my mental sieve...
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| Evil Wayne my mental sieve... |
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Thursday, March 31, 2005 I Couldn't Have Done This If I Tried This morning I was making my lunch on the counter next to the stove. I open the cabinet directly above me to retrieve a can of V8. I do this just about every morning. With my left hand I open the door, with my right I grab the can and close the cabinet. I do this all the freaking time. But today, I'm moving fractionally faster. The corner edge of the cabinet door smacks the can. Not hard either. But it's exactly the right angle, exactly the right amount of force, exactly the weakest part of the can and the can erupts from the precision cut. V8 goes screaming across the counter, the wall, the stove. It takes a second to realize what's happening, because it's not normally part of the routine. I swear and turn a bit, the can still whizzing across the stove and I clamp my hand over the hole. Tine comes rushing over and gives that defeated oh-no sound. I dump the can into the sink and wash it off me and then clear away all the items from the counter to clean it up. The only plus is that V8 is a thick, slow moving liquid and it's landed on the tiles that line half of the kitchen so cleaning up isn't as bad as it could have been. Still, not exactly how you want to start your day. In other news, I gave up on the whole Old Skool Meeting idea. I caved and we're back at the Macaroni Grill tonight. *Sigh* I wonder if anyone would be willing to have a weekend meeting at someone's house? posted by Evil Wayne | 12:00 PM 0 comments Tuesday, March 29, 2005 Planning an Old Skool Meeting I seriously don't know what my problem is. I volunteered to take on NELUG's March meeting as well this year. Well, not so much volunteered as just sort of took it upon myself. February got a little messed up and I didn't exactly feel like I planned anything. Plus, I've been lamenting the total lack of actual Lego at the Lego meetings. It seems like the last bunch of meetings have started at the Lego store in Burlington and then we move to the MacGrill nearby. For a while there was another restaurant that had a nice cubbyhole area for the average 15+ members to sit around and bullshit and occasionally bring Lego creations. But that placed closed and the MacGrill just about sucks for an alternative. The last time they just pushed tables together in the middle of the room and it was impossible for anyone to show off any of the goods. So I thought I'd step up and suggest that we do an old skool meeting where we could go back to Waltham and the original Lego store (the Construction Site) and then over to a pub that used to have a front room. See, I said used to in that sentence. And now it's become another grand mess to figure out where to eat after the fact. There are no places for a large party to just hang out. Not without it being an ordeal. I don't want to know I have to spend freaking $25+ just to hang for an hour or two. That's stupid. And now we're down to one day, there's no way I can pull this off for Thursday. We need a house and order some fucking pizzas. posted by Evil Wayne | 10:35 PM 0 comments Friday, March 25, 2005 I Smell Like Burnt Sausage Yeah, so it's Good Friday and not being Catholic, my daughter decided to fry up some sausages this morning. And fry she did. High flame, stairing blankly at the little links in the pan. The entire downstairs now smells like lightly burned sausages. This is the kind of odor that sticks to clothing and flesh like it was put there with a hot glue gun. The kitchen--which I have to pass through to get out--had a hazy, smoggy look about it that was burnt sausage. So now the car, my cube and myself all smell like some greasy spoon restaurant. posted by Evil Wayne | 10:08 AM 0 comments Thursday, March 24, 2005 Podcasting I've been discovering the really, really new world of podcasting. And I have to say that it's very cool. I've been downloading all kinds of programs and listening to them at work. At 20 to 40 minutes each, the day just flies by. I love how amateur even the well--produced programs feel. It's like underground radio--anything goes. I've even gotten Tine to listen to a few. It's not like I'm listening to the music programs, either. It's mostly the talk formats that are interesting. Slightly voyeuristic, I guess. And it's perfect timing, I've been so down on the music I have. I'm feeling it all sucks lately and really needed something new. Instead of repeating the whole spiel regarding Adam Curry (of MTV fame) and podcasting, you can go here and see the wikpedia entry, which explains it better than I can (and lots of people have linked to for explanation, so that in-and-of-itself is trendy). I've got about a dozen subscriptions going, but here's a few of my favorite podcasts to date: Area 51 AirFerg Croncast Hometown Tales Illinoise! On the down side, because I normally mutli-task at work by churning over Brikwar stuff while doing my job; Listening to some of the podcasts has seriously diminished my Lego-half of my brain and I'm starting to feel majorly guilty over it. Work has been nuts lately and that hasn't helped, but I'll have to get a little more on-track if I want to be part of the next BrikWar game in May. But I know it's just the newness of it all. I've actually caught up on a few shows where I'll have to wait a week to get my 30 minute fix. But as I have to start spacing them out, my brain can revert a bit back to Lego. This should help—the last couple of weeks have been non-stop because everyone has like 10 shows in their archives and I've loaded up the iPod with them all. I can't get enough... Of course it's only a matter of time before I talk Tine into doing it--you know that right? posted by Evil Wayne | 12:01 PM 0 comments Monday, March 21, 2005 Saint Patrick's Day Oh, where to begin... Saturday we had the ritualistic celebration of all things Irish. Which meant the traditional drive up to my parent's home on the North Shore. There were an inordinate amount of shitty drivers on Saturday. I mean it. The ratio of Bad Driver to Good Driver was about 1:2, and probably higher in some areas. The big one was the 93-3 split in Braintree. There's always some chump that can't read the signs and suddenly realizes he's about to head to the Cape and wants to go to Boston. So he tears across three lanes of traffic to squeeze into the left lane turn offs. There were no less than four of these chumps and one fucker who had to stop in the median of the split because he couldn't get in. Of course I made the mistake of actually leaving a car length between me and the next vehicle and that was his cue to cut me off at about 70 MPH. That resulted in Horn Blast #1 (I never use my horn) and some choice words that got me a reminder from Tine there were children in present. Getting through town was pretty normal. Chump here who just wants to get a car ahead, chump there who's too busy on the cell to notice traffic bunching up. Chump there who sees I've rolled out the red carpet by leaving another car length between me and the next one. This stuff doesn't bother me that much. We decided to risk it all and take the tunnel again. We were lucky again in that it did not burst open, flooding the tube and turning us into a statistic of those Tragically Killed in Tunnel Flooding Incidents (on Fox no doubt). You probably get your actual name used in that one. TheBoy™ refused to take a nap the whole way up. Which makes him rather cranky (which got worse at the day wore on). After surviving the Third Artery, we came to light near Orient Heights were Tine tried to get TheBoy™ out of his funk. Across the street in the corner field there was a guy that we assumed was a clown. He was brightly dressed in oversized clothing of primary red and yellow. I thought it must be some kind of McDonalds' promotion. Tine turned and told TheBoy™ to look at the clown! "Hey, everyone look at the clown!" But as we drove past, it was not a clown. It was some homie dressed up in some clothes he apparently went out and actually bought somewhere. He even had what looked like a giant cartoon anchor chain around his neck. Bright red puffy pants with giagantic yellow cuffs. A red hooded sweatshirt with bright yellow sleeves. I mean, this guy wanted to look that way. Tine and I burst out in laughter to which the other kids, having headphones on, ripped them off and ask, "What? What?" This got a You snooze, you loose. Sometimes, it takes all the fun out of it to have to explain it. The day was okay. TheBoy™ finally crashed on his own around 4 PM, which let us eat in peace. Salmon flan, cabbage, corn beef, potatoes and Guinness. Tine made a cheesecake. It was supposed to be green. It wasn't. Got a little X-Box fun in the basement/bar area. Kate and I tried the Star Wars Battlefront and it kicked Jawa ass. Or I kicked Jawas ass, because that's just about all I could make it do is shoot them as they ran for cover. The one vehicle I got in, a speederbike, crashed it into the only rock within 200 miles. I can't play console games. But when the PC version comes down, it'll be on my list. Then, the one freakin' scary event happened while we were playing; kids (because there's lots of kids) were up and down the stairs. As I was trying to aim my rifle to blow away a little R2 unit, I hear the heavy thumping of someone coming down the stairs. Only it sounds like they're running and it doesn't sound normal. I turn and see two bodies pinwheeling down the stairs. I see my 2 year old niece, her arms out and her head down, like she's doing a cartwheel, but there's this confused, scared look on her face. Behind her, another small body, with blonde hair, arms out, legs pulled in, like a half cannonball. They crash into the floor before I can get there. I pick up my niece and hand her to her mother, and the other boy -my nephew- I have to bring upstairs to find a parent. They were fine (a little bruised) but it looked so freaky. The rest of the visit was pretty uneventful. On the way home, we cut through Boston again. This is less harrowing—usually. Tonight it's a whole different ballgame. First, several people don't seem to understand the whole toll booth thing on the Tobin. There are lane for FastTrack or whatever it's called and there are lane for the rest of us who still have to use cash (three freakin' dollars now). After this and a merge onto the Zakim bridge. Of course, I get the guy coming up 93 in the slow lane doing 80. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you if you think that lane is for getting there quicker? I merge and he's suddenly on my ass and he lingers there just so I know he's peeved and then a quick lane change and he's gone. In the tunnel we get a guy who can't seem to find his lane. The tunnel snakes and as I'm passing he, using my lane as a buffer. Enter Horn Blast #2 and some much choicer words than earlier today. Tine has some censored, choice words, because the whole situation makes her nervous. After the tunnel, we come upon one of those short travel busses that commute between the airport and a hotel or between Boston and Foxwoods or wherever. It's got those large tinted windows, but we can see they've got a big TV on through the glass. As we get closer, I think that it looks like a cooking show. I think I can make out a close up of some hands coming together and moving fast or something. Like they're dealing with food. I even say something, "Hey, what are they watching?" You know, because it's different, and I'm trying to draw Tine out of being uptight on the highway. As we close in on the bus and before passing it, I look over and low and behold it's not a cooking show. Through those big windows, we can make it out quite clearly. It's porn! It's a close up of a woman masturbating! A real close up. I start laughing—I think because I went out of my way to draw attention to it. I look over and Tine is laughing, but trying to hold it in. I hit the accelerator to get farther away. At least I was right about the hands. posted by Evil Wayne | 10:21 AM 0 comments Wednesday, March 16, 2005 mutherfucker I went to move a rather large manuscript to my desk; I had previously been working on it before moving to another project and had left it in two stacks across each other to denote my position. Well, I grabbed it with one hand to make room with my other and the fucker just slipped out from my grip. Not only do the 300+ pages crash onto the desk and the floor, completing a 52-card pickup maneuver, but the meaty section that doesn't hit the floor instead, collides with my mug full of tea and promptly launches it against the wall against my cube. The liquid runs down and is conveniently soaked up by the offending manuscript. Thank god I've been hording napkins over the past few weeks. So this guy's manuscript now looks like it's been fished out of the Charles. I've got it airing out about my cube. Several of the family pics are slightly wet - especially one of TheBoy that I really liked. That one got soaked and trying to mop it up, just smeared the ink. Damnit! posted by Evil Wayne | 4:18 PM 0 comments Tuesday, March 15, 2005 Not Evil Enough  Looks like I have some work ahead of me. posted by Evil Wayne | 10:15 PM 1 comments Hot Chicks Accounting HCA is back again to audit the books, taking over the library and looking good. Well not as good as years gone by actually: EvilW: Hot Chicks Accounting is back. This year? Not so hot. Steve: They were hot when I worked there... EvilW: You were drunk. Steve: What's your point? posted by Evil Wayne | 9:55 AM 0 comments Monday, March 14, 2005 Whacked I meant to post this yesterday, but I was all messed up over going to bed at four in the morning. In fact, except for finally watching that buttload of crap Mansquito and shoveling, I don't really remember a heck of a lot that happened. But I did notice that the plows had finally taken a run at our mailbox. Every year, at the start of Winter, there's a flyer telling us that the Highway Dept isn't responsible if your mailbox is destroyed by a snow plow. Yet, aside from a P.O. box, you can't get mail delivered any other way. How are those two things compatible? They didn't actually take it out this time, but our neighbors weren't so lucky. Their little gold mailbox was obvious marked for death and whacked in the early, pre-dawn hours. 
posted by Evil Wayne |
9:27 AM
0 comments Sunday, March 13, 2005 radio.blog I'm not entirely sure if it's actually a good idea, but I thought I'd try out radio.blog. A couple of songs from what I'm currently listening to, I'v put up on my playlist and you should be able to stream them from the player at the bottom of the sidebar. As you're not downloading anything (like an MP3), I think it should be okay. If it works out, I'll see about changing up what I have when I switch around my listening posts. I'm sure eating up my bandwidth is more of a problem for me than anything else. In other news, Shaun and I have started talking about this year's Halloween BrikWar game (because we're already a month behind). It's still in the early stages, but we're hoping to keep up with themes presented in The Brikington Manor Horrors from last year. I found my Call of Cthulhu RPG books and I've been trying to elaborate on the random thoughts I've been having regarding the plot. I know I've confused Shaun at least a half dozen times. I think at one point he was getting ready to tell me to take a hike over the layout size. But this year, I have access to my collection and I hope to be much more helpful than last year. I hope to have as much to do with the layout as the storyline and whatever multimedia work needs to be done. posted by Evil Wayne | 1:38 AM 0 comments Saturday, March 12, 2005 Will It Ever Stop Snowing? There's been more damned snow today. Thick and heavy shit too; although I haven't really bothered to shovel today. My mom got stuck at our house because it got bad real fast. I think it's stopped snow now... Have I mentioned how sick I am of the snow yet? posted by Evil Wayne | 10:30 PM 0 comments Wednesday, March 09, 2005 Happy Birthday Steve! Okay, so I was gonna send you some lame-o webcard, then I thought I'd find something creepy from the internet, but typing in "Happy Birthday" into Google for an image got me this, which is way better. 
posted by Evil Wayne |
4:01 PM
0 comments Snow Another 3 or so inches came down last night. Yesterday, when I left work, my car was encased in a not-so-thin layer of ice. Which would be cool if the car had fallen into a ravine and was to be unearthed 500 years from now. I mean, this layer of ice sealed all the freshness in, and kept me the hell out. Took me about 15 minutes to clear off enough of the car so I could drive it home, which wasn't much better as the roads had the same preservative layer applied to them. And my wipers suck. Why is the first place that wears out directly in front of my view? Don't tell me that's not a conspiracy. Last night, the freezing rain or ice or Three-Fifths Sign of the Apocalypse that was coming down formed a nice, solid case over the wipers that made them even less affective. I had to pull over twice just to clear them off enough to see. For long portions, I just couldn't. Which is a perfect recipe for sending my insurance premiums skyward. Snow, sleet, frozen ground and my view is like driving thru a waterfall. So this morning I had to shovel out the driveway again and Tine never backs her car in, so I had to excavate it from her ice wrap as well. And the wipers still don't work, in fact when I started them, they just stopped. Another pull-to-the-side-of-the-road-and-hope-I-don't-get-run-down moment. Ice forms under the base and has to be chiseled out. Of course it's impossible to see until you try to run the wipers. I'm so sick of snow. I am so fucking sick of shoveling it. This winter sucks. posted by Evil Wayne | 10:04 AM 0 comments Tuesday, March 08, 2005 24 WTF is up with Driscoll's daughter committing suicide? I mean, it feels like the writers decided she was a dead weight and just off'd her. Although, maybe Edgar's suspicious comment means there's more going on here. And why was Sarah so eager to front the Relieve Driscoll of Duty march? Wouldn't she benefit more if Driscoll were to stick around? Didn't she just extort a pay raise out of her? I see that it paved the way for a Michelle-Tony reunion. That ought to be fun as they work off their sexual tension with witty banter and playful looks, until she busts a cap in his ass for fun... Or maybe I'm just daydreaming again. So, now the people at the tech company went from being unwitting accomplices to outright terrorist on their own. Nice. However, it does play up the whole idea that corporate America will do just about *anything* to save it's ass. Which I would have thought wouldn't be a Pro-FOX approach to such thing, considering how buddy-buddy the seem to be with the current admin. I hope Jack puts two slugs in the back of their heads. posted by Evil Wayne | 1:29 PM 0 comments Monday, March 07, 2005 From My Kart to Yours On Saturday we played the second in our series of The Year of BrikWars, Shaun's scenario From My Kart to Yours. The plot revolved around each team building a cart that contained an item of immeasurable value - but was bascially a medieval super weapon.  Three teams, each with a kart come together at one point to duke it out. For this game I actually built a cart and we put a TekLevel 2 flamethrower on the top and had an elephant pulling. Joe and I were up against Alfred (of AlLUG fame) and Shaun as a team and DaveE and Jorge. It was a great time once again. Although I think our team took the most casualties. I think we had 2 archers left and none of my Close Combat troops ever saw any action without getting killed. It got so bad, that we had to team up with Shaun and Al just to combat DaveE and Jorge. This happened right after one of my troopers (Clara!) was killed by Al and I was denied revenge due to the alliance. But I had plans on getting some vengence before the game was over. Unfortunatley, when the time came to lop off some heads, Al got some good rolls and I got some sucky ones and my remaining Amazon Warrior Zoogby got stabbed in the back and died. Shaun's Pics AlLUG Pics Al and I drove up together to Shaun's (which is about 2 hours) and we got to talking about time and Lego. I spend too much time on the PC at home. Too many games to play here and there and that's the problem. Bascially, it came down to deciding what I really want to do. I will still play games (heck, I've got the LAN party coming up), but I've got to back off. There's just not enough time in the day for work, family, televison, PC and Lego. So, something's got to give and I've been trying to watch less TV. No repeats (which is too bad, because shows like Lost and Caravel almost require repeated viewing). But it's not enough, I have to really try to curb PC gaming a bit more. posted by Evil Wayne | 11:23 PM 0 comments Saturday, March 05, 2005 Happy Blogversary Well, it's March 5th (technically) and because I won't be home today I thought I'd make a comment on the 2nd Blogversary. It's been 2 years since I started this thing and I have to be a little impressed it hasn't completely folded in on itself by now. Of course I skip days and a lot of what I put up here is probably boring the pants of some of you (which would be cool if you were hot chicks, but considering I know it's mostly Steve, Shaun and, maybe, Mike I'm even more depressed). But at least I'm trying and it's keeping me writing at least a little bit. Which now gets me thinking about that story I was writing back in Novemeber. I still think about going back to it and I just can't seem to make myself get there, even though I have a plan. It's on my short list. *sigh* Tomorrow (today) is Shaun's big entry in the 2005: Year of BrikWars program. A big old TL2 game which I almost always suck at. But at least I managed to build a cart for the game. My Lego collection is still in a massive state of disorganization with no end in sight. That's my big goal for the Spring, to have the Lego sorted and maybe actually have something to bring to Brickfest later this year. Anyway, Happy Second Blogversary. posted by Evil Wayne | 12:55 AM 0 comments Tuesday, March 01, 2005 Dream Sequence It started in an airport. It seemed to be a warm location and I want to say Los Angeles, but I've never been there. My parents were there with me and we were in some kind of small waiting room. A cement box with a large plate glass window - we were several stories up and I could see out towards the tower center that looked like LAX (as seen on TV). The room was full of those sets of chairs that are back to back. There were no lights on in the room, only the sunshine from the window came in, casting shadows. I stood against the wall looking out the window. I'm not really sure if we were waiting to go somewhere or someone to arrive. Seems to be both at the same time. As I looked out the window, large clouds rolled in. Like in a movie, where they speed up the frame-rate and everything just billows in, taking only seconds. Even in the dream I knew this wasn't normal. People gasp and stood up to watch. A plume broke away and rushed towards the window. People screamed and ran, I turned away as it stuck the window, blowing it out into a hailstorm of tiny fragments. I don't remember if anyone was hurt by that and my parents disappeared, but I was not concerned in that way dreams rewrite what happens. I do know people who had turned away or were on the floor stood up and began looking out the shattered window. It was really quite and the clouds now were a dense fog. The color also sort of drained out of the dream. Everything tuned slightly sepia; nobody noticed but me. As a man in with a 50s style hat approached the edge of the window, there was a roar from outside. Then there was this dinosaur at the window. Only it wasn't a dinosaur. It looked like a giant velociraptor from Jurassic Park. Only it was hundreds of feet high and it was all brown (everything was a shade of brown) and it's face, when it saw the man at the window, it's face just pealed back in four corners, like a banana and these tentacles came shooting out, wrapping around the guy and yanking him out and to it, where a mass of teeth just ripped into him. Everyone screamed, people started to run, but there were more dinos suddenly at the window, tentacles whipping about and ripping people out of the room. By now, everyone seemed to be dressed like it was the 50s or maybe the 40s. Women in dresses with large hats. Men in casual suits with fedora hats. Screaming, running and dieing. I was in the back and immediately turned to the door exiting the room to the outside. As I opened the door, there was a woman, in a blue dress with white polka dots. She had had a hat, but it was torn off and her hair was a mess, a wild, crazed look in her eye. She was also about 15 feet tall. I knew, that way you know, that the fog had done something to her. She crouched down to fit in the doorway and babbled something incoherent. She wanted blood or food - whatever it was, it meant killing and eating people. I backed into the room and started to close the door, but a woman who was fleeing the dinos, rushed pass me and the 15-foot monster grabbed her and broke her body immediately. There was blood coming down her fist where she held the woman and she laughed this sort of primative-Chaka-Land-of-the-Lost laugh. I closed the door at that point, but people were still screaming and trying to get as far away from the window as possible. I turned around and they were up against the wall as long tentacles probed the room like tongues. They grabbed another guy and he went out the window. I turned back to the door and opened it again. The woman was gone. I walked outside and I was on a cement patio that was high above the airport, but I couldn't see anything through the fog. I started to make my way to the other door on the far side. Then I was in a cabin in Maine. It was fall. The leaves were all off the trees and it was cold, but not cold enough to snow. And the color was back on. We were a collection of survivors, but it was like they didn't know they were survivors. We were indoors and it was a series of cabins that had been cobbled together. There were three distinct cabins, each with a wood stove and a small kitchen. The place was crowded and beds were in every room with many people sleeping together. But nobody seemed to know there were these horrible creatures running around now. I was sitting in the center cabin, with a pot-belly stove and mattresses on the floor and one rocking chair. There was a group of girls. They were cheerleaders from a nearby school, but they had been here for awhile. As they sat and talked, one of them opened the window to cool the room down and I almost freaked. "They can smell you," I said, getting up to close the window. "They'll come if they get a whiff." The girls were pissy and indigent that I was telling them what to do. But as I closed the window that thing from Resident Evil, the one with the whip tounge came rumbling through the forest. It sniffed around the cabins on the outside and the fog came in to obscure all details. The girls were at the windows and upset, but nobody was screaming. They were just wordlessly terrified. Here it gets a little fuzzy. I know it went away, but I don't remember how. I do remember that the community grew to include a lot of kids in college. There was some frat kids who strung up a piñata and were getting drunk while trying to smash it. I got in a fight with a few of the for pissing on this girl. The odd thing is that whenever I fight in a dream, I always move in slow motion, while they move normally. I never win. But this time I hurt them plenty. They still outnumbered me, and the swarmed me when I started to interfere with the piss-fest, but I did some damage before I went down. Which is about where I woke up. Yes, I am aware that large chunks of this are reminiscent of Stephen King's novella [i]The Mist[/i]. posted by Evil Wayne | 1:49 PM 1 comments |
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