to the baby bird I buried this morning

I left Caroline's this morning, and walked towards my truck. On the way there, I stepped over you. Featherless and motionless. I ignored you for two seconds, but I stopped and thought about you for a second. I didn't want you to be stepped on, and I knew you would. In a nearby flower pot, I dug a hole for your body to be placed in. I picked up your cold, lifeless body, placed you in the hole and covered you up. I looked around to see where you came from, but I didn't see any nests. I figured you came from one of the many nook-and-cranny nests that surround that building.

I feel bad that you never got to experience life, but I also realized, that is life. Things don't always work out they way everybody wants it to.

I'm sorry you had to die. I thought burying you was the best decision.

seriously

Could this day drag on any longer? I've got stomach acid crawling up my throat like Mario crawling up a vine that appeared after he hit his head on a brick block.

On the bright side, I'm enjoying a tasty Mountain Dew Voltage that tastes like DEW Charged With Raspberry Citrus Flavor and Ginseng.



It's got good flavor, and of the two flavors that I've tried, I like this one better.

those lazy, crazy, hazy days of summer

I don't know if I've even been this lazy. I guess it doesn't totally feel like lazy, more like unmotivated to write anything.

To my one reader out there, I apologize. I know that there's nothing better than reading about my exploits on a fairly daily basis, and how it all boils down, you're right. I try to write, but sometimes it's difficult to get the time, since I do most of my writing when I'm not supposed to. Whoops.

I hope you all had a fantastic weekend.

I watched two movies on the big screen this past weekend. Here are my reviews, in haiku form:

Indiana Jones and the Bifocals of Destiny:

Boy, Indy. You're old.
How long has it been? That long?
Oh. That explains it.

Speed Racer:

Something to ponder:
Is the chimp is his brother?
Go, Speed Racer, Go!


Basically, both of the movies were fun. The chimp in Speed Racer and Shia LeBouph could have traded roles and made BOTH films better, but I'm really not complaining. I was slightly disappointed by Indiana Jones (but come on...who didn't see disappointment coming?), and quite impressed with Speed Racer. And with a summer full of blockbuster fanboy releases, they were both a good lead in to 2 more months of entertainment. I can't wait.

a week

that's how long it's been since I last posted. I've been so tired and busy and internetless and about a billion other excuses.

The past three nights, I've wanted to go to bed at 10pm, although last night I wasn't able to do so until midnight. That hurts. I feel exhausted right now.

I was fed genetically engineered water this morning, and was told that it balances the acids in your body almost immediately. I'm as big a skeptic as they come, but I love humoring people. I was asked to try and touch my toes before taking the water. I got to about an inch from my toes. Then after taking a literal sip of water, and waiting 20 seconds, I was asked to try again. I touched my toes. WOW! It works!

Common sense tells me however that water DOES balance the acid because most water has a pH level of 0. As far as being instant, well sure...it'll change the acidity of your stomach acid, but not change your ability to stretch. That's snake oil, man....snake oil.

who would do this. really?

http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/apa/681689434.html

What woman in their right mind would participate in something like this? I mean, don't get me wrong...this sounds like a fantastic deal, but really...get your rocks off like any other normal pervert, you freak.

stomach ache

I hate fast food.

suck e. cheese

It was my nephew's 7th (!) birthday on Mother's day, so his mom invited her favorite brother-in-law to the party at everybody's favorite: Chuck E. Cheese's!

Now, I grew up going to about 5 CEC parties a year when I was a kid. There were ball pits, skee ball games, ticket prizes, countless fun video games, party rooms, pizza, pop, beer and animatronic anthropomorphic performing animals. The room where the animals performed were dimly lit, and the shows were entertaining. Sure the animals weren't realistic, but how can you be when you only have 6 points of articulation, and 4 of them are in your head?

But goddammit, when I was a kid, this shit was FUN.

Fast forward 20 some-odd years later, and let me paint a picture for you.

First thing I notice is the place is bright as a strobe light showroom. Neon everywhere. Next thing, is this place is two levels. Upstairs and downstairs. Design flaw in my opinion. Sure there's an elevator, but there's kids running everywhere, and the stairwell is not the widest thing in the world.

DOWNSTAIRS

Downstairs has the eating/stage area. Tiny. Very bright, and you could barely hear the sound coming over the overhead speakers for the canned television CEC channel, which loops every 30 minutes or so some very uninspiring CEC themed skits and music videos.

The front stage was very tiny, with some kid controlled video cameras and a little mini stage with a non-working blue screen that the kids could perform in front of. Animatronic animals? One. Mr. Cheese himself from the waist up. Close enough to the edge that kids were all over him, sticking their fingers in his mouth while he performed. If this shit was real, he would NOT go for that. At all. The only really entertaining aspect of the dining/stage area were the television show themed posters which all had a disclaimer stating that these were parody posters. The first poster spoofed Seinfeld as "Cheesefeld", and had a picture of Chuck dressed as Jerry. The second was The C Files in homage to The X files. The last was a spoof on ER. Instead it was called ERrr. I didn't get it. And it had a surprisingly buff looking Chuck E. Cheese dressed in a white lab coat.

The rest of the stuff downstairs was mostly kiddie rides and video games. Nothing spectacular.

UPSTAIRS

Upstairs is strictly video games and ticket games. Lots of light-gun shooting games, racing games, skee ball, little "rides" and seating. All in all, totally uninspiring. There were about 3 games that looked interesting or fun, and that's just not enough. The arcade is dead. Long live the arcade.

THE EXPERIENCE

It was painful. I showed up early. Waited for 20 minutes. Apparently, showing up early is not as important anymore to anybody else except for me.
My brother and dad show up, and we all sit up front waiting for the rest of the gang. The kid working the front door (job? I think he was the gatekeeper. I didn't see the keymaster anywhere.) spent most of the time up front wearing plastic glasses with a big nose and a black moustache and checking his height on the "I think the criminal was 'this tall'" sticker on the door. My sister in law showed up with my nephews and my oldest nephew's friend. Good. The attendance is getting better.

I told myself that the only redeeming thing would be for some hot mom to be there and at least give me someone to stare at. Everybody who was invited showed up, including some hot moms. My joy turned into disappointment because kids were just dropped off. This is bad for me.

Ten seven-year-olds running around and having a good time. This was fun to watch. Little kids bragging about how many tickets they won and everything.

Pizza shows up and we eat. The pizza was sub-par, and no amount of crushed red pepper and Parmesan cheese could save it.

Let me tell you, though. This kid SCORED present-wise. Holy crap. Toys galore. Good for him. His uncle only got him a gift card, but that's like gold to a kid who wants anything and everything. GOLD I tell ya.

It came time to leave, and I was glad to go. Hot moms came back to pick their kids up and that was good again, but quickly turned to bad. I'm not going to say that I didn't have a good time, but I did find myself checking the time quite frequently near the end of the party.

So, to sum it all up: lame pizza + sub-standard entertainment + 2 levels of ho-hum + a rat with Bell's Palsy = happy little kids.

I guess it really isn't all that bad.

In researching the links for this post, I did come across an interesting word. Exonumia is the study of coin-like objects such as token coins and medals, and other items used in place of legal currency or for commemoration. My favorite line in the wikipedia entry for this is:

"The words exonumist and exonumia were coined in July 1960 by Russell Rulau, a recognized authority and author on the subject, and accepted by Webster's dictionary in 1965."

Do you think they intentionally said that the terms were coined in July 1960? Because that would be funny.

dumb stimulus package

What the smart government should have done was base the schedule for payments on the promptness of when people filed. I know it's just easier to do it in numerical order, but some of us who fall into the latter end of the social security numbering scheme (me...98) want our goddamn money and we want it now. I've got habits to uphold, people! And I filed fairly early.

The bastards.

Super Thursday!

I had a great day, yesterday. The workday went by fairly quickly, which is always a bonus. My friend, Lance, invited me out to an early screening of "Ashton Kutcher screams, and is funny" or what everybody else calls it, "What Happens in Vegas....".

Now, I usually jump on early screenings of everything if I can help it. The ones that happen during the week are an issue, but I'll skip work to see shit like Spider-Man. But I had to politely decline the invite because I already had a super Thursday planned with Caroline.

I leave work at 4:30 and speed down 94, 35W South, and hit the crosstown to Southdale Mall. I meet her at the AMC theater there, which she says I've been there before, and I tell her, "Nope...never have."

We're there to see Iron Man. As we're getting our concessions, one of the girls behind the counter noticed my "potato shocked by seeing french fries" t-shirt (I should really scan it in. I can't find an image of it on the internets, and I got it from goodwill) and said something about how cute it was. Then she asked if I was seeing Iron Man (do I look that nerdy? Awesome!). If I was, I should make sure that I waited until the end credits (which I already knew about. I *do* have the internet). A girl after my own heart. Too bad she was a solid decade younger than I was and working at a movie theater, coated in more popcorn oil than I care for my women to normally be.

The movie: Fantastic. So much more true to the comic book than a lot of the superhero movies out there. I wish they played up the alcoholism a little more, but they did a good job establishing Tony Stark's fondness for the booze. Good chemistry between the characters, although I wasn't entirely buying the whole Rhodey/Stark relationship. It just didn't seem 100%. More like 80%. All in all, I'd totally recommend it to anybody who likes comic book movies, or who has an affinity for geeky science and gadgets.

Then the movie ended, we zipped quickly to Chipotle because Caroline was about to pee her pants. We gorged on burritos, then we headed back to her place to watch ABC's LOST.

No review, but I do love that show.

helpful

Lately I've been helpful. This isn't entirely self-diagnosed. I helped Liz carry this GIGANTICALLY heavy-assed T.V. up to her apartment. My friend Andy needed support the other day. My brother is moving and has an entire house to move in the span of a month (technically his lease for his current house is up in September, but his words were, "Fuck it.").

I feel particularly better, karma-wise.

what's YOUR demographic

Diet Coke just wished me a happy Mother's Day.

Or they were saying, "you look like a chick, and you're fat."

Or they were saying, "you look like a 60 year old woman who has had 3 kids, needs to go on a diet, and is probably going to get her only 'Happy Mother's Day' greeting in a mass emailing from a company that doesn't care to discern their male audience from their female, mother audience."

friend indeed?

Last night I was planning on meeting up with some people to play bar bingo at Baggan's Pub, formerly Sharx Sports Bar and Nightclub, winner of CityPages "BEST STRIP CLUB (MALE DANCERS) of 2000" on East River Road in Fridley. I have never been to Baggan's at all, I'd been to Sharx, but after it was Sharx and before it was Baggans. I've never played bar bingo before.

Needless to say, I was kind of looking forward to this.

It never happened. I ended up being a friend in need, therefore being a friend indeed, for my buddy Andy, the comedian.

After one beer, a good burger, a long talk about relationships, Martin Short, and countless other things talked about, Andy got his drunk on, I drove him home, and hopefully I helped out a little.

hate spoilers

I hate myself for needing to know the storyline and secrets. I ruin it for myself.

With NBC's Heroes, I could never get enough information. I played their little ARG, participated in all the viral marketing I could to find out all of the information I could possibly find.

Then there's LOST. Hoo, boy....don't get me started. Really. I did everything with LOST that I did for Heroes, but like....times ten. There was a fantastic ARG during Season 2 that I didn't entirely participate in, but I followed on a very regular basis. And you can find me every Friday, going through countless sites trying to find out next week's storyline.

But, what I hate worse than finding out things I want to know, are things I don't want to know. When people post spoilers to things that are better appreciated when they aren't previously unknown. This is the reason I stay until after the credits roll. Ferris Bueller's Day Off and X-Men United (lamest name for a movie ever) are two great examples. One movie provides humor, the other, hope for a sequel.

NOW...when a movie less than a week old, DO NOT POST SPOILER INFORMATION, Mike Krumboltz, you asshole. Now, I'm not going to post the link that I read, or even reveal the subject I was reading about. But what was revealed shouldn't have been because I wanted to see it for myself.

All you needed to say was, "Go see the movie, and stay until the credits are finished." Instead, you blew your load in one tug, you pre-ejaculating, spoiler fuck.

There's gotta be a spoiler rule.

attention to detail

I bought Grand Theft Auto 4 yesterday, and I'm happy, as usual, with my purchase. It's games like this that continue to amaze me. The game world itself is HUGE. HUGE, I tell you. But it's not the size that matters....it's the detail. There's roads in the game. But they just aren't paved roads, they're roads with litter that blows around. Visit your brother, Roman, who's hiding in a dumpster, and when you talk to him, notice the flies that are buzzing about. Run over countless lightposts, and watch the sparks fly out.

It's little nods and homages to things that I really appreciate in video games, as well as movies.

With Marvel Studios finally taking control of it's properties, instead of optioning them out, a la Spider-Man to Sony, we can finally see movies starring the Avengers, instead of it's members. I just read about the first baby steps to something like this happening with a cameo appearance by Robert Downey, Jr. in the new Hulk movie. A little birdie also told me that Wolverine might make an appearance near the end of the movie.

And that's my biggest beef with comic book movies. With the exception of the X-Men movies, when did you hear even the slightest mention of another hero in such a movie. Oh yeah, that's right, Aunt May mentioned Superman in the first Spider-Man flick. This shouldn't have ever happened, and is the worst part of that movie.

In a world where all I want is a mentioning of another hero in a movie, or a glance at a newspaper headline in a Spider-Man movie saying something about Thor, or whatever....I finally might get what I want.