Eat A Teat

I love The God-Damn Onion. Peep this week's story about the Pope, titled Pope John Paul II: 25 Years of Laughs. Best quote:

"I can still remember seeing him do his classic 'Galileo' bit in the early '90s," said fellow comedian George Carlin, referring to the pope's 1992 declaration that the church erred in condemning Galileo. "Here was this man, appearing on televisions around the world, making a proclamation that the sun does not move around the earth. I laughed until tears rolled down my cheeks."

Delightful. What a hateful fascist that man is.

Today's paper had an article about this Norse woman who wrote this book that's apparently unfavorable towards this Afghan family she'd been living with. From the purportedly tyrannical patriarch who's suing her and the publisher:

There were lots of misrepresentations about me, my family and my country.

Let me tell you something that country: Afghanistan's a luddite cesspool of misogyny and Islamo-fascism. The whole country should be paved over and turned into a big Planned Parenthood clinic. Culture is a farce, tradition is a farce; when you're stuck between culture and human rights, guess which one's gotta give. I mean, I know which one does tend to give, but you know...

The 1.10 Patch for Diablo II came out yesterday. It's alright. I guess my interest in the game has kind of waned. I'd been watching the official Forums, and most of the posts seemed to either praise Blizzard for funneling resources into a game that's getting pretty long in the profit-tooth or take them to task for not being supportive enough of a fan base that they were courting for the purchase their Christmas offering, World of Warcraft. Pretty characteristic of the dilemmas surrounding capitalism in general. I don't know which side of the line I fall on; probably the gratitude side -- I'm just happy to have some new items for my little one-inch high projection of masculine agency. However, the NYTimes had a piece on Monday about the work attitude of Generation Y (that's me). Apparently, we don't trust the Company to provide for us the same way Mom and Dad did. Well thank Chaturr'gha for that -- how humiliating. I'm just saving up to get my MS, anyway.

Speaking of games, though, I've been thinking about the kind of game I'd like to make if I had the wherewithal to make one. You guys remember those games called Manhole and Spelunx by Cyan? They weren't so much games (as far as I remember) as much as they were complicated objects that you could explore. You could click on different parts of a scene and sometimes it would take you to a new scene and sometimes there would be a little animation or sound effect. I was explaining that to Tom, and he was like, "That's not a game I'd really wanna play." Yeah, I know, it's not much of a game -- it's more of something like a novel or a Faberge egg or something. The only game-like example of this I can find is the Inform game Aisle, by Sam Barlow (review here). I've played it, it's really pretty interesting. So that's what I want to make.

Howdy Doody In The Woodshed

His hair is red, his eyes are green
He's like a person that you've never seen
He'll sing and dance, he's been to France
But now he doesn't seem to stand a chance

Mimi (fat enough to be known as "Muffin," we think) did not like going to the Vet. When we took out the cat carrier, she hid under the computer desk and wedged her head behind the printer. But Mer managed to pull her out and stuff her into the box, and I carried it across the street to the Park Slope Animal Hospital. There was a lady there with her cat, and she said that the place was not the best place when it came to veterinary medicine, but you know what? It was pretty good, so she was clearly an hysteric. The Vet was a big fat dude -- he explained that he and Mimi, probably, both had a problem with liking to eat. He also showed me a trick that many of you may already know -- if you grab a cat by the scruff of the neck, it gets real calm, a lot like when you put your computer into software-suspend mode. So try it.

The 1.10 patch for Dia-blow 2 is supposed to come out today.

I hear RedHat is phasing out their SOHO edition. What?!

We (Mer) rented the complete first season of Smallville, as well as The Eye, which is a good film but not terribly scary. Think "The Sixth Sense," plus that movie Blink with Madeleine Stowe. Okay, so Smallville, right? The emblem of the series, kind of, is this image of Clark Kent strapped to some cross-like scarecrow rigging in the middle of a cornfield with the a big red 'S' painted on his chest. How edgy is that -- Superman, crucified? But the series doesn't ever really get that contraversial again -- after the pilot, that is (or is it the first episode? Do they even air pilots?).

Speaking of scary, I've been over at a certain best-friends-club's apartment playing a lot of this game Eternal Darkness for the GameCube, and I've gotta say, it's really IA! IA! TIER ARETAK PARGON CHATTUR'GHA PARGON!!!

Blow It Out Your Blow-Hole

These eight-to-six crank shifts have me dead tired, but I managed to upload the missing CoA strips this morning.

Mer and I rented Dreamcatcher last night. Well, Mer rented it. I'm not going to take credit for doing anything but watching it, and I was playing with the cat for most of it, anyway. You know, some people have been able to make decent movies out of Stephen King books, but this Larry Kasdan guy seems to have a slavish devotion to the original text, which is, you know, a mistake when it comes to this stuff. Look, I'm not going to lie and say I read the whole book, but the first few chapters had everything that King fans seem to hunger for insatiably: A rag-tag bunch of kids who have a mystical experience and grow up into a rag-tag bunch of white trash with shitty jobs; white trash insistently spitting out awkward and improbable catch-phrases like "Fuck Me Freddy" and "Same Shit, Different Day"; a fucked up little boy with psychic powers; and white trash dying perverse and violent deaths. Oh yeah, the movie's got all of that, except they left out the part where any of the stupid story ever gets properly explained. And way to mis-cast Morgan Freeman, clods. I guess I'm saying I didn't like it.

Blog on, Christian soldier. Peep it. Best quote (re: Partial-birth abortion):

Good, I say. Even if a women is raped or incested, and even then I dont think they should be allowed to get them, she shouldn't be allowed to kill it so late into the pregnancy because it has a soul.

Good old fucking fake ridiculous soul bullshit.

Hey Jeb Bush, I've got one of those fake rubber rat toys with a battery in it that makes it writhe around and squeak -- you wanna come over and put a feeding tube in it for me? kthx bye.

Comeuppance in Spades

I kind of got chewed out by the CTO today. But you know what, if you want me to come in at 8:00 fucking AM, don't expect me to do a good job.

This guy on the Q train met a friend who got on at Atlantic Ave., and showed him a book called something like, "Alice In Wonderland And The Truth Behind 9/11." Apparently you shouldn't bother looking for it on Amazon.com, 'cuz it's packed with stuff the national media companies don't want you to know, like:

• You got to have the bloodline, negro! It don't matter what race you be; if you don't got the bloodline, you ain't goin' nowhere!
• I already knew all that shit about the dollar bills, the eye in the pyramid and all that shit, but what about how's there's 13 arrows for 13 Indians; and those is wheat arrows!
• You know about the microchips? Man, they been doin' that shit to dogs for years, but there's this family where they all got microchips
• The media tryin' to blame all this shit on the Islam, but it ain't Islam! It's the Jews! The Jews and um... them dudes with the bloodline!

According the first guy, he'd just started to read the book, but it had already changed his worldview completely. His friend was saying, "Yeah, man, that must be some heavy shit in that book. You look all shook up!" The guy was like, "Yeah, it's the real shit. It's vicious."

Here are some pictures for you to enjoy:

• Mimi the cat
• The apartment

I uploaded most of my award-winning comic strip, Cavalcade of Assholes. Peep it here.

Oh Jesus Fuck

Man, I felt terrible yesterday. Jason and I wandered around the West Village for half an hour looking for a place to get food, and we finally settled on Sammy's Asian Gourmet at 6th and Bleecker -- apparently a spin-off of the Noodlehaus, up on 11th St. Anyway, it wasn't very good, and like 15 minutes after I started eating my body started screaming at me that I was going to have to throw up. I managed to keep it in check, but I had to go downstairs and walk around the block a few times before I was feeling well enough to sit down at my desk. And then the feces explosion.

That morning, the Q had been super-slow; I could've gotten to work faster by walking. I was standing next to this old guy on the subway, and whenever the conductor apologized for the delay, the guy would murmur quietly, "thas' okay," or, "hey, that's cool," or, "don't worry about it."

I'm reading Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. I don't get it, though! Earth people: "I was born on Jupiter!"

The Daily News

The last time I sat down to write a post, I wanted to tell the Interweb how I was praying for the death of this guy who runs the American Family Research Council or whatever. I mean, what an awful organization -- they deserve nothing short of obliteration. But then I started thinking about how I kind of get all wrapped up in hating this stuff and it's not very good for me. Don't get me wrong, I'm still hoping these guys and everyone like them take the big dirt nap right fucking now, neatly demonstrating the irony of their positions -- if only their consciousness existed to realize it -- but I guess it's sort of a waste of time to talk and write about it, and it's bad for my emotional health.

Mer and I went to the Beacon Theater on 74th on Saturday night for the Comedy Central Live tour, featuring Dave Attell and Lewis Black. Of course, we were really there to see Mitch Hedberg, but it turned out that Lewis Black ain't half bad. I mean, I don't have cable or anything, so I don't watch comedy all day long like some of you, so he was sort of a surprise for me. Dave Attell is 100% not funny, though. He is just deadly. He is like the "funny guy" for every bunch of asshole friends out there, and you could tell because the audience was packed with assholes. Mitch was pretty good, except that the sound was way too loud, 'cause the opening guy was too quiet, and he was holding the mic way too close to his mouth. He was doing this line about how he knew he was going to be a stand-up comic because he's real good at holding an ice-cream cone, but apparently he doesn't really know how to do that at all. That's okay, though. A bunch of people in the audience were yelling at him to get off the stage, and he was sort of responding in a funny way. I couldn't tell whether they were fans or not; I'd like to think that they were.

After the show, Mer was trying to find a pot to piss in, and all of a sudden I ran into Kim and this guy Brian from high school -- they'd gone to see the show together. Kim was real intent on having me return this phone call she'd made to me like a month ago. I mean, I don't really have anything to say to her. She's fucking awful. Brian is nice enough, I guess, but he's kind of a stoner jerk-off who's gotta say everything in this real low, terse voice. I couldn't remember his name, so I just referred to him as "guy" -- Billy and I used to joke that he looked like his name might be "Jesse," and that's all I could think of until Mer pointedly introduced herself. Maybe they were on a date. I bet he's just her type. That's always weird, when you find out that your friends just have these weird, inexplicable sexual tastes that they'd never reveal to you explicitly.

I played some whiffle-ball with the Degraw ladies today in Prospect Park. It was only seven of us, so we played it like there were 7 teams, each with one batter and a bunch of "ghost runners." I got 1 point, which puts me in third place -- Tom, infuratingly, got 6 points, and Devin, little power-house that he is, got 2. And I fucking beat Ted in a push-up contest; first thing like that I've ever won. And I am mad sore, son.

Before we went to the park, we "ate a feast" at the local Mickey D's. Man that place is awful. The more hospital-like and efficient it is, the more "Fear and Loathing" it feels. Just all these overweight little kids packin' they faces with fat shit. I got the two-cheeseburgers meal, but I gave one of the things to Devin and I couldn't even finish my fried. The really creepy thing is how they don't even try to advertise to white people any more.

Coming home from Tom's place on my bike, I saw this guy with a fat little bulldog-like dog, which was sort of snuffling around the base of this tree. The guy must have seen me looking at his dog, because he said, "Yeah. He's gonna be sick." And then, true enough, the dog pukes up some greenish gunk. For dinner, I made 'tato quesadillas. Yeah, it's my specialty, and yeah, it's awesome. The cat's ass is pretty much clean enough now to sleep on the bed with us.

For Tom:

(21:17:20) Nintendo Julian: tell me, sir
(21:17:25) Nintendo Julian: do you *ever* read my web-log?
(21:20:14) TEWogglebug:Yeah. But usually when you tell me to.
(21:20:26) Nintendo Julian: I want you guys to read my web-log ALL THE TIME
(21:20:33) Nintendo Julian: and I want you guys to have web-logs
(21:20:36) TEWogglebug: Well, say that in the web-log.

I'm sayin' it -- now do it.

Fuck you, Gary L.

Maybe you long-term scumbags can back me up on this one -- I've only been working the .com nightmare for a few months -- but am I right or not that the business half of the business / brains duo is just awful? I mean, one might naturally suspect this, but is this choice evidence or what:

(regarding the annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade) I mean, back in the 80's it was just a bunch of guys butt-fuckin' each other. Now they've got sponsorship from, like, a dish detergent company. Corporations! Man, they'll sponsor anything, even gays...

Or, try this on for size:

Man, what is this stuff? "Pad thai"? Heh heh, they should call it "dog vomit," 'cause that's what it looks like!

Proof once again that if you major in a shitty subject -- finance -- at a shitty school -- anything ending with "SU" -- then you are an asshole.

Mer and I got a cat named Mimi at Bide-A-Wee. Mer went in looking for a kitten, but they clearly wanted to sell us on one of the older cats, and, you know, that is cool. So our cat is big and fat and five years old, like a guest on Maury Povich, maybe. She had some kind of skin problem from being depressed and sleeping in her litter box in her cage, but apparently that is all cleared up now. She is very sweet but she has a pretty dirty asshole from not cleaning herself at the shelter, and she clearly wants to scratch our furniture to pieces. The very first night she came into bed with us, but during the day she is always hiding under tables and pretending not to notice us. It's a little weird, but hopefully she'll adjust to our apartment soon.

As another part of Mer's B-day celebration, we went to go see Kill Bill, Vol. 1. Now look, this Quentin Tarantino guy, right? He knows how to make a movie, you know, with all the camera work and editing and pacing and stuff, but can he write a line of dialogue that doesn't make you want to punch him? "I put a bullet in her head, but her heart just kept on beatin'?" Come on. Don't jerk me around, shithead. I mean, everyone is always off on this guy's dick because he taught himself everything, but he didn't teach himself how to make a movie that a person should want to watch. It's really pretty low material. I don't know, I guess Resevoir Dogs is an okay movie. Then we rented May, which was pointlessly excruciating, but probably a better movie than Kill Bill in many ways. We also rented White Oleander, which I didn't watch.

Finally, The Stars Are Right -- for my Call of Cthulhu campaign, that is!

Go Fuck A Cactus

I just saw Bruce Campbell's latest ouvre, Bubba Ho-Tep. Well, pretty good, and even kind of touching, but I don't know... Don't get me wrong, it doesn't jerk you around, but it's a bit rough. And it's a little too short. But I liked it. You should see it, you.

Okay, I'm going to list some headlines from the great Satan, CNN.com, and then I'll say something about each one.

• Tiger mauls Siegfried and Roy Illusionist: So... which of the Siegfried and Roy illusionists? Siegfried? Or Roy? Right.
• Pope offers warning over gay clergy: Oh sweet dead putrescent Christ how I pray for the death of this awful fascist. The day his consciousness thankfully ceases to be, I will be masturbating into a kleenex to the most deviant porno I can find before going to work to program a computer.
• Marlins kill off Giants to reach NLCS: If this weren't a stupid sports story it would be so, so exciting. Except what is NLCS.

Okay that was three headlines. I don't know.

Some lady who used to board dogs upstairs moved out, and now she's getting all these debt collection notices, including some honest-to-god subpoenas. But she also gets all these classy magazines, like National Geographic and Smithsonian and some other magazines I've never even heard of. So: Is she a villainous faker living beyond her means? Or just a hapless idiot living who needs to update her forwarding address? Idiot. More on this later.

Hate The Player, Not The Game

You know what? I don't like losers. Shamefully enough, I keep reading this guy from Yale's online journal and all he talks about is how he wants to get an investment banking job and an apartment in Manhattan so that he can go to all the hip clubs and meet lame, materialistic gay men like himself and generally be a fucking asshole. You know what? If everyone in New York acted like you, it wouldn't be a place you wanted to live in in the first place. Go down to Panama City Beach or back to God-forsaken Long Island, you creep. Thanks for ruining the world. You'll always be a fucking loser from Long Island, no matter how many guest lists you get your name on.

And another thing: I was reading the Times the other day, and there was this story about some guy in some New Jersey suburb or something or killed his son and then jumped in front of a train. And the mayor of the town goes:

"The community is obviously shocked because this doesn't happen in a community like ours," said Mayor McDermott.

Oh -- you mean it only happens in the big city because of all the blacks and the hispanics and the poor people. Guess what, dickhead, some guy might get shot in a liquor store or something in New York City, but the really sick shit happens when people have more money than they deserve or know what to do with and there's nowhere to go and nothing to fucking do all day. Fuck you, scumbag. I'd like to shoot you and your little gated "community" into fucking outer space.

Chris came over for dinner the other night, spilling Budweiser all over the hall in the process, and I made us some 'tato quesadillas, but Mer was feeling sick so I kind of had to give him the bum's rush after an hour or so. Those fucking creeps are looking into a new drummer, which, I suppose was inevitable, but Chris dropped off a CD of stuff they'd recorded recently, and some of it sounded pretty good -- particularly this one song called "Dinosaur Bones." That song is very good.

I went over to 81 Degraw last night to help Tom roll a character for our game, but he and Emma were still at a movie. So I hung out with Devin for a while, 'cuz he was locked out. By the time Tom got back I was succumbing to my gross mucus-filled cold, so I kind of had to hit the road. Sorry, guy. Maybe we'll try again tonight.

What else? Oh yeah, we might be adopting a kitten. Shut up.

A Journey of Self-Discovery

I took the IKEA-bus to IKEA today. Kind of a fluke -- the last one leaves at 2:30, and I showed up at 3:00, grimly determined to get to Elizabeth, NJ somehow, someway, and by God there was a fucking bus waiting for me. Ill. I had been hoping that those creeps at 81 Degraw would help me get there, but the one with the car said, "Oh, not today." Just goes to show, if you want something done, you gotta do it yourself. The Elizabeth IKEA didn't have much of the stuff I wanted, but I got an office chair and a little box for some of Mer's bathroom things. My arms are killing me.

And now, a musical interlude:

Well, they'll stone you when you're walking down the street
Yeah, they'll stone you while you're looking at you're feet
They'll stone you while you're excavating Crete
Yeah, they'll stone you while you're welcoming the fleet!

You know, I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned!

I've more or less finished the first version of my Fuckfuck to C converter. Here's the link.

I Feel Like A Turd Burger

I do. I woke up before Mer today with a tummy full of gas and I made all these really long farts, but I didn't feel better. I think it was the taquitos I had last night, but who can say for sure? I've been having some strange dreams lately. A couple of nights ago, I dreamed that Mer and I had these gigantic fish tanks installed in our house (or maybe we were living at the Coney Island Aquarium -- the decor was definitely a Beach/Granite kind of affair), and we had all kinds of fish. We even had a 1950s Norman Rockwell dad type of human who could only breathe water living in one of the tanks. He had a pipe and a newspaper and everything. Whenever you would walk up to one of the tanks, the fish would get really excited and press their weird little faces up against the glass. But whatever company was supposed to be cleaning all of it was doing a bad job, because the water was really murky. In the dream, I think we were having an argument about switching tank-cleaners.

This morning as I was on line at the breakfast cart, this guy asked if he could see the front page of my paper because Kofi Annan was on it. I told him he could have it, because I'd already read it. I do like Kofi Annan a whole lot, though. He is one hell of a guy. No, seriously. I really like him.

I've been playing around with ChilliWilli's F*ckf*ck language. I've even written a simple piece of software to convert 'feckfeck' code to C. Maybe I'll post it on the main page once I polish it up.

There was this article on CNN's site the other day about a fossil specimen of the earliest known human:

Although we call them 'modern humans,' they were not fully modern in the sense that we think of living people," [some scientist] added.

"They are all dirty and smelly and all that sort of stuff."

What?!

Just Wonderful

Today was really very nice. The weather, I mean -- I know we are going to have this big stupid hurricane but it's not really going to come here, and it just seemed like a very nice fall day on Broadway today. Everyone was going about his or her business, and I really felt like I was a part of the everyday goings-on of the world again. You know that feeling, right? It's very nice. Plus, it's "Fashion Week" in the city, so you can imagine the height and virtue of the women walking down the street. I had some sushi and dumplings for lunch.

But I am a terrible employee. I mean, I am always goldbricking and making stupid mistakes. I spent a couple hours today trying to get the sound to work on my computer so I could listen to MP3s on peoples' Windows shares, and it didn't work out. The only thing I was supposed to do today was rename some variables in a few test files and I could barely do that. I'm still trying to get it done. I'm awful.

I posted a comment on Slashdot that earned me 5 "Funny" points. The thing is, I'm not that funny and neither was my comment. You know who's funny? David Rees.

Eat A Fat Salad

Well, I decided that most of the things I had to say about September 11th wouldn't do me or anyone else any good to post, so I won't post 'em. Suffice it to say, it's very sad that all those police and firefighters and EMTs and whatever all got killed. And that if it's open-karma-season on Western civilization / whitey, we really better watch out, because we've got it coming to us in a major way. And all those neo-nationalist creeps like Wil Wheaton can eat a fat dick -- Liberal? Conservative? American? Shut the fuck up.

Last night when I joined Mer in bed, I tried to take some of the blankets away from her and she said "Mmf... no." When I tried again, she started punching my hand, hard. "Some people need to learn to keep their hands to themselves," she said irritably. I figured out she was asleep and said, "Jesus Christ, it's me in the bed with you." "Try to set a better example, then," she said, and turned towards the wall. When I told her about it this morning, she cracked up. "Oh, I knew it was you," she said. "I just thought something else was going on." What?!

I got some cool but overpriced d6 and d10 from Blatt's Billiards -- they're all black with white numbers on them, and the d6 have little skulls instead of ones. I'll be going to the library at lunch today to pick up a book about historical Boston. Or should I say... hysterical Boston?

I Feel Like The Bottom Of A Taxi Cab

No, I do. I was carrying heavy things all weekend and now I feel like the acid-deuce. I didn't even feel like writing in my stupid 'blog today, but that's the thing about having a web-log. You have to write in it, even when you don't want to and don't have anything to say. Mer's got her first day of teaching today. She's doing it right now, I think. Actually, the kids are probably at lunch right now. But she was doing it recently. It's probably going to go fine, though she has been experiencing some slight trepidation.

I bought Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu role playing game. I got the one with the original rules system instead of the new "d20" rules. See, when you play role playing games, you have to role dice and someone has to do a little math to figure out whether or not certain things happen in the game world. The set of dice rolls and calculations is what makes up the rules of a game -- the part that is not just sitting around talking and drinking vodka tonics. Wizards of the Coast, the company that bought TSR, is trying to come up with a ruleset standard so that people will be able to learn new games quickly and maybe have more genre-fluid campaigns, and their work so far is referred to as "d20," because it involves a lot of 20-sided dice. Anyway, I bought the version with the non-d20 rules; this one is called the "BRP" version. I think it's going to be fun. We'll all dress up in funny costumes and light candles and eat chicken wings.

News Flask:
(Reactions to Bush's Address to the Nation)

"In 15 minutes, he attempted to make up for 15 months of misleading the American people and 15 weeks of mismanaging the reconstruction," [Howard Dean] said.

In his speech, Bush called Iraq the "central front" in the war on terrorism and said foreign terrorists were to blame for recent violence there. But Dean said the security vacuum caused by the war itself is to blame for that situation.

No duh, right? (From the New York Times front page)

Twenty-seven percent, or $144 million, of the $539 million World Trade Center Business Recovery Grant program went to traders who work on the floors of the financial district's stock and commodities exchanges, to brokerage firms and to investment banks, according to an analysis by The New York Times. An additional $53 million, or 10 percent of the total, went to law firms, some of which employ hundreds of attorneys and generate yearly revenues of tens of millions of dollars, and few of which faced dire threats to their survival.

Johnny Rotten asks "Ah hah hah! Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" Get on board the hell-bus, jerks.

I had a funny dream last nigh: I developed this way of shimmying around and slipping away from people that made me an excellent football quarterback. Naturally, this talent made me very attractive to the admissions department at Wesleyan University, to which, for some reason, I was really eager to return.

I really want to do this. Yo Degraw snivlets -- want to help?

Welcome To The Diamond Mine

Actually, now that I write that title, I wanna hear that song real bad, but I brought all my CDs home from work so that Mer could put them into this big binder we bought.

Ted et. al. moved into their new apartment, finally, on Wednesday. They want to go to a bar tonight, which is kind of disappointing. When it comes to that kind of thing, my point is this: Single people with an appetite for shit can go off to a bar all they want, but to try to sell it as a fun activity for your friends is insulting. Because it's not a fun activity when there's no prospect of scoring new and different pussy (if you're a dude) or of having some greasy meatball in a tight shirt tell your hair looks "beautiful" (if you're a woman). It's a shitty, boring time. So I don't know what I'm gonna do tonight. I'm out of the closet and I feel alright, though I am out of Carbona.

My sister's birthday was yesterday; as per her wishes, I made her a Ramones mix CD. My parents got her a computer to replace the e-Machine that just conked out. I had tacos and cake.

I put on this shirt this morning and I was out of the house before I realized it had a big stain on from the laser chicken I ate last week.

Stupid, Awful Shit

Fucking blogger just erased my post.

Well, today is Labor Day. Tom, Emma, Ted, Devin, and Katie were supposed to move into their new house yesterday, but they couldn't find the landlord, so they just cooled their heels in Pelham instead. It sucks because we waited around to help them all day, and we'll probably end up doing the same today, because it's raining and there's nothing else to do, and they are probably not going to find their guy.

Mer was telling me about this big dumb woman she saw buying lottery tickets at the deli. The woman bought like ten lottery tickets and made a net profit of a dollar. As she was leaving, Mer heard her say to herself, "As long as I stay one step ahead..." You fucking idiot. She (Mer) also described how most of the women who shop there aren't very good at doing math, so they go get the most crucial item first and bring it to the counter with their twenty, and then when they see how much change they have left, they start going after less necessary items, like donuts and Big-Gulps, and they say "gimme 'dat" to the cashier.

I was on line at Wholesale Distributors, the big department store underneath my office, and there's this guy on line behind me on a cell phone who's ordering some food for himself from his friend who is on line at some fast food place (it sounded like Wendy's). So he orders some happy meals or something for his girlfriend and a chicken sandwich for himself, and then he's like, completely serious, "Yo, make sure that chicken sandwich is fresh." What?! You have an Associate's Degree in Office Technology and wear khakis to work, so you are clearly a connoisseur of rubbery fast food chicken, able to tell the difference between the pap we serve to customers and the tender morsels we save for ourselves, the Wendy's Illuminati. Welcome to our inner circle, you fucking dumbass.

Movies:

• Spider: Good, but not very talky, and not very Cronenbergian, though I don't think I know what that means.
• Heavy: Very good, very sad
• Royale-wit'-Cheese Video Exchange also gave us Wild Cherries by "accident." That is one boring porn.

The asshole upstairs is playing his music far too loud again. At least it's "cool jazz" this time and not sex-you-up-girl music. I have never spoken to this guy, but I get the feeling is the kind of guy who says things like, "Music is my life." Anyone who tells you that music is his life is the fucking death idiot.

Home Alone

Well, I am home alone. Mer went to go work on classroom materials with her friend Annie. They went to a bar, too. I bought a quesadilla at Yummy Taco and rented Chicago. Tom and Emma came over on Saturday; Tom had an interview for a job at Kaplan. We watched

• The Kid Stays In The Picture: I don't know if it was good or not I didn't really pay attention
• Bringing Down Da House: Embarrassing / Unfortunate
• NARC: Embarrassing / Moustaches

Now I'm trying to get PHP + Apache + MySQL working for my implementation of Fiendster.

I had drinks with Billy and Ruby Lien on Friday. Billy's doing okay, I guess. It made me want to start working on my stories again, whatever that means. It's always nice to open up a word processor and just type things up. I was thinking about publishing a book of short stories in the shower this morning. Not publishing the books in the shower, mind you. On the way home, I picked up a copy of PSM Magazine at a newsstand. That thing is a piece of shit. Here are some quotes:

While the story is somewhat cliche, the gameplay is tried and true

What?

Jak's ability to transform into an unstoppable dark version of himself, his gun-wielding capability, and the fact that he can whip out a nimble hoverboard at any point automatically makes the gameplay much deeper and more unique.

Yeah, I bet it's real great. Thanks, shills.

I went for a bike ride today. It was beautiful. Maybe I'll ride my bike to work tomorrow. Maybe.

The Dickies Roadshow

Yesterday a guy who was sure some gigantic wizard in outer space was granting him wishes blew up a bus full of people who were sure that some gigantic wizard in outer space was granting them wishes. Also a bunch of still-anonymous individuals who, presumably, were sure that some gigantic wizard in outer space is granting them wishes blew up the office of a guy who put helping other human beings ahead of whatever stupid beliefs he may or may not have had about the special rewards he'd receive when he went to the fairy cupcake kingdom after he died.

The Fiend Fest was okay. I met Mer there around 7:45 -- it took me a long, long time to get up there, because I had to buy earplugs and then run back to the office to take a horrible shit -- and the show hadn't started yet, though they had said to be there at 6:00. At 8:00 they let people in and the bands started going on at 8:15. So the bands, in chronological order, were D.I., Balzac, Agnostic Front, The Dickies, The Damned, and The Misfits. D.I. and Agnostic Front were terrible -- an embarrassment to themselves and hopefully their fans, though I don't know if their fans are capable of being embarrassed. Balzac was okay. The Misfits web site describes them as "horror punks from japan," which apparently means dressing up in spooky costumes and singing like The Misfits.

The Dickies were just great. It's just Leonard and Stan now, of course, but they seem to have tamed the three frosted-tip jerk-offs (who're playing drums, bass, and rhythm) pretty well, because every song sounded like the album version. Leonard made some characteristic stage small-talk, which sounded, as usual, gratingly rehearsed. Among the gems:

• He referred to Stan as "the best bisexual Muslim guitar player in all of punk rock." Stan leaned awkwardly toward his mic and said, "Well, first of all, I'm not religious." "Second of all," he said haltingly, as if he resented having to participate, "you're the one wearing the snakeskin stretch pants."
• Leonard presented literally 5 or 6 variations on a proposal for a new reality-TV show he'd like to shoot called "Who Wants To Suck My Dick?"
• Leonard mentioned that the new album came out on Fat Wreck, which meant that Fat Mike from NOFX was his boss. "How'd that happen?" he asked. After a moment's reflection, he said, "Oh yeah! Heroin!"

So anyway, I danced around a little, but I don't have the energy for it I had when I was 16.

The Damned played a boring set that took too long to set up and too long to play. Then The Misfits took even longer to set up. I'd never seen them live before, and they're probably better than their Tour Edition ("Dez" from Black Flag on guitar and Marky on drums). They played the songs really fast and there was some kind of buzz problem with one of the PAs and the vocals were too low. The band was also kind of ticked off because not enough people were dancing around. I am sorry guys, but I woke up at 7:00 AM, and your roadies spent 45 minutes dicking around trying to hang black sheets in front of Marky Ramone's drum kit. Jerry Only kept trying to get people excited with good old working-class crowd-pleasers like, "Hey New York, are you ready to have a good time?" Some article somewhere once described him as "the hardest working guy in punk rock." I'm no expert, but I think it is definitely not punk to be the hardest working guy in punk rock.

I'm starting to feel pretty healthy again, which means it's probably time for life to fuck my ass. Thanks for everything, God, you great merciful faggot!

Cracked-out Blackout

So there was this blackout on Thursday, right? Big frickin' deal. When the power went out at my office, my boss made sure everyone had a way to get home, and then we all walked across the Manhattan Bridge together. It took about 2 hours door to door and I was pretty beat. Mer and I hung out on the steps of our building with our neighbors Jamie and Tony, and then we went in and ate stuff out of the fridge and drank some beers. When it got dark, I lit some candles that these kids outside Flatbush Hardware had been selling, and then read to Mer out of the Diamond Age (she liked it so much that she stole it from me over the weekend and read the whole thing). The exciting part was that our friend Ted had been planning on staying with us that evening -- he had an early flight to catch -- and we figured, since he'd've been taking Metro North, that there was no way he'd make it. Well, at around 11:30, Jamie knocked on our door to tell us that this guy was wandering around outside our building calling our names. Ted had driven all the way down from Hartford on a dark highway and somehow found his way across the bridge and into our neighborhood. He had to get up at 4:45 to catch his flight, and when I got up to wake him up, the power was back.

Unfortunately, so was my sinus/throat infection. That was awesome. Not.

Here are some movies we watched over the weekend:

• About A Boy: Quite charming
• Bowling For Columbine: Characteristically excellent and hate-filled, though it looks like Michael Moore needs to take better care of his teeth
• Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: I mean, it's quite good, but the battle of Helm's Deep is a little boring.

By the way, shut the fuck up, Sean Astin, you fat corporate mouthpiece piece of exploitative shit. Doesn't it cost enough to see a movie these days? Some people need to get paid a bit less, I think, if some schmuck set painter is gonna lose his job. I probably do, at least.

Appreciated, IBFT-style from some Ain't It Cool News message board:

You stoner fuckwads destroyed the world with that crap. Of all the cloying stupid bullshit catchphrases going, those are the worst. How about FORGETING everything you learned in kindergarden and seeing how things turn out? Stop sharing, stop waiting your turn, and STOP THINKING IT'S OK FOR ANYONE TO HAVE A FUCKING LAME ASS OPINION. News flash: if you sit at home and watch "My Little Pony" tapes and enjoy them, it isn't an example of the beauty of pluralism in action. It's an example of a reason why you should be in the fucking gulag. I for one think movies, like everything else I can think of, would be a lot better if everyone STOPPED deferring to every mongoloid's right to have an opinion, and instead decided to scream and hate and fight each other over their differences of taste and viewpoint like fucking Palestinians after a funeral.

Dickies tonight!

Well Today Is Just Turning Out Great

I just took my second burning, capsaicin-flavored dump of the morning. Chicken Dansak Curry and Burrito, you are delicious: Why do you want to hurt me? I gave the "Enchilada" menu to one of the marketing people, and she says she might order some for lunch on Friday. What else happened that was bad? Oh yeah, a little spider crawled down my shirt today on the subway. I don't know where it came from. And then when I got to work and was looking over my boss's shoulder at this bug report, I spilled coffee all over myself.

Yesterday wasn't fantastic either, mind you -- I had to stay at work until practically 9:00 PM, and then on the way home, a hot piece of melty tar from the Canal St. Station ceiling fell near me, almost splattering the book I was reading (Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, which I thought I'd read before but don't remember any of it).

The day before that was pretty good, though. Mer'd told me that the guys at the Golden Deli had a very affectionate cat, so I went over there to see. I couldn't find the cat, so I asked the morning guy and he said, "Abdul! Take him to see the cat." So Abdul grudgingly takes me down to the basement to see the cat, a skinny calico that seems perfectly friendly but clearly isn't interested in me, despite Abdul's repeated attempts to pick it up and put it on me. That evening I visited another cat at the Haifa Deli across the street. It thought I had food when I called it over and walked away when it found out I didn't. The guy at Mike's pizza let me pick up my take-out food even though I didn't have the cash on me. I paid him later.

I just got some spam that said I could buy an acre of moon land. Don't want it, thanks.

The AniMatrix on DVD was strictly okay. I mean, the animation was, in most cases, pretty interesting, but the stories were pretty lame. They were just too short to be good. It was 9 stories, each one about 5 minutes long.