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My coming of age story.
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Why I don't care:
It does work a lot better.

It's fun to hate:
Reagan-Fluffing. This is what all of the conservatives are doing with the death of Reagan, he was a president, he died. Do not try to paint him as a Messiah or you are going to sound really foolish when the news shifts back to things like the "Iran Contra Scandal".

When Shadowtwin reigns supreme:
Dead presidents will only be appreciated for their portraits on the currency. No less, no more.

Music lost to history:
Alice Cooper:
Roses on White Lace

Alice Cooper is basically what Marilyn Manson has become. He sang about really taboo subjects at a time when taboo actually was taboo. This particular tune is one that I began listening to after being dumped by the girl that I was supposed to marry back in the early nineties. It is actually one of three songs that play back to back on most albums. Those three songs are, if memory serves, "chop, chop, chop", "Gail" and "Roses on White Lace". I never really appreciated the other two quite as much as this one, but then I have never hacked anyone to death, so check back later...

This song stands alone as being pretty cool just because it states the anger that I was having at the time (back in the '90s). At the same time, it illustrates that Marilyn Manson is following the course of another very successful rocker. While Cooper's songs were not earth-shaking, they were provocative. That single fact is what has led to Manson's success. I have never heard or read Marilyn Manson say that Alice Cooper was an actual influence on his music, but here is an example of it from twenty years ago.

French Toast-
A cute little game that I spent about a minute playing earlier today. It could do without the racial slurs, but it was free, and fun for the minute of playability.

Well, yesterday's post went all to hell. I wrote a paragraph or two, but it was so damn hot in my house that I was no longer able to take it. It was around six when I asked my wife to provide transportation to the nearest Home Depot so that I could buy a new pad for our evaporative cooler. We have a MasterCool cooler in our home, and it works pretty well. It can normally keep the interior temperature thirty degrees colder than the exterior while providing a nice breeze. The MasterCool is a lower maintenance system than your average evaporative cooler as it only has one pad (as opposed to the eight on the ones at work) and can be easily cleaned/repaired by a layman. The major problem with the cooler is that the cost of that pad was $97 yesterday, and at least that high the rest of the days of the year (even higher if you are not at the home depot), while the "aspen" pads for normal evap. coolers are usually a couple of bucks each. 97 is a larger number than say 12 (which is what the cost of the 4 pads would be if I had a similar size cooler that was not a MasterCool.)

The MasterCool system does certainly work a hell of a lot better, but the difference in prices is pretty considerable. MasterCool does offer a five year warranty on their pads, but that warranty does not cover damage due to water, calcium, lime, hell anything that the pad might be damaged by. I guess they are saying that if you leave the box on the shelf in your shed for five years it will still perform as if you bought it new, since the warranty doesn't cover any of the things that could actually happen to the pad if it was in use.

I have always likened the warranty on the MasterCool pads to the people who sell stuff on eBay with a "guaranteed not to be Dead On Arrival" guarantee. So the second that you touch the thing you broke it. If you say "but it never booted." They will say, "it powered up, didn't it?" If you try to say that you really don't know, but a light came on, that means that it did power on and therefore you broke it...

To use the same logic, I have a PC that totally works, it will boot right up and run without any problems. Well the fact that it has a boot-sector virus and can not actually do anything might be mis-interpreted by some as a problem, but I can certainly guarantee that it will start when you push the button...

• *sigh* . I had a direction that I was travelling here, with my thoughts, but instead of that happening I totally lost that track after having been on the phone with my wife until the very second she walked in the door after work. Good, bad, indifferent, whatever thought I lost is just that, lost. Not that I write anything that could end world hunger over here anyway, just that I sure needed something other than a *sigh* to signal the formation of a new thought.

• Lollipops and Pentagrams, if one could combine the two they would be quite a wealthy person.