so, i was in college, right? i'm sure some of you know what that's like. in college i had a job—a couple jobs, in fact—that involved me mostly sitting around on my ass watching people not know how to work simple devices. during my ample free time, bored off my nut, i would occasionally write stories or little anecdotes to humor myself. once we actually got campus "internet," i would occasionally write these stories for a buddy of mine to give us both a little amusement. i hired him into the computer lab i managed for a semester, and he stayed put after i moved on, so i wrote little parodies about life in the lab after I left, and i wrote them in the style of a screenplay (more or less). in the midst of one of these stories, i wrote a parody commercial-break, for a product I assumed would never exist. i have just found out today just how wrong i was.

but first, a word from our sponsors… (a parody commercial written in the heady year of 1994)

warning, the rest of this post is probably NSFW

And now, back to your irregularly scheduled blog.

so, yeah, that was weird. but it gets better. apparently, a company in Cologne, Germany is producing a fragrance called—oh yeah, i'm not even kidding—VULVA. this, people, is what we call not mincing words. it is a bit amusing to me that they use "flavour" instead of "scent" in a few places… especially since their FAQs specifically recommend against "drinking" Vulva.

perhaps more frightening is the fact that they have "other fragrances" in development, including "Vulva – Eighteen," and "Vulva – Exotic." the "Eighteen" version is inexplicably packaged in white, and I have to wonder what they mean by exotic… do the vulvas of different races or cultures have different scents, or are they just "spicing it up?"

and to take it one more step further into the absurd, they also mention that they're working on a scent for women (as obviously, with women already having vulvas, they won't need to carry around a vial of the scent of one). one might wonder just what masculine fragrance they might attempt to capture. perhaps their next product will be called "Balls," "Shaft," or something "edgy" like "Foreskin."

this icky-dirty-need-a-shower bipolar experience has been brought to you by the letters "V," "J," and, uh… "J."

sara & I, and a couple of her friends, are taking a little four day vacation to Washington, D.C. this weekend. i have been to D.C. before, but only when i was a kid, probably somewhere in between 7th, 8th, or 9th grades. pretty much the only thing i'm interested in site-seeing-wise is a visit to the Air & Space Museum. i do believe i went there before, but like i said, it was a long time ago. no matter what we do end up doing, i'm sure we're going to have a great time. and, i'm going to try to take an assload of photos with the hope of putting them up online here sometime after my return.

you'll notice that row of pictures over there on the right… well, it's all thanks to my lovely girlfriend who got me an early birthday and christmas present.—that's right, a brand spankin new fancy-ass digital camera . so, now i'm trying to get back into the habit of carrying a camera around with me everywhere and taking pictures whenever i see something good. we'll see how that works out, but rest assured, this weblog isn't going to devolve into *just* a fotolog.

a good friend is getting married this weekend (and like a dumbass, i forgot this fact until after we'd bought the plane tickets to D.C.), so we're going to have to fly back early early on Sunday to get to the wedding on time. especially imperative since i'm in the damn thing. would be in bad form for one of the "men of honor" to be late. hopefully the tux will fit, 'cause i won't get to pick it up until 12:00PM on Sunday. talk about cutting it close…

and to top all that fun stuff off with some really excellent news, lucifigous prick has been invited to play at the mom's music festival this year! so, we'll be taking the stage at some point on the 26th or 27th of July, along with about 140 other bands. it should be an awesome time, as we don't expect to fit in with the other bands, or even necessarily the crowd at all, so we're going to try to have as much fun as we can with it. there was even some talk of jim wearing a mini-skirt, though i think his wife put the kibbosh on that idea. nevertheless, it's going to fucking rock.

and speaking of fucking rocking, we've got another show lined up two weeks later with three other bands, all of whom have one or more members who work at Ear-X-tacy. we don't know for sure if the owner is going to let us use the store's name while promoting the show, but that was our original plan. promote it as some kind of Ear-X-tacy employee's show. Check the site for more info on the other bands playing, though i'm sure i'll post a link to the flyer once that's been put together.

g'damn. i think that's about it for today. i wanted to make sure i got a new post up before i took off for four days. i'll post more crap and probably go on about how great the trip was, once i return. so, you've got something to look forward to now, right? right.

this is the sound of excitment building up within me until i literally explode.

i finally managed to score some tickets to the City of Light, so i'll be taking my vacation there IN EIGHT DAYS. !!!! gaaaahhhh !!!!

now i've got to think of all the things i need for the trip. camera, film, pens, paper, oh, uh… clothes, money. yeah. that should do it.

pick-up-lines, i need pick-up lines. if any of you know any good french pick-up lines, leave 'em in the comments. oh, and put an english translation, so i'll know you're not trying to get me to tell some little french hottie that "there's something foul about your body." or some such thing.

oh, and i need to start exercising. now. now. now. now. get at least 10 pounds off (yeah, in a week) before i go.
damn. damn. damn.

too. much. excitement… can't. handle… head. caving. in….

ok, i can't let this one pass without comment.

Hollywood's Bachelorettes

first off, i love how these online celebrity sites always use the worst possible photos of people when they're talking about how attractive they are. some of these pics are just utterly horrid. i know these people look better than this.

but my biggest beef with this list is… Cameron Diaz at number #25? come on. you're kidding, right? Cameron may not come in as number one among this "elite" group, but there's no way she's behind Jennifer Love Hewitt and Kirsten Dunst. hell, Cameron should be in the top 5, at least in my opinion.

and, Natalie Portman at number 11? somebody at e! or msn has gotten hold of some seriously good crack. Natalie comes dangerously close to knocking Cameron off the top of my wish list.

i really need to stop letting myself get sucked into things like this.

ok. so i'm a liar. most of you should have me figured out by now though, if i say that i'll post again tomorrow, it almost always means you won't hear from me for a week. i thought that was accepted practice around here… guess i'll have to re-read the employee handbook.

so, anyway, let's step back in time to a week and four days ago. for most of the time leading up to our first show, i wasn't nervous at all. occasionally i'd have a bout, but generally i was butterfly-free. on friday, brax & i were just chilling about the house, me being on vacation and him being off of work, and it pretty much hit us both at the same time. we'd just got done watching some TNG season 3 episodes from my swanky DVD box set, and then all of a sudden about four hours before the show, we're both getting nervous. we made our now-standard jokes about how funny it would be if we all called in to the bar and told them we'd all come down with some stomach bug or something, calling in sick for our first show.

we finally got our shit together and went over to jim's house, grabbed a little beer and whiskey (to calm the nerves) and waited for our of & underage transports to arrive. Paul was first to get there and we hung out for a few minutes before the girls showed up. two of the girls are brax's former co-workers, and they're both incredibly cute, barely underage, and unfortunately attached (not to each other). when they showed up–right on time–they'd also brought along another friend of theirs who also fit all of the above criteria (not sure about the attached part, since i couldn't work up the gumption to broach that particular question). everybody pitched in and loaded our stuff into the back of the truck, then we all left for the bar.

we arrived, met one of the guys from another band, and he pointed out where we needed to bring our stuff in. the sound guy showed up as we were preparing to unload, so we went ahead and started loading onto the stage. amazingly enough, at this point, i wasn't nervous at all. er, well, maybe a little. we got all our shit set up, the waitress brought us some drinks, we did our sound check, played portions of a couple songs, then went out into the "crowd" to talk to all our friends (the only people who were there other than the other bands). we tried to stall for a while, but at about 15 minutes after 10 (when we were supposed to start) we pretty much had to go on or get lynched. all told, i think we had 15 – 20 people there–mostly our friends, as i said–to watch us on our first outing. it was what i would consider a good turnout. amazingly enough, once we started the sound-check, pretty much all the nervousness went away, and we were down to "bidness."

now, we're all too well aware that most of our friends aren't into the kind of music that we play, so it really meant a lot to us for them to come. the support of friends is a powerful and very much appreciated thing.

we took the stage pretty much without saying a word, and started up our first song. of course, Jim was borrowing a bass amp from dave (red taled hawk), and when he played the first note (not having had a dedicated bass amp in any of our practices) it freaked him out to the point where he nearly lost the bassline. he did manage to get hold of himself, and we continued on. i'd have to say we did a pretty damn good job for our first time playing out like that, and considering the "PA system" such as it was, was crap. once we got to the louder parts in our later songs, we pretty much couldn't hear a damn thing from the monitors. i got totally off track in the first song, by a little more than a measure, but we just kept playing like it didn't matter. i think it happened in another song too, and again we just kept going.

one of the things i was the most afraid of was that we'd have a minor problem like that, and we'd just stop in the middle and have to restart the song. thankfully that didn't happen.

of course, now that we've had our first show, we've all been lazy bastards and haven't called around anywhere to set up another one. gotta work on that.
but this one went well, our friends were there, they enjoyed seeing us doing our thing, and we're anxious to get out again.

man, animals can be so pitiful when you have doctors do mean nasty things to their bodies.

we finally managed to get our two kittens (not kittens anymore i guess, they're over a year old now…) into the vet on Monday to have their child birthing equipment forcibly removed. a good friend of ours (who happens to work at the vet's office) was kind enough to come pick them up from the house, then to bring them back to us the next day. man, when they got home… they were just pitiful. laying around, barely moving all day. of course, if someone had ripped out *my* uterus (a difficult task, to be sure, seeing how i don't have one in the first place.) i would probably be walking gingerly for a few days, if i bothered to walk at all.
they're starting to get better and better now, moving around a bit more, climbing stairs to hang out with their three dads. they seem to be pretty good about not licking their sutures too much, and they are eating healthily again. as brax has said on multiple occasions, it will be nice to see them back to their old mischievous selves again.

i guess it's been about two weeks ago now, but we recently came into possession of a vintage Galaga arcade machine. how awesome is it to be able to come home, walk into the foyer, and jump right into a game (or six) of Galaga without having to drop quarters into the machine? well, let me tell ya, it's pretty awesome. of course, i completely suck at the game. i've gotten a little better since we got it, but i'm still not breaking the 90,000 point barrier. of course, i've also gotten to the point where if i lose a ship in the first four rounds, i just let myself get killed and start over.

our friend Jess has finally gotten engaged to her longtime beau, and they've now moved to Texas. it seems weird for her to not be around, despite the fact that we haven't really hung out with her much since we all moved out of the old place (brian's current place). when she was still in town, it was always acceptable to not see her, partly because we knew we could call her up if we were doing something, and have her join us. with that no longer being an option… well, i tend to realize more that she's not around.

and with her gone, our "family" now has only one female member remaning. it used to be that i couldn't count the number of girls hanging out with us on a regular basis with two hands. it's a very different existence when you don't have that special female "energy" around. to top that off, we're down to only one female at my workplace as well… the yin energy is slowly being siphoned out of my life. in six months i'll be a truly desperate, depraved charicature of myself if we don't get an influx real soon. it's a good thing i don't have any "whore money" to throw around… it's all gotta go towards rent & bills & silly shit like that.

perhaps i should just try to get out more.

well, tonight I went out to the bar (which was a big surprise to brian, since i'd told him about an hour earlier that i wasn't interested) with paul, neil, & lisa, and we met up with brian there and hung out for a bit. at some point, i ordered a large sampler (mmm… sampler platter) only to come back to the table and find that neil & lisa were pretty much already on their way out the door. well, not that that really matters, 'cause between a hungry brian, a semi-hungry me, and a not-really-hungry but unable-to-resist-the-sampler paul, we finished the thing off without much trouble. shortly before the last morsels were yanked by greedy hands from the platter, brad and dave came over to join us. paul offered brad a won-ton, and brad's first reaction was to ask me which of the many sauces went best with them. (of course, the answer is "honey-mustard") brad then proceeded to dub me the "king of condiments," a declaration he even repeated later when his girlfriend joined us. so, apparently, either through pure obsessive behavior or a history of good advice, i am, at least in our little circle, the King of Condiments. thank you. you may rise.

another thing i've realized though, is that i could be in the running for a totally unrelated title. i'm pretty sure i could make a strong showing in a contest for the "king of work avoidance." not that i avoid doing the work i get paid to do, that is, not my actual job job. but my god, when i get home, there are literally 10 to 15 things i could be doing at any given moment. 10 – 15 projects i've started that i really need to finish. and what do i do? well, of course, as i recently explained to paul & brax, i've only got two weekday nights that are really worth anything–personal project-wise. Tuesday is band practice night (band-practice from ~7:30 to 11:00pm). Wednesday is geek night (trip to comics store, dinner at Denny's, then Enterprise at 8:00pm, and DS9 at 10:00pm). Friday is… Friday. That's socialization day. Friday is the day matt comes down from the mountain to carouse with friends and other assorted real living people. Friday is the night (typically–unlike tonight, which was an aberration) where matt goes to the bar to look at the few hot girls and (as noted in another post) not speak to any of them. Saturday is much more open, and should be the day where i get all kinds of shit done, but it is usually the day where i sleep a whole lot, then laze around the house. Sunday's another sleep day, and then also another band practice day, which accounts for at least 14 hours. So, i'm left with Monday & Thursday after work, and whatever hours & can squeeze out of Saturday & Sunday to accommodate all those things that i need to do. Needless to say, not a whole lot is accomplished usually.

I have to say though, that this past week/weekend has been pretty decent so far. on thursday, i went out to the hardware store and picked up this neat toolbox and some other bits & bobs, and constructed (what will be) a nice guitar effects pedalboard. so, i had quite the productive day on Thursday. today, after doing the normal saturday sleeping 'til 4 after a night at the bar thing, and lazing for a couple good hours once i got up, i actually managed to do a few productive things. i got the velcro strips placed on the plywood base for the pedalboard, broke out the guitar for 30 – 45 minutes and played around, then checked email for a little bit. oh, and i also sketched out some ideas that i had for a logo for My Favorite Martyr (no, it's not just you, that site is so horribly out of date, it's almost funny again. BUT! it does have the first mention of Old Man–paul & neil's band–on the web!), and for a flyer design for Old Man (which i was going to try to mock up & post, but i haven't been able to find any appropriate imagery yet). of course, there were several other things i needed to do (as i told brian when he asked about going to the bar), but after about an hour of sitting in front of the computer avoiding them, i realized it was a bit fruitless for the time being.

y'know, perhaps i'd get more done if i spent less time avoiding work and more time doing it. but my biggest problem has always been not so much finding things to do, as deciding between the things that i need to do. so, i'm going to ask for your help on this one. (realizing wholly that the majority of my pleas for public response have brought few in the past–but now that we have the comments system in place, perhaps that'll be different now…)

here's the list:

votes   project
_1__ finish 2nd poetry book
____ finish & submit short story(/stories)
____ write new poems
_3__ write screenplay
_2__ continue working on novel
____ redesign coffeemonk.com
____ design separate myfavoritemartyr.com
____ today/tomorrow mixed 2 CD set
____ mixed cover songs CD
____ learn to play bass for Old Man
_1__ put together (personal) media server
_1__ design new bipolar theme
____ finish playing computer games i'm in the middle of
____ put unboxed comics in boxes

and here's the plea: help! help me figure out which of these things i should attempt to do first. if you wanna go crazy, put the whole list in order of "importance." but at least tell me the one thing you think i should focus on until it's done. this is the struggle i'm presented with every time i enter the door to my house from work or being out on the town or whatever. and i've yet to reach a decision on my own. so, give me a hand. there are no prizes to be awarded, but if it's something that either exists or can be translated to the web-medium, i'll be sure to post it here first.

i seem to have returned to a semi-regular practice of actually turning on my webcam, turning on the chat client, and maybe… if you're all really lucky (or not, depending on your point-of-view) of posting to ye olde bipolar.

had a fairly fun weekend (except for the Sunday that wasn't) hanging out and being social. paul and i chilled most of Friday night watching various incarnations of Trek until it was time to go get our drink on. we did the normal friday thing at the bar, meeting up with neil and BRIAN and SCOTT and their friend chris. we did have quite a bit of fun, as usual, looking at pretty girls, screwing up our courage, and… completely ignoring them. woo-hoo!
at the end of the eve, BRIAN and SCOTT and neil came over to the house so i could play that "jive" delta airlines sound clip for SCOTT, and so we could all laugh our asses off for a while. i think at this point, i was on coffee, but neil & paul were still drinking. by the end of the night, we nearly had to bury poor neil.

saturday was a lazy day, woke up and got some "kefk" (that's KFC to you phonics impaired people), and did some more chillin at the house. we (that is, my roommates and i) briefly toyed with the idea of going out for a fun night of bowling, but instead opted for a somewhat-less-fun-but-still-enjoyable evening out at the rud watching two bands we'd never heard of, looking at pretty girls, screwing up our courage, and… (you guessed it) completely ignoring them. well, except for Rachel, but she doesn't really count since we already know her and she's just really friendly anyway.

i stayed up way too late Sat. night/Sun. morn doing god knows what tinkering around on the computer, ended up slinking off to bed about 6:30 or 7 AM, and ended up sleeping until the sun was down again. boy what a waste of a perfectly good day. but nevertheless, two hours after i woke up, we had our normal 8:00pm sunday band practice, and though it got off to a slow start, we did make some progress, making the day not end up a total waste.

today at lunch i finally broke down and bought a turkish coffee set (sort of) from a Russian grocery near a place my work crew frequents, so hopefully, once i get off my ass and down to the "real" grocery store to buy some sugar (note to self: add sugar to grocery list, you moron.), which we've not had since we moved in back in May of last year…. well, then i'll be able to have some real turkish coffee, just the way Arslan used to make. now if i could only make Baklava and kebabs (A.K.A. gyros), i'd be set (and fat) for life. I do have a recipe for Sarma, which i hope to break out here sometime soon… perhaps that'll be turkish coffee & sugar night as well.

oh, anyway, i've got shit i want to do tonight, and at this point, i think i'm using this blog as a crutch to avoid "work." hep me jeebus. i thank i just self-revelated.

g'night.

as brian promised last night, here are my semi-official seven questions with the seven-questions master himself…

for a while there, it seemed that you were going through a phase where you couldn't date a girl that lived less than 300+ miles away… was this in any way related to your recurring alien abductions?

i did have a problem where i'd start whacking it and then i'd wake up in the bed of some 17 year-old girl, somewhere in new hampshire or some other similarly ludicrous place. whether this has to do with alien abductions, secret government experiments in sexuality and space/time travel, or my own uncontrollable libido, i can't tell you.

speaking of aliens, if H.R. Giger were to feature your penis in a painting, in what situation would you like your penis to be placed?

remember those paintings he did of deborah harry? well…my penis should be involved in just about any deborah harry painting.

or involved with deborah harry, period.

assume you are a powerful telepath like Professor X, what would be your first action upon realizing your powers?

realizing? like what would probably happen that would cause me to realize i have these amazing powers? or i already know?
and what is the first act i perpetrate upon another living mind after discovering that i'm a super mack daddy telepath?

you become aware of your powers, what is your first action upon another human mind?

i would instantly transmit thoughts to all the beautiful women on earth, making them forget to wear clothes. then i would mess with the minds of authority and make them believe that this is perfectly okay.

either that or i would convince rachael leigh cook to have sex with me.

all the time.

and, speaking of rachael leigh cook…
If you were a zit somewhere on Rachael Leigh Cook's body, where would you be, and what would you want her to do about you?

i would like to be a nice sized zit on one of miss cook's breasts. i would like her to show her zit off to various people, trying to convince them that she has, in fact, grown a third nipple.

if you were sent to prison and made someone's bitch, what would you want your name to be?

definitely "crotchrot" or "crotch killa." this would, hopefully, head off any future "bitchmakings." i would also spread word around that i bite and that i keep razor blades stuffed up my ass.

ok. it's bottom of the ninth, two runners on, your team is down by two runs, the batter's at 3 & 1, you're the pitcher. as you check the runners you happen to glance into your team's dugout, where you see the aformentioned miss cook and lucy liu naked and beckoning you to forfeit the game and take them right there on the benches… exactly how long does it take you to drop the ball?

to be honest, my balls would be doing the opposite of dropping, if you catch my meaning. it really wouldn't be a matter of measurable time. i would toss the ball into the stands to my number one fan, wave to the crowd and stalk into the dugout to get my rock on.

if you could give one piece of advice based on your life experiences to children living in a post-apocalyptic world, what would it be?

hmmm…

how about…

don't believe all that shit your friends say. they haven't proved the exact content of soylent green yet. so eat up before i sell your little mutant asses.

[j. brian "the brain" hall posts like a fiend over there on the left side of bipolar and is a constant thorn in my side–always saying things to me like "post, damn you!", or "when are you going to fucking post!?" oh, and then there's that whole transmission3000.com thing that he kind of does on the side…]

(or, the playa strikes again.)

continuing the story of our trip to bloomington, let me first explain yesterday's "hey, is moves there" thing. it's a kevin smith reference. basically, when kevin and jason mewes were first hanging out, jason was still a 15 year old virgin, whereas kevin had had some "exploits." when kevin told jason that he had, in fact, kissed a girl, jason from then on called him "moves."

anyway, after the thoroughly enjoyable visit with Kevin "moves" Smith, paul, nathan, and i grabbed some grub at the Bell, some refreshments at Marsh, then headed home for a relaxing rest of the evening (it was already close to, or later than midnight) of playstation 2 and some Batman Beyond on DVD. Since i'd never gotten to see the first few episodes (or any episodes, really) of batman beyond, i enjoyed the pilot movie and first episode quite a bit.

we did crash before too long, since we'd all had full work days, a moderately long drive, and a four hour sit in a crowded auditorium.

the next day, nate and his wonderful girlfriend heather took us out to lunch, then to the comic shop and little kids toy store (heather had to buy some gifts for her little nieces.) in the toy store, nate and i had a great time playing with magnets for more than a half-hour. i think i'm way too easily amused. i also ended up buying one of those little balsa wood wind-up rubber band planes.

after all this fun stuff, we went back to Marsh to gather groceries for dinner, then back to the house to chill for a while. nate and i (primarily) played quite a few rounds of Gran Turismo 3, with paul jumping in occasionally. we watched the rest of the batman beyond episodes (four in all, i think) and "Mask of the Phantasm" (yet another batman animated movie…) while we were all in the living room, doing our guy things heather was working up a storm preparing some delicious chicken enchiladas and (makeshift, but very tasty) spanish rice. we also spent quite a bit of time outside in their huge yard winding up and tossing around the little airplane. it as actually a lot more fun, and lasted a lot longer than i expected it to.

all the while dinner was cooking, heather was putting the finishing touches on her and nathan's costumes (blossom and space ghost, respectively). finally after dinner had been eaten and all the preparations had been made, we hopped in the car and headed for the party.

now, the people who's party we were going to, were (pretty much) all grad students and all psych majors. fortunately, the party wasn't nearly as weird as i thought it would be. despite the fact that i was pretty much in neanderthal non-talking matt mode most of the night, i had a good time. the crew had gone to great lengths to decorate for halloween, and pretty much every room or available space was decked out in gory halloween fright-fare. zombies in the front yard, a mad scientist in the living room, pitchforks mounted on the drum kit, and all sorts of other things, including a (motion-sensitive) skeleton hanging in the bathroom that sang "bad to the bone" every time you went to take a leak. they'd even built a maze in the back yard by hanging black plastic tarps or garbage bags or something and putting scary things in the nooks and crannies of the maze. it was, needless to say, a big to-do.

later in the evening, paul, nathan, and one of the house residents picked up the musical instruments and jammed a little. at one point, paul took off and handed me the guitar. we jammed for a little bit and kind of hit our stride on a song or two despite the fact that i was feeling uncomfortable about my lack of really rockin guitar playing ability, paul eventually came back, picked up the mic, and started to sing.

if you notice in the first paul pic, his little cowgirl's right there in the background… which leads to the next part of the story (of which, paul would have more to say than me…). apparently, paul was feeling a bit frisky that night (way friskier than me, anyhow) and after talking to several girls, got invited to go run around town with them. they were headed to a different party, then to a bar. from the story heather told, paul was uncertain at first, but heather insisted… "go. go! we'll find you." so, at heather's prompting, paul took off to parts unknown with girls unknown. go puffin go, indeed. i, for one, enjoyed living vicariously through paul's ability to throw caution to the wind and take off with strange, beautiful (drunk) women.

we were still jamming when paul left, so i got a great kick out of heather whispering in my ear "paul took off with a girl!"

myself, i stayed right there, sat for a couple hours (in between warm-up visits to the indoors) out on the front porch listening to psych majors talk about bloomington or Indiana things, smoking cigarettes, and freezing my ass off.

we went back home late late late and nathan made the "concerned fatherly" call to his friend who'd run off with paul, to make sure our boy was being taken care of. in the morning, through a series of phone calls, heather located him and brought him back while i drifted in and out of sleep.

most of sunday was another lazy day, punctuated by a good lunch and the eventual necessity of saying goodbyes.

all in all, as i've said before, i had a great time, and i look forward to the next time i get to visit. even if there won't be Kevin Smith or a hottie psych major halloween party.