Maybe It's Swine Flu?

Lately all of my XP experiences have been filled with viruses and horrible things that pop up every now and then. I don't know where they're coming from, but I'm beginning to have an idea, and I don't like it... but if it means the goodness of my computer, I think I need to think of the bigger picture here, rather than games that I have a slight inkling of playing. So, no more games, no more questionable content... and we'll see if that helps.

Of course, if it doesn't help, I'm totally looking for Bioshock 2. KIDDING.

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TV's on in background, and just played one of those Kay Jewlery commercials where there's a woman who only feels validated when she has diamonds and there's a guy who only feels like he has a penis if he gets his girl diamonds. Ended with: "I've never felt more beautiful." Bonus points for including kids in it; total exploitation.

Oh! That reminds me of my dad's commercial in St. Louis. They included a kid in that too, presumably as dad's kid. Whenever he has a kid in a commercial it is always just a little weird to me. It's happened before, but honestly, you really can't use me to exploit things in that direction anymore; I doubt they want a 6 foot slightly overweight man to make people want to shelter and protect something. Well, maybe protect me from diabeties.

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Speaking of Swine Flu, I think it's all sensationalist media. More people have died from the common cold this year than have died or even been infected by Swine Flu. So stop talking about it please.

Although, it is funny to say every time Monica coughs that she has Swine Flu.

Okay, time for a walk. Been way too lazypants lately.

Friday In Memphis/Tunica

Woke up in Tunica, apparently sleeping through tornadoes reeling across the area. (Sidenote: did you know tornadoes is spelled with an es, like tomatoes? I just found that out. Thanks, spellcheck!) Our whole reason to go to Tunica was to stay at Harrah's, so we could go to the Paula Deen buffet, and by gum we were going to get there! Plus maybe play some games. We like casinos.

The buffet was everything it advertised and more. Amazing stuff. Favorites:

• Hoecakes (fried cornmeal pancakes)
• Fried green tomato eggs benedict
• Grits; and Monica has a great story involving a buffet attendant telling her off. It was pretty cool, but I honestly thought they would be Charming Southern, not Condescending Southern.

Also there were the common stuff like pancakes and eggs; all were excellent, because, ya know, the butter.

Our goal for the rest of the day was to get to the National Civil Right's Museum, where the Lorraine Motel used to be, and is, reconstructed. This whole event is something that I'm really unable to put into words. We followed a pretty fantastic tour guide, had our minds blown in so many ways, and I certainly can't speak for Monica, but I was choking back tears the entire time. From a replica of the bus that was firebombed to the actual piece of cement that has evidence from King's death, it was truly awe inspiring.

There were some awkward moments: I wished there was more examples and exhibits of the Movements that this one inspired, but that's really a minor thing, to tell you the truth.

Afterwards, there really wasn't much anything else on our plate, and we tried to get out to the Gibson factory, which we missed out on all the tours until 4, way later than we'd want to stay (we had busy stuff planned for the rest of the weekend) so instead we just hung around Beale Street, wishing we could stay longer, and eating fried pickles and fried green tomatoes. That was a good thing, actually.

Fried pickles and tomatoes were our staple on the ride home, which was a great ride, mostly because of the great company, and even returning the car to the awkward Enterprise place before taking a shuttle back to the airport before taking a shuttle back to our car in the long term lot was pretty uneventful. But suprisingly fun to write.

Haven't posted in a super duper long time, but several updates have happened. Went through my Brigadoon callback, went well. Grandma left. Thank god. Applied for jobs. Now up late, unable to sleep, and watching a horrible comic as a guest on a horror host show on KOFY.

I really want sleep to come back so I don't have to watch this shit anymore.

Beach Day

So grandma's in town, as readers will know. So we're doing things we normally don't do, which includes mom taking a day off work, and us all going to Pacifica for a day at the beach with the girls!

Joy was had, sea glass was found, and I actually didn't freeze when jumping in the water. It was an amazing day, which left me pooped (but like always I'm still awake for some reason) from exercise and watching the weird people that end up on the beach on a hot Monday. And boy was it fucking hot today.

The cool thing about being unemployed, aside from the not having to work and the government sends you more and more money, especially because the spiralling downward economy requires them to extend it longer, is that you get to spend an entire day on the beach if you want to, and you can see the different people that show up throughout the day. Afternoon was filled with moms and kids, more and more young couples came in the afternoon, and then after 3ish, TONS of kids appeared. Good idea. I'd be at the beach too.

Joan, Lauren, and Violet are great. Violet (who is 2) ran around naked almost the entire day. The last time I tried that, I was arrested, so there was a little double standard here, but it was a pretty good time anyway.

Thursday Memphis Trip

This day was an EPIC day.

The morning started awkwardly; my dad being as strange as ever, not driving us to the airport to pick up the rental car and strangely enough, leave his car at the long term parking at the airport. So let's just get a tally of where all our cars are:

1. Rental is at the airport.
2. Dad's car is in long term parking at aiport.
3. Monica's is in long term parking at Oakland aiport.

Just a lot of complications, especially when it comes to which trams' receipt and which parking lot ticket we have floating around in our wallets. In any case, the shuttle took us to the terminal, and the rental car shuttle took us down the road a bit to our new rental car. After a lot of fucking around with who can drive, etc. (turns out I could have driven the car legally if I had just said we were married... good old wholesome Midwest) and the odd taxes and securities that come from the airport, we were on the road in a bright orange Kia of some sort.

Our ride to Memphis was interesting and fun, with The Mixed Up Files playing throughout, and the landscape changing with each mile; we were heading south, and while it was flat for some time, we enjoyed the pretty easy drive down. We were getting pretty psyched to get to this pretty fantastic mecca of awesome music.

Aaand our first stop was Sun Studio! It's where Elvis, Cash, etc. recorded... and more recently, U2, and we stood in the exact same place, holding the exact same mic, making the oddest poses, that they did when they were recording! That was the highlight of the scene, but the whole Studio is a great museum with some pretty cool artifacts from that time period, including a recording of Elvis' first... uh... recording. (It sucked, by the way.)

THEN THEN, we went to the Stax Museum, which was even better than Sun Studio (sorry dude, you were a great guide, they just have a better museum); the whole tour through this musuem went through what the studio looked during that time period, and the history of soul in the area, to what celebrities lived like... ONE block away. It was pretty cool also, everyone interviewed about Stax, when it was a recording studio, said that there really was no racism in the building. Neat.

Next, Beale street, and walking around through that cool area, eventually ending up at Dyers, home of the 100 year old grease that fries those delicious burgers. Burger Journey continues. And throughout Beale street, music was wafting out of restaurants and through plazas... all amazing music. This really is still a Mecca for musicians.

One short ride to Tunica, ending at Harrah's, and the thoughts of Paula Deen's buffet the next morning danced in our heads as we most decidedly did NOT gamble, but instead fel fast asleep so quickly.

Recent Events

My callback today went pretty well. Well, pretty well in the sense that I got a great workout, sang probably the best out of everyone there, and read among the top. The funny thing is... I don't really think I want this gig, and that makes me laugh; all the callbacks/auditions I do REALLY well on are ones I really don't think would be a great career booster. Why oh why can't I redirect that luck to something I'd really love to do.

Anyway. A mosquito hawk is fucking with me this evening. It annoys me, but I can't smash it; it kills my nemeses.... so I must learn to live with it running into my eye. Yes, folks, it just ran into my eye as I was typing this. I might have swatted it to oblivion. Oh well. They're big fuckers, but it totally was creeping me out.

Ever messed with Braid? It's awesome, and I think I OD'ed on it during the past couple of days. And I'm convinced that one of the stars is impossible to get because my laptop has too little of a processor to get the framerate fast enough and reaction time down... but it may just be my reflexes that need to tune up.

Aaand I have 2 days off rehearsal! Yep. I should be learning my lines during those days, and you know what, it's probably going to happen. This is for Wildcat by the way. It's fun.

STL Wednesday

Hooray! Some backstory on Breaking Bad!

Anyway, the Wednesday was filled with some fun in St. Louis. Mostly involving the Zoo and some wonderful times there; I love that goddamn Zoo. The main event were the hippos; they are truly the shining star of that place. The big cats are still my favorite when it comes down to it, for realz.

A Zoo Anecdote: While most Zoos don't have as active hippos as the St. Louis Zoo, they still have hippos, and in my opinion, most people see hippos either pretty stationary or pretty far away, so they may not get the full effect that comes with epic hippo watching in STL. During our visit to the hippo place, some white trashey people were watching the hippo, pretty close to us, yet standing pretty still, and they were saying things like, "That ain't real." "Naw, that's a fake hippo." This went on for about five minutes, while a bunch of actual smart people (us, and a few other St. Louisans) stifled our laughter, waiting for the moment they left. It was worth it. Plus, the hippo yawned and it drooled all over the place. Epic win.

For lunch, we went to Steak n' Shake, another Midwestern stapel that has little to no vegetarian options on the menu; sometimes it's really hard to be a vegetarian in that place, as traveling further south later in our journeys told us. Anywho, I enjoyed it, eating another burger on the Burger Journey, and we went home, only to rest, relax, and find our strength to visit Grandma Scheppner.

She's not a bad person, not anymore. She's mellowed out a lot, and Monica certainly wins Best Girlfriend for actually making me go; I totally would have skipped it had it been left to my discresion. But no, it was an okay visit, mostly because of the Monica Buffer that comes from family members actually being nicer to people OUTSIDE your family than people in it; I'll never understand that odd happenstance. Afterwards, we went on a quest to find Burger Bar.

One jaunt through East St Louis Later, realizing that YES we should have turned off the highway when it said Downtown, and not continued on it when it said Illinois, we found our way to Laclede's Landing, and Lumiere Place, a pretty fantastic casino on the waterfront there, and within, our dinner, continuing and fulfilling the Burger Journey. It's worth it though, and gotta give some props to my hometown, there's only two Burger Bars, one in Vegas, and one in St. Louis. Dunno how that happened, but good for you STL! Also, tons of casnios. Never realized how many of them popped up over the years.

The night is over, and we returned to our air matress full of turkey burgers, weird toppings, and delicious sweet potato fries. Our journey would continue early the next day, picking up our rental car and heading down to Memphis.

Back

Tried to update blogger stuff during my St. Louis/Memphis trip, but that never happened. As can be seen.

The flight out was pretty okay, and the first night we came home, and after a slightly awkward hello with my dad (always slightly awkward..I don't think it'll ever be as cool as it was when I was a little kid) and saw Laurie later briefly... and that was the trip, when it came to the house. While dad was incredibly awesome and let me use the car for the entire trip, he and Laurie were largely nonexistent as usual. That didn't stop us from having a fun time by first going to Blueberry Hill in the Loop, sadly after much of the Loop was closed, so we couldn't head out to the rest of the strip and see the shops, particularly the comic shop and the vintage clothing place.

Blueberry Hill was the first of my Many Burgered Trip. It was a small, yet fantastic burger. Monica had something delicious, but for the most part, to be honest I was too focused on my burger.

I guess Wednesday will be posted later, as I'm having a love affair with these Cheeze-its.

Dyers fried burgers!

Beale street

Suprisingly tired post.

Day before the day to the trip to St. Louis with love. I'm looking forward to it, and am having an evening to myself; Monica and I are going to be spending entire days together, and I think having a little bit of time to myself is a good thing, especially because I'm tired enough to fall asleep now... which is something that might happen right now.

So... yes.

Been learning my lines for Wildcat, working on them is fun, but I also found the card to the show; obviously I'm not on it... no photoshoot thing... but its' just... you know... I'm the motherfucking villain. DAMMIT.

Anyway. Going to sleep.

Some thoughts.

Monica's checking out some youth bands that have submitted to be in the contest for the exhibit. It's pretty awesome, and these little fuckers are amazingly talented. There's always time to start for me! I could learn how to play something different!

10 jobs applied for today, by the way, in addition to recontacting my temp agencies telling them that I'm still alive and would in fact like some job at some point in time, even if it's something shitty that I complained about every day in my life back when I had an office job. When it really comes down to it however, it's what we do in this stupid country, soulless jobs until we die. I guess some people do it for their children; gives them something to live for. If I don't ever have children, what will I be doing it for?

Myself, obviously. I want tons of exploration throughout the world!

Fuck kids.

But these youth groups are awesome!

Nobilis

Thinking about developing a Nobilis campaign. I don't know if it'll work out, but I'm going to see if I can come up with anything. Coming up with a campaign of course, is easier than finding players.

You all know Nobilis, right? I used to have the book, but can't find it; I think it's in St. Louis... in any case I'm downloading the book, so that if I do end up with some players, I can give them the copy that fell off the back of a truck.

Anywho, Nobilis is where you (the player) plays a specific aspect of reality. Like the Power of Shadows or the Power of Doubt. It's a surprisingly wonderful idea, game, and system. And I think I'd start them out as normal humans, and seeing how they evolve into their Powers. Different playstyles might be awesome. I'll start outlining something down tonight maybe.

Yay TV

BREAKING BAD IS BACK ON!

YES!

Totally didn't know this show was back after a year hiatus. And boy oh boy is this show going some weird and ugly places. It's a good thing I'm not involved in meth. Good old drug dealing isn't going to someplace nice. Never for me, especially after this show! Good old tv telling me what to do as it always does.

Exciting news update: I think I'm going to get my laundry done today. Way overdue... something like a month and a half. Of course, it may not happen today; I may just clean myself instead, in preparation for the Grand Tuttimelon Experience this evening. At least, I hope it's going to happen tonight. Fo sho.

Ever heard of burpees? Found it out today, and it rang a bell that I've read before. Anyway, if Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs) likes it, maybe I should give it a try.



Okay, after trying, I'm about to kill myself. With AWESOMENESS. It may be in addition to what I'm doing (or not doing... hehe procrastination!) every day! Of course, I still kinda want to kill myself afterwords.... but good things happen to those who kick their asses with exercise.