Hot Jupiters, Batman! Bargains, straight ahead!

So it was Sunday, and I was trying to decide what to do. My options were three-fold what they usually were — 1) sleep more or 2) eat and then sleep more — because I had some extra revenue from some well placed bets at the Hobo Wrestling Circuit the night earlier (I guess I was the only one who saw that Skinny Ol’ Man Douglas had a knife). And then I get a call from my friend Sam. “Hey,” he says, “the next town up is having a huge yard sale type thing, lets go get some serious swag.”

I checked around for a few moments, and replied “Yeah, I definately don’t have enough swag. I’m in.”

Yard sales, for those of you who don’t like having money and therefore go to actual stores to buy your goods, are places where people take all the stuff they dont use anymore and throw it on their lawn so other people can take it. This is awesome for 2 reasons. 1) You find the weirdest junk, and 2) Usually the people are buried waste-high in useless garbage so they can’t run after you when you steal their good stuff.

Hence, I acquire these items:

Picture of an Awesome Boat – This picture is 3 ft tall and 2 feet wide and comes with a frame and everything. It depicts an awesome pirate ship or some jazz to that extent, and even has a little water damage for character.

Classics Illustrated – These are the same comics used by comedic legend Jay Pinkerton to make hilarious spoofs of old stories. (If you have not read the Duke of Conte Fisto, you have not yet truly seen the internet). I was lucky enough to chance upon a copy of “20 000 Leagues Under the Sea” and “The Mysterious Island”, both of which are displayed in glorious sixties-o-vision. Seriously, these are dated and fucking hilarious.

An Awsome Cane – It’s a stick, carved up so that it has a handle. I now use it to turn on my bedroom light from my computer chair. Efficiency at its finest!

A Scanner – If anyone out there knows how to get an Epson Perfection 1250 scanner working under Windows Vista, email me. Seriously, I have pictures of boobs and Zeus and stuff I want to scan in and this whole driver shit is keeping me from doing it.

Various Medias(?) – I got various CDs, including the album East, by New Age Jazz Fusing something group Hiroshima. I also found UHF, the Weird Al movie, on VHS.

Thats about it. I also got a bunch of pins, the best of which says “Eato Bandito” on it, but those will be for later maybe.

A Job Interview? For me?

Yesterday I applied for a job at the local convenience store. “But Ben,” astute readers will exclaim, “don’t you already have a hilarious job?” Of course I do. But we all need a little change here and there. Also, I hear from a friend that an old lady fell down at Mac’s the other day and couldn’t get up, and that is just awesome.

In going though with this, I realized several things:

1) Apparantly I think Jack Handy quotes are more important than my resume, because that’s exactly what the file entitled “resume.wpd” on my computer contained.
2) I have no skills or interests that apply to the convenience store environment that don’t have something to do with laughing at the elderly.
3) Job interviews are annoying and I never want to do one again.

You see, I went up there with my resume thinking the manager would simply see the name and go “Ben Nicholls? Aren’t you that guy that keeps stealing things and making complex structures out of the unsold VHS tapes of Ninja Turtles 3? I’m just going to file that resume under B, for BURN!” So it took me completely by surprise when the manager brought me back into the ‘Employees Only’ area and began flinging questions at me.

—

“Why do you want to work here at Mac’s?”

Uhh.. well, you see, I live next door to the Lawn Bowling centre, so I can just look out my window and see these old people, right? And they, like, have these white outfits that they wear and they’re all like “stop watching us!” and I’m all like “GO STEELERS!” and then I run away. Anyways, the Lawn Bowling season is almost over and I heard that old people like to buy lottery tickets from here.

…

I need the cash. Next question.

“Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”

Not here! Hahahah-that’s not funny. Uhh… well, that’s kind of hard to say. Well, if I had to choose, I’d have to say… Morocco. Yeah, Morocco. That’s where the money is. “First, you get the money. Then you get the power.” That’s my motto. By the way, how much money do you keep in the till here? A hundred? Fifty? I’m just curious, is all.

“What would you say is your biggest weakness?”

Oooh, that’s a toughie. Uhh… hmm. It would probably be my crippling, insatiable need for the blood of th- no, that’s not it. It would probably be that I can’t bake a cake. It always burns the edges, and then there’s like, chunky stuff in it, and the other people are like “Ben, your cake tastes like liver!” and then I tell them why it tastes like liver, and then they vomit, and I am the one that has to clean it up. Can you believe that?

“We’ll be in touch.”

—

Let’s hope I got the job.

(I did not make this graphic, this is from spacebar.com or something. Google found it, never you mind.)

I’m not even going to say it this time…

…or maybe I will: I am back, and I’m sorry for yada yada yada. All is not lost though, according to my “site stats” I’m still managing an averge of like 12 hits a day, which is pretty good for a blog that hasn’t updated in months. Thing is though, for my mighty ego to be inflated back to its normal size, I need like five times that amount. So yeah, now that I got some extra time I’m going to pelt the internet with more of my musings.

So what have I been up to? Well, I’ll tell you.

Linux = holy shits: Okay, here’s a scenario: you hear about the absolute sexiest woman you’ve ever heard, and that she’s been captured. Let’s call her “properly configured Linux”. Now, because she always has her cell phone on her, she got the message out that she will marry the person who rescues her. There is also a rumour out that she’s, well, well versed in some of the finer arts of life. Of course, you would think “hell yes, I gots my moxie on this week, I bet I could do it and get me some of that.” So you set out on your adventure. Halfway through, you realize that you have to swim through the “always liquid concrete” ocean, and then cross the desert where it rains lava, and then once you get to the castle where she is being kept, you have to fight Richard Simmons in an arm wrestle, forcing you to actually touch him.

All of a sudden, the prize doesn’t seem so sweet. But you trek on. You put on your +1 hat of “swimming through the thickest shit ever” and get through the ocean, you use the children you captured proficiently as shields and managed to get through the desert of raining lava, and you touched Richard Simmons, thereby rending your left arm useless. With your one good arm, you open the door to her chamber and see….

Horatio Sans. He laughs at you for a full five minutes and says “the Princess is in another castle!” You then shoot him and go marry a 41 year old rich guy with nice transitions. His name? Vista.

Anyways, tomorrow, I’ll talk to you about something funtastical. Probably a movie or something.