I Come Not To Praise My Microwave But To Bury It

Last night, in the midst of heating up some frozen leftovers, my microwave died.
For the record, whoever claimed that microwaves heat “from the inside out” was full of shit, and clearly never tried eating a microwaved meal that was hotter than the sun at the outer edges and still at Absolute Zero in the center.
In any case, I have no idea what killed the microwave and no desire to find out or to have it repaired, as, quite frankly, I hated that microwave anyway.
When I bought the thing all I knew was that I needed a microwave, it looked decent, and it was at about the mid-point in terms of price, being neither too cheap nor too expensive.
Once I got it home I discovered how annoying it was. Lacking a numerical keypad, setting cooking time involved using a combination of keys that set cooking time in ten minute intervals per push, one minute intervals per push, ten second intervals per push, and one second intervals per push respectively.
Those same keys had to be pushed in some arcane sequence for setting the clock, and of course the clock wasn’t programmed to understand how AM and PM work, as the time immediately following 11:59 AM was, according to its clock, 12:00 AM.
So when I got up this morning the item at the top of today’s agenda was “buy a new microwave.”
I decided that Wal-Mart would have a better selection and better prices than Target, so off to Wal-Mart I went, finding it packed with people who apparently just now realized that tomorrow is Easter and maybe they should think about making some Easter-related purchases.
Beyond the crowds filled with fat people, old people, fat old people, crying babies, and assorted other children running in circles like dogs chasing their tails, The Universe decided to take this opportunity to royally piss me off.
Apparently there’s some sort of heretofore unknown to me connection between Easter and sales of microwave ovens, as Wal-Mart had absolutely none in stock. There was a gaping hole in the shelves where the microwaves should have been that was comparable to what you see in the bottled water section of a grocery store in Northern Virginia when snow is predicted.
Seriously, WTF? Do parents put microwaves in their kids’ Easter baskets these days?
How could that possibly be anything other than The Universe fucking with me? My microwave dies on me just as the demand for microwaves exceeds supply. Coincidence? I think not.
There were other things I was planning to pick up there, but I was too pissed to deal with all of the human-shaped obstacles in my way, so I left without buying anything and headed to the comic shop, then on to Target, where the supply of microwaves was almost exactly as depleted as it had been at Wal-Mart.
Having little recourse – by which I mean I really didn’t feel like going anywhere else – I grabbed one of the few microwaves they had in stock, which, naturally, was the most expensive one they had.
At least the damn thing has number keys on it – and doesn’t provide any indication of whether it’s AM or PM, preventing it from claiming that it’s midnight at noon.
Tomorrow I’ll be heading to Manassas to have Easter dinner at Scott and Stacy’s, and they had originally planned to take me out to dinner on Monday for my birthday, but Stacy has some sort of PTO thing, so it’s been moved to Tuesday.
I haven’t really mentioned my birthday here much, in part because I haven’t really been posting much of anything at all, but mostly because...meh.
It’s really just another day. Granted, I did take the day off, but not because I had, or expected to have, any kind of plans: it was just a convenient excuse for a day off.
I haven’t even dropped any subtle or not-so subtle hints about gift ideas here, though I have explicitly asked for Carla Gugino.
Of course, I know that nobody I know is willing or able to get me Carla Gugino – or really anyone from a long list of suitable Carla Gugino alternatives – and honestly, when it comes to stuff I want and that it’s possible to acquire, the odds are pretty good that I’ll just buy it myself.
If I want something and don’t buy it, odds are it’s too expensive, and if I’m not willing or able to pony up the cash to acquire it for me, it’s a safe bet that no one I know is either.
Nor would I expect them to be.
Beyond going out shopping today I didn’t do much besides watching some of the recorded TV that had accumulated on my DVR.
In any case, I mostly wanted to share the story of the death of my microwave and the childish pranksterism of The Universe.

Keyword Kraziness: Posted Without Komment Edition

a poster of poisonous plats what horses and ponys can't eat

Random Sampling

I know I've been pretty light on posts of late, and that's not likely to change for the next day or so, but in the meantime I figured I should post something.
My brain, as I've often mentioned, is a strange place. Lots of weird things going on in there.
What I find most fascinating - and often irritating - are the random things that just seem to pop up.
Some are easy to understand, like random scenes/quotes from TV shows like The Simpsons, The Venture Bros., or Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
The "earworms" - songs that get stuck in my head - are also kind of understandable, in theory, at least. In practice they're usually baffling - and irritating - because the songs that pop up are so utterly random and so far from my conscious mind, and so unlikely to be anything I'd want stuck in my head.
I get a lot of songs that I haven't actually heard in decades, and that I generally didn't like in the first place, stuck in there. Lionel Richie is a repeat offender, and usually it's not one of the more obvious songs, like, say, Hello, or Dancing on the Ceiling, but something like Stuck on You. The hell?
Old TV show theme songs also get a lot of brainplay.
But the truly puzzling things are the random names/words that just pop up, completely appropos of nothing. No context. No apparent connection to anything.
Here are some recent examples:

Glastonbury Tor
The New York Dolls
Fran Tarkenton
Mimosa
Geraldine (the Flip Wilson character)
Desultory
Candida Royalle
Caravaggio
Bodhisattva
Geritol
Deja Thoris
Clytemnestra
Ascot
Hermeneutics
Blastocyst

For some reason I find "Fran Tarkenton" to be the most puzzling, most likely due to my lack of interest in sports.
Anyway, maybe you can use this list to do some random Googling/Wikipedia searches to pass the time in between my sporadic posts, but note that "Candida Royalle" probably isn't the most work-safe search term.

The Life-Changing Miracle Of Blah Blah Blah

The first day back to work after taking time off is always painful...especially when you return to discover that three new projects have been dumped on you in your absence.
Oh well.
Other than that it didn’t take long to get back in the grind.
A lot of people, including my boss, are taking time off this week to be home with their kids. Personally I think that having your kids home from school would make you want to spend more time at work, but that’s just because I haven’t experienced the life-changing miracle of blah blah blah.
Scott has taken this week off for that purpose, and he and the family are off camping somewhere, so there’ll be no Riff Trax night this week.
And that’s pretty much all that’s going on.
Which is to say that I’m too lazy to write a proper post.

And Here's Something Else

I quicklly dashed off this picture of Geek Goddess Olivia Munn, was reasonably pleased with it, and figured I should post it. So there you have it.

Here's...Ummm....SOMETHING

As mentioned, I've been doing some drawing, but I haven't really produced anything I'm willing to post, as I've mostly been experimenting and getting used to the Cintiq.
Eventually I'll draw something worthwhile, but in the meantime...umm...here's this:



I have no idea what it is; I was just messing around with different effects to create something kind of abstract. This is the result.
Make of it what you will.

The Best Laid Plans

When I decided to take two days off and make this a four-day weekend, my primary intention was to not do anything.
That's hardly unusual for me, I know, but you stick with what works.
Still, I had intended to spend a fair amount of the time doing some drawing. In fact, my plan for doing “nothing” was actually to do “nothing but drawing.”
That didn't happen on Friday, of course, as I spent much of the day out doing things, and then most of the evening watching TV, so Saturday was my target day for getting started on doing nothing but drawing.
Of course, it was easier to just do nothing, so I found myself putting off the drawing, eventually settling down to start watching The Venture Bros. Season 3 and putting off the whole drawing thing, figuring I had plenty of time.
On the DVD releases of previous seasons of The Venture Bros., the broadcast censorship - bleeped out swear words, pixelated or black-barred nudity - were carried over.
However, when I watched the first episode and heard the Monarch say “fucking” instead of “bleeping,” I realized that such was not the case this time around. I wondered if it was Blu-ray thing, so I sent Scott a text asking if the DVD version was also uncensored. He responded back that he thought so, and wondered how bad it was. I responded back with some examples of language and nudity, and somewhere along the line in the text conversation he said that Stacy wanted to invite me over for haystacks dinner. I said that I didn’t know what that was, and he responded with the details - the incorrect details - and I decided to think about it.
On the one hand, I’d have to shower, get dressed, and drive to Manassas. On the other, I wouldn’t have to bother feeding myself, and leaving the house gave me a good excuse to not do any of the drawing that I’d supposedly intended to do.
While I was deliberating, Stacy called to telephonically twist my arm, and I decided to make the trek.
After dinner we headed downstairs to see if there was anything worth watching on Pay-Per View, and discovered that there had been a Dead Like Me movie released this year, so we watched that.
The movie served as something of a coda - or possibly the first of more direct-to-DVD sequels to come - to the late, lamented series that was taken from us far too soon.
Overall it was entertaining, but it was kind of weird. Mandy Patinkin did not reprise his role as Rube, nor did Laura Harris reprise her role as Daisy. While they were wise enough to not have another actor replace Patinkin, they did bring in someone else to replace Harris, which, along with the lack of a Stewart Copeland soundtrack, added to the overall weirdness.
Still, it was good to see some old friends once again.
After that the dog dander was starting to get to me, so I headed home, and actually did start doing some drawing, and I spent most of today doing the same.
I haven’t really managed to draw anything I’d be willing to post, as I’ve mostly been doing some experimenting to get used to the Cintiq. While it’s a more natural interface than the tablet, it’s taking me a while to unlearn the habits I picked up using the tablet, and getting used to actually watching what my hand is doing - and getting used to my hand sometimes obscuring my view of what I’m drawing.
Still, I’ll keep at it, and eventually I’ll probably crank out something worth posting.