Cocktail Confessions

Many congratulations to my wife, who just celebrated her ten year milestone at her place of employment.  I actually believe she’s been there a bit longer as she started off as a temporary employee before the company officially hired her as a full time employee.

The last few years have been a mental struggle for her, as I imagine it would be for anyone after ten years.  It’s hard to be continually challenged and motivated after so many years, especially when there are a lot of changes to the corporate structure every few months or so.  At times it can be very stressful for her as she will come home and tell me about some new bombshell that drops unexpectedly and a whole new management team is coming in.  It’s actually happened quite a few times with more and more frequency the last couple of years where they have had at least four different CEO’s within that time frame.  As you imagine, with each regime change, there is always new people coming in, old people leaving (not necessarily by choice), and shake-ups as to who is now reporting to who.

With all that being said, however, she has a decent job.  She works less than ten minutes from our house, every day is casual day, and her hours are somewhat flexible.  For as much heartache as it gives her, it could be a lot worse.

Needless to say, for her ten years of effort the parent company gave her an eight page catalog in which she can select a gift.  She brought the catalog home last night to show me and I honestly have to say, what a fricken’ joke.  I don’t know who at that company is in charge of employee relations or morale, but I cannot help but imagine some old little bitty who knits tea cozies is at the head of this thing.  All the gifts are so cheap looking, tacky, useless, or just plain outdated.

I had to laugh at the artwork section.  After ten years of service, who in the hell in their right mind is going to choose a piece of artwork by some unknown artist that you can easily pick up at a swap meet and look right at home in a dental office?  I mean really…a picture of a lion? An eagle soaring?  A barn in the middle of nowhere USA? Pathetic.

How about the ladies pastel pink checkered golf bag from 1970?  The brushed nickel analog clock paper weight?  How about the sterling silver ring some inlaid polished rock you’ve never heard of?  If those don’t catch your fancy, how about the glass bowl party snack holder?  The fluted vase?  The leather luggage tags?  Are you kidding me?  Ten years of service and you can have leather luggage tags.

Absolutely embarrassing and sad.  It’s not even my award and I feel insulted for her.  Why not just give her a healthy bonus check?  They think that picking some stupid flea market ‘Big Lots’ clearance reject is some lofty gesture on their part to show gratitude and appreciation for all those years of dedication.  I know, how about give her an extra week of vacation, or why not the catalog that the CEO gets to pick from.  Do you think for a minute that the CEO (if one ever lasts that long) is going to choose the simulated mahogany 5×7” picture frame?  He’d throw the catalog back across the desk, take his family out for a 5-star meal and charge it back as a business expense and laugh the whole way home.  I know I would.

My wife decided to look up many of these gifts to see their value on the Internet.  As you would expect, the majority fell along the lines of $59-$79 dollars, with the majority landing on the lower end of that spectrum.

With that being said there was one item in the catalog that may actually have some value to our family, and not necessarily for her, but more for me.  My wife was gracious enough to extend her gift to me instead and made the suggestion that we pick this particular item: a charcoal smoker.  Despite the fact that at Lowe’s it actually does retail for $59 (probably cheaper during July 4^th weekend or end of summer sale), my wife is sacrificing her earned gift to me which is a very generous and appreciated gesture.  So, I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to her and let her know I love her.

Now, once we get it, perhaps in her honor we can do a really nice smoked brisket and invite some of her close coworkers to our house later this summer for a celebratory BBQ.  It’ll give me a great excuse to try a new recipe and buy some nice apple or hickory wood and a stove-pipe charcoal starter with real ‘wood’ briquettes.  I’ll do a review of it once we try it out down the line.

The last few days I’ve had a mild case of writers block when it’s come to thinking about a topic to discuss .  Oh, I’ve had a few ideas percolating within the old noggin, mostly about my upcoming few days off, or some great beers I’ve recently had.   However, just as I was about to put it off for yet another day, I realized my place of employment has a rich cavern of stupid gems I can mine from on a regular basis, and today I struck gold!

We have a thing at work called ’5S’, and the majority of normal folk can’t tell you what all the S’s stand for (Sort, Shine are all I can remember), but it’s an idea developed by the Japanese that has something to do along the lines of making your place of employment a better overall experience.  It has to do with maintaining a clean and safe environment, things should look tidy and put away, everything in order…blah, blah, blah.  In concept it sounds like a decent idea, but in practice and personal experience it’s more of a hassle that only a few people seem to really get off on. 

And by a few people, I mean a minority handful of select kiss-asses who take this concept to an irrational level of eleven.  I swear, it has turned these individuals into the Gestapo of ridiculous policies where a committee of ‘yes men’ all pat themselves on the back for forming an adhoc committee to discuss the obvious.  The problem I have with it is that it takes all the ability of logical problem solving skills and responsibility of the sane workers and places it in the hands of a handful who take forever to rule on what would seem a no-brainer to the rest. 

This committee of five or six has a tour once every three months, armed with a digital camera, clip boards, and frazzled panic and walk around the facilities to point out and document things that need to be cleaned up, repaired, or fixed for safety reasons.  Like I said, 5S seems decent in concept, but now its more of a nuisance than anything else.  The majority of big ticket items were addressed the first few times.  Now I have the feeling they are just making shit up or going overboard to justify their own experience.  It’s as if they ‘have’ to find something on each walkthru now, and if they don’t they either failed or try harder.  It’s gotten nit-picky to epic proportions and eye-roll inducing at worst.  I am convinced they are on a mission to write anything down now just so they can say they found something.  God forbid the company actually passes one of these tours.  It has literally come down to things such as which font is used to mark a door, or how wide a tape marker is….a half inch or a quarter inch these days.

All this leads up to today’s asinine event: The speaker.

Apparently they had a dry run today for the actual walkthru on Wednesday of this week.  In one of our least populated buildings there is a secured area that only a few people have access to and way out of the way for a regular employee to find themselves near.   Now in that secured room which has plenty of open space, there is a single mono speaker sitting on a portable plastic step….in the corner. 

There is nothing special or noteworthy about this speaker other than the fact it looks like it came from Radio Shack back in the late 70′s as it is adorned with some tacky beige tweed fabric.  It doesn’t work, or at least it hasn’t been hooked up to anything in at least three years that I have been with the company, and I’m sure many years before that.  Like I said, it is sitting in a corner doing nothing but collecting dust.

Anyway, even though the ‘committee’ has walked through this area multiple times in the past and this speaker has never caused a problem, stolen any kids lunch money, or made racial epithets, today it has now become a red-ticket, high priority, def-con-one issue.  Why today and not the last dozen times they’ve walked through this room?  Your guess is as good as mine.

So the committee of managers and higher-up muckity-mucks decide to talk amongst themselves and call my boss.  My boss in turns talks with another supervisor to discuss who owns the speaker, what is it doing now, what was it’s original purpose, and what can the company do about it before Wednesday.  Both my boss and supervisor then contact yours truly to understand and glean information from me on the history and current dossier of the six inch woofer.  I explain that is has been there for longer than I have been employed here, that it is not hooked up nor has been for at least three years and that no one knows who is responsible for it judging from the quarter inch of dust on it.  I simply reply, “Throw it out.”

I am instead met with “Well, we have to follow procedures.” and “We have to make some calls.” and more back and forth banter between them seemingly goes on for much longer than a govermental selection and vetting process of a Supreme Court nominee. 

Finally, when it is all said and done, they open an electronic ticket for me in our work process flow system to have me dispose of the speaker.  This equates to me printing out a ticket, walking down to the building, grabbing the speaker, throwing it in the trash, walking back, and then closing out the ticket.  My manual labor of throwing the speaker out was all of 30 seconds….the paperwork I had to acknowledge and then sign afterwards about ten minutes worth.

Now why none of the Muckity-mucks couldn’t just throw it out themselves in the beginning and just be done with it?  Why make multiple phone calls to various people to discuss the fate of a speaker that is clear close to forty years old and doing nothing but holding down a non-moving step ladder?  Why open a ticket and assign it to me for something this ludicrous?  Who the hell knows other than to justify their won existence.  I mean why bother with trying to improve employee moral, or invest in new equipment to make our jobs easier, or strategizing about how to improve our overall standing in the marketplace….there are paperclips out of place somewhere and mismatching paper cups in the cafeteria, and by golly, we’re going to find them.

Eyeballing - Sport of the mentally challenged.

There is apparantly a new trend that has orginated somewhere in the U.K. amongst their crooked toothed teens, and of course not to be outdone, we here in the states seem to have spawned our own home grown collection of idiotic teens.

I came across this news story today about a new fad termed “Eyeballing.”:

Vodka eyeballing. It’s the latest drinking fad on YouTube, and it could cause blindness.

Hundreds of online videos that originated in the U.K. show teens pouring vodka directly into their eyes, straight from the bottle. The videos are getting hundreds of thousands of hits.

Substance abuse expert Mike Gimbel claims kids aren’t eyeballing to get drunk faster, but do it when the effects of alcohol have already set in and impaired their judgment. Eyeballing is more of a prank than a way to become more intoxicated.

“They’re not doing it to get more drunk, they’re doing it as part of a fad. ‘I dare you to do this,’” Gimbel said.

Robert Stutman, president of the Maryland Optometric Association, said eyeballing can be very damaging to the eyes. Vodka is 40 to 50 percent alcohol and can burn and scar the cornea.

“It probably could [cause blindness] if it caused severe enough scarring of the cornea,” Stutman said.

Personally, while I understand the flawed concept of trying to get buzzed quicker, I just cannot imagine anybody in their right mind thinking that pouring alcohol directly into their eyes is gonna turn out good in any form.  For one, you’re just wasting your good booze (or not so good depending on what you have on hand).  How goofy do you look by pouring a shot or more in your eye when 99%+ is just going to spill down your face and into your shirt.  Plus, you can’t taste it, so what’s the point?

The mindset is that you can introduce alcohol quicker into the bloodstream by allowing capillaries close to to the surface of the skin to absorb alcohol directly, therefor bypassing the conventional method of swallowing alcohol down the gullet into the stomach where it is to be processed and then waiting for the intended effects as the alcohol has to travel back upwards to the brain.

I for one knew of this concept back when I was a teen myself, but I also know that pouring alcohol into certain tissues causes a horrific burn.  Just watch any old western movie where they use a bottle of whisky to sterilize a gunshot or knife wound.  Hell, I can’t recall one injured cowboy that either didn’t flinch from the pain or got drunk via this shotgun medical practice. 

That being said, I recall from my youth that in biology classes I once took that the area just under the tongue that attaches to your lower jaw is chock full of capillaries and the ’tissue’ is relatively thin.  I also know that there are a lot of medications that are termed ‘sub-lingual’, that is they are intended to be absorbed quickly by the body when placing drops under the tongue.  Back in the day, I used to take a good swig of a beverage and hold it under my own tongue for a brief period of time before swallowing.  I figured even back then that the alcohol could be introduced to my bloodstream much quicker this way, and since its proximation to the brain was relatively closer than my stomach, that I would get buzzed slightly faster.

Now, while I am not advocating or endorsing my own practices, it just makes a helluva lot more sense than dumping a bottle in my eye likes it Visine.

I do not proclaim to be the neatest or tidiest person in the world.  I don’t lose sleep over an errant jacket not hung up or a loose leaf magazine hanging out on the coffee table, but on rare occasion I reach my very own breaking point where I just can’t take the junk collection anymore.  I often think that I could give Sanford & Son a run for their money, and I tend to skim past the TV show ‘Hoarders’ for fear of recognizing a camera crew standing outside my own house. 

In reality, I’m really not that bad.  However, I do tend to hand on to some things much longer than I think I need to.  And sometimes it’s not even a conscious thing.  Often I place something down or put it away only to really forget about it until it is discovered either months or years later.  And I’m not the only guilty party in my household either.  My wife and step-daughter have their own unique collections to excess, however, whereas my wife will cling on to some useful objects, my daughter retains broken or gaudy junk rather than throwing it out.  Unfortunately, it’s her bedroom floor that tends to be the catchall of this stuff, and worse yet, in my mind that floor is a part of ‘my’ house, ‘ergo’ it’s also my junk by proxy.

Some people, (mostly the fairer sex I presume) get an itch for Spring cleaning, and can can spend an hour here and there culling a closest of yesterday’s fashions, maybe some expired medications, and newspaper articles or magaizines one will never read again (if they even read it in the first place).  I on the other hand get the urge for a purge about twice a year, and it is always amazing to me how much I can indeed clear out.  It’s also amazing that it seems every six months or so we as a family have collectively filled that empty void again with more useless crap.

The job of cleaning house is both time consuming and laborious, but I always feel a great sense of accomplishment and even

Er...not our house, but you get the idea.

liberation thereafter.  To look at the large 50 gallon trash cans in front of my house on garbage day and know that they are full of stuff I have ‘let go’ gives me a sense of self-satisfaction and I feel my overall house is indeed lighter.  I often think if we had to move one day, that’s 50 gallons worth of stuff’ I don’t have to pack.

I am getting much better at my collections though and what I retain.  I used to keep every single book I ever read, thinking someday I may want to read them again, or may need to pull them out for some trivial information as if I would be just a life-line away from “Who wants to be a millionaire?” contestant.  At one point I had every single magazine issue of Wizard (the guide to comics) from debut issue number 1 though 100.  I have since let go of them and tossed them all, and though it pained me at the time, I have never really missed them since.  My used paperback books?…I know sell them on Amazon.com or donate to the library.

I have a harder time with clothes.  I have shirts dating back to the late 90′s and mid 90′s I just don’t have the heart to ditch, thinking that one day I may fit back into them, or getting rid of a stained t-shirt is sacrilege.  Oh, my wife laughs and mocks me, but she is not better.  If you were to look at her closest she has 50+ pairs of varying shoes in which she’ll be the first to admit she only really wears about 5 pair. 

Same with her hair care products.  In our shower you can count my bottles on one hand, probably 3 fingers: shampoo, conditioner, and some body scrub.  My wife on the other had never has anything less than 5 bottles of shampoo, perhaps 6 bottles of conditioner.  And that’s just the shower folks.  If we look at her vanity, there are easily multiple bottles or canisters of hair sprays, straighteners, body enhancers, stuff to repair split ends or control fizz.  She also has a hard time getting rid of clothing tags.  Whereas I may have a collection of dated shirts, I often find small cardboard tags and the little vinyl attachment spruces all about the house.  Sometimes they will be there for days if not weeks on end until I throw them out myself.

So why the sudden interest in a home cleansing?  Well, my wife is out on business this week, meaning there is no one to watch over my efforts and to tell me what stays and what goes.  My daughter is also gone, and I have free reign to pitch her stuff as well.  I always try and do this when they are not there because it works.  There is no one in my way, no distractions, no second guessing, no arguments.  I look at stuff and make a snap judgement call….if it looks like it hasn’t been used in a year, or looks like it was forgotten, then it’s out.  To this day, I have done quite a few ‘purges’ and not once has my wife come back to me and said “Hey, do you recall that piece of wood decoration we got from the neighbor five years ago I put in a box in the garage?  I need it now.”

Everything on the table...$.50

This round actually got started this weekend.  See, I was looking for some acetate covers for my cell phone I purchased a few months back.  They cost me all of $5 and I misplaced them.  So instead of going back to the store to buy new ones, I began a quest to locate them in our house.  Three hours into my non-stop spelunking sojourn, I had nary an idea where they were, but I did discover bank statements from 2002 (mind you, it is 2010), unopened VHS movies (even though we have a Blu-ray player), about 20 different beer bottle openers we get from various trade shows, and of course directions for appliances we no longer even own.  I spent most of Sunday night just shredding documents that serve no purpose to us today and if I wasn’t looking so hard for my cell phone protector covers these envelops of yesteryear would sit even longer in dust covered stasis.

I know for a fact I have magazines dating back six months still in their protective mylar mailing jackets I have never opened, and I’m sure I can find more questionable gems of crap in my daughters room.  So it looks like tomorrow there will be an excorcism taking place at my house.  I will be staying home, Zune player in back pocket, as I go room to room, drawer by drawer throwing out crap I have deemed crap.  Because if I don’t, I know no one else will. 

As a tease this morning, I opened a drawer in the kitchen and discovered mardi-gras style beads that were accumulated from some software-centric trade show a few years back.  There is no reason to have them.  I have never seen my wife wear these chipped plastic baubles since she unpacked them from her suitcase more than two years ago.  I doubt there will ever be a day or event when wearing beads that say ‘Big Dog inventory software 2008′ will creep back into our lives, or the numerous take-out menus I have collected from fast food joint that don’t even exist anymore will be paramount to our existance.

I had went out this past Tuesday night to celebrate a birthday of one of my friends, Jon, at Buffalo Wild Wings in Lake Forest, CA.

As any true red blooded male will attest, hot wings and beer are a match made in heaven, and quite a favorite bar attraction if the word gets out the wings are good.  Well, anyway, between our small group of guys, we polished off close to 75 wings of various degrees of hotness and flavors.  Included were ‘Asian Zing’, ‘Original Hot’ and ‘BBQ Hot’.  And in addition to the few beers we had, there were a few rounds of Jack & Coke being ordered as well.

Needless to say, my taste buds and eyes always seem to trump the knowledge I have that I may have some G.I. tract issues the next day.

I awoke at 5am in the morning with a mild case of heartburn and acid indigestion.  Over the years I have learned that Mylanta, especially the mint flavor has been a good friend to me in a time of need and discomfort.  The cool coating action has always worked in the past, and it may even be psychosomatic to me, but I swear Mylanta has helped with hangovers in the past as well.

And can I also admit to you, I love the chalky taste?  I swear, if they could make a Mylanta ice cream ‘shake’, I’d most likely drink it.  I know that sounds gross and warped, but hey, that’s what I like so that all that matters.

Anyway, I reached under the counter for the big blue bottle and took a large swig.  It’s minty coolness was refreshing but I noticed that it was a little more watery than I remember it being.  I didn’t think much of it and went back to bed hoping that it would soon works its magic.

Well that magic was more like a hex, for within 30 minutes I was in the restroom with a mild case of diarrhea.  And then a more violent case 30 minutes after that.  Could it be I had food poisoning? Was the chicken bad?  Funny, it didn’t foul the night before.

It was only a bit later when I was more awake did I take a closer look at the blue bottle I had grabbed earlier for relief.  It wasn’t Mylanta.  It was Phillips Milk of Magnesia, a similar looking bottle in the wee hours of the morning. It was the two words obscurely located on the lower right hand side of the label that gave me horrified pause: saline laxative.

Yup, I grabbed the wrong bottle.  For the next seven hours or so I would find myself making numerous unscheduled trips to the public restroom and rubbing my arse raw with industrial grade sandpaper someone out there is passing off as toilet paper to corporations. 

By the end of the day yesterday I had a new outlook on the definition of roto-rooter as I felt I had inadvertently snaked my own lower intestines.  I pined to soak my tushey in the tub.  So, let my error be your lesson: the next time you reach for an antacid or heartburn medication, make sure you have the correct one, lest you wish to spend the day in the loo with a good book.

Holy Kool Aid!

It is widely well known and accepted that billionaire Bruce Wayne began his ascent to the mantle of Gotham City’s vigilante of justice and detective extroidinaire, (aka Batman) after the tragic murder of his parents when he was but a youth.

However, very little is know about Chatsworth, CA’s. own crusader of the night, Clarence Washington.

While enrolled in the liberal studies certificate program at the local community college, part time student and current Papa John’s delivery man, Clarence Washington takes matters into his own hands at night. 

Donning his very own stealth suit (Kobe Bryant’s jersey painted black), and armed with the latest in Radio Shack technology, ‘Blackman’ carves out his own brand of sweet Chuck-D inspired justice nightly (except when there is a delivery to be made or new episodes of Run’s House) and helps keep graffiti artists and unsolicited window washers at bay.

You’re lucky if you can catch a glimpse of this super-tricked out VW and the man behind the crinkled do-it-yourself tint.  However, vigilant observers may catch a glimpse of the Blackmobile frequently parked outside his rented room of his mom’s house in the 300 block of town.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has captured the highest-resolution temperature map to date of Saturn’s moon Mimas, and it found Pac-Man.

Mimas, one of Saturn’s many, many moons, is notable for several reasons. According to Wikipedia, it’s the “smallest known astronomical body that is thought to be rounded in shape due to self-gravitation.” For a sci-fi nerd, Mimas is notable because its singular prominent crater immediately brings to mind the Death Star – that’s no space station, that’s a moon! Now, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has taken temperature-map photos of Mimas that give it another claim to fame: It’s secretly Pac-Man.

Specifically, it’s Pac-Man eating a dot, as seen here to the right. I mean, that’s unmistakably the classic videogame icon right there. I wonder if they’ll find Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde on any of the other moons while they’re at it?

NASA itself hadn’t been expecting to find the Pac-Man in the Moon, either:

Scientists working with the composite infrared spectrometer, which mapped Mimas’ temperatures, expected smoothly varying temperatures peaking in the early afternoon near the equator. Instead, the warmest region was in the morning, along one edge of the moon’s disk, making a sharply defined Pac-Man shape, with temperatures around 92 Kelvin (minus 294 degrees Fahrenheit). The rest of the moon was much colder, around 77 Kelvin (minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit). A smaller warm spot — the dot in Pac-Man’s mouth — showed up around Herschel, with a temperature around 84 Kelvin (minus 310 degrees Fahrenheit).

As it turns out, Pac-Man is defined by temperatures at a balmy -294 F. No wonder he eats so much – gotta stay warm somehow!

Credit to Escapist.com via G4

“If you watch ‘JAWS’ backwards, it’s a movie about a shark that keeps throwing up people until they have to open a beach.”

Sometimes I wonder just how lazy I actually am.  It’s a hard question to really answer both honestly and contextually if I think about it for any given amount of time.  And the only really reason I am thinking about it now is that I am too lazy to do anything else more constructive.  However, since I am actually developing a post in the right here and the right now goes to show you I have enough motivation and energy to devout to such a mundane topic, perhaps I am not that lazy afterall.

I suppose laziness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.  Or a matter of opinion and perspective.

My wife was gone on a business trip this last week and left me home alone to fend for myself the last five days.  Now generally speaking I am not a lazy person.  I actually get more done in the early hours of the day, than the average Joe does before finishing his first cup of coffee.  I also try an plan out my free time (i.e. not slaving away at my actual job) to fit in the myriad of chores most men slough off.  I do my own laundry, I vacuum, I mop, I do dishes, I walk the dog, I pull weeds, I pick up dog crap, etc., etc.  I also manage to fit in numerous other tasks on the weekends and still manage to get in some drinks and entertainment. 

This can also leave me exhausted, or too brain numb for the trivial things, such as overlooking the fact if there is enough soap or ‘body wash’ in shower when it’s time to get clean.  Not just once, but two days in a row now, thank you kindly.

See I was in the shower the other day and reached for the soap bottle when I discovered it was empty.  So naturally I reached for the other one (it’s always good to have a back up), only to realize that my backup was also bone dry inside.  How I did not notice the evening before they were both empty and why they were still in the shower is something only my subconscious could answer if it wasn’t marinating in a jacuzzi of hops and barley. 

Now the first thing that came to mind was contemplating if there was a full bottle available in the closet which I am sure there was, but this is where the laziness kicks in:  the thought of getting out of a hot shower, dripping and walking to the closest to retrieve bottle of new soap seemed like a very daunting and bothersome task, even if it only did take 20 seconds.  The whole thought process bouncing around in my noggin, weighing both the pros and cons of such a bold and innovative solution took longer than if I just would have performed the task initially.  And again, the fact I am detailing this all out in this very post is beyond any sane comprehension.

Then another bottle grabbed my attention.  It was blue, very blue in fact, and it isn’t that much a of a stretch of the imagination to realize it also had a faint hint of blueberry fragrance.  What was it?  It was my dog’s specially formulated body scrup/shampoo.  I picked up and scanned the bottle.  I read the ingrediants…seemed all above board and normal.  I took a small whiff…yup…blueberries for sure.  I looked at the price: $14.99.  Surly, if his shampoo costs more than mine it can’t be all that bad. 

So with all the facts and circumstances laid out before me, I am readily admitting that due to my laziness of not wanting to temporarily get out of the shower, I lathered by whole body up from head to toe in my dogs shampoo.

Would it suprise you to learn that the following day, knowing full well ahead of time I was out of body wash stepping back into teh shower, that of course I forgot again?  Well, don’t be.  I did indeed forget the second day, and once again lathered up in my doggy sudz, both of us smelling like blueberries.

So as any self respecting nerdy geek like myself will admit to without embarrassment, I enjoy video games.  Always have.  My very first console was an Intellivision, followed by the following: Sega Genesis, Nintendo 64, Xbox, Wii, Xbox 360.  That doesn’t include the portable systems I’ve owned as well: GameBoy advance and PSP nor my pure gaming rig, the PC computer.

Anyways, I’ve played a lot of games over the years.  Some good, some bad, some strange.  But Japan has the market on weird shit as the picture states.  The land of the rising sun in all their tech savvy ways is also very perverted.  That’s not to say the Germans and a few other European countries don’t give the Japanese a run for their money when it comes to eroticism and perversion…well, I suppose perversion is in the eye of the beholder, but the Japanese often blend sex with just about anything they can.  Take vending machines for instance:  it is well known that Japanese business men can often be seen dropping coins into public vending machines in order to obtain panties.  Yes…panties.  Not sure if they are ‘used’ or not, but no one seems to think this is out of the ordinary over there.

They are also obsessed with Manga, or to qualify, cartoonish looking robots and young school girls with larger than life eyes, huge breasts, and some kind of innocent-slash-constipated look on their faces.

Now throw in video games.

This is what you get: Eroge, a video games that not only encourages masturbation, but also keeps score and statistics regarding your solo activities if you feel so inclined.  Yes, you are indeed reading this correctly….the game keeps track of how many times you have decided to a choke the proverbial chicken.  There are numerous categories you can enter data in (wash your hands first though), such as: Did you use socks today?  How long did it take you?  How many times did you spank the monkey today?  You get the idea.  The best part is, there is a handy graphing tools as well for those math centric racial stereotyping we are go good at.  Hey, go compare your graph with that of your friend.  Fun!