Hello folks. So in my last blog post I wrote "So, now that I've reacquainted my ass with a chair and my fingers with a keyboard, I can assure you of at least a half dozen posts before I forget about the blog again." That was over TWO YEARS AGO making me a big, fat liar. Yay me.

Now - less than a week away from my birthday - I'm giving this another shot again. I've decided to sit myself down (sans pants) and do a list of all the areas of my life to see which have improved and which have gotten worse now that I'm entering my 38th year.

Relationships, Romantic - Ok. Decent start. I'm still in a relationship with Jen. Admittedly, this has more to do with her tolerance and apparent lack of standards but I will certainly put this in my "win" column.

Relationships, Non-Romantic - Alright. This is pretty bad. In fact, I would put this as an almost total fail. I have admitted before that I have an intense anxiety with it comes to social situations and a terrible problem keeping up contact with people. I really think that I'm nearing bottom. Blog posts go unwritten, emails have not been sent, phone calls not made and I've done a great job of making my life a little island that only Jen visits. I'm trying to correct this, though, but it is really tough. I just got onto Facebook and, man, is that exhausting! Still, give me a little time and leeway here, folks.

Finances - Ooh boy. Well, as many of you know, Oregon has the second highest unemployment rate of the nation (behind perennial shithole, Michigan) For the first half of the year, every Oregonian responded to any greeting by shrugging and saying "at least I have a job" So, I still have a job and that is good. What is bad is that it doesn't pay well and all raises and bonuses have been suspended. On the plus side, I have finally reestablished credit again. So, I'm calling this one a draw.

Weight - Ahhhh....not good. This is a loss.

Hair - My hair loss plateaued around the early thirties. If I have lost a whole lot, recently, than I'm not aware of it so that is good. Still, I tried Rogaine this year to see if I could regrow anything and it didn't help a bit. Still, I will put this is in as a very minor win.

Immersion in Popular Culture - A pretty solid win here. I watch an ass-ton of movies every month (was it a rough summer for movies or what?) and my eyes are otherwise glued to the television set (Mad Men! Yay!) so I'm definitely keeping up with the cultural output of today's society which almost makes up for the fact that I'm really, really fat.

Non-culture related activities - Ouch. Move along.

Health - Considering that I'm fat smoker that drinks enough Diet Coke to kill a wilderbeest, I'm not too bad. Nothing really hurts, nothing has given out and I have both nuts. So that would be a minor win for me but only because my standards are very, very low.

Final score - Errrrrrr...not great. I have a great relationship, I have a job and I've seen both Moon and the Hurt Locker this year. That said, I'm also a sedentary, isolated, bloating husk of a corpse of a man. I'm obvious luckier than I should be but have to admit that almost all of my wins are due to luck and anything requiring any effort on my part is pretty weak.

Confucius once said that a man's worth should be judged by imagining what male celebrity you could nail if you were both gay. I think I could get Brad Garrett which is certainly not where I want to be in life. Hopefully, I can get on the treadmill and snag me a Marlon Wayans. Cross you fingers folks and I hope to talk to you soon.

Hey folks! Good to see y'all again. I hope you have all been well. Looks like it has been a bit long since my last post so let me bring you up to speed.

I stopped living over at St. Johns and moved in with my friend, Malina, and that has pretty much been where I have been for the past year. Sorry about not posting, but I didn't have any furniture and you would be suprised at how little time you wish to spend writing a blog (or email or anything) when your ass is on the floor.

So why post now, you ask? Well, first off, lemme mention what a nosy prick you've become since last we spoke. The main reason is over the past weekend, I have moved in with my girlfriend and that has allowed me to use things that have been in storage for the past year. Like chairs. For sitting.

Really, sitting and typing go hand in hand like Laurel and Hardy, smoking and drinking, smoking and sitting, drinking and Laurel and hot, gay couples.

So, now that I've reacquainted my ass with a chair and my fingers with a keyboard, I can assure you of at least a half dozen posts before I forget about the blog again.

Wish me well on my new life at Jen's. We would invite you over for some kind of house-party celebration (God knows, I long to bust out my Kid-And-Play moves!) but we are too concerned that you would steal stuff. You know how you are.

I'm having a problem with identity, lately. Not in the "am I a good-natured but foppish dandy or a tasteless, rambling dimfuck?" kinda way but in governmental, legalistic, "I don't have a proof that I am who I say I am with the exception of this out-of-state driver's license that expired almost a year ago" kinda way.

Unless, you got lost in my labyrinthine wordplay, above, then you realize that I have been driving for the past nigh-year with an expired drivers license. That has pretty much made the sight of any cop car an extremely hard blow to my smoke-weakened, exercise-free heart.

Add in that I lost my passport, a month ago (which is quite the worry, not least of which because Jen and I are planning a trip out of country for my birthday, next month), and I'm completely lacking any official form of picture identification. Fortunately, the fact that I look my age (plus ten years) keeps me from being thrown out of bars and away from high schools in a bid to relieve and repair my glory years by pretending to be 16 a la John Cryer in that John Cryer movie that I went to directed by the guy who did Hall & Oates 'Possession Obsession' video (ya' know, that one !?!?)

I'm heading to the DMV, later today, to try and get my Oregon driver's license. Wish me luck.

** UPDATE **
I just got my license! Woo hoo! I got two questions wrong on the test. According to me, you can turn your headlights off an hour after sunset and you don't have to turn them on until an hour before sunrise. Whoops! Sadly, I had to part with my old California license with its rugged, badass picture that makes me look like a young ex-con. My new license picture makes me look fat, blotchy and quite possibly drunk (like an old ex-con!)

** UPDATE II **
That John Cryer movie was 'Hiding Out' and directed by Bob Giraldi. He also directed the videos to 'Beat It', 'Love is a Battlefield' and any video that had ambient sound effects and dialogue.

The summer is winding down and I just have to say what a disappointing season of movies it has been. I can usually count on Hollywood giving me at least one blockbuster that I unequivocally enjoyed and possibly two or three that I found fun. This summer has been a drag, though.

Firstly, most of the movies in the theaters, I didn't even want to go to. MI III? No thanks. I still regret see in the Brian DePalma incoherent wankfest that was the first and the John Woo nervous breakdown that was the second. So what else was there? The were about a half dozen CGI animated movies of varying quality that I had no desire to go to - including Cars which is the first Pixar film that I don't have the slightest desire to see.

Which brings us to Little Man, a movie that I have practically been waiting my entire life not to see. There was a nice piece of dialog in the TV series Action where a film producer was yelling at a subordinate that was thinking of taking a job at UPN:

"See that's the difference between movies and television...talent! Movies have Sean Penn. Television has Shawn Wayans. Movies have Marlon Brando. Television has Marlon WAYANS! Movies have Alec Baldwin. Television has Alec...Wayans...I don't know...I'm sure there is one running around somewhere"

Oh, if only that were the case. Little Man has the distinction of being one of those movies that I was glad to see finally make it into the screens, if only so I would never have to see the trailer again. Now, if they would only stop running the ads on television.

So, what did I actually see? I saw several comic book movies like Xmen 3 and Superman Returns which I didn't hate but I didn't really love. Superman, in particular, I enjoyed and yet was bitterly (and rather profoundly) disappointed with at the same time. It was such an intelligent, heart-felt film with several incredibly well-done sequences and yet the choice to make it a sequel to the Donner films made me rather sad and uncomfortable (and I'm not even gonna start in about the kid!)

What makes me really sad and uncomfortable, though, is that Pirates of the Caribbean was the only movie this summer that I flat out enjoyed and, as a film, it was a mess. It was a shapeless movie stringing along almost random scenes, sequences, characters and jokes into a ill-defined plot. It completely lacked a proper climax and it was 30-45 minutes too long but I was still able to laugh, enjoy it and, most importantly, turn my brain off for a couple of hours and, really, that is what I want from my summer movie and, with my brain, it shouldn't be that hard.

Hey folks! Sorry for the long delay between posts but things have been pretty busy in TimTown (population: me) this year. Heck, there have been so many changes, you might worried that you've gotten the wrong blog!

First off, I've moved out from John's house. After spending the past, what, two and half years (and my entirety in Portland) living in the house on N. Macrum, it was time for me to move on. John was getting tired of hanging around me and I was getting tired of him still supporting Spongewhore Fatass (my stalker, Susan) and shoving her into my life. So, I loaded up the truck and moved in with my friend, Malina, and the living conditions have been great. John and I are getting along really well and Susan's pathetic, childlike and tiresome annoyances are limited to the easily ignored email and blog responses.

I'm still working providing network support and monitoring for a financial services company. I just have been promoted from worthless corporate cannon fodder to slightly less worthless cannon fodder. Whoopee!

To cap all it off, I'm in a very happy relationship with my completely out-of-my-league girlfriend, Jen.

In other words, folks, the peach trees are in full bloom and things have gotten pretty peachy in TimTown. Don't worry, though, as this blog will still be a reliable source of bitterness, self-pity and navel-gazing. Thanks for checking back...be sure to buy something from the gift shop!

Well, John returned home from the hospital to take my room and while it has been pretty crappy, it hasn't been as bad as I had thought it was going to be. See folks, that is the great benefit of always expecting the worst and refusing to see the possibility of good, you occasionally find yourself only 94% fucked and thus somewhat pleased.

Instead of moving into John's stench pit, I moved into the downstairs storage room. It is a big, ugly room meant to be a den or exercise room that John partially tore up for some reason and never put back together. So it's got all of this paneling and crap lying around, along with all of our stuff that we don't feel like dealing with and it also has...oh yeah...the furnace. So all of the shit has been pushed to one side of the room and my bed is on the other next to...the furnace.

So the room has some flaws: there is no door, it is right under 'my' room and I can hear John's every fart but the main problem is that...furnace. It starts up two to three times a night - right next to my motherfucking head - and it sounds like the engine of a '74 motherfucking Chevette. I wake up each time as if the sirens of the motherfucking Blitz are going off. Once I even woke up muttering, "don't kill me."

But, really, if that is the worst of my problems with the whole move, then I'm doing fine. Thanks for asking.

Sorry that I've been absent for the month of January. 2006 has started out badly for an amiable, little fuckup like myself and it seems to be getting worse as it gets along. I understand that the bad things that happen in one's life should be viewed as learning experiences and whatnot and - to illustrate that very point - let me describe the events of last week and the the Life Lessons that they have imparted.

I started off the weekend sick with a very bad flu that inflicted, among other things, a sore throat that made it hard to speak. I ended up taking a couple of days off (I haven't accumulated any sick days, so these were not those wonderful days where no matter how painful and rotting you feel, you still smile because you're getting paid to lie in bed and scratch your nuts (or Vag' or what have you)) I took Sunday and Monday off and on Monday evening, I got the call.

Some guy named Rob or Ron or Rog or whatever was calling up to tell me that my roommate, John, had just had an accident. John had hit a rock or stick or whatever while cycling, went over an embankment and broke the shit out of his right leg. The guy, Rod or whatever, had just taken him to the hospital. I was immediately pretty worried for John because despite whatever differences John and I have about life, each other or anything else, Truth #1 is that John is a pretty good guy.

So, anyhoo, this guy goes on to describe how John went over the embankment and broke the shit of his leg to the point where his foot is practically pointing in the other fucking direction. While I was lying around with my pissass flu thinking that I am about to die, John hopped up the embankment (carrying his bike, mind you), got back on his bike and started peddling with ONE MOTHERFUCKING FOOT to the nearest major road. John was thinking of riding all the way home but fell over with his bike - onto his broken leg - before deciding to just flag down a car to take him to the hospital. While this guy, Ross or whatever, was telling me this, I realize Truth #2 which is that I'm a big, fucking pussy.

It was later that night as I was running around trying to find John relatives' phone numbers, that I realize that I'm gonna get kicked out of my beloved room. You see, I live upstairs with my loverly bedroom, convenient bathroom and dandy, little study while John lives downstairs in his fucking dungeon. It has low ceilings, no light outside of his scattered fluorescent bulbs and stinks from dirty clothes and body odor to smell like a combo of nut sweat and ass juice. It smells like his fucking taint. Well, John with his broken leg won't be bouncing up and down his stairs. He is going to have to move upstairs into my rooms and I would have to move down into his Taint Pit. Over the next week, John acted like this thought was as repulsive to him as it was to me. He assured me day after day that he was staying downstairs but, the day before he moved back from the hospital, he had to admit that we were going to have to switch and I had to admit to Truth # 3 - I am fucked.

More of this ongoing story later, hmmm? Thanks to everybody who has been checking this space for updates, this past month. I love you all with the exception of the ones I really,really fucking hate.

I managed to see King Kong last week and it was good. I think most critics have done an effective job at nailing the problems with the movie while still overrating it. It is too long due mostly to a dragging first act that wallows in too many shallow and uninteresting characters. It's like going to a party where there is only one person you like there and you spend over an hour listening to Hipsters and Dullards drone on, occasionally interupting them by asking "where's Kong? Has Kong showed up yet?" Alot of the problems of the first act lie firmly on something which I have always maintained but nobody has ever agreed with me on, namely that Peter Jackson is not - and never has been - funny.

Then Kong shows up and Kong is really fucking great. Maybe I'm biased, because if anybody can identify with a tall, sensitive, hairy guy with a bit of gut, it's me (yeah?) but Kong fucking rocks every fucking scene he is in. I honestly could watch three hours of just Kong picking giant ticks out of his ass and sure enough, when the big guy gets it in the end, I fucking sobbed like a little baby. It is a shame because Jackson knows that Kong is great and wonderful and that Kong dying is the saddest fucking thing in the whole wide world but he can't realize that you could line up the rest of the characters, shoot 'em in the back of the head - execution style - and nobody would give a single crap.

After I left the theater, I was struck by how much the movie reminded me of Capote (another flick I've seen in the past couple weeks). Unlike Kong, the filmmakers know that Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote is simply staggering and try to shove him into every frame of the film and Hoffman is so damn good that you can't look at anything on the screen when he is on. They could've had him spend the film sitting next to Angelina Jole and Charlize Theron making out and you still wouldn't take your eyes off of him.

Part of me wishes they had combined the two films and saved three hours of my life. Kongpote if you will. The movie about a twenty five foot, martini-swilling ape with a lisp who spends the entire film either beating the shit out of dinosaurs or insincerely befriending them only to dish nastily about them behind their back. Hell, I would dare anyone to argue that it would be a worse film than Kong Lives.

I have to apologize for not getting in touch with alot of you people, this last week. The new job has been kicking my ass. Admittedly, I have become a big pussy after being unemployed for so long and doing anything that doesn't involve me lying in bed, scratching my testicles, is pretty tiring. But what has really been canning my ass like a giant ass canning machine has been my commute. I spend 3-4 hours every day either on the bus or waiting for the bus. So, after twelve hours of working, sitting on a bus or freezing while waiting for a bus, I have naught a thought in my pretty, little head outside of "guh?"

The job itself is okay. The crux of my job is running a variety of programs and commands to monitor and troubleshoot thousands of ATMs throughout the States. Sometimes there is a problem with an ATM that I can fix by myself and that is when the job is most rewarding. I like the idea of entering the router of an ATM located outside of a rest stop on a forgotten highway in North Dakota or wherever, booting the port, marking it up and getting the machine running without anybody else on God's green Earth knowing that I was there. I feel like the ATM Fairy or one of those elves that cobbled shoes while the cobbler was passed out drunk or that leprechaun that milked goats while the...goat milking guy was...doing something else.

The worst part of the job has been the need to call people to deal with the problems themselves. I can only fix about a tenth of ATM problems by myself, the rest of the time I have to either arrange techs to come out (which isn't so bad) or bother the bank people into going out and fixing the ATM. That is the worst because the majority of my shift lies after hours and I have to bother these people whose banks have volunteered that we can contact day or night. "Yes sir, I'm sorry that it is midnight, your wife is giving birth and there is snowstorm but could you run over to ATM 37894 and power-fail the machine. Thanks!"

I'm getting into the swing of things, folks, and I will get started on the flurry of emails and phone calls in a few days. I appreciate your patience and please don't feel bad because I'm doing something that is a million times more important than you. Sure, if you were cooler then I would value you far more and shower you with far more attention but it's probably for the best. I assure there will always be room in life for all of you people with such limited charms.

I spent so many posts talking about being unemployed that I am probably overdue in announcing on this blog that it is no longer the case. I have been employed as a monitor/tech of independent ATMs for a financial services company. Not sexy by any means, sure, but it beats the ass off staring at Craigslist wondering if I have the education/background to fake my way through an interview as an anesthesiologist. Throw in that I've stopped weeping my way through ATT Tech commercials and having a job is pretty nice.

While having a job is nice, I can't really tell you how my specific job is. I'm still in training. Until they pick up my contract (and I'm assured that they eventually will), I get none of the bennies. No medical, no dental, no bus subsidy (which really smarts!) and while I RSVP'd for the Xmas party, I don't think that I'm actually invited (they would be wise not to, as I plan on getting shit-in-my-pants-and-piss-on-the-floor drunk.)

The only thing about my job that I can really comment on with any authority is the vending machines. My new company has very nice vending machines. Beyond the standard coke, chips and candy bars that one expects, they have sandwiches, ice cream, burritos, microwave meals, skim milk, jerky, cereal and quite possibly whippets. All for prices that are actually lower than what one could find in a downtown mini mart.

In my opinion, this bodes well for a continuing relationship between the company and myself. If there is anything that I learned when I was very young, it is that I can put up with alot of shit as long as I keep shoving salted meat down my jerky hole.