Spotlighted today: the lovely Jen Barber (Katherine Parkinson) from "The IT Crowd"! Doesn't she look so sweet?

However, Jen wears a diverse array of expressions on the show. Here we see her concerned that a co-worker might be planning to murder her!

And here she seems quite confident, though I can't remember why.

Jen in the process of some intense across-the-room flirting.

And here's happy Jen posing with a creepy mouth-breathing boyfriend! But no matter what facial expression -- or outfit; our Jen has a no shortage of fun yet professional outfits in her wardrobe -- she's wearing, Jen Barber is always bloody adorable.

Had Turtles Forever featured this unholy alliance, I think the outcome would have been very different! I need to retake this picture with Metal Mutants Shredder, though... that little purple fiend definitely deserves to be included in the Shredder mashup.

Probably my favorite Cenobite in terms of design.

See, on the rare occasions that I actually spend time with people, any enjoyment I have during the experience is usually muted by the aftermath. Sure, it might be kinda fun while it lasts, but there's almost no prolonged benefit for me. It's not as if I'm building lasting friendships with these people; I always end up spending more money than I'd like to spend (I'd like to spend nothing); and I typically don't leave with anything tangible to show for the monetary and temporal loss (though if I remember, I'll try to squeeze in a photo or something -- at least then I have a keepsake of sorts).

For instance, a couple of weekends ago I went to the goth club to see this DJ and singer I like -- more in a personal/friendly capacity than for her talents, though she's a very compelling singer (I'm not that up on music and really can't evaluate her DJ skills, but her playlists don't suck). And yeah, it was very cool to visit with her... but after metro and entrance fees and drinks and food, I ended up spending around $50. Plus social situations like that tend to leave me feeling physically drained, and I always end up with a raging headache after spending several hours in a noisy club. Generally speaking, even when my social outings don't involve nightclubs, I tend to come back wishing I'd stayed in and watched a DVD.

But the dream! The dream actually started to go south a little bit towards the end. Like many of my outings, spending time with the people was enjoyable -- but then it came time to divvy up the check. Now, not wanting to spend very much at all, I had ordered a cheap crawfish appetizer for my meal. Apparently, however, the waiter had mistakenly thought that we meant to order the larger size for the entire party and had brought it out with the appetizers rather than the meals -- but since I was on the other end of the table, I never saw it and didn't look for it until the entrees were served, at which point the amount left was the right size for a single-person appetizer. And since one person had pretty much eaten the bulk of the appetizer before leaving when the meals arrived (and thus wasn't there to split the cost with me; the little bit of cash he'd left behind was barely enough to cover his drink), it looked like my group was going to stick me with the full $29.98 cost of the party-sized appetizer rather than the $6.98 I had expected to pay for the individual version. An extra $5 to $10 would have been tolerable (though still annoying), but this was seriously upsetting.

And then I woke up, and actually spent the next five minutes lying in bed thinking about how much it was going to suck that I had to pay this... until I realized, "Wait, that was a dream! I don't have to pay that shit!" And then suddenly it was awesome. All the benefits of social interaction and good food -- what remained of the crawfish appetizer had been pretty tasty -- and the most unpleasant aspects of these encounters had been completely averted! Plus I didn't feel like I'd wasted my time and could have been doing something else instead, since I had been sleeping (something I really needed to do) and woke feeling fairly well rested. Of course, it did mean that I didn't get to hang out with one girl in the party afterwards -- when I'd commented that I kinda wanted cheesecake but decided against ordering dessert at the restaurant, she'd suggested that the two of us hit up the nearby Giant afterwards and split a cheesecake (cute girls and cheesecake = epic win) -- but ah well.

Before this one, I also had another cool dream last night -- I dreamed I was at Five Below and found a whole bunch of superarticulated 9" Nightmare Before Christmas and Final Fantasy action figures, as well as some cool, obscure DVDs and a wall of comic books selling 4 for $0.79. I also woke up from that dream without having to pay anything, though I was less enthusiastic about that since I didn't get to keep the merchandise. Those Sally figures (in several different outfits, none of which actually appeared in the film) were bloody awesome.

But for some reason, whenever Have Your Say shows up in my headlines feed, I get some question that actually has a proper answer -- whether we definitively know it or not -- such that soliciting opinions on the matter is silly and pointless. For instance, following Ricky Martin's announcement last month concerning his sexuality, the feed linked "Does 'coming out' affect careers?" It's not necessary for anyone to "have their say" on this -- the question is a simple yes/no one, though one could elaborate upon it to discuss how coming out could affect people in different professions and so forth. In any case, however, people shouldn't be voicing flat "opinions" so much as looking at past cases, how people and the media and celebrities themselves react to suspicions of homosexual activity, and making relatively informed inferences concerning the topic.

And then there's today's question: "Do aliens really exist?" Maybe, maybe not -- but how the fuck would we know? The first question asked at the end of the piece is similarly irritating: "Are there aliens out there capable of communicating with us?" Again, how the fuck should we know?! Of course, there might be people who actually know the answer to this question (assuming it's in the affirmative), but it's not directed to them and I doubt they'd share their secret government knowledge on an online forum anyway. The final question -- "If they exist, should we avoid making contact with them?" -- is more appropriate for an opinion question, however, as it essentially asks about people's beliefs and fears concerning extraterrestrial policy as opposed to asking them to provide their opinion on a yes/no question.

I think my problem with these such questions comes down to the wording -- if it asked "Do you think aliens exist?" I'd likely be a lot less annoyed.

P.S. Everyone knows aliens exist. We've been aware of the Doctor's visits to the planet since the 60s!

Seriously, this is one of my most despised errors.

Count down from ten, but stop at three
I'll wait for you in the sea
with sharks and shrimp alongside me
and drowned doves in a plastic tree

or

and treasure chests that need no key

Hmmm.

I once dated a Bobbi Jane who was sexy as hell
I once dated a Bobbi Jane who was ugly as well
Alas, it was the ugly Bobbi Jane whom I did wed
I shout the sexy Bobbi Jane's name when we are in bed.

Today was a very wet day! Not just because of the rain outside, but because the metal clamps on the pipe connected to the sump pump came loose... resulting in much gushing and minor flooding of the basement. Luckily Mom noticed it before too much water spread, and then I made a temporary fix using planks and bricks to keep the pipe in place until more skilled hands arrived to reset the clamps properly. I was really proud of myself for that invention until Mom's friend rectified the problem in all of five minutes -- I'd previously tried to tighten the clamps but been unsuccessful for whatever reason (I failed similarly when the toilets upstairs were leaking; again Mom's friend came to the rescue).

So it seems that I am terrible at simply tightening screws and bolts, but have little difficulty grabbing and combining random items from my surroundings to fashion temporary fixes. I guess if anything ever goes wrong and you don't have any tools -- but do have a kettle and string and knickknacks of that nature -- I'm your man!

Luckily, today's damage was confined to several damp box bottoms and two books with wet pages towards their conclusions.