Blog Make-Over

I have been playing around with the Blogger template & my HTML guide. I'm not sure how I feel about the results.
Feedback?

BBBQ*

We rocked it out hard on Sunday at the BBQ on Valley View.

We started at 2PM, and I woke up on a plastic lawn chair sometime in the wee hours of Monday morning. Thankfully, I had the foresight to shelve the camera sometime before dusk. Unfortunately (or fortunately), we only have pics from earlier in the day. I'm sure that some of those damned 'later' pics will surface shortly. If so, I'll make sure to get them up here.

2PM-5PM = Typical BBQ fare. Beer drinkin', food grillin', pellet-gun shootin' wholesomeness.
Food/Beer Breakdown:
- 3 Cases Each of Bud, Bud Light, and Rolling Rock
- Mexican Chorizo
- Bratwurst
- Italian Sausage
- Oriental Chicken
- Indian Yogurt-Curry Chicken
- Jerked Chicken
- Elise's Mellon Salad
- CousCous
- Sauteed Portabella Mushrooms
- Strawberries and Dip
- Assorted Chips
- Various Vegetarian Burgers

5PM-8PM = The BBQ is heading into full-swing. We have a full crowd, the pellet-gun has been replaced by throwing-knives, and everybody is getting their drink on. It is around this time that Elise brings out the Vodka Mojitos & I start pushing the first round of Jello shots.

8PM-10PM = I break out the Sweet Tea & Bourbon, & things get really "spinny". More Jello shots, more beer, more mixed drinks. I start forcing food onto people like an old drunk Jewish grandmother. I hide the throwing knives.

10PM-1AM = The crowd begins to thin out, and the serious drinkers go into overdrive. The liquor is killed, the Jello-shots are killed, the sweet-tea & bourbon is killed, many brain-cells are killed.
(Note: Most of the rest of this is anecdotal, and I remember very little of this period)
I get "huggy" and thoroughly freak out all of my guests. I compensate by picking them up over my shoulder and spinning them around.
We decide to stage a side-show on the back lawn. I start spraying WD-40 into my mouth and spiting fire with the aid of an extra-long citronella candle. On about the 3rd try I hiccup and swallow a bit of fluid. I spend the next 30 minutes puking all over. Oh yeah, I also try to extinguish the candle-on-a-stick by shoving it in my mouth; I burn my tongue something fierce.
A contingent of the guests decide to get the dog drunk. Milo stumbles all over the place and keeps tripping. He falls over backward while trying to poop, and then proceeds to sit on a lit candle. We get him cleaned up and send him inside. Once inside, he barfs pisses all over the kitchen.
All the guests leave. I decide to spend some quality time alone vomiting on the back porch. I then make a heroic attempt to kill the last 12 beers left in the cooler - I end up finishing 1 & 1/2.
I wake up in pain (covered in bug bites and vomit) sometime in the middle of the night. The birds are starting to come out. I decide that they can't be trusted, so I go inside.

-End BBQ-

Everybody feel free to add anything that I missed.
For a few more BBQ pics check out my Flickr Page.
Oh, and for a full pictorial rundown of the pre-BBQ weekend check out Elise's post HERE. Good stuff.
---

*The Extra 'B' Is For 'Bring Your Own Bullets'

The Post I Don't Remember Writing

Rocking out on the back porch with Drinky Joe.
We're hardcore.
I keep burping lighter fluid - Parlor trick gone awry.

- Sent From Blackberry Handheld -

Update - I have no memory of writing this one (or anything that happened after 11PM, for that matter).
Around 5AM I woke up on a lawn chair.
Good times.

I'll post a BBQ wrap-up sometime tomorrow.

Joshie's Angels

Sippin' Juice and Roillin' Dice

Elise, Jes, The Girl, and I are rockin' out with lounge music,
cocktails, and Trivial Pursuit.

We're livin' the high life, baby.

- Sent From Blackberry Handheld -

The King Of Ska is Dead...

Desmond Dekker, who brought the sound of Jamaican ska music to the world with hits such as "Israelites," has died, his manager said Friday. He was 64.

I've always loved the 1960's Trojan Ska records, and Desmond Dekker was one of the best.
The Jamaican pre-reggae ska movement helped to define popular music as we know it today. If you aren't familiar with this movement, I'd HIGHLY recommend finding a copy of History of Trojan Records Vol 1 (out of print), or a similar early Trojan compilation.

Link to CNN Article.

The Hits Just Keep A-Comin'

I'm in the middle of weird shit central lately. Here's a taste:

a) Phantom of K-Street:
I felt a pimple coming up on my cheek, so I broke out a skin peel to kill it. Well, the skin peel lived up to its name (and then some) - It took off 3 layers of skin.
I've been sporting the Nelly look this week at work with a band-aid over the open wound on my face.

b) The Rat-Farmers Strike Back:
On my way to work this morning there was a homeless guy weaving across the sidewalk in front of me (nothing new).
I timed his flailing and made a break to his left as he was going right to get past. No sooner than I get by him, I see him straighten out and jog up to me.
Fuck.
"What?" I say peeling out my headphones.
He starts begging me for a cigarette.
I hurriedly explain that I'd "borrowed" this one from the roommate, and needed to pick up more. I put my headphones back in and rushed to make the crosswalk before the light changed.
Then the fucker ran up and latched onto my arm.
This is the quickest way to piss me off. Period.
Ugliness ensued.
When I got to the subway platform the train was pulling away. I missed my train by the 25 seconds it took to deal with that fucking crack-head.

c) Workputer Blues:
Monday my computer started acting up. We figured it was a problem with the integrated video card. It's under warranty, so we called Dell tech support to replace it.
While waiting for Dell, the computer fixed itself. All day yesterday, and most of today, it was working fine.
The Dell guy got there this afternoon and managed to fuck the whole thing up beyond all belief. My workputer is now in pieces on my desk.
On an up note: I got off early today.

d) Hexed Keys:
I got off work early and couldn't get into my house because I mislaid my keys.
I knew this. I'd spent a good chunk of the day walking around the building at work after locking myself out on the loading dock (several times) during smoke breaks.

e)Chasing Walgreen's:
If you're not up on the Walgreen's thing read the post below.
Today Chase sent me an e-mail asking for a signed statement (with proof) in order to dispute the charge.
Proof? What the fuck kind of proof am I supposed to have that I DIDN'T place an order from Walgreen's Mail. The proof is the absence of proof. Ask motherfucking Walgreen's for some proof that I DID incur a charge. Plus I asked that Chase block all charges from that merchant; so WTF? Both of you can come over and suck some proof out of the end of my cock. Jesus!
I should have taken a break, because I immediately sent Chase a terse note telling them to fuck-off and fix it.
I'm screwed.

Fuck Walgreen's

No, seriously. FUCK them.

God, I'm pissed. I know I shouldn't blog livid, but this is driving me fucking batty.

Let's take this from the beginning: I have a couple of prescriptions for allergies. I was tired of dealing with the DC CVSs (prescriptions were never ready on time, lines were always glacier-slow, pharmacists never spoke English, etc.). After a few months of that, my doctor urged me to switched to mail-order (after CVS lost the 3rd script he sent in). Things were great, I got my prescriptions at home, and saved about $40 every few months.

Just over a year ago My health care plan switched to Walgreen's Mail Service for all multi-month orders. This is when my own personal hell began.
I placed my order with them, paid my $50, got my pills, and then a few weeks later I was charged an additional $175 for NO FUCKING DISCERNABLE REASON.

Walgreen's reply: "We didn't charge you". I had to fax in my redacted credit card bill, and spend several hours on the phone getting this all straightened out. "Were sorry, there must have been a glitch in the system ". I was glad I caught it, and everything seemed to be back on track.
Then I put in my second order. There was a flurry of random charges and credits in varying amounts.
FUCK!
After another several hours on the fucking phone they said that everything was worked out and that there shouldn't be any more problems.
The third order (yes, I'm an idiot) The same god-damned thing happened. This time they flat-out refused to acknowledge that they had made these charges. They "lost" all of the faxes (3) that I sent them, and kept removing my dispute from their files. Fucking dirty thieving cocksuckers. I spent a good chunk of that week screaming at minimum-wage phone employees.

I finally told them to remove me from their files, and turned to my credit card company to void the excess charges, and disallow any more charges from Walgreen's. I even switched to over-the-counter brands (for a lot more money) to rid myself of the whole RX mess.

Today I check out my credit card bill to find another phantom $150 charge from Walgreens Mail.

FUCK!!!

I'm in salt-the-earth mode right now. I'm considering throwing a few mail/credit-card fraud lawsuits at them for sport. A couple of congressional hearings on how mail-order pharmacy companies prey on the elderly with fraudulent charges sound good to me. I'll have to bring up how mail-orders should be excluded from the medicare/medicaid drug benefit at the next PhRMA meeting. And don't you think it's about time someone looks into Walgreen's' property-hoarding in the Chicagoland area to stifle competition?

Fuck these flim-flaming cocksuckers. This is all-out-war.
Aaaaaarrrrrrgggggggghhhhhh!

Blog Stall

My work computer has staged a horizontal black bar parade, and I'm slammed at home with shit I need to do before the BBQ this weekend.

The tech guy is coming in first thing tomorrow to get my workputer a-workin', and hopefully I'll have at least one free evening this week.

I should get a little free time to throw some content up here soon, but don't hold your (collective) breath.
Feel free to hold your other bits instead.

I'm Whipping Out the Meat Next Weekend

You heard right, next Sunday (the 28th) we're going to do a Memorial Day 'BBQ at Valley View'.

Expect:
- Jerked Chicken
- More Sausage In Yer Face Than That One Time At the 'Man-Hole'
- Slow-Smoked Ribs (dep. on availability)
- Loads of Free Beer (thanx Dan)
- Vodka Limeade
- Jello Shots
- Sweet Tea and Bourbon
- Throwing Knife Contests
- Elise (from Chicago)
- Milo Getting His Head Humped by Peapod
and (of course) my drunken meat-stuffed self rambling on about what's wrong with the kids today.
Good times.

This is a 'go', rain or shine. If it is raining, be sure to bring a poncho, because I'm not letting you filthy animals into my house.
Oh yeah, make sure to remember that (as always) it's BYOBA*.
---

*Bring Your Own Body Armor

The First Rule of Hill Club...

I'm dying here.

I have A LOT of good "inside" stuff to write about, the only problem is that I can't.
Due to confidentiality agreements and the closed nature of my vocation I can't say a word on:
- Net Neutrality
- NSA Wiretapping
- Immigration Reform
- The '06 Midterm Elections
- Political Gossip
- Juicy Scandals

Fuck.

Maybe later I'll throw up a review of headphones (or some such shit).

Double-Fuck.

Hollywood's War Against Science

Everyday for the last month all I've heard of some religious group getting their pretty pious panties in a twist about the upcoming 'DaVinci Code' film.
What I find surprising is how little protest there is toward this film compared to the release of 'Last Temptation of Christ' 18 years ago. I haven't read the DVC, but my understanding is that it takes the big J's fantasy sequence from LToC and claims that it truly happened.
I guess that if you put Opie in the director's chair and cast that nice young man from 'Big' in the lead role, everyone seems to be less pissy than if the film is helmed by one of those artsy New York types.
Regardless, I just don't give a wet shit either way.

What has me all riled up is Hollywood's continued abuse of religion's mortal nemesis - science.
This unending attack has been waged since the earliest days of cinema, but since the advent of the Summer blockbuster this skirmish has bloomed into an all-out war. Some simple rules of Science/Physics:

- Not all nuclear scientists, geologists, aeronautical engineers, or quantum physicists are bikini models.

- You can't use the force from one exploding vehicle to blow you onto another.

- If a plane falls off of a cliff, you can't catch up to it by jumping off the cliff fifteen seconds later and "flying" down.

- You can't escape a thermonuclear explosion by jumping into a pond, or draping your Members Only jacket over your head.

- It is impossible to parachute through a waterfall of molten lead.

- You can't flip a car onto the top of a nearby 18 wheeler's trailer by jerking the wheel sharply to the left and engaging the emergency brake.

- Nobody can drill to the center of the Earth, let alone do so in a passenger vehicle.

- If hanging by your fingertips from the top of a skyscraper, you can't effectively fire a bazooka.

- If a loved one is in a helicopter that is shot down by a surface-to-air missile equipped with a military-grade nerve-gas warhead, It is very unlikely that you can bring them back to life by sobbing over their lifeless body.

- Robots, computers, and super-secret stealth fighter jets cannot spontaneously "come to life" and develop autonomous personalities.

- Snakes (Suborder Ophidia) are greatly varied, and can be found in most temperate regions of the world. There are even snakes, in the genus Chrysopelea, that can "fly" (by controlled gliding). However, motherfucking planes are not acceptable habitats for any of the known Ophidiads.

This attack on reason will not relent unless it is met with strong resistance. These maniacs not only want to take our money, but change the established tenets of science.
We need to take a page from the Flanders set and rise up in revolt. We need to storm the streets and unite our voices in outrage against this attack on our core beliefs. We will make those anti-science types pay dearly. Michael Bay's disemboweled viscera will hang for crimes against logic.
Aaaaaaarrrrrrgggghhhh!!!

If anyone needs me, I'll be at the theater down the street protesting 'M:I:3'.

The Quickening

I seriously rock. I just upgraded the RAM in my desktop from 256MB to 1G. This is the first time I've cracked open a CPU case without the use of a blunt object and/or firearm - It feels good.
Many thanks go out to Gundy for helping answer my ultra-retarded questions on compatibility and installation ("There aren't going to be any poisonous snakes that will bite me in there, are there Craig?").

Everything is done, everything is working perfectly, and this mutha is running faster than a nitro-burning funny car now.
My next project today will be to paint flames and racing stripes on my CPU case.

Word to your motherboard.

Friday Feature: Drunk Monkeys!

...The study, recently published in the journal Methods, also found that booze affects monkeys much the same way it affects people.

"It was not unusual to see some of the monkeys stumble and fall, sway, and vomit," Chen added. "In a few of our heavy drinkers, they would drink until they fell asleep."

Lower-ranked monkeys and males tended to drink more overall, but certain individuals consistently drank more than others, regardless of status or housing conditions...

See full article at Discovery.com (via Boing Boing)

Weird Shit

The strangest thing just happened. The ashtray on the back of my terlet just spontaneously exploded. We were in the other room and heard a loud "pop - clang" noise, we went in to examine the disturbance and found this:


There wasn't anything in the room that had fallen onto it (in fact - above the tank is a shelf, so nothing could have fallen onto it). We scoured the bathroom for any potential projectile, but found nothing.
It's really weird, it looks like one piece was shot back toward the wall, and one piece fell down toward the bowl. The dead cigarette butt landed roughly where it had been when there was an ashtray under it.

Observations:
- The top of the bowl was dry (no condensation) and wasn't hot or cold
- The tank never vibrates (that I've noticed)
- Room temperature was approximately 75 degrees Fahrenheit
- There was one cold cigarette butt in the ashtray (from 2 hours prior)
- Earlier there was a big thunder storm, but it had completely passed when the ashtray broke
- The ashtray broke into 4 distinct pieces, with only 2 small slivers additionally
- There were no 'impact' marks anywhere on the astray
- There were never any noticeable flaws in the (clear) glass

I'm stumped. What could cause a solid piece of glass to randomly shatter at room temperature without any discernible outside force?

Things I've ruled out:
- Falling object
- Extreme temperature flux
- Static electricity phenomena (despite porcelain and glass being excellent conductors)
- Suicide
- Ghosts, Bigfoot, Chupacabras, the Loch-Ness toilet monster, Leprechauns, Jesus, etc.

If any of you science types have any idea what could have caused this, please let me know. All of you non-science types can feel free to load on your own left-field theories.

The Freemasons assassinated my Chicago Comics ashtray!

Detritus

- I'm So Busy With Work, That I've Dragged The Girl in as Back-Up.
We were working on a mock-up for a client until 11:30 last night. She kicked some serious ass with 'In Design'. The layout fucking rocked.
I got to work this morning and proudly plunked down the final draft. They said: "That's great, now could you re-do it exactly the same using 'Power Point'?"
It was at that point when my head exploded. After cleaning up all the mess from the conference room, I spent the rest of the day trying to build a Bentley out of Yugo parts.

- That Damned Drinky Dago is Driving Me Daffy.
The first thing I saw this morning was the wop sprawled out on the couch like he fell through the fucking roof and landed (dead) on the couch.
The second thing I saw was the crumpled remains of the hard copy from the project we'd been working on all night poking out from underneath his overstuffed backpack.
Must... Kill... Dago.
Actually, the first thing I SMELLED in the morning was a case of whiskey-breath that was causing the varnish to peel off from from the coffee table in front of him.
I go through the daily 'morning drill': Open the windows, light a candle, spray him down with Febreeze... What the hell did I just step in?
On the carpet is a HUGE wad of chewed-up sunflower seeds (Jim Beam Brand - no shit). My only thought is he chipmunked a fist-full of seeds and then passed out before he had the chance to discard the remains, then sometime in the night - PLOP.

Fuck!

More Flickr

I just got around to posting a handful of pics from a couple of weekends ago on my Flickr page. You've got some DC pics, some Big Hunt pics, a shot of Drinky Joe awake, and a few of my rotten girlfriend. Enjoy.

Sweet Zombie Jesus!

From CNN.com:
...there also was speculation that Fox was looking to resurrect the animated series "Futurama," from "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening, on its Sunday lineup the same way that "Family Guy" was brought back last year. The network has an option for new episodes, which currently are being produced for Cartoon Network's Adult Swim late-night block.

There has been a lot of talk about reviving Futurama lately, but nothing concrete. Last month I wrote another "woo-hoo" post on the return of Futurama, but had to pull it after the source (Billy West - the voice of Fry) rescinded the announcement.

This time it looks like it's for real.

Shitstorm of the Week

I'm in the middle of another media-frenzy, this time due to my work with our bio-tech clients.
Crazy speculative "news" pieces to follow.

Fuckers.

Glad I Waited

Unedited Original 'Star Wars' films coming to DVD

I just couldn't bring myself to pick up the 'special'* edition set that came out a few years back.
---
* like retarded kids are 'special'

A Lesson I Should Have Learned From Watching Cartoons

On my way to the subway this morning I actually slipped on a
motherfucking banana peel.
Before I reached my destination I encountered two more peels in my path.
Apparently, DC has a serious monkey problem on its hands.
Now I'm just hoping like hell that I don't get hit by any falling anvils
by day's end.

- Sent From Blackberry Handheld -

NAMBLAdvertising

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!

And yes, this is a real product: Amazon Link

Checking In

I'm just checking to make sure that everyone who requested a Spring compilation CD got one. My system is AFU, and I'm making sure that nobody's CD fell through the cracks.

In other news: I spent a good chunk of the weekend working, & have been (and will be) slammed at work all week. Other than that, I've got nothing.