For those of you who’ve been asking about the second print run of the violent video games shirts, now’s your chance! I’ll be taking preorders through 24 November (two weeks from now), so head on over to the shirts page and do your thang. Remember, there won’t be extras for me to sell after I’ve already sent in the final order to be printed, so if you want one you should make sure to order before the 24th.

The setting: Emma waits in line to order her broccoli slice at the surprisingly fantastic pizza place down the street. In front of her is a surly, odorous Russian man staring at an array of sides, including broccoli rolls, spinach rolls, eggplant rolls, and chicken rolls. Each is labeled with a sign indicating its contents (such as BROCCOLI ROLL or SPINACH ROLL, for example).

Surly, Odorous Russian Man: WHAT ARE THOSE ROLL THINGS THERE!
Pizza Guy: They’re, uh, rolls?
SORM: YES BUT WHAT ARE THEY CALLED!
Pizza Guy: Well, those there are broccoli rolls, and those are spinach rolls, and those are eggplant rolls, and those on the right are chicken rolls.
SORM: BUT WHAT IS IN THEM!
Pizza Guy: The broccoli rolls have broccoli in them, and the spinach rolls have spinach in them. Same with the others.
SORM: SO YOU DON’T HAVE ANY WITHOUT MEAT IN THEM?
Pizza Guy: Uh… well, the chicken rolls have meat in them, but the others don’t?
SORM: YES BUT I AM VEGETARIAN, I CANNOT EAT MEAT!
Pizza Guy: Yes, only the chicken rolls have meat in them!
SORM: SO NOTHING WITHOUT MEAT?
Pizza Guy: No, see, the broccoli rolls and the spinach rolls and the eggplant rolls don’t have any meat.
SORM: LOOK I CANNOT STAY HERE ALL DAY, I HAVE A BUSINESS TO RUN! JUST GIVE ME A PLAIN SLICE!
Pizza Guy: (baffled) Um… okay, so just a slice? You don’t want one of the vegetable rolls?
SORM: I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS! I NEVER COME HERE AGAIN! (storms out)

I did, indeed, watch 1940s house the other night, all three hours of it. I enjoyed it more than Frontier House - maybe because it was shorter, or because the family members weren’t as outrageously dumb, or merely because I (who, thanks to years of babysitting, am less than fond of the younguns in general) can’t help wanting to pinch cheeks every which way when I hear a small British boy announcing that the blancmange was gorgeous, just gorgeous?

And speaking of custard-like substances, I’m suddenly in the mood for the dessert Qat and I were served with the lunch special at Calcutta. It was unclear exactly what it really was, but because of its resemblance to an unholy union of flan and some sort of yogurt, I will think of it always as flogurt. Ours was topped by something between a grape and a raisin - a graisin? We would have devoured it entirely if we hadn’t already been stuffed full of truly fantastic Indian food. I mean, my god - the banana pakoras alone.

- Finish the Shiny New Caoine Design. Yeah, I know, it hasn’t been that long since the last one, but this is one of those things where I either need to finish it and use it for something or abandon it completely, because I’m going to get sick of looking at it soon and it isn’t even live yet.

- Mention something in a post about shirts. Specifically, how the second print run of the violent design is just around the corner and how people should seriously be keeping an eye out.

- Study for that Genetics midterm on Tuesday, or work on that presentation for Wednesday, or start preparing for the second C midterm next Thursday. (Although being one whole week away, that one is still fairly low on the urgency scale. I mean, it’s not like I ever spend all weekend working on things due Monday and Tuesday and then find myself Tuesday night with no time for the stuff due during the rest of the week. Oh, wait.)

- Find some tactful way to gloat about getting a 99 on the Logic midterm, and threaten to pummel anyone who asks what that one point was for, and then explain just for good measure that it was for forgetting the God Damned single quote convention when mentioning a metavariable in one of my supporting examples.

- Remember to watch 1940s House tonight because I missed it the first time around and because it looks to be the same kind of guilty pleasure Frontier House was. Not that I, like, watch PBS. I swear.

- Find a sweatshirt or something because it’s mightily nippulent in the Emmahaus tonight.

Oh, Spring 2003 Course Directory, you strumpet. Shall I sample your Topics in Epistemology and Metaphysics, or is Advanced Logic your sexiest feature this season? Shake your Basic Algorithms for me, baby, but please - nothing else from your Linguistics Department. I’m not into that kinky stuff. I know we tried it that one time and I said it was okay, but it just doesn’t really bake my cake, if you know what I’m saying. Truth be told, the chafing still hasn’t gone away completely. It leads to awkward questions. “No, no, I wasn’t doing any phrase structure diagrams over the weekend. Oh, that IPA symbol chart? I, uh… no, that’s my friend’s. I’m just holding it for her.”

How about this, we’ll do your Philosophy of Mind, but then let’s try some of that Aesthetics business you’ve been hinting at. I won’t tell if you won’t.

<entweichen> ‘/etc/init.d/oatmeal.d start’
<sth> no way
<sth> cd /home/chris/kitchen
<sth> make oatmeal
<sth> cd ../livingroom && eat
<sth> cd ../kitchen && make clean
<entweichen> cd oatmeal; ./configure –with-milk; make;
<sth> you are cd’ing into your food
<sth> you need help
<sth> man oatmeal
<entweichen> i am cd’ing into the oatmeal src dir!

Residents of New York City: Beware. Emma is in a truly ferocious mood today. It started when she woke up with her back still hurting and her stomach still obnoxious from yesterday, and realized she’d overslept rather dramatically, having somehow remained obstinately unconscious throughout an eight minute Underworld track playing at full volume. Advil and vitamins didn’t help the queasiness and a bag full of textbooks didn’t help the back, and when a conductor with possibly the most irritating voice in the world announced that this Q express train will make all local stops running on the N/R line, repeat this Q express train will make all local stops: the standard it’s-Monday-morning-and-I’m-running-late mood darkened to a stormy, seething rage.

Emma sat on her Q train, whose local stops included not only the usual stations but also several strategic locations in barren stretches of tunnel (which I mean, phew - without those extra ten minute pauses, she might only have been half an hour later than intended, but she really dodged a bullet there), and brooded. She’s not really a broody kind of person, in general, but she brooded quite thoroughly this morning. Subjects of her brooding included the large, odorous man who had chosen to occupy (or overflow, really) the seat next to her so as to more comfortably gaze at the pocket sized faux-leatherbound New Testament clutched in his sweaty fist. Also the woman who singlehandedly added an extra three to five minutes onto today’s total morning commute time by holding the train doors for her husband who wasn’t right behind her or indeed way behind her but in fact still in line for a Metrocard when the train first attempted to leave. And of course, the omnipresent and obscenely young-looking high school kids who flooded the car somewhere around DeKalb with their outdoor voices and sports equipment.

So: consider yourself warned. If you happen to spot Emma today, you’d be well-advised to run away, or at least buy her a cup of chai while assuring her that the whole bedhead thing is either endearing or fetching or both but certainly not sloppy, because all she really wants at this point is to crawl back in bed and read some trashy contemporary science fiction, but instead she’s on her way to a god damned Linguistics lecture, of all things.

I guess it’s kind of unfortunate when the painkillers I take to make my back feel better don’t seem to make much of a difference to the whole back pain thing, but at least they make me nauseous so I have something to distract me from it. I mean, thank goodness for that!

There’s something about nausea itself that’s infinitely worse than actually throwing up. Not that I’m all that fond of the whole vomit thing in general, but really - if I’m going to do it, I’d like to get it the hell over with so I can brush my teeth and move on rather than spending hours with that dentist’s-office-waiting-room sort of dread. I guess some people feel the same way about sore throats, but they don’t bother me as much feeling like my stomach is a dumbass dog trying to catch its own tail.

Every time I get queasy, I’m not only experiencing my current discomfort but reliving all these pleasant selected scenes from my past - puking over the side of a whale watch boat when I was six, endless carsick cab rides home over the God Damned Bridge, that winter I got food poisioning three times in as many months. Ah, memories.

See, there are times when you know in advance that you’ll want to have a camera. Documentation will be required later, you can already tell. “This is going to be one wild night,” you note. “I’ll bring my camera!” But then if it actually is a wild night, when the hell are you going to have time to take pictures? It’s difficult to maintain that sort of reckless, devil-may-care feeling to everything if you’re making everyone pause in their recklessness and smile for the camera.

That said, I brought my camera out last night, and predictably didn’t take that many pictures. I thought I would, and when early in the evening the camera began to show signs of irritability, I was dismayed. CARD ERROR? I’LL GIVE YOU A FUCKING CARD ERROR, YOU LITTLE FOUR HUNDRED DOLLAR PIECE OF SHIT. Thankfully, this is why people like Crispy were invented - to fix problems with my digital camera so I can then proceed to not take pictures.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. There are a couple of pictures. We arrived early at our usual pre-club bar and found it all gussied up for Halloween (as well as offering half price drinks to anyone in costume). I was fond of this little guy perched on the wall over our table:

Crispy, on the other hand, managed to uncover the gateway to hell. Right there in the bar! Who knew?

And yes, there are a couple of pictures of what I ended up wearing. And yes, that’s me on the right (and the delectable Erin on the left), and yes that’s almost what my hair looked like in high school.

No, there’s no excuse for this one:

And finally, the last photo I managed to snag before we migrated to Batcave and documentation became an impossibility - a rare sighting of the elusive Crispyghost, whose hazy otherworldliness makes him a difficult creature to capture on film or memory card.

Batcave itself was more fun than I would have expected. Al and Crispy and I were joined there by Spencer and did the club thing until it got too crowded to be fun. Only on Halloween can I go to a club I’ve been to so many times already and see completely different people, which is both good and bad. If I never see another Spooky Dead Clown or Spooky Dead Bride, I think I could live a long and fulfilling life. The plus side to the whole costume thing, though - or at least the wig thing - was that I got to startle once again everyone who just got used to me being blonde.

I think Halloween is for me what New Year’s Eve is for most other people; I tend to get all nostalgic and sentimental. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially when I’m out and about and having a ball with some of my favorite people. Good times.