Diary of a Wolfeman

So I’m heading home from the store and turn off Broadway onto 7th only to discover that some asshat on a bicycle is in the exact center of the lane going slightly faster than a walk. I slow down from 20 mph, but end up getting a little close to him, at which point he glances back as if he’s trying to intimidate me into backing off. Instead of coming to a complete stop in the middle of the road to let him pull away, I coast along about 5 feet behind him as he continues down the center of the lane until he finally gets around some parked cars. As you can imagine, I applied perhaps more acceleration than strictly necessary as I pulled around him, but I gave him plenty of room.

Cue puzzlement as this guy hunkers down to catch up with me, and then turns after me onto my street and into my gorram driveway. When I get out of the car and give him my best “have you really thought about what you’ve just done?” looks, he says “I think you were a little close.”

Me: “Yep. And you were in the exact center of the lane, instead of off to the side like you’re supposed to be. The law clearly states that you do not get the use of the full lane, you must stay off to the side.”

Him: *shrug*, looks away like he’s been busted.

Me: “I see about 20 of you guys a day, and not a single one of you ever rides the way you’re supposed to, and it makes me mad. And now you’re at my house.”

Him: “I didn’t come here to have a confrontational conversation about this.”

Me: “You followed me. To. My. House.”

Him: “So you would like me to leave.”

Me: “Yes, I would prefer it if you left.”

Him: “And you don’t want to have a conversation about this.”

Me: “No, I do not want to have a conversation about this.”

He looks at me, I push the button to close the garage and he rides off.

What. The. Fuck.

If you’re going to chase someone down, don’t try to have a conversation with him, you’re not going to get anywhere. You gotta jump right in there and get confrontational. Get off the bike, rip your helmet off and glare a bit – you sit there on the bike and then look slightly sheepish when I call you on your own errors and you completely lose any position of strength you may have had.

This is why hippies and Save-The-Earthers will never get anywhere – they just don’t know how to start a fight.

Assholes of the world, rejoice! Our Loudest Voice and Champion Ranter is back – Frizzen Sparks is back online!

Somehow I just knew that having a Democrat back in the White House would drag him out from whatever hole he had fallen in :)

Good to have ya back Grau, we missed ya. Of course, this close to Zombie Awareness Day, are we sure you’re really alive?

So the past couple of days Da Roomie and I have been knocked out of bed at un-$diety-like hours by the damn smoke alarms. We changed the batteries in all of them not too many months ago, and it wasn’t the ‘change-my-battery’ chirp anyway. After some research, Greyduck recommended we change the batteries again (just ‘cuz) and hit ’em with some compressed air to knock any dust out of ’em. Not a bad idea.

So, we pop the one in my room off the ceiling first, and what do we find? About 30 freakin’ ANTS crawling all over the damn thing.

O.o …

I’d scream too, I guess.

Sometimes you forget about the little things.

That seems to be the general message at Kell’s. Little things matter, and they have forgotten the little things that turn a good pub into a Great Pub. Little things like a windbreak just inside the door, so a cold breeze doesn’t wash through the entire bar every time the door is opened. Things like conversation – which was impossible with the sheer din of music, people and tv’s. (Part of this is due to the flat ceiling that they stick your $1.50 to, but still).

Lastly, they forgot what good service is like. This was the first time in a couple years that Tolerant and I have

both

gotten to the bottom of our glasses without a wait-staffer even raising an eyebrow in our direction. I had the frickin’ curry fer chrissakes, and I would have had to actively seek the attention of our server to get a refill.

That’ll teach me for thinking an Irish curry wouldn’t be too hot for the Gringo.

All in all, Tolerant and I were both disappointed and give the place a C at best. Too many years catering to the yuppies and hipsters Downtown, I guess.

Here’s a bit of silliness for you: a music meme.

IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?
So, here’s how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing (feel free to annotate, since snarky commentary is half the fun)
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend that you’re cool…

Okay, that doesn’t really make any sense – why would I put the player on random for this? If my life had a soundtrack, I’d want it planned out properly! The soundtrack is a vital component to the situation. Nobody gets naughty with J-Pop in the background, it just ain’t done!

So I’ll compromise and do this both ways – the first song will be the random one, and then I’ll put what it should have been. For the sake of limitation, I will only use my personal collection.

Opening credits: “Kiss me, I’m shit-faced” by the Dropkick Murphys. Not exactly what I would have chosen, that’s for sure. This might not be too bad as an ending credits cut though…

My choice: “Tank!” by The Seatbelts (Cowboy Bebop OST). It worked for Bebop, it should work for me too.

Waking up: “Beautiful World” by Devo. Not a bad choice, actually. Unless, of course, you happen to wake up hating the universe.

My choice: Something that starts out slow and then builds up, like “Burn Up” by Siouxsie & The Banshees.

First day of school: “Fascination” by The Human League. I wouldn’t have picked this originally, but now that I listen to it in that context, it makes an okay choice. Of course, it’s really all about the next scene though.

My choice: “No Spill Blood” by Oingo Boingo. Children are animals.

Falling in love: “No One Lives Forever” by Oingo Boingo. Huh. My randomizer is trying to tell me that love kills. Bullshit.

(Then again, Tolerant got me a set of glasses that say “Love Kills Slowly”, so maybe I should think about this…)

My choice: “Jane’s Getting Serious” by John Astley. The tale of a guy realizing he’s falling in love with his best friend – just the way it should be.

Love scene: “Digging My Potato” by The Seatbelts (Cowboy Bebop OST) It’s an instrumental bit, but slightly whimsical so maybe not the best fit.

My choice: “Nights In White Satin” by the Moody Blues. Duh.

Breaking up: “Good Ol’ Fashioned Lover Boy” by Queen……. No.

My choice: “Ball and Chain” by Social Distortion

Life is good: “Red Barchetta” by Rush. Pretty good choice – the tale of a young man evading the cops and having fun driving. I’ll leave this one be.

Mental Breakdown: “That Day” by Poe. Yeah, this one fits here.

My choice: “Insanity” by Oingo Boingo. Kinda obvious.

Driving: “Speed Freak (Moby Remix)” by Orbital. Too many interruptions in the flow, sounds more like I’m in Downtown traffic.

My choice: “7 Minutes” by The Seatbelts is just that – 7 minutes of movie car-chase music, with a 30-second interlude for the “oh no! I’m caught but I get away!” bit.

Flashback: “Come Around Again” by Jet. Score one for the randomizer.

Getting back together: “Shock to the System” by Billy Idol. Not really feelin it with this track.

My choice: “Hey Jealousy” by the Gin Blossoms. That track was on heavy rotation back when I was on-and-off with Twiggy.

Wedding: “Travels in Nihlon” by XTC. Great track, REALLY does not fit here. This would be good for mental breakdown or maybe as a lead-up to the final battle.

My choice: the song we played at my wedding: “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica. Why? Because it’s a waltz!

Birth of Child: “Fantasie Sign” by The Seatbelts. The lyrics are French, so no clue.

My choice: What’s the name of the song they play whenever the spawn of Satan crawls out of the sacrifice in the horror movies?…

Final Battle: “Just a Little” by Used. Nah, not a fit.

My choice: “One Little Victory” by Rush. The drumline alone should get your through the fight.

Death Scene: “Bastards on Parade” by the Dropkick Murphys. This one would have been better earlier on – the song asks for a second chance not just for the singer, but for all those like him.

My choice: “No One Lives Forever” by Oingo Boingo.

Funeral song: “Subdivisions” by Rush. This would have been a good choice for first day of school.

My choice: “We Are The Champions” by Queen.

End Credits: “Strutter” by The Donnas. Heh.

My choice: “The Real Folk Blues” by The Seatbelts. If we opened with bebop, might as well close with it…

And there ya have it folks – enjoy. My typo percentages have tripled, so it must be time for bed.

Just a couple blocks South of MFP, the East Bank Saloon can be found on the West side of Grand at #727 – just North of the Morrison bridge, so parking sucks out loud. You’ll probably end up walking a block or two, and it’s that long stretch between crosswalks so transit-users may walk even farther.

I’ve driven by the place three days a week for years now and it wasn’t until Friday that Tolerant and I finally decided to swing in. The decor is very nice – brick and wood, and the ceiling is painted a lighter color so the room doesn’t seem as dark. There are a pair of bookshelves on the North wall stocked mostly with filler (old encyclopedias and the like that look good together, ya know?) but there are a few gems in there – like an actual Settlers of Catan box! I’ll have to bring the boys here sometime…

I’ve seen other reviews call the place a dive, but it isn’t – it’s a sports bar more than anything, but also has a very restaraunty-feel to it. The food was good, and had a few gems in the menu – I had the Hawai’ian Burger, and Tolerant had her usual fish and chips. One of the best parts though, was finding tater tots on the menu! Both meals were tasty and too much food, so the price (more in line with a McMen’s) wasn’t so bad.

Service was good, but I was a little disappointed to see dreadlocks on our waitress. I know that it is perfectly possible to wash dreads and keep them clean, but they have always struck me as messy and unkempt, and I can’t for the life of me understand why any self-respecting girl would deliberately do that to herself.

Overall I’ll give the Saloon a ‘B’.

Wow, I just realized that the whole pubcrawl theme pretty much derailed after one review – we’ll have to fix that. I really could have sworn I’d reviewed this place before.

The Moon and Sixpence is a nice little English pub at 2014 NE 42nd in the Hollywood district (just ’round the corner from Sam’s Billiards). Parking is a crap-shoot, as there is only on-street, and it fills up fast. Inside you’ll find lots of wood and a fairly dark interior, but there is a fair amount of seating between the tables, chairs and pews. (Tolerant keeps wondering which church they lfted those from).

For the beer snobs out there, they carry quite a selection from all over – it will take a while to dig through the list. For the hungry, the list isn’t as long but you’ll find items listed here that you won’t have seen anywhere else. Cottage pie may be common (and usually known as shepherds pie) but the pasties were new to me and the idea of a pear salad was too. Sometime this summer I’ll have to go back and try the ploughman’s platter – sometime when I don’t want hot food.

The fish & chips are traditionally made and served – most of a fish dipped in batter and fried up with chips, here have some tartar and malt vinegar. Hot, not too oily, and a nice flavor to both fish and batter. I can also attest to the cottage pie and pasties being damn tasty. For those not wanting to try something new, the roast chicken is pretty normal.

Service is just attentive enough – the waitresses are apparently trained in being relaxed and showing up just when you were about to go looking for them, but in the good way. You know, you’re just getting to the bottom of your drink and you’re thinking ‘should I get up and go order another’ when the waitress pops ’round.

The ‘Pence is currently Tolerant’s favorite, so we’ll give it a ‘B’ leaning towards an ‘A’.

I know, I know, there’s only so much of this crap you can read. I’m almost through this.

(Over a month now since I stopped smoking, and almost a week since I stopped nicotine patches…)

Anyhow, I did most of my blogging (both the reading and the writing) from my desk down in the garage where I could smoke. Now that I don’t smoke, not only am I not down there, I’m also not using the laptop very much, and that was the blogging tool, so I’ve been falling behind on everything. So, some updates:

My health: I’m getting fatter, and find myself eating for no reason. This sucks.

Windows 7 Beta: still using it, still okay with it.

D&D: running Da Boys through the Scales of War campaign, currently about halfway through Rescue at Rivenroar and I haven’t killed them yet. I’m proud of this part, they didn’t bring a Cleric with them. They opted for “do lots of damage fast” instead of sitting there and taking it.

Leatherwork: finished the bracers for J and D’s X-mas gifts, need to post some pretty pictures.

And… that’s about it. Oh – Tolerant is still (and even more so) the World’s Best Girlfriend.

Speaking of upgrading computers, I thought I had blurbed about this but I guess not. On a whim the other day I downloaded and installed the Windows 7 Beta.

I went with the 64-bit version, and I have to say that so far I am impressed. It responds rather snappily, and the only problem I have had with it so far is that the Activesync replacement for Vista and Windows 7 isn’t as good as the original. It doesn’t always sync up to the phone. Considering I do all of my real syncing over the air, not a big deal.

Bonus points: The default setting for the User Access Control (UAC) that normally bugs the fuck out of you is a little tamer in 7. Programs still trip it, but they trained it to ignore when a user clicks to change something like a network setting.

Oh, for those that did not know this, the Windows Live Mail client sucks just as bad as Outlook Express does. You’ve been warned, use Thunderbird instead.

All in all, at this point Windows 7 looks like what Vista should have. Yes, it still swallows more of your resources than XP, and yes it still has the Vista interface, but aside from that you can live with it.

That’s right, kids! I have survived a whole two weeks now without smoking. Well, not quite – I cheated on Monday of last week. I got called just as I was getting out of the shower to go deal with a kerplooied server, and rushed out of the house without grabbing a patch. By the time I got home, I was pretty frazzled, but didn’t want to waste a patch for just a few hours, so I had a smoke instead. Then I had another before bed to quiet down the monkey.

The good news part of that is that smoking tasted bad.

This is strange for me, because smoking hasn’t tasted bad to me in all these years. Maybe it was because I grew up in a smoker household, or maybe it was because that pack had been out and open in the garage for over a week and nearly frozen a couple of times… I don’t know. The point is, it was good for it to taste bad. I now have a memory of smoking being a bad thing.

There is still, however, the psychological addiction to break. It’s time to change the subject, because writing about it is making me want one.