$2, baby

As it turns out, this week's poker game was delayed until tonight, because it just wouldn't be poker night without someone taking my juice money. For those of you keeping track, I'm still up overall - I've made a net profit of $2. Yee-haw.

Much as I've enjoyed my little vacation of whitewater rafting on my nose runoff, tomorrow it's back to work for me. I feel better now than I did last night, so hopefully a dose or two of DayQuill will get me through the day.

You can't say I was totally unproductive over the past few days - I finished the storyline missions of GTA: San Andreas (though I've only done 64% of the total stuff to do in the game) and finally finished season one of The West Wing. I bet that will show up as a spike in the GDP.

Die cold, die (That's German for "The cold, the")

Ok, I'm ready to not be sick anymore. The novelty of this runny nose and aching muscles has worn off entirely, and I'm actually getting a little tired of sitting around all day drinking Odwalla limeade and playing GTA. I also missed poker night tonight... though considering my track record lately, that might not be a bad thing. And as a final insult, The Daily Show seems to be taking the week off, robbing me of my entertainment.

I'm debating whether or not to go in to work tomorrow if I feel as crappy then as I do now. Actually, it's not much of a debate - my boss hates when I come in to work sick, since he works about five feet away from me and hates being sick more than I do, plus it's almost July and I've just used only my third of ten sick days. If I don't use those up by the end of the year they go byebye, so I should probably catch up to the schedule. And it's the first week of a new cycle, so there's not a whole hell of a lot to do right now anyway. So yeah, debate over.

Sick again

I've managed to come down with yet another cold. My throat is sore in such a way that it is actually painful to breathe through my nose. I've also managed to strike a unique balance where my stomach hurts, yet I'm quite hungry at the same time. I expect that tomorrow my throat and stomach will be better, but my nose will be running and/or stuffed, and my neck will be sore as hell. Also, I will be quite tired. Thus, I hereby declare my intentions to call in sick tomorrow - I've got a bunch of sick days coming that I've gotta get started using anyway, and it would be a damn shame if any were to go to waste.

Burrito Lockdown Takes 3rd

San Francisco - In a respectable first team outting, newly-formed pub quiz team Burrito Lockdown placed 3rd in the Wednesday Night trivia session at the An Bodhrain Irish pub. Team captain and self-proclaimed President For Life Dan Stapleton and team bitch Jason "I'm Too Much Of A Pansy To Drink Guinness" Kneebone were able to successfully bullshit their way through questions such as "In what year did the War of 1812 begin?" and correctly identified celebrities Mandy Moore, Nathan Lane, and Anne Hesche to capture the prize of a couple of shirts that read "Hooray Beer!" on the front and "Red Stripe" on the back.

...and thank god, because lord knows I don't get enough swag. However, beer swag is probably more socially acceptable to wear in public than video game swag. Wearing beer swag, you instantly have the respect of frat boys everywhere. With game swag, passing motorists will shout "NEEEEERD!" as they throw bottles at you. And they're right to do it.

In other news, I fucking hate this country sometimes. For example, when Congress decides it would be a great idea to pass a Constitutional Amendment banning flag burning, and the Senate is only one or two votes shy of actually passing the stupid thing. How the hell did people who don't even understand the concept of freedom of speech and expression get elected to high office? These idiots get up and say that we need to protect the flag because of all the soldiers that died carrying it into battle, completely oblivious of the fact that they fought to protect our freedoms - the freedom to burn the flag being one of them. I just don't understand what they could possibly be thinking.

Another thing that baffles me is this kid in Utah that got lost in the mountains for four days. First of all, the kid says that his parents told him not to talk to strangers, so every time a rescuer got close, he'd hide. I know he's only 11, but honestly, how dumb do you have to be? He's clearly not the brightest, since his parents actually took the time in the MSNBC article on the topic to make sure to say that he's "not retarded." Also from said article:

"His personality hasn’t changed one tiny bit,” Jody Hawkins said earlier, adding that one of the first things Brennan asked about was whether the Pokemon cards he bought on eBay last week had arrived.

“I tell you, that’s what got him off that mountain,” she said.

“They were here.”

So what gets this kid home was not the hope of seeing his parents and siblings again, or even of a square meal after four days presumably eating grass and gummy bears from his pocket, but wondering whether his out-of-date fad playing cards had arrived yet. Brilliant.

I think whenever a young boy goes missing, we should take advantage of the resouces available to us: simply put Michael Jackson on a leash and give him a whif of the missing kid's used underwear, and then hold on for dear life. The kid won't stay lost for long.

Realization

I suck at poker. I just went back and looked up my win/loss record over the past six months:

6/21/05 -$18
6/14/05 -$10
6/7/05 -$3
5/31/05 -$20
5/24/05 -$15
5/10/05 +$140 (tournament)
5/3/05 +$6
4/26/05 -$4
4/12/05 -$13
3/29/05 -$13
2/22/05 +$21
1/18/05 -$17
Net: +$12

That's pretty freaking absurd. I had thought I'd be in the black for quite a while longer thanks to my big win. My only consolation (and this is going to make everybody stop feeling bad for me at all) is that when I factor in the $190 I won in the Superbowl pool, I'm up $212. But I liked it better when I thought I was up more than $300, dammit.

Cursed I tell you, cursed!

Down another $18 tonight at poker. I'm beginning to suspect that that old gypsy woman I ran over might have something to do with this. I'm still up overall, thanks to my tournament win, but I don't know how much longer I'll be able to keep saying that at this rate.

And if I keep losing like this, I might have to think twice about buying $15 bags of cherries, even though they're incredibly good. These were Starr Ranch "premium Washington cherries," and each and every one of them was bigger and better than the best one from your average bag, and there was not a single rotten one among them. I'm officially addicted - I'm going to have to run out and get more tomorrow.

And just to note, Jeb Bush and Bill Frist are both raging assholes. I hope that any attempt either makes at running for president in 08 is demolished by their assholery in this whole Terri Schiavo thing.

I went to that comedy club again last night. It's been about a month since I was there last - I'd hoped that they would use that time to come up with some new material. Unfortunately, not only had the hostess merely tweaked her opening jokes, but there were several comdians there that I'd seen before, and they did the same routines as the last time I saw them. That's not to say there wasn't anything good. For example, the winning joke of the night: "Back in 1938, H.G. Wells performed War of The Worlds on the radio as though it were a news broadcast saying we were being attacked. Millions of Americans believed it was real and panicked. Now, 70 years later, they're remaking it - it's called Fox News."

I followed that up by going to an Irish pub where I may very well have been the only non-Irish person in the room. Despite assurances from everyone at the bar that the Guinness in Ireland is much better than it is here, I drank about six glasses of it before stumbling home, collapsing in bed, and waking up with a nasty hangover. A job well done.

Booze!

Ok, so it's technically not a cabinet. More like the space under a table next to my bed, but you get the idea. It has been steadily growing, both through the occasional purchase and inheritance from Santa Cruz and my grandfather. I'm going to have to learn some half-assed bartending skills to figure out what to do with all of this - or just get Ryan up here.

My collection:

Fris Vodka - 1/2 bottle (large)
Kahlua - 1/8 bottle
Baccardi Gold - 1/6 bottle
Jose Cuervo Especial - full bottle
Baily's Irish Creme - full bottle
Gallo Sweet Vermouth - full bottle
Bandolero Triple Sec - full bottle
Hot Damn 100 Cinamon Schnapps - 1/3 bottle (small)
Deknyper Creme De Menthe - 2/3 bottle
Brooker's Kentucky Straight Burbon Whiskey - 3/4 bottle
Grand Marnier - 1/5 bottle
Southern Comfort - 1/2 bottle (small)
Jim Beam Kentucky Straight Burbon Whiskey - 2/3 bottle (large)
Greek Dry Aperitit Ouzo by Metaxa - 1/3 bottle
Tanqueray Special Dry Distilled English Gin - 1/2 bottle (large)
Hiram Walker Peppermint Schnapps - 2/3 bottle
Bols Cherry Flavored Brandy - 1/2 bottle
Mohawk Cream of Caco - full
Rose's Grenadine - 1/2 bottle
Galliano Liquore L'Antentico - 1/4 bottle
Angostara Armonatic Bitters - full
Old House Orage Bitters - full
Fat Tire - 6/6

Well that's disappointing as hell

I found out today that at the end of the year, my office will be moving from the middle of nowhere to the ass-end of nowhere. It's actually only three miles from our current location, but far, far less convenient. So what they meant when they said that it would be close to public transportation was that if you want to take public transportation you'd better be working 9-5 like all the sales/marketing staff does instead of 10-6 like all of the editorial staff does, because the last shuttle from the BART and Caltrain stations leave at 8:45am. And what they meant when they said we'd be close to good food was that we'll be about the same distance from all of the same crappy food. Brilliant. And here I had all these high hopes for us to move somewhere more convenient, like downtown SF so I could just hop on Muni to get there, or even south a ways so we'd at least be in a decent area.

Well, I guess this means that when the time comes I'll be moving and getting a car again, because I'll be damned if I'm going to be spending an hour and a half or more each way to commute. The whole not having a car thing has been kind of nice (and quite economical) but I can only take so much time on a bus every day before I start to really hate public transportation.

The many smells of Kat

7/15/04 Kat smells like chlorine and old lettuce!

7/18/04 You smell like paper towels

8/3/04 Kat smells like circus midgets!

8/4/04 Kat smells like dental floss!

8/5/04 Kat smells like Q-tips and burnt corn

8/14/04 Kat smells like tupperware and ointment

8/15/04 Kat smells like tapioca and socialism

8/19/04 Kat smells like motor oil and flobotinum

8/22/04 Kat smells like peanuckle and lycathropy

8/30/04 Kat smells like Big League Chew

9/5/04 Kat smells like fish food

9/6/04 Kat smells like toothpicks

9/7/04 Kat smells like mollusk pee

9/11/04 Kat smells like styrofoam peanuts

9/12/04 Kat smells like mayonnaise

--------- Kat smells like batteries and grass clippings

9/25/04 Kat smells like rubber cement

10/4/04 Kat smells like bubble wrap

10/6/04 Kat smells like a piñata

10/7/04 Kat smells like yarn

10/17/04 Kat smells like stuff

11/23/04 Kat smells like bees

--------- Kat smells like gangrene

11/28/04 Kat smells like teen spirit

12/03/04 Kat smells like toothpaste

12/08/04 Kat smells like laser beams

12/12/04 Kat smells like lunchmeat

12/22/04 Kat smells like chutney

12/28/04 Kat smells like Jamba Juice and international intrigue

1/16/05 Kat smells like puppets

--------- Kat smells like jungle gyms

--------- Kat smells like papier mache

1/17/05 Kat smells like pie filling

--------- Kat smells like twigs

1/19/05 Kat smells like organic produce

2/8/05 Kat smells lumpy

2/10/05 Kat smells like dolphins and the number 17

2/27/05 Kat smells like word processors

3/3/05 Kat smells like fig newtons and subpoenas

3/10/05 Kat smells like coupons

3/11/05 Kat smells like bottlecaps

3/12/05 Kat smells like thread

--------- Kat smells like baking soda and turmoil

3/13/05 Kat smells like pockets

--------- Kat smells like bottles and festivity

3/21/05 Kat smells like plastic bags and rocket science

--------- Kat smells like knickknacks

3/25/05 Kat smells like Capt'n Crunch and oligarchy

--------- Kat smells like the Cretaceous Era

3/26/05 Kat smells like tin foil and humility

4/3/05 Kat smells like paper cuts and mayonnaise

4/9/05 Kat smells like canned peas and debauchery

4/10/05 Kat smells like hula hoops and formality

4/11/05 Kat smells like photographs and perspicacity

4/19/05 Kat smells like scotch tape and astrology

4/22/05 Kat smells like dancin' monkeys and the present tense

4/24/05 Kat smells of tapdancing and versamilitude

--------- Kat smells like larvae and hedonism

4/25/05 Kat smells like laser beams and cold medication

4/30/05 Kat smells like shopping carts and deliberation

5/1/05 Kat smells like marbles and solicitation

5/9/05 Kat smells like sandpaper and antagonism

5/10/05 Kat smells like Christmas lights and duplicity

5/11/05 Kat smells like turkey feathers and hodgepodge

5/15/05 Kat smells like penicillin and hypnotism

5/28/05 Kat smells like sea shells and despair

5/30/05 Kat smells like non-dairy creamer and hallucinations

6/2/05 Kat smells like hot pockets and misinformation

6/3/05 Kat smells like pocket change and research

6/4/05 Kat smells like dishrags and remorse

Best superhero movie ever

Batman Begins has officially blown away all my expectations. Aside from a few minor quibbles about details, it really was excellent. Finally, a dark, gritty, realistic interpretation. I've always loved the 1989 Tim Burton version, but even that was a bit on the goofy side at times, and Batman was portrayed more as a tank who'd just walk into a room and punch someone in the face. This time they did it right: they made him a badass stealth ninja who takes out people silently, one at a time, and can actually turn his head without moving his whole body.

I'm a little undecided on Christian Bale's Batman voice (I'm just used to Kevin Conroy's brilliant voice work on the animated Batman) but his Bruce Wayne was fantastic - he managed to do the playboy thing without repeating his American Psycho character, and did a pretty good job with the angsty stuff too. Morgan Freeman and Liam Neeson were great. The plot was, for the most part, very clever and believable. Everyone had a good motivation. And I was amazed at how much stuff they were able to pack into the film, considering they had to spend time on the whole origin thing again. At two hours and fifteen minutes it did feel a little long, but in a good way.

If I could improve one thing about it, I think it would be the score. The music really kind of dropped the ball. It was very generic actiony drum music, with no memorable theme to speak of. If they could only take the Danny Elfman theme and drop it in there, it would have been awesome. If I could change a second thing, there were a couple of lines that were a little bit too comic book, but they're easily ignored.

In conclusion: loved it.

PSA: For those of you with access to the Scifi channel who haven't seen Firefly and are too lazy to get the DVDs, be sure to catch it.

Not guilty!

...of giving a damn about Michael Jackson. I find it ridiculous that anyone outside of his immediate friends, family, and alledged molestation victims give a rat's ass about any of that whole stupid fiasco of a trial, and I'm ashamed to know as many details about the case as I do. The only piece of information I care to know is, in the event I'm ever accused of something that I'm probably guilty of, how can I contact his attorney?

I'm down another $10 at poker tonight. Once again, I started out pretty strong, but it was all downhill from there. At least this time I didn't majorly misplay anything, I just wasn't getting a lot of good hands. Ah well. I'm still up, thanks to the poker tournament I miraculously won a while back... though at this rate I'm uncertain how long I'll be able to keep saying that.

On the bright side, I found out today that I get a full 15 days of vacation time this year. So, even after I take my annual Canadian trip, I'll still have 2 weeks left to blow later. Not bad.

Batman Begins opens in about two hours. As much as I love Batman, and as good as this movie could potentially be, I'm somehow not super psyched up for it. I'll be seeing it within a week or so, I'm sure, but I'm not rushing out for opening day tickets. Odd... it doesn't really fit my MO.

A/V Weekend

I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed by Oasis's comeback album. It doesn't seem to have a catchy hit song on it... I can't even remember a tune from any of the songs a couple hours after listening to it.

Beck's new album, Guero, on the other hand, rocks. It's much more creative and upbeat than Sea Change, which just got boring after a little while. I particularly like E-Pro - I haven't even tried listening to the lyrics yet (as if they would make any sense anyway) 'cause the tune is so catchy.

Between that and GTA: San Andreas, my weekend has gone down in antisocial flames. This game is pretty awesome - it's every bit as sociopathic as the previous two (well, four) games, but covers an area about five times as large and has no loading pauses when you move from city to city. I can't wait to see the next one, which will no longer be handicapped by the stupid PS2 hardware requirements. This one looks dated graphically, but the gameplay more than makes up for it. My only problem thus far has been the controls in certian parts (mostly flying) being very difficult to use - it's as though they didn't bother trying to play through it on the PC.

It is too late for me...

I managed to score tickets for Serenity for the third consecutive time, using a technique I like to call "getting really really lucky." They went on sale this morning at about 9:40, and by 9:50 they were gone. I read some message boards claiming they were gone in 2-3 minutes. I did my part to make sure no one else got tickets by buying 10 (I learned my lesson last time when I only bought six). And all I had to do was miss about an hour and a half of work this morning.

Like most things, this reminds me of a Simpsons quote.
Homer: *camping in front of a ticket window* Woohoo, second in line! And all I had to do was miss eight days of work.
Random guy: With the money you would have made working, you could have bought tickets from a scalper.
Homer: In theory, yes.
*first guy in line buys 10,000 tickets*

Tonight's buzz courtesy of: Electronic Arts

Here we go again

I just found out that there's yet another showing of Serenity scheduled for June 23rd. The tickets will probably go on sale around midnight, and this time I'll be buying up eight or ten if I can luck out and get in during the hour or so between when they start selling and when they sell out. Kelsey, Eric and Naomi are all in for this one too.

For their sake, let's just hope I'm not too sidetracked by GTA: San Andreas to compulsively check Movietickets.com every 10 minutes. I've only played for about an hour so far, and it's already fantastically, mind-numbingly violent. Wonderful stuff, really. And this time they've even got a city based on San Francisco - I'll have to see if they put my house in there.

I am cheap

It is true - I'm a tightwad, as my father before me. For example, take my movie-going habits: years after graduating college, I still occasionally use my expired student ID card to get $2 discounts at the movies. I'd rather go to the theater early to pick up my ticket to a show that's going to sell out than just order it online and pay the $1 service fee. I never buy any food or drinks at the theater (at least not for me), and will sometimes wear a bulky jacket with cans of soda or candy in the pockets.

Which is why shelling out several hundred dollars for a couple of plane tickets to Detroit damn near gives me a heart attack. Parting with large amounts of cash (unless it's for something I will use literally every day for a long long time, such as a bed or a computer) makes my brain hurt. And as I may have mentioned earlier, this whole thing has not made me any fonder of the airline industry, and I'm sure that by the time I pass through security on my way there I'll like them just a little bit less than I already do.

On an entirely unrelated topic, I hate hard drive jumpers. They're the dumbest thing ever, and SATA drives, which are smart enough to figure out what's going on by themselves, really can't become readily available and cheap soon enough.

That said, check out Girls and Corpses. Makes me hot, how about you?

One of my West Wing season 1 DVDs has a flaw in it that crashes the DVD player on my computer during the opening scene of an episode. I don't much care for this, which, combined with the fact that Apple really is switching to Intel processors (the least they could have done is gone with AMD), makes me kind of unhappy with the world of tek-mologee today. Oh, who am I kidding - I can't stay mad at you. No, I am not being physically affectionate towards my computer right now. Ok, I am. But no tongue - I'm not that kind of girl.

But while The West Wing is working, I'm in the process of redecorating my room. My technique involves putting several hundred nail holes in the wall, and then covering them with whatever I have that's big enough to conceal the damage. And suddenly, my room looks less like the dorm room of a nerdy college student and more like an adult's room that happens to be suffering from severe termite infestation.

Among the various stuff I brought back from my late grandfather's house yesterday were a couple of semi-nice granite bookends. Sadly, these are not being used for books. I don't have enough books to require ending them, which shows just exactly how into my American Literature major I was. I did, however, add a couple to my limited collection (which as it stands is mostly made up of compilations of such American classics as The Onion, The Far Side, and Calvin & Hobbes): Catch 22 and 1984. Once I've read these, I expect to get a few more Simpsons referrences, as well as finally being able to authoritatively use the word "Orwellian" in referrence to the Bush administration. Up 'till this point I've just been using it accurately.

I'm also still in the process of trying to arrange my transportation to Canada. The airlines are, if you haven't noticed, stupid jerks. They want to charge me too much money to leave and arrive at times that aren't terribly convenient for me. Worst of all, JetBlue doesn't fly to Detroit, meaning I'm going to pay through the nose for crappy service and no personal TV on United or some other shitty airline. Who would have thought it would be the Mormons who would raise the bar for air travel in America? This whole situation is like a win-win, except not at all like that.

But I'm going to do it anyway, and if nothing else this should buy me several hundred dollars worth of complaining, which as many of you know, is a hobby of mine. Besides, someone has to go out there and straighten out my occasionally insane Midwestern relatives. Which reminds me, I have to look up exactly what law it is that says you can't rent DVDs and burn copies of them. I have a cousin who didn't believe me when I told him that was pretty obviously illegal, which I think is pretty goofy. And I have an uncle who reads Michael Savage books, and an aunt who thinks she can talk to ghosts and see people's auras (but they have to believe she can see them, or it doesn't work. How convenient is that?). The truly disturbing thought is that, relatively speaking, my family is about as sane and normal as they come.

Four totally unconnected paragraphs

If Apple really does pull this rumored switch to Intel processors tomorrow, I'll be a little irked - I just set my parents up with a Mac Mini (which, I might add, is pretty sweet. It's practically the size of an external CD drive and super quiet) and if they now announce that they're going to make it obsolete ahead of schedule, it will be much harder to recommend another Mac to my parents next time they upgrade... in another 5 years.

Anyway, courtasy of my late grandfather, I now have some wall decorations that don't look like they came out of a dorm room. Now it's just a matter of actually hanging them, which I'm sure I'll do eventually. I spent a large portion of today helping to clear out his attic, where he kept just about everything he ever received. Every bill, birthday/christmas/fathers' day card, and electronics packaging from the past two decades was neatly packed away up there. Now I know where my family gets its pack-rat gene.

I also need to do some computer work - I've got to basically pull the entire thing apart and put it back together in my new, slightly smaller case... making me wonder if it's worth it for something that won't increase performance. But I did get another 120GB hard disk, which will bring my total to 240 (I'm replacing my old 45, which has been making some unhealthy noises of late), so that's nice.

Tomorrow I need to buy my plane tickets for my anual Canadian trip. This is the first time I've had to pay for it myself, as opposed to freeloading off my parents. After looking at the ticket prices, I've decided I liked it better the other way. But, given that this is a long standing tradition, and a once-a-year thing, I think I'll be able to convince myself to override my frugal tendancies and blow a few hundred bucks getting there. The current plan is to leave on July 22nd and return on July 31st, pending boss-approval of vacation time. If all goes well, I'll be buying those tickets tomorrow.

Last night I was visited by an almost eerily clean-shaven Eric Morgan. More people should follow his fine example and drop in on me here. However, they should bring me gifts.

Eating donuts is not a very good idea. I think I gave myself diabetis today eating two of them. Anyone know where I can get some insulin on the cheap?

I'm headed back to Los Altos tomorrow to set up my parents' new computer. I really hate when things go wrong with new computers, so I'm really kind of hoping nothing does. Screw challenge.

Also, my monitor problems have been preemptively solved. No sooner did I complain on here that I needed a new one than the store room at my office needed to be cleared out, and lo and behold there were a few unused 19" monitors down there. Not flat pannel, but very good none the less. Now there are only two problems: How to get it here without a car, and what to do with the old one. I guess I could follow the lead of the rest of this city and simply leave it out on the sidewalk as though someone might actually want it, but I don't think that's terribly likely.

Whether rain, sleet, or MPAA lawsuit...

I've managed to get my Daily Show fix, but it's not quite as smooth an opperation as it used to be. For example, I wasn't able to get last night's show until about 20 minutes ago. Still waiting on tonight's, which is really annoying because it's going to have all the Deep Throat jokes and I want it now. Hopefully in a couple of weeks there will be a new Bittorrent client version that makes it harder for the MPAA to sue people and I'll be back on track.

On the bright side, I finally have some food in my apartment. This is a definite improvement, as eating is a hobby I have come to enjoy. Unless it's was today's special at the Hawaiian place I ate at for lunch, which was some kind of baby-shit green flavorless curry over beef that was at least 20% fat.

My poker luck has now been scientificly proven to be shitty. I've been playing with a poker game on my computer in a simulated tournament with 39 other computer controlled players. I've tried it about 8 or 9 times, and so far I've yet to finish better than 38th place. Once I was knocked out on the first hand. It's pretty absurd. I blame Kat and her voodoo doll.