Since we are already way off schedule...

I have been asked by an ex if she could use me as a fake boyfriend to fend off the relentless suitors. She still has photos of me to use as proof I exist. Is this just a little odd to anyone else? If I were in the same situation with people trying to set me up with their daughters, I would just invent a simple lie and go with it. I must state that I am a flamboyantly flagrant embellisher. I am like that logic riddle with the two guys, one that always lies and one that always tells the truth, except that I am always both. Maybe it is just easier for me.

Maybe it isn't.

Google is a Government Spy!

It is finally official. Google has been outed by NPR as a government agency. In case, you hadn't yet heard, the document that the Nigerian yellowcake uranium case was based on was forged and completely false. Do you know how they, the g-men, proved that it false? The g-men googled the ministers named in the fake document and found out that they were out of office at the time the document claims they were dealing with Saddam Hussein. THEY GOOGLED IT! How the hell could anyone trust a document with such an obvious flaw? How could the Bush Administration have avoided investigating this document with such intense scrutiny as to require such a high security agency as GOOGLE!? This is utterly recockulous. A simple Google search reveals that the document the administration used to take us to war was false and the senate and house are not calling for impeachment. I am infuriated and I just hope somebody tries to support Bush at the Halloween party I am attending on Saturday because I am going to flay them alive.

If you are still supporting Bush and I haven't meet you yet, then you are an idiot. If I have met you, then you are an idiot. You have no defense and should you continue to support Bush, whatever values you claim are irrelevant because it is clear that you are seriously lacking, morally and ethically.

The Chuck Bug: A CDC Proposal

Abstract:The Chuck Bug is a strange virus that seems spread through a strange interaction of vocal patterns with the aural nerve. It is extremely likely that there is a visual component as well, but several colleagues have divergent opinions in this area. The symptoms are peculiar. They consist of an odd attraction, completely without cause, for the individual known as chuckles and a strange sense that this individual is better than he appears.

There is one saving grace. If two individuals are infected with the bug at one event, the infected will often lapse into a state of remission while in proximity to both chuckles and each other. Should the social dynamic change by one of the infected leaving proximity to the source, the infection will wake and assert control.

The individual in question, chuckles, appears to be unable to control the infection in any way. It happens often enough to be remarkable yet in such an uncontrolled fashion as to be hilarious. Infection can happen across a broad range of women and has been known to be decidely awkward in certain social situations, such as weddings.

Vaccination is highly recommended, however, there is only one known cure for this viurs. Dating chuckles is the only known cure and it is an uncertain cure. Some have been cured in a matter of days, while other require months of exposure to the source. Still others never recover and are forever changed by the virus.

It is not yet known whether this is truly a virus or a hormonal, or even pheremonal, result from proximity to the source. Only time and study will tell.

Run for the hills, it's Tarantula Tuesday!

Last week I removed all of the hated crickets and cleaned out Helob's terrarium. I removed the branch that looked cool but was really only a refuge for the food insects. I then removed all the carcasses I could find and cleaned up some of the webbing. I then took great pleasure in removing the crickets that had been making so much noise and causing me great irritation. I used a pair of pliers and grabbed the crickets one by one and tossed them outside my door. This was not a gentle process for the crickets as they died shortly after I grabbed them. What with the crushing of their abdomens and the guts and all. Helob got a little flustered by all this attention, so I left him alone.

The next day I stopped by my parent's house and caught some crickets in their basement. These are big crickets that do not chirp but do breed like, well, crickets. They also jump a lot higher. I must be careful when opening the top. Hopefully, Helob will eat some of these crickets. I have heard from other spider people that tarantulas will periodically go off their crickets and that it is nothing to worry about. I am glad it is nothing to worry about because the spider people creep me out. What with the four extra limbs, fangs, and chittery Aragog-style speech.

Chick Flicks and Kurt Russell

I am disavowing this term. Most of the movies that people describe in this fashion are really just films for idiots. Why we need to describe them as somehow feminine is beyond me.

I have a question for the quiet masses. Who is a better rainy Saturday afternoon movie star? Kurt Russell or Rowdy Roddy Piper?

A Little Something About Me

The first time I went to the Congo was Christmas break of 1996, my first freshman year of college. I got off the plane in DC and had to take a cab or the metro to the house we were renting (long story) and then take some mefluquine and then watch Mom flip out about the packing for a few hours and then walked over to Dave's house to say hello and then goodbye. We left for Dulles about 6 hours after I got into town. Then we flew to Brusselles(whatever) and then the congo.

Christmas dinner was crazy. Mom was only able to find a massive, bigger than my head by far, squash and overcooked it. She was very frazzled being there and tried to make a cheese sauce. The sauce was great and the squash really dry. So we were all trying to ladle as much sauce as possible to make the squash palatable. We had about half the sauce we needed but no one was saying anything about it, we just sat there eating becuase we were worried my Mom would flip out about the whole thing. After my third trip to refill teh water pitcher from the filter in the kitchen my Mom just looked at me as I filled up our glasses and sat down. 'The squash came out a little dry, didn't it?' She asked. Me and Tim agreed and my Dad just sort of wiggled his eyebrows and we all looked at each other for a few seconds before we all started laughing. It was by far the worst Christmas dinner but we were laughing like crazy. hell, we were in Africa, shell shocked and eating an enormous squash that hard been cooked almost hard enough to build a house out of it.

EVEN MORE ARACHNID PHOTOS!

Here are some photos of Helob that aren't blurry. I may be a genius but I am not a great photographer.

Tarantula Tuesday Starts Today!

Who needs a security system when you have the Spawn of Ungoliant living with you?
Just try and break into my apartment now! BITCHES!!!

Microbrew Review Monday

I drank some beers at the Brickskeller the other night. As soon as I get home, I will be posting on their relevance in the face of the unfathomable failure of the universe to instill a sense of humility in me.

Said It Before and I'll Say It Again...

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Friday Afternoon Philosophy: Sex Music

This hasn't been a problem for me as I have been turning down offers of sex for four years now. (In order to clarify that statement, I mean sex, not fooling around, there has been enough of that on a regular basis to satisfy me.) Now, however, as the desire for actual sex rears it's ugly head, I find myself worried about being adequately prepared. I have only one, maybe two, CD's of sex music and very little on my computer that would satisfy that situation. I have The Richest Man in Babylon by DC's own Thievery Corporation and a CD of Late Night Tales as selected by The Flaming Lips. The first album needs no introduction and if you haven't heard the thieves then you have been living in a box, or at least not watching Garden State. The second album is a compilation of music for late night as chosen by the Lips. It has a cool cover of The White Stripes' Seven Nation Army by the Lips, too. Kinda neat. As cool as this is, it only amounts to about two hours of sex music. I think the standard sits around four hours, as some variation and accommodation of taste must be made. I am woefully unprepared.

My younger brother has untold hours of sex music. I could just take his collection and duplicate it, but that would be like duplicating another man's porn collection. Not kosher. Sex music and, by extension, porn say a lot about a person. I am not my brother, thus I must not duplicate his music. Since, he is in Slovakia at the moment, I can't even listen and get some ideas of what I like or what, the currently hypothetical, she might like.

I need to prepare a budget and just start logging some hours at the stores listening. Melody Music in Dupont seems like the place.

My Place in the Schemes of Things

I acknowledge the meaningless, puny nature of my existence in the face of the vastness of the universe, the scope of mythology and the expanse of human consciousness while simultaneously admitting the importance of my life in the perception of those around me. I will move through and beyond this life someday and the greater world will be largely unchanged, yet the smaller realm of this planet and this civilization will mourn the passing of my life. There will be those that will begin to erode my accomplishments and seek to remind others that I was merely a man. There will also be those, I most shamefully declare, that will seek to raise me above the professed humility of my life, but that is their right. After all, it is not for the dead that we remain faithful, but for the living.

Cricket Apocalypse

I have had it. Tonight the crickets die. I am going to kill or maim any live crickets left in Helob the tarantula's cage when I got home from work. The constant chirping will end and I will have peace.

That New Book Smell

I just purchased Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut and Knife of Dreams by the Jordan. I figure that you can't call yourself a patriotic American without having read at least three books by Kurt Vonnegut. As for Robert Jordan, well, even I have my weaknesses. Good thing they are protected by eleven three inch thick books. I wonder if this new book by Jordan will live up to his standard style of three chapters of plot development followed by twenty chapters of fluff and then three more chapters of plot.

I will not read either of these books until I have completed my readings for the past two weeks of WEstern Thought Wednesday. Then I will read Cat's Cradle and follow it with Knife of Dreams.

My New Buddy

I now have a pet curlyhair tarantula. I call it Helob, because I get this vibe that it is a male(and I am not horribly imaginative with names). That may just be the smell of all the testoserone that fills my apartment, but whatever. Helob doesn't do a whole lot. The first night he ate two giant cricket I caught in my parent's basement. Since then, he has eaten maybe one cricket. I wish he would eat one more. The one that keeps chirping. Maybe Helob is holding a hunger strike to get more of the big crickets. He should know that he has to clean his plate before he gets more food. Watching him devour the second large cricket was seriously cool. Helob moved it around with his front little arms and keep stabbing it with his inch long fangs. His fangs are about one quarter of his body length. He is a lot like me in that respect.

This is Weird

You Are Apple Cider

Smooth and comforting. But downright nasty when cold.

Friday Afternoon Philosophy

WHY AM I SO DAMNED GOOD TO PEOPLE?

I just agreed to give away my next weekend to a friend of my parents. He owns a bird watching store and needs help twice a year with his massive seed sale. He sells bird seed (for growing your very own birds) in the 5, 8, 20, 25 and 50 pound bags. I have helped with three of these events and each one has ruined a weekend. I get really damn tired hauling seed bags for a continuous seven hours and get paid seven dollars an hour to do it. I should have just said no this time as I have a steady job now, but his wife is the reason I have the job.

I won't even get any rest this fricking weekend either because I agreed to help my friend's sister move into her fiance's apartment. Sunday, I have to go to church because I want to appear to like people when really all I want to do is help them with certain events and then disappear for the rest of the year. The new vicar is nice and my age and she roped me into spending Sunday evening at some Christian meditation event. So my entire Sunday will be spent at church and I don't even believe! I am an infidel in a fidel's family. But not Fidel's family.

I don't even know why I am so nice to some people. They are the people that just don't matter in my life. I am less helpful to people I care about because I am always doing shit for people that I never see again. Like this girl last night. I walked her to her hotel when I could have just given her directions. She was cute or nothing, I was just bored with the walk home.

Why am I so nice? I never get anything from most of these encounters. I don't think it has anything to do with ethics, either. Giving money to the homeless has no ethical basis, more of a karmic basis actually. If you really want to help the homeless, you need to give to an organization you like. I guess I am just a sucker. These people aren't even hot, usually, so there goes that excuse.

WEstern Thought Wednesday: Charmides

As if it weren't obvious enough, this will be delayed until Saturday because everybody at work seems to think that fourteen hours days are normal even though they won't give me enough tasks to fill an eight hour day.
I am also meeting some people who run a bonobo rescue/research/reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo tonight at The Daily Grill here in DC and tomorrow night is either Serenity or Architecture in Helsinki. Probably the latter.

SAT Words

I have finally gotten to the point where I just can't take it anymore. The Republicans have been making up words for years, to say nothing of the Idiot in Chief, and I must speak out. Certain members of Congress are angered by the administration's 'cronyism'. These morons have apparently never heard of the term nepotism, or they think we are all as dumb as our President. Nepotism, folks, nepotism. The act of placing friends and allies in positions of authority upon rising to power. It is called NEPOTISM!

The Great Sausage Fest of 2002

Its May of 2002 and I had just recently moved to Portland, Oregon and my brother wanted to come visit me from Eugene. He said he had a friend in town that could show us around and we could go have some drinks. We met up with my bro's friend outside a restaraunt, Fellini, which is associated with it's neighoring club, Satyricon. Fellini is known for the strong drinks, but the ones we were given were quite weak.

The Shanghai Tunnel was our next stop and I thought was alright because it had a vodka I liked. The vodka was a Polish style potato vodka and it is smooth as sipping whiskey. We had a couple drinks there and then wandered over to some other bar, the name of which escapes me. The bar was a little lame for me, being a strange mix of hipster and the burgeoning metro style. We had a few more drinks there and I remember them being twice as expensive as the Tunnel's.

It was now somwhere between 9 and 11 and I can not remember where we were, but the friend was talking about a girl he had recently started dating/seeing/screwing. He was not sure what was going on between them, but he was sure that she was hanging out with her gay friend, Todd. They were at some club. A perhaps short while later, the friend suggests that if we want to meet some chicks that really want to meet guys, we should go to this place he knows. He says that it is a little out of the way and will take a bit to walk there. We're all pretty drunk by this time and my brother and I say yes. Which sounded a lot like fuck yeah, but let's not split hairs.

We wander around for probably 45 minutes, but I can't really be sure. The friend says we are getting close and wants to explain something. He says that it is not exactly your average club. We keep walking and ask what he means. He is evasive. We are drunk and not worried. We get to this place and the bouncer looks at us like what the fuck are you doing here and that is when I notice the sign, 'The Three Sisters', and the black plastic drapes hanging in the doorway. Irealize that we are about to enter a strip joint and that it is probably a gay strip joint. This takes about five minutes to percolate through my mind, meanwhile the friend is negotiating with the bouncer. The friend says the cover is ten dollars for us. I inquire into the amount of supposed girls inside. Bouncer says there are girls inside. I am drunk and this jives with everything heard so far tonight so I say sure, lets go in.

Well, there was a girl inside. It happened to be the girl the firend was sort of dating and her gay friend, Todd. He introduced himself to me as Todd, Todd the Rodd. I shit you not. This precipitated a protracted argument between Todd and my attraction to women and overall not-gayness. It was pretty funny the next morning, but I'll get to that later. My bro and I are a little annoyed because there are no other women beside the one the friend was seeing. It was all just naked dudes and dudes putting dollars bills into naked dudes pouches. At least there was Pabst on tap. For the most part I sat and watched TV at the bar. This was and is the only bar where I have been happy to see a TV. The movie playing was 'Valentine' and the channel was USA and the bartender wanted to know what the hell I was doing there. I told him we had been duped by our friend into coming here because of all the hot, horny, lonely girls who come to look at cock. He said that they usually come in right before closing. I didn't believe him and tried to avoid getting my butt pinched too much. Ladies, I feel your pain, some dudes are just way too aggressive.

So, after a while, some ladies did come in and I went after them like a cruise missile. I started talking to one blonde and she fit the bill. She wanted to know why I was there and I told her the story about the friend and the girl and the supposed hordes of women. She said that she was a regular because she just wasn't meeting the right kinds of guys. We danced and talked and were generally hitting it off until the lights came on after half an hour. Her friends were pretty drunk and she said that hse ahad to take them home and I was a dumbass and with the sheer volume of penises running through my short term memory I forgot about my own and didn't ask for a number. I never saw her again.

Todd the Rodd disappeared and I never saw him again either, thank you very much, and we all started walking home. Still being drunk, I daydreamed that I was Nemesis Enforcer from the G.I. Joe movie and walked ahead of everybody and fought imaginary beasts with my giant claws and Cobra-la strength.

It turned out that the girl lived in the same building as the friend, so he got some. My bro and I were given the keys to the friend's apartment and told we could eat whatever. I went right to the porch and sat down to clear my head and my bro started cooking something. He comes out onto the porch and says that he found some food and hands me a plate of two cooked sausages. I thought he was being funny and started laughing. He asks what is so funny and starts eating and I said that I had seen way to much sausage that evening. My bro nearly choked on his, ahem, sausage. We both cracked up and ate our sausages and fell asleep on the friends futon.

The next morning the friend admitted that he mostly wanted to see the girl and hadn't expected there to be girls at the club. The girl said that I had made an impression on Todd. I asked her to explain to the guy that it was never going to happen. My bro ad the friend then ripped on me for a while. It was funny.

Thus ends the story of the Great Sausage Fest of 2002.