I’ve wondered that too…

Hey, you know what is awesome? When I was getting on the elevator to go see Kip earlier today and just I was getting on a little boy (about four years of age, I would guess) and his father were stepping off. The little boy looked up at me then asked his father “Why is he really tall?” It was awesome. His father apparently had no reply.

You’ll note that I mentioned Kip just then. I would like to clarify right now that I am mentioning him in a poor light. That’s right, Kip. I am disparaging you. Suck it.

So, remember a few months back when I thought that I’d lost all the cable networks that I don’t pay for? Well, it appears that I was too quick to assume that someone had noticed I was getting an odd assortment of things I’m not meant to. It turns out that the cable was just unplugged and I’ve still got them all. So I am back in the business of being able to flip through the channels as a form of relaxation.

Shame about how there really isn’t anything good on them.

So, it’s the middle of July…

Why did nobody tell me that there was a movie made about Hypatia last year? Everyone knows that she was my favorite personality from the Library of Alexandria. What am I paying you people for?

I have recently learned that there are things called Drabbles which are stories exactly 100 words in length. The Internet tells me that they are typically done for fanfiction, but I have decided that I am going to do a whole bunch of them using the superhero world I’ve built up in my head since childhood. It’s like fanfiction of my own creation. Or something. Anyway, I’m going to try to do fifty of them and then put it all up as one page here, but in the meantime, to fill out a post, here is one of them:

In the Grand Canyon there is a secret facility built on a rift in the universe called the Nexoid Portal. Dave works security in the Nexoid building. One night the sensors blinked to indicate that something was trying to come through. When Dave checked on the rift he saw his daughter who had died two years before.

“Daddy,” she said. “I found my way back. Let me in.”

“I can’t do that,” Dave replied.

“But why?”

“Because you’re actually the demon Zeozal in disguise. You tried this same thing last week.”

“Crap, I did. Man, I need new ideas.”

“Yeah.”

— — —
In other news, if anyone out there has been reading the X-Men comics for the last couple years and thinks that reading a parody of them would be quite nice, there is a new Micro Adventure by my good friend G:DR right in the section of this website where those are kept. They’re the only comic parodies you can trust.

PDR’s UFO

So when I was a kid I saw a UFO. It was when I was walking to school one day, probably this was around 1990 or so. As UFO sightings go, it is really on the boring side of the scale. I have tried to represent it as best I can recall in the three panels above which depict it as it flies in front of a cloud. As you can see, it’s just kinda blue and white. The exact blue of the sky and the exact white of the cloud. Because of that it really seems more like atmospheric phenomena than alien spacecraft, but hopefully that is just what they want us to think.

Haiku!

Boring UFO.
Probably not aliens.
I am still your friend.

So that is my UFO story. Not much, but it’s all I got, so I’d thought I’d add it to the Book of PDR on this similarly nice day. Of course, now that I’m not nine, a nice day like this doesn’t make for a nice UFO-spottin’ walk to school. Nowadays it means a sweltering apartment where the heat wakes me up after four hours and I just can’t get back to sleep. Oh how times change.

So anyway, while I am sure that the universe is big enough that alien life must be out there, they haven’t visited me yet. When they do, I’ll put in a good word for the rest of you.

June 2010

I find the month of June 2010 guilty of the following:

  • One count of my partner who does all the work I don’t want to do being on vacation for a month, leaving me with twice the work to do and the only person at work I can have a real conversation with gone.
  • One count of a staff member just not showing up any more leaving us shorthanded by one for the duration of the month.
  • One count of a staff member injuring herself with a box cutter leaving us shorthanded by another one for the duration of the month.
  • Two counts of staff members losing family members causing us to be further shorthanded, in one case for a week and in the other for the duration of the month.
  • Four counts of machinery literally breaking.
  • Three counts of my supposed second in command leaving early without letting me know and leaving me with extra work that I had to rush through so I could be done in time to catch my ride.
  • Two counts of my supposed second in command calling in to say he won’t be coming to work for reasons deemed suspicious.
  • One count of me not getting done in time to catch my ride.
  • One count of the paper being delayed hours to wait for the results of a hockey game. (Fact: Anyone who cared about that game and for some reason hadn’t watched it on television or caught the results on the news or on the Internet or from friends should really just not bother)
  • Untold counts of me spending hours trying to get to sleep but unable because of heat or noise from outside.
  • Eight counts of me finally being asleep and then being awakened by some external stimuli (In one case it was a cannon salute for the Queen. Am I the only one who thinks maybe she’s been around the world enough that a cannon salute isn’t going to impress her much?)
  • One count of being called into work when I had already been awake for twenty-one hours.
  • Three counts of me crashing an sleeping for ten or more hours at a time, eating up an entire day of time spent not working.
  • Two counts of having to postpone Father’s Day dinner because of work.
  • Two counts of having to cancel blood donation appointments because of work.
  • Three counts of having to turn down Hanging Out With Friends time because of work.
  • One count of ruining a shirt on a jagged metal bit at work.
  • Two counts of ruining pants beyond the point of wearability (and for me that point means they are quite damaged.
  • One count of me injuring my finger in such a way that blood came out from under the fingernail.
  • One count of a long scratch on the back of my neck from the corner of a machine I was reaching under.
  • One count of not having access to the Internet on my only day off during one week.
  • One count of the twenty-four hour gas station I used to stop for juice when I had to walk from work apparently not being open twenty-four hours any more.
  • One count of locking myself out of my apartment.
  • One count of the truck I was in nearly being hit by a drunk driver (or if not drunk, just a very bad driver).
  • At least three counts of papercuts (those are just the ones that occurred after I decided to keep a list of annoyances).
  • One count of being a month with so many annoyances I decided to keep a list.

Now, I fully admit that the vast majority of these are quite minor and several were obviously much worse for other people than me, but the fact it was all condensed into one four-week span really made June 2010 a month that I will not miss in the least. It joins the year 2006 in Times PDR Mostly Didn’t Enjoy. But hey, it is all over now.