A whole bunch of nothing
June/2005: Randomness - Well, first...
Moxie says hello
Nothing has been going on. Beyond PeeJ, my life is very boring. Which is not an altogether bad thing if you're me. Tried to feed Moxie some of the steak I made tonight. She was uninterested. I can't say I wasn't offended, considering the fact that my steak is ten times better than her cat food. Both my cats are odd about food. Whenever the dish is empty, they run around like idiots, hollering in their little cat-ways. It doesn't make any logical sense, hell, even for a cat. When I get hungry, the last thing I want to do is run around and jump on things. It's the furthest thing from my brain. Darting from room to room in a mad dash certainly isn't effective when it comes to getting me to refill their dish, since I think it's kind of amusing to watch Colby run around like an idiot.
Winco has some really great prices. Two bucks for a box of triple chocolate drumsticks. A buck fifty for six "Super pretzels." The only problem I can see with the super pretzel is that there is little to do except dip it in cheese. Most foods I make, I like to be able to experiment with. Perhaps it's Cheesey Steak Tots. Maybe it's Mini-hoagies with italian sausage and cheese. Can't do anything extragant with the pretzel. I was trying to think of things I could do to switch them up and came up empty. Can't put them on bread. Can't mix them with steak, or chicken... there's nothing to be done. The large bread pretzel is truly the loner of all foods.
I'm always amazed when I take up basketball again. I've been playing basketball again over the last few months after a hiatus of about four or five years. You don't lose your shot with basketball. I remember back when I was 19, went to a batting cage with my fiancee of the time. Thought... "Gee, I've played baseball, you don't lose your swing." How wrong I was. Couldn't hit a goddamned thing. Basketball, you step onto the court, shoot and it's all there. Sure, your touch may be a little off, but the mechanics don't really leave you. I can still hit the jumper. I shouldn't be proud of that pointless fact, but I am.
Never realized it, but a basketball is nine pounds when fully inflated. So you play basketball for a couple hours, you're basically throwing around nine pounds a few hundred times. That adds up after awhile. Doesn't seem like it, but you've basically tossed around 2000 pounds by the end of the session, in small increments. That's a ton.
My metabolism is a godsend. If there were any justice in this world, I'd be about 400 pounds. Or at least 300. Or 250. Not even close. Yet I should be. I've lived the most "Tech'd" life possible the last five years. Computer... computer... computer. Eight, ten hours a day. Far more than that when working tech support jobs. Yet in those five years, I've gained less than a hundred pounds... which may seem like a lot, but I started out at 125 pounds. Basically, I've done nothing resembling athletic activity for five years and I gained less than a hundred pounds. It has to be my metabolism that saved me. I never was able to put on weight, because sure I would eat a lot... but I was active. Used to drive me nuts. There's this old picture of me floating around off my old geoshitties website where I literally seem to not have a neck wide enough to support my head. Still, what drove me nuts saved my ass the last five years. Now with a regimen of basketball, I figure I'll be able to finally strike that perfect balance.
The only problem with attempting to is that while I may not have gained a fraction of the weight I should have after my years of nearly continuous computer-use, I sure as hell killed my lungs. The problem with getting back into activity isn't the soreness nor the sweating... hell, not even the tiredness since that's never been too much a concern. It's the loss of wind. You feel like you're sucking hot coals out of a lava pit. The cardio goes out the window. More than toning up, I want to get my cardio back, yet it's the hardest thing to get back. Without being able to get enough oxygen to your muscles, you burn out quickly and have to push it extremely hard to get the results you want. A real pain in the ass considering how much cardio I used to have.
Back when I played basketball each day with my multinational cadre of regulars (A Mexican guy, Chinese guy and Vietnamese guy), we came up with what I now consider to be an idea of hell, although it was fun at the time. Basically, it was a suped-up game of "Crunch." Crunch is an "all vs. all" game that sees the individual who shot last have to defend the individual who rebounded the ball. Make a shot and you get up to three free throws. Miss a shot and you're playing defense while the others rebounded. The vast majority of players, everyone I've ever observed in fact, play Crunch half-court. We didn't. We played Crunch full-court. Doesn't seem like a big deal, right? Crunch is played to 21 in almost all cases, right?
We played to a score of 100.
The games would last three to five hours straight. Up and down... up and down. Think about it, with only four (sometimes five) people, the entire game was a series of fast breaks. Miss the shot and whoever rebounded would be running. So you have to guard him. However, even if you didn't take the shot and just missed the rebound... you're still running. You want to get that rebound. I cannot describe the heartbreak of playing that game two hours straight and then losing 100-95-67-49, with your score being the 95. It was like sprinting a marathon and finishing second by only a few seconds. Now that was cardio. I don't even want that kind of cardio back, just enough so that I don't feel like I'm winded from a few trips up and down the court.
Last "major" entry I wrote about guilty pleasures of the playlist. My TV viewing though has it's own guilty pleasures. For instance, Reno911 shouldn't be nearly as funny as I find it. It should be a dopey cop comedy that is forgettable. Somehow they took that concept and infused it with writers who actually give a damn. Seasons 1 and 2 of Reno911 are funny as hell. The show has the balls to be just politically incorrect enough, without going overboard on it. Otherwise, MTV and VH1 have the worst "guilty pleasure" shows. VH1 had the ridiculous Celebrity Fit Club (Whose finale I still have not seen) and Surreal Life, both of which I've written about before. But MTV has Cribs and Pimp My Ride. I should hate those two shows. I don't. Hell, of all the TV shows on currently, the most I would like to be on is Pimp My Ride. It's a sickness.
Every once in a while I think I should go out and meet someone. But then I think "Why bother?" and that's the end of it. It used to be more of a struggle than that. I used to say "Go out and meet someone interesting, stupid." And then I'd reply "But where would I go? Hmm... and where would there be interesting people? Hmm." Now, it's not even that much of a conversation. "Why bother?" Can't think of a reason to bother. Sure, it'd be nice to have someone to watch movies with, but I don't really want to do any work to accomplish that. Since my definition of "work" socially has slid to an all-time apathetic, I think the only real chance to meet someone will come at say, the grocery stor... well, if someone looks at what I buy to eat, probably not, since it's bachelor to the power of lazy. So no real opportunity. Be nice... but the counter-argument of "Why bother?" is just too persuasive.
This Holloway/Aruba story has annoyed me away from watching the news. Yes, it's sad that the girl is missing. It's sad that she's probably dead. I get that already. It's far more sad, to me, that the story is getting as much attention as it is. If Natilee Holloway was a fat 18 year old, nobody would care. Nobody would pay any attention other than local LE and the family of the kid. Greta wouldn't be zipping over to South Dakota to "check out the places the fat kid has been" and CNN wouldn't be covering it with CNN's usual stupidity. Larry King would not have the girls mother on as a guest. Nobody would care. If it was an autistic kid? Nobody would care. Plain ol' ugly 18 year old? The national media wouldn't care. Much like Laci Peterson, this story is being driven by attractiveness. I just wish criminals would stop killing attractive people, then perhaps I could watch some actual news.
Robert Blake, OJ Simpson, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jackson and Scott Peterson. What two things do four of these five people have in common?
If you guessed "They're famous and got off", you'd be right.
Scott Peterson's greatest crime is that he wasn't an actor, sports star or musician. Stupid fucker.
The NBA finals is boring. I don't care if the last game was a close, tense game. They're boring. I was rooting for 27 teams to make the finals this year. The only two I weren't rooting for were the Detroit Pistons and the San Antonio Spurs. Jokes on me, since those are the two teams in the finals. I'd rather see the Hawks play the Bobcats. Detroit is absolutely the most unwatchable team since the Isaiah Thomas-led Pistons of the late eighties and early nineties. Their offense consists of running Rip Hamilton around screens, or watching Chauncy Billups toss up lackluster shot after lackluster shot. The Stockton/Malone Utah Jazz are looking at this team and going "Geez, fuck, this is boring. Fuck." Watching the Spurs play the Pistons reminds me of trying to watch Soccer. the only exciting player is an Italian, and he's not even that exciting.
The fact that we ended up with Pistons/Spurs when we could have had Heat/Suns is as disappointing as basketball gets. It's a heartbreaker. You almost wish for a year-long lockout in the hopes that enough players on the Pistons and Spurs will retire so that an abomination like this can never happen again.
I still haven't spent that check from K.C. Yargh.
Watched ECW One Night Stand tonight. The most striking thing from the whole Pay Per View is that Eric Bischoff is more hardcore than anyone else on that show. This is a guy that goes and works for a man who hated his very being. Then he gets in a ring with someone he fired over the phone. Then he goes on a Pay-Per-View filled with wrestlers and other personalities who he tried to put out of work by undermining the bingo-hall company. Eric Bischoff has big brass nuts.
The other aspect that struck me was that it was odd watching Awesome and Tanaka do those types of moves to each other without being arrested. If I go down the street and punch some guy in the head, once, I can be charged with assault and jailed for up to a year. But Mike Awesome can power-driver (I refuse to call the running Awesome-bomb he did off the apron a "bomb", since he basically tossed Tanaka on his neck through the table) Tanaka through a table and it's legal. Sure, Tanaka is willing... the contrast though, still intrigues me. Even if my neighbor down the street agrees to fight me, it's still illegal for me to punch him in the head. I guess perhaps the entire fight should be pre-arranged, then it'd be okay.
I'd like to see Colin Farrell and Russell Crowe get into a fight, with the stipulation that the loser can't be famous anymore. Just no more. If I didn't know better, I'd believe that Ireland and Australia are having a competition over who can bring forth the biggest moron. Right now I'd say Australia is ahead, but only by a slim margin... which is almost negated by the fact that Crowe can act and therefore has a reason why he should be famous to begin with.
I joined this site called Freecycle. Basically, it's a group of people who offer up stuff they don't want anymore for free. I got a monitor off of it, and it's pretty nice. There are two problems with Freecycle however. The first is ridiculous offerings. I've seen people offer rocks. No, worse than that, condoms. For free. From a stranger. If that doesn't set off your little alarm inside your body that should tell you not to do extremely stupid stuff, what will? If you can't afford a condom, don't have sex. Just don't do it. And if you do it, you should be forced by law to tell your partner, so they can immediately realize that they need to dump your cheap ass. Still, condoms aren't the worst thing I've seen on freecycle. One person offered up tampons and stuffed animals. In the same post. They were both sitting in her closet. I didn't know you females made a practice of keeping those two items together and I kind of wish I didn't know that now.
The other problem with Freecycle is the plethora of idiots posting "Wanted" messages for shit that they have no chance of getting. These idiots are asking for "like-new" air conditioners, digital cameras and other expensive items that people don't just give away. It's not Santacycle. It's not "birthdaycycle." These people aren't your friends. They're good-intentioned people giving away stuff they've replaced that isn't valuable. Sure, you'll find your random old air conditioner or say, used paintball gun... but digital cameras? One idiot actually posted a "wanted" message asking for a car that runs and looks good. It's sad, but each hour my email reminds me that I live in a city full of idiots. Outlook is like a little taunting jerk that says "Look at these stupid people! Look at them! They're within half an hour of you! MUAHAHAHA."
And that is a big reason why the argument of "Why bother?" is so persuasive.
See? Told you it was a whole bunch of nothing. Why'd you even bother clicking?
Moxie says hello
Nothing has been going on. Beyond PeeJ, my life is very boring. Which is not an altogether bad thing if you're me. Tried to feed Moxie some of the steak I made tonight. She was uninterested. I can't say I wasn't offended, considering the fact that my steak is ten times better than her cat food. Both my cats are odd about food. Whenever the dish is empty, they run around like idiots, hollering in their little cat-ways. It doesn't make any logical sense, hell, even for a cat. When I get hungry, the last thing I want to do is run around and jump on things. It's the furthest thing from my brain. Darting from room to room in a mad dash certainly isn't effective when it comes to getting me to refill their dish, since I think it's kind of amusing to watch Colby run around like an idiot.
Winco has some really great prices. Two bucks for a box of triple chocolate drumsticks. A buck fifty for six "Super pretzels." The only problem I can see with the super pretzel is that there is little to do except dip it in cheese. Most foods I make, I like to be able to experiment with. Perhaps it's Cheesey Steak Tots. Maybe it's Mini-hoagies with italian sausage and cheese. Can't do anything extragant with the pretzel. I was trying to think of things I could do to switch them up and came up empty. Can't put them on bread. Can't mix them with steak, or chicken... there's nothing to be done. The large bread pretzel is truly the loner of all foods.
I'm always amazed when I take up basketball again. I've been playing basketball again over the last few months after a hiatus of about four or five years. You don't lose your shot with basketball. I remember back when I was 19, went to a batting cage with my fiancee of the time. Thought... "Gee, I've played baseball, you don't lose your swing." How wrong I was. Couldn't hit a goddamned thing. Basketball, you step onto the court, shoot and it's all there. Sure, your touch may be a little off, but the mechanics don't really leave you. I can still hit the jumper. I shouldn't be proud of that pointless fact, but I am.
Never realized it, but a basketball is nine pounds when fully inflated. So you play basketball for a couple hours, you're basically throwing around nine pounds a few hundred times. That adds up after awhile. Doesn't seem like it, but you've basically tossed around 2000 pounds by the end of the session, in small increments. That's a ton.
My metabolism is a godsend. If there were any justice in this world, I'd be about 400 pounds. Or at least 300. Or 250. Not even close. Yet I should be. I've lived the most "Tech'd" life possible the last five years. Computer... computer... computer. Eight, ten hours a day. Far more than that when working tech support jobs. Yet in those five years, I've gained less than a hundred pounds... which may seem like a lot, but I started out at 125 pounds. Basically, I've done nothing resembling athletic activity for five years and I gained less than a hundred pounds. It has to be my metabolism that saved me. I never was able to put on weight, because sure I would eat a lot... but I was active. Used to drive me nuts. There's this old picture of me floating around off my old geoshitties website where I literally seem to not have a neck wide enough to support my head. Still, what drove me nuts saved my ass the last five years. Now with a regimen of basketball, I figure I'll be able to finally strike that perfect balance.
The only problem with attempting to is that while I may not have gained a fraction of the weight I should have after my years of nearly continuous computer-use, I sure as hell killed my lungs. The problem with getting back into activity isn't the soreness nor the sweating... hell, not even the tiredness since that's never been too much a concern. It's the loss of wind. You feel like you're sucking hot coals out of a lava pit. The cardio goes out the window. More than toning up, I want to get my cardio back, yet it's the hardest thing to get back. Without being able to get enough oxygen to your muscles, you burn out quickly and have to push it extremely hard to get the results you want. A real pain in the ass considering how much cardio I used to have.
Back when I played basketball each day with my multinational cadre of regulars (A Mexican guy, Chinese guy and Vietnamese guy), we came up with what I now consider to be an idea of hell, although it was fun at the time. Basically, it was a suped-up game of "Crunch." Crunch is an "all vs. all" game that sees the individual who shot last have to defend the individual who rebounded the ball. Make a shot and you get up to three free throws. Miss a shot and you're playing defense while the others rebounded. The vast majority of players, everyone I've ever observed in fact, play Crunch half-court. We didn't. We played Crunch full-court. Doesn't seem like a big deal, right? Crunch is played to 21 in almost all cases, right?
We played to a score of 100.
The games would last three to five hours straight. Up and down... up and down. Think about it, with only four (sometimes five) people, the entire game was a series of fast breaks. Miss the shot and whoever rebounded would be running. So you have to guard him. However, even if you didn't take the shot and just missed the rebound... you're still running. You want to get that rebound. I cannot describe the heartbreak of playing that game two hours straight and then losing 100-95-67-49, with your score being the 95. It was like sprinting a marathon and finishing second by only a few seconds. Now that was cardio. I don't even want that kind of cardio back, just enough so that I don't feel like I'm winded from a few trips up and down the court.
Last "major" entry I wrote about guilty pleasures of the playlist. My TV viewing though has it's own guilty pleasures. For instance, Reno911 shouldn't be nearly as funny as I find it. It should be a dopey cop comedy that is forgettable. Somehow they took that concept and infused it with writers who actually give a damn. Seasons 1 and 2 of Reno911 are funny as hell. The show has the balls to be just politically incorrect enough, without going overboard on it. Otherwise, MTV and VH1 have the worst "guilty pleasure" shows. VH1 had the ridiculous Celebrity Fit Club (Whose finale I still have not seen) and Surreal Life, both of which I've written about before. But MTV has Cribs and Pimp My Ride. I should hate those two shows. I don't. Hell, of all the TV shows on currently, the most I would like to be on is Pimp My Ride. It's a sickness.
Every once in a while I think I should go out and meet someone. But then I think "Why bother?" and that's the end of it. It used to be more of a struggle than that. I used to say "Go out and meet someone interesting, stupid." And then I'd reply "But where would I go? Hmm... and where would there be interesting people? Hmm." Now, it's not even that much of a conversation. "Why bother?" Can't think of a reason to bother. Sure, it'd be nice to have someone to watch movies with, but I don't really want to do any work to accomplish that. Since my definition of "work" socially has slid to an all-time apathetic, I think the only real chance to meet someone will come at say, the grocery stor... well, if someone looks at what I buy to eat, probably not, since it's bachelor to the power of lazy. So no real opportunity. Be nice... but the counter-argument of "Why bother?" is just too persuasive.
This Holloway/Aruba story has annoyed me away from watching the news. Yes, it's sad that the girl is missing. It's sad that she's probably dead. I get that already. It's far more sad, to me, that the story is getting as much attention as it is. If Natilee Holloway was a fat 18 year old, nobody would care. Nobody would pay any attention other than local LE and the family of the kid. Greta wouldn't be zipping over to South Dakota to "check out the places the fat kid has been" and CNN wouldn't be covering it with CNN's usual stupidity. Larry King would not have the girls mother on as a guest. Nobody would care. If it was an autistic kid? Nobody would care. Plain ol' ugly 18 year old? The national media wouldn't care. Much like Laci Peterson, this story is being driven by attractiveness. I just wish criminals would stop killing attractive people, then perhaps I could watch some actual news.
Robert Blake, OJ Simpson, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jackson and Scott Peterson. What two things do four of these five people have in common?
If you guessed "They're famous and got off", you'd be right.
Scott Peterson's greatest crime is that he wasn't an actor, sports star or musician. Stupid fucker.
The NBA finals is boring. I don't care if the last game was a close, tense game. They're boring. I was rooting for 27 teams to make the finals this year. The only two I weren't rooting for were the Detroit Pistons and the San Antonio Spurs. Jokes on me, since those are the two teams in the finals. I'd rather see the Hawks play the Bobcats. Detroit is absolutely the most unwatchable team since the Isaiah Thomas-led Pistons of the late eighties and early nineties. Their offense consists of running Rip Hamilton around screens, or watching Chauncy Billups toss up lackluster shot after lackluster shot. The Stockton/Malone Utah Jazz are looking at this team and going "Geez, fuck, this is boring. Fuck." Watching the Spurs play the Pistons reminds me of trying to watch Soccer. the only exciting player is an Italian, and he's not even that exciting.
The fact that we ended up with Pistons/Spurs when we could have had Heat/Suns is as disappointing as basketball gets. It's a heartbreaker. You almost wish for a year-long lockout in the hopes that enough players on the Pistons and Spurs will retire so that an abomination like this can never happen again.
I still haven't spent that check from K.C. Yargh.
Watched ECW One Night Stand tonight. The most striking thing from the whole Pay Per View is that Eric Bischoff is more hardcore than anyone else on that show. This is a guy that goes and works for a man who hated his very being. Then he gets in a ring with someone he fired over the phone. Then he goes on a Pay-Per-View filled with wrestlers and other personalities who he tried to put out of work by undermining the bingo-hall company. Eric Bischoff has big brass nuts.
The other aspect that struck me was that it was odd watching Awesome and Tanaka do those types of moves to each other without being arrested. If I go down the street and punch some guy in the head, once, I can be charged with assault and jailed for up to a year. But Mike Awesome can power-driver (I refuse to call the running Awesome-bomb he did off the apron a "bomb", since he basically tossed Tanaka on his neck through the table) Tanaka through a table and it's legal. Sure, Tanaka is willing... the contrast though, still intrigues me. Even if my neighbor down the street agrees to fight me, it's still illegal for me to punch him in the head. I guess perhaps the entire fight should be pre-arranged, then it'd be okay.
I'd like to see Colin Farrell and Russell Crowe get into a fight, with the stipulation that the loser can't be famous anymore. Just no more. If I didn't know better, I'd believe that Ireland and Australia are having a competition over who can bring forth the biggest moron. Right now I'd say Australia is ahead, but only by a slim margin... which is almost negated by the fact that Crowe can act and therefore has a reason why he should be famous to begin with.
I joined this site called Freecycle. Basically, it's a group of people who offer up stuff they don't want anymore for free. I got a monitor off of it, and it's pretty nice. There are two problems with Freecycle however. The first is ridiculous offerings. I've seen people offer rocks. No, worse than that, condoms. For free. From a stranger. If that doesn't set off your little alarm inside your body that should tell you not to do extremely stupid stuff, what will? If you can't afford a condom, don't have sex. Just don't do it. And if you do it, you should be forced by law to tell your partner, so they can immediately realize that they need to dump your cheap ass. Still, condoms aren't the worst thing I've seen on freecycle. One person offered up tampons and stuffed animals. In the same post. They were both sitting in her closet. I didn't know you females made a practice of keeping those two items together and I kind of wish I didn't know that now.
The other problem with Freecycle is the plethora of idiots posting "Wanted" messages for shit that they have no chance of getting. These idiots are asking for "like-new" air conditioners, digital cameras and other expensive items that people don't just give away. It's not Santacycle. It's not "birthdaycycle." These people aren't your friends. They're good-intentioned people giving away stuff they've replaced that isn't valuable. Sure, you'll find your random old air conditioner or say, used paintball gun... but digital cameras? One idiot actually posted a "wanted" message asking for a car that runs and looks good. It's sad, but each hour my email reminds me that I live in a city full of idiots. Outlook is like a little taunting jerk that says "Look at these stupid people! Look at them! They're within half an hour of you! MUAHAHAHA."
And that is a big reason why the argument of "Why bother?" is so persuasive.
See? Told you it was a whole bunch of nothing. Why'd you even bother clicking?
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