<emma> but presented with a regular shrimp i generally will not eat it
<stl> They do admittedly look rather vile.
<emma> the texture kind of gets me too
<emma> like, it’s the same reason i’m not hugely into lobster
<emma> there’s something strange about them
<emma> i am pretty sure they are aliens
<stl> Aliens from the deep!
<emma> have you seen lobsters?
<emma> they are totally goddamn aliens
<stl> Agents of Cthulhu!
<stl> Harbingers of the imminent return of the Great Old Ones.
<emma> that is absolutely correct
<stl> I bet that is really why they taste so good.
<emma> if by good you mean evil, then i agree
<emma> “mmm, dagon-licious”
<stl> Haha, damn right.

1. A tourist outside my office in SoHo stopped me on the street to ask directions to “the park,” so I asked her which park she was looking for. Her reply: “Oh, you know. The central one.”
2. A kid got on the subway this morning at 59th St with the standard sort of hip hop thing going on - layered t-shirts six sizes too big, jeans tucked into his sneakers, etc. But here is what is awesome about him: he had a black Huffy bike with him on the train. Now, this was no ordinary bike. He had drawn dollar signs all over it in gold paint marker, along with other less recognizable things. And my favorite part is that there were little plastic stick-on diamonds plastered all over the wheels, and he sat in the middle of the subway car, spinning the front wheel so that we poor bikeless suckers could not help but notice the bling. And that is how I know today is going to be awesome.

I’ve got another interminable summer cold, which is about as much fun as you’d expect. I’ve spent the past few days in a fog of coughing and sneezing, but I finally found the magic combination that at least let me get some sleep last night: NyQuil washed down with rum (but not enough to be stupid, don’t worry). Half an hour later I’m dozing off on the couch, and ten minutes after that I’m sound asleep till my alarm goes off. I’m still coughing and sneezing, of course, but at least I’m well-rested in my misery.

Anyone who knows me has probably noticed my fondness for all things black and skull-adorned, so it’s probably no surprise that I dig the whole pirate thing, too. I’m not quite prepared to show up at work in a frock coat, but I have recently acquired some excellent pirate loot nonetheless.

I’m a fan of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, and a while back I bought Jolly Roger along with a couple of other scents (Miskatonic University being my everyday favorite). But while I can wear most of them with no problems, Jolly Roger for some reason irritates my skin pretty badly so I thought I’d have to quit wearing it. Luckily, the Black Phoenix Trading Post makes beautiful perfume lockets that solve that problem nicely. Mine is Calico Jack, of course.

As for other piratical scents, because I loved using Arcana’s Sleepy Hollow soap this past winter, I picked up Swashbuckler, which I like just as much. And since I was at Dress Like A Pirate anyway, I also got a black skull head scarf.

All in all, not a bad haul and it’s stuff I can use pretty much every day. I sure wouldn’t turn down one of these hats, though. After all, if my mage can have a top-notch pirate hat, why can’t I?

And in conclusion, I would like a muffin.

On Saturday night, I had the great pleasure of seeing Skinny Puppy live for the third time. The short version is that the show was fucking awesome, easily the best I’ve seen in the past few years. If you like Skinny Puppy at all and they’re coming anywhere near you, go to the show. You won’t regret it.

As for the longer version: I showed up at the venue at probably about 5:30, with my latest pair of glasses (which are still not quite right). There were maybe 15 - 20 people in line, and it was a surreal experience waiting to see Skinny Puppy in the middle of Times Square. Big tourist families kept walking by in “All American Grandma” and “These Colors Don’t Run” t-shirts and either looking at us disapprovingly or asking what we were waiting for. We were let in at exactly 7pm, and I had enough time to hit the merch booth, the bathroom, and the bar before claiming a spot up against the barricade. I was over on the right but had an unobstructed view of the whole stage, which was awesome.

I’ve seen one or two other shows at Nokia Theatre and while I hate Times Square, I like that the venue understands they make money if they let people stand around and drink. There are bars everywhere, the hallways are huge with benches and tables scattered around, and there’s nobody shooing you out immediately after a show is over. I found some friends and acquaintances and settled in for the wait, as it happened standing near some people I met in line for one of the 2004 shows.

Otto went on at 8:30 and was even more Otto than last tour, if that makes any sense. I liked his set but was very glad I’d brought earplugs, since I was directly in front of a speaker. Sightings didn’t go over well with the crowd and were heckled pretty badly by a couple of people.

Skinny Puppy went on at about 10 or 10:15 and I loved every second of it. Highlights for me were Ugli (which was even more compelling live), Rodent, Amnesia, Testure, and Far Too Frail. I had a better view of Justin and Cevin than I did at either show I saw in 2004, and both were really kicking ass. Ogre seemed to really be enjoying himself, which was great, and the crowd loved it. One of the better crowds I’ve been in, too - lots of movement and energy, but no assholes distracting me from the show itself. Even one loud girl who’d been having a high-volume conversation with her boyfriend during the two openers shut up during Puppy, except to scream her head off from time to time (as we all did). I think security only pulled one person out of the crowd, during the second encore.

Anyway, the whole night was just about as good as it could be. At Webster Hall in 2004 the experience was slightly marred by the shitty sound at that venue, the asshole security people, and a crowd with a high density of dickheads, but this show had none of that. And oh yeah, that’s a signed copy of Back & Forth 7. It’s ok if you hate me a little bit.

June is a concert-rich month here in New York so I figured I ought to go and get an eye exam, since even with my glasses on things at a distance were getting a little blurry. Because I no longer live near my old Lenscrafters location, I picked at random the one nearest my office, which happened to be on Broadway at 8th St. This was an error. The first problem I had was that they failed to mention at any point until after I’d already had my exam, picked out frames, and paid a hefty some for the whole endeavor that they don’t have a lab. This means that instead of getting my glasses in an hour, it would take at least one business day and up to four. I was reluctant to wait that long and considered taking my prescription to a different location (which as it turns out I ought to have done), but the woman ringing me up was extremely reluctant to cancel the charge and assured me that I would have my glasses well before the event I needed them for. Fine.

A day later I got a call saying I could go pick them up, which was good news as it was indeed faster than I’d expected. But when I get down there and try them on, it’s immediately obvious something is wrong. Looking straight ahead my vision is fine, but if I look slightly up or down or left or right, everything is blurry and has a strange halo around it that’s blue on one side and red on the other. They take the frames, heat them up and bend them slightly, which accomplishes nothing but making them wobble when set down on a table. I explain that I can’t actually use the glasses if 90% of my visual field is fucked up, but I am assured that the issue is merely the change in prescription and my brain will adjust shortly.

So I go home and wear the glasses for a few hours, and nothing gets better although I do end up with a headache and some serious nausea. I decide to take the glasses to a different location to get fixed, one with a lab so I don’t have to wait a day or more as time is pretty tight by this point. The new location I picked was on 13th St and 6th Avenue. The person I spoke to there realized the problem immediately - the lenses are in fact made from a material my eyes can’t deal with, and there’s a big note in my Lenscrafters file saying exactly that, meaning the people at the Broadway location didn’t even bother to look at my file. And better still - without asking me, and without even saying that they were doing so, they added an extremely expensive anti-glare coating to the lenses, which is something I neither want nor need. So even though the material my new lenses are being made out of is about $50 more, I got a $62 credit once I told them not to use anti-glare. The guy at the 6th Ave location was upset that I’d been given glasses that were so obviously wrong, and promised he’d get me my new ones before my event even if he had to go pick up the new material from a different store. This will be my new Lenscrafters location of choice, from now on.

But let’s review the failings of Lenscrafters at 8th and Broadway: during my two visits they never once glanced at my history, even when I complained that I couldn’t see with the glasses they made for me. I’ve been a Lenscrafters customer for nearly ten years now, and there’s a wealth information about me in their system, but they decided to ignore it completely. And they added a coating costing $110 without ever asking me if I wanted it or even telling me that they were adding it (it does not even appear on the receipt except as “PKG”). They also don’t have a lab but are careful not to mention this until you’ve paid, and are very big on the hard sell - unwilling to give refunds and always trying to push a second pair of glasses or sunglasses. In conclusion? Fuck you, Lencrafters.

I finally caught the sequel to 28 Days Later this past Friday night. Unfortunately, my impressions of the film are tainted by the fact that I spent most of it annoyed at the chatty bastards sitting two rows back (OH SHIT YO DID YOU SEE THAT). But I’m pretty sure I approve of the movie nonetheless. It had all the requisite zombie gore I demanded, although some of the action sequences were a little too confusing for my taste. And yeah, I know they’re not true zombies, but they’re close enough for me.