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February 8, 2010

A Ratings System and an Application of that System

I've been seeing more live music lately. I feel like I'm finally coming closer to appreciating the live music scene that Madison has to offer, which is cool. What is not cool is that there are a lot of bands out there that suck. But there are some bands that are perfectly competent but that I'd still never want to listen to again. And there are, every now and then, bands that are just friggin' amazing. With these thoughts in mind, I decided that it might be helpful to have a semi-objective way of rating live acts. A simple star...

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February 1, 2010

The Rumors of My Demise . . . .

They have, in fact, been greatly exaggerated. Sure, I took a bit of an extended break there, but I never intended it to be a full-blown departure. It's just that things were busy and I didn't have a lot of stuff to write about that I felt like sharing. I'm back now, though, and--while I can't promise daily updates like in the olden days--I won't go a month and a half between updates again. So what have I been up to? Well, kind of a lot, actually. For starters, today marks two important anniversaries. First, this is the two-year anniversary...

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December 20, 2009

Avatar

I just got home from watching Avatar. I was expecting the movie to be terrible. James Cameron has been developing this thing for a decade and a half. He wrote and directed it. He made up a fucking language for it. He scrapped production on it a few times. Who the fuck knows how many script drafts he's gone through. And it's budget exceeds that of several small nations combined. All of that sounds like the setup for a Chinese Democracy-style fail pile than a good movie. The previews confirmed my suspicions. I mean, for fuck's sake, a character in...

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December 1, 2009

My Thankful List

I had meant to post this before, you know, Thanksgiving, but then I didn't get around to it. Thanksgiving doesn't crack my top-three holidays--that would be Christmas, Halloween, and New Year's--but it would probably make my top five. I think Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July would round out my top five. Anyway, the point is that I nonetheless enjoy sitting down and thinking about the things that I'm thankful for. So here's what I'm thankful for this year. My girlfriend. Many of you who've read the blog are probably familiar with how much I used to complain about not...

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November 23, 2009

Inglourious Basterds

Several of us went and watched Inglourious Basters a few weekends ago. While the thing wasn't completely unwatchable, it was still pretty fucking bad. This thing currently has an 88 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, which only makes me think that Rotten Tomatoes is completely worthless. My biggest problem with Basterds--aside from the completely pointless bad spelling--was the fact that literally about 80 percent of the movie consists of conversations around tables. The movie starts with a Nazi Jew hunter and a French farmer sitting at a table. Then a junior Nazi war hero imposes his presence on a Jew-in-hiding at...

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November 11, 2009

Oysy

The other day, I noticed that there was a new restaurant on the East Side that claimed to offer a seafood and sushi buffet. Being a fan of seafood, sushi, and buffets, I decided I had to check this out. To my surprise, chelsadilla--normally a vehement anti-seafood advocate--was really into the idea of trying it out, especially when we read some stuff online indicating that they had several non-seafood options. The food at Oysy isn't the best I've ever had. The crab legs were cold (intentionally, I think), some of the sushi had been sitting out too long, and the...

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November 8, 2009

It's All About the Class

I'm not sure exactly who's idea it was, but chelsadilla and I decided that we had to go to Le Tigre Lounge, like, now. So, given that we had a bunch of people willing to go out but no particular idea about what to do Saturday night, we suggested it. Everyone was down, and we set off for parts unknown. For those of you who aren't as hip and with it as me and my group of friends, Le Tigre Lounge is in an extremely dilapidated strip mall directly off of the Beltline on Midvale. It's next-door neighbors are an...

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November 2, 2009

Worthy of Failblog?

I was watching TV tonight, and, due to the fact that I wasn't watching stuff off the DVR, I had to sit through commercials. I hate commercials, but I'm sorta glad I did this time, because something hilarious happened. This commercial came up that was clearly one of those extremely low-budget ads for some extremely sketchy pseudo-company. Then it cut to this screen: That's right--they want you to call their website. Or they named their company after the website, which, unless you're Google or Yahoo, just seems like a bad idea. Plus, also, how large is the target audience for...

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October 26, 2009

Happy Birthday, Happy Housewarming

Here we are in late October, and, for some reason, that means that three of my friends just had birthdays. Yes, Mr. Vice, pH, and Night Cactus all added a year to their life tallies recently. Oh, and I moved in to a new place that needed to be warmed. So, it was with much fanfare and shit that I invited tons of people over for a combo birthday-birthday-birthday-housewarming party. Despite L-Dawg's contention that it would, in fact, be a house cooling, I think things turned out fairly well. The main theme to the party, if there was one other...

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October 22, 2009

The King of the Burgers?

Earlier today, on Twitter, pH made an assertion that I considered fairly ridiculous: "The Angry Whopper is the Platonic ideal of a fast-food burger." The contention that the ideal fast-food burger could come from Burger King seemed too ludicrous to even consider. I mean, In-n-Out and Five Guys both exist and are sell amazing burgers. But then others on Twitter suggested that I was wrong for mocking pH. Later, finding myself tired and hungry after an extremely long day, I decided that I'd put the whole thing to the test. I was recently in California and, of course, I had...

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October 19, 2009

Where the Wild Things Are

I went to see Where the Wild Things Are tonight. I liked it sorta a lot. I didn't read the book when I was a kid. At least, not that I can remember. I definitely remember the pictures, though. And the image of a boy in a wolf costume is in my subconscious somewhere. But, as far as plot, nothing. Something about wild things, maybe. As it turns out, and at least according to the Wikipedia article, the text of the original book only had ten sentences to it. I couldn't tell based on the movie, though. So, with no...

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October 13, 2009

The New Worst Company I've Ever Dealt With: Dish Network

In all of my various exploits with stupid people working for stupid bureaucracies, I had not, until recently, encountered a company that fails to provide even mildly competent customer service as completely as Dish Network does. It all started with the move. I was told that I had two options for TV: Charter and Dish Network. That choice seemed easy: I fucking hated Charter, so I decided to go with Dish Network. I called up Dish Network and explained to them that I had tapped them to provide me with mindless entertainment. I gave them my name, phone number, address,...

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October 12, 2009

I Lived Like This All the TIme?

Chelsadilla was out of town this weekend, so I was left to my own devices. The conclusion: I'm not really certain what I did with myself before I had a girlfriend. One of the things that's strange about going from meeting someone to dating someone to practically living with someone is that there's this progression from that person hardly being there to that person being there all the time. It's like you wake up one day and it's strange when the person's not there. That had never happened to me--my life had always been long stretches of being by myself...

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October 5, 2009

The Cheese Stands Alone

Lots of awesome stuff has been going on lately. There's been some non-awesome stuff, too, unfortunately. But I've been too busy and too tired to sit down and post about it. And when I decide that I'm going to, all of a sudden it's 1am. But not to fear! Here's a post of my favorite series of pictures with chelsadilla. I hope you enjoy them, and I promise more substance soon....

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September 30, 2009

seXterra the White

Yesterday morning, I got ready for work, walked out to my car, got in, turned the key and . . . it started normally. But, as I was backing out of my spot, it seemed that the car was being extremely sluggish. That's when I realized that, although the car had started fine, it had, at some point, stopped running. The radio was still on, so it wasn't immediately clear to me that anything was wrong--I couldn't hear the lack of engine noise or whatever. After my ham-fisted attempts to diagnose and correct the problem failed, I had the thing...

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September 28, 2009

Guilty Men Should Be Sentenced

I'm having a hard time understanding the attitude that most people seem to be taking towards the whole Roman Polanski thing. I just want to make sure I understand this: the guy admitted that he had nonconsensual sex with a thirteen-year-old girl, right? The guy raped a little girl, yeah? And it's not even like he just raped a little girl--which is bad enough. No! The guy admits that he did it, and then he decides that he doesn't want to live with the consequences of his actions, so he exploits his wealth and runs off to a different country...

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September 25, 2009

Built to Spill Was Built to Rock

For the second time since I've been here, Built to Spill came to the Barrymore Theatre. And for the second time since I've been here, Built to Spill put on one of the most best shows I've ever seen. The set list was a very good mix of older stuff and stuff I've never heard, presumably because it's on their new album. While they failed--again!--to play "Car," they did play my two other favorite BtS songs: "Virginia Reel Around the Fountain" and "Else." Both versions were spectacular. Doug Martsch is an amazing guitarist. He might not be the most technically...

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September 24, 2009

The Queen Has Pubic Hair

I thought this story--about Justice Sotomayor getting lost on the way to Washington--was sort of interesting. What I like about it is that it gives us this strange sort of glimpse into the mundane details of the daily lives of one of the most powerful lawyers in America. In her career on the Supreme Court, Justice Sotomayor--like all of her colleagues--is likely to make a good amount of history and will influence the interpretation of our most important documents for decades to come. But here we're presented with a moment where she's clearly just "one of us": she's a person...

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September 20, 2009

New Way Home

First off, happy birthday to my grandma. She turned ninety-five today. Can you imagine that? She's been around for the vast majority of one of the most exciting--in my opinion--centuries ever. So much has happened since 1914, it blows my mind. But what really blows my mind is how spry my grandma still is. She has some slight lapses now and then, but for the most part, she's lucid and coherent. And still witty and funny. So happy birthday to her! Secondly, I've officially moved. Chelsadilla and I spent pretty much all of yesterday packing up the majority of my...

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September 16, 2009

Alright, So Some White Walls

After careful reflection, it turns out that painting every single wall in my new apartment would have resulted in both terminal exhaustion and an unappealing apartment. That what I'm telling myself, anyway. The fact of the matter is that I would have liked to paint some of the walls in my bedroom, but I'm going to have to make do with a fully painted and awesome living room and dining room, and a half-painted but also awesome second-bedroom office. This second bedroom, by the way, is fucking great. I finally have a black wall, and what I had planned on...

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September 14, 2009

"The Best Laid Plans . . . "

I've officially spent more time, effort, and money trying to make my new apartment look nice than I've spent on every other place I've ever lived combined. Mostly, this means that chelsadilla and I have been painting. A lot. We had thought that we'd be done by Sunday, but that didn't work out. Then I thought that Wednesday would definitely be the last day of painting, but now I'm not so sure that'll work out. Still, we'll be done sometime this week. We have to be since everyone's agreed to help me move on Sunday (thanks, people!) and I have...

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September 11, 2009

Concerning the Passage of Time

One of the important yet tedious things that many lawyers have to do is keep track of their time. For many attorneys, life is measured by the tenth of an hour. There are many ways to keep track of one's billable time, from fancy computer programs to just making it all up. My method isn't technologically advanced, but I think it's fairly accurate: every day, I take a blank page in a legal pad and write the date at the top. I note the client's name, the time I started working, the time I stopped working, and what I was...

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September 10, 2009

Jason Mraz Fucking Sucks

I remember the first time I heard this no-talent assclown's music. It was a video for one of his songs and he was going out of his way to be all "look at me, I'm happy and care-free but also a tooled-out hippy." The music itself was inoffensive enough, I guess, but it was completely disposable and uninspired. So, of course, the guy's fucking huge now. I've had his song "I'm Yours" stuck in my head for fucking hours, and I'm about ready to smash my new guitar with my face. That song is infuriating both for its banal lyrics...

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September 3, 2009

No More White Walls

Chelsadilla and I were over at the new place tonight, and I'm officially extremely excited about moving. Even though there's still no furniture in the new place, it's already starting to feel a little bit more like it's mine. Now I have to deal with the daunting realization that I'm actually going to have to get all of my stuff over there somehow. Fortunately, many of my friends have volunteered to help. Unfortunately, I still have to pack up everything myself. I mean, I guess I could just have all my friends come over and discover that I've done no...

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September 1, 2009

A New Lease

Yes, I'm finally moving. Soon, I'll be far away from all the shenanigans at my current place. All indications are that my new place is mostly drug-dealer free. Yay! The lease at my new place actually started today. The lease on my old place ends on the last day of this month. This--together with the fact that I got a month's free rent at the new place--means that I get to take a whole month to move. This works out great because I really want to try at my new place. By "try," I don't just mean that I want...

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August 30, 2009

Seasons Don't Fear the Reaper

Sometimes, the shifts in seasons can be so gradual that you don't even realize it's happening. You look up one day and you're covered in snow when it seems like it was just yesterday that you were drinking a Spotted Cow at the Terrace. That's what it's like for me, anyway. But because I'm a bit of a control freak, there's always a moment when I realize that there's a seasonal change a-comin'. See, it's rare that I'll have the windows in my car down: either it's warm enough for air conditioning or it's cool enough for the heater. One...

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August 25, 2009

Happy Birthday to Me

You know what Monday was? My twenty-eighth birthday. Yes, I've now been imposing my presence on the world for almost three decades. Damn, I'm old. So I didn't go out to a bar and get rip-roarin' drunk or anything. I'll do that later. Instead, my lovely girlfriend took me out to dinner and got me some very nice and very useful gifts. What did she get me? Well, this might sound lame, but she got me a letter opener. I've been sort of wanting one for the office for a while, but haven't bought one because I hadn't seen one...

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August 23, 2009

Kickin' it Old School

So, in keeping with a now-established tradition, my friends and I ventured to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival for the second year in a row. Last year was my first time at a RenFest, and I was pretty impressed. This year, I had a much better idea of what to expect, and, while the novelty began to wear off a little bit, it was still a lot of fun. In fact, knowing what to expect from each event meant that we knew what to avoid, so there was less waiting around for a lame fucking joust and more just enjoying being...

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August 17, 2009

Charlie Keeps Getting Worse

I've ranted about Charlie, the local "we play everything" random radio station before. In fact, things have gotten so ridiculous over there that I haven't really been listening too much at all anymore. I started getting turned off to the whole thing when they started doing more and more talking and less playing of occasionally awful, seldom amazing, but almost always entertaining songs. Then they started broadcasting a morning show. My mind warped when they did that. I mean, wasn't the whole point of these no-DJ radio stations that it was just random music and, well, no DJ? The entire...

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August 15, 2009

Overpeopled

Somewhere along the line, I became an extremely social person. I love being around people. I love doing things. I love hanging out. I love talking. Some people feel that it's a burden to be "on," to have to be funny or entertaining or whatever. I may not be funny or entertaining, but I rarely feel burdened by social interaction. In fact, most of the time, I feel undersocialized. I wonder sometimes why no one's doing anything on a Wednesday evening, for example. Then, when the weekend comes around, I'm always sad when people get tired and decide it's time...

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August 10, 2009

"1970 Pontiac Firebird. The Car I've Always Wanted and Now I Have it. I Rule!"

Ok, no, I didn't buy a 1970 Pontiac Firebird. In fact, I didn't buy any kind of car. But I did get something I've always wanted: a Gibson Les Paul Standard. This one, to be specific: I've written about being fourteen and having my mom offer me an electric guitar if I cut my hair. Well, at some point, I started taking guitar somewhat seriously. I've never sat in my room and practiced scale runs over and over for hours on end, but I've spent a lot of time learning solos and songs, and I've also tried to learn a...

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August 9, 2009

This Delay's OK

So, my vacation is nearly over. it was supposed to be over last night, but our flight out of Albany got canceled. That meant, obviously, that we didn't make our connecting flight in Minneapolis. I was prepared to go nuclear, except that our airline--Northwest--was actually fairly awesome about the whole thing. I mean, airplanes are going to have mechanical problems from time to time--even the best maintenance in the world can't stop that. And I'd rather fly today on an airplane with no problems than yesterday on an airplane with minor problems. And besides, Northwest put us up in a...

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July 29, 2009

I Refuse to Call it a "Vacay"

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...

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July 28, 2009

Just Go the Fuck Away

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...

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July 26, 2009

Parking Ramp Fail!

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...

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July 24, 2009

My Girlfriend Has a Blog!

And, in an ill-advised move, it's all about me! Umm. Or not really. But sort of! See, it's a blog about her introduction to all things sci-fi, a process spurred by my own love of all things sci-fi and fantasy. So, check it out: http://zodblog.wordpress.com/...

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July 23, 2009

So That Was a Sixteen-Hour Day

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...

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July 22, 2009

I Am the Lame

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...

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July 20, 2009

"Another Thing We All Survived."

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...

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July 16, 2009

Two Awesome Things

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...

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July 15, 2009

I'm Back?

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....

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July 12, 2009

Shows on PBS Were Awesome

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...

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July 8, 2009

I Will Never Own a Mac

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...

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July 5, 2009

A Good Fourth

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...

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July 2, 2009

Who the Fuck Would Do This to a Car?

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...

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July 1, 2009

Perhaps Morally Correct, Definitely Practically Dumb

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...

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June 29, 2009

Pork Wellington (Sorta)

The grocery store had pork tenderloin on sale the other day, so I bought two and decided to try Alton Brown's recipe for .Pork Wellington. Basically, you stuff a pork tenderloin with dried apples, wrap it in prosciutto, wrap that in puff pastry, and bake until delicious. And it was delicious, but I thought I could do something better with a savory rather than sweet filling. So, I took some onions and some mushrooms and sauteed them down. Then, in my bad-ass cast-iron skillet, I fried up some D & G bacon from the Farmer's Market. While that was cooking,...

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June 25, 2009

"I've Been a Victim of a Selfish Kind of Love"

I remember this one time in high school. Me and some friends were in my friend's car. My friend's brother was also there. He was listening to HIStory on his Walkman. I made fun of him for it. I made fun of him for it because I was weak and stupid and because I was more concerned with being perceived as cool than I was with being honest. Because, although I railed against Michael Jackson, the truth was that I loved Michael Jackson. I remember being ten years old and buying Dangerous on tape. It was the first album I...

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June 24, 2009

The Next Thing I Love that Hollywood's Gonna Fuck Up

I've known for a while now that one of my favorite books, Youth in Revolt (if you haven't read it, go do that now--it's fucking funny), is getting made into a movie. This knowledge fills me with an difficult to understand mix of emotions. On the one hand, I'm excited to see these characters and scenarios on the big screen. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that the movie probably won't be as good as the book. Out of all of the numerous adaptations I've seen, the only movies that are anywhere near as good as their source material...

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June 23, 2009

Have You Seen This Governor? (Updated) (Updated Again)

Perhaps I should have included South Carolina on my poll of ridiculous state governments. I woke up this morning to a headline telling me that their governor was missing. "Missing," I thought, "Like some stranger offered him candy and now police are combing the neighborhood looking for clues?" How the fuck does a governor go missing, exactly? The real story is much lamer than you might think. It turns out Mark Sanford wasn't abducted by aliens or terrorists or anything. No, instead he went for a long walk after getting his ass handed to him by his state's legislature. And...

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June 21, 2009

Woot Shirts FTW

I love t-shirts. They're comfortable and versatile and, best of all, they give you a great platform from which to express your love of a band or your irreverent sense of humor. In high school, I had enough Smashing Pumpkins t-shirts to last for two weeks without repeats. I also had several shirts from Hot Topic because, hey, Hot Topic was awesome when i was thirteen. Fucking deal with it. But the problem is that most t-shirts are sort of boring or just far too cliche for people to really wear. For example, the first time I saw a "Trust...

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June 17, 2009

My Crazy Cat

I have two cats. The oldest one, Smash, is a pretty standard cat. He's playful and he requires constant attention. He chases my ceiling fan and meows. He loves cuddling and being pet. The younger cat, Lily, is another story. She's the most bizarre cat I think I've ever met. For starters, she never meows. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard her do a straight meow. That isn't to say that she doesn't make sounds. She barks and grunts and whimpers. But no meows. She also hates to be touched. She'll come up to you and make some...

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June 15, 2009

Undergrads

My friend Mr. X graduated from college one year ahead of me, by which I mean that he rushed through the subject matter in four years while I took an extra year to really let things soak in. Anyway. Mr. X went off to grad school and came back talking about how much he hated undergrads and how annoying they were. I, still being an undergrad, thought he was crazy and out of line. Then someone reminded me that it was my turn in beer pong, so I screamed at the top of my lungs and chugged a beer while...

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June 12, 2009

New Poll!

So the vast majority of you agree with me--not to mention reason and good sense--that "Gangsta's Paradise" is Coolio's best song. Some of you voted for "Fantastic Voyage," which I guess is respectable. One of you voted for some other song, which frankly makes no sense to me. I think this should lay our previous disagreement to rest, Mr. Vice. In any event, the new poll also got its impetus from a conversation I was having with a friend. Morenononsense and I were discussing various state governments, and I asserted that New York's is clearly the most ridiculous. He pointed...

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June 10, 2009

6:45

For the most part, being an adult is going alright so far. I guess it comes with more responsibilities and the consequences of fucking up are probably greater, but the tradeoffs from childhood are probably worth it. Independence, self-determination, fulfillment: these are good things. I mean, yeah, I can't get totally wasted every weekend, but I don't really want to. And sometimes I miss blowing off responsibilities to do something more fun, but I get a real sense of satisfaction from my work, so it's not that bad. All in all, I definitely prefer being an adult to being a...

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June 8, 2009

Me v. Customer Service, Round 2143

I went to the bank the other day to deposit a check. I had seen a lot of ads and stuff for these new ATMs where you don't have to put your deposit in an envelope. Cool. So, assuming that this was the sort of ATM I was dealing with, I started my transaction without first putting my check in an envelope. Of course, I was completely thwarted by the ATM, which was not prepared to take my naked check. So my transaction timed out, I put the check in an envelope, and I started the whole thing again. This...

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June 7, 2009

A Two-Bentley Day

When I'm in California visiting my parents, it's not so much of a shock to see ridiculously expensive cars driving around. You see Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and Bentleys on LA roads fairly frequently. Still, I think I saw more fancy cars per capita in Miami. The point is, though, that those sorts of cars don't show up in Madison very often. I mean, let's be honest: if you were worth as much as you'd have to be worth to spend that much money on a car, how much time you spend in little Madison, Wisconsin. So yesterday was kind of surprising....

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June 3, 2009

Up and Up Yours

We went and saw Up this weekend. It was really good, but surprisingly adult oriented. It was definitely the most adult Pixar movie I've seen, which I guess isn't too surprising considering that it's rated PG. There are spoilers in this review. You sort of know that this is going to be a fairly grown-up movie right away. It starts by introducing a young Carl Frederickson. He's a cute little kid who enjoys watching newsreel footage of adventurer Charles Muntz, who's off in South America trying to clear his name or something. Carl immediately meets Ellie, a little girl who...

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May 30, 2009

I Succeed at Dinner Again

chelsadilla and I were out and about today. We were specifically going to go grocery shopping and to look at some mattresses for me for when I move and get a new bed. Since a lot of the places we were going to go were on the West Side, we stopped and had lunch at the Atlanta Bread on University. After we ate, we walked down the sidewalk to Penzey's Spices. We had been there when we visited the Spurgh, and I was really excited to discover that we have one in Madison. So we walked around for a bit...

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May 28, 2009

Singing and Dancing is Awesome

I've always loved musicals. It's true. I really do love them. My favorite is probablyChitty Chitty Bang Bang, but I really like but Mary Poppins and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory are awesome, too, obviously. I've also really enjoyed every single musical stage production I've seen immensely. I think that life would be awesome if it was more like a musical. Think about it. Instead of fighting, we'd dance and sing and have stylized, choreographed pseudo-conflicts. You'd have an orchestra and a chorus line to back you up when you're feeling down. And if there's a better way to...

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May 26, 2009

Grammar for Idiots, Part III

In English, it is often difficult to decide how to indicate that a noun is plural. Sometimes you have to add an S to the word, sometimes you have to drop a Y and add an "-ies," sometimes you have to change the word completely, and sometimes you just have to leave it alone. And that's not even all the options. So, yeah, the whole thing is pretty easy to mess up--if you're an idiot. See, the one thing we always know is that we only ever have to apply one transformation to a singular noun to arrive at a...

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May 21, 2009

"I'm Ten Years Burning Down the Road . . . "

May 21, 1999 is, as nearly as I can remember, the ten-year anniversary of my graduation from high school. High school is a rough time for everyone, I think. I always feel bad for people that say that high school was the best time of their lives. If you have the best time of your life between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, something's seriously wrong. High school was not the best time of my life. I was angry and depressed, as all teenagers are. Many of my teachers, not to mention the administration at my high school, made me...

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May 18, 2009

Spring Cleaning!

Chelsadilla and I went on a walk in Maple Bluff today. I discovered my new favorite house in Madison. It was fucking gorgeous. But we had to cut our walk short because about halfway through, we both developed an inescapable need to urinate. There were no public restrooms in sight, so I speed walked over to the Tenney Locks, hoping that their restrooms were still open. No dice. We managed to get to the seXterra and drive to a nearby convenience store before having what were undoubtedly the best excrementory moments ever. Then we came back to my place and,...

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May 17, 2009

Chicago Again

Mr. Vice, pH, chelsadilla and I headed down to Chicago this weekend to celebrate EiC's birthday and just generally hang out. It was a fun weekend. I'm completely fucking exhausted, but it was worth it. Mr. Vice and pH headed down on Friday, and chelsadilla and I joined them on Saturday. Chelsadilla and I were staying at the same hotel everyone had stayed at during our last Chicago extravaganza, so it was convenient to get around. Our first stop: IKEA. God, I love that place. The Chicago IKEA is, according to one of the employees we talked to, the largest...

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May 14, 2009

More Parking-Lot Shenanigans

Strangely enough, this story involves something that happened at my office, not at my apartment. Mr. Vice and I have an office in an old three-story building. The ground floor has three offices--ours, our landlord's, and a CPA. The second and third floors are residential apartments. The building has a parking lot in the back, and we rent one of the spaces. The others belong to the landlord, the CPA, and some of the tenants in the apartments. Mr. Vice and I arrived this morning to find a giant white van parked in our space. But here's the thing: it...

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May 12, 2009

Mmmm... Hollandaise.

A friend once remarked that, judging by the blog, my relationship with chelsadilla consists almost entirely of me cooking ridiculous meals for her and us eating them. I told him that wasn't exactly true. Today, I realized that I hadn't blogged about any cooking exploits for a while, so I figured I'd revive that trend. Given that I have absolutely no court scheduled today for the first time in recent memory, I decided to cook up a little bit of an amazing breakfast. While chelsadilla was still asleep, I started frying some D&G bacon (from the farmers' market), slicing potatoes...

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May 10, 2009

The Four Most Overrated Things in Life

Dee pointed me to Overrated List, a blog consisting of readers' lists of the top four most overrated things in life. Dee also asked me to write my own. So here goes, in no particular order. Summer. Yeah, I have to admit that I was pretty excited when the average temperature started being above freezing this year. Yeah, I like not having to put on four layers just to take my garbage out. Yeah, I like being able to go for walks and stuff. And I love the farmers' market. And the Terrace. I love all of those things. But,...

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May 7, 2009

Happy Birthday Dane101 (Warning: This Post Contains Butt Funnel)

So, Dane101 is apparently four years old. To celebrate, they threw a party at my favorite Madison venue, the High Noon Saloon. So RPM and I, along with some others, went down there. It was a good time, and I got to talk to Jesse, who I have a bit of a heterosexual man-crush on (his favorite band is The Pixies! I love The Pixies!). The music, though, was a little, um, let's say "eclectic." The first band up was Little Red Wolf. This was apparently their first show, but I wouldn't have known that had I not been told....

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May 6, 2009

Roadside Meat, a Special Spurgh Sidebar

Yes, during our third day in the Spurgh, chelsadilla and I had some roadside meat. We went to lunch at this fucking amazing BBQ stand that was in a parking lot somewhere. It was all really, really good, although chelsadilla's pulled pork was way better than my brisket. The sides were great and the cornbread was out of this world. But the funniest thing about the stop was something on a flyer. The BBQ place was apparently hosting the second annual chili cook-off. The rules were very clear that the meat in the chili had to be beef. It listed...

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May 4, 2009

The Spurgh (Part III)

Frankly, after Friday and Saturday, I was pretty fucking tired. So I was happy to have a pretty relaxing Sunday morning. And it actually ended up being one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. Chelsadilla had been telling me for a long time about how she had driven a Miata in college and how that Miata had ended up in the Spurgh with her brother. Well, sure enough, there it was: a red convertible Miata. Now, I had appropriately made fun of chelsadilla for holding the Miata in such high regards, especially after the incident in law school...

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April 29, 2009

In Defense of Criminal Defense

People sometimes react strangely when they learn that I'm a criminal-defense attorney. On the one hand, some people are sort of predisposed to respect people who happen to be attorneys. I get the benefit of that sometimes, although not as often as I would have previously imagined. On the other hand, though, people are confused by the idea of defending criminals. A friend once asked me if I was revolted by the idea of having to say that guilty people are innocent. But that's not what criminal defense is all about. First of all, criminal defense is not about defending...

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The Spurgh (Part II)

Before so much as one other person tells me how much I should go to Primanti Bros., let me just say this: I fucking went, ok? Anyway, our second day in the Spurgh started off pretty lazily. We got up sometime in the mid-morning. After a quick bagel, we were off. And in style, too. The weather was perfect: sunny and mid-80s, so we drove around in a convertible Wrangler the whole day. Awesome. We got on the highway and then headed towards the city. I knew I was in for a great day as soon as I saw the...

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April 27, 2009

The Spurgh! (Part I)

Chelsadilla and I went to Pittsburgh (The Spurgh) this weekend. Her family is originally from there and although her mom and dad no longer live there, her grandparents and brother do. Oh, also, her mom and dad were also visiting this weekend. So, yeah. I've now met all of my girlfriend's family and have emerged without a singled punch being thrown. In fact, I think most of her family members liked me. And I'm totally in with her mom. Oh, also, Pittsburgh is a great city. Going into the trip, I had a few concerns. First of all, while I...

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April 23, 2009

Rock Show!

Chelsadilla, R-Mac, and the girl R-Mac's seeing (is she at nickname status yet? I don't know) went to the Annex to see some heavy-metal rock show thing tonight. It was fun. The first band consisted of four women. Everyone agreed that several of the women were really attractive, but we couldn't agree on which ones were and which ones weren't. Based on the fact that they all played Gibson instruments (including the bassist--when was the last time you saw a Gibson bass used in a hard-rock setting?) and that they all had other expensive backup instruments, I was suspicious. It...

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April 20, 2009

Despite All His Rage

I've heard a lot about that moment when a son realizes that he's stronger than his father. Or that he's faster or smarter or more successful. The moment when a son surpasses his father, it seems, is a big deal. I didn't have a father, though. I had Billy Corgan. Ok, so that analogy is a little much. Billy Corgan wasn't my role model; I didn't want to be like him. No, I had much better people to look up to. But at a time in my life when even my best friends seemed like cruel strangers, the stuff in...

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April 16, 2009

I'm from a Country that Tortures People

I've been busy lately and haven't had time to blog. That's gonna change and I'll be back to blogging normally. I'll blog about something inane and dumb later tonight. But what prompted me to blog just now was the release of some Bush-era memos concerning the torture of various terrorist suspects. You can read all of the memos here, and you can see several outtakes along with some commentary here. I have to admit that I've only read the excerpts at the second link; I have not read any memo in its entirety. I honestly don't know if I'm going...

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April 12, 2009

Terrible Driver Sighting

I was driving home. I was in the middle lane of a three-lane road. The extreme right lane is explicitly reserved for right-hand turns only. I'm driving along when I see a minivan in my rearview mirror. I see that it swerves from the extreme left-hand lane to the extreme right-hand lane. This is a maneuver a friend of mine once called the "Jersey Slide." I thought, "Fuck, this guy really needs to make a right-hand turn." Anyway, the van drives along in the right-hand turn-only lane. It's going pretty fast. It passes me. It passes the first right-had turn....

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April 11, 2009

Concerning Dreams, Babies, and Bathwater

I'm not one of those people that thinks that dreams mean something. In fact, I'm the opposite: I'm of the opinion that people who think that dreams mean something are dumb. As far as I'm concerned, dreams are a random collection of nonsense, devoid of any deeper significance. The idea that dreams are made up of representations of things that are going on in our waking lives is ridiculous to me. So that's why i was sort of shocked to have a dream last night that I found sort of relevant. In this dream, I was a lawyer. I had...

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April 9, 2009

Some Simple Rules to Follow if You Want to Be More Like Me

People have told me that I have a unique personality. I've always been baffled by this because I think my personality is fairly obvious and boring. Still, I'm putting together a list of the basic principles I follow, just in case you decide to impersonate me or something. The perceived funniness of something is directly proportional to how many times your audience has heard it. If something was mildly amusing once, it'll be fucking hilarious the fourteenth time. If people tell you that something you're doing is obnoxious, you just haven't done it enough. Whoever is louder is righter. The...

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April 6, 2009

I Need to Avoid the Ghetto . . . .

So, pursuant to all the recent 911 activity and the fact that I'm sick and tired of living on the wrong side of the Beltline, I've started looking around for places to live. It's been sort of exciting, and I hope I can find a place for a little more than what I'm paying now that has a lot of cool stuff going on. The best place I've seen so far was this townhome on the West side. It was about 1,200 square feet and had two bedrooms, a fireplace, a nice kitchen, an attached garage, in-unit washer and dryer,...

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April 4, 2009

Why I Called 911 Again

For the second time this week, I called 911 yesterday. Here's the story. I had just gotten home after work. I was walking from my car to the back door of my apartment building. Right as I'm opening that door, I heard screaming and cursing coming from behind me. I looked over and I saw that a woman was using a long metal tube to hit some car, and that a man was standing there arguing with her. It looked to me like they were about to fight each other or something. They continued to scream and argue, and the...

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April 1, 2009

Why I Called 911, or My Encounter with Hooligans

So, yeah, I called 911 today. It wasn't a big deal, really, but I was scared and pissed at the time. Let me explain what happened. Behind my building, there's a parking lot. I was backing out of my spot, turning slightly so that I could then turn and drive forward out of my spot. The scene was something like this: Right as I was reaching that position, intending to head left out of the parking lot, I looked left and saw that a white car had just pulled into the parking lot and was heading towards me. I thought...

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March 30, 2009

Untitled

I've been working on this one for a while. I posted the lyrics and a really crappy demo a while ago. Since then, I--with the help of tRJ--decided that a chorus and stuff would be lame, so I decided to keep a simple verse-verse-verse-verse format. To keep it interesting, I tried to amp up the tension and energy as the song progresses. I'll let you guys tell me how that goes. The whole thing culminates in what I hope is a blistering climax. In order to make the thing a little more energetic, I did two guitar solos. But, instead...

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March 29, 2009

On Wisconsin

Chelsadilla and I got to play host to her sister and her sister's boyfriend this weekend, and it was a lot of fun. It was cool to see things that I take for granted from the perspective of someone who had never been here before. And it was also cool to realize just how much I love Madison and Wisconsin generally. It's easy to reduce Wisconsin to a few stereotypical things: beer, cheese, the Packers. But while those stereotypes are certainly warranted, there's so much more going on here. Whether you're having a meat and cheese platter at the Weary...

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March 25, 2009

Dan Aykroyd Acknowledged Me!

Dan Aykroyd has apparently lost his mind. If you doubt that, you should check out the video at the website for his newest business venture, Crystal Head Vodka. This thing has apparently been all over the place for a while now because, well, Elwood Blues manages to somehow relate extraterrestrials, ghosts, and parallel dimensions to, umm, vodka. I mean, don't get me wrong--I love vodka, but it's no proof of the divine. Anyway, when I was excited when I heard that Mr. Aykroyd was going to be here, in Madison, at the west-side Woodman's (a local grocery store), promoting his...

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March 23, 2009

For Reals This Time

I almost never eat breakfast. Certainly not on weekdays. Eating breakfast would require waking up, like, half an hour earlier, and fuck that. So when lunch comes around, I'm fucking hungry. But here's the thing: half the time, I don't eat lunch, either. Sometimes this is because I didn't bring a lunch and I don't feel like spending the money on something and other times it's because I don't have time to eat. Yeah, sure, if you added up all the time I spend reading the Superficial, I'd have ample time for lunch, but that's not the point. Some days,...

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March 22, 2009

Unmitigated Douchebag at the Five Guys

Mr. Vice, RPM, and I were at Five Guys this afternoon picking up some food before heading back to RPM's place to watch the Battlestar Galactica finale (which, despite the efforts of RPM's DVR, was awesome). And it was then that I saw one of the biggest douches ever acting like a giant fucking douche. And then I called him on it. I don't know how many of you have been to Five Guys, but it's this burger place. It's pretty good. One of the distinctive things about it is that they have giant boxes full of peanuts for you...

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March 20, 2009

You Know You Sound Like a Condescending Old Rich Lady, Right?

You know what annoys me? Using the word "dear." Not so much when people say, for example, "Did you pick up the things I asked you for, Dear?" Cause on the scale of nicknames for a significant other, "dear" isn't that offensive. I mean, it's not "schnookybottoms" or anything like that. No, what I'm talking about is when people say "I went to visit my dear friends Tom and Jane." What the fuck kind of person talks like that? It just sounds so pretentious and insincere. Am I alone on this one?...

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March 18, 2009

New Poll!

So, nearly half of you seem to value intelligence over attractiveness or wealth. Or, more accurately, 48 percent of you would rather be more intelligent than more something else. I respect that, yo. But now it's time to get down to serious business. My new poll really concerns something both germane and critical to the state of modern American life. The topic, my friends, is this: what's the best Coolio song? This is a debate of long standing between Mr. Vice and myself. He contends that "Fantastic Voyage" is the best. I think that's a great song, but I don't...

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March 16, 2009

Warmth? What's this Nonsense About?

You know what I did today? I fucking turned on the AC in my car. Cause it was hot in there. I mean, maybe not scorching, and maybe I was just overreacting, but the point is that I didn't need the heater. It was a fucking beautiful day today. The end of winter sometimes makes me sad. I like the way the lakes look when they're frozen over, but now they're all liquid again. Which just seems unnatural, really. Also, there's all the lingering snow that's holding on for dear life. I find the thought of that really depressing for...

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March 12, 2009

My Dream Home

Some day, I will own a home. And when I do, I want it to be super badass. To that end, here are some things I really, really want in a home. Stone I want this thing built like an ancient fortress. I want ramparts and a tower. It would be so awesome to have a round tower a story taller than the rest of the house from which you could lord over the neighborhood. So awesome. And, of course, the whole thing would have to be made out of stone. Like, by stonemasons. That would be so fucking badass....

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March 10, 2009

I Won't Be Going Mongo, Thank You Very Much

One of my favorite restaurants in Phoenix was this place called YC's Mongolian Grill. It was the first Mongolian BBQ place I ever went to, and it's still my favorite. There was this whole ritual to the thing. The regulars handed down secret arcane knowledge about how to pack the most food into the bowls. You had to construct your bowl correctly. First, you start off with the meat. But you had to compact the meat enough to serve as a solid foundation for the rest of your bowl. You could use another bowl for this task, but I preferred...

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March 6, 2009

I Win

So, chelsadilla and I went to dinner tonight at Tex Tubb's Taco Palce. It was pretty decent, although their Mexican rice sucked the fat cock. But while the food was ok, the highlight of the evening was the unexpected appearance of Dr. Lady. Yes, the M.D. who pulled out a journal article on our "date" showed up. She must have seen me, but she didn't acknowledge me. I only saw her after she was walking away from us, so I didn't have to pretend that i didn't see her in order to excuse my avoiding her. They sat Dr. Lady...

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I Watched the Watchmen

I'm gonna keep this short just because I know a lot of people haven't seen it yet. Although I'm not gonna give any spoilers here, you might not wanna read this if you haven't seen it yet, just cause, you know, yeah. So here's what I have to say: meh. I'm not disappointed at all, really. The movie was faithful to and even reverent of the book. It respected the characters and the plot and it took it all seriously. There were some changes--one of which was pretty major--but they didn't hurt the story. They might have improved it, actually....

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March 4, 2009

I Bought a Motherfuckin' Blowtorch!

Some of you--chelsadilla, I'm looking at you here (side note: do you know how hard it was not to type an "@" symbol before her name? Twitter rocks!)--might belittle the blowtorch I bought and call it a "kitchen torch" or a "cooking torch." Well, if you belittle my motherfuckin' blowtorch, you can fuck right off. Also, the next person who makes fun of the blowtorch gets no creme brulee. Because, you see, I am now the master of the creme brulee. I'm in love with this shit, and now I can make it. I had never had this particular dessert...

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February 26, 2009

Lo Siento

It has come to my attention that some people out there might not have appreciated the post wherein I said that I loved the names of several of my male relatives but don't care for the names of my female relatives. So here's the thing. I love and respect everyone I'm related to. And I'm not saying that because I'm related to them or whatever. I'm saying that because, as I've grown older and come to understand more and more about what my family is and who these people really are, I've come to understand that they my family is...

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February 23, 2009

A Weekend in Madison

This weekend was awesome. Let me tell you why. On Friday, a bunch of us met up at Brocach for drinks and food. Our original plan was to go to happy-hour Gomeroke, but that shit ended at like 7, which was lame. So we went to Brocach and had some drinks. I hung out on the fruity side of things, enjoying some brady old fashioneds and a midori sour. Then I had a vodka gimlet, which wasn't very good, frankly. Chelsadilla and I split a shepherd's pie and some fries. It was friggin' awesome. Around ten, RPM, L-Dawg, X-tina, chelsadilla,...

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February 21, 2009

Of Deep Thoughts and Urination

So, if you're in college and you happen to be friends with the people who throw some of the biggest house parties on campus, you get used to having tons of people--mostly strangers--around you on weekend nights. And you get used to interacting with them on some level. Personally, I never liked to have more than shallow conversations with those people because, frankly, most of the time they had nothing interesting at all to say. Anyway, on most Friday and Saturday nights in college, I found myself at The House, partaking of various boisterous activities. If they weren't hosting a...

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February 16, 2009

Sonic

Flagstaff had a Sonic Drive-In, and I remember going there exactly once and being largely underwhelmed by the food. So while everyone else in Madison was flipping their shit over how amazing the new Sonic was going to be, I was largely cool to the whole thing. I certainly was not going to wait in line in my car on University for an hour and a half for some thawed tater tots. But the combination of pH and Mr. Vice discussing Sonic during Chuck, my grumbling stomach, and it being late enough for the wait to be reasonable conspired to...

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February 14, 2009

Concerning Food and a Made-Up Holiday

So, for the first time, I have a girlfriend on Valentine's Day. While some people around me stressed over what to do for their significant others, I took the pressure in stride. For one thing, chelsadilla and I haven't been together for all that long, so it's not like I'm expected to buy diamonds or anything. I hope not, anyway. If I was, I completely failed. But also, I sort of knew what I wanted to do: I fed her. We started off going for breakfast at the winter farmer's market with pH and RPM. Everyone except me had crepes...

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February 13, 2009

A Step in the Right Direction

If I'm Superman, then UPS is Lex Luthor and Charter is General Zod who, I now admit, is a first-rate Superman villain. Anyway, yeah, UPS and General Zod. Today I was pleased to learn that Charter Communications has filed for bankruptcy. Yeah, sure, the article makes it sound like it's a friendly bankruptcy or whatever, and Charter's not gonna start liquidating its assets or anything, but it's something. I mean, yeah, it's not as awesome as tricking General Zod and making him think that I've lost my powers when in fact it's him that was exposed to the anti-power energy,...

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February 12, 2009

"Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog"

So, Mr. Vice, RPM, chelsadilla, and I all went to the Majestic Theatre last night to see dane101's showing of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Joss Whedon's NPH-starring musical bad guy thingy. As it turns out, the thing was awesome, and seeing it with a bunch of people who loved it only enhanced the experience. I should note that of all of Joss Whedon's offerings, I have loved only one: Firefly and the movie it spawned, Serenity. I don't care for Buffy or Angel. Still, I really, really love Firefly and I had heard innumerable good things about Dr. Horrible's. As...

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February 10, 2009

"Some Sacred Questions, You Stroke My Locks"

One of the coolest things that's happened since I started the blog was that it started being a place where I can keep in touch with a bunch of people that I unfortunately don't see as often as I'd like. Another cool thing is that I've met a few people in the blogosphere that are pretty cool. You might not all know each other for reals, but you're probably vaguely familiar with the names and aliases that comment on here most frequently. Also--and I just thought about this--no one's come on here to bash me in a while. I sort...

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February 9, 2009

Lipsynching Is a Sin

You know, I didn't care for Jennifer Hudson's performance of the Star-Spangled Banner at the Superbowl. I've never really liked all the histrionic nonsense people do to the song. But, whatever--it takes a fuckload of talent to do it. And from the perspective of appreciating someone doing something difficult and impressive, Hudson's performance was awesome. Except that it was a lie. Which is bullshit. According to Hudson's manager, lipsynching is "the right way to do it." He goes on: There . . . [are] too many variables to go live. I would never recommend any artist go live because the...

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February 6, 2009

Are You A Member of Generation Y?

Recently, tRJ told me that his work had sponsored some thing where people came in and told all the employees what they were like based on when they were born. Apparently, Generation X kicks ass and Generation Y is a bunch of ingrates. Or something. Anyway, I was thinking about that today and I went and started looking on the whole "Generation Y" thing. As it turns out, I was not as cool and unique as I thought I was when I was a teenager. Did you know, for example, that everyone my age was sad when Kurt Cobain died?...

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February 4, 2009

My Twitter Experiment

I think I've mentioned several times that I'm now an avid reader of Wil Wheaton's blog. I'm such a big fan of his, in fact, that I decided to sign up for Twitter based simply on the fact that he uses it and thinks it's awesome. What is Twitter, exactly? Glad you asked: So far, I'm following Wil Wheaton, Jeph Jacques (the guy who writes Questionable Content), and Darth Vader. I know that tRJ tried the whole Twitter thing a while ago and got bored of it pretty quick. I think part of the problem is that he's not nearly...

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February 3, 2009

It's Sorta Funny . . . .

You make one tiny change to your Facebook relationship status and everyone you've ever met is tripping all over themselves trying to figure out what's up....

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January 29, 2009

Five Questions and Five Answers

JLee posted this meme on her blog. Basically, someone e-mailed her five questions, she posted them and the answers, and then invited her readers to comment asking to receive five questions themselves, which they then posted and answered. So, if any of you want me to ask you five questions for your own blogs--or for my own edification--you should comment. Or, if you don't want your e-mail address floating around in cyberspace, e-mail me. Anyway, JLee's questions and my answers. 1. If you could join any band (any time in history) which would you choose? This is an interesting question....

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January 27, 2009

I Am A Culinary God!

Lately, I've been really into cooking. Specifically, I've been all about learning to cook new delicious things, especially given that I can count the number of recipes I know off the top of my head on one hand. And I wouldn't even need all of that hand's fingers. So, yeah, I've been trying to expand my culinary vernacular. I started with a simple breakfast that's fairly obvious but that I had never made before. I threw some olive oil in a pan, followed that with some onions, and then added some Yukon gold potatoes. After that went for a while,...

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January 26, 2009

Concerning Names

For no reason, I'm thinking about names. Actually, I'm thinking about names because I was randomly thinking of one of my favorite books, One-Hundred Years of Solitude. Those of you who've read it know that although there are maybe a hundred characters in that book, there are a grand total of about three names. There are literally somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty characters named Aureliano. It's awesome. Anyway, that got me thinking about how I generally like the idea of repeating names through generations. I lament the fact that although my actual middle name--Ismael--has been used several times in...

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January 21, 2009

Touché, Charter

My feud with Charter is second only to my feud with UPS. You could say that Charter is like the General Zod to UPS's Lex Luthor. Right. Anyway, when I last tangled with my dastardly foe, I told them to go shove it because they refused to waive a stupid, made-up fee they had decided to charge me. I told them, in no uncertain terms, that they were the worst company in the history of the universe and that I would never do business with them again. This apparently did not resonate with Charter, as I have gotten at least...

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January 20, 2009

The Change I'm Hoping for

There's no way that Barack Obama won't disappoint me. I mean, there just isn't. Let's put it this way: I'm sorta disappointed that he didn't reveal himself as the Messiah immediately after taking the oath. But, while I definitely expect more from the man than any human being can possibly deliver, I also recognize that my expectations are ridiculous. If I step back and think about it, I think that President Obama will probably be a very good president, but that he'll make some mistakes. His approval rating will fall from where it is right now, obviously. But I think--I...

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January 17, 2009

My Subconscious Is on Overdrive

So, I had another wacky dream last night. Or, well, this morning since I just woke up from it a few minutes ago. Anyway, in my dream, I'm in the courtroom of a judge I'm before relatively frequently--Judge R, for those familiar with where I practice. Messers. Vice and RPM were there, too. So were lots of other people, but everyone besides us and the judge was Japanese. In fact, it was as if the courtroom had been turned into a Japanese game show. The judge was wearing a shiny blue robe and his hair style changed throughout the dream...

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January 16, 2009

Cold? Where?

I'm told that it was extremely cold outside today. I wouldn't know--I didn't set foot outside my apartment a single time, and it was awesome. The days have been long and boring lately. The cold has sequestered everyone in their own homes, and no one goes out or does anything. Not that there's anything to do. Still, I'd like to leave my house every now and then. Not today. But, you know, sometimes. I haven't even seen anything super interesting in the news lately. It's like I'm in a blog-material drought. I'm working on some things, though. Soon, there will...

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January 12, 2009

There Are Many Purposes to this Post, but the Most Important One Is to Make Lauren Feel Guilty

I'm writing this on my laptop because my desktop has been infected by approximately forty-eight distinct viruses simultaneously. Although I'm running various scans, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to have any recourse other than to wipe the hard drive and reinstall the OS. It's been years since I've had to do that, so it's sort of overdue. Things are getting really disorganized and there are way too many programs installed. Anyway, my friend Laurie-hole (given that entirely appropriate nickname by Co-SME) was here this weekend. We hadn't seen each other in a long time, but it was good to...

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January 8, 2009

Two Thoughts on the English Language

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were fairly busy days. At the beginning of the week, Wednesday in particular looked like it was going to be a bitch. You see, Wednesday was the day of a motion hearing that's been months in the making. And I really wanted to win. On top of that, I had to drive to the middle of nowhere for another fairly big hearing. Oh, and I knew that I was going to have to spend Wednesday night prepping for my trial on Thursday. Oh, and I still had to find some way to cram four client visits...

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January 7, 2009

Fuck You, UPS (Part MMXCLIIVq)

Those fucking fucks at UPS are at it again. I was expecting a package today, but I knew that I wasn't going to be home in time to be here when they tried to deliver it. So I was prepared for another fight with these worthless fucks. Here, now, is the timeline of how this shit went down. 6:58: I come home, see that UPS has left a sticker on my door, take it, and go to UPS.com to arrange to pick up my package tonight. 6:59: UPS.com has completely failed. The InfoNotice number that I am specifically told to...

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January 5, 2009

I'm Gonna Write a Book

As is my custom, I bought a horrible book for the flight back from Los Angeles. I find that nothing passes the time better than a ridiculous tale of international intrigue, ancient mysteries, and furtive glances. The particular book that I bought, though, was terrible even by the standards of its genre. It was The Alexandria Link by some douchebag named Steve Berry. Still, my need to know what happens next drove me to finish the thing. When I was done, I literally wanted to throw the thing int he trash--something I've never even considered doing with any book. But...

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January 4, 2009

Motherfucker!

I hadn't left the apartment all day. So I had no idea what to expect when I left to go to a show with RPM. That was my first mistake. My second mistake was expecting that the ground would provide me with traction. Apparently, slow rain coupled with temperatures fluctuating between just below freezing and just above freezing means that the ground stops being the ground and starts being an exercise in high-school physics: for the sake of simplicity, we'll be ignoring friction in all of our calculations. The result of this whole situation was that on literally the first...

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January 1, 2009

"A Long December"

So, I completely failed to record a Christmas carol this year. So I figured I'd do a New Year song. And my favorite New Year song, by far, is "A Long December." So here it is. I kept it really simple and, more importantly, I think that the singing is pretty decent. Let me know what you think. The Lovers of Sight and Sound - A Long December Anyway, 2008 was a great year. Mr. Vice and I started a business and didn't immediately fail. In fact, we did really well. I saw my family. I hung out with my...

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December 29, 2008

I'm Back!

I didn't have internet access while I was in California. Well, not on my laptop. I had it on my phone. But blogging from your phone is far too time-consuming, so I didn't do it. I did type out a few posts, though, and I've put them up now and dated them so that they appear on the days they were written. I only wrote two because I was alternately too busy and too busy relaxing to write too much more. In general, though, my trip was fan-fucking-tastic. I got to see almost all of my relatives and I got...

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December 27, 2008

Mia

So, I've been home for a few days now, and I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon. It's been a really good trip. My cousin Gloria has a four-year-old daughter named Mia. Mia is the cutest, funniest, most charismatic little girl I've ever met. Mia spends days when her parents are at work either at her paternal grandmother's house (where she's doted on by her father's mother), or at my mom's house (where she's doted on by my mother, my aunt, and my grandmother). The result is that she's the most ridiculously spoiled little girl in the world. Anything she wants to do,...

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December 23, 2008

"I Like to Be Here When I Can."

So I actually came far too close to having that nightmare scenario from that terrible JTT movie come to pass. I woke up at 2:30am Central and drove to Milwaukee. The drive was pretty ridiculous, actually. The roads weren't terrible, but they were far from good. In the end, though, I made it to Mil-town without too much of a problem. My parking and shuttle situations worked out fine, too. The problem started when Frontier Airlines decided that, instead of de-icing the plane and taking off, we would sit on the runway for a long time. Like, an hour. After...

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December 22, 2008

Predictions . . . .

Tomorrow morning, for the first time in two years, I'm going "home," by which I mean that I'm going to the place where my parents live now. I'm really, really excited. I theoretically fly out of Milwaukee tomorrow morning at 6am. That means that I'm going to leave my apartment at about 3am. Others might think I'm crazy, but I love getting up really early to start a trip. I don't know why, but I'd feel ripped off if my cross-country journey started while the sun was up. I say that I'm theoretically flying out because my trip has an...

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December 20, 2008

A Realization

I just realized something. I don't know why it's taken me so long to get to this conclusion, but I think it's correct. Your friends don't think you're perfect. The people that love you most aren't the people who don't think you're flawed. Fuck those people. People who think you're perfect have no fucking idea who you are. The best friends you could ever have are the ones that see your flaws but also see that you are, on the whole, a positive addition to their lives. This is a huge thing for me to realize, I think, because I...

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December 18, 2008

Dumb Arguments Can Take Forever to Resolve

I got a call today from a friend I hadn't spoken to in something like three years. It was nice. We spent a lot of time catching up and remembering lots of things we all did in college. And we planned some new adventures--she's hopefully gonna come visit me early in the new year. We hadn't spoken for, uh, dumb reasons. But it's all blood under the whatsit or whatever. The fact of the matter is that even when we weren't speaking, I knew we'd speak again sometime. And we did. And it was good. It's nice to know that...

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December 17, 2008

Engage Christmas Spirit!

I should give credit to Dee--I bastardized her Facebook status for this post's title. Anyway, for a number of reasons, I feel like I'm finally ready to start thinking about celebrating Christmas. I was most certainly not ready in October when the ever-expanding Christmas season started this year, but I'm ready now. First of all, I bought my plane tickets home today. So, while several courts are desperately trying to keep me in Wisconsin over the holiday, I will be in California with my family. I haven't seen my mom since graduation in May of 2007, and I haven't seen...

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December 15, 2008

That's Madison

Yesterday and last night, it was so warm that I was afraid the city would flood because of all the melting snow. Snow banks were reduced to large puddles, and the ground was once again visible. This morning, it's as if the sun went out and the Earth is floating around in the cold harshness of space untethered to any star. I love this city....

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December 12, 2008

Campbell Brown Is a Fucking Idiot

Up until a few months ago, I had no clue who Campbell Brown was. Now that I do, I wish she'd shut the fuck up. As far as I'm concerned, she's the worst that mainstream news has to offer (note that I'm not counting people like Bill O'Reilly as members of the "mainstream news" because, well, what they do isn't news). She's sensationalistic and panders to the "common" folk and all that other shit. But the positions she chooses to take are retarded. In a video posted on CNN.com today, for example, Ms. Brown discusses the fact that Governor Rod...

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December 11, 2008

How Lecherous Am I?

I've been thinking lately about how old a girl would have to be in order for me to consider dating her. I mean, I'm twenty-seven. That's fucking old in terms of the whole dating scene, right? I mean, I'm not in college anymore. Fuck, I'm not even in grad school anymore. So would it be strange--either for me or for other people--if I dated someone in, say, law school? Or college? I mean, people in college are, like, twenty-three at the most. What are those people like? I envision this scenario in which I show up with my twenty-two-year-old girlfriend...

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December 9, 2008

"Too Late to Turn Back Now, I'm Running Out of Sound." (Updated)

So, after an initial delay, I finally saw The Smashing Pumpkins again last night. This was the fourth time I've seen them, and I can now say that I've seen them tour for every album since and including Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. The first time I saw them, it was on the "Infinite Sadness" tour on December 7, 1996. It was in a giant arena, and Billy was wearing his most iconic outfit: the Zero shirt and the silver pants. I believe he had just started shaving his head. I don't know for sure because our seats sucked...

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December 7, 2008

Turkey Fixes Everything

Some people are very solitary and enjoy spending time alone when they're stressed or anxious or depressed or whatever. I've never been one of those people. Although there are times when I'd definitely rather sleep or read or just be alone than socialize, when I'm in a bad mood, I'd almost always rather be around my friends. By early Friday evening, I was in a pretty bad mood. Nothing specific or really terrible had happened. My week had just been long and I was tired and irritable. And stressed about some things that are completely out of my control. So,...

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December 5, 2008

People on Dating Websites Are Stupid

Now that I've gotten over the initial embarrassment of admitting that I signed up for one of these things, I think it's appropriate to rant about the kind of shit people write in their profiles. The site I signed up for asks a bunch of questions and then you're supposed to answer in some way that tells people interesting things about you. Probably pretty standard shit. Unfortunately, there are also some pretty standard responses which are really, really fucking lame. Some examples: What I'm Doing With My Life "Living" Really? You're living your life? Gee, thanks for letting me know...

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December 4, 2008

Are the Grammys Completely Out of Touch, or Am I?

I love the first Coldplay album. I think the second one is good. X&Y is pretty bad And this new thing they put out, Viva La Vida, is fucking unlistenable. It's fucking crap. It's some of the worst "music" I've ever heard. "Roman Catholic choirs are singing"? How does that count as a lyric! Compared to "Don't Panic" or even "Yellow," this new shit is appallingly bad. And who the fuck is Lil' Wayne? I honestly have no idea. Have I heard something by him? I mean, what the fuck is going on in the world of music? Anyway, all...

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December 3, 2008

Looking for an Opinion

So, the Big Three car companies showed up in Washington again to beg for money. This time, they jetpooled or something. They didn't each fly their own private jets, anyway. And the CEOs of each of the companies have apparently promised both to work for $1 a year and drive hybrid cars to DC for the next meetings. Because that makes sense somehow. All of this was some sort of good-faith demonstration which, I assume, was meant to soften the blow of the fact that they're no longer asking for $25 billion, they're asking for $34 billion. Huh That seems...

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December 1, 2008

Four Day Weekends Are the Best Things Ever

I kept thinking that yesterday was Sunday. Do you know what it's like when you wake up having gone to bed thinking you were going to wake up on a Monday and find that you've actually woken up on a Sunday? It's like God said "You know, I think you've been working really hard lately and I know you could really use an additional day to do nothing but goof off, so here, this one's on the house." And when God does something like that, it would be a huge mistake to actually do anything. Accordingly, I did nothing today....

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November 27, 2008

Giving Thanks and Whatnot

I wanted to come up with something clever and un-cliche to say for this year's Thanksgiving post, so I went back and read last year's post. And I realized that the thing I'm most thankful this year is my job. I mean, I have a job that I love. I look forward to work every day, as much as that's possible. I enjoy almost every aspect of my work. My co-workers kick ass. And though it can take a lot out of me, I don't feel like it's grinding down my soul. Plus, while I can't "win" everything I try...

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November 24, 2008

Concerning Concert Dates and Beer

Before yesterday, I had seen The Smashing Pumpkins three times. Today, even though I went to Chicago to see them for a fourth time last night, I have still seen them only three times. Fuck you and your "illness," Billy Corgan. Still, the fact that you rescheduled means that I have a good reason to go back to Chicago in the not-too-distant future. So what did I do in Chicago if not see my favorite band? Drink, mostly. See, not only were the Pumpkins playing, but it was also the day of the OSU-Michigan game. And since RPM is a...

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November 19, 2008

A Date with a Stranger

After exchanging a few messages and spending some time on the phone with a girl I met on the dating website I signed up for, we decided to meet up tonight. This girl is a doctor, so I'll call her Dr. Lady. In messages and on the phone, Dr. Lady seemed sarcastic, funny, and engaging. I was cautiously excited for our get-together this evening. When the thing was over, I was left thinking "Huh, I wish I had stayed home and played video games." It would have saved me money and I wouldn't have had to go outside in the...

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The Upside to the Housing Crisis

So, yeah, I was sort of busy there for a bit. But I'm back now--one of my trials is over and the other one is being rescheduled. Now, yeah, the housing and lending crisis or whatever really sucks. It's fucking over lots of Americans, and I fully acknowledge that, and it sucks, and I'm sorry--not that I played any part in it. But even in the worst situations, it's important to find the good news, the silver lining. With that in mind, I have to tell you guys that I was filled with vengeful glee when I saw this story....

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November 13, 2008

Just Like That . . .

One of the things that you sort of know when you're a lawyer is that nothing ever goes to trial. It just doesn't happen. Mr. Vice and I opened our office in February and we've each had one trial so far, which isn't very many when you consider how many cases we've each handled. Many clients start off telling you that they're completely certain that they want to try their case. But as you begin to develop a better understanding of the case and the witnesses, it's a lot easier to see where each case has huge weaknesses, so even...

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November 8, 2008

A Story

This is a story I told to some friends tonight while we were at the piano bar. I feel like sharing it universally, so here you go. When I was much younger, maybe between eight and eleven, I got it in my head that I would go exploring. The house I lived in had four bedrooms. One was mine, one was my mom's, and the other two were just sort of there. No one ever really used them. Of the two unused bedrooms, one was very boring. It was my de facto play room. We kept all of my crap...

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November 7, 2008

Tea Sucks

I drink lots and lots of water. At restaurants, I usually go through at least a glass before I even order. And I go through several glasses during the meal. This is apparently not the norm, since most of my friends don't touch their water at all during a meal. And this leads to frustration because most waiters think that most people don't need refills during a meal. Which in my case is simply not the case. But I digress. There is nothing more refreshing or good than a nice, tall glass of ice-cold water. It's just so fucking satisfying...

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November 4, 2008

"I Promise You: We as a People Will Get There."

I guess I have to admit that I was wrong. In fact, I wasn't just wrong: I was very, very wrong. But I'm happy that I was. I have always been proud to be an American. I have always appreciated the sacrifices that other people made to make sure that I grew up here. And, while I have become increasingly aware of the many flaws our country has, I have always firmly believed that the fundamental principles upon which this nation is built are sound, true, and beautiful. In recent years, however, it's been harder to defend my almost blind...

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I Voted

So, yeah, I voted. I usually hate getting up early and that was still true today. But I didn't want to stand in some huge line and I have work to do today--which sucks, by the way. But I went and voted and it wasn't too big of a pain in the ass and there were more people there than I've ever seen and there were a lot of younger voters, too. And a bunch of people registering. Many of them seemed to me like maybe they were voting for the first time. I find this encouraging. I've voted in...

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November 2, 2008

Halloween, 2008

So, yes, Halloween happened. From what I can remember, it was a hell of a lot of fun. We played the newly created Pulp Fiction drinking game and then the traditional yearly game of asshole. I never rose above the rank of vice-asshole, so things went badly (or well, depending on your point of view) for me. Here's the costume rundown. (We had originally planned a Quentin Tarantino theme, but only some of us ended up going along with that): pH as Gogo Yubari from Kill Bill 1: Mr. Vice as Captain Coons from Pulp Fiction: Here's me and RPM...

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November 1, 2008

And That's How You Pick up a Stripper

So, Co-SME, The Reeg, RPM, and I went to some undergrad Halloween party hosted by The Reeg's friend tonight. I spent the early portion of the evening doing what I normally do at large parties: stand around and looked pissed. I also went outside and criticized their beer pong rules. The proper way to play beer pong is with two teams of two people, with each person having six cups arranged in a triangle in front of them for a total of six cups per person and twelve cups per side. Here in Wisconsin, people are too afraid to drink...

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October 25, 2008

The Things I'd Change

The ten-year anniversary of my graduation from high school is quickly approaching. This is making me feel old. Very much so, in fact. But more than that, it started making me feel nostalgic. I mean, high school wasn't the best time of my life or anything, but it also wasn't the worst. (The worst, incidentally, was the one-and-a-half-year period immediately following high school.) I had some fun during those four years, and I actually knew some cool people. And I dropped out of touch with the vast majority of them in the intervening years. But, with the advent of Facebook...

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October 24, 2008

An Answer

On her blog, Butterflyfish posted a meme where people are supposed to comment and one of the things she's supposed to do is ask a question they've always wanted to ask you. I, being the attention whore that I am, posted. And the question she asked me? "What stops you from doing something like Match.com?" So, here's the answer. Actually, three answers, all of which are true. First of all, I keep picturing this conversation where I first tell people that I'm seeing someone. They'll be all "How did you meet?" And in my mind, I cringe when mental-me says...

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October 23, 2008

The Omnivore's Hundred

Having nothing better to write about--that I want to share, anyway--I've decided to finally do this list, which I got from tRJ. 1) Copy this list, including these instructions. 2) Bold all the items you've eaten. 3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating. 1. Venison 2. Nettle tea (I have no idea what this is.) 3. Huevos rancheros 4. Steak tartare 5. Crocodile (That's gross, dude.) 6. Black pudding (Congealed blood? No. Fucking. Way.) 7. Cheese fondue 8. Carp 9. Borscht 10. Baba ghanoush 11. Calamari (Am I the only person in the world who doesn't...

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October 20, 2008

"Dying of the Light" or "Maybe this Season Will Be Good, Too"

pH and I agree that this is the best episode of the season so far. A lot of the things that were good about the first season were back, one of the final remnants of the abortion that was the second season is gone, and the overall plot started to seem cohesive and focused. I liked the Hiro and Ando parts. I appreciated that they got the whole "Hiro killed Ando" thing out of the way immediately, although it did feel sort of cheap. Still, the follow up--their exploits in Africa--were entertaining, funny, and they furthered the plot a decent...

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October 18, 2008

An Epilogue

Most days start earlier than I'd like. I wake up, groggily shower and shave, get dressed, and go to work. Most days, I spend a lot of time thinking about my clients and our business and about the law. Most days, I get something to eat from one of the restaurants around our office. Or I eat something at home. And then, I go back to work. Or to court. Or to jail. Most days, I wrap things up at around 4 or 5. On most days, I feel like I didn't get as much done as I should have....

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October 16, 2008

A Story in Two Parts (Part II)

When we last left our intrepid adventurer (i.e., me), I was pretty excited about the prospect of having a third date with an extremely attractive girl I met through our mutual friend, The Reeg. We had ended our last date with an agreement to go out again on the following Friday. Let's see how things played out . . . . So, I was fairly excited and not at all discouraged by our last get together. Still, she was at an out-of-town wedding that weekend and at work during the week, so I didn't call her or whatever. I figured...

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October 14, 2008

A Story in Two Parts (Part I)

I'm going to tell you guys a story, and I'd love it if you could let me know what you think. Specifically, I'm going to ask you a question at the end, and I'd like your reasoned answers to it. If you want to make fun of me and stuff, that's fine, too, but at least be creative about it. If you already know how this story plays out, please don't ruin the ending. Cool? Ok, here's the story. I was introduced to a girl--let's call her Emily--by a mutual friend, The Reeg. The first time we met, we went...

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October 10, 2008

Well, That Was a Good Week

After last week, I was feeling sort of beaten down and worthless. I had gotten my ass handed to me several times in court, and I wasn't happy about it. I was feeling like a failure, frankly. Then this week, a whole lot of good things happened. I mean, I didn't win a trial or anything, but I got some fairly good results for my clients, and that's what's really important, I think. So I did the only thing I thought was reasonable: I took a half day today. Yup, I drove to the office, made my one scheduled appearance...

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October 9, 2008

"I Am Still Just a Rat in a Cage."

Fuck yes! So, The Smashing Pumpkins are playing in Chicago next month for their fucking twentieth anniversary. That's fucking insane. But what's even fucking better is that I get to go. I don't have tickets yet, and no one's committed to going with me--RPM, Mr. Vice, pH, I'm looking at you guys here--but it doesn't matter. I don't care if I have to go by myself and wrestle some teenage girl for tickets, I'm going to one of these shows. I say "one of these" because they're playing fucking FOUR SHOWS in a week. I swear, if I had the...

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October 8, 2008

"I'll Take All of the Blame"

As it turns out, I am a terrible friend. See, Mr. Vice and pHrecently got engaged, and I neglected to say "congratulations" in a public and embarrassing forum. So, anyway Mr. Vice and pH, congratulations on your engagement. Just remember who you have to thank for your eternal bliss: that's right, me. So, for example, let's say that you're walking down the aisle at your wedding, pH. You shouldn't be thinking about your future husband or your wonderful life together. No, you should be thinking about me. And you shouldn't just be thinking "god, I wish he would stop undressing...

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October 7, 2008

"Where You Once Belonged"

Valerie, a friend of mine from Wisconsin, is currently kicking it in the good ol' Flagstaff, AZ (I've never liked calling it "Flag"--anyone who does is a loser). Talking to her in the past few days has made me realize how much I love that city and how much I miss it, which is strange because I had sort of thought that I hated everything about Arizona and didn't miss it at all. Last night, Valerie was telling me about driving from Phoenix to Flagstaff. And I couldn't help thinking about how many times I made that drive by myself...

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October 6, 2008

"I Am Become Death" or "Brunettes Are Hot"

The fourth episode this season continues to not completely disappoint. In fact, I rather liked it. There were good amounts of plot development, character interaction, and humor--all of which served to make the show so damned good during the first season. The main storyline involved Peter traveling into the future with the aid of Future Peter to find out what the fuck Future Peter was all pissed off about. As it turns out, the future's all fucked up because everyone has powers and some are using them for less than noble purposes. But the most startling revelations involve the switched...

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October 4, 2008

Who Am I and What Have I Done with the Real Ismael?

It's 9am on a Saturday. I am willingly awake so that I can go to a farmer's market. What the fuck is wrong with me?...

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October 2, 2008

Who the Fuck Is this O'Biden Character?

I have said and still believe that the substance of what's being said matters more than the person saying it. I think that a natural extension of that principle is that you have to try to look past the words someone uses--or misuses--to express an idea to the idea itself. It's the ideas that ultimately matter. I really did try to apply these axioms during the vice-presidential debate tonight. But at times it became nearly impossible to find any meaning in the jumbled of words she was spewing. I mean, what the hell did she mean when she was talking...

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September 30, 2008

Thoughts on a Hectic Day

Sometimes things seem to gel really nicely. I'm prepared and on top of things and I walk away from them feeling accomplished and proud of myself. Today was not one of those days. Today I felt like things might fall apart at any given second. There were a million different things happening that each required my attention like, right now. And though I did everything that needed to get done--and did it fairly well, if I do say so myself--I still feel like I was *this close* from having everything fall apart. And that's a scary feeling. And it stressed...

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"The Second Coming," "The Butterfly Effect," and "One of Us, One of Them"

Despite the recent lack of posts on the subject, I am as devoted a Heroes fan as ever. While the end of season one was was an unmitigated failure and the whole of season two was even worse, the third season is off to a good start. So I'm going to resume my Monday night Heroes posts. During the hiatus after season two, Mr. Vice, pH, and I made a lot of jokes about how we really hoped that the producers would come back this season and largely ignore season two. As it turns out, they did almost exactly that....

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September 27, 2008

Why I Hate Sports

Stupid Wisinconsin Bager. Stupid, stupid Bager....

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September 25, 2008

Huzzah!

You know, sometimes life seems like a constant stream of disappointments and letdowns. I know that my life has certainly felt like that in the past month or so. I can't really explain how much I hate getting excited about something and then having it fail. What sucks the absolute most is when you try to keep your excitement under control, when you spend all your time analyzing and rethinking the entire situation because you've been let down so much in the past that you don't even want to start getting excited unless you're pretty sure you've actually got good...

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September 23, 2008

Apology to the Charter Guy

Ok, Charter Guy. I grudgingly admit that I owe you an apology. See, I may have been on hold with Charter for literally an hour and a half that night. And your company may have been completely incorrect about everything you told me. And it is absolutely the case that three different people told me three different stories about when my service would get fixed before you got on the phone. And it's true that the person I spoke to immediately before you barely spoke English but still managed to convey a level of condescension and derision that not even...

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September 18, 2008

Get Born Again

One of the things I have always wanted to do but have not yet done is go to a Renaissance Fair. Seriously. They seem like a shit load of escapist fun, like Civil War reenactment but, you know, less queer. So here are some of the things I'm looking forward to seeing. I have no doubt that these things will be there in abundance because Renaissance Fairs are authentic reproductions of Medieval times, and these things existed in abundance in Medieval times. First, I expect there a shit ton of hot chicks in corsets. I expect to see skinny girls...

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September 16, 2008

Sad Songs

One of my favorite iTunes features is the smart playlist function. Not only do I try to rate all of my songs, I also try to label all of them according to general feel. The result is that if I want a bunch of good, hard songs, I can just put on one list and know that I'm going to get what I'm looking for. I think my most-played list is "Mellow," which has a lot of acoustic and mid-tempo stuff on it. I play it a lot because it's good to listen to in the background while I'm reading...

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September 12, 2008

Concerning Trying and Failing

No one wins all the time. And no one can reasonably expect that they will. I certainly don't. But I have--or maybe had--faith that our system was fair or just or equitable. I wish Mr. Vice could tell me that I fucked something up. I keep asking him if he thinks I did. But he keeps telling me what I think is probably the truth: I could have done better, obviously, but it probably wouldn't have made a difference. So it's not even like I can really blame myself for what happened. In the end, the system fucking failed. And...

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September 11, 2008

New Poll!

Yes, after what seems like forever, I have posted a new poll. This one was inspired by a conversation I had with Co-SME and his girlfriend, The Reeg. I personally voted for "more intelligent." I feel completely lost and overwhelmed by how smart others are far too often, so I think that being smarter would be preferable to almost anything on that list. Also, apparently about 40 percent of you love your job. Nicely done....

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September 10, 2008

Let's Find the Higgs Boson

So, the Large Hadron Collider is supposed to be turned on today. Stay tuned to Here is No Why for updates about whether CERN's particle collider creates a black hole that swallows and destroys the Earth or the entire Universe. Anyway, while I'm not nearly smart enough to understand what the fuck the LHC is actually supposed to help us learn--something about particles, dark matter, and the nature of mass, from what I understand--I am smart enough to appreciate an extremely geeky yet catchy rap video about the LHC. Check it out:...

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September 9, 2008

The Twelfth Thing to Love About Madison: Fall

Right now, I'm thinking that fall has to be my favorite season. There's something about the crisp air on a fall night that makes the world seem--for lack of a more hetero term--magical. Fall reminds me of riding ferris wheels, Halloween, the feeling of being buried in blankets, Wes Anderson movies, and that scene from American Beauty where Ricky's showing Jane the video of the plastic bag. Fall makes me feel, for whatever reason, like the world is full of awesome possiblities but that, at the same time, it's on the brink of ending. Fall in Wisconsin is even awesomer....

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September 5, 2008

A Day, Deconstructed

Melancholic, overwhelmed, anxious, worried. Hopeful, purposeful. Relieved. Busy. Overconfident. Worried, worried, worried. Doubtful. Nervous. Relieved. Focused, pleased, elated. Satisfied. Faithful, excited. Disappointed. Disappointed. Disappointed. Dissatisfied, angry, critical, hurt, lost. Entertained. Disappointed. Infinite sadness....

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September 1, 2008

Chunkin'

As you may recall, last Saturday was my birthday. I went out ot dinner with my friends and had a really good time. Oh, and Co-SME and The Reeg threw me a party at their place, which was also a house-warming party for the place, which is awesome. It was a lot of fun, and I would have been more than satisfied with those two awesome things. But Mr. Vice nonetheless told me that I shouldn't make any plans for this Saturday because we were going to go out to dinner with RPM and Mr. Utah, who had not been...

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August 28, 2008

Mission: Accomplished

My fucking place is clean like a motherfucker! The living and dining rooms are organized and tidy, except, again, for the corner with all my guitar crap. The kitchen is fucking sparkling, and almost all the dishes are done. I say "almost" because there are still some glasses and bowls I need to wash that I just didn't want to wash last night. The bedroom has been completely cleaned up and now it looks really, really empty. And the bathroom is sanitary. And I also brought back the concept of a hamper, so there's no longer a big pile of...

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August 27, 2008

Progress!

My apartment has become sort of a giant mess. In fact, it's gotten so bad that I instituted a ban on people being in the apartment about a year ago. Since then, no one has set foot in here other than me. Except for Mr. Utah one time, and he insisted that we leave immediately. I'd like to say that I have some excuse for being so terrible about cleaning the place, but I don't. There's not really a reason for it other than that I'm lazy. Things were getting pretty bad for a little bit there. The living room...

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August 25, 2008

Happy Birthday, Mom

A friend of mine has a nine-year-old son. The kid is pretty smart and charismatic. But he also craves attention like you wouldn't believe. I like the kid, but he can be very, very annoying. I mean, not more than any other nine-year-old, I'm sure. And not in a malicious way. He just wants attention and sometimes he doesn't understand that people are doing other things at the moment. I'm telling you this, Mom, because the last time I was interacting with this child I realized something horrific: that this kid, as obnoxious as he can be, is no where...

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Concerning Spirituality and Sigur Ros

I've written before about my beliefs on God. Recent happenings have got me thinking not only about those beliefs--which, upon re-examination, I still believe are valid--but also about something else: spirituality. By spirituality, I mean the notion that a human being can have a relationship with God. Maybe I'm using that word incorrectly and perhaps there's a better word, but that's the meaning I'm assigning to it, so let's just work with that. Anyway, like I said, I hold to my previous assertion about the nature of God: God may exist or he may not, but I don't know, I...

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August 24, 2008

A Sad, Sad Day

I was born on this day twenty-seven years ago. I generally really look forward to my birthday, and I certainly did this year. But I feel extremely old. Maybe some of you will read that and think I'm stupid for thinking I'm old even though I'm only twenty-seven. But it freaks me out, man. I can no longer plausibly claim to be in my mid-twenties. The most I can say is that I'm in my early late twenties, but those sorts of linguistic calisthenics just show how desperately I'm trying to cling to some semblence of youth. It's all fucking...

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August 20, 2008

I'm a Fucking Pansy

One of the reasons I went to college and law school is that I hate lifting things. There's nothing wrong with people who lift things for a living. Just because you lift things doesn't mean you're stupid or uneducated or whatever. There is honor in lifting things. I just don't want to lift things. I'm fairly intelligent, I hate lifting things, and I enjoy work that challenges me mentally. I've built my entire life around the desire to avoid having to lift things to feed myself. I bring this up because I realized today that it's a damned good thing...

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August 18, 2008

There's No Fucking "H"!

Surprisingly, this post has nothing to do with people mispronouncing my name. Instead, it has something to do with the Olympics. I was watching the trampoline finals tonight and, between thinking "How the fuck is this an Olympic sport?" and "I don't understand how this is a sport," I couldn't help but notice that one of the commentators kept saying that the competitors were getting a lot of "heighth." What the fuck is heighth? Is it like height but pronounced by an idiot? People adding an extra H to the word height has bothered me ever since middle school where...

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Meat

Saturday night, in order to celebrate pH's recent acquisition of gainful employment, we went somewhere we had been wanting to go for a long time: Samba. Samba is one of those Brazilian steakhouse places that seem to be all over the place now. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, you basically pay a fee for all-you-can-eat meat, which is delivered to your table on swords by dudes dressed like pirates. Or not dressed like pirates, depending on which specific place you go to. Several of us had previously been to one of these places in Chicago. We were...

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August 14, 2008

"Tapestry"

I just watched this episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called "Tapestry." You can read the whole plot synopsis here, but basically it involves Captain Picard almost dying. Q gives him a chance to go back and undo one of his biggest mistakes. See, when Picard was an ensign, he got in a fight because he was sort of an arrogant jackass. And during the fight, he got stabbed through the heart. Well, Picard took that back. And then he saw that the arrogance of his youth made him the confident, badass leader he would become. Had he not...

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August 12, 2008

Of Spotlights and Friendship

One of the rumors I've heard about the upcoming ways in which Hollywood will rape my childhood is that they're planning some sort of movie or something based on Thundercats. I really hope this doesn't happen because, while Thundercats kicked an unmitigated amount of ass when I was a kid, I really don't think it would hold up nowadays. Not without major modifications, anyway, and if you're going to change the whole thing around, then why not just come up with a whole new idea and leave my childhood alone? Having said all that, there was one element of Thundercats...

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August 10, 2008

The Olympics Kick Ass

With most of my friends out of town this weekend, a wicked hangover to deal with on Saturday, and generally low motivation all around, I did a lot of sitting around watching TV this weekend. And I watched the Olympics almost exclusively. Here are some observations: I would do almost any of the female gymnasts on the U.S. team. The ones that are legal, that is. I would not do any of the female Chinese gymnasts because none of them are anywhere near legal, regardless of what they claim. I'm sorry, gymnasts might generally be small and young looking, but...

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August 6, 2008

Concerning Fairness and Power

I'm sure that any of my relatives would be able to tell you about how I reacted to things that I thought were unfair when I was a kid. I would cry. But I would also tremble with anger. My fists would be clenched as tight as possible. My face would turn into a hideous scowl. I would be inconsolable. Yeah, I was a terrible child to deal with, but here's what was going on in my head. I hated being treated unfairly. Or, rather, I hated being treated in a way that seemed unfair at the time. Looking back...

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Stargazing

I remember the first time I really saw stars. It was in college. Nogales is not, by any means, a bustling metropolis, but even it puts out enough light to diminish someone's view of the night sky. And though I had been camping a few times, I think that the moon was always out and, besides, I wasn't really paying attention. But one day, for no real reason, some people and I went on a drive in the woods around Flagstaff. Flagstaff takes its astromony somewhat seriously--they discovered Pluto from Lowell Observatory. There's a "dark sky" policy which means that,...

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August 5, 2008

I Fucking Hate Fucking Internet Fucking Explorer!

Seriously, this isn't so much a browser as a steaming turd that occasionally loads HTML files. Not only does it lack tabbed browsing, it loads pages slower than molasses and it makes my computer run slower than... molasses! Why am I using Internet Explorer and not my beloved Firefox? Because Firefox has decided that the bset possible thing for it to do is crash randomly. It doesn't care if I'm loading a page, playing a youtube video, or just letting it sit there, if it's the exact time I don't want it to crash, that's when it crashes. What the...

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July 31, 2008

Destroying Instruments Is Stupid

I strongly prefer The Daily Show to The Colbert Report. In fact, I don't really like Colbert that much. I mean, I don't dislike him, I just think he's greatly, ridiculously inferior to Jon Stewart. And even with The Daily Show, I don't really like the interview segment. I don't really like the interview segment with any show. Even when I was a religious Conan O'Brien watcher, I would mostly tune in for the monologue and the sketches. So it was that after the two noninterview segments of The Daily Show tonight, I started trolling around for other things to...

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July 30, 2008

Band Update

So, as I said, tRJ and I are making a semiserious effort to start a band. By that I mean that we posted an ad on Craiglist looking for a drummer and a bassist. We got some responses, but haven't played with any of them because, well, they all suck. First there was this drummer guy who said he was into what we were into. So we sent him a very rough demo of a song we worked on together. He wrote back that he thought he liked it and that he thought it would work really well as a...

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July 29, 2008

"Sleep Will not Come . . . ."

Blah. I went to sleep at about 11. Actually, about 8:30 if you count the time I spent with the TV playing reruns of The Next Generation while I slept on the couch. I have some sort of ear infection. It's not really painful but it's obnoxious and my hearing is all fucked up. And my throat still hurts. So it's not like I'm actually sick, but it's not pleasant, either. Anyway, I was in and out of consciousness from about 8:30 till 11, at which point I decided to call it a night and went to bed. And now...

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July 27, 2008

Seventeen

Here's an interesting question that came up last night--and when I say "came up," I mean "I brought up and then repeated over and over again." What is the highest number of orgasms you've ever had in one day? As the title of this post suggests, mine is seventeen. In the past when I've told people this, they've reacted with shock and disbelief. I don't think it's that amazing--a bored fourteen-year-old boy with lots of time on his hands, a boring Saturday, and a free preview of Cinemax can do a lot good. Seventeen times, to be precise. I mean,...

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July 20, 2008

I'm Just Sayin'

In a conversation with Co-SME, I just said this, which I thought was awesome: Cynicism always trumps faith, and if it ever doesn't, marry that person. Just saying....

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Go See The Dark Knight

There will be spoilers here, so if you haven't seen The Dark Knight, you should probably stop reading. So I've now seen The Dark Knight twice--once painfully alone and once with friends. And here's what I've got: it's obviously the best Batman movie ever. Anyone with any sort of lingering love for Tim Burton's Batman movies just has to accept that. It's also clearly the best superhero movie ever. This admission pains me, but it's just true. It's also the most awesome movie I've seen all summer and the best movie I can remember seeing this year or even in...

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July 18, 2008

How I Spent My Friday Morning

My friends and I are going to see The Dark Knight tonight. There had been some discussion about going to a midnight showing, but we never did anything about it and then assumed that all the screenings were going to be sold out. And, besides, we've all got responsibilities and jobs and stuff. Well, as it turns out, I don't have to be in court tomorrow and I'm not meeting any clients. I've got stuff I have to do, sure, but I don't have to be up at any specific time. That left me wondering what I was going to...

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July 13, 2008

The Two Things I Miss About the West Coast

In my darker moments, I have to admit that there are times when I crave McDonald's. I don't know what it is, but sometimes I just need that fried pseudo-food. I imagine it's what a heroin addict feels like. Last night, for example, L-Dawg and I saw someone eating a Chicken McNugget on TV, and we developed a deep-seated need for them. So we started talking about making a giant pile of McNuggets and french fries, and then we ended up actually getting some McNuggets and realized that they're way inferior to the nuggets at Wendy's. But, though I sometimes...

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July 11, 2008

I Fucking Hate You, You Fuckwads

To the guy at the courthouse: Good god, you're an idiot. Let me see if I understand what you just did. You walked into the Clerk of Courts room, saw the long counter with the windows on it, saw the people standing in the fucking line, saw the fucking signs saying "please wait in line until you are called to a window," and decided that you were somehow above all those fucking rules and just walked right up to a window--one manned by a woman on the phone, no less!--and conducted your business. I fucking hate you. To the woman...

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July 10, 2008

If You Want a Fight, You've Come to the Right Place

You know, for all of my deeply held beliefs, and in spite of my legendary stubbornness, I have fought for very few things in my life. I mean, I guess there are things I would theoretically fight for--specific examples elude me at the moment--but there's never really been an issue that I've been actually involved in. This is due partly to the fact that I haven't really felt like there was anything I could do about most things I've been opposed to or in favor of. How was I, for example, going to have any measurable influence on how the...

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July 8, 2008

Ha! The Obvious Eludes Me Again

As I was lying in bed, I realized something: if you want to write an angry song, concentrate on something that makes you really, really fucking angry. So now I've got the rough workings of a verse and a chorus. Because years-old pain is definitely worthy of a giant "fuck you" in song form....

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July 7, 2008

This Is Some Frustrating Shit

I very rarely sit down with the intention of writing a song. Instead, I'll pick up the guitar and noodle around until I come up with something that I like. If I'm in a sad mood, I'll mess around with minor chords and minor pentatonic scales. If I'm in an angry mood, I'll mess around with distorted power chords and try to come up with some interesting riffs or fills or whatever. Then I'll generally see where that little snippet wants to progress. Then, depending on my mood and the mood I think the music seems to evoke, I'll generally...

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July 4, 2008

Concerning Pyrokinesis and Cowardice

One of my cousins once observed that I was a strange kid. At the time, I took offense. "I wasn't strange," I insisted. But she has a son that's only two years younger than me, so she knew what was going on in the teenage universe at the time, and the fact of the matter is that I was a strange kid. As lazy as I am, and as much as I half-assed school and whatever else, the fact of the matter is that, emotionally, I'm not half-assed at all. I throw myself into things, people, causes, vendettas, and ideas...

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July 1, 2008

A Shoutout to a So-Far Silent Reader

Contrary to what I believe popular belief to be, I do not write songs exclusively about romantic love or the lack or loss thereof. Sometimes I have other things to write about. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes other things come to mind. Sometimes they don't. In college, I wrote a song that I intended to be not at all about romantic love, but it was sort of a strange song. It had three verses and no choruses, and each verse was about a different person that I respected or admired or whatever. Sure, every person is a woman, but that's not...

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June 30, 2008

Whoa, that Was Fucked Up

I very rarely remember my dreams. In fact, I don't really think I dream very much at all. But when I do--as I assume I must since I haven't gone insane--I don't remember them. They disappear from my mind the second I wake up, or very shortly thereafter. I also very rarely think about my father. He died when I was three, and I have no memories about him at all. I only know what he looks like from pictures. People that did know him tell me that he was a pretty awesome guy, but for whatever reason, I've never...

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June 29, 2008

Close to Home . . . .

Holy shit. So, two medical helicopters crashed into each other as they were arriving at Flagstaff Medical Center in Flagstaff, Arizona. Six people died in the collision, and at least one other person was seriously injured. As some of you know, I went to college in Flagstaff. But what makes this even closer to home for me is that my house was literally about two blocks from the hospital where these helicopters were heading. I remember driving home many times and seeing the helicopters flying onto the landing pad on top of the building. I actually almost crashed a few...

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June 26, 2008

Why I Oppose the Death Penalty

This is an old story now, but the U.S. Supreme Court decided that child rapists cannot be subjected to the death penalty. I view this as an extremely good thing, not because I support child rape (I don't) but because after considering the issue for a long time, I am fundamentally opposed to the death penalty. Let me give you some reasons why. The empirical stuff. I've heard that it costs more to execute a criminal than it does to house him for life. I've also heard about various studies that prove that the death penalty has no deterrent effect....

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June 24, 2008

The Rumors of My Demise . . .

Ok, so the blog was down for a few days because my domain expired and the fuckers at Modwest didn't bother to give me any sort of notice and then I was too busy and lazy to deal with it. But it's back now, so there you go. I will resume regular posting shortly....

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June 20, 2008

Things That Make Me Unspeakably Angry

Twenty-two-year olds. My contempt for people my own age has almost no bounds, but my contempt for twenty-two-year olds is fucking brighter than a thousand fiery suns. It was Co-SME's birthday, so I briefly went to The Plaza. And what I saw there made me furious. What the fuck is wrong with these people? Skinny jeans on fucking everyone. And the girls that weren't wearing skinny jeans were wearing fucking trash bags and tights. What the motherfuck is going on with these people? But even that's not the worst of it. There was one guy there who was just a...