Tony’s Journal

Disjointed journal entry follows:

Gameday was fun to go to, even though we were not very close to the stage. Corso dressed up in the full Mr Wuf outfit, which was cool.

The Fair was a good time as always. The first thing I did once inside was share a cheesesteak with Cynthia, and the first thing I did with that steak was spill about a cup of onions and cheez — this definitely was cheez with a z — on my shirt, and then onto my lap. I scooped it up and ate it. Fair food is not to be wasted. During the course of the day, I had a ham biscuit, a bloomin onion thing, a huge bucket of root beer, a sour pickle in a paper sleeve, and a deep fried Moon Pie on a stick.

I noticed that Jim and Justin looked exactly the same as they did in 2003, down to the clothes they wore to the Fair. Here’s a comparison:

2003	2004

Jim is wearing his Philip Rivers jersey, and Justin his windbreaker. That’s weird. But anyway, it was a good time.

Afterwards we walked across the street to the game, which had an exciting atmosphere and was an exciting game for the first half. We ended up losing to Miami 45-31. And following that, we went to IHOP.

IHOP was a strange experience. The IHOP by campus employs freaks, attracts freaks, and serves good food fast. However, the service was terrible. We were able to order as expected, and the waitress chatted us up, and told us a fun fact: IHOP puts pancake batter in its eggs to make them fluffier. Strange, but it tastes great, and that’s the bottom line. Jim went back and forth with her for a while, demanding to know why they would not cram  guacamole inside the omelet that he ordered. He begrudgingly agreed to take it on the side.

Justin and I got our pumpkin pancakes extremely quickly and commenced to eating them. They were delicious. Meanwhile, Chris, Billy, and Jim waited for their food to arrive. We finished our pancakes. The others’ food did not arrive.

Time passed. Justin and I felt like we were going to get hungry again. A different waiter came along and said that our waitress had left with a medical emergency. We surmised that they took her out back and shot her for disclosing The Secret of the Eggs. The hungriest three ordered their meals again. We noticed that the guys next to us were having similar problems with service. Our neighbors had gotten some of their order, but others remained hungry, just like our party.

Time passed. It was now about 2 am. I was getting delirious and laughing at the syrup bottles. Jim eventually got his order. Billy got the wrong order.

One of our neighbors was brought a dish that looked like an old boot. It looked unappealing. Jim pointed this out and we all died laughing, except Chris. Chris had never received his food at all. He collapsed face first on the table.

So that was fun.

The next day we then arose early (oh, how that sucked)  to go to Charlotte for the Panthers-Chargers game.

A riddle for you!

Q: What goes chchchchchczzzzz THOD “hup?” chchchchchczzzzz THOD “hup?”

A: Chris continually snoring on the way to Charlotte, and someone punching the headrest to make him stop, and Chris getting startled and falling asleep again, over and over.

That wasn’t so much a riddle as a true story, I guess.

It was probably the most boring game I’ve watched all year. If I was watching it on TV I would have flipped to the Iron Chef instead. Here’s what one news article said about the game:

It was such a lackluster game – the Panthers led 6-0 until Tomlinson’s touchdown with 8:13 to play in the third – that the largest cheer of the day came when the stadium scoreboard showed rival Atlanta getting blown out by Kansas City.

We ate at an Uno’s on the way home, which was more exciting than the game.

…

This week has not been exciting.

News in Brief style for the remainder of this.

Henderson just showed up in my office and showed his “ticket” to the John Edwards rally at Dorton Arena tonight. He didn’t even know that Bon Jovi was going to be there. . . Hitler has a lot in common with Justin, as we can see in this old news footage. . . Virginia Tech beat Georgia Tech last night, and the ACC Refs gave VT a TD that they shouldn’t have gotten. I’m wearing my VT polo shirt today — it’s too big for me now — and the first two people I saw gave me crap, since it would have been better for NCSU if GT had won. . . All you Yankee Chipotle freaks check this out: free baby-sized burrito on election day if you buy one on Halloween. . . I hope Melistopheles has gotten a hold of her keys by now. . . Tomorrow Billy turns 25, which, if I’m doing the math correctly, means that he & Mandy have been dating for about 42 years now. . . It appears that only low-rise mens’ jeans were on sale at the mall last night, which would have been perfect if my name was Nancy.

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So I went to the Nice Price Books this evening before it closed, which is an improvement on yesterday. I was looking for a couple of particular records for Dayo and struck out. But all was not lost. Apparently some lady came in earlier today and sold them a bunch of very lightly used records in great condition. They were not originals — they were probably from the 80s as they have bar codes on the back — but they are all immaculate.

The desk jockey thought they were her son’s.

And this is how the term “mother lode” came to be.

And I plundered.

For less than $50 I got near-mint copies of:

The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced?
U2 – The Joshua Tree
Creedence Clearwater Revival (first album)
Ozzy Osbourne – Blizzard of Ozz
Led Zeppelin I
Led Zeppelin II
Led Zeppelin IV
Led Zeppelin – Houses of the Holy

I think I have about 5 copies of Led Zeppelin IV now, and multiple copies of I, II, and Houses of the Holy as well, and I may have already had The Joshua Tree. But today’s copies are virtually scratch-free, and have great artwork to boot. They’re in far better playing condition than any of the copies I already owned, except for my copies of I and IV — I already had the “quiex SV” copies of those, which are newly made versions that are about as heavy as a Sprewell rim and are about as expensive.

I am happy with the music I bought today.

And now! Journal entries three days in a row! Connect Three!

Pret-ty sneak-y, sis.

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Whoa, writing in the ol’ LJ on back-to-back days.

I needed a haircut last week, so on Friday I left work at 5 on the dot and headed to Man-Mur. This is an old-timey barber shop across from campus with the nice old style barber chairs, the checkerboard floor, the hot shaving cream back-of-the-neck shave, etc. Nothing has changed there in decades, including apparently the hairstyles which they are acquainted with. Military folk and police officers go there a lot, if that’s any clue. Basically they buzz you, and it’s just a matter of how short you want the buzz. This time, I told the old timer that I wanted it short enough that I didn’t have to part it, and he went above and beyond. My head now looks fat and round. Hence the term in the local lexicon: “Man-Murdered.” Luckily I have thick, fast growing hair (thanks to the Italian side of the family).

But I haven’t gotten a haircut anywhere besides Man-Mur in over six years, and I don’t plan to. Every once in a while, I’ll spin the wheel and it’ll land on “Man-Murdered,” but it ain’t no thang.

Picky nerd rant time: I hate hate hate it how, when logging on to Windows XP and you mistype your password, a bubble comes up and says “Did you forget your password? Blah blah blah.” No. I just mistyped it. I made a mistake, for god’s sake. Microsoft of all entities should know what that’s like. Every other week they get a thousand news organizations reporting about the exploit du jour, each article rhetorically asking Microsoft “Did you mean to create an incredibly unsecure operating system?”

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This week we can talk about football. State beat Maryland, who looked fairly impotent in all aspects of football. There were no fights and the UMD football players didn’t beat up our band and their fans didn’t throw produce at our fans, which is an improvement from recent years. It seemed that a lot of UMD fans left at halftime, which is pretty pathetic in itself. To paraphrase Ben, I guess they quit on their team and proceeded home to drown kittens. They were therefore unable to see this scene, photographed immediately after the game:

“TIME FOR PLAN B: WE MUST PROTECT THE INTERNATIONAL HOUSE OF PANCAKES”

Bridget, who I can only assume is sort of a Wal*Mart UMD fan, sent me an utterly nonsensical text message during the game implying that since Chuck Amato is so unstylish, he might be gay. This clearly makes sense because we all know how unstylish the stereotypical gay man is.

Then again, it makes about as much sense as that UMD alum taunting us at the Hard Rock Cafe in DC a few years back, calling US “losers,” then getting back to his job mopping up things that tourists spilled.

Wei might be the only friendly Maryland alum who I have ever met. I’ve had a beer with him, and I look forward to having another. He’s a really nice guy, which stands in sharp contrast to every single other UMD fan I’ve ever met. I would not have a beer with the rest of them. I’d be worried  that they’d bash the bottle on the table, chase me with the jagged end, and then fail to see the hypocrisy in calling me a redneck.

…

Anyway, the Skins won! Special thanks to Mark Brunell for throwing one touchdown to each team this week; this is an improvement.

And the Steelers won too. Big Ben Roethlisberger beat the hated Cowboys.

This week feels like it will likely drag on for a while. Next weekend will be, as the kids say, off the hook. Let’s see: likely to the Fair on Friday night, then College Gameday at 10:30 Saturday morning, then the fair again all day, then to the Miami @ NCSU game, then sleep for a bit, then to Charlotte early Sunday morning for the Chargers @ Panthers game.

And Dayo is playing rugby tomorrow. In England. What the hell.

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Say! I have filled out the voter registration address change form. Something I’ve been casually wishing would get done for a couple of months.

Hooray for me!

Now let’s see whether I mail it, and then afterwards, let’s see whether I vote. I might disenfranchise myself by enacting a laziness clause.

Stamps are 37 cents these days.

…

You may notice that my LJ premium account has expired. I don’t care. Maybe I’ll pay again for it. I can tell you with some conviction that LJ is broken often enough that paying them more money is not my top priority. The brokenness of it makes my web site look crappier than usual, but who cares, my website is basically just a place to post photos for the time being. I’ve got grandiose plans to fix up the web site, and a complete lack of motivation to do so. Only time will tell.

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I wish I had two more hands so I could give Macy Gray 4 thumbs down.

Get off my TV and out of my ears, you gravelly hag.

…

In other news from NC State — and this should really make you Clampett-types who fled NC for the big city homesick — the latest cow mischief story from the campus police blotter:

11:36 PM Animal Problem

A non-student who lives in the Mid Pines Rd area called to report that there were several cows loose on Mid Pines Rd. Officers checked the area and found 15-20 cows outside the gate on the side of the road.

But wait! There’s more, this time from the creepy old man department. Three girls were picked up by a taxi cab on frat court and the following ensued:

Assault

The student stated that the driver asked them if they could introduce him to ugly women, and then began pinching her on the arm. He finally stopped pinching her and drove them to the requested fare location.

Ha ha! Ugly women. This man, though I have never met him, seems to subscribe to my personal mantra of “Aim low and you might accomplish your goals.”

Ahhh. Ugly women.

That reminds me, hey, the fair’s coming soon, who’s making the pilgrimage?

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