Lazy Bastard!
Just updated my political blog. For the first time in like 5 months.

Me and My Big Mouth
Kirsten has officially banned me from the simple pleasure of smoking cigars.

Well, I'll show her! I'll find a new simple pleasure, like making puppets do the nasty, or writing greeting cards...

<Zoidberg>Hooray!</Zoidberg>
Apparently, being a Geek is in, now. So, when I get beaten up by the bullies at school, it's not because I'm wimpy or stupid, it's because I'm hip and "with it."

Good to know.

The Simple Geek You answered 74% of the questions as a geek truly would.

You don't seem to sway in either direction, however you still seem to have some latent geek attributes within you. Maybe you're interested in computers but not a gamer? Maybe you've got geek hobbies but none of the awkward social tendencies. You may be slightly geekier than you thought and in denial! The simple geek usually has various quirks that friends may make fun of, but in general can be considered a fairly normal person. Your geek attributes make you less likely to conform to society. The popular kids don't hate you but the geeks don't either, so it's a respectable demographic. In a nutshell, you answered enough questions with geek tendencies and enough questions without geek tendencies that it's difficult to pinpoint your exact alignment.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 47% on geekness

Link: The True Geek Test written by ambientred on Ok Cupid

*Koff*
There are a lot of advantages to living with your significant other. One of them, of course, is that you get to spend your free time with the woman you love (in my case, anyway, and the case of non-traditional female readers). It's nice to know who it is you're coming home to. Plus, you get to know this girl's (see previous parenthetical statement) ins and outs, as it were - what she looks like in the morning, how she smells on a daily basis rather than just before a date.

The less obvious benefits, of course, are things like having someone to share the financial burdens of the household, teaching yourself to cook out of real cookbooks, and not having to be the only person to make the bed.

And interior decorating. That's nice too.

But after living with my girlfriend for the past two years, one thing I miss is one of the most simple pleasures: the cigar.

When you live alone, or rather, with people who don't depend on your attention and whose attention you don't necessarily demand, you can go out, hang out with friends in their front yards, drink a glass of port and smoke a stogie. Come home smelling like crap? Doesn't matter. Have a bit of a headrush from the nicotine and the temporary replacement of oxygen with various poisons? No big deal. Cough up a lung? Only Berney and Pratik can hear you, and one's doing thermo while the other steals umbrellas.

Last halloween, I dressed up as Bill Clinton for a party, and decided to carry around a cigar to complete the effect. Now, I'm not a guy who does everything halfway, and this was one of my good moments. Rather than spending five dollars on a box of Phillies or Swishers, I opted to really step up to the plate and buy four Honduran cigars. I had just seen The Punisher, so you'll catch the reference if you have, too.

I smoked one that night after getting home, and while Kirsten said she didn't mind, I get the feeling she was a little unhappy about the odor. I felt guilty the next time I smoked a cigar when she was around, too, since she doesn't really get a kick out of them like I do.

She's in Washington state right now, visiting her folks for her birthday. So after going to the gym and becoming more impossibly ripped and hunky, I grabbed my last remaining cigar and sat out behind one of my complex's garages, watched traffic, and just kicked back with a few strike-anywhere matches and a nice smoke.

I must have been out there for about half an hour, just staring at the moon and feeling the gentle breeze caused by Cardinals traffic cruising by on I-170. Sometimes, it's the simplest things that make the day.

Cheesy Badness
They say that scent is the sense tied most strongly to memory, and I'm not going to argue. It is. But let's not give auditory sensation the shaft here. Sound can trigger memories pretty well, too. Just think of shell shock, and how some vets will drop into a crouch in shooting position at the sound of a backfire.

Kirsten borrowed a friend's CD tonight, presumably to burn it, copy it, or whatever. Anyway, it has the song "Knights in White Satin" on it, which as anyone on Eliot 6 will recall was on Antonio's second-favorite album (his first bieng Garbage, of course). Technically, it wasn't Antonio's album, it was his parents'. But he stole it fair and square. So there.

Kirsten starts playing this album, and it's weird, but I can close my eyes and instantly remember exactly how my room was shaped, the door, the layout, even where my alarm clock was. I'm not usually one to ramble on nostalgically, at least not for too very long, but I really enjoyed living there. Perhaps it was the fact that Antonio and Brad would accuse each other of being bad Catholics (Brad, you're gay. Can't get much worse than that, even if you'd rather play tennis than go to Mass).

It's weird the kind of things that can make you realize what a great time you had back in the day. But freshman year was a really great year, IMO.

Mebbe I'll pop in CD Fave number three, Ben Folds Five's "Whatever and Ever Amen," sit back, play a little command and conquer, and wonder why in the world any man should have to restring his tennis racquet on a weekly basis.

What, it Wasn't Unkosher Enough?
Serious kudos go to whoever it was that decided bratwurst needed cheese injected into it. Fat AND cholesterol? How can I go wrong?