September 22, 2004
I've been sitting in this restaurant for twenty minutes and the manager has been peering over the kitchen partition at me for the entire twenty.
He thinks I don't see him. He's partly right, since I took my glasses off, because I can't just sit at a table with glasses on, so I can't really tell if he's staring at me as if I were about to shovel a salt shaker in my pocket or as if I'm about to take off my shirt.
I just caught his eye again. Maybe.
He walked past me at fifteen minutes to ask if the food I was delivered was to my satisfaction.
I informed him that it was and I tried to smile innocently, but how innocent can one look with a mouthful of Eggs Benedict?
Now I'm trying to act naturally because I know I'm being watched, but I have to awkwardly hold the fork in my left hand, because I am sitting too close to the wall for proper elbow leverage with a right-hand grip.
He can't be looking at me, can he?
I've stolen a bunch of glances, but, as I said, with my glasses folded on the table, it's impossible to tell if he's meeting my gaze or if he's looking over my head for some salt thief just behind me.
He just walked past me again. Now this is getting ridiculous. I pretended to be looking at a basket hanging on the wall, which should have given him ample time to take stock of the condiments which still remained on the table.
There's a little kid with a crayon haphazardly grasped in her hand crawling all over the table next to me. A perfect diversion for any restaurant manager to set his watchful eye over, but instead, he keeps a steady gaze on me.
I suddenly get the urge to pitch my salt shaker at his head, but the plan is quickly aborted, not only because the wayward Crayon Girl could lunge in the line-of-fire at any moment, but also because, without my glasses, my aim would be way off and I would likely hit my own waitress, who was nice enough to bring me a water without my even asking, even though I really wanted one, but I felt guilty or ordering a coffee and and orange juice.
I quickly checked the levels of each. Maybe that was it. Stare at the indecisive girl, eh? Well, sir, maybe YOU can decide whether you want to enjoy the fruity coolness of juice or the warm smoothness of coffee or the neutral water that seems to cleanse between sips of each, but I cannot!
Doing your rounds again, little man?
Yes, pretend you're asking Crayon Girl and her family how they're enjoying their meal. After all, she only has one apple juice and that's in a sippy cup.
If I hadn't already tucked the salt shaker into my bag, I would whip it at your head right here and now.
September 20, 2004
For those of you kind souls wondering, I am feeling much better.
My coughs now actually seem to be getting somewhere, instead of sounding like a dead car engine trying desperately to turn over.
We're still recuperating from that awful storm last week.
It didn't hit me, personally, really bad, but when I look at all the communities around me, I was really lucky.
All joking aside, I really hope everyone can bounce back fairly easily.
Pennsylvania isn't really known for natural disasters, so it's really scary to see how ill-equipped we are when something bad happens.
Well, unless you call the town of Pittsburgh a natural disaster.
Okay, well, not ALL joking aside...
Seriously, though, I keep hearing all these sirens and warning alarms, and when I drive through this one town JUST down the hill from me, and just to see all the ruined furniture on the sidewalks, and crushed cars in alleys and watermarks on businesses and apartments, it's really depressing.
Um...what else?
Was there a reason I decided to update?
I'm in the market for a crappy laptop, so if you have one that you want to get rid of for a few buckaroos, shoot me an email. I basically only need it as a Word Processor.
Um...I think I'm going to go...do something.
The icon for Microsoft OutLook is not only a clock showing 3:00, but it's also an "O" with an "L" inside. As in OutLook.
I haven't been this excited about a discovery ever since I was 13 and I got the pun in Sonic the Hedgehog's sidekick's name -- Miles Prower.
No, I haven't had a very exciting life.
September 19, 2004
Well, kids, if you've been listening to the news and heard anything about Allegheny County getting completely DROWNED by Ivan, your dear webmistress happens to live in just that county.
I've been without internet for the past couple days, and it just came back today.
I am still without water, however, but it is kind of a sad state of affairs about how much more grateful that I am able to read the tripe on the internet rather than, you know, shower or go to the bathroom or anything.
I just had my week at the Funny Bone opening for Mike Birbiglia, and I'd like to tell you all about it, but instead, I'm not going to.
I have to get to work, but I will leave you with this link:
to read my little opinion about Google.
I will also give you this image left in the AIM info of a delightfully underaged camper from PAC where I work in the summer.
Oh, how I love that camp.
September 16, 2004
Just when I thought I couldn't have a worse night than I did on Tuesday, I went and had a night like tonight...and TOTALLY redeemed myself.
Hoo, man, I was awesome, and I don't like saying that, but I was.
I did pretty well up front, but the crowd didn't like dirty stuff, so instead of a big laugh on my closer, I got a loud groan of disgust. It was fine, though, because since it was such a small crowd, I could gauge individual reactions, and they all seemed to be digging me at heart, if not vociferously.
The whole front row were CMU employees and former students, which, while not big on the Semen-in-the-face humor, are huge on the Nerd Humor, both at which I am adept.
So another comic, Tom, goes up, and when he doesn't get a laugh, he asks the crowd if they go on IM, and when they said they did, he asked them if they knew what LOL meant.
When they answered "Laughing out loud," he asked why the fuck weren't they doing it in a comedy show.
So I got up there when he was finished and tried to lighten the mood a bit by saying "I think you guys are LOLing just fine! WTF, Tom?"
And they ate it right out of my hands.
DANCE, PUPPETS, DANCE!!!
I look forward to the teaspoon of codine I get to take when I get home to keep me from keeping myself awake coughing all night.
I hate people who blog about drug use, but this shit is legal, and it is a BARREL of fun.
The first night I took it, I spent the next hour and a half lying in my bed, then sitting up real fast and giggling, and repeat.
On a fucking TEASPOON. This is why I don't take real drugs, people.
September 15, 2004
An informative, yet unfunny update.
Well, kids, for the past week and a half, I've been as sick as the day is long.
And apparently, the days length == pneumonia.
Lucky for me, however, I have the kind people call "Walking Pneumonia," meaning I can still generally go about my daily activities all while feeling really shitty and frightening people with my phlegmy coughs of doom.
If you know me -- and let's be honest here, how many of you really do? -- you'll know that I have a fundamental problem about taking off work or abandoning prior engagements. While a nice enough sounding work ethic, it has resulted in me infecting numerous comedians and co-workers, and re-spraining my ankle when my dear friend Tom asked me to go out dancing with him and his friends.
After sufficiently infecting a couple people, the guilt set in, and I took the last two days off work.
I mean, I have fucking pneumonia, but still in the back of my head, I imagine all my co-workers shaking their heads in disappointment of me. As if they cared.
I did, however, host the Funnybone, and my body went into what Hsiu termed as "Fight or Flight" syndrome, meaning I made my body healthy enough for my two hours onstage, and the second I got off, I nearly drowned in my own mucous, and even tried a couple times to corkscrew into my own head to let the sinus pressure out.
So, I took a healthy day (night) off work, and lucky for me, there was a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air marathon on Nick at Nite, so life was awesome.
And today, although I still break into the occasional terrifying cough that gets my heart pumping really fast and for a second, I'm fairly certain I'll never catch my breath again, I feel a hell of a lot better.
And hopefully I won't suck as badly tonight at the Funny Bone as I did last night.
I did well up front, but...everyone makes fun of me because I ALWAYS write out my ad-libs and "spontaneous" hilarious intros, and last night, let's just say, THAT'S WHY.
I messed up one guy's name, mistaking it for a guy I had just BROUGHT to the stage, and then my dyslexic ass informed the audience that they should "put it up and give it together for Mr. Vic Wallace" followed by me tripping off to the kitchen to laugh hysterically/find something sharp to stab myself with.
Oh, first times.
Well, I'm off to dry my hair and worry that I'll be as big of a doofus tonight, then try not to die when I drag my pneumatic ass into work tonight.
Dying is easy.
Comedy is hard.
--Mel Brooks
September 12, 2004
So, I wasn't going to say anything on here for fear of sounding boastful, but I decided to get over myself, and just let y'all know.
It probably won't mean much to you, but I've been given the sheer fluke of honor in hosting the Funny Bone this weekend for the delightful Mike Birbiglia.
You may have seen him on Comedy Central, or you may have never heard of him.
While I'd love to invite all of you wackos and have you live in my apartment for the week, I am sane. Also, my friend Hsiu is in town, and although, at times, inviting complete internet strangers into my house is preferable to understanding and entertaining the mythical, magical ball of enigma that is my friend Hsiu, I have enough on my plate.
So, I'll let you all know how it goes.
If you live in the Pittsburgh area, however, contact me, and I'll tell you dates and times, and how many of your friends you should bring (100) and if it's less than the number I specify, you should make more, and then invite them.
This weekend, I not only met another one of my comedy idols, Dom Irerra, but I got to watch Felicia do HER first week of hosting.
She did wonderfully, and more importantly, I got to stare at the hottie feature act all weekend, whose name I won't mention here. Google has a way of getting me into trouble, so I'll just say that his name was ttaM sivaD, because why would Matt Davis ever do a Google search for his name backwards?! It's foolproof!!
In internet news, in case you live in a hole, Mike Krahulik (Gabe from Penny Arcade) just had a baby. Well, I assumed it was his wife, but the point is, unless Tycho was protecting his real name from the harsh, cold internet, they named the child Gabriel, which, in case you have never been to the site, or you, you know, don't like to read things that are in parenthesis, is Mike's internet handle. (Also, you're gay.)
This is the coolest nerd inter-news since that one guy named his kid Jon Cusack 2.0 instead of Junior.
It had really cool implications, signifying both how much the site and how much the kid really mean to Mr. Krahulik, and it almost got me wishing that I had put more thought into my own internet handle, or you know, that I were Japanese. Or a fox.
All right, kids, that's all for today.
Come to my comedy show.
September 10, 2004
Do you think if I do a favor for the mob *now,* while I've got a lot going for me, I can ask one of them down the road when I hit hard times?
Or does it not work that way?
September 05, 2004
I have had really bad luck in my life with regards to finding out ends of movies/video games/books before I actually GET to the end of said mediums.
I am the type of person who, if you turn to me in a movie and say "This part is funny right here," I straight up will punch you in the throat. If, while you are choking and grasping your neck, you gasp out, "No, I mean when he falls, it's really funny," without a second of remorse, I will kick you right in the nuts/uterus.
You just gave away the joke, you ASS.
Don't you KNOW THE RULES OF COMEDY?
HUMOR ARISES IN THE VIOLATION OF EXPECTATION.
When Felicia told me that I should see Anchorman because of "two words: cat fashion show," I almost started to cry. And not because "cat fashion show" is three words, because I knew it would be the only part of the movie I liked.
(PS -- It was.)
(PPS -- If you haven't seen the movie, I just saved you two hours of your life.)
This is not to be confused with someone who quotes movies and books and tv shows.
Now, I DO know some people who think that the Matrix will be better if they utter each line AS we watch it (Jonathan Kross). These people also belong in the Asshole Movie-Ruining Category.
But people who quote movies and shows at appropriate times not only don't give anything away, but they are sending out a kind of homing beacon for anyone to "get" it and return an approving smirk.
Why, I've made entire CIRCLES of friends simply by slipping in a "They're not booing you, they're saying 'boo-urns'!" at an appropriate time.
But I am not one of those who "just HAS to tell somebody" the plot twist in a movie, because let me tell you a little bit about those people.
This particular person, the "OOH, WATCH THIS PART" person, thinks that they will somehow, through some sort of time-travel air-borne theatrical reverse osmosis will get all the credit from your liking of that particular part.
The vapid cum receptacle sitting behind me leans over to her boyfriend to inform him "Watch this next part, it's SO funny" because she knows he will like it, and as a result of liking it, instead of thinking to himself "Wow, that filmmaker/actor/director really knows what he's doing!" he will think to himself "Wow, my girlfriend is SOOO cool and smart for knowing what is funny and good, and I can barely contain my manhood in my pants." While I am thinking "And the CRAZY thing is, if *I* killed them both, *I* would go to jail!"
Even the sentence "OOh, this is a good movie. There's a twist in the end" is so idiotic and asinine, I don't understand how often it's spoken.
Why would you even SAY something like that?
That makes me think the entire time "What is going to twist? What paths am I being led down, and how could they be warped?" and since I'm not a complete idiot, I can usually figure it out.
Can anyone REALLY watch an M. Night Shyamalan movie anymore without wondering that? I can't.
I did give one movie away. It was about six months ago at a Denny's with my dear friend Matt Bower, and I happened to utter a line from the movie Soylent Green, which, okay, in my hypocritical defense, was sort of the line that gives the entire movie away, but I swear to God, if you haven't ever heard of Soylent Green and what it's made of in the year 2000-fucking-4, you deserve not only to hear the entire play-by-play second-hand, but listen to me also recount the hilarious Phil Hartman SNL sketch done in the mid-'90s about what Soylent Red, Soylent Blue, and Soylent Cow Pies are also made of.
I say this because I am playing a certain video game in which not one, not two, not three, but FOUR MAJOR PLOT POINTS were given away to me by you online douchebags.
I'm not here to name names, but 6-foot Hobbit gave away a certain plot point a few posts ago, and when I came upon what he was talking about, I threw down my controller and rage and stomped over to my computer, and let's just say I didn't type up the post that was running aflame through my head at that time.
It was in a made-up language comprised mostly of the word "fuck."
So I am here to stop this from happening across the globe.
Please, everyone, stop being fucking idiots.
Do not do this anymore.
You're ruining the movie. You're ruining the game. I don't give you extra friend points when you give away something I would otherwise have enjoyed until you fucked it up with your fucking attention whoring diarrhea of the mouth.
Don't say "This is cool" or "Who saw THAT coming" or "I'm not giving anything away, but Darth Vader is Luke's father."
Yeah. I quoted Simpson's again. Everyone remember that Simpson's scene? And how Homer was a gigantic yellow ass for doing that?
Well, if Matt Groening had drawn ME in that line, Homer would have had a gigantic yellow punch-mark in his throat.
September 03, 2004
Resident Evil: Apocalypse comes out in a scant 7 days, and I'm more excited than a five-winged bee flying around a Honey Factory.
Too much?
That said, I have a confession to make -- ever since Dawn of the Dead...I've thought my roommate was a Zombie.
Every time I come home, she's asleep, and I spend my waking hours jerking my head around, because I'm sure she's right behind me, ready to eat my brains.
When she's out of town, I worry that some other zombie has broken in and is also awaiting my tasty grey matter.
Yeah. Go ahead and laugh.
I thought it was funny, too, until Felicia was out of town for the weekend, and I found I had locked myself in the bathroom.
I was showering, sure, but I can't shower with my knife, and nakedness is prime time for zombies to eat you, because you can't wear hats in the shower.
Well, you can, but it doesn't get the job done as well.
So, yes. I just had to come out and tell you all that my insatiable hunger for zombie movies will keep me terrified for many months to come.
I swear, as I told Felicia yesterday, when I flip around, I'm as certain that I'll see the wall behind me, that I'll see her there, zombified. I SEE it in my head, and when I flip around, there's a split second where I'm sure I see it in real life.
Now, sure, I've gone over the simple logistics of it, and it just doesn't add up to enough to ease my mind.
For instance -- What if Zombie Felicia came about as a result an air-borne virus -- why wouldn't she have already gone off to eat others' brains?
Because zombies can't unlock dead-bolts. That one was easy.
Oh, you think they can?
Okay, well, then you may ask why would Zombie Felicia wait in her room for hours after I got home? Wouldn't she attack me the second I got home from work?
Good question -- but say a zombie broke IN. Then if zombification takes a couple hours after she was bitten, and the zombie left her to, you know, zombify, then...left. If they're so smart as to understand a dead-bolt, he could have locked the door behind him.
I'M WAY AHEAD OF YOU.
And now I'm really scared.
Well, let's talk about something else.
As I was talking about KOTOR to a guy at work today, who reads this blog, he asked me how to pronounce Kashyyyk, and I answered in Galactic Basic (English) when I missed a perfect opportunity to pronounce it in Wookie language! It was a perfect set-up!
Come ON. How many chances do you get to answer a question in fucking WOOKIE and have it be appropriate?
NONE, that's how many!
Fuck. It would have been awesome.
Well, speaking of work, if you're a "Net-Savvy Hipster" as I am, you'll have read that a chick was FIRED from Friendster for blogging.
Now...I have mixed feelings about this.
I thought about quitting Friendster, as some dudes have chosen to do, especially since the blogs in question containted nothing even remotely INTERESTING much less largely incriminating save for some admitted file-extensions, and since Friendster is all about connecting people and exchanging information, AND they didn't ever have a no-blogging policy.
Yes, all these things make perfect sense, and sure, I'd hate to get fired for saying something my company didn't like, but um...isn't all this uproar exactly WHY they fired her?
Think about it. Perhaps, in their stuffed-shirt, idiotic business meetings, they decided that should a time ever come when this Trout-Person got irritated with her job, her blog gave her the power to do some damage to the site, which it probably didn't, but I guess it's still the tiniest of liabilities.
So, instead of ignoring it, because it's JUST A BLOG, they went and FIRED HER like idiots, and exactly what they feared would happen...happened.
It's like...a company worrying that their building is going to get burned down decinding to fire someone who is friends with a bunch of arsonists. And when the arsonists get angry, what do you think they're going to do?
Whatever. Just my two cents.
I worry enough about what I put on here, but I try not to put anything incriminating.
So let's see, we've covered zombies, we've covered the fact that I'm a nerd, we've covered why you shouldn't blog about your work, and then I proceeded to blog about my work.
Anything else?
Tune in next time when we neglect to answer the questions "Who is Hot Work Crush? Does he have a personality? Is he simply a well-behaved zombie?"
Only time will tell.