blog.big-woop.com

Doesn't it sound, to anyone else, like Christina Aguilera is choking on something while singing? I don't know the name of whatever just came on the radio, but it sounds like there's something lodged in her throat, and the noises she is making are just futile attempts at removing it.

My hair's black. It looks bizarre. I will not get used to it. Ever.

Yesterday my car broke down on the highway. It was an altogether sucky experience.

That meant that I had to drive my dad's Buick Regal to school today. It handles like a boat and the brake and accelerator pedals are way too far apart. I miss The Silver Bullet. I hope it can be revived (revove?).

Peace.
-Todd

I'm extremely glad to be going to College next year. Not because of the freedom. Not because of the excessive amounts of alcohol. Not because of the fact that it will mean high school's over, but because it means I won't have to hunt for a fucking Easter basket.

And the freedom, the excessive amounts of alcohol and the fact that it will mean high school's over, but mainly because I won't have to spend the better part of the day getting aggravated about not being able to find a goddamned basketful of candy that I couldn't possibly eat all of and is hidden in the easiest, most obvious hiding spot. A spot that, when I do find the damn thing after six or so hours of searching, will embarrass me to no end.

You:	Hey, Todd, you're eighteen! Aren't you getting a little old to still be getting visits from the Easter bunny?
Me:	Shut up.
You:	Or what? You'll...
Me:	I said shut up
Me:	(muttering) Stupid dead Jesus.

I guess it was worth it. The basket contained twenty bucks. I might be able to fill my tank with that.

Yeesh. It's 2:00 in the morning. I'm not tired because it's the end of spring break, throughout which I gradually upped my bedtime to 5:00 AM. That was a terrible idea. As was not doing my photography paper, which, for full credit, is now due at 7:30. That's only five and a half hours away.

Anna is going Promdressshopping (It's an important event so it's capitalized and all one word for some reason.) with her mom today. Inevitably, they will be saying things about me. I hope they're good things.

I have tentative plans to dye my hair black on Wednesday. I'm going to look ridiculous.

I mean, even moreso than usual.

Actually, I'm kind of excited. I always wondered what it would look like. Now I have an excuse: I'm a creepy guy in a play. All creepy guys in plays must have black hair. It's the rules.

Peace.
-Todd

Last night Joe, Geoff and I went to the Twins-Yankees game. We put up a decent fight for a few innings, and I got out a few choice swears toward Clemens and company ("Jeter's certainly put on a few!" ; "Joe Torre's a bitch!" ; "Fuck you, Giambi!"). It made it pretty much worth the six dollars it cost.

Afterward, we picked John up at the airport and continued on to Perkin's where we ran across David, Jali, Sam and others. Joe went home and John, Geoff and I were free to wreak havoc on the streets of Saint Paul. It was pretty cool.

Peace.
-Todd

Vwah-friggin'-lah! I redesigned for the first time in about a decade. I've got a load of work to do still, though, transforming all the old stuff to this format, which kind of sucks.

Please don't complain about not having my other stuff to browse. It's not like you would. The weblog's all you come here for anyway.

Peace.
-Todd

The fuse in my bathroom is out. I just peed in the dark. It was a trip.

Peace.
-Todd

Now that it is past midnight (Thursday), I cannot technically refer to any of the things I did since I woke up as 'today,' but rather must do so as 'yesterday,' which I find particularly annoying. Especially because --going to sleep as late as I did-- I did things after midnight the day before yesterday (Tuesday) but before falling asleep yesterday (Wednesday). This is the unfortunate trap I set for myself by not updating every day.

Having wrapped my mind around that, I don't really recall much of the past few days, and because of the aforementioned (I'm getting kind of sick of that word, but 'said' is far more irksome.) trap will refer to them as Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Monday
After DQ, Eclipse, and Wendy's with Jacob (Ascending in order of dumbness. Ha!) I came home to do the Jumble (TEASE, ELATE, JABBER, WALLOP. That position at the candy factory turned out to be this. A "SWEET" JOB.). It was beautiful out. I wore shorts. I realized I needed to get some sandals. I would, later, at Target, on the way back from picking up Anna, with whom I rented The Truth About Charlie based solely on the fact that it is a remake of Charade (one of my favorite movies), which we found on the b-side and watched instead (I'd split that sentence up into manageable chunks if I weren't so lazy. Refrain from reading it aloud without pausing for air). Zinzee (Phonetic. I don't know how to spell her name) and The Beav joined us toward the end. A bad idea. The film is one which is impossible to understand without having seen the beginning, not like Anger Management, which I saw half of with The Boy on...

Tuesday
It wasn't a very good (last half of a) movie. I only watched it because it was what we'd bought tickets for in efforts to sneak The Boy into Phone Booth (which is R-rated). The manager, Cranky Old Prick, kicked us out. It was the first time I'd been kicked out of a movie. Ever.

I came home from that ordeal to realize the final word on the Jumble, which I'd begun earlier in the day (HAREM, TOPAZ, MEADOW, SNITCH. Why the mobster played on the baseball team. HE WAS A "HIT" MAN.). Anna called around five, so I went over. It started lightning-ing something fierce. It was pretty rad. I learned how to play Whist, kind of.

Wednesday
I fell asleep off and on there, ultimately leaving at 2:30 AM, which was odd, but it was still one hell of a nap. The drive home was taking extraordinarily long. I figured it was due to how tired I was and the cats and dogs that were descending en masse on Highway 61. Glancing at my speedometer, I noticed that the needle had dipped well below the minimum speed. I guess I had never bothered to accelerate on the on-ramp, because I was tooling along at the decent clip of 17 miles per hour. I suppose the absence of other vehicles may have contributed to my snail's pace.

I woke up (after having gone to sleep around three) about twelve hours later, just in time to catch my new favorite old-time television program, The Streets Of San Francisco, starring a young Michael Douglas. Fucking brilliant.

Later, Beka, Julie, Charlie, Jessie, Joe (lacitebahplA) and I watched the third disc of the newly-released Family Guy boxed set.

Joe got the last word on the Jumble (MAJOR, FLUKE, JAGGED, GOSPEL. What the hunters did when they didn't bag any game birds. "GROUSED.").

Thursday
I began transforming content into the new design for this website, which I renewed yesterday. No, the day before yesterday. I also wrote this boring shit over the course of the past hour. That's unfortunate.

Peace.
-Todd

(Actually 12:00 Noon)
A dream.

I arrive at some anonymous building for the seven o'clock showing of Bringing Down The House (a movie which I have yet to see, but about which I have heard nothing but good things). When I enter the 'theater,' I find myself on what seems to be the set of some sort of movie, the star of which is Vin Diesel. We shake hands. An alien creature then swoops overhead. Vin and I duck, escaping by the skin of our teeth. We run for hiding, but this complex is swarming with these alien creatures, which happen to look a lot like those from Diesel's breakout hit Pitch Black. This ordeal continues, until somehow we escape. This is explained to me through all sorts of techno-jargon that I doubt would hold water to any sort of Dr. Who explanation, but all of it made perfect sense to me.

Upon escaping this terrifying -nay, horrifying- ordeal I glanced at my watch, which is weird because I totally don't wear one. As it turns out, the frightening, week-long tribulation that I had thought might take my own, Vin Diesel's and everyone else involved's lives was really nothing more than an hour and a half long. I decide to go to Dairy Queen and get a Dilly Bar before catching the nine o'clock showing of the aforementioned Queen Latifah/Steve Martin white-person-doesn't-understand-black-person-comedy.

When I return to the theater, Dilly Bar in hand, I find a parking space near the 'theater.' While turning in to the space, I accidentally bump against the car next to me. It wasn't enough of a bump to cause any damage, but the driver emerges from his bright blue Prowler in a huff.

The driver, as it turns out, is Charlie Sheen. He obviously wishes to have a word with me about my bumping into his expensive car, which, within the last few seconds has morphed into an expensive leather Gucci overnight bag. It is now bruised, somehow, and Mr. Sheen is getting visibly upset.

Now, I don't have the benefit of having looked at my own face in the midst of all of this, but, judging by my ridiculous accent, I am Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny.

"I'm sure," I say, "Mr. Sheen, that you have a perfectly good reason for being upset with me, but I can't seem to figure out why you, a famous Hollywood actor, might have gotten so overheated in the first place over such a trivial material good such as this."
"You bruised my fucking Gucci bag!" is his reply.
"...and for that I am truly sorry. However, if I continue to sit here chatting with washed-up stars of the past, I'm going to be late for my movie."

And that's it. That's how it ends.

As Jacob -who is sitting here impatiently, waiting to go to Dairy Queen to get Mr. Misties and then to Eclipse to do something else- might put it, "[I] have issues [I] need to get resolved."

I don't think he's too far off.

Peace.
-Todd

I came home on Saturday. Ben, Charlie, Jessie, John, Julie and I (Alphabetical) went to Sole to play pool. We argued about the definitions of "ball in hand" and "ironic." We also went to Taco Bell. We argued about the definition of "communal." My friends and I argue a lot. It makes things a lot more entertaining, but at the same time more difficult to deal with. As a result, I'm ten bucks poorer than the day before.

Joe and I chilled for a good deal of time today. That's one of the things I love about Joe: He's so chilled-out. Today he found out that he'd been living next door to one of the members of The Big Wu; Knowledge that, had we had it earlier, we might have used to our advantage. Oh well. We listened to music and hung out at my house.

Anna, however, was antsy to go 'do something,' so we did. We got some Chipotle and borrowed The Ring from John (in his absence).

The Ring -for those of you that don't know- is about a video tape, which, when watched, kills you one week later. You are notified of this immediately upon completion of the video when its creator (a small girl) phones you and tells you so. Doesn't sound scary? That's what Anna thought.

Midway through the film I told my brother to call the phone in my room at 10:46 (the time at which I had calculated that the film would end). When the movie ended and Anna again denied the film its rightful scariness, the phone rang. She jumped. I played along, finally telling her that she'd been had. It may not have been that clever, but it was still pretty effing hilarious.

Peace.
-Todd

Ball In Hand
"...a player's scratching is penalized by the incoming player having cue ball in hand... The incoming player may place the cue ball anywhere behind the head string."

[BCA General Rules of Pocket Billiards]

I'm in Grinnell, Iowa, home of Grinnell College, the school to which I will be going for the next four years (hopefully that, and not moreso). John and I convinced a couple of prospectives that we were actually students here (~clever, huh?~). Last night we went to the Les Savy Fav concert. It was rad. No. It was beyond rad. It was WAY rad. The lead singer is possibly the raddest lead singer in the history of lead singers. In the midst of Adopduction (as well as throughout the rest of the concert), he came out into the crowd and messed around with the audience. He grabbed my hood and tugged it up over my head. I felt blessed. At the end, he led the audience up out of the basement of Main and out onto the quad. See? WAY rad.

I think I'm going to like it here.

My website expires in seven days. I probably ought to renew it.

Peace.
-Todd

Today I went and hung out with Anna in Stillwater. When I walked in the house, her dad was listening to and playing along with Peter Gabriel. It was cool. I met her dog and her chickens. We even went canoeing. Briefly.

Very, very briefly.
-Todd

Tonight --actually last night, I guess-- I went to the Twins' embarassing home opener, in which they lost 2-7 to the Toronto Blue Jays. Yeesh. I'm glad to see baseball again, though, despite the gametime temperature of 22 degrees. Of note: The lady that sang O Canada sucked. It was absolutely pathetic. I'm no [good singer name], but this lady lost the tune somewhere around the first measure and really didn't find it again. She also reversed "we stand" and "on guard." Nothing was lost in the mix-up, and to tell truth, I think I kind of liked it better this way, but I don't think the Canadians in attendance were very pleased. Former Twin Mudcat Grant sang The Star-Spangled Banner. He was pretty fucking rad. He was joined with [Minnesota Governor] Tim Pawlenty to sing God Bless America. Even Grant was thrown off. I think Pawlenty thought it was sung in the tune of Sherry by Frankie Valli or something, because it was absolutely horrific. I heard dogs howl in the distance that agree with me.

After that stinkfest, I joined Ben, David, and a fresh bag of Wendy's for a cruise around the ice-covered streets of Saint Paul (I almost nailed a mail truck on my way to pick up the Twins tickets.). David went home around 11:00 and Ben and I were free to mess with the toys at Snyder's. Whoever can find the teddy bear with my recording of "Pop. Six. Squish. Uh-uh. Cicero. Lipschultz." on it gets a thousand points. Seriously. You press the bear's right hand and you can record a message. Press its left and you can play it back. It's effing rad. We also got interrogated by a grumpy old man and almost broke a lane sign during our seven minutes in there. Ben threw the football. Not me.

Then we went to see Chicago for free. At midnight. It's a great film.

Peace.
-Todd

I saw another fabulous film tonight. No, wait, it was the same fabulous film I saw last night: Final Destination 2. I'm still fucking mad fer it.

Peace.
-Todd

Final Destination 2 is a fucking brilliant film. Never before has so much unneccesary gore and splatter been stuffed into less than two hours. It is definitely worth the dollar I spent on it, if not several more. And the ending to this one is twice as spectacular as that in the first. Seriously. Go. See. It.

Peace.
-Todd