McGuffin of The Ant Queen (Part II of the Ant Queen Chronicles)

Many a thing needed doing before the final assault could be launched, and more prisoners were taken all the time as my soul-pure brethren wandered into those dark tunnels, seeking only to convert the filthy Christ-killers and God-haters who peopled the palace of The Ant Queen. And there was the matter of a little recon, a bit of looky-see for to show us the path to the victory of the Righteous.

And the McGuffin. There's always a McGuffin.

I tracked into the lair yet again. It is important for a Man to know his mission and to choose the right tools, and for this operation I was packing, in addition to my crucifix, only My Rifle, Old Reliable; my trusty nightscope liberated from the race-mixing oppressors in the U.S. Army; and a few claymores and flash-bangs in a ditty bag in case I ran into serious trouble. Oh, sure, I might've had another ace or two up my sleeve, but that's for me to know and you to find out, savvy?

The insertion was easy; these careless sluts never protect the opening to their precious hideaway, preferring to lure a Man into this den with the overpowering waft of their raging pheromones. Many an innocent lamb of Christ has fallen into their clutches this way.

Even as I slipped into the vile burrow, I could sense the pulsing of the compound's life beat: the rap-hop music; the soccer; the young persons, fuel for Her unholy fire, with their gold chains and their piercings and their exposed midriffs and their illicit drugs; the working women, callously abandoning their children to secular homosexual daycare providers as they waltzed off to deprive Men of Their right to work; hippies and other socialists, chanting and beating on their drums and making dirty bestial partisan love to trees and whales and baby seals; and Her minions, always Her minions, the Jane Fondas and Bella Abzugs and Susan Sarandons and Rachel Carsons and Greer Garsons and Barbara Boxers and Andrea Dworkins, and their captive Leninist boytoys, the Tim Robbinses and Ted Turners and Adam Baldwins. They lolled about the chambers of the compound, gorging themselves on rich Ethiopian food and sodomy, taking breaks from their gluttony only to mince down to the dungeons to sing Alanis Morrissette songs to the martyrs, their hapless captives, condemned to rot in chains listening to Godless propaganda until the day when the Righteous could fulfill their destiny and destroy their heathen oppressors.

All of these seethed and frothed into an unholy stew, whipped into an Atheistic frenzy by Her and Her Ilk, bombarding the Faithful with messages of Peace and Love and Free Will and Temptation, mocking Us with their debauchery, cruelly and rudely rebuking Us at every turn with their facts and their logic and their science. How could We, simple servants of the Baby Jesus and of God's Will, compete with Her in such a complex and distracting world as this? Even by her nature she was not subject to holy assault by the Righteous, for even Satan was created from the same stuff as the Angels. She, my friends, was no fallen Angel. Sterner measures would be required to defeat this villain.

Silently, I plunged into the tunnel, the walls around me throbbing with the Unholy evil that saturated this foul place. Despite the constant draft flowing through this womb of Our Tormentors, I began to sweat, slowly at first, a light sheen covering my towering form, then more profusely as the heathen beat of the Gomorrah-hive intensified, corresponding to my progress through these tubes.

And then, the ambush! Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Holly Hunter, and Mia Hamm reared up and attacked. "Back, foul libertines!" I cried, hosing them down with molten death from Old Reliable, but as they fell, there She appeared, the Ancient Enemy, the Royal America-Hater herself, spewing babies from her female orifice, chanting, "That's mine! That's mine! That's mine!" and fatally squashing every one of them that was of a color lighter than that of cured leather. This was about one in every six, since Her protocol of interbreeding Communists from all over the world was in full swing and She was well on her way to homogenizing Humanity itself into one foul medium-beige slurry. She knocked the rifle and my bag of explosives from my hands, sending them clattering off into a convenient abyss.

"Babykiller!" I screamed, and she flinched, as all leftists do when called names. "Why do you hate America, foul fiend of the matriarchal Underworld? Sheela na gig! Exhibitionist!" She reeled at my assault, croaked "Generalizer!" as if her silly taunts could harm me, and clattered back down the passageway, leaving a trail of babies impure, but living, and pure, but deceased. But in the dim light, I made out something else she left behind--the McGuffin!

As soon as I moved toward the all-important grail, though, her stalwart army rallied, ear plugs fitted to withstand my assaults. I knew that it would be a waste of breath to remind Liv Tyler, Rosie O'Donnell, and Gloria Steinem, that they were Feminazis, and I looked for another plan. But I was in deep trouble, for the smell of their pheromones filled the air, and I knew that this was my worst fear realized; this coven of trollops was ovulating. What was worse, the excitement of combat, combined with the inescapable draw of the pheromones, was having the expected result; I was growing erect, all fifteen inches worth.

Liv Tyler cackled hideously, her sordid laughter ringing in my ears, her giant demonic ovaries calling to Me with their tainted scent. "Come to us now, and help us create stem cells," she chortled. "You cannot escape us now, in your helplessness. Come to me, my pretty Christian, and let me make a man of you even as we kill the embryos you help me create so that we may use their stem cells to research cures for heterosexuality and normality." I shuddered in fear, paralyzed by inaction, by a million options and nonoptions whirling through my purified mind.

And then, He appeared as if in a hologram. "Use the Force, Insuffricubus!" whispered Joey Rats urgently, "your Holy Seed will triumph over their wicked lubriciousness!" The Pope was right. I had one more trick in my book.

I reached down and unzipped myself calmly, drawing out all seventeen inches, stroking once, twice. "Okay, girls, I guess you've got me," I said. "Who's first?" All three of them crowded closer to me, and then I let them have it. Never in my life have I been so happy for that little control problem, as I sprayed the heathen harlots with My Righteous Semen. It was if the infidels had been sprayed with Holy Water, and they melted away before me. I laughed in triumph and picked up the McGuffin, preparing to escape. I was so charged up from My victory that Joey Rats had to come back and remind me of something crucial.

And so I scooped up the embryos that were all that remained of the forces of the Left, scooped them up and into the McGuffin, and flew out of there as fast as I could, preserving myself for the next step in the struggle against Evil, and preserving the precious embryos for adoption into good Christian homes.

In the Halls of The Ant Queen

The whimpering and the scurrying of little and not-so-little feet alerted me to the possibility of a problem, and I got there as soon as I could. Not wanting to round the corner too quickly, I unslung my weapon and peered around, trying to suss out the situation. It was dark in there, with flickering shadows cast by the torchlight in the drafty corridor, and I had trouble making out the shapes that cavorted before me. But the terrified cries of "liberal media" and "legally elected" and "Newsweek" and "Bill Clinton's cock" left behind in the aura of fear that permeated this place made clear the identities of the escaping victims.

And that made it a good bet that The Ant Queen was back on Her High Horse.

I'd done battle with the Ancient Insect before, of course; in fact, for quite a time, back in the day, I was her prisoner, held in her sway by the inexorable grip of the Death Star and its promises of a steady stream of meals and the prospect of becoming A Cool Executive, with the flashy car and the flash roll and the flashy dames of convenience held in an anteroom at my beck and call. But one day I dreamed I was free, and three days later, in a paroxysm of violence and terror that separated the head from the thorax from the abdomen from the legs from the feelers of many a dark worker, I made like Disneyworld and made my dreams come true. No need for details, but suffice it to say that escape was more important than the uncertain prospect of taking The Old Bitch down for good. I made good that escape, and lay in wait to this day, shepherding resources for a final assault on Her and Her Socialist Klatch of Feminazi Amazon uber-Warrioresses.

Seeing no proximate threat, I edged around the corner and into the hallway, Old Reliable raised to my shoulder, sighting down the hall, ready to deal hot death to anything standing in my way. It was a shame that Bill Frist walked out of that side passage so quickly, but my reflexes are razor-honed and it's always my policy to shoot first and filibuster later. I'm sure it got me a job on McCain's staff later on, if I'm in that market.

But for now, I was still in Her hallways, intent on rescuing the persecuted. A shadow loomed, ready to devour me, and I popped off a three round burst into the amazon bitch's eyeballs, screaming "Anne Coulter looks hot in a black minidress!" She toppled over, still twitching as her Stalinist life-slime oozed from her chunky body, but my warcry had alerted her cronies, who leaped out from every part of their AIDS-quilting circle, screaming threats of retributive distributive justice against me. I had no time for their leftist drivel, and quickly laid down a pair of claymores, spurting sizzling blobs of death into two crowds of them, mowing down Katherine Graham, Hilary Clinton, Jenna Jameson, and dozens of lesser footsoldiers of The Ant Queen, all of whom died secretly loving it.

It was time to advance, and I did, this time choosing "Hanging for All Activist Judges" as my cry, and then I saw them, peeking out from alcoves and crevices in the walls; my brethren, the innocent oppressed victims of these Communist Harlots, cowering in fear against their depredations, wanting only to pray in schools, kill the Jew bastards, and send wogs out into the fields, where they belonged, to pick the crops that make Our Country Strong. "Get thee behind me!" I cried, "Live to fight another day, Repressed Christian Masses, that ye may spread the word and prosper to defeat thine enemas!" They looked at me, momentarily confused by the prospect of escape, then sped out the passage behind me, freed of their burden of intelligent debate with these totalitarian slatterns. But the last one out froze, quivering in his tattered shoes, pointing down the hallway.

It was Her. The Ant Queen, Socialist Maximus Her Own Self. Her giant pincers waved, and her horrible voice boomed down the passage, the sonic tremors making it hard to concentrate on ensuring the safety of my blooded lambs. "Facts!" she squawked, "Interrogative statements based on logical precepts!" The last lamb scurried down the hall behind me, abandoning me to my fate.

I stared Her down, steel in my eyes and my Rifle in my hand. "You make me sick," I sneered. "Keeping my people in the gulag for so long, berating them with your liberal distortions, you feminazi hag."

She clicked her pincers at me, afraid to advance; She knows a Real Man when She sees one. And yet, I knew that my Rifle wasn't powerful enough to take her down, and I certainly didn't want to dirty my Gun. And I didn't have time to off her with namecalling. It was time to skedaddle to fight another day. I popped off a flash-bang, the powder exploding in her face with a great noise as I sped down the hall in a rearward advance, leaping from the opening to her lair just as Greer Garson grabbed at my ankles. I dropped another flash-bang behind me and wriggled free, done with another day's labors, my innocent lambs still unwashed in their own Jesus-loving blood by these infidel She-Devils.

We'll be back.

Party Like It's 1999

So my brother's birthday party was today. His 40th birthday was several days ago, but there was this big family and friends event at his home. Our mother, known to you as the SheNurse of the SS, was there with her boyfriend Slow, and my sister-in-law's dad, Wild Bill, and her Evil Stepmom and her Evil Sister were there, and a bunch of my brother's friends, and a bunch of people connected to my brother and his wife through their children, the Crown Princes.

Another person was there because of her connection to the Crown Princes. My ex-wife, you see, remains Auntie Gamara to the Crown Princes. I view this primarily as her method for maintaining some input into my life, although others assure me that this view is completely narcissistic. Whatever. It's not like I have anything to do with her family, her sister and her sodden husband Bubba or their child, Little Bubba.

So Auntie Gamara was there, with my mother and my sister-in-law, forming the Holy Trinity of Control Freaks. Also there? Auntie Gamara's boyfriend, a guy we'll call Sub. And, of course, Ilse.

I took the initiative, of course, marching right up and hugging Gamara and manfully and enthusiastically shaking Sub's hand, engaging him immediately in a conversation on some stuff we have in common that doesn't involve Gamara (we used to work for the same large corporation, known to you as the DeathStar). Gamara was at a bit of a loss, here. I think she expected Cranky Landru. Instead she got Salesboy Landru.

Ilse showed up after a bit, having been detailed by Slow and Wild Bill and the Evil Stepmother or something, and perfunctory introductions were had. I thought I had Gamara on the ropes at this point, because Ilse is, not to put too fine a point on it, way hotter than Gamara (Gamara is not without hotness, for some people--I got past that a while ago because of some unfortunate disliking-each-other-intensely problems--but her looks are more glamourpuss than Ilse's basic, earthy, straight-out fundamental, scorching, surrender-now hotness, and attained at a greater cost in time and chemistry). I was feeling even better about this when Gamara pointed at the buffet line and said, "Oh, look, food." Oh yeah. Tactical retreat. Round One to Landru.

So we get food, and Sub is off talking geekspeak with some guy there that he knows, and Ilse and I head out to the deck to eat, and things move around a bit as they do at parties. Old friends and neighbors wafted in, and I greeted them and chatted them up, and all of a sudden I'm on the fringe of the kitchen, and from the corner of my eye I spot it. My Worst Nightmare. The Knockout Round. Yes, Ilse and Gamara and the SheNurse of the SS are clustered in a small group on the other side of the kitchen. Talking fairly animatedly, although not in a conflict sorta way.

Auggghhhhh!!!! I mean, let's be real. What could they be talking about, those three? I mean, is there any other mathematical possibility for a topic among those three humans? This can't be self-absorption! They're talking about me! And My Mother and Gamara have Ilse outnumbered! Gods, I can feel myself being chopped like salad bits from across the room!

I'll be honest. I cut and ran. Out the front door, out to the Grand Parakeet (my vehicle), into the little armrest compartment for a cigarette. I smoked it happily, then popped in some Trident so it wouldn't be so obvious that I had been sneaking off to smoke. I marched back into the kitchen, where the dissection was under way. They were talking about Europe or something, clearly code for "Landru is a major pig, how can we make him change?"

So I edged into the conversation. After about thirty seconds, Gamara started mocking the way I was chewing my gum.

This is an old saw. It's not like I chew gum with my mouth open. Or maybe it is. Who the fuck cares? We've been separated for nearly three years, I mean who the fuck cares?

I win.

The Interview

The interview game is cute. I am entertained, and I thank those of you who have submitted to the process and shared the results. I thought about who I wanted to play with, and then I got to thinking about a lot of the questions. What I concluded is that every one of you frightens the hell out of me.

Don't get me wrong. I don't feel physically threatened, except maybe by the One of you who knows where the soft underbelly is located and would strike fatally at it in a nanosecond if I gave cause. But That One is kind of like being captured by the Ant Queen (and I think I just nicknamed someone, didn't I?). As long as you're a source of entertainment and occasional intellectual provocation, and you don't go out of your way to piss One off, your innards should remain fundamentally unmolested.

No, what's frightening is the quality of the questions. Not just in the sense that they are good questions, but their characteristics, too. They do not admit easily of whip-smart answers. They are deep, activity-inducing questions. They are calls to the deep end.

As is the game itself, in that it challenges the player to not only provide satisfactory answers that respect the strength of the questions, but to open oneself to the intellectual and possibly emotional labour (and the additional letter seems, for some reason, appropriate here) of becoming curious about anyone who chooses to comment and request an interview.

So what's really frightening, it seems, is the effort. The blog and comment format opens the game to the possibility of having to formulate an interest in someone about whom I could not care less. This is not a trifling problem--for me, at least; it's obvious that many of you reading this have gotten past that issue without banging your heads on the guilt wall.

And all of us get past it every day, at some level, merely by posting on that extremely public place where we do. That experience opens us to having to engage with thousands of morons. We pick and choose the engagements, certainly, and we all do that; if there are 22,050 people in that place, I don't care about approximately 22,000 of them and really don't like about 21,600 of them. Randomness and entropy will, over time, reduce that number to 21,540, and increase the number I care about at all to maybe 75 or so; the magnitude remains unaffected.

I should note, hands open, palms spread up, that everyone in this circle of chum is someone I care about; in fact, there is no one in the circle I don't love, including and especially the Ant Queen. I'm talking about strangers and, even worse, the wannabes.

An implicit assumption about that extremely public place that has always bothered me is that we'll welcome anybody, and that everybody is friends. This is a necessary policy; it cannot be any other way. After all, if that open welcome did not exist, we would not know The Mom (or, as Wheezus has dubbed her, The Dad), or Germbabe, or to take it outside of the circle of chum, The Bob. And of course, the assumption that everyone is friends could not be more faulty. I recently had lunch with an established and beloved member of that community whom I had not previously met, and she noted how blind she was to the complexity and layering of relationships there.

Another member of that community, a relatively recent and surprisingly annoying addition, posted an apology for some pretty boorish behavior, and concluded his apology with the question "Friends?"

Well, no. Not ever, actually. And yet there is no one in the circle of chum, and probably a good chunk of the circle beyond that, who I would hesitate to label a friend.

Oh yeah. I'm also tired and cranky and very, very lazy, and the prospect of opening myself up to something like work makes me even more tired and cranky (there is nothing that could make me more lazy, because of some strictures in mathematics).

So I'm going to make up my own questions, because I can't decide which of the chum I want to submit to. It ain't the Ant Queen; she'll rough me up for sport, and I can't say I'd blame her. It can't really be the Rodent Goddess of the West, because she'll internalize it and, after this little rant, worry too much about the questions, because she's conscientious. It cannot be the Weasel, or any of the other superfriends, because you're all way too much smarter than I am, and I will not be exposed. Exposure is death; if anyone twigs to that, for real, it's a long slide down to the bottom of the pit for them what Fail at Establishing the Cult of Personality.

1. Who did you leave out of the speedboat?

Charlize Theron. Total oversight. If I were editing, I'd replace Julie Berry with her.

2. Where do you want to go right now, other than home to finish your stoopid summary and play "Rise of Nations"?

I gotta say that the beaches of Mozambique are looking pretty swell. Really, really unmatchable, in fact. Gosh, these questions are hard.

3. If you were a...

Shut the fuck up. Try again.

3a. Why Ilse?

Because I've always wanted a girlfriend named after the Shewolf of the SS. The Ant Queen would tell you that that's somehow related to Oedipal desire, but honest, Ilse has very little in common with my mother, the SheNurse of the SS, and the things they do have in common are pretty superficial stuff.

3b. That's not what I meant.

Over the course of several divorces and failed major relationships (three that I consider significant, to be precise, including two marriages and one long-term deal), I have gathered a great deal of information on what's important, by methods evidence-based, intuition-based, and elimination-based. Sex, it appears, it pretty effing important. Being left the hell alone, except for a reasonable interaction based on commonality of interests (in which I include both dinner and the movie) and the fairness and details of housekeeping and other relationship stuff, seems pretty effing important. Not being inclined to argue about every effing detail proves crucial. All this may seem unfair, but I don't view it as such. I cook, and I clean, and I share fairly in the money-gathering as well as the housekeeping. I do the stuff that I do, some of it with my partner. But I'm damned good at keeping myself entertained, and I expect some measure of that in return. This is, I think, where two of the three relationships just totally blew up. The third (which was the first) blew up just because I was, way back then, a fuckpig.

3c. And?

Oh. So Ilse scores very highly in all of the crucial categories, and doesn't expect me to dance for her when she's bored. She's also, apparently, easily impressed. And gorgeous and smart and stuff, but I'm still a fuckpig and pretty much take those two for granted.

4. Are you actually capable of discussing anything other than yourself?

Rarely. This does not mean I am ungracious. I am in awe of the qualities of others; Goth's literary sophistication, Wheezy's and Jolene's markedly different types of depth, Dweezil's composure, Buggy's practicality, Kim's everything, Sasha's completeness (among other things). Among other things. Many other things--that list just scratched the surface for everyone. But this is my blog, and until Sasha and Dweezil and Goth tell me to STFU and talk about something that doesn't involve self-indulgence, I'll probably do too much of it. And if Buggy tells me to STFU and talk about something else, I'll just dah.

5. How are you?

I'm super, thanks for asking.

What Wine Goes With Not Doing a Reunion Show Summary?

At Greedy Internet Gaming Pirates, Inc., we're not just about producing software and taking your money so that we can retire early to some sunny tropical place where we can jet around in cigarette boats adorned with mostly nekkid and entirely willing babeage. In point of fact, we're not about producing software at all, at least not so far. This causes me a great deal of anger management, and not just because I'm not yet speeding around Tortola with a scantily-clad Lucy Liu draped over the other seat begging for a spanking. And oh yes she is that hot.

Sorry, I had to take a moment. Where was I? Oh yes. Greedy Internet Gaming Pirates, Inc. So as you all know, I went to the very bowels of Ohio, where it was my sole pleasure there to meet the Mom and the lovely and brilliant and funny Mrs. Mom, who saw through me like I was a wet t-shirt. Being fabulous, she was damned polite about it, though.

Yes. Ohio. Business trip for Greedy Internet Gaming Pirates, Inc. So there are two pieces to this software that's keeping me from the BVIs and my high-velocity sodomy date with Heather Graham. One is the game engine, which is the bit that actually runs this game which we intend to reproduce programmatically, giving you, the person giving us your money, a high-quality virtual representation of the boardgaming experience. This game was the game of the year two years ago, which was shortly before we decided we were going to get rich off of the Internet.

So a while back, we--me, Mr. Bigglesworth, and our other partner, Prince Evercrack--did a really great business plan and got some money from some guys in Vegas, actual venture capital money, and we incorporated and bought cool laptops and a nice server and shirts with our logo on them and some other stuff. A really great business plan is, by the way, defined as "a collection of lies that induces people to give you money," and we operated under that plan, some of which was actually factual, for some time. Then, after six months or so, the Vegas guys decided we were going about it all wrong and that their vast experience in running porn sites led them to conclude that our skills--Programmer, Programmer, and Guy Who Tells Other People What To Do (guess which one I am)--were best put to use by sitting back and remotely supervising badly paid coders in foreign countries where life is cheap.

We told them thank you for your money and goodbye now, mmkay? They threatened to sue. We laughed. They threatened to break our kneecaps. We reminded them that they only knew where one of us lived, and by the way, it's not illegal to record certain telecommunications in the jurisdictions where two of us live. They threatened to sue again, we laughed again, and all was eventually forgotten. Including, for a period of four months, the software, by Prince Evercrack, who decided that we were kinda making his life miserable and that he should ignore our emails from September through December. Which he did.

But eventually, Prince Evercrack saw the light and heard the siren song of Virgin Gorda, and we sort of resumed our dream of the sun. Then, back around the beginning of April, which should've been my first clue, we had this argument, Mr. Bigglesworth and Prince Evercrack and me, while we were sitting around Mr. Bigglesworth's dining room table up in some hideously Yankee jurisdiction. Mr. Bigglesworth argued that we had to have this deal ready for this big geek deal in Columbus. I argued that history, statistics, probability, and the dialectic made it a mathematical impossibility for us to do anything but make giant gaping asses of ourselves on a five-week timeline.

I was shouted down. I shouted back. Words were exchanged, ICBMs prepared and nearly launched. I prophesied, correctly, that one of the Pirates would get screwed in the end, and that the most likely candidate for this penetration was me, because while Prince Evercrack took his sweet freakin' time finishing the game engine, and Mr. Bigglesworth took that and added the instant-messaging bit (the second piece of our grand plan), Mrs. Satan's Baby Boy would have no time to ensure that these things would actually work, and would have to test the thing in front of a crowd of geeks expecting professional-looking software. Which brings us to Columbus, and me draped facedown over a table in the Radisson, a convenience that The Mom and his spouse most thoughtfully ignored.

My, this has become a long story. How sad for you. But I will shorten it by saying that after two all-nighters, Mr. Bigglesworth finished up his piece of the product at about 10 AM Sunday, leaving Mrs. Satan's Baby Boy to test it in front of a crowd of skeptical geeks. This had about the result you'd expect.

Mrs. Satan's Baby Boy struggled home after his almost entirely unpleasurable (save those two hours with The Mom and The Delightful Mrs. Mom) trip to Middle America. He settled in for what he hoped would be a nice long week of ignoring Mr. Bigglesworth and Prince Evercrack, because frankly, they were really starting to piss him off and it's not like we have any chance of banging Catherine Zeta-Jones at eighty miles an hour anyway. And all of this is making me truly tired, in a soulsick, semi-permanent sort of way.

Yesterday, Mr. Bigglesworth demanded that Mrs. Satan's Baby Boy produce forthwith the list of all the bad things that happened to Our Software. The Pirates had to get to work now now now, and Mrs. Satan's Baby Boy was singlehandedly keeping the ship from leaving.

And that's why I destroyed civilization. Sorry about that. I guess you prolly want me to STFU and go write that summary-thing now, huh?

The End of History

So I met The Mom. And Mrs. Mom. They are lovely people. I mean, really, really lovely people. I know that pas d'irony is not what you expect from me here, and I'm sorry to be temporarily irony-free, even for a couple of sentences, but truly, Goth and Mrs. Goth rock. We ate Mexican, for those of you who are enthralled by such detail, and talked, for about 2 hours.

So, for the record:

• Goth is most emphatically not the one of all who sucks.
  
• Mrs. Goth is, in fact, hot, but she was kinda repulsed by me, so it's all good.
  
• The voices in my head cooperated and I did not fart; Goth was even kind enough to flatter me by pointing this out.
  
• I am not, as yet, a Republican.
  
• I didn't set my shoes on fire and, for the next 24 hours or so, I have a cool cow-spot lighter. Thanks, TSA!

Four stars for The Mom and his faboo spouse, who have the super power of making Middle America disappear. That's a pretty fuckall cool talent, there. I'd hang with them any day and twice on Sunday.

The Continuation of Whining

So I'm sitting here in Ohio, a place distinguished only by the presence of The Mom, and things are just peachy.

Well, no they're not. Mr. Bigglesworth was up all night coding, and he's pretty damned cranky. He's also not finished coding. Which means we're not finished testing--haven't started, actually. Which means that hanging over the happy occasion of the meeting of Me and The Mom will be the ghastly spectre of imminent testing, and the even ghastlier and considerably more stinky spectre of impending code failure, because that's what happens when we here at Greedy Internet Gaming Pirates, Inc., do testing--we experience code failure.

The hotel--the very town, actually--is a shrine to Middle American dumpage. Mind you, I have no problem whatever with those of you who actually live in Middle America, and I don't even actually consider you Middle Americans, because obviously you're of some superior form if you're reading this and haven't gone off to burn Democrats at the stake or crucify cheerleaders for their demonically short skirts. But this town--a Middle American suburb of a Middle American city that I do not need to identify--is...uhm...well, let's see. There's an interstate exit. There's...there's...there's an interstate exit. Jesus, I can't even write about this. The highlight of the last twelve hours is that I got a new lighter to throw away when I get back to the airport. It has cow spots on it.

I'm stifled by it all. I'm gonna go meet The Mom, which will eclipse anything else that will happen to me here, west of Appalachia, and when I come back, I'm gonna beat the crap out of Mr. Bigglesworth in a real satisfying, East-Coast sorta way. That'll make us all feel better, won't it?

Now I'm Just Whining

So I'm off to visit the world for a few days, as part of my incarnation as a busy software company executive wannabe. What? You didn't know about that? Yeah. I lead a number of professional and semi-professional lives, two of them related to boardgaming (see the Diplomacy thing).

By day, on days when I can't avoid it, anyway, I'm the project manager for a global public health program that's housed at a U.S. government agency (it's not a government program, but the funder gave the money to the government). By night, I'm a teenage tiger and a goo-goo muck. Wait, that's not right. By night, I'm a busy software company executive wannabe. Okay, not so busy, because we have no product, and no revenue, and no customers. Yet. But let me tell you, that endless railing at my two partners, who are the busy programmers producing our wannabe product, that gets exhausting and stuff. In fact, I think I need a lozenge.

In between all that, by which I mean when I'm pretending to work on my other jobs, I'm the Director of Competition, or some such twaddle, for a big Diplomacy hobby organization. We're hosting the World Diplomacy Championships this summer in DC. I'm the one delegating everything to my horrible teammates and cleaning up their messes and all that. And I still have to be pretty when Mr. Trump shows up. It's so unfair.

So where I'm off to this weekend is Columbus, for some big show of geekery, where we may debut a demo of our actual product. That is, if my partner Mr. Bigglesworth can take the game code that was just cleared from testing yesterday and wrap the communications code around it without hosing everything up entirely. Since Mr. Bigglesworth didn't find my email from yesterday until this morning, I'm feeling a tad pessimistic about the possibilities here. But I'll get to sit next to him on the airplane and nag him while he writes the code.

So what am I trying to say here? Well, the real message here is that I'm meeting Gothmog this weekend. This raises all kinds of fears. I've met (in person) probably a dozen and a half people that I originally met on the Internet. What if Gothmog is, like, the one of those who sucks? What if he has a hot wife and she likes me? What if the voices in my head tell me not to maintain my usual policy on not farting on the first date? What if travelling to Ohio makes me a Republican? What if not having a lighter on an airplane makes me try to set my shoes on fire with matches?

Life's just too fucking complicated.

All About You

It doesn't do to let your friends have too much fun. I was, until recently, quite content to let them do just that. They all blog, and it's not like they're jumping off of bridges or smoking crack or voting Republican or otherwise taking candy from babies. Then my friend Jolene told me to look at her blog. This after my friend Sasha has been blogging for quite a while. And when I looked at Jolene's blog, I realized that all my friends were hanging out there, loving her more than they love me. And that they all have their own blogs. And are thusly acquiring more love than I am. And this? Cannot stand.

So I started this thing, here. It's all Jolene's fault and she will bear all responsibility, legal, moral, and otherwise. Oh yes she will, the love-bogarting bitch.

If you're reading this, there's a very high probability that you already know me, but I will give you some noninvasive tidbits by way of sourcery. I am nearly 45 years old, the "nearly" now being measured in days instead of years. I am twice divorced; women love me until they hate me. I generalize a lot. I had a heart attack once but still smoke cigarettes. I have many friends and a few very close friends. My passions in life are minimizing my workload while maximizing my income, playing games (board games, computer games, and especially a little game we like to call Diplomacy), watching a very few selected stupid television programs, avoiding entirely the flow of certain kinds of information--most particularly news--eating things I shouldn't, and...well, the rest is personal, but her name, for purposes of this thing here, shall be Ilse.

Oh yeah. I'm liberal. Although I prefer to cut my liberalism with a strong dose of red-meat eating and leather wearing and road-building. I like to think of it as Hamiltonian liberalism. Because, like my man Alex (Colonel Hamilton to the rest of you), I think that Americans are by and large too fucking stupid for democracy. That strain runs consistently through the political spectrum. Your duck-loving treehugger who doesn't want me to be able to drive to the next county via the hypotenuse is no better off in this regard than your fundamentalist Jebus-totin' Christian who thinks I'm more than just a cartoon. You? May choose to think that you're not in the collection of people too fucking stupid for democracy; that serves my purposes just fine.

I don't know how much energy I'll have for this. I write carefully, in a technical sense, so some effort goes into this, despite appearances. For now, don't be sitting there clicking the Refresh button.