The Voices in My House

It was two o’clock this morning when I heard the voice. I was lying in bed playing poker on my tablet because – well, for two reasons really. Number one, my red-haired wife is traveling. So I’ve no motivation to go to bed early. And secondly, because I’m insomniac, so there’s rarely any sleep for me these days. And thirdly, because I – wait… I only promised you two. So that’s that. I was, therefore, not awakened by the sound of a voice. But I was startled by it. That’s for sure.

It sounded at first like a woman talking in my kitchen. I was alone in my bedroom with the door closed. So it could have been coming from anywhere. But it sounded about as far away as it could be while still being inside my house and downstairs. The kitchen is the answer to that. I perked up and listened a minute. Then I went back to my poker game. Some people get arrested for taking other people’s money. I get badges. I was well into another good hand when I heard the voice again. And this time it was louder.

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SpaceBrew Review: The Prestige

Occasionally there comes along a film that is so great it makes you say a cuss word and choke on your bourbon. And even more remotely, there comes one that makes you rearrange and alter your top-five favorites list. Well, friends and enemies, this here is one of those.

This film came out around the same time The Illusionist arrived on scene. Just like Deep Impact and Armageddon, The Matrix and The Thirteenth Floor, and Little House On The Prairie: The Movie and James Bond in Casino Royale. Like movies always seem to hit the scene at the same time. Like they both thought of it at the same time and one of them didn’t copy the other’s idea. (Like Leeanne Rimes suddenly deciding she needed to sing How Do I Live Without You shortly after the superior Trisha Yearwood had already sung it. And sang it well. And there’s your introduction.

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SpaceBrew Review: The Time Traveler’s Wife

After several years of deliberating and delaying and any other excuses I could find to put it off, I’ve finally finished building my HTPC. To you lay folk out there, that stands for Home Theater Personal Computer. And let me tell you: you need to get yourself one of these bad boys.

Anyway, the point is that since I have finally finished it out, my red-haired wife and I have been watching a lot more movies. And she’s even stayed awake for a few of them. I know, I know, most of what I write on this site is fictitious, but trust me, this is true! And last night she stayed awake through the entire viewing of The Time Traveler’s Wife.

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What is a reunion without first a union?

It’s that time of year again. You know, that time after Halloween when you begin taking down the sheety ghosts and throwing away the rotten, moldy, blackened, gnat-infested carcasses of the pumpkins on your porch and prepare to replace them with Christmas decorations. It’s that time when we begin winding down the year and getting ready to board up the tree houses for the winter, and start migrating inside where we can convene around fireplaces and football games. We also tend to have a lot more family reunions this time of year.

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The Heisenberg Handbag

Are any of you married? I don’t know if that really matters. I think the more relevant question is, “Do you know a woman?” This question is really only aimed at the men though. So, men, do you know a woman? And secondly, does she have a purse? Because OH MY GOD. My wife does. And I’m not talking about the two-hundred-dollar job she bought from some online French retailer. It cost sixty bucks to ship the damn thing. And when it got here it looked like a nylon bag to me. I mean, props for the orange rubber handle, but dude – seriously? It looked like a ten-dollar cheap-ass Target job.

Well, I guess I sort of am talking about it. See, I’m actually going to talk about all of her purses. She has several thousand, I’m sure. It’s ridiculous. I actually had to build an add-on to our closet just to house all her fine luxury purses. And we’re not talking Target job shit here. She only buys the finest handbags made from the finest material. Like Indonesian Batwing Silk, South African Lion Mane Weave, Alaskan Malimute Pelt and Egyptian Dung Beetle Chiton. And she always tells me how great of a deal she got on them. “Oh but honey, this Hungarian Elephant Scrotum Silk one was on sale for half off!” Oh, that’s great, babe. So how much was it? “Three hundred and sixty dollars. Can you believe that deal?” she says, wrinkling her nose. No. I can’t believe it. How could anyone pass that up? Why didn’t you get four of them, sugar?

:what:

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Can the 1300s get a little love?

Haycomet just wrote a very nice piece about living in the middle ages, and it sort of touched a soft spot in my emotions. Because like her, I too have always wanted to visit a different time period. I actually wrote an essay about my time machine in the SpaceBrew Scroll. You can read it here if you’re interested. You probably didn’t even know that existed, did you? Yeah? Well it does. You should go check it out. It’s a small series of collaborative efforts by the entire writing staff at the time. Anyway, I’ve gone off on a tangent, and there’s your opening paragraph.

But I have to admit something, friends. I mentioned where I had gone and what I had done with my time machine in that post, but it wasn’t really true. I don’t really own a time machine. I know, I know, I’m a bastard for misleading you and everything, but it was fun to pretend for a while. I really want one though, if that’s any consolation. I like to think I could go back and meet some of those really cool, influential people in history. Albert Einstein. Seka (when she was younger)… Adolf Hitler. You know, just those people you really kind of want to get to know. Find out what made them tick. Well, I know what made Seka tick, if you know what I mean. :perv:

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The Time Traveler Convention

We had a little get-together the other night with a few friends, and I think some of the things that happened that night are worth mentioning. It was a hot summer night, just like every other night has been this year, here in Texas. It’s so hot that when my wife and I sit outside and just enjoy the cool night air after the kids are in bed, it’s actually still over 100 degrees. And we’re talking about after nine o’clock. But there is one good thing about it. At least we’re not in Oklahoma.

So Haycomet and Byronic came over and brought their tinycomet – who (and this is another story, but) installed Open Solaris on one of my print servers and re-allocated a slash 28 from my DHCP scope to serve as her science lab, then delved into some hard coding time, whereupon she ran all six of my computers at 98% CPU usage for over two hours grinding out application for her theory about relativistic dimensional vacillation. So in short, we spent a few hours sipping cognac in a fine 17th century hall surrounded by warpainted women in loincloths and pasties who thought we were Norse gods. Thanks, tinycomet!

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Coming Out of the Closet

During the Great Robot Fiasco of 2010 a couple of months ago, where my Pusher and Shover Robots malfunctioned and tried to push my red-haired wife down the stairs (instead of my grandmother), I spent a lot of time in my closets. I spent time in my water closet testing and replacing parts on my air handler. I spent time in my master closet testing and replacing circuit breakers. I even spent time in some of my neighbors’ closets looking through their clothing and enjoying the various scents attached to the legs of their slacks and dresses. But now, my friends, it’s finally time to come out of the closet.

Yeah, see, I really just wanted to say that. It feels good to say it. But it feels even better to finally be out of the closet. See, after several long hours spent in all these closets around my house performing repairs, I realized some of those closets could use a good once-over cleaning. I realized I had junk on my shelves in the master closet that had been sitting there for years. Just shit like picture frames and curtain rod holders, cabinet knobs and stacks of important papers, electron shufflers and relastics diodes. You know, the stuff you find in just about every closet in America.

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Wait. What birds? What bees?

A few years ago, when my nephew was still just a little shaver, we found ourselves faced with an uncomfortable confrontation when my sister mentioned something about sex. Now it wasn’t something inappropriate, to be sure, but rather something along the lines of “sex in a movie” or something equally as innocuous. So all she did was basically say the word sex. It might even have been something like, “what sex is the child?” or whatever.

Anyway, my nephew, hearing the unfamiliar word, piped up with this little gem: “What are secks?” Well, seeing that a possibly uncomfortable situation might abound, I went ahead and stepped up to the plate with a perfectly delivered response, when I said, “Well, son, let me tell you what secks are.” So as the boy sat on the couch and looked at me, I told him that secks were like different categories into which women are grouped to determine their eligibility. I said, “For example, your mother would be in Seck A. Grandma over there? Well, she’s in seck B. Now Step, my red-haired wife? Yeah. Hi-five. She’s Seck C.

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The Law of Averages

I can’t recall how well I did in statistics class, most likely because of one of the few following reasons: I a) didn’t take statistics class in college, b) spent way too much time between the sheets with girls and not near enough between the pages of schoolbooks, or c) didn’t actually go to college. I can’t even recall which of the answers would be closest to correct, so I shall not bother. And there’s your opening paragraph.

But let’s just say that the odds of some things happening are almost statistically impossible. Like that time when my dad and I were at the driving range hitting golf balls, and we both hit at the same time, and our golf balls hit each other in mid-air about fifty yards out. Un-effing-believable. Seriously, we couldn’t do that again in seven hundred years. But it did happen. I wonder if that has ever even happened before to anyone out there at driving ranges all over the world. Surely it has…

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