In a year, I buy a lot of crap. Junk even. Money just kind of flies out of my wallet and I didn’t know why until now. I had a sneaking suspicion that I was simply buying too much fast-food from McDonald’s, Chick-Fil-A, and Freckle Bitch’s, but I didn’t know to what degree.

I compiled my purchases for the year 2008. This is pretty easy when you can do online banking and all you ever buy anything with is a debit card (Sidebar: my bank can only export to MS Money or Quicken. What? No Raw data? sigh). No, I’m not going to tell you how much I make, and yes, it’s much less than you make, but here’s the breakdown in a hand-dandy chart.

Too much fast food

First off, rent is the lion’s share and I’m not going to shy away from that, but damn. Look at the fast food portion. Of all my expenses, excluding rent, I pay more for fast-food than I do for anything else. It’s not like we don’t have food at home, either! It’s a convenience thing, really. It’s less hassle to run out and grab burgers for about $5 a plate than it is to actually make something.

Thing is, home-made food is more delicious, tends to be healthier unless you fry the shit out of everything, and it’s cheaper at about $2 a plate if you do it right. I’d be happy if the grocery bill matched the fast-food bill and the latter disappeared almost entirely. I can’t say I won’t ever get fast-food again, because hey, sometimes I get a craving for Jack in the Box.

After putting it off for what seems like an eternity, the  trouble-making power steering pump in my truck has finally been defeated. Every time I drove the truck for more than a couple miles, the pump would leak 8,000 gallons of fluid, leaving a wake of ugly, greasy puddles wherever I parked. I typically park in the same spot everyday when I go to work, and the mass of grossness is like an official parking spot marked “Employee Owns a Truck” one would get in a raffle – when they lose.

Every couple of days, I’d have to pour not an insignificant amount of power steering fluid into the reservoir. I’ve been planning this bitter celebratory post for awhile, so I kept all 29 discarded “steer juice” bottles so I could show you just how much the EPA hates me – and how much STP and the gas station around the corner will miss my patronage.

Twenty-nine bottles of lube on the wall, Twenty-nine bottle of lube!

My mechanic is pretty capable and will get things up and running again pretty quickly and may not even charge you when things are simple. I went in wanting to replace the pump, but all that needed to happen was the seals needed replacement and another hose. I got out of there for cheaper than I was quoted!

Kiefer Sutherland was killed by Jack Bauer today.

Jack Bauer gets played by no man.

You know, I liked this movie and that’s saying a lot. I tend not to like horror movies, but this one held my interest. While short at 82 minutes, it kept me engaged even through the slow setup. After people started dying (oh no spoilers!), it picked up nicely and kept escalating to the end.

The basic premise is a film-maker gone mad inhabits his horror movie as the slasher character. Whenever it screens, he can somehow transport himself into the real world and kill people in the area. Whenever he does this, the projection on the screen shows what he’s looking at, so the people in the theater still think they’re watching a horror movie. He drags his victims back into the film world, thus leaving no body (but plenty of blood). This progresses until people start freaking out and the suspense of solving the mystery and the reactions of the caricatures drive the movie forward. 

As an independent film, the acting can be a little hokey, but not nearly as bad as you might expect, and the gore  special effects are pretty impressive for the budget. There are other post-production effects thrown in too, and the low-budget shows. Fortunately, whether the film-makers realized they looked cheap or ran out of money, there isn’t that much of the silly-looking stuff.

I want to give this a lower rating because I tend not to like horror films as a rule, but this one gets a higher slant out of me. I guess I watched it on a good day!

I’m not an original thinker on this one (Google Image Search), but I want to make a suitable-for-framing personal take on Team Fortress 2 with female characters. There’s only one out there that’s any good, and I think I could be on par with the quality, but be thematically better.

This might take awhile, and I’m definitely going to make each individual class member full size, meaning that if I wanted to, I could make a print of just that class and be happy with its resolution. This will be my most ambitious project yet, but it is very reminiscent of something I did in high school.

I made sketches of everyone in the drumline, including myself and the directors and put them all on a shirt. It took a few retries, plenty of scanning, and laying out on a computer that could barely handle the task, but it turned out pretty awesome – and it was in glorious color! There must’ve been thirty or so people in the section, so it was no small feat to pull it all together, but I think this will be even bigger and better because:

1. Just like webcomics, nobody knows who your friends are on the Internet, so leave them out of your comic; make new characters or use pre-existing characters that people know
2. Hi-resolution baby! Each of the class members will be printable at 14 inches tall and look nice. The drumline shirt only had to look good on a t-shirt at a couple feet away
3. My computer doesn’t suck nuts!

I’ll post my progress as time permits, hopefully I’ll have at least one to show off this week!

Hope your Valentine’s Day was as awesome as mine. Ame got me some workout clothes and cooked an awesome dinner. I got a little sloshed and we watched Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I got Ame some Hello Kitty stuff, chocolate, and, of course, roses. Oh, I also got Ame these hilariously awesome cards:

Brandon Bird's Law & Order: Special Valentine Unit

I’m sure you may remember me mentioning Brandon Bird at least once before. I saw these on his site a long time ago, and also pretty recently, and I had to get them for Ame. She’s a Law & Order: Special Victims Unit fan so these were a big hit!