Arachnids: This Spider

This spider was large and mean looking. I believe it was a brown recluse. I met it a couple weeks ago in my mom's garage. I circled around the spider a couple of times, taking pictures. Several times it turned to face me, but it didn't do a very good job tracking my movements. I throw a mat on top of it and stomped it.

Recommend: If you like things that turn your flesh necrotic when they bite you, then yes by all means. In particular to this spider, it jumped about six inches in the air as the mat descended towards it, bouncing off the underside of the mat and landing directly beneath it. As far as final acts go, that one was pretty freaky so I give it a thumbs up since it managed to be creepier than your average spider.

Book : Wicked by Gregory Maguire

Wicked is the the life story of Oz's very own Wicked Witch of the West. But this is not a children's book! Example: 3-way with a Tiger, a young girl, and a homosexual male. If you plan on reading this book, I recommend you stop after the third section and read the original Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, and then continue to read the fourth section. It works out really neat that way.

Recommend? Way better than the Pink Floyd thing!

Movie : Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry potter and his friends have entered into a new age of wizarding style, very similar to the Pinball Wizard age, which came slightly before Voldemort's horrible rise to power.



This is the best movie of the four, and even though tons of events from the book were left out, if you read the book two or more times, you shouldn't have a problem following the storyline.

Recommend? Great effects, funny parts, and evilness! This one will make six year olds cry for sure!

Video Games: Civilization IV

The other night I wiped out the American's with Iroquis, using my superior riflemen and tanks to wipe out their musketeers and cannons. There is something beautiful in crushing the Spanish with the Aztecs or Egypt with the Malinese. There's also something eerie and fun about conquering the world as Russia or Germany. There's something ironic about converting your nation to Buddhism and then going on a nuclear rampage that leaves the world desolate and uninhabitable.

And its extremely addictive to do so, to discover all the beautiful perversions of the world's history that can be created. I've already spent immense amounts of time clicking at the computer, squashing cities and annihilating the wolves and bears that now populate the landscape. You never stop saying, "well I'll quite just after I build the Taj Mahal." There's always something to keep you playing just another turn, infinite excuses to shut down that part of your brain that manages your time and tells you that you need to sleep whether it be waiting to get that crucial technology or building some of the units and wonders you get from that technology or using those units or wonders to obliterate one of your opponents.

Recommend: If you like games that you play until you realize it is light outside.

Food: Golden Corral

Last night I ate:
A piece of fried chicken, a pork chop, a steak, some other steak with gravy, a piece of meatloaf, 2 servings of green beans, mashed potatoes with gravy, baked beans, corn, apple pie, apple cobbler, banana pudding, 2 cokes, and a cup of coffee.

Recommend: It was hard to walk afterwards!

Animals: Chihuahuas

A year and a half ago, I cursed chihuahuas and everything they stood for. I considered them to be yapping obstacles in the walkway of life, the type of blockade that just begs to be punted like footballs with legs into a basket full of sharks beset by bears.

However, after spending a significant amount of time with a chihuahua, I have learned that with proper raising they are little different than cats except that they don't use litter boxes and are willing to play little games of tug o war with you when they aren't curled up on a lap or in a cute little bed - see picture on the upper left.

Recommend: Look at the little face in both these shots. If you don't like what you see, than the chihuahua is not the breed of dogs for you and it is more than likely that you are not a member of the human species. If you are a member of the human species, than yes, I highly recommend.

Book : Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Published in 1900, this book is simple. And I was surprised to see how dictatorial the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion ended up being. Hell, if Kansas's prairie dogs could talk, I bet Dorothy would have requested to become High Queen Ruler over them all. Damn.

Recommend? It's a perfect book to read on the throne!

Visitors : The Murf

I had a visitor, which is rare when one is so far away. It was The Murf, and he did everything right. He brought me four 12-packs of mellow yellow, treated us to dinner (twice!) and even did the dishes while we were at work. He was also conducive to making overly long, offensive experimental country music. CONS: sometimes he was too polite. Like when he asked if he should knock on the door when he came back from the car. Was that a joke?

Recommend? Yes! If you like to have fun and make music and live a long way away, then invite The Murf! Watch out for his halloween costumes, though. They're the scariest!

Concert: Nine Inch Nails

I was going to upload pictures, but the picture function is acting funny - it makes a big gray box with a tiny version of the picture in the corner. What's up with that?

So anyway, I went to Nine Inch Nails in Nashville on Halloween and man, it rocked. Queens of the Stone Age opened for them and they were one of the better opening acts that I've seen in a while - solid rocking, no more, no less. NIN put on a really kick ass visual show, playing the first song with transparent curtains all around the stage to hold a really dense cloud of smoke that they shot strobes, spotlights, and a huge assortment of multicolored lights through. Later in the set they lowered the curtain again and projected film onto it. That was neat, cuz you could still see the band through the curtain, but the images were on top of them. Otherwise, they played an extremely heavy and aggressive set that never let up on the energy. The guitarist kept doing these crazy ninja acrobatics with his guitar, leaping all over the place and swinging the guitar wildly but somehow never missing a note.

Also, they flung about twenty mics into the crowd. The roadies were pretty impressive. I figure less than a 3 second gap between a thrown mic or a flung mic stand before a new one was up. The set itself was sweet, consisting mostly of songs from their first 3 albums, but avoiding the singles. They played a bunch of sweet songs I wouldn't have expected like "Burn," (Natural Born Killers soundtrack, "Eraser" a cool building song that they used the projecter for, and "Reptile." Also, "Terrible Lie" kicked total ass, and they added an extra verse onto Closer. Most notable as a performance, though, was "Right Where it Belongs," the last track of the latest album.

Recommend: Hells yes, provided you like violently aggressive rocking while surrounded by people in costume.