Crappity-Crap-Crap

I still seem to be inexplicably slogging away at that soul-sucking hellbeast of a novel. *shakes fist feebly at computer screen* I'll defeat you!!!

Dammit, it's laughing at me! Make it stop laughing!!!

Each circle on this map represents craters left after that fleet of invading aliens used Virginia for target practice. Notice that they couldn't be bothered to blow more than one hole in Danville but they Swiss-cheesed the hell out of D.C. I'm guessing they tried to drive in D.C. traffic and just couldn't take it any more.

Oh, and thanks for leaving me here on this shithole planet, guys! Merci buckets.

Spent a few minutes yesterday doing what everybody else on the East Coast was doing--standing out on the sidewalk looking for the gas main explosion or the freight train derailing or any of the other things that happen way more often than earthquakes around here. I suppose we're lucky we didn't get beaned by any shoddily-fastened Victorian decorative doo-dads while we were out there because those are usually the first things that come down when the wind blows harder than 20 mph.

It was pretty helpful to have local newscasters tell everyone several hours later that we all should've stayed inside and crawled under a desk, like we were going to remember fifty years from now when the next one happens. Of course I was standing out front touching a rattling old plate-glass window. Why? Because it was awesome, that's why. Not like I don't get to handle huge sheets of glass every damn day at work but they're not usually shaking. Anyhow, we were way more concerned that a whole creaky old building would come down on top of us to worry about crap from the outside of the building yanking itself loose and amusingly jamming itself in the tops of our heads.


I don't have any photos of earthquake damage but I do, however, have a photo of what last night's 4.2 magnitude aftershock did to a 17-lb. ocicat. What did it do, you say? It knocked him right on his lardy ass, that's what it did.


Somewhere around here I have a map that shows how far north smoke from the Great Dismal Swamp fire has drifted up to but I can't be arsed to find it. Just pretend you care that smoke from a couple hundred miles away stinks up Richmond worse than usual every few days or so. Last week it had drifted as far as D.C. and damn if they didn't think they were special because of it. Of course our earthquake made them way extra-special, at least until the aliens shut them the hell up.

Hurricane Irene (Door #3 in this Unholy Trifecta of Crap we got going on) should put out the fire and sweep the smoke away Saturday but I don't have a map for that either. It'll also be another chance for hundreds of shoddily-fastened Victorian decorative doo-dads to rain down upon the populace. I'll probably be standing out in the rain watching.


Instead, I have this dandy map of future alien targets, stolen by me when I accidentally hacked into the mothership's main computer while trying to Google a recipe for Russian Haired Sausage. Yes, I am fully aware that "Russian Haired Sausage" sounds vaguely like porn, but everything on the internets sounds like porn.