INKSTAND

I recently got a new Mastercard with Paypass, but never really considered it. Just a while ago, however, I went to 7-11 (no eggs this time) an noticed that they had PayPass on their EFT thingie. So instead of swiping my card I just touched it to the pad. It was sweet! It beeped and seconds later my reciept printed out. I don’t consider entering my PIN to be a big time-consuming event, but I do like the speediness of PayPass. Although, it brings up a slew of security issues that I don’t even need to mention.

I know, the immediate reaction is “ewww, gas station food!” but really, this 7-11 isn’t so bad. It’s tucked away near this christian college I live by and it’s really clean and they sell some decent food, like apples and bagel sanwiches they make themselves.

Nonetheless, their eggs suck.

I love hard boiled eggs in all forms. Egg salad, Deviled eggs, um…what else? I dunno, but I’m sure I’d like them. In all my years of peeling the shell off of a hard boiled egg, I cannot for the life of me figure out why these particular shells are so difficult. After cracking the shell, the first thing that happens is that the egg inside splits in two. See, the shell is so strongly adhered to the egg that attempting to peel it off pulls the egg with it. With evey crack more and more egg peices become independent of the whole shell, each attatched to the egg inside with equal strength. The delicacy involved in prying off eich piece of shell is simply ridiculous, and usually the piece comes off with a layer of the egg white attatched to it. Still, I buy one ocassionally thinking “Oh, maybe this time will be different and I won’t have to throw half the thing away.” Maybe someday.

It’s way too easy for spam to get through. Luckily I get to moderate them all in case a real person comments on a post. Just now I approved one from a real live person and for the first time ever…*poof* it was gone. Just vanished. I’m going to have to be careful from now on. Boo, Wordpress!
Sorry, Tennille.

Jeremy took me to lunch at Earth and Ocean so we could try their American Kobe Beef Burger. Here’s the menu description:

american kobe burger
onion jam, fontina or beecher’s peppercorn cheese, french fries

This picture is not the actual burger, but it is representative of the juiciness of the burger. We ordered them medium rare but they were brown throughout, no pink ribbon. Also, for whatever reason, the fryer was down and we couldn’t have fries so we had sala instead. Despite these thing, this was hands down the best damn burger I’ve had in this city. It is way worth the $14, but that’s because it’s not an everyday meal. Special burger occasions only.
Oh, my god, it was so fucking good.
Thanks, baby. And by the way next time we go out, it’s on me.

Years ago a man named Billy got the high score on Donkey Kong. Recently, a man named Steve claimed to have beaten that score. Who’d have thought a documentary about this situation could be so much fun to watch.

First of all, Billy is really full of himself. He exudes a brand of confidence rarely seen in an individual, much less someone who played a lot of Donkey Kong. He spits phrases that seem right at home on a No Fear t-shirt and wears his hair in a style that I don’t think was ever popular.

Steve is a man who never fulfilled his dreams of being in a band. He got laid off at Boeing the day he bought his house and went into teaching. He has a wife and kids who seem to just barely tolerate his drive and mild-mannered passion to beat Billy’s high score.

I got some strange feelings from both these men from things that either I inferred from the movie, or the movie only eluded to. I got the feeling that Billy is a control freak. There are shots of him stocking store shelves with the hot sauce from his restaurant, as vendors tend to do. He clearly pushes other products on the shelf to the side to create more facings for his hot sauce. I also think he insisted on certain things about how the film was presented. For instance we don’t see his wife, or even know that he’s married until he’s about to encounter Steve for the first time. Then he brings her out, of course she’s “hot”, and he struts her around the arcade. An arcade, mind you, where everyone kisses Billy’s ass and sort of snub Steve, hoping he’ll lose. Oh, that’s another thing, they have to compete for the title and Billy gets all weird and mind-gamey with Steve.

As far as Steve goes, his wife doesn’t say it directly but it is clear that she is at her wits end over the whole video game thing. She tells how people came to inspect Steve’s home Donkey Kong game, bother her mother and basically breaking in. His daughter is shown once saying something to him about it destroying his life. Even on the video that he sent in originally, you can hear his son yelling and crying in the background to be “wiped” while Steve tells him to wait.

This is a pretty entertaining movie because the people in it create drama wherever they can find it.
Here’s a clip of Steve winning. Note how everyone kind of doesn’t want him to win. Also note how Billy does everything from afar, via telephone. His response to Steve winning here was to send a video tape of him beating the score. So much drama!