The best all-around athlete ever.

In celebration of my promotion, I took Amy out. To dinner. Not "took out" in the sense that I assassinated her.

We had a nice night out. We went to Texas Roadhouse, where the hostess was indeed five hostesses, all pretty inept at their one singular job. We called ahead for a 15-20 minute wait, and since our ride to the restaurant was inadvertently about 10 minutes, we expected another 5 minutes of waiting. We got there and they told us another 10-15 minutes. What, exactly, then, was the point of calling ahead?

I had a beer, and accidentally asked for a tall-boy. It was enormous.

After dinner, I had the idea of walking around somewhere to help the food digest a little easier. We ultimately went to Target where I threatened to buy some Legos, but in the end bought Super Mario Strikers.

After Target, Amy wanted to stop at the liquor store, having had a margarita with dinner and craving more. We tried to buy our respective choices with our credit cards, but were informed that it was cash only and that we needed to sacrifice two dollars to the ATM gods to use it.

So we came home after that, having sacrificed our two dollars each, and put in Super Mario Strikers while taking in some of the Sacrament. Amy bought Captain Morgan's, I bought Jameson.


And let me just say that Mario is an insanely talented athlete. Tennis, Baseball, Driving, Golf and Soccer - whatever sport Mario plays, he's ridiculously good at. Meaning that, my hate for sports-related video games ends when Mario comes on the field. Mario Strikers is amazingly fun to play.

And not only when you've been drinking, though that did add to the fun.

Very good work-related news.

If you've talked to me lately and asked me about work, no doubt I'd have told you that I am working in coffee and am filling in as a temporary coffee buyer until the official one is chosen, which I am applying to be. I would also have told you that as the temporary coffee buyer, I've been responsible for maintaining the inventory, making sure it's properly stocked and looking good on the shelf.


At least, that's what I would have told you last week.


As of today, officially, I have been hired as the coffee buyer for my store. It comes with the added responsibilities of keeping an eye on the sales and numbers, and a substantial pay raise to match.


That's all, really. I've had an 11-hour workday. I'm going to bed.

I'd like a response.

Okay, so I've been watching a few movies today, and I'd like to do an informal poll of sorts. What I'd like you all to do (and by "all," I of course mean, like, one of you), is tell me what your favorite cop movie is, and tell me why it is such.

I'll start it out.

My favorite cop movie is Bullitt, starring Steve McQueen. Throughout the whole movie he's just really calm and collected, he's just cool and nothing gets to him.

Okay, so send me your favorite cop movies. My goal is at least three responses.

You'd think the opposite would be a better option.

At work, during the lunch hour, I see a lot of different types of people in from their respective workplaces. Some are from the Staples or Babies 'R' Us stores nearby, while others are more business class.

Today, there was a particularly odd businesswoman in getting a cup of tea.

She was young - maybe mid to late 20's, blonde and pretty darn attractive. She was wearing one of those dark grey pantsuits.

She was also wearing a rather large name badge, or rather what I thought was a name badge until she came up closer to the counter to retrieve the tea I had just made her. What I previously mentioned what I thought was a very large name badge was not a very large name badge, but was rather a large badge advertising the drug Cialis (I love how awkward and long this sentence is).

The conclusion I drew from the Cialis badge was that she was a drug representative, responsible for pushing the latest and greatest pharmaceutical products. Normally, of course, it would be incredibly wise to have the face of the company be a young, attractive female. But then, I thought, the drug is Cialis. And, being an attractive young female, she wouldn't be the best person to sell this drug due to the fact that she wouldn't normally need to administer the drug to get the...desired effect.

On the other hand, I think that it would be wiser to have a dumpy-looking middle-aged woman sell the drug to push the effectiveness of Cialis.

If a man took the drug and became aroused while looking at the young attractive girl, the man could claim that, well, that was very probably going to happen anyway and would doubt the effectiveness of the drug.

If a man, on the other hand, took the drug and became aroused while looking at the dumpy middle-aged woman, then the man would clearly see that arousal would very probably not have happened anyway, affirm the effectiveness of the drug, and buy ten cases, being thrilled to have an answer to the problem of not being able to make love to his own dumpy middle-aged wife at home.




These drug rep executive-types need to think more subversively when it comes to shoving pills down our throats. Get with it!

We shall be triumphant.

In relation to a recent post about Dane Cook ruining America and the comedy business within it, Tim and I have formed a cadre of heroes dedicated to foiling Dane Cook's plot to lower our collective comedic standards to near-Blue Collar Comedy depths.

With a mission statement this emphatically important, such a collective needs a proper name. We haven't got one yet. We wanted to have a name whose first initials would spell something, but a) I don't remember what that's called, and b) thinking of that shit is fucking difficult. Ask Tim. We exchanged ideas for a full half-hour. The best we got was embarrassingly juveline.


However, a squad this revolutionary and needed also needs a uniform. We have this base covered.

Just Say No To Dane Cook.

Our friend Jake, whom you may remember as creating a massive amount of t-shirt art surrounding Snakes On A Plane, and whom you may remember as being mentioned in a national publication based on the internet fan-promotion of said B-movie, has taken it upon himself to make the coolest anti-Dane Cook design and merchandise ever.

That was a long sentence.




However, t-shirts, mugs, baby onesies, courier bags, coasters, etc. are on sale now. Support our cause and do your part to put an end to the terribly unfunny tyranny of the scourge known as Dane Cook.



P.S. We need help finding a name for our collective. Send in your suggestions and be inducted into political party. If we choose your name, I don't know...Tim and Jake and I will buy you a shirt or a baby onesey or something. Deal? Deal.


Now I have to tell Tim and Jake about this promotion.

It's the small joys in life.

If you know anything at all about me, you know that I enjoy irony in every sense of the word. Usually, I enjoy irony if it means something is funny.

For instance, I have an aunt who is a staunch vegetarian. My mother chewed her out for pushing vegetarianism on my brother and me when we were smaller. All our lives she has been a vegetarian. So, then, a few years back in the beginning of October, my brother's birthday to be specific, he received a package in the mail. It was a very large, unmarked white styrofoam carton. We were both caught by surprise, as neither of us could remember having ordered anything over the internet or otherwise that could possibly fit in a very large white unmarked styrofoam carton. Feeling brave, we opened it to find that it was from a company called the Omaha Steak something or other. They specialize in very delicious meat products. This bit of information startled us a little bit, mostly because our grandmother on our father's side ordered from this company a lot, and she had just passed less than a month previous.

Was this steak from beyond the grave? Did our grandmother gain supernatural steak-ordering capabilities? Is this, in fact, the lamest post-mortem supernatural power anyone could possibly hope to possess?


However, having inspected the invoice, we still had no inclination as to who sent it to us. Eventually, we found a short birthday greeting on one of the pamphlets. It read something along these lines: "Happy birthday, Nicholas - enjoy the hamburgers and filets! Love, your Aunt _______."

We had a good laugh about that.





This is why I was particularly delighted by a piece of mail I received today. It was a coupon card from the auto shop that had just serviced my car, saying "Thanks for your business." It was ripped very jaggedly pretty much right down the middle of it.

It was stuffed in my mailbox inside of a large, clear plastic bag with the U.S. Postal Service logo on it, bearing a big greeting that read, "We Care."


After that, I inspected another piece of mail I ultimately determined to be junk mail, ripped it in half, and said, "I care."

Past few days.

I've been pretty busy at work. I have officially taken over the coffee buying. That said, I still have to apply for the job.

They way things are right now is that it's officially me and one other person working coffee. We had another person, but she's just left for bigger and better things. She was doing the coffee buying un/officially until someone was actually hired. So now that she left, I'm doing the same thing.

There was a big staff shake-up, and many people left the department and the company. One of those people was the person that took care of pretty much the entire coffee area. He did the buying, maintained inventory, maintained staff and maintained maintenance. So now that that person left, half of that shit isn't, or rather hasn't, been done. Therefore, no inventory has been rotated, leaving older stock in the back to spoil. Today I had to shrink over $300 worth of coffee. People just kept adding onto the shelf without putting the older stuff in front. But the good news is that now that there is a new permanent, full-time person to take care of that sort of thing (i.e. me) that sort of thing won't happen any longer.


Switching gears, the other day I watched Enter...Zombie King. It combines the zombie genre with the infectious joy of the luche libre. It was more Mexican Masked wrestling than zombies, and the acting was terrible, but the gore was decent. That said, it is difficult to begrudge that sort of movie, especially when the executive producer is named El Fuego. It was a short 75 minutes or so, and it was mostly entertaining. I would call it a renter, or a must-buy if you are really into that sort of thing.


Okay, switching gears again, I just picked up Dr. Octagon's The Return of Dr. Octagon. As the lore goes, Dr. Octagonecologyst was released in 1996 and made a lot of people think differently about underground hip-hop. The main character, Dr. Octagon, was an alien doing odd and laughably violent things to people. Then, during some unnamed year (not because the release date is unknown, but rather because I simply refuse to look it up at the moment), Nogacto Dr. was released, and Dr. Octagon was killed off for some reason. Now, in 2006, The Return of Dr. Octagon was released, and it is also very entertaining. The beats are more hyperkinetic and there isn't much of Dr. Octagon's "practice" in it. Rather, there are a bunch of songs about masturbating telephone operators, dying trees, ants, and of course, aliens.

Finally, I just downloaded the newly released Twilight Singers EP, A Stitch In Time. It was released exclusively through iTunes and cost $3.99 for 5 songs. As I'm typing now, it's just finishing. It's very good and features Mark Lanegan and Joseph Arthur. Normally, I would leave this sort of thing to Timothy, but he's expressed dislike for Twilight Singers (which I completely respect, because, let's face it, I don't like Grand Buffet), so I thought I'd talk about it.


At any rate, having to be up before 6 a.m. makes one tired around the 11 p.m. area, so I'm going to go to bed. Goodnight.

I hate Columbus Day.

What a useless holiday! Only banks and government offices are closed. No schools are closed and they certainly don't close retail businesses. What the hell? Only third graders celebrate it with ships made out of construction paper.


Also, what an offensive holiday. We all know that Columbus raped and killed the natives, right? We're all caught up on that little tidbit of history, aren't we? Why would we celebrate that?

It completely confounds me.

Done with it.

I decided it was better that I cancel my Facebook account. Why? Mostly because I was tired of receiving invitations to about 8 million groups I don't really fucking care about.

The group invitations have an option where you can send it to specific people, or just everyone on your friends list. I was invited to a group relating to a fast-food chain I've literally never heard of before.

I was also invited to about 10 groups starting off "___________ for Homecoming Court 2006!"

I graduated. Why would I care who's on the homecoming court, especially seeing as though I never cared when I was still a student?

Dear Dane Cook:

This has gone on long enough. It is time to stop now. I know you think you're funny because Best Buy stocks about twenty copies of each of your albums, but it's a lie. No one is buying them. So, I reiterate. Please stop. That's enough.



Dear Dane Cook fans:

Please stop encouraging him. Buying his albums as joke-gifts for other people is making him think he's successful. He cannot sense the sarcasm through record sales. Why do you think William Hung put out an album?

A dash of esteem.

I sometimes think of adding a "III" to the end of my name.

Jeffery William Lombardi III.

It in no way is accurate, but I think that it would make me seem more WASPy, and therefore, make me more successful in life.

I never even liked the smell of it.

I subscribe to Gmail's services. It's a great email service - easy to use, lots of space, a spam filter.



Speaking of spam.


There's this little feature that kind of reads what is in the subject or part of the body of an email, and then gives me a link to go to related to whatever they pick out. For instance, my brother Nick emailed me his wishlist, as his birthday is fast-approaching. In it, he asked for a few zombie-related horror DVDs. The email service picked out a few choice keywords from the body and gave me a link to a website that sells rare horror films.

Also, occasionally, the email will suggest recipes and give me a link to one. More often than not, they involve Spam as a main ingredient.

Dear Gmail: I do not want to make Spam tacos, Spam casserole, or Spam wraps. I hate Spam.



It seems that, due to the high frequency of spam messages being sent to everyone around the world, and to my inbox (which thankfully is filtered into a separate "Spam Folder") in particular, the email seems to think that I love Spam, seeing as though I indeed have a folder titled "Spam".

What kind of circular logic do computers have?

And people are worried that computers will rise up and overthrow governments, thus ruling the world and, according to The Matrix, use our energy to power themselves. I can't see this happening if they keep trying to feed us Spam. Humans would not live long enough to see this apocalypse occur.

A sudden and disconcerting realization.

Okay, so if communion means drinking the blood of Christ, does that mean that followers of the Christianity-based religions are all vampires?

And, since the majority of Americans are followers of said Christian-based religions, that means that the majority of America are vampires!

Furthermore, since there seems to be such a problem with the separation of church and state in this country, that means that AMERICA IS RUN BY VAMPIRES!!!



George Bush keeps sending in troops because he wants to drink their blood!!!

"Times, they are a-becoming quite different."

Indeed. As you may have noticed, I have changed the template, in my opinion, drastically.

I took Tim's advice and pretty much copy-pasted someone else's page source into my own and made some of my own changes. Took some gifs down, changed a few colors. And, of course, made the header say "Jeebus Loves You."

I aim to change the template for my last ten tracks played in my iTunes, but the last.fm website is giving me my favorite number: 404.

Let me know what you think about the new setup. I like the colors and the little bubbles.

Also, cite the quote from the title and you win.

Very good news.

I just watched Reanimator earlier today, and about five minutes ago, I decided to search for Jeffrey Combs, the actor magnificently portraying the creepy Dr. Herbert West, in the Internet Movie Database website.

Go here for what ultimately came to my attention.

That's right, George Wendt will play the Vice President of the United States of America.

Finally, this is the next movie coming to me via Netflix.

Build it up to crash it down.

On Thursday I worked my first shift in coffee. It was a closing shift, and I was by myself. It was quiet, I knew what I was doing, and I wore normal human clothing, as opposed to the chef coat, chef pants and hat that causes me to look like everyone in the prepared foods area.

When I got home, I realized I smelled like coffee. It was glorious.

People asked me questions, to which I knew the answers. Part of the hour-long training I received was on how to use a french press coffee pot, which I already knew, since I have one myself.

And then, when I closed the area, I left. I didn't have to go help any other slow bastards anywhere else. It was 10 p.m.





So, literally the next day, I had to go back to work to finish up my week in prepared foods. They gave me a great day, so they could instantly break my spirit. I had to work in an area, of course, in which I had no experience and in which I have no idea about the protocol of how the area runs. Shitty night. Was there till, like, 11:30.

And yesterday was my last day in prepared foods. I was supposed to work in the chef's case, an area in which I do have experience and in which I do know the protocol of how things run. And even the foresight to be able to facilitate a fast and efficient close. But, no. Didn't work there yesterday. I worked, of course, in an area in which I have no experience and in which I have no idea of the protocol of the way things run. This is how the news was broken to me.

I came into work, clocked in, and turned around to see Worst Manager Ever sitting on a table with a grin on his face. "How ya doin', Jeff?"
"Ah, having my day ruined with whatever you're about to ask me to do." (Note: not my line, but rather Michael Bluth's. Works well, though.)
"Am I that predictable?"
"Well, you don't say hi to me any other time."
"We want you to work in the bistro today."
"Are you kidding? I don't know what I'm doing over there."
And it goes on like that. So cut to 15 minutes later, where I'm standing in the bistro, miserable and fuming. Does this man have no tact to speak of?

So, of course, I worked there all night, because the guy that was supposed to work there walked off the day before. However, we got out of there slightly before 11 p.m. because I kicked so much ass. The bistro closed at 8, so then I took my break and immediately started preparing to close to chef's case. I then proceeded to kick it's ass and then pee on it.


Now today I start my stay in the coffee area, and I am excited to wear jeans to work. I don't feel the soul-crushing desperation I felt when I'd go into work at the pizza place on a Sunday.



A quick note: "Brisco County, Jr." is everything I expected, and my latest Netflix correspondence is one of the greatest horror movies of all time The Reanimator.