brb, seizing the means of production

Thank God the Daily Show is back today. Now I know what opinions I should have about politics and the SOCIALIZT NAZI HELTHCARS. I need him to help me think of snappy comebacks for people who are trying to talk politics on Facebook of all places. I really don't need to know every time someone joins a "obamas stupid lol" group, but there it is, clogging up my newsfeed.

Okay, so the newsfeed shows me a lot of stuff I don't need to know.

In any case.

Nothing happened over Spring Break. My hours at work shot up which is nice, but deprived me of most of my free time. Spare time was spent bumming around Brewing Grounds, which I believe is where Cody sleeps these days. I wish I had something of substance to write about on the subject of Spring Break, but the material's just not there.

I did learn that when we're talking retail, customer loyalty is proportional to the size of the discount you're offering them, and customer civility is inversely proportional to same.

I also learned through a new contact that the English major program is actually super easy. Take the classes and you're done. No thesis paper, no speech, no nothing. I'm kind of disappointed in a "is that all you got?" sort of way. My History Major Friend has to apparently write a whole textbook and my Art School Roommate I guess needs to have a portfolio of his work stretching all the way back to finger paints in kindergarten. I just attend a seminar and, I assume, go to the alley behind the Open Pantry at Oakland and Hartford and take from a dumpster the manila envelope that contains my degree.



The vast majority of you should probably just leave now.

I went to a gaming tournament over the weekend. For a collectible card game that I haven't played in years. Didn't win a single game, which is about how I expected it to go down. It's way easier to swarm the field with monsters now. Time was, it was a miracle if you had even three cards on the field at once. Stardust Dragon showed up way more than I expected it to, because people are now packing Starlight Road, a mechanic which would never have been used in my day.

Some kid with a Different Dimension deck even muttered "newb" under his breath. I was top-decking Fissure to destroy a Jinzo, finally allowing me to use Call of the Haunted to take back my Summoned Skull while you were still wetting the bed, kiddo.

But I did some decent trades. And the fact that I own a copy of Archlord Kristya, which in addition to being one of the best cards in the game right now is also worth INCREDIBLE amounts of cash on eBay right now helps me sleep at night.



Most Gundam fans are familiar with the Gundam Wing series above all others, and many of my readers are no different. Bandai is finally gracing us with a high-end 1/100 scale Master Grade model from the series, in the form of the titular machine, the Wing Gundam.



It's lovely. The Wing is probably my favorite After Colony design and this is the first time that the series has gotten a Master Grade model, not counting the Endless Waltz Wing Zero which Adam has or the Katoki Redesigned Wing which is just a "what-if" sort of thing. Someone buy it for me.



It transforms and everything!


/Post for post's sake.

So I'm thinking about becoming an alcoholic

Twenty-one is such a fun age. When most people in my generation turn that age, all it really means for them is they trade in their Solo cups for actual bar-issued highball glasses filled with the same terrible beer they were weaned on. Beer is pretty awful in most cases, most of the beverage's allure coming from the fact that you aren't allowed to drink it. If we made the opportunity to headbutt a brick wall illegal for those under eighteen, I can guarantee the amount of teens in hospitals for head concussions would skyrocket.

Though I make the exception for Strongbow which is actually a cider anyway, so yeah. Beer = gross.

Wine is nice enough to have, but I don't quite see what all the fuss is about. Certainly, it fits well enough in your hand while you're sitting alone yelling at the contestants on Jeopardy, but there's not much utility beyond that. Still, nothing wrong with keeping a cheap bottle around. Our refrigerator currently houses a 2/3 full bottle of White Zinfandel. To be fair, most of my views and indeed knowledge on wine mostly comes from episodes of Black Books.

No, liqueur is where it's at, children. I've managed to fairly consistently keep a bottle of some variant of Irish Cream Whiskey in the house. For the moment, we're on St. Brendan's, so chosen for its low price (compared to Baileys), and for its funky bottle design. It has a punchier transition from the original milk chocolate taste to the burn of the whiskey, but ultimately is well-suited for my purposes. Leaning back in your chair, holding a glass of this on the rocks at the end of the day while something like this plays in the background makes you a debonair son of a bitch.

So do you readers like liqueur? What are some liqueurs that are tasty?


Anime Milwaukee was actually pretty cool. Ten bucks to get in for a day and see some pretty wacky things. Like Vic "Edward Elric" Mignogna kissing the bald head of Chris "I've voiced every anime character ever" Sabat. That should be on Youtube by now, come to think of it. Hold on a sec.

Yup. There we are.

Of note are their compatriots, Wendy "Envy" Powell and Todd "Alex hasn't actually seen anything he was in" Haberkorn excitedly recording the exhchange.

Sadly, you had to be preregistered in order to get decent spots in the autograph lines, and I can only spend so much time in the company of fat neckbeards and high school girls who squeal at frequencies only dogs can hear. So no autographed DVDs for me.

My wallet was fortunately unharmed by the vendor room, given that it was mostly filled with shit like this. As opposed to the shit I do collect.

However, I am giving serious thought to going in costume next year, like so many others. There is one costume that is at once perfectly appropriate and fairly cheap to make. I could go as Lelouch vi Britannia in his school uniform. All you need is a full black outfit (where am I gonna find that?), some gold fabric for the trim and you're done! I could have the hair for it, and I'm basically anorexic anyway, so I could pull it off. Also, I think I can do the voice.



Plus, I'm told that chicks dig the bishounen.



Look it up. I have enough links in this post as it is.

George Clooney is so sick of this

Imagine you are working along a deserted street late at night, say one in the morning. Say that this street is N Farwell Avenue. It's a Saturday night (okay, Sunday morning I guess) and the bars are starting to let out. You are with your boyfriend perhaps. There's a minor fog, but nothing too bad. You pass a coffee shop, closed obviously because who buys coffee at such an hour?

This coffee shop is Brewing Grounds for Change, a local volunteer-run joint. In the large windows you see what appear to be mannequins. Very life-like ones. Why would a coffee shop put mannequins in the windows? Maybe it's some weird hipster thing. You go in for a closer look, when perhaps one of the statues moves a hand or appears to chuckle to itself or exchanges glances with its fellow.

Imagine that you proceed to FUCKING LOSE YOUR SHIT. I was one of those statuesque folks and if you were this person, let it be known that you, whoever you may be, made our night. Your boyfriend laughing at your fear was the icing on this terrifying cake.


Right, the Academy Awards. Hurt Locker won, which didn't really surprise me. In a startling upset, Up managed to win best animated picture. And Tarantino went home with jack squat save the best supporting actor for his man, Christoph Waltz. The best thing about the night, though? Cut to George Clooney for an instant.



There we are. Aaaaaaaand, George Clooney reaction shot.



I'm imagining the phrase "What the hell do you want from me?" in his voice and it works so well.

And I almost forgot about Neil Patrick Harris's surprise musical number. The other best thing about the show. Is there anything that can't benefit from a little Enn Pea Aitch?


My coworkers are often very concerned for my welfare. I'm not sure why this is, but I continue getting offers of food from them. It may be the fact that I work with a handful of what are basically stereotypical Jewish mothers, but I am never without a source of free food. It is thanks to one of these wonderful coworkers that I had to clear out a shelf in my refrigerator to fit a bunch of random Chinese leftovers tonight. After a party, they had nowhere to go, so she tried to see if anyone at work wanted them, insisting that I take it all off her hands. Radical.

Cody still hasn't got over his last battle with East Asian cuisine, so his reaction should be way hilarious.


What else is in the news? Oh yeah, a protest at school turned into way more of a clusterfuck than it should have been, and both the students and authorities can probably be blamed for this. Bothering the lawmakers in Madison who allocate funds to our schools might have a better chance of working, no matter how tiny that chance is.

And for Chrissakes, did you really take marijuana to a place where there would be likely to be police officers? Are you a goddamn idiot? You might try laying off the weed.


Anime Milwaukee is this weekend and Vic "Edward Elric" Mignogna will be there. I may have some things for him to autograph. But I am staying away from the furries. These anime cons attract some frightening, and frankly terrible people. You may consider me entrenched, like a harried journalist reporting from inside a strange and alien cult.