Gillyweed may be innocuous, but boomslang skin? Lacewing flies? You and your little friends are brewing Polyjuice Potion!

Though Halloween has long been, with Thanksgiving, in my top two annual holidays (there is candy for the kids, booze and slutty nurses/policewomen/pumpkins/prostitutes for the grown-ups), I haven't had much chance to participate the last few years since I've moved to the city. This year, however, I'll be attending the annual medical resident Halloween party for the first time. Obviously there is nothing better than hanging out with hundreds of doctors whom I don't know (and I'm fearing my closest allies, the ladies of Filterless, won't be attending this year), but the free food and open bar should help. I'm guessing tomorrow's hangover is going to be frightful, as nothing causes me to drink faster than standing awkwardly in between stilted small-talk conversations with people whose names I don't know. Yay, parties!

Unfortunately, unlike every Halloween party ever since the beginning of time, this party has a mandatory costume theme of 'children's book characters,' which kind of takes the fun out of it, and also made it excruciating to get a costume together. Also, how many variations of 'Slutty Little Bo Peep' and 'Slutty Red Riding Hood' can there be? Not enough, my friends, not enough. As for your humble narrator, I will be donning round glasses, scarf, and wizards' robes (aka used graduation gown from thrift store) in a half-assed attempt to be harry potter. Pictures may be forthcoming, if they don't make me look weird.

If you are a gambler, the over/under on number of times I ask a woman if she wants to see my 'Magic Wand' is six and a half.

...and Boom goes the Dynamite.

Drinking: Bottle of Shiraz, which went, from glass to glass, as being "meh", "okay", "awesome", "transplendant", and "Motherfucking Awesome!" as I finished the bottle. Also the rest of the gin mixed with Rose's Sweetened Lime Juice to make a gimlet (serve in used red wine glass). There is no more alcohol in the house.

Eating: Two venison sausage sticks, and then Jack's frozen cheese pizza with fresh spinach and sliced garlic on top. Delish.

Buying: Lots of drinks and lunches lately, plus yet another CD from Deerhoof's back catalogue. Otherwise nothing.

Playing: Ken Griffey Jr Presents Major League Baseball for Super Nintendo on my computer. I, since sometime last February or March, played an entire 162 game season (each game takes just 15-20 minutes) with the worst rated team (this was from 1994) the San Diego Padres, finished with a 118-44 record (Phil Plantier batted .443, hit 47 HR's and had 162 RBI's), and proceeded to lose the NLCS to Pittsburgh 4 games to 2. The weird thing was, and the only reason I'm mentioning it, is that during the playoffs I was nervous and shaking while playing a game I usually only played when bored or wasted. I may be the least calm person under pressure of all time. Today at work a client asked me a question I didn't know how to answer and I babbled 'til I nearly fainted. Could you imagine what happened when I used to talk to actual girls?

Listening: NOISE NOISE NOISE NOISE, plus Deerhoof. Best of 2006 is going to make ears bleed. But I could be bluffing, there's still a chance that Justin Timberlake could sneak on.

Reading: Just started 'Special Topics in Calamity Physics', by Marisha Pessl. Actually bought a book in hardcover for the first time in a while. God knows I love girls who can write, and this one seems to be pleasant on the eyes as well. But the writing comes first so we'll see. See the links on the side for more SFFW's.

Watching: Baseball, Season 2 of Angel, plus Noah Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming (not the Will Ferrell soccer movie), which I quite enjoyed, and highly recommend.

Writing: Not enough.

Like you have Planted the seed in the ground, I will plant my Seed in You

Tonight will be 'Cleaning Day,' which nearly always turns into 'Drunken Cleaning Party.' My parents are visiting Saturday-Sunday, along with M's Dad-New Stepmom on Saturday. The apartment really hasn't been cleaned thoroughly since sometime in August, before Kim Gordon arrived to ruin everything (this may sound harsh for all the cat-lovers out there, but KG's love of attacking forearms jumped the shark last night when I was bleeding.) And while cleaning in itself is troublesome and unpleasant, we also need to do laundry (today I wore my last pair of non-athletic socks, last undershirt not covered in magic marker, and last pair of boxers), hang the two finally-framed silkscreen prints we bought at Pitchfork, and assembled a newly purchased table thing, which seemed like it would be easy to do, since it is only a table, but apparently has 58 parts and a shoebox of screws and things. M should be a saint and start laundry when she gets home, then I will get home, shotgun a beer, and start dusting things. It will be an unforgettable night.

I haven't seen my parents in three months, which means we'll get along splendidly for a day before they leave again. I'm not sure what we'll be doing, but my goal is simply to make them eat at an exciting restaurant, which usually means not bar-and-grill, not mexican, not chinese, not pizza. I failed at this the last time they came (Piece and PJ Clark's) and am thinking about the Thai-Vietnamese-Japanese place nearby which doesn't give you forks, which will cause them to order the safest things on the menu and cry and complain. It will be great. I'm also curious to see what happens when they meet M's dad (for longer than 30 seconds at a funeral), who is a very strange man, and his new wife, who produces more eye-rolling per minute than everyone I've ever met. That was probably mean. Anyway, this meeting wasn't planned, more of 'Hey, my parents are coming down in a couple weeks.'; 'Oh, yeah, so is my dad.'; 'OK.' sort of thing. It should be fine, except when someone brings up marriage, in which case there will be tears. Not mine.

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You see that little hit-counter on the right side? Well, a couple months ago I was going to post a contest for whoever provided the 10,000th hit (no cheating allowed) would get a prize, like a mix-CD and maybe the chance to write their own post, all in an attempt to get more people to visit my blog. Obviously, writing more would be step #1, but they fact that I'm averaging like 5 people a day is kind of sad. So, the contest should wrap-up sometime late next year I guess. Wah-wah.

Milk Man Smiles to You "Hi" in a Nude

First of all, if you want to go any further, you have to read this.

Now, at first I thought this was one of those ultra-hippy uber-expensivo private schools, filled with children whose parents still wear Chuck Taylor's with tweed blazers. But, according to the school website, this is a tiny K-12 public school located on an island with only 69 students. Now, I was a child once, and I assume all of you were as well, and I couldn't possibly imagine being, say, 8-years-old and being a part of this. When I was in sixth grade, our music teacher was a geriatric (NOW RECENTLY DECEASED) man who was so against the concept of pop music that when our class sold enough magazine subscriptions in order to win the class 'prize' of having any music we wanted being played and sang in our music class, he absolutely refused. We had class as usual, and the only concession he made was playing, on piano, the old-time rock 'n roll style ripoff song that was printed in our music class songbooks.* Incidentally, a couple years later our new music teacher did let us bring in our own music and then we'd discuss it academically, but eighth graders have horrible taste in music, if you didn't know. I do remember someone brought in some Guns 'n Roses (and not any of their classics but "Used to Love Her (But I Had to Kill Her)" from their horrible GNR Lies LP) and I, motivated by the desire to seem what then was perceived as 'hip' at the time, brought in my C + C Music Factory tape. No shit. I had to work hard to get where I am today.

Anyway, imagining the Milk Man album as child ballet is a bit of stretch. Granted, Deerhoof is one of my new favorite bands, I've purchased three of their albums in the last few months, and it has been a great pleasure to discover and explore their back catalogue. But, Milk Man, which I finally purchased just last week and is great, was an album I had downloaded last year, listened to once (maybe) and then deleted. Therefore, not the most accessible stuff to get into, and if I would have heard it twenty years ago I probably would have freaked out. You can listen to the title track from the album, which is by far the most mainstream sounding song they've ever made, here. There are other songs on the album that are much more unusual and designed to frighten small children and pets. I'm giving major props to the teacher who put this together, and the open-mindedness of students, parents, and other teachers for cooperating and not complaining.


*A little sidenote: I can't believe that when I was 11-13 I'd actually go out on my bike and sell magazine subscriptions (and CDs/Cassettes too I think) to strangers, all in the name of raising money for the K-8 parochial school that, while certainly providing me with a semi-quality education, at least in math and science (but not English, obviously), was during those three years my personal torture chamber. Obviously my parents bought like 3 in order to help me get whatever the highest goal was (one year it was a limo ride and a free sub from Subway, another year it was a trip to a Brewers game), but still I do remember riding five miles and knocking on random doors. Since I am now 27-years-old and would be too embarrassed to do the same thing today, and I was probably more shy and weird (I hope) then, it just seems impossible.

Would you like your Lube before or after your Steak?

I. Explanations

A. M has been using the computer a lot of the past month to study for an important exam.
B. I've been out of the house a lot lately, with weekend trips plus lots of after-work happy hours.
C. Football season, baseball playoffs, the three primetime TV shows I watch (The Office, Veronica Mars, and Studio 60), plus constant stream of Netflix keeps me pacified and lazy.

Hmmm... I may think of more, I thought there was going to be more.

II. Weekend Wrap-Up: I'm really not going to bother going into this in great detail, since 60% of my blog readers were present, but, a few observations:

A. On Saturday I may have drank more alcohol than any other day in my entire life. I'm not sure exactly, but anytime you have your first beer at 8 a.m. and your last beer twenty hours later at 4 a.m., that adds up. However:
i. My hangover Sunday turned from a dull headache to slight nausea a couple hours later, but by dinnertime (Popeye's Chicken) I was mostly fine. Perhaps spreading out your obscenely heavy drinking during an entire day is the secret, even if you do drink 20-22 beers plus mixed drinks. They should be teaching this in schools.
B. If you don't understand the subject of this post, go here. I had no idea, and am both awed and frightened. You can look at the menu as well, it appears that their spiciest chicken wing requires a signed 'Release from Liability' form. In that case, you'd be glad to know that there's going to be some lube involved afterwards.
C. I worry far too much about aging and saying goodbye to my youth. I can still keep up. I'm very proud of myself.
D. Two nights without getting woken up by cat, even though I only got to sleep for 6 and 5 hours each night: Unbelievably satisfying.

III. Manifesto for the Future.
A. I don't think I'm going to do NaNoWriMo this year, but I do plan to write more in the next six weeks than the last six months. More posts here, for sure, each of which will be more and more boring. Also hopefully some writing that may appear elsewhere. And, eventually, maybe a brand new website with several contributors and a horrible name that I didn't come up with.