The Union Square Westin had HBO, so I fell asleep catching up on Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I had sacrificed, like table tennis, Las Vegas, alcohol and others before it, to finance my jobless lifestyle. Still waiting on Larry to take on airline security (especially the gate checkers I see laughing and joking amongst themselves), but one episode did feature his "racist" dog Sheriff. Now everyone knows WaWa was the OG CJK-KKK.

Is this the beginning of the end of the Holy American Empire? Or, as Republican strategists would have it, just one (fall) guy out of a job—not out a taxpayer-paid salary, mind you, just the job? It'd certainly make me feel like I lived through something if it were indeed the former.

You know how I get so riled by leftist solidarity on riot revisionism, namely the "Rodney King Rebellion"? Have had this lingering thought that if Cheney et al. are acquitted in any of these most serious investigations into their alleged wrongdoings, then there'd be similar reprisals by the America they've fleeced. Not bloody likely. You apathetic lot (myself included), you deserve all this… or should I say, League of Shadows, sign me up?

…Speaking of corporate script, the Blockbuster lady served me up another when I updated my card to rent Batman Begins with a bunch of settlement coupons. Movie might even pay for itself if I come back for the Hitchhiker's Guide within a month.

Nothing good ever happens to me in Las Vegas. I get sick on shrimp, see a lot of ass I can't have, and tend to treat money like it's meaningless: case in point, order a large fountain drink at Sbarro in the mall to escape the three-dollar vending machines, and it comes with a giant lid containing a crappy sampler disc. $3.22, including tax. No mention of the promo anywhere. The fat lady at the counter (who seemed a little slow) nicely offers to take it back, as if it's become part of the job, but I reply, "You've already poured it." CD's? Even AOL doesn't mail out those anymore.

The way I look at it, I can play WoW, solo for decent EXP, while I LFP in FFXI. (Last night during installation I got an invite to a refresher-less PT, killed three beetles in Garlaige for less than 300 experience before trekking all the way to Kuftal where after a single 5-minute-long fight, the only other Rank 10 decides to bail with the "on-call job" excuse.) I still think things look more mature in the Japanese offering, and I'll never feel as comfortable with my hands resting on a mouse and keyboard than around a controller, but I can see why this is the big winner among attention-deficits.
vs.

Well, it's final: not even Shadow of the Colossus, the much-anticipated follow-up by the creators of Ico, has managed to pique my interest. Like frog legs fried beyond re-animation. (You know what did it for me? The in-game tutor telling me to "attack it's leg to make it kneel", which not only offends me grammatically, but wasn't the correct instruction to begin with.) I'm on the verge of picking up World of Warcraft, just because some ex-LS converts asked me to join them.

White late 90's Honda Civic, California plate #4CAK961—I have this impressive memory for the insignificant: this, the car who RTB'd me last week and prompted me to consider a list. (I'd have whipped out the RAZR and made it a moblog if not for our inadequate cameraphone technology to deal with even that distance and the nighttime, not to mention the struggle to remove it from my pocket. So far I've missed the 60's Batmobile on Western and a couple of Ninjas at Weinerschnitzel because of that.) I re-considered when I remembered that episode of the Twilight Zone with that loner with the parrot who kept meticulous records of people whom he harrassed and condemned as evil, then fell victim to his own scheme to shrink them all to two feet-tall; I pictured myself in a wreck at an intersection, rear-ended in the right lane. I don't even have a parrot.

Take this as you will, but there are a lot of Black people in Memphis. They easily outnumber Whites everywhere I've been, except in the swanky offices of our multibillion-dollar developer and the photographs on the wall at the local tax bureau. (Their two receptionists were, though, too.)

So far the highlight of my business trip was finding a Nathan's Famous (oh come on, look at that hot dog favicon) in Phoenix, when I went the other way back down the whole freakin' airport looking for a second Jody Maroni's because we'd passed one getting to the gate. Humorouser and humorouser: I had to contain myself as my roommate fell asleep to the Fox News Channel… did I ever mention the time we had a luncheon and another co-worker gave me a lift to the restaurant—in a car with a "W" sticker in the rear windshield? I felt dirty getting out.

How do budgets for projects like this get approved, and my Dungeons & Dragons cartoon reunion sinks to the bottom of my blog? Honestly, I tried to follow, much less enjoy, this movie best I could—what choice did I have at 1:30am, especially with the Hitchhiker's Guide out, again—but even with my sensitivity for the genre, I still couldn't understand what happened at the end. The bad guy whose ambition to destroy the world we're reminded of in every other scene just gives up because he had a knife at his throat? Visual effects don't seem to be much of an issue any longer, but the anemic pacing (the franchise-central "party" doesn't set out until more than an hour in), wasted character development/interaction and lack of, well, novelty, make me miss oldies like Hawk the Slayer and even Krull all the more.

I'm gonna do it—I'm gonna rent the Hitchhiker's Guide on the way home. With everything in hiatus, my only other TV this weekend will be pickup and the conclusion of バツ彼, which, after 11 weeks of jack actually happening, at least isn't likely to disappoint. Funny how I gave up on the sheer outlandishness of 電車男 less than halfway into it, all the while hoping an Adams-ish turn of events, say, a freak warp hole opening up in my living room and delivering me to a life of excitement and adventure and really wild things, makes up for what is sure to come.

White House needs writers, badly.

Cartoon Network must have Katrina-like cronies (new word for the day: "Katronies") in their programming department, because they seem to change their schedule back and forth with what's on other channels—that night. I mean, it's as if, new Daily Shows this week, let's move Family Guy to 11:30 again. Speaking of which, I watched Jon Stewart for the first time since, I think, the last election. There was just something about laughing while the world went all to hell. "Oh I used to be disgusted/And now I try to be amused" …who would've thought I'd go back to being disgusted?

(Hmm, so this is what it looks like to post twice in one day.)

I don't know why, but off to lunch today I started thinking about bird flu. Right—it was because of the inordinate amount of chicken I eat out, as I actually considered ordering a beef fajita burrito at Chipotle. Anyhow, this is some scary shit, and didn't I just see the Administration bring it up as the next big thing? …What do you know, related headline on Google, and without a mismatched photo! But what's most frightening, apart from the typical oblivion of the general public, this very type of outbreak at the end of the second season in Millenium heralded the apocalypse (well, insofar as the show's writers and the audience alike were led to believe it was the end of the series).

Fucking Skype: log off and can't remember your password, and you have to register a new account because they let you without an e-mail confirmation. That's one way to boost your userbase.

Fucking RTB: I was trying to make it home on my last gallon of gas when this shithead in a Corolla cuts around me (I was stalled by that god-damned light at the school which turns yellow, even when there's no cross-traffic), then sits at the next intersection, you guessed it—in the right lane. I seriously considered getting out, as I had enough time, and beating his face in.

I was trying to find some app that'd let me capture a video clip from classic (read: funny) Simpsons ep "Dog of Death" which very much describes my reaction lately to the news out of Washington, when I came across this screenshot, anyway; here's how it works:
—Then there's the Bush administration swearing to rebuild New Orleans, whatever the cost, too—
Way more effective when you make that sound, you know, of reality ripping apart.***

***This is just as funny a picture, but I prefer to use it in the other context.

Nicholas Cage's newborn son: Kal-El. This reminds me of Jerry Seinfeld's bit about a child's career prospects when he's named Jeeves.

Must be Douglas Adams just doesn't want me to see this Hitchhiker's Guide movie, because I went to two Blockbusters (the second, minutes before midnight, I wasn't even sure was there, at an intersection I only pass everyday) and neither had one for rent, with at least three shelves of cards and their shitty "more copies" guarantee. Came back and checked the PPV lineup, as I'm not known to give up that easily. Oh well, I probably would've hated it. I hate everything.

Finished up the third D&D disc—which is my last, as I mistakenly watched them out of order. "The Day of the Dungeon Master" was the episode I remember the Jap animators going all out for a minute or so at the end, much like the Dinobot one in the post-movie season of the Transformers. Diana falls for an eighteen-year-old, so nuts to statutory. And DM calls Venger his "son" when he's beaten and spared by the gang in "The Dragons' Graveyard"; tie that to his teary-eyed Obi-Wan (whose name Eric actually uses in a joke, oh my) reference, and seems "Requiem" was a foregone conclusion.