Sonicrusk Blog

They are still talking about the Virginia Tech shootings and Cho a good nine days after the incident occurred, and to be honest, I’ve taken to fast forwarding through the news coverage with my TiVo. I get the point; this nutball went bananas and shot up a bunch of people. Then NBC News gave the man additional glory by playing his listless taped confession and showing photos of him hamming it up for the camera.

Stories like these really bring out the nihilist in me. NPR and the Today Show both talked about some of the victims. One guy had three majors and was just weeks from graduation. Some type of stellar grade point average. Another lady was a beautiful dancer.

I’m reminded of other crime stories that stick to my brain after watching too much Court TV or Bill Kurtis. Remember that guy in Idaho that kidnapped the girl and brother after killing their family with a hammer? Not much any of them could’ve done to avoid that, they didn’t even know the guy as far as I know. Did you know that this same guy walked up to a group of boys on bikes somewhere here in California, grabbed up a kid right in front of his friends, and took him away. The kid ended up dead, of course. Shit, what the hell can you do to avoid that? The kid did everything right, used the buddy system. Still didn’t help him.

Yet another lurid story I remember involving the Railroad Killer, the Mexican guy who traveled via train killing people in a number of states who has since been executed by Texas. One of his first victims was a lady doctor. Her sumptuous house was located near some railroad tracks. This guy broke in right before Christmas, raped and strangled her in her own home, and even opened up and stole some wrapped Christmas presents. So this lady spent her whole life striving for perfect grades and finishing medical school and a pain-in-the-ass residency, only to be raped and killed by a migrant bum. Fuck, the dude even stole the Christmas presents! She could’ve spent her adulthood fucking around, just like the triple major and interpretive dancer in Virginia could’ve done.

I’m tempted to take a page out of my patients’ books. Smoke, drink, fuck and make babies, eat fatty foods, drink Pepsi, go to collections, lounge around watching Maury, Springer, and Vida TV. Sure, I might end up with congestive heart failure or rampant Diabetes, but some of these folks live into their 70’s anyway. Pretty good ride if you can stifle the judiciousness.  Then again, you might just end up as a poor bum lamenting how you’ve wasted your life. Some of my patients do that too.

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I have someone from Idyllwild, California that has been spending two hours reading my blog just about everyday for the past couple of weeks. He or she reads in spurts, eight mintues here, twenty-five minutes there. . I’m pretty sure it isn’t a spammer, although anything is possible. Most spammers come to my site through some type of funky search of text or image. They are often from the four corners of the earth. Idyllwild comes to the site from the front page and stays on the front page. Who are you, Idyllwild?

EDIT: The lurker is my dad, a regular visitor to the blog. For some reason, his ISP is directing him through Idyllwild…

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I had the joy of playing the longest UNO game in my life last night with three other people. It was one game – two hours. That’s it. One game that took two hours. We reshuffled the deck about five times.

I don’t know how familiar you are with the game, but it is easy enough so that if you don’t, a quick Google search will fill you in. This particular game started out without much fanfare. It’s not that hard of a game; a card is put down and you must match the color, match the number, use a Wild card, or start picking cards from the deck.

It ended up that each person at one time must have had twenty cards in their hand. It was getting ridiculous at times. I’ve never had a game last more than twenty minutes, but then again, I don’t play UNO all that much. I once had a hand that was half green cards, and half yellow with a couple of reds mixed in. I’m guessing that the other players had something similar. It seemed like the other players would place a Wild card and choose blue, so that I was picking even more cards. I was in despair and certain I was going to lose.

UNO has no real strategy but one that I can see. I got on a lucky streak where I had three or four Wild cards, including one of the Wild+4 cards. The girl next to me called out UNO! My hand consisted of the wild cards and one card of yellow, red, and green each. I could’ve played one of them, but chose to play the Wild+4 card to get some cards in my opponent’s hand.

A few turns later, I found that my strategy had worked as I had only two Wild cards left. There was virtually no way that I could lose. Nobody, of course knew what my cards were; I keep ‘em close to my chest. I placed a Wild card down, called out UNO!, and chose the color blue. No particular reason. I didn’t have a blue card. Even if my succeeding opponent did, she still had four or five cards she needed to clear out. The turn went to the next person and she placed down a card. The only thing standing between victory and me was the next player. If he placed down any number card, success was mine. Only a card requiring me to pick more cards would hamper my chances, at least for the time being.

He placed a number card down. A red card. It didn’t matter what color, or what number. I put down the Wild card. I won. Two hours later and after having a hand at one time of twenty cards, I won. So the moral of the story is: collect the Wild cards.

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We all know how important it is nowadays to destroy all pieces of paper that could be used by dirtbags to steal your identity. It seems like every three months or so here in Bakersfield, the local news shows video camera footage of a couple of moronic crankheads buying stuff at Wal-Mart using stolen credit cards.

Thieves are pretty clever, and it doesn’t help that there is so much paper out there with personal information. I have pretty good credit, so like a lot of you, I get daily offers for new cards and those fake cards with my name already printed on them. I have to open them up and cut up the faux credit card with scissors. A big pain in the butt.

I got a paper shredder about five years ago at one of those White Elephant office Christmas parties. It was manufactured by Fellowes and is basically a junker as it runs hot after only a few minutes. It clogs up so I have to press the reverse button and then the forward button quickly to get the metal teeth to spit the chewed up paper through to the collection bin underneath. It now sits dormant. It really is a white elephant.

The shredder might have worked fine if I shredded documents as they came in over the years, but I didn’t. I pay my bills and set aside my utility statements “just in case.” I do the same with my bank statements. Then I end up with piles of paper with my name and other personal information all over them. With the daily credit card or car insurance offers, I try to manually rip them into little pieces daily, but with the ones I can’t get to, the utility bill statements, bank statements, paper copies of my work schedule with fifty other nurses names, and ATM and check card receipts, it seems like I am swimming in perforated scraps of paper.

In the past, I put them in a manila envelope. My plan was to take them to work and force them down the narrow mouth of the stout gray shred bin. However, I have seen those bins opened and looked through by employees when someone accidentally loses an important piece of paperwork for a patient. Now, I just put them in manila envelopes and set them aside a couple of times a year. I’ve looked into taking them someplace and paying a fee but have been unsuccessful. Most places appear to want a recurring contract or large volume. I went to Costco yesterday looking for a powerful shredder but couldn’t find one at all. Even if I did, I have so much that needs to be destroyed that that no shredder could keep up. I could probably shred without stopping for at least thirty minutes. I’ve even thought about taking the envelopes to my mom’s outside portable metal fireplace, dousing them with lighter fluid, and burning them up. Whatever the case, it is a pain in the ass.

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For some reason or another, I mentioned to some co-workers that I wouldn’t mind having a switchblade. Now I know they are illegal, so I was pretty much just fantasizing. I do not plan on owning one, or attempting to own one. I can see its usefulness at times. There are a lot of thugs running around.

I made a mention of this to my younger brother who is much more streetwise than I am. Why escalate a fight by bringing out a knife he asked. That makes sense. I haven’t been in a fight in a while and that surprises me with my big mouth and low tolerance for bullshit. I wouldn’t want to get my ass kicked. I want all my teeth to stay in my head. I am vain.

There are supposedly two types of people: streetwise and book smart. I guess I am book smart. I have a college degree. I write on this blog, if that indeed shows any intelligence. I’ve always got by in life by using my brain and it’s given me a pretty comfortable life. I’ve never spent one hour in jail. I hardly ever even talk to cops.

But I wouldn’t necessarily say that I am devoid of street wisdom. I at least know that I have more than some people. There are some folks who are afraid of the east side of Bakersfield. There are some that have never met any shady character. I have met plenty of shady characters. Maybe I am as much of a novelty to them as they are to me: The smart guy talking to the thug. Actually, a lot of the shady folks I’ve met in my life aren’t really that bad as long as you maintain your boundaries. The oddest thing I can remember offhand is a guy swinging a gun around while drunk and dancing at a party when I was eighteen.

I watch my boundaries and avoid disrespect. I don’t glare at thugs in the eye and I am polite. That still goes a long way with thugs. Kept me out of trouble this far. I still wouldn’t mind having a gun in the house in case I have to head to the hills like Red Dawn. Too much Red Dawn and The Stand has left a portion of my mind paranoid.

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I remember reading through the archives of Blackie Jones’ now defunct Black Dog blog. I noticed that there were no comments for months in the earliest posts of the blog. Black Dog commented to me that he talked to himself for over a year.

That is probably going to be me after not posting anything on this site for nearly a month. What can I say, I had nothing to talk about. I could talk about my love life, but have discovered that you will probably always lose on that topic. You talk about all of the negatives of someone, and the next woman thinks you a jerk. You sing the praises, and the new girl thinks that you are a bullshitter that sells the same line to every chick you meet. The only way to not get clobbered is to talk about your marriage. So, I will remain mum on that subject for the foreseeable future.

Like I’ve written previously, yet not to be pretentious, a post writes itself. This post wrote itself. I thought about one thing, something else added itself onto the thought, and the whole thing snowballed. I guess that sometimes life is boring and you have no interesting insight or yarns to spin.

I found out who my Columbia, Maryland lurker is, and it ain’t my genius friend Calamari. I’m tempted to call the lurker “Jersey” since that is where he is from, but it sounds too much like a gay stripper. I’ll call him Charlie. He’ll recognize it as an appropriate pseudonym. Anyway, Charlie is an old army buddy and I’ve known him as long as I’ve known Al, Hoat, and Kosar. I hadn’t heard from him in years, then he dropped me an email saying that he now lived in Columbia, MD and that he was vacationing in San Francisco with his wife. He admitted to being the Columbia Lurker. I would’ve never figured.

I am now getting nearly 600 spam posts per day to moderate. Ridiculous assholes.

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