Halloween Night

What are you all doing for Halloween Night? I'm going to Markoff's Haunted Forest. There is a menu at the top with pics and such.

This thing has me amped up. You have to sign a waiver too. A WAIVER! Wee!

I'm sure I'll have a story or two after this beast.

Opps

So I went to the Maryland vs FSU game yesterday with the Dad, my sister and her husband.

Here is our view:


Anyway, I knew it was going to be windy but it was in the low-60's when I headed out I just tossed on a pull-over windbreaker thing over my shirt. Well, that obviously wasn't enough because the temp dropped like a brick to the mid-40's and the wind was NUTS. So now I'm fighting a stupid cold, trying to kick it before Tuesday night's feastivities.

The game was awesome, though. The last five minutes are why I like football. It was intense. FSU is a hated team by Maryland and beating them has only happened twice in recent memory. Beating them was a BIG DEAL (tm) for us plus it made us Bowl Eligeable for the first time since 2003.

Here was the scene after the game:

Weekend Summary

So, here we go. After spending most of the week in a social comma I went out to Happy Hour with the Ashburn Singles Meetup group at Old Dominion brewery. Maybe 15 people showed up? If you remember, the last time I went to the Happy Hour with this group I ended up in a heated discussion with a Christian gal about religion. Anyway, the first part of the night was fun. Some people thought I was from California, partly because of the white streak thing I have going on apparently.

The group split up, some people went home and some people to a different bar to see a band and then over to a different bar afterwards. This all happened around closing time of the brewery around 10 pm. Myself and four others tried the second bar to see if we could hook up with them but there was a cover and the smoke was insane, so we headed over to this big ass bar in a steakhouse instead. We were able to snag a booth.

So it was myself with these four ladies all over 38 with kids. We had some good conversation, even if it did get out of hand a bit from time to time. The funniest thing though was this waitress that was waiting on us. So I was giving her this hard time because of the music that was playing. The music was pretty good at first but it varied widly, I mean it went from Gun's and Rose's to f'ing Paris Hilton, one after the other! So she kept coming back to tell us she put different songs on for us. This prompted the ladies I was with to be convienced that the waitress girl was into me. This also prompted me to do a LOT of blushing. Fricken women.

Ok, so that was Friday night...good 8 hours of fun. Saturday was another social coma. Sunday was the last day of the Ren Faire. I went with Les and two guys I know from various Meetup groups. We spent the entire day wondering around and drinking. It was pretty cool because of the customs that were there. A lot of gay people in drag (never seen them there before) were hanging out and lot of Star Wars outfits. It was pretty cool.

Leslie, being Leslie, got flirty after the drinking and was hanging out with one of the guys we went with. Apparently they both get flirty drinking so they kept wondering off while Kevin and I were making fun of them. Well, at one point they headed over to the bathrooms and Kevin and I were delayed because we were hungry. By the time we got over there they were no where to be seen. We hung around for a bit then gave up and headed to the bar we were ultimately going to end-up at anyway. We sat around there for about 30 minutes before Jim called and asked us where we were. Leslie wasn't with him (arg). So we head over and meet him and I slap him around for not keeping an eye on Leslie. I mean, you gotta keep an eye on that girl when she's been drinking. So I ask them to stay where they are and head out to find Leslie. I was pretty sure would eventually find her way over to the bar in the middle where we were all headed anyway so that is where I went. Low and behold there she was! She was shaken up but all was good. The rest of the day was low key except for the end. Leslie and Jim wondered over to shoot arrows and Kevin and I sat in front of the Dragon's Pub or whatever that one is by the elephants and watched the belly dancers...one of whom was a guy that was just plain scary. :)

So anyway, all in all a good weekend.

Weird Al

Finally broke the Top 10

Yay!

Unacceptable

I think this speaks for itself. Do these people know the meaning of the work irony?

Grude 2, Thursday Night, and The Satanic Verses

So I figured this will be a general catch-all post since I've been a bit remiss in posting. I've been hiting a bunch of different Meetup groups and it has kept me pretty busy.

Thursday night I went to a group in Arlington that was a happy hour. They reserved the top floor of this bar and some 100 or so people showed up. I got there about 6:30 pm and left around 1 am. In the process I had far too many glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon, then we moved onto Mimosa's and shared a Hookah! I've been wanting to try that thingy, it was pretty interesting. Had a melon flavored one and shared it between 7 of us or so. The music was pretty loud but all in all it was a good time.

However, I spent most of Friday sleeping off the hangover. I went to bed about 1:30 am and slept until about 9:30 am. I got up and staggered down stairs and read some email, etc. About 30 minutes later I start to feel pretty crappy and crawled back up into my bed to sleep it off. Ended up sleeping until about 3:30 pm or so...opps.

So I get up, right...and head out to Fairfax to catch a different meetup group doing dinner and a movie. We went to Joe's Crap Shack and caught Grudge 2. Now, I've explained how much a fan of Sam Raimi I am before and he totally didn't let me down on this one. The man has a gift. Needless to say, I will be sleeping on the couch tonight with the TV on. Scared the crap out of me.

Now, one of the conversation that have come up at various meetup groups are book clubs. There are a few in Washington and it is something I've always wanted to try since I like reading and I like having conversations, so it seems like a good deal to me. I signed up for one that meets once a month around the 24th. They are reading Salman Rushdie's 'The Satanic Verses'. This book was very controversial and the author actually has a bounty on his life in a few countries. I've heard about it over the years and am pretty excited to give it a read. The thing is 550 pages and I have just over a week to read it. Crap.

Anyway, there you go, now you are up-to-date.

Public Service Announcement

As if having to deal with terrorists and a resurgent Taliban wasn't enough, now they have to deal with this. Run for you lives!!

Alternate Reality: What Would You Be Doing

I was watching me some crappy Sci-Fi today, as I often do whilst I work, and this particular crappy episode involved alternate realities in alternate dimensions. The theory, as was put forth by this crappy tv show, was that there are an infinite number of alternate dimensions presenting us with an infinite number of alternate realities, some of which are close to are own and some that are very different. Got it? Sounds good to me - who am I to argue with such a theory anyway.

So I got to thinking...what would I be doing in some of these other dimensions? I could be the preznit, or I could be living in a box. I could be some famous movie star or some infamous murderer. Hell, I could be a gay pumpkin harvester in Alaska for all I know. Gee...how appealing.

All in all I like to think I wouldn't be all that much different than who I am now. If I was, I wouldn't be me, would I?

What would you be doing?

I Feel Like Rambling

So it is 1:39 am on Sunday night (not all that late by my standards on some days) and I am in a weird mood. One of those semi-surreal moods where one side of me just doesn't care and the other side is stressed and everything around me has kinda faded a bit. I have a prediciment that I guess is a good one to have but is stressing me out anyway. Ya see, I got this email late last night saying that a spot on a singles cruise opened up...not just any spot but a spot in an Oceanview cabin. It retails around $900 but since the dude dropped out but paid the deposit I can get it for about $700. Its for a week at the begining of Novemember and going through the Carribean, hitting some places I hit on a cruise several years back.

Why aren't I jumping at such a deal? Well that is the pisser of the whole thing. I was unemployeed for a few months over the summer and I'm close to having my finances back in order. One of the things I wanted to do was to build up some savings in case something comes up. I have an invoice in to my main client that should be paid in the next couple of days that will allow me to catch up on the remaining outstanding bills. I should be able to get one more in and paid before the cruise. Assuming that works out I can pay my mortgage, etc etc and maybe be able to pull off the cruise as well. The problem is I'm not totally sure. And that would be $700 that wouldn't be going to savings. And let's be honest here, it'll be another $300 or so on travel expenses to and from the boat (car pool) and the boos on the boat, which isn't included (although everything else is).

Additionally, my brother, Dad and I are trying to plan a weekend to go camping and we were talking about the first weekend in Novemember, which happens to be the weekend that the cruise starts. Now this is something I've been looking forward to but no specific date is set. Also, I'm not even sure that weekend works for my Dad or my brother...so, damn it.

So I'm vexed. Do I commit to the cruise, have a fucking awesome time, and deal with any financial issues afterwards...or do I decline the cruise, kick myself in the ass for it later, but finally get back on my feet financially.

It is now 1:50 am on Sunday night and I find myself leaning towards going again...but I've been back and forth on this about 20 times today.

Damn it.

Aww hell, there goes the TV switching to Univision again.

Damn it.

Kiss of the Devil

I went to the 31st Annual Wine Tasting/Show thingy on Saturday. 55 of Virginies 100-some vineyards were represented under four big ass tents. $25 gets you in the door and unlimited tastings, quite the deal. I met up with a MeetUp group (http://www.meetup.com) and proceeded to drink. The process basically was picking a tent, going to all the vineyards in there and trying their wine, then going to get something to eat and repeat for the next tent. By the time one tent was finished you had something like the equivlant of four or more glasses depending on how generous they poured. So, there was quite a bit of inebriation going on.

Anyway, I was there for something like 7 hours and towards the end of the day we found this vineyard called Peaks of Otter that didn't really have wine, just different weird stuff. One was called a Chilli Dog where they squirted some easy cheese on your hand like you would salt for a shot and you licked the cheese then slammed the wine. Tasted like a chilli dog. However, the most unique one was called 'Kiss of the Devil'. This was made out of various peppers, chief amoung them the Habernaro. This drink...it had no taste. It looked like lime juice and the smell made your eyes water. Drinking it...wow...it was just pure sensation. Lit your face on fire and felt it all the way down your throat. As much as it hurt it was so unique I tried it three times. Mmmm...so good.

Anyway, this picture has nothing to do with any of that but god is it funny:

Why Are Fart Jokes So Funny?

I can't figure it out, but I always find myself laughing my butt off. One side of me is like 'Why are you laughing at this crap' but the other side is like 'Make it stop, I can't breath'!.

So, without further delay, check out around 6:11 in the follow clip...it is hysterical:

Debate! WARNING: Religion Content

So in the 'Under God = Bullshit' thread we got into a nice conversation. One poster wrote:

'Can a society define it's ethics without some association to some religion? - Nope, I don't think so.'

I think that is an awesome place to start because, as I'm sure you can guess, I disagree. I think a large amount of people gather their ethics and morals from religion but I don't think it is required to follow a religion in order to be ethical.

Before I get into why, we need to define what we are going to call religion. Obviously anything that is inspired by some intellegent greater power that told some dude to write a book is a religion. But what about some of the middle eastern philosophies? Like Taoism or Buddhism. Budda was some fat guy that sat under a tree and came up with a way to look at the world. He was hardly devine. And Taoism is a philosphy that developed over a LONG time from stories and observations. I wouldn't consider either a religion in their pure form (although some people have taken them and turned them into a religion, dorks).

So taking Taoism, someone who has read about Taoism and believes it is a pretty spiffy way to look at the world and follows its tenents would have a common set of ethics that other Taoists have, but it wouldn't be from a religion, right?

I tell you that so I can ask you this, what about atheists? Some of these people are almost militaristic in their non-belief, yet they have ethics and morals...I don't see a group of crazy atheists running around killing people because they wroke up with a sore tooth or something.

I think ethics and morals are a learned behavior and are reinforced by society. Sure, if the family you grew up in is a religious family and if the society you hang with is mostly religious you can make the arguement that your ethics were religiously based. But I think you can also learn ethics and morals if you group up in an athiestic family and an athiestic society. Afterall, religion developed as nothing more than a codifed set of what the hell made sense back in the day to control the masses...social control. Whether you believe it devinely inspired or not, in the end that is what it boils down to.

Discuss.

Good Conversation on Jesus Camp (Bill Maher)

This is good, particularly the part in the middle between Bill Maher and the Fox News Christain.

Under God = Bullshit

So I went to this Singles meetup on Friday night. I'll keep most of this short. In a nutshell, it started with 16 people, boiled down to 6 who went to a different bar, which boiled down to myself, this other guy and this chick. Ok, so we had been drinking for about the past 5 hours so we were relaxed, to be sure. I think we started to talk about immigration and that turned into a conversation about religion. It turns out the chick that was there was a Christain, which in itself isn't a problem. As I've expressed before I believe belief is very personal and I don't hold a person's personal belief against them...it's when it goes outside of the personal and starts to be pushed upon others that I have the issue.

Ok, so she was pretty cool in that she didn't shove religion down my throat, etc. However, we got into one of the biggest mythes that have been shoved down American's collective throat for a long long time: that the US was founded as a Christian nation. What a load of shit.

1) God is not mentioned in the Consitution, not once. Read it. It was on purpose.
2) The majority of the founders believed in deism and freemasonry rather than Christianity.
3) 'Under God' was not put into the Pledge of Allegence until 1954. This was done as propaganda during the Cold War since everyone knows the commies were Goddless.
4) 'In God We Trust' was not added to money until the Civil War.

So how does any of that equate into the country being founded as a Christain nation? And on top of that, if it was founded as such a nation explain the explicit separation of Church and State. This whole thing is simply an attempt to muddle the waters and it's fricken annoying.

The chick I was arguing with was adament that Under God was in the Consitituion and that is was always in the Pledge, etc. That is what pisses off, lack of critical thinking. Why would you by that shit? Hopefully she looks it up like she said she would. Can't wait to talk to her next time. :)

Anyway, here is more for your reading pleasure if you are curious about the facts.

What Is Pissing Me Off Today - Part 4

The VW car commercial where two people are chatting about whatever and WHAM, someone hits them. It's too trumatizing and, more importantly, it isn't funny. Bad no funny, bad!!

White and Nerdy

Yay!

Aww

Aww

What Is Pissing Me Off Today - Part 3

My Stupid Mortgage Company.

So I'm trying to make a mortgage payment. I have the money in my PayPal account because that is how my customers want to pay me. I login to the website to make a payment, but the website doesn't take credit cards, only checks. Ok, fine. So I figure I'll just call them up and pay over the phone. I can't find a customer service number. Pleanty of numbers for new loans and crap but none for existing ones. I end up having to call one of the other numbers to get the existing customer service number. Arg. When I finally get the right number I call it and I get their stupid automated teller system that wants me to talk to it. Fine. So I talk to the stupid thing and it figures out what my account number is. It wants me to confirm it by saying Yes. I say Yes. It says 'What?'. I say it again...still can't figure it out. I proceed to say it in different tones and speeds, etc and FINALLY it figures out I'm saying yes. Piece of shit. So then it says it is going to transfer me, fine. Then, like it forgot something, it goes 'Oh! By the way, blah blah blah'. What the hell? Why is it trying to be a person? Just get on with it.

So I finally get in touch with a real live human. He proceeds to tell me that they do not accept credit cards. *sigh*. I thank him for his time but before he let's me off the phone he tries to get me to refinance the loan. Come on! I just refinanced the damn thing last year and there is no way I'm getting a better rate. Turkeys.

The result of all this is I need to transfer the money from PayPal to my checking account anyway to make a payment, which is going to make the payment late. :( Punks.

Rant Coming in 3...2...1...

I lurk around on a few blogs from time to time that represent the more conservative side of the aisle so I can get my blood pressure up...masochistic I guess. Anyway, one of the things that really gets me is how a certain strain of people just blames every muslim for the actions of the fundamentlist sect. The arguement goes that Islam teaches violence and hate (you don't have to go any further than the uproar about the Pope's idiotic quoting of a Byzantine King saying something similiar). They claim that followers of Islam are, by nature, violent.

What a load of shit. Sure, there are fundamentilist muslims and yea they want to kill you. Some even put the number as high as 3 million. Ok, let's take that figure and think about this some. 3 million out of 150 million followers is a very low total percentage...2% of the whole. So what 2% of the whole believes is enough to condem an entire group of people? Yikes.

But let's not stop there. Apparently, this 2% of the entire muslim population is a greater threat to America than Nazi Germany or the USSR during the Cold War. Are you kidding me? They don't even compare. The fundies, the extremists, are not an organized whole. They are not a nation. They don't have anywhere close to the industrial capacity that Germany or Russia had. So how on Earth are they compariable? If a war had started between the US and the USSR millions of people would have been dead inside of an hour. To think that a group of extremists without state sponsorship or any industrial capacity at all could even get near that sort of threat is extreme naiviety at best and purposefull insanity at it's worst.

Don't let the obvious differences distract you. Listening to some of these turkeys talk about it (and we are talking about some pretty main stream people here - see Fox News sometimes) this is the Greatest Threat To Civilization Ever. This is World War III. This is the prelude to the rapture! Yea, hardly.

Ok, I got off the topic I wanted to nail. Back to the people that believe 2% of a group is enough to condemn the entire group. I've always maintained that in any group (particularly religious groups) you have a small percentage that are totally and completely dedicated and extreme about it. Literal, even. Islam has them, Christainity has then, even Star Trek has them. There isn't a whole lot of difference between the Islamic and Christain crazies.

But dude! Christain crazies aren't blowing themselves up! I would submit that in order to be part of the crazy group you don't have to go blow yourself up. Before 9/11 the biggest terror attack on US soil was Oklahoma City. Guess what group of crazies Tim was part of?

To drive the point home, check out this link. That's write, soliders of christ right here. How is that any different then what some people accuse Islam of doing to their young? It's the same damn thing, but it is a small and extreme part of the whole...just like it is in Islam.

Get some damn perspective.

What Is Pissing Me Off Today - Part 2

Every night, around 2 am, every channel on my cable box switches to Univision, the mexican channel. Everychannel. I mean, i can flip the box to any channel on it and they are all Univision. It lasts for like 60 seconds or so. What the heck is that all about?