My weekend plans including a little yard work, a little trim painting, and buying some new curtains to finally cover up the back patio door. I'm also going to make some new mix CDs for the car, since I've exhausted the stalwart six from last year.

Booty's plans include catching and sautée-ing a pigeon with mushrooms and onions.

Fishermen reels in cursed wedding gown. Offspring to pay.
I thought it was quite unacceptable and even my cat was disturbed
Watch out for them big funky housecats
$10 million ad campaign filmed in the wrong state

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Chad Darnell's 12 of 12

7:28 AM: Waking up. Because it's the weekend, there will be no ridiculous 5:30 AM shots today.

7:52 AM: Feeding the piggies.

8:04 AM: On the way to the grocery store. It's not raining -- I just had to run the wipers to get rid of excess bird feces.

9:47 AM: At Home Depot -- the store where you can confirm that the parts you need are definitely out of stock before you go to Lowes.

10:14 AM: A view from my crotch: All done with errands and on the way home.

10:30 AM: Hanging a new shower curtain from Target.

10:44 AM: Pointy the Cactus was not doing so well in the basement window, so I relocated to a more arid region of my ecosystem -- the guest room.

12:24 PM: Playing a little Puzzle Quest before I leave.

4:41 PM: Driving past Pentagon City to Crystal City.

5:21 PM: At the boathouse in Old Town Alexandria, smelling the raw sewage from the Blue Plains Sewage Treatment Plant.

5:35 PM: Along the waterfront in Old Town.

5:42 PM: On the docks by the Torpedo Factory, among all the tourists, before heading to Aladdin's in Shirlington for some lamb-rolled pita (the entire lamb).

For more "12 of 12ers", see Chad Darnell's site!

Big cat baby boom keeps zoo busy
Leathery grub-filled sacs as big as beach balls hang from branches, as many as 40 to a tree.
Women steal paper because they look fat

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Cat Day

Yesterday after work, Rebecca and I went to see Becca, fresh from her first year of college with a new kitten that's only about seven weeks old. Its mother was a barncat whore, so it's unclear what the breed is, but it looks a lot like this ragdoll breed on the left (except, more in focus and less like someone tried to attack it with a pink eraser). If you have ever played a computer game with "ragdoll physics", those complex physics were modelled by putting a cat like this in a jumpsuit and launching it out of a cannon.

Becca's cat, Leonidas, is still very tiny -- probably the size of two clenched fists put together or a single poop from a Saint Bernard. It runs around the room chasing toys, licks stuff, and solves complex integrals from 0 to infinity in mere seconds. We considered setting up a play date with my cats, but it probably wouldn't be very fun since Booty would eat it and be like the python in this X-ray .

To round out this post, here is a video of two cats on a treadmill . This could ostensibly be the solution to our clean energy concerns all over the world.

Don't forget about the brass quintet concert tonight at Harris Pavilion in Manassas (7:00 PM - 8:30 PM). The first five hundred people to arrive will receive free T-shirts with Skippy on them. Also, Paige has returned to the Bloglog on the left!

Hoochy prom dress lands teen in cuffs
Blunt Federal Letters Tell Students They're Security Threats
Buckle up your beer

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Review Day

There are no spoilers in these reviews.

200 Cigarettes (R):
A 1999 indie flick with a massive ensemble cast including Ben Affleck, Paul Rudd, Dave Chapelle, Kate Hudson, and more, telling various stories about the characters' attempts to get to a New Year's Eve party in 1981. Other than the fact that they all end up at the same party, the stories don't really overlap, and some are more interesting than others. The funniest part of the movie is actually the credits voiceover, where Dave Chapelle narrates the Polaroids from the party and calls Elvis Costello a necrophiliac. I wouldn't seek this movie out, but I didn't mind watching it. Courtney Love is weird-looking.

Final Grade: C

The Heartbreak Kid (R):
We did not have high expectations for this movie, but Ben Stiller can usually be pretty funny in any movie that doesn't involve him meeting some parents. This turned out to be a dud across the board, with long stretches of zero laughs. None of the characters in the movie have a moral center, so there's no one to root for, and none of them deserve a happy ending. This would be fine in a black comedy, but the movie continues to sell itself as a romantic comedy right up to the end. Skip it.

Final Grade: F

Smart People (R):
The parts of this movie were more enjoyable than their sum -- there were enjoyable scenes but they didn't add up to much in the end. This was a typical "improve the surly guy until he loves puppies" type of movie with shades of Regarding Henry (which, fun-factily, was written by J.J. Abrams). Ellen Page plays "Juno as a Republican" and Sarah Jessica Parker has a distractingly-shaped face.

Final Grade: B-

LOST, Season Five Finale:
Nothing unexpected happened in this finale, which is telling for an episode of LOST. In fact, nothing much happened at all. There was zero emotional resonance in either of the two ending scenarios (one in 1977 and one in 2007), and the pacing of the episode dragged ridiculously. Apparently finales without any Desmond suck.

Final Grade: D+

Intelligent women like sex more than bimbos
New weapon turns fire ants into headless zombies
He did not get the burrito, police said.

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Friday Fragments

how did I forget this tagline last week?

♠ Last night after a run in the park, we went back to Omia's Pub and Grille for dinner where I had a delicious Supreme Steak and Cheese Sub, topped with mushrooms, onions, peppers, lettuce, tomato, and enough mayonnaise to cement a house together.

♠ For a fun trick to freak out your friends: wash out a mayo container when it's empty and fill it up with plain yogurt. The next time someone comes over, pull the mayo jar out of the fridge and nonchalantly start wolfing it down with a spoon. Delicious!

♠ There's a song on one of my Dr. Demento CDs from the 90s called "Delicious", which features two people getting increasingly tipsy and saying "Delicious!" over and over. I never found it funny, but I was never really into intellectually challenging humour. Just make a pun about farts and your stock will instantly rise in my eyes.

♠ I think it's strange that they still don't have an explanation for the day the stock market dropped eight billion points in seconds last week, but then, I'm also someone who's skeptical about the fact that Apple could unintentionally lose two next-gen iPhones in two weeks. I'm guessing some fund managers were having some fun(d), and wanted to see how many banks they could make fail in an hour.

♠ Speaking of banks that fail, when I closed my Bank of America account in 2003 and moved back to Virginia, they tried to keep the 800 dollars I had remaining in the account. Their reason was that they tried sending it to my old address and couldn't locate me, even though I had given them the new address. BoA definitely puts the douche in fiduciary.

♠ I'm happily under the umbrella of federal credit unions again now, and haven't had a banking related problem in months, not including Monopoly money.

♠ I don't have any big plans for the weekend, though I'll probably be releasing a new DDMSence version tonight -- the next release will probably let you watch television shows in XML, depending on how ambitious I am this afternoon.

♠ Have a great weekend!

The maze of Facebook privacy
Well, These New Zuckerberg IMs Won't Help Facebook's Privacy Problems
Who caused sell-off? Space aliens or fat finger

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Chad Darnell's 12 of 12

6:39 AM: Showered and foggy.		6:45 AM: Booty, having been evicted from the master bedroom at 3:17 AM for trying to wake us up, has established an alternate bed zone elsewhere.
8:11 AM: Soft-boiled eggs and toast for breakfast.		9:00 AM: Morning cartoons to transition from lazy to productive.
11:16 AM: Scrubbed and spotless deck.		12:23 PM: Spring cleaning with six years of Consumer Reports back issues and assorted books, including Zarlino's Music Theory tome.
2:45 PM: Enjoying the clean back porch with a bottle of Narmada Midnight, while researching vacation options.		4:05 PM: Visit of the Smiths.
4:24 PM: High five!		8:03 PM: Poker time.
10:17 PM: Ben triples up.		11:07 PM: Forlorn, leftover cookies.

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Weird Search Day

or "How I Stumbled Upon the URI! Zone"

Currently, the ratio of searches for ear training cheats to legitimately insane searches is about 12 to 1.

chef boyardee rapist
It is unclear from this search whether this misanthrope was given the name because he did unspeakable things to canned lunches or because he left a can behind at all of his crime scenes. Alternately, he could bear more than a passing resemblance to the iconic logo, although that giant chef's hat would definitely increase wind resistance during his fleeing activities.

mnemonic wiseowl shotgun presentation

This mnemonic device is often used in elementary school gun demonstrations to emphasize the fact that you should never point a loaded gun at someone's face.

is chip mcneill gay
I can't authoritatively answer this question, and I don't think it matters. However, I will admit that his solos get a little gay after the 15 minute mark. Not every jazz solo needs to be the bebop version of Flight of the Bumblebee.

bird poops in cindi lauper's mouth
I'm sure that that was a Night To Remember.

real information coolmint icebreaker used in a crime scene
Power tip: apparently, you can modify your Google search to cut through all of the BS by prefixing "real information" onto your search query. In this case, we would discover that the Chef Boyardee Rapist avoided detection for so long because his breath never smelled like Beefaroni.

pepperjack shiraz bolton
This sounds delicious, but I also kind of hope that it's the name of Michael Bolton's daughter.

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Stuff in My Drawers Day: WoW Screenshots

with apologies to those who have never played

60 days of play time is 1440 hours of being logged in on this character. This is how people wasted time before Netflix.


I'm really not exactly sure what was going on in this screenshot.


This was my consistent keyboard setup across all of my characters. Also, they all had macros for Charge, Cheer, Moo, Train, and Honk.


... said the Holy Paladin to the Shadow Priest.


I sold those pants for 100 gold.


All of the Night Elf towns sounded like prescription drugs.


When all you do is play Warsong Gulch, this is what your bags end up filled with. I used to do daily morning runs around Loch Modan for Swiftness Potion ingredients. Also, "WSG Bonus Weekend starts with YOU (well, double you)."

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Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Silk Road by Eileen Ormsby:
This Kindle book tells the story of the underground drug market that existed on the deep web and was shut down by the feds in 2013. The writing is dry and impartial but the material stands on its own well without needing embellishment. I found this to be a quick and easy read about a technology topic that I didn't have much foreknowledge of.

Final Grade: B

Pillars of Eternity:
This Kickstarter-backed RPG, like Divinity: Original Sin before it, aspires to be the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate. If you liked any of the Baldur's Gate or Infinity Engine games, you'll probably love this game. I, however, got bored around twelve hours into it -- a little too much party babysitting and a minimally-explained UI dulled my enthusiasm. All it really did was make me want to play Skyrim again.

Final Grade: C

Scrotal Recall, Season One:
In spite of the ridiculous name, this British comedy was surprisingly well-done, and sometimes felt like "How I Met Your Mother with an actual plotline". There are only 6 episodes, and we ended up watching them all on a single slow Sunday a few weeks back. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: A

Fed Up:
Rebecca wanted to watch this documentary on obesity and sugar conspiracies, and it's about what you'd expect -- occasionally interesting, mostly facts you already knew, and a format that subtly increases the sensationalism of each segment. I fell asleep in the last 20 minutes, but it was late on a Friday -- almost 9:45 PM! Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: C+

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Chad Darnell's 12 of 12

12 pictures of your day on the 12th of every month

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Easy Photos Day

We're still doing the whole infant + three-year-old life, so I hope you enjoy pictures as blog updates.

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