There was a time (I think, not in my lifetime though) when you could safely judge another human being based on his/her worldly accoutrements. Driving the caddy or Rolls was a clear indication that a person had made particular sacrifice to have ‘earned’ elevated social respect. Nowadays everyone drives an Escalade and there are no clear demarcations of honest endeavor. In fact, the scum is often at the top of the money ladder. Not from hard work and endurance, but from reeling in the fattest financial derivative, or selling shit to the government at over-inflated value. The people with the money don’t seem to be the admired these days. Coveted riches, for sure, but the people holding the bag seem to be nothing more than greasy douchebags that we would all like to kick in the teeth.

Tony Robbins needs to retire to his island paradise in Fiji and shut-the-hell-up. No one wants to hear how he has the answers to unlocking mysterious human powers of wealth building. Ok, most of don’t. If you’ve lived in this great land for more than 10 years, you’ve heard it all, over and over and over… you’re incomplete, lazy and deficit of potential if you choose to be yourself. NO! You must follow Tony.

First get yerself a big goofy smile. Then make a lot of money completely unrelated to what you are about to tell the rest of the world to do. Selling motivational tapes and books is a good one as there are lots of desperate people who keep buying the crap. Motivational groupies are like drug addicts who swap their substance for another substance. Same pattern. Be loud and intimidating, and unapologetic about screwing with peoples’ lives.

Of course I’m bitter.

I’ve read no less than 12 authors who claim to know the secrets of life and the universe. I used to think other people had the answers and that I was just derelict in life. I must just have too few habits to swim with the big boys, and I simply can’t wake up that early.

Who else?

Oh, there’s the the douche nozzle Dave Ramsey and dry hole Suze Orman. Not really motivational speakers, but they sure seem to make a good living browbeating those of us in the trenches trying to live day-to-day. “Act your wage” … only problem with that cute little quip is that 80% of the population should be walking around wearing barrels. I challenge Dave Ramsey to live for a year on minimum wage wages. Somewhere around 15K annually. Then let’s play “can I afford it” with Suze Orman. I’d like her to call in to my program asking if she can afford a penis implant for her beard. Then I would thrash her in public explaining that no matter how much she has in savings, it will never be enough to spend on something elective, but I would give her permission to renovate her kitchen with granite counter tops, and it would be okay to go in debt to do so.

I’m just rambling tonight.

Normally I can get behind the ACLU. I like their constitutional stance on division of church and state, but I’m not sure about their condemnation of SB1070. Is it possible they needed a project for a new intern? Furthermore, Jon Stewart called Arizona the, “meth lab of democracy.” I’m not only proud of the accusation, I think we should have a special edition license plate for the motto. The bottom line is that most of the people complaining about the law don’t live here. In fact, the Mexicans have mysteriously left town as well and I hear Colorado and Utah are the new border states. Let those geniuses think about borders for a change. We’re just doing what we have to do.

In the past month we’ve passed laws to legally carry concealed weapons into bars, ban any classes or clubs in our public schools that are exclusive to a single ethnicity, and of course 1070. What kind of pussy conceals their weapons anyway?

I didn’t vote for Jan Brewer, but I think I like her. In fact, nobody voted for Jan. She got the job by default after Janet Napolitano bankrupted our state in epic failure and got promoted upward to run Homeland Security, the largest bureau in U.S. History. She’s got good experience at spending public funds on crap.

Arizona isn’t just known for our landscape, we’ve also got a high population of bomb shelter residents who are reading this post right now from fortified concrete bunkers sprinkled throughout the west desert. Like Gila Monsters hiding under a ledge until Spring, they await the apocalypse when they can emerge to shoot their way from cache to cache across the great land without quite knowing why.

Ultimately us Arizonans are a unique breed. I don’t expect the rest of the country to understand us, and in fact, I wish they would stay the hell away. We could use about 6 million less resident in the state. We should build a superhighway with tall fences on either side that goes from the Grand Canyon to Tombstone. Better yet, let’s move Tombstone to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, situated next to the Flintstones exhibit. Welcome! See the canyon and watch some cowboys re-enact historical gun fights… then go the fuck home.

John Wesley Powell surveyed the desert southwest in the late 1800′s only to conclude that the arid environment could sustain a million people, at most. That was before we discovered ground water. I don’t want to hear any griping by Nevada or California either. You don’t like our laws, but you sure like our share of the Colorado river water. What will you boil tofu tea with when we turn the spigot off, sand? Perhaps you could use some of that fine Salton Sea brine.

I’m here to set the record straight for Arizona. Many of us are neither queer left nor fascist right, just simply desert rats who enjoy good old fashioned independence and simple living. Go ahead, give us back to Mexico. Based on all the se habla signage I have to drive through every day, I doubt anyone would notice a difference anyway. Getting annexed by Mexico would also have the benefit of flushing Scottsdale of all the vermin who constipate the east valley. I for one welcome our brown-skinned overlords. In fact they are welcome to check my papers, and if I can’t produce any they can deport me to Europe.

I wanted more wireless power and didn’t want to spend a lot of time so I visited the local Frys Electronics and scanned the shelves for a power booster. While there were cheaper, off-brand versions available, I didn’t want to waste more than a few minutes so I settled on the Cisco Wireless-G extender. It looked simple enough, and claimed a painless, plug-n-play installation. After all, what’s so fucking difficult about a gadget when all it needs to do is boost a signal. I don’t give a rats ass about routing any packets, just extending the reach of my signal. Am I right? Bottom layer of the OSI model, that’s all… nothing tricky.

After exploding the contents from the shrink-wrap I plug the basterd in and expect it to show up on my wireless grid. No such luck.

The next step, read the instructions. Big type, lots of pictures, simple 1-2-3 type steps. I’d guessed right, but couldn’t get connected so I tried inserting the CD. After answering the Vista (Accept or Deny) questions, I opened the setup.exe. A few seconds later a progress bar appears stating it is searching for networks. After 90% done I get a system failure error, try again. Having seen these types of messages throughout my Windows career, I ‘try again’ knowing full well that I’ll get the same error.

Usually I’ll hack around for several hours, re-booting and doing all sorts of calisthenics to try and make it work. Not this time. It’s Sunday afternoon and my precious weekend is about over. I’d just spent a hundred hard-earned dollars for a promise of a quick solution. I cut to the chase and called the 800 number.

Fuckin’ Packistani on the other end of the phone took all my contact information, put me on hold, and finally dropped the call after about 15 minutes.

That’s it, game over, Cisco loses a sale and I lose an hour.

I boxed everything up and mounted my trusty steed enroute to Frys Electronics. The girl at the return counter didn’t bat an eye. In fact, I said, “it didn’t work” and she filled in the problem on the return screen as “Could not connect.” She obviously had a few of these come back.

I feel liberated! I drove home feeling conquest. Granted, I still don’t have a strong connection in some regions of my house, but Cisco has lost a potential sale. I will never buy another Cisco product if there is an option. I’m tired of companies who make claims they cannot stand behind. They have no regard for people and their discretionary time. I will never again spend more than a few minutes trying to get a product to work as it claims. Especially computer shit. If I get software that won’t load, or devices that aren’t detected, they go back immediately for a full refund. Life’s too short for fuckers who cut corners to make sales.

Hey Cisco…. FUUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The colony may be colorful, but they’re each a self-serving little flying asshole.

Consider yesterday. A new fledge either just got pitched out of the nest box by a parent, or the youngster got carried away singing Ted Nugent… “Kamikazi on the hundredth floor, swan dive to the street.” Regardless, I found the shit hobbling around the bottom of the aviary.

The beak was crossed excessively, one eyeball was pointing straight down with a large bulge over it, and the feet were gnarled into arthritic kinks. Still, it managed to lurch around the bottom. The rest of the colony was doing what it did with any other cripples, ignoring it. Or at most, swooping down to take a chunk out of the mutant. The bird kingdom is vicious this way, there is no short bus in the colony, only abandonment and destruction for the defects.

The Mrs. decided she needed another project and so rescued the little guy/gal. Note that we have a hospital cage where she’s nursed a couple other weak links to partial health. One has only one eye, another has a giant scar where the colony attempted a gang murder. Anyway, she decided this would be her newest project. One look was all I needed and the first thing that came to mind was Borat’s brother Vilo… he is reTARrrrrrd.

I fully expected the thing to be dead by morning. Instead, with a little hand warmth and formula, Vilo is climbing all over his quarantine cage like an preposterously happy Downs Syndrome kid. I’m quite sure if we’d left him in the colony, his headless corpse would have been on the floor of the aviary this morning.

I’m fairly certain how this happened genetically. Vilo is the likely offspring of a father/daughter or brother/sister roll in the food dish. (they like to fuck in the food dish.) We call them three-headed babies in the Sapien world. But who am I to judge?

We have a black president being sworn in tomorrow, who’s to say this retarded bird won’t grow up to be president some day?

Planned Communities (tm.) : It’s like a halfway house for the desperate masses. Too fearful of nature, and too fearful of our capitalist overlords. We move into their orderly neighborhoods and enjoy the freedoms that our forefathers fought to bestow upon us, the liberty to choose the color of our house. Any one of three shades of beige.

Order. We must have order!

Hide that trash can behind your gate or suffer consequences, a ticket.

Do not park your car on the street or in your driveway.

You may select from six species of plant to ornate your front yard, but you must remain within quota.

You may not allow your grass to grow beyond three inches or suffer consequences, a ticket.

—

This is stupid, I don’t even live in a fascist HOA community, what do I care?

I punch the URL into my browser and clickity-click on through to setup my own blog site. After entering all the information I get rejected!!! Fuckin’ rejected I tell you. Now I have to find the lanker who stole my stupid web identity so I type in http://bilquest.wordpress.com and start reading.

Hey! This sounds familiar… reads like my own… not much there, but shares a cadence with my own thoughts. Wait a minute, THIS IS ME! When did I create this blog? Was I sleep-blogging?

Somewhere deep down a neuron fired brightly, yet only resulted in a dim recall of setting up this blog a long time ago, probably for the same purpose as I’m here today. I completely forgot, and more importantly, what the hell is my password?

After going through the steps to reset my password I was emailed a string of characters created by baboons humping on a keyboard.

At any rate, I’m back. Dunno if I’ll continue writing here or not. I mainly need to see what all the blog excitement is about.

His original name was Bear so we re-named him to Gazmo. Consider this our first act of psychic correction for the mutant. Not only did Gazmo not have any outward characteristics warranting the name of ‘Bear,’ but he might have been mistaken for a chupacabra with downs-syndrome had he been captured south of the border. Quasimoto was my first choice, but the name was too laborious. Gazmo was the name of a dog mentioned on a Timbuk-3 vinyl disk we were listening to at the time. Cur of a new age family out in the Carolina’s. This dog, formerly known as Bear fit the bill.

A woman at work thought my new wife and I would like to liberate her un-wed, teenage daughter of 8-month gestation from the little flea market creature that bounded off her stomach, walls and ceiling of her 1-room apartment. Either the dog had to go, or there would be a late-term abortion. It was our moral duty since we had a small yard with our fixer-upper home we bought with the honeymoon money.

Gazmo was a mix. A hairy tail twice as long as his body, stubby front legs, quivering kangaroo rears. Bald head with eyeballs bulging out the top like a gakked up Marty Feldman. The final selling point was an underbite that would inspire fear and dread among a mighty legion of orthodontists. Later we would discover the recessive trait of a Great Dane lurking inside this milk carton sized mutt when he curled up on the floor to pleasure himself on his mammoth love rod. His penis protracted mysteriously from within his insignificant loins. The wife would perspire and look at me with contempt whenever Gazmo exhibited his enormous purple, pulsating, crooked, veiny, lumpy shaft. Which I might add, was frequent.

As all perceptive animals have reacted to me over the years, Gazmo wanted nothing to do with me. It took an hour just to capture the wiry animal inside the single room apartment. He was part moray eel, hiding in every nook of the apartment and snapping out at my hand with those gnarled and rotten teeth. Why did I want this critter again?

At first Gazmo was an inside dog, for about a week. We had been falsely assured that he was housebroken. But like any crackhead, they’ll never admit to anything. During the night he made it his personal opus to cover the entire vertical portion of the house (a foot and below) with dog urine. We turned out the lights one night and turned on our scorpion light (black light) to what was revealed as a crime scene. Every six inches around the entire house looked like a photo negative of Niagra Falls. He spent the next night, along with the rest of his life, in the back-yard where he continued his life quest to mark the outside walls.

Oh ya, we did try to train him at first, but it didn’t do much. Like any dog I’ve ever known, they don’t understand why they can’t take a whizz wherever they damn well please. The wainescoating of my life is dog urine.

The two normal dogs wait patiently for a chance at a tasty round waffle. They each gingerly accept a waffle with a quick eye-glanced ‘thank-you,’ and only Mary is left. Mary just stares off to the side and I ask myself it it’s possible to have asynchronously wandering eyeballs? He makes no effort to retrieve said waffle from waiting hand so the wife flops the warm and soggy breakfast directly on top of Mary’s head. Instead of shaking, Mary takes a couple steps back as if to backup out from under the waffle that is draped over his head like a strange beret. The waffle slides off the the side and the idiot watches it drop to the ground. Instead of proceeding to eat that waffle the asshole walks over to Sgt. Baker and starts eating his portion. Of course Baker isn’t about to share so his prickly spines perk up on his back and he gives Mary one of his, ‘make my day motherfucker’ snarls. Before anyone has the chance to reach for the baseball bat, Mary and Sgt. Baker are in full-contact cage sport. Note that Mary doesn’t stand a chance against the drill sargent, not only does he out-muscle Mary, but he wears a snappy bandana. Mary just bites and scratches like a girl.

I hear the ruckus from the back room and come out to referee the duel. As soon as I open the door they break off the fight. Mary cowers off to the cool deck while Baker expectedly stands his ground… now covering both waffles, casually enjoying both his and Mary’s waffles while Mary watches from a distance with his “I’m a total fuckup” stare.

Meanwhile Lynnyrd is still dining on his waffle over in the palm tree planter as if nothing else was happening. He has proven himself the smarter of the three, but he still has his flaws. His vice is uncontrollable pissing, but at least he doesn’t dive through plate windows at the sound of the neighbors’ backfiring Dodge.

Mary the Dog

Rant #1

This is the post that started all this. Not having known much about Craigslist, other than responding to ads and trucking home old shit that people posted in the free section, I just surmised it was a free-for-all forum with categories. I punched up the pets section and started typing…

Subject: (pets) Free dumbass dog

I can't take the expense anymore.  3 strikes and my moron
dog must go... the idiot crashed yet another window during
the storm yesterday.

Here's the story: I have 3 dogs, all strays that I've taken
in out of compassion in my heart and generosity of
pocketbook. I've had the oldest mutt for about 4 years
after a friend found him wandering around her neighboorhood.
He was under a year old when I adopted him. I tried training
him and thought he'd be a good frisbee dog but he never
'got the idea.' Most the time he'd follow the flying object
and then stop letting it hit him in the head. We finally
concluded that he is mentally retarded about the same time
we discovered that he is very sensitive to loud noises.

He goes totally bonkers over thunderstorms and explosions
(e.g. fireworks) He bangs on windows, cries, barks, and
leaps tall fences. I bailed him out of the Durango lock-up
after one 4th of July and he just crashed through the
third window with the last storm. I can't take it anymore
and my other dogs treat him like a leper. So if you like
projects, please come take him away, otherwise he's going
to the pound, and most likely a trip through euthanasia.

Description:

color: brown and black and white
breed: mutt
size: medium
gender: male w/out nuts
shots: current
age: probably 5 or 6 years
name: Mary

He leaps around the yard chasing birds and butterflies. He
flies through plate glass windows during thunderstorms out
of fright. We no longer have the patience to work with
him. He is completely harmless and has a wide, dumb smile.
Email me with your intentions with Mary and we'll contact
you with adoption info.

(pets) More adventures of Mary the dog

Couple days ago I posted about my dog Mary (dumbass dog)
who keeps jumping through windows during thunderstorms.
Now, before all you weepy dog lovers vote my message off
the list again you might want to hear me out.

First off, I'm not a dog hater and 'NO' I haven't sent
Mary off to doggy lockup. Fact is I'm taking the
suggestions that were emailed to me and we're giving
Mary another chance.

Regarding the tranquilizer theory... we tried that.
Fact is we've jacked Mary with enough medicine to knock
out a 350 lb. linebacker. It didn't do anything but
give him bloodshot eyes the next day.

I tried the kennel theory for last nights thunderstorm
-- and for all you people who think I'm a sick and
twisted dog abuser, I even built a custom kennel for
Mary that was larger and more spacious than your air
carrier type because that's just what kind of
compassionate guy I am. It kept the mutt from diving
through the window, but he kept us up all night with
the yarping. And for further evidence of my retarded
dog, I went to let him out this morning and opened
the door. Instead of looking out the door he faced the
opposite side of the kennel expecting me to open the
other end of the box. I stood there completely
stupified for several minutes while he faced the closed
end of the kennel, wagging and obviously excited to be
let free... directly behind him was total freedom yet
he continued to face the closed end of the box.  Finally
I reached in and yanked him out backwards by his tail.
He gave me one of his dumb smiles and seemed to say,
'oh ya, I was about to do that' before slinking off for
some morning sodomy with his yard buddies.

So to all you doggy defenders who villified me, I've
had many dogs in my life and have come to accept a
certain level of 'dogness,' but Mary truly is the alpha
dumbass of dogs.  Mary is mentally retarded... really!

Yes, Mary is a male dog (without nuts). Does he have
complex you ask? Ya gotta have brain before you can
have psychological problems.