Mass Neglect

At the moment, with both Mass Effect 2 and Bioshock 2 coming out, I figured that since I’m barred from spending money on video games, that I should try and play the originals, both of which I’ve purchased at low, low discount prices from Steam over the last couple of years.

Mass Effect is a game I’ve talked a lot about with Scrapper, with it’s quick and malleable dialog structure, the game allows you to “dial-in” your dialog options, so that you get the gist of what your character is about to say, usually friendly, neutral or aggressive, along with interrogative choices (tell me more!). It works pretty well, and I have been delighted by the idea of telling my massive ginger character to be a dick to various aliens.

Hell Yes

“To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere.

Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”

Conan’s Last Night in Town

Argyle Gargoyle

Today was the first day where I had a really down day since being unemployed, I think it was a confluence of factors, topped off chiefly by the fact that last night while walking to Clever’s, I turned my ankle on a cantankerous sidewalk and fell like a big ol’ sack of poo onto my left side. My elbow and knee hurt like sons of bitches and I’m hobbling around like an old man. I am still very pissed about this.

Secondly, even though I had an interview (if only a recruiter), I came back home and instead of being able to go the gym to quiet my negative energy and let off some steam, I could only sit around and be angry about my knee and elbow hurting. So I went to bed.

At 12:30.

I woke up about a half an hour ago feeling very pissed off about the whole thing, so I figured I would blog it out and go the store so I can buy some pieces for the eventual construction of a ham sandwich. First, of course, I am going to drink some of this day old coffee.

I’m still down to just writing notes about my bikini barista killer story, for some reason my brain is recoiling at the thought of constructing an actual plot. I do have my copy of Ray Bradbury’s “Zen and the Art of Writing”  sitting in front of me, which for various reasons always helps me worry less about putting that first word to page, but it remains unopened.

Hot Toddy!

I can’t tell if Foursquare is good or bad for me, for instance going back and looking at all the random places I checked in last night (I checked in at a dry cleaners after illegally parking in their lot ) and realizing that yes I really did drink a pickled pony at a bar in Ballard. (A shot of crown royal follow by a shot of pickle juice, and it was not so bad). Some of these details would have gone unmentioned if not for foursquare. I also ended up with a Crunked badge, which is like great, even if I only had a handful of drinks spread over where I went (and none in the parking lot of the dry cleaner).

However, I’m still jealous of Troy being the mayor of his closest 7-11, while I have yet to check in at mine during the week or so I’ve been playing. I suppose the game would be nice if a lot of folks I liked to hang out were playing as well and I could see where they were at on a given evening that I might want to go out, but at the moment I’m only playing against Scrapper and Troy and most of the time I’m with one of them, so it’s really just a made drive for merit badges (A good idea we were going to use for our Seattle Breakfast Blog if it had ever gotten out of the planning stages)

In any case, I will keep on this Foursquare idea and at least try to get a couple more interesting badges.

Fahr’n auf der Autobahn

I’ve noticed that I’ve been listening to music a bit differently this week, while working I always listened to something to get into the right frame of mind. Something maybe a little more aggressive if I wanted to attack a series of tasks with some urgency, and something more mellow if I was working on something more mundane.

At the moment, I only have a few tasks per day it seems, so I’m putting on anything that strikes my fancy. I noticed I had a handful of songs by the band Live, and while they were terrible (especially The Dolphin’s Cry) they were sort of fun to try and listen to as long as I could. I’m really curious about how I got all this terrible shit, but I guess in thinking back about it, I have about 11 years worth of MP3s at this point, so there is a lot of room for change. I’ve never been one to delete, but now I’m wrestling with just why I have a Brooke’s and Dunn song on my hard drive.

No update on the job search, I’m still not even quite sure what I want to do yet. I’ve been looking at job listings and blanching a little bit, but you know, there are so many things I want to buy (like a garbage disposal), so I can’t remain unemployed forever.

I think my favorite job ever was working for my aunt as a receptionist/filing clerk, mostly because I was able to do a lot of interesting things over the course of a day. (Like buy office supplies and candy) I’m not sure how well it pays these days, but I could look into it.

-Matt

Getting Back to it

Today really has been the first day where I’ve felt completely unemployed. I woke up at 9am with nothing on my agenda but a few vague thoughts of cleaning my apartment and going to the gym. I know there are are a few other things I could be accomplishing, but unlike last month where I didn’t really have to go to work, but showed up periodically, I no longer have that option.

I’m not feeling down or anything, and have so far been able to occupy myself with various doings. I finally got Rhapsody to work on Windows 7 (I like that Real’s policy is instead of creating a patch to fix a problem, they ask you to roll back to a previous version where you are prompted to upgrade again). So now I can listen to new music and figure out things like, who the fuck is KeSha?. (Another senseless pop act, is the answer). I did, however, take a listen to an album by The xx, who I noticed were on a bunch of top 10 lists. Those guys in particular are amazing. Very down tempo, kind of a jazzy r&b, done by four 20 year old white kids from Britain.

In other news, I’m in the midst of a huge DVD ripping project as I try to eliminate DVDs from invading my house. Many of our Simpsons discs are covered in a sticky substance I can only deduce is Diet Coke, which is kind of the impetus for ripping them anyway. GW is hard on DVDs, and so I rip them, at least most of them.

I’m also working on cleaning up our MP3 library, which after finally combining our two collections, meant that we had a lot of duplicates and random crap filling up the hard drive, and like I tweeted earlier I’ve ended up with music from Timberlake and Motley Crue. I also have about 100 gigs of metal that I have not yet incorporated into the main collection. I’m trying to figure out what to do with it honestly, as I’m not sure how deep the rabbit hole goes in regards to my love of Black and Fantasy Metal.

That’s all I have for now, I was going to post a pic of my ugly mug, but my maybe later.

-Matt

Cop Out

I can’t stop thinking about the film Cop Out. In watching the trailer for the first time it looks like a movie that might appear in an episode of 30 Rock, but it’s real, the trailer doesn’t make any sense and it was directed by Kevin Smith. It boggles my mind.

Like I said in the theater, we’re gonna get drunk and watch that

But I came across another movie that has apparently started shooting called Freshman Roommates that stars Tracy Morgan, and basically marries the storyline of a Nigerian 419 scam with Coming to America (minus Eric la Salle, I guess). Basically the plot is that Tracy Morgan is somehow an African prince who goes to college. So maybe its more like Van Wilder meets Coming to America, I have no idea, but it has me thinking that maybe Tracy Morgan’s career is just following in the footsteps of his TV character, which blows my mind.

Thinking about it more, the only film career I can recall him having before the show was as Pumpkin Escobar, a union affiliated crack dealer in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (I love that movie, I mean, my computer is named Moonraper) and as a cheerleader in the  remake of The Longest Yard.

2000-2009 – A Quick Review

In trying to recap the decade that saw me graduate both college, high school and finally employment, it was actually easy to remember a few details about my new years going into 2000. It was spent at my girlfriend’s house out on Jordan Road. We watched the film “Kill the Man” starring Luke Wilson. I also remember she became quite angry at me for wondering aloud whether or not the world would end. I also do not believe I consumed any alcohol, probably the last year until 2008 that I would have a sober new year’s eve. I was 17.

Last night I stood on a roof with some fine folks I’ve spent most of the last decade with, and it was easy to appreciate the things I have in this world. It was a pretty amazing 10 years, but I’m not going to lie, I’m so over that decade.

Sorry oughts, you’re the new 90s.

Suck it.

-Matt

Trying to post a blog entry today

Man, I have certainly got some kind of mean headache today that was probably compounded by going to the casino and smelling some really weird smell near my computer that I can’t quite turn into any nouns or adjectives, but I assure you the description of the smell should contain nouns and adjectives and if I knew what they were I place them in this way:

“Man, it smells like adjective noun in here.”

Anyway, I went the casino today with my grandma and in return she gave me a bunch of amazingly awesome ‘cowboy’ shirts that belonged to my grandpa. I am very excited about wearing these shirts and telling half-true stories this holiday season.

I also started going to a gym today again, which I’m kind of excited about. Along with signing up they give you an hour with a personal trainer, and the dude was super nice and did not criticize my attempts at lunges. He told me to eat oatmeal and stretch after a workout, and took me through some things, and boy was I tired.

It smells like old towels in here. That’s the smell, I have got to get rid of it.

I was trying to come up with a list of movies that I enjoyed this year, and the only one that comes to mind is Bad Lieutenant, maybe because I saw it last, and maybe because I’m afraid most people won’t see it, but I want to say, you should see this film. It’s amazing and unhinged and weird and awesome and needs to be seen. I also quite liked Moon and probably Star Trek, so maybe its just that I didn’t see very many movies this year, I dunno. Does the first half-season of Mad Men count? I have not seen A Serious Man or Precious and probably will not before the year ends.

I finished watching the first season of Dexter yesterday, and I thought it was alright. I like the guy who plays Dexter, but I figured out the plot without really trying  too hard, and I’m not sure if its heavy-handed foreshadowing or what, but that kind of bugged me. I’m in for the second season though, I’ll probably start watching it tonight. I should probably also weigh in on the debate about Defying Gravity that is going on with some folks in this world.

I am favored slightly to win the Le Canard Non Fantasy Football Championships. This is very important to me for some reason.

Is the smell of wet towels what happens right before you have a stroke? I may be in danger here. I will let you know how it turns out.

-Matt

Listening to DragonForce

I realize that the weather is probably the most boring thing to discuss in the world, the last resort of awkward failing conversations from across this land, but I guess that’s more or less what a blog is, so we’ll go there, because GEEZ it’s cold outside.

It’s cold inside too, my kitchen definitely has a hole somewhere (I think it’s behind the stove) where warm air is making a serious prison break. As luck would have it, my kitchen does have a door, so at least I can isolate the problem a bit. My bedroom door is closed as well, so is probably 50 degrees in here right now, which is pretty toasty compared to the outside.

Today is the first day of what is basically a pre-layoff period at work. I’ll probably make a quick cameo appearance to spout off a one liner and take care of a couple lingering admin tasks, but other than that I’m not expected back until I receive the official layoff notice. I may go in a couple days anyway if it continues to get colder and I’m interested in free coffee.

I’m trying to come up with a daily routine so I don’t just hang out and play Fallout all day long, I should try and turn it into some kind of game with rules and points. I could also try and get into Foursquare, but I probably should not be trying to visit every bar and restaurant in town.

Let me know if you’re on Wave and want to brainstorm Unemployment the Game, even if, you know, you’re gainfully employed. It’ll be an RPG, so maybe your class will just have a plus for ‘waking up on time’. I have no idea, I just thought of this and it may be a terrible idea.

Now I’m listening to Dyme Def, I should probably only listen to hip-hop for the rest of the month.