I went to the gym yesterday. It was good. I got my heart rate way the hell up– somewhere around 180. I think this was partly due to disgust at seeing the Alka-Seltzer World Championships of Competitive Eating on the TV. I saw this man whose claim to fame was eating 1.5 gallons of chili in fifteen minutes, and I thought, I must run faster.
Then Sports Illustrated came on with a football-themed commercial. The URL was SinflOffer.com. That’s almost as good as PooLife, the pool chemical company.
C: damn i wish i could get myself to blog regularly
Verbal: the secret is a high-fiber cereal.
C: Hahaha.
Verbal: Several of my friends have signed themselves up for a “content challenge,” where they post at least once every day for a month, and it has to be real content– no quizzes, no random links to the NYT without at least some good commentary.
C: I bet your friends are “writers.”
Verbal: I don’t know what most of them do, actually. I’ve only met two of them. They’re just blogs I read. Does that count as friends?
Yes, this review of El Bullí is on a website called Food Tourist. And this one from the Guardian is equally insane. Well, what can you do? I emailed and asked if a table was available in case of cancellation.
But I repeat myself. I think I’ve posted on this topic before. Do I repeat myself?
Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I contain multitudes. There will be time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. There will be coffee spoons. There will be wine. There will be vitamins and echinacea and exercise and Serrano ham.
My friends say, bring back a leg of illegal ham. Bring back a bottle of illegal booze. Bring back a funny wooden mask with mystical powers, or possibly termites. Bring back a case of syphilis, the red light district is full of sailors. They should, you know, they go from port to port.
Over the years, my girlfriend has accumulated a variety of unwanted gifts. They can’t be gotten rid of, but they can’t be kept, either. The cut-glass figurine of a cat (“she has a cat, she must like cat statuettes!”). Inspirational books like “I can’t accept not trying” by Michael Jordan, and a book for college graduates with a picture of the last pope on it, apparently because every college graduate needs sentimental pope-paraphernalia. They live in the box of guilt under the bed, where they will not be spotted by friends, but where they can be found in case of an emergency visit by the relative of origin. This weekend we plan to bite the bullet and ebay the more saleable items.
Earlier, I complained about people asking too much for used bikes. I still think that four grand is an awful lot for a 3rd-hand Ducati Monster 620 dark that’s been in a wreck, but according to the price guide it’s not as far out of line as I suspected.
I’ve determined that today’s route to Waltham was not the most optimal.
Sure, tools for ad-blocking and checking the weather and seeing if there’s a new version of the app are all well and good. They do not compare to the Stop! Hammertime! button. It replaces the boring ‘stop’ button with a HAMMERTIME button, which does something MUCH MUCH BETTER than actually stopping. Requires sound.
I finished the Half-Blood Prince on Friday night– Bookdwarf had company over, but I was hidden in the bedroom with the air conditioning and Harry Potter. For the last hundred pages or so she came in every few minutes to see where I was, and if I was crying.
I didn’t cry.
Dear MTV.Com:
I just watched the MADE episode where Samantha is made into a Girly-girl (off-schedule; I have TiVO). The show said, check mtv.com for more. So, I:
* Visited MTV.COM
* Switched from Firefox to Internet Explorer
* Installed a new Flash upgrade
* Rebooted
* Visited the MTV Overdrive
* Crashed my browser
* Restarted my browser
* Visited MTV Overdrive
* Discovered that Overdrive Life After Made only shows info for the latest MADE episode.
That’s an awful lot of work for a disappointment.
Note: the same lack of episode information applies to Pimp My Ride: what was fan reaction to that C-10 Truck they put all those monitors into? I just spent most of this afternoon watching Pimp My Ride on Tivo and I want to know how Heather has fared with a truck that no longer holds her garden implements because it’s so full of electronics, and what fan reaction was!
Look, I know my life is empty. But your website doesn’t help me in my quest to forget that fact. I’m going back to beer.
Yours,
Verbal at Secretly Ironic Dot Com
OK, so, I resisted it as long as I could, but I have started reading the latest Harry Potter installment. I managed to avoid reading any of them until last year, well after Phoenix came out. And now I’ve managed to wait all of six days before, last night, giving in and reading the first couple chapters.
My current guesses as to who dies in the end: I don’t know about the “central character death” but I’m thinking, there have to be some additional collateral fatalaties. For one, Voldemort. He dies at the end of all the other books, too, so he’s got to die in that one. Also that French girl. This is a novel by a Brit, after all– the French can’t go so well in this one either.
I kind of hope Hermione gets it, though. Not sure why.
Secretly Ironic 