what i actually hear

Stop Waiters From Thieving Your Money By Kicking Their Asses

2008-05-08T14:44:00.001-07:00

I bet you all saw how to do checksum tips several months ago (I'm linking to Punny because Punny is awesome. Go read it). Something about this has always bothered me. It's not the math; I fucking love math. Whenever I walk into someone's kitchen I always count the tiles along the edges and multiply them together; I can recite a whole lot of powers of 2 in one breath; one time I got a math question wrong on a test and my teacher was so dismayed, he made everyone else answer it wrong too. Et cetera, et cetera. The point being, I love math.

However, I am also a creature of habit, and I always tip the same way: the lowest multiple of $5 that is at least 15% of the bill; 20% if the service was memorable (and I wouldn't forget a memorable service). Yes, that means I tip $5 on $20 worth of food. No checksum required. I'm not about to sit around, paranoid, clutching my bank statement in my hand, wondering if some idiot waiter decided to give themselves a cash bonus. Life's too short to think about everyone stealing from you. When it's obvious somebody's ripping you off, don't rely on some arcane formula where it's not required; this is one of the fundamental aspects of programming, to take the simplest, most elegant solution, and kick the asses of everyone who breaks your shit. Or, you know. Buys themselves a pack of smokes on your dime.

I'm Apparently Gay For Legolas

2008-05-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

1:33:07 PM Kerplunk: which motivates me to buy a gun

1:33:24 PM Kerplunk: and a bow and arrow, because i want to be like fucking legolas

1:33:58 PM Teleolurian: you want to be fucking legolamb?

1:34:18 PM Kerplunk: hes so swift and non aging

1:34:25 PM Kerplunk: maybe i dont ever want wrinkles

1:34:32 PM Teleolurian: that's what asianism is for, i'll be young forever

1:34:46 PM Kerplunk: maybe i want to hear the pain of the forest and shit

1:34:55 PM Teleolurian: only if i'm causing said pain

1:35:06 PM Teleolurian: it would be awesome to kick the shit out of a forest

1:36:19 PM Teleolurian: don't be an elfass bitch

1:36:21 PM Kerplunk: fair enough

1:36:30 PM Teleolurian: galadriel was a total wuss

1:36:42 PM Kerplunk: you're a fucking wuss

1:36:47 PM Teleolurian: i could kick an elf's ass

1:36:57 PM Kerplunk: with your inability to look at someone in the face

1:37:06 PM Kerplunk: YOU COULDNT EVEN SEE THE ELF

1:37:08 PM Teleolurian: all i have to do is threaten to piss on a mushroom or something

1:37:21 PM Teleolurian: and then, when they're crying for the mushroom, steal all their shinies

1:37:35 PM Kerplunk: yea right. legolas would stick you

1:37:43 PM Teleolurian: legolas wants to stick me anyways

Sure, The Beautiful People Get To Starve

2008-05-07T13:13:00.000-07:00

I am so horribly addicted to Hell's Kitchen it's not even funny. Well, it is funny. It's fucking hilarious. It combines two of my favorite things in life: cooking, and hatred.

I could give a shit less whether Gordon Ramsay is a good cook, because he's a totally awesome drill sergeant. He's like R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket, and all of his cooking apprentice game-show slaves are like the guy who commits suicide in the bathroom. I know it's basically The Apprentice meets Iron Chef, but the screaming! Oh, the screaming. Kurt Cobain wishes he had Ramsay's talent.

So, apparently, you get to go to Hell's Kitchen (and not even eat, if Ramsay shuts down the kitchen) by invitation only. It figures that once and one time only in my life I have a small reason to be jealous of the beautiful people. Of course, they play a role I couldn't do anyways- they actually start bitching when they've gone without food for an hour, like they didn't know that they might not get to eat. It's just a big show, people. Treat it like a third date and get a little something before you go to the main event. (If it actually is a third date, well, you'll probably need some skills to eat and masturbate at the same time).

Of course, I know nothing about how the rich pretties live. For all I know, Hell's Kitchen invites might just be a huge prank they play on each other. Oh, fa-ra-ra, I totally got you with those shitass dinner invites. I bet you didn't eat anything all night. Lucky bastards.

BOO, HONKIES

2008-05-06T16:42:00.000-07:00

Let's Hope This Primary Crap Is Finally Over

2008-05-06T15:05:00.000-07:00

I've never voted for a Democrat president, ever.

Neither have a lot of people, but apparently, people are all over the Democratic primaries this year like a buffet made entirely of sex. It's been a weird experience for me, looking at things from the blue side. Mostly, there's the bitching. You dems bitch a lot. I swear, somebody could rebuild the economy, destroy the national deficit, and shit dollars in an envelope every day to mail to every citizen of these great United States, and all you guys would do is complain about all the horses that died so those envelopes could get licked shut.

But nobody can fault you for not having candidates that at least dream of a brighter tomorrow. I'm used to voting for the side that says, "hey, the rich get richer, but if you become rich, then that's you." Of course, it seems like this year nobody really knows how to give up either. Maybe it's because the PATRIOT Act pretty much gives you the right to take pictures of all of our wives, Gone Wild, and watch them in privacy at the super secret CIA Department of Pornographic Surveillance. I mean, come on. Fringe benefits.

Maybe with the exit polls in North Carolina, Hillary will finally give up? I don't know. I haven't been on this side of the fence before. It's like the first time I did acid- the whole idea is pretty cool, but all the little things are really pissing me off.

UPDATE: Half an hour before Indiana's polls close, CNN, who apparently got slammed for being hypersupportive of Obama, shows higher percentages for Clinton than anybody anywhere is reporting. Hilarity. 63% to 37%.

UPDATE: Those >60% figures are now showing on HuffingtonPost as well. And to think I spent all this time without reading the hilariously silly liberal media sites.

My Diabolic Plot To Drink Four Beers

2008-05-05T15:53:00.000-07:00

Fancy came over on Friday with, I shit you not, FOUR huge beers from Whole Paycheck. Four large beers, thirty one dollars. It was supposed to be some really kickass gourmet beer, but it had an incredibly retarded name, like monobrow or something. You'd think there'd be a rule in the beer industry to not name your product after a genetic deficiency, but whatever. I'll still be at the store, buying Sickle Cell Anemia and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome when they hit the shelves.

Anyways, we had the brilliant idea of drinking them in order of worst rated to best rated, completely forgetting the fact that we would be way too royally smashed to even taste the last beer. By the time I was done with the last glass, I was fading in and out of consciousness, so I took a quick zone-out while Fancy fielded long-distance booty calls with diarrhea-like regularity (or so he told me when I woke up). I'd accuse him of sleeping with my girlfriend or something, but he always says he did that, so there's absolutely no point in trying to call him on it.

So anyways, he was pretty smashed near the end too, and in the process of handing his child off to a random stranger that drove near the house, he also gave away his car keys, meaning I had to drive him home. That was a challenge. There are no less than four bars on the way to his house. The next day, my head was like the talking drums of Africastralia or wherever they come from. It was literally like my brain was trying to punish me for driving Fancy home with the power of techno. Next time, he can sleep in the backyard.

The Care And Feeding Of Proles

2008-05-02T12:55:00.000-07:00

As of the time of this writing, I have two live-in poors of my very own. Fancy has one. This is your penultimate guide to maintaining their health and marketability.

1. Proles Are Not Like You: Where To Find Your Lower-Class Roommate

The proletariat can be found in many places, since in America they outnumber the typical suburbanite by about sixty trillion to one. They can even be found, with a little patience, in your own neighborhood, usually walking around and marking their territory with spray-paint cans. If you search all the graffiti-able surfaces in your neighborhood and cannot find any of their spoor (which is an anagram of poors), try putting an old piece of furniture out on the sidewalk as bait. The proletariat cannot resist free furniture, which they use to decorate their nests in order to attract a mate.

2. The Lower Class Is Not Housebroken

Not to mention nearsighted. If you do not provide proper receptacles for the endless amount of junk that your very own poors can produce, and place those receptacles right next to where they sleep, they will just throw things out of the nearest window. I am not kidding. Ever since I began keeping my little transients, my front lawn is now home to beer bottles, bolt cutters, syringes, and the occasional partially demolished automobile. The purpose of placing all this waste in plain view is part of the vagrant's evolutionary need to set borders.

3. The Derelicts Love Food

But they cannot digest most normal human foods, like vegetables, foie gras, and botox. Instead, your working-class poor will wait until night (when they are most active) and then search your pantry for low-nutrition prepared foods, leftovers, and beef. The proletariat cannot eat enough beef, preferably raw. I once took my poors to the Bonnie Springs petting zoo and showed them the longhorn cattle; they immediately jumped up in the air like in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, except instead of kicking each other's asses they fell on the cow and started taking huge bites out of it. I tried to leave them there and go back home, but the near-homeless also have the magical ability to find their way home, even if you leave them in a drug rehab center in Newfoundland, several thousand miles away from anything worth doing.

4. Transients Naturally Live In A High-Drama Environment

If you don't have cable television, especially a channel that receives WWE, then your pet proles will immediately begin making their own drama, because they cannot live without it. Drama is how the proletariat gets its exercise; without drama, proles will go into hibernation. If you visit a trailer park, you will notice how as soon as a slight disagreement is reached, the working class will emerge from its nest and begin fighting as publicly as possible. This is another reason for them putting things all over the front lawn: they will require these items as they throw them at each other. This is also why vagrants are not monogamous; although they occasionally 'marry', this is usually a means of generating more drama further down the road.

I hope you've gained some valuable insights into the workings of your very own live-in proletariat. With proper care, you can keep them from picking up horrible, life-threatening diseases, like socialism. And remember: badly-treated working poor often leave home, where they are thrown into pound-like "detention centers" and "drunk tanks". Make sure to leave them pomade, to help them grow a shiny coat. In return, your poors will give you several years of entertainment and poverty.

Standard Deviant

2008-04-30T19:40:00.000-07:00

7:35:06 PM Teleolurian Kordyne: like, if somebody gets a mean 1000 hits to a website per week with a standard deviation of 200 hits, it's only 25% likely that they'll get 1400 hits in a week

7:35:45 PM Teleolurian Kordyne: but another person with 1000 hits a week and a standard deviation of 600 hits is 50% likely to see 1400 hits in a week

7:36:36 PM SGrDDyPiMP: how do you determine standard deviation?

7:37:23 PM Teleolurian Kordyne: get the number of hits for x weeks, find the average, subtract the mean from each week's count, square the counts, add the results, divide by the number of values, sqrt the result

7:37:36 PM Teleolurian Kordyne: simple math

7:38:13 PM SGrDDyPiMP: that makes my brain hurt - which must mean you're touching yourself

Vegas Wins Subprime

2008-04-30T11:53:00.000-07:00

Congratulations, fellow gamblerholics and people who moved to Vegas to get started on your career in the adult movies: we win subprime. According to all the news numbers, Las Vegas stands at the top of the US market of housing price drops.

I remember wandering around in Phoenix's totally awesome Copper Square, which is kind of like urban shopping, except more sexlike. I walked into a pawn shop that was closing its doors and holding a huge liquidation sale. As I browsed musical instruments and shotguns, the clerk made small talk with me. And by small talk, I mean I elicited his confession that Las Vegas was totally growing faster than Phoenix. I forced him to say, "We're number two". Which made me giggle in the store, because I thought he was talking about poop.

If you drive down some random streets on the south side of Las Vegas, you'll find millions of crackerbox McMansion communities, each development of which has about two residents. All the rest of the houses are totally and completely empty, because nobody actually wants to live in Las Vegas except for meth junkies, alcoholics, and aspiring transgendereds who are also prostitutes. After the subprime crisis hit, all the construction companies went "oh noes!" and watched as their gigantic housing projects did not form Voltron, as well as not getting any residents ever.

Personally, I think the solution is simple. Every single one of those houses should be turned into one of the three things we can't seem to get enough of in the valley: convenience stores with slot machines, music venues with slot machines, and casinos with cigarette girls (slot machines optional). If there's one thing Vegas has an awful lot of, it's old people who live their entire lives in front of the spinny flashy money eaters; why not open more venues to cater to them? Just like real estate, you can never have too many places to put video poker.

Jimmy Makes My Brain Part Hurt

2008-04-29T11:59:00.000-07:00

After hanging out with some "hardcore metal guys" he says he knows, my complete and total idiot around-the-corner kind-of neighbor Jimmy Albright now believes that his soul is some sort of fungible intangible. Meaning, he's thinking of selling it. I'm completely confused as to how he thinks he will be able to remove his quintessential self from his body without, you know, dying, but he assures me that this is totally possible because of some rambling, boring story he heard while listening to Shadows Fall. I would bet you anything they sat in Jimmy's garage, smoking pot, which Jimmy calls "Gramma's Breath", while Jimmy's mother good-naturedly gave them all the sodas they could drink. Which was as many as there were.

I'm pretty sure that Metal Guy will do some darkass meaningless babble in one of those deep, gravelly, still-pretty-gay voices that everybody knows how to do from listening to Killswitch Engage and Dethklok and whatever shitass nonmusic the idiot kids listen to nowadays while thinking about how many piercings to get in their disease-encrusted man junk. They'll howl, or bark, or maybe sniff each others' butts, and then they'll tell Jimmy he is down one soul and give him an IOU for $5 scrawled on the cover of Lucifuge 10K or whatever.

As soon as he gets home, I'm gonna be all like, "Dude, Jimmy, they removed your soul all wrong. You still have some on you."

I mean, after all, if he doesn't give away his WHOLE INTERNAL BODY SPIRIT SOMA ESSENCE to the smelly dreadlock guys, I'm pretty sure I can convince him that the Better Business Bureau will totally come to his door and throw him in federal, pound-you-in-the-ass prison.

Then I will give him some chloral hydrate and deposit his sleeping ass somewhere out past Pahrump.

Stupid Horrible Sunlight

2008-04-29T10:07:00.000-07:00

Last week, the President sent me my tax return, so my fiance and I decided to go be good consumers. You know, for America. So we went out to the new Town Square shopping center by Fry's Electronics, at the south end of the Strip. Mostly so I could pick up an Airport Extreme; I need that 802.11n love, and fast.

I also made sure to stimulate the entire American economy, using trickle-down powers granted to me by the ghost of Reagan, by buying a PSP. Wow. I didn't know handheld gaming systems had such great graphics. In fact, the graphics were so hypnotic and gorgeous - as if though I were watching CGI porn made of lasers - that I completely didn't post at all yesterday, because I was swimming through a beautiful sea of joy. With a mermaid made of chocolate, who cried syrup tears of pride as I beat all PSP games ever, all at once.

419 Scams Hit Prosper

2008-04-25T15:09:00.001-07:00

Check it out while it's still running! There's a total 419 scam going on on Prosper, as someone who apparently works in the clergy claims to be bringing gold, diamonds, atom bombs, lions, tigers, and prostitutes from South Africa to the USA! Okay, just gold and diamonds. But still.

Besides the fact that the price of gold is totally fixed and there is no way this could happen, ever, that doesn't change the fact that somebody obviously thinks it can happen, and will probably privately message this upstanding church member to find out how to trade in their worthless American paper money for eternally rewarding gold. Which they will then probably craft into idols representing J-Lo.

Anyways, it's one more loan on Prosper that won't see any of my money. Even though I am going to go around the corner right now and show it to Jimmy. He'll think it's the awesomest idea ever.

Small Things

2008-04-25T13:46:00.000-07:00

The roommates have FINALLY removed their filthy stoner marijuana weed plant from my upstairs window, where it had an uptime of 2d 22h 4m 10s. In addition, after three months without ATV love, my tagged linkdump at xplor.in is back, online, where it will outlast the human race. Because I know you missed it so much. Liars.

At least Tweetcret loves me, because they're gonna use xplor.in for... something. Perhaps. I dunno. I was just pimping their site cuz they asked so nice-like.

Roommates and Buddy's Totally Awesome Window Adventure

2008-04-24T14:37:00.001-07:00

Do you see this? It's a totally awesome pot plant my ghetto roommates put RIGHT UP IN THE WINDOW WHERE EVERYBODY CAN SEE. I told them to take it out of the window yesterday, when we first found it, but it's still there. Because it's totally awesome, and therefore it has more right to be in the house than me, a completely legal immigrant from Seattle.

Why does the pot plant mock me? It's probably because, unlike all other drugs, I really hate pot. It smells disgusting and it gives me headaches. If I were Godzilla, I would lay waste to marijuana plantations with my mighty radioactive dinosaur urine, which probably kills pot.

Sweet mother of chlamydia, it's STILL THERE! I live in a nice neighborhood. Why must my roommates torture me by not moving their disgusting fishtank full of sweet reefer? Maybe nobody heard me when I complained about there being a TOTALLY FUCKING ILLEGAL PLANT sitting out in street view from the second story of my newly ghettofied, tricked-out, two story house, which is now kind of like a trailer that has a foundation!

I'm pretty sure that the Dutch invented marijuana, way back in prehistoric times, when people were just chilling out in caves and smoking whatever they found on the ground. I think it's the Dutch because the Dutch are totally fucking chill. My roommates aren't Dutch. I think they may be botanists though.

Stay tuned for more news about THE POT PLANT THAT WOULD NOT GET REMOVED, EVEN THOUGH I AM GOING TO KILL MY ROOMMATES WITH A GUN THAT SHOOTS GODZILLAS.

Recent iTunes Loves

2008-04-23T15:11:00.000-07:00

The Delgados - Witness

I seriously love the Delgados. This isn't the absolute best of their songs (Woke From Dreaming), but it is one that I just recently found in my collection, and I'm enjoying it a lot. And if you don't like Woke From Dreaming, whoever you are, you're a total cockrobber and should just turn in your headphones, now, to me. Because I keep breaking mine.

Cranes - Shining Road

Yeah, I had an annoying indie rock friend who kept talking about how superhumanly great the Cranes are. My analysis? Meh. Alison sounds like she's twelve. Seriously. But this song is good.

Denali - You File

Aww, Denali, how come you had to cease existing before I heard this song? Maybe it's because most of your other songs are just okay, or because you were eaten by vampire zombie sushi or something. Whatever. I set the CD player in my car to start on this song when I get in, so I can roll down the windows and everybody can hear what tremendously good taste in music I have.

The New Pornographers - Letter From An Occupant

You know I can't do a music post without mentioning Neko Case and her fantastic hot singing powers, which she uses to save tiny children from monsters. Neko Neko Neko. Apparently everyone in the world besides me has already heard this song, but damn it, I have a really really big music collection. I'll get through it, eventually.

Harsh Dose Of Reality

2008-04-22T08:59:00.000-07:00

teleoluriani heard she rode a horse, and then it exploded

08:53amMUUUUUUHFORDand her butt is sore and thats why she is angry?

08:53amKerplunk_secret_locationwhat?

08:53amteleolurianit reminded her of when her grandfather was in the korean war

08:54amMUUUUUUHFORDlol, drink some coffee plunk

08:54amteleolurianand he threw his body on a grenade to save his squad

08:54amteleolurianand it turned into a horse

08:54amKerplunk_secret_locationi wanna rockstar

08:54amteleolurianand then didn't explode

08:54amMUUUUUUHFORDhahaha

08:54amMUUUUUUHFORDwas he humiliated?

08:54amteleolurianno, but he was on a horse

08:54amteleolurianwhich is pretty scary

08:54amteleolurianbecause horses are scary

08:54amMUUUUUUHFORDnegative

08:55amMUUUUUUHFORDhorses are fucking awesome

08:55amteleoluriani once pet a horse and it picked me up and swung me around and threw me thirty miles

08:55amteleolurianthen it wrote me one love letter a day for ten years

08:55amteleolurian...then it died of a lung attack, which is like a heart attack but worse

08:56amteleolurianoh my gosh, how can you people stand listening to me

Salmon Eggs Are Disgusting

2008-04-21T10:10:00.000-07:00

I loves me some sushi. The same drive that leads men to consume rare steak and bloody veal insists, nay, forces me to put raw fish in my mouth. This is ten percent because I am biologically more complex and therefore superior to fish. It is also one hundred percent because raw fish is delicious, much more delicious than ordinary cooked fish. If there were some way to uncook a fish and thereby invent a process which made fish more raw, the person who invented that technology would be rich forever, because they would have unlocked the secret flavor of rainbows.

That having been said, I do not like salmon roe. At a recent get-together where there were probably a million people sitting at a table of ten, I put one salmon egg in my mouth and bit into it, hoping for the lack of taste I get from smaller roes. I did not get this lack of taste.

Instead, I got the taste of a sweaty fish orgasm in my mouth. It was horrid. It was like I'd been physically abused by some distant fish I would never be able to find and murder for the horrible thing it had done to me. It was like cheap, salmon-flavored, convenience-store wine, steeped in salt and fish kool-aid. Somewhere, there's a fish out there who owes me ten dollars. And to all the ladies: I'm sorry, baby. I didn't know.

I'm going to buy as much salmon as I can this weekend. I am going to cook it in various ways, and I am going to get twenty million percent of my US RDA of omega-7 magic acids. And I hope that somewhere in all that fish is the one that destroyed my soul. Even if I never know, it will be better for the balance of the universe if this one time I can get revenge, forever.

The Dictatorship Of Wang

2008-04-18T14:36:00.001-07:00

teleoluriansomebody's got ego problems

2:32pmteleolurianand only i'm allowed to have those

2:33pmdit's all about the wang here

2:33pmteleolurianshe has to reset up irc

2:34pmteleoluriani suppose we'd better clean up before the girls get here

2:34pmYou changed the topic to "boobs".

2:34pmteleolurianthere we are

2:34pmTopic changed to "huge boobs" by d.

2:34pmKerplunk joined the chat room.

2:34pmteleoluriancongrabulations

2:34pmdgood timing

2:34pmKerplunkWOOOOO

2:34pmKerplunk was promoted to operator by you.

2:35pmKerplunkthank you thank you

Taco Bell Submits To My Dastardly Whims

2008-04-17T09:33:00.000-07:00

Merely months after McDonalds brought back the McRib temporarily, somebody at Taco Bell corporate finally got hit by my orbital mind control lasers, because they have brought back the holy grail of taste with the Club Chalupa. But what's this? They've changed it up somewhat to appeal to discerning restauranteurs. By calling it the Bacon Chalupa. And making it out of more bacon. I'm pretty sure they're setting a trap for me, where they will lay down a trail of Chalupas in the desert in order to lure me back to their cheap condo.

Oh, I'll put up some resistance at first. I'm not the kind of girl that you can just bring home with promises of deliciousness and expect to get past fifth base. But eventually, Taco Bell will brush my hair away from my ears, and whisper to me seductively, and tell me I'm pretty. Maybe the morning after I'll feel that bitter little twang, the sickening symphony of rationality telling me it was just the heat of the moment. But then I'll be full of bacon. I'll take the top down on the way home, and the chilly morning air will follow me the whole ride.

Move Over Joe Camel

2008-04-15T13:31:00.000-07:00

I don't have a problem with sharing cigarettes, especially with friends, because friends are awesome and cigarettes were meant to be used in groups, much like needles, condoms, and lasers. Apparently, however, I am so disgustingly popular that now random people come to my desk to ask for cancer, even people who don't smoke and people who I have never seen before. I'm not actually sure all of them work at my job.

Since I like poison and hate people, I think I've got a solution to the massive financial drain of being the sole cancer provider for an entire company: I need to get sponsored by Altria. After all, they're the company who discovered that you can basically tell people to fuck off and die, over and over, and that they will pay you for it.

Basically, I think it should work like this: Altria can send me a trendy jacket, emblazoned with their logo, and fill the pockets with packs of cigarettes as well as Toblerones (the toblerones should also contain nicotine). Throughout the course of the day, I will give cigarettes to other people. I will give them cigarettes when they ask. I will give them cigarettes when I want them to shut up. Sometimes, I will give cigarettes to people as an answer to a question, and then I will contemplate the proffered cylinder as if though it holds the zenlike answer to the universe. I will also give cigarettes to children, because I believe that the children are our future and by getting all the kids addicted to cigarettes means that even after I'm dead, I will have killed them.