random shit

blech!
been sick for the last 3 days. you can set a clock to my yearly allergy attacks. same time every year for the last 20 years, my body gives me the big fuck you and shuts down. i go to the doctors office and get prescribed the same exact medication. it's an ongoing joke with us.

dr: what seems to be the problem?
me: i've got a scratchy throat, i can't breathe, my head is draining and i have crabs.
dr: geez, is it september again?

i'm totally drained of energy and lay in bed at home feeling sorry for myself. i'm back at work today after two days out and realize i was better off feeling sorry for myself and eating bland chinese food.

meet you all the way, rosanna yeah!
ok, maybe not rosanna, but i've found a new love. In my sick time, i was fumbling through my DVD library and stumbled across my roommate's box set of ALIAS, first season. WOW!!!! My panties are wet. This is an amazing show. i remember flipping thru the channels last year and coming across this show one sunday evening and thinking, meh, cute chick, but the story line is to confusing. understandably, this show keeps you guessing about the next step from the get go. i don't care what others say about Jennifer Garner. she's amazing. great actress and quite easy on the ojos. and they've got her dressed to the T in the skimpiest outfits you've ever seen on a 10 year old boy. so i ended up watching like 10 of the first season episodes yesterday. it's no wonder i'm feeling better today. and thank gawd the second and third seasons are on DVD as well, cause i'm getting close to finishing my x-files stint on dvd and was looking for another tv show to add to the queue.

gaskets, check. heat shields, check. arc welder, check . . .
i ordered some new baffles for the pipes on dobra this last weekend. for those unfamiliar with a baffle, lemme explain. engines require some sort of exit for exhaust. those would be pipes (for a motorcycle). baffles are tubes that fit inside the pipes that hinder the exit of exhaust. the more hinderance, the quieter the sound from the pipes. so when you pull up next to someone on a motorcycle and it's so loud that you can't hear your old lady giving you road head, it means one of two things. 1) the pipes are short (the shorter, the louder) or, 2) the smaller the baffle (or in some cases, no baffles). a baffle looks like a cardboard tube from a toilet paper roll, in various lengths and made of steel. it also may have holes drilled thru it. the holes allow the exhaust to flow thru, quieting the sound. so i ordered my thunder monster baffles, like i was saying, and by the name, you can tell that they won't be quiet. they are also less than 6 inches long, in comparison to the stock baffles which are a foot and a half long. my girlfriend and i are going to sit down on saturday and install the baffles. this requires removing the pipes, removing the stock baffles, drilling an anchor hole in the pipes and reinstalling the pipes with new crush gaskets. i've already pulled out one of the baffles and it's significantly louder already. i tend to set off most car alarms in my complex when i roll through in first gear. the new baffles will make the pipes louder and much deeper in tone. more of a rumble. it's also supposed to add a significant amount of HP and foot torque. i.e., get up and go.

i mentioned to her that i needed the help (plus, it's good couple time) and she was eager to help. she rides as well and a combination of her being able to spend every second of time with a bike mixed with her inability to ride for the last two weeks (she has a broken foot), she jumped at the chance. then comes the next inevitable question.

her: do i need to bring my arc welder?

i almost proposed right there.

me: uh, no honey, but you wanna go shower together now?

So, that'll be a good saturday afternoon activity for the two of us. she'll hopefully be back on her scooter by then again and i'll be signing my eviction notice for noise polution.

musica caliente and a cold coors light
caught bb king in concert last saturday night. the man is amazing. and at 87 years old, he puts most old timers to shame. hell, he puts most 60 year olds to shame. we saw him at billy bobs, which is a strange place to see a black, blues musician. billy bobs is the biggest honky tonk in the world. i've never been sure what exactly a honky tonk is, but it sounds menacing. especially if you are wearing spurs. anyway, he sat onstage and played some amazing blues and got the crowd singing with him most of the time. he danced and jiggled (he's a large man), but he had a great time and so did we. it's not often you get to see a legend. that, he is.

QotD

Is quality worth the price?

I'm a coffee drinker. Actually, i'm a coffee requirer. I have an addiction to caffeine that requires some sort of caffeine intake during the day to keep the headaches at bay. Luckily, i like the taste of coffee as well, so it makes the morning drinky worthwhile. My morning routine wakes me, showers me, drives me to the office where i partake in my first cup of coffee and fuck off for the first half of the day til my boss catches on. Until recently, the company i work for had a ban on anything extraneous in office locations, like coffee machines, large roomy desks, plants and bathrooms. So, for the last two years, i've been bringing my coffee from home. i've got a good coffee maker that will have it brewed and ready for me when i'm walking out the door. About six months ago, they installed coffee machines in the break rooms. These aren't fresh brew coffee machines, but a vending style coffee dispenser, complete with little paper cups, sound bytes of coffee beans being ground and then an indescribable thumping and grinding sound that i suppose is the steaming hot water being pressed through the freshly ground beans. And wonderfully so, out pops the worst fucking cup of ass juice that i've ever been priveledged to put to my lips. even wors than those wankers at the tom thumb starbucks. i still continued to bring coffee from home, but the machine made for a nice afternoon gag fest if you were snoring to loudly during your conference calls. be not mistaken, this stuff made me cry. not the 'princess diaries' or 'i just lost my virginity' or 'that custom paint job on your chopper is gorgeous' crying. it's more like a 'bill and ted' or 'i just lost my virginity . . . anally' or 'i just laid down my chopper with the custom paint job' crying.

About a month ago, an email was sent out to tell us that they will be putting the normal coffee machines back in the break rooms. the machines that you actually put the grounds in the filters and watch brew right there. like we all have at home. great! except, the coffee still sucks. imagine taking the coffee grounds that have been sitting in the filter of your coffee machine for a week and then just sucking on them. sucking on week old coffee grounds. this stuff is almost that good.

i think you understand my point here.
i'm not a starbucks fan (unless i'm in dire need of coffee), but i do appreciate a good, simple cup of well brewed, nice tasting coffee. there is a local bagel place near the office that brews their own coffees and it is great. hearty, flavorful and consistent. so i ask, is me paying a buck fourty nine worth the quality as compared to the free monkey snot they serve here? and i know, i could just continue to brew my own and bring it with me, but that scenario won't fit my arguement here, so pretend you just never heard that i own a coffee maker.

I made a joke once about my not actually reaching a mature and complete adulthood until i had purchased at least one piece of furniture from a store that didn't require me to build it myself. i have an affinity for buying tables and desks and hutches from places like target or walmart because it's cheaper to pay the $150 and build it myself than to spend $850 at a crate and barrel or golden corral or wherever you buy expensive furniture (or just permanently borrow it from hooters like buddies of mine do . . .). i'm sure those snotty little housewives in highland park are looking down their newly sculptured noses through their Armani sunglasses at me and scoffing at my mediocrity, but honestly, i kinda like that kind of stuff. i like to spend the time building it and it's cheap and reliable, most of the time. It gives me a sense of acomplishment.

so again, is it worth the price? Is my two weeks in the pokey for petty theft worth the six bar stools and a cash register from hooters or should i just pay the five hunnet bucks and get the same thing at pottery barn?

Hope . . .

. . . it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness.

so sayeth the architect. never could a quote be truer fitted for someone like myself. my greatest hope, right now, is that the video game industry would implode for a single month. no longer, no less. as i sit here at work on a slow afternoon dreaming of the impending weekend, my thoughts wander to those things that will be vying for my time. Star Wars: Battlefront, Call of Duty: United Offensive, Doom 3, masturbation . . .

you get the point. We've reached the time of the year where sugar plums and presents, harley davidsons and boob-jobs, x-files and blue toilet bowl cleaners dance through a young man's head. the fall season is upon us and video game manufacturers are coming out of the woodwork with gifts to bestow upon us, like they've been promising us with for many months past. it's feast or famine. the summer months are a drought for gamers and come September, we are inundated with choices. and i, singley, am the person they are looking at. i am an advertiser's dream. show me a commercial with pizza and i'll instantly call for one. tell me that i'll get chicks with only 3 simple, 5 minute workouts a week and i'll trade in my car, tell me that this is the best game since pong and i'm buying new, $500 video cards to play it. my hope to fully maintain hapiness and serenity through a choice of 13 different weapons of destruction is my greatest weakness.

my biggest problem is my attention span. if i could be happy for longer than 37 seconds playing a game, i wouldn't be here today complaining. but my weakness for games, my ADHD and an affinity for kindbud all contribute to the need to play everything i read about. it started mid-summer with the purchase of Doom 3, which is a great game. it's a bit repetetive, but still thoroughly enjoyable. i'm probably 2 hours away from completing the game. i then moved on to SpellForce which is one of the best RTS/RPG games i've ever played. i actually played this for almost 3 weeks. Guiness was calling me. i broke down yesterday and picked up SW: Battlefront. esentially, it's Battlefield 1942 in the star wars arena. and it's fun. i fought with both Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker in one sitting. And i'll let you in on a little secret, they're related.... I've also got my eye on the expansion for Hidden & Dangerous, Silent Hill 4, Halo 2, HalfLife 2 and The Matrix Online.

So, hopefully, you are seeing my dilemma. I have a weakness for all of these games. The need to fulfill my hapiness. And as time moves on, I've gotten worse about actually finishing these games. And to complicate matters, i have to divvy my time between these "life ruiners" and my addiction to my bike (a complete other discussion), and my girlfriend, and my family, and sleep and the 19 other things i do every day. and we won't even begin the discussion of how many games i have sitting in my closet or next to a console that i've forgotten about. to numerous to discuss.

Whoever said "Hope springs eternal" hit it right on the nose. And they should be punched in theirs.

"What" ain't no country I ever heard of! They speak English in What?

or how about
Blagged? Do me a favor, Tony, speak English. I thought this country spawned the fucking language, and so far nobody seems to speak it.

maybe,
Naw, he speaks some English, but he can't not speak it good like we do.

i couldn't not respond to the two posts from Any and Stodgy about the degredation of the english language . The most widely spoken language in the world? Possibly? Who knows. and Any posted a textbook example of what our education systems are churning out. now you can't blame education solely on this problem, because teachers, like firefighters and police officers are probably the most underpaid professionals in society today. it's a profession where dedication to your job is the only reason you keep it. i could pull some numbers out of my ass to prove that the profession is noble and struggling to stay alive, but i won't. becaus i don't need to. private school enrollment is on the rise because like Any and Stodgy and myself, they're sick of it. then there is the other side where youth go to school because it's a place to stash them for the day while mom whores herself out for a bag of crack. now i know i'm jumping to extremes, but i've seen Law and Order and i know it exists.

yes, in a society of text messaging and internet messaging and short attention spans and attention defeceit disorder, our language is suffering. but music is to blame as well. parents are to blame. society is to blame. it's unfortunate, but this is the way the world is headed and i don't think it's going to get better. it's just going to get worse. and it's easy to get drawn into that. i'm guilty of that. i was a literature major in college and i've succumb to the sweet, sweet taste of a new language. the language of eminem and xzibit and anything that crosses the airwaves via text and IM.

i don't have a solution for it. not for the world. my solution is just to make an effort to stay well spoken; stay educated. beat the corruption.

aaight?

i heart online shopping

i'm not a shopper. i don't like malls for many reasons. i get bored with them after about 30 minutes and need to leave. if i find a store that appeals to me (games, books, tools, lacy underwear), i usually get into trouble. i'm an impulse buyer and it really gets me in trouble, cause most of the time, i don't really need what i buy. i've fought this my whole life and although i have a really nice flat screen tv or a pretty good computer, i tend to levitate towards buying more, bigger, better. i always keep within my means, so i'm not bankrupting myself, but in the end, shopping makes me nervous. when i buy clothes, i know what i need and i spend mere seconds purchasing and finding the door again.

what i do enjoy is online shopping. i'm not talking about QVC, but shopping online can be harmless as much as it can be dangrous. i go thru online shopping phases on a pretty regular basis. plus, when you order something online, you get the enjoyment of recieving a package delivered to your home, so it's like crimmus in september.

last night was one of those nights. while eating dinner, i was watching Pimp my Ride on empty-v and heard a quick line from a song i used to have. i remembered a few of the words and could sing them, but for the life of me, i couldn't remember the band or the song name. so, i scoured the interenet for almost 3 hours looking for the band. i hit various music bulletin boards, lyrics sites and music sites in an effort to remember the song and band. after googling myself into exhaustion, i finally found the band (Sunna) and the song title (Power Struggle) and then set out to get a copy of it. i only wanted the song, but after futile efforts to find it on itunes and real, it was nowhere to be found. i called my roommate at work and he said that not only did they not have it in the store, but none of their stores would ever carry it since it was over 3 years old. so i hit cdnow (which reroutes to amazon - but then, everything reroutes to amazon these days) and found a used copy for a dollar and nineteen cents. with shipping, the entire cd came to three dollars and sixty eight cents. and it was being shipped to me from someone in my own state. yeah, it's used, but i'm getting it for one song. this is 368 i can justify. so, in the end, i lucked out after some good efforts. and where else can you shop in your underwear?

heartache

this time of the year pains me. more so in the last couple of years because time seems to be flying by. i'm not gonna get deep and philosophical about life and death and air freshners and shit. i just think we need more time. add a couple more hours on to each day. tack on two more weeks to the end of the year. lets create a month called boobtober or geelember or even fraqtelenguinktylinquer. yeah, that last one's kinda tough, but my point here is we need more time. we needed it as a kid to ride our bikes:

me: bet you can't clear that tree branch
buddy: fuck you dude, i did a table top over that last week.
me: you did not! you totally endowed it, bitch!

we needed it in highschool on those ever so important and awkward nights in the back seat of the car:

me: shit, it's late and your dad's gonna kill me...
her: don't worry, it's only 11 o'clock, we still have plenty of time
me: then why do you still have your bra on?

we needed it in florida on spring break:

me: woooooo! yeahhhhhh! julie brown, you rock!!!!!
julie brown: no!!!! LBG, YOU ROCK!!!!! wuba, wuba, wuba, bitch!!!!!!!

and we need it now. i just checked out gamespy's 2004 fall preview of pc games coming in the next few months (thus, the fall comment) and my heart is beginning to ache. not just because there are at least 7 games in there that I WILL purchase and play and won't have the time to do anything else but call in sick, quit showering and ignore my family, but because there are those less fortunate souls like tex; despite his ability to make better judgement calls in life, chose not to and went to law school instead. again, this makes my heart ache, because i know he's just as big a fanatic as i am and it crushes me to know he won't be able to play any of these games. he thinks it's cruel that i sent him the link showing all the games but i sent it because i care. i want him to know that there is a whole other world outside law school and it's full of aiens, jet packs and large breasted women in bikinis who like to beat the shit outta each other. it's a good life and some of us are fortunate to be a part of it. tex will learn that some day and learn to make better decisions.

with that being said, i wanted to get everyone involved in my push to petition for the addition of fraqtelenguinktylinquer and remember that it's for a good cause. do it for the games, do it for those 18 year olds trying to get laid, do it for tex or just do it for yourself, but make it happen.

wuba, wuba, wuba, bitch!

losing smaller skirmishes

in the battle of life.

after an incrdibly hectic two months and some very busy weekends, i decided to be a zuchini this weekend and do nothing. i spent the better part of yesterday either here online, working on a model, playing the new CoD expansion and watching movies. i did clean the turtle tank and they now have smiles on their faces and i spent some good time cleaning dobra (that's more fun than work), but otherwise, no brain cells were expended. so last night, i flipped on the tv and switched over to SciFi. Most of the time, i know better than to do this on a saturday evening, cause i feel entirely to educated to succumb to the crap they play, but i love the channel and most of the time, SciFi is great to watch. Last night SciFi, like many other lost nights, robbed me of yet another two hours of my life. i flipped on their saturday night premier called Darklight or Darkfiend or DickSuck or FatChanceWhiteBoyofEverGettingThisTimeofYourLifeBack. I think it was that last one, but it was horrible or as the mesicans say, horrible. i have such high hopes that someday, SciFi will do us all right and play something good. and maybe they are just living the standard that science fiction movies need to be unbelievable and a huge stretch to the imagination, but man alive, i'm not that fucking stupid. thank god i don't smoke weed any more, cause it would have been on my top ten list of best movies ever, right up there with Earth Girls are Easy, Drop Dead Fred and the second Exorcist movie. I just don't get it. Low budget doesn't have to equal horrible acting and even worse plotlines. there were so many holes in the plotline, i was starting to feel religious. anyway, if you feel like torturing someone within inches of their life or want to know what it's like to get kicked quare in the balls with some steel toed boots, check out Darklight at it's next showing.

the second small battle was this morning. sundays are probably my favorite day of the week, cause it's quiet until at least 11 around here. the world is still sleeping or at church, SciFi is showing the Raiders trilogy back to back (see guys, you can make good choices when you try) and coffee always seems to taste better knowing i still have an entire day to watch the world go by and not be concerned about anything. so, i woke up early this morning and decided to hit the grocery store to pick up some things. if you shop, hit the stores on sunday mornings and it's wonderful. no lines, people are in a great mood and the chocolate doghnuts with the sprinkles are freshly made. i hit my local Tom Thumb to pick up a few items and cash in on a coupon for a free Starbucks coffee i'd received the last time i was in the store cause you get one when you spend over ten thousand dollars in one purchase. it's the least they can do for you. they've recently remodeled the one near my place and it's great. new store, overly nice employees and a starbucks. the problem is, the store uses their own employees to run the starbucks and the coffee would taste better if i were sucking it out of the ass of a dead horse. i've cashed in on two of these "keep spending money in our store" coupons and both times, i've seen my life flash before my eyes. i think i actually witnessed the end of the world as seen thru my eyes. these people don't care about coffee and it's obvious they don't know how to make it. this shit was horrible, and COLD. straight from the cappuchino machine. i don't know how that's possible, but i was gonna hug the guy's neck for accomplishing something i didn't think was possible. not being out any money for the abomination in a cup i was served, i stopped by a real starbucks and got what i needed. the woman served me a hot, full, tasty coffee and i told her i loved her.

two battles already fought today leaves one more, the boys fighting that punk Campo and his bitches, the Browns. i'm sure we'll wipe up with them, but who knows. if we can just kickstart our defense, we should have no problem.

why can't you just be nice?

because the world isn't a nice place...

tasty goodness with a creamy center

and if that didn't cream your center, this certainly will.

sony sticks it in and breaks it off

Found this on 1up.com this am:

Hoping to reinvigorate interest in its PSX multipurpose entertainment console, Sony Computer Entertainment today announced two new models of the PlayStation 2/digital video recorder combo. The new versions, due to hit Japan in early December, mix in a new "x-DJ" music and video mixing feature borrowed from the SCE PS2 game DJBox.

The new models, categorized DESR-5500 and DESR-7500, will otherwise be up to the same spec as their predecessors on the market, including all the interface upgrades Sony has added through firmware updates since the release of the original PSX models last December. The 5500 will have 160 gigabytes of hard drive space for storing recorded video and later burning it to DVD, while the 7500 will have 250 gigabytes.

Surprisingly, Sony will not suggest a retail price for the new PSX models -- instead, they'll be "open price," subject to the judgment of retailers. The first two PSX models carried suggested retail prices of approximately $900 for a model with a 250-gigabyte hard drive and approximately $700 for a 160-gigabyte model. However, recent reports claim that Japanese retailers have been marking down those models to as little as 50% of their suggested price tags.

That's the latest bit of down news for the PSX, which debuted to strong response from early adopters in Japan last December, but failed to sustain interest thereafter. Sony will likely not be able to meet its target of one million units sold by the end of this year, and it quietly shifted plans to release the device in Europe and North America this year to some time in 2005.

I'm a little confused as to why it's necessary to put a 250 gig HD in a ps2. you can count the number of ps2 games that require a HD on one hand. And all those games come with a HD in the package. I mean, WTF? If Sony wants to keep up in the console wars, then do something other than sell us an overpriced Pentium pro with a lot of disk space. And it's not as if they are doing badly in sales. I don't know about sales of the base unit itself, but the sheer amount of games made for the console will keep the board of directors in a comfortable lifestyle for quite a few years. My ps2 collects more dust than it does playtime, mostly because the graphics don't compete with those of the xbox, but the ps2 still has the best sports games and survival horror games which is the reason I still own one. And do you know anyone who will pay nine hundred F'ing dollars for a new ps2 when they can buy one for a buck forty nine right now? C'mon guys, pull your heads outta your butts. The new world is here and it's full of cheap, reliable hardware, not nine hundred dollar harddrives.

NOTE: Ok, i guess i should have read the article a little better, cause it's not just a ps2, it's a psx, which i guess is their full blown entertainment center, like a ps2 with a tivo built in for good measure. this still doesn't justify the pricetag if i can get the ps2 for $149 and a tivo for less (plus or minus the monthly fee depending on my desire to pay for it). And coincidentally, wasn't the ps1 renamed the psx after the ps2 came out? or the slimmed down version of it...

sin city

frank miller's masterpiece is finally seeing the light of day in hollywood with the largest cast since the remake of Ocean's 11. No one else would be fit to direct this epic but Robert Rodriguez and by the looks of this nice lengthy teaser from Comic Con this year, it's bound to be a hit.

anyone else suddenly feel like boning Carla Gugino?

lids

in response to Any's post to my lid issue, no, i couldn't wait for the new lid. if i heard one more person bitch me out for not wearing one, i would have stabbed them in the eye with my chrome dipstick (take that as you will), but you could always get me THIS for crimmus (or it's flat black counterpart). Or even THIS. Or THIS. But THIS wouldn't suffice, cause it's not DOT approved . . .

and since we've been locked out of responding to posts, here at work, HEY FLIPPER!!!!! When is your game tonight? I wanna come watch. Sorry i missed you last week. I was on top of my girlfriend.

for those who are less endowed

please read the product description. someone didn't proofread and i've never laughed at a target item like this before.

random shit

thank god i'm in texas
cause we have pretty liberal beliefs about the death penalty. we can also carry concealed weapons, which make most of my friends happy. i own a pistola, but i don't carry it on my person (why does it always sound dirty when i say that?). the reason i mention this is because

1. people driving while talking on cell phones, and
2. anyone driving a minivan

have advanced their way to the top of my "i'll do 9 consecutive life sentences just to do away with every single one of these people" list. and i'm not biased cause i'm a biker and i don't exist to anyone on the road. this just fuels my anger. but is there some clause you have to sign that when you buy a minivan, you are required by law to not drive the speed limit in every other lane but the one i'm in? and i know that i'm employed by a wireless corporation, but i'd buy some votes in florida to make it illegal to talk while driving. obviously, safety is second best to nothing but everything else on the road. motherless fuckers.

it gets the women wet
except your mother...
my roommate is starting to seriously consider the idea of buying a scooter. he's seen me on Dobra and is itching for some new addiction in life. or at least something to rid his obsession for online pool. problem is, he's a procrastinator and his favorite saying is "not right now". he's gotten really good at coming home from work, taking off his pants (not his shirt, just his pants) and sitting down at his pc and not getting up until it's time to hit the sack. this happens on weekends too. now i know i'll catch all kinds of shit from him for saying this, but sometimes the truth ain't a pretty thing. i know he's got the cash and i can't tell you how many scooters there are out there just looking for a good home. i know this cause i scour the sites on a daily basis looking for new ways to bankrupt myself with "one more piece of chrome" (that's my favorite saying). i believe the term is "chromosexual".

speaking of bankrupting myself
i'm on the way to meet my family for lunch yesterday around noon, so i hop on dobra and i get stuck in the center lane behind some 90 year old in a cadillac (remind me to add that to my list), so i punch it to get around her and suddenly hear this loud metal clanging behind me. now keep in mind that i've got aftermarket pipes and they're pretty loud, but i turn around at the sound and see something shiny tumbling across the middle of the road and start to panic. as i pull up to the next light, i look down and notice that one of the tips has jumped free from one of the pipes i've just spoken of. grrrrr!!!!! so i head home after lunch with the familia and notice that the baffle that's normally held in by the tip is looking to jump ship as well, so i have to stop at every other light and kick it back into place. i got home and ordered a new set of tips which came to $90. ninety fucking bucks. for a set of chrome tips. jesus, why don't you just take my liver as well, it's no good to me any longer. so this new lifestyle that i'm trying to get my rommate into is losing the battle by showing him how modification is the work of satan.

on a good note, i got my lid in today, so as soon as i can get the new tips put on, i'll be riding in style AND SAFETY. so all of you lecturing me on riding without a lid can shut the hell up. *cough*mom*cough*

i was just kidding about that shut-the-hell-up-mom thing
i loves me mom.

best new group of the year?
i was listening to this new group today during lunch on the radio. led zepplin, i think. these boys will make it big someday. i just know it...

actually, with the total lack of radio in dallas these days, i've been reduced to listening to my bonnie rait greatest hits collection and 93.3 The Bone (whose "bone" related jokes JUST NEVER get tiring). if i never hear the deep voiced, midday dj say "let's bone all day", ever again, it won't be soon enough. for those not in dallas, the bone is a classic rock station. until recently, we had a mediocre rock station until those fuckers at clear channel took the station off the air. the local "alternative" sister station of the rock station taken off the air has been scrambling to pick up the lost listeners by playing some metallica between the smiths and green day. it's a veritable buffet of songs. it's ok to listen to occasionally, but the homosexual overtones of the morning show makes my stomach turn most of the time and you can't help but change the channel.

so, i'm not really a classic rock fan, despite growing up in the 70s and 80s, but i'm having to readjust and since the music industry is in the toilet right now and has been for about 2 or 3 years, there's just not much to listen to.

so back to the group of the year - yeah, you knew i'd get back here eventually. i'm thinking this honor needs to go to chevelle who has really given us a good, grinding, angry, tool-esque sort of sound that we've needed to kick some of these stupid little boy bands in the butt. they have a new album coming out later this month entitled this type of thinking could do us in and the first single, Vitamin R, is really giving me butterflies. they hit the scene two years ago with wonder what's next and really blew me away and i'm so pleased with the new single that i've already downloaded and added into rotation. i guess bonnie will have to go on hiatus for a bit.

bad motorskooter

it's friday and work has finally slowed down after two and a half months of hell, so i'm killing some time on ebay dreaming of better times and larger checkbooks and looking at some of the custom choppers and OCC can kiss my ass (not on zis side and not on zis side, but right in zee meedle...). there are some custom built choppers out there that make cycle haters gasp in awe. it doesn't help that my girlfriend is a junkie too, but we pass links to each other to see who can come up with the most outrageous custom build. i may have found it. Check out this ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLAR, custom built Boss Hoss chopper. it makes my nether regions tingle. it also makes me wanna quit this shithole and become a grease monkey, but maybe i'd better master starting my own bike first . . .

my life as i know it, is over

so i took a half day off today to recover from my extended weekend a few days ago. i took friday thru monday off to enjoy an extended weekend and ended up getting food poisioning on friday night only to be sick all weekend long and totally fuck up my anniversary dinner i had planned at jack in the box with my girlfriend. she was all kinds of pissed. i'd been promising her a sourdough jack for months now and the smell of that grease made me wanna spill the steak tartar i'd eaten the night before...

so, anyway, i took the afternoon off to fuck off and enjoy the beautiful weather we're having here in dallas and discovered that my all time favorite pc game has released the beta of their newest phase in the family of crack-like addicting games, Tribes Vengeance. so i downloaded the beta and got online and realized that i'm gonna have to call in sick tomorrow cause i think i feel that food poisioning coming back. thank god i laid out the groundwork for being sick at work this morning, so now i have an excuse to not shower tomorrow. if you are a fan of tribes, you can grab the beta right here and play the three maps they have running right now. Vengeance is being done by a completely different company than the first two games and i think with some tweaking of this one, it could be as good as the original. great graphics, nice online play and i even hear they have a full single player campaign this time around to give us a storyline to follow. i'm not sure that i really care about a storyline when i'm mortaring the shit outta the other teams base while my buddy swipes their flag, but who knows, it could be a lot of fun. they've reinstated skiing for the game. they even assigned it its own key this time around. it's intentional. with that being said, i'm off to serve a coupla disk sammiches to some punk trying to capture my base.

Ju-On

Caught Ju-On yesterday afternoon, down at the Angelica. So so movie. I’m a big fan of Asian, horror cinema, so I’ll watch just about anything that is asian and part of the horror/thriller/suspense genre. I went with Any and another friend of ours. Any gets creeped out when you just mention the word “horror”, so he’s always fun to watch squirm. He mentioned that if I got home (we’re roommates) and he was curled up in the fetal position grasping his Glock, just not to make any sudden movements.

The film was produced by Taka Ichise, who also produced Ringu. Recurring elements of the long haired, vengeful female ghost were here which is a recurring theme in asian horror cinema. Apparently, this film did so well, that a Ju-On 2 was released last year and the Americanized version of the original is being released this year starring Sarah Michelle Gellar (which appears to be a reenactment of the same exact script).

So like I was saying, so so movie. This film had a lot of potential to be much scarier and that’s what I was disappointed in. In fact, the trailer for the film creeped me out more than the film itself because of the way it was put together. Typical storyline – desperate husband kills his wife and son after he finds out she’s been having an affair with another man and that the son isn’t really his (how can he tell? They all look alike…). The murders took place in their home and everyone since, who’s visited or lived in the home has been haunted and killed by the ghost or others killed there. The little boy is a prevalent character throughout the entire film and this is what usually creeps me out in horror movies. Something about kids in horror films really does it, but this kid was fairly mild mannered (for a dead kid). Some gore, some good sound effects, some good camera effects (for which this kind of cinema is famous for) and a bunch of hot little asian girls in schoolgirl outfits. It was really great, because at one big, revealing scene in the film when one of the killers (the girl with long hair) is crawling down a flight of stairs, covered in blood, the theater is very silent as we all watch in anticipation and some woman, at the top of her lungs barks out “Oh my God!”. It was hilarious.

If you are into these kinds of films and this genre, click the link above to hit IMDB and see some others by this director and producer. Also check out the Pang Brothers (The Eye, specifically) and if you just want some good, mindless gore in films that won’t make any sense at all, check out anything done by Takashi Miike.

it's the most wonderful time of the year

August is a memory and the fall season has begun to set in. this is my favorite time of the year. The weather cools, football starts, meals begin to get heartier, fall TV starts up, tight sweaters get pulled from the closet and video game manufacturers inundate us with a large helping of games we’ve been waiting for all year. Yes, I’ve had Andy Williams rolling through my head as I read the articles about what games will be hitting the market in the next 4 months. Just about every large gaming site has recently released an article about game releases and it’s the same discussion they all have every year about this time.

Most of the sites I frequent do a little dealio on Mondays showing what games will be released that week and the articles have been extended to show how this will be one of the largest gaming years in about a decade. The summer was dismal until the release of Doom 3 (which I still haven’t finished yet) and now the market will be flooded with games for all platforms and I, like others, wonder how any of these game companies plan to make any money this holiday season. The gaming community is growing in leaps and bounds and has surpassed the film industry by billions of dollars, but for some reason, release schedules have never been perfected and come this holiday season, my amazon list will consist almost solely of games.

i picked up a game last friday called Spellforce that's a combo RTS/RPG that i'm really loving. it's a lot like Warcraft III, but not so cartoony. that should keep me busy for at least 2 more weeks until some others come out that i'm looking forward to. The Call of Duty expansion hits shelves next tuesday and i'll probably pick that up. it should keep me busy for maybe a week, depending on the length of the game. Star Wars: Battlefront is being released on 9/20. this is Battlefield 1942 in the SW universe. i'm giddy about this one. being able to fly a tie fighter has me really excited.

anyway, the list goes on and i'm sure i'll have more comments coming soon regarding other games that i'll be spending my rent payment on.

we blew it

watched Easy Rider tonight. i've never seen the film and it finally showed up from my netflix list. what a great film. low budget, lots of ad-libbing, a shitload of weed and two great scooters. it was so obvious that the entire crew was really smoking weed while it was all being filmed that it made it that much more enjoyable. then to see the feature where everyone involved discussed making the film and walked us thru it shot by shot. and nowhere else have i ever enjoyed Jack as much as i did here. the ending was a surprise and almost to abrupt, but didn't detract from my pure enjoyment of it. if you spent 5 minutes in the 60s, i suggest picking this up if you haven't seen it.

five stars

radioblog

while surfing blogs this morning, i ran across radioblog which is an add-on to your site/blog that allows you to stream music from your site. pretty cool idea cause you can choose what you want to add to your list and then allow readers of your blog to choose from your list and play it while they read your rants. not that we really need another way to listen to music, but i like this idea. it's a good way to let readers know more about you by your selections. it doesn't look like it has much in the way of formatting to fit the look of your page, but the music selection seems to be pretty decent and i wouldn't mind introducing everyone to my J Kwon addiction.

tank, cooter and curly sue

not many of you know this, but i'm a turtle guy. not in a mutant ninja or soup sorta way, but i have turtles as pets. of all the pets i've had in the past, outside of Maggie (old english sheep dog), turtles have been my favorite pets. i have a 40 gallon tank in my kitchen sitting in a window seat that currently houses 3 red ear sliders. each are about 6 inches in circumference. DeDe, DoDo and Spaz have been around for a little longer than a year and live contentedly in the aquarium. the three of them did have a fourth roommate until the other day, Tank. Tank was about 11 inches long and a big MFer. Once any of my turtles get that large, i take them out to a local creek where a ton of other turtles live (including Tanks bigger brother) and let them loose into the wild.

so, i let Tank loose friday morning and decided it was time to get some new kids to add to the family, so i went to a local petshop that specializes in exotic fish, turtles, amphibians, snakes, etc. and picked up Cooter (a yellow bellied cooter) and Curly Sue (a ridgeback). Brought them home and introduced them to their new roommates. within two hours of their arrival, the older kids had killed Curly Sue. and now, Cooter is looking like he's about to pass on to that big toilet in the sky. you see, the older turtles thought the babies were fish and chased them around the tank biting them. Curly Sue was found floating and i separated Cooter into a small bowl (he's only the size of a silver dollar). he had some scars and it looks like this may have been what killed him (or will). he doesn't look like he's going to make it either. i'm pretty upset by this cause the babies are great to watch, but i'm the idiot who introduced them into a hostile environment. this will not happen again.

here's hoping Cooter makes it.

things that make you go . . . vroom!

sorry, that sounded so funny in my head.
now that i've had about 2.5 months on the bike, i wanted to take notice of a few things i've discovered about the wonderful world of biking.

1. the road REALLY is full of idiots, bad driver and people who don't care about anything else but themselves.
2. the roads you've traveled for years really are new to you again.
3. every third cager is talking on a phone, literally.
4. there is an instant kinship between all bikers regardless if you've never seen them before.
5. once you get the scoot, tragic stories of mayhem and death come out of the woodwork. i think i keep forgetting to take the note off my chest that says "tell me your goriest and most gruesome motorcycle wreck story".
6. not all bikers are like the hells angels. only the hells angels are like the hells angels. most of these people are programmers, plumbers and insurance salesmen.
7. customizing is an addiction - once you get started, start saving money cause you've got some Betty Ford time to pay for. and it's much worse than that pixie stix addiction you had back in the 5th grade. i just bought 5 new additions and have everything else readily enqued. let's hope the scooter fairy gets my letter.
8. chicks don't always dig bikers. most of the time, they're to busy talking on their stinking cell phone. housewives and men dig bikers (in the hetero way). housewives won't say anything, but they aren't shy about passing glances and doe-eyed stares (maybe they're just looking at my ass). guys aren't so subtle. they just roll the window down and start a conversation with you and ask you to rev your engine.
9. you become an instant grease monkey
10. driving to work, the store, to your kidney transplant or to buy new turtles is a new experience. all that every-day, monotonous driving is exciting (see #2).
11. everyone you know suddenly wants a ride (even the ones that told you that you were crazy for buying a scoot in the first place).
12. if you can, date a biker (if you are a biker) - it's a constant source of conversation and discussion. unless of course, they start eyeing things like this for their next upgrade (which she is). suddenly, i don't feel like such a man any longer. . .

to be continued . . .

this really eats me up

J posted some comments, quite elegantly, about the annual BIG NATIONAL CHAIRITY that our company holds each year. And each year, the drive seems to get longer and longer. it's like middle school, just when you think summer has just started and you've escaped school for a while, it's august again and time to go back. well, this charity is the same way. we are going to be bombarded with annoying emails and flyers and posters on every wall, in every elevator and over every urinal. it really annoys the shit outta me. i give to my own charities every year and choose not to give to this one, but it doesn't keep them from hammering my inbox with crap (and they wonder why we always hit our size limit so quickly).

so every year, there's something new done to try and sucker us outta our hard earned money. today, some woman with a huge cart, a stack of flyers and a case of CANDY BARS rolled up and down the isles and gave one to each of us. it's probably a good thing that i was on a conference call at the time, cause i wanted to tell her to keep her stinkin' candy bar and leave me the hell alone. again, probably good i was on the call, cause i don't want to come off as a real asshole (even if i am). how do we avoid this barrage? we don't. we complain, we're the bad guys.

thpppppttttttt!!!!!!