Recently in Chronicles of JASmius Category

I just noticed on the log-in page that it's been two and a half months since I've posted ANYTHING.  Two and a half months.  Funny part is, it seems like it's been so much longer than that.

I offer up no excuses for my extended absence.  One reason is because the extended absence, and the months-longer de facto one that preceded it, I probably don't have a readership left anyway, other than those who might still wander over here occassionally from my podcasts, which do still have a small but diehard following.  Hard to believe I was once a Large Mammal in the TTLB Ecosystem once upon a time.

But that's what changes in life circumstances can do to you.

A little over a year ago I was hospitalized with raging hypertension stemming from, so they told me, Type II diabetes.  So I spent last spring losing fifty pounds and have been on blood pressure meds ever since.  Then, last June, the general manager at my day job resigned, shifting some of his responsibilities onto my shoulders, when I didn't have any spare time as it was.  Then, last Labor Day, my mother died, and I took on stewardship of my father's finances.  A few weeks later my employer undertook purchase and implementation of a gigantic, catch-all, gonzo, Big Gulp, grand unification theory-esque software package called an ERP system that will supposedly turn our internal universe of spreadsheets into the one-stop shopping experience of my boss's fantasies, except that it is, in reality, a user-hostile, white elephant boondoggle that has and will continue to make my workload immensely more burdensome than it would otherwise be (and it was already burdensome, in case that drift hadn't sunk in yet).  Figure in my burgeoning role in my church's music ministry and, well, as Deadpool used to screech, "Something's got to give!", and so what gave was hardstarboardblog.com, which ironically, was where this empire started.

After Mom's passing even the bulletin board this blog had turned into (aside from Jenber's much appreciated, if occasional, contributions) went by the wayside.  I literally haven't had the time to write or post at all, unless I was willing to forgo sleep.  And that's werry werry bad for my blood pressure.

So does this post mean I'm turning the blogging lights back on?  I wish I could say yes, but then I thought I was reaching that point a month ago, so I don't want to make a promise I can't keep.  But then again, I've found over the years that writing and not writing is a kind of rhythmic habit.  To get back into it, I have to consciously choose to start, and once I do the habit returns, and it re-weaves itself back into my daily routine.  Maybe this is the ice-breaker that brings me back to these hallowed pixels once again.  After all, there have always been ebbs and flows to my blogging over the past eight years.

I'll do my best.  But I make no promises.  Because who knows what might happen next.

Where else?  Completely buried under my day job.

This was the case pretty much since last November's midterm election, which explains the drying up of expository posts and the down grading to what amounted to "bulletin board note posting" (a week's worth at a time on weekends) up until a couple of months and change ago.  By mid-May I was weeks behind even on that meager output, and it finally fell by the boards when even my weekends were taken over by work.

Then, about six weeks ago, I learned that the general manager where I work was qutting, which was just delightful for me, since (1) he was sharing the analysis load with me and (2) he served as a crap shield for everybody else in the office from the man at the top of the chain of command.  With his departure, my workload, which was already crushing, became absolutely ridiculous.  Combine that with the fact that the boss is an aggressive micromanager who got blind-sided by our GM's resignation and is "vigorously re-engaged" almost as vicarious retaliation against the rest of us, and the fact that a core part of that "re-engagement" is what I think of as "sphincter-tightening" regarding computer usage, and, well, now you should see midden hole down which my one-time prodigious blogging output disappeared.

Oh, yes, and (prior to six weeks ago) I got distracted into posting links on Facebook and Twitter in lieu of here.because it was quicker.  And my blogcasting computer's harddrive essentially died after only a year and a half, and with my schedule so overwhelmed, it took me a month to (1) get a new drive, (2) install it myself (since I wasn't about to cough up an extra hundred bucks to wait for Geek Squad to get around to it), (3) reload all my applications (that would load, anyway), and (4) re-download all the movies I bought off Amazon.com last year (their video download has this proprietary software that won't allow movies you download from them to play on any other drive; which is just SO convenient; the only plus about it is that if your drive dies and you lose all your data, at least you don't lose your movies.  So of course I had all my data backed up on an external hard drive THIS time versus the LAST time, when I didn't and did lose everything, which is why I had to buy all the replacement copies in the first place).  I bought a bunch more which weren't available from Amazon off of Movieberry.com, which is both a lot more convenient and a lot more economical.

So.basically I've been sidelined from rightospheric commentary other than my podcasts, the latter of which is indirectly branching out to broadcast radio via a small talk station in Southern California.  I say "indirectly" because it's my cohort on ADR Radio, Doug Gibbs, who is getting his own weekend show on KCAA, the bic-flicking blowtorch wannabe of the land of Moonbeams and runaway fiscal bonedry.  Which is to say, it's been a liberal talk station, which is why they begged Doug for a lifeline.  Anyway, I get to play Elephant Boy to Doug's Howard Stern every Saturday afternoon after ADR concludes starting August 6th.

Let's see, what else?  Any remaining leisure time has been consumed by my burgeoning involvement in my church's music ministry, which finally gave me the pretext I needed to purchase the soprano saxophone I've always wanted.  That is gonna be too sweet.  And my little girl is leaving for college in four weeks, and I've been writing tuition checks so big I'm already developing carpal tunnel syndrome.

That brings me to tonight.  See, she went back to Brazil this summer on another short-term mission trip, and her flight was supposed to have departed four hours ago.  Instead the plane has been sitting on the runway twiddling its collective thumbs to the point now where it's probably going to be canceled, which means I don't have the later flight numbers so I won't be able to track her flight.  After eating dinner, practicing God's Instrument and otherwise staring at a live webcam shot of the Avenida Paulista on the brand spanking new laptop I got her as a high school graduation/college going away present (and spent half the night Monday getting set up for her), I figured what the hell, why don't I finally return to my site and post a long, rambling, maundering mea culpa?  I mean, it's not like the debt ceiling circle jerk has been worth banging keys over.

Well, okay, it probably is, but there's that pesky time issue again.  Now that the blogcasting computer is back up and chugging, I'll try to get back to at least bulletin-board posting level again.  And, who knows, if Obamerika is officially a third-world shithole after next Tuesday (Think Red Barry would hang a big "Mission Accomplished!" banner on the front of the White House?  Yes!  You!  Do!), I might just have plenty of time for joining in the post mortem recriminations, until either the Regime shuts down the Internet, my power is turned off, or the Obamastapo arrives to drag me and my family off to the Alaska Gulag.

At least my daughter will be safe in Brazil.

UPDATE: Flightaware.com evidently isn't all that aware; according to Delta Airlines' website, her flight left Sao Paulo at 5:36PM PDT.  A very good thing, considering that I was beginning to wonder if the Brazilians had aleady sold all the oil reserves Barack Obama paid them to discover and tap to their trophy-headed benefactor, leaving my little girl and the other passengers to get out and push that Boeing 767 all the way home.

h/t: Uncle

h/t: Uncle

Behold, Japanese heroism....

....Japanese calm, patience, strength, and perspective....

....contrasted with our own Obamunized pussification:

Shep Smith scolded Americans stocking up on potassium iodide pills due to fears of radiation poisoning coming from Japan, where a nuclear crisis is raging.

Speaking to correspondent Trace Gallagher on Wednesday, Smith scoffed at the notion that radiation was threatening the U.S., even though there has been no warning saying such a thing, and scientists have said that the country is too far away to be affected.

"This sounds a little silly, frankly," Smith said. "Do we know where the biggest rush for these pills is happening? And why someone isn't trying to talk these people down off a ledge? It's 5500 miles away, Trace!"

Gallagher said that people as far away as Michigan have been stocking up on pills, and that suppliers of the pills are having trouble keeping up with demand.

"Well that's almost sad and pathetic," Smith said. "I know everybody wants to feel the pain of these people over here, wants to feel badly for them, but to take these pills, that's just tantamount to crazy."

Just wait 'till the San Andreas megaquake happens, or the New Madrid seismic zone erupts, or the Cascadia Subduction Zone destroys my neck of the woods.  We seem to almost crave disaster as long as it stays at a nice, comfortable distance and doesn't actually inconvenience us or otherwise disturb our, nice, comfortable lives.  Like when crowds were oohing and aahing to the depiction of the destruction of the White House and the U.S. Capitol and the Empire State Building in Independence Day, but were dumbfounded when al Qaeda brought down the World Trade Center for real five years later.  We want to play disaster victims along as it's on a screen and the lights eventually come up and we can leave the theater.  But when it, you know, actually happens?  Somehow, methinks the general public reaction will be quite a bit less noble.

Another (non-nuclear) explosion....

....and more riveting tsunami footage....

....but thank Barry we have Tingles to maintain our Obamacentric perspective and remind us of what's truly important.

Exit quote from Rob Port: "People dead, dying and suffering and all Chris Matthews can think about is Obama getting a chance to stick it to the birthers."

No, it's no Chernobyl:

Not that there aren't the problems of preventing meltdowns and cleaning up the radiation mess and such, but China Syndrome this ain't.

Oh, by the way, now their volcanoes are erupting, too.