Well, the band has been taking up a lot of my free time, so that's pretty much it.  I'm in mid-construction of Keybot, Jr. - a portable computer to run my soft-synths at the practice room, and on stage.  The original Keybot is way to big to bring out, and it has a bunch of rack synths that will never get used outside of what passes for my studio.  Apologies to Dr. Pinkerton for ripping off Drumbot's good name, but it's too cool not to.  Besides, it's fun to think of an armada of autonomous musical instruments roaming the planet, just waiting for the sign to attack.

Or at the very least getting together to make the weirdest damn music ever heard.

     Well, after a few hectic weeks, I'm finally taking a breather.  What with Dr. Pinkerton's Luck Gun and the failed Pac Man restore out of the way, I can concentrate on my other projects.  I'm still hunting around for a monitor bracket for my retro jukebox.  I might get in touch with my old boss at Southern Rehab, and see if he has any wheelchair mounting hardware that'll fit the bill.  The next few weeks will find me finializing my outdoor projects.  I still need to finish the edges of the deck and waterproof the whole thing.  Also, I still need to finish the soffat and facia on my workshop.  Right now, Susan and I are in the process of de-stumping the front of the house where our palm trees used to be.  Fun fact - the palm trees didn't really have stumps, rather, they had hundreds of small roots that clumped together and eventually compressed themselves into a 'trunk'.  After they're gone, Susan's gonna re-plant the whole thing.  I told her that if it's anything with thorns or needles, I'm taking the dogs and leaving her.  On the plus side, I was able to eBay most of the Pac Man machine parts, and make almost triple what I paid for the thing.  I do, however, have two MDF sides cut out for it.  I actually might build a dedicated 'Space Paranoids' cabinet with those.  Oh well, this calm was good while it lasted!

    Well, the Pac-Man restoration is dead.  I tried my hardest, but I just couldn't get the board to work properly.  I replaced all of the critical chips, made sure the voltages were correct, and checked every solder joint and trace.  Still, it mocks me with its defiance.  So, I'll teach that little bitch a lesson, and eBay it.  That's right, I'm parting out everything salvageable, and selling it to the highest bidder.  It would have been nice to have a dedicated Pac, but I've already got the MuliPac.

Plus all the ones on my Retrocade.

Oh, and all the ones on Portacade, too.

Good God, I think I might be a little obsessed here!

     Anyway, I'm going to save the sides I cut, plus the coin door.  I now have most of the parts to build my Space Paranoids machine.  What's that, you ask?  Just scroll down my previous entries to the December 13, 2008 entry.  With the Pac restore out of the picture, I can concentrate on my Art Deco touchscreen jukebox.  All that it needs is a suitable mounting bracket for the monitor, and a deco-style housing for said monitor. 

     And just when I think I'm done, I'll probably find another game on the side of the road or on Craigslist. 

     Just point and laugh at me.  I really deserve it.

    I'll take a break from posting updates on various projects to rant about something that's been nagging me to no end.  I suppose I started to notice it years ago.  After graduating high school, and meeting new people, I began to see a trend forming - people who loved Mickey Mouse, and people who loved Bugs Bunny. Sort of like the whole Rolling Stones/Beatles argument - it's impossible to like both equally.  You've gotta choose sides!  Mouse people always seemed upbeat, over-cheerful, and extremely sociable.  The Bunny people are more cynical, always brooding about something, and you couldn't pay them enough to run with a pack.  While the Mouse people are constantly extolling the virtues of Walt Disney & his magical empire, the Bunny people can't wait to drop an Acme anvil on their collective heads.  Mouse people love, I mean LOVE a good pie fight.  Bunny people love to see someone wrapped in sticks of TNT being ignited with a flamethrower.  Mouse people are never sarcastic.  Bunny people are never sarcastic.  Mouse people still use AOL, while Bunny people are running Firefox on a pirated version of XP over someone else's unsecured wireless internet connection.  Mouse people spend hours picking out the perfect birthday card for that special someone.  Bunny people can't even remember their own birthday.  Mouse men drink light beer, Bunny men drink some unpronounceable German lager that has the viscosity of used motor oil.  Mouse women have pink drinks with fruit that end in 'ita', 'ito', 'iri', or 'ini'.  Bunny women drink some unpronounceable German lager that has the viscosity of used motor oil.  Mouse people have t-shirts, hats, shorts, and all the matching accessories adorned with various Disney characters.  Bunny people have tattoos of their favorite Warner Brothers characters.  You can give a Mouse person a fish.  You can teach a Bunny person how to fish.  Mouse people think Pluto is a dog.  Bunny people still think Pluto is a planet, godammit!  A Mouse person thinks they are right.  A Bunny person knows they are right.  A Mouse person will tell a Bunny person that the glass is half-full.  The bunny person will tell the Mouse person that the glass is half-empty.  The Mouse person will again state that the glass is half-full, then the Bunny person will say that the glass is half-full.  The Mouse person will now inevitabley say that the glass is now half-empty. 

     There are some similarities, such as needing to breathe and eat, but that's about it. 

     That's all, flolks!

     For those of you not in the know, Bob Roberts is the Yoda of arcade repair.  He's a well-respected member of the amusement community, and has more parts and knowledge than anyone could ever imagine.  Well, in the process of diagnosing the Pac-Man, I was advised to get new game rom chips.  These hold all the data and programming that make a Pac-Man the wonderful game that it is.  Now, everytime I order something from Bob, I get some lagniappe.  Sometimes it's a pen, sometimes it's a chip exctractor.  Nothing of real monetary value, but it is invaluable in customer service points.  Well, when I ordered a set of chips and fuses, I expected the package to be just a padded envelope.  I was surprised to find a small box on my doorstep yesterday afternoon. 

Here's what I ordered -



And, here's what else was included in the box -



Hot damn, moon pies in a Mardi Gras cup!  Now I could have gone out last Tuesday and probably caught a case of this stuff, but since I'm an anti-social hermit, I stayed home and cut down palm trees instead.  This gave me a little taste of the parades without putting up with the traffic, swarms of morons, and lack of restrooms. 

Best of both worlds, baby!

Anyway, this is what the old chips looked like -



The pins were corroded, and some of the legs were barely attached to the chips themselves.  After pulling them and cleaning the sockets, it looked a lot more attractive -



The good news is that it looks good.  The bad news is that it didn't help.  The screen is still scrambled, and the game doesn't even boot.  The next step is to replace the processor chip and one of the sync chips.  Fortunately, old chips are really cheap, so this project isn't as relatively frustrating as some of the other projects I've tackled.  

     Speaking of other projects, I'm nearly finished Dr. Pinkerton's "Pinkyon Particle Procurement Apparatus" (that's not the official name, but I had to call it something).  Looka -



You can't really see it with the flash, but the horseshoe is illuminated by a strip of EL wire.  Also, I'm searching frantically for green glitter to fill up the procurement chamber (the empty Diet Coke 2-liter bottle).  Unfortunately for me, green glitter is a main component for most Mardi Gras costumes, so every place I've looked has been sold out, and probably won't be re-stocked for a few weeks.  To make matters worse, St. Patrick's day is around the corner, and it'll be just as rare then as the St. Patty's parades start taking shape.

    So, that's my quest today.

    Must.  Find.  Green.  Glitter.

     The original Pac-Man mini cabinet is no more.  The first things to go were all the electronics and wire harnesses.  Then, hardware like the control panel, coin door, speaker grille, etc.  Now that the cabinet was a lot lighter, I set it on top of some MDF and traced what will be the new sides.



After the tracing was done, I stripped off all of the plywood supports, monitor mounts, and the top and rear panels.  This was all that remained -



I took off the coin box, and threw the sides in the dumpster, although 50% of the wood crumbled off as I dragged it.  After some cutting, I had my new sides.  Now, to make sure they were the exact size, I clamped them together, and sanded the sides flush.



The hardest part now will be trying to replace all the mounts in the exact same place as they were on the original sides.  I measured as best I could, but I think I'm probably gonna have to do a lot of guestimating.  Another thing that I was able to salvage was the piece with the serial number stamped into it.




That's about all I can do with this project for now.  I've still got to finish Dr. Pinkerton's luck gun, and my retro jukebox.  I've got crap all over the place, and I really need to start finishing things.  

     I'm a sucker for alternate reality.  The possibility that an infinite number of alternate universes could co-exist with ours, all with some degree of difference, has always intrigued me.  It's really fascinating to think that if one simple thing had been different in our history, the world as we know it could be radically different.  I got to thinking - what if Nicola Tesla had been the great inventor that everybody remembered instead of Thomas Edison?   If it wasn't for his dimisished social skills and financial ineptitude, it might have actually happened.

     So, what the heck does this have to do with your stupid jukebox?

     Well, I was thinking - what if Telsa was the one that got into the whole phonograph business instead of Edison?  Instead of death rays and wireless energy, what if he focused on more practical things?  What if Nicola Tesla designed this jukebox? 

     So, that's where I'm at in the design process.  Throw Telsa in the mix, and now I've got creative license to add some sci-fi elements, as well as some steampunk inspired accents to this thing.  I've alread made a Windows startup screen for the computer -





As far as the actual box portion goes, I fabricated a rear panel for it yesterday.  This weekend, I hope to make the internal speaker box.  Once all the speakers and computer are mounted, I can focus on how to mount the touchscreen.  I'm thinking about an art-deco style of enclosure to it, mouted by a really over-complex series of rods and gears.  To top it all off, I've got two small plasma globes that were from a project that never was.  I've just go to find out where they would all go in the scheme of things....

WWTD

(What Would Tesla Do?)

Before:




After:




The next step is making a mounting board for the speakers.  That will be later on this weekend.

     Here she is after being stained red oak and the first coat of an amber tinted shellac -






The next step is to sand it with 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out the brush marks, and then alternate clear spray shellac coats and sanding with 320 grit sandpaper.  That's for tomorrow.

I started bright and early this morning with the intention of just cleaning the veneer.  Boy, was I mistaken.  I guess I was looking at the radio through rose-colored glasses yesterday, because today I really saw how bad the finish was on the veneer.  Murphy's oil soap can't work miracles.  So, I got a mess of 150 grit sandpaper, and started stripping off the bubbling and cracking finish on the veneer.  After that was done, I glued some of the veneer that was peeling on the bottom and filled a few cracks with wood filler.  Here's the evidence -










This last shot was after I went over everything with a 220 grit sandpaper and ran a tack cloth over it.  I've still got some residual finish on the speaker grilles to get rid of, but I'm waiting for all this bad weather to pass so I don't get caught out in the rain.  Oh, and if you're wondering what those silver things are in the doorway - they're just the rocket boosters from Dr. Pinkerton's flying truck.  Dr. Stroganoff stole them, and is in the process of reverse engineering them for his own diabolical purposes.    

     Every so often, I like ride through Elmwood business park, looking for things that businesses have thrown away.  It just so happens, I've been wanting to rebuild E.R.I.C. 2.0 (my wall mounted jukebox, as seen in my avatar).  I pulled behind a row of businesses, and found this next to one of the dumpsters -





According to the label, it's a General Electric model H-116 radio.  I did some research, and it was made in 1939.  As you can see, it had some water damage to the bottom 6 inches, but all in all, it's in pretty good shape - considering it's 70 years old!  Here are some more shots -












All the electronics are shot to hell, so I'm going to gut it and refinish the veneer.  I'm then going to install E.R.I.C. 2.0's CPU inside with the powered speakers mounted behind the grill.  Since the display is gone, I'll probably just put a piece of opaque plexiglass over the cover, and illuminate it from the back with some while l.e.d.s. 

     Now, here's the challenging part.

     Since I want to continue to use my touchscreen monitor, and it clearly won't fit where the old display was, I'm going to fabricate an enclosure to go on top of the box.  I've been doing some searching on Google images for a 1939 GE television, and this is what I got -



This baby came with a whopping 5" screen, and you had to attach it to an existing radio, so you could tune in the audio through that one.  Now, my touchscreen is 17", so it will have to be a tad bit larger, but I'm hoping to get the same result.  Naturally, I've got to make a Windows start-up screen that will fit the style and era.  I'm a little disappointed, because this is too recent to be steampunk'd.  I'll have to start researching art deco design now.  As usual, this project will probably take a lot longer than predicted, but the price was right on this thing. 



  

     Well, the title sums it up.  The house has been de-Christmas'd, and now we're in Mardi Gras mode.  Work has been more crazy than usual.  I've been offshore once this week, and will probably have to go back out next week for a day or two.  In between work and sleep, I've started experimenting with Windows 7.  Even in the first beta release, I'm liking it far more than that cybernetic miscarriage known as Vista.  I had the opportunity to try it out a few months ago, and completely hated it.  XP has served me quite reliably for the past few years, and I've been reluctant to change.  I know it's cliché, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it.  When I heard that the new version of Windows would be available to the public as a beta test, I decided to take a chance.  I had an extra system lying around, due to the fact that I soft-modded my Xbox into a media center.  I wiped the hard drive, and with a clean slate, started to install it.  After many attempts, I learned that you can't have any auxillary cards (agp graphics, pci usb, etc.) physically installed, or Windows freaks out and keeps shutting down.  After that minor setback, I was ready to roll.  Windows 7  only requires about half of the memory and processing speed as Vista, so it runs quite well on older systems.  I'm using a P4 2.5 gig processor with 1 gig of ram, and it's holding up just fine.  The new gui format takes a little bit of getting used to, though.  However, it looks very slick, and is actually more compatible with some of my older sound cards than Vista.  I'll see how this holds up before I convert my main rig over, but it does look very promising.  If history is any indication, every other Microsoft OS (Me, Vista) is a stinker.  Kind like the Star Trek movies (1,3,5, etc.).
     
     Speaking of stinkers...
     
     Last Saturday, I found an ad on Craigslist for a Toshiba laptop for $75.  Now, Susan and I had always wanted to get her dad a laptop, so he could surf the internet to his heart's content.  I emailed the girl selling it, and said that it just died a year or two ago, and she just bought another one without ever getting this one checked out.  We figured $75 for a $800 laptop was an acceptable gamble, so we got it.  When we got home, the thing came up with no problems.  The previous owner had, however, installed America Online, and had more chat programs running than I had even know existed.  So I formatted and re-installed Windows XP.  Everything was going just fine.  That's when I did the something stupid.  I tried to pick it up. 

Dead.

That's it.  I grabbed it by the sides to move it, and the thing up and died.  Now, I have a laptop, so I know how to handle them.  They don't just go dark when you move it.  I mean, really, what good is a portable computer that's not portable??  Anyway, I did some research, and found that it's actually a pretty common problem with the Toshiba Satellite.  The only fix is to send it back to the company for far more than it was worth for them to fix a grounding issue with the cover of the laptop.  So it sits on my workbench, patiently waiting for me to fix it.  I tried isolating the ground and insulating the cover, but it still dies every time I touch it just right.  If worse comes to worse, I might use it and retrofit my old TRS80 model 3 with the screen and motherboard, and use a USB keyboard in place of the old one. 

Just what I need, another project!

     Well, better late than never.  I've got no real excuse other than I've been extremely lazy.  Other than de-Christmasing the house, and finally backing up all the files on my server, I've been doing nothing, absolutely nothing.  So, hopefully everybody had a good New Year's eve/day , and nobody is missing a body part as a result of a fireworks mishap or a drug deal gone bad.  Hopefully, 2009 will be as relatively uneventful as 2008.

     Oh, and there is a possibility I could be making a roadtrip to Houston this weekend, but more on that as it develops...


Oh well edit

   Last week on the KLOV message boards, someone posted a Craigslist listing in Houston for some really cheap gutted arcade cabinets.  One of them was a Space Invaders cabaret.  It was a damn near match for my Space Paranoids project!  I emailed the guy, and told him I could be out there this Saturday to pick it up, and I even offered to pay him in advance via paypal.  Well after a few days of no contact, I finally got the email this morning that said he sold the whole lot to one guy this past weekend.   So, the search continues, but at least I know what kind of cabinet to hunt for now!

     The way I am with arcade games, Susan is with dogs.  Yesterday, as we were getting out of the car after a long day of shopping, this gal came up to us in the driveway -



She's a sweet chocolate lab, who is obviously trained and is very well behaved.  She had a collar, but no identifying tags.  We took her to the vet to scan her for a microchip, but she didn't  have one.  So, after we got back, we walked her around the neighborhood, asking everybody that we encountered if she looked familiar, or if they knew someone missing her.  Nobody did.  The next step was to post ads on the internet.  I put a 'found' notice on both Craigslist and the NOLA.com forums, and sent an email to the Jefferson Parish animal shelter letting them know that we found her, just in case the owner went there looking for her.  This morning, I printed up a bunch of signs, and put them up on the phone poles at all of the major intersections around the neighborhood.  I hope we find her owner.  I know I would be going nuts if one of our guys got out.  My cousin Amber recently went through such an experience.  Fortunately, her dog had the chip, and after a few days, she got a call from the Kenner pound.  I hope this girl has the same happy ending.

Happy Ending Edit

Well, we got a call, and I just reunited 'Emma' with her family.  It turns out that she lived one street over and one block down from us.  Susan actually remembers her barking at Hugo and Tucker when she used to walk her that way.  Small world after all, huh?

     Well, I hope Christmas is rapidly approaching for the rest of you as it is for me.  Fortunately, I've got most of the gift-buying done, so now I'm in the home stretch.  Along the way, I've been sure to catch the staples of holiday television - Rudolph, Charlie Brown, etc.  But none come close on the "WTF" scale as "North Pole Nutrias".  For those of you with Cox cable, tune in Saturday night 8 p.m. on channel 10.  DO NOT TAKE DRUGS, AS THIS WILL ONLY MAKE THINGS WORSE!  North Pole Nutrias is a puppet/music show produced and starring local musical oddities Quintron & Miss Pussycat.  I won't give you too many details, but two nutrias are trying to save Christmas.  Along the way, they face a bad guy played by the late sheriff Harry Lee.  Oh, did I mention Al Scramuzza is Santa Claus and Hubig's pies are pivotal pieces in the story? 'Nuff said.  Still on the viewing list is the 24 hour "Christmas Story" marathon, and if the fates allow, "Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas".  I don't know if it's airing this year, but I'll track that sucker down somehow.  Of course, nothing beats this -

     It started innocently enough with THIS POST on the B.Y.O.A.C. message boards.  Apparently, someone FINALLY was making Tron arcade joystick handles that were actually good.  But these were beyond good, these were essentially NOS.  Randy, the guy that owns Groovy Game Gear  obtained the original molds, and started making them with better, more UV reactive plastics.  The result are handles that are better than the original.  For those of you who have never played the Tron arcade game, the cabinet was loaded with blacklights and fluorescent colors.  The joystick was intended to glow like the characters in the movie.  It was all going to be a just a matter of time before I would recapture that  bit of psychedelic goodness.  Now, I already had a trigger stick, but it came from a M.A.C.H. 3 game.  It had the same base, but different handles, and as I found out, a different mounting post.  So, I ordered the new sides with the intentions of just making my Tron modular panel for Retrocade a tad more realistic.  That's where this story takes the usual downward spiral.  I thought, "hey, if I'm gonna put a realistic Tron handle on the panel, I should make it glow."  So, instead of the 18" blacklight bulb that's supposed to be mounted on the control panel, I got some UV LEDs off of eBay to put directly inside the handles.  Then I thought, "hey, that sure would be a lot of bells and whistles just for a modular panel that would get used once in a while."  So, I decided to build another machine.  As I've said over and over again, I'm out of room, game wise.  That's when I decided on a bartop machine that would play the multiple versions of Tron (the original arcade game, its sequel, Discs of Tron, and the PC sequel Tron 2.0).  As a final touch, I thought of adding Space Paranoids by Rogue Synapse.   Never seen it in the arcades?  Well, there's a good reason. It was a fictional game in the movie, but someone decided they really wanted to play it.  Apparently, they also wanted to play The Last Starfighter, too.  And that's when the project took on a life of its own.

     Instead of being just a glorified MAME box, I would try and build a replica Space Paranoids machine.  The first thing to do was to watch the arcade scene in Tron to get an idea of what the game cabinet would look like.  Unfortunately, all you can see is a screenshot of the game, the coin door, and the glowing blue joystick.  Well, that's good news, in a way.  I can make it, and nobody can tell me it's not an exact replica.  So, I took what clues I could find, and started planning. 

First was the marquee.  The only thing I could remotely base this on was the billboard on top of Flynn's arcade -



Taking that cue, I used Photoshop, and some images I found using Google photo search to make this -



The hardest part, believe it or not, was re-creating the Encom logo.

Also, I modified a Discs of Tron control panel overlay to fit the controls needed for Space Paranoids (an extra joystick to aim the tank turret).



The bartop cabinet itself is nothing more than the top half of the Tron arcade machine in 3/4 scale.  As for side art, I haven't really made a solid decision, but I'm leaning more to making stencils of the Recognizers -  going for the old-school arcade look.

Whew, that was a lot.  As per usual, I'll post updates when I get around to them.

MORE RESEARCHED EDIT -

After some snooping around, it looks like the cabinet used in the movie for Space Paranoids is actually an Atari Dominos.  Interestingly enough, the game itself was the basis for the light cycle game in Tron.  Homage or rip-off??


MORE INFORMED (WITH PICTURES) -

Okay, here's a screen cap of the original -



Now here's the Dominos cabinet -



And, upon further research, here's a more likely cabinet by Kee Games called Ultra Tank -



While it's not an exact copy, it's damn close enough.  Even the artwork would make a convincing argument.

There's something strange happening.  I don't know if it's made the news yet, but there's cold white stuff coming from the sky.  I've seen movies about this.  Some of them deal with the end of the world, but most of them are are about Christmas.  I'm too scared to go outside, because this stuff might be radioactive or alien in nature.  God have mercy on us all...

     Well, Christmas season is well upon us, which means one thing - idiots.   No matter where you go, there they are.  You could be in line at PetSmart buying some Alpo, and there would be one of these dolts who don't know how to work the credit card keypad or want to pay with a goddamn Diner's Club card.  And God forbid they want to write out a check - you'd think they were filling out a loan application for a house.  Thankfully, I was able to get most of my shopping done relatively early in the season.  THE absolute worst day for shopping is Christmas Eve.  I know you'd probably guess 'black Friday'.  Black Friday isn't so bad.  Sure, there are tons of people out there, but they know what they want, and they know how to get it.  These are the commando shoppers - they drop in like ninjas, scoop up their merchandise, and whip out that credit card so fast, you only see a blur.  Christmas Eve is when all the idiots wake up and realize, "holy crap, tomorrow's Christmas!!  Why didn't anybody tell me?!"    It's not like they  were waiting on a paycheck, because no banks are going to be open that day.  We're talking a perfect storm of laziness, procrastination, and good ol' fashioned stupidity. 

     Years ago when I worked at Wal-Mart, one of the solitary joys was locking the doors on these morons at 6 p.m. Christmas Eve.  The management got all the guys that worked there to act as bouncers, and for a brief moment, it was payback for every asshole customer you had to put up with the previous year.  Now, they were forced to go buy their Christmas presents at the gas station or a lighted waterfall painting from some guy in the van parked on the corner of Vets and David Dr.  (That is one business savvy sonofabitch.)  This has evolved into one of the many Christmas traditions Susan and I have each year, that is, when she's not working. At 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve, go get yourself some get eggnog daiquiris (Jax Dax on Vets is the best, because they're awesomely strong, and in the same parking lot as Wal-Mart).  Then,  park on the outer edge of a Wal-Mart parking lot.  Start drinking, because what you're about to see is so much funnier with a buzz.  You may miss the initial lock down, but that's okay.  What you're after is the post-game show.  After a while, all the customers will eventually clear out.  Then, the basket wranglers will move all the baskets in front of the doors for good measure, followed by a mass exodus of haggard employees.  After a few minutes, you'll be one of the only cars in the lot. 

Then watch what happens. 

     Sure enough, the idiots will start to show.  At first, a few will pull up to the doors, realize they're closed, and then drive away.  But the real champions (who have that never-say-die attitude) will actually park their car, get out, shimmy between the barricade of shopping carts, and try to go into the store.  Never mind that the lights are off, and the doors are locked.  What happens next is almost textbook.  They'll knock a few times on the glass, and then put their face up to the door, using their hands to shield any outside light in order to see better into the darkened store.  I kinda know the deranged and desperate thought process that goes on inside that useless hunk of mass they call a brain, but it's still fascinating to watch.  So if you're free this Christmas Eve, by all means, follow the plan, and head for a Wal-Mart.  Because that's what the season is all about - knowing that some jackass is giving his kids New Orleans road maps and air fresheners for Christmas.

Ho. Ho. Ho.

Oh, by the way, I need to go to Bavaria one Christmas to see THIS.  It's like GWAR putting on a Christmas pageant. 

    Well, another Thanksgiving is coming to an end.  And finally,  I've realized my dream of spending the day alone and dining on pizza for my feast.  Every year, I have to hear nothing but complaints from both sides of the family about the hustle and bustle of creating a feast of biblical proportions.  My smart-ass solution was always,  "just order pizza".  Well, as fate would have it, I would heed my own advice today.  My parents went to Atlanta, and Susan had to work.  I was so jazzed.  I haven't had pizza delivered in years, so I didn't know if they took checks or just cash, so to be on the safe side, I went to the ATM and pulled out enough cash for a large pizza and a tip for the poor bastard that's gotta work on such a family-oriented holiday (like I had to for so many years at the 'Coin).  Well, as Santa was bringing up the rear of the Macy's parade, my stomach started growling, like some type of Pavlovian/Cringle response.

I knew my options were limited.  My usual pizza place - The Italian Pie was definitely closed, so I thumbed through the yellow pages for a suitable substitute.

I dialed Papa John's.  

No answer.

Hmmm, maybe they're closed today, I thought.

I reluctantly dialed Dominos.  Their pizza tastes like ketchup on old cardboard, but it's still pizza.

No answer. 

What the hell?!  Did they suddenly find family values, too?  Great, I was poised to have a great Thanksgiving, and now it was going to be pizza-less.  I even toyed with the idea of maybe going get Chinese, but the hell with that - I WANT PIZZA!!  I remembered that my brother-in-law had to work at Wal*Mart today, so I went by to see if I could at least score some DiGiorno's pizza.  I tell ya, old Wally World was deserted - a pleasant surprise!  I guess the masses were home with family, like a bunch of chumps, stuffing their faces with turkey and the ilk.   The lack of screaming children and the morbidly obese on scooters was a pleasant surprise.   I decided that if I was going to have my own dinner, I would do it right.  The main course was a DiGiorno's supreme pizza with a side of corn chips with artichoke/garlic hummus .  For dessert, I would dine on a coconut macaroon that Susan got me from Gambino's and a chocolate Hubig's pie.  I know it's no comparison to the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving dinner, but it was everything I had hoped.  Now, I can cross Thanksgiving pizza off my list of things to do before I die.  I still need to conquer the Moon and become the King of Antarctica / Lord of the penguins.  I'll get to that next year...

Good luck to all you suckers getting up before God tomorrow morning and battling the other cheapskates in order to save $5 on a Christmas gift. 

Merry Christmas, tightwads!


Black Friday sad/asinine edit proving my point -

Wal-Mart worker dies after shoppers knock him down

And people wonder why I hate society.  I'm sure Wal-Mart will try to sweep this under the rug as quickly as possible.  A person's life is now only worth 10% off of a flat screen t.v.