Monday, October 15, 2007

Dispatches from the Abyss - Monday, Oct. 15th

Today was payday! w00t! (See how cool I am?) I don't know why I am so pumped about today being payday, particularly since on the second payday of each month I pay my big credit card bill and my rent, which means by the end of the day I only have about $400 in the bank account until next payday. How is a boy supposed to live on $400? This is just crazy talk! Actually I kid, before I got my job here in Houston that is how much I had a week in take home, $300 of which was dedicated to paying the bills. I am so happy to be back in Houston and working at the job I am at, even if I was bored out of my mind again today.

I think the most exciting thing to happen at the office today was me figuring out that I could, in fact, get the first Puppini Sisters' CD Betcha Bottom Dollar from iTunes and then a buddy was able to scrounge a copy of their new CD The Rise and Fall of Ruby Woo so without having to go to any record stores whatsoever I have gotten the majority of their recordings. Now there are just a couple of limited edition recordings to track down. All in all it was a good Monday at the office.

I spent some more time monkeying around with the desaturation/colorization trick I discussed here. This time I took one of the close-ups I shot of my newly minted sister-in-law, Olivia, at the wedding and only recolored the flower in her hair. Here is the end result:


The other image I actually finished was a picture of the Patton impersonator from the BMJP Open House this spring. In this case I just recolored the insignia on his shoulder. I initially I was going to recolor all of Patton, and then just the insignia and his ribbons. Once I finished the insignia on his arm I decided that was enough for this picture. Here you go:


I am trying to do this to the rose picture which won second place at the Midlothian Photo Extravaganza. (I am sure this is not the official name, but it is fun to type.) I keep having trouble keeping the cursor under control and end up with a halo around the rose. I will continue working on this because I think this picture would be very striking with a grey background. I'll probably work on it tomorrow and then I am done playing this game for a bit.

Over the last couple of days I stumbled across a couple of places on the internets which deserve your attention. The first is 'Lilformers, chibi versions of the Transformers brought to us by Matt Moylan. In these strips cute-a-fied versions of the Transformers make fun of themselves, GoBots, the movie (which comes out on DVD tomorrow), current events, and even other movies. Pretty funny stuff. The other place you should check out is not so much a site as a thread from the always entertaining Newsarama.com, which is one of the places where the unwashed masses of comic fanboys get their news and then bitch about it. In this thread, titled "Superman doesn't poo," we are treated to all sorts of theories on whether Superman has to use the john. It is only three pages of reading and, quite frankly, worth it if you have nothing better going on. And you're not fooling anyone with that TPS report open on your PC. Go on, check it out.

Speaking of peer pressure I meant to bitch about this last week but it kept slipping my mind. A bunch of my friends are suddenly into this geek-oriented MMORPG and I had to spend about 30 minutes the other day telling one of them that there was NO WAY IN HELL I was ever going to play this game, I don't care how cool it is. The fucker would not take no for an answer and had me so pissed off that I was about to just cuss him out and walk out. I have been down the road with MMORPGs before, although back then we called them MUDs and they are a nasty and addictive beast for me. My last semester of college I probably spent more time fucking around on MUDs than I did in class. After I explained all this to the guy he still would not take no for an answer. I explained that I have never played Everquest or WoW or Star Wars Online or any of those other games because they are the sort of crack I do not need to expose myself too. I know they're fun. I know you get to meet all sorts of interesting people. I know you get to kill shit and get l00ts. I also know that they will quite literally take over my life. I will be one of those sad fuckers who puts off doing things with friends to play the game. I will start staying up all night to play, being very late to work and then just calling in sick. After I explained this to him he still insisted on pitching the game to me. Very rarely do I get the point to where I have to force myself to walk out of a room because I am seriously considering giving violence a try but this cat had me there.

The thing that pissed me off the most about the whole thing? Ostensibly this guy is a friend therefore when I described the kind of problems I have with these games and that it is VERY MUCH an addiction and temptation I have to fight he did not do what a friend would do and relent. He actually mocked me about it. I am getting pissed off just typing about it!

Oh well, fuck this guy. He is pretty much an irritating POS anyways who seriously believes Communism is the wave of the future. He claims he believes in Socialism, however his true colors came out the other day when we were discussing socialized medicine. I think socialized medicine is something we need here in the States and I think it is something we will get in the next ten years. I also believe that if you have the money you should be allowed to pay for additional or "better" care out of your own pocket. I am not advocating that these people be allowed to opt out of the system and pay for their own care, but rather they should be allowed to spend their money on private doctors and hospitals if they are so inclined. This guy does not believe this should be the case but rather everyone should be in the same system and not allowed outside the system at all. From some of our other discussions it has become clear to me that he feels like people should not be allowed to use the money they have to make their lives better than their neighbors, which sounds an awful lot like Communism to me. Dirty Red. That's his new nickname. From now on I am going to call him Dirty Red around the office.

Phew. Fifteen more minutes of writing and I am all tapped out on the Dirty Red front.

Oh yeah! So last night I finished ripping pretty much all of my CDs to MP3. Now I jsut have to go through and get all the files tagged and then loaded into iTunes so I can load them on the iPod. Throughout this project I have had several "I own THAT?!?!" moments. Man I have got some terrible taste in music. On the upside this means that I will soon have plenty of soundtracks loaded on the iPod, which is better music for me to listen to at work than Breaking Benjamin or Linkin Park. I get a little wound up if I am listening to aggressive music. I think I would be an easily led automaton at times.

Right now I am CRAVING something nice and sweet, ice cream or a DQ Blizzard, however it is raining cats and dogs out there right now and I could not be arsed to put any actual clothes on. Right now I am kicking it in my black boxers and nothing else. That's for all the ladies out there. ;) I haven't got anything sweet in the casa except for some grape jelly. Looks like it might be a round of PB&J sandwiches to end the evening and take care of this sweet tooth I am suffering from. Oh well, time to call it a night. Sleep tight and don't let the oshiri kajiri mushi bite!


SOUNDTRACK
Puppini Sisters - Betcha Bottom Dollar
Puppini Sisters - The Rise and Fall of Ruby Woo

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I feel your pain on the MMORG front. I lost so much time to those damned MUDs in college. I lost tons of time to Diablo and DiabloII, the last thing I need right now is another antisocial way to waste time. Stay strong, you know that most of them are only going to play that shit for about a month or two before they get bored with it and move on.