my day at pitchfork

so. i ended up at pitchfork this saturday. somewhere along the way i got the lineup mixed up with lollapalooza's, and consequently thought there were much cooler bands (or at least ones better known to me) at the show. i absolutely knew i wanted to see Battles.. mark turned me onto them a few weeks ago and i got hooked on 'atlas' hardcore. plus he got me all hyped up by going on about how he saw them live and how mind-blowing it was. (damn him.) so when the opportunity to snag a press pass came up thru chicagoist, i jumped on it. i also wanted to see Girl Talk, but knew 90% of the crowd would want to see him/them too.

if it had been any other weekend, things might have turned out differently. i accepted the pass wednesday, then got slammed at work thursday and friday.. i had to cover for not one, but two people that were out. both days. not a happy camper was i. beyond that, my lower back and right ankle have been giving me problems, so i wasn't the most mobile of peeps. not what you want to have going on when you go to a huge rock festival. if i had a nickel for every broken branch i nearly rolled my ankle on, i'd be writing this on an iphone.

the weather was fantastic, but in my typical cloud of pessimism, i brought my umbrella just in case. skilling and all. i saw the first band, the Twilight Sad, a scottish band who had the lovely distinction of being called the Cunts in their homeland. if we weren't such pussies, they'd be called the Cunts over here, too. ..unless there's already a band called the Cunts here, which is a possibility. anyway, they were okay.. the frontman had a accent so thick you needed galoshes. feminine sigh.

i saw at least one girl who came prepared in that respect. dear god, some of the most questionable fashion choices went down on those grounds. oversized sunglasses? check. tweed fedoras? check. wide white studded belts? check. cowboy boots with shorts and skirts? check. neckerchiefs? check. feathered hair? check. long Journey-style hair? check. and so on. i felt like drew barrymore in 'never been kissed' or something, trying to infiltrate the valley of the hipsters in my pink gauzy blouse (yes, a legitimate blouse) and jean skort (oh yes, a skort). in retrospect, though, i'm glad i didn't have anything in my wardrobe that would have made me fit in. and you know what? while standing in line at various points, i could hear people behind me making fun of other people. sooo.. why dress like idiots again if no one believes in it? who exactly are you trying to impress?

after the Twilight Sad i lost interest in the stage and wandered around union park. i plunked down some cash for whatever Pinback CDs WLUW had for sale, trying to assuage my guilt on knowing most of their catalogue but not paying for any of it. *sheepish look* i took a look around at the crafts people had.. it smacked of the same ironic lemming mentality of everything else. a table proclaimed 'i love potatoes' and had pictures of potatoes shaped like hearts. that's great. this costs money? then there were the mounds of ironic tees and posters and fugly purses. i was interested in one guy's version of CTA signs; pretty good condition. but $40? for an 8"x10", when i could get my hands on a 12"x16" that was actually up in a station at some point, for half the money? they were in good condition would have been a great apartment addition, but come on. and shit, is that even legal? was the CTA getting a cut of his stuff? i didn't even check the prices on most other tables, for nothing really caught my eye.. until i came to a little comic book niche. figures i'd get sucked in by comics. i toyed with the idea of picking up gangsta rap coloring book, but got a little surprise for kim & scott instead. (shh!)

yeah, i felt old, which should not happen. i was just completely out of my element. and tired. and grumpy. and alone. it didn't help that i didn't know 95% of the bands playing. seriously, i like going to shows, but the huge outdoor fest isn't my style. hugeass lines, festering port-o-potties, swarms upon waves of people EVERYwhere. and i didn't even stay for the worst of it. i crammed my way in to see Battles, who totally rocked my sockless ass - 'fucking sick loops' i believe is how one guy described their style - and decided i'd review the food and go home. (the press pass didn't come NSA.. i had an article to write and wanted to cover as much as possible. oh yeah, i also felt like a tool in the press tent, since that's where people did interviews with the bands. you know, actual journalists.) i guess after i left it got mega packed, with basically nowhere to go if you didn't want to see a particular band. i can only imagine the lines to the ATM (just one), food vendors and port-o-potties. yuck.

it's the kind of thing i regret going to, but if i hadn't gone, i wouldn't know just how much i'd regret it. think i'll stick to club shows from now on. i just pray Pinback doesn't headline one of these things. oh, the dilemma..

what i do in my spare time

every now and then i check out thinkgeek.com to see what fun, shiny things i would buy if i actually sold stuff on ebay. i will get a friggin shirt from there eventually, i swear. they sell a lot of stuff from penny arcade and they used to have a nifty blanket from megatokyo. amongst their wonderful geekery is das keyboard. i coveted that thing from the moment i saw it. what geek wouldn't want to display her prodigious typing skillz after she's used a computer day in day out for the past 15 years? i would have snapped one up but for the price: 80 skins. yeah, a blank black keyboard is cool and all, but to pay $80 for it? hell, i thought, i could make a keyboard like that.

...make a blank keyboard, you say?

like anyone wishing to take on a project, i turned to the internet. i quickly found this little tutorial on a site called sane asylum from a guy who had experienced the same indignance when faced with das keyboard's hefty price. being the pack rat that i am, i had an extra keyboard laying around that worked okay, except the spacebar is kinda jacked and leans to one side. perfect for experimentation.

i followed the steps as well as i could. i started out in summer of '05, i believe, then lost the verve and put it away for a while. lately i've been bit by the project bug again, so i dug the old beast out again and finished what little i had left to do tonight. behold, the final creation.


having done the entire tutorial, i'd like to review/simplify/decant it here:

1. clean. pry up all the keys with a flathead screwdriver (be careful with the big ones, there's probably something extra keeping them tethered) and clean it all out underneath, preferably with compressed air. wash the keys if you have to, i know i did. use gloves for all your tasks.
2. sand. 150 grit sandpaper works great. cut it up into strips and wrap it around a cylindrical object. i found a spray paint can worked best for me. caveat: you can't do this for any keys that have bumps, like F, J and 5 on the number pad. i accidentally sanded down my F key before i realized what i was doing. now i feel kind of lopsided. you also can't do this for big keys, like the space bar and backspace. you just have to sand evenly by hand and make sure to keep a smoothly curved surface. another thing: make sure to sand in whatever direction you want the end product to be in. i sanded my regular keys vertically and my space bar/ctrl/alt/etc keys horizontally. it was easier and it looks better.
3. smooth. here's where i differ from sane asylum, but only by circumstance. he advises 600 grit sandpaper to smooth out the roughness created by the heavy-duty second step, but even at the hardware store, the highest i could find was 320 grit. no matter, it worked fine.
4. shine. ultra fine steel wool put a nice gloss on the keys (that unfortunately is hard to show in pictures). i forwent the pliers and just held the keys in my hand, working them against the wool. easier to keep a straight line that way. the more shine, the more satiny and heavenly the keys feel as you type.

i'm really, really digging my new, fully-funtional toy. the keys feel extra nice in a way i've never noticed in a keyboard. i'm finding i still look to know what key i'm pressing, like in a cut/paste situation, but it's as if i instantly envision it in my mind anyway. my only regret is that i didn't practice on my lone black kb first, cuz that would have looked ultra sweet. but this way, i can mod it with paint or glaze and not have to worry about priming it. now i have the confidence to experiment with other keyboards for some antiquated steampunk effects... muahahah.

the creepy crawlies are here!

it's about damn time! i'm finally seeing cicadas, almost a month into the invasion of brood xiii. however, the weird thing is, i'm seeing them downtown.

see, the creepy red-eyed buggers (unless they've got blue eyes.. huh, reminds me of a new order song) are out in droves, but only in certain parts of the city and suburbs. beverly in the south? check. downers grove? check. park ridge? my coworker lives there and man, do they gross her out. but around my neighborhood, i've seen nothing. neither have a lot of city-dwellers.

the theory is that brood xiii cicadas kind of got displaced during their 17-year hibernation due to 1. lack of a thorough root system (they burrow into the roots of trees), and 2. increased construction and ground turnover. easily believable, with the amount of development i see in some places. so in my mind, it would make sense if the severity of the swarm was ringed out in the burbs where there's more stable greenery, then lessening and lessening as you get closer to the epicenter of chicago, the loop.

like i said, it's all theory.. which was blown out of the water yesterday when i saw a live cicada in my office building lobby, right outside the elevators. i actually nudged it with my shoe, not knowing what it was and thinking it was dead. since i hadn't seen one, i didn't know it was a cicada at the time. then today after work, i saw another live one crawling near an underground parking ramp. i went to take a pic, but i forgot my non-digital macro sucks, so it flew away before i got a chance. i saw two more on my way to the train station, their bodies mangled by traffic.

it's weird, but pretty amazing at the same time. i lived out in the burbs during the last cicada freakout, but i don't remember a thing about it. it either wasn't that great or i was living in the wrong burb. but now, i can say yeah, i saw cicadas. i was part of the process. why, though, am i seeing them in what should be a cicada ghost town?

hatesong

grrrrrrrrrrrrrr. so i had nothing going on this weekend, aside from some mucking around with my computer/tv setup. i haven't gone to the club for a while, so i thought, hey, why don't i go to the club? my legs hurt friday, so i put it off till saturday. and put it off.. and put it off.. until i was wide awake at midnight (damn iced raspberry mocha) and bored as shit. i figured, what the hell? i'd been jonesing for it for a few days, and they start the really good music after midnight as it is.

i got all dolled up and headed down to neo. little did i know i stumbled into an aftershow party for some band i've never heard of. seats were chained off. music was unfamiliar and worse, sub-par. worst of all, the dance floor was swarming, absolutely packed, with douchebags. it was as if they joined together to form one huge undulating douchebag. except they didn't undulate that much. i can't fucking stand when people get on the dance floor and don't dance. utterly foreign concept here. i don't care if you're drunk. if you're drunk you should be dancing more. and put that fucking sidekick away or i'm ramming it up your nose job.

goddamn. i go to neo to get AWAY from these fucking people. i could see goths around the fringes, watching instead of dancing. i wanted to walk up to someone and say 'wtf?' i left after about 25 minutes. was gonna walk home, but i could see the endless parade of soused yahoos shouting at me from beer gardens and threw in the towel. oh, and my cabbie was nice and creepy: after i got in, he sang 'pretty woman' in a very off-kilter voice. thank god he shut up after that.

$15 down the drain. left in my apt at 2 am to seethe and bitch. hey, craigslist is 24 hours, isn't it...

right up there with the 'bag-o-glass'

in the spirit of chicagoist, i feel the need to recycle all the wonderful things i've seen on the internets lately. here's a blog post from a former associate editor of the aforementioned local website. i don't plan on having kids - i'd rather stick my head inside a hive of killer bees - but it makes me happy to see people like matt reproduce. we desperately need a new generation of well-read smartasses.

thomas the tank engine recall

but camo is SO out this year!

ran across this while perusing the online version of the fortean times:

A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsquently rejected, building the so-called "Gay Bomb."

[...] "The notion was that a chemical that would probably be pleasant in the human body in low quantities could be identified, and by virtue of either breathing or having their skin exposed to this chemical, the notion was that soliders would become gay," explained Hammond.

...

we have got some SERIOUS FUCKING PROBLEMS with this stupid asshole country.

the search continues

crushing on a guy. pretty badly, in fact. quiet, works hard, some would say boring. i would say he's got great eyes, a sharp tongue and a wonderful scent (a mixture of fresh laundry and burberry). single, too, an amazing rarity.

he's also moving to new york in two weeks and won't be back for a long, long time.

back to the drawing board...

a white wedding

so my sisty ugler got married yesterday. if anyone out there knows my sister, you know she's the goofiest, least fussiest, bullshit-less woman out there. she married scott, a man totally her equal. their wedding totally reflected their personalities. yeah, there was some behind-the-scenes drama and whatnot (her blog has some of those details), and i had to deal with being in the same state as my estranged father and his wife, but even that wasn't as bad as i feared it would be.

friday kim and i were going to pamper ourselves at a salon. she was due for a massage and mani, i was going for a mani and pedi. i took friday afternoon off, aiming to leave beteween 1 and 1:30 to get to a 2:10 vet appointment, then jetting to the 3:30 spa jobber. work problems meant i couldn't leave till 1:30 when i wanted to leave at 1:15, making me about 20 minutes late to the vet. even though i called ahead, i spent 45 minutes in the vet's waiting room, with the actual appointment taking about 20 minutes. long story short, i got to the salon at 4:20, forcefully missing the pedi entirely. yeah, the mani was the real reason i went, but i was sooo looking forward for high-paid slaves to work my callused feet to a buttery pulp. the topper? they made me pay for the pedi i missed. yay. (i went and got a much cheaper one the next day.)

saturday i got a ride from annette, a fellow bridesmaid, up to illinois beach resort in zion, where the wedding was taking place. really nice spot, steps away from a windswept beach. we went thru the rehearsal (think herding cats) then did the chancery for dinner (think tomato lemon cream angel hair pasta with italian sausage). mm. scott and a bunch of his friends from maine hung out till the wee hours with booze, but i left them to their own devices pretty early.

sunday we got all fussed up with makeup and hair. after all that noise was done, we were greeted with a beautiful june morning. we flew through the ceremony (clocked at an amazing nine minutes), but not so fast i didn't get a chance to hear the waves breaking behind us and an opportunity to put my waterproof mascara to the test. then, suddenly, a married couple was presented to us, traipsing down the aisle to sonic youth's version of the simpsons theme. it was glorious.

asides: i've been dieting hardcore to fit into this awesome dress i bought for $10 at a garage sale that just happened to be the same color as the other bridesmaid dresses. with the right application of shapewear, i managed to pull it off...all except for sitting down. ugh. so the reception was a bit difficult. i still managed to pack away a decent amount of french toast and sausage. brunch food ftw. did i also mention aunt flo decided to drop by that day too? oh well. also, i'm extra super thankful to patrick for coming as my date even though he'd worked a double shift at bubba gump shrimp co. to make up for time off sunday. i didn't get too many pictures since i was in the bridal party, but i got one of each bridesmaid, as well as kim, mom and plenty of my bouquet.

i ended up taking today off, not because i'm hung over (although patrick did scare me up a mighty nice piña colada), but because my damn throat hurt like a bastard from allergies and talking so much. i must now rest, and by rest i mean play mortal kombat. kim and scott go to disneyworld (yes, disneyworld) tomorrow for their honeymoon. i desperately want them to come back with a picture of scott splitting a 40 with mickey.

mortal kockup

i don't blog much. and i usually don't blog about stuff that just took place. but i have to blow off some steam.

i've been waiting on mortal kombat: armageddon for the wii for ages now. pretty much since it was announced, at least since december. i put myself down for preorder at gamestop. the release date said sometime in february. no prob, i can wait a little while, right? while i waited (and waited and waited) i saw what all they were planning on doing with the wii controller. looked like some pretty nice shit. simple interface, good way to integrate the motion sensing capability. needless to say, i was stoked.

yesterday i got the call: it came in. since peapod came last night and i had to wait for it, i went out today instead and snapped it up. what i found when i got home was greatly disappointing.

it doesn't work with the wiimote.

i thought it was something i was doing. i even shut off the wii and turned it back on again. but no. i can bring up the wii 'home' page with the wiimote from within the game, i can navigate just fine with the thing outside of the game.. but the stupid game doesn't work with the innovative piece of machinery around which it was engineered. i finally got it to work with the gamecube controller, but who the fuck wants to do that? i bought it so i could rip out a man's spine out merely by waving my controller back and forth on a whim, not mashing buttons like every other gimpass figher!

i'm hoping i'm still at fault somehow. i'm gonna look around this morass called the internet and see if anyone's having the same problem. you'd think since nintendo pushed the release date so far back, they'd have put out something that works. i expect this kinda shit from sony or microsoft, not nintendo.

UPDATE: sigh.. false alarm. nowhere in the manual did it say to unplug any gamecube controllers if you wanted to use the wiimote. i unplugged it and voila. works like a charm (pretty much). now i gotta learn all those moves...

call me ms. augustus gloop

been a while. i don't know what it is about blogging that makes me not want to do it. i figured i'd have filled up half the internet by now with crap from my brain.

my sister's getting married in exactly a week. yesterday we threw her her bachelorette party. we didn't bar-hop, we didn't hire a stripper, we didn't go to a wolves game (an act we have done in the past). what'd we do? we went on a chocolate tour of chicago. and omg, it was the best damn idea ever.

the entire tour took place in the gold coast/river north area of the city, all along michigan avenue. our tour guide was a spritely, animated woman that i never would believe ate a piece of chocolate in her life, just by looking at her. listening to her talk, though, you could definitely sense her passion for it. we hit six shops in about three hours, all giving out samples of some sort:

- teuscher, 900 n. michigan. sample: champagne truffles. it's a tiny shop with cute little european hand-made figurines that have chocolates inside. i'd never heard of the place, but it's what you think a typical small swiss chocolate place would be like. i bought a bar of 88% dark chcolate. they had 99%, but that plunge is just too deep right now.

- lindt, water tower place. sample: choice of raspberry, orange or dark truffles, along with a "spring" truffle of white and dark chocolate. one wall was floor-to-ceiling truffles, the rich, creamy truffles lindt is known for. a mother and her two kids kept darting in and out of our group, which got kind of annoying, but the truffles made everything bad melt away. i came away with a peanut butter truffle that i ate on the spot, a cherry & chilli dark chocolate bar, and a chocolate crème brûlée bar.

- godiva, water tower place. sample: chocolixir, a blended drink kind of like a frappucino without the coffee. holy SHIT. everything had been delicious up to this point, but the chocolixir blew me away. it was pure liquid chocolate that went down smooooth. nathan, one of the godiva workers, was very nice and looked quite good too...until he said he and his partner had just adopted triplets. goodbye, sex drive. i didn't buy anything, but am kicking myself for not getting their chocolate-covered raspberries.

- hershey's, 822 n. michigan. sample: reese's crispy crunchy bar. this was a marked step down from the other stops in terms of both atmosphere and selection, i felt. it was geared much more towards kids than the typical artistic chocolate shops, kinda like the disney of chocolate stores. plus the only thing that made our sample stick out was that it was new. i didn't turn it down, though.

- vosges, 520 n. michigan. sample: pieces of goji chocolate bars, which are made with goji berries and pink sea salt. this is the real reason i wanted to go on this tour. i've loved vosges ever since i picked up a naga bar from binny's on a whim. vosges is known for very unusual chocolate combinations, like olives, wasabi and curry powder. i blew the most money here with four bars: calindia, woolloomooloo, red fire, and mo's bacon, which had just debuted the day before. that's right, peeps, motherfuckin' bacon. (maybe that's what the "mo's" stands for?)

- moonstruck, 320 n. michigan. sample: an espresso-laden daisy made from dark chocolate. seats!! thank god they had seats, i was about to fall over from standing and walking and standing some more. moonstruck's a full-fledged café with lots of room, and not a few delicious truffles. i bought two truffles, amaretto and honey caramel, and was disappointed only when they were gone. if i hadn't been full up with sweets and nothing else, i would have gone for a peanut butter milkshake. oh well.

after the whole thing was over, we headed to goose island on clybourn for some much-needed real food. i ate so much yesterday after being on a diet for two months, i don't know how i wasn't majorly sick. i needed it bad, though. to be without chocolate for so long.. oh, the torture. the shame! now i just have to get through another week before i can start nibbling away at the treasures in my fridge...

fashion backward (and loving it)

kim says i have an obsession with mary janes.



i say baby, i'm just gettin' started.

eureka!

some time ago, i obtained my very first HDTV. silly me, i didn't really equip it with the right firepower, so it's been a very shiny, sleek paperweight as far as TV is concerned. games look orgasmic, but i've still had to hook up the old rabbit ears if i want to watch anything live.. and it comes in as well as on my sister's old hand-me-down rustbucket.

then i went to a droolery party on sunday at kristin's. her tech-savvy boy was on hand, scattering when we really got down to business. before he did, though, we got to talking about the fantastic reception they got on their own HDTV. (the cubs sucked with that much greater clarity!) rudy informed me that before they caved and got comcast digital, they'd had an HD antenna to pick up local channels. of all that i'd read about HDTVs, i didn't know it was possible to do such a thing, and without sacrificing a big chunk of my money and patience dealing with middleman satellite companies. i can't get directv through normal channels due to a partnership my landlords have.. and naturally the consumer connectivity with that middleman sucks donk.

fascinated by the idea that i don't have to settle for beautifully-rendered static, i went to radioshack to get an HD antenna. when i asked the guy if they had any, he said that *any* antenna would work to get HD channels. i resisted the urge to call bullshit, but resolved to try it at home.

with the help of antennaweb.org, i figured out what local HD channels correspond to what numbers. fox's normal chicago channel, for example, is 32; their HD channel is 31. and i swear, i'll be damned if i didn't connect my ancient rabbit ears, flip on 31...and see a crystal clear picture. granted, i forgot that they've moved the simpsons to 10:35, but i digress. it fuckin' worked! not only does that mean i can watch programs and not feel like a gimp.. it means i could have watched the entirety of March Madness while taking full advantage of my equipment. talk about mixed feelings.

someone left a cake out in the snow

been a while. i'm still doing stuff, but i hardly ever feel like blogging about it. this, however, was too good to pass up.

it's my three-year anniversary at my job on thursday. at least, unofficially. i've been coming to this office day after day for three years, but my company didn't hire me permanently until jan '06. so technically, i've only worked there for a year and a quarter. *snicker* tell that to my graying hair and frequent headaches.

anyway, what i've done for the past two years (i think) was buy a cinnamon bundt cake from corner bakery. nothing wrong with that in the least. but whilst looking for dessert recipes for easter, i had a hankering for something lemony. (i went with peanut butter & chocolate, the latter to placate kim.) so i decided to suck it up (hrhr), buy some actual lemons, and make a lemon layer cake, complete with frosting.

tuesday's my workout day, so that took me to 6. i stopped at the store on the way home, so that took me to 7. then when i got home, i could barely stand up, so i rested till 7:30. ok! time to roll up my sleeves and bake a cake before 10. no sweat. ...except i didn't even start on the filling till 9:30. said filling required boiling, and in order to get the two cake layers to stay without slipping off one another, it had to be competely cool. i ended up sticking it in the fridge and, because it was still so gloppy, i frosted the outside of the cake with it, rendering the actual frosting obsolete. whee.

went to bed at 11:15. got up at 5 to wash my hair. after surveying the heap of pale yellow crap on my kitchen table, i decided to break out the frosting after all and coated it right there. so i had a freshly frosted cake...but no cake carrier. the best i could do was a disposable pizza pan with no bag big enough to hold the whole ensemble. with time slipping away, i decided to carry it until i could catch a cab. so what if it was exposed to the elements for five minutes? it'd be better than the stares i'd get on the train.

that's when i saw the blizzard outside...

it took me several minutes and an ATM stop to catch a freaking southbound cab. i almost wound up taking the train anyway. thankfully my cake didn't capsize, but it did end up a little soggy. i don't think that will make much difference in the final taste. i'm almost glad i'm on a diet, so if anything's wrong with it, only my coworkers will suffer. hooray!

this could be big

i was poking around the internet, looking for the source of the movie quote "note to self: feed the fish mayonnaise"* (like you do), when i stumbled upon an old entry on a blog called Erudite Redneck that i felt i should share with you. for you see, some ideas are bigger than all of us.

the gist? a "searchable database for the best strip clubs in the country." the name? Lapquest. shit, how i wish i'd thought of that one.

* it was "night shift" with michael keaton, not to be confused with the classic stephen king short story collection of the same name.

ashes to ashes, crust to crust

by some miracle, i actually made my own dinner tonight, a yummy taco salad. while slicing green peppers i pondered my gingerbread house, which was still sitting on my kitchen table, in the exact spot it's been for about four months. (i never could figure out what to do with it.) i thought i noticed the chimney starting to come away from the roof a bit, and wondered when the whole thing would just pack it in.

i didn't have to wait long for my question to be answered. whilst devouring my salad and watching futurama, i heard a loud crash come from the kitchen. figuring my cat to be involved somehow, i checked out the situation and found this:

i guess that's it then.

after singing an impromptu rendition of "the end," i immortalized the moment (see above) and went back to my salad. i heard another crash a few minutes later. more of the roof had collapsed, so that i had to take the entire top apart. the royal icing had become so brittle nothing would stay together. i knew this day would come, if not by my hands than by nature. although a couple people suggested i light the thing on fire (both named scott, oddly), i couldn't bear to do such, since that's what doomed its inspiration. oh well. it was a good ride. i hope to continue my new tradition by making something equally batshit crazy this holiday season. my only hinderance is my imagination! (and my patience, and my social calendar, and my dependency on food for life, etc.)

credit where credit is (over)due

so i'm sitting at work, minding my own business, when my boss comes up to me and hands me some stuff. we have this thing at my work called the 'superstar' program, where people can nominate you for doing a fantastic job above and beyond for whatever. lo and behold, i was nominated to be a superstar for helping one of our gals in dallas! i ended up with a notepad, a yellow star-shaped stress squeezie, and a fitty dolla bill. not too shabby, considering my company. after all, the only other superstar in our office went to the silly bitch of whom i've spoken before. the girl who used to fall asleep at her desk. for some reason, that caused me not to have much faith in the whole superstar thing.

however, i am letting bygones be bygones. hell, 50 bucks is 50 bucks, correct? correct. woohoo!

YDKJ

remember "you don't know jack"? i sure do. i'm sure a few key family members do as well. well, i just read that there are now full-on YDKJ episodes available online, one a day, in addition to several DisorDats (pick and choose minigames). one more thing to make me reconsider killing myself! woohoo!

meh 'n' stuff

saw "300" last night, on imax. holy flircking snit, was it awesome. i was a little apprehensive, since i'm not familiar with the comic at all, i didn't get in on the hype, and i heard mixed reviews all over. but it was so utterly worth it. the only way to see it is on imax, too. warriors thirty feet high...leperous councilmen displaying every misshapen wart...blood splattering every conceivable surface. just thinking about it releases my endorphins all over again.

other than that, i've been really tired lately. various muscles always seem to be sore for whatever reason, and i'm not even working out as hard as usual. last week it felt as if my quads were rotting from the inside out. i started to pretend my bottom half was nonfunctional in order to rest it. so i haven't felt up to much. i predict that will change now that the relatively sultry 60° weather is becoming more frequent. springward ho!

more of the same

coworker 1: did you see 'talladega nights'? did you know Borat's the Perrier racer?

coworker 2: you're really not that smart, are you?

adults say the darndest things

overheard at work today...

Coworker: Mike, why don't you go ahead and yell out that name we call each other? Starts with a "W", ends with an "L", got a couple of "O"s in there?

Boss: ..."Wookiee"?