It’s been an enjoyable couple of days off. I haven’t gotten a whole lot accomplished, I’ve just sorta been relaxing. I had lunch with Sarah today at Flavor’s (which isn’t nearly as good as it used to be), went to the mall with my mom to get some Christmas clothes, and redesigned Nate’s review blog (as noted in the most recent post).

I’m almost done with editing “Into the Abyss.” I’d planned on having it finished sooner, but I’ve been sidetracked with other stuff. Once this one’s finished, I’ve got another idea I want to work on, and then I’m going to finally finish editing “Thirty Well Spent,” which has been languishing in rewrite hell since the summer.

I work 7-4 the next three days, which translates to me being ass-tired and barely coherent for the next three mornings. After I get off work tomorrow, the family is going to Roland’s house to celebrate Lindsey’s 18th(!) birthday. That’s right, my little sis is turning the big one-eight, which just serves to make me feel even older.

Well, time to go pound away at “Into the Abyss” for an hour or so before retiring to the bed.

JAB

The redesigned Yummy Reviews is now up and running. The new design is pretty fucking cool, if I do say so myself. I’m almost jealous of Nate’s new layout. It’s way better than mine, so I’m thinking of re-redesigning JBdN too.

While I’m on the subject of Nate and web sites, I should also mention that he keeps a shitty Myspace blog too, which he updates fairly regularly. His posts make for great reading, full of wit and anger, but let’s face it — Myspace blows. It’s like the slutty-girl-at-school of the Internets. Everyone and their mom has experimented with it, a lot of people frequently use it, and even though you feel ashamed and dirty every time you visit it, you still find yourself being drawn back. So I’m trying to convince Nate to write a real blog, as he is quite funny. Much funnier than I. Go read his other crappy blog, then come back here and tell him how much you want him to start a real blog.

JAB

I’ve spent the better part of the evening catching up on some TV shows. Man, I swear — all five of the shows I regularly watch are having some of their best seasons ever. It’s especially nice to see some of the ones that have been on for a while doing well (at least from a storytelling standpoint), like “Smallville” and “Alias,” which are currently in their fifth seasons. The last couple of seasons of these shows had gotten kind of stale and swept up in retarded storylines that I didn’t care for. Fortunately, last year I discovered two brand new shows that were awesome: “Veronica Mars” and “Battlestar Galactica.” Those two shows are seriously the two best hours of television. The fifth show I watch is “Bones.” I talked about it in a previous post, and I was a little harsh with it:

“Bones” is basically about this weird, asskicking, forensic anthropologist woman who basically can take a skeleton or some flesh melted on a car seat, and tell who that person was, how they died, what they ate for breakfast the morning of their death, and quite possibly what they ate when they were four. She hangs out with some FBI agent and they solve crimes, along with the help of her wacky staff. That’s basically the whole plot.

I don’t generally watch procedurals, which is what this is, and in particular I despise “CSI.” I find their methods of investigation fairly ludicrous, as I sort of indicated in the above paragraph. For instance, in the second episode of “Bones” she can tell all sorts of basic and not-so-basic things about the murdered guy. Okay, that’s to be expected. But then the line of reasoning spans from finding out the dead dude had dioxin poisoning, to finding the murderer because the type of drywall the killer used contained chemicals that were in the poison, and that drywall was only used by this one particular architect in the 1920s, who designed this neighborhood of houses. Then BAM, they locate the murderer. Seriously — give me a fucking break.

A couple months later and now I really dig “Bones.” I still don’t really give a crap about the procedural aspect of it, but the characters and their relationships have got me completely won over. The title character has learned some empathy and has become a bit more human, the lab staff have become a little more fleshed out and less cliched, and Seely, the FBI agent, is just cool as hell. Especially when he’s kicking ass.

I’m not sure if all of these shows will be on next year. I’ve got a good feeling about “Smallville,” “Veronica Mars,” and “Battlestar.” They seem to be doing well for their respective networks. “Bones” probably has a good shot at returning next season since it was just picked up for a full order of episodes this season. I fear “Alias,” however, is on its final season. Even though the show has been much-rejuvenated by some new cast members, it just doesn’t seem to be retaining viewers; quite the opposite in fact, it seems to be hemorrhaging them. I found out tonight that it’s being moved to a later time slot, which is never a good sign. I suppose that’s okay — it’s had a good run and, to repeat the old adage, nothing lasts forever.

JAB

Got back from Nate’s house just a bit ago. I took a shower and feel much better now, as I was reeking of smoke accumulated from a combination of fire and cigarettes. We’d gone down to the Trolley Stop for Sam’s surprise birthday party, which went well. She was actually surprised, even though it seemed a number of people might’ve given the secret away, what with them trying to coax her to come to the bar. I ate some tasty smoked turkey and drank a few margaritas. Afterwards, Nate and I went back to his house and played Mario Double Dash for the Gamecube. I decided I don’t hate that game as much as I did the first time I played it several years ago. It turned out be pretty damned good, if not kinda hard on the more difficult levels. Which I guess is the sole reason for them being more difficult. Whatever.

Earlier today I went with the fam (as in P. Diddy and the) to the Easton Mall in Columbus. It’s fucking sweet as hell: it’s an open air mall, has a two-story Barnes & Noble, a Chipotle, a kick-ass thirty theater cinema, and a whole bunch of other cool stores and restaurants. There’s an apartment complex situated on one end of the mall. I’d like to live there, if I made lots of money. Then I could stare out my window, a bitter shut-in, cursing all of those damned happy people trespassing on my property, i.e. the mall. Yeah, that’d be sweet.

JAB

I was going to post last night, but I ended up watching my Veronica Mars DVD and then fell asleep. Oh yeah, my life is exciting…

On Tuesday night, I went to Thai Nine with Nate and his aunt, Sam. The food was fantastic, as I expected. I got the chicken pad thai, cooked at level 5. Nate and Sam shared this gigantic wooden boat full of sushi. The boat nearly spanned the length of the table. It was huge.

Hanging out with Nate and Sam again brought back a lot of happy memories from my childhood. I’ve known Sam almost as long as I’ve known Nate — over a decade. I first met her when I started going downtown with Nate to visit her store on the weekends (she runs Sterling Silver in the Oregon District, a jewelry/gift store populated by hot, female customers). We’d walk Ralph, Sam’s dog,then eat at the China Buffet, and then go either be geeks at Cathartic Dreams or Challenger.

Cathartic Dreams was my first love. It was a cool store — in the nerdy sense — that sold all sorts of gaming supplies, as well as comics, books, and other geek-related paraphernalia. In the back of the store, they had a room set up with tables for gaming. One could go in on a Saturday and usually find some type of D&D game going on, as well as numerous CCG games. That’s where I first played Magic: the Gathering, Rage, Doom Trooper, and my most favorite, Star Trek: CCG. I met a lot of cool people back then (Jon, Jared, Judo, and Sean), some hated enemies (these obnoxious, old assholes, the Game Masters, who played their stupid roleplaying game), and a creepy guy: Frank. He was a fifty-ish — possibly older — hippy guy who hung out with us 12-16 year-old boys. At the time, it didn’t seem that weird, but now I realize ol’ Frank might have liked hanging out with us for reasons other than that we were nerds like him. Incidentally, I saw him a while back at the Dayton Mall. He was sitting alone at the little station where they have a TV and benches. He didn’t recognize me or anything, fortunately, and I certainly didn’t go over and talk to him. I just saw him and thought, Huh. I guess creepy old Frank is still alive after all.

Eventually, Nate and I started spending more and more time at Challenger. Challenger consisted of ten or more networked computers nestled inside a corner of Kendall Printing. It was operated by the Kendall boys, three thirty-ish guys who could’ve been the poster children for nerds. They ran a sweet business, though, and were pretty cool, so I won’t make too much fun. At Challenger, I learned to play sweet video games like Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Quake, and the awesomest game ever, Starcraft. A number of the same people who went to Cathartic Dreams also migrated to Challenger, except we all called each other by our call signs. Nate was Savage Garden, though Judo called him Savage Salad, which Nate absolutely hated. I went by the moniker Avatar, a name which really held no significance other than the fact that I just thought the word was cool. Other regular players were: Shaft, Apollyon, and Judo. There were a number of others, but their names escape me at this time. There was also Lord Set, a guy in his late thirties who was the shit at every game, and wasn’t bashful about it. He had this annoying habit of calling people “knobs.” He was weird. Carnage was another asshole, who pretty much everyone hated. Though Nate hated him probably the most (Oy, so much rage in that boy…).

I went downtown with Nate pretty much every Saturday for a number of years. I think I started to stop going around the time I got my first real girlfriend. Yeah, like that’s a big surprise… Both places are now out of business (though Kendall Printing still remains), and I wish they were still open. I’d love to be able to go down to those places again and waste countless hours with Nate. If I recall correctly, Nate did manage to go back there when he was a junior in high school. It was a couple of hours before the prom, and he and Todd made their dates sit while they probably played Starcraft in their tuxes. I went to prom with a different group, and we went to the Englewood Reserve before prom. It was a good time, but still…

I’d much rather have annihlated the Zerg and Protoss with Nate and Todd.

JAB

I get so frustrated sometimes with the direction our country has taken that I just want to scream…or kill a small puppy. In this case, I’d also settle for the asshole who invented the phrase “intelligent design”:

TOPEKA, Kansas (AP) — At the risk of re-igniting the same heated nationwide debate it sparked six years ago, the Kansas Board of Education approved new public school science standards Tuesday that cast doubt on the theory of evolution.

The 6-4 vote was a victory for “intelligent design” advocates who helped draft the standards. Intelligent design holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.

Critics of the language charged that it was an attempt to inject God and creationism into public schools in violation of the separation of church and state.

All six of those who voted for the standards were Republicans. Two Republicans and two Democrats voted against them.

“This is a sad day. We’re becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that,” said board member Janet Waugh, a Kansas City Democrat.

Supporters of the standards said they will promote academic freedom. “It gets rid of a lot of dogma that’s being taught in the classroom today,” said board member John Bacon, an Olathe Republican.

And as if that weren’t bad enough, there’s this, the icing on the cake:

In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.

Right. So according to their definition of science, anyone can make up whatever shit he or she wants and it’s automatically an explanation for phenomena in the universe. Fantastic.

Now that this is all out in the open, I can finally let you all in on a little secret:

I created the universe.

Because I’m God. Not just a god, either, but the God.

And for my first public act as God, I am going to transport the city of Topeka, Kansas back in time 6000 years when — as everyone knows — dinosaurs ruled the Earth. But don’t fret for the safety of the Topekans — I’m sure all of the humans living side-by-side with the dinosaurs will protect them, right? I mean, according to most Bible-fuckers, once upon a time humans and dinosaurs coexisted, at least until the liberal, heathen dinosaurs were struck down by God me and the worthy humans inherited the Earth. ‘Cause according to the board of education of Topeka, Kansas (the very same board of education that brought you this little case fifty years ago), science now implies that this, in all likelihood, is (probably) true.

To read the story that sparked this little tirade, go here. And to you people who think intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution, one: take your kid to whatever private school will indoctrinate the little bugger for you and leave the already intelligently-designed curriculums of public schools the hell alone,and two:

Go fuck yourselves.

JAB

For the most part I have the layout the way I want it. Yeah, there’s some other crap I wanna add — like the late, sort-of-great Gallery, an About Me page, a Links page, and a Short Story/Writing page where I can post the bilge I keep on churning out — but the layout looks pretty fuckin’ sharp. The only thing that needs major fixin’ is the individual entry pages — y’know, the ones where I allow the three of you monkeys who desire to comment to do so.

On the right-hand sidebar, amongst the list of blogs I like — or as some of the more gay sexually ambiguous members of the blogging community like to call it, a “blogroll” — you will notice a new one: Sexy Politics, by my friend, the esteemed Allan D’Angelo. On his blog he generally discusses, aptly enough, “sex, politics, and entertainment.” He has some great ideas, especially if you’re a liberal, including labeling conservatives as Anti-Freedom instead of Pro-Life and Pro-Family, and suggesting that Wal-Mart should sell porn next to the toasters (though I personally think Wal-Mart should sell porn in the huge-ass dump tables that fill the main isles).

JAB

Except for the massively painful headache I’ve had for most of the day, today’s been pretty damn good. It started by me getting up early (not by choice, though) and putting the finishing touches on “Into the Abyss.” I just need to adjust the ending a little, and then it will be ready to be sent out. I’m excited.

I also saw the Legend of Zorro with Jason. While not as good as the original, it held its own pretty well. Plenty full of sweet sword fights, but a little too tame. There was very little killing done with swords, unlike Mask of Zorro, and the villains weren’t nearly as…well, villainous. On a whole, however, it was a fun movie. Afterward, we got lunch at Smoky Bones and then retired to Tim Horton’s, where Jason and I spent several hours launching our Next Big Idea. It’s a novel and funny — at least in our opinion — take on the horror movie genre. We outlined the general story, plotting the major points, and basically wrote the first twenty pages freehand of the script. I’m very, very excited. As of yet, it’s untitled.

I had to go home then, as at that point my head had gone from mildly aching to feeling as though a monkey were pounding on it with an iron mallet. I took a shower, took a two hour nap, forgot to tape a show for my parents, woke up with my head still pounding, and just finished watching three episodes of “Enterprise.” The head’s feeling better, but still hurts enough to be more than distracting, so I’m gonna sign off now. Maybe I’ll just lie on my bed for a while and stare at the ceiling.

I sense a fun night awaits me.

JAB

This joke is a little outdated, but still damn funny and appropriate, especially since we’re gearing up for a huge fight over the newly nominated Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. So here’s the joke:

Q: What was President Bush’s reply when asked what his position was on Rowe vs. Wade?

A: “I don’t care how people get out of New Orleans.”

JAB