Effing hilarious.

I can’t really excerpt, you have to read the whole thing, as the effect is cumulative.

[wik]: I was startled, when I actually opened the link in a browser, at how ugly the page is.  I read most webpages now through my rss feed reader app, Reeder.  It does a remarkable job displaying ugly websites in a clean, easy-on the eyes manner while retaining useful semantic markup.  If you’re a mac or iphone/ipad user, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

[alsø wik]: h/t to my pal Christian.

While down in Columbus, the wife conceived a need to go to Walmart.  On the way back, waiting at a light, she was looking through her purse.  And her foot lifted off the break pedal a bit.  Since it was an automatic, she drifted forward and touched the bumper of the car in front of her.  So slight was the impact that she wasn’t even aware that she’d touched the other car.

That is, until the woman got out and started screaming.

This Indian woman (dot) accused my wife of damaging her car.  Based on what I saw when of our car, there is no possibility that there was any damage whatsoever.  The woman called the police.  The officer, when he arrived, refused to right a citation to anyone since he couldn’t detect any damage to either car.  My wife gave the harridan our insurance info.

I thought (hoped, really) that that would be the end of it.

But the day after the whole house thing blew up (see my previous post) I get a call from Geico about the “accident.”  I had a hard time thinking of a .1mph impact as an accident – I’ve hit people’s cars harder than that on purpose and caused no damage.

The bonus, though, is that the car my wife was driving was my dad’s minivan, which we’d borrowed for the trip so we’d have more room.  So, I had to call Dad and explain that we’d been in an accident.  So while I was frantically trying to save my house, I had to deal with spending hours on the phone with insurance companies explaining the non-accident and making sure that the insurance adjustors when they get to look at the woman’s 97 Toyota Camry, they take a skeptical view of any of her claims of damage.

Trying to get my insurance to pay for a new paint job or something for her thirteen year old car – and making my rates go up – is basically theft.  And forcing me to have to explain all this to my dad is just annoying.

Bitch.

No easy way to excerpt, so I’ll just quote the whole damn thing:

Let me start by saying I have no problem with LeBron James leaving Cleveland for a bigger city, for a team with more talent, for more money, or for any other reason to his liking. It’s his talent. His body. He’s free to market his skills as he pleases. But like just about everyone else outside of Miami, I thought his decision to schedule a 1-hour prime time special on ESPN to make the announcement was tacky and gratuitous. (And shame on ESPN for playing along.)

So I don’t blame Cleveland for hating him.

When LaBron and the Heat visit Cleveland for the first time next season, the game will almost certainly be nationally televised. Cleveland fans could go ahead and boo and hiss when James takes the floor as expected. But that would really be no different than the reaction of every other city who lost a hometown hero to a bigger market. As these things go, what James did to Cleveland was uniquely insulting. So when James comes back to town, Cleveland needs to come up with an appropriately unique collective middle finger to let James know just how his home city feels about him. It needs to be special.

Here’s my idea: Make him play before an empty arena.

Go ahead and buy your tickets to that game. Sell the place out. In fact, for this idea to work you may need to sell the game out way ahead of time. There’s no sense in punishing the Cavs organization for all of this. If you want, have a city pep rally or two the afternoon before the game to let current Cavs players know it’s nothing personal.

But come game time, don’t step foot in the arena. Do go downtown. Patronize the local bars and restaurants. Watch the game from a sports bar. Do some shopping. But keep your tickets in your pocket. Set a goal: See if Cleveland can set an all-time record for lowest attendance at an NBA game. Put so few people in the stands that LeBron’s first dribble actually casts an echo through Quicken Loans Arena. And on national TV to boot.

Any crowd can boo. This would show some civic commitment. It would take some coordination. Some advance planning. It would demonstrate a lingering anger still potent enough to compel an entire stadium of fans to eat the price of a couple tickets. And if it works, it would be a pretty awesome spectacle to behold.

Even better: There’s a pretty good chance that the first Miami/Cleveland game in Cleveland will be on . . . ESPN.

As a native of Cleveland, I was horrified. Well, not really. But Radley has the right of it – the way James went about this was just classless. Or, to put it another way, exactly how you’d expect a player in the NBA to behave. At least we still have the rest of the team, which isn’t always the case.

My wife and I are working on a secrit project, one which involves downloading a vast amount of public domain texts from a variety of sources.  One of the sources we are using to guide our choices of which books to download is the list compiled by Harold Bloom at the end of his book, The Western Canon, the Book and School of the Ages.  Mrs. Buckethead, in interpreting some of the vaguer entries in the list (like, Robert Burns, Poems) has had recourse to looking over the interwebs for guidance on what Mr. Bloom meant when he said, “Poems.”  Universally, she has found comments criticizing Bloom’s list.  For being Eurocentric.  That’s like complaining that African-American History month is afrocentric.  Did they read the title?  Sheesh.

But, while trolling around being completist on the works of Ambrose Bierce, I found this:

Apparently, this is Johnny Depp’s directorial debut, and the story for the song – Unloveable by Babybird – is from Bierce’s classic story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.”  If you haven’t read it, you should.  This story blew me away when I first read it at 13, and just did again.

From the Oatmeal, source of all kinds of awesome. Like, Seven Reasons to Keep Your Tyrannosaur off Crack Cocaine. And How Long Could You Survive Chained to a Bunk Bed with a Velociraptor? Or after Kicking a Bear in the Balls? And then there is the mighty, Motherfucking Pterodactyl.

Found this on Foseti.  It’s like reading Joyce’s Ulysses, but without the comforting assurance of generations of fey English majors that what you are reading is indeed a classic of western literature, no matter how little sense it’s making to you as you read.

Start here, if anywhere.  And here’s a sort of concordance/glossary that may help you understand what you are reading.  Or may not.  I don’t know if I do, but it’s fun trying to imagine that I do.  There does seem to be something behind the mangled spelling and odd terminology.  Whether that something is good, I don’t know.  I hope he’s not typing this in software that has spell-checking, because otherwise the red squigglies would blind him.

From “i luvs you allls  o ye of little faith”

to all the spinsters with cats
who teh fed tricked into spinsterhood/serving debt lxolllozlzl
to all the fanboys in ther single mom’s basements
whose dads they never knew because the fed tookawy fatehrhood lzozlzl
to all the broken familes
who were split up by the need to make two salaries to feed the kids
to all aging necon womenz celeberating secretive tapings of butthex without teh girlths conthent lzozllzlzozlzl they tircked you too
to all the spinster chix again i am sorry they sdesouled you
in asscokcing sessins drugged you up on prozac
told you to abort your kids no wonder your’re d[pressed and all fucjked up no lozlzlzlzling here
my heart goes out to you while tucker max & goldman sax laugh zlzolzlzl
too all the aborted fetushes we ask for forgiveness we deserve not and to all those tricked into aborting the gift of life lzozllzllzl we forgive u too and pray for teh fethuses, but not in school as prayer is illegal in school lozlzllzlz

[wik] One of GBFM’s favorite word is butthex.  But it’s not pronounced butt-hex.  You are asked to imagine that Barney Frank is saying it – something more like but-thex.

[alsø wik] Not really germane, but considering what I just linked, who the fuck cares?  GBFM uses a the pure quill variant of the Hemingway Black WordPress theme that once powered perfidy before we cleaned house and moved to this new, Buckethead-designed theme.

[alsø alsø wik] I don’t think we’ve ever had a more appropriate use of the ‘deranged scribblings’ category here on perfidy.

[Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] I just noticed that there is a post at GBFM entitled, ‘how the federal reserve system created the PUA community lzozlzlzloozlzllzll!! they DO NO wan t the men to read mises or hayek or jefferson or the us constitution lzozlzlzlz they want to keep the men in the fiat masters’ cave — the fiat butthex matrix — “gaming” and fighting over the table scraps of all the desoulaed, haggaard, std-ridden, vicious, gold-digging, cold, defeminized, prozac-addled womenz the fiat masters buttthexed and deosuled in college during teh primae nocate ceremeonies, instead of manning up and fighting for their dvine irght to something far greater — an honorable, virtuous wife. lzozllzllzllzozzlz’ – I believe I’ll save that one for lunch tomorrow.

Interesting.

Sure, men were a good idea. They were a good idea when the world needed immature, aggressive,  reckless, “overemotional” brutes who could hunt and plow.

Describing men, in opposition to women, as “overemotional” is new to me.  I’ve been somewhat insulated from the effects described in the post I linked – working in IT.  IT remains a predominantly male preserve.

Would it be completely un-PC of me to note that we’ve seen a drastic decline in innovation in nearly all fields, over the period that women have increased their role in the workplace, save only in the two fields that have not seen a vast influx of women?

Maybe “immature, agressive, reckless, ‘overemotional’ brutes have some value that isn’t currently recognized by the leading lights of our culture.  In fact, maybe if we rephrased that description to, “confident, assertive, daring, passionate men” we’d see more of it.  One (among many) of the reasons that we’ve decided to homeschool is the treatment of boys in the public schools – whenever a boy acts like a boy, they generally get prescribed ritalin, and they are indoctrinated into viewing their own nature as “immature, aggressive, reckless, ‘overemotional’ brutes.  I have no brief against women in the workplace, but not at the cost of training boys not to be men.

And while I’m on about it, a little emotional stoicism would likely do us all a lot of good.  Except for Jerry Springer and Oprah.  A rebirth of emotional stoicism would kill them.

Now go read the post that justifies, in a roundabout way, this picture.

I almost inexpressibly happy.  I am floating on air.  I am tingly with joy.  I am so happy, if I saw a congressman, I wouldn’t spit on him.

Why?  The materialistic and gadget addicted side of Buckethead has been deeply unhappy for much of 2010.  Because on the day after Christmas, his dog Kasey gave him an anti-Christmas present.  Kasey committed the unforgivable sin of breaking his master’s iPhone.  Horror!

I was walking Kasey, waiting patiently for him to find a suitable pile of snow to piss on.  I realize that this is a difficult process, piles of snow being so different and all.  So I was reading something or other on my iPhone and smoking a smoke when tragically, Kasey saw a squirrel or snow weasel or some damn thing and jerked on the leash.  Which jerked my hand.  Which held the iPhone.  Which then wasn’t holding the iPhone.  The iPhone flipped up, did a one and a half gainer, and did a belly flop glass down on the pavement.  10.0 from the East German judge, but the glass was cracked.

Here’s the villain, looking remorseful:

The only thing damaged was the glass surface – the underlying screen and touch sensors were still functional.  For about a month, I continued to use the phone while I tried to figure out what course to follow for repairs.  Every time I swiped my finger over the cracked glass, I cried a little tear inside.

Apple wanted $200 to fix the glass.  ”$200!” I exclaimed, “That’s the price of a new phone!”  ”A new, unsubsidized phone is $650,” the Apple Store employee helpfully pointed out.  Well, that seemed high, seeing that you could buy the glass part for $25 online.  Of course, I couldn’t get a subsidized phone, I’d used my upgrade to get the one that lay, broken, before me.  Mrs. Buckethead is eligible for an upgrade, but wasting her upgrade on a replacement phone for me seemed, well, unseemly.  Also stupid, since I was planning on using her upgrade to get me an iPhone 4.0 when it comes out in June.

I dithered on ordering the parts and doing the repair myself.  On the one hand, I’m moderately handy with electronics.  I’ve built my own computers.  I can repair things.  I can make things better than they were before.  On the other hand, the iPhone is a $600 piece of magical technology made out of rainbows and leprechaun brains, hand crafted by Unicorns.  After deep soul searching and comparing the $50 with $200, I decided to order the parts.

The parts arrived, and I disassembled my phone using custom made plastic prybars and a suction cup.  I removed twenty dozen molecule-sized screws.  I pulled the screen assembly out of the phone.  I disconnected things.  The tricky bit was getting the LCD screen out and away from the glass.  I removed the broken glass, not even cutting myself.  I installed the new glass, reassembled the phone, and proudly turned it back on.

Holy mother of fuck, I broke the LCD display when I twisted it to get it out of the frame.

I cried bitter, bitter tears.  It seems that LCD screens do not tolerate twisting, even in small, repair-justified amounts.

I tried not to think about my phone.  About as successfully as you can avoid noticing you’ve amputated your arm.  Because, after two and a half years, losing the phone was like losing an arm.  I borrowed my wife’s iPhone – my original iPhone.  But that was like losing an arm and replacing it with one of those creepy hook things.  Sure you can pick things up, but you scare small children.  I wanted the full 3GS goodness.  I wanted my arm back.

So I looked online again.  Some people warned against the online repair shops.  Plus, shipping costs yet money.  I decided to go with a local repair shop that was “only two blocks from the metro.”  Turns out, that’s actually five blocks, not one of which has plowed sidewalks.  And uphill both ways.  But anyway.

Dropped the maimed iPhone off with the helpful and condescending lackey.  And three days and $200 later, I have a working iPhone again.  And I am whole and happy once more.

This whole experience has been stuffed to the gills with lessons, moral and otherwise.

• One, never trust dogs.  The little bastards don’t care what you’ve got in your hand when they see an ice weasel.  This obviously has implications beyond iPhones.
• Two, $30 for an iPhone case is cheaper than $250 in iPhone repair costs.  You’d think that would be obvious.  But it ain’t.
• Three, I am completely and unabashedly addicted to my iPhone.  I was briefly embarrassed by the extent and deepness of my affliction.  But really, why shouldn’t I be dependent on something so damn useful?  Do you think your dependence on, say, the internet or cars is ridiculous?
• Four, I went down the road my Grandfather always walked, the one that made my grandmother say, “We fix everything twice.”  I spent $250 repairing the phone, and a lot more trouble.  If I’d just gone to Apple I’d have had it fixed sooner, spent less money and wouldn’t have violated my warranty.
• Five, I know all I have to do to recapture this feeling is buy an iPad next month.

Perfidy is now at WordPress version 2.8.4, and theoretically safe from blog eating monsters.  That’s the upside.  Downside is that some of the old plugins apparently aren’t very compatible with the new version, and some things are hosed.  Like the “open sesame” button up there to the right, fer instance.

I think I might just redesign the whole site, seeing as I’m going to be doing that same thing for two others over the next couple weeks.  And seeing as I’m the only one who’s posted anything over the last year or so, and damn little of that, well, I’m not even going to solicit input from my fellow ministers.

I am Perfidy.  I control the horizontal.  I control the vertical.  And no one really cares.