Its a good day to blog.

 My old keyboard served me well: I got it back when I built my first computer back in the late 00's but most of the keys stuck when I hit them, and even the keys that did work were very hit and miss. When your keyboard is mostly used to type phrases like "pizza hut colorado springs" or "olivia munn magic mike" rapid response isn't really something that one would care about. However when you are using that same keyboard to play games on steam, your key presses really need to precise, and an input in the vein of "wadaawssddddddddddddddddd" will just get you killed. I tried to clean the ol' girl by taking it apart and putting all the plastic bits in the dishwasher. This did wonders for the appearance of the thing. which is now shiny and new like a baby lobster, but it did horrors for the performance. About half the keys became completely unresponsive and useless, and unless I wanted to justneverusethespacebaragain, I really needed to get a new keyboard. The Logitech K750 said it was solar powered, and since I hate batteries this seemed like the way to go. I was blown away by how easy it was to use, I literally connected the dongle, turned it on and was using it about 30 seconds after I opened the box. I've been using it for about 2 weeks now and I am very impressed, It is easily the best keyboard I've ever had.

I've been playing more video games than normal lately (this may be hard to believe but keep an open mind) and I've given most of the new games that have come out a shot. Bioshock: Infinite just isn't that fun to play. There are a few styles of shooters out there; First you have the Halo/Gears of War types where your character is a bullet sponge that shrugs off gunshots like a hot girl shakes off copulation requests. In this type of game you have to shoot an enemy about a thousand times, chuck a few grenades at him and then beat his face in with a rock before he will die. Then you have the Call of Duty types where soldiers wear armor made of wet construction paper, and every person runs around like headless chickens trying to kill each other as many times as possible, and twitch reflexes are king.

Bioshock Infinite is a game where you have the armor of a call of duty, and every single enemy is from Halo. 2 bullets to the face and you are dead, but about halfway through the game you start fighting enemies who absorb bullets like the quilted-fucking-picker uppers absorbs spilled fluids. Maybe I just suck at games but this was the hardest game I've played in a very, very long time. Every new enemy encounter I thought to myself "Shit, I have to shoot MORE guys now?" instead of "huzzah! more guys to shoot!" Great story though.

This comic has made me laugh at least 5 times. Please read it and enjoy.

Ehrmagerd iza blerg

      Like that friend that shows up at your door once every six months around 11pm and wants to sleep on your couch, my blog returns, filled with gusto and likely to leave unexpectedly at any moment! I've done all manner of stupidly adult-esque things since my last post, including getting a new job, setting a budget, taking my car to a real life mechanic, and, bathing!

      I decided to put on some music to help increase the flow of creative juices from my think-brain onto the screen, and chose my Bruno Mars radio station. I thought I liked Bruno Mars, until I realized that I really only like the songs "Runaway" and "Grenade". Also apparently Taylor swift is in the same genre as Bruno? I ran out of "dislikes" in about 6 minutes, and then just switched back to my Dragonforce/Flogging Molly/Capercaillie station.

Speaking of fluids, for the last few days my nose has been an unsealable conduit of mucus. The liters/sec flow on my face-faucet is roughly equal to that of a small waterfall. This pile of tissue was created between 8 pm and 3 am. and no I didn't put them in the trash. Sidenote, I have completely forgotten how to format these things so there is not a gigantic break in the text on the side of the picture. Opportunity for improvement!

New Girl was by far my favorite show in existence for its first season, but season 2 has been mostly disappointing to me so far. Zooey Deschanel is on my "hit" list for sure, but the show has lost a lot of its appeal as the plot has had an ever-heavier emphasis on sex. Now don't get me wrong, I love me some sex, but it has its place! Some of my favorite shows, like Game of Thrones, Archer and porn already have tons of sex in them. It was nice for there to be a very funny show that had sex as sort of a side issue, not the main focus. Eh, can't win em all.

Dragonforce was starting to make me want to club a baby seal, so I switched over to my good ole' Ray Charles/James Brown. I swear I should have been born a black Irishman in the late 60's for the way my music taste seems to orient itself. Alas, I am white, Italian and sadly without soul. By the way if anyone knows how to share a pandora station as a link, and not just as a "pandora link" It would be fun to link to my stations here.

There is an unfortunate lack of good sci-fi out right now. There was a disappointing teaser for a while that a new Star Trek tv show was in the making, but nothing really came of that. As fun as swords and sorcery are, sometimes a guy just wants to know how re-configuring the flow of the matter anti-matter reaction will increase the terradyne/ns output of the warp core enough to escape the gravity pull of a quasar. You know, science!

Snow still sucks.

Link Vomit

I apologize for the haphazard placement of links and pics, I'm writing this really quickly

My favorite players in the NBA are (in no real order) Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, Kenneth Faried, Rajon Rondo, Steve Nash and Dwight Howard. click this and drool. I screamed like a 9 year old girl about to swim with dolphins.

I wish I could have done what these guys did. Steve Nash redeems the entire nation of Canada all by himself. Seriously, this dudes awesome makes me overlook all the weird hats, beaver-centric money and maple syrup based economy. Seriously the beaver is like their state bird. Ok sure we had a buffalo on our nickel but we outgrew that phase back when FDR was still running around(ok, wheeling (buh dum tish)) defeating axis powers. And anyway buffalos are awesome.

This is Snooker. Its british and strange. Watch the score change, listen to the bizarre commentary and be stunned into silence.

This is why Olympic Ping Pong is my favorite thing to watch. Skip to 23 min.


I got promoted at some point in the past, I am now officially an Associate Manager at Dominos. Hurray for me.

I bought a new car last week, a blue 2012 Honda Fit. Its very nice looking imo. Every single person who has asked me about asks "What sort of mileage to the gallon do you get" and then tells me to fuck off after hearing the answer (ok that was just chris, but I could tell the others were thinking it).

Hopefully I will be able to come back later and make this look pretty, but at the moment i'm just glad I finally got around to posting this thing.

Cooking and Sech

Every time in the last four years or so that I have happened to catch a glimpse of myself naked in the mirror, I have immediately declared "I am going to work out every day, and eat only healthy food, starting tomorrow!" Then tomorrow comes along, and I rephrase my statement "I'll work out every other day, and eat better!" By the time day three comes along, and I buy two McDoubles and a large fry on my way home from work, My grandiose claims are as forgotten as that chick I met at that thing that time. Katelyn? Bathsheba? idk.

Roughly 15 days ago, I once again saw myself in the mirror, and decided that changes were in order. I went out and bought healthy food, pulled my p90x dvds out from behind my copy of FFXIII (I'll finish it. I will!) and... actually did the workouts, and actually ate healthy food! for more than a week! I'll admit I'm not sticking to the diet exactly, but when you've lived primarily on ramen and frozen pizza for the better part of 24 years, replacing even two of your three meals with veggies, good proteins and vitamins is a very significant accomplishment that I am not ashamed to brag about.

Unfortunately, people who live the better part of 24 years on ramen and frozen pizza also tend to lack the ability to prepare food that isn't flash frozen on a Chinese assembly line. I decided that I was going to learn to cook shit, and then told number one to make it so.

My first goal was to make chicken. This actually turned out to be easy, you just put it on the grill until the middle isn't pink. Done! Sadly, with little effort comes little reward. I discovered plain chicken without batter to be edible only in the broadest sense of the word; eating it doesn't seem to cause instant death, but my taste buds wished they were dead.

OK, I just need to make some kind of sauce to conceal the taste of ass. Honey-Chile sauce! sounds great! I excitedly acquired all the ingredients and followed the directions until I got to the step "Bring to a boil, then reduce by half. Add to blender and blend until smooth". Wtf does that mean? I assumed it meant "Reduce the temperature to half" so I did. Just after it stopped boiling, I dumped the contents into the blender, firmly held the lid down with my hand, and hit the button.

A geyser of almost-boiling fluid blasted upwards with enough force to knock the lid off the blender, burning my hand in the process. The kitchen was covered in steaming hot liquefied honey-Chile sauce, which believe it or not is as sticky and hard to remove as those really old lollipops you find stuck to the carpet.

Cooking is hard.

Fire

I don't know if you've been watching the news or listening to the radio, but Colorado Springs (where I live) is a little bit on fire at the moment. I've been listening to 105.5 constantly for the past few days, and the weather people sound really excited whenever they mention stuff like "Pyrocumulous Clouds" and "Fire Tornados", but manage to rein it in just enough to not be psychos. My Dominos graciously donated 40 large pizzas to the evacuees who were sent to the evacuation center in Monument. At first I thought it was trivial, even callous to give these people pizza; "Hey, sorry your house is burning down, did you want a veggie lovers or pepperoni?" In retrospect though, free pizza isn't going to make people feel any worse, will it? Hopefully all of the burnination will be resolved soon, we have over 200 additional fire fighters coming into town to join the 800+ already working their asses off. To any F-Fighters out there: Best of luck, and thank you for your service.

One of the reasons this fire is getting so out of hand is the record heat that we have been having here. For over a week the temperature has been in the 90's, staying in the 80s every night. I live in a three story house without air conditioning, and the top floor is almost a sauna. Whenever I go to the bathroom I expect to find a creepy old dude wearing only a towel and seven gold necklaces sitting on the counter smoking a cigar*. When I go out on the balcony to watch the world burn, I can feel heat emanating from the doorway behind me as strong as a space heater. After two days of sleeping on top of the covers, with the fan full blast, in the buff, I gave up and started sleeping in the basement.

Even my cat is feeling the effects of the heat. Just look at her; too tired and lazy to put any serious effort into pissing me off. Notice how she isn't even bothering to lie directly on my keyboard, only half-assedly sticking her feet over the edge?. She is too overheated to fully concentrate on inconveniencing me

*Movies have shown me that the only people that go to saunas are creepy old dudes and really hot chicks, neither of which seem to be able to wear towels properly.


I saw Brave. It has some of the most impressive animation I've ever seen, but the story is a little... meh. Its one of those classic "The plot only works if the main character decides to do something incredibly stupid" deals. The story also manages to be simple, yet confusing at the same time. The soundtrack is amazing though, Patrick Doyle integrates bagpipes and tin-whistles into the modern orchestra quite well, making the score come off as very Scottish, but not old fashioned. As an added bonus, all of the songs are sung completely in Gaelic! Worth seeing, but walk, don't run to do so. 6.5/10

Annoying Things

Watch this Corona Light Commercial



Corona's slogan is "Find your beach" or some shit. So this group of people are attending a concert and thought "you know, it sucks with all these other people around, I wish we were all alone at a beach". If you don't want to see other people, why are you at a club? Why does holding a corona make you zone out and ignore everyone? Mind Boggled!

I cant find a sound bite of it anywhere, but there is a radio commercial for Twisted Tea where a girl is talking in a breathy voice that is supposed to emulate Katherine Hepburn but comes off as more like "high school girl in drama club trying to sound mysterious". The word "tea" appears every four syllables, and at one point she says "but you need a little kick" the same way a condescending babysitter might offer gramcrackers to a sixteen year old. Unlike the corona commercial which is just confusing, this one outright infuriates me. I will never buy or consume Twisted Tea, and I urge you to do the same.

I don't like it when I'm driving and someone starts tailgating me. I always use cruise control, and when someone gets right on my butt I decelerate one mile at a time until I am satisfied that they have been sufficiently annoyed.

Except for this unquestionable bad-ass and Freddie Mercury, NO GUY should ever sing falsetto. It reminds me of the leader of the knights who say "Ni!" when he commands Arthur to chop down the mightiest tree in the forest... with... a... herring! The dude is trying to sound as silly and ridiculous as possible so what does he do? Goes into falsetto! And yet some male singers do this on purpose, while trying to sound sexy? No. Stop. Allow your balls to drop down where they belong.

While I've been writing this I've been syncing my Cd's to itunes so I can put them on my phone. Needle decided the best way to assist me was to lay all over my shit. Cats are awesome. Its my favorite when they chew through your brand new phone charging cable and then poop in your clean laundry.

Check out The Best Page in the Universe. The guy only updates once every few months but there are posts going back like 8 years, and he is pretty funny.

Scruffy

Ever since I started shaving around 19 (I'm a late bloomer so sue me) I have sucked at it. There has not been a single time, in five years, that I have not cut myself at LEAST once. I have always used disposable razors for the lolz, but yesterday I was at walgreens and saw the Gillette Fusion Proglide in the bargain bin for seven bucks, and I figured hell, what have I got to lose except seven bucks? I just shaved about twenty minutes ago, and DAMN. The difference was mind boggling. It was like shaving with a stick of butter instead of rusty nails coated in tetanus.

Just look at this smooth neck! Appreciate its not-sliced-to-shittedness! My neck-skin used to function adequately as sandpaper after each shave, but that beauty over there wouldn't even scratch a baby's bottom*. On a more somber note, wtf is up with my ear? look at that thing. From underneath it looks like some weird mutant thumb coming out of my head. Ew.

*I in no way endorse the use of beard-scruff to scratch baby bottoms

I finally got on the bandwagon and got a smart phone last week! The Iphone 4s is really shiny, and is packed to the gills with niftyness. Ex: On fathers day I called up a place to order pizza. When I ended the call, I realized my phone had already pulled up the store's address on my screen without me even searching for it! I touched the address, and BAM! I had directions to the place faster than I could say "I need directions to the place." Like wtf! After briefly pondering what manner of augury allowed Siri to read my mind, I calmly followed the directions to the store. Science be praised.

So my phone kicks ass. Getting the phone, however, was a less than pleasant experience. When I arrived at the i-store, a gaggle of 4-5 blue shirted types were milling around absent-mindedly near the front. When I approached, one of them took me to "Drake", who was busy trying to unlock a drawer for a customer. Apparently, someone had locked her phone in the drawer for safe keeping, then left and taken the keys with them, dooming the phone to a lifetime trapped in i-purgatory. After about fifteen minutes of Drake trying to pick the lock with a paperclip and explain touch screen controls to me, the blue-shirt gang decided to bring over ANOTHER girl for Drake to help. This one was buying a brand new computer and had never used an apple before, and naturally Drake was the only man who could possibly explain it. So we had five employees standing around contemplating their uselessness while Drake tried to simultaneously complete three disparate tasks. The Apple store apparently has a "Only one helpful employee per shift" rule which forces most workers to pretend to suck at their jobs.

Veep is a good show! You should watch it.

I'm not even gonna talk about the NBA finals. Disappointing.



How's that for a slice of fried gold?