3 more days

in 3 more days i will open the jar of toonies (2 dollar coins) and find out how many trips i took to the supermarket on the iron maiden. i've been staring at the jar for weeks and have resisted temptation. i'm dying to know how many coins are in the jar but therein lies the problem. once i open the jar and count the coins i won't have anything to look forward to. my raison de etre will have vanished.

i'm thoroughly enjoying the tomatoes and without further ado, i present little leo, the lemon tomato:

it doesn't really taste much different than a red tomato but who gives a shit, i can walk around saying, look at my beautiful lemon tomato. i gave the best one to my father and he didn't really seem to give a shit about it. i guess not giving a shit is hereditary but i'm not complaining. not giving a shit usually works out very well. the trick is making people think you really do give a shit. this is essential at the cracker factory.

in other news, mr google, sergey brin, has ditched his wife for a YOUNGER WOMAN. i find this very disturbing. all week i've heard about cars that will be able to drive themselves by 2020 and i'm pretty sure that google maps and satellite services will be front and center. the man responsible our safety should at least be able to resist the charms of a younger woman. i've thought google was a great company for years and if the world goes to self driving cars using google technology, there should be more than a few kopeks profit.

there is one thing i give a shit about:

i love you sons of bitches.

inequality?

a lot has been said about economic inequality and the ever increasing chasm between the haves and the have nots. this little deal is QUITE INTERESTING and kind of cool to play with even though it seems to be a little biased against white men. all is can say is, jesus fucking christ i apologize for being a white male. i'm just lucky to born on a white male friendly planet. there's a few planets where i wouldn't want to be a white male for all the tea in china.

i don't know who owns the outfit that produces the CRONUT BURGER, but a lot of people have puked their guts out after eating one. it's pretty easy to sit back and say any fool who eats that shit deserves to get sick but i must confess, in my younger days, after a few drinks, a cronut burger would have looked pretty good. same thing for wendy's baconator. the thought of eating one of those things makes me sick but once again, in my younger years, i would have ran to wendy's as soon as the first buy one, get one free coupon arrived in the mail.

so heres the question, would you eat a cronut burger?

and here's a little bit of news that made me smile. JUSTIN TRUDEAU SMOKED POT AFTER BECOMING A MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT! as i said, my first reaction was, right on justin, you're my man! but then i read where that fucknut prime minister of ours, fat bald harper, was grinning like the cheshire cat when he heard about this. just one more item for harper to base his attack ads on for the next election. the more whacky stuff trudeau does, the higher the odds of harper getting re-elected. it can be quite depressing.

in the spirit of canadiana, let me present a cool song that makes me proud to be a canadian:

i love you sons of bitches.

new gimmick?

last september i bit the bullet and had the drive train replaced in the iron maiden. i hemmed and hawed over that decision for a long time but decided what the hell, that old bike and i have a lot of memories, so i sunk a few hundred dollars into it. to have a little fun i decided to toss a toonie (2 bucks) into a jar every time i rode her to the supermarket since that's about how much money i would save on gas. well, september 1 will be d-day. i'll open the jar and count the coins. all i know right now is the jar feels heavy:

the decanter beside the jar contains about 5 pounds of pennies. remember when i had the brilliant idea to buy 25 pounds of pennies? well, i still have 20 pounds looking for a home. all i can say is it seemed like a good idea at the time.

the tomatoes are doing very well. the picture below shows a few ripe ones next to an almost ripe lemon tomato. they're from different plants that i failed to properly prune and have crossed over each other.

my buddy continues to deteriorate and refuses to seek medical help. he wouldn't get out of bed this morning saying he'd rather kill himself but lacked the guts. he is a very difficult man to deal with at the best of times. as they say, pride goeth before a fall.

i love you sons of bitches, any guesses on the number of coins?

vanity sizing

hands up if you know what VANITY SIZING is. i wasn't familiar with the term until i complained about pants not fitting. a few weeks ago i bought a pair of pants without trying them on, yes i know, dumb move. when i put them on i couldn't believe how fucking big they were. i take a size 32 waist and these things had to be at least 34's. in the past if i saw "relaxed fit" i knew they would be big but that little hint seems to be out the window. when i took the pants back i grabbed a 31 and a 30 to try on. the 31 was still way to big for me and the 30 was just a fucking big. i probably would have fit quite nicely into a 28 but said fuck it and asked for my money back.

i guess that's the new paradigm. make chubby people think they're thin by mislabeling clothes. oh yeah, my fucking feet seem to have grown a few sizes over the years. people want small waists and big feet. people will bitch and squawk if they buy a product that doesn't accurately state the ingredients or true weight but they don't say peep if the deceitful practice allows them to feel thin.

i was talking to my suicidal friend a few minutes ago and it occurred to me an explanation may be in order for my frequent childish remarks about jews and nine irons. my buddy is a first class racist. years ago he hated nine irons with an intensity that would put a pitbull on guard to shame. every thing that was wrong with the world was the fault of the nine irons. for the past few years his hatred has switched from nine irons to jews. no matter what conversation we have it will usually end up in an argument over jews. there are topics i won't touch because i know it's going to start an argument over jews or nine irons. so if i've had one of these conversations just before doing one of my childish posts, there's a good chance i'll toss in a few digs at my israeli or asian brothers out of frustration. truth be told, it's snooty eurotrash that really bug me.

on a more positive note, me and ruby are swimming in ripe tomatoes. when tomatoes are in season, the tomato slice should be at least as thick as the meat patty in a burger. at least that's how i see the world.

these guys are pretty good. i liked them on the "i'm not there" but just now got around to checking them out.

i love you sons of bitches.

one small step

a few weeks ago i mentioned there might be a few changes in pilgrimville. a change occurred today, not the big change i had in mind, but a change nevertheless. it had been my plan to retire this summer but a few unexpected things popped up and, well you know the story, the best laid plans......

rather than pulling the plug, i gave it a tug today and will be on leave until the next fiscal year. i'm so excited i could shit. this isn't how things were supposed to play out. when i was a young man, i dreamed of the day i could retire and party like it's 1999. i'd be out drinking, partying, playing poker and generally having the time of my life but i never factored in one very important detail, AGE! although i now have the time and resources to fulfill those wonderful dreams, my decaying old body will have none of it. good bye alcohol, hello vegetables. it's been the ruin of many a poor boy.

the other plan was to leave the rat race and join two friends on vancouver island. well, that plan was shot to shit too. one friend up and died and the other has gone stark raving mad. he is probably pacing back and forth at this very moment waiting for the roof to collapse on the new house he built two years ago. several years ago he had a really nice little house on the ocean but became convinced that the house was about to collapse and sold it real cheap. he then bought a really beautiful large on house on the ocean and within a few months he was convinced that house was going to slide into the ocean and he'd be ruined. the house didn't slip into the ocean but he was ruined. major depression, suicidal and desperate. he sold the house at a huge loss and bought a new house in a family oriented sub-division. after several months he decided that the new house was depreciating too much in value so he sold it at a loss and built his current house. it's a fucking beauty, not on the ocean but across the street from the ocean with an unobstructed view. things were going smoothly until his well ran dry and again he's convinced the house is fallilng apart and he's back to being suicidal. there's one big difference this time, he's flat broke. i won't go into how he lost a ton of money on the market, suffice to say that mental illness played a big part. through all this nonsense he's refused medical help, i'm his surrogate therapist. oh, the stories i could tell.

so plan a and plan b are both down the shitter. scotty, i need that third option!!

this kind of sums it up.

i love you sons of bitches.

sochi

so russia is CRACKING DOWN ON GAY PROLIFERATION at the sochi olympics. i'm surprised that russia is doing this as it surely is an impossible public relations battle to overcome. it has been my experience that engaging in a war of words with jews, indians or homosexuals is akin to pissing into the wind.

now george takei is jumping on the bandwagon and calling for the sochi games to be MOVED TO VANCOUVER., lucky us. i didn't really pay much attention to this bullshit until that little rat bastard weasel takei opened his pie hole. i have a two bit bullshit facebook account and somehow i'm always seeing takei's ugly mug on my wall as lots of people seem to enjoy sharing his shit. until that little rat bastard fudge packer issues a unequivocal and sincere apology to william shatner for all the cheap shots he's leveled at the man responsible for any success he's enjoyed, he is persona non grata in my books.

until this little gay dust up, the big news out of sochi was the CORRUPTION AND THEFT that was occurring on a grand scale. whenever there are large amounts of money at stake it doesn't matter if if there is a socialist government or a capitalist government, the human condition of greed will appear. anyone dreaming of a just society, an equitable distribution of wealth, racial harmony or global cooperation hasn't even managed to climb aboard the turnip truck, let alone fall off it. we are what we are and i get awfully tired of people trying to turn us into something we are not or trying to make us feel guilty for supposed character flaws that are hard wired into our collective psyches. so it goes.

i had planned a few big changes in pilgrimville but health issues have temporarily put things on hold.

i love you sons of bitches.

public service announcement

i hope to spare you the pain i endured whilst doing a few repairs on the utopian trek bike. after filling my tires with air at the gas station i noticed that the bike had a broken spoke. i stopped at the bike shop and was quite happy when they sold me a spoke for a buck. seemed like a great deal and the plan was to put on a new rear tire and change the spoke whilst the wheel was off the bike. after taking the wheel off i soon found out that changing a spoke as trickier than it looked, i couldn't get at the spoke because the rotor for the disc brake was in the way.

i grabbed my allen keys to remove the rotor and quickly discovered it was attached with some sort of a star shaped screw but as luck would have it i had a set of them so it was off with the rotor. after the rotor was off i soon discovered that in order to slide the spoke out i would have to remove the cassette of gears on the other side of the wheel. this was where i drew the line, a special tool is needed for that and probably a lot more skill than i have. i removed the old spoke by bending the shit our of it. now i had to get the new spoke in and the only way was to bend the shit out of it and hope i could straighten it out. i couldn't quite get it perfectly straight and these things are an exact length so the kinks in it made it too short to reach the nipple. fuck me, i spent about 30 minutes with pliers straightening the spoke but finally got it done.

next came the tire. this was the first time i changed a skinny 27 inch road tire and expected it to be easy but the son of bitch was very hard to get onto the rim. i almost snapped the tire levers getting it in but finally the job was done. next i had to put the wheel back into the frame which i did with relative ease but when i gave it a test ride the it was not shifting smoothly so i had to take it off and make a few adjustments. it shifted like a dream and all seemed to be right with the world.

later that evening i decided to take a look at it and bask in the glory of my handiwork but much to my chagrin i noticed that the bearings were lose. fuck me, i had to take the wheel off again to tighten the bearings. i tightened the bearings and finally the job was done. so here's my public service announcement, if you have a busted spoke, learn to live with it!

the whole ordeal was so stressful that ruby got a shit load of grey hair, poor old roo.

i love you sons of bitches, just don't ask me to fix your spokes.

my new favorite comedian: