Hookers kidnap Marine / Intergalactic AIDS day / effortless blog post

I am in the middle of writing my research paper of mass destruction for English, but a quick break for a slow-pitch blog entry.

Earlier this week, I shared this blog entry with Andrew, George, and Joey about two DC women getting mugged by hookers in Vegas. So it's kind of been hooker week around here.

Today, we started with me sharing this story from Wonkette about a Marine being lost in Vietnam:

From: theAlphaJohn
To: Andrew, George, Joey
Subject: Hooker kidnaps Marine in Vietnam

Bush Loses Troops In Vietnam
We know Iraq is George W. Bush’s long-delayed personal Vietnam War, but this is getting ridiculous: America actually lost a Marine in Vietnam during Bush’s visit. MIAs in Vietnam again? Let’s rock it Apocalypse Now style!

The missing staff sergeant was a maintenance specialist assigned to the Marine One Presidential Helicopter detail. After a night out drinking with fellow Marines, the specialist “left his hotel on the back of a moped driven by a local national without telling anyone,” a Marine Corps spokeswoman confirmed to ABC News.

Despite his CO “suspecting foul play or terrorism” and shutting down various bars in Hanoi in the frantic search, the Marine was just out partying with a “local national” (hooker) and wasn’t even really AWOL as he was off duty for the night.

Joey replies:

From: Joey
To: theAlphaJohn, Andrew, George

LMAO

I mean seriously, whats up with world today if you can't even trust a hooker??

and naturally, I get fired up:

I know, the hookers need to step off and understand their role in our society:

-expose orafices
-get paid

Speaking of, did I miss a memo and today is intergalactic AIDS day? I walked across campus to get lunch and found (1) a rapid HIV testing van (all writing on it was in Spanish), (2) some kind of crazy AIDS/Orphans thing with little pictures of poor black AIDS babies on popsicle sticks lined along the ground, (3) some kind of AIDS charity drive in one of the buildings being run by Robert Reed hating students.

And some kind of giant, Berlin wall parody that is supposed to convince us to stop giving money to Israel. I wish I could revoke the F1 and J1 visas for the Palestinian students and send them home on their giant stryofoam wall. But not before I made them sleep with one of the students whose rapid HIV test result was "es verdad".

After which, Joey reminds me that tomorrow is World AIDS day.

Meh.

If I lived in Southpark...

This is what I'd look like. Courtesy of the the South Park Studio (Version 2).

My initiation for Masters Swimming is finally complete (I guess?)

I've been swimming with the Masters team since September, and while everyone is friendly enough I haven't really felt like one of the guys. It doesn't bother me because this was never meant to be a social activity. I joined Masters for extra cardio, and I'm happy with the slow lane clique. As long as I'm not in anyone else's way I'm content.

The last week of the month, practice is always packed with the usual crowd plus new people dropping in to try it out. The slow lane ended up with so many people that Cheryl had to move the newbies to other (faster) lanes. After about 300 yards of the warmup our entire lane just kind of fell into sync. Our workout was a little shorter than the rest of the team, but we cranked out our 3500 yards in 1hr 15min and finished right along with everybody else. Less than 1/6 of the team is competitive tri-athletes or recent former NCAA swimmers, everyone else is 10+ years off the swim team or just fitness swimmers. The middle of the workout was (15) x 50 yard sprints, and by the end people were really feeling it.

A bunch of us ended up in the hot tub afterwards, and it was much more social than it usually is. People usually talk in twos and threes for a couple minutes and move on; this is the first time in three months I've seen 10 or 15 people have the same conversation and carry it into the locker room.

I realized the velvet ropes were behind me when some of the old timers, who were discussing work (some kind of consulting practice, not the same one but similar industry I guess), were talking about wanting a secretary but not being a position to hire someone who's 100% overhead. They mentioned a shared acquaintance who occasionally does work for them on the side, which then degenerated into nasty blow job jokes. I was really just standing there getting dressed, but I guess creeps can smell each other, because all the sudden I was on the inside...

A perfect score on your PSATs and a National Merit Scholar, nobody knows your name. You fuck one goat...

Iota Kappa Awesome's Service Work

theAlphaJohn: a couple guys in my english class also want to start a frat
theAlphaJohn: did i tell you about this?
Will: no but it sounds awesome
Will: how many recruits do we have?
theAlphaJohn: two or three
theAlphaJohn: our "service" work won't be picking up trash or whatever, our members are going to try and "fix" all the obnoxious girls with low self esteem who don't date because they repel men
theAlphaJohn: I think I mentioned this girl in my english class, ShaRonda (Capital R) whose white and fat and thinks she's all that
Will: yeah
Will: she's not allowed in at all
theAlphaJohn: oh no
theAlphaJohn: but one of our members is going to date her long enough to fix her
Will: hahahaha
theAlphaJohn: it's a catch and release program to better society
theAlphaJohn: a pity throw and a few good date conversations
Will: you mean a pledge will
theAlphaJohn: well but somebody needs to show the pledges how it's done
theAlphaJohn: i'm certainly not, but someone will have to
Will: exactly
Will: not me either
theAlphaJohn: like "hey, mouthy, do you know how hot you look when you keep your opinion to yourself??"
theAlphaJohn: really she asks?
theAlphaJohn: then you give her the best 7 minutes of your life
Will: hahahaha
Will: as long as i don't have to do it
theAlphaJohn: in the end, the goal is to boost her self esteem but to kind of clean up their demeanor
Will: nice
theAlphaJohn: so it's not like pigging or meant to be degrading
Will: right
theAlphaJohn: but our service work is all psychological
Will: hahaha

Google Answers Redeux

I'm working on my final paper for English, and was thinking about using Google Answers to help me find a bit of research I need for this paper (I'd say to finish it, but at this point it's just an outline).

I'm already signed in to GMail, so it's no surprise that I don't have to login. What is surprising is that I already have my account setup there (billing information, etc). I had completely forgotten that I used GA before.

To jog my memory, I visit my past questions and find this (click on the picture to enlarge):


I really am a creep you know.

Craigslist locks George out of his car

George called me yesterday from an undisclosed location in Rockville to tell me he'd locked himself out of his car. We have a set of each other's keys for just such an event, so I ran home and got his. While I made my way up there, George forwarded the directions from his Blackberry to my phone.

When I got there, I found George and Timothy locked out of his car and standing next to a vacuum cleaner. The story goes that George bought a vacuum off some Craigslist sketchmo and through some series of actions locked his keys in the car. I let him in and he gave me back his keys.

I'm glad it was a vacuum, and not some kind of "casual encounter" gone wrong.

While we stood in the parking lot of some random Twinbrook apartment complex, I scraped some of the barcodes and other graffiti off his windshield while we talked. I explained to Timothy that the parking lot of an apartment complex that you'll never see again is synonymous with a dumpster. To prove it, I tossed an empty Starbucks cup out the window just before we both pulled out of there.

Concert :: DJ AtomX, live at Goodlove in Baltimore

George, Timothy, and I took a trip up to Goodlove in Baltimore to see DJ AtomX's return to the booth.

Tim was first to point out that the club was basically a three level townhouse, though that didn't stop 180+ people from coming through the doors Friday night. There was a shitty house DJ downstairs that spun even shitter amp'ed up house tracks for the Fubu thugs and gaggle of worn out house fraus away from their husbands and kids for the night. The upper two levels were musically served by a DJ booth on the third level that overlooked both sets of stairs. The top level was like a loft in a townhouse, only there weren't any windows behind the mini-blinds hanging on the walls.

At one point, I did turn to George and Tim to say, "When we leave, let's go on Baltimore's Craigslist and get a hooker for all of us to share. Now I know we'll need to compromise because Tim will want his to be a tranny, and George will want his to have a USB port. Maybe we can meet someone in the middle and get a regular girl?"

Much was drank, bar tabs were small, and AtomX blasted out a four hour set (and was surprised he got paid for it). Was good to finally meet him, but it was even better to pass out in the back seat before we got on 95 and wake up in front of my house. Thanks for driving, George.

This Thanksgiving, what I'm thankful for is this speeding ticket

I left for my parent's house in Myrtle Beach right after work, and made it all the way to Souf Carolina before Johnny Law caught up with me.

Most of my trip through SC is spent on US-501, and speed limits vary from 45MPH to 60MPH. Anytime the speed limit drops, it will go from 60MPH to 55MPH before dropping to 45MPH. That's exactly what happens as you enter the town of Aynor, where Officer Peavy pulled me over and wrote me a ticket. He claims that he clocked me at 67 in a 45 which is impossible.

I always engine break in the WRX, especially when slowing down but still moving. If you haven't driven a WRX, it has a lot of horsepower (227HP@6000rpm) and a lot of torque (217 ft lbs@4000rpm). If you're in too high a gear, the car barely moves; in too low a gear the car will physically buck back and forth.

My WRX is a five speed. If I am at 60MPH or below, I have to be in 4th gear, if I'm between 35 and 50 I'm in 3rd gear. I was probably going 67MPH in that 60MPH zone, and as soon as I saw the sign for 55MPH I downshifted to 4th, and when I saw the sign for 45MPH I downshifted to 3rd.

Officer Peavy, of course, sees no break lights and pulls me over. He told me he clocked me at 67MPH but no mention of how fast he was pacing me. If I had been going 67MPH and I was in 3rd gear, he would have watched my car buck back and forth from all the excess torque (since I'd be around 5500rpms).

Office Peavy was kind enough to only write me for 55 in a 45, though he noted the "actual" speed next to it in case I decided to come from out of town to contest the ticket. I actually thought about going down there to fight the ticket, and then I found some interesting facts about Aynor on Wikipedia:

As of the census of 2000, there were 587 people, 228 households, and 158 families residing in the town.

Something tells me that if I go to court in a town with 587 people, I'm going to end up in jail instead of getting my ticket reduced to parking on the pavement.

A Visit to the Nutritionist

I had an appointment with my nutritionist Rebecca today. You may recall that I started seeing her in last August on Meredith's recommendation. In the past three months, I've lost 27lbs and 4% bodyfat.

Not quite as good as the Robert Reed diet, but I'll take it.

I'm trying not to borrow from other blogs

In this case, however, I need to make an exception.

This post by Roosh (formerly DC Bachelor) is hysterical:



Make sure to read his commentary about the video also.

DJ AtomX at Goodlove 11/24/2006

AtomX, my favorite local DJ, will be spinning the day after Thanksgiving at Goodlove in Baltimore. My turkey day travel plans have already been adjusted to accommodate an evening on ATOMX HOUSE remixes.

Welcome to the Future

I migrated my blogs over to the new Blogger Beta, which already seems faster and more stable than the rickety mess that Blogger Classic had become. It does have some new features, so we'll see how that all works out.

I do have to say, labels rock!

My "When I finally meet the Microsoft Word Development Team" to-do list

1.) Buy a 50 gallon drum full of Cancer on eBay
2.) Tell TSA when getting on the plane that it's really 50 gallons of personal lubricant (cause my gears squeak like a rusty hinge)
3.) Drench each and every motherfucker who every wrote or revised a single line of code for this useless application in delicious, thirst-quenching, butt-cancer.

I mean, have these fuckers ever tried to format a multi-level bulleted list in Word? Are you fucking kidding me? This isn't god-damned Office 95, you faggots have had 11 cunt-punching years to make this work.

Some serious bullshit right here. Ass cancer for each and every one of you, your children, and the Starbucks employee who makes your day a little brighter. There's nothing wrong with your Q/A skills that a scalding gallon of free cappuccino in your useless eyes couldn't fix.

Glow presents Bad Boy Bill at Club Fur

First, let me apologize for the ancient picture of Bad Boy Bill. I realized a long time ago that camera phones do not good pictures take in a club setting, and I won't be that douche bag who brings his camera with him. I'm there for the music, I'm there to dance, and I can almost always find shots a real photographer took during the show the next day. Not so much this time.

With that out of the way, Kristin asked if anything was going on this weekend since it was her birthday, and it just so happened that Bad Boy Bill was spinning at Glow to promote the release of his new DVD, Behind the Desks. We decided that tapas and sangria at Jaleo would be the perfect pre-game experience before a night of dancing to ear-bleeding bass.

With a nice buzz and our hunger abated, Kristin and I found parking and started walking towards Fur. The fun began immediately: a gaggle of drunk, college-aged girls had taken a limo from Martensburg and knocked a chain-link fence over at a construction site next door to Fur.


Quite a hike.

They were walking right behind us as we got into line...behind about 100 deaf kids from Gallaudet University. One of the drunk girls, when we explained they were four blocks from a deaf university, professed her love of sign language and decided to practice her ASL alphabet. While we made friends, her cohorts told us how their evening was ruined because "the guys" were having poker night but some other girl showed up there. About that time, a Fur employee came by and told we were in the "Deaf Party" line so we walked to the other side of the building.

We had a spot on the floor about 15 minutes before Bad Boy took to the decks. There was a traditional exchange between DJs about 1:00am. "You ready to go on?" "Nah, go ahead and spin another song." Though just before this, the sound engineer came out and adjusted the levels until everything was nice and thumpy. When it was time to switch out, they were still fucking with the video feed, but the show started anyway to a rousing cheer of "Bad Boy! Bad Boy!..." started by yours truly.

Bad Boy's style is Chicago House, but he backs everything with deep, dark euro-beats. A typical house DJ will just beat-match two records together and let them play. Bad Boy sets himself apart from normal house DJs by scratching (simply as an effect) and using incredibly tight breaks for faster builds. Here's a one minute sample that includes both:

Just a phenomenal show all around. The place was packed but the crowd was great. Kristin and I danced with another couple, a black guy and his hot red-headed girlfriend in cammo pants and a wife beater. Totally worth the price of admission.

Powderwhore at Arlington Cinema Drafthouse

Friday night, I joined George and friends at Arlington Cinema Drafthouse to see Powderwhore.

From the website:

What started as a name yelled at a friend while face deep in the Wasatch white has evolved very little over the past 10 years. POWDERWHORE is just a term or symbol of ones commitment to the great white deep. In the past few years we have filmed our passion and it has been seen in TGP's productions "CORE" and "INCOGNITO". This year we felt it was time to branch off on our own.

POWDERWHORE is based out of the Wasatch Mountains in Utah, with affiliates in Tahoe, Bozeman, and wherever snow falls.

This is the best way I can describe it. Imagine you have those crazy friends who ski all the time, so much so that they have their own their own Steadicam and film their antics at the mountain. At the end of the season, they use iMovie and make their own DVD and invite you over for beer and snacks to watch it in their living room.

It's like that, except they back country ski on terrain you or I would never even consider, and their living room seats over a hundred people.

ENGL302: Writing is like...

Ugh! How come every English class makes you do a writing exercise with similes and metaphores? I had these things down by the third grade. After reading The Writing Life by Annie Dillard, we were given less than 10 minutes to write our own simile about writing:

Writing is an emotional roller coaster. Anger makes you write until the writing makes you angry. You pen a funny line that makes your friends scoul; you rewrite it until the frustration makes you wonder, what was so funny in the first place? Period pieces make us whistful, comparatives use dichotomy to push us over the line. The act takes us through the emotional gauntlet until the coaster pulls into the station and we realize that the writing itself was therapy.

I think I just threw up in my mouth.

ENGL302: Persuasive Memo

This paper was a group effort, and had to be a persuasive memo about an on-campus issue. Our group chose to write about fountain soda choices in the dining halls on campus:

TO: Hilary Rosen, Director of University Services
FROM: Mason Students for Healthful Beverage Choices
DATE: November 10, 2006
SUBJECT: Fountain Beverage Choices on Campus

Given the recent media attention about the lack of healthy eating choices in high schools and colleges, we appreciate the efforts of University Services and Sodexho to offer a variety of dining choices on campus. The area of healthy choices that we still fall short in, however, regards beverages. It is our understanding that George Mason is under contract with Coca-Cola to provide vending and fountain beverages across campus, but the choice of Coke products offered at each soda fountain is far from balanced.

RESEARCH

Right now in the United States, heart disease is the leading killer of adults and diabetes is the most common chronic disease among children. Physicians tell us the number of adolescents diagnosed with type-2 diabetes is increasing rapidly; until recently, this disease was unheard of among those under 40 years of age. This rise juvenile-onset diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and a myriad of other health problems among Americans is related to obesity.

Obesity has become an epidemic in America over the past decade: six out of ten adults are overweight, and 17 percent of children are obese. Childhood obesity is caused by two main factors: lack of exercise and unhealthy diets, which include soft drinks. Parents, health advocacy groups, and local and state governments have recognized this link between weight gain and unhealthy diets, and have worked to change school menus in schools across the country by replacing fatty foods with healthier alternatives and instituting banning soft drinks. Through negotiation, compromise, and the threat of a class action lawsuit, soft drink corporations have willingly removed their products from schools. Many say this action is not enough, and want to hold the corporations liable for selling soft drinks with full knowledge of their negative health effects. This is likened to the way tobacco companies were successfully sued for selling a product they knew could lead to lung disease, various cancers, and other major health problems.

DINING HALLS AND OFFERINGS

According to Lori Leetz, the Resident District Manager from Sodexho Dining Services, each unit manager chooses which Coke products to feature in their dining establishment. We examined the soda fountains in each major dining area on campus and counted the number of sweetened and unsweetened beverages; we made the following observations:


• With the exception of a single Diet Sprite, Diet Coke was the Healthful Alternative at every soda fountain.
• Almost every fountain had two regular Coca-cola dispensers.

PROPOSED SOLUTION

We can all agree that Mason students are adults, but we contend that given the choices offered, students are rarely in a position to make a healthy choice. If one dislikes Diet Coke, she or he rarely has a low calorie choice at a soda fountain. We feel that rebalancing the options from Coke’s portfolio of beverages will offer people a greater likelihood of making a healthful choice.

We propose the following changes:
• Two or three slots of each soda fountain must offer one of the following healthful Coca-Cola products: Diet Barq's, Diet Cherry Coke, Diet Coke (also with Lemon or with Lime), Diet Fanta, Diet Mello Yellow, Diet Mr. Pibb, Diet Sprite Zero, Diet Nestea.
• Offer unsweetened tea in all areas. Unlike other beverages, people are used to having to sweeten tea on their own
• Ensure that water is available in every soda fountain
• Increase the variety of the choices in each area rather than a standard lineup of Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, Barq's, and Cherry Coke.

While statistics of consumption choice on the Mason campus may disagree, we strongly feel this is due to the current offerings and lack of choice available today; Coke is the most popular fountain soda on campus because every fountain has two Coca-Cola dispensers. We urge you to consider our proposal, and possibly pilot these in changes in a single dining area to see how people react. Should University Services choose to pilot our plan, we are willing to offer our services to monitor and report the results to you.

We appreciate your consideration in this matter.

Sincerely,
Mason Students for Healthful Beverage Choices

Wal-Mart: World's Largest Retailer, Ginormous Pussy

From CNN Money:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Wal-Mart has told its employees that it's OK to once again greet shoppers by saying "Merry Christmas" this holiday season instead of the generic "Happy Holidays."

CNN confirmed that Wal-Mart will announce Thursday that it plans to use the phrase "Merry Christmas" in products and around its stores this holiday season.

The announcement comes a year after religious groups such as The American Family Association and The Catholic League boycotted retailers including Wal-Mart last holiday season for excluding the word "Christmas" from products sold in stores.

"We, quite frankly, have learned a lesson from last year," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Linda Blakley told USA Today in a separate report. "We're not afraid to use the term 'Merry Christmas.' We'll use it early, and we'll use it often."

In what alternate reality do a couple religious groups tell Wal-Mart how to run their business? These are the people who told their suppliers (little companies like Unilever) that they needed to use RFID tagging to conform to Wal-Mart's stringent supply-chain procedures.

Make no mistake, Wal-Mart does not do what people tell them, Wal-Mart does what it wants to. If they want to butt-fuck the baby Jesus all holiday season, then that's what they're going to do.

According to a Craigslist Rant & Rave I wrote read, Speaker Nancy Pelosi can fix this too:

Down goes Rumsfeld

booyah!



And Tester has been declared the winner in Montana. A few weeks of arguments and recounts and Virginia is officially Webb's.

How could this day get better? Maybe if the sky opened up and it started raining ponies...

We Win !!! !!! !!!

First, the news from WaPo:

In the House, Democrats picked up at least 27 Republican-held seats without losing any of their own, putting Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) into position to become the nation's first female speaker . Several other House races remained too close to call.

Democrats also scored heavily in gubernatorial races, picking up at least seven states to claim a majority nationally.

The upheaval in the House and the changing balance in the Senate signaled a dramatic power shift in Washington that will alter the final two years of Bush's presidency, with resurgent Democrats expected to challenge the administration on its domestic priorities and the Iraq war.

I heard from Susann also:

Susann: susann = happy
theAlphaJohn: thealphajohn = thrilled
Susann: what a fun two days!
theAlphaJohn: so are we getting the senate too?!?!
Susann: i think we will
theAlphaJohn: how fucking cool?
theAlphaJohn: interesting question on the radio this morning
theAlphaJohn: why wasnt howard dean partying with the dem leadership last night?
Susann: he was there
Susann: i saw him in the hotel
Susann: he was just doin media
theAlphaJohn: did you make out with him?
Susann: like five times

Election Night Emails

Photo compliments of Princess Sparkle Pony

An email exchange with George:

George: [Link to Samsung $200,000 Gun Sentry Robot]
theAlphaJohn: No joke, I just ordered one of these for... (wait for it)...
theAlphaJohn: HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI (D, CA)
theAlphaJohn: I figured she could use this to push legislation through the...
theAlphaJohn: DEMOCRATICALLY CONTROLLED HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
theAlphaJohn: and now we wait to take the Senate.
George: oh god here we go
George: i get my news from jon stewart. i don't kno what it means.
George: i do want some cake.
theAlphaJohn: OMG I'm going the political pee-pee dance for Virginia. 99% reporting, the remaining votes from Arl (D) and Rich City (D) and Webb is ahead by 2500 votes.
theAlphaJohn: This is going to take *days* to resolve.
theAlphaJohn: Nancy Pelosi and Robert Byrd are both getting robot gun thinggys if
the Dems take both houses.
theAlphaJohn: mmm...cake

Hooray! It's Election Day!!!

That's right kids: today we send racist Virginia Senator George Felix Macacawitz Allen to the unemployment line!

Susann was good enough to point me to the Election Protection Coalition website, with live maps showing voter intimidation and polling problems.






The good news for him is that on Friday, Allen will appear as the 51st more influential Jew in America (“an honor previously bestowed on Kabbalah-practicing Madonna”).

Edit, Tuesday Morning
Yeah, I hope Macaca's resume is up to date. The last time we had a recount in VA (last year as a matter of fact), the challenger picked up 27 votes.

The Downfall of The O.C.

One could argue that The O.C. was never a good show. But as someone who came of age during the height of 90210's popularity, I think America's tastes are clear: life in New York City and Southern California is a dichotomy that appeals to everyone.

We watch Seinfeld. We shop at Hollister. Borat goes to Times Square. Paris Hilton gets a DUI in Los Angeles. There is no center to our cultural universe, but it definately has two poles.

It wasn't until the second season of The O.C. that I started watching, and only infrequently. I found the characters more likable than their 90210 counterparts, and eventually I Netflixed the first season. The writing was brilliant: tight, interesting, hilarious.

I continued to watch, but saw that the second and third seasons together made up the sophomore slump. The show was running out of steam.

My DVR was set to record the show, and I realized a few weeks ago that it hadn't shown up yet. I was so disgusted with the last season finale, I assumed that I just deleted it. Just a few days later, the fourth season premier shows up (in November?). I watched it a few nights later while I was eating dinner and realized that The O.C. has officially jumped the shark.

I don't want this to be an episode review, but a quick recap is in order. Marissa died in the last episode, and five months has passed since then. Julie (Marissa's mother) is doped out of her mind, and Ryan is living in the backroom of a bar and illegally ultimate fighting for free to get out his (anger|rage|aggression|stupidity). Basically, they wrapped an entire season of story and angst into a single episode where everything is resolved and Ryan moves home to the pool house.

DVR -> The O.C. -> Delete Scheduled Recording -> Enter

And with that, I get an extra hour of my life back every week.

Rock out...with your caucus out

This is pretty funny: