COMMUNICATIONS INTERRUPT: IT'S THE MOST WONDERF-HELL TIME OF THE YEAR

Holy geez. Last time I brought out a CI was right around this time of year, but in 2011. But it's not primarily my blog, so I'm not the bloody slacker around here.

WingTackLE (not to be confused with WingTackER, the W name I used LAST TIME ON RHYMES WITH IDIOT) is still slacking off, clearly. Not so understandable this time around, even though she's still doing the same damn things I naffed off about last time; scrawling less-than-furiously in notebooks, keeping me awake as she screws around on the Pokémon GTS looking for trades--the current X and Y games, naturally, and commiserating with anyone who'll listed about the latest news coming out of the Brewers organization (Corey Hart has interest from three teams besides the Crew but nothing will come of it until he's given a clean bill of health after sitting out the entire 2012 season). Again. The seeming usual.

Black Friday is UPCOMING, and WingTackle is not put out about the shifts she's working this year beyond having to work Thanksgiving Day at all. It means, unfortunately, another twinday of narcissitic shitheads giving her grief because they're not being served immediately--fuck those customers ahead of them, right?--and the fake-ass simpering dicks pretending commiseration that anyone at all has to work on such a family-oriented time of the year while simultaneously passing the plastic to her and shushing the three knee-high irritations who are all clamoring (and oh, YES, sometimes CURSING) for three different toys.

I see no reason to go out, either day, beyond giving her an escape during lunch and leaving a generous tip for whoever might serve us at whichever establishment we frequent. Mental health via Applebee's or somesuch. Yeah, it works.

She's quite better about the whole shooting thing, as you might imagine. The idiotic jokes from oh-so-'clever' people have trickled away to nearly nothing. Few jump at loud noises anymore. The shooter is a complete fruitbat. You can read up on this nutbar if you like, but you won't do it here, at least not by my hand.

Been keeping busy myself, when time allows. Usual crap, mostly. Been running, for a good year, an alliance on one of the mobile card games, MARVEL: WAR OF HEROES; our alliance's very simple blogsite is here, if you give a flying damn and/or play. Small community of players who've grown to be friends, I think.

+++PRIME OUT+++GODDAMN CAP WALLS+++

COMMUNICATIONS INTERRUPT: TOO MANY DOG TAGS

WingTacker (thank Primus for the Multiforce; twelve W names with which I can run) has obviously been slacking off here. Understandable, I suppose; still filling notebooks with that horrendously illegible scrawl of hers (won't just buy the cheapest ones, either), spending moronic amounts of time looking for GTS Pokémon trades (it IS moronic when it's happening well after midnight and the alarm clock's gonna sound around 0700), mooning over the Brewers and the latest player to jump off the train (Jerry Hairston just signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers). Y'know. The usual.

Black Friday passed uneventfully for both of us. The 'open' times for stores poking into Thanksgiving late-night meant that all the nigh-solipsistic assholes, the nutbars who do all their holiday shopping then, and the people who were just looking for one or two deals and preferred not to risk missing out on 'em...they were pretty much all gone by 0300 Friday. WingTacker hadda be in at 0645. Fairly quiet shift. Me--I am a charter member of the third group listed above. No dues to pay this year, though--the entirety of Transformers offerings, this year, consisted of old stock, taped together and stickered with a fluorescent yellow SPECIAL VALUE starburst label. Shipped like that from Hasbro--I've seen the case boxes. Generally gotta put a little more effort into the repackaging to get me to bite.

So I stayed home and bought a Ninja. Hasn't arrived yet...

Took WingTacker to see Pokémon the Movie WHITE: VICTINI AND ZEKROM on Sunday. Limited engagements, bleh. Four whole theaters in Wisconsin showing it (once a day for two days), all in the Milwaukee area.

Whatever. I can drive that in my sleep BUT DIDN'T BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE IRRESPONSIBLE. Yomped around the area a little bit, afterward, hoping to find a Transformer that's been sighted in the state and is being snapped up about as quickly as its predecessor.

And BotCon just horked up the dates and location for the 2012 convention. Hopefully, Dallas in late April will be nothing like Dallas (Frisco, whatever, blah frickin' blah) in late September 2005. I'm missing DairyCon for the first time ever for this. Kinda sucks, but then, some of the behind-the-scenes drama is making me feel...somewhat less bad about it.

+++PRIME OUT+++C'EST LA VIE+++

COMMUNICATIONS INTERRUPT: 'WE' ARE TOO BUSY

Hard to say if you heard of the ridiculous storm that crossed Wisconsin yesterday morning. If it was mentioned nationally, I sure didn't have a lot of opportunity to hear about it.

Damn system was on a tear at 75 MPH and was blowing winds at a fair clip higher than that. As you might imagine, some trees don't take to well to such windspeeds. Powerline poles...well, duh, same thing.

Wingthing and I have no power at our house, and it's been that way for over twenty-four hours, now. WE Energies, which serves a large portion of the Fox Cities (too large, if you ask me, and I don't care that you didn't), has, I suppose, their hands full trying to restore power to everyone that lost it. Doesn't make seeing houses on the other side of the street with power at night any less an irritation, unfortunately. Unfair, I know.

The humidity was already making staying in the house a fairly miserable experience by itself by the time I returned home from work yesterday. No light but candlelight in the waning hours of the day just added to it. We both finally uttered 'screw this' and went to a fine Fox Cities establishment...well, an Applebee's...to have a light dinner and watch the Brewers game (8-2 over the Astros, yay).

Back home...still no power. This morning...still no power. And all the fallen branches are still in the backyard and on the roof (though no, I wasn't expecting them to magically disappear. Didn't have that thought at all, but now that I have, BOY IT SURE WOULDA BEEN NICE DONTCHA THINK I SURE DO).

Local library internet access results in the finely crafted blogpost you see before you onscreen. Bask in its glory, 'cus WHO KNOWS WHEN IT'LL HAPPEN AGAIN.

+++PRIME OUT+++FINALLY REACHED MY TIPPING POINT, I HATE HEAT AND NOW *RAIN*+++WHERE IS THE DAMN SNOW+++

EDIT, 1223: IIIII HAVE THE POWWWWWERRRR (and, ostensibly, so do others up the street)

COMMUNICATIONS INTERRUPT: DUEL SHOCK

I swear, I didn't misspell 'dual'. That 'e' is LEGIT, yo.

Broke down--or more accurately, proclaimed, "SCREW THESE STUPID SHOULDER BUTTONS THAT DON'T WORK ANYMORE"--and bought a Nintendo 3DS. Much as I've enjoyed both DSlites I've owned, the shoulder L & R buttons are pretty much the first thing to go on the 'lite' model. The silver version I bought Black Friday before last didn't even make it a year before the L started on its path to becoming grievously useless. The R wasn't far behind, and lemme tell ya, for me, it is not a grand and glorious experience playing MLB2Kwhatever when I can neither make a basestealing attempt when I wish nor can I make the runners get back to base when I need.

Wingstun, naturally, enjoys getting hold of it to make use of the Pokédex 3D app (by which I mean, she'll peruse the other listings I've so far garnered before going back to coo over those effing mudbots which continue to cost me currency and sanity DAMN IT ALL COULDN'T YOU HAVE SIMPLY STAYED A BUMBLEBEE FAN I COULD LIVE WITH THAT PRIMUS KNOWS I HAVE DONE SO FOR OVER A DECADE bleeeahhgk...better, now. Me...I use everything else. Bought a few games so far off the eShop, screw around with the camera and get onto the internet wherever I can find a free wifi hotspot.

Fun. The camera and internet access have already come in handy--I can tweet from a ballgame using a stylus much more quickly than using iTap on a phone BECAUSE I AM JUST SO SLAGGIN' AWESOME SHUT UP BABY I KNOW IT and can even snap a few 3D photos of the action--both of which I did Thursday night at the Timber Rattlers ballgame. Game started off as a pitcher's duel for a few innings--thankfully, it didn't stay that way. Need to figure out how to log on at Miller Park, if I can, though I doubt the camera will get much use, considering that we're usually sitting in the Terrace Level. Club Level, last game, but that's not so big a difference, at least to my eyes. Man, the prices nowadays sure make me appreciate the games I was able to attend as a kid at County Stadium--I could walk down by the dugout and try for autographs, pregame...

Between the multiple BP C'Mon Back Club cards I and my mom filled over the summer, and a Time Warner Cable BOGOF offer bill slip, Wingstun and I have pairs of tickets to four games in September. That's more damn games than we've attended in whole seasons past. Naturally, she's looking way forward to it. Just hope she's granted the requested time off.

Two of the games are on consecutive days. Been giving serious thought to simply staying at a hotel after the first game and perhaps yomping around Milwaukee the day after before attending the second. Wingstun can probably use a mini-vacation...as it is, she's been bugging me about going to Slagacon in October. Apparently, two TF-themed cons aren't enough for her anymore...

Probably going back to Fox Cities Stadium tomorrow. Carlos Gomez is there for the second of a four-game rehabilitation stint, and there are postgame autographs by the team on Sundays, so if Go-Go is gonna be part of that, it's worth a shot.

Worth the $10-$15 for parking and the ticket, too.

+++PRIME OUT+++SHE GOT MORE AUTOGRAPHS IN ONE DAY THAN I GOT IN A DECADE+++

COMMUNICATIONS INTERRUPT: FREEBIES COST REM

Not a damn thing to do with the band. Just sayin'.

Ol’ Windsweeper has been busy killing letters and using Microsoft Word to do it, and I’m frankly sick of opening Firefox to see a Photoblog, so…what the hell.

Went to see another Milwaukee Brewers game on 26 July. Not even a week earlier, Caterpillar Global Mining bought 5000 Terrace Reserved tickets apiece to that game and the following, both against the Chicago Cubs, as a goodwill gesture, thank you, blah blah blah of some stripe…guess they entered into some sort of corporate partnership with the Brewers. What kind of partnership a baseball franchise and a mining company needs, I’ve no clue, but it happened. They were made available on the Friday before, at 0900…which naturally means I’m already at work. Figured it was worth a shot nevertheless. A single two-dollar charge for printing ‘em yourself, when normally each ticket, being for marquee games, would be $20 before the convenience and delivery fees? Yes, please.

Was kind of pain to get through the order—the site was being hammered like MattyCollector.com on a sale day. MLB does better with the refreshing waiting room concept, though. Took so long to make it through, though, that I couldn’t get seats together for either game. However, Windsweeper has, in the past, made clear that sitting together isn’t a high priority for her when attending Brewers games—a mild insult of which she was rather unaware until I spoke up—so I jumped on what I could get for us, and picked up another pair for the next day’s game for a coworker who is a diehard Cubs fan (somehow, we get along fine), and put the order on through.

Game day comes, Windsweeper’s off and I’ve left work an hour early to get down to Milwaukee at a reasonable time…which almost never works, anyway. Traffic gets pretty slow down there around an hour before first pitch, and that day was little different...probably worse, what with the Cubs as opponents. Plenty of Chicagoans make the drive north to fill seats with that narfy bright blue. As it was, it took half an age to get parked in one of the General Parking lots (Uecker, I think). No way I was getting into Preferred, let along paying for it on gameday. Not for a Cubs game.

By the time we’d walked to the stadium and gotten past the gate, the first inning was already over—a fact made more irritating because all the scoring in the game happened in that inning. Made our way up to my section and saw that all but two in my row were empty, so Windsweeper stayed. Could always have moved if the actual seatholders showed up. They never did, so we were able to enjoy the game together. Well, she enjoyed—me, I’ve never been all that big a fan of pitching duels unless there turns out to be a good shot at a no-hitter (then the enjoyment becomes retroactive). Windsweeper left after the fourth inning to get her usual cheese-fries-in-a-helmet—cupboard’s getting full of those things (exaggeration), but I still have the ice cream helmets and drink cups that I picked up after Brewers games in the late 80s/early 90s, so I’m one to talk, I guess.

Game ended with a win and we headed back to the car. The drive back home was uneventful and as always, somehow longer than the drive away.

Windsweeper stayed awake until 0200, keyed up from a win yet again.

+++PRIME OUT+++I MISS REGULAR EIGHT-HOUR SLEEP+++

COMMUNICATIONS INTERRUPT: STUPIDITY IN LEGAL MOTION

I can't often say that I've seen legal documents that have made me want to take a baseball bat to somebody's head--mostly because I haven't often read legal documents, period.

First time for everything, I guess.

This, so far as anyone has been able to determine, and triple-digit-count errors notwithstanding, is not a joke, at least not in the 'never gonna happen' sense. It's either one of the more epic (and by epic, of course I mean retarded) trolls ever to come out of (and piss off) Transfandom, or there really is some empty-skulled narcissistic dumbfuck out there who thinks this motion stands a chance of being heard in court, let alone played out at length to a conclusion in favor of the plaintiff. Honestly, having had experience in other fandoms, I don't think the sort of toy collector butthurt that this pathetic wreck displays is seen anywhere but with Transformers fans.

The real kicker? This flyspeck might well find a judge who doesn't see the differences between these three toys and these other three toys as grounds for dismissal with prejudice and mocking laughter. It might then become...not quite the biggest waste of time ever recorded in the annals of the United States justice system, but damned if it wouldn't have a cozy spot in a list of the top ten.--

EDIT: March 32nd moronic antics are NOT supposed to begin in mid-to-late-March. Sweet effing Primus, I hate this day. Like there isn't enough incidental stupidity to go around, a day must be set aside for DELIBERATE stupidity.--

+++PRIME OUT+++I NEED A BEER+++

COMMUNICATIONS INTERRUPT: WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY

Shockingly enough, I got sick of seeing that three-word phrase over the course of the past four or five months. Don't get me wrong--I LIKE winter. Favorite season of the four. I LIKE it cold. It's more a case of being hype-sick...like the whole idiotic situation with Drift, except that in the case of the winter weather, the derision is deserved. Derision, here, is directed toward the ones blathering endlessly and needlessly about it. Granted, this is Wisconsin--blizzards in May are NOT an impossibility, not at all. But it lately seems that the overly made-up newsreaders and two-finger typing reporters are taking it to an extreme one would nominally expect in, shall we say, more southern states. (/unsubtle yet playful jab) Residents in those regions can be somewhat forgiven for a 'flake freakout, raiding grocery stores for every last gallon of milk and driving in a couple centimeters of slush like crazed carjackers--they don't know any better, as snow is such a relative rarity. Up here, there's no bloody excuse, yet the same seems to be happening--with frightening frequency, no less. (Certainly, they tend to drive like dumbasses during more temperate times, but in years past, people had responded to news of six-to-eight inches impending with an apathetic 'eh'.)

...

(Going back and reading the previous paragraph...sweet Primus, I think I've got to STOP reading Stan Lee's tweets. Maybe I got hit upside the head by a No-Prize or something. Tiptoeing its way into my typing, the alliteration is absolutely aggrav... ... ...AAGGHHK WHAT THE SLAG STOP IT NOW) o.O

...whatever, I'm not changing it. The point at which I was trying to arrive before derailing myself was that the overhype reaaaalllly needs stoppin'. As a rule, we Wisconsinites know to have our damn bags of salt, our shovels and snowblowers at hand, ready for use, so it'd be well appreciated to tone it the hell down when reporting the impending snowstorms. I'd like 'em to quit taking up so much newstime on 'em, or I'm gonna change the channel and watch an episode of the latest Power Rangers series or somethin', just to screw up their Nielsens...and I don't particularly care for Power Rangers.

Hm. Speaking of 'ready for use', I wonder if I'd better go buy a gallon-plus of that $3.499 gasoline for the ol' blower...then again, what's been falling is the kind of stuff that could choke damn near any unit. Looks like one of those Snoopy Sno-Cone Machines threw up all over the, uh, everywhere--

+++PRIME OUT+++

COMMUNICATIONS INTERRUPT: 2.5" x 3.5"

Waterlog (yeah, a new name every time!) has certainly thrown herself full-throttle into baseball fandom.

We just ordered delivery of the baseball cards she garnered by entering Million Card Giveaway codes from Topps (mostly from the 2010 Update series, which consists of players traded or rookies who made their Major League debut during the course of the season; they cover the All-Star Game, too, which is something they didn't do back when I was initially collecting and it was simply called the Traded set). Participants could actually trade the cards they acquired with other participants to get cards they would find more desirable than what they had, which is pretty damn cool. Waterlog had a series of trades maintained right up to the end of the MCG promo, offering several cards (one or two of which were more valuable than what she wanted) in exchange for one of Bob Uecker's cards from the 1960s. She really wanted his Braves card, but would've taken a Cardinals or Phillies. Nobody bit at those, unfortunately, but somebody did take a 5-for-1 she offered in order to get Trevor Hoffman's rookie card--sure, it's a card I already have by way of owning the entire 1993 Topps Baseball set, but she wanted one of her own, and now it's coming. 'Inordinately happy' would be a good way of describing her state of mind immediately after finding out the result, yes.

(I think I've a single of it around, too, but good luck finding it...)

The MCG promo ends tomorrow, but that's not the end of this sort of thing for Waterlog--Topps is celebrating its Diamond Anniversary with--well, pretty much the same thing, but with diamond rings 'n stuff. She's around 50 cards from completing 2011 Series One, and has some cards lined up for her on the new promo site (nobody mega-special, and trading won't be available for awhile yet)...man, I dunno how far it'll go. Collectible cards of ANY stripe began getting kind of expensive when I was originally collecting, which was a big portion of the reason why I stopped for the most part in 1995; it has not gotten any better in the years since, obviously.

(I blame and name Stadium Club; a specialty card series, then, that became the forerunner of what we get as a matter of course today. Maybe I'm showing my age--blah blah blah 40¢ for a pack of 14, they were only a little glossy on one side blah blah holy cow and postage stamps went up to a quarter OH NOES...wait, I'm not allowed to do this sort of thing until I'm sixty? Dammit.)

IN ANY CASE, true then and now, it's naturally far cheaper to buy the complete base set when it's released and chase down any wanted insert cards (something ELSE that didn't really exist until the early 1990s; now where're my trifocals?!) on their own as they are made available (eBay, for the most part)...but she's having fun doing it exactly the way I used to do it--pack by pack. I'd be remiss if I didn't point that fact out, but I'd be a real dick to take that fun away from her.

Guess I'll just stick to jokingly grousing after having dinner at a nice restaurant. "$43.65? Well, that was a Leader-class Transformer. Or three Deluxes and a Scout..."--

+++PRIME OUT+++

COMMUNICATIONS INTERRUPT: Most Wonderful Time of the Year, My Skidplate

So the first major snowfall of the year for Wisconsin has come and gone, thankfully. That was some fairly bitter scrapmetal, there, that made me wish I had had a snowblower canopy. Or a ski mask. Or a winter cap. (Well, Weasel took care of the latter pair last night. Think I'm on my own for the former.)

Damned wind could not seem to choose a direction and stick with it. North, south, east or west, it seemed whichever direction I pushed that ol' John Deere winter warhorse was against the wind, and the blown snow invariably wound up in my face and down my jacket. (Thankfully, Weasel was not in much position to lay optics upon my beardage displaying more white than usual; she would've tried to get a snapshot and I would've had to hit her in the face with the shovel I didn't want to use yet or something equally absurdly hilarious.)

Add to that the city's inexplicably quarter-assed (they're not getting credit enough for a pronouncement of half-assed from me) job of plowing the streets and I had a dammit-I-am-already-tired-of-this-slag series of moments in clearing the driveway and sidewalks. (How the city plows managed to leave several centimeters on the roads and yet create a 60cm wall in our driveway, I can't fathom.)

The city did finally make another pass-through this morning, it seems--there was a smaller wall in the driveway waiting for us to leave for work. Far easier to get Scamper up-and-over that.

I shouldn't complain too much, I suppose. This is my home state, I chose to live here, it could be said I dragged Weasel here...I may be a moron.

Just waiting for the next damned snowfall--

+++PRIME OUT+++

COMMUNICATIONS INTERRUPT: So Much for the Screaming II: The Next Day

Hi, Prime here. You can tell because I use Eurostile for everything. Unless you can't because you don't have it, in which case, sux2bU. :p

Weasel's at work, slavin' away for the megacorporate. I, on the other hand, am at home watching the final Brewers home game of the season--and they're puttin' on a helluva show. Kinda wish I had risked her wrath to drive down to Miller Park on my own. It's only the bottom of the fourth inning, and so far, Ryan Braun has knocked two two-run home runs in, Lorenzo Cain has put bat to his first career home run, and Prince Fielder landed one in the Blue Bunny section in right field, at which point (bottom of the third) Marlins manager Edwin Rodriguez decided that he'd seen enough of Adalberto Mendez on the mound for the day. Ha. 7-1 Milwaukee.

Weasel is going to be simultaneously so pissed and so pleased when she finds out, considering having witnessed the Marlins' 16th shutout this season just yesterday evening. Her combination facial expressions are just priceless, lemme tell ya. You wouldn't think facial muscles could move that way, but yeegh.

She's asking, nay, demanding that I net tickets for Brewers On Deck in January and the home opener in April. (Former would be easy enough, but the latter requires miraculous abilities I simply do not possess.) I ask you, what have I wrought upon the world? Y'know, when I became a fan in 1987, marrying a girl who'd go complete bonzo for the Brewers wasn't really marked as a point-of-interest on my mental map...

Enhh. And I have to agree wholeheartedly with Weasel's comment about the swirling trade rumors surrounding Fielder. I had hoped that with Bud Selig finally out of the picture that the era of getting a good-to-great-to-star player only to trade him away for yet more (sneer) future prospects was over. But GM Doug Melvin is still here, so that's yet a danger. Hopefully principal owner Mark Attanasio will continue to be more willing to open the wallet than anyone in the Selig family ever was.

--Prime, "No, this has not nor is likely to become a sports blog. Put your bats away."

(HA SEE WHAT I DID THERE)

EDIT 1550, top of the 9th: And to top it all off, now it's Trevor Time at Miller Park. Yeah. There'll be screaming, all right.