Roachinator

A few incidents occurring as of late have made me re-embrace my status as The Roachinator. For starters, I talked to Angelica on the phone today. Tonight, I killed a roach (bare handed with no assists). Last week, some girls were talking about how much they hated roaches and I had to tell them that I like to kill the roaches. The fact that Carmen lost my Roachinator bracelet *sorry about that, Angelica :(* came up in conversation only Saturday.

For those of you who don't know the back story, this fascination with killing roaches began in Hell-Hole-Ocho, Salango, Ecuador. Beerman, Matt S., and I were staying in a bungalow that was shared with scores of roaches and a bat (named Deuce). We decided to keep track of how many roaches each of us killed. There were also bonus points to be earned. We decided to keep track of how many assists you got...an assist could be spotting a roach then holding a flashlight on them so that someone else could kill the roach or maybe moving furniture or other objects in order for the other person to kill the roach. You got 2 points if you killed it barehanded, 5 points if you killed the roach with your forehead, and 10 if you used your nutsack (unattempted by anyone). Naturally, these kills only counted if they were confirmed, i.e. if somebody else saw it happen.

Reminiscing, I killed a roach outside when B was staying at my house a few weeks ago and I went to get him so that he could verify the kill and he refused, saying that it wasn't good enough that there were roach guts on my shoe and roach guts on the wall...he didn't see the actual kill. What a bastard.

As for technique, let me tell you that there are different ways to kill different roaches in different scenarios. First of all, Amazon roaches are in a class of their own. Some of them grow upwards of 5 inches. The best way to kill any roach (and make SURE it's dead) is to stab it to a hard surface so it can't go anywhere, then take a lighter and burn its face off. You've got to be careful with the big ones, though. They will try to turn around and eat you once you stab them. Make sure the blade of your knife is long enough so that doesn't happen.

I think one of the reasons that killing roaches is so exciting is because sometimes they get away. Those bastards are fast and don't want to die. I think that it wouldn't be nearly as much fun if I won every time. After you spot them, you've got to keep an eye on them. If you have to look for an instrument of death, then they have time to relocate and then you have to go hunt for their location. You also have to make sure that your weapon is hard enough to kill them (but not to break whatever surface they're on) and small/agile enough to get in the space they're in *like a corner.*

As an end note, it's not as fun to kill them with bombs and traps and residual sprays...but, the kill-on-contact sprays are cool, especially if you use something aerosol based and light it on fire and give them a flame-thrower death.

Pick #36

Shins - Kissing the Lipless from the Chutes Too Narrow album. I have never been very big on The Shins...but I started listening to them more this past week probably triggered by hearing one of their songs randomly. I think "Kissing the Lipless" is my favorite one of their songs as of right now.

Strawberries

Taken just over a year ago in Virginia. Very tasty!

Reunido con Univisión

Mi nuevo ¿compañero de casa? (roommate) me dijo que tiene que ver ESPN los fines de semana. Por eso, hoy llamé Comcast y pedí un boquete más grande que ahora tengo. Había dos opciones al mismo precio...aún la segunda fue mejor. Voy a tener Digital Cable Starter Package y ahorrar unos $20 al mes por 6 meses en mi pago de servicios de la red. En total, Comcast me va a cobrar unos $85 al mes (hasta que terminen estos 6 meses...después de aquel día pagaré unos $100 mensuales). Pero, tendré canales como: History, Discover, TLC, ESPN(2), 45 canales de música, UNIVISION OTRA VEZ!!!!!, y otros con películas OnDemand.

De mi perspectivo, es una buena inversión por tener otro ser pagándome (digo viviendo aquí).

StatCounter

After seeing this counter on FSU's experimental economics webpage, I decided to get one for my blog. I made it invisible so you can't see that you are the only other person that reads this besides me.

Silly Proper Plurals

(and singulars) These tend not to be used or to be misused.
plurals:
stadia
aquaria
formulae
fora (not forums!!!) *also, not to be confused with flora.
fishes (fish as a plural doesn't work when there are multiple species of fish)
corpora (like if there was another city somewhere named Corpus Cristi, that and the TX one could be corpora Cristi??)
genera (plural of genus)
media (lots of people mean medium)

and i just like nuclei

singluars:
datum (lotsa people use data like it's singular)
criterion
elf (which is plural in German...)

Tallahassee Marathon

I found out a couple weeks ago that Tallahassee has a marathon in early February. I'm going to run it this upcoming Feb. 3,2008. I initially wanted to qualify for Boston on my first marathon. Unfortunately, the Tallahassee Marathon is not a qualifier. I guess I'll be happy if I can run a "qualifying time" which is under 3:10 for my age group. You can't beat starting it so close to home. I'll have plenty of support. It's a flat course. Should be pretty easy to train for. Not to mention cheaper than all the other possible marathons (including all costs, as an economist would).


Retraction posted on 9-23: the Tallahassee Marathon IS a qualifier!!!