how to skin a cat.

it comes down to this: either someone takes our two shithead cats, or I'm going to kill them.

the little fuckers did the SAME thing today. came home, the freezer door was WIDE open. the only thing left in it was the ice cream I had bought last night, which is now soup and probably needs to be thrown out. more importantly, if the strain from yesterday hadn't killed the motor in our freezer, it's a good bet today did. so I'm gonna have to buy a new fucking fridge, since I really doubt "using freezer as air conditioner for entire apartment" is covered by the warranty.

there wasn't even anyone ON our back porch today. amazingly enough, the blinds were still down and tied where I left them last night. which means these little assholes did it all on their own without any provocation.

if they're going to keep doing this, they need to go. I'm sick of it.

fuck everyone.

people wonder why I downplay my fucking birthdays? because every year, something horrible happens. everyone remember a few years ago when I was having a GOOD birthday and then the surrey crack whore ran a stop sign and plowed into my two month old car? fuck, every birthday since my 8th when my mom invited my entire class to a birthday party and NOBODY showed, my birthdays have sucked ass. and this year is no exception.

it's 90 fucking degrees outside. so we went and bought a large shade for our back porch to keep the place cool. we got a letter two weeks ago saying they'd be doing pressure washing on the outside of the building between the 20th and 30th, but seeing as no one has done a damn thing since the 22nd, I figured it was safe to put the fucking thing up.

wrong. I came home from work, the thing is sitting on the back porch, probably broken. and the fuckers must have made such a commotion tearing it down that they spooked the cats. who in turn got as high up as the could, which is the cupboards over our fridge. in the process, they kicked the freezer door WIDE open.

everything in the freezer is ruined. it's 90 degrees in here, and I don't know how many hours it's been open. not to mention the damn motor has been trying to keep the entire apartment a balmy 30 degrees all day, so it'll probably die soon as well.

so there's at least fifty dollars worth of food I have to throw out. it's soggy as all hell, there's no way it'll refreeze properly, and even if it would, I'm sure as hell not eating it. there was chicken in there that's probably oozing with bacteria now.

I swear, if I could figure out a way to take about a hundred million people out with me, I'd off myself in a fucking heartbeat. this shit is NOT worth it.

all is well.

well, not really. but the funeral is confirmed for thursday at 3pm. it's still in a church. but because the church is decorated for the stupid vacation bible school, the chapel is decked out like a pirate ship. I'm going to have to REALLY try to not make pirate jokes or say "yarr!" or crap like that. this timing seems to work well for everyone involved. well, except maybe grandma. I'll have ti sit in a church, at a funeral, and listen to my cousin sing some crappy sappy cuntry [sic] song, three of my least favourite things in the world, but at least it won't interfere with my weekend plans.

I'm definitely a bad person. when someone at work asked if I was upset, I honestly told them no. "don't you have any fond memories of your grandma?" nope. she was a mean old lady that was always giving me crap about not going to church. miyuki and I discussed this tonight a bit... I've come to the conclusion that I'm just a jerk and I'm destined to spend my life bitter and relatively dis-satisfied with most of my interpersonal relationships. mostly 'cos I'm a hypocrite. I tend to view people in general as selfish and/or phony. I don't much care for people who only keep me around because I'm useful for something (unless, of course, they're my employer), and I seem to encounter very few genuinely nice, sincere people. but that's okay, because I'm neither nice nor sincere. I'm a dick that can't stand small talk and have like zero empathy for anyone other than small animals. seriously. I took this and scored an eight. that means I'm either severely autistic or just plain retarded when it comes to dealing with other human beings. I answered questions as honestly as I could, despite the fact is was plainly obvious what the "right" answers where to score well on the test...

but this funeral gets me out of work for a couple days. right at the end of the month too, which will suck for everyone else. and with the holiday weekend, I'll even end up with a six day weekend out of the deal, albeit one with an annoying trip south.

oh, and on a completely different note: don't try to buy an air conditioner several days into a moderate heat wave. it's been in the 90s for a few days (that's low 30s for you commies up north), and home depot was all sold out of the small 5000 btu units. we're not gonna buy a $400 AC unit for our bedroom, 'cos that would just be dumb. I guess we just have to wait til they get more stock in... we did at least get one of those shitty fake bamboo shades for the porch, to keep the sun out of the living room. should cool things down a little bit...

I'm an asshole.

my grandma died last night. she'd been in hospice and was essentially brain dead for the past week or so. she was also gravely ill a few weeks back with a nasty noro-like virus that was around her rest home and killed over a dozen people. she didn't die because my idiot mooch uncle saw his gravy train drying up and guilted my aunt into taking her to the hospital to have fluids pumped into her, thus prolonging her meaningless life (which was mostly in a coma anyway) for another three weeks. in her few brief moments of lucidity, she looked confused and perplexed. she's been completely senile for years now. it's basically a mockery of the whole "compassionate life" bullshit that people in my country are so fond of.

a few hours before she died, it was obvious she was in her last day or two, so the family ordered a casket. from fucking costco. it'll arrive tuesday or wednesday.

problem is, her church has vacation bible school all next week. they can't do the funeral then. a funeral home is out, because she was so devoutly religious. another church is out as well, as she had attended this one church for over 40 years. which means it will be saturday, unless there's a wedding scheduled. I really hope there's a wedding scheduled.

you see, next weekend is a REALLY bad weekend for a funeral for me. not that I like funerals anyway, but next weekend is about the worst weekend possible. miyuki got us mariners tickets for my birthday, we're supposed to go to the game friday night. then my friend BJ is coming down saturday for a weekend of up-bucking, since he's had a rough go of things lately. we'd been trying to coordinate him coming down for at least two months, and that weekend was the only one that worked. and it worked beautifully. we're not going to have another window of opportunity, and the ticket has already been bought. not to mention I've rounded up a small posse of friends who are REALLY hard to get ahold of...

so basically, if the funeral is gonna happen next weekend, I'm not going to go. I never liked my grandmother anyway, she was VERY conservative and not very nice. my dad hated her, moved out on his 18th birthday. in fact, where is he right now? he's on a fishing trip in canada. knowing full well she was on her deathbed, he went fishing. when they put her into hospice last week, he went golfing. yet for the funeral, he's going to expect me to be there, in the front row, pretending to be sad. right next to him, pretending just as hard. and if I don't go, I will NEVER hear the end of it. he will give me shit about it to his dying day.

I hate funerals. especially for people I don't care about. ironically enough, the people I do care about don't want funerals. when my mom's dad, booboo died, there was no funeral. her mom doesn't want a funeral. my parents don't want funerals. my sister might, but she's still so far off she could very well change her mind.

everyone seems to think I'm an ass because I'd rather dot he stuff I'd had planned for weeks or months than go to a dumb funeral. I think the only reason this bothers me is because it's actually quite an easy decision to make, and I feel like I should feel guilty about that. does that even make sense? feeling bad because I don't feel bad?

hol-eeee shit.

this weekend has made my brainmeats hurt.

first, miyuki and I went to see the al gore movie, an inconvenient truth at a free screening sponsored by myspace. I found the link to it on accident (it wasn't well advertised at all), so we went. depressing ass movie. I came out of it the same way I came out of the corporation... he tried to make it seem like there was hope and everything, how we have the power to change the world for the better, but in reality we're doomed. I guess it'll at least be interesting to see if that "hundreds of millions of refugees" thing happens... and how lame the US is for not joining kyoto, maybe it'll spawn some sort of revolution...

then my friend toby dropped the bombshell that after nearly thirty years of fairly ardent atheism, he's found jebus. this has taken pretty much everyone aback, I think. personally, I look(ed) to toby as a sort of atheist hero of mine... when I first met him, he and graeme were sitting at the SFU secular humanist club booth quoting simpsons references about the bible. at that point I knew I had found a home. back then I was a wishy-washy agnostic, but sec-hum was sort a spiritual fight club for me, and after a few weeks my views had firmed up "as if they'd been carved from wood"... toby switching teams has me wondering about a lot of shit.

and the ultimate mindfuck coup de grace was going to see a scanner darkly at SIFF... midnight movie, overly tired; with a vietnamese coffee, coke blak and complimentary jones soda energy drink (read: cherry flavoured concentrated evil); and a headache I hadn't been able to kick all day... add all this up, and my head REALLY hurt after watching this rotoscope masterpiece. and yes, I'm calling it a fucking masterpiece. it was gorgeous, the acting was incredible, and philip k dick was brilliant.

we got home about 2am, and I was ready to drop. it was four hours past my bedtime, and I could barely keep my eyes open... and despite all the caffeine and shit, I was ready to sleep (caffeine doesn't keep me awake). I couldn't. for THREE HOURS I was stuck tossing and turning, feeling physically disturbed by what I had seen. going over and over in my head what was real and what was hallucination... it was a similar mindfuck to the first time I saw the matrix, but multiplied by about a thousand... miyuki and I need to go see it again, in a hopefully more lucid state to see if that helps. but as far as the initial experience goes, I think all those factors listed above actually added to the surreal experience...

I gotta go get that book, and pronto. dick is one of those authors I've read VERY little of, and I should rectify that.

a sad epiphany...

miyuki and I need to get back to canada, stat.

we're one pace to be out of debt in two and a half years, at the current pace. we should also have about $7000 US saved up by then, which will come in handy. the cost of getting me up there is going to run about two thousand of that, and there's also moving expenses to account for. and of course, all of this is accounting for status quo... any raises we get or any other surprise monies will speed up the process a bit.

I'm not happy with my job. it pays the bills, but it's soul sucking, much the same way my last one was. I don't know if I'll ever find a job that I love, but I'm finding lack of happiness with other parts of my life aren't helping. if we move back to the vancouver area, we'll see friends a lot more, which will make the eight hours of boring crap five days a week a lot easier to bear.

unless something changes drastically, I'm going to plan on being back in canada for summer of 2009. hopefully the four years miyuki will have been down here will offset the pain in the ass we went through to get her permanent residency...

I'm a bad person.

I decided not to go into work today. I just had a general, non-descript feeling of malaise when it came time to wake up. I didn't feel ill necessary, I just didn't want to deal with anything. it's not like a full on depression either, it's more an apathy combined with a bit of lethargy.

I tried to sleep in, but by the time I called in (and actually got to someone there to leave the message with), I was awake. didn't stop from lying in bed TRYING to sleep for another two hours.

since I got up, I've done very little. watched a couple episodes of undergrads on MTV2 (which will no doubt make miyuki jealous), ate corn dogs for lunch, cleaned the house a bit... talked to toby and paul on msn, two people I rarely get to talk to anymore... played with the cats a bit, and they seemed appreciative. rocked out to journey, neil diamond and daft punk. I had forgotten how repetitive "homework" was... probably need some drugs or something to enjoy it more.

I tried finding a couple extra shelves for our ikea dvd rack... annoyingly, you can't buy them online, and there's no stock at seattle, richmond or coquitlam. how the hell am I supposed to pick up the two shelves I need? that's totally retarded...

mostly, it's been a highly unproductive day. I need to do this more often. maybe just schedule a day off every month... I get three weeks of "paid time off" per year, and I don't actually go on vacation much. I could actually burn a day once a month and probably be fine. it's not like I ever use sick time for actual illness anyway...

I have a feeling exercise would probably help with this feeling. anyone have any ideas as to how to exercise without exerting any effort? see, I'm really incredibly lazy...

dumbass.

KIEV (Reuters) - A man shouting that God would keep him safe was mauled to death by a lioness in Kiev zoo after he crept into the animal's enclosure, a zoo official said on Monday.

"The man shouted 'God will save me, if he exists', lowered himself by a rope into the enclosure, took his shoes off and went up to the lions," the official said.

"A lioness went straight for him, knocked him down and severed his carotid artery."

***

now, I'm about as rabid an atheist as you can get. I'm all about disproving the existence of god. however, I also like to fancy myself a bit of a logical chap, and I have some serious beefs with this argument.

lions are dangerous. that's pretty much a given. and even if it isn't, zoos usually have big signs stating this. not to mention fences, walls, and all sorts of other protective shit. even if god DID exist, I have some serious doubts it would interfere with someone stupid enough to walk up to a lion on its own turf. it's not like the guy NEEDED a miracle to be saved or something, he just needed to not be an idiot. he put himself in danger, and really, an act of god should only cancel out another act of god, if one were to occur. why should god bother to save this guy's sorry ass?

this guy didn't prove god doesn't exist due to a lack of divine intervention. all he proved was he's a dumbass. and I think the world is a better place for it.

this is retarded.

WASHINGTON - Frito-Lay said Thursday its chips that contain olestra will bear more prominent labeling alerting consumers to the presence of the fat substitute.

The change wards off a lawsuit that a consumer group had threatened on behalf of a woman who said the snacks gave her stomach cramps and forced her to rush to the bathroom.

what kind of moron sues a potato chip company because it made them need to use the potty?

I was really excited when those olestra chips first came out. some friends and I each ate two full bags (the big ones) in an afternoon hoping to test the "anal leakage" theory. and sadly, all I ended up with was some greasy poo.

seriously, how could you NOT know what those chips are? when you're looking at the package, and it says "ZERO FAT" in giant, brightly coloured lettering, wouldn't that alone make you wonder? "how can potato chips, which are fried in OIL, not have any fat in them?"

jebus christ, people are stupid.

I need a new job.

as if getting yelled at by underlings wasn't enough, I've got a boss who won't let up on my wardrobe.

today it was "suggested" for the fourth time in the past month that I do something about my appearance. he thinks I should dress up to impress the shop monkeys. guys who wear baseball caps, filthy jeans and t-shirts sporting questionable slogans. guys who treat me as a glorified secretary. they're not gonna care if I shown up in a damn tuxedo, complete with top hat and tails.

yet my boss thinks my jeans and polo shirt attire isn't professional enough. forget that the buyer, who is essentially at the same level of professionalism I am (mostly office, significant shop time, plus he deals with vendors) gets away with jeans and t-shirts all the time.

no, I need to wear collar shirts and they need to be tucked in. I need to wear a belt (I already do wear a belt, it's what keeps my pants up). I need to wear pants that aren't so baggy.

now, I have an abnormal physiology. I have huge tree trunks for legs. it's a genetic thing, and probably wasn't helped by spending half of my formative teenage years swimming competitvely. my thighs are 23.5" around. my calves are 18" around. most peoples' THIGHS aren't even 18". hell, my thighs are bigger than runway models WAISTS. I simply can't wear most pants. I can wear loose fit jeans comfortably, and without ripping out the crotch or something. and I have no ass to speak of, so even with a belt, my pants tend to droop a bit.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do about this. I can't afford to go buy a whole new wardrobe, nor do I think I should have to. nearly all of the inside people wear casual clothes to work everyday, nearly everyone wears jeans. I HATE tucking in shirts, and they never manage to stay tucked in anyway, which looks terrible.

I've tried explaining all this to my boss, especially the bit about wearing "tighter pants"... I don't think he understands. I'm about damn tempted to go to work in a speedo just to show off my legs.

either that, or I'm gonna go try to buy like fifteen identical outfits, all on clearance, as cheap and tacky as possible. get like five pairs of the same pants, and several of the same non-descript collar shirt. just be an office drone. I'd look like I feel most day, at least.