T-Day 2008

Seeing as tomorrow is Thanksgiving, I figured I should write up a little how I celebrate the day. We all know Thanksgiving is the day that Christopher Columbus was thanked by the native Americans for the skanky European women be brought over on his voyage to the new world. The feast they prepared for him and his men was second to none, which was why he told George Washington to make it a national holiday.

But enough with the history, there are a few ways I celebrate thanksgiving that make it unique. First, we always fry the turkey. If you have never had fried turkey then, quite frankly, you are not American. You have to be careful when using this cooking method as it can lead to serious injuries. Here are just a few tips to remember:

- Always wear closed toe shoes. Failure to do this can, and will, lead to serious burns on your toesies. I have experienced this first hand and let me tell you a happy Thanksgiving does it not make.

- Try to avoid sticking your head in the boiling oil whilst frying. This can be very tempting due to the insanely delicious aroma it emits. I have illustrated the consequences of this action below:



As you can see, there is clearly some inherent danger involved when frying a turkey. However, the risk is well worth the reward. Add some mashed potatoes, green been casserole with bacon with some stuffing and red wine and baby you got yourself a Thanksgiving going. So try to stay safe out there tomorrow. Be sure to get super fatty! And have a happy Thanksgiving!

Options

Today is Pay Day. The happy time of the month where dollars are deposited into my account and I am free to waste them on whatever I see fit. It is at this point I must decide what to spend my monies on after paying rent, bills, etc. There are usually 3 options: booze, stock market and fancy food.

Now under the category of booze, i usually include entertainment as well since I am generally boozing whilst being entertained. I find that bar food is generally 95% fried and therefore unhealthy. The chicken basket seems to be a common theme amongst many bars, most likely due to it's ease of procurement and delicious presentation on top of french fries. I sort of went off on a tangent, didn't I....? Oh well.

Spending money in the stock market can be extremely exhilarating and suicidally frustrating at the same time. This median is what most people call "normal life" and it is encouraged. I do not recommend dumping money into individual stocks unless you can stay mentally in the swing of things when it hits the fan, much like it is now. I guess the point of this section is to tell you to stay away from stocks...because they will turn you into me. And nobody wants that.

Now the real bread and butter of where I like to spend my monies is on food. Fine food especially. I recently went on a lobster binge. Broiling and grilling and baking it. Add some broccoli with some potato salad? Man you got yourself a stew going. But I digress. I am always into trying new foods. When I was in London I had a mussel and squid pasta. Super tasty!

I really have no idea what I was trying to get at today with this post. But I'm sure if you look hard enough, you will find a deep message hidden in there. And if you figure out what that message is, please let me know. I am way too lazy to figure it out myself.

Fable 2: A Review

At the behest of my brother, I decided to pick up a copy of Fable 2 this past weekend. Having really heard nothing about it before and my brother's usual taste in games, I was skeptical of finding anything of value in this thing. Boy was I wrong. So here is my halfway through the game review.

Gameplay:
I was a bit surprised by the ease of playability of this game right out of the box. Unlike games such as Mass Effect, it assumed you had no idea how any of the controls worked and had a guiding voice to help you along the way in the early parts of the game. The use of lock-on aiming as well as free aim shooting removes unneeded frustration from those of us who are used to the point and click FPS games on the PC, one thing Mass Effect significantly lacked. I found the controls to be easily understandable within minutes. I realize this section may have turned into a Mass Effect bashing, but to be fair I was really disappointed in that game which seemed to be hyped up a lot more than Fable II.

Graphics:
Simply amazing. If you have the means to play this game in 1080p you will not be disappointed. This is virtually no static background scenery at all. The dynamic world constantly changes around you. Almost all buildings are able to be entered either peacefully or otherwise. I am really not sure how else I can put how awesome the graphics are for this game.

Story:
The story line is relatively simple, in a good way. Basically if you enjoyed how Zelda: Ocarina of Time unfolded for the Nintendo 64, you will enjoy this game. There are many side quests for you to go on along the way. And, from what I'm told, the game doesn't end when the story line does enabling you to continue to explore the world.

Other:
This game is unique (for me at least) in the sense that every action you take has either a positive or negative effect on not only you, but the people you interact with. Kill a store owner and you will become more evil and the town will suffer. Bring a bunch of warrants for criminals back to the sheriff and you will get a discount at local stores while the city prospers. Another thing to keep in mind is that this game is rated M for mature, and for good reason. It allows you to not only marry someone, it allows you to marry ANYONE, if you get my drift. Multiple partners of both genders. You can also have either protected or unprotected intercourse with them. With that in mind, this is definitely a game that should be played by adults only.

Although I have not yet completed the game, I can safely say it is one of the better titles for the Xbox 360, again, unlike Mass Effect. A must have for a person who enjoys the RPG model of gaming will surely not be disappointed.

Giant Universe

You probably already know that the universe is a big place. Simply look up at night you are are able to see hundreds of thousands of stars gracing the sky. It is also easy to forget that most of the specs of light visible to us here on earth with the naked eye are stars from our own galaxy which is one of several galaxies that inhabit our tiny region of space.

The picture above was taken from the Chanda X-Ray Observatory. The image is a picture of the universe as it existed when it was just 2 billion years old, or nearly 11 billions years ago. This is one of the deepest, and therefore oldest, images of the universe ever imaged.

Lets now try to put this image in some sort of perspective. The stars you see at night are mostly part of our galaxy, the Milky Way. The Milky Way consists of some 200 billion stars and is roughly 100,000 light years in diameter. Our nearest, large galaxy is the Andromeda Galaxy which is about 2.5 million light years away from ours. It contains about 1 trillion stars and is also about 100,000 light years in diameter. Ok so now look at the picture above again and realize that each spec of light you see is an entire galaxy, the light of which has traveled 11 billion years to reach us.

If that doesn't blow you off your ass I'm not sure what will. For more information about this image, click here. Click the image for the super large version.

Sorry for the nerdy post. I will be back to shenanigans in the future.

Veterans Day

I was going to make a post today about something else until I noticed it was Veterans' Day. So whatever pointless thing I was going to blabber on about mindlessly will have to wait until tomorrow.

I'd like to take the time now to thank all off the past and present men and women of this country's armed forces for their service. Thank you for doing what needs to be done in order to keep this country safe. Your patriotism will never be forgotten. I pray that all that who are currently on active duty around the world will stay safe and be able to see their loved ones soon. Thank you again so much for your service!

Future m1ke

Lately, I have been putting off a wide variety of tasks and assigning them to Future m1ke. Normally this works out well with Future m1ke generally taking care of business which little to no repercussions for me. He has long been one of my absolute BFF's by unselfishly lightening the very heavy load that is my life.

However, I am starting to get the feeling that Future m1ke has been sleeping around on me. Case in point: I purchased a few bar stool one day while at the Home Depot, which was lovely. Not wanting to burden Future m1ke too heavily, I put one of the stools together myself leaving the other for him. It has now been over 4 months and yet the box containing the stool remains unopened.

My only theory is that Future m1ke has been hanging out with Future Future m1ke. If this is true, steps will need to be taken to ensure that the two of them never end up together. This plan will probably include drinking less...