failure weblog

a year or two ago i was standing at a metro rail stop when a small, folded, light yellow piece of paper caught my eye. i picked it up and opened it, and it was a credit card receipt for the silver palace chinese restaurant. the good part was it included the full credit card number, card type, expiration date, holder’s name, and his signature. i pocketed it and have kept it with me at work. i don’t even know if the account is still active or not, but it’s sort of like a mental security blanket i can keep for use in case of extreme circumstances. that expires 10/05.

evidently the divorce was finalized last friday. tamara called jack about coming over tomorrow (monday) to pick up the two sentimental things she wanted. never mind that she’s got a small u-haul worth of stuff, including a lot of stuff that is completely hers (not “ours” in any way, shape, or form) like photo albums, guitars, books, camera, etc. and if she doesn’t take it i have to deal with it. i shouldn’t have to deal with it. it should be her problem to deal with. but this is pretty much par for the course — she takes whatever she wants and i get to clean up all of the sh!t left behind. i can’t believe how painful things continue to be, especially after all the stuff she’s done to me over the last couple of years. d4mn if i don’t still have a problem accepting that this is reality, at least at times. i’m seriously at a loss for words to describe how broken and hurt i am by all of it.
on a related note, what kind of law firm am i working with, where they didn’t even bother to call me to let me know what did or didn’t happen on the court date? for over a week? and i’m paying how much for this? geez, being naive about lawyers and the legal process got me screwed on this one.

so…this guy is low on funds, so he uses some fedex boxes to make some furniture. some friends think it’s cool, so he puts up a website with some pictures (www.fedexfurniture.com).
what happens next? the fedex lawyers send a bully letter telling him he’d better stop doing his nastiness to their beautiful logo and reputation, because the idiot public (i.e., their customers) might get confused and he’s going to hurt poor little fedex by this heinous act. they even invoke the legal swiss army knife of fuzzy reason, the dmca. it catches the attention of a stanford attorney (one of the few who appear to have a heart or soul) who decides to stand up to them for him.
how is it in these days and times that some corporate entities have their heads stuck so far up their…anyway…that they don’t understand the value of this kind of marketing? i mean, seriously, ad companies would probably pitch this as a hip new ad series and charge them a lot to make commericals, but some guy does it for free and they bully him. maybe the fedex lawyers were bored and needed something to entertain themselves.
on the guy’s blog he mentioned he got an email from a dhl.com address suggesting their materials would add a modern flair to his apartment. personally, i think it’d be nice if dhl jumped in and realized what kind of marketing opportunity they have, gave him free packaging materials, played it up, and turned fedexfurniture.com into a black eye for fedex. not that i’m a fan of any large corporate entities really, but marketing and large corporations are a fact of american life and it’s nice to see them fight each other and have one use the social stupidity of another against them. plus maybe it’d pit fedex and dhl lawyers against each other. (i’m going to stop now instead of going on and on about the concepts of marketing and public relations and so on and so forth. maybe some other time.)

on sunday i went up north for a motorcycle ride at the request of a lady friend (the one i met a couple of weeks ago at the dale watson show). i picked her up and we rode around, ate lunch, talked, and rode around some more. it was enjoyable. when i went to drop her off at her house, i went in for some water.
turned out her two older kids were back home. a bit awkward, but i met them. then a few minutes later her mom showed up to see her grand-daughter’s new school clothes. a bit awkward again, but i met her too. a few minutes later, the sister showed up bringing back the youngest kid who’d spent the night at her place. still awkward, but i met her. then a few minutes later the dad showed up, coming to get the lawnmower. still more awkward, but i met him too. he seemed somewhat irritated and before going into another room told his daughter that he needed to talk to her later. i decided this might be a good time for me to leave, so she and i walked outside.
as we were standing at my motorcycle, her dad came out and walked straight up to me and looking somewhat upset said: “i need to ask you…just what are your intentions with my daughter?” *boggle*

Continue reading “who’s your daddy?”

well, friday was the court date for my divorce. it was supposed to be at 10am. so i may already be a “free man” and not even know it. how’s that? i never heard from my attorney, the worthless (yet highly paid) goober. so i have no idea if i’m legally divorced or not.
i had to get a cashier’s check for $450 and deliver it to tamara’s attorney’s office on friday, so i did it in the morning before going into work. i couldn’t help myself, and on it wrote “first we loose the shackles, then we wear the chains”. that’s a paraphrase from lsu’s song “shaded pain” (full lyrics below).
the whole day i also wore the t-shirt i got married in, under a long sleeve black dress shirt (like the one i got married in, but not the actual one). symbolism is important to me.
i still get angry every time i think of how much tamara and her attorney have taken advantage of me financially. it’s completely unfair, but the legal system isn’t set up to be fair to me in my situation. so i’m just screwed. and unfortunately, at some point tamara decided she should take me for what she could get instead of trying to be anywhere near fair. and of course this is beyond all of the emotional pain i’ve gone through because of her choices, which is still sometimes rather excruciating.
in yet another amazing cosmic coincidence (or higher intelligence, if you’re open to that sort of thing), river oaks is showing eternal sunshine of the spotless mind as their midnight movie this weekend. i was going to go last (friday) night because how perfect is it that the day i’m getting legally divorced river oaks just happens to be showing that particular movie, but i ended up staying out drinking after the technology bytes geek gathering. which seems just about as appropriate, i guess. but i’m going to go watch the movie tonight.
i think here in the not-too-distance future (since everything will be final) i’m going to post some of the details of the affair, along with links to stuff. maybe this truth will get out and be tied to the people involved. or at least be available on the internet for anyone to see, if they happen to find it.

Continue reading “walking papers?”

this morning when i was backing my motorcycle out of the garage, i noticed a cd laying beside my driveway. there was stuff written and drawn on it with a red sharpie. i picked it up and looked at it. it was the typical graffiti font that all the cool taggers and yo-mtv-raps gangstas use. there was also a crude, poorly executed pic of a spray paint can spraying as if it had tagged some letters. “hhmmm…”, i said to myself, “i wonder what kind of music the local ganstas burn to cd to listen to?” i flipped the cd over and realized i’d actually been looking at the data side of the cd. on the side that had been facedown was a full-color, silkscreened “scooby-doo & the toons discover the alphabet” label (or some similar learning title) with scooby-doo and some cartoon network characters. now i know. (and knowing is half the battle.)

i keep forgetting to mention that i picked up a few new domain names last friday. they are: armyoftexas.com, diablostejanos.com, and republicoftexas.org. i’m particularly proud of that last one. i’m not sure what i’m going to do with them yet, but seeing as i have my very own server i pay monthly for and can have as many domains as i want on it, i went ahead and set them up with a basic text entry page. i’m kind of curious to see if the purchase of those three names at the same time along with the text i put on them will get me on some kind of government watch list. that might be kind of cool. okay, maybe not really, but it’s kind of intriguing. did i mention that i’ve been buying a lot of guns and ammunition lately?

i failed to mention this, but sunday night/monday morning i had a dream that i got fired from work. it was kind of weird. i bring it up now because last night i had another dream about getting fired. it was very realistic and kind of shook me.
i was at a meeting and an IT security guy came in looking frustrated and upset and said something to my manager, then he said something along the lines of “what? 12 millions times?” then looked at me and said “oh, man. terry, this is no good. we just can’t allow this sort of thing.” i was getting nervous and running through my mind trying to think what i could have done. did i run something that went amuck and i didn’t know it? did i even really do whatever this was? so somewhat confused and tongue-tied, i started saying “what? what…did i do? i don’t understand.” and my manager and the IT security guy just looked disgustedly at me and my manager said “oh, come on, terry. don’t play this with us. you know we can’t let this slide. i’m sorry, man. you’ve got to go.” so the security guy started trying to get me to get up and pack my stuff, but i was still confused and trying to figure out what i was being fired for. then i woke up.
my work environment is kind of in a weird phase, so i can understand why my paranoia about what’s going on at work is being batted around by my brain while i sleep. but still, having dreams about getting fired isn’t enjoyable.

before the show tonight, a friend of mine i hadn’t talked to much in awhile called and told me he’d purchased a motorcycle. he had a couple of female friends and was seeing if i’d be interested in riding to kemah or something. we ended up making plans to ride after the show. he showed up not too long after the show was over. he bought a used 02 honda shadow 750, if i recall correctly. the previous owner had spent a decent amount of time and money modding it. it had some nice pipes on it with a really good low, loud sound. so we ended up going to buffalo wild wings to eat and hang with the after-show irc meet-up clan, then driving around downtown houston for awhile, then stopping in at late night pie for a pitcher, then more riding around downtown and through montrose and such. he was pretty giddy about the bike, but i understand because i’ve had that same insane permanent grin about bikes before too. it’s a great feeling. i ended up staying out until around 2am, but it was a rather good time. hopefully we’ll end up being able to ride together now and then, since i don’t have anyone i normally ride with.

so i had the opportunity to go to a beauty pageant in san antonio on sunday. what an…odd experience. i felt like i was watching one of those documentaries where the people being filmed take it very seriously, but everyone watching the documentary can’t believe they’re for real (slasher, hands on a hardbody, american movie, etc.). i’m sure my background and opinions colour this heavily, but i just feel like it’s a lot of energy and passion about things that for the most part don’t matter that much. i mean, i like to look at a pretty girl as much as the next heterosexual guy, but it seems like pageants pervert all of that into some kind of weird thing, because it’s near impossible to separate the legitimate skills and honorable traits from the arbitrary societal skills and social attractiveness. (perhaps ironic i use “pervert” in that context.)
and of course, much of the time was spent with jack and myself in the balcony acting like those two old men from the muppet show. oh well, i’m sure they think i’m a loser and care too much about things that don’t matter as well. touche.
afterward, jack and i headed down to the river walk, where we paid way too much for mediocre margaritas (only one each though…the disparity between quality and cost was too great) and had some passable mexican food. we headed back to the car and i drove to seguin where we stopped for the night.
the next morning started off with a call from work at 7:30am. joy. back to sleep, then up for the free breakfast, which was generic and horrid by most any standard. (i guess that’s what we get for cheaping out and staying at a super 8. but the marriot on the riverwalk was booked full. seriously.) even though i thought it wouldn’t happen, back to sleep again. then up and on the road and to…
luling city market (in luling, Texas, of course). which is the current reigning champion in my personal bbq hall of fame. especially the sausage. oh man, that stuff is good. i could go on and on. but, really, it’s best for you to just go and have it for yourself. you can thank me later. and pick up some brisket and sausage for me while you’re there.
and that’s it for my quick jaunt to san antonio to watch a bunch of (mostly) young ladies wear evening dresses, formal gowns, and swimsuits, while they attempted to show their poise and grace onstage.