the heebie jeebies

First off, that's one of my all time favorite sayings. I love it.

I was sitting here.

Laying. I was laying here and... GODDAMMIT.

I'm sick and tired of saying "watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer." When in the hell is this series going to end for me? For those of you who are just joining us, well, in my boredom at the store, I have been entertaining myself with the entire series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

All 7 seasons. And, as of this writing, I have 2.5 episodes left. It is 11:50pm on Friday night, and I'll be damned if I am going to sleep without finishing this series.

So I thought I'd take a break and walk you through exactly what gave me the jeebies.

I got an email from Fangoria. I wanted to see about getting my name in a contest, when I saw this article on John Carpenter. You can read part 1 and part 2 here.

digg link here.

And that made me think of my dad. So, yesterday was the 12th anniversary of my dad's death. He died of lung and brain cancer at the ripe age of 50. He was a Vietnam vet and, by far, the coolest guy I've ever met. Seriously. People say they're lucky to have their parents in their lives, and that they're cool, and when I think of my dad, I don't doubt them. I just feel luckier.

I'll put it to you this way. First, I'm sorry I didn't get to talk to my dad more, especially near the end, about life. I know there were things he could have taught me... things he'd experienced and all.

Second. Let me tell you that if there was one guy on the planet who, after death, would come back and haunt the shit out of me, for fun? It would be him. I'm talking full poltergeist haunting, just to mess with me.

In a really funny way. Like, if I had a girl over, he would do the blood on the walls, "Get OUT" thing... what a pisser.

Hmmm... 12 years ago, that would make me 22. Like, would he have told me not to get married (I'm divorced, btw)? What would he have said about being on anxiety meds for 6 years?

I watch movies that come out and think "He would have loved this one?"

I learned a lot from him. I wish I would have learned more. Here's a bit about how he died, and something I found of his.

So, John Carpenter. I can't remember the first Carpenter film my dad took me to see. I think it was They Live, one of my all time favorites.



My dad took me to every single cool movie that came out. I remember, very clearly, when I was young, going to a Chinese restaurant with him and my sister, and then rushing to go see Time Rider. I saw that poster, man... that thing was AWESOME, and we had to go see that movie.



From there, after They Live, it was The Thing, my second all time favorite movie.



To this day, and I'd seen movies with cursing in it before, but when that F bomb happened, I laughed so hard, my dad had to stop the VCR. I think I was 12.

Big Trouble in Little China was HUGE. That movie was a blast.



Slowly but surely my dad groomed me for a life of fantasy, sci-fi, horror, comic books... Piers Anthony, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Fritz Lieber... he laid the serious groundwork for everything that I enjoy today.

Which moves me into the Jeebies. Seriously. What a crazy word!

I always check CNN. I hate CNN. But ever since 9/11, I check it, every day, every hour that I'm awake, because they update quite regularly. I don't think they're unbiased. It's quite easy to read between the lines. And I don't bother with morons like Glenn Beck.

So, I go and check, and I see this thing about aliens in Colorado.

Fucking aliens. Not, you know, illegal aliens. Real aliens. With ships and...

Check this out. The video is awful, but it's like Signs, except in Colorado.



Ever seen the movie Arachnophobia? For three days, any little thing that touched my skin, I freaked the fuck out. (it's late, I usually don't curse this much on my blog, cause, well, I'm trying to stay pg-13)

This? I double checked my door (cause aliens can't work door knobs), under my bed, behind the shower curtain, in the closets, and I probed my cats.

No! I mean... pshhh... petted my cats. You know, I love my cats.

Love them to DEATH. (see earlier post)

Anyway.

There's the round-a-bout on the evenings thought process.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for commenting (all of you) on any and all posts.

I'll be around. Reading, writing. Watching more Buffy, and then moving on to... christ, you know I'm gonna have to buy the Angel series.

I feel whipped.

J

PS - my upstairs neighbor, if you can believe this, has that dueling banjos song on.

Now, were I not in the deep south, were I not surrounded by people who drink their alcohol in big jugs with XXX marked on them... were I back home, I would actually have grounds to kill the man.

Kind of like how women can get off of murder charges because it's their time of the month? Well... yeah, see sometimes it works both ways.

Except men don't have PMS. And in this instance, it's banjos.

So yeah. Both ways.

"duh" or "thanks"

Well, I didn't know NIN had done this... I know Radiohead did, and that album, In Rainbows, is awesome.

NIN has a new album out that you can download for free. The Slip.

Check it out.

Can't wait to give this a listen. I've really been digging their music of late.

look what I found!

These... hahaha, oh man. These are so funny. I just kind of stumbled upon them. I'm not sure if anyone has seen these before, but I'm sure that it'll catch on like wild fire.



So funny...

Sigh.

Ok, ok. I know the world is sick of Ask a Ninja but this is my favorite video of the series.

It's 9:22 on Friday morning, and I'm out of milk. Looks like I'm walking to the grocery store.

J

I don't hate my mother

How dare you accuse me of that. You don't even know me!

So, my mom decided that she didn't like the color for our new store. You know, the one we just opened.

You know, the one we just painted.

The one where she chose the colors.

Yeah, that one.

So we took everything we'd just put a couple months ago, we took it all off the walls, primed the back wall (I'll have photos Monday), re-painted it, put up new shelves, moved a 6' x 7' 100lb book case... last night and this morning.

And I'm exhausted. Wiped out. A zombie.

The new color... I don't hate it, but I'm not in love with it. My mom seems to be in love with the new wall, so is forgoing dating for the next six months. She took pictures of the wall and framed them and put them on her night stand and kisses the pictures goodnight.

Ok, ok, she doesn't do that, but my sister and I were about to go mutiny on her ass...

We worked very hard, got most of the work done, and now, tomorrow, I work from home and then have the weekend off. So, I'll be relaxing in a t-shirt and boxers tomorrow (the uniform of the work-from-home crowd) and drinking mimosas and spearing fruit with a foot long tooth-pick and my cats will have a large fan made of big leaves, and they'll be fanning me with it.

So yeah, I'm already looking forward to tomorrow.

Tonight, this evening, I'm getting drunk by myself, which is actually... it seems like a sport down here. I feel like I'm prepping myself for the big drink off.

I'm having a great glass of wine, cheese, crackers, fig spread, olives... it's turning into quite a lovely evening, and I figured I would blog just a bit about it.

Have a good night, talk more tomorrow.

J - Retail Hell - ish (goddamn SEO!)

cool made-up stuff about me

I asked a group of perfect strangers what they thought was cool about me. Here's what I got:

"Your arms are 1000 Kilometers long." I'm the less scarred version of Freddy Kruger.



"John was the first blogger to ever have an RSS feed picked up by an extra terrestrial." And none of the little bastards leave any comments!

"John plays air guitar like nobody else." PREACH ON!

"It's not widely known but John has a phd in Politics of Caribbean Nations." I'm the guy who got all the chicks down there to start wearing thongs. Bow to me.

Especially girls in thongs. Bow! Bow backwards!

"John is amazingly good at juggling!" CIA Operative, Martha Stuart regular, wife and mother of three amazing children... I do it all.

"John was knockin' off drug dealers when he got that wound (blogcatalog reference)... got shot three times and still standin'" Ain't gonna get cooked by no fools, man, sheeeit.



"John owns the second biggest ball of yarn in the world." This is only half true, since the ball is actually in my apartment and my neighbors. But we share the glory and the voided Guinness World Records check.

"John once took a trip across the country just so he could stop at every rest stop and read all the magical words on the walls of each and every bathroom." 'nuff said.

"John worked in Paris, France as a runway model until 1985 when he was arrested and deported. After that he started his above mentioned cross country bathroom trip." You want to meet some catty bitches? But I got them back. I was the guy who told the press that even French runway models smell. Who's laughing now, bitches?



"John studied the art of belly dance in Egypt. Though he once took the champion title with his patented wiggle-twist-sliiiiddde movement, he was criticized for his lack of panache..." I deserved that trophy goddammit! Dislocated my hip, now I'm 60lbs overweight and if I were to even try belly dancing again, well, it's in Revelations.

"The samurai are John's heroes." Live by the sword, die by... well, it depends. I mean, heart disease, cancer, donuts. Samurai didn't have to deal with donuts, did they.

"When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for John!!" Do I even need to comment here? No.

But I will! This guy, let me tell you something about the boogeyman. He's like 3 feet tall, bad breath, and he's got these little chicken arms... ah, forget it. He still owes me like a hundred bucks... he's going through a tough time now. I mean, three feet tall. Hello. Who's he scaring, except kids... sheesh.

"John probably has the entire "Terminator" series in his movie collection." This isn't so much cool as it is expected. I also have the whole America's Greatest Hero on DVD, too. Keep upping my cool factor. Keep upping it.

"After completing his passage through the Great Divide, John set his saddled tabby cat, Moose, loose to find his way down to the village of dyslexic fisherman in the middle of a waterless oasis as his outreach program." I do a lot of good. A lot. Of. Good.

"After putting on extra hours at his shop, John was driving his 2-seater convertible down a deserted road with a storm fast gaining on him. He came to a bus stop. The bus was late and would not be passing by for some hours. There stood three people – a sick old woman who needed fast medical attention, his best friend who he owed his life, and the woman of his dreams. He had to choose, and fast, who he could take in the car. Being the fast thinker and considerate man that he always is, John gave his very expensive, only-3-in-the-world-car to his friend to take the old lady to the hospital, and chose to brave the storm, tightly holding the woman of his dreams, waiting for the bus. Did the bus ever come? John was seen receiving his Nobel prize for heroism with a hot damsel in his arm."

That never happened. The real story, only the damsel knows. See, we killed the old woman, and my 'friend', my so-called-friend, well, we carved him up and... so the old lady, she went to the hospital with my friend.

I got wet... you know, cause. Of the storm. And.

"When John first made it to the top of Mt Everest, the helicopter he used to get there ran out of fuel. Darn it to the shortcut of using the helicopter to get to the top, he thought... He had to walk down to ask some farmers before returning with some fuel." I think this guy, who wrote this... I think I went to high school with him, and I wouldn't let him cheat off one of the hundreds of A grade test papers I had... I'm not sure.

Use a helicopter... pshhh. Jet packs! I would use a jet pack, man. Get with the program!

"John is the kind of guy that would give his right arm to be ambidextrous." You know, when I first read this, I was like "This guy is COOL." But now I'm re-reading it and I can't figure it out.

But he's still cool!

And finally, this is me in action.



Man, all this to make my blog roll. My site must be kickin'!

J

strange customers

So, I'm sitting here minding my own business... oh god, the puns, the puns.

And this trio of women come in. They go around and giggle and smell soaps.

"What happens if I bite one of the soaps?" customer 1 asks.

"You buy it," I say. Giggles all around.

So she comes over to the table and grabs this plastic duck filled with bath gel and says to her friends that "Hey, this is what those breast implants feel like, you know, the ones at our desk when we talk to customers."

So I say "Umm, you tele-market breast implants?"

"No. Well yes. But mainly penile implants. You know, to make them bigger. You want the website?" customer 1.

"Not that you need it." Customer 2. "You know, if you have a friend."

"Ah, well, the last time I saw any of my friends naked, we were all 5 and we all needed implants."

Another friend comes in. "What's going on?"

"They're trying to tell me I need a bigger penis." me.

"I try so hard, but I can't take them anywhere."

"It's ok, this'll be a funny story I tell my mom."

This isn't the site (they told me the site, but the part of my brain that tells me everything is fine and dandy down there blocked it out) but I can't stop looking at some of these pictures.

A couple of pictures.

OK, really just specific pictures, jeez.

Today wasn't a bad day at the shop, and it's not over. 3:30, two hours left. Almost made our break even quota for the day.

Last season of Buffy. I can't wait to stop watching this, so I can talk to you guys about actual movies.

And I have to put this here for some SEO - retail hell-(ish) - blech.

Thanks for stopping by. More later, or tomorrow.

3am sucks

so, I haven't touched on my anxiety problem at all on this thing. well, here's the once over.

quick like.

Started almost ten years ago. was bad, got better, got worse, and now it's a daily constant battle. not on meds, had a problem with some of them. want to try and fight it on my own.

woke up tonight at 3am and I couldn't feel my legs. or, I should say, I could feel my legs. and they felt weird. not like pins and needles weird, but just weird, and it's usually one of two things. a) a low blood sugar attack. b) anxiety masking as a low blood sugar attack.

it's usually almost always b.

so I'm up. wide awake. and I remembered that blogcatalog resident crotchety old man wakes up in the middle of the night, so I thought I would commiserate for a little bit.

Here's to the group of us that don't remember what a good night sleep feels like.

J