I went to the Texas State Historical Association annual meeting this year in Austin. Took some alright pictures. Here’s a few, check out my Flickr page for more. If you like.
Also this is awesome, if you’re into either the Flaming Lips or Madonna. For the record I only really like one of those things.
I know this is long, but it’s worth it. Trust me.
A few nights ago me and two friends went out to have some Mongolian barbecue in the Bay Area. We ate, and it was good, and began the short drive home. (Not to my home, obviously.) We sat at the red light here, at Bay Area Blvd and Highway 3. This is when things started to get weird.
A frantic knocking at the front passenger side window. Muffled incomprehensible screams of a hysteric woman, probably in her mid to late twenties. Marilyn, who is in the front seat, cautiously rolled down the window just enough to be able to hear her.
“My boyfriend is an asshole!” She screams between sobs. “I just want to go home! Please! I want to go home!”
At this point the only thing that was certain to us was that she is clearly upset. I can’t be sure what is going through my two friends’ minds at this point, but I figured she was previously in a car behind us and was just in some kind of fight, possibly physically violent, with her boyfriend. What a horrible thing it would be to just drive away from a woman in such a terrible situation, I think. My friends and I instinctively huddle together between the front seats to discuss our options. We exchange “what the hell are we supposed to do?” looks.
“Well,” I whisper, “there’s only one of her, and there’s three of us. If things get crazy for some reason, I think we’d be alright.”
Justin unlocks the car doors, and she gets in the back seat next to me. We are pounded with the strong stench of alcohol. Smelled like she was soaked in it. She kept crying, fidgeting around, and at one point kind of rubbed her butt on my leg, which inspired me to move as far away from her as I could. The situation is extremely amusing to me so I cover my mouth, stare out the window and bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself from a laughter that would have rivaled her mumblings on the insanity meter. We ask where she needs to get to. “Turn left,” she manages to get out between mumbles. This was the direction we were going anyways, so we turn. She continues muttering things under her breath, with only the occasional “My boyfriend is an asshole!” being anything close to understandable. We ask again where she’s going. “34th and Kansas.” It is clear that none of us, save for her (and come to find out even this is questionable) have any clue where this intersection is.
“You’ll have to tell us where to turn, because we’re not sure where that is,” one of us says. “Turn left at this Texaco. My boyfriend is an asshole!” More crying. We all look left. “That’s a Shell station,” someone says. “I don’t think there’s a Texaco around here.”
“I just want to go home! Turn around, we’ll go to my ex-boyfriend’s apartment, he’ll write down the address. He’s not an asshole like my ex-boyfriend.” (this is verbatim)
My guts wrench and my amused demeanor shifts to one of absolute horror. Is she about to take us to some place where someone is waiting to rob us? Has this all been a clever act on her part? Will I live to see tomorrow? From this point on I keep my eyes on her much more closely. I send out this twitter.
This bitch is either crazy or luring us into a trap. If I die I love you all. This is only partially a joke.
It’s obvious to me we’re all feeling this fear, although Justin and Marilyn’s horror is contrasted by their amusement for the face that I apparently make when I’m terrified. We turn around on Highway 3 and head back to Bay Area Blvd. “I just need ten dollars to get home,” I manage to make out.
“Turn left,” she says at Bay Area Blvd. She seems to have a propensity for left turns. “I just need nineteen dollars to get home! I want you to give me twenty dollars!” We turn left. “I don’t have any cash, and I don’t think my friends do, either,” I say. She picks up her expensive looking purse and places it on her lap. Her hand reaches in and stays there. I picture her finger on a trigger of a gun, waiting for the right moment. Adrenaline surges through my body at levels I’d never felt before (save for maybe a few close encounters with poisonous snakes in the wild). I run through all the scenarios in my head. What will I do? Will I have to tackle this woman? I prepare for the worst and am ready to tackle her to keep her from using whatever she might have. I am horrified. Part of me wishes she’d pull the gun out already so I could get it over with. “I don’t have any cash either,” both my friends add. She bangs her head on the door again. “I just need five dollars.”
Her consistent requests for money make me feel a little better. Why would someone who was planning on robbing us at gunpoint beg for cash? Still, her hand remained still in her purse, so my nervousness continues. Justin has had enough and pulls into an empty parking lot across the street from an open CVS pharmacy. “You want me to get out here?” “If you wouldn’t mind,” Justin says. “Do any of you have a cigarette?” “Sorry, none of us smoke,” I state while keeping two very close eyes on her hands.
Then, very calmly, sounding more sober than she had throughout the entire ordeal, she lowers her voice and says “I think I have one.” Her hand shifts in her purse. I’m ready to pounce. She pulls out a lighter and fumbles it around. I let out a sigh of relief.
If she would have owned one of those lighters that was shaped like a gun I probably would have punched a drunk woman. I don’t think I could have ever lived that down.
My favorite cat in the whole world, Balls Nasty, was found dead today. No sign of trauma or anything, which is kind of surprising. I always figured that cat would die in a fight with some animal much larger than itself. Which means it would die in a fight with something that wasn’t a cat, because Balls Nasty was a huge cat. I’m going to miss you, BN. I’ve never been so sad about a pet dying in my entire life. He was both the angriest and sweetest cat I’ve ever encountered. Goodbye, friend. I love you.
It took nine years, but it looks like Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are will see the light of day this year in October, two days after my birthday. It’s hard to describe how much I’m looking forward to this movie. I might explode when I see it in the theater.
And I’ll tell you my house caught on fire! Looks like I’m going to be living vagabond style for a while, the house is uninhabitable. Luckily none of our stuff got messed up too bad. Having a fire truck in your driveway is a surreal experience that I don’t reccomend to anyone.
I finally broke down and got a pro Flickr account, I guess I really wanted those extra sets. I also uploaded some stuff – some new pictures from yesterday’s late night trip to Quintana Beach and some old stuff that for whatever reason I never uploaded before. Check out my Flickr page if you want to see everything all reorganized and new, but for those who are lazy here are some samples (click for larger size).
My review for Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People finally went up over at N-Philes, as well as a little blog entry on some bullet hell style shooters for the PC.
If you’re unfamiliar with the term “bullet hell,” this video sums it up pretty well I think.
I did a nice little interview with Tim Sievert (That Salty Air) for N-philes.
Is it pretentious to quote myself?
Let’s be honest: most comics suck. But so do most movies, games, TV shows, and so does most music. But with these mediums most people seem to think themselves pretty good at weeding through the trash to find the morsels of goodness. Why is it, then, that more people don’t sort through the horrible comics and find the good ones? Sure, every once in a while the mainstream will notice something likeWatchmen or Maus, but many great comics fly well under the radar. With Comics That Don’t Suck, which will be an ongoing feature here at N-philes, I hope to bring some attention to comics that you probably wouldn’t have known about otherwise. If you never read comics maybe something will catch your eye and you’ll pick one up. If you already love comics, hopefully I’ll show you something new. For the very first CTDS I’m talking about Tim Sievert’s first published comic: That Salty Air. I also had the chance to talk with Sievert about his book (among other things).
For one of my classes an assignment is to write entries in a “math journal” based on given prompts. It’s really pretty silly, but hey it’s an easy grade so whatever. I think I may have screwed the pooch on this one, though. I’ll let you be the judge. The prompt? Why can’t you divide by zero?
