Some days I ask myself the usual question everyone checks in with once in a while. "Where am I going?" Y'know, every so often you just need to make sure you're doing what you ought to be doing, and that your compass is still set on your goal.

Most of those times, I find myself answering, "Maybe today I'll finally hit that second star on the right."

To avoid being overly-political, I will keep this short.

My mother's step-father, the grandfather I knew best in my childhood, was a veteran of World War II. He was awarded something like nine medals, including a purple heart, and fought in Europe. I don't know the details of his life or service, sadly, because by the time I was smart enough to comprehend what he and men and women like him did for our country and for other countries, he had already passed. My mother once did a history report in college on him, and it was about the Normandy Landing. I can only assume that he was involved in, or shortly after, D Day.

To all the veterans out there who know what loving your country and sacrificing the way many of us in this era would not, could not, or cannot, thank you.

I was thinking on the matter of the furry fandom, the roleplaying community, and of avatars we choose to represent us. The furry fandom has an important concept and distinction, I find, between a "character" that we play in fictional settings and a "fursona," a furry persona that we choose to represent us. I think that the biggest separation between what a "character" is and what a "fursona" is, is which one you associate with the player. It can be a difficult distinction, especially if you only know the player in a certain area or aspect such as a MUCK or particular IRC channel, but in the end the amount of association that is placed on the character or the fursona.

Take for instance, Lai. My character, Lai, was originally an oriental dragon character that I created for a furry-based roleplaying MUCK (or MUD, or MU*, as you prefer to lable them). Lai was, in that association only, me. In this furry text-based setting, Lai was how people saw me represented, and though Lai had a unique backstory full of fantasy and adventure, out-of-character, people would still use the "Lai" image to associate with me. Later, Lai would go on to represent me in a good majority of the furry fandom, being a name I used at conventions, on forums, and on IRC communities for about eight years. However, over the years Lai was still a "screen name," a handle, and though the avatar of a noodle-dragon was a fun way to be represented and my out-of-character interactions reflected me generally well, the character of "Lai" remains distinctly independent of me, myself, and I.

Now, Justin the rat has raised a few questions. While I don't really play "Justin the rat," Justin is a presentable, public face. He is me, without a doubt, and I don't sugar-coat it or pretend that it's just a character that I can hide behind with in-character justification. Seeing me, in real life, and seeing Justin the rat (as you will in this journal), are interchangeable. There is no "character," and nothing about the rat will be something I am not.

The problem is, Lai is a well-known standin for "me." People know Lai as me or vice versa. I hate surprising folks with the revelation that I am not cute nor particularly like a dragon, so it's kind of an emotional tossup for me. Is being Lai, a lie? Is being the rat betraying being what people know and have come to accept? Is having a repertoire of characters in and of itself just an excuse to hide behind multiple facets, or can a person be represented as One, by the Many?

Whew.

So Halloween was fun. Went out to a furry get-together with people from work and had a lot of fun. They're a bit more "into it" than I am. Call me unenthusiastic, but I just can't get into the whole howling, paw-wearing, tail-wearing, partial fursuit business or the like. I mean, I like it when other people do it, and I think making fursuits is an art form in and of itself, but for me? Nah. Besides, I'd just look like a creepy pedophile in a fursuit. In any case, these folks have a pretty nice place and a greyhound also, so two bonus points there. I'm hoping to make the routine sketch nights they hold every other Saturday from here on out. Truth be told I was skeptical because nine times out of ten, the fur gatherings around here are painfully gay. I don't have a problem with gay people, it's more of a problem with the gay people around here. One too many furries have no sense of personal boundaries and border between "making me uncomfortable" and "close to getting punched."

Sunday I felt a sick to my stomach, but it's the first in a while (thankfully). It was bad enough to make me want to stay home from work, largely due to the hour-long drive to the place that hasn o bathrooms or rest stops in case I suddenly needed to. I called in to the automated reporting thing we use to notify work of our absences. The problem is, the after-hours pager is not only problematic, it's retarded. In order to report myself absent, I have to call an automated service that records that I am absent. Then, on a normal day, I call my manager and let her know. On the off-hours, I have to call this pager thing. Well, when you're nauseated and exhausted and have this weird cold sweat, it's hard to figure out menu options from a poorly-laid-out, poorly-recorded pager message. I tried it twice, entering my phone number both times, but received no confirmation that it was received, and never received a phone call back from the management. Naturally, at work, it works just fine and the reception is clear as a bell, so I can clearly and fully understand the instructions. It was my first time calling the thing, but since I'm the only competent person here on Sundays, it was the biggest deal ever.

Lately I've been really wanting to branch out to meet new people, but I think I've already "met" all the people around here, and the Internet is being all reclusive. Not that I'm complaining; I have lots of great friends that I barely have time for due to job, fatigue, depression, ADD, or what-have-you, but sometimes I want to talk to somebody about something I read in their journal or a thing they posted online, and they're equally busy. I wish I could just take a year off and tour around, meet folks at conventions or something. Give it substance, so I can shake a hand and say "Hey there, nice to meet you." Maybe sometime in the distant future AC/FC will be a possibility.

Mmm, Pepsi.

The past couple of days have been idle fun for me, mostly in World of WarCraft. With the recent patch, all raid content was reduced in difficulty by approximately 30%, and with the new class rebalances the instances have become much less difficult. I wouldn't call them "easy," because I still believe that you need to be able to follow instructions and know how to play your class, but in the end you can probably get into some decent groups of 10 to 25 friends or acquaintances and expect to succeed without being uber-leet raiders. This makes content more accessible, and while some of the more hardcore people might be whining about their achievements and such, they can go jump in a river becase I got to go to Zul'Aman!

My warlock did well for himself on Monday, although his DPS was relatively low. As Affliction I find it hard to really shine in anything but boss battles, where my debuffs and damage over time spells with self-healing potential essentially give me a running advantage at being able to do a lot of damage with minimal effort. Trash pulls are basically AOE or shadowbolt spam. But, he got a sweet one-handed spell dagger and picked up an off-hand badge reward. Tuesday was not so lucky for my warrior.

Let me straighten something out. I used to think tanking was a miserable job, because I played a warrior. Back in the day, before BC, gear that was good for tanking high-end content was rare, very difficult to come by, often requiring multiple high-level instance runs and even some raid content before you could really move forward. So, I wanted to play a damage-dealing type. Again, in order to really shine in this role, you needed the even rarer equipment from high-level instances and raids to up your hit rating, your critical hit chance, and all that fun stuff. People would still prefer rogues, mages, and hunters over you because of their versatility; warrior could only swing a weapon. So, when BC came out, I was a bit more excited about being able to deal damage because the warrior gear available was much more varied and readily accessible through several instances, and though the content was more difficult your gear level rose quicker, so you were never really left hurting too badly. Unfortunately, I was in that "middle phase," before any of the real big patches hit but after BC was already released. By the time I was 70 my raiding friends were concerned with Karazhan, but I was still in Outland instances. As I tried to get geared up and grind the reputation necessary for Heroic dungeons, they were clearing Prince. And unfortunately, DPS warriors weren't in high demand. Those that were already in the guilds had their roles solidified, whereas tanks had stringent requirements that had to stick to or else they'd be a detriment to the entire raid. This has steadily been changing and, with the most recent patch to the game, tanking has become some kind of easy street that leaves me feeling as if the past four years of my warrior career could have been better spent had they just done this from the beginning anyway.

So, I off-tanked in Zul'Aman last night. Nothing of note dropped; I didn't even get enough badges for my new cloak or helm. I want the helm that drops off of the spirit lord and the chestplate off of Zul'jin, but neither dropped. The bosses are tricky but are just learning curves, and once you get their strategies down it's not too hard to remember them. Though it was my second time I could tell everyone in the raid what to watch out for during Soul Siphon, each phase of Zul'jin's animal spirits, and how to get through the Gauntlet before the eagle boss. I'm sure the 30% nerf in difficulty helps out when it comes to applying your strategies, but that's the thing; the difficulty just made it a numeric requirement. This just goes to show that intelligent people who know what they're doing but aren't in epics are very capable of DOING it, it's not like it's some kind of rocket surgery.

Whoo. Feeling kind of braindead today. I was a bit worried earlier when my stomach was upset again, but it seems to have settled down. I just can't find the time or the money to go have something checked, and I know I'll regret it. But, part of me is resigned to the idea that whatever is wrong with me is going to be wrong with me, and I won't be able to fix it, so bothering with it is about all kinds of futile.

I really want Dead Space for the 360. But, if I can't do the above, I won't be getting any new games. Besides, the budget is tight. It's so tight that I can't really justify the expense of going to a doc, otherwise we'd be dead broke. I'd also need to make an appointment and hope somebody does something on Saturdays. That's the only day I have.

Work has been particularly frustrating this week. If you read my previous rant about work, you know that the tools I have to use are utterly useless. My coworkers border somewhere between infuriating and downright incompetent. About six people have called out this week on a desk that only has about 12-15 people, at maximum, to handle the call volumes. The ones that are here are lazy, spending most of their time out of availability because they don't want to answer the phones. Add this to the fact that I do about five times as much work as a level 1 agent because the guy who's supposed to be "with me" on certain projects spends most of his time on SomethingAwful.com, and I get cranky easily.

Grr. I just want to relax a bit and not have to freak out about people who can't do their damn jobs, my money, and my health.

So, it's been almost a week since my last update and not a whole lot has been going on. I've gotten back into WoW, mostly due to the new patch content and that fact that a lot of things have been changed. In my curiosity I found out that a lot of things have been revamped. The talents, the classes, abilities, and content have all been changed, apparently with the goal of making it even easier. Not "easier" as in, "they're making it playable for dumb people," but in that the warrior can now effectively solo-play. As a level 70 warrior who mainly tanked stuff, it was hard for me to get things done, dailies and otherwise, because I wasn't uber-decked-out in T5-equivalent where warriors really "shine." Now, they've tweaked the specializations and abilities and I'm very excited about how warriors play.

Though I still think PVP is a load of bullshit and chips, I snagged myself a Merciless Gladiator one-hander from honor and tokens. The Horde, apparently, fucking blows at Battlegrounds whenever I'm in them. It took me most of a week to get the honor and tokens (Eye of the Storm, one at a time, because we lost 20 games in a row!). However, now that I have it as well as a mish-mosh of Karazhan tanking gear and some reputation-vendor PVP blues, I'm landing Shield Slam crits for 1700 and Revenge crits for 1200 quite often. Couple this with the fact that most of my Shield Slams are FREE due to a new warrior talent and that my Revenge landing makes my next Heroic Strike FREE thanks to a shiny new glyph, I do pretty well for myself in PVE.

Hopefully there's no nerf coming toward us warriors, not with monstrously overpowered classes like Retribution paladins running around out there. I think they'll get hit the hardest, since a single human paladin managed to take me down in one Eye of the Storm using nothing but a single auto-attack that proc'd his seal of anal-reaming, then used Divine Storm, which proc'd the same seal at least a bajillion times, and all told he smacked be about nine times for over 12,000 damage; I know he must've done more than that because I died and the spirit healer refused to resurrect me.

That's one thing Blizzard has never managed to do - launch a patch without grievous errors. The servers, for the first four days, were terribly unstable. World servers were crashing, BGs were glitching, and people were getting dropped off at random. Luckily these things seem to be smoothed out.

Still, the game's primarily a distraction for me, as I'm not doing any serious raiding. I hope to at least "finish" Wrath and check out their endgame content before I make a final call on all this new-fangled jazz.

So last night I was playing a bit of Doom 3 on highest settings in 1024x768 Windowed mode while IMing folks, MUCKing, and looking at GameFAQs for a list of locker passcodes. This is, in retrospect, fairly intriguing because I remember Doom 3's release. This game was apparently designed to run on some fictional gaming rig that only the true warriors of Valhalla had ever glimpsed in their battle-halls and glorious conquests. In those glorious times my computer was limited to World of WarCraft on medium settings at best. Now that I'm reasonably able to run everything I want to with good chances at keeping StarCraft 2 on maximum detail, I look forward to more PC games than I have in the past.

I started thinking about the roleplaying group I have here locally. They're a fun bunch, and we play D&D 3.5/3.75 every Friday. I think a lot of our fun comes from the obligatory hour we spend cracking up about nitro-glycerin breast implants instead of actually gaming. We've got a couple of cliches in our group and they're really glaring at times. Let me break them down for you.

• The Innovator - You all know this guy, I'm sure. He typically plays a halfling rogue and will spend the entire gaming session trying to come up with the most creative way to get around a guard, even if it means contracting out to a team of ditchdiggers to tunnel underneath the castle walls as a distraction while he uses a catapult to fire himself over the parapets and into the king's bedchambers to ask for that favor the party was after. This isn't always a bad thing, as the party needs to have somebody who thinks outside the box - but this guy is thinking outside the dodecahedron. Most of his suggestions are silly, like his tendency to don full climbing gear to scale the bar and order a drink despite the presence of chairs or an active bar wench. Sometimes they're just impractical. You want to build an extension onto the back of the party's cart so you can pitch a tent and have a medieval RV? Why? You can just sleep in the back of the cart! When things do get into mechanics, though, it gets impractical and inconvenient. Sure, you took Improved Disarm...but as a halfling, you're taking a -4 penalty to opposed Disarm combat maneuvers, and since you're using your grappling hook, an improvised weapon, you're taking an additional -4 on the attempt...Improved Disarm's bonus is completely negated, still leaving you with a -4 to your result. Style is good and all, but you're spending most of your combat rounds failing to disarm everyone, meanwhile the party has just killed them all.


• The Unnecessary Fighter - So your character is a half-orc barbarian. Good. Your character loves the thrill of combat. Great. Your character is a devout believer in the God of Battle, who states glory comes to those who express their honor in warfare, favoring those who show skill, tactics, and above all else, respect for those who battle with or against. Excellent. But you know what? You don't have to go out into the streets and try to beat up a peasant every time the party is in town because you're "bored." You don't have to challenge the party to duels because you want to test their mettle, and you especially don't have to go into a rage and use your greatsword with every point of Power Attack you have on the cleric. Unfortunately, this guy plays this way regardless of what he's doing. If he's not in combat, even combat against a goddamn rabbit, he's not satisfied. In my games, the peasants may be commoners, but the guards are level 20 fucking badasses when you try to randomly murder people. If the subtle hints don't work, then the ensuing combat will be great all the way up until the gate guard wipes the floor with you and you get to roll up a new character entirely.


• The Exuberant - It's nice to get into the game. It's nice to get into your character. What isn't nice is when you just want to look so cool doing everything that you start to disregard rules, common sense, or even common courtesy. During a combat round, there's only so much you can do, and you have to do it in order with everyone else involved, so what you can do at one time is clearly defined in the mechanics. You want your character to do a running jump-kick to the back of the enemy's head, that's cool - I can give you charging bonuses and you can make your attack roll. Your character cannot, however, do a running jump-kick to the back of an enemy's head, backflip off him and land 30 feet away, chug a potion, and ready an attack to roundhouse kick the next person to come within reach. And no, you certainly do not get a bonus for describing all that to me. A round is 6 seconds long, and everyone has to have a turn - what you're doing is a simultaneous action that takes up a fraction of this time to perform, and just because it's your turn, this doesn't give you permission to just outline your entire combat plan and pull it off without a hitch in one roll.


• The Couple - You probably know these. There's a guy and a girl. The guy plays WoW, D&D, video games, and is generally a huge nerd - but he's a sexy nerd. Thus, he typically has a few girlfriends throughout the course of an adventure, usually changing them out every 3,000 miles for engine safety. It seems, though, that he can never date a girl with interests anywhere near his own, and his girlfriends are always slightly vacant, slack-jawed, and confused. So he brings her to D&D. He helps her make a character, lets her know all the rules, and generally keeps her in line - it's great and all, seeing as how she doesn't slow up the game too much. However, she has no idea what is going on in the game, having joined halfway through a plot arc but is automatically introduced to the party when her boyfriend's character, unsurprisingly, waltzes up to her in the bar and extends the invitation to join his merry band of adventurers. Now, there's nothing wrong with putting forth effort, and hell, it can even help garner interest in someone who otherwise wouldn't have had the opportunity to get into D&D without her boyfriend dragging her along, but it becomes problematic when the girlfriend, who isn't hardcore in any sense of the word, misses no less than half the sessions you put together, then mysteriously shows back up for the other half. Since she's not really playing D&D because she has nothing better to do on Fridays, the only reason to be there is for her boyfriend - and as we all know, penises are like dowsing rods for stupid. If the girlfriend says so, the boyfriend will drop D&D altogether, or in a worse case scenario the boyfriend will get himself into deep shit for showing up at D&D instead of plowing her a--er, paying attention to her on the weekend.

Whoo, boy. I'm really tired here at work, but I think this week I'm going back on a decent schedule where I'll have two days of "weekend."

More stomach troubles today. I was a bit late getting in to work because I had to make a "pit stop" along the way, and it's already a long drive. This was compounded by the fog that was blanketing the area, and the fact that people lose their fucking minds in a light mist. It wasn't even impacting visibility, really; you could still see the road for a mile ahead, but the sky was overcast and there were droplets of water beading on the windows. Oh shit, the Apocalypse! I'd better do 25 in a fucking 50!

I should probably go in to the doc at this point, but I had to work today. I'm sure they don't take appointments on the weekends but tomorrow I shall call. There are no medical clinics in the area. The last time I thought to myself "Hey, I should go get checked out, but I can't afford to pay an emergency room fee if it turns out to be bad fish," I tried to find a walk-in clinic locally, only to discover that these clinics don't do medical work - they take pee samples and send them off for testing so truckers can get jobs. Not a one of them had a doctor in it who could look at me and go "Yep, that's bad fish." Alabama had a place called MedPlus, where they had doctors who would just take patients on a first-come-first-serve basis, no appointment necessary, and it was very prestigious - often preferable to going to the actual doctor because it was cheaper and same-day. Granted, I haven't been to a doctor in nearly ten years, it's probably a good idea to find one and visit him.

The problem here is that my roommate has to work on Tuesday, the day we normally have off, because Monday is a holiday for her and she doesn't want to miss out on the hours. This leaves me without a car to go on Tuesday, even if I make an appointment on Saturday. I've considered taking a cab, although that would be a new experience for me, too. Not gonna rule that out as an option, but that raises a question in the back of my mind. What is "medical transportation?" I know that when you dial 911 for emergency stuff they send an ambulance that will take you to the hospital, but do they have a service you can call and have someone come pick you up in an ambulance to carry you to a hospital? I don't know how to get to the local medical facility, so I would have to hope whatever taxi service I called would...granted, it's their job, but I don't put any amount of stupidity past Colorado and its hurka-durka occupants. -_-

With Halloween coming up, I thought to myself, "It's not often I get to get into the seasonal spirit." I love the seasons, especially holidays such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. But, I don't get the luxury of lounging around and watching Halloween specials or decorating my apartment. It's unfortunate, but I really feel like doing at least some TV watching this year. There have been a lot of advertisements for Tim Burton's Corpse Bride on TV. I thought the movie was cute, and I'll definitely try to catch it. Also, you can't go wrong with some good ol' Addams Family fun.

I also want to get some decorations, maybe even just one little thing for my desk at work. I'd love to get this set of decorations. I totally dig the light-up haunted houses, the little ceramic ones that have dioramas or whatnot that fit together to make a spooky village. And hey, Nightmare Before Christmas, anyone?

This is also the time of year when my interest in spooky things is at its peak. Recently I watched a playthrough of Silent Hill on YouTube. A lot of people may complain about people who post walkthroughs and talk during it, but whatever. I still enjoy it. To this day I can't play Silent Hill in any incarnation alone for any length of time. Despite having beat the games several times and the fact I know exactly what's coming, it's terrifying. The Silent Hill games seem to have gone downhill, though, and I haven't played either installment past number four. You'd think that with the next-generation graphics and gear they'd be able to pump out the horror like you wouldn't believe, but the terror isn't quite what it used to be, despite our massively accelerated hardware. Still, some games these days manage to make me pee a little.

Maybe I should pick up some of the old games at a used game store, give 'em a run or two...but my roommate would have to watch me play or else I'll get scared. T_T

Just while I'm thinking on it, I wanted to vent some thoughts on what is, apparently, a unique kind of human emotion that many people have completely ceased to feel.

The emotion I'm referring to is not complex, like love, nor is it something destructive like anger or constructive like sympathy or hope; I'm talking about caring. I've come to the realization that I care too much, something that I have always been told is impossible. What do I care about? Who do I care about? In what direction are these feelings directed? Well, I suppose you could say this is the problem.

I actually care about everyone. I do. I know that sounds like some kind of sappy after-school special, but bear with me here. I actually care that other people are having good lives. I can't help people, most of the time, and I certainly can't change the world to make sure that everyone is hunky-dory and going about their daily routines with the utmost joy or ensure everybody gets a tray of cookies for just being great, wonderful people. Most people aren't worth the effort, it's true; the vast majority of humanity cannot be "helped" with their daily lives. They either don't need it, don't want it, or don't care enough to receive it. There are those who would exploit kindness; these people don't need you to care about them because it's a waste of your time and positively stupid.

But, at the end of the day, I still adopt a policy of non-interference. Complete strangers walk in and out of my life by the dozens, and I oftentimes don't say a word to most of them...but that's the thing. I do not say anything to them and in doing so do not impact their lives positively or negatively. Sure, that guy on the bus might just need an encouraging word to brighten his day, but I might say just the wrong thing to make him lose it and go home to beat his wife or something insane like that.

This isn't really about accidentally screwing up good intentions, though. This is mostly about the greater and greater tendency for people, especially people over the Internet, to go out of their way to make people miserable on purpose. It doesn't matter where you go, there are people who dedicate their time to just being dickholes. They find it funny, they have huge groups of friends who laugh at the same sort of thing, and they have the anonymity of the Internet to safeguard them against any consequence whatsoever. This infuriates me, and this is the point; these people, these thousands of faceless goons, can simply not care. They even get a kick out of people, like me, who think what they're doing is wrong and have the balls to say so.

When, why, and how did it become perfectly alright to neglect consequences and treat other people like crap, all for the sake of treating people like crap? I know sometimes people are stupid; mock them! I know sometimes people are incompetent; call them out! But when people are just existing, trying not to get in your way or make ripples in the water, why do they have to be singled out by groups, whole bands of people, who do what they want, whenever they want, to whomever they want, without fear of consequence?

And why am I somehow wrong for wanting to beat the fuck out of anonymity?

McDonald's is doing their Monopoly game, with a "new" play by text aspect and online play, where you can enter codes online for a chance at prizes, up to and including $100,000.

I keep thinking to myself, "Wouldn't it be great if I could just get a share of that?" Really. I'm not a homeowner, or a car owner, or many of those other "owner" things that puts me in possession of expensive articles. The other day, my roommate and I were talking a bit about what we would do if we had just $10,000. Seriously, if we won one of McDonald's silly contests and hit $10k in prize money, there's a lot we could do. I could completely clear my debts, and still have a several-thousand-dollar savings account to cushion me. Yeah, I'd probably splurge a little...I want to go to AC, or FC, at least once more before the end of time, but when you break it down I wouldn't need that much at all to just erase my inconvenient expenses and bring myself back to 0.

My roommate is much the same way. She could really plow through her credit report with $10,000.

Despite this, I can't help but roll my eyes every time I see one of the "success" stories about some fifty-something trailer-dwelling woman in Kansas who wins $100,000 and plans to take a cruise and put their kids through college. I think to myself "Yeah, that cruise will be really great...once," and "Your kids are drug addicts, they're not going to pass anyway!" But, it's just jealousy, and it's not fair to others to think the worst of them. Even if they have six chins.

Alright, first and foremost, I want to say that the following is an observation of mine drawn from my own data, evidence that has only been presented to me. It is about people who, though oddly "public" in their interactions online, generally via the Furry Fandom or other such media, are discerningly private to the point of being downright rude.

( Here it goes. )

Sometimes I wonder about the medicine we put in our bodies. It's not that I'm some conspiracy nutjob who thinks that the government is propagating a front to fill us with a mind-control serum through flu shots and prescriptions. No, that's a worry left for someone who isn't taking a pee pill.

I recently started popping a vitamin every morning, specially forumalted for men's health, or so it is advertised. I figure, it couldn't hurt the body, right? I've taken everything from Flintstone's Kids (which are still damn delicious by the way) to Centrum A to Zinc. Sometimes health pills can be disconcertingly large, so as I opened this bottle for the first time, I marveled at the rather modest proposal sat before me. Though the pill itself was a sickly yellow flecked with spots of other materials I couldn't identify, I chalked it up to being "all natural" or somesuch and was glad that it wasn't a horse suppository that was eagerly eying my esophagus like a virgin equine asshole.

I'd like to say that, in my time, I've taken some pretty flavorful medicine. The candy coating of Advil is a personal favorite of mine, but I am also used to the unappealing, bitter taste of a raw aspirin. This pill, however, was the farthest it could be from an appealing flavor. It tasted like pee. So, assuming that it is the color of pee, and that it is flavored like pee, my brain immediately jumped to the conclusion that this was the testosterone-laced urine of some Hungarian bodybuilder and health-food nut that had been poured into mold and allowed to crystallize into a room-temperature solid due to sheer testicular fortitude. Every day they got easier to swallow, so I eventually let the idea drift away and simply bit my tongue every time I had to stare down one of these bladder-borne monstrosities.

Then my pee got yellower.

I'm not very political myself, but this has got to be the funniest campaign in history. In that...cosmic way.


see more funny political pictures

Also...they've really caught some of these politicians in some unfortunate freeze-frames, haven't they?

Eh, Monday. Apparently there's some kind of meltdown going on in the financial market, but I have absolutely no idea specifically what is breaking, other than "shit's falling over and desperate accountants are trying to hold up this proverbial tower of poo."

Speaking of poo, I've been having some stomach concerns lately. I know my diet is far from stellar, but it isn't dramatically different from the same diet I've been eating for the past eight years. However, I think that, since we grow older and our metabolisms change, it may be time for me to investigate a little deeper. It's not so much something urgent, but I have an upset stomach more than three or four times a month. Pepto-bismol easily reigns this in. It's gross, and embarrassing really. For a while there it was okay, with me eating breakfast bars and cereal and some of that Danon Activia yogurt stuff, but I cut that out as money became tighter. Now I think it may be a good idea to pick these things up again, and maybe go see a doc.

Also, what's with Pepto turning stuff black? That's like, the weirdest thing ever. I used to drink a lot of green Kool-aid so I never paid much attention to funny colors until the other day when I realized I haven't had green Kool-aid in four years. But one dose of Pepto and it's like, "Yar harr! Here be a panic attack for ye, ye land lubber!"

Yes, my poop talks in a pirate voice.

I seems to me that there's some kind of engagement virus going around lately. A lot of people, and by this I mean, about fifteen people I know either online or in real-life, have gotten engaged in the past month and a half. Even people I'm not in regular contact with, such as work contacts or gaming buddies, have shared intimate details about their relationships all leading up to their engagements at a moment's notice, oftentimes blathering incredibly personal details without the slightest provocation. It's not bad, exactly, but it's definitely new - and on top of that, it kind of makes me look at where I am in terms of relationships.

Overall, I'm probably not the best person to talk to about relationships, because my one and only relationship was something of a catastrophic failure, and due in large part to my being undesirable goods, I haven't had any further relationships to temper the experience. It's not a point I'm particularly emo about, more like...frustrated. Granted, I don't do the dating thing myself largely because I'm looking for a very specific kind of companionship. Ideally, someone who wants to be with me should be interested in video games, art, fantasy stuff, and having fun (this does not include barhopping, drinking, or drugs) while at the same time having a relatively good grip on reality and what's going on to not completely fuck up at life. This person should also have a relatively healthy sexual awareness and even an active libido.

Evidently there are far, far many more gay men who fit this profile and are perfectly willing to stick it in the pooper, as it were. Sorry guys, I hate to sound prejudiced, but I just don't like gay men. D:

In any case, a few folks have tried to convince me to place personal ads on Pounced or other matchmaking websites, but in the one example I have of someone actually meeting relatively non-freakishly-psychotic people on a dating site, their relationships with the people they met quickly soured and went downhill fast. This tells me that whoever isn't openly psycho is still dysfunctional, and I don't need dysfunction.

Maybe I'll just have to wait s'more.

I was watching a recent rash of superhero movies over the weekend and got to thinking about how things are so different between oldschool X-Men on Saturday morning and the new superhero films they've been remaking since the first attempt at The Hulk. These aren't the classic superhero movies of our childhood, nor are they the peerless "first installments" that were unnecessarily sequeled into the dirt. Spiderman was a great movie, and I enjoyed it. Spiderman 2 kind of went down the emo slope, but it was still watchable. Spiderman 3, on the other hand, was made of EPIC FAILURE. Despite featuring my favorite villain of the franchise, Venom, it managed to flop harder than Peter Parker's symbiote-possessed badass streak. Seriously. He looked like a little Hitler.

I think one of the most gut-churning parts of this movie was Mary-Jane. It's not that Kirsten Dunst is a bad actress; I don't really look at the movie for the quality of acting until they actually make me sick to my stomach. This time, though, it was the entire characterization of Peter Parker's love interest that made me want to punch the bitch in the mouth.

I don't know who thought it would bring more "human element" to the plot of the movie or what sweet, sweet crack they must've been passing around when coming up for interpersonal conflict for the film, but Mary-Jane was definitely the worst part of the movie for me. Your boyfriend is a super-powered web-slinging guy with a massive secret that he wants to keep from the world...and all you can think about is how he's not coming to your plays? Or how he's not paying attention to you twenty-four-seven? The guy gets beat over the fucking head by a man made of sand and thrown through buildings on a regular basis, and you're jealous because women all over the city are swooning over "Spider-Man." Not Peter Parker, mind you, but Spider-Man. Here's the deal: stop being a co-dependent twat and let the only hope the city has for defeating a crazed space alien psychopath do his job. And I bet he'd really appreciate a little hands-on tension relief after a hard day of getting the shit kicked out of him by mad scientists, if you get my meaning.