Big Stupid Tommy |
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An online journal from perhaps the biggest, stupidest Tommy on all the internet. 
Big Stupid Tommy: Jamming French Fries Into Your Mind since 2002 
Newsreader Feed Twitter Feed "Those who shun the whimsy of things will experience rigor mortis before death." --Tom Robbins The Reads Real People that I've Met Baboon Pirates Bad Bad Juju Back Home Again Bill's Rant Sheet Blog d'Elisson Boudicca's Voice The Briar Patch Dax Montana Down in Lucky Town Drunken Wisdom Erica's Blog Grouchy Old Cripple John Cox Look, a Baby Wolf! Oddybobo One For the Road Parkway Rest Stop Redneck Ramblings Southern Martyr Straight White Guy Technicalities People I can only assume are real 15 Minute Lunch 10,000 Monkeys and a Camera Angry Pharmacist Bigfoot Diaries Boing Boing Busy Mom Cherie Priest Covered in Beez Cowboy Blob Craven's World The FFOT Give me the Booger Good Ol' J.R. Groanin' Jock Hacking Netflix Holder of Useless Knowledge Inn of the Last Home It's All Relative KeesKennis Kung Fu Monkey A Large Regular Leaning Toward the Dark Side Mental Multivitamin Missives Anonymous Naked Villainy Newscoma No Silence Here Obscurorant Orbitcast Perfect Blue Buildings Perfectly Cromulent The Real Cherilyn Russ McBee Sergio Leone & the Infield Fly Rule Sheila Variations Smoking Toaster Snotty Dog Stephen Silver Strange Maps Stupid Sports Blog Tits List Warren Ellis Watching and Listening Write Lightning Writers I Read Harlan Ellison Carl Hiaasen Stephen King Joe R. Lansdale Christopher Moore Cherie Priest 
Archives
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Sunday, November 15, 2009
2012 Went and saw me some disaster porn today. And Disaster Porn, 2012 is nothing but. Maybe it's a flaw in my character (though I know I'm not alone), but the only thing you need to do to get me to see your movie is include two shots in the movie's trailer: 1.) A major landmark (be it manmade or natural) being destroyed 2.) People running the hell from it. Seriously. If The Bridges of Madison County had featured a bridge getting demolished by a meteor, I'd have paid to see the movie. Twice. There may be another post in me, after I've digested my thoughts mainly concerning Roland Emmerich. It should suffice to say right now that my thoughts on Emmerich took an odd turn during this movie, and I left the movie today thinking that should Roland Emmerich and I ever have occasion to hang out, I tend to think that he and I would likely have very similar sensibilities, as it concerns people in general, and very likely, similar senses of humor. I'm going to have to hammer that particular line of thought out, but there are a couple key points in the flick that made me (and no one else in the theater, that I could tell) laugh out loud. Mainly, there's the whole bit where the final bit of dialogue, paraphrased, is along the lines of: "By the way, I'm no longer peeing in my bed..." Should I have thrown a Spoiler Alert up there? As an aside and bit of non-sequitur: if there were ever a movie that would have me sitting at the back of a theater, laughing my ass off Max Cady style, it would be this one. But anyway. I dug the movie. It is everything that you would think it would be. Vapid, barely-two-dimensional characters surviving horrible disasters in manners illogical in both terms of character's logic and feasibility in general. In short, everything that you've probably ever come to love and/or hate from Roland Emmerich's flicks.... Friday, November 13, 2009
VII Just wanted to note, early this morning, that today marks the Seventh birthday of this little blogamathing. Cool, right? Today is like many days, here lately. It's a busy sonuvagun. Heading out there door by 6:10, and with plans after work, probably won't wander back this way until 11 or so tonight. Did want to take a moment to say thanks for reading, those of you who've been here for a while, and those who've recently picked up the habit. I appreciate you all. Except for Gunny. Gunny is merely tolerated. Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Salute.... I want to quote a I would however like to take a minute to quote from Jeremy Belk's front page story from that November 9, 2009, edition of the Daily Post Athenian, entitled: Napping in Ditch Sends Man to Jail.
The report goes on to note that while Butler appeared very intoxicated, he registered .08 when administered a blood-alcohol test. Was I the only one disappointed by that number? Jeez. Seems to me that the icing on the cake could have been the County Physician saying "This man should have been dead, by all accounts..." But, anyway. Stay far from the moonshine, kids. I mean, I get the machete. Who DOESN'T take a machete out with them when they're drinking? But the firearms? A bit much, I think. I wonder about where, precisely, Butler was going with his full gear in tow. That'd have been a fine sight to see, driving down Highway 30 on Saturday, the man with a rifle, a machete and a mason jar full of courage hiking toward town (the story doesn't make it clear. I wonder if he was headed toward Athens or Decatur...the county line is closer to Decatur....) Highlighting Yet Another Difference Between Big Stupid Tommy and President Barack Obama Today, because I am a man, and the world is my toilet, I took a piss out in the yard. Seemed the most convenient and least time-consuming way to go about things. And trust me, with all the scent-washing rain we've had the past day or so (thanks, Ida), I needed these trees to know just whom they belonged to. President Obama, on the other hand, could not pee out in the yard without (literally, most likely) a federal case being made out of it. If you're keeping score, it's: Tommy 3 Obama 1 Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Milestones.... Two milestones, actually. It pleases me very much, here on the eve of the eve of the eve of this blogamathing's seventh anniversary, that Big Stupid Tommy currently sits at #6 on Google, if you were to search out Channel 9's weatherlady Allison Chinchar. Spent the morning writing. I've got a small writing project going. It's a little goofy, and I'm pleased that I've been able to corral the goofy energy now for 33,000 words. More quickly than I'd imagined, it's reaching an endpoint. That's actually a good thing. I've got more than a handful of projects that wander to absurd wordcounts, never to find a good finish. For me to be able to start and finish a rough draft in a couple of weeks, that's a step in the right direction. Honest moment? I'm 32, and I'm starting to get scared with the whole writing thing. Needing to make myself do a bit more, to make a little more come of it. There's a twin demon of laziness and uncertainty, and it's a daily battle to say "fuck you both..." But, it's going good right now. Current goal is to have this draft done by next Monday. Reasons being, the end point is relatively quick to get to (For once, I think I know where this story's supposed to go), and for two, our busy season at work is kicking into high gear. As it is, I had to come back from vacation, and knock it up into third pretty much as soon as I hit the door. Made me a crabby sumbitch, to be honest, but we'll deal.... Anyway. Just a marker or two. Y'all take it easy. Monday, November 09, 2009
Burn Me Deadly Just want to take a second to give a shout for a buddy of mine. I'm writing without coffee in me, so I'm not particularly verbose this morning. Suffice it to say, a friend is having continued success, and this is a post simply to say I'm proud of the man. I've known Alex Bledsoe for a decade now. He headed up a writing group I joined in college. He's a funny guy with an easy laugh. He tells a hell of a story. He's a cool dude, and he's worked hard toward these goals for years now. It's not hard to believe that he's got ANOTHER book coming out Tuesday. Alex is a great guy who's earned his continued success. I'm proud to call him friend. Burn Me Deadly is coming out tomorrow, and you can order it from Amazon here: Edit: You can read an interview with Alex about Burn Me Deadly here.... Further edit: Corrected the link...had one too many http's in there.... Sunday, November 08, 2009
Friday, November 06, 2009
Highlighting Another Difference Between Me and President Obama Today, I can name So far as I know, President Obama cannot say the same. Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Linkage.... I've been reading blogs for seven years, now. I've read a lot of fine written material, and had the good fortune to have met a fine many folks (and look forward to meeting a fine many more, sayeth this shy kid from the foothills of the Appalachians....) Eric, over at Straight White Guy, can count himself high on the rolls of both these lists: Fine Folks, as well as Fine Writers. This post, "Stealing...." is one of his very best. I gotta be honest. Today was not a great day...trying, and I do not feel that I rose to the challenge with the utmost in grace or fortitude. It was a day that I call "a learning experience," and one that left me feeling rather out of sorts with a lot of things in my life. But reading that put me in a better frame of mind....as I say in the comments, I find myself wondering at how it truly is a small world, a lot of the time. I marvel at the little coincidences in life, and at whether they truly are coincidences or not. And while there's a middle-of-the-night drunken conversation to have about that particular mouth-of-the-river, I will say that Eric's post was a terrificly written way to get my mind out of the rut it had worn itself into, in both a thoughtful and philosophic way. Eric's a good dude. And I would gladly eat nachos with him any time. Check his stuff out.... Sunday, November 01, 2009
Sto-Vember... "Me and November are homies..." --Me. Via my twitter feed. November? Sto-Vember? I greet November with a bit of a wary eye. I've spent a goodly deal of time at my store in 2009. More than I've spent in any other year. And now we enter the holiday season. Eh. It should be good. Just have to steady myself for the next few weeks. Get my head right. Because I'll be spending more than a healthy amount of time down at the salt mines. Sto-vember, indeed.... As such, I'm not doing nanowrimo this year. Considered it, for the third straight year. But, considering that toward the 12th or 14th of the month, it starts kicking into high gear in the grocery business, I find myself without a shitload of free time. I'll be writing (and have been...it's actually been a constructive fall). Just not toward nanowrimo.... As things stand now, the old vacation candle's melted down, and your old pal Tommy finds himself in the last few hours. It was a good one. Productive, some, as I managed 16,000 words produced (the biggest part of that coming in one manic, sleep deprivation produced day). Got to see friends I don't get to see often enough. I got to see Mickey Dolenz in person. Wandered out to Nashville this past weekend. Got to see my friends Julie & Jason. Got myself a Reuben and the St. Charles Porter at Blackstone. The food and the beer were excellent...the service left a lot to be desired, which was a surprising and disappointing first. It's one thing to forget a request like, I dunno, a basket of bread. It's another to forget the bread, the ketchup we asked for, and to neglect to ask if we were interested in another beer. Saw my first Predator game in three or four years. I've gotten back into the hockey a bit. Following isn't the easiest thing in the world, when you've got a cable system that devotes seventeen channels to all things biblical, three to high school football and throws Vs. in there up there in the nosebleed sections of channels I never surf, even in the midst of a marathon of Jimmy Football commercials.... Good seats, near center ice, maybe 15 rows up. Made even better when a co-worker of Jason's invited us down to the empty seats next to him, three rows up from the boards, right behind the goal the Predators attacked in the first and third. Just one of those things I'd forgotten, how much I enjoyed seeing the game in person. I could see how a person would derive a great deal of enjoyment from such a pursuit. Helps, too, that the Predators won, 4-2. Made it back to East Tennessee late this afternoon. Watched the Titans get their first win of the afternoon, though it should be noted that Maurice Jones-Drew broke out for his first big run not two minutes after I'd turned the television on. And did a fair amount of laundry, toward the idea of returning to work wearing clean clothes. First time for everything, I guess. Anyway. I am going to work a little more toward putting shit up on this site. I'm nearing The Big Seven here in 12 days or so. Seven years of this blogamathing? Dayum... Saturday, October 31, 2009
Testicle Bedpost Went searching for a link I'd put up, once upon a time. Ended up making myself laugh...it was a day that my water went out.... And it reminded me to try and find some more cashew butter. That stuff was the shit... Someday, we'll all laugh. But right now, I'm gonna hurt somebody... Tonight, I sit here, trying to figure out whether I believe in Karma, or not. I won't lie to you, my hordes of Big Stupid Tommyniacs, it's been a rough few days. Grocery Inventory; No sleep; Everybody in the world calling in; Cubs losing the playoffs, again; seeing a person who still makes my heart jump into my throat though we haven't spoken in months; a two-day case of the runs; having to own up to a Georgia bet (I gave points, even...lots of points); et cetera, et cetera. This morning, I wake up, and there's no water. None. I turn on the faucet, and it makes a sound kinda like the tripods in the Tom Cruise vs. the Martians flick (which I kinda like, in spite of myself). So, your old pal Tommy calls to find out what the heck is up, can't get anybody on the phone, and proceeds to wash his face, armpits and private areas with bottles of Dannon Spring Water, cussing anything he can think of, all the while, asking himself but one question: WHY CAN'T I LEAVE JUST A FEW BOTTLES OF WATER ON THE COUNTER, SO THAT THE WATER MIGHT BE AT ROOM TEMPERATURE? Damn. It's bad enough that I gotta wash 16.9 refreshing ounces at a time, but I also gotta spend 10 minutes before I put the shirt and tie on to get my testicles to pop back out of my torso (for the record, falling gut-first on a bed post seems to do the trick). So. I'm thinking this might all come from having done a post on the Cubs. I mean, they're no longer around to jinx, so the jinx has to fall back on me. It's the only logical thing I can find, as for why all these little, piddly, irritating things keep happing. The only logical reason. In truth, I deal better with the big stuff. Though I'm knocking like hell on wood that cancer or a car wreck don't pop into my life having just said that. Jeez, I'm a superstitious sumbitch when left to my own devices. Truth be told, in spite of all the little irritations, it's been an otherwise good day. Work went easily enough, I actually wrote something, for the first time in forever and a day. And I found Cashew Butter here in town! Cashew Butter! Like Peanut Butter, only with Cashews! And Quince Jelly. I don't know what that tastes like. I've heard of Quince, and Quince Jelly. But I've never had it. Today, I will. Soon, we will found out if Quince Jelly can overcome a Day Without Water.... (The water is fixed. Thankfully. Though just in case, before I left work, I bought a gallon container....) Friday, October 30, 2009
I'm a workin' sumbitch... I think I have worked more today than I do during a non-vacation day. First, I spent an hour tidying up Casa de Big Stupid Tommy, which was apparently fell victim to some manner of paranormal activity concerning a demon who had issues with Chili Cheese Fritos. (Parenthetically, I like the idea of watching a camera set up of myself, walking into my living room in a sleep-walk trance, and simply scattering a bag of Chili Cheese Fritos willy nilly around my living room. In truth, I simply dropped three or four Fritos when I was snacking on them while finishing up the World Series last night, and inadvertantly crunched them into the carpet. A device that men call "vacuum cleaner," that I refer to simply as "the vacuum" corrected this particular malady. There was also the chore of "picking up the laundry," which seems to be vexsome for yours, truly. I own more hampers, at this point, than I have cars in my life. Yet somehow, everything I wear or use gets tossed onto the floor, as if my subconscious is sure there's a laundry fairy out there who will come pick up my clothes. Trust me, after living on my own this long, I'm pretty sure they're not coming. And, as an aside, it's a pain in the ass not to have somebody else there to blame this shit on. It's always my dumb ass who's left the laundry on the floor, not done the dishes or drank the last ever-loving Guinness. That last one almost earned me an ass-whupping night before last. But I digress. After the cleaning, I spent an hour or so raking leaves up at my folks' house. There are roughly 600 trees on their property, and apparently they've all decided to start dropping their leaves this week. This has happened in years past. I suspect terrorists. I want to take a second (my blog, fuckers...I'll take a paragraph or three), to address an issue of semantics. There are devices called "leaf-blowers." They are wondrous machines. They create a wind gust that allows you to be able to move leaves without the horror of picking up a rake. Here it is, though, that we run headlong into the semantic issue I brought up. There is nothing on the device that denotes it is expressly for the purpose of moving leaves. I think of the thing simply as a "blower." And as such, the dogs, the cats, a squirrel, an unfortunate chipmunk and my Dad all managed to feel my wrath. It occurs to me know that there are jokes to be made along the lines of how I blew the dog, the cats and my Dad. These are to be kept silently to yourselves, to be shared perhaps after my funeral. Be warned, my funeral might come after I am executed, for killing you for telling jokes like "Tommy blew the dog." Anyway, it should suffice to say that I lost the semantic argument, and was relegated to "rake duty." There were other chores.... My folks are preparing to have major work done on their garage. Call it an exercise in persistent gravity, and result of living on a hill high enough to defend against the masses. But, the hill is doing its damnedest to push their garage down. And, after several years, it finally seems to be doing the trick. There will be some construction work, and it's involved my having to remove ductwork for a furnace made obsolete by prior renovation. This among other tasks, of course. At the end of the day, it's involved multiple trips to the metal salvage yard, here locally. I've made friends with the fine people at Seaton's, and highly recommend them should you have large quantities of metal to dispose of, or if you simply want to drive your truck through the swamp where Mateyo has his horse drown in The Neverending Story. And? We cut up trees with chainsaws. We've had a damnable amount of stormy weather in 2009. And it's been simply a metric assload of limbs they've piled up for a free afternoon. So, there was chainsawing. We chainsawed the hell out of various trees and limbs. We chainsawed the shit out of this one tree. It was all, like, "Don't you dare chainsaw me, you asshole!" and I was all "Here I come anyway, you dumbass tree. I'm gonna chainsaw your ass!" That's right. You can guess who won that particular fight. Don't see any trees from my parents' yard blogging, do you? Or do you? If so, send me the link. I need to know what I'm competing against. Then, there was a return to Casa de Big Stupid Tommy, where showering was the order of the day. I spare you the hot, hot details. However, I did find sawdust in one particularly troublesome spot, and simply say that the sleepwalking featured early in this post may not be so much a figment of my overactive imagination, after all. Anyway. We wrap up the vacation this weekend. There's a trip to Nashville in the works, and a hockey game to be taken in. Good gravy. What a day.... Thursday, October 29, 2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Cheating... Just a couple quick thoughts. For a few months now, I've been wandering down to Chattanooga for a night of beer, greasy food and team trivia. We do okay. Very well, in fact. Every place we play, we're in contention to win, owing to that I'm not the only one with 2.3 billion otherwise useless bits of information rattling around in my noggin. It's a fun game. A question's asked, and a song is played. You must answer your team's answer by the end of the song. Some are fairly simple...others can be bugger-all tough. It's good to have a well rounded team. We win occasionally. Usually it's enough to put a nice dent in whatever bar tab we've accrued. By no stretch of the imagination is it enough to hoot and holler over. Or cheat in order to get.... Dunno. Watched a group use everything short of morse code and a slide rule tonight to get their answers. Aside from Fat Tire and shrimp (something I've acquired a taste for in the past several months, after a lifetime of taking or leaving it), there was some satisfaction in beating that particular team. I dunno. I look around the world today, and I wonder at that particular attitude. There's a maudlin part of me that wants to wretch and bitch (and how) at a society of people who doesn't know that it's about the journey, and not the end result. Whether it's a group of idiots who can't enjoy a night out because they're not winning a game, or some douche loading himself up with some manner of growth hormone over the matter of an everyday playing position in a sport. Don't know why I'm on this line of thought. Just a little pissy with the world, this evening.... Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Thoughts at 11:53 on Paranormal Activity, and other items Blogination was meant to have occurred before now. There were doings that transpired, which need to be reported. I mean, honestly, there was a discussion about Y2K that somehow had me thinking that there was a massive health scare recently related to the nation's much needed supply of KY Jelly. That was the personal highlight of my visit to the Hysterics at Eric's, this past weekend. I got to meet a few more blog people in real life. Mercy. Also? I got to see Mickey Dolenz in real life. He wore his sunglasses inside, because he is a star. I am on vacation. This, in and of itself, is sweet. I go to bed when I want. I wake up when I want. Well, that last part ain't precisely true. My old friend insomnia showed up somewhere around 3:15 in the morning. This was twofold troubling. The first level comes just from irritation at not being asleep, though since this is vacation, it isn't a huge issue. I was muchly aware that I'd be able to sleep to whenthefuckever whenever I fell back to sleep. Much of my insomnia, I think, is based on some godforsaken fear that I'm going to oversleep. I am not sure if this is a cause or a symptom of impending madness. I'm thinking it is like the Chicken and Egg debate. The second level comes from my viewing Monday of the movie Paranormal Activity (which I have mostly positive feelings toward). I don't want to spoil too much of the movie, but there are a number of portions that come from one character's running a camera while our protagonist couple sleeps. The movie documents the paranormal activity that occurs in the house, and the bulk of it happens during these sleeping hours. And there are a fair number of occurrences, unless my memory fails me, that happen within spitting distance of 3:15 AM. Troublesome for me, because most of my insomniac episodes begin somewhere within spitting distance of 3:15 AM. I hate to say that a movie is fucking with my fragile little mind. But Paranormal Activity stuck with me. I made myself get up EARLY this morning. Turned on a few lights (and if there's one BIG complaint I have about the actions of Micah and Katie in Paranormal Activity is that they wander around their haunted house with the lights off entirely too much for my taste or suspension of disbelief). I started writing this morning. A piece of fiction. Don't know where it's going, but it's kinda biographic in nature. I wrote 9100 words today. Holy frigging crap. My eyes, brain and wrists were sore at the end of it. As was my back, to a lesser degree. I wasn't precisely hunched over writing, but I could feel the ghosts of poor posture as I made myself get up and wander around. Like I said, I don't know if it's going anywhere. I suppose that's up to me. It's 9100 words, though. I can't think that I've done that much in any five, six or seven days, lately. So, the insomnia was helpful. Even if it's 9100 words of crap, it's 9100 words I've written.... Anyway. That's all I got for now. We'll see you fine feathered frogs on the flip side. |