The Rudolph Red-Nosed Rap

It is the night before Christmas, and I swear to whatever you hold holy that I'm not writing a ripoff holiday poem.  It literally is the night before Christmas.

I spent the day thusly:
- A haircut was procured, largely as a present to my mother.  I'm looking good.
- Drinks and Jenga were had/played for several hours.  My father was new to the game, but plays like a champion dick.
- Food.  Food, food, more food, then food mixed with food to make other food.
- Cleanup and drinks.
- New fleece pyjama pants (it's a tradition.  My sister is in head-to-toe reindeers.  Rudolph is her bitch.).
- Terrible tv xmas specials.

Christmas is kind of awesome this year.  Just sayin.'

Fro fro

Hello, Internet. 


It's been a while, how are you?  I'm fine, been taking exams.  Say hi to your mother for me.


I've just had the strangest dream.  At least, the end of it was something strange, that's really all I remember. Here goes:

In my high school gymnasium, and through the healing power of dodgeball:  I, a black kung-fu-master-gym-teacher just helped a flamboyantly gay kid and a little black kid with a semi-progressive physical handicap come to terms with themselves and deal with their anger at the world.

Oh, and it was 1969.  Racial overtones were definitely part of the dream.  Should have seen the afro I was rockin'.

I woke up cry-laughing because the disabled kid and I had just had a serious heart -to-heart and I, in the process of showing him the brighter side, cracked a joke about how he'd have an edge when it came to picking up girls because he was going to have wheels way before his brother and his friends.  

That's right.  In my dream, I made a wheelchair joke to a little handicapped boy.   Luckily, it went over well.

Everyone Loves Their Own Brand

My brother and I are currently involved in a heated discussion over text message (this is in and of itself rather amusing, given how many years he held out against text messaging as something completely unnecessary).  The discussion revolves around wether or not he ever locked the windows in our old Honda Accord and farted, then giggled his butt off as we attempted to vacate the premises or ventilate the area, all the while moving at highway speeds.  

He texted me to ascertain if, in fact, the car even had a master control switch for the windows.  It did.  It was a child-safety button on the driver door, grouped in with the rest of the window controls, mirror controls and door locks.  I confirmed that yes, it did have this device, and then volunteered the fact that he used to think it was hilarious to push it, break ass, and then laugh at our pitiful struggles to escape the stench.  

Not only did he deny having done this on any occasion, ever, he accused me of colluding with my younger sister to make up stories about the shit he used to do to us in his role as eldest sibling.  This, to put it mildly, blew my fragile little mind.  Him not remembering it?  That's perfectly understandable, I can see how it would be a far more memorable experience on the receiving end.  Him not being immediately proud of his cleverness?  Very unusual, to say the least.  Him actually getting angry and resentful and accusing me of taking the time to fabricate new events from our adolescence?  Twilight zone.

I don't NEED to make up stuff like this.  We were all clever children and had a relatively normal sibling dynamic, ergo, we often used each other as sources of amusement.  

So odd.

Badger Burgers (Mushroom Mushroom)

While perusing the Internet recently, I came across an interesting recipe for burgers.  Interesting, yes, but not quite interesting enough.  I took it and ran.  The result was Badger Burgers.  Makes 8 patties.

0.5 kg Ground Bison

0.5 kg Ground Turkey thigh

4 strips of bacon

2 tsp fresh rosemary

2 tsp fresh sage

2 tsp fresh oregano

1 tsp salt

8 Portobello mushroom caps

Olive oil

Pretty simple.  Mix the meat and herbs, form into patties, cook with grilling method of choice.  There being a blizzard outside, I used my George Foreman Grill. 

Brush the mushroom caps with olive oil, maybe a little salt (or garlic salt... next time).  Again, grill using method of choice.

Stick it on a bun with some greenery.  Bam.  

BurgerTime (tm)

Goddamn, I want a hamburger.  

I've been living gluten free for two years now, give or take a few months in either direction.  This is a necessary thing.  When you put wheat gluten, or that of barley and rye (and to a lesser extent, oats) in my body, a curious thing happens:  I get dumb.  Very dumb.  I lose access to my long term memory, have a difficult time processing new information, my reflexes slow dramatically and, perhaps most oddly, my eyes stop tearing.  This lasts for anywhere from two hours to a day.  Somewhere in the nature of 7% of celiacs suffer these same symptoms, rather than get "the poops."  While I have yet to be formally diagnosed as such, I have reproduced these symptoms often enough that it simply makes sense to behave as if I were a celiac.

This has further necessitated a radical alteration of my diet.  I know, I'm only removing one foodstuff; you wouldn't think that would be so complicated, yet...  Everything deep-fried is breaded.  Candy manufacturers dust rollers with wheat flour to prevent sticking of products, particularly chocolate.  Restaurants thicken their soups with flour.  Most pernicious is modified corn starch, which is a ubiquitous thickener of sauces, yogurts, creams, and everything low fat.  Modified cornstarch is not always, but usually, modified in such a way that includes the addition of wheat gluten.  This prompts a less severe response from my body, but it's there all the same.  

What this means for me is that it is very difficult to eat at restaurants, and that certain things are off limits unless I make them myself, or feel willing to pay three or four times as much for an equivalent product that lacks the offending ingredients.  The first two months of this were pure torture.  Constant food cravings, watching my friends eat things I loved, never really feeling full, and a significant lack of convenience.   These feelings have largely subsided, as one should logically expect.  However, I do occasionally keenly miss certain items of food, most notably variations on the sandwich.  

Yes, I know that gluten free bread abounds in variety at health and organic food stores, and even to a lesser extent at mainstream supermarkets; but this bread is expensive and, quite frankly, a poor facsimile.  It is brittle and usually of lesser dimensions, making for smaller and harder to eat items that are, because of these traits, generally less enjoyable.  These facts make it much easier to cut wheat and its related cultivars out of my life entirely, though I must admit that the temptation to eat what I want and just be stupid for a day rears its head every so often.

Today is one of those days.  I will not succumb, but I sharply crave a hamburger.  Specifically, I am craving a Wendy's classic triple, an Everest-like mountain of beef and bread.  I want to make a base camp in the lee of the second patty, and would risk losing a few other climbers on the way to the top.  Luckily for me, there's a 3g network there now, so if things get to hairy we can call for help.  

Or fries.  

May the Schwartz be with you

Note to self: There's always time for lubrication.
She Wore An: Itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow-polka dot bikini.
Music: House of Pain - Jump Around
Mood: Yes. I.  Did.

Could not sleep last night.  Ordinarily, that would be annoying, even troubling.  Not last night.  I grabbed a book, made a martini and sipped and read until about four.  Woke up slightly tired four hours later, but feeling like a champion.  Oh.  Not some syrupy chick-tini.  Vodka Martini.  Although, the "Bond, James Bond"-ness of the experience was marred somewhat by our lack of olives.  I substituted a pickle instead, way more phallic.

*    *    *

We here at Aperture Science wish you a lovely die.  Day.  Did I say die?  How completely non-Freudian of me.

*    *    *

Surface tension affects mayonnaise emulsion.

*    *    *

That door is still there.  What has been seen cannot be unseen.

*    *    *

There are a bunch of chairs moving in the room next to mine.  It sounds oddly like a lightsaber battle and now I am thoroughly distracted.  Vmmmm.  Vmmmm.  Voo, twang, kirsch, kirsch, vum, kwash, I am your father, Nooooo that's impossible!  Messy bitch you are.  Choo-choo, choo-choo, WAAAAAAOWW.

*    *    *

I think my fluids prof is losing heart as lecture attendance drops off.  It's just the middle of the term, man, not your fault!  I want to give him a hug.

*    *    *

Suddenly, I want a fish taco.  All innuendo aside, that would be awesome.

I'm on the hunt, I'm after you.

Mood:   Phernerminal

Music:   Reel Big Fish - hungry like the wolf

Hair:   In my eyes like a highland steer.

Note to self:   Sex with blow-up doll not as good as advertised.

Productivity:   Is a smurf.

All the lights were green; I'm actually wearing a sock over my entire left foot (kind of a big deal, boy-I-tell-you-what); a cute girl in class laughed a little too much at a joke that didn't deserve it and then smiled at me, if she's actually older than The Lion King, maybe I'll pursue.  Simba.... *smear*.  

*    *    *

After classes in this room spread out over five years, minus two consecutive years of medical hiatus, I have just now noticed that there is a door tucked behind the screen for the overhead/projector.  Five.  Years.  In my defence, it is only this year that I have begun sitting immediately opposite the screen, as opposed to middle-rear of the room, and there is usually a media cart occupying the space directly in front of the screen, obscuring my vision.

*    *    *

Engagement rings are like "dibs."

*    *    *

Christ evenly distributed on a platter of crackers, my thermodynamics professor is funny today.  He's cracked five or six actual, chuckle-worthy, jokes.  And then he moved our midterm back two weeks.   He's doped up or dying or something.

*    *    *

Jack's sundae shack, you want nuts with that?

Just... wow.

A friend of mine who runs a home for troubled teenage girls just rainchecked me on supper plans because she needed to rush back to the house to take care of a crisis.

Naturally, being a bit of an ass, I replied, "They'd better be knife fighting over cheez whiz, but okay. THIS TIME."

To which she responded, "You're actually closer than you'd think. More like pistol whipping with a BB gun over bagels and shampoo."

Me: "Christnuggets. That's just as ludicrous as what I proposed. Have fun with that."

Her: "I love my job. Endless entertainment."

Butt out, baby.

Just had an interesting conversation with my roommate about smoking coming full circle - from cool to uncool (even disgusting) to kind of cool again.  I'm not sure how widespread that attitude is, but in our little city, it definitely seems to be happening.  I think that, here, it's because of a legislation that passed some time ago, banning smoking in any public building.

 Now that it's not in your face all of the time, literally, the acquired dislike that my contemporaries found concerning smoking has not been picked up by the new breed.  Such is my surmise.

Before the ban, when you went out for a night of drinking, to say nothing of being in a restaurant, you came back saturated, inundated, permeated, perforated with essence of smoke and sweat.  The clothes that you wore last night could not in any way be considered being worn again.  They were disgusting, they reeked.  There was a palpable aura of filth to them.  When you stepped into the shower, the moment the water hit your hair, you had to pray your stomach would handle the smell, because fuck. I mean, fuck.

When the ban was upcoming, people bitched.  People moaned, whined, cried, wailed and railed against the "injustice" of it all.  Even I thought it was needless establishment meddling.  Bar owners thought it would destroy their business.  Personally, I wondered how Bingo halls would survive, since, having worked several bingos in high school while raising money for our football team, I learned that a Bingo hall was secondhand smoke.  You went to a Bingo hall to sit, and smoke, and maybe, maybe win some money.  Mostly the first two.

 But that first night back from pubs, clubs and bars, no one complained.  Our hangovers were so less, and we smelled so much better, that the "inconvenience" of having to go outside to smoke paled by comparison.  All of my smoker friends agreed.  They also found that being limited to a small area outside while smoking made them a lot of new friends.

Bars lost no business.  In fact, business picked up.

The only thing I regretted about the smoking ban was the closure of a really cool little cigar bar some friends had introduced me to, only months before.  We'd made the decision to cultivate properly adult, properly refined vices.  Scotch, cigars, port, all that shit.  And so, they took me to this twenty-by-twenty, one room bar in one of the hotels here in town.  We dressed up a little, and enjoyed the hell out of ourselves.  But this was an enclosed room with amazing ventilation, built for the express purpose of enjoying a cigar.  And sadly, it had to close.  No loophole could be built into a legislation that banned smoking indoors, or everyone would take advantage of it.

I still think cigarettes are unappealing, though.  In fact, that's one of my personal dating rules - no smokers.  I don't like the smell, I don't like the taste in someone's mouth, and the money could be better wasted, if not better spent.

The Rules: Installment #1

Let us now discuss The Rules.

The Rules are not a system to pick up women. The Rules are not a system to pick up men. The Rules are simply what a referee would use when assigning penalties in the game of love. This is the first installment, more to follow as I think of them.

In no particular order:

Asking out someone at their job:

It shall be considered bad form for a man to ask any woman in a service industry job for her phone number. It is her job to be charming and friendly, the odds are not in your favour, son.

If said woman is interested in you, it shall hereby be the accepted practice for her to write her phone number on your receipt or a business card, preferably with a little heart somewhere. If you are married or have a girlfriend and this happens, it shall be accepted practice for you to feel a little flattered, not to call, and keep it to your fucking self. Your wife or girlfriend will not be impressed that the cute waitress gave you her number.

The corollary is true concerning women asking out male employees: go right ahead, it doesn't happen as often to us. Men shouldn't randomly hand out their phone numbers, like asking out your waitress, the number usually comes across as creepy. If you're the kind of guy that she's going to be hoping for a number from, you're probably not the kind of guy who needs this advice, gnome sayne?

This definitely also applies to receptionists.

The End of Date kiss:

Men, if she hasn't laughed at a joke all night; has been texting the whole time; or pulled her hand away when you tried to hold it - don't move in for the kiss, dumbass. She's not interested and you'll look like a tool. And not a manly tool, like a pneumatic torque wrench, no, you'll look more like an eggcup. Who needs an egg cup, really?

Ladies. The date was fun, but it's just not there for you? It shall henceforth be the policy to offer a preemptive handshake. Men are often bad at picking up subtle clues, woman are often bad at giving subtle clues, no matter what either gender thinks of their respective skills. The handshake will be the accepted way to end the date without drawing out the awkward kiss attempt.

Further, if you do not like to kiss on the first date, but wish to see someone again, be clear about both things.

How to handle an unwanted suitor:

Let's be honest, this mostly applies for women, although I've had to deal with this a time or two myself.

Be blunt, and be blunt soon.

If someone is asking you out and you feel no attraction to them whatsoever (to say nothing of revulsion, which is also completely relevant here), most people will try to let them down easy, so as to avoid bruising feelings. Most of the time, this will be enough. A second attempt by the same suitor must be crushed decisively.

You read that right: crushed.

Any repeated attempt must be answered in a clear, concise and brutally honest manner. Do not waver, do not let them down easy, and do not, under any circumstances, offer excuses for specific evenings or events or end your explanation with the words, "right now." Either of these infractions will leave your pursuer with some fucking hope, keeping them coming back for more.

You are not "being mean." You are saving yourself untold amounts of annoyance and avoiding a potentially major scene down the road.