THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME

Flying Spaghetti Monster, intelligent design horseshit, yadda yadda.

I worship this now.

Happy Friday!

LIFE'S LITTLE ROADSIDE MYSTERIES

Seen by the highway on the drive to work today:

1. A single car pulled over, the driver standing next to it, talking to a cop. NO COP CAR IN SIGHT ANYWHERE. Where the hell did the cop come from. How'd he get there? How'd he even pull that woman over?


2. Next to the on-ramp between 85 N and 237 W: A couch. Why would you dump a couch there. It's like you're trying to keep people from getting to it. Why not just do ... anything else ... with it.

Does anyone else find these weird? And both on the same day. What is the universe trying to tell me?

BUT I NEED IT, YOU IDIOTS

Apparently Best Buy/SciFi or whoever aren't interested in getting my money. I've gone to two separate locations looking for the Season One collection of Battlestar Galactica that includes the miniseries, and they're all out everywhere. Did they not expect to sell them? Each store had more than like five copies, right? Even so, are they having that much trouble restocking? Somebody somewhere is keeping me from enjoying my life to its utmost. That show is essentially the best science fiction on TV since ... well, there's been a lot of good science fiction on TV, actually. But that doesn't take away from this show, which has got to be one of the tensest hours on television.

Unrelatedly, I made three new postcards. I still haven't mailed out the last batch, but those will go out soon. I'm building up quite a library, aren't I? Should I consider printing some up in batches and seeing if stores are interested in selling them? This has been mentioned to me once or twice before, but I figure I'll put the question to you, the masses. The blogosphere. The all-encompassing blogiverse. Rain your answers and knowledge upon me!

ANIMALS ARE TASTY, I'M SORRY

You can make meatballs out of turkey, and you can certainly make meatballs out of veal if you choose, but to make meatballs out of both simultaneously is some whole other next-level shit going on. I learned this lesson firsthand last night. It was my ladyfriend's* idea. Other ingredients were involved, too, but clearly it was the embrace of the concept of diversity that won the day.

There has also been an update to the Dogblog, for those of you who are into that kind of thing.

* My super sidekick / my chief advisor / my special attache / my lieutenant general / etc

SOMEONE'S PAYING ATTENTION

One thing I was never sure if anyone else but me noticed was that once you opened a box of Cheez-Its, you had to contend with actually getting the plastic bag inside open. For some reason, the Cheez-Its people believed that they needed to make this bag hard as fuck to open. You know how most normal snack-food bags have that little flap you can grab onto and sort of pull the top of the bag apart very smoothly and easily? Cheez-Its bags were like that superficially, but when you went to open them, you discovered that they had been sealed with some sort of nanoscale molecular adhesive that turned opening them into at least a three-tug ordeal that partially deformed the top of the bag with all the pulling.

Well, that's changed now. I just opened my first box of Cheez-Its in a while, and I am pleased to report that they've now officially caught up with the year 1998 and made the bag easier to open. Thank you, Cheez-Its people. Thank you.

Now we will do our best to forget the intestinal horrorbomb you dropped on us howevermany years ago with those "White Cheddar Jack" Cheez-Its or whatever they were.

(shudder)

ULTIMATE TEAM CARDBOARD FORTRESS BATTLE

For no real reason, I have invented a game I call ULTIMATE TEAM CARDBOARD FORTRESS BATTLE. I would like to "play test" this thing within the next month. If you know me, and live in the Bay Area, expect an email or an eVite or some damn thing. I'm not sure when yet!

CATSPOTTING

I have plunged myself deep into the cavernous mineshaft of Work and begun extracting Productivity Ore from it in steady supply, so my internet presence will be somewhat limited from here until whenever I find the bottom of the mineshaft.

HOWEVER

I feel the need to report to you all that today is the second day in a row that I've seen a feral cat next to the road at the top of the hill where southbound Skyline Blvd meets northbound CA 1. Yesterday's was a mostly gray cat perched atop a rock or a log or something, not doing much besides resembling a statue. Today's was a spotted white cat in the middle of the weeds of the median, obviously on the hunt.

This is just odd to me because I've been making this drive for years now and suddenly I go from zero cat sightings to two in a row.

IT IS TOO A RATTLE

I'm hearing a weird, clunky sort of rattling from my car's passenger side, around about where the wheel well is. I wonder what's making it. It doesn't seem to affect the way my car drives, but at the same time I don't want it to fall apart around me or somethin'. I just took it in for routine maintenance last week, so I'm guessing it's not too big a deal or they'd've noticed, but all the same, I should probably bring it in soon, huh? It only seems to happen when I'm rolling over an uneven surface; my guess is it's something in the suspension. I am a total car expert.

Dogblog update went up just now. If you can click on one or two of the ads that are on there, you will guarantee (a) hero status for yourself and (b) more updates to come in the future. Everyone wins!

PHANTOM LEG SWAP?

You know that feeling you get in your legs after you've run or walked a ridiculous distance? A kind of weird dull ache as though your bones have been replaced with hollow glass replicas? I have that right now. Except I haven't run or walked anything approaching a ridiculous distance today. I'm serious. I complained about this feeling to Gabe all evening.

The only thing I can think of is maybe I'm feeling some sort of remote leg ... thing from two ladies I know who did a triathlon today. Except if that were true I'd probably be dragging myself around with just my arms, because I can't imagine ever working up the courage/stamina/etc necessary to complete a triathlon in my life. I know some tough people I think is what's going on.

MEN'S FRAGRANCE IS A LOSER INDUSTRY FOR LOSERS

I don't think I'm alone in having the following experience happen to me:

I buy an aftershave I like, and by the time I am about to run out of it and hence about to buy more of the same, the company that makes it has either vanished or just stopped making it for some stupid reason.

I've been using this in its aftershave-balm form, to pretty universally excellent reviews, but the tube is getting lighter and lighter. Naturally I thought "Okay, time to buy more from the internet!" since that's where I got it last time. It appears that even the internet is out of this stuff, or at least the balm, which fucking boggles the mind. I guess it's time to either

- Find a new scent
- Try to find the regular liquid aftershave version and learn how to use that

But really, what the balls, Hugo Boss. Didn't enough people like this stuff to prompt you to keep making it? Why do I keep seeing the same bottles of junk from all the other companies at the men's fragrance counter, while the ones I personally select keep dropping off the consumer radar? Maybe my purchase is the mark of death for a brand.

KALI MAAAAAA

My housemate Jim (and his dog Whistler) moved out last week, and not only did we get a new housemate (and a new dog), but the bookshelf he was using went empty. So I've moved the three giant stacks of books that were in my room down there, and that's been pretty great.

The only thing is now there's a monster inside me.

It's a monster that wants me to go buy more books, now that I have the room. I have to work pretty hard to resist him, but he's in there. He has needs. Further updates as events warrant.

For some reason this made me think of that dude from the Indiana Jones movie; I don't really know why.

In other news, the ads on the Dogblog now make more sense (i.e. not sock-related), so if you want to go over there and click on them, that would be awesome.

GOOD WEEKEND

I'm pretty tired, I'm not going to lie to you.

I made some things!

Eleven new postcards

Substantial Dogblog update

You'll notice that I have seamlessly melded the Dogblog with state-of-the-art internet commerce in the form of ads. This is because I am now fully a part of the Machine that exists solely to grind up your lives and make of them a fine, flour-like powder, out of which money is printed. I'd tell you how it works but I don't actually know. The Machine is endlessly complicated and sort of irritable. There you go.

NOT REALLY MOVING ON SO MUCH AS JUST NIMBLY SIDESTEPPING

No more talking about the hurricane clusterfuck for now; too upsetting. Instead I just wanted to remark that it's now officially September, which means Serenity is now just a month away. This is good news because

- I have been looking forward to this movie for forevertimes
- It distracts me from feeling guilty about being able to go to the bathroom without wading through feces or worrying about being raped and killed

I broke the rule I made in my first sentence; I am sorry about this.

I DEFINITELY GOT NOTHIN'

I don't even know where to start with this whole "destruction of New Orleans" thing. It's not an event that I can wrap my mind around; the sheer scale of it is fucking staggering. I will say that it seems like it could be handled better, though. I'm not some kind of professional disaster plan rescue recovery guy, but come on. Let's make our asshole president stay in the Superdome for a night and then see what he comes up with as far as evacation and disaster relief.