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the way soldiers salute the president


Today blew. Got horribly lost on the way to my 2nd Lasik consultation/evaluation – making me irreparably, showing up after the doctor had already given up on me. This means that I had to push out my 2nd evaluation, the one I was planning to use as a bargaining chip, until next week. And, because I have no basis for price-matching either surgeon down until I’ve had the other evaluation – I had to reschedule the surgery I booked for this Friday. Bummer… but I figure I can wait another week. You shoulda seen me though, lost in some remote part of town, furious at myself and stressing at 150% like I always do when I’m late for something… I had a headache in an instant. I couldn’t even enjoy the windows-down drive in our excellent 80 degree sunny temps. Woe is me… my life is so tough.

Biding my time while on the can the other day, I made it through another issue of Maxim. Not done with the restroom, I had no choice but to also begin reading the ads at the back. That’s when I came upon the ubiquitous back-of-a-mens-mag penis pill pitch. In a full-page spread peppered with bold, red block-text and lots of suggestive pictures of couple in various states of undress – a company was selling a “pill for male enlargement.” Standard enough, I figured. Heck, 50% of the comment spam this blog gets is for penis enlargement – so it must be a booming business. After all, I suppose there are some men with 11″ dongs who’d want just that little bit more… in case they ever bed a porn star or something. I found some of the ad pretty good, thought I’d share it here – although it’s not graoundbreaking comedy by a long shot… these ads are written to be made fun of. So, you can say I took the easy way out by picking an easy target for jokes, so be it. Some of the claims made in the very wordy pitch:

A longer and thicker penis even when you are not hard. Because there is more blood flow, your penis “hangs” larger all day.

I dunno why they put “hangs” in quotes, perhaps to add emphasis to the nature of the verb “hanging,” such that images of gravity pulling downward on an immense weight come to mind.

Just imagine when your sex partner sees how thick and long and hard you are. Men will gasp with envy the first time they see the new you in a locker room, shower or gym.

As a man, I resent this. The notion that I would “gasp” at another man’s penis is an insult to me. Unless of course, that man’s penis was 4ft long and shouting racial slurs at a funeral. Actually… it really wouldn’t even have to be a penis for me to gasp in that case – shouting racial slurs at a funeral is just plain-out cause for gasping… I’m just trying to keep this related to the penis bit.

You will feel in total command because now any possibility of going soft, and premature ejaculation will be eliminated with your new rock hard much larger penis.

I’ve always wanted to feel “in total command.” In fact – if I’m gonna be in total command, I’m going to have to ask that my sex partner salute me. You know, the way soldiers salute the president? I’m also going to need some medals and a hat that makes me look “in charge” of shit. I want to walk into the bedroom, rock hard penis leading the way a full 15″ ahead of me, sex-medals pinned to the flesh of my bare chest, and have my buck-naked sex partner snap to attention on the bed and salute me. And I want a crisp salute! None of that limp-wristed crap or there’ll be no rock hard penis tonight.

We also included some of the same type of herbs found in Polynesia where the men of the Mangaian tribe have sex on the average of three times a night, every night. While this is not what you may desire, it is nice to know that your sexual performance can improve substantially.

“While this is not what I may desire?” I’ll say. Have you seen any Mangaian women? Those skanky she-males are so hard up for mansword they’d bone me three times a night. No thanks, buddy, you can slay Mangaian women thrice nightly if it’s your cup of tea – I’ll settle for someone who’s hookworm-free once or twice a week. They do it with monkeys too, you know… those herbs don’t discriminate.

Because you are longer you penetrate more sensitive areas of the woman.

I’m hoping for her back teeth. Those mofos can be quite sensitive for some. They’ve even got special toothpaste for women who’s back teeth my new penis will batter during sex. Sensodyne: “For when your teeth hurt because his rock hard penis pounds them during the three (or more) bouts of freaky Mangaian sex you have every night.”

Well, that’s it for me. Canned content, if you must know… because I needed to hit the sack early (midnight) to wake up around ~4am and head to Oregon, again. The last of the travel, mehopes. Goodnight friends and lovers.

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what can i do to get you into these eyes today?


Uneventful Monday, other than what’s in the paragraph below. This week is full of holes for me, effectively useless from a work standpoint. Monday and Tuesday morning shot with Lasik consultations, Wednesday gone to a day trip to Oregon, and Friday consumed by my eyes getting lasered. My only full day in the office being Thursday… not that I mind, but I just feel so disconnected from work lately. Sharaun’s out running errands, and I’m at home tending Keaton. After several circuits of the living room and hall in her dad’s arms, she’s now sleeping quietly in her swing – looking a little angel far from the screeching banshee I struggled with just 10min ago. My website is still acting up, no help from the hosting company as yet – which saddens me as they’ve been so responsive over the years. Today I either hit a run of good luck, or the server was acting as it used to – because my page loads were fast and enjoyable. But as I try to post tonight, I’m hampered by timeouts and slow-loads. Who knows folks, I may end up having to switch hosts out of this whole deal… something I’m not looking forward to at all. Well, I think that’s a sufficient expository paragraph, eh? Yes then, let’s move along shall we?

Went in for my 1st Lasik evaluation this morning (you can read that as yesterday, since I’m writing from the past). It was a loooong experience: a battery of exams with a bit of good old fashioned salesmanship thrown in. There are several options: lasers, better lasers, tear-duct protein plugs, higher-order aberration correction, power windows and ABS, etc. It was clear to me that the Lasik business is a very lucrative enterprise – so much so that your ability to wheel and deal is huge. I casually mentioned that I was getting evaluations at a couple other major surgery outfits here in town, and was immediately offered “their lowest price minus 10%” as price-matching. I’m fully confident that I won’t end up paying more than 80% of the original prices I was quoted once I’m done shopping around and pitting surgeons against each other for my business. Seems odd… bargain-hunting for elective surgery… but there are so many places that do it and it’s become such a competitive industry – it works to the consumer’s benefit. Either way, I’ve got my surgery scheduled for Friday morning – with the caveat that I can call in my lowest “shopped around” price and get 10% off that anytime prior to the procedure.

Goodnight.

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catching up


I apologize for my website of late, the performance is horrible. The page either loads incredibly slow, or times out altogether. I have no idea what’s causing this, but am fairly certain it’s nothing of my doing. I’ve been running the same pages with the same scripts for quite a while with decent performance… and all of the sudden things are gummed up. I’ve narrowed it down to any page which accesses one of my MySQL databases (as both this page and my gallery pages do), so it seems the problem lies there… somehow. I have noticed a sharp increase in the amount of spam comments the blog gets, up to about ~3000 per day now – and that might be the culprit. I wrote to my host’s tech support – but so far they’ve only offered me an upgrade package to a dedicated server (rather than the virtual slice of a server I now share with others). This sounds appealing to me, but also ticks me off… I should be able to expect my pages to work. For crap’s sake I only have a measly three databases and a handful of scripts that call them. So, dear reader, I’ll do what I can to fix the situation – but until then I apologize if your experience here is frustrating.

But, just to make it all the more frustrating – here’s a link to Keaton’s gallery, where I’ve uploaded some annotated snaps from our weekend in Oregon which you’ll read more about below. Oh yeah, today’s entry is mad disjointed… and I make no apologies, as it was written in fits over the last week, often for entries not posted (as the gaps in writing last week make evident).

Let’s get started with random paragraph #1.

The other night on TV 20/20 ran a story about a girl who had to have half of her brain removed, due to a rare brain disease that was causing her to have debilitating seizures. Yes, it was a storyline on a popular medical drama recently. Anyway, they showed video footage the girl’s family took when she was a baby – and cut to her parents saying how happy they were when she was born that they got a “healthy baby.” Yes, aren’t we all… it’s what we all hope for, a healthy child with ten fingers and ten toes. But, when this family’s little girl turned four – something went wrong. I think about that all the time, how things can look so normal and right for so long – and then, seemingly out of the blue, go so terribly wrong. I think about that with our daughter, how perfect she is, how healthy and happy and beautiful. Watching a show like that before Keaton tugged at my heartstrings, watching it now that I have Keaton – it full-on hooked my heartstrings up to the Concorde and took flight.

Continuing with random paragraph #2.

Showering at my folks’ place these past few days, I noticed that their guest bathroom is stocked with a bottle of “body wash” instead my preference a bar of soap. I never did get into the “body wash” thing, just doesn’t equate to a bar of soap to me… leaving my skin feeling all slimy when I draw my fingers across it, instead of the squeaky clean of soap that I like. Anyway, I picked up the body wash to check it out – and read the following off the back label:

We know how special your bath or shower time is…a place for you to be private, reborn, where creative thoughts visit.

Reborn? For me, my bath or shower time is more like a time for me to wash the stink off my ass, sweat off my balls, and grease off my face (although not necessarily in that order). Who are these people for whom bathing is a religious experience? Although, I guess, I can’t argue with the “creative thoughts” coming to visit part – as this whole bit was indeed inspired by a shower…

And, random paragraphs #3 and #4, written last week but never posted.

Why are large conference/meeting rooms always unable to cool themselves properly? It seems like every time I find myself congregated with a large group of folks in big conference room, I’m sweating balls. You’d think that engineers designing these big conference rooms for hotels and the like would take this into consideration and install cooling that could handle capacity. Ugh… now my face is greasy and I’m getting sleepy, thanks a lot hot conference room.

The trip to Oregon has been a huge success thus far. Keaton must have her dad’s genes because she traveled like a seasoned pro – making nary a peep and sleeping the entire time. Last night Sharaun and I slept with her lain betwixt us, which we’ve never done before – partly for fear of rolling over onto her mid-sleep. Well, we didn’t roll over onto her, and I really enjoyed the experience. It may sound dumb, but I loved waking up in the middle of the night and seeing her sleeping face just to my left, her little pink-clad arms flung up above her head just like dad does when he sleeps, her little chest rising and falling and making soft breathy sounds through her tiny nose. I want to describe it as “intimate,” but that sounds kinda pedo… so maybe I won’t.

Let’s end this mess just as randomly, shall we?

I’m so excited about the news that Thom Yorke is doing a solo record, I can’t wait to see what he does with his “spare time.” I certainly love the woodcut-esque flash animation on the frontpage of his solo-centric webpage – I the imagery there is in any way representative of the album’s vibe, I’m down. I’m also excited because the new Sufjan leaked… a full two months in advance of the album’s official release. I’ll write more about it once I’ve had the time to properly digest it.

Well, today (Monday) is the 1st of my two Lasik consultations, with surgery possible as early as this Friday. I’m so pumped folks, so pumped. Talk to you all later, Dave out.

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once more to the skies


Not much meat today, but I didn’t want to do one of those skip-two-days things again. We fly to Oregon tomorrow (we’re already gone as you read this), for a work/vacation thing (I work Wednesday through Friday, hang with the folks in the evenings and on the weekend). Keaton’s first flight, and we have to roll out of bed at the ungodly hour of 3am in order to get ready and catch out 6am flight. Wish us luck, OK?

Work’s got me in a rut… some recent goings-down there have shaken up my responsibilities and rendered a good part of the planning I’ve done over the last six months moot. Gave me occasion to sit aimless for a bit, without direction, wondering where and how to get back into things. I’m reluctant to go back and redo all my careful planning, as I’m somewhat concerned the dust hasn’t quite settled and it may all be for naught. I will admit, though, that a Tuesday with no direction and no solid deadlines was kinda nice…

Progress on ripping the very last remnants of my CD collection is moving along swiftly, thanks to the bootleg-wizard script I wrote to tag-up the resultant MP3s. I’m working through the Beatles at a breakneck clip, and excited about the prospect of finally getting down to zero physical CDs and an all-digital music library. Well, to be honest I do have plans to box up some of my original Beatles bootlegs and store them for safekeeping – as they’re rather rare and have a high sentimental value. But all the CD-R copies of stuff I traded for over the years is going right in the bin – trash.

Until Oregon, goodnight.

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firsts


A weekend of firsts: First night away from home with little Keaton; Keaton’s first camping trip; Keaton’s first time to the ocean; and Keaton’s first night slept entirely through (she’s been doing ~6hrs for about week, but Sunday night she went 11 hours – in a tent no less). Camping was good, but freezing – windy and in the low 50s / high 40s at night. We bundled Keaton tight, and she really seemed to enjoy being outside. Laying down in the tent must’ve seemed like a circus-colored light show to her, with the wind blowing the canvas walls in and out and the sunlight playing through the trees we were pitched under. I’ve posted the Keaton-specific pictures from the trip in a new gallery, and the more general camping-related pictures in another new gallery – go there or be square.

Speaking of galleries and pictures, I made some simple optimizations to my Coppermine gallery script (the machine behind my photo galleries). I’d had problems with slow loading and updating, and most annoyingly I was getting SQL “max_questions” exceeds errors (seems Coppermine is pretty liberal in the number of SQL SELECT statements it does, and my server limits me to 5000 per hour). I actually think it’s Google’s robot spidering the images that was constantly pushing me over the limit – but regardless of the culprit it was annoying to have the gallery go down for an hour at a time. I added a brilliant bit of randomization to the SQL user, so the gallery will run the SELECT statements with one of four different users each time, randomly. This way, I can effectively have 20000k queries per hour. What’s more, it seems to have greatly improved the speed of the galleries – maybe by deserializing all the queued SELECTs from a single user. Either way, it seemed to be working well over the weekend – but I did get a couple slow loads… we’ll see how it works under the “strain” of all my readers.

Tomorrow, Monday as I write, is gonna be a busy one. Unfortunately, I had to cancel this first of my two much-looked-forward to Lasik consultations… to schedule some last-minute meetings at work. Things were thrown into the air at work Friday, as some major shakeups went down. So much so that my planned travel this week is now up in the air, which is tough because I was using the trip to Oregon to get to my folks’ place for our Mother’s Day visit (Sharaun is meeting me there Wednesday). Now, however, I don’t even know if my work-related travel is still on – although the trip to the grandparents’ place still is, meaning I may have to find my own way there… which may or may not be on the same flight as Sharaun and Keaton. Not a big deal, it’s just that, me being anal, I like to know how I’m getting where I’m going – especially when it’s Keaton’s first plane trip. It’ll work out I suppose.

Three songs from the to-be-released new Radiohead album leaked in live form this weekend, from a recent Thom & Johnny outing – and they’ve got me salivating for this thing. Also, tickets for the show at Berkley’s Greek Theater (a short jaunt for me) go on sale next weekend… and I’m just dying to find a way to go. Too bad I’ll be out of town the day they go on sale, as I know I stand no chance online and the phones will be jammed. I’d love to see them again, any chance I can get really… maybe Sharaun and I can hire a babysitter… or I can take a night off and head over with someone of similarly excellent musical taste. Maybe… just maybe…

Blogging this week could get sparse, as we’ve got more firsts for Keaton which may end up taking precedence: first trip on a plane, first time meeting grandpa on dad’s side, and mom’s first qualifying mother’s day. Until tomorrow, take care out there in the real world… and we’ll do the same here at sounds familiar.

Goodnight.

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bank error in your favor


I’ve been writing and rewriting the topic-major of this entry over the past two days, and I realized it’s as good as it’s going to get. I wanted to convey more, but I couldn’t seem to get the words right… or maybe I don’t have the spirit or attention span to make it happen. Here goes anyway.

We’ll be taking Keaton on her first camping trip this weekend, hoping to infuse her with a love of the modern version of outdoor life. We’ll be packing it in and heading to the coast for a short overnight sleepover in the tent. We’re heading down with a close knot of folks we run with on a regular basis, including those ones with the twins (important, as we’ll not be the only folks with babies on the trip – potential relief from that “baby’s gonna ruin it” apprehension). Sharaun went out and bought a little bug-net cover thing for Keaton’s stroller, and got her some baby sunblock and a cute floppy camping hat. If we can pull it off without all three babies protesting the entire time, it stands to be an awesome adventure – I’ll let ya know how it goes.

The comments on my powderkeg entry this week really pleased me, especially the one from my own mom. I don’t know when I officially became a “grown up.” Maybe it was when I got my first job, or moved out of the house, or bagged my first vagina; maybe it was when I stopped smoking weed, or asked Sharaun to marry me; maybe when I bought a house or started my career – who knows. What I do know, though, is that, with the arrival of Keaton, I feel like I have passed that milestone for sure now. Regardless of how drawn-out and blurry the transition period may have been, I’m now comfortable saying I’m on the other side of it – crossed over. And, along with “adulthood” comes this feeling of wisdom-gained, not to mention shame of things done prior to the metamorphosis. My mom’s comment brought to mind one moment in time I remember from my youth that’s always given me that sense of shame, only more acutely now – now that I have my own child and am beginning to realize just how kids can effect parents. Read on…

I don’t remember how old I was but I’m guessing under 10. I do remember it was my family: mom, dad, me, and my brother all spending a week or weekend or whatever with my mom’s folks up at a cabin on a lake we frequented. I loved that place, they had those plastic paddle-wheel big-tired tricycle-looking contraptions you could take around the lake and a rustic hunting-lodge-esque building overlooking the lake where you could get three meals a day. The cabins were surely rentals, and were small if I remember, but nice. My story takes place with the entire family playing a game of Monopoly on a picnic table outside the cabin one evening. Multicolored money splayed across the table and little green and red plastic houses and hotels cluttering the gameboard – we were deep in the throes of a game and, I, I was losing. It was time to start mortgaging properties, and anyone who knows Monopoly knows that’s a player’s last raspy breaths before death.

Valuable information about me as kid you’ll need before proceeding: When I was a kid, I was a manipulative brat. I had well-formed methods by which I attempted to get my way, mainly through emotional plays and tantrums. These weren’t things which I did subconsciously, but things I’d thought through on a very conscious level, best-known-methods which I’d honed over time for maximum results. Despite how calculating and “grown up” this might sound, it was really nothing more than a bratty, stubborn kid trying cheap tactics to get his way – and breaking down into plain fits when they didn’t work. And folks, that was my endgame strategy – if I wasn’t getting my way, I’d scream, cry, kick, punch walls… whatever it took. I know all kids do this to some extent, but I’m pretty sure I was different, somehow more “extreme.” So much so that I remember my folks taking me to a “family therapist” about it, although my memories of our “sessions” are mostly of me sitting around trying to make the perfect paper airplane. But, that’s another story altogether… and you’re now properly setup for me to continue.

So here I am, something of eight or ten years, losing badly at Monopoly and not wanting to mortgage Mediterranean Ave. to stay afloat. So, I lost it; went completely berserk. I don’t remember all the details, just remember putting all I had into the effort. I’m not sure what my intended results were: the family declaring me winner by default, the banker cutting me a break and slipping me some yellow $100 bills under the table… I don’t know. I do remember, however, that the situation was such that I realized I mustn’t back down from the tantrum – in order to maintain the strategic advantage I perceived I’d built with such fits. So, I escalated, and things got out of hand. Now, the part that brings me shame, the one thing that sticks in my mind and makes me shy away from the memory… is something I overheard my grandmother say to my mom after we were all back in the cabin and things had died down:

“You don’t have control over that boy,” she said to my mom, “What are you doing with him that he thinks he can act like that?” Sure, I’m paraphrasing – but the gist was that I had caused my mother’s mother to question her child’s parenting skills. Even then, young as I was, I knew that must be a crushing blow. Now, as a self-conscious new parent – I can’t imagine how devastating it would be to hear my own mom question how I was raising my daughter.

Sorry mom (and dad), I didn’t really mean it…

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pure evil


Can you guys actually believe I write on this dang thing like pretty much every day? Sometimes I can’t believe it. You know, it does take time, however easy my consistency may make it look (or, however easy my lack of substance and poor writing may make it look – two sides to every coin). Every day I get a complete entry together I surprise myself. Some days are easier than others, some days I just skip straight up because it’s not in me, and some days I publish something short and off-the-cuff thinking it’s just a notch on the blog bedpost – and it ends up being something I’m really happy with upon reflection.

Browsing my blog stats the other day, I noticed a strange, seemingly inexplicable spike in which entry is the “most read” on the year. Surprisingly, the satanic flier has been sounds familiar’s most popular entry this year, being read a “whopping” 432 times since March (when I reinstalled my stats tracking). Digging deeper, it’s interesting (to me, at least) that that same entry has topped the “daily” most-read stats for an entire month now – being consistently read by visitors between 10 and 15 times each day in April. Odd, right? I did some searching, and turns out the flier is a page-one return for a Google image search on the word “satanic.” Just what I want to be famous for.

I know I’m waaay late to the “Colbert lays into Bush at the White House correspondents dinner” party, but these videos are just too good not to share. So, for those of you who somehow missed the tsunami of internet attention this thing generated this week – here are the videos (the more user-friendly YouTube versions were removed late last night due to “copyright” issues, so I have to just use plain old links to some other website). Watch the 1st part here, and the 2nd part here. Or, if you’d rather, download the entire thing as a Windows Media file here (clocking in at around ~20min).

Made two appointments for Lasik evaluations in the next couple weeks, can’t wear the contacts prior to the consultation – which means glasses only for couple weeks. I’m so dang excited, and the ballpark prices I got over the phone fall right in line with the money received from my CD dump. Eyes! Eyes that can see!

I’ve got nothing… goodnight.