TAGGED.

I hate these things. I have been tagged by Matt, who was tagged by Heather, who was tagged by Dirty Blonde, who was tagged by Seeker, who was tagged by Marrie who started this mess that would have ended at me had I not tagged Holly for it. I feel bad about that. Almost. Anyway...

Things to do before I die:

1. Build a house.
   
2. Run for president and get impeached in a horrible scandal of some sort, likely involving the contents of this blog.
   
3. Visit all 7 continents (3 left...)
   
4. Update my profile picture.
5. Record hit album, tour world, make millions.
6. I guess get married eventually.
7. Kill a man... just to watch him die.

Things I can do:

1. Design. Graphically.
2. Fix everyone else's computer but my own with my mere presence.
3. Pick out awesome music for any occasion that you've probably never heard before and will find cool.
4. Somehow make it to work despite waking up 20 minutes before I need to be there.
   
5. Shoot a basketball with near-perfect form.
6. Pass the infectious-disease-related-testing required when I donate blood every 8 weeks. Ladies, take note.
   
7. Probably beat you in a fight. Unless you are the Ultimate Fighting Champion or a girl. Because Maki don't hit ladies.

Things I can't do:

1. Hit ladies.
2. Hit on the ladies (with any skill).
3. Trigonometry.
4. Eat shrimp.
5. Stop buying friggin' DVDs.
6. Tear down the walls I've built around myself, allowing me to display my emotions in a public way, thus allowing others to gain insight into who I really am and what my hopes, dreams, desires and heart's longings are.
   
7. Listen to country music.
   

Things that attract me most to the opposite sex:

1. Gotta have a cute face.
2. It also helps to have a petite frame.
3. She really needs to get my sense of humor and have a pretty good sense of humor herself. But really, it's all about laughing at my jokes.
   
4. I also need a woman with brains since I get bored holding one-sided conversations.
5. She must also have good taste in music. I know this shouldn't matter to me as much as it does, but well, it does. God help me, this is starting to sound like a personal ad.
6. Gotta agree with the lower-lip-biting thing Matt mentioned. Some girl is gonna toss that one at me one day and get me in a whole barrel of trouble. In a good way.
7. I am also attracted to women who let me talk to them without spraying pepper spray at me. That is hella attractive.
   

Things I say:

1. "Dammit."
2. "True."
3. "Quality."
4. "HOLY CRAP."
5. "Word."
6. "Bastards."
7. "Yes, I agree, Andy Warhol doomed modern art to an era of mediocrity with his gimmicky approach."
   

Celebrity crushes:

1. Ingrid Bergman circa 1941
2. Amy Acker
3. Liz Phair
4. Lucy Davis
5. Tina Fey
6. Christina Ricci (yes, I know I'm strange for that one)
7. Since it seems to be a requirement to have one gay crush or something, I'll go with Clooney.

I hope you, the people of the blogging world, have enjoyed this post.

DSL + wireless router = time machine

How is that, you ask? Especially without a flux capacitor? I will tell you, friend. It means you're suddenly transported to 1990. It's the days of a 2400 baud modem, when that was a hella blazin' fast piece of equipment for connecting to the local BBS and stuff. You spent like $200 on that thing and you were the cat's meow, for lack of a better term at the moment.

Anyway, that's what my upload speed is right now.

I can download just fine... But let me try to connect to the server of the webspace I just purchased to share awesome goodness with you fine people and it's suddenly a trip in the wayback machine. Try to connect to me on MSN or AIM or your Instant Messenger program of choice and suddenly Bell Biv Devoe and Jesus Jones comes up on the iTunes and I didn't even load them on there.

So I go to BellSouth's website and pull up all of my information and begin a lovely chat session with my good friend from India or wherever their tech support is these days. What follows is the unedited transcript.

BellSouth: Welcome to BellSouth FastAccess Technical Support. How may I assist you?
Maki: I am hella frustrated, yo
BellSouth: Can you please explain the problem you need assistance with?
Maki: I'm all tryin to upload to this new webspace I tossed some coin at and your whole DSL modem is suddenly like a lame-ass old 2400 baud modem which was so slow a 14.4 made it look like a little bitch and it took like 45 minutes to send one little MP3 to the site and I'm all Jouaqiun Phoenix in Gladiator going, "I am vexed. This is hella vexing"
BellSouth: I will pull up your information now, sir.
Maki: damn straight
BellSouth: I want you to open up Internet Explorer and go to a site called speed.fastaccess.com and test the speed of your connection.
Maki: Shit, yo. I'll go there but I already told you we partying like it's a 1990 modem in here

* 3 minutes pass, site is still testing *

Maki: That totally broke the internet. I don't even know how we're still talking here. It ain't done because it's still trying to catch up to 15 years of progress in modem connection technology in like 3 minutes
BellSouth: It should have completed by now. Is your computer connected directly to the modem or sharing a connection?
Maki: It's hooked up through a wireless router that you guys helped me set up, don't they keep that in your records and stuff? Why even ask for my info beforehand if you're not gonna read it
BellSouth: What you should do is disconnect the modem from the router and plug it directly into the computer. That should solve your upload problems.
Maki: So whenever I need to upload a file, you're telling me I've gotta go behind the computer and rewire all sorts of crap, then rewire it back the way it was next time I want to play some halo 2 with a bunch of racist 10-year-olds on xbox live?
BellSouth: I was not suggesting you do that every time, I was suggesting that may be a possible solution. Your router is the problem. We are not at fault in any way shape or form. You did this to yourself. Contact your router manufacturer.
Maki: So you're saying that it might be a solution, the laziest damn solution I've ever heard from anyone ever. Remind me to call you up when your car breaks down and be like, next time carry a gas can in your trunk cause maybe you ran out of gas even though there's flames coming out from under the damn hood
BellSouth: Is there anything else I can assist you with today?
Maki: You can fix my damn internet without me all rewiring everything any time I wanna do something
BellSouth: Thank you for using BellSouth FastAccess Technical Support.
Maki: I hope you catch the clap
* Help Session has ended *

Guess you guys won't be getting any fun MP3-type stuff until I can get this router thing sorted out. This will only happen during Belkin's pre-designated hours of 8am to 5pm Monday through Friday, Pacific time. My life is pain.

Near catastrophe passive-aggressively averted!

There's this cute girl I've been eyeing at the gym lately. The problem with eyeing a woman at the gym is that there are very few opportunities to ever speak to her that are appropriate. Can't do it while she's on the elliptical. Can't do it while she's lifting weights. Can't really do it while she's stretching or doing crunches, either. Your choices are either during a water break or as you both are leaving (which requires a remarkable amount of timing).

Usually I'm all business once the workout gets started. I hate people that screw around just talking and all, which is probably why I never really meet anyone at the gym. I'm too busy actually doing, you know, gym stuff. Timing was on my side as I showed up for my workout today, though. I usually drink a bit of water from the fountain before I get started. Who should I see waiting for her yoga class to start, right by the water fountain? Even better, as luck would have it, I'm not sweaty-nasty. Yet. I decide to make my move, just as she reaches up to adjust her beautiful auburn-haired little ponytail.

Wait a sec. Where the hell did that ring with the big friggin' diamond on her left hand come from?

Damn. I could tell she saw me moving towards her, chances are that's why she did the not-so-subtle hair fix. I had to try and play it off like I was heading that direction anyway... But I don't think I pulled it off that well. Even with her passive-aggressive signal I was still thrown off my game a bit. At least she did that before I made myself the guy that asks out the engaged/married chicks at the gym hoping for one of those "open arrangement" type deals or something. Dammit. I only ever seem to be attracted to women who are completely unavailable. Even if I don't know it beforehand.

Defeated, I ran 3 miles on the treadmill waiting for Matt to get there then proceeded to have one of my better chest/triceps workouts ever. I guess you win some and you lose some at the gym.

No Excuses

I just haven't really got anything to say and it's late once again. I haven't gone to bed before 2am yet this week. I keep finding things my puny little brain decides that I have to do LIKE RIGHT NOW OR ELSE and I end up staying up until like 2:30 or 3am when I know I have to get up around 7am so I can get to work and all. I don't get it. I am accomplishing a lot of useless things, though. Blogging isn't one of them. It is now, I guess, but you get my point.

Things I have accomplished this week:

1. Booked airline flight to Chicago so I can get to Notre Dame for a football game. Not particularly useless.
   
2. Completed epic, 101-song, 7 hour, 32 minute, 55 second playlist for Mark's housewarming/wife's birthday party this weekend.
3. Accomplished this with only 3 swear words that I know of on the entire playlist, one of which was edited out by moi.
4. Crammed so many songs that are gonna just blow peoples minds on that playlist. I love it like happy little bunny rabbits spreading happy vibes to their happy bunny friends. That's the amount of good vibes coming from this thing.
5. Talked more about the playlist even though nobody but me knows what's on it and the vast majority of you won't be there to hear it.
6. Shopped for groceries. Old Mother Hubbard came by and was like, "Yo Maki, you need some food in this piece. These cupboards be hella bare." Now my cats get to eat food again, and so do I.
7. Put out 36-page section at work. FUN.
   
8. Um, screwed around entirely too much on Instant Messenger programs. It's sad that those have pretty much replaced my phone as the primary form of communication with friends. A sign of the future? Let's hope not.
   
9. Placed pointless blog post listing pointless things on internet.
   

Things I have not accomplish this week:

1. Never got to download the Six Feet Under finale because bittorrent hates me and downloaded 2.1 gigs worth of file before I cancelled it because it was stuck at 92% and 93 minutes left despite downloading at 50k/second. WHY YOU HATE ME SO MUCH MPAA/RIAA.
2. Brand new Mac G5 with 23" widescreen monitor at work is still a $4,000 paperweight because our tech services department:
   a) hates me
   b) is full of imbeciles
   c) all of the above
   It's the most goddamned beautiful paperweight you've ever seen, though. It can't run Quark or InDesign but it sure as hell runs a mean screensaver. This is really important when you have a 23" monitor taking up space on your desk.
3. Taken new picture to replace awesome shoes in profile.
   
4. Avoided placing pointless blog post listing pointless things on internet.

If you read this far, then congratulations

a2 = b - 1

you are the equation of the week.

I shake my fist angrily at Northwest Airlines.

Y'know, I fly a lot. You kind of need to in order to get where you're going these days. And yet I hate airlines. HATE THEM. I'm like the girlfriend who keeps getting abused, yet I keep coming back for more every time I need to get somewhere. All messy-haired, black-eyed, knocked around, legs stiff from being crammed in the little barely-reclining seat, neck hurting from sleeping with my head against the window, all of that jazz. And yet I keep trying to book flights with airlines and getting punished for it. Hell, it's still better than taking the train.

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself here. Let's start at the beginning.

As some of you may recall, I received a free flight voucher for taking a bump and risking my life with a certain relative. My sister is a student at University of Notre Dame. For those who live under some kind of sports rock, this is a school which happens to be known for its football tradition as well as its exceptional academics. I decided I would like to attend one of these football games again before my sister graduates and leaves the school forever next summer. I had risked my life to earn a free flight anywhere in the continental United States. I figured it was time for the voucher chickens to come home to roost.

I journey to Northwest Airlines' website, enter my Worldperks number, pick my flight dates and times. I pick a Friday morning Jacksonville departure to arrive in South Bend at a reasonable hour that afternoon. I pick a noon flight out of South Bend on Sunday. I don't pick any later because I know how bad that airport sucks with getting their flights out and I really don't want to be stuck in Waiting For Godot or something. Anyway, I click submit and prepare to beat the system. My total comes to $805.32. A pretty hefty sum for a weekend flight, huh? Not with my voucher, I say! I input my voucher information and prepare to cackle maniacally at my good fortune.

My total says $605.32.

This is not exactly what I was expecting. I check and see that my voucher is only worth $200. How can this be? THEY PROMISED ME A FREE FLIGHT, DAMMIT. An airline would never lie to me! They would never hurt me! They love me! So I get on the phone to find out what the deal is. After waiting approximately 23 minutes on hold (not that I was counting) I find out that vouchers can only be used for a specified number of pre-assigned seats per plane. This number is never told to me, but they do inform me that the seats were taken before I even received my voucher. Damn you, loyal Notre Dame fan base. Damn you to hell. I figure that one guy with a voucher got the one lone voucher seat on my flight. As did the other 8 people on the other 8 flights I could have taken that day.

Defeated, I decide to hit old reliable, expedia.com. My flight will only cost me $432 there. This is still way too damn much money for a graphic designer (an awesome one, but a graphic designer nonetheless) to spend on a weekend trip to visit family and watch a football game. At my sister's advice, I try SideStep.com. $397. Maki is now officially frustrated and referring to himself in the third person. Angrily.

I ask my sister if she's got any classes she could skip. Turns out Thursday afternoons are free... And Chicago Midway Airport isn't that far away. Midway rules simply by not being O'Hare, the black hole of airports which never seems to allow you to go anywhere you'd like to go without delaying you somehow. 100% of the time. As in always. Without fail. So I check AirTran and Southwest's fares to Midway. Now we're talkin'. $200.80 on AirTran, $197.30 on Southwest. Now there's something an awesome graphic designer can consider. Fuck you Northwest and your $800 flight. I think we have ourselves a winner. A winner, that is, provided my flight doesn't get cancelled or something else stupid. You know I've got a 50/50 shot at getting the right one anyway. Murphy's Law and all. I figure the pendulum is bound to swing my way after the voucher incident and my time on hold. And I've still got my voucher. Eat it, Northwest.

This has been another absolutely enthralling episode of Flight Shopping With Maki. Thank you for your time.

You should go see 'The 40 Year Old Virgin' right now.

Every once in a while, a movie comes along that can walk the line between raunchy and heartwarming without getting disgusting or sappy while being non-stop, rolling-in-the-aisles funny all at the same time.

The 40 Year Old Virgin is that movie.

Thank you, There's Something About Mary, but the torch has now been passed. Same with you, American Pie. Steve Carell is my new favorite comedian. The guy is a genius. He singlehandedly has made me willing to watch the NBC version of "The Office." If he's half as good in that as he is here, I'm all over it. Add his Brick Tamblyn from Anchorman to the mix and I think I'd be willing to watch him in even one of those terrible standard sitcoms where he's the dorky funny guy with the really hot wife that would be completely out of his league in real life and three quick-witted kids that throw out one-liners. He'd make it watchable anyway, I'm convinced of it.

So anyway, get to the point, Maki... Let's hear about the movie.

It's about a 40-year-old virgin. Judd Apatow & Co. take this very simple concept (that would have been one-note in just about anybody else's hands) and make the absolute most of it, giving us fully fleshed-out characters that we can understand and sympathize with. We all know somebody like Andy (Carell); he's that guy at work who may or may not be a serial killer but he's probably harmless enough. Turns out he's just a virgin who's pretty much given up on dating. He works at the electronics store with that guy who's always cheating on his girlfriend (Romany Malco), that guy who never got over his last girlfriend (Paul Rudd) and the shameless horndog (an absolutely hilarious Seth Rogen). Throw in their slightly creepy boss (Jayne Lynch), some surly Pakistani coworkers and assorted females for Andy to meet (and likely fail with) and you've got a recipe for success. This may sound like a crowded movie, but trust me when I tell you that every single character gets a moment to shine.

Failing miserably at picking up women is a comedy goldmine in the first place. Just look at this blog to see how often I go to that well. Add in adventures with drunk driving, speed dating, chest waxing (which, yes, is even funnier than the previews showed), sex ed, a whole bunch of action figures and even a framed Asia poster and you've got one damn funny movie. It's all held together by Carell, though. He makes Andy a huge dork, but one who you want to root for anyway, even when you know he's doing the wrong thing. Catherine Keener is stuck with the straight-man role here, playing a single grandmother. It's her duty to react to all the jokes going on around her and she does a terrific job at it, giving depth to a role that could have been "the standard love interest that everyone knows our protagonist will end up with at the end of the movie." She gives you reason to want her and Andy to end up together. Seth Rogen, Romany Malco and Paul Rudd all work great with each other, providing just enough support and just enough smart-ass remarks to really feel like friends to Andy.

Really, I have few, if any complaints about the movie. Even the stuff that bugged me as I was watching is addressed by the end. What we have is a crowd-pleaser of a movie that gives us laughs, genuine romance and characters that feel and act and react like real people do. But really, Judd Apatow has already proven that that's his forte. I'm looking forward to seeing what he directs next (he's the screenwriter for Fun With Dick And Jane, which looks hilarious, but he's not directing it).

4 out of 4 stars. Get yourself to the theater.

I am so pissed I missed this.

Hootie! Hootie! Hootie!

First I missed out on taunting Jared Leto, now I miss out on taunting Hootie by repeatedly requesting the Burger King Bacon Cheddar Ranch song. The only thing that could make it better? If they were performing at a Wal Mart.

Hey, wait...

HOLY CRAP.

Dammit, I hate my life sometimes.

"I don't know what to say, you don't care anyway..."

I am usually not one to participate in "tagging" games and such, but I'm doing this anyway because I want people to think I'm cool because of the music I listen to. Besides, Liz demanded it and I can't let her down, being her hero and all. Anyway, it's 5 songs you love right now, even if they suck and you know it. These songs, however, do not suck. Here is my list, with non-optional commentary track!

1. "Crystal" - New Order - My favorite New Order song of all time. Will it ever get old for me? Probably not. Fun fact #1: The Killers got their name from the video for this song.
2. "She's The One" - The Beta Band - Fun fact #2: The 4-minute crescendo that takes over the last half of this song never breaks. It just fades out eventually. This is why The Beta Band owns you.
3. "Amphibian" - Bjork - I don't understand a word that's being said in this song, but it still gives me chills every time I hear it. Both the Mark Bell Mix and the Film Mix are amazing, yet completely different sounding tracks. Fun fact #3: The song was in Being John Malkovich and captures the mood of that creepy ending absolutely perfectly.
4. "Why" - Rip Slyme - Japanese hip hop is awesome, and so are these guys. Just a hell of a lot of fun. Fun fact #4: I swear to you, if this was in English, it would be a top-40 hit. And not in a bad way.
5. "Dynamite!" - The Roots - Touch this Illa-Fifth Dynamite! Touch this Illa-Fifth Dynamite! Fun fact #5: I'm out of fun facts. Um, The Roots play their own instruments, but you guys knew that already.

As always, catch me on AIM or send me a shout at bigmaki@gmail.com and I will share goodness. Or just run to Soulseek already.

Sorry, but I'm not tagging anyone else. Feel free to tag yourself for me. Loser.

Writer's cinder block

Dang, man. I have absolutely nothing to say. I think I used up all my good stuff leaving comments on other people's blogs or something. I did throw some genius stuff around, as this will attest. Of course, now I've got nothing left for me to post, since I've settled back into a life of working out, complaining about bad CDs, and attending meetings every 20 minutes or so at work. Since I don't write about work (boring), that only leaves me to talk about bad CDs (check) and working out (boring).

What do I do when I have nothing new to say? I'm glad you asked. I go through the archives of this here blog. In doing this blogging thing for almost six months now, two things have become apparent to me:

1. I crack myself up.
   
2. You people who don't know me must think I'm a horrible, horrible human being.

Really. I post some out there stuff on here. Not only is some of this stuff just flat-out wrong, but very rarely do I present myself in any sort of redeeming light to make up for it. I don't exactly present others in any sort of redeeming light, either. It's like my whole world is a big, contorted ball of negative energy. It's awesome, really. The funny thing is that I really have it pretty good, so I really have no reason to be negative about much in this world.

The more I thought about this, the more I realized that happy fun stuff is rather boring to me. It certainly doesn't inspire me to write anything. All the stupid, messed up stuff that I encounter is a lot more fun. Does that make me cynical? If so, I'd rather be cynical than appear happy to you people. God knows my cynicism must be the only thing keeping you guys around these days.

Worst post EVAR?

CIRCLE ONE

• Yes
• No
• Maybe
• Stop blogging

A 311 fan's review of 'Don't Tread On Me'

Wow, that was $10 poorly spent.

Damn.

Um, don't buy Sin City today.

Didn't think I'd hear myself saying that. Just an FYI though, there's a much better version with actual special features and stuff coming out in a few months. I love the movie to its violent, black-hearted core, but I ain't no sucka who's gonna spend his hard-earned cash on 2 copies of the same movie. Not that I haven't done that like 20 times already on much lesser movies, but I digress. Spend your money on The Simpsons: Season 6 instead.

This public service announcement has been brought to you by the Maki Has Too Damn Many DVDs Foundation.

Deluge

It all happened so fast. The staccato hammering of the rain graduating to a cacophony. All sound and fury. Sight, too. Red squares ahead, barely visible, their edges obscured by the gallons of water in the space between us; vague twin pairs moving along with me at fifty miles an hour.

It should have been eighty.

The music pours out of the stereo louder and louder to drown out the clamor. "Take me in and dry the rain..." An apropos sentiment for the moment. Kamikaze drops pound at the thin layer of glass a few feet from my face. The wiper blades struggle keep up with the monsoon. They're losing the battle.

A flash of lightning illuminates the dirty sky. The crimson twins ahead glow brighter in reflexive response. Amber hazard light cousins flash their interval, repetitive, nonsensical morse code almost apologizing for the slow rate of progress. I refuse to acknowledge their excuses.

"If there's something inside that you wanna say, say it out loud, it'll be okay..."

Momentary silence outside bursts through, cutting the noise for just a split second. The music hits me louder than before. With no competition, the sound is deafening and wonderful. The overpass grants me this brief reprieve; lesser vehicles huddle underneath, staking claim to the oasis of dry land for as long as necessary.

The downpour continues apace. Whitecaps form in the wake of rubber tread cutting through the murk. Flashing saffron triangles portend a long evening ahead.

Fucking rain.

Attention, Martini Bar bartenders of Orlando!

When you are asked to make a dirty martini, which, really, should be one of your specialties, considering you're a martini bar and all, you should be able to produce one that is pleasantly salty, in which I can vaguely taste the vodka used in the drink. It should not taste like someone dunked my head in the ocean and attempted to drown me and the only way I could survive was, by sheer reflex, gulping down saltwater and making bitter faces and hating my life and the situation I'm currently in. Especially if I specified that I did NOT want it "extra dirty." Please don't make me regret the $10 (plus tip) that I just spent for your libation.

Thank you for listening, Martini Bar bartenders of Orlando, if not the entire world.

PS: Note the exceptional use of commas in that first sentence. Thank you.

Insecure Racecar Guy

I had this happen the other night, and it's just really odd. I'm stopped at a light and some dude with his rims, his loud muffler, ugly graphics on his car and those totally 100% awesome neon lights underneath pulls up next to me. You know the type. One of those kids who's seen The Fast And The Furious like 100 times, and even watched 2 Fast 2 Furious because he just couldn't get enough fast and furious car racing Paul Walker action. Ask him what the meaning of life is and he'll give you a Vin Diesel quote. That guy. He pulls up to me at the light and starts revving his engine, as if he wants to race.

I drive a Hyundai. It's an SUV.

Something tells me your car sucks if you want to race me. Either that or you've got such a massive inferiority complex that you can't bear to lose a race, so you pick a sure thing. I mean, really. Did he expect me to roll down the window and start talking shit?

"CD, air conditioning, automatic transmission, power windows and power locks standard, BITCH! $5,000 less than a comparably equipped Explorer, BITCH! Your girlfriend really likes my nice, long warranty, BITCH! Yeah, you want some more of this Hyundai style? Al B Sure be rollin' in this motherfucker! Come get it! BITCH!"

I can talk shit with the best of them, as you can obviously see. What I think would be really cool is to have stealth modifications done to my Santa Fe. You know, soup up the engine, get some NOS in that mofo, the works. But don't get the rimz or the ugly-ass graphix or the stupid writing on the windows that designates which car racing gang I'm in or anything. Make it look like a plain old Hyundai Santa Fe. So when Insecure Racecar Guy pulls up and thinks he's the shit, I can destroy him off the line and then point and laugh. Then he goes "I can't handle it, this never happened to Vin Diesel," and decides to kill himself by wrapping his car around a tree, thus killing two birds with one stone. But maybe that's hoping for a little too much.

The moral of the story is this: don't try to race me unless you're driving an Escalade that you spent too much for. Then I'll let you win so you don't shoot me. Otherwise, I'm not interested. Just beware of my Stealth Santa Fe.

My weekend sucked.

I jinxed myself. I'll admit it. I was all up for doing something Friday afternoon, as you saw before. I worked out with ol' Matty, went home showered, got dressed and like a wave crashing into me, suddenly felt like complete and utter crap. It was like having a hangover without the alcohol. I had an invite to head out to the bar, but by the time I got it the prospect of going out was pretty much a distant memory. I shotgun some NyQuil and go to bed around 11pm, since looking at a computer or TV screen hurts my head to much and I refuse to be reading at home on a Friday night.

I wake up Saturday feeling worse because now my throat feels swollen shut and my nose is completely plugged up. I also have the hangover from hell headache lingering on. I also realize that it's noon. Thanks, NyQuil! I proceed to go from laying in my bed to laying on my couch. I find out that Brian is rounding up troops to go to the 30 Seconds To Mars show out at the beach. I'd like to go, not because I like the band (the CD was decidedly generic) but because I'd like to taunt Jared Leto. I think it would be great to just keep screaming, "Ed Norton whupped your ass! And not jacked up American History X Ed Norton, but wimpy-looking Fight Club Ed Norton!" Two things would be great about doing this. 1) People who can't differentiate between actors and the characters they play are inherently funny. 2) People who know the difference but still do this anyway are even funnier. Me getting in a fight with the lead singer of a band would make for great blog fodder, too. Sadly, my crappy condition prevented any of this from coming to pass. I shotgun more NyQuil and go to bed early, weeping just a little.

I am awakened early Sunday morning (around 10am, yes that's early) to the sound of someone across the street from me setting off their car alarm. Repeatedly. Like every 45 seconds repeatedly. For a solid 20 minutes. It's times like this that I'm glad I don't own a gun, because I'm too pretty to go to jail. Well, I'm not that pretty, but I've seen enough episodes of Oz to know that I never, ever want to go to prison. EVER. So I figure I may as well get up since the car alarm is going to drive me insane either way. I have a bowl of oatmeal, since that seems to be one of the few things able to make it past the grapefruit-swollen glands in my neck. I decide that maybe some fresh air would do me right, so I try to do some yardwork. The fact that I could only breathe through my mouth reminded me that this was a horrible choice. I finish mowing the lawn, feeling like I'm coated in a mixture of sweat and mucus. I take a shower and lay on the couch for a few hours, before finally getting up and using the computer again. I have some nice conversations with the 30 people who IM me about 3 seconds after signing on. Just an aside, it damn well better be an emergency if you feel the need to write me less than 30 seconds after I sign on. I don't want to talk to you that bad. Don't take that personally, I hate everyone equally. Well, not really. Just sayin'. Anyway, my mom calls, asks what I did this weekend, I tell her, she asks if I had any dates, I tell her no and she gets mad and bugs me about how she wants grandchildren, making my mood even better. Thanks, mom! I shotgun more NyQuil and go to bed.

I wake up this morning to a dream about getting home around dawn after being out partying all night. Pretty sad when your dream life is more functional than your waking life. Needless to say, I get up exhausted, and feeling only marginally better. I figure it's because I've been locked in a grimy old training room for over a week now with a dozen newspaper people who rarely see the sun. It's the only explanation.

Sorry if you read all the way through that, but sometimes you've just gotta purge that crap from your system before you can move on.

It's Friday!

This can only mean one thing. It's time to party.



Now when I say freeze you just freeze one time
When I say freeze y'all stop on a dime
When I say freeze you just freeze one time
When I say freeze y'all stop on a dime
FREEZE

Attention, drivers of Jacksonville!

I am hereby informing you that you do not need to give yourself a two car width berth to pass a parked truck on the side of the road. Especially if those two car widths put you into the lane of oncoming traffic. I don't care if you drive a Dodge Stratus. I don't care if you have both a lei and mardi gras beads hanging from your rear view mirror. You are still a moron.

Thank you for your time.

Bumping up my geek cred.

Maybe those crazy kids Six and Eight can help me with this one, since I seem to recall one or both of them playing this game at some point. I have recently come into possession of a DVD containing a two-week trial for World of Warcraft. I've heard a lot of people have enjoyed it and had fun with it, despite paying some bizarre thing called a "monthly fee" to play it. What worries me is that I vanished into Diablo 2 for a few months, emerging, haggard and unkempt, with a broken index finger, wondering why my friends and family had declared me dead weeks before. WoW is by the same company, so what I'm doing may be akin to asking that guy on the street corner of a nearby neighborhood* that I'm considering trying crack because I've heard some good things about it and some people seem to have enjoyed it. But something tells me the people that suggested that analogy are pansies and don't take their video games seriously or something.

I guess what I'm asking is should I risk my social life and well being to interact with other human beings I've never met and probably will never meet over some sort of electronic network? Especially if I get hooked and log in visiting this game compulsively? Now that I think about it, this description sounds vaguely familiar, though I can't exactly place it...


*Not my neighborhood, mind you... my neighborhood is hell of nice.

The comedy goldmine was full of iron pyrite.

I realized today that I went to driver improvement school on Saturday morning and have said exactly nothing about it. There's a good reason for this. Absolutely nothing of import happened there. Nothing interesting. Nothing funny. No zombie attacks, no abstract terror, no cheesy old "Blood On The Highway" movies, no hot chicks to hit on and fail miserably with, nothing. Hindsight tells me I should've ordered the DVD, I guess. This was so disappointing, since I figured I'd be able to milk a good 3 or 4 posts out of the experience, but it was just not to be.

It was the Improv Comedy Driving School, which means it's supposed to be more entertaining than the standard deal, but all we ended up with was a "yuck yuck" comedian type guy who kept saying, "that usually gets a bigger laugh than that..." There's a reason it didn't get a bigger laugh, buddy. It's because you're wearing light-up sunglasses indoors and you're not Gallagher. Gallagher sucks anyway.

The people in the class didn't help any, either. Bunch of losers. The cross section there did prove one thing to me, though. Women are much, much, much more likely to get out of a ticket than men are. Of the 17 people in the class, 3 were women. THREE. All three of them had been in accidents. Funny that none of them were there for speeding, eh? Go figure. The only one who was remotely attractive (I'll use the term very loosely) and remotely my age was the girl I will call "Shannon." Now, either I'm getting old and cranky or Shannon was partially retarded. Or high for the entire class, which was a possibility, definitely. All I know is that she was dumb as rocks, which is really an insult to rocks everywhere. She also spent 75% of her time laughing at the least appropriate stuff possible. I thought about talking her up since it'd probably be pretty easy to end up getting her number. But then I remembered that I think there's a commandment against getting a retarded person's number so I decided against it.

You can tell how unfunny the Improv Comedy Traffic School was by the lack of funny in this post. Sorry.