Name Calling And Other Green, Black & Yellow Issues

Aha! I was right! About too much water in American toilets, I mean. There's a great post over at Inky Circus about how wasteful our current system is. They also link to another article on the subject worth a further read, which reminded me of how the company of mercenaries I saw alot of in the Interzone in Baghdad, named 'Blackwater', (you should all have heard of them, if you pay attention to news) is named after what the sewage treatment business calls water with nasty smelly human poo in it. You can't make this poop up folks! The other thing it talks about is how in the future men will have to pee sitting down, if we want to solve the problem with urine separating toilets. Screw that; when I finally have my own place, I'm getting a waterless urine-separating urinal installed... I never understood why all houses with men residing in them don't have urinals already, anyway. Much less water wasted in those, and it would stop all fights about having the lid up or down. Another Green issue on everybody's mind is this unreasonably warm winter, and whether it is Global Warming. This article says to expect 2007 to be the warmest year on record, a record originally set in 1998... a quickly moving upward trend if I ever saw one. They're also pulling out the 'ol El Niño defense again. I haven't seen a real snow in 4 years, and now this! Grr, argh. Global Warming is really cramping my style, man.
Anyway, I'm going to Thailand! I was hanging out in my Dad's house, trying to figure out if I should find an apartment, or where I want to work, and all kinds of deep life issues that I am apparently still not equipped to deal with properly, when I realized that there is no reason I can't run off and play for a bit before settling those questions. I've done everything I needed to do by coming back to the US for the moment, and while there are other issues on the horizon, at the moment I have a more or less clean calender and so I decided to go on the trip I'd wanted to go on after leaving Baghdad in the first place. I also wanted to get Lasik surgery, and after some research discovered that it's actually cheaper to buy a round-trip ticket and get it done in Thailand than it is to get it done here! Don't believe me? Check out US prices, and then go to the site of a very famous hospital in Bangkok and check out their prices and add that to the price of a round-trip ticket purchased at least a month in advance from expedia. The total pricing may wind up being more or less equivalent, but then you also get a sweet trip to southeast Asia out of the deal and a nifty passport stamp. It's totally a no-brainer.
I leave at the end of the month and will be gone for about 3 to 4 weeks. Sorry TF, (Can I call you Tim? You always sign in as TF, even though your name is Tim, and I feel kind of weird calling you TF if you'd prefer Tim. Let me know.) I'd love to go oil-drilling in Canada, but I hadn't heard back from you and I get antsy left to my own devices. If it's still an option come March, drop me a line.
In the meantime I am still having some issues with my old company about whether they will pay me or not and whether I am going to Washington DC later this week for a few days to give my deposition or not. I imagine I'll have a better idea of what's going to happen there by tuesday.
Meanwhile, go buy this shirt. My friend Heather made it (I think) to promote a book written by my newest friend, Miss Luongo. (Do you mind if I call you Miss Luongo? It fits, somehow, but if you don't like it I'll stop.) It's called "The Hard Way" and comes out sometime this spring. (Which, judging by the weather, is any time between now and April. I think that in May, summer will be here.) It's her debut novel, and I both painfully admire and jealously despise anybody I know that actually gets something published. Apparently it's a really really good book too, which shoots up my admiration even further, and sends my covetous black heart even lower. I can't wait to read it.

Comments

[Miss Luongo]

Claims that the book is good come straight from the author's mouth. Rah. It must be true.

[messiestobjects]

Stephanie Lessing seems to think it rocks...

[Heather]

I thought you only answered to Rajah or Most Beneficent Rajah. DOH. I fixed my blog-home. Yay! It's not news, but yay!

[messiestobjects]

Ok great; now, if you'd only stop blowing it up, you'll be good to go...

[Heather]

Yeah. That's not going to happen.

[Miss Luongo]

Splish splash my poo was taking a bath. Very wasteful. And what's with all the personal space we need? We're like goldfish. We keep expanding to fit our environment. The high ceilings are entirely unnecessary though, since we're not growing that way. But we won't be oppressed by shelter! And bulky sweaters are restrictive. Good thing there's global warming, foreign oil, and long sleeved t-shirts to keep up toasty.

[Gary]

My massive b-logs will not make it down the pipe without GALLONS of water to move them along. I have a well and a septic system - am I ok? Probably not but I'm just checking. I used to live on Main st. in s'burg not far from the piss-wheel and damn I tell ya after a friday and saturday night the air down there was just not right. Lots o' drinking and flushin and blowin mud going on down in s'burg. "Hello Muddville - Campus Invaded By Mud Yet Again" was my favorite ESU headline. I don't know how Linnea and co lived right next to that thing, but then again the massive amounts of garbage pilled up in the their place must have blocked out the OTHER smell. Ah the smell of lower main brings back memories. Oh and what's with the skunks? Damn I don't miss that. Shit would wake me up in the middle of the night.

[messiestobjects]

Oh yes, many were the days on lower main, sittin' in a rockin' chair on Linnea and Nina's back porch, sippin' on a lemonade with the crickets a-chirpin' and the pleasant waft of human feces chemical processing plant in the air... ah memories.

[Tim]

Yep, go ahead and call me Tim.

I'm just finishing up yet another two weeks on a rig in northern Alberta. Extremely labor intensive work in minus 40 weather, but the pay is awesome and it's cool to say you're a "Roughneck".

March should be cool, since fall, winter and spring is pretty busy drilling time.

I'll email you more info after I've slept and hopefully dreamed of Thailand...

[messiestobjects]

Sweet. It is, in fact, wicked cool to say you're a Roughneck.