9/25/98:

HEY!

Look at

this!!  Isn't this

something?

I mean

does this annoy you?

so how could this annoy you?

maybe

I SHOULD WRITE IN CAPS AND USE THE

blink tag?

Look...I'm screwing with < h >tags

My mommy won't let me use bendy straws.  I don't get to 
have forks either.   I have to drink from the hose and 
eat with my fingers.  On Sundays they let me back in the 
house and give me dinner on the kitchen floor with the 
cat.  
 
Are yams and turnips compatible?  I lately became the 
Pineapple Goddess, if that makes a difference.  I made
my worse-than-Punkin friend Puddin visit the Yam Page...
that would be Euphoria in the guestbook.  Puddin has very
special problems.  If I've been good, her mom lets me sit
on her while they give her daily shots.  Sometimes she bites
my hand.  Then I have to get shots too and my arm swells 
up.  Punkin bit me once.  Now I wear heavy gloves and take a 
cattle prod when I go to her house. If she misbehaves while
I'm babysitting I make her watch the televangelist channel.
This prly only makes it worse, but I enjoy watching her
twitch.  

peaches!
Kitty M
 Ai to seigi no Sailor-fuku no Bishoujo Senshi Sailorkitty!
    Turnips ni kawatte oshioki yo!  ...the hell you say!
Join the Splutsluts and start racking up chick-points today!          
                Sailor K Quote of the Day:
         "Boys should shower more and talk less."
         thanks to Punkin for that nugget of joy.

Deer sailor Kitty or maybe I just should call you bicth:
 so youwant to steel my fuchure husband & most likely father of my child to!  plus i kwote you:  
"pick the vermin out of my hair. Those darn flea baths leave me flaky"  
cawze yor a dog is why!  you keep a way from ThoughtViper now !  if i see you by the mall
i will hit your face so hard yule go Hey!  that hurts! and--  
Shut UP!!  MOMMY'S ON THE INTERNET!  Shut Up!!  Sit down or I'll smack your bottom!  sory that
was my dotter ashley.  she never minds me!  Ashley, go sit at that other compotor terminell here
in the liberry!  I want to tel you kitty, or maybe just bicth i should cal you, to not be
callin my fuchure husban to pik your nats off you.  ASHLEY!!  Stop typin on the innernet!
yor stupit as yor father and dont pretend difrent!  Look, now all the liberry is starin
and pointin at me and its all yor fault!  Want i should smak yor bottom?!  Hey!  Who are YOU?!
Hey, lemme go!  What's goin on--
MACHINA: "Excuse me, ma'am.  I'm Special Agent Davis X. Machina of the Dept of Youth Services.
Seems someone in this library sent us an email about your alleged lack of parenting skills.
We're taking your child away from you."
ASHLEY:  (pumping fist in the air)  "YESSSSS!!!  Yes yes yes!!  I knew that AOL trial disk would
come in handy!"
MACHINA:  "Ashley, who is this long-lost mother you spoke of?"
ASHLEY:  "Ummm, errr, lemme think...Oh yeah. (DIMPLY SMILE)  She's called Kitty!"
MACHINA:  "Welllll....We really should thoroughly research your outlandish claim before
reuiniting you with a potentially imaginary or dangerously schizophrenic individual who
hangs out with people who are either named 'Slutbucket' or have no bellybuttons, but
what the hey!  That's one dimply smile ya got goin' there!  Alert the choppers, boys!
Ashley's going home to Kitty!"
DOREEN (as she's led away in cuffs):   "YOU'LL PAY FOR THIS, SAILOR KITTY!!  I SWEAR ON MY
MARY KAY COSMETICS, YOU-- WILL-- PAAAAAAY!!!"

Kitty walks to class, chewing gum, minding her own business, glittery and shiny-haired, mentally
shrieking Sailormoon lyrics and repainting her nails.  Some sudden noise jars her out of her
natural state, and she takes a good look around.  On the right, blondes with cigarettes hanging
out of one side of their mouths and drool dripping out the other.  On the left, filthy-haired
zitty boys with needle marks in their arms and bad shoes falling off their feet.  She stops in
the middle of the street, screams, "MY GUM IS LOSING MY FLAVOR AND I WANT A SECOND OPINION!"
and is nearly run down by a gimp on a bicycle.

9/27/98:

Well, just about the whole world's seen this by now, but everybody liked it, so here it is for posterity. A coupla weeks ago Bill went bonkers during a descent into the Geocities htmHell editor, and, Lo, like a twig he snapped, and he ranted thusly:

...it's STILL not good enough and you cut and you chip and you dale every last little bit and end up with ONE CHARACTER'S WORTH OF SPACE LEFT. Do you think that's fun? IT IS NOT FUN!!! Say you're on this Carnival Cruise and you thought it would be fun but you're forced to share a cabin with Kathie Lee Gifford and she follows you around the ship and you can't even shuffleboard in peace, would that be FUN? No!
And then you finally get away from her and her endless cheerfulness and then the ship sails above the wreck of a sunken Commie nuclear submarine and the radiation has made giant mutant otters swarm on board with those giant clams you only see in cartoons, but the otters got no rocks, so they place you on their playful bellies and use your head, YOUR head mind you, to crack them clams open, would you also think THAT was fun?? NO! That would SUCK!
And then the otters go, Hey, we eat oysters, not giant clams! and they throw the clams into the Pacific Princess's swimming pool and then Kathie Lee comes by and dumps cocktail sauce on your head cause she thinks you're an clam and she eats your BRAIN by mistake, and now your synapses are inextricably intertwined with hers and she uses your brain that she's eaten to help process her conversations with Regis Philbin with, and all you can think of with remaining synapses you've got is THIS IS NOT FUN! Would that be fun? NO!!! It would NOT be fun! What was I talking about again?

11/28/98: **sigh** Here I go again...A New Page with no New. So, in honor of the Xmas season, here is another every one of you has read. Cause the only people who read this are the poor slobs who get email from me, but all I ever put here is the email you've already read...Bah.
My snookums Amy discovered something ...evil... something ...vile... a few months ago. A horror whose name then we dared not speak, though today the blasphemous masses now chant its dread accursed title now, as if to summon it from its pit of ultimate terror...The thing...the thing...
The thing they call FURBY

I'm still waiting for the Quicktime movie to load...but what is Furby supposed to do?! Is it an AI Teddy Ruxpin? The product info page has no info...And those stare-straight-ahead slack-jawed Furbys of Doom scare me. It was fun chatting with the Talking Furby. Actual dialogue:

BILL: Thou art the spawn of Satan
FURBY:  Me like kisses
BILL:  Can I use my tongue?
FURBY:  Big yes
BILL:  Can I touch you...there?
FURBY:  Big no

BILL:  Me like Furby oven baked.
FURBY:  Me like you.  You happy
BILL:  Happy and full!
FURBY:  Me like joke
BILL:  You ARE a joke.
FURBY:  Me like joke

12/6/98:
So anyway. I'm digging through old notebooks, desperately trying to find the notes for a tape I made years ago so I can reproduce it for someone special, but so far I'm failing (sorry, Amy!). On the other hand, I find all this crap from 15 years ago...If you've ever asked yourself the question, Has he always been this way?, the answer is YEP.
Back then, I worked as a child laborer in a wool mill for the Vanderbilt syndicate, with only 6 hours a day to sleep & eat--No, wait, I worked for Kay Bee Toys. Same thing. 1 day, after working too long in the pre-school section, I composed a song to the tune of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man."

"I AM POTATO HEAD!!"
Is he live or dead
Has he got a brain in his spud head?
Dumb smile & goofy eyes
Turn the human race into people fries
Children make him sick
Stab them with his nose on its pointed stick
People treat him rotten
They'll all wish they hadn't once they're Au Gratin!

Well. I guess we all see now why I don't write songs for a living--I'm just too damn intellectual for today's market.

Remember the action figure line, He-Man? Damn, I sure as hell do! Knowing which overpriced figure was which was a central part of my worklife at 1 point. They were hard to tell apart, especially since the early ones' names all ended in "-Man" & all the later ones ended in "-or." Here's something I scribbled 1 day, complete with crappy drawing. You'll probably need an extensive memory of these hateful toys to get the jokes, but like I care.

Hey, I just found the listings of all my old video game scores! I once got 252,858 in Colecovision Spyhunter! Maybe I'll upload all those, the next time I'm bored!

1/20/99
RASHOMON!!
It's that new video game that induces mass hysteria in Japanese childr--
No, wait, that's "Pokemon."
Rashomon was that movie where all those Japanese people gave different views of the same situation. Like Groovygirl's take on our latest visit to the airport (one of MANY that week for her, due to a hideously uncooperative icestorm). We walk into the gate & there's this guy, mid-50s maybe, business suit and tie--sprawled out over 2 chairs snoozing like he's the stinky guy at the Port Authority bus terminal. Groovy & I settle in to relish our few remaining moments before she yet again leaves my arms, when I notice (in Groovy's words, from her Litterbox)

Not only was this guy picking his nose, but he had a whole
                  routine down. He would jam his finger up his nose, find
                  whatever he was digging for, and then attempt to sneak the
                  same finger into his mouth. Nothing interrupted this disgusting
                  snack-in-progress. Viper started giggling and making "eeeeew"
                  sounds. I turned around and caught a glimpse of this freak
                  show and quickly turned back around so I wouldn't have to
                  face it. The horror continued when the same suit-booger-man
                  started poking his finger in his ear. 

ColonelMacViper: you made B-M sound like he was being *subtle*
ColonelMacViper: he was just a-shovelin' them boogies in
ms_wierdo:  Weeeeeelllllll.....
ms_wierdo:  I didn't want to say "he was shoving his hand up to his elbow up his giant snout
and retreiving giant glimmering mounds of mucus"
ColonelMacViper: AHHHHHHHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHA
ColonelMacViper: WHY NOT????
ms_wierdo:  because *that* is gross
ColonelMacViper: the TRUTH *IS* GROSS!!
ms_wierdo:  Maybe Viper should take a stab at it   *nudge nudge*
ColonelMacViper: won't stop me from quoting you in my version of the booger man

                  Then we started making up a little song to the tune of the
                  theme from Spiderman. Except the words were "Booger Man"
                  instead of "Spider man". I guess you had to be there. Or
                  maybe it's better off you weren't. 

Okay, so we're grown adults & shouldn't spontaneously compose songs about guys eating boogers in public.
But at least WE don't eat boo...
Oh, gourd. I'm sorry to have used up your precious free time like this.
PS: When she got on the plane, guess who was seated right near her...
Thankfully, he didn't ask to shake hands.

4/20/99
Jiminy Xmas...3 whole months since the last New. Time to try something.

PROJECT SHAWT

SHAWT 4/20: A coupla weeks ago this regular customer comes into the store (BTW, it's a liquor store I manage, where "regular customer" means "comes in 1 or more times a day"). It was his 2nd visit in a hour (like I said, he's a regular). He's wandering hither & non all confused. I ask, "Can I help you find something?" "Yeah," he replies, "has anybody found a bag of weed?"
OK, if I lost a bag of herbally goodness, I'd go look for it too, but I sure wouldn't go ask the Lost & Found Department about it. "Sorry, sir, this crumbly white rock thing is all anyone turned in."
So anyway. He's back in the store today (what a shocker, huh?) with his drain-bamaged girlfriend. After they buy tonight's tickets to oblivion, she asks him how much cash he has left. "$4." "Oh well," she says right in front of me, "I guess weed is out of the question for tonight then. No weed." I'm surprised they haven't taken a want ad for it out yet.

4/22/99
SHAWT: You ever see those old ladies in the dairy section, digging through the milk to find the 1 with the latest expiration date? How dumb. Like at midnight it turns from Bossy's best to rancid poison (from my drug store managing days, I know that the federal law regarding medicine expirations dictates that it's "expired" when it's only lost 10% of its effectiveness. If it took 2 years to reach that point, it could take years longer before it's useless. This is how the Government got the Corporations to agree to the law: The Corps were against taking their outdated products back to the point of not caring if people bought inert medicine, but agreed to print expiry dates on it. Because that would guarantee that customers would toss out marginally less effective medications & go buy more...) Well, liquor stores have these people too. Today we had a woman who dug through the Franzia Bag-in-Box wines to find a box of Chablis with the latest date. So she bought the wine that'll expire in 8 & 1/2 months instead of only 8 months. I guess it'll take her exactly 8 months & a week to drink it...
Nope. She does this every week. Stupid Human.

4/22/99
SHAWT: So far so good, huh? Well, here's a twofer:

SHAWT #1: Can you give me 2 fifties for this hundred?
RUDY: Sure. (opens drawer) But I've only got 1 fifty.
SHAWT: OK, a fifty, a forty, & 2 tens would be good.

SHAWT #2: (on phone at 7:57PM--we're legally required to close at 8) Will you guys be open another 5 minutes?
ME: No, we close in 3 minutes. You won't make it.
SHAWT: Yes, I will! I only live 5 minutes away!

4/23/99
SHAWT: We sell all the legal addictions that the Government gets a cut of--booze, cigarettes, and The Lottery. 1 of the scratch-off instant games has a picture of the Mona Lisa on it, & is called "Leonardough's Money Lisa." Ah-hahahaha! Boy, those cards at the Lottery, they slay me. Today a little girl, 8 years old maybe, was asked by Daddy what scratch-off she wanted. She pointed at Mona & said "I want a couple of those Monica Lewinskys."
I wonder how'd you play that game..."Scratch her dress to see what your prize is. You win if the number in the 'Your Sperm Count' box is higher than the number in 'The President's.' If you see 'Vote Only For Censure,' your prize is doubled!"
That the kid wouldn't recognize the most famous painting in the world, but immediately knows that name, makes this less of a SHAWT & more of a SMOAC (Stupid Media-Obsessed American "Culture").

4/24/99
Pretty slow day, SHAWTwise; no bewilderingly brilliant flashes of supernova-level stupidity, just the ordinary dumbness I see every day. Such as the lady who pointed to 2 identical, side-by-side 12-packs & asked if they each contained the same beer ("No, ma'am, one's Beck's Dark & the other's Pennzoil 30-weight. I wish they'd mark the outside of the boxes; we'd have less customers going to get their stomachs pumped"). Or the woman who wouldn't buy 1 particular brand of bag-in-a-box wine because it said "Natural Flavors Added" on it. Look, bag-in-a-box is not the 1st choice of wine connoisseurs. That's like asking if they used free-range chickens & sea salt in your McNuggets Happy Meal. "Oh, and is that today's grease?" Or the Usual Scene on Saturdays, several people buying booze but only 1 of them (the designated buyer, evidentally) having any ID...gee, do you think there's underage drinking going on here? He had the ID for the 30 beers, the liter of vodka, & the pint of rum, but it was all for HIM because she didn't have any ID--"She's not drinking, she's driving." Uh-huh. You can't do that with out a license either. His parting shot: "Well, we won't buy here anymore!" Damn straight you won't.

SH On The Way To WT: The Greatest Menace on the Road Today, after drunk drivers, is The Old Man In A Hat. This is a proven fact. Insurance companies will tell you the deadliest driving ages are 16-24, followed by 70+ (the things you learn, living near Hartford CT, the Insurance Capital of the World & America's Filing Cabinet). We were side-by-side coming up to a light that went from yellow to red, & had been red for a good 30 seconds when we reached it & I stopped. He kept going, slamming on his brakes halfway through the crosswalk as a car with the green passed within inches of his hood. As soon as it passed, he started right up again & someone else barely missed hitting him! He then demonstrated the universal reaction of very bad drivers everywhere--he gave the finger to...umm, someone. Himself, since he was the only 1 who deserved it? Or I guess the world, as that sure seemed to be his philosophy.
The Old Man In A Hat is terrible thing. About 5 years ago I was rear-ended by an OMIAH (hmm, if you read that aloud,it sounds like what you say as a OMIAH attacks--"OH MY --AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!"). He hit me so hard, my car pushed the car ahead of me forward 10 feet, despite the fact we were BOTH IN PARK. And it happened in line at the Emissions Testing Station! No, Methuselah, you depress the BRAKE before you shift into drive, NOT THE GAS PEDAL. I had my license for only 2 months when I was behind 1 as we were both coming to a red light. The light changed to green. Somewhere in his dusty memory cells he remembered that 1 color of the light meant "STOP DEAD," & I'll admit he did have a 50% chance of remembering which color that was...but that color ain't green. screeeech I missed by inches. I hit the horn in 16-year-old fury & he looked in his rear view & shook his fist at me, like I was the Red Baron & he Snoopy. I pointed at the light, & he tried his alternate plan, Go Forward If Green. Of course, if a 16-year-old had rear-ended a geezer at a traffic light, who do you think the cops woulda blamed?
Not the geezer. Old Farts have some sort of 2nd-childhood universal cuteness to them in some people's eyes. The cops in the town in which I grew up let this 2,000 Year Old Man (in a hat) drive every day, despite the fact the only way he safely could was to do 15MPH with the yellow line on the shoulder centered between his front wheels. If I'd tried that for 15 seconds I'd have been getting a sobriety test within 10 more. At the liquor store, we have a OMIAH who needs a 5-foot-high bright red antenna attached to his hood ornament to be able to find the center of the road. Stay outta those crosshairs, folks...

WARNING SIGNS THAT OMIAHS ARE EVEN MORE DANGEROUS THAN USUAL:

Driving a Buick or Oldsmobile the size of an M1 tank
This is how they've lived to be nonagenarians. It's the people they hit that die

Having 1 of those wooden beaded back-massager thinggies on their seat
I have no idea why, but it's true. It must disrupt the flow of information through their spines.

Bumper stickers proclaiming their:
Love for America (because we don't make them retake their driving tests no matter how inept they are)
Love for God (He must appreciate all the people OMIAHs send up to Him before their time)
Hatred of abortion (LOOK, you're 82 years old & a man--what makes you think you have any input into this discussion?)

Numbered license plates
Face it, anyone who started driving when there were only 1,027 cars registered in the whole state has been on the roads waaaay too long

4/26/99:
What a gorgeous big day of nothing.
No SHAWT today...I have Mondays off. And it was a great Monday to have off. Big fluffy clouds alternating with blue sky sun. Our 1st non-freaky day with 70 degree temps (the last day of 70 degrees was in January, making it a freaky day, a global warming unpleasant & guilty kind of nice).
So I did the laundry & walked in the woods as it washed. This is my favorite season of the year--no, actually, my favorite 6 weeks of the year. Early April in CT is grey trees & dead leaves, late May is green bursting forth from every tiny crack it can find in the Universal Pavement the Hu-Man seems so intent on leaving. Like the Hu-Man is marking its territory, with lawnmowers & rototillers. I saw 1 old man (in a HAT, no less!) raking leaves over the part of his backyard that he'd chainsawed all the trees from 2 weeks ago, dragging the vegetative corpses into the 50-foot-wide but 3-mile-long stretch of forest behind my condo. Good show, Hu-Man! Now you have a lovely backyard filled with Lawn. At a 45 degree angle. What the HELL is he doing it for? You can't even play bocce ball on that lawn...No, he's doing it for the classic reason of Hu-Man: "We Can." Screw you, Nature! This orta teach you to mess up our Doppler Radar forecasts with your inscrutable ways!
Still, that dude can't kill everything in the forest--err, tree-strip. The vines are everywhere, trying to get a head start before the trees cover the canopy with leaves. And there's wild grass, and some bush-thing that I don't recognize that's everywhere, and there's a huge crop of--
Skunk cabbage. Ok, I admit it--I'm enough of a nature boy that even skunk cabbage thrills me. They were lil teeny things but 10 days ago, now they hug the foot-wide brooks in glorious green waves.
I went walking Sunday, too...a day even more beautiful than today. There was virtually no one else but me out there. Sad, really. I noticed that every inch of my condo's Lawn (that artificial construct, the Green Desert) was sprouting little maple trees...every inch. I wondered how long it would take the Lawn to be replaced completely by them, if it weren't for the lawnmowers killing them the 1st day they went out chopping. I spotted some micro-saplings growing at the edge of Lawn--growing where they had no hope, even if the lawnmowers missed them. Growing in road sand at the edge of the parking lot.
Growing in road sand? Hoping against all hope, I guess. I decided that today I would scoop up the lot of them, & at least try to grow them indoors (with a grow lamp, & "potted" in an old trash can). And I had to act today; in another week or so the lawnmowers will visit, & every last little sapling will be dead. There's 6 of them now, in my bedroom under the lamp. There was another tiny 1 I inadvertently scooped up, 1 too tiny in fact too have any hope of survival. I left it in the pot with the road sand, & I'll toss it all out tomorrow.
So I was wrong: the lawnmowers came less than 2 hours after I'd transplanted the saplingettes. They're all dead now, the ones in the Lawn. Nothing but Lawn will remain until next year, when the tiny trees will futitlely try again.
Now, the too-small-to-worry-about 1 is in a pot on the windowsill, nicely watered & facing the sun. Maybe it'll make it. I've found that there is always hope. Always, at least a little.