I Ruled Over A Kingdom Of Howler Monkeys!

And now, a timeline:

4 years of college education
6 years in journalism
15 days until the end of the part-time job
37 days remaining on the lease

1,200 pictures of George Washington owed to the credit card company
1,300 more owed to the oral surgeon before the end of summer

Bow to Balls Mahoney!

Yes, ladies and germs. Flapping in the sweet, sweat-filled breeze is the gangly underbrush of that almost-ran dirtbag, that perpetual mid-card wrestler, Balls Mahoney. Here he's getting whoopoed by John Cena at Raw Monday night. Yes, I was THAT close that I could snap this picture.

Ok - MARCY snapped the picture. She wore a pink shirt.

I just like saying Balls Mahoney. Let the ridicule ensue.

Angels Fix the Printer!

Angels are everywhere in literature. Whether you're a wrath-of-God fan like me, or a casual observer of man's interpretations of angel behavior, there's a lot out there to satiate your cravings.

Sometimes, as you can see from this photo, they appear while you're waiting for your page proof to print when you're at work. Those are reporters' heads in the foreground. I should also mention this was taken by Vasiliy, our photographer, who's the blackest white Ukranian I've ever known.

If you'd like to learn more about angels (and I'm not that much of an angel nut myself so this stuff isn't too weird) check out the following:

Paradise Lost: John Milton's epic poem about the parts of the Bible the Apostles didn't want you to know. Its descriptions of the angel battle scenes inspired fillmmakers for generations - swords, gold armor, glorious choruses bearing Death on their wings, ham sandwiches. A side note: Milton was known to have read every book in the world at the time of his writings. Of course, this was just before or right at the time of the printing press, so those books probably numbered in the 10-30 range. But it's still an impressive thing to be able to say. Another side note: I'm not sure if I read about the ham sandwiches or if I dreamed them. Mmmm. Sammiches.

His Dark Materials: Phillip Pullman's series of three books was inspired by Milton, so naturally it involves angels. "His dark materials" refers to a passage in Paradise Lost describing the building blocks God used to create the universe. That should NOT be confused with the dark materials of Cletus Randall Johnson, a resident of Wayne County, NY who in his double-wide once declared that "his dark materials" were responsible for the great Johnson family sewage explosion of 1995.

Eat this!

Mahooch's Beef Stroganoff

What you need:
2 tsp fresh ground pepper
1 tsp. salt
garlic powder
3 tbsp olive oil
3 cloves minced garlic
1.5 cups chopped white onion
1 lb. thinly sliced beef (sirloin works best)
half a package of baby portabello mushrooms (about 10), sliced
1 cup water1 can (10 oz.) beef broth
1 can (10 oz.) cream of mushroom soup
1.5 tsp worchestershire sauce
splash of white wine (about a shotglass-worth)
3 cups egg noodles
Two spoonfuls of sour cream

How you do it:
In a large skillet, sautee the onions and mushrooms in the olive oil on medium heat, seasoning with pepper and salt, about four minutes. Once the onions get tender, add garlic, sautee another minute.

Use the garlic powder and more pepper to season the meat. Then throw the meat in and brown it 5-7 minutes, stirring constantly.

Add water, broth, soup, and worchestershire. Stir. Turn heat to medium high, then when it starts to boil, add noodles. Reduce heat to medium and cook about 15 minutes or until noodles are tender. Turn off heat and stir in sour cream.

Where The Photos Live

The Girlfriend Strikes Back

"Wait!" You say. "Is this not the selfsame girlfriend whose name Bryan besmirched in the previous blog post? Is this she, stealing his thunder and posting in his sacred internet space in his stead?"

What-EVER, says the former Valley Girl and member of the Official Young Indiana Jones Chronicles Fan Club. Is this an invasion of Blog Privacy? I think not. After all, it is my computer, my camera - and most importantly:
MY Plastic Viking Thinking Helmet.

What Bryan did not tell you is that the commercial he was tuning out was in fact quite funny. Not as funny as the one where the really fluffy cat sneezes and all of his fur flies of. And definitely not as funny as the original Gieco caveman commercial. ("Dude!! Not cool!") But funny nonetheless.

As I write this stealth post, Bryan is dozing off, cuddled up on the couch with my cat (who is not a fan of the Plastic Viking Thinking Helmet) and it's oh so cute.

That's what he gets for buying me a digital camera and falling asleep while still logged into Blogger.

(And a note for the Secret Blog Ninja Police Task Force ... Bryan said it was ok to post on his blog.)

Mwahahahahahahahaha!!!

I Bested a Giant in Norway!

A physics student once tried to explain to me how big the universe was:

According to modern theories, he said, the formula to precisely dictate its size is somewhat relative to that of a formula identifying the flat point on the surface of a sphere.

I tried to picture that, but then he said this:

You cannot actually picture this.

Oh. Well then.

Here are some other formulae to describe what hitherto has been undescribable:

The filling in an Oreo cookie = mass x volume of stomach – lunch(squared) plus the square root of milk.

Writing at night while girlfriend chats about commercials = velocity x energy x 0. (It should be noted that anything multiplied by zero is zero; therefore the amount of writing done is nothing. However, this equation may be modified thus: )
Writing at night while girlfriend chats about commercials + Norwegian plastic thinking cap = velocity x energy x b, where b represents the amount of time spent tuning her out.

Lacrosse = hockey + football + jai alai – reason

You may also use the following to calculate the amount of change lost in the couch:

Days since last load of laundry / Number of pairs of underwear in drawer x S (where S is snacks purchased that week out of the vending machine at work) - W (where W is your weight, in grams).

Top Five Time Wasters

5. Work

4. Filibusters

3. Golf

2. Watching golf

1. Getting drunk and passing out and waking up in Mexico and finding a new tattoo and discovering it says “Beulah” and forgetting Beulah’s phone number and hitching back to the U.S. border and being denied access because you don’t have your passport considering you last remember another round of Schnapps in New York and trying to hop the new fence that wasn’t there the last time you were in Mexico and remembering your roommate from college still owes you 20 bucks from Cancun and sneaking into a truck full of migrant workers and remembering seventh-grade Spanish and forgetting everything from class except “Me gustaria comprar una vaca” which means I would like to buy a cow and finding the one National Guardsman looking to sell a cow and getting invited to camp in New Mexico and meeting your best friend from second-grade who was forward deployed to the border and can vouch for your citizenship and calling your parents so they can fly you home and meeting a gypsy on the plane.

Bryan and the Giant Killer Squid

Whoa … did I really only post once last month?

Well, for both of you who have stuck with me, I make a peace offering. From the bowels of my own personal social closet I bring you an oily, festering, pimple-laced, gooey confession that’s so juicy if you touch it you’ll get boils.

I might be addicted to AM radio. But that’s not all: I think I’m hooked on Air America.

It began with a flurry of channel surfing for Rick Jenerett’s (sp?) broadcasts of Sabres games. Then, I made the happy discovery Al Franken and Bill O’Reilly broadcast at the same time. If you flip back and forth it’s like they’re arguing with each other! In a fight, I think O’Reilly’d win. He’s sick.

Later in the day, after Al, is Ed. Democrats always have monosyllabic names: JOHN Kerry. GEORGE Stephouanoupoulous. BILL Clinton and his wife, HANK.

One morning I found I’d left it on overnight. My radio didn’t melt. Some guy named Mark takes the morning shift. He’s useful for the re-broadcast of Jay, Conan, Dave and Jon. A refreshingly unbiased way to start the day.