This is Why Computers Were Invented

The title for this entry comes from a curious email I received today. "We are positive we can get you laid." While I agree that this would be a challenge which would easily justify emailing people for consultations, I seriously doubt that the people who sent me this message are up to the job.

I'm not really interested in getting laid. Like Acidman always said, there is no such thing as free sex. Women always find a way to charge for the service.

I have no idea how much spam I get every day, but I'm sure the spam/legitimate email ratio is a number bigger than five. This is what I get for having friends who don't know what "BCC" means. I tell them over and over, stop putting my goddamn address in "To" lists, and they apologize and agree every time, and then they put me in more "To" lists.

The dumbest spam I get is image spam. You get an email with a subject like "cow doily weasel mondongo," and you open it up, and it's a jpg full of text, instructing you to buy a stock. What kind of moron buys stock based on spam? I shouldn't even ask. Not in a world where Nigerian spammers reel in two million dollars a day.

My aunt once told me the Bible compares humans to sheep because sheep are incredibly stupid and helpless, and sometimes I believe it.

Someone help me understand why Mozilla Thunderbird blocks inline images from Hewlett-Packard and American Express but lets "cow doily weasel mondongo" stock tip images squirt right through.

My argon tank arrived yesterday. Very exciting. It's roughly the same volume as a scuba tank, but taller and thinner, and it weighs a ton. Wonder why that is. Scuba tanks have to hold what, 3000 psi? Correct me if I'm wrong. I believe this thing only has to cope with 2500, and you don't bang it around on boats or bump it into coral, so you would think it would be no heavier than a scuba tank.

I think you could pull great pranks with this thing. Imagine filling it with helium and opening it up at a christening or something. Suddenly the priest sounds like Alvin the Jesuit chipmunk. Nitrous oxide would be even funnier, but the priest might drop the baby.

I got a nice new tank instead of a used one. The price was about the same. The problem with this is that it's so pretty, I won't be willing to exchange it. I'll have to leave it at Airgas and go pick it up. I don't want some turdhead at a muffler store renting my tank and scratching it up. Maybe I should paint flames on it and put on some lacquer.

I looked into welding courses. Here is an interesting fact. Miami is the home of the American Welding Society. They have a building on LeJeune Road. Their site directed me to some places where I can take courses. People keep telling me they took evening courses at their local community colleges and so on, so I figured there had to be something like that down here. If so, I have not found it. I keep seeing things like "total hours: 1170." I just want to build barbecues; I don't want to make my own aircraft carrier.

Hobart Welding has a site that has courses using DVDs. Great. I took a look. Cost? About a thousand. That's about nine hundred and seventy-five dollars more than I feel like paying.

I guess I'll be okay with my two DVDs and a couple of books. After all, like I said before...not brain surgery.

Someone suggested I build what is known as a brewing sculpture. This is a big iron monstrosity on which you brew beer. I have never seen the appeal. It's huge, it's heavy, and I fail to see how it could begin to be as convenient as the stove and kettle. If I had a big plot of semi-rural land, and I had a cheap shed on the land, I could see sticking one of these things in there, to get the crap out of the house. But in a suburban setting, it seems like a bad idea.

What I WOULD like to do is to add some sheet metal to my propane burner, to keep wind away from the flame. That would be easy, even for me. It would also be fun to modify it so it has two burners, side by side. That would make steak nights easier. I could do three or four steaks at once.

Steak. Mmmmmmm. Something to think about.

Life is not overly stressful right now. While I was screwing around with the contracts for Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man, the publisher told me they didn't need a manuscript until March. So I wrote "March 15" in the deadline box. Inadvertently giving myself a long and unexpected vacation. I thought it would take longer to get the work done, but working at a leisurely pace, I expect to be finished in February. I should get back to the screenplay. It would take about three days to finish the first draft. I know the odds that it will sell are tiny, but who knows? Besides, it would be funny to publish it in its own right.

You are now caught up on my hectic life. Just be grateful you don't have to maintain this killer pace.