THINGS ON MY BODY

I gave myself a haircut a couple of nights ago, which means that all the hair on my head is more or less the same length. This picture gives you the idea.

My shoes are squeaking with every step; the soles are kind of messed up. Understandable, since they're five years old at this point. I'm debating taking them somewhere to get re-soled, or just buying new ones. Because man, I damn love these shoes. I didn't even know Timberland made shoes! Hiking boots, sure, but not shoes. Maybe they're still making these? I'm guessing not; five years is probably a long time i/t/o shoe fashion, but these are pretty simple, classic-looking black shoes.

You know what would solve this question is a trip to the shoe store. I should try working that in over the weekend somewhere.

YOU'RE NOT PSYCHIC DAY!

(I DECLARE TODAY TO BE GIRLS ARE PRETTY TRIBUTE DAY)

Every day for the past month (ever since you moved to Vegas) you've been coming into the pawn shop and demanding to see the wedding bands that desperate husbands and wives have traded for cold, hard cash. "Ernesto," you say (you've come to know the proprietor of this particular pawn shop), "show me the latest." Ernesto will comply with the same queasy smile he gave you the first time you asked, presenting you with a small velvet-lined display box cradling an assortment of winking gold rings.

You'll run the tips of your fingers over the shiny, cold metal and feel nothing. You've been secretly hoping all your life that you possessed some latent, inbuilt psychic talent that will come alive in a sudden burst of otherworldly, foreboding hallucination the moment you touch the treasured heirloom of a doomed person, but so far there's been zilch. It's been that way for twenty-nine days now, more if you count the preceding forty-three years of your life. It's time to admit it: You're not psychic. This time, as a change of pace, buy a hatchet from Ernesto and bury it in the head of the first tall person you see. You still won't be psychic, but at least now you'll be interesting.

Happy You're Not Psychic Day!

UNRELATED ITEMS

- New chunk of Get Your War On went up! Man, who needs RSS when you have me.

- There is a man who works in my office who seems literally unable to control the volume of his voice. The trouble is that he's always talking in what sounds like Cantonese when he walks past my cube row, so I can never tell if he's angry, jubilant, or something else. I will likely never know.

UTCFB 2.1.1

Apropos of absolutely nothing, I need to report that I've made a few very slight tweaks to the rules of ULTIMATE TEAM CARDBOARD FORTRESS BATTLE. Basically I've added some internal links, formalized the requirements for Flag capture, and put in a mild legal disclaimer. Now nobody gets to sue me if someone gets hurt playing this game, though that hasn't really happened yet and I don't foresee it ever occurring as long as the correct people are involved.

Also, do cashews count as breakfast. I say they do if you eat enough.

GENIUS TELEVISION EXECUTIVE: ME

Idea for new animated TV show: Goth Scroll Capture Masters. I ... I guess you can probably tell what its deal is already. There you go.

I SALUTE YOU, FAKE DOG POOP GUYS

With this post I am forever cancelling my future career as a detective crimefighter superhero: I fell for a practical joke last night that involved a fake dog turd. In my defense, it was super realistic-looking and also a dog actually did crap in my room relatively recently.

IF I WERE A SNAKE

My sunburn, which seemed to cover my shoulders and back (as well as oddly self-contained areas of my shins), has advanced to the peeling stage. Or at least part of it has, specifically the right-shoulder part and nowhere else. What is the deal with that. Also, wouldn't it be nice if the whole thing could just peel off in one single piece, as though I were a reptile molting? That would be simpler, wouldn't it? This is yet another reason why so-called "intelligent design" is a big ol' crock of shit.

SNAKES ON A PLANE

Movie of the summer.

Back during the college days, we used to go see nearly-first-run movies for a dollar at the big auditorium on campus. This was as close as I've ever come to recreating that experience. Go see it with some pals, and maybe be a little drunk. Hands-down the most fun I've had at the theater in the past four months, possibly even the whole year.

VACATION ITEMS

Things I've learned on my latest vacation to the East Coast (Ocean City, MD) include but are not limited to:

- SPF 15 is no longer adequate to protect my formerly invulnerable skin, except for my face, which I guess makes sense when you think about it

- I seem to have lost my taste for Maryland hard-shell crabs

- The prehensile-tailed porcupine has the most hilarious face and mien of all small mammals upon the Earth

- Just because you are on vacation does not make you immune to microbes

MERRY WEDNESDAY

Dogblog update for you. Don't say I never gave you nothin'.

I still think you should be watching Eureka Seven, though.

THUMBS UP TO GIANT SKY-SURFING ROBOTS

A few months ago I stayed home a few Saturday nights in a row, just to give myself a breather from the constant stream of social activity, and found myself watching Cartoon Network. It turns out Eureka Seven is actually a pretty good show (I obtained the 50-episode run from a magical internet fairy). The first twenty or so episodes remind me of a cross between Neon Genesis and Firefly, of all things, before it starts to take things in its own direction. There's a lot of backstory protein that doesn't get revealed until fairly late in the series, but I guess that's the way I'd want it done, too, now that I look back on it. The ending is pretty great, too, for what it's worth; the only other anime show I've ever watched that had an ending was Cowboy Bebop, and I had issues with it.

So if you've been looking for something new to watch that has giant robots in it, you could do way worse than this, is all I'm sayin'.

ANIMALS!

I spent about two hours yesterday preparing a roasted pork tenderloin with garlic and rosemary potatoes. Then my housemate stopped by with a dog she was watching, who promptly stole it off my plate when I got up to answer the door before I'd really gotten started and ate it. Or roughly half of it. But let's face it; you don't want your food anymore after a dog's put it on the floor and gnawed on it. I love dogs, but I have limits.

My housemate did have the grace to pay me back for it, though, which was good because I was still hungry. I got a quesadilla.

Next time, if someone else is home, I'm going to let them answer the door instead.

I AM LIKE A CELL

I divide and grow like a cell

What this is, is the voice of the dude inside me who appears from time to time when I create projects for myself. In this case, it started out as "I should burn some mp3 CDs for some friends of mine." This morphed pretty quickly, however, into

- "I should also make a little mix CD that has tracks from all these albums, because sometimes it's hard to just dive into a bunch of albums you don't know."

- "This is actually turning out to be a double-disc mix CD."

- "If I'm giving them this one album by Artist X, shouldn't I also include the other album, even though nothing from that album is going on the mix? It seems almost criminal not to."

This is a completely easy thing to do, though, because technology has made it ridiculously simple to burn CDs. I damn love when that happens.

SALAD SUPPLY SURPLUS

I'm in one of those moods again where all I want to eat for dinner this week is enormous salads and hunks of protein (in this case, tofu that I'm going to fry up). But here's the thing: I couldn't remember if I had any dressing back home, so I bought a new bottle. I could very well have a bottle already sitting on the shelf at home. Maybe even two: One on the shelf and one in the fridge! The thing is that I eat salad somewhat infrequently and my housemates sometimes use my stuff, so my mental inventory of the salad dressing I own is hazy at best.

What I need is a salad dressing version of Eggs & Milk Minder 1.0b.