I, Whore

I finally caved to the temptation to put the scant "popularity" of my weblog to the test and pimp out some space for advertisements. I've got no idea exactly how much actual cash I stand to make from people clicking on generic ad links on my blog, although I ran across something that lit up the cliched dollar signs in my eyes:

My blog is worth $2,258.16.
How much is your blog worth?

My blog is apparently worth thousands! I'm still not completely clear what this is based on, but to whomever is valuing Fillet of Soul at over $2200, is that monthly, yearly, or a one-time sale? Either way, deal. E-mail me and you'll have full ownership the minute the check clears.

Meanwhile, I'm swinging my pink boa Google's way, with the assumption that I'll be hearing from them about accruing advertising revenue in the form of a check, auto-deposit, or periodic addition to my IRA. I'm thinking I should be able to pay off my student loans by next weekend.

FUCNN

This makes me want to puke.

My e-mail to CNN:
"I've been increasingly despondent over the apparent abdication of responsibility most media outlets have shown in covering the abuses of power perpetrated by the current administration; however, until recently I've held CNN in high regard among major news channels. Your hiring of Glenn Beck is entirely beyond the pale. I'm certain your staff is fully aware of the inexhaustible catalog of execrable, indefensible, and disgustingly misanthropic statements he's made on his radio show. Why not round it off by digging up Anne Coulter and bring back Michael Savage? Nauseating. This is a very sudden last straw."

If you have any doubt or confusion about what an unearthly abomination Beck is, have a look here. And it mentions something that I was unaware of -- CNN also just hired Bill Bennett, who lost his own radio show after claiming that "[Y]ou could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." FOX squared. Shameful.

Melancarly: FrankenMetro 1993 - 2006

FrankenMetro passed away while on work transport duty last Wednesday after a short illness (it had been stalling at stoplights). Its last journey was one of approximately 80 feet from my habitual parking spot to the mailbox, after which it was meant to take its wonted route to ACS. It was not to be. After cranking but failing to catch, I pushed its still-warm body back to its space and called AAA. It was towed approximately eight miles to The Car Shop, where dedicated mechanics labored to resuscitate it for two days before it was pronounced totaled at approximately 3:00 pm on Friday.

Over the course of its exceptional life, it had traveled over 127,000 miles -- I learned only after its passing that a Geo's aluminum engine is reliable only up to 100,000 miles, afterwards it drives on borrowed time. I had hoped to push it onwards past 200,000 miles, but apparently that's akin to my hoping my dog lives to be 40. As it was, in Metro years, it was probably already around 105.

I drove a company car back to the mechanic's, where it rests still, and cleaned it out for the last time, relieving it of its jumper cables, funnel, and registration documents. I rubbed its hood and bid farewell. It wrung my soul to see it finally and eternally still, defeated, immobile. After so many miles, after bearing me to view the breathtaking Anasazi palaces of Chaco, the remote and stunning Canyon de Chelly, and the beaches of Mexico and Florida, it could carry me no farther.

Some day this week, perhaps tomorrow, it will be towed to its final destination at the behest of the American Cancer Society, the proceeds of its sale to be donated to cancer research. It's what it would have wanted.


"Oh Geo Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling..."

Grandpa's Brain is in a Metal Cannister

Before I lay me down to sleep, I have to refer you to this.

Boy, do I wish that Blogger had some form of password protection feature. There are a lot of stray free radical thoughts bouncing around my skull, and I'm not quite free to expound publically quite yet. Sigh.

I'm pretty speechless about the whole government deal, but with everything that's come out about the amoral, shameless bulldozing of the foundations of our society that's been going on, this bursts the seams of irony (listen to "Imagine.") DICK IS A KILLER!

Son of Sam Adams

Just bottled my pale ale last night, and now I'm trying to think of a clever-clever name for my most recent brew. My favorites so far include the entry title (perhaps a mock-up of the Sam Adams label with Berkowitz's head pasted onto Sam's shoulders) and "(Oh, am I) Still Ale," complete with a wistful (or inebriated, if I can find one) shot of Moz in the background.

Others:

Jagged Little Pale Ale
18th Ale Descendant
What the Ale?
Wallace Beery
al-Aqsa Brewers Brigade Presents "Ale Qaida"
Hopped-up Chinaman
Ale Gore
Call Me Morbid, Call Me Pale Ale (yes, yet another Smiths allusion)
None the Weiser

That's all I got for now. Ideas very, very welcome.

Meanwhile, Janine's finally got her own blog! Do go read!

Oh yes, and read this, too.

Update: My first label! Very, very clever if you're a hardcore Smiths fan.

Happy, the End

Just mixed up a big batch of homebrew pale ale, which is cooling in a bucket in the bathtub so I can add the yeast and starting waiting for it to gestate into beer. That, and I recently caved into my creeping sense of apathy and let my gym membership lapse, saving me $50 a month and leaving me to my own devices, fitness-wise. Which is probably for the best -- toward the end, I was getting horribly bored with the weight machines, and started doing lunges and push-ups. Which require no weights and no machines and no gym. I resolved to stay in some semblance of "shape" anyway, but the Italian soup Janine whipped up tonight (of which I devoured two enormous bowls) bodes ill. Good thing the New Year isn't far away -- I had a good resolution a couple of years back, maybe I can make another one.

Doesn't look good, though -- I'm slipping into that awful, no-pressure, carefree comfort zone in which I don't even feel like keeping in shape's that big a deal, but damned if anything's going to keep me from this book! Something about an briar patch...

Tomorrow on the Freeway

Picking up where I left off with one of the worst weeks in recent memory, revolving mainly around the continual success of my Metro to get me to work followed by its continual failure to get me back home. There's still something wrong with the alternator belt, which I'll have to work out sometime tomorrow between five and six in the morning. It'd be smart to figure it out now, but I'm sleepy.

This, paired up with my work situation, in which I'm "monitoring" construction activity to guard against violation of pristine archaeological resources. A worthwhile endeavor, although the construction is taking place in an area that's been previously churned up numerous times before. Which means I'm watching men dig holes for eight (and this week 10!) hours a day. It's actually a pretty good opportunity to scribble some chapters in my Nanowrimo work, but writing fiction while standing or while perched on an I-beam is oddly uninspiring.

Place of my birth, I'm a-comin'.

Sing My Life

In the same vein as Stacy's type-your-name-into-Google idea (which gave me a bit of a shock initially -- the first thing my eyes landed on when I saw that post for the first time was, "Stacy is pregnant!" Then I saw, "Stacy is a schizophrenic film," and thought maybe she was going all Dada on her posts. And then I got it.), I tried typing my name into Rhapsody's song browser to see what songsmiths over the ages have been writing about me.

1. "Andy" -- Indigo Girls. How sweet. They must have seen me in the audience during that show in Columbus in '92.
2. "Andy" -- Frank Zappa
3. "Andy Gets Fired" -- R.E.M. Guess Stipe got mad I never came to see them. I feel bad about that too, Michael. Everyone needs to vent, I understand.
4. "Andy, Who Are You?" -- The Way It Is. Afriad I'll have to return the question.
5. "Andy in the City" -- Kaley Willow
6. "Andy Always Dreamed of Wrestling" -- The Bobs
7. "Andy You'll Be Alone in Heaven" -- Carrigan. How creepily nice of them to say.
8. "Remembering Andy" -- Clare Cooper
9. "Desperate Andy" -- the Cranberries. Hell hath no fury like Dolores O'Riorden.
10. "Call Me Andy" -- Marc Shaiman. Please, do.
11. "The Summer of Andy" -- The Cancer Conspiracy. Eek. A song about '98...

And then we have "Me and Little Andy," "Jim and Andy," "Fred and Andy," "Elvis and Andy," like I'm always somebody's fucking sidekick. Anyway, there were 116 hits -- talk about a really freakin' narcissistic mix cd...

Change of Plans

Things have altered somewhat over the past month and half since I last posted -- not necessarily bad things; it's one of those situations in which the good and bad come in pretty equal measures, and the bottom line looks like it might turn out better than I would have expected. And everyone likes lists, so:

1. Remember that house we were going to buy? We're not going to buy it. The builder and the associated mortgage company we were going through turned out to be supremely unreliable and inept enough to assume the problems we were having as we got closer and closer to the closing date weren't going to be the last problems we were going to have with them.

2. We've been in very close contact with my mom back on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and will probably be paying her a visit next month.

3. Meanwhile, not blowing a ton of cash on a house means we have more left over for things like a badly-needed computer and cable modem. Probably the main reason I haven't been posting much of late is that I've been subscribing to NetZero dial-up. No, wait, that's accelerated dial-up -- I wasn't supposed to be able to tell the difference between that and broadband. It turned out to be the internet equivalent of the Chinese postal system. One of the most satisfying things I've done all week was to call NetZero and cancel my subscription. The new Dell's on its way. Expect more posts when it gets here.

4. The job at ACS is coming along just fine -- I'm still (and shall remain for a while longer) the new guy, but I've got some writing credits under my belt, some small projects I'm in charge of, some newbies to boss around every now and then. Life's a piece of cake, archaeologically. Wow, how's that for a contrast from a couple of years ago...

5. I freaking loved New Orleans. I spent New Years of '97 there, walked Carter around the French Quarter, had my first mufaletta... Yet another of the many, many instances in which I ask myself, "What if Gore had won..." In this specific case, I'd wage the answer would be, "Fewer people would have died." That might actually be the answer to to every instance.

That's it for now -- I've got to take a shower and step out for a while -- Phoenix is still largely an unexplored country, although I do know where all the good brew pubs are... E-mail me to request a special Director's Cut edition of this post!