“I yam a jalapeno onna steeek.”

raininva and I went to the Virginia Beach Funny Bone to see Jeff Dunham tonight. Lots of you might have caught part of his act, because he’s been doing it for a while – I swear I saw him on “Solid Gold” once. I haven’t laughed that hard since the first time I saw Eddie Izzard do his act. The tickets were pricier than usual, so it’s good to leave feeling like we got our money’s worth.

Our oil heater, once again, isn’t working right. In what I think is an intentional snub, it’s getting air in the line and failing every time the weather gets cold out. I woke up this morning to a 50-degree house. On the bright side, I got a couple points to spend in “Driver’s Seat Replacement” today and made the skill check just fine. Rain’s Pontiac should be much more comfortable to drive, now.

A few weeks ago, I bought the first book of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy, thinking if the first one was any good, I’d buy the rest. It seems Pullman knew I would do this, because the first book isn’t a bad start at all, but the second two fall apart almost immediately. The books are being marketed to the Harry Potter crowd, but while Rowling does a fair job of writing about adult themes from an adolescent’s viewpoint, Pullman tries to stuff in philosophical observations of the nature of good and evil, the way that people’s souls change over time, and a literal war to destroy Heaven. Throw in a large cast of characters we’re given no reason to care about, and I’m reminded of Steve Martin’s line: “I’ve written a number of children’s books. Not on purpose.”

Gregory Maguire’s “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West” is a slightly better read, but only if you are willing to assume that everything you saw in the movie (I haven’t read the original books) was a propagandist’s lie. At this point in my reading, the WWW isn’t any more evil than your average misunderstood goth chick, while the Wizard is a fascist dictator bringing all the worst kinds of “progress” to Oz. If the writing wasn’t pretty decent, I think I might have moved on from this one by now… and I can’t imagine this being the Broadway musical that’s it’s been adapted into.

It’ll take a while to load, but you should watch this Flash animation. Any non-geeks on my friends list (are there any?) may understand the rest of us a little better 🙂

Speaking of web video… Rube Goldberg meets Half-Life 2 in the “Doctor Breen Butt-Kicking Machine“.

Oh, and over the course of Thursday and Friday, I put 22 hours in at work. Yeek.

Slang of the Trade

I have learned something new today.

At certain auto parts places, the phrase “sure, we have that, come on by” means, “well, we have a junkyard out back, you’re welcome to take a look”.

Bloody hell, if I have to dig through junk to find it, and wrench it out myself, I feel like I should be able to just walk off with it. Moot, though, since they didn’t even have anything close to what I needed.

P.S. If you have an over-active imagination (I do), an auto junkyard is a damn morbid place.

Eight years and (happily) counting!

Sunday night raininva and I celebrated both an early Valentine’s Day, and a late anniversary of the day we began a serious relationship. We drove out to one of Rain’s favorite restaurants as she told me about the incredible gift she’d got me that would blow me away.

Well, we got settled at the table and she presented me with my gift – the first season of Gargoyles on DVD. Now, that was certainly cool and something I’m pleased to have in my collection, but it didn’t quite measure up to the hype she’d been giving me. But I played along, and told her I was very pleased with the gift (not hard to do, since I did like it).

She said, “Yeah, I’m glad you like it; though I did get you a backup gift in case you didn’t.” And she hands me a 1 GB iPod shuffle.

iPod!

An iPod has spent quite a long stretch on my list of “things I’d like to have but I’m not holding my breath”. And I have to admit it’s keen to have a device which plays hours and hours of music on a single charge, with no moving parts besides the control switch. And it’s tiny, and weighs nothing!

A passing waitress saw me looking at The Precious and said, “You must have been a very good boy lately!”

Not really. But my sweetie loves me 🙂

*****

Rain got a nail in her Pontiac’s right rear tire Friday night, and assuming the tire was unsalvageable, we headed to Wal-Mart on Sunday afternoon for a replacement. There was a five-hour wait there! I swear, I’m going to start boycotting Wal-Marts not because of any political feeling, but because they are always overcrowded and scary. I want to start bringing a machete when I go to the Superstore down here!

So, I was about to admit defeat – Wal-Mart was impossible, and everything else was closed – when I saw a Shell station with a bunch of tires propped outside; I rolled the dice and pulled in. Turns out there was a friendly good-ol-boy in there who wasn’t even busy, and had the tire plugged and airtight in 15 minutes, and even re-inflated the spare for us. Only charged about 15 bucks, too!

Here’s some karma for you, guy. You deserve it.