yes, i’m up at nine am on a sunday - i’ve been up, in fact, since about six thirty this morning. i was talking with tycho about the subpage design for penny arcade and then just didn’t feel like going back to sleep.

jim’s not home - he went to long island yesterday for a family dinner thing and ended up spending the night. it’s apparently quite a bitch to get between long island and brooklyn - my only experience with that epic journey is the time jim and i went to sphere one friday, and i recall it being a royal pain in the ass indeed.

so it’s new year’s eve, i guess. don’t know what we’re doing tonight. there’s not a whole hell of a lot going on in manhattan - a fetish party somewhere, and supposedly astral projection are playing [or such was the murmur on rec.music.industrial] but i don’t know any of the details and it seems rather late to get tickets. jim and i are invited to a party one of his friends is having, i think - but i don’t know if we’re going. it doesn’t really matter to me - as long as he’s around, i’d be perfectly happy just renting some movies and staying in. last year everyone was in a millenial frenzy [amusingly enough given that this year is 'the real milennium'] but this year seems to be just not a big deal. fine by me, quite frankly.

i’m trying to gather the resolve to get dressed and go out for coffee and a bagel. it’s only about five or six blocks but damn is it cold out, and my bed is so very warm. i’ll get a caffeine headache soon if i don’t get something in my system, though, so i think i’ll just go trudge over there now.

good lord, i had no idea that red bull was a subject of such strongly-held opinions. since i have been so unmercilessly dissing it lately, i’ve gotten quite a bit of mail on the topic, both from you filty red bull loyalists and also from those true-hearted souls who support me in my worthy rebellion. however, the most interesting of the red-bull-related mail came from someone named brian who pointed out that there are in fact two distinct beverages by that name - both of which are in the energy-providing category. apparently in addition to the austrian concotion i so loathe, there is also a thai version of the substance which is infinitely superior in its effects. i’m intrigued! i’ve decided i must seek out an asian grocery and acquire some of this new and interesting delicacy. if anyone would like to point me in the direction of either more information about the thai red bull, or a location in manhattan where i can purchase some, please feel free!

brian also corrected me on the name of the professional farter i mentioned the other day. it turns out [and i have no idea how brian knows this, but i'm so very glad he does] that the gentleman in fact went by le petomane, not petomaine, and that you can find out more delectable details about his glorious farting career here. i know that made my day.

when i awoke [obscenely early] this morning, i discovered that jim had spent a good portion of the night playing phantasmagoria 2: a puzzle of flesh. it’s apparently a worthy title, and deliciously creepy. in any case, after he exposed me to a particularly hilarious snippet, i am now changing my answering machine message to “sorry, your whore isn’t available right now, but i’d be happy to service you in any way.” i’m actually hoping to get someone with a more ominous voice to record it for me, but you get the idea. i’m sure my father will be just thrilled.

one more thing before i succumb to the daily joys of office drudgery: i will get the new penny arcade redesign live and luscious very, very shortly. there, i’ve said it. i kiss you!

i’d just like to take this opportunity to state firmly and unquestionably that no, i’m not dead. i guess i should have mentioned i was going to boston for xmas or something, because if one were to judge by the contents of my inbox it’s apparently a sign of my tragic and untimely end that i didn’t update the site for a few days. let me clarify the boston thing, incidentally - when i say boston what i mean is my parents’ house in a rural area slightly north of the city, where there is no computer, much less any kind of net connection. so you understand my situation. do we all feel better now? i’m so glad.

in other news, the whole familial-holiday-gathering thing was remarkably and refreshingly unstressful this year. my grandparents elected to skip the big dinner at my aunt’s house, given that my grandfather is recently out of the hospital because of an anurism, and as my mother is away that meant there were just seven of us: my father, two cousins, brother, aunt, and uncle. i enjoy all of their company, and the feast my aunt prepared was nothing short of legendary. there were more courses than i for one was prepared to count, each more delectable than the last. plus, how can i not adore a pack of relatives who consider the life of a professional farter to be ideal dinner table conversation? when my cousin peter, a french major at middlebury who’s graduating this year, pointed out that his name is the french verb ‘to fart’, that sparked a discussion of a character known as ‘la petomaine’, who, according to my brother, was a professional farter capapble of blowing out a candle from twelve feet away. my father backs him up on this. apparently, he died farting on stage. “that’s tragic, yet beautiful,” noted my cousin edith.

yesterday, before catching my train, i spent some time with my friend becky, who i hadn’t seen in well over a year, and her boyfriend mike. she came over and we caught up over tea, and decided that she has to come and visit me. i left midday to catch my train back to penn station, but had time to do a little shopping in harvard square before i did so. it’s a little depressing how that place has changed - the square, being very near harvard as it is and not far from a couple of other colleges, was always sort of a mecca for the young and interesting in boston and cambridge. it’s gotten very tourist-centric, however, and the funky little stores that you couldn’t find anywhere else are slowly being replaced by entities like abercrombie and fitch, the gap, and pacific sunwear. it’s sad. i’ve been spending time there for nearly ten years now, and i suppose i’m just sort of missing what it once was. nonetheless, it’s still fun and just about the only place i know of in this country where you can buy tango.

rawr, i am sleepy. it’s really cold out this morning - the kind of cold where just the walk to the subway station made my face hurt. it snowed yesterday, the first snow of the year that’s actually stuck to the ground for any length of time. today though - it’s just fucking cold. i’d rather be home bundled up in my huge grey blanket, which, incidentally, i belive jim is occupying at this very moment.

so i was going to take some pictures the other day and i realized that gundam still has my digital camera - i haven’t seen him since we went to downtime the week before last, or whenever it was. i think i might take some polaroids and scan them, though.

gah. i am more or less dozing off at my desk, here. i need caffeine - luckily, i stocked up yesterday and i think i still have a couple of jolts. hold on. yup, i do. w00t.

because i can’t think of anything else to write about today, here’s a list of all the absurd stuff i’d like for xmas but know i won’t get:

• extensions from trisha star, or even just a hairpiece. i love that site, also.
• this black vinyl ballgown i saw at fifth wheel on sunday, but this girl grabbed it literally from my hands and bought it. it was the only one they had. god damn!
• a new corset from gallery serpentine
• a webcam [i might buy one for myself]
• a cute geekboy - oh wait, i already have one, never mind!

woo. i just got back from my company’s swank christmas lunch thing and i’m not exactly what you’d call sober, so excuse me if this is a little wak [i am picturing myself rereading this entry tomorrow and cringing]. the lunch itself wasn’t as bad as i expected, though it wasn’t the kind of thing i’d like to do every day. we went to this überitalian restaurant on sixty third street - the menu was entirely in italian [would have been nice to have jim there to translate, but then when do i not wish jim were there when he isn't?], but whatever i ended up ordering, it was good. the president of the company did a toast and talked to each of us for a while, and the talk got sillier as we all got a little drunker. spencer and chris skipped out early because of a “problem with the webserver” [you can't see, but i'm making those little quotey mark gestures with my fingers right now] leaving me abandoned at my side of the table - at which point my boss took the opportunity to invite me to her table, with all the other people from my company that i don’t know. but it was okay. and we at least got out of the office for three hours.

i was going to go do a little xmas shopping last night with the money from my bonus, and maybe get myself some boots, but when six o’clock rolled around i just really wanted to go home and see jim, which is exactly what i did. had some connection issues, so i couldn’t do any work, but i did play a lot of thps2. it’s fun, it is. my current custom skater is a scrawny kid with a red mohawk and a black hoodie who’s really good at landing and at balancing on rails. go me. heehee - jim created a custom skate park, which meant he defined various areas of it where certain tricks are worth certain amounts of points and what not - anyway, i was exploring it last night, and came across a section just begging for an elaborate series of grind tricks [which jim knows i like] - i went ahead and did them, only to discover he’d named it ‘you are sexy’, knowing i’d be unable to resist its grindy allure and would trigger the message. he so cute!

i’m so not in the mood to work right now. let this be a lesson to you, kids: alcohol and html [or javascript, or css for that matter] don’t mix. i wouldn’t really mind, except i’ve got a lot to do - i’ve got a friday deadline for a project at work [i'm not even going to be here friday] and i’d like to finish the new penny arcade site before i leave for boston [obscenely early saturday morning. it might even count as friday night].

this just in: red bull is both overpriced and nasty. plus its caffeine content is negligable. my conclusion: what a stupid drink! why spend your money on that absurdity when you could be enjoying the classic caffeination of jolt, or even saucy newcomer to the neural stimulation scene whoopass. jesus crispy christ [as tycho so elegantly phrased it recently - even if he is a traitorous red bull supporter], even go-go’s got to be a more worthwhile beverage. [that said, the only beverage affecting my consciousness right now is good ol' heineken.]

they had these breadsticks at lunch - but they weren’t the soft, squishy, breadlike type of breadsticks, oh no! no ordinary, pedestrian breadsticks, these. they were the long skinny crackery type breadsticks that make really good lightsabers. never underestimate the power of the dark side!

one other thing: all of you should go vote for the adorable hepkitten on the hardnews cam portals. why? because i fucking said so, duh.

you know, i still wouldn’t mind seeing my boss get hit by a bus - but that feeling is muted a bit by the fact that i had a meeting with the president of my company yesterday, a meeting that involved me getting lots of money. hooray for xmas bonuses! given that i’ve only been working here for just about a year, this bonus was fairly hefty - more than twice what i was expecting it to be. i’m putting some of it towards that new g4, saving more of it, and then probably buying myself a couple of pairs of new boots. mmmmmm, boots.

played some more tony hawk 2 with jim last night - we’ve both created custom skaters now that we’re using, which is endlessly entertaining. jim’s is named [appropriately enough] ‘jim’ and looks almost exactly like him. mine isn’t that cool - i can’t make a version of me because they have [oddly enough] no female skaters, but i customized a scrawny blue haired kid who reminds me vaguely of my brother. tony hawk 2 is another game that i really wasn’t expecting to like at all - but like it i do, and then some. the two player mode is pretty snazzy, too - tag and graffiti being my two favorites.

a lot of you, i’ve noticed, are coming here from penny arcade - welcome! a couple of things, though: while i appreciate the input, keep in mind if you’re thinking of mailing me your ideas for the design of the site that it’s more or less already designed, and at this point i’m just ironing out various technical issues. by all means send your suggestions, just be aware that i’m probably not going to start over from scratch to change, for example, the color scheme. also: i’m happily taken, but thanks for the offers

random nerd fact of the day: back when i was in high school, i used to go to this page every morning for the college board’s SAT test question of the day. i suppose it was a good idea - i mean, i did very well on the SAT - but what’s odd is that i’ve still got this habit. i don’t do the question every day, but i do it fairly often. even though it’s unlikely that i’ll ever have to take the SAT again. woo! i am a dork!

hey, how was your weekend? yeah? glad to hear it. mine was rather yum, actually. friday night i came home and dinner with jim - he made german spaghetti, which looked rather ominous but was delicious - and then we both worked on our projects and such until we went to sleep.

saturday i worked a lot on the penny arcade site and played the tony hawk pro skater demo from the cd that came with the dreamcast. i wasn’t expecting to like it, but like it i did - even if i suck rather immensely. jim went christmas shopping in the late afternoon and came home with a present for himself - the full version of dead or alive 2, which we enjoyed for pretty much the rest of the night. it’s visually very impressive, more so than tekken 3 [obviously] and quite possibly tekken tag tournament as well. the backgrounds aren’t just backgrounds - they’re multi-levelled environements that really have an effect on gameplay. i love it. the reviews i read were glowing, also, with the sole complaint being that unless you have someone else to play against it doesn’t have as much lasting appeal as some other fighters - but given that it’s jim’s game anyway, anytime i’d be playing i have someone else to play against.

sunday i woke up relatively early and went christmas shopping with spencer. picked up a copy of tony hawk’s pro skater 2 for jim, as well as something else tht i’m not mentioning here i also got some monty python’s flying circus videos for my father, at his specific request. i really prefer it when people just tell me what the hell they want for christmas instead of making me guess - shopping for the rest of my family was a nightmare, though i succeeded, for the most part. i was sort of clueless about everyone except for my brother - i got him a couple of cd’s which i think he’ll like.

spencer and i also headed down to st mark’s place to do a little non-christmas shopping for him. he tried on a few things only to realize his check hadn’t cleared yet [which sucked]. i got this adorable black fleece hoodie with little cat ears on the hood - it’s really warm and quite possibly the cutest thing i’ve ever seen. it’s made by emily, so it was a little pricey, but worth it in my opinion. actually, according to this page, the hood has little devil horns - but on the actual sweatshirt they look way more like cat ears. either way, i love it. looking around the site, i see that they’re also selling skateboards, which is either delightful or disturbing. maybe both.

i fell asleep really early last night - i’m not even sure when, exactly. i just remember curling up next to jim to watch him play tony hawk 2, and the next thing i know my alarm is going off. and i’m still sleepy, dammit.

the new pa site didn’t go up last night, unfortunately. it’s very nearly done, but inserting all the new god damned ad banners that their network requires ended up being such a royal pain in the ass that there just wasn’t time. tycho and i were up till four am working on it, and the good part is that we did get a lot done, and i’m happy with how it’s all coming together. expect it to go up sometime over the weekend, most likely.

i’ve been listening to a lot of björk lately, particularly post. it’s just so damn good. plus i think björk herself is more adorable than any human has the right to be - seriously, she can do or wear essentially anything and she’s nothing less than delectable.

i really wanted to go to lbv last night - it’s been a few weeks since i’ve been, plus my friend sean was performing and i told him i’d be there. but jim and i both had so much fucking work to do. as it was, i overslept and still only got about an hour of sleep. there was the pa stuff, and when i was finished with that i had work [as in job-related work] to do. the only place jim and i went last night was to dunkin donuts for some much-needed coffee, around one am. oh well. i suppose there’s always next week.

jim’s been playing a demo version of dead or alive 2 which i believe came with the dreamcast when he bought it - it looks yummy. i haven’t had a chance to try out the demo yet, much less the full version, because i’ve been so busy - but i’m looking forward to spending some time with it this weekend if at all possible. i’m looking forward to playing just about anything, really. i haven’t so much as touched the playstation or the dreamcast in at least a week or so, and quake has been neglected for longer still.

for all that i’ve been working myself silly lately, i don’t really mind - i’m enjoying the pa project more than i’ve enjoyed designing a site in a while. it’s very different from my usual sort of thing, and it’s challenging me to design in ways i’m not used to. tycho and gabe are also great to work with, and despite the frustrations that got me in a bit of a vile mood last night, i’m really glad i’m doing this.

it’s raining today. it’s frigging december, it should be snowing [god dammit]. rain is all well and good when you have the option of sitting around in your pajamas consuming warm beverages - in other words, when you don’t have to in any way come in contact with said rain - but if you’re, say, me and you have to walk to the subway station to go to work and you don’t have an umbrella, then the novelty wears off faster than you might think.

so i’ve been in kind of a design frenzy for the past couple of days - apparently, efront [bastard that they are] have laid down the law and told tycho all the new ad shiznit for penny arcade has to be up on the fifteenth. that’s tomorrow, you see. which means that either tycho can scramble around and try to find somewhere to put the new ads on the current version of the site, or i can get my rear in gear [so to speak] and finish the redesign, which is what i’m attempting to do. i’ve gotten a lot done in the past couple of days, but there’s still quite a bit left. i’m going to just work tonight until i finish it, i guess, and hope that i can get it done.

so yes, i am very busy until about this time tomorrow - i’ll write more then, i promise.

i want to go lock myself in the office bathroom and braid my hair or something. i’m really distracted today and i can’t concentrate on my work. i’m listening to that virgin prunes song [baby turns blue] and i’m all in the mood to go dancing around in my socks. actually, i’m not wearing socks. yay for tights! tights are your friends. people should wear more tights.

speaking of hair, i need to cut mine off. it’s getting way too long. i haven’t cut it in years and i’m sick of trying to deal with it. i was thinking about it the other day and i realized i’ve never had my hair shorter than shoulder length [past infancy, i mean]. isn’t that odd? should i cut it really short, maybe, or would that look doofy on me? i’ve always chickened out in the past from cutting it short. but you know, it does grow back. i guess i could wait until it grows out a litte more and then just cut off the black - this two-toned hair thing is getting really old, and given that i’m now allergic to anything harsher than shampoo it doesn’t look like i’ll be re-dyeing it. my roots are right now i guess about four or five inches long, so that would be pretty damn short. eep.

sigh. i miss being able to dye my hair. i still have some blue manic panic at my house, even. my hair’s been something other than natural since my freshman year in high school. maybe earlier, i can’t even remember exactly when the first time i dyed it was. i was red for years, then i tried blues and blacks. black i think was my favorite because it works well with my skin tones. my natural color is really blah; i’m going to have to think of an interesting way to style it, i suppose, or it’s just going to be really depressing.

right now i have it slicked back into a bun. it still smells like shampoo from my shower this morning because it was wet when i put it up. that’s one thing about having long hair - it’s more fun to play with, i think. although if i had short hair i could spike it. i like spikes. i just can’t decide if i have the right face for short hair.

in any case.