I make no apologies.

When you're jumpstarting a DeLorean, you just have to expect people to say shit like, "I don't think you're gonna get 1.21 jiggawatts out of that thing, dude."

Dear North Carolina...

Thank you for getting rid of Elizabeth Dole. I feel bad, though. I didn't get you anything.

Love,
-Taco

Best. Shopping. Trip. Ever.

My wife was out of town all last week, so our normal routine's way off. We wound up having to do the week's grocery run last night instead of our usual Saturday. Burn Notice hit the shelves this week, so I went over to electronics to pick up a copy while we were in the store.

There was a retarded guy over in electronics. Poor dude looked pretty sick. He was hooked up to an oxygen tank. But they were playing Stevie Ray on the demo stereos and dude was seriously into it. He was dancing around behind the cart, completely unself-conscious. I shot him a grin, because fuck, we should all enjoy music that much.

Dude danced over and gave me a high five.

In typical Taco fashion, I had no idea how to respond on the spot, and blurted out the first thing that popped into my head: "Rock the fuck on, man."

I panicked for a moment and wondered, irrationally, how much trouble you got for dropping the F-bomb on a retarded kid. But he just threw me a thumbs up and danced back over to his cart.

Best. Shopping. Trip. Ever.

Smack Talk

Sunday morning, Super Smash Bros. Brawl dropped. We loved Melee on das Gamencuben, so getting the new title for the Wii was a no brainer.

The kids and I dragged our asses out of bed and hauled on down to Target to pick up a copy. Target opens at 8, and I figured we'd be able to get a head start on the Christians going to church. They still had a huge stack of the game when we got there, and I was very proud of my cleverness... until I realized that I'd forgotten the time change, and Target had already been open for an hour when we arrived. I guess I needn't have worried so much.

We've put some miles on the game this week. Wifezilla even plays with us. They've kept the automatic handicap feature from Melee, so within a few fights, even my three year old daughter has a fair shot at winning a fight.

We've had a blast.

My son is six, and he's started to get the hang of the game. The handicap the computer assigns to me dwindles daily, and it's started to get really fun playing against him.

Unfortunately, I talk a lot of trash while I play without even realizing it. Last night, kidzookie was playing against his mom (and winning big time). He'd staked out a position on a ledge, and every time my wife would try to jump onto it, he'd send her flying, point at her, and yell, "Not in my house, little man!"

I couldn't stop laughing. Wifezilla was considerably less impressed.

The Wang Whisperer

I recently switched over to a Mac laptop as my main computer at home, and I'm still experimenting with all the software options available to me on the new platform. I found a pretty serviceable chat program in Adium almost immediately and have been most pleased with it.

Last night, while digging through the applications folder for Shit I Haven't Tried Out Yet (TM), I found that the computer came with chat software already installed. Huh. Reasoning that anything so blessed by Apple must be very nicely integrated with the system, I decided to try it out.

It works well, but I wasn't able to get it to connect to everything I wanted all at the same time. I generally stay logged into AIM, ICQ, and GoogleTalk because there's people I chat with frequently on all three. It looks like I can do that with iChat, but I haven't figured out how yet. Still getting used to the way Mac does things.

Like most of the software I've fiddled with on OSX, it's very pretty, and adds nice little touches that make using it more intuitive and pleasant.

It decorates the chats so that what you and your chat partner type come up in word balloons (a la comic strips) in the chat window, making it look for all the world like your icons are talking to each other. You can turn this off, but I got a kick out of it and left it on.

Then Coyote logged on and I pounced on the not-nearly-often-enough opportunity to talk to him. And all hell broke loose.

You see, Coyote's icon is always a golden wang.

And last night, the golden wang talked to me, man.

It was... surreal.

Party at Taco's House

So my father in law came up for his every-third-week chemo last night. Today was the appointment. They checked him out and declared that he no longer requires the chemo treatments. No word yet on whether he'll have to undergo the radiation treatment at the end. I think we find that out tomorrow.

Pants off dance off at Taco's house. Yay!

Breakdown (Let Me Hear It, Now)

Rock Band hit back in November. I resisted. Lord, how I resisted. I have Guitar Hero 3. I am immune.

One of my coworkers picked it up this week. We discussed the game at great length yesterday. The more he talked about it, the more awesome it sounded.

I needed this fucking game.

Fortunately for my immortal soul and for my marriage, John described in great detail just how hard it is to get Rock Band in San Francisco. He had to comb the city for it. When he finally found it online, he ordered it and arranged for an in-store pickup. It sells out there the second it hits the shelves, even after a couple of months. Think Wii, only not a childhood euphemism for micturation.

Hooray, thinks I, I'm still immune... for, though I have caved after lo, these many months of wanting an X-box 360, and lo, these two months of wanting Rock Band, the game is in scarce supply. I can't have it.

I hit Best Buy on my way home from work yesterday. It would seem that we on the east coast do not suffer from the San Franciscan hard rock drought. You know how sometimes gas stations will build elaborate structures out of soda can cases? Best Buy had built what approximated a 17th century well out of Rock Band cases. The display came up to my chest.

Of course, they were out of 360s.

As was everyone else in Wake County. Evidently, Raleigh is anti-San Francisco. If there was ever an earthquake that rocked the San Andreas hard enough to cause the two to touch, I'm quite certain the earth would be destroyed in the resultant explosion and outpouring of energy. God help us all.

Three hours of store-hopping later, I found one at Target. Score! I paged the guys covering the section, and one of them showed up, unlocked the console, and carried it over to the register...

...where he discovered it had already been opened. Target's policy is apparently to return opened consoles as defective and recover the cost, so they don't sell them once they've been opened and returned. And I didn't really want to pay retail for a used system. They checked the online inventory, but no Target within reasonable driving distance had one.

Fortunately, I had kidzookie with me, and kiddo was looking extremely sad over the prospect of not getting the only fucking 360 to be found within 50 miles. No sooner had I explained to the Target guy that I understood, he'd been more helpful than anyone I'd talked to so far that night (especially the gotard at GameSpot who couldn't even fucking tell me whether they had any 360s in stock), and thanks for your time, than he asked me to hang on and paged his manager.

Manager lady showed up, and electronics kid told her my sob story. She got a load of my sad, sad little boy who was bravely accepting the loss of the 360, and offered to sell it to me against store policy at a 20% discount.

I love Target.

So I got the mid-range X-box 360 pro with Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Forza for the price of the crummy Arcade Edition.

The reviews for Ultimate Alliance paint it as a mediocre game. That's about right. It's fun, but not great... but fucking sweet for a free game

Forza is awesome... think Gran Turismo, except they actually model damage and actually let you paint your fucking car.

And then I stopped for Rock Band on my way home.

God Damn.

Rock Band may very well own my immortal soul. It was developed by the original Guitar Hero guys. It's fan-fucking-tastic.

1. The guitar. It feels cheap compared to the Guitar Hero controller. It's flimsier, made of thinner plastic. It's got more controls, but it feels cheaper. I'm not in love, but it's serviceable... it works well, it just feels cheap. Mad Catz is supposed to release a controller for it eventually, so I'll look into that when it comes out.
2. The microphone. It's well-made. It's heavy. I don't know if they weighted it to make it feel more substantial or what, but it feels like a solid piece of equipment. I sang (badly) into it for a while last night. It works well. On easy mode, the vocal tracks are very forgiving and easy to pass. I hear they're pretty fucking tough at high levels. We'll see as we get there... maybe I can lure wifezilla into the game with the mike. You can use more or less any headset/mike combo with the game as well, so I'll try to sell it as a song & choreography combo a la her favorite performers.
3. The drums. Jeebus. These things are the shit. They're really solid. Good aluminum struts, solid drum pads... the thing feels really solid. I played the drums for hours last night. I'm not good at drums, but fuck they're fun. Plus I get to hit shit.

I'm on my second evening with the 360 and Rock Band now. Well into the point where buyer's remorse usually sets in... except instead of the usual taste of stale beer and sadness, it's OMGWHYAMINOTPLAYINGROCKBANDRIGHTFUCKINGNOW?

OMG.

SRSLY.

The Danger of Wishes

Lately, we've had a lot of trouble getting my son to stay in bed after bedtime. He comes downstairs over and over again, wanting hugs, wanting to ask questions, wanting to know what some noise was, you name it. We've established a firm rule that you have to keep your scrawny little ass in bed after you're tucked in, and no yelling downstairs to us, or you get no hugs, no second tuck-ins, nothing.

It doesn't do shit, of course, but we have the rule.

So last night, he's up over and over again, and I'm getting pissed. "I heard a noise upstairs, is the computer off?" (That's been a popular one, lately)

I log in remotely to the machine upstairs and check the volume. Nope, I had forgotten to mute it. I mute it remotely. "There ya go, kiddo, get back upstairs."

Two minutes later, he's back downstairs. "I heard a noise. Are you sure it's off?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

"Can you turn it off again?"

I'll check again. "Yep, it's off."

"But I heard something."

"The dishwasher's on. The washing machine's on. The dryer's on. You probably heard something from one of those. Or one of the cats moving around the house. Or maybe the wind blew one of the trees against the house. There's absolutely nothing to be worried about. Now get. Your. Butt. Upstairs."

"But..."

"Get upstairs now, and don't come down again, or you're going to be in a lot of trouble."

Tears. Snot. The works. I haven't even raised my voice at this point, so I don't understand this reaction at all. My wife goes upstairs with him to tuck him in and play good cop to my bad cop. She comes downstairs about five minutes later, smirking and suppressing giggles.

Turns out, the root of the matter was this: he had been curious to know whether wishes worked, so on the playground at school that day, he'd tested it by wishing on a dandelion that monsters were real. Every bump and thump that night sent the kid into hysterics.

My life, ladies and gentlemen.

/bow

Why aren't you listening?

Fuck you! I don't want to wear the tutu!

I mean, uh, yeah. Manly shit. And stuff.

I bought the last Beth Hart album I was lacking tonight. Why the fuck aren't you listening to her?

1. It's an awesome blend of blues & rock. Which is fucking awesome, since rock owes its life to blues and country already, even though nobody remembers that.
2. She's Janis reincarnated, motherfucker. Yeah, she was born two years after Janis died. She deserved a vacation. Bitch.
3. She covered Whole Lotta Love. I licked the screen but I'm pretty sure that isn't transmissible.
4. She toured with Jeff Beck. Seriously. God damn.
5. She's fucking hot. Srlsly.

Why the fuck aren't you listening to her? That's it. I'm not speaking to you any more.

Okay, I am. But only because the sex is great.

The Chosen Beer

I wish my camera phone was better, because something as bizarrely awesome as this deserves something better than the grainy, out of focus crap my razr churns out.

We stopped by the beer shack near our house this evening to pick up a flavored beer my wife's fond of and can't find any place else, and as I passed the He'brew shelf, I swear the clouds parted and sunlight broke through to land dazzlingly upon the display even though it was night time, I was indoors, and the DVD I'd been shopping for at the previous store is apparently a figment of my imagination (at least according to the pubescent brainchildren at Best Buy).

Behold the glory. It's the chosen beer. L'Chaim!

Precocious little thing, isn't she?

So wifezilla, my daughter, and I stopped by Target today on our way home from breakfast. Wifezilla needed a few things and wanted to do a little Christmas shopping while we were there.

So while wifezilla was off doing her thing, I took the wee one over to the grocery side of the store to nab a free cookie. On the way there, she took a hard right and bolted into the personal hygiene aisle. When I rounded the corner, she was standing there with a box of tampons, which she proudly held up and informed me, "These are for mommy's butt."

Necro Feel Ya II

Grimmy sent me a screenplay tonight. I only mention it so you can writhe in jealousy. That's right. Writhe, my pretties, writhe. No, seriously, writhe.

Oh, this? It's just baby oil. Don't worry about it. Get back in the jello pool. No, really. No big deal.

Oh, yeah.

Zombies and strippers make everything better.

Deer, Pocky, Lips

So I'm riding in to work this morning, and the whole drive in, it looks like I missed some massive, failed deer uprising. The carnage was impressive. Several of the corpses were even more or less intact.

I saw no human bodies, by which I conclude that we must have won. I mean, we had the luxury of hauling our dead off the field of battle. Go home team!

Then, upon my triumphant return to work, and after wading through all the confetti and ticker tape (they say you get used to it, but I find that you never really do), I log in, check my email, and find that Grimmy's back, and has been posting comments on my blog.

Could it be coincidence that Grimm -- the man who once confessed to a burning desire to best a deer in hand-to-hand combat -- returned today? Nay, I say. Nay! I feel quite certain that he must have led the assault.

Your children are safe tonight thanks to this brave man.

Parenting is hard to do...

...with a straight face.

So last night, we hit Sears to buy kidzookie a suit for Emu's wedding on Saturday. After a painful round of trying on dozens of suits while one kid whined that she was bored and the other that he was tired of trying shit on, we got him squared away, and headed back out into the mall. Wifezilla brought out a gift card to Victoria's Secret and said she'd like to go pick some stuff up if I didn't mind.

Mind? Pffft.

So we all pile into Vicki's, Wifezilla's digging through piles of stuff and having a grand old time, and the kids are bored shitless. My daughter asks me to spin her around and get her dizzy, and I look down to tell her no, this really isn't the place to play that kind of game.

Then I look up.

My son is wearing a thong on his head.

I stare at him for a moment, trying to figure out exactly how best to approach this situation, and he takes the opportunity to inform me, "It's a superhero mask, dad."

Hrk.

She's my little princess.

So this weekend, we're riding around in the car, and my daughter is sitting in her car seat, red-faced, grunting, and straining:

TACO: You okay over there?

DAUGHTER: Nnnnngyeah.

TACO: Do you need to be changed?

DAUGHTER: Nnnnnnng...no.

TACO: You didn't poop your pants?

DAUGHTER: Nnnnnnng...no.

TACO: What are you doing over there?

DAUGHTER: Nnnnng... I'm trying to fart.

I have the best brother ever.

Boring background info, part the first:

I used to work for BEA about six years ago. I really loved it over there. I was on a great team, we had pretty interesting work, and I was learning tons. The last project I worked on there was a new website implementation for a big time credit card company. For a couple of months I worked 14-16 hour days and Saturdays. We delivered the project in spite of the ridiculous deadline, and the credit card guys were thrilled.

A week later, I got canned when the company laid off 10% across the board. My wife was as pregnant as it gets.

Not that I'm bitter.

Background info part the second:

My brother is currently in San Francisco on business.

The story:

Emu: BEA has a booth here. I got cornered by a sales guy. He was telling me of their VM appliances and what not. He asked what I thought....

Emu: I told him that they let my brother go a week before his son was born...

Taco: lmao

Taco: Did you really?

Emu: The look on his face was priceless.

Emu: Awkward moments ftw!

Taco: You are the greatest fucking thing ever.

Emu: Would have been better if it had been you.

Emu: Figured it was the next best thing.

Personalized License Plates

I have a completely irrational hatred of personalized license plates.

I had a couple of paragraphs here earlier detailing my hatred in acid tones, but deleted it. I've got a once-in-a-great-while reader that I made fun of, and with my luck, he'd load up my blog and see it. Allow me to sum up without examples: a) unless your plate is intended to be witty and amusing, I probably only grind my teeth a little, and b) I probably don't mean you.

If your plate is supposed to be clever, I die a little inside whenever I see it. Fuck me, I hate those damn things.

The ones I do like are the ones that are unintentionally funny. A few years ago, I was riding behind someone with a plate that read:

BCNSLT

Now, sure, their initials were probably BCN, and the car was probably an LT model of whatever-the-fuck conspicuously consumed vehicle they'd bought, and they wanted the world to know that it was BCN's god damned LT.

But for the rest of my life, that chick will be known to me as The Bacon Slut.

On my way home tonight, I saw the second funny personalized plate I've ever seen:

MM 88

God help me, I laughed until I cried. If you don't get it, then Noq and I just get to lord it over you. Especially you, Coyote, since you're going to lord the beginning of my own conversation over me.

Neener neener neen.

I do believe I'm fucking flattered.

So I got an email from a recruiter at Google today, asking whether I was interested in jobs with them. I probably won't pursue it, since it's almost certainly located in California (and I Hate California). But still, I'm fucking flattered (check out that alliteration... no charge to you, dear reader).

Go me, or something.

Taco, you glorious bastard...

Steps to a pretty good morning:

1. Get a chicken biscuit from McDonalds on the way into work.
2. Sit down at your desk and eat said biscuit while checking email.
3. Get an email from a guy in California wanting info about your software.
4. Dig around in the code, find what you're looking for, and wonder who the hell wrote it, because it rocks.
5. Check the version history.
6. Find out you wrote it.

Works every time. The chicken biscuit is key. I can't stress this enough.