A conversation I overheard today:

PetaGirl: That's just so mean the way they treat those chickens!

InstigatorGuy: Well what about cotton plants? They hack those plants up just to make your clothes.

PetaGirl: But that's different!

InstigatorGuy: Why is it different? Plants are alive too you know.

PetaGirl: But they can't talk!

Finally fixed the bug in my code that was supposed to automagically fill in my age at the top of my main page.

I left the bug in for a long time because I thought it was funnier when it just said "error: value too large."

Now I realize that this is no laughing matter.

On Saturday, for whatever reasons, I found my myself in a mood for the apple taste of a Belgian ale.

My initial attempt to satify this craving was a Great Lakes 15th Anniversary Ale. Yummy, but I still wanted more apples.

The second beer I tried was a Mad Bitch - I'm sure it has a real name but everyone just calls it Mad Bitch.

This was as close to drinking hard cider as I think I could stand. I liked this beer, but at a whopping 10% alcohol I know that one will always be my limit.

Once the Mad Bitch as gone I got a little bored with Rich O's Nobody I knew was there except for ExBartender and he was involved in a loud conversation with some tatooed guy.

I ended up leaving and going to Jillian's of all places.

VigilanteGirl had mentioned earlier that she would go there after work, so I went and had a couple of Newcastles while I waited.

I guess we had a misunderstanding as she didn't show up. Actually as it turns out she was there for a bit but her and her friends didn't stay - they had gone by the time I got there.

Once I left Jillian's I went back to Rich O's, got talked into going to a party, got bored at the party, and went home.

com-pas-sion
n.
1. Deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.

fu-til-i-ty
n.
1. The quality of having no useful result; uselessness.
2. Lack of importance or purpose; frivolousness.
3. A futile act.

dis-miss
v.
1. To end the employment or service of; discharge.
2. To stop considering; rid one's minds of; dispel.
3. To refuse to accept or recognize; reject.

Tonight was certainly interesting.

I spent the night talking with LaptopGirl, CoffeeDude, and CoffeeDude's brother.

I had a couple of Guiness pints, and an NABC Beak's Best. The only experimentation I did was to have a SkullSplitter.

It was quite disgusting at first, but after an inch or so it started to taste pretty good. I suspect that my initial disgust was caused by the Beak's Best still coating my mouth. At 8.5% it was too strong for me to risk getting a second opinion.

Tonight I basically tried to be a nice person but apparently failed. Not only was I blown off, I was told that I was being blown off as it was happening. People sitting across the room were like, "Dude, you just got DISSED" and I was like "gee like thanks for letting me know as I am like stupid and would never have noticed otherwise."

They say nice guys finish last.

CoffeeDude did try to stick up for me but it was clearly a lost cause at that point.

Also, it was pretty cool that LaptopGirl took one look at this stranger at Rich O's and guessed that he was CoffeeDude's brother, and it turned out she was right.

I've noticed a pretty odd side-effect to my owning a 65" television.

Because the screen dimensions are 16:9 instead of the normal 4:3 most shows need to be stretched horizontally so the picture fills the screen.

This makes everyone look short and fat.

I've become so used to this that the women that are hot are STILL hot when they look short and fat.

So now in real life I've become much less critical about chunkier women than I used to be.

So while I still have pretty high standards, I now find myself looking at, and appreciating, women that six months ago I wouldn't have paid any attention to at all.

The next thing you know I'll be stocking up on midget porn.

I've been spending some time trying to decide who to pine away for.

I generally feel most like myself when I'm obsessing over some girl that is (a) completely inappropriate, (b) wholly unavailable, (c) way out of my league, or any combination of the above. Then I also have the standard requirements like attractiveness, intelligence, and personality.

There also has to be an inkling, however slight, that some slight change in circumstances could allow a real relationship. Perhaps if she wasn't married, or if I was more attractive, or if I moved to France - that kind of change.

For the last few months that niche was filled by LaptopGirl, but for reasons best left unsaid she no longer meets enough of the requirements.

So I've been thinking about a replacement.

I've got it narrowed down to a trio of candidates.

VigilanteGirl
Her main qualification has to be her age. I'm old enough to be too old for her mother. While that's fine by me, in a dirty-old-man kind of way, I'm sure that the age difference would make her completely unavailable to an old coot like me.

There also the issue of her workplace competition. VigilanteGirl is not the only candidate that I considered from that establishment. To truly pine for her, I'd have to stop thinking about some of her coworkers; notably TwinSisters and NeighborsDaughter.

There's also the issue of the flirting. At least a small part of me has to suspect that there may be something behind her innuendos, and of course if there's any chance that she's available for me then that blows that deal.

FilleFrancaiseSexy
The hot French girl that came into Rich O's last weekend would at first glance appear to be perfect. The age factor is there, making her quite inappropriate for me. She's possibly third or fourth on the list of the most beautiful women I've ever laid eyes on, so she's so far out of my league that, as they say, she can't even see my league. And oh yeah, she lives in France, so availability should never be a problem.

I'm concerned that I've never successfully pined away for anyone that I couldn't see on a semi-regular basis. My limit seems to be about a month - after that much absence I'm usually out looking for someone else to torture my soul over.

HotWorkGirl
I'm hesitant about even writing about HotWorkGirl here. I'm not sure that she meets ANY of the requirements I listed earlier. Her only real chance to be inappropriate or otherwise unavailable is to be a LOT older than she appears or to be a lesbian. She's just too new for me to have categorized her yet.

I can't decide. Perhaps I should widen the list of candidates.

There are several likely women - each more beautiful or young or married or gay or drugged-out than the last - that could possibly step up and occupy enough of my thoughts that a full-scale crush COULD ensue.

I suppose I'll just wait and see how things play out.

There are millions, maybe billions, of ineligible bachelorettes out there. I'm sure I'll find the worst possible one someday.

For reasons that I cannot fathom I haven't honored my July 11th Hottie of the Day until now.

Paige Davis is the host of TLC's Trading Spaces, one of my favorite shows.

Paige's perkiness would likely get old very quickly, but her sexiness may just make up for it.

group-ie
n. Slang
1. A fan, especially a young woman, who follows a rock group around on tours.

Saturday night was much like Friday. It seems that most of the regulars were in attendance at one time or another and I spent the night in the living room area talking about various topics ranging from my quiet demeanor to the severe lack of attractive, single, straight women at Rich O's.

I had the same beers I had on Friday, in probably the same order.

What a wild-man I am.

As I left I spotted LaptopGirl sitting in her car so I said hello and left before I got drafted into chauferring her and her new boyfriend someplace.

ex-ot-ic
adj.
1. From another part of the world; foreign.
2. Intriguingly unusual or different; excitingly strange.

I'm having a tough time thinking of anything to write about Friday. Everyone was at Rich O's and there were a lot of interesting conversations, but nothing really sticks in my mind...

...EXCEPT the presence of FilleFrancaiseSexy who was there with CanadianGirl and her entourgage from work.

I heartily recommend that CanadianGirl bring more sexy French girls to Rich O's. They're just what the place has been missing.

For the beer part of this report the only experimenting I did was to order a Great Lakes 15th Anniversary Ale. This is a Belgian Ale, and it had all of the appleness that I've come to expect from Belgians, but this beer had a lot of other characteristics that I cannot even begin to describe. It was one of the most complex beers I've ever had.

I liked it, and so now the Great Lakes Brewery is about 5-for-5 when it comes to making a beer that I like.

Other than that I had a few of my regulars; NABC Beak's Best, Arcadia Scotch Ale, and Alaskan Smoked Porter.

Got the bill for my truck repairs today.

It cost me four-hundred for a new radiator (which I needed) and another three-hundred for a new timing belt (for which replacement was way overdue) so it was like, eleventy-zillion or so total.

Today's the first time I've been broke since I refinanced my mortgage and got all that lovely money back in the Spring. Being broke sucks.