BONG

Last night's Lost was particularly awesome because:

1. It had Lando Calrissian as himself
2. It was Hurley-heavy
3. The writers managed to:
• Illustrate via Paulo's bathroom run that they do in fact have some minimum level of foresight and are not just drunkenly stumbling from episode to episode
• Acknowledge that the extras on the island have lives and stories of their own while simultaneously acknowledging that no one, including the other characters on the island, cares even a little bit
• Introduce the possibility that previously unseen extras have been making important discoveries of their own on the island so it's not out of left field when Chumpy McNobody pipes up with some huge plot altering revelation a few episodes out
• Off Nikki and Paulo
  

Boob Shirt

The other day Lizett was showing me pictures on facebook of her friend Svetlana from high school at her bachelorette party, decked out in the mother of all boob shirts and tipping back a martini with a dildo stirrer.

This is madness.

To be clear, I have no problem with whimsically sexualized bachelorette parties. If you want to stir your drink with a phallus, by God you do it! If you want to walk around with a bunch of condoms taped to your veil, then you walk proud. You can even feel free to take pictures to chronicle the whole event. But posting them on facebook? Here's what's going to happen:

Svetlana's friend Otto is going to see this picture and think it's absolutely HILARIOUS. So hilarious, in fact, that he's going to grab a copy and put it on his blog, renaming the file to something like svetlana_martinidildo.jpg for easy reference.

That's it. That's the end of the story. Now every time anyone types Svetlana into Google or God help her Google Image Search for the rest of her life, Svetlana and her whimsical dildo stirrer are going to come up. Her Grandma, having just finally figured out The Internets, is going to google her baby granddaughter's name and BAM! Crushed world view. The company interviewing her for a prestigious position in fish deboning is definitely going to see it, and who will debone the fish when they laugh her out of the debonery? Not me! So old Svetty asks her buddy Otto to please take the picture down but oops! Google has cached it, along with a dozen other mirror sites. It's there FOREVER, and you've quite possibly killed your grandma, the linchpin of the whole fish deboning industry. Don't drink and facebook.

Yeeeeeeehaw!

It was a good weekend in Houston. I bussed it down there because I love the environment and bus people and arrived to a delicious quesadilla dinner. Lizett's pappy warned me not to use too much salsa because it is very very hot but I piled it on anyway and took it down like a man, and in that moment I think I really gained his respect because he gave me the wink and the gun and said "I like your style."

We spent about 3 hours discussing wedding stuff, which was very thoughtful of them because they want me to feel included in the planning, but the truth is I'm happy with whatever Lizett wants, so I pretty much spent 3 hours trying to think of polite ways to say "I have no opinion whatsoever." It was highly informative, however, and now I'm all caught up. Oh, we did decide definitely not to have a wedding party, so for all of you fellows who would've been in it, you don't have to rent a tux but you still get the free dinner. Score!

Saturday we checked out the church and the hotel, and they're both very nice. I was particularly impressed with the church, very big and a really cool looking mixture of blank imposing walls and huge stone arches and really ornate windows. The hotel was also very nice except there was a fellow there waxing the carpet and I'm only 20% sure he worked for them.

That afternoon we headed out to the Rodeo. Lizett totally wore a cowboy hat, it was pretty grand. In fact, I rather felt like a chump being hatless, since easily over half the people there were similarly attired. There was one guy who had the whole getup, the bushy moustache hanging all the way over his lips, a long leather coat, cowboy hat, neckerchief, pocket watch, and God bless him, a cane. Presumably only federal law (couldn't possibly be Texas law) prevented him from strapping on a six shooter, this guy was hardcore. Anyway, it was all very Texas-y, although mostly we just did the carnival, and being us, pretty much just went from stand to stand eating fatally greasy food. It was awesome. We also rode a few pansy rides (Lizett likes the back-and-forthy-upside-downy stuff but I do not) and checked out the livestock show. Cows are disgusting.

I was supposed to meet Lizett's BFF out for St. Pat's but we were pretty wiped from the rodeo and we just crashed to The Sentinel. Hugely sub par.

Sunday I got ("got") to attend spanish mass. Now I know mass is an extremely spiritual and meaningful weekly ritual for a whole lot of people, and I am NOT disparaging it, but you must understand that from an outsider's perspective it is pretty bizarre. You walk in and there's a guy in a creepy hooded robe signaling a touchdown. Behind him is a naked dude being tortured to death. The crowd listlessly sings, then listlessly chants, then stands, then sits, then kneels, then sits, then stands, then sits, then kneels, then eventually approaches the naked guy to pretend to eat his flesh and wash it down with a nice swig of pretend-blood. Obviously after 8 years at ND I get what's going on and why but I am here to tell you if you didn't grow up thinking these are all totally normal and positive things to do, it's still a little funky to sit through. On the plus side, I couldn't understand a single word being said.

So that wrapped up the weekend. We drove home uneventfully and had a fine gourmet dinner at our favorite Hooters. Our waitress was from Indiana and instead of laughing simply said "that's so funny" in response to humorous situations. As always, the buffalo shrimp were delicious.

Jacked

Lizett finally posting has inspired me to post as well, but I'm not feeling creative so I'm just going to weigh in on her topics:

Stephen and I made the drive down from Indiana to Tejas. Illinois was harrowing. Arkansas is boring and awful. Living together is pretty neat, and I like it a lot, except we're going out to eat like every day. Which is not good if I plan on, you know, fitting into all the clothes I currently own.

Hmmmm, I guess I already covered the drive. Living together is pretty fantastic. I've never lived with a chick before unless you count Jism's honorary 5th roommate status, and I must say, it's a lot more gassy than I expected. Haha, I'm kidding! I would never write that if it were true, right? Riiiiiiiight? That does segue well into going out to eat every single day though, which has indeed been pretty ridiculous. It's not even like we just go out once, we have to go out for lunch and dinner. Sometimes two dinners, and sadly I am not kidding about that. We found a meal between dinner and the midnight snack.

As you may have read in Stephen's blog, I was insanely busy with Assault and Flattery, the law school musical/play. As always, it was a fun time and many inside jokes were made. If you'd like to hear a tale about a man named Tom Foetus, trust me, I've got plenty of material.

Hmmmm, I guess I already covered this one too.

Spring Break, wooooo! Actually, spring break has been fairly low-key with me running all over Houston looking at wedding stuff. It is most exciting to actually start the wedding preparations and all that. I even semi started a website.

Ha! You do not know the meaning of low-key. For one thing, being among the gainfully employed I sadly do not get a spring break. For another thing, with Lizett out of town and thus far knowing virtually no one else in the city, I have been playing perhaps 5 hours of Final Fantasy 12 a night. Sadly, again, I am not kidding about that. I am heading to Houston this afternoon though to visit the new folks and be exposed to Texas culture via a rodeo, so the drudgery ends now!

My cousin just told us (today) that he and his wife are having a kiddo! That makes for baby #2 in my cousins.

I'm the father.

I started watching Battlestar Galactica on DVD. So far, I think I'm enjoying it. Although, I did watch 4 hours of The Langoliers on The Sci-Fi Channel on Sunday, so my mind may be a little warped.

We actually only caught the last 3 hours of The Langoliers on Sunday, so sadly Lizett did not get the full experience, but since it was in fact my third viewing I was able to fill her in on the details. Also, I guess I already weighed in on the awesomeness of Battlestar too. This was the worst idea ever.

Stephen and I had a $20 margarita. It was mildly delicious. I think I'll go for the cheap one next time.

Yeah, so this place Trudy's has these Mexican Martinis (and delicious fajitas) which are basically just margaritas in a martini glass with a dash of cointreau thrown in, and they have a $20 version with uber-premium tequila. So we decided to go drink our second dinner of the night, and Lizett said she wouldn't love me anymore if I didn't buy her a $20 drink, so by God I got her one and one for myself and prepared for the ride of my life.

It was marginally delicious. Very marginally. Not as good as the house mix. So I was coming to the conclusion that I just don't like expensive tequila when the bartender came up to us and said "Hey, how do you like your martinis? I went light on the mix so you could really taste the tequila."

You son of a bitch. The mix is what makes it delicious! It's what makes it a "margarita" instead of a "shot of tequila". You ruined my $20 drink, and now I'm going to eat your family. Haha, I love that joke so much I'm going to take it out behind a middle school and get it pregnant!

Tom Foetus Is A Son Of A Bitch!

Lizett had her show this weekend. She's part of this group called Assault and Flattery, which is a bunch of law students who put on a play every year. This year's play was Willy Wonka and the Myriad Inside Law School Jokes, which as you may have surmised from the totally clever title I just made up was heavily directed toward other law students. That isn't to say I didn't enjoy it, I just suspect I would've enjoyed it exponentially more had I been among the target audience--the biggest laugh, for example, was in response to a comment regarding adverse possession, a concept which is presumably familiar to the lowliest of 1Ls, but utterly meaningless to the likes of myself. I did laugh though, so as not to appear foolish. There was also a long and enormously perplexing bit about the UT Law mascot, the peregrinus, which (really) is part feline, part avian, part equine, and all goose stepping abomination of nature. I enjoyed it.

So the show was funny and well done, and more importantly it's now over, which means I get my fiancee back. She was rehearsing 5-7 hours a night, which was--well, you would not be incorrect to say 1,000 miles past ridiculous, although I would never say that because I am a very loving and supportive SO who does not wish to be kicked in the nards. And there were cast parties after every show, so it was a good opportunity to meet some of her friends, a large portion of whom are hilariously obsessed with a fellow named Tom Foetus, a sort of evil super lawyer bearing a suspicious resemblance to Bill Brasky. Although skeptical at first, I must admit that the tale of the goat driving the taxi through the himalayas was as good or better than anything I've read about the Chuck Norris/Mr. T/Vin Diesel Trinity of Pain. Well played, law guys.

BBBZZZzzzz BZzzt BTT-T-TTT-zzzZ

One more reason to hate the RAZR. Actually my understanding is that it is a pretty good phone through Verizon, it's just the Cingular software that is so terrible. But that aside, I suspect it may be killing me.

I've been charging my phone on the other side of the room at night due to a limited number of outlets, but last night I just tossed it on the night stand beside the alarm clock, forgetting that it periodically emits death particles that make the alarm go BBBZZZzzzz BZzzt BTT-T-TTT-zzzZ every 40 minutes or so. This also happens to my computer, and especially to electric doorbells. Swear to God.

The question is, in the unlikely event that someone actually calls me, what is this phone doing to my BRAIN? If we're ever chatting and I suddenly go BBBZZZzzzz BZzzt BTT-T-TTT-zzzZ call 911 immediately.

Is anyone familiar with this phenomenon? C'mon Goat, show me those EE skills, which I'm 90% sure is what you were.