to begin the new year!

Boobies and Kittens - watch more funny videos

Somebody needs a beat down.

I am so pissed off today that I am vibrating.

Every nerve is firing and every tendon is taut.

The scowl on my face is deep and my head is lowered in thought.

Last night my daughter was at Taco bell, just down the street from maybe 2 blocks but not well lit. She was there with her friend talking with her friends that work there.

Its Christmas break and I knew where she was so she was allowed to stay out and about.

Come 1030, Taco Bell is closing up shop for the night.

PHM’s friend’s dad comes and picks her up.

As my girl starts to climb into the vehicle as well, he stops her.

“You can walk home.”

And drives away, leaving my girl in the parking lot.

Alone

At 10:30 at night

In the middle of winter.

Luckily her friends at the Bell were cool enough to hang with her until she could get someone to drive her home.

I know why she did not walk home and that is because it was 10:30 at night and the middle of freakin winter!

Now why she did not call home is indeed a mystery.

I think it is because she was smoking in the parking lot and didn’t want to come home with the stink.

She did anyway.

That is a separate issue which shall be addressed.

THAT is my fault entirely.

I take full blame and responsibility for my daughter smoking.

I regret everything about it and around it.

That’s MY cross to bear and I am working on it.

I can rationalize it by saying

“Hey at least I don’t smoke a lot! I can make a pack last 3 days and if I tried harder even longer.”

Or

“I smoke the heaviest when I am tired and with my current issue with fatigue I am smoking more.”

Or

“I don’t need the nicotine it’s the habit that I have the hardest time with”

But none of that changes the facts at all.

Actually that last one is true and a solid issue, but I digress.

The issue that has me hot under the color is this father leaving my daughter stranded when it would have cost him literally 1 maybe 1.5 minutes of his time to drop her off at home.

Luckily I have the day to burn this heat off.

From what I was told my girl called his wife and explained what he did.

She was appalled and said she would take care of it.

I am debating now whether that is good enough for me.

I don’t want to jeopardize my daughter’s friendships but I will not allow anyone in my family to be disrespected and abandoned like that.

I DO know that he is blessed right now not to be in front of me and that I have the whole day to chillax out.

Oprah is black!

I was flipping through the channels the other day and watched the beginning of the Kennedy Center Honors thing a ma bob

I wasn’t but a few minutes into it before I realized something

                    Oprah is black!

Now I know this may come as a shock for some of you as it was for me.

I knew she was a woman

  I knew she was immensely successful

    I knew she is incredibly powerful

      I knew she has more money than Scrooge McDuck

It just never really registered with me that she was black.

                                         I always just saw her as a human.

The color of a person’s skin means about the same to me as the color of their socks.

It is the person that dwells within that skin that is the important matter.

Unfortunately everyone starts out on the bottom rung of the ladder in my mind. Unless it can be proven to me otherwise, everyone is beneath contempt but equally. I hold myself on that ladder too, dear reader. I don’t hold any elevated ideas of my worth or that I am better than anyone else.

I have an abundant number of flaws and I am quicker than most to point them out.

      If I were to believe in yearly resolutions then that would be mine.

To consciously try and improve upon myself more than ever before.

I have spent too long just waiting for a better me to develop.

This new year I will endeavor to at least try to be a better me.

A me I can actually be proud of.

I can still recall with acute and painful clarity the last time I was strong and proud of where I was and who I was.

                                                                          1999

 From there I slid.

You know the movie “Romancing the Stone”? The scene when Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner were in the rain and the ground gave away causing them to slide and slalom down the mud slide?

                                  .. yeah it has felt like that for a decade.

Fortunately I “think” I have reached bottom and started my climb back out  

(unfortunately I did not land between the thighs of a young and lithe Kathleen Turner but ah well. I did qualify that with the YOUNG Turner though, not the raspy linebacker of today.)

I don't feel the oppressive gloom and doom I once did. 

Its not all dark and death and skulls and tombs and evil and bleak and desolate and lonely and disheartening and… stuff.

I am nowhere near puppies and sunshine yet and I truly doubt I can ever be again

but I will end my days on this planet trying.

                           OH!

                  Ok?

well… that train took an detour indeed. 

I was going to one place and ended up somewhere completely different.

Should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque.

To return to the top up there…I think what I was trying to say

A poor black woman becoming such a public and yes historical icon is quite an achievement.

I have so much respect for that achievement to conquer so many odds.

Not because she is famous or a celebrity.

Those are just window dressings.

Social candy with no nutritional value.

I have respect for that because she took herself to where she wanted to be and beyond.

I admire that.

I envy that.

snowblind

December 2010 Blizzard Timelapse from Michael Black on Vimeo.

Skys the Limit

This is wrong.......

So according to the numbers here (from their website).. Lets say you need some extra emergency cash for Christmas so you think "oh hell! I am tapped and I still have to get the entire in law side of the family done shopping! I know I will go to Western Sky and grab some quick dough there."
You walk in and take out a $1500.00 Loan
You walk out with $1000 - yes they keep $500 off the top.
Then over the next 2 years you make the minimal payments off $166.95 a month
That means after 24 months you have now paid them just over $4000 dollars.not counting the 500 you gave them off the top or any penalties you might occur for being late.
So to recap one day you borrow a grand and 2 years later you have paid back almost $5000.

Do you think the Native Americans are still pissed we took over their country?

http://www.westernsky.com/General/Rates.aspx

Love Marshmallows

 It's the holidays so I am being blog lazy for a bit as I try to cope with another year kicking the bucket. God how time soars by as you age. I still remember being a kid and waiting just the week till Christmas was an eternal agony.
Now its like once the 4th of July hits Christmas is the next damn day.
Anyway, this is a nice blurb article from Psychology today



Love Marshmallows
By John R. Buri, Ph.D.
Created Nov 2 2010 - 7:15am
Imagine that you are a 4-year old and you have just been given a choice:
- you can have one marshmallow immediately
- OR you can have two marshmallows if you wait 15 minutes.
Those children who at age 4 did not delay gratification --- they grabbed a marshmallow immediately --- were followed up at age 16, and now during adolescence they were:
- less able to deal with the frustrations of life
- more apt to back down from challenges and difficulties
- less self-reliant and assertive
- less socially confident and effective
- less dependable and trustworthy.
Imagine that you are an 8th grader and you have just been given a choice:
- you can have $1.00 right now
- OR you can have $2.00 if you wait until next week to get it.
The inability to delay gratification --- to wait until next week to get $2.00 --- is a far better predictor of poor academic performance than is IQ.
As a nation, we scoff at delayed gratification --- our current financial deficit stands at $13,683,993,569,372!  (And it has increased an average of $4.14 billion per day for the past 3 years.)  Spending cuts? --- that would mean someone would have to do without – someone would have to sacrifice.
In a Newsweek listing released this fall of the 100 most successful nations in the world, the U.S. did not even make the top 10.
A recent report has identified the U.S. as having the weakest families in the western world.
I recently scanned the dozen or so top marriage and family textbooks, and only 2 of them discussed the role of sacrifice in love relationships --- and only 1 of these 2 talked about sacrifice as having a positive role in love.  [The other 1 emphasized that if you sacrifice, you are apt to become a martyr and to be taken advantage of by your partner.]
Let me make it clear --- sacrifice is vital if you want love to thrive.
Watching-out-for-yourselfism doesn’t work.
Something-for-nothingism may apply in the world of in-loveness [Love? Or Being In Love?], but not in love.
How often are the love marshmallows waiting for us to simply reach out and grab one?
- In those moments when you can respond to the one you love with kindness or with nastiness
- At those times when the coy come-ons of a co-worker display a blatant disregard for the fact that you are already in a committed relationship
- When you have to choose how you will respond to your partner's need to talk --- with interest or with indifference
- When your former lover flirtatiously befriends you on Facebook, even though they know you are attached
Like the 4-year old, we can reach out and grab a marshmallow anytime we want.
But not without a price.
Something-for-nothingism does not work in love.

big bag of awesomness

found this via reddit.com and thought it was worth sharing

Quote:
Originally Posted by BadgerMatt
First of all, I am not claiming to have invented this trick. I imagine others have used it with varying degrees of success. I also want to point out that nothing here is embellished or exaggerated.

I had tickets to a sporting event and couldn't attend. I made a 1-day listing and clearly stated that the tickets must be picked up in person within 24 hours (the game was the evening after the auction ended, so there wasn't any time to ship the tickets). A woman won the auction for about $600. The auction had ended at 10:00am and by 5:00pm she still hadn't responded to my emails trying to organize the exchange. Finally, at 9:30pm, I got a one-liner email: "I overbid and my husband won't let me buy these. Sorry and enjoy the game! "

I first tried explaining that I wouldn't have the time to resell the tickets (I already got turned down by the losing bidders). She said, "... that's not my problem. It's eBay, not a car dealership. I can back out if I want." I still don't understand the car dealership reference.

I was pretty upset. I was basically going to be stuck with tickets to an event that I couldn't attend. That's when I got the idea to convince her to change her mind.

I created a new eBay account, "Payback" we'll call it, and sent her a message: "Hi there, I noticed you won an auction for 4 [sporting event] tickets. I meant to bid on these but couldn't get to a computer. I wanted to take my son and dad and would be willing to give you $1,000 for the tickets. I imagine that you've already made plans to attend, but I figured it was worth a shot."

At 11:30pm she responded to Payback: "I'll do it for $1,100, no less. I can meet you at the game if you agree. I need your phone number."
At 11:35pm, Payback wrote: "Deal. Here is my number..." (Thanks Google Voice for the throwaway number). She called a few minutes later and made Payback "promise" to go through with the deal. She emphasized that she'd be out a lot of money if Payback backed out. Payback swore he would never do such a thing.

At 11:45pm, the woman emailed me: "Fine. I'll buy them. But you have to drop them off at my house tonight. I'll have the cash ready." So at fucking midnight I drove to her house across town and met her on the road in front of her apartment building. She was a nasty and rude individual. Things didn't get any better when I told her I wanted an extra $20 for the trouble of driving there at midnight (yeah, pushing my luck, I know). It became very awkward and she literally threw 31 $20 bills at me. I counted them before handing over the tickets. I said, "thanks for the great transaction" as she flipped me off while walking away.

At 10:00am she called Payback to make sure they were still on for the exchange. Payback said that he could no longer go to the game and wouldn't be able to do the exchange. She blew her fucking top and I swear to god started speaking in tongues. Payback said, "Ma'am, this is eBay, not a car dealership" and hung up.

I got a rabid email 10 minutes later telling me that I was going to hell and that she's reported me to the local police, FBI, and... the fire department. WTF?

I never heard another word from her. I have no idea if she went to the game or not.

Ok so you are telling me there is a chance....

Via: Online Blackjack

too much brain

I was just thinking a few minutes ago...
The opposite of love is not hate, it's apathy
but the opposite of hate is love
but wouldn’t the opposite of apathy be love as well?
Still working that one through.
I stumbled across a paradox as well
(by stumbled across I mean I am sure someone else as written volumes of works on the matter but I end up thinking this stuff myself)
There is no such thing as normal
normal is completely relative.
However if normal does not exist the abnormal cannot exist
if abnormal is no more then wouldn’t that insist on the existence of normal?

I need to drink more.
My braincells have way too much free-time.
They need to be more focused on fighting for survival and shutting the hell up.

stuff I thought I knew

[Source: Misconception Junction]

Smell the Roses

This is a video created by Graeme Taylor aboard a high-speed train using a high-speed camera, replayed in slow motion. The result is pretty spectacular.
Somedays this is how I see the world...

A person just likes what they like

What is it in us that make stuff interesting to us?

Ok

Not very clear there.

Example:

I was born and raised in a pretty white bread household.

Nothing spectacular. Middle class across the board.

We moved a lot when I was younger but that’s about it.

Dad worked for the government at air force bases as an inspector on the minute man missile program. So we moved about once a year or year and a ½.

There are “things” though that have always interested me and they were really never “introduced” to me at any given time.

For instance I like:

• Skulls, demons and Grim Reapers
• Medieval times (Knights and chivalry)
• Shakespeare
• Classical Music (NO one in my family enjoys this even remotely but me)
• Superhero’s
• Dungeons and Dragons

Yet at no any given time was I ever sat down and told “watch this” or “listen to this” or “try this”. Each of these had a moment in the mind cooker, as was millions of other things and for some reason or other they took hold and became “likes”

I like Star Trek, but I know where that came from. My mom used to watch it while she ironed the laundry each day and I fell in love from there.

As for Star Wars my father took us in 1976 to the theatre to see it. We were actually reluctant to go! Afterwards he regretted it for the rest of his life, semi-jokingly of course. This was the last time my father EVER went to the theatre.

I can claim Star Wars and specifically Han Solo to be one of the factors in the development of who I am as I was growing up.

However, this does not explain my attraction to knights and skulls and demons and even zombies.

So where do these things come from.

What is it in our brain that says “This I like. This I don’t like.”

Do you think there is some credence to the reincarnation of the soul? Maybe I was squire at one time and some part of me feels that this feels familiar? Is there a limited amount of souls in the universe? There is a philosophy of thought that believes that there are a finite number of souls and that you are continually surrounded by the same souls in each incarnation of your life. That way you are given a better chance to learn what you need to learn to be able to move on to the next plane or the next lesson.

If that’s true I will be the last soul walking on this earth because I am clueless as to what I need to learn.

I know my faults but I am, so far, unable to fix them (at least enough to satisfy myself).

So where do these odd likes (for that matter dislikes as well) come from? Why do certain things click with a person and not with another?

It’s deeper than just a preference there are some things that you are drawn too and just like it.

Why

Just because.

Maybe there is no higher or alternative meaning.

A person just likes what they like and it is nothing more than that.

I don’t think so though.

The initial spark has to come from somewhere or somewhen.

Doesn't it?