Tonight - Peking duck and a movie.

Tomorrow - dialysis and possible adventure.

Sunday - Anything is possible

Monday - The parts for my new PC arrive. There will be much assembling and testing and possible swearing.

Holy crap. I put my EQ2 toon on the market at around 11am. It's now 4pm and it's sold for $700.

I should have priced it higher =(

A few days ago I made a huge batch of spaghetti sauce. More sauce than I know what to do with since I'm not all that into spaghetti these days. The thought of what to do with all this marinara was weighing on my mind, so I decided to put it to use. There are possibly dozens of recipes that call for use of spaghetti sauce, or that can be topped with marinara sauce, or served with marinara sauce... right? Well I thought of one - meatloaf.

Now, I've never made meatloaf. It involves, like, steps... and processes... and mixing and junk. Things way beyond my experience as a cooker of food (which should in no way imply that I'm a "chef" or even a "cook"). So I looked up meatloaf recipes on Food Network website (because there's no way I'm putting the word "meatloaf" into Google), and I found 4 pages of recipes. Ingredients varied, but the basic procedure comes down to - mix stuff in a nowl. Put mixed stuff in loaf pan. Bake.

Seriously, that's all the instruction some of the recipes give. And yes, one of those is the one I used.

After 30 minutes of prep, 75 minutes of baking, 15 minutes of waiting, and 15 minutes of eating, this is what I learned:

Meatloaf is really difficult to screw up. I know this because I left out the onions, used too much beef and garlic, and substituted marinara sauce, for tomato juice and it still turned out awesome.

Well, relatively awesome. It wasn't perfect, but when topped with my marinara sauce it was pretty damn good. Apparently I'm the only one in the house who is going to eat it because it has mushrooms, but that's fine by me. I've got dinner for the next 3 or 4 days sitting in the fridge.

Now I just have to experiment with different ways to use meatloaf. < insert dirty jokes here >

Tonight I finally watched Cloverfield. After following the ARE (E for experience instead of G for game. It doesn't seem to crossover into meatspace) I was looking forward to seeing it in theaters. That didn't happen, though, due to me not having a car, and knowing the two people who lived here at the time with cars wouldn't want to go. But now I can watch it at home, and I did. Unfortunately I like the marketing of it way more than the movie itself. I just don't get creeped out like I used to by horror movies, and most of the characters we follow in the film annoyed the piss out of me. As you may know, when it comes to me that's quite an accomplishment.

The good thing about watching the movie is it made me curious in their marketing/game/experience again. So I looked in on the Unforums to see what people have been posting, and it looks like it's still alive. The release of the DVD has started their second wave it seems, as new websites and new footage are popping up all over the place. There are new mysteries, and new clues helping solve old mysteries. Enough new stuff to play with to occupy a good 4 hours of my night.

The next few weeks should be entertaining.

Movies I have watched in the few last weeks:

Unforgiven - Fucking amazing. Clint Eastwood maybe my favorite American director ever. At least he is this week.

30 Days of Night - meh. It's vampires. They kill stuff. I probably would have liked this movie a lot more 10 years ago. You know, when horror movies still effected me.

Seven Samurai; Yojimbo; and Sanjuro - Even at their worst Kurosawa and Mifune make cinematic magic. There's 50 years of imitation in Yojimbo's swagger, and I find it comical and enlightening to see where the ground work was laid for so many anti-heroes to come. Then there's Seven Samurai... I could spend hours talking about that movie. As Raseny knows.

American Gangster - A forgettable crime drama. It's not bad, and it's not a bad way to spend 2 1/2 hours some night when you've got nothing else to watch. Unfortunately after a week spent watching Unforgiven, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, and the Godfather, there seems nothing compelling about the story or the characters.

Serenity - I don't know why this seems to be playing every night on some random cable channel, but I hope they keep it up. It's not brilliant in the way a Kurosawa film is, or revolutionary the way Star Wars or 2001 was, but this goes down as one of my favorite films ever. It's funny, intelligent, and engrossing. Ok, it's a bit preachy in some parts, but I forgive it for taking itself too seriously at moments. I've been known to do the same.


Other than that there isn't much going on. I've closed all my EQ2 accounts, and deleted it off my computer. Next week I'm putting the character I've been playing for the last 18 months up for sale. Yes, people are still buying EQ2 characters. A player from my old guild got $1000 for his toon, and there are auctions over $500 for others. I want a piece of that.

So now I'm watching movies, and reading the Dune series. I'm almost done with God Emperor of Dune, and I'm significantly engrossed in the series that I'll have to go buy the other two books in the series written by Frank Herbert. That should hold me over until May when it will be time for the dead to rise and my birthday to commence. A week later the Age of Conan MMO will be released, and it will be time to turn my back on physical reality again for at least a little while.

Tonight, I think I'm going to download Sid Meier's Pirates!, and maybe, if it doesn't hold my attention all night, watch No Country For Old Men.

Oh yeah, and I got this email yesterday:

My friend,

Indictments are about to be handed down. If you don't want your name on one, we'll need your full cooperation in an upcoming operation.

In case you haven't heard, we are struggling with a bit of corruption in the department. I'm not about to let the Gotham PD collapse in on itself, so we're taking action. We've identified a group of offenders that need to be apprehended. Problem is, most of these cops are hightailing it out of the city. But a C.I. just like you just gave us some information on their last known whereabouts. Now all we need is to catch them. This is where you come in.

Consider yourself on deck. I'll contact you next week, and let’s just say it's in your best interest to play along. County's not a place you want to spend the rest of your life.

Lt. Jim Gordon, MCU



The game is on.

The following is offensinve:

"Look, Jesus died for my sins, so they should be good ones, right?"
"Yeah, we might as well commit real sins. Sins worth nailing a jew to a stick over."


....but I still laughed

My clothes are black on black. Nothing new there except the shoes. I'm wearing boots again. I don't remember the last time I wore these things. It's been years I'm sure.

There's only reason I put on boots anymore - I'm going to an industrial club. Raseny has decided she needs to dance. Maybe it's the weather, I dunno. Anyway, she needs to dance, and I haven't seen the inside of an industrial club in years. I don't expect anything in Portland to compare to Das Bunker, or even the Industrial Mecca that I compare all such clubs to - Kontrol Faktory. Those days will never be seen again. The music is still fun, though, and I always like looking at spooky girls in vinyl so there are reasons to go.

But I'm not enthused. I don't wear these boots comfortably anymore, and loud music in a cramped space isn't the thrill it used to be. I'm not a fan of nostalgia, and I think that's all I'm going to find tonight.

The best nights I have are those I spend in a car watching the lights and the people pass by on my way to somewhere (nowhere in particular) with music gently guiding the way. Tonight was one of my better nights. Raseny and I felt rich for moment, and we enjoyed many a minor meal on this drizzly Portland night. We began at Saint Honore, the bakery on NW 23, for coffee and pastries. From there we made our way downtown to Voleur for an order of french fries where we watched the MAX trains go by under darkening skies, and the lights on the river from the huge stretched windows. Then over to Voodoo Donuts for our mandatory donut. Yes, it's mandatory. We're downtown, we're getting donuts. Then we got good and properly lost.

We drove out into the east side, and headed south until we found something that caught Raseny's eye. It was a record store this time. I don't remember the last time I looked at cds live and in person. In my world music only exists online, and if I get cd it is delivered to me from the Great Distribution Center located somewhere out there in the great unknown place that I'll never see, and certainly will never walk around. They had 4 Skinny Puppy cds, 1 Front 242 cd, and no Snog. I stopped looking after that. Raseny didn't, though. She bought The Shins cd, Wincing the Night Away. As we walked back to the car she turned, handed me the cd, and said, "This is for you."

Yeah, it's been a good night.

From there we headed further South and found ourselves on Hawthorne. We drove past the Subhumans concert, and the mass of kids pretending to be part of a scene that died an ignoble death 20 years ago. From the corner of my eye I spied a coffee shop (on Hawthone? NO WAI!), and next to that coffee shop was a sign declaring Portland's Best Fish and Chips. Well that sounds like a challenge to me.

The fish wasn't that great, but the fries are a winner.

Back into the chill but now clear night. Scattered clouds meandering through the night illuminated by moon and headlights as we wander beneath them just as aimless. Sometimes you have to be a little lost. We drove North again and found our way to the 84, and the drive I love so much. On the east side of the river I stare out over the water and let my eyes wander up the reaching towers of glass to the hills behind them. We turn over the bridge leading to the 26, and I look over the grid of concrete and streetlights nestled between a river of shimmering black, and the shadowy face of hills under stars.

I love living here. If I'm going to be lost anywhere I want to be lost here.

I've felt silent the last week. A combination of shell shock recovery from last weekend, the slow bubbling anger and frustration of life on hemodialysis, and the redundancy of similar events happening on similar days in similar ways. The last one isn't at all bad. In fact, some of those redundant events are quite satisfying, but hardly seem worth talking about at length. I raid a couple days a week. I hang out with Raseny some other nights. There's acupuncture, and Voodoo donuts, and exploring comic book shops and crappy over priced taquerias. But see, now I've told you about it and it only took a sentence. It hardly seems worth writing an entry about.

However, there was one cool thing I wanted to get down in some more permanent form. It's even something cool that happened at dialysis which is something I hardly ever to get write about. Some of you may remember around when I first moved to Portland the dialysis unit I was at did something special for Halloween. For those that don't remember that "something special" was to make little cut out ghosts, write the names of all the patients in the unit, and then tape them up on the walls. It was disturbingly awesomely morbid and creepy. I still wish I'd remember to grab my little ghost before they took them down.

Anyway, the intent seemed to be to involve the patients in the unit. To help make them feel comfortable... or something. Like they belonged there, or at least recognized. At that unit their hearts might have been in the right place, but clearly their heads were not.

Davita, the company who owns the dialysis unit I go to now, is apparently trying to do something similar. They sent out some kind of memo asking their employees to make a wall devoted to the patients and staff of each unit. The wall is supposed to contain names, a little background info, and a picture of the patients, the techs, the nurses, the manager of the unit - everyone. It's purpose is to help everyone feel they know each other a little better, and to make the strange, alien environment of a dialysis unit more comfortable to those of us who sleep there for a few hours every other day.

I found out about this about 2 weeks ago when Lyndsie (yes, I know her name now) walked over to my chair smiling and excited to tell me about her brilliant idea. Apparently I was the first patient to hear about the plan because I inspired her little artistic expression of corporate moral building. The plan? She found a HUGE mural/poster of the solar system, and each of the patients/staff would get their own planet named after them surrounded by stars with the little biographical snippets we submitted. You know, because my name is a constellation... so she thought of space. I'm so totally inspiring, I don't even have to try. I just have to be there and my name does the work for me.

Since I was the inspiration for all this I had my choice of which planet I wanted to be mine. Everyone else would have to wait. I filled out the paperwork, and wrote down a few of my favorite things (Seven Samurai, They Might Be Giants, Blade Runner, A Stranger in a Strange Land). The photograph I passed on. I haven't felt very photogenic lately. However I couldn't decide on a planet. There I was face to face with a conundrum the narrator Fight Club would understand - Which planet best defines me as a person?

In the end the answer came as a joke. I chose the sun.

And they agreed to it.

So now, on the wall of the dialysis unit I go to 3 days a week, 4 1/2 hours a day, there is a 10' x 15' mural of the solar system. On 8 of the 9 planets there is a picture of an old white guy, or an old black man, or a 20-something dialysis tech, or a 50-something nurse, or one of the 4 other people who took part in this little project, with 4 or 5 bright silver stars around each planet with some info on it. If you follow the trail of stars (because Lyndsie actually set up the stars to lead from one planet to the next) all the way to the left you will see the sun taking up the entire left side, and the name ORION in huge gold letters stamped on it.

And that's how I found something to smile about when I go to dialysis.

In the end no one chose the planet Earth. It sits there amidst the pictures and the stars unclaimed. Apparently none of us who find ourselves in that building, either by necessities biological or economic, think this world is ours.

On Friday, in the first time in a long time, I spent a long night out. Darren was in town for Brew Fest, and many familiar pastimes were enjoyed. There was good food courtesy of Miss Anita at Pound Cakes and More. There were nekkid dancers courtesy of Sassy's. There was booze, there were donuts, and there were friends. It was a great way to kick off Spring.

And for those who might be curious, here's what I look like now that I'm spectacled: