It was a long day at work…which was 100 miles away yesterday…each way.  I started early, ended late and came home to a house in chaos.  After finally getting the kids to quiet down, eat a dissatisfying meal and say hello to my wife, I decided I was just punchy enough to call Dell tech support and see if I could scare up some interest in helping me remedy my defunct desktop.  No need to weigh down this part of the story – it didn’t happen.  90 minutes later ‘Dave’ and I had completely dismantled my Dell Optiplex and concluded, unanimously, that it was fucked up and should stay apart in bits and pieces until someone smarter than the two of us could put it back together.  Thanks for that Dave. 

1am…annoyed and tired.  It was time to go to bed.  Time to wipe away today and replace it with tomorrow.  But around 3:10 I was awoken by a growling from outside the room. 

Don't shoot the messenger...don't shoot the messenger.  Why not shoot the messenger?  Sometimes you have to shoot someone and the person you want to shoot just isn't a possibility.  I'll give you a perfect example:  last week was tax time and for about 10^th year in a row, I owe more money than I can think about without having a panic attack.  But, what do I do?  It's unrealistic to think I am going shoot the IRS, ‘The Man', Uncle Sam or the Federal Government (I guess those are really all the same entity).  So...the only plausible alternative is to shoot the person that told me - my accountant.  Plus, she deserves it.  Ok, ok...Cool your jets Secret Service and anyone else scouring my entries for signs that I'm a danger to myself or others...no one is getting shot, even if they should be.  I'm not really going to shoot my accountant.  I already gave her a verbal bitch slap, which I'm happy to transcribe below...word for word.

I’ve had a lot of people ask me my take on the psychological condition of that wingnut that killed 30+ people on the Virginia Tech campus this week, Cho Seung-Hui.  Not because I’m any kind of expert or anything, but I worked in chronic mental health for a few years, before politics, back when I was a social worker.  Part of my job was to be on call for 24 hour crisis shifts.  If there was a situation where someone may need to be hospitalized – by their own will or against – we would go out and assess the situation, try and control it if that was possible, and hospitalize the patient if it wasn’t.  Here is a partial list of calls I went on during that time:

Teen shot in head when looking for ghosts

More fun news from the hillbilly elite in my adopted home state:

A man who lives in the house, Allen S. Davis, 40, was charged in the shooting and told reporters from jail that he was trying to drive off trespassers and didn't intend to hurt the teen girls, whom he called juvenile delinquents.

He said he fired his rifle out his bedroom window Tuesday night after hearing voices outside the home, which is across the street from a cemetery and blocked from view by overgrown trees and shrubbery. "I didn't know what their weaponry was, what their intentions were," he said. "In a situation like that, you assume the worst-case scenario if you're going to protect your family from a possible home invasion and murder."

I don’t fall particularly high on the ‘man scale.’  Weird, I know, because for so many years I lived on that scale, by that scale…maybe in that scale.  Why do I score so low these days?  A variety of reasons.  I don’t follow college or pro sports (any sports really).  I don’t watch NASCAR (it’s a culturally integrated scorecard – if you’re reading this and don’t live in the Midwest – don’t worry.  You won’t lose any points.)  I’m not a fan of any particular team.  I don’t hunt.  I can’t fix a god damn thing, so don’t even ask.  Oh, and here’s a biggee – sometimes when I’m in Lowes or Home Depot I get a little nervous when I’m in the big lumber section.  Yeah nervous.  Of course if I’m there it’s because I got lost en route to the propane refill station because I’d otherwise have no business being around all those serious construction ingredients.  I beat it out of there fast too, before I get injured.