I know we all get lazy, and in our adult lives we tend to be “too busy” for most things that we want to or need to do. Especially in these days with this so called “fast paced” lifestyle where we hardly find time to read the directions posted on a sign anymore, but when it gets to the point where we aren’t keeping our homes or our belongings clean is that just laziness or are we really THAT busy?

I became inspired to write this short story all thanks to the most likely week old McDonald’s biscuit that I just realized was sitting on the couch next to me. It’s not mine, I don’t really ever eat breakfast from fast food places, but it’s sitting right here on the couch cushion next to me all nestled up next to a screwdriver (okay so the screwdriver is my fault) and a knife. It’s as if they’re all snuggled up, and the two other objects are protecting the biscuit from the evil human being who is about to throw it away after she’s finished writing. There;s even a can of peanuts sitting behind it, acting like a bodyguard to this poor stale, lifeless, and probably tasteless, biscuit. I understand that my brother works long hours in a night, and I definitely could be of more help in keeping the apartment kept up, but I know for a fact energy is a problem for me, and it’s also hard to touch old food that I haven’t brought into the house. I’m also getting pretty terrified of that can of peanuts now that I look at them more, they are pretty mean looking. What if it’s a trap and there’s really a snake that pops out of the can the second I go to grab that disgusting pastry and bring it to it’s final resting place?

I’m starting to think I need to invest in a trash can in every room in the house or every other corner. I’m not going to sit here and say that I am the cleanest person you’ll ever meet, but I am scanning my living room and noticing that my big problem is the many pairs of shoes I own that are kind of scattered about in the pathway from where we enter our apartment. I rarely drink Dr. Pepper if ever, and there are cans of it scattered about as if they had been in some sort of war against each other.  None of them were left standing and…oh wait, there’s one survivor! Maybe it’s because he has a few body guards too, a soda cup from Runza (again not mine), an orange juice cup from McDonald’s (again not mine), a coke zero can (oops) , an open bottle of rubbing alcohol (mine, but the last place I left it was in my bathroom), a fry box from Runza(not mine) with a couple of surviving fries, and a bowl with some sort of green substance in it (not mine, and most likely molded milk).

Now I’m beginning to wonder what the exact distance the kitchen is from my couch…all I really know is it’s not that far. Maybe I should build some sort of belt like for a cash register to set all this stuff on so it makes it into the kitchen, instead of on our floor or furniture. No, on second thought maybe I shouldn’t because that would just promote even more laziness in a country that already has a severe problem with it. Oh, and just so we’re clear this isn’t a story intended to attack my brother, the poor guy overworks himself from 6pm to 6am almost every night, it’s just a realization on my part that one or the other needs to get into gear. Actually, people in general really need to. Yeah, I’m talking to you mister “I’ll just leave my soda cup on this clothing table even though the trash can is 5 steps away from me in plain sight” and you miss “I’ll just leave this paper sample cup on this end cap because even though there is a designated trash can next to each sampling station it’s just too much effort for me to use my brain or eyes to find the thing, or even extend my arm to throw it in there. I mean who does that anymore? Using your arms or any part of your body to do things yourself is so 1999! So is using your brain, my phone and computer just do that for me now!”

I’ll just leave it at that. It’s not really a matter of “I don’t have the time” as it’s more of a, “this doesn’t interest me because it’s a mundane necessary task in life, and quite frankly it bores the living shit out of me so I won’t do it. Besides , someone else will even if I don’t.”

And with that all said, I am now off to attack this biscuit, pick up these fallen soda cans, these bowls that look like they’re about to be sick, and the debris this little trash war has left on our living room carpet. If I return alive, you’ll see me back on Facebook yet again, and the carpet will be thanking me because it will be able to breathe again as well as show it’s pretty self off. Just keep this simple fact in mind, you’re all adults now. Pick up after yourselves! Hell, most of you (I would hope) learned how to pick up after yourselves since you were knee high. Why quit now that you’re adults? The only excuse you have now is any possible disabilities, or just being so old you don’t function anymore, and I mean that in the literal sense. Not just saying you’re old because you feel old, I mean like old as in you share a birthday with dirt. The end.

— I would also like to add as a side note the biggest apology on earth to my mother for being a messy teenager/young adult during the time I lived under her roof. I now completely understand the irritation!

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To be fair, a 500 dollar dell is not going to be the same quality of hardware as a macbook. Where apple really dings you, however, is the high end. As far as I know, apple hasn’t released a core i7 system. Additionally, windows has A) a huge library of software going back twenty years (compared to OSX’s three, four at the most), B) real gaming support (mostly microsoft’s fault, but still), and C) I can install windows on whatever the fuck hardware I want. OSX I legally am not allowed to do that.

As to the virus issue, OSX is only mostly virus free because of its comparatively small market share. As that market share increases, more of the people who develop viruses will turn to developing them for OSX. Contrary to what apple may want you to think, OSX is no more secure than windows is. Additionally, anti-virus companies have a huge amount of experience combating windows viruses, and almost none combating OSX viruses, so when the time comes that it is popular to write OSX viruses, who do you think will be on top then?

Also: the leading anti-virus software on the market, both Kaspersky anti-virus and (my personal favorite) eset nod32, have a 90% plus detection rate. I’ll stick with windows.

And before some wiseass says that OSX has been around ten years, yes it has, however when apple switched from powerpc to intel, that rendered most of its previous software obsolete and incompatible.

(This is completely unedited from a facebook comment I made, I may edit for better blog-reading later. As it is, enjoy.)

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If there is anything I am well-known for in most of the communities I frequent, it is the bloodthirst of both my dad and me for small animals. More particularly, the small animals that dare to wander within the relatively broad boundaries of our yard. And recently there has been a wave of brash animals challenging Dad’s territorial claims, and he just won’t stand for it.

First, a bit of explanation. Having acquired our land when the area we live in was fairly undeveloped, we were able to seize a particularly large space of land. That means there is quite a bit of yard to take care of/guard against the forces of evil (animals). And this being rural southern Georgia, you bet your sweet lily ass there are animals waiting to snatch our land out from under our grasp with their filthy claws/hooves.

From the very get-go, Dad waged a campaign against Mother Nature and her furry bastard children. The first to feel the wrath of Angry Middle-Aged White Man were the squirrels; the furred freaks enraged Dad by climbing up the bird feeder and stealing the seeds meant for the adorable cardinals, robins, blue jays, and finches that frequented our birdfeeders. Dad set out wire traps, and like moths to the flame the squirrels practically barreled into the cages to get at the concoction of peanut butter and something else (I don’t recall) placed inside the trap. Once trapped, Dad would proceed to put the squirrel, trap and all, in a plastic garbage bag, attach the opening to the exhaust pipe of his truck, and rev the engine. My brother and I would stand in fascination, as the squirrel’s death scene played out unscene behind plastic bags. It was hauntingly beautiful, listening to the frantic scrabbles slow and then stop, much like a play, as the garbage bag was then dramatically removed to reveal the corpse of the squirrel, frozen in death. Dad would then take the body and throw it in the ditch behind our house. Our next-door neighbor observed the phenomenon with horror and dubbed our house the “Gas Chamber”.

The squirrels took the hint and stopped coming back, for the most part. Then the moles moved in. They were much trickier than the squirrels, for moles are much much harder to trap or even catch. This is when Dad became almost frightingly dedicated to eliminating the Mole Threat. He started tracking the moles; whenever he caught sight of an extremely fresh ‘mole trail’ (dug up ground), he would fetch a golf club and stand by the hole. And he waited. And waited. Sometimes he would be waiting for hours, but he was determined. When one is waiting out a mole, it is imperative that one try to move as little as possible, lest the mole sense the vibrations and veer away. Dad was very good at waiting motionlessly. Eventually he would feel the vibration of the mole returning and as soon as he could discern movement below the earth his golf club would come crashing down. I only glimpsed this almost epic clash twice, not having the patience to wait with Dad. It was an exciting thing; to see Dad, motionless, poised, then suddenly leap into action with a terrifying force. Without fail the mole would pop up, dazed, and Dad would take a chop that would put Tiger Woods to shame. The frail, small body would spiral almost gracefully through the air, blood sprinkling the earth, and land with a gentle thud, only to be picked up and thrown unceremoniously into the ditch to join the cooling bodies of the squirrels.

The moles never really went away, but their numbers dwindled enough so that Dad was not enraged every time he stepped out into the yard. Then the armadillos stepped up to bat. THEY have been Dad’s most infuriating opponent yet. For while moles are largely nocturnal, moles actually pop up rather frequently during the day. Armadillos, on the other hand, absolutely refuse to come out during the day, so Dad had to stalk them at night. They are also extremely fast, so one shot is all you get. Their skin (armor?) is also apparently rather tough, as Dad was forced to cast aside his pellet gun in disgust and take up his shotgun after the pellet merely bounced off the blind fucker. They are supposed to be extremely blind, but they are paranoid little bastards; when Dad sat in the yard just waiting for them to come out, they did not linger long enough for him to get a good shot. They probably smelled him, I guess. This frustrated Dad even further; now he had to stand by the door that opened to the area the armadillos seemed to favor, looking out the window, watching for the motion-sensor light to snap on and reveal the armadillo snuffling about. It was a long, laborious effort; oftentimes there would be nights were the armadillo didn’t come out at all, or came out but only long enough for Dad to rush down the hallway to grab his gun. Then there were the times Dad missed or didn’t hit a vital organ; then Dad had to watch in frustration as the armadillo shot up in the air and then hauled ass back into the forest next to our house. The only aspect in his favor is that armadillos are extremely territorial, so he was only dealing with one or two armadillos. It took two weeks for Dad to get the first armadillo, then its mate the next week. Fortunately it didn’t seem to have reproduced–a very good thing since armadillos have four babies at a time.

The armadillos stayed away until recently; Dad has noticed to his fury the beginnings of another armadillo settling in. I have also noticed the motion-sensor light snapping on during the night, so there is definitely something out there. Squirrels have also been starting to swarm the birdfeeder recently established right in front of the house; these squirrels won’t fall for the traps, so Dad has resorted to killing them face to face. As soon as he sees a squirrel through the window, he goes barreling down the hallway, loads his gun, and creeps out the door and around the corner, usually catching the squirrel unawares. I will often follow, for the thrill of seeing Dad have a classic Gregory Peck moment from To Kill a Mockingbird. The moles have also been making a comeback, moreso than the armadillos, and Dad has already stalked two.

If I ever wrote a memoir, I can bet that there will be at least five chapters dedicated to Dad’s sheer insanity, obnoxiousness (he once called me ‘a bigger faggot than your brother, and given how your brother hasn’t gotten any, that’s saying something. Why don’t you stop eating so much fucking ice cream, goddamn, that’s my ice cream, you’re already fat.’) and bloodlust. I can guarantee there will probably be more posts similar to this one; this Thanksgiving, Dad lamented the fact that he had never opened a morgue/crematorium and made it a family business. “Can’t you see us working together, Edith? Just shoveling in the bodies and making statues out of corpses to put in the bathroom? We could learn taxidermy and make the dogs into statues and put them in your mom’s bedroom. Wouldn’t that be awesome.” My dad is batshit insane and it is fucking awesome.

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Now let me tell you bout my man Orpheus
He wasn’t the kind of guy to drive around in a prius
Naw, he was a pretty down to earth kind of guy
He had this girl, she was pretty fly
But then she had to go and die
Now this girls name was Eurydice
And she filled Orpheus up with idiocy
And so when she was killed most hideously
She cause Orpheus to cry most piteously
Orpheus went down to old man Hades
And said “Man, I ain’t got no rabies”
All I know is you got plenty of ladies
And I just want back my baby
Hades said a few different things
He said “Orpheus, I know you only just gave her that ring
And before that it was much more than a fling
And her death has taken away your ability to sing”
So I’ll give her back to you on just one condition,
Because you are such a fine musician,
As you embark on your expedition
Your head must remain in a forward position
Orpheus said that he could accede to that
And off he went with a rat-a-tat-tat
Off into the never-ending black
With Eurydice’s eyes boring a hole in his back
Now my man Orpheus nearly reached the light
But those eyes on his back were an un-ignorable blight
He just had to have Eurydice in his sight
The last thing he saw of her was her dress so white
When he turned around old man Hermes
Picked Eurydice up by the back of the knees
(He did it with a bit of a sneeze)
And flew away without so much as a please
And now Orpheus was exceedingly sad
He wrote some new songs which were pretty rad
Until the harpies showed up at his pad
And decided to take his torso home and call it Chad
His head floated down past his momma the muse
All the while it was singing the blues
And while with his lack of lungs this is bound to confuse
It’s Orpheus; so it ain’t exactly news
And that right there is the end of my story
I’m sorry it wasn’t full of blood and glory
But it was the story that needed to be told
Even if in this day and age it’s getting kind of old

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In your mind you feel cold,
in your eyes you see frost.

In your mind you feel hot,
in your eyes you see waving air.

In your mind you feel the evil in the world,
in your eyes you see the blade penetrate your heart.

In your mind you feel love,
in your eyes you see love enveloping the world.

Which do you want?
Which do you choose?
Which do you see?

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