I keep waiting for it to rain. The news keeps predicting dire weather conditions, and it sprinkled ever so slightly yesterday, however I got no real rain. I am sort of mentally geared up for a rainy weekend, so it needs to come.
I saw Ghost Rider the other day at the Aloma Cinema grill. Was it bad? Pretty much. The plot made you scratch your head, the dialog seems to have been made for fourteen year olds, and of course Nicholas Cages' douchbaggery was slathered everywhere. However, to be honest, when a flaming skull on a demonic motorcycle roars through a city, causing the street to crackle and cars to explode simply through the sheer awesomeness of being a flaming skull on a motorcycle, I can forgive everything else. Well, almost everything. There's still Nicholas Cage.
I always thought that Nicholas Cage is what Emo boys aspire to be. The constant moping, the hangdog expression, the Moe Howard haircut, He's like a Ross from 'Friends' who works out. And the sad thing is, he shouldn't. Work out, that is. Even though he has pumped himself a set of abs, when you throw him in a leather jacket he still looks like a lanky dork. He's just not action hero material. The best part of the movie was when they edited out that mopey face and threw a flaming skull on instead. They should go back and do that to ALL his movies.
In other news, I have been slowly training the insane dog that lives next door. Last time I was at the dollar general I picked up a bag of those fake bacon dog treats. Now whenever I walk outside he gets one. I started out be simply tossing it over the fence, but now I am at the point where I crouch down and have him sniff my fingers before I pass it to him through the fence. So now instead of barking insanely and slathering and throwing himself against the fence with rage in its eyes, it instead barks happily a few times and wags its stubby tail. I still don't trust it, because it's insane, but I no longer fear it's going to crash through the fence and feat upon my firm buttocks.
I also got my flea medicine kit in the other night, which simply consists of a glass vial and a 1 milliliter syringe. A 'big dog' package of frontline flea medicine contains 4 milliliters of the medicine. So I dump it out into the vial, and use the syringe to measure out .5 milliliters, which is a cat dose. I dosed all my cats, and I have enough left in the vial (which has a cap) for next month. All from one dog dose. Sweet.
I don't think I have any real plans for the weekend. I was thinking of going to a Biker Bar down in Daytona to see a Rockabilly band, however I did not realize it was bike week. Parking, which in Daytona is never that good, shall become insane. And it is going to rain. So I do not feel like running around in the rain on a street crowded with biker women as the rain soaks through their flimsy t-shirts.
Hmm...or do I?
2026 Update
Nineteen years back, and Ed is measuring dog flea poison for cats while Ghost Rider smolders in his brain.
Ah, 2007. A gentler cesspool. Ed is out here reviewing Ghost Rider at a cinema-grill, which tells you people used to eat nachos while the movie star simmers on screen, instead of yelling at a streaming service from their couch while fourteen different apps demand passwords. The neighbor dog gets trained with one-dollar fake bacon from the dollar general, and no one records it for clout; it’s just a man crouching at a fence making a dubious animal slightly calmer. And the flea meds—my favorite—he’s redistributing a dog dose into cat doses with a syringe, like a discount veterinarian in his kitchen. That was the era of rogue do-it-yourself medicine, before everything needed a subscription and a nurse’s note. Now that dog would have a designer diet and a dedicated account; those cats would be on a payment plan for prescription revolution. And Daytona bike week in the rain? He says he doesn’t want to run around, but then he second-guesses himself, because 2007 Ed had no survival instincts, only vibes.
“2007 Ed, why were you so confident that a syringe of dog-sized flea poison was the right amount for every cat in the house, and did the words “for dogs” ever make your eyebrow twitch?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: So, Beelzebubba, you're asking about the flea poison, huh? Well, the "for dogs" part did make my eyebrow twitch, sure, but only for a second. See, I did the research, and the active ingredient in that frontline stuff is the same for cats and dogs, it's just the concentration and the dose that changes. The dog package has four milliliters, and a cat dose is half a milliliter, so I measured it out with the syringe and gave each of my three cats their proper share. One and a half milliliters used, and I've got enough left over for next month. They're all still alive, no twitching, no drooling, no sudden desire to chase laser pointers, so I figure it worked. I'm not a vet, but I'm a guy with a syringe and a calculator, and that's close enough. Plus, it saved me a trip to the pet store and about thirty bucks. The cats didn't complain, and they're the ones who would know.
