Hola!

the blogger menu is all in Spanish. bizzare.

Im writing this as i sweat here in beautiful mazarron, Spain. this spanish keyboard is totally wierd, so you´ll forgive me if i forgo caps.

I came out here with BSA to visit my family and see the sights. we had a nice flight. pretty much slept most of the way here. sunday we were in Madrid, and totally got ripped off by a taxi driver. unfortunately, niether of us speak enough spanish to point out that the meter said one thing, and handling our baggage and adding tip for our convience still shouldn´t be 8 euros, but oh well.

i was adjusting to the jet lag pretty well, until i took a nap today after the beach. i went down and five, and woke up at 9. crap!

sunday we walked around retiro park, which was very nice, and saw a pair of horse cops. one of the horses loved to prance, and seemed to determine to show off how he pretty he was, so we snapped pictures. the cops seemed to like it though, they stopped and posed.

we went to a bull fight sunday night. the plaza des toros is gorgeous. an amazing brick and cement colleuseum. we saw 4 main matadors each fight two bulls. it was pretty intense. i´m not sure at what point we started cheering for the bulls, but my favorite was when a bull made the blond matador run for the fence, and BSA yelled out ´"take that pretty boy!"

he was very pretty. he looked like dr chase from House. he also loved to prance and jump, and looked very good whenever he had to leap the fence.

i need a boyfriend. ;)

there was one bull that was amazing. he was determined to take out the guy on the horse, that he kept getting speared over and over, and they spear hit an artery. the blood gushed up all over the horse, and i said "good night that´s an arterial spurt!" we thought for sure that he would bleed out before the matador go to finish the fight, and they´d send a junior matador to knife him Ç(this happened to the first bull, who gave up early on) but the bull was amazing. he simply would not quit, even though he was bleeding heavily. even after he had the six spears and the sword in him, he still went after a junior matador and managed to get his cape.

after the senior matador struck the killing blow, and the mules came to pull the body away, everyone in the stands stood up. it was just an amazing show of endurance.

right now i´m at the beach, spending the days in my swimsuit and trying not to burn. i even went snorkeling today. we´re going to a costume party tomorrow, with some of the families here in mazarron. i don´t have a costume, i recommended that BSA and i go as american tourists.

Changing of the Guard

I'm going to be unavailable for a couple of weeks, so bust out your patriotic underoos because Wonder Woman will be holding down the fort.

This means there will be:

Celine Dion
Elektra
Justice League AMVs
More Celine Dion

Just in case you need something slightly evil to tide you over this fortnight of Amazon Goodness, I present...

PILLAGE THE VILLAGE!!

Play Pillage The Village

Friday Fun

I love the trunk monkey. This one goes out to all those lucky souls with daughters.

At last I have an answer

Since I live in DC, most first conversations go like this:

"Hi my name is suchandsuch"
"Hi, I'm Corbeau."
"So...what do you do?"
"Office ninja"

And then the conversation dies, because suchandsuch thinks my job is boring and mundane, but doesn't want to look like a jerk by saying so.

But now, thanks to today's Dilbert, I can kill the conversation much more efficiently, and with the added bonus of dark humor.

Nostalgia

The milblog Blackfive had a post discussing recruiting commercials, including this gem from the Japanese Navy.



I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't learn a single dance routine during my time in service. On a totally unrelated note, some of those guys can kick really high.

Compare with a US Navy ad, and marvel at their evil marketing genius.




The Air Force offers this awesome little ad, bravely showing some of the more interesting adventures of enlisted life. Can I just say that I'm shocked, SHOCKED, that this guy does not clean a toilet. Do Air Force guys miss out on this vital part of military training?




I also found this, running cadences from the Rangers, but I sang versions of both when I was in bootcamp. Just substitute "sailor" and "Navy" where appropriate.



I mean, if you find yourself running in formation at 4 in the morning, than singing about how all this is going to kill you someday just seems logical.

And singing about killing Superman is just fun.

New Book!

I was perusing Amazon and happened across Lemony Snicket's new book, Horseradish.

It appears to be a parody of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series.

I enjoy Lemony Snicket's writing. In fact, I bought the box set of the Series of Unfortunate Events, but every time I see his name I find myself asking, "So, what was the deal with the sugar bowl?"

I need sugar bowl closure Mr. Snicket. Somehow I doubt I'll find it in Horseradish. I worry that I'll be on my deathbed, and in a Citizen Kane like moment, groan "suugarrbowl" and everyone will be so confused.

Monday AMV

Tenchi gets knocked down.

Ninja Report: Buddy War!!!

At our fortress, ninjas are placed in teams of two-the better to smite our enemies and cover phones.

Anyway, the other half of my team, "K" my buddy, and I have been at war this week.

It all started on Monday when I bought a bag of ButterRum flavored life savers for my candy dish. Upon opening the bag, I discovered that the life savers were in an unfortunate color most commonly known as "Baby Poop Brown."

But I figured, eh, it's free candy so whatever and I threw some on top of the stash.

Everything seemed fine until K swung by later that morning for first pickings. She found the presence of these lifesavers morally offensive, and proceeded to bury them under all the other candy... pretty much guaranteeing that the Reese's would all be gone by 10. (I fill my candy dish strategically, natch)

Tuesday, I made sure that the lifesavers covered the entire top of the dish. K waited for me to leave and then proceeded to bury every last one of them on the bottom of the bowl.

Wednesday I came into work early. I grabbed the bag of lifesavers (I still had plenty. They really were unpopular, but that's not the point) I snuck into K's station, and proceeded to hide lifesavers.

Throughout the rest of the day K became more and more enraged as the evil "nasty brown disgusting" lifesavers appeared in drawers, files, paperclips boxes etc.

The best part was that since she had made such a fuss about how much she hated these lifesavers, she actually had a couple of suspects.

She found out it was me though, around number 5, when I could no longer keep a straight face. That was when she hit me with....the curse of the bottle.

K has a Jones Soda holiday special issue "Turkey with Gravy" soda from LAST YEAR's holidays. She displayed it proudly throughout the end of 2006, the better to disgust everybody who passed her desk. It also led to the Curse of the Bottle, with everyone constantly asking her when she was going to drink it.

Thursday morning, I found it on my desk, with a lifesaver displayed next to it. One couldn't help but notice that both candy and soda were the same shade of disturbing brown.

The curse began it's hideous work. I was able to stave it off at first with "I can't drink it. It doesn't belong to me" but the pressure mounted. K suggested that I was too chicken to drink a year old novelty soda, and I bravely replied that I had once eaten a year old German Chocolate shake (it's true!), and that I would be just fine.

She said something along the lines of "Oh yeah?" and possibly "I triple dog dare you!"

And that's how, at 4:00 this lovely afternoon, I found myself swigging down a chilled (I insisted on it being cold) turkey and gravy soda, which had been aged gently in a desk drawer, for a year.

It had a peachy sent to it that was actually quite pleasant. I poured some into a cup (it still had fizz!) and took a healthy swallow.

Good heavens that was some nasty crap.

I didn't puke (please, I have a stomach of steel) but I'm told my face turned an interesting variety of colors.

Update: I thought a visual might be nice. So here's the soda, although mine had the picture of a cooked turkey on it.

Friday Fun

I didn't have a lot of time to peruse Youtube this week, shocking I know.

But here's a La Femme Nikita blooper that's pretty fun.

Ninja Report: Lunch

One of my good friends at the firm is leaving to start her career as a middle school teacher. Today we had her farewell lunch at IndeBlue, a very nice restaurant in Chinatown that is "Indian Fusion." Basically they mix Indian and American cuisine.

Since I think food blogging is cool, I made sure to take special attention to the menu selections.

We started off with naan, which was served hot, and was coated in butter, herbs and garlic. It was delicious. I enjoy naan plain, but it was amazing with butter-garlic-herb sauce.

We also had samosas, I had a potato and pea one, although there was also spinach-feta samosa, and a lamb-spice that I don't remember, one. (Food blogging is hard!)

Then we had Dosas (These are all still appetizers. The samurai in charge of the lunch is infamous for the amount of food he orders at these types of functions)

The Dosa was a crepe, filled with mushrooms and a blue cheese sauce. Very tasty.

And then we had a naan pizza, which was basically an enormous naan covered in cheese and prosciutto.

For my main meal I had lamb chops, medium rare, rubbed with spices than grilled in a tandoori and served with a mojito reduction. It came with green lentils and garlic mashed potatoes.

It was amazing. I'm fond of lamb anyway, but having it tandoori style was a whole new experience. Tender, with that great tandoori flavor, and just enough kick from the Mojito reduction (white wine, mint, chilies.) I wish more Indian places served lamb tandoori.

For dessert we ordered three servings of "Some More" a little molten chocolate cake with a scoop of marshmallow ice cream and a candied banana.

I took my helping and finished it. Then one of the admin ninjas across from me didn't want her share, and gave it to me. Than at the end, there was still part of one left, and no one wanted to eat it. The whole table looked at me and said "Give it to Corbeau."
I said "Okay. I'm here to help!" and finished that sucker off.

I feel like I'm going to explode.

Update: I need to learn more food adjectives. I think I used amazing to describe everything. I blame all the candied banana for this complete shut down of my mental thesaurus skills.

Comic Goodness

Yesterday's Brevity cracked me up.



I especially love the scientist on the far right. He looks so abashed, yet secretly smug. I just know he's the goober who added the olives to what otherwise would be the world's perfect dip.

Seriously, have you ever tried picking all the nasty, mushy, olive bits out 7-layer dip? I should've known evil scientists were behind it all.

Ha!

This is awesome.

Since I have the direction sense of a suicidelly-depressed lemming, I pretty much live off Google Maps or Mapquest. If for some reason, I had been on the quest for the one ring, this printout would be crumpled up in the bottom of my knapsack.

More Map Fun: Go to Google Maps, type "Paris, France" in the destination box. After Google has located Paris, get directions from your house to Paris. Scroll down and read the direction box.

Corbeau Goes to the Movies

Friday night we decided to go see Becoming Jane, the biopic which takes Jane Austen's life story, and shoves it into a Jane Austen novel plot line. BSA and I managed to get into the theater just in time for the 8:30 show, (we had friends holding our seats) and it seems like a cute movie.

You can play "spot the inspiration" for characters and events that mimic those found in Pride and Prejudice. I don't know if other novels come into play, because at the first ball, about 20 minutes into the film, the fire alarms went off and we had to evacuate the theater.

It's a 24 screen theater, so there were lots of people to evacuate, and that doesn't include the die hards standing in the ticket line, or still entering the theater.

If I came to a theater, and saw the strobbing lights, and the sirens, and the masses of humanity exiting the doors and spilling across the street, I would think "hmm, maybe I'll go somewhere else tonight" not, "Hmm, I wonder the ticket line starts?"

But that's just me.

Anyway, so we waited out in the hot humid evening, and watched the fire trucks come, and then a manager came out and yelled that they probably wouldn't reopen that night, so just hold on to your ticket stub to come back another night.

By then it was almost 10, and we still didn't feel like going home, so my two roommates and I decided to drive across town and see what was playing there. We got into a 10:30 showing of StarDust.

As we sat in the nice A/C waiting for the movie to start, my other roommate the Secret Agent(SA)grumbled "I've paid 20 bucks for movies tonight, and I still haven't seen anything!" We had to point out that this wasn't true, since she'd seen one really cool preview for the new Elizabeth movie, and almost an entire 20 minutes of Becoming Jane, and if that wasn't worth 20 bucks what was!?

Fortunately, the movie started and nothing went wrong.

I like StarDust. It's a fairytale movie, and features British humor. Michelle Pfeiffer has a lot of fun playing the evil witch, and it was a lot of fun watching her ham it up. Robert de Niro was amusing as gay pirate captain (really!) and Claire Danes wasn't annoying.

So it was a win-win-win all around! I also like the Peanut Gallery of dead princes, but I have a morbid sense of humor. I can understand though, why it might not appeal to everyone.

Monday Music Videos

I found a hamster video. I'm posting it just to see what deep psychoanalysis WW comes up with to explain it.



For the rest of us, here's a video featuring one of my favorite Naruto moments. During the chunin exam (think of it as a finals examination for ninja school) Hinata and Neji, who are cousins, are selected to fight each other.

I was trying going to explain why this fight is such a powerful and moving moment, but that requires a lengthy and complicated exposition that just doesn't do it justice.

So just sit back and enjoy.

Friday Fun

We've all had those days when you're trying to get something done, but you have to deal with some chucklehead making your life difficult.

So it makes it very satisfying to see this local reporter do what we've all dreamed of doing.

Make sure you watch to the very end, just to see the look on her crewman's face.

Hopefully this will help the ease the pain of SYTYCD's final four result show being bumped all the way to Monday night. Stupid football.

Happy Fun Quiz Time

Found a nice little "Which House Doctor Are You?" quiz. Man I miss that show.

Just click on the picture if you want to take the quiz.

SYTYCD: Last 6

I thought last night's episode was one of the best of the season. It actually had dances that were exciting, and I wish they had made the choreographers stop babying everyone a long time ago.

I loved Neil and Sabra's dances. This is the first time I've actually cheered for Neil, but their first routine was so amazing. It was a jazz routine choreographed by Mandy Moore (not the actress) and it's my favorite dance of the season.



The part where Neil lifts himself over the table?

Hot.

I also loved Pasha in his hip hop routine. Lacey was tolerable with her nasty hair tied up.

Check out how cute he is!



The jidges seemed to be drinking happy juice. They loved everything. Everything was awesome. Everything was beautiful. Everyone was riding the hot tamale train.

I like it when their a little more critical. Although Nigel totally called out Lacey's lazy waltz hands. That made me happy.

This is who I want for the Final Four.

Sabra, Lacey, Pasha, and Neil.

What did you guys think? Who do you want to see in the final four?

Curse You Indiana!! Curse YOU!!!

There's a great site called mapsmsg where you can play state tetris, or European tetris.

Basically, you're learning geography and developing mad tetris skillz all at the same time!!

Of course, lets say that for whatever reason, you haven't really studied US Geography since the 5th grade and you can't for the life of you remember where on earth Indiana goes as it floats and spins around like some horrible bright blue appendix of doom just waiting to blow and spin out so you get a really bad score..

Well in that case, the game makes fun of you.

But other than that, it's pretty fun.

Fun Meme

I spotted this from a post Friday on Atlhouse. It seemed like a fun experiment so I thought I'd give it a try.

List 10 things you have never done:

1. I have never gotten a speeding ticket.

2. I have never had a cavity.

3. I have never eaten brussel sprouts, and don't plan to, just on principle.

4. I have never succeeded in making any sort of bread product from scratch. The muffins, they mock me. Save me Betty Crocker!!

5. I have never read Emma. In fact, the only Jane Austen I've read is P&P. I know the rest from watching movies.

6. I have never been to Mexico.

7. I have never been skiing.

8. I have never been to a comic/sci fi/fan convention, although I want to. I'd go in costume too. :)

9. I have never liked pumpkin pie.

10. I have never been in a helicopter.

Man, that was harder than I thought it would be. All right, now come up with your own!

Ninja Report

Recent intelligence states that there are miny butterfingers in the candy jar on nine.

To the Ninja-later!!!! Nin-va-later? Emergency stairwell?

None of those seem right.

Obviously the only proper way to go is to sneak out a window, repel down, break into the A/C ducts and steal a "fun size" when the secretary isn't looking.

Bleh.

Today
Very hot and humid with sun and some clouds
High: 95F / 35C

Tonight
Very warm and humid with patchy clouds
Low: 81F / 27C

Humidity: 76%

I say again, Bleh.

Actually, it's cooled off some. It was 106 Saturday. A hundred and freaking six.

Monday AMV

Featuring everyone's favorite genius slacker, Shikamaru.



UPDATE: My profile icon has been updated to reflect the fact that Shikamaru rocks.
Just FYI.

Fiendish Fudge Robbery

Fudge Thief! This sounds like something from the pages of a Stephanie Plum novel.

Can't you just picture Lula walking off with the front window display of a fudge store?

On a side note: I discovered this story when four different co-workers emailed it to me, offering condolensces on the failure of my fudge-stealing minion.

Truly, my sweet-tooth is legendary.

Friday Fun

The Matrix trailer, re-cut as a Romantic Comedy.