Would You Be So Kind and Shut Down My Pain Receivers?

"Encourageable" or "Incorrigible", which one?

Dave here! (Were you expecting Rowan Atkinson or something?) Welcome to another edition of Thunderdome! If you're here to test my loyalty, you succeed only in testing my patience...

I filled up on the following perishable items in preparation for tonight's post: Beef Jerky, a Monster Energy drink, a can of chili, a double-shot of Emergen-C (so I can stay in tip top health) and chocolate... mmmm, chocolate... I like my chocolate like I like my wives: special, dark and nutty! lol Plus, wifey's cooking gives me the Hersheys, so there's that tie-in as well, lol...

Don't tell wifey I said that....

Today was the quintessential mellow San Diego Saturday 'round the Wagner household. Stayed up way too late last night, reading (Point of Impact, Steven Hunter). Woke up late, cuz I'm a lazy turd. Pancakes, errands, some work, some games, a disgusting fast-food lunch, and here I am! Man... my life is just too high-tension... I need to relax more...

Today's Gut-Buster (from This Is Why You're Fat):


Double-patty, pulled pork, BBQ sauce, bacon, cheese and slaw. Guaranteed to put you to sleep for 12-18 hours while you digest. It's the Burger Barn, Gilbert, the Burger Barn! French fries? This is France, you gotta have French Fries!

Man, didn't anyone think the LMAO t-shirt art from yesterday's post was funny? You see, that's a pic of Chairman Mao, see... and he's smiling (that's as close as he ever came to laughing), see... and the LMAO acronym stands for "Laughing My *** Off", see... and so, it's like Laughing Mao, see? Cuz, like, his name is Mao... well, he's Chinese, not North Korean, so maybe that threw everyone off... OK, fine, so it wasn't funny, sheesh! No need to gang up on me! Keep in mind, your friends might get me in a rush, but not before I make your head into a canoe, you understand me?

Oh well...

How about this one? This is a face only a mother could love... on pay day.


Did that one make you laugh, at least?

Man, what a rough crowd today! I'd hate to take a bite out of you... you're a cookie full of arsenic!

My friend Mike P. showed me this cool Mind Mapping software called FreeMind, which is ridiculously easy to use and very helpful. I'm using it at the moment to map out the Rug Care Central website and all of it's elements, both current and proposed. I'm going to use it to help map out my upcoming Wagnervana website as well... Wagnervana.com will be like this blog, only a lot more robust. In fact, Josh says we can simply embed this blog 'as is' into the main page of the website, so that's sweet... no reinventing the wheel, eh! Plus, I'll have half the site dedicated to my work-related stuff, so I can send prospective new clients there to scope out my work. I am a businessman... I am anything I need to be at any time! I'll put a lot of my writings, paintings, photographs, comics, game-related stuff, and other nonsense up there as well. Can't wait, it will be schweet!

Getting back to the Mind Mapping software, the real reason I bring it up is that I'm going to use it to map out my novel so far, and then flesh out the rest of the book, as far as character story arcs, and such, so I can see the scenes I have, the scenes I need, and be able to view the overall story at a glance. I'm hoping it will help me get unstuck, so I can get the thing finished and published and sell you all copies and become rich and famous and move on to richer, more important friends... ba dum dum! But seriously folks..!

Come on, that was funny... don't make me have to break out the MC Hammer pants... nothing in my pockets but knives and lint...



Sorry. I didn't want to do it, but you made me... that's ok... what you see on this screen up here is a fantasy - a computer-enhanced hallucination!

I bet you're just dying to know which games I played on the computer this afternoon, aren't you... admit it, your day feels incomplete without know what I played. Well, you'll be happy to know I played more than just my daily dose of Battlefield 2 (still inching toward my next promotion in rank). I raced in G.R.I.D. for a bit, played some golf (Tiger Woods '08), until it caused a catastrophic crash to Vista. I played some Oblivion as well - beautiful game. Can't wait for the next Elder Scrolls game. Played some Far Cry 2 as well - another beautiful game.

Speaking of nerdy RPG-type stuff, the current storyline in The Order of the Stick is really good. I was never into D&D at all, but that webcomic is my very fave.

Todayve In History: June 7
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- June 7, 1329: Death of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland. (I told him that cigarettes would kill him one day...)

- June 7, 1984: Tetris is first introduced!

- June 7, 1965: Mick Foley was born! (If it bleeds, we can kill it.)

To celebrate Mick Foley's birthday, I'm going to post the infamous Hell In A Cell match that he had with Undertaker back in 1998. It's uploading now - I'll embed it when it's done.



This match was memorable for many reasons, really. Foley was out of shape, and the undertaker was injured, so Foley was worried that they'd have a crappy match (and it was a pay per view event), so he talked Undertaker first into starting the match on top of the 16-foot high cage (it was not built for that), and then into tossing him off the top. Foley thought he could make up for the fact that the match was going to suck by giving the audience something they'd never seen before. And they didn't tell anyone else what they were planning. The announcers are usually privy to the match plans beforehand, but in this case, they had no clue what was coming, and you can kind of hear it in their voices as they call it. When the people were trying to prevent him from climbing back up the cage, they weren't "pretending"...

Before the match was over, Foley was tossed from the top, climbed back up, was thrown through the cage and to the ring below, knocked out cold, and then chokeslammed onto thumbtacks... lol. I know the issue with wrestling is that its fake, I get that. Fake, in that winners, losers, moves and things are pre-determined, true. But these guys risk life and limb, and this was the match that proved that beyond any I'd ever seen. In fact, after the match, Vince McMahon instituted some changes to prevent the sort of thing from happening again.

His list of injuries from this match include dislocated jaw, dislocated shoulder, front teeth knocked out, kidney damage, and he has no memory of the match whatsoever after the second fall (he was out cold in the ring for almost 2 minutes - beyond that was autopilot). It's odd... you watch the match and you know it's "fake", yet you know the guy is hurt, and the wrestlers just have to keep going, because the show must go on, that sort of thing. It's not like other sports, where there's a time-out called when an injury happens. These guys have to continue whether they are hurt or not.

Anyway, I used to be bigger into wrestling when I was younger, not so much anymore. Still, this match is like a mile marker in my history. It represents a place in time for me, and there are good memories associated with it, many involving my brother Bryan (now deceased). So, yeah, it's brutal, but it had an impact on me as well.

If you're interested in more info, you can borrow my copy of Have A Nice Day, which is Mick Foley's autobiography! It's actually a great book. I can safely suggest lending you the book, since I know no one will take me up on it... come on, a wrestler autobiography? Like you'd read that! Anyone interested enough to read a professional wrestler's biography has done so already. Still, it makes me sound like a generous guy to offer it to you, even though some of you are out of town, and so I'd have to pay to ship it to you, and likely pay to have it shipped back once you kept it for 6 months without reading it and I whined enough to have you return it to me. Of course, by the time you finally agree to send it back, I'd have already bought a new one, so I'd have the new expense of purchasing the new copy, plus the cost of shipping for you to send my book back! Man, see if I ever loan you a book again!

Well, I've done a good enough impression of a tea kettle for the day (hot air and all), so I think I'll call it a night. You can shake the sawdust off your feet, but you can't shake it out of your heart!

Speed round for yesterday's 2 quotes begins now. Good luck. In nineteen minutes, this area's gonna be a cloud of vapor the size of Nebraska.

Until tomorrow, remember, you can't fight in here... this is the War Room!

9/16