Monday, April 30, 2007

I blame the Invisible Pink Unicorn

Apparently, Utah Republicans are debating whether or not Satan himself is behind illegal immigration.

Something tells me that 100% of the delegates at that convention can trace their ancestry back to American immigration.

Friday, April 27, 2007

if you're going to graffiti ...

in cement, at least learn how to spell first.

nostrols

Otherwise you just create a lasting tribute to the fact that you're an idiot.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

everything sucks too much to complain about it all

Blogs are little more than a world stage for personal bitchfests. Still, there are so many things that I've been wanting to write about recently that I find I'm not motivated to sit down and write about any of them.

There was the ridiculous jump to conclusions in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings that video games were to blame for the actions of a seriously disturbed young man. Just like other people decided that it clearly had to do with foreigners, Muslims, and liberals.

There's the Alberto Gonzales testimony which I listened to last week that left the entire world (minus ... you know, one guy) convinced that Alberto should resign. Plus there's the Wolfowitz crap, the Tillman/Lynch crap, and the fact that there's nothing on CNN.com about the crap going on in Darfur but there is a "news story" about a video of a cat playing the piano on YouTube.

I'm slammed at work. I'm too busy again and now that I have a car, now I'm staying late and working too much again.

Everything's just sorta ... crappy. Everywhere. But it's all so freakin' important, and it isn't going to get any less important/less busy/less quiet the closer it gets to next year's presidential election.

Monday, April 23, 2007

I understand the fishnet bodysuit ...

But what's with all of the balloons?

I don't know who this woman is, but she plays a helluva mean keytar.

God damn, this video made my day ...

Friday, April 20, 2007

in your face, random snotty pundit!

Manda and I were watching TV last night and the show we were watching said "now on in 120 countries." This prompted a discussion between us about something Amanda had heard from some TV talking head somewhere saying "Most Americans would be hard pressed to name 120 countries."

First of all, I think most people in the world would be hard pressed to name 120 countries, regardless of their nationality. There are apparently only 202 countries. Regardless of that, we took it as a challenge. So, being the wild and crazy couple that we are, we spent a healthy chunk of our night doing our best to name 120 different countries. In the end, the final total of actual countries that we named:

122

I'll tell you, though, it was hard. The biggest problem is that we can name a ton of countries from stable regions in the world, but there are a lot of countries that spring up, change names, divide, etc. in more chaotic regions of the world and it's hard to know what they are right now.

For instance, we were both surprised to discover that both Zaire and Yugoslavia are no longer countries. While we were familiar with their replacement countries (Democratic Republic of the Congo and Serbia), we didn't know their old namesakes no longer exist. We both also found ourselves desperately wanting to name certain cities as countries, even when we knew it was wrong. My brain was insisting (despite repeated attempts to get it to shut up) that Heidelberg was a country. We both also kept wanting to say that Nairobi was a country, even though we both knew all along that it's just a Kenyan city.

What annoyed me most were the moments when my brain latched onto names that weren't even places, but simply decided they sounded like countries. Mallomar, Cacao, and Lusitania are each a cookie, a tree, and a sunken ship, respectively.

Still, we got there in the end and I'm proud of us. Interestingly, most of the countries we hear about in the news weren't the ones first on our list. Iraq and Afganistan didn't come to us until No. 58 and 60 which means that Cameroon and Lietchtenstein were both further at the forefront of our mental country inventory. Albania beat out North Korea and Papua New Guinea came to us before Sudan, Rwanda, Isreal, or Palestine.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

holy hell, I'm in love

With "Dohar: Lord of Beasts."

There better be more of this. Good god, I love it.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

is this just me being an a-hole?

David Collins and I went to Panda Express tonight for a little overtime chinese food. While standing there in line, I noticed a sign they have advertising their catering services.

weWokYouParty

Please ... tell me it's just me and that I have an evil mind that will make me go to hell, but ...

Is it just me, or does that sign read like someone with a stereotypical Asian accent saying the phrase "We'll rock your party"? Someone at Panda Express must have noticed that, right?

This wasn't intentional, right?

Monday, April 16, 2007

good-bye, public transportation

Hello, new car. Yep. This weekend I managed to drag my sick ass out of the house long enough to go buy a new 2007 Honda Civic LX. I'm thrilled.

And let me tell you, if you ever want to go buy a car, ask Amanda to go with you. She is a master negotiator. She plays hardball, she finagles like a pro, she generally all-around rocks the house when it comes to negotiations. If you were to check Edmonds.com, you'd see that - in the Bay Area - new Civic's are going for about $18,200. Amanda was able to talk the dealership into letting us have it for $16,500 + a 7 year/120,000 mile extended warranty.

I'm telling you, ask for her help. She's incredible. If it had been just me on my own, I'd probably have walked out of there with a used car that I spent $19k on. Don't ask me to go be your negotiatory wingman. You won't like the results.

I pick the car up this evening when I get home from work. I'm totally excited. Now I just have to figure out how I can get rid of the rotting husk of my Camero that is still in the driveway. Turns out the title for it is missing after having moved 5 times in 7 years. Go figure. So, now I have to wait for the DMV to issue me a new title before I can donate it to an animal rescue charity. Nothing moves slower than the speed of bureaucracy.

Friday, April 13, 2007

totally stir crazy

This is my sixth six day home out of the last two weeks and I'm going nuts. I've resorted to taking stupid quizzes on the internet to keep my brain from completely turning into Jello. So far I've discovered which of the X-men I am (I'm apparently Professor X), I've learned that George McFly is an asshole, and I've discovered that I know my Nintendo trivia much more than I know my Atari trivia.





I can't wait to go back to work on Monday.

Monday, April 09, 2007

diagnosis: awesome

As I was walking down into the BART Embarcadarro station tonight, I passed a woman soliciting for spare change. Here was her pitch:

"Spare some change so that my daughter can get a diameter?"

Today was a good day for train crazies. There was also the 20-something woman this morning who told me she'd been "on the street since the '30s" and wondered if I could tell her how much a soda cost. I told her I didn't know. I wasn't sure which decade's price she was looking for.

Then there was the 50-something stoner duo who sat on opposite sides of the train and talked VERY loudly about how 1.) they both had to pee, and 2.) how easy it would for an evil chemist to let some kind of super-virus loose on a train without anyone ever finding out until it was too late.

Mostly, though, they just reminisced about peeing into Ziplock bags on long Greyhound bus rides.

back from the beyond ... sorta

I'm back at work today for the first time since getting knocked on my ass by a bad cold. I'm not 100% yet, but at least I'm not as incapacitated as last week. Although, riding on BART with a lingering NyQuil head-fog was a bit tough.

So, let's see ... I still owe Ry a description of Ben's wedding. Maybe I'll write that tomorrow. We have two new people starting in our department today, which rocks. We've been so short-staffed for so long ... treading water until we could get some more bodies into the empty offices here. Thankfully, the days of treading water look like they're coming to an end.

Muh. This is a boring post. Oh, while I was sick, Manda and I watched the movie "Stranger Than Fiction." Good movie. Really good. I liked it a lot.

Crap. Guess that's all I've got for you today.

Thursday, April 05, 2007

like looking in a mirror

I'm so glad that this thing is finally on YouTube. Game Design has become a hot little topic when it comes to collegiate level trade schools. All kinds of schools at all levels of the academic strata from small AA programs to BAs at universities like USC are now starting to offer programs where they teach people how to make, program, and design games. As such, many of them are now starting to advertise during daytime TV just like the old "Earn your diploma from home" commercials did in the '90s.

Anyway, this has got to be, hands down, the absolute worst commercial that's ever been made for a Game Design program. Yes, there's the one for Westwood College where the two guys are chastised by their boss and look like idiots. But I think this one from Collins College is even worse.

Absolutely nothing of what they're saying makes any sense. I especially destest that part where they say "Let's make sure the sound we used in the last level fits here, too." Sitting between them on a little end table is a 16 channel mixing board. Doofus A then reaches over and touches his finger to one of the EQ knobs and a terrible "space laser" effect plays out of the TV. I don't know what they think they're selling, but it sure as hell isn't game design.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

it's 4 am

This is the third night in a row that my cold has kept me up through the night. Tonight is the worst yet. I can't sleep because I keep coughing and I keep coughing because I can't seem to get back to sleep.

That and there's a persistent phlem wad in my throat that keeps tickling my tonsils and making me feel just wonderful.

I'm so exhausted. This bites.