What Are These Goddamn Animals

...but I figure z_gryphon would rather hear about it from a friend.

I'm sorry, man.

And I'll just post this here for the heckofit. Here's what we bought from Matt Wagner this year:

http://gweep.net/~wedge/mw-sm.jpg

Really, really awesome con this year. Lots to digest this time around which is good. :)

We're off to San Diego tomorrow. Here's a gallery to which I'll be putting pictures up to from the iPhone for the next three days.

http://gallery.me.com/wedge#100032

Reload often to see when and where I forget to keep taking pictures!

Go. Go go go. Hurry.

Setting: our bedroom
Time: ~7:30am this morning, shortly after the alarm had gone off

ardaniel is attempting to gain consciousness to get ready for work

ard: mmrph. bed is *comfy.*
wedge: Indeed. It's our bed.
ard: mmhmmm.
wedge: Our *conjugal* bed.
ard: mmm*hmm.*
wedge: ...where we conjugate.
* ard snorks
ard: I have, he has, she had.
wedge: voy vas va vamos van.
ard: j'ai, tu as, il/elle/on a, nous avons, vous avez, ils/ elles ont.
* ard and wedge break

huzzah!



We were worried that it was going to be too big, but it actually fits just right. It's a big relief having it done and in, we've spent the last couple weeks at the new place and it's felt sort of unfinished.

It really does, as the man said, tie the room together.

ALL SEEING ALL KNOWING

So I wanted to do something for ardaniel tonight, it's St. Patrick's day, she's occasionally wistful for food from Back Home, so I figured, what the hey. After looking at a few proper corned beef and cabbage recipies and realizing that I didn't have that kind of time tonight, I focused on the cabbage. I found this Alton Brown recipe. It looked like I could bend it to my will, so I forged out to Bay Cities Deli at lunch and got a pound of thick-sliced corned beef, and picked up the cabbage and fixin's on the way home from work. I chopped the cabbage instead of shredding it because I wanted bigger peices, so I left it in the water an extra minute or so, and I'm pretty sure I used MUCH more butter than that, but, hey, butter. Tossed the corned beef on the griddle just to heat them through. The result?



The cabbage needed just a teeny bit of salt, but was otherwise perfect. It was received by ardaniel with many noms.

Way back when, the first couple times I got to do this, my former employers mumbled something about the Academy being all weird about pictures of Oscar being independently displayed on the web. Well, I no longer work there, I've never, ever heard anything about this again, and the same company released a whole fuckload of these on a public Picasa feed.

( so, fuck it! )

So the new apartment goes by a letter instead of a number (there's only maybe 8 units in the building). Our's is Apartment H. ardaniel, being an Alpha Flight fan, immediately twigged on calling it Department H. I dig it as a name for the place because I like easy references like that. She's shied away from it since making the joke, on the argument that Department H aren't always the nicest people. So, any opinions on the matter?


Poll #1356168 What should we name our new apartment?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 17

What should we call the new ArdWedgeHome?

Feel free to offer up other suggestions in comments. Previous domicile naming: Stately Generic Manor, Delta House, Castle Kilrah.

So, after almost 13 years in Los Angeles, the impossible is happening. The one thing I said I'd never do.

I'm moving to Santa Monica. We found a place that's owned by an old friend from DD and is walking distance from my new job. I just couldn't say no.

I've lived in a pretty diverse range of areas in LA. Two years in the Valley, five years in Playa del Rey (before it was Archstone Central), three years in (well near, but close enough) Hollywood. I spent 12 years working in Venice, just one imaginary border south from Santa Monica, close enough that crossing the street would put me in Santa Monica city limits. And where Venice has generally been Bohemian in nature, Santa Monica was always the epitome in my head of the limo liberal. All the annoying things about the far-left with too much money and actual civic control. I always felt more comfortable with the scruffy artists in Venice and the mellow beach bums of Dockweiler.

Of course this is all my personal opinion. If pressed, there was nothing really solid I could back up my subjective view of the place, save for one thing: Santa Monica's uber-liberal treatment of the homeless. It was a perfect example of how to totally screw up outwardly good intentions. All sorts of programs and efforts to medically treat and feed the homeless, massage that liberal yuppie guilt! But there was nothing else behind it, just feed them, essentially, and chuck them in the hospital when they need it. Noble, sure, but what did the effort earn them? A five-star Michelin rating of places to go when homeless. I remember reading, years back, of homeless moving to Santa Monica from *out of state* to take advantage of the handouts. Keep in mind, as big as LA is, Santa Monica's all of 3 miles wide by 3 miles deep, if even.

Well, I happened across this story this morning. Someone is finally learning the lesson in city hall.

Things seem pretty placid around the new place. Here's to hoping that I picked the right time to cave in.

ardaniel subtly suggested I do this, possibly so she might have something to read between bouts of boredom during her trial.

Think of 15 albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world.

( Asps. Very dangerous. You go first. )

http://twitpic.com/znyp

...oh *really?*

So apparently a trailer for Crank 2: High Voltage is out, as ardaniel was alerted to by someone on twitter. Not being on the Apple site, I googled for it, and found some movie blog hosting a red-band version of it, which you can find here.

The trailer is pretty awesome (and also, being red-band, utterly not safe for work, as it includes, among a ton of gratuitous nudity, a montage of people saying 'fuck' *really loudly.*) but the best part is the second comment down on that page, which holds this timeless opinion:

"Any class that Jason Statham had left after the Transporter series is complete gone after that trailer alone."

If I could buy tickets for it right now, I would. :D

...to be entering my fifth year with ardaniel:

< ard > ...I parsed that as "The hooker felt really good last night."
< wedge > Dude! She did. You totally missed out.
< ard > I did.
< wedge > I wrote her a check out of your checkbook, hope you don't mind.
< ard > nahh.

Happy New Year!

Made from tonight's Questionable Content. hee.

...I've Been Shot!

Week two of enforced vacation, and today's early morning activities included laundry. While waiting for the clothes to dry, I found a copy of the LA Weekly, and thought I'd scan the back for band names. The best of this particular bunch (as always, if I've repeated some we've done in the past, it's because my memory sucks and I got to find it funny all over again):

Look Daggers
Minus The Bear
Scobra
Sugar Bitch
UFO!
Uh Huh Her
The Abdomen (snrk)
The Monolators
Free Moral Agents
Rocktapussy
Whole Wheat Bread (true desperation while making sandwiches for the band)
Sasqrotch (only changing one letter! that's dedication)
Wait Think Fast
Aunt Dracula
Dental School
Spider Problem
Beatnuts
Bipolar Bear (shows that will never make it to Cartoon Network)

and winner of the gloriously long band name of the week:

And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead...

ardaniel bought me a bottle of Bookers, and I'm having a glass now. Couldn't help but give a shout out and remember a great night. :)

Yesterday fair ardaniel had to work, leaving me to my own devices for most of the day. I'd gotten a call the day before informing me of a local Obama phonebank nearby and decided what the heck, I've already given the guy $30, why not spend a few hours on the phone for him.

The signup form on the Obama website said there'd be 21 people on my shift. Oh, oh no. There were 50-60 people inside, with a dozen or two more outside waiting to sign in. Signed in, got my training on the phone system- a clever setup that allows you to use your own cell phone to get into the system- and then went and found a quite spot across from the commisary at Culver Studios to sit down, log into the system, and start taking calls from the auto-dialer. The target for the day: Missouri. Here are some highlights:

About 10 calls in I got a very stern lecture from an elderly lady about calling after 7 on a Sunday. "I'm *going* to vote for the man, but even *God* rested on Sunday!"

Another older woman (I got quite a few of those): "Well, I glad to hear you're voting for Obama, ma'am. It's going to be a tight race out there." "You're sure right about that. Missouri's full of *bigots* and *horrible people.*" "Well, all the better that you're trying to change that, ma'am!"

Between calls, I overhead the one-sided conversation of a fellow voulenteer across from me: "Well, that's great. I-- oh! Well, happy birthday in advance, then! Uh huh. Well, I'm sure you can vote *before* you go out drinking!"

"Hi, my name is Chad and I'm a voulenteer for the Barak Obama campaign. How are you doing tonight?" "...are you *real?*" "Yes sir! I assure you I am not a robot!" Sadly, it sounded like he'd had one too many political phone calls, so I didn't get to carry that one further.

"Well, I was going to vote for him, but I've had about three hundred of these calls today and it's about enough to make me vote for the other guy!" "Well, ma'am, I certainly would hate to see that happen, so here's what I'll do fo you. I've got a button I can press here that will mark you as 'Do Not Call' for us, and I'll go ahead and hit that when we're done, how'd that be?" "That would be wonderful, thanks!"

It was a pretty cool way to spend a couple hours. I wish I had more time, I could have probably gone back today and been on the phone with Florida. After a solid 90+ minutes on the phone, I had maybe 30% hang-ups, a smattering of answering machines, one guy who refused to tell me how he was going to vote, another smattering of undecideds, and a pretty wide majority of people who either were going to or had already voted for Obama.

Oh, and *one* person who was voting for McCain.

Political content and some rude language to boot, so I suppose I'll go ahead and cut it so people who want to wave off can. Nothing major, just an observation.

( Here there be dragons )