It's Sunday morning, close to 9:25 am, looking over my work schedule for the day and dreading it. Have to go to Wal-mart and pick up a new air conditioner today between shifts and hope I can figure out how to install it before it gets any hotter out there.

Right now it's kind of nice out 60's and rain, nice type of weather to wake up to. Even better if I could lie in bed with that special someone and spend the morning ... well listening as she sleeps and catching up on my reading. LOL. I was always like that. I wake up at 8 am on the nose every morning, as a kid it was 6 AM so whenever I'd go to a sleep over or crash on someone's bedroom floor I'd always be awake too darn early. It was nice though, I had a best friend in Jr. High who had a battered copy of nearly every comic book there was on the floor of his room back then. I could literally reach out and grab a brand new issue of something I'd never seen before (or 20), and spend the hours between my wake up time and "the normal SANE wake up time of the rest of the world" (or so he claimed), reading old comics and listening to my headphones.

Another move and another time, high school, I'd wake up every morning at 4 am. I switched things around because I was having horrible headaches in the afternoons from eye strain and allergies and my parents wouldn't take me to get glasses until I passed the Driver's exam. Yes, it made no sense then, and it still makes no sense, all it did was give me headaches and keep me from driving (legally anyway), until my early 20's. Anyway, I'd get up at 4 am and do homework until it was time to go to school. If I didn't finish by school time, I simply wouldn't go to school. Easy enough. My folks didn't care, and senior year after missing 45+ days of school I still somehow graduated 8th in my class. I guess that's saying something about the school system, my lack of regard to rules, and my parents. But such was life.

4 am and HBO was always a good mix back then. In that move we had gone from the Seattle area, where to get cable you had to rip up your entire front yard because the cables were under ground, to a "planned community" (ie. rich folks don want nobody weird living there), near Baltimore, where the wires were like "normal people" -- hanging from poles in front of the house. Cable meant we had more than 5 channels for the first time in our lives and cable meant a whole host of moves I had never seen before. There's nothing like a bad movie at 4 am. I mean cult classics like "Better off Dead" and "Howard the Duck" only really shine if you're watching them at 4 am.

I'll babble about movies and my attitude at another time, but for now I'm about to be late for another shift. Which would be especially bad as I currently set my own hours ...

Quick shout outs:

To Summer: Congrats on getting out of the jail known as California High School. We can all breathe a lot easier now that you're out of the "exciting education environment" provided by the California school system. Good job and good luck.

To the Guy who almost went to jail because his neighbors were going to call the cops as he was laughing so hard over the Jessica strips: More power to you man!

To Robyn: Girl, Bombdiggity, we've got to get you into a chat 12 step program.

To everyone else: have a great Sunday. New strip went up last night, trying for 2 new ones this afternoon to end the third season. Hopefully anyway.

k9

P.S. To earlier, a shout out to Katie-Bear-Okto-Fis, who still has a crush on Zoltan.

It's 6:30 PM now, sitting here with the instruction guide for my brand new Kenmore Room Air Conditioner. Got it on sale at sears. Not sure about anything other than it has a remote control and I have no real clue about how to get it from the box and into the window.

I'm actually reading the instructions, which is scary, because my little eyes begin to glaze over at the thought of anything to do with this installation. Mind you, I can put expansion cards in my computer or have done just about any sort of upgrade you can think of to computers over the years, but the trying to do anything non-computer and mechanical has always been beyond me. My little brain freezes with putting things together and I end up having to hire someone to do it or resort to my brother in law or my dad having do it.

Right now all I know is that the air conditioner is cool because it has that remote control and that Sears will clean it for me when it stops working next spring. That's two whole steps up from my old air conditioner -- which I got on sale at Wal-Mart a couple of years back -- it was one of those now passe remote control-free models and well, if I tried to take the thing back to Wal-Mart to repair it I have the feeling the only response would be "you bought it, you broke it, go away." It was a floor model after all. I mean buy one of those and it's like you're sure to give up any claims to warranties or damages when it electrocutes you while you sleep.

I harbor serious fears over mechanical appliances anyway. Anything that saws, cuts, drills or presses tends to scare the heck out of me. Heck, it took my best friend's calming voice to guide me through putting my expansion hard drive in for this system after I needed to use ::gasp:: you know like screwdrivers and stuff to put it in. I'm half serious, but I am scarred for life because of an encounter with a table saw in Jr. high, which, if anyone cares to hear the story, I'll share one day. It's why my right thumbprint is basically scar tissue.

Oh, while I'm thinking of it, Sears is heavily discounting Sega Dreamcast software. Picked up "Sliver," "Ready 2 Rumble" and "Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits Volume 1" for DC for $10 each. Grab them while you can get them because there's some amazing prices for some great games out there.

Take care,

k9

10:31 PM or so, writing as I watch the Original Highlander on DVD. I'm a fan of the first movie first and foremost. Never got into the TV series (I'm sorry but the TV series Highlander was too Fabio for me), though I've come to appreciate it after watching the DVD of "Highlander Endgame" (the TV series Highlander was a much better swordsman, I'll give him that).

The original Highlander was one of those early to mid-80's movies like the original "Terminator" where just about any scruffy looking guy could find himself to be the sole savior of the world. All you needed was jeans, sneakers and a leather jacket. Ta-da! You could be anyone from Peter Parker the Amazing Spider-man to Highlander to the guy who fought the Terminator but no one remembers his name.

SPOILER WARNING -- SKIP TO /END SPOILER IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THIS MOVIE: The first Highlander really got a hold on me for the music. Queen's "Who wants to live forever" set to the aging and death of the main character's first wife was touching. A very beautiful little series of scenes set as she grew old and died while he stayed the same. /END SPOILER

I know immortality is a dream for most men. From Vampires to Highlanders to Time Lords, in a lot of our hearts, we'd like nothing more to stay the same forever. Went through that phase in my mid-20's, wishing I could stay the same and dreaming of not having to face death. To be around this reality forever or until god or entropy took time on a course to where it goes when time can't go on.

Right now I don't know if I want to live forever. I mean sure it would be nice, but you know, I think of a problem my barber is going through now. His mom is 88 and all her friends have either passed on or are in conditions where they don't remember her. She just faced having her last good friend have a stroke and forgetting all their years together. Now they're strangers, and while the memories live on, for the able minded one seeing friends in those conditions and having those people die and leave you all alone must be quite painful.

My mom's father is 88 as well, but he keeps alive through family. We have so many second or third cousins and so many things for "Uncle Al" to do (he's always gardening or working in the yard -- no matter what house he's at), he keeps himself refreshed and living. That's how I'd like to live out the last years of my life if or when I get that far. The last thing I'd want to do is be stuck in some nursing home with no power over the last years of my life.

For a long time part of me wished that if I died that I could come back as a ghost. Immortality through death is an ironic concept. I tend to spook myself out with thoughts of that sort of thing, but in the end I ruled that out as an option I'd like as well. I mean think about it. Let's say you die and you're a ghost. You're essentially stuck in one place for the rest of time unless someone or something brings you along to whatever you believe in for the afterlife. I always thought about haunting a mall or some place people come -- but it hit me, even buildings die.

Oh sure if you were to haunt a popular spot at a mall you could get a few years in, but buildings aren't immortal. Malls fail, buildings get torn down, and you'd end up haunting an abandoned spot. Maybe not in the first 10 or 20 or even 50 years, but sometime the place will fail, the world will change and you'll be haunting in silence. Alone forever in the spot you chose.

Even ancient cities like Troy must have had haunted houses. Now where are they? If ghosts are real there's some strange cold spot where a city deemed "immortal" stood where some poor fool stands around wondering where all the people went.

Oh I'm in a weird mood tonight, forgive me. This movie always gets me going.

Ironically enough, Freddie Mercury, Queen's lead singer, died not many years after the end of this film. I hope his spirit or essence or what have you has found happiness where ever it went when it headed for the big gig in the sky.

Another night down, getting ready for bed.

k9

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