Blaaaahg post

I started re-reading "A Game of Thrones" for the umpteenth* time today, and I decided to check on progress of "A Dance with Dragons" (Coming July 2005!). Obviously its no where near complete, but I did happen to look into the HBO series thats coming out next year, and it looks very promising. Sean Bean (Boromir from Lord of the Rings) is cast as Eddard Stark! Lucky him, he gets to revise his role as "Guy who dies right away!" In related news, I discovered through arduous and painstaking research that Mr. Bean is being type cast as the fantasy genre's version of a red shirt.

Lena Headey from the confusing-but-entertaining Terminator series is playing Cersei, which is nice until I realize that Summer Glau isn't playing anyone at all, and a Nerd-gasm is totally out of the question. How can I get excited for a show with NO Firefly cast involvement?

I have a bizarre loyalty to the cast members of LotR and Firefly. I watched the entire terminator series just for River, "V" just for Anara, and most of "Castle" For Captain Mal. When I learned that Nathon Fillon, Alan Tudyk and Adam Baldwin were doing voices in a video game, I preordered it with no hesitation.

I sat all the way through the god-awful movie "Chupacabra Terror" because it had John Ryhs Davies (Gimli), And I went to see The Chronicles of Riddick - IN THEATERS - because Karl Urban was in it, and Eomer was an ancillary character at best.

For the love of sweet cupping cakes, Andy Serkis is in ONE SCENE in lotr, and I'm buying the upcoming game "Enslaved, Odyssey to the West", because he is doing one of the voices in it.

Is this a problem? Some kind of complex? or just my super intense nerdiness finding other outlets because of my stubborn refusal to cosplay?

* Umpteenth is a real word! wtf!

quickie

Today I got my first call from a potential employer in roughly 4.2 millennia, give or take a few decades. Whole foods! huzzah! The interview went great, the guy actually had me meet the next higher-up manager and showed me around a little. I need this job like BP needs better public relations (would have been nice a few months ago, but even more important now!) so fingers crossed.

Last easter I got a sandwich bag filled with jelly beans, and by eating only one piece a day I've managed to make it last until the present day. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that if you eat just one jelly bean, the gods replace the sugar with vitamins so its basically like munching on cauliflower, but without the agony.

Speaking of agony, I think I am developing athletes foot. The top of my right big toe burns like the dickens, but there is no visible rash. My secondary notion is that diminutive fairy-folk (likely envious of my large feet) are sneaking into my room at night and attacking my extremities with miniature mallets.

I broke even!

A few days ago, I was leaving my parents house to head back to my semi-permanent residence in boulder (I hardly felt safe after the spider incident). My phone was dead, but I didn't really feel the urge to charge it beforehand. I told my parents I would text them when I got to boulder, hugged them, and set out on what proved to be an unusually long journey.

I was going through open country about 10 miles outside of castle rock (a wild, barren stretch of land inhabited only by cows and hill-folk) when "Living on a Prayer" came on the radio. I naturally had no choice but to sing along at my maximum possible volume, apparently pissing my car off to the point where it was forced to take drastic measures to shut me up. Apparently I wasn't catching its subtle signals (the flashing "Check Engine" Light, weird-ass vibrating sound and general aura of being haunted) So it decided to show me the full extent of its wrath by blowing out it own front tire. Needless to say I was quite offended. It could have just ASKED me to quiet down, geez.

In any case, I pulled over to the shoulder, and sure enough, my tire was blown out. Without hesitation, I grabbed my phone to call my dad for help. Oh yeah, its got a dead battery. "Well shitty shitty shitballs," I thought to myself, "wtf do I do now?" I was in the middle of nowhere! walking to the nearest building would take at least 45 minutes if not more.

Plus, it was around 11:00 at night, and since we are in colorado, nothing stays open past 8:00 on a weeknight anyway. After spending 5 minutes softly weeping in the glow of my hazard flashers, I decided that I'd best do something about my predicament. I grabbed the cars manual (thank the Gods it was where it was supposed to be!) and taught myself, on the spot, how to change a tire. To make a long story short (too late, right?) it took me about 50 minutes to get the spare tire on, but I did it!

I'm kick-ass, just so you all know. Like, really. I'm kinda a big deal.

Then just this morning, I reduced my kick-assery by at LEAST 50 points by washing and drying my cell phone. It seems that electronics don't like it when you fill them with water and then rapidly change their temperature while bouncing them about. Its totally fried.

A harrowing tale of survival

Moments ago, As I sat in my parents basement absentmindedly watching anime, I reached for a slice of cold pizza. Little did I know that a mother-having ninja spider would drop down out of the shadows, bouncing off my outstretched hand before coming to rest atop my delicious food.

Surely some lost descendant of Ungoliant had climbed straight out of the old tales, this thing was closer in size to a dinner plate than a dime. Demon-esque in the obvious malice it held for me and all living things, I knew for a certainty that it would devour my soul without hesitation given half the chance.

It was clear the bastard was out for blood, I had to act quickly or risk my immortal souls' destruction. With steeled resolve, I slammed my hand down on his revolting head with all the gusto of an excited 3 year old happily squeezing his first pet kitten.

A horrific monster attacked me, I defended myself with honor and courage.

OR

A spider landed on my hand. I freaked out and smashed it into my pizza. Now my pizza is full of dead spider. Total. Balls.

Take your pick. Either way I'm a hero.

The Glory of Spam

I think I may have mentioned spam once or twice before, but it has come to my attention that very few people realize just how delicious and versatile this miracle meat-product is. Fast, convenient and infinitely tasty, Spam can (and should) be eaten with every meal of the day. I will now list a few of the recipes I have personally concocted that feature spam.

Spam and Veggie Ramen
Ah, this one is a staple of my diet, I eat it almost every day. Bring some water to a boil, and add in the noodles (uncrushed of course), 1/4 cup of diced spam and 1/4 cup of frozen veggies. Allow to return to a boil, and stir continuously for 2 minutes and 40 seconds. Drain out 95% of the water, put in a bowl, season to taste and enjoy. Perfection when eaten with pop-tarts for brunch or a midnight snack. Add a cup of green tea to give it an authentic Japanese flair!

Spam and eggs
If you start a day off with Spam and eggs and a piece of jelly toast, I can personally guarantee that that day will be totally awesome. Take as many eggs as you want, and mix in a tablespoon of diced spam per egg. when the spam is golden brown and slightly blackened, remove from the frying pan. Add pepper and copious hot sauce, meal done! For a balanced breakfast, serve with pancakes and/or bearclaws.

Spameroni and cheese
Another brilliant use of diced spam, just add in 1/2 cup of the miracle food to the pot when you boil the noodles. Simple and elegant, this "mmm" inducing dish is best served with a glass of milk and a side of chips and salsa.

Fried spam sammich
Among the easiest uses of magic-meat, just cut two slices from the block about 2/3 cm in width, fry over medium heat until golden brown. Place side by side on toasted wheat bread, slather in mustard, and serve with peanuts and pretzels. If you are out of bread, simply cut the slabs into thin strips and dip into mustard for an intriguing and exciting meal!

Spam is an ideal substitute for ground beef or chicken dishes, such as hamburger helper, pasta or Mexican food. For another thrilling treat, try placing slabs of spam on a foil covered baking sheet at 300 degrees for 8 minutes, and covering the heavenly results in barbecue sauce. As Miss Frizzle always said, "Take chances, Make mistakes!" With spam, experimentation is key, and there are no bad ideas.

If anyone has a recipe to share, let me know!

How to be funny.

Have you ever noticed that even the most hilarious people with top-notch senses of humor (like yours truly) occasionally try TOO hard to be funny? While there are a handful of professional comedians who manage to succeed at being funny on a daily basis, most of the practitioners of the side-splitting arts have to bust their asses to produce so much as a half-hearted chuckle. For us casual comedians, getting a good reaction from a joke comes down to having a quick wit, an even quicker tongue, and a hellava lotta luck. Unfortunately, I learned in Vegas that luck is a heartless bitch, prone to plopping a sack of money in your lap only to then fill it with anthrax, and bees.

Telling a spur-of-the-moment joke is really more art than science (mostly because it isn't science at all). Its easy to toss out french comments left and right like praise at a self esteem camp, but is it even worth it? Guy gets startled and drops a drink - "You'd be a shoe in as an officer in the french army!" These ones practically write themselves. They are quick, effortless, simple and... well they aren't actually funny either. I'll get a polite chortle, or if someone is VERY generous a full on laugh or two, but in all honesty, the french haven't been funny since their country was relevant.

The "your mom" and "your face" plan of attack works about the same. If someone finds even the slightest bit of humor in it, its only because they are surprised you even bothered to spew such trivial nonsense. You can't even call these real jokes, more like stalling tactics or so much hot air. The only reason anyone should EVER resort to such tactics is to remind people that they are still around while waiting to hit them with a REAL joke that will knock them off their chairs, writhing in (hilarious) agony while struggling to keep the air in their lungs.

The REAL jokes, those are the ones that either make you or break you. Something on this scale takes significant time to prepare, and great skill to wield safely. In the words of Ben Parker, "With great power comes great responsibility". The backlash from a failed joke can last years, even decades. They need to be uttered (or mimed, or gestured) at precisely the right moment. Explanation is the death of humor, so they must be easily understood, they mustn't take longer than the average attention span. You don't want people to think you are being serious, but you don't want them to think you are stupid either. Something like "knock knock" just won't cut it. Even the timeless poultry-highway conundrums consistently fail to yield results.

After hours of expert breath control, popping a mint every 30 minutes, surveying the room for the perfect opportunity to unleash your genius upon the world, your time has come. The stress of constant alertness has built inside you like you swallowed a crate of pop-rocks, but someone finally sets you up, a minor joke (something involving health care) creates the ideal lull in the conversation, you are ready!

Please, for the love of god, do NOT get an asinine grin on your face and say

"Yeah, I bet you need good health care cause of your diseased cooter!"

Shit.

Braces... quick one.

I got my braces off today. I'm still not sure my newly revealed yellowed husks are actually a cosmetic upgrade over the bramble of twisted metal I've come to know and love, but at least I can floss in less than an hour now.

I am too tired to write something clever, OR witty, but maybe after I get all my crap-stuffs done tonight I'll post something substantial. For now, its nap time.

From Norway to Mexico: A three hour tour...

This happened while I was "studying" for a midterm. I never entered a new search item, only clicked links inside each article. The following was pulled directly from my page-history.

Wikipedia Search: Norway
Norse Mythology
Odin
Thor
Norse Gods
Aesir
Aesir-Vanir War

And here is where it starts to degrade...

Rape of the Sabine women
Roman Empire
Spartacus
Crassus
Julias Ceasar
Ceasar Augustus
Persian Empire
Sabinites

and... ok, I don't even know how this happened

50's Musical Theater
MGM Studios
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
Oregan Trail
California Trail
Donner Party
Cannibalism
Donner Trail
The Gold Rush
San Francisco
Mining Techniques
The Mexican-American War
Texas-Mexico border disputes
Mexico

Bus people.

Ever since my bike kicked the bucket about a week before Christmas, I've been riding the bus every day. I can say with a straight face that the vast majority of bus riders are normal, socially adjusted people, however, there are a few genres of commuters that seem to be represented on the bus with surprising regularity.

The hot girl:
These girls are full of themselves, thats all there is to it. Sometimes people get crammed into the bus until its so full its like fitting a dozen marlins into a can of sardines, and people are forced to make (gods forbid) physical contact with each other. These girls turn their noses up at every male in their "bubble" and react as though you tried to grope their naughty bits if your backpack so much as brushes their shoulder.

The angry (possibly violent) guy:
These are possibly the worst. Even if you are the only one on the bus, they will move directly across from you, and sit down with their arms crossed. Sometimes just to switch things up, they constantly open and close a lighter as though they can't decide whether or not to light you on fire. They constantly stare at you like you just threatened to rape their mothers, occasionally snarling wickedly. When you get off the bus they follow you with their eyes until you're out of sight.

The elderly women doing her shopping:
This specimen is accompanied by 4-5 large bags. They occupy an entire row of the bus; one seat for themselves, as well as another seat for each food group they brought with them. Starches are in one seat, dairy in another, cat food prominently displayed in a third. Even if the bus is full to bursting, with people literally standing butt to butt, she will not give up a single one of her 3+ seats to a person.

The creepy 40 year old stoner:
These people don't seem to be going anywhere in particular, they are just riding the bus for fun, and to hit on college chicks. True story here; about a week ago a man wearing 3 pit-stained t-shirts and a trucker hat sat himself down next to a 20 something college girl, and proceeded to ask her multiple times if she thought his mountain man beard was "sexy". He told her he was only 3 credits from an unspecified science degree, but the "System" just "Kept him down, man", and he just returned from a trip to Amsterdam.

The couple so in love they can't help but make out on the bus:
'nuff said.

The refuses-to-sit-down guy:
Its all in the title. Say there are 50 people waiting to get on the bus, and this guy is first in line (usually with a girlfriend). His girl sits in the first seat, and instead of taking the available seat beside her, he decides to stand directly in front of her, in the process BLOCKING THE DAMN AISLE. A horde of cold, tired people start getting log-jammed behind him as they struggle to squeeze by one-by-one, but he refuses to acknowledge them, instead smiling a dopey smile at his girl until an "Angry (possibly violent) guy" shoves him out of the way.

The ridiculously clumsy person:
Usually a girl, this person has trouble standing on solid ground, much less balancing in a moving vehicle. Woe to any passenger within a 5' radius of this graceless blunder; their feet will be stomped, their chests elbowed, the sitting will have their heads buffeted as the pirouetting terror lunges wildly about each time the bus takes a wide, gentle turn. Boarding a bus when one of these walking disasters is aboard is as dangerous as parachuting with the 101st airborne.

The...

The following is a list of actions that I have personally taken in the last 5-6 months;

Ran out of underwear, and wore swim trunks instead for three days

Found a blackened, hardened pepperoni under the washing machine, and ate it

Kept a cooler of water by my desk so I wouldn't have to fill my bottle at the sink

Dropped a pizza face-down onto the carpet, scraped the cheese out of the fibers and ate it.

Used a spoon to cook bacon, then the handle of the same spoon to spread peanut butter and jelly

Now I have a serious question for you folks, is college devolving me?

Whea' mah Gorbags at?

While driving to Gamestop to reserve Mass Effect 2, I heard an ad that claimed their product was "America's most trusted condom". How do they determine which condoms are most trusted? The most obvious answer is to station someone outside one pay-by-hour motel in each state and conduct exit polls, I'm sure going something like;

"Excuse me sir, which brand of condom did you cast YOUR vote for?"
"Why Trojan, my good man"
"Would you say you chose Trojan over its competitors due to a belief that it would best enhance your lovemaking, without creating additional human beings?"

Speaking of radios, have you ever been driving with someone whose musical taste is completely different to yours? Its like trying to fix up a Wookie with a Klingon... the basic anatomy is the same, but there is just NO compatibility there. Not too long ago, I had the supreme misfortune of sharing a vehicle with a pre-teen girl. There is no specimen of humanity on earth as predictable and ornery as a pre-teen girl. Does it sparkle? WANT. Does it have dolphins? WANT. Think about it; this subset of humanity is SO twisted, they pick characters in fighting games based solely on "which one has the prettiest outfit". Utter madness. SO... I told this dear, precious child that she could pick the station* as we left on a 15 minute trip. It was like a vengeful gnome was attacking my eardrums with a cheese-grater, and no q-tip of any size could save me.

*If you live in the Colorado Springs-Denver-Pueblo area, listen to FM 98.6 sometime. A fun game is to see how many songs you can get through before your hands start slipping off the steering wheel and fastening themselves around your throat.

The Megatherium was featured on prime time TV friday (before the first commercial)

http://www.hulu.com/watch/122598/the-tonight-show-with-conan-obrien-fri-jan-22-2010#s-p1-so-i0

This was definitely his best acting role in at LEAST 19,000 years. Nice to see someone doing well in these trying economic times.