Diary of a Wolfeman

Twelve years ago, I lived in a section of town called Northwest Industrial. It’s the area north of Burnside and west of the Willamette. When it was all first built, it was bustling with river and train traffic, commerce on the move.

When I lived there, the glory days had definitely gone. Most of the folks in the area were barely scraping by, and what businesses there were tended to be places you wouldn’t take your mother to. Unless she was really wierd, anyway. The first apartment I had we got evicted from – they condemmed the top floor where our apt was. Still being mostly broke, we moved into the building next door – the one with the Phillipino-Mafia-owned restaraunt and the matching gay strip club. Then I got even more broke, and left the state.

When I came back, the area was called The Pearl. Yuppies had moved in and begun buying up the old run-down and partially condemned tenements and warehouses, either renovating them or razing them outright to build condos and lofts. The bums and homeless folks who had been squatting in these buildings were simply run out, left to fend for themselves someplace else. Property values skyrocketted with the influx of Californians moving up from Silicon Valley, and by all counts the area was a success story.

Now it’s twelve years later, and on a downward spiral. Some of the new apartment buildings went HUD and Section 8 at the beginning of the economic slump to keep occupancy up. Some of the newer buildings have yet to reach capacity, as folks started buying houses when the interest rates fell instead of renting or buying ridiculously-expensive condos next door to the poor and unwashed folks moving in across the street. Vandalism is on the up as apartment managers have had to cut spending on security. Places that were clean and beautiful are now dirty and ugly again.

I worked in one of those apartment buildings as a cable guy starting in 2000, and it was almost sickening watching them build these beautiful new buildings, when the one I was working in was getting worse every day. I just couldn’t understand how people would willingly befoul their own home at such a rate that even the most determined maintenance crew couldn’t keep up with it.

What has happened to humanity? I’ll be the first to admit that I grew up poor – my family has never been wealthy, and my mom was on welfare much of my childhood. Nevertheless, our house and property (when we had it) was always clean and well-maintained. Often, we made deals with our landlord for reduced rent in exchange for improvements to the property. I just don’t understand how someone could willingly do this to themselves.

I had a point when I started writing this, but it escapes me now.

For those of you cartoon fans out there, I watched the new WB cartoon series The Batman this morning. It has it’s good points and it’s bad points…

The Batarang went this way… Read the rest of this entry »

Took a trip out to Sauvie Island today with the EMC, her hubby and the Pookster to check out the Harvest Festival they were having. It’s been a long time since I spent any time at all on anything resembling a farm.

Pookie enjoyed the hell out of it, which is at least some recompense for the aches in my knees – I really need to get back into some sort of shape here. I used to be able to walk around all day long without any problems. Anywho, Pookie painted herself a pumpkin, rode a pony, fed the petting zoo animals, took in a magic show and had a good time in general. Which means, of course, that I will have to take her back out there again this October to do the pumpkin patch thing. Maybe I can talk BtFR out of his 4×4 this year – the mud last year almost ate the Little Black Beastie…

Ran across a couple interesting sites this morning urging folks to take one for your country.

The first is Fuck The Vote, which urges people to help keep Bush from a second term by trading sexual favors for a non-Bush vote this November. From the website:

At Fuck The Vote we provide a Pledge Sheet that can be used conveniently before becoming physically intimate with a conservative. The Pledge Sheet asks the signee to make a promise to vote for anyone but George Bush in the November election. FTV has not endorsed a single candidate but recommends strategic voting. We also encourage FTV fans to take road trips this summer to swing(er) states to collect pledges. If you collect a pledge let us know about it on the Swinger States page! Have safe fun fucking over Bush while fucking for votes.

A noble project indeed, and one I can get fully behind (or in front of, as the case may be!) Just remember folks, that “anyone other than Bush” has a chance of fragmenting the vote – you really should pick a candidate that has a chance of winning. Unfortunately, that means Kerry. I know, the choices suck AGAIN this year.

The second site is aimed at just getting more people to vote, by pledging to have sex with a voter on election day and/or withold sex from non-voters for at least a week after election day. To earn “American Hero” status, one would withold sex from non-voters for a period of 4 years. Votergasm has this to say:

# Pledge-fulfilling sex must be consensual, legal, and generous. And safe. And hot.
# Acceptable sexual positions include, but are not limited to: missionary, doggy-style, cowgirl, reverse cowgirl, leapfrog, butterfly, humpback whale, cling wrap, squashing of the deck chair, accordion, reverse piggy-back, advanced (“twin”) leapfrog. Male-male, female-female, group, and oral variations of these positions can also be used to satisfy the pledge.
…
# “Cybersex” does not satisfy the pledge, dorkwad.
…
# Achievement of a Votergasm during election-night sex is probable, but not guaranteed. Those encountering difficulty reaching Votergasm are encouraged to slow things down, talk about it, and reduce the pressure. Other techniques include the use of massage oils, toys, “dirty talk,” “ballot stuffing,” and “exit polls.”
# Per the U.S. Constitution, children conceived on election night are eligible for gigantic interest-free loans from the U.S. government, and special t-shirt

There you have it folks – get out there and persuade some voters!

A friend of mine made me the offer of a new kitty the other day, and I’ve been thinking about it very hard. My neighborhood currently does not have a tabby cat wandering it’s streets, which just seems very odd to me. The tabby that used to live with me (Sebastian, AKA Be’elzekitty) went home with his original owner some time ago, and the girl who had a twin to him moved away shortly thereafter. Heck, even that poor tomcat with the ‘lion’ haircut moved away.

Anywho, the kitty I have been offered is a grey tabby. He’s currently running under the moniker ‘Trouble’, and is the largest cat in his litter – roughly twice the size of his sibs at 10 weeks old. Big, curious, outgoing and atitude to spare – the kind of cats I’ve had all my life.

The only drawback I can see is the financial aspect. I’m not real big on taking myself to the doc, so you can imagine how often I take a pet to the vet. (Like me, my pets have always been healthy.) While the cat would be free to me, I would still need to take him in at least for his first round of shots (not a big deal) and the Breaking. (If something works, and you make it not work, it is breaking, not getting fixed.) This procedure currently costs about $125 – a fairly largish sum to be spending on a pet at this stage of my finances. This amount is offset somewhat by speculation though: I would have another couple of months before a vet would even perform the procedure due to his age.

Other considerations include the current non-human residents of Chez Wolfie. Zoe The Monster Cat has seemed a bit lonely since Sebastian moved out, and might like a new kitty. Or, she may not. On the flipside, Zoe doesn’t consider Tweaker the Hamster to be food, and a new cat might. The Ratboy would be very unhappy if he came home and found Tweaker’s cage open and hamster-breath on the cat.

So, I’m looking for feedback. What do you think?

Remember how my backpack got stolen back in June? Well, my old roomate found a message on his voicemail from a Troutdale cop trying to get ahold of me. Apparently someone has been masquerading as me somehow or something.

Now I’m waiting for the cops to call me back. I hate waiting.

MSNBC has a review of the new BlackBerry phone, which looks to be a sweet bit of geekery. The reviewer could only find one thing to complain about in the beta model he tested – the screen is hard to read in sunlight.

The real surprise about the whole thing is the price – T-Mobile is offering the thing for a mere $199.99 US, with a decently-priced access plan as well.

Y’know, it just so happens that I already have a T-M account…

For those of you with access to a cable feed, Spike TV is having a CSI marathon this week, so all of us here at chez Wolfie are in hog heaven. I threw a Labor Day barbecue yesterday, and we all sat around watching tv and snarking where appropriate.

Greyduck, however, has once again proved that his Geek-Fu is strong, since we are also recording as many episodes as we can on one of the upstairs workstations. We’ll be able to burn them onto a VCD for watching in the DVD players for those days when there’s nothing on.

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough episodes to cover all of them. TV sucks.

I picked up another contract gig for this Thursday, and thought it would be a good idea to drag along a laptop just in case something goes wrong, and Greyduck was kind enough to loan me the laptop he’s had lying around the house. This one doesn’t have a battery, so nobody has been using it.

I had to dump Windoze2k back into it, since the stuff I’ll be using it for requires it, but other than that it ain’t so bad – provided I don’t need to do any serious number-crunching with it. This thing is slow. I spent about 3 hours installing the OS, patching the OS and getting the video drivers to work. (A slight hiccup in the ATI mobility drivers thought it was supposed to be using the TV out connector instead of the panel display.)

So, what was one of the first tests I ran with it? Seeing how much signal I have down in the garage at my smoking table. 64% strength, 73% quality if you must know the details.

I just got this in my inbox:

GLORIOUS LOTTERY AGENCY
Ref. Number: XXXXX
Batch Number: XXXXX

Sir/Madam,
We are pleased to inform you of the result of the Lottery Winners International programs held on the 4th of September 2004, your e-mail address attached to ticket number XX-XXX with serial Number XX-XXXXXX drew lucky numbers x-xx-x-xx-x-x which consequently won in the 1st category, you have therefore been approved for a lump sum pay out of One Million United States Dollars (US$1,000,000) CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Due to some numbers and names, we ask that you keep your winning information confidential until you file for your claim. This is part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this program by some participants.

This is, of course, a scam of the first order.

Chances are they will ask for some sort of money up front or tell me I have to purchse something in order to be elligible yadda yadda yadda. A quick Google search came up with many hits on scam-debunking websites across the globe.

Move it straight to the round-file, folks.