Sure, not all drug-users are this stupid, but it's still funny:

Dope gets suspects in big trouble at cop party

Both of these appeared on today's AP wire as spooled by Excite, with just one other story separating them:

• Snowballs Replace Bullets as Snow Hits Holy Land
• Man Charged with Shooting Girl Over Snowball Fight

Which trumps which, the dichotomy or the irony?

Because it pleases me to share these things with friends:

The horror of blimps.

Someone here at work turned me on to Yahoo!'s Text Twist game (requires Java, and despite the disclaimer it does work under Linux at least). I was prepared to say that I only play it occassionally, you know, to clear my head once in a while. That's all.

I had to leave it up in a browser window Friday, because I had to be somewhere else, and I wasn't going to lose potential high-scoring game. I've now stayed nearly an hour past work-time, just to finish the game. But hey, I ended up with a score of 167,830.

I'm not even pretending that I'm not an addict on this one.

This weekend was a major set-back in terms of the diet. Lots of Krispy Kremes were consumed, as well as a noteworthy amount of deep-fried foods. To my detriment, Jack in the Box has added a new sandwich to their menu, a grilled chicken breast in a Chipotle sauce. Yes, the chicken is probably not too bad (fatty levels notwithstanding), but I'm pretty sure that JinB will have found a way to counteract any real nutritious value the sandwich might have otherwise had.

And yet, I can always find something that either outright cheers me up, or at least reassures me that my sins were not as dire as they seem. In this case, the saving grace comes from someone else's blog at use.perl.org:

The Worst Breakfast. Ever.

You must see the nutrition panel from the box-end to truly understand how egregious this product is.

I bought some dirt-cheap software for my Windows box off the discount table at a local store. I got the Concise Oxford Dictionary, Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Thesaurus of English and World Encyclopedia (the latter three share a pop-up interface called iFinger).

I installed the COD, and just now when I started it up, it (randomly?) opened up on the definition of repetitive strain injury. Somehow, I doubt that it was random.

I've been a huge fan of Margaret Cho since seeing her in 10-minute spots on MTV's old "Half-Hour Comedy Hour" series. This is her second concert film, and it's killing me. Less than half-way through, and I've already damn near hyperventilated twice.

Talented, intelligent and so very, very funny. You can't ask for more than that in a person.

A co-worker of slightly-managerial capacity asked me on Friday how my current project could be made any less stressful. I answered that I needed the following, roughly in order:

1. One round-trip ticket to CENSORED, same-day preferable.
2. One aluminum baseball bat.
3. Address of, and directions to, the offices of CENSORED.
4. An alibi, or at the very least plausible deniability.

After some thought, said manager pointed out that since we don't have a company softball team it would be difficult to expense the baseball bat.

Like I said, I've been steadily (if slowly) losing weight by watching my diet fairly carefully. As a result of this, my jeans now fall neatly into two categories:

1. Those I've had six months or more, which are slightly loose-fitting and have a tendency to work their way down if I forget to wear a belt.
2. Those I've bought within the last three months, which are the next size smaller, and are just a hair too tight around the waist.

I've never been the sort to wear any article of clothing I didn't need, solely for the sake of fashion. So I'm not used to wearing belts on a regular basis, since I hadn't needed them for so long. Even now, I only need a belt for half of my collection of jeans.

Of course, in another month or so, I should fit into the smaller ones more comfortably, and the larger ones will just have to be replaced. Or so I hope it goes.

On the rare occassions that I actually rent porn (which is far more infrequent than you would think, if you were to judge me solely by my often-inappropriate sense of humor), I usually have trouble picking a tape out. It's not that I'm picky, and I'm hardly an expert on the subject. But if I'm in the mood for that, I want there to be something about it that interests me.

And when I get the DVD home and it's scratched beyond playability, I'm in no mood for returning it and going through the selection process again.

My dearth of writing here lately is due to a lot of factors, but one big factor has been an upsurge in the amount of time I've been playing games. In particular, CivIII and my MAME installation (MAME is on my Linux laptop).

I play a lot more than I'd like to be, just because it feels like wasted time afterwards. I enjoy it at the time, but it's kind of an empty feeling when the game is shut down.

Still, I did just win the Space Race at Regent level in CivIII, playing the new Ottoman tribe from the CivIII expansion pack. That must surely count for something.

I'm not especially happy with the way I look, particularly my weight. And my schedule and lifestyle have never really lent themselves to a good regimen of exercise, either natural or at a gym. So for the last year or so, I've been trying to make the changes where I could, in my diet.

I'm not a very good diet-person, if the diet is framed in terms of all the things I can't eat. I've proven that to myself on too many occassions to count. So I've taken the approach of trying to improve what I do eat, instead. Rather than thinking about what isn't allowed, I look for really enticing foods that are allowed. And I permit myself to cheat, without guilt. If I only lose 4 pounds in a month rather than 6, hey, I've still lost 4 pounds.

So it was with this in mind that I went grocery shopping this past Monday. I planned a good meal for that night, heavy on the protein and light on the carbs. I also got the ingredients for an interesting salmon/pasta dish from a new cookbook (more on that in a few). But when I got home, I realized that I had left work so late, and taken enough time looking at nutrition labelling and all at the store, that it was nearly 9:30p, and I was just too damn tired to do all the prep as well as the cooking.

So I threw a frozen pizza in the oven.

In other news, I recently picked up a really interesting cookbook, called The Whole Foods Market Cookbook: A Guide to Natural Foods. It's got me looking not just at vegetarian recipes, but vegan ones as well. I've never thought I could find vegan dishes that held the promise of enough flavor to give up my cherished meat. But I'll be giving some of these a try over the next few weeks.