LONGEST MORNING EVER.

CHOCOLATE FOR BREAKFAST OH YEAH.

i don’t actually metabolize chocolate very well so i’ll be all SKIDDLY BOPPITY DO WAH BAH LALALA WOW a la amanda because it makes me mad jittery.

oh, but fine chocolate is worth it. LOVE.

hah!

As if hanging around Julia didn’t already have enough advantages, now there’s apparently a constant supply of chocolate.

My life is too good. Something bad is going to happen soon.

kenan has become the bizarro me.

That means something good is going to happen soon!

but otto, don’t you have a crazy weekend of drinking and debauchery to look forward to? or was that last night, hence the long morning?

yeah, yest morn was great. my roommate’s nongirlfriend came out of the bedroom and asked if we wanted a truffle or something, then brought out a PILE of little trays of gourmet chocolates. oh the ganache. i like having a chocolate chef around.

xp let’s just try for good all around.

Good morning, sunshines. I just ate two of Sarah’s cookies for breakfast. MmmmMMM!

i have opted out of debauchery. i don’t think my brain/body/soul can take much more of this.

I ate all of that macaroni before bed last night. It was sooo good.

lol at Lance Rock

My paw is almost all better today! I credit the consistent application of ice and my amazing self-healing powers and adamantium skeleton.

yesterday i went to the jewel on ashland/milwaukee/paulina along with roughly 900,000 other chicagoans. i brought my handy shopping list provided by handymanda with the intent of making chili. i crossed off what i had at home, got the remaining ingredients and some other things i needed. they were all out of loose red potatoes, they only had the pre-packaged 5 lb. bags and as i was walking and already had a ton of stuff i decided not to have garlic mashed ‘taters for thanksgiving. when i got home i got my pot ready for the chili, i opened the cans of beans and diced tomatoes, i got a skillet ready with some oil for the onion and celery (and garlic). it was at about this time i realized i never got around to buying any ground beef. so, dejectedly, i put everying into ziplock containers and will give it another go tonight. i had grilled cheese and ruffles and onion dip while watching football. all in all not a bad day.

xpost Does it hurt when your claws come out?

what did you do jenny?

Jenny made stuffed squashes and they were awesome.

Jenny grabbed the glass lid of a casserole dish with her bare hand, intending to clear counter space and do some dishes, not realizing that said glass lid had just spent 30 minutes in a 400 degree oven.

I’m going to put that squash recipe on the blog. I’ll put the mac and cheese recipe up, too, if anyone wants it although it’s not of my own devising.

in the past, when i have been unable to find pot holder i have been known to take a chance and bet that my pain threshold is greater than the time it will take for me to take something out of the oven and put it on a counter. i’d say i’m right close to 40% of the time.

xpost- mac me up!

I don’t want the recipe. I just want you to make more of it and give it to me.

oh, hey, i didn’t realize that was an option. i’ll take that instead too please.

Check this out:

Average Money Spent on Private Car Ownership (Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey 2003–04)

Vehicle Purchases $3,618

Gas and Motor Oil $1,449

Other $2,445

TOTAL $7,512

Typical Transportaton Costs (per year) for an I-GO Member:

Car Sharing: $1,080

Transit $ 900

Rental Car $ 300

Taxis $ 240

TOTAL: $2,520

pain in the assness because every one of the four cars within a 1 mile walk of my place being booked almost 24 hours a day for 5 days in advance? priceless.

that mac and cheese recipe makes me salivate.

yeah me too. i would do something rash for some mac ’n’ cheese right now. oh, wednesday night i woke up in a panic because the CO2 detector was going off in my apartment. turns out it was because the batteries were dying but for a brief 2 minute span when i wasn’t quite awake and unable to process what was going on i was in a disoriented state of panic.

Okay, stuffed squash recipe is up, too. I realize that I have no idea of the actual measurements for most stuff.

Jenny, you made an awesome meal.

I only made two components. You are forgetting Nick’s asparagus and cheese biscuits, Sarah’s sweet potato casserole and cookies, Jesse’s green bean casserole, Courtney’s sour cream pie (I think you missed the sour cream pie course) and razzleberry pie, and beer.

Stuffed squash and mac and cheese alone would have been kind of sad.

Damn, we had an awesome dinner, didn’t we?

You’re right, of course. I also LUUUUV asparagus.

Stuffed squash and mac and cheese alone would have been kind of sad.

This is not right.

Cookies! Oh, those were some good cookies.

Did we ever get a definitive answer on wtf a razzleberry is?

sounds like the testicles from the drummer to hanoi rocks to me.

I want Nick’s asparagus recipe. I like it baked on a cookie sheet, drenched in balsamic vinegar and salt. But Nick was on some other shit, and the shit was good.

I am watching the movie Misery. Apart from Carrie, which is the best, and The Dead Zone, which is awesome, this is the third best Steven King movie.

HELLO THE SHINING CALLED AND WANTS YOU TO RETHINK YOUR LIST.

THE SHINING CALLED AND WANTS YOU TO RETHINK YOUR LIST?

That’s a Kubrick movie. Duh.

STAND BY ME THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

ew. Middle school.

STILL A GOOD MOVIE THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

i’ve never seen cujo in it’s entirety. i liked christine, though i realize it wasn’t a very good movie.

xpost Uh... I guess. I kind of think of it as being the same as The Breakfast Club, only 7 years younger. “You have issues appropriate to our age? Wahey! So do I!”

WHATEVER TEDDY DUCHAMP. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

oh shit i’ve been feldman’d.

If you eliminate The Shining from your Stephen King movie list because it’s a Kubrick movie, then you have to eliminate Carrie because it’s a DePalma movie and The Dead Zone because it’s a Cronenberg movie.

I liked Stand by Me a lot, even though it wasn’t that scary.

Let’s see... taking camp value and nostalgia as well as actual goodness into account, my list would go:

The Shining*, **

Carrie*

Creepshow

Children of the Corn

Stand by Me

The Dead Zone

Christine

Shawshank Redemption

Maximum Overdrive

Firestarter

Misery

Pet Sematary (sic)

Salem’s Lot

Anything not on this list means not even camp or nostalgic value could save it from being utter crap. Inclusion on this list doesn’t automatically exclude the film from being utter crap, either; it just means I have a soft spot for it.

*These movies would be in a top ten favorite movies list, regardless of Stephen King’s involvement.

**Kenan does have a point, though, since Stephen King for some reason decided he had to remake this movie into a total steaming turd because he believed Kubrick somehow got it wrong.

There’s a new IGo car location by my house in the Aon parking deck. I hope that the fact that they’re always booked up means that they will continue to expand their service.

Between the day we moved in and last weekend when we reserved a car they had added a bunch of locations to our neighborhood, so I think they are and will continue to expand.

I hope they get a Honda S2000.

who is crunkleJ?

and i forgot about shawshank, one of my FAVORITE MOVIES EVER, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

It kind of smells like old beer and smoke in our apartment, and I think that’s oozing up from our downstairs neighbors’ apartment, who smoke and had a big old Thanksgiving fiesta yesterday.

xpost—it’s Jesse.

it’s goddamn jesse.

my apartment smells like stale incense, old sweat, and lies, lies, lies

(NIN lyrics)

my apartment smells like the frozen pizza i made at 2:15 this morning.

Proof that Norman Rockwell had a dark and evil side.

I just made popcorn on the stove! It was delicious!

Hi there. I don’t know why I never really registered this in my brain before, but the microbrewery in my home town sells pints of beer for two dollars. It’s insane. Think of what it would be like if there was a place like this in Chicago — a place that would sell 5 or so moderately good to pedestrian American style beers until only 11 o’clock at night. The cross-section of people you’d see drinking there would be amazing.

But here, it’s like the only game in town. It’s big, it’s cheap, it has free wireless. It’s full of people from about 5 PM untill 11. Then the drunk people spill out of the place and the social strata of the town becomes clear. Certain people walk out and go to one bar, some other people go to a different one, and a few go home. It’s really weird, and god damn I’m drunk.

I uploaded the Beyond the Valley of the Dolls soundtrack to the blog. Enjoy.

I never had realized that Mylo sampled it. DENSE>

Hm. Seems that archive is empty.

“My” asparagus recipe is just the “asparagus appointment” recipe from ILX: take asparagus, brush/coat in olive oil, add salt and garlic powder to taste, and roast at hot (like 425) until tender. It’s the recipe with the highest tastiness-to-easiness-to-prepare ratio that I know.

Anyone up for doing something tonight? Sarah and I are indecisive. We are considering:

1. Rock show

a) Dead Meadow/Pinebender at Sub-T

b) Pere Ubu and Mahjongg at Abbey Pub if it’s not sold out

c) Oranges Band and Red Eyed Legends at the Note (probably not)

2. Movie

a) The Fountain

b) For Your Consideration

3. Something else. I mainly just want to get out of the apartment.

Call me.

Sarah is making xmas ornaments, I am bored. I want to play video games but am bored with all of mine.

I’m listening to Christmas music. Maybe I should post my favorite Tony Bennett number to the blog.

Jeff and I just finished cleaning our little hearts out and now we want to leave the apartment before we trash it again.

We’re hungry.

xpost Ok, done.

Jenny, tell Jeff that his BTVOTD OST is a bad file. Re-upload, plz.

Nick, I’d go out with you, but I have computer-related obligations that I am pushing to the very outside limit. Even as we speak. I shouldn’t be dicking around with uploading music and shit.

Kr and I are going to see Memento Polonia at 8 pm, but we’re up for hanging out after the play if anyone wants to have drinks or something.

if you’re going to be in the neighborhood later, i maybe could use a beer.

How many celebrities can you name?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=bPIqX8gbyVA

My favorite guy: “Life’s unfair, and Ernest Goes to Jail tells us that.”

Hey, I put “Trill” by the Clipse on the blog. Download it for awesome misogynistic, crack-promoting rap.

News of the day: I have another cat for December. The evil one, the Acker. She was supposed to bring her over a week or two ago, but... well, that didn’t happen. Anyway. She’s being surprisingly calm and sweet, and so is Dobbler. I think the apartment is big and separated enough that they’re finding it easy to ignore each other. Perfect.

The new Tom Waits set is freaking awesome. The first disc especially is some kinda awesome bloozy Waits-essence concoction. And the third disc is so bleeding strange. Love.

I can’t identify all the people on the cover. One is clearly Burroughs, which makes perfect sense, and one looks like a Modigliani, and one is some kind of gangster-looking dude. Dillinger? No... not him. Something like that, I’m guessing. And then there are these ghostly figures. Weird.

Supplementing my listening today with Skip Spence. Also very good. Been meaning to get this for freaking ever, but never got around to it until today.

I thought this would go away quickly, but when the windows are open and the train is really loud going by at all hours of the night, I still have train-related dreams. Last night I dreamed I worked for CTA, and was working on the tracks for some vague reason, but the trains kept going by and interrupting me and almost running me over.

trains are huge and really very loud. I wish they could all be underground.

Wow, this sounds like a great job

http://www.cta.apply2jobs.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=DSPView&Lookupid=1218&CurrentPage=3

Makin’ jambalaya! Hangin’ out by myself, listening to UK pop hits from the ’70s! Maaan, every day is awesome now. I went back to the old place to get some more stuff, though, and the cats had no food or water, the place is scary and squat-like and so dirty that I didn’t like to inhale, and my landlord threw away my Netflix picks, the head-fucked bastard.

Wow, this sounds like a great job

I don’t know if “great” is the word, but that sounds like the job I’ll have at 40 if I don’t don’t get more ambitious in a hurry.

the place is scary and squat-like and so dirty that I didn’t like to inhale

haha My last place was like that for the whole time I lived in it. Cats and all.

Kenan, you don’t think it sounds good? I suppose I’d like to see what it pays... but otherwise it’d be pretty cool!

(I also am not remotely qualified)

I would love a job like that.

I thought this would go away quickly, but when the windows are open and the train is really loud going by at all hours of the night, I still have train-related dreams. Last night I dreamed I worked for CTA, and was working on the tracks for some vague reason, but the trains kept going by and interrupting me and almost running me over.

I too often dream of trains.

2 Cheers and 1 Jeer for Ikea. Cheers for helping me stock my kitchen with (18-piece set (NOT 16!) of decent looking dishes (for $18), frying pan, sauce pan and a few other kitchencetera for a very nice price. Also for supplying Courtney with some reasonably grown-up looking furniture at a good price.

The 2nd cheer is for cheap eats: 99c breakfast (eggs, bacon, potatoes), $1.99 breakfast (eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, french toast) and Swedish meatball lunch, not to mention lingonberries at every turn.

1 Jeer for missing parts in their furniture. In the 3 pieces I put together tonight I was missing 1 screw (easily replaced) and 2 obscure fasteners. Grrr.

Also, Courtney made clear that I was forbidden from having sex at Ikea this time.

boooo hiss

This is where Jessa is going, and I’m really, deeply envious:

http://www.idlewords.com/2006/04/argentina_on_two_steaks_a_day.htm

Eating steaks in Argentina feels like joining a cult. You find yourself leaning on friends to come visit, and writing YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND in all caps more often than feels comfortable. Argentine beef really is extraordinary. Almost all of this has to do with how the cows are raised. There are no factory feedlots in Argentina; the animals still eat pampas grass their whole lives, in open pasture, and not the chicken droppings and feathers mixed with corn that pass for animal feed in the United States. Since this is the way of life a cow was designed for, it is not necessary to pump the animal full of antibiotics. The meat is leaner, healthier and more flavorful than that of corn-fed cattle. It has fewer calories, contains less cholesterol, and tastes less mushy and waterlogged than American meat. And the cows spend their lives out grazing in the field, not locked into some small pen. You can taste the joy.

hahaha: “Surely Solís was wearing one of those crucifixes that shows Jesus actually hanging from the cross. It must have been a simple mistake on the part of the natives, who saw him as a friendly gift from the visitors on the boat, complete with a serving suggestion suspended around his neck.”

Cheers for helping me stock my kitchen with (18-piece set (NOT 16!) of decent looking dishes (for $18)

I think I may have the exact same dishes.

1 Jeer for missing parts in their furniture.

Ditto. I was only able to put my bed together through the good graces of someone’s well-stocked toolbox, because the parts sure as hell didn’t fit.

Hello Chicago. I am out of cocoon.

my face has been leaking yellow-green snot all weekend chicago and i don’t like it one bit. a thoroughly disappointing weekend all the way around (with the exception of the pats game yesterday).

does this work? testing testing

Now I have a name

Job Title: ENVIRONMENTAL GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Job Type: Full Time Regular

Primary Duties and Responsibilities: Proofreading; spelling Belmont correctly; remembering the existence of the Fullerton transfer; designing stickers to cheaply correct the last environmental graphic designers stupid mistakes.

...possessive apostrophe skills...

My weekend was SO F’N LAZY. Let’s see.. What the hell did I do? There was Thanksgiving... That was good stuff. Then there were a ton of leftovers. I spent most of the day after Thanksgiving napping. I tried to do some Christmas shopping, but didn’t have much luck. I went to the gym a couple of times, had Indian food and drinks, and watched lots of Herzog and Kinski. I started watching Big Love. I got through most of my decoupage Christmas ornament making. I read some Christopher Moore bahhumbuggery. I put up fliers and then was sad when they were all ripped down basically 24 hours later. I played a championship boggle-trivial pursuit-scrabble game against Nick and won, so he has to treat me to a movie.

Maybe I’m not so ready to be back at work yet... Where is everyone?

friday i saw a formerly great band play a really shitty set, you know if dan the fan stops dancing there is something seriously wrong with your band.

saturday i went to a party but was home by 1.

sunday i watched the pats turn the ball over 5 times and still beat the bears. that was great.

starting wednesday i will be house/dog/cat sitting for a friend out in berwyn.