The animals, the RLA and I have a game we play. It's called "Sockie on the Head" and it consists of (when putting socks on or off) taking the sockie and bopping the animal on the head with it. Ming tries to hook it with his claws, and does a mighty fine job of catching them, I may add. Nails bites the sock. Or at least snaps at it. We love this game.
I bring this up because when I got back from the gym last night, the RLA was watching the "debate" and one look at the smirking, simpering chimp and I went wild. I ripped off my gym socks and proceded to beat the talking head on the TV screen. I played Sockie on the Head with Dubya.

Sigh. Dubya. He fumbled, he mumbled and he stumbled his way through 90 of the most excrutiating minutes on TV. It was awful. I couldn't sit through the whole thing and went off to the showers. When I came back he was still there repeating his one memorized line: Kerry changes his mind.

I don't know about you, but if I had never changed my mind about anything, I'd still be a redhead married to the Anti-Christ. I'd still be drinking coffee milkshakes accompanied by Bar-B-Que potato chips and I'd still think that shoulderpads were a good look. Granted, most of those are superficial beliefs, and not the earth-shaking ideals that Dubya was yapping about, but if he hadn't changed his mind about certain things, he wouldn't have gone AWOL in the National Guard and he'd still be drinking like a fish and snorting cocaine. So maybe changing your mind isn't the sin he likes to make it out to be.

Of course, born-again Christian though he is, he still lies like a rug. High crimes and misdemeanors.

I kept waiting for Kerry to answer one of Bush's snivelling platitudes about the value of every American soldier's life with the question "Oh, yeah? Then why haven't you had the grace to go to a single one of their funerals? Why don't you let the American people see the price we're paying by showing photos of the flag-draped coffins of the military dead? And don't tell me it's out of respect, because you are using the dead of 9-11 like fucking wall paper, every chance you get."

But that wasn't going to happen.

I thought whoever dressed Kerry did a great job. Loved the black suit and white shirt: it really played off that great hair of his. It was stark, it was dramatic, it was a dangerous fashion choice and it rocked.

Verbatim from today's blog:

What Kerry Should Say (Rude Version):

If, at tonight's "debate", when Kerry is asked, "What would you have done differently in Iraq?", he doesn't answer, "What the fuck kind of question is that, Jim? Jesus Christ, how many corpses of children need to be piled at the door of the White House to know that any reasonably well-trained terrier could do a better job managing this war than that motherfucker at the other podium? How many dead soldiers need to clog the pool at the 'ranch' in Crawford before anyone in this goddamned administration admits that things are more fucked-up than a thalidomide baby with warts? Here's what I would have fuckin' done different: Short answer - I wouldn't have fuckin' gone to Iraq, and if this squinty fuckface wants to accuse me of leaving Saddam Hussein in power, then he can fuckin' ask the mom of some kid blasted to shit by a roadside bomb if she gives a rat's ass whether or not Saddam's in power and Iraq is gonna have fake elections to prop up its fake ass government. Long answer? Yer askin' me a fantasy question, Jim, and if you wanna get into fantasy, here's my fuckin' fantasy - so get your wish-fulfillment bell ringin': I'd've gotten a large gay black man to get into William Rehnquist's shower back in late November 2000 and had him scare the Chief Justice into a coma with his raging black hard-on. I'd've fuckin' sent the SEC probin' Bush's asshole for evidence that he fucked over the shareholders of Harken. I'd've sent his fuckin' drunken, coked-out, duty-skippin' ass to Vietnam, where the men of his platoon would've used him for practice before raping the village girls in the Mekong. I'd've yanked down his pants at a Skull and Bones meeting and paddled his butt bright red with the wooden plank that had 'Bitch' carved in it so the word would be scarred on his ass forever. I'd've spiked pregnant Barbara Bush's drink with an abortifacient so she would eject the goo that would become George W in her womb. I'd've gotten George, Sr.'s nuts ripped off when he ejected from his fighter jet. I'd've made sure Prescott's dick was mustard gassed into disuse in the Meuse-Argonne. That's what I would have done differently in Iraq. Now, you little semi-conscious cuntface, get Karl Rove to shove a talking point up your ass about that or do you want me to make you suck my cock in front of a national audience?", then the debate will be worthless.

This is the week that a good deal of my stress ends: the project from hell is due to go live on Friday.

A little recap: sometime in the middle of last year, the hospital got a new web management tool. My father died the first week of May. While I was sitting at his bedside, web tool was installed and configured. It had taken almost 9 months to get the tool installed. The day I returned to work, I started on the site conversion. My PHB asked me how long it would take, and I told him six to nine months to complete the work, if the PR department cooperated with content, and assuming I'd be working on this pretty much alone. He said that he'd help (yeah, right) and that I had three months.
So I have been working como un perro ever since. The PHB "helped" for a month or two by adding and deleting links and going to California for classes and then by leaving me alone to do my work. The PR department "helped" by telling me how to structure the site, demanding pages be added, then not giving me content, and lastly demanding that those empty pages be deleted.

Thursday we have a demo and are supposed to go live on Friday. That's two months longer than my boss gave me, and one month less than my shortest estimate.

I've also been maintaining the existing live site, keeping it updated and adding pages. I've also been going to meetings and doing all the other day to day business I'm expected to manage.

And then there's my personal life: executing my father's estate, trying to keep an eye on my mother's care (she has advanced Alzheimer's) and worrying about the various extended family that lives up and down the Treasure Coast. The names of the cities that they live in would have been unfamiliar to 90% of America until this month, when they were in the path of two monster hurricanes.

Vero Beach, Port St. Lucie, Stuart, Hutchinson Island, Snug Harbor, West Palm Beach.

I have no idea today if my cousin's house in Vero is standing, or my auntie's condo on Hutchinson Island exists. I haven't spoken to my brother in Port St. Lucie (his mother-in-law died in the last storm and I have little hope that his father-in-law will do any better in this one). I spoke to Mummy's nurse yesterday morning, but haven't heard since.

Yesterday, I had a full-fledged anxiety attack in the middle of the afternoon.

Today, I am back at my desk, pounding out another 20 pages or so in anticipation of Thursday's presentation. My flu is in remission. My boss is over at his west coast house, stuck in the Tampa airport.

My horoscope keeps promising me good fortune in business. I have two resumes out, and am waiting to hear from other opportunity. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Item the first: I've got the flu. That'll teach me to discount the RLA's misery when he gets it first. I'm falling over in my chair, surrounded by OTC flu products and big honking box of tissues, spreading my disease to my co-workers because (despite my personal feelings about coming to work when sick) I have the web roll-out from hell in one week, and I have to be here to work. Hah! and Good Luck with what ever I produce today.

Item the second: Bruce Springsteen is 55 today. Happy birthday, Bruce. Read his most excellent interview in Rolling Stone. Here.

Item the third: Hurricane Ivan is back? And Jeanne just won't go away. She's bearing down on the Florida coast for the third time, after wandering in circles in the Atlantic for two weeks. Just beat us up, and go away, already.

Item the fourth: I'm preparing a rebuttal to the person who dropped a comment on my entry down below about the Bush family, and how she admires their family values. So far, I have found multiple arrests spanning multiple generations for crimes ranging from breaking and entering, to DUI, to drug abuse. I have located the reports of Neil's philandering and Poppy's. From personal friends, I have the story of Barbara's anti-Semitism that goes back to her childhood. And that's just the opening paragraph. I haven't even gotten to the high crimes and misdemeanors of the sitting president. However, with the roll-out from hell, and the flu from next door to hell, that rebuttal will have to wait.

Go read what Bruce has to say. It's worth the read.

Don't perform in front of one. It's pretty simple really.

To the stupid bitch sitting across from me on the train this morning, whispering into her cell phone, behind her hand: Hey! If you don't want other people to hear you, then don't use the phone on a crowded train.

But then, she also put on her make up in the train. So what can I expect?
To paraphrase Rodney King: "Can't we all just shut the fuck up?"

What ever happened to internal silence and thought? Huh? How come we all have to have a fucking soundtrack to everything and every moment of our lives? I admit that with my addiction to my i-pod, I'm guilty of this, too. Except, I turn the damn thing off now and then. But all I see are people with head sets: telephones, talking to the invisible other; music delivery systems, rocking to something only they hear. In their cars, walking on sidewalks, on treadmills at the gym, on the trains, buses: everywhere. People are separating themselves from the rest of humanity at the expense of our humanity.

Instead of saying that we need to stop and smell the roses, I think we need to turn off the noise and savor the silence.

I came in this morning, and my boss walked into my office and closed the door. Never a good sign. Especially bad sign when the Herald ran a front page story yesterday about the layoffs.

Our VP saw "the list" and was "very surprised" by the names on it. Remember this is the VP who swore on his mother's honor that not one person would be cut from our department. The names themselves have not been revealed, merely that they were a surprise.

My boss then extended this advice, which came from the upper middle manager above him, but below the VP.

"We in this group should mind our Ps and Qs and do whatever we are asked by whomever asks. This is not the time to make waves, or enemies. The PR department is in full charge of the web. Do what they say and no back talk. Of course, this means that you can still point out to them mistakes in spelling or whatever. But..."

I've been watching Shogun for the past few nights. And all I can think of is the various daimyos telling Blackthorne that he'd better behave or else ... "Do you understand?"

Hai. I understand. I'm fucked in the ear with no oil. Or as the PR department is so fond of saying "It doesn't have to be done right, it only has to be done."