Oddball Update

Damn, the flu this year really sucks. Usually I can avoid getting it, and I tend of be of a pretty hardy sort, so I don’t worry about getting flu shots. (Plus, the two times in my life I actually got one, I ended up with the flu.) But maybe next year I will try the vaccine, because I’m in the midst of Flu: Day Eight and let me tell you, it is no pic-i-nic basket.

Granted, I feel a lot better today than I did all last week or weekend. Basically right now it’s just down to a scratchy throat and one hell of an irritating cough. But I had the whole range of symptoms over the past week…crazy fever, chills, total body aches, respiratory problems, sleeplessness, all that jazz. My eyes even got all watery and red like I had some kind of conjunctivitis for three days, and they’re only just now starting to heal up. What a drag. I’ve sucked down more water in the last week than I probably have all year, trying to keep my throat wet. Plus I ate a whole bag of Robitussin Honey cough drops and almost a whole bottle of “Tussin” Flu Version which, actually, tastes pretty good nowadays. Heh, I believe there was once an old Oddball Update (many years ago) which I entitled “TASTES LIKE CHERRY!” at total and aboslute random. That title may actually have been appropriate here, because that’s what the cough syrup tastes like. It’s actually tolerable. Unlike liquid DayQuil, which just tastes like burning.

I had a whole huge post all worked up about Pontiac’s lineup of vehicles, and how I basically think they’re doing a real shitty job of figuring out what it is the human race likes when it buys automobiles. But I decided not to publish it, because it started to read a lot like your typical, conspiracy-theory believing F-body irritant who still can’t get over the fact that the Firebird is dead and will probably go his grave spewing insults at GM for axing it. I don’t think this INTARWEB PAGE SCREEN needs any more rambling from that vein, so don’t look for that post anytime soon.

It’s down to the final four episodes of Deep Space Nine. I’ve got ‘em all saved on TiVo. They were recorded while I was in Orlando, and now I’m spending my last two weekday evenings watching two-hour DS9 marathons. For as lousy as this series started, it sure is ending fantastically. Last night Worf actually challeneged Gowron (Chancellor of the Klingon Empire) and killed his ass, then handed leadership of the whole empire to his friend. Odo (Rene Auberjoobiejoobiedoobie) is about ready to die of some disease, and tonight’s episode will show us whether the goofy yet resourceful duo of O’Brien and Bashir can single (double?)-handedly save him. Meanwhile, Colonel Kira and the Cardassian Corps (wow, that’s some alliteration) sneak aboard a Jem’Hadar fighter and actually manage to steal it, after a wicked scene where everybody on the bridge gets blown away at point-blank. It’s exciting! It’s awesome! It’s Star Trek as no one has seen it in ten years! I miss this kind of Trek. Can we have it back?

Speaking of Trek, I haven’t watched that dumbass Enterprise series in…oh, probably six weeks now. I had TiVoed all the episodes and marked them “Keep Until I Delete,” until it became abundantly clear that I wasn’t ever going to watch them, so I started deleting them myself. I axed the entire Andorian / Romulan / Whatever / Whocares arc, because what little pieces of it I saw looked depressingly boring, and what’s this stuff I see now with Spy Reed™ in the brig? It’s all very surreal. I’ll most likely delete those too. God. Such banality.

It’s almost lunch time! The weather here today is blah. Just as blah as Enterprise. It’s cloudy, cool and expected to pour rain all evening long. I don’t much care if it does, other than it’ll mess my car up again, but there’s not much I can do about it. Tonight I’m cooking a frozen turkey dinner, which I have to remember to put in the oven as soon as I get home, since it takes almost two and a half hours to bake. I was supposed to eat it last night, actually. After screwing around on the computer for a while, I happily went out to cook my meal at 7:30 and was quite astounded to discover I’d be eating dinner at 10:00. So I heated up some leftover spaghetti instead.

I got Gran Turismo 4 for the PS2 this weekend while we were in Orlando. This is definitely the most beautiful entry in the GT series yet, and my Playstation isn’t even connected via component cables (so I’m not seeing the 1080i HDTV resolution). The car selection is vast, the UI design is phenomenal and the graphics are astounding. The sound design is still pretty sub-par, especially after getting used to the great sound effects of NFS:U2, but it’ll do. The music selection is good; when you fail a license test, you get the “Oh Yeah” song from Ferris Bueller, hahaha. Speaking of license tests, they’re damn hard. I was able to import my A and B licenses from GT3 (which I had saved on my memory card and forgot about) as well as $32,000 in cash, which enabled me to buy a used Skyline right away. But I’m having mucho problems getting the International B license. Guess I need to get better acquainted with the analog controls. Practice makes perfect, and all that.

A few posts ago I talked about how I wasn’t going to buy any more Hong Kong or Sinagpore albums by the China Dolls, and instead stick to the real Thai releases. I found one already—their first album, Thai edition, is on eBay now and bidding will expire in about a day and a half. I’m contemplating whether to bid. No one has yet, and no one probably will, so I might just go for it. I’ve seen the same China Dolls CDs relisted multiple times, so there doesn’t seem to be much demand. Suits me fine. I’ve been wanting the Thai release of their first album because it has a hard-to-find remix of “Muay Nee Ka” on it, which I’ve heard a low-quality stream of and found quite delicious.

Okay, time to get going. Maybe I’ll post some more soon.

Categorized as Life