Can I get a drink?

Have you ever tried to get rid of an old sweatshirt, but it always turns up somewhere else? Some times this occurs with friends. With that, I bring you another installment of Aquaman's Blog.

Thanks, asshole. A lot of people like old sweatshirts, and a lot more like Aquaman. I want you all to look at something.



Do you see how happy I was? That's right during the ceremony. There are a few things that I've noticed since that day. One, Wonder Woman isn't wearing any breathing aparatus in this picture. She's a pretty tough chick and apparently she can bully the laws of physics. She should be dead.

Also, look where Robin is. He's directly across from Batman. "Young ward" my ass. They were making googly eyes at each other during my wedding. And the worst part is that they have no visible pupils.

But the strangest thing is how great Mera looks. Long, red hair. Big cans. Smoking body. Now she butched up her hair, her boobs are sagging into the Marianas Trench and she's gained 30 pounds. That's what marriage can do to a gal, but what can it do to a guy? I'll tell you what it can do, it makes you swim 340 miles to the nearest bar. And I don't mean a sand bar.

There is a place called Speedy's where the boys from the Justice League and the Legion of Doom go to relax and kick it old school. I know what you're thinking, "Kick it old school with the Legion of Doom? What the hell?" Yeah, we hang out with them some times, they're really not that bad of guys.

The only one who doesn't is Superman. He's on some kind of kick where he can't separate his work from his social life. Forget the Son of Krypton, his sense of snobbery also effected by the yellow sun. And let me tell you something, Superman isn't the most liked guy in the Superfriends. Behind his back we call him Super-no-friends.

The best thing about Speedy's is that we don't have to worry about the Norms, that's you, pal. Unless you have some sort of super power, you can't come in. Something is always going down, mostly with the Flash. There are two reasons why they call him that, one is because he's fucking fast. The other is because when he gets wasted and he just whips it out. To anyone. It's funny stuff.

Another cool thing about the Flash is that the drunker he gets, the more brews he steals. And the bartender never can tell. The Flash just pours a beer hella quick and then sits back down in the blink of an eye.

Since the Superfriends had to go all multi-cultural, we had to take the first minority who came along. Unfortunately for us, they all had the characteristics that have plagued their people. For example, Apache Chief always gets wasted. I mean completely shit-faced every time he goes to Speedy's. And he's a complete Indian giver. I know that's not PC, but what do you call a guy who buys you a beer than drinks it while you're taking a leak?

Only you better not say that to him, he goes crazy. Plasticman called him an "IG" and the next thing you know, that fucker was twisted into a hangman's noose. He choked on himself. And after Apache Chief gets his anger out, he gets super horny.

See that giant bitch in the leopard print?


Her name is Giganta, and she can grow to the size of Apache Chief. Have you ever seen a 15 foot vagina? I have and let me tell you something, it ain't that pretty. Apache Chief and her used to screw all over Metropolis, it was absolutely disgusting.

That's why I don't have any kids. I saw them bumping uglies and my testicles went into my chest. I am now sterile thanks to those two freaks. And that's where I'm leaving off tonight.

The next time I'll tell you about Samurai and the Sake, Black Lightning and his Colt 45 and El Dorado and his tequilla.

I feel like Gene Siskel

Or Roger Ebert. Which ever one isn't dead. For the last three days all Aly and I have done is watch movies. At least it seems that way.

Friday Aly bought her wedding dress. It's weird writing that sentence. Aly bought her wedding dress. Five words ... Powerful shit. There's no going back now, not that I'd want to. While she was buying a dress, I bought the Simpsons season four DVD. Easily the best season and I got it for a song at Target. $17.77. Kick ass.

I'm sure there is some sort of deeper meaning in the fact that Aly bought a wedding dress and I bought four DVDs full of cartoons. You find it, there's something about not being able to see the forest for the trees.

Friday night we went to see "Alexander the Great". I was pumped for this movie for a few reasons: I like gladiator/historic pictures, I like Val Kilmer and Oliver Stone, I've always been a fan of ATG and it had a lot of buzz going into it. Three hours later, the buzz was squashed. It wasn't a bad movie per se. It just wasn't that good of a movie.

Even though Oliver Stone couldn't tell us how Alexander died it may have been the hammy over acting. And it wasn't all Colin Farrell's fault, Anthony Hopkins as Ptolemy, Angelina Jolie as Alexander's mother and Jared Leto were all terrible. There was even a narrator telling us everything going on. Shoddy filming, confusing cuts forward and back and corny dialogue torpedoed this flick.

And the symbolism ... oh the symbolism! A hawk was in just about every scene (no doubt representing war), snakes dominated every bedroom scene(shhhh ... they stand for penises) and the whole son of a former world power leader trying to conquer the mideast so his daddy will be proud (hello G.W. Bush!). Oliver Stone just slammed us over the head with this stuff.

The good: the fight scenes, especially in India and the fact that it was about Alexander the Great. I always think that he gets the short end of the stick compared to Julius Caesar. I'm glad he got some pub, though this isn't going to help him in the long run. Out of 19 stars, I'd give it eight.

On Saturday we woke up early and went to South Hampton, NH to pay our respects to Brownie's grandmother. She died about a week earlier and a funeral mass was being celebrated for her. The preacher did a really good job, even though he admitted that he never knew Brownie's grandmother.

I had driven by this church hundreds of times, but have never been in ... it was very bare and basic. Baptists aren't ostentatious like Catholics apparently. Also old, according to a plaque, the church has been there since 1833. A lot of shit has happened since then.

Another interesting thing was that the preacher was a black guy. Not a huge deal in most places, but this is South Hampton, NH. There is about 350 people in their village and I doubt that any of them are African American. I wonder how this guy came up there? Like I said, he did an awesome job and his sermons must be something to hear. I hope that they keep him.

After the funeral we went to my parents' house for another Thanksgiving dinner. We got there early and I began to get stir-crazy, so we walked around Newburyport for a bit. Aly had never been there and she enjoyed walking around the down town checking out all the little shops. We hit Fowles and it was like going into a time machine with their old-fashioned soda fountain.

We had dinner after that and of course Nina's stuffing was the best. And while the stuffing was top-notch, the most enjoyable part of the day was seeing how happy she is. She loves watching Aly and I interact because she knows how crazy we are about each other. She kept saying that we should always act like we are now. I'm taking that advice to heart.

Saturday night we were supposed to go out with Ryan and a bunch of his friends. I cancelled. I was just too beat from the entire day. Aly and I got a movie instead. In retrospect, we should've gone out. "The Missing" was probably one of the most boring movies both of us had ever seen. Aly fell asleep and then I did too. And I never fall asleep at movies.

Basically, Tommy Lee Jones is a drifter who finds his daughter. She's a healer in Arizona or Colorado or New Mexico in the 1880s and she hates her dad. These rogue Apaches who used to work for the government get sick of working for Uncle Sam, so they decide to kidnap a bunch of chicks and sell them off to the Mexicans as sex slaves. Guess who's grand daughter gets kidnapped? TLJ's, that's who. They have to go find them.

Sounds like a pretty good plot, huh? As Homer once said, "More boring than church." Too much talking (TLJ's bitchy daughter), too much brooding (TLJ), too much of TLJ's other, younger grand daughter. And since this is a western made in the last 20 years, it's Uncle Sam's fault that these Apaches are assholes. Why can't people just be dicks without having someone make them this way?

In any event I shut this turkey off before it ended. Hopefully, everyone died. I doubt that happened though. Out of 19 stars, this one got zero.

Sunday morning we woke up early and popped in "Elf" starring Will Farrell, no relation to Colin Farrell. Which is good because his movie was actually pretty interesting. It wasn't the funniest movie I've ever seen, hell, it wasn't even the funniest Will Farrell movie I've seen. But it was cute and had a lot of heart.

And there definitely were some funny scenes. The only problem is that every one has seen this movie about a million times. Elf is looking for his dad and comes to the big city. Dad doesn't want him because he's so weird. Elf does something that wins his dad over. The end. But like I said there was a couple of funny scenes. Out of 19 stars, I'd give it about 12.

After that movie, Aly and I ventured out of the house to the mythic city of Woburn, where we saw "National Treasure" with Nicholas Cage. This was a Disney flick with sort of a hokey premise, there is a treasure map on the back of the Declaration of Independence that was put their by our forefathers in order to hide the treasure of the Knights of Templar. Since the signers were Masons, they were also super smart apparently, so they were good at hiding shit.

Cage's great, great, great, great grandfather was a stable boy of the last signer and was given a clue as to where the treasure was and since then generations of Cages (actually his name was Gates in the movie) have been obsessed with finding this. So Cage gets paired up with a rogue billionaire who screws him over and then it's a race against time between Cage and the billionaire to see who gets the treasure.

Sounds really dumb, right? That's what I thought too, but it wasn't bad at all. Easily, the best movie I've seen in the last 48 hours. Lots of fun, didn't take itself too seriously and was entertaining. That's all I ask out of a movie. Every flick isn't going to change your life some times it's cool just to go in, shut down your life for a few hours and go home. "National Treasure" did that for me. Out of 19 stars, I'd give it 14.

Following that, we went to Charette's, I picked up some new pens, pencils and paper. It's all happening now, man. I also got to meet Drew's girlfriend this weekend, her name is Alicia and she's really cool. I guess she works at Drew's company. Hopefully she'll be around a bit.

Speaking of roommates, looks like I'm not moving out of here on January 1. I'm sticking around until March 1, at least. The way Aly and I worked it out was this: if she gets a job maybe I'll go back to Amesbury. If she doesn't, she's going back to Franklin. We need a place to hang out, and there is no way both of us are going to live at home. That would suck.

Also, Aly is going to Atlanta on Wednesday for a few days. Her brother is in Russia covering a hockey story and her sister-in-law is very pregnant. Aly's going down to help her. So, I'm a free man for three days. The women of Massachusetts must be very happy.

How I spent my first Thanksgiving

There should be an "Away From Home" in that title. Unfortunately, I don't have that many keystrokes in the title.

I had a good one. That's the short answer.

The long answer is this: for the first time in my 30 years I did not celebrate an important holiday with my folks. Aly and I went to her parents' house in Franklin where we had the annual turkey day meal. They had a lot of the same stuff the Magranes had, an antipasto course (which was awesome), turkey, peas (DelMonte especially for me), cranberry sauce. But they also had this mashed potato dish made with cheddar cheese and sour cream and sweet potatoes with marshmellows. So good.

It was just me, Aly, her dad, her mom, her grandmother, Bob and Lauren. All we did was watch football and eat.

Yesterday Aly had a bad day. It's odd but there are two things that I really have to get used to about being in a relationship. The one thing is, when she's in a bad mood, inevitably I'm in a bad mood. I'm not saying that she intentionally pisses me off, but I really feel bad for her. And when something is troubling her, it's troubles me too.

And it works in opposite ways: as in when I'm ticked off, she usually gets mad. This is sort of a weird phenomena for me, I'm so used to being solo, when I'm mad, I'm mad that's it. I don't have to worry about someone else also getting angry or sad because I happen to be feeling that emotion.

It's sort of nice to have a symbiotic relationship with someone. I guess that's what people mean when they say, "Two people have become one."

The other thing that I wonder about is money. It's no longer her money or my money, it's really our money. And since she makes more than me (even though she lost her job) I'm cool with it, though sometimes I fall into the trap of "Hey! That's my money." And this isn't to say that Aly spends all of my cash, because she doesn't. While I am the cheap one in the relationship (a title I hold near and dear to my heart) Aly isn't exactly Paris Hilton either.

I was doing some thinking about this in the shower today (where this inner monologue was MUCH better) and I've come to the conclusion that I feel this way because I am the first child and very territorial. That toy was mine, this toy was Jay's. That shirt was mine, this shirt was Jay's. And so forth. We shared, of course we did, but my toys were always in better condition because I took care of them.

Honestly, I'm not sure what the hell I'm trying to say, like I said, in the shower today I thought I had a truly profound point, but it's turned to shit now. I am very happy with the way things are going, but I guess sometimes I fall back to my old, bachelor habits. Oh well that's what three or four beers will do to your thought process, it makes it less lucid.

I'm going to be pumped tomorrow. Aly is going dress shopping all day which means I have a chance to finish up my comic strip. I've been corresponding with a dude from SOSH who is writing a graphic novel (his name on SOSH is Shoeless Joe) and he's been giving me some awesome advice. His best advice so far is: make sure that you set some time every day to do your comic. Otherwise, he said, you're never going to do it. And he's right. For the past two weeks I've been like, "I'll do it next Saturday. I'll do it next Saturday." I don't do it.

It has to be a strong decision to make this strip work. Tomorrow I will.

Anthony, Stacy's boyfriend, asked me if I wanted to bounce at the Pour House tomorrow night. It is from 8 pm until 2 am at $10 an hour. I was going to do it, but I have to be in South Hampton, NH at 10 am on Saturday for Brownie's grandmother's funeral. I asked him if I could do it another night and I think he said it would be cool. He has been trying to get me a gig there bar tending, but I'm not sure if I want that. I'd rather bounce, even though the money is better as a bartender.

Maybe I can work my way up to that.

I learned something this weekend

I think that this is going to be a long entry, so buckle up buttercup.

Thursday night I went home to Amesbury to pick up some mail and do about 35 pounds of laundry. One of the things that was delivered to me from BMG was a three-disc live CD box set of Led Zeppelin called "How the West Was Won". I wasn't sure if I was going to keep it, so I decided to listen to it on the way to work on Friday.

The verdict? Not that good. It feels like I've heard these songs over and over and over again. I'm bored with Zeppelin. And do I really need a 21-minute drum solo? I mean come on, that is just ego and self indulgence at its worst. What I may do is burn a few songs that I do like and then send it back.

But here's the thing, as I was listening to the disc, I just was getting more and more bored. It's not often when you can actually feel yourself grow out of something. Though I still like Led Zeppelin's studio stuff, it's much more tight, their live stuff is just meandering and sloppy.

I think I'm glad that I never saw them in concert. After 27 minutes of Dazed and Confused, I would've been out the door.

Speaking of art and stuff, I just finished reading "Junky" by William S. Burroughs. Pretty good book though I'm sure when it first came out it must've really blown some minds. You can tell it's dated because he actually had to explain what the words "cool" and "pot" meant when a few younger beatnik's swung by the Burroughs' pad. It's nice to see the entomology (spell?) of a word.

So Lisa is leaving work and Monica is not too happy about it. And to be honest, Monica has a point. Lisa was brought over from what I was doing after two months to her current job of ordering direct mail lists and things like that. (There is a ton more shit that she does, but that's essentially it). It's a pretty important job and she gave Moni five days notice. Lisa was unsure of what to do, but she just said, "Fuck it" and gave less than a week.

I can tell the Moni was a bit pissed because she called me into her office and asked me about Lisa and whether she was happy here and basically wondering whether she was the reason why Lisa left. She sort of is, but I never told her that. Moni's not a bad boss, but she is very hands on and if you fuck up, you're going to hear about it. I think Lisa used to screw up, not a lot, but enough that Monica didn't trust her. That started her out the door.

Normally I don't get involved with work melodrama basically because I don't give a shit and I don't want to deal with this sort of thing, but I can see how some people do get into the gossip game. It was sort of like being in a club when Moni asked me into her office to give her the scoop, and she told me a few things, namely that she feels that Lisa is too immature and that she's tired of hearing her whispering to Diane. Monica felt that Lisa was "talking about her", which I squelched.

The Patriots are on right now on Monday Night Football. This team is too fucking good, they are a machine. Just picking apart the Chiefs. Whether they're down third and ten or first and ten, the Pats just know how to get it done. Corey Dillon just scored ... that's seven points for my fantasy football team.

So what had I learned this weekend? Hmmmm ... aside from office gossip and that I dislike live Zep? I learned that I have awesome friends and family. Saturday night, Aly and my parents threw us an engagement party. All of my family were there like Nina, Uncle Guy, Kyle, Megan, Uncle Bud, Karen, Paige and Aunt Grace. Not to mention Rye and Kristen, Bill and Ellie, Brownie and Cindy, Skaus and Sara, and Jay and Vanessa. Aly's family and friends were there too: her brother came up from Atlanta (the next day he had to drive to East Rutherford, NJ to cover the Falcons/Giants game) as well as Lauren and Bob, Anthony and Heather, Grandma Connie, Sara and Chris, Stacy and Anthony, Chrissie and Mike and Danna and Rick came up from New York.

But the gifts we received, it was like a shower. Everyone was beyond generous. Our entire registry list has essentially been cleaned out and we got anther $200. Between my birthday party and now this, man, I'm just lucky. I shake my head some time as to how lucky I am. And it's just not the gifts, it's the time that people give up on a Saturday night to hang around with me and Aly. I guess you sort of expect family and friends to do that, but when they actually do it, you just feel it.

Forgot to tell you about last Wednsesday, Aly and I along with mom and dad, Bill and Ellie and Sara and Chris all went to Keri and Byrnie's house for dinner. I may have said this before, but it bears repeating, Byrnie and Keri have an awesome house in Stoneham. It's a lot like Jim and Sara's, it's not too small but it's not monsterous. It's a very cozy place ... I would love to have a place like that some time.

In any event, we did the same thing we normally do with those guys, we made fun of each other and shot the shit. Byrnie made a pork roast, with potatoes and corn. Very good food. Just thinking about it ... damn, I'm starving.

What I've been up to ...

To borrow a phrase from Onion correspondent Jim Anchower, "It's been a long time since I rapped at you, but I've been busier than a one-armed wall paper hanger."

Sort of.

I'm at work, trying to kill some time, so this may be a short entry ... or not. I don't know. It all depends on the quickness of my fingers.

This weekend Aly and I went to visit her friends in White Plains, Danna and Rick. I've talked about them before, cool people, even if they are Yankee fans. It was fucking snowing on Friday night, which didn't make for the best commute, but we made it to their place in about three hours. Not too shabby.

Usually when we get there, we start boozing and talking until 3:00 am. Didn't happen this time, Danna is pregnant. No one knows about it, so don't say anything. It was great news and we were their first friends that they told, which really meant a lot to Aly.

Saturday we just hung around and waited for Rick's 35th birthday party. It was pretty cool, more people were coming up to congratulate me about the Red Sox winning the Series than on my up coming nuptuals. I thought that was pretty funny. Aside from one or two people, everyone was really cool. There was one guy though who was more ignorant than annoying. He was trying to convince everyone that Steinbrenner threw the middle three games of the series in order to pad his pockets. He said that Steinbrenner was getting $1,000 per bleacher seat.

I had to put an end to his bullshit. When I called him on it, he got pissed and said, that he heard it on WFAN and that he was just going with "what he heard" Michael Kay say. Dude, shut the fuck up. You're a moron.

Sunday we did nothing but drive home ... the commute was much better.

While at the gym on Monday I was bitten by the inspiration bug. My comic now has a name, two main characters, and 13 stories. Thirteen fucking stories, I am more than pumped about that. Bruce Beattie, the comic strip guy I've been talking to, says that the art is the easy part, it's the writing that takes the most time. And he's correct. The one thing that I'm really excited about is that I also found the tone, it's a lot like the early Peanut strips that are sort of subtle and world-weary.

I don't want to have a hacky, pun-filled strip ... I mean, it might come to that, but I'd like to start out pretty high brow.

Yesterday the bomb dropped. Aly got laid off. She called the office at about 10 am, bawling. I pretty much dropped everything and went to her house. Apparently, there has been some scandal going on at Putnam and they've been laying people off left and right. She just happened to get caught in the thrashed. And the layoffs aren't going to stop ... there is expected to be another round soon. And it's going to be bigger.

The one good thing is that Aly was given a very generous severance package. She's going to land a job pretty quickly I think, and honestly, we may be able to make out pretty good in this deal if she does. I just feel bad for her because she's taking it pretty hard. It's not her fault, but she has inklings that it is.

Corporate America fucking sucks. Some shit head higher up gets his hand caught in the cookie jar and the little guy has to pay? Real good system we have. Of course no one gets pissed, and if they do, they're called a "Michael Moore".

I am a bad friend

About six weeks ago I got this email:

Byron,

What's up? Not too much down here, I was just chilling pool side (yes, I do have a pool here) and realized that I haven't written anything for your site in a while. Do you want me to do anything?

Your buddy,

Aquaman

BTW, dude Angels and Dodgers in the World Series

With the playoffs and other stuff going on, I forgot about him until I got this email yesterday:

Dear dicknose mouth breather,

What the fuck? I emailed you six weeks ago and you still haven't emailed me back. What the hell is your fucking problem? I just have a bunch of shit on my mind that I want to get out in the open, so let me write something. If you don't, the next time you take a crap, I'll find out and send a school of piranah to bite your scrotum.

Aquaman

BTW, what did I tell you? Red Sox/Cards World Series, just like I predicted!

Since I need my scrotum, with out further complications, here's Aquaman.

Hey surface folk, what's shakin your bacon? Not much is new down in the water, though Atlantis is still rocking from the World Series. I can't believe that the Red Sox did it. Old Neptune was really smiling up on them this year.

I got an email from Frank Weebles the other day and he asked, "Yo AM, since you don't really do the superhero thing that much anymore, how do you stay in the cabbage?" Here's the thing douchebag, I am still in the superhero game, the problem is aside from the Bison Dele incident a few years ago, there aren't many pirates or other nautical crimes going on.

That is why I am pumped for the best word in the English language: residual checks! Your buddy Aquaman was smart enough to tape all of his adventures in the 60s, 70s and the beginning of the 80s. This week I finally got my first DVD set, "The Challenge of the Superfriends" delivered to my underwater palace.

Calling it cool would be doing it a diservice. It rocked. The DVD was loaded with my fights against Black Manta, especially that part in the beginning where we're tussling around in the ocean and I get an octopus and a whale to help me kick his ass. Not that I needed two of the biggest sea creatures around to kick one dude's ass, but whatever.

So after I got done making Aqualad and Myra watch my adventures, I noticed that there was a disc of special stuff. There is no one more special than yours truly, so I figured it would be a lot of footage of me. Actually it wasn't. It was these two guys who worked for DC Comics.

At first they were totally complimentary saying, "What you should remember about Aquaman is that he really is one of the most powerful guys in the DC Universe. He controls 75% of the world. That's a lot for one dude, and he does it well."

See that? I bet you never thought of it that way before. Donald Trump doesn't control 75% of the world, neither does Paris Hilton or Hawkman. It's me, Aguahombre.

But then something happens to these two clowns and they start slagging off on me, "It must've been hard for the writers to come up with stuff for Aquaman to do. With so many heroes, there can't be a lot of water-related plots. So he stands around a lot."

Then they show scene after scene after scene of me just standing there. Seriously? What the fuck? If those assholes knew anything about superheroing, they would've figured out that:

a. I was waiting for something to happen so I could spring into action and
b. No one writes this stuff, it's all real stuff going on

Then they started talking about how in the older episodes, with less teammates, I was a more featured star, now that guys like Black Vulcan, Apache Chief and Samuri were around I got bumped to a bit player. Again, they're wrong.

Who did Batman come to when he and Robin got into a fight? Me.
Who did Hawkman come to when he needed bail money for getting peeping on girls at that woman's college? Me.
Who did Wonder Woman make clean up her room? Me.

If it wasn't for me, the Hall of Justice would stop running. But, you know what? I don't give a crap about what these guys say because those checks just keep rolling, rolling, rolling in. So suck on that, DC guys.

Well, I'm going to get going. I'll talk to you sooner than last time. Peace.

I crave excitement ...

"Excitement, action, adventure ... a Jedi craves not this." -- Yoda

So I'm not going to be wielding a lightsabre any time soon and I probably fucked up that quote, but I need something to spice up what I'm doing or I'm going to go nuts.

Friday night Aly and I went to dinner with her roommate Sara (from the long, boring story I told on Thursday) and her boyfriend Chris. That cat is pretty interesting, though he's not much of a story teller. He went to high school with Nomar Garciapara, saw Sublime play in Long Beach (CA) garages and lives in the house that Vincent Price lived in when he lived in Boston's South End.

I was really interested in the Nomar thing, but he didn't know him very well, Nomar was a senior when he was a frosh and they didn't run in the same circles. He did say that "everyone knew he was going to be awesome." Well, no shit ... I knew my buddy Dan Marshall was going to be a good hoop player after high school, and he put up a bunch of records at Assumption College. That doesn't tell me much. After I asked him two or three questions, and he didn't' know the answers, I gave up.

We ended up going to Giacomo's (I think I spelled it wrong) in the South End. Good grub. Nothing else happened.

Saturday, Aly went wedding dress shopping, so I had the day to myself. I started my comic strip, but was interrupted and stopped after one panel. Other than that I spent a bunch of time on SOSH and watching TV. Totally killed the day.

Then we went to Jim and Sarah's house in Reading. They live in a really nice place. I'm talking fucking beautiful house, lots of room, but not big enough to get lost in. I only wish that we could afford a place like that some day. Sarah made a great meal too, pork tenderloin with sweet potato fries. They also gave us an engagement gift, a wine decanter with a wine bucket. Since Aly checks our registry every day, she knew that they were the first people to get us something.

It was unexpected and really nice. I was very touched. One of the funnier things Jim told me was that one of our friends (I'm not saying who) gave them a check for $42 for their wedding last year. And he brought a date. What the fuck? $42? Is he serious, why would you choose to give someone $42? Was it in support of Jackie Robinson? I must've laughed for 42 minutes.

Sunday we went to Aly's parents' house where I worked like a dog for the entire day. First I put up insulation under their porch (or in the very least I helped) then I raked their front yard then I trimmed the hedges (which hasn't been done in at least five years). It sounds like it sucked, but it was pretty cool. For one thing the Manassos feed me like there's no tomorrow, and they always let me bring stuff home. Secondly, they are having our engagement party in two weeks. That's not going to be cheap, a day's worth of labor is the least I can do.

And thirdly, whenever we buy a house, I'm going to need to start doing this stuff, I might as well get some practice now.

Nick ran the New York City Marathon yesterday, I wonder how he did? I'll probably ask him tomorrow.

I worked out a deal with this dude on SOSH named Dick Pole (the name of a former Sox pitcher and pitching coach), basically I'll give him a copy of Sports Weekly and he'll send me a CD of the audio calls of the Sox playoff games. I'm pumped, that is going to be awesome.

Speaking of SOSH, I owe Napkin $5 for reading my last entry and there is a thread where a SOSHette and a girlfriend of a SOSHer are posting naked pics of themselves (not together). They're both pretty hot. I never thought that I'd see that, but it's pretty cool.

I fucking hate the telephone. Every thing about it. I hate talking on it. I hate how accessible I am to everyone. I hate the technology that more often than not fails as many times as it works. I just hate the phone. Aly loves the phone, she's like my mother, they could talk all day. So, sometimes we get into arguments about that. Case in point, tonight.

I made my usual call to see what's up, she told me she'd call me back. She calls back and we don't have much to say, I'm tired and not really paying attention and she's getting more and more frustrated with me. In turn, I'm getting frustrated because I just want to throw this cell phone through the wall. So, an instrument that was created to lead to better communication has effectively put a block on communication. Strange, eh?

Probably not, this sort of shit happens to millions of people every day. I just tried to be profound and I'm too fucking tired. Ok, I'm out ... I'm going to apply for some jobs.

I forgot to add a postscript to that story about Sara meeting with her ex-boyfriend. Nothing happened. They just caught up with each other and he made a couple of sarcastic comments about how he has to pay her back for all the crap she bought him. On one hand I'm sort of glad because Sara's a cool chick and Chris is a nice guy too. But on the other hand, it would've been cool if he came out (which he is going to, it's just going to take some time ... he's more of a chick than any chick I know) or if they hooked up.

I don't know why the latter would've been cool, and it probably wouldn't have been, but it would've given me something to talk about.

No baseball is boring

It's been eight days since the Boston Red Sox won the World Series, I just love writing that, BTW I will be doing it a lot during the off season. And there are 102 days until pitchers and catchers report.

That means I have about three and a half months to find something to do. I am bored out of my tree. Tonight I watched a bit of TV, the only thing that was on was Survivor. At first, I thought I may have judged this season a bit too quickly: the whittled-away cast seemed cool, there wasn't a lot of fighting and they merged tonight (that's always the best episode). There are four guys and six girls and it looked as if the guys were going to sway a few girls their way to vote a chick off.

They didn't. This means unless one of the three dudes figures out a plan soon, they're just going to get picked off. How fucking boring. I don't think I'm going to tune in next week. That's just boring.

I have a couple of things I should be doing, but I haven't been doing them. I think I still have a Sox hangover. At least that's what I'm telling myself. I think the truth is that I'm lazy. I wish I had more motivation.

Today at work, I was talking to my friend Diane. She asked why I didn't go to an afterwork party last night, and before I could say anything, she said, "Oh I remember, it's because you said you don't want to have work friends." I think she's right. I like just about everyone I work with, but I don't really want to socialize with them outside of work.

There are two reasons:
1. We're just going to talk about work. I'm there for more than 40 hours a week, I really don't want to talk about work any more than I really have to. I just don't like work that much.

2. Eventually I'm leaving there and when I'm gone, it's adios HCPro friends. Not that I would do it on purpose, but seriously, what's the point? Am I going to see these people any more? When was the last time I saw Briana Curran or Kristen Bolow or any of the other people that worked at HCPro? Never. They're shadow friends, in that they're real enough that I see them every day but there's no depth to the friendship.

Sort of a dick thing to say, but it's realistic. It's completely pathetic when people have to have their best friends at work.

It's fucking freezing in here and I saw that Josh got the oil bill ... $403. What the fuck? He still hasn't collected any money for the last two month's worth of bills. I should owe him about $200. This is going to suck, I don't have that kind of dough. I don't understand why he can't just do bills once a month, it's not fucking hard, I used to do it when I lived in Winthrop.

Butthead.

Last night I woke up at 4:00 with the worst calf strain. It fucking killed. I had to massage it and stretch it out. But when I sleep, I don't really move around too much so it was atrophied. So with this cramp and the early stages of not moving around, it was a painful experience all around. It still hurt when I woke up this morngin.

Here's a pretty good story: Aly's roommate Sara has a new boyfriend named Chris. Her old boyfriend, Justin, was a dude she thought that she was going to marry. He broke up with her after a little over a year in September. Sara was understandably crushed, but managed to find this new dude Chris.

He's a good egg, a total 180 from Justin, who was nice, but was really into himself. And he was a dyed-in-the-wool Republican and kind of a loud mouth. I only really met him three times (because he lived in Washington) so maybe he was really cool and I never go to know him. In any event, Justin is back in Boston and wants to meet with Sara on Saturday. BTW, his reason for breaking up with Sara was that he wanted to find himself, which I think was code for, "I'm going to see if I'm gay or not."

Chris is head over heels in love with Sara and expects to marry her. Sara told him that she has to talk to Justin. He was cool with it. I don't understand this, I spoke with Aly about this and said, "I would completely flip out. There would be no way that I would be cool with this, if we were just starting to date."

Aly thought I was just being posessive and her and Sara talked about it. I guess Sara felt bad that she didn't tell Chris the entire story, so she told him all about Justin, etc. Chris hit the roof. Good for him. This is just a dumb story that sounded better in my head than it looks on the screen.

If you're still reading, I will come over your house right now and give you a five dollar bill. As you can tell, I have nothing to write about. So, I'm going to bed.

In the coming weeks, I want to get another Aquaman story up, another Watching TV with 19 and a look at what I have on my Replay TV. Maybe I'll throw a Wire story in there if he does anything funny.

For the first time in three weeks ...

I have absolutely nothing to do. No Sox. No going home. No going over Aly's. I'm here all by myself, listening to tunes and just chilling out. It's nice just unwind for a night.

There were two Sox related things that happened to me last Thursday that I forgot to talk about. Last week, Massachusetts was like a giant college town where everyone knew everyone else. Let me illustrate:

Last Thursday, I was walking around Marblehead with my Sox shirt on. It's an old school Carl Everett t-shirt. As I walked by a dude in a truck, the guy honks and points at my shirt and gives me the thumbs up.

Then when I came back from lunch, I saw these two Asian guys whom I normally say hello to. They work in the office building we're in and they take a look at my shirt, yell "Red Sox!" and then "Schilling!" but did it in sort of a cartoony Asian accent.

I woke up sort of depressed today. Fucking George W. Bush won the election. I don't really get into politics on 19 Thoughts, but for so many reasons this is just the wrong thing. Why does the American public think that this guy is doing a great job? Jobs, our economy, scientific achievements, our environment, our standing in the world are in the toilet and we are getting our asses kicked in Iraq. How can a rational person say that this guy is doing the job?

This is a huge, huge mistake.

But the only person worse than George W. are anyone of his minions from Chaney to Rumsfeld to Ashcroft. These guys are just pure, unadulterated evil. Not nice men. You know who else sucks, the conservative cocksuckers who are just reveling in this. Gerry Callhan, Rush Limbaugh, the whole lot of them. Fuck them. I wish that they'd all drop dead.

Last week I finished, "Dark Star Safari" by Paul Theroux. When he wasn't lecturing on the evils of missionaries and how much he hates the city, it was a good book. It's a travel book and tells the tale of how he went from Cairo to Cape Town by rail and automobile. It's a lot like his other book I read, "The Old Patagonian Express", where he goes from Somerville to the tip of Argentina.

Theroux has a gift for writing about conversations between him and the locals and can paint an awesome picture of far-off lands. Like, I said earlier he does seem to sermonize about one or two subjects and continues to go back to them a lot during the book.

Aside from that, I would definitely recommend it.

I went to Stacy and Keith's wedding on Saturday, it wasn't too bad. Here's the thing, since Aly and I are getting married next year, we've become wedding critics, deciding what we want and what we don't want from different ceremonies. There were a lot of things that we liked from Stacy's wedding: she and Keith gave the eucarist at the church, which was interesting. I liked the food. It was damn good.

Oh yeah, last thing (I'm really tired) I told Eddie and Josh that I am leaving Somerville on January 1. I'm moving home to Amesbury to save some money for the honeymoon and our new place. Sort of sucks, but it really shouldn't be too bad.