Awright, semi-retraction time.

I talked to Mom and It seems that they didn't ask her to pay the whole $2,000. In fact they didn't ask her for anything.

Yet.

See, Mom offered to chip in for part of the cost of a new liner which they (including me) would put in themselves. The conversation I overheard was Der Fuhrer wanting it put in professionally, meaning they need $2,000.

None of this changes the fact that the lecture about me being lazy and faking my medical woes so as to bleed my mother dry financially was completely out of line.

Now I'll be the first to admit that I'm lazy, or at least I was before the amphetamines. Now I have energy, but my body can't really keep up because it's expending energy trying to heal stuff that it can't heal on it's own.

Anyhow, Mom said that after that lecture she wouldn't give them $2,000 even if she did have it laying around.

In other news, I've been fighting off a major sinus infection. Actually it started out as a sore throat, but thanks to the sleep mask blowing 11 cc's of air per second up my nose all night it got into my sinuses, my eyes, and my ears. Basically my whole head is infected. Thankfully I have bottles of vicodin and antibiotics on hand and apart from a problem with my balance (which could be the ear infections or it could be the self-medication) I'm doing pretty good.

However, recovering from this condition (on top of my regular conditions: hernia, insomnia, paranoid delusions) my sleep has been all jacked up. So when I came downstairs at 7 PM to get the mail (yeah, 7 PM, kiss my ass) I found two gas bills and since their office was closed they had to wait till this morning.

One of the letters was a 10 day shut off notice for not paying the last gas bill. The other letter was the last gas bill.

And you people wonder why I sometimes think the universe is trying to drive me insane..

But yes, this has been a problem for some time. My gas bill just doesn't get here in a timely manner. Or sometimes even at all. I've talked to them about this, but apparently my address is EXACTLY the same as at least two other addresses in this town and very similar to a couple more in Vienna and they're only the fucking post office, how are THEY supposed to know what mail goes where?

So I call the gas company to pay the bill. I go through the automated system, which I hate, and I get all the way to entering the date on my credit card. Actually, I don't have any credit cards, it's a debit card with a credit card logo on it, but it works, I've done this before.

Well it tells me that my expiration date is invalid and it asks for the zip code the bills go to. So I put that in. It's invalid. It asks if I want to try again, I do, still invalid, it connects me to a real human being. The real human being informs me that two charges went through (even though I didn't make it to the part where I authorized them) for $155 each, the amount I was paying, AND the bill isn't paid.

So They could still shut off my gas at any minute (God knows when that notice was SUPPOSED to get here) and there are two pending charges against my available balance which add up to about a hundred dollars more than I have in there. The charges have been fixed, but till they clear out of the system I can't spend any of my remaining money.

Why I don't just go take a shower with the toaster is beyond me...

And while I'm thinking about it, i think I've narrowed down my pics for the title of the new strip.

I got a lot of great suggestions, at least one of which I'll be using for a different project, but my favorite was Trashman's suggestion, for which I made up a title graphic:


I liked it, but I thought it was just a bit too pessimistic. I need a note of false hope in there. So I thought about going the other way with this:


Almost heaven is sort of the unofficial motto of West Virginia and I always thought it sounded like a backhanded compliment and that's fitting for this strip. Plus there's that goddamn John Denver song. i don't know which came first, the motto or the song, but you can't think of one without thinking of the other. So I thought, why not combine the two and name it after a good song? So I came up with this:



And here's the song:




It is, of course "Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell" by the great Zakk Wylde. I think it really captures the feel of what I'm going for and to top it off, the town in the video looks like this town. Only cleaner.

So let me know what you think. I'm gonna go take a vicodin nap, but before I go, here's a heavier Zakk Wylde song so you don't think I'm going soft.




and just for good measure here he is on Aqua Teen Hunger Force: