It's a life sentence

Sooo today was a good day. I slept in (and slept well, which is sadly becoming less and less normal). I goofed off for a bit, went to meet Trip, got some tasty crab and then hit Walmart. Woo exciting stuff. We then came home and played Tony Hawk American Wasteland until about 1 a.m., which is seriously late for Trip. Actually, I shouldn't say we played Tony Hawk, I should say I pwned Trip back and forth and around again. He did win one and is very proud of that accomplishment, so I'll note it here.

I wanna see the new Xmen movie, but I may wait for a bit and catch a matinee next week or so. I hate fighting crowds and prefer noone in the theatre besides me. I've heard it's good, from Trip actually. He sold me out and saw it over the weekend. Bastard.

Ohhh Trip and I did watch the Gracie vs. Hughes battle tonight, along with the rest of the bouts from this weekend. Trip's dumbass skips around all the commentary so I never get a feel for who's who unless I already know with the undercard fights. Anyway Hughes pretty much manhandled Gracie as I predicted. It was sad, cause Gracie is a great UFC champion, but it's not the same sport it was a decade ago.

Then she didn't

Well tonight's nigh 10 hours of work were well spent. You see, I went to Roanoke early today to have some time to relax and eat before work. I ended up at Barnes and Noble and, well, I gave in to my consumer instincts and bought the new Douglas Coupland book, Jpod. I had read that it was the spiritual successor to Microserfs (which is one of my all time favs.) and so I had to have it. Of course, it's still in hardcover (having only come out last week) and so it was expensive.

So at work tonight I managed to read the whole thing. That's right, I read the whole damn book on the clock. It's was a Saturday so I really wasn't goofing off more than I should have, I didn't have much to do and I just flew through the thing. Still it's annoying to pay $20 for a book and then read it all in one day.

Actually I had a couple of hours to spare and ended up reading part of another book I had with me, The First World War by John Keegan. It's going substantially slower, but I did enjoy the sequence of events surrounding Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination. I knew that was ostensibly what caused the war, I just had no idea why.

Back to Jpod, it was a good read. I dug the characters, but it seemed a little indulgent. Coupland has inserted himself in as a character, which is odd. (Although I can appreciate it from a Charlie Kaufman type of stance.) Also his stories always have these real life beginnings and go random at some point, which sometimes works better than others. Here it's hard to pull it all together in my mind. I'm giving it a foot massage initial rating, but am reserving the right to change it later. (Actually I always reserve that right, screw you people I'll do whatever the fuck I want... ok, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get all hostile, but I will do as I please on my own site!)

The Trooper

So I'm almost done with my longass week, just one more day to go. It was going pretty rough until I slept like a damn rock until nearly 3 p.m. today. That took a lot of the edge off. But yeah, I make it through tomorrow and I have a day off, woo.

The weather has been so damn gorgeous and I'm spending all my time inside looking at a screen. I'll grant you that I'd probably be doing the same thing if I was off mostly, but I can bitch about it now cause I'm obligated to be there! At least I get to drive to work in temperate conditions. Today I rolled up listening to some Jimi Hendrix and that was nice and seemed fitting for such a beautiful afternoon. The trek home was all Iron Maiden, I love, repeat, LOVE the basslines from Iron Maiden. It's just got this driving sound that I dig a lot. Anyway I'm off.

War inside my head

When it rains, it pours like a bastard. So remember when I mentioned that I picked up some overtime hours to make paying my bills easier? Yeah that definitely happened. I picked up two extra shifts, which I was fine with. Of course, today I found out that my weekend shifts are gonna be longer than normal too. So while the money is gonna be nice, I'm gonna be a bag of shit after this is done... actually probably well before it's done. Ahh well, I shouldn't complain I did have a 18 month vacation beforehand.

Not much else going on, I finished In Cold Blood and it was good overall. I'd say for innovation it deserves a foot massage, but for strict readability for today's audiences I'd lower that to +1 chainmail. But definitely worth the time. I have now moved into complete pulp, reading a book on Warcraft. That's right, more video game novels. What can I say, I'm a sucker for this sort of thing. My nerd cred is unshakable.

I've been listening to a lot of hardcore tonight, so I'm kinda upbeat despite the late hour. It started with Suicidal Tendencies on the ride home. Man I love it when they rip it up. It is impossible to deny music that could be the soundtrack to a riot... or in fact, could start a riot. If you recall, ST wasn't permitted to play L.A. for just that fear. I'm now exploring the aggressive world of Agnostic Front, which is a truly great name for a band.

Cocksuckers calling it quits

I have just read some horrible, horrible news. It concerns my fav. show, Deadwood... sigh. Alas it seems the series will be done after season three. Dammit, why do all the good shows only last three seasons or less while shit like Reba is on for years? WHY? Apparently the creator, David Milch is a cocksucker to work with, according to HBO. Still that show is sooo good, let him run with it.

In other news, Sunday's suck. My shortest shift, but seems the longest. They drag on and on, argh. I also got a sub from Firehouse Subs for dinner and it kinda blew ass. I won't be going back there, in spite of the hotass working there. Tomorrow I get to sit through a presidential address with my highly political comrade and listen to him rant throughout it. The fact that I agree with most of his point of view only makes it a little less like torture.

Betrayed by body and mind

Ohh man what a day I've had. It started late last night when I had a bowl of Life cereal, that my body decided to reject with extreme prejudice. I've felt unwell for most of the day and that was fun. That made work less than fun from the outset. Couple that with me being a dumbass and a couple of annoying things done by other people and it was just not fun.

On the upside, I did get good news. I will be working a couple of extra days later on in the month, which will give me a nice 60 hour week before the end of the month. This is good, because I've been pinching pennies to get my bills under control and next month was gonna be a bastard with my insurance being due. But now, it's more managable, so something worked out nice for a change. Maybe the Year of E is still in effect, maybe.

Anyway I'm done for the moment. Have a good weekend cocksuckers. (Deadwood comes back in June or July and I'm prepping now!)

Hankco's Laminated Grinder World

Sooooooo Trip and I went to Danville today and had a good time. Got a little BBQ at Short Sugar's which is a quality establishment. I particularly like the name, which has much more personality than either Martinsville's main cue places (Pigs R Us... yesh and Dixie Pig).

Anyway after that we did some Mother's Day shopping and I got Mom a nice vase that I hope she likes. We'll see. I traded in some old games for a coupla Game Boy games to play at work. We'll see if I like em. Then we made the trek back to Trip's and watched last week's episode of The Office, which was quality.

We also managed to download the new trailer for Halo 3!! Woooo. I'm never gonna be able to afford a Xbox 360, but one can dream. It was a cool little movie, Bungie does things right.

Ramblings of the insane and pathetic

Soo it was a busy night at work, but not bad. The time went quickly, which is always good. There is a new camera watching what I do, but honestly I don't give a shit. I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing and so it's fine.

So after work, on my drive home my cd player's batteries died. I decided not to try and juggle it around to switch em while roaring down the highway and gave late night radio a listen. Adam had told me about this paranormal talk show that comes on and I went searching for it and found it. Man, there are some batshit crazy people out there.

The topic was what is your worst fear and the calls ranged from the kind of blah to Crazy-A bonkers (an expression I learned from watching the Young Ones). One guy's fear was that he could imagine odd things... he was totally out there. I gotta admit it was interesting to listen to some of these clearly bizarre people talk.

years go fast, but the days go so slow

Ahh the bliss of days off. I'm watching Memoirs of a Geisha, which is pretty good. Of course I'm obligated to tell you that the book was better. It should come as little surprise. Still Zhang Ziyi is compelling.

Anyway yesterday Trip and I watched UFC 52 in high def. It looked spectacular on Trip's tv. The blood really seems to pop off the screen. Ohh I did get to see Corb for a coupla minutes before the unyeilding stream of his life swept him away.

Think I'm going to spend the day in front of the tv and maybe playing some WoW. Gonna keep it low key.

so tired

Ahh my three days off, here at last. It's been a looooooong four days, let me tell you. Ended up working my first overnight on Sunday. Dude was sick and I got to do it. Loads of fun. Plus work has started to be more like work now. I don't just sit there and watch tv, I actually do stuff. None of it is really hard or annoying, just occupying. So I'm not complaining too hard.

How about that draft? I would now like to say I don't believe the Texans made that bad a decision. There may have been a better way to go about it, but I think they addressed a definite need instead of overspending on a position they have covered. Is Reggie Bush a special player, signs point to yes, but we won't know until the fall and that D-line needed some serious help.

I suppose this all boils down to my own personal football philosophy. I'm a firm believer that the game starts at the line and if you can dominate that, you will win, no matter what super player they have catching or running the ball. That's why I'd say the Jets had a really good draft, picking up two really good linemen in the first round. The Dolphins might have some trouble owning them next year Nick... maybe.

The Steelers seemed to do fairly well in the draft, as usual. I figured they'd go for a safety first, but they reached up and grabbed Santonio Holmes, then added another WR later in the thir .Even so, how could I criticize them? I trust Pittsburgh's front office implicitly. They've proven over the years that they know how to rate talent and get the most out of the draft. So until that changes, I don't have anything to say but welcome to Steeler country draftees.