No, I'm going to call it a vacation like god intended. You see, L-Dawg and X-tina, after something like 18 years together, are finally getting married. Everyone expects absolutely nothing to change--we already refer to them by one last name. Yeah, it's hers and not his, but she's pretty much in charge. And she's also extremely mannish (I'm kicking it old school on that joke).
So, yeah, chelsadilla and I--together with a bunch of other people--are heading out to Massachusetts for the nuptials. The actual event is happening somewhere near Cape Cod, but all of us who aren't actually getting married this weekend are spending a day in Boston, which I'm pretty excited for. I went to Boston when I was a kid, but I'm excited to see it again as an adult.
So, yes, the weekend looks to be very awesome.
But that's not all. Because, by either sheer coincidence or awesome planning and follow-through, chelsadilla and I are spending the week after the wedding in a cabin in upstate New York together with two of my best friends from college. So, yeah, the next ten days are going to be jam-packed with fun.
Potentially not so much with the blogging, though. Apparently cabins in upstate New York don't even come with cell-phone signal, so I guess I can forget about a high-speed internet hook up. And no instant Blackberry e-mail, either. This could get really very interesting; there was an e-mail outage for a few hours last night and I almost lost it.
When I first came to Wisconsin, many things shocked me. Fried cheese? How had I never thought of that before! Forty below? You've got to be fucking kidding me!
But one of the things that struck me the most was the degree to which people were devoted to the Packers. Coming from Arizona, a state with only mediocre sports teams (yeah, the Diamondbacks won the World Series that one year, but I still don't think they had any die-hard fans) it was strange to see such universal, abiding love for one sports team.
But if people loved the Packers, then they worshiped Brett Favre. The way that people talked about him was just, well, awesome. Sure, people loved the way that he played, but there was more to it than that. There were stories about him helping his teammates with difficult personal issues and about how accessible and nice he was to fans. The consensus was that he wasn't just one of the best athletes ever, he was a great guy, too.
And then that whole thing with him retiring but then not retiring but then retiring but then wanting to play for the Vikings but then retiring but then playing for the Jets happened. I got the impression that people wanted to give him a chance. When I was a kid, I looked up to Superman; when Wisconsinites were kids, they looked up to Brett Favre. And now he was being a douche, but people wanted to forgive him for it. And many of them did.
And now he's back except that he's not and whatever else. Favre's was wildly pathetic before, now it's just unacceptable. Had Favre just hung up his helmet four years ago, he would have gone down as one of the best athletes in any sport. He'd be up there with Jordan and Woods and whoever else. Now he's just going to be remembered as a sad, indecisive, selfish guy who didn't know how to give up the glory days. He's like the high-school quarterback that, as an adult, still looks back on the homecoming game as his best moment, only on a much bigger scale.
Chelsadilla and I went to the Farmer's Market Saturday and parked at the parking ramp by the Great Dane. This is what we saw:
In case you can't tell, that's a car parked across three parking spaces and behind a pillar. It's also parked in by the surrounding cars, so that there is absolutely no conceivable way this car could get out of the spot unless at least two cars on either side move.
How did this thing get here? What asshat or drunk put it there? The world may never know. But in mean time, I plan on laughing at it.
Someone asked me how I've been today. I responded by saying "busy" in an annoyed and frustrated tone of voice. Between work, other obligations, and band practice, I had almost no time to myself today. In fact, I was running around so much that I didn't eat a bite of food until about 7:30 this evening, not counting some extremely disappointing beef jerky I got from a gas station (there is a brand of beef jerky that's good--what brand is that?).
But, anyway, I said that I was busy in an annoyed and frustrated voice. But I wasn't annoyed or frustrated. Being busy is good. Being busy means that I've got lots of work to do, and that means I can pay my bills. Plus I like the work I do--I got a lot of satisfaction out of what I accomplished today.
Still, I haven't been getting enough sleep. Or general down time. I mean, I have, but I haven't. I couldn't handle being unemployed and having absolutely nothing to do all day. As much as I used to like doing it, sitting around watching TV all day for days on end just doesn't sound appealing to me.
So, yeah, given the choice, I'd rather be busy than not. I'd rather be overworked than unemployed. And I'd rather be tired than bored. But that doesn't mean that I'm not going to sleep in like a motherfucker on Saturday.
I have so many things I want to blog about, but I keep running out of time. I get up early, go to work, come home in the late afternoon or early evening, hang around, make dinner, go for a walk, and then, all of a sudden, it's 1am and I'm faced with only getting six hours of sleep--again. Given that I used to blog just before bed--and that the average post takes me about a half hour to write--starting a post at 1am just doesn't work anymore.
So I'm trying to revise the way that I do this, by which I mean that I'm going to start writing posts during the day rather than late at night. This is a sea change, folks. So it'll take time for me to adjust. I mean, look: I only came to the realization that this is what I have to do tonight, a night when I'm again facing the prospect of getting less than six hours of sleep.
And with that, my friends, I'm turning in for the evening.
Four of my best friends are getting married this year--Mr. Vice and pH in October, and L-Dawg and Xtina in just under two weeks. Somehow, they, along with chelsadilla, RPM, RPM's still un-nicknamed significant other (I'm going to suggest Hannelore, based on this), Mr. Utah, and L-Dawg's brother, all managed to take some time out of our calendars to head up to the Dells this weekend for a bachelor party for the men, a bachelorette party for the ladies, and a day at Mt. Olympus for all.
Large portions of this thing were supposed to be a surprise. Certainly, the fact that L-Dawg's brother was flying in from the West Coast was intended to be a bit of a shock. But that failed when various people mentioned that he was coming. Then, somehow, L-Dawg randomly guessed where we were going for dinner. And the overall theme of the evening--get drunk and then go gamble--was fairly easy to discern. In fact, the only thing that seemed to remain a surprise was the fact that this was Mr. Vice's bachelor party, too--he apparently didn't know that it was until just hours before it started.
Anyway, we convoyed it up to the Dells, arriving at right around 4pm. That gave us just enough time to get situated in our hotel and get to the restaurant. The men headed to Ginza of Tokyo because I figured that the food and the volcano (a giant bowl of booze with a rum-fueled flame in the middle) would serve as good bases for the rest of the evening. But we got to the restaurant early, so we decided to have a drink before sitting down at our table. Many of us started with Long Islands.
Now, for some reason, I hadn't eaten all day. I had woken up late and then was busy the whole morning and early afternoon. So I was starving. But I also didn't have much of a defense against the initial rounds of strong drinks. So I was in a good mood when we left the restaurant. Figuring that it was too early to head to the casino, we instead decided to check out a locally infamous bar: Nig's. Yeah, the place is called Nig's. No, that wouldn't have been my first choice for a bar name, either. Still, I had read about Nig's in police reports way too many times not to want to check it out. And I was not disappointed.
We walked in and I decided we needed a round of shots. This was an Important Event, so I decided that we needed Fancy Drinks. I ordered five shots of Patron. I pulled out a wad of cash, expecting an absurd tally. But the guy told me the total was $25. Patron for $5 a shot? Things were about to get awesome. And stupid.
Nig's was fun, but Mr. Vice had noticed a knife and sword store on the drive in (he was DD; we did a lot of dumb things that night, but driving drunk was not one of them), so we obviously went and checked that out. There were some seriously awesome weapons in there, and I took the opportunity to sneak next door and buy some much needed items. See, Hannelore had bought each of the bachelorettes sashes that identified them as, well, bachelorettes. So I decided that we needed some similar items for our bachelors. But sashes are sorta wussy, so I bought each of them hats. Mr. Vice got a pointy wizard hat, and L-Dawg got a pizza hat. They seemed to like them, and we got a lot of Gandalf jokes pointed in our direction as a result of Mr. Vice's hat. L-Dawg's hat was taken prisoner at some point by an old lady at Nig's who said she needed to take it because she "loves pizza" so much she "eats it every day." Strange.
Feeling that the time was right, we headed to the casino. On the way, we decided it might be interesting to stop at an "adult novelty" store, but we failed to find it, so we just plowed on to the casino. Part of the plan for the evening was to bankroll Mr. Vice and L-Dawg for the evening, so we handed them a wad of cash and let them loose. Then someone suggested that we should all smoke cigars, which sounded like a good idea until we found out that the best cigars we could get were Swisher Sweets. Undeterred, we smoked them, anyway. They were terrible.
We played poker for a while, with L-Dawg making some money, Mr. Vice busting out, and me ending up about $40 down. We wandered around in the casino for a while, played some craps, then some blackjack, and then headed back to Nig's, but not before we made another effort to find the adult novelty place. We were successful this time, but they failed because they were closed.
Once we got back to the bar, we had a few more drinks, then decided it was time to find a place where we could hang out on the edge of the water. We wandered aimlessly for a while, always following Mr. Vice's pointy hat. We took a vote and decided against trespassing, and eventually, through the use of Google Maps and a Blackberry, discovered that there was likely a dock within driving distance. So we started driving and eventually discovered not one but three docks. We sat there for a while. Nothing deep was said.
We came back to the hotel. Mr. Vice took his leave of us and the rest of us walked to a local breakfast establishment. What followed will forever be referred to as The Ugliness, and I will not speak of it here. I think it will suffice to say that it involved a Slovakian waiter, an interminable wait, some extremely mean people, and the police. In the end, though, we all made it through and, as someone said to me, it was just another thing we all survived together. Some friends are linked by war; my group of friends is now linked by The Ugliness.
Anyway, we all made it back to the hotel safely and went to sleep. Four hours later, we woke up and spent the day at Mt. Olympus. I had never been, but we got the tickets free with our hotel, so we decided to try it out. As it turns out, Mt. Olympus kicks fucking ass.
We started off at Poseidon's go-carts, and they were pretty awesome, even if the line was fucking long. But then everyone wanted to ride the Hades rollercoaster. I went along with it for a while because I didn't think chelsadilla would do it if I didn't, and I could tell she really wanted to. But I was terrified. I think people thought that I was playing up my fear, but I really wasn't. Previous to this weekend, the most hard-core rollercoasters I had been on were at Disneyland. The prospect of riding Hades--a wooden coaster with a top speed of nearly 70mph; a 65-degree, 140-foot drop; and 90-degree banked turns--was daunting. I honestly nearly chickened out, but I'm glad I didn't. The ride was terrifying but extremely fun, and I sorta wanna do it again. Here's a video of the ride:
We spent the rest of the day exploring the dry and wet portions of the park, and it was a lot of fun. I would definitely go back. In fact, if Mt. Olympus ever gets a ride on par with Black Anaconda at Noah's Ark, I can't think of any reason why it would be worth it to go to latter.
Anyway, the weekend was fun and exhausting, like a good party weekend should be. I think that everyone involved had a good time, especially those of us who are about to get married. I hope, anyway.
I've always said that the two things I really wanted in life (other than superpowers) were an awesome girlfriend and a badass band. Now, for the first time ever, I have both.
Chelsadilla is fairly badass, and things are going great. I won't bore you--or embarrass her--by going on about that subject. Besides, it's the band I really care about.
The band is called SuperKarateMonkeyDeathCar. It consists of me and RPM, each on guitars and vocals, and two as-yet-un-nicknamed people on bass and drums. We should get on nicknaming them, I suppose.
Although we have our first gig scheduled (I cannot believe that Mr. Vice and pH are actually going to let us ruin their wedding), what I've enjoyed most so far is just the fact that I'm playing music with talented musicians on a regular basis. It's just so fun to work on something over and over again and then get it to click. It's so awesome to look up in the middle of a song and realize that you've each hit your parts perfectly so far and that you're probably going to do it for the rest of the song.
Right now, we're working primarily on covers, but we're kicking around ideas for new songs, and we've just free-form jammed a few times. I'm really excited to work on some originals--working on them by myself is cool because I always get what I want, but I think the product would be so much better with four of us pitching in and serving as sounding boards.
There's really nothing about me that doesn't put a smile on my face. I look forward to practice every week.
We've got a long way to go before we each quit our day jobs, but so far it's been so much fun that the whole "being good at it" thing is sort of secondary.
I don't know what the fuck has been going on around here. Or, well, I only have some vague idea. The other day, I came and checked my blog as I normally do and saw that I was apparently out of bandwidth. This had never happened before, so I was a little confused. After a little poking around, I discovered that I had, in thirteen days, used up all of my allotted bandwidth for the month. That's fifteen gigabytes. I checked the averages for past months and found that my highest bandwidth usage before this month was about three gigabytes. I was confused.
I bought extra bandwidth and the site was back up, but the next day, the same thing happened. My host was able to inform me that about half of the bandwidth usage was for the transfer of images, so they speculated that someone was hotlinking some picture off of my blog at a high-traffic sight, thereby causing my bandwidth overages. They seem to be unable to explain the other half of the bandwidth usage. And they can't tell me where that image is hotlinked or even what image it is.
But, they were able to disable hotlinking and, now, hopefully the problem's solved. So, sorry for all of that.
We didn't really have cable when I was a kid, but we got PBS, so I was pretty happy with the offerings.
I only have vague memories of "Sesame Street." I remember a lot of Kermit the Frog and some sketches with The Count. But I don't remember too many specifics. I think by the time that we had TV, I was too old for "Sesame Street."
But I definitely remember watching some of the dorkier shows when I was ten or so. My favorites were "3-2-1 Contact" and "Square One." I don't remember too much about "3-2-1 Contact" except the theme song, which was awesome. I think there were a bunch of kids running around doing things.
"Square One," though, I have vivid memories of. I remember all the scenes where the characters would have to use simple mathematical concepts to solve contrived real-life situations. And I definitely remember "Mathnet," the math-based "Dragnet" parody where the detectives carried calculators in their holsters. I learned all about the Fibonacci Sequence from a parrot. Good times.
Those shows were awesome. They were witty and entertaining, and I'm sure that if I went back and watched them now, there'd be plenty of content an adult could enjoy.
I have no idea what kids are watching nowadays--except that younger kids watch Dora the Explorer and something called "The Backyardigans." It's kinda funny, actually: my mom knows all the characters and their catchphrases from "The Backyardigans" because my cousins daughter, Mia, used to love that show. I wonder if she knew the names of each of the Thundercats when I was a kid.
Fucking seriously! I'm using chelsadilla's Mac right now, and this thing makes no goddamned sense.
First off, there's this "Apple" key. The Apple key does everything you would expect the control key to do. So, if I want to open a new tab in Firefox, it's not "ctrl+T," it's "Apple+T." If I want to copy and paste something--and yes, this computer actually does have copy and paste, so I guess Apple is aware that it's a thing that you can have machines do--it's not "ctrl+C" and "ctrl+P," it's "Apple+C" and "Apple+P."
So then you'd think "Ok, if there's this whole other button that does what the control button does, then they got rid of the control key." And if you thought that, you'd be reasonable. But no! The control key is still there for some reason. I have yet to figure out what function, if any, it serves. Why are they both there? I have no idea!
The other major problem I have with the keyboard is that the backspace and delete keys are the same, but you have to push the control key to switch back and forth. Why the control key and not the Apple key, when the Apple key is what you use for everything else and "Apple+delete" does nothing? I DON'T KNOW!
The OS is also infuriating. If I want to make a window take up the whole screen, I have to click and drag the corner, a much more cumbersome process than just clicking one button. And even after the click-and-drag nonsense, you still end up with a window that only takes up some part of the screen, not all of it.
As near as I can tell, there is no GUI shortcut to close a program. I have to either do several mouse clicks into menus or I have to hit "Apple+Q." WHY?
I know that I don't deal with Macs very often, so maybe this is one of those things where if I just used them more often I would get used to them. I probably would. But I would still think that some of the features--or lack thereof--on the Macs is strange. After using PCs for something like fifteen years, being on a Mac is like being in a bizarro version of the real world. And I don't like bizarro versions of things.
Chelsadilla and I started the day out at the farmer's market. We walked around for a while, but we weren't really need anything, so it was just sort of nice to go on a walk. And then we found the Capital City Band playing on the square. Being big fans of classical and semi-classical music, we hung around and watched for a while. They did an awesome little brass-band version of "Billie Jean" as a tribute to Michael Jackson, and then they did a tribute to the armed forces. With the honor guard standing behind them, they played the theme song of each of the branches of the armed services and asked that anyone who had served in the military stand up when his or her branch's song was played. It was really cool, and I was glad that chelsadilla didn't see that my eyes got all watery.
After that, we headed to Bluephies, which I hadn't been to in a while. Brunch was delicious, as usual, but the big winner of the late morning was the Fat Boy Bloody Mary I got. Check this thing out:
That's two jalapeno-stuffed olives, a cocktail onion, two pickled mushrooms, an asparagus spear, celery, lemon, lime, some string cheese, and a slice of bacon. And the drink itself is made with bacon-infused vodka. This thing was delicious, but also expensive. It actually cost more than my eggs benedict, which is a little bit ridiculous. On the other hand, though, the drink was fucking good. So I definitely see myself getting it again, even if I don't get it every single time I go to Bluephies.
Next up, I took a nap and then worked on a mix CD of badass songs about America. First up was a version of the Star Spangled Banner by Duke Ellington. Then came the Hoe-Down portion of "Rodeo," otherwise known as the "Beef: It's What's for Dinner" song. Other songs on the CD included Simon and Garfunkel's "America," the 1812 Overture, a really awesome old-timey version of "This Land Is Your Land," and a version of "My Country Tis of Thee" by Crosby and Nash, and a few others. It was awesome.
Chelsadilla and I took the CD over to our friend's house and played it while I whipped up some delicious burgers. Which we then attempted to cook. The problem was that we failed utterly and completely at understanding that hot things melt melty things. Consult chelsadilla's Facebook page for more information.
Anyway, after that, we went to the the fireworks show at Shorewood Hills, where were all agreed that we were closer to the fireworks than we had ever been. And they were awesome.
The Fourth of July has always been one of my favorite holidays. Yeah, I love the fireworks and I love the food and the drinking and all that other stuff. But I like the Fourth of July so much because I sincerely love America and all that it's about. TRJ's posts on the subject always capture the sentiment well, and this year's is no exception.
I was getting back to my car tonight when I noticed this monstrosity parked nearby:
Here's another shot:
What in the hell is this thing? It's an old sedan, painted metalic pink and green, and then lifted so that it has more ground clearance than my SUV. The amount of money it would take to do this to a car is staggering. Who the fuck would willingly do this to his or her car? Why? Why?
Can someone--anyone--please explain to me what goes on in the mind of a person who decides that he needs to spend thousands of dollars to turn a shitty car into a completely useless eyesore?
Plus, also, I thought we were dropping cars? I thought we wanted the car to be as close to the ground as possible? Is that different now? Now we want rims as big around as a small moon and the ability to handle wicker terrain?
So, I was thinking about something I don't understand.
There are some people who think that premarital sex is wrong. That's fine, people can think that. People are also free to teach their children that premarital sex is wrong. And people are free not to discuss sex and reproduction with their children at all. That's not what I'm going to do with my kids, but, hey, I'm not going to tell you how to raise yours.
So if your goal is to teach your children that it is morally incorrect to have intercourse before marriage, fine. But let's say that your goal is something else. Let's say that your goal is to reduce instances of pregnancy and STD infection in teenagers. As a policymaker, wouldn't the best thing to do be to evaluate the effectiveness of various strategies--say, abstinence-only education versus education on STDs and proper condom use--and decide, based on that evaluation, which approach would be most effective?
You'd think that yes, that would be the best thing to do, right?
But there are still people in this country that think that we have to implement abstinence-only sex-ed everywhere, even though it's been demonstrated to be less effective, because we have to keep from appearing to encourage the evil of premarital sex.
People who are of the opinion that sexual education in the schools should consist only of a stern warning are dumb, at least insofar as they actively take a position which is unlikely to bring about their ultimate goal.
All of that is fairly clear to me. Please tell me why you disagree if you do.
But then I started thinking: what if there are areas in which I am as just as dogmatic as the abstinence-only people? I mean, certainly there are certain moral imperatives on which I would not accept a compromise. So I'm wondering: in those areas, am I likely to be blinded by my ideals to the point that I'm incapable of evaluating policy on the basis of its efficacy?
why is everyone so against such a beautiful human being? his songs express fun, love, and excitment. god forsaken means something everyone should expierence, and or deserves. thus, everyone deserves to be loved. to me, that is a beautiful message. i dont think he seeks out fame, i just think his songs are so beautiful that everyone cant help but sing along. and if you dont like him, then dont listen to him. dont start an entire blog to bitch about someone who is just doing what they love, and sucseeding.
I agree with absolutely everything you said, with the caveat that I didn't see it in 3-D. Aside from the clunky opening act and the occasionally painful dialogue, the movie was gorgeous, thrilling, and expertly made. Easily one of the best of the year.
Though I could have used more conversations around tables. Like if 80% of the movie had been conversations around tables, that would have been just right.
So you hate dialogue in general? Or the specific dialogue in the movie? I'm surprised you were unmoved by the tension in all those scenes.
I could be wrong, but I think the movie was preliminarily titled, "One Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France," which clearly would have been far superior.
Despite the single flaw of the title, I thought it was absolutely great. I was completely entertained the entire time.
July 2009
