Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Insider Trading is Dumb and Stuff

Last week or so, Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks got busted for insider trading. Sucks for him. Because really the whole idea for busting people for insider trading is dumb. Think of it this way. You and a bunch of your friends put your money in a pot. Then one of your friends tells you that if you don't take your money out of the pot someone will set it all on fire and you won't get anything back. You would take your money out of the pot. Insider trading is like that only on a much larger scale. I'm sorry but punishing these people because they were told that their $750,000 was going to disappear and them thinking that was a bad idea, is really dumb. Investing like life, doesn't need to be fair.

Apparently in the last week two of the characters from Laguna Beach were married. The only way that I would care about this is if the reception hall caught fire and got rid of the cast of Laguna Beach.

Last weekend Jeb and I were playing the new game Little Big Planet for the PS3. While possibly being one of the most beautiful, perfectly textured, fantastically witty games I have ever played. Playing it (especially with a friend) is the most frustrating experience of my life. What looks like a kids game, with characters call sackboys (which you can dress up with mustaches and sombreros, which is hilarious), is anything but kiddish. Jeb and I are not novice gamers but it was like asking five year olds to do Calculus.
Your partner goes and grabs the thing you were going to swing off of as you jump:
You die.
Your partner sets off explosives while you are right beside them:
You die.
You wait too long so your partner can get out of the way before you go:
You die.
One level even had depth charge type explosives that only exploded if you hit them onto some other object, guess how many times we died before I quit:
27.

I am leaving tomorrow for a trip back up to Pennsylvania for the Thanksgiving holiday. Plenty of family and friends that I haven't seen in over a year so we might get a crazy post Sunday but chances are after driving a combined twenty hours in the next five days, I won't be all that conscious Sunday night. Also feel free with your complaints on me not writing to suggest something that you would like to hear my opinion on. I could always use the suggestions.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Gurdy Gurdy and Bartender Infatuation Continued...

So I awoke (much earlier than I hoped) and got a ride back to Jeb's from Ish's. Immediately upon entering I almost fell back asleep on the couch, but was talked into hitting up some Moe's (that's a lot of apostrophes in two sentences). We got it to go and headed back to Jeb's to crash. And crash I did, falling asleep almost immediately upon finishing some burrito goodness.

I awoke later to the beginning of the Clemson football game and a video that Jeb took of me snoring. Clemson seemed to be doing half decently but as the game went I suggested we head down to Esso to watch the rest of the game and get more of their fairly good food. Sadly everyone and their mother had the same idea and we abandoned Esso for a walk up the street back to Griffin's. Griffin's has a big advantage over the Esso and she was definitely working Saturday night. This woman is a goddess and apparently also plays the guitar and teaches special needs children. She is like how you would describe the perfect woman to someone else. I want to make a move with all my being but can't for the life of me get up the nerve. Part of it could be that I enjoy the fantasy of the perfect girl and don't want that to be ruined by the inevitable rejection, but probably it has to do with my brain turning to mush when she talks to me and me being a big dumb ass around every woman there is. Anyway Jeb and I ate and had a great time sitting there for like six hours. At first I felt great, hanging out and having a good time, just still a little tired. But as the night went on I felt worse and worse. I did my best to hold it together, drinking a lot of water but it was no use. I was exhausted and felt horrible and had to get out of there. Even the silly teasing I was getting (which ranged from me drinking water to the way I was sitting?) was getting on my nerves. So I cashed out and got out of there. I strolled back to the condo in the cold (which surprisingly helped). After chatting with BMS for a little while about things that I don't remember in my deliriously tired state, I was able to get back to the couch to fall asleep.

The rest of the weekend involved staying much longer than I had planned, watching Jeb kick so much ass in Spiderman that he actually made the game skip. Once I got home I hunkered down and trimmed the inserts so they would be ready for Monday and watched three of my favorite movies. All and all it was a great weekend like usual, one I'd be happy to repeat any week.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Gurdy Gurdy and Bartender Infatuation

After sadly missing writing about last weekend's Halloween extravaganza, where, dressed as a doctor I dominated all challengers in Beer Pong to the point where I tried to handicap myself by holding small dogs at the same time, I decided to do my best to knock this entry out before the wave of Captain Pretentious's bitching hits my cell phone. For some reason, some weeks I just don't feel up to writing when I get home from work and last week was one of those weeks. Especially when I had to bring at least two hours of work home three days out of the week. So making it to the weekend (even with the disappointment that came with my week's work needing to be trimmed down this afternoon) was a welcome relief of the stresses of the work week. Don't get me wrong, I love my job, but sometimes its very stressful. Especially those moments where you're trying to insert a piece of plastic into its holder in front of your client and its not fitting.

So after that stressful Friday morning where I was sent over to the hospital to put vinyl hours on their doors and deliver the stack of inserts that I had been working all week on, I was looking forward to getting the weekend started. All week on the radio at work I had been hearing about this sale going on at the one expo center where you could get electronics for much cheaper than normal. I had been wanting a wireless router for weeks, hoping to allow both my x-box and my computer to access some Internet at the same time, with the added bonus of being able to surf the net on the couch or in bed. So after work I headed over there. I was greeted by a sign telling me that I would have to pay four dollars just to park. I never carry cash. It just doesn't seem very logical for me to do so with the ability to use my debit card, so I had to drive around and find an ATM to get some money out. I finally got some cash and headed back to the lot where an old woman was collecting cash. Before handing her the money, I asked if I would be charged again before I was allowed to check out the merchandise in the expo center. She said it would be another seven dollars. So now I'd be up to eleven dollars before even seeing if they have anything I want. I kindly thanked the woman and did a U-turn back out onto the road. Anyway long story short, I ended up going to Walmart and buying one for what it would have cost to get into the expo center and purchase the shady marked down merch. Setting it up was another story as the directions are delightfully vague and the only way I got it to send out Internet was to directly plug to router into my computer, which sort of takes away from the benefit of the Internet being wireless. So hopefully I will figure it out later this week or get some help.

After failing at turning my apartment into a wireless haven, I put my stuff together and drove on down to Clemson, a surreal feeling because this now involves doing so in the dark despite it being only about five in the evening. I arrived at Jeb's place, seconds after a call saying that he had been caught at work and wouldn't be there for another forty five minutes. BMS was also absent and I basically just sat around waiting for someone to get home in a house that isn't mine. Jeb says that this isn't a problem but its still sorta weird to me. I was relieved to finally get a call from the Polo Twins (C.P and the Katie) extending an invitation of pizza. Ten Minutes later Benjamin time (45 minutes real time) we hopped in the car and headed over to Peppinos. Both Jeb and BMS had arrived home in those ten minutes and so the evening began. For some reason I have come to hate Peppinos because it seems like its always 90 degrees in there so I feel uncomfortable sitting in there sweating my ass off, waiting for their overly greasy pizza. Happily we weren't there too long and started our night out at the bars.

As usual we started at Nick's with a couple Dale's Pale Ales. One of the bartenders was told by my party that it would be funny to spank my ass, and did so on a sneak attack when I wasn't paying attention. We bounced from bar to bar and ended up as we often do at Griffin's. This was happily early enough to get a waitress for at least the beginning of the outing and she turned out to be a really cool chick that coincidentally was from twenty minutes away from my house in Pennsylvania. After a while of hanging out, she decided to join us after she got off, and we all had a fun time. Except for one thing. I don't really know how it started or why they do it, but when the Polo twins join us out drinking, everyone pinches my nipples. I am sitting there relaxing with my friends and suddenly one of the three of them will lay into me with some wicked pinching. I kinda don't get it, don't really appreciate it and wish they would just come up with something else to bug me with, but apparently to them it is hilarious. After the twins left, Jeb and I stuck around for another couple hours before heading home, where I somehow was able to get a ride from Ish to spend the night at her place, which is always nice.

To be continued....