So, the party at the Bills went over pretty well though there were a few notable downsides. For one thing, I was feeling a little subpar due to some stomach upset. The night before the party I had eaten some leftover pizza upon getting home and it didn't agree with me. I'm not sure why but that seems to be a common response for me and pizza lately. Maybe it was just all the oil or something but it was not a pleasant morning. By the time I left for the party, I thought it had cleared itself up and snacking on chips and vegetables saw no problems. Having a hotdog and a sausage though brought on a lingering series of mild abdominal pain and a vague sense of nausea. It may have had something to do with taking my meds on an empty stomach as well. I do that all the time but in this case, I was already feeling a bit bleh to begin with. Really, the only real net effect is I didn't want to eat anything else for several hours after that and just wanted to have a nice restful sit down.

I ended up playing a lot more games at this party than most of the previous. A lot of that was due to the not feeling well. Usually I tend to move around chatting with people but this time I just planted myself downstairs on the couch and games sprang up more or less organically. I must've played 8 or more games of Cash 'n Guns last night. There were also a couple of rounds of Pow-Wow and then a final game of Ra. Other activites included watching a really whacky Dr Who parody on youtube through the Wii's Opera browser, seeing bits and pieces of Return of the Jedi on tv, and I also got to spent a lot of time chatting with Bob. Him and Randy just got back from a trip to Barcelona and France and they were telling me about the trip. I didn't see much of Randy after that since he got himself entangled in a 5 and a half hour game of Through the Ages.

That was pretty much it. I held up pretty well on the whole pain front, mostly due to the fact I popped some steroids in the morning. Things were really starting to go downhill by the time I left though and the drive home wasn't pleasant. It took hours for the inflammation to die down and the accompanying issues. I don't think I actually got to sleep until around 4 or 5 am and then got up again way too early. What I really need right now is a good nap. I'm going to see if I can find one.

I got back from the gameday at the Panera a couple hours ago a complete mess. I'll spare you any descriptions but suffice to say that you'd probably be horrified if I didn't. It shouldn't have been completely unexpected. Even with my drugs, there's just a limited amount of time I can be out and about like a normal person. Going to game days in general is pushing it when I spent 6-7 hours there. Today was simply worse because my day started earlier. Since my mom is going to be working at the restaurant tomorrow, my sisters and I went with her and my grandmother out to eat for mother's day. We went to the Bennigan's out near Middlesex mall and it was pretty spiffy overall. Business can't be very good at these sort of places lately given the state of the economy and it shows. There were some pretty incredible deals including a 7-day a week lunch special consisting of an entree and drink for only $6 or you could get an appetizer, entree, and dessert for $11.99. Even with those promotions going, the place was like a ghost town with only a few tables occupied while we were there. Food prices up, patronage down. It can't be a happy time.

Connie brought Madeline along with her and it's the first time I've seen her in around a month. She looks absolutely huge to me though I'm sure a lot of that is perception rather than reality. Connie did say that she's in the 95th percentile for head size so she's inherited our family's giant melon head. She's also a lot more behaved in general. What I remember most about my previous encounters was that it was almost impossible to see her both awake and not screaming. There was usually only a 10-15 minute window after she woke up or was fed or was changed before she would start to cry and had to sleep, eat, or be changed again. She's actually starting to develop a personality and would break into a huge smile whenever she looked at my mom or grandmother. Her brows would furrow in a puzzled/slightly disturbed expression whenever she glanced my way, though that's better than her reaction to my father which is to immediately break into tears. I'm sure a lot of it is just familiarity.

Madeline was well behaved enough that there weren't any real disturbances with the meal. For the most part, my sisters just passed her back and forth as the other would eat. The meal itself was very good for the price. I ended up having a cheese burger with fried mushrooms as an appetizer. When it's piping hot and done right, I just <3 batter-dipped fried vegetables. I did end up scalding my mouth at one point though.

After the meal, it was still around 45 minutes before the gameday would start and I made the mistake of just going there early and waiting in the car. What I should have done is just gone home and 'reset the clock' on my issues and arrived late. Instead I sat around listening to NPR until everyone else arrived. I spent most of the game day playing Through the Ages again. No doubt that was part of the problem. The game must've run at least 5-6 hours where I just sat there without moving. By the time I was finally forced to get up to make my bladder gladder, everything had just snowballed into a real cockup. Inflammation issues are like that. You can take anti-inflammatories or other drugs but time works against you. All you can do is slow the issues, but there's always a piper to pay at some point. I managed to limp my way back to finish the game because I didn't want to just abandon it so close to the end. As soon as it was over I made my way to the car and came home.

Situations like this always make me worried when it comes to cons and other sorts of situations where I'm stuck out for extended periods. It's no wonder why things like that have become less appealing over the years as things have gotten worse.

So, things actually went pretty at the smirk and dagger day. By the end, I was more than a little tired of running the games over and over and there were a couple other minor issues, but that was about it. I guess I should just list the downside first.

Well, first and foremost, Sue Ellen was a major pain in the ass today. I have no clue if she's just gotten more whiney and obnoxious over the months I haven't been around or she was just being more of a bitch than normal. I've just about had it though. I've told Lori already that the next time she spends an entire game whining at me, I'm going to slap the stupid out of her. It's one of the most annoying and rude personality traits I've ever seen in my life, and coming from me, that should mean something. Hell, if I call someone else rude, they must really be fucked up. Anyway, I endured two sessions this time around and I simply refuse to do it again.

Other than that, I had some drug issues. I hadn't eaten anything all day other than a little bit of pasta that Bernie didn't want and I think that's what caused the nausea and dizziness. Just the normal sort of side-effects I get when I pop too much of the codeine. It wasn't dehabilitating and I was able to work through it.

All in all, around 20 or so people participated and we ran 3 games of Candy Man, 2 of Hex-Hex, and 1 of Cutthroat Caverns. Those who played seemed to have a good time (with the exception of Sue Ellen) and I hope at least a few of them decide to show up for the tourney. I was surprised to discover that I scheduled the thing for the day before Easter, and that Easter falls on my birthday this year. I don't think I can ever recall an Easter coming so early. I've always thought of it as an April holiday. That proximity may be helping to drive down registrations and turnout.

In other news, I called Bill S tonight to see if he and the other Bill wanted to go for breakfast tommorrow morning like we had talked about. His mom ended up calling me back on his cell to tell me that he's in surgery at the hospital and that she and Bill M were waiting for him to regain consciousness. I immediately thought something truly catastrophic had happened. I mean, death or dismemberment, or something along those lines. Apparently he had an appendicitis attack the night before and they called 911 to get him to the hospital. Once there, an x-ray showed it was about to pop so they snicker-snacked it out of there. He should make a full recovery though he'll be in the hospital for another day or two. It's a good thing they got medical attention for him when they did. Hell, if it had been me, I probably would have just popped more codeine and spent the next day hoping it'd go away.

I forgot completely (by around a hour and 15 minutes) that yesterday, March 14th, was Pi Day. It's not like I've ever celebrated it before, but I usually make some sort of mention on here.

Speaking of which, I could really go for a pie right about now. Who wants to bake me one?

Oh, and if yesterday was Pi Day, then that makes today the Ides of March. Wonderful.

Welp, it's been 50+ days since Christmas has come and gone. I think at this point I can be pretty sure that neither slith_tschillin nor Computechie are coming through with their part of the gift exchange. Ah well. It wouldn't have felt quite right if there wasn't some sort of hosing about the whole thing. It's always nice to have your predictions verified.

The only reason the whole thing is coming to mind is I just reading the ol' f-list and someone else was starting up a chain letter gift ring. The idea being that when each person sends out 3 whozits to the first individuals who comment to the entry and then each of those people post and send out 3 more items. I guess it's like the pay-it-forward version of a garage sale. I thought about giving it a whirl, but then remembered the Christmas screw so I'm using that as my excuse.

I've meant to mention for a few days now that I got kat15lee's gift exchange item in the mail and it's pretty damn spiffy. I just haven't managed to snap pictures of it up until now. I have more than a small dash of laziness and procrastination in my nature to begin with but I find that pain issues only exacerbate it. It becomes very easy to put things off when you know that there'll be some cost payed in discomfort. Not that this was a chore or anything, but it's easy to put aside. Anyway, here's what I got:



It's a t-shirt with a red chinese dragon on the front. It's actually spiffy for multiple reasons.

• I was born in the year of the dragon.


• My nickname as a kid (and even nowadays among family) is Little Dragon.


• Chinese New Year is coming up in just a few weeks.

It'll make for something nice to wear this year for the New Year. Last year, I ended up skipping the family celebration and actually ditched one of my friends (Randy) at the event. He actually mentioned it on the phone yesterday, asking if there would be another celebration this year and if I would actually grace it with my presence. I told him that even if I'm a no-show, he's always welcome to attend from now on. On one level, I like the idea that there will always be a surrogate for me at need. Maybe he can stand in for thanksgiving this year too.

Courtesy of jirel:

Featuring Achmed, the dead terrorist:

I got a bag o' candy today from kat15lee. I've apparently missed a lot of the new innovations that have come out for old favorites. There are now apprently Hershey Kisses with little peppermint balls mixed into the chocolate. Pretty spiffy really. I was also amazed to find that there are now peppermint peeps in existance.



I've never been a fanatical peep fan, but I do enjoy a good and stale peep every once and a while. I'm planning to leave these out for a while until they're aged to perfection and I'll let you know how the whole peppermint thing goes over.

Me and the triple chin I'm working on thank you, kat.

Alrighty, here are some of the pictures from the christmas party. I'll put it all behind a cut so it dosen't scroll out of control. Minorly annotated for your edification:

( Here we go )

So today was the day planned to go and redeem those "mystery" coupons from Houlihan's. In the end, it was the usual crowd of the Bills, Lori, Bernie, Karen, and myself. We had at least four of those coupons between us and I was dead set on trading mine in. I don't find Houlihan's all that appealing that I would want to make repeated trips just to trade in a coupon.

When I got there, everyone else had already been informed that the terms and conditions on the thing said only one could be used per table. My response to this was that we should all state we wanted to be seated at our own individual table so we could then each use one of the coupons. We could then yell conversations to one another and everything would be spiffy. When I suggested this perfect solution to the waiter, he said he would check on the idea and eventually sent the manager over. The manager didn't exactly strike down the idea but made some mention of how wouldn't we rather sit together and wouldn't that be better. Hmmmm....sit with everyone else...save up to $10...sit with everyone...$10...fuck that, I chose $10. I got up and moved maybe 3 feet to a nearby booth. Unsurprisingly, no one else followed suit and they all decided to stay where they were. Pansies.

All in all, it's not like I was exiled to Siberia or something. The distance was close enough that I didn't even have to raise my voice to be heard or anything. Lori snapped a picture to document my cheap defiance and that was basically that. We spent a good chunk of time at the resturant just chatting about various things. The Bills are still thinking about making a trip to Amsterdam this summer, Lori's traveling to Florida to engage in debauchery, plans for Bill M's birthday at the resturant, and we made plans to go see Sweeny Todd in a couple of weeks. Almost everyone gone a free movie pass from Bernie and Karen for christmas and it'd be a good oppertunity to use them up. Besides, now that I have the soundtrack, thanks to Randy, I should go see the movie in order to better appreciate it.

I should have popped over to Brian's for a New Year's get together but he had called me the night before saying that it was canceled due to lack of interest. It seems that most people weren't up for the idea, no doubt spending the day recovering from their hangovers. Since there was notta else to do, I popped over to the Mall and burned up a coupon for Coldstone Creamery and I've now got dessert sitting in the freezer.

So last night was the annual holiday party at the casa de dos Bills. It's something they do every year and they go out of their way to have it catered which can't be an insignificant expense. The guest list seems to grow year from year and there are always new faces in one form or another.

This time around I got to meet a few more friends of the family (Bill S's) who included a little person, his little person wife, and their average-sized son. I'm putting average in italics because I have this tendancy to use the word 'normal' instead and actually did it once while talking to the guy about the genetics of little person-dom, something he quickly corrected. I'd never really had a huge amount of interest in the topic but was fasinated to discover that it's actually a dominant trait apparently. Only the heterozygous individuals survive so when any two little people have a kid, it's 2/3's likely to be a little person too and 1/3 likely to be average sized. I had always assumed because it was generally rare that it was a recessive trait. It turns out that a lot of them are also just spot mutations, which I guess only makes sense from the whole heterozygous thing.

As an aside, I find something incredibly belittling about the term 'little people'. I know it's what they apparently prefer and I guess it has to be better than dwarf or munchkin or leprechaun, but you'd think that they could come up with something better than little people. It makes them sound a bit like magical wee folk and you can't say that the world 'little' dosen't have an infantilizing ring to it. Maybe we could just call them short people or something.

Oh well, that whole thing aside, the only other thing I did was play Rock Band. I had realized at Matt and Joyce's Christmas get together that the drums were never going to be my thing. I tended to struggle even on easy. So this time around I gave the guitar a whirl and found I really liked it. I was competant enough to play on medium without getting boo'ed off the stage and usually managed a score in the high 80's. Not fantastic for sure, but not bad for a first night's try. There was something thrilling about playing the actual melody of a song, note for note. Of course, there were a few times I ended up flubbing those parts so badly that the song essentially had no melody for a bit. It always took a while for me to feel the beat of the song. As far as timing, I end up playing more on instinct than watching exactly when those colored bars hit bottom. In fact, when I had to rely just on the colored bars, that's when I usually ended up having issues.

We also ended up exchanging some christmas presents at the party. Frankly, this is part of the party that always causes me some amount of angst each year. I don't much like holiday shoping in general and I really don't like the fact that so many people end up showing up to this thing and there's this differing levels of friendship thing. It makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable when I see someone not get anything to get something and not give anything to someone or vice versa. I'm sure most other people don't even spend much time thinking about it, but it's something that I end up pondering. So this year, basically I just decided to load a pillow case with whozits. I bought a case of those bigass solid Hershey's kisses, a few tins of some fancy schmancy truffle whozits, and $75 worth of gift cards in $15 incredments. I then proceeded to toss the items about, hitting at the very least the major individuals and then anyone who didn't seem to have gotten much or anything. Lori ended up doing practically the same thing but went all gift cards. She was telling me she ended up picking up 15 of them from Target just to make sure that she had every possible person on the darn invite list covered. I have no clue what denomination is on the card, but that had to have been a pretty pricey endevor overall.

The only non-generic item I picked up was from Randy, who continued the tradition. This is the third christmas in a row where he's gotten me musical CD's. This time around it was Evita and the movie version of Sweeny Todd. I'm pretty excited about the later since it's one of those that I've always meant to get around to listening to. In fact, I'd love to get a group together to actually catch it in theaters. Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, and a musical about killing people and baking them into pies. What is there not to like? Bob also came along with Randy and I got a chance to have a good talk with him as the night wore on. It's a shame that I don't get to see more of them in general, but Bob has no interest in gaming and generally avoids those events and even Randy dosen't pop down as often anymore. Shame really.

I ended up taking some pictures but they're still in the camera. I'll try to find some time to upload and resize them in the next day or two and pop them up.

I found some time today to snap a few more pictures and got them all uploaded and prepped.

Here is what I received from littlestink:




I actually spent a good chunk of time looking at and thinking about this card. It seems incredibly familiar but I can't recall where I might have seen the image before. It looks very Tim Burtonesque and reminds me of the style of art from the nightmare before christmas or corpse bride. That gothic sort of claymation. It's also reminding me of some halloween clip I recall seeing on youtube a while ago.




My mom was around when I was opening up the package and I got to explain what liberals were. I think she believes I receive mail from nutjobs. It's just as well she never saw the voodoo cat.




Hmmm. You know, I've never really given much thought to robot uprisings. I'm not even sure it'd be a horrible thing really. When I have focused on sci-fi end of the world senarios, I always figured it'd be a clone war or a battle over eugenics. It might actually be sort of comforting to simply have robots revolt. At least there you can draw the lines of good and evil pretty starkly and clearly. I'll have to peruse the book at length and see if any of the tactics can be adapted to fighting cats and hippies.




I have no idea if this was intentional, but I thought including the receipt was a humorous twist. I can only assume that littlestink thought it was possible that I would hate the book so much I would trek up to Toronto in order to exchange it. I was also happy to see that the other book listed on the receipt is Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. A absolutely fabulous book IMO, and it should be a must read for everyone, even those who normally don't have much of an interest in the sciences. He manages to bring a level of easy comprehension you don't often find as well as including a lot of interesting and funny scientific annecdotes. The takehome message being that many scientists were nuttier than peanut brittle.

So that's all the items to date. I'll keep making addenum entries as more things arrive. Thanks to everyone who participated and I hope you all enjoyed what you ended up getting.

Over the past half a week or so, the gift exchange items have filtered in and I finally got around to snapping some photos and then uploading and resizing the results. Well, most of them anyway.

From jirel:





I haven't touched a John Steinbech book since high school. For all that I would read voraciously, I never actually went for the classics unless forced. It's probably not a stretch to say that if it weren't for high school English, I wouldn't have encountered his work at all. That said, I liked a lot of what I did end up reading. I still have very pleasant memories of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. I can recall that whole moment of "Listen, you fellas don' know what you're doing" and thinking, holy crap, it's Jesus and that one scene of Okies pulling up to the diner and the waitress telling them it was penny candy so the father could get a piece for the son and then receiving the huge tip from the truckers in return. Just thinking about it almost makes me want to go out and find a copy. Besides, if I read it this time around it's unlikely I'll need to write an essay afterwards.

Up until now, I had never heard of Travels with Charley, though I've been promised it's cynical. Nothing like a good tale of developing misanthropy at christmas time. In the past, the only travel logs I've read have been by Bill Bryson. They've been incredibly entertaining and afterwards, even I feel a twinge for wanting to follow in the author's footsteps. Considering how much I loathe travel in general and my other issues, that's saying something. I can only hope that Travels with Charley ends up being as spiffy.


From vala_amaris:

To preface things, this package ends up qualifying as the most disturbing thing I have received in the mail EVER. I'm almost certain it'll keep that title up until someone sends me a severed bodypart or something similar.






I probably should have suspected something unusual just from the card. Cats are always an ill omen. It was with a minor amount of trepidation that I unwrapped the item and this is what I found.




It's a cat voodoo doll. Spiffy in a creepy WTF sort of way. Just looking at it, I'm tempted to try to sneak it under someone's pillow just to see what the reaction is. I guess I would need to stick a few pins in it first just for authenticity but I'd love to see the response when someone finds this sort of thing in their bed. It could very easily become the stuff of nightmares if you tried it on a child.

For the time being Voodoo kitty is sitting on my desk, though he has his head covered with some paper. I didn't like the way he was looking at me. Admit it, you wouldn't want him staring at you either.


From sparklefancy:




Spiffy. I haven't had a desk calender in ages. I don't think it's something I've ever bought for myself before since I tend to get very absentminded about ripping off the days in a timely fashion. Not to mention I'm one of those people who always has only a vague awareness of what day it is. I've never been able to get into the habit of making notes and scheduling events, even back when I had something worth scheduling. I'm thinking that this might come in handy as a header to future LJ entries in the new year. A quick camera shot and upload and it might be pretty spiffy.


I should note that I also got the gift from littlestink but it ended up arriving after I had taken the pictures of all the others. I'll try to snap a few shots sometime tommorrow or the next day and edit this entry with its addition.

I'm still up, having gotten zilch sleep last night. I was having pain issues and despite exhaustion, just couldn't manage to doze off. I finally just ended up popping another double dose a hour or so ago and I'm finally starting to feel a bit mellow. I'll probably end up zonking out at some point, but I figured I'd do a quick recap of Christmas.

It actually wasn't much of a holiday around here. Christmas has declined in importance in my family until it's pretty much no different than any other day. No family get togethers, no planned meals, no gifts. Hell, we might as well be Jews at this point. Well, I guess that's not exactly the case. At least the Jews go out for chinese food and a movie.

So my christmas day would have been pretty much like any other if it weren't for being invited up to Matt and Joyce's new place. They invited the regular crowd of people and quite a few of us showed up. Bill S, Lori and her husband, George, Dave and Heather. I guess maybe we're all sort of latchkey children when it comes to this holiday. Until I had heard the headcount from Joyce, I had assumed that most people would have been spending the day with their families.

It was a pot luck affair and I ended up bringing enough fried rice to feed a hobo army. I think some wires must've been crossed when I requested a portion large enough to serve as a side dish for 10 people or so. What I ended up carting there was enough to gorge 10 starving people with enough left over for the day after. I figure that unless Matt and Joyce can find starving homeless people nearby, they're either going to be heartily sick of fried rice or have to end up tossing most of it. Overall dinner was nice though I ended up insulting Joyce's Mom's Red Velvet cake. I had never run into anything like that before and it was just incredibly weird in texture. I commented that it had it consistancy and texture of play-doh. Matt then helpfully pointed out that Joyce's mom (who was sitting right nearby) had made it. I'm more than willing to take their word that it's supposed to look and taste like that, but it just didn't seem quite normal to me.

After dinner we spent most of the time playing Rock Band. Shelley had bought an extra copy of it from Costco and had wanted me to sell it on eBay. Looking at the size of the box and the recent headaches I had had with the Wii's, I decided to offer it up to Matt first. I thought he had an xbox 360 already and that he might be interested. Turns out he did want the game and was willing to go out and get an xbox just to be able to play it. Joyce ended up buying it as part of his christmas present and we all reaped some of the benefits last night. It's a lot of fun, allowing three people to play at once, with capacity for a 4th once you get another guitar. The only downside as far as I was concerned was my complete lack of rythmn and the obscurity of most of the songs from my point of view. I recognized very few of them, not being a big rock fan and even those I did recall, it's not like I knew them well enough to feel comfortable singing them. The only thing I tried were the drums which I could only manage on the easiest setting and even then with mixed results. I've never been very good at any of those games that require timing and dexterity. Meanwhile, Matt was hitting that guitar like someone in the throes of an epileptic seizure. I can't comprehend how someone can follow that huge jumble of notes streaming across the screen.

Dave, Heather and I ended up being the last to leave, treking out sometime after midnight. The drive back was uneventful and it was a lucky thing that the rain held off. My windshield wipers aren't working at all right now. They ended up somehow slipping off the motor which mean sthat they need to be opened up and reattached somehow. I tried driving without wipers a week ago during a mixed rain/snow and ended up almost wrecking myself.

I've been up ever since getting home and it's only now that I'm starting to feel painfree and normal again. I should probably just go to bed but I'm thinking about whether it's worthwhile to head on over to the BoardgameNJ meetup. Lori scheduled a gameday for today and it might be nice to pop over just to chitchat. Of course, knowing my luck, I'll start to feel crappy again just as I manage to haul my ass over there.

It's becoming harder and harder for me to make entries on this thing. Just too many things bubbling up and it's hard to find the will to go and jot it down. Add to it the fact that I usually only have a limited window (usually after pill popping) when it's not an unpleasant experience and it just makes things a bit more sketchy.

Yesterday I went to the gameday at the Panera despite feeling incredibly wretched during most of the day. I was up half the night and popping codeines like they were candy. Things ended up stabilizing by the time I got to the game day which is just as well. I'm just a little disturbed by the continuing escalation of what I need to maintain some degree of pain management. It's not been a fun time. I sometimes think that I should make a daily notation of pill popping and then create a long term graph of the thing just to quantify the changes.

The game day itself was okay. I finally got around to playing a game of Santiago where I then proceeded to get my ass handed to me in a pretty decisive manner. For all that I love the game, I just can't seem to win at it. After that it was a game of Goa where I pulled out what I felt was a pretty impressive comeback to finish second. I finished the game with only 5 freaking plantations total and spent around 75% of the time going second. It's a miracle I didn't just end up grinding to a halt.

I'm pretty certain that I will be popping up to Matt and Joyce's place for Christmas. I got a headcount update from Joyce at the gameday and passed the info along so the resturant can whip something up. It's a potluck affair and there's no way I'm actually going to do any cooking. I'm pretty sure no one would want to consume the results even if I were inclined to do it myself. Instead I figure I'll end up hauling along a vat of some sort of fried rice or similar item.

Oh, and I got two christmas gifts in the mail from jirel and vala_amaris. I took some pictures but haven't uploaded them to the computer yet. I'll try to get around to it sometime tommorrow. God knows that they deserve their own entry.

I've always wished that I could sing. Really sing. Like, well, instead of just generally being able to hit the notes I'm going after. It would have been amazing to have been a member of an acapella group or to have sung in musicals and the like. It just seems like it would be an incredibly fulfilling thing to do and I can't help but get a little ferclemped when I see videos like this. Ah, if only I had been touched with some talent there. I guess it really would be asking too much though. Maybe I should just keep hoping for that star fighter. Between the two, I can't help but realize that it's the more likely.

And hell, this might be the only reason to go to a Hardee's.

I was watching the History Channel downstairs and they had one one of the near endless string of programs about dog fights and and fighter jets. This got me thinking a bit. In an idea world, I think that if I could pick any career I would want to pilot a star fighter. If star fighters aren't avaliable, then a F-15 would be pretty spiffy or any modern fighter jet really. Of course, I'm not sure that there's enough give in quantum where there might exist any such universe. After all, you don't usually see fatasses zipping around in planes or spaceships. The last such was probably Porkins and we all know how he ended up. It also wouldn't be the best idea to give me a machine with missiles, bombs, or, if I were lucky, laser beams and quantum torpedos. After all, I have almost a pathological ability to hold a grudge and a slightly suicidal bent. I'd probably be kamikazi'ing someone before the first day was out.

Still, assuming that there were some slipup and I was allowed to sneak past, I can't get over the idea that it would be glorious to zip around in a fighter jet, sending out jets of hot plasma death into the bodies and vehicles of my enemies. It's also sort of appealing that if you're going to get into a dog-fight, chances are you're either going to waste the bastard and win, or go out with a bang. Across the palate of my mind are the sweeps and turns of contrails, forming a beautiful strategic symmetry.

Well, that settles it. I'm asking for a star fighter for christmas.

I woke up a couple hours ago and have been more or less unable to get back to sleep. I ended up popping some more pain meds and they're slowly working to take away some of the Ow. To pass the time, I've been listening to David Sedaris read his book Holidays on Ice. I know that I've mentioned Sedaris on the LJ at least once before when I reposted his story 6 to 8 Black Men. I first ran across him while listening to This American Life on NPR, and have since managed to track down some of his audiobooks.

Overall, I'm not a huge fan of reading his stuff because it pales in comparrison to hearing him read it. There's just something about his voice that accentuates the funny as far as I'm concerned. I occassionally search his name on bittorrent search engines, only to be disapointed by the same lack of hits. Well, maybe because it's the christmas season but someone uploaded a copy of Holidays on Ice recently and I managed to snag it. It's a perfect series of holiday-related stories for every misanthrope you might know. These are not the happy fuzzy sort of christmas tales you might usually find. Part of it recounts his time working as the elf, Crumpet, at Macy's Santaland during the christmas season. It's hard to imagine an experience more likely to engender horror and a general loathing for all of humanity. There are also some pure-fiction stories accentuating various holiday sins which will warm any heart.

I really hate this time of year.

Speaking of mall and department store Santa's, I just saw an article come across CNN that's on point.

Mall Santa says woman groped him

DANBURY, Connecticut (AP) -- Santa Claus says that a woman who sat on his lap was naughty, not nice.

A Santa at the Danbury Fair mall said the woman groped him.

"The security officer at the mall said Santa Claus has been sexually assaulted," police Detective Lt. Thomas Michael said of the weekend complaint.

Sandrama Lamy, 33, of Danbury, was charged with sexual assault and breach of peace. She was released on a promise to appear in court on January 3.

Police quickly found and identified Lamy because the woman was described as being on crutches, said Capt. Bob Myles.

A call seeking comment from Lamy was answered by a recording Tuesday morning. A woman later called back and said: "It's a false report and I don't have any idea."

Police did not give the name of the disconcerted Santa, but they said he is 65 and felt badly because children were waiting to see him. "He was apparently shocked and embarrassed by the whole incident," Myles said.

You'd think that a nice grope would be one of the few fringe benefits of being Santa. Still, part of me can't help but hope they throw the book at her. It would be funny to see someone have to register as a sex offender because you copped a feel off of Santa. Imagine trying to explain that the next time you filled out a job application.

Well, the good ones anyway.

A while back, on the fateful day that I made a trek out to see the monumentally bad The Golden Compass, we stopped off at a bar and resturant named Houlihan's after the film. The meal wasn't anything special but we each got handed a 'mystery envelope' a part of their holiday promotions. The basic idea is that it's sealed with a prize inside that you can't look at until January when you bring it back to the resturant. On the back, the list of possible prizes include a $5 voucher, a free dessert (up to $5.99), a free appetizer (up to $9.99), a $25 voucher, or a $100 voucher. Since you don't know what you're going to get, the idea is that hope might entice you to return to find out.

I've had this thing sitting on my desk for a week or so now and it only just occurred to me to seriously give peeking a try. Turns out, that if you angle the thing just right, you can peer through a hole in the side of the envelope and, with sufficient squinting, make out what it says. Mine's for a free appetizer, which is sorta spiffy. I'm not sure I would have returned to redeem the $5 or the free dessert, but since an appetizer is what I had as an entre when I was there last, it's like they're offering a free meal.

I know that some of the people who also picked up those envelop vouchers read this, so I'm also encouraging you to take a sneak peak. I'm sorta curious if anyone got one of the really good prizes.