Just Under The Wire

I have located employment at a Dupont Circle bar. More news in the New Year, as my library will be closed tomorrow and Thursday, but I shall return triumphantly with a Tarantula Tuesday on Friday, music on WRN, and probably some updates to the bloggio. Green is the new black.

Extra Cookie Madness

I think maybe I made too much dough. I have an enormous amount left and only the smallest shred of sanity with which to work the infernal contraptions in my kitchen. I set the coffee maker to 375, and pre-heated the sink. Next I think I need to knead the spoons, and bake the cookie cutters. Then I can move on to fricasseeing the ladles, and maybe, if I get fancy, melting some bananas for a lovely crab rangoon.

Just Chuck Full of the Fucking Spirit Am I

I am unironically enjoying Kathleen's Holiday Radio Pandora channel again this year. I am trying not to be such an unrelenting curmudgeon, and I have to say that it is pretty freaking tough. I hope the two people I might see this holiday season fucking appreciate how nice I am being.

So I am inflicting my amazing cookies, if such a meager word can define these scrumdiddilyumptious morsels of pure alien insanity, on a group of friends and relatives tomorrow. My brother and I are hosting an intimate gathering to eat cookies, drink hot booze with spices, and watch holiday movies. Everyone else thinks that we are going to watch Christmas Vacation, but I know better. We are going to watch the horrifying and evil holiday special that can only match the evil in my cookies, if such a pathetic word can be used to describe the immortal hellscape that has been reduced to a bite-sized confection.

Additionally, why wasn't I informed of this earlier?

UPDATE: We only made it through 35 to 40 minutes of the Special, and even that only because my brother started fast forwarding through the parts containing no human dialogue.

CDC: William Shatner and the Cast of Every Star Trek TV Series, Ever

This dream happened a little while ago and I have yet to come to terms with the thrashing it gave my uncollected subconscious.

I called up a friend of mine, who exists in real life, and asked her to get me some tickets to the next session of the US Senate. She works for a Senator* and had access to a couple tickets a year. We had a bit of back and forth because of a contentious relationship, but she finally agreed to get me a ticket as long as I promised to wear the proper attire. I reluctantly agreed to her demands.

The dream then morphed into the day of the session to which I had a ticket. I was standing outside the Senate chambers. I was near the statue of Will Rogers, and standing in line with the rest of the ticket holders. I thought this was a little odd, because the Will Rogers statue is outside one of the doors to the House chamber and not the Senate. But it was a dream, so whatevs.

I was wearing the proper attire, which consisted of a futuristic spandex mini-skirt. The skirt was a metallic purple, or blue,** and a little sparkly. Everyone was wearing one. After the second American Revolution, the masses decided that everyone working in the Government would wear the same uniform so that all citizens could identify them as such when the civil servant was not in the office. This was thought to encourage honesty in our government. When sitting in a session, all visitors were required to wear that same uniform. Unfortunately, the one I had gotten was not quite big enough and tended to ride up a little, and I was constantly pulling it down.

After a brief wait, the visitors were invited into the Senate Chambers. The Senators were all seated already and we filed into the viewing balcony. Once we had quieted down, Jonathan Frakes stood up to introduce a new spending bill. William Shatner then spoke in support of this bill, as did Jerry Seinfeld, and Patrick Stewart. The person next to me whispered something about, "that's a simple majority, then."

At this point in the dream, I started to nod off in my seat in the gallery of the senate. After the second revolution, the masses decided that lobbyists had too much power in the old government and had decided to change the voting infrastructure in America. We would now all vote through our digital video recorders, which would be monitored by the new Nielsen-inspired Department of Media Research. Senators and Representatives would be chosen based on the number of viewers and subscribers to every television program. Only the stars of the shows and certain qualifying regular guest stars could qualify.

Thus the three major voting blocs in the US House and Senate were the cast of Star Trek, Friends, and Seinfeld. The cast of all the Star Trek series ever created held a significant margin in both the House and Senate, except for everyone in Enterprise, and Scott Bakula only had a seat in the House due to Quantum Leap. Apparently, the Seinfeld and Star Trek blocs frequently aligned for budget and other fiscal matters, while disagreeing on social policies. While I was slowly nodding off, my metallic purple, or blue, skirt kept riding up. I had to wake myself up every now and then to pull the skirt down, so that I would not be arrested for indecent exposure. At the end of the session, I stood up, pulled down my skirt, and said, "That was better than television." Then I woke up.

*She actually does work for a Senator, but as far as I know, does not have access to tickets, nor do I know if they even sell tickets for Senate sessions.

**Yes, I am still colorblind in my dreams.

I won't be home for Christmas

Maybe it's just me but I kinda like being alone on Christmas. I would rather work than spend a socially acceptable amount of my non-disposable income on gifts that are supposed to show how much I care for another person. I like giving thoughtful gifts to people, I just don't want to do it when I am told. I would rather mail someone something cool and thoughtful any other time of year than December.

I hate the manufactured emotion that we are all supposed to display during a random day in a random month (that isn't even on the day when the Christianics should be celebrating anyway). Why should we all get together to give gifts on this day? Why not just be happy and familial all year long? The holiday commercials drive me right to drink, too. "Hey, you know that kid you've been ignoring all year? BUY THEM A NEW PHONE AND YOU WON'T HAVE TO TALK TO THEM FOR ANOTHER 12 MONTHS!"

The WalMart commercials running this year are particularly enraging. Is the one day a year only really special if you buy your kids some more trade deficit toys? Or do you want them all to get lead poisoning because you can't stand your life? Shouldn't every day with your kids be special? They're the future and all that.

Man, I like being alone but maybe I shouldn't be left alone for too long. What bitchy asshole I can be.

Mmmmm Bake-Off Cookies...

So once again, I declare myself the winner of the 2008 E-True Holiday Cookie E-Bake Off tm. Mendacious D made a spuriously solid attempt at unseating the champion, but ultimately failed as his concocted confection was slightly off. I think his Wormwood-root-embellished-East-Prussian-truffle-flaked-creme-brule puffs went bad in the time it took them to reach me. He did have them sent by African carrier pigeon, so he gets points for style, but loses points for stagflation of flavor.

As for my entry, I went with my traditionally sinful-extragalactic sugar cookies. Of course, they were fantastic again. I would even go so far as to say that what remains of my mind was shattered even further and into teenier, tinier pieces than the last time I followed the Recipes of the Mad Arab. I experienced some oddly coherent visions while tripping back through the doorways of my mind, trekking past the mouth of madness, the tongue of inconceivability, the tastebuds of infinite esoterocity. I will commit these visions to paper and relay them to you through this electronoscopic ether in due time. William Shatner may or may not feature heavily in these visions, as may spandex skirts. Or mayhaps not.

Should you like a trip down memory lane:
The second post.
The third post.
The fourth post.
And I'll leave it up to you to find the confessional post. I once again state that it was all totally worth it.

Iraqi Journalist Misunderestimates American Style of Footsie-Journalism

That title is more of a stretch than my last work out. Lemme try some others on you. Have you heard the one about the Iraqi Journalist? His shoes were made for throwing. Ouch, that pains me. How about this: "Attempted Iraqi Advertising Pitch Goes Wide." Or maybe, "Bush Ducks Shoes Better Than Blame."

Forget it.

Freezing Temps

You know what sucks? The pandemic of hiring freezes in this city. Temp agencies seem to be having a good time, though none of them like me either.

Fucking retail. I fucking hate working retail, but find myself filling out applications at every store I pass anyway. Fuck all the fucking fuckers that fucked us all.

Bad ideas, I've had a few...

Um, probably less said the better. In fact, maybe I'll just not continue with this post. Anyone else ever had an idea so bad you don't even want to admit to it?

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.

WoW! Not Really

I canceled my World of Warcraft account again. This time it shall remain inactive for a minimum of three months, as I have better things to do with my time than hang out with people I fin annoying on-line. That's not fair, there were a handful of people in my guild that I would go drinking with, but the rest reminded me too much of the people in my old sci-fi club in college that annoyed the fucking piss out of me. The game had become a source of un-fun and so I stopped paying for it.

And now is the part where you won't understand unless you have played the game:

In October and November, I was able to get a few things accomplished in the game though. I earned five titles and brought my mount total to 52. My two favorites were the Cenarion Expedition Hippogryph and the albino drake. To do this, I bought all the Alliance faction mounts, since I'd been exalted with all of them for a while. I then bought all the Sha'tari Skyguard nether rays. I did all the work to get the Netherwing dragon mounts and Kurenai riding goats and didn't use them. I also had one of the yellow riding bugs from Ahn'Qiraj. When I got the Kurenai mounts, I hit 50. I was also able to get the Reins of the Dark War Talbuk, and I used those in Northrend and Azeroth. This took me about one month of game time effort and whoopdedoo. Once my friends stopped playing, the game really lost all interest for me. It was fun for a while but now, it's not.

Anyway, you can check all this crap out here.

Wallowing

Why is wallowing a negatively associated verb? Pigs are happy when they wallow. They roll around in mud and leaves and sticks and shit and it's all very good for the pig. They're happy. The bugs can't get at them and the mud keeps them cool in the summer. When they un-wallow, the mud dries and flakes off and is probably great for their skin.

So why do we call it wallowing when a person hides out in their apartment all day? I wish I was so lucky as to be rolling around in some healthy mud. Instead, I'm doing laundry and looking for work.

There's a Difference

There's a difference between me and a close friend: he has yet to date a woman good enough for him, and I have yet to be a good enough man for the women I've dated.

New Book I'm Working On

It's titled "101 Uses for Stale Bread." So far, I'm at two uses.

Monday Morning Music: 12/2/08

Let's see if WMP can redeem itself after the depressing song selections of my last random music post.

1. Elvis - She's Not You
2. Johnny Cash - I Still Miss Someone

By Chewbacca's wooly ass, what the hell happened to the random function on my music player? Did it get stuck on "Fucking Depressing Shit," or is the univerese trying to speak to me through my computer? At least the universe has good taste in music, but I am trying to maintain a brave face and this shit isn't helping.

Thanksgiving 2008

My thanksgiving was going well until my brother turned on the news and we saw the reports of the horrific shit happening in Mumbai. I have been trying to write something but only get as far as the wailing and gnashing of teeth at the ridiculously stupid people in the world who think that senseless violence will help their cause.

I still don't have anything decent written, so I'll post a video instead:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mumbai Tragedy

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video