Doesn't anybody remember what happens in Atlas Shrugged?

"The plan would temporarily remove the tax drivers pay on gas for the summer, and shift that burden to oil companies that earn “enormous” profits. An average profit would be calculated for the oil companies, and anything over 10 percent higher than that average would be taxed 50 percent." (article here)

That's Clinton's idea, which anyone with a brain realizes discourages oil companies from being productive, i.e. from being able to keep the cost of gas from going up. What a fucking moron.

Let's get to the bottom of this

What are they called?

You know what you can use

instead of a flash light when you forget where you put it? You laptop screen!

Buffalo Wings Last Night Were Delicious!

More too much X-Files?

Yesterday I came down with a cold, so I left work an hour early and watched four episodes of the X-Files and went to sleep. I was sweating and tossing and turning, all night I was dreaming about evidence I had of aliens and trying to figure out how to interpret it and use it to prove it to everyone. All Night Long.

Two views I don't understand

This morning on the bus this lady was talking to the bus driver about how life is hard because prices are going up all over the place. She said, "Well, there's nothing I can do about it." Hopelessness infuriates me to the point of losing my appetite. I don't know her life story, maybe she's really doing all she can, but I actually don't know anybody in Lithuania besides myself and my wife who works two jobs (I'm not at the moment, but I do regulary find extra work, in small chunks or big ones). Are prices restricting your consumption? If you produce more, then you can consume more.

This brings me to a quotation from an article I read yesterday: "One thing is certain, the world has consumed more than it has produced" over the last three years, [U.N. Chief Ban] said.

That's a very interesting claim. Let's figure it out. One man cannot consume more than produced except by four ways: (1) credit from the bank or (2) charity, including government handouts, alms, help from friend and family, or (3) gambling, in which I include cashing in on insurance policies (gambling on your health), or (4) thievery. Besides these things, a man who earns $N can consume $N worth of goods, no more. A man of course has much access to those things, the proportions ranging throughout areas of the world: more credit in America, more government handouts in Europe, and more thievery elsewhere. So many people do consume more than they produce, a system I consider to be unnatural.

But how can the world consume more than it produced? The world is not getting any handouts, unless you consider solar power to be a handout, but we're not taking advantage of it anyway. We're not cashing in on insurance for sure, nor do we have the capability to gamble with or steal from (or tax) other planets or moons (yet). So what's the deal then? The only thing I can think of is that we consumed more by consuming everything we produced plus some of our saving from before three years ago. That's plausable, but entities with high savings are only goverments and only let's say 1% of people with significant savings; that's a liberal guestimate, since "currently, there are over 9 million residents around the globe classified as millionaires," which is just over 0.15% of the population. And if it's governments it only counts as "savings" if it was aquired more than three years ago: if it's from the past three years of tax revenues, then it's the producation of citizens which equals the consumtion of government handouts.

Am I missing something? Maybe I am, I haven't had a cup of coffee in ten months. If the world's been getting so much charity from governments and millionairs that we've been able to consume more than we produce for three years, we ought to be very grateful! I haven't noticed any movements, though, to celebrate and praise the rich and governments.

Family Guy

Anybody interested in everyday objects that remind people of Family Guy, click here!

I didn't even have to use my winter lining when I pulled out my trench coat for the rainy season

My DVD remote is broken, so I can't watch anything that requires navigating the menu: this includes all movies I've purchased in Lithuania, and most tv show dvds (if you want to watch more than the first episode). I watched X-Men 2, which I like, a few days ago. I thought maybe I'd been too hard on X-Men 3, so I decided to give it another try. Big mistake. Everything I wrote then was true, plus I notices many glaring inconsistencies. S t u p i d . . .

Vegetarian Day

Yesterday I ate no meat or fish all day, which is a first. This happened because my breakfast during the warm periods of the year is yoghurt, and lately I've been bringing my lunch from home, usually salad and black bread, I buy a liter of kefir every day at work. I had three tortillas left over from making quesadillas with Liepa that I had to use up for dinner. I didn't want to make beef ones again, and my special lady, who is not a bean fan, was not around. I decided to make them with beans, as most recipes suggest, even though I didn't have black beans; I used red. Very tasty.

Today I will eat the meat of two different kinds of animals to make up for yesterday's lapse.

Number One Guest At My Next Tea Party

Liepa was staying over for a couple days while participating in a conference in Klaipeda. Yesterday I went to make breakfast and she said she would make the tea. After we ate she tasted her brew and said, "Duh, I don't think you're gonna like it...tastes like soap. It was sposedta be orchid vanilla." So I took a look at the package she took it out of. The name of the product was written thusly:

O r c h i d V a n i l l a
Garment Fragrance Soap

Pop Quiz

Their homework for the past six days was to learn where the 50 states are (to fill state names and capitols into a U.S. map). I didn't expect anybody to get more than 10 or 20 correct, but I was surprised by one quiz. Just five states were filled in:

Washington was filled in as "Washington"
New Mexico was filled in as "CA"
California was filled in as "Mexico"
Arizona was filled in as "Cuba"
Texas was filled in as "Tokio"

Sometimes I think to myself, wait, am I training these students to be class teachers or court jesters? Searching for the answer I found this page of funny town names in America. The winners are:

Monkey's Eyebrow, AZ
Why, AZ
Hygiene, CO
Two Egg, FL
Experiment, GA
Santa Claus, IN
Beebeetown, IA (that's even funnier in Lithuanian)
Krypton, KY
Mummie, KY
Mud Lick, KY
Petroleum, KY
Plain Dealing, LA
Waterproof, LA
Boring, MD
California, MD
Crappo, MD
Hell, MI
Hot Coffee, MS
Horseheads, NY(also even funnier in Lithuanian, that's a derogotive for Latvians)
Boston, TX
Old Boston, TX
New Boston, TX

Too much X-Files?

Last night I was deserted in my aunt's house in New Haven, which was currently on a desserted island. I knew I would be able to forage for food for a while until I was discovered, but first I would have to survive an attack by the worst student I ever had. I was looking frantically for a good weapon in the kitchen, but all the knives were too flimsy. I chose something like a scepter, but long, like a broomstick. Then I heard her coming. I ran out to the stairway, and saw her and her boyfriend coming up the stairs. I lunged at them in slow motion, still deciding how best to attack. He retreated a bid down the stairs, moving back under me, while she was frozen in place. I smashed the scepter into her face as I moved out of slow motion, and then smashed him and her again, and so forth in a croutching tiger fashion, until they were incapacitated and I made sure they were dead by smashing them further, conncurent with an episode of the X-Files I watched yesterday. And then I woke up.

April Fools Day Pranks

Both my pranks succeeded, one was stupid and the other one was good enough to merit a phone call.

Stupid: I went to meet my special lady after work, and I called her to come down way too early, obviously, since she knew I'd left work only two minutes ago. So she had to wait for me outside instead of in her office.

Good: I made up an email address with my special lady's boss's name and from it sent my special lady this joke of new office rules which was a pretty funny April fool's day joke in itself. So she and her colleague who share the work email address thought it was their boss writing and so wrote back very politely about how funny it was, and told all their friends at work about how funny it was that their boss sent them this thing. I wrote back inviting them for a drink towards the end of the work day. They then gossiped to all those friends about what a goof their boss must be, to not know that the school's emails are public, visible on all school computers!

Last night I left the cat out of the bag, but she still didn't get it when I said, "So why didn't you go for that drink with your boss?" She only got it when I yelled "APRIL FOOLS!!!" Then she immediately had to go call her colleague and laugh hysterically.

McCain is Ha Ha Funny

This was quite a good bit on the late show! I'm pretty sure McCain wrote the jokes himself.

New Job

Yesterday I spend the day in Vilnius because in the evening I had to attend an anniversary birthday party for my master's paper sponsor. I could only stay shortly, because I had to get back to my job that I hate in the city I'm tired of in the country that has an endless overabundance of laws the same night. But the great thing that happened was earlier...

During the day I met with my colleague Leif (pronounced "Life") from Denmark. I visited him and gave guest lectures a year and a half ago. We were talking about a project we've been working on, and I told him the person he wanted to coordinate the foreign language part of it is out on maternity leave. He told us that he also has an English teacher who will be on leave next year and that they've been having a very hard time finding a replacement, since according to their curriculum they need a native speaker. Jokingly I asked if my master's degree would qualify me for the job...he called his headmaster, who remembered me from last year, and, pending receipt of my CV, hired me! They've got a partner school where their students do practice where he said my special lady can probably get a job and my special baby can definitely go to kindergarten. And if she can't get a job there, I met somebody from the Language Center in Stockholm where they have Lithuanian language programs, so, I'm confident anybody fluent in Lithuanian/Russian/French/English will be able to get herself some income. And, he said I could pursue my doctoral studies there for free since I'll be working there, nice! I'm gonna try to do a degree in international education management, which will be a bit of a custom course, I hope I can pull it together.

Excellent pizza, here I come!


UPDATE: It took 19 days, but I finally fooled someone!
Rachel wrote me in an email, "that Denmark opportunity sounds amazing, I hope it works out for you guys :-)"
Well Rachel, April Fools!

UPDATE: I've added photos to the last three blog entries. I'll give a fiver to the first person who can guess which four of the Easter Eggs were made by me.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I posed this same question to my students, with the prize as getting to skip the next quiz. The chance of winning with random guessing is 1 in 5,040. I only have fifteen students, so I guess the chance of one of them winning is 1 in 336 (I can't remember if that's how the calculation goes). One did win and got to walk out on the quiz that day.

Easter Feaster Day 2

On the second day of Easter we made these fabulous recipes:

scotch eggs

carrot raisin cake with irish cream frosting

The Scotch Eggs I first tasted at Dubliner, a Vilnius pub Gedas took me to, so I made them because of all the left over eggs and because Gedas was coming over that day. And the carrot cake I made because Juste was obv coming over too, and she loves that. I brought half the carrot cake over to gims, they all loved it, it was the only dish out of over a dozen to get big compliments. The Eggs were not nerely as much work as I though they would be, I'll definately add them to my menu bimonthly or trimonthly. Next time I'll make the spicy mustard sauce some of the reviews recommend. This time I'd already made a honey mustard sauce for the scones, so I just used that, and it was very good.

Good Priest

"Yo, God is good, and He wants you to be good too, and if you're not He's gonna come down here and bust your freakin skull!"--New Yorker priest in Family Guy

What my priest at the Holy Stanislaw Church in Riešė said was almost as good as that. We had the little procession around the church, went inside, listened to the hymn while the priest did the incense around the front. Then the priest comes up to the pulpit and says "Nu, viskas." (Well, that's all.) Everybody looks at him and around in disbelief; it's only been 20 minutes. "What, you want more? You want a prayer?" Yes, everybody shouts! "You just want a prayer, or do you want some holy water?!" Yes yes, holy water! "I see, you're not here for the prayers at all, you just want me to bless your food, eh?" (Many people had brought easter eggs to church to be blessed) Yes, bless our food! "Alright, fine, but don't say I didn't warn you!"

The priest then proceeded to walk around literally dousing everybody with holy water. But hey, we were in and out in thirty minutes with no alms-giving. Can't beat that!

Easter Feaster

Here's the delicious menu from the first day of Easter, serving 5 1/2 people, everything was fabulous except for the bulka:

margučiai (waxed and painted hard boiled eggs eaten after the Big Battle of the Eggs ,the official begining of dinner)

roast pork loin and potatoes (mine was 9 1/2 pounds)

savory easter cheese pies from kimolos

cheddar scones with ham and honey-mustard butter

white mišrainė (lithuanian potato salad)

"aš-nežinau-mišrainė" (lithuanian cole slaw like layered vegetable salad minus the cabbage plus herring)

spinach tomato salad

double-peanut double-chocolate chip cookies

bulka

table

Notstalgia

Yesterday evening I followed up Monday's nostalgia with Further Down the Spiral, by Nine Incha Nails. It reminded me of how impressed Rachel was that I had both albums, since most people would only have one or the other. Nice memory, but the music is no longer enjoyable. I can't believe I ever liked it. Several times I had to check to make sure it wasn't stuck on a one second loop.

Nostalgia

Yesterday evening I listened to Pink Floyd live and Nine Inch Nails' Downward Spiral. It was pretty awesome. Floyd came on unexpectedly in my play list, and before realizing that it was Floyd, I thought to myself, man, this CCR really sounds like Pink Floyd! Then I though it would funny if we were in high school again, or just acting like it, and Peanut said that out loud and Sean had said That might be because it is Pink Floyd. Then we'd all chuckle. After that album I skipped down to Nine Inch Nails, because when I saw March of the Pigs I remembered when we translated that song into Lithuanian for our evening Salute to camp Neringa: Darius climbed up on a rock and screeched the lyrics at the counselor, and the rest of us formed a mosh pit. Man, that's gonna be awesome when I transplant my brain into a fifteen year old clone of myself and do that again.

Burton/Deppathon

Saturday afternoon my special lady and I went to see Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. It was awesome, and all the singing made me feel like we was doing something more sophisticated than going to the movies and eating crab sticks and tartar sauce that I snuck in from the store. All the blood made her feel like we were doing something far less enjoyable than anything she could think of. So if you're not classy, or you don't like blood and guts, then it's not for you.

Then my special lady went out with some non-special ladies to discuss menses, or something, I don't know. I went to pick up my special baby at kindergarten and get some ice cream on the way home. When we got there we watched Corpse Bride, which is one of her favorite movies. Because of the Burton/Deppathon I decided to pay more attention to it than usual. I noticed a bunch of funny little jokes that you miss if you're not paying attention, as I'm most often not to her various entertainment. However, though the story may be better, I do prefer the songs in The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Sunday afternoon before going to church we watched Edward Scissorhands, which I hadn't seen for a decade or more. Interesting juxtaposition between this and the first movie of the weekend: in Sweeney Depp is super vocal, singing or speaking practically constantly; in Scissorhands I don't think he said even 100 words. Very enjoyable: very fairy-tale, but very full of non-fairy-tale elements too. Like the simpsons!

Attention Surplus Advantage

Here's an anti-disorder I seem to have! My special lady remarked last night that she's never seen anybody read five books at once before. She said she'd feel rather scatter-brained if she kept switching back and forth. No problem for me: I usually have two non-fiction going in my Klaipeda bathroom, currently We Are Not Alone (in my sidebar) and God Stories, one or two non-fiction in my Vilnius bathroom, currently Mere Christianity, one or two fiction and one or two non-fiction in my bedroom, and sometimes a biography, one of which I'll take with me most of where I go, currently Stranger in a Strange Lange, The Omnivore's Dilemma, Aristotle for Everybody and Leadership, and two non-fiction in the car for when I have to wait for somebody, currently The Best Travels Writing of 2006 and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

So I'm actually in the middle reading nine books right now, though in any given week I probably only pick up four or five of them. However, I picked up Aristotle last night for the first time in about six weeks, and I jumped right in where I'd left off without having to scroll back to get back on the train of though: I simply hadn't lost it. I can do that with all the books I'm reading, as long as there's a book mark in the right place. And this reminded me of another thing.

Six years ago Sarunas and I had a conversation about how annoying it is that women tend to chat through the bathroom door, as if you're not busy reading in there while you're sitting on the toilet. And Sarunas mentioned that he has to plan his time going to the bathroom, because he hates to stop reading in the middle of a chapter, he has to read the whole thing, so it might take a while. I was really surprised by this: "Really? I just stop reading wherever I am, even mid-paragraph. Hell, sometimes I stop reading mid-sentence!" That's true. I guess it's not a problem for me because of my increadible Attention Surplus Advantage!

Where not to buy your gas

I wouldn't normally go to Lukoil, but we were almost out of gas coming back from the countryside and we had to stop. I gave her a twenty and proceeded to fill the tank, but it only filled to 19.99. So I looked at the receipt: sure enough, she rung it up as less than I paid without giving me my penny! Soviet Bitch! Just because I got out of the passenger's side doesn't mean I'm so drunk I'll skip my change! I marched right up there and got my cent.

A loft apartment over a really great party...

Why doesn't Canada change its name to Comeda? Then at least the people would be called Comedians...at least then they'd have something going for them...

Secretary Chuck Norris?!

I used to think Huckabee was serious about becoming president until he said this: “In my administration there would be room for a Secretary of Defense named Chuck Norris!”

The Most Important Vote of 2008

I've got 128 days left to Svente. I tried to fit into my tauties (national costume) last night. I'm about 2.5 inches too fat. I proposed a simple solution; my special lady countered with a much more difficult and arduous solution. I won't say whose is whose, but I'd like you to vote on which option you think I should pursue:

• Use a buttion-in patch of fabric to extend the waiste, or
• Lose 20+ pounds in the 128 days remaining.

p.s. here's why this will be your most important vote!

Laughing at Retards?

I guess growing up in America, I didn't develope a sense of humor for laughing at retarded folks. One of my colleagues was just telling another colleague about a conversation she had with a retard, and they were both laughing pretty hard about his inability to communicate properly. I don't know, I didn't find it highlarious. Or maybe I'm just not in the mood!

I already knew this...

...cause I saw it on Penn and Teller's Bullshit show, but I like this article too.

Dos and Don'ts of a Trip to Italy

• Do expect to eat pizza at least once a day.
• Don't leave home without soap and shampoo and every other toiletry besides toilet paper. Even if you run out of that, all the toilets have butt washes.
• Do get the spicy pasta, though all the pastas are great.
• Don't get frustrated when it takes hours to find the restaurant you're looking for, all the best places are well-hidden.
• Do buy three pounds of sausage to bring home, it's awesome!
• Don't miss the Parthenon, or the crypt, what's it called, weinerschnitzel
• Do start taking a siesta from day one, lest you be off kilter with all the shops, which are closed from 1-4 p.m. for lunch.
• Don't visit during one of the ecological days, when driving a car is forbidden; if you do this by accident, do not walk the kilometer to the trainstation with your 26.5 kg. suitcase.

Formerly Painful Brain Surgury

I assume without checking that the HBO show Rome is historically accurate. I find it surprising, therefore, that they performed brain surgery in ancient Rome. And I find it disturbing that they did it with no apparent anesthetic. Most disturbing of all is that they actually show it graphically on HBO. Who wants to see glass bits pulled from a brain and a metal plate inserted below a man's head flesh? Not me.

Luckily the show provides much more graphic sex than brain surgery; I don't mind that so much. I guess I'll keep watching.

UPDATE: Liepa found out that the brain surgery was authentic.

The View from the Glasgow Tour Bus

Can't tell what this lovely scene is? Here's a closer up look:

Real Pain

If youve never picked up a bed by accident when you were trying to just lift up the matress and dropped the whole wooden thing on your foot, you've never felt real pain!

Strategic Command (1997) is the most ridiculous rip off ever. The Imdb comment states it's a rip off of Air Force One and Executive Decision, which I haven't seen. What I have seen, one of the most watchable movies ever (you can watch it once a month, it doesn't get old), is The Rock (1996). Let's see if I can remember all the matching plot points:

• renegade soldiers break into a facility and steal chemical weapons
• one soldier drops one and is sealed in the chamber to his doom
• a chemical expert is dispached with U.S. soldiers to neutralize the threat
• the soldiers resent being accompanied by an amateur and the one assaigned to watch him gives him a talking to about it
• his fiance/wife, who has just become pregnant, is in harm's way
• a city in California is being held hostage in return for exactly $100,000,000
• only two good guys, the chemical expert and one soldier, make it to the final battle
• the chemical expert defeats the bad guy by smearing him with the chemical, which eats his lungs from the inside
• the expert then has to inject himself in the spine with the anditode (i guess in the rock it's in the heart, so that's actually a big difference)

Real Pain

You never felt real pain unless you've felt this: my special lady gave me a bite of a breadstick on Saturday, and I bit off enough of it that she had to regrip it before pulling it back. She accidentally got a bunch of my whiskers under her thumb when she regripped, and tore half my lip off trying to get her bread stick back. Well, that's what it felt like, though there wasn't acually any blood or tearing of anything...besides breadstick.

I'd get a cat, but she'd probably eat more than the mice

I got these two mousetraps set, with cheese. However, the mice don't go for the cheese, they climb all the way to the stove top and eat the top off the whole leftover meatloaf I forgot to put in the fridge. (I tend to forget because the kitchen's freezing cold, so it barely makes a difference for freshness where things are left) Goddam! If I didn't have a kid, I'd just cut off the chewed part and eat it anyway. I don't think that's risk-free enough to put my special baby through. I'd get a cat to eat the mice, but I'm fairly certain she'd fill up on the meatloaf and have a fifty fifty shot of sleeping through the mouse pillage.

Idiot

History's greatest monster also has history's dirtiest mouth: Jimmy Carter.

Galas, who the fuck is Galas?

At first, when Living Next Door to Alice came on the radio in Lithuanian, quietly cause it's at work, I couldn't really hear the words, but I sang along the "Alice, who the fuck is Alice" part anyway. When my colleagues, and one student who was with the dean's secretary, looked at me funny, I thought I'd better listen up...turns out in the Lithuanian version, they don't sing about Alice at all, but rather Galas, mano meiles galas... (End, the end of my love) Much More Fun in English!

$90 for a book?!

My father had the tremendous wisdom to know that I would love nothing more for Christmas than to get as a gift all the episodes of The State. I don't remember praising the show as much as loving it on the inside of my head, so, I was excited when he checked to make sure I'd really appreciate it. A month later, I was devastated when he told me it was not going to be for sale, contrary to previous advertisements, MTV had sued somebody for some kind of rights or something, and the issue was not yet resolved. So, now, I thought, my birthday is about a month past Christmas, so maybe the dispute has been resolved, and I should inform my father that he can now get me the gift that will be so good it just might make me ignore the rest of my life until I finish watching it ten billion times in a row. so I put it in Amazon, I’m looking for it, and last but not least, I thought I had it, but instead this book pops up, for ninety fuckin dollars! WTF???

I always thought bombing Iran would be a good idea, but now I know it

Like any good American, when I have to do something I have no interest in doing, I only read the Onion for two hours; after that, I read something more academic. That way, I don't feel bad, because I'm not wasting time, but rather bettering myself. Roaming around political websites because of Iowa yesterday (thrilling!) I happened to read The Case for Bombing Iran because of its interesting title, and I found it to be very interesting indeed.

A little less academic but much funnier than that was another article you should read, Crybaby Kerry.

Eggnut

I made Eggnog 6 times in December, it was so good. It was so fantastically delicious I just couldn't stop making it for every occasion.

1. December 1, Test run (hadn't made it for 11 months, had to make sure it was as good as I remembered it)
2. December 21, Office Party, almost everybody drank it, and more people raved about it than declined to finish, a surprise, since so many middle aged Lithuanian women (90% of my colleagues) are obsessed with no sugar/no fat diets; when I introduced the drink as Eggnog, one of our English language specialists told people around her in Lithuanian "He said it's called an egg's nut."
3. December 22, special wife's Office Party, but I took a bit of it to work myself as thanks to those whose praise was so bountiful
4. December 24, Christmas Eve, Lithuanians for the most part don't drink on this day, so we had to kill the 28 drinks one recipe makes on our own
5. December 26, Christmas Day II, a bunch of relatives came over to help us with the fresh Big Ass Ham we made the day before
6. December 29, Pizza party at Egle and Mindaugo place, including a Speed Quarters Death Match (we pretty much all died, count that as winning or losing, as you wish), during which I had to take six penalty shots of Green 999 back to back as Mindaugas and my special wife kept skipping me back and forth; that's cause I had to keep pouring the drinks myself, I didn't ahve a chance to get out of the loop!

Dos and Don'ts of a trip to Greece

• Do bring your wife!
• Don't have your heart set on your plans: the Greeks might have a national strike, but announce it so late you can't change your flight
• Do spend your now 17 hour layover (due to the strike) in Prague site seeing and buying souvenirs; get on the bus tour, it's a great deal and you can sleep on it if you already know the city well enough
• Don't spring for a nice hotel for the night you now have to spend in Athens (due to the strike); it won't be long enough for you to enjoy it, and the breakfast isn't work 80 euros
• Do pack everything you need for three days into your carry on, because your bags won't be arriving the same day as you
• Don't pay the surprise gratuity they try to force on you in Prague or Ioannina (or anywhere), they're tricky asshole waiters, but you just have to refuse
• Do shotgun beers behind the museum in the dark
• Don't let your digital camera, which has been having problems, freeze (it won't take pictures anymore)
• Do expect snow in the winter, not a tan
• Don't dress warm if you smoke, you can smoke inside everywhere, even the airport
• Do dress warm if you don't smoke, we had to eat outside with our gloves on to avoid you, your clothes, and hair reeking of cigarette smoke from every singe cafe/restaurant/bar.

Big Gulps, eh? See ya later!

I haven't had a moment when I wasn't too lazy to write about Greece, or Eggnut, or X-mas 2007 (below), but I'm taking such big delicious gulps now I have to mention this. I got highball glasses for X-mas from my special lady, and I thought I'd christen them with actual highballs, so I had to check online. The only thing I really know about highballs is that characters in Salinger's short stories drank them. Turns out highballs are whiskey and ginger ale. I didn't like the first sip, but after the second sip I started to like it very much. Now I'm feelin smiley facey.

As long as I'm on, X-mas was pretty good, including much Eggnog, Christmas cod, two kinds of marinated mushrooms and fresh ones in a sauce for broccoli, giant fresh ham (16 lbs.), a yule log, hamburger buns (for left over ham sandwiches), and poopy milk (all homemade, of course). Great gifts include, beyond the highball glasses, an electrical mixer which will save me much whisking and three belts which bring me closer to my goal of having a belt for every pair of pants, so I never have to take the belt off (or search for a belt in the morning).

In the religious spirit, we watched Bible Josef, as it's spelled here, and today we're watching Bible Jesus. They weren't bad, for real!

p.s. oops, clearly what i meant was "poppy milk."

I am too busy and/or tired to post

so here, this onion article is really funny, especially the second photo!

I guess my work place isn't as crazy as I though :(

These work stories are funny! Specifically they are:

1. Inspirational
2. Good competition
3. So desperate you risk arrest
4. Good lesson
5. Don't work with French people
6. Shows you're stupid not to send it back
7. I do most things nude besides working with power tools
8. I guess they won't be flying to the international speedo convention!
9. My friend was arrested for being a fake doctor and giving people shots of grape-ade
10. Too awesome
11. Same team, same team!
12. I only ask my boss for things when she's in a good mood...duh...
13. :D
14. Now who's a weiner??
15. I hope that wasn't Sim...

Lithuanian Lithuanian Dance Groups

Saw Liepa's dance performance Saturday: fun. Two things I noticed. First, half the groups didn't hold hands while making gates: lazy, and sloppy, despite the more identical angle. Second, all the groups wore uniforms, in old Soviet style. I realize it's cheaper, but really, is it worth being a communist just to save a few bucks?

Happy Anniversary

I'd like to wish a happy anniversary to my life partner, my boots. We met exactly ten years ago in December of 1997. I bought them for the (now) low low price of 140 Douche Marks, though it seemed expensive to me at the age of 16, and they certainly weren't the cheapest. We've been through thick and thin together, ten winters and much work in muddy muck and slushy snow. In all that time I've only had to change the laces three times, have the soles reglued twice, and have parts of the lether repaired once. I love my boots.

Feelin Guilty

I been trying to put on more classical music lately so that my special baby doesn't become stupid but listening to too much trash, e.g. her fave, Shakira. I have more classical music than I listen to regularly. Last night something came on that I really enjoyed, it sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Then I looked down at the name of the song strolling along my music player...Canon in D. I felt really bad for enjoying it, since I decided to hate it forever after watching my favorite youtube video five times a day for a month. Maybe I'll watch it again right now...

Professions that might suit me

If I were a judge, this would be I!

The Drunken Hillbilly Vote

The support of Ric Flair is sure to get Huckabee this key demographic, vote, if they don't forget to vote...

Thanksgiving 2007

Liepa came out to visit us for Thanksgiving this year. We thought about just making Turkey breasts, but we wanted gravy, so we had to get something greasier: two thighs, two drumsticks, and half a breast, total of 4.5 lb. we got plenty of grease and made delicious gravy, stuffing with sausage, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and big salad. The next day we made carrot cake, awesome. We drank beer, red wine, jagermeister, Cyprus ice tea, and several liters of pina-coladas with fresh fruit blended in. Nice. Tonight's sweet and sour turkey and stir fried vegetables. Double nice.

P.S. Liepa can't post comments, so she asked me to post this (i spell checked it for her):
why don't you mention anything else fun that we did, like tell so many jokes on the bus ride back and laugh so hard that we almost forgot a special someone... and after much arguing, watched troy and then psycho again? and play ALIAS with various sets of rules on various days, various amounts of which we agreed about, and ironically aras the single player won while the liepa-special team won by a landslide! maybe because aras forgot what "ziedadulkes" are; and buck euchre, and the vas-ki-chi game, and seinfeld. and getting up early to go the turgus and finding you hot pants and me freezing my toes off because my socks fell off and getting covered with snow and undressing into a shopping cart like bums at akrop, where we also made a t-shirt which included the words "pomidorcikas" and "ackarikas" and "malacius" and ate chinese soup and played MINI GOLF which i haven't done in years, but we totally ruled that floor, especially because we just did the holes in any order, avoiding all little kids and other goofs who take like 20 minutes per hole. and don't forget how we planned a fancy chinese dinner last night, but then ate so much leftover stuffing and chips with GUACOMOLE (the best we've made yet-- thanks to bacon and beans), that we forgot about dinner and just made dessert. but we grated about 7 cups of carrots (from 6 carrots!), when all we needed was 3 cups, so now you'll have to think up something else that might use so many damn grated carrots... maybe consider getting a rabbit as my special niece’s first pet.

I put the winter liner into my trench coat today

Coincidentally, today is also the day after the day when I watched The Last Stand. I didn't realize it was an X-Men movie, because I have a brail copy of it without pictures. Therefore, I was very excited to watch it when I put it in and realized what it was. Imagine how devestated I was when the movie was, uh, stupid. The X-Men continue to fight each other, for reasons that are no longer descernible in the least. All mutants were threatened with extermination in a much more real way than in the second movie, when they teamed up against the government. Now they fought against each other instead. Why? No reason. Plus they kill most of the good characters, but not in ways that serve a purpose, like when they killed Terminator 2. Almost all of them were killed, it seemed, just cause it's the last movie. I rate this movie a negative three.

Spicy Porkchop Paradise

We have this favorite rentaurant, Neringa, my special lady and I. It's not spectacular, but it is really good and close to home and reasonably priced. We always get the same thing: pork schnitzel and wild mushroom sauce for her, and a porkchop with jalapeno sauce for me. Ten times we been there, and we always get those dishes, they're so good. When I noticed an inconsistent jalapeno appropriation, I started telling the waitress each time to feel free to be generous with the jalapenos, I like it spicy. Since then I always get plenty. Last night though, when we went, I almost got more than I bargained for: there were jalapeno slices litterallly piled onto my pork chop. The "sauce" was mainly the peppers, not something more saucy. They were so piled onto the chop that they were overflowing onto the potatos. It was spicier than I thought it should be, even so, and towards the end I saw that the chef had mixed in a stub of piri piri too: awesome! My nose was running, I was sluggin beer back: perfect.

Do as I say, not as I do

I realized I gotta, I mean, have to shape up if I wanna, I mean, want to lead by example. This I realized when my special baby started say "yeah" instead of "yes." I imagined a conversation with a future English teacher who gives my special child a bad grade, telling her I'm a native speaker English professor, her critisizing my English, and me saying "Oh yeah, wanna fight about it?"

Soduko

Ever seen Psycho, by Alfred Hitchcock? Awesome movie! Had me guessing till the final minutes. They don't make such good movies anymore.

p.s. I head working out Soduko puzzles helps postpone dementia, so I started playing on my phone. The only other games I have on my phone are such mindless wastes of time, I had to try it anyway. I dig Soduko. I think I can actually feel it making me brain stronger.

Cheeseburger Cheeseburger, wherefore art thou Cheeseburger?

Man, I made such delicious cheesburgers last night, it was unbelievable. Sauted mushrooms and onions? You better believe it. They were the tastiest cheeseburgers of my life. Unless that was just the three shots talking I took with my brother-in-law before eating. Either way though, we totally scarfed those burgers. It was one of those meals so delicious that you finish it, and you realize you forgot to drink your beer.

International "Students" Day

Why are the q-marks around students, you wonder? Well, it's because only pseudo-students celebrate this day, so it's really more of an internation anti-student day. On Mother's Day, Mothers spend time with and/or are cherished by their children. On Frotteur's Day, they do the same. On Students Day, they celebrate by not being students at all, i.e. skipping class! Now, there is an hour and a half event that they may skip class for. So the professors let them out, and they walk right out of the building and don't come back after for their remaining classes. On their way out, I heard the receptionist ask them if they're not going to attend the event, and they replied, "Madam, have you taken leave of your senses?!" ("Nespank!")

Cool (as a Cucumber)

That my new name for this cocktail I learned about from Lokys. Take five shots worth of gin, soak one cucumber sliced lengthwise in it for 24 hours, and mix in tonic at three to one and add some ice. Good for five cocktails.

It's amazingly cucumbery. And if you're too lazy to go make yourself another, you can just eat the gin soaked cucumber you used for garnish. Plus, I think it counts as a vegetable, so you can have less vegies at dinner and your mother can't yell at you, you just point to your drink, and smile, and she'll say, touche. It's the healthiest cocktail since bloody mary came to town!

Kaip Suprast

Oddly, I don't know how this happened, but Kaip Suprast wasn't abandoned as I had thought. My link to it became wrong, a link to a similar sounding but wrong page. Maybe somebody stole my blogger password and did that to sabotage the Kaip page count so they couldn't sell any ad space? I don't know...Kaip suprast?!

Is anybody stealing my passwords?

Sometimes I accidentally sign in somewhere with the wrong password. It's especially common since I have whoeverthefuckiam for my user name more often that not, so I'm used to typing it then one of several passwords. I wonder, when I enter a password that's wrong not from a typo, but completely a different word/number combo, I wonder if, say, some evil technician at google, for instance, tries to use that password with whoeverthefuckiam@something.else, or whoeverthefuckiam on amazon or ebay. That seems like a good idea for identity theft.

Hillary Clinton: hard to say she's less stupid than anybody else!

These are awesome little bits of her contradicting herself repeatedly:

The Politics of Parsing

This is even funnier than Bushisms! It's so funny, now that I think of it, it's hard to imagine she's leading the polls...Hopefully people are just joking with those polls, like they were with the Lieberman polls.

It's funny (or sad) (or highlarious) because it's true! So true...

No truer story has ever been told: Study Finds Working At Work Improves Productivity

Always Ask!

One of my colleagues today told me I have to redo some work I did, basically just move around a bunch of figures from some columns to other columns, because the college is switching to a different report form. I just did it a three weeks ago the way, so I said whoever chose to change the form can do it herself, I already did that once. They said, it doesn't matter, you gotta redo alot of things in this life. I said that's nonsense.

Then I went to talk to the person in charge of these reports, turns out I was right. That new format is only for departments that haven't alread handed in their reports yet.

Moral of the story is, if you waste your time because of a mistaken colleagues, it's often your own fault for not going over her head.

Lyme Disease is Gay

Not sure if I've got lyme disease again, but my lower back and neck are really sore and I'm suffering fatigue (not alcohol related).

The gay thing is that it recurs without being bitten again. Most doctors don't realize this, and some will think you're crazy to suggest it, just because they don't know about it, e.g. my butthead Boston University doctor. I had to insist on a blood test, he wouldn't even do that willingly. Then he called a few days later to apologize, I did have Lyme again, without being bit again. What an ass. This was my second time with it, four years ago. Hopefully it ain't that, or what my ass colleague scared me with, Radiculitis, which isn't exactly eponymous the way I hoped it would be!

UPDATE: feelin better, guess it was just the microbus trip or carrying the 80 pound backpack.

All Saints Day

Thursday was November First, so Liepa and I went to the cemetary where our Senelis is buried. Nobody went with us because our gims like to go a few days early when it's not packed. It wasn't really packed at 1:30 though, and it all looks much nicer when all the graves are decorated with flowers and burning candles.

On the way home I bought a new BBQ sauce which is by far the greatest one in Lithuania. It's easily in the same league as the ones I use in the states...unfortunatley, it's like three or four times as expensive as the next best one...fortunately, the next day we my special lady found them on sale at a different store for half price! But, she only bought four, so I went back the day after that for a dozen more. Hooray!

So far it's been used on chicken fingers, french fries, and meatloaf. Hooray!

Happy Halloween Party

Siga didn't recognize me when I went to pick her up. Even when I told her hey, get in the car, she was hesitant. Well, who wouldn't think twice about getting in a car with Borat? She was a yoga instructor. Also, before the night was over, she spent about 45 seconds pushing on a pull door before I explained her mistake to her. She hopes nobody finds out about that... :)

My special baby was Borat's chicken, my special lady was Ursela, Liepa was the Cat in the Hat's wife, Gedas and Juste were clowns, one sad one happy, Bronius was John Trabolta from Grease, and Donkus was a Yankee. Aurimas was bandit for like ten minutes. The rest of the crowd didn't manage to dress up, so they were losers for Halloween.

The funnest part of my show was singing the Kazakhstan National Anthem, twice! Sing along!

My Anti-Heroes

Three of my heros are pirates, but I wouldn't want to be one of the loser pirates writtten about in this article.

And that firestarter in the X-Files was pretty neat, but I can't imagine any kid I'd hate to be more than this kid! Jesus H. Fuckface!

And ugly is ugly, but this is the ugliest presidential candidate I know of!

And I wonce ate a heaping bowl of salt!

Last night I made long sandwiches, on like a three foot baguette: tuna salad sub sandwiches. Everything would have been fine, the tuna salad wasn't too salty: it was just salty enough. However, I added two things to the sandwiches which resulted in my culinary undoing: pepperoni and fetaki (salted feta) cheese. The pepperoni wouldn't have been so bad except for one thing: I fried it, a process that quadruples its saltiness. The cheese is naturally salty, so after adding those two things, we ended up having to accompany the sandwiches with something else: milk and/or beer poured down our throats with mega haste!

Liepa Weekend

Yo, Liepa came to visit for the weekend. We can't do much cause we're baby sitting, it's pretty hard to find a baby sitter on the weekend, so I don't even try unless it's like my birthday or something. Liepa wanted to watch Hannibal, but, shocking as it might be, said she hadn't seen Silence of the Lambs, so I said you gotta see that first. So we put that on for ten minutes till she realized she had seen it and moved to Hannibal, which she passed out watching.

In the morning I made kefir pancakes, which were scrumptious, and mimosas. I said, what are we going to do now, she said, well the first thing is pick out what five movies we're going to watch today. Shwe chose Hannibal, 300, Thank You for Smoking, and Resevoir Dogs. Then we went to market and got a bunch of food, and got some Chinese turkey on the way home. Washed that down with some brewskies. Yeah.

Naps. Playing cards. Eating Dijon Tarragon Chicken, wines, going to church on Sunday, blah blah blah, the end.

Spell Checker

You ever write something in Word, and you get a red underlining indicating that it's misspelled? And then you look at the word and you can't figure out what's wrong with it? That happened to me this morning when I was writing about boybotting. I got all frustrated. How could Word not know the word boybotting?! That's a perfectly normal word. I'm sitting there, writing a letter about boybotting products from China, and my thought process is totally destroyed by retarted Microsoft Word. I thought, it's my own stupid fault for stopping my boybot of Microsoft products, maybe I should start boybotting them too, go back to good old Apple computers. Well, just for the hell of it, I right-clicked the word...oh, boycotting! That's what I meant.

Why read new books when I've already read all the good ones?

I've gotten out of the habit of reading good books. Last night I started reading for the fourth or fifth time the greatest book ever, Tai Pan by James Clavell. I know that I'm not in the habit anymore, because I don't keep my eyes on the same line the whole way through. You know when you're reading something entertaining but like whatever, by Janet Evanovich, you can just read like half of every other line and that's plenty to keep the story going? Well, not with a great book like this.

It's a classic, which means it gets better each time you read it. Other books like that are others in his Asian saga, any fiction by Ayn Rand, the best of Heinlein including Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, some stuff by Ludlum like the Bourne Identity, the founding trilogy and the twins trilogy of the Dragon Lance series, some of the short stories by Salinger, Poe, and Hemingway.

Ever had a falling out with a book? When I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I loved it so much I decided I'd read it once a year for the rest of my life. Well, it's been about ten years and I've made good on my promise exactly zero times. Over the same time period I've read repeatedly books that I didn't fall so head over heels for. Well

Spoiler Warning--and I'm not talking about a device for changing the airflow past a moving vehicle, often having the form of a transverse fin or blade

Hey American Beauty, good movie, huh? I saw it for the first time last night. I tend to admire the people in movies who should be bad examples, I admired Kevin Spacey and Mena Suvari, and sort of Peter Gallagher. I especially liked when Spacey smashed the asparagus dish on the wall because his wife interrupted him, but I was glad my special lady didn't notice how much I enjoyed that. I was sad he got killed and wished to know how everything ended, maybe I should read the book.

One thing I don't completely get, even after talking to Liepa, is the gaytastic kiss, then Chris Cooper shoots Spacey. I thought, okay, he killed Spacey cause he paid Wes Bentley—his son—to give him blowjobs. Fair enough, but why'd he have to kiss him first? I thought, at the moment, what, is he testing to see if Bentley was telling him the truth? But then it can't be that, cause then he wouldn't have killed him when he finds out Spacey is not gay. Liepa said it's cause Cooper is gay, he's just always hated himself for being gay. But so then why did he kill him? Anger at being rejected? That doesn't seem quite right.

While trying to find a quick answer to this question, I found this ridiculous site: ChildCare Action Project: Christian Analysis of American Culture (CAP).

We all took turns being under the weather this weekend, so:

We watched these awesome movies: Rambo: First Blood Part II, Being John Malkovich, The Big Tease, March of the Penguines (twice), Envy, awesome.

I bought fresh pumpkin and made pumpkin bread, delicious. First time. Also a first was making Icebox oatmeal cookies, which are not bad, but they make up for their quality by convenience.

I had the longest conversation of my life, with a man no less, Darius, though I guess that's subject to debate: one hour, fourteen minutes, and forty-nine seconds!

Ate Chinese sesame chicken, salmon with wild rice&peas and everybody's fav brussel sprouts, buttermilk pancakes, bacon egg and cheese sandsiches, chicken sandwiches, and moussaka. Just kidding about the last one, but I forgot what we ate Friday.

Went to the gym a whopping once.

And I thought this week would be hectic!

I'm having one of those days I have about three or four times a year, when I sort out and file all the piles of paper that have accumulated around me, water my work plant, reorganize my folders, remove my coffee maker from my desk (I quit drinking coffee in June), clip my fingernails and brush my teeth with my work tooth brush, wash off my work knife (with spit and toilet paper), and catch up on the constant tasks I have. One of the things I have to do now is decide to whom I can regift the stupid knick-knacks that have surrounded me since my last house-cleaning. It has to be someone I don't work with...

My colleague that shares this office with me said to another colleague when they walked in, "Am I dreaming or is Vebra cleaning?!"

I can't remember what I wanted to post about today

It was gonna be good, but so anyway, I'll post about this: Lonesome Dove is an awesome movie. Anybody like Robert Duvall? Well, if you haven't seen him lonesome, you haven't seen him at all. And what about falling on your back? I bet nobody likes that, huh? Well, this movie might floor you, but in the good way.

Nightmare about Paul Giamatti

The persecuter in my nightmare last night was Paul Giamatti. I left my car in a garage at a mall (there are no such garages in LT, but anyway) and went in. Then I remember that I left the car unlocked. That's no big deal, as long as I have my keys, cell phone, and wallet. But wait, I left my wallet on the passenger seat! Crap! I go back and find I've been robbed. The money and credit cards have been stolen. I bring the wallet to the receptionist to file a complaint or report or whatever, and it's Paul Giamatti. I show him what's left in it and explain what's missing. He writes it up in a report for the police, and then takes a closer look at my credit card. "This is expired," he tell me. Yeah, so? "So I can't give it back to you, it's no longer valid." I start arguing about it with him, I get very upset because to get it renewed from Lithuania I have to be able to send it in the the CT DMV by post; we argue for the rest of the dream, and then I wake up.

Soy Russian!

I got some soy milk just to try this weekend. I was all excited about writing a post about how disgusting it...unfortunately, it was delicious! I liked and and my special baby too. There was one person who didn't like it, so I used her left overs to make a soy milk white russian: awesome!

One question though: is it really supposed to contain fructose???

Interesting concept

What's really intersting is to see Slatecard now, when they've raised less than a thousand bucks. Now where did I put my credit card...?

Is it okay to wear pants to work that have a huge hole in the crotch?

Cause almost a year ago, I started putting on alot of weight, as I went through working 4 jobs at once, writing my master's paper, getting married, and spending three gluttonous weeks in the states. The result of this is that my legs got so fat my inner thighs rub against each other and wear out the crotches of my pants, even my jeans. Luckily, my suit pants are alright, since when I was so busy I often didn't have time to put a suit on, but all my jeans are crotchless now.

Dos and Don'ts of a Trip to Latvija

• Do bake cookies for your colleagues on the bus
• Don't use 4 minutes mixed oats instead of 1 minutes instant oats for oatmeal-raisin cookies
• Don't order anything with mushroom sauce in Biržai
• Do give them your Lugan passport at the border, the U.S. one will need to be checked for 10 minutes
• Don't stay anyplace besides where i stayed, if you like a fantastic breakfast, a fifteen foot three room single with a giant bed, flat screen tv, and free wifi.
• Do bring your laptop to the seminar, it'll get boring at the end, boring (I'm writing this during the Belorussian's speech)
• Don't save room for lunch during the first coffee break, the croissant sandwiches are way better than the buffet lunch (also when the Latvian told us about lunch he pronounced the T in "buffet lunch")
• Do drink on the bus on the way home

Dos and Don'ts of a Trip to Cyprus

• Do spend your long layover in Prague in the corner booth at KFC, it has an outlet, with something from duty free
• Don't bring any umbrellas
• Do bring a variety of shorts
• Don't bring any suit jackets
• Do bring an adapter, they got stupid-style plugs
• Don't take anybody seriously, they're all jokers
• Do try to stay in a hotel on the beach, but not necessarily Lenios Bitch Hotel (if you like clean rooms with running toilets and internet)
• Don't fill up on the first 19 courses at dinner
• Do get ready to stuff yourself with the 20th course: "shifty yeah!" It's delicious beef balls.
• Don't leave room for dessert, it's made from soap...we ate it just to be polite, but we couldn't help from looking at each other trying to figure out another solution.
• Do ask the waiter to buy some of the house wine, he'll give you a bottle as a gift!
• Don't wait till the afternoon to buy anything from the fruit market, they're closed.
• Do call ahead wherever you want to go, other places are closed at weird times too.
• Don't be afraid to save wine bottles from hitting the airport floor with your bare ankle; the bottles will be worth the bruise.
• Do bring your special lady!

Alice? Who the fuck is Alice?!

I don't know if everybody in the States knows the Ray Brown dirty version of the song Living Next Door to Alice, but nobody in Riga does. I know this cause when Uncle Bob and I were there eight years ago and shouted along the dirty part in an ourside beer garden, every Latvian in the house was staring at us.

I remember this today because the cabbie this morning on the way to work was playing it. I asked him if he'd drive me back home first so I could copy it; he just lent it to me.

Now, if you like shenanigans with paper and pencil, check this out!

Brussel Sprouts Have Landed

I consider my greatest achievements in the kitchen to be preparing something my special lady likes that she never liked till I made it for her. These have included brocolli, fish, corn and bell peppers. Onions too, but I add those secretly so she doesn't realize yet that she has grown fond of onions. The trickest so far has been brussel sprouts. Steamed, baked, boiled, parboiled, buttered, cheese-covered, salted, salted-buttered, cheese-buttered...no luck! Finally I managed to serve them up so she liked 'em yesterday:

1. warm 3T olive oil in a pan on medium low temp
2. immediatly add 1T red pepper flakes (I would have thrown in a garlic clove but I couldn't find one)
3. when they start to blacken, remove them with a flat spatule
4. add so much breadcrumbs that they soak up all the oil; if you add too much add some butter to soak the remainder
5. if sensitive to the sound of wook scraping on metal, insert earplugs
6. work the mass around a bit with the spatula
7. add cored, halved brussel sprouts and continue working around; add 1t salt; cover for a minute and work around and cover, work, cover, work, cover, work for 6 minutes

She totally like it.

My Own Backyard

I found a list of the top ten diners in America to use for a class about English speaking countries and their cultures. Here's one that I can reminisce about getting breakfast at:

O'Rourke's
728 Main Street, Middletown, Connecticut
860-346-6101

At the far end of Middletown's Main Street, O'Rourke's is a 1946 silver-sided treasure with counter stools and worn-smooth marble counter. Although it's old and a bit rickety-looking, it is a head-turner of gleaming stainless steel, as well as a fantastic place to eat. The menu includes mid-Connecticut's unique steamed cheeseburgers, southwestern dishes made with chili that chef Brian O'Rourke imports from New Mexico, and local shad roe in the spring, when he barters meals to get the best of local fishermen's catch. Waffles, pancakes, and French toast (made from freshly baked bread) make Sunday brunch especially good, but expect to wait for a seat.

Golfing is the Sport of Whom? Rich People.

We got a free pass to the driving range and a lesson that I used last weekend. My special lady was busy, so I took Tadas Vyšniauskas with me. It was hell getting there, it's in the middle of nowhere, we literally had to spend a while going down a dirt road. He'd never played before, and I haven't played for many years. We did alright though, me hitting 150 with the driver about half the time. He hit it that well sometimes too, and we each almost hit the 200 mark once.

On the putting green he thought he'd best me, so we bet a beer on it. I won that one. Then we bet on who could get it in from a certain distance with less strokes, and I won that too. I lost the rematch, so we had some beer buying for each other on the schedule.

Anyway, can you imagine how expensive it is to actually golf? Before you can golf you have to pass a test and get a green card, which costs 900 litas, that's $340. After you pay that, if you want to become a member, it'll be $14,000. This is in a country where the average wage is $600 a month.

A Fountain of Knowledge

We tried one of these drinking games with Animal House last night...fun!

I lost my lunch...literally!

Well not exactly, but I left it at home twice in one morning...how stupid is that? I made a tuna sandwich and packed it with half a liter of tomato juice in my cooler-lunchbox. Then I went to work without it. At 10:15 I had to drop off the car at the mechanic and take a cab back to work. The mechanic's close to home, so I decided to stop by and grab my lunch and some papers. I grabbed the papers and forgot the lunch again! What the hell! Now I'm gonna have to have a tuna sandwich for dinner instead of tacos! That sucks! Tacos're way better!! Dammit!!!

p.s. I had the sandwich as soon as I got home and the tacos a couple hours later...

Adding Spinach to Dune Casserole is a good way to get more Spinach in your diet

One thing I forgot from Darius and Ellen's wedding is this. See, Darius was planning to wear a tux, so I was too. He changed his mind with several days left, but we were already on route, and my special lady had planned to match my level of elegance...with just the luggage we had, we couldn't change. So oddly, the the most formal wardrobe that evening wasn't worn at the alter, it was at the Krupnikas Toast.

So this camera man came up to me early on and asked me if I'm the groom. Of course I say, "Yes."

He explains that he works for the vinyard we're at and they are making a promotional ad about the place a site for weddings. Would I give him permission to film some of the festivities and use it for the vignette? I respond, "Will I be able to get a copy of the raw footage?"

He guesses I will. "Well, there's a few things I'd really like included, then," I explain, "which you probably won't use for your movie, but I'd like in the raw footage you'll give me. It won't take long. Just get a decent shot of all the good cleavage in the house. Then I'll point out a few guys, you go up behind them and kick them in the ass, and film their indignation; tell them it's all part of the show. Okay?"

Shocked, he mutters about just wanting some candid shots. "Well, if you want something so humdrum, I'm not interested. Why don't you ask the real groom? He's right over there!"

I haven't had any straight soda (or pop for you goofuses)

besides rootbeer in many years, but I might start if Lithuania starts importing this one.

Coffee's for Suckers...and people who wake up early

After two months of no coffee this summer, I decided if I'm ever going to quit drinking coffee it'll be much better now than later. I was afraid that as soon as I started working, I'd need it. But I didn't. Until today. I was fine with tea until today. Today I had to get up as 6 a.m. (God, no!) I've had two strong cups of black tea, but at 10:40 I'm already brewing a third. Yawn. I have a colleague who used to drink coffee alot and quit, she inspired me to do this, pretty much. Well, I hope it doesn't take too much longer. However, my schedules getting a little jumbled around, and it looks like my early classes will probably get moved. I'll never have to wake up so early again!

Watch TV or Beware!

Next time a special somebody, I don't know, possibly let's say your wife, turns the TV down so quiet you can't hardly hear it, just turn it back up when she goes to the bathroom. DO NOT turn it off and just start reading diet books about good nutrition right before bedtime. You'll end up having nightmares about Flavanoids and Polysomethings and Ascorbic Acid and Carotenoids and Folate and Omega 3 Fatty Acids. If you don't fall asleep and have nightmares about them, you'll lay awake tossing and turning, wondering how the hell you can possibly get blueberries and spinich into your diet every day! I'm telling you...just put the TV back on...

The State of America: FAT

After three weeks in the States, I no longer fit into most of my pants. I ate the best meal of my life about fifteen times. Steaks, swordfish, Popeyes chicken & biscuits, hash browns and breakfast sausages (anybody have a recipe? i'm willing to make them from scratch at home), home grown corn on the cob/tomatoes/cucumbers/squash/broccoli, D'Angelo's, spaghetti with hot Italian sausages, beef stew with home growns, dozens of cheeseburgers, Krispy Kreme donuts, lots of pizza and onion rings and buffalo wings, including from Anchor Bar (I survived the Suicidal Wings), roast chickens, Margherita Hard Salami, pork chops, pork loin, and smoked pork loin (three days in a row) and if that wasn't enough pork, we also ate Famous Dave's Legendary Barbeque. It was all awesome, but now I'm obese.

I gave the Krupnikas toast at Darius and Ellen's wedding. It was not too embarrasing for either of them, which was a relief. I was clever enough to present them with an obscene gift during the speech without anyone noticing. I heard that it wasn't tame enough for all the guests though:

Old Woman: Did he just say what I think he said???
Sim Philips: No, he just said they used to bare knuckle box.
Old Woman: That's what I thought he said!!!
Sim Philips: Oh...
Old Woman: Did they really do that???
Sim Philips: Well, no, not much actually, they usually wore gloves. I was there alot of the time.
Old Woman: OH MY GOD, NO!!!
Sim Philips: Yeah...

I rode on the Viper, the awesomest ride in the world, at Valley Fair, the awesomest park in the world. It's totally better than Six Flags or Disney World.

I went to a bar in NYC where you had to swim to the bar to get drinks.

I got all worked up with Peanut and went to see StraddleDaddy.

I saw Niagara Falls on my honey moon.

I won the last game of buck euchre in Minneapolis.

I had a blast seeing the fam and friends I haven't seen for three years or more.

No Breakfast? Ha!

My special lady and Liepa got up early this morning to go to the big Giriunai market (at 10, real early!). I guess they thought they could play a joke on me. As they pulled out of the driveway, I went into the kitchen. Lo and behold, they've left me abandoned with nothing for breakfast and no car.

All there is is ham and cheese. I pulled that out and realized there's no bread for sandwiches. That's okay, I can make eggs with ham and cheese. No, there's no eggs. That's okay, I can make crepes with ham and cheese. No dammit, there's no eggs. Oh but there is a little left over cream of mushroom soup. What if I made a casserole out of koldūnai, sour cream, the soup, ham and cheese? It's be awesome is what! But crap, no dunes! How about porridge? Well, how am I supposed to get ham and cheese into porridge?! At this point I almost gave up and called them to say ha ha, very funny, now where's all the food?!

I didn't give up though. I looked through the freezer. Guess what Jesus had hid there for me? A loaf of white bread! Why Jesus? Why the hell would there ever be a loaf of bread in the freezer? No reason but divine intervention.

It's too cold for sandwiches, but I figured it would be perfect for grilled cheeses. Why? White bread in Lithuania doesn't come pre-sliced, except for super shitty bread. If you slice it yourself the slices are too thick, and the bread burns before the cheese melts. But if it's frozen you can slice it thinner without smushing it, and it won't cook as quickly. I spread a layer of fetaki (spreadable feta cheese), ham, normal Lithuanian cheese, and adžika (spicy tomato spread). The best grilled cheeses ever, so good even my special baby ate half of one and loved it (last time she tasted adžika she cried...)!

Nice try ladies, but you got to get up pretty early in the morning (before 10) to pull one over on this guy!

Surprise Wedding

Gedas and Juste decided not to host a reception for their friends to express their love for them. At the initiative of Donkus, we decided that just won't stand. So we threw them a surprise wedding!

Traditional Lithuanian wedding: the couple to be has to pass several corrals: the gypsy corral, which tells their fortunes, the medic's corral, which administers tests, and the musicians corral, which plays games with them. Liepa and I volunteered to be in the medic's corral, because the gypsy corral was very popular, and we wanted to stand out more. And we're not good enough singers to make that our main attraction.

I wasn't officially the head medic, but I became the leader de facto. Liepa's and my experiences at Neringa and other camps made us qualified and skilled at thinking up funny bits to put the couple through. We all dressed up as doctors, and when the car came through to us we held across the road a long bandage entwined with flowers, and I held up my hand. They got out. They had no idea this was coming, cause like I said, it was a surprise, and there's actually many different ways weddings can go traditionally.

I said we're the highest commission of medics in Lithuania, Dr. Aiaras, Ailiepa, Aigvidas, and so one, everyone's name getting an Ai- in front of it in honor of Dr. Aiskauda, Lithuania's legendary medical hero. They have to pass our tests if they want to get married. After inspecting their eyes, the doctors and I decided that Gedas needs to pass a psychological test--to prove he can swallow his anger, he has to funnel a beer. He failed!

After inspecting their elbows, ears, butts, and noses, doctors and I decided that they need to pass reactionological, comradological, balancological, and child-foddering tests--they passed everything else. The only other really funny one was child-foddering, Juste had to feed Gedas a bottle full of beer while he laid on her lap with a bonnet on his head.

Then we sang this song for them and the Gypsies too:

Ten toli ošia žalia girelė,
Prie jos čigonai buria porelę.
Skamba gitaros, visi dainuoja,
Justė pašoka, Gedas nemoka. (2x2 k.)

Oi, jūs, čigonai, iš kur atėjot,
Plačiam pasauly kur vaikštinėjot?
Kur jūsų valda, kur užtvarėlė,
Kuri išbūrtų šią šeimynėlę? (2x2 k.)

Mes medikantai, kūnų klajūnai,
Tik pro mumis bus, santuokos rūmai.
Užkūrę pirtį, šoksim, trepsėsim
Ir savo didžią pjankę pradėsim. (2x2 k.)

Taip susitarę šoksim, trepsėsim,
Klausyk, Justina, ką tau kalbėsim:
Neieškok meilės turtingo pono,
Vilioki jautrią širdį čia Gedo. (2x2 k.)

Gedas - sveikuolis, Gedas - varguolis,
Gedas laimingas, Gedas vaisingas!
Gedas neturi ant savęs pono,
Kur tik pažvelgsi - žemė čigono! (2x2 k.)

Wedding Highlights II

Šv. Kazimiero was a great church to get married in. Father Vitkus was really great, funny, and entertaining. The organist and hymn singer were amazing. The latter was warming up in the back where the best men and I were dressing, Peanut goes, "Oh my God, she's amazing...is she for your wedding?!?"

Žaldokynė was a fantasic restaurant. It's thanks to us for booking it ten months in advance, but it's also thanks to them for being honest. They said they got countless call from people offering any amount of money it takes to get the hall for 7-7-7. I believe them. My special lady saw a bit on TV about people getting double crossed left and right for limos and other wedding servces for that day: "Pay double, or we refund your down payment in double." Our down payment was 300 litas. They would have been within their rights to refund us 600 and make an extra ten, twenty, thirty grand. But it wouldn't have been honest, so cheers to them.

Liudas Masys was a great photographer. Lots of really good non traditional shots, many candid. The posing ones felt like we were posing as models, not family members. He came by the next day, less than 16 hours after he'd left us, with a cd with over 1,200 pictures and an album with about 30 choice pictures printed out super high quality.

Kapelija (sp?) was a great band. Traditional, old fashioned music, exactly what we ordered. They even had a guy MC the whole evening, which was a godsend, cause I can't imagine who we could have got to do it so good: games, sing-alongs, special dances, the works.

Santa Salonas, where the best men and I got our tuxedos, is the worst place in the world. When I came the first time somebody was just leaving, in disgust. I wish I hadn't assumed it was an isolated incident and given them a chance. They didn't have any bow ties, except for clip ons, and they didn't have any shoes. They promised to get the bow ties. Okay, I guess the men and I can supply our own shoes. The mes are flying in, though, a week ahead of time. They tell me that's not enough time to prepare everything, we have to send ahead our measurements. Liars! Idiots! Because of this stupid move on their part, they were in a real bind when adjustments had to be made with less than 24 hours till show time. If they managed to do it in that time, though, they would have been much wiser to do it a week ago and not sew them wrong in the first place. Not to say that they did a good job sewing them: all the best men had velcro cummerbunds, and Peanut's was sew together backwards, so the ends met face to face instead of overlapping! Plus when we went to get them, a young woman was bitching them out and demanding her money back for sewing her dress wrong twice and wasting her time. They never got the bow ties they promised, there were slips of paper belonging to previous renters in the pockets, and the shirts had sweat stains around the collar. Those fuckers are lucky Gedas dropped out of the wedding party. If I wasn't in breach of contract myself for ending up short one best man, I would have given myself a sizable discount for poor service. When I went to return the tuxes I heard yet another damsel crying inside.

Pirates the third, or Pirates the TURD?

Pirates of the Caribbean is a movie I can watch once a month and not get bored of it.

Pirates II is okay too: original, funny and exciting, visually entertaining too.

Pirates III, At World's End, however, should be renamed At Wit's End, since I was at my wit's end trying to enjoy it. No success.
1. Many of the jokes are recycled from the first two movies. Liepa said that made the movie funnier, I don't see it. If I know the punchline before it comes, I consider it poor writing, not funnier.
2. No great fight scenes. II managed not to be repetitive by having the great sword fight on the mill wheel rolling down the hill. All III managed was having sword fights in the rain...wow!
3. No new visual effects. II had the pirates hanging in cages, the sword fight mentioned above, Jack falling between those cliffs, and Davey Jones and his crew. All III had was the maelstrom, and my next complaint.
4. The delirious scene? All white with a guy's nose crawling along the screen? Get out of my face. I thought this was a pirate movie, not a weirdo mind trip movie. Most out of genre scene ever!
5. And every seen a shitty bad guy? Not this shitty! Lord Becket was all talk, and even that he was shitty at. How's this for a farewell as the ships goes down: "It was just supposed to be good business." Too bad I didn't know it wasn't supposed a good movie instead!

Wedding Highlights I

These are gonna come in bits and pieces--quotes and moments--cause the celebration lasted 8 days. Weddings that include a mass and 100 guests are very rare in Lithuania (usually it's just the marriage sacrament and ~30 guests), so comments about the splendor are re: that.

My speech at the reception included this: "We're not getting married married because we love each other..." I couldn't finish my thought before a tremendous roar of laughter silenced me for a minute. "I mean, we can love each other all we want without getting married; we're getting married in order to have a family. We want a big family because both of our families are so caring and so fun to be with."

One woman with two unmarried children said, "I've never been to such a wonderful wedding in all my life, and I probably never will!"

When we got to the reception we had to win our table from cross-dressers, since the place was dramatically overbooked. To satisfy them, we had to sing them a song. What song to we both know better than any other? Krambambolis! Several Lithuanian folk experts were astonished to hear a folk song for the first time. I guess first wave immigrants brought it over to the States and it died out in Lithuania.

I'd never seen my aunt wear pants before this in my life. Possibly she never had. After a few days of seeing me and my friends in casual wear, my 77 year old aunt pops in wearing torn, cut off jeans and laughs, "I found these going through some boxes of clothes; you think I can hang with Sarunas and his crew now?!"

wait, when tf is the election!?

after all the hubbub in newspapers, and after i added the frontrunner's link to my toolbar, i got all excited about giuliani winning this autumn. then today when i was looking at the title, join in 2008, i realized, it's not 2008 yet. so now i gotta wait another year and a freakin' half!? jesus maria! what's up with starting campaigns two+ years ahead of time? if it's that beneficial, let's have the 2012 candidates start up this summer. i can't wait!

Since you're board

Everything that's happened over the past week is a secret. That's why I haven't been posting. I've gotten a few complaints from bored people that they don't have anything on my blog to read on work breaks. Therefore, I give you this hilarious, totally indecent link, courtesy of Rachel, which I hope nobody respectable opens, but if you're bored and want to laugh out loud and have to cover your mouth so your supervisor thinks you're having a coughing fit, click at your own risk!

Which century are we in?

I think this rural Lithuanian woman might have traveled forward through time. She seems a bit in the dark:

Interviewer: How far away do you think the sun is from the earth?
Young woman: Crickey, it's far away! 30 km I reckon!

(30 km = 18.75 miles)

p.s. here's a great opening line from an email i received today: "People judge your dick size by your shoes size." that's...just great...really peaks my interest.