Whatever you do, don't blink.

I'm boxed in here. I seriously have trouble driving anywhere, because literally every single road is under construction. Excessive roadwork on every one of my typical routes to work. I'm seriously out of ideas other than saving enough money to by myself one of these and just flying to work.

On Wednesday I got called into work. We were playing host to the famous romance novelist Debbie Macomber. She writes books about God and knitting, so you may be able to guess what the audience was like. Three hundred plus 50-60 year old women all filling up the cafe area. Every chair in the store had been reassigned to the event, and there still wasn't enough room. The author herself seemed like a fairly nice old lady, but the evening was not terribly fun. Complaints that were lodged to me:

- They managed to miss the handing out of wristbands marking their position in the signing line despite having them at the top of the stairs before heading down. Fortunately, most people just got into line wherever they felt like it. A fight or two might have broken out, but most of them would have had to sit down and catch their breath after the first punch.

- The fact that Macomber started at about 6:40, when the event promotion clearly stated that she'd be starting at seven. She wanted to get started and get started she did - these authors have a certain momentum. She spoke for only about fifteen minutes anyway and started signing books. The whole decision process was out of my hands you could say, so yell at her.

- We did not account for the large amount of people with standing/walking problems. They were ushered to the front to the best of our ability.

We went an hour past close so that everyone could get their book signed. Got paid for essentially standing around, but still. Crazy old women. There was a particularly patient gentleman who had been somehow (and I don't want to think too hard about how) roped into getting his wife's book signed as she couldn't be there herself. There's a marriage that is either on shaky ground (speaking from a masculine standpoint) or fucking ironclad. When he finally got his wife's books signed, the old ladies behind him assured him that he was a great husband and that the good Lord would bless him.

I don't know, maybe God's a fan of the books.


And speaking of patience paying off, I finally got to register for classes next fall. I've only selected one so far, but it's an important one. ENGLISH 452 - SHAKESPEARE. Required for every single English major basically, this is the first year that I've been able to catch it - indeed, harpooned it like some great thrashing sea beast. I dunno how the class will turn out, but at least I'll finally have it behind me.

By popular request

Gather around children, for I have a story to spin.

We were on our way to get pizza, my chums and I. The two of them having polished off the bottle of SKYY Vodka from the refrigerator, and I am of course perfectly sober. I am very much the escort, to make sure they don't get arrested for public drunkenness or get murdered for making rude remarks about the wrong gang member's choice of attire.

(Aside: I regularly serve this role, in the perhaps unconscious hope that some young lady will note my responsibility and care for my friends and throw herself into my arms. This has not occurred and Cody tells me I am stupid for thinking this.)

In any case, the three of us walk along North Avenue at 1 in the morning and something catches our collective eyes. There is a dude (the bro type, on his way to a sick kegger, no doubt) in the drivers seat of a parked car, and the woman in the passenger seat seams to be doubled over. She is ill perhaps, head resting in the guy's lap. Then we note that her head is bobbing up and down, and yep that guy's getting his staff spit-shined by a comically drunk young woman.

For those of you who have never seen an act of public sex, it is one of those things that tears you between two sentiments. One that says "Ew. The nerve. Get a room, you animals" and one that says "Wow, just like in the movies!" It's very much a religious experience. I keep calm and continue walking with a grin, but my friends are snickering and laughing until one of them gives the guy the thumbs up. The dude in the car comically puts his finger to his lips, miming a librarian's "Quiet, please".

They later briefly entered the restaurant we settled on and I resisted the urge to loudly say something like: "BOY, THIS EVENING SURE BLOWS."



So working caused me to miss what was apparently a really swanky shindig. Focus Refilled, which I am told attracted somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty people, winded down basically right after I got off work. There would have been tons of artsy-fartsy people to mingle with. Some of these people would have probably been English majors that I could have mooched advice from. Some of them might even have bothered to talk to me.

It doesn't help that one roommate just quit his job and the other one hasn't bothered with one to begin with. So while I am shelving books for minimum wage they're (I can only assume) playing awesome video games, and meeting cool people, and eating nice food, and kissing beautiful women, and making new friends.

I need to do something about this annoying "responsibility" thing that causes me to do things like leave social functions early to study and refuse to ever call in sick to work.

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.

So very industrious

It's been quite a decent weekend for getting things done.

-Went to work.

-Got a perfect score on the first online exam for my Advertising Class. And I only had to cheat on a few of the questions!

-Scouted out a new game store. And found out that their tournament players are mostly not douchebags.

-Had Taco Bell.

-Had Noodles & Company.

-Had chili. (Yes, these are all accomplishments, shut up)

-Took care of taxes.

-Balanced the checkbook.

-Took out the apartment's trash AND recycling.

-Found Brawn at my local dump of a Wal-Mart. I can get behind any figure that has dual pistols AND a shoulder-mounted chain gun.

-Finally saw Moon, and I have to say that it's a goddamn crime that it's not up for a single Oscar.

-Read 100-ish pages of Underworld by Don Delillo.

-Read nearly half of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, bringing me perfectly up-to-date for my class on New Journalism.

-Caught myself saying "In True Blood" instead of In Cold Blood more times than I am entirely comfortable admitting to. Again, I blame the bookstore.

-Made a post on my increasingly neglected blog.

YOU ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD

Because the bookstore is being stingy with the hours, I'm looking into second jobs. I really like the bookstore and don't want to leave it, but it's not bringing in the green that it used to, especially now that I am living somewhat on my own. I don't plan on leaving the bookstore though, because the idea of having some control over what the masses read is incredibly attractive to me.

So I'm going to try the UWM library. I have a contact. And I've seen the people they have doing the shelving there, and I can tell you I can shelve CIRCLES around them. And it's actually a lot like the bookstore anyway! There's a multimedia area, a children's book area and a coffee shop! They both even have hobos come in sometimes!


This may come as a shock, but I was pretty big on the Yugioh scene, back in the day. Even had a gig as a columnist on a fairly prominent gaming web site. (No, I'm not linking it for you. If you really want to see how and what I wrote six years ago, you're gonna have to work to find it.) The game has improved somewhat over the time that I was away from the game once Konami got it through their heads that the game needs a little thing called BALANCE. So I've been tentatively dipping my feet back into the pond. I blame Andrew.

This means buying packs of cards. This is much easier to do when you're twenty-one compared with fourteen because you can drive, have income, and a certain disregard for what the register monkey thinks of you. Among the cards pulled, I grabbed this thing:



It's a Blackwing Tuner that can be used in a Synchro Summon even while it's in the graveyard so long as you're using it to summon a Blackwing Synchro monster like Blackwing Armor Master.

That's not important.

What is important is that this thing is selling for BIG BUCKS. A piece of shiny cardstock is selling for 50 bucks on the secondary market easy. And what's more, most players are predicting that the card will only skyrocket in value once the next Banned/Restricted Card List comes out next month.

That's a 1250% fucking return for something that I got out of a four dollar booster pack. What I am trying to get across to you, dear reader, is that I am now (proportionally speaking) FABULOUSLY WEALTHY.


Card game players have a tradition of shelling out insane amounts of currency for these pieces of paper. I remember when the only way to get a Mechanicalchaser was to fork over nearly half a grand for it. And of course, Magic the Gathering players are well familiar with the Black Lotus, a card that at one time could be auctioned for a final price well into the four figures.


No, I can't imagine why I'm single at the moment.