my new album

i just realized that my new header looks like my folk album cover.

street heat

i love my car. it looks pretty good, gets decent gas mileage, is kind of fast when it needs to be, and has a sunroof and working a/c. it's also fairly reliable despite having over 236,000 miles. i recently had to replace the spark plug tube seals and the valve cover gasket, so as a show of respect i decided i would repaint the valve cover.

here is what i did:

removing the valve cover

i pulled the spark plug boots, removed all the hoses that were connected to the valve cover, then removed the valve cover nuts. i lost a nut and it drove me insane. luckily i had a regular nut that fit.

cleaning that shit

this is what the old vc looked like:




as you can see, about half the paint has chipped off and it is greasy and basically looks like some doodoo. to remove the old paint i got a spray can of paint remover from autozone. this stuff is lethal. i've heard people say to leave it on for 24 hours, but it will chew through the old paint immediately. it burns like a bastard if you get it on your skin. i used sandpaper and a toothbrush to get the more annoying crevaces and made sure it was completely free of the old paint.

to make sure it got nice and clean i sprayed it down with engine degreaser and gave it a rinse. i let it dry and was ready to paint.

painting

i shoved masking tape in any holes i didn't want to get paint in and hit it with about three coats of primer, then another three or four of glossy red. it's good to pull the tape off while the paint is still a little wet otherwise some of your paint is bound to peel off where you don't want it to. i sanded down the honda "H" and "honda motor company" lettering, and this is what it looks like now:

our first date part 1 or "the night we met"

as most of my readers know, i've been dating a girl named katie for a few months now. she's cute/smart/funny/quirky and in my opinion, things seem to be going well. we get along, but often find ourselves disagreeing on one particular subject. it seems that there is a discrepancy in the set of facts that either of us presents regarding our first date. i will now use the blog format to resolve this dispute and set the record straight.

it was late december of 2008 and christmas was fast-approaching. our friend bub was having a party at his silver spring house, and kevin, chris and i decided to go. it was a friday night and i wouldn't get home till a little before ten. my friends were accomodating enough to wait for me.

there were only a few people at the house when we got to the party. i started with a strong drink and decided that i would be especially social that evening. as the night grew old i grew very drunk, and my list of people met and ladies charmed grew tall. suddenly i noticed that a little person was talking to me. she was about 4'11", snowy white skin, strawberry blonde hair and very pretty. she looked really wasted and was slurring her speech and falling all over me, but there was something very charming about her, so i stuck around.

"hi, i'm katie" she said. "can i pleeeeease get your number?"

"sure," i replied. "here it is. my name is dave. your beauty has me speechless, unlike the twelve other only mildly attractive girls that have given me their numbers this night. wilst thou now come with me, little one? i have something to give you."

it was the eve of the winter solstice and the full moon above was huge. together we walked through a standing of tall, black, leafless trees and crossed a wooden bridge where we came upon a snow-covered knoll. her eyes were cold and beautiful like the full moon in a frozen river. it was here that i presented her with the Moon Ring that she now bears, anointing her my lover...

dopesmoker

sleep-dopesmoker

i bought this album over a year ago, and i listened to it once or twice, but never gave it a fair chance. i figured it would be good, i just couldn't muster the patience to give it my full attention. the thing with this album is that it is one hour-long song. in the early 90s sleep recorded this album and presented it to their label who rejected the idea of releasing an album that was one giant song. it eventually saw release in its original form in 2003 and i eventually bought it. i decided to give it another listen last night and it is epic. it's kind of like standing in front of a giant monolith at the bottom of the ocean. there are no real parts-you have to listen to the whole album, unlike sleep's holy mountain(awesome) which actually has songs.

more reviews

supernatural

if i were to rename this show, i would call it "tough and tender". just look at that picture of the two main characters. the one on the left is saying "i'm gonna rape you" while the guy on the right is like "...and i'm gonna write a song about it". these are the winchester brothers, dean and sam i think, stars of the WB hit "supernatural". i've at least seen the show enough to know this, i guess. basically these two codpieces drive around in an old impala trying to kill demons. i imagine this show is popular among 10th grade goth girls who dream about these hunky protagonists killing ghosts. the special effects are shitty at best, and i think i wrote better stories in 7th grade. if you want to know what this show is all about, imagine the x-files minus any redeeming qualities.








stargate: atlantis

this is another show i've barely seen, but i must say that i'm kind of into it, given the few snippets of footage i've actually caught. it's like a less mature battlestar galactica (which is an awesome show) which isn't to say that it's bad. the characters are interesting-there's the han solo style col. shepherd, a doctor who looks like alton brown and a few hot girls, one of which looks like jennifer lopez, but hotter and apparently not as awful at life-and the writing seems decent, though i haven't seen too much of it. not as good as battlestar, but still worth watching.

reviews of things that i may or may not be qualified to review

the road cormac mccarthy

the road is cormac mccarthy's tale about a boy and his father trying to survive in the wastes of a perpetually gloomy post-apocalyptic american wasteland. despite mccarthy's strange poetry-as-prose* writing style, it is a pretty easy read. i'll admit that it took me a little while to get into, but i finished the second half of the book in about three days. all the gloom and desolation of the book is redeemed by the ending which almost made me cry. i can't remember the last book to do this-maybe my first reading of lord of the rings? childhood's end? anyway, read this book. they're making a movie out of it now which makes me a little wary, but viggo is in it, so it probably won't be that bad.














mirror's edge xbox360 game

in this game you play as kate or vanessa or something. you are this quasi asian parkour expert who jumps from catwalk to standpipe to rooftop avoiding cops in a city that makes me think that all its inhabitants shop at ikea. it looks pretty cool and everyone seems to like it. while i've never actually played this game, about it i know this: no other game has caused louise more visible infuriation. often times i'll be eating lunch while she's playing when suddenly she drops the controller onto the table and buries her face in her hands, letting out some typed of distressed moan.









kevin's new comic books

while they initially looked like winners at 10 for three dollars, upon further inspection i feel that may not be the case. last night i opened "chesty sanchez". in it, some type of virus is unleahsed into mexico's food supply, and chesty sanchez, luchadora profesional must stop whoever is doing it or solve the case or something. it's a piece of shit. the artwork is bad, the story is bad. in kevin's position however, i would have bought this one too.

my new stick

that beauty you see above is my new stick. it's a nike/bauer vapor apollo composite one piece i bought from hockeygiant.com. actually, i didn't "buy" it per se, but i used my mom's credit card to purchase it in her stead as a christmas gift for me since she doesn't know what the internet is. the best part is that it came to my house today, but i can't use it. i have to give it to her so she can wrap it up and give it to me on christmas. i'm 29 years old.

it was $50-pretty low on the price range for composites. i've seen maybe one or two offered in the $30-$50 range, but most i see are upwards of $100. i'm not saying they're not worth the money-i'm sure they're very good sticks, but what happens when someone takes a hack at your $240 Warrior Dolomite and cracks the shaft? tears.


i had to open the box it came in, because inside was also a jersey-another xmas gift from mom-that i will have to use sometime before christmas. i sliced the box open and there it was, shrouded in only a thin plastic wrap so of course i did what any man would do. i took it out and started messing with it. first of all it's really lite. it's about as lite as the bauer one55 wood stick i use right now, but i would rank that one as one of the lightest i've used. it's got a decent 85 flex which increases in stiffness depending on where you cut the shaft. i've never used a composite stick before, but apparently there's something in the technology called a "kick point" . apparently a lower kick point means that the lower end of the shaft is doing alot of the work in taking a shot and it springs out quicker, resulting in a shorter release time. i hear this is good for wristers and snappers, but not so much for slap shots because the shaft can't load up as much energy as is required for those shots that require a longer release time. this is good for me because despite the fact that i've been playing defense lately, i have no slap shot, but definitely take more pride than is warranted in my wrist shot and snap shot.

by the way, hockeygiant's delivery was quick and accurate. i ordered my stick and a customized jersey on thanksgiving and got it today-the folowing wednesday. maybe fedex is just going extra hard to try and keep the customers they have in this turbulent economy.


so now that i've lost the two people that actually look at this blog, i'll talk about how much i can't wait to use it. my first game after christmas is the 28th. i'm getting all giddy just thinking about cutting it, taping it, waxing it, etc.