"I am the very model of a Modern Major General!"

I've finished my first week of education at the learnatorium that is SFASU and was on my first break from school. I'm not exactly sure why we get Labor Day off but then again I believe that I have worked every Labor Day for over a decade.

For a quick run down of my first week at the learnatorium:

• History is my major. The two classes I am taking are pretty good. My Western Civ class is a blast. I plan to take every class Professor Malpass offers - including a Summer Class about Vikings.
• In the fifteen-ish years since I have taken a Math class I have not improved in the least.
• I like to sit in the library taking lots of notes about lots of stuff. Primarily the history of the slave trade.
• I have adopted the phrase, "You know what's interesting?" Apparently I've said it so much that Amanda has turned into a joke.
• The Reformation kicked ass.
• I am old and cranky.
• I am at high risk for turning into a know it all. I will do my best not to say, "Actually..."
• Moxie likes to help me study and take notes primarily by sitting on whatever I am reading and/or chewing on my pen.

More news to follow. Hope all of you are well.

A new addition to the Hooligan Youth Reviews family.

Please welcome Moxie. I don't know what possessed us to get another cat but it's too late now. We picked her up from the local shelter. She's about four months old and is pretty lively - a.k.a. bites the living hell out of us. Our other cat George is not particularly pleased but then again George is never particularly pleased. She will now be taking her meals under the bed.

Yay, new kitty!

Happy "Holy Shit, it's Joe Piscopo!" Day

That's right folks I decided to revive "Holy Shit, it's Joe Piscopo!" Day.

Looks like things are still going well for him over on his website. Cheers to ya Joe.

Redland Drive-In Theater

Finally got some pictures of the Redland Drive-In Theater on US-59 between Nacodoches & Lufkin. For reason a shut down drive-in makes me sad. If I had a shit ton of money I'd buy them up, reopen them, and restore them.

The first time we drove by this place I nearly crapped my pants. I have to confirm with Mr. Joe R Lansdale but I think this might be place Drive-In was based on.

Sunday Drivers Part II.

We headed back to town and with the aid of our GPS - a.k.a me with a paper map - we headed down 2259 through Woden to 226 to Etoile. This area was not as picturesque as the area around Lake Nacogdoches. I wouldn't even say that it had rustic charm.

Sam Rayburn Reservoir, at least north end of it where the Angelina River flows in, was kind of...

We should have taken a picture of the massive pile of trash below the "No Dumping" sign.

Again, no grills. We headed back to Nacogdoches and stopped by one of the parks in town. There was a grill but it was hanging off the post at a sixty-six degree angle. After this we went home. We're gonna buy a hibachi and go to Lake Nacogdoches this week so expect more pictures of Joshua acting like a normal person.

Sunday drivers or "What a loovly day for a ride in da coontry." Part 1.

We planned to go to a lake on Saturday but were warned off by the weather reports of "Turn Around. Don't Drown.". I don't know if you folks are familiar with TADD but here in Texas you don't mess around with that especially when your transport vehicle is a Honda Fit.

On Sunday the weather reports were not as menacing so we packed up the cooler with food and gathered up our shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed out to Lake Nacogdoches. After drifting west on 21 and taking a left on picturesque FM 255 we eventually found the West Park at the lake. It's really quite nice and the next time we go there we will have pictures. The weather was pleasant in the upper 80s with some cloud cover so my translucent skin would burst into flame. Nice little picnic area on the water. Wait, where are the grills? Hmmm. I wish I had a picture of post that a grill was formerly attached to.

Well we hopped back in the car and drove around a bit more and eventually stopped at Yakofritz Landing for lunch. The food there is good. Amanda got the catfish dinner and I got my stand by BBQ Beef sandwich. The catfish was better than I've had in quite some time and the BBQ sandwich was damn tasty. They actually mixed in the onions with the meat. The meat was chopped but had some kick ass chunks of texture in it. The sauce was just a hint sweeter than I would normally go for but it was still damn tasty.

After some deilberation we decide to drive out to Sam Rayburn Reservoir.

Further Librarian humor.

Librarian humor.

Highjacked this from the librarything blog. Makes me laugh and think,

"Conan. What is best in life?"
"To crush your enemies. To drive them before you. To hear the laminations of their women."

Haha...sigh. I'm a dork.

Too Human (demo) - Silicon Knights 08/19/2008

Too Human is the upcoming RPG/brawler Norse cyber-deity game from Silicon Knights. I downloaded the demo and it's pretty fun. I'll definitely check it out once some reviews come in but I don't know if I'm going to run out and pick it up. Too Human seems like a game that will be worth playing more for style and story than gameplay and replayability. Just my initial impressions.

Arte y pico Award. w00t!

Muchos gracias to Chris over at Exquisitely Bored in Nacogdoches for an "Arte y pico" award. I would like to thank Dr. Venkman, Rodney Dangerfield, Don Rickles, and Lone Star.



Wanna particiate?

1. You have to pick 5 blogs that you copnsider deserve this award, creativity, design, interesting material, and also contrubuites to the blogger community, no matter of language.


2. Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.


3. Each award-winning, has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog thathas given her or him the ward itself.


4. Award-winning and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of "Arte y pico"blog , so everyone will know the origin of this award.


5. To show these rules.

My award winners are - in no particular order:

• demonbaby, http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/


• Blonde Zombies, http://blondezombies.blogspot.com/ (NSFW)


• M. Christian, http://frequentlyfelt.blogspot.com/ (NSFW)


• Soviet Posters, http://sovietposter.blogspot.com/
  
• Mike, http://satellite-eclectica.blogspot.com/

Anders Loves Maria by Rene Engström

Anders Loves Maria is an excellent webcomic that works because of Rene Engström's good old fashioned Swede-styled mono no aware. It's a grown-up comic that's NSFW but not hentai. Anders Loves Maria is one of those webcomics that is a joy to read even though it's pretty depressing. The art work is sharp and definitely stands out from the slew of comics I read.

I wholeheartedly enjoy this comic - check it out.

Braid (2008) Number None Inc.

Once upon a time there was a game for the NES called Castle Quest. It was one of those NES Classics that hated you as much as you hated it. This was an unmerciful bastard of a game that I think I once got half way close to winning.

Braid is cut from the same cloth - a puzzle/platformer that at times makes you want to punch yourself, your television, the dog, the cat, and spike your controller though the floor. Unlike Castle Quest the designers of Braid actually made the game some what forgiving, fun, and fascinating. The puzzles start easy enough but eventually reach a point where you want to pull out your eyes. The puzzles are based on time manipulation but each world has a different style of time manipulation that doesn't carry over to other worlds - which would have made life easier. The ability to rewind time makes life a little easier and less frustrating. If Braid had lives - a la Castle Quest, Super Mario Brothers - then I probably would have spontaneously combusted.

It's a gorgeous game with great music and puzzles that made me pretty happy. Some of the puzzles actually surprised me with their cleverness. Number None Inc isn't going to make a bajillion dollars off this game. I imagine that most people aren't willing to put forth the brain power, patience, and masocism required to complete Braid. At the very least download the demo. If Braid is an example of things to come from Number None Inc then they are going to put forward so great games.

Gustatory Reflex & Oral Chemesthesis is Da'Bomb! (aka new hot sauces I like)

Gustatory Reflex & Oral Chemesthesis are the fancy terms for sweating, snotting, and coughing fire. I found new hot sauces and here's the rundown.

El Yucateco is a damn fine brand. I picked up a bottle of Kutbil-Ik which - according to their website - is Mayan for "crushed chile". Rated at 11,600 Scoville this stuff is...well...my direct quote was, "It's like a volcano shit in my mouth." It's awesome stuff and I love the flavor but I don't know if I could just put this on everything I ate. Kutbil-Ik is something to: use very sparingly, use for some kind of Shaolin chile pepper eating, or for punishing children. On the other end of the spectrum I picked up the Chipotle style. It's much milder ranking in at 3,400 Scoville. It is very tasty and far superior to any other chipotle sauce I've found. This is going to be a staple hot sauce. If you can find it I strongly suggest picking it up. I haven't picked up the Green Habanero but have tried it a couple of times at restaurants around town. It comes in at 9,000 Scoville. Not so good on its own - it's too bright but could be tasty mixed in rice or guacamole. The green is not one I'll be picking up though.

San Luis Hot Sauce "Really Hot" is good. About the same caliber as Valentina Hot Sauce. It's a solid every day use hot sauce. I've been partial to putting it on breakfast - not Strawberry Rice Kripsies...yet - eggs, sandwiches, egg sandwiches, etc., etc. It's not particularly hot but it's not a slouch either. At an eighty-nine cent price tag for a 17 oz. bottle there's no reason not to have a bottle kicking around. Only one problem - opening the bottle is a pain in the ass. The cap doesn't screw off so you have to punch a hole in the cap and fish out the plastic or leave the chunks of plastic in the bottle.

You can pick these up at your local Mexican supermarket, bakery, taqueria, or if you're not smack dab in the middle of whitey-town your regular supermarket.

The Spice must flow.

Working on the Spice Mix this weekend. Thanks to Amanda for taking pictures and taste testing.

Dear Rangers,

thank you for continuing to beat the Yankees and keeping losses to close games. Now stop losing to the White Sox.

xoxo,

Joshua

Getting my learnatorium sea legs: Part I

I've already found a computer I like in the library. I plan to start lurking in the stacks pretty frequently. The fiction section is pretty solid though I forgot the joys of wandering around a library picking books up at random. I found the complete run of Life Magazine and spent a good hour leafing through 1969. The only problem is a lot of the photos would lend themselves very well to photomontage so it makes it a little hard not to just requisition the book for my own nefarious uses.

My goal today is to find the cookbook/food writing/food culture section and see what there is to see. With any luck I can find something interesting about East Texas/Louisiana cuisine. This is part of an idea I have kicking around in my head - Major in Texas History and focus on food. If there's one thing you can say about Texas Culinary History it has a lot of interesting influences: White, Mexican, Indian, and it'd be interesting to see what kind of influences SE Asian immigrants have had in the last couple of decades.

My library is now 95% catalogued!

I picked up a CueCat barcode scanner and beefed up my account at librarything.com. Maybe it's my low level OCD and hoarding tendencies but I kind of love cataloging, organizing, and alphabetizing my stuff. A friend once told me, "Hey, you're coveting your own stuff."

The CueCat scanner is very easy to use. If you can manage to plug in a USB cable then you can use a CueCat. It does take a little finesse to get the barcode to read properly but once you get the hang of it there's no problem. One drawback is that there's no information registering beep.

There's a pair of widgets over on the right if you'd like to browse my library. A bunch of other HYR contributors have accounts as well:

• BC3
• blipvurt
• demimode77
• iguanasomethinsweet

Check it out, join the fun.

Re:sonance DJs get a write up...

over at welovedc.com. This is Mike and his buddy. They are spinning around the DC area and i recommend going out to see them. I haven't gone to one of their gigs - what with living in TX -but I know the quality of the music they listen to. Get your asses out to see them. They also slum around on the myspace: http://www.myspace.com/resonance429

p.s. There's also a link to a mixtape of selected cuts. Available only for this week. Pretty solid shoegazer-y stuff and remixes.

Lost Boys: The Tribe (2008) dir. P.J.Pesce

We watched this so you wouldn't have to.

I don't know what possessed me to download this but I did.

Lost Boys: The Tribe had one big strike against it from the get go - the Lost Boys name attached to it. People don't seem to realize that The Lost Boys wasn't that good to start with. Granted it has its moments but all in all? If you don't believe me then you haven't tried to watch it recently.

The Tribe is pretty bad but not really any worse than any other cheezy late late night cable movie with Corey Feldman in it. It's pretty gory, has a bunch of nudity, a couple moments that were funny, and a large amount of dialogue directly ripped from the first movie. There is also another gauzy "love making" scene done to Cry Little Sister. A crappy cover of Cry Little Sister.

There's ultimately no point in seeing The Tribe. Really. It's not even that much fun to make smart ass remarks about. This is much cooler:

"OUCH! GOD DAMN IT!"

Very simply put, knives do not mix with thumbs.