Stick it where the sun don't shine...

I received a package yesterday that made the work day pretty short. I ordered two blue ninja stikfas from ThinkGeek. These guys are just fun. A couple of my coworkers give me funny looks, but I was surprised as to how many actually want to know more about them. One of the guys near me actually ordered two as well (he wants to have the stikfas rock band).

So right now I have 1 legionnaire vs. 2 blue ninjas. I thought that was a fair fight (but if one of the ninjas is a girl...then the legionnaire doesn't have a chance). After the initial trial period, I have decided to purchase more and make a whole battle scene in the upper cabinet of my cubicle. I mean why not, right? I have to sit in this box for 6 to 8 hours a day, why not have toys entertain my brain while I try to discover the secret to badly written non-source controlled code?

At any rate, I think I'm going to stick (no pun intended) with the fantasy and ancient Asian models of stikfas. There are 2 versions of dragons that I'm tracking down, 2 different knights with horses, a samurai, black ninjas (which would kick the blue ninja's butts), some warrior monks, and I think I'll get a couple more legionnaires just to be able to have a formation of warriors (if I give them the spears and round shields, I guess they become a phalanx). For being an Hasbro toy, these things are a little hard to find. A decent site to order from is the BigBadToyStore.com.

You're just mad that my toys are better....

Stick to your ribs....

So this weekend, Big Joe Duke, of BigJoeDuke.com fame, held a grill-deck-congrats-to-Tammy's-sister-in-law gathering. The aroma of charring flesh found its way past the Gulf Stream, around the polar ice caps, crossed the autobahn, skipped the marinara trench and made it to Birmingham. As such, I couldn't resist the temptation to consume mass quantities of ribs (I don't even like ribs, but BJD's are the bomb yo!).

It was good to see all of the people I still remember from my old town (well with one exception, Porter was in Atlanta getting his rock and roll on). It's amazing how quickly humans can jump into old patterns and how well we remember them. At the conclusion of the weekend, I almost felt as if I had never left. Which is both a blessing and a curse.

While heading out to come back to Bham, I experienced a sense of loss and loneliness that I did not expect. It was as if I was moving all over again. In hindsight, I can clearly see why this happened and how in my excitement to have "charred flesh of the rib-like kind", I didn't even think about the fact that it was going to happen. Eh.....we live and learn I guess.

Pork...the other white meat...

We have baby's on racks....

Last night I was watching an episode of CSI on Spike and one of the main story threads started out about this dad who had forgotten his 6 month old son was in the back seat. Dad parks, locks the car and goes into work. Now this show is set in Las Vegas (i.e. the desert) and it's during the summertime. So needless to say, Jr. becomes a bacon cheeseburger.

Recently one of my best friends had a baby boy. And I've said on many occasions that my friend's son is as close to having my own child that I want to ever get. And while Jacob (the baby) is only a few weeks old, I love the little retard like true family. So here I am watching this show about some negligent parent causing the death of his kid, in what seemed like an accident and thinking about just how many ways are there for a parent to "accidentally" harm his/her child. Or how even I, as just a family friend, could hurt little J. The more I thought about the more I was thinking that I should really just stay away from Jacob until he was 16, which occurred to me as a good age in which it becomes difficult to royally screw up a kid.

It's weird to me to be sitting at home having no children and not planning on having any, yet to start worrying about all the problems in the world and how we might be able to protect Jacob from it all. And to be worrying about are we going to get him into a good college, how do we keep him away from drugs, and other such "parental" questions. Is this the point in my life where I suddenly realize that I'm missing out or not complete? And why do I suddenly consider myself part of the "we" that's going to raise him?

Another friend of mine recently told me that he felt it was time to move on in his life. Now this guy is younger than I am and, while I love him like a brother, I would consider him a hellion. But he felt this inner need to settle down, find a girl that he wanted to spend his life with and maybe start thinking about children. I assume this is some sort of natural desire for us humans to have, but I'm wondering if maybe I slept through it.

This world can be amazing and scary, and a lot of the time both at once. I feel I have to throw a shout out to the good parents and commend their bravery for taking on the world by having children. I'm sure as hell not that brave, at least not yet. As for CSI, it turns out that the baby's death wasn't an accident (like we didn't see that coming). Mommy and Daddy thought the kid had some terminal disease and left him in the car on purpose hoping to "spare" both him and them the life they had to lead. Heh, gotta love the human mind.

Baby, the other white meat....

JDATE and PWoT

Recently (the past week and counting) I've been extremely bored at work....like nothing really to do. Of course like any good American, I'm not telling my boss that. And of course I rationalize it as he knows I'm here and if he wants something he'll let me know. At any rate, I've been very very bored and a friend of mine sent me a link to an article about World of Warcraft which lead to my discovery of Pointless Waste of Time.

Now there's all kinds of good stuff on that site (especially if your a bit crass like me), but I stumbled upon JDATE or "John Dies at the End". I spent three days at work reading through it and then the forum afterwards. Needless to say I thought it was pretty good. The language is rough, but it feels real not like most stories where you read some statement that a character made and think, "who the hell speaks like that? I'd be pissed and would have been cussing..". At any rate, I found it great entertainment while I was at work and some of the pictures they collected to embed in the story are pretty freaky.

Now I don't think I would pay money for the story, but since it was free I'd have to say it was worth twice that much. Hopefully the author will refine his style and actually get a publishing deal somewhere and then I'd love to see what he comes up with.

Frou Frou and you too....

So I was doing my normal weekend activities (you know, like losing at chess to my bar stool) when I happened to discover Charter OnDemand (more on that in a different post). Being bored, I decided to watch some movies that I hadn't been able or had the desire to watch yet. Two of which where Garden State (definately an indie film) and Shreak 2 (I'd seen bits and pieces, but never the whole thing start to finish).

Garden State is a bit different but it helped to pass a little bit of time, and of course theres the soundtrack. When I was done watching I thought to myself, "That one tune right at the climax was pretty good. Wonder who it is?". But as my bar stool had just assualted my queen with a knight, I didn't do much about it. Eventually I moved on to watch Shrek 2, decent flik, not as good as the original story wise, though amazing visuals. At the end when the credits were rolling, I noticed a song that sounded decent. At this point having lost 3 games to 1 to the bar stool, I took a break to find out name's and artists for said songs.

Suprisingly, both songs where done by the same band/person/people/whatever they're british, Frou Frou. Weird how that works, don't you think?

Maybe the stool doesn't know how to play backgammon...

$20 on the way to the buffet....

A few of the peeps at work like to get together and play poker occasionally (approx. once every 2.694637 to 3.648912 weeks). I'm generally not one to gamble, but I decide I could really use the social contact (it was either that or go home and resume trying to convince my wall that it's the opposable thumbs that make me superior to it). So my adventure begins.

I end up being 25 minutes early, so instead of stopping I just drive around presumably house hunting. The truth of the matter is I'm trying to avoid sitting with this guy and his wife in that awkward "we don't know each other really, but lets act like we're not social retards" environment. I screw around for a little bit, then show back up at 7 on the dot. Unfortunately our host spots me so I can't pull away. So I park the truck, and head inside only to find out that while I'm on time, everyone else is going to be an hour or so late. Just my luck.

Eventually everyone shows and we start to play some poker. Now I'm really nervous, I've never played for money before (if you can call $10 money) and my luck is so bad that when I go to casinos, I generally just throw $20 at the change girl (if she's cute and not make I might actually hand it to her politely) and head to the buffet. At the end of the night I was mostly happy, I walked away with $1 more than I started, didn't socially isolate myself, had a few laughs to boot. Mission success!

Now if I could just figure out what happened during those 3 hours I blacked out and why my butt hurts.......

Ah! So thats how anthrax works.....

HowStuffWorks is awesome!!! I mean come on, where else can you learn how a thermonuclear device works and then see a little animated graphic of how death and destruction incarnate happens? Or get little animated flash snippets of what happens to a woman going through PMS.

I have to admit, when I used to teach I would often check out the topic of the day on HSW and see if there was any info I could use to spice up my classroom. The computer section was a great source of graphics and non-uber nerd ways of relating information.

I was recently bored at work and just started going to link after link and learning how different stuff works (like cold fussion and cooking the books). So I guess I find it entertaining as well.

Now if I could just find the one on how dating works....

Learn to read in six syllables or less...

Books are the bomb. People say my generation doesn't read enough. I'd have to agree with them (who ever they happen to be). We don't! While a few primates in my "monkeysphere" of friends tend to break the mold when it comes to reading, most people I know or talk to seem to look down there noses at reading for themselves.

I guess we have busy schedules, work problems and - according to all the spam - errectile disfunctions and small breasts, but it amazes me how many people have such double standards for reading. A few of the parents that I work with when asked haven't actually read a book front to back in as long as they can remember, but they want their kids to read through 6.284 books a day and be smart to become doctors. What kind of example does that set?

As we get older we have responsibilities and changes in desires that lead to us working to hard to pay the bills, become work-a-holics, make the spouse happy, or what have you, and I understand that. But I'll be damned if some of the best books ever written are for us, the adults. I read the kids books when I was young, heck I still read them, but I can't really imagine how boring and uninteresting I would be if I didn't expose my mind and imagination to adult reading.

Now where did I put my copy of Highlights.....

True traffic laws...

Burnout 3 should be used in driving school.....as a very good example of how we want to drive but shouldn't. I'm generally not a big racing gamer. Yes I play Gran Turismo, but that series is about the extent of my driving games. But I've been addicted to Burnout 3 for a few weeks now.

While it's definitely an arcade racer, the road rage event, and to a lesser extent the crash events, are almost like road therapy. In the rage the entire purpose is to try to make the other cars crash while avoiding the same being done to you....so the entire time you're trying to ram the crap out of someone else's vehicle and get the ultimate satisfaction when their car suddenly flips 50 jabillion times and explodes.

Just have to remember that doing that on my way to work might be considered impolite....

How to do the rain dance...

I jumped in the truck this morning to make my cheery (not really) way to wor. In my stupor I happen to actually take notice of how clean/dirty my truck is. A week ago, I had the thing washed, waxed, detailed, pimpified because I though it needed it. Stupid me......

While the inside got a good cleaning, I don't know why I even bothered to pay for the outside. Ever sinced I move to B'ham it has rained just about every freakin day. I thought I left the Gulf Coast and moved inland a little to avoid the torrential downpours, guess not.

It's probably my own fault...I paid to pimpify both my truck and Big'J's truck (his birthday present...I couldn't think of anything else one guy buys another without either feeling a bit uneasy) so I guess I had it coming.....

Show me the money....

So, is it wrong to get two paychecks? I changed jobs recently and because of how I was getting payed at my old job, I still receive a a couple more paychecks from them. Now I'm not going to be rich or anything but, getting a paycheck from my current job then looking at my bank account to see another deposit just feels so damn good that it has to be bad, right?

It won't last though, but a few people at my current job know about it and give me flak for it. Either way, I'm trying to look at the double pay as a perk for the crap I had to deal with at my last job before I left.....which suddenly sounds pretty dumb considering it was money I earned and would be entitled to whether my job had smelled of roses or not.....heh.....I'm just glad I have a new job.

Anyway, a good friend of mine who is always looking out for me gave me a bunch of tips on what to do with the "extra" pay since it's definitely above and beyond my current living expenses. It seems a bit scary to me though...I'm using the money to pay off my credit cards and pay down my truck loan and putting some in savings....what happened to the kid who would blow it on booze and video games?

How do I turn this thing on??

so i've done it....i started a blog. just like every other person in the entire universe. it seems so weird to actually write things down, but like most other things in my life i quickly ask, "how long will this last?" i tend to have trouble commiting to doing things on a regular basis, so who knows how long i will actually post.