Bottom (1991–1995)

Edward and Richard are best buddies living off the government doing nothing more than having a good time and breaking stuff.

Me: Do you  remember these guys from 'The Young Ones'? Do you even remember 'The Young Ones'?

Animals...we've been ignoring the silly animals...

Stream of consiousness from this weekend...


Journal130126
Good morning, Vietnam!

I’m no robin Williams, but then neither is ol’ Robin most of the time.  I’m implying he’s in character most of the time.
Ended the day with a lattee, starting the day with some fresh grind.  Who would have thought coffee would replace alcohol   Age.  Its all because of the age.  I had a fuxing epiffiny when I skipped my routine happy hour and found three hours on the end of my day.  I didn't go to bed early.  I had thought going to bed was just part of getting my eight in.  Turns out, it was a side-effect of the alcohol   I stopped paying the price of a hang-over (if I can help it) years ago.  The proverbial, two days gone.  Little did I know alcohol was taking hours of my live every day.  One hour gone at a time, credit me for that new proverb. So a sixer a night went to a sixer a week.  And I’m a better man for it.

And I get time on the flip side n the weekend because I added shots Friday and Saturday which  didn't put me to bed any earlier but did keep me in be longer.

And the time I have is much more productive.  Even if I am just downloading erotic  art, it is an activity.  Drunk, I just sat. Still.  Half asleep until it went to full sleep.  Maybe mindlessly munching salty or sweet treats.

This is my favorite mug.  There is a story.  One, its large. That makes it an all purpose mug.  Hot or cold. Winter or summer.  Only negative, doesn't microwave, its that attractive glaze.  Must be full of lead.  I have tried to keep a set of these, kind of like man-china.  You don’t use fine china, and I didn't use anything from my set.  Has a little bowl for sugar and a tiny picture for creamer.  Any who, last time I repacked it because the box had gotten abused and torn, I found one had had the handle knocked off.  Although it couldn't remain with the collectibles  it found a home n my ManLab desk.  Ta da! And that is the story of my mug.

Another cup would be nice. Let me get the pot boiling.

So far, I had to shut the gate to the driveway so the dog can hang with me in the ManLab, going in and out of the doggie door.  The doggie door is in the garage door.  The corgi likes to come and go as she pleases, terrorizing the squirills.  Fux the squirrls, they walk around like they own the place.
The first thing I do when I enter the ML is take a picture of myself with the camera on the computer on the bench.  Start the coffee, and turn on the computer and TV at the desk.  Here I sit at the desk.  Watching ‘Reno 911’.  Obviously, doing some stream of consciousness journaling.
Shit.  Pronounce it She it, this is a good, good morning.  Key to being happy: don’t expect much. And don’t do much.  Do not exert yourself.  Thet that be the guide throuut the day.  And set up activities that boost your sense of self worth.  For me, that includes ‘ professional reading’.  I have five books I read (a page to a chapter in each).  Bullshit? Unquestionably.  I am crazy, not self delusional.  I know I’m pretending, pretending to have fun but man, it’s fun.  Just as fun as having fun.  This is one of those paradoxes that rank right up there with ‘fi a tree falls and there is no one around to hear it fall, did it make a noise?” Don’t care.  I’m having too much fun reading:
The Hot Zone
Outliers
General Biology
Environmental Laboratory Data Evaluation
Ion Trap GC/MS
IUs said it was fun to read, not something that was funny.  The subjects are…dry.  That’s why it’s ‘Professional’ reading not ‘pleasure’ reading.  It’s a m.f. accomplishment. Banked knowledge.  Mind expanding, if not mind blowing.  Ion Traps are fucking cool.  Way better than your quadrapole mass spectrometers.  Can I get an ‘Amen’?
Notes:
The Hot Zone:  The Industrial world arrives…to battle the Ebola outbreak with three paper masks, some gloves, and  a bag of currency.  They were dropped of fin the Hot Zone in the President of Kenya’s private jet, an old cargo plane gifted by the Americans.  He added the leporad skin upholstery himself.  The crew never turned off the engines when they tossed the research team out, hoping the draft created by the propellers would keep them from being infected. The team used their bag of cash to get tow Rovers and travel to the epicenter of the outbreak.  Their discovery? That the virus was spread primarily…by the hospitals.  The cam upon one facility that had not been decontaminated or burned down.  A delivery room full of bowls of putrid fluids left over from the births of infected babies.  Imagine the horror show? Back in the city, the Ebola equivalent of Typhoid Mary was dying.  One doctor took off her gas mask to work with her face-to-face during her last hours.  She died when her heart melted, literally, the virus set up in her heart and you could hear it disintegrating until lit couldn't beat another time.  A ship was anchored in the bay to serve as a grey zone for the doctors who waited for the outbreak to hit the city, It never happened.  The virus went back into the jungle where it came from, but for how long?

Outliers: Talent gets you started, time spent gets you there, but opportunity plays a huge part on the degree of success that can be achieved.
Altair 8800
1954 – 1955
Gates, Allen, Ballmer, Jobs, Schmidt, Joy

General Biology: The cell.  Remember people use to call it ‘saccules’ and ‘globules’.  Remember Grew for his work with discovering how plant cells are organized.  Remember Brown for giving the nucleus a name.  And don’t forget the father of cell principal, Schleiden. And the defining text: Wilson’s ‘The Cell in Development and Heredity’.
Next, the organ systems:
Dermal
Skeletal
Muscular
Circulatory
Respiratory
Digestive
Excretory
Nervous
Endocrine
Sensory
Reproductive

Environmental Laboratory Data Evaluation:
EPA 3510/624 Semi Volatile Organic Analysis of liquid
Surrogates
pH<2
Phenol
Flourophenol
Tribromophenol
pH>12
nitrobenzene
flourobiphenyl
trephenyl
labile = evaporate off easily
phenol
flourophenol
inert = won’t evaporate
Tribromophenol
Trephenyl
Inert = won’t react with active sites
Flourobiphenyl
Trephenyl

Ion Trap GC/MS

It’s two forty I the afternoon.
Dean and I worked until almost one on his ‘Chemistry for Biologist’ workbook.  Not our first time to talk about chemistry so he remembered a lot of the concepts.  He actually outlasted me.  I started nodding off about one o’clock so he went upstairs to play World of Warcraft aka WoW.  I turned out all the lights and turned off the lights and covered up with a blanky and went nighty night for thirty minutes or so.  Here I am, fresh as a daisy.
The eldest woke up, after my nap.  He lives an upside down life, sleeping by day, playing by night.  ‘Playing’ sells him short.  He is  a student of life.  Really.  He is always studying something.  He became stressed out last semester because he came to the realization that college is not really about education.  It took me ten years of college to accept the same reality.  Higher education is a business.  I don’t want to gallop the high horse but Matt Damon had it right in ‘Goodwill Hunting’ when he said he could replicate an Ivy League caliber education with three dollars of late fees at the public library.  It wouldn't  take three dollars now that MIT and other institutions of higher education have put complete cources on-line for free. No paper issued for completion, but nothing out of pocket either.

January 27, 2013
Sunday
Its around six o’clock I n the morning.
Down in the ManLab.
Drinking freshly ground coffee.
Watching movies we picked up at the RedBox last night. Two for Head and one each for the res tof us.  He has finished hers.  I watched mine while I photographed my sketches.   A suck movie:The Paperboy with Matthew McConaughey

Now I am on a quest ot watch the youngest’s movie, “The Possession’ and the one I picked up for the eldest, ‘Total Recall’. The new one with …that Australian guy from ‘SWAT…I picked it for him because he has just finished thee book, the one made into H…’Blade Runner ‘ with Harrison Ford.
To recap yesterday, studies with the youngest.

Went for Taco Villa take out with Head and the Youngest.  He read ‘Battle Royal’ to us on the hour drive over to the taco joint.  Saucy for a boy to read to his mom. A stupid story if you ask me.
We ate.  They shorted me a burrito so I gave up one of the three things I ordered so we’d all have the same.  It was the right thing to do.  More than enough calories. And I showed moderation drinking beers on the trip.  Usually I can hurt a sixer.  This time, sipped one over and one back and that held me for the night.
Ate watching a Spurs game with the Eldest. Then, like I said, watched my shitty movie and worked on sketches, to add to a blog.
I needed a couple of episodes of ‘Fringe’ to finish the night the beddie bye.
Colin Farrel.  The actor in ‘Total Recall’.

Napped again today after studying chemistry wit the youngest. The eldest took me to the Asian Market for all this stuff! We love the Asian Market and we only know what 1% of the shit is for!

 

 Sweet rice, rice noodles, rice sring roo wrappers, all kinds of sodas, tead, and juices, ramens, ....

...Somball chile sauce, Hosin sauce, coconut cookies, coffee candy,  ... that's about it.

We had ramens for dinner and I bought a Marie Callander's Key LIme Pie...mmmmmmm. Gonna go get some right now.

All my best.

By the by, added to the food blog and art blog and started a trashy art blog on this account. Not necessarily for you, but you can look if you want, it's where I keep my nuddie drawings.

Premium Rush (2012)

Wilee is one of 1,500 bike couriers in Manhattan who rides on the edge by having a bike with no brakes. On this day, Wilee has a delivery that is so valuable that a corrupt NYC Detective, who needs the money, begins to chase Wilee throughout the city to get it before the envelope is delivered.Me: Looked for this movie for two reasons: Danny MacAskill and I thought it was from a novel I read this summer.  It wasn't But Danny is phenomenal   Go check him out on YouTube.Kill the Messenger is a suspense thriller by author Tami Hoag.was the book I read.

More of my stream of conciousness- journaling earlier tonight.  I'll try and clean up the spelling and put some pictures in. Enjoy.


journal Friday January 25, 2013

Man, what a week...but aren't they all?  I feel really lucky to be able to say that but...but, that isn't' by accident.  I spend every minute making sure I have the best chance at being normal. I aim high, shooting for average every time.  Anyone who knows jack-shit knows being normal is something special in this world.  Being middle class, run of the mill, middle of the road. You know you've made it when your plain.



I am down in Mor's room, feet up on his massive video camera case, one of his projects that is now, well, furniture.  He is upstairs making us all lattes.  It's Friday night. Woo ho, coffee after seven...hell, its eight fourty. He is making beverages to take the chill off.  The weather turned from warm to downright chilly today.  It is hard for me to tell at work because it is always cold.  The gas chronographs have to have a cold environment to ramp up and down form room temp to three hundred degrees efficiently and fast, and we have maybe twenty of those instruments all going at once. 




It is halftime in the Texas shootout, Spurs v. Mavericks.  NOt much of a challenge this year.  Dallas sucks.  In fact, the Spurs Coach and best player didn't make the trip.  The last time the Spurs didn't travel their best players the league fined the team a quarter of a million dollars.  Pink horse shit.






Mor is showing off his coffee making skills, what do they call those pricks, barestas?  Shows how much I know.  He just got a new shipment of beans, Peruvian with a distinctively floral taste.  I caught him throwing out his Kenyan beans.  He didn't like the espresso roast.  What the fux? I'm drinking Safeway morning grind I buy three pounds at a time for seven dollars.  Give me those fuxing beans.
I'm been making my morning coffee out of the beans and then half a pot of Safeway for Head.  She is just happy as a pig in shit to have it waiting for her when she wakes up.


Dean, now there is a success story.  We are all doing good but he is finding his stride.  What a work ethic.  Man, he is putting in the time, seeing what it takes to be a successful college student.  We have been spending an hour a day reading up in The Tower. And then today, the clutch goes out in his Corolla.  He just hot new tires. The he gets sideswiped and it takes months to work out the repairs.  Just got it back with two new doors and new paint job.  A thousand bucks is what it's going to take to get him back on the road but it has to be done.  Don't want to buy something for two or three times that and inherit someone else's troubles.  We bought that car new.  He'll have it back by next Thursday.  



My week started out like shit.  Stress out the ass at work.  I finally called Head and told her I'd head enough.  Sat my bass down and said I'd had enough.  'We're not there yet Mike" he says to me.  "I am", was my reply. All of the sudden, all the bullshit went away.  So I  had the rest of the week, although busy, less stressful.  The scientist I work with stepped it up and we cranked out a lot of rush work.  Everything was emergency work.  Well, might as well get twice the price if your going to do the work.  
'Nuff 'bout work.



I'm home for the weekend and ready to veg the fux out.  The people at work are starting to look at my food blog and want to see me put something up on my art blog.  I need to spend some time and put some new content.  I want to put some stuff here on UnlessYOurJohn, too.  Kind of standing back and seeing how things progress for our friend John.  Head has been keeping me up to date.

TV: Watching the forth season of 'Fringe', it just had its last episode ever, in the fifth season. I pretend I'm Walter.

Fiction: 'Perdido Street station' by China Mieville. I pretend I'm Isaac. 

Audio book:'Blaze' by Stephen King. I do not pretend I'm Blaze.

Non-Fiction: Simple Living and Seven Weeks to 300 Sit Ups.  I pretend I'm Amish with a six-pack.


Spiritual: Tao. I pretend I love my fellow man.

Music: One Eskimo. Can't stop singing 'Kandi'. Makes me think of Head. I think of you, John, when I listen to 'Astronauts'.  Go find it on YouTube. I pretend I can sing.

Food: Looking forward to making green chile stew this weekend. Hatch chlies, ohhh yeah. I pretend I'm skinny.

I just want to say, good night, sweet prince, may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. 
Harry Dean Stanton 

Fringe (TV Series)

A television drama centered around a female FBI agent who is forced to work with an eccentric scientist in order to rationalize a brewing storm of unexplained phenomena.




I fuxing love Walter and I covet his lab.  Yes, he has a cow.  He is trying to make it make chocolate milk.  Don't think him a fool.  Burnout, yes.  Fool, no. He use to have no qualms about doing tests on children.  Cold blooded!

On the subject of animals...

Surprise, something other than a cat!

I'm sorry, don't cry...

My blog will look a little funny, I am combining journaling, rambeling, and what I call 'stream of consciousness .  I write then I paste it here. Happy reading!

NOTE: PIctures don't transfer over, they have to be inserted, like your finger in your ear! I'd like a picture of that!

BB!Q dinner, with German potato salad, cole slaw.

I bought the choclate cokie crust but I made the pudding from scratch.

This has been a very restful weekend.  Peaceful  I do not regret ‘doing’ anything. I ‘do’ things all week, it’s called work.  Weekends are for relaxing.  I even napped in the ManLab this afternoon.

Tis is my second attempt at typing in what I cal a ‘stream of consciousness  style. The first time I think it will actually make it to a blog.  John, this one’s for you.  My way to combine all my interest: journaling, family, food, and blogging you.  Hope it works.  And photography.   I plan on emptying my phone of pictures and including them.

Took lots of pictures on my walk today.  Wanted to bring you along with me.  I brought my phone for the pictures and to call when I arrived at the grocery.  I brought my IPod to listen to.  Today, I finished a Sherlo0ck Holmes story.  This one was unique, it had two parts, the first part was the normal who dunnit in England.  The second half wa a back story abot a Pinkerton detective in the West Virginia mountains.  Finishe dit early in the walk then started an audiobook written, and read, by the Dali Lama.  ‘Gnga la gunga’.  Know where that quote is from?  If you don’t you should.  Hind: Bill Murry.

Come on a walk with me...

My day has been as nice as the weather.  And the weather is fine.  I took a walk and went all the way to Kroger.  We needed creamer aka Head needed creamer. I could use milk, she is addicted.

I use to plan my menus. Now I work the specials.  I walk the perimeter of the store and get eh main items, the meat and the fresh veggies.  The  I fiil out the menu.  Snacks are whats on sale.  I heed to stop bringing home unhealthy snacks.  When I walk, someone has to come pick me up and that someone is Dean.  He had to bring me my wallet too because I walked off without it.  Don’t cry for him, we filled up his tank and put a couple of quarts of oil in his trunk for his efforts.   Any who, he made a great personal choice when I told him he could select a bag of cookies to take in his backpack for school.. and he declined.  Good for him.  Maybe he’s thinking about his morbidly obese friend Tyler.  Who, by the way, tot the job at Six Flags.  Way to go Tyler.

Down in ‘The Basemen’ aka Mor’s room.



San Francisco vs. Atlanta in the NFL playoffs.

Woo Tan Clan on the turntable…old school squared.

For  a while the turntable displaced the computer set up I had on the other end of the table Mor uses for a desk.  Just this last week I moved ala the way toe the end of the table and set up so I can see the monitor he uses for streaming e.g. sports on the other end.  But I can’ t see the monitor he works off of.  The whole reason I set up a computer is because he is always playing video or surfing that I needed something to do.

He brings me up to date on the world that is the internet.  Not the part you or I use, the real web for those that are into it, that live I the world-wide virtual world.



Today he is filing me in on Rosseta Stone Spanish and the big games which are simulators for Eurotuuck, driving a eighteen wheeler and SimFarm.  They are realistic to a fault.  Providing almost real life experiences of running the equipment.  There is a whole after-market accessories, cluth,  break, shifter, the whole enchilada.

I am harvesting the forth season of ‘Fringe’ off this computer.  Not sure how it ened up here, but this is where I recorded it.  The season ended Friday night.  The last episode of the fifth season  was supposed to wrap it all up.

Mor figures that mainstream TV is at least six months behind the pace of the real internet.  Minimum 6 months behind.

Of course, TV doesn't get all the fads, just the ones that overlap.  There are lots of unique…information that is only on the web.

Okay, I’m transferring files.

So how am I doing with my stream of consciousness/blog?

Time to take a looked at some porn, food porn that is.  I eat more than I screw at my age.

S’mores waffles.  I need to keep this n mind for my retirement dream of opening a waffle stand…’The waffle Butt’.



Mor thinks it is stupid for neck-beards to call doctoring up frozen food ‘cooking’.  I Dis agree.  I think of it as modular cooking. There, a term I coined, …modular cooking  I actually have a recipe that involves ‘modular cooking’. Making a hamburger using frozen pizza as buns.  Look for it on my food blog real soon.



Now Mor is off on a rant about how some people are obsessed about the ‘ authenticity’ of Gundam models.  Gundham is a kind of robot.  He bought one to sit on his ‘battle station’.  I asked him to write down this date, …as the day I lost respect for him.  When we look at battle stations on the net, and yes, there are sites where  people submit pictures of their computer desks aka battle stations, we make fun of the ones with anime or any other kind of ‘doll’ displayed.  Today is January twentieth  twenty thirteen.












Inspired….went upstairs to find the pizza dough was ready. I made it in the read maker.
1 ½ t yeast
1 t salt
1 T sugar
1 c whole wheat flour
1 ½ c flour
1 c warm water
That is enough dough to make two pizzas so…I make one Italian and one ‘specialty. ‘Specialty’ is either BBQ, or Mexican, or Alfredo   Or cheeseburger. I have four specialty pizzas I rotate. Tonight was BBQ.  Unfortunately the first rule of home-made pizza was broken…don’t’ use too much toppings.  Unfortunately food that needed to be used was included whether it was too much or not.
Apologies all around.
Head doesn't like pizza, unless its from the neighborhood joint, Mama’s.  Then she eats like she has a hollow leg.  So, she ate other leftovers, not on a plane of starch aka pizza.

She made a trip to Sonic, I rode shotgun, and gt herself a big coke with ice.  I think she added Malibu.  That keeps her happy.  She doesn't mind the leftovers so much with a big drink to wash it down.

Here’s how the BB!Q pizza went down.  Masterpiece sauce.  Then sharp cheddar.  The leftover BBQ meats from last night, pork roast and bratwurst.  Sauteed two colors of bell pepper and onion in bacon grease   That went on next.  The some fresh chopped tomato and onion Done.











The Italian model.  Tomato sauce and Italian spices.  Lots of garlic powder.  Mozzarella cheese.  Bacon and more of the pork roast.  The rest of the sauteed veggies, with portabella mushrooms.  Fresh tomato but not the onion.  Top it all off with chunks of pineapple.  Done.








Mor just informed me that the high and mighty Lakers aren't  so high and mighty.  They paid top dollar but ended up with people that don’t mesh, everyone do a different system.  ‘Every company needs a janitor’, was Mor’s observation.The Lakers don’t have any janitors.
And Houston has lost it’s last seven games.  Lin-sanity and James Hardin are in a slump.

The Italian Model was too juicy, cut it in halfr and put it back in the oven to dry out.  Cross your fingers.



Now the second game of the day, Baltimore vs. New England.  San Francisco ended up winning the other game.

HAlftime.  Went upstairs to irritate Head while she made cereal bars.  Cereal bars are rice krispie bars, just not mad exclusively out of rice crispis. We make them out of what the half empty boxes hold.  We keep boxes of cereal on the ‘frige  Sometimes it gets a little crowded.  When it does, we know it’s time to have cereal bars.  Tonight’s dinner is all about leftovers.  Dinner and desert.