Black Friday Evening

I was smart, yeah...I'd forgotten that the cafeteria would be closed since only a skeleton staff was working today. So I ended up getting a little pair of White Castle-sized "barbecue chicken" sandwiches, that tasted like they'd ground up all the parts of the chicken nobody wanted and pressed them together.

Work was less busy than usual, though more busy than I'd hoped. Didn't keep me from finishing R.A. Salvatore's DemonWars trilogy (ending slightly disappointing, clearly sets up for a sequel series which I wonder if he ever wrote) and starting John Dalmas's The Regiment's War. At one point during the day, I figured out with a calculator that $20 an hour works out to 5.55 cents per second. Yay me.

Played a bit of Starcraft tonight; now I'm about to do the bedtime chores and hit the sack. My friend Joe (defunct LJ at blacknumber01)'s coming over tomorrow (if he actually follows through on what he promises for once), and I'm looking forward to seeing him again. More when I have more to report.

Tackiness du jour

Seen on Wired:

---

Let It Be

John Lennon autographed an album for his assassin just five hours before the former Beatle was killed. Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono's signed Double Fantasy is for sale on the Web for $525,000, the owner taking advantage of the recent frenzy of interest in Beatles memorabilia. Last week, Lennon's handwritten lyrics to the song "Nowhere Man" went for $455,000 at Christie's. According to the website's sales pitch, the album's cover and dust jacket contain the "forensically enhanced" fingerprints of Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman, who shot the singer outside Lennon's Manhattan home, on December 8, 1980. The album was found in a flower planter near the building and used as evidence against Chapman.

---

I suppose I can't blame the owner for wanting to sell it. I can't help but wonder who it is and how he obtained it, though...and how much he paid for it. Profiteering on such a grisly artifact just seems downright tacky to me. If I had it, I'd either destroy it or donate it to a John Lennon museum somewhere.

Joe's been and gone...

Well, I got my living room cleaned up so it's nice and open, and then Joe came over for about three hours. We played a bit of Starcraft, me on my Windows box and him on my Powerbook. I won the first game, then we traded pointing devices (he didn't like the trackball) and he won the second one (the trackball didn't work all that well for me either, on this machine...the cord's too short, so using it put me in an unnatural posture). He'll bring his own USB mouse next time.

I played samples from some DVDs and things for him to show off my sound system, showed him the first few scenes of Max Payne, and showed him how fast I could rip CDs. (In so doing, I found my long lost copy of The Beatles's Help!—I don't know exactly how, but it somehow managed to get put in the CD case with the Townshend musical The Iron Man.) For a snack/dinner, we cooked a couple of bacon-wrapped beef fillets I'd picked up for $1 each at the Deal$ store. Joe suspected he might have overcooked them, since we didn't have a meat thermometer handy; they were a little tough...but all in all, quite good, especially at the price. Finally, we watched the first episode of Those Who Hunt Elves which I have in from Greencine; he enjoyed it a great deal. Then he had to leave for a friend's house where he was running a game. I kind of wish he could find the time to spend a whole day, but I realize he's kind of a busy guy...especially since he's looking for work again. I suggested he might see if Quikdine could use him, and he said he'd look into it.

All in all, a decent enough visit.