Upstaged on a Tarantula Tuesday

Sometimes, I sit down in my creaky chair, open up my browser, and the words just deluge forth in a way that I find a relief and you find an entertainment. Other times the flow is stunted, viscous, oozing, but I can usually wrest some laughs from the primordial thought sump. Today, I was entirely upstaged while drinking my coffee. This clip ruined me:

Pizza Night at the Cousins of Somewhat More Determinate Number

It's pizza night at the Cousins of Somewhat More Determinate Number. We're drinking cheap pinot, eating homemade pizza, and listening to hardcore punk. That is just how the COSMDNGS roll. The g and s in that acronym are a classified secret known only to me, Pinko Punko, and certain high-level government appointees. I would dearly love a Genius-sized Big Wheel. I was watching some hilarious keyboard cat, and realized that this would satisfy a lot of of my nutritional and exorcisational necessities. I may have to go make one. You can ask Adorable Girlfriend, I've built some pretty cool shit AKA my bed, out of Congolese mahogany shipping containters. So I'm clearly a dedicated recycler, ladies. At some point in this, you may wonder what the point of this here bloggio was, or is, and to which I can only respond with, which blog have you been reading? The ones in which I get bizarrely randomly insensically emo or the ones in which I get bizarrely randomly insensically tardiloquent about my roommate, Helob the Tarantula.

Peter Coyote versus James Woods: Totally Tarantula Tuesday Celebrity Edition

Nature show voice-overs versus Family Guy cameos.
Advantage: James Woods.

Making wolves interesting versus looking vaguely sinister.
Advantage: Tie, because both are cool.

Sphere versus Contact.
Advantage: The only person in the world to have seen neither, His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Having a name evocative of the rugged American West versus having a name evocative of a metaphor about details and plans.
Advantage: Peter Coyote

The Verdict: His Holiness wins! Enlightenment is the only path.

Fooled you!

Totally Tarantula Tuesdays: Monday Morning "Cool in Service" Edition

You know what's cool about the service industry? The women. Ok, well the sane ones are cool, the batshit horse/coke addicts aren't. The women who dress like hookers and then bitch about some dude staring at her tatas can also be filed as not cool. So aside from those two types, who make up 95% of the women, the women in the service industry can be pretty boss.

You know what else is cool? The drugs. Lotsa drugs. Ricockulous amounts of drugs. Drugs pouring over the hillside in a torrent of stoned jackasses. Ok, maybe they went a little far on the drugs, but that's a Squidbillies reference for those in the back.

You know what else is cool? Insomnia and apathy. No one worries about you if you haven't sleep since Friday, that's just how the weekend goes. Now that it is Monday, I wouldn't mind being able to sleep, but I can wait for another 15 to 16 hours. I've got shit to do today.

You know what else is cool, and this will really rock your face? All the famous people! OMG! I carded Brooke Shields in February and she was SO not happy about it. Haha! She didn't know we have a 100% I.d. check policy! Hee! So yeah, I didn't recognize her at first, and just thought she looked a lot like Brooke Shields, and she looked great, but still rules is rules, ma'am. So yeah, but a jackass is still my thing when I can justify it. Which is pretty much always. That might have been better off left implied, but if you look at my body of work, you'll see I've lost flab and got seriously veined arms now. Seriously. I look like Jon Cena, from the elbows to my fingertips. I'm so totally ripped! Incidentally, John Cena has NOT been in my office at any time that I am aware of.

You know what else is cool about the service industry? All the drinking you do! It helps you forget about how much your job sucks and you just can't wait to quit if you could just finish your novel, or script, or animated tv pilot, or short story collection, or that sculpture, or song, or what the fuck you've convinced yourself will elevate you somewhere above despairing mediocrity.

You know the cool thing about the service industry? You really learn your city backward, forward, upside down, and slanting over. You get to know so many vibrant, cozy, shithole neighborhoods because you heard Johnny had an ounce pf the good shit and Johnny always has good shit, I wouldn't lie to you about weed, man, cuz that's not cool. You meet all sorts of cool bartenders at bars in other districts that might have an after-hours license, or might possibly be willing to let you stay after closing and drink with the staff because I think he used to work here, or maybe he used to fuck Jenny, or that one girl who quit before you started here. Then, after finding all these quaint, little, slices of urban purgatory, you will get to walk home from them cuz Becky got blitzed on Goldschlager and cough syrup, and you think she lost her keys, but even though it's been months since you've even downloaded any new porn since your internets got disconnected, you still aren't reaching into her pockets to find her keys. You don't know where she lives and she's got to be at work in two hours to open anyway, so fuck it, leave her here. Hell, most people don't get to wait outside a Starbucks for it to open! The Muffin Man is a hard motherfucker to catch in the clact, however.

So where was I? Oh yeah, Helob ate the last of the fourth generation of crickets and I don't think any more will be spawning so I should get some today or tomorrow. Except it is tomorrow, so do I mean Monday or Tuesday, or even Sunday? I was planning on getting some sleep today, and I was thinking that on Sunday but that was before midnight, so I guess I meant Wednesday. Or Monday.

Totally Tarantula Tuesday: Extra Special Biting the Hand That Feeds You Edition

Typing one handed is a lot tougher than all those people on message boards joke about it being. Especially when your roommate and one time confidante has assaulted you while you were watering the remaining cricket crop. Not cool. Seriously not cool.

In other news, my hand had almost healed from it's injurious wounding back in February. In somewhat related news, it still hurts. In less than truly related news but still sorta relationary, I will not be reviewing Bear Republic Racer 5 IPA any time soon. In less than related news, nor will any of the so-called contributors to Well-Rounded Nerds, despite their claims of near-constant Spotted Cow consumption. In totally unrelated and not at all interesting-ness, if you want something done, blog about it four months later.

Totally Tarantula Tuesday: Extra Special "I Think My Pet Thinks I'm Food" Edition

This morning, as I stumbled blearily past my roommate's terrarium and cricket death chamber, she/he/it/bird/spider licked her lips at me. I shit you not. I stopped and looked back at her, and he/she/it/bird/spider stopped moving for a brief moment and then continued running her pedipalps over her fangs. WHILE LOOKING RIGHT AT ME. I guess she/he/it/bird/spider hasn't learned yet to avoid biting the hand that feeds. I took another step toward the kitchen and the inevitable cup of coffee and Helob turned to the left to watch me while continuing to rub his/her/it/bird/spider's fangs. Disconcerting does not begin to describe the feelings engendered by my roommate's actions, especially considering how she/he/it/bird/spider is nearly blind.

Helob has been getting damn testy of late, refusing to get out of the way when I need to refill the water dish. He/she/it/bird/spider has reacted violently to my attempts to clean the terrarium of cricket corpses, striking out at the fork I use to scrap the dirt clean. I am a little worried that Helob might be meeting a rough crowd and experimenting with drugs and piercings. She/he/it/bird/spider has certainly attempted to pierce my water bottle and fork.

I should also mention the strange incident that happened last night. I heard a strange noise as I was falling asleep and thought that something had fallen over or perhaps a new roommate/tarantula food source was moving in. I turned on the lights and looked around for the source of the scuffling. I heard the strange scratching sound again, and it was definitely coming from the terrarium. I peered into Helob's dirty domain of cricket doom and saw her/him/it/bird/spider standing on the cricket's food dish. His/her/it/bird/spider's front pair of legs were on the ground and she/he/it/bird/spider was using his/her/it/bird/spider's pedipalps to lift the dish, which would then make the scratching-scuffling sound when the pedipalps lost their grip. Helob could only lift the dish about a centimeter before her/his/it/spider's weight caused Helob to drop the dish. I think the devious and deadly spider was trying to frighten the cricket that shelter underneath the food dish, but the meals of wheels weren't obliging him/her/it/bird/spider. Wanting some peace and quiet, and also to appease the great beast, I opened the terrarium and shooed the large-fanged and furry creature off the food dish. I carefully lifted the dish, not to avoid harming the crickets cowering underneath, but to avoid being attacked by a rabid tarantula. The crickets scattered for all corners of the terrarium, yet not a chirp was uttered. They had nowhere to run and no stage on which to sing and be free of the tyranny of venom enforced by Helob. I had a quiet night, but the next morning Helob's attitude toward me was decidedly un-passive and un-roommatey. Figures. I buy all the food and clean the place constantly and somehow, I'm the shithead.

Totally Tarantula Tuesday: Terrifying Tuesday Edition!

Helob finally ate one of the little violinsts! I happened to glance over at him/her/it/bird/spider and she/he/it/bird/spider snatched up a cricket that wandered too close. Sweet success for me and sweet succulent secretions for him/her/it/bird/spider. Hopefully, fear will keep the rest of the string section in line.

Totally Tarantula Tuesday: The Cricket Farmer's Spider

I spaketh and I delivereth...on my own fucking schedule, so go eat a cobag, or read on, if you like tales of large, hairy, arachnids and their complex relationships with their caregivers and life-essence providerers.

Some writers have written about the eternal nights and the depths of the human soul which they encounter while exploring said nights. I write not of such nights, nor am I lucky enough to experience such lovely, lonely nights on a regular basis. I write of nights filled with the sweet, dulcet tunes of creatures unfortunate enough to be birthed into a world of captivity and fear. they live their sad, short lives in constant dread of the moment of pain and poison which suddenly ends their miserable excuse for an existence. I write, of course, of the crickets that have hatched in my tarantula's terrarium.

These are the evolutionary equivalent of veteran soldiers. They are the spawn of crickets smart or lucky enough to have lied long enough to breed and lay eggs in the strata of my cohabitant's domain. I am amazed and bedazzled by the mere presence of unpaid-for crickets in my fanged roommate's portion of our small efficiency. She's quite and always pays the bills on time, so I count myself among the lucky few in the District. Back to the crickets.

I have counted more than seven of the little bastards in there with her. The first three that reached edible stage were eaten with a quickness, mostly likely due to the extended and involuntary, totally accidentally enforced, starvation of last Autumn. Also, they were the first to sing and chirp.

As one local stand up comedian remarked last summer at Live Humans, "it must suck to be a cricket violinist, because you know you'll never be as good as an Asian." All I can say is this, if I were an Asian violinist, I would hope, pray and practice so that I would not become prey. I have not heard much about Chinese tarantulas but I will admit to the great and species-wide fear we should all be fearing at the implication that there are arachnids preying on violinists of any region.

There are more circkets than I can count in Helob's terrarium than I can currently count due to my deificient lack of marking equipment and motivation. I think I counted somewhere between eleven and eighteen musicians of various tonnage. Currently, there are only one or two denizens capable of producing ear-splitting decibels and violations of my REM-pattern. I would blame my recent lack of worthy Celebrity Dream Cameo's but the one brilliant remaining dream of such quality is still in draft form among other languishing blog posts. I can not fairly blame the crickets for this because I am a huge slacker. I can blame them for thinking that my alarm is blaring at dawn, when it was clearly set for 11. I wish she would just harvest the life juice out of these six-legged bastards and be done with it.

Regarding the predator in discussion, she remains calm in the face of immanent financial ruin. She may have lost all her stock and options, but she's still got some living crickets and a slow metabolism. The second crop of crickets to reach singing age have recently begun inflicting their special brand of insomnilent torture upon me. I sincerely hope Helob either experiences a growth spurt and the incipient pangs, or gets bored with this version of Tchaikoveranskhovenonovachight's Third Symphony in A Major, Night Terrors alternate universe version. I would vastly prefer if she would just consume all the goddamn grass that grows and chirrips in her vastness.

I will state for the internetian record that there is very sparse irony at searching for the allowed variations of the word insomnia at 6:43 am on Sunday morning.

Totally Tarantula Tuesday: The Beat-uls

This one time, in San Francisco, I almost got into a fight with some tiny hipster and his girlfriend because I said that Elvis was better and more influential than The Beatles. I was mostly talking out of my ass because he had just said that The Beatles were the most influential band of all time. I even quoted the commercial for those compilation albums that had just been released: "Before anyone did anything, Elvis did everything." Or whatever.

So the anglophile just kept making all these arguments and talking about albums and release dates, and I just sat there saying, "Nope, no, Elvis was better" and he grew furious. His girlfriend then tried to get into the action. I think the point at which the conversation went from funny to asshole was when I said, "Dude, if The Beatles were so amazing, why does your girlfriend have to step in to help you lose an argument?" The hipster got rather upset at this point. Someone said that it looked like a fight was brewing and I said that was crazy, what kind of idiot ruins a party with a fight. Especially when I out weigh the kid by 100 pounds? Again, calling the guy a kid probably didn't help the matter, but he was about a foot shorter than me and I had thought the whole exchange was rather hilarious because who gets angry in a conversation about The Beatles and Elvis? Anyway.

Gin. That's my excuse, even if I was drinking vodka that night. This was also a party at which I claimed to be an ornithology grad student, in SF on vacation from my longitudinal study of the mating habits and life cycle of the red-wing blackbird. I had to come up with some excuse as to why I was being asked about binoculars by the host. I had met her at a Niners game, and during the boring parts of the game, I had been checking out the Gold Rush Girls, or as I called them at the time, The Golddiggers. Once again, I'm gonna plead gin.

This post brought to you by gin, the letter Y, and My Stupid Life.

The Turkey Video and Me

By now, I'm sure most of you have seen the video of Sarah Palin being interviewed in front of Joe the Turkey Killer and read better jokes than I can write about the subject. I saw the video when it was played on The Rachel Maddow Show which was on the large, flatscreen television at the pho place where my family had dinner on Friday night. The television was muted, which I found oddly appropriate for Palin, and I was one of the unlucky three who were sitting facing the television. Having now seen the unsensored version of the video, I have to admit surprise that anything was fuzzed out at all, but then I am rather badly red-green colorblind. The video reminded me of a family story from our days in Romania.

This story takes place in the year before the Iron Curtain* fell, as we were driving home to Bucharest from a road trip through Yugoslavia. We had had a flat tire on the way out from Bucharest, so our spare was already in use when we ran over a nail or two** about ten minutes from the border with Romania with only hours left on our visas. We managed to limp across the border, during which I took the opportunity to admire the scenery while secretly trying to locate the Iron Curtain. We were now about 500 kilometers from Bucharest with two flat tires and three good ones. Paranoid security forces could show up at any time, and the people in the nearest town might be too afraid to help us out, regardless of hard currency or not.

Since it was getting late and we weren't going any further that day, Mom and Dad decide to camp out in the recently reaped field near the side of the road after asking permission from the farmer. As we set up our tents, our emotions were mixed. I was ecstatic about missing school the next day. My mother was worried about feeding us, since she had planned on a ten day trip which was stretching to 11 or more. My father was likely angry and bordering on furious. My younger brother was probably oblivious. My older brothers were feeling devious, taking every opportunity to tease us about being traded for a new tire. As we lay down for the night, we all felt extreme discomfort because the five-inch plant stalks didn't exactly crush easily beneath us. The sensation was akin to sleeping on a bed of nails with a nail density of one nail to one foot. I have had worse nights, but while they also involve claim jumping in camp sites, they are from a different era of my life.

The next morning we asked around the little farming town for some guy who might be able to help us with the leaky tire. The helpful gentlemen of this nameless town would react pretty much the same way to my father's requests for information: "VULKANAZARIA!?" and then they would relate some version of "I don't know anyone, but my brother/uncle/cousin/friend does know someone." We set off limping down the road, searching for a "VULKANAZARIA?!" In the end, we found some guy who was unable to fix the tire, but who thought we might be able to stick an inner tube inside our tire. That just might work. But first he had to find a tube without a whole in it, so we went to his buddy's house who had a large enough basin to submerge the semi-inflated tube and check for bubbles.

The scene at the buddy's house was interesting. A bizarre conversation was taking place my father conversing with a couple Romanians in a couple of different languages as my older brothers stood by, trying to look mature and knowlegable, and my mother watched me and my brother play with the variety of animals in the courtyard of the lovely, little farm house. There were kittens and maybe a puppy. There were also chickens in a coop, but those were rather less interesting because they were fenced in and I can't recall any chicks. So we played with the kittens, and tried not to be terribly bored as the tire issue dragged through the day.

When the grandmother of the house walked out of the kitchen door with a hatchet in her hand, the chickens suddenly became the focus of the afternoon. The grandmother was wearing a dark scarf and the hatchet was in her right hand. She walked over to the coop and at this point my mother said, "OH! Hey children! Uh, look down the well, I saw something move down in the well." My younger brother ran over and began looking down the well, as did I. As I looked down into wet darkness, I realized that there was absolutely no way my mother could have seen anything at the bottom because the weel was deep and she had been standing at least ten feet away. The chicken coop door creaked. I turned to ask her a question and she said, "There it is, I see it!" She pointed down the well again, and I didn't want to be the only one to miss the well creature, so I looked. The chickens began a mighty squawking. Seeing nothing, I turned my head again, but this time my mother grabbed my head and pointed it down the well and told me to look harder. The hatchet made a thunking sound twice and the squawking stopped. There was nothing down that damn well but water. My mother said, "Oh, maybe I just thought I saw something that wasn't there, or maybe you missed it." There was some blood on the stump by the coop.

We never did that tire fixed in that town. We ended up inflating the tire with a cigarette-lighter-powered-air pump and then racing as fast as we could for a mile or two, then my brother would jump out and inflate the tire again. I think this went on for close to six hours before we got home.

* KLANG! But seriously, ask me sometime about my young mind's unknowledge of metaphor and my subsequent education. I was a very confused boy, but my igneous parents even more so.

** Exact number uncertain. I remember at least two and one of my brothers claims there was only one.

Obfuscations

I have played a lot of games in my life. As a child the games were more pedestrian in nature, involving the simple purchase and sale of properties and moving your piece around the game world, contained completely within the bounds of the playing board, with the goal of comaplete and total financial ruin of your brothers and cousins. I have played games strangely based on expressions of rage-inducing empathy during the play, particularly at moments when you had just screwed your opponent-brother out of any chance of winning. I have even played a game loosely based on a mutual experience of strategy and skill, but invariably devolved into a game of how many fake rules I could coerce my opponent-brother into obeying. We played card games, the rules of which are equally as impossible to remember now as then. Many relatives lost all hope of playing a friendly game of anything with such a diabolically cunning mastermind, or so I saw myself when manipulating rules to suit my hand. Go fish! became an all out struggle for supremacy, the opening moves full of subterfuge and bluster while the endgame was strikingly more physical.

As I grew older the games became slightly more unusual as did the rules sets. Games involving legions of monsters marching around a strange hexagonal universe were enjoyed as much as games wherein the pursuit of success was secondary to hampering all chance of success by your fellow players. The supplied rules sets became far more complex and the simple lies and coercions of the past were insufficient to secure a victory, as even I was utterly flummoxed at times by the inherent systems of this era's games. I learned to become one who would take the time to learn all of the rules and then pursue aggressive means of enforcing penalties upon my brother-opponent. When questioned, I always offered to let my opponents read the rulebooks, but when the rules set truly approaches book length, most will simply give in rather then settle down with a cup of tea and an afghan and peruse an arcane tome for clues as to why my legions could move against a box tile, but his could not. It had something to do with native lands. I learned that masterful cheating must always seem reasonable, and yet still leave your opponent completely hosed.

Given my rather flagrant history and flamboyant imagination, you might think that I developed a habit of crafting intricate new interpretations of rules all working to a singular goal: total domination of my brother-opponents. Sadly, the elder brother-opponents had many more years of experience in game-rule manipulation and younger brother-opponent quickly developed and interesting defense: apathy.

I began to move to games that had no measurable means of success and even more rules. Rules that required multiple books, with actual spines. I found myself reading more and more, learning combinations of rules that could work to my advantage and yet still be completely within the legal realms. There were many such games and many such days spent attempting to redefine victory not against some loathsome creature sent forth from the bowels of imagination but victory against the very imagination itself. I collected playing aids in the form of multitudes of dice, in the hopes that certain dice would gain me certain advantages in play. I became superstitious about color, shade, and warmth of my dice. If I could not successfully manipulate the rules to my advantage, then I would manipulate my playing to my advantage. All the while having no appreciable idea of the goal of these desires.

I played an uncounted variety of sword and sorcery games, and even more uncounted versions of these games. I played Western games, involving playing cards and dice. I played science fiction games, the more deadly to my character, the more I enjoyed them. I learned one constant among all the games I played: more books means more rules. Eventually, the human mind would reach a storage limit and carefully compartmentalized rules sets would become jumbled and slowly mingle in the mind of the players. Rules would meet over drinks, share a dew laughs, stumble drunkenly to a room in the hotel upstairs, and then awkwardly run out a few hours later, only to discover the following month that a new rule was growing inside. A rule that made rather a lot of sense when you think about it, I wonder why we hadn't been doing that before. It was in these spaces that I learned to allow my fellow players to breed rules, as they were far less likely to find fault with me if they had written the new rule. Could I really be blamed for buying the new handbook? After all, it was their idea to read it. I gradually moved away from manipulating rules to wholesale manipulation of people.

Despite this rather...miscreant behavior of mine, I like to think that I only wanted to have fun. To that end, I knew that there were some games that should be avoided at all costs. Some games had rules sets from which there was no recovery. fulsome once tried to interpret set of rules from a venerable institution that were an attempt to simulate a realistic system of combat against popular, fictional aliens. The designers had forgotten two things: nobody cares much about realism when the creatures you are shooting at explode acid, and that a mind is a terrible thing to lay waste. fulsome currently resides in a lovely, double-width refrigerator box in Berkeley, California.

Monday's Penny Arcade inspired this post.

Totally Tarantula Tuesday: Trying To Avoid Terror and Trembling With Rage

A little tarantula humor on this Tuesday morning, full of dread, woe, and WTF*. A lot of people have asked me about my tarantula. They ask me questions like can you cuddle it? Does it show you love? Do you feel any sympathy? Are you sure you're not psychotic? What sex is it? To answer all of these questions, I have to respond with, who needs love?

Except the sex question. I don't know or particularly care what sex, or gender!, my cohabitating arachnid is. Knowing the sex of my roommate would not change my behavior toward it. If it is male, I would go out and buy it spider porn and give it some quiet time. If it is female, I am not going to give it 60% of the crickets I had been giving it.

We got an understanding. We respect privacy.

*I want more information and to thank mdhatter.

The Battle is Enjoined!

The Corn Refiner's Association has struck back against those fighting the forces of over-sweetening and accidental obesity. They have commissioned at least one commercial and an informational website. According to the commercials, high fructose corn syrup comes from corn, is all natural, and is just as bad/good as sugar and honey. Let's break these claims down individually.

"High Fructose Corn Syrup Comes From Corn"

Yes, indeed corn syrup does come from corn. However, this is almost like saying that meth is clean because it is made with bleach. While I don't put either meth or high fructose corn syrup in my body, if I had to choose I would choose the corn syrup over meth any day. Parents of small children may disagree with any distinction between the two.

"All Natural"

According to the website, HFCS is...

considered a natural food ingredient under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's definition of the term “natural.” Under FDA rules, “natural” means that “nothing artificial or synthetic (including all color additives regardless of source) has been included in, or has been added to, a food that would not normally be expected to be in the food.”

By this definition, gasoline is natural, too. That must be why we don't need factories to make the stuff, or to make HFCS. I wonder if you can get organic HFCS.

"Nutritionally the Same as Sugar or Honey"

The chart on each page reinforces this claim. The ads claim that as long as HFCS is used "in moderation" HFCS is just as healthy as any other sugar. This may actually be true, I am willing to concede this point. Let me be clear: I admit that HFCS is just as good or bad for you as any other refined sugar and honey. Except for the teeny, tiny problem of actually trying to use this stuff in moderation. HFCS is in freaking everything: like apple sauces, almost all non-diet soda and fruit drinks, coffee flavor syrups, beef, yo momma, etc.

According to the USDA, high fructose corn syrup accounts for roughly 41% of all caloric (nutritive) sweeteners consumed in the U.S.

True, but corn sweeteners--including HFCS, glucose, and dextrose--account for over 50% of all sweeteners shipped in the US, according to that table the website mentioned. (You have to open a spreadsheet from the USDA to find Table 49.) The funny thing about the honey claim is that we aren't consuming nearly as much honey as we do HFCS. Only 148,000 tons of honey was shipped in 2007. Almost 11,000,000 tons of corn syrup was shipped in 2007. I guess this must be what the Corn Refiner's Association calls moderation.

I was suspicious of the claim that only 40.1 pounds of HFCS were consumed per year, per capita. The chart is clear about this, despite my completely anecdotal suspicion. We purchase about 50 pounds of the stuff per year per capita, but let an estimated 20% go to waste (uneaten or spoiled or etc), according to Table 52. This means that we are wasting 20% of our soda purchases every year. I have a friend whose mother will open a soda and drink a few swallows and then put it back in the fridge and twenty minutes later, she will open a new one and repeat the process because "she just wants a little drink, not a whole one." This boggles my mind and fills her fridge with 30 or 40 half empty sodas a week, which all go stale before anyone else gets thirsty. These are also diet so they don't count, therefore everyone everywhere drinks every drop of soda and eats every pound of HFCS they purchase. 20% seems kinda high to me, but I am not an expert working for the USDA. I have wasted corn starch plenty of times making some non-Newtonian fluids and those are always cool, so maybe 20% isn't so high...except corn starch isn't corn syrup.

One regular soda a day is horrifically bad for you. Diet sodas aren't so great, either, with all that salt.

Despite all this blathering on about HFCS, I have only one reason for disliking HFCS beyond the health reason: it tastes terrible. Sodas and fruit drinks with made with cane sugar taste more refreshing to me. Cane sugar straight off the cane is soooo much better than corn syrup straight from the jar, especially when you go to the Latino grocery store and buy it in a bunch and then chew it like tabacco and sit around the pool. If you can get past the woody texture to the sheer buzz and flavor of the sap, cane sugar is brilliant.

Next week in wild, quasi-scientific rambling: if men are often red/green colorblind, are rare women blue/yellow colorblind? I once convinced an ex-girlfriend's father that this was the case, despite having never heard of it and having done no research whatsoever. I just wanted to convince a well-respected lawyer that a total fabrication was the truth.

Synergy in Mind and Webcomics

In college, I was a...scattered individual. Since becoming a more focused, or perhaps coherent is the proper word,* I have either lost the desire or need to attend late night visitations to the wildebeest carcass, or gained the ability to find dead wildebeest wherever I roam and regardless of the hour. Since I am on my second pot of coffee, I doubt that even regular "readers" understand what I mean when I talk about wildebeest, but any regular "viewer" of Animal Planet will understand. Clearly, I am talking about eating pancakes at four in the morning simply because you want some maple syrup, or you have perhaps more sinister motives.

In the days shortly after leaving the hallowed halls of learning, I longed for a return to the clarity of pancakes consumed in the hours between dusk and dawn. I sought out fey circles and other shrines to the gods, followed other strung-out seekers in a communal quest for late-night, grease-induced visions. Despite all attempts to reach that odd plane of mental and physical union of process that was once achieved with ease, I remained lost and listless. I could not regain my impetus for inquiry. I drifted thus, hungry and syrup-deprived. I wandered the country. Penniless and desperate, I eventually made my way back to the Manor and suffered the tender ministrations of my parents until I could stand and walk once more.

I was grateful for their help but anxious to be moving again. A lifetime of travel has left me unfit for settlement for periods longer than one or two seasonal cycles of our lonely planet. I moved on, and took residence in an underground hovel. It was there that I began to suffer the full withdrawal from my former habits. During the agonizing hours of the night, the cravings for sweet syrup and fluffy griddle cakes pounded through my being and shook me to the core. I lay awash in pain. As the months ground slowly on, I found that I could sense that missing clarity floating just out of reach, just behind the next door, on the edge of memory. In a still, cool, fall night, I finally grasped that strange and wonderful process of mind while strolling the empty sidewalks. There was no hunger within, no maple syrup on my chin to guide my vision. There was only the solitude of a city sleeping while I and perhaps others walked the barren alleys and avenues. Since then, I have been able to summon this inspiration when desired, and I am better for it, though I doubt the world would agree.

There are many other reasons for visiting the IHOP or profane IHOP-equivalent at such an early, or late, hour. Perhaps you have an allergy to the food offered by your institution. Perhaps you are an insomniac. Perhaps you have a term paper due and need some coffee and carbs. Perhaps you really appreciate Mrs. Butterworth in a way your friends would never understand, should they find out. Perhaps you have a wager about the number of teeth the waitress has. Perhaps you feel a need to have every menu item once in a semester, due to some bizarre form of gastric OCD. Perhaps you have even stranger, eldritch reasons for visiting an Interdimensional House of Pancakes.

I might have said too much. I can feel the influence of weird energies on my mind, and I think I may have given the beast too much food yesterday evening. The crickets do not sing, for the hungry, hairy beast hunts in the dark. Be wary.

* Condensed? Concentrated? Distilled? Aliquoted?**
** Now that there is a truly old inside joke.

This Totally Tarantula Tuesday Brought To You By My Unconcious Mind

This post probably brings an altogether and impressive layer to phoning it in, but since I am not mo-blogging this, we'll just call it all even. Some of the most brilliant posts on 3Bulls aren't even written, they are dreamed. They aren't even written by the whoever-knows-how-many-contributors to 3Bulls. This is of course totally appropriate for their oeuvre and possibly even their under. I hereby present to you five posts straight from the horse's apple AKA my dream state:
Hugo Weaving, Bruce Lee and Hope Chest
Jeff Kober and James Gandolfini
Indira Gandhi and Paul Rudd
Stephen Colbert and Helob
The Best Cast of Law and Order and my friend E

Totally Tarantula Tuesday: With Less Autism

Helob, the Tarantula of Undefined Species, molted lasted night. I noticed that she/he/it/spider had flipped over onto his/her/its/spider's back and immediately sniffed the top of the cage. I have heard that tarantulas reek horribly when they die and thought that maybe she/he/it/spider had decided to leave this existence in a cartoonishly melodramatic fashion. The cage did not smell of dead tarantula, incidentally I have no idea what that smells like, and Helob did wiggle her/his/its/spider's legs when I brought the enclosure down to the floor.

Having once read that tarantulas needs a lot of humidity and no crickets in their cages when they molt, I immediately put fresh water in the dish, added a second dish of water, and dribbled water on the glass sides of the ten-gallon aquarium in which Helob lives. Over the next couple hours, Helob wiggled free of his/her/its/spider's old exoskeleton and is now happily hiding in the corner of the aquarium. I think she/he/it/spider may be feeding on the remaining juice in the husk, as I have heard tarantulas do that.

It will take several days for Helob's new exoskeleton to reach full strength and I plan on purchasing a smaller enclosure and filling it with clean sand and a small burrow. Or maybe I will just get clean sand and remove the old dirt from the current cage. Both of these ideas require me to remove Helob from her/his/its/spider's home temporarily and to do that, I must either pick up a spider with INCH-LONG FANGS or shovel Helob out with a bowl or something and hope he/she/it/spider doesn't crawl out and escape under my stove or something. The last thing this country needs is another Cirith Ungol. Especially in my apartment.

Here are a couple videos:
Helob is brown but you get the idea:


That same species has a dinner date:


Did you notice how it had one foot on the web? Terrestrial tarantulas apparently have abysmal eyesight and use the vibrations caused by moving food on the webs to locate and catch prey.

Here is a dumbass kid:

World Tour 2008: The Genius Ages Like a Fine Wine or Scotch...or Cheese

So, Bossy is doing her roadtrip and I am totally stealing her idea. If you want me to swing by your city and show you precisely how I roll*, then clear off the couch, clean out the bong, wash out the funnel, and put the pizza in the oven cuz I am going on a frigging world tour again!

The last one involved a brief stay in London**, Vienna, Bratislava, Poprad, and the High Tetras. If you want me to visit your town, let me know. The list so far includes Bahston, Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco.

* Off the curb and into the gutter?
** Heathrow doesn't count, you pretentious jerk.
*** Who the fuck let this asshole in?
**** I am crashing your chundernozzling cobag-slurp fest.
***** Piss off, ass face!
****** Oooo, now I'm scared, I'll be back, comuffin.

UPDATE: Unless people buy me tickets, this world tour is sticking to the continental countries. If I get to three countries, I will probably be on the run from the authorities. And Anton Chigurh.

Tarantula Tuesday: Brief Post on Science Fiction

I really enjoy science fiction, as a genre and a guiding principle. I don't know what that means either as my brain functions have been compromised by what I hope is a simple ear infection and not one of the sandworms from Ceti Alpha Five. I don't need anyone planting simple suggestions in my brain and then letting me die off because I am only a tanshirt in my mind and in reality we all know that I am probably the reddist of redshirts. If you've ever played paintball with me, you'd know exactly what I mean. If you weren't raised by a family of volcanic rocks, you'd know exactly what I mean and I mean that I don't know where I'm going with this at all.

I will continue to let this post grow later in the day. For now, I forgot where I was in the stream and have lost sight of the banks and I think it's salt water which is impeding my analysis of the chapter and verse of my head. I think I just got back on track but I must leave you anyway. I have a meeting to attend which should be pretty outstanding and if I had a video camera, it would be the highest viewed youtuber minutes after being posted. I think I am expected to talk about something, which is nice since something is a topic about which I can blather on all the live long fucking day.

The thing about caffeine is that it frees you of something you may not want in you, like all other drugs. This one just happens to be legal although if the authorities knew what I was doing with it, they probably would ban it. I say that because Lenny Bruce had a point, as do many other fucking nut job right wingers, making yourself think that someone is after you vindicates those feelings of paranoia and self-importance that totally irrelevant and unimportant people feel to make themselves feel better about their totally anonymous and hopeless lives. Like when I was talking to some people in my first freshman year about how they just frigging knew that the FBI was keeping tabs on them¹ because of their involvement in the BXXXX Science Fiction and Fantasy Association. I wasn't really talking, I was listening and trying to figure out how I could politely leave that boring conversation without resorting to shooting them in the communicator with a laser rifle or something. Eventually I just walked away from them, but later I learned to fling poop at people and they never bothered me again. What's good for the alpha male and all that. As someone who has actually received a variety of levels government clearances, I have no authority to tell people that the FBI cares about them. It's a fucking science fiction club, not Boy Scout Troop U-238.² But these were the sort of people who thought the X-Files was the nightly news, so I guess everyone deserves their daydreams. I think I would throw myself off a bridge if I learned that I had lost the capacity to daydream.

That's basically all a role-playing game is, a collective day dream. Some people get together to watch sports, some people get together to talk sports, and some people get together to kidnap a rival corporation's agent, interrogate said agent in a situation involving moral ambiguities³, and then use the gathered information to steal a shuttle and destroy a transport ship of the previously mentioned corporation.

Despite the fact that society is currently undergoing the longest length of time⁴ without a new episode of Star Trek, this does not mean that we are completely bereft of science fiction. It does mean that the lazy geeks among us are left only with World of Warcraft, the H4LOEZ, EVE online, Surpreme Commander, Mass Effect, Bioshock, endless DVDs, new movies every month that kinda suck and are kinda cool, but that is basically the problem. It isn't that there isn't any new science fiction or that there isn't any easy to get good science fiction, it's that we're all fucking lazy. Role playing games are not easy to coordinate in my life. I am ready to go whenever, but other people in my group have wives, children, cars, orchids, dogs, overtime, taxes, and I have the World of Warcraft which consumes a set amount of time. While it may be fun, the last few weeks I have logged on, I have done exactly the same fucking thing. I do the same couple of quests to get fucking imaginary money to spend on imaginary fucking shit.⁵ I can pretty much only play on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the odd Sunday morning or Friday, but I can only afford to play the game anymore. I rationalize staying at home because I don't have any money to go out on Friday night. So help me Butterscotch Buddha, if the National Gallery of Art were open on a Friday night, I would go down there and stare at a different painting every Friday for hours on end until I could do nothing but write about it. I don't know if you would want to read that or even if I would, but I think that would be amazing. Maybe I'll do that this Saturday and maybe I'll sprout wings and leave this silent planet.⁶

Does it matter if Hollywood can't make a decent scifi movie to save the industry and genre? Do we really need science fiction on television? Are we so bereft of imagination that we can not survive without some other person's idea of what the 24th century will be? Are we capable of surviving without Gil Gerard's Awesomely Hairy Chest? If not, I volunteer to be the next to assume the mantle of Buck Rogers. I have all the credentials necessary: cheesy lines, humorously mild chauvanism, full chest of hair, wavy do, thumbs.

There are plenty of decent authors out there and even more less then decent. I, myself and me continue to not write my screenplays while I sit around notwriting dozens of books. Hell, if you want to get all interesting, you can get some friends together and waste some alien rebel scum with a pulse cannon in a game of Battlelords of the 23rd Century. Or perhaps an implosion field cannon-thingy. If you want to know what war will look like in the future, this is it, despite the fact that war never changes.⁷

There's also Spycraft for those that like their science fiction with a different flavor. Basically, if you don't like the science fiction that is being created by other folks for your easy consumption, make some yourself. That's the best way to cook anyway, toss the recipe into the shredder and throw random ingredients together until you have something that hopefully doesn't make you sick and tastes better than ramen. Also, don't bother reading EW, they wouldn't know decent science fiction if it walked up and sucked out their brains.

1 These days, however, if someone said it was the NSA, I'd just hang up.
2 That troop wins the Golden Matchstick every year for fastest fire lighting. Unfortunately, the last three jamboree areas were designated Superfund sites.
3 Everyone in the group looked at me when we learned we might have to interrogate the agent. I looked at Aristotle and he told me exactly what you think he told me. Not you, you're wrong, but you other people, you're right. I might have imagined this whole scenario, but that is the thing about RPGs. And caffeine.
4 This may or may not be true, I really don't care to verify it.
5 Cue Inevitable Backlash Music
6 Double reference to Christian Mythology on a Triple-Score Self-Deprecating Tile means I phail at life.
7 Turns out I know someone working on press sorta stuff on Fallout 3. I did a huge geekgasm when I found out. I won't break any confidence and neither will my friend, but I hope to view some content soon. I also retain hope that I will be able to waste some mutants on my lawn or cruise by my old video store and vaporize the ruins with a suped-up energy weapon.

Weekend Winding Wound Withy Wowza Woolamaru: Thao Nguyen, These United States and Le Loup

I am still feeling the half shot of faQuil I took last night, so life is a little bit more surreal than normal today. Kinda makes Dali look like Hoover but whatever, I find it is best to avoid eye contact with the iguanadons. They'll just send their iguanagumbas after you if you piss them off. The weird thing about iguanagumbas? They only break your thumbs.¹

I have been to some mighty² awesome music shows in the last week but no one seems to care. Check out the fucking posts, cobagz. Of course, today I will get a note from Esteemed High Warlord of the Webbernaughts, dontEATnachos, that our page views at WellRoundedNerds only spike when we discuss Bioshock, computer hardware trouble³, and Where has all the fulsome gone? I have an idea where all the fulsome is. I bet it is hidden in exquisitely hand crafted cabinets.

The upside of this downside is yet to be determined. But since I just remembered where I was going with the previous paragraph, I am going to switch back to that topic. I saw some amazing music on Saturday. I can list the bands here, but I would prefer to review them when I am less inclined to compare them to people in my philosophy classes in college, despite how apt it would be for one of the bands. Maybe I will do it anyway, just for comedy's sake without it being at their expense. It would help if my computer weren't acting like it had just downed half a bottle of faQuil.⁵

So, the bands. Right. Thao Nguyen and the Get Down Stay Down sounded like a much more interesting Ani Difranco. These United States were like the cool dude in Philosophy who could actually pull ladies with his existentialism, while I just failed miserably at the same task. Le Loup was fun and I accidentally insulted one of the three guitarists when she asked if I was here to see them and I said, "No, a friend in San Francisco said I had to go see These United States. Who is Le Loup?" I made it up to her by buying two copies of the CD they were pimping. I also bought two copies of the other two CDs because I like music and I hate saving for the rainy days that seem to happen every fucking month.

Look for a more coherent review on Tuesday.

1 Paleontology joke! EAT IT XKCD! Still love your t-shirts.
2 If you knew how long it took me to spell mighty, you would tell me to go home like my boss just did.
3 Hot, sexy hardware trouble. I'm gonna dual boot your RAM, baby.⁴
4 The above sentence does not even make sense to the most unlaid computer engineer *COUGH* RES PUBLICA *COUGH*.
5 I hate it when it says, "Word is now recovering your documents" in reference to the document that I spent all last week editing.

Totally Tarantula Tuesday: Who Needs Meth?

I'm all three forms of gamer: RPGer, wargamer, videogamer and a GM! Woooo! All those others weirdos are just odd.

When we play Battlelords of the 23rd Century, I am the sniper and also the rules lawyer. When we have rules questions and they benefit the players in such a way as to fuck the situation, I then "remember" one that benefits the GM next. I keep saying that we wouldn't have these problems if the GM would just read the effing books. dandrobium may not like that much but fuck it, I have helped rebuild so much shit in his house¹, I deserve some damn breaks in game. Shit, man, if he had thought about it a little harder we would have installed a whole new shower in the basement, one of those fiberglass one that come in pieces and then he would have had to replaster the fucking thing but just because I have never apprenticed myself to a fecking plumber or carpenter, I can't be trusted. Shiiiit, our dad rebuilt our house in Chevy Chase and I paid better subconscious attention to that than I did the fucking Thundercats.² How else would you explain how I know how to fix plumbing problems? From my time at the gutter company? Probably. I learned a lot about water in that shitty job. Every damn time I talk about his homeowner projects and offer advice, unsolicited to be true, I have been confirmed by every source he can find. Does this make him trust me on anything? Fuck no! It has made him trust me less, like I am some sort of idiot savant about home improvement. This is the only thing his wife will trust me with, aside from their son, which is saying something because I don't think she would trust me with 20 bucks otherwise. You want to know where this shit really comes from? Gene Fucking Hackman.³ His real name, look it up. I just imagine a man with more training and experience and ask myself how he would handle this problem. I can fix anything. Except electricity, I don't fuck with that shit. Fucking shit'll kill you deader than you can say Russell Crowe sucked ass in Gladiator.⁴ I think I drank too much coffee today and I am supposed to meet some pretty ladies tonight. I should film that cuz it's gonna be funnier than that video of the donkey violating some dude in a field. Which was DAMN funny. I do believe that I will be doing my impression of the Human Torch by evening's end. I am not sure what I mean by that.

1 I have more fun working on his house than I do in the World of Warcraft. I wouldn't say yes to everything if it weren't. That being said, I am still ashamed that I passed out on the floor asleep while everyone else kept on painting.
2 I had Mum-Ra and the frog dude and my younger brother had Jackal-Guy or whatever. I always thought my parents hated me because they got me the fucking FROG dude. How lame was that character concept?
3 Hackman will fucking kill you if you don't get the blocking right this time.
4 Russell Crowe is the fucking Dyson of actors. He never loses suction no matter the plot!