D minus 70

Finally was able to drop the bomb on the boss as discreetly as possible. It seemed to go well enough, particularly as I held out the possibility of either working as a contractor or with folks already up there. The funny part is that he asked me to write the first draft of my own job documentation letter for the immigration service. Tonight's gonna be full, with the workout and all.

D minus 88

My second-to-last document came in today. I'm holding off asking for a letter of reference (more like a description of what I do, but oh, well...) for a bit longer, for reasons that should be obvious. Dearest's last school is driving me up a wall--I'm almost ready to grab the wheel on this bus and make life miserable for the superior of the woman who's supposed to be (but patently isn't) figuring out why there's no record of graduation on file.

Grrrrrrr....and I thought I loathed the gatekeepers at my last mega-corporation job... Then again, it's been about a decade since the last time I had to push the "Screaming Unreasonable Bitch" button, so maybe I'm due.

This had better be worth the annoyance and expense. But, on the positive side as of next Monday, it will be illegal to use a cellphone (the usual way) while driving in the province of Ontario. Something that should be a no-brainer, but you could line up American idiots from here to the moon who will scream that insisting that they stop endangering other people's lives is a violation of free speech. Actually, I rather like the prospect of lining them up to the moon, because that means that most of them will have to be in space, which will definitely keep them off the roads...and hopefully chlorinate the gene pool in the process.

So maybe the annoyance isn't quite so annoying nor the expense quite so dear...assuming that the immigration process goes reasonably smoothly, of course.

Keep ranting your way to insolvency, moron

Just wanted to send a big fat, double-middle-finger-laced razzberry to Rupert Murdoch tonight after reading about his little tantrum that involved verbal Molotov cocktails like "kleptomanic" and "flat-earther." It's a testament to how deeply into the red the needle on my Hypocrite Meter was just buried that I'll actually resort to profanity on this blog, but here goes:

Fuck you, you festering thrice-used douchebag. You overpay and give airtime to enough sociopathic know-nothings that you, sir, have precisely fuck-all to say about either kleptomania or flat-eartherism.

Look, you old goat: If you don't get that the business model is changing, that's your problem--and the only pity is that you won't live long enough to see me laugh at you pissing away your sleaze-mongering empire while trying to boil the ocean. Granted, I didn't spend much more than a year as a member of The Fourth Estate, but it was long enough to learn that subscriptions were a pittance compared to advertising revenues. In fact, I would be surprised to learn that the consumer revenue fully covered printing and distribution costs.

If you're worried about breaking even, perhaps you should stop hiring delusional prima donnas that consider the First Amendment carte blanche to project their "fair and balanced" pornographically paranoid fantasies onto the adults trying to duct tape this f*cked country back together after the thugs and morons you lionized trashed it for eight years. Here's a novel thought: How's about pretending to be a professional rather than a neocon mafia padrone? Because, yeah, you can probably rile up the base for another year...no one's gonna expect the economy or the job market to stop sucking before then. That's a lot of discontent you can milk.

But after that...ooh, you're really rolling the bones there, jack. Because maybe--just maybe--Joe America's gonna get bored with checking under his bed for the re-education camps and death panels and floridated water supplies you've been "warning" him about. Maybe you'll get lucky and there'll be another terrorist strike on U.S. soil. Or, more likely, some teabagging nutcase's pot-shot will get past the Secret Service. Or you can fabricate/augment some juicy financial or sex scandal to keep pushing your litterbox-liner. But if you can't...what then? Doubling down on an already bull$#!+ product might not be such a good idea. I hope for its own sake that history plays out differently from the scenarios that would put more ill-gotten gelt in your bank account. But I'll save a sliver of enjoyment for your discomfiture if it does.

Calling out more faux outrage

To be a Theocon, one must pair any number of conflicting beliefs that, in a sufficiently developed intellect would be tantamount to mixing matter and anti-matter.

But those screaming about America's "moral" obligation to avoid saddling "our grandchildren" with stimulus debt are largely the same ones who don't give a rat's backside about trashing the world those grandchildren will inhabit.

So, folks: Why so...selective in your high-horse sense of "responsibility?" (And I thought it didn't matter anyway, because you all would be Raptured out of any consequences?) I'm dying to hear the rationalizations: Dazzle me.

Bulldozer tracks

I once quipped to a friend that the problem with setting out to bulldoze your past is that sometimes it bulldozes you instead.  I spent a chunk of this morning pulling old greeting cards and letters (that had just been pulled from storage boxes) from their envelopes and putting them into piles to be stored in a smaller box until after the next move.

Sobering enough to read the writing of those now dead, in some cases almost hearing their voices read the words.  And humbling--with the telescoping of twenty years or so--to see how faithfully cards had been sent at birthdays, Christmas, sometimes even Valentine's Day.  But, most of all, deeply shaming to realize how little I reciprocated.  A futile and utterly childish exercise, crying the way I did--wishing I could have those folks back for even a few minutes to tell them that I really did love them, despite being the selfish and self-absorbed @$$hole that I was...and still largely am.

So I guess if there's any point to this post other than sheer navel-gazing, it's to encourage my gentle reader to visualize reading each greeting card or letter they receive twenty years hence.  As much as I've avoided contact with Christmas, though, the experience has changed my thinking on digging out the boxes of cards and reviving the tradition of sending them out.  

D minus 130

Huzzah, three more documents rolled in today. That leaves four apiece for Dearest and me. And the passport photos. But those are an instant gratification kind of thing, so I'm not really counting them.

One little mystery solved

According to the folks at Kourtaki wineries, 85% of retsina is made from a grape called Savatiano. So now I just need to track down a flavor profile and try to approximate it with the kit wines on the market. Oh, yeah, and find pine resin suitable for food use. But if wine-making isn't an adventure, then you're doing something wrong...