Saying Stuff As It Hits Me (for the love of Zod, don't say "semi"!!!)

* Is it just me, or do you ever stop yourself as you're leaving the house to make sure you've put on pants? That sounds silly, of course, but given some of the truly dumb-ass things I've done in my life, it's NOT entirely impossible, so every once in a while I find myself looking down to make sure my "li'l hickman" is not exposed (well, assuming that my gut would allow me to see it anyway).

I remember one of my students saying to me "you know more than any human being I've ever met." I was beaming over that one, let me tell you. Yeah, dat's right, I'm da man. Wheel yourself outta my way, Stephen Hawking. Then, all of five minutes later, I went to the men's room, and when I tried to walk out, I found that I couldn't get the door open. I panicked for a second, until I realized that I was pushing on the side with the hinges.

Yeah, I'm Enrico freakin' Fermi...

* I'm working on a City of Heroes project that I can't talk about yet (I'll let ya know). Y'know, I have probably 120 CoH player-characters now, and only one (Nitewolf) has made it to level 50. Most are stuck in the 22-32 range. It occurs to me that probably 80% of them have puns for names, which sounds gimmicky, but I've found that both in the game, and in my comic writing, that such a method works well for me. They start off being goofy puns, but then it comes together when I try to flesh them out. I wonder if I took a character with a standard superhero name, say Captain Lightning or Darkbolt or something, and tried to do the same if it would work. Hard to say, and it'll probably never happen, as I'm much more likely to do Bananas Froster or Shock Cousteau.

* I think I'm supposed to dog-sit a little pug here in a day or two (if so, there will be pics). I would so dearly love to have a dog, and we're allowed to have 'em at our apartment building now. Unfortunately, while I could afford the $25 or whatever they add on to your rent for a dog, if anything ever happened to the little guy, health-wise, I couldn't afford to get him any treatment. So I'll just have to be happy with our two little turtles, Eastman and Fichtner, for the time being. Eastman is named after TMNT creator Kevin, obviously, and Fichtner is named after William "Mr. Pointy Face" Fichtner, whom he resembles.

* The other day the Dairy Queen close to my place had a deal where certain items were 50% off. I normally don't go to DQ, as the food is too expensive and REALLY is not the kind of stuff I should have on this diet. But the half-off deal was too tempting for a cheapskate like me, so I went through the drive-through while I was out and got myself an order of chicken strips, figuring that wouldn't be too bad.

I had to do some grocery shopping, so I pulled into the Pay-Less parking lot and decided to eat my chicken before going inside. I grabbed one of the little batter-dipped hunks of white meat and settled in for my "splurge."

But...it was...too gooey inside and...chewy...and...oh...my...god.

I suddenly realized what I was holding in my hand was a breaded hunk of completely, absolutely, totally RAW chicken. Not undercooked, not slightly cooked, not even warm inside. Raw, pink, cold chicken meat.

I spit it out and drove back to DQ, where I presented it to the manager.

"Look," I said, "I'm not the kind of guy who complains over little things, and if this were just slightly undercooked, hey, no big deal. But this bastard is still CLUCKING."

He let out an "OH MY GOD" and immediately got me a replacement, and thankfully this one didn't have salmonella as a dipping sauce.

I'm sure Dairy Queen is a fine establishment in general, but I'd advise against the chicken tartar.