Random Links And Observations

I went for a walk this afternoon, and here are some things I encountered:

A tall, gangly teenaged boy on the phone, arguing with his girlfriend:

"You said you'd be there! I didn't know you were going to fuckin' Pittsburgh!"

A little further along the way, there was a tiny, yippy little dog chained up in a yard that was yipping its yippy little head off at this older woman and large young man, who were just standing there staring at it. The yipping was so high-pitched and cartoonishly annoying as to sound like a parody of a yippy dog, or as if someone had forced it to breathe in some Helium.
The woman was saying, in a soothing tone, "Just calm down. It's okay."
Meanwhile I'm thinking, "Why are you trying to reason with the dog? Just keep moving," as it was clear that they, like me, were just passing by. "Why are you standing there antagonizing the thing? Are you retarded?"
It was at that point that I noticed that the woman was not talking to the dog, but to the guy, who, despite his size, was covering his ears like a child, and was letting out a similarly childlike groan.
Oh.
Whoops.
The guy then let out a howl and started to rush the dog, which backed away and increased its yipping to even more manic levels, which caused the guy to retreat, clutch more tightly at his ears, start crying, and wailing, "Nooo-oooooo! NOOOOOOOOO!"
So, yeah.

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As a reminder to those who knew about it, and to inform those who didn't, tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day.

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It was my friend Eric's birthday yesterday, and today, to celebrate, he and a bunch of his friends are hitting up a local strip club, which is having an amateur night, and he invited me along.
Unfortunately, that's "local" for him, which means it's in Delaware.
Still, I seriously considered going, since I haven't seen Eric in over seven years, and haven't been to a strip club in nearly eight.
I would actually like to go to a strip club, but I'd hate to go alone, and the circumstances of my life are such that I don't really have any friends that would or could go with me.
But ultimately I decided against it, as, under the best of circumstances, I hate driving anywhere that it takes more than an hour and a half to reach, and being in the thick of Northern Virginia/DC/Maryland traffic on a Friday afternoon is about as far from the best of circumstances as you can get.
If I'd had any sense, I would have taken today off and headed out that way during the non-peak hours.
But then, no one has ever accused me of having any sense.

*****

I have a doctor's appointment on Wednesday - I'm hoping I'll be put on different medication and be able to get off the insulin - which includes a complete physical. I figured that would take the better part of the morning, so I decided I might as well just take the day off.
When I was considering making the trek to Delaware, I decided that since I'd be losing the better part of my weekend I might as well take Monday and Tuesday off as well.
So now I don't have to be back to work until Thursday.
Too bad I don't have anything to do with that time off...
It turns out that I wouldn't have been able to take today off anyway, as I ended up having some meetings that I couldn't really afford to miss.

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My Boss: I'm planning for us to do an off-site team-building kind of thing pretty soon. Just a day to get out of the office and do something like go bowling, or play pool or something.
My Boss: Or we could just go someplace nice for lunch or something.
Me: Well, as far as the bowling or whatever...I pretty much suck at everything across the board, so I vote for lunch.
(We ended up, based on my suggestion, deciding to have lunch and then go to the Udvar-Hazy Center to see an IMAX movie.)

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I've started hitting stories from around 1981 in my Savage Sword of Conan reprints, and I'm finding that the nudity is starting to disappear, so it looks like my theory that The Universe got them to stop featuring nudity just as, in early puberty, I was on the cusp of becoming a regular reader was the correct explanation.

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I really wish this were real so that I could direct all of the people fruitlessly coming here in search of boob size-related knowledge to buy themselves a Droid:

Getting Things Done

It took several hours, and it feels like more of an accomplishment than it really ought to, but I’ve finally managed to sit through all of the recorded TV that had piled up on my DVR.
Who says I don’t get things done?
Seriously, I want to know who’s been spreading these lies about me.
Yesterday found me out in the world earlier than usual, as I was off to a Green Home Buying Seminar for the NOVA Green Team.
The seminar was held next door to the comic shop, so after it was over I popped in to pick up this week’s comics.
Being the first Saturday in May, that meant it was Free Comic Book Day. Everyone was allowed to take five comics from the available freebies. There wasn’t much there that interested me, so I grabbed one comic for myself – the “zero” issue of Blackest Night, the latest “event” being published by DC – one that I thought Scott might be interested, and three kids comics for Scott’s girls.
After that I didn’t really have time to do my grocery shopping, as I was meeting Scott and Stacy at 1:30 to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
I don’t really have a lot to say about the movie. I liked it, for the most part, despite the presence of Gambit, who may very well be my least favorite comic book character ever. God, I hate him so very, very much.
I know a lot of people didn’t like the handling of Deadpool in the movie, but he’s never been a character that I cared about one way or the other, so while I could see that perspective, I didn’t share it.
But yeah, it was pretty good. Nothing spectacular, and while nowhere near the level of the really good comic book movies of the past few years, it was well above the level of the worst (which are themselves largely better than the comic book movies of the more distant past).
I’d probably rank it somewhere around X-Men 2, which is fitting, given how much it ties in with that movie.
After that it was off to Manassas, as I’d agreed to bring my chainsaw down to help trim a large tree in front of Scott and Stacy’s house. We were also going to watch the Riff Trax version of Twilight, which Scott and I had originally planned to watch this past Wednesday, but hadn’t, as Stacy had expressed an interest in seeing it.
After a trip to Costco to pick up a ladder and some food, and then eating some of the food, we got to work on trimming the branches. The end result of the trimming looked, to put it charitably, like crap, so ultimately the decision was made to remove it entirely.
Unfortunately by that time we’d pretty well run down the chainsaw’s battery, so it wasn’t up to the task of cutting it down, and, while I’d thought about doing so, I hadn’t brought a spare battery or the charger along.
By that time we decided to call it a day it was fairly late, and, covered with pine needles, I was feeling grungy, tired, and I-just-want-to-go-home-y, I decided that we’ll hold Riff Trax night at their house this Wednesday and I’ll bring along a spare battery and the charger and we’ll finish what we started.
Seriously, at least some times I do get things done, even if it takes an extra few days. Who is this vicious rumor-monger perpetrating these falsehoods?
In any case, I went out and did my grocery shopping this morning, and also stopped at Home Depot to pick up a regular supply line for my toilet and installed it when I got home, so now I’m done with that flood stop nonsense.
And that pretty much brings us up to date.