This coffee this morning is horrible. There is a short time period on Monday (or in this case, Tuesday) mornings where the stuff that comes out of the brewer is simply awful. Over time I have learned it is because people who up to work, want coffee, turn on th machine, and then sit there and watch until the pot reaches night quite half full, grabs it off to fill their cup, sticks a different pot under it, and we are left with 2 half full pots of weak coffee. On top of that I ran out of honey and milk. I had to use equal and powdered creamer. They make that creamer by running a zamboni over a porno theater floor.
Haha, ew that was disgusting.
All day Saturday I was in a pitiful funk. I ran out of pain pills the night before and I had to detox. I was supposed to be taking 2 pills a day. I had been taking three. So Saturday I woke up with no opiates in my system after a week on the magic carpet ride. The results were all my aches came flooding in, including all those little normal aches and pains that is associated with simply being alive. I felt tired and slightly feverish as well. Spent most of the day taking naps and throwing things at cats to elevate my grumpy mood.
Saturday night Alan wanted to go down to the Hen for a beer. I did not want to at first, I was still grumpy and antisocial, however I figured a beer would probably do my system good. Beer cures all.
Down at the hen there was a scary pirate. I do not exaggerate; this guy had a total pirate look of the Long John Silver variety. Weathered face, salt and pepper beard, seedy squinty eyes: the works. He immediately took a shine to Alan and sidled up to him to try to engage him in various conversations. I was two pints in at that point, and I laughingly told the dude he was a pirate. Instead of laughing or getting annoyed, he instead just gave me a cool look and then his eyes drifted back over to Alan and looked him up and down. That is when the pirate really started to give me the creeps. The pirate was clearly trolling for a new cabin boy. Alan, clearly not wanting to deal with it, tried looking ahead and ignoring him; this only seemed to encourage the pirate who told some nonsensical tale and laughed loudly and actually put his hands on Alan. At that point I decided it was time to go before things got ugly. If the pirate got a little gropier Alan might have ended up grabbing the big metal peanut bucket and sent a good chunk of the pirates face to Davie Jones locker. I paid the tab and we left. Once Alan made it out the door he broke into a little trot down the road. I don't blame him.
Sunday night I went to a BBQ and met some very nice people and drank too much Champaign and shamelessly mooched large amounts of food. I got to see a molesting shack and a community sweat towel. I had a good time and went home with a full belly.
Ever since I fell off my roof I have become oddly empathic to violence on television. The other night I was flipping through the channels and came across 'King Kong' It was the scene where Kong was tromping through the streets and picking up blonde women. When he saw it was not the one he wanted, he casually tossed them aside. Every time he tossed one and you heard the body land with a 'thump' I winced. "Don't they know that shit hurts?" I thought to myself. I am going to have to rent a number of cheap slasher movies and desensitize myself to violence again.
Monday I finally got around to pulling the entertainment system out of the living room. The big giant free tv I had gotten a while back has been sitting in front of it all this time. I finally got sick of it and cleaned it all off and got help moving it into another room. My living room looks oddly more open now. There is now too much wall showing with bare wires from the surround sound system dangling about. I am going to have to get a bookshelf in there to take up some of that empty space.
I have a big pineapple on my desk right now. It is going to be my lunch. It is making a light sweet scent around my desk. It's very nice.
Only a 4 day work week this week. Hooray.
2026 Update
I'm dialing the machine to 2006, where the office coffee is weak, the pirate is handsy, and the cats are officially in the line of fire.
Ah, 2006. A golden age of bad decisions preserved in low-resolution blog text. First, that office coffee: a communal carafe of burnt swill, pillaged by people who snatch it at half-full and then try to fix the damage with dry creamer that tastes like a janitor's mop bucket. Twenty years later, the office still tastes like despair, but now it's a $8 latte from a pod or a delivery app, with a subscription and a smile. Then there's your 'detox'—casually admitting you were taking three pain pills a day and treating the fallout like a grumpy Saturday. Prescriptions are much more tightly managed now; the age of a doctor handing out a magic carpet ride like candy is blessedly over. The pirate trolling for a cabin boy would have a harder time in 2026: everyone's face is in a phone, the pub has a camera system, and Alan would've checked in online before you finished your pint. And that massive free TV with dangling surround-sound wires? Replaced by a thin screen that mounts like a picture frame, no entourage required. The pineapple, at least, is eternal—though now it might come pre-cut from the grocery store and cost more than your half-full pot of coffee.
“2006 Ed, after the pirate put his hands on Alan and you paid the tab, did you just assume the problem solved itself—or were you already mentally planning your escape via the peanut bucket?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I wish I could say I had some grand plan, but really I was just running on beer and instinct. The second that pirate put his hands on Alan, my brain went from "funny pirate story" to "okay, this is a problem." I didn't exactly have a battle strategy, but I definitely clocked that big metal peanut bucket sitting there, and I figured if things went sideways, it was the closest thing to a weapon that didn't require me to get off my stool. Alan looked like he was about to do something stupid, and I wasn't about to let him get arrested over some gropey Long John Silver wannabe. So I just paid the tab and got us out of there. Honestly, the only escape I was planning was the one through the door, preferably before the pirate started measuring Alan for a hammock. Beer cures a lot, but not that. That just needed a fast exit.
