And speaking of the Army...

It's the step-dad's 60th birthday today. 60 years. Ah, what would a birthday be without the obligatory "old" jokes? The big six-oh-my-god-my-back-hurts. Just remember, you're only as old as you feel. So make sure you get good and drunk and you won't feel anything. If you were a wine, you'd be vinegar. Ok, I think that'll do for now. Happy birthday, Bill -- may your DVD collection continue to grow, and may JAG never go off the air. Oh, and may your taste in music hopefully evolve beyond the mother's "smooth jazz" nonsense. Not that I have anything against "Boney McBone" or whatever, but at your age ... Ok, I'll stop. Seriously, happy birthday.

Oh, and speaking of manly things like smooth jazz, the Superbowl's in two days. So I'm back to the old dilemma of trying to decide whether or not I want to watch. On the one hand, I don't really care about football. On the other, I want to see all the nifty commercials that have a higher production value than some independent films. What's a boy to do?

His gaming abilities are real ... but he is not

There's this movie that my bro and I used to watch back in the day called D.A.R.Y.L. It's about a government-created robot-kid who, you know, becomes a real boy or some shit. Anyway, there's this scene in which the robot-kid plays like 6 video games at once (because he can), and plays them all flawlessly.

Well, now you too can pretend to be D.A.R.Y.L. Check it. It's a lot harder than the Atari-style graphics might lead you to believe.

I'm also playing America's Army now, which might explain my sudden urge to enlist. It's not a bad game, but some of the training missions are ridiculous, which means I'll never get to be something cool like a sniper or a special forces guy. Oh well.

Snow problem

(See if you can find the double entendre in that)

So yeah, it was supposed to snow a whole buttload. Somewhere between six inches and a foot. Then, last night, the storm just sort of moved south 75 miles. The result -- three inches of snow. Which is good for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that I didn't have to start my day by shoveling snow out of my apartment's parking lot. This didn't stop people from getting into accidents on the highway, seeing as how the roads hadn't been exactly cleared. But I got to work without incident, a half-hour early even, because the office opened a half-hour later than it usually did on account of the snow.

I just hope it stays at three inches. The car doesn't like much more snow than that.

On a lighter note, check this out. Seems to be a new trend in the UK to protest the government cutting funding to higher education or something.

Bad songs to have in your head

I saw this stand-up comedian on Comedy Central the other night whose whole act was done in song. The idea was that he was supposed to be a children's entertainer singing songs to all the "boys and girls" of the audience. He actually was a really good songwriter/singer, which is probably why I've had one of his songs stuck in my head for the past two days. It's a lullaby to his child explaining why mommy doesn't live with them anymore.

...Daddy likes porno and ten-dollar whores,
Daddy gets drunk and he robs liquor stores,
Daddy's got sores on his naughty bits oozing with pus,
And that's why your mommy left us ...

It's actually a really pretty song. Too bad I can't sing it at work.

Fact #1: Ender is a mammal

So I've been re-reading Children of the Mind, the conclusion to the Ender Quartet. It's so awesome. It gets me so pumped I almost kicked my mom in the face. Not really, mom. I just wanted to link to that website.

And let me take this opportunity to formally welcome Larissa and Katie back to sunny (yet ridiculously cold) Providence, RI. May your semester be filled with learnin' and eight hours of sleep a night. Hopefully. Oh, and welcome, Ms. Mynx, back to the wide world of the internet. May your connection be quick.

Yeehaw!

More fun with search engines

Here's another one I found...

Googlism -- using super-high-tech-magical-craziness, this website will take your name and tell you who you are in your innermost dark places. Apparently, I am also "betty jack devine". I guess this confirms Katie's suspicion that I'm really a woman on the inside.

Fun with search engines

Hey kids! Are you bored with the same-old-same-old video games? Tired of blasting aliens back to the hellish dimension from whence they came? Well, good news! With the help of these websites, you can turn your ordinary search engine into a super-fun activity for the whole family!

Googlefight -- put in two words or phrases and see how many times they can "hit" each other ... there can be only one.

Googlewhack -- try to find a two-word phrase that will give you one (and only one) search result. For the advanced googler.

Whee!

Update: Just found my first googlewhack -- but I won't tell you what it is, 'cuz it'd throw off the google results. That's the tricky thing about googlewhacking. You can't boast about your triumphs on the web or your whack woefully won't work. Woah. Word.

Poor Art...

Speaking of recent posts on the brother's blog, his post from today I found quite amusing. Poor Garfunkel.

Wait, I thought of another one... "God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson ... 'cuz you gave me some pot!" Eh? eh? Two can play this game.

Now it's your turn! What lame-ass headline would you write to cover Garfunkel's recent arrest for marijuana possession?

Libration

Regarding my brother's recent post about libras and pounds ... I was thinking about that, and I remembered that the French word for pound is "livre", isn't it? Or at least, a "livre" is some kind of unit of measurement, I think (besides also meaning "book"). A relation, perhaps?

Oh, one more thing ... saw "28 Days Later" whilst I was visiting my lady. She hates it. I think it's pretty cool, actually. The ending definitely needed some work -- it's pretty clear they had no idea how to end it, seeing as how there were three different endings included on the DVD version. That aside, it's not your father's zombie movie. Much more metaphorical and stuff. And I can understand why some people might find that annoying, but I thought it was fun. Plus, the music added a whole other level of creepiness.

Also saw "X2". Again, the lady hated it, and I liked it. Fun ride, cool special effects, and bonus points for using the "Dies Irae" from Mozart's Requiem in the opening scene.

Oh, and to all my ones of readers out there ... I'm disappointed in you. I went to all the trouble to set up comments, and you aren't writing me nothin'! Come on...I'll even give you a reason to hate me and write nasty things. Here goes...YOU ALL SUXX0RZ0RZ0RZ!1!!!1!

Ahem. That is all.

Bloo...me? No. Blood of the lamb.

(Bonus points if you know what that's from. And you don't count, Katie.)

Read "Big Fish" at work today (it's not that long...and I read fast). It's a fun book. Funny, sad, all that good stuff. Plus, it's divided up into vignette-esque short chapters that makes reading it at work easy, what with constant interruptions and all. Mary (the nice lady) lent it to me. When I gave it back to her at the end of the day, she remarked, "Yeah, I hope the movie ties it together a bit more." Which got me to thinking...

Y'see, the version of the book I read had a "reader's guide" at the end, which was actually quite useful. It included an interview with the author. One of the questions was about how the main character's name is Bloom, and was that a reference to Joyce's "Ulysses"? The author confirmed that it was, although somewhat superficially -- he was playing with mythology in the same way that Joyce was. That is, his main character kind of mythologized himself. So I started thinking some about the whole Joyce connection, and I realized that the kind of disconnectedness that Mary had alluded to might actually be part of it...that is, like with "Ulysses", the reader kind of has to put it all together for him/herself, the same way that the main character is. Which is kind of fun. Read the book ("Big Fish", not "Ulysses"), and you'll see what I mean.

Reader's guide...it's like DVD director commentary without the DVD.

"Working" Lunch

My boss is a swell guy. Sometimes, when we have to work through lunch, he buys us lunch. Plus, we get paid overtime for working through lunch. It was a tad busy today, so he bought us lunch. It arrived, it was tasty. Well, when I was about halfway through, I got a call. I looked at my super-high-tech phone and saw that there were two more calls "in queue", that is, people on hold, listening to muzak, waiting to talk to someone. I look up, and Idiot Boy has logged off the phone and is eating.

I couldn't help myself. I finished my call, then I said: "Hey, Idiot Boy," (except I used his real name), "get back on the phone!"

IB: "But I'm hungry, I wanna eat..."

Me: "We all wanna eat. It's called a 'Working Lunch'."

Supervisor Lady: "Is that why we're in queue?"

IB: (groans, gets back on the phone)

See, this is when I have a really hard time wishing him well. When his stupidity screws everyone over. And it does, by the way, screw everyone over -- we have these kind of quotas when it comes to answering calls in a certan amount of time, and every call that's in queue screws our stats up.

Anyway, lest you think I only talk about work and video games (ahem), here's a change of pace. I'm writing a story. Which is odd, seeing as how I haven't written anything creative in, oh, 4 years or so. I was inspired by my recent phase of nostalgia and wanting to talk to Eric. So I'm writing a story about him. And me, I guess. Maybe I'll post it when it's more done.

Going to Katie's house for the weekend. Yay! Tasty food, well-heated house ... oh, and girlfriend. I think we're going to watch 28 Days Later, because she thinks it's the worst movie ever made (although it did quite well on Rottentomatoes). And maybe watch all the cutscenes in LoK: Defiance so she can see how cool it is.

Damn, there I go back to video games again. Well, I guess I'm just a big ol' dork.

Can't buy me love...

Got my last direct deposit from the ol' temp agency today. Also, because I've been having trouble setting up a direct deposit for the place where I now permanently work (my employee ID # changed), just got a paper check for this week -- we get paid every two weeks, and this, my first week, happened to be a pay week. So I just got a whole bunch of money.

Oh, wait, it's the 15th...that means in six days, my student loan payment will happen. Crap. Well, it was fun while it lasted.

By the way, did you know you could buy a three-acre, 4 bedroom, 2 bath house with a fucking stable (as in, for horses) in the St. Louis area for $105k? Ya heard me. The monthly payment is less than what I pay for my apartment. Real estate in the midwest is wicked* cheap. Guess that's 'cuz noone wants to live there, eh? Ooooh...burn! Sorry, Mary Ellen.

*I've been experimenting with different forms of slang recently -- can't find one I want to stick with. I guess "Boston" will suffice for now. Go get me some chowda!

Orientated

Had my "new employee" orientation today, which is odd considering I've been working here for more than two months. It was your standard indoctrination session, complete with inspirational Powerpoint presentations and videos (featuring Enya's "Book of Days" on the soundtrack, no less). Oh, and I got a pen that also can be used to blow bubbles. Woo!

And let me take this opportunity to formally welcome my friend, Ann, to the wonderful world of Blogging. We can expect to see great things from her, I'm sure. Perhaps someday Katie will join the ranks of the Blogified, if we can get the whole invitation process to work.

Comment away!

Thanks to CommentThis!, my blog is now comment-able. Yeehaw! Start writing stuff to me! Now!

heh...

Did I mention that I've been keeping the fact that I was hired permanently on the d.l.? Well, I have. See, one of my coworkers here (not Idiot Boy; a very nice lady named Mary) worked as a temp for eight months before getting hired permanently. I figured if it became public knowledge that I went from temp-to-hire in two months, everybody would hate me. Plus, Idiot Boy wasn't hired permanently either, and he started working as a temp at the same time I did, so there'd be that whole thing.

Well, the cat's outta da bag.

Somehow, Idiot Boy found out ... I think it was because he could hear me talking on the phone with my boss, who was telling me that I needed to fill out the ol' I-9 form (that's the one where you have to prove you're a citizen of the U.S.). I'll give him credit, though, he was rather gracious about it. "Congratulations!" he said. "Good for you." He even kind of asked me in a round-about way how much more money I'd be making now ("Not a lot," I answered honestly...it's probably something like $1000 more per year).

Despite his idiocy, I still feel bad for the guy. Really, I feel bad for him more often than I feel pissed at him. It must suck to be that stupid. In that sense, Katie, I wish him well. I sincerely hope that somehow, some day, he becomes smarter. He'd be a much happier person, I think.

Ok, I'll try that again. I wish him well in all his future endeavors as a weekend dad/Air National Guardsman/History teacher. Although I must say I'm a bit concerned about his future as a teacher. Once, he told me how he loved this assignment he had in the Air Force where he had a bunch of subordinates under him. "I love bossing people around," he told me. He loves to brag about how he got this one guy kicked out of the Air Force for insubordination and stuff. Yeah, this guy's gonna be a great teacher. Fuckin' idiot.

Ok, one more time. I wish him well. Really. Sort of.

And now, a news update from the land of the surreal. What with my overwhelming sense of nostalgia yesterday (see preivous blog entry for further clarification), I decided to log on to the ol' AIM to see what was cookin'. Y'see, I never use AIM anymore. The last time I used it consistently is when I was a freshman in college, and then I used it to chat with all my friends from high school. So they're all still on my buddy list. Well, who should I run into in the vast realms of cyberspace but Mary Ellen, my ex-girlfriend from high school. In retrospect, I'm not sure why I kept her on my buddy list, seeing as how the last time we spoke wasn't what you'd call a friendly parting. I think we both (and by that, I probably just mean "I") decided to not to talk to each other anymore. Well, 4 years and a few hundred miles turned out to be the right amount of distance necessary to finally put that whole thing to rest. So approximately six years after we broke up, we had a nice, friendly chat about life, education, and the past. And I came away from it feeling really good, because this considerable amount of ugliness and hatred that I had been hauling around with me all those years is finally gone.

So maybe there is something to the whole "wishing people well" thing, Katie. I guess that's why you're smarter than me.

The old days

Had a crazy dream last night about Eric, a guy who was my friend in high school. I dreamed we were both in the Vietnam War together (in a uberdramatic, "Platoon"/"Full Metal Jacket" kind of way). I don't really remember the details at this point, but it involved being in what I think is technically referred to as "the shit". That is, bullets whizzing past, explosions all around, stuff like that. What I think this dream represents is the kinship I feel with Eric. I kinda had this love-hate thing with him throughout high school. He was super smart, played the violin and piano like a prodigy, and and and all the smart kids liked him. Which, of course, made me insanely jealous. But I'm over it now. Now, I just really want to talk to him again and see what he's like after all these years. I even google'd his name, thinking maybe he might have a blog somewhere, but no luck.

So, Eric, if you're out there, I hope you're doing ok, my man. Say hi to your brother for me.

More thoughts on video games: I replayed the first Legacy of Kain game over the weekend (Blood Omen), and it actually shed some light on some stuff that happened in Defiance. But the overall plot of this series remains extremely confusing to me, mainly because there's a whole bunch of time travel that makes no sense at all. If you don't believe me, check out this. (By the way, don't read this if you plan on playing Defiance, it spoils the plot) It's a timeline of the history of Nosgoth, the fictional world in which the series takes place. I especially love the parts where the author of this timeline says things like, "At some point, x must have happened." Even when you try to make sense of the whole deal, it still requires cheating. What I think would be more useful is a "subjective timeline". That is, a timeline that follows the events of Kain's life as he perceives them. Maybe I'll write one. It'd give me something to do now that I've beat Defiance...twice. And thinking about a third time.

OT on the MLK

So Martin Luther King Day is coming up, in case you didn't know -- January 19th. My company only started recognizing it as a holiday last year. However, we're still open on that day, so anyone who volunteers to work then gets paid time-and-a-half, which is pretty nice. The funny thing is, the temp agency I work for (well, worked for, as of the end of today) doesn't actually recognize it as a holiday, which means that if Idiot Boy wants to get paid at all, he has to come in -- and he won't get no time-and-a-half, neither. But I will! So yay for me!

Speaking of the job, I did my little drug test yesterday. It was very exciting. Peed into a little cup and everything. Right now, my bodily fluids are being whisked away to some lab somewhere to be analyzed. And you thought your job was bad. What must a conversation with a urine-analyzer on a first date be like?

Hot Chick: So, what do you do for a living?
Urine Analyzer: Well, I analyze piss. But the benefits are outstanding. I'm hoping to get promoted to stool samples next month.

** Note to any feminists out there -- the UA could be male, or a lesbian. I suppose he could've been a woman, but is this really a field in which you'd want absolute equality? Oh, and his date is hot because ... well, give the guy a break.

Oh, and I beat the shit out of LoK: Defiance. It got really friggin' awesome towards the end. Kain and Raziel's stories finally come together, and it's the coolest sequence of scenes in any of the LoK games, hands down. It's basically the game I've been waiting for ever since I played the first Soul Reaver. A highly satisfying (and conclusive -- go fig) ending, dialogue that's half-way decent, and all the bazillion loose ends get tied up, more or less. Hallelujah.

Wacky link for the day

Here it is. Enjoy. Glory!

I write this with defiance in defiance of your defiance

Now playing: Legacy of Kain: Defiance.

First impressions: A very cool game with improvements in gameplay pretty much across the board. Combat is, on the one hand, much more interesting. You finally get to fight like a vampire/vampire-like-demon-thing instead of just a dude with a sword. This means grabbing people from afar with your Darth Vader-esque grasp and flinging them off the edge of a cliff, popping an enemy up into the air and slashing him repeatedly while he falls, and other such fun and violent stuff. In addition, the enemies have gotten a tad smarter than their predecessors -- whereas enemies in the other LoK games would approach you in a group of 5-6 only to take you on one at a time, these guys actually work as a team. There are human spellcasters who use their magic to power up their allies and launch ridiculously strong spells at you, dudes who toss grenades at you, along with the standard array of sword- and pike-wielding guys. That being said, combat can still get a little old after a while.

The biggest flaw I've seen so far has to be the plot, which is a shame considering that the game is entirely plot-driven. Your focus keeps switching between Kain and Raziel, which is fine, except that Raziel's story takes place 500 years after Kain's, which makes no friggin' sense whatsoever. It also suffers from what I like to call "Devil May Cry Camera Syndrome". This is when you are in a 3D environment, but you have no control over the camera, resulting in you walking towards the camera down long corridors and being ambushed by enemies you can't see. This sucks. All in all, though, it's a fine game.

Now, if only every other word out of Raziel's mouth wasn't "defiance"...

Can't blog...must answer phone

An average day at my job: 21-30 calls. My busiest day prior to today: 60.

Today: 100. And I still have a half hour left. My tongue is ready to plotz. Blargh. And get this, my average call time is 3 minutes, 41 seconds, which is hella good.

In the time it took me to write this, I got 2 more calls.