This last weekend was scouting wedding locations, chain restaurant eating, and a Cardinals game. We may have a wedding location in mind even though we've only looked at three places. I just looked at their prices and it seems comparable to other locations (expensive), but I think this location might be worth it. The chains we ate at were Red Lobster, El Paso BBQ Co., and Gordon Biersch. The highlights were the Long Island ice tea and Bananas Foster cheesecake from Red Lobster, baby back ribs, spareribs, a white chocolate martini, and peach cobbler with dulce de leche ice cream from El Paso BBQ Co., and fried artichoke hearts and chili/ginger wings from Gordon Biersch. Finally, the Cardinals' game was good; they won.
The other day I was going to have lunch at Tacos Mexico, but when we got there the building they used to occupy was under construction. Now I don't know if Tacos Mexico will return to their location when the construction is completed, if they've moved, or if they're even still in business. Since we were still in the mood for Mexican we went to Riva's, which is just down the street. I ordered a horchata, an adobada torta, and a fish taco. The horchata was nasty. It tasted like it was made from powder, and they made it twice as thick as normal. The texture was thick; like some sort fiber drink only without the fiber. The fish taco was decent, and the adobada was sort of tasteless. Lunch wasn't satisfying at all.
Luckily I knew I was going to have dinner at El Tlacoyo. (Yes, I can eat Mexican for lunch and dinner.) When we got there I ordered a horchata (a hopefully good one to make up for the bad one earlier) and chips with two kinds of salsa were placed on the table immediately. One of salsas was made from some kind of smoked red chile I can't remember the name of right now and the other one was a much milder green salsa. The red was very tasty with a smokey flavor, but it was a little hotter than I anticipated because I had eaten about three chips full of salsa before the heat kicked my ass. (You'll find that heat kicking my ass was a common theme of dinner.) Lynn insisted the green salsa was hotter than the red one, but she had just got off of work and who knows what that did to her. The horchata arrived and it was pretty tasty. It was creamy and mild, with just a little cinnamon and vanilla flavor. It actually did make up for the nasty horchata from Riva's.
We had ordered two things for appetizers: a chicken quesadilla (because the lady on Chowhound who recommended the restaurant to me said the quesadillas were really good) and an order of tortilla soup (since me and Lynn both appreciate a good tortilla soup). The quesadilla was indeed very good by itself, but it was vastly improved by eating it with the smokey red salsa. The tortilla soup was another story. It was thin, not that tasty, and it had a funny aftertaste to me (sort of tinny). Lynn didn't detect the aftertaste, but she agreed the flavor needed some help. With a liberal squeeze of lime the soup perked right up. Lynn liked it a lot more after that, but I wouldn't order it again.
For our entrees I ordered a green chile chimichanga and a sausage and napolitas [cactus] taco while Lynn ordered the enchiladas suizas. (Does anyone know what the "suizas" is? I've never heard of enchiladas suizas before. Email me if you do.) The chimichanga was pretty good, but I had a hard time identifying the filling as green chile since it was practically all beef. The green chile I'm used to is a good portion sauce (with green chile in it). This reminded me of some machaca I had in Tuscon. Not really meeting my definition of green chile it was still tasty though. The taco was so-so. The meat made about as much of an impression as the adobada torta I had earlier for lunch, and the taco was far too salty. After I finished the taco I was hunting down pieces of sausage with my fork to see how they tasted by themselves. They were crispy and not salty at all! I tried a piece of the napolitas and that's where all of my salt was coming from. I really liked Lynn's enchiladas suiza. So did she too, except that they were a little too spicy for her. I was happy to eat them for her, but she wouldn't have it; she just took it real slow.
While we were walking out Lynn said, "Hey, they've won best of Phoenix!" I looked at the wall, and sure enough they won the 2001 New Times Best of Phoenix for "Best Authentic Mexican". Since when did the New Times know anything about Mexican food!? (I think I actually stopped reading the Best of Phoenix when Pepe's Taco Villa won best Mexican something.) Anyway, I'll be returning to El Tlacoyo some time soon, and I might even start taking the New Times Best of Phoenix seriously again.
After looking at the sample images from the Sigma SD9 I'm convinced that the Foveon X3 is pretty much everything it claimed to be. When I looked at the samples, they looked like real pictures as opposed to the soft or muddy look of typical digital photographs. It's amazing considering the sensor they use is only about 3.5 megapixels. The pictures from current professional digital SLRs with 6 megapixel bayer sensors also look as good (look at these sample images for the Fuji FinePix S2 Pro and Canon EOS D60 to see for yourself), but if there's a well designed "prosumer" camera with the same Foveon sensor I'm going to be very tempted to get it. It's doubtful that's going to happen any time soon though.
Tonight Seb Fontaine is going to be at Freedom. A couple of weeks ago I wanted to go see him, but now I'm not so sure. Jas is opening for him, and Jas plays some gay ass house music. He's pretty much the reason I didn't go into Freedom to see Doc Martin.
*sigh*
I guess the next show I'll be excited about will be Amon Tobin in October.
These are just some old pictures that I had taking up hard drive space that I took on one of my Flagstaff trips. They've all been through Photoshop, and some of them were more than just slightly tweaked (for instance the picture with the brown bark was originally grey).
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Last night I tried to duplicate the seared scallops we had the last time we were in Vegas, but it didn't quite work out. The scallops had just thawed out and when I put them in the frying pan they released all sorts of water that kept them from searing. The butter sauce I prepared for them also needed a little extra something too. I think my mistake with that was clarifying the butter; I think the cream might have been necessary for a full flavor. Well now I know not to make the same mistakes next time.
Last night I also finished reading "Ender's Game". It was a pretty good little read that I recommend. The ending was anticlimactic, and I saw it coming which I guess made it even more anticlimactic, but the last chapter was nice in resolving the story and making me feel good about the outcome of the book.
You might not see any updates for a couple of days; I'm working on something special. You may not care about it when I'm done, but it's at least some writing I'll be proud of. Anyway, I have a couple of new restaurants to try and I'm excited.
Earlier today Murray sent me a link to submit content to the Fray. I checked out the site and it was an interesting read. All of their content is based on the writer's personal experience. I actually enjoyed the theme and considered trying to write something worthy, and I even came home with a story in mind. Then while I was sitting in the Taco Bell drive-thru an overwhelming wave of apathy washed over me and suddenly I didn't care to (try to) write a story for Fray. I actually didn't care to do much of any writing (even though I do have several things I could be working on). Oh well. Maybe I'll feel like doing something tomorrow.
At least I might be able to finish reading "Ender's Game" tonight.
After countless missed reruns of practically the same episodes of "A Cook's Tour" I finally got around to recording the two Russia episodes so I could actually watch them. If you read the end of my Vegas 04/02 trip then you know that the Russia chapter was one of my favorite chapters from the "A Cook's Tour" book. I've wanted to see the TV version of that chapter for a while, but up until this weekend I was just too lazy to record it. After watching it I don't think I really missed much by not seeing it earlier. This was one of the many instances where the book was much better than the television show. I guess it's good that they never came out with an Iron Chef book, or that tv serious would probably be ruined for me too.
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Have you ever had something in you
Black and Hungry
Growing
Feeding
It began in my brain
A mere spark
It was able to find sustenance
Started a brood
Multiplying exponentially
Eating all thoughts
Leaving nothing
But themselves
A contingent was sent to my heart
Demoralization their goal
It's working
They aren't parasites
I'm not their host
I'm their target
Mission almost accomplished
Nothing sounds good
Last night me and Lynn went to Barrio Cafe to meet Patrick and Kathy Murillo so I could buy my "Iron Chef Muerto" painting. Well we got there early and they got there late (I guess at least one artist stereotype might be true). We were already eating when Patrick and Kathy showed up so we waited until after dinner to take care of business.
We started by splitting a salad, the ensalada del Barrio, which was a spinach salad topped with candied walnuts, raisins, roquefort and Oaxaca cheese, a sweet vinaigrette, and some slices of apple. I loved it, but Lynn dislikes blue cheese so the salad ended up being all mine. I especially like the combination of the raisins and roquefort. When they were eaten together, the flavors combined so you tasted raisin sweetness up front, followed by the blue cheese finish. It was very tasty.
For our entrees I had ordered the chicken tamale with red mole and Lynn ordered the mojo (shrimp with lime butter sauce). It didn't take long for the tamale to come out, but Lynn's dish wasn't anywhere to be seen. When I asked the waiter about her missing food, he checked with the kitchen, and came back and told us in "waiterese" that the kitchen had forgotten to make her dish. I was waiting on Lynn's food before I tried my tamale, but she insisted I eat. In fact she kept telling me to over and over until I finally gave in. My tamale was excellent, but a little dry. The flavor of the chicken/onion filling was great, and the red mole added just that little extra something to it. (Lynn tasted it and liked it, but she didn't think she could make a meal of it.) When Lynn's shrimp finally arrived she wasn't happy with it at all. She asked me to taste one of the shrimp and tell her what I thought. I ate it and said it tasted good. She then asked me if I tasted any lime or butter. I didn't really taste any lime or butter; the shrimp had a nice grilled flavor, and the sauce was kind of peppery, but there didn't seem to be any lime or butter components to it. Lynn hated her dish. She expected butter and lime, and when she didn't get it she was bitterly disappointed. I ate the rest of her shrimp.
The chocolate cake was good last time, but I wanted to try a new dessert, so I went for the churros filled and drizzled with cajeta (goat milk caramel) and vanilla bean ice cream. The dessert was so amazingly sweet that it's almost unbelievable that I even finished one churro, but I did. If your sugar tolerance is high (which mine isn't), I highly recommend the churros.
After I had ordered dessert I asked the waiter for a menu since there was some doubt concerning exactly what Lynn's entree was. (She brought up the idea that it might not have been what she ordered, and that seemed plausible.) When the waiter brought the menu, Lynn looked at it and said, "See, it was the 'Camaron Esplendido (or something like that)'!" I laughed at her because that's what she said when she ordered. She was happier knowing that she couldn't blame the kitchen for forgetting her order AND getting it wrong too.
After dinner we chatted with Patrick and Kathy a bit. I asked if the painting had a name, and Patrick said he never really named it, so I told him I had dubbed it "Iron Chef Muerto". He thought it was funny (which, to me, sounds like he just gave his consent to my naming it). I'll take a picture of it and try to have it online tomorrow.
With a Portland trip at the end of October, a week in Philadelphia in November, tickets to Cirque du Soleil's "Dralion", and a trip to New Orleans in December, why is it only September?
Mario: So what's up?
VW: not much
VW: just work
Mario: *nod* Same here.
Mario: Boring ass shit.
VW: i have oh soo much too look forward to for the rest of my life
VW: weee
Mario: You feeling that way too huh?
VW: i have been for a while now
VW: like last year was fun
VW: but this year is like so boring
Mario: You feel like you're not doing anything. And you've done it all before. And you don't feel like doing anything.
Mario: Is that it?
VW: more or less
VW: plus i get stoned alot so that makes the dont feel like doing anything even worse
VW: i look at the next 40 years and wonder if ill be still sittin here sayin, im bored, i wanna go home, blah blah blah
VW: and then i get home
VW: and go... im bored...
Mario: Dude, we should become goths!
Mario: We can dress in all black, create vampire names, wear makeup and not look gay.
Mario: Pick up on chicks who look like they haven't seen the sun in 2 years and listen to depressing music.
Mario: I think goth is the lifestyle for me.
Mario: Well I feel a little better now. : )
Mario: How about you?
VW: i think even if i turned goth, if i started wearing makeup i think id probably look gay
Now that I'm using Mozilla and it displays site icons on the browser tab, I want to create an icon for my site. The only problem I'm having is actually deciding what to use to represent my site. Talent and an icon that's only 16 pixels x 16 pixels are my limiting factors. Any ideas.
[I've added an icon, but I'm not sure I like it. I guess I'll keep working with it for the next couple of days.]
You may not want to read this if you're planning on watching the movie and haven't seen it yet.
I finally got around to watching "Audition" for a second time and decided that the whole ending thing needs more explanation than I gave it. Earlier I said there were two plausible endings, but I've decided to support the one I think is the real ending.
Here's what happens in the movie in a nutshell. The guy is looking for a wife and his friend convinces him that holding a movie audition would be the perfect way to find a good candidate. He does find a girl that he's really fallen for, they date, and he decides to take her away for a weekend and propose to her. His friend doesn't get a good feeling from this girl and some of the things on her resume just don't seem correct, but the guy doesn't listen to him. The guy and the girl are on their weekend, and the girl wants the guy to join her in bed. Basically that's where things start getting weird. The guy sleeps with the girl he was going to propose to, and then he wakes up to find out she's disappeared. Up until this point he only called her so he didn't even know where she lived, but he was persistent in tracking her down. That's when the movie takes it's depraved turn, steadily increasing it's pace until the girl drugs him and tortures him. Suddenly (plot twist copout #1!) he wakes up to find himself in bed next to her like everything after he woke up the first time was a dream. He's pretty shaken considering the reality he knew just seconds ago included the girl sawing his left foot off with piano wire, so he goes to the bathroom to wash his face off and try and make sense of things. He returns to bed and the girl tells him she's accepted his proposal and that she's very happy. When he closes his eyes he jerks awake on the floor of his den, one foot shorter. He watches as the girl tries to attack his son, who's just walked in in the middle of her exacting gruesome revenge for everything the world has done wrong to her, and sees his son accidentally kick the girl which causes her to fall down the stairs and die. The movie ends as the guy is writhings on the floor remembering bits of dialogue from their dates. It was pretty sad stuff.
It would appear most people think that the real ending was the twisted one with torture and death that the last scene ended on. I feel that all of the depravity and torture were all a dream (which probably says something about me) from the mind of a guy who felt tortured by his own feelings. I think the guy felt guilty about going along with the audition idea and misleading the girls as to it's true purpose, felt like he was betraying his dead wife, and finally let his friend's suspicions work their way into his subconscious. I think that led to one of the most screwed up dreams of all time. (Suspicion is hard enough to deal with when you're awake, much less when your subconscious mind takes over.) Anyway, that's my take on it. You can choose to believe that he was lying on the floor with his foot lopped off and the part where he thinks it's all a dream is just his mind trying to buy him some relief from the pain he's experiencing, if you want. It's pretty horrific either way.
I was looking through my site statistics and once again, at the halfway point of the current month, the number of requested files have almost reached the total for the previous month. I've been luck enough to have traffic double for the last couple of months. Maybe someday I'll actually have a noteworthy amount of traffic without having to resort to a cam portal or a directory of free porn.
Something that's actually interesting is the link that's garnered the most response from the people at Chowhound is the one where I talk shit about my dinner at Commander's Palace. I think that says something interesting about human nature, but now that I've just gleaned that little bit of useful information about successful link whoring I'll be sure not to abuse it.
Somehow someone found my site using the search phrase "girl crapping". I'm not sure how to take that. I was wondering just how high on the list of sites returned for "girl crapping" I happened to be, so I ran the search on Google. I didn't make it on the top 50, but that doesn't bother me since none of the sites in the top 50 looked like they were really worth reading. (You think I'm lying? Look them up yourself.)
"Your ears are full, but you're empty
holding out your heart
to people who never really
care how you are.
So give me coffee and TV.
Peacefully.
I've seen so much, I'm going blind
and I'm brain-dead virtually.
Sociability
is hard enough for me.
Take me away from this big bad world and agree to marry me.
So we can start over again.
...
Oh... we could start over again.
Oh... we could start over again.
Oh... we could start over again.
Oh... we could start over again."
-Blur "Coffee & T.V."
Friday night me and DJ went to Club Freedom to see Doc Martin, but we never did go in. When we got to Freedom I heard gay vocal house music pouring from the club and decided that it might be a good idea to see if the music got any better once Doc Martin got on. (We got there at about 11:50 so we wouldn't have to wait too long.) Some time after midnight it sounded like the music changed tone, but it was hard to be sure. Instead of being gay it sounded kind of funky, but it was too repetitive and got boring to me so we left. Oh well, at least I didn't have to spend $18 to figure out I didn't like it.
Yesterday I was supposed to meet the artist who painted the "Iron Chef Muerto" painting so I could pay for it and pick it up, but they never got back to me. It looks like it'll have to wait until later this week.
Since I'm not good at saving money, and the most saving I've been doing recently was connected to buying cigars, I've figured out a new scheme to save money (since I've stopped buying cigars for a while). From now on whenever I make a payment on my credit card, I'll also make a deposit to my savings equal to the payment. That should have the money rolling into my savings account.
Just when you thought that Japanese television cartoons couldn't get any more incestuous this morning I saw a cartoon called "Fighting Foodons" which seemed to be a cross between Iron Chef and Pokemon. Needless to say it sucked.
"Audition" is probably one of the most unexpected movies I've ever seen. Since not knowing what to expect is part of the experience with the movie, don't read on if you plan on seeing it. Something quick to let you know if you actually want to watch the movie, this movie contains a torture scene that will make the stoic very uncomfortable at the least and probably be too much for quite a few people (myself included, but I'm squeamish). That warning given, I'll say that it's one of the better movies you could watch.
Now for the review. This was my first Japanese horror movie, but it didn't seem like a horror when it started. It was light-hearted and kind of cute and romantic, but slowly the tone of the movie started turning dark. The foreshadowing seemed obvious, but the rest of this movie was anything but. Even the ending was far from typical or obvious. Actually, I would say there are two feasible endings to this movie and even though one seems like the obvious ending I could make a pretty good argument for the other one. The reason it's difficult to rely on the last scene to determine the ending of the movie is that like "Sex and Lucia" the narrative combines fantasy and reality in a way that makes it hard to differentiate between the two. I actually enjoyed the lack of a cut and dry ending for this movie though. In fact I'll probably be watching the movie again very soon.
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I wish I knew what I know now when I was buying a digital camera; it might have convinced me to wait
a couple of years before buying a digital camera. Basically I learned a couple of days ago that a
company named Foveon developed the world's first full-color image sensor. I'm sure you're wondering
how it can be the world's first full-color image sensor when there are probably hundreds of
types of digital cameras floating around, all of which take full-color pictures. The Foveon web page
"Why is X3 better?" explains in simple language and
some very helpful images how this is possible, but I'll boil it down to this; current image
sensors only record 1/2 to 1/4 of the picture and guess at the rest. It's obviously a very good
guess, but it's a guess nonetheless. It does explain a lot concerning digital image clarity though.
I've noticed before that when my digital images are examined up close they tend to be a bit fuzzy,
and I was worried that it was my camera, but I realize that it's all digital cameras. It's simultaneously
reassuring and depressing to me because now I know that no matter how great the resolution is in any
current camera it will still interpolate a large portion of the image. (Be sure to check out the above
link, it's very informative. For an even more detailed explanation look at the Digital Photography
Review page for the Colour Filter Array.)
The Foveon X3 is the first image sensor to actually record the amount of red, blue, and green light at each pixel (location), thereby mimicking the process actual film uses to capture an image. This makes a huge difference in the final image. If you look at Foveon's Image Comparison page you'll see why the X3 totally rocks standard image sensors. Resolution for this type of sensor can now be compared to film grain instead just being a better approximation of an image.
Currently there's only one camera that uses the Foveon sensor, and it's a professional camera that'll cost about $3000. I'll be waiting for a high end consumer model to come out since I love the portability and flip-out LCD panel of my Canon Powershot G2 too much. Hopefully by the time I actually get my Canon paid off there'll be an equivalent camera available which uses this kind of image capture technology.
Tonight Doc Martin is going to be at Freedom.
This should be it.
For my birthday Lynn took me out to dinner at Barrio Cafe. She ordered one of their sangrias, which was a little different than any sangria I've ever had. It consisted of red wine, Jack Daniels, and mango puree. It was pretty damn tasty and potent. Lynn loves chile con queso more than I can understand, so she ordered the chile con queso with chorizo. When it came out, it also had fresh chips and pico de gallo. The chile con queso was delicious, although not spicy.
For our entrees I ordered seared duck breast in a tamarind and chipolte sauce, while Lynn ordered the filet mignon with roquefort and "5 chile" demiglace. When they arrived they were both served on a bed of fideo with asparagus. The duck breast was well seasoned and cooked until the fat was rendered and crispy. It was more well done than I'm accustomed to, but it was great. The seasoning made the breast tasty without the sauce, but the sauce definitely added something to it. The fideo was delicious, while the asparagus looked pretty limp it was still firm enough not to be mushy. Lynn wasn't happy with her steak though. It wasn't cooked medium rare the way she ordered, instead it was more like medium well. She chose not to send it back, and didn't think the steak was very flavorful, tender, or worth the $20 they charged for it.
Before our entrees arrived I had asked our waiter Vincent (and no, his name was not changed to make him seem more gay) about the price of the painting of the skeleton chef (which I now refer to as Iron Chef Meurto). He said he would check on it. After he brought out our food he told me the price, and asked if I was interested in purchasing it. I said yes, then he said something about taking it down and putting it across from us so we could look at it while we ate. We both thought he was kidding, but a couple of minutes later he set the painting down in one of the vacant chairs at our table. I thought it was funny, then the owner of the restaurant came to our table and told us (although she seemed to be addressing Lynn) that the restaurant doesn't actually sell the paintings, just displays them and directs interested parties to contact the artists, and that their policy is that none of the paintings come down during the duration of the show. She then picked up the painting from the chair and told us she was going to rehang it. After she left Vincent walked by and said, "How rude," in his best catty voice. Vincent cracked me up.
Lynn ordered the chocolate cake with whipped cream and Mexican chocolate/almond sauce. The cake was pretty damn tasty and it wasn't too sweet if you ate it just with the whipped cream. (The Mexican chocolate/almond sauce was pretty tasty, but it was too sweet for me.) While we were eating dessert Lynn overheard the owner talking to a couple of people at another table (the only other people in the dining room at that hour) about the paintings, the restaurant policy concerning them, and how she just had to put a painting back on the wall. Lynn now hates the owner, although she liked everything else well enough to go back.
Me and Lynn were at Chandler Mall (or whatever it's called) for the first time and looking for something to eat the other day. We looked at the mall directory and the only thing that piqued my interest was Kona Grill. We looked at their menu, but the only entree that sounded interesting was their steak, and at that time I would have rather have made my own. Luckily Lynn noticed that it was happy hour and that appetizers and pizza were half price. A snack of cheap appetizers sounded good to me.
We ended up ordering more than just a snack. We had the calamari, onion rings, chicken tacos, and a five-spice bbq chicken pizza. The only thing that tasted so-so were the onion rings. They were too big for onion rings and they actually didn't taste like onions! (Odd that the bigger things get sometimes, the less they taste like what they're supposed to. If you've had Elephant garlic before you know this to be true.) The onion rings were served with a chipolte/pineapple sauce that Lynn totally loved though. (I believe onion rings that don't taste like onions are a complete waste.) The calamari was great by itself, but the sauce (which was like remoulade) made it even better. The chicken tacos were really chicken wraps (chicken, avocado, and cabbage wrapped up in a flour tortilla) which were bland by themselves, but dipped in the dressing they were really tasty. Finally the pizza was really tasty: the crust was really good and the bbq sauce was sweet and spicy—just the way I like it. The pizza even tasted good after being reheated the next day (and I'm very picky about reheated pizza).
Neither me nor Lynn had heard of Rockfish before so when we saw it we were curious. We were hungry so we ordered quite a few things: creamy jalapeno soup; gumbo; the fire & ice appetizer combo which had hushpuppies, grilled shrimp, a Mexican shrimp martini (basically cooked shrimp with salsa and chips), a crab cake, calamari, and a couple of "the bomb"s (which were jalapenos stuffed with shrimp, bacon, and cheese); and a grilled scallop salad. The soups came out first, and the creamy jalapeno was so good! It had bits of potato, cilantro, and, of course, jalapeno. The gumbo was pretty good too, even a little spicy although it can't compare to homemade gumbo, but what can.
Since we were both highly impressed with the soup, we were really looking forward to the appetizers and salad. They both came out at the same time, and we immediately dug into the grilled scallops. The scallops were every bit as good as you'd expect perfectly grilled scallops to be. The salad was pretty good too; not a bit of iceberg lettuce in it. As far as the appetizers went, the grilled shrimp didn't taste good, the calamari tasted pretty good with ranch dressing (but not as good as the calamari from Kona Grill), and everything else was ok. One thing worth mentioning was the aptly named "the bomb", which could have been a little more appropriately named "the colon bomb" because it started out tasty, but it was so heavy that they felt like they were heading straight to your colon. I think they should try stuffing the jalapenos with cream cheese instead of cheddar.
Anyway, I'd eat at Rockfish again for the soup alone (although the creamy jalapeno isn't a regular menu item), I'll just know to avoid the appetizers.
Movie: "Lucía y el Sexo" ["Sex and Lucia"]
The first thing I think of when I think about "Sex and Lucia" is that it was long. Really good movies make you forget that you've been sitting in a seat for two and a half hours, then there're ones like this. Not that it was all bad, it just felt long. It was also very odd, and not in a way I enjoy. It's good points were it had a distinctive visual style, the story had a good message, and there was a lot of female nudity. (I do have to specifically mention that Elena Anaya, who played Belen, was super hot in the movie.) If those don't sound like good reasons to watch the movie then I wouldn't suggest it. I hardly suggest it if those DO sound like good reasons.
Movie: "La Vie Rêvée des Anges" ["The Dreamlife of Angels"]
As I was watching "The Dreamlife of Angels" I was getting pretty mad at the movie. It was because I knew where the plot was going and one of the characters was being really stupid. I should have realized that was a sign of a movie with believable characters. Anyway, after seeing the ending, I liked the movie. I wouldn't watch it if you're easily depressed though.
I didn't get everything in yesterday, so here's some more. (The rest will be continued tomorrow.)
One day me and Lynn had an odd occurrence with a sales lady. I was looking at a necklace when the sales lady mentioned that there was a matching bracelet. I told her I didn't wear bracelets, and then she asked if I was interested in rings. Lynn told her that I don't wear rings either, at least not for a year. The sales lady then asked, "So are you going to Bali, err... Belize?" Me and Lynn just looked at each other. I responded to her question, but I couldn't help wondering what prompted her to ask that. [For those who don't know me, me and Lynn originally planned on going to Bali for our honeymoon, and I'm from Belize so it's conceivable that we would consider going there.]
Me and Lynn talked about it afterwards and both thought it was very strange. I thought she might be psychic, but now that I think about it, if she was psychic she would have known that I don't wear bracelets.
I went to Bamboo Club because some people I knew wanted to go there. I had heard from people who know food that Bamboo Club sucks ass, and it turns out they were correct. Our meal started with spring rolls and pot stickers. I was wary when the pot stickers only took about five minutes to come out. At any reputable Chinese restaurant they take 20 minutes. These pot stickers were deep fried, but not as bad as I thought they would be. The spring rolls were another matter. I'm not exaggerating when I paraphrase a quote from the comic book guy on the Simpsons when I say, "Worst spring rolls ever." If they hadn't told me they were spring rolls I would never have recognized them as such. They sucked ass.
The rest of the meal was Korean beef, Thai spicy shrimp, orange beef, crispy spinach, and wokked asparagus. The Korean beef was sweet, and pretty good, but not especially Korean in flavor. I dug it anyway. The Thai spicy shrimp looked like the Bamboo Club version of prig king, but it didn't taste a thing like it. The spicy, dynamic flavor of prig king was replaced with something not nearly as spicy or complex. (Once again it just didn't taste like the ethnic cuisine they named the dish after.) The green beans were nice and crisp though. The orange beef was pretty decent. The beef was sliced thin and covered with a thin coating of batter (so it wasn't too chewy), and the sauce had a hint of orange, which is better the usual "smack in the head" orange flavor you get at too many restaurants. The crispy spinach seemed to be a variation on crispy seaweed. The only difference is that crispy seaweed is usually served with sea salt and the crispy spinach wasn't. I asked for salt. Last but not least was the asparagus, and it was pretty decent.
Even though most of the food wasn't bad, Bamboo Club actually made me miss P.F. Chang's, so it's better that I never eat there again.
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I'm not dead, I've just been up to a lot and haven't really had computer access so here's all the recent stuff in no particular order. So for today only, in an effort to get things current, today's updates will appear below this message and only long entries will actually get titles.
Friday it was raining pretty hard and as I was driving home that night I thought that warm custard would be the best way to enjoy the weather. When I got home I looked up custard recipes on the internet (since I've never made custard that didn't come from a box before), and I ended up combining a couple of different recipes to suit my tastes. As I was stirring the milk and vanilla combination on the stove I thought this was a great idea. It was too bad the custard never quite turned into custard. The mixture somehow ended up forming tiny particles of "stuff" that never really gelled together. Lynn thinks I overcooked it. I don't know what happened, but I think the mixture got a little too hot and the egg cooked separately from the rest of the mixture. [I later asked my mom about this and she makes custard from a box, but she said when they used to make it from scratch they always used a double boiler. Maybe I'll give making custard from scratch a try again, but I was eyeing the box of custard mix she had sitting on her kitchen counter and considered just taking the easy way out.]
Lynn passed her kidney stone, without the aid of an ultrasonic zap, but she still has pain in her side. She's waiting for the urologist's office to actually make an appointment for her. Hopefully they'll do it before she leaves for Houston on Thursday.
One of my plants died this weekend. This was the second weekend in a row that I forgot to water it on Sunday, and I noticed it was dead last night when I remembered to water it. I was sort of sad since I've kept this plant alive for a couple of years now even though it was a pain in the ass for me to take care of. At least it'll never go thirsty again.
Yesterday we got this kick butt showerhead from Restoration Hardware. It's got a large, flat chrome head with a lot of holes in it, and it goes by the name "Rain". The name is pretty accurate since it has more holes than your average showerhead, 91 holes to be exact—and no I didn't count them all, I did something even geekier and just figured out the formula and did the math (1 + 1 x 6 + 2 x 6 + etc... = total)—so the water doesn't come out in jets, but soft streams. It's a lot more relaxing than the "fire hose" showerhead we had before. I may have to start waking up earlier to account for the extra time spent in the shower.
It's hard for me to justify paying the $23 Todai charges for dinner, but paying $13 for their lunch seems a lot more reasonable. Not much seems to change between their lunch and dinner offerings, and if you like sushi, it's easy to eat $13 worth. (I probably ate at least $13 worth of unagi when I had lunch there.)
My blue backpack has been retired (again). Long ago I had a briefcase (of sorts), but the zipper broke and the handle was about to fall off. Since I didn't have anything else to carry stuff in, I unretired my blue backpack. I've got a history with the blue backpack; it's the backpack that I used in Europe. This is the backpack that I carried that bronze statue around in. It's amazingly useful and resilient. Since it's unretirement it's been with me to music events, and on other trips. It only has one drawback; it's bright blue color is hideous! You can see the thing from a mile away. While I hate the way it looks, I'm also too lazy to do anything about it. Luckily I found a backpack without really looking (of course it only took a year or two, but whatever). We were at Yucatecan Imports the other day when I spotted some cool looking wool backpacks. I found one that was hunter green and navy blue. Since it is more my style than day-glow blue, I got it. Hopefully it'll last a while, although the blue one will be there to take it's place if something should happen to it.
Succumbing to my travel impulses, to the detriment of my wedding savings, I'm going to Portland with Noah and Ryan to see Amon Tobin in late October! I finally get to return to one of the more interesting cities I've been to, and get to see one of the djs I've wanted to see for a while now, at the same time. It seems like money well spent. (Lynn might not agree, but she's going to Houston this week to see one of her best friends so she doesn't really have any room to criticise.)
Speaking of the wedding, me and Lynn are starting to scout locations. While that's not the most fun thing in the world, there are some fun things we get to do along the way. Lynn noticed an ad in her wedding magazine for Kokopelli Winery, who sell custom hand painted bottles of wine and champagne. We decided to give their champagnes a try since hand painted bottles might be cool at the reception. They have three different types of champagne: a brut, "Imperial Kir" (flavored with raspberry), and "Royal Kir" (flavored with black currant). First we tried the "Imperial Kir", and we both thought it was going bad. Either that or it's the bitterest champagne I've ever tasted, and it's SUPPOSED to taste that way. Next we tried the "Royal Kir". It good by comparison, but Lynn mistook my comment to mean that it was good. She liked it, but soon figured out that I didn't care for it. The last champagne was the brut. To me it was the best of the three, but I still didn't really care for it. It had an aftertaste I liked, but it just didn't do it for me. Well Lynn thought we should use the Kokopelli "Royal Kir" at the reception (she really likes the hand painted bottle idea), but my thinking is that there's got to be a $15 bottle of domestic champagne that we can both enjoy. Lynn doesn't disagree, but she bought a bottle of the "Royal Kir" so I can get a better taste of it.
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My mom made a dinner for my birthday. As usual, she made far more food than we could ever eat. Here's the lineup: Mexican style grilled flank steak, bbq chicken, fresh tortillas, regular potato salad (Belizean style), southwestern potato salad, spicy bbq baked beans (w/bacon), and a tres leches cake. Everything was absolutely delicious and there were a ton of leftovers to take home. (I'm going to try to make the southwestern potato salad myself, with my own variation on the recipe I got from my mom. You quarter and grill the potatoes, and some red onions. After they're cooked you mix them up with mayonnaise, chipolte chile, and red bell peppers. I think with some bacon, green onion, and a little cilantro it would been perfect.) After dinner DJ took out a board game he had called "Zombies!!!". The point of the game is to kill zombies and be the first one to escape. I dug it and since I seem to have a knack for all things zombie related, I won the game too.
I finally got around to retaking pictures of the ring. My camera is definitely not cut out to do these
kinds of pictures. Of the two dozen or so pictures I've taken of the engagement ring, this is the only
one that's been sort of in focus.
Today I went to lunch at Barrio Cafe since it was so highly recommended by Erin (who knows food although her taste in movies can be questionable). Everything on the menu looked so good that I had a hard time deciding what to eat. Eventually I settled on the roasted sweet and spicy pepper soup and the torta de filet mignon (a sandwich with a filet mignon and a "5 chile" demiglace) and side salad with balsamic vinaigrette. The soup was a huge disappointment; it was so salty that I couldn't even eat more than a couple of spoonfuls. The waitress stopped by and asked us how things were, and I told her the soup was too salty. She immediately took it away, and when she came back she apologized and took it off the bill. I like that. When a restaurant apologizes with money it always seems more sincere.
When the torta de filet mignon came out I was far from disappointed. It was very tasty, and cooked perfectly, although it wasn't as spicy as I expected. The person I was with ordered the torta de cochinita pibil (a sandwich with slow roasted pork rubbed with achiote). I had a bite of the pork, and it was quite delicious, but also not as spicy as I expected. After I finished off my sandwich I tackled the salad. It was much better than you'd expect a side salad to be; it contained a lot of different greens, but it didn't have too many annoying, bitter ones. The balsamic vinaigrette was nicely tangy, but still pretty sweet. I enjoyed it.
As we were walking out of the dining room I looked at the paintings for sale on the walls. There was one painting in particular that caught my attention. It was a Dia de los Muertos painting of a skeleton chef!!! I immediately walked over to it to see how much it cost, but I didn't find a price. There was a web site listed—and I was already a little late getting back to work so I didn't feel like asking about the price—so I committed the URL to memory and decided that I'd just look up the price online. Committing the URL to memory wasn't a good idea since in a couple of minutes I was distracted and I completely forgot about looking the painting up. It wasn't until I started writing this that I remembered to do it, and by then it was too late; the URL was forgotten. I'll have to call them some time soon and see if I can't find out the price. If a happy painting of a skeleton cooking in it's chef's whites isn't me, then I don't know what is.
I had to take Lynn to pick up her x-rays from last Thursday, pick up the CT scan from last Saturday, and to get a new x-ray taken for her urologist appointment today. The urologist reviewed everything and determined that Lynn's kidney stone didn't move from Saturday until today (even though it moved a lot from last Thursday to Saturday), so she told Lynn that it didn't look like she was going to pass it on her own.
Lynn has an appointment to get the stone ultrasonically zapped this Monday. Guess when my birthday is?
"No provocation, no warning, no survivors."
The other Friday at work I noticed as I was about to leave that all the other programmers taken their laptops home, but they left their monitors on. I thought it seemed a little dimwitted to go to the trouble of disconnecting and taking the laptop home but not turning the monitor off. Recently I heard one of the Helpdesk guys complaining that one of the User Support guys didn't turn his radio off before leaving (bothering the Helpdesk guy with the noise) and the Helpdesk muttered, "How hard is it to turn off the radio?"
It was then that I wondered if the vast majority of people aren't as stupid as I think they are (this excludes you of course), but too lazy to NOT do stupid things. For example, when someone cuts me off on the freeway and then immediately hits their brakes, it's not that they're not too stupid to drive without being a complete moron, but that they're too lazy to look in the lane and see that it's not moving. Also, when I explain something to someone for the sixth time and I think it's because they're stupid to retain anything, it's just because they're too lazy to remember what I've told them (even when I've gone to the trouble of putting it in writing for them). Finally, when I see someone throw trash out of their car window, it's not because they're too stupid to realize that the world isn't their trash can, but they're too lazy to throw their shit away when they actually run across in a trash can. (I'm surprised these people don't shit themselves, but I guess even they have to draw the laziness line somewhere.) That being said, I guess I'm not as lazy as I thought I was.
I do have my moments though. I tried to register for Japanese 101 yesterday, but they wouldn't let me register over the phone since the course has already started. They said I would need the teacher's signature. That was fine. Inconvenient, but fine. Today I had about an hour left at work before I had to leave for class, and I just kept thinking how inconvenient MCC was making this. The more I thought about it, the more I decided I'd rather be at home reading or writing something than trying to get a teacher's signature just so I could register a class that has only met twice. I never made it to class; laziness prevailed. At least I'm not too lazy to run a spell check on things I write. (Hell, sometimes I even proofread.)
Today I've been using Mozilla 1.1 seriously for the first time. It rocks! Two of my favorite features so far are the browser tabs and the ability to disable unsolicited popup windows. The tabs are cool because you can have any number of web pages open as different tabs in one Taskbar instance versus the old way of having one window open for every web page. It makes the Taskbar much neater for those of us who have about eight different web pages open at any given time.
Disabling unsolicited popup windows effectively fixes (for free!) one of the most annoying things in all of web browsing; popup ads. Take that X10! (It's unlikely you haven't seen an X10 ad since the X10 ads are the most profuse and notorious ads on all the web.)
Now I just need to learn how to use this Javascript debugger...
Last night I saw one of the classics of cinema and was quite impressed. One of the reasons "M" is a classic is even though it was made in 1931 it's still relevant. The story itself is straightforward, but it's the issues that are brought up that are of interest. The discussions they had in 1931 are the same discussions that we're having today. Other than that the directing is amazing. Obviously made during the infancy of talking movies, dialog is used very well (with the exception of a couple of long winded monologues) in addition the usual tools of the silent film director. The movie was dark and foreboding with some of the silent scenes being the most powerful, but the reoccurring use of Grieg's "In The Hall of the Mountain King" was inspired. I don't think any song has ever taken on such a sinister tone before. Even though this was a serious film dealing with serious issues, there were still humorous moments. (When the inspector hears something he wasn't prepared for and let's the cigar fall from his mouth as he tries to regain his composure is a good example.) Other than some of the tediously long feeling monologues, this was an absolutely great movie. It's amazing that we never watched this in film class, but "Dr. Strangelove" was a good choice too.
Last night I got some food from Peruanitos for Lynn and myself. A couple of the things were tasty, such as the chicharron de pollo (fried chicken served with some tasty french fries) and saltado de pollo (chicken sauteed with onions, tomatoes, and potatoes which had a really good sauce, but contained dark meat which didn't fit as well in the dish as white meat would have). I ordered one thing that completely grossed me out though; the tallarin saltado. It's vegetables and noodles, but the noodles just didn't taste right, much less good, and the vegetables were overcooked. Overall I was happy with the meal though.
Well I don't know if it was the amount of habanero pepper sauce I used on the fried chicken, or just the food, but something has had quite a negative affect on my digestive system today. Earlier today I felt put off of Peruvian food, chicken, and anything fried. The latter two made it a little hard to find lunch today since I also didn't want a burger either. I ended up going to Dimonte's Grille, which is one of the few places you can actually get a decent side salad and a sandwich. (When I say sandwich, I don't mean a sub, I mean meat and vegetables between two slices of bread worth eating. Most sub bread sucks.) I like Dimonte's Grille, but they always seem to take forever. By the time I got back to work with my food I had already used 50 minutes of my lunch time (and they're only located five minutes away). Anyway, lunch was decent.
I looked at the final usage report for August and my traffic doubled! Something bothered though; there were 800 "404" errors on my site and I have no idea what's causing them. If you run across any errors on this site, please let me know. Final bit of trivia, Steve has single-handedly brought Japan to the number two spot for countries that have viewed my site the most.
It's nice to have a three day weekend. I actually did most of the things I wanted to do this weekend (except eat at Barrio Cafe, but soon, very soon). I did a lot of reading (which I never seem to have time for), cleaned up the kitchen to a somewhat respectable mess versus the filthy mess it used to be, and most importantly, worked on some of my current web site projects. Since I'm both cpu and hard drive challenged at home I wasn't able to do some of the most important things though. I've known for a while that my global navigation doesn't appear in newer versions of Netscape and IE, but since I didn't use either one I didn't get around to fixing it quickly. Now I feel up to the task of scripting for yet another browser, so hopefully before the end of today I'll have that taken care of. I should also have my global navigation actually appear on every page too.
(Maybe some day soon I'll even figure out a linking scheme I'm happy with for the other sections on this page such as Distraction and Babble. I'm sure most people have never scrolled down the page far enough to see them.)
Wednesday Lynn wasn't feeling well. She made an appointment to see her doctor Thursday, and she was in so much pain that she couldn't drive herself back from the doctor's office. The doctor's initial diagnosis was that Lynn had a kidney stone. Friday, after reviewing some x-rays, the doctor verified that it was indeed a kidney stone.
Lynn was in pain Friday and Saturday, but her doctor had prescribed a pain killer, so it wasn't too bad. Saturday night her pain increased to the point that it became unbearable. I was getting worried that Lynn might be having some sort of complication. Up until that point I hadn't worried at all because kidney stones are painful, but not life threatening. Saturday night at 10PM we went to the emergency room. Naturally things didn't move too fast at the emergency room, but after an hour or more they finally saw Lynn. They doped her up, and ran some tests. It turns out that the kidney stone was just following it's normal course, it just hurt a lot. That was good to know. They prescribed a more powerful pain killer for Lynn and set us on our way five hours after we arrived. At least I got to read a lot of my iaido book while we were waiting.
Today Lynn hasn't had much luck with the new pain killer. She's been nauseous and hasn't been keeping anything down, including the anti nausea medication. Late tonight has been the first time she's been somewhat pain free.
I hope Lynn passes this kidney stone soon.
In other news, I might be able to go to Japan next year to visit Steve. It depends on the money situation with the wedding and honeymoon, but I don't think I'll have a problem saving for it.
I finally got around to seeing "Signs". There's not really much I can say about the movie without giving it away, so I'll just say that I was a little disappointed. It was very similar to "Unbreakable" in that I just didn't really care about the movie. Nothing was especially bad about either movie except that both endings were let downs, but nothing was especially good either. Both movies seemed to try too hard to be as original as "The Sixth Sense".
Today after lunch I stopped at a martial arts supply store (named "Karate Mart" or something like that) and bought a bokken (wooden sword). Right now I'm reading a book on iaido—a Japanese martial art that concentrates on killing an opponent on the draw of the sword—and thought it might be cool to actually try some of things the book talks about. (I might even take lessons someday if I ever get motivated.) Anyway, even if I don't do anything worthwhile with the bokken I can always terrorize the cats with it. (And speaking of terrorizing cats, I borrowed DJ's Ballzooka and that ratcheting noise it makes when you cock it really does make the cats run in fear.)
Finally, I'm thinking of retaking JPN101 so I can learn some of the vocabulary I didn't learn the first time and review things I've forgotten. That way I also wouldn't have any doubts about my preparedness for JPN102 next semester.
Today I had lunch at Fry Bread House for the first time. I wasn't impressed. I had a green chile taco which was an indian fried bread with green chile, lettuce, and cheese. My fry bread was a little salty, which I didn't care for. The green chile was ok, but nothing special. I don't think I'll be returning to Fry Bread House when there are so many other good restaurants nearby.
Andy C and MC GQ were so bad ass last night! I think that was probably the best jungle set I've ever listened to. The music was hard and fast roller style jungle. The MC was pretty good, but he'd interrupt the set with too many "Rewinds!" so the set was really choppy instead of having a really nice flow. That's ok since he really got the crowd into it. Anyway, it was money well spent.
"I won't say I'm the baddest or portray that role, but I'm of the top two and my father's getting old."
-Big Daddy Kane "Cause I Can Do It Right"
I feel much better about the rings today. I'm actually really happy with them now.
Last night I took a couple of pictures of the engagement ring, but I just looked at them and they're out of focus. (I had to focus manually with the digital camera, and it's not nearly as easy as focusing with a regular camera.) I'll take some pictures again tonight.
Andy C is @ Freedom tonight. I should have guessed.
I left in the middle of work and started my trek to my PO Box (which is about 20 miles by freeway), but I wasn't driving as fast as I normally do, or as fast as I would when I'm in a hurry, because I haven't had much luck with cops lately. In the last week I've had a couple of cops wave at me to slow down (one was a motorcycle cop who actually pulled up next to me and waved "10" with one hand).
I eventually made it to my PO Box and my rings were there! I like them, but I feel a little dejected. I can be a perfectionist and these rings aren't exactly how I envisioned them; namely the opal is not quite as vibrant as I was hoping for. The realist in me is trying to keep myself from being disappointed, but I'm sure you know how well that works. Anyway, I don't have my camera with me so you'll have to wait until tomorrow to see the engagement ring.
Wow, August has been a good month for my little site. Traffic hasn't blown up, but it is increasing steadily. It would appear that Google has now indexed my site and has already sent more traffic my way in less than two weeks then all of my link whoring. Of course the link whoring will probably attract people who are more likely to stay. "Why?" you may ask. The answer lies in what search terms people are looking for: "fark top boobies" [this has been the most popular one], "natural cigars by drew estate reviews" [second most popular, these people should find this site useful], "cab driver dangerous professions" [other than one amusing story I don't have much on that], "djs kettle corn" [search for kettle corn and find electronic music djs!], "korean anime beige pictures" [huh?], and the best one "marijuana yatta" [the guys in the "Yatta" video might be high, but I have a feeling that skinny Japanese men wearing fig leaves was not what this person was looking for].
I get to stop by the post office today and see if I have some rings.
Tomorrow night is British jungle dj Andy C. I don't remember where he's going to be at, but I'll find out before I have to get there.
I'm finally done adding photographs to my New Orleans 12/01 trip page.
Speaking of Japan, I uncommitted myself from taking Japanese 102. I reviewed my JPN101 stuff and decided that I don't remember enough to even stand a chance of passing JPN102. I guess I'll just have to brush up on my basic Japanese so I can be ready for next semester.
I just got an email from Steve. He's in Japan and already writing about the experience. His web site is below.
http://www.geocities.com/srberardi/japan.html
[You might notice some funny looking characters on the page that don't make any sense. Those are probably kanji or hiragana. You can set your browser to display kanji and hiragana so that they don't make sense in Japanese instead of the gibberish that's probably on your screen now. The only way I know to view them is in Internet Explorer go to "View," and "Encoding," and then select "Japanese" if it's an option. If you don't see "Japanese" as an option, you need to go to "More," then select "Japanese". Enjoy.]
Saturday night we were sending Steve off to Japan. First we had to get the last of Steve's stuff out of his apartment. I suspected that he might have more boxes than I could fit in my car while there were three people in it, and I was right. We had to call DJ over to take some of the stuff. (For someone getting rid of most of his possessions, Steve still had more than a few he wanted to keep.)
We got everything out of the apartment and went to Outback Steak House for dinner. Dinner was ok and everyone enjoyed it. After dinner we went back to our apartment and set up Steve's Playstation 2 (which Steve has loaned to me until he gets back). We played Star Wars Jedi Starfighter (which is addictive), Bloody Roar 3, Dead or Alive 2 Hardcore (the biggest innovation in pseudo 3-D fighting games seems to be bouncy boobs), Parappa the Rapper 2 (me and Steve thought it was campy fun, but DJ and Lynn weren't amused), and cards while drinking various sakes for the entire night. We finally dropped Steve off at the airport 7 o'clock Sunday morning. Hopefully he made it to Japan ok and there was actually someone at the airport to pick him up.
I can't wait to hear from him.
Friday was Ken's birthday so we went to Todai (a Japanese buffet) to celebrate. Since it was Ken's birthday he got to eat for free, but the rest of us had to pay $24. I looked at their menu online, but I wasn't sure if it would be worth $24. Everything looks good on paper, but most buffet food is crap.
Anyway, we went to Todai and the sushi wasn't too bad. Unlike the Bellagio buffet, which featured sushi made by Mexican guys who didn't know what sushi was really supposed to look like, Todai's sushi was made by Mexican guys who knew what good sushi was supposed to look like. The sushi selection wasn't as large as their menu suggested, but it at least had unagi (freshwater eel). The unagi was really tasty; even Ken, who's never had it before, really liked it. After finishing off a couple of plates of sushi I tried food from their hot bar. It wasn't any good. I tried the desserts and the only two worth eating were the crepes and creme brulee.
At the end of the night I tried to figure out if Todai was worth $24 and I guess I might have actually eaten that much in sushi alone. I think lunch is probably a better value though.
I got a call from Wil on Friday saying that one of the pieces of opal in Lynn's wedding band was cloudy, so he was going to replace it and it would take a day longer to get it done. Saturday I got a call from Wil saying that he wouldn't be able to get it finished on Saturday, so hopefully it'll be done Monday. I'll post some pictures as soon as I have the rings in my possesion.
I stayed up late the other night and watched "Te Amo (Made in Chile)". While I was watching it I couldn't help but compare it to the better "Y tu Mama Tambien". They're both movies about friends, their relationships, and one summer with nothing to do. "Te Amo" was about four friends (two male and two female) who go through an angst ridden period and discover that together they can overcome anything. What a bunch of crap. ("Y tu Mama" took the more cynical line about the frailty of friendship, but it actually covered a lot of things.) To make the movie worse, there were a more than a few times that I thought I was watching teenage actors instead of teenagers. Even with all of the issues I had with the movie, I still liked it a little better than "My Big Fat Greek Wedding".
Last night I went to see "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" against my better judgement. Lynn wanted to see it and the movie has received some very good reviews so I thought I'd give it a chance. Well, this sort of movie has been done so many times before, and better, that I was disappointed watching "My Big Fat Greek Wedding". The "daughter of immigrant parents who want their daughter to marry within their race" movie is nothing new, and the only thing that seems to differentiate it from others is that these people were Greek. Instead of watching a disapproving Chinese father come to terms with his child's choice, it was a disapproving Greek father.
Not that every movie has to be something new, but I didn't really feel the connection with the main character Toula. She goes from thirty years of frumpiness to fashionable woman faster than seems realistically possible. To me her character didn't seem very realistic at all. After that realization, there really wasn't any reason for me to watch the movie. It did have some funny moments, but they aren't enough for me to actually recommend this movie to anyone.
The answer in this sake FAQ for the question "How do you heat sake in a microwave oven?" doesn't sound like a good idea. If you think it is, try it out and let me know what happens.
I just created an Alcohol page. I'll start filling it with content as I have time.
This month I've been whoring my URL on some web sites and it appears to be working. I now have some traffic that can't be 100% accounted for by people I know. I hope some of the people who came using those links find my site interesting enough to make it bookmark worthy. I only left links on places that are related and that I tend to frequent (like Chowhounds, but not Herfer's Paradise since they all practically seem to have been cigar smokers much longer than me), so it's not like people would find themselves somewhere completely unrelated. I guess we'll see what happens in the coming months.
I think I'm going to start a wine page for people who hate wine. I'll get to it sometime after I finish putting the photos on my New Orleans 12/01 trip page.
The next time you make the mistake of thinking cats are cleaner than dogs, remember this. Last night I was watching tv when I noticed Tiger dragging his ass on the carpet. I was sure he had a good reason for it, but I'm not about to let anything wipe it's ass on something I walk barefoot on. I shot at him with my Ball Blaster and, oddly enough, that was enough to get him to stop. A minute later he had one leg up in the air and he was licking his ass. Apparently he got some crap stuck to his fur, so he was getting rid of it the only way he could (thank God for thumbs). It was pretty gross seeing him lick the brown from his fur, but even worse was the smell which was enough to make me slightly nauseous.
Yesterday I got a call today from a Japanese instructor and she asked me if I'd be taking JPN102 this semester. (I had previously registered for it, but I didn't get around to paying for the course so I was dropped for nonpayment.) I told her I would take it depending on who the instructor is. She asked for a little more clarification and I let her know that I wouldn't take the course if Moeur was teaching it. (Moeur is the Japanese instructor that I had last semester for less than one class period. I thought his Japanese was so bad, and so painful to listen to, that I couldn't even sit through an entire three hour class.) She said they haven't staffed it yet, but most likely he wouldn't be teaching it.
Heh.
Looks like I committed to taking 102 this semester. Damn persistent Japanese instructors.
While I was at Toys 'R Us buying something for my cousin's baby, I decided to see if they had a Ballzooka in stock, but to my disappointment all they had was were Ball Blasters. I decided the Ball Blaster was better than nothing, so I bought it. After the baby shower the first thing I did when I got home was try it out by shooting it at one of the cats. I guess the jokes on me, the cats like it. The Ball Blaster is nothing compared to it's big brother the Ballzooka. One, the balls don't shoot out nearly as hard, two, it's accuracy sucks, and three, there is no menacing noise when you cock the gun. Instead of the cats running in fear when they see me pick it up, they watch me expectantly because they can't wait to chase the balls down.
*sigh* I might just go to EBay to see if someone has a Ballzooka for sale.
I just had a bbq beef sandwich from Honey Bears so I thought I'd list all of the kick ass barbecue places I could think of, and some of the things other than bbq that they do really well.
Lynn and I went to Flagstaff on Saturday to search through Wil's opal inventory and hopefully find something we liked. When we got to Wil's shop he told us that he had already looked through his opal and pulled out a piece that would be big enough for all three rings, and that he thought we would like. It was a stone that was predominately blue, but with a decent amount of green in it. It looked very nice, even if I didn't like it as much as our original piece. (I think Lynn actually liked it more than our original piece.) Anyway, we agreed on it and hopefully Wil will have the rings done this week. While we were there he showed us the cast metal versions of our rings so we could make sure they were the correct sizes. The rings were very rough; they were unpolished and still had their hard edges. Wil hadn't done anything to clean them up yet because he had to do the inlay before he started working on the rings. Even with the rings being a rough as they were, they still looked beautiful. I was amazed at how thick they were, and since it was Lynn's first time seeing the diamond, she was mesmerized watching it sparkle in it's setting.
I, again, wished I had taken my camera. If I was thinking before I last two trips I would have brought my camera so I could have taken pictures of the wax models and the rough metal rings just so everyone could see creation of the rings. Well you'll just get to see the finished rings instead.
After we were finished at Wil's shop, we looked for some place to eat. We wanted to eat at Pasto, because one of Lynn's friends mentioned they had a good dinner there. We had 30 minutes to kill because it was 4:30 and Pasto didn't open until 5 so we went to the Wine Loft, a wine bar. They were having a wine tasting, but we hadn't eaten all day and four glasses of wine just didn't seem like a good idea. Instead Lynn bought a bottle of Taylor Fladgate 20 Year Tawny Port (one of her favorites). We both had a glass of wine; I went with a Hendry 1999 Chardonnay and Lynn got a Grand Canyon mead. To me the Chardonnay tasted like oak and not much else so I didn't really care for it. Lynn thought it was pretty good, but she likes oak flavor. The mead was weird; there was a very strong ripe banana scent and it had a flavor that was a mix of ripe bananas and some sort of spice. I didn't care for it (I don't care for ripe bananas) and Lynn thought it had been exposed to air too long and that it was ready to turn.
After we were through experimenting with drinks we headed to, the now open, Pasto. We started our dinner with scallops formaggio; scallops sauteed in butter and garlic and served in an alfredo sauce. When it came out, it wasn't what I expected. I thought it would be scallops on a plate with a thick alfredo sauce covering it, but it was a bowl of scallops swimming in a thin alfredo sauce. I tasted the scallops and they were cooked perfectly; they were just barely cooked. The alfredo sauce was excellent! Even though it was thin, it was quite tasty. I thought it was missing a little something so I sprinkled a little black pepper on top and it was perfect. Me and Lynn both dished up very healthy portions of the scallops and sauce, and we sopped up the sauce with our bread. We agreed that the appetizer with bread would make a really good meal all by itself.
Next the soup and salad came out. I had a caesar salad while Lynn had the minestrone soup. The caesar dressing was good, but the salad was prepared a little too early and the lettuce was a little rusty at the edges. Lynn liked the minestrone, but it was too spicy for her to eat very much of.
For my entree I went for the special of the day; halibut coated in pine nuts served with field greens and a tarragon/gorgonzola polenta. Lynn ordered the capellini pomodoro with shrimp. When the waitress brought the food out the first thing Lynn noticed was that her entree didn't have any shrimp. The waitress took her plate back to the kitchen, and then brought it back immediately, telling Lynn that she'd bring out the shrimp in a minute. I tried her pasta without the shrimp, and it was tasty, but it seemed like it was missing something. I tried my own dish and didn't care for it. The halibut was slightly overcooked and the polenta just lacked flavor. It only took the kitchen a couple of minutes to saute Lynn's shrimp, and when those perfectly cooked shrimp sauteed with olive oil and garlic were poured over the capellini, it was great. It provided the missing element to the dish.
Despite some problems on the freeway going to and from Flagstaff, Saturday was very good. I can't wait to see the finished rings and tonight my dinner is Lynn's leftover capellini, which should be even better since it's flavors have had a chance to marry.
Since I finally finished reading "The Botany of Desire", I've needed some reading material for when I smoke a cigar on the patio. Well my mom provided a solution; she had a copy of "English Grammar for Dummies" that I could borrow. One of my serious pet peeves is reading someones' web site and having to deal with their bad spelling, nonexistent punctuation, and obvious lack of proofreading, so I've been meaning to brush up on my grammar. I would hate to be a grammar hypocrite.
After reading through the punctuation sections (I skipped all the other stuff because I enjoy abusing the English language), it looks like I haven't been doing too many grammatically incorrect things. At least as far as I can tell.
One of my serious, but deliberate, grammar errors is putting quotes around the titles of books and movies when they should be italicized or underlined. Well underlines usually mean links on the web and I've noticed that it's too hard to see italicized text on web sites that use small, san serif fonts (like mine), so my titles are quoted. I don't think anyone really cares anyway.
Today I got a call from Wil and it turns out there was a problem with the opal being used for our rings. It would seem that the petrified wood in the opal which made that piece really beautiful also made it more fragile. When they started cutting the opal to fit the shape of the inlay, the opal kept fracturing into smaller pieces, and they don't have enough usable opal for all three rings. They have enough to do Lynn's rings, but not mine. Lynn wants all three rings to match so we're going up to Flagstaff tomorrow to choose a different stone.
I'm disappointed. The opal we chose was very blue, and that's why we went with the white gold settings. As best as I can remember, all of Wil's other opal pieces are green. I don't like the green opal/white gold combination nearly as much as the blue opal/white gold combination. What's worse is that I also thought our piece was the best one he had. I don't know if I'll be really happy with anything less.
[I just spoke with Lynn and she'll be happy with whatever, so long as both rings match. She doesn't mind green opal and she thinks the green/silver combination will look good. I'm happy she's not too disappointed.]
This morning I turned on the Sundance channel and caught the last 20 minutes of the documentary "Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse" ["The Gleaners & I"]. The film is about scavengers in France, and the last twenty minutes were enough to convince me to see the entire movie. Here's an example of why I thought it was interesting.
[You see a guy picking through garbage.]
Director: "He picked up an empty clock, and put it back. I put the clock in my bag and took it home."
[You see the clock on the mantle.]
Director: "A clock with no hands is my sort of thing. I like not being able to watch time fly by."
Sounds like my sort of movie.
Last night was a lousy movie night. We watched two films and both of them were hard to watch all the way through. We started with Kurosawa's "Kakushi Toride no San Akunin" ["The Hidden Fortress"]. I had high hopes after just recently watching "Rashomon" for the first time, but instead I was severely disappointed. The two farmers who take up far more screen time than they should were so annoying! I wanted to strangle them more than a few times, and I was hoping that General Tadokoro might do it on screen. Ultimately I didn't find anything redeeming in this movie. I didn't think the story or characters were really compelling. There were a couple of really funny moments, but that was it.
I'm used to watching strange movies, but "The Price of Milk" was a little more strange than I could handle. I found a little more to like in this movie than the Kurosawa one though. The cinematography was unique; the colors were really saturated, and there were a lot of primary colors in the film to show off the saturation. There were also a lot of very funny moments in the film. The big problem I had with the film though was that it was a little too much like watching someone go crazy. Another thing I didn't like was that most of the characters were pretty stupid. They didn't seem to get any more intelligent by the end either.
Speaking of last night, I recently watched the film "Last Night" again. Now that's a great movie. The story and cinematography are both unique, and the characters seem very real. The premise is that if you knew the world was going to end, how would you spend your last night? The movie follows a few people around to find out. I'm not going to say anymore since I think that's already more information than you should know when you see the movie for the first time.
So the hotel question has finally been answered. Olivier House actually got around to returning my email, and they have a really good rate for their suites, so that's where we're staying. (You know, The Andrew Jackson never answered me. That might have cost them the reservation.)
Today Dan, one of my best friends, sent me an email saying that he's having a serious health issue right now. I hope it doesn't stay serious.
I figured since I hardly mention other people, I would give a quick update of what's happening with some of the people important to me (and my cousin too).
Jason, my cousin, just had his second kid. A son he's decided to name "Jameson". My aunt Zell is supposed to be throwing him a baby shower this Sunday.
My mom leaves for Belize this Monday. She's going to see my uncle Calvin since he's got cancer and the health care in Belize isn't the best.
Steve leaves for Japan next Sunday. He's going to school for a year. I hope he doesn't decide to stay there. You should be able to find trip updates from Steve at http://steve.bigmarbles.com. (I promise I'll get around to doing something with that site sometime soon.) [This text has been left for archive purposes, but Steve is using his Geocities URL so I'll be getting rid of the steve.bigmarbles.com subdomain.]
That's all I can think of.
Damn, you'd think I've never proofread my own stuff! Today I've found all sorts of words missing in sentences on my web pages. It's strange to think about "finding" that something is "missing" since it doesn't sound like it should make sense. It's probably one of those things that throws non-native English speakers for a loop (much like the idiom I just used). Did I mention I signed up for JPN102 for the fall semester? I hope the instructor isn't Moeur this semester. As much as I want to take the class, I refuse to take Japanese with someone who's Japanese sounds so bad that it's painful to listen to. I may take fencing this semester so I can learn to inflict some rapier pain, but I'm not sure since I really need to start working out again. Today I noticed a scale in the employee lounge (who knows what it's doing there) and found out I weight 185. That's a little heavy for me. When I was in highschool the most I ever weighed was 175, and that's when I was working out daily. Even fairly recently I weighed 180, but I had a lot more muscle to show for it. Too bad proofreading doesn't develop good pecs.
This morning I thought I'd try something different so I sprayed on a little of Lynn's CK Be. (You know CK Be, the stuff advertised for you to "be yourself", but it's ambiguous enough to be worn by everyone [man or woman] so you can all be yourself at the same time by wearing the same cologne.) I normally like Calvin Klein scents, but this stuff reeks on me. I hate it so of course it's 3 o'clock in the afternoon and I'm still smelling it. What's worse is that it's difficult for me to concentrate on work with the scent of Lemon Pledge assaulting my nose.
This reminds me why I'm picky about colognes.
[I decided to do something about the CK Be instead of just complaining, so I just went to the bathroom and tried to wipe the horrid stuff off with a wet paper towel. So far it seems to have been succesful, but I didn't doubt it would be since it was only one tiny squirt that caused this entire situation.]
Since I'm not buying cigars right now, I had to find something else to focus my attention on, so I turned to wine. The Iron Horse that I bought in Flagstaff is a blanc de blancs, which means it's made completely from Chardonnay instead of the usual champagne blend of Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, and Chardonnay. I'm pretty new to champagne, and wines in general, and I wasn't sure I would be able to taste the difference between a blanc de blancs and a regular champagne, so I thought it would be a good idea to get familiar with Chardonnays. Last night we were at CostCo and it seemed like a convenient time to buy some Chardonnay, so I looked around and picked up two bottles: a Beringer 1999 Napa County Chardonnay, and a Simi 2000 Sonoma County Chardonnay. While I was looking I found something completely unexpected sitting in the bins too; two bottles of Robert Eymael "Monchhof Estate" 2001 Rieslings! (That was the wine we had in Las Vegas that I totally loved.) The problem was that even though the two bottles were both 2001 Rieslings, they were different styles of Riesling wines. I wasn't sure which one to get, so I got both. (It turns out they were really reasonable anyway.)
Final wine tally: I have the four bottles that I bought last night, plus the Iron Horse, plus some dessert Riesling and a red wine that Lynn wanted to try that we picked up at Cost Plus a while back. That's a lot for someone who doesn't even really like wine. At least I'm done buying wine too.
Now what? We do need to get Steve saked up for his trip to Japan...
We went to Flagstaff Saturday to check out the wax models for our rings. Wil McNabb moved his shop since we were there last time, but it was easy to find. Wil showed us the three dark blue wax models of our rings, and they looked great. We approved the final casting and Wil said the rings should be done next weekend. Before we left I asked Wil about the casting process because Lynn wanted to know, but she spaced asking him about it. He started to explain that it was made using the lost wax process and invited us into his workshop and showed us everything involved in the process. It was unexpected that he showed us his equipment while he explained the process, since I thought he'd give us a quick two minute explanation. It was also very cool to see how excited he was to share information about his chosen profession. [Here's a web page that explains the process, but not nearly as well.]
[Want to read another story about a custom engagement ring then check out My Engagement Ring!]
After we left Wil's shop we stopped at Vino Loco (where we picked up the bottle of Argyle) and got a bottle of Iron Horse 1991 Blanc de Blancs (champagne). I hope it's good.
Before we left Flag we had lunch at Asian Gourmet. We started with hot and sour soup and crab puffs. The crab puffs were pretty good, but the hot and sour soup almost made me gag on the first spoonful. It tasted like a lot of vinegar and white pepper, both flavors I'm not very fond of. Even though it tasted horrible the first time, I like to be thorough so I had a second spoonful and it tasted a lot better; the white pepper and vinegar flavors seemed a lot more subdued. I actually ended up enjoying it after a couple more spoonfuls.
For the entrees I had sauteed spicy shrimp and Lynn ordered the pepper beef ("because it's hard to mess up"). Well the pepper beef was indeed messed up; it was far too salty to really eat much less enjoy. (Hard to screw up is a bad reason to order something since it's just a challenge for something to be horribly wrong.) Anyway, the sauteed spicy shrimp wasn't what I expected, but really good. The shrimp were battered and fried with some dried chile and served over sauteed onions, green onions, bell peppers, and carrots. The batter was very similar to tempura batter and it was very light and delicious, but it was a little salty too.
Last time I was at Asian Gourmet I tried to order the Chinese donuts for dessert, but they didn't have the ingredients for them. This time they did and they weren't disappointing. The donuts were fluffy little balls of fried dough that were coated in sugar. They reminded me of beignets, but fluffier. After that large lunch we couldn't eat very many of the ten donuts that our order consisted of, so we took the rest of them back with us to Phoenix and had them for breakfast this morning.
So I'm agonizing over a hotel choice for my next New Orleans trip. Right now I'm down to two places: one, the Andrew Jackson (been there, loved that), and two, the Olivier House (highly recommended). It may just come down to which one is cheaper. We'll see.
I've seen a lot of movies lately that I haven't written any reviews for, so tonight is speed movie review night.
"Rashomon" was made in 1950, but it's still unique today. The movie tells the same story from four different points of view, and is depressing in it's examination in human nature and human weaknesses. It's a great movie that doesn't seem great immediately, but it's one I know I'll be watching again to try and catch the nuances.
Movie: "Vénus Beaut?(Institut)" ["Venus Beauty Institute"]
"Venus Beauty Institute" in a nutshell is a French romantic comedy that's better than most films of the romantic comedy genre. It's a good film to watch if you're into that sort of thing.
"Fall" is a tough movie for me to review because there were some superficial things I liked about it (kinky sex [which you don't get to see], some nice bits of poetry, and a line I've probably said in real life [something like "I don't think we should talk to each other until we've eaten."]), but ultimately I hated the ending, which to me, made the entire movie pointless. Looking at IMDB it's obvious that most people either love or hate this movie. I thought it was decent, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Movies: "ˇÁtame!" ["Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!"] & "Carne Trémula" ["Live Flesh"]
"Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" and "Live Flesh" are two movies by the same writer/director that seem to center on strange guys and the nutty women who love them. They're pretty good, but not great. While both are odd, I thought "Live Flesh" was better than "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!". They're good if you're in the mood for a change of pace.
I finally finished my Las Vegas 04/02 trip page. Yay!
I know I'm cut out to be a parent yet. Cats are like kids and I'm already finding myself disliking the bad kid. Lynn has two cats and one is definitely the good cat (Isis) and the other is naturally the bad cat (Tiger). Tiger is either incredibly stubborn or incredibly stupid. He knows when he's doing something he shouldn't, and he runs when he knows punishment is coming. That's not that unusual or bad except that he'll turn around and attempt do it again as soon as my back is turned. I've been tempted to get a Nerf Ballzooka (the manual one, not the mechanical piece of crap) so as soon as I catch Tiger doing something I can crank a barrage of foam Nerf balls at him. (The balls don't hurt since they're foam, but the noise that thing makes is enough to put fear in anyone or anything that's not expecting it.) I figure that would give him something to think about next time he attempts to repeat whatever he just did. That's not so bad, but I almost feel like I'd be lucky if it made him want to avoid me too. At least now I'm aware of how I'm beginning to feel about Tiger and I'll try to hate the cat.
Now I see how parents can have favorites.
This Saturday we're going up to Flagstaff to look at the wax models of our rings and approve the final casting. I can't wait to see them.
Gordon, a friend of mine, sent an email about his name change to everyone at work the other day. That's not very unusual since people do it all the time, but his inclusion of a picture was definitely a first.
Please note that my name has changed from Gordon X to Gordon Y.Have fantastic day,
--Gordon
The funny thing is Gordon's a graphic designer and he "improved" his picture. (I guess I'd doctor my picture too if I had the skills.) I liked his new and improved picture (there's some sort of retro quality about it), so I asked him if I could use it. Here's his response.
Woooooo, not on the X rated channel.Mario wrote:
> I like the photo. Can I use it on a web site?
So now I'm officially no longer buying cigars for a good while. Not only is my humidor filled to capacity, but both humidors will be filled to capacity when I get my last shipment of cigars. The other day Erin accused me of being addicted. When I countered with the "but I don't smoke that often" argument, here's what she wrote me.
*laugh*Daily intake has nothing to do with it. You like cigars so much you bought them their own climate controlled housing and invested hundreds of dollars in purchases. It would physically hurt you to take that humidor with all your "favorite" cigars and throw it in the lake, wouldn't it? And, don't tell me it would only hurt because of the exorbitant amount of money you've invested... you want those cigars. You have to have them all lined up according to your own little system. You've written a web page about them. You critique them.THEY GOT YOU, MAN !!!
Last night after dinner I decided that it would be a good time to try the Argyle 1997 Brut Willamette Valley (champagne) that we got up in Flagstaff. That was a mistake because the champagne (or sparkling wine if you want to be completely correct) was pretty tasty. It had an apple flavor that was just a little bitter and a little crisp. It was definitely one of the better champagnes I've tasted.
Since I liked it I had just a little over two glasses in less than an hour. (I'm a lightweight so two glasses in a short period of time is a lot for me.) By the time I was ready to go to sleep my head was throbbing and I felt slightly nauseous. I took an aspirin to get rid of the headache, but while my stomach was still a little upset I decided it'd be better to be close to the toilet. Eventually I actually got to sleep in my own bed instead of the bathroom floor.
This morning Lynn woke up with a headache. She only had a glass and a half and there were times when she's drunk much more and not had any problems in the morning. I'm wondering if there's something about this particular champagne that just didn't agree with us.
I've now realized that having the capacity to store more than a few cigars changes you from a cigar smoker to a cigar collector. It can be a good thing in the respect that you save a lot of money*. Even buying five cigars can have a significantly cheaper cost per cigar than buying one.
The only negative aspect is that collectors have a habit of buying more than they need. Much more. The collector is always acquiring, but usually not consuming at nearly the same rate. I'm not sure why that is, but I think it's the goal of having the perfect cigar for any given mood, whim, or occasion. I'm not sure if that's it, but I'm sure there are other collectors who would understand.
This weekend I must have been feeling Korean. Friday night we went out to dinner at my favorite Korean restaurant on the east side of Phoenix, Arisoo, and had a great meal. We had something that's like kalbi, but without the bones, and a cold noodle dish I've never had before. The kalbi like thing was great, but I've had it before and knew it was great. The noodle dish consisted of thin rice noodles in a red chile sauce, with a couple slices of beef, radish, and cucumber. I knew the dish was served cold, but I didn't expect it to have ice in it! It was a new experience eating something that was spicy as hell, and cold at the same time. I enjoyed it, but even with my tolerance for pepper I had a problem eating it.
Saturday afternoon I watched "Chunhyang", a Korean movie. It's actually a classic love story with some nice moral lessons thrown in to boot. (Amazingly, Disney has yet to make it into a cartoon.) Since the story itself is fairly universal, the director came up with a unique way of telling the story. The movie started with a lone man on stage with a spotlight on him. He started singing and even though I didn't understand the words (which were Korean and weren't subtitled) there was something about the meter and repetition of the sounds that drew me into the story, and introduced the odd structure of the storytelling. This went on for about a minute, and the man and the stage melted away into a scene of an older Korea with the man's voice still singing the narration. Throughout the rest of the movie you would hear the singing narrative and the scene would occasionally fade to the man on the stage looking out at the audience. It was surreal watching a period piece and then seeing the audiences' reaction as the man sang the story with his drum accompaniment. I would definitely recommend watching this movie.
Saturday night we had dinner at Takamatsu, my favorite Korean restaurant on the west side of Phoenix. This time we had a combination of Korean and Japanese food. Dinner started with a variety of sushi: spicy tuna roll, spicy scallop roll, yellow tail roll, a royal California roll (which is a CA roll that's battered and deep fried), and a Philly roll. My favorite was the spicy tuna roll, closely followed by the spicy scallop roll. I've never been able to get into yellow tail, Philly rolls are unnatural, and the the royal CA roll sounded better than it tasted. We also had a little cold sake with our sushi. The brand was Hakutsuru and it totally kicked butt! It was amazingly smooth, and really didn't have a bite. For dinner we had kalbi and skirt steak. The kalbi was great, but I didn't really care for the skirt steak. Oh well, at least I know they make some good sushi now.
Right now I'm on the patio having just finished smoking a cigar and reading. While I was doing that I was feeling especially contemplative and I just felt like writing it down. I was going to handwrite this on the patio so that I wouldn't lose any of the "magic" of the moment, but that moment's already passed. The air is now full of the sounds of children playing in the pool, and the humidity has taken on an oppressive feel. I'm going indoors to try and capture my thoughts as best I can.
This afternoon I went outside to smoke a cigar and read from Michael Pollan's "The Botany of Desire". I sat down, lit my cigar, and started reading the chapter on marijuana. After I blew out a mouthful of smoke, I watched the milky blue smoke drift from the lit end of the cigar and worm it's way toward the ground. This was a little unusual since the smoke typically floats up. Then I became aware of the humidity and the stillness of everything. One of my memories came to me; I'd been here before. Not this place per se, but this environment: the temperature and humidity precisely at the right combination to feel good even without breeze, the lack of noise except for the gurgling of falling water, sitting on a patio, and smoking a cigar. There were a couple of times in New Orleans that were exactly like that. One night last December when I was smoking a cigar by myself in the courtyard of The Andrew Jackson and another during Mardi Gras when I sat in the courtyard of The "W" while writing notes about my trip.
I sat there and wondered if this wasn't the appeal of travel for me; the ability to be instantly transported to another place and time by the correct combination of environmental elements. If that's the case I hoped that I would have an entire catalogue of memories which could intrude on me any time they wanted to.
I returned my attention back to my cigar and it's smoke, and hoped a breeze would come along and lift the smoke skywards, where it belonged. And keep me from accidentally inhaling it too. I looked at the cigar with it's firey red ring of burning tobacco, brilliantly blue smoke (almost purple from the right angle), and light brown smoke barely escaping the cut end. I took a drag and exhaled upward, examining the grey smoke being issued from my mouth. (Odd that the smoke has so many different colors isn't it?)
I started reading about the effects marijuana has on memory and perception and started thinking about my own memory. Lynn once asked me how I remember things, and I told her that I remember things sort of like text descriptions. I don't see past events when I think of them so much as remember detailed descriptions. (That's one of the reasons I like writing about my experiences; it's like transferring my memories to a more permanent medium than my head.) She mentioned that she remembers things as images rather than text. I thought it was unusual that two people can remember things in a completely different way, but I guess I had never thought about it before. Lynn then asked me if I dream in text too and I told her that those appeared, and when I do remember them, are remembered, as images. I guess that's even weirder. While reading the book Michael Pollan talked about the discovery of an entire network of cannabinoid receptors in the body, the effects of cannbinoids, and what their importance to our well being might be.
While thinking about the effects of marijuana, I noticed that I was feeling the effects of the cigar. Most of the cigars I smoke don't effect me any way other than the relaxation I derive from the actual act of smoking a cigar, but this particular cigar is very potent. I could feel the liquid filling my eyes and the fuzziness surrounding my head. Lynn recently asked me if I'd felt the effect of cigars. I told her I had and she said that she was beginning to enjoy it. That bothered me since nicotine is addictive and a bad habit, but I was beginning to understand the appeal of a cigar high. It was like drinking alcohol without the physical or mental impairment. I was beginning to like it, but I'm not about to make a habit of it.
I read some more about the importance of forgetting, and how experience is dulled by the shroud of memory that everything is perceived through. It was very interesting, and as I was reading about the cacophony of sensory information we have to deal with at every given moment and why our mechanism to filter and forget is important, I smelled that my cigar was about to go out. It was giving off a soap scent that I recognized. (Some people perceive it as a chemical smell, but some people don't perceive it at all.) I took a drag and barely got any smoke. There wasn't any smoke coming from the lit end either. It took a couple more hard drags for the cigar to return to life.
I returned my attention to my book and continued reading.
There is another word for this extremist noticing—this sense of first sight unencumbered by knowingness, by the already-been-theres and seen-thats of the adult mind—and that word, of course is wonder.Memory is the enemy of wonder, which abides nowhere else but in the present. This is why, unless you are a child, wonder depends on forgetting—on a process, that is, of subtraction. Ordinarily we think of drug experiences as additive—it's often said that drugs "distort" normal perceptions and augment the data of the senses (adding hallucinations, say), but it may be that very opposite is true—that they work by subtracting some of the filters that consciousness normally interposes between us and the world.
I was ten pages within my goal of finishing the chapter, but my cigar was almost finished. There were weak wisps of light brown smoke coming from it, and it didn't look good so I took one last drag, and let it gracefully go out on it's own. I followed it up with the last swig of my second Coke. I proceeded to take out a piece of paper and I was about to start writing when I became aware that being out on the patio wasn't as comfortable as when I first sat down.
You see conspiracies when your favorite waiter gets fired. In Creole contretemps long time patrons of Galatoire's express their disbelief that one of their favorite waiters got fired for sexual harrassment. It even caused them to speculate of a conspiracy created by Galatoire's General Manager to demonstrate his power to the waiters.
Whatever. If this is the sort of thing high society does to keep itself occupied, then I don't want anything to do with it. Of course Phoenix doesn't have 100 year old restuarants with career waiters, but still...
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Ok, this image is really pointless, except that I just find it amusing. I can almost hear the disco house music playing now.
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Did I say something about looking for new information and not finding it??? Well I was wrong. I checked out Chowhound.com, a food web site that I haven't looked at before, and found some restaurants I want to go to in December, and even a discount hotel reservation site that looks really good (Quikbook). It's good to be wrong when you're feeling pessimistic.
So it's that time again. It's the "I'm going to New Orleans in December, but I'll obsessively look for new NO information right now (that I know I won't find anyway)" time. At least I know it'll pass in a couple of days. Of course I also know that the week before my trip I'll probably be useless at work too. There's something to be said for having travel traditions.
First it started with people stupid enough to pass a smoking ban in Tempe (Tempe passes smoking ban). [People are too stupid to decide for themselves if they can be in places where second hand smoke is so now that choice is taken away for everyone in Tempe.]
The entertainment industry has asserted that their rights are more important than the rights of US citizens and they're looking to be exempt from the law in their copyright enforcement (Hollywood hacking bill hits House). [That's ok though because you're not infringing on the RIAA's or MPAA's copyrights right? What if they willingly compromise and destroy your computer and you're innocent? Who can you take it up with when they're judge, jury, executioner, and exempt from the laws that make it illegal for someone else to do the exact same thing to you? They might give you an apology.]
The agriculture industry has also asserted that their rights to grow genetically modified organisms [foods] (GMOs) without public knowledge is more important than labeling GMOs so consumers have a choice whether they want to eat them or not (The Big Experiment and even better U.S. Pressures Europe to Drop GMO Labeling Rules). [The agricultural community is afraid that by labeling GMOs, people might consider GMOs bad. GMOs haven't been proven unsafe, but they haven't been proven safe either. I'm betting on unsafe. Every time an artificial sweetener is created, eventually long time effects are discovered.]
Finally, to top everything else off, the government is creating a huge spy network so they can investigate "suspicious" activities (US planning to recruit one in 24 Americans as citizen spies). [If that's not scary, I don't know what is. This spy network may start with trying to fight terrorism, but what if it evolves to include "undemocratic" activities? These types of things usually start with good intentions... anyway, the Citizen Corps official site.]
Personally I don't feel:
This is from an email I received, this sounds like a really good idea to me. I'm one of those people who's not too happy to pick up dead, twitching roaches.
A new product to get rid of cockroaches has appeared on the Japanese market, and has quickly grabbed 20% of the market. It's called Goki-Bao, and it was developed by a company that listened to feedback from Japanese housewives, who had very strong ideas about what they wanted in an anti-cockroach product. A kind of tough plastic similar to Silly String, it shoots out of the can in a liquid form but quickly hardens, allowing you to trap fleeing roaches in a white cocoon, and then pick the whole mess up and throw it in the trash can. Because Japanese housewives with children said they didn't want to use poisons at home, the product contains no actual insecticide -- the insect suffocates inside the cocoon. Considering some of the HUGE cockroaches they have in Japan, I am glad of this new development. Hopefully the new product will find its way to other countries soon.
The lamb chops turned out pretty well. It would seem that honey and lamb go together.
Today I tried a banana flavored grass jelly drink that seems to be popular with Vietnamese people. I've tried the regular flavored grass jelly drink once before, but it's odd "green" flavor was more than I could take. The banana flavor was a little easier to take since it tasted like banana bubblegum or banana Laffy Taffy. There were still the little bits of chewy grass jelly to deal with, but I started getting used to them. I never did figure out if I could drink it all or not though because I got a raging headache (probably due to the mildew smell in the office today) and left work early. Oh well, it's not like I was crazy over it or anything.
This morning I decided to marinade some lamb chops, but I wasn't sure what to use. I remembered a lamb marinade from "The Barbecue! Bible" which called for onion juice. There was more to it than that, but that's all I could remember. Well, I shredded an onion (basically juicing it), added a little bit of Worcester sauce, two cloves of garlic, salt, and some pepper. I decided it needed something else so I added the juice of one lime. Since there was a ton of acid in it I thought that something sweet would help balance it out so I added a healthy amount of honey. Not quite satisfied with just honey I decided a little cinnamon would be good too (hopefully it's not recognizable as cinnamon though). The last thing I added was a tiny bit of nutmeg. I'm not sure why other than when you bake with cinnamon, you usually add a little nutmeg too. Anyway the marinade smelled like a real mess. I hope it at least doesn't taste bad.
Just yesterday I was on Megatokyo, my favorite web site, and Dom, one of the guys associated with the site, had written something that shocked me. He gave the price that one of Piro's, the web comic's artist, drawings went for at a anime convention auction ($1750) and the fact that that amount, as large as it was, still didn't cover the cost of hosting the site. (I went back to Megatokyo today and noticed that all mention of the hosting costs had been removed. I'm betting that Piro didn't want that made public.) I was shocked that it costs so much to host Megatokyo. I knew it was popular, but I had no idea that it was that popular.
Anyway, Piro has never really asked for donations to cover hosting costs, even though it's now obvious that they're really expensive. All he's ever asked for is that people show their support by purchasing merchandise. I love his web comic, but I'd just never gotten around to buying anything. After seeing the hosting costs I felt guilty that I hadn't done the one thing he's requested, so yesterday I decided to do my part and buy some stuff. I doubt it'll be much of a contribution (since I can't imagine that there's more than a couple of dollars profit on any particular item), but it's something.
Today I now feel a certain sense of responsibility to make sure that the web sites I frequent actually stay up. Of course the only other site I frequent that much is the Herfer's Paradise bulletin board, which I just contributed to today.
So I've got my airline tickets for my December New Orleans (NO) trip and I'm getting excited about it. This probably won't be my last NO trip like I thought, but I may not be able to take another for a couple of years. We'll see what happens.
This weekend I was listening to some program on Public Radio International (PRI) (basically the same thing as NPR) which was some lady reciting an essay she wrote about her life. It was about her mom trying to dress her up when she was a kid, and her hating it. She talked about how she looks tiny, cute, has a squeaky voice, and appears as unthreatening as anyone can so she got a goth makeover to look more menacing. It was pretty funny and reminded me of how much I liked Henry Rollins' spoken word stuff. It's amazing how different hearing someone's story in their own words is from reading it. Who knows, I may put something like that on my web site some day.
Of I may try it and decide my voice sounds too dopey and never put it online.
I never even knew the universe had a color but according to this article "The Universe is not turquoise - it's beige". Who knew the universe preferred earth tones? What happened to black?
I think both of Lynn's cats are nuts, but this morning I would say Isis (the female cat) was being a little more odd than normal. Isis has a bad habit of wanting to be petted while I'm in the bathroom trying to get ready for work. Since I hardly ever wake up on time this is probably the most inconvenient time for me to pet the cat, so of course it's really the only time she's interested. Normally she'll meow once or twice and if I leave her alone she'll just lay there and not bother me anymore. This morning I wouldn't pet her (namely because I was going to be late for work) and this cat wouldn't take no for an answer. Isis isn't a very vocal cat, but this morning she just wouldn't stop with her pleading meowing. Not surprisingly I couldn't take it and I pet her just to keep her quiet for a little while and somehow I still managed to make it to work on time.
I hope when I'm a dad I won't give in that easily.
Rancho de Tia Rosa was highly recommended to me so we finally had dinner there the other night. Dinner started with fresh chips and two kinds of salsa. I totally dug their green tomatillo salsa because of its slight sweetness, while my dinner companion liked their red salsa for it's smokey flavor.
Our entrees were the pork adobada and carne asada. The pork adobada was tasty, but it was just one pork chop. I was expecting chucks of meat and I wasn't happy about paying $12 for one pork chop. There was more of the carne asada, which was delicious if lacking guacamole.
For dessert we had the homemade vanilla ice cream with fresh berries. I was happy since it's the dessert I wish that most restaurants that actually make their own ice cream would have on their menu instead of screwing the ice cream up by doing other things with it that don't taste good. Ice cream with berries is simple, elegant, and delicious. Their ice cream was delicious, and a pleasant surprise, the raspberries they served with it were actually ripe. That's the first time that's ever happened.
Needless to say Rancho de Tia Rosa has worked it's way into my restaurant rotation.
Last night I missed Ethereal, but I heard I didn't miss much. I did catch Soloman, and his set sucked. His flow, mixing, and track selection just weren't good at all. Dieselboy started off ok, but after about 45 minutes the set got pretty good. It wasn't the best set I've heard Dieselboy spin before though.
Tonight is Ethereal and Dieselboy @ Freedom. Hope I actually make it.
Lately I've been getting lots of headaches, which is unusual since I almost never get headaches. The thought that it might be the precursor of a tumor has occurred to me, but a lot of people said it might just be my glasses. Since I like that possibility more than the one that includes me dying, I might get some new glasses this weekend and we'll see if the headaches continue. (I need new glasses anyway. It's been years since I've had a new pair.)
After almost a year I've finally finished the text for my Europe trip. All I need to do now it to print it and proof it. Then I can start adding pictures. (Of course I still have another trip page that still needs pictures too, so who knows how soon I'm going to get around to either one.)
Me and Lynn had dinner delivered to us from Rosalee's Italian restaurant this weekend. They say they have been voted Best of Phoenix four years in a row. I didn't know that when we ordered, but knowing that just makes them ten times more disappointing. Their food just was not good. Not one thing.
Their garlic bread was really light and fluffy, like a hamburger bun and they didn't even use real garlic on them. Their homemade Italian dressing had too much garlic to enjoy (and I love garlic). The minestrone soup was thin and weak. Lynn had the pollo taormina and I had the baked mostaccioli con formaggion with meat sauce. There was a flavor in Lynn's dish that I couldn't figure out, but I didn't like. Lynn described the flavor as peas, which was accurate (even though the dish didn't have peas in it) and pretty sad since neither of us likes peas. My dish was ok. The meat sauce tasted more of bread crumbs than meat. Finally, we had a cannoli for dessert. Both the filling and the wafer tasted wrong to me and I stopped eating it after my first bite. Lynn ended up tossing it.
I really don't know how these people got voted Best of Phoenix for four years. I couldn't even find one thing that I really liked.
My Europe trip page is coming along, but I still have one day left to write about. I also still need to write about the "Liechtenstein Incident".
I tried to load all the new cigars in the humidor, but I had to throw about 11 cigars in my homemade one because they wouldn't all fit in the new one. Maybe I need to smoke smaller cigars?
http://steve.bigmarbles.com - A place just for Steve (and hopefully some good stories while he's in Japan). [This text has been left for archive purposes, but Steve is using his Geocities URL so I'll be getting rid of the steve.bigmarbles.com subdomain.]
I got all sorts of cigars in the mail today! It's like Christmas. And there weren't any signs of the dreaded tobacco beetle.
Last night me and Steve went to Gameworks to finally put "House of the Dead 2" out of it's misery. Steve had a damn good idea to account for the problem of the machine rejecting the card just long enough so that we can't continue the game; keep loading on credits during the cut scenes. That worked really well until when we were on the last stage the machine ate one of the cards and wouldn't give us any more credits until the card was removed. I thought we already had more than enough credits to finish the game, but while we were fighting the last guy they ran out. : (
Maybe I was just never meant to finish the game.
This last weekend I saw a strange movie called "Alphaville, a Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution". It was old, black & white, French, and science fiction!? In the beginning it looked like a film noir detective movie, but it didn't take long before you realized that things weren't normal. The movie is about Lemmy Caution, a secret agent, sent to Alphaville to kidnap (or kill) a scientist. The movie gets weird, funny, philosophical, political, and cheesy, in a package that's not quite neat, but very interesting. A movie definitely worth seeing, if only for the rarity of French science fiction.
"You can't talk to a psycho like a normal human being."
-Poe "Trigger Happy Jack (Drive By A Go-Go)"
13 more cigars coming to me. I think I'm done now.
10 more cigars coming to me.
The problem with having a 100 cigar capacity humidor is the feeling of being obligated to fill it. I want to fill it up some but I don't like the idea of paying full retail, so luckily I heard about CigarBid.com on Herfer's Paradise and I've got some good cigars for less than $3 a stick. Not bad. Of course the thread on Herfer's Paradise where they mentioned CigarBid had to do with receiving cigars from CigarBid that were ruined by tobacco beetles. (In case you don't know, tobacco beetles eat tobacco and can easily destroy every cigar in your humidor so they're very serious.)
I should receive my cigars this weekend so we'll how this turns out.
This weekend I got a chance to see "Reign of Fire". Before I even saw the movie I figured it would either be lots of fun or one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Well, it turns out the movie was highly entertaining. The action and the special effects were good. There were holes in the story, but what do you expect for a movie about dragons destroying the Earth?
[Email I sent to Steve]
At least you'll be able to afford beer in Japan. ; )The war for control of Japan's beer market continues to rage. The two biggest companies, Asahi and Kirin, keep taking the lead back from each other, as each tries to come up with new ways to steal market share from their rival. Currently, Asahi has 39 per cent of the market, and Kirin 35 per cent. The market has undergone many changes since the emergence of happo-shu, a kind of beer that is made slightly differently than normal beer, although I don't understand the difference at all (happo-shu just tastes like beer to me, although it's not terribly good). Because the taxes on happo-shu are much lower than on beer, it's much cheaper for consumers, and this has sparked a price war that has brought the prices of virtually all alcoholic beverages down to as much as half what they were a few years ago, contributing to Japan's deflationary spiral. The current price leader is Suntory, though, with their new "Ad Draft Happo-shu." To lower the cost of the beer, other companies can advertise right on the front of the can. It's about $1.10 a can.
[Steve's reply]
Dude, right on. I like how they let other companies
advertise on the front of their can. If I were
Asahi I'd buy space on the Kirin beer cans. ;)
Just like how Bank of America should put a machine
at the Bank One Ballpark.
This weekend we went up to Flagstaff to get the rings ordered. We should be able to pick them up in about three weeks. I can't wait to see them.
I also got a bottle of Momokawa "Pearl" and Argyle 1997 Brut Willamette Valley (champagne). We haven't opened the Arygle yet, but we did try the Momokawa. "Pearl" is a nigori sake, which means it has a large amount of tiny rice particles floating in it, which makes it a little more sweeter and a little more alcoholic than normal sake (at 18%). Because of the extra alcohol it's not quite as smooth as some sakes, but the sweetness and the somewhat fruity (like banana) aftertaste more than makes up for it. I think I'm going to start a wine page under the vice section.
Today is a clean up day; hopefull we actually get some cleaning done.
A couple of us got together last night to try to learn how to play mahjong. What a disaster. I think the secret is having someone there who already knows how to play the game.
Have you ever wondered why inflammable and flammable mean the same thing? If you have, the answer's in this Usage Note at Dictionary.com.
Woo hoo! I finished one more day on my Europe page.
I haven't written much lately, but I think it's due to the fact that I'm working on my Europe page and I don't really feel like writing about anything else. The reminiscence brought up by the sprinkling the other day still hasn't dissipated. I should write about two movies I've seen recently, "Fall" and "Live Flesh", but I just can't focus enough to write about them. Hopefully I'll get my Europe page actually completed some time soon; I still have 5 days left to write about, but it goes pretty fast when I have time to focus.
I've tried sake a few times, but it didn't taste very good so I've been reluctant to go out of my way to try sake. The first time I really drank sake was on during my Las Vegas trip in April. We were at Tsunami and ordered a flight of Moonstone infused sakes. [It said Momokawa on the menu but I now know it's really Moonstone, but that's not really important except for the sake of accuracy.] A couple of the sake flavors were really good and they were convincing enough for me to want to buy some sake.
Not that long after our trip in April we went to Lee Lee asian market and bought a couple of bottles of sake. One of the bottles was Y "Rain" (a daiginjo [ultra-premium] which is ginger infused) and the other was one of the sakes we had in Vegas, Moonstone "Raspberry". It didn't take long for us to try "Rain", but we really didn't care for it.
It took a while, but we finally got around to the "Raspberry" sake this weekend. It was damn tasty and made a sake drinker out of me. Something that surprised me though is that Momokawa, Moonstone, and Y are all made by the same kura [brewery], SakeOne. Today I checked out their web site and picked up a little sake education. Now that I know just enough to be dangerous I can't wait to try some more sakes.
Tonight my humidor was steady at 70% humidity so I took the majority of my cigars and placed them in the new humidor. It wasn't dramatic and didn't involve breaking bottles of champagne, but the new humidor is now christened.
I'm starting to plan my annual December trip to New Orleans and I'm starting to get excited about it. I'm glad my enthusiasm for the place has returned.
I picked up my humidor from the post office this last Saturday. It was everything I expected. Right now it's charging (absorbing humidity), but this morning when I checked it was at an almost perfect 69% humidity so I should be able to start putting cigars in it as soon as tonight.
Have you ever thought using chop sticks with your left hand when you're right-handed was a good idea? I just made that mistake. I had some left over fish cakes and they were on the left side of my desk (the only side that's somewhat clean) so I thought I'd try eating them with my chop sticks in my left hand (it seemed convenient). I guess the fact that I couldn't even hold my chop sticks correctly should have clued me in to the fact that it was not going to be easy or convenient. After I managed to get my chop sticks positioned correctly there was the small matter of actually being able to grab the food and lift it to my mouth. It sounds easier than it was. I discovered my left hand has a mind of it's own, and isn't afraid to piss me off either. I would think "squeeze gently between the two chop sticks" and it would execute "grab food really hard and flip the food in the air". At least I didn't stab myself in the mouth.
I don't think I've done that much clumsy bumping around since my first time. At least it was similar in more than one way; I got better with time. I still wouldn't try to eat an entire meal that way though.
Well here I am. I wish moving were this easy in real life.
It's time I got off my ass and moved to my domain. I have real life moving in to do so I don't currently have time to change anything for the site on the new domain. Oh well.
See you at http://www.iamjacksbrain.com! Last one there buys the cigars.
Well the 4th didn't quite turn out how I planned it. Instead of going to Ninja for sushi we ended up at Arisoo (Korean) because Ninja was closed. That turned out pretty well. We ordered three things I've never tried before, and it was one of the best Korean meals I've ever had! We had some barbecue that was short ribs (similar to kalbi), but without the bones that was tasty. Lynn ordered udon (Japanese noodles) that came in beefy and earthy broth that I loved. I ordered a soup with a bean paste base, cabbage, and short ribs which was also very good. Even better last night though was the condiments that came with dinner. There was pickled cabbage (which I never get enough of), fish cakes (when did they start serving those?), and other assorted tasty items that I could only describe as some veggie that was sweet, spicy, or both. It was just a great meal. The service was slow though because it looked like they only had two waiters working that night and the restaurant was packed. We had to look for our waiter more than a few times, but he made up for it by bringing out mass quantities of the things we needed (e.g., a pitcher of water, Coke, and a ton of fish cakes).
After dinner we went to Gameworks as planned. My and Lynn immediately went to the "House of the Dead 2" game, but we never got through it. The first time we were playing we almost got to the very end, but the machine wouldn't accept either of our cards and our continue time ran out. It happened twice more after that. Bastard machine. I'll probably never find out what the endings like now.
This is going to be hard to explain but the instant messaging excerpt below was a response to an entry by Gustavo (Mr. "BODYSLAMM!!!") at rebel-alliance.net [Link removed since Reverend decided to take down The Rebel Alliance Network. - 1/23/03]. If the whole thing was more entertaining I would have just put a link, but since I love you all and want to enrich your lives with as little effort for you as necessary, I'm only posting the amusing part.
Gustavo entry
..."My dick gos in butt" is a great catch phrase, though. I encourage anyone that reads RAN
to go and post it everywhere they can. See how many people you can piss off. Send me the
results.
Chronic Chains: My dick goes in butt.
Reaper1134: ok
Reaper1134: hello
Chronic Chains: The kind says so god damnit!
Chronic Chains: Butt + Dick = Happiness for me.
Reaper1134: ok i m sorry but i had to fix somethong
Reaper1134: thing
Chronic Chains: No...I think you were right the first time.
I hope you have a good 4th doing whatever it is you're doing. I'm celebrating Independence Day in a typically American way; by eating sushi and heading to Gameworks tonight to take out zombies and finish "House of the Dead 2".
"The Wedding Banquet" is not your typical story. It's about a gay Taiwanese guy who decides to get married to please his parents. His parents come to stay with him, in the house of his gay lover and the woman he's engaged to who wishes he would love her. Despite a typically bad Hollywood plot this was actually a great movie. The characters seemed real and so did their feelings. It was interesting watching everything unfold and trying to figure out if it was headed towards a Chinese ending.
I finally got the see the entire movie for "Shall We Dance?". It was as good as I thought it was going to be, but it started a little slow in the beginning. Of course it picked up after the first half hour and turned into a funny and great movie.
Ever since my application for Lieutenant of Evil was rejected I've been thinking that it was a good thing. I'm better than a Lieutenant. I'm more like a General, if not the Master Fiend himself. The last couple of days I've been getting weird fortunes in my fortune cookies. The last three have said: "You will be awarded some great honor.", "A golden egg of opportunity falls into your lap this month.", and finally, "Soon you will be sitting on top of the world." I think these are all signs pointing to the fact that I should just appoint myself Emperor and take over the world.
Of course that means I'm going to have to raise an army to enforce my claim on the Earth so if you enjoy the idea of a benevolent dictator (or at least enjoy killing zombies), send me an email with your proposed job title and qualifications. Running the world is a big task and I'm going to need a lot of help doing it. If you don't really have any bankable skills don't worry, an army always needs infantry and if your aim sucks, armies always need targets too.
Eventually I'll put up my organization chart with the filled positions, but until then recruit anyone you think is worthy to help run the world.
While I was getting ready for work this morning I heard the light patter of water hitting the windows. I looked outside and even though it was overcast it was still bright and it had sprinkled enough to soak the sidewalks. I started to feel pangs of reminiscence sneak up on me, but I had to get to work and I wanted to find my raincoat before I left.
It didn't take very long to stop sprinkling and ten minutes after I looked out the window I was out the door. Everything looked a brilliant shade of green and humidity was heavy in the air. I stopped for a second and remembered some of the other places this scene reminded me of: Flagstaff, Portland, Switzerland. All good memories and all places I want to return to. I wished I could have been in any of them right at that moment. Even though it hadn't stopped sprinkling that long ago the sidewalks were already drying out.
I got into my car, but I couldn't bring myself to turn on the radio. I had a feeling it would snap me out of whatever altered state the weather had put me in so I opened up the vents and rolled the windows down to listen to the wind while I drove. That lasted for a couple of miles before I had to roll up the windows and turn on the air conditioner. The Phoenix heat had slowly overpowered the residual moisture in the air and reestablished the dry heat. I didn't realize how much I missed being somewhere moist and green.
Maybe some time in the next two years I'll find myself in Portland watching it sprinkle from someone's patio, or in Switzerland exploring some small town in the rain. At least I know that next weekend I'm going to be up in Flagstaff. I hope it rains.
There's something I learned on this last trip to Vegas; Lynn is a pain in the ass to fly with. She's slightly afraid of flying, which is fine, but she prefers to sit in the front of the plane (which has nothing to do with being slightly afraid of flying) so it requires getting to the airport too damn early when we fly Southwest so that she can attempt to check in early enough to board in Group A (which hasn't happened yet). Normally I get to the airport whenever I get to the airport, and I still end up boarding in Group B so to me getting there early is a waste of time, especially if it doesn't have the intended result of boarding in Group A. Oh well, this is just one of those things you learn about people, but I'm tempted to just schedule her flights an hour after mine so we'll both be happy. Just kidding. I'd have to schedule her flights two hours later for her to get there early enough.
I've ordered it and my humidor should arrive Friday.
I've got a talent only recently discovered, but handy as hell. I'm really good at killing zombies. Maybe it's because they don't move too fast, or because they don't run away once you start blasting limbs off, but for whatever the reason I'm pretty damn good at dropping a zombie with a pistol from 50 virtual feet away.
I only discovered this talent about a month ago when me, Lynn, DJ, and Steve went to Gameworks for their Moonlight Special (unlimited play for the last two hours of the day for $15). Well we played all sorts of games (some of which were actually fun), but it wasn't until the end of the night that I discovered my previously unexercised skill for blowing zombies away. We had passed "House of the Dead 2" a couple of times and it just didn't look that interesting, but we did have a couple of minutes to kill before close so me and Lynn picked up the pistols and started the game. It wasn't long before I was knocking off undead like I was getting paid for it. We didn't get very far since we only had about 5 minutes before they closed.
Even though it only took 5 minutes, I knew killing zombies was my calling. I hadn't touched a gun since then, but when we were in Vegas this weekend the monotone voices of zombies were calling to me. There was a "House of the Dead 2" game in the Treasure Island arcade and it was on. In mere moments of dropping my quarters in the headless zombie corpses were piling up. I intentionally didn't have much change on me to keep the game short since we had somewhere to be, but I didn't need much. I'm a natural. I'm Reverend Mario "Bane of the Undead". While DJ was busy dying, feeding the machine, and killing innocents, I was dissecting axe wielding zombies, decapitating regular ones, and filling demons full of virtual lead. I was so happy.
Now remember, if you should see someone who's resembles a zombie, just run and come get me. I'll be happy to take care of them.
I haven't decided if I'm going to redesign the site for the new domain or not. We'll see how lazy I am this week.
