Feh. Well I sat down at the computer about an hour ago, intending to check email and a couple of the forums I frequent for a bit before starting in on tonight's dispatch. Instead I found a post bitching about Israel taking more land. I in NO WAY support the Israeli plan to build a wall between them and the Palestinians on Palestinian land, however I am tired of the current trend in liberal America to paint Israel as being completely wrong, thus absolving the Palestinians of any responsibility for their current state of affairs. The tone of the initial post let me so fired up I ended up spending a good thirty to forty minutes writing, quite passionately I might add, about what it would take to fix the current situation.
I will not bore you with the details but ultimately it comes down to giving the Palestinians a hope for the future. It is time to stop thinking of Jenin and all of the other "refugee camps" as refugee camps. After you have been living there for more than a decade calling it a refugee camp is a bit silly. What they really are is slums. These slums need to be torn down and reasonable housing needs to be provided, with electricity, water, and all the other modern comforts of home. Palestinians need to be given jobs and allowed access to those jobs so they can make a living. Aid needs to be poured in to the West Bank and Gaza and controlled by reasonable people so that civil institutions can be created and a civil society can begin to grow. Provisions need to be made for the education of every Palestinian child through high school age. If a Palestinian can get accepted into a university or college in the United States, Canada, or Britain then they should be given a full scholarship to attend the school with the understanding that once they have completed their degree they MUST return to the West Bank or Gaza to teach school for a couple of years. Ultimately if you remove this unbearable load of hopelessness under which the average Palestinian currently labors then the Palestinians and Israelis can begin to work towards a permanent solution which creates an independent and sovereign Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel.
I believe we even had a chance to make this change happen in the recent past. With the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections the West was faced with an ugly choice. We could cleave to the democratic ideals we claim to believe in (Isn't the current rational for spilling more American blood in Iraq that we are bringing democracy to the Middle East?) even when the results are not what we might wish. Or we could pack up our toys and go home. Guess what we did? For the second time in his presidency G-Dub had, what I believe, was an opportunity to profoundly change the world for the better and he opted not to. (The first was right after 9-11 when the world was united in its condemnation of terrorism and Iran was making overtures to the U.S. about being a partner in Afghanistan, amongst other things.) The reason we walked away is because Hamas is a terrorist organization, a labeled that can just as easily be applied to the PLO, however the reason the Palestinians voted for Hamas is because they were tired of the Fatah/PLO old boy network which was about as corrupt a government as one can come by. All they wanted was for the aid money to help the man in the street, something Hamas promised to do.
Oh well. I hope someone starts making good decisions with regards to the Middle East in the next decade or so or things are going to get REALLY out of hand. Let us move on to a happier topic, shall we?
Like hockey, for instance? Tonight there were two games on television and I spent most of my evening flipping between the two of them. First was the New York Rangers versus the New York Islanders, which ended up being a very close game with the Islanders edging out the Rangers 2 to 1 in Madison Square Garden. Sadly I did not watch much of this game but rather I watched the Dallas Stars hammer the Los Angeles Kings 5 to 1. Marty Turco made some excellent saves throughout the game but these were especially critical early on when the game was a 1-0 and 2-0 affair. If the Kings had managed to sneak one past Turco at that point then the entire complexion of the game is changed. As it was the third period was hardly worth watching with Dallas scoring just sixteen seconds in to make the game 5-Love. By this time the New York New York face-off was done so I was stuck watching South Sydney Story on Versus. Now I want to see the rest of the series although I have to say that the first episode seemed like a whole lot of manufactured drama. We already know that Russell Crowe and his partner take over the team so the build up and drama about the vote, while probably the way it was, seemed like a whole lot of wasted time to me. For those of you who don't know (which I imagine is pretty much everyone but Scott) South Sydney Story follows the storied South Sydney Football Club as it struggles to revitalize itself for its 100th anniversary. Now I am looking forward to the next episode!
I managed to get some reading done on the train both on the way in to the office and on the way home. Right now I am working through Tolkien's The Children of Hurin and it is reading much better than the other posthumous publications to come out of Tolkien. I think a large part of this has to do with Christopher Tolkien staying out of the way and letting narrative drive the story. While enjoyable so far this book is certainly no Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, both of which I should reread in the near future.
T - You may want to avert your eyes from the rest of this post as I discuss morning wood and its causes while using the euphemism "High Noon on my sundial." Just thought I would warn you since you found my discussion of how I like my porn (over-easy with a side of bacon please) a bit much to handle. (Like how I made no grits or gravy jokes in there? I think I have grown.
This morning was a bit strange. I woke up in the midst of a dream about a girl I used to work with in College Station. While I was always attracted to this girl in a very base an ungentlemanly way because how else are you supposed to be attracted to a girl who tells you about letting two guys, neither of whom are her boyfriend at the time, double up on her, I had never dreamt or even really fantasized about her. I suspect a large part of this has to do with the fact that I suspect she was not very good in the sack. She constantly complained that none of the boys she had slept with made her cum, but then she would freely admit to not masturbating. I am of the opinion that you have to prime the pump a little bit, and my very unscientific polling of my female friends (not like that you fucking perverts! Although I do wish in some cases) tends to support this theory. Of course I am still of the opinion that she is probably lying about the not masturbating thing, something which Margaret claimed as well. Anyways, I woke up in the midst of a dream about this girl and it was high noon on my sundial, as they say. I totally do not understand this and am tired of the weird sex dreams about people I know. Monica Bellucci why hast thou forsaken me?
Oh well, time to wrap up another Dispatch with some pithy comment however you will just have to put up with nothing except an excuse for my lack of post tomorrow as I am going to a networking function right after work and will probably be too drunk to blog tomorrow night. Plus I need a break from dancing like a monkey for you people.
SOUNDTRACK
Much like the pithy comment you will get none and like it, sirs. I forgot to turn on some music.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Dispatches from the Abyss - Tuesday, Oct. 9th
I am so not feeling an hour of writing in me tonight and so far I have managed to put this off for an hour however these are the times it is most important to buckle down and do it. Otherwise if I skip tonight, then skipping tomorrow night will be just a little easier, then skipping the next night will be just a bit easier than that and then the next thing you know I will have managed to skip an entire week. And then another week. And then a month. So here I sit, Miracle playing in the background, trying to pound through sixty minutes of random prose for your entertainment and my edification. I hope you appreciate the pain and agony I go through for you cretins. (I am kidding about the pain and agony part, and heck, the cretins part too. Most of you are not cretinous at all.)
While surfing some of my usual porn haunts I stumbled across the motherload of thumbnail links to Desirae Spencer's site Naughtyathome.com (NSFW, duh). I am not certain what it is but Desirae is my favorite web-based porn star. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that she looks like a normal woman, rather than being all So-Cal Porn-hot. She also plays to some of my favorite things, wearing heels, stockings, and glasses. On top of all that she has a FILTHY mouth on her and James? He likes the dirty talk. (So much so that I have offended more than one girl and have had to reign myself in over the last couple of encounters.) I still won't subscribe to her site, though. Just seems like a waste of money with all the free porn out there and Literotica.com (also NSFW) for when I need my old school Penthouse Forum fix. I bet this is more information than you really wanted to know but that is what you get when I have had a boring day and need to find something to talk about.
Today at the office I was messing around with some of the pics from the air show (sick of this subject yet?) and my office-mate Brian showed me a trick he has done with a couple of his fire spinning pics. First you desaturate the picture, turning it into a black and white photo (or rather the digital simulacrum thereof) and then you can use the healing brush to restore the color to section of the photograph. I have found the picture comes out looking like a b&w photo that has been colored with the inks, or at least a reasonable copy of one. Here is a picture I took at the BMJP Open House this spring which I fiddled around with. Here is the original:
Here is the re-colored version:
So what do you think? I am thinking about doing this with some of my air show pics before next year's picture showdown in Midlothian. We shall see.
I keep finding stupid things to distract me from writing. Just now it was the scene in Miracle where the boys tell Coach Brooks that they do not want Tim Harrer, played by Adam Knight, on the team. I really like that scene for some reason however the scene that always make me tear up, besides the moment where Al Michaels yells, "Do you believe in miracles?", is where Ralph Cox, played by Kenneth Mitchell, gets cut from the team.
Speaking of hockey, 'tis the season and all that. I have managed to watch most of two games this season. The first game was Dallas' only win of the season thus far, a 4 to 1 beating handed to the Boston Bruins in the Stars' home opener. The other game I watched was tonight's 7 to 1 ass-whipping delt to the Toronto Maple Leafs by the Carolina Hurricanes. Quite frankly the score should have been at least 8 to 1 but one of the Hurricanes managed to ring what should have been an open-net shot off the pipe. The shot was so open that someone in the broadcast truck changed the 'Canes score and then had to change it back. Carolina, under the leadership of Peter Laviolette, used five forwards on what is a very aggressive power-play unit. A unit which got far too much time on the ice for the Maple Leafs' taste and scored four of the seven goals. In the end this was not a particularly good game however there was a lot of good puck movement and possession by Carolina and, if nothing else, that can be a beautiful thing to watch. I am so looking forward to tomorrow night's game where the New York Rangers face off against the New York Islanders. Should be a nice, rough game.
One thing I have never understood is why soccer is referred to as the beautiful game. I played soccer for several years when I was a kid and so I have a decent understanding of the game and I have never really found it that beautiful. Quite frankly I find it a bit tedious to watch with brief if moments of beauty, which are usually marred by some jackass heading the ball in the wrong direction or some other mis-cue. Oh well, the rest of the world is weird.
What was it with the ho's out today? While I was riding the train to the office this morning I swear I was on there with three or four "working" girls. They were ho'd up to the nines in super tight tops which showed off their pierced belly buttons, pants of varying tightness, and either boots or shoes which can only be described as stripper shoes. The scenery was kind of nice, actually.
During the hockey game I saw and advert for some moisturizer that made me chuckle. It starts in the desert and there is this circle of ladies dressed in what can only be described as dirty tribal hot couture. They start to wave their arms around (like they just don't care) and suddenly this moisturizer falls from the sky. They all pause and this is where things go tragically wrong. Instead of the ad turning into a rip on the 2001 ape scene, which I was SO hoping for, they share the moisturizer with each other and then go into full tribal hoochie dance mode. They were nice to look at, but I wanted someone to smack a ho with a bone. (That sounds REAL dirty, doesn't it?) Now that I think about it perhaps the advert was on during Reaper, which is still funny as balls.
I am trimming this one short since I am starting to get a little tired and need to get some decent sleep tonight, which did not happen last night for no readily apparent reason. Until next time keep the immortal words of Ice Cube who said, "You better check yo self before you wreck yo self," in mind. Peace out my homies!
SOUNDTRACK
You'll get nothing and like it! Tonight I had the 2004 movie Miracle on in the background. It was either that or Mystery, Alaska since I do not own either Youngblood or Slap Shot.
While surfing some of my usual porn haunts I stumbled across the motherload of thumbnail links to Desirae Spencer's site Naughtyathome.com (NSFW, duh). I am not certain what it is but Desirae is my favorite web-based porn star. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that she looks like a normal woman, rather than being all So-Cal Porn-hot. She also plays to some of my favorite things, wearing heels, stockings, and glasses. On top of all that she has a FILTHY mouth on her and James? He likes the dirty talk. (So much so that I have offended more than one girl and have had to reign myself in over the last couple of encounters.) I still won't subscribe to her site, though. Just seems like a waste of money with all the free porn out there and Literotica.com (also NSFW) for when I need my old school Penthouse Forum fix. I bet this is more information than you really wanted to know but that is what you get when I have had a boring day and need to find something to talk about.
Today at the office I was messing around with some of the pics from the air show (sick of this subject yet?) and my office-mate Brian showed me a trick he has done with a couple of his fire spinning pics. First you desaturate the picture, turning it into a black and white photo (or rather the digital simulacrum thereof) and then you can use the healing brush to restore the color to section of the photograph. I have found the picture comes out looking like a b&w photo that has been colored with the inks, or at least a reasonable copy of one. Here is a picture I took at the BMJP Open House this spring which I fiddled around with. Here is the original:
Here is the re-colored version:
So what do you think? I am thinking about doing this with some of my air show pics before next year's picture showdown in Midlothian. We shall see.
I keep finding stupid things to distract me from writing. Just now it was the scene in Miracle where the boys tell Coach Brooks that they do not want Tim Harrer, played by Adam Knight, on the team. I really like that scene for some reason however the scene that always make me tear up, besides the moment where Al Michaels yells, "Do you believe in miracles?", is where Ralph Cox, played by Kenneth Mitchell, gets cut from the team.
Speaking of hockey, 'tis the season and all that. I have managed to watch most of two games this season. The first game was Dallas' only win of the season thus far, a 4 to 1 beating handed to the Boston Bruins in the Stars' home opener. The other game I watched was tonight's 7 to 1 ass-whipping delt to the Toronto Maple Leafs by the Carolina Hurricanes. Quite frankly the score should have been at least 8 to 1 but one of the Hurricanes managed to ring what should have been an open-net shot off the pipe. The shot was so open that someone in the broadcast truck changed the 'Canes score and then had to change it back. Carolina, under the leadership of Peter Laviolette, used five forwards on what is a very aggressive power-play unit. A unit which got far too much time on the ice for the Maple Leafs' taste and scored four of the seven goals. In the end this was not a particularly good game however there was a lot of good puck movement and possession by Carolina and, if nothing else, that can be a beautiful thing to watch. I am so looking forward to tomorrow night's game where the New York Rangers face off against the New York Islanders. Should be a nice, rough game.
One thing I have never understood is why soccer is referred to as the beautiful game. I played soccer for several years when I was a kid and so I have a decent understanding of the game and I have never really found it that beautiful. Quite frankly I find it a bit tedious to watch with brief if moments of beauty, which are usually marred by some jackass heading the ball in the wrong direction or some other mis-cue. Oh well, the rest of the world is weird.
What was it with the ho's out today? While I was riding the train to the office this morning I swear I was on there with three or four "working" girls. They were ho'd up to the nines in super tight tops which showed off their pierced belly buttons, pants of varying tightness, and either boots or shoes which can only be described as stripper shoes. The scenery was kind of nice, actually.
During the hockey game I saw and advert for some moisturizer that made me chuckle. It starts in the desert and there is this circle of ladies dressed in what can only be described as dirty tribal hot couture. They start to wave their arms around (like they just don't care) and suddenly this moisturizer falls from the sky. They all pause and this is where things go tragically wrong. Instead of the ad turning into a rip on the 2001 ape scene, which I was SO hoping for, they share the moisturizer with each other and then go into full tribal hoochie dance mode. They were nice to look at, but I wanted someone to smack a ho with a bone. (That sounds REAL dirty, doesn't it?) Now that I think about it perhaps the advert was on during Reaper, which is still funny as balls.
I am trimming this one short since I am starting to get a little tired and need to get some decent sleep tonight, which did not happen last night for no readily apparent reason. Until next time keep the immortal words of Ice Cube who said, "You better check yo self before you wreck yo self," in mind. Peace out my homies!
SOUNDTRACK
You'll get nothing and like it! Tonight I had the 2004 movie Miracle on in the background. It was either that or Mystery, Alaska since I do not own either Youngblood or Slap Shot.
Monday, October 08, 2007
Dispatches from the Abyss - Monday, Oct. 8th
Thank God I survived another Monday! All things considered today was not too bad at the office, a bit boring, but not too bad. I had an extended conversation with the paralegal who from now on shall be known as the Old Bitch from Hell. I have probably bitched about her before however I am too lazy to go back and look it up. There are three problems with the OBfH:
1. She thinks she knows how to do my job and tries to tell me what to do. Usually I am able to overcome this by ignoring her and giving her what she actually wants rather than what she asks for.
2. She is just not a nice person.
3. She is not terribly organized. We will receive stuff back from the vendors and I will load it. She will then spend quite a bit of time working herself up into a tizzy over what the vendor did wrong only to find out it was something she had done wrong or not instructed the vendor to do in the first place. This is very frustrating since I am the point of contact with the vendors.
Oh well, she was a minor part of my day and I am moving on!
Before we put the subject of the air show to bed I wanted to share a few of my favorite pictures with you guys. The first is the first picture I took when I got to the air show:
This is Rayburn Thompson's Spitfire. I am not sure what model it is, however I have heard that it is a D-Day vet with either two or three confirmed kills. I love the shafts of light coming through the clouds in the back. When I was young I always thought shafts of light like that were epiphanies.
Here is a close-up of the Spit's nose with the sun just barely hidden by the prop spinner:
The next picture is of NASA's 377SGT-F Super Guppy aircraft:
This is a really cool transport aircraft which is based on the Boeing 377 fuselage. The interior diameter of the hold is 25 feet and the nose swings away so large components can be loaded into the bay. You can read more about this plane here. I love this plane because of its unique profile and the Wings Over Houston air show was the first time I had ever seen one. I have vague memories of my dad giving me a model kit of the Guppy as a gift one year.
The next two pictures I decided to get artsy and use the puddles on the tarmac to take pictures of the reflections of the planes rather than take pictures of the planes themselves. It strikes me as somewhat appropriate since some refer to these war birds as ghosts:
This picture is of the nose section of the P-51D Mustang "Gunfighter" which is operated by the Great Plains Wing of the CAF out of Council Bluffs, Iowa. Every time I type the name of the Great Plains Wing I have a TON of trouble not typing Planes.
This picture is a reflection of the bottom of the Lone Star Flight Museum's F6F-5N Hellcat. In an interesting coincidence the pilot of this plane lives in Midlothian, the same small town where my parents live.
This final picture is of the USAF Heritage Flight they performed this year:
The F-15E Strike Eagle is from the USAF Strike Eagle Demo Team. I have no idea who owns/operates the F-4 Phantom or even what model the plane is, however it is nice to see one in the air. I forget how mean they look in flight. The final plane is the Lone Star Flight Museum's P-47D Thunderbolt "Tarheel Hal."
Now I think I have bored you with enough talk of air shows for awhile so we will move on to other subjects!
First I want to thank T, otherwise known as the Egotistical Priest, for pointing all the traffic my way. Whenever she links to my blog she almost doubles my daily hit-counts! Now if only I could keep some of those people coming back. Speaking of people that keep coming back, I notice there are several of you who have me in your Google feed reader, which is an awesome tool, but would you cats do me a favor and give me a shout-out in the comments next time you're about? I noticed I got three hits from Google feed readers in the UK and I am trying to figure out who might be reading me across the pond. If it is Scott's mom or dad I want to know so I can start posting outrageous lies about him.
Speaking of Google I would just like to take a moment to announce that I am currently the first site Google returns when one searches for the mannsier. I am not certain whether I should be proud of this or not, but there it is. (Or rather here it is.)
Right now I am not too certain what I should talk about. I am listening to the Braveheart soundtrack and exchanging emails with my dad about attending the air show. Apparently he was thinking about going with me this year but did not realize it was this soon! Maybe we'll get to go together next year.
I just noticed the other day that I have not uploaded any pictures to my Webshots account since I put my pictures from Scotland up there. The one exception to this is the pictures from the Brent Mullins Jeep Parts Open House in March. That gallery usually gets me a bunch of hits (here is the gallery from 2006) although my Flipside galleries (2004, 2005 #1, and 2005 #2) tend to do pretty well, too. As of right now I have pictures from the Brian O'Neill's Kilt Night, the Houston Zoo, St. Paul's Methodist Cathedral, the LSFM Air Show, Fire Spinning at Heidi's, Anne's Wedding, Flipside, a party at Rob's house, the Parasol Project Civic Art House, and Hawaii that need to be posted. I think I am going to concentrate on getting the Wings Over Houston album cut down a bit before I load any new galleries.
I also need to work on a new slideshow for my MySpace page. I am thinking of making a Year in Review slideshow which covers everything from my trip to Scotland through the end of the year. One potential title is '07 with the CM.
Since I screwed up and started this MUCH later than I meant to due to a wonky clock on my laptop, I am going to go ahead and cut this short for the evening and get things posted to the Opiate. See you guys tomorrow!
SOUNDTRACK
Braveheart Soundtrack by James Horner
1. She thinks she knows how to do my job and tries to tell me what to do. Usually I am able to overcome this by ignoring her and giving her what she actually wants rather than what she asks for.
2. She is just not a nice person.
3. She is not terribly organized. We will receive stuff back from the vendors and I will load it. She will then spend quite a bit of time working herself up into a tizzy over what the vendor did wrong only to find out it was something she had done wrong or not instructed the vendor to do in the first place. This is very frustrating since I am the point of contact with the vendors.
Oh well, she was a minor part of my day and I am moving on!
Before we put the subject of the air show to bed I wanted to share a few of my favorite pictures with you guys. The first is the first picture I took when I got to the air show:
This is Rayburn Thompson's Spitfire. I am not sure what model it is, however I have heard that it is a D-Day vet with either two or three confirmed kills. I love the shafts of light coming through the clouds in the back. When I was young I always thought shafts of light like that were epiphanies.
Here is a close-up of the Spit's nose with the sun just barely hidden by the prop spinner:
The next picture is of NASA's 377SGT-F Super Guppy aircraft:
This is a really cool transport aircraft which is based on the Boeing 377 fuselage. The interior diameter of the hold is 25 feet and the nose swings away so large components can be loaded into the bay. You can read more about this plane here. I love this plane because of its unique profile and the Wings Over Houston air show was the first time I had ever seen one. I have vague memories of my dad giving me a model kit of the Guppy as a gift one year.
The next two pictures I decided to get artsy and use the puddles on the tarmac to take pictures of the reflections of the planes rather than take pictures of the planes themselves. It strikes me as somewhat appropriate since some refer to these war birds as ghosts:
This picture is of the nose section of the P-51D Mustang "Gunfighter" which is operated by the Great Plains Wing of the CAF out of Council Bluffs, Iowa. Every time I type the name of the Great Plains Wing I have a TON of trouble not typing Planes.
This picture is a reflection of the bottom of the Lone Star Flight Museum's F6F-5N Hellcat. In an interesting coincidence the pilot of this plane lives in Midlothian, the same small town where my parents live.
This final picture is of the USAF Heritage Flight they performed this year:
The F-15E Strike Eagle is from the USAF Strike Eagle Demo Team. I have no idea who owns/operates the F-4 Phantom or even what model the plane is, however it is nice to see one in the air. I forget how mean they look in flight. The final plane is the Lone Star Flight Museum's P-47D Thunderbolt "Tarheel Hal."
Now I think I have bored you with enough talk of air shows for awhile so we will move on to other subjects!
First I want to thank T, otherwise known as the Egotistical Priest, for pointing all the traffic my way. Whenever she links to my blog she almost doubles my daily hit-counts! Now if only I could keep some of those people coming back. Speaking of people that keep coming back, I notice there are several of you who have me in your Google feed reader, which is an awesome tool, but would you cats do me a favor and give me a shout-out in the comments next time you're about? I noticed I got three hits from Google feed readers in the UK and I am trying to figure out who might be reading me across the pond. If it is Scott's mom or dad I want to know so I can start posting outrageous lies about him.
Speaking of Google I would just like to take a moment to announce that I am currently the first site Google returns when one searches for the mannsier. I am not certain whether I should be proud of this or not, but there it is. (Or rather here it is.)
Right now I am not too certain what I should talk about. I am listening to the Braveheart soundtrack and exchanging emails with my dad about attending the air show. Apparently he was thinking about going with me this year but did not realize it was this soon! Maybe we'll get to go together next year.
I just noticed the other day that I have not uploaded any pictures to my Webshots account since I put my pictures from Scotland up there. The one exception to this is the pictures from the Brent Mullins Jeep Parts Open House in March. That gallery usually gets me a bunch of hits (here is the gallery from 2006) although my Flipside galleries (2004, 2005 #1, and 2005 #2) tend to do pretty well, too. As of right now I have pictures from the Brian O'Neill's Kilt Night, the Houston Zoo, St. Paul's Methodist Cathedral, the LSFM Air Show, Fire Spinning at Heidi's, Anne's Wedding, Flipside, a party at Rob's house, the Parasol Project Civic Art House, and Hawaii that need to be posted. I think I am going to concentrate on getting the Wings Over Houston album cut down a bit before I load any new galleries.
I also need to work on a new slideshow for my MySpace page. I am thinking of making a Year in Review slideshow which covers everything from my trip to Scotland through the end of the year. One potential title is '07 with the CM.
Since I screwed up and started this MUCH later than I meant to due to a wonky clock on my laptop, I am going to go ahead and cut this short for the evening and get things posted to the Opiate. See you guys tomorrow!
SOUNDTRACK
Braveheart Soundtrack by James Horner
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Dispatches from the Abyss - Sunday, Oct. 7th
I hope everyone out there had an awesome weekend! I know I managed to despite some crap-ass weather on Saturday which threatened to put and end to my plans to attend the Wings Over Houston Airshow. More about that in a bit. First I want to thank Greg, Scott, Lynn, Rob, and Diana for coming out to my birthday shindig Saturday night. The five of you being there really made the night special for me and I really appreciate it!
Now I would like to start with a joke I just read somewhere on the internets:
A Soviet school teacher asks the class "Who were the first people?"
A student raises his hand and says (in Russian) "Adam and Eve!"
The teacher says "Good, and what nationality were they?"
"They were Russian!" the boy says.
"How do you know they were Russian?" the teacher asks.
"Because they had no roof over their heads, no clothes, only one apple between them, and
they called it 'Paradise'."
This had me laughing out loud! Speaking of the LOL while I was sitting at the airshow I had one of those sudden moments of clarity where it occurred to me that I should have titled this post LOL S1TH. Oh well, maybe I will do better next time.
Whoops! I forgot to take a look at the clock when I started typing so I guess we are going to get some bonus time together tonight. Isn't that sweet? More quality time with the FWJ. Did you know you were going to be this lucky when you woke up this morning? I think not.
When I finally rolled out of bed on Saturday and took a peek out the window I was crestfallen. The rain was coming down pretty good at mi casa and I contemplated skipping the airshow however the fact that I had already spent $42 on my ticket, which was non-refundable, convinced me to at least drive out there and see what was going on. Plus weather in the Houston area can be very weird. I cannot tell you how many times I have left my house to a nice blue sky only to hit a torrential downpour on my way to the comic book store, which is less than three miles away. On top of all that I was already out of bed and if I stayed at home the day was going to be wasted. I got on the road to Ellington Field around 8:00 and was parking by about 8:30. When I arrived at Ellington the sky was overcast with a fairly low ceiling however it was not raining. I decided I had made the right decision and headed in to the air show.
I forgot how massive the Wings Over Houston airshow is particularly when compared with the Lone Star Flight Museum airshow. Since I am all about the warbirds I headed to the far end of the runway where the warbird ramp was located and started shooting photos. It had rained pretty good Friday night so I spent a lot of time taking pictures of the warbirds with their reflections. I have not looked at my pictures from the show yet so I have no idea if any of them came out or not, but I am hoping so, particularly since Rayburn Thompson's Spitfire was there rather than the usual suspect owned by Bill Greenwood. Don't get me wrong, I love Bill's Spit(that sounds all sorts of wrong) however it has been at the LSFM airshow for as long as I have been going and one of these days I will get a good picture of it, however the first time I saw Thompson's Spit was at this year's LSFM airshow. After that I wandered around the show for awhile before finally heading over to my reserved seat and settling in for a bit. I ended up sitting next to a father and son whose last time to attend the airshow would have taken place about the time my dad was taking me on a regular basis. It was really cool.
The airshow was good but I fear a lot of the pictures I took of the planes in the air are not going to turn out too well. First the sky could not make up its mind on what it wanted to do. There were times where I was shooting against a blue sky, times I was shooting against a partly cloudy sky, and times I was shooting against almost complete cloud cover. The complete cloud cover is a pain in the ass because it diffuses the sunlight and appears like a backdrop that has been lit with a massive light, therefore the planes in the foreground appear to be more silhouette than anything else. I am hoping I can fix this with a little processing time in Photoshop. We shall see. The second problem I encountered is that a couple of specks of crap fell on to my sensor AGAIN and I did not notice this for a bit. I was able to clean the sensor there however I am tired of this happening. I am not sure what is getting into my long lens to cause this to happen but it is frustrating as all get out! Hopefully I will be able to salvage some of the affected pictures via Photoshop but I would rather not have to do it that way.
Both the Air Force Heritage Flight and the Navy Tailhook Legacy Flight were awesome however it occurs to me that the Navy really ought to change the name of their program from Tailhook Legacy Flight unless they are attempting to re-appropriate the name Tailhook.
(Check out this video of AF Heritage Flights I found while searching for the website.)
One of the complaints I had about the airshow is that while I managed to score some pretty decent seating, the fence keeping the attendees off of the runway was a bit too tall. I was faced with the choices of either being a dick to the people behind me and standing, which I generally refuse to do except for once or twice, or having to try and shoot around the top bar of the fence, which was difficult at best. I know there are several pictures I have where there is this fuzzy darkness across the bottom of the frame. This is the out-of-focus top of the fence. I can remove this by cropping the photo in Photoshop, but I really wish I did not have to. I think I am going to send a letter to the people in charge of the airshow and see if they will do something to accomodate photographers next year. If they would let us in early and give us a special pool where the fence is lower I would pay some extra cash for this. I should also find out if the LSFM intends to do this next year.
The feature act at the airshow this year was the Canadian (Ha! I spelled this Canadien like the hockey team and did not notice until Word caught the error) Forces Snowbirds flying their CT-114 Tutor aircraft. They flew a pretty cool show and I think I managed to get a couple of good pictures of them flying. Once the Snowbirds were done I wandered the tarmac a bit to allow the traffic to clear out as well as shoot some pictures with a fairly sunny sky. I then headed home to shower and prepare for my evening.
(BTW. Here are all of the pictures I took at the show. This week I am going to spend some time cutting this gallery down to a reasonable volume. Enjoy!)
One thing about this airshow that was really nice is that I managed to escape without a major sunburn. I am sure part of this is due to the cloud cover however there were times where I was sitting in direct sunlight and felt like I was frying. I was pleasantly surprised when I got home and discovered that I was not lobster-red!
After a shower and some screwing around it was time to start the evening's birthday festivities. Rob, being the awesome person that he is, agreed to be my designated driver for the evening so I did not have to watch my alcohol intake. Sadly this ended up not being too much of an issue, but at least I was prepared. He and D picked me up and then we headed over to Catalan for what was perhaps one of the most awesome meals I have ever had in my life. I cannot even remember what all we had to eat. I know my main course was a lamb porterhouse steak on risotto however we had SO many appetizers I do not even know where to being with them. One of the more unique things I tried was roasted bone marrow, the thought of which turned my stomach a little, however it ended up being really tastey! (DAMN YOU FERGIE!) The pork belly and venison tartar were also surprisingly excellent. The pork belly because pork belly is not what I was thinking it was and the venison because while I likes me some sushi, other types of raw meat worry me. Next time I go back I want to try the garlic soup. After dinner we headed over to the Kelvin Arms however we were all in food comas so we ended up calling the night a little early. Regardless of this minor set back I had an excellent evening although I do have to point out that my friends are nothing if not enablers. Here is a pic of the gifts I received that night, in addition to the excellent company which is all I really wanted:
That's right. A box of Montecristo #2's from Rob and D, a bottle of Sean Michael's 16 year old single malt scotch whisky (which is distilled by Macallan) and the previously mentioned Padilla cigar from Scott and Lynn, and a bottle of Connemara 12 year old peated single malt Irish whiskey and a Padron 1926 cigar from Greg. Now I really wish I had a porch on which I could sit with a cigar and a dram or two.
Today I did pretty much nothing but read, watch some television, take a nap, read some more, and then hit Bedrock City Comics, where I completely forgot to ask about their pull service. Oh well, just means I have to go back. I got caught up on most of this week's television which I had managed to miss during the week. So far nothing has been voted off the island although I have to admit that Journeyman is taking some work to get into. I started this week's episode a couple of times before I could force myself to sit down and watch the whole thing. It is not a bad show it just starts kind of slow. On the flip side of that I found Big Shots very funny. The characters are really working for me now and I find myself looking forward to this week's episode AND hoping that this show does not get cancelled. Right now it is toeing a very fine line between comedy and soap-opera. I hope the show stays where it is rather than swerving off to either side.
On the reading front I finished Phonogram. I really enjoyed the book and look forward to any future volumes that might come out. I know I said I would think about how to make the phonomancer work in Shadowrun however after reading the whole book I am not sure how to do that. I think I will have to see some more before I can get a real idea of how to get this done. I do want to check out some of the bands mentioned in the back-matter. I particularly like the line about Razorlight, whom I really happen to like, being a "...band based around an intense creative relationship between Johnny Borrell and Johnny Borell's ego."
Well that just about does it for this dispatch. I will leave you with this scan from Adam Warren's Empowered Vol. 2 which I picked up at Bedrock City Comics today. This is perhaps the only funny anime-particle physics joke I have ever seen:
Of course not that you mention it, this might be the ONLY anime-particle physics joke I have ever seen. C'iao!
SOUNDTRACK
Today I just put Breaking Benjamin's Phobia on repeat. I have a stupid love for "Diary of Jane", which for the longest time I thought was Diary of Pain, and "Breath".
Now I would like to start with a joke I just read somewhere on the internets:
A Soviet school teacher asks the class "Who were the first people?"
A student raises his hand and says (in Russian) "Adam and Eve!"
The teacher says "Good, and what nationality were they?"
"They were Russian!" the boy says.
"How do you know they were Russian?" the teacher asks.
"Because they had no roof over their heads, no clothes, only one apple between them, and
they called it 'Paradise'."
This had me laughing out loud! Speaking of the LOL while I was sitting at the airshow I had one of those sudden moments of clarity where it occurred to me that I should have titled this post LOL S1TH. Oh well, maybe I will do better next time.
Whoops! I forgot to take a look at the clock when I started typing so I guess we are going to get some bonus time together tonight. Isn't that sweet? More quality time with the FWJ. Did you know you were going to be this lucky when you woke up this morning? I think not.
When I finally rolled out of bed on Saturday and took a peek out the window I was crestfallen. The rain was coming down pretty good at mi casa and I contemplated skipping the airshow however the fact that I had already spent $42 on my ticket, which was non-refundable, convinced me to at least drive out there and see what was going on. Plus weather in the Houston area can be very weird. I cannot tell you how many times I have left my house to a nice blue sky only to hit a torrential downpour on my way to the comic book store, which is less than three miles away. On top of all that I was already out of bed and if I stayed at home the day was going to be wasted. I got on the road to Ellington Field around 8:00 and was parking by about 8:30. When I arrived at Ellington the sky was overcast with a fairly low ceiling however it was not raining. I decided I had made the right decision and headed in to the air show.
I forgot how massive the Wings Over Houston airshow is particularly when compared with the Lone Star Flight Museum airshow. Since I am all about the warbirds I headed to the far end of the runway where the warbird ramp was located and started shooting photos. It had rained pretty good Friday night so I spent a lot of time taking pictures of the warbirds with their reflections. I have not looked at my pictures from the show yet so I have no idea if any of them came out or not, but I am hoping so, particularly since Rayburn Thompson's Spitfire was there rather than the usual suspect owned by Bill Greenwood. Don't get me wrong, I love Bill's Spit(that sounds all sorts of wrong) however it has been at the LSFM airshow for as long as I have been going and one of these days I will get a good picture of it, however the first time I saw Thompson's Spit was at this year's LSFM airshow. After that I wandered around the show for awhile before finally heading over to my reserved seat and settling in for a bit. I ended up sitting next to a father and son whose last time to attend the airshow would have taken place about the time my dad was taking me on a regular basis. It was really cool.
The airshow was good but I fear a lot of the pictures I took of the planes in the air are not going to turn out too well. First the sky could not make up its mind on what it wanted to do. There were times where I was shooting against a blue sky, times I was shooting against a partly cloudy sky, and times I was shooting against almost complete cloud cover. The complete cloud cover is a pain in the ass because it diffuses the sunlight and appears like a backdrop that has been lit with a massive light, therefore the planes in the foreground appear to be more silhouette than anything else. I am hoping I can fix this with a little processing time in Photoshop. We shall see. The second problem I encountered is that a couple of specks of crap fell on to my sensor AGAIN and I did not notice this for a bit. I was able to clean the sensor there however I am tired of this happening. I am not sure what is getting into my long lens to cause this to happen but it is frustrating as all get out! Hopefully I will be able to salvage some of the affected pictures via Photoshop but I would rather not have to do it that way.
Both the Air Force Heritage Flight and the Navy Tailhook Legacy Flight were awesome however it occurs to me that the Navy really ought to change the name of their program from Tailhook Legacy Flight unless they are attempting to re-appropriate the name Tailhook.
(Check out this video of AF Heritage Flights I found while searching for the website.)
One of the complaints I had about the airshow is that while I managed to score some pretty decent seating, the fence keeping the attendees off of the runway was a bit too tall. I was faced with the choices of either being a dick to the people behind me and standing, which I generally refuse to do except for once or twice, or having to try and shoot around the top bar of the fence, which was difficult at best. I know there are several pictures I have where there is this fuzzy darkness across the bottom of the frame. This is the out-of-focus top of the fence. I can remove this by cropping the photo in Photoshop, but I really wish I did not have to. I think I am going to send a letter to the people in charge of the airshow and see if they will do something to accomodate photographers next year. If they would let us in early and give us a special pool where the fence is lower I would pay some extra cash for this. I should also find out if the LSFM intends to do this next year.
The feature act at the airshow this year was the Canadian (Ha! I spelled this Canadien like the hockey team and did not notice until Word caught the error) Forces Snowbirds flying their CT-114 Tutor aircraft. They flew a pretty cool show and I think I managed to get a couple of good pictures of them flying. Once the Snowbirds were done I wandered the tarmac a bit to allow the traffic to clear out as well as shoot some pictures with a fairly sunny sky. I then headed home to shower and prepare for my evening.
(BTW. Here are all of the pictures I took at the show. This week I am going to spend some time cutting this gallery down to a reasonable volume. Enjoy!)
One thing about this airshow that was really nice is that I managed to escape without a major sunburn. I am sure part of this is due to the cloud cover however there were times where I was sitting in direct sunlight and felt like I was frying. I was pleasantly surprised when I got home and discovered that I was not lobster-red!
After a shower and some screwing around it was time to start the evening's birthday festivities. Rob, being the awesome person that he is, agreed to be my designated driver for the evening so I did not have to watch my alcohol intake. Sadly this ended up not being too much of an issue, but at least I was prepared. He and D picked me up and then we headed over to Catalan for what was perhaps one of the most awesome meals I have ever had in my life. I cannot even remember what all we had to eat. I know my main course was a lamb porterhouse steak on risotto however we had SO many appetizers I do not even know where to being with them. One of the more unique things I tried was roasted bone marrow, the thought of which turned my stomach a little, however it ended up being really tastey! (DAMN YOU FERGIE!) The pork belly and venison tartar were also surprisingly excellent. The pork belly because pork belly is not what I was thinking it was and the venison because while I likes me some sushi, other types of raw meat worry me. Next time I go back I want to try the garlic soup. After dinner we headed over to the Kelvin Arms however we were all in food comas so we ended up calling the night a little early. Regardless of this minor set back I had an excellent evening although I do have to point out that my friends are nothing if not enablers. Here is a pic of the gifts I received that night, in addition to the excellent company which is all I really wanted:
That's right. A box of Montecristo #2's from Rob and D, a bottle of Sean Michael's 16 year old single malt scotch whisky (which is distilled by Macallan) and the previously mentioned Padilla cigar from Scott and Lynn, and a bottle of Connemara 12 year old peated single malt Irish whiskey and a Padron 1926 cigar from Greg. Now I really wish I had a porch on which I could sit with a cigar and a dram or two.
Today I did pretty much nothing but read, watch some television, take a nap, read some more, and then hit Bedrock City Comics, where I completely forgot to ask about their pull service. Oh well, just means I have to go back. I got caught up on most of this week's television which I had managed to miss during the week. So far nothing has been voted off the island although I have to admit that Journeyman is taking some work to get into. I started this week's episode a couple of times before I could force myself to sit down and watch the whole thing. It is not a bad show it just starts kind of slow. On the flip side of that I found Big Shots very funny. The characters are really working for me now and I find myself looking forward to this week's episode AND hoping that this show does not get cancelled. Right now it is toeing a very fine line between comedy and soap-opera. I hope the show stays where it is rather than swerving off to either side.
On the reading front I finished Phonogram. I really enjoyed the book and look forward to any future volumes that might come out. I know I said I would think about how to make the phonomancer work in Shadowrun however after reading the whole book I am not sure how to do that. I think I will have to see some more before I can get a real idea of how to get this done. I do want to check out some of the bands mentioned in the back-matter. I particularly like the line about Razorlight, whom I really happen to like, being a "...band based around an intense creative relationship between Johnny Borrell and Johnny Borell's ego."
Well that just about does it for this dispatch. I will leave you with this scan from Adam Warren's Empowered Vol. 2 which I picked up at Bedrock City Comics today. This is perhaps the only funny anime-particle physics joke I have ever seen:
Of course not that you mention it, this might be the ONLY anime-particle physics joke I have ever seen. C'iao!
SOUNDTRACK
Today I just put Breaking Benjamin's Phobia on repeat. I have a stupid love for "Diary of Jane", which for the longest time I thought was Diary of Pain, and "Breath".
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Friday, October 05, 2007
Dispatches from the Abyss - Friday, Oct. 5th
Today was a pretty crap day overall and the only reason for that is that I was BORED out of my noggin'. I was telecommuting today and did not have that much work I needed to do. I got some reading that I had been meaning to get around to done and went and had lunch with Rob but besides that I really did not do too much today. Read a comic or two, took a nap, dropped off and picked up my dry cleaning so I have something nice to wear to dinner and drinks tomorrow, watched this week's episode of Smallville and then monkeyed around on the computer. I swung by a couple of hardware shops searching in vain for some cup hooks which I need to take the next step in getting my kitchen squared away. I figure since I have been living here for six months I might as well go ahead and finish moving in. To finish up the kitchen I need about 20 cup hooks so I can hang all of my mugs and cups with handles above the sink and free up some of my VERY limited cupboard space for bowls. Once I get that done I need to find a longer gas hose for the stove so I can turn the stove 90 degrees and free up a little more walking space in the kitchen. Then I need to find a bar or something to put next to the fridge so I have a little more storage space and work surface. My initial thought is to get some baker's racks and put a cutting board surface on the top. The OMAR from Ikea is just what I am looking for, but with a different top. Maybe on Sunday I will jaunt over to Ikea and check things out because I also need to get a table where I can work while sitting on the couch. Once I have that and my wireless set up telecommuting is going to be, well, I think interesting would be the best way to describe it.
While I was monkeying around on the internet today I started chatting via MySpace mail with Kat. (Yes, that Kat.) In kind of a weird confluence of things we had both been thinking about some of the same stuff lately and I have to say it was really nice to "talk" with her without getting all fucked up in the head about things. $20 says I end up having some fucked up dreams about her in the next week or so, though. My subconscious mind is not a very nice guy. As it turns out her current SO is a pilot and they went to the EAA AirVenture this summer, which is perhaps the largest airshow in the country. As I understand it the warbird community is usually very well-represented there and I believe a few years ago they had all of the flying B-17s in North America there. That would be pretty cool to see. One of these summers I am going to try and do a tour of the airshows in the Great Lakes area and points east. I want to hit the EAA AirVenture, Thunder over Michigan, and the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum's World War II Weekend.
I spent part of this evening cleaning my camera, wiping off my memory cards, and checking my batteries so I am all ready to go at butt-crack dawn tomorrow. I think the gates open at 8 and I want to be down there as soon after that as I can be. I am setting the alarm for 6:45 AM and will try to be out the door as quickly after that as I can be. I made sure to hit the ATM so I have cash but I just realized I forgot to hit the gas station so I am going to have to do that in the morning once I get on the road. Come to think of it I don't even know where there is a gas station in the direction I am going to be headed. Damn. Oh well, there will be a little back-tracking going on. That will give me a chance to get a gas station breakfast in me as well as a couple of bottles of water to take in with me. I am so pumped about going to the airshow again!
While I was cleaning my big lens, a Canon 100-400mm image-stabilized zoom, I realized that the UV filter I have on the lens was screwed on wrong. Now I am going to have to try and remove it once I get done shooting the airshow. Hopefully I can remove it without damaging the lens because that bad boy retails at over $1,500.00 and it is my favorite lens for shooting airshows. I do not want to have to replace it if I can avoid it. (More to the point I can't afford to replace it until I get my annual bonus in April and then I am taking money that should be used elsewhere to pay for the lens.) Maybe I will take it to one of the camera stores in town and see if they can remove the filter for me without damaging the lens.
I tired of Save Ferris. Now I think it is time to check out the Polysics on their MySpace page. Apparently they are releasing their newest album here in the States next week and then are going to be touring to support it. This includes a stop here in H-Town on November 9th. I am going to have to try and remember that. This might be a show worth checking out! I still need to get some of those glasses they all wear then I would be Chick Magnet Prime.
Feh. I am having trouble concentrating right now. There is this pen on my desk that I keep picking up and playing with rather than typing and I still have about 20 minutes of typing ahead of me. Argh!
Yeah, depending on how I am feeling on Sunday I may go hit Ikea and check out a couple of their storage and table solutions and then I need to run by either Bedrock City Comics or Third Planet to see if they have some issues I missed through Nan's over the last couple of weeks. The service over at Nan's has taken a hit recently. Last week they did not pull my comics for me, which is the forth or fifth time this has happened recently and then they did not have the books on the shelves so I could fill my own pull list. :/ Now when I went to pick up my books from this week they had pulled both weeks worth of books but crammed them in the folder so the spines on all of last week's books were bent. I went ahead and pulled what I needed out of the stack and then left the rest sitting near the new comics shelves. Mistakes happen so that is not a big deal but then when I went to pay the guy at the counter, which is one of the younger guys who works there, was barely civil. I had to give him a look before he would apply my 10% subscriber discount to my purchase. All around it was one of those experiences that makes some comic shops shitty comic shops. I have never had any problems with the people at Bedrock City Comics. The only reason I do not have my pull list over there is that it is kind of a pain in the ass to get to from my house and the office. With where they are located it can take an hour or more to get there just because of traffic and they do not stay open past 7pm, so my ability to get there after work is seriously hampered. I may go by and ask about setting things up on Sunday. I have been thinking about leaving Nan's for a while and just have not gotten off my ass and done it yet.
You know what kids? I am going to cut today's writing session short by ten minutes so I can get this loaded to the blog and then get to bed at a reasonable hour. Have fun and I will be back on Sunday. With pictures!
SOUNDTRACK
For right now tonight's soundtrack will be provided by Music Bang on AZN. We'll see how long that lasts because whoever they decided to open up with sucks some serious monkey ass.
Okay, fuck this, now they are running ads. I am turning them off after one song and going to the iPod. Oh snap! I have my Save Ferris CD sitting here. That is what we're listening to now.
While I was monkeying around on the internet today I started chatting via MySpace mail with Kat. (Yes, that Kat.) In kind of a weird confluence of things we had both been thinking about some of the same stuff lately and I have to say it was really nice to "talk" with her without getting all fucked up in the head about things. $20 says I end up having some fucked up dreams about her in the next week or so, though. My subconscious mind is not a very nice guy. As it turns out her current SO is a pilot and they went to the EAA AirVenture this summer, which is perhaps the largest airshow in the country. As I understand it the warbird community is usually very well-represented there and I believe a few years ago they had all of the flying B-17s in North America there. That would be pretty cool to see. One of these summers I am going to try and do a tour of the airshows in the Great Lakes area and points east. I want to hit the EAA AirVenture, Thunder over Michigan, and the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum's World War II Weekend.
I spent part of this evening cleaning my camera, wiping off my memory cards, and checking my batteries so I am all ready to go at butt-crack dawn tomorrow. I think the gates open at 8 and I want to be down there as soon after that as I can be. I am setting the alarm for 6:45 AM and will try to be out the door as quickly after that as I can be. I made sure to hit the ATM so I have cash but I just realized I forgot to hit the gas station so I am going to have to do that in the morning once I get on the road. Come to think of it I don't even know where there is a gas station in the direction I am going to be headed. Damn. Oh well, there will be a little back-tracking going on. That will give me a chance to get a gas station breakfast in me as well as a couple of bottles of water to take in with me. I am so pumped about going to the airshow again!
While I was cleaning my big lens, a Canon 100-400mm image-stabilized zoom, I realized that the UV filter I have on the lens was screwed on wrong. Now I am going to have to try and remove it once I get done shooting the airshow. Hopefully I can remove it without damaging the lens because that bad boy retails at over $1,500.00 and it is my favorite lens for shooting airshows. I do not want to have to replace it if I can avoid it. (More to the point I can't afford to replace it until I get my annual bonus in April and then I am taking money that should be used elsewhere to pay for the lens.) Maybe I will take it to one of the camera stores in town and see if they can remove the filter for me without damaging the lens.
I tired of Save Ferris. Now I think it is time to check out the Polysics on their MySpace page. Apparently they are releasing their newest album here in the States next week and then are going to be touring to support it. This includes a stop here in H-Town on November 9th. I am going to have to try and remember that. This might be a show worth checking out! I still need to get some of those glasses they all wear then I would be Chick Magnet Prime.
Feh. I am having trouble concentrating right now. There is this pen on my desk that I keep picking up and playing with rather than typing and I still have about 20 minutes of typing ahead of me. Argh!
Yeah, depending on how I am feeling on Sunday I may go hit Ikea and check out a couple of their storage and table solutions and then I need to run by either Bedrock City Comics or Third Planet to see if they have some issues I missed through Nan's over the last couple of weeks. The service over at Nan's has taken a hit recently. Last week they did not pull my comics for me, which is the forth or fifth time this has happened recently and then they did not have the books on the shelves so I could fill my own pull list. :/ Now when I went to pick up my books from this week they had pulled both weeks worth of books but crammed them in the folder so the spines on all of last week's books were bent. I went ahead and pulled what I needed out of the stack and then left the rest sitting near the new comics shelves. Mistakes happen so that is not a big deal but then when I went to pay the guy at the counter, which is one of the younger guys who works there, was barely civil. I had to give him a look before he would apply my 10% subscriber discount to my purchase. All around it was one of those experiences that makes some comic shops shitty comic shops. I have never had any problems with the people at Bedrock City Comics. The only reason I do not have my pull list over there is that it is kind of a pain in the ass to get to from my house and the office. With where they are located it can take an hour or more to get there just because of traffic and they do not stay open past 7pm, so my ability to get there after work is seriously hampered. I may go by and ask about setting things up on Sunday. I have been thinking about leaving Nan's for a while and just have not gotten off my ass and done it yet.
You know what kids? I am going to cut today's writing session short by ten minutes so I can get this loaded to the blog and then get to bed at a reasonable hour. Have fun and I will be back on Sunday. With pictures!
SOUNDTRACK
For right now tonight's soundtrack will be provided by Music Bang on AZN. We'll see how long that lasts because whoever they decided to open up with sucks some serious monkey ass.
Okay, fuck this, now they are running ads. I am turning them off after one song and going to the iPod. Oh snap! I have my Save Ferris CD sitting here. That is what we're listening to now.
(mis)Spelling with Fergie
Has anyone else noticed that on several of the singles from her debut album Stacy "Fergie" Ferguson is teaching her fans how to spell? So far we have the singles "London Bridge," "Fergalicious," "Glamorous," and "Big Girls Don't Cry," from her album "The Dutchess." Out of these both "Fergalicious" and "Glamorous" substitute spelling lessons for actual lyrics, which is too bad because on the whole her lyrics and rhymes tend to be less obnoxious than most. If you can get past her ego, that is.
- 1:20 We learn how to spell Fergie
- 2:09 Wil.i.am teaches us how to spell both Tastey and Delicious, however he throws an 'E' in tasty, therefore teaching us wrong.
- 0:16 Fergie herself lays the science on our asses, teaching us how to spell Glamorous.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Dispatches from the Abyss - Thursday, Oct. 4th
And today is the day I turn 34 as well as the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, the first man-made object to orbit the Earth. While my dad and I were at dinner he was telling me about what a shock it was that they did it and that his teacher in school told his class that Sputnik was the reason they should concentrate on math and science. My father was trying to think of a way he could convey the shock the world felt when the news broke about Sputnik. The best example he could come up with was that the shock would be comparable to Nigeria dropping a nuclear bomb on someone. First there would be the shock that they even had a nuclear weapon and then the shock that they would actually use it. It has been too long since my dad and I sat down and had dinner. We used to go out to dinner fairly regularly, but since I moved into Houston proper he has been finding excuses not to do dinner. Now that he sees how easy it is to get to my house he says we're going to start doing dinner more often and next time I am supposed to take him to a steak place!
After I got back home from dinner my mom called to wish me a Happy Birthday. It was good to talk to her even if there was nothing really interesting to report.
Sorry about not posting anything last night. After work Scott and I got together over at Downing Street for a couple of beers and a cigar or two. I had an Ashton Heritage that I had bought some time ago and Scott gave me a cigar made by Padilla Cigar Company which I am saving. I might light it up Saturday night, we'll see. I still need to decide what to wear on Saturday night. Part of me wants to bust out the kilt if it is cool enough. I was thinking the kilt with a white shirt, tie, cream stockings, and Ghillies. The thing I can't decide on is which sporran to wear. Should I wear my formal fur sporran or my casual black sporran? At some point I need to nut up and buy a brown sporran as well as set of brown and black sporran straps. You know if it was supposed to be cool enough I would wear a sweater and the dress sporran, but I think I will just go with khakis and one of my Cubavera shirts. And a luchadore mask. (j/k...or am I?) I need to do something where I can wear my kilt again; it has been too long.
Oops, got distracted there being a clothes horse and all. After I got home from Downing Street I had some leftovers for dinner and then went and was lazy on the couch for far longer than I meant to be. By the time I was thinking about sitting down and writing it was already almost midnight. I was fighting to stay awake while lounging on the couch so I decided to go ahead and call it a night rather than force myself to write for an hour and end up staying up WAY too late rather than just kind of too late.
I recently finished the second Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus from Dark Horse comics. Ryan Sook is the perfect choice for the stories featuring Spike and Dru, but some of their other artistic choices were a bit off, particularly Hector Gomez who was the penciller on the final story in the collection. His art is good enough but until Xander said Willow's name I did not know who the character with the long hair was since her and Cordelia ended up having the exact same face. Come to think of it none of the characters really looked like the actors that portrayed them, something which needs to be done in comics of this sort. If you're really in to Buffy then this collection will be right up your alley, but it is not really something for the casual fan. I also finally started reading the collection of Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie's smash hit series Phonogram. Back when this book first came out it was the darling of the comicsblogoweb and thus I was not able to track down a copy (much like Mouse Guard) so I had to wait for it in trade. So far it is VERY interesting and I am looking forward to getting into it more. The main character describes himself as a phonomancer and I have started to think about this as a sort of shaman in Shadowrun. Once I am done with the book I may scribble some ideas down and see where they get me.
While I am on the disparate subjects of my birthday and comics, there is one comic I need to recommend to any of you out there who are WWII aviation enthusiasts like me. Romain Hugault's The Final Flight. While it clocks in at only 52 pages for $10 it has some of the best aviation art I have seen in a long time. It contains stories about four different pilots in different theaters of WWII which are all interconnected. The stories are enjoyable, but really the best thing about this book is Hugault's artwork. You get to see a Japanese Zero, an F4U Corsair, a P-38 Lightning, several P-47 Thunderbolts, FW-190s (an example of which has recently been resurrected in Germany), Messerschmitt Bf 109s, B-24s, P-51s, and Yakolev YAK-9Ts. I love the paint jobs on the Russian planes! Your best bet for getting this book is probably to try and order it from the publisher, Paquet. If you're interested in seeing more of Romain's work you can check out the gallery he did for the Paris Airshow 2007. (Here is a link to a painting he did of a Russian MiG-29.)
I really think the CAF or Lone Star Flight Museum ought to get this guy to do a series of lithos of their various planes. They could then put them together in a calendar. Since the author is an aviation enthusiast and pilot himself I bet they could work out some trade where he donates the art to them. I would totally buy one of the calendars.
Speaking of planes check out this SFX clip from the upcoming Red Baron movie:
Hey look! The shitty formatting is back! And you can see a better version of this clip here. Be warned this one takes a long time to load.
HFS! I have not seen Flyboys since it got such crap reviews but I had VERY high hopes for the movie. From what I can tell this appears to be a pretty high-quality project so I cannot wait until it makes it to our shores. To tide you over until then here is the official site, the pretty much useless IMDB entry, and the Wikipedia entry which has some interesting links at the bottom.
Can you tell I am SOOOOO ready for Saturday to get here so I can go to the airshow? I love watching old warbirds fly. There is something beautiful and graceful in the way they move through the air that more modern planes have lost. I think part of it is just the design of the planes themselves. Even the really aggressive looking planes are all smooth lines and curves whereas more modern jet fighters are angular. You know what? Let us take a moment to enjoy the curves of a Spitfire as it goes through its paces at the Russell Group air show from 2006:
God I love those planes!
Well, I have managed to get myself good and distracted by a couple of things so this is not going to be an hour of uninterrupted writing. I am going to keep at it until 12:30 and then start working on getting this bad boy up on Blogger so I can hit the sack.
So I complained in one of my last posts about the fact that my iPod had locked up on me and this necessitated me wearing down the battery before I could do anything with it. This meant that I was without my iPod during my commute on Wednesday. This being the case I went ahead and took the Phonogram collection with me, intending to read it on the way into the office on the train. Of course this means that the train was full that morning and there was no seats available. ARGH! Even though my iPod was back in full effect today I went ahead and took both the Phonogram collection and the latest Tolkien book, The Children of Hurin, with me with the intent of reading. The train was worse this morning. ARGH! At least I had some funkwoodjamz to occupy my mind, which was nice until a bunch of noisy punk-ass kids decided to get on the train at the McGowen stop. Not only were they loud, but they all stood right in front of the door and made it very difficult to get out of the train. Damn kids. GET OFF MY TRAIN!
I had a completely random encounter at Downing Street last night! Scott had gone to return some of the beer he had leased from the bar and get some more smokes leaving me alone out on the patio. This was okay because for all the bitching I do about that pit of evil some call Taco Milagro, the scenery over there can be very nice at times and Wednesday night was a good night. While I was sitting there, puffing away at my Ashton and splitting my contemplation between the wild ass running around Taco Milagro and how tasty Amstel Light can be, an old friend of mine, Tim Brisko, appeared out of nowhere. I am sure he came from Taco Milagro and he was catching a ride with one of his compatriots so basically we just shook hands and said hello, but it was cool to see him, if even only for a couple of minutes. I forgot to tell Matt about this when he called last night to brag about his triumph at some bachelor auction for which he had volunteered to be auctioned off. He only went for $60 to a girl he was already going to take out anyways. I so should have tried to get some of the girls in the group to go and run up the score on him. Particularly Katie. She would scare the shit out of him. Anyhoo, apparently Matt walked away from this auction with three or four phone numbers of bachelorettes as well as an email address or two. Now he is convinced I need to do this despite my protestations that I turn in to a complete freak show in front of attractive women. I am not certain why this is. Generally I am fairly confident about myself. I know I am smart, funny, and fun to be with, but I guess I get caught up in the whole being fat thing. I know how guys should dress and if I could get fashionable clothes that fit reasonably I would, but nice clothes for fat fucks like me are not cheap and I fall into a weird category where anything I buy off the rack really needs to be tailored for me and how I wear my clothes. Ultimately I guess it is because I am lazy and just couldn't be arsed to do anything about it because, despite liking how I look in suits and so on, I am more comfortable in a pair of jeans and a camp shirt and fat fucks in jeans and camp shirts are a dime a dozen in this town.
Wow! Hey look kids, we've ended up talking about women again, even if just tangentially, so I guess I ought to go ahead and dive into at least one of the subjects which has been bothering me and that subject is Margaret. (I suppose the phrase "dive in" might be a poor choice of words here, but I am nothing if not inappropriate.) Many moons ago Margaret and I dated. There was kissing and some inappropriate touching, but at the same time she was sleeping with two or three ex-boyfriends. This did not really bother me too much since I understand the need to get laid and I am not the sort to jump into even a casual relationship with my britches around my ankles, so I waited for a month or so to see where things were headed with us. By the time I got to the headspace where I was ready to sleep with Margaret she was out of the wanting to sleep with me headspace. While I can't remember the exact date I do remember that she broke this news to me at my first AA* party. Basically she said that she just wanted to date me and fuck other guys. This is where I should have told her to fuck right off and been done with it but I am nothing if not too nice and too desperate so I keep hanging around with her in the vain hope that things might go somewhere. And then there was the whole thing about really liking Margaret and thinking that she might be someone with whom there had been the potential for a very long term relationship there. Boy was I wrong on several counts there.
Now let me back up for a moment and share something else with you. Several of my friends who happen to be girls back in College Station do not like Margaret AT ALL because of how (Hah! I initially typed hos rather than how) she behaved while we were dating. The specific problem they had with her was how she flirted with Abe, my roommate at the time, while she was ostensibly with me. This will become important later.
After a while I got tired of putting in all the work of dating Margaret and not getting any of the rewards. Quite frankly I got tired of her shit right around the time she left UCS so it was easy to just be done with her. I did not have to see her at work and with Margaret it was out of sight, out of mind so I was golden.
Once Abe returned from his deployment to Kosovo things changed as suddenly Margaret started hanging around again. By this time Abe and I were living in a big house so when Margaret was over it was easy for me to ignore her if I was so inclined. This crap basically continued until I left College Station.
I am not sure what started it but for some reason I invited Margaret to come down to Houston and go out drinking with me one weekend. We went out and things seemed to be fine however this was a huge fucking mistake on my part as I started to think I had feelings for her again. Margaret has this incredible smile that just kills me every time she lets it fly and I honestly enjoy hanging out with her. One of the things you should know about Margaret is that the old saying "In vino, veritas" really applies to her. She gets drunk and she starts speaking the truth as she sees it. As she gets closer to graduation we start to hang out a little more and during her truth stages she goes through two things over and over again. First she felt like the world was stacked against her because she was a woman and she wasn't certain she was heading into a field she wanted to be in for the rest of her life. Stuff I would consider usual graduation anxiety. The other thing is she started to ride my ass about "abandoning" her in College Station. She would tell me time and time again that the only reason she was hanging out with Abe was to make me jealous. It worked a little bit but I am a stubborn ass so I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of knowing that. At the time I so wanted to point out that she was the one who decided I was worth dating but not fucking and if she had wanted to remain friends after that little revelation she should have put more work in to the friendship, but I held my tongue because the past was the past and, being the pathetic jackass I am, I was thinking that maybe we had a new future ahead of us.
Things came to a head right around Thanksgiving of last year. She was in town for some reason or another and we went out to Downing for a few rounds. We got a little drunk and for some reason that night I decided to make my move. There was some fumbling and inappropriate touching before Margaret put a stop to everything and basically told me to fuck off. I was so wound up I was actually shaking. I went and took a cold shower and still had trouble falling asleep. I did not sleep real well that night. The next morning was one of those uncomfortable moments where I was embarrassed about getting turned away and so I was probably a little gruff. I think we emailed once or twice since then and I have only seen her once.
Back when we were dating for some reason we were talking about what our biggest problem is when we are in a relationship. Mine, hands down, is jealousy. It has always been a bit of a problem for me and led to the demise of more than one relationship but the whole Kat imbroglio really brought it to the fore. It went from being something that was just dumb to something I had to consciously confront and deal with on several occasions. During the course of this discussion her behavior with Abe came up and somehow she ended up promising me that she was not interested in Abe and would not date him regardless of how things ended up with us.
So a few months ago I am on Gmail when Abe pops in to check his mail. We end up chatting for quite awhile when out of the blue he mentions that he and Margaret are dating now. (She lives in Arlington BTW.) I ended the conversation with Abe pretty quick as I needed to go have a drink right then. Ideally I would go have a drink and get in a fight because my mad was up, however I am not that sort of guy so Scott and I headed over to Downing where I proceeded to down Appletons and Cokes like they were going out of style and smoke the last of my Cuban cigars. Seemed like as good an occasion as any. While I was there I started writing about my entire relationship with Margaret in my head but I never got past the opening:
I have thought about how to tell this story time and time again and have never gotten past the ball of hate I have in my stomach for both her and Abe.
Scott was an excellent drinking companion that night. He did not offer any advice and just nodded in agreement when I said things about fuckin' women. A little later Matt suggested that I should think about whether I will still care about this when I am 80. Of course the answer is I certainly hope not but I still feel justified in my anger at the both of them. For her it is not so much the broken promise as the fact that this means when she was dating me and flirting with Abe there really was something there. This plays into the anger I have towards Abe as well, however more of it comes from the thought of "Bros before Hos." If I plan on asking out someone a friend of mine has dated then I am going to ask my friend if he minds. Ultimately my friendships with Rob, Scott, Kyle, and Matt are too important to me to risk over pussy. So in the end I wish I would have embraced the chance to tell Margaret to go fuck herself when I had the chance. C'est la vie.
Tune in tomorrow when the Happy James Funtime Hour pretends to be fun!
* Please note that AA here does not stand for Alcoholics Anonymous, I am a drunk not an alcoholic, but rather Autonomous Acres
(I would like to point out that I made it through the entire section about Matt being auctioned off like some poor man's Jason Lee without making any Mallrats references or quotes whatsoever. Well fuck.)
SOUNDTRACK
Star Trek Generations Soundtrack by Dennis McCarthy
The Da Vinci Code Soundtrack by Hans Zimmer
After I got back home from dinner my mom called to wish me a Happy Birthday. It was good to talk to her even if there was nothing really interesting to report.
Sorry about not posting anything last night. After work Scott and I got together over at Downing Street for a couple of beers and a cigar or two. I had an Ashton Heritage that I had bought some time ago and Scott gave me a cigar made by Padilla Cigar Company which I am saving. I might light it up Saturday night, we'll see. I still need to decide what to wear on Saturday night. Part of me wants to bust out the kilt if it is cool enough. I was thinking the kilt with a white shirt, tie, cream stockings, and Ghillies. The thing I can't decide on is which sporran to wear. Should I wear my formal fur sporran or my casual black sporran? At some point I need to nut up and buy a brown sporran as well as set of brown and black sporran straps. You know if it was supposed to be cool enough I would wear a sweater and the dress sporran, but I think I will just go with khakis and one of my Cubavera shirts. And a luchadore mask. (j/k...or am I?) I need to do something where I can wear my kilt again; it has been too long.
Oops, got distracted there being a clothes horse and all. After I got home from Downing Street I had some leftovers for dinner and then went and was lazy on the couch for far longer than I meant to be. By the time I was thinking about sitting down and writing it was already almost midnight. I was fighting to stay awake while lounging on the couch so I decided to go ahead and call it a night rather than force myself to write for an hour and end up staying up WAY too late rather than just kind of too late.
I recently finished the second Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus from Dark Horse comics. Ryan Sook is the perfect choice for the stories featuring Spike and Dru, but some of their other artistic choices were a bit off, particularly Hector Gomez who was the penciller on the final story in the collection. His art is good enough but until Xander said Willow's name I did not know who the character with the long hair was since her and Cordelia ended up having the exact same face. Come to think of it none of the characters really looked like the actors that portrayed them, something which needs to be done in comics of this sort. If you're really in to Buffy then this collection will be right up your alley, but it is not really something for the casual fan. I also finally started reading the collection of Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie's smash hit series Phonogram. Back when this book first came out it was the darling of the comicsblogoweb and thus I was not able to track down a copy (much like Mouse Guard) so I had to wait for it in trade. So far it is VERY interesting and I am looking forward to getting into it more. The main character describes himself as a phonomancer and I have started to think about this as a sort of shaman in Shadowrun. Once I am done with the book I may scribble some ideas down and see where they get me.
While I am on the disparate subjects of my birthday and comics, there is one comic I need to recommend to any of you out there who are WWII aviation enthusiasts like me. Romain Hugault's The Final Flight. While it clocks in at only 52 pages for $10 it has some of the best aviation art I have seen in a long time. It contains stories about four different pilots in different theaters of WWII which are all interconnected. The stories are enjoyable, but really the best thing about this book is Hugault's artwork. You get to see a Japanese Zero, an F4U Corsair, a P-38 Lightning, several P-47 Thunderbolts, FW-190s (an example of which has recently been resurrected in Germany), Messerschmitt Bf 109s, B-24s, P-51s, and Yakolev YAK-9Ts. I love the paint jobs on the Russian planes! Your best bet for getting this book is probably to try and order it from the publisher, Paquet. If you're interested in seeing more of Romain's work you can check out the gallery he did for the Paris Airshow 2007. (Here is a link to a painting he did of a Russian MiG-29.)
I really think the CAF or Lone Star Flight Museum ought to get this guy to do a series of lithos of their various planes. They could then put them together in a calendar. Since the author is an aviation enthusiast and pilot himself I bet they could work out some trade where he donates the art to them. I would totally buy one of the calendars.
Speaking of planes check out this SFX clip from the upcoming Red Baron movie:
Hey look! The shitty formatting is back! And you can see a better version of this clip here. Be warned this one takes a long time to load.
HFS! I have not seen Flyboys since it got such crap reviews but I had VERY high hopes for the movie. From what I can tell this appears to be a pretty high-quality project so I cannot wait until it makes it to our shores. To tide you over until then here is the official site, the pretty much useless IMDB entry, and the Wikipedia entry which has some interesting links at the bottom.
Can you tell I am SOOOOO ready for Saturday to get here so I can go to the airshow? I love watching old warbirds fly. There is something beautiful and graceful in the way they move through the air that more modern planes have lost. I think part of it is just the design of the planes themselves. Even the really aggressive looking planes are all smooth lines and curves whereas more modern jet fighters are angular. You know what? Let us take a moment to enjoy the curves of a Spitfire as it goes through its paces at the Russell Group air show from 2006:
God I love those planes!
Well, I have managed to get myself good and distracted by a couple of things so this is not going to be an hour of uninterrupted writing. I am going to keep at it until 12:30 and then start working on getting this bad boy up on Blogger so I can hit the sack.
So I complained in one of my last posts about the fact that my iPod had locked up on me and this necessitated me wearing down the battery before I could do anything with it. This meant that I was without my iPod during my commute on Wednesday. This being the case I went ahead and took the Phonogram collection with me, intending to read it on the way into the office on the train. Of course this means that the train was full that morning and there was no seats available. ARGH! Even though my iPod was back in full effect today I went ahead and took both the Phonogram collection and the latest Tolkien book, The Children of Hurin, with me with the intent of reading. The train was worse this morning. ARGH! At least I had some funkwoodjamz to occupy my mind, which was nice until a bunch of noisy punk-ass kids decided to get on the train at the McGowen stop. Not only were they loud, but they all stood right in front of the door and made it very difficult to get out of the train. Damn kids. GET OFF MY TRAIN!
I had a completely random encounter at Downing Street last night! Scott had gone to return some of the beer he had leased from the bar and get some more smokes leaving me alone out on the patio. This was okay because for all the bitching I do about that pit of evil some call Taco Milagro, the scenery over there can be very nice at times and Wednesday night was a good night. While I was sitting there, puffing away at my Ashton and splitting my contemplation between the wild ass running around Taco Milagro and how tasty Amstel Light can be, an old friend of mine, Tim Brisko, appeared out of nowhere. I am sure he came from Taco Milagro and he was catching a ride with one of his compatriots so basically we just shook hands and said hello, but it was cool to see him, if even only for a couple of minutes. I forgot to tell Matt about this when he called last night to brag about his triumph at some bachelor auction for which he had volunteered to be auctioned off. He only went for $60 to a girl he was already going to take out anyways. I so should have tried to get some of the girls in the group to go and run up the score on him. Particularly Katie. She would scare the shit out of him. Anyhoo, apparently Matt walked away from this auction with three or four phone numbers of bachelorettes as well as an email address or two. Now he is convinced I need to do this despite my protestations that I turn in to a complete freak show in front of attractive women. I am not certain why this is. Generally I am fairly confident about myself. I know I am smart, funny, and fun to be with, but I guess I get caught up in the whole being fat thing. I know how guys should dress and if I could get fashionable clothes that fit reasonably I would, but nice clothes for fat fucks like me are not cheap and I fall into a weird category where anything I buy off the rack really needs to be tailored for me and how I wear my clothes. Ultimately I guess it is because I am lazy and just couldn't be arsed to do anything about it because, despite liking how I look in suits and so on, I am more comfortable in a pair of jeans and a camp shirt and fat fucks in jeans and camp shirts are a dime a dozen in this town.
Wow! Hey look kids, we've ended up talking about women again, even if just tangentially, so I guess I ought to go ahead and dive into at least one of the subjects which has been bothering me and that subject is Margaret. (I suppose the phrase "dive in" might be a poor choice of words here, but I am nothing if not inappropriate.) Many moons ago Margaret and I dated. There was kissing and some inappropriate touching, but at the same time she was sleeping with two or three ex-boyfriends. This did not really bother me too much since I understand the need to get laid and I am not the sort to jump into even a casual relationship with my britches around my ankles, so I waited for a month or so to see where things were headed with us. By the time I got to the headspace where I was ready to sleep with Margaret she was out of the wanting to sleep with me headspace. While I can't remember the exact date I do remember that she broke this news to me at my first AA* party. Basically she said that she just wanted to date me and fuck other guys. This is where I should have told her to fuck right off and been done with it but I am nothing if not too nice and too desperate so I keep hanging around with her in the vain hope that things might go somewhere. And then there was the whole thing about really liking Margaret and thinking that she might be someone with whom there had been the potential for a very long term relationship there. Boy was I wrong on several counts there.
Now let me back up for a moment and share something else with you. Several of my friends who happen to be girls back in College Station do not like Margaret AT ALL because of how (Hah! I initially typed hos rather than how) she behaved while we were dating. The specific problem they had with her was how she flirted with Abe, my roommate at the time, while she was ostensibly with me. This will become important later.
After a while I got tired of putting in all the work of dating Margaret and not getting any of the rewards. Quite frankly I got tired of her shit right around the time she left UCS so it was easy to just be done with her. I did not have to see her at work and with Margaret it was out of sight, out of mind so I was golden.
Once Abe returned from his deployment to Kosovo things changed as suddenly Margaret started hanging around again. By this time Abe and I were living in a big house so when Margaret was over it was easy for me to ignore her if I was so inclined. This crap basically continued until I left College Station.
I am not sure what started it but for some reason I invited Margaret to come down to Houston and go out drinking with me one weekend. We went out and things seemed to be fine however this was a huge fucking mistake on my part as I started to think I had feelings for her again. Margaret has this incredible smile that just kills me every time she lets it fly and I honestly enjoy hanging out with her. One of the things you should know about Margaret is that the old saying "In vino, veritas" really applies to her. She gets drunk and she starts speaking the truth as she sees it. As she gets closer to graduation we start to hang out a little more and during her truth stages she goes through two things over and over again. First she felt like the world was stacked against her because she was a woman and she wasn't certain she was heading into a field she wanted to be in for the rest of her life. Stuff I would consider usual graduation anxiety. The other thing is she started to ride my ass about "abandoning" her in College Station. She would tell me time and time again that the only reason she was hanging out with Abe was to make me jealous. It worked a little bit but I am a stubborn ass so I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of knowing that. At the time I so wanted to point out that she was the one who decided I was worth dating but not fucking and if she had wanted to remain friends after that little revelation she should have put more work in to the friendship, but I held my tongue because the past was the past and, being the pathetic jackass I am, I was thinking that maybe we had a new future ahead of us.
Things came to a head right around Thanksgiving of last year. She was in town for some reason or another and we went out to Downing for a few rounds. We got a little drunk and for some reason that night I decided to make my move. There was some fumbling and inappropriate touching before Margaret put a stop to everything and basically told me to fuck off. I was so wound up I was actually shaking. I went and took a cold shower and still had trouble falling asleep. I did not sleep real well that night. The next morning was one of those uncomfortable moments where I was embarrassed about getting turned away and so I was probably a little gruff. I think we emailed once or twice since then and I have only seen her once.
Back when we were dating for some reason we were talking about what our biggest problem is when we are in a relationship. Mine, hands down, is jealousy. It has always been a bit of a problem for me and led to the demise of more than one relationship but the whole Kat imbroglio really brought it to the fore. It went from being something that was just dumb to something I had to consciously confront and deal with on several occasions. During the course of this discussion her behavior with Abe came up and somehow she ended up promising me that she was not interested in Abe and would not date him regardless of how things ended up with us.
So a few months ago I am on Gmail when Abe pops in to check his mail. We end up chatting for quite awhile when out of the blue he mentions that he and Margaret are dating now. (She lives in Arlington BTW.) I ended the conversation with Abe pretty quick as I needed to go have a drink right then. Ideally I would go have a drink and get in a fight because my mad was up, however I am not that sort of guy so Scott and I headed over to Downing where I proceeded to down Appletons and Cokes like they were going out of style and smoke the last of my Cuban cigars. Seemed like as good an occasion as any. While I was there I started writing about my entire relationship with Margaret in my head but I never got past the opening:
There I was at the bar. Again. Rum and Coke in one hand and the last of my Cubans in the other as I fought the urge to punch someone. A stupid, self-destructive urge to get in a fight that can only be brought on by a woman. Not just any woman, but the one that got away and yet still manages to twist you into an ugly thing barely recognizable as human.
I have thought about how to tell this story time and time again and have never gotten past the ball of hate I have in my stomach for both her and Abe.
Scott was an excellent drinking companion that night. He did not offer any advice and just nodded in agreement when I said things about fuckin' women. A little later Matt suggested that I should think about whether I will still care about this when I am 80. Of course the answer is I certainly hope not but I still feel justified in my anger at the both of them. For her it is not so much the broken promise as the fact that this means when she was dating me and flirting with Abe there really was something there. This plays into the anger I have towards Abe as well, however more of it comes from the thought of "Bros before Hos." If I plan on asking out someone a friend of mine has dated then I am going to ask my friend if he minds. Ultimately my friendships with Rob, Scott, Kyle, and Matt are too important to me to risk over pussy. So in the end I wish I would have embraced the chance to tell Margaret to go fuck herself when I had the chance. C'est la vie.
Tune in tomorrow when the Happy James Funtime Hour pretends to be fun!
* Please note that AA here does not stand for Alcoholics Anonymous, I am a drunk not an alcoholic, but rather Autonomous Acres
(I would like to point out that I made it through the entire section about Matt being auctioned off like some poor man's Jason Lee without making any Mallrats references or quotes whatsoever. Well fuck.)
SOUNDTRACK
Star Trek Generations Soundtrack by Dennis McCarthy
The Da Vinci Code Soundtrack by Hans Zimmer
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Dispatches from the Abyss - Tuesday, Oct. 2nd
Two days until my 34th birthday you cretins! The only reason I even mention it today is because I bought my non-refundable ticket to the Wings Over Houston airshow today and it looks like there is a low pressure system in the Gulf of Mexico which may or may not go tropical on our asses and may or may not even hit the Houston area. It has been more than a decade since I first attended the Wings Over Houston airshow, which is in its 23rd year. (I think I have the program from the 4th Wings Over Houston airshow, so that should tell you around the time I was attending.) For a few years attending the airshow was one of the few things my father and I did together of which I have fond memories. It was always on the weekend after my birthday and he would take me as part of my birthday celebration. It was at Wings Over Houston that I saw my first B-17 in the air. For whatever reason I have always liked the B-17. I have vague memories of putting together a 1/48th scale model of the B-17 with my father when I was younger but I am not certain if this predates my attendance at Wings Over Houston or not.
TheConfederate Commemorative Air Force's B-29 "FiFi" used to be a regular performer at the show. Sadly that bird is down for maintenance for the foreseeable future. One plane that will be making a return to the Wings Over Houston this year is the CAF's B-24. She used to fly under the moniker "Diamond Lil" however they have restored her to her original configuration and she is now flying under a new name, "Old 97" if I remember correctly. I am looking forward to seeing a B-24 in the air again, along with a lot of the planes from the Lone Star Flight Museum whose airshow I attend each year. I am really hoping to see one of the Spitfires I saw at the Lone Star Flight Museum's airshow in April. It is one of the few Spits in the world that have combat experience, having claimed either two or three kills during WWII. I also hope there is a Hawker Hurricane there as I do not know if I have EVER seen one of those in the air. The only other planes that would make my day would be the Zero out of the Planes of Fame Museum in California or on of the de Havilland Vampires that is floating around. Oh, or the Lancaster bomber that flies out of Canada sometimes. I bet I am going to have to go to one of the shows up north to see that baby, though.
I am really looking forward to going and spending the day shooting pictures of the planes. That reminds me, I have to wipe my memory cards and make sure my batteries are all charged before I head out Saturday morning.
Today at the office was boring as all fuck. I was so bored I could not even bring myself to complete the ethics training I need to do by the end of the month, and that is truly mind-numbing crap. Instead I spent most of the day monitoring the various Star Trek fan film forums I have recently joined and wrestling with how to tell the gentleman that is working on The Wild Wild West fan film series that I would like to help out in any way possible. I do not know why I was so nervous about doing it, but after about an hour or so of putzing around and putting it off I finally got it done. Now we shall see what comes of it.
Last night after I got things posted on the Opiate I finally re-watched the first episode of Torchwood and really enjoyed it. The only thing that bothered me about the first episode is that there is a point towards the end where Gwen, the "civilian" who isn't supposed to know about Torchwood, starts having flashbacks to something she saw earlier in the episode. My problem is that when she sees the item in question the viewer is not allowed to see it as well even, as far as I can tell, in a very quick and off-hand manner. This means that the viewer is not really given the chance to solve the mystery without Gwen guiding them along the path. While I vociferously bitch about movies and TV shows giving too much away and making the audience wait while a character catches up to what we already know, I think it is almost as bad to not present the audience with all the evidence. The Sixth Sense did a masterful job of showing the audience what was going on without giving away the twist. Watching the movie the second time was an infuriating experience for me because once you know what is going on it is painfully obvious. Honestly besides that one quibble and the lingering question of what the hell they are doing on the rooftops all the time I really enjoyed the show and I am glad I have set the DVR to record it. (Oh yeah and I am SOOOOO bummed that Indira Varma is not going to be in any more episodes. I have been in love with her since I first saw her as Niobe in Rome.)
Tonight I watched the second episode of Reaper and it was as enjoyable as the first. Whomever cast Ray Wise as the Devil is BRILLIANT!
I think in yesterday's ramblings I instructed you people to remind me that I wanted to talk about girls in today's post. I still want to talk about girls but I am in an unreasonably good mood so I am going to skip that tonight and rock right on to another subject. We might come back to it if I run out of things to say. Moving on.
I am contemplating taking the Opiate over to WordPress or another blogging site. I am tired of fighting the constant formatting wars with Blogger. To wit check out how the formatting on my post from Friday changes after I insert the block quote. It looks like monkey ass and I cannot find the formatting tags which have gone all wonk-i-fied on me in the html code. What I really need to do is buy a domain name and move all of my stuff to one place on the web. Make my blog the front end of the site but include some slimmed down galleries of my pictures as well as post writing projects once they have been sufficiently milked for the money/CV padding. Moving to WordPress is the easy way out as I already have a WordPress account which I created for a couple of other projects which never got off the ground. One of them was meant to be a group blog for the group with whom I was playing Shadowrun. This was intended to give us space to share short fiction pieces about our characters so that we could keep the game going between game sessions, which were going to be rare since we live in four different cities. The other WordPress blog I have created is Four-Color Combat. This was intended to be a blog about war as seen through comics with occasional forays to war-themed museums and the like. I created a pretty spiffy logo for the blog and everything but then couldn't bring myself to write anything interesting about any of the piles of war comics that I own. Very frustrating stuff because I have a couple of comics which I think are worthy of getting noticed and being discussed, however I just can't bring myself to discuss them right now. I do not know why.
Wow, I am running out of steam early tonight. :/
There is no soundtrack listing for tonight because my iPod had the bad manners to lock up on me while I was headed home from the office. Now I have to wait for the damn thing to run out of battery power before I can do anything else and seeing as how I just charged the battery a day or so ago I have some time to wait. ARGH!
Lately there has been this song by Pink playing on the radio titled "Who Knew." The song really sums up how I feel about several of the women I have known over the past decade. You know what, that's not true. It is more a summary of how I hope they feel about me. I hope they look back on whatever it was that caused us to drift apart and regret their part in it. (I am not talking about you Nik, if you happen to be reading.) I realize that a lot of it has as much to do with me being an obstinate ass, which is probably why I remain single to this day, but sometimes I want to know that they hurt as badly as I do. Sometimes I am not a good person on the inside.
It turns out I lied to you about the lack of soundtrack for this post. After I typed that bit about my iPod abandoning me in my hour of need (which it did about an hour into my flight to Scotland as well) I realized I had a couple of CDs sitting right here by the laptop so I popped one in. In this case it is the "Flame of Wrath" album from the 78th Fraser Highlanders Pipe Band based out of Canada. They are one of the premiere pipe bands in the world and if that is something you are interested in then I suggest you check them out. The album is available from iTunes and here they are in a video from one of their competitions this year:
Finally before I bail on your tonight I wanted to share this picture, which I took today right after I got off the train. I was reading an article about how to be an interesting person and one of the suggestions was take a picture every day, so I am going to try that, at least, seeing as I am already an rather interesting bloke.
Until tomorrow enjoy these two videos of Mustangs doing low-level, high-speed passes. I really hope there are a couple of these at the airshow on Saturday.
The
I am really looking forward to going and spending the day shooting pictures of the planes. That reminds me, I have to wipe my memory cards and make sure my batteries are all charged before I head out Saturday morning.
Today at the office was boring as all fuck. I was so bored I could not even bring myself to complete the ethics training I need to do by the end of the month, and that is truly mind-numbing crap. Instead I spent most of the day monitoring the various Star Trek fan film forums I have recently joined and wrestling with how to tell the gentleman that is working on The Wild Wild West fan film series that I would like to help out in any way possible. I do not know why I was so nervous about doing it, but after about an hour or so of putzing around and putting it off I finally got it done. Now we shall see what comes of it.
Last night after I got things posted on the Opiate I finally re-watched the first episode of Torchwood and really enjoyed it. The only thing that bothered me about the first episode is that there is a point towards the end where Gwen, the "civilian" who isn't supposed to know about Torchwood, starts having flashbacks to something she saw earlier in the episode. My problem is that when she sees the item in question the viewer is not allowed to see it as well even, as far as I can tell, in a very quick and off-hand manner. This means that the viewer is not really given the chance to solve the mystery without Gwen guiding them along the path. While I vociferously bitch about movies and TV shows giving too much away and making the audience wait while a character catches up to what we already know, I think it is almost as bad to not present the audience with all the evidence. The Sixth Sense did a masterful job of showing the audience what was going on without giving away the twist. Watching the movie the second time was an infuriating experience for me because once you know what is going on it is painfully obvious. Honestly besides that one quibble and the lingering question of what the hell they are doing on the rooftops all the time I really enjoyed the show and I am glad I have set the DVR to record it. (Oh yeah and I am SOOOOO bummed that Indira Varma is not going to be in any more episodes. I have been in love with her since I first saw her as Niobe in Rome.)
Tonight I watched the second episode of Reaper and it was as enjoyable as the first. Whomever cast Ray Wise as the Devil is BRILLIANT!
I think in yesterday's ramblings I instructed you people to remind me that I wanted to talk about girls in today's post. I still want to talk about girls but I am in an unreasonably good mood so I am going to skip that tonight and rock right on to another subject. We might come back to it if I run out of things to say. Moving on.
I am contemplating taking the Opiate over to WordPress or another blogging site. I am tired of fighting the constant formatting wars with Blogger. To wit check out how the formatting on my post from Friday changes after I insert the block quote. It looks like monkey ass and I cannot find the formatting tags which have gone all wonk-i-fied on me in the html code. What I really need to do is buy a domain name and move all of my stuff to one place on the web. Make my blog the front end of the site but include some slimmed down galleries of my pictures as well as post writing projects once they have been sufficiently milked for the money/CV padding. Moving to WordPress is the easy way out as I already have a WordPress account which I created for a couple of other projects which never got off the ground. One of them was meant to be a group blog for the group with whom I was playing Shadowrun. This was intended to give us space to share short fiction pieces about our characters so that we could keep the game going between game sessions, which were going to be rare since we live in four different cities. The other WordPress blog I have created is Four-Color Combat. This was intended to be a blog about war as seen through comics with occasional forays to war-themed museums and the like. I created a pretty spiffy logo for the blog and everything but then couldn't bring myself to write anything interesting about any of the piles of war comics that I own. Very frustrating stuff because I have a couple of comics which I think are worthy of getting noticed and being discussed, however I just can't bring myself to discuss them right now. I do not know why.
Wow, I am running out of steam early tonight. :/
There is no soundtrack listing for tonight because my iPod had the bad manners to lock up on me while I was headed home from the office. Now I have to wait for the damn thing to run out of battery power before I can do anything else and seeing as how I just charged the battery a day or so ago I have some time to wait. ARGH!
Lately there has been this song by Pink playing on the radio titled "Who Knew." The song really sums up how I feel about several of the women I have known over the past decade. You know what, that's not true. It is more a summary of how I hope they feel about me. I hope they look back on whatever it was that caused us to drift apart and regret their part in it. (I am not talking about you Nik, if you happen to be reading.) I realize that a lot of it has as much to do with me being an obstinate ass, which is probably why I remain single to this day, but sometimes I want to know that they hurt as badly as I do. Sometimes I am not a good person on the inside.
It turns out I lied to you about the lack of soundtrack for this post. After I typed that bit about my iPod abandoning me in my hour of need (which it did about an hour into my flight to Scotland as well) I realized I had a couple of CDs sitting right here by the laptop so I popped one in. In this case it is the "Flame of Wrath" album from the 78th Fraser Highlanders Pipe Band based out of Canada. They are one of the premiere pipe bands in the world and if that is something you are interested in then I suggest you check them out. The album is available from iTunes and here they are in a video from one of their competitions this year:
Finally before I bail on your tonight I wanted to share this picture, which I took today right after I got off the train. I was reading an article about how to be an interesting person and one of the suggestions was take a picture every day, so I am going to try that, at least, seeing as I am already an rather interesting bloke.
Until tomorrow enjoy these two videos of Mustangs doing low-level, high-speed passes. I really hope there are a couple of these at the airshow on Saturday.
Monday, October 01, 2007
Dispatches from the Abyss - Monday, Oct. 1
So I was a bad monkey yesterday and did not do any writing. I spent most of the day in bed or on the couch and then went to Casa del Rob for steaks, potatoes, and some hanging out. All in all it was a good day capped off by a VERY pleasant evening. Dinner was just Rob, D, Scott, and I. The food was good and the conversation as excellent as it was wide-ranging. I think if more people had friends like these and evenings like these then the world would be a better place.
Actually I spent most of this weekend hanging out with friends. First there was the rugby debacle of Saturday afternoon which I have already discussed, and then Saturday night I met Scott and Matt over at Downing Street for a couple of beers and the final Montecristo #2s from my locker. Looks like I will be dropping some coin on some more cigars before too much longer. We had a good evening of conversation and not too much drinking, but we did manage to close the place down. Matt did bring the first episode of Torchwood with him along with Sports Night, so when I got home I snuggled up with one of my laptops and tried to watch it. Sadly I started to nod off during the episode so I will have to watch it again (perhaps tonight after I am done posting this and ready for bed.)
Earlier in the day I managed to watch the season premier of Bionic Woman and made it all the way through Chuck without any interruptions. To be honest I was pretty disappointed in both of them. Bionic Woman suffers from being a two-hour pilot crammed into and hour as well as the writers embracing every cliche they could think of, which combined to deliver a story which was somewhat disjointed as well as somewhat disinteresting. I am going to give it a chance to get better, but I do not have a lot of hope for the show. I think my biggest problem with Chuck is that I REALLY wanted to like the show and it could not have lived up to the expectations I had going in. Two of my favorite movies when I was younger were Gotcha! and Cloak & Dagger, both nerd makes good with spies movies. I have not seen them in years so I cannot make a mature judgment about how good or bad they are, but my memories are of them being excellent movies. Chuck just did not strike the chord with me. Part of it is that they resolved the conflict between the CIA and NSA agents a little too quickly, and even though this rivalry continues in the second episode it just felt kinda dumb. Then there is the character of Chuck who seems just a little too pathetic for even my tastes. If they had cast Ben Stiller in the role I would probably not watch the show. As it is I am going to keep DVRing it for another few weeks but I do not feel any real urge to watch it while it is on.
Writing about Chuck reminded me about the Fox show The New Adventures of Beans Baxter. This was one of the shows Fox premiered when they became the fourth network. I don't think it lasted a season and the only things I really remember from the show are that in one episode Beans Baxter learns that women tape recipes in the bathroom stalls and that Beans' love interest was one Karen Mistal who, along with Real Genius' Michelle Meyrink, aroused *ahem* interest from a young James. They were probably two of my earliest star-crushes. Anyways, getting back on point, the premise of the show was that Beans' father was a spy and had disappeared and somehow Beans was getting pulled into the life, all the while having to maintain the appearance of being a normal teenager. Sound familiar? I thought as much.
That was pretty much all I accomplished aside from finishing the ripping of about a CD case worth of CDs to MP3 format. Tomorrow night I am going to update the tag info and load them to the iPod so the funkywoodjamz (yes, I named my iPod funkywoodjamz) can be even funkier. Oh yeah! Now I just need to sucker Matt's friend Sara into transliterating the song titles for the stack of Japanese CDs I have and I can get those done as well and have some truly funky music to drop.
I also finished almost all of my comics from last week, once again managing to staty ahead of the game. One of the comics which came out last week was JSA Classified #30, which features the second part of a Mr. Terrific story by Arvid Nelson. I think Arvid Nelson may be one of the most under-appreciated writers working in comics today. As far as I know the only other series he has worked on are his breakout series Rex Mundi and his new series from Dark Horse, Zero Killer. When Rex Mundi first came out a couple of years ago I purposely stayed away from it as it had the peculiar smell of a The Da Vinci Code rip-off, a stench shared by the movie National Treasure which I enjoy more than I should. While Rex Mundi can certainly be painted with this brush, Nelson brings MUCH more to the table. If you found the questions about the Holy Grail brought up by The Da Vinci Code then I think you will find Rex Mundi an interesting read. Nelson's current work in JSA Classified involves Nazis, rockets, and a government cover-up of a secret program. Plus Mr. Terrific gets framed for murder. Hopefully the finale, which I think should be next issue, will live up to the build up. I could really do without the artist, one Alex Sanchez. I have trouble telling which character is which.
Another comic which came out last week which I am REALLY enjoying is X-Men: First Class which is written by Jeff Parker. Parker is getting the notice he deserves, at least in the comicsblogosphere, for being a writer who is not afraid to have fun in his comics. I have yet to read anything from Parker that I would not let an 8 or 9 year-old read, which is not something you can say about most comics these days. On the flip side of that Parker writes stories that are as intellectually satisfying as any of the spandex books out there. If you enjoy good, fun comics you should check out either the first X-Men: First Class collection, which collects the miniseries which was so popular it led to the series being turned into a monthly book, or Agents of Atlas. My only complaint with this book is that in the second issue Hank was wearing a Utilikilt BACKWARDS (that is with the pleats in the front). It is stupid the things I will notice, isn't it? Regardless of the kilt faux pas the book is still worth checking out if you're into that sort of thing.
After spending most of the day thinking I wanted to order pizza for dinner I took the frugal route and cooked up some macaroni and cheese (aka. Kraft Dinner). Since I ate about three hours ago I have been burping this nasty flavor back into my mouth. I looked on the boxes and apparently Kraft Dinner has an expiration date. Who knew?
Right now The Simpsons Sing the Blues is ripping on my other PC. I can't wait to add that to the MP3 collection if for no other reason than "Do the Bartman." That is just made of awesome.
So I saw this today. There are some things which cannot be unseen however the first comment is true of just about everything. In fact I tried to convince my friends that the saying, "More luchadores" is the new "More cowbell." So far no one is biting, but I think with time this is gonna go my way.
Anyhoo we're running out of time here. I need to get this posted to the Opiate and then send out an email to some people about my birfday party plans. Drinking at the Kelvin Arms seems to be the way forward on this one. Saturday night. Should be fun. Oh yeah, remind me to talk about women tomorrow night. One in particular has been on my mind lately (AGAIN) and I need to bitch about it. See you tomorrow!
SOUNDTRACK
W. A. Mozart - Horn Concerto No. 2, K 417 - I. Allegro
Bach - Violin Concerto in E, BWV 1042 - 2. Adagio
Monty Python - I Bet You They Won't Play This Song on the Radio
Pat Benetar - Painted Desert (skipped)
Mannheim Steamroller - O Holy Night (skipped)
Beyonce - Me Myself and I (skipped)
Fallout Boy - The Pros and Cons of Breathing
Huey Lewis and the News - Perfect World (skipped)
Rush - Earthshine
Information Society - Something in the Air
Puffy AmiYumi - Atarashi Hibi
Evanescence - Bring Me to Life
Michael Penn - Invisible (You know this album might be the closest thing to perfect in my collection. There is not a song on this CD I skip.)
Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra - Kiss the Sky
ZZ Top - Rough Boy
Sting - Wilt Thou Unkind Thus Reave Me
Heather Nova - Walking Higher
Blue Man Group - Mandelgroove
DJ Peaking (The Veronicas vs. Pink) - U and UR Hand 4Ever
Shania Twain - Leaving is the Only Way Out (skipped. Too slow)
KISS - Any Way You Want It
Beastie Boys - Do It
Willie Nelson - I Never Cared for You
Wide Boy Awake - Slang Teacher
Star Wars Revelations Soundtrack - Sukaal's Vision
Shania Twain - Raining on Our Love (skipped)
Bowling for Soup - If You Come Back to Me
Actually I spent most of this weekend hanging out with friends. First there was the rugby debacle of Saturday afternoon which I have already discussed, and then Saturday night I met Scott and Matt over at Downing Street for a couple of beers and the final Montecristo #2s from my locker. Looks like I will be dropping some coin on some more cigars before too much longer. We had a good evening of conversation and not too much drinking, but we did manage to close the place down. Matt did bring the first episode of Torchwood with him along with Sports Night, so when I got home I snuggled up with one of my laptops and tried to watch it. Sadly I started to nod off during the episode so I will have to watch it again (perhaps tonight after I am done posting this and ready for bed.)
Earlier in the day I managed to watch the season premier of Bionic Woman and made it all the way through Chuck without any interruptions. To be honest I was pretty disappointed in both of them. Bionic Woman suffers from being a two-hour pilot crammed into and hour as well as the writers embracing every cliche they could think of, which combined to deliver a story which was somewhat disjointed as well as somewhat disinteresting. I am going to give it a chance to get better, but I do not have a lot of hope for the show. I think my biggest problem with Chuck is that I REALLY wanted to like the show and it could not have lived up to the expectations I had going in. Two of my favorite movies when I was younger were Gotcha! and Cloak & Dagger, both nerd makes good with spies movies. I have not seen them in years so I cannot make a mature judgment about how good or bad they are, but my memories are of them being excellent movies. Chuck just did not strike the chord with me. Part of it is that they resolved the conflict between the CIA and NSA agents a little too quickly, and even though this rivalry continues in the second episode it just felt kinda dumb. Then there is the character of Chuck who seems just a little too pathetic for even my tastes. If they had cast Ben Stiller in the role I would probably not watch the show. As it is I am going to keep DVRing it for another few weeks but I do not feel any real urge to watch it while it is on.
Writing about Chuck reminded me about the Fox show The New Adventures of Beans Baxter. This was one of the shows Fox premiered when they became the fourth network. I don't think it lasted a season and the only things I really remember from the show are that in one episode Beans Baxter learns that women tape recipes in the bathroom stalls and that Beans' love interest was one Karen Mistal who, along with Real Genius' Michelle Meyrink, aroused *ahem* interest from a young James. They were probably two of my earliest star-crushes. Anyways, getting back on point, the premise of the show was that Beans' father was a spy and had disappeared and somehow Beans was getting pulled into the life, all the while having to maintain the appearance of being a normal teenager. Sound familiar? I thought as much.
That was pretty much all I accomplished aside from finishing the ripping of about a CD case worth of CDs to MP3 format. Tomorrow night I am going to update the tag info and load them to the iPod so the funkywoodjamz (yes, I named my iPod funkywoodjamz) can be even funkier. Oh yeah! Now I just need to sucker Matt's friend Sara into transliterating the song titles for the stack of Japanese CDs I have and I can get those done as well and have some truly funky music to drop.
I also finished almost all of my comics from last week, once again managing to staty ahead of the game. One of the comics which came out last week was JSA Classified #30, which features the second part of a Mr. Terrific story by Arvid Nelson. I think Arvid Nelson may be one of the most under-appreciated writers working in comics today. As far as I know the only other series he has worked on are his breakout series Rex Mundi and his new series from Dark Horse, Zero Killer. When Rex Mundi first came out a couple of years ago I purposely stayed away from it as it had the peculiar smell of a The Da Vinci Code rip-off, a stench shared by the movie National Treasure which I enjoy more than I should. While Rex Mundi can certainly be painted with this brush, Nelson brings MUCH more to the table. If you found the questions about the Holy Grail brought up by The Da Vinci Code then I think you will find Rex Mundi an interesting read. Nelson's current work in JSA Classified involves Nazis, rockets, and a government cover-up of a secret program. Plus Mr. Terrific gets framed for murder. Hopefully the finale, which I think should be next issue, will live up to the build up. I could really do without the artist, one Alex Sanchez. I have trouble telling which character is which.
Another comic which came out last week which I am REALLY enjoying is X-Men: First Class which is written by Jeff Parker. Parker is getting the notice he deserves, at least in the comicsblogosphere, for being a writer who is not afraid to have fun in his comics. I have yet to read anything from Parker that I would not let an 8 or 9 year-old read, which is not something you can say about most comics these days. On the flip side of that Parker writes stories that are as intellectually satisfying as any of the spandex books out there. If you enjoy good, fun comics you should check out either the first X-Men: First Class collection, which collects the miniseries which was so popular it led to the series being turned into a monthly book, or Agents of Atlas. My only complaint with this book is that in the second issue Hank was wearing a Utilikilt BACKWARDS (that is with the pleats in the front). It is stupid the things I will notice, isn't it? Regardless of the kilt faux pas the book is still worth checking out if you're into that sort of thing.
After spending most of the day thinking I wanted to order pizza for dinner I took the frugal route and cooked up some macaroni and cheese (aka. Kraft Dinner). Since I ate about three hours ago I have been burping this nasty flavor back into my mouth. I looked on the boxes and apparently Kraft Dinner has an expiration date. Who knew?
Right now The Simpsons Sing the Blues is ripping on my other PC. I can't wait to add that to the MP3 collection if for no other reason than "Do the Bartman." That is just made of awesome.
So I saw this today. There are some things which cannot be unseen however the first comment is true of just about everything. In fact I tried to convince my friends that the saying, "More luchadores" is the new "More cowbell." So far no one is biting, but I think with time this is gonna go my way.
Anyhoo we're running out of time here. I need to get this posted to the Opiate and then send out an email to some people about my birfday party plans. Drinking at the Kelvin Arms seems to be the way forward on this one. Saturday night. Should be fun. Oh yeah, remind me to talk about women tomorrow night. One in particular has been on my mind lately (AGAIN) and I need to bitch about it. See you tomorrow!
SOUNDTRACK
W. A. Mozart - Horn Concerto No. 2, K 417 - I. Allegro
Bach - Violin Concerto in E, BWV 1042 - 2. Adagio
Monty Python - I Bet You They Won't Play This Song on the Radio
Pat Benetar - Painted Desert (skipped)
Mannheim Steamroller - O Holy Night (skipped)
Beyonce - Me Myself and I (skipped)
Fallout Boy - The Pros and Cons of Breathing
Huey Lewis and the News - Perfect World (skipped)
Rush - Earthshine
Information Society - Something in the Air
Puffy AmiYumi - Atarashi Hibi
Evanescence - Bring Me to Life
Michael Penn - Invisible (You know this album might be the closest thing to perfect in my collection. There is not a song on this CD I skip.)
Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra - Kiss the Sky
ZZ Top - Rough Boy
Sting - Wilt Thou Unkind Thus Reave Me
Heather Nova - Walking Higher
Blue Man Group - Mandelgroove
DJ Peaking (The Veronicas vs. Pink) - U and UR Hand 4Ever
Shania Twain - Leaving is the Only Way Out (skipped. Too slow)
KISS - Any Way You Want It
Beastie Boys - Do It
Willie Nelson - I Never Cared for You
Wide Boy Awake - Slang Teacher
Star Wars Revelations Soundtrack - Sukaal's Vision
Shania Twain - Raining on Our Love (skipped)
Bowling for Soup - If You Come Back to Me
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