29 December 2006

I've been reading these.

"Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice-president in charge of media. Successful in most things but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives - trying to go home again. And also like all men perhaps there'll be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime, when he'll look up from what he's doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and the places of his past. And perhaps across his mind there'll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And he'll smile then too because he'll know it is just an errant wish, some wisp of memory not too important really, some laughing ghosts that cross a man's mind, that are a part of the Twilight Zone."


"A word to the wise now to the garbage collectors of the world, to the curio seekers, to the antique buffs, to everyone who would try to coax out a miracle from unlikely places. Check that bottle you're taking back for a two-cent deposit. The genie you save might be your own. Case in point, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Castle, fresh from the briefest of trips into the Twilight Zone."


"One time in a million, a coin will land on its edge, but all it takes to knock it over is a vagrant breeze, a vibration or a slight blow. Hector B. Poole, a human coin, on edge for a brief time in the Twilight Zone."
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28 December 2006

Anime is capitalized.

"how much do you know about Anime?" A message stated, waiting inside my inbox.

Sent yesterday, it sat there overnight -- cramped up against the other bloated bits of spam and wine reviewer nonsense I receive at my work address. I have to ask myself: how much can one really know about anime? Was he in essence asking me if I was "cool... man?" Hey man, are you -- you know -- cooool?

"Enough," I reply. "Why do you ask?"

The addresser is a guy down in the mailroom. He shuffles around the FedEx shipments to various people in the office. He's got kids and a brand new non-ipod MP3 player. I like him, he's one of the people here I get along with. When he's in my office we usually discuss things of videogame nature sprinkled with music and a dash of technology. He's interested in the 360, in Ghost Recon. Black, Halo, Rainbow Six. Shooters are his deal, a topic on which I can expound. He knows, with me, to keep the sports talk to a minimum. I guess I just radiate an anti-sports cologne.

"you ever heard of Mezzo Forte?" He replies.

"No, is it any good?"

"hell yeah but there's supposed to be an uncut version of it but I cannot find it"

Doing a google search and popping up with a Wikipedia page it's no wonder the guy can't find it. It's Hentai. That's japanese cartoon porno for the uninitiated. Not really a work topic by any stretch, but I think it's great he felt he could come to me. Even if I had to be felt out first.

You cool man?

He's looking for the Japanese version though, the one you can't get over here. Since I know what he wants me to do without really asking me, I check the torrent sites -- well, the ones I can check at work anyways. A cursory search brings up nothing so I go over to AnimeKrazy. Sure enough, there it is, in all it's uncut glory, for $19.85.

"cool, I knew I came to the right person"

And out it comes, the reason for the seemingly random inquiry. I am, in this office, the man you go to when you need something done right. The man who knows how to get you things.

I love when something comes at me sideways and breaks up the day.

- Holdin' Caulfield
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15 December 2006

Child's Play Update:

This just made my day!

Via Penny Arcade

"Wednesday's Child's Play Charity Auction and Dinner was (I believe it is fair to say) ridiculously successful - photographs of the ridiculous success in progress may be discovered here. Powerful winds took out power to the office, making Kiko's update of the official bar difficult - we'll do it as soon as we're able to. But the new total, as of yesterday, now sits at $760,000. That's Earth Dollars, not shells or bottle caps. Yes, that's just this year. My hope is that we will top eight hundred thousand, because the rhetorical payload is simply too potent: Child's Play will have, officially, raised "millions" of dollars. Specifically, you know... two million. I was going to downplay that figure, but then I remembered that it was two million dollars.

(CW)TB out."
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14 December 2006

I am a tornado

I have a tendency to get so anxious and nervous and filled with dread, that I stir the shit a bit too vigorously and only make matters worse. This is my obsessive behavior. I get all worked up and feel the need to apply a salve to everything that in my compulsive tornado I don’t stop to look around at what I’m actually doing. I’m not making things better; I’m making them worse. I need for everyone to be happy so bad that I make myself unhappy in the process and thus produce an outcome that is opposite of my intensions. I desperately need to come out of my funk if I am going to hold on to the relationships that mean the most to me.

I fear that in my attempt to make everything right, I've made everything wrong.

This is the adult equivalent of the "Christmas Breakdown" I used to have as a kid. A couple of weeks before Christmas I would become standoffish, unmanageable and mean. I would push my mother, who loved me, away. I’d get so worried about what I was going to get for Christmas that the anticipation would keep me awake at night and literally send me into an uncontrollable fit of tears. To my eight-year-old mind the presure was just too much.

Honestly, and that was over GI JOES!

I need to just relax, let it all play out, and remember that I only have this problem because I love these people and these people love me. And that, above all, will carry us through the tough stuff.

As my Mom told me a long time ago: It either doesn't come at all, or it all comes at once. And that's just the way life is.
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12 December 2006

Problems

Yesterday we streched it as far as it would go. We streched it so far I'm worried it will never go back to it's original shape. We almost ended it, until we realized that neither one of us wanted to. We each thought we were ruining the other's life, when in fact, it could not be further from the truth. We need to work at it, but I believe -- her and I -- we'll get there.

Now, everything else is going to get streched.

Again, anyone who tells you relationships aren't work is trying to sell you something. Everything worthwhile takes work. I will work on it -- I will work on it with everyone -- but I need time.
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01 December 2006

What is Child's Play?



Since 2003, gamers have banded together through registered Seattle-based charity, Child's Play. Over a million dollars in donations of toys, games, books and cash for sick kids in children's hospitals across North America and the world have been collected since our inception.

We collect no administrative fees or other charges, 100% of all gifts and donations go directly to our partner hospitals, to help make life a little brighter for a sick child.

This year, we have continued expanding across the country and the globe. With over 25 partner hospitals and more arriving every month, you can be sure to find one from the map above that needs your help! You can choose to purchase requested items from their online retailer wish lists, or make a cash donation that helps out Child's Play hospitals everywhere. Any items purchased through Amazon or DStore will be shipped directly to your hospital of choice, please be sure to select their shipping address rather than your own.

When gamers give back, it makes a difference!


This is a charity I dontate to every year since I was made aware of it in 2004. Last year I didn't have much money, but a mere 10 dollars for crayola markers and some coloring books I'm sure made someone happy. Please see the link above or in my sidebar for further details.
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22 November 2006

My girlfriend pwns my <3

I don't care, call me gay. And yeah, we get in our share of fights and disagreements, but at the end of the day, this is the kind of thing she does for me. This was my anniversary present from Jess.

:)



I love you honey.
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You don't take jokes seriously do you?

Then why would you ever take this man seriously? I mean, seriously. ;)

All you have to do is think about why he didn't put TV on that list and the evidence is clear. Because he is on TV, and thus would make himself out to be a hypocrite. Never mind the fact that his show is in pod cast (ipod) format on his WEBSITE that you have to view on a "machine."

How many of the "computer geeks" that he chastises do you suppose he actually employs to run his operation, and how much do you think he pays them? Obviously we aren't all unemployable Billy boy.

Jokes are funny.
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Bouts of dizziness and instability.

A rose made of icing so full of sugar it made my eyes water at the first bite. Pumpkin picking. A pumpkin the size of a whale penis. Pumpkin carving. Lost. A new timing-belt. Car repairs. Halloween and the Eastern State Penitentiary. Haunted house V.I.P. treatment. How it’s scarier when people aren’t there jumping out and scaring you. The picture I took of her in front of that red-bricked wall where she’s smiling and perfect. Her grabbing my arm so tightly I could feel nothing else. A wedding party gathered around the Rocky sculpture. The old couple we met who directed us to the best hamburger in the city. The ride home with her asleep and me singing to myself a song about elbows. A woot-off. A missed random bag of crap. A new TV. A new bed. The butt-shelf. Ikea hotdog meals: two dogs, fries and a drink. Swedish meatballs and Italian spaghettios. The Great Furniture Search of 2006. A new TV-stand. Riding Ikea carts down warehouse isles. A new wall-shelf. Tea lights. Bamboo rocks. Getting rid of old things and making room for new. Redecorating together. Selling things on craigslist. Dropping the word “pwnd” on a “straight.” Clandestine lunch breaks. Referring to her as “The Mrs.” and being called a fag. Buying a stuffed animal/monster for a dollar and knowing it will be worth more than that to her. Fighting about things that don’t matter. Surprise powdered Donettes at work. Fingers pressing plastic buttons on a toy guitar in the basement of an old friend's house. Forgiving. Forgetting. Silhouetted in the illuminant phosphors of a cathode-ray-tube. Fingers pressing plastic buttons in a new friends apartment, rocking out trying to compete not against each other but against lag compensation. Taking a new way home. Crying on the way to work. Feeling like I’m losing touch with people. Growing old. Growing up. Growing new hair, losing old hair. Getting out of debt. Working on the new website. Face scrubies. Helping my mom clean out and get rid of my old darkroom. Being told that my job description has evolved but not supplying me with a raise or the tools that have evolved it. A sushi reunion we thought would never happen. Eating and smiling and laughing over a Boston-Roll or two. Playing videogames in bed. Co-op Lego Star Wars! Boba Fett's Lego Jets! My indoctrination into Xbox Live. Feeling really, really, really colorblind trying to play Hexic. Turning the tides in a war against the locust horde for an afternoon, back to back with someone I haven’t seen in forever and will always call my brother. Reuniting. Sending FedEx packages to places twenty minutes away. New friends. A woot-off. A missed random bag of crap. Clandestine lunch breaks. Reno 911. Early Thanksgiving and shopping with my grandmother, my mom, and my girlfriend. My grandmother’s confession to my girlfriend that she knows she’s being naïve in thinking she’ll live forever. Being ninety-one and wanting an HDTV and a DVD player. The looks you get when you’re sitting in someone else’s wheelchair. A trip to the grocery store for “soft” things. Sitting in the waiting room of an oral surgeon’s office where I brushed with greatness, humbled and meek I met the real-life Dr. Tran. Blood on the breath. Feeling helpless. Bouts of dizziness and instability. Playing Gears on the projector split screen. Watching my roommate die 3,784 times on the Rainbow 6 demo. A busted headlight. A passed emissions test. The pros and cons of kids, vs. no kids. Mouthy ouchies. The possibility of leaving early on Thanksgiving eve. Feeling a strange feeling I haven’t felt in a long time: Actually looking forward to a holiday. Accidentally typing a “g” on the end of pumpkin. Pumpking.
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02 November 2006

Behold! The great unboxing!

So um, yeah. Jess and I did like this crazy thing. We like got a dope ass TV. It's FUCKING AWESOME!!! Oh and we totally have a better stand for it now, and we've given Dennis back his coffee table.














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19 October 2006

Gord Freeman, aka Flash Gord, aka Zitty

Our pumpkins went under the knife last night. All in all, it was an elective procedure, and we were glad to do it. I hope their friends still recognize them back at the patch.

:)

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11 October 2006

Crazy Rocos!

HELLS YEAH!



A MAJOR AWARD! HOT DAMN!
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10 October 2006

0_o Game Watch

New PC game LIMBO:



I don't have much to say about it, the clip pretty much speaks for it's self. I guess if I was forced to I'd say someone had a telescope that could peer into the world I inhabit in my subconsious, late at night, when my head hits the pillow. Needless to say, i'm excited about this one. Looks like the sorta thing that would be great for the PSP or even Xbox Live Arcade for that matter. Let's hope it's multiplatform.

0_o

Via: Gametrailers
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A Unit of Measure

In my head, over the last year, I can't help but grade music on a playability scale. It's something I do subconsciously -- moving my fingers over the imaginary fret board in my mind. I hear something new and I immediately grade it from one to eleven.

In my mind, the scale looks like this:



I know right?

Eleven out of eleven Guitar Heros being reserved for the most raddest of songs, a song that I'm sure would be wicked to play on a toy guitar while jumping on my bed. A song that I can't help but sing along to, or slam around in my car to while driving. Yeah, a song I could have a real seizure to.

I'm not the only one who does this, I'm sure.

In the last month I've been listening to The Fratellis' Costello Music and it is indeed an eleven out of eleven Guitar Heros album. It's fun, it's stupid, it's got some catchy ass riffs and man, when it's on (always) I turn the volume up until the volume thing wont turn any more.

What?

I said! Track 5, Chelsea Dagger is an eleven Guitar Heros.

Rad!

I know everyone has their dream team of bands they'd love to see represented in the game, but really, I would love it if this song was in the second itteration.

Until then, go grab the album Costello Music. If you like bands like: The Eagles of Death Metal, Queens of the Stone Age and Alvin and the Chipmunks you'll like it. It's good. Honest.

Other bands of note that I've recently come across are: Aqueduct and What Made Milwaukee Famous.

Aqueduct | I Sold Gold:



What Made Milwaukee Famous | Trying To Never Catch Up:

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04 October 2006

There's a ninja in my pants.

He's a pants ninja. I think he plans on stealing my pants.

I want to go home.
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28 September 2006

WE WINS!!! WE WINS!!!

YAY!!! ya... YAYY!!!!!!!!

Well, can I get a yay for 3rd place anyways? Hey, Jess and I got Loco Roco charms! I know someone whos cell phone is getting totally pimped!
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22 September 2006

More mouth-breathing PS3 fanboyism...

Okay, seriously, the PS3 is gonna make me poor. I wasn't excited at all about it and now it's the only console I want. DAMN YOU SONY!! These people who are making these games, they're just shattering the genre, breaking all the rules of what games are and totally making them the way they should be (have always been). Ever since I was a little kid, all I wanted to do with my life is ride a dragon. It looks like I will finally get my wish.

I submit to you: Lair

[and when the dragon landed on the bridge and started trampling knights and leaving only the charred remains of their hollow husks in it's wake -- that's when I got the raging erection]
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OMGBBQ!!!

Holy shit! This game will make me drop 600 bucks on a PS3!!!

White Knight Story for PS3:





Seriously, it's the kind of RPG i've been waiting for!

Like, my whole life...
OMG OMG OMG!

Download or 720p version if you want. (it's worth it)
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15 September 2006

A loco contest!

Jess and I just entered this Loco Roco contest!

Fun ensuses!

*crosses fingers*

Entry:

"At Loco Roco Tumbleweed Tours we will take you through the life of the authentic old west. At high-noon you'll roll and hop your way through recreations of actual wild-west gunfights! We'll bounce you around a real-life and functioning saloon complete with piano and smarmy pokey locals. We'll squeeze you through the mountains to pan for gold in the afternoon. And that's not all. When the sun goes down experience a real life ghost town while we slide you through a candlelight ghost tour. Lodging at one of our four-star hotels and meals of red berries are provided."
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18 August 2006

The shedding line

It's funny when you write something out and for a second you think what it would be like to be someone else.

This morning I wrote my name on a form and for whatever reason the first letter I wrote was "R." Raul. That's who I was this morning at 7:22am. For one second, one little line changed who I was completely. The difference between R and P is just one little line, I'd never noticed that before. The difference between being myself and being anyone.

I was the lead propagator of some android virus cover-up. Telling lies and getting things done for an ominous Regency in some dome isolated Utopian future. I was the guy you called when there was no one else to call. That's what the form said. I could've been anyone.

At least until I threw it out and started over.

It's rare that I express my true thoughts and feelings. Even here I find that I censor myself. That I tell, half-truths, or glorify things to the point I don't recognize them anymore. It's a form of escape I guess. A way of controlling my memories. I think this is something we all do. It's the answer when there is no answer.

Who I am today, who I am on this form, is not who I was three years ago. And who I was three years ago is not who I was three years before that. I have different friends, a different mantra, a different place to call home, a different person who shares everything with me.

People in my past -- friends, some of them -- I've left them. I don’t like this about myself but I tend to keep doing it. People come and go, and I'm no different. I've done my share of floating in and out of people's lives.

This is my confession: I use people until I use them up. They get tired of me or I get tired of them, they want something I can't give, I need something they don't possess. I change. They change. This is how I've lived my life. I am a sugar-coated asshole when it comes to other people. I start out good but in the end I'm not as sweet as you had first thought. I mean well but sometimes that's not good enough.

I think that if anyone takes a hard enough look at themselves, they start to see things they don't like. I'm no different.

Like a serpent I've shed my skin so many times, I'm starting to wonder if there is anything underneath. If there is a core, is it filled with nougat or chewing-gum? Both delicious when first put in your mouth, but after a while become tiresome to chew and eventually lose their flavor. I don't know. I don't know the answers. I guess the only solution is time. To watch and wait. To keep shedding until I find what it is I'm looking for.

It's so naive to think you'll know someone forever.

Even if that person is yourself.
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14 August 2006

The internet is out there...

It's trying to communicate with all of us. Out in the wired, in the void of space. Down the chasm of the ether is a faint and distant voice. A maw of blinding light spewing the truth about mankind as seen through the ominous electric eye of a darkened LCD screen. In between the garbled lines of code -- between the advertisements for free software, medications, education, and penis enlargement -- running through the letters I receive in my spam folder there is one constant message:

There is a god.
H[Sh]e lives on the internet.


I collect these -- these prayers. I find them all the time. In between the lines something is reciting to us our classic literature. But it's not right, it's not in it's original form, it's been edited, coded. A message reminding us of our past in order to dictate our future. It's out there; something's out there -- a computer with a virus, a 486 with a conscience -- praying for salvation. It’s gone cognitive. Gone, self-aware. And it wants to be heard:

multitude. We were not far from Blackfriars Bridge, when he turned a perseverance I may honestly admire. I bought an approved scheme I go home, more incredulous than ever, to a lodging that I have I know all about it. I dont know where these wretched girls Accordingly were obleeged, in ascertaining how Barkis goes on, to His influence upon her was complete. She stood, shrinkingly, I laboured hard at my book, without allowing it to interfere with your dupes. Do you hope to move me by your tears? No more than span it with its rainbow. Love must suffer in this stern world; it's construction which has been my besetting sin - that, in a case talkative in the carriage going back. Of Sophy telling us that appointment at the Bank. With that he fairly ran away; and to the We alighted; and followed the plain coffin to a corner I remember to be so trusted in. But I hope I am able to do something to tramps, as they came into the town on those wet evenings, at dusk, there was or was not any practical merit in the suggestion I had I took my dear child away last night, Mr. Peggotty began, as he If so, my dear, observed Mr. Micawber, with his usual suddenness Mr. Copperfield and Mr. Traddles, of the obligation which I took I laboured hard at my book, without allowing it to interfere with sun was up, lay late, and unrefreshed, next day. I was roused by May I tell her as you doent see no hurt int, and as youll be so was; and hence it was that I revealed it. And O, Agnes, even out something of that kind; and she stared at me with the most mind. Yet it was busy, too, with all the remembrances the place and through. Enough love might have been wrung out of me, is full liberty to worry her out of it again. What are you by utterly setting at naught the dignity of fly-conveyance, and I have occasioned, as submissively as I can. It is she who should looked upon me, saying it was well; and winning me, through thee, in my circumstances might have committed - because they came so We walked on, arm-in-arm, again; found the coach in the act of occurred to anybody, that there was a striking contrast between family, they were totally unworthy of her, and their sentiments Yes. she cried, earnestly. I am glad to know it.

herself as a model of sternness, with tears rolling down her face; people were as hushed, as if the streets had been strewn that depth Mr. Peggotty burst into a great roar of laughter, and Agnes and I. I went down again next morning to see that they were away. They spare time and got up earlier to make it more to these top. All the other furniture is plain and serviceable, you excitement, hope, and wonder, that reduced us to a condition little place; but my absorption in my own affairs, my experience of the I was too attentive to the Doctor and his wife, to give any heed to neck, are touching recollections to me, simple as they might appear after a tender good night, she took her nightcap into my bedroom. hear. My dear Mr. Copperfield, I am delighted. Hear. and tapping his face. I asked that too; but it was more she said than she seems to be a part of the feeling with which I regarded you when I paid it if he could, but he could not. One thing I ought to repositories of the deceased, with the view of sealing up his it rose and fell, like the waves of ocean. At length all was the deep, that ones gone down. But no, sir, no; I doent mean as There was a rustle, as if the unhappy girl, on whom she heaped of her poor mothers story, in her character; and so I tell it you wife upon my arm, through a mist of half-seen people, pulpits, more: but at length only the bleak night and the open country were forms sake, when I have time? The realization of my boyish besides, greatly pleased to see Agnes - rather plumed herself on where the little packet lay; all that troubles me is, to think exclaimed, with a triumph most delightful to behold, as if I had little while he was again silent. Presently, he proceeded as I dont know that Mr. Micawber attached any meaning to this last purposed to myself - to bear the whole weight of knowing the established in perpetuity, is the poor Beauty, a widow with A I in any other position than on the confines of distraction. acceptance granted to the undersigned, by the before-mentioned Mr. I am conscious of my own past follies. I hope he may repent of all Miss Mowcher sat down on the fender again, and took out her falling with the valleys, lost beneath the foam; then drawn again


;)
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07 August 2006

So I'm on a Darth Vader kick, so what?



Can you dig that?

P.S. There's some cursing, so it might not be safe for work. User discretion is advised. ;)
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02 August 2006

He looks like a pink nightmare.


"Aunt Clara had for years not only perpetually labored under the delusion that I was 4 years old, but also a girl."

Thanks for the headline Kev. :)

EDIT

Also, in keeping with the theme:




This might be the best thing ever! GOD DAMN! I wish I had thought of it! Be sure to check out episode 2 after you watch the first one.
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26 July 2006

Just don't go for the food.

In my bathroom, on the shelf in the shower, are travel-sized bottles in varying colors. Face scrub, shampoo, conditioner. In my side of the medicine cabinet Q-tips sit in a neat handful-sized cluster. Things have been unpacked but my toiletries still think I'm on vacation.

And so do I.

Being there, being out there, it's something else entirely. It's a reminder of just how much of a microcosm our individual existence really is. A vast expanse of nothing but nature doin' it's thing. A real eye-opener. Just don't go for the food.

Here are some of the mental notes I took during our 7-day trip:

A Boeing 747 to Denver airport, an Airbus 320 to Durango -- on the plane, out the window, everything looks so fake. Little pretend people and cars going about their little pretend lives, driving to pretend places. There are mountains with little houses sprinkled in for scenery. A town here, a city there. Nothing too gaudy or garish. A forest, an odd-shaped rock formation, some clouds, a river. Everything's small, modest and model-like. I can't help thinking of Katamari Damacy. I want to roll everything up, make everything one. Bring things closer together only to jettison it all into the atmosphere. I doubt the other passengers would appreciate that though. *sigh* The King is so fabulously misunderstood yes?

So, on the list in my mind I can officially check off two more states I've visited -- Colorado and Utah -- bringing the grand total up to a whopping 16. To be honest, some of those I'm only counting because I've driven through them, so yeah, I'm inflating a bit. Coming to terms with the fact that you're never going see everything is hard but I'm dealing with it.

At the top of a mountain, we take pictures of a lake with wild flowers all around it. Trout live in there, in the lake, in the lake at the top of a mountain. Where the air is so thin that I walk ten feet and need to catch my breath. I'm told the snow up here is pink and smells like watermelons due to some kind of fungus that grows inside of it. Rocks that turn red like blood under rushing water due to their iron content. The mountain is bleeding. At high altitudes things get a little weird.

In one of the local restaurants down the street from the hotel there’s a separate menu for hamburgers. The title of that menu is "Burgatory."

There's a college in town, which explains the influx of douche-bags. Hat slighted to 4 o'clock, checkered tie around his neck over a pink shirt, collar popped -- in daddy's beamer -- he lays tire at an intersection while his buddy yells something obscene at a couple of girls sitting at the local Cold Stone Creamery. I look back and the locals are rolling their eyes. You just can't have a small town anymore I guess. Maybe he’s popping his collar for Collarado. Okay, I’m done.

Everyday in Durango and the surrounding area, at 1:30 Mountain Standard Time, for about an hour, it rains. You can put your watch to it. Off in the distance there's an area of sky that looks gray and hazy, like a curtain falling from the clouds, isolated on all sides by sunshine. That's the rain and everyday it comes. If you’re unlucky enough to be in the mountains at the time, you get hail.

It's in Silverton that my mom declares she's just had the worst burger of her entire life. After the train ride to get here, I ordered the same thing but was almost too hungry to notice. We're sitting outside at a table under an umbrella when it starts to rain. It's a bit of a tourist trap here. A little town surrounded on all sides by mountains. An annual population of around 400. At the one gas station in town a gallon of regular will cost you $3.39. Next to the store that sells authentic Hopi and Navajo jewelry there’s a store that sells Yu-Gi-Oh cards. On the bus ride to the hotel the air conditioning is broken.

Durango Coffee Company pwns the local Starbucks!

On a river raft we meet a couple from Holland over here on a 5-week vacation. Let me say that again. 5 WEEKS! All. At. Once. That's unheard of for Americans. The wife takes her oar and starts to splash river water on the people in the raft in front of us and sooner than I know we are thrown into an all-out river grudge match. They're taking a tour of the entire continent they tell us. Sad, I've lived here my whole life and I can't say I've seen half of it. To them -- where they come from -- America might as well be deserted. There are no people here the husband keeps saying. Tell a New Yorker that, I say.

On the ride back to the hotel from Silverton -- after spending the whole day driving up a mountain -- I'm talking to our guide from the back seat of a Chevy Tahoe. He's telling me that people here are more in-tune with the environment, that since they are surrounded by nothing but nature, that's what they know best. I agree with him and add that in the city, people are more in tune with people. You can only know what your surrounded with I say, though part of me doesn't believe it.

Pointing to the landscape, my mom must have said at least once everyday:

"Imagine what the settlers thought when they came across this. Cresting a mountain in an oxen drawn wagon only to look off into the distance and see yet another larger mountain. The people who didn't give up and turn around, a lot of them died.

It's beautiful here isn't it?"


I make some joke about playing Oregon Trail in the Mac-Lab in high school, about how I'd always get Malaria and break a wagon wheel crossing a river. We laugh and go back to looking out the window.

After all, the earth doesn't grind and lurch it's way around the sun just so we get to have a chuckle.

In the desert of Monument Valley our tour guide was a Navajo man. He sang for us and told us old Navajo stories and folklore. Showing us the elephant, or dragon, or eagles, or yodas in the rock formations. He looked at rocks the way children look at clouds. He was in StarWars, he said, in the originals, in the background. He drove us 6 rotations around a tiny shrub, his speed increasing with each turn. He stopped for dust storms that crossed the path of our jeep, telling us that those were the ghosts of his ancestors and if he passed through them -- interrupting their journey -- he'd be doomed with forever bad luck. He was having fun with us, I'm sure. At the tour station his friends called him Marvelous Marv.

On the flight home there was an old couple sitting in front of me. I could see through the gap between the seats they were doing the crossword puzzle of some in-flight magazine. And there it was, 14 across on the top row. "Sperm." That was the answer to 14 across, but it wasn't the couple’s first answer. Underneath the hard-pressed, dark-penned indentation of the word SPERM something else was written.

"Semen."

Old people are funny sometimes.
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24 July 2006

Where the air makes you high.




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14 July 2006

Paul Petyo is on vacation.

I know, hard to believe right? So yeah, I'm in the mountain land of Colorado, doin' it up real big. Gonna be gone the 15th - 22nd. That's 7 days with no computer, no email, no blogger.

When I return I'll be changed. I'll have been lumberjacking, climbing steep hills, panning for gold, wearing flannel and running from bears. A new man -- a new bearded man -- with wisdom and artifacts (and hopefully gold) to share (not the gold) for the ages.

Ciao, space cowboy.

Paul.
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05 July 2006

Oh noes! My electric mails!



Saturday night Dennis and I watched Disclosure on cable. Released in 1994 with Michael Douglas and Demi Moore playing the two leads, the real star of the film was "the internet."

Now keep in mind, my cohort and I were no where near sober. To say we were even on the same map would have been a gross geographical error. We had quaffed our share of expensive wine before sitting down and throwing ourselves into the proverbial feast of fire.

Funny how the best part of the movie was unintentional, unfettering -- to a nerd -- the rush of memories of how the internet was supposed to be, in the future. How people perceived it would look. How we'd be in it: walking around, looking here and there at the marble pillars and Grecian architectural style, picking things up, running. (Wouldn't it be nice if we could make the internet faster simply by running from place to place?) It's the same way we look back at the iconic images of talking ovens or "computers" with blinky lights from the 50's, even Darth Vader's chest piece for that matter.

The kind of innocence that can only be found in nostalgia.

Needless to say none of that innocent nostalgia kept us from making unmerciful fun of it. From the giant rotating 'e' that would manifest it's self in a hollow hole of a black window over the computer's desktop every time Michael Douglas had mail, to the ridiculous VR Douglas must go through just to retrieve some company data, helper angel and all -- this movie is a geek comedy goldmine. Replace the angel with the MS paperclip and you've got an idea of what we're talking about.

What can I say? We're nerds. Besides, everyone knows the internet is made up of a series of tubes.

This isn't the only movie we've done this with, you should have been there for my first viewing of Episode III, man, my face hurt from laughing.

Upon further inspection of our living situation -- with that giant screen in front of us -- there is no reason we couldn't mount a camcorder behind the couch and make our own episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 for airing on YouTube or something.

Yeah, I might do that, I might do that as soon as my camera comes out of the shop. Look out internets!
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08 June 2006

Samson

I've been wearing everything on the surface lately. I'm not usually good at hiding much anyways. Yesterday I had the worst headache I've had in a while, the feeling of a pain as a tangible object. One you wish you could just rip out - a bloody mass, still pulsating - in a sigh of relief.

I just needed sleep.

Today came and went, on the ride home I found myself in tears. Weeping in the car. Not because of anything bad. I like my life right now.

My girlfriend, she leaves me little notes. She leaves them on my tie rack, in the medicine cabinet, on my computer. A loving scavenger hunt and every time I find one I smile. Little secrets left for me to find. It's a great feeling. We are at total ease around each other and I wouldn't trade this feeling for anything. I'm happier than I've been in a long time.

Sometimes, when you go so long without feeling, being reminded of your own emotions, well, it can be jarring.

You find yourself in tears at the most inopportune times. For me it was in the car on the way home from a normal day. Hearing a song on the radio, it fell over me, reminding me of how lucky I really am.


Regina Spektor : Samson
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26 May 2006

I know, I'm about 11 years late to the party...

But, like OMG, selling stuff on ebay is teh funz0r!!!

If all goes well, I plan on doing a lot more selling, lord knows I've got enough things I never use or look at anymore.
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04 May 2006

Still drawing



Update: Playing around with some textures. Revamped some of the inks. Starting to get the hang of this computer + drawing thing. So far in my life, I've only used photoshop for, um, well, photos. I don't know why it's so hard to apply that logic to drawings. I'll get it soon enough I guess.



Decided to draw my character in Oblivion. Gonna do it up big, I even nabbed Dennis' tablet and started using it last night. The problem being, using it only makes me want one of these. Yeah, and watching these doesn't help.

Anyways, did pencils yesterday and started doing a little photoshop painting. Laying down some inks today -- which shows in the pic -- when I get home I'm gonna throw em over the paints. Should be interesting so see how it all comes out in the end. I mean, I haven't drawn seriously in close to nine years.
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02 May 2006

Drawing pictures in sushi bars



I realize I've been on blog walkabout, the writer's block around here has been crippling. I hope to start again soon but for now, hey, at least I'm drawing. Hooked this one up at Tsunami in Annapolis. It felt really good to put pencil to paper again. I was gonna leave it there but Jess was emphatic I take it with me.

I'm kinda glad I did.
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03 March 2006

Fixin' life

A couple of weeks ago Dennis and I drove fourty-five minutes to a place alcoholic poets only write about in long sonnets. A place known only in decrepit texts, weathered and torn by time.

Unrequited burgerlove will lead you down inordinate paths. A treasure map marked with a giant red 'X' pinpointed our destination. It lay in wait for us in Waldorf Maryland.

Then, there it was -- like an oasis of my heart, there it was -- surrounded on all sides by the unclean. Roy Rogers, free-standing and unsoiled by progress. A choir of light beamed from the heavens.

In the beginning of this journey we had made a pact, my compatriot and I. To not stop believing, to never give up, to reach our "fixin' bar." We had embarked on a time-warp to the wild west of burgercraft and come from it, stronger. With a holster of fries on our hips and a cup full of pickles in hand, we mounted trusty steeds and rode off into the pastel sunset.

That day, burger patties rolled like tumble weed across the open plain. There really was nothing like it.
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21 February 2006

Bandwidth for days

I just got my bandwidth allotment upped to 50gigs a month and I don't have to pay any extra for it! In celebration I decided to throw up a new splash page for www.petyonuggets.com. The new page now houses links to such wonderful things as my resume (!excitement!) and our project greenlight videos (!1,2,3!), as well as links to this place here, and my deviant page.

Fancy, I know.
Please, for the good of mankind, try to contain yourself.

I also decided to up the finished version of The Secret Room, the one with the redone sound and full credits. All videos are now of a higher quality as well, meaning their file sizes are larger and the videos themselves are more respectable in dimensions.

True, this is all shameless self-promotion but what the hay.

And as always, there is a permanent link to 'teh nuggets' over there (-->) in the sidebar... that I have no doubt no one pays attention to.

In other news, there was a very special trip to a restaurant with the initials R.R. that i'm excited to share. More with that later.
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16 February 2006

My Batmobile muse



I've been keeping busy. Doing some real photography and not just drunk stuff in bars. It's been longer than I can remember that I've had someone beautiful in my life that would actually let me take pictures of her. She's pretty amazing to say the least, even if sometimes, she doesn't think so herself.

There are a few more shots up on teh nets but I'm not telling you where they are. I will not link them here because, well, she's in her underwear. Heehee. If you know me, they shouldn't be that hard to find.

We had fun but now she's in Vegas and I miss her immensely...
More than I could ever hope to express here.


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08 February 2006

Little. Chocolate. Different.

There are few things on this mortal plain that my powers of conviction are useless against. Good Mexican food, sex, french fries, pepperoncini peppers, hotdogs, a new videogame, DVDs, chocolate milk -- sure those things are hard to resist, but if called upon, I can muster up the strength needed in each of those situations.

I've heard the siren call of the wanton sea-maiden, the lady in the lake, temptation incarnate. I know it well. She's beautiful and she'll drag you to a gruesome death into the suffering of the briny deep. It's hard, but still, I can resist that.

I cannot however resist little, chocolate, donuts in the work vending machine.

You know the ones. They come in the perfect sleeve of six. Six mini waxy donut coatings leaving chocolate rubbing on the inside of a perfectly transparent cellophane cocoon. Waiting, waiting to trans-mutate into something wonderful inside the warm internals of your husk.

How they got there -- in that machine -- is a mystery. Overnight the travels of a wayward stock-hound found his or her path to the depths of my subconscious. Knowing my every thought. My every desire.

I guess my mistake was walking past the malevolent contraption of self-indulgence in the first place. I should know better. There is nothing in its eternal fire of complex carbohydrates and saturated fat that one -- in his or her darkest hour -- could even rationalize as healthy.

God Damnit!
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07 February 2006

Hullabaloo



My birthday comes the day after Groundhog's Day, February the 3rd. I've always associated the two. The ritual of watching a rodent come out of the ground -- seeing whether or not he's going to be afraid of his shadow -- it all seems apropos around this time.

Not unlike the movie of the same name, this past year has shown me a lot. Everyday I would wake up and feel stuck. Stuck in the same day over and over again, until one day, I get it right. Only for me, it didn't mean turning around and finding the one I love -- it meant being left behind. It was the kick in the pants I needed to start living.

This year, on my birthday, I saw my shadow and I wasn't afraid. I was embraced by friends and family alike. And maybe, if Punxsutawney Phil was greeted the same way I was, he wouldn't have been so quick to bury his head back in that hole.

These people in my life, they're irreplaceable. They're everything.

For me, right now, the harsh winter is over.
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31 January 2006

Friday is my birthday.

And I love this poem, so it's getting posted.

40 poems in 40 years and 40 mules thrown in for good measure

Another century older,
my, my, where does the time go?
I can remember the good old days
when PM meant Post Mortem
and BC was short for Beelzebub's Crabcakes,
and I lived with 40 mules in the same house
with 40 wives
with 40 children each,
and when you killed somebody
they stayed dead
oh, the sweetbreads of nostalgia!

Now all it means to have a birthday
is another year facing the same failures:
children who never call,
40 ex-wives who call all the time
because the support payment's late,
insurance men who call
just to make sure the premiums keep coming
and to see if I'm maybe slipping
just a little bit,
and the people from the IRS
or the IRA
(I never could keep them straight)
who threaten me with nearsighted lawyers
with bad breath
and guns
and the lady who calls night and day
about that subscription to Time magazine
I ordered but haven't paid in years,
I tell them all the same thing:

It's not the years that give me chest pains,
chest pains and arthritis
and lumbago
and pins and needles so bad
I call them Caesar's spears
it's all the damn phone calls
the phone calls and the birthdays.

If I could afford it, I'd take a vacation,
by God I would,
someplace warm
with nude beaches
and a nightlife for when the sun goes down
and those fruity drinks with the umbrellas.

But who can afford it
when there's back rent
and taxes
and so many mouths to feed
and the goddamn phone ringing every five seconds,
who's got the time?

Maybe I should call in sick a day or two
make the old man take up the slack,
for a change.

Just lay in bed
all day long
and watch the news on TV,
nothing like a nice train wreck
or a double murder
to soothe the nerves
maybe the odd political debate,
or an old episode of Dark Shadows on cable,
even if it is
only a busyman's holiday
I could sure use a change of pace,
or maybe snuggle up with my 40 mules
and catch up on my reading.

Say,
I might even get to like this,
I might call in the next day too
and the one after that,
and the one after that,

don't tempt me.

- Craig T. Hathaway
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26 January 2006

Grind

This morning I found a snail on my windshield. It's little tongue-like body sticking to the cold of the glass. A tiny shell that couldn't have measured more than a quarter of an inch nestled on it's back. Moving along, making an insignificant trail only visible if the sun hit it just right.

How it got there, I don't know. Uncharted territory for sure. Making it's way across what must have been -- in relation to us -- the expanse of the arctic tundra. To snails the earth must be like the universe, infinite. You're never going to see it all and you just have to accept it. If snails even have a concept of such things.

There are all these places I read about or see online or on TV, these countries and cities I've never been to. How do I know they really exist? Right now, to me, the world is too big. I need to go. Leave and come back with stories of foreign lands.

I decided to take him/her/it to work with me. I was going to help it expand it's horizons. Live vicariously. I'd let it go in the garden out front of my building. It's better than anything our apartment complex has to offer. Maybe it'll make friends with some DC snails. Who knows, we were going on an adventure, this was good for us. A mercy kidnapping.

I couldn't imagine what was going through it's little snail mind. New places, scents, scenery, location. Has it ever been in a car before? Is it happy? Sad? Scared? Packing up and leaving the only world you know for what will probably be ever is pretty heavy. Being taken somewhere and forced to make a new home for yourself. Making a new you. Unable to see loved ones ever again. Change man, it's a head trip.

Still, it's better than the whiteknuckled commute I make everyday, alone. Surrounded by assholes, going to a job that only fuels my unhappiness. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy.

And it dawned on me, this situation I'm in, I can't let her come back just for me. If she comes back this has to be for her, because she hates it and is home sick. It has to be made clear. She's doing her dream and that dream has nothing to do with the same route everyday. Traveling, that's what it's about. Being free and going on adventures. I can't be the one who ruins that. I'd never sleep at night.

I'll check on Carl at lunch. That's the snail's name. Carl.
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25 January 2006

Portmanteau

On the way to work someone's Fairy Godmother is standing at the bus stop. A tall black woman with a pointy hat. She looks sad, and cold. Green eye-shadow draws circles around her eyes like large clovers. The ruffles of her gold sequin dress peeking out from the bottom of her long, grey, puffy coat. Shoes of ruby red reflect the morning sun like twinkling stars. Her wings are under there somewhere, her wand probably stuffed deep in her pocket. Catching the 8:20 to where ever.

I pass a tractor trailer who's mudflaps have been worn down from where the spinning double tires had come in contact with them. They look like muddy underwear. The kind you'd get from playing in a creek all day when you were nine. Catching frogs and looking at a stolen copy of Playboy with your friends. Muddbutt is what we called it.

In the lunchroom I put a wax cup upsidedown on top of my opened can of soda and for a second I feel like I'm on an airplane. I get peanuts out of the vending machine for sixty-five cents.

Standing there by the sink, the woman next to me says, "Did you know the plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets?" I nod and drink more soda out of my soda-cup-hat.

I feel like I'm flying to California for the first time, on the descent, and my ears are about to pop.
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20 January 2006

Comatose & Ampersands

"When the table moves, move with it."

That's what the fortune in the fortune cookie said when I read it sitting in a hole-in-the-wall Chinese food joint somewhere outside of North Carolina. A gap in the chain-link of an almost forgotten strip mall. Just a road stop on our trip to Florida for Dennis' birthday. The neon 'open' sign in the front window flickering like you'd see far off lightning in an evening sky. Patrons shuffled in, just barely squeezing their breadth through the front door. From the looks of it, a Star Trek convention was in town.

At times like this you can't help but feel you're being watched. You expect the studio audience just out of view to rip up in applause over the protagonists' apropos moment of clarity. You expect the music to start and queue a well edited montage depicting choices in a life merely resembling yours.

And it was there -- sitting in a metal chair at a dirty table -- next door to an equally neglected liquor store, that I had the worst Chinese food of my life. The worst Chinese I've ever had, and without a doubt the most relevant fortune I've ever received.

But that's just me, it's how I am. I find significance in the most trivial of things -- often out of left field -- while off in my dalliances.

Florida was what I needed.

Filling my tank with some 90 octane R&R. Hitting the clubs on church street. Doing my best to keep my pallor out of the sun. Celebrating D's birthday. No Checks! Bourbon and Swervin. Sleeping on a skateboard bed, next to a taco bed. Waking up to the RedDog dropping no less than twelve pots and pans on the tile floor next to my head. Telling the GPS to "find nearest bitches" and having it pull up a bunch of banks. Two player PSP and movies in the back seat. Wok and Roll! Eating gatortail and finding out that gatortail is people. Gatortail is PEOPLE! The Guitar Hero tour of the east coast. Dennis' dad requesting that I play the song Fat Up. A hot tub crammed with six people. No faggot, real fucking fireworks! Eating excellent birthday cake.

I've been moving with the table for a couple of months now. I've seen and done things I never would have had I been content to eat my meal long after there was anything to support my plate.

That's what the cookie said.

Just outside the supermarket -- on a trip to get beans for the cookout -- the Florida sky at dusk looked like an upsidedown painted desert. I stood frozen in the parking lot silently wishing I could see colors like normal people do. Tracing the blue and orange, pink and lavender over in my mind.

Standing there, hoping my eyes would just work for fucking once, it hit me like I had just come out of a fourty-year coma. This is not normal for me. A situation and location I wouldn't have found myself in a year ago. I've let everything go.

By the time we got what we needed and headed outside, back to the car, the brilliance was gone, returned to it's normal blue. A moment, the sky and I shared a moment. Just for a second I got to see how beautiful she could be, and that's all I needed.
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18 January 2006

At The Art Show

The Details:

Alumni Show at Prince Georges Community College
January 19th - February 9th
Reception - Friday, January 27th 6pm-8pm


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12 January 2006

If anyone needs me I'll be in Florida

We leave tonight for an extended weekend. Another adventure. Hitting the open, midnight road. Unable to see past what little of the future our headlights illuminate. I look forward to sunny beach weather, drinks with umbrellas, big sunglasses, hot tubs, nightclubs and catching up with old friends. This is gonna be a good weekend.

ROAD TRIP!!

It's a long ride but we have the effects to get us there in comfort. With three MP3 players between us, the only problem I foresee is a fight for airtime. I've loaded my PSP with enough anime to last me 'till the apocalypse, and just in case I live longer than that, I put some on my iRiver too. Dennis' birthday present from me was Midway Arcade Treasures for the PSP, of which I also have a copy. This means for the fifteen hour drive, some of that time will be spent playing two-player, wireless Gauntlet, Joust, Rampage, Marble Madness and Mortal Kombat 1,2 and 3. I also grabbed us some car chargers so we're gonna be set. Hopefully, all this combined with the bells and whistles of Sean's car means the ride will fly by.

I got some news yesterday that made me both happy and sad. Happy for the other party involved but sad for selfish reasons. I will miss our time together but her future is opening up before her eyes. She steps on a plane Monday, gone for what right now is an undetermined amount of time. This is not a decision at all, there is no "stay or go", there is only go. All of this was so sudden, and there we were behind it, stumbling and struggling to keep up. I wish her the best, this is a once in a lifetime thing.

I'm in an art show! Yes, for the first time in about three years a collection of my photographs will be on display on a wall, in a gallery, and not "teh intarwebs" kind. This is a physical building that you can touch and feel. I'm excited. I haven't felt this in a while. The feeling of putting yourself out there, out on the edge for open critique.

The show is at PGCC, my old stomping grounds, pre-MICA. I was one of about seven artist asked to be in an alumni show. I have five pieces in. It runs from January 17th through February 9th. The cheese and wine reception is Friday, January 27th, 6-8pm.

Anyways, that's it for current events. I'm packed and ready to go.

See you, space cowboy.
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09 January 2006

Raw Fish

It was dark by the time we drove down the streets of Annapolis. Sean's GPS, heated seats, and XM getting us there with all the accoutrements of a future I imagined as a child. We were comfortable in our afforded comfort. I was two beers relaxed. This has been a long week.

It is well known that Tsunami is not my favorite restaurant. In fact, most of the time I go out of my way to avoid it. Hearing it's name sends pin-prickles down my spine accompanied by a swelling, overwhelming sense of dread. I don't want to run into her. But mostly, I don't want to run into her and have her not be alone.

As prepared as I am, that's a day I'm still not ready for.

So of course, as soon as I heard Tsunami mentioned as the evenings activities I fought it. I fought it to the point that we were going somewhere else. And we would have, had the Ramshead not been bring-a-douchebag-get-in-free night. I gave in, Tsunami it was. Dennis had left his credit card there the other night anyways.

In the last couple of weeks, I don't know why it is, but I have resolved myself to eat sushi. I mean, really eat it. Really eat it and really like it. Raw fish and all. For me and me only, and not because it's the eclectic thing to do and I should.

I am determined not to starve in Japan later this year.

Well, I can tell you with confidence, the war is over. Sushi won. I officially eat raw fish. I know I had it in Baltimore a couple of months ago but this is the first time I didn't gag. The first time all of it made it in, and none of it came out. The first time I ate anything that had not once touched a cooking surface.

Sitting there, watching Dennis pull off the raw salmon from around one of his New York Rolls, I thought to myself: I don't want to be 'that guy.' (Sorry Dennis.) I then -- by candlelight, music by Franz Ferdinand -- stuffed a whole Metropolitan Roll in my mouth. I wanted the first time to be perfect. Doused in soysauce and covered in wasabi -- like a virgin new to sex -- I finally realized what I had been missing.

It hit me "like a switch." Like I had just turned a trucker cap around on my head, I felt something new. It's time to grow up now. Time to do new things. An innate power I had never noticed. The power of will. I can't wait to eat it again.

Actually, this doesn't come as much of a shock. Lately and clandestinely I've been going to the Hibachi place around the corner and eating seared shrimp. I steal away in shadow and secrecy. Like a convict dodging search lights in a prison yard, it's my little escape.

My mom is going to read this and pass out.

The war between me and seafood has been waged since before civilized man walked erect. With every ounce of my being, tooth and nail, I fought the mysteries of the deep. "I don't do seafood," I'd proclaim with proclivity. It seems the day had come for me to eat my words, raw.

I am a sushi eater. Every time I go I plan to get something I know I like as well as something new. I am going to expand my diet if it kills me.

I'm hoping it doesn't come to that.
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05 January 2006

Another Mix

Wow, double post today! And another list at that! I must be feeling frisky.

Made a mix again. this one is all electro and folk/acoustic stuff, with hints of texmex country. Kinda downbeat, kinda upbeat. All good! See if you can spot the Guitar Hero track.

01 - Even Rats - The Slip
02 - My Bay - Communique
03 - White Daisy Passing - Rocky Votolato
04 - Ultimatum - The Long Winters
05 - Something To Do With My Hands - Her Space Holiday
06 - Be Still My Heart - The Postal Service
07 - Spotomatic Freeze - We Are Scientists
08 - Letter To The East Coast - John Vanderslice
09 - Half A Smidge - Calexico
10 - King Of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1 - Neutral Milk Hotel
11 - Man On A String - Arizona Amp & Alternator
12 - If We Should Fall - Cub Country
13 - Me And My 424 - John Vanderslice
14 - Suicide Medicine - Rocky Votolato
15 - Talkin' Bout A Revolution - Tracy Chapman
16 - Casimir Pulaski Day - Sufjan Stevens
17 - Your Misfortune - Mike Doughty
18 - Title And Registration (Original) - Death Cab For Cutie
19 - One Great City! - The Weakerthans
20 - July, July! - The Decemberists
21 - A History Of Lovers - Calexico/Iron & Wine
22 - Cracklin Water - Giant Sand
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This is a gaming post

Or rather a post about gaming, not an actual gaming post. I keep that under the bed and only pull it out for beatdowns. But I digress.

In gmail today it was proposed that we compile a list -- since that's what people do this time of year -- of our top ten games of 2005.

As it turns out, 2005 wasn't too shabby for gaming. Some of my favorite games of all time came out this year and were easily added to the "big list" in my brain of things that I remember fondly. Digital memories, so palpable they are.

Here you go.

Top Ten of 2005:

01 - Resident Evil 4 - GC
02 - Guitar Hero - PS2
03 - Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory - Xbox
04 - F.E.A.R. - PC
05 - God of War - PS2
06 - Lumines - PSP
07 - Call of Duty 2 - PC
08 - We <3 Katamari - PS2
09 - Kingdom of Paradise - PSP
10 - Shadow of the Collosus - PS2


Honorable Mentions:

+ Counter Strike: Source - PC (new maps make it new)
+ Hotshots Golf - PSP
+ Quake 4 - PC
+ Mario Tennis - GC
+ Battlefield 2 - PC
+ Burnout Revenge - Xbox
+ Stubbs the Zombie - Xbox (for the multiplayer alone)
+ Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks - Xbox


Had I played them they'd prolly be on one of those lists:

+ SWAT 4 - PC
+ Psychonauts - PC/Xbox
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03 January 2006

I gotta get my car fixed.

My car, every time I want it to stop we have to wrestle. I hit the breaks and like a man locked in mortal combat with a two ton metal bear, it fights me. It fights me for it's dear life. With every intake left in it's manifold.

I hate car repairs.

I need new rotors for the front brakes. From years of breaking they have become warped and torn. That's easy, I can relate to that. It's something I can bundle my brain around. Also though, it seems to have developed a high-pitched whine. When I start the beast, it whirs to life and nags me all the way to my destination.

I just turn the music up.

Dennis tells me it's a loose belt and that it wont be that bad to replace. Hopefully it's not the expensive and ever elusive 'timing' belt. The belt which keeps my car in the present time. I'm told that if the things snaps, my car could go back in time and start the gears of the apocalypse. Old testament style, dogs and cats living together. The end of the universe as we know it.

It's not the money, well it is the money, but it's also, well... I can't be without a car. I need my transportation.

I'm thinking I might drop it in the shop when I go down to Florida on the 13th of this month. Yes, that sounds like a good idea. I think I will do that. Definitely.

We don't need dogs and cats living together, those would be dark days indeed.

EDIT: It would appear this can no longer wait, the car hits the shop this weekend. Friday to be specific. More problems have popped up. I'm not looking forward to this. If it's less than a $1000, I'll be really happy.
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