Ouch.......

Ouch indeed, after my wonderful week of my code continuously grinding it's stiletto high heels into my crouch I figured I needed a few drinks. Really it all came to a head when I found myself desperately trying to discover why my code hates me when in the office next to me the whole population of China decided to show up and talk for awhile. Normally if your building was made of say sheetrock and wood these wouldn't be problems but when your doors are made of balsa wood and your walls of rice paper there is no privacy. Once the delegation left the building maintenance company decided that they were going to try to fix some problem with the main door that leads out to the atrium. The door opened, the door closed, open, close, open, close, open, close, open, close again, and again, and again and again and again. You must be thinking that a door opening an closing for ten minutes is nothing to work oneself into a lather over, however every time the door opens a beeping noise emits, ever time. FINALLY that stopped and all was quiet, then a Goose head popped up right next to my window and honked. His/Hers/It's honk lead to all the other geese in the greater metropolitan area of Columbus to honk in one unanimous roar, the sound was deafening and at that point the desire to sprint out and start swinging geese by their necks was nearly overwhelming. So please forgive me if I felt the need to get a little drinky in my on Friday night. I grabbed some dinner Friday night at Hound Dogs home of Smoking Joes Pizza, Spicy sauce and saucy punk wenches. SG was unable to make it out, something about a symphony concert and me not being invited, yada yada yada. After pizza and PBR I found myself over at Tito's delivering folding chairs for the annual Tito-athon the next night. Four hours later and a flask of whiskey gone I found myself sitting on Tito's couch attempting to understand through my whiskey induced drunken haze Shirow's latest anime show (Ghost in the Shell 2 Second Gig). At some point Tito and I looked at each other and we both realized that neither one of us understood what was going on in the show, at that point I went home... good idea no, but I did nonetheless.

Saturday night was Tito's birthday party which was a great time, Schlitz was had, mini kegs of Heineken were tapped for their foamy goodness and those with the soul of a rockstar got to rock out with their cocks out. If the rocker did not have a cock well they rocked out twice as hard. How does one rock out? Well one has to purchase Guitar Hero's for the playstation. This here is a game that lets you posture like the best of them and play some mad air guitar while jamming to such great hits as (among others) "Thunder kiss 65", "Iron Man", and "I wanna be sedated". There are two really nice things about this game. 1) As you play and hit the notes on time your 'rock out' meter fills up, when it is full you then can go into rock out mode by tilting your guitar to a 90 degree angle with the floor. 2) Some of the songs that you can unlock are from indy type bands that different developers that worked on Guitar Heros knew of 3) Do you really need anything else? Alright there's a whammy bar. I think I am going to write to Red Octane and see if they are considering a wireless version of Guitar Hero's, once that comes out all I need are some wireless headphones and then I can jam out in my backyard while standing on my patio table. I could also get a Scion xB and I hook it up with LCD TVs (on the roof, and in the headrests) then install a strap system on the roof so that you can pull a Jason Batemen and ride on top of the car like in Teenwolf 2. Eat your heart out Huey Lewis.

I ended up being a little smarter and a lot less drunk and walked home at 3:45am and got home at 4:15am. I choose to take a short cut and cut across the pedestrian bridge into the Park of Roses. Before SG left she kept trying to take my wallet for fear that if I did get mugged that the muggers wouldn't get my wallet, I was more worried that if I was chomped by a zombie that without my wallet people would be unable to determine it was me. Granted if I was a zombie it wouldn't matter but at least it would give my loved ones some closure.

The white dawg that poops with his sunglasses on.

So here I am again minding my own business washing my hands in the bathroom when a coworker of mine walks in wearing sunglasses and listening to his Ipod with just one earphone on. Sunglasses inside for some reason makes me think of Corey Hart's song "Sunglasses at Night", you know "I wear my sunglasses at night, so I can, so I can", anyway when I was in elementary school I thought that was the coolest of the cool songs. That and Eye of the Tiger, though I didn't know for years after who actually sang it..... thank you Jesus for creating "Survivor" and thank you for the all powerful and knowing inter-web. Back to this coworker thing. Let's analyze this.. he walked into the bathroom with his sunglasses on listening to his Mp3 player and walked right into the bathroom stall as if nothing was outside the normal. I mean come on is his shit so offensive that the way he fights back against it is by putting himself in sensory deprivation. As Tito said, the dude must have shit like Napalm... which reminds me I wonder if he was the guy who's shit smelled just like taco seasoning a month or so ago... that would explain a lot.

The first story Dawg ever told when I was around was when talking about DDR. Apparently a few years back his parents bought his brother a DDR pad. Well it wasn't soon after receiving it that while involved in a heated flash dance like fury his brother leaped up in a spinning pirouetting like motion only to put his foot through the double wide trailers floor. That shit's funny on so many different levels, nice thing too is that Dawg takes it in all in stride. I mean when your shit is like napalm there ain't nothing to fear.

Distilling the soul.

Regurgitation, I can't help it it's like second nature, and I remind anyone that does actually read this... I'm not making anyone read this... did I mention that I have a real sharp knife in my pocket. SG claims that I need to have an opinion or add something to my regurgitation of the Modern Marvels episode "Modern Distilleries," I don't... besides I don't want to actually make this work or something. Anyway I'm going to break this bad boy into multiple entries over the next few weeks as I have a feeling that my love of alkyhol may get the best of me. This episode of Modern Marvels episode pretty much glazed over the major types of alcohol sold around the world and intermingled this narrative with pictures of modern distilleries. The modern distillery part I could care less about, just like Modern history I say Ba humbug. It was the background information on the liquor that got my attention and it will be the background of Rum, Whiskey, Bourbon, Scotch, tequila, Gin and Vodka that I will split this into. Remember nobody's making you read this and that sharp poke in your ribs, nevermind about that.

Lets start at the basics... based on archaeological finds of terracotta stills found in Pakistan alcohol has been made since around 3000 B.C. The process of making alcohol whether it is making beer, wine, or spirits is the combination of yeast mixed with some fermentable organic ingredient (corn, wheat, grapes) known as mash. The yeast converts the sugars in the mash to ethyl molecules, and when this mixture is heated the alcohol vaporizes and rises up to the top of the still where it condenses back into alcohol. All spirits whether they be Whiskey (Whisky), Scotch, Bourbon, Gin, etc, are colorless and odorless much like Iocaine powder (Iocaine powder: odorless, tasteless, and dissolves instantly in liquid). The color comes from the barrels that the alcohol is aged in. It does seem that hard liquor is something of a modern era thing due to agricultural advances that tended to be leave an excess amount of grains. This excess of grains meant that farmers had to do somethign with this which lead to many farmers becoming distillers. Why? Well just like with beer distilling the excess grains was a perfect solution for the excess harvest, it never goes bad, is much easier to transport, and there is a ready and wanting market of boozers.

Rum was the first spirit enjoyed in the colonies though it was not the first distilled spirit in the new world. I'm making an assumption here but the first distilled spirit was most likely the Parent of tequila, but I'll come back to that in a bit. Rum is made from molasses which is made from sugarcane which was brought by Columbus on his second voyage to the new world. He planted it on some Caribbean islands in 1494 and from that the rum was eventually produced. Rum like many other spirits is colorless until it is added to casks for aging. White rum was created when the Spanish Royal Development Board offered a price to anyone who could improve Rum making. Don Facundo Bacardi Masso (Bacardi Rum) stepped up during this time and provided the most important advancement by using charcoal filtering and specialized yeast strains to create white rum. While Rum was mainly imported from the Caribbean, it was also made throughout the colonies, specifically in New England where it became much desired. The consumption and production of rum eventually stopped due to embargos by Britan which stopped the importation of rum and molasses and the rise in popularity of Whiskey.

Next up.... Whiskey, Jack and Coke anyone?

Vampires kick ass.

They do actually, I've often said that all one has to do to get me interested in a movie is add a dose of vampire, stir in some chop sockey, add a pinch (Pinch you get it ooooh the humanity) of vampire breasts, and a shake of ass rock mixed with some club inspired beats with an angelic host of voices and you have a movie that SFB HAS to go see. Alright, fine a shake isn't technically a term used in cooking I ran out of terms to use. It's too bad that with a topic as great as vampires the number of good movies is far and few between. Now if they could do a vampire movie with Samurai's, put it in a futuristic context with space ships, add Jet Li and the ass rock/hippity hop that would be a recipe for destruction.

Sooooo on Saturday I was drawn to the theatre like a sailor drawn to the sirens song and saw latest incarnation of your favorite blood suckers "Underworld Evolution". To use the term bad when describing this movie would be a great understatement, it's kind of like saying Hitler was not very nice. "Underworld Evolution" is one of those movies where after you watch it you wonder who it had to go through to get the approval it needed to then drink (Drink, get it?) up the millions of dollars it took to make. I mean really I feel like I should go to the theatre and try to make a case to the executives that their money would be better spent if they would just give me a little cut of the pie. Not to actually help make the movie you see, I just figure a little infusion of cash to help me pay for some home improvements and a new car would be a better use of the money. I will say there was some vampire breasts swaying in the wind, there was some great gothic club music, there were some great action scenes, there was however no story in sight. Seriously none. Oh alright there was but I could sum it up in two sentences, which is amazing since I won't finish this entry up in less than two pages. Let me give an example of the ludicrous-ness (Care not english majors) of the movie, the origination of vampires occurred when one brother Marcus was bit by a bat while his brother William was bit by a wolf. You can figure out who became what, go ahead I trust you. That's about all of the back story you got, now granted I hadn't seen the first one but I was told there wasn't much story there either. There were tits though, did I mention them? For the gals out there the male lead was some dude (Scott Speedman) from Felicity that kept tearing his shirt off like Hulk Hogan. Hulkamania Werewolves! Anyway I don't think I'll end of getting it when it comes to DVD, that is unless I can get it for $1 and then I'd only do that so that when I am feeling down I can watch it and cheer myself up.

After that I had the gang over for PBR's, veges, French onion dip and Carcassonne. If anyone ever tries to tell you that playing Carcassonne under the heavy handed influence of alcohol works... gut them like a fish immediately. I'm not entirely sure how most things that I'm involved in turn into some sort of binge drinking endeavor. Some, mainly SG, would claim that I'm a lush while other people, Steven Seagals wife, would say that I'm a pusher.... regardless people get good and loaded when they come to my home. Mint julep anyone?

Bundles of... Misery.

In my inbox there appeared an email from SG with the subject 'And proof that I'm right' which just screams for me to read. SG and I have been arguing since day 1, not serious arguing mind, but we have been known to enjoy a good argument now and then. Which reminds me of one time in college, I was a sophomore in college and SG was over at my dorm room hanging out. At some point we were arguing over whether or not Parkersburg WV actually has anything in it. Talking about Parkersburg for me is like like throwing gas on an already raging fire, that place just sucks, it's an abomination, a hell hole, nothing good exists there, NOTHING! Satan's throne can be seen atop the town hall. My dislike for Parkersburg all begin the when SG was taking summer classes at OU. I decided to come visit her for a weekend, the only problem about OU in the summer is that no one's there and there is nothing to do. You think I'm kidding don't you? Taco Bell, THE LARGEST Taco Bell in the US (so they claim) shuts down at 3pm every day. That's 3pm, 15:00 for you military/euro wannabees. To find something to do on Saturday night we decided to drive to Parkersburg a mere 10 miles (actually about ~50 miles or so) but three fucking light years from Athens. Upon arriving at the oasis that is Parkersburg you have to pay to cross the river to enter Parkersburg. PAY! That just might be as asinine as having to pay to leave New Jersey (Another rant for another day). Once in Parkersburg we then attempted to find something to eat and something to do both of which we failed miserably. We went right instead of left and never found the main strip of what one could call life in Parkersburg and instead entered the downtown which is a dead and lifeless husk of a place. So back to this argument in College, I said there was nothing in Parkersburg, SG said that there was. This went on back and forth for an hour or so until SG had to mention that Columbus isn't technically a large city either. While I agreed with her in general it was on a technicality that felt she was wrong. My argument was that while Columbus is cow town USA with not much to do it is a large city based on population. SG wouldn't concede this point which led to us making pot shot arguments back and forth like two rivaling West Virginian families arguing over a property line. Where was I? Oh yes bundles of misery.

The email in question referred to an article in the Washington Post about a survey done with 13,000 adults. I don't know the specifics of it but what it boiled down too was that the adults with children were more miserable than those that didn't have them. The article mentioned how in Western culture children are more of a burden instead of an asset (Soccer lessons, baby gap, SUV sized strollers, Mini-vans, Barney, tutors, etc, etc). A hundred years ago when people had children those children would have helped out around the house, worked in the fields, watched the younger children. Today's parents generally don't even have the support of their families to help out with raising their children which leaves parents agitated and overworked. The best part of the article was when it mentioned an email titled "Mom's Letter to Santa":

The mom is hiding in the laundry room using a crayon to write her wish list on the back of a receipt while the laundry is between cycles: She wants a car with fingerprint-resistant windows, a radio that plays only adult music, a television that won't broadcast programs with talking animals and a place where she can talk on the phone in peace.

This is almost word for word SG's argument against children. Sadly my only argument for having one is that soon everyone I know will be DEAD and maybe my child won't hate me and maybe just maybe they might invite me over for the holidays. When you write it like that I do sound silly. In my mind this study isn't all that surprising, I mean believing that raising children is going an enjoying game of bocci ball is just a joke. It's kind of like thinking that if you have issues with your significant other while dating that when you get married they will just disappear in a big puff of fairy dust and the warm glow of marriage will engulf you in bliss. Right. Maybe this is all part of my personality, ESTJ, the thinking part to be exact. I don't actually think that having children will be wonderful all the time, actually the first few years sound dreadful but maybe that's just a coping mechanism. So gear up breeders and let the pain begin, and let me leave you with one of SFB's favorite sayings, "If it doesn't hurt it's not worth doing."

A kick in the ass.

There are times in my life where I look at what I just said or did, and realized... HOLY SHIT you're fucking weird. Mornings may be best time for maximum to the extreme weirdness. I seem to go from zombie, you couldn't wake me up with a fucking bull horn to walking around singing songs. Songs may be a stretch I mean it would be one thing if I was singing jingle bells, livin la vida loca, or even toxigenic. I however sing phrases. The phrase "A kick in the ass" was what I was singing a few days ago, can you imagine a song built around the phrase "a kick in the ass". Over and over again I sang "A kick in the ass.. A kick in the ass , A kick in the ass " after awhile I'd mix it up you know, break it down, do my white boy scat and throw little non sensical sounds in and change the tone at which I was singing. This singing really freightens me, I mean it just might be the greatest single example of how our personalities are formed from environmental factors while growing up. My mother used to walk into my bedroom when I was growing up and would sing songs at me, they wouldn't be whole songs, sometimes they wouldn't even be songs. Can you imagine being tweleve years old and being woken up by your mother singing "I heard the witch doctor he gave me this advice he said, oooh ooh iii ah ahhh ting tang walla walla bing bang, ooo ooh iii aa aahh ting tang walla bang". I shit you not. That's weird but for years my mother was singing snippets of Beetles songs, you know Beetles, bad teeth, revolutionary hair, black suits, english accents, yellow submarine, The Beetles and didn't even realize that what she was singing was The Beetles. HUH?!? I mean holy crap the world stopped when The Beetles came to the US and that probably didn't even make it on the mental RADAR of my beloved Ma. Was my mother a bad singer? No, quite good actually. Why did my family not like her singing? I'm not sure. I actually feel bad now that I'm older I mean my mother loves to sing, it's something she does unconciously, HELL at least she sings real songs unlike her son SFB who sings such great chart topping numbers like "A KICK IN THE ASS".

Egypt Untold

I am in Egyptology heaven due to the fact that the "Discovery Channel" is running a series called "Egypt Untold". I really can't remember when this interest in Egypt and it's history started, I do remember a childrens history book on Egyptology that I used to pour over and wonder what life must have been like then. I didn't even realize that there was a series until a second "Egypt Untold" appeared on Terry (Tivo). Last weeks was about how Howard Carter with the financial backing of Lord Carnarvon discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun. While this was interesting it was no where near as interesting as this episode about the Rosetta stone.

Before I watched this I had only the vaguest of ideas of what the Rosetta Stone was. The Rosetta Stone was named because it was found near a town called Rosetta by soldiers of Napoloen's army who were reinforcing a fort. Eventually the Rosetta stone made it back to the Museum of England but not before the 160 artists and scientists in Napoleon's army were able to make numerous copies of it. Why the Rosetta stone was so important was that it had three different languages, hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Greek, written proclaiming the glory of the Pharaoh Ptolemy V. The reason that the stone had three different languages was that it was supposed to be read by anyone currently living in Egypt at that time (~196 BC). Hieroglyphs were used by the priests (they were also the defacto language for important and religious messages), Demotic was a simplified script preferred in court and in legal and business documents while Greek was the language of the Ptolemic Dynasty.

How did a Greek become an egyptian Pharaoh? This happened when Alexander the Great beat the Persian army which was in control of Egypt at the time. When Alexander the Great died his Empire was split between three men and the one that gained control of the area around Egypt was a Greek named Ptolemy. The first Ptolemy governed Egypt more like a business however his successor's eventually became Pharoah's.

An interesting side note that I found out was that the name Ptolemy was passed down from Pharaoh to Pharoah as was the name Cleopatra from queen to queen. I had originally thought that the Cleopatra that lived during Julius Ceaser's and Marc Antony's time might have been the Cleopatra, I didn't realize that it was a named passed from generation to generation.

Interest in Egypt spiked after Napoleon came back to Europe as he brought with him books and illustrations that his scientists and painters compiled during their three year campaign in Egypt. The only problem was that all the theories were based only on speculation due to the fact that no one could read hieroglyphs. Two men appeared to take up the challenge, a Frenchman by the name of Jean-Francois Champollion and an Englishman by the name of Thomas Young. Champollion was a naturally gifted linguist who by the age of 16 had already learned 12 ancient languages without any formal schooling. Thomas Young on the other hand was a independently wealthy scientist who was tapped by the British government to attempt to translate the Rosetta Stone. The reason why the British government wanted him to do this was that they felt it would be an embarassment if the French were able to do it when it was the English that had the actual Rosetta stone. I don't claim to understand the historical hatred between the French and the English in the 1800's but apparently the desire to not be one upped was very important for England at the time. Thomas Young felt that hieroglyphs were not an actual spoken language but symbols where he could use the greek translation and math to attempt to translate hieroglyphs. The idea was that he was going to look for groups of symbols in the hieroglyphics that occured the same number of times that words in the Greek message appeared. Champollion took it for a linguistic perspective and felt that it was a spoken language and to do this he focused on the use of Coptic.

In the end it was Jean-Francois Champollion who translated hieroglyphs when he realized that Coptic borrowed seven symbols from Demotic and from that was able to make educated guesses on how to translate and pronounce the hieroglyphs (Coptic was a language spoken by a christian sect in Egypt around the 4th century AD and at the time there existed a Coptic church in Paris). Based on how he translated the hieroglyphics on the Rosetta stone Champollion was able to translate a copy of a cartouche found at Abu Simbel to be the Pharoah Ramses. Eventually Champollion was able to go to Egypt using funding from the King of France and while in Egypt was finally able to prove once and for all that he could translate hieroglyphs.

Something that I found really interesting was that during this time Champollion was viewed as a risk to the authority of the Church. The reasoning was as such, if Champollion was able to translate something that said that Egypt was older than the date figured for the great flood (2349 BC) that it would undermine the authority of the Church and throw doubt onto the Bible. Part of the stipulation to the King of France paying for Champollion's work in Egypt was that if he found anything to disprove this belief in the date of the Great Flood he was not allowed to publish it.

Next in the series of "Egypt Untold" is going to be about Ramses, see what I mean ... Egyptology heaven.

Surly Girl Saloons Menu

 

What an incredible new smell I've discovered.

Saturday night was another first for me, but I'll get to that. Saturday we went and got some sushi at my favorite most ugliest Japanese restaurant Otani (Map). An ugly Japanese restaurant, that's almost a contradiction of terms in my mind, I mean most of the time when you think Japanese restaurants you think trendy, upscale, zen like simplicity, something.. Right? Otani may have been that about 20-30 years ago when the Japanese first started appearing in Columbus due to Honda, however it doesn't look like Otani ever updated their decor since they opened. This is a sad because they have some of the best sushi in town, and the best variety of specialty rolls along with a nice sushi bar. Most Japanese restaurants have things like California rolls, Philly rolls and spicy tuna rolls but Otani has the big papa pump of them all the "Dragon Roll". This thing is a bunch of California rolls set on their side and then topped with barbecued eel set in the shape of a slithering dragon, TASTY! Well at least tasty if you like barbecued eel (Unagi) nigiri.

After dinner SG, Ratz and I went to the bowling alley behind Otani called Capris Lanes. Bowling like the board games I have come to realize is actually a pretty great thing. Why? Well unlike a bar where more times than not you'll stand around in tight clustered groups attempting to fend off some unseen predator while shouting at each other in nearly incomprehensible conversations bowling is social. You get a lane, get a table, purchase some pitchers and start bowling while hanging out and talking. It's laid back, there's generally not a long line to get more booze and for whatever reason hair bands never sounded so good. My only complaint for which I'm sure some people will grumble about (freedom to stink up my shit or something) is that walking into a bowling alley was equivalent to smoking a years worth of cigarettes. Not anymore, apparently the smoking ban that passed in Columbus also affected bowling alleys. Do you have any idea the smells you will smell when you walk into a smoke free bowling alley? It's really disconcerting. Think thirty years of sweaty shoes, throw in a hint of old cigarette, shake with the smell of greasy pizza and bar food and you my friend are smelling a bowling alley in it's RAW unadulterated majesty.

Capris Lanes itself is a nice little bowling alley much like the one I used to go to in Highschool. It's tucked back behind Otani off of 161 and you only see it from the freeway if you are heading south on I-71. By it's appearance and location you would assume that it would have some sort of crime related issue, or at least a cop on duty inside. There's none of that though it's a friendly place with a great mixture of people due to it's location right between Worthington (suburban mostly white area) and Columbus (made up of a more blue color demographic). Something I also like is that it has about twenty or so lanes and the only frills are that they have machines that score for you. Some people may not like that but I think the high tech bling that you might find at other places like say Columbus "Ghetto" Bowling Palace or Sawmill Lanes to be an overkill.

On a side note something I found amusing was that Capris Lanes has these amusing murals on the walls. One is of a football player taking a bowling ball to the crotch while a cheerleader stands to his side holding two bowling balls at chest level, chest level.... The other amusing one was of a another football with his arm torn off after he attempted to catch a bowling ball. There was no blood, just this arm much like a mannequins arm laying on the ground clutching a bowling ball and a football player looking down at it with a shocked face. EXCELLENT! Anyway I have a feeling I will be going back to Capris during the week if I can round up some people to go as Monday's and Wednesday's from 9pm-1am all games are $1 a piece along with $1 hotdogs, Coke and pizza slices which sounds cheap and fun.

If you have not played Carcassonne then you can ignore the rest of this but if you have you may be interested to learn about "Hunters and Gatherers".

After bowling SG and I played "Carcassonne Hunters and Gathers" over at Tito's house. Hunters and Gathers is a game much like Carcassonne however "Hunters and Gatherers" takes place in prehistoric times thousands of years before the city of Carcassonne was founded. Your "Meeples" instead of being knights, thieves, monks and farmers are gatherers, fisherman, and hunters.

Hunters are placed in the fields/meadows and are played much like farmers. You score them at the end of the game by counting up the number of deer, orak and mammoth that are in the meadow that your hunter is in (2 points per animal). The only catch is that if there is a tiger in your meadow this negates your ability to count a deer (It's a one to one thing, one tiger eats one deer, orak and mammoth are immune though). Other players can lessen the worth of your hunter by placing tiles that will put tigers in your hunters meadow.

Gatherers are analogous to knights and are placed in forests. The forests in shape resemble the cities in the original game. While cities are relatively easy to finish forests are harder to complete and you do not score incomplete forests at the end of the game. When you finish a forest your score it like you would a city and if there is a gold nugget in your forest then you can take a special resource card which have various special landmarks on them.

The last aspect to "Hunters and Gatherers" is the river systems and the fisherman and huts that you can place on the rivers. A river system starts at one spring/lake and continues until all it's ends are finished with a lake, in a way rivers are like roads in the original game and meeples placed on a river score it just like thieves do. The only difference is that any fish that are in a segment of the river that your fisherman is on count as one point in addition to the one point for ever segment in your finished river segment. Where it gets interesting is that at any time when you lay a tile down that has a river you can place a hut on the river (as long as no one else has done this on that river system) which then gives you ownership of that river system. This can be important at the end of the game when players with a hut on a river systems get to count up all the fish in that system and add it to their final score.

If you haven't ever played the original game then this is all meaningless but if you have what's really nice is that the underlying gameplay is the same but there are little differences that put together make it enough different that it is worth buying and playing. I ended up losing in part because I placed meeples on forests that did not get finished and ignored the rivers which ended up being more important. In the original game roads give you little piddly points but usually don't decide a game for you.

Ra The Sun God

We have not one but two Gods at my place of employment, I know I know it must be a trully blessed place. Oh and while I'm mentioning new nicknames I think I'm just going to start calling where I work Sprockets Inc (Sprockets for short). Back to this sun god thing. Ra was named Ra because he must feel that the sun rises and sets just for him. Ra is one of those people who if you tell Ra something Ra always has a story to top what you just told Ra. Tito works in the cubicle right next to Ra and let me tell you he is honored to get to hear the many great and wonderous deeds of Ra. He's so humbled that I decided that he needed a ticket created on our bug tracking system that will allow Tito to compile an ongoing list of the deeds of his holiness. Below is just the beginning of Ra's many great deeds:

Ra:

1. Started his own computer company at the age of 8.
   
2. Was offered a spot on some professional soccer clubs team.
   
3. Was speeding down a highway one day and was pulled over by a policeman, when the policeman asked him why he was in a hurry, Ra looked at him and told him that "Ra had a test and could not possibly be late." After Ra proclaimed this the officer then told him that he would escort Ra to class so that Ra would not be late.
   
4. Ra is such a great fisherman that when Ra goes to the ocean he can catch enough fish to feed 3 families for a month.
   
5. Ra knows more about databases than ANY other developer.
   
6. At Ra's last place of employement Ra did everyone's job, people used to wait in line to ask him to do things.
   
7. In school Ra did all the work in group projects despite the fact that Ra was working full time.
   
8. In Egyptian highschool Ra did much harder work than Ra ever was made to do in college.
   
9. At Ra's last job they offered to relocate Ra to Chicago however Ra deemed that it was much better to stay in Columbus.
   
10. Ra used to smoke three packs of cigarettes day. (Please keep in mind that while
    Ra is a God but if Ra was a person Ra would be about 25).
    

After seeing this short list of the great deeds of Ra you can only imagine how great working in Ra's pressence must be. As time goes on I hope to add more of the deeds of Ra so that we all can read about it and be humbled.

To Protect The Identities

I've got to get into the habit of shorter posts, I mean the longer the post the more I lose interest and if I lose interest there is no hope for anyone else. I don't actually think anyone reads this but if someone does they may have noticed how people's names have been replaced with nicknames. The reason is two fold, to make it a little less obvious who I am so that if I want to rant I can rant, and to make it slightly harder for anyone else to figure out who it is I'm talking about (rant,rant). This whole thing started when I made a post about Polaris and how much it sucks. In that post I mentioned a church, which will remain nameless, and then linked to their national website and while continuing my rant. SG read it and mentioned to me in passing that maybe I shouldn't rant so openly about a religious orgnization as some (not all) of the people involved in the churapolis's don't tend to have much of a sense of humor. It's all I need for some nut to track me down and throw a molotov cocktail at my beloved Civic, I mean really it has enough dents as it is.

The only identity that I will tell you up front is that SG (Surly Girl) is my wife, Why is she surly? No idea, it's just part of her personality, and speaking of personalities SG is doing some leadership training this week at work. They were doing the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality test and SG witnessed another example of how I am such an 'S'. To be more exact I just took a Myers-Briggs test online and found that I am a ESTJ (Extraverted Sensing Thinking Judging). Anyway what solidified for SG that I am an 'S' was when the instructor of her leadership class had an 'S' standup and tell everyone how they get to work. The 'S' person went into how they pull out of the driveway, turn left, head down to the street, turn right, go five lights down and turn left onto Island Rd, etc, etc, etc. My ability to write pages about nothing should be more than enough to backup my 'S'-atude.

Peelander-Z @ High Five

Peelander-Z you better recognize, the only band that has ever made it from the planet of Peelander, so what if they sound like a bunch of Japanese guys and look like a bunch of Japanese guys. Oh and if there lyrics don't make that much sense, well just sit down and be quiet.. Sunday night (1/8) Peelander-Z landed at the High Five, and oh boy was it a show, it was such a show that I was still feeling the after affects on Monday. Nothing starts off a week quite like a good drunken binder followed up by prayers to the almighty while laying on the couch praying that the "hot and spicy" nachos that sounded so good earlier wouldn't be revisited in slurry form. Peelander-Z is a self described "Japanese punk action comic" band that dresses up in spandex suits and does among other things human bowling on stage. Interested? Well I was. I found out about this supernatural band that hails from Peelander about a week ago when Olaf sent me an e-mail. It went something like this "happy new year from Peelander-Z" with a URL to the Peelander-Z's website. I'm not sure what it was about the site but I didn't even bother getting past the home page before I fired an email back asking Olaf when we were going.

Sunday night I went over to Olaf's around 7:30pm to drink some beer and hang out, two beers (North Coast Brewing Co's Old #38 Stout, and Flying Dog's Amber Ale) and two hours later we were driving over to the High Five to prepare for Peelander-Z. We intended to go in at around 9:45pm but but noticed the crowd to be light and instead decided to first grab tasty beer at Surly Girl Saloon.

Surly Girl Saloon just might be one of my favorite places in Columbus to go too now. On the outside of SGS (Surly Girl Saloon) there is a little sign hanging from a pole with the symbol of a skull with horns on it's head winking. That right there is enough to make me interested, however on walking in I was greeted with a long narrow bar, shrouded in low light and dripping with style. The walls are decorated with black and white pictures of women from the fifties wearing cowboy costumes, the tables have elaborate black and red inlay's with skulls at each corner and in the center of the table is a black and white picture of a woman from the fifties wearing a cowboy hat. From the ceiling gaudy yellow and red chandeliers hang from a ceiling with gritty black tin ceiling tiles. Did I mention this place exudes style? The reason why we went to SGS was that Olaf had tried the Cappuccino Stout that SGS has on draught and figured I would want to try it me self. Cappuccino Stout would by itself be reason enough for me to like the place, however they have another 25 micro brew beers on tap! The last and final great thing about this place is that the menu is simple but tasty looking, spicy peanut butter sandwich with chocolate milk for starters and they serve till 2am. Oh and if you needed any other reason to love the place it's the after event location for the Ohio Roller Grrls. Rock.

We returned to High Five after mawing a plate of nachos and a tall glass of Cappuccino Stout. At High Five I ran into some people I knew and attempted to order some Jack Daniels only to find out that you can't get hard alcohol on Sundays in Ohio. My backup was to try Brooklyn Breweries Monster Ale which in hindsight was my first step into self destruction. The "Monster Ale" is a barley wine with a whopping 10.8% abv, it will kick your ass, then kick your head, then it may just crush your testicles just because it's feeling bored. I realize Jack Daniels can do that too but I have a healthier respect for Jack Daniels than I do for beer. Marvin the Robot opened for Peelander-Z and while he's music sounds better on CD than it does live I'm just not much for the intentionally out of tune music. I have no idea what time Peelander-Z came on but you knew they were starting when this seventies sounding Power Ranger like theme song started blasting and suddenly Peelander Blue, Yellow and Red (left, center, right) were powering up like sugared out power rangers. I think I would have gotten a lot more out of the show had I listened to any of their stuff before going, which might be a statement in itself as I still really dug the show. It's tough to explain but they felt like a band instead many of the "bands" that I have heard from time to time. Maybe I only tend to go see shows for people that play in a band as a hobby compared those who do it for a living. Their music while nothing earth shattering was together and the effortless way in which Peelander-Z got the crowd into the show felt natural not staged. This is an impressive thing in my mind for a bunch of guys that don't seem to speak much English, seriously throughout the show they used cue cards to interact with the crowd. After the show I was able get the autographs of each members of Peelander-Z on my official Peelander-Z fan which now is on the wall of my office.

Sunday night nearly broke me though, I got about 2-3 hours of sleep Sunday night. I blame the bouts of dizzies mixed in with the queasiness of too many exotic beers, on top of Jack Daniels with a hint of nachos. Monday I came home and passed out at 6:30pm and didn't wake up till the next morning. Thirteen hours, I'm pretty sure that in my entire life I've not slept thirteen hours at once but it's not every day you get to go see an interspectacular band like Peelander-Z ;).

Midas Beer Touch

Nothing that so much as requires a post but as I am here I figured ... whhhhy not. About a week or so ago I was over at my favorite little carry out (Palmer Beverage) and noticed that they had the Dogfish Head Midas Touch. Since I heard about it on the tele, I figured why not buy some of this historic brew, I mean come on it's history in a bottle with a wee bit o' booze. Oh and because I can't seem to help myself I purchased another six pack of Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale (Scotch Ale, an I.P.A., and an American Brown), the grand total for my kingly purchase of beer? ~24 bones... so for $24 you'd think that this would be some of the best damn beer ever, right? Well the Midas Touch is good, it's fruity and is lightly flavored with some really nice spices but, but really what it comes down to for me is I'm not a fruity beer person. Give a good brown ale, porter, stout, chocolate stout, lager or a pilsner but IPA's are too bitter and fruity beer is just too, well too fruity. Oh and if you ever happen to run across said gold in a bottle it will run approximately $14 per four bottles, yaowza. Maybe I just need to start drinking forties again, now there is a bargain that even King Midas would like. As for the Indian Brown Ale? Well I found it to be quite tasty and hoppy, bitter but not too bitter. It's not one of those beers I would want to pound bottle after bottle but one at a time they are quite nice on a cold day.

Oh and while I'm on the topic while at Barleys for a happy hour I had the Dogfish Head "Raison D'Etre" (Translated: my reason for existence) on tap which while good just seemed to be far too complex for my palate.

I am become [as] sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

Ever since the movie "Four Weddings and a Funeral" came out I can almost never go to a wedding and not think of "Four Weddings and a Funeral". For whatever reason the part where an extra is reading 1 Corinthians always seems to come to mind (hence the title "I am become [as] sounding brass ... ), well that and Rowan Atkinson's as one of the priests. Seriously I keep waiting for a priest/minister/pastor to say holy spigot when ending a blessing/prayer. Oh and there was the other bit where Charles (Hugh Grant) is always late to the weddings, which brings me to the latest wedding I went too.

The wedding was Saturday (12/17) for a friend that I have known since highschool and well we were late too it. I had decided earlier in the day to go do some Christmas shopping, while my SG went to a gift exchange for her Stitch and Bitch club. I came back home around 2:30pm put my suit on and waited for my SG to show up. 3:10pm rolled around and I started to get a little worried as the wedding started at 3:30pm, so I dial up SG only to find her on the way home and was unsure as to why I was calling her as she was SURE that the wedding was at 4pm. When I heard that she thought it was 4pm I hung up, see I couldn't think of anything nice to say, and for once I choose not to say ANYTHING.

It was at this point where I somehow entered Zen like calm, there was no driving like the "Bandit" ("Smokey and the Bandit") and there was no point trying to take a short cut down a Hazard county dirt road whereby Rosco P. Coltrane would try to catch my little Honda. We arrived at the church right before the bride walked down the aisle which was nice, you know I mean how many times do you get to say hello to the bride and her bridegroom's before they walk down the isle. Once the bride went down the middle the ushers then let us in after which we proceeded to slink down the left side of the church. More amusing was that friends of ours just happened to be sitting at the end of some of the further back pews and having sensed our late arrival were turned around chortling at us. I found out later that they had shown up only minutes before us, which is only part of why they were laughing. The wedding itself was nice, a little long but nice, mainly because two out of the three pastor's that did the ceremony I have known since Highschool. One of them was the youth pastor when I was in high school and the main pastor was the father of my friend getting married so that was touching to see.

The reception that followed was held in this very nice unique convention center up north close to Polaris built in a brick colonial style. This really didn't matter as SG has told me over and over again as the wedding was inside and the inside looked more or less like a hotel/convention center. The reception was a lot of fun as my ex co-workers from Worldcom were there, along with miscellaneous friends, and people I knew from highschool (pastors, parents, choir directors). I really enjoyed this wedding, and I think it was because most of the time when you show up to a wedding, you sit with a few other people you may or may not know that well. Dinner is spent with mostly strangers and then follows the DJ and dancing. At the reception I basically hung out with a lot of people I really enjoyed being around and the fact that there was all this free booze and food made it even better. Food you say, yes food, the appetizers were excellent (Brie, Smoked Cheddar, Pepperjack, Spanikopita, Shrimp patte, party sausage things, etc, etc), the bar was open and pretty well stocked. The only potential irritating thing was that the bar closed from 6:30-8:30 while dinner was being served, I was able to turn this into a game as I continued to remind everyone how much time before the bar was closing. I remember walking in and noticing this and turning to Tito and telling him "Hey you know the bar closes in like an hour and a half" at which point he downed the beer he was holding and returned a few minutes later with one in either hand. Ahh yes when you start two fisting you know it's a good time. I made sure such behavior continued as I would periodically look down at my watch and tell him and those around me in a casual sort of manner that it was getting closer and closer to 6:30pm. This is not to say that I just pushed those around me, I also partook in many a fine beverage. There was a point in the first 45 minutes or so that when the bartender mixed me a drink I am almost positive he put no alcohol in it and was laughing as he handed to me, LAUGHED! Well I got around that by having Ratz get me a White Russian, no bartender was going to stop me from getting obnoxious.

One of my favorite lines all night was when while eating dinner a waiter walked up to Tido and asked him if he wanted red or white wine. Tito's response, "Yes" the waiter stood there for a second and then filled both the red and the white wine glass. Tido's only response to doing this when his wife started chiding him was "What? They gave me two glasses." Excellent. The dance itself was pretty enjoyable as it was a band instead of a DJ with a computer and winamp. Granted the selection of music was limited to what the band could play however that didn't stop them from playing Toxic by Britney Spears (Not the first time that I have heard the song covered by a man) and of course a little Bon Jovi Livin' on a Prayer to close it all out. Which reminds me the first time I heard Toxic covered was by Nickelcreek, which strangely was excellent. I mean you wouldn't think a man singing in a blue grass band would be able to pull that kind of thing off.

The aftermath of this whole thing was that there was some passing out and some vomiting, luckily not by me as I was the ever responsible designated driver. Apparently while I was getting my Bon Jovi on some of my friends and SG were drinking tequila shots among other cocktails. I didn't realize this but it started to make sense when she started trying to take my drinks away from me. Silly SG Jack Daniels is for drinkers. While driving home SG fell asleep/passed out on my shoulder while I heard a friend of mine, who is big enough that we add "Big" whenever to referring to him, vomited profusely on his hour long drive home.

Eat your heart out Bon Jovi.

Dreams

I just realized that I keep remembering a dream of mine that I had last night. In my dream I was in a movie that was of all my highschool friends back together again in a sort of reunion. They were with their significant others, children and we were all in a field on a hill enjoying the nice day. The strange thing was that my dream then jumped to an older couple in a spa type resort with a mayan/egyptian styled theme. Both the man and the woman were in their 60's-70's quite healthy and active looking. The man was thin and kind of stringy and struck me as having quite a bit of strength as he walked into a room where the woman was. Something happened and then he was leading her in an excited manner to an area the size of a medium bathroom. There was no sink, toilet, mirror or anything in it but smooth granite walls much like are found inside the great pyramid of Khufu. On the floor was an opening where clear blue water bubbled, the depth could not be determined but was deep enough that one could not easily see the bottom. Once the man led the woman into this room he then jumped in and held out his hand for her to join him. The woman stood feeling unsure and nervous as to why she should but eventually gave in and started to walk slowly towards the pool opening. When she got within the reach of the old man in the pool he reached out, grabbed her and started trying to pull her in. The woman unable to stop her progress slid slowly into this pool and as her head entered and she opened her eyes it was at that moment that she realized there were dead people affixed to the bottom of the pool. I got the feeling that she knew these people but as to how she was related to them I was unsure. I don't know what happened after that as I woke up, but it was strange enough to for me to remember it again. I have a strange feeling the man and the woman were parents (though many years from now) of a guy I went to highschool with though again I am unsure as to why I think that.