Snarky Tom's Rants, Raves and Ruminations

Day 18 - "30 Possibly Known Facts About Me" When I saw this assignment I thought hooray I get to talk about ME.  But then I realized after reading my sister's blog that I had to tell the truth.  No matter.  It's still all fun. The Facts...Nothing But The Facts I was born on Valentine's Day during one of the worst blizzards of the first half of the 20th Century in New Jersey. My favorite color is red, sometimes orange, but mostly red. I'm a smidgen under 6 feet, but say I'm 6 feet tall anyway. I'm the oldest of 5 children. I'm a Type 2 diabetic.  (Who isn't?) I love baseball and football.  I don't care much for other sports. I used to play golf...poorly. I was in a bowling league for several years in the 1990s.  My average as of my last game was 188.  My highest score was 275. I was a PIAA football and wrestling official for 8 years. I have been playing guitar for 41 years.  I also can play bass and som...

Day 17 - "Are you true to your zodiac sign"  I am Aquarius.  See me Bear Water...and Water a Bear. When I was young I had a fascination with the zodiac signs and horoscope and later with the Zodiac killer, but that's a different story for a different day.  I went as far as to buy literature and I don't mean just the crap in the newspapers and magazines.  Books to guide your life by your zodiac sign crap.  They saw a sucker coming.  Back then I was interested in the mystical side of life.  Today I'm more interested in how to use it to score with chicks.  The closest I have gotten was a box of Easter Peeps.  I went for a search online and found this.  Read carefully.  There may be some truth in the gobbledygook.  To read the whole schmegegge click the title for the link. The Aquarius Man Let's get one thing straight from the start. The Aquarius man is no one's water boy (Yeah, baby, yeah) , and it would be a mistake t...

The second half of the writing challenge begins.  Day 16: "Something That You Miss".  Nothing like coming out of the box with something heavy and soul revealing.  I'm not very good at displaying my softer side.  I hide behind jokes. I'm great at displaying the shit that pisses me off and things that outrage me, like politicians and careless corporations and the such.  Like the harlequin that I so sorely distrust and dislike I'm quite adept at hiding my pain with a forced, yet natural looking smile. There was a time when I let bygones be bygones.  A time when I turned the biblical phrase of turning the other cheek.  I was young, naïve and believed that there was more good in the world than bad.  A belief that through time eroded like a California ocean hillside after one Niña too many. But assignments like this are difficult for me.  You can't make jokes like how would you write the headline if a rogue robot melted down a ...

At the halfway point of this experiment and challenge and I'm still hanging tough.  Today's assignment: Day 15 - "Bullet-point your whole day".  Sit back, relax and prepare to be wowed by the typical day in the life of this accountant. Wake up Go to work Suck Suck Suck Lunch Suck Suck some more Go home OK.  It's a little more involved than that. Let's start over. 5 a.m. - Get up to pee.  It's what middle-aged men do, sometimes several times a night, but definitely when the first rays of morning has invaded through the bedroom window. 5:02 a.m. - Go back to bed. Hell, I am not getting up any sooner than need be to go to that life zapping, soul sucking hellhole.  (I hear some of you. If you hate it so much, get a better job somewhere else.  Three reasons I don't:  1) There aren't any, 2) There aren't any and 3) Oh, yeah, there aren't any.) Somewhere between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m., cat strolls in and starts howling as...

Day 14: "Post your favorite movies that you never get tired of watching." Who would have thought I'd last this long?   Commitment is not one of my stronger suits when it comes to the pursuit of entertainment.  But day 14 brings me  something that I can really sink my teeth into.  The strange thing here is that I have over 100 movies on a 2T drive and I've yet to go back and watch any.  It's pathetic and sick.  I'm like a movie hoarder.  The problem is there are still so many other films and programs I've missed over the years.  I must see those first before revisiting ones I've already seen and own.  The good thing is I haven't had the desire to add any new ones.  Well except for any new Pixar movies.  I'm such a fiend for animation.  It stems from my childhood and the hours of watching Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, Porky Pig and Daffy Duck.  I saw a lot of Disney too, but no one beats Bugs, not even the Evil Mouse Empir...

Lucky Day 13 of the 30 day writing challenge. We're almost half way home.  " What are you most excited about? " Ponies, pink frilly dresses, my black patent leather Mary Janes, okay, I'll cut the crap.  None of that excites me.  Not even close. One thing that doesn't excite me is my job with the soulless, heartless and faceless corporate slavers, where I live, near the seventh level of hell, or my social life which is a little meh at best.  At this stage of the game, there's not a whole lot that does get my engines revving. I cheated (as I usually do) and read my sister's blog.  We're doing this writing challenge in tandem.   Without saying I sort of knew what she was going to write about, but I sort of knew.  And without copying her, I admit that I've had a string of crap luck too.  She's had it worse.  Not that it is a contest.  It would be one contest I would not want to win.  However, the end results are the same. ...

Day 12: Name 5 blessings. Hah, piece of frosted flour and egg mixture. Like most people I don't count my blessings because we don't live our lives with blinders on. We see something else and think I'm worthy of that. Why don't I have this or that? We get ourselves wrapped up in the rat race.  The race to have the most money, the biggest house, the most expensive car, the most exotic vacations and what's trending now. To quote a line from the failed 1972 sitcom, The Paul Lynde Show that starred Paul Lynde when asked how goes the rat race. His reply was the rats are winning.  So in time we all must take a beat and look into and around ourselves.  Take stock as the idiom dictates.  See what we really have. See who we really are.  One thing is certain.  We always have ourselves.  Therefore, this is going to be about me. My 5 Blessings   1. Appearance - I look good.  I have seen and met people my age or younger that don't...

Day 11 of the writing challenge and I've fallen behind. I blame work. Work is getting too intrusive to my blogging life. What if I didn't have to work?  Wouldn't that be nice. There is a lot of what ifs I could talk about. What if 9/11 never happened?  Would the election stealing tyrant Bush have been re-elected? Let's go a little further back. What if JFK was never assassinated?  Stephen King wrote a thousand page book about it. It is speculative fiction. 11/23/63 was about the main character going back in time through some strange time portal.  He stops the assassination.  He returns to the future and finds the USA in complete shambles. Is it possible that having Kennedy dead was in the best interest for the USA?  Let's go a little further back. What if the Japanese didn't bomb Pearl Harbor? Other than the lives being saved, there may have been people walking the Earth today who could have had the cure for cancer. Or someone worst than Hit...

Day 10: "Write something for which you feel strongly." I think I have been doing this all along.  I mean, it's the reason why I write this thing.  The alternative would be to purchase a high-powered weapon with lots of ammunition and perch myself in a 2nd or 3rd story window and take out my wrath and vengeance on complete strangers who probably deserve to be shot in the ass.  Death would be too good for them.  I just want to make them suffer.   But I have not the motivation or the finances to do any of that, so I write, vent and verbally body slam the sons-of-bitches. So, what do I feel strongly about right now, today.  I could go off on my job and my company, but even I am sick of giving them all this attention.  I could bitch about the freaking weather.  I mean, this is the year of precipitation.  One hellacious snowy winter.  A very cold and wet spring.  And now summer is ambivalent about being summer.  First, it's too c...

Day 9: "Words of Wisdom that Speak to Me"   I'm not one of those people who can quote chapter and verse from the Bible or from a great literary work of art.  The words that speak to me usually are short and sometimes not so sweet like "Hey, go F*ck yourself."  That speaks volumes to me.  The problem is I'll read a phrase or a saying and think, "that's really great.  I should remember that."  An hour later I not only have forgotten most of the phrase or saying but I don't remember where I heard it or read it.  I'm just not a quotes guy.  Now song lyrics and movie dialogues I can remember, especially if I've heard the song thousands of times or seen the movie a few dozen times.  Books, for the most part, I read once and done.  There are so many books I want to read...need to read that to re-read something I've already read may not occur for a very long, long, long time. However there is one or two phrases that pops to mind....

Week 2, Day 1:  30 Day Writing Challenge: Day 8 - Share Something You Struggle With I am beat. Dead tired.  I've just worked my 5th 12 hour day out the last 6 days.  I'm struggling with a job that I absolutely abhor.  I'm struggling with a co-worker who can't seem to remember how to do things from one month to the next.  This individual is old enough to retire, yet they don't.  They continue to plague me with their presence.  I don't want to wish death or a debilitating disease on them, but I'm seriously considering breaking out my voodoo kit and cursing this individual.  I'm struggling with a company whose management philosophy is ass backwards.  It's not just the company with its metaphorical head up its hyperbolic ass or the moronic idiots I'm forced to deal with everyday.  The struggle is that no one seems to understand how to perform or plan things in a logical state.  Simplify situations and follow a sensible pat...

It's Day 7.  A week down and three or so to go.  Today we are going to talk about one of my most favorite subjects, music.  My list is not in any order.  Just what popped up in my head. 10 Songs I'm Loving Right Now I recenlty went on a music buying binge and purchased several new and older albums (mp3).  (I don't buy CDs or plastic anymore if I can help it.  I am looking forward to the new Yes album due out this week.)  I have been spending much time with them.  My list comprises of songs from those artists and a few others that just have been stuck in my head. "Cold Dead Reckoning" from Homo Erraticus by Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull fame) "Aqualung" from Aqualung (40th Anniversary Special Edition) by Jethro Tull "Oldest Surfer on the Beach" from Songs from St. Somewhere by Jimmy Buffett (Too Drunk to Karaoke video.  It's from the same album. I couldn't find one for the other song.) "Somebody Who" from Move in Sp...

Day 6 - 5 Ways to Win My Heart. This would be easy if my heart could be won.  Not so easy.  I could be glib and say: Do things my way. Do as I say. Do what I want. It's about me, me, me. SEX. But that's just insane and not true.  I wouldn't want to be in love or be loved by a Stepford Wife . Here are my basic 5: 1. Intelligence - You need to be intelligent.  I don't want someone to be a brainiac but you can't be a complete idiot.  I need to be able to have a conversation with you.  Share ideas.  Agree and disagree.  Of course, if you throw your intelligence in my face, I'll cheat on you with your best friend and throw that into your face. 2. Passion - You need to be passionate.  About me, about something.  I don't need a wallflower in my life.  Hopefully, you like the same things as I do.  This brings us to... 3. Common Ground - We need to have something in common.  Be it TV, Books, Movi...

Day 5 of my first 30 Day Writing Challenge - 5 places I want to visit.  Who would have thought this writing challenge would be so...challenging?  But I like this one. I can't say that I'm a world traveler. I have been places.  I have been to Canada, The Bahamas, Mexico, and about 50% of the USA.  Nothing too exotic.  However, there are places that I've always dreamed about but have not gotten there yet.  Some places as a child/young man I wanted to visit, but as an older (not old) adult, they've dropped off my list, like Paris, France and just about everywhere in Europe.  I am not really interested in going there any longer.  So, where would I like to visit.  In order of what's hot on my mind right now these 5 places. 1. Hawai'i - Yes, I spelled it the way the natives intended it to be spelled.  I have heard so many stories from people who have gone.  I faithfully watch the CBS show "Hawaii Five-O" like a die-hard fan shoul...