Temporary Insanity

Mr. Index Finger

admin — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 03:18:35 +0000

It was a strange weekend to be sure.

I made my way to the fine state of Pennsylvania with a two primary purposes. Get my semi-annual cleaning at the dentist and go to several bars with my friend that had flown in from New Mexico. The two of you reading this might wonder why on gods earth would I drive roughly 280 miles just to get a cleaning? Surely there must be dentists somewhere in or around my current location that I could visit. All of these things are certainly true but my dentist is awesome. I’ve been going to that office for so long that I simply have never been to another dentist’s office until Somewhere around ago. That’s when I tried going to a dentist down closer to me. They are all booked up and I needed to schedule 3 months in advance. The place I went to was horrid in just about every respect. I left the office with a mouth full of so much blood you would think I had got into a fight with a wall in which I lost. (Though I put up a rousing good fight, the judges were split.)

To top it all off the dentist only barely took my insurance. I had decided after paying that much money for all of that abuse I decided that if I was going to continue my trips to the dentist the 280 miles were indeed worth it. Plus my dentist back in my home town was awesome. I can rearrange an appointment only a week or so prior without much hassle. Plus my dentist is awesome. When I go there the woman cleaning my teeth doesn’t leave my mouth feeling like I need to call the police and report a hate crime. Plus my dentist is awesome. Are you sending a trend? Seriously. If you don’t believe me just drop me an e-mail I’ll tell you where his office is.

Prior to the cleaning it had started to snow and by all accounts it was going to continue to snow for a significant remainder of the day and the better part of the evening. Roughly 12 inches of snow later I resigned myself to the fact I was not likely to leave the house that Friday. I had received the cold hard shaft of mother nature once again. As it turns out snow becomes somewhat less fun when you don’t have snow days anymore. But the snow must go on, so let’s fast forward to Saturday.

At the behest of my friend we made our way to a bar across from the campus of the college he had graduated from. The evening had multiple bars in store for me, none of which I had wanted to go to, one of which I hated since first time I ever entered into it, but he had flown in across several time zones and thousands of miles so I let him call the shots. At bar number 1 I knew not a single soul aside from the one I came with. Just lovely. I wanted to leave instantly. Luckily we weren’t there for too long before making our way to bar 2. Unluckily bar 2 was the bar I’ve hated for some time and with good cause.

You see there was so many people from my high school it might as well have been a reunion. This bothered me more than I’d like to admit. For one thing if I graduated and you have not heard from me in the 5 years hence it is not likely that it was accidental. The number of people I have lost contact with that I actually would like to see again can be counted on one hand. (Make mental note of this statement, it will come into play later.) With that fact in mind, how am I supposed to react to people I haven’t seen in so long as to make them all but void in my psyche. Don’t misunderstand me, with the exception of perhaps one individual there is no one I hate, just none of them have entered my head in well over a year. They are none events, much like any movie Sandra Bullock has made in the last 10 years.

The good news is that when I was in high school I had long hair. Like really long. Like past my shoulder blades long. At the very end of my junior year I cut it all off to the beautiful coiffed head of head you all know and love today. This is a sort of good news bad news situation because in the eyes of most of the people from high school the mental image they have of me has long ass hair. To them my long hair is like the red and blue Spider-Man suit. They’ve had no exposure to the black symbiote suit and in this alternate realty the black suit wasn’t evil, so Peter Parker kept it. That might have been the longest but also the awesomest extended metaphor I’ve ever used. Let’s continue on our merry way. For some reason the people that recognize me are the people I don’t want to recognize me, and the few I actually want to recognize me don’t. The plan back-fired.

So now I’m surrounded by people I used to know almost entirely because of geography and all of them want to know how I’m doing. This frustrates me a bit. The big problem is how do I summary the last 5 years of my life? It’s like making a resume for job when I don’t care at all whether I actually get the job but I just want them to want me for the position anyway. How do I explain that for roughly 6 months in my sophomore year in college I had what can rather euphemistically be called an existential crisis resulting in my first hand account of psycho pharmacology. How do I explain my job to some people that barely understand how to operate a television? How do I tell them that I own a motorcycle and a nice car without making it seem like I’m bragging? If there is an answer to any of these questions I’ve certainly not found it.

So I make small talk. I discuss cars with someone who obviously doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. (The finest automotive is clearly the BMW M3, and anyone that says otherwise is delusional.) I ignore them as best as I can and pray that we get to leave this bar and never come back again. (Had I known that any bar on the roster was going to be similar I’d probably have spent the night driving back to Maryland.)

At some point I was having a discussion with my friend over this girl I was talking to earlier in the evening. She had been a friend of a friend or some such and sitting next to me a bit earlier. After quickly making note that she was quite attractive I decided I needed to flirt with her because what’s the worst that can happen? When her friend told us it was time for them to leave I obtained her phone number after a short verbal exchange that had been executed so flawlessly I wish I had instant replay so John Madden himself could draw over it with a white marker making note of exactly how awesome it was for future generations to study. So my friend and I were discussing her when he dropped the bomb on me that she was the younger sister to an old friend of mine. Remember when I said there was only several people I wouldn’t mind looking up could be counted on one hand? Well it turns out I had flirted with and got the phone number of Mr Index Finger’s younger sister. It seems mother nature was not the only one interested in dropping the shaft on me this weekend. I’ll just have to wait and see how this goes.

No More Mr Nice Guy

admin — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 04:41:37 +0000

Some people are great people. I’d like to think I’m a good person… well I’m alright. Point is when a friend/co-worker asked me if I could help him move I said yes. Cause I try to be a good little human. And like any good little human I’ll do some manual labor for the promise of free food and drinks. (Specifically pizza and a diet cola of some kind, root beer is best. If you need something moved and consider this a fair trade please contact me.)

I was to show up Saturday morning at 9am along with some other people. I have a bad habit of jumping the gun, leaving early and being the first to show up places. While it works wonders for going to the movies I’ve discovered that showing up early for anything of a more social type of interaction it can make for an awkward situation. This is why I try to leave later then I normally would any more. Following my new set of rules I got to this place about 8 minutes later then scheduled and was still the first one there. The others arrived shortly and I was given the task of manning the truck and stacking the boxes. In between the dolly loads of boxes I saw some bungee cords sitting there attached to the truck. Being the useful sort of fellow that I am I decide that I should use the cords to secure some of the boxes in the are of the truck that is above the cabin area. I was stretching the bungees attempting to get them to attached to each other and one of them came loose smacking me in the face.

I felt a slight sharp pain but it was gone immediately. Felt a bit like being punched in the face, my tooth ached a bit but otherwise no lingering pain. I started tasting blood in my mouth caused from my lip pressing against my teeth too hard. Then I felt that my chin was wet and reached for it pulling my hand away to reveal blood. “Huh.” I thought to myself. Touching it with my other hand realizing the blood was considerable I decided I needed to see it in a mirror. Searching out the bathroom (Being careful not to bleed all over the place.) I washed myself looking in the mirror. Several attempts at trying to affix a bandage to my lip was a no go, partly because it’s an awkward place to put a bandage, partly because the thing was bleeding so much it got slippery before I could get the second half of the bandage on my face.

I remember thinking to myself that this thing is going to need stitches. Not that I’m a medical expert put it was rather deep. So much so I did a tongue check to see if it had gone all the way through my cheek. I’ve never had stitches before so I thought I should get a second opinion, plus I thought it’d be kind of lame to bail without telling him. I was here to move shit. I was going to move shit if I had to sew my lip myself. I wadded up some toilet paper that had puppies on it and pressed it to my lip so I could move about with out dripping blood everywhere. Going outside I found my benefactor and showed him the wound and it was immediately suggested that I should seek medical help at a hospital.

I got in my car ashamed at the fact that I was a dumbass and started driving with one hand on the wheel and one hand on my face. Periodically moving and folding the toilet paper to get a fresh section I made my way to my doctor’s office hoping they were open, which of course they were not. If this had been my office in Wilkes-Barre they would have been but let’s not go there. I decided I needed to make my way to the hospital’s ER. I realized I didn’t have any idea where the ER was and since I was already driving with one hand cell phone use was ill advised so I decided to call someone while I was still in the parking lot of my doctor’s office. The problem was who the hell did I know that was awake this early on a Saturday, certainly my brother was huffing pillow somewhere, so I called his roommate figuring he would know this sort of thing, which luckily he did.

Hanging up I made my way to the hospital using a masterful display of skill in the art of driving with one hand and two knees, folding the toilet paper, which was now mostly covered in blood. Upon entering the ER I was asked why I was there and pulled down my bloody toilet paper which met with something along the lines of “Oh shit.” which is never what you want to hear. She then asked me for my info and rather then try to speak I just handed the woman behind the counter my drivers license, trying hard not to bleed on my wallet. (It is a rather nice wallet that Mean Dean the METAL Machine sent me one year for my birthday after one of my weekly e-mails made a joke saying I’d take a mail order bride… though in retrospect blood on the wallet would probably have made it more metal… there’s always next time.)

After some waiting I was lead to a room where after more waiting a series of women took some more info and eventually gave me a tetanus shot because we couldn’t figure out when was the last time I had one. After a bit more waiting in walked the Hot Doc. I know it’s entirely possible I was hallucinating from whatever but I swear to whatever god you believe in that I heard the bell chiming ahhhh noise Scrubs uses whenever something really awesome happens. I attempted to flirt with her as best as I could, which was made somewhat easier when I discovered she was Polish, but really now how the hell do you flirt with the woman that is injecting you with a numbing agent so she can sew your flesh back together? Seriously, how the hell do you pull that one off cause I haven’t got a clue. The whole matter was complicated by the fact that the wound was on my lip so not only was I slightly drooling from the numbness but if I moved my mouth to talk I would have made her job that much more difficult. After the fact I was instructed to look for a ring, but I’m willing to bet most people that work in an ER find it difficult to wear a giant glove piercing diamond ring which makes that whole argument a bit null and void.

At the end of the day, it was totally worth it. I was going to make a joke about how I asked my brother to cut me so I could go back to the ER but then what if I legitimately get injured, it’d be bad karma man. My only regret is that it didn’t happen while doing something much cooler, like a bar fight, or wrestling a grizzly. Bottom line I’m not going to let this little setback effect my will move for food instincts. Though next time I will totally be wearing safety glasses, cause stitches are fine but loosing an eye would suck. And now for pictures of the aftermath taken today.

Random Notes:
I’ll update when I damn well feel like it and when I have something worth saying. This way I don’t waste your time.

Stan “The Man” Lee guest stared on the show Heroes as a bus driver and I totally geeked out.

I ran into Vince and Matt from Anomaly and they are doing shows on on the 2^nd and the 10^th of March and seeing as how it’s my birthday I’m so totally going to be there and so should you.

Lego Star Wars 2

admin — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 04:31:03 +0000

Lego Star Wars 2 has consumed my very soul. If my Mondays were not already busy enough between exercise, Heros, Studio 60, and How I Met Your Mother I now spent my free time trying to collect every last anything in Lego Star Wars 2. Oh I’ve solved the story portion of the game, but there are mini-kit pieces, red blocks, yellow blocks, and hidden characters to collect. I think it speaks to the skill of the developers that something so very simple sounding not only works so well but is so incredibly fun.

Lego Star Wars is why I didn’t make an entry last week. I’ve decided that while I will continue to try and make entires on Mondays I no longer feel obligated to and I will post whenever the hell I damn feel like. I once read somewhere that everyone has about 1000 pages of pure shit in them and they just have to keep writing until they get rid of them all before they can expect to write anything worthwhile. To that end I present the new additional purpose of the blog, bear with me, I’ll reach 1001 eventually.

This weekend provided for much amusement. First Smoking Aces was a decent movie. It was dumb but highly entertaining cause shit was blowing up constantly. You have to love a movie where Ben Affleck is killed half an hour in and his murderer turns him into a puppet. (His best acting since Good Will Hunting.)

Saturday was kind of interesting. I went back to that same bar from two weeks ago only to find that the crowd at this place seems to vary significantly depending on the band, and this particular cover band seemed to attract an older crowd. Old enough that I decided to go cougar hunting. Results were not positive and worse yet I’m pretty damn sure my friend has pictures of the whole thing.

So a horse being put to sleep in national news as of when? Seriously how slow must the news day have been that this is top of the hour coverage. I understand the death of an animal, blah blah blah, whatever PETA wants you to believe, but you seriously couldn’t come up with something better? Last time I checked there was a war going on. Unless someone decided to call that off on Sunday and I just missed it or something.

I’ve lost roughly 12 pounds since Thanksgiving. I’m not telling you this so you can offer support or encouragement, I have my own reason for doing this now. Don’t tell me about your bullshit diets. I don’t want to loose it quicker than this, my current pace is more than adequate thank you. In fact if you loose weight too fast it can cause all sorts of other health issues and since I am rather adverse to having my heart explode this early on I’ll stick to what I’m doing. I merely state this fact so that I can look on at this entry months from now and remember how far I’ve come.

I so need to try and make this happen at my brother’s wedding.

Better Then Never

admin — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 05:13:08 +0000

Going to bed last night I had that sudden sickly feeling I used to get back in high school or college when I would realize that I had forgotten to do a piece of homework for whatever reason. Seems I didn’t write a blog entry. With schoolwork there is some bit of consequence but I suppose the benefit of knowing no one reads this is that if I am late there is no consequence other than what I give myself. I blame Jack Bauer for my distraction. I’ve never seen the show 24 prior to Sunday and after watching them detonate a suitcase nuke it became very obvious to me that this show is awesome. Jack Bauer kicks more ass in one hour than the collective we do all fucking year. But I digress.

Saturday was a very long day and I will get to that, but allow me to explain the circumstances that directly led to me meeting people that I am going to hypothesize were swingers. Last Monday, the 8 th I was attending a social event over other people hired in the last 3 years. I was tired and didn’t really have any desire to go but it was my insistence that we have the event at this particular location so I guilted myself into making an appearance. While there it was mostly small talk with me telling the occasional random stupid story from my past. When I was leaving I ran into a dude by the name of Vince that told me I should stop by to see his band Anomaly (Music will auto play) Saturday night. I had pretty much made up my mind that I would go to the bar cause he seemed nice enough and I really needed an excuse to break out of my rut. Plus I visited the band’s website and learned the band in question has some genuinely good original material. (You’d understand the surprise if you knew the area well enough to realize how unlikely that seems.)

Saturday morning I wake up and begin the 80+ trip to Ikea and Guitar Center. The Ikea trip was almost fruitful but I hesitated on buying a couch when I found out how much it would cost to get it delivered to my apartment. Not an unreasonable amount but significant enough that I decided I should check local furniture stores before throwing away the money. I did get a table, but more on that later.

From Ikea I made my way to the Guitar Center. Despite having intentions otherwise I did not buy a guitar. I putzed around looking at all sorts of guitars, playing a few different SG’s even the one I mentioned last week. Even though they were all some fine guitars at the end of the day I had to ask myself if buying any of the guitars in question would be settling and after some consultation of a friend it was decided I should wait to buy the Menace if only because it looks insanely evil. No problem though I bought some cables and etc to make the trip worth while and headed home.

I arrived home sometime after 6PM roughly and made the requisite calls to all that potentially would be interested in my outing to “The Island” as the locals call it fully aware that none were going to come but I felt compelled to call anyway knowing their answer would somehow give me the drive to go anyway. (If you ever want me to do something explain to me how it’s the kind of thing you think I’d never do and say it in the most condescending tone you can muster.) I have some time to kill to I start to assemble my table and realize a bolt is missing. I am now in possession of a table with only 3 legs. After a lengthy discussion with an Ikea representative who much to my dismay did not have a Swedish accent of any kind we both agreed that it was unreasonable to expect me to return the store because it was well over 70 miles away and they would instead mail it to me. You would think I had just asked them to deliver their first born child to me.

Let’s recap my day until this point. No couch, no guitar, and a table missing a leg. Things were not looking good for me. My resolve to go to a bar by myself was waning. I called my friend Chris from Philly to see what he had to say. As my lawyer he advised me to go there, have something to drink, if was uncomfortable leave, otherwise stay. Using that advice I got there a little after 9PM. I left around 12:30 AM. Oh yeah.

After I got over the initial shock of being entirely by myself I ran into the bassist who introduced me to a bunch of people and all was well. Turns out I’m quite the skilled small talker because I managed to talk to just about anyone that bumped elbows with me. I even managed to fake interest in some kind of sporting event by saying “I’m from North Eastern Pennsylvania, I’m contractually obligated to root for the Eagles.” which sounded plausible enough that everyone believed me. The most interesting part of the night though was when I started talking to some dude that was wearing a Ducati jacket about motorcycles. During the conversation I had with this dude and his soon to be wife I got the impression they might be swingers. I’m trying not to speculate but there was signs sprinkled into conversation that wouldn’t exactly take Sherlock Holmes to start piecing things together. Though nothing as blatant as the main man Paul Jenkin’s encounter.

Overall the band was awesome. (Aee them if you’re in the area.) Loud enough to cause some temporary hearing loss, I met some cool new people, and I got out of the house for the night. Missions accomplished.

The Return

admin — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 03:49:02 +0000

I took off for two weeks in a row. I know I said I might not do Christmas but last week despite so much happening that I’ll have enough to talk about for the next month I decided I’d take that week off too. (My English teachers in high school used to praise me for my ability to string along a long sentence that was in fact grammatically correct. I was the poster child for sentence variety. How terribly sad.) I justified this extended vacation from my 3 regulars by saying that during the holidays the radio station wouldn’t report for 3 weeks, therefore the e-mail I sent out that this blog is in someways attempting to emulate would be a ghost for 3 weeks as well. In that regard you got lucky that I’m here this week.

Where to begin. First I feel the need to mention that Collis’s girlfriend (who’s name escapes me at the moment and will no doubt be entered into this location once someone tells me just what it is.) requested that I make mention of her in my blog once she found out I had one. She specifically wanted me to mention how she thought the girl on one of the posters advertising some brand of beer was hot. There may or may not have been more blatant terminology used but I’d rather error on the side of caution than put words in her mouth that were not as vulgar as my addled little brain remembers. The interesting point of the evening was when we compared war stories regarding therapy and psychopharmacology as a sort of parody of that scene from Lethal Weapon 3 where Mel Gibson and Rene Russo’s characters are comparing scars, only in a slightly more unsettling manner. Sadly I lost this match… I’m not entirely sure it’s the sort of thing you’d want to be sad about actually but it’s the way the phrase turns.

I went to the two largest music stores I’ve ever been to in regards to music instruments since we last spoke. Playing a guitar in store especially when you haven’t done it in a long time is a bit nerve racking. You tell yourself, “Ok I’m going to play some Wolfrmother, Beatles, Johnny Cash, intro to Stairway, etc.” but it doesn’t work out like that. I get there and I ask the guy if you can plug a couple guitars in and he ever so politely asks what sort of amp you have so that you can approximate the sound you’ll end up with in your home so rather than testing it out on some tiny little 15 watter I’m plugged into a 60-watt Fender for everyone to hear. The sounds of about 3 other shoppers playing significantly better than I’m likely to ever become echoes though your head just as the feedback begins to build in the amp. Suddenly the mind that was full of a dozen songs is pelting out the only song that came to mind over and over again. This is how I ruled out the ESP Viper series of guitars.

I’m going to put it back on the wall in favor of one of the ESP series guitars when the ever so useful salesman asked me what I thought of the Viper. I’m taken by surprise. How do I express my dislike. “I just wasn’t feeling it.” This is not a lie, I genuinely didn’t like the feel of it, It felt odd for some reason. So when he asks me what I didn’t like about it I’m confused. What the fuck am I supposed to say. I don’t remember enough from my golden days of guitar to express my dislike of the guitar in a way that will allow this guy to help me pick a better one. After some conversation that I forgot the second I uttered it he points me to an ESP EC-1000. It’s got a 1000 in it, it’s clearly top of the line. I start playing it and realize two things, not only does it look the same as my Epiphone Les Paul (shape, not color or finish) but it feels almost exactly the same. It sounds better but that’s nothing a set of pickups can’t fix. I conclude that I’m not about to spend $800 on a guitar that feels the same and is only a few pickups away from what I’m currently playing. So I quietly leave the store.

On my way to the Guitar Center I begin to resign myself to the possibility that I nailed perfection the first time I select a guitar. Once I arrive there I notice they do not have the Gibson SG Menace in stock. Rather than ask the dude and feel pressure to buy it sight unseen I decide I’ll just pick up the closest SG I can find which happens to be the Faded SG Special. I remember thinking “This feels good, let’s plug it in.” so of course I do and all of a sudden I’m in heaven. I remember why I wanted another guitar in the first place. The action is a little high but that’s nothing I can’t adjust myself in 5 minutes at home.

I spend the better part of the week ruminating on the guitar and how much I loved it. I completely understand all SG love all of a sudden. It’s such a fabulous instrument. The thin body really lets you get all up and personal with your strings and I love that partly because it is so unlike my Les Paul which is thick enough and heavy enough to be used as a blunt object to defend myself if the need should arise. Not to disrespect the Les Paul, it’s still a fabulous guitar but it’s lonely and needs a sibling to keep it company while I’m away. I’m still unsure if I simply love this guitar or if it all SG s play feel this awesome but the accommodating folks at the closest Guitar Center have made an arrangement with me whereby I will buy the Faded SG Special and once the SG Menace arrives if I should like it better they’ll accept an exchange for the full cost of the Special. It’s amazing the things people will do when you’re about to spent upwards of $600 at their store.

Tonight We Dine in Hell

admin — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 03:23:46 +0000

I’m almost afraid to admit that the new Rocky movie actually looks good. The most frightening thing is according to Rotten Tomatoes I’m not the only one that thinks so. Amazingly I’ve never seen a single Rocky movie in my entire life. This is a point that most of the people I knew in high school found incredibly amusing. What can I say. My parents weren’t fond enough to buy the movie at any point in the VHS revolution and my friends obviously found it so much more amusing to make fun of me for not having seen it than actually loaning me a copy or sitting down to watch it on one of the various weekend outings. Yes most of my friends were assholes. (Note: They still are assholes, but the friends in questions are no longer friends, so the were is in reference to their friends status and not their asshole status.) Is it any wonder I don’t remember my teenage years fondly.

Point is Rocky Balboa looks damn good. Good enough that when I saw the trailer on the big screen this weekend I literally got goosebumps. I’ll be there to see it sometime next week after it opens because I’m quite certain I’ll have more than a little free time.

Another blast from the past there’s going to be a brand new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie and it also look pretty damn good. I want to see it if only to see the Turtles move in a way that is significantly more fluid than they ever have in any medium previously. The trailer looks like they’ve managed to capture everything I loved about the cartoon when I was a child and meld it to the slightly more violent and mature themes present in the comics the whole shebang was based off of. For the record that entire paragraph was not just a fabrication so I could use the word shebang. (That sentence was an illicit fabrication so that I could use shebang a second time, just as this was a way for me to use it a third. What can I say it’s a fun word.)

And then there’s the new trailer for The 300. Looks as good as before and again benefits from the use of a Nine Inch Nails song. (“Just Like You Imagined” off the Fragile disc 1.) While the action is interesting it would not be nearly as compelling without that song. honestly think that they need to get a similar sort of industrial sound to it. Ironically the other day I was listening to the blue man group on PBS when I realized they could write some really good movie music. So without further adieu, The 300 meet the Blue Man Group, Blue Man Group meet The 300. Someone should get one that and then write me a big check. I’m curious to see if this movie can pull a Sin City or if it is going to fail to entertain. For the moment I’m content to watch the trailer at 720p on my computer as often as I can.

As a thing to make note of, next Monday is Christmas. While it’s entirely possible I will be able to find something to write about (especially considering Friday Brown Bear and I are going to be jamming out in his town of residence while hopping bars like man.) it’s unlikely I’ll want to write anything, or more accurately I will be unable to find a computer with the right setup toe compose a post with the same level of competence of which I’m accustom. You’ll know next week I suppose. I’m just warning you that you should not be surprised if I don’t make an entry. Please hold back the tears. I will return.

Guitar Hero For Real

admin — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 04:21:22 +0000

I’ve been bitten by the bug again. I can’t stop. It’s an addiction. I’ve spent most of the weekend playing… well the moments when I wasn’t so dizzy that I couldn’t stand. I should have seen the signs. I’ve got blisters on my fingers. I walk around work throwing up the horns. I’ve even started head banging in my car at stop lights. That’s right my dear audience I’m playing the guitar again.

I suppose Guitar Hero is partially to blame. When I got it last march I’ve slowly been learning how to rock all over again. (Part of rocking is respecting that you will never be as good as Randy Rhodes or Dimebag Darrell, rest in peace the both of you.) The biggest culprit though is probably my friend Chris. Over Thanksgiving we had an impromptu jam session and now I’m belting out Wolfmother so good it makes faces melt. Pleas do not call the police, there’s no one in my apartment but me so ho actual faces have melted, these are hypothetical faces. Though the neighbor below he likely hates me now, but it’s only fair considering his penchant for playing shitty music with the bass turned up way to loud.

I’m full blown in the madness. I’m asking around work to see if anyone plays anything hoping I can get a band together. I’m craving the 60 watt amp that is hidden somewhere under stands of randomness at my parents house. I remember fondly the days when I was home alone and I would crank that thing so loud my it could cause permanent hearing loss in my neighbors. Combine that with a Crybaby 525 Wah-pedal and I used to do a decent version of Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner that would make any hippie patriot cry.

I’m surfing Musicians Friend website the way the 13 year old version of me watched basic cable praying to god some editor slipped up on his job and I got to see some unpixelated jubblies. The interesting thing is when I was 17 I had no job and now I have big fancy job so suddenly the idea of spending $800 on a guitar doesn’t seem that unreasonable. I keep trying to justify it by saying that even if 2 months from now I’ve given up on all this again it’s still a good investment. I mean unless they become damaged guitars never really go down in value right? I’m making a list of guitars that I want to try out at my earliest convenience. Thus far it consists of: ESP Viper 500, ESP F-500, Gibson SG Menace, and Gibson Les Paul Menace. What can I say, I’m in a black kind of mood. I might try one of the Epiphone Gothic series but I’ve got an Epiphone and to paraphrase the previously mentioned Chris, “If you’re gonna buy another guitar might as well upgrade or go home.”

The bad news is I live in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere. I should have known something was wrong with this area when I had to drive over an hour to get to a movie theater that doesn’t have wrinkles in the screen. This place doesn’t have a decent music store worth a damn. By all indications I’m talking at least 90 miles to even look at a guitar that isn’t my own. There’s no telling how impossible it’s going to be to find at least 2 other people interested in the same kind of music I am. Hell in my home town (which was considerably larger) it was damn hard to find anyone so this place is hopeless. If my Friday night is any indication none of the local bars really have need for someone with my unique interest in music. The band I saw Friday was so horrible I would have felt bad for them had there not been dozens of chicks dancing to it anyway. I can’t tell if these women have a genuine bad taste in music or if they simply were simply too drunk to care. Regardless my future in rocking doesn’t look good in my current locale..

I spent the remainder of the weekend sick with no immediate cause in sight. My cure for colds of this variety consist of Mrs Grass Noodle soup and enough NyQuil to tranquilize an elephant. Ironically just this last Thursday a coworker recommended this ZiCam stuff so Sunday when I made the weekly trip to the grocery store I got myself some. Surprisingly it actually does work rather well at relieving the symptoms. At least I think it did, it’s entirely possible it was a coincidence. I’ll have to wait until I get another cold for further experimentation to be sure. The instructions on this ZiCam box read like the rules for dealing with mogwai. Do not eat or drink anything for 15 minutes after taking it. Do not eat or drink anything citrus related for 30 minutes before or after taking it. Other wise drink plenty of fluids. Do not take after midnight or your skin might turn green and you might become a deranged monster. On that note I’m off to down some more NyQuil.

True Story, I Swear (To Everyone)*

admin — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 04:40:48 +0000

This past Saturday the local Best Buy was supposed to have a Guitar Hero II contest which I was all about. I wasn’t sure if it was one of those things that they were having “for kids” or if it was an all ages thing because there wasn’t a lot of info, I mean hell the sign didn’t even list a time. Friday night I’m at the Best Buy because it’s sort of tradition to hit up the Best Buy any time we go out to eat on a weekend and their PS2 with Guitar Hero II is gone alone with both controllers. I muster up my best Bill & Ted’s impression and mutter “heinous” under my breath.

Via a series of events that included one of those friend’s girlfriend’s friend’s daughter kind of chains I discovered that the contest was canceled. The reason for the canceling was attributed to insurance or space or something, which is fine if that’s what they have to tell the public but I know the true reason. Truth is they were terrified that once I arrived and started rocking out hardcore no one else would be able to compete. I mean how on earth could they, it’s difficult to play a game when your face has been melted off Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark style due to my blistering fake fretwork. Truth is I feel bad for my parents as I don’t even have the game yet but when I do I’m going to be playing it nearly non-stop while I go visit them for Christmas.

Regardless of the status of the Guitar Hero II contest there was always plans to attend a game day, which is very much like game night, only on a Saturday, consisting of more games with more people over the course of a much longer time. All was fine aside from the fact that I was surrounded by all sorts of family. I mean that in the respectable domesticated sense of the word, not in the literal these people share my blood line sort of way. I think if you’ve made it this far in my weekly ramblings you’re very much aware that I am lots of things but respectable isn’t really one of them. I say that is the most congenial way possible. I don’t think I’m a bad person, I’m just also very much aware that I’m the kind of person that doesn’t need any sort of formal introduction because it won’t be long before I’m introducing myself which will without a doubt be followed by awkward conversation that leads to me planting my foot firmly in my mouth. It also means I’ll swear a considerable amount which is fine by me.

See the thing is I made a decision long ago that I will absolutely refuse to apologize for who I am. Once during a conversation regarding the sort of initial impression I make on most women it was first suggested I “Be yourself.” and then told that I shouldn’t swear at all. I entered the defense that swearing is as much who I am as anything which was met with immediate friction. “Swearing is a bad habit, like smoking, it’s something you should avoid doing.” Fuck that. It’s just words. If you are so easily offended that the proper alignment of syllables causes you extreme dismay than you have much bigger problems to deal with than the guttural sounds I’m pushing out my mouth. Besides dialects and accents are just the sorts of things that make you who you are. You wouldn’t tell a Bostonian that he should stop talking like that would you? Hell no, that’s as much a part of who he is as anything else.

The thing is I don’t really have a North Eastern Pennsylvania dialect. There might be some remnants of the accent but I’ve worked hard to make sure I have as little of either. The only time I use the NEPA dialect is when I’m attempting a joke. I’ve worked pretty hard culminating a colorful dialect of words and phrases always on the lookout for words I can use to expand upon my current vocabulary. (for example next time you have to go “take a leak” call it a “pilsner” as in “Well I’ve got to take a pilsner.”) It took me until I was watching the “Back To The Well: Clerks 2” documentary on the 2^nd disc of the Clerks 2 DVD when I realized I speak a dialect of vulgar geek carefully developed due to years of internet communication, Wednesday’s spent at comic book shops, too many LAN parties to count, and of course Crazy Billy. If you’ve ever been to the kind of comic book shop I was forced to frequent (due to geography, not some malicious scheme.) you’d understand what I meant.

So back to the story, I was surrounded by the sorts of people that would be insulted if I had cursed in front of them which is the kind of situation that would be met with disaster normally because my filter is long gone and I censor myself for no one. Lucky for all involved but myself I will make the best effort to censor myself when there are children involved because fuck I’ll be damned if I’m going to be responsible for corrupting someone else’s kids. I’ll corrupt relatives kids, the children of close friends, or in the eventual apocalyptic event my kids but not the kids of someone I’ve only met recently. By the time the little ones had left I had basically spent the better part of 8 hours without cursing which is the kind of horror no man should ever have perpetrated on another man. Most of the rest of the evening was spent meeting my daily quota for vulgarity which as you can imagine was incredibly funny to watch.

I finished Sam & Max just yesterday. With the exception of one puzzle that seemed rather obtuse (even for a game with Sam & Max’s level of abstraction) it was all relatively simple, but still clever. Unless you’ve never played a point and click adventure game before in which case I have no idea where you’d stand. I don’t have any idea how long it actually is, but the stated 2-4 hour time seems reasonable. Regardless it is a fantastic game. I highly recommend it if you enjoy that kind of humor. I’d recommend it even if you don’t enjoy that kind of humor but I can’t accept any repercussions that might occur because you are completely devoid of humor.

*If you get that reference that you are so awesome that you probably shouldn’t even be reading this.

Thanksgiving (After The Fact)

admin — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 04:22:59 +0000

I had this big long diatribe about Thanksgiving and how it’s lost it’s meaning but it seemed pointless to do this after the fact so look forward to that in a year assuming I’m still doing this in a year. Most of the weekend was spent with an bit of drama that was not my doing nor directly involved me which was interesting for a change. It was also interested to be the one being asked for advice about women which while I found it flattering I couldn’t help but wonder why. Asking me for relationship advice is like asking a blind man to describe a sunset; I’m sure it can be done quite adequately but it’s far from the ideal situation.

On a related note I spent some time establishing a basis for comparison with my cousin on the subject of women. He gave me the advice that I should shop for a woman via the Internet, saying he’s had the most success with craigslist. I found the proposition incredibly disturbing. My resolve may wan sometime in the near future (and when it does you will almost certainly hear about it here.) but for now all remains quiet on the western front.

I absolutely cannot wait for Thursday because Scrub returns. Normally I’d be glued to Greys Anatomy like it was oxygen but Scrubs is quite possibly the best show ever made. (Though Arrested Development was so good I had to question that. There was a rumor that Scrubs and Arrested Development might get a cross over of sorts in the form of a Tobias Funke showing up as a patient.) I don’t know where you’ll be but I’ll be at home watching this show like my very life depends on it because it just might.

I can no longer tolerate my hair, it’s irritating me in ways I didn’t think possible. I long for tomorrow when I can extricate most of it. I’m running out of random things to say. Clerks 2 comes out on DVD and I’m all over that.

Casio Royale

admin — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 04:35:52 +0000

There was a pretty damn awesome scene in the movie “Lucky Number Slevin” where Lucy Liu’s and Josh Hartnet’s characters are having a discussion about who the best Bond was. They tease each other saying every name other than Connery. The joke lies in the fact that everyone knowns Connery was the best Bond. It’s knowledge inherent from birth. So much so that when the short lived X Show had a review of the Bonds they said something to the effect that “There’s no point is saying who the best Bond is, instead we’ll ask who the second best Bond is.” Everyone everywhere knows Connery was the best Bond. (With the possible exception of the 1983 movie.) The movies might not have held up well over time but it’s plain to anyone that he was clearly the best at it.

I tell you this not to state what you already know, I tell you this so that when you read what I have to say next you will understand it’s full meaning. Daniel Craig is Bond. I saw Casino Royale this weekend and from the second the movie starts off, all the way from black and white opening (with the old school Columbia opening, which was a nice touch.) all the way to the very last syllable of the movie Craig manages to accomplish the seemingly impossible, he bests Connery in every way imaginable. There is a charm to the character that has been lacking for nearly 40 years; women want him and men want to be him. The lines were so effortlessly cool that I spent half the time wishing I was able to come up with shit that awesome in day to day life. And not in that smarmy almost repugnant way that has been the status quo in the franchise for long before I was ever born.

There is an added depth to the character that hasn’t been seen anywhere previous to this. (at least on screen, I’ve never read the books.) There’s no way I can really expand upon that further without ruining some of story so I won’t. Just wait until the shower scene to find out what I mean. (Trust me, it’s not what it sounds like exactly.)

The deaths in the movie are visceral to a degree we haven’t seen in a Bond movie before. Actually everything is grittier, somehow more real. Sure this isn’t the way a spy would actually act, but it still feels so very real.

Despite all of the praise I have for the movie I want to make something perfectly clear. While it is by far the best Bond film, it isn’t the greatest film ever. I’m not sure it will make my list of desert island movies but I do think it would be close and largely depend on whether I’m allowed 5, 10, or 15 movies. I don’t want to hype it so much that by the time your expectations are heightened to the point where the movie can’t be satisfying. I also understand that more than a few people are going to disagree with me, especially on the statement that Craig is better than Connery. My brother’s roommate has said to me “Early Connery, Craig, Later Connery, Dalton, Brosnan, Moore, Lazenby, Nelson, Niven in that order.“ which is interesting because means of the 3 people that read this there’s already one that disagrees with me before I even wrote this. So I’m not telling you “This is the way it is.” I’m telling you that by god you must go see it, even if you’ve never seen a Bond film in your life you owe it to yourself to see this movie.

On another note I was curious to see how the new Sam & Max game played and after exploring Telltale’s website for a bit I discovered that low and behold, they had a demo. The demo was short but I laughed so many times and so hard I actually had to stop and tried to think when the last time was a game made me do that. (Turns out the last time I laughed at the computer because of a video game was Psychonauts, but even then it wasn’t as many laughs per minute as I did when playing Sam & Max.) The several minutes managed to make just about every memory I have of early childhood playing the original flood back. (That’s right early childhood playing the CD version. If I made you feel old then good. At least I still know what a records and cassettes are.)So that’s is Telltale, product sold, here’s my $35 sign me up for season and give me a CD at the end. Expect a full review when I get around to actually finding the time to play it. (Which I suspect will be after Thanksgiving.)

On a somewhat related note if anyone is looking for to buy me a present for Christmas but just doesn’t know what to get me there’s always the Sam & Max Sketchbook and/or the Sam & Max Poster Prints. The sketchbook is the sort of thing I’d love to own but don’t know if I can buy now because I’m going to go poor buying other people crap. The supplies are supposed to be limited so I might buckle and get it for myself once I figure out who is getting what and how much this what will cost. The prints are the kind of thing I would love to hang on the wall but find superfluous enough that I’ll leave the tab with them in it open in Firefox forever and never actually get around to buying. This is exactly why they would make perfect presents. Is that enough whoring for now? Yeah I think maybe it is.