Custom lego figure of the awesomeness? I think … yes!

And as long as we’re talking Lego versions of comic-things seen on the big screen, I present to you The Tumbler. And yes, it comes in black, Mr. Wayne.

HT: Golden Shpleem.

Eebmore’s comment on Neckbone’s blog, “but I’ve always thought that Old Bay is crap” startled me so much I nearly had a heart attack and died.

I love Old Bay.

I don’t know whether my apartment building uses electricity or gas for heating. I don’t know if you can use electricity over gas for heating. Sad, isn’t it? I’m worried about my heating bill — speaking of which, there’s nothing like smelling burning lint through the vent to signify the first activation of the heater and thus the “start” of winter* — I hope I’m on electricity heating, and I think I am. A friend recently confided to me that the reason she was moving is because her heating bill was, with the rising cost of gas, going to become twice as much as her rent.

Eeep!

So I’m hoping we’re on electrical heat. Because, if we aren’t, Steve’s going to have yet another reason to hate me — before he and A. signed their lease, Steve inquired long and often and often about how much my BGE bill ran. In the summer and the winter, it gets up into the $70 range. During the off-months of fall and spring, it sometimes drops as low as $20. Anyway, here’s hoping I don’t walk into the Franchise one day to have Steve jump in my face, wave his BGE bill, and scream: “FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS! I HAAAATE YOUUUUU!”

Truthfully, I’m not the most power-conscious individual in the world. I leave lights on when I’m not in the room. My clock radio in my bedroom is almost always on. I can’t remember the last time I turned off my computer. My digital cable box and DVD player are also always on. I run the dishwasher in the middle of the afternoon. Sometimes I wonder how much that affects the bill.

I heard something on the radio where BGE smoothes out your payments so the bills don’t vary that much between seasons. Truthfully, I don’t mind paying higher costs six months of the year because I know the other six months the bill will be dirt cheap. This summer (my third here) was actually a little odd — usually, my basement-level apartment is very cool even in the middle of July, but this entire summer the place was just hot. Very strange.

*If I wasn’t sick, I wouldn’t have turned it on.

I was supposed to meet up with my “jewish mother” today for lunch, but she diagnosed me as being sick (and I am, despite my complaints to the contrary) so instead I’m spending the day home with multiple bowls of chicken noodle soup and my DVD player. I do at some point need to run to the bank to deposit my paycheck and tips from the weekend so I don’t bounce checks, and I also need to get my cough drops for my poor throat, but I tell you what, I’m not looking forward to venturing out in this weather no sir.

Greg, a month ago or so, paid Ogre to overhaul his store computer. Mind you, I’m not talking about the computer system we use to operate the store, I’m talking about the POS shitbox in Greg’s office that he checks his e-mail with.

Ogre returned the computer with a non-working modem and a wallpaper image of a girl sucking a guy’s cock which was protruding through a pizza.

Greg … eh … not so happy.

Anyway, Ogre came by last night to get the computer and fix it. He’s working, as mentioned, as a car salesman for Nissan. He told me proudly, “I sold two cars in two weeks!” I just sort of nodded, I guess this is a good thing because he added, “It’s the slow period of the year!”

When Ogre first walked in he started talking to me about Carmax and about how I made a horrible mistake, I should have come to him for help with a car. Meanwhile I’m standing there giving him this “Huh?” expression on my face, when I realize he doesn’t know about my accident. He shut up when I told him it was a rental, than I teased about how clearly desperate the dealership was. He retorted by saying I was a horrible salesman.

He traded up his Sentra - he’s got a new one. It’s red. And it costs $100 more a month than his old one. Greg and I worried that he might be getting a bit ahead of himself — when we went to work for corporate he spoke loftily of his goals, and ambition, and work ethic. And that came crumbling down around him. Greg would be loathe to rehire him — apparently, in their conversations, Ogre has been dismissive of the job and critical of Greg, a stinging blow, I’m sure, since Greg stepped out on one hell of a limb offering Ogre his old job back.

We joked - “Hey, if Ogre comes back, are you going to make him store manager?” Because, see, Ogre has a way of quitting in order to get a short-lived promotion.

Anyway, Ogre left and I handed Greg a $5 bill - I’d told Ogre about Neal’s incredible bong solutions (seriously, the guy was the marijuana smokers’ MacGuyver) and convinced him to pay $5 for a $2.25 2-liter bottle to turn into a bong. Greg and I split the profits and laughed as Ogre poured the bottle’s contents onto the parking lot and critically appraised the bottle. Am I not an excellent salesman?

This would’ve been a question I could not have answered for you before 5:30 Monday evening, except in the form of the typical West Virginian parodiacal*.

I was on one of the main traffic arteries coming back from a delivery to the western end of the franchise’s delivery area. When I say “main traffic arterie” I mean it was a two lane road - one in each direction. These are the largest the roads get out there (some do have turning lanes). Traffic was moving super slow, and I was kicking myself because generally before six, if I’ve got to come out this way, it’s 50/50 chance faster to take the back roads to return to the store and I regretted my choice as to the method of my return.

And of course its drizzling, which only makes everything worse, right? Gloomy, rainy, ick.

So I’m on this “main traffic artery” and we’re going slow. It’s a somewhat windy road, and across the next turn, I see a momentary flash of blue and red lights reflect against the side of a package truck. Oh great, an accident. There ain’t no detour on this stretch — either we’re going to get turned around, or we’re going to wait until the bodies and debris get cleared. Joy.

So we continue to move forward, slowly, and then I see this dude in a suit dragging a deer across the road, following by a Baltimore County Police officer. As best I can figure it, Joe Schmoe was driving home from work, hit a deer, reported it to the police, then collected the animal’s carcuss when the officer arrived.

Several years ago, on this very road (more east) I struck a deer. It was a little one, ran right out into the street as I came past in my Jeep. I knocked the animal clear across the road. Circled around, pulled to the side of the road, called the cops, and waited for the responding officer crouched in front of this oddly silent creature, which was, I should add, still alive, looking up at me with these big dark eyes. It was almost serene, except, of course, I’m sure the animal was in too much pain to register how much pain it was in. That was, I believe, the third deer I hit, and I believe also the last one. When the officer arrived, he asked me if I wanted the deer’s body, which threw me a bit — who would ever want roadkill?

I mean, big difference between a deer and a squirrel you run over (ever run over a bird? I did, once) I suppose, but, still — roadkill!

I guess it beats going to the grocery store.

“Honey, we’re out of meat. I’m going to drive around until I kill me some dinner.”

(Trust me, out here, deer get hit a lot. There are many many many deer and they enjoy running into the middle of the road, particularly when they see you coming - I suspect they’re suicidal, as a species.)

*I’m reasonably certain of two things — a.) not a real word and b.) if it is, I misspelled it.

Last season sprung forth quite a few hit series — myself, I’m not so much interested in all the new crime programs. I can’t watch Numb3rs without picturing a remote Alaskan town (”Hi, Joel!”). There should be a CSI: Baltimore. That JAG spinoff — much like what it spun-off from — is shit. Desperate Housewives? My cup of tea … can we say ‘not‘?

But I’ve enjoyed Lost and Veronica Mars. As I mentioned when I bought the Lost DVD set, I bought it on the strength of a handful of episodes I’d seen, as well as the pretty excellent word of my mouth. My sister, who lives on Oahu, actually had the opportunity to see the screening of the premiere episode on the beach where the show is filmed. And I took a risk on the box set but it was worth it, quality program, that.

As far as Veronica Mars goes, I also watched a handful of episodes over the run of the first season. I found the writing easily on par with Buffy, and the production value excellent - hard to be bored watching this show, and not just because Kristen Bell is yumalicious (hard to see her get her skull bashed-in in Deadwood). Yeah, I admit, I don’t much care for Duncan or Logan, the most 90210ish characters of the show — that’s, I think, part of the attraction of the show. In Buffy, the Vampire Slayer got to beat the hell out of the Undead. In Veronica Mars, our lead gets to humiliate, out-think, and generally humiliate the vapid, shallow not-quite-90210 crowd, while seeking to bring down The Rich & Almighty for the murder of her best friend.

(One of the episodes I saw was actually the season finale, so going into the show, I knew who’d done it, but the saying holds true — it’s the journey that’s fun, not the destination).

Both Lost and Veronica Mars are very mystery oriented. With Lost you have the Island and all of the questions about that. With V.M., we have a high school girl working after school at her dad’s private detective agency. There’s The Mystery the show is premised on — who murdered Lilly Kane? — and of course the smaller mysteries resolved over the course of each episode’s run (Who framed Veronica as the maker of fake IDs? Who stole the school’s mascot? etc.). Actually, my big problem with the smaller mysteries is that after a few episodes, viewers start getting a feel for the show to the point where it’s easy to come to a conclusion as to who the guilty party is — thankfully, they started breaking their pattern and guessing wasn’t so easy.

I’ve mentioned before that I enjoyed Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. Many people I know who I would classify as at least partially “geekish” (and, uh, male) aren’t attracted to the showprecisely because the hero role is a woman while male supporting characters are almost always reduced to some combination of “comical” and “villain/quasi-villain/sidekick/librarian.” Once you get into the meat of the show, of course, that ain’t true — it’s one of the best written sci-fi shows of the late nineties (let’s be honest, post season three, it sucked to various degrees of poorness).

Veronica Mars is sort of like the un-demon Buffy. Well, a lot of the characters could probably be pulled from the ranks of 90210 or The O.C.. Veronica, like Buffy, is an ex-popular girl, Veronica reduced to plotting her various revenges against the crowd which so quickly abandoned her over her father’s pursuit of software mogul Jake Cane (Homicide’s Kyle Secor).

In my opinion, Veronica Mars began to suffer as a television show with Veronica’s gradual re-acceptance by the popular crowd. A large part of the show’s appeal — in addition to the high production values and cast — is as the “anti-90210″, a show which ruthlessly portrays the rich and priviliged lionized in other television shows (”The OC”, anyone?) as scumsuckers whose plotting is most often turned back against them by a girl who drives a LeBaron. Unfortunatly, the final episodes of the season seem to be plotting Veronia’s return to popularity — I haven’t been following the second season so far, but I really hope the producers nix that in the bud, they’d be undermining a big reason why the show works.

… I’m out of mother fuckin’ cough drops. Fuck.

So my throat hurts like hell (come to think of it, so does my jaw), and swallowing isn’t much better. I’ve had sore throats before, but I don’t think I’ve ever not been able to get to sleep because of them — see, I lay back on my bed, my mouth fills with saliva, and I’m forced to swallow. All night, this. I’ve found a bit of relief by propping up the pillows so I’m trying to sleep halfway-sitting-up, but I rarely (read: never) sleep on my back. I’m a stomach-sleeping kind of guy, so not only am I trying to get comfortable in a new sleeping position, but I’m contending with this damn throat.

Anyway, I’ve tossed and turned for three hours so I’m going to take a break from sleep and blog for a bit. I’ve got a few entries I’ve been working on, so I’m going to finish one up for posting, and maybe get some work in on the others.