^{Sunday, 27 Sweltring 2010}

It appears that the state of Michigan will continue to pay me to try to find gainful employment for the time being, and so it would probably not be the wisest course of action to start up that whole blogging thing again - especially when I'm trying to start it up as a paying proposition - just yet. My lone advertiser will get mondo value for his contribution as things should probably stay static here for a while.

Besides, serious journamalistic integritude takes quite a bit of time and effort for Your Humble Narrator, even with all of the cheats and time-savers I've built over the years. And I am probably spending more than forty hours a week in an increasingly desperate search for just about any sort of employment opportunity that I can handle. Plus I'm trying to work out some long standing issues and get my kimchi together. Which brings the E2E ratio* for blog updates to microscopic levels until such time as I can get out of my current situational difficulties.

There are also a number of Catch 22's involved:

- first and foremost the mortgage. I have no income or current employment prospects and thus cannot refinance the loan. As long as I don't miss any payments, the mortgage remains in good standing. Once (the outstanding amount on the mortgage) + (the available funds to pay for the renovations/updates required to sell the house) gets to be lower than (the current retail value of the house with renovations/updates as required to sell the house) I can begin to think about starting said renovations/upgrades;

- secondly the auto situation. It will be impossible for me to get an auto loan without some sort of job. As long as I keep on paying the car note, the car holds together, and nothing untoward happens, all is well. It would be nice to think about a new vehicle (especially with all of the new fuel efficient options becoming available), but I'm not so sure about what direction I want to go as far as my next vehicle is concerned. If I will be able to get a new vehicle when the time comes...

- lastly (among the primary situational Catch 22's I am trying to deal with right now) being hamstrung by the lack of employment. I can't start up a small business (I can't afford to pay attention - remember?) and/or pursue anything of that nature until I am no longer collecting unenjoyment. Once I can satisfy myself that I will be able to produce enough to replace the dole, then I can resolve the business issues. I can hone my business plan in my spare time (cough) and work towards a smoother implementation when the time comes, but not much else.

So I guess what I'm saying is: so long** for now and I'll be back once I can get some steady employment, or once I'm no longer getting state unenjoyment and trying to pursue some independent entrepreneurial activities. Which I hope turns out to be sooner rather than later. See ya!

* - E2E ratio = Earnings to Effort ratio

** - and thanks for not serving me fish.

^{Humpday, 22 Sweltring 2010}

...for anyone who's read Heinlein's Future History series: putting the technological differences aside, does it seem like we're in the beginning of the period described as the “Crazy Years” in his books?

^{Humpday, 22 Sweltring 2010}

I seem to be getting into the lists of late, so I thought I would bring a couple more points of clarity to those who have been following my personal exploits for a while. I have always considered the lack of ability of (most) humans to be able to rationally discuss politics, sex, and religion to be a problem that humanity needs to solve if we are to ever evolve beyond our current capacities*. Just as I have always been frustrated when conversations inevitably spiral into chaos if any of those topics (which also seem to be the main focus of many people's lives) get brought up in a social setting.

So, when I find out that somebody who can put into writing some of the way I feel on at least two of the big three (I haven't seen many of his writings on sex; but maybe I haven't been looking hard enough!) has written three (of a four part) series of essays about the Catholic Church and why he has some slight (cough) problems with the way they've been handling the fact that there have been a lot of priests doing a number of immoral (and illegal) things for years while the church's administration tried to cover it up, I like to point it out and explain a bit of the problems I have in similar areas.

Thanks to my good friend Bartcop featuring his latest article, I got a chance to revisit Barry Crimmins' site and catch up on Cath 22, Manic Compression, and The Legion Of Indecency. Barry's also informed the studio audience that there is still another essay in this bunch – something I am definitely looking forward to. You might want to check it out too...

The exposure of this long term, long time problem with the Catholic Church points to other issues within the broader scope of acceptable moral behavior for humanity as a whole. Will mankind decide that civility and empathy are not as important for their continued survival as duplicity and selfishness? Will the unique abilities and talents of mankind nurtured more by treating individuals as precious and brimming with the potential to revolutionize the system, or treating them as easily replaceable cogs that can be fit into place as need be to keep improving the running of the system? Will mankind's skill set include bigger and better ways of generating broad mental reservations about things they'd rather not face, or more flexibility to adapt to whatever reality we have to deal with?

On a personal note, my particular journey out of the clutches of the Church had two main pushes behind it:

- a long time friend of the family became a Catholic bishop after many years of (as far as I know) exemplary spiritual behavior. Then, out of the blue, he suffered a stroke. This led me to a couple of observations: what kind of Invisible Sky Fairy would 'reward' his most faithful minions with motherCheneying strokes? And why would it make any difference what I did - if such an entity could do that, and/or allow all sorts of other atrocities by others, in and out of the faith, to go by without similar 'reward', why should I even bother to factor it into the equation?

- many moons ago, I was so broke and destitute that I had to move back into my parent's house** during the Ronnie Ray-Gun/PapaDoc Putsch Recession of the late Eighties. The condition that caused me to move out six months later was that I had to go to (Catholic) church every week. The sheer hypocrisy of the uber-Catholic who required this as a condition of my keeping a roof over my head was bad enough, but after being away from it for a decade, it was kind of difficult to handle what I saw as the inherent contradictions of pretty much all religions (but particularly the one I was most familiar with, the Catholic Church) up close, and in my face, so to speak, on a regular basis. I do remember informing a few people that I would no longer be attending any Catholic services of any kind once I no longer had to as a condition of my residence. And I've pretty much kept to that vow to this day...

Now, of course those are not the only factors causing me to reconsider my membership within the religion I was enrolled in from birth; but both of those events caused me to reevaluate my decision to be a willing follower of the BuyBull. I was also able to take a year's worth of university courses on the major faiths out there; and I was able to flesh out those courses with supplementary reading - there's a ton of people who have written about the wisdom and truth of their particular brand of superstitious nonsense.

You can well imagine that my particular take on religion does not go down too well in most social situations. So it's somewhat refreshing to find someone whom I believe I might actually be able to talk to about (at the very least) religion and politics without the conversation going down in flames...

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* - I also consider one of the main failings of civilization as we know it today is the lack of common courtesy and basic civility for our fellow man – especially the promotion of said lack as a character virtue instead of a hidden flaw - that seems to be the accepted norm in society these days.

** - not in the basement - that was a packrat's paradise thanks to nature/nurture from both family trees - but back upstairs, in my old room before I had left for university ten years earlier.

^{Tuesday, 21 Sweltring 2010}

I think that some of my long term friends would have wished that this product was on the market thirty years ago:

Added Bonus: If you go to the website (by clicking on the link, inside the box, below the video) and let the videos on the website keep playing, The Onion will continue to feed more fantastically funny stories (and a promo for Comedy Central's new 'hit' series, Big Lake, over and over again) into your internets connection. They use a lot of profanity, and talk about adult situations, so be warned...

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^{Sunday, 20 Sweltring 2010}

It's been a long, hard slog here at the Funny Farm for the past year and a half or so – adjusting to paying (roughly) $1800 worth of bills with $1500 per month of income*. As long as I don't eat, put gas (or maintenance) into my car, and nothing goes wrong with any of the old junk that I'm keeping together with duct tape and baler twine**. One of these years decades millennia days I'm going to get around to cleaning things up and having Toms' Great Junk Purge Garage Sale, but until then there's a lot of mathoms piled up all over and a few things that I can kluge together to make the old junk that I need for whatever I'm up to at the time.

So, basically, I'm trying to get by on dwindling resources and keep things going for as long as possible with what I've got. In efforts to cut back on things, I began to cook more often, and I noticed that my electric stove was causing a bit of a ding in the power bill. As any cheap-a$$ skillbilly would do, I began to use my little baby Weber grill more for cooking as much stuff as I could get on the grill, which is slightly larger than a regular dinner plate. It certainly was an adventure grilling sweet corn on it with out resorting to actually tossing the ears into the charcoal.

Now, one of the main reasons I am so keen on trying to hang on to my current domicile is that I live in a very nice zone of southeast Michigan. My neighbors are nice quiet people who get along with each other as well as Your Humble Narrator while struggling with their own situations and adventures in life. It is probably the nicest set of digs I've been lucky enough to live in. I am able to set up areas that allow me to be able to do some computer repair work (now that I might actually manage to find a few jobs in that area). My car is garaged year round, which I can say from personal experience is a lot easier to deal with than outdoor long term parking, and might add significantly to the life and value of my vehicles (the jury's still out on that one).

I've also been here longer than almost any other place I've lived at; a lot of stuff has accumulated; having already moved over thirty times by the time I was thirty, I now have a somewhat different perspective on the whole moving experience; and I don't want to have to tear down/wade through/set up a lot of the houses of cards I've kept so precariously balanced.

Well, as you may well imagine, even though under this particular roof an economic crisis was underway, life went (and goes) on just the same. So it was that my neighbor, a relatively new surgeon (having just completed his internship in Pontiac) with a newly born child, went to the place he was finishing interning at and asked for a surgeon's salary. And then, shortly thereafter, found a place that would pay him surgeon's wages.

So now he's working in Florida, with a place to walk his dogs on the beach less than a block from his house, and hopefully enjoying the new situation (along with his wife and the youngling and the two aforementioned dogs). And, why, dear reader, did I tell you this in the middle of my tale of woe? Well, we had had a few discussions over the years (I'm not all that social by nature until I get to know someone, and rarely have I engaged in a lengthy conversation with my neighbors), and he was aware of how tight the purse strings are stretched over here. So, just before he moved the last of his stuff out of the house next door, he wheeled his old gas grill over to my place, helped me lift it onto my deck, and gave it (along with a full tank of propane) to me.

A whole new world of culinary adventure has opened up to me with this acquisition. No more double power expenditures (mondo electricity to power the stove, then mondo power to cool the house down from all the extra heat). And a different methodology and way of thinking about the job of cooking makes things a bit more interesting.

I've already explored a few avenues previously unimagined to me: I made my first beer can chicken, put together some awesome kebobs, and had grilled beer soaked sweet corn. But the best is the grilled veggies. I've never been a big fan; but mostly I was getting my veggies in the convenient canned form. The bland, soggy, salt-and-preservative-filled canned form. Now, I put together a nice chicken marinade, cut up some fresh veggies, make a little grilling pan with a veggie griller and some tin foil, add olive oil and marinaded chicken, and start grilling. Add fresh veggies as desired – carrots and other tougher veggies should get grilled longer than things like tomatoes and peppers. Usually things are done to my satisfaction within fifteen – twenty minutes or so. I can make a small pan of rice on the side burner at the same time to complete the basics of the meal. And there's usually enough leftovers from one grilling for the rest of the week!

Along with this fine parting gift, Your Humble Narrator also managed to pry this out of their hands when they had their garage sale:

I don't know where he got the original from, or the Plexiglas cover he got for them. And I don't want to know. All you need to know is that I have an (almost) 3'x4' framed picture of the Three Stooges, each holding a bottle of Three Stooges Beer. And that I am sincerely thankful to my ex-neighbors for their kindness and friendship.

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* - the rough numbers:

mortgage – 825
auto - 225
phone - 70
cable/internets - 55
water - 40
gas / electric - 350 (summer=high electric;winter=high gas)
prescriptions - 150

unenjoyment benefit (after taxes, FICA, etc.)*** - 362.94 / week

** - spare the duct tape, spoil the job! Oddly enough, the lawn mower decided to take a crap this weekend and I'm trying to figure out what parts to get and where to get them so I don't have to drop $300 plus on a new lawn maintenance device.

*** - that's right, gang, Your Humble Narrator is still paying all of his taxes, lazy DFH that he is...

^{Thursday, 16 Sweltring 2010}

I am very happy to announce the first fruits of the ongoing online labors here at the Funny Farm: Pizzariffic, a local pizzeria in Lake Orion, Michigan, has agreed to support the blog as part of its' local advertising strategy. And I've agreed to take his cash and put a link up on the page for you to get to him whenever you want some excellent italian food.

Brick oven pizza is a specialty of the house, Mike features a number of recipes that you don't always see on the regular menu (and that aren't listed on his current online menu – D'oh!), and the jalapeno poppers and the cannolis are magically delicious. Plus, on a personal note, he is a friend of a friend who is a huge hockey fan who will probably soon be getting me into the Joe Louis Arena to (finally) see a game of hockey in the Motor City in his fantastic season ticket seats sixteen rows up on the blueline*. Yes, his loyalties are somewhat misplaced as far as I'm concerned, and I'm sure I've only got a slight mental defect as far as he's concerned because I root for the Habs, but there's no denying his love for the game. I probably wouldn't even hold it against him if the Dead Things trounced the Habs in a future Stanley Cup Final...

So you will now be able to see a new banner in the newest part of the links zone (in the primo real estate section for the paying customers) over on the right for Pizzariffic. Click on it for delivery and take out orders - or come in and enjoy the comforts of Mike's dining room filled with sports memorabilia and comfortable seating (and free WiFi, setup courtesy of the Funny Farm Computer Services Burro). And tell them that the Funny Farm sent you!

* - that's right, kids, it's not what you know, it's who you know**.

** - Don't hate the player. Hate the game.