Random Chaos

 It's like 11 at night. I'm writing from my gaming rig, slightly stoned off ...a lot of things, but mostly cannabis.

There's been nothing much new to report except that my doctor got me on a new pain medication, one that seems to be working far better than the last one did.

Darling Prince, the cat, sits at my side with his head on my elbow. What an awkward place to be, kitten. 

I'm setting up this machine without really knowing what I'm doing, since I'm coming from Win7. But I'm slowly getting it.

There's a few things to do right away that I can think of:

• find the damn silver,
• find the damn towels, and
• get Pestilence Couch mk. 2 outta here.

Oh, didn't I mention? The bugs followed me. They colonized the couch I was sleeping on. And as it turns out, I'm allergic. After a week or so of sleeping elsewhere, the whistle I had developed in my throat that I thought was something else? It cleared up. I could breathe. 

You want to hear something disturbing? That 'throat-closey' whistle I'd developed? I was getting that while taking heroic doses of Zyrtec.

I do not wanna think about what could happen to me if this gets worse.

Whewf...I got stories. So many stories. And if I was more awake I'd tell more of them. But my point is, I still have stories. I still have a life.

I don't have to stop writing.

Even if last year kicked my ass, I don't have to quit.

I'll get back into it. I have to bring the joy back into my life.

And I'm going to start by telling my stories again.

Thin Mints.

Thin Mints.

Did I mention Thin Mints?

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"Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen.  The best part about it:  the camp value is so high that even if you don't bring your own personal mob of minions with you, there will be a group involved on it before the end of the first verse anyway, complete with ridiculous dancing and the like, before it's all over—it's so much fun.

Close second?  "Space Oddity" by David Bowie.

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Chocolate, popcorn and—wait, does bacon count?

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It was the Fourth of July one year.  I was on a major "let's get the family healthy!" kick, and had been working hard to get people to quit smoking—or at least cut back—for the sake of the huge chunk of the family that has asthma.  We were outside setting off our fireworks, when an uncle lit up one of the vilest smelling cigars I'd ever smelled.  It wouldn't have been so bad if he wasn't right next to my cousin, who has enough problems when it's just HOT out, without smoke or allergens.  So I told him to please put it out.

He said it wouldn't take all that long, since it was a cigar and those are hard to smoke in one sitting.  So he knocks the last bit of the end off and puts it out.

Unfortunately it lands in our fireworks.

We had just enough time for everyone to pick our favorite expletive and then make a rush for the inside of the house.  But it was pretty.

It was proof that no July 4 season in my family is complete without some kind of explosion.
The following year a different uncle managed to make a charcoal grill explode.  The tradition continues…

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As a general rule, it's usually an immediate fail when a film deviates too much from the original material.  When it is done right, you get a coherent, compelling story; when it is done wrong, you get a mishmash of—of stuff—that doesn't seem to have anything to do with what we started with.  Of course, when this change is actually made implicit from the beginning, sometimes this can work.  (Like when a manga is adapted to a film before the original source material is complete, which results in a branching off from pure necessity, without altering the fundamental essence of the material.)

When the only common thread turns out to be the title, it's not good.

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I do not.  While a politician should rightly be held to fairly lofty standards, the public really doesn't have a claim to know the intimate details of his/her personal/romantic life.  It is another story if they choose to make this information public; but otherwise, there is no legitimate basis for the public to know this.  In the vast majority of cases the information and activities have no bearing on the politician's ability to do their job.