The Apple Store officially has a sad reputation with me, now. Last month I ordered the For Mac Studio, which took 3 weeks to arrive, after I paid $15.00 for express delivery. Now I've ordered the iPod, back on Monday, to be shipped priority overnight. Fedex tracking tells me it should be delivered by NEXT Tuesday morning.

I'm sorry, when did "priority overnight" translate to "8 days from now"? I could see it taking 3 days or so: I order it on day 1, they ship it day 2, it arrives day 3. Even 4 days if they miss the cutoff time on day 2, is understandable. But 8 days???

Anyway, there's my rant. I wish I were seeing David this weekend. But I guess it's good to have at least one uncommitted weekend each month, and in this case, I have Lauren's birthday to look after tomorrow night...

The sixth consecutive day away from David is always the hardest. But I'll get through it, and probably not let him out of bed the entirety of next weekend.

To change topics: not that I had all that much respect for him before, but Newsweek's new cover story on the Gates' philanthropy makes me have even less respect for Windoze's emperor. Personally, I never find philanthropy all that impressive to start with.

Men who really want to help others do it in pursuit of the gratification they get out of extending that help, and they don't advertize their activities if they truly believe in them. The only reason Bill Gates would 1) give up a fortune in capital toward dubious charities (which he owns and can therefore write-off) and 2) brag and spout about it in national newspapers, is because he feels guilty about his wealth.

I do so long for those good old pre-Sherman Antitrust days when the richest men on Earth were actually proud of the fortunes they had created, and saw their wealth as a personal achievement, not as a burden of which they should feel ashamed. Perhaps the fact that Gates himself has committed some dubious business flubs contributes to his guilty feelings toward his wealth? It would make sense, considering he has failed to really defend himself against the nearly decade-long DOJ attack on his company. Instead of claiming that the Windoze "monopoly" is a market response to a popular product, he has shouted "but I don't have a monopoly!" and "don't attack me, attack AOL Time Warner!"

If he was proud and confident of his fortune, he would say "I created this product, people want it, I deserve my wealth" and he would build his philanthropic portfolio in a less horn-blowing and more respectable fashion. Silly self-deluded man...

A big Happy Birthday to Lauren. I only wish I had more to offer you than a breakfast at Klein's. But at least we chose the best place in Fresno for breakfast (at least the best non-Mexican place on Sundays).

There's a song by The Sleepover Disaster called "Startime" which is currently my favorite song. I think I like it because it makes me think of David. It's not really a song he ever mentioned, but for a variety of reasons I associate the song with him...

And right now I associate him with the fact that I will still be waiting 5 more days to see him. But like I said, maybe this absence thing is good in small quantities...

I hate Avery. I hate their labels, their crappy accompanying software and their web site. Just try using their CD-case labels and you'll see what I mean. Why design a form like a CD insert and then not allow your software to typeset like a CD case insert? Useless useless, useless...

Go Patriots. Damn you for taking my regular Fox programming away, though.

I was sitting down, thinking of writing another dirty story that had been brewing for a few days, when I suddenly started typing my first new essay in months, breaking a scary dry spell.

Hopefully no one takes it the wrong way. But have I mentioned that Startime is my favorite song right now? Or that David is my favorite person?

Little did I know when I awoke Monday morning that by the week's end my entire web presence would be so transformed. But here it is. Welcome to MurderingMouth. It's basically the same as my previous site at TheHyaena.Net, except this site includes only the Journals and Essays (eg, the most popular parts) from TheHyaena. TheHyaena now houses my biographical section, the Fresno section and the Road Trips journals.

I know it will mess a lot of people up, having moved the more frequently updated and more popular sections, but I actually like this domain name better, and since the journals and essays (and dirty stories) are what I spend more time on anyway, I thought this would be a better place to park.

But the whole decision was quite unexpected. I woke up on Monday to find my mailbox sstuffed full (I mean full - to where incomings were being bounced) with spam. I quickly blocked all incomings and took down the site as a precaution. Further research traced the problem to a suddenly reactivated but previously dormant prior account which had forwardiing turned on to my main box. Apparently the dormancy had not meant that messages were being bounced in the interim, and thus when it came back to life, it came with all the messages. I'd already made major realignments to the site, since I first assumed that the influx was to be blamed on the site's contact form.

Anyway, I figured since I would have to do some work to get the site back up, I might as well make use of this domain and separate the more-updated and more-popular parts of the site from the more archival and less read areas. Most people would question the intelligence of moving the more popular sections to the new (unlinked, unbookmarked) domain, but it will probably stay here longer, sinec I like the name better, anyhow.

So there you have it. If you haven't seen it yet, there's a new essay up. I shall be spending the rest of the evening working on a much-delayed dirty story. Once again, if you don't know where I keep them, you have to ask...

Thanks for this, Andrea. Now I can reminisce about those days when video games were actually cool...

I am a Breakout Bat. I am an abstract sort of creature, who dislikes any sort of restraint. If you try to pigeonhole me, I'll break the box, and come back for more. I don't have any particular ambitions, I just drift, but I am adept at keeping life going along.

Well, I dropped over $300.00 at the dermotologist's and the pharmacy yesterday, but after only 24 hours of antibiotic and topical steriod therapy, I'm back in the world of wankers with normal skin. I'm glad that money was put to use in a good way, even though it squeezes that new DVD player out of my budget for another couple months...

Unfortunately, having normal skin might put me in danger of frequenting net.porn far too often... Well, at least I'm building a good stash of porn featuring David. That stuff works better anyway...

So I managed to host David for yet another great weekend. We did the Mexican food, the romantic steakhouse dinner, hung out with all my favorite lesbians and saw a kick-ass show at Club Fred featuring Fastback 69 and los Creepers. Captured it all in digital sound, the cleaning up and editing of which will probably consume my next couple evenings.

I also reflected upon the fact that David is probably a real anomaly - not just for me but for anyone. Where else do you find a guy that is physically and intellectually stimulating (damn is he stimulating...) and can round it out with sex that is significant in both its quality and quantity? I mean - we have a lot of sex... And it's all good sex... Yep, I think I've landed a keeper here...

Anyway, I guess I should stop being so mushy. But speaking of sex, there's a new dirty story up. If you know where to find it, good for you, if not, ask me and I just might tell you.

Milosevic has a point. I've never been a fan of supernational law, and there is a very rational reason for this. By accepting citizenship of a nation, one accepts the rights of that nation's government to enforce its law on oneself. An individual has as much a right to choose the state he wishes to live in as he has a right to be governed by consent. This is why majority rule must never infringe on individual rights (though it often does).

The fact is, Yugoslavia has never agreed to be accountable before any international body. Being a member of the United Nations does not obligate any individual state to participate in the institutions managed by that organization. The UN is effectively a mere NGO, and its institutions are member created, and all are voluntary. Even membership in the UN is voluntary. I admire the Swiss for their discipline in avoiding the irrational (and expensive) entanglements of membership in the UN or its institutions.

The fact that an international court is trying Milosevic for crimes which were not committed under any Court jurisdiction (as defined by the consent of the offender) is a mockery of justice. I admire Milosevic for his refusal to recognise the justice in the proceedings against him. His trial is analogous to Chechen rebells trying an ethnic Russian for not following Chechen Islamic law, or America trying a Saudi terrorist in an American court for crimes committed in Israel. In any case, a trial is only just when the court has a documented and recognised jurisdiction over the case at hand.

Milosevic has said that his trial is illegal. This is true. If he has committed crimes against specific Yugoslav or Albanian citizens or residents, it is the reposability of Yugoslavia or Albania (or the budding sovereignty of Kosovo) to try him. If they choose to delegate their jurisdiction to an international or foreign body (none of them have), then the trial would hold water. As it is, Milosevic is now a political prisoner, and as such, he is behaving appropriately at his "trial". By refusing to enter a plea, he is justifiably withholding his consent and sanction from an alien court wishing to hold him responsible for laws he never agreed to be held accountable to.

Would that America would take heed to the persecution of Milosevic and his government, and quickly and decisively remove itself from these unjust and wicked international organizations - the United Nations being the worst. I have written my congressmen: "Get us out, now!." Would that others followed suit...

A somewhat sleepless night last night, but it wasn't entirely a bad thing. I listened to "Rain Dogs" on repeat for a while and contemplated some things. I even had a revelation or two. It was significant. Tell my instant messenger it will be neglected for the forseeable future. Tell the bars they'll probably not be seeing much of me. Tell Fresno to enjoy me while she can. And happy Valentine's Day to you. Now if only I'd figured out just how mushy or explicit I was allowed to be in this journal...

I hate AT&T now. And it has nothing to do with the Carrot Top campaign. I'm not going to go into it, now though. I'll just ruin what was a wonderful blood pressure diagnosis this morning.

114/82. That's almost a miricle for me. I (and Doc) think it has a lot to do with quitting smoking back on New Years. Doc has now told me to quit caffine. That will be substantially harder, as it is more tied-up in my day-to-day activity, and I'm far more addicted to it than I was nicotine. I only smoked socially, never in my home, and usually less than 2 packs per week. I enjoy caffinated beverages morning noon and night, alone and in social settings, with meals and without, and in quantity. I prefer sugarless sodas, and it's often difficult to find those elusive caffine-free-diet sodas in all venues. It will be a chore to start having to say "just water, thanks".

I'm sure I'll manage... And sorry Becky for losing your link when the site moved. Thanks for the special Valentine's words.

In only a few more hours, I'll be hosting my favorite fellow traveler for a special Valentine's version of our usual weekend together. Complete with a Saturday evening session with Sippy & Old Guzzler.

And speaking of travelling, I thought I'd mention that I will be visiting the great Northwest with this very same person in early April, and he has inspired the idea in me that I should bring along the iBook, just in case there's some important stuff worth cataloguing. Along those lines, if anyone has any suggestions as to cheap divy motels, diners, cheap divy restaurants or places to avoid, or even roadside attractions that I might otherwise miss, please let me know. I have this sinking suspicion that I will be falling in love with Portland when I visit it... We'll see. I'm sure there will be more on this subject as the trip draws nearer.

Hungry and tired. As expected, the decongestants left me with precious little sleep for a second night in a row. But at least tonight I'll have a legitimate reason (aka "sex") for not getting to sleep early... Now to contemplate lunch...

Because I'm no longer likely to take any new applicants, I decided to note as much on my Ideal Personal. I still think it was a good witty bit of writing on my part,though, so I'm going to at least keep it available for your continued perusal.

I never thought I'd feel so great about no longer caring whether anyone answered a personal of mine...

I bid David goodbye about an hour ago... As always, I have this dopey giddy grin on my face and I'm a combination content with having spent such a woonderful weekend with him and sad that we always have to part ways. I honestly can't wait until our trip, when I get to spend 9 whole days with him...

Hopefully that doesn't spoil me and make even 9 days too short. I'm sure it will. Now who among you all are being tootally cheesed out by my recent mushiness? Good.

You'll also notice I now have linkable individual entries on this page. Not sure whether I'll do it to old entries, but you can now link to a specific point. Now onto the job of getting these to automatically update to the new month when it comes...

I added a few links and finally put together an index for my journals, so that you can easiily access each individual month, rather than having to go back chronologically each page. I figured now that I'm into my 6th month, it makes sense to improve the navigation throuhout the journals as they become more volumous.

Brewing a rant on John Walker Lindh and a new dirty story, but no guarantees that either will apppear tonight...

So what's going on at TheHyaena.Net? Good question. Even I'm not sure. All I know is that I've been very slow at getting out and getting new content for that site, and I doubt my apathy will change any time soon. I have wanted to start getting back into tape/CD trading, and start having some more substantial content on Fresno and the road trips so that I can move those sections to their already-acquired domains.

And yet, and yet and yet... I just can't really find the motivation. I've had a bit of atrophy in my infatuation with Fresno, due primarily to the facts that I'm tired of my job and that my significant other isn't here. I want to eliminate both of those problems, but I still think that Fresno has a lot to offer me, and that I have a service to offer it via my web-work. We'll see.

I love Fresno, but I need to change my scenery soon, otherwise I may grow to see this place more as a prison than a playground. I may return, but only if the break is amicable. The longer I stay, the less likely that is to happen.

So there you have it - I haven't abandoned my previous home, I just don't really know how much I care anymore... Maybe I'll get around to caring again. Just not now.

I have finally posted my position paper on the trial of John Walker Lindh. It is not only in response to the press and popular reactions to the trial, but to the "might v. right" argument which has been showing up throughout the dialogue in the war on terrorism, and has managed to make its way even to my own message board. Whilst I encourage the discussion of hotly controversial topics, my impatience at being misunderstood will prompt a diligent fight for reassertion...

Take it for what it is...

Referred by Andrea:

My Potential For...
Disorder	Rating
Paranoid	Low
Schizoid	High
Schizotypal	Moderate
Antisocial	Moderate
Borderline	Low
Histrionic	Moderate
Narcissistic	High
Avoidant	Low
Dependent	Low
Obsessive-Compulsive	Moderate
Take The Test

All these neato quizzes and stuff... I feel like I should be reading Cosmo. But they're fun, and I'm posting them even though they do fill up my journal with quite a bit of useless stuff... At least I can guarantee you that they'll prolly be dead links within a year and thus will be unlikely to soil my archives...

Take the What animal best portrays your sexual appetite?? Quiz

But this one kinda makes sense, though there outta be a category for people who are even worse in the Nympho area. I know I'm pretty bad, but I know people who are worse (not that "worse" is necessarily a "bad" thing... Is anyone confused yet?). My sex partners still only number in the double digits. But then again, I'm still only 24...

I'm glad we're finally taking the Bay Area to court. We may not (and I actually hope we don't) enforce anything as far as actually reducing Bay Area pollution production, but hopefully the end result of the case is an affirmation that making the Central Valley responsible for 100% of its air quality problems overlooks the fact that most of our pollution sees its source esewhere.

Anyone who knows my political opinions would understand that I'm in no way a fan of environmental laws, epecially when they get in the way of commerce. But in the recent case, Sacramento is trying to tell their southern counterparts that we need to reduce our smog or lose the federal money that we produced but that they control. This pisses me off even more, and thus think we need some sort of official recognition that most (yes, most) of the San Joaquin basin's pollution is produced in the Bay Area.

Ultimately, industrial pollution is a side effect of freedom and affluence. We should welcome it. But here we're dealing with a catalogue of irrational laws - we have to know which to attack first - and I think the "total responsibility" part is a good place to start.

I've searched for this for years and finally stumbled upon an old archive of it. I thought it would be a novel addition to all the other .Net-Codes I've been tossing out lately. But if you want to decode it, you'll have to be as snoopy as I was today...

Goth.Code2.5a GoSS7Bu5$ TYyuJtZ cLBRZ1 PG10Sa6E3 M2p3gD ZGo*PuoEx*MegIp*Ja* C7om a24- b55 H178 g5T w5 r3E h4 s1 k5 Rn SrNy N0196 LusCA

I love that code... It's the most descriptive I ever came accross... Anyone know of an even better one?

It was an alarmingly nice day today, and the smell in the air on my commute home was almost reminiscent of May or June. It put me in an alarmingly good mood, so much so that I decided to take a rare weeknight trip to one of Fresno's less offensive pubs to have a couple glasses of sin before bed.

Now why is it that jerks at bars can always sense the people that are just there to zone out and enjoy themselves, and always manage to ruin a perfectly good mood accompanied by a second pint of Newcastle? Anyway, I cut my outing short in order to avoid this unpleasant element. Reminds me why I don't really go out very often anymore - especially alone.

But tomorrow I'm gonna see David, and since that's what's really getting me through the week, I'm over the unpleasantness already.

Sorry to those who have been fruitlessly hoping for updates the past few days. This isn't really one. I just wanted to advertise my voting habits by displaying what I'm voting for in California's odious primary election:

• Superior Court 1: Jim Oppliger
• Superior Court 13: Vince McGraw
• Superior Court 16: John Vogt
• State Superintendent: Lynne Leach
• County Superintendent: Pete Mehas
• Assessor: Bob Werner
• Controller: Paul Dictos
• Clerk: Victor Salazar
• D.A.: Elizabeth Egan
• Coroner (my personal favorite): Loralee Cervantes
• Sheriff: Dick Pierce
• City Council 1: Tom Boyajian

I'm voting "NO" on all measures except 42. 42 will allocate the gas tax strictly to infrastructure (theoretically). Every other measure either puts our state or county in more debt or infriges on the rights of some minority (usually businesses or the wealthy).

For those of you searching with baited breath for which party candidates I'm voting for, I apologize, but as a non-partisan voter, it's pretty useless for me to vote for candidates when the parties reserve the right to reject my vote. I'll wait until November for them to do that.

New Alanis disc to buy, then I'm fasting in the music area until the end of March. I've had both a new rant and a new dirty story brewing, but I'm not in the mood today. Still soliciting suggestions for my trip to Portland & Seattle next month. Full-serve gas anyone?

After a lengthy battle, Fresno has beat out Clovis in the fight over who gets to annex Copper River. I must say that it's refreshing that people are actually clamouring to join Fresno. It's a rare departure from the old-hat snubbing shown by the snobbish county islands such as Sunnyside, Fig Garden and Fort Washington, who continue to deny annexing. I'm sort of a Fresno supremiscist, and a statistics whore, and those combine to make me happy about any news of growth in Fresno. I have this fantasy of Fresno one day beating San Francisco population-wise (it has already beat Long Beach to become #5 in the state - not bad for being #3 in terms of total land area).

My fantasy was almost crushed a few years back when Madera approved the Children's Hospital Development on the 41 corridor, since it meant the city would be jumping over the San Joaquin river and into Madera rather than continuing to grow within Fresno County. New growth in southern Madera will continue to leach some growth out of Fresno for the forseeable future, and the possibility of an LA County-Orange County type of seamless metro area is a good prediction, to which I don't really object per se. But I still want Fresno to be the statistical beneficiary. And with the renewed interest in the Copper River area and the forthcoming extension of 180 into the Kearny-Kerman area should spark some new suburban growth in this often neglected but very promising region. Of course, this wouldn't matter if this was back east, where the city growth isn't subject to county boundaries.

Horray for Fresno. And if it's any consolation, I don't mind if Clovis gets Tarpey. Clovis deserves the trailer trash. It is Klovis Klan Kountry, after all - and Tarpey is where the burning crosses feel most at home. They can annex that if they really need some growth. But that kind of growth might be a little too much like a tumor, I guess. Whatever.

I'm living in hell.

Why is it that whenever I start really feeling good about myself and my life and where I'm going, some sort of mild adversity has to come along and throw the shit right in my face. I'm depressed and crying this morning and tense and disturbed the rest of the day.

I don't really want to go into exactly what the adversity was today, but it has conspired with recent home improvement needs to totally scuttle any possibility of arranging an unscheduled visit to see David this weekend. Now we definately have to wait another week, and even that one might not be as pleasant as it could have been, depending upon the extent to which this current crisis is repaired by then.

Anyway, my day has been absorbed with damage control, and that doesn't even include the huge telephone clusterfuck I've been going through trying to ixnay AT&T. I would like to formally declare that they are the most despicable and detestible company on Earth. I hope they crumble crumble one of these days. Crumble crumble crumble...

I really hope things are looking better by this time next week...

Feeling only slightly less hysterical. A few soothing words from David and a browse through my regular web journals has snapped me as close to normalcy as I'll get today. Or this week for that matter.

Thinks I hate today:

• Human pathogens
• Slow scaners
• AT&T

Things I love, despite my mood:

• David, the most wonderful man in the world.
• Permethrin
• Having a laundry room

And finally, thanks Sarah for this:

Which Winona Are You?

That's it for February. My body was not happy this month.