Some More Thoughts On Miami

• No rock stations down there. In fact, half of them were Spanish.
• Oh yeah -- a lot of Pitbull and Drake.
• The only time I hit South Beach was my last day there. I wanted to people-watch, see some of the Art Deco hotels, and hit the beach itself. But faced with a couple hours, no direction where to go, no priority of things to see, and no idea where the hell to go besides having a vague sense of where the ocean was, I just did what I usually do on vacation: I wandered. And I headed south, seeing hotels along the way. And then I headed towards the beach. Then I walked for about an hour northward up along the beach.
• I saw a great thing when I turned around. At the very end of South Beach there is this small islet of a bunch of big, jagged rocks. The only people there were fishing. As I started to gingerly walk out, I noticed that there was a couple right in the middle. Suddenly, one of the knelt. Oh my God, he's proposing to her! And from the way she kissed her and they embraced, she said yes!! I stopped and even looked away for a bit because I wanted to give them some privacy, but as they started walking back I couldn't help but saying congratulations to them as I passed by. So cute!!!
• On my way up the beach I tried a few things: To get a tan by taking my shirt off (I needed another day to break down the skin so it gets nice and bronze and sick); to exercise by walking through the edge of the water; and to see as many babes in bikinis as I can. There was a lot talent on display, but all of a sudden, I saw one girl bathing topless. And there was one walking along the water, drinking something, with her boobs hanging out. Is this the topless part of South Beach? Are you allowed to bathe topless there? I really thought that Haulover Beach was the only place you could show anything.
• Oh, and by the way, I went to Haulover Beach. I should write about it soon.

How 'bout now?

Didn't Think I'd Ever Do This In The Summer

So I saw the U2 concert last night, in the driving rain.  I should talk about it at some point.

I was wet.  I was going to buy a t-shirt after the show anyway, but since my shirt was now a used rag, I just put it on outside TCF Bank Stadium so I would be dry.  I would've bought shorts too, but they didn't sell any, so I was going down to Red's Savoy with my torso still very, very wet.  And cold.

When I got home I felt my underwear; still quite waterlogged.  And I was tired, so my thinking was this: I don't want to break out new undies because tomorrow is when I change, yet I can't just where my pajamas without underwear, so I'll just go to sleep naked.  I mean, it's summer, right?

Right.  So I did.  Well, I did lay some pants on the foot of my bed so I could slip my feet under them (I'm a Pisces so my feet get cold), but other than that I passed out naked as a jaybird.  I only do that when it's hot and My Father refuses to turn the air conditioning on.  But the thing is, last night he did.  Being nude was unnecessary.  But I went to sleep sans clothes anyway.

I managed to sleep for a few hours before my body woke me up to tell me it was about to die of hypothermia.  I had to find something, but then my mind thought this: If you're cold, why not where long underwear?  So, while turning on, like 1% of my brain, I got into my closet and, almost blind by sleep, managed to find some long underwear.  So I went back into bed ... only to realize that I was still cold, so I found a thermal shirt in the closet, too.  And after another second in the bed I got up and put on some socks.  So from dawn on, I was wearing socks and two pieces of clothing I'd usually wear only in the winter.  That's what the title's referring to: I never thought I'd wear long underwear and a thermal shirt in the summertime, but that's what I did in order to go back to sleep.

And it felt nice, too.  I kind of wonder what it'd feel like to wear such a getup on a day like today, sunny and in the 80's.  But then I realized I'd probably fry, so I get that out of my head.

The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

Positive Numbers: Lynx (Last Week: -1).  Right now, things are coming up rosy for the Lynx.  What is more impressive: That they now own the best record in the Women's National Basketball Association, or the fact that they have four All-Stars in the ASG today (Saturday), more than any other this year?

They won their two games this screening week, the latter being an important eight-point weekday matinee win on the road against Phoenix (thereby doing to the Mercury what they did to us when they were our guests for our annual basketball camp game last Wednesday) that catapulted Minnesota to the top of the Western Conference and the league with a robust 10-4 record.  They've got to be in the playoffs now ... but the conference remains tough, and if they fail to break even against conference opponents in the second half of the season, we could be looking at yet another swoon.  But I'm being a pessimist.  Right now, enjoy it, because this is awesome and may not last.

After the ASG they resume play Tuesday against Los Angeles and then Friday vs. Seattle.  Both games will be at Target Center.

#-1: Twins (Last Week: -2).  Hmmm.  This is the second of their two long homestands.  They finished their first homestand 8-1, a large reason why they've been able to come back from the abyss.

But right now they're only 5-4 in this homestand; for the screening week, which began after their series-opening win over Kansas City, the Twinks are only .500.  What may be telling is the games against the two teams leading the American League Central.  They split their four-gamer against Cleveland, but had to come back after a doubleheader sweep on Monday.  And so far they've gotten tamed by Detroit, whose 1-2 punch of Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer have had their way with the team so far.  They are now, I think, 7 games behind the Tigers for first.

They need to split to get something good out of this home cookin'.  I'll be at the game today (Saturday), where Moonshot Scott Souvernir Maker Baker will hurl for the first time since the 5th against Brad Penny, aka Mr. Karina Smirnoff.  After finishing off their homestand Sunday, they go on one of their longest, if not the longest, roadtrips of the year, a 10-game, 11-day trek that starts against The Bastard Washington Senators v.2.0 midweek, then at Oakland for a trio starting on Friday.

Uh-Oh ... Did Blogger Erase My Drafts?

Maybe this has nothing to do with Blogger and is just a bug. Or, maybe I can find them, I just need to look for the way. But I have, like, three blog posts that I saved for future work. I just tried editing one of them, and all I get is a blank screen. And now I'm getting these weird error messages with the code "bX-wfsfbe." What the fuck is that?

And where the hell are my posts? I worked on them a lot, and I don't really want to go back and do them again.

Showered last night even though I was tired.  Do you ever hate it when you want to lie down and rest but you can't because your hair's wet?  I'm glad I got a haircut last week because then I could stay up for, like, five minutes then carefully lie down face-up and not move as I watch Letterman.

But then I closed my eyes.  And I didn't open them until 6 this morning.  I was so out of it that my converter, which I have on shutdown, shut down; I woke up to my TV still on but completely blank.

Seven-and-a-half hours.  Even though I was tired as hell the past few days, I didn't feel I needed it last night.  But I guess I needed every single minute.

Another Rare Night Where I Mix It Up With Mother

My parents are assholes, and bullies.  But they are in different ways.  That manifested itself last night.

They came home late, and Mother wanted to eat later than the rest of us.  While I was trying to pound through four pieces of fried chicken and a sizable mound of rice, Father told me Mother wanted me to help her downstairs.  That usually means some shit she needs done online.  Maybe I've written about this before.

There she was, in her office, staring at her laptop.  She makes online payments all the time, and like the other times she needs my help, she has a problem with a payment.  Specifically, however, this one's different: She wanted to put the entire amount of a bill due on her credit card, but she mistyped and inputted a charge 70 cents short of the whole balance.  So she wanted me to go in and fix it.

This is the company and the website -- the remittance arm of the Clark County Water Reclamation District.  I'll have to write out the track to hell I couldn't get off of: After putting in Mother's account number and zip code, I had to choose pay by credit card. Since this only accepts one-time payments, I had to put in all My Father's credit card information.

That's where this incident starts to go downhill.  My mom keeps track of so many sites she pays online on that she keeps a notebook, filled with the website name, the credit card information she wants to apply to that particular company, account numbers, security codes, password answers, everything.  At first I couldn't find the security code in the entry for this website, then I forgot to add the last four digits of the number.

Finally, I thought I should just pay the whole thing a second time.  I told Mother they’re going to see the double charge and give it back, or at least keep it as credit for future Clark County Water bills, if a public works could do such a thing.

But Mother put the kibosh on that, whining, "Nooooo!!!!!!" and forcing me to not put, uh, $100 on her card.  She didn't want to charge more money on that credit card, even though it looks like that was the only way we could modify the charge, which was only seventy cents shorter than it's supposed to be.  That pushed my button; her whining sounds exactly like My Fucking Father when he doesn't get his way.  So I may have yelled at her then.

Mother then came up with a genius idea: Why not just charge 70 cents to the bill to make up the difference?  Yeah, that's a great idea, mom!  Except that the website will not accept credit card payments less than one dollar.  Are you fucking kidding me?  Shit.

At one point during this futile search she said, "Why don't you call them?"  That's another button pushed, for two reasons: 1) I hate going on the phone for online problems because I think problems that are created online should be solved online; and 2) she presupposed that it is I that should call them, even though this is my parents' fucking bill for their fucking property in Vegas, and I just stepped in and was appointed by them to clean up their fucking mess.  You know what, Ma? Why don't you fucking go call them?

So I poke around the website some more.  And I fucking tell you, there is no edit payment button, no similar setting or link that lets the customer go back and change a pending payment, just in case, oh, I don’t know, if they typed in the wrong goddamn amount. What year is this, 1997?

At some point a third button of mine had been pushed because the architecture of this government website is so goddamn linear -- going straight down the fucking tubes! -- that I'm convinced someone taking a crash course in HTML can whip up a better online payment system than this piece of shit.  Is too-simplistic-yet-difficult-to-navigate websites a red state thing?  Because My Father owns property here in Minnesota, and even though it's becoming redder and redder each day, there still seems to be a sizable Democratic (if not progressive, if not socialist) population, and it seems as if that leads to better government services – don’t laugh – such as trying to fix the wrong amount on a charge you want to pay.  Swear to Buddha, our county district would allow you to fix a pending payment.  Because we're compassionate that way.  And we know that sometimes you put in the wrong goddamn number.

If there's something I overlooked, I overlooked it because I was scouring that fucking website for about ten or fifteen minutes before Mother stepped in and told me to stop searching.  Then she said something that I've heard pretty much all of my life from her: "I thought you could find your way around a simple website and change the amount on my credit card."

I don't exactly remember what I said.  What I do remember is that I snapped at her accusation that I disappointed her because I didn't know how I could fix an online one-time-only payment site that I wasn't aware existed until Mother told me.

But I finally gave in because I needed to go out into the hothouse that was the weather and run another fucking errand for the 'Rents.  But on my way out I hear Mother again, insulting me with a phrase similar to the one above, but a much more exact sentence I've heard uttered from that cunt's lips most of my life: "I thought you were a smart boy."

As I said before, either from the top of this blog post or a previous one, both my folks are bullies.  Yet they have exquisitely different approaches.  Father whines and threatens bodily harm more.  But Mother ... well, as I may have said before, it looks like My Father and I clash a lot, but it boils over quietly because we're always fighting (well, I’m not fighting, it’s more like he's jumping on my case, but that's another story entirely).  But when Mother and I fight, we fight.  Accusations fly and fingers get pointed when I decide to stand up for myself, and shit gets stupid real.

Mother also insults a lot, and that's what really got my goat last (Tuesday) night.  So I respond to her utterance with an angry yet (hopefully) logical argument: "Don't give me that crap!  If you're so smart, you wouldn't have put in a charge of $127.00!"  And I left.  Fuck yeah, it felt good to finally tell Mother her shit stinks like all of ours.

Unfortunately, I felt kind of guilty with the way I showed her up.  Well, not really.  Then, yes, really.  Shit, man, I don't know.  I'm now scared of what recriminations she’ll try and make me suffer as a result of calling her out on her bullshit.  We crossed paths after this, uh, tiff for dinner, but she didn't say anything.

Later that evening I use getting a Coke as an excuse to go back into Mother's office, where she's still there, staring at the website.  First I make a "pttsch" sound, trying to say "I told you so!" while I actually say out loud, "And you're still not done looking. ..."  I showed weakness afterward, pacing back and forth outside her room, wrestling with myself over helping her or not.

I finally made up my mind, went inside her office and said, "Once you give up, I'll call tomorrow."  I didn't really mean it -- I mean, I had to work, there's no way I can just drop everything and give a government agency in Nevada a call, you know?  But I hope it's a way to make peace.

But will there be peace between Mother and I?  I don't think so.  She'll cram her feelings down because it's the next day, but at some point in the near future, she's going to blindside me with allegations of her hurt feelings stemming from bad memories like this one.  My God, she's an asshole.

She wasn’t acting pissy at me tonight, so maybe she called the Water District, or maybe she just let it go.  Or, she’s crafting something to get me.

I've been writing while my mind's been on sleep mode for, like, the past 90 minutes.  How I stayed up is beyond me.  It frightens me.

And now Blogger's having technical issues and I can't publish it.  Can I publish this instead?

I need to go to sleep.  Now.

Chronicles Of My Trip V: Milan Crossroads

So we get the train and hit Milan, later in the day (and thus missing our Last Supper tour) but we're back on schedule.

Before leaving, my sister and brother-in-law made sure that we had maps to ensure we wouldn't get lost. They also gave us suggestions on what to do in Milan as well as our next destination, Florence. For our night in Milan, they suggested this place called Z2 ("zerodue"). We've never been to Milan before, but from what I know, it's Italy's business and fashion center, and therefore doesn't have the historical importance of Florence, Venice or Rome. With no architecture or landmarks to walk by and admire, we needed something to do, so this restaurant will do.

Unfortunately, I didn't have any directions to the place. And when I asked the guy in the front, even though he did make reservations for us (I think that was nice), he didn't know either. He knew where the street was, though, so he pointed it out in our city guide. We -- well, I because I'm the only one who could understand Italian -- would then be on our/my own.

We take the clean and efficient subway (gotta love public mass transit!) to the south side of Milan, and from there, I was leading my parents by 20 feet on my way to the street where this place was.

Milan is an old city, so it doesn't have the grid system. That added another layer of confusion to what was a series of bending streets that changed names from block to block. But luckily I got to the street of this restaurant -- and now all I had to do was decide in which direction to go, left or right.

I had thought about this crossroads ever since we left the hotel. I knew that I would make the wrong decision, because I always do. So should I ignore my first instinct, or go with it, because if I doubt myself, I'll kick myself for not going on my first instinct, you know?

Through about five or ten minutes of walking through tight streets and trees, my way finally opened up to a busy intersection, Italian nightlife on display. So, here I was. Where to go? What I kept thinking about was what I finally acted upon. On the map, when I saw where we would meet up with the intersection, more of the avenue ran south than north (in other words, we were closer to the northern end of the street Z2 was on). So, logic demands that there was a greater chance that the restaurant was south of where we were. So I turned a right. And my parents, who were depending on me, followed me.

From there, we walked a good, oh, half-hour, trying to find the name, a sign, a number, something to indicate that I found the place, that I was able to navigate a foreign city with parents in tow and get us to our destination. But there was nothing.

Finally, we reached a circle. After going around one side of it, I looked up at the street sign. Even though this street was long, it changed; going further would obviously not be the right way to go. I turned right when I should have turned left. Fuck me.

I was too tired and angry with myself to say that out loud. I just turned around and started heading north, mumbling something to my parents. Mother wanted to ask somebody, but I knew where we were going, I just didn't want to tell her, which is this family's modus operandi. Also, I was acting like a man.

The stranger Mother spoke to -- and her coming out of her usual defensive, mistrustful shell while on this trip still mystifies me, because that is so totally against her nature, or at least what I know of her -- reaffirmed what I figured out: That Z2 was at the short, northern end of the street. No time to waste; we were probably about 15 minutes away from where we made the right turn, and at this point we were about 25 minutes late for our reservation.

So we go all the way up the street. We hit a dead end/roundabout. There was no sign, no sandwich board, no nothing showing us that this is where the restaurant is. Does this fucking place even exist?

After about five minutes of standing around trying to find Z2, Mother finally found a sign. It was on a sandwich board, a small one, on the pavement. It pointed us to this skinny storefront, a well-appointed place, and a lot of empty chairs.

I profusely apologized to the host for being now 45 minutes late for our appointment. Possibly because they were not busy, possibly because they are Italian, he didn't sweat it and promptly sat us.

Z2 is a fancy restaurant, with the extravagant bill to go along with it. In short, this is exactly the kind of place I like to eat from time to time whenever I can scrounge up the money to go. This is also exactly the kind of place where my parents hate to go. They think all food is good, so if that's the case, why pay so much money for it? I told my sister that they hate fancy restaurants, and here we are now.

So we sit down and look at the menu. Since this is Italian, there are many dishes for each of the several courses that "real" Italians would take full advantage of. Even though we were dead tired and our feet and legs were hurting us, we didn't feel like eating, like, fifteen courses of food. I was willing to push it to three. But I got overruled by my parents, who were visibly pissed at me for leading them so astray.

One of the many reasons why Italian, and maybe even European, restaurants serve their food so slowly is that this allows restaurantgoers to begin talking to each other, thus creating a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Those who originated what has become known these days as the Slow Food Movement probably have never met my parents, who would rather eat shit if it meant not talking to people, including me. This went beyond the disaster I took us on; they are very impatient when it comes to food. That is their goal, and they don't take their time talking. So what I had were minutes upon minutes of uncomfortable, movie-tension silence. I know they were thinking, "Where the fuck's our food?!" but nothing was coming out of their mouths except breathing, slowly progressing to a heave as they waited longer and longer. The periods of silence felt like eons.

I never venture to break the queasy stillness in the air when I'm around these two. But My Fucking Father said something about the slowness of the service (the quality of the food was something they both bitched about throughout the course of the, uh, 90-120 minutes we were there, but they always bitch about the food whenever they go out to eat, they're terrible), and I, needing to say something or else I would just die, said something to the effect of, "Well, that's because you don't eat at fancy restaurants much."

And that set My Fucking Father off. "What you talking 'bout?!" he barked back in his broken English. "We go fancy restaurant all the time in Vegas!!" He is right that there are some incredible restaurants in Vegas. But then he dares to say that "we ate at the Stratosphere!!!" The fucking Stratosphere?!?!?! Are you kidding me?!?!?! And once he said that shit, I couldn't say anything else. How could you after he admitted that he thinks the fucking Stratosphere represents top-of-the-line food? I mean, it's great that it spins, but I went there once because My Fucking Father got a comp, and it was alright, not memorable.

We bolted after two courses; they both were visibly testy when it came to getting the check and then giving them the money. We escaped Z2 (even though I thought it was a perfectly nice place) and followed the host's directions to the nearest station. Once again we were fairly lost amid the zigzagging labyrinth that is an ancient Italian city. But even though my parents were initially hesitant in following my lead yet again, I did lead us finally to the station and then our hotel.

(By the way, the hotel was the best part of our very brief stay in Milan. The customer service was excellent, our room was kind of cramped but very ornate, and best of all, when Mother forced me to ask them if we could have more of those amaretto-flavored cookies that greeted us on top of our pillows, the owner gave us a whole bag! The Hotel Berna Milano -- if you're ever in the city, I highly recommend this hotel!!!)

Two Ways I Missed On This Particular Saturday

1) I was at a party Saturday afternoon, and it was hot. I hate heat because I get delirious.

When I was going home I remembered that Mother wanted me to call her and ask her if she wanted anything from outside before I reached it. I told the 'Rents before the weekend I was going to be busy both Saturday and Sunday, and she told me to call her before I came home. Well, I did about five minutes before getting home, but I got her voicemail. She was supposed to be home by the time I called her, and she usually is good at picking up her phone. But she didn't then. So I called the landline, where I got Grandmother. Shit, I shouldn't've done that -- of course she'd pick up the phone. So, not knowing what to do, I asked her where Mother was (she was downstairs, in the master bedroom, of course) and then said goodbye.

Just before I hung up my phone rings. It's Father, who wants me to buy pizza. Well, that precludes me from going home for at least 15-20 minutes. So I order over the phone while driving, then park at the grocery store close by and wait. I decided that I'd buy a Vanilla Coke just because I haven't had a Vanilla Coke in a while. I thought it'd be cheaper across the street at the gas station, but they didn't have Vanilla Coke. So back into the grocery store I went. That took 15-20 minutes.

I get the pizza and I come home. The first thing I see is Mother coming out from the bedroom, asking me, "Did you get my messages?"

"What message. ...?" and then I realized, Fuck, I put, or kept, my phone on silent mode. She called me, like, three or four times. Moreover, I rolled my voicemail into Google Voice. (I wanted to try and see if I could use that to transfer the texts I've saved on my phone to that; so far, no dice.) That kind of threw her off -- actually, it threw off the few people who tried calling me and expected my voice as I tell them to leave a message -- so that's why she kept calling me. I had my phone on me the whole time. I just didn't hear it, and I didn't check it.

She wanted me to put parmesan cheese on the pizzas before I brought it home. She had me do it once before and she didn't like it. But now she wants me to do it again? Whatever. Still, I felt bad that she tried to call me and I blew her off. It hurts. A lot.

2) Bella is a hot dancer that used to work at My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Edition). She was one of ... oh, I should count some time, some number of dancers who gave me her number. She does massages and said in no uncertain terms that she did more than massages. So when I mustered up enough cash I was going to pay her a visit. But when I called, the phone number didn't work. She said she was trying to get it fixed. And then she quit.

But I saw her again recently, first at a party she threw (I'll talk about that in-depth soon, I hope) and then back at the stripclub. She's back there on weekend nights. I was so happy to see her there again that I promised her onstage that I wanted a dance from her. That's something I usually don't do.

After a few minutes of sitting and watching sports on the TV, I had the itch to go to the bathroom. I went to make absolutely sure I wasn't uncomfortable getting a dance from her. While I was in there, I started spacing out. I only went in to pee, but I guess I stayed there, if only for several seconds, playacting stuff out. What it was, I don't remember.

When I come out, Bella was gone. Shit! It was past the 15-minute mark when the girls rotate. If I just did my business and went back out, she probably would have seen me. But I guess she didn't see me go into the head, and so she just went into the changing room. Worst of all, this was at the end of the night. There's a possibility she was changing and leaving.

But I waited, just in case she decided to stick around and/or find me. After 15 minutes, however, I got very antsy, then disappointed. I needed to go, and that's when I finally saw Bella, in her civilian clothes. Indeed, she thought I had left after I promised her a dance. I wouldn't do her like that, honest, we just missed connections. Shit, we were mere feet away from each other.

I haven't seen her dance there since.

---

There was a third thing that I "missed" this Saturday, but now I forget. It's been several Saturdays since, and I don't even remember the exact date all this happened. I've been busy, but I hate that.

Handjob After Years Of Patience

I admit it: The following story makes me a creep. I can understand if you feel that way. But I'm telling you, this is one of the greatest moments of my life, and I have her to thank.

The one advantage the new Blogger interface has given me is stats on pageviews that I can see without searching for it. And apparently my self-effacing put-downs aren't entirely true; there are a few people who actually have read this blog, or at least the occasional post. So, I hope you're entertained while I keep my identity a secret.

I've known this girl off-and-on since she started working at My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Version) a few years ago. She's short with slits for eyes. I once thought she was ugly. Nonetheless she flirted with me confidently and competently enough for me to get dances from her, and from there she could keep up a conversation so that I didn't mind continuing to get dances from her. She's turned out to be a cool enough chick, even though she might not be as hot as others, or puts out as much others -- or so I thought!

We exchanged numbers before she quit the club. And after a few months of not hearing from her, she called me and told me that she was working parties at this condo owned by a former stripper out in the western suburbs. I've gone to these private parties before. They're much better than the ones at My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Edition) because there's no light and no bouncers. But there were a lot of guys around, and I hate that.

Still, when you have a girl so open to be real with you, you have to try and see how much you can get away with. So I started with luring her to a private place and flashing her for the first time -- not angry, which is good. I apologized, give her some space, and when I see her again, I don't whip it out. Next time I do, and she's still not angry. Will she touch it? No. Try it again the next time. Rebuffed again.

But I'm wearing her down. And finally, about 16 months after I exposed myself to her and about three years after meeting her for the very first time, all my work and money finally paid off.

The prelude was, again, this private party, when I finally begged her into touching my penis. About three months later, she invites me to this different private party, one by another girl who used to work at My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Edition). (I may have blogged about her once when she gave me a number to her "massage service" but it didn't work. Need to hit her up for some satisfaction.) She didn't say explicitly, but she told me inbetween the lines that, finally, she would finally give me what I want.

So I go to a neighborhood in Minneapolis. I knock on the door and see the host -- who's wearing Daisy Dukes and no shirt!!! I wanted to know if she was bold enough to prance outside looking like that!

Anyway it was her and two other girls, one of them being my girl. (The other is also an ex-stripper at My Favorite Stripclub [Non-Cover Edition] who thereafter became a low-level porn star. I checked her out online; it's true, she did some Internet porn!!!) There were, like, three other guys in this rather large apartment -- better than the party, but still not safe enough for me to, say, walk around with my thing hanging out.

What we did have, however, is a private VIP, which turned out to be the host's bedroom. With very little hesitation, me and my favorite ATF took that room after it got done, uh, being used.

We talked about some stuff. Well, she talked about some stuff. Because the door to the outside was locked, I got to taking off my shirt and then my pants. Of course I wasn't wearing underwear; when I let go of my pants, there was my pink thing, as flaccid as it was.

"No!" she cried. "What do you mean no?" I asked. (OK, I could be totally making that up.) "We can't do that," she said, "Not unless you have $100." Trust me, that is a pretty steep price for sexual activity. I mean, there was one girl I once talked about who would touch me for $40. But $100? Well, OK, I was horny. And besides, I had a feeling it was going to cost about that much money. That's why I went to the ATM before I went to the party.

So after a display of hesitation, I reached into my fallen pants for my wallet and laid down five $20's on the bed. And she said OK. Great! But I wouldn't get on the bed before she squeezed my cock. And she did! I was cranked up, so I got on all fours and slowly walked up to the top of the bed. I made sure I stuck my ass out for her to see, and I spread out my legs a bit so she could see the long, nasty hairs on fumunda place.

When I turned over and laid down, she was leaping up in front of me. She straddled me, then reached back with her right hand and grabbed my cock -- but this time she didn't just give me a quick squeeze. She closed on it and slid it up and down me! My God, finally, all this work is paying off!!!

The host dancer provided lotion -- aloe, I believe. I still don't need lubricant when getting a handjob, in fact I prefer if the girl doesn't use it. I like the feel of rough, dry skin-on dry skin contact. Plus, I feel like the lotion acts as a buffer between true human touching, like the dancer really doesn't want to touch me even though the act of using it makes you think she's really getting into it. But I already paid my money and I wasn't going to spoil the mood. So she spilled some lotion onto her hands and went to work on my pee-pee.

It was interesting. There was no dirty talk (glad about that, I find that to be so fake), but a lot of small talk about non-sexy stuff. It was as if she wasn't giving me a handjob. During the middle of it, in fact, we gave each other a high-five. I was happy, but I wasn't aroused for a long time during our, oh, 15 minutes in the bedroom. It's not as if I wasn't turned on by her, her beautiful naked body, or the sexual act she was performing on me -- I was. Maybe it was the novelty of it all, or the fact that there was a time limit (we couldn't stay in there forever, but I hate to be put on the clock), but it took me a long time to get hard, let alone ready to shoot.

But the deadline was approaching, and we both finally focused. I was laying down the whole time she was cranking me, so to mix things up I asked that I kneel on the bed. At this point she was feverishly wailing on my sex organ because she wanted me to shoot. But getting off my back finally did the trick I think: "Oh ... uh ... oh my God!" I stammered out. Sensing that I was about to pop, she told me the sexiest thing I've heard from her yet: "Cum on my leg!"

And I did. I finally ejaculated after about 15 minutes of getting my dick moisturized the hard way, so to speak. I don't think I expelled much, but I do remember seeing a stripe across her leg. Unfortunately she didn't pull my wang for any residual cum, so I was just hanging there, on my knees, with an oncoming case of blueballs.

Didn't matter. What I saw next was sexily romantic. She quickly got up off the bed, cum all over her (her leg at least), marched into the master bathroom, shut the door only halfway, quickly pulled down her thong underwear (she was topless this whole time but kept her undies on) and got onto the toilet, ripping out some squares of toilet paper as she started peeing. Does giving handjobs make a girl want to pee? Guess I don't care. Her allowing me to see her at her most depraved, when she's tinkling, makes me erect just thinking about it. I would have been hard then, but she made me cum, so I couldn't.

I put my clothes on. She stormed out of the bathroom and told me to quickly get dressed. I told her all throughout our session that I really didn't give a shit if one of the others barged in and saw us. They all knew what they were willing to do at the party and in the bedroom. Now if a guy came in, well. ... I failed to convince her to slow down; our 15 minutes were beyond up, so she threw my clothes at me and opened the master bedroom door as soon as I looked decent.

She wasn't cold to me the rest of the night, but she was occupied, mostly with getting high. Near the end of my stay at the party her face looked dangerously pale, almost grey, compared to the tanned skin of the rest of her body. Maybe she smoked a whole lot of weed, but I was kind of concerned for her safety.

But she made it to the end of the day. Sadly, I didn't. They went to a bar after they decided the party petered out a little earlier than they thought. I did not want to compete with the guys who were going to accompany her.

This was my first handjob from her. I'll tell y'all about my second some other time, maybe soon! And to think that I once found her ugly. I was so, so wrong and very, very stupid. She is now one of the most beautiful strippers in the world!!!

(By the way, I did get a quick, $20 dance from the former porn star out in the living room. There were two other guys at the party at this time, and they hooked up with two of the other strippers. At first I rebuffed her offer of a dance, but when I saw that the rest of the party were paired up, I changed my mind. After the other pair got done with their dance on the same couch where we were doing ours, I made sure I took my pee-pee out. She would have none of that. Funny. Maybe she wouldn't do it unless she got paid as much as she did when she was doing porn.)

I'm Afraid To Go Outside

I realized this at work today, coming back into the room from getting coffee or running to the bathroom.

We're in the middle of what appears to be the longest heatwave in my lifetime: Daytime highs in the mid-'90's, humidity in the seventies and eighties, heat indices crossing 110. It started in earnest Saturday and will continue, in my opinion, as far as my eye can see, although it's supposed to be a tad drier come Thursday.

But that doesn't help now. Forecasters say the next two days, tomorrow and Wednesday, will be the worst, with tomorrow having the worse heat index and Wednesday the higher air temp, predicted to be 100.

It was shitty today. I think it felt like 110+. I was out and about Saturday and Sunday, and it felt all humid as fuck then, but we at least had the saving grace of clouds. If it were sunny this weekend, God, I think I'd've melted.

But it was sunny out all day today (Monday). While outside has been a blast furnace all weekend, Monday was the first time that you could tell it felt like a blast furnace outside, you know?

And yet, standing in the hallway of our antiseptic but air-conditioned building, it was a brilliant day outside. It'd be a typical summer day, a day that beckons you to play hooky and go to the beach ... except it would then fry you alive with heat that could grill a steak on the parking lot. It's so weird to look at something so benign, yet know that it would feel like hell on earth once you step outside the doors.

It's that dichotomy, that visual siren song, that made me scared of outside these past few days to a degree I hadn't felt since I was a kid in spring and didn't know what allergies were. I would stay indoors because only then would I know I wouldn't sneeze and have to blow my nose or rub my eyes. These past few days, like my misspent youth, I've been sedentary on my bed. And I would gaze outside, secretly frightened over the oppressive force beyond this house's walls, waiting to kill me.

Tricky Disney

While purchasing a ticket to a movie a few weeks ago, I was given what looks to be a game piece tied into the movie Cars 2 (the first Pixar film to be universally hated, by the way) and sponsored by State Farm.  Because of that sponsorship, I thought this would be a case where I would have to sign up for e-mails from them, so I just kept it in my pocket.

Saturday, with no power cord (I'll get to that some other time) I sat in the coffeehouse and sifted through the stuff in my pockets.  I came across this game piece again.  I finally looked through it, and it said its sweepstakes ended Sunday, the next day.  I thought the timing fortuitous, so last night I endeavoured to finally see what exactly is up with this.

These people did trick me, but not in the way I thought.  Like the plot in the movie, you play a car that's also a spy.  And you have to sign up using the username given on the game piece.  But then, after you're given a "dossier" and just as you're led to this page where you're supposed to use the decoder screen on the piece and put it up to your computer screen to see if you've won (you know, like 3-D glasses), you're told that you just won 50 points towards some vacation at a Disney property.  And here's your username and the website to register!

Except that I wanted to play the game, whatever the hell it was, and I bypassed it before realizing that, hey, maybe I want to write that information down for later.  Because if I can't get back to it, I might regret not getting those points, or somehow starting my journey to a free weeklong vacation at The Happiest Place On Earth.  But for some reason I kept going and didn't hit the "back" button, and eventually I just got lost and wasn't able to go back.

They probably wanted more demographical information from me.  But who knows, maybe it would have been worth it.

Still so goddamn mad at the American women losing in Sunday's World Cup final.  I mean, it was a close match, but they had so many chances, and they couldn't fucking keep a lead.  Japan healing from the earthquake and tsunami?  I guess, but really, I'm starting to get sick of it.

Avoiding sports coverage because of this loss.  Can't stand it.

This is The Beginning Of The End Of Women's Soccer.  No one gives a fuck about a bunch of losers.

Oh my God, I think I just went through one of the most violent bouts of diarrhea ever.  Fucking A, I thought I was done after a half-hour shitting water, then I wipe my ass and I feel some more coming, then I get up and, even though I feel some more coming, I go to the room, where it really feels like it's coming, then I have to go back to the shitter.  I did that three times.

But I'm typing this now not needed to run back to the throne in about 15 minutes.  Plus, I don't feel anything in my bowels, so I think I'm good.

Goddamn, all the food and drink I had today ... sandwiches, cake, pizza, ice cream, salad, a shake, and coffee -- lots and lots of coffee.  Oh, and a lot of water, too.  All of that combined to whip my execretory system something fierce.

Unfortunately, I heard Grandmother's door open during one of my episodes.  I wanted to leave the bathroom for her, but I wasn't done yet.  I didn't know when I was done.  So after a couple minutes I hear her door close.  God, I hope she didn't just shit into one of the tubs she keeps underneath her bed.

Now, to get rid of these sudden allergy symptons I'm feeling.

The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#-1: Lynx (Re-Entry!).  A 2-1 week after a week-plus-long layoff.  A friend of mine got a ticket for us for the Saturday game against the Connecticut Sun.  Their starting lineup featured four players from UConn.  Coincidence, a sign that the school is so good teams should exploit that advantage, or a desperate ploy to curry interest from women's college basketball fans from the Nutmeg State who have yet to give the WNBA a try?  Anyway, the Lynx beat them by 23.  It was a tight game at halftime, but they pulled away in the third quarter.  This may be the first time I've ever seen in person this franchise rout an opponent.  I'm serious; they usually lose.

However, I was getting food for me and my friend during this decisive third quarter.  (I was at one of the, like, five concession stands open, all of them at one end, all of them trying to serve about 5,000 people.  I don't know how, but this team is bringing in more fans, so there should be a few more stands open, and on the other side of Target Center.)  Maybe I'm a jinx who didn't know he lifted it when he left his seat.

There is no excuse, however, for their collapse in their annual Day Camp Matinee on Wednesday.  They had an 11-point lead with 6:31 remaining in the fourth quarter but fuckin' blew it.  There were children there, guys, young, innocent girls!  They looked up to you, and they bore witness to a frightening and humiliating event most adults shouldn't see.  They are scarred for life.  I wouldn't be surprised if, after the game and during camp, they talked trash to you.  Because you lost.  Therefore, you deserve it.

They bounced back last (Friday) night, however, with a victory at Indiana, so there's that.  So now they have two games coming: Home to Seattle tonight (Saturday night), at Phoenix Wednesday.  Oh yeah, by the way, congratulations to Maya Moore for making the WNBA All-Star Team -- and as a starter, too!

#-2: Twins (Last Week: -1).  They finish the part of the screening week before the All-Star Break by splitting at Chicago, and they begin the second half of the season with a split at home to Kansas City.  But the big story remains the collapse of Capps.  He came in to a chorus of fearful boos last (Friday) night at the top of the ninth inning in a 1-0 game, and with two outs served up a two-run home run.  The guy got Bronx cheered out off the field, and a rally at the bottom of the inning came up short.  The Twinks playoff teams of the past won more than their share of 1-0 games.  Games like last (Friday) night are why they're seven games out of first place in the American League Central.  They continue their long and important homestand by finishing out with K.C., then bringing in Cleveland for a special four-game, three-day series (the day-night doubleheader is on Monday, the first day of the series, funny), then hosting Detroit for a quartet starting on Thursday.

#-3: Timberwolves (Re-Entry!).  Yes, Kurt Rambis was 32-132 his two seasons "leading" the Woofs.  Yeah, he lost 100 more games than he won.  But despite what you think of his coaching acumen or lack thereof, what David Kahn did to him -- giving him the silent treatment, letting him twist in the wind, then finally disposing of him this week -- was unnecessary, cruel, and disrespectful.  There's nothing I can think of to be gained from waiting until half the off-season's over to fire a Head Coach.  So if Kahn's telling you he knows what he's doing, don't believe him, because he's batshit crazy to believe that.

And the names that keep popping up to replace Rambis are two retreads: Bernie Bickerstaff and, for some godawful reason, Don Nelson.  Kahn wants a more up-tempo offense, but do you want an all-and-nothing guy like Nellie, someone who is a mad genius on the offensive end but couldn't give less of a shit on defense?  That's what we got on last year's Woofie Dogs.  Really, him?

Dilemma: The place I work at has signed me to yet another project, one that starts immediately after the one I'm currently one is done.  It should be at least for two weeks, though possibly three.

Unfortunately, around this time I have a dentist's appointment.  This is a teaching clinict the University of Minnesota, so I can't schedule at night.  Moreover, the one I have seen for the past year is graduating in about a month.  Although I have had differences with her in the past and it's not like I'm emotionally wedded to her, I have seen what I consider to be a rocky first couple visits through, and now I can't trust anybody else with my teeth except her -- well, at least until she takes off.  So that's why I want to see her one more time.

If I take off from work, I get hit in the wallet twice.  Obviously I miss my hourly wage.  But, in this company I get to earn a bonus if I work enough hours a week.  As any American company would, they tend to find ways not to give this bonus to you if they can help it, and making a dentist's visit in the afternoon should do it.  I'd be missing out on, geez, $75?  What should I do?

Oh, by the way, the series finale of Friday Night Lights is on, uh, 17 minutes after I publish this.  It's The Most Underappreciated Show In Recent Television History.  Go watch it.

Just had the most awesomest nap in my car in a long, long time, maybe ever.  What made it work was the weather outside: Just after a rain, cloudy, absolutely no sun the whole day and, best of all, no humidity.  That combination allowed me to lean my seat back and pass out without feeling sweaty or bringing the windows down and inviting the noise outside (even though I parked in a desolate parking ramp at the Ridgedale Library).

I needed it.  The past two overnights I stayed up and had about 2 1/2 hours of rest both nights.  Tuesday was OK because I passed out that evening; I mean, who gives a fuck about the All-Star Game?  But Wednesday I stayed up for So You Think You Can Dance 9 even though I felt a massive pull towards unconscious around 7 o'clock and I actually passed out for the show's first few minutes.  I stayed up and was productive at work today, but I have a meeting to go to, and I needed the time to myself.

What's even more remarkable about my nappy is that it's going to get stupid hot and humid for the next week starting tomorrow.  I'll need to go to sleep at work during breaks and lunch, but it's not going to happen because it's going to be so fuckin' hot.  This will be the last time in a long time I'll be able to do so in my car.

Is My Oil Level Sensor Cured?

The one thing I noticed since my last oil change more than two weeks ago is that the oil level light in my car is not on anymore.  Usually after an oil change it'd take a day or two before that damn thing pops on.  I used to get freaked out over it, but now I don't because it's been on so many times while the car has been working fine.

But now I don't have to worry about even that.  I balked at getting it fixed, even though I've had it checked out twice and both times I was told they need to do more intrusive tests to diagnose the problem.  I've also been told that the oil level's fine, which leads me to believe that it's the sensor that's broken.

Now that it seems to be running totally fine, that must be the case.  I'm glad I didn't panic.  But maybe the sensor's been on for so long it's now burnt out, and my engine's running on no oil.

Maybe I should check it.  Or, maybe the problem was an easy fix all along and now it's totally fine.

The Five Babes I Saw At The Urge Overkill Concert

Gosh, it was a week ago.  Anyway, so I was at last Tuesday's Urge Overkill concert.  The concert wasn't bad.  I think their Saturation is one of the unjustifiably forgotten albums in nineties alternative music.  They played many of their known songs -- "Sister Havana," "Back On Me," plus four or five other songs from that album.  But I'm saddened that they didn't play Saturation single "Positive Bleeding," or the underrated "Tequila Sundae," and I'm surprised they didn't play the song UO's probably best known for, their cover of the Neil Diamond tune "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon" which Quentin Tarantino used in the Pulp Fiction soundtrack.

The other big thing I have to object to is the fact that they played nearly all their songs a half-key lower.  This isn't what I hear on their CD's, and it sounds worse.  I thought it maybe be because they're playing the back half of back-to-back tour dates, but they actually kicked off their two-week, ten-date mini-tour at First Ave. on the 2nd.  That means, then, that the only reason they played a half-key lower is because they're older, and that's a punch in the gut.  We were all young in the 90's, and now I'm hearing and seeing the rotting effects of old age right in front of me.  I didn't want to be reminded that I fell in love with this band a decade and a half ago.

Wasn't sold out.  Wasn't very empty, either, but for the first time in I can remember (even though I don't go to too many concerts) I had plenty of room to move, although near the end of the concert this totally into-it fan literally backed up to my face.  This motherfucker either didn't realize or didn't care that he was invading my space.  I couldn't get away with punching him the back of the head, however, because it was one of those situations where the crowd was sparse enough to stop looking at UO and see me trying to wail on some guy.  So I stood my ground and just continued to look up, and fortunately the guy didn't back into me.

OK, so, the babes.  There were five of them:

1. Urge Overkill is a thing from the nineties.  Another thing from the nineties?  Barebelly shirts.  Don't see that on the streets these days.  But during the concert I couldn't help but look to my left and seeing this cute girl -- she wasn't, like, model fit or anything, but she's skinny enough -- about ten feet away wearing a red t-shirt that didn't cover her up all the way.  It wasn't full midriff or anything, but even when she wasn't dancing around to the beat there was this sliver of skin peeking out under her t-shirt.  And being the dirty dog that I am, I think about that when I masturbate from time to time.
2. About ten feet to my right was this brunette who dressed up for the occasion.  She didn't show any barebelly, but she had an ample bosom.  I think about that when I touch my pee-pee as well.
3. Uh, another chesty babe standing at the front of the stage.  I don't remember her all that well, she must've impressed me when she turned around near the end of the concert.
4. And to the tattoos.  One girl standing to the left of this third woman turned around very late in the show.  From what I remember she had a cute face.  But what's really burned into my memory is the tat she was sporting on her left shoulder.  OK, I can't give too many specifics of the tat, but it was a detailed design, and I think it had color in it.  I don't know if she was beautiful, but that tattoo definitely was.  I couldn't help but stare at it from time to time.
5. And finally, there was the waitress.  She was going through the crowd on the floor, asking concertgoers if they wanted drinks.  I don't know if you want to get in the way of someone who wants to listen to the music.  And what happens if he or she is dancing wildly and the waitress is holding a tray full of drinks.  But anyway, she was wearing a First Ave. tee with a wide neckline.  And I could see that she had a tat running across the top of her chest with what looks to be a sketched-out skyline of Minneapolis.  Showing so much pride in your hometown that you want to represent it on your body for all time?  That is risky, but that shows committment.  That is awesome, courageous, and sexy as hell!!!

Almost Caused An Accident

I think I spoke of the time when I was confronted "nicely" by someone who accused me of cutting him off.  I was always scared of a next time; I would not be so "lucky."  Well, it happened -- and even though the person who probably wanted the confrontation is no longer mad at me, I could have caused a very, very bad accident.

The shocks on my car are bad.  I think I realized this, or was convinced to believe it, when I was told during an oil change that they were bad.  So what I thought was my car bouncing over potholes normally now is a dance with the devil, and I catch my breath hoping I'm not breaking my axels and flopping to a complete stop in the middle of the road.

Tonight, I was going to My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Version) as part of a night which was to lead me downtown to this new stripclub where a girl who gave me a handjob a couple weeks ago (I'll talk about it some other time) is now working.  Unfortunately, the way there is under construction.  I can drive on it, but a part of it has been peeled off, so when that part ended and the old road started, there's this huge bump that I'm really freaked out over.  So I slow down all the way as I approach it (on a left turn) and slooooooooooowly creep over the bump.

Too bad I totally didn't give a shit about the car behind me.  Or the car behind it.  As soon as I was willing to accelerate, I see the girl behind me start vigorously shaking her head and gesturing with her hand.  Oh, shit, she's mad, isn't she?  Well, I started to get ready for a road rage fight right in the middle of the intersection.  From the looks on my rearview mirror she's still furious at my slow driving.

But then I look at the head.  It looks ... familiar.  It looks pretty also.  And then I realize that it's 9 o'clock, the beginning of the late shift.  Oh, shit.  There is a very good possibility that we're going to the same place ... because the person I pissed off is a stripper at the bar I'm going to.

And sure enough, as soon as I get the green light and enter the parking lot, the car behind me does the same.  Well, fuck me.  I had a choice: Go away and hope they forget, or ... confront the situation myself.  I decide I wanted to see boobs, so I figure I could just go in and apologize to her.

I go in; no one, woman or man, tries to coldcock me.  I go up to a stripper who's holding her bag and looks like she just came in.  "Were you the one who was behind me?" I asked her.

"She was," the guy she was talking to when I barged in, who is the bouncer, said.  She then looked at me before going into the strippers' locker room.  She's usually kind of out of it, so she probably didn't know what I was trying to ask her.

Or, it wasn't her.  There was another girl holding her bag and looking like she just came in, and this one (with whom I'm familiar with, just like the first one) had the shape of her head and hair that looked like the woman who was following me.  But she was talking so much that I decided to wait to talk to her.  Maybe she was venting about the asshole who was going to slow and making her late to work.

She disappeared into the lockerroom.  It took about a half-hour before she re-emerged.  At the juke box I asked her if she was behind me.  "Yes!  And you almost caused an accident!" she replied.  The guy behind her was driving like the car two ahead of him wasn't slowing down because he was afraid, and he almost rear-ended her vehicle.  And I was so, so sorry to almost have caused that.  Fortunately she, like the first stripper I spoke to, isn't totally in the present, either, so she quickly forgave me.  Whew.

I should go faster over bumps, but I'm very scared that I'll bust my car if I do that.  Maybe I need to use an alternate route to get to My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Version) for the time being.  Or not go until the fix the road ... which, considering the state's been shut down for over a week now, could be a long ways away.

My Take On The Coverage Of Casey Anthony, About Five Days Late

First of all, about the verdict: I had a college professor teaching me about journalism and the law who told me that the most underrated part of a trial is the jury.  Ordinary American citizens, the oft-cited "jury of your peers," really do take their jobs seriously, he said, and he fully believed that take their time seeking out the truth and thinking about whether the evidence presented proved, beyond a reasonable doubt (another oft-cited American aphorism) if the person on trial is guilty.

Being a distracted observer, I believe that the jurors came to the conclusion that there was no proof there that Casey Anthony did indeed murder her daughter, Caylee.  They had circumstantial evidence up the wazoo, but no smoking gun.  And if 12 people are going to find her guilty and subject her to the possibility of killing her, they needed to make damn sure.  They weren't sure.  And I can see that.

Now, is that bitch Casey guilty of something?  Absolutely -- and this is where I feel my bloodlust outweigh my loyalty to the Constitution.  She did something -- or nothing -- that led to her daughter's death.  It's the same postulate that led some people to suspect that Claus von Bülow "had a hand" in helping his wife, Sunny, slip into a coma.  Anthony probably can't be found guilty of murder.  But goddamn, she did something that caused the death of Caylee.  And that's why a part of me wanted the jury to nail her to the wall for something, even if it would certainly be overturned on appeal.

It is that need for justice, rough yet illegal, that I saw on display in the coverage of the Casey Anthony murder trial.  But the thing I got out of this is the suddeness of the saturation on broadcast television news.  It looks as if free TV largely ignored this case until the beginning of Independence Weekend, and from then on I was fucking bombarded by that tramp and that cute picture of her dead kid.

People say Casey Anthony is this generation's O.J. Simpson.  It's not.  No one could match O.J. Simpson, and no one ever will.  In this age of cable news and the 24/7 news cycle, anything noteworthy will be replayed ad nauseum somewhere, so the entire focus of a salacious story, where we all see it from its origin through its gestation to its culmination, just won't be there.

However, this Anthony case was largely a product of cable news.  I don't have cable, and so there was a good chance I never would have even heard of this babe until the broadcast networks started covering it over a week ago.  I know about this case largely because when I was working out at the gym I would flip the channels and see that Headline News' Nancy Grace made it a topic of her hour-long show for months.  She succeeded in making other cable news networks and syndicated programs cover it, and the lurid details and the conventions on what makes a good broadcast journalism story (hot girl gone bad, fucked-up family, a cute kid that deserves justice) took it from there.

What finally brought this case and trial to the mainstream probably were two things, both of them benign and yet at the heart of the troubles of maintaining a broadcast journalism enterprise: Newsrooms were heading into a slow holiday weekend, and there was nothing else to cover.  They had the time, the money and the means (or at least an affiliate who could cover it for them), and such non-national stories get ratings, so what the hell?  I'm just still surprised that it's as if all three broadcast networks made a pledge to flood the city of Orlando with cameras, and saturate their half-hour show with this shit.

Sadly, after the not guilty verdict, the aftermatch specials were the kind of slanted, baiting pieces of shit "news" shows that forced me out of TV news.  What was needed was to tell people who wanted blood why Casey Anthony is about to walk away free.  Those people need to be reminded of innocent until proven guilty.  In other words, they needed to be reminded of how the Constitution works.  Instead, we got news reporters who made sure they were on camera when they asked loaded questions that were basically a variation of, "What the fuck were you thinking, letting that cunt walk away free?!"

Bitchy Father On My Case Again

He wasn't being a paranoid, overbearing prick for a long time, so maybe he was due.  But during dinner tonight he freaked out, and in his own goddamn way, he did it by buttering me up first.

He asked me about finding some software that kept track of his real estate holdings.  And then he asked me why I went out and had coffee so many times.  "To work on my laptop," I said, and I reminded him about the website I keep writing sports for.  My Fucking Father then asked if it was making money.  I couldn't lie; no, not yet, Father.

He then launched into his misgivings about working too much when I was young.  "The one thing you never get back is time," My Fucking Confucius said.  He then said something to the effect of I was wasting my time and I need to find a good job, blah-blah-blah.  I don't know what he exactly said because I fucking tuned out as soon as he got on me.  But I did talk back to him; I said, "You don't know that," meaning he didn't know whether I was wasting my time.  He then fell back to his martyrdom pose: "Yeah, you're right, I don't know."

Listen: I ain't makin' shit on my sportswriting or this blog or any writing I'm doing right now.  I have a job that I need to pay for things, and I need that, obviously.  But goddamn, I am happy right now.  To give all of that up for financial security and completely abandoning writing and going to coffeehouses and writing ... fuck that shit.  I'd rather die.

So, once again: Fuck You, Father.

Don't remember when, it was a few or maybe a couple months ago.  When I was flipping channels, I got to the local CW affiliate on Channel 23.  Actually, 23-1.

Absentmindedly, I hit the "channel up" button on my remote.  I thought I was going to get Channel 29, the weird-as-fuck "my" channel that appears to be the redheaded stepchild of the FOX network.  But I didn't get 29-1.

Instead, I got 23-2.  And, if I recall correctly, what I saw was the video for Rhianna's "Only Girl (In The World)."  And I'm all, What the fuck is this?  Not the song, which is awesome, IMO.  I'm talking about this channel I apparently stumbled upon.

So I kept watching.  It's something called, and this name really sucks, THECOOLTV.  They play music videos, just like MTV did before it whored itself out to reality shows to the point where they now show no music videos.  I've seen old videos, videos from new songs I like, and many videos that I don't like.  But that's all they play: videos (and, well, the occasional infomercial, but that's OK).  It's nothing more than that, but it's nothing less, and when there's nothing on TV, I can flip to that channel and see if there's something I want to watch.  Sometimes there isn't, but sometimes there is.

Also, oftentimes I switched to THECOOLTV during a commercial break and I get sucked into watching a video for a song I like that I haven't seen before, or I'm taken back to a video I remember from a long time ago.  That happens for most of the songs from the grunge nineties.  In fact, there's an hour-long block of just alternative music on Tuesday nights called "Nineties Nectar."  And even though they have a fairly long block of commercials after every two or three videos, which is annoying, for that hour I was mesmerized by all the songs whose videos they showed.  I think I remember them; here is the setlist:

1. The Wallflowers, "One Headlight"
2. Belly, "Slow Dog"
3. Nirvana, "Come As You Are"
4. Radiohead, "Karma Police"
5. Alice In Chains, "No Excuses"
6. Spin Doctors, "Two Princes"
7. Red Hot Chili Peppers, "My Friends"
8. Counting Crows, "Mr. Jones"

Takes me back to the days where I was a college student, and I professed to everybody around me that those days were the beginning of the end for me.  My God, I was such a dreamer then.

If you miss music videos, find your local THECOOLTV station.  Here in the Twin Cities we also have The Country Network which plays only, yes, country videos.  I hate country, yet I find myself watching it from time to time.  I'm not saying I'm warming to the genre.  I flip to it mostly to see if they're showing a video when THECOOLTV is showing a commercial.  It seems to happen a lot, which leads me to believe that there are more ads on THECOOLTV than on The Country Network.

The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

There's only one.  I think that's a first.

#-1: Twins (Last Week: -2).  You know, usually, a 5-2 week would be considered a great week.  But we're talking about the Twinks here, the Twinks we thought would roar to the American League Central title and then get swept by the Yankees, the Twinks that had a shitty April and May.  They're in such a hole right now and behind so many teams in the division that only a perfect week would be considered a good week, and even then we're all secretly waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It didn't help that the two losses were excruiating.  Matt Capps was given a three-run lead in the top of the 9th Saturday at home against Milwaukee and promptly choked (although Michael Cuddyer fucking up that fly ball to right didn't help matters).  And now he's a punching bag and his reputation is in tatters.  I was at the following game, the Sunday matinee.  It was thrilling to see this team bounce back from such a humiliating defeat, and it was even more heartening to come back on the Brewers like they came back on the Twins the day before (even the Brew Crew came back from a 7-0 deficit and they only came back from a 6-1 one).  But with a two-run lead in the top of the 9th, out came Capps to a chorus of boos.  And even though he has the excuse of a blown double play, he left the game with two men on -- and a chorus of boos.

Manager Ron Gardenhire turned instead to Glen Perkins, the Minnesota boy and Gopher who had been bitching about not being a starter.  And he promptly got the next two batters out to seal the win.  It was the first save of his career.  Moreover, it was the first win for reliever Phil Dumatrait, a man who I didn't know even existed until, oh, six weeks ago.

Capps again couldn't get hitters out on Tuesday, so Perkins saved his ass again and salted away a 3-2 Minnesota victory over Tampa.  Capps has righted himself since; I think he's picked up two saves.  But right now, Perkins has been the only lights-out reliever this team has, and there's a three-way race for closer; don't forget Joe Nathan, who's starting to pick up arm velocity.

In other news ... I always hate it when a team, such as the New York Yankees, seem to have the Twinks' number.  So it's always good to see that we have someone else's number.  And that is the Chicago White Sox, who are now 6-28 against Our Nine in their last 34 meetings and have lost nine in a row to them.  Moreover, the Twins are conducting an awesome home invasion: They have a 14-2 record in their last 16 games at Comiskey, including the last eight.

They've already split this series; can they go for the sweep this weekend to end the first half of the season?  After the All-Star Break, the Twins begin the second of their two long homestands this season (12 games in 11 days) when they start a series Thursday against Kansas City.

Whoa!!!  I was about to blog post something about the good things tha happened today, or the bad things, or Casey Anthony, or the News of the World.  But I see Blogger has changed its interface and everything.  Holy shit!

I don't know if I like it.

Need some time to think.  Need to sit down.  Need to stop blogging.

The Old Song I Had Never Heard Of That's Blowing Me The Fuck Away Right Now

I bitched about satellite radio a lot, and my complaints still remain. However, one of the main reasons I got it in the first place and renewed a few months ago is the variety of music I can get, and the possibility I'll listen to something awesome that I've never heard before. That's how I heard of bands like Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts, the XX, and Gil Scott-Heron.

I found another one Tuesday. On Backspin, Sirius XM's old school hip-hop channel, I heard a fucking great song from way back in 1988: "Strong Island" by JVC Force. The best thing about this boast track is the bump-bump! punctuated every four bars of a loop sampled from a 1969 R&B song by Freda Payne called "Unhooked Generation."



Goddamn I love this song.

The mosquitoes or gnats that bit the shit out of me on the 4th of July have won.  Their itchy toxicity was too much for me tonight.  While I turned on my laptop and waited for the modem to stop bugging out (it once again didn't build enough connection strength because the air conditioning's on), I passed the time by scratching the fuck out of my feet and legs.

Earlier this summer I was bit on my right arm and left wrist.  A little scratching -- I think I did it only one time, though I did it feverishly -- resulted in scabs that I can see to this day.  There will be marks I will see for a long time, maybe forever.  The very temporary relief from scratching my arm and wrist are not worth the lasting physical mutilation.  And they won't be when I see calloused red spots on my feet and legs.

Toys For Adults Aren't Adult Toys -- They're Exercise Equipment

OK, I've noticed this every time I go this particular community activity center, and it's high time I talk about it because I don't think I'll be going to this place anymore -- for monetary reasons, not for this:

As a general rule of courtesy, plus it's hygenic, plus not doing it would be fucking gross, this gym (hell, all gyms if they're worth anything) ask that you towel off after you're done using a piece of equipment.  At this fitness center there are towels and spray bottles everywhere.  There is no excuse for not using it.  Shit, I probably spend half my time there toweling off the machines I use -- after and before.

And guess what?  I'll be goddamned that no one else in the fucking gym uses it.  I have been at this place about 12-5 times and I swear I'm the only one who uses the cleaning tools and religiously wipes everything down.  A few people I see wipe, but only when they're done and usually it's in a half-ass manner.  I have seen more people use the towels to wipe themselves off.

Tonight was the final straw.  Time and again I would be working out, purposefully, on one machine, and then some douchebag would walk in, sidle up to a machine, do, like, five or ten arm curls or leg lifts, then drop the machine and walk out of the room, like he was sleepwalking.  It doesn't fucking matter if you were only using the machine for a minute -- clean your fucking sweat off!!!

And by the way, who in the hell only uses a machine for a minute, anyway?  If you really want to develop muscle and burn fat, you have to work at it, not just pick it up and then put it down like you're a toddler with a toy.  I see all these people just testing out the machines.  Maybe they have short attention spans, and once they begin their reps they forget where the fuck they are and just drop everything and go nowhere else in particular.  Now that I think about it, I find that more annoying than people not toweling off after their done with a machine.  I can avoid using those machines if I see someone using them.  But using something for 60 seconds and then just walking away?  What's the fucking use of working out if you're not going to work out.  What a waste.  Boggles my fucking mind.

The facilities are nice and all.  But this city's CAC is more expensive than the other one I go to, even though this one's a little closer.  Add that the other one is less crowded -- probably because this other CAC only has ten machines and thus doesn't get a lot of people who want to work out there -- and it looks like that once I use up the last of the ten-pack of passes I got for the CAC I went to tonight, I will be committing to the other one for the foreseeable future.  It may not be any cleaner, but I have less chance to worry about seeing other people fuck around with a machine for half a minute then quit, leaving their drug-resistant bacteria behind.

A Bad 4th Of July

I am glad I went out to my cousin's place to watch fireworks with him and his friends.  It's the first time I've ever done it, and it was about time, because it got me out of the house.  Besides, it's the 4th of July -- what the hell else are you supposed to do?

But I couldn't enjoy myself.  Two things.  First of all, we walked to a soccer field in order to get a good vantage point of the fireworks, so there were bugs biting the fuck out of my feet, my legs, my hands, my arms, and me.  It could have been mosquitoes, but I never heard that familiar "buzz," so they could be gnats.  Whatever they were, they bit me, like, two or three dozen goddamn times.  It got so bad that near the end of the half-hour presentation I stopped paying attention to the pyrotechnics and more on scratching my legs and feet.

I should have remembered my bug spray.  I left it at home, and I decided to wear my flip-flops.  Someone from my group brought some, and I used it, but I think it was too late.  Now I'll be scratching my feet and legs all night, and I have to work in the morning.

Worst of was something that has preoccupied my mind all day: I don't know where the hell my camera is.  I took it on vacation, and I printed some pictures for my parents, but Mother wants some more.  I finally found the USB to hook it up to my laptop ... but I actually realized yesterday that my camera is nowhere to be found.

I thought it'd be in the car, so I calmed myself down and waited till today to look for it in the trunk.  It's not there.  And now I'm scared.

One of the worst things about myself isn't that I forget things; it's that it can take me days, weeks, even months for me to realize I forget things.  I make a big deal of material items that I own, keeping them in my room just so I can be certain that I still have them in my possession, even if they may not necesssarily be in my line of sight.  But if I don't need them, they're out of my mind.  So if one day I suddenly decide I need them, there's a chance I wouldn't know where that item is.

Sadly, pathetically, that has happened to my camera.  I bought it for $300 several years ago.  I could upgrade it, but it's a good enough camera, and I don't have the money to splurge for yet another one.  I knew that thing, in its case, was so damn bulky my subconscious would make me not secure it to my belt so I could lose it.

But now I need to take a deep breath and calm down.  I can't have lost it.  The last time I knew I used it was the NHL Draft a little more than a week ago.  I put my case down to snap a photo of the draft logo wrap on the outside doors on one side of the Xcel Energy Center.  I wanted to make it quick because it was drizzling and it could have intensified.  Which means there are only three places it has to be:

1. I brought it inside the house, and it's either somewhere in my room, which I haven't completely scoured yet, or I brought it inside and Grandmother just took it.  I have a penchant for leaving things I bring inside the house on our living room couch, and Grandmother hovers a lot and sticks her nose into things she shouldn't.  It's possible she has it and knows where it is.  Once I'm done with my project (which should be tomorrow/today), I'll ask her.
2. It's still in my car.  There's a lot of shit in my trunk, and even though I looked, I haven't yet completely yanked every single fucking thing out of it.  Plus, it's possible I brought my camera inside the house, but I don't remember doing that.  It's been, what, only ten days since I last used it?  It's possible.
3. I lost it out in public.  Somehow I dropped it on my way to my car from the X.  There's, oh, a five percent chance that happened.  But if it did, well, I'm royally fucked.

You heard of RFID?  I think there's technology where you can stick these stickers onto items you constantly lose, then they can be tracked through an application on your smartphone.  From time to time I thought I could use that technology.  It would be something I would splurge on.

Man, it has to be somewhere around here, right?

This is why I need a cameraphone.  I'll give a damn about a camera if it's attached to a phone, I tell you what.

This Mouse Can't Play Because The Cats Aren't Away

For the first time in several years, I haven't been able to hang out with my wang out and rock out with my cock out during the holiday.  Why?  Because my parents did not go to Las Vegas this Independence Weekend.  Yeah, I know.

Apparently they're trying to make up for the thousand dollars spent going to Tuscany to see my sister get married by not going to Vegas this weekend.  Understandable, but that fucks up my mojo somethin' fierce.

They almost always go to Vegas on vacation, usually on five of The Big Six American Holidays: Memorial, Independence, Labor, Thanksgiving and Christmas.  (Since we're Chinese, they don't really give a damn about going away for New Year's.)  The last time they didn't go away for a holiday was, if I recall correctly, 4th of July Weekend five or six years ago, possibly because it occurred during the middle of the week.

With them here, I could not do the things I usually do: Cover for them at work, then go home and try to take a three-hour nap, then eat and use my laptop in the dining room, then stay out late at the stripclub where I try and take out my dick.  No rules, no expectations, no feeling that they're going to yell at me for coming home late.  It truly was an Independence Weekend for me!

But now that they're here, I'm watching what I do.  For example, I usually headed out to three stripclubs every holiday weekend, one for each night.  In recent years I curtailed it to two because I had no money.  But with the exception of sneaking into My Favorite Stripclub (No-Cover Version), which I go to always because it has no cover, I went to only one, My Favorite Stripclub (Cover Version).  I wanted to make sure Claudia, my All-Time Favorite there, knew that I was still thinking about her even though I had to be out of the country when I usually would've stopped in for a visit Memorial Weekend.

Also, I find myself feeling like I need to do things around the house in order to keep the 'Rents' bitching about me not doing shit around the house at bay.  Do I want to paint the shed?  No.  Do I want to prune the lilac bushes?  They should be done and they need to be done, but no.  Do I want to clean my room by taking out all the newspapers and alternative magazines I say I will read by never do?  Fuck no, leave them in here.  I wouldn't have to worry about doing any productive shit, but I do now that they're here.  Tonight I took an hour to hang all the laundry.  There was a gigantic pile of clothes, but I only did it because my parents were around and I believe Mother came in bringing me a bowl of this soup shit I hate drinking and saw my room was dirty and could've complained to My Father who would've framed me during dinner by asking me nicely how my day was going and then hitting me with, "So, your mother said she was in your room last night and it was very dirty.  When are you going to clean your room?"

Then again, I need to emphasize that I only feel like I need to be doing things around the house.  I have reacted to them being surprisingly here by staying away from them as much as I can.  I did go to a stripclub, a big one, Friday night, even though I usually don't do that while they're here because I'm afraid they'll catch wind of it.  (I didn't specify why I wasn't going to eat at home, I just told them I wouldn't be home.)  On Saturday I returned home in the afternoon after they did, then left after dinner to catch the Urge Overkill concert, of which I'll blog about some other time.  And even though I should have told them because it turned out they were waiting for me to come home to eat, last (Sunday) afternoon I was at the Twins game.  I knew on Friday that I could come, but I was afraid that after coming home late both Friday and Saturday nights, they'll just bitch at me for doing something fun for a third day in a row.  (Turns out they weren't too bent out of shape, or at least it appears they weren't; they wanted me to pick up Burger King on the way home, whenever I got home, because chicken sandwiches are $1.04 through Monday.)  I kind of feel bad, but I'm just so squicked out about them being here on a holiday that I want to be physically away from them.  It's just so weird for them to be here on holiday.  I'm not used to it, you know?

So what to do tomorrow?  I'm probably going to have to wake up before they come home, which probably will be early.  Either I spend my entire afternoon painting the shed and cutting down the lilac bushes, or I walk over to My Favorite Coffeeshop and just hide in there all afternoon.  Either do something or act like I'm doing something.  Just to get through another day without them judging me.

A Most Obnoxious Stripper

"My pussy's wet."

You know, when a stripper says something like that, it'd be so goddamn arousing that I'd just whip out my dick right then and there.  But there were a combinations of things that led me to react to such a blatant statement tonight with utter revulsion and ridicule.

I went to My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Version) after seeing Urge Overkill at First Avenue last (Saturday) night -- more on them and the concert later.  There she was.  I saw her once before.  She said two things to me: personal information about her and her family, and the fact that her vagina was secreting bodily fluids because she was aroused.

I couldn't figure her out that first time, which was exactly a week ago.  This time, she didn't figure me out.  She didn't know who I was and spoke to me like I was meeting her for the first time.  This is when I reminded her about what we talked about a week ago.  And after verifying that the information I relayed back to her was right, she started right in with, "You wanna touch it, don't you?"  The "it" being, of course, her purse.  No, her hotbox.

But was that a turn-on?  Fuck no!  Why?  The following reasons:

• Like I said, she didn't remember who the hell I was.
• She totally ignored what I had just said.
• Her talking up to that point were interjections -- "Huh?"  "Really?"  "Oh yeah!"  She couldn't hold a conversation.
• She wasn't great-looking.  OK, she was kind of ugly.  It's not as if she's totally heinous; she's blonde with a decent body and decent tits.  She's the kind of girl you'd see here.  But she ain't model hot.

And all those things up, and my pee-pee stays limp and tiny.  She didn't understand my negative body language and just kept talking dirty to me.  And she threatened to visit me at my chair once her stage set was done.

Very few people follow through when the say, "Maybe I'll come see you when I get down from the stage," but dammit, she did.  And she kept on going with the come-ons, even though I wanted to switch the conversation over to the concert.  One time I turned my back toward her to show the guy who decided to stand right in front of me, and she groped my ass.  Normally, I'd like it.  But because this is all she talked about, and that she seemed to be talking through me instead of to me, I find it to be highly annoying.

Then, after I got done spinning my tale (long-winded it was, but it was somewhat intentional because I kind of wanted her to buzz off), she asked me, out of the blue, "What are you thinking?"   I was thinking, get the fuck away from me, please!  But actually I started into my fantasy of getting fucked in the ass by a girl with a dildo.  She was so riveted because as soon as I closed my mouth she said, "My pussy's throbbing."  Goddammit, did you not listen to a fucking word I just said?!?!?!

So I just got straight to the point and said I didn't want a dance.  She was very understanding over my refusal, even though I didn't mind getting a dance from the right girl (which I didn't tonight).  And right before saying goodbye, she said that, yes, her girl parts were still hot.  Oh, and the reason that she seemed kind of out of it was because she had eaten a pot brownie.

Right before I left I saw her playing one of those electronic games to pass the time.  I wonder if her pussy was wet then.