the screwtape letters

i remember talking to sai before we all moved out of ec, and her telling me she had a bunch of books she was trying to give away. never being one to turn down a book, much less a free one, i skipped on across the courtyard and picked up 1) kokology (is that right?) by some japanese fellas, 2) ah, sweet mystery of life by roald dahl, and 3) the screwtape letters by c. s. lewis. i am very glad i did this.

kokology was this book of questions. one's answers to the questions determined certain aspects of one's personality, based on associations in kokology (the study of some japanese koko-something). example: you're walking down the beach and you see a surfboard washed up on the sand. what does it look like/describe it. you want to go surfing. how are the conditions? you wipe out. what do you think as you swim up to the surface?
this question assumes that in everyone's subconscious, a surfboard is really a phallus. thusly, my description of the surfboard as beat up and discarded means i see my penis as such. my saying i don't know how to judge surfing conditions because i've never surfed before means i'm inexperienced with the whole sex thing because i've never sexed before. and my thinking, i ought to learn how to surf before i try surfing means ... i forget, but it was also pretty harsh on the whole sex/penis front. to make a long story short, the book was crap. although initially interesting.

that was a tangent, i hadn't meant to write so much. i'll leave the roald dahl book for when i read more of it, i'd only read 2 or 3 of the short stories.

the screwtape letters is really amazing. it's incredibly thought provoking. it makes me consider going to church (never for longer than a minute, but the thought has _never_ entered my mind before). it is so right about so many things. when i was reading it last night i saw at least 3 or 4 passages i wanted to post up here, but i was too lazy. the lazy has not changed, but i'll put it on my todo list. which is growing day by day. amanda, you would love this book. really, look it up next time you're at a borders.

i sent sai an email thanking her for the book. the bitch never responded. i'm not thanking her again here.

macross plus

i would link the title except the first link to come up on google was an aol website and it was last updated in 2000. boo aol.

wow. really cool. it made no sense. it is anime, after all. however, it didn't make no sense in the typical anime way, which is a lot of high-minded philosophical sentiments about war and peace and the meaning of all such things, like gundam wing. i don't know what kind of pcp those writers were smoking... maybe in japanese it makes perfect sense. regardless, macross plus mostly didn't have a real plot. test pilots for a government military project involving new fighters, and an AI program run amuck. nevertheless, the flying and the fighting were spectacular. all the animation was smooooth. and the mechs looked neat, too. consequently (now i'm just trying too hard), any anime fan should watch this. any mecha anime fan in particular should watch it as soon as possible.

make sure to get the ova, which is 4 ~40 minute episodes, rather than the movie, which is just a sliced and diced compilation of the 4 episodes cut to fit into a movie. and if it starts off slow, keep going. i watched the first episode and did not continue maybe 3 times over a span of 4 years before i finally just watched it all now, and it comes together quite nicely if one gives it a chance.

flcl remains best anime series ever.

i remember!

i watching supersize me in the evening, i watched dummy in the afternoon. at the northampton academy of music. interestingly, almost every single girl in theater was fat. not just fat, but seriously fat. i don't know how fat obese is, but around there. more on that, if i ever get around to it.

the IKEA experience

i have trouble finding words to describe it. the place absolutely floored me. it's so amazing. i remember catherine telling me about the apple retail stores. one can imagine the beauty of the IPOD and just extend it to an entire store. IKEA is not beautiful like the pristine, smooth, white aura that apple exudes, but it's incredible in all it's swedish glory (that is a good way to describe the IKEA glory, right? as swedish?)

i don't think i could say it about any other store, but going there for the first time is truly an experience. it's like how i want to go to the brooklyn bridge. or going to europe. or seeing the giant bronze buddha on lantao island in hong kong. if i had known what it was like, i would have put visit IKEA store on my list of things to do.

the store spoke to me in soothing, reasonable tones. not pushy, not demanding. you could live a neatly packaged IKEA existence. you could fill your home and your life with these cool little pieces of furniture. sit down. isn't that seat comfortable? look at that tv stand. wouldn't that go perfectly with the tv you're thinking of buying? wow, [trinket] (using brackets because i'm not sure if carrots will be read as html tags) is only $20! you spend that much on dinner, sometimes, maybe more. why not get it?

being inside bombarded me with feelings, but in a nonthreatening way. i wanted to own an apartment or a house. heck, anything with square footage that was mine to furnish would have suited me. i wanted to have kids so i could furnish their rooms in these incredibly cool ways. chalkboard clock? magnetized picture-holding whiteboard? leafy frond resembling soft-lit floor lamp? look at all the cool ways you could bunk your child's bed? everything was so goddamn cheap. and so goddamn neat. the store was goddamn everything.

and the place was designed so well. i had _fun_ walking through every square inch. those swedes... they know how to play with the mind, like jello. they must be masters of the human psyche, or at least the american consumer's. the place could not have been designed better. the layout, the showrooms, the checkout area, the playrooms for children strategically scattered throughout the store, the self service area and checkout, the garage, and so on. (what does ad infinitum mean? i wanted to use it there, but i don't know what it actually translates to)

the best part of the visit was pushing along the flatcart and hopping on for a ride. then almost falling off as i almost hit a wall, and looking over to see a 20-something year old girl riding her shopping cart. some things never change.

i can understand why the author of fight club (chuckk palynick or something?) went on an anti-IKEA life rant. i feel like ken could articulate what i'm feeling much better. he also loves the movie fight club, coincidentally. does he read this?

no more. this post is long enough.

terrible t - tirts, and IKEA

i changed the sh in shirt to t, for the alliteration. i went outlet mall shopping with jillian today. one of the stores i ran into was S & G (Sam and Gerdy, or something like that) athletic sportswear. a humongous store, and a closing out sale of _everything_ in the store 5.98 or less. they weren't lying. everything, even shoes, jackets, hooded sweatshirts, jackets, cargo pants, all less than six dollars. it was amazing. being a sports store, and being in america, almost everything had only XL and L left in size. why don't they make less of them? the Ms and Ss are always gone, you'd figure they could correct for this discrepancy between supply and demand... can someone in econ explain it to me? anyways, i got a pair of shoes (5.5 kids, the smallest adult size they had was 10) for 5.98 and two t-shirts.

let me tell you about these t-shirts. they were the typical a&f fare. about 4 out of 5 had a not clever message of dirty innuendo, accompanied by a similarly crude illustration. they were terrible. you know, mary lou's crab shack, no one leaves without crabs... big al's barbeque, best sausage in town, so on and so forth. they must have had over 50 designs like that, but there were some GEMs if one looked hard enough. they were all designed the same, but out of the ones that were not just plain obnoxious, some managed to be so unfunny that they were funny in an ironic fashion. plus a lot that i would pick up as crappy gifts for people since they were only six dollars. but i didn't want to be bothered with guessing people's sizes (ranging from M-XL, what is wrong with this incredibly obese country?), so i only bought two for myself:

one with MASTER in big letters across the top, then under it, bait and tackle shop, bangor, ME. it took me a few seconds to even get the terrible joke.

one with (i forgot what the other one was, so i looked in the bag and the shoebox says "Sam & Barry." close enough) "pinch my bass" lobster and seafood co. with a drawing of a lobster. again, terrible, but i judge it to be ironically funny.

one that i really, really wanted, as this was the true king of so awful it's funny jokes, was a t-shirt with 3 toads on the front. they all look drunk, one has one sock on, one with underwear on his head, and one holding a beer mug. underneath is the text "Toadily Wasted." i almost died when i saw it. sadly, it was all out. the illustration is what did it, it was so loud - just screaming look at me - and it failed so stupendously at being anything close to witty. alas...

ones that i wanted to pick up for friends but were all out:

a t-shirt that said, "I speak Haiwaiian," and underneath, "Hai-iwanabangya." jess, if you wore that, you could just point at the shirt, and thus avoid the risk/certainty of cockblocking your poor self.

the bangor ME one for rachel.

a t-shirt that said, "THE MAN" with an up arrow and "THE LEGEND" with a down arrow. and another one that said, "I am the man from Nantucket." both would have suited steiner.

i'll actually post about IKEA in a separate entry, as it deserves its own. meaning you'll be reading this after the IKEA post. sucka.

more movies to catch up on

the day after dodgeball, i rented dummy. i'm pretty sure i watched something else right after that, but i can't remember what. i'll have to ask pardo.

i saw the terminal with josh and hayle in arlington. i watched half of about schmidt at his apartment. i need to finish that.

other things i mean to write about: the cloisters in NY, staying with josh in arlington, how incredible staying with jillian and leon is, and so on.

my links

have paid off. happy birthday, gainey. hope 21 treats you great. really.

numbers

i could blog about things that people might actually want to hear, but this has been bothering me more and more. i've let it slide til now, but as the latest example confronted me while i was at my computer with wireless internet access, i feel i should make my complaints known.

what's with this "replace a letter of a word with a number or something else that looks nothing like the letter" trend that's emerging? those subway adds for 5ive hours til midnight. a 5 looks nothing like an f, or an F. who do they think they are kidding? and se7en. that 7 does not resemble a v. good movie, but that still bugs me. and the one that made me blog is an ad for driv3r. i guess that's supposed to mean driver 3, the third one in the series. it looks awful though. driv3r is not aesthetically pleasing to me in any way. i hope to god the next one in the series is not driv4r. and then driv5r. when will they stop? at driv354r? also, i didn't think of it until i had already started this post, but that stephen spielberg series, t(person thrusting his chest forward)ken did not look like taken. not even close. i remember always calling it tiken or token because that little bastard annoyed me so much.

am i having some problems with tense in this post? i think i might be. there was a book at costco written by some uptight british chick about bad grammar in our world today. it uses that eats shoots and leaves joke that austin is so fond of, albeit in a tamer incarnation. one of the snippet reviews said the book made grammar, among other things, "sexy." i highly doubt that. but i was tempted to buy the book. i do like grammar, although i don't try very hard to make my writings error free. i don't even capitalize. oh well.

movies part 21: dark blue

i can't write any more. i'll edit this one later. still on the list: city of god, anything else, 50 first dates, supersize me, dodgeball. wow.

movies part 20: chronicles of riddick

i saw this at enfield for 4 dollars. this might be a sequel to pitch black, but it's an entirely different genre. action action action. sure it has aliens and strange weapons and hellish prison planets, but it can't be anything but action.

jack turned out HOT. who is she? hmm, trusty old IMDB says alexa davalos. that's greek, right? greek people have weird names. anyways, she's HOT. and kinda nuts. sexy.

the movie was out of control, with each sequence getting more ridiculous than the next, but it was a good ridiculous. oh shit, can i say "riddick-ulous?" i guess i just did.

apparently there's an animated CGI short film (30 min) called chronicles of riddick: the dark fury. it takes place right after pitch black. i'm a little interested.

movies part 19: pitch black

we watched this the night before chronicles of riddick came out, because steiner had never seen it.

i forgot how good this movie was! maybe it was better this time than the first. i remember first hearing about it from jess or mike or austin, and the premise sounded ridiculous. whoever it was explained it as, yeah, a bunch of people are stranded on a planet with 3 suns, but every 27 years it goes completely dark. and there are these aliens (indigenous life on the planet, i guess), that can only come out at night. and vin diesel is in it, with these eye implants that let him see in the dark. it's cool, you should see it.

oddly enough, that description is accurate. and i agree, you should see it. it is definitely a cult sci fi flick. just skimming the message boards on imdb makes it impossible to classify any other way. HUGE, pages long threads over whether or not it is science fiction (some idiots don't understand what science fiction is, apparently. this movie has space travel and colonies in other galaxies). HUGE, pages long threads over whether or not is a "good movie."

i really like it. the characters (the ones that survive for a decent length of time) are incredibly interesting. almost everyone has a secret, and the development of the characters as the movie progresses is really well done. you know, what happens when a few people are stranded together and facing death.

riddick is too cool. usually those characters annoy me (as in, for example, XXX), but he pulls it off in this one. and i thought johns was sweet. "put a cork in that girl!" the aliens look so awesome. and of course, there's the requisite worthless stupid asshole that panics and tries to kill everybody with his stupidity. the pilot is kind of cute, too.

cult sci-fi. definitely worth watching. one thing that bothered me was the question of how the aliens survive. there is NOTHING else on the planet. all desert. a few trees, and some massive skeletons (really cool looking, by the way). all they have to eat is each other and whoever crash lands on the planet... it would be cool if the planet went through a 27-year cycle of life growing and evolving on the planet until it gets wiped out by the aliens, only to start all over again after the suns come back out. oh well.

movies part 18: tears of the sun

standard military flick. some navy seals go to rescue a doctor from a mission (church) in some African country embroiled in civil war. the doctor will not leave unless the marines bring the villagers along, so seals disobey orders blah blah they all have hearts blah blah slow motion scenes of the seals dying for the villagers against overwhelming odds etc.

monica bellucci is hot. even in this movie, when she's dirty and her hair is all greasy. she's also a whining, ungrateful bitch. she makes demands nonstop throughout the movie, clearly never realizing that she owes her life to the seals. i would hate her, except for her magnificent acting talents. the best part is that there's a message board thread on imdb discussing them. it never fails, go to the message board for a movie with a hot actress and there will always be a thread: i think is hot, or i think is overrated and not that hot. always.

it was pretty sweet seeing a few hundred men firebombed by the airforce. but that part still confuses me. why did they wait until the seals were dying off one by one to fly off the aircraft carrier? why didn't they leave earlier? i don't get it.

ok movie. good if you're into military movies. bad if you don't like action. i wouldn't watch it more than once, i think.

falling behind

i'm way behind on movies here. i think i've done some other stuff that i could blog about, but i can't really remember. this could be a precursor to a long hiatus, but i'm trying not to let that happen.

i've been playing a ton of civilization 2. it's such a time sink. really, the old games are the best. i'm playing at deity, the hardest difficulty level, against 7 other civilizations (can't make the game any harder), but i'm slaughtering them. so the challenge has kind of gone out of it. recently they've stopped warring with each other and allying against me, and trading technology behind my back and such, so maybe it'll get interesting again.

i asked my boss from pratt and whitney, and my boss from UDAR (in the ICC) for recommendations to send to those law schools i'm waitlisted at. both responded within a day or two... i think that was sunday. i still haven't mailed them out, because one asked me to draft the letter, and i don't know how to do that. and not having that one ready has kept me from sending the other boss the simple forms and stuff so she can write hers. i didn't think a few days would matter, but of course yesterday

i received an email from umich law saying their second deposit deadline was june 15, so they're going to make a handful of offers in the next week or so ("handful??" how much is a handful? how many offers can i hold in my hand?), and let the majority of the waitlist go. so i guess these recs will be a little late to do anything. i still have to do them though. maybe they'll be helpful next year.

corey

i'm blogging right now from corey's computer in his apartment on 120th. the place is pretty nice. corey's room seems appropriate. i was surprised by all the biking gear. i had no idea he was into biking.

i have the sweetest spot. for 20 minutes longer. it is directly in front of the building. i initially parked down the street a little, but i moved my car when i came out to get the beer and saw the spot open.

corey is in 7e. phil coakley sublet a room in 7d for the summer. how crazy is that? he was sitting on the stoop using his cell phone when i moved my car.

corey is good at foosball. i, on the other hand, am not. i think my left hand is much better. i can't get any force with my right. the motion seems inimical... and when i try to flick it i usually kick it backwards as i draw back.

we also played caps, which i am not good at either. i sank 4 shots to his 7 or 8. it's mostly a matter of technique. i could feel whenever a shot was money.

corey brews his own beer. it's pretty good. it does not taste bad at all.

somehow, i am hung over. i did not plan on this. i'm drinking water now, but i definitely should've drank some before sleeping. i gotta move my car before i get a ticket.

preparation

my friend ariel is taking the LSAT today, monday the 14th of june. he has prepared up the wazoo. i don't understand some of the things he is doing. i guess, once you get started, you might as well go all out. let me explain:

he's taken 20 practice LSATs. usually only 3 or 4 sections per day; he only took a full exam in one day twice.

he has regularized his sleep schedule so his body clock wakes him up at 10:30 am. this is for an exam that tells him to show up at 12:30.

he's planned out his breakfast. he has the clothing he will wear tomorrow ready. he's driven the route back and forth once to practice. he has all everything one is supposed to and might possibly want to bring, up to and including granola bars.

we were hanging out last night and from 8pm on, he wouldn't stop talking about how he wants to shit so he won't have to worry about it during the exam.

i'm on "standby" today, in case he gets in a car accident along the way and is too short on time to run/hitch. he actually asked me to do this a few days ago.

i think i left stuff out too.

i took maybe 3 or 4 exams? probably 2 complete from start to finish. mostly i did the games because i enjoyed them. i got to longmeadow for the WNEC exam (which was at 8:30am or some obscenely early time) around 1am, i think. because of raj's samantha breaking down and AAA trying to screw us. winged it to wnec, and downed a cup of coffee beforehand. still did alright though. but i wonder how i would have done if i'd put the same number of man-hours in as pardo.

good luck my friend.

the dark tower

since i've been home, i've read a couple books. but mostly it's been ones i've already read and know i'll enjoy reading again. i've read a bunch of dragonlance books by richard a. knaak, my favorite author for that setting. i've mostly exhausted that list, so i picked up "Hearts in Atlantis," by stephen king, which i bought a while ago when it was a bargain book hardcover for 5 or 6 dollars. it's not advertised as such, but it has a _lot_ to do with the dark tower, more than i thought. especially with those stupid previews showing anthony hopkins and the little boy. but i now know a lot more about breakers. and it's fucking creepy, all the secret signs that the low men use to communicate with each other. in addition, i now understand that stupid segment with anthony hopkins and the boy touching opposite sides of a pane of glass. the book, and my desire to shower vs my desire to wake up my mom and get yelled at, resulted me in reading it til 5am or so. and look! 6:50 am and i still haven't gone to sleep.

what's my point? if you like the dark tower, this one's kinda cool. it's not that long though, as the book is actually a collection of 4 related stories. the first one's all you really need though, so you could go to a barnes and noble or a borders and read it in a comfy chair.

live from california

ZhueyZhu: i'm in cali dude
ZhueyZhu signed off at 5:28:14 PM.
ZhueyZhu signed on at 5:28:19 PM.
ZhueyZhu: it sucks here
ZhueyZhu signed off at 5:32:30 PM.

movies part 18: tears of the sun

i'm just writing these down, so i don't forget. i watch too many movies to keep track of. i watched tears of the sun wednesday, pitch black on thursday, and today i watched the chronicles of riddick and dark blue. i'll put up my thoughts later.

productive day!

i got a lot done yesterday. i went to the post office and mailed: my hair (from right before spring break), a thank you letter to makiko's parents (from winter break), and a stupid unwanted WWF theme song CD from BMG music co (from at least 2 years ago). i also went to the hardware store and made 2 copies of the house key, since i always lose mine. and i bought one of those things that go in the toilet paper roll, since the one in the upstairs bathroom was mysteriously missing. and i watched some movies, which i already put up here. i'm proud of myself.

mysterious

i emailed makiko the other day, and she responded to ask how i was doing, since all my blog does is review the movies i've seen recently. for the most part, that is all i am doing. if there was something more interesting, i'd put it here. _however_, i have been advised by a certain chinese aftermeal treat that i would do well to keep my plans to myself. i don't really want to get into more detail than that... i admit this might sound silly, but i don't know if i've ever received a fortune as direct and to the point as this one. as i said to amanda, to ignore the advice of a fortune cookie is to court disaster.

useless skill

my brother can not control his spending of money. this bothers my mom immensely. mostly because he spends all his money on crap. then she has to give him money so he can buy basic things like food. and he doesn't appreciate it. no one reading this can possibly understand how much of a _waste_ my brother is. in fact, he's _more_ than a waste. he's _negative_ rather than zero (could i _use_ _underscores_ any more?). i could get into how he needs massive loans for law school, and my mom has to sign for them, and my parents and i are all less than confident that he will graduate and land a job that will allow him to pay off said loans, thus causing my mom to lose her/our house. and how that leads to them screaming at each other all the time, my mom in a futile, desperate attempt to make ed understand that he can not spend as much money, and ed ignoring everything she says. and how that makes living at home unbearable. i'm not going to, though. rather, this is a segue into how ed came home 2 days ago from the mall with:

time crisis 3 ($60)
command & conquer: generals ($40)
2 x abercrombie and fitch necklaces - what the fuck is wrong with him? ($10 each)
i don't know what else was in the shopping bag.

he says he doesn't spend any more money than he needs to survive. i swear to god. and he believes himself, too.

SOOOOO, time crisis 3. i've always been good at gun games. i beat both time crises before this one in the arcade, without too many continues. once i play through a level once, i memorize enough of it so i can avoid the surprises and i know where to expect the enemies. but besides that, i aim well and i can pull the trigger fast. when i watch my friends play, it takes them forever to empty a clip. i don't know why i'm better at that. even in all the mario party games where the goal is to press A as fast as one can, or A+B, or A alternating with B, i always win those by a really large margin. also, i played tc3 left handed and i did almost as well as with my right.

i remember beating time crisis 3 with a bunch of kids - mostly freshmen - on spring break this year. that was a really fun time, going to the mall and seeing starsky & hutch (DO IT) and then playing in the arcade for a while. all the other people were so terrible at the game. and then i played the latest silent scope and everyone was really impressed. i nailed 3 bosses in the head with that sniper rifle.

what i want to know is, how does this help me? does my ability with goldeneye (i was awesome before i started playing halo), smash brothers, soul caliber, mario tennis, time crisis 3, etc. do anything for me? what is the job for which i can add that to my resume? can i be a video game secret agent or something? why is the thing i'm best at considered useless in the real world?

movies part 17: spellbound

hilarious. and oddly moving. it's a documentary following 8 children out of 249 competing in the 1999 national spelling bee championships (up to 8th grade). i was typing up how i felt about everyone, but i realized that would ruin it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. i want to hide it, but the template code is strange... the font color is only 4 digits instead of 6, so i can't figure out how to make the color of stuff i want to hide the same color as the background. i wanted to do that for the stripper segment of my last post as well, but whatever. i moved the spoiler stuff down a bit, so just don't read that part if you want to see the movie.

i think i want to own this movie. one strange thing is that the only subtitles are in french, and this movie could really use subtitles, which is rare.

also, i'm really glad i watched it at home, and not in theaters. being able to talk during the movie was a large factor in my enjoyment of it.

**don't read this part if you don't want to know who doesn't win**

i was rooting for Neil the whole way through. 1000 people praying for his success in india! and his grandfather would have paid for 5000 people to eat if he had won. oh well. i even called him my fucking horse once, a la catherine.

i am so incredibly glad the jap bitch didn't win. she was 4th... she had the skill, but she was so fucking cocky. with her horseback riding and her singing, the whore.

the homeschool kid george was frightening. trust in jesus? no thanks.

oh, and the scary kid from missouri! was it missouri? steiner and pardo and i are sure he's going to be the next columbine. some teacher will inadvertently let slip that he is easily "distractible" (i-b-l-e, not a-b-l-e), and he'll snap and pull out an uzi.

UBALDO. my thoughts and prayers go with you, wherever you are. you are one dependable mexican.

strippers billiards and breakfast

last night (monday) was howie's last night in longmeadow before he went back to uva for some summer classes, before he starts his masters in the fall. so we went down to the bars in springfield. the bars being the strip club mardi gras. the place is pretty good. 4 dollar cover, 11 dollar pitchers of beer (a lot for a pitcher, but it's hard to find pitchers in the first place, not to mention titties and ginies). can i call them ginies? maybe i should use vags. whatever.

i was the DD. which sucked. i had a beer at home, 2 cups of coors light at the bar (which didn't do shit, fucking light beer), and a small mug at the billiards lounge. meanwhile, the other three guys were all at their fucking limits. we left at least 2 pints in that pitcher at the billiards lounge.

*!!the strip club and my favorite strippers there are described forthwith. skip down if you don't want to read it!!*


the girls at the bar are pretty good. especially since they're in springfield. there were 2 absolutely gorgeous ones last night. what's funny is since it is awkward exchanging names with a girl bent over showing you her labia and such, we come up with nicknames for the girls. sort of like frisbee, only instead of, "i got hat/visor/fat kid/funny socks/purple shorts/snausages," it's "check out the tits (i don't normally like using the word tits, but it seems apt when talking about strippers) on [blank]."

so there was, the tall blonde with the legs, hot body but nasty face, the really hot blonde with the huge tits and innocent face, the 40 year old, purple, and the brunette with the glasses.

my favorite was the brunette with the glasses. she had these incredibly large natural perfect breasts. she had a really pretty face; her nickname evolved into "tiny fay" by the end of the night. she was prettier than tina fay, with longer curly brown hair, but the resemblance was definitely there. and she had pretty much no fat on her, which is impossible considering her breasts. she was giving lap dances all night; as soon as she finished with one customer another hailed her (for some reason the procedure struck me as similar to flagging down a cab).

a close close second was the really hot blond with the huge tits and the innocent face. she was giving lap dances all night, when she finally came up on stage after a few hours howie and i almost high fived. she had these expressions on her face while she was on all fours shaking it, that looked like she was concentrating really hard. her breasts were clearly fake, but they still looked really fucking good on her.

the two guys next to steiner were ridiculous. they had at least 20 dollars all in one's in front of them at one point. that's a lotta Georges. it made steiner look plain bad. a couple times he just yelled out, "i just want a stripper to come over here, i don't care what she looks like!" as loud as he could, but to no avail.

*end of strip club segment*


after the strip club, we wandered down the street a little and found a billiards lounge. this place was really cool. mike liu would've liked it. i don't know their weekend rates, but for monday night we paid $5 for a table (so only 1.25 each). pitchers of PBR were only 5 bucks. and zhu got some really good buffalo wings for 6.50, probably around 20. i am _terrible_ at pool! on one shot i succeeded in getting 3 balls at once, only they were all stripes and i was solids. we only stayed for a little bit before the wings made us realize how fucking hungry we were.

we drove to enfield and found the bickford's, but they were closed. i thought they were breakfast anytime, but oh well. their loss. we went to denny's instead, where i ordered the lumberjack. i ate a _lot_ of it, more than i should have... i ate 1.5/3 pancakes, 2 eggs, 2 sausages, 2 strips of bacon, all my home fries, half of a _thick_ slice of ham, but i left my toast. the food took so long that we were all just sleepy and not as hungry by the time it arrived. oh well. zhu passed out on the bench and slept, it was pathetic.

we left around 9:30, got back around 2:30. really fun night. too bad we didn't do it more before howie left. god, that brunette was fucking hot. goddamn.

movies part 16: the ninth gate

i watched this with ariel after american splendor. it's long! about 2 hours and 15 minutes. after about an hour, i was buzzed from the two beers i drank (so past my prime), and i started playing literati*, so i stopped paying attention. the movie was pretty good up until then, i just really wanted to play more literati. i plan on watching it the whole way through at some point. that johnny depp is one sexy devil (my use of the word devil is not some sort of hint about the movie).

um, the movie is about rare book inspector/dealer/collector dean corso, who is hired by a wealthy book collector to authenticate his own version of "the nine gates of something something," a book that rumors say can summon the devil.

*the yahoo version of scrabble

movies part 15: american splendor

i watched this on sunday night with ariel. it's the story of harvey pekar, an ordinary everyman file clerk who turns his life into comics. calling harvey an everyman is a compliment; he's got a shit life. he's short and pudgy, his voice is gone, and he can barely draw stick figures. but he takes all the mundane, shitty things in his life and hires illustrators to turn them into a comic. and he finds love, of a sort.

i liked it. the movie was slow, and depressing. not that much happens. but watching him on dave letterman on nbc was funny. listening to his nerd friend talk was funny. some of the shit that happens to him is funny. it's worth watching, at least once. i don't know what would make me see it again, though.

what's your spiritual type?

i got this from mara. it's pretty good. i got a 41 from a scale of 25-100 (how does that work?), classifying me as an active spiritual seeker - spiritual but turned off by organized religion.

the possible answers were well thought out. almost every question had an answer that fit my thinking pretty closely. it's so sad, though. there were many answers that just screamed intolerance and righteousness. sai occasionally puts up links in her profile to the latest ridiculous christian goings on, and they are really upsetting. such as the christian science fair that had these ludicrous exhibits... i remember one was something along the lines of: a 2nd grader puts a carrot in a case for 2 weeks. it does not evolve into a potato, therefore evolution is disproved. i'm exaggerating, but it was almost as preposterous.

and there are people that really believe in these teachings with all their being. mary said before that she sometimes can't sleep at night because she thinks the devil is coming to drag her to hell, so she just curls up into a ball and hides under her blanket. people somehow think the passion of the christ means something, when it's just a gruesome torture spectacle. people think it is right to kill the doctors that perform abortions. people believe bush is a good president. i could go on forever.

i have my own firm ideas of what is right and what is wrong. for example, i believe in the death penalty. it just seems impractical to me to house killers at the taxpayers' expense. hell, it seems impractical to kill them with lethal injection when it would be much cheaper to take them to an alley and shoot them. is it china that charges the family for the cost of the bullet?

in high school, nancy would get into debates with people about abortion (other things too, but this one gets me the worst). at parties. with alcohol. they'd get drunk, and start debating about an issue that is rooted in one's soul. no one changes their minds about abortion. it's part of one's most basic belief structure, religious or secular. i could never see the fucking point, and i'd always go downstairs and play ping pong or pool so i wouldn't blow up at her. it was so futile, debating it.

god, marynia, in college, comes in a close second. let's get some wine and some cheese. let's sit around talking politics. let's pretend we're smart fucking shitheads, and not a bunch of pretentious snot-nosed well-off college kids who know nothing about the real world.

i started this post in a much more mellow mood. but yeah, i wish religion was more about the tolerance than the intolerance. devout christians make me angry. it's all right though, as long as they keep letting their children die because they refuse actual medicine (hurrah for christian science), they won't overrun the reasonable-minded people.

high school friends

i commented this in stoops's blog, but it's long enough that i felt like putting it here.

i don't understand why people can't get along with their high school friends anymore. i'm still friends with steiner, who might be a different case. but i'm also still friends with zhu, josh, ariel, and howie. and rohrbach, whenever we find him. the whole problem with college and having separate lives for four years doesn't really seem to matter to me, and i don't think it bothers my friends either.

does it have something to do with school, and classes? josh left longmeadow HS sophomore year, and zhu senior year. and i was not in the same classes as many of them. but we were friends anyways, and we insult each other all the time, and when zhu gets too racist for our liking, someone punches him and he shuts up for a while.

stoops, my mom and my brother will not stop screaming at each other. it's excruciating. i just get up and go for a walk whenever they start talking, because it inevitably leads to intolerably high noise levels. i feel your pain, brother.

this is long enough that i'm going to paste it into my blog.

hunting and fishing

i stayed over the first night in NY at sai's place, which is really jen's place. it is very nice. very white and clean and girly. i was browsing her book collection, and "the girl's guide to hunting and fishing" caught my eye. being the literal minded being that i be, i thought it was a guide to hunting, and fishing, for girls. naive of me, i guess. i'll think twice before i ever judge a book by its cover again.

anyways, it was actually a very good read. engrossing, maybe? can i use that word? i read the whole thing before i went to sleep. although, i did not understand the point of that chapter with the other family. i caught the connection about the mother living in the same apartment building as the main character's aunt rita. but i still didn't feel like it added anything to the novel.

anyways, i'm still mad at sai for tricking me. you and your whole duplicitous gender. it's not over, sai. oh, no...

movies part 14: the texas chainsaw massacre

i watched the first hour off a bootleg dvd from china, and then the durn thing stopped working. so i rented it and watched the last half hour or so. jessica biel and water are a perfect combination. my problem with these movies is all the chances the (almost always) female characters have to kill the maniacal killer that they pass up. slight spoiler alert: when she kills her friend in the basement (out of mercy), she stabs him with a knife. then she leaves the knife in him. weapon, anyone? and there's a good 5-10 seconds when another guy is grappling with the killer while jessica lays on the ground sobbing, and the chainsaw is on the ground. someone needs to start a "if you're in a slasher movie survival school." GOLDEN RULE: ALWAYS GO FOR THE FUCKING CHAINSAW.

possible final exam question: you are, as the girl, lying on the ground, doing nothing, while a male friend nearby sacrifices his life to give you another 10 seconds to live. he is keeping the killer occupied. there is the killer's weapon (in this case, a chainsaw) on the ground, right next to you. RIGHT FUCKING NEXT TO YOU. it's already started up. you don't even have to pull the cord, if you're one of those ladies not especially good with tools. IT'S ALREADY FUCKING STARTED UP. you:
a) remain on the ground, sobbing
b) get up and run away so the killer can chase you down
c) GO FOR THE FUCKING CHAINSAW - pick that shit up and kill his ass with it
d) get up and beat on him ineffectually with your girly fists.

(the correct answer is c)

i have to admit, she did all right at the end. hacking off his right arm with the meat cleaver: thumbs up. running away afterwards instead of finishing him off: thumbs down. running into the sheriff with his own car: thumbs up. backing up and running over him. thumbs up. running over him again on the way forward: double thumbs up. being incredibly fucking hot in a tied off tshirt and getting soaked: more thumbs than i have.

movies part 13: american wedding

i saw this in theaters already. i don't remember why. nothing else to do, maybe? it was while i was at home, so maybe over winter break. i don't remember. it was pretty funny then. my brother got the dvd because he joined one of those dvd clubs and forgot to click "don't send." it's still pretty good. those 2 strippers are super hot. and stiffler is incredible. but, who shaves their pubes and then throws them out the window? no one would actually do that. i hope.

movies part x: human nature, starship troopers 2, harry potter, eurotrip

my blogging can not keep up with my movie watching. it's just not possible. i'll give my opinion in short...

human nature: it was all right. i think my order from best to worst would be eternal sunshine, being john malkovich, adaptation, and human nature. some parts were really funny. any time "puff" humped somebody (that waitress totally looked like she enjoyed it) was priceless. and it was novel seeing eowyn as tim robbins's assistant. and seeing patricia arquette naked was neat, albeit the fun was lessened somewhat by the fact that she was covered in hair. oh, and my friend pardo recognized the young lila king kong as hilary duff. lotsa names.

starship troopers 2: so bad. so so bad. a big part of the problem was that the movie could not decide if it was being ironic or not. those propaganda commercials in the first one were clearly satirical. but i couldn't tell if all the commercials and references to "meat for the grinder" and such were meant to be sincere or not. and i don't think the screenwriter, or the director, or any of the "actors," knew either. for some reason though, the whole row of copies at blockbuster were out.

harry potter 3: my favorite, i think. in some ways, 1 and 2 were just going through the motions. taking the books and providing visualization. which i don't really have a problem with. but they didn't do anything else, really. and i could only be saying this because steiner was telling me about the nytimes review. but i think that review had the right idea. this movie has a new director, and it seems like it has more of a purpose.

i know i shouldn't, but i think hermione is hot. how old is she? or rather, how young... so wrong. but she's hot, and she knows it, and so does everyone else, and it's kind of pointless trying to pretend she's not. still wrong, though.

eurotrip: damn. i am impressed. really impressed. a catchy theme song. matt damon singing about nailing kristin kreuk. goddamn, she is hot. and, she is starring in a new series on the scifi channel, earthsea. and the hot twin sister used to be dawn on buffy, which makes me want to see those seasons. and the hot german girl is, i don't know. hot.

the movie is genuinely funny. i thought it would be a cheap road trip ripoff. but i laughed a lot. and it does not just consist of cheap gags. the humor is solid. robot fight!

i still have master and commander. can't handle anymore tonight. maybe tomorrow. there's pickup in noho (northampton) tomorrow at 2pm. but my right middle finger is jammed! no forehand for eric. what to do...

movies part 8: narc

awesome movie. it had me into it the whole way through. more later.

hot day, summer in the city

visit the rooftop garden of the met
go to coney island
visit the new york aquarium

done and done and done!

also done, not on my list, but still cool:

see the alice in wonderland sculpture in central park
eat korean bbq at k-town
see christian's band "hello nurse" play
erotic photo hunt?
eat at the original nathan's

unfortunately, i did not go to 1st and 1st, aka the nexus of the universe. i was fairly close. and i got to go to 2 "cool" bars, arlene's grocery and the library. sadly, coolness and price seem to be directly proportional.

i walked so much the first day. if i had the wherewithal, i would find maps of the city, the met, and central park, and trace my path through them a la family circus. anyone know what i'm talking about? that little kid - PJ i think was his name - would walk all over the place and so he'd be gone much longer than his mom expected.

i got to eat at m2m again, pesto grilled chicken. and koronet. it was tough to choose between koronet or saji's, but koronet was closer and cheaper, and i lacked a saji's coupon.

thanks sai, and ken, for letting me stay at your places.

i bought a cool-ass hardcover core rulebook for "call of the cthulhu" (pronounced kuh-THOOL-hu) off the sidewalk for four dollars. awesome pictures. and from a different stand, i managed to spend 14 dollars. from there i got:
volumes 1-3 of dante's divine comedy
faust
that hideous strength (now i just need the second volume of the trilogy)
thief of time
heart of darkness & the secret sharer, in one book
alice in wonderland & through the looking glass, in one book

there were so many other books i wanted to buy, that i already owned. but i don't know who i would give them to. a widow for one year, a prayer for owen meany, and the cider house rules were all there. i already own the alice in wonderland + through the looking glass book (maybe even the same edition, i'm not sure); i had to pay 15 dollars for it, i think, which is why i bought it again. and some others that i can't remember.

i still want to visit the cloisters (grr, judy). and walk across the brooklyn bridge. maybe next time. i would've liked to play mini golf at coney island, but that's no big deal. and go to mcsorley's again. mm, and i wanted to surprise amanda at work, but the opportunity never came up.

thank you, weather, for being really nice when i wanted you to be. impeccable timing. :)