Mooshack

Sometimes...

2008-08-26T18:20:00.002-04:00

Your friends let you down big time. Have I done it before? Yes, but I don't think it was on purpose and I sure as hell have never kicked a friend when they were down. If I value their friendship I'll ask for forgiveness. That's what friends do and a good friend will forgive.

When someone knocks you down, then kicks you and then expects YOU to crawl back?

That's not a fucking friend.

Someone who sees this take place and tries to blame you for it?

That's not a fucking friend.

It would seem like I lost a few friends this month, but not really, turns out I didn't have friends to begin with.

I'll keep this...

2008-08-25T22:37:00.001-04:00

Short. One of my ex girlfriends is pissing me off right now. My feelings are actually hurt and I can't do anything but lash out. I realize this is not the way to handle anything, but it's all I have right now. There is no way to fix this situation and I think that is what I am so mad at. Oh well, at least red hot burning anger lets me know I'm alive.

I'm a selfish...

2008-08-21T18:16:00.001-04:00

Asshole. Or at least that is what an ex of mine and some girls I recently banged are trying to claim. My first instinct was, to agree with it completely. I AM a selfish asshole. I mean, I have been single and have been having sex with random women, my ex-girlfriends and even that little kid from Indiana Jones 2 all the while making no commitments and bragging about it up and down the East Coast.

The whole time I've just been enjoying myself (mostly, Asian penises are tilted to the side which hurts more) and only concerned about my own feelings.

Based on this I think it could be argued that I'm selfish, but an asshole? It seems the two go hand in hand at times, but I have to stop you right there. A selfish asshole would be having sex with the above and telling them anything they wanted to hear to do so, thus making the person not just selfish, but an asshole in the process.

See the difference? No, then bear with me while I explain this out a little further. Yes I may have been acting selfish the last few weeks, but, since I was totally honest with these women (and little Short Round) about my motives (cock in hole action, no strings attached) wasn't I giving them a chance to make up their own minds about it? Don't think to hard, the answer is YES! These women KNEW what I was about long before the mediocre sex acts took place. They CHOSE to do them with me because of their OWN SELFISH reasons. Am I right? THEY are the selfish ones because they knew what I was all about, they went through with it anyway and now they are annoying the shit out of me with all their whining. It seems to me like they are being the selfish assholes.

Some of them were clearly mad at themselves for what they had done and decided to take it out on me. Now I'm pissed AND inconvenienced, I mean when women start getting bitchy, it gets harder and harder to sleep with them. Not to mention the fact that I've run out of people from Indy movies that are Asian.

Christ, one of my friends actually suggested I put myself in the ladies' shoes (I guess she doesn't give a shit about Short Round) and try to understand their feelings. I told her, what the fuck is the point? I haven't fucked any chicks that wear a size 13 shoe (other than that one in South Carolina, but she might have had a penis at one point), you know what I mean?

Who's life is most important in the world? Mine, that's who (that mine should be read as "mine"). That is right, everyone is looking out for themselves in the world right? You start trying to take care of other people and they WILL fuck you in the end. History is full of examples; Ronald McDonald, Jesse Jackson, Neil Cavuto, the chicks who were cheated on by Sam "Mayday" Malone, I could fucking do this all day.

The Point is that YOU have to look out for YOU. Not to mention you sure as fuck shouldn't take being called a selfish asshole because only someone who is concerned about their own feelings above yours would use a hurtful term like that which means, you guessed it, FUCK THEM!

Due to recent suffering...

2008-08-21T17:41:00.001-04:00

I've found God. This is what I recently read in a profile of an OKC girl who's Bi. OK, first I want to point out something, I too found God due to recent suffering as well.

Turns out the bastard was under my bed, and here I thought I had to flip the mattress due to a bad spring.

Second point, baby you're Bi, God's not down with Bi chicks (or dudes). Why? Well at the risk of flaming up the entire female population of OKC, it's b/c you can't, can not, no way, just can't trust someone who is Bi.

What is this? Have I gone crazy? Is this some bullshit urban legend that Snopes needs to debunk? No, not at all. It's simple, plain logic. See if you can follow.

If you are straight, you have a potential mate pool of 50% of the population. Now, I really believe that the more people you meet in your life the odds of you having more partners and people to fall in love/lust with will be greater. OK, now take a gay/lesbo person, the pool still sits at 50%. See where I'm going with this?

Many Bi chicks tend to be sexually liberal, and although I find nothing to be wrong with this in and of itself, the problem is, as much as I like whores and strippers and ice cream, these are just things you cannot trust. Why the fuck is Pistachio green anyway? The actual nut is cream colored. Point set match I think.

Back on topic, does God hate Bi sexuals because they are, uh, free lovers? No of course not, odds are this is a plus, but God needs full devotion from his/her subjects. Can someone who is so willy nilly with their love provide such devotion? Someone, who can at anytime fall out of love with bearded hippy guy and jump ship to that hot blue chick from India with the extra arms (not to mention extra hands, which have the extra fingers)? I'll leave that up for you to decide, unless you are Bi, in which case, I'm watching you.

Someone poor...

2008-08-16T11:31:00.000-04:00

Must have said, money can't buy happiness because for a week I sure felt fucking great. I just got back from Nice and man was it nice.

OK, had to get that out of my system. Anyway after being in the land of Ferraris and Lambos (actually that was two years ago in Italy, but bear with me) and the mega rich who can afford to spend $750,000 on a freaking watch, I must say, MY LIFE SUCKS! I thought I was doing OK, you know, living in a house with a full time job and all (considering half the guys on here can't make a buck and live with mom) but after going to Cannes, I feel like shit.

Lately my life hasn't been going the best, moving to a place I hate, doing a job I hate, hating a girl I hate so on and so forth. Anyway, yeah spending a week in France not only was great, but it was like a serious heroin high, you feel great for a short burst, but now, back to my place in the world, I need another hit.

Not only do I want to go back to France, I want to live the high life. What kind of bullshit post is this? I don't know. Any rich women in France want to take me in? I do dishes...

Final Fantasy...

2008-08-16T11:30:00.001-04:00

One of my favorite RPGs, well at least it use to be before it got "hip" and all the modern kiddies play and dress up like them. At first this post was going to be about how much I hate the fact that Nerd and Geek has become so mainstream that fucking Hot Topic has Transformers T-Shirts, but instead I think I'll post that a Persian made Final Fantasy 1-3. That is fucking cool as shit.

As an Iranian (-American you asses), I feel like anytime I hear of one of my peeps doing something great, I feel a little bit of pride. Like the fact that the first civilian Female to pay for a ride in space was an Iranian. That is cool, but finding out that the guy who programed the best of the FF series was Iranian? That fucking rules!

How does this make my life any better? It really doesn't, but just as people cheer for their home-town sports teams, even though they couldn't throw a football across their yards, I likewise cheer on my fellow Iranian, Persians if you will, even though I couldn't code myself out of a paper bag, even a virtual one.

I'm going to start posting again.

2008-08-16T11:28:00.003-04:00

Sort of. I've been posting some shit in my journal over at OKCupid.com and I figure no one even looks at that shit, so I might as well cross post my super witty, fun to read, awesome writing. Right? Right.

Rip Van Wrinkle

2007-09-30T07:08:00.000-04:00

So the last week or so of my class here in Texas has been pretty tough. I had a hard time with the next to last class and had to repeat a portion of it. This would be the first time ever I had to repeat something and I took it pretty hard. Not to mention the fact that my job said if I didn't pass it a second time I could look for a new job. Though standards huh? Anyway, about 1/3 of my class (five people) ended up taking it again, with only three of us making it.

I'd take this time to wish the two ladies the best of luck in their new job hunt. It certainly wasn't fair, but life rarely is.

Anyway, as you could guess, I like my job and especially the paycheck that comes with it so the pressure was on to do well on the test retake. I'll save you the suspense and tell you that not only did I do excellent, I did better than the instructors had seen on some sections ever during their time teaching it. But that is not what this post is about.

Pain in the neck. Because of the mishap of the last week as I like to call it, I'm stuck here an extra few weeks due to missing my original day to move my things. The movers will be back in about 3 weeks then I can hit the road. The good news is that it doesn't really affect me to much, the bad news is that I'm still going to Georgia. The point I am trying to make though is that it has been a whole lot of stress dealing with it all. The pressure of possibly losing my job, the pressure of rearranging all of my dates to get out of here and the overall embarrassment of having to wait an extra three days to get my training certificate. All of these things (plus a few more I have not mentioned) have caused me stress. What has the stress caused? A literal pain in the neck.

I woke up about ten days ago with a killer stiff neck. I've had them before from sleeping wrong or cold air blowing on my neck or whatever. You wake up and your damn neck is sore. Usually it is gone in about three to four days. Not this one, nope. It was eight days later and it was still waking me up in the middle of the night. I decided enough was enough and went to see the Doc.

He says that the neck is most definitely f'ed up and I need to stretch it and take muscle relaxants. The only problem he says is that they will cause drowsiness. Drowsiness? On my first celebratory weekend? No way, not me, I'm to happy not to party.

Uh, yeah right. I took one of these things at four PM on Saturday and next thing I know it is 6 AM on Sunday and my phone has a bunch of texts from my friends wondering where I am so we can go out.

Also, King George is no longer in power and the American Revolution has taken place.

I can't stop laughing at it!

2007-09-03T01:16:00.000-04:00

An otter was sitting on the bank of the euphrates river doing his ottery things when a scorpion scurries up to him:

Hey you think you could you ferry me to the other bank?

The otter replies: nah, you'll probably just sting me.

But if I sting you we'll both drown.

The otter thinks for a moment and agrees to ferry the scorpion.

They get to the middle of the river and the scorpion stings the otter.

Why the fuck did you do that? the otter yells, now we both drown!

And the scorpion goes: ALLAHU ACKBAR!

Captian Morgan Rum

2007-09-02T23:55:00.000-04:00

Is no longer my favorite spiced rum. I have discovered (why didn't I have this before?) Sailor Jerry Rum. Man this stuff is good. I've been drinking it tonight with my Coke Zero and have since switched to sipping it off the rocks.

So sweet, yet just right. The Captian has to step down for the Sailor. Don't worry, I won't make him walk the plank, there's always room for a Captian on my ship, but sailors are more welcome now... huh, that sounds kind of, uh never mind.

By the way every time you click a link, I do a shot.

My friend Spider Girl

2007-09-02T23:35:00.000-04:00

Has changed her blog address to http://spyder-girl.blogspot.com/ and it only took me a little over a year to fix it on my links on the side.

Of course I see she has killed my link on her blog. If she even had one. Pssft!

The King of Kong

2007-09-02T22:55:00.000-04:00

It's a three day weekend and this special documentary about the world champion Donkey Kong player and a challenger is getting fantastic reviews on Rottentomatoes.com. In fact, some are calling it the movie of the year, yeah, all year.

Well, I love movies, I love video games, I love documentaries. Sounds like I have a movie to watch. The movie is only playing in 7 cities across America. Austin being one of those cities. Austin is only 3 hours from me, so I said what the hell, I'll drive 6 hours, see a movie (a great movie) and party hard in one of America's best college towns.

Long story short, I didn't go, but I did see the movie. Don't ask me how, I'd have to kill you.

Best movie of the year? Yes. I can't do a full review because I'm at home playing Guitar Hero and Donkey Kong, but the urge to blog just hit me and that is what I am doing in between sets of Holey Diver on hard.

Some have called this movie a classic David vs Goliath story, but I know that facts and attitudes were edited a certain way to give it more of that flare than really happened, I would say that if Michale Moore saw this movie he would be proud, then he's sue for "style infringement".

Anyway, I digress. This is, even with the shady edit job, one of the best movies of they year. Even if you don't like video games one bit I guarantee this movie will have something for you. The challenger to the title, Steve Wiebe, is an every day man and his passion as well as his feelings will resonate with you. The champion, Billy Mitchell, comes off as one shady, arrogant son of a bitch. Some of this is editing, some of it is the fact that he's the best god damn video game player of our time. Several people I know have met Billy and say he is a nice guy in person. I say who cares, when you're that good, you can be cocky. Life's short, right?

In essence the movie is about a small town guy trying to dethrone a king, a god. To do the impossible. To defeat a score that has lasted almost 25 years and has never even been in any danger of falling. In fact, no one but Billy Mitchell has even beaten Donkey Kong. Will Steve be able to do it? Well if I told you that it would be like telling you Bruce was dead right at the beginning of a certain other movie. Takes a lot of the fun out of it don't you think?

So, in short, go see The King of Kong. It's great.

Breather

2007-08-01T19:38:00.000-04:00

Wow, I had two back to back pool party weekends where I ended up getting into no good and annoying my friends and coworkers. Now this week I have two tests and a presentation I have to do. I really miss summertime when I was in middle school.

Did I post that I'm moving to Georgia yet? Yes, it's just what I wanted to get from my job, if the thing I desired most was to get fucked on where I was moving.

I'll just have to make the best of things I guess. Aggh. I'm going to buy a big McMansion to make myself feel better. Spending money makes me feel better. Maybe a new car as well. We'll see.

I'm a soft MOron!

2007-07-08T11:40:00.000-04:00

This guy I mentioned from my last post is still on my ass about this whole thing. Just so you can see what kind of person he is, let me post his first reply to my post:

Me: Buyer beware if you need a specific joystick, this my not be your seller.

Chris Sorey: I think he is Taliban. Mo is actually short for Mohamed, but only in name, not to be confused with the above paragraph. So add him to your blocked list AND your watch list.

Now he is emailing me demanding I send him the joystick back. Well I told him I want a sincere apology and $8 to cover the shipping. I think that is fair. Maybe too fair. I must be getting soft in my old age.

31 going on 50!

I'm a MOron!

2007-07-07T13:11:00.000-04:00

So I'm into video games and sometimes I just have to have a really hard to find part that is way overpriced now because they don't make it anymore.

Case in point an old joystick made by a now out of business company called Wico. When the company was around (as little as 6 months ago) these joysticks were merely $10 each. Now with the company gone and supplies low, people are hording the parts and charging crazy amounts for them. I decided that for my newest machine, I need a NOS 4 way one. NOS means New Old Stock, which basically means a new, never before used item. It can't be marked New because the company is gone and the item is second hand, but for all intents and purposes, it is new. The next part, the 4 way is very important because it is a different joystick than an 8 way or a 2 way. In a 4 way, the joystick can only move up, down, left or right. In a two way, only left or right and well you get the idea. Simple concept right?

That is what I thought. So I see an ad for a guy selling a NOS Wico 2, 4 or 8 way for $45 shipped. Ouch I thought, $45 is steep, but if you have to have it, you have to have it. I had to have it. I sent the money and a short while later it arrived.

I quickly opened the box so I could check out my new awesome Wico stick and to my surprise, it's an 8 way. Damn, I thought, I emailed this guy 4 times telling him I wanted a 4 way specifically! Well, no big deal, I'll email him and tell him he sent the wrong one.

Well, long story short, this guy first is in denial, tells me there is no such thing as a 4 way, then tells me an 8 way is just like a 4 way with 4 more directions, then ends up calling me a Taliban member.

That is right, this racist idiot pulls out the Taliban card. Jeez if he had half a brain, he would know I'd much rather be in Hezbolla! (I keed, I keed)

Anyway, I figure this guy is some ass who just doesn't know what a 4 way is or just doesn't have one and won't own up to his mistake/deceit. I just resign my self to keeping the NOS 8 way, which I could use down the road for something.

Then it gets ugly. he goes and posts all this shit on a news group, such as my full name and email. Not a big problem because I can always get new emails. And lets face it, Mohammad isn't really that uncommon of a name. The clincher is what he does next however.

He REFUNDS my money, then calls me a MOron (I go by Mo on some news groups to save on typing). THEN he asks me to mail the joystick back on my dime.

That is right, he REFUNDS the money, I now have my money, PLUS his joystick. Then he calls ME a "MOron", THEN he asks me to mail the joystick back using my money to ship it to him.

HAAAAHAAAHAAA HAAAA HA...HAAA,...HA...HA.

That is some funny shit.

Needless to say, it is clear who the MOron is.

Just thought I would rant.

It was a DEATH defying birthday!!!!!

2007-06-04T22:08:00.001-04:00

OK, sorry for the slow updates but hey, life is fun and blogging seems to fall lower and lower on my to do list.

So, I'm stuck in Texas during my birthday this year. No problem, I call Jolene and tell (ask) her to come and visit me so I won't feel so bad when I turn 31. She agrees and I set up a fun filled three day birthday fest.

When she flew in on Friday we went out to a fancy house that has been converted to a restaurant with my friend Adam and his wife Sharon. We have a great time and the dinner is excellent. Then we head home to pack and get ready for our trip to San Antonio and Corpus Christi.

The next morning we head out early and make the drive to SA. When we get there I have mapquested our way to the closest Apple Store to have them take a look at my MacBook (which has a crack in the case but nothing serious). It turns out the Apple Store is in a crazy nice shopping center with stores like the Sony Store and a store that sells only Pens. It is also designed like with a nice Spanish or old world Italian feel. Lots of fans in the walkways and overhangs to keep you cool. Very pretty and fun to walk.

Next we headed out and went to the Alamo because Jolene wanted to see it again. We did the whole tour and I still didn't get to see the basement. That makes two trips and still no bike.

Following that we headed to Sea World where they let us in free because I had a coupon. Good thing I did too as the tickets would have been over a hundred dollars! The shows at Sea World are awesome, but the acting is a little cheesy. After we saw all the shows, Jolene wanted to ride some of the roller coasters.

THIS IS THE DEATH DEFYING PART!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So after we ride what we think are all of the coasters, Jolene wants to ride some of the water rides. It had started to rain earlier and we were already wet so I figured why not? We ride a couple and see one more roller coaster we hadn't rode yet and head for it. On the way there we notice the Texas Log ride. This is basically a plastic log that up to four people can fit in and it goes up a giant track and comes down the hill really fast, hits the water and you get off. Everyone has probably seen these things, they are really common at amusement parks. Anyway, Jolene says, hey lets hit that ride on the way back after we do this last coaster. I say sure, why not?

We do the coaster and head to the log ride. At the bottom of the ride are some water guns that are set up to shoot the riders if you put money into them. There was an older woman there putting money in to shoot at the people coming down slope. I decided to talk with her a minute before heading up the hill to the entrance of the ride. Jolene calls me and I turn to go. Just then I heard a loud crash and the woman I had been just talking to began to scream, "oh my god the cart didn't go, oh my god, oh god!" Hmm, I thought, that doesn't sound good.

I turn to see what had happened and I realize that the previous log had not gone around the track. Essentially, the next log had come down the hill at 60 mph, with two women and two children, and slammed right into it. Not a pretty sight. To make things worse, the next log was about to come down as well and cause even more trouble.

At this time the women at the water gun had figured out that the next log was about to drop down on these hurt people and began yelling at the picture people (the kiosk that sells your terrified image when you ride these things, I guess this one would be more interesting than most) to stop the ride and stop it now.

Without thinking to much (I knew this skill would come in handy one day) I leaped over the fence where the ride was and dashed toward the water track to help the people (cue Superman music).

Let me set the mood for you. It's about 9pm. It's dark. It's raining. The moon provided me no light as the water droplets hit my glasses, making what was going to be a crazy move even more dangerous. I'm running up to an unsecured crash site with injured people, where at any moment another cart could be crashing toward my body at 60mph, and I didn't even have the protection of being in a cart myself. Was I scared? Did I have time to feel the fear?

Damn right I did! My hands were shaking hard from adrenaline, cold, and straight up fear. I kept looking up the tracks to see if the next log was hurtling toward me, the blood was quickly leaving my head giving me that oh so dangerous grey tunnel vision. I couldn't pass out here, it would be a death sentence. I had to make it to the cart and get who I could out while I could.

I get there and the situation seems better than it should. It's an older woman unconscious, a younger woman dazed, and two 8-12 year old boys who looked fine. The boys didn't seem hurt at all, but the old woman's hand was a bit messed up. The younger woman came out of her daze and began screaming that her mom had diabetes and she was going to die! Diabetes I thought? WTF? Why would she die from a sugar disease? Maybe I have some candy in my pocket. I think my grandmother who has diabetes always carried candy for this reason. Why did I have candy in my pocket? Oh wait, it's not candy, it's gum. Oh damn, it's sugar free gum. Why do people think of weird things when in crazy situations? Like why am I thinking about candy when I could be mere seconds away from doing a grasshopper on a windshield impersonation! Oh yeah, I'm here to pull people out of danger! Fuck, get to it man!

OK, I snap back in. Now normally you don't want to move people who have experienced trauma like these people had due to neck injuries, but I figured if they stayed where they were, they would probably be experiencing even something a little more jarring than what I was going to do so I said fuck it. I grabbed the first kid and pulled him right out of the seat and tossed him as close to the fence as I could. Then I grabbed the second kid and started running toward the fence because that is when I saw next log peaking out above the top of the tracks. It was coming.

Oh fuck I thought, their mom is going to die. Just then the kid tugs my shirt and says, hey can you get my shoe? The impact and made his shoe fly off. Funny that. The impact, the shock, or just plain innocence didn't afford him the opportunity to realize that he was one lucky son of a bitch just to be alive. Well, years in foster care would give him time to think this moment over I thought. No not really, but it's classier to write that than what I really said which was "fuck your shoe, duck" to an 8 year old.

Well, either way I shielded him the best I could to at least take some of the shrapnel that I was sure was about to come flying our way when I hear the the water gun lady yell, "look, they stopped it, oh my god, thank god they stopped it!"

Holy shit came out of my mouth a few times as I headed back to the women in the cart. The old woman's hand was mauled up pretty good but the daughter seemed fine. Right then an employee with a walkie talkie showed up and "took control of the situation". By took control I mean she asked me to leave the area.

I was still shaking when I climbed the fence to get out of the way for the paramedics. I hoped back over the fence and started walking toward Jolene who was like, HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT!

I'm not sure those were her exact words, but that's the gist of it.

We start walking toward the park exit in the rain and she cautiously asks, "so do you still want to ride the Raging River ride? I mean we're already wet right?" I look her dead in the eyes and say, sure, why not, what's the worst that can happen?

Just as lighting streaks across the sky we hear over the loud speakers that Sea World is being closed early. Well I say, that must be a sign. With that we were off to our hotel room to shower and eat.

Why didn't I stick around? Wasn't I a hero? Nope, anyone would have done the same. Didn't I want Sea World to at least give me season tickets or something? No, after all, I had gotten in with a coupon. They didn't owe me a thing.

Happy New Year

2007-03-21T21:05:00.000-04:00

Happy New Year everyone! I've been super busy. Here I am in Texas for almost two months now and I still haven't unpacked so you can't expect me to send out New Years greetings on time! If you think this is more than a few days late though, you need to email me so we can chat. Hope you are doing well!

Like I said, Temporary...

2007-03-08T21:17:00.000-04:00

Well, it was too good to last forever! After getting out of one crappy training for my job, I'm in another.

Here I am in Texas for about 7 months going to class to get up to speed for the new job. Having the new job is cool, but having to be in class sucks. I think I am really ready to be done with "learning" as it is, but I just don't seem to reach that point.

I remember a few years ago, I was at something or another and the guest speaker was telling us that we never stop learning. He was right, no matter what you do in life, you are always absorbing new information. I guess I feel like it's been like that for me a little to much. I just want to sit down and DO something, not learn, learn, learn about doing stuff.

I guess I'm just burned out a little. I also guess I got use to my friends back in Maryland and am feeling a little blue about being in another new town, having to make more new friends. Not to mention the fact that I ABSOLUTELY miss my "girls", yes all three of them!

Those of you that know me, know that I don't make friends easily, so when I do, I value them!

Anyway, I'll just keep on, keeping on I guess. Maybe I'll buy a new pinball machine to cheer myself up!

Temporarily out of prison...

2006-12-18T00:56:00.000-04:00

Yes, I know the updates have been slow. Why? Because I'm stuck in semi-hell!

So I'm out of prison (just till the 2nd when I must return for 3.5 weeks) and I spent my first night out in Nashville TN, with an old bud, Eric. We had a blast as he took me out on the town with some of his friends and I proceeded to up my tolerance to alcohol again. Several Jagermeister shots and Captain and Cokes later we returned to hang out with his wife and friends at his crib. Around 4am everyone went to bed and I spent the rest of the day taking care of his 4 month old because his Roller Girl wife had broken her collar bone earlier in the week and Eric was exhausted from taking care of her and a baby. Wow, talk about birth control. I love the little tyke, but trying to take care of a crying kid when you've had no sleep and are a little drunk is hard work. I ended up mixing the formula wrong and giving him a way watered down version. Let's just say I had to change a lot of diapers today.

Anyway, Nashville is a blast and I went to some of the coolest country western bars in the world. Whats even odder is that the clientele at these bars were everything from cowboys/girls to gay guys/girls and punk guys/girls. So odd. One bar even sold cowboy boots along the wall. They had a selection of like 50 styles. Weird.

Speaking of being tired, I ended up ordering my ticket wrong and am leaving tomorrow at an odd time. I arrive home in NC about 4 hours earlier than I thought and hopefully I will finally be able to get some sleep.

Hope everyone is doing well and I'll try to say hi if and when I see you.happy xmas!

I'm NOT getting married.

2006-06-16T01:02:00.000-04:00

It's an update. It's an important one. I am not, I repeat, NOT getting married. I am NOT getting married. It was an April Fools Day joke. A JOKE. I'm not getting married.

My friend Carl (congrats on the promotion by the way, not that he'll ever read this, see next) told me the other day that he doesn't understand why I have a blog, "no one cares about your life" he said. Well, he was partially right.

Apparently, about 15 people care enough about my life to scan through my blog quickly about once every six months, then email or call me to find out why the hell I'm getting married or who the unlucky girl is.

Damn.

In Italy and OLD!

2006-06-06T07:00:00.000-04:00

First, pictures here.

Wow, what a wait. Big things happened to me this last month. First off, I went to Italy and toured most of the country for two weeks with Jolene. It was a fantastic trip and along the way I finally turned 30!

I realize most people hate hearing younger people say they are old and I know young people think if you are older than them you are old anyway, but yeah, I'm gonna say it. Now I'm old. Yuck. I hated turning 30 and I hate being 30, but here it is. What can I do? Nothing I guess. Spending my birthday in Italy is probably the best way I could have passed this milestone in my life, so it was as it should be.

How was Italy? It was fantastic of course. Oh the stories I could tell! Uh, you want me to tell them? Well, I've got bad news. I think it's because I'm old now (ha ha, gotta get those in there) I just don't feel like writing as much as I use to. Heck, I didn't write that much to begin with but now it's worse. Maybe it's not so much old as it is lazier. Or maybe I'm just busy. I don't know. I'm moving in less than four months and I've just go so much to do it's overwhelming thinking about it at times. Anyway, I'll get as much of this out as possible, but it's better if we meet up in person over dinner or lunch to talk about my trip. But please, no Italian, I don't like Italian food*!

The beginning of this trip story starts out like so. I told Jolene awhile ago that I had a lot of vacation time, about 60 days or so and she told me she's always wanted to see Italy. These two events combined to create a once in a lifetime opportunity for us. The problem was, much like many people I'm sure, that we'd always say, well this month is bad, lets go next month, or February is no good, the darn Olympics are going on, or I hate you right now and can't stand to be on a plane for 12 hours with you. You know, the small stuff would keep forcing us to put off the trip.

What finally made us go through with it? I'm moving that's what. By March I had accrued 90 days of vacation time and I was leaving my job in October. Not a great idea if you don't want to waste your vacation time. I told Jolene, in April we are going to Italy.

So April rolls around and work is like, you can't take any time off this month, we are too busy. WTF? OK I tell them, I'll stay, but I need the month of May off. They said sure and I rushed home to tell Jolene all about it. First thing we did was email our friends who had just moved to Italy not 7 months ago. We figured it would be good to meet up with English speaking friends before we set off on an adventure of backpacking randomly through a country that neither of us spoke the native language.

Randomly backpacking? Oh yes, did I forget to mention this was one of my trips where I was just planning on taking a back pack, no hotel reservations and no itinerary and just touring the country? It was. Why? Because apparently I'm to lazy to make a damn itinerary, that's why!

Well, April comes and goes and so does the first half of May. We still haven't heard from our friends, nor do we have any hotel/hostel reservations made anywhere. The only things we do have are plane tickets for the 12th and unlimited train tickets for 6 days. I figured we were set. I just need a few things to set the trip up. Good hiking/walking shoes and a big back pack like mountain climbers use. I had everything else we needed, or so I thought...

Here is where I have to stop and say to myself, how could you not even think through things for the first day? My plan was, stay up all night and sleep on the plane. Since Italy was 6 hours ahead of us and the flight so long, we'd be saving the price of our first nights sleep by doing it on the plane! Genius I thought. Apparently I'd forgotten the 720 other times I've flown and hadn't been able to get a good sleep on board. Old people have problems remembering things you see.
Well, what seemed like 40 hours after we were dropped off at BWI by our friend, we arrived in Italy. Sleepy, so very sleepy. As we stumble out of the terminal, with NO clue how to get to the train station (we were winging it, remember?) this red-headed woman and sharply dressed man assault us in Italian and start talking gibberish. After a few dazed moments, I realize it's our friends Nate and Shawn. She's dyed her hair red and I'm suffering from major lack of sleep and I didn't recognize them. After a few moments I realize their gibberish is actually English and a greeting at that. They tell us, not one hour ago they checked their junk mail folder and realized we were on our way that day and they rushed to catch us at the airport. Holy smokes I though, what good luck. What good luck indeed. Our entire trip would be a mixed smack on the cheeks from lady luck. Always the sweet with the bitter!

It turns out my friend Nate was off from work that week and they were both willing to drive us around the town they live in which is near the mountains (I'll post pictures if I get the OK from the family). They were even kind enough to drive us to the top of the mountain closest to their home where we checked out a cool lake and ski resort. At the end of the day, I was falling asleep while trying to talk, so they took us back to their 3 story mansion (OK, it was just a house, but it was awesome) and let us stay the night before we headed out the next day. The awesomeness that was meeting up with them, cannot be put into words by me, so I'll just say this. I'm glad our trip started out as it did.

The next day, Jolene and I headed out on our own (after being kindly dropped off at the train station by Nate) and headed for Milan, but we never got there.

Jolene was smart enough to bring a Lonely Planet Italy guide book (I WON'T travel without one of these again, it enhanced our trip immeasurably) with us and after reading about Milan, we decided Verona would be a much cooler (for us) city to visit, so we head straight there and arrived a few hours later.

I think now would be a good time to remind my friends and inform the random internet readers that I don't like Italian food. I despise the Olive Garden and can barely stand Macaroni Grill. The one place I do like is Bertucci's, and even then, only the pizza. The real problem is I don't like noodles, a major problem when talking about Italian food.

OK, and now I think it would be a good time to tell everyone that Italian food (in Italy) ROCKS! We could not stop eating from morning until night. I was eating about 4 times a day and that does not included the ice cream (Gelato) which I consumed at least once a day, but sometimes two, with multiple scoops each time. There were days where I would eat two or three pizza by myself and then there was the noodles. God the ravioli, spaghetti, rigatoni, all to die for. What the hell happened? I don't know, but it was awesome in Italy. The flavor of everything was a million times better than here and nothing more so than the cheese and tomatoes. I'll say it again, a million times better. This is all I can write about the food in general for you, because you just have to go there yourself to experience it. It was just good and thinking about it won't bring it back for me so I'm trying not to. Just trust me when I say you need to go and eat there. Also, we were walking around with 30 pound back packs on, so luckily for us, we did not gain any weight on this trip. If it wasn't for the walking, I would have easily put on 15-20 pounds. When I get to a city that had a specialty food or dish, I'll mention it and describe our experience with it.

Back to the trip. Verona. The city of lovers I think. They had a Romeo and Juliet house here, with the balcony and the statue of Juliet here that everyone rubs. Of course me and Jolene rubbed it! I even got a picture of myself on Juliet's balcony, which was funny because when I went up there, all the people at the bottom where like, why is there a guy up there, in like nine different languages. I just wanted Jolene to hurry up with the picture taking because it was a little weird. They also had the wall where all the lovers write stuff, we passed on writing anything, but I got a cool picture of Jolene by it.

Verona also has the Roman Arena which to be honest I can't remember anything about except that Jolene took a picture with a guy dressed up as a gladiator and I ate a lot of gelato. Then we headed out of Verona.

After seeing the mushy love stuff that Jolene wanted to check out, I was ready for a man's city. The home of the greatest car company in existence. The home of Ferrari, Maranello Italy.
To get to Maranello, we first headed to the larger city of Modena, of which Maranello is a suburb. The only thing that really interested me about Modena was that a bus could be caught to Maranello from there and that on Sunday's in the summer the great car companies of Italy (Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini, etc) would send out some of their newest creations for the public to view. Since we were not there on a Sunday, I was just interested in the bus ticket to Maranello.

We ended up running into a Scottish family who were also going to the Ferrari museum and I struck up a conversation with them. It turned out that the Italian bus drivers were on a some sort of strike (you get that a lot in socialist Europe) and weren't working or something until noon. Not wanting to waste any time, I asked the father of the family if they would like to split a cab with us to Maranello. They seemed like a nice family and they also all talked just like Sean Connery. Even the mom. Penis mightier indeed.

When we arrive to the Ferrari museum, the Scott is nice enough to pick up the tab for the ride out there. It must have been our wrinkly clothing or huge back packs that made him think we were stretching our money. There is no way he could have known how little we make at work!
I thanked him and we hurried into the most expensive musem on the planet. You first enter and are immediatly confronted by the gift shop. This place has awesome T-shirts that have Ferrari embroidered on them with Ferrari seat leather. I would have bought one to show you guys, but at $60 each, they were a tad bit expensive. Then I looked at getting a cap, but for $40, I again had to pass. It looked like I wasn't buying a suvenier from that shop, but no matter because I was more interesed in going inside to look at the cars.

I won't bore you with what was in there (hint, think Ferrari's) because you can just look at some of the pictures I took, but I will mention one Ferrari. The Enzo. Named after Enzo Ferrari, who died in 1988, I believe this is the only street legal F1 car a normal person can buy. And by normal, I mean obscenely super rich normal because the car cost over a million dollars when it was released a few years ago and Ferrari only made 399 of them. They were sold out instantly and there is no way to get one. Here I was standing beside one though. All I can say is, cool moment. Oh, they also had that car that that famous racer won like 4 record breaking world champion ships in, but it just wasn't as cool as the Enzo.

After the cool museum tour, I inquired about a factory tour. They are available I was informed, but the tickets are expensive. About $400,000.00. Sounds a bit high, but remember, you get a free car with it. I thought it over and decided that we should just head back to Modena for dinner.

At dinner, I experience my first great super-joy of Italian food. Up to this point I was really enjoying everything we had to eat, but I hadn't had anything super special yet. Well in Modena that was about to change. Modena is known for their Balsamic Vinegar. Now, I know what you are thinking. BV? Isn't that for salads? Well, yes, yes it is, unless it's BV from Modena. You see, these fine people age their BV in barrels. Anywhere from 3 to 30 years. Is there a difference? Well does my cat shed hair? Yes, oh god yes. We both decided to try meat dishes served Modena style. The meat is marinated and then cooked with a special BV sauce. The taste is so sweet. So delicious. So delectable. So good, I considered buying a $100 (yup, that's a hundred) dollar bottle of BV to bring back. That stuff is pricey there (more expensive the longer it's aged), but damn worth it. Like aged wine, you get what you pay for. Since returning home, I've had some Modena BV, but not being aged it just tastes like normal BV in a fancy bottle. Until you taste the aged stuff, trust me, you have no idea how good it is. I'll say this now, I think that meal was my favorite as far as flavors go the whole trip. You MUST try it out if you are ever in Modena. After eating our fill, we decided to press on.

Next up was a cool little place we heard about called Cinca Terra. What Cinca Terra means (pronounced Chinca Terra) is Five Cities and it's used to describe five incredibly little towns built high on the cliffs of Italy's Western coast. This place sounded to cool to pass up so the decision was made to head there next, but to get there we had to go to La Spezia first.

La Spezia was a cool little navy/port town and had a nice bay. We decided to check out their bay before heading to CT and stopped to get some pictures. It was here that I spotted some old (several hundred years) cannons they had point out toward the sea to protect the city. I told Jolene, hey, why don't you hop up on one of those and I'll get your picture. She seemed to think this was a good idea. Sometimes my ideas seem to make good sense, until you try them out.
When she hopped up on it, the momentum from here huge back pack continued to carry her forward and she was thrown off the cannon faster than I could take the picture. It was a shame to because it would have been a great picture! this resulted in several very black and blue and purple bruised on her legs and ass which made it seemed like I was beating her when no one was looking. It also caused a bunch of Italians who were watching us to start laughing like crazy. To her credit though, Jolene just got up, shook herself off and got back on that cannon.

The Soprano's season finale is about to come one, I'll finish this tomorrow and get the pictures up!

I'm back.

OK, so after La Spezia we got our special passes and headed for Cinca Terra. As we approached the first town, we could tell it was going to be awesome because we started passing some seriously awesome vistas on the way there. Cliffs, mountains, and ocean all greeted us, we thought we'd seen it all. When we finally did arrive though, our breath was taken away, it was incredible.

The towns are built on the edge of the world. The area is magnificent. The citizens of the towns are farmers and through the generations their farming techniques have actually kept the fantastic cities from slipping off the cliffs into the seas below. It really is hard to comprehend unless you see it for yourself, so jump over to the pictures and take a look, you won't be disappointed.

There are many paths that actually go into the mountains here and one that connects all five towns. Jolene and I decided to take this path and it was a five hour trip on foot which we did in two days. This allowed us to see all five towns close up and get familiar with the the cliffs and olive groves first hand. Cinca Terra is know for two major things (other than the fantastic location). Lemons and salty anchovies. I'm a fan of lemons, but not the anchovies. We both decided to put aside our feelings and try out their specialties.

While we were there the annual lemon festival was going on. I must say, that first off, the lemons there are very unique. Not so much sour as super bitter and oval shaped like a football. We tried items from lemon alcohol, lemon candy/chocolate, to lemon marinade. Very unique, but horrible overall, just to darn bitter.

Next up was the salty anchovies. I was scared. I hate anchovies so much, that if someone orders it on half a pizza in America, I can't even eat from the other half because the smell is to strong. I couldn't pass the chance up to try them here though. We decided to order them and give it a shot. We both took a bite of our anchovies on toast and it was hard. It actually tasted like biting into a salt bar with a strong fish flavor. Man, I have to say pass, unless you really like that flavor...

OK, this is turning into a three day process. Check back later for more story. In the meantime, check out the pictures, they don't have captions yet, but at least you can look at them.

Here is the end of it all darn it!

We went to Rome, then Naples, then Florence, then Bologna, then Venice, and finally home. Why not more detail? Because you've all freaking asked me about it in person and I've told you. No one online has posted any comments asking for more info, so I can only surmise that no one reads my damn, boring blog. So that's it. End of story. Email for more or post a damn comment. Or don't. I don't care.

April Fools, April Fools.

2006-04-17T17:55:00.000-04:00

No I'm not getting married. For those of you who missed the announcement below corresponding with a certain date of the year. Sorry, pay more attention!

Anyway, I'm only updating because Angie really wants me to. The problem is that I don't have anything interesting to write about. I've just been busy with work and I can't wait until this month is over. Next month is my May and my 30th birthday month. Yuck, finally turning 30. Well, this blows. Anyway, I'm still trying to squeeze a trip to Italy in before I turn old, but I'm not sure I'm going to make it.

In other news, I saw the movie Slither. It was good. It stared a lot of B+ actors (the captain from the movie Serenity) and had a typical alien invasion story line. I loved the dialog and the directing was good as well. Overall, a good flick. No review because I'm to tired to write it, but see it if you like the genre.

The weather here has been getting nice and Jolene bought a nice mountain bike. I want to buy one also to ride with her, but I've been brought up on the $100 bike theory and some people have recently told me to at least spend $400. Not sure what to believe. I went to the bike shop and looked at all the expensive bikes. I even got to play with Lance Armstrong's bike, which cost $10,000 but was as light as a book. It wasn't the actual one he rode to win 7 Tour de France races, but the model they built for him. It was awesome, but for ten large, I had to pass.

I think I'm going to spend the $400 and just get a nicer bike. It will be my first bike purchase in over 12 years, but I'm excited about it. At the store when they gave it to me to test ride I was really nervous about remembering how to ride it, but you know what they say...

I'm getting MARRIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2006-04-01T16:50:00.000-04:00

Well it had to happen right? I've been dodging this bullet for about 29 years and I finally decided to go ahead and do it. Since my job is moving me in about 8 months and I'm not too good with long distance relationships, I've decided to go ahead and make things official and make XX (she'd rather not have her name on the internet) an honest woman.

My close friends, this should come as no surprise. You know how much I've wanted to be married these last few years (and have kids) and the timing couldn't be better.

When's the wedding? As soon as possible. My birthday is in May so I'm thinking June or July. You are all invited of course and invitations will be going out shortly. It would mean a lot to me if those of you that are close enough to easily come, well, came!

Questions about the ring? I sold off my BMW (as I couldn't really use it to get to Texas anyway) and once the bank clears the funds, I'm picking up the 2 carat diamond. It is going to be sweet! I'll post pictures as soon as I have it.

A lot of people said I would never give up the bachelor lifestyle, but come on, I'd be a fool to pass up an opportunity like this!

Well, that's it for now, hope to see you guys/gals there!

Good news and more good news.

2006-03-30T06:51:00.000-04:00

How about a quick update about me? Yes, how about this, on March 1st I got a promotion at work! Was it a big one? Well, not so much a promotion in status (although it was a small one), but more importantly a little more jingle in my pants (and all guys love more jingle in their pants, yes that was a double entendre).

News item #2, I was presented with a career change! It's a new job with my same company, only I'll be moving to Texas next year (only for a year though!). I like Texas, so that's not bad and I'll be getting more cash, also, not bad. In five years time I hope to be able to double my income and triple my responsibility. I'm not sure that is a good deal, but I never was good at math.

Last but not least, how shall I put this? I've been getting fat. I finally hit 240 pounds, which I think is my heaviest weight ever. I think I was 238ish one time in late 1997, but either way, I got fat. What have I done about it? Well the last month and a half since I posted, I've been working out and eating like a damn rabbit. I'm down to about 208 (32 pounds for those of you who are counting) and I feel better. No, that's a lie. I look better, but I sure do miss my lazy lifestyle and great food.

I guess when I get down to my goal weight of 195, I'll start eating some real food again. Unfortunately, I'll have to keep up with the exercise I've been doing, but I guess that will help me live longer so it's not all bad.

Inside Man.

2006-03-30T06:49:00.000-04:00

Chris and I finally went to the movies again. The result is a movie review of the movie Inside Man. Before you click, I will warn you, he gives away a few lines and possible spoilers for this great movie.

Enjoy and remember to thank Chris when you see him (either for being an anti-racist, or for writing funny reviews).

Everyone relax, I'm not dead.

2006-03-30T06:43:00.000-04:00

Where the heck have I been? Well, on http://www.somethingawful.com/ I Posted a crazy story about my pinky finger. Read it at the Feb 15th post below if you haven't already. After I posted my story, I got 50,000, that's right 50,000 hits to my website from SA. This caused quit a bit of problems to my poor little website that is use to only getting about 10 people a day. Anyway, long story short, I got offers of help (money and otherwise), offers to move in with people to avoid my imminent death, and much, much ridicule. What I also got was a breach of my bandwidth with caused me to shift over to my free blog and not post after awhile. If you read my story, here is the real scoop (which was posted on SA last month):

"I was going to post that I'm not a compulsive liar, but then I thought back on when I first went to the hospital... I told the doctors and nurses that I broke my pinkie in the Maryland State Nose Picking Championships....

It was the final round, me and Sausage Hole were going in deep, suddenly my index cramped up and I went to my ring as the reserve. There, there was a deep, stuck, little one I couldn't reach. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sausage Hole pulling out his last big booger, the one that would likely put him over the edge. I couldn't let that happen. With all my might, I jammed my pinkie in as deep as it would go while praying to the god that helps those by mistake to allow me to get that winning booger. That's when I heard the crack. Result? Second place and a dislocated pinkie.

That's one story. What did I tell my friends? I was with a new girl, she liked it rough. I had given her all I could. I was tired. It was clear that all I could, was not enough. I decided to go for The Shocker, but I knew this girl could easily take it. She didn't need, nor want The Shocker, she wanted, The Xtra Shocker (my name on SA is XtraSmiley). Being the Xtra kind of guy I am, I decided to go for it. Turns out, I wasn't as "Xtra" as I though. This involves such rapid and intense movements, that my poor little "For the Stink" couldn't keep up. It just gave way to the overwhelming weight of the buttock. Crack. I left part of my fingernail in the battle field that day...

What did I tell my SA Goon buddies? Well, they needed a good story to turn their stomachs a bit. So I took an hour and came up with one. I'm glad some of you enjoyed.

What really happened? Fucking basketball game. THIS, THIS is why I don't do sports (I do gamble like a nut though). Yes it hurt. Yes I have a job. Yes, I guess I am a compulsive liar, but it was for all the right reasons!"

Well, that's it, now you know. I'm fine and I don't have a gambling problem, thanks for asking!

Why haven't I updated?

2006-02-16T00:38:00.000-04:00

I had lived my life playing video games and watching TV. I figured the sooner I knew how to live my life as simply as possible while doing these things, the better off I would be, but how?

I didn’t know until about two years ago. That’s when I discovered gambling for adults. I’m not talking about online poker or going to Vegas, I’m talking about hooking up with a bookie and betting on sports (or anything else that catches your fancy). I’m not going to get into who I bet with or how it works because that is not the focus of this thread. Let me just say that I met a guy through a guy and that my betting has been going on for a little over two years now.

To be honest, I didn’t know that I had such a great knack for it. I went from having a crappy job to actually betting full time to make the rent. Was it going well?

I started my own ARCADE in my house.

I bought a bad ass BMW convertible.

Trips all over the US and world.

I have the big screen HDTV, the awesome computer and all the other shit you want as a teenager growing up (note, I’m not a teenager now, just have the mindset).

So, why post this story you ask? It’s not to brag about how cool my gambling lifestyle is because no matter what you have, someone else has more and it's childish to brag. Yes I was living large compared to what I had grown up with, but I knew plenty of people (especially in the DC area) who really thought I was barely making ends meet. No my Mooshack buddies, this thread isn't here to brag, it's here is to tell YOU the great rules of gambling.

Rule #1; no matter how much you win, you eventually lose.

It started a few months ago, betting on football and leading up to the Super Bowl. Basically, I made some bad choices this year, real bad.

I have no real job to speak of (part time shit I do for fun notwithstanding), so the gambling winnings were what I was working with to live (and live large). Correction, the gambling loses were what I was working with to try and stay alive. A few weeks before the big game I owed my guy, $40 large.

That’s forty, thousand, dollars.

This is a lot of money for a guy who barely made it through High School and never went to college, hell it’s a lot of money for any normal person. I was in and I was in deep. The thing is, when you win big and then lose big, you think you can turn it around by winning big, you know what I mean?

Rule #2; don’t try to turn around a big losing streak by betting more.

I had a system figured out to get out of this big-ass hole by post Super Bowl. Problem was, I was already floating a bit and the time had come to “collect.”

I’m coming home one day from seeing a movie and I see three guys waiting for me at my house. I recognize one as my bookie (let’s call him John). John is a great guy. He’s taken my bets, we’ve chatted sports, we’ve had meals together, hell I’ve had him over for drinks. John is not what is odd, it’s the two guys, the two big guys I’ve never seen that are with him.

When I get out I head over, I’m already a little nervous because I’m several weeks late paying what I’m into John for. Of course I could tell that being late on the payment of my debt was what this "meeting" was all about. I don’t’ get a chance to go inside, because as soon as I approach, John suggests that I get in the car and go for a ride to talk things out. I feel like turning and running, but I doubt I could get anywhere and make it. I decide to just follow along, because hey, it’s just money and I’m good for it. I’m fucking good for it.

The whole car ride, they talk amongst themselves mostly, but a little with me. No serious talk though. This makes it worse. I’m scared out of my fucking pants. This is nothing like a movie. I was fucking shaking all over and I couldn’t stop. John just tells me to relax over and over. Fuck.

We get to where we are going. It was a closed building of some type. It doesn’t look good. Now it’s more like a movie, but a movie I’d rather not be in. I’m not going to lie. I started crying like a little girl. John told me to relax, they just wanted to talk. I began to wonder if they were going to kill me. I couldn’t stop shaking. Fuck.

We go in and there is literally, spread before my stinging eyes a scene from a formulaic mobster movie. It’s a fucking chair in a dimly lit small room, like an office. Not much in there but a chair. At this point, I’m using my shirt to dry my face and blow my nose. No one offers me a napkin, but at least they haven’t shot me yet. I’m no longer crying. My brain is starting to numb up to the whole thing. It's like my body is there, but I'm floating on clouds. John, with a very grim look on his face, tells me I owe him and his employer some money. I’m late. This is a lesson on why not to be late. That was all, and then he just looked at me like it was my turn to speak. In reality, it was my turn to beg.

I start begging; pleading for them to not hurt me, kill me anything. I tell them I’ll pay (although I really can’t). I’ll tell them I’ll go to my family (which wouldn’t have that much). I promise I’ll sell my things and get the cash (I’m not sure I could raise the money in time). I’ll pay with the interest I owe. I’ll pay extra. Just. Please. Don’t. Hurt. Me. I wanted to say that it would all work out after the Super Bowl, but John knew that. This was not the time to bring up more gambling I was doing to offset the problems I had with prior gambling.

John just calmly lets me get it out. Then out of no where one of the two goons just starts hitting me in the stomach. He gets two or three good whacks and I’m on the floor. One kick to the stomach and I’m in the fetal position trying to protect my head and belly. So far, so good (I realize later, hey a few punches and kicks, it’s not so bad!). They are just waking me up a bit and telling me to shut the fuck up.

They put me in the chair. Yes, I’m fucked up and dazed, but in good shape, considering. Now John actually tells me he likes me and hates doing this. Fuck, I felt like a battered wife being told by her husband that he really loves her as he smacks her one more time in the lip. I actually felt good for a second. It’s like we are friends and he’s just trying to help me out.

John tells me that I still have time to pay and as long as the Super Bowl goes good, it should all be fine. Funny thing is, at this point I remember thinking, "well". "As long as the Super Bowl goes well, it should be fine." Shit, the things that run through your mind while under stress.

Just one thing, he says, snapping me out of my stupid grammar day dream. I have to hurt you just because it’s expected of me. You understand. Fuck.

Then he pulls out the pliers. Fuck.

I tell you I was freaked out. The two guys hold me down in the chair while John grabs my hand. He tells me to relax and he’s going to pull out a few fingernails. Fuck.

I beg, beg, him not to because for some reason this is one of my worst fears (not that anybody would actually not fear this happening to them). He has trouble getting a hold of a hand easily, so he just looks me in the face and says, fine, I like you Mo. No fingernails. Thank god.

What a goddamn relief that was, although I didn’t quit believe him, you know? I’m still guarding my hands as much as possible, although the two goons have let go of me.

He then tells me to hold out my hand with a look on his face that says, don’t you fucking disobey me you fuck-bitch. Fuck.

I give him my left hand as I’m right handed.

He just grabs my pinkie and fucking breaks it.

I can’t really describe it in detail because it was so fast and so shocking. Just imagine a grown man, grabbing your smallest finger with the intention of doing it major damage. That was it. He used both hands and just twisted at the first knuckle until he was satisfied. Crack. That was that.

Then, they told me not to be late again and drove me home. I called my girlfriend and had her drive me to the hospital.

Sorry if this was a long winded way of saying:

Rule #3; don’t gamble and lose if you can’t afford it.

And now for something a little different.

2006-01-14T18:02:00.000-04:00

As you guys know, I have been collecting arcade machines for a couple of years now and have even worked on a MAME cab or two. Well, MAME is so great, that whenever I get a chance to help in anyway I can, I do. Early last year I came across a game that wasn't in MAME yet so I bought it and sent it to the people that can get it in there. After a long few months, the game finally showed up and although I didn't do any of the programming, I felt like just finding and buying the game made me a "co-producer" of getting it in MAME. Well, more important than feeling good, I helped save another game that would more than likely disappear forever. Well, flashback to late 2005 and I come across another game that isn't in MAME. This time the game in question is B.O.T.S.S. Battle of the Solar System, a giant, sit-down mech game. Of course as soon as I see it on ebay I post a message at MAME.net to let the fellas know that it is available. The opening bid is at only $50 and we (we being the MAME community) didn't have the PCB (although the ROMS had been dumped). Well, long story short, no one bought it. Since it was a sit down game with a giant screen, shipping would have been killer, and none of the MAME team lived in Maryland so shipping would be a bitch.

In Maryland I say? Why yes I do. Hmmm, who do I know that lives in Maryland? I do! Well, frack it (BSG!) I say and I contact the owner. Turns out she will be re-listing the item soon and I can bid on it when she does. There is something else too. Something that peaks my interest more than a game that is not yet in MAME. She says, her husband is the original designer of the game, and it's his I'll be bidding on and buying. Not only that, but he has agreed to give the winning bidder one-on-one time to answer any questions about the game. Wow, a chance to interview a man who actually designed a video game? Yes, regardless of how little room me and Jolene had in our tiny condo, I was going to bid and win this game. Did I mention it was a giant sit-down arcade game? Did I mention we lived in a cramped condo, on the second floor? Did I mention I bought a new car, perfect for transporting giant arcade machines? I immediately threw open my ebay account and made an opening bid.

Well, having the bid in there and knowing I would bid up to a ridiculous amount to be able to meet the designer, I started thinking on ways to a) break the bad news to Jolene and b) find someway of getting this thing to my house, which was 45 minutes away from where it was waiting for me. The first was easy enough. Jolene doesn't care what I do as long as it's not to crazy, oh and I just didn't tell her about it until I got it home. B) turned out to be easy also as I was in class with a guy who just bought a new truck and was supper eager to use to move stuff in. The stars couldn't be more lined up, except, I still hadn't won the game yet.

Now, if you know anything about ebay, you know that people in the know, wait until the last second to snipe an auction. It helps keep prices down and to piss off people who don't know about sniping. Some bidders (like me) like to make an initial bid to let others know they are watching the item (usually the opening bid) then they sit back and wait until the last possible second and slam the auction with their maximum price. Sometimes using sniping software from a third party. Me, I don't use the software, but I snipe something fierce, like that guy in that movie, that movie about snipers. Anyway, the plan was set in motion for this auction when I noticed that the end date was Thanksgiving. Uh-oh, this would be a major problem because I wouldn't be home sitting on the computer waiting for the end of an ebay auction (this Thanksgiving at least!). I had to think of something fast. Should I just put in my maximum bid now and take a risk? Should I sign up for one of those sniping programs to do the dirty work for me? What to do?

I did what any fair minded ebayer would do. I contact the seller and made an offer to BIN, or Buy It Now for the ebay uninitiated. She took me up on the offer and I was off to get the game.
I can't tell you the excitement I had in the car with my friend Taj to go and get the game. A real life game designer. Oh the things I would ask him. Then I realized, the things I would ask him? I didn't know any things! I wasn't a journalist! I hadn't ever interviewed anyone in my life! I didn't even bring a tape recorder! Oh crap, this would end up sucking. But then I realized, hey this is really for the readers of Mooshack.com. you guys already know I can't write! A few minutes later we arrived at the house and here is the interview. Enjoy.

Me: First off Doug, thanks for taking the time to answer these questions. My first ones are, what was your involvement with this game and where and when did you get a hold of this actual one?

Doug Kaufman: Ha, well thank you for coming by to get this out of my house and to ask me these questions! Lets see, back around 1990 I was asked to be the designer of the B.O.T.S.S. game where I worked at Micropose. Microprose had recently expanded their business to a coin-op division and got into the market with a 3D polygon game by the name of F-15 Strike Eagle. They wanted to put out a second game and at the time Japanese robots were very popular, so it seemed like the right direction to go. We had the hardware done, so it was easy to develop B.O.T.S.S. on that platform. As far as how I got mine, five years ago, a friend of mine had called from the Timonium Fairgrounds (a town North of Baltimore that holds fairs and auctions on a regular basis -Mo) and told me they had one for sale. I decided to go and check it out, with the thought that I could spare $400 on the game, but I doubted I could win it. When the bidding started for it, there were two other people who were bidding on it. When the bidding started, I finally took it to the 300 dollar mark, one guy dropped out and the other kept going. When I finally bid my final bid of $400, he looked at me for a second and then just shook his head. I had won the game I once designed!

M: Awesome! So you were there when they were planning the game. Were you excited to move to the coin-op division in the company, why did you do it?

DK: Well, I had been looking for something more interesting to do and they offered me the designer position. I thought I could bring some unique ideas to the game and decided to do it. I was relatively new at the company and I wanted a chance to prove myself.

M: Lets talk about the game, what was the inspiration for it?

DK: Like I said earlier, Japanese robots were big at the time, so we knew it was going to be a robot game. We spent a long time trying to come up with the game title actually. One day one of the guys says, hey we are fighting different levels, lets make them planets and call it Battle for the Solar System. Then someone noticed that if you made it Battle OF the Solar System, it spelled BOTSS in acronym. At first we thought, two s's? That won’t work, but then we just went for it and it seemed to work out.

M: What about some of the elements in the game?

DK: Well, I have a couple of stories here. First is the targeting display. The reticule itself changes as you get different weapons. Up to this point I don’t think any game I had seen did this and I came up with the idea after a dream. One night I had dreamed I was in the game and when I got a bigger gun, the targeting display changed to show the bigger gun. The next day I had it put directly into the game!

M: From dream to reality! (note, I didn’t really say this because it sounds even goofier than it looks on paper).

DK: Another funny story involves the hot female in the game. At the time the game came out, everyone who played it (and even the testers) were like who is this hot female doing the voiceovers?

M: Are you talking about the sexy-sounding assistant in the game that tells you the planet objectives and damage report? Man she does sound sexy! That voice is very nice.

DK: LOL, yeah that is the best part. At that time we didn’t have any females in the office and instead of going out to hire an actress to play the part, we just grabbed the first one at work we came across that could do the job. She just happened to be the office secretary, Anita, our like 65 year old unofficial grandma!

M: 65! Oh man.

DK: Yup.

M: Wow (looks around nervously to see if anyone sees the crushing look of disappointment on his face at the fact that his dreams of ever meeting the sexy assistant who countless times helped him avoid certain death by giant robots comes crashing down). OK, so you guys finished the game, what happened then?

DK: Well, I think we were only able to get 40 (note: Doug wasn't 100% about this number, it could have been 400) or so games to market. At the time, Microprose’s CEO refused to get into the coin-op "distribution game" like other companies. He wanted to handle distributing internally and I feel (as did others) you just couldn’t do it with an establish industry. They were just not going to be open to it. As a result, we had problems getting it out there and felt resistance in other areas of the business. I feel that the coin-op division of Microprose actually helped bring the whole company down as we were losing tons of money.

M: Wow, the whole company? That is harsh! How did B.O.T.S.S. do though?

DK: It did very well, but was facing stiff competition at the arcades. There were a few games out there where the arcades could link them up and players could play head-to-head. This was proving to be a very popular option and we didn’t have it. At first we considered an update to the B.O.T.S.S. game to get this feature in there, but then decided it would be better to create a new game. We decided to do a tank battle game, but it would be linkable and co-op. We were even looking at doing a split screen if the operator only had one copy of the game.

M: Would that be the often rumored A-10 Tank Buster?

DK: Yes, it would be the follow-up and have all the features we wanted to put into F-15 and B.O.T.S.S. but couldn’t. Now, another game you may not have heard of was a car game we were developing.

M: A car game? No, tell me more.

DK: Yes, it was another attempt to use the hardware and included co-op, simultaneous play. Sadly it was never completed past the planning stages. I think it was going to be called Crazy Race.

M: What happened at this point?

DK: I was offered an opportunity to work in the PC division and I took it, because I could see the handwriting on the wall. The coin-op division folded a bit later.

M: Wow, I’m sorry to hear it; I bet you could have created many more cool coin-ops, had you been given the chance. What do you think of MAME, the main reason I bought this game from you today?

DK: Thank you. MAME, what’s that?

M: MAME is the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. It was started to help preserve the arcade games of the past. Basically, people are writing code/program to be able to run old arcade games on a PC. This allows us to preserve the work you and your coworkers created as the hardware they were designed on begins to fail and in some cases is discarded or lost.

DK: That sounds fantastic, where is this located?

M: Check out www.mame.net for more information. Hopefully, with your help we (and by we, I mean Philip J Bennett who is working on the emulation of B.O.T.S.S.) will be able to get the emulation of B.O.T.S.S. completed.

DK: Wow that is great news! I’ll help in anyway I can.

With this ended our interview. Doug Kaufman is in my opinion a master game creator with many games under his belt including the following:

Board games: Star Warriors, the TORG RPG (with Greg Gorden), and Star Trek Kobayashi Maru Test while at West End Games.

Computer games: Civ 2 (with Brian Reynolds), Dragonsphere, and Command HQ (with Dan Bunten) while at Microprose, Alpha Centauri while at Firaxis, Rise of Nations at Big Huge Games.

And he is President of the official Netrunner fan club, the Top Runner's Conference.

Happy New Year Everybody!

2006-01-03T20:59:00.000-04:00

What a year that last one was! I had a blast and it's hard to believe it is over. I want to wish all my friends, and even some of my enemies (you know who you are) out there a happy New Year and all the best this year. I hope this upcoming one is even better than the last.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

2005-12-25T14:50:00.000-04:00

Here are the pictures, stop bugging me!!!!!!!

2005-12-18T23:59:00.000-04:00

With all the dang partying I’ve been doing this week, I haven’t been able to keep up with the site. Sorry. Since the requests have been pouring in for pictures, I’m going to just post a few sets and skip the captions. I know this is truly heart breaking for some of you, but I promise you this, you have not seen the last of the captions.

On to the pictures.

1. The great birthday party I went to last week was for my good friend Angie. It was held at The Green Lantern, one of DC’s premiere Bear Clubs. If you don’t know what a Bear Club is, uh, don’t click on these links at work. Here.

2. My friend Christy’s birthday party. Back in July of this year. Ouch, yeah, it’s a little late. Here.

Happy Birthday Angie!

2005-12-13T02:18:00.000-04:00

Wow, this took longer than I thought to update. I've been kind of busy I guess. I purchased a new arcade game called Battle of the Solar System (B.O.T.S.S.) and it is huge! It's a sit-down MechWarrior type game and it is sucking up large amounts of my living room. I thank GOD (as much as an atheist can thank God) that I'm blessed (lol, blessed) with such a great girlfriend/roommate that doesn't just constantly scream at me for buying large, 20 year old, spider homes. Anyway, I've decided to cut back a bit and sell some games off. I've already sold my Popeye and the B.O.T.S.S. is also tentatively sold. Next up may be Crystal Castles (I plan to buy one in even better condition in the future) and Marble Madness. Both games have served me well, but I need to make room for other things, or in the event of a move, have less shit to move.

Lets see, I saw three recent movies. Narnia, Syriana and Murderball. No reviews right now because I'm tired, but unless you have a deep desire to see any of them, just skip them. Video is fine because none were extraordinary.

I promise that one day I'll finish the story of my trip, it's just that this is not the day. Instead, I want to wish my friend Angie a Happy Birthday!

Quick update, movie review.

2005-11-20T19:36:00.000-04:00

Hey, here is my review of the movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. The short version is GO SEE IT NOW, IT'S THE BEST MOVIE OF 2005! The long version is here.

OK, I'm really back this time!

2005-11-18T19:26:00.000-04:00

OK, crap that was a bit of a bigger break than I thought it would be. Sorry. Anyway, I realize I was about to finish the story of my vacation when my super-cooled, super computer, super died. Now it has been several months and my "memory like a fish" is starting to fail on me. I'm not sure what the hell happened, so maybe Stacy could write in and fill in any holes that I may have left out.

Well, we started the trip by heading up to NYC to see a theater show. Wait, scratch that, it should read, we wanted to start the trip by heading to NYC to see a show but couldn't because Spamalot was sold out for the next three weeks.

So, we started the trip by heading for Boston. This was my first time in Boston and it was great. We headed straight for the downtown area and found the bar that inspired the show Cheers. It is the Bull and Finch Pub and it was great. The atmosphere was very nice (with lots of pictures of the Cheers actors and show) and the food was excellent.

Next we walked around downtown Boston a bit. Talk about historic. This place was so cool! We walked into a cemetery where famous historic people from American history were buried. Who were they you ask? Well, I don't remember, but I do remember that Samuel Adams was buried there. He invited beer I think.

Later we headed up to a small town where the PalaverCon 2005 was being held.

This was a rather large collection of Stephen King geeks (myself included) and everyone was very nice and cool. The guy who is running Donald Grant Publishing's (was that the correct place to put the possessive apostrophe s?) wife seemed to be running the show, and I'm glad she was, because she was very nice and seemed to be dedicated to the show.

The big draw for me was meeting some of my favorite artists like Phil Hale and Michael Whelan. These guys were very cool and did a collaborative art session where they painted 20 pictures together over the course of a few hours (with also cool artist Rick Berry).

Stacy, who had never read The Dark Tower series nor seemed to have a lot of interest in it, still went with me and checked around. At first he seemed really bored, but then some panel members began talking about things like "collecting" and old comics and movies. Suddenly Stacy became very interested.

He got to meet the writer of the The Towering Inferno (Frank M. Robinson), who was this really cool guy who told stories about the '60s and '70s that were very bizarre and really interesting. To give you a taste, he use to be the writer of the Playboy Advisor... that is all you get for a taste, you should go to his website and buy a book and email him for more, trust me, it is worth it! OK, OK a quick story from what I recall.

Frank was the editor of a magazine that was a competitor to Playboy. Every month, Franks magazine would run a comic strip in their issue. Well, as people can tell you (what people, I'm not really sure) Hugh Hefner was a very shrewd business man and wanted to beat his competition. A few weeks before Frank's magazine was about to hit the stands, he gets a call telling him that the comic strip they run has been bought out by Mr. Hefner's company and they could no longer run it.

Now, back in those days they needed weeks to get the layout of a magazine done before it could go to press, not like today where layouts can be changed on the computer in an instant. In essence, Hugh had screwed Frank's magazine big time. Frank was pissed, but he kept his cool. He recalled a story that had been floating around about Hugh regarding a comic strip that Hugh had drawn when he was a lad of 18. Apparently the story went, the comic was so stupid and poorly drawn, it was a source of major embarrassment to Hugh. In fact, no one had even seen these comics, but word on the street was that Hugh wouldn't want anyone to ever see them and do what he could to prevent it. Well having this pseudo-real story and balls the size of watermelons, Frank decides to call his friend, the then current editor of Playboy.

Frank: Hey did you guys know someone bought the strip we usually run in our mag?

PB Editor: Yeah, I had heard about that, that's tough luck.

Frank: Oh, it's not a big deal, we just got a hold of something much better. It's a strip done by a guy named Hugh Hefner. It's not to funny, but I think the readers will enjoy it anyway.

PB Editor: What are you talking about?

Frank: Well, we'll send you a copy of this months issue when it hits the stands so you can check it out...

PB Editor: Uh, wait, what are you talking about?

Frank: Talk to you later.

Of course Frank didn't have any such comic, nor could he even know for sure if such a thing even existed. I think he just knew he had been beaten and wanted to fuck with Playboy a bit. Well to his surprise, the Playboy people call him back and asked him to not run the comic. Well, since Frank didn't even have a comic to run he agreed as long as they remembered that he had done them a big favor. Well a few months down the road his magazine shuts down (as Frank says he saw coming b/c Playboy was killing them in sales) and subsequently, Frank gets a job at Playboy, later becoming editor!

I don't think Frank ever found out if there were any comics floating out there, or even if the editor of Playboy knew if there were. They were just so scared of finding out (and maybe Hugh firing the lot of them) that they just couldn't risk it happening. This was one of the few stories from Frank that I thought was great. Of course, sitting there having him tell it to you live is a much better experience than reading my crappy writing, but sometimes you just have to deal with what you got.

OK, back to the trip. So, instead of spending a day or two at the convention, Stacy started having a good time so we went ahead and did all three convention days there. We had a blast and I ended up spending a ton of cash on some artwork. After the convention was over, we decided to head north to Canada. Nova Scotia here we come! To be continued...

Meanwhile, wet your appetites on this really old review of The Dukes of Hazzard that Chris wrote like five months ago.

I'm back baby!

2005-10-21T15:44:00.000-04:00

Damn, talk about talking a bit of time off! I had major computer problems, then work picked up, now I'm busy with school again. I promise and update is coming soon as well as pictures. Even though my camera is toast.

A little background.

2005-08-06T14:48:00.000-04:00

Well getting my pictures off of my camera's memory card was a total and utter failure. If anyone can come by my place with their Sony camera that can read "Pro" Sony memory sticks and their USB cable I'll download the GoonCon photos that I have. In the mean time, you'll have to make due with the ones I took while going up North.

Stacy lives in North Carolina and was my boss when I was a punk 16 year old working in a video store. I was an ass, much like that guy in Clerks, only before that movie came out. I even recall when it did come out, the only reason I saw it was because Stacy and another friend Joy were like, Mo you have to see this movie, there is a video store clerk a-hole just like you in it. I did and I do agree, it is as if Kevin Smith had made a trip down to Action Video in NC and watched me work for a week while writing the script for Clerks.

Anyway, I digress. Stacy is a lot older than me and was my boss for several years. I really didn't think we had much in common, but along the way I found his rather fondness of movies, games and comic books tied right into my interests as a 16-18 year old (sad for him).

Flash forward 10 years and I still hang out with him when I head home. Although I figured by now at least one of us would have grown out of some of our interests, neither have (sad for us). One of the new things I have developed an interest for is traveling and I have pulled him into it as well. At least every two to three years me and Stacy like to do a road-trip to a new location. Be it Vegas, Niagara Falls, Chicago or New England, if we haven't been there, we'll go. The things I really like about Stacy are:

1. I can call him up and say, "Stacy I just bought two tickets to a Dark Tower Convention in New Hampshire, you have 50 days to get off of work for a week and drive up here." and he'll responds with, "OK I'm in, what the heck is a Dark Tower?"

2. I can make him drive his car. We share driving duties, but he has a bigger car (even more so now, see below) and it's newer (not than the Bimmer, just the Nissan) and it gets great gas mileage.

3. I can talk this guy into going anywhere if I can somehow include games, comics, food or gambling into the trip. This has never been a problem.

4. He's willing to split the cost 50-50 with me. Some of my other friends like doing 51-49 or 45-55, which drives my OCD brain up a wall. Not Stacy, he is willing to go to the PENNY on the cost and divide it totally evenly. I like that.

5. He puts up with a lot of my shit. Conversely, he has a lot of shit that I must put up with, but hey, dems the breaks.

Well, as some of you are well aware of, I'm a pretty big Stephen King (SK) fan. I am an even bigger fan of the Dark Tower series of books that he's written (although the last three were the weakest). Anyway, all the collectors buy SK books from a place called Donald Grant Publishing (DG). DG puts out special versions of SK's books that are bound better and in a more limited number. I have about 15 of these versions from different series. I'm a huge fan and I've been on their mailing list for years. Anyway, the Dark Tower series contain some of the few books that SK has commissioned artists to paint art for. For the seven books there have been six artists (Michael Whelan did the art for books one and seven). Long story short, DG decides to have a convention and invite several of the artists to attend. They send out an email and indicate that there are only 150 tickets available. I of course, buy two immediately. This is the start of my 2005 road trip to the Northeast.

I didn't know much about the Northeast, nor about the artist involved with the Dark Tower, but the conventions official website, PalaverCon 2005 provide a lot of needed details. I signed up, bought the tickets and called Stacy up. No wait, maybe I called him while I had the site up just to make sure he could get off of work in that short a time. At any rate, he could and I bought the tickets. Now began the planning of our trip.

Ever since I moved out on my own in the world, I've wanted to see places. I have seen quit a few, but I've always wanted to say things like, "I've been to all 50 states," or "I've been to Europe, yes, all of it." At a newly minted 29, I feel like I'm well on my way. I had probably under 15 states to go, and hitting New England would knock off about five more. Another big reason to go.

Done with that above paragraph? Yes? Well that was about all the planning I got around to doing. Stacy HATES that as he likes to know exactly what he's doing and when. I love winging it because I like doing stuff off the cuff and enjoying myself with no pressures. Sure my way can waste time and I miss something we wanted to do (sorry about the Boston Ghost Tour Stacy!) but all in all I feel it is the least stressful way to go and to have a fun vacation, not a stressful one. Others, I understand, are totally 180 on this belief.

Well, my road trip so my planning, as in none-at-all. I tell Stacy to meet at my house on Wednesday so we could roll out to NYC by Thursday afternoon to see a play and go on up to Boston before hitting the first of the three day convention on Friday. Whoa, should have planned that better, here's how it really went down...

My fingers are tired. I'll type more of the story soon. For now, here is a movie review of Stealth by Chris.

I return.

2005-08-03T21:15:00.000-04:00

I'm back from my two back-to-back vacations. First I drove from DC to the New England area, ending up in Canada and back, then I flew to New Orleans to party it up for a four day GoonCon drinking fest. Both vacations were great for different reasons and both will provide some stories and pictures when I have a little more time to provide them.

During the NO trip, my camera suffered a soaking at a pool party I attended. After several days it is back to working almost 100%. Unfortunately the almost part means that the USB port is fried and I cannot download pictures at this time. Over the weekend I'm taking my stick to another computer to download and post the pictures.

Look here for updates soon. In the meantime, here is a movie review of Wedding Crashers. Post comments on my blog or email them to me.

2005-07-25T08:42:00.000-04:00

Aw crap, I just wrote a whole bunch and freaking blogger erased it during spell check. OK, long story short. Me and Stacy were in the freaking boonies of Maine, hell we couldn't even pick up the news on the radio for a minute. Now, we are heading to Nova Scotia and have even gotten a hotel room with internet. Next update? Who knows. I'll post more when I know.

Not currently in the US, will update upon my return...

2005-07-25T00:08:00.000-04:00

Hey guys, I forgot to post that I'll be out of town for about two weeks. I'm on a trip all around. New England, Canada, Nova Scotia, NewOrleans.... all the hell over. I'll post the story, the pictures and the arrest details upon my return.

My new car!

2005-07-16T00:58:00.000-04:00

OK, enough keeping the few of you who don't know yet in the dark. Four days ago, after many agonizing days I had come to this decision. Buy an Acura TSX, a fairly expensive yet very nice, dependable, cool looking, four door sports sedan with great gas mileage and a really sweet navigation system or a Nissan 350Z, a sweet two seat roadster (a car with only two seats that is a convertible) that rocked out.
Three days ago I decided to go with the 350Z. I said to hell with being practical.

Yes I don't have a garage.

Yes I don't have a second car for the winter.

Yes I'm 6'2 and a roadster is not the most comfortable for me.

Yes it eats gas, premium gas, like there is no tomorrow at $2.50 a gallon.

Yes, I don't really need the huge, HUGE car payments coupled with the high insurance rates.

YES, I FOUND A BRIGHT RED ONE, NEGOTIATED THE PRICE I WANTED OVER THE PHONE AND MADE AN APPOINTMENT TO GO BUY MY CAR ON WEDNESDAY THE 13TH OF JULY, 2005.

So what happened? I went on a test drive of the BMW Z4 first and bought it on the spot. Yup, I love the car that much. Ladies and gentlemen, my new ride:

What do you think? Click on the picture for the link to the rest of them. It is awesome, right? Fully loaded inside, the only thing I didn't get was the bigger engine, but the one I have is plenty big for me. Especially when it only takes premium and I can watch the dial move down as I drive. To think, I was going to buy a Toyota Prius to save money on gas. HA!

Well, I've been driving around the last few days and not getting enough sleep, so this is a short update. Let me know what you think of my new car by emailing me.
Wait, before I go a riddle:

What's the difference between a porcupine and a BMW?

VS

On the porcupine, the pricks are on the outside.

After yesterdays update with the BMW emblem, you bastards wouldn't stop emailing me with that joke, so here it is, get it out of your system now and I'll give you a ride in my car later!

New car?

2005-07-15T18:31:00.000-04:00

Well, I said I'd post my new car today, but first, here is a picture of poor old Ramon.

Ramon: 1992-2005

This death notice may be a bit premature, as my friend Ken is still working on him, but the future doesn't look bright and either way My new car has been the center of my attention for a few days now. What is it you ask? Hmmm, well, here is a hint.

R.I.P. Ramon

2005-07-14T17:55:00.000-04:00

Arrrghh, some shit has happened to me in the last week that has kept me super busy. Mainly my car Ramon finally died on me. After 190,000 miles his transmission bit the dust. I'm looking into getting him fixed but it looks like it won't be worth it. I was holding out for the Pontiac Solstice but they are sold out for this year and won't have more until February. Since I need a car now, it won't work out for me. I'm super lucky because Jolene is out of town until August so I have a car to use to get to work and back and I'm not stranded. Since I will be out of town next week until August myself I thought about getting a car when I returned to find a better deal, but I said the heck with it and got a car. What kind of car you ask? Well, it's a surprise. When I get some pictures of it, I'll post. I will say this though, it is not a practical car, nope not practical at all...
In the meantime, check Chris' review of Fantastic Four.

Since I'm home anyway...

2005-06-28T16:38:00.000-04:00

As I sit here at home again recovering from Strep throat, I decided to do a little site update. OK, I lie, I'm going to do a BIG one, b/c hey, I've been home for two days, OK?

First off, GO HERE NOW: http://earth.google.com/

This is the single greatest thing Google has invented up to this point and considering all the things they've done up to this point, this is not a small claim. You can see my home and my work with eerie clarity. Baltimore is damn accurate. This is just one of the greatest things ever, ever. Check out the Great Pyrimids. Those things are f'ing HUGE. Add in the volcano feature and go by Hawaii. Awesome. Add the crime thing and look in your neighborhood. Creepy. I hope they can do a registered sex offender option soon.

OK, next up are two movie reviews for Land of the Dead. Check them out, unless you're scared.
And finally an email from an old high school friend who finally check out my site:

Hey Mohammad,
I'm doing great man. Just celebrated 5 years with my wife. Just finished my first year of grad school (2 more to go). I'm in Seminary at a school just north of Chicago. And that's actually what kept me from getting down to the 'boro for the reunion. I thought we were going to be able to squeeze it in - but for me to graduate when I need to I need to take a couple summer classes each year - and there was just no way I could get away from these classes this year. Believe me - I HATED to miss it. Especially after seeing your pictures.

Yeah - Director of Worship - I work at a church out here in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago. It's one of these contemporary churches with the rock and roll worship. I play guitar (or bass or piano or drums) and lead the band, work up the music, and plan the services with the pastors. I'm also in charge of the sound equipment and audio/video aspects of the services. I also do a fair amount of preaching. Before moving up here to Chicago last August we lived in Champaign-Urbana, IL (where the University of Illinois is located) for 5 years where I was the Pastor of Students (6th grade thru College) at a medium sized church and my wife (Melanie) did her Master's degree in Opera Performance.

And to answer your question - we will DEFINITELY be at the next reunion - whether it's 15 or 20 or whatever.

Ok dude - I'll talk to you soon.
Jason Carter

Well Jason, it was good hearing from you and knowing you are doing well. This is Jason's wife Melanie in the picture with him. If you wish to contact Jason, feel free to email me and I'll forward his information to you.

That is it for now, make sure you go to that link I gave you and down load the program right now, it's the bee's knees dude.

I have Group A streptococci.

2005-06-27T15:39:00.000-04:00

And it blows. I'm off of work Monday and Tuesday now and maybe even Wednesday if the doctor doesn't think I'm better. The best treatment for Strep is Penicillin, in fact, it is one of the few things doctors prescribe PCN for anymore, unfortunately, I'm allergic (the only thing I'm allergic to in the whole world) and I'm on some shit that makes my stomach hurt. Damn!

I'm sick today.

2005-06-24T13:45:00.000-04:00

I got sent home from work today because I am sick. At my job, I have unlimited sick days, which is great except...

When you get sent home, you have to go, even when you want to stay as was the case today. Oh well, there is always Monday.

Renegade Chris' Big Birthday Bash.

2005-06-23T20:14:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago it was Renegade Chris' Birthday. What a freaking night. We went, we drank, we drank. It was one hell of a night. Between bitter shots and my ugly bar tab, I was in tears by nights end. We succeeded into getting Chris trashed (even though he's waaaay to old for that shit) and had a blast. The Karaoke people sang was just right, meaning it was just shy of making me want to push my thumbs into my eyeballs and crush my brain until I passed out bad. Like I said, just right. If you check out the pictures, make sure you read the captions. I spent a lot of time on these because I figured a special day deserves some better shit than I could come up with. Enjoy Chris, and happy "One Day Closer To Death" day!

NOTE: Read the captions in order, I didn't go through several hours work so you could swing by and fuck it all up.

New York City! (said the way the guys on the Pace commercials would)

2005-06-21T21:18:00.000-04:00

I just got back from a four day trip to New York City where I had a blast. I met a new friend (Andrea) a couple of weeks ago at my High School Reunion and I got the invite to come visit her in NYC. I, having just secured a promotion at work, and needing a diversion in my boring life, jumped at the chance to head out and enjoy myself.

While there I had the pleasure of eating some of the most delicious food I've had in quite awhile. I had Peruvian food for the first time. I can't say enough how much I enjoyed it. They choose to cook some of their dishes using citric acid, which, while sounding strange, gives the food an ungodly strong and new flavor that I loved. I highly recommend it!

I also saw another Broadway play while there. David Mamet's Glengarry Glenn Ross. This is a movie that I was turned onto by my friend Eric, and it has one of the best, best performances by Alec Baldwin ever. Since the play was only playing until August 28th and since it has won the best play revival for 2005 I had to see it. If I didn't, I would have seen Spamalot.

After seeing it, I must say I was very, very happy. We sat 3rd or 4th row, very, very close to Liev Schreiber's piercing eyes and strong jaw. He even looked directly at me and Andrea during the performance. I tell you friends, I like this guy. If I were gay, he'd be my crush for sure, hell he is my crush. I always thought this man had a big career ahead of him, and his performance did everything to cement this belief for me. The rest of the cast was 100% fantastic too, as well as being all stars. Check out the official link and tell me what you think. If you get a chance, I highly, highly recommend seeing this before it's gone forever. If you can't make it up to NYC, check out the movie, it's great too. The only thing that bothered me was that Alec Baldwin's character wasn't in the play. If anyone but Mamet had made this change, or if the play cast hadn't been stellar I would have been screaming bloody murder, but since this wasn't the case either way, I'm OK.

Well, enough gushing about Liev Schreiber (you really can't blame me man!) and onward to some movie reviews. While in Gotham City (NYC is Gotham, of course, then again Metropolis is also NYC, so when they do those Batman/Superman team-ups, I have no idea which city they are in) I was the new Batman Begins. The short? See it. When I got back into town, Chris wanted to see a movie, so we saw The Longest Yard as it was the only thing I hadn't seen. I must say, I'm sorry Chris, I should have just watch Batman again. Be sure and check out the reviews of both films.

Promotion time!

2005-06-15T17:56:00.000-04:00

I finally got that promotion at work I really should have gotten last year. Today my boss came by my office and told me I got it. Although I won't start getting paid for it until next year, the raise will be sweet. I wasn't really expecting to get this right now, but now that I've been told I have it, I've done nothing but think about spending the extra money. What will I get? Well I've always wanted that real looking Darth Vader costume...

Nah, forget that, that is crazy! I guess I'll do something normal with the money, like add a few more arcade machines to the collection.

Anyway, short update as I've now got some other work to do for work. I'm still very much working toward that new job a lot of you guys know about. I'll know if I got it or not in about 3 months. Keep your fingers crossed!

Hey Hon!

2005-06-12T18:39:00.000-04:00

This year my room mate Jolene told my about Baltimore's own HonFest 2005. According to the website, HonFest is:

"...is a unique celebration that pays homage to the neighborhoods, the language and the people of Baltimore. The highlight of the day is the crowning of “Baltimore’s Best Hon.” What is a “Hon”? The term “Hon” is actually a friendly Baltimore greeting and comes from the word “honey.” However, the women who vie to become Baltimore’s Best Hon are a vision of the sixties-era women with beehive hairdos, blue-eye-shadow, spandex pants and something, anything leopard print!

This nationally recognized festival covers four city blocks on 36th Street in the neighborhood of Hampden. Hampden is a revered old-style Baltimore neighborhood, filled with quirky shops, quaint restaurants and endearing residents.

The Baltimore's Best Hon Contest began in 1994 and quickly grew into its own festival, aptly named HonFest. ...local sponsors have all combined their efforts to create this spectacular one day celebration known as HonFest."

Go to the website to read more. Needless to say, after living in the area for a little over four years, I felt the need to actually go to the HonFest. I told Jolene, yes and off we went. The festival was a blast and I got to see some really hot hons! I love the way these hons dress and talk and could easily see myself settling down with one of them. Now to find the right one...
As usual, my tiny Sony was with me and I snapped a bunch of random, bad angled shots for your amusement. Now, I must say, the most fun I have on my site is writing my picture captions. I usually will spend a good hour or two and come up with some of the funniest lines my limited comic skills will allow. I'd like to say, I did do this for the HonFest photo set. The problem is, as I was getting ready to save them, I accidentally erased the entire series. Damn you computer!!!!!! As it was, I really didn't have it in me to re-write 65 captions, so I didn't. What you have now, is about 10 of them, not so funny, but not so bad. Hey, what do you want from me? I don't get paid for this you know!

This just in, Mohammad's life not so interesting!

2005-06-08T18:36:00.000-04:00

In other news, there is no other news. Not much happened in my life between yesterday and today. Well wait, I did finally switch to my new wallet.

For those of you that know me well, you know that me switching to a new wallet is akin to Halley's Comet passing through our solar system. What is going on is that I carry a lot of stuff in my wallet. I have the usual assortment of credit and identification cards, but my frugal nature forces me to carry and even larger assortment of discount and club cards.

Really, the average person probably has about 4-10, I have like 30. It's a case of my cheapness combined with my OCD. If there is a club card or some deal, I must have it. You know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, back on task. My wallet. No normal wallet can possibly hold all of my shit at first. Like a virgin, the new, tight wallet cannot possibly hold even one half of my items when first purchased. I must stretch it out over the course of several days, sometimes weeks, two or three cards at a time to get every last deal card in there. Needless to say, this disrupts my daily life ten fold. It goes without fail that the one freaking time I need that 4th punch for a free watch battery at the Jewelry Service Center, I have left it at home because the new wallet could not hold (true story). This pisses me off to no end.

For this reason, and the fact that I get really attached to things, I rarely if ever change wallets. In fact, I only do it when I absolutely, positively have to do it due to:

1. The current wallet falling apart where it doesn't hold my stuff. This is almost solely the primary reason I will ever change a wallet.

2. I get drunk and vomit on my wallet. I attempt major clean-up efforts before discarding my wallet though. Sadly, I can only hypothesize about this being a reason I change wallets because in two different instances, I still chose not to do it.

3. My wallet gets stolen or lost. Never happened, but I suppose I would have to get a new wallet in this case. Maybe.

Well there you have it, the only three reasons I see for changing wallets. Well why you may be asking, did I change wallets today? Simple, reason number one. About 2 years ago the stitching on my wallet started to come undone. Seeing this as a great opportunity to by for my "notoriously difficult to buy for" ass, my cousin Laela jumped on the opportunity to buy me something useful from Christmas. That was back in 2002 I think. Anyway, yesterday I figured it was time to open the gift up and actually make use of it. That and the fact that my old trusty wallet was having problems holding my stuff pretty badly at this point.

As I was transferring roughly 40% of my items into my new cow hide, I realized that I didn't need half the shit I had. I decided to take a stand. Instead of stretching my new baby out like a truck stop hooker, I decided to try and eliminate some of the things I carry. I began by canceling 5 credit cards. That helped a lot, but the real problem still lay ahead of me. The club cards. Which club cards would get the chopping block and which would find a new life of luxury in my fancy pants new wallet? Did I really need a Safeway and a Weis card when I never shopped at either? Did I really need a Blockbuster card when the last time I was in there VHS ruled supreme? Gym membership? Have you guys seen how much weight I've gained the last few years? Do I really need an ATM card for an account that only carries $20-30 dollars at any given time?

All good questions. If I was sane, the answers would be easy for me. As it sits, I'm slowly stretching out my new wallet to accommodate the 'ole club cards. After all, you never know when you could earn a free fifth watch battery!

I've updated my website.

2005-06-08T16:29:00.000-04:00

Hey gang, I've spent a little time and updated my website. It is at www.mooshack.com if you care. I will probably cross-post articles to both spots so you don't miss any of the intense action, but pictures will always be at the other site. I guess I'll keep this blog up for people to make any interesting comments that they have, if they have.

So, go ahead, let me know what you think.

My High School Reunion

2005-06-08T16:07:00.000-04:00

Hey gang. As you can see, I decided to go back to the old format of my web page (if you are reading this on my blog, ignore). I met this girl over the weekend that said something like, people would rather get kicked in the nads than make a change, even if the change is better. At least I think she said something like that. What I mean to say is, I'm going back to the way I'm use to doing things because I hate change.

The important thing to remember here is that I have survived my 10 year high school reunion. Yes folks, it was 10 years ago in Greensboro, North Carolina at Grimsley Senior High School where this hellion was released upon the world. Man, time sure does fly. How was the reunion? Well, I think I'll let the pictures do the talking.

I will say this. I almost didn't go. I mean, I almost went to Philly for a comic book convention instead. Sure, sure this was the biggest comic book convention on the East Coast, but I had been to it before. I thought to myself, how many chances do I get to go to a 10 year reunion? The answer came back to me in a flash; only once every 10 years Mo. Well, I didn't have to break out my TI-83 to figure out that one in ten is less than one in one.
I said, "screw the comic books and the scantily clad chicks man, instead I'm going to see year books and scantily clad chicks!"

And off I went. Moral of the story, go to your ten year. Even if you hate everyone from your school, at least you can make fun of them. Even if you can't, you can at least let them make fun of you and then take the high ground and tell them to grow up, they're almost 30 for chrissake!
Anyway, I went, I saw, I drank. I reconnected with some old friends. I made some new friends. I found out that not that many people actually show up for their 10 year high school reunions, but the god damn Whirlies do!

I also wonder if I'll ever see some of these people again. Some I most assuredly will not, cause they will be dead, others, probably not because they may avoid me at the next reunion. Still, some others, I may be seeing a lot of, since hell some of them live, like down the road from me. In the end, for me the biggest pleasure came from that fact that I went and it rocked, pure and simple.

Until next update!

Preakness in Baltimore

2005-05-22T22:31:00.000-04:00

OK, been a busy weekend for me. On Saturday I worked the Preakness in Baltimore. What an awesome time. It was 16 hours of heat, horse shit, and boobies. Man it was like a Marty Gras without the Hurricanes, no wait they did have Hurricanes and were they tasty! Man I've had Hurricanes before and they tasted like ass, the ones at Preakness by the SoCo company were very, very yummy. Hmm, I just wish I had taken my camera to this event so I could have snapped pics of all the hot ladies. I also wish I had bet on horses that didn't suck ass. Oh well, maybe next year.

I hate PETA

2005-05-16T22:06:00.000-04:00

Man, do I hate PETA. I mean I REALLY HATE PETA. I don't hate animals, I have two cats which I really love, but PETA doesn't help animals, they kill them. Check out this website:

http://www.petakillsanimals.com/

I hate PETA.

Sin City Review

2005-05-15T19:56:00.000-04:00

By Renegade Chris

See this if you've taken your medicine and you're not confused.

There are movies that are terrible adaptations of comic books and there are movies that are great adaptations of comic books. Then again there are also movies that are "based on a true story", meaning the story is a load horse puckey and the lead character's name shares three consonants with some actual person, and there are documentaries about ants in the African rainforest. Not having read Frank Miller's comics, I can't tell you with any authority which one of those this movie falls under. I can, however, tell you that Sin City is one fantastic movie for you to take the kids to. By 'the kids' I naturally mean your adult male gore, nudity and violence loving friends. Sin City is a neat mesh of several stories that are loosely interconnected and share their foundation in that they all take place in Basin City. Basin City is a dark and forbidding place where it's always night and at any given moment someone is having the bejesus shot/stabbed/kicked/clawed out of them. The main story themes revolve around Marv (Mickey Rourke), Detective Hartigan (Bruce Willis) and Dwight (Clive Owen).Marv is a hardcore street thug who seeks revenge for the killing of Goldie (Jaime King), a beautiful woman who mysteriously gets down with him one evening and then gets taken down that same evening. His rampage leads him to encounter evil Harry Potter look-alike Kevin (Elijah Wood) and his man-eating wolf, and ultimately with the help of his lesbian parole officer Lucille (Carla Gugino), the corrupt and powerful Cardinal Rourk (Rutger Hauer).Hartigan's problem is being one of the only honest cops in Basin City. Shot nearly to death in the course of saving 11 year old Nancy Callahan (Makenzie Vega), he winds up in prison for putting a hurt on Rourk, Jr. (Nick Stahl), son of Senator Rourk (Powers Boothe) who is the brother of Cardinal Rourk. After sacrificing his reputation to get out, Hartigan seeks out Nancy, now 19 years old (Jessica Alba), who wrote him ceaselessly for all the years he spent in prison then suddenly stopped. Who's the mysterious stinky yellow bastard following him around? Don't ask me, watch the damn movie. Dwight is a convicted murderer who escaped and had his appearance changed. After a dispute leading to the death of Jackie Boy (Benicio Del Toro) over a barmaid (Brittany Murphy), Dwight gets caught up in a conflict between the mafia, led by Manute (Michael Clark Duncan) and the hookers of Old Town, led by Gail (Rosario Dawson). Mafia versus hookers? Do I need to give you any more encouragement to see this movie? Gather up 'the kids', go have a nice dinner (by which I mean a few beers), and go see this gory, fun-filled, violent, offensive, rude flick (by which I mean... Sin City).

I'm BAAAAACK!

2005-05-15T19:37:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the long absence friends. I've decided to shoot for a new job and promotion at work and that consumed all of my free time. Not to mention that I bought a Playstation 2 and have spent some time "testing out the toy". I also got tired of doing the old style Mooshack.com and have gone to a new blog type website. Please write in and let me know what you think. I'll still spend some time updating movie reviews as I get them and look forward to hearing from everyone.