Austinpanda

11:37 pm: Menu
the agenda from now until Friday:

Now - watching Eyes Wide Shut, chatting with Coulter, chatting with Martin. Blowing my nose a lot. Coughing a lot. Just lit my bathroom candle (autumn wreath, or some shit...a nice holiday spice kinda smell), shaved, took nyquil, and cleaned my bathroom sink.

Soon - Bed. My cat, sensing that I'm a bit sick and extra tired, will jump on the bed and orient her ass toward my face and meow until I pet her.

Tomorrow

8:00 or 9:00 a.m. - probably wake up, watch some of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, get displeased with the excessive cuteness and commercialism, put in Mystery Science Theater 3000 of "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies" and enter the kitchen.

9:30 a.m. - begin ham preparation. I have a 7-ish pound butt end (I think) (uh-huh-huh-huh...butt end) of ham that I'm going to bake in a glass baking dish for 2 to 2 1/2 hours and baste with Dr. Pepper. I will lovingly stab it with a probe thermometer and attempt to hit the proper internal temperature when the other foods are about done.

10:00 a.m. - ham enters oven. Tom starts asking me if the ham is ready yet. At some point Martin will show up, and the group will be complete.

11:30 a.m. - I begin prep work on cheesey garlic mashed potatoes and stuffing, and...you know...cook them. Slice the can-shaped cranberry sauce things.

12:00 or 12:15 p.m. - ham achieves completion, and there was much rejoicing.

12:20 p.m. or so - Feeding Frenzy, the First

12:43 p.m. - the great horizontalling, wherein we apply stretchy pants, lie down, and begin outgassing

later - cover dishes, more resting from all the exertion of eating.

1:40 - Feeding Frenzy, the Second

3:15 p.m. - Dallas Cowboys football! Not sure if I care, but the last two games were shit-tastic, so might check it out. It's nice to watch the Cowboys play on Thanksgiving sometimes.

4:00 - Feeding Frenzy, the Third

...and repeat.

I considered using the just-us-guys Thanksgiving to pay homage to all those who have to spend time with family. I was considering taking pictures of myself arguing with the different dishes, and giving them titles like Rick Pokes Fun at the Ham's Belief Systems and Rick Points Out How Little the Stuffing Has Really Accomplished, but that isn't in the holiday spirit, I don't think.

And XTube is back! Woo-hoo!

12:03 pm: Home sick, bleh
I am having some exciting nasal issues today so I'm home, laying on my side, hoping it causes all the mucus to drain into that side so the opposite nostril will start working again.

So...where the hell did Xtube just go?

12:29 pm: Trapped at Work
At this moment my company's Christmas party (now called the YEE, for Year End Event) is happening. They've got tents in the parking lot with blackjack tables and air hockey and ping pong, as well as a modified tractor trailer with video games on the inside and outside. Also there are face painters, a caricaturist, and TWO shriveled swarthy women doing tarot readings.

It's three hours long. I'm a pretty private guy, so I played some Guitar Hero for a bit, snagged my free food, then bailed. Back at my desk now. It wasn't bad! That was more than I've participated in any YEE since they stopped doing fancy-dress dinner party with free cocktails 13 years ago.

Only problem is that we're not allowed to go off-site. I could drive home in 11 minutes and take the world's best nap on my sofa, but noooooo.

So how's everyone else doing? 

By the way, my car repairs were completely and utterly free! The tow was free, the repairs were free. Turned out I somehow lost my fuel pump...not a good sign for a 2008 Hyundai, but they towed it and fixed it for free, so I can't complain too much. Can't imagine what parts & labor would have cost for a new fuel pump if it hadn't been under warranty.

Now I'm listening to a podcast that's discussing an annual pageant run by a Dallas church that shows how the devil can ruin your life by encouraging you to have an abortion or be gay. In the same pageant they also recreate the massacre at Columbine. (We all know how the devil can cause mass murder at schools that specialized in gay abortion-having students, like Columbine.) I'd say I've found at least one reason why this particular Dallas church can, and I beg your pardon, suck my motherfucking dick. 

One line from the play, from a girl character who formerly hated her parents and god as well: "I'm a Christian now. That's why I'm so happy."

Then the two boys in black trench coats come in with a demon character, and the boys (played by high school students) are holding real handguns and shotguns. The happy Christian girl gets shot in the head (fake ammo, I hope), and another high school student dressed in white choir robes (Jesus!) comes in. I'm going to stop listening at this point or else I'm going to be angry all day. :o)

 This was performed 6 months after the actual Columbine massacre. Wasn't that thoughtful of them?

09:15 am: My Life, Yesterday Afternoon till Now

So...yesterday afternoon I was napping on the sofa and thinking, I need to exercise more. I should go for a walk. Then I thought, A walk? Me? Have I actually MET me? So rather than walking I did some curls with my dumbells and some vigorous chores, and decided to have Chinese buffet for dinner. (My dieting abilities are questionable.) First, needed a pack of smokes from the head shop. I get them at a head shop because they're the closest place that has my brand.

Tom came along, and we went to the place that sells pot paraphernalia for cigarettes. After I came out, I started the car, and after a few seconds the engine died.

*dramatic music*

I typically don't have a lot of spare money lying around, so when the engine dies unexpectedly on my 2008 Hyundai Sonata it causes my most recent meal to leave my body, form a giant multi-headed vomit hydra and then I curl up and go all fetal.

We walked home. It wasn't bad, couple of miles, some very tall hills...by the time I got home I thought, You see? You see what happens when you desire exercise? The fickle finger of fate gives you some! And it's awful! le sob!

But this morning things are looking up. I called my local Hyundai dealership and they said it should still be under warranty, even though I bought it used and from a different dealership. They gave me the number for the tow service and told me what to say to them. I called the tow service and got it arranged. I had to tell them I'm parked in front of a place called "South Oats," and I was suddenly glad they didn't name the place "Bongs 'n' Baggies." The tow guy came in a pouring rain, attached the cable to my car frame, pulled it up, put the nets around all four tires and tightened them with come-alongs, whereupon I gave him Tom's last $5 for a tip, then went home.

Now, one of two things will happen:

I'll get a phone call from the dealership saying, "It was a timing belt, we fixed it, we love you, come have some juice and cookies while we detail your car and then you can take it home."

-OR-

I'll get a phone call from the dealership saying, "It's the blinker fluid cutoff valve, not covered by warranty, they're only made in a small Himalayan village by a single 106-year-old craftsman who produces one of them every decade, then the village has a big celebration, and they ship the part off. They cost eighty million skillion bajillion dollars and it'll take two weeks to install. We hate you. Your penis is misshapen and orange in hue, and will fall off later today."

Fortunately (as it were) my head cold is still bothering me a bit...can't seem to shake the cough. This has nothing at all to do with my being a smoker. It doesn't! Shut up! But the fortunate bit is that I'm taking the day off work to deal with cold and car problems. I was only scheduled for a half day today, but I still feel guilty. The insurance industry needs me!

Well, probably they can live without me until tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed.

[edit: spell check doesn't recognize 'bajillion' and suggests 'bazillion' instead.]

10:48 am: O Hai Everybody

Ahhh, blissful autumn. The many things about my life that remain constant (Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the slanty apartment, e.g.) remain constant. Current examples of variety include:

I have a new special friend now! He lives in the city where I went to high school. He is cute and understands adverbs and I like him so much it's silly. There are pictures of him which I won't show you because he's MINE, and you can't have him.

Does this happen to you? Sometimes when I'm starting to like someone, and they like me too, there's a part of me that says, "Why on earth do they think I'm attractive? They're attractive. I'm just this meh person who watches too much Tommy Wiseau." I have a big tummy and not-so-big arms and legs and other more specific areas of unimpressiveness elsewhere. It's not that I dislike my appearance, even though it's rather less like that of Nick Frost than I'd prefer, but still. My normal attitude is, "I know I look fabulous, but everyone else is a bunch of ignorant poopyheads and they think I look like a haggis with four chopsticks coming out."



So there's that. Also my workplace is having its Year End Event on Tuesday of this week. It's to be some sort of carnival thing in the parking lot, with booths and food and...I don't know...funnel cake? Face painting? I'm required to take 3 hours out of my day for the event, so I'm not certain what I'm going to do during that time. If they let me come home, awesome! If I'm required to stay on site I'll bring my ipod and maybe take my free food and eat it somewhere.

I wonder if that comes off as anti-social. I suppose it is. Nothing wrong with a year-end carnival thing with my co-workers, and it's nice of the company to spring for it. Shooting baskets in a carnival booth in front of a crowd for a chance to win like...a small stuffed crocodile or something is just not my bag. I'd much, much rather listen to an NPR podcast explaining the financial crisis.

Here's what REALLY turns me on. Found this on LJ recently...props to he/she who originally posted it:

10:33 am: Day of *cough cough, hack, turn purple* Health
I was feeling poopy this morning so I did not go to work. I plan on spending the day taking care of my luscious bod and doing health-related things. As an example, I'm looking for a podiatrist because of pain in my big toes. I don't know the source of the toe pain. (Also, I hate the word "toes" and I always have.) Feet seem to be a huge deal with diabetes. A popular phrase for me now is, "I can't eat that, it'll make my feet explode."

Just checked my blood sugar. It was 109, which isn't bad! Could be better, considering how late in the morning it is, and I haven't eaten anything yet. Then again, yesterday was Junk Food Day and I was using one of those funnel bongs to pour powdered sugar straight into my stomach right up until midnight. I'm exaggerating, but there was a lot of leftover birthday cake around, and Long John Silvers hooked me up with some great fried cheese curds. No wonder my body is being all stabby on me. They were sooooo good, it was worth it.

I have all my medications: couple of cholesterol meds, blood sugar med, children's chewable wild cherry paxil; but I need a new mask for my CPAP. Busy busy busy!

Grape Nuts for breakfast which, by the way, you could smother in queso and it would still taste like cat litter, and I'm off to begin my day. Y'all hang in there.

BTW, I re-read this post and it sounded a bit pissed off, but I am okay! Smiley face! I'm going to use the day off to fix some stuff and that's a good thing. Also, I noticed I frequently add pictures. Very well, have some random recent favorite lolcats:



( MOAR!! )

07:10 am: OMFG It's Tom's Birthday!!!!!!!!!!


Happy birfday, sweetums! May the lord rain precious jewels and sweet meats upon you!

03:02 am: Silver Lining

You know, I was going to begin this post by complaining about how it's 3:04 a.m. and I can't get to sleep, until my wonder kitty HORK HORK HORKED directly in the middle of the doorway to my room. I would almost certainly have discovered it in a much more surprising and squishy way if I'd already been asleep and didn't discover it until tomorrow. I think you'd be impressed at how I took insomnia and cat vomit and turned it into something positive.

( Night and Sky Pics )

11:03 am: This Just In...
 
Oompa-loompas always scared the shit out of me.

04:23 pm: *dramatic music* Bullet List!
- It is so chilly today that I had to put on my sweatpants. I'm so happy I could cry!

- My cat is stupid. We let her onto the patio through the sliding glass door in my bedroom, then she walks to the other patio door (which leads to the living room) and scratches to be let in. Yes, while the sliding glass door is still open. *scratch scratch* "Why do you hate meeeee? Let me in!!!"

- Quentin Tarantino peaked with Jackie Brown, and it's one of the best movies ever. Inglorious Basterds was okay.

- Speaking of WWII, I found this picture on my hard drive recently. No clue where it came from:



- One of my co-workers said the calls at work were tougher today because, "We bombed the moon this morning and it's making everybody crazy." This is a six-and-a-half-foot guy whose ironic last name is Little. He's so gay, he has a tiara...collection. I like him a lot.

- Drive the speed limit. If you go slower than the speed limit, and you're in the fast lane, and I encounter you whilst on my way to work, I'm going to kill you.

- It's Friday! I'm happier about that than I am the sweatpants!

- I needed earbuds for my lil' old iPod, so I searched for them on Amazon. I found eight million kinds. I got a pair (uh-huh-huh-huh) that cost $2.68 and they work better than the original ones.

- My intellectually challenged kitty purrs and starts kneading and drooling whenever you bounce the bed up and down. Also she eats the clear plastic windows out of envelopes.

- I'm starting to see Christmas decorations at Target and I love it! Suck it, haters. We're entering the time of Collin Street Bakery fruitcake. The big deluxe one, just a bit short of 5 pounds of solid holiday sex (in the form of fruitcake) is just under fifty bucks. I wish I could afford twelve of them!

10:07 pm: Noooo! Want more weekend!
 
Because October is the first month in Austin when going outside doesn't make you spontaneously combust, I declare it the month o' love. This is the month of Aphrodite and Venus, of Barry White and Smoove B. Also of Halloween.

04:36 pm: Rain rain rain rain rain rain

They said it was going to rain all weekend, and it looks like they were right. It made the skyline disappear!

Here it is normally in the late afternoon:



Here it is now:



Weather like this also increases the frequency of cock-and-balls clouds:

10:38 pm: Birds Like Dancing
Damn, I love it when animals do interesting things. Saw this on fark.com just now.

09:00 pm: Watching the Rifftrax of "Saw" Now
Wow, glad I never tried to watch this movie without humerous commentary before. I'm a bit of a film snob, I'll cop to that, but jebus this movie is dreadful.

I'm attempting to determine whether it deserves 15 sequels, but I think Wikipedia summed it up well when they said it sucked, but was profitable, like credit default swaps or cancer. Wiki also associated it with the emergence of the torture porn genre in the 2000s.

05:35 pm: A Final Word on "The Room"
Here is perhaps the best 7 seconds of the whole movie. That's writer/producer/director and star Tommy Wiseau as Johnny. The other woman is...well, Lisa:



This clip appeared briefly in the trailer I linked to in my last post, but I thought it deserved to be highlighted on its own. The need to post it was tearing me apart.

12:14 am: zomg I'm awake
Just woke up from huge multi-hour nap! And our apartment was just overflown by a low-altitude life flight helicopter. I'm watching what's perhaps one of the 10 worst movies I've ever seen Ah, Saturday!

I'm so glad Tom woke me up. We spent the day poking our computers and eating badly (Dollar junior bacon cheeseburgers from Wendy's do vex me!) and I was bored. Kept trying to nap unsuccessfully and finally Tom fell asleep at around 6:00. I tried to fall asleep again myself, finally made it to sleep at about 8:00, then woke up at 9:00.

I put in a new MST3K (The Sword and the Dragon) and poked Tom awake, said, "Hey, it's 9:00." Tom said something that didn't involve recognizable words and rolled over and fell back asleep. I thought, "Yeah, he's right," and went back to sleep myself.

At 11:00 Tom woke me up and said, "Hey, it's 11:00," so I woke up and put in a new rifftrax I burned for a movie called The Room. Oh my god, is it bad. It wouldn't be so bad if I were a 14 year old straight person who thought the idea of skinny guys who look like Kenny G making love to unremarkable mass-produced blond women was titillating, but I'm not. The movie seems like an amalgam of outtakes from a teeth-whitening infomercial.

Hey, a trailer! Check out the ACTING at about the 17 second mark.

edit: grrrr...begins with an advertisement, but worth the wait

Trailer Goodness!

That long-haired guy doing the ACTING is writer/director/producer/"actor" Tommy Wiseau, as the Stanley Kowalski-esque Johnny. I'll tell you now...it just ended with Johnny killing himself. I am oddly unmoved by this.

05:13 pm: M'kay, so one of the things I like to do whenever I'm sad is watch this video! I watch it with the sound down. I generally prefer it over whatever music was added.



It's sweet. Also, I enjoy the brief, inexplicable shot of the chubby shirtless guy at 1:12. Hey, the sound guy is smiling! Get a shot of him!

And DON'T tell me if it's fake, or if you happen to know that the lion then ate everyone and the footage was recovered later, Blair Witch style.

Something else I must get out of my system: I've been, shall we say, lacking consistency in adhering to my diet. Today I'm adhering to it, so here are all the things I want to eat right now, but will not:

First is this cake. It's made with grape Kool-Aid.



A nice person on the randompictures LJ group posted this pic and a link to the recipe at Apocalypse Cakes. It's called Jonestown Kool-Aid Cake.

I'm craving hot dogs for some reason, so hot dogs.

On top of the cake. 

Cracker Jacks 

Tacos

Something with melted cheese. Perhaps queso! Or an order of fried cheese curds from Long John Silvers. Those are still the win.

Chicken fried steak

Macaroni salad

Onion rings

and maybe Texas toast. That is all.

11:15 am: Last Night, This Morning

I call this one Last Night at 11:46 With Gecko and Hummingbirds, Leather Bear, the Guys From Mystery Science Theater 3000, Plush Cthluthu and UT Tower





And now the big news! Tom and I went to Sunset Valley Farmers Market this morning! It's supposed to be one of the best farmers markets in the country. Here's the only picture I took:



The picture is noteworthy, perhaps, for the lack of interesting things occurring in it. I should point out that a farmers market at 10:00 a.m. in the rain isn't a place that's prone to high speed car chases and John Williams music, although I predicted at least a 5% chance that an elderly person would plow through the stalls in a sedan. Didn't happen while I was there.

We purchased stuff! Did you know that at farmers markets, the stalls are run by the people who grow the shit, and that they are therefore much more prone to saying stuff like, "Excuse me! Wanna try a sample of our naturally grown overpriced pretentious foodstuffs?" I don't like it when people do that, because my tendency is to smile really big and say, "Yes," and then buy some. I tend to feel guilty for the people in the booths. I'm good at feeling guilty about things I don't understand and that don't affect me in any way.

I ended up getting a pound of really really good Chisolm Lane raw honey. Tom bought a small plastic thing of...some plant. I want to say they're...uh...fuck. They're little green and red testicle things...not a kiwi, they're smaller than that. Like a ping pong ball. I want to say it's a date, but I don't think they're dates. See? This is why I hate vegetables. :o)

Also got a loaf of Sweetish Hill Bakery 100% whole wheat cinnamon raisin bread. It's very very good too.

And now it's raining and it seems like it's always rained (even after this hot-ass summer...go figure) and always will rain. It's like that city with the sparkly vampires. I love watching the rain from Mount Slanty, though part of me is concerned that many days' saturating rain are going to make the apartment slant further. Perhaps I should begin moving our heavier possessions to the uphill portion of the apartment.

Action Update!!

They are figs.

05:55 pm: OMG, give this video 10 seconds
...although its pure win achieves escape velocity in only about 7 seconds :)

09:00 am: *cymbal crash*
I got some booty!
I got some booty!

Sometimes I get a reminder that being pure of heart truly does have rewards. ;o)

Soon I'm going to be so popular that wingnuts will accuse me of being born in Kenya.