Sawyer has gone out.

To buy gas. The pipeline that supplies the city with most of its oil (I don't know exactly how this works) has been inoperative for the past couple of days, so it looks like Atlanta will be without gas for Labor Day weekend. If it has gas, the gas will be really really expensive. So Sawyer went out tonight to fill up the tank before we can't get any gas. We don't want to strand any of the people to whom we've promised rides this weekend, and, well, the trains don't run after 1am, so we'd like some reliable mode of transportation other than a taxi cab.

Mr. Miyagi is on TV, but he's not Mr. Miyagi. He's some weird physics professor fighting the devil. Evidently he has to prove some eeeeeevil equation in order to stop Satan from taking over the world. I knew math was evil. I just knew it.

Sniffles.

I left my kleenex at home and I really could use one right now. It's been a week since I bought the darn things to take to work.

However, it is mostly okay because Meridith, Lisa, and (last but not at all least) Fyvel will all be here in 3 or four days (depending on the person). Most will be here in three days. I'm really really excited. Oh, and my brother will be here. Yeah.

I just hope I can get all my homework done before the Con...

Zzzzzz....

I can't wait for the weekend to start.

I am actually going to go to a bar with people my own age (other than Hatman) for the first time since I moved to Atlanta. I'm both apprehensive and excited at the same time.

Numberology

I have discovered that I have a strange sort of OCD... I seem to only like things in groups of prime numbers. For example, I'll go out of my way to make sure that I never have an even number of things, though I seem to make an exception for multiples of three and five. I find this odd. Hatman noticed it the other day. I'd never noticed it before.

Bruce f****n' Campbell

Bruce Campbell is currently touring along with the release of his new movie, Man with the Screaming Brain. Last week, I picked up the local free paper and noticed that, lo and behold, he'd be at the neighborhood arts cinema doing a book signing and a Q&A before three exclusive showings of the film. So Sawyer and I played hooky for the evening and went to see the movie. Actually, first we went to dinner at an Indian restaurant I'll definitely return to and then had ice cream at Jake's and then saw the movie, but you get the idea. We had to settle for the 11pm showing, as all the others were sold out, but it ended up being okay. No book signings, though; we decided to wait and buy the book later, then catch Mr. Campbell at a convention or something. Even though it was at 11 on a school night, the theatre was packed. We met one of the local goths while in line (he was with a group of younger people who were having a lengthy conversation about poo). Bruce was awesome, though. I'm used to him being a total jackass to his fans, but he was really cool this time. He talked about living in Oregon, and the documentary he and his wife are making about what you should do in public places, and about the state of Hollywood today. He said some things I really agree with, about how Hollywood thinks that certain poor box office returns are due to piracy, when in fact they're just due to really crappy movies. I wanted to ask about his opinions on Troma films, but I wasn't sure it was appropriate.
The movie was... strange. It was filmed in Bulgaria, and along with Bruce, starred Stacey Keach and Sam Raimi. I felt that it was far above a Sci-Fi channel quality (even though it was filmed primarily for that purpose - catch it September 10th). I'm not sure how it will translate to the small screen, though. Now, mind you, it wasn't terrific. It was a solid B film. However, it was thoroughly entertaining, and I'd watch it again.

I sort of hoped that Bruce would recognize Sawyer from the ScavHunt video (which some fan might have sent in the mail, thinking it was cool), but it didn't happen. He did brush past me while I was standing in the lobby, though.

Yeah.

LEAST COMPETENT PEOPLE:

"Citing the high quality of the workforce in Ontario, Toyota decided recently to build a second plant in the province even though Ontario was offering only about half the subsidy offered by Mississippi and Alabama to build the plant in one of those states. According to a July Canadian Press story, a Toyota spokesman said it had learned from Nissan and Honda, which had found the work force in the U.S. South to be often untrained and illiterate, and that, in Alabama, trainers had to use pictorials to teach some workers how to use the equipment."

I don't think they even approached Arkansas about this. Anyway, it's all self-perpetuating, and is why Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi remain the three crappiest states in the Union.

I'll post something more positive later on.

It's getting dark outside...

I planned on riding my bike to the park today, but it looks as thought either I'm going to have to wait a while before I go, or I'm not going to get to go at all. It's about 5pm right now and I could swear that it looks more like it's 7 or 8. just before the sun goes down. There are some storms moving through the area and the one over us right now is particularly heavy. Very soon, we will lose the satellite signal on the television, and I will be left with doing work on the computer (which is really what I should be doing, after all). I will enjoy Carey Grant while he is there, or perhaps change the channel and see if there's something better on another channel.

And the sky keeps getting darker. This is going to be a big rain.

'Kay, then.

An awesome website: Bugs!

Also, please do not bank with Wachovia. In the six months I have had my account, they have done nothing to make me want to keep an account with them. In fact, they make me want to take my money away from them and then punch their CEO for making things so difficult for me the past couple of months. Since when is it standard bank practice to hold checks from clearing (payroll checks, mind you) for a week because an account is less than six months old? And then they charged both me and Hatman a bunch of overdraft fees that we could have avoided if Wachovia hadn't dicked us around about them.

So, yes. Bank with Citibank, if you have to. It's better than Wachovia.

Gah.

Today is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Wachovia can suck it.

Holy crap! Happy quarter-century, Xylo!

Now you can pay less for rental cars. Isn't that momentous?

Ohio

I slept a lot right after we returned. The trip to Zanesville ended up being really quite interesting. We got in early Friday afternoon, and assumed that nobody else was there yet (though found out later that Milligan had been there as long as we had). We drove around Zanesville for most of the day, and feel that we saw pretty much all of it. We've driven across the famous Y Bridge several times now. At the end of our exploration (after taking pictures of Ohio Route 666 road signs) we found the Zanesville mall. There, we went to an awesome comic book/video game/used movie place, and discovered that Zanesville appears to have the largest group of high school-aged goth kids anywhere that I've seen within the United States so far.
The next day we went to Jess and Connor's wedding, which was beautiful. Millit looked absolutely gorgeous in her dress, and the ceremony went pretty smoothly, except for when the ring bearer didn't make it down the aisle because he was too interested in picking his nose to continue any further. After the ceremony we went to an outdoor reception with loads of UofC people we know, and dancing, and pizza. It was nice to see all the people I haven't seen in a while, but would like to see more often. Okay, so maybe not all of them, but a decent number, at least. Following the reception, Ridith, Gemma, Milligan, Hatman and I went back to the mall for a round of blacklight putt putt. Though none of us was really very good at it, it was indeed fun. Then (ah, faithful readers, the night was not nearly over) we drove to Columbus, picked up some more people (aka Carla) and went to the Church, which is the Goth night in Columbus. I wore The Boots and danced my ass off (perhaps even a little literally). I hadn't been to a goth club in over a year, so this was fantastic. It's weird, though, because the clubs in Columbus are non-smoking, so it had a very smoky and crowded back patio that I only glimpsed. It also had a water cooler with free water for patrons. I think that LDO would like it a lot (it even had an LDO-esque person, whom I determined to be inferior based on the quality of her dancing and her lack of Hair and Pants). RIght. So I think I will go back, if I'm ever in Columbus again.
And then it was back to Zanesville and sleep. We had breakfast at the Cracker Barrel, and tried to find the Longeberger Basket Factory (unsuccessfully), and then went on our way home.

All in all, even though I feel guilty for having done no homework all weekend, it was completely satisfactory.

New thing.

From now on, the LJ posts will be cross-posted here, for the benefit of those who don't have an LJ. (All LJ-specific posts will be posted only on LJ).