all in the name of pretty girl science

i just did something incredibly silly and extremely geeky.

i'm on a venture brothers kick lately. my ex patrick first introduced me to them over the summer. i was instantly hooked by the ultra-violence, obscure pop culture references and classic comic book drawing style. there are so many great characters, but the monarch and dr. girlfriend are just such an awesome, awesome pairing.

in one episode, dr. girlfriend is asked what shade of lipstick she wears. she replies, 'pink poodle...it's a MAC color.' i love her lipstick on the show, so i paid special attention to this...the makeup worn by a fictional cartoon character. yeah, i need help.* forever after, MAC cosmetics - which i knew was a high-end line, but that's about it - has become linked in my mind with the venture brothers. for further strengthening, saturday night i stumbled upon a mockup on co-creator doc hammer's deviantart page for a DIY triana orpheus costume. what lipstick does she wear? MAC's cyber. not just any cheapass purple lipstick put out by walgreens at halloween, like you'd expect from a proper goth teenager! no, she wears a $14 tube of lipcolor i've never heard of. hilarious.

so tonight my xmas shopping took me to (ugh) macy's, where they have a MAC counter. every time i passed it i smirked to myself. when i was done with consuming, i passed by one more time.. and thought, why not? why not try to find cyber and pink poodle, for some S&G? cyber was easy enough; the counter girl looked like she ate it for breakfast and pointed it right out when i asked. and there, at the top of the lipglass display, was a very pink poodle. mirthed, i had no reason to stay...except they all looked like really nice colors, especially that one there, the mattene shade.. can i try it on even if i have a cold? i can? how's it look? ...sigh, yeah, i'll take it.

long story short, i blew $14.50 on lipstick that i never, ever would have bought if it weren't for that meddling TV show. on the bright side, it's really nice stuff, and i think it looks damn good on me. it just better justify its cost in the long run.

* what really got me was listening to the directors' commentary on the DVD.. doc hammer, who voices dr. girlfriend, thought they might get free product out of the mention. they didn't, but i found it highly amusing that two raunchy, smartass guys were hoping to get free makeup out of a plug on their show.

snapshots of a work christmas party

our party was at the 10 pin lounge next to the house of blues. it's the third year in a row we've done bowling. some thoughts on the evening:

- the party was slated to start at 6; most of the guys were going to go downstairs after work at 4. eric went on a beer run around 2. cuz two extra hours of drinking isn't enough.
- i left later than the others.. took a cab to the joint and looked around. no one there.
- found the boys in an opulent lounge off the sax hotel. this is the kind of joint you do opium in. they even offered an absinthe cocktail (absente, sugar and water), about which i inquired intensely, but declined when the waitress said no one she'd served it to yet had liked it, and that it tasted like 'rubbing alcohol.' not a good choice for the first drink of the night.
- instead, i got the girliest drink on the planet, a lotus martini. dark pink drink with a pink flower for garnish. which, naturally, i wore.
- the big boss in dallas made us all bowling shirts, replete with names (and a pocket!). pretty snazzy.
- treated to the sight of a hunky coworker changing into his shirt right there in the alley. he was wearing an undershirt, but he was nice enough to take that off too. wish i'd gotten a picture.
- we took a group picture in our shirts, in the hopes of making it into our holiday card. a glass was broken during the proceedings. no matter; they just knelt amongst the shards. good thing, too, or else those pictures would never have been taken.
- someone chose three tool songs from the video jukebox. i never thought i'd see 'prison sex' in any setting with my coworkers. thanks to whoever did that; no joke.
- couldn't breathe for most of the night. i carried my hand sanitizer everywhere i went. like i'm not enough of a dork already.
- i bowled a 34, which i'm blaming squarely on my horrible cold.
- at one point a pin got stuck in the gutter. mark asked one of our waitresses to go down and fix it. so she hauled her skinny gum-smacking ass down to the end of the lane to the tune of catcalls and hooting. upon returning, she got a hearty outbreak of applause. in that instant, i hated the entirety of earth.
- near the end of the night, i got into a conversation with wallace, one of our guys out in cali. he mentioned that he writes, and we got on the subject of poetry and hemingway. he's actually convinced me i might have to go back and check hemingway out again. patrick will be so proud.

my regrets? having this stupid cold, only having two drinks because of this stupid cold, missing work today so i can't see how the hangovers turned out/who showed up. that's usually the best part. oh well.. there's always next year.

a warning

do not fall asleep with a cold-eez lozenge in your mouth. ever. i'll be lucky if i taste anything else ever again.

gingerblog 2007: gaming edition

so last year i did this gingerbread thing, right. you might have read about it. since i like questioning my sanity every once in a while, i decided to keep the tradition alive again this year. the only thing is...the 'test market' is a remarkably small audience. not as small as it was a few months ago, but no one in my immediate physical circle (except one) will understand what the eff i'm doing. in short, this one's for me. (and my gaming clan, and my online friends, and a few thousand kotaku readers.)

a longass time ago, i played an online computer game called mega team fortress. when i say played it, i mean i played the fuck out of that bitch. i had no job, was out of school.. i was the archetypical nerd living with her mom and staying up until 5 am playing a mod of a mod of a mod of quake 1. (funny, the more i write, the less nostalgic i become.) i got involved in the community, created my own maps.. even my first four boyfriends (ever!) came out of playing this game. to say i loved mega was probably an understatement.

i started playing in november '98; it had already been around for a while before that. it started out with people playing many different maps, a different map for every server, if you will. as the years wore on, the number of popular maps dwindled, until most capture-the-flag servers were playing a map called 2fort5. two forts facing each other, one for the red team, the other for blue. simple enough. that and a few scant other maps were still being played when i left the scene. (to show what it looked like, a thoughtful fellow put up a mega TF 2fort5 rampage up on youtube. i never thought i'd see the day!)

skip forward to october, 2007. slavering geeks everywhere went mad with ecstasy over the orange box, which included a little game called team fortress 2. i was one of those geeks, secretly pining for my own TF days of yore. sure, i played a variation of TF, but who's counting? naturally since 2fort5 had been so popular in the first Team Fortress (and i'm guessing team fortress classic for half-life, but i never played that), valve decided to remake the old standard, complete with intelligence rooms, chicken wire and cows. aside from a few minor differences, it's the same 2fort i love, hate and know to an embarrassing degree.

that degree's going to get even more embarrassing when i undertake this year's holiday project: 2fort, gingerbread style.

now that's all well and good. it shouldn't be *too* tough.. no ceiling, two stories (three if i can figure out how that would work).. a structure not unlike a dollhouse with sniper decks. for the most part, i'm forgoing the fanciness of the new 2fort and kind of getting back to basics. what i'm really digging on are the nine different character classes in TF2. valve executed them with such graphical and stylistic brilliance that i want to bring them into my little gingerbread world. so, to go along with 2fortgb, i will attempt to render each of the nine classes in fondant. this is where i take flight and delve deep into the heart of madness.

however, to show it's not impossible (and how much i need a date), i gave the pyro a go a couple nights ago. keep in mind this is ONLY A PROTOTYPE. the finished pyro will lookd a damn sight better. if not, i'm feeding them all to neighborhood cats and taking up cross-stitch.