Kim du Toit Is a Genius

So, it's been a while posting, I know, but check this out.

My favorite bit:

In the meantime, they do stuff that’s pleasing to them—solitary or detached
pursuits, from video games to hobbies like fishing or hunting—because those
are not part of the game. So they go to work, put in the hours, and don’t
care about their work, their careers or the job. They smile, go to endless
meetings, work by “teaming” and in short, they do all the role-playing that
they need to do in order to get by.

I was feeling guilty about considering work “fundraising” for video games, fishing, hunting, and science fiction books, but I feel better now. And I’m about one more “recommendation” on how to paint and decorate my house to just do it all in ways that *I* find pleasing, since women seem to think that owning your own home means you have *more* money to throw around.

Oh! Oh! One chick actually told me that I should keep the childproofing all over the place since "at [my] age, you are probably only going to get women that already have kids." My ideas on the state of modern "child-proofing" could fill another blog entry... I'll admit that in San Antonio, I'd be lucky to find a woman without kids, but that would have been the case when I was 25, too. At this point I'm just kinda counting myself lucky that I have a dog and a nice TV and a backyard and a really cool vehicle and a degree and an XBox 360 and a "study" full of books and a few power tools out in the garage. Oh, and a bow and a fishing pole.

How To Get Rupe To Blog

So my longest-serving college roommate and archnemesis Chickenboy emailed me a link to Hot Air at work yesterday. I think both of us do most of our web surfing and Jonah Goldberg-emailing at work. In his case, I guess that means he's got better bandwidth. In my case, that means streaming video is pretty likely not going to work, and I'd rather not advertise to the people I work with that I'm watching streaming video.

Anyhow, he usually sends me the link, I email the link to my home account, and watch it there, if it's a taser video. Otherwise.... bleh. But the little nerd insisted I watch it at work.

So what does he send me?

Her.

After the swath of devastation wrought by Ann Coulter's mouth, I'd forgotten conservative commentatrices could be bearable, or in this case, a couple of levels above bearable. And the accent was a pleasant surprise.

Thanks, Chickenboy. You've now proven yourself not-useless. Once.

Fun With Sisters

I don't know if I've ever alluded to my worthless 18-year-old sister. She has a "job" at Abercrombie & Fitch, after they tried to recruit her several times. Let me be clear on this: Abercrombie was insistent that my sister work for them. So she "works" for Abercrombie. Does this involve standing in an Abercrombie store? No. She gets the employee discount and if she wants to show up and be pretty in the store, she'll get paid for that. Plus the employee discount.

So, for the benefit of all those guys I went to college with: She's one of those girls. Except she's nice. To me, at least. And yeah, she's a cheerleader.

Well, it turns out she's entertaining in at least one aspect. Since she's a girl, she loooooves being evil about other girls. And my roommate-cousin is a girl. And the roommate-cousin has some, well, ideosyncracies. So every time I notice an idiosyncracy, I call my sister (I'm gonna call her "Heather") that very second, tell her about it, listen to my sister rant about things she heard about this cousin from this cousin's little brother, laugh, and then hang up.

My sister could have said the entire prior paragraph in about 10 seconds. So she can really pack in the invective. She'll spew for nearly a minute, ending with "but I love [Cuz], she's sweet."

The first time I noticed this source o' fun was when Cuz got strep throat and I called my sister to gloat that I did not have strep. Heather went on a rant much like this:

OmigodCuzissickliketwentyfoursevenISWEAReverytimeyoutalktoherthere'ssomethingnewwrongwithher ...
...It'slike'OhI'msosickandI'mlikewhatthehelliswrongwithyouNOW?' But I love her, she's sweet.

Yeah man, it's great fun. I called yesterday when Cuz was going to not get ice cream because the place didn't have the kind of waffle cone she wanted. Heather was much more vocal then. Something about Cuz making her brothers brush their teeth every five minutes.

This bit o' fun has legs.

My Roommate

Okay, so my cousin is living with me while she does her student teaching here in San Antonio. It has been a good arrangement. She got the big room, formerly the romper room that held all my toys and comics and this very computer. All my stuff is shoehorned into the room formerly known as "where I sleep" since, you know, when you have the whole apartment, you live in the whole thing. You don't live in your bedroom.

Let's see, what else happened since last July...

• I got furniture. Leather, La-Z-Boy furniture.
• I had a job interview. Bombed.
• Got some really good hiking gear. Been used once thus far, kinda bummed about that.
• Oh, went camping (before I got the good hiking gear). Actually, hunting with some camping thrown in. Coyote hunting. The best kind since they're not game animals.
• A friend from high school that I'm not embarrassed to know moved next door to my parents.

More on the cousin later. Much hilarity there. She's a nascent coach (see the post Coach Tauntery).

Coach Tauntery

Today after lunch we were driving through Downtown and passed the Convention Center, which was just letting out for lunch. A convention of what today, you ask? Well, the Texas High School Coaches convention. So I rolled down the window and yelled at some that were crossing the street: "On the hop now! No walkin', no walkin'. Come on now, keep them feet movin'!" All in Coach Larry Hill's (one of my HS football coaches, now at Smithson Valley) voice. Loud. I can still make my voice loud. I forget this sometimes until I really open it up. I stayed tickled at myself for about half an hour after that. It feels good to taunt coaches with their own words.

And I suspect they didn't get the joke.

I forgot "Bubble it around."

Dan, Stopped

Looks like this is the definitive last chapter of Dan's Property Girl saga. Keep reading that blog (and try following the blog when Dan moves it around like it was a fugitive from justice). He's a little cagey about it, or I got bored and stopped reading before he got to the good part, but he found some chick in Australia in between taking pictures of the local wildlife. Again, I may have missed it, but I don't know if this chick he met in Australia was Australian or [Other] and I don't if she had any of Property Girl's astributes.

He's big on taking pictures of the wildlife. Also he likes to taunt the wildlife. Wish I could find that picture of him and the monkey and the M&M's.

Where are those damn pictures, Dan?

The face up close

The face up close
Originally uploaded by That Rupe Guy.

This shot is the result of no traffic and a swerve. You can really see the detail. I should stress, this appears to be constructed entirely out of skidmarks.

I'm not a kook, people! Part of Grand Adventure 2005 was a trip to Marfa to see the Mystery Lights (the observation area is a good place for a picnic, by the way), and I didn't see any of that BS. But I see this. This is real, and freaky.

It's a Light

ItsALight
Originally uploaded by That Rupe Guy.

As Cartman would say, seriously you guys!

For real, seriously. It's a light. You pick it up and the white part lights up, like a candle.

This was in somebody's grandparents' house. Zero irony intended with it. I had to take pictures of the rest of the living room to camoflauge this, the most important shot in the bunch.

This thing was big

GrandAdventure2005 025
Originally uploaded by That Rupe Guy.

From Grand Adventure 2005...

This is at the Very Large Array outside Magdalena, "New" Mexico. I left a hippie in the shot for perspective. This is where Jody Foster did the beginning of "Contact".

I've got another cool shot in the flickr gallery, too.

Come With Me If You Want To Liff.

The chick at the window at Whataburger down the street from my house was named Sarah Conner. I verified that this was indeed her name, then didn't say "I'll Be Back" or "Come with me if you want to liff."

Yeah, she was pretty cute too. Not as cute as the redhead that was there last week.

UPDATE: On second thought, I think she was equally as cute as the redheaded chick.

See the face? See it?

Nakoma-281
Originally uploaded by That Rupe Guy.

Okay, seriously you guys, look under the front wheel of the white truck, on the concrete. It's a face made out of skidmarks on the concrete! Do you see it? I think you can click on it for the larger size.

I went by it again today and there's a lot more detail closer up--it looks even MORE like a face. It's not Jesus or Mary or anything (note the absence of candles or Catholics), but it's a face.

I hope I'm not the only one who sees it.

Filthy Hippies At My Convenience Store

FilthyHippies
Originally uploaded by That Rupe Guy.

This is the convenience store close to my apartment. Picture was taken around 2am. The fellow in the sandals is my best friend Brian. The chick in the sandals is his non-common-law wife, Brea.

As for the other two gentlemen, I don't know what their names are, but both their titles are "Officer."

Brea's hot friend is not pictured, as she was behind me. Of the four of us, Brian is the least snookered, which is good because he was driving. And after two bars and [several] beers, they had to run in and get foods and whiskey-mixing drinks and coffee (unavailable) and some pistachios for me.

For some reason, the cops didn't hassle those troublemaking hippies at all. That was good for the short term because they were my ride home and I didn't want to have to walk back to my apartment if they got busted for some dirty hippie offense. But in the long term, what the hell kind of police force (except Austin and San Francisco) doesn't put the Mag-Lite™ of law and order upside the heads of troublemaking hippies that want coffee at 2am?

Ow

I'm not as hungover this morning as I thought I would be last night, after absorbing [several] beers. I don't know how many. Seriously, I just kept drinkin' em. Guinness, Rolling Rock, one Bass Ale (ick.). I don't know how many. But I'm a lightweight--even at my size I just get drunk too fast. I burn it off fairly quickly, though, and I'm usually really good about double-fisting beer & water, but I was lax last night and have a bit of a headache. And I'm tired. At least it doesn't feel like I have 70-grain eyeballs scratching around behind my face.

So my bestest, oldest buddy Brian is in town from New Zealand. "Town" being "The United States," luckily the San Antonio, TX portion of the United States. Good to see him and his filthy hippie wife. And he was surprised I had a blog. I don't know why he was surprised. He and his filthy hippie wife are sleeping on my futon Right Now. His wife's hot friend already left (for those of you that will ask: No. Didn't even try, just no sense in it.) so I'm left having to be relatively quiet, except for the keyboard, which will maybe annoy them and wake them up so I can watch TV.

Got some pictures--I'll put those up later. Including the mysterious image of a face formed out of skidmarks on the turnaround at Nakoma and 281 (heading north).