Rants!

The wedding is less than two weeks away, and only one thing is stressing me out:  picking the music for the reception.  The last time I had to pick out a musical line-up for anything, I was a DJ at the college radio station, and my audience was about two people.  Needless to say, I was able to play anything I wanted to, and I did.

A wedding reception is a little different.  There is a certain, specific set of music people expect to hear at wedding receptions, and that stuff doesn't appear on my favorite music list.  Not even close.  

From the time I was at the age of picking out my own music, I can count on one hand the number of times I've encountered another person who had almost the same interests as I have.  I'm an oddball.  For the most part, I'm utterly disgusted with pop music.  Scratch that - I'm utterly disgusted with just about everything that you hear on FM radio.  It's boring, dull, and severely lacking in talent and effort. 

That being said, I'm also considerate of our guests.  I can tell you for a fact that nobody there is going to want to hear any Scandanavian death metal, nor will they want to hear any techno-rave music.  Except for my sister; she'd be into that stuff.  At the same time, I don't want to have the exact same wedding reception that everybody else has, especially with regard to the music. 

I spent a good chunk of yesterday looking through my collection of thousands of MP3's so I could put together a list of songs to send to the DJ.  Not counting the ones that didn't pass through the Kim filter, I came up with twenty songs.  That's about 1% of all my MP3s.  Isn't that sad?  I looked through everything at least three times, and all I could come up with was twenty songs. 

Every year, the company gives me $110 towards a new pair of work boots.  I have abnormally narrow feet, and every year it seems that fewer and fewer boots are available in a B width.  In the past, I've always bought Red Wing boots, because they met my three requirements:  they lasted a long time, they were very comfortable, and they were made in the US.  Unfortunately for Red Wing, they have recently failed two of my three requirements.  The boots I used to buy almost annually are no longer available in B width.  Not only that, but they are now made in China.  Congratulations, Red Wing, you just lost one of your best customers.

It was time to come up with a contingency plan. 

I've always wanted a pair of White's boots.  White's are like the Cadillac Eldorado Rolls-Royce of work boots; there is no finer work boot in the world, period.  They have been hand-made in Spokane, Washington for over 100 years, and they still are today.  So I went to the shoe store, got measured and sized, and dropped $407 on a pair of White's boots.  Fuckin' A, Ray.  I would rather spend $400 on an American-made boot than spend $40 on a Chinese one, anyway.

I've been wearing them for two weeks now, and I can say definitively that these are the best boots I've ever worn.  They are comfortable, and extremely well put together.  Everything I've ever heard about them is true, except for the part about them being difficult to break in.  I seem to have the same type of foot that they modeled their boot after, so there was virtually no break-in required.  I've been walking along the ballast line at work (lots of loose rocks and generally poor footing) all week, and at the end of the day my feet don't hurt a bit.  I couldn't say that about my old Red Wings, even after they were well broken in. 

If you've ever been on the fence as to whether or not to try a pair of White's, I say go for it.  They are worth every cent.

(Cross posted toecon_patriot)

Kim and I are looking at a trip to Australia for our honeymoon.  She's been checking out flights to find the most economical way there, and she has made an interesting discovery. 

If you want to fly first class to Australia, you better be ready to shell out an amount you could make a downpayment on a house with.  We're talking $7,000!  For $7,000, I better get to fly the damn plane!

The flight is only around $1,000 - $1,200 (ha, only!) if you want to fly coach.  So, what justifies a fucking SIX THOUSAND DOLLAR difference for a 15 hour flight?  I mean, if I were to be served five-star, gourmet meals all day long with complementary non-stop lap dances from the girls of a Vegas revue, it MIGHT be worth seven grand.  If they were to hold the Super Bowl aboard the plane, and I was to get first row seats on the 50 yard line, I MIGHT consider paying seven G's.  Now, if I got to take controls of the 767 and do barrel rolls all the way to Australia, THAT would be worth it!

The price for flying business class is even more ludicrous; we're talking five digits.  For ONE FLIGHT. 

I don't have much else as far as info for the rest of the trip; I just thought I'd do a little mini-rant there about obscene plane ticket prices. 

I was driving the company truck in town today on my way to one of my crossings.  I was following a large, moving van-type truck, when it suddenly stopped.  It sat there, for no apparent reason, stopped in the middle of the road.  And of course, this was right in front of - you guessed it - me.  The truck could have gone a mere 50 feet further and had room to completely pull off of the road, but noooooooo.  For at least three minutes it sat there, and I sat behind it, dumbfounded.  My helper asked, "Can you go around him?"  I replied, "Fuck it, we have until three o'clock, right?"  Three o'clock was quitting time.  I was in a stare-down with the universe, and I wasn't going to be the one to blink...  as long as the stare-down didn't go past three.  

When my helper was first assigned to me, he thought what most rational people would think - he thought that I was crazy, and that I was overreacting to what he originally thought was a normal amount of traffic hassle.  He has since come around, and now is well aware of just how much crazy shit happens right in front of me.  He asked me the other day if I had done something horrible earlier in my life to deserve this constant barrage of bad karma, and I couldn't think of anything.  Then I said, "What if this bad karma is for something that hasn't happened yet?  What if I become the next Joseph Stalin?  That would explain this!"  It all made sense.

That was good for a laugh.  The next Joseph Stalin and his helper laughed.

If I could just be the Joseph Stalin of traffic rules, that would be enough for me. 

I guess Paul Harvey kicked the bucket this weekend.  That's not the sad part, at least for me.  The sad part is that I was going to buy doughnuts for my old crew in Billings when Paul Harvey died, but the Krispy Kreme store closed there last year!  They were the only ones in town who would deliver doughnuts, so now I'm S.O.L.  Oh well.  Maybe I'll think of something else to send.

To understand my feelings towards Paul Harvey, read here.  Or, the first paragraph here.

I will honor now honor Paul Harvey in my traditional style - with a Haiku:

Paul Harvey is dead
"News and Comment" really sucked
He won't lie again