Curse of the Day:
¤ May your unpleasant errands take you far from home.

Word of the Moment:
¤ Word: Janky (adj)
¤ Usage: "That movie sucked.  It was hella-janky."
¤ Synonyms: Crappy, inadequate, lame.
¤ Deviations: Jankalicious, jankitude. Fequently paired with "hella".
¤ Origin: Unknown/pop culture.  Malaya was using it regularly when I moved up here in mid-July and I'd heard it before, but hadn't really incorporated it into my vocabulary until hearing her use it frequently.
¤ Notes: Currently in heavy rotation, frequently used for comedic effect. Can be made to fit virtually all situations. -- August 5, 2003

I should have plenty to blog about, with all of the new movies I've been seeing lately.  Well, not exactly "new", but ones I haven't seen before, anyway.  In addition to the three listed but not discussed in the last blog, I just saw Ocean's Eleven yesterday, and we bought Seven and Tomb Raider I and Red Dragon recently as well, none of which have I ever seen. No real reason for this burst of movie purchasing, other than having someone to watch them with (me with Malaya, and Malaya with me) and also someone to split the cost with.  Some movie you sorta want to see for $15 or $20 seems like real money, but when you're only paying for half of it, it seems like a discount.

Malaya has already seen Tomb Raider and Seven, but we also got Ladyhawke which I like (aside from the oh-so-dated 80's air rock soundtrack) and she hasn't seen, and there are still half a dozen good movies I brought up with me that she's never seen, such as Brotherhood of the Wolf, Angelheart, Natural Born Killers, and Reservoir Dogs.

While it's likely that a movie I see will turn up in a blog mention at some point, it's less likely that the same is true for Malaya, though she does mention the entertainment we view together at times.

Just to update the computer situation, dad sent up the Win98 CD and all is well.  Or at least pretty good, since we were able to use the Win98 CD to reinstall and fix the problems on the second computer, and make it fully functional again.  WinXP still refuses to install, giving some janky "C drive is corrupted" error, which just means that some obscure piece of hardware in the tower is incompatible with Windows, since the C drive works fine, and the processor and RAM and disk space are all sufficient for WinXP to work with.  We're happy enough with Win98 to tolerate it for the immediate future, at least when the alternative is to go out and buy a new motherboard and processor and hope that fixes the mystery problem. Plus this way we get our $54 each back from the $108 that XP cost us last week at Fry's.  That's like half a dozen new DVDs!

Then again, if we're going strictly by blog space per dollar, the XP was a pretty good investment since I've talked about it for 5 or 6 updates, while I only get a blog out of about every other normal DVD I watch.

A recent reader email, replying to another recent reader email.

Regarding that e-mail on August 3rd:

I can't even begin to tell you how much that e-mail depresses me. I have been a huge fan of Tool and Bill Hicks (the comedian he so cleverly quotes a few times) for years. It's really shocking that he can be this stupid, especially since both Tool and Bill Hicks are very sarcastic. I don't see how anyone with such a lack of a sense of humor can like a band like Tool (watch an interview with the lead singer of Tool and listen to all the backhanded compliments he gives... just about everyone). 

I guess I'm just trying to say that he does not represent the majority of Tool fans.

-Josh-

P.S. I wonder if he actually thought he was being clever with that "N*Suck" comment. 

Of course the real irony, something that I didn't bother to mention in my post, is that I had two Tool albums in my current 120ish mp3 track selection on WinAmp.  Malaya enjoyed relating this fact in her blog on the 4th, and one of my greatest joys in reading the regular parade of rather dumb emails I get (mostly at the D2 site) is the joy of sharing them with her.  While I just sort of chuckle or glance and delete, she tends to hold her head and make moaning noises, since she's been doing this sort of "accept emails from the general public" thing for much less time than I have, and is therefore still easily-impressed and dismayed by how dumb some of the people who mail me are.

She's also harder on people than I am, and when someone mails me at the D2 site to relate their amazing new game discovery, which is almost invariably something the rest of us have known about since approximately the D2 beta test (3 years ago), she often goes off on a cursing jag about how people have no damn common sense, while I just laugh and move on.  You really can get used to anything, I've found.

One other mail, one that came in from Tim, and that he sent to one @blackchampagne.com email, and then another one six hours later.  Just so you all know, you can email anything@blackchampagne.com and I'll get it. And I mean "anything" literally.  If it's got __________@blackchampagne.com after it, I'll get it. I just have a bunch of different mails so I can use the "to" line to figure out what page someone was reading when they mailed me, since people so seldom include the URL that generated their comment, especially when it's one of the archive pages, or articles, or other non-current non-front page topics.

Anyway, Tim just found out about "vore" fetishes, and is all worked up.

All right, where to start. Well since I saw (I think it was your 4th) article on D2 I have been reading your D2 articles and loved them. No this is not a letter begging for more, I like your writing about non-D2 things much more since I hardly play it anymore. So why am I writing you?

Well it is something I think you should have on the sex slang page at the least but you could write a bit of an article on it too (I was going to on my site but it scared the shit out of me.) I'm talking about vore, the strangest fetish I have ever heard of. I've heard of fucking goats, I've seen things I wanted to gouge my eyes out because of (a movie about Nazi's controlling a killer magic elf will do that to you) but nothing has been this weird. Vore, being sexually aroused by women getting eaten, not by men, that’s just cannibalism, no by fantasy beasts! Like half tigers half octopuses or gargoyles, eating people, what the shit! Google "vore stories" if you don't belive me. Don't worry about pictures though, the crazy half tigers don't exist but there are some cute crayon drawings of them on the sites. My first thought was oh god, and I felt unclean, some how though I felt obligated to pass this along so the rest of the world can have a good laugh, or cry, or both, I'm sure the vore lovers wouldn't mind.

No, there isn't anything you can possibly think of that someone doesn't find sexually arousing.  Vore obviously isn't all that common a fetish, but it really does exist, and not just in cartoons and fantasies, it's happened in real life.  There was a case about it some months ago where a German guy recruited another guy via the Internet and ended up killing and eating him.  Really, the trial has been ongoing, and I saw a news item about it some weeks ago that said the eater had rejected half a dozen people before he found the guy he eventually did screw, kill, and eat.  Some guys (he was gay) were too fat, or ugly, or whatever, and he wasn't going to vore just any slob off the street, apparently.

Anyway, here is a photo of one demonstration.  We had a chance to talk to this woman afterwards, and found out that she was not just using a big damn knife, but a real one, not just one of the shiny aluminum demons blade that couldn't cut a flight attendant's throat, which was what most of the other people were using for their displays.  Like most of the demonstrations, hers was non-combat, and of the type that I thought of as "more athletic Tai Chi with props".  Pretty to look at and I'm sure difficult to do with the proper forms and body control and all of that, but still essentially a lot of slow-motion arm and leg waving and posing, with musical accompaniment.

The fact that most of the women doing their cute little prancing routines could use those same moves at higher speed to beat the crap out of me is irrelevant, and I'll thank you for not bringing that up.  You should also not mention how much I want to learn to do that sort of thing and how much I enjoy doing my own utterly amateurish and improvised Tai Chi moves now, when the mood takes me.

And here is a shot of a nice demonstration by two masters at their discipline. Both women were at least 50 years old, and they were frighteningly fast with the sword and staff, and landed numerous nasty hits to each other.  There were at least half a dozen demonstrations from groups who used sparring weapons and pads and sparred no contact; you could very clearly hear wooden staves cracking into pads and helmets from 20 feet away.  It looked like a lot of fun.

Malaya and I are still debating what discipline we want to get into, and she's been looking online for classes in the area.

If we put one in the ball on the carpet, they just sit there, hardly moving at all.  If we put them in on a hard surface, such as the kitchen floor, they roll around constantly.  Well, "rock" is probably a more accurate description, since they don't actually move anywhere, in a rolling fashion.  They just sort of stand still while moving like a small craft in a choppy sea, up and down and side to side and on and on.  I suspect they must be getting seasick in there, the way they sway constantly, but I don't think rats can puke.  At least I've never seen one do it.

In theory, they could scoot around at a high rate of speed.  They both run in the wheel in their cage, though it's got a bit larger radius than this ball does. But neither of them have shown any directed movement in the ball, other than sporadic aimless wandering in a downhill direction on the back patio.

We've been putting them into the ball for 10 or 15 minute sessions on a pretty-regular basis, but there's no sign of any real improvement or change in their movement as of yet.  I think we'll probably need to buy some younger rat(s), or have a litter born, and raise some young ones who are put into the wheel all the time, so they'll grow up used to it, and will motor around the apartment like second nature.

Dusty has no idea what to make of the rats in the ball, and he sniffs intently, but has yet to try to whack at them or try to get to them.  Of course that's pretty much the same thing he does when he sees one of the rats ouft of the ball and just sitting on someone's hand, but then he's not the brightest of kitties.

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