grimy and sleazy

the way it should be ;)

last night, i left work and walked to the balcony. i talked to the two cute bartenders (although the new one, sadly, has an SO), and i cannot express in words just how happy i was. am. this week was just absolutely fantastic!! the whole idea of the air force transfer taking place, my replacement finally arriving...

it's like after all the time i've been sucking from the rotten teat of a dead nurse, somebody's showing mercy and is inviting me into the kitchen for a glass of warm, frothy hot chocolate and cookies.

spot joined me after a while, and then left for the airport. with instructions to organize me an ipod from the duty free. more on that later :/

wr arrived soon afterwards, and i then had that "one too many". or was it two? it took a couple of hours of monty python quotes and general silliness for me to be able to focus again. by that stage, the party had shut down, so the two of us went with ta2. to be fair, i was under the impression that we were simply getting a ride home...

but no. not even a little. we went downtown, and entered a club that was extracted from the mind's eye of a goth/cyberpunk junkie. crazy music, sharp metal teeth, and all the huge, bearded, long-haired biker-types moshing and headbanging and playing their air-guitars, (some good looking) wimmen dressed both formal and extremely not-formal (unless standing on a street corner in the year 2020 is formal by that time) doing their spindly thing, grime and sleaze in every corner and being radiated by the walls themselves.

we went upstairs, where the music was higher-energy but not as deep, and sat there chatting with some strange strangers. well, not any more, i guess :P

anyway, it's a place that really is exactly as it should be. i don't know if i'm more impressed that it exists (and isn't too far from my place), or if i'm more disappointed (six years i've been here. six years. never heard of the place).

a short while after we got there, the music pulverizing my ears and my neck begin to loosen up from all the vibration, spot called to squick me over which ipod to organize. the options weren't great, so i picked the 60GB... i don't even know for how much. whatever.

just before leaving, i discovered that spot, in his infinite wisdom, had sent me an sms (when he *knew* where i was, we'd talked) giving me an even better option, and had left by the time i'd received it. schmuck. the only issue i have is that i'm looking at the prices online, and it looks like duty-free is more expensive... that's not good :S

when i got home i was wasted after a totally full day. i almost went straight to bed, but i managed to force myself to have a shower, and floss, because hey, that one day can make a difference. and making your bed smell of smoke, sweat and sleaze doesn't help anyone.

i woke up about six hours later, and took a cab to azrieli. i finally bought a perfect circle - thirteenth step, got me all excited. while standing in the line to pay, cbg walked in. pretty easily recognizable, but not my type as far as looks go. other than that, really cool chick. i had a good breakfast, good coffee, and then we said goodbye and i made my way to work.

i spent my afternoon doing some serious browsing. well, at least that's what i did after finally sorting out my new album. all i wanted to do was listen to a perfect circle - pet, but i inserted the disc and windows asked me if i wanted to install some software.

fuck no.

without installing the software, i can't listen to the disc... that's just screwed up. i just paid for the damned thing. not cool. i do a basic search, but i only came up with a method of copying it: i don't have a burner, i don't wanna, and i'm certainly not interested in installing more software on my workstation (which is what started this whole thing in the first place).

i began whining to nystire, hoping to find him familiar with the problem. after much debate over what exactly i wanted to do - no nystire, i don't want to rip to ogg vorbis :P - he provided me with a forum link. what was that about ockham's razor? i scanned the posts, and found a frighteningly simple solution: hold down the shift key while inserting the cd. i kept it down for a short while, then used media player to rip to wma, and now i can listen on my player.

and fuck them. bastards.

there are so many links that i wanted to post from the crypto-gram newsletter (and the articles are good, too), that sod it: go through them yourself.

as one commentator put it: "imagine a cop pulls you over for speeding. as he approaches, you realize you left your wallet at home. without your driver's license, you could be in a lot of trouble. when he approaches, you roll down your window and shout. "hello officer! i don't have insurance on this vehicle! this car is stolen! i have weed in my glovebox! i don't have my driver's license! i just hit an old lady minutes ago! i've been running stop lights all morning! i have a dead body in my trunk! this car doesn't pass the emissions tests! i'm not allowed to drive because i am under house arrest! my gas tank runs on the blood of children!" you stop to catch a breath, confident you have supplied so much information to the cop that you can't possibly be caught for not having your license now." [from one of the articles]

the two exceptions follow because i laughed so hard that i cried:
the turnpike prank (4 pages)
the all-natural test (also 4, i think)

serbians witchdoctors have weird cures
conventional greeting
i agree with scott mccloud completely
reasons not to donate blood.