Time to vote for the second immunity challenge in Blogosphere Survivor. Can you guess which one is mine this time?

Posted by: Jim at 11:11 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 22 words, total size 1 kb.

Terry repositioned himself, angling for a clear view of the doorway. It wouldn't be long before his target walked through it. He checked the position of the setting sun. Yes, just a few minutes. About fifteen, to be precise.

Terry knew his target, Todd McCallum, almost better than he knew himself and he knew that tonight McCallum would be coming through that door alone. Months of study and preparation would be paid off tonight. The countless hours invested in studying his prey during the dark hours of the night would soon be redeemed. Tonight would be the night, he was sure of it. He settled down as flat as he could make himself and stared at the doorway through eager eyes.

Terry could have taken McCallum long ago if he had been free to act according to his own designs but there were so many rules that he had to follow. No witnesses. No evidence. It had to be done in this location. He had to strike from this position. So many damned rules but what was the use in complaining? It wasn't always easy being an M.U.B. but it would certainly be rewarding tonight, now that everything was coming together. He turned his head and checked the sun again. Ten minutes, give or take. He grinned ferally and ran his tongue over his lips. Oh, this was going to be sweet.

McCallum had established a pattern, something very dangerous for someone in his position. He had an escort every other night but for the past three weeks he'd been alone when he came through that door on Saturday evenings. Terry couldn't do anything at all when one of McCallum's bodyguards was present. That's why tonight's strike was so important. It wasn't like he'd be able to continue this hunt indefinitely. Eventually somebody was going to cop to his hiding place (the one mandated by the damned M.U.B. rules!) and then he would be up Shit Creek. He glanced at the sunset again. Any minute now. Any minute. more...

Posted by: Jim at 10:19 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 2269 words, total size 12 kb.

The Letter of the Day is was "I".

"I" is for Idea. The best ones are often the simplest.

Posted by: Jim at 08:53 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 27 words, total size 1 kb.

Piss on 'em, Helen. more...

Posted by: Jim at 08:29 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 16 words, total size 1 kb.

The news is in and it's not of the happy variety. Our Everyday Stranger has been cut in a round of layoffs by Company X. Go visit Helen and leave some love.

Makes me glad that I don't have a phone from a certain large Swedish telecomunications company.

Posted by: Jim at 07:24 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 58 words, total size 1 kb.

Ilyka has a fantastic post that uncovers the grubs and worms crawling behind the protests of the international trade talks in Miami. Fithian? She's a worm. The New York Times? Definitely a grub.

Posted by: Jim at 04:35 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 37 words, total size 1 kb.

The 61st edition of the Carnival of the Vanities is waiting for you over at Peaktalk. It's big. Spooky big.

I wonder how large this thing is going to be by the time I'm hosting it...

Posted by: Jim at 03:45 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 42 words, total size 1 kb.

Then shame on you! We're just getting into the good stuff now. But still, there are other worthies out there that can complement our battle to the death.

Nick Queen over at Patriot Paradox is organizing a Blog Tournament. Currently the tourney needs both contestants and judges. This contest runs in a two week cycle so even if you don't get into the first edition it shouldn't be long before you're playing.

I wouldn't recommend playing in two contests at the same time, which is why I've volunteered to help with judging but won't be competing until after Dec 03. The rest of my island friends will have relatively shorter times to wait before being able to join the Patriot Paradox tournament without conflicts. Jeff, you can go ahead and sign up now.

Posted by: Jim at 07:04 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 141 words, total size 1 kb.

The Bonfire of the Vanities is hot and ready. Stop by and warm yourself with the flaming rejects of the blogosphere.

Posted by: Jim at 06:50 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 25 words, total size 1 kb.

I shall seek and find you...
I shall take you to bed and control you...
I will make you ache, shake and sweat until you grunt and groan...
I will make you beg for mercy...
I will exhaust you to the point that you will be relieved when I leave you...
You will be weak for days after I am gone.

Posted by: Jim at 01:53 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 74 words, total size 1 kb.

I've just received word that Luuk, the Everyday Bear, has left the Peacock household and is on his way to his next Angry destination. Lovely Wife saw him off after giving him a quick Scotchguard treatment. (Hey, Don is his next stop. Safety first.)

We got a bunch more pictures of Luuk in the past couple days and I'll get those up as soon as I can.

Posted by: Jim at 11:16 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 77 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Can't wait to see the pics. I get Luuk after a while (after his visit with JimiLove), and I need to start planning and rule out any cool Atlanta places you may have covered.

Posted by: Joey at November 18, 2003 08:42 PM (Jq6q/)

2 Shouldn't be too hard, Joey. After all, we've got more cool places than you can shake a stick at.

Posted by: Jim at November 19, 2003 03:49 AM (fkewd)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

I'm going to offend some people with this post. I'll probably get some hate mail and some harsh comments and may even lose some regular readers. That sucks but it's also the way of the world. If you have an opinion there are going to be people who disagree with it. If you can state it in an obsequious manner you'll probably do okay. People will line up to defend a timid speaker. Be nice, they'll say. He's wrong but it's because he's confused. Explain it to him in simple terms and you'll see that he's not truly evil. If, however, you happen to be the sort of person who states his opinion in a raw and coldhearted fashion then you'll piss off many folks. Even some who might ordinarily support your position. Can you guess which one I am? Let's begin:

Midgets Need To Get Their Heads Out of Their Asses

I saw a special presentation about an operation that little people(TM) can undergo in order to get taller. It involves implanting an external metal brace into the long bones of the legs. The bones are broken and separated. The bracing is then continuously lengthened. The healing process of the broken bones causes them to grow towards each other. As the gap of the break is consistently maintained the effect is a gradual lengthening of the legs.

It's painful. It takes a long time. It's good for only a couple of inches. There are many post-procedure problems including weakened bones, arthritis, bone and muscle pain. Sense of balance is seriously compromised and the patient is clumsy and awkward for quite some time.

One of the patients who was interviewed told of all of these problems but dismissed them as negligible. You see, he can now do things like drive an unmodified car. He can ride on a roller coaster. He uses the cupboards at his apartment. In fact his only regret about having the procedure is that he is now an outcast from his community. You see, those jokes on Seinfeld about little people(tm) "heightening" weren't jokes. It really is viewed as a serious breach of etiquette to wear tall shoes or otherwise compensate for (lack of) height. Having this operation makes a little person an outcast from the little person community.

This leads to an obvious question which I will direct to the little community at large:

How do you get such an oversized head so firmly implanted in your anal sphincter? Come the fuck on! It's a birth defect. It is not normal to be a midget/dwarf/little fellow. It is neither amoral or foolish for somebody with a birth defect to use devices and procedures to overcome that defect. Should somebody born with one arm forgo a prosthetic one? If I had a procedure that cured Downs Syndrome do you think that all of the Downs' afflicted out there would rally to attack a person who went through that procedure because they wanted to be normal?

YOU ARE NOT NORMAL. Get it through your skulls. I'm not saying that you should be ashamed of being small. I'm saying that you shouldn't be carrying around a chip on your vertically challenged shoulder because of it. It's a birth defect, a freak happening of nature, one of the more common of literally thousands of documented and understood genetic mishaps. It should not be either a badge of honor or a Sysephean burden.

If you have a chance to correct it then do so! And if you are so wrapped up in a communal pity party that you can't bear the thought of fixing what's wrong with you then at least have the fucking courtesy to support somebody with the courage to do so himself. The way that guy was treated, the exposure of the intollerance and antagonism in the little community, was sickening. He showed bravery and courage, going through a painful procedure in order to make his life better, already knowing that his friends would turn on him. He didn't deserve the way he was treated and to be quite frank those "friends" certainly didn't deserve him.

Fire away.

UPDATE: I wrote this quite a while ago and never posted it. Generally I try not to post things when I'm pissed about the subject. A decent rant is fine but when I'm very irritated I tend to get more insulting than descriptive so a "Jim is pissed" post generally won't do anything constructive. I figured that I would let it sit and revisit it, edit it in a calm voice and then post it. It ended up getting lost and forgotten until yesterday. I looked it over with the intent of editing out the more inflammatory insults and profanity but have decided to present it as-is instead. It's not as overwhelmingly antagonistic as I thought when I first wrote it and the anger the subject raised in me back then has been fairly well rekindled by rereading it.

Posted by: Jim at 10:09 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
Post contains 836 words, total size 5 kb.

The second challenge for Blog Survivor is to come up with a slogan that will appear on forthcoming Anger Management T-shirts. This is a delicious opportunity for a warped and evil person such as myself. Here's a couple I came up with off the top of my head:

• Sucking up to Frank J since January, 2003.


• Adventures with my objectionist mangina.


• Almost but not quite completely unlike a weblog.

Actually, that last one can go a lot of different ways. Sub out "a weblog" and insert "humor" or "entertainment". You see where I'm going here.

Oh, I feel like a kid in a candy store.

Posted by: Jim at 07:41 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 119 words, total size 1 kb.

Kelley is wondering what stuff you believed as a kid that you can laugh about now.

I had a particularly voracious monster under the bed. It wasn't good enough to keep hands and feet away from the edge. All body parts had to be protected by the Blanket of Monster Repelling or it was all over. You had approximately 5 seconds to get covered (after jumping the last 3 feet into the bed) before he would attack. I didn't have a closet monster though. The bed monster probably ate him.

I had a stair monster too. The steps to the basement were open (no backs on the steps). If you were too slow getting up the stairs he would grab your ankles. One of the most terrifying moments of my childhood was when I was tearing ass up these stairs and slipped. I smashed my shin on the wooden step so hard that I couldn't even scream, it hurt so badly. I was stuck, unable to move, just waiting for the monster to grab me. Eventually I was able to crawl up to the landing where I sat huddled in a fetal position until I could stand up again. To this day I don't know what saved me back then. Either he was asleep on his watch or just assumed I'd trucked all the way up like I usually did. I'm sure that if I'd actually been able to cry at the pain he would have been alerted and then he would have got me.

Posted by: Jim at 06:47 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 275 words, total size 1 kb.

What the hell is Buy Nothing Day? Apparently it's supposed to be some sort of statement against American consumerism. This is a participatory project (which strangely enough started in the Pacific Northwest, who woulda thunk it) for people who think that capitalism will be the doom of America.

Ummm...

Right. more...

Posted by: Jim at 05:12 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 391 words, total size 3 kb.

Say that you're in a meeting with your team (programmers, production guy, product manager and boss). Further, say that you are sitting across from and just a bit over from the boss. Let's also say that she has one too many buttons undone on her blouse. And it's obvious she does not have a clue that said button is open. She's also got a lacy black little half bra thing going on and depending on which way she is facing and how she is sitting you can see nipple.

Do you stare? How openly? Is it bad if you do a jaw dropped open full-on ogle for several minutes, during which time you are aparently brain dead and slowly, one by one, the people in the meeting each realize that you are occularly linked to the boss's boobages? How bad is it when the boss herself realizes that you are visually molesting her and calls your name several times before you respond?

Finally, if at the completion of the meeting the boss stands up and it turns out that she was wearing some black leotard thing under her blouse and anything else that you thought you saw was just your own very overactive imagination, should that cancel out any asshole points that you've accumulated or does it simply mean that you are pathetic?

This is all just hypothetically speaking of course...

Posted by: Jim at 04:25 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 235 words, total size 1 kb.

Nothing much coming from here today. I'm busier than a Bangkok whore with the 6th fleet in port. I'll give you a teaser though. Another short story is percolating through my gray matter. What will it be? Horror, Sci-Fi, Fantasy? Maybe some more porn? Find out tomorrow, or whenever it's finished brewing. The biggest problem with it right now is there are 3 endings and I can't pick which one I like best. Maybe I'll give you all three.

Oh, wait. I do have something quick to share. Captain Corelli's Mandolin was a decent movie destroyed by two things. The first was Nicolas Cage. Sorry, but he can never ever play a romantic lead. No matter what the character is supposed to portray you will never escape the image of Cage in Raising Arizona. And what was with that accent? He either got it from an intense one week session with a voice coach in the Bronx or from watching too many Olive Garden commercials. The second problem was the normally spectacular John Hurt who was almost but not quite completely unlike Roddy McDowell a Greek provincial doctor.

Posted by: Jim at 07:50 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 196 words, total size 1 kb.

The Letter of the Day is was "H"

"H" is for Happy Medium. Not the "pleasant muse" type, we're talking the state you need to attain before you can successfully spend 3 hours in a car with somebody who has radically different musical taste.

Posted by: Jim at 08:23 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 54 words, total size 1 kb.

Wander over to Venomous Kate's Snarkfest for the best of all things snarkish.

Oh what savage delight grips these unworthy bones at perusal of such delicious vitriol.

Posted by: Jim at 08:06 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 33 words, total size 1 kb.

The Letter of the Day is "G".

"G" is for Gone. See ya, Pylorns!

Posted by: Jim at 04:42 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 22 words, total size 1 kb.