2.28.2009
Overexaggeration
One of the most depressing realizations of my life is that it's not spelled 'soul mate;' it's 'sole mate.'
2.26.2009
Living 101
I have a book entitled: "101 Things To Do Before You Die."
I'm thinking of renaming it: "101 Things To Make You Feel Inadequate."
I'm thinking of renaming it: "101 Things To Make You Feel Inadequate."
2.21.2009
Getting Hot in Here (Not Really)
According to my hybrid Alarm/Thermometer, it is currently 52 degrees. Inside.
The heat isn't working, and neither my roommate Ryland nor I can figure out why. We even hit the button 'Emergency Heat.' Clearly, if was ineffective. I've taken four showers today, hot showers, to try and get warm again. I've built repeated blanket forts. Nothing really worked.
Until now: We've turned on the oven and left the door open. And heat is slowly drifting into the house. I'm working in the kitchen.
There's a palpable different between the kitchen and living room temperatures. You can feel it change the second you go through the doorway.
So now whenever I get cold I just stick my hands in the oven, into that glowing red light, like sticking my hands straight into Hell. But fuck it, at least it's warm.
Ryland and I got into an argument about it. We couldn't figure out what would be warmer. BAKE at 500 degrees or BROIL on high. We've settled on broil for now, solely because Ryland's food always gets burnt when he tries to broil it for the suggested length of time.
Typing is starting to hurt. Off to the oven!
The heat isn't working, and neither my roommate Ryland nor I can figure out why. We even hit the button 'Emergency Heat.' Clearly, if was ineffective. I've taken four showers today, hot showers, to try and get warm again. I've built repeated blanket forts. Nothing really worked.
Until now: We've turned on the oven and left the door open. And heat is slowly drifting into the house. I'm working in the kitchen.
There's a palpable different between the kitchen and living room temperatures. You can feel it change the second you go through the doorway.
So now whenever I get cold I just stick my hands in the oven, into that glowing red light, like sticking my hands straight into Hell. But fuck it, at least it's warm.
Ryland and I got into an argument about it. We couldn't figure out what would be warmer. BAKE at 500 degrees or BROIL on high. We've settled on broil for now, solely because Ryland's food always gets burnt when he tries to broil it for the suggested length of time.
Typing is starting to hurt. Off to the oven!
2.18.2009
A Gamble
For those of your who don't know, I fucking love Pinochle.
It's a fairly simple card game that looks intensely complicated, but isn't. It's played in even-numbered groups so that there are two teams playing against one another. The goal is to get as many points as possible. There are two parts.
In the first part, all the cards are dealt out evenly, save for four (typically) cards placed face-down on the table. People look for specific combinations of cards (a king in each suit, a king and queen of the same suit, etc) and each combination is assigned a point value. You then tally up how many points you have, and predict how many points you think you and your teammates will make by the end of the round. You bid on how many points you are going to make, starting at 30, the number getting higher and higher until all but one person has dropped out. The winner of the bid gets the four cards in the middle of the table to make more points. The downside: If they don't make their bid -- say, 45 points -- then they have 45 points subtracted from their total.
The second part is much simpler: each player plays one card per turn, and the idea is to lay the most powerful card and take everyone's. How this happens is not important right now. In fact, nothing about the second round is all that important.
The point is this: Pinochle is a Miller family tradition, one that I have lovingly adopted and will likely make a Adams family tradition within the decade. And what I love most is: the bidding.
It can be a huge rush, and it's very empowering. Everybody wants those four cards, and people fight for them. But it's dangerous. You have no clue if your partner is going to be able to provide you any points, so codes start to develop. Even bids mean that you have a lot of points from card-combinations. Odd bids mean you have a power hand, and can take a lot of cards in the second half of the round. Overbidding somebody by one point is barely a statement. By two? A little one. By five, a huge one. Everything takes on meaning.
And so you start messing with people. You don't have a playing hand at all, but you refuse to let your opponent get the bid for an easy 31 points... So you bid them up anyway, hoping they don't bail out. And you have to start judging. Are they the type of people who will go go go and then drop without warning, leaving you with no choice but to take a bid you can't make? Or will they hesitate, recalculate their points, and continue on slowly? Will there be signs, or not? Are they bluffing? If they are, maybe you should act like you're hesitating, to scare them out of bidding. Maybe you should drop out, even though you could easily make the bid, to stick them with it. Maybe your opponents have dropped out, it's just you and your partner bidding one another up, who has the better hand, is one of you fucking over the other?
All of this in a minute. And it's thrilling. It's playing people, watching and judging, and the satisfaction of being right is undeniable. I love bidding. The rest of the game is okay. The bidding is absolutely addictive.
That said, I went to a date auction this weekend and pulled an oopsies.
A good friend of mine came on the stage dressed as Mail-Order Bride. Bidding slowed around $55 or so, and then I started bidding, back and forth with this one guy up to $85. And then he hesitated. Maybe it wasn't real -- maybe he was calling my bluff. But I backed out, and he took her. Which was good. I did not have this money.
Another friend came out as a Cowboy. A Retarded Cowboy, to be honest, but that's a detail perhaps best left unspoken. I got really into this one, eventually standing up and screaming: $110! And then no one bid. So I ran to the last bidder, just before me, about to offer up $20 for them to outbid me again. Before I could open my wallet (but believe me, it was out), a girl in the back screamed out $120, and I sunk into my seat and vowed not to bid again. It was too dangerous.
Within five minutes, I had bought a girl for $65.
The problem was that after bidding so much higher on the others, I wasn't expecting people to drop out so soon. So I wasn't watching the signs. I was just screaming higher and higher for this girl Jacki, dressed as a blow-up doll, arms locked straight and mouth in a wide 'O,' and I got to $65, and suddenly nobody else was saying anything. Nobody. And I won a date a round of laser tag and coins to a local arcade, all in her company.
That said, I can not figure out, at all, not for the life of me, why she was sold to me for so (comparitively) little. I barely know her -- she's my friend's roommate and in the play I'm directing, but we've only had a few rehearsals together, and besides, doesn't that director/actor/casting couch aspect just make this a little more unsettling? -- but I can vouch for her. She's great-looking and funny, whip-crack funny. In fact, I'd say she's funny enough to redeem the whole entire blonde species. Yes, I say that's a fact.
Like I say, we don't know each other that well. In fact, our relationship is so slight that it's perhaps the absolute creepiest way somebody could buy a date. At least if a stranger buys you at a date auction, it's a (probably) spontaneous decision to go on a date with the pretty face on the stage, and a compliment toward your physique. If it's an acquaintance, like I am, then it probably means one of two things:
1) 'I've had my eye on you ever since I met you but doubt that you like me, so I got a date the only way I know how to: a shit ton of dollar bills.'
or 2) 'I bid by accident.'
I made the decision to let her know that the situation was a #2 situation soon after the auction ended. I wonder if this was wise. Part of me says yes, because it clears the water. Part of me also says I may have just shattered her self-esteem.
Regardless, this entire situation has got me thinking a lot about human auctions, and what separates them from prostitution and/or slavery. And outside the sexual obligation, I can come up with nothing. What it comes down to is this: I bought a woman's company the other day. May my future in the Escort Service begin.
It's a fairly simple card game that looks intensely complicated, but isn't. It's played in even-numbered groups so that there are two teams playing against one another. The goal is to get as many points as possible. There are two parts.
In the first part, all the cards are dealt out evenly, save for four (typically) cards placed face-down on the table. People look for specific combinations of cards (a king in each suit, a king and queen of the same suit, etc) and each combination is assigned a point value. You then tally up how many points you have, and predict how many points you think you and your teammates will make by the end of the round. You bid on how many points you are going to make, starting at 30, the number getting higher and higher until all but one person has dropped out. The winner of the bid gets the four cards in the middle of the table to make more points. The downside: If they don't make their bid -- say, 45 points -- then they have 45 points subtracted from their total.
The second part is much simpler: each player plays one card per turn, and the idea is to lay the most powerful card and take everyone's. How this happens is not important right now. In fact, nothing about the second round is all that important.
The point is this: Pinochle is a Miller family tradition, one that I have lovingly adopted and will likely make a Adams family tradition within the decade. And what I love most is: the bidding.
It can be a huge rush, and it's very empowering. Everybody wants those four cards, and people fight for them. But it's dangerous. You have no clue if your partner is going to be able to provide you any points, so codes start to develop. Even bids mean that you have a lot of points from card-combinations. Odd bids mean you have a power hand, and can take a lot of cards in the second half of the round. Overbidding somebody by one point is barely a statement. By two? A little one. By five, a huge one. Everything takes on meaning.
And so you start messing with people. You don't have a playing hand at all, but you refuse to let your opponent get the bid for an easy 31 points... So you bid them up anyway, hoping they don't bail out. And you have to start judging. Are they the type of people who will go go go and then drop without warning, leaving you with no choice but to take a bid you can't make? Or will they hesitate, recalculate their points, and continue on slowly? Will there be signs, or not? Are they bluffing? If they are, maybe you should act like you're hesitating, to scare them out of bidding. Maybe you should drop out, even though you could easily make the bid, to stick them with it. Maybe your opponents have dropped out, it's just you and your partner bidding one another up, who has the better hand, is one of you fucking over the other?
All of this in a minute. And it's thrilling. It's playing people, watching and judging, and the satisfaction of being right is undeniable. I love bidding. The rest of the game is okay. The bidding is absolutely addictive.
That said, I went to a date auction this weekend and pulled an oopsies.
A good friend of mine came on the stage dressed as Mail-Order Bride. Bidding slowed around $55 or so, and then I started bidding, back and forth with this one guy up to $85. And then he hesitated. Maybe it wasn't real -- maybe he was calling my bluff. But I backed out, and he took her. Which was good. I did not have this money.
Another friend came out as a Cowboy. A Retarded Cowboy, to be honest, but that's a detail perhaps best left unspoken. I got really into this one, eventually standing up and screaming: $110! And then no one bid. So I ran to the last bidder, just before me, about to offer up $20 for them to outbid me again. Before I could open my wallet (but believe me, it was out), a girl in the back screamed out $120, and I sunk into my seat and vowed not to bid again. It was too dangerous.
Within five minutes, I had bought a girl for $65.
The problem was that after bidding so much higher on the others, I wasn't expecting people to drop out so soon. So I wasn't watching the signs. I was just screaming higher and higher for this girl Jacki, dressed as a blow-up doll, arms locked straight and mouth in a wide 'O,' and I got to $65, and suddenly nobody else was saying anything. Nobody. And I won a date a round of laser tag and coins to a local arcade, all in her company.
That said, I can not figure out, at all, not for the life of me, why she was sold to me for so (comparitively) little. I barely know her -- she's my friend's roommate and in the play I'm directing, but we've only had a few rehearsals together, and besides, doesn't that director/actor/casting couch aspect just make this a little more unsettling? -- but I can vouch for her. She's great-looking and funny, whip-crack funny. In fact, I'd say she's funny enough to redeem the whole entire blonde species. Yes, I say that's a fact.
Like I say, we don't know each other that well. In fact, our relationship is so slight that it's perhaps the absolute creepiest way somebody could buy a date. At least if a stranger buys you at a date auction, it's a (probably) spontaneous decision to go on a date with the pretty face on the stage, and a compliment toward your physique. If it's an acquaintance, like I am, then it probably means one of two things:
1) 'I've had my eye on you ever since I met you but doubt that you like me, so I got a date the only way I know how to: a shit ton of dollar bills.'
or 2) 'I bid by accident.'
I made the decision to let her know that the situation was a #2 situation soon after the auction ended. I wonder if this was wise. Part of me says yes, because it clears the water. Part of me also says I may have just shattered her self-esteem.
Regardless, this entire situation has got me thinking a lot about human auctions, and what separates them from prostitution and/or slavery. And outside the sexual obligation, I can come up with nothing. What it comes down to is this: I bought a woman's company the other day. May my future in the Escort Service begin.
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