REPOST: pictures

This picture is kicking around the intertubes today. It's from the National Geographic photo contest. Many more pictures over on the big picture, but this is my favorite. It's one of those things that you would be lucky to see, never mind capture in a photograph. Totally sweet.

Image copyright Sean Heavey and NatGeo.

Moar reading, but free

It's one of my favorite times of year: cooler weather means mostly comfortable motorcycle riding, I get a couple weeks off during the xmas holiday, and also it's cool enough outside that I can bake delicious desserts if I'm in the mood. I'm almost always in the mood for dessert, so I'll probably make a carrot cake or a custard pie this weekend. The carrot cake is a bit more work but it stores nicely. The custard pie is delicious but after The Episode* I haven't been able to have one of those in the house.

Thanksgiving highlight (aside from my friend making every effort to keep his happy holiday buzz from the previous evening rolling along throughout the day) was when Trevor attempted to identify the vaguely-turkey-shaped bread item on the table. I got the impression he wasn't really in the thanksgiving mood when his guesses were as follows: "Treble clef? Swannn??" Ahh, no and no. You had to be there but I promise it was funny. To be fair, it looked substantially more swannnn than it did turkey. Just sayin'.

Magazine articles for your reading pleasure: http://givemesomethingtoread.com/post/1660934095/give-me-something-to-read-best-of-2010

If you're ipad enabled you can read them on instapaper. I'm old school so I print them to a little thing I like to call 'actualpaper' and read them at my leisure. Then I give them to other readers. It's great!



* Can't remember if I blogged about The Episode, but what happened is I made a custard pie on a busy Friday night (I party) and proceeded to eat it that night and most of the next day. I worked through 2/3 of it before I had to throw it out because I was going to eat the entire thing. The kicker was I had just taken out the garbage so when I threw the remainder of the pie in the empty, clean trash bag I thought, "I could totally come back to this; the bag isn't even dirty or anything, it's just like a big ziploc." At which point I took the whole thing to the outside trash and did some soul searching in re: gluttony, desserts, and me. It was a Low Moment.

What are you reading?

The 'Best of' book lists for the year are coming out, which is great because I heart reading and I look forward to indulging this vice, especially in December when I'm only working half the month (vacationing during the other half, if you must know).

I recommend starting with the Guardian - they solicited feedback from several authors and posted it here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/nov/27/christmas-books-year-roundup

Let me know if there's anything you liked that no one mentioned. Nobody put Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie on their list, perhaps because it wasn't sufficiently highbrow. I quite enjoyed it.

Give thanks: post number 974

Baby Girl can see the future: it looks good (there will be snacks)

Thanksgiving in the US of A today. It's a time when people get together and, depending on your family, enjoy themselves or argue. I enjoy thanksgiving very much, even though my own nuclear family went nuclear a long time ago. I have many close friends so I get to review several different thanksgiving options and pick the one that I think best suits my needs in re: dinner, dessert, accessibility, pre- and post-dinner plans, and company. I could visit my own parents but they're about 1000 miles away and it's too far for a holiday weekend. Thus they get low ratings for accessibility, pre- and post-dinner plans, and if they're mean to one another (which is often), company. To be fair, the dinner and dessert are always first rate.

October was an interesting month. It gave me a head start on what to be thankful for, and helped me figure some things out, such as: if you drop a piece of buttered toast, what side it lands on is less important than your attitude when you pick it up. In other words: good things and bad things will happen, but you own how you feel about those things. Cliche, I know, but here's the kicker: things that made me sad actually ended up making me happier. How can this be? They made me realize how good I have it, and how important it is to appreciate that goodness on a daily basis. Fuck yeah.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

I hope this post finds you well, whenever and wherever it finds you.

hugs,
-case-

'evo' is Italian for 'boner-inducing'

Pictured is the new Ducati middleweight sportbike, the 848 evo. Not pictured: the stirring in my loins.

Middleweight bikes from the big four are 600cc machines, but Ducati is a v-twin, so they have to bump up capacity to get equivalent (or better) horsepower numbers than those inline 4 engines. (The advantage of a v-twin engine is that it makes more torque, which is good for acceleration. If you've ever hammered the throttle on an I4 engine at low RPMs you'd be amazed at how little happens, especially on a 600cc bike. You would subsequently be amazed when the engine spins up and the bike takes off like you just got launched off an aircraft carrier). The best engines are a combination (or compromise) between a good torque curve and max horsepower. This new iteration of the 848 is the best yet, at least until the MV Agusta F3 comes out, and the MV will almost certainly cost a lot more.

You can get a superb 600 for half of what the 848 evo costs; it's about $12k new, $6k for a used 600 is an easy find on clist. And your maintenance costs will be much cheaper if you get a Japanese bike. But still... look at that thing. It comes in red (lame) and white with red wheels (lamer). Stealth black, you are sneaking your way into my heart. On the sly. Because you're so STEALHTY. (See what I did there?)

Before there was scrabble, there was Angry Birds

Long before I was getting blown up by over 100 points a game by people both near and far ('qat' is a word? wtf?), I had a different obsession. If you haven't played then this video will make no sense to you. But if you have...

Sex advice from people that don't have sex

With apologies to our Christian readers, an admission: some of you may be new to this space, but occasionally We write unpopular posts about things that are important to Us, such as science education in schools, and civil rights. It gives Us an opportunity to flex our rhetorical muscle, clarify points that might get discussed in later conversations, and also use the majestic plural. We hope that you will continue to visit this space anyway. Because sometimes we post recipes and they are delicious.

The pope is in the news this week for making comments about using condoms. Never been a big fan of the pope or his organization, what with their centuries-long commitment to gross ignorance and institutionalized abuse. Oh, I meant these more recent cases. My bad. Sure I chose some easy examples but there are soooo many it's pointless to list them all. You either agree or you disagree already; I'm not going to change your mind here. I'm just telling you where I'm coming from.

Anyway, setting aside my personal feelings about how/why this tax-exempt, pedophile protecting group retains its influence, I wonder why anyone thinks it's a good idea to take sex advice from a guy that doesn't have sex. How can you trust the accuracy of information when the person delivering it has NO EXPERIENCE in that area? Indeed, professes to avoid it? Recommends that you too also avoid it, until you're married? (And then only if you're straight.) Why wouldn't you question their motivations? (If you're Catholic you're prolly not much of a questioning mind anyway, but that's a separate issue, about which see prev. paragraph.)

Just. Don't. Get it.
My issue is that any answer from Catholics will be grounded in Catholic theology, which I reject. Don't start there because it's a dead end. Instead, I want an answer that explains why it makes sense to solicit information on a subject from people that actively avoid its practice, except in specific circumstances (marriage) WHICH THEY ALSO DON'T PRACTICE. That is flat crazy. Would you ask a vegan how to cook a steak? No. You wouldn't even let them near your grill. Or smoker. Not that they would ever know the difference between grillin' out and barbecue anyway. Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiit. At least the Protestants and other reformation churches have some kind of leg to stand on with this stuff. Yeah they're full of crap too, but for different reasons.

Which reminds me: Why do you always take two Baptists fishing?
Because if you take one he'll drink all your beer!

Coming up: recipes for the chocolate cake I made yesterday, and also maybe the recipe for carrot cake I'm going to make later this week. I might have posted both of those already but I can't remember. you care.

Harry Potter denouement, analyzed (revisited)

The release of the latest Harry Potter movie reminded me of a conversation I wanted to revisit. My friend was very into the HP books and we discussed them at length when the final version came out 3 years ago. Also I wanted to review some of the plot points, since my normally superhuman reading retention/comprehension is compromised by the fact that I tended to finish the HP books in 24-48 hours (total elapsed time, not total time reading). If you look at this post and say, wow, that's a lot of words, well, you should see the books.

This is a narrative about which many people have Strong Feelings, and I'm surprised by how many readers I talked to loved the epilogue. I was not one of them. I did enjoy the strength of Neville, though. While Harry was a bumbling, idealistic bore, it was deeply satisfying to see Neville make good in the end.

Here then is our conversation from July 2007, in it's entirety. (Pls ignore typos):

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me:
what did you think? were you pumped when Mrs. Weasley took it to Bellatrix? did you say, WTF! when harry took a 30 minute time out to hang out w/ the pensieve and snape's memories? were you moved when you realized that snape was a repressed, jilted, bigoted, errr... hero? did you smile when Neville killed Nagini, because you had predicted big things for him (although you overshot the mark a bit)?

I thought the epilogue was cheesy. except for the last line, it was a family sitcom. pass out. tell us something about what they had become: aurors, teachers, whatever. Instead they're parents. it was a letdown after some good storytelling in the final chapters. also, the book was about 150 pages too long. that part in the woods added nothing to the story. overall, it was very well done.

---------------------------------
okay, let's see.

Mrs. Weasley was bomb, that was awesome.

sort of expected more from Harry chilling in the pensive. Snape loved his mama...okay. it was still his fault that she was killed, and he had no problem handing over harry and james. also, he was a jerk to harry who had no parents and no family, bc, why? jealousy? school boy grudge? eff that. i am not that impressed. [My friend] steph took the other side, incredibly moved by snape's pain, sacrifice, whatev. me, not so much.

neville's part was cool. what got me was when he pulled the sword out of the hat. he was a true griffendyor hero.

also, Narcissia Malfoy willing to sacrifice herself for her son got me pretty good. tears are stinging my eyes just thinking about it. she was the same as harry's mom.

i still really like the epilogue. i told you the reason i get so into the books it that i like hanging out with the characters, so i was excited to know how that worked out.

i had a few issues. i had expected a bigger twist/revelation. i had hoped for bigger turn arounds from snape, draco and maybe petunia.

i thought harry dying and coming back was lame. he either dies or he doesn't. too easy to make up a middle ground.

i also didnt like that harry was so perfect in the end. i would have preferred him more flawed. in particular, he didn't actually kill voldemort, he never had to confront the challenge of committing murder. he was still innocent/pure blah. not a real character. dumbledore and his lust for power/struggle not to take it was much more engaging and relatable.

overall, i liked it a lot too. it would have been pretty hard to screw up.
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my take:
Harry was not much of a hero. no flaws, and every time he was in serious trouble he was rescued by someone else. example: in the ravenclaw house when searching for the diadem, he gets knocked down and Luna saves him. laaaaaame. maybe it's part of the fact that he wasn't supposed to be anything special as a wizard. voldemort was right when he said it was luck and circumstance, although we're led to believe at the end it's V's own bad choices that lead to his demise (linking himself to Harry). He was The Boy Who Lived, not The Boy Who Did Anything Much. He stands up to V, but it's Vs protective elements inside him that protect him. Harry stood tall in previous books, but in this book, not so much.

One point I really liked was when Harry stood up for McGonagall (shortly after Luna saves his bacon). Where was that guy the rest of the story? missing Ginny? feeling sorry for himself in the woods? punk.

re: Snape, enh, i was unmoved. he was an interesting character, but his resolution was unsatisfying for me. he did it all for love? are you kidding? he wasn't in love. he was obsessed. and he was an unremitting jerk who couldn't let go of a) his "love" for lily, or b) his bullying at the hands of James. get over yourself. move on. it's not noble, it's pathetic. if you say he was in league w/ Dumbledore, well, fair enough. It was interesting that Dumbledore was pulling the strings and that he was every bit the egomaniac that V was. It was his ambition that killed him in the end. There's a lesson there...

i missed the narcissia sacrifice. i will review that again. you were right, that is a key turning point.

when Neville pulled that sword out of the hat and killed the snake I almost wept for joy. i wanted to cheer for him. he came further than any other character. i said, f yeah, that's how you handle business. I was also much pleased when Harry gets back to school and they decide they're going to fight. Harry tries to talk them out of it (again, and again, and again, does Rowling just Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V these sections?) and they say no, they are there for him, and they are taking a stand. That was nice. And I wept a little when Dobby showed up w/ the house elves to turn the tide. A pleasant touch, i figured they would be left out.

lastly, I think there was too much made in the book of Harry's unwillingness to sink to the DE's level. He should have had more edge. Instead, he comes off as weak. Lupin chastises him for it in the early pages, but HP refuses to make the hard choices (unlike Dumbledore). You could argue that is why D died and HP lived, but i think HP would be a more triumphant character if he could make the hard choices and survive. If you have to wrestle a snake, you're gonna get dirty. It's how you clean up after that matters. (At least in my fantasy world.) :)

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and the last word from katie:
i agree with you about harry. he is a weak character. more of a conduit to the rest of the story than anything else.

i was very excited for neville in this book. as you know i had even higher hopes for him, but i do not hold him responsible for those not happening. he is one of the best characters. not in that i like him the best, but that his story is probably the most touching and heartbreaking of anyones. in the first book, when he gets house points for standing up to harry, he is triumphant. in the fifth when he is visiting his parents at the hospital and harry, ron and herm come across him, it is the most heart wrenching scene in the entire series. he has suffered as much, if not more than, harry, but is not "the boy who lived" and thus no one really knows about his pain and no one offers him their support the way they do harry. he is much stronger than harry.

harry has always been obnoxiously repetitive. him trying to convince others not to help, trying to protect ron and herm, refusing to go to authority figures who could help him at the appropriate time, etc. i think the three central characters all have the same essential problem of not growing throughout the series. they lack character development.

i completely agree with your last paragraph. you gonna get rid of death eaters by stunning them over and over again? obviously not.

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/end/

The gauntlet has been thrown down

I am officially everyone's whipping boy on words with friends. I remember now why I never play scrabble. I know a lot of words (more than anyone I can think of offhand), but I am SO BAD AT SCRABBLE. Ugh. But I will get better, people. Enjoy your victories now because the fat kid is going to improve. Search the web for strategies? Yes. Learn new high-scoring words before other players use them against me? Yes. It's going to be lopsided and lonely you get an xbox360 and allow me to destroy you at CoD: Black Ops. But I am going to practice. Or something.

Video is somebody doing amazing things on a bike. Sweet. Like epic skate tricks, it never gets old watching somebody do impossible stuff on wheels. The first trick alone was worth a video, never mind what he does about 1:45 in, over the bench to the retaining wall and back over the park bench. That is insane.

Buffalo buffalo

Had to hit the internet for some visual inspiration today. I don't know why I loved this animated gif so hard, but I do. Headline for the post where I scavenged the attached picture is 'sad bookshelf is sad', which made me laugh. (Notice how they had to put the encyclopedias at the bottom so it didn't tip over?)

Been a tough week in blogville. Not much going on. Usually I could hammer out something pithy about current events or my gym schedule but I don't have anything really good, so I'll dig into the email mailbag for a word problem I kicked over to my word-minded peeps.

The following is a famous linguistics exercise. It's also a grammatically correct, complete sentence:

Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

I asked friend Jeff if he had come across it in his studies and he said yes, but he can't teach it in his classes because his students would just get more confused. English is hard. Sentence is easier to parse if you read it as 'place animal (verb) place animal'. So: buffalo from Buffalo push buffalo from Buffalo.

I got the sentence from a Steven Pinker book about language. I forget which one. He references its source as an associate of his. So, credit where credit is due: check the book for the actual source. I would look it up but my books are in boxes in the garage. :/

In New Addictions I finally beat Skott in a furious battle of wits on the virtual scrabble board. By one point. He's up two game two one after delivering a spanking in game two. I had to withdraw in game 3 because I played a word I thought was illegal. Turns out it wasn't, but that's my fault for not knowing (word was jesuit, if you must know, and yes, the lower case usage is accepted, which is why it wasn't illegal). If you've got an ipod touch or iphone and want to go head to head with a very mediocre player then hit me up. LET'S DO THIS. My words with friends name is Dooshie McTool. All my usual videogame and forum names were taken. Which sucked.

REPOST - good enough to eat

Cribbed this from someone else's interweb space, but I liked it, and it reminds me of something I would do (the eating part, not the drawing), so here you go:


“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”

- Maurice Sendak

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It's almost Fall weather here. That means dessert time, and soon. Get excited. CARROT CAKE.

Somewhere Coach Jeff is laughing right now

I'm on injured reserve for a couple weeks with biceps tendinitis. Why is this funny? Because my friend Coach Jeff always gives me a hard time about only lifting arms when I go to the gym. That's ridiculous, but now I have an overuse injury and can't shock the guns for 2 weeks, followed by 4 weeks (!!) of light work to rebuild strength. :/ Could be worse, though. It's not serious, and I can still go to the gym, just can't do the usual.

I'll have to rotate some different work into the program. Spin class, here I come.

In new entertainments: try words with friends on the iphone or, if you're me, ipod touch. Scrabble with your peeps. Good times.

Veterans day was yesterday

In honor of Veteran's day, here's a good post from one of my favorite writers, who was brilliant on withleather.com (sports blog) until they moved him over to write about television (warmingglow.com). Ugh. TV? He's still funny, but TV sucks.

So here you go: http://www.uproxx.com/feature/2010/11/eight-completely-badass-veterans-youve-never-heard-of/

Yay for turtles!

This comes straight from the internets. It's still funny. Photo credit to whomever took the original picture. It wasn't me. Nice depth of field and photoshop effort.

In unrelated news, there's a psychic / 'spirit medium' that works (and I use that word very loosely) down the hall from me. She gets clients to come in and she has 'seeings' with them where they contact the spirit world. It gets quite loud when she 'channels' the spirits. This kind of thing can't be done quietly. Seriously, this happens. And people pay for it. Anyway, what kind of psychic is she if she can't even figure out when I'm coming down the hall and walks into me? Oh she's not THAT kind of psychic? My bad. She must be the other kind, not so much predict-the-future, more make-shit-up.

Maybe if she channeled the spirit of my dead loved ones she could predict why people pay to have her invent nonsense. Maybe.

Teachers are funny

Professor Jeff has to deal with mostly good students. But every now and then he gets to work with students that have no idea how dumb they are.

The cheating parts, and the parts where the student complains about 'deserving' a grade, are particularly common in his experience.

He sent this. I'm sure it's a big hit with teachers everywhere.

Sound req'd, and NSFW, because of the f-word.

The People Have Spoken, part V

Reader Shannon (NMSNSS) comes to us from LA, and I don't mean Los Angeles. How she ended up here is a mystery, but we're glad for the feedback and until we have more readers than time to respond to their comments we will continue to feature hers. She wrote a whole funny post on chicken strips, and the only thing I have to add is that she refers to the carefully chosen words I used as:

blah blah blah blah chicken strips

That's clearly wrong, because what my post actually says is:
blah blah chicken strips blah blah blah

Sheesh.

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Bad news is that corporate is cracking down on internet usage at the office. I used to like to post an update at lunch or in the evening but it looks like all internet traffic is now a Serious Issue, so I'll be posting only early or late henceforth. Minor hassle but I'll do what I can to keep the magic happening. In my pants. Wait, what?



What does Glasvegas have to do with any of this? Nothing. Sweet jam though.

Louder = Better

Spent the weekend doing important stuff, like, umm, restringing the Babe (pictured, in the chair - it's a Gibson Les Paul Classic). I need to restring Sara too (that's the acoustic), but I wanted to play instead of bumble with the strings so I put that off until later this week.

Stuffed animal (pictured) is a chew toy that baby girl left to keep me company. 

I needed my roommate to experience the full awesome of The Babe played through my Fender DeVille 4x10 amp. The amp is appropriate for 'small to medium sized gigs', and totally inappropriate for a 10x10 room with hardly any furniture and hardwood floors. It's also perfect when your roommate is suffering on the couch with a hangover. Sorry bro. Kind of.

Total number of seconds I played before a screw from the vent rattled out of the ceiling and fell to the floor: ~6. (Some of the falling fasteners are also attributable to the stereo. We do a brisk business in loud music here at Chez Spencer.)

Took me a while to get the tone I was hoping for. One of the (dis)advantages of a tube amp is that they don't start to sound good unless you turn them up. The volume increase is nonlinear, so it goes from inaudible (setting 1, seriously, it doesn't even make noise until you get to 2), to 'kind of loud' (2-5)  to 'deafening' (5-12; hells yeah it goes to 11). You can keep turning the volume on the amp up but you only get a minor increase in volume up above about 8; instead the tone changes as you push more power through the tubes. Further complicating matters are volume and tone controls on the guitar. So many variables! So much power!

Invited the roommate to plug in the acoustic (she's an acoustic-electric) and jam but he said he 'doesn't know how to play'. I pointed out that didn't stop me, but he demurred. I'm optimistic he might get involved next time. Next step: learn a song for the electric. Or two. Maybe two.

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Brief technical description for Music Whiz Scotty B, who has a similar guitar and same amp, and will want to know what settings I used. Skip this part if you aren't into minutiae.
Tone pickup on LP (front?), guitar pickup volume at 5, pickup tone maxed, amp volume to 4, amp treble at 6, regular drive, and I forget the other settings. no reverb.

The People Have Spoken, part IV

The people have spoken. It's been hard to find a moment to update this space and give the readerships comments the attention they deserve. It's late and I'm tired but I don't want them to have to wait any longer.
Reader Shannon (or, Not My Similarly Named Sociopathic Sister, henceforth NMSNSS for short) asks / comments:

I didn't understand chicken strips so I had to look it up.

Now I understand and I'm sure that my life will be richer for knowing.

I don't know why I get sucked into these things. I'm a middle aged house wife who works at a church, for pete's sake. I could care less about motorcycles or chicken strips (unless they're from Cane's).

Since you contributed to the wasting of 10 minutes of my life that I'll never get back, I think the least you can do is give me some ideas on how I can work chicken strips into every day conversation.
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Chicken strips are what you get on your motorcycle tire when you don't lean it over very far. The only way to lean a bike over is to go fast around corners, and in order to do that you have to trust both your tire and the road. Some guys like to lean their bikes over really far on public roadways. They have a trust in the roadway, and traffic, and conditions, that can best be described as 'optimistic', but is more often described as 'fatal'.

If you ride by the book, in every corner you leave a margin for error so that in the event of some unforeseen circumstance (a car in the road, gravel in the road, a dead coyote in the road - which happened to me last week, water on the road, whatever) you can either stop, adjust your line and go around it, or both. In the canyons the penalties for unexpected loss of traction are severe. So I go relatively slow, and I have some pretty sweet chicken strips to show for it. Truth is it's definitely possible to ride the canyons near my house safely and still go faster than me, since I only ride a speed at which I am comfortable. And that's not very speedy.

On the racetrack you can be confident about the road surface, and the line, and traffic, and traction, so you don't have any excuse and can fully commit to the turn. I hope to take my bike to the track in the next couple months and put some proper wear all the way out to the edge of the tires.

Not sure how to work it into conversation, since 'chicken strips' has a negative connotation and you don't want to insult anyone. Plus it comes up infrequently even if you like talking about bikes (and I spend a LOT of time talking about bikes), unless you're at the track. :)

Past my bedtime.
Thanks for reading.

I (heart) animals!

yayyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!

Priorities

I survived another layoff, still have a job.
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Indulge me for a moment while I take a break from the dick jokes and do some navel-gazing. If you're over it, come back tomorrow, and it'll be business as usual. Promise. 
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It's been an interesting month over here in me-ville. The company I worked for got 'acquired' by another company, so I had to wait out another round of layoffs (they cut 25% of the old company yesterday). It was the fifth round of cuts in 2 years. Also, there were some other personal disappointments I had to deal with at the same time.

These hiccups encouraged (forced?) me to examine how I felt about my job-career, my personal life, future happiness, and all sorts of other shit I don't pay much attention to when I'm busy practicing yoga / working / reading books / playing guitar / traveling to amazing places / working out / riding motorcycles / dominating / generally being awesome and doing awesomely. But sometimes things don't go your way, and instead of waking up every day noticing how good your life is, you wake up and wonder what the hell just happened. This is not my preferred Default Setting for navigating the day.

So where are we now? I don't think that all my life lessons need to be reproduced in this space, but the short version is that I appreciate my life more than I ever have. It's good to be me, though not because I'm anything special. Instead, it's good to be me because my friends and family are amazing. (If you're reading this, you're probably one of them.)

Have a good day today.
Thanks for reading.

Total domination: Daft Punk costume in action

Halloween 2010 was about what you'd expect: sloppy drunk with a side of shenanigans. I don't mean me - I had several drinks and there are some photos of me on fbook that I only vaguely remember posing for, but I was far from the most drunk person at the party. Yeah I was working the dance floor but I'm pretty sure everyone else out there was as drunk as I was so whatever. 

Costume of excellence goes to my roommate, who dominated from start to finish.

This is him pre-partying with a martini, and also spending a few moments in repose before he made magic happen at the club.The club shots are poorly lit, but I'll see what I can do.