Bat Attack

As you may recall my car had a little run in with a bat back on the 26th of July, well the other night we had some more bat news. My family stumbled upon a dead bat on our porch. Damn that is a creepy little animal. The weirdest thing about it, is the way he had a smile on his face. And yes I know it was a he, you could see his little bat balls up close, although I don't think they're noticeable in the pictures. While we were trying to decide what to do with the bat it disappeared. We left it over night with the intention of burying it the next day, but it was gone. Apparently something ate it, we do have foxes and coyotes in the area, but it freaks me out to think they climbed a flight of stairs and came on to our porch to supper.

You can kind of see his smile in that picture, but the light was low and my hand unsteady so most of the pictures look like blurry crap.
This picture is a bit clearer, but as you can see it is upsidedown, but that's the way bats like it.




And here are some cute kittens to offset the dead bat.

Death of a planet.

Pluto you had a good run, but you are a planet no more. You have been demoted to some other sort of space rock. I am sorry, you were a planet for 76 years, that's better than the moon, and he's bigger than you. Perhaps sometime down the road in a more enlightened society we will recognize your beauty and grace once more, making you a planet for the ages.

Mazda's overboard.

I don't know how many of you read about the car carrier vessel that was in the process of rolling over in the northern pacific, so I'll update you. There is a very large boat, carrying about 5,000 Japanese vehicles, mostly Mazda 3 and CX-7 models, and it looked as if it were going to sink. See.


Well it looks like luck was on its side (no pun intended), because the vessel was able to safely make it to Wide Bay, Alaska. Although salvor work, the coast gaurd, and nautical mishaps are intriguing, what really got me were the pictures of the ship in harbour. They are absolutly breath taking, check 'em out, there are 36 of them. I'd love to join the coast guard and work at sea, but I just can't imagine putting my life of hold for about 4 years to do so. But, thats a story for another day.

As you can see above, inspite of the fact the vessel did make it safely to harbour, I would recomend against buying a Mazdaspeed 3 or Mazda CX-7 in th near future.

A couple of things.

I don't think I could imagine a worse weekend for the Red Sox. Loosing 4 straight to the Yankees? Two of those games they should have won, this is a disaster. I have never seen anything like it, at least not from the Red Sox. They are falling apart, along with my heart (sorry to sound sappy, but it's true). They're already 5 1/2 games back, and I don't see them making up that difference the way they're playing right now. Hell, they might as well throw in the towel.

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It looks like the West African Black Rhino has gone extinct. I had assumed that after the last century and a half we had gotten out act together, and didn't allow for this sort of stuff to happen any longer. Perhaps I'm too optimistic, but I hope the same thing doesn't happen to the Northern White Rhino, of which there are only 4 known examples. I don't know how you can get a species to survive with enough genetic diversity with only 4 examples, but I hope it can be done. From what I've read it seems that political unrest is the main culprit behind the decline of both species.

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Finally, it looks as if Steve Carell has at last made a funny movie. Little Miss Sunshine is damn funny. I can't stand Steve Carell, it seems as if everything he does is exactly like the last thing he did. The only two exceptions to that rule at the second season of The Office, and this movie. It took him a while to find his stride for The Office, but he did, and he is making it work. This movie is so well written that not even he can screw it up. The film is in limited release for the time being, but if you get the chance to go see it, and you like quirky films, take the time to find a theatre where it is showing. (Off Topic, sort of) Steve Carell will be starring in a forthcoming Get Smart film.

Future Jobs.

Although I've been happily self employed as a title search for the last 4 years (this month), I've been thinking of starting a new job, soon. I'm almost done with college, I have 1, 2 or maybe more years left, I've really got no idea. But, I won't let that slow me down. In order to better help me think of a future job, not carreer, I've made this list of things I'd like to do (mostly as a fantasy).

1. Drive a truck, a big 18 wheeler.
2. Be a flight attendant.
3. Work on a fishing boat.
4. Join the merchant marines.
5. Work at a radio station.
6. Drive a cab.
7. Tend bar.
8. Be a personal trainer.
9. Work in a music club.
10. Projector operator at a movie theatre.
11. That guy that uses the spotlight up in the rigging at a concert.
12. Anything at Disney.
13. Peanut/ Beer/ Pretzel guy at Fenway.


I'm sure there are others, and I may just add some more later, but those are the jobs I want. I just think most of those jobs would be fun, at least for a little while.

Disappointment.

Have you ever wanted something more than anything else in the world, only to either get it, or encounter it, and end up completely hating it? That happened to me today. I was standing outside my fathers office about to get in my car when a Lamborghini Diablo drove by.

Growing up, I had 4 posters on the walls in my bedroom. One featured a whole bunch of jets (not the football team), another a whole bunch of whales and other assorted cetaceans, another featured a Lamborghini Countach, but my favorite was my poster of a red Lamborghini Diablo. To me this was the greatest car ever. My dream was to be a pro baseball player so I could have enough money to buy a Diablo. I gave up baseball, I never gave up the dream of owning a Lamborghini, even if it wasn't the Diablo.

Back to the Diablo I saw today. I've seen plenty of cool cars on the road, including Lamborghinis. Just last autumn I saw a Miura and a Countach in the same day. I thought they both looked great. Everything about them was perfect. Even with though the Countach is one of the ugliest cars of all time, I loved it; because it's a good ugly, it's a wonderful ugly, it's the best ugly there is. Sadly the Diablo was just plain ugly. Something about it didn't tug on those heartstrings the way it did when I was 10. Not only did it look terrible, it sounded terrible. I know it has a massive V12 engine, but it sounded like farm equipment, it sounded like a Tractor. (And I'm not just saying that because Lamborghini started off as a Tractor company.) Nothing about the Diablo was as I wished it to be. Another dream down the drain.

PS: I'm pretty sure I also saw an Aston Martin DB2 (circa mid '50s) today, but that seems rather unlikely due to their rarity.

Thank You Very Much Mr. Thomas.

Not to sound like Jerry Seinfeld, but What's the deal with English Muffins? They're not even muffins. They are to muffins, what animals crackers are to regular crackers. But that is neither here nor there, my real problem has to do with the impossibility of separating the muffin in half. It is the only bread product that I know that requires the use of a fork to cut it in half? Why can't we just use a knife like with everything else?



As you can see I didn't have any luck with that muffin. I'd say a good 90% of my English Muffins end up looking like that or worse. I should talk to my grandmother; opening an English Muffin seems like the kind of thing a grandmother would be good at. (I know it is grammatically incorrect to end a sentence with "at" but deal with me here.) Regardless of their impossible nature, I will continue to eat English Muffins slathered in butter and then topped with Cloudberry jam. It's like dessert.

Sorry Baby Hitler.

If you were planning on raising you kid in Malaysia I hope you weren't planning to name you kid Adolf Hitler, or Stalin, because those names have been banned. Recently Malaysia has banned a number of names due to their "unsuitable" quality.

Some of the names on the list:
Adolf Hitler
Stalin
Ah Gong (unsound mind)
Chai Too (pig)
Kai Chai(chick)
Sum Seng (gangster)
Ah Kow (dog)
Karruppan (black fellow)
Zaniah (female adulterer)
Batumalai (stone hill)
Ah Kow (dog)

In addition to that you'll no longer be allowed to name you child after Japanese car companies, or car models. No more baby Honda, Suzuki, Toyota, or Nissan.
Numbers are also out of the question. Say goodbye to 007, 001, and K7.

Why would anyone want to give their kids these names to begin with? Could you imagine going home and having to tell your parents or in-laws that you named their grandchild Adolf Hitler?

I know many girls here in the states have already decided upon about 15 baby names by the time they reach the 5th grade, but do you think Malaysian girls are the same way? Is little Zaniah sitting there in primary school dreaming of a child named "Black Fellow" or "Gangster"? I hope not.

The Aficionado

*Sorry for the delay, I've been super busy, and I wanted this post to be JUST right.*


Have you ever received a gift that you hated at first? But then you fell in Love with it? Well I did this past Christmas. I was 20 at the time, and assumed my days of over the top Christmas' were over. I have 5 younger siblings, 3 of which are under 10, and I simply assumed their time had come. I was wrong. Sitting there Christmas morning, next to the Christmas tree, was a giant box, with my name on it. I thought it was just a big empty box with a little gift in it; perhaps a new iPod. What it was, was The Aficionado by Haier.



Initially I was disappointed. Why in the hell would I want a mini-fridge, even if it was a very large mini-fridge. But, I grew to love The Aficionado. It is like a child to me. I use it to keep things cool, or cold, and sometimes I even freeze stuff in it. Currently The Aficionado is close to empty. I have been neglecting her. As you can see in the photo it is lacking food. All I’ve got are beverages, condiments and jams.



Aficionado Inventory:
1 half empty 2 liter bottle of Polar brand Birch Beer
1 half empty bottle of Nantucket Nectar Lemonade
2 12oz Carlsberg
1 bottle of Domaine Ste. Michelle sparkling wine
1 bottle Wish Bone Romano Basil Vinaigrette
1 bottle Maple Grove Farms Asiago & Garlic dressing
1 jar of Lingonberry Jam, purchased at ikea
1 jar of Cloudberry preserve, purchased at ikea
4 bottle of Nestle water
1 roll of film

And that’s just what is inside The Aficionado, if we explore the surface we come across even more.

1 half empty bottle of Fresca
1 Campbell’s Soup at Hand
1 bottle Kikkoman brand soy souce
2 bottles of McCormick seasoning: Garlic Salt & Cilantro Leaves
840g of Beef Bullion cubes
1 Crystal Light packet
1 package of Lipton Pasta Sides: Alfredo
1 packet of developed film
There is also two cameras, a frog shaped Easter Basket, 7 lala envelopes, and a chopper.



Recently I thought I killed The Aficionado. I was relaxing in the black chair you can see in the photo, and I put my feet up on the white box next to The Aficionado, and suddenly it started making this horrible noise. I didn’t know what I had done, but I was convinced The Aficionado was dying. It wouldn’t shut up, it made this noise for about 15 minutes. And trust, even 15 seconds of this noise was enough to make you leave the room. When it did stop, it only did so briefly. I had to deal with the same noise on and off for about a week. Then one night (Sunday night) I was having trouble sleeping, it was one of those nights where you go in and out of sleep before you fall asleep for good. I finally did fall asleep, only to have The Aficionado wake me up after about an hour of sleep at 4am. I lost it. I was going to kill The Aficionado. I got out of bed in the dark, and was looking for this plug. I didn’t care about my food, errr, water and condiments, it had to stop. In the dark I couldn’t find the damn plug, and decided to just throw my shoulder into the side of the beast. It worked. The Aficionado shut up, and hasn’t made a peep since.



I hope that when I finally move out, which I hope will be soon, The Aficionado will find a place in my new place.

Don't forget to keep up to date with The Aficionado Here.