Unless things have changed without me knowing, we’re having a super special guest to Knitting in the Buff tonight: Stewie’s mom! So take advantage of the opportunity to kick it up a notch. BAM!
Opportunities Squandered.
What’s more annoying than getting a coupon for a free kids movie rental at Rogers and then forgetting to use it before it expires? Well, at least I didn’t leave a package of strawberries in the fridge for so long that they went MOULDY! CHRIS!!!!
I’m starting a habit of putting a batch of stuff on ebay every week. To supplement my income. This week I put a lot of old Arkham Advertisers (Official Magazine of the H.P. Lovecraft Fan Club of the Miskatonic University Press) up. Anghold’s shoes end in an hour or so, and the bid is only up to about ten bucks. That’s sad and alarming, as Ang was hoping to get 30-40 bucks for them. I set the reserve price at $36 so if it doesn’t go up, we don’t have to sell.
Did you wreck the car? Did you raise the dead?
Today and yesterday will be forever known as The Two Days of Zombies. In a strange flash of synchronicity, I was invited to a new roleplaying game by Palle, the gm of that Call of Cthulhu campaign that I was in for oh…almost two years. The game is described as “Punk Rockers versus armies of Zombies. 1983. A punk rock dance club in a bad part of East LA, on a hot Friday night.” They system we’re using is FUDGE – which I’ve never played before but apparently used a lot of d6’s. Tonight we’re making up characters. Mine will be modelled after Igby from the movie Igby Goes Down.
The other part of the synchronicity is that last night we had a Zombie-themed TV marathon. We watched the zombie episode of Buffy, the zombie episode of Spaced, the zombie episode of Kolchack, Shaun of the Dead (which I liked a lot better when I saw the whole thing all the way through), Day of the Dead, and the zombie segment of Treehouse of Horror IV. And there were donut holes and watermelon slices, amongst other things.
The Esquire Man's hated nemesis: woman hair.
I was going through my heap of magazines today, trying to reduce the clutter (for the nonce) in my work area and indeed, the entire living room. I came across this quote from an article in the July 2003 edition of Esquire.
What conclusions can I draw from a woman who steadfastly refuses to get a bikini wax?
I’ts unreasonable to expect any woman to maintain a trim caterpillar-sized patch at all times–the upkeep is tough, painful, and expensive, and most jobs don’t allow you to write it off. However, it is reasonable to expect her to keep her crotch from looking like Benji, and if she isn’t doing that much, then you’ve got a problem on your hands, and in the back of your throat. First, you need to rule out some things: Is she foreign? No? Is she Robin Williams? No? Then it’s possible that the woman in question is a hippie and you’ve chosen to ignore the warning signs: rock-crystal deodorant, hemp butter. Sound familiar? If this is the case, let me offer my deepest sympathy. The situation is hopeless, but I hope you have fun at Burning Man. Or she could be a rebel by nature, which can mean only one thing: trouble. Still, she might take issue with waxing specifically, in which case you may want to gently remind Grizzly Adams that there are many other ways to remove hair.
Now I have a question for Stacey Grenrock Woods, the author of the article: What conclusions can I draw from a woman who propagates–on her own gender no less–uptight, narrow-minded, masochistic esthetics towards something as natural as pubic hair?
Just a word of advice
If you go to Popcap.com and start playing Astro Pop (“galactic puzzlement!”) and enjoy it, do yourself a favour and resist the urge to download the “deluxe” version, because you will find that just when you’re getting your highest score ever on your highest level ever, and things are really starting to heat up, the program will close and tell you that your 60 minutes of trial time is over and that you need to register for $20 to play more, and you will want to put something large and brick-tasting through your computer monitor.
A little something I found while cleaning up
No gnus is good gnus, with Gary Gnu
Linda Ronstadt was booed off the stage at the Aladdin casino in Las Vegas after she dedicated “Desperado” to Michael Moore; the casino’s management removed Ronstadt from the building and refused to let her return to her hotel room. [BBC]
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals released a videotape of workers in a chicken factory stomping on live chickens and throwing them against a wall; the undercover investigator who documented the abuse said that he saw hundreds of cruel acts, including squeezing birds till they explode. [New York Times]
The Government Accountability Office said that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are running $12.3 billion over budget this year. [New York Times]
Janssen Pharmaceutica Products, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, warned doctors that it had “minimized potentially fatal risks, and made misleading claims” about Risperdal, an anti-schizophrenia drug; the drug can cause stroke, diabetes, and other fatal complications, the company said, and contrary to claims on the label it is not safer than similar drugs. It was reported that some boys who were given Risperdal in Florida, where it is used as a “chemical restraint” in state facilities, developed lactating breasts. [Miami Herald] The Bush Administration has decided that consumers should not be able to sue manufacturers of drugs that have been approved by the FDA. [New York Times]
An Italian city banned the practice of keeping goldfish in bowls. [Agence France-Presse]
Here here. And while they’re at it, let’s stop being jerks and keeping siamese fighting fish in coffee mug-sized glasses.
An alligator bit off a landscaper’s arm in Florida. [CNN] It was reported that one of the first lesbian couples to get married in Canada filed for divorce within five days, though Canadian law does not yet recognize same-sex divorce. [Globe and Mail]
Bit of an oversight there….
Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor found wide genetic variations among healthy people; many people lack large sequences of DNA; others have multiple copies. [Newsday] Researchers found that monkeys with good mothers are less likely to be aggressive, even if they have a gene that codes for aggression. [New Scientist]
I dedicate this entry to my jive-talkin' friends
Here’s a few things that have been bugging me lately.
Hizouse (sic?) – what’s the deal? Why do we need the “iz” in the middle of that word? What purpose does it serve? Where did it come from? Where is it going? In the gizarbage, I hizope. I’m so square.
f’ing or effing or whatever. Everyone knows that when you say “f’ing” you mean fucking, so why bother? I could kind of, possibly understand using it if you’re in the presence of a seven-year-old (but only if her parents are around), but if you’re hanging out with adults I don’t see the point. Whose delicate sensibilities are you trying to cushion? Same thing with friggin’ or frickin’ – I’ve heard both of those used. As a word, ‘fuck’s whole raison d’etre is to offend, so to water it down is to strip it of its sole purpose. But if you must soften the word fuck because it’s too vulgar, don’t use some lame bastardized version of a real word*. Try replacing it altogether with ‘screw’ or ‘hell’ or ‘damn’. Those are actual words that actually mean actually something, and can add to your statements rather than confuse and muddle them.
*The word, by the way, apparently comes from (or was at least first printed in) an old poem written partly in English and partly in Latin in the 14th century. It’s translated from the latin “fuccant.” The poem is “Flen Flyss” (Fleas, Flies [and Friars]) and it satirized Roman Catholic monks who fornicated with the “wives of [the town] Ely.” More….
A hot time in the old dungeon tonight.
These grapes are shaped like pears and I find that disturbing. Maybe they were genetically modified to include genes from my oil painting instructor in college, who was also pear-shaped. They certainly do taste a little like paint thinner.
D&D tonight was fun, if hot. I blame Stewie for stealing one of the fans (I’m not really concerned whether or not it is his fan, thanks for asking) and keeping it in his room. And by that I mean I blame him for the heat, not for the fun. I blame the fun on Kelly, who brought home made blueberry ice cream. And by home made I mean it’s made in her home. I’m wary of restaurants who declare that I’ll love their “home made” meals. I choose to believe in that case that somebody is living in the restaurant, therefor it is his/her/their home, therefor the meals are ‘home made.’ I guess there could be rats who call the restaurant home too, so okay – yeah, by that logic, no matter where you go the meals are home made. Swanson tv dinners are home made because gypsies and spiders live in the factory. “It’s gypsy-licious!” their new ad campaign begins. No? I digress.
In D&D the kids are finally putting together pieces of the information I’ve been feeding them to come to various conclusions. These conclusions may be right or they may be wrong, I’ll never blog, but it’s nice to see them putting their heads together as a group. Most of the time NPCs will tell them what to do and they’ll just assume it’s what they’re supposed to do seeing as how it came from the DM. Not necessarily, my pretties, not necessarily. They parleyed, and in the words of Paul Simon, time it was oh what a time it was. Now they may make choices that I haven’t planned for and even though it means more improv for me, I think they’ll enjoy the campaign more that way, knowing I’m not railroading them.
Fahrenheit 9/11 with Warren and Yvonne
If anybody wants to join Warren, Yvonne and me for Fahrenheit 9/11 tomorrow at 4:45 at the Park Theater please do!