whazzmaster.com

So I finished Life of Pi last night. I must admit that it was entertaining. I started on page 50 at about 11:30 last night, and ended up finishing it around 3am. I really just couldn’t put it down, especially once Pi was on the raft and trying not to get eaten by the Bengal Tiger. The book is basically about a guy stuck on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal Tiger. It’s crafted as a biography type of story, but I’m trying to decide if it is pure fiction or based on a true story.

I have previously made my contempt for all things Ann Landers and Dear Abby known on this site. However, today’s column illustrates so perfectly the retard-advice columnist symbiotic relationship that I could not resist to puke it up here:

DEAR ABBY: I am a 37-year-old single mom of one. For the past seven years I’ve led a secret life, because the man I’m in love with is married. (I’ll call him Mike.) Mike made a commitment to me to love me forever, and I believe him. He gives me the world.
My family loves Mike to death. They think we should be married because we make such a “perfect couple.” They do not know he’s married. I’ve kept this secret from them all these years. Mom went to her grave not knowing Mike has a wife.

It’s been a wonderful seven years. He’s the only guy I’ve ever loved. I can’t get enough of him. Should I sit tight and hope a divorce is in the future? — I’VE GOT A SECRET IN TEXAS

I have bolded the really important/retarded aspects of the letter for those who are “on the go” and can’t waste time reading all of this dreck. Below are the important parts analyzed:

• Continue reading or Read comments... (2)

I worked from home today, and while I was sitting here Erin fixed a pot of coffee. I ended up drinking probably a whole pot by myself. Keep in mind I drink coffee maybe once every two months. I am sick. Not only do I have the fucking coffee frenzy where it feels like my heart is beating 400,000 times per second, but my stomach feels like small intestinal elves are making a profit out of hacking my digestive track to pieces. My condition can be summed up in one word: beelerRUGH-pffffft. And that’s god’s truth, BROTHER.

Many have told me that they cannot download the .zip archives of the pictures I posted yesterday. I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong, but every time I try from any one of my computers it works just fine. For now, I would suggest right-clicking on the links and choosing “Save Target As…”. Maybe that would work. Different people had different problems, but I’m still looking into it.

Erin was baking Christmas cookies today and watching movies like It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, and Drop Dead Gorgeous. It was nice after working for a while and feeling like someone poured acid directly into my stomach to walk out into the living room from the office and sit down for 5 minutes. I think we should have a TV in the lab at work so people can take small breaks and relax. Because right now my group is a goddamn powderkeg ready to blow sky-high the next time someone suggests we “reprioritize our action items and call out the high-level strategies”.

• Continue reading Comments Off

I’ve seen Madd Scientist pretty drunk in my time, and I’ve seen other people pretty drunk in my time, but I have never seen anyone as drunk as the Madd Scientist was on Friday night. I’ve got pictures. I zipped them all up into one file, so you can get the archive of the night by clicking here. You’ll need Winzip or something like that to open it. To whet your appetite, however, I will give you a taste of what you’ll find in the download:

Madd Scientist on the floor/couch.

On Saturday, after sleeping off my hangover, Erin and I went to Carmel for an early Thanksgiving dinner with her co-workers. Pretty great, I’m always up for a free turkey dinner. For anyone who came here looking for those photos, you can download that archive here.

I’m well into Life of Pi. I’m still enjoying it, much to Wirkus’ chagrin. Maybe I haven’t got to the part you were talking about yet, Mike.

Metroid Prime is the best Gamecube game I’ve ever played, and anyone who thinks it doesn’t have the “feel” of a Metroid game, you are wrong.

–whazz on

• Read comments... (2)

I’ve never worked in a job where I had to stay more than 8 hours a day. I mean, that one time Paul stayed at the HoJo for that 27 hour shift, but that was more his choice than anything. I’ve always worked jobs where it’s 8 hours, punch the clock and go home. Now however I’m regularly bustin out of work at 8pm, which leaves me screwed for the night as I get home and it’s 8:30, and I just go right to sleep.

Case in point, I bought Metroid Prime yesterday, but the package hasn’t even been opened yet. I also got the new Sonic Mega Collection, which is all 7 sonic titles from the Genesis on one Gamecube disc. I played a little bit of Sonic 2, which brought back the memories, but didn’t do much else.

I busted a bunch of my Christmas shopping on Monday morning. Amazon.com is getting to be a very mature shopping center, as they now have apparel and other stuff too (besides the ususal books, dvds, and video games). I was able to get 1/3 of my holiday shoping done in about an hour.

Not much else to report at this point. The Thanksgiving countdown is rolling ever closer to the zero hour, and we now know of three dishes: turkey, mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole.

–whazz on

• Read comments... (9)

I was sick this weekend. Sore throat and headache. I’ll tell you, since moving to Cali, I haven’t gotten sick often. Used to be, every spring and every fall I got laid up for about a week with a debilitating sickness. This weekend wasn’t so bad, but it screwed up my plans for Saturday. I ended up sleeping most of the day.

I am humbled to say that Cal whooped me today to take the series. I can’t say that my attitude about it was that good at the time of the loss, but I’ve accepted it now. I busted out of the gate 6-1 in the first set, and then lost the second and third sets 6-2 and 6-1 respectively. I broke my water bottle cause I was mad. I hate the fact that no matter what I do I can never finish off. I’m always second best at my peak. It really bothers me.

Spent a lot of my sick weekend playing Tony Hawk 4. I got really, really good over the last three days. In fact, today I busted my first 100,000+ point combo. To put it in perspective, when I first plugged the game in the best combo I could pull was 5,000 points. Big ups to Anthony for showing me how to manual in and out of tricks, and big ups to the game for teaching me how to revert and then manual into and out of tricks.

Wirkus, I finished Emporium now. I’d like to talk to you about some things, so get ahold of me. I say this because as soon as I had that book done, Cal had the Booker Prize-winning book of 2002 for me to read. It’s called Life of Pi, and it’s about a boy set adrift on the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger. I believe the book was also sent to Wirkus, so I’m treating it like a race. A McTeague-ish race.

Our bed broke this weekend. At about 1:30am on Saturday Erin and I awoke to our bed crashing through the slats holding it off the ground. Couldn’t figure out why it happened, but its not like I weigh 500 pounds or anything. Erin fixed it… hopefully.

Finally, I’m getting real excited about Thanksgiving. We now have confirmed reservations for 5, including myself, with a possible total of 7. I’m totally looking forward to Lions football, turkey, and beer. I think I said this whole paragraph last weekend, but I can’t emphasize enough how much fun it’s gonna be.

Last thing, I made an Amazon.com Wish List, so if you’re dying to know what I want for Christmas… there you go, I guess.

–whazz on

• Read comments... (2)

I don’t often, or ever, talk about politics here due to my pessimistic nature. My cynical self believes that, in essence, the founding fathers’ experiment in freedom is over and the rights to it have been optioned for a major motion picture due out Sep 2005. This year’s election proves this. And you do not need to beat me down for not voting, because I’m beating myself down for not getting my voter registration switched in time to my new address.

Anyways, as I was reading Salon earlier this week I came across two articles by Garrison Keillor about the loss of Minnesota and Paul Wellstone. For the most part, as much as I hate the Republican machine, I have to see the bias here. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s not a sad story anyways.

Unfortunately, the Salon articles in question are in the Premium content section, so there’s no use linking to them there. Cal, however, posted them in full to this site in the comments page so I will link to that page instead. Very interesting stuff, but please keep in mind the source. And for all you who think that by that statement that I’m real chummy with the Republican ideology/method, eat my ass. I sure as shit hate Republicans, don’t like Democrats, and don’t trust politicians in general.

And do you want to know why I hate Republicans and Democrats as much as I do? Pundits. Those goddamned Bill O’Reillys that sit around yelling at the camera about whatever they’ve got stuck firmly up their ass that day. Video game violence? Osama bin Laden? Bill Clinton getting BJ’s? Pro athlete salaries? They don’t have any real knowledge about whatever they’re yelling about, just enough to make the person being interviewed cringe when coupled with their abrasive and abusive interviewing style. Oh, and if you disagree with them, apparently you’re a terrorist. Not all pundits are yelling at a camera though, some write books and some are on the radio.

Look, I’m not here to tell you who to vote for, what to believe, or what brand of ketchup to buy. I just wish people would stop tuning in to the goddamn brainwashing that has afflicted this nation. “Hmm, well, if Bill O’Reilly doesn’t like it, I HATE IT!” does not an informed populace make.

–whazz on

• Comments Off

The word fondue likely strikes terror in the heart of the common man. A man of my generation does not cross a fondue pot often or at all. So it was with great trepidation that I attended a fondue restaurant last night to wish Kim a fond farewell on her move to Wisconsin. I will say this: its damn tiring eating fondue. You have to be the goddamn chef, and there’s rules about how long to leave whatever in the pot, and you can’t put this on the grill because it would wreck it (the grill), and meanwhile you sitting over a boiling stove that’s built into your table. Meanwhile you’re expected to dip apples in cajun cheese, and oranges in chocolate. I mean, don’t get me wrong here, the meat was awesome. Ostrich filet mignon, wild turkey, shrimp, ahi tuna. All very good.

In other news, Tony Hawk 4 is goddamn awesome. I can’t adequately express how fun the game is, and I suck at it. Casperson told me that Dan can do tricks that last 5 minutes or something, which is quite an achievement since mine only go for 3 seconds max. I’ve done some sweet stuff though, like grinding a rail, jumping on a storefront’s awning, then onto a goddamned telephone wire where I grind across the street until I land on the top of a brick wall where continue to grind until I reach the end. Whew, that was something. I think I picked up 15,000 points for that little gem. Anyways, Tony may become a lost cause on November 18th, cause Metroid Prime is dropping and I’m buying it.

The carpet cleaning went well on Monday night. The major stains are not gone, but they are slightly lessened. We have invoked a “no shoes on the carpet” rule in the house, as apparently we happened to live on the “easiest-to-stain” capret in America, if not the world. The whole deal cost about $33.04, so it didn’t break the bank, which is good.

–whazz on

• Read comments... (2)

You know what? Some things are better left unsaid. Or, a picture is worth a thousand words. In the interest of brevity, my Saturday night can be summed up in two pictures:

Yes, that is me staring off into space drunkenly, and sadly, yes that is me doing a tripod at 3:37am. Even more amazing is the fact that, according to the timestamps on my camera, the second picture was taken 24 seconds after the first one.

Overall it has been an entertainment-filled weekend. Saw 8 Mile on Friday night. It was good, but I went in with insanely high expectations that it didn’t meet. I really thought that the Rabbit Run track from the soundtrack would be at the climax, but all they did was use part of it as a build up. I also thought it would go way more into the underground rap scene than it did. Lots more about Jimmy Smith’s personal life than expected. The climax was great, and worth the price of admission alone. I think I’ll end up buying the DVD specifically for the end. Overall a thumbs up, but not the Oscar winner I was hoping for.

• Continue reading or Read comments... (1)