These are the thoughts that go through my head...

12/17 - Cough...cough..oh I think I'm too sick to stay at work today. I think I've caught returnofthekingitis. I heard the best cure for it is to go sit in a dark room for three hours and eat popcorn.


12/13 - Cops and Robbers

I was awoken early this morning by the sounds of sirens. The sirens got closer and closer until they sounded like they were right outside my door. I heard a crunch and a few seconds later I heard someone running through the courtyard past my apartment, followed by somebody yelling "He ran that way!". Naturally I, and several other curious neighbors, hoped out of bed and got dressed so I could see what was happening. It turns out that a car chase ended right beside my apartment complex!

The guy and his presumably stolen truck couldn't make the sharp turn that leads behind the apartment complex. He ended up running the truck through a fence and into the dirt embankment that separates the apartments from the freeway. He then decided to jump out of the truck and make a run for it. He got to the other end of the apartment complex before he was tackled by cops in front of my garage. The cops were pinning the guy to the ground an cuffing him. The guy kept yelling that he couldn't breathe, the cops didn't seem real concerned. Apparently they don't like it when you run from them. The guy was stupid. He never had a chance, there were eight cop cars following him. It was trippy, you could smell the brakes on all the cars burning.


12/12 - I've been using my powers for evil again. Somewhere in between school and work and school and work I found time to design my own christmas cards. The ones in the store just aren't really me. Hallmark should really come out with a series of morally and ethically questionable Christmas cards.


12/3 - I'm sure of it now, they're trying to kill me. My co-workers, when they are well they skip out of work, when they are sick and hacking, wheezing and coughing they think it is somehow necessary for them to come into the office. Their only reason in being in the office seems to be to try to infect me! They are always sick, when the next great plague hits they will be the first to catch it. The CDC might as well come here now and start taking samples.


11/25 - I went to Target today and outside there was a homeless persons shopping cart there. It was filled with the regular homeless person stuff and a full size doctors scale. Weight conscience homeless...next on Ricki Lake! If that wasn't weird enough there was also one of those petition people with his little booth set up taking signatures to repel the car tax increase. Mmmmm, okay, Schwartzenegger already repealed the car tax his first day in office. I think a lot of people are just confused that an elected official did what he promised. It's baffling. Schwartzenegger said he would repeal the car tax as soon as he got into office and he did.


11/4 - Advantage #152 of living in Southern California. Being able to watch a screening of the latest John Woo movie with John Woo himself. That's right just me and John Woo......and maybe about 100 other people in the movie theater. I would tell you about the movie but I've been sworn into secrecy. They said that if they caught any of us leaking information they would beak into ours homes and wallpaper every inch with lifesize color promos for Gigli. Shudders......I feel ill just thinking about it.


scary pumpkin

10/31 - BOO!

Well if it hadn't been pouring down rain all night I'm sure the little kids would have wet their pants anyway at the sight of my scary pumpkin. It poured all night so I didn't get any trick or treaters which means the candy is all mine!


10/28 - The hills are alive with the sounds of mus.. er.....fire! It looks darn near apocalyptic outside. The sun and the sky are red. Ash is everywhere and the smell of smoke is strong. The closest fire to me is 20-25 miles away so I'm in no danger but I know several people that have been evacuated.


10/21 - Ah, another beautiful day on the freeway. I would like to take this opportunity to relay a message to all the Toyota Corolla drivers out there. - I hate you all. I loathe when I see you in the lane in front of me. I wish I could attach a snow plow to the front of my car to shove you all out of my way. TIme and time again you have cut me off and then decided it's too much of a strain to go faster then 60mph in the left most lane of the freeway. It is always you that gets magically stuck to the side of car, when I slow down you slow down, when I speed up you speed up. You seem to find everyway possible to impede my progress on the freeway. Stop oppressing me!


10/7 - Today is the day. Will the Gropinator be the next Governor of California? Even the Magic 8 ball doesn't seem to know, when I asked it said "BETTER NOT TELL YOU NOW." It seems to have gotten stuck in the last minute mudslinging Davis has been doing. I went in to cast my vote earlier today. Now it's time to sit back and see what happens.


Fluffy

10/6 - I caught Fluffy in the act last night. I'm sure the opossum was planning to ambush me when I came out to feed the cat. It had a very sinister look in its eyes. I thwarted its efforts by squirting the hose at it. This morning I woke up and found that a valve stem cap was missing from one of my cars tires. Coincidence? I think not.


9/30 - I'm house/cat sitting again for the next three weeks. I spent half the night hauling all the stuff I'll need over and setting it up. Right now I have two computers set up in the kitchen. I have my PC so I can work on my 3D stuff and a little iMac that I'm fixing for somebody. Actually, I'm surprised I manage to get any work done there with all the distractions. The biggest distraction is the cat, it thinks that me petting it is far more important than anything else I'm trying to do. Then there is fluffy - the name I've given to the opossum that sculks around the backyard and eats the cat's food. I was running diagnostics on the iMac last night when I looked up and saw fluffy staring at me through the sliding door. He was giving me a look as to say, "the cat food dish out here is empty, you going to fix that anytime soon?".


9/16 - This country is in big trouble now - I just registered to vote! I went to Target and there was a guy with a little booth signing people up so I figured what the heck. If I would have known the registering process was that easy I would have done it sooner. Just filled out my name, address, what state I was born in (I was so tempted to put infancy) and my drivers license number. The hardest part was choosing a political party. I ended up picking Republican just so I can spite George Bush is the next election by being a Republican and not voting for him.


8/30 - I spent an hour and a half sitting in the Honda dealership waiting to get my oil changed today. This is the last time I'm going to go to the dealership to get it changed, they just take way too long. I wouldn't of gone there again except last time I was there they gave me a card for a free oil change to shut me up. I was making a scene because they had washed my car (and did a crappy job) after I explicitly told them not to. The car had big white streaks on it from the soap not being rinsed off properly. They wanted to run it through the car wash again but I made them come out with towels and windex and spot clean it in front of me. So this time I threatening to disembowel the service manager if my car was washed again. They successfully read the do not wash on the service order this time but they apparently didn't believe it necessary to tell me the car was ready. I have a feeling that if I hadn't gotten tired using Dantes The Inferno to chart out which level of hell the various sales people would end up on and walked outside to check on things I would still be in the lobby waiting.


8/27 - Okay, I can kind of understand why people might need to talk on their cell phone in cars or maybe briefly while at a restaurant, but now it has gone too far. Why on Earth do people feel the need to talk on their cell phones while in the restroom?!? Can they not go 5 minutes with out talking to someone? I can hear their conversations, I know that they aren't discussing anything important. I, too, have a cell phone and yet have no problem not talking on it all the time. Most of the time I leave it in my car for emergencies. So if I'm ever attacked by Pygmies on the freeway I'll be able to call for help.


8/15 - Stupid people make my head hurt.

I'm designing a website for one of the 135 people running for California Governor. He doesn't want to spend a lot on the site design so he asked me if I could just go to somebody else's website and just take their images. I'm just thinking that if you're running for political office maybe you shouldn't be stealing images from your competitors websites. Of course I could be wrong, maybe that's just the type of thing that will get him elected. Cheat, cheat....always beat.


8/13 - The Aflac Cult Recruiter came by the office today. She didn't bring any cool-aid for us. She did bring a stuffed animal duck that shrieked ALFAC in a high pitched, whiney sound, thankfully she took it with her when she left. She spent an hour going through her little 'this is why you need Aflac' canned speech. I waited patiently until the end before I let the games begin. I started out with simple little things at first, quizzing her about the claim process and paperwork need, then I decided to have some real fun. I asked here to see the specific terms, services and cancellation policy for Aflac. She smiled and replied that it was in the propaganda pamphlet that she had given me at the start of the meeting. I smiled and said, "I've read the pamphlet, have you? because the information is not in there." She smiled and flipped through the two page pamphlet and conceded that the information was indeed not in there, but then could not tell me where to obtain the information either.

Now, I start questioning her about Aflac coverage for outpatient surgeries, which as far as I can tell from the propaganda Aflac does not cover. She tells me that they should be covered if they are done in a hospital or ambulatory center but not in a clinic or doctors office. Hmmm, very interesting. I asked for examples of ambulatory centers - knowing full well that the pamphlet explicitly states that any procedures at ambulatory centers are not covered. She says that ambulatory mean to walk (close enough) so any place I could walk in and out of. I can walk in and out of McDonalds, so does that mean I'm covered if I have my appendix removed at Mcdonald's?

Lastly, I felt it appropriate to start taking about the costs of these plans. Aflacs typical plan costs $23.00 a month (or only a few dollars a week! in Alfac talk, $276.00 a year in logical people talk). Now every time you go to the hospital you get $120 from Aflac. Let's see how many times have I gone to the hospital in the past year - 0, past five years - 0. Hmmm, so Aflac doesn't seem to make any sense for someone who has the DNA to be able to stand erect and walk on two legs. At this point the Aflac recruiter pipes up with the "every year you get a $60 wellness benefit." Let's see, I pay $276 a year for Alfac coverage plus $25.00 for my insurance co payment and Alfac will give my $60 a year to get a physical - Yippie! All my dreams have come true where do I sign up!!!

This was so much fun I could have kept this up for hours. Unfortunately, it was getting late and I wanted to go home. I will get a round two on Monday. The Aflac lady is coming back to discuss our insurance needs with us individually.


8/5 - My co-worker keeps trying to get me to sign up for Aflac. I told him that I don't want any part of his cult and no one is going to make me drink red punch. His bottled water tasted funny yesterday and now he's convinced I'm trying to poison him. I asked him if he could taste a faint almond flavor. It's always best to keep him on his toes. Of course I would never really poison my co-worker. It would be much more effective to drug him, dress him in women's lingerie and drop him in a very public place.


Hobbits

7/22 - So many people, so many lines. I believe all of San Diego was in attendance at Comic-Con on Saturday. It was another fun filled Comic-Con filled with hobits, mutants, and Quentin Tarantino walking around aimlessly. I was disappointed that no one was dressed as the death star or Han Solo frozen in carbonate this year. On a brighter note there was someone dressed as Strong Bad!


7/11 - Tempis Fugit. I'm not really sure what happened since I last wrote here. It's not even a blur, it just doesn't seem to exist in my memory. Maybe I was abducted by aliens! -Who knows. I do seem to recall reading the new Harry Potter book at some point. I went to the midnight sale at Barnes and Nobles. I got my very own Harry Potter glasses.


Picard at McDonalds

6/12 - Did you know that Jean Luc got Big Mac attacks? David Hasenmueller caught sight of Jean Luc's most recent outing to McDonalds. I think that Jean Luc was probably on his way to get a Happy Meal. I saw him eyeing my Squirt toy from Finding Nemo enviously just the other day.


6/6 - After spending 40 minutes stuck in traffic to go 10 miles on the freeway do you find yourself wanting to see something on fire at the end? Inevitably, when you get to the end there are no explosions, no fire, no chaos and destruction just a cop giving somebody a measly ticket. It took 40 minutes just to see that?!? That sucks. If this were a ride it would suck so bad to be put in Disney's California Adventure.


5/28 - Is Ikea Swedish for "you're going to starve to death while trying to find an exit in a store surrounded by moderately priced modular furniture"?

I had never ventured into an Ikea before, no one ever warned me that you had to stay on the path. They show you a nice little "you are here" map when you first enter the store. It looked so easy, the path weaved around all the departments on your grand tour of modular show room city. Why, I could just cut through the kitchen and bath areas to get to the storage section where I can quickly find the bookshelf I'm looking for. That part of my plan worked flawlessly, however I was prepared for the "you need to look at the tag to find out where to find this item in our self serve warehouse" portion of my Ikea shopping experience. I also soon realized that I didn't have a clue where the self serve warehouse was or how to exit the store at all. I had was lost in the storage section. I tried following the path for a little while in hopes that it would lead me to the one exit in the store, but the path started heading in a direction away from where I though the exit should be and I didn't want to go for the three hour cruise. I followed exit signs until I was convinced that there was no exit and eventually stumbled through a bedroom set where the ONE EXIT IN THE WHOLE STORE was conveniently located.

Okay, now I'm back where I started. The "you are here" map has no mention of the self serve warehouse. I walk around the entry area reading all the signs until I see a sign that has, in small print, "short cut to the warehouse and customer service" with a little arrow. The arrow is pointed toward a door that leads to a long dimly lite hallway filled with plain white doors. I stood there for a while contemplating whether to take the "short cut". No one else seemed to be going through the "short cut" door. Do they know something that I don't? If I go through the door am I going to wake up a day later in a pit with someone yelling "It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again!" At that point I decided to exit Ikea while I still could.

As I was walking through the parking lot I saw the Exit doors for the self serve warehouse and decided to take a chance. The warehouse itself was a lot less scary and confusing than the Ikea show room. I managed to secure my $49.95 book shelf with no difficulty and have decided never to go into an Ikea again.


5/23 - I was killing Nazis last night. They sure looked surprised when I snuck aboard their submarine. I shouldn't have drank that last Red Bull my head and stomach started spinning and it made me jump off of the three story building. Luckily, it didn't seem to hurt me at all. I decided to stop playing after that. I was laying on the carpet waiting for the world to make sense again and the phone started ringing. I didn't answer it. They can't have my soul.


Pikachu

5/15 - Got to spend some quality time with Pikachu at E3 this year. He's so busy anymore we rarely get a chance to see each other. I've already made my list of all the new video games I want this year. Topping the list is the LOTR: Return of the King video game. It actually looks even better than the Two Towers game which was great.


Jean Luc in Washington DC

5/6 - Jean Luc and I needed a little break from our hectic work schedules so we decided to spend the weekend in Virginia. We drove up to Washington DC on Saturday to see the White House and all the other sites. I don't know why but Jean Luc spent most of the day looking for John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld. He kept muttering something that sounded like "I'll show you a Patriot Act.." so it's probably good that we never ran into them.


4/24 - I was bored at work so I decided to go to fidelity.com and see how my IRA is doing. It's actually up for the first time in two years. Heck, there's almost as much money in them now as when I started them three years ago, woohoo! Not that i think I'm actually going to be able to retire someday. I was playing around with the retirement calculator on the site. According to it if I want to retire at age 67 and have around $45,000 dollars a year to live on until I'm 85 I have to sock $15,000 away every year. If by some miracle social security is still around by that time I'll only need to sock away $10,000 every year. I have a strong feeling that I'm going to be spending my finer years of retirement as a Walmart greeter.


4/18 - I'm not sure what's so good about this Friday. It feels like any other day at work to me.


4/10 - Is it just me or does it seem like the toy makers have just completely run out of new ideas. I was watching TV yesterday and saw a commercial for "Penny Racers". So let's see GI Joe, Transformers, HeMan and now Penny Racers. You kind of get the feeling that the toy execs all are trying to relive the 80's. Not that I'm not happy to see some of these toy lines come back, but if they are going to go to the trouble of remaking 80's toys I wish they would at least make them like they did in the 80's. Everything is made of cheap plastic now. Remember when Transformers were actually made of metal? Sure they also had lead based paint - so what! They felt like a toy worth spending 25 bucks for.


4/2 - Ack! I've really been slacking lately. I can't help, I've been too busy hiding from the Peeps. I braved Target long enough to get enough Robin Eggs to go into a sugar coma. Luckily the Robin Eggs were on sale by the checkout far, far away from the steely gazes of the Peeps.


3/10 - Part of me must really like pain, because in the last two weeks I've been going through the sadistic process of house hunting. I was all excited at first, the prospect of living somewhere bigger than a Barbie Dream Home was so appealing. Then, of course, came the crushing blow of reality.

It turns out that in this insanely expensive California market what I could afford would be the house equivalent of a Ford Pinto....up on blocks....in a WalMart parking lot.

I did bravely ventura out to view some of these Ford Pinto-esque condos that were in my budget. The realestate person was showing me around like it was the greatest place ever. He made a special effort to point out the "charming fireplace". First of all, this is Southern California why do I need a fireplace? Second, did he think I wouldn't notice that this "fireplace" was protruding from the wall and hovering 2 feet from the ground, that this "fireplace" was a plastic log glued to a wall heater?

I think I will stay in my Barbie Dream House for a while longer.


2/27 - Everybody be cool this is a robbery!

The bank in our office complex was robbed! I was walking to the bathroom when, I saw the Brinks dude take a couple steps out of the truck then run back in it and take off. I thought that was pretty strange but didn't think too much about it. Then on my way out of the restroom I saw cops running everywhere with semi-automatic rifles and police helicopters over head. It took about 10 minutes for 6 cop cars and 2 G-men to show up. They taped off everything and were questioning people. It turns out that the people in the office next to ours where the ones that called the police. They saw a couple people get out of their running car, put on ski masks, gloves and head for the bank.


Borg attack

2/21 - Iraq..Shmirag, has everyone forgotten who our common enemy really is. That's right, it's the Borg and they're back! A brave bystander witnessed Hugh Borg allegedly "just visiting" the FERMI lab in Chicago. I have it on good authority that the Borg have been eyeing that particle accelerator for quite sometime.


2/10 - I couldn't contain my curiosity any longer so I broke down and bought some Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans from Target. I'm not sure how they can claim to be every flavor beans, they only have 20 flavors listed on back. Among the flavors are Booger, Dirt, Ear Wax, Vomit, Sardine and Spinach. My package seems to have an over abundance of Dirt flavored beans. They taste a lot like potting soil in my opinion. The Sardine flavored beans were disgusting, but still tasted better than those awful Buttered Popcorn flavor beans. I haven't been brave enough to taste the Booger beans yet. I didn't get a Vomit flavored bean but I imagine it wouldn't taste much worse than the Tutti-Fruitti flavor.
Bertie Botts every flavor bean

2/6 - Has everybody set there VCR's or Tivo's to record the Michael Jackson interview this evening? I admit I'll be watching it. I can't help it, his life is like a train wreck. It's ugly and scary but you just have to watch. If nothing else it should be funny to watch him deny that he has had plastic surgery.


1/28 - I was woken up last night by what sounded like a 747 landing on my head. It turned out to be my upstairs neighbor. Apparently they decided that 11:30pm was the perfect time to vacuum their apartment. They vacuumed for a good 10-15 minutes! Their apartment is the same "only slightly bigger than a Barbie dream house" size as mine. Even you had no furniture, it should not take 15 minutes to vacuum and 12x20 room.


Toyota Echo

1/20 - I am so embarrassed. I am currently driving around in a Toyota Echo. I believe it is powered by exactly 24 gerbils and when I push down on the gas pedal they all start to scream. This is the loaner car that the body shop thinks is equivalent to my Honda Civic EX. I'm not even sure if the Echo has power steering and I'm reasonably sure the interior was created from recycled playground equipment.

Why am I driving this lovely car? Well, the paint repair that was done on my rear bumper 5 years ago is starting to peel so they are fixing it. At first they didn't even want to give me a loaner car, they said they could get the work done in one day. Which translates to they were going to half-ass the repair job because they aren't getting any money for it. Luckily when I dropped off my car this morning the evil lady that I had spoke to before wasn't there. The new nicer lady agreed that to properly fix my bumper they would need to strip it and it would not be done in one day. She also had no problem giving me a loaner car, which they should since I wouldn't be carless if they had applied the paint properly in the first place.


Lotr meets ST
Darth Vader, Boba Fett and Jean Luc

1/15 - It seems that a couple of visitors to my site have recently caught glimpses of Jean Luc in unexpected places. Apparently Jean Luc was all set to help protect Frodo on his journey through Middle Earth. Regrettably at the last minute he was called back to the Enterprise to deal with some upstart Romulan.

I also can't believe we all missed Jean Luc's appearance in The Empire Strikes Back. I suspect Jean Luc was there on some kind of survey mission. Maybe studying who is the worst shot, stormtroppers or Red Shirted Ensigns.


1/10 - Looks like I won't be taking any classes this semester seeing as how I totally missed that classes started on Jan 6. I'll finally have some free time to create the chaos that I've been planning for so long......


1/02 - Okay if you are ever compelled to go to the Home Depot whatever you do don't tell them that you need an insulated ceiling panel because there is a Keebler Elf stuck behind your refrigerator. They just sit and stare at you, they are no help what so ever.

Well, I survived the holidays, my return home to the frozen tundra (Indiana), the airports and got some good Christmas booty in the process. I got The Two Towers video game (my precious.....) and the Geonosis Battle Arena. Can you beat that!


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