You are FIRED! But you need to give us some overtime first.......

Ugh, wish I was kidding! Fat Rock here, with fun news. Seems Chubby Industries has had a rough patch of business, and as such has had to cut the hours of the production and manufacturing staff by 20%. Yes, twenty percent pay cut. But here's the kicker: On the weeks we are NOT on reduced hours, we have to work overtime to keep the schedule from getting behind. Yes, you heard me right. Furlough time.................but with overtime.

Damn.

Eve Online

Now, this is the stuff. Better then World of Warcraft. Better than Everquest. WAAAAAyYYYYYY better than that steamy pile that is City of Heroes. Eve Online is more complicated than all 3 of those games combined, and has a wider variety of roles and abilities. Like a big-ass diamond, the facets of Eve are limitless. The learning curve is steeper., but the fun is limitless.


Essentially, you're in space. The empty void of space. But the void is what you make it. There are hundreds of thousands of players, all working in this void, trying to make something. Individual players join corporations, groups of like minded players who use teamwork to accomplish their goals. Corporations can join alliances, which can consist of up to thousands of players. Alliances can band together into coalitions, informal treatieas and the like. The economic and diplomatic tools used in this game would even give Kissinger and Greenspan a run for their money. But don't take my word for it. try it out.

Azalea Festival.

(Note to Self: Insert Gay Joke HERE)

Yeah, so I went to the Azalea Festival Garden Tour recently. I was not forced to go, but wanted to go as I get ideas and inspiration for my home garden when I see what others have done. I went last year, and because of that I was able to go out and sunburn myself so badly I couldn't go to work for two days because I was tilling, moving earth, laying brick (not to self: insert poop joke here) and preparing a new garden for my wife's enjoyment. Well, the garden kinda flopped the first year. We're doing a lot better this year, and I have the added bonus of not being referred to as "Lobster Boy" at work.

So to get fresh Ideas, we went to the Garden Tour. The Azalea Festival Garden Tour is put on by the Wilmington Garden Club, who are kind of like the Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Freemasons, The Emipre from Star Wars, and Opus Dei all rolled into one. Seriously, they're like a shadowy secret society that wears sundresses and ridiculous hats. They have a set member count (354), they are all women, they have a waiting list of several years to even be considered to join, and there's like a generational hierarchy to it. It's creepy. Like that men's club from Stepford. But they put on a darn good garden tour.

So we went for the second year straight. Every year we go we get to see a part of Wilmington that we never knew about. Last year we discovered Forest Hills South. This year we got to cruise the gated community of Landfall and gawk at houses we will never be able to afford. But we also got to see a number of lovely gardens. My favorites we're the old gardens. The ones that were made over YEARS of work. Like ours is turning out to be. There were several homes that were around 80 years old, and the gardens were from decades of toil. They took out breath away. Then there's the noobs. Yes, I used the World of Warcraft term Noob (new or inexperienced person, from the words New and bOOB) to describe a garden. Bite Me. The noobs hired someone to make them a garden. And make it fast. The result is a garden that looks " just fine" but has a sterile look to it. Last year almost half the tour was like that. This year only a few gardens were noobs. And now a few photos from our favorite, a garden that was designed by a housewife (she was also a botanist) and made entirely by her and he husband. It was designed to have something blooming every month of the year.

They made that garden themselves. And it was awesome.

Mutually Assured Destruction

Many of you may have been Cold War Children like I and Lemur Queen were. We knew "Duck and Cover" and all that. We knew of the Evil Empire, the Iron Curtain, and the USSR(CCCP). But most of you kids have never heard of that crap, as schools no longer teach actual history, but feel good crap about things that don't matter. So, this post is about the modern application of the timeless doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Basically it goes like this: one nation won't do something stupid (launch nukes), because it knows that if it does another nation will launch nukes enough to kill them both.

A lot of times marriage is like that. But different. With us it's about hair. Lemur Queen has gorgeous hair. Jet black, a little past her shoulders. It's like a waterfall of midnight. It's great and I love it. Way back in the day, before we started dating she tried one of those "styling" bobs and cut her hair short. She said it looked bad on her, and she let it grow back out.

Now it's summertime. It's hot. Long hair is hot. Beautiful, but hot. Lemur Queen was thinking about getting a "Pixie Cut" for the summer, as she seems to have forgotten what happened last time. She was looking at this:

But when she says stuff like this all I can see is this:

So to counter this I've had to grow my own "nuclear option", so to speak. I have grown out my goatee. I haven't trimmed or cut it for 4 months. It's getting long, and starting to develop ear lock type curls. But it keeps growing. Lemur Queen noticed it's length last week when I just got out of the shower (I usually style it so the length doesn't show, I didn't have the opportunity at that time) and asked when I was going to trim it. I asked if she had decided not to cut her hair.

Then she realized it was a mexican standoff with hair. If SHE went nuclear and got a pixie cut, I would go nuclear and go full Pai Mei on her. "Who's Pai Mei?" you ask? He's a famous Shaolin monk, immortalized in film and saga. Also, he kinda looks like this:

Wait, that's a bad pic. This is more like it:

Yeah, that is EPIC. And that's what's gonna happen if she cuts her hair. And she knows it. So it's a waiting game until the first cold snap, then I'm clear. She won't cut off all that insulating hair once fall hits. But until then I need to be strong, and threaten the woman I promised to cherish forever of the possibility of my trying to make myself look like a catfish is she trims her locks.

Do I LOOK like a stoner?

So, the other day I was in Wal-Mart buying pots, seeds, potting soil and dirt. Specifically, I was buying Sweet Basil seeds. As I was trying to check out in the garden section, a hipster doofus got in behind me with two of those Sobe "Enlighten And Train Your Chi Because It's Not Like Cha'an Buddhists Spend 20 Friggin' Years Trying To Do This, You Can Do It By Drinking Our Overpriced Crappy Water, You Dumb White Yuppies" Flavor or it could have been "Mango Raspberry". Whatever. So this guy was behind me. He was wearing a rasta hat, and holding a Bob Marley Book bag. You know, because Rastafarians are all about materialism.

Yeah.

So I'm chatting with the very bored cashier about how my herbs aren't growing well this season, and how I'm trying to re pot and reseed to see if that helps. RastaDoofus perks up with the mention of "pot" and "herb", and says "Hey Man, I'm totally having trouble with my herb too!"

"What are you growing?"

Fat Rock: "Basil, Marjoram, Oregano, Thai Basil, Parsley, Lemon Thyme and Lavender."

RastaDoofus:"Dude, Man. I am totally trying to grow some oregano. I have a ton, but I'm trying to get more." Really there Half Baked? Oregano? Really?

At this point my purchase is completed and I beat feet to the car. Rastadoofus catches up to me and starts bombarding me with questions about my "Oregano", such as how green it is, how many plants I have, and what I'm doing for indoor lighting. At this point I have to stop Mister Herbal-life from incriminating himself. He gets pretty deflated when he finds out I'm really growing JUST HERBS. And shuffles off with his Chi Water.

Stupid Hipster Doofus.

What's Irony?

Irony is having a safety meeting that covers extensively the topic of "how working too many hours/working while fatigued can cause more injuries and errors". What did management announce right after this presentation?

That we were doing overtime again. For the fifth week straight. Five. Weeks. Overtime. Fatigue. Injuries.

One guy actually raised his hand as asked the managers if they knew what irony was, the managers said yes, but it totally didn'y apply to this situation.

The mind boggles.

Averages

Sorry, been really busy lately. Been doing overtime for a good 3 weeks now. Wife's been working a lot. Sure, money's coming in, but I am getting run ragged. Makes me feel exhaused, and wonder how I'm doing in life. Every now and again I try to take stock of myself, and try to compare myself to others. I do this on many levels: work ethic, looks, weight, intelligence, wealth. I try to be good, or at least above average in a lot of stuff, I really do care put out a lot of effort.

Then today after work I was still in a philosophical mood, when it hit me: average.

Literally:

Average: (n) a quantity, rating, or the like that represents or approximates an arithmetic mean: Her golf average is in the 90s. My average in science has gone from B to C this semester.

We, humanity are a great pool of possible metrics to be determined. There's a ton of us, all with different gifts and potential. I won't be the best at everything. Hell, I won't be in the top 20% in most things. The best I can do is try hard and stay off the bottom rung.

Sorry, just needed to let that out after 3 weeks of overtime, with a manager running after me waving his arms like he's shooing chickens.

Ok, back to work.