Sometimes it takes some time for AOL to load up both the pictures and text for the welcome window. So you get pies mixed with stories of war, or war torn wasteland mixed with celebrity gossip. Just as funny as runstaverun's favorite site. I thought this one was particularly amusing, and had to save it.

So. Time to catch up on the past few weeks, like I've said I would. In honor of Zaphod Beeblebrox (no, not dasubergeek or cybersphere's Zaphod, the Douglas Adams character you putz) and his male ancestors, I'm doing it in reverse order. Not in honor of Memento, that'd be a photoshop cliche.

So Friday night, I was hanging out at work CNS-ifying my section's website, as I said. Talked to Pete on the phone, he somehow talked me into going to see The Matrix: Reloaded with him. I was hoping to limit myself to two viewings so as not to be a total nerd, but I had been blowing Pete off and wanted to spend time with him.

So I headed over to his place, and he convinced me to grab a beer with him at Butch Kowals first. Typical Pete. Well, typical Pete would be a vodka and tonic, but that'd get you smacked at Butch Kowals. So we were a few feet from his car when he came up with the idea of smuggling a six pack into the movie. I know, how high school. So we bought a six-pack of Bud to stuff into my trench coat and his coat. Obviously, most of it in the former. As we made the purchase, some guy grabbed me and asked us about The Matrix. Sure, see a guy with a trench coat and assume he's seen the flick. We admitted that we were on the way to see it (3^rd for me, 2^nd for Pete) again, and chatted a bit about it. Pete commented in his car, ``That guy saw us as fellow dirtbags, and figured us out on sight.''

The movie wasn't as good the third time as it was the second. So the point of diminishing returns is two viewings for me. But maybe the beers didn't help. Kevin Garron, Pete's brother Rudy, Alex Sierra (master of the White Weenie deck), ``Two Blue'' Dan Yu, and Mike ``Golden Shower'' Schaffer joined us. I hadn't seen them since Pete's birthday. The lovely conversations in my LJ helped me philosophize with the philosophy major about the flick, and he actually brought up the MWAM idea first. After the movie, we hit the Omega Diner, which really pissed off maidoftheshore, who didn't believe me that we were there that night. We didn't fit on a round table, so the waitress pulled over a square table to add to the round table. She pointed to me in a conspiratorial whisper, ``See, the tables form an Omega now.'' It wasn't a true Omega, but I didn't bother, I figured she had enough to deal with putting up with our shit. I found out Rudy was going to work at Los Alamos, I joked that he was going off to work with Lazar's friends, and corrected him on a few misconceptions about Lazar's imprisonment. Went home. Slept. Hid from the world.

I love the Adult Swim comments for Trigun. My insurance agent isn't as cute as those two.

The night before, we had two guests for Game Night, and I got to meet Toasted Marshmellow. She's such a friendly, affectionate, well-mannered little muffin head. So cute, such beautiful eyes, a great little kitty. I hope she finds a loving home. So willthestud and drunkinmunchkin came to join us. It was the former's third time, so I guess he's a regular by now, I think. It was the latter's Game Night debut. So we finally got gaming pretty late in the evening, and ordered some pizza at some point. Halo (kikibird sat out), Beyblade, Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (I sat out), and Fuzion Frenzy were played. I played some of the worst Halo of my life, usually coming in second behind runstaverun. I need to start playing nights other than Thursday. The two rookies held their own, tying me most rounds. The others played Gauntlet while I chatted online, and they tried three-player Beyblade. I won at Fuzion Frenzy, as usual, but I'm a loser like that.

Wednesday we wanted to do Halo night with Khang, caniswolfie, and runstaverun, but the latter two couldn't make it. Due to Movie Night being moved, we might have to look into doing Halo Night on Tuesday. That morning, on the way to work, Artie Lange said something on the Stern Show about going to AA meetings.

``You listen to the stories and think, God a year ago this would have been a great party. Now it's just a bunch of self-righteous jerks telling me not to drink.''

So on the 20^th, Movie Night returned to gayness after two weeks of little gay content. johnstevensaul asked me whether I wanted to watch the downer first or second. I wanted to end the evening on an up note, so we watched The Perfect Son first, and Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss second. kikibird and runstaverun were also in attendance. johnstevensaul said that the main character had to be gay in order for it to be a gay movie, so I guess the former wasn't really a gay movie. Unless you just mean any main character, not THE main character, like the difference between ``capital A'' Administrator and ``lower case a'' administrator. Regardless, it was a well done movie, and truly a downer as johnstevensaul said it would be. The latter was light hearted and funny. Neither one was as good as some of the other movies we've seen, and I insisted again to our host that Jeffrey be shown to the breeders ASAP.

Yay, tomorrow night on Trigun is the first episode with Wolfwood.

Monday, the 19^th, someone had this as their away message: This week is my 5 month anniversary. *CENSORED* is very happy :-). I wonder. Five months before that was, well, nothing that I knew of, and I was sort of with them at the time. If we were to assume they were counting wrong and meant January, then that was the day they realized they weren't getting back together with me. Honestly, I'm wracking my brain, and can't think of anything a month before that. Of course, I did wrack my brain for most of that day trying to piece something together.

Sunday, the 18th, was kikibird's actual birthday. I woke up, had oatmeal, and passed out again. When I woke up for real, aaronkliger had left noelr's copy of Microserfs in my boot. runstaverun, kikibird, and I went to the Essex County Turtle Back Zoo. And, sure enough, I got to see a fox! kikibird was overjoyed to see the turtles (the namesake of the zoo), while I was totally blown away to see the fox! The cute wonderful little smelly fox!!! Oh, and there were other animals. Like rutting otters, the Kean University mascots, and the old pirates. After spending some time at the zoo with the couple, I went home, and watched the next to last episode of Six Feet Under. The dead did NOT have my middle name as their last name, there was a slight misspelling.

The party the night before was insane. Pete and hiphopatcong getting animalistic, maidoftheshore getting freaked out, Pete attacking people for ruining kikibird's party and not considering her feelings, then yelling at her a little bit later. noelr broke his word about throwing a punch at redvector, shmivejournal brought a ham. johnstevensaul, windexcowboy, and I smiled. towelboy took the last after runstaverun said I could have it, despite noelr and runstaverun yelling at him due to the fact that I couldn't talk. People kept on handing me shots, and I couldn't talk to say no. Not that I would have anyway. Good times. I kept on grabbing people. redvector, shmivejournal, runstaverun, and kikibird. Someone decided that I, too messed up to even talk, should cut up and serve the ham. I managed to open it, and was finding a knife when Pete grabbed it from me. Pete threw the ham shmivejournal brought at him and around until it got thrown out by redvector. I, despite being incredibly messed up, fished it out of the garbage, and washed it off. Pete threw it again, redvector threw it out again. This repeated a few times, until Pete brought it outside and threw it around out there until it got thrown at a car and the ham was taken out of the picture by cooler heads. No hot straight girls showed up, so towelboy didn't need to act.

As planned, I took a bubble bath in the bathroom. When people went to go to the bathroom, I pulled the curtain slightly aside and said, ``What the fuck? I'm taking a bath here!'' Hilarious. Just as kikibird asked for while drunk and I agreed to while buzzed. Managed to fool towelboy, despite him hearing the water running. Fooled aaronkliger by being naked. Fooled someone else by still being in the bathroom. Really freaked the fuck out of Jake and Pete. Kept on topping off with fresh bubbles and warm water so as not to freeze, but got even more messed up by not realizing how gone I was sitting in a tub. The second I stood up and started to wash the bubbles off, I could barely concentrate on turning the knobs.

Purchased the Scooby Doo bubble bath and generic opaque shower curtain at Odd Job, felt really dirty and got really dirty looks at the register. Looked like a child molester. ``Ruh-roh!'' windexcowboy, redvector, and I managed to hit just about every store in that complex. Before Odd Job, they bought CD-Rs at Circuit City. Between the two we hit ShopRite for pound cake and chocolate for fondue (redvector's genius idea after hearing that kikibird wanted fondue for her party), balloons, birthday cards (redvector managed to make a nice LJ reference with his card), etc. Before that, we went to Veggie Heaven with incetardis, his girlfriend, and other artsy people. After hitting all the stores in the strip mall, we hit the remaining porn place near me on 46 for another birthday gift.

That morning was graduation, where I got to see the first class that's never known me as a student graduate. My former mayor and state senator, the honorable James McGreevy, alumni of my high school, gave a wacky insane speech. He was all over the place. It was awesome. angryjonny, epic47 (just barely!), redvector, ancalimar, carrisse, and other people without LJs all walked. I got to rub my chin on ancalimar's head, maybe for the last time. I bit Josh Butchko's head, maybe for the last time. In fact, as he was walking after getting his diploma, he taunted me, ``Try to bite my head now!'' crescentdude was there watching his girlfriend graduate, and thanked me for the 23 link. See? 23! Erik Slagle was there with his wife watching his younger brother graduate, Ivan Rodin showed up, Guy Pastena was there, even Jeff Dunbar was there watching his girlfriend enter the real world (as was caniswolfie, but I expected him to be). I wonder how many more graduations I can go to and see as many people I knew from my student days there, I'm sure there will be a gap... before I see them there for their kids' graduations. *shudder* The weather was perfect, the hot pink number my boss's boss's boss was wearing was smashing as always. Good times. Good to see everyone. I think, despite loving it, I might be allergic to champagne. Yet not other forms of alcohol. The cheaper, the worse my reaction. For a while my junior year, I tried to make that my angle, but I kept on getting sick. Maybe I didn't outgrow every allergy during the stressful combination of divorce and puberty as originally thought.

Friday, as you know, I saw Reloaded for the second time with windexcowboy and redvector. Read the whole long debate and spoilers in THAT entry, why don't you? I've mentioned it enough in this entry, and I'm going to mention it more later, so ha!

Thursday the 15^th, three days before her birthday, kikibird whooped our asses at Cheapass Games. And, for the first time in a while, we didn't have any special guests for Game Night as willthestud couldn't make it. We played Change - Make Your Own Change Night, and Big Cheese - Rats. The final scores were 48, 27, 25 and 516, 442, 414 respectively. That's her, runstaverun, and your hero kingfox. But in Rats, I was two turns away from a big scoring random(6)*20, so I could have won. And close means nothing except in hand grenades and horse shoes. So she was the big winner. I talked them into playing a short game of Fuzion Frenzy, which runstaverun got into the zone with and managed to barely beat me in, as the computer barely beat kikibird.

Wednesday, the 14^th, the original night for sushi night, I served students. In fact, I served noelr's biggest fans, carrisse and redvector. The two said that I was one of the most influential faculty/staff during their time at drewuniversity and graced me with the honor of attending the senior banquet. *wipes tear from eye* Honestly, I was flattered and honored to be chosen. So windexcowboy, blackbytes, and I stood around waiting for redvector to show up. I also had an eye out for carrisse. Wave after wave of student arrived, but no sign of our students. Finally windexcowboy talked to redvector on the phone and found out how late he was. I gave up and sat with carrisse (who kept on insisting that she was fine and was sitting with a bunch of people blowing everyone else off) just as redvector showed up. So I sat with these people who all blew off the faculty/staff whom they had invited. So I ended up serving twenty students. That's right, twenty students. Luckily, Aramark employees helped me carry half the dinners, so I only ended up bringing out ten meals. Oh, and a few pitchers of ice water. And clearing most of the salad plates and some of the dinner plates (thanks, blackbytes for helping). And bringing out most of the twenty desserts. They ate all the bread, so I couldn't have any, the bastards. Here I am, bringing out lobster for random students I don't know, and they don't leave me any bread? Oh well. Still, it was a fun time, and it was good to see all the graduates one last time before graduation sucks them away from me forever. We (the faculty and staff) all got to sing the Alma Mater to the students, I snubbed the inspiration for noballs, and I had a good chat with Baha about life. Rich Meyer (famous from stickers in The Pub bathroom and GSP toll booths) was introduced by Tom Kean, at which point redvector dragged windexcowboy and I off to the movies, where other graduates joined us.

Tuesday, the 13^th was the Math/Comp Sci picnic. Every year I recognize less students. Gloria and epic47 plotted to kill me and take my job, and people discussed how much the market sucked.

Later on, johnstevensaul had a couple of odd movies for Movie Night. He started out with Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, one of my favorite classics. I was amazed that kikibird and runstaverun hadn't seen it before. Such an amusing movie in how dated it is. Afterwards others joined us for Six String Samurai, another favorite of mine. One of Snapple's favorites as well, full of hilarious moments. Satisfies my metal needs, my post-apocalyptic needs, and my surreal needs all in one movie. It's actually a movie I got in to due to the soundtrack. The soundtrack arrived at WMNJ back when I was in charge, and I thought the liner notes look interesting. From that I ended up seeing and loving the movie. No one else there had seen it, and I'm not sure quite how they reacted to it. I love it. Like Road Warrior, Natural Born Killers, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen all rolled into one. Good times.

Monday we went to sushi feasting. redvector drove out to drewuniversity, where he stood with runstaverun, windexcowboy, Vicky and I waiting for shmivejournal. And waiting. In fact, I even went back and edited this entry pushing all times back a half hour to make extra time for shmivejournal's motorcade to make it up from Princeton to drewuniversity. Finally, when he was already late, I got an anxious phone call from the celebrity. He was lost in Perth Amboy (a town I know quite well, having grown up near it, that's right next to the city), and was giving up and going home. I tried to convince him to press on, telling him that he was within minutes of the city, but he was afraid to drive in the city and went home. We cursed his name and swore to write about it angrily on LJ. Then he got hit by a ham he procured, we felt bad, and didn't say anything. So runstaverun went with windexcowboy to pick up kikibird, while I went with redvector and Vicky. We trusted my intuition, fucked up, and finally followed the directions to perfectly arrive at the place after getting caught in traffic in Hoboken. carrisse and shamugrad took mass transit, beating our asses. incetardis joined us, driving in from his Brooklyn pad. Meanwhile, the New Englanders chose to ignore the directions, and called them crap. The perfect directions that got us to the place despite me fucking up in Jersey and getting us caught in traffic, the perfect directions that would lead a person unfamiliar with Manhattan to the place without any problems. So they took a while to get there. Didn't matter, it took them forever to seat us. We finally got seated, and kicked their asses again. Not like last time, we used more strategy this time, and even worked it logistically to leave room for dessert. As usual, eel that melts in your mouth. Pickled veggies to die for. Even veggie boy incetardis had a great feast, and held his own.

incetardis threw another fancy shindig at his pad in Brooklyn on the 10^th. Just like last time, I went with runstaverun, kikibird, and windexcowboy. This time windexcowboy did not bring any electronic music devices to abandon at a deli. We met with aaronkliger at his place of employment (this week is his last week there, BTW), and got to see his office. Then we walked a bit, and popped kikibird's White Castle cherry. I got to try the Jalapeno Burger (good times), and picked up details on their receipe contest. When we showed up, the host had gone out to get more alcohol, as they were running low. Until we showed up, and tripled the amount of alcohol present, becoming heroes. John, redvector's future roomie, was there. As was the killer of WMNJ, and other familiar faces. As runstaverun drove the four of us in, I was assumed he'd be driving us back out. So when I noticed he was as drunk as kikibird, I realized I'd have to stop drinking if I was going to make it to EB for work the next day. So my ride got stupid drunk, as did the people I came in with. windexcowboy was staggering up and down incetardis's steps, complaining about not having any good music to sing to, and commenting on his music selection. kikibird was yelling to random pedestrians and neighbors until incetardis freaked out and pulled them inside. People putting the V in VC was discussed loudly, and I drank lots of tonic water. Towards the end of the evening, we hung out near the bathroom, as some groups ended up going in. kikibird kept on joking all night that someone should barge in on someone random, and commented on how she moved the shower curtain when she herself was using the facilities. From there she was joking about how cool it would be to have someone hiding in the shower during her birthday party, which led to me agreeing to take a bubble bath during her birthday party. While sober, I still kept myself to this odd drunken request. kikibird rode back to Jersey with aaronkliger in his car, while I drove runstaverun and windexcowboy back in the former's vehicle. The two were quite smashed, and hard to keep in line, so I put up with them listening to Ska. Once in Jersey I got my car, gave windexcowboy a ride back to the mansion, and got home just in time to get a few hours of sleep before working at EB. And the kicker? It was a shift I offered to pick up on a day I was originally scheduled off. Hah!

That morning, before heading off to incetardis's party, I beat the new Castlevania. Kick ass, if short, game. But not dismal replay value. I look forward to beating it on hard, and trying to catch all of the souls. Like the last one, I'll probably still boss rush once in a while when I'm looking for something to do while sitting on hold or such.

willthestud joined us for a second Game Night on the 8^th. We played the same old games, had the same old fun, he got lost going home the same old way. We played Scattergories, which was fun as always.

The 7^th was the senior farewell lunch. We all went to Benihana's, my first time participating in said event. It was a fun lunch, with ice flying when responsible adults were out of the room or turned away. We're saying goodbye to a great crew, and I truly miss them. Some of the coolest ATOPS I've known in my seven years at drewuniversity left. The mighty fall and rise of Bob, redvector's hate, epic47's ninja ``goth'' gear, angryjonny's short time behind desk, Gloria's cool finds, Elan's procrastination, Vicky's cleanliness... *sigh* I now understand why blackbytes and Lorrie always got so misty eyed every spring.

Tuesday night johnstevensaul showed us Scotland, PA and The Fisher King. The former was fun and wacky, a hilarious white trash version of Macbeth. The latter's a classic that some hadn't seen, which was rectified. I keep on catching it one quarter or one half in on cable, it was good to see it all the way through again.

Saturday, the 3^rd, noelr had a bunch of us over. aaronkliger, towelboy, kikibird, runstaverun, and I. It was the first time there for the Game Night crew, and we saw forty deer on the way up there. It was an insane night. It started with us three mooning the other three, and went downhill from there. towelboy and noelr had a rematch of their prior fight, where towelboy pulled some crazy Brazilian Jujitsu action on noelr's ass. I was taking action, not sides, so I ended up betting on noelr's side with aaronkliger against kikibird and runstaverun supporting towelboy. The last time noelr tapped, but faced hiphopatcong first. Trash talking reached a point where the winner had to face a second person. noelr would have to fight runstaverun and towelboy would have to face aaronkliger. We set up a light box, moved things aside to form an arena, and started pumping up noelr in his room. aaronkliger and I gave him tips, aaronkliger had some insightful amazing pointers for a winning fight strategy. Sure enough, it occurred exactly as we warned noelr it would. A choke hold on the floor. noelr couldn't slam him against the floor like aaronkliger did to kikibird, and ended up tapping after a while. The second round was canceled, unfortunately. It went FURTHER downhill from there. towelboy and aaronkliger went over to noelr's dead grandfather's place to set it up for them to spend the night (no cat to bother aaronkliger's allergies), and came back over wearing noelr's dead grandfather's clothing. It went FURTHER down the slippery slope. At one point, as I pointed out, it looked like a scene from The Blair Witch. Three guys facing the wall playing with themselves while a shocked female stands in the middle. Angry vulva, turkey leg, the brain. Boofcat.

I ended the night saying that the only way we could take it to the next level was either killing and eating a live animal or killing a hooker. kingfox will work on the former, towelboy will work on the latter.

And that's my story. You're now caught up to last major update.

Feeling: anxious
Listening to: Chemical Brothers, Song of the Siren