Arbitrarily Enraged

A brilliantly mundane discovery

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 06:50:21 GMT

This weekend I had the pleasure of being home and hanging out with friends, and even getting to see the new Nationals Stadium. A shame that the stadium outshone the game I went to see, but that's Washington sports for you. The new stadium however, is not the brilliantly mundane discovery I made, no, it is far more mundane than that.

I went with my mother to Wal-mart today to buy allergy medication amongst other things, and decided one of those other things would be Ibuprofen. So I'm going down the pain relieve aisle when this squat bottle with an orange cap catches my attention. The point of interest; the fact that the cap had no child-safe squeeze places and no matching tabs, no this was a simple twist-off.

I didn't realize non-child-safe medicine bottles even existed any more, and it threw me off when I read "THIS PACKAGE FOR HOUSEHOLDS WITHOUT YOUNG CHILDREN". It definitely makes sense for a pain killer to have an easy-open bottle, especially an anti-inflammatory for things like Arthitis. It was awesome, almost like I had turned back the decades and pulled a bottle from those bygone days when child-safety was laughable and air guns ruled the Earth. I shouldn't be this jazzed about something so simple, but it's just so different.

Tagging like a mofo!

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 05:53:57 GMT

One of the cool features that have been introduced to livejournal since I was last active is tags. Don't give me that look, it's been almost two years since I was active, a lot changes in that time!

So yes, tags are awesome, tags are great, and fortunately for me my archives are quite meager so retro-applying them has been quite simple. Most tags are pretty self explanatory, though the "greatest hits" tag is the most arcane. It will be used on retrospective posts from the two year gap.

It's not that current life in uninteresting and without material; rather I want to commit some of the greatest of those tales to some sort of archive so I have them for prosperity. The German trip was especially interesting and I did begin a a journal while I was there, only I stopped writing in it within a week. Might as well write them down, some of you will be familiar with a few tales already.

Hopefully my journal won't end up consisting exclusively of greatest hits.

Day 930?!

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 06:17:28 GMT

So here we are true believer, on the spectacular 930th day since the creation of this livejournal, and what a wild and wicked journey it's been. There twilight plane boarding of the damned in San Francisco, the traversing of the wild German suburbs in conditions of great adversity possibly brought on by the substance the locals call "Bier", and the perils of the Bethesda Triangle which almost claimed me and my brother in its tangled web of super highway. Certainly tales that I know have warmed many a heart.

What's this?! None of these epics worthy of Homer himself are recorded in this virtual tome? Oh wait, like a good portion of livejournal's userbase I posted semi actively for a few months until getting bored and dropping the ball entirely.

Now I won't make any bull shit promises like claiming daily updates, but I might attempt to get the theoretical ball rolling again. Who knows this might pan out, or more likely fizzle again, at which point every one can go on reading this as often as I update, heh.

The death of a constant companion

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 04:57:20 GMT

Pardon my melodrama, but my pocket-sized Langenscheidt German-English dictionary has died. It has become completely severed from its rubbery exterior and remains only a matter of time until the binding itself becomes only a memory from the past. My little dictionary has been of constant use in the seven years I've owned it, and I admit it has had a rough life constantly being tucked in my backpack and in all weather. It will be with great sadness that I replace the deceased book, and even then it won't be the same. Fare thee well my departed word book, I'll properly replace you with a Englisch Wörterbuch.

Living a Lie

Sun, 02 Apr 2006 05:37:48 GMT

As the title may lead you to believe I've begun to realize that I'm living a lie in regard to my traditional dislike of the color green. It really didn't have any basis in anything aside from spiting my mother and younger brother, and certainly didn't do me any favor. This might be due in part to me recently realizing I very much have green eyes, with that finally concluded I feel a bit more at peace with my eyes. When we consider many of my favorite fictional characters are green, green is a color that looks execeptionally good on me, one of my school's colors is green, I have many green shirts and have green eyes it seemed rather funny to dislike the color. Honestly the only green thing I dislike significantly are plants that cause me allergy attacks. So in response to the revelation I've injected color and a layout change to a potentially revitalized Livejournal, resulting from my boredom. I still like grey and blue but I think other colors deserve a chance to shine.

Does Whatever a Spider can!

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 23:47:54 GMT

For some odd reason this post broke my LJ
Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man		80%
Green Lantern		65%
Batman		60%
Superman		55%
Hulk		55%
Robin		53%
Catwoman		45%
The Flash		40%
Iron Man		35%
Wonder Woman		33%
Supergirl		33%

You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...
An obligatory random survey post, though shouldn't that be "try to be witty" in reference to Spider-man?

Buses-a-go-go!

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 23:07:12 GMT

When the creative well seems dry, it seems like a ride on the bus is in order. For the past few days I've relunctantly had to ride the bus almost exclusively due to being over a pint short of blood since last Friday, and the negative effects bicycle riding would have.
So yesterday when I first got on the bus I was casually amused to see the driver on a cell phone, at the time it didn't seem like any harm was done. At this point I was on the Green/Gold line and randomly decided I wanted to go to Target so I hopped onto the Red Line, where the trouble really began. First the bus was exceptionally late, but I can hardly hold that against the bus with all the crazy road construction that has been going down on one of the main drags. Then the route was completely different, which I guess was to be expected with the new movie theatre having just opened on Friday and a new shopping center finally slipped into the route, though it would have been nice if some how WAT had managed to get the word out. No, the real problem was that this red line bus driver was constantly glued to her cell phone, obviously having personal conversations on company time. Sure the previous bus driver was also on a cell phone, but his call was quickly ended before we were on the road, whereas the bimbo driving the Red Line bus was on her damned cell phone for almost the entire route, and actually missed an old lady's stop since she didn't hear the stop-request sound go off over his cell phone, and later she skipped another crucial stop, which fortunately none of us needed after explicitly saying the courthouse was still on the bus route. It seems like a miracle we were never in a tight traffic situation since I can assure you her mind wasn't in the game and one-handed bus steering isn't going to offer one the dexterity required to find safety. I would have been willing to pass this off as one bimbo driver if the same exact thing hadn't happened today as well!
So maybe I'm the one in the wrong here, perhaps bus brivers have an inalienable right to talk on their cellphones while driving, the lives of the hundreds of passengers who will ride the bus each day only frivolous statistics. Perhaps I'm the one being unreasonable when I expect municipality employees to have more responsibility when countless lives are in their hands. I guess I must just be naïve in that regard...

Inconceivable!

Sat, 12 Nov 2005 02:23:13 GMT

Today something magnificent happened, today I decided not go see a movie at movie theatre. So what makes this decision worthy of magnificence? It's because I was able to make the decision at all instead of having it made for me in advance, since today at 4 o'clock pm the brand new movie theatre opened in Williamsburg, VA. No longer must I go through cinema deprivation while at college with the closest theatre being over thirty miles and two bus systems away. So benevolet felt I that I decided to give blood on a whim at the campus blood drive today despite my previous encounter with blood donation services being most tragic.

For anyone wondering just how nerdy my school is...

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 18:54:36 GMT

The College of William and Mary has a bit of a reputation of being a tad nerdy; I don't really think I can dispute there claims...
In a few of the men's rooms, the vandalism isn't vulger in any ways whatsoever, instead the vandalism consists of jokes and puns about... ready for it? Grout. Take what you will from that

-Tom

It takes all types to make an INTERNET whole, yes even the idiots...

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 20:18:00 GMT

Sometimes the internet impressed, usually I think I've seen it all, but all too often I'm proved wrong. I'm no stranger to internet idiocy, I've been an active member at forums drowning in idiots coughkalsparkcough. But apparantly I've missed out on facebook idiocy, facebook being the collegiate version of Myspace for those of you previously unaware. The greatest reason for my membership of this social network is that it makes available to me the laziest means of keeping track of highschool friends post-highschool. Before I ramble more I'll cut to the chase, a few weeks ago I checked out the spam-infested haven that is my old university e-mail accont (c'mon CNU I haven't worked at your library or have even been a student since late April why the hell are you still sending me notices to get my time sheets in? why!?) and I notice that a "Tom Fletcher" has listed you as a friend message from Facebook. I notice this and commented that I didn't remember sending a friend request to myself from my newer (better) account and ignored it figuring I'd get to it later. Suddenly today in my current school e-mail I get a friend request from a "Tom Fletcher" and I know for certain I'd done crap with my older account so I clicked the link to discover who this mysterious "Tom Fletcher" truly was. Apparantly he attends "Virginia Wesleyan" which I've never even heard of, and was a complete stranger. So what the fuck was the common connection I briefly thought, until the obvious dawned upon me, the only damn connection was our goddamned name, apparantly he put his own name into the global search prompt and decided to make all the other "Tom Fletchers" his "friends."
Tom Fletcher of Virginia Wesleyah, I salute you, your idiocy has brought me a smile on what was otherwise an irritating day marked by a fiendish Calculus II exam. The last name "Fletcher" is not a rare name, nor is it exceeding uncommon, and much can be said about the name "Thomas" so the idea that one could concieveably find multiple people with the same firstname surname combination isn't rocket science, hell there was another "Thomas Fletcher" going to the same pharmacy as my family for a while. We are not unique snowflakes, we're probably not even closely related if at all. I will probably not accept your friend request since even now I don't have all my actual friends on my friend list, and why would I want random strangers with whom I have no interest fraternizing. You are not your friend count, stop obsessing over it.

Also on a random note, sweeten tea is the devil's own creation, tastes like shit!

More than meets the Press

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 13:13:57 GMT

As most people with even any familiarity of me and my interests are aware that I'm a transformers fan, and well if you didn't it's a dull surprise. In any case my interest in transformers leads me to naturally follow transformers new, and just recently the lovely folks at newsarama posted an article concerning the new comic. What? You didn't know there was more to transformers than lovely plastic and occasionally rubber and metal globs of joy and horrible cartoons that have repeatedly been shitcanned by cartoon network for the past few years? Well there are comics too, this round we see the francise attempt to arise from ashes of the late Dreamwave in a new continuity (as if the Generation One era didn't have enough conflicting continuity) published by the company IDW, which for the average person might as well be IDwho. Those details aside the issue "0" is shipping next week, and the orders are high, according to the details releashed by IDW over 100k, which is a number that would seem low in any other market aside from the modern comic book market which is an inebriated frailty right now. 100k sounds like a bright future, but there are a few crucial details missing, like the fact there are not one, not two, not even three but four normal variant covers available and one incentive cover in the mix as well. Let us not forget the cover price is only a dollar compared to the three dollar cover price that's the average at the present. Kinda stacks the deck in IDW's favor doesn't it? So color me unimpressed, perhaps if the issue "0" sells out completely and has a substantial reprinting, then I'll be impressed.

Oh and here's the article I link to it so late because they updated it since I last read it and the added notes at the end stole my steam and I couldn't have that now...

The Taste of Politics

Wed, 05 Oct 2005 03:46:22 GMT

By now I hope we're all familiar with our glorious political leader's current supreme court nominee Harriet Miers, and how she has no experience at all as judge of any kind. Well here's my own two bits, with my own highly qualified candidate...

I have my own nominee for the supreme court; my nominee has a first name it's O-S-C-A-R, my nominee has a last name it's M-A-Y-E-R. Mr. Mayer may only be a piece of bolonga without judicial experience, but he has unquestionable taste!

My attempt at wit says it all

An Addendum for the Previous Entry

Wed, 05 Oct 2005 03:30:10 GMT

I just remembered one of the strangest things that happened yesterday, right after the *pip* at the intersection. the light was red for the left turn lane so I pulled all the way up to the front of the intersection, I ended up next to a truck with its window down. The radio was playing, and obviously I could hear it, and suddenly the driver leans out the window and politely askes me whether I wanted him to change the radio station if it distrubed me. It was the damndest thing, it was nice and alienating at the same time. I was kinda dumbstrucked by the whole thing, fortunately the turn light changed so I didn't have to answer, but it was so odd.

WAT to do about shenanigans?

Tue, 04 Oct 2005 19:31:16 GMT

If you'll excuse the pun in the title, and even you won't; the bus and I had another debacle. It all began yesterday when I was pleasantly biking towards campus with with enough time to be comfortably arrive ontime for my 11:00am class, but such wasn't to be case... While I was approaching the intersection of Ironbound Road and Montecello Road (for most of you unfamiliar with the Williamsburg geography that's approximately five-sixteens of the way between class and dorm) when suddenly what do I hear? Well let me tell you what I heard, this catasthropic *pip*, it sounded happy and innocent enough, but it was the harbringer of a most unfortunate doom. Ignoring the nefarious sound I began my wind down Montecello road noticeing that my tire was looking increasingly unhealthy and a sickening sound of metal rubbing against metal at a decently high velocity. I limbed the bike further on trying to ignore the obvious, but apparantly denial doesn't keep a tire inflated very well with the absence of pressurized air. When I reached the campus access road I was forced to dismount and walk the injured bike the remaining quarter of the way remaining stopping at the nearest bike rack where I removed the lame tire with the wrench I fortuiously had on me from when I tightened my tire before the diasterous trip. Needless to say I went from running early to being quite late, and looking ridiculous I might add, carrying a bike tire with me around campus all day.
At this point you might be asking yourself, WAT does WAT have anything to do with this ranting at all, to which I remind that the title involves shenanigans as well as the Williamsburg Area Transport, which will be dicussed in time.
Veering back to my inane rambling; the reason I decided to carry the lame tire with me was because there is a local bike shop, of which I've only heard praise, so I figured that instead of bringing my tire back to the bastards who only nine days before installed that very same tire (and apparantly did a shitty job at that,) I'd rather try a new establishment. If only things ever worked out as plan! This local bike shop was closed; the one day of the week they're closed is Monday, and most of the stores here that close, do so on Sundays including the frikin' Ukrops (Ukrops being a big local chain do about in this part of Virginia.) So I was shit out of luck, and I could tell WAT was laughing at my misfortune since my tire and I had to ride the bus back to Dillard. Once returned to my dorm I tried to mooch a ride to the bastard bikeshop over by the target since I wanted my bike fixed that day, but nothing panned out and I had to use the bus service. The bus that was both late in arriving, and even later in departure, literally sitting for four minutes before leaving Dillard, causing me to have to run to a connecting line's bus stop accross a parking lot when I almost missed the Red line bus by mere seconds.
Ultimately I arrived at the bikeshop quite irritated and ready to make the shop feel my righteous wrath, but the bikestop men ignored the subtle threatening tone in my voice by remarking that they weren't responsible if a tire they installed blew, since accidents could happen at any time didn't even waive the installation fee for the new inner-tube. Naturally the cashier had to smartly point out these things called "toughies" that add an extra lining between inner-tube and tire to reduce flats, those certainly would have been useful had they fucking pointed them out the previous week when I bought a slashed tire to them, bastards. Needless to say they're never getting my business again in the future, those asshats. The rest was pretty uneventful aside from making the idiotic mistake of biking down the access road at night where there are no lights at all.
The greatest shenanigan at all though was that when I got back to Dillard all the network, phone and TV lines were down due to the nefarious construction project breaking the lines so I had to miss the daily show which made me sad. I won't dimiss the theory of an anti-Fletcher conspiracy being undertaken covertly by WAT though.

Just so I'm not accused of always complaining, a bit of positive news. I tried a chicken salad sub for the first time today, it was not the worse thing I've ever eaten, and actually better than the usual turkey or ham subs I usually get from the Dodge Room; contrary to my expectation. Score one for variety, maybe tunafish is next.... maybe not

Of buses and mayhem

Sun, 02 Oct 2005 20:35:29 GMT

It's no secret that I've found buses to increasingly be pains in the ass. My trouble with HRT* last year should have filled me with a sense of forboding for my future problems with WAT**. I have the pleasure of being in the Dillard Complex, the area formerly known as JBT*** in the past, at W&M****, Dillard being a little bit over three miles away off campus. Though never fear, we have a bus line that runs out to our dorm, and it's half-hourly, which is convenient... except on week-ends when the bus only runs hourly, and wouldn't you know it... it's sunday and I've managed to miss the bus by mere minutes twice in the past two hours to get back to Dillard. Hurrah I managed to avoid bus-riding in my lower years of education only to have to ride it at college, the sense of progress is overwhelming...
So yeah that burns my biscuits, but at least WAT tries to generally be on time, they often fail, but that's another issue entirely. Some other busing services don't any manage that, example being the SBS***** that was operating the shuttling of students to and from busch gardens on friday during the creatively named, Busch Gardens Day (aren't we so clever?), during which Busch offers reduced rates for the students ~~as a way to make a profit during the off-season~~ so that cheap college students may enjoy the park. Theoretically the SBS was supposed to shuttling students hourly, which it failed at massively, I didn't even catcht the bus to get to the park, instead me and five other people got frustrated waiting for the tardy bus, instead we piled in a 1963 Ford Falcon and motored it down to the amusement park taking advantage of free parking. Once inside of the park I lost track of my ride since I was meeting other friends and intended to take the bus back to campus with them. We were told the las bus would be leaving the park at 10pm, that was a laugh, the buses didn't even come until 10:40 and there were only three coach buses to attempt to move 2000 students, now that's what I call planning! Needless to say we all rushed the buses and didn't all get boarded. It was the worse for my nine person group when four of us boarded before the loading cut off, only for the bus to first find two more seats whihc we didn't take since we didn't want to get further divided, only to have three more people board as we walked away, bull shit. Ultimately we managed to get a ride from someone else instead of waiting another hour for the buses to return.
Lesson learned: Buses suck

*:Hampton Roads Transit; **:Williamsburg Area Transit; ***:John Blair Terrance; ****:The college of William and Mary; *****:shitty bus service (I was already getting ridiculous with the asterix's and figure one more couldn't hurt, even if fake :p )

As I was bored...

Thu, 22 Sep 2005 14:49:03 GMT

I decided to take the three variable funny test

the Wit

(80% dark, 23% spontaneous, 10% vulgar)

your humor style:
CLEAN | COMPLEX | DARK

You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you're probably an intellectual, but don't take that to mean pretentious. You realize 'dumb' can be witty--after all isn't that the Simpsons' philosophy?--but rudeness for its own sake, 'gross-out' humor and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat.

I guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer.

Your sense of humor takes the most thought to appreciate, but it's also the best, in my opinion.

You probably loved the Office. If you don't know what I'm
talking about, check it out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/.

PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart - Woody Allen - Ricky Gervais

The 3-Variable Funny Test!

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 99% on darkness
You scored higher than 1% on spontaneity
You scored higher than 1% on vulgarity

I guess I like to be in the extremes considering I seem to pretty much have primarily dark humor, oh well

The Return to the Livejournal Circuit

Thu, 22 Sep 2005 14:23:52 GMT

I'm bored, you're bored, we're all bored, which is why on a whim I've decided to relaunch a new livejournal even though my previous one only had three entries. This time I promise less religion at the beginning, this time I'll let everything settle first. In honor of the new blog I'll basically post my highlight entry from the previous blog, I know it's a copout, but I still think it's amusing circa March 27th, 2005...
I don't imagine most of you who actually know me are aware of how often I'm entangled in misadventures. I'm exceptionally unlucky in that regard, fortunately I'm lucky enough to usually get out generally unscathed. Today was exceptionally odd, and after recounting it to a friend on AIM it finally pushed me over the edge to actually start a blog. So here it goes: Basically the whole thing started with the big DC countdown event with next week there being a special 80 issue for 80 cents, and me really wanting to get that issue the day it came out. So thanks to TFgeek for pointing out a listing of local comic shops I noticed a few only a couple miles away and figured I could walk to them. And then because I'm oblivious I thought the 4.4 miles estimation for the trip from Mapquest was one way, not round trip. Under the mistakened assumption that the whole trip was 4 miles I decided to walk to it today to find out where the comic shop was. My first mistake was not leaving until 3 in the afternoon, since Newport News is a trashy city where one does not want to out after dark. My second mistake I didn't notice until I was about a mile or so away from my dorm; I had mismatched shoes. One shoe was a suade brown timberlake, the other a gray reebok, god only knows how I missed that fact until then. This meant my feet were made sore from the uneven level the were at in relation to each other. Every where I was walking looked trashy and was only looked worse due to how cloudy it was. Finally I reach my destination only to discover the comic shop does not exist and I'm in an unpleasant drag of the city, (the 7-11 was nextdoors to an "Adult Video Store") things just weren't going my way. So I figured, I'll just take the bus back, who cares if it will cost me money since the tightwad school didn't give us a bus pass this semester unlike the previous. Unfortunately it being a week-end the bus came less frequently and one passed me by while I was trying to decide what I was doing. So having not eaten at all yet I got some dinner at a trashy diner and almost missed the bus again and would have had to wait an hour for another and it was getting dark So I get on the bus, it was an unfamilar route but I figured that I could take it the mall and transfer to a more familar route, only to find out that the route I was on, the 112 had recently been completely changed even the driver didn't know what the fuck was up with it anymore. His first time driving the new route, but he promised he could get me to the mall. He drops me at an ad hoc stop and tells me to cross the street and wait for the 111 that should come in the opposite direction that would be coming soon. About 20 minutes past, no bus comes I call my brother since I'm bored and when I hang up, I realize I had made a third mistake; my wallet was left on the bus My wallet which contained my student ID, my driver's license, my debit card, my room key and about $13 in cash. Suddenly my situation was much worse, I was penniless in the middle of nowhere with only my cell phone and jacket and it was getting darker and colder I kept my cool and first called my dorm to give my roommate the head's up since I was likely going to need rescuing. I figure I was going to have to suck it up and pay $35 for a new Student ID, and $25 for a new room key once I got back and have the bank kill my debit card, but I decide to call the bus system to let them know I lost my wallet in the vain hope I would get it back. Called my RA who wasn't around, then called my roommate again to see if some one from the floor with a car would come rescue me. Some body would so I went to the street corner and waited; however that was when things finally began to get better About a half-hour later I'm waiting at the street corner still and apparantly the same bus I had been on had made a loop in it's cycle. Suddenly it stops, the door opens and the driver leans over my wallet in hand and offers to let me back on the bus. Telling me he was about to try to call the contact number I gave the bus system. I graciously accepted the wallet, but declined the re-entry responding that some one from my dorm was coming to pick me up. That was one crisis averted About ten minutes later the guy from my dorm arrived and I was on the way back to school. I thought the misadventure over and was relaxing for a while, then the library called asking where I was, suddenly I was 30 minutes late to work. I just don't win, but I still forgot to change my shoes back. The moral was that I should stop walking place with which I'm unfamiliar

Perhaps this time I'll actually update more often, anything is possible...