I have never actually taken part in any of the memes that all of the bloggers do, this time I really wanted to. Mostly since I want to answer the questions that Flux put up as The evil meme of four. I figure I should answer the questions from the original meme before I do that though, so here it is.

Four jobs you've had in your life:
Dish Machine Operator (that is what the place actually called the position, I guess they just didn't want me to feel like a lowly dishwasher. Keep that in mind as I try to glorify the rest of them), Petroleum Exchange Technician (I pumped gas in Oregon where there is no self service), My current job, being butcher/stocker/cashier/manager/handyman/plumber/electrician/anything else you can think of at a family owned grocery store, Vice President in charge of frozen confection marketing, sales and distribution (while I technically only changed the prices on the billboard, collected money for ice cream cones, then served said cones, this is a fairly accurate statement).

Four movies you could watch over and over:
Pump Up the Volume, The Princess Bride, Jacob's Ladder, The Shawshank Redemption. Keep in mind that I left a few of my favorites (Monty Python and South Park most notably) out because I have seen them so often on other blogs.

Four places you've lived:
Roseburg, OR, Weaubleau, MO (though only on a summer vacation), Florence, AZ, and most notably, in a friend's garage for six months or so.

Four TV shows you love to watch:
Survivor, South Park, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

Four places you've been on vacation:
Tijuana, Las Vegas, Disneyland, The Grand Canyon.

Four websites you visit daily:
I am just gonna do my first four in the surfing routine here. Black Champagne,Political Animal, Daily Rotten, Magazine Man. Magazine Man tells some great stories, if you have never read any you really should.

Four of your favorite foods:
Pizza, Chimichagas, Pollo Fundido, Funyuns.

Four places you'd rather be:
The forests in Oregon (since that was my stomping ground back in the day), the Giza plateau (must see the pyramids before I die), Ireland (must see the castles before I die), mid-air with a parachute on my back (I always wanted to try sky-diving but when I actually tried to schedule a session my boss was going to be on vacation so I had to cancel it.)

Thus the original four meme is concluded.

But that was not the one I really wanted to do, on to the good one.

Now to the evil four meme answers:

Four celebrities you'd cheat on your wife/husband/gf/bf with. (Time travel is permitted.):
Doro Pesch, of Warlock fame (would need to be in the mid to late '80's though), Marilyn Monroe (always have had a weird fascination with her) probably would be better if it was while she was alive also, Tawny Kitaen (on the hood of WhiteSnake's car, whatever year that was), Samantha Fox (only in her glory years which have long since passed. I like full-bodied women, sue me).

Four celebrities you'd like to see dead, painfully or otherwise:
Tom Cruise (compared to Scientology all the other religions seem logical), Paris Hilton (can you think of a more vapid, uselss person? She should have been swallowed long before conception), Rob Schneider (I think Schneider is a great comic, however, I can't justify pumping out movies that suck then criticising the critics that say the movies suck. Suck it up Rob. Your movies suck. Go back to stand-up and get your crowd back). There is a certain nameless individual who has to come first on my list, I am not sure that he is actaually a celebrity, but he has some impressive credentials that make me hate him and, therefore, wish his death. Take from the last statement what you will.

Four movies you'd like to erase from your brain:
This one is a bit subjective. There are movies that I wish to erase from my brain because I hated them, every Star Wars 4-6 would fall into that category. There are also movies that I would like to erase simply because I have bad memories about them. First up will be The Hearse (that was the first horror movie I ever watched, I think I was six at the time, it creeped the hell out of me... I still have hearse related nightmares). Pretty in Pink (enough said). Basektball, this one I only saw a couple of minutes of but it soured me to the whole thing. Every Matrix movie that had a number following the title/ every Star Wars title that put a number before the title.

Four places you never, ever want to visit.
Washington, DC, anywhere in the southern united states (the places where they don't understand why slavery isn't legal), Iraq, DisneyLand.

Four TV shows you wish you had never seen/never want to see.
Lost, CSI (I watched that show when it was called "The New Detectives" on the Discovery channel), Judge Judy, The OC.

Four websites you wish would cease to exist.
I would need an audio clip of crickets at night to make this one work. Everyone is enitled to their voice. No matter how wrong, in my opinion, that voice is, there is nothing I can do about it.

Of the "Seven Deadly Sins," which four do you most frequently indulge in? (Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Wrath, Greed, Sloth.)
Envy, Lust, Greed, Sloth.

Of these four, which would you give your life to save? Your mother, father, wife/husband/SO, or children:
I would certainly give my own life to save my wife. I wouldn't do the same for anyone else on that list. I don't have any children, so the wife is the most important/valuable person in my life. My father is dead, my mother would probably understand the choice (were it her or me) if I didn't take the bullet for her. My wife is a couple years younger than me, I hope she would just avoid the gunfire in the first place, if she didn't she would be able to move on without me, that doesn't work the other way.

Have a Happy New Year, all.

I am far from what would be considered an average, normal neighbor, come to think of it I don't think there really are any average, normal neighbors. I may think someone is a nutjob based solely on the fact that he decorates his yard with old beer cans, while he would think I was a nutjob because I don't. It is all very subjective...Usually.

I always thought that the woman who lived a couple of houses down from me while I was growing up was weird, just because she was a bit of a recluse and had roughly 14 million cats. As the years have passed I realize that that is just standard old lady behavior, perhaps a bit eccentric but completely normal when put on the giant pie chart of old ladies. There was another guy a block or so over from us (I think I wrote about this previously but I couldn't find a reference to it, probably because I don't know his name and spoke about it pretty vaguely) that threw all of his spare change into the drain gutter in front of his house. There were some neighbors that I literally never saw; I would see the cars leave the garage in the morning and arrive home at night but never once caught a glimpse of them. It seems weird neighbors are everywhere, probably even right next door to you.

The guy that I met yesterday might not take the cake as the weirdest neighbor ever, but I bet he got some door prizes. Hell, I am sure he would have won it all for best costume, the dude you feel most uneasy around, and the guy that gets the most flimsy excuses for why people have to leave when he enters a room. He seemed pretty harmless physically, but he gave off an aura that your mind interpreted as, "Body! Body! We must exit this space immediately! Let us leave now and never speak of this man again!"

The person in question is not my neighbor, quite thankfully. He will, however, be the neighbor of whoever buys the house that I have been working on in the next town over. The Real Estate company would do themselves a favor to do a Simpsons and just pay the guy to not come outside when there is a perspective buyer there. He is that weird. At least I think he is, but it is all about perspective, right? I am probably just as weird to him. Though I am not sure if his mind can process the word weird, or any other word that has more than one vowel, for that matter.

I have been doing work on this house for some time and had never actually seen the guy until yesterday. I was going to the house to do a bit of touch-up painting and to connect the plumbing lines that the contractor had neglected to do. The guy that was installing the tile and carpet was working on it though so I was not able to do any of the tasks I needed to (you can't walk on the tile for at least 24 hours after it is installed, also he had removed the vanities and toilets from the bathrooms and they were the ones that I needed to finish). I spoke with Mr. Flooring Guy only long enough to find out when I could come back to finish off my tasks, which would have been today for the flooring being done, but the vanities and toilets won't be back in until tomorrow. I was certainly done for that day. I made my way to the car.

Have you ever had one of those WTF moments? I don't mean that in the sense that you text message WTF to someone when they give you a weird response, I am talking about a full on "what the fuck" moment. You see something that is so unbelievable that all you can think or say is "what the fuck?" That happened to me midway between the house and the car, in a big way.

I have been thinking about this all day and I still can't figure out which way to go with it. The weird neighbor was the one that gave me a genuine "What the Fuck?" moment, but it was his attire that brought that about. The whole outfit was the reason for it, but there were three key pieces of it that had me holding back my laughter as I spoke with him, and backing away slowly. He had crossed the line between eccentric and insane, done a couple of laps around the slackers, then lapped the crazy people a couple of times before he dressed himself, by appearance at least.

Though I saw him top to bottom, I am going to describe him bottom to top. His feet were donning some fashionable, blue thongs flip-flops (the wife has told me that I can no longer call the footwear a thong because of possible misconception). Scroll up a bit (oh how I wish I hadn't) and you will see military camouflage, unfortunately it is on a pair of shorts that look like '70s era basketball shorts (if I would have looked hard enough I would likely have seen ass cheeks). He was wearing a very sensible long-sleeved sweater, well, it would have been sensible if it didn't have a Raiders logo on it. That is pretty weird, eh? That was the normal part of his attire though, it only gets worse.

Much like the Gaydar kicks in when I see someone gay (three or more facial piercings and pants that have a zipper on the back will send that thing into the red zone), this guy set off my whackodar. My best guess is that he was voted most likely to bury bodies in the basement when he was in high school, and he probably followed through on that.

So, he was wearing the blue thongs flip-flops, camouflaged short-shorts, a Raiders sweatshirt, and a British Pith Helmet. He was also wearing a gun belt, which had an indeterminate pistol in it. I have never had rules about it previously, but I invented one yesterday: Always run away from the man in flip-flops, camouflaged short-shorts, a Raiders sweatshirt, a British Pith Helmet, and an unidentified gun. That is a good rule. Keep it in mind.

Thank the random fluctuations of time and space that he is not my neighbor. That guy was just creepy.

The best part of my job is that no two days are ever the same. Sure everyone makes that same claim, but in my case it is totally true. I am a butcher, in theory, but I have to do all of the stocking of the milk, beer, perishables, and just whatever the hell happens to come into the store. That is just in the first couple of hours that I am there though, after that it can get interesting.

When I first started working there, back in 1994, whenever something would go wrong with plumbing/electrical/you-name-it, they would call someone to come and fix it. Now I am that someone. I have learned a lot of skills during my time at this job, skills that will likely make it a lot easier for me to find another job should I go looking for one. I never knew that I was an electrician, or a plumber, or a building contractor until, I actually had the project in front of me. My logic was pretty simple: If someone with an 8th grade education can do it, I can do it also. Because "I am good enough, I am smart enough, and dog gone it people like me" (no offense if you don't get the humorous intent of the quote).

In my years working where I do I have taught myself the major aspects of various trades. I can now lay down tile (ranging from the do-it-yourself peel-and-stick, through the industrial grade that must be glued down, all the way to the ceramic, which is extremely expensive but a very good investment as you will never have to replace it.), I can troubleshoot electrical circuits in structures that were wired up at least a couple of decades before my birth, I have become quite proficient at finding and eliminating the sources of leaking roofs, I can replace water lines without a problem (though I only replace with PVC or CPVC since I don't actually have a torch and the flux that copper would require. Although I did have to borrow a torch to do a copper line one time since building codes do not allow pvc connections behind walls. That is a long story though), yes, I have learned a lot while working where I do, mostly self taught.

The culmination of my self-taught abilities came a couple of weeks ago. There was a vacant rental house that the boss wanted fixed up, but he figured I could do all the work. He was right. I will skip over the minutiae of broken faucets and the such and get to the meat of this one, I had to install laminate flooring (Pergo. Google it if you care, I am not going to link to it). That is some tough shit to put down. While it is true that it just snaps together, what they don't tell you (the installation instructions tell you but you have already committed yourself to it at that point) is that there has to be a quarter inch space between the flooring and the wall at all times, to allow for expansion and contraction of the flooring. That is probably all well and good in new homes, you know the ones, they are easily identified by their straight walls, standard door moldings and the such. In a house that is as old as the one I was working in none of those things exist.

This description will be horribly confusing, but bear with me. I had to lay the flooring down in a house that had walls and corners about as square as an overhead view of the border between the U.S. and Mexico. There was existing "trim molding" that actually went below the level of the floor (which I could not use for finish molding since it would leave the underside of the flooring completely exposed to the elements, or so the Home Depot guy told me), the existing "trim molding" stopped about an inch before every door, went back to the level of the wall, had a quarter-round molding (vertical), then hit the door jamb. The door transitions were hard.

It took me about an hour to lay 200 square feet of this flooring: It took me about 20 hours to lay the 30 square feet for the 7 doorways and two carpet transitions. I still had to leave the quarter inch gap around all of the transitions (where the doors are), but was able to cover all of the rest of the gaps with molding. Even the housing inspector (that is the guy that comes in to check out the house prior to sale to make sure that the home will be around by the time the mortgage is paid off) didn't notice the small gaps at the doorways. It is only a quarter of an inch.

So I learned a brand new skill today: I can now haul dirt.

The basement of the place I work is quite cavernous, thousands of square feet. The foundation is extremely visible and made of nothing but huge stones and mortar. Problem is someone decided to mud over the foundation and make it into a living area (I have no idea how long ago that was, but I would guess decades). The mud that they slapped over the enormous rocks has long since turned to sand, which is now filling up the basement. It is nearly knee deep at the corners and along the wall, while being only a light dusting (say an inch and a half) near the center. I have to clean it out.

Dirt is heavy.

I spent three hours down in the basement today doing nothing other than moving out that dirt. I had a helper so that we could do double the damage in the same amount of time. We each filled two buckets, five gallon buckets, before taking them out to the street. Each bucket weighed in excess of fifty pounds, we carried them out two at a time (four at a time since there were two of us). That makes it to be 200 pounds each time we carried them out. I would guess that we only did 25 trips to get the dirt cleaned out, which sucks since I titled the post about sixteen tons and we only did about 2.5 tons. Of course the sixteen ton song is about shoveling, not what we had to do.

Every full bucket of sand has to make it to the street. That trek, from where we were in the basement, was about 200 feet to the stairs, the thirteen stairs, 30 feet to the door, and an additional 250 feet after that. Dumping the pails was taking about five minutes every time, but we were to sweeping near the end so I guess I didn't really have to work all that hard.

On the upside, I get to do it again tomorrow! We only managed to clear one wall today, there are many more to be taken care of.

Seriously, Kids, stay in school.

Living in the Phoenix area can really suck the enjoyment out of football. At least if you happen to be the type that like to root for the home team. I don't really give a rat's ass about the Cardinals though, I have always been a Cowboys fan. That began to change about the time that the receivers were featured more often on the 5 o'clock news for drug possession than yardage.

Prior to this morning I had watched less than one complete half of a game all season. The matchups have just sucked all year. Not that today's matchups should have been any better. My viewing options were the 4-9 Cardinals @ 2-11 Texans, or the 8-5 Chargers @ undefeated Indy. I wouldn't have watched either of them except I happened to check the scores at the half to see that the Cardinals were losing (as always) but Indy was down 13-0 as well. I had to watch the second half of that one.

I have an irrational hatred for Peyton Manning, there is absolutely no logical reason why (thus it is irrational, though all hatred is irrational when it comes down to it). My beef with Manning is that he isn't that good. His dad was one of the best to ever play the game, and had to do it with one of the shittiest teams ever. Peyton got into a damn good college program based more on his lineage than his talent, has always been surrounded by excellent players and has never really had to prove himself. He manages to throw up some tremendous numbers because he has one of the best running backs in the game, a great offensive line, as well as a couple of receivers that seem to have sticky tape for hands. Hooray for Peyton.

The very second the game actually matters though he folds like a cheap suit. Once he reaches the playoffs he looks like he is straight out of a High School JV team. He just can't win when it matters. His QB rating drops like a stone in big games, yet everyone still seems to think he is great. Perhaps someday he will be but he sure as hell isn't now. It kind of reminds me of something that Shaquille O'neal said prior to the Lakers run, he said that he had won championships at every level "Except college and the Pros". Probably at least 25% of the US population could make that same statement.

So it was that I watched the second half of the game today hoping beyond hope that San Diego could put a stop to Indy's undefeated season. They did, but it seemed they were trying to give it to Indy several times. Brees threw an interception and fumbled in the third quarter, both resulted in Indy scores. San Diego committed so many fouls that I lost count, though I do know that they got fouls on three consecutive plays at one point. If not for their defense, and a couple of clutch plays late, San Diego would have given it to Indy just with the penalties. Thankfully they managed to hang on and make a couple of huge plays when they needed to.

That all being said, I have to say that I took away from the game a sliver of respect for Manning. I don't know that he was ever upright to watch one of his receivers make the catch. The Charger's defense just seemed to walk through Indy's offensive line at will and made Manning pay for every pass he completed. Not baby taps either, we're talking pound him to the turf/sandwich him hits. He stood in there and took it, and still managed to complete some pretty amazing passes. Though the passes wouldn't have been amazing were it not for his receivers ability to turn on a dime and chase down the ball. Even the part of me that irrationally hates Manning was feeling a bit sorry for the guy by the end of it.

That was a very entertaining game to watch, in the fourth quarter especially. I can't remember being that emotionally involved in a game in a long time, which is saying something since I don't actually like either of the teams involved. I just wanted San Diego to win so badly because I don't think Indy has any right to go undefeated. If Joe Montana couldn't do it with the best 49ers team, if Marino couldn't do it with the best Dolphins team, if Staubuch couldn't do it with the best cowboys team, if Namath couldn't do it with the best Jets team, well you get the idea, then certainly Manning has no business doing it with the Colts.

I guess I should mention that I think people put way to much stock in every quarterback. Take the 49ers for example. Montana was out, Steve Young was in, everyone said there was no way anyone could compare to Montana, but Young had the same group around him and was able to go quickly from rookie to champion. My beloved Cowboys had quite a run in the '90s with Troy Aikman at the helm, but they also had Michael Irvin, Emmit Smith, Moose Johnston, Jay Novacek, and one of the best offensive lines in the history of the game. More recently, the Cardinals sent Jake Plummer to Denver since he seemed to be pretty inept as a QB, but, the second he got somewhere with a running back, an offensive line, a tight end and a couple of receivers he is looking like pro bowl material. Which is why Peyton's dad (Archie) was such a great QB, he got all of his numbers playing with an expansion team and never won anything.

Put Peyton Manning on the Texans team and see if he can continue to produce the numbers he is now, then, then I tell you, I will give up my irrational hatred of him. For now I was happy to see his bid for an undefeated season dashed, and eagerly await his forthcoming playoff meltdown.

In case you didn't notice, I took a couple of weeks off on the blogging. I didn't have anything to write so when I tried to put something together it was obviously forced. You know it must be some bottom of the barrel crap if I think it is too bad to post, I mean look at what I do post.

I have also been playing a lot of Guild Wars lately. That game simply kicks ass. It is also an enormous timesink. You can't really just pop into it for a ten minute goodie run, well you could but not looking for anything actually good. Once your ass hits the seat you are in it for at least an hour, probably a lot longer. The reason for that is the cooperative missions. There are missions that can't possibly be done solo, some that require precise party formations to be completed at all. Finding a party for any particular quest is often difficult, unless you are a healing monk, in which case the party will find you. That was the reason that I had stopped playing it some time ago, I was just tired of wasting my time looking for a group to do a mission.

My wife plays the game a lot more than me. As a result she has characters that are far superior to mine, and never much of a problem finding a group. She also developed a list of friends that she frequently played the game with, and ultimately left my guild to join one that didn't suck (which left only myself and a friend in Washington in the guild). She downloaded a program called Gamecomm, which allows her to communicate with her party members via a headset instead of the keyboard. After seeing how this technology made missions which seemed impossible turn easy I decided it was time to start playing the game again.

My wife got her guild leader to invite me into their guild, which required me leaving my own guild (thus leaving the friend in Washington as its only member), and it has been nothing but fun ever since. I also use the gamecomm program, but I usually just listen to what she and her friends are saying, which is often hilarious, as I muddle along on lower level quests to try to reach the areas of the game where the good shit is. The members of the guild I belong to are fabulously helpful, they have taken time out of their high level item quests to help me through some low level dreck, and having them tell me what I need to do during the mission (via a headset) makes it so that I look like slightly less of a noob. I'm still a noob though.

The worst part of it is that my highest level character, the character that they invited into the guild, is name "Probably a Mistake". Yes I named my character "Probably a Mistake". So when they are talking on gamecomm or in chat they refer to me as "probably", even if I am playing a different character I have to tell them that I am "probably" so they know who I am. I really thought that character was a mistake when I made it, and it is. Smiting monk isn't as good as I thought it was going to be once you get to higher levels. While it is easy to change the skill set to become a healer, the name can never be changed. I will henceforth ever be known as "Probably a Mistake" or "Probably", thankfully they have yet to call me "Mistake", at least not when I am in game anyway. I just wish I would have used my standard alias when I formed that character, it would be so much nicer to be referred to as shadow, or twin, or ST than "probably." At the very least I could have gone with the joking moniker I used when I set up my first internet dial-up account: Big Dick McGee, though I guess that would have been a mistake, probably...