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?

Success and Disapointment

I only got the internet turned on a few days ago, so this blog has been steadily and repeatedly delayed (not unlike my education!) but here it is! Aisha should now be temporarily mollified.

I posted back on may 30th that I had a job. Turns out that wasn't true, as I still had one more interview to go through, But I made it through the wilderness! I am now a Dominos manager in training. How much better than unemployed is this? Three.

I read Wicked recently. Here is a brief recap.

chapter the first: A magic dwarf with a mechanical dragon goes from town to town making people kill each other. Elphaba (wicked witch) is born! she is green. Also she has fangs. Also she has a glowy eye that can see into the future, and her first word is "Horrors".

Skip forward 16 years. Oz has become 1930s Poland, but the Jews are talking animals. The words "pogroms" and "discrimination" are thrown around a lot. elphaba is attending hogwarts. She has a little sister who has no arms. The magic dwarf makes a tiger rape a dude. For no reason. Just to make sure some steamy beastiality makes it into the book, because the author knows that books with NO tiger rape suck.

Skip forward 5 years. Elphaba is now a terrorist who is fighting for animal rights. Nothing happens for 8 chapters. she tries to kill some lady and fails. The magic dwarf gives her a magic book.

Skip forward 10 years. Elphaba has been a nun ever since her failed assassination. The head nun gives her a broom and tells her to go the desert. In the desert she meets a magic elephant who tells her "You are now a witch". She goes to a castle. Her little sister (with no arms) is now king of munchkinland.

skip forward 3 years. Elphaba discovers the broom can fly, then spends all her time sewing pigeon wings onto monkeys to make flying monkeys. Elphaba is now called "The Wicked witch of the west", and her armless sister is now called "the wicked witch of the east" why? The denizens of Oz are apparently terrified by armless women and pigeon mutilation. Dorothy kills Elphaba with some water, The end. Oh and the talking animal terrorist movement and the magic rape/murder dwarf are never explained or resolved. Oh and her sharp teeth disappear at some point, and her ability to see the future never seems to come up again or matter either.

Basically the whole book is nonsense hodgepodge with tons of random shit that never amounts to anything. The musical is pretty decent though. Which reminds me, I want to see Rock of Ages.

When I was at the theater to see The Avengers for the third (glorious) time, I saw this teaser for an upcoming show (slightly NSFW)



Now, ever since I saw Heartbreakers as a thirteen year old hormone sack, I have loved me some Jennifer Love. THAT trailer was enough to make me schedule a spot for The Client List between Game of Thrones (yeah, this blog has been a while in the making) and Legend of Korra.

I watched the first two episodes of the show. Turns out that men who visit a prostitute just want someone to talk to, NOT someone to engage in the sexytimes with. Maybe the Client List is great for women in the worlds oldest profession that felt that the Lifetime Network was not adequately empowering them, But all "I" wanted was for J-love to run around prostituting herself. Waste of time.

I have a lot more to write about, but this thing is already getting up there in length, so look forward to another silly nonsense blog filled with my opinions in the coming days.

Another Wikiventure

Earlier today I was wondering what the word "Lovecraftian" meant. I hear it sem-frequently, and yet had no idea. Google to the rescue! Starting with googling "Lovecraftian" and clicking the wiki article "H.P Lovecraft"...

H.P. Lovecraft - The Rats in the Walls - Nyarlathotep - Cthulhu Mythos - Deep Ones - Dagon - Pantheon (gods) - Armenian Mythology - Armenia - Gavar - Cyclopean Masonry - Hayravank Monastery - Moses of Chorene - Hovnatanyan family - Saint Petersburg - Tsar Peter the Great - Russian Empire - List of Largest Empires - Mongol Empire - Ghengis Khan - Mongol military tactics and organization - Lamellar armour - Ō-yoroi - Samurai

At this point, I realized that four and a half hours had passed, and that my left leg was asleep. Damn you wikipedia! *shakes fist*

I have been searching for a job recently, and I answered perhaps ten or fifteen craigslist ads for jobs. I've gotten four replies! Unfortunately, none of them were for an actual job. Two simply sent me an ad to the same site that was saying "Use this site to post your resume, 5.95 a month". One was a little more clever, the email they sent was "Thank you for your application, to continue the process, please use this third party site blah blah blah fuck you."

The kicker though was two days ago, I got this email. I changed the name of the company and the mans name in the slim chance that it IS a real job.

Greetings Zach,

My name is John Doe and I’m the senior staffing coordinator at Possibly Fake Company, LLC.

I am pleased to inform you that you are being extended a tentative offer of employment for the available warehouse position within our company.

As mentioned in the posting, this position pays a competitive salary, plus benefits, and also provides potential to earn both pay increases and growth opportunities into supervisory and management positions. We are taking on new employees rapidly at this time, and are willing to make you an employment proposal, provided that you comply with the rest of the enrollment provisions.

This is a full-time position. Based on your previous experience and physical ability, you will be working either inside the warehouse in packing and shipping, outside on the truck-loading team, or operating a forklift. These jobs vary in pay as well as physical and mental demands. Your initial salary will be based on your experience level, as well as the results of your preliminary strength and logic aptitude exams. Some experience working in a warehouse setting is preferred, but not essential, as fully paid training will be given if necessary.

To comply with these terms and carry on to the last stage of the recruitment process, you are required to supply us with an up-to-date copy of your credit report to go in your employment record. We have a zero-tolerance policy in regards to theft of company property. Your score or payment history do not matter; rather it’s a safe method of verifying your identity, and will also serve as your acceptance of the position.

Your no cost report can be obtained here:

http://followthelinks.net/?lid=ogrnxq1

This link is unique to you! Once you have this completed please email me so that we may move forward. Do NOT include your SSN or any private information in any emails. We will in turn email you your new hire paperwork and give the times for your orientation.

Thank you again, and congratulations for being invited to join Possibly Fake Company, LLC.! If you have any questions, feel free to contact me directly. Have a great day.

Yours Sincerely,

John Doe
Sr. Hiring Manager
fakeemail@notreal.net


I clicked the link, and started to fill out information until it wanted my social security number. I then discovered that the page URL was "followthelinks.net" but the page itself claimed to be "creditreport.com". This seemed fishy to me, so I googled "creditreport.com" to go directly to the website and avoid any shenanaginizing. What do I discover? The following two websites are the second and third search results

Creditreport.com is a scam and Avoid Craigslist Credit Report Scams!.

I sent back an email to the guy saying "You sent me a scam, but if the job is real, I am still interested!" He has not yet responded.

By the way I need a job, so if anyone has an extra that they aren't using, I would really appreciate you letting me borrow it until I can get one of my own. Thanks!

Of Drunkards and Heroes

I like to tell people that I follow politics, but I am too lazy to do any of the research myself. This is why I rely on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report to tell me what I am supposed to think and feel. At the end of the show, a guest comes on to talk about something or other, and last week, Diane Keaton was the guest. Watch this please. You won't be disappointed.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Is she high, or drunk? Or both? I CANT TELL. In any case, this video is hilarious, and one of the better things I've seen in recent months. With one very notable exception...

THE AVENGERS. Oh. Em. Gee. Go see this movie. It is awesome. Anyone who knows me knows I have an irrational and borderline zealous love of The Lord of the Rings, but this movie might possibly be better than it. It is that good. Joss Whedon is the director, which is an excellent start. He was a little involved (sarcasm) in a show called Firefly* that was solid gold from start to finish. (if you don't know what that is... shame on you.) He shows his God-like abilities in full force here. Even though the movie has a HUGE cast of characters, somehow every one of them feels equally important and gets at least one "I'm a motherf***ing badass" moment. If you are a straight man, or a woman with similar inclinations, Scarlett Johansson wears THAT OUTFIT (see right) and flips around all over the place being Hot. Ok she also kicks ass and does cool stuff, but she looks GOOD while doing it. Her presence would make even a shitty movie 3/5 stars, but in a 5/5 movie? Its just not fair how good this movie is.

I have always been a huge fan of the hulk from the 60's-70's comics, and I never felt like the hulk movies really did him justice... until now. Every scene where the hulk appears becomes the very best scene that you've even seen in your entire life. Until you see the next scene with the hulk. If you are anything like me (doubtful but lets roll with it) You have had many conversations in your life that followed this structure:

Who would win in a fight, A-Man or B-Man? B can control animals, but A is faster and has laser eyes...

Needless to say I nerdgasmed almost solidly for the full 2 hours 23 minutes. I feel dirty, but I like it.

I recently discovered Yardsellr, a nifty little site connected to facebook that lets you buy and sell stuff. I made 50 bucks selling a few of my old magic cards last week, which is super awesome since I am not swimming in money at the moment. If you like buying and selling stuff, you should check it out!

*This is a link to watch Firefly for free online, so if you were one of those sad people that didn't know what it was (shame on you again!) then you can correct this by clicking the link

Elections.

I've been following the republican nominee race with various levels of closeness for the last four or five months, and it has definitely had its share of awesomeness. Notably, Herman Cain Quoting the Pokemon Song, Michelle Bachmann claiming that HPV vaccinations cause retardation, and, as a bonus slice of fried gold, Newt Gingrich revealing his plans to build a Moon Base. Yes. an honest to goodness moonbase. Still, none of those things brought me even half the joy that this comic I stumbled upon did. Go, ahead, click that image on the right and enjoy.

P.S. When I Googled "Michelle Bachmann" to get this clip, Google politely offered to finish for me "Michelle Bachmann Sexy". Wtf? Who is searching this shit?


A few days ago as I was feeding ol' Salamandy McGee, the sacrificial cricket clung to the edge of the tube instead of conveniently falling out. I tried to "scrape" it off onto the sides of the tank, but it wasn't letting go. Eventually I resorted to swinging the tube erratically in an effort to shake the little bugger (heh) off, and I accidentally flung the diminutive chirper directly into the water dish. As it started to drown, I panicked, but then with the clarity of mind that only comes in moments of crisis, I heroically scooped it out with my bare hand, and triumphantly deposited him on the safety of dry ground.

It was pretty comparable to a mother lifting a truck off her baby in a surge of adrenaline; one of those once in a lifetime events that get made into terrible lifetime movies. I was feeling pretty full of myself and superman-like after my rescue, but alas, the feeling would be short lived. Mere moments after the cricket was deposited onto the "safety" of dry land, Jethro darted out of his log and scarfed the little guy down before it had even shaken the water off of its legs. Talk about a letdown.

Speaking of letdowns, I was driving the other day and I saw a cop driving and texting at the same time. I was super excited and wanted to take a picture of him on my phone for evidence, then was crestfallen when I realized I couldn't...

Bad show

Tv and movie dramas should not have child actors. Occasionally you get someone awesome like Arya* from Game of Thrones, but the vast majority of children are really bad actors, creepy, or annoying. Game of Thrones had the right idea, aging almost every child-character 5-10 years so they would only have the bare minimum of kids involved. I suppose with all the boobs and violence flying all over the place its not appropriate having a bunch of kids on the set being all... youthful.

Now there is another show (recently cancelled) with an annoying kid called Terra Nova. I watched this dumb thing every week, and was ashamed of myself for doing so. The little girl character is a constant cheese-fest, if she was on full house the fake audience would go "awwwww" everytime she opened her adorable mouth. Considering that the premise of the show involves time travel and dinosaurs, you would think you would get some decent violence here and there, but noooooo. This show is much more interested in showing a little girl make friends at school, and draw pictures of her family holding hands under a rainbow.

Remember last week when I clearly established that in the future, guns shoot exploding frisbees of death? Well apparently in this future, guns only shoot sound. One of the problems that arises when you use a glorified loudspeaker to fight dinosaurs, is that sound doesn't kill dinosaurs. At best, they think "oh, this is mildly annoying" and at worst "Wow, that guy is making an annoying sound. I'm going to eat him now". Nobody on the show really seems to mind that they are powerless to stop dinosaurs though, because In Terra Nova, no one ever hurts dinosaurs. Ever. Even in self defense. Its as though the show creators were worried that animal rights activists would be upset if they showed their poor, defenseless CGI dinosaurs being harmed in any way or for any reason.

The straw that broke logics back was when a velocorapter eats some dude alive, and they need to get his dogtags out of the things stomach. instead of doing the normal thing and killing the monster that is eating your people, they capture it alive, carefully surgically extract the dog tags, and then release it into the field twenty feet from their camp. Its like knocking down a wasp nest and then putting it back up inside the house. Its no wonder this crap was cancelled.

If you don't mind your PC games crappy, short and full of bugs, you might be interested in beta testing! Diablo III just launched its open beta, and there is also a Korean MMO called Tera That is beta testing until the 23rd only. Happy gaming!

Winter

I hate the snow. This wasn't always the case. When I was a kid growing up in Southern California, the snow was cool. It was this far off exotic thing; It didn't stroll into town every winter with the homeless, we had to drive to find it. Snow represented fun and frolic, snowball fights!

Now? Snow sucks. Its cold. It causes accidents. It delays planes. It causes people to slip on the ice and fall on their ass as their "friends" laugh, then quickly feign concern. It awakens the white walkers, and every time a kid gets triple dog dared to lick a pole they have to call out the fire department. This is a huge drain on city resources! No wonder the economy sucks; We have winter.

If you have a computer and like free games that are awesome, you should check out Tribes: Ascend. By far the best free game I've ever played. The premise is, Its the future! Guns now shoot explosive frisbees instead of bullets! And... everyone can fly! If those last two sentences didn't make you think "I need this inside me" than go watch Stargate: SG1 until you enjoy happiness again. And then watch this.*



"But, Zach" you say haughtily, swirling your fancy-person drink in a chalice "I just don't like things with space or explosions or excitement, especially when they are free!" Just get out. Go. I can't make a logical argument with you. There is no reason why free (FREE) access to exploding frisbee deathmatches at breakneck speeds should not be taken advantage of.

* I am aware that this video includes the word flag a comical number of times, but I give it a pass due to the bombastic awesomeness of everything else

Crickets and Worms

I mentioned before that I have a pet salamander; I caught him fair and square as he was crossing the street several months ago. My diligent google-based research on the care of salamanders informed me that crickets are the best food for them. Being the responsible* and dependable* person I am, I promptly went to the pet store and bought a bag of crickets for Jethro (the best salamander name ever) to consume. Have you EVER tried to extract only a single cricket from a bag of 25 of its living, jumping brethren? Its about as easy as typing with chopsticks while blindfolded. I finally managed to do it by just barely opening the bag, squeezing out most of the air, and then herding a single cricket towards the opening from OUTSIDE the bag while holding the whole mess above the tank. It took about 10 minutes. Unfortunately in my zeal I had forgotten that crickets, like MOST animals, need air to survive; The remaining 24 crickets were dead in about 2 hours. Well, I'm not doing THAT again.

* The claims made in this post are not evaluated by the FDA

Since that accidental massacre took place, I've been feeding Jethro a steady diet of mealworms, waxworms, nightcrawlers and other things used as live bait.

As much fun as it is to store vermin in my fridge behind the yogurt, I recently decided to step up my care for Jethro. I went out and got him some new moss, cleaned his tank all nice, and even decided to give crickets another try. Thats when I discovered THIS contraption. You put the crickets inside, with some food, and they crawl up into the little tubes to escape the light. When its time for some of them to get eated, you pull the tube out, evict as many of the tenants as you please, and then replace the tube! The guy who invented this is probably some kind of evil genius. No doubt he spends his off hours stroking white cats and designing elaborate ways to kill Mr. Bond.

My nephew saw the cricket box yesterday, and excitedly asked me when I had gotten pet crickets. I told him they weren't pets, I was only keeping them so I could feed them to Jethro. He screamed "NO YOU CANT FEED THEM TO HIM, THEY ARE TOO CUTE". It took me a long time to calm him down, but at least I wasn't feeding him mice.

Life

I went running on the path behind my house today, and a woman walking a dog without a leash was coming towards me. I stood to the side to let them pass, but apparently the dog saw this as a threat, and charged me while barking. I turned my back and just ignored it but apparently this is ALSO a threatening gesture, because the creature then decided the only reasonable action was to repeatedly jump on my back. I looked to the woman for help, and she just smiled at me, said "Oh stop it jack" in a jovial manner and continued to walk towards me at a leisurely pace. Upon reaching me (Without stopping mind you) she laughingly said "Sorry, he gets a little excited sometimes!" and then proceeded to walk past me. Her dog joined her a few seconds later with a few final barks to make sure I wouldn't dare give pursuit. Not cool.

I saw the hunger games a few days ago; I had my doubts as it was only rated pg-13 and the subject matter is... well, violent murder, but I feel like they did a fantastic job and I highly recommend it.