Note: The "squorch" referred to here is a Navy helicopter pilot.



(I can't take credit for this. That goes to Jeff Eaton.)

Presented in order of sucky to rad:

Totally shitty: Our luck with flying commercially, at least out of LAX. It was not LAX's fault what happened to us this weekend. In fact I've had many perfectly pleasant LAX experiences. Nor was it entirely American Airlines' fault. It was, however, AA's fault for still continuing to try to sell us shitty snacks instead of just giving them to us, despite the incredibly long delays. From now on I will fly JetBlue out of Long Beach unless it's more than a 500 dollar difference, and assuming JetBlue happens to be flying where we're going. On our most recent trip we saved just under 300 bucks by flying American out of LAX. JetBlue is a far more pleasant airline, and Long Beach is eight billion times more pleasant of an airport to fly out of. With everything that happened this weekend, I truly would have rather paid the extra 300 bucks.

Kind of shitty: White Castle. I understand that this is supposed to be drunk food, and I was relatively drunk, though not hammered. But... ugh. My wife claims you have to eat the sliders immediately when they're hot and fresh, but even then, still, ugh. I tried like three of them, the first only about 30 seconds after they were given to me. Upon biting in to them, they just dissolved into vague bad meat and cheese flavor. I shall say nothing of what happened to me the next morning. All I can say is that I will never have any desire to eat White Castle ever again. No matter how drunk I get.

Not shitty at all, though not awesome: The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Well... okay, it's pretty cool. But a lot of their exhibits are in dire need of updating. I may have had a better time had we gone there earlier, and had a lot more time than we did, and if we weren't leading a four-year-old around. Although it did produce one of the best moments of the weekend that I, sadly, did not get to see - Mr. Nibbles saw an Egyptian poem about, uh, I guess it was about gods, posted on the wall, and he decided to read the whole thing out loud, and then once done reading it sang "Glory Glory Hallelujah." Pretty frickin' awesome. Wish I'd been there for that.

Meh: Wrigley Field.

Awesome, with reservations: The city of Chicago itself. It really is a great city. We saw more of it than we intended to, due to getting lost/trying to find parking. I still don't know that I'd want to actually live there. Snow is pretty when you're leaving in a day, but it sucks balls to live with it for weeks and have to drive through the shit, because it shut down public transit too.

Awesome: 80's Prom Night Party. I didn't dress up but I appreciated those who did, especially mule242 and my own wife, among others. It was a totally radical party, even though I only personally knew about 8 or so of the 60-ish folks who showed up.

Totally fucking bitchin': Predicators. I... sniff.. I... sniffsniffsnork... I LOVE YOU GUYS!^* I really do, though. I am so pleased at whatever confluence of factors managed to bring this group together.

^*Except EB. That guy can go to hell.

Edited to remove a ton of extraneous other stuff.

[11:42] <Osomatic> See, okay.  Let me break it down for you folks:  There's the gas station car wash....  (blah blah blah about car washing, the various levels of service, etc).

[11:42] <Osomatic> Detailing is where they do all that, plus take a q-tip to the crevices, sort of thing.

[11:44] <byrne> That sounds like something a sportscaster would say. "Oh ho, Urlacher really took a Q-tip to Romo's crevice there, Bob!"

That wife of mine, she's pretty funny.

<Ludwig> How many "gun-related deaths" are there that aren't shootings?

<Ludwig> Obviously you can pistol-whip someone to death, but that shouldn't really count as specifically gun-related

<byrne> I wasn't supposed to clean weapons while pregnant because of the cleaning/lube chemicals.

<collier> maybe people are drinking the cleaning fluid.

<byrne> Could be you shoot somebody, he doesn't die of the wound, but gets a complication in hospital and dies from that.

<scottydont> or you shoot the gun in the air and the guy drops dead of a heart attack.

<scottydont> or if you're in a car chase, and you use the gun to blow up his gas tank, which then explodes and kills him

<collier> or you scatter a bunch of guns all over a dark staircase, and he trips on them and falls down, breaking his neck.

<collier> OR, you could fire a whole gun at him using a slingshot.

<Ajax-> Like, the gun hired somebody else to hit you.

<scottydont> like a guy is hanging on to a rope and you shoot out the rope which causes him to fall to his death.

<collier> OR, if the gun had a really sharp edge on it somewhere, you could use it to hack somebody's hand off or whatever, and then they could get gangrene and die.

<scottydont> what about bayonet deaths?

<collier> totally related.

<scottydont> that probably happens all the time at those civil war reenactments.

<collier> OR, you could stuff a gun down somebody's throat to suffocate them.

<scottydont> or you could throw someone's valuable collector's item gun into the water, which they then drown trying to recover

<Osomatic> "Type 'GNU' to continue, or be instantly killed."  "Okay... G... U.... N... - oh crap!"  ZZZTTTT

<collier> OR, you could jam it into the propellor of their fancy cigarette boat and make it explode or something.

<Ludwig> You could melt down a gun and pour the molten steel into two beer cans and then put the beer cans in someone's beer helmet and they would drink it during a football game and die

<Osomatic> That's such a good idea that I'm not even going to point out the various logistical problems.

<sammybaby> But... yeah, english inserts it in places you wouldn't expect.

<bitterpants> so english is a sodomy language?

Geeky Serial Killer humor!  Yeah, I don't understand us either.

 <Cy_Guy> killing a group of ppl all at the same time lacks the "serial" element

 <hunter-> "Parallel Killer"

 <Osomatic> Can you get a PS2 killer?

 <Osomatic> Sorry.

 <Ludwig> YOu should be, that's PS/2

 <hunter-> I was wondering what a playstation had to do with murder.

 <Cy_Guy> the USB killer

<mule> RS232 killer!

 <Cy_Guy> firewire sounds pretty lethal

 <mule> COMmit murder!

 <Osomatic> Heck, then you've got your bluetooth.

 <Osomatic> To chew your victims up with.

 <mule> are the peripherals accessories to murder?

 <Cy_Guy> BlueTooth sounds more like a pirate

 <Ludwig> Ethernet to render them unconscious

 <sht> you have to have your cliche cat-5 scare too.

<Irish-> nerds

 <Ludwig> cat-5 fever

 <sht> two serial killers working together are a twisted pair.