Posting to pass the time on a dull Monday

I hate Mondays. I know it's a tired, worn-out sentiment, but still so very true. I hate being jerked back into reality after two days of doing whatever I want, and getting my ass here 5 minutes early so I won't miss the pointless weekly staff meeting. Meanwhile, the Boss is away on a luxurious three-week vacation in Italy. How nice that he can afford to do that! Because he saves so much money by paying us insultingly small salaries. Greedy reptile. Anyway, this past weekend we watched several redbox rentals, ate a lot of pizza, and I took some time to catalog my music library more carefully. My goal is to have the year of release (or composition, in the case of classical pieces) for every song, and when possible, the year, month, and day of release. That way, I can arrange my library in chronological order, and even make year-by-year playlists arranged in order of release, permitting a musical journey through time. My other goal is to digitize every single worthwhile track in my CD collection. I've had iTunes for about 7 years, and I still haven't done this. Now that I'm keeping my iTunes library in a 1TB external drive instead of my aging laptop's pitiful 80GB hard drive, there's no excuse for not having my entire sound library in electronic format. Once this is accomplished, I'll be able to clear out a little bit of precious storage space in the upstairs closet and make a few bucks selling some of my CDs to Edward McKay.

I am keeping some of my classic '90s albums, though, in hopes that I may someday resurrect the '90s room. It never did really pan out in its first incarnation, what with having to multi-function as a home office, storage room, and library. Someday, though, I'd like to have a guest room decorated like a late '90s dorm room. It would have twin beds, sturdy laminated furniture, maybe an ugly sofa, crude humor posters, mini fridge, vintage microwave, '90s computer, an old CRT TV set and VCR, and a Playstation or N64. I even saved some '90s VHS movies from the trash, and more titles can be found cheap on eBay.

I also spent some time last week during a very slow week at the office tracking down digitized forms of books and comics I already own in printed form. A few weeks ago I downloaded a torrent containing the entire run of Calvin & Hobbes, in chronological order with publication dates on every page and Sunday strips in full color. I managed to find a few Uncle Scrooge stories by Romano Scarpa, an Italian artist active in the '50s, as well as some stories from the daily Mickey Mouse comic strip of the '30s which I have in attractive softcover volumes. I also came across an index of downloadable Preacher comics. Gray's Anatomy (the classic medical text, not the estrogen-soaked TV series that just won't die) was easy to find in PDF format, but my best find was the entire Book of Kells, a medieval Irish manuscript full of beautifully illuminated pages. It was surprisingly difficult to find for free, and I'll be damned if I was going to pay $50 for a public domain book on CD-ROM.

Now my latest interest is to get a good video capture device so that I can convert my old VHS tapes to MPEG-4 files. I've got some odds and ends recorded from TV many years ago, as well as a few movies that never went to DVD, such as Ducktales: Treasure of the Lost Lamp and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown, the only Peanuts movie that didn't put me to sleep or make me feel like taking ’shrooms. Maybe I'll even digitize my bootleg VHS copy of Disney's darkest shame (no pun intended), Song of the South.

What's been keeping me from accomplishing all this archival work? My dreary day job, that's what! There's not much time to do all this while I'm watching the irreplaceable hours of my life tick away in a little gray cubicle and praying harder than ever before for a windfall. I do feel that it's getting close, though. I have a feeling that God will come through and knows how badly I want, nay, need, to get out of the daily grind and live my life the way I've always wanted. I don't even demand a luxurious lifestyle with expensive cars, private jets, yachts, and multiple mansions. All I ask for is an elegant city house, a beach retreat, and a few vehicles for various purposes, and the funds to maintain it all without working. He's coming through with it by the end of the month.

The Universe failed, but God will provide

May 1 came and went, and the Universe failed to provide the car I desire and need. However, my faith that an all-powerful God will come through for me still survives thanks to what can only be portents of things to come, in the form of multiple Sequoia sightings over the weekend.

This past weekend, my wife and I journeyed to Raleigh to visit friends and family. On Sunday, May 1, I was feeling down at first after learning that, yet again, I hadn't won a substantial lottery prize, but on the drive back from lunch to my parents' house, I spotted a silver Sequoia along Glenwood Avenue, gleaming in the sun in all its elegant splendor. It dawned on me that since I was testing the power of the Universe against the power of God, God had prevented me from getting my paws on the coveted S.U.V. so that there would be no confusion as to who was in charge, and to drive home the point that positive thinking and laws of attraction are horse shit. Now is the time for Him to come through and deliver me from the banal world of the Ford sedan. I'll concede that one late-model Sequoia sighting can be ruled out as mere coincidence, but when I went to gas up for the drive home that afternoon, a beautiful black model ambled past me in the parking lot, just the kind I want. I spotted two more with my eagle-eye in the opposite lanes along the interstate on my way back home. Surely this can't be a coincidence. Four '08+ models in one day? With their yearly manufacturing output decreasing each year due to the feeble economy and soaring fuel prices, the '08+ models aren't exactly to be found around every corner. God is working on it, and by May 31 He will have one sitting outside my door with my name on the title.