HOW MANY COMICS?!

It appears that my fears were justified.
I'd left it about 3 months since I last went to A1 comics to pick up my standing order.

The horror...

What the hell sort of a time is 2:10am to get better, eh?

This is the question I find myself asking right now.
Morgan, with her usual impeccable timing, seems to have chosen the aforementioned silly time to "get all better".

Her eyes have cleared up a lot... her cough is lots better... and while she may not be 100%, she's still at the stage of "Fuck this sleep malarkey... I wanna get up! I wanna trundle all over the flat and PLAY WITH STUFF!"

Initially, I wasn't overly bothered - Kat had gone to bed and I'd been playing Half Life 2. After a few "Pause game, go replace dummy" incidents, Small made it clear that she would prefer some non-cot-based activities.
So I got her up and let her watch the special features on Red Dwarf 5 with me.

This worked for about 45 minutes. Then she started heading for the door, and not taking "Ah ah AH!" for an answer ( Warning tone, not "Count from Sesame St. tone". ).

Currently, she's back behind ( wooden ) bars and is undergoing something of a Clockwork Orange scenario with Tweenies videos instead of the footage Alex watched.

Well, she WOULD be, but I've lost my gaffa tape...

[Insert "Why Is It Called Boxing Day" Joke Here]

Another "Blog from memory" here... So apologies for anything that's missed out.
My memory sucks. Lots.

The main thing on Boxing Day was the "Post-Drunken-Bullshit Phoncall" from Kat's Mum.

I didn't catch all of it, but I did hear the Extra Bonus Snide Remark.
This time, it was ( After Kat mentioned that my Sister was taking us to visit my Grandparents on the 27th ) :
"Oh well... It's nice that you have a family that looks after one another..."

Aye, nice try.

See if you ever read this, Marlen?
Try this - If you are nice to other people, they will be nice to you.

If, on the other hand, you treat them aboninably... Lie to them, lie about them, and accuse THEM of lying - to their face, to their friends, and to their family...
You will reap what you sow and you will NOT be respected, liked, or contacted by the people you've wronged.

Evil begets evil... And you are an evil person.
I suggest you change, if you want to stay even a small part of our lives. Because if you keep on the way you are, I suspect that not only will Kat and I do our best to get as far away from your spiteful shite as possible... So will the rest of your family.
At least, if they have any sense they will. The best you can hope for if you don't change is to be tolerated.

Is that what you want to be?
The spiteful childish bully, who is only tolerated because of blood ties?

Change, then.



Morgan update - STILL ill, STILL gummy-eyed...
She went over to my Mum's for the evening, while Kat and I met up with Kat's cousins... Since we barely got a chance to talk on Xmas Day.

Good fun, good chat... And in a moment of surreal hilarity, I burst out laughing midway through a conversation about Cancer.
I'd spottedat the bar the dude that Julie pulled at the Catty the night before - who we left at the bus stop after noticing that he'd pissed all down his jeans.

As "Ways to change the subject" go, it was a good'n.

>> Search for food... >> Closed restaurants... >> Pizza at Dino's... >> Meet Semp and go to Cathouse... >

And the Catty was alright. Barry was somewhat drunk, and his set reflected this.
Epic twice, STUPIDLY LOUD TUNES... And some amusing banter as we arrived.

He'd arranged to get us in for free - which is always much appreciated. Semp and myself were standing at the top of the stairs... Me at the top, Semp on the next step down.
Barry yells "Oi! Steve! Unclench!"

"If I do that, Semp'll slip out and fall down the stairs!"




"I will kill you."

Hehheh.

The shine was taken off my evening when I was dancing to Epic #1, and some tit and his pals were dancing with full pint glasses.
One of the stewards came round the dancefloor, and noticed that I was watching him come round. He did the slight-nod "Yeah?" gesture, and I pointed to the fools with the booze.
This got a "You what?" frown, so I started to walk over, and mimed drinking.

Rather unexpectedly, the response was "DO I tell you how to play shite songs and dance like a fanny? No. So don't tell me how to do my job."

Hey, I was only trying to help - Apparently, if he'd been stood there for half an hour and not spotted them I'd have been OK to point them out.

I hadn't thought I was being rude... I may be wrong, as I was a bit drunk... But to my mind, if I'd left it for any length of time, the point would have been defeated as the floor would have been soaked and slipperry. And since my apology was thrown back in my face as well...
Seems some people just aren't worth talking to - If I have any further comments to make to assist the Stewards in their duties, I'll be sure to pass them on to one of my pretty female friends.
They always seem to be listened to intently...
>>
Banter... >> Sig Quotes ( See Semps' blog, I suspect, for info on these )... >> Home ( Cheers for the lift Semp! )... >> Julie pulling an old mate from the Rat Trap days... >> MASH and Sleep.

"If they could FLY..."

*Sigh*
I was looking forward to Christmas, this year.
Really, a lot.

I was dying to see Morgan bounce off the walls at Mum's place, and here, opening all her presents.

As it is, the poor wee bugger's had gummy eyes and a sore throat since Xmas eve.
And worse... But I'll get to that.


So, Christmas Day then.
We got up because Dad and his girlfriend Michelle were coming over, and did the present thing. Morgan's definitely not feeling herself... But the chocolate teddy bears helped a little :)

After that, we got dropped off down at Mum's, ready for Xmas dinner - which was good as always.
The Main Present Session came after that, and my heart was breaking - Morgan was trying so hard to be cheerful and enjoy herself but it was plain to see that her eyes were hurting and her cough was annoying her too.
She loved her Duplo, and the wee Little People Zoo I got her - and she got me a set of spicy sauces from Oil And Vinegar.
So "Woo!" there!
Kat got me the new Pratchett, and Grandma and Grandad got the usual Oor Wullie book + hardback retrospective. So I'm sorted for reading material.
Kat seemed to like the MASH DVDs I got her, and hopefully will like the other small bits and pieces that are taking AGES to arrive!

My Stepdad liked his Bond collection, and my Sister loved her Friends book.
Mum had me stumped, but the 6 Feet Under companion proved an amusing choice. "Is this a hint?"

Speaking of mothers...

Around 5pm, the phone rang.
It was Kat's aunt, so I lobbed it over to Kat.
Her Mum came on, and asie from her hearing aid screeching we could hear most of the conversation.

As expected, it was her Petulant Voice asking how dinner was, how Morgan was, and if we were enjoying ourselves.
Kat was perfectly pleasant - "Yeah, fine. Dinner was good... Morgan's still not too well then. Sorry again we're not making it down, but we have no way to get home. Wish everyone a Merry Xmas" etc etc.
"OK, bye. *Click*" from The Evil One... Or should that simply be The Petulant Child? ( She was, in case you hadn't guessed, absolutely shitface drunk again. )

A few minutes later, the phone rang again.
Kat's cousin...

It turned out that The Evil One had actually thrown a tantrum, and had started crying at the coffee table - a blatant attempt at being the martyr and guilt-tripping Kat.
So Kat's aunt offered to pay for a taxi to get us home if we PLEASE came down.

Fuck it, we'll never hear the end of it if we don't... So we did.

Upon our arrival, the first thing to come out of Kat's Mum's mouth ( Aside from a cloud of alcohol vapour ) was "Oh, she is ill! You should just have stayed at Sheena's!" ( Sheena being my mum ) .
Cheeky bitch...

Morgan was no better - if anything she was feeling worse.
She got introduced to Kat's cousins and all the folk who hadn't met her before ( Cousin Gary particularly hit it off with her... Me too - he's a top bloke, and his sister's alright too. )
Before long, though, Morgan needed a nap.
So she lay down on the sofa and tried to sleep - succeeding in the end.
This clearly meant nothing to Kat's Mum though, since she would NOT stop poking, prodding, or even trying to haul Morgan upright by the arms! "Are you having a nice Christmas? Aww, you're so sweet!"

Yeah... And so ILL! LEAVE HER ALONE!
She got so annoying with her whining and baby-bothering that one of Kat's aunts ( Who used to be a teacher ) actually had to yell "Marlen! Leave her ALONE!"
Which did the trick for a while.

( Marlen being Kat's mum... A contraction of Margaret Helen. )

So eventually the booze took her to the "sleepy" stage of pissedness, and she hauled herself up on to the sofa.
Nice of her, that - To sprawl out and every so often straighten her legs and actually kick Morgan!
Or stretch out and put her stinking feet on the little one as if she was a cushion!

The rage was seething in me... Really, I was getting angrier with her by the minute.

We shouldn't even have gone DOWN there - Nothing whatsoever against the rest of Kat's family, who are all great. Just her - Her petulant, childish selfishness, and bullying attitude to her daughter.
I'm sure the rest of them understood that we could always see them on another occasion - and I made DAMN sure that they knew that Kat had offered to go and visit her Mum on Xmas morning... so there was no way she could play the Martyr card there..

( Actually, she had been invited to MY Mother's for Xmas dinner - and had the CHEEK to have a go at Kat for it, complaining that she doesn't know my family, and that she was SO embarrassed being invited to "That woman's house".

See what I mean? She's a childish idiot. )

Kat ended up telling her Mum in front of everyone to shut up, and stop waking Morgan - be it with yelling to be heard over the general chatter, or kicking her while on the sofa.
She also pointed out that her Mum's excuse of "Maybe having had a wee bit too much" holds precisely NO water - since her Doctor has told her repeatedly not to drink ANY alcohol while on her meds, as it reacts badly.

For someone who claims not to have a drinking problem... She's got one hell of a drinking problem.

We got away in the end, and the irony of it was that it would have been a very pleasant visit were it not for Morgan's illness, and Marlen's sheer drunken bullshit.


The silver lining here is that with any luck, the bullshit is over.
Kat's family have now witnessed what her Mum can be like, with everyone present including Kat and myself.
There's no pretending or sweeping it under the carpet anymore - It's out in the open now.


And from now on, if the woman cannot be trusted to look after HERSELF - i.e. not to drink when her Doctor has told her that alcohol reacts badly with her medication - then she is not being trusted to look after our child.
I doubt there'll be any complaints from the family, no matter HOW much she whines to them that we're treating her badly, when we tell her that she's not looking after Morgan until she's proven herself to be completely teetotal from now on.
And even then, her attitude needs to improve as well.

More on THAT later :)

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Sod this. Really... Why?

It's ten to one on Christmas day, and Morgan's ill.

High fever, wheezy chest, sore throat. We've got an appointment at Hairmyres at 2am.

Some start to Christmas, this...

"Shatpank" I like that word.

Watched the Bo Selecta Volume 3 DVD last night - well, one disc of it.
Pesky Tesco DVD Rental only give one DVD at a time ( Well, they do if you weren't sure whether anything else would be covered by the 14-day free trial, and played it safe. Seems the 2-at-a-time and 3-at-a-time options ARE available for free, so... )

Bloody good making of doco - still done in character, for the most part, but it's on for bloody ages!


What else have I been up to?
Here's some advice - do NOT go to Toys 'R'Us on the 22nd of December.
It's "quite busy".
Still, that's Morgan's Xmas sorted. Got an interactive Jess The Cat ( From Postman Pat). Looks like Ebola, but is probably slightly more intelligent.
Also snagged a Little People zoo set.
So Morgan's Elephant Impressions will be a-plenty come Saturday. Woohoo! ( Or should that be "BrrrrwwwOO!"? )

Got Kat an extra little something in case her main prezzies don't show, and picked up a cheap Transformer for myself.
Laserbeak - Who now transforms into an orange camcorder, and is an Autobot!
Go figure...

Borrowed a shitload of books from my stepdad's sister - She's moving house, and has boxes of stuff at Mum's.
I spotted some Anne Rice in there, and realised that there might be some good stuff, so blagged a largish pile as payment for taking the damn things upstairs!
Memnoch The Devil, The Rock's "biography", some random other horror and SAS / thriller titles. And Chopper's biog. Wee :)

Came home, and played the Half Life 2 demo a bit.
Wow. This is some scary shit - and NOT just because you have to choose between torch and gun this time!
Some headcrabs are poisonous now, and instandlt ytake you to 1 health! You gradually regain it, but FUCK THAT!
Fast-moving zombies, bastard things shinning up drainpipes... I think I'm gonna like the full game!

Gonna hit the sack now... Getting the dishwasher plumbed in tomorrow.
Finally.

Just a short excclamation of disbelieving rage...

GAH!
Fucking GAH!

Had some newbies at FireFight the other day... 17 years old, and along with their Dad.
They were told that under-18s may NOT use pyro. Their Dad bought enough smoke grenades and thunderflashes for all of them, though.
We don't deal directly with Pyro at the moment - One of my marshalls is a reseller, so we let him flog his stuff, for a small percentage.

So he showed the Dad how to safely use the goods... Coincidentally with the boys standing nearby.

And what do I see today on the forums?

"im the guy that used smoke and thunders and im 17 remember u ran us through how to use them...."

Bloody idiot... Raging, here, at the sheer stupidity of coming out with something like that on a public forum!
WE'RE legally covered, but the father could actually be charged, if someone were to take the notion...

Vegematatening. Mmm...

Cool Runnings on TV, soup-and-a-sammitch on the table, and Kat's Big Fuzzy Blankie over us on the sofa.

Nice afternoon, all in all. This morning saw us down at The Evil One's place attempting to fix the hoover - It turned out not to be the belt that needed replaced though, but rather a burned-out motor or some other internal problem.

The exploded hooverbag I found hidden in the cupboard whilst looking for screwdrivers may provide some clue as to how this may have occurred...

So we hauled ass back home ( Before T.E.O. could ask us to tidy her house for her. Rantage on that to follow... ) via the wee woods in between Greenhills and Newlandsmuir. Morgan was having great fun climbing up the stairs - Kept trying to take them one at a time, and ALMOST making it :)

Saw some doggies too - "HWOOF! HWOOF! DOOWIE! HWOOF!". Heheh.


So yeah, The Evil One's house.
This really irritates me.
While I do appreciate that she has arthritis, I still think that she is well out of order with her attitude.
Even during the short time that we lived there, before she threw I and her 9-month-pregnant daughter out on the street with no place to go that she knew of, she would leave filthy dishes lying all over her living room and kitchen, and manage somehow to smear all the surfaces with jam and butter.
When she smoked, there were fagends all over the place ( Kat was seething because she used her big Scooby-Doo mug as an ashtray. And rightly so! She also has no respect for other people's property. Rantage on that to follow... )

One weekend, Kat and I were out on Saturday afternoon / evening for some event I forget the details of, but that incorporated dinner. The house was fine.
We came home, pretty much went straight to bed.
I got up the next morning, and went straight out. Kat got up a little later and went wherever she was going.
We met on the bus on the way home... And when we came home, T.E.O. was in a rage because her house was "In a state! An embarrasment!".

And indeed it was - because SHE'D MESSED IT UP!

And this is the selfish, ignorant, arrogant attitude that annoys me.
She expected us to tidy up after her.

Bad enough when we lived there...
But she STILL expects Kat to go down and tidy her house!

As if we don't have enough on our plates.
She bitches when she's asked to go and pick Morgan up from my Mother's ( As she seems not to be intelligent enough to navigate from East Kilbride to Newton Mearns... even when she can allegedly find Rouken Glen easilly enough. ).
She bitches when my Mother arranges to pick up or drop Morgan off directly to or from her place - Moaning that she doesn't want anyone seeing her place "In such a state".

Hey, here's an idea for you... KEEP IT FUCKING TIDY THEN!
I swear, I've known with stoner, drunken students who have kept better homes than her!
Hell, I've known SQUATTERS with better standards of cleanliness!

I admit, I'm an untidy bugger at times, but I do keep things hygienic. She's getting close to the point where I turn around and tell her that Morgan's no longer going to be visiting her.
She's on her last chance, here...


And as for "Other People's Property"?

Like I said - no respect.
She broke some expensive Lord Of The Rings statuette/bookends... The ones that she claimed I took upstairs "Just to spite her, because I knew she liked them"... after she ordered Kat and I to "Get all our stuff out of her living room".
I packed them away in a drawer after she broke the crown off of one.

The next time I was down at her house, I found the pair back up on her bookshelf... Each one missing a hand and the hands nowhere to be found.
So much for my nice ceramic Argonath, then.


Or the Trigun coasters.
I had a set of handmade, limited edition glass etched coasters - with silhouettes from a Japanese animation that Kat and I are fans of.
There WERE 6... And when I went to retrieve THOSE, I found only 5 in the video box inside which I'd place the carefully-wrapped-in-paper coasters.
Now, we know for a fact that this woman HAD used them in the past, as Kat caught her doing so and told her that they were NOT to be used, but were display pieces.
When I asked her if she'd seen any lying around ( I implied that I may have left one out myself ) she responded:
"I don't use coasters. I wouldn't have touched them."

Not what I asked...

Even when we told her that we thought a friend's childhad broken the coaster, and that said child was being grounded as a result - she still refused to own up.
Nice.

She hates being called a liar - Which is a shame, really, as she's been proven to BE one.

Put it this way - People who don't know that Webcams can be set to start recording when they sense movement should NOT try to fiddle with people's PCs then attempt to indignantly claim that nobody at all had been anywhere near said computer...

I still have the footage, for when I fancy a laugh.

"Everything hurts again... Well, those are harsh words, my friend."

Ow.
Last night - Cathouse.
Me, Kat and Max went for a night out and it was surprisingly good!

I wasn't really drinming, as usualy, but it was quiet enough that I got some decent dancing in... And BOY am I feeling old!
Time was, I could start in the Rat Trap at 10:30 on a Thursday night, dance til 3 with VERY few breaks, and repeat til Monday morning.
True, the main reason I don't do so in the Catty is the fact that it's usually mobbed with pish-requesting idiots on Saturdays and that's the main night we get to go - but still, when I DO dance, I feel it the next day.

Semp was sadly absent, so the banter was lacking "The Je Ne Sais Quoi", or something - I don't know what, really.
Huge buckets of sarcasm, probably...;)

T'was Mandy's birthday, and she was absolutely falling-down-pished. Hilarity!
Also for filing under "Teh Funney" would be Ruth Gypsie getting her belt grabbed by ( I forget his name. ) - and when she tried to get away from him, said belt snapped.
Or so we thought - what actually happened wasn't a break in the belt, but two breaks... leaving him standing with a 6" section of leather belt in his hand.

Max met Edgecrusher, and Shug and a few others... And to my delight, there was a huge amount of airsoft chat from Shawsy, Everett, Bagpuss, Shug, and a good few others.

Worryingly, the Catty staff and stewards wanna come to Firefight for their staff night out.
Dibs be on the same side as the stewards!

"Long, dark wossname of the soul?"

I really meant to post on this yesterday, so it's not gonna be as bleak as it possibly should be.

The night before last was awful - Remember I mentioned insomnia? Well, I had it in spades on Tuesday night.
I kept just about nodding off, then having some stupid nightmare and waking up in a sweat. The fact that our room was roasting as a result of downstairs having their heating on full-blast, and Kat's asthma is flaring right now so she snores almost as badly as ME ( Except, of course, I never snore. Ever. ) meant that I was having a very tough time of it.

I got up, fannied around online again... But got more and more depressed and annoyed as the hours passed.
Horrible, absolutely bloody horrible.

Don't really remember much of yesterday either - Probably because I was so down.

Eventually lightened up yesterday evening - But nearly got myself killed by Kat for washing a bowl that was in the kitchen... I didn't know she hadn't finished with the contents!

Today's been pretty good - Went to the town centre with Mum, Kat and Her Worshipfulness... who didn't sleep a wink all day, so should theoretically give us a damn good sleep tonight!

Chatted to Dave down at the model shop, chatted to Tommy ( Who swears blind that the bunker he told me about DOES exist, and promised to get his brother to email me details... ).

Ended up buying some Xmas presents at Matalan, and then went to Lidélle's for some cheap MEAT!
Black forest ham, salami... Supper's gon' be good tonight!

Although we better open the window, because if I sweat as much as I did last night after eating what I plan to tonight, things will NOT be good.

Also, I appear to have inadvertently created a web-comic.
http://www.alternativenation.net/forums/showthread.php?p=1553946&posted=1#post1553946

I think I'll keep doing it this way, until I have a bit of spare time, then I'll create a website and make it a PROPER webcomic.
Complete with digitally remastered footage to replace the early efforts ;)

It doesn't matter weather or not you like puns... I do!

I hate sleeping.

Well, that's almost a complete and utter lie - I LOVE sleeping. What I hate is trying to GET to sleep.
These days, my main problem is that no matter how much or how little I sleep, I still don't seem to get much rest from it. On the very worst nights, I'll keep waking up at the slightest thing - usually because I'm too hot.
If I have to be up for something the next day - then I'm really screwed.

Last night was pretty bad - Started out shattered, and got steadilly worse.
Was watching Underworld, and couldn't keep my eyes open. After about half an hour, I had a drink of Peach Water ( 12X2l in Poundland! ) and managed to watch the rest of the movie... then couldn't GET to sleep, so watched a bunch of Friends episodes.

By the looks of things, I finally got to sleep around 6... was in and out for a bit then hit deep sleep around 8.
Kat appears to have realised this and left me alone once she got up to give Small her breakfast.

But now we run into the next problem - the weather.
Why in the hell am I so deeply affected by weather? Even when the curtains are closed and the room unaffected, I still seem to KNOW when it's a shitty day and fall into this weird sort of depression. Grey, overcast, oppressive, depressive.
The sort of day that I'm actually kinda looking forward too once Morgan's old enough appreciate the fact that we have 500 DVDs and a reasonably large TV... But for now, I bloody hate days like this.

Maybe putting up the Xmas tree will help.

I hate Xmas - and I love it at the same time.

We'll get to THAT at a later dat.

If Sue Townsend had been born 20 years later, would she now be writing "The Blog Of Adrian Mole"?

I only wonder, because I'm reading "The Cappuccino Years" just now - having done my usual, and run out of stuff to read. Grabbed "Secret Diary" off the shelf at random, worked through that and Growing Pains, and plan to pick up the new one - "Weapons Of Mass Destruction" ASAP.
Wonder if anyone's got either of the TV series' for download anywhere? Not seen the first one for years, and missed the Wilderness Years when it was on in 2001.

Aside from reading, it's been a fairly boring few days.
Right now, I'm just waiting for Kat to get in so we can pick a DVD and perform the usual eat/watch combo maneuver.
She's gone to Julie's, next door. Looks like she's "got chatting", and forgotten that she lives here again ;)

*Pre-emptively ducks a slap*


... as opposed to pre-emptively slapping a duck. Because that would be unfair. Ducks being relatively weak, compared to a full-grown human being and all. I suppose if I agreed only to use my bill ( Or indeed some form of faux-bill, created from papier maché or similar... ) then it might be a fair fight.

Ach, who am I kidding? Ducks rule. I'd never fight a duck. Ducks are almost as good as penguins.

And nothing... NOTHING is cooler than a penguin.

Nothing.

He has made no plea, he has made no statement...

Fear Factory tonight, then.
Again. :) - They played not so long ago at the QMU.

This show ( Full review when I have time ) was still slightly sloppy to begin with - but after they got through my two favourite Demanufacture tracks ( The title track, and Self Bias Resistor ) things really came together.

Great show after that - and with Martyr dedicated to the late Dimebag Darrell, followed fairly quickly by Scapegoat, I really enjoyed it.

Then onto the Catty for a bit - Didn't dance that much, and FF never showed up... So I never got to ask Burt if he remembered the impromptu lapdance he got a few shows back from a certain acquaintance of mine who, upon giving up on Burton and deciding against Dino, came to me with the immortal line "Dump your girlfriend and come fuck me! I can give you so much more pleasure - I'm pierced and shaved!"

Yeah, OK, sure.

"You can't win - but there are alternatives to fighting..."

Such as giving in, and starting my own Blog.

I have no idea if there's ever going to be anything of interest here, but we'll see, shall we?
Right now I'm just incrediblycredibly bored - But Fear Factory will be solving that problem in a few hours.

In the meantime, there's the age-old tradition of "Fannying about online".