Austinpanda

10:11 pm: And, Like, I Bought Stuff, And, Like, Now I Feel Better
 
Now I'm going to stop buying anything fun for myself for a while and begin to cram money into savings. A good friend just advised me that the recommended amount of money you should have on hand in case of mega-emergency (like losing your job or your appendix) is eight months' worth. Right now I have no months' worth. I'm free of credit card debt, but I've only a popcorn fart in savings. 

I say that stuff because I ordered myself one last item, with some birthday help from family! It's one of these:


It's a camera, yo. In case you give a shit, it's a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ4K (or "dumucfuzzfuk", as I'm going to call it) and in this photo it's being shown in its tumescent state, which I assume means to illustrate the camera's appearance when the zoom is engaged. It's a 12.1 megapixel, has image stabilization (makes blur go away...whoda thunk it?) and shoots HD video with stereo sound. You can see two flat microphones on the top; one's the left mic, the other the right mic. Tech gadgets like this still blow my fucking mind. 

When it arrives in the mail, I'm going to carry it gently to my bedroom and fuck it for days. I can't describe how much I'm looking forward to owning it, and learning to use it, and taking pictures with it. What I'd like is a digital SLR. Since I can't afford that, I'm getting a digital point-and-shoot. I chose this one because it was the top-rated digital point-and-shoot super-zoom camera on Consumer Reports. That's super-zoom as opposed to sub-compact (small and thin with small lenses) or compact (slightly larger body, larger lenses). 

So I'll get it soon and I'm getting it for about half price, even though it's brand new (!) because I got Amazon gift certificates from mielikki and cubthulhu for my birthday! And everything's turning up Milhouse. 

I read recently that cameras, like wristwatches and PDAs and MP3 players, are eventually going extinct because of smart phones. I say they're lying scumbags, but I could see it happen. And it makes sense that it will, in the next handful of years. Still, it's nice to hold something with this much glass in it, built with such precision and such purpose. 

I got the email tonight saying that it had shipped. And don't get me started on the goddamn shipping story. Well...okay, short version. I paid $15 extra for two-day shipping. Then after two days I learned that "two days" doesn't mean "two days," exactly, it means that it'll take two days to reach you once it's shipped. So you might only be changing a 9-day ship time to a 7-day ship time. I wrote to amazon and said, "you suck." They said, "You can cancel and order from this other thing and get it faster." But now it's shipped tonight and I'll have it Tuesday. 

So yep, got it cheap, using it to replace something I use frequently that was old and obsolete, and now I'm going to start putting money into savings to make sure I'm ready if this apartment falls the rest of the way over. :)

02:54 pm: Love, Panda Style
 
Ugh, just had to tell a friend we weren't going to have sex any more. He has a boyfriend. He's said it's okay for us to fool around. Sometimes, the boyfriend has said it's okay for us to fool around. But sometimes that permission is revoked, and this morning I finally got around to asking myself the question: Is this an okay thing, or a bad thing? If they're not both on board, then I'm just shoplifting the pootie from a good friend, and that's a no-brainer bad thing. So it stops now. 

Friend is displeased, but at least logged off after saying, "Okay," rather than letting it turn even less pleasant. Points to him for that. 

My Dad sent me a birthday e-card! My father and I don't get along, and I'd like him to leave me alone, but sometimes he can't, bless his heart. I'm not speaking to him because the only thing I have to say to him would be a 90-minute list of reasons why I'm not speaking to him, delivered at top volume with table-pounding, so I'm choosing not to do it. He's not well, and the only thing I can do for him is to avoid making his life worse, so I will. I knew the e-card was coming, so I asked Tom to delete it, then delete the contents of my 'deleted items' folder. 

For the first time I'm beginning to accept that I might not ever find a spouse, and that's a bit of a bummer. You know what's convincing me? Drake's equation. Here's my version:

N = G* · fd · fg · fi · fr · fc · L

N = the number of husbands I'll have

G* = the number of people geographically close enough to the places I might meet them
fd = the fraction of those who are dudes
fg = the fraction of those who are gay
fi = the fraction of those who'll be interested in me, and me in them
fr = the fraction of those who'll get into a relationship with me
fm = the ones who'll want to marry
L = the length of time I'll continue to be alive

Starting with a G of 10 million, I ended up with an N of .384. The number of spouses I'm going to have is about a third of one spouse. 

09:44 pm: He's a Good Man. And Thuruh.

 Some thoughts from this evening. 

- Newt Gingrich? Fucking seriously?

- Played World of Warcraft with the new headset today! Couldn't make it work when the game was running. I could hear everyone, and I know the mic works, but no one could hear me. Technical difficulties, please kiss my ass. I'm confident we'll get it sussed. 

- I turn 43 on Monday. I feel as keen about this as I do the possibility of being pepper sprayed and then eaten by a shark. 

- I have placed my solar-powered jiggly sumo wrestler on my desk at work, where I assume it's jiggling still. It's so adorable! I estimate a 50% chance it'll be stolen within a week, though the thought actually kind of makes me chuckle. Someone will see the little sumo guy jiggling away, their eyes will widen with delight, then narrow with envy. I can empathize. 


- The cat won't stop doing things with her poo that are, shall we say, geographically inconvenient. I think it's stuff like this makes people get addicted to opiates. 

- Just found a nickel in the washer because I'm doing LAUNDRY ON A SATURDAY NIGHT. I must find something to do.

- That turned out to be watching Dexter and pondering where I might find a cheeseburger to my liking. 

- McDonald's. Prepare yourself for a shock: it wasn't that great. Dry burgers and a nickel in the washer. I absolutely, positively suck at weekends. Pardon me while I go feed the first of what will soon be scores of cats. 

- You know, I start to watch a show like...L. A. Law, back in the 1980s. Jimmy Smits joins the cast. NYPD Blue, Jimmy Smits joins the cast. The West Wing, Jimmy Smits joins the cast. Ditto for the Star Wars movies. Always Jimmy Smits shows up. He just showed up in Dexter. I'm just going to start expecting him to show up in everything from now on. 

- Okay, I really have to think of something to do. 

06:48 pm: The Weekend..I Can See It
 
This morning the most awesome thing happened. I was wearing one of my new T-shirts to work. And I walked past my boss's cubicle, and he was talking to a cool chick named Heather, like they do. I stopped by because I wanted to show him the shirt, and he said, no shit, "Me and heather were just talking about bacon, and how awesome is bacon, and isn't life amazing with bacon in it, and shouldn't there be some sort of bacon holiday," or some shit. 

And I held up a finger and said, "Oh, check this out," and unzipped my hoodie thing and revealed the new shirt:


And my boss and Heather laughed, and my boss cried from laughing so hard, and he fist-bumped Heather. In retrospect, I wonder why he didn't fist-bump me (I was, after all, the one who's supplied the serendipitous, indeed miraculous bacon shirt contribution) but I'm still glad he didn't. Seeing him weep with mirth was enough; fist bumps make me feel like a traitor to uncoordinated gay introverts who hate sports. 

Been an awesome week! And I got my solar-powered jiggly sumo dude. He jiggles when sunlight hits his magical sumo solar strip thingie! 

Some select bullet points from the instructions on the bottom, reproduced as accurately as possible:

- In order not course the danger of asphyxial, Please do no to put the spare parts into the mouth.

- In order to avoid accident, please safekeeping the toy that make sure the children who are not enough 3 years old not reachthetoy.

- Please do not use the sun energy battery tongh and don't throw it away.

Okay, I don't know what an asphyxial is, though I can guess. I will never know what a sun energy battery tongh is. And that middle thing was just a fucking train wreck. I have to assume this hilarity occurs because it's being translated by a computer...? Because otherwise you almost have to assume there's a giant university that covers every part of Asia, and does nothing but turn out thousands and thousands of translators with exactly this level of comical non-proficiency. 

Since I've received my gaming headset, my bacon T-shirt, and my sun energy battery tongh sumo toy, the only thing I have yet to receive is my large purple Buddha T-shirt. No tracking on that one. Buddha doesn't need tracking to travel in the right direction. You can try to track the large purple Buddha T-shirt, but it just doesn't take. It will be here when it arrives, and you'll be okay with that.

09:55 pm: Dexter and Doakes
 
So I ignored it, and ignored it, and finally acquiesced to start watching Dexter. This is the Showtime series about a serial killer. I've finished the first season and I'm on the third episode of the second season. I like it! Dexter enjoys killing, and the show's writers put forth the notion that he's killing because he needs to, has a compulsion to, but that he limits himself only to the murder of bad, icky people who are murderers of innocent people themselves. He does this because his adopted father recognized Dexter's compulsion right from childhood and gave him a code to live by. (Kill only bad, icky people.) So Dexter is a mass murderer that you're supposed to like. And they pull it off pretty well.

Best thing about the show? On the show, his job is that he's a blood splatter expert (see what they did there?) with the Miami Police Department. Here's the best part of the show: angry black coworker. One of Dexter's police superiors is this guy, Sgt. James Doakes:


As you can plainly tell, his role in the series is to steal your white daughters and take away their Christian god with his giant African penis. He's literally the most terrifying black man I've ever seen on television. It's awesome. The first time he appeared in the pilot he said "motherfucker," many, many times in a very short period. (I call this Samuel Jacksoning.) And he's gorgeous to look at; jebus, just look at him! He's like the Old Spice guy with Tourette's. He looks like he's carved out of chocolate ice cream and his biceps are bigger around than his waist. If I didn't have a penchant for fair-skinned cherubs, I'd totally fantasize about squeezing his bum. 


That's him, about to order a Shirley Templeini for his elderly grandmother after church on Easter Sunday. And still, his facial expression is, "I'm having to actively stop myself from killing you, just so you know, motherfucker." The actor who plays him is named Erik King. He's been in a bunch of stuff, mostly TV. He was in a Matlock, an NYPD Blue, a JAG, an Oz, a Charmed, a Malcolm in the Middle, a CSI: Miami. I like him, and look forward to being terrified by him and his African genitalia in the future. 

06:46 pm: Okay, Screw It, I'm Buying Myself Presents

You know what? I'm sick and tired of all YOU people telling me not to buy things! So I decided to get on Amazon and buy myself a few fun things. Mostly I'm doing this because the folks in my inner octagon with whom I play World of Warcraft want to try a thing that allows us to communicate verbally while we play. In order to do this, you need a set of headphones with a built-in microphone. A headset, if you will. 

Now I've had to wear a headset pretty much every day of my working adult life, so I'm familiar with how those work. Amazon had a few hundred varieties of these, so I just ranked them by customer review and scrolled down till I found the right kind, right price, recognizable manufacturer. 

Next, I got a T shirt that says Bacon in swirly baseball-jersey-style letters, as if to say, "Go team Bacon!" That's the font, and the letters are red and white, sort of like bacon. 

Next, I got a T shirt that's large and very purple. It has a gray buddha head on it. Sort of three quarter profile, kinda deal. 

Finally, I got this solar powered cute sumo toy:


I got this for several reasons. First, it's chubby and mostly naked, and I like men when they're chubby and mostly naked. 

Second, you have to love the list of features, which include:

"Great for gift," and,

"no need to control, as long as the light it will shake up leisurely"

I'm beginning to realize a fondness for poorly translated Asian things. Finally I'm buying it because I want to know what part moves. It's a moving solar-powered thing...what does it do when the light hits it? The product description doesn't say (though it certainly fills my need for something that shakes up leisurely as long as the light) and I'm sufficiently curious that I'm willing to buy the stupid thing. It's going on my desk at work. 

08:49 pm: Another Purty Sunset Tonight


I really want a better camera. It'd be nice to zoom in a bit more and capture more of the detail in those buildings. Incidentally, you can see my favorite pan-Asian restaurant in this photo, The 888, though you have to know what you're looking at. It's the upside-down white 'V' just below and left of center. 

If I get a new camera, which I'm considering, I'll take another picture of the next similar sunset for comparison. 

I've read, however, that when it comes to long-term happiness, the best bet is to give yourself is a trip or an event of some kind, something that'll give you fond memories and photos. And I'll admit I do enjoy owning shit, although I'm beginning to be satisfied with my collection of shit. I have a running car, decent computer, sufficient clothes, and my bills are paid. Bacon is still cheap and plentiful. 

I want to see Washington DC. Maybe a trip is what I should be saving for. 

07:28 pm: Got Coat. Coat Me Got.
 
After returning the Coat of Deceit, I ordered what I hoped would be the perfect coat from JC Penney. Here's me in the new coat:


It's not bad, I think! I'm even fond of the prissy scarf. Not sure how to wear it, though. Do I leave it like that, or actually wrap it around my neck? I suppose I'll wrap it around my neck if it gets cold enough. 

Somebody tell me why they sewed the pockets shut! I had to gently tear out a single row of stitches (which seemed designed to come out that way) before I could put my hands in the pockets. 

I've tried it on and it fits. It's kind of wool-like on the outside, which makes it a tad scratchy, but it fits wonderfully and has TWO inside breast pockets. And the sleeves are more than long enough for my (apparently) freakishly long arms. 

Also I just got the email from work giving me online access to my W-2 forms, so I did my taxes! Hooray for being single and childless and owning nothing! I'm getting a fair bit back; enough to pay off my final credit card and have enough left over to buy myself a nice present! I haven't really bought myself anything, even with my big Christmas bonus at work. Used it to pay off credit card debt. That's a present in itself, though. I'm about to reduce the number of credit card bills I have to pay per month to zero. 

I got the coat, which I needed because I was essentially coatless, and new shoes (still awaiting their arrival) because my old ones have worn out. Perhaps I should invest in a second pair of shoes. 

11:09 am: *sigh* Okay, Drop Everything and Pay Attention To This
 
There's a singer named Carolyn Wonderland; she's been called a reincarnated Janis Joplin. She's from Houston but it seems her home base is Austin. She plays guitar, slide guitar, mandolin, trumpet, and piano. And she wrote this song, Feed Me to the Lions. 




You should listen to it, because it is beautiful! I'm looking at you in particular, mielikki, because it's such a haunting minor-key (I think? Confirm this?) song and will be my favorite for, I think it's safe to say, the next 40 years. It's not my favorite because it's haunting--I'm not that guy--but just because it happens to be the most beautiful thing I've heard in forever. A few bullet points. 

- Everyone should listen to this song, because when I'm President or Emperor or whatever, it's going to become our new national anthem.

- If there's a song that's the perfect song for Top Gun-style shirtless beach volleyball, this song is the opposite of that song. 

- Is this a genre of music? This song reminds me of something dark but not scary from childhood, a style of melody that somehow suggests solitude and cold weather. 

- I have another favorite which I'll post about later. That one is a Bob Schneider song. 

Lyrics to Feed Me to the Lions if you want them:


( Lyrics )

09:42 am: I Drank To Excess

My friends Derek and Martin were all, "You don't drink! You never drink! Never seen you drunk! You CAN'T get drunk! Ya big pussy," and instead of saying something like, "I'm an adult, and I drink exactly as much as I bloody well want to drink," I said, "YOU'RE a pussy, pussy! I can get drunk if I wanna!" So we set aside Friday evening (which was last night) for a booze-up. We dedicated my existing supply of booze, a few new bottles that Tom purchased after work, and a few bottles Derek & Martin brought that were leftovers from a combination wedding/New Year's party Derek attended in Oklahoma.

( Drinking )