If you’ve been reading my blog, you probably know I’ve been trying to fix a leak in my roof for quite some time now.

Randy Amway from Hallmark Building & Remodeling re-gooped my roof on Dec. 1, ostensibly to seal any cracks. He showed up without appointment, unannounced. The only way I knew he’d been there was a single business card on my door, like the Lone Ranger’s silver bullet. Unsettling.

A few days later it rained all day, and my roof leaked like a sieve, mostly down the inside of the wall in my office/spare bedroom, warping the paint right off. So I called him back. He said he’d get back to me.

He didn’t, not without some pestering. He finally came back on the 16th — again, without notice. To this day, I’ve never met Randy Amway, nor have I showed him where the leak is coming in. He caulked around the scupper above the bedroom and essentially said he hoped that fixed the problem.

No extra charge for that visit, but I still had the original bill for $575 on my kitchen table. I decided not to pay until the next heavy rainfall. I had no idea whether the leak is plugged, which is all I wanted done in the first place, and I didn’t fancy paying Hallmark Roofing not to fix my roof.

This being Tucson, three and a half weeks passed between rainstorms. Intermittent showers this time. No water running down the wall, which is a good sign. But still I held off on paying the bill, just in case.

Until this morning, that is, when I got a phone call from what is apparently Hallmark’s Mafia Enforcer Division threatening to put a lien — and eventually foreclosure — on my home. (Can they even do that, or is it bullshit?) I explained all of the above to him, but he told me “that’s not The Process.” I wasn’t aware there was a Process. No one ever explained it to me, but apparently it’s “1. Hire a roofer; 2. Get fucked.”

So I paid and mailed the bill today, adding a sarcastic note about services rendered. I don’t know if it will do any good, but I managed to not swear at any point, so I’m proud of that.

Of the three contractors I called, Hallmark was the only one to actually respond. What is it with roofers in this town? At least the other two were honest enough to just blow me off instead of pretending to want my business.

(One of the nice things about having this blog is that now anyone googling “Hallmark roofers of Tucson” or somesuch will land on this page. Moo hoo ha ha.)

Found via BoingBoing:

Nicely splintering off of my Yuletide rant is “Tis the Season”, an amusing short story by China Mieville about the privatization of Christmas. Mieville normally writes steampunk fantasy, so it’s neat to see him stretching some SF/comedy legs.

Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t got shares in YuleCo, and I can’t afford a one-day end-user licence, so I couldn’t have a legal party. I’d briefly considered buying from one of the budget competitors like XmasTym, or a spinoff from a non-specialist like Coca-Crissmas, but the idea of doing it on the cheap was just depressing…

Garbage’s fourth album, Bleed Like Me, is coming this April. Yay! I need a new Garbage fix, even if it’s less-rockin’ like their third album.

I had a pretty good three-day weekend. Went out to a club on Christmas Eve, because the idea struck me as amusing, and I heard local acts Al Perry and Mankind for the first time. Perry performed an amusing cover of a sadly-accurate song about Tucson called “We Got Cactus.” I chatted up a nice girl who I completely failed to get off with. By midnight Club Congress was surprisingly crowded, but I am horribly old and went home before the final band started at 1am.

On Christmas Night I saw The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, which is sort of the anti-Buckaroo Banzai. Both films are strangely-plotted stories about a team of world-famous, well-armed, globe-hopping scientist-adventurers. It ends with a seeming tribute to Banzai‘s closing credits, right down to the presence of Jeff Goldblum.

There are two primary differences. The Hong Kong Cavaliers were so competent it was funny, while Team Zissou is so comically incompetent they’re unable to read maps properly. And while Banzai was about Black Lectroids from the 10th Dimension, The Life Aquatic is about… fatherhood? Aging? I’m not sure.

I’m always left entertained but vaguely unsatisfied by Wes Anderson films. He overloads on irony to the point where any lame, cheesy moment is written off as intentional, which may not be fair to more sincere filmmakers. (Roger Ebert calls it “terminal whimsy.”) I always feel like I’m missing the point of his films, even though there may not be one.

But it has Bill Murray and Willem Defoe and modern-day pirates and Portuguese-language David Bowie covers, so it’s still worth seeing.

Merry Just-Another-Holiday-Swiped-from-the-Pagans Day! Here, have a late-night rant:

Nobody sticks up for Christmas except for Bill O’Reilly, says Bill O’Reilly, protecting America’s only federally-mandated religious holiday from the mean old nasty liberals who want to destroy it.

I’d argue that liberals don’t hate Christmas except… uh, I do. Every store is crowded, driving is an even bigger hassle, and the music sucks. The only Christmas song that should be allowed in stores is “Father Christmas” by the Kinks, but I never hear it, probably because it’s about mugging Santa. As annoying as retail Christmas music is, it could be worse — I could WORK in retail and hear it 40 hours a week for a month.

Anyway, the right wing noise machine has been working itself into yet another hyperventilating Persecution Complex-o-rama over a series of made-up Attacks on Christmas. This is nothing new — my parents have had a “Put Christ back in Christmas” lawn sign for years now — but it’s gained extra traction this year.

Trouble is, they’re blaming the evil nasty Secularists, who are entirely NOT to blame for removing Christ from Christmas. That would be the corporations. Retailers, specifically, who rely on the period from Thanksgiving to New Year’s to turn a profit on the year. They are totally reliant on consumers racking up massive credit card debt to buy each other crap they probably didn’t need anyway. Without it they’d go broke.

And to encourage deists, atheists, agnostics, and other non-religious folk to celebrate (as Bryan Lambert calls it) I’m Not Christian But Here’s a Waffle Iron Anyway Day, they design their public relations to be as all-inclusive as possible. Hence, “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.”

So when Christian groups force their way into traditionally secular events like Denver’s Parade of Lights — an event created solely to put asses in downtown for cash-spending purposes — they’re really just fucking with their local economies.

Actually, if you go far enough to the Left, you’ll find liberals who hate the crass commercialization of Christmas as much as my parents do. See? Red and Blue America can agree on something.

Before we put Christ back into Christmas, I’d like to see Christ put back into Christianity. Right-wing Christians don’t spread the philosophy of Jesus as much as the philosophy of Paul, history’s first born-again evangelical. It was Paul, not Jesus, who condemned homosexuality (or some mistranslation thereof) in his letters bringing the angry, vengeful Old Testament God out of retirement and desperately trying to graft it onto Jesus’s teachings.

You know, the Bible also contains verses against tax evasion and usury. Once I see people protesting Arthur Andersen and MBNA America with the same fervor as abortion clinics, then maybe Christ will be back in Christianity.

Graced my inbox a couple of days ago:

Subject: wamu.com Account Verification Process! securile

Encrypted Key: rhrgzmyrodjvvw

Oooh, an excrypted key! The text of this email must be highly secure!

Dear wamu.com customer,

NOTE: Not only am I not a wamu.com customer, I’d never heard of wamu.com before this.

We recently have determined that different computers have logged onto your Online Banking wamu account, and multiple passwords failures were present before the logins.

We now need you to re-confirm your account information to us. If this is not completed by December 24, 2004, we will be forced to suspend your account Indefinately, as it may have been used for fraudulent purposes.

We thank you for your cooperation in this manner.

Click below to confirm and verify your Online Banking Account:
XXXX

URL deleted, but the IP resolved to a site in Korea. Which explains the Engrish grammar and spelling.

Note: If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choice but to temporaly suspend your account.

Wow. Not only would they suspend my account, but they can manipulate the fourth dimension and completely remove it from the space-time continuum!

Best Regards,
wamu.com
Security and Anti-Fraudulent Department

After much waffling, I’ve finally decided not to upgrade my machine to a Dell, but instead build a custom PC and cannibalize my old one for parts. I think I can build a decent machine for less than $500 that will run Sid Meier’s Pirates! and won’t choke on large Photoshop projects.

It’s been several years since I built a computer. Last time I did this, I had two choice of cases: tall beige or short beige. Since then, selection has apparently exploded. In fact, there’s an entire subculture dedicated to custom casemodding, but that takes more time and money and effort than I’m willing to invest.

I’ve been surfing newegg.com and getting a kick out of some of the cases for sale:

“The Viper” – Designed by a 14 year old boy circa 1985, judging by the Cobra Commander logos. For only $88 plus shipping, guarantee that you will never know the touch of a woman!

“R214P” – Answers direct questions with a series of beeps and whistles. Can extend a metal arm to retreive objects from surly Muppets.

“Dream Star” – The Pimputer! Runs WizzlesXPizzle.

“TU-153″ – Will devour you in its glowing blue maw in the dead of night.

“Sidewinder” – “Bring out the Gimp.”

Apparently commenting has been down for a few days and I didn’t realize it. It’s fixed now. Sorry if you tried to add a comment and got a “page not found” error.

I’ve added a couple of other nifty things around the site. For example, if you use the Amazon search box or (from now on) follow any text link to Amazon.com and then buy an item, I get a kickback in the form of store credit.

Also, I’ve added code to the Fiction page so that when I post a new entry to the “short fiction” blog category, the title and a link are automatically added to the page. Database-driven web functionality: it’s sort of what I do.

Yoinked from BoingBoing:

DJ BC mashes Beastie Boys lyrics over Beatles instrumentals to create Meet the Beastles, freely downloadable on MP3. Most amusing so far are “Whatcha Want, Lady?” (“Whatcha Want?” vs. “Lady Madonna”) and the self-explanatory “Sure-Bla-Di, Shot-Bla-Da.”

Narbonic creator Shaenon K. Garrity will be Artist Guest of Honor at Capricon 25 in the suburbs of Chicago, IL, on February 10-13. They’ve chosen Mad Scientists as its annual theme.

Hmm… I should probably get back to work on Narbonic, vol. 2, shouldn’t I?