Crazy Lawsuit Game

- Old black lady from the TV adaptation of Stephen King's "The Stand", Gary Sinise plays Stu if you were wondering

The cats were kicked out of our room last night. Foxy first, then Leon, then Foxy again. J and I went to sleep and I dreamed that I had a motorcycle. No defining characteristics but I seemed to dream it was used. I rode to the bank on a cloudy day and while I was there, the other customers and I watched the bank get hit by 3 tornadoes, the last one ripping off a front office and some of the roof.

If you see me pull up to your bank on a motorcycle on a cloudy day, it's probably best that you get the hell out of there.

Labels: dream, motorcycle, movie

Aw yeah! Congratulations fat asses! You helped take Alabama to the #2 fattest state in the country! Yee-haw! How about another deep fried Twinkie?

Why is the South so heavy? The traditional Southern diet -- high in fat and fried food -- may be part of the answer, said Dr. William Dietz, who heads CDC's nutrition, physical activity and obesity division.

The South also has a large concentration of rural residents and black women -- two groups that tend to have higher obesity rates, he said.

Who knew the CDC was so racists? All black women are not fat and your precious stats and surveys don't give you the right to go around calling black women and rural folk fat. Besides, they're not fat, they're just big-boned. Sorry to say I'm not helping matters. I just googled a BMI calculator and I'm obese too! Oh no! Well, I do live in the South and am American so it isn't my fault! Hooray! Hehe, but isn't that what's wrong with this country in the first place? No one wants to take responsibility for their actions anymore. Well don't lump me in together with those jerks. It is 100% my fault that I'm fat. At 68 inches and 227 pounds, I had a feeling I was no Mr. Lance "Enlarged Heart" Armstrong, but I still feel pretty good. My mental health is alright (getting out of grad school would help a shit-ton). My exercise regiment is decent but obviously I might need to take up my cardio a bit. I'm slowly cutting out dairy (on a temporary basis, I'm not sure I could never eat another grilled cheese sandwich again [wait, what? holy double negative. I'm sure I will have to eat another grilled cheese sandwich again]) And that vegan cheese we bought melts like a champ but tastes like nothing. It sort of tastes like melted orange but certainly not cheese, and yes the color orange not the fruit. I drank the last of our Happy Cow whole milk last night. My meat intake has decreased. I haven't bought lunch meat in weeks. My wine intake could go up. So many freakin' studies have shown that a glass of wine a day helps in every way. That's a good idea. I'll start drinking a small amount of wine a day, in addition to everything else. The meat reduction strategy is an entire life thing but the dairy thing is just to see how I feel after 2 weeks of no dairy.

Also South Carolina is 7th on the list.

My dream last night was J and I hanging out at the Playboy Mansion during Casablanca Night. Hef was a very charming host, Holly and Bridget were funny and enchanting and I don't specifically remember Kendra but I'm sure she was around somewhere. I'm fairly certain the Captain Morgan's Rum contest to attend the Playboy Mansion's Halloween party inspired that particular dream, which reminds me, I'm off to register for Captain Morgan's contest to go to the Playboy Mansion's Halloween party. I would provide the link but I don't want to make it easy for you to enter the contest and blow my chances.

Labels: dream, vegetarian

I just finished reading #10 Bloodworld by Laurence M. Janifer from the Top 10 Most Obscure but Superb Science Fiction Novels from List Universe. We'll get to that in a second but first a story.

It's an idyllic morning in the valley. A fresh snowfall has left the surrounding mountains and valley village bathed in a quiet white blanket. Vlad asks if I know my way around my guns. Of course I do, I mutter and then explain the safety and where to insert the bullets and we shoot through a clip or two. Bah, I forgot to pack extra ammo! My house sits down in the valley about 200 feet down from where we are now. Be right back. Once in my house (which is identical to the one we lived in here) I get the bullets and start to make my way back when I get a bad feeling. Something's wrong. The lights are off and I slowly creep my way around then windows, then I see it. A massive grey wolf. Shit. It hasn't caught my scent so I follow it as it circles the house. It comes to the back where screen covers the upper half of the door. He could tear through that in a heartbeat, I think to myself. I haven't had time to reload the clips so my guns are worthless. The wolf stands up on its hindlegs, peering and sniffing through the screen door. Aaaaaaaah! I shriek hoping to scare it away so it never comes back. My scream momentarily startles the wolf and I beat it in the head with a hammer. Nothing gruesome. It's like I'm beating the animatronic wolf, The Nothing, from the Never Ending Story.

Then I switch dreams to something I can't remember.

That scream woke me up. This morning I found out it woke J up too. I don't usually talk or scream in my dreams but I guess I really wanted that wolf gone. Also only in dreams do I condone the killing of wolves by beating them. Feel free to beat all the animatronic things you want in real life. The theme park might not like it though.

So Bloodworld. It's told from the protagonist's viewpoint as he's relaying the story to inhabitants of another planet (presumably ours or one similar) about how his home world was destroyed and his customs. I suppose in 1967 it was shocking but not so much by today's standard and he spends entirely too much time convincing us that it's okay where he comes from. Gah! I believe you already, stop interrupting the story! Basically there are 2 classes of people, Lords and Ladies, and the Bound men and women. The Lords and Ladies are very polite and refined and rule their world sanely. Apparently they can only do this by ordering around the Bound and occasionally torturing them. Yeah. At one point, Jo, the main guy, gets pissed at his mom so he sets off to one of their "remand houses", goes through the formal commands, selects a Bound girl who kind of resembles her and wants "Style B" (there is a Style A but people are shocked when it's asked for so it must be really messed up), then is led to an empty metal room which contains the Bound girl who is tied up, a fire with a bucket full of tools with insulated handles over it, and a chair. He then proceeds to brand the Bound girl and then explains to the Doctors "oh you sane men" about how their medicines are advanced and they are able to heal the Bound very quickly. They take joy in the pain of the Bound. That's a few chapters in, so no big spoilers.

*Spoiler alert* Don't scroll down if you plan to read Bloodworld*









He then falls in love with Elaine, his favorite Bound girl who he never tortured, and devises a way for them to be together but can't really come up with anything, nor does it sound like he tried. There are 2 murders on their city streets, then 2 more, which is unheard of in their Lord and Lady polite society, so a bunch of his friends decide they can do a better job of keeping the city safe than the current Council, they stage a coup, it doesn't work and are banned from the city, then they burn down the city and pretty much end their entire civilization.

I guess the message is if you beat someone enough, you lose the spark and then have to beat them more and beat different important people. I don't know. I'm just glad I can move on to the next one. The List Universe recommends it to Gene Wolfe fans and according to this Wikipedia quote:

Wolfe frequently creates an unreliable narrator to tell his stories. According to Wolfe, "Real people really are unreliable narrators all the time, even if they try to be reliable narrators."[2] Sometimes this is a person who is simply naïve (Pandora by Holly Hollander, The Knight), or is not particularly intelligent (There Are Doors) or is not always truthful (The Book of the New Sun), or is suffering from serious illness (Latro in Soldier of the Mist, who forgets everything within 24 hours).

So maybe that's true if they like less than perfect narrators.

Labels: book, dream

They were just sitting around. And then J and I were walking around campus and she jumped into a moat and was being chased by swimming iguanas. This might have been a dream. She did make it out safely though.

I ran most of the 5K route from a couple years ago. The ipod helped. Or at least it did in my head. And slow Smashing Pumpkins is not good running music. Sorry Billy. But fast SP definitely is.

J and a friend from work attempted to do the 5K route that we will attempt in less than 2 weeks. They finished in 21 minutes. They also took a wrong turn because that is wicked fast.

It will be fun to run in downtown Greenville. Hopefully another warm streak will come through. The temp was in the low 60s-high 50s last night. Awesome. The radio just said that the newest cold front is coming through, so that won't last.

My parents are going back home tomorrow morning. They were here for around 3 months but it's never long enough. Yes, they're just a phone call or half day plane ride away, but a 4 hour car ride is much easier and more convenient. For Christmas Dad took Mom back to Portland, Oregon. They were missionaries out there in the late 70's and early 80's, which is why my brother and I were both born out there. So they went back and said alot had changed but it was still pretty.

It was funny. According to my father, lots of white Californians moved out of Cali and sold their modest houses for oodles of cash and could afford huge houses in Oregon, but they weren't used to having yards or anything, so it's all these McMansion subdivisions. Some friends of ours sold their 5 acre mini-farm and a develelpor put 32 houses onto that 5 acres. Yikes. Hope you like your neighbors. It used to be lots of mini-farms everywhere and now the sprawl has taken over. Our friends bought a 32 acre farm with the proceeds of their sale. He also said that there are now strip malls everywhere. So I imagine it looks like Orlando now, instead of the Pacific Northwest. I can't remember the term Fast Food Nation used, but it was the McDonalding of America, or something like that.

I realized yesterday that I haven't been using the post labels, so I'll start doing that. And once things settle down, get ready for a blog makeover. And for some old posts to go away, so save your favorites now.

Labels: 5K, dream, Mom and Dad