Happy New Year!

This is my final post for the year of 2015. Hope you all have a wonderful time bringing in the new year, I will be at home binge watching anime or something on Hulu when that stupid ball drops in New York. Thank you very much for reading my blog, and all the stupid stories of my life. I hope you've enjoyed them. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter. Have a great and safe New Year. 

Dziękuję i szczęśliwego Nowego Roku. 
Vielen Dank und glückliches Neues Jahr. 
Vous et heureux Nouvel An Merci.
Obrigado e feliz Ano Novo.
谢谢你，新年快乐
あなたと幸せな新年をありがとう
شكرا لكم و سنة جديدة سعيدة

All bad translations are thanks to Google.

The Only Spoiler Allowed Here Is Stephanie Brown!

Last night was the first showing of the newest Star Wars movie. I did not go see it. I will tonight. We have a really dinky movie theater here, that only shows two movies at a time and only one time per day, unless it is summer time and all the brats are out of school or a weekend. That's it, unless I want to travel four hours in either direction to the nearest big theater chain to watch this movie in IMAX 3D with jiggly seats. And while I am quite sure that the $20 for a seat is worth it for this movie, I'm going to stick with hoe and pay my eight dollars to sit in a somewhat crappy theater with the busted seats. At least I don't have to sit near any children, because we have a balcony that is eighteen and older. I am that guy that will complain about kids being in my area, I waited until I was eighteen you little fuckers, you can wait too. Go hump each other downstairs.

Since the premier of the Force Awakens I have ignored most of my social media accounts. I have blocked several friends on Facebook for the time being because they will spoil it and I don't want to be forced to murder them in for their sins. It should be a perfectly allowable legal defense to killer off anyone that spoils a movie, with in a two month time frame. If you haven't seen something like this after two months, it's your own goddamn fault. Within that time frame, public hangings should be encouraged. I was once accused of spoiling Citizen Cane because I said that whole Rosebud is his fucking toy was bullshit and this person hadn't seen the movie yet. I'm sorry you haven't seen a movie that was released before your fucking mother was born, that is not my fault. You should be thanking me for giving you the cliff notes version of that pile of shit movie. It's in black and white because color did not exist at the time, get over it. I still like to think that everyone was color blind until movies finally came out in color and it was a sudden change like it was in the Wizard of Oz. And I see some guy out in a field to his farm just staring at the sky, “Martha, what is that new bright shade of gray in the sky?”

“I don't know Harry, you think it will frighten the cows?”

“We won't know for a couple months, I do believe. Said 'Boo!' just last week to them.”

There were a couple people on my Facebook feed wondering about which order to rewatch the movies, before going to see the new one. I only made it through Episode One, and I think I'm just going to watch that again just before I go see the new one, it'll help keep my expectations low. It's not like I haven't seen these movies before. Hell I think I've seen the original trilogy more than a hundred times. I still have the tape that proves Han shot first, and why wouldn't he? Han Solo was a fucking asshole that thought making fun of some kid's new found religion was just fine because they gave him all the money they needed. So killing a guy that was there to toss his sorry ass to a giant slug for a down payment on some sand bungalow didn't seem out of character. Han is much more of a bad ass in first edition. I also have seen someone posting a thing about how they are in the one percent that hasn't seen any of these movies. Good on you pal, why are you harassing me because I have seen Return of the Jedi more than three hundred times, and can quote it near line for line? I'm sure my friend didn't post thing out of spite, but you know the fucker that made the damn meme did. And that guy is a douche. And probably the bag it came it. And he probably lives in his mom's basement for entirely different reasons than the nerds.

My home town is tiny, I'm sure I've mentioned this before, and with our one shitty theater we had a couple guys camping out in front. People I know asked if I was going to camp out too, and I told them “Fuck no!” Not that I didn't want to be the first person in, I wasn't going to hang out on a sidewalk in the fucking cold. It was sixteen fucking degrees (Fahrenheit, none of that Centigrade bullshit here) this morning when I got up at 8AM. Without a goddamn Taun Taun to cut open, I was not willing to dress as a Sith Lord, because the dark side is the best, am I right? and sit in the cold with a nice steady breeze to completely make Main Street feel like the icy breath of Hoth. To the guys that did, you dumbfucks are better fans than I. And much, much stupider too. To each their own I guess. And with that, I'm going to go see the movie, with high hopes. It can't be worse than Jar Jar Binks saving the galaxy with Pod Racing, can it? CAN IT? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! Think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts!

Update: I wrote this up well before I went to the theater to see the Force Awakens and just now got around to posting it to the blog. I got home from the movie a little bit ago, and  I am pleased. And a kid tried to spoil the movie, but someone grabbed the little shit before we could string him up, so we can only hope they tossed him in front of a bus.

I'm expanding your vocab in this one.

 I'm a fan of December. I like the cold winter air, except when my feet remain in a frozen feeling that will last until spring. I like the smell of a wood stove burning, even if I hate going out into the damn forest to find burnable wood. I like the mountains covered in snow, there is no except here, those things are epicly beautiful. Spell check says there is no word called epicly. Fuck that, I'm adding it to my vocabulary anyway.

Fuck you, Spellchecker!

Winter is just nice. I used to be a fan of Christmas too, because presents were fucking awesome. Sometimes epicly too. When I was no longer a kid and learned that my parents went into horrible debt so I could have a goddamn Transformer or a new GI Joe, or several video games, I felt bad about the fact that they payed for the gift that I would get them. When I was little (not having a job was the new norm) we had a bazaar for kids to buy gifts. It was cool, ten or fifteen cents for something stupid for my mom and dad, a couple silly things for my grandparents and then something else for my mom's brother. It was easy shopping, taught us kids about money, and the gifts were pretty good for pieces of American made in the 80s crap. I don't know why the Methodist church ended that, because I did my shopping there every year until I was eight, I think.

When I got a job I spent my own money on those gifts, just I bought them from various stores. One year I decided to buy gifts in an incremental scale, someone would get something expensive and then someone got the shaft. I wasn't a complete ass about it either, my sister would get something decent, I got her a set of books one year and thought that just wrapping it in gift wrap was not enough. I taped that fucker shut, with a whole roll of clear plastic tape. I laughed for the whole hour it took her to open that goddamn thing. The next year I got her a gift certificate and put it in a box filled with sand and three rolls of that tape. You can't tell me that isn't funny as fuck. My grandma got a pair of scissors every year, I do not know why but she finally asked me to get something else after twelve straight years. And my grandpa always got a tackle box for his fishing supplies. I never wavered from that, because they were cheap, always there, easy to wrap, and he always needed a new one. I didn't just get cheap gifts for everyone, I got my dad a bitching stereo that he could play his vinyl records on and hook up to the TV for surround sound. The plan was to split that $400 with my sister, but she welched on it (hence the taped asshole gifts) and I fronted that cost myself. Whenever I decided to do the shaft and expensive gifts I would put everyone's name in a hat and just randomly assign a dollar amount to how much I was going to spend on them that year. It worked great when I wasn't fucking poor. Bought my mom a cast-iron dutch oven and twelve inch pan one year, $100 for those was bit tough, and then she used them one goddamn time. They are now used all the time, in my kitchen. But when I went to college and could no longer afford the same amount for gifts I set myself a budget. Fifty bucks one year, and got useful gifts for everyone. It was easy because I only had five gifts to get.

And then the next year I set myself with a challenge. Five dollars, for everyone. Do you know how goddamn hard it is to just shop with five fucking dollars? My family knew I was doing this, so they wouldn't be hurt over getting some gift that only cost a dollar. I got my grandma some gloves that were on clearance, my mom got a set of scissors that were in a dollar aisle of Rite Aid, I don't remember what I got my sister and dad but my grandpa got a glider plane.

I went all out on making him one for his room last year.

A fifteen cent toy from the pharmacy that was made out of balsa wood. My grandpa used to be a pilot and when he opened that present he lit up. He was well into his dementia by then, and we hadn't seen him that happy in years. It was probably the best gift I ever got for him. I had my receipts for the challenge too, I spent five dollars even, with the goddamn taxes. My dad was impressed that I could buy something for everyone with just that amount, and the next year it wasn't. Now, I'm sure that this isn't even possible for just one person. But this was an experiment in the whole, “It's the thought that counts” and it epicly fucking worked.

Edjumacation are kool!

I named this blog Rural Nerd Tales for a reason, I've been calling myself a nerd since I was a kid. I was good at math and science, and enjoyed history class more than anyone else in school. I wasn't a good student, because the shit was boring all the fucking time. Except for second grade. That was my favorite year of school. The teacher also introduced me to science, he did the hard cooked egg sucked into a glass bottle using nothing more than a lit match. When that egg got sucked into the bottle, it was like magic, and then he told us how air pressure works. I was hooked from that day on. He also blew up a desk too, but that just solidified him into being the fucking coolest teacher that school ever had. Not only did he torch a classmate's books and school work but we got to see our fire department in action, that wasn't a drill that day. How he wasn't fired we will never know, but everyone wanted to be in his class after that, and I was reborn into a nerd.

A couple weeks ago I decided to check out Khan Academy, I saw it on the Windows App Store and installed it because it was free and I'm a sucker for a freebie. My Angry Birds addiction is still going strong, QUIT FUCKING ADDING LEVELS! But after loading the Khan Academy app, and it did not work, for what ever fucking reason Windows 10 decided and I cannot fix this, I uninstalled it and just went through the browser. The first thing I did was check out the math section. I always felt I had a good grasp on math through school. I liked calculus and could do a lot of trigonometry in my head because it was easy once you knew what the hell needed to be done. I skipped a couple grades of math back in seventh grade, really, how hard could seventh grade algebra be? At first the problems were fucking easy. Multiplying multiple digits together, easy. Adding fractions, easy as well. Most of that shit I don't remember from being in my algebra classes but okay, it's been more than twenty years, maybe it's just all added in now. Then it got to long division of multiple decimals into decimals. Fuck! I couldn't remember how the fuck to do those. I refused to use the goddamn calculator, I passed this shit with ease back in school. Why the hell could I not remember how to do this. Son of a bitch, I felt like a fucking moron.

With the failing of that part of math I decided to say fuck it and go all the way back to the first grade level. Counting. An hour I spent on those, not because they were hard or anything. Shit, I still count on my fucking fingers once in a while, this was nothing. Which shape has the most sides, with nothing but a triangle and a square for options. How many ducks are there? How many blue squares are needed to fill in the rest of the big square? Which is a rectangle? One of these things is not like the other, which one is it? First grade math is nothing. And I did get a couple wrong, but that was because I didn't bother reading all the instructions. The whole, I got this, adult mindset kicked in. I stuck with that stuff for so long because it felt good, failing at that one subject dented the hell out of my pride. Second grade math was simple too, it was including adding large numbers (three digit was the largest it got to) and they introduced subtraction as well. Went back to doing this shit in my head. Easy. Passed through that and into the third and fourth grade stuff easily too. Finally I got to the long division again, the easy stuff that didn't involve those goddamn decimals. Pride and ego were back to where it needed to be. Got back to decimal division again, and came to the same road block. Dammit!

They have a button called, surprisingly enough, “I haven't learned this yet” and I hadn't clicked on anything other than to go to the next problem. I clicked it and a video pops up, with a guy that has a very soothing voice, explaining each step on how to do these math problems. Holy shit! I felt a little stupid but no longer because I couldn't remember some knowledge I gained decades before. The stupidity was because I didn't look at everything, and then remembering how I missed a fucking counting question was even more embarrassing, for the same goddamn reason. Now, not only do I know how to fucking do seventh grade math again, but I'm just busting through that stuff once again. I'm going to have to check out the science stuff they have there because I know I've forgotten a lot of it in the twenty or so years out of school. They have coding too. And history as well. Relearning something is good, and if they had this when I was a kid I would have gotten better grades. Unlike how they just let me constantly die of dysentery on every trip on the Oregon Trail. The site is great and I highly recommend it to you readers with kids, because when you fail at counting, they're just going to have more reason to laugh at you.

There is no problem here.

Wednesday is the day I hold above all others, it is my holy day, Sabbath if you will. Because it is New Comic Book Day! It is the day that I go and give my local retailer a large portion of my money, and in return, I get several thirty-two page mini picture novels, and if it happens to be an annual, double the normal price.

Comic books are much like the drug trade that I was warned about in D.A.R.E. Back when I was a wee one just getting grips on how life was supposed to be, a friend of mine passed an issue to me telling me “This stuff is rad, try one.” We said rad then, and tubular, because the campy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was all the rage at the time and being dumb kids, we repeat what the TV said was popular. But that first hit sent me on a spiral down, you know you're hooked because you've gone through what that one friend had and he was no longer going to have a good supply about. You need more, so you find yourself a dealer, just to get the fix. And then you notice there are more than just the one strain you've been getting, you try something new and bold, with strange names and bright fancy colors. All promising a good time, out of reality. Sometimes it's a good trip, other times not so much. And then you're hooked, and you spend more and more money and then you can't wait until the next batch. And then, Bam! You're a fucking junky now! And then the other kids start calling you names, like Nerd and Geek but you ignore them because that lunch money Mom gave you, it's going right to the dealer because goddamn it he has a back issue you've never seen before. That son of a bitch friend then introduces you to the next fix, a little thing called Dungeons and Dragons. “Come on Billy, everyone else is doing it.”

Goddamn it, that all makes me sound like a real junky. But like my mom said, at least I was reading something.

I swear, I can stop anytime I want.

Thanksgiving

My family, my dad's side, always tries to meet up at least once per year, for Thanksgiving. Last year was a bust, my sister ended up in the ICU, my mom had surgery the week before, a cousin's in-law passed away, another cousin's in-law tried to do the same thing while taking out a cat, and the flu was rampant. Last year was THE clusterfuck from hell for a family get together. But this year everyone was as healthy as possible, and went on as normal. Well what can pass for normal, for us. We are an odd bunch that is hard to describe, we insult each other out of respect, generally harass each other out of love, and brag about how awesome the football teams we root for are, and how we are kicking the crap out of so and so in our fantasy sports league. There's drunken yelling, but mostly in an argument about who had the better insult. It's the best dysfunctional family I have ever heard of. We have die hard Republicans that get along just fine with the die hard Democrats. Most of the family claim to be Catholic, there's a family prayer which is fine and fully nondenominational, and they tolerate my near atheism and how my sister is a practicing Wiccan. We all have some kind of goddamn food issue, that everyone forgets until it's been realized to have been added to the list of someone else. My sister has Celiac Disease, and she can't have gluten, someone will always toss in flour to thicken up some soup dish; I'm allergic to mustard, the same person thought to spread that yellow goodness all over the goddamn ham; there is someone with a nut allergy and that meant that some needed to be in a fucking jello salad; someone can't have fruit, that ended up in every fucking sauce on the table. In the end, most of the food is eaten because we all said “Fuck it, I'm hungry, pass the goddamn gravy!”

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, sure Christmas gets you a present or two, and Easter has chocolate and coloring eggs, Halloween is just everyone in cosplay of some kind. Everyone enjoys one of our many holidays for some reason, and I enjoy it because I am finally around people that understand me. We're all goddamn fucking weird, and have the same humor. To the outsider, we are probably a nightmare, we even have a rule about bringing in a potential mate, you get one free pass to be an observer. If you are dumb enough to come back, you are now fair game. There have been a couple of people that couldn't handle us and we never saw them again, then there are those that fit in before we even met. An aunt was introduced to us as a Raider fan, the family is mostly Packer fans, and she immediately attacked me with witty sarcasm snarky humor. I defended myself, she responded back, and then she uttered a swear word at dinner the night after Thanksgiving (at the time we took over a Home Town Buffet, which has sadly closed. Sad for us, probably not for them) and she was forced to come sit at my table. She is currently one of my favorite aunts, because I have not lost to her in our fantasy football league this year, and my attitude can change at any moment depending on a football score.

One of the things argued about at these Thanksgiving dinners is weather. Argue is probably too much. More like discussed. With sides. One group of the family is from San Diego, where the temperature is a stable seventy degrees year round. They think fifty degrees is cold, and they will “freeze to death” and always wear some godawful coat and complain about how my uncle hasn't turned on the heat. I come from the mountains of California, where we have winter, it was sixteen fucking degrees the morning we left for my uncle's house this year. I thought about wearing shorts to dinner, but my tan is gone now that the frost has arrived at home. This aunt needs to sleep in a bed with a heater. I slept in the tent trailer set up outside in the driveway. This weekend ended up being a cooler one, with some good winter like winds blowing, so I needed a couple blankets, those thin lap things that K-Mart sells this time of year for $5. And the next morning, I am always asked if it was too cold outside, and that aunt is always right there to hear me say, “No, still warmer than home.” My uncle is a smooth styled kind of asshole, I believe my answer brings him joy after her complaining about how his house is too cold.