Off Night

So if you know me at all, you know that I generally play trivia on Tuesdays with a few chaps of mine. Now don't get me wrong, we are never generally the strongest team (mainly because we don't cheat). We usually finish around the middle of the pack and we have even placed second before. But last night we hit a new low. The bottom of the barrel kind of low. The kind of defeat that only the strongest can survive. I attribute this failure to many unique circumstances.

1. New waitress: The place last night was packed more than usual. Due to this, our normal waitress, Stephanie, had to work one side of the bar while this other chick worked our side. Now Stephanie knows us all quite well, ie. our names, what we like to drink, and the fact that we won't walk out on a tab which means we never have to put down plastic up front. I like to refer to this phenomenon as "walking around the metal detectors." So when we were asked what names to put tabs under and got "confused cat" looks when we ordered some of our drinks, it definitely put us off our game.

2. Pregamming: You should never, ever pregame before an event that requires you to think clearly. While it is fun to kill a few beers with friends before an event, trivia night might just be an exception. Or not. Who knows?

3. Missing team members: While I am generally the brains of the operation, there are some categories which I simply have no clue about. This is where the other people on the team usually step up and deliver. Two of of the people who play trivia with us decided to go to the Rockets game last night. This caused friction as large role gaps were present throughout the night.

These three unique events joined forces ala Captain Planet style to form a perfect storm which delivered what was our worst trivia performance ever. Well, that and an entire Meryll Streep category. I mean, come on, Meryll Streep herself couldn't have even gotten some of the questions correct.

Country Roads

Went on a mini-road trip to Austin this past weekend. I more or less took the scenic route since I was in no hurry to get where I was going. Getting out on the road again reminded me of how much I love driving. To think that I have driven some 130,000 miles in my life and yet have barely scratched the surface of the 5.7 million miles of paved roads that the United States has.

I think the main reason I enjoy road trips is seeing the diversity of landscape. Living in a huge urban environment, like Houston, you can often forget that there is so much else to see out there. On my trip to Los Angeles, I drove through dense cities, deserts, mountain forests, abandoned towns and miles and miles without even seeing another car. Singing my own renditions of Country Roads and On The Road again are also always a hit. For my money, there is simply no better way to see the country.

One of these days I hope to drive to Alaska and back. The epic trip of nearly 9,000 miles round trip would surely be the trip of all trips. I hope to find someone, someday who is crazy enough to attempt this journey with me. I'll bring tons of snacks if you're interested! A Bear Survival Kit will also be provided!

* Programming note: Be on the lookout for a "2008: A Year In Review", coming to a blog post near you in early 2009.

A/S/L?

No, I'm not trying to cyb0r with you. Today is "Cyber Monday", a term the media has coined as the day that people do tons of holiday related shopping online a la black friday style. I have a few issues with this whole idea mainly due to the fact the advertisers have shoved yet another meaningless word into my already robust vocabulary.

I just feel that there are enough BUY MORE SHIT RIGHT NOW days. We, as Americans, do not need to be told to get out and shop. We are going to do it, we promise! There is no need to create another day specifically to remind people to get out and buy more crap they don't really need. I mean, what am I going to do with another $24 egg beater or a new dinette set?

I sort of lost my train of thought. I got side tracked while wikipediaing the origins of this "holiday." I started at Black Friday and finished up at the war of 1812 before realizing that I was supposed to be blogging. My point was this, it's a dumb name for a stupid day.

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.