Umbral Echoes Blog

You thought I was going to say “titties,” didn’t you?  Hah!

Last night we were had a going-away party for our friend Nikhil — his H1-B visa is up, so he’s going back to India.  However, having been in Atlanta for several years, he’s never been to The Clermont Lounge (often misspelled “Clairemont”).  This is an Atlanta destination, so of course we had to take him.  For those not in the know, this is quite possibly the worst strip club in the country, if not the world.  In fact, it is not so much a strip club as a freakshow, with one great-grandmother stripper, and their star act “Blondie,” a 350 lb. black woman who wears a blond wig and crushes beer cans with her tits.  The sort of place you’d expect to see an amputee stripper.

This is the second time I’ve been there, the first having been for a friend’s bachelor party.  The great-grandmother was out that night, and I don’t think I will ever be able to burn the image out of my memory of her releasing her sagging breasts, flopping her torso around, then angrily looking at whatever unlucky patron was right in front of her, as if they owed her a dollar bill for the display.

Rule one of The Clermont: don’t make eye contact with the strippers.

Oh, did I mention there was apparently a prostitution sting going on at the Clermont Hotel?  (The strip club is in the basement of the hotel.)  They had the paddy wagon right by the entrance to the club.  So very classy.  It does, at least, have cheap drinks.  The bartender insisted we all have something called a Red-Headed Slut.  Too sweet for my tastes, but I was a trooper and slugged it.

Anyway, there were surprisingly few horrific strippers.  There was even one that might be qualified as somewhat hot.  Her stage name was Jessica Rabbit, real name Amy.  Cary and I talked to her a bit, and wonder of wonders, she immediately recognized Cary’s Mage: the Ascension t-shirt.  Apparently she used to play Mage and Werewolf (as recently as a couple of years ago), is a White Wolf fan, an amateur flame dancer, and writes horror scripts and short stories.  Scripts and stories which actually seemed pretty compelling, from the few examples she gave us.  Who knew that being affiliated with White Wolf gets stripper cred?

So, we got Nikhil a double lap dance from her, and a 40s-ish looking stripper.  Some hot and cold for contrast, if you will.  I attempted to surreptitiously take pictures to give Nikhil something to remember the night by, but unfortunately I got busted (by a patron, no less), and had to delete all of the pics I took.  Bummer.

We left shortly thereafter, to go to The Pink Pony, just to get the taste of the Clermont out of our mouths.  Clermont to Pink Pony seems to be a tradition in the making.  I was oddly blasé about The Pink Pony — it was quite refreshing after The Clermont, but overall I just wasn’t feeling it.  We got Nikhil a lap dance from a smoking-hot Aussie chick, and left shortly thereafter.  But not before a lap dance was inflicted upon me as well, by a girl that looked just like Paris Hilton — if Paris Hilton had collagen injections and a boob job.  I was pretty horrified, actually.

I was thinking about strip clubs in general last night, and who all they exploit.  They obviously reinforce stereotypes all around — women as sex objects, men as mindless creatures wanting only sex.  But I actually think that men are more exploited than women, because it’s their pocketbooks that are getting drained, and the women profit from it (quite nicely, too).  Strippers are the ultimate con-artists, and I truly say that with sincere appreciation for their skill as such.

• 20:49 Nikhil, I will do my best to make sure you don’t go back to India with any STDs. But I make no promises. It is the Clermont, after all. #
• 20:53 @shadoweyes just told me he wants me to be the star of Ask a Pornstar (or maybe Ask a Gangsta), which will be like Ask a Ninja. Except not. #

Update via LoudTwitter

Bagwell originally pointed me toward the video game review series Zero Punctuation, and another friend brought it up again. Best game reviewer ever. Here is his review of Guitar Hero III.

So tonight, for the first time in… I don’t know how long, I had a meal that wasn’t microwavable, drinkable, or even fast-foody.  I also learned that every Tuesday and Thursday night, White Wolf provides a very tasty home-cooked dinner for any employee who wants it.  This is in addition to providing breakfast and lunch daily.  Good food and balanced meals, not just standard cafeteria faire of soup, sandwich, and meatloaf.

It is amazing what a difference a good meal can make.  Physically, I feel better than I have in months.  Psychiatrists prescribe people pills to make them feel better because no one is willing to eat a healthy, balanced diet, and exercise regularly.  I’ve got the exercise down, but honestly I am pretty damn lazy when it comes to cooking.  Spaghetti is about as non-pre-prepared as I get.  I cook a mean chili, but it’s been years (and that’s not exactly “healthy,” either).  Which is all a  shame, because I love food.  Absolutely love to eat, to taste.  Must eat about every 2-3 hours in fact, or my body rebels.
Maybe it’s time to fire up the grill.

Okay, so it took me longer than planned.

Video – Chris McDonough deepthroating a corndog:

Video – The crew singing some Pat Benatar:

Pictures below the cut, so I don’t spam people’s friend page. Full gallery here.

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I forget sometimes how much I truly miss the White Wolf guys.  And more than that, I never realized before tonight how much they miss me — even some who never actually worked with me, like the Icelanders.  Anyway, I won’t be overly mushy here.

I drank from about noon until 9pm today.  It was grand.  I won a game of Liar’s Dice, I had more to drink than I planned (but less than sick-level), and I nearly made out with my former boss Chris.  The last was for a good purpose, I swear — he nearly convinced two hot chicks to make out with each other.  Also, yet again I made a name for myself by taking things a step too far.  Apparently it’s okay to joke about rough sex, but making hair-grabbing and thrusting motions is over the line.  And by over the line, I mean just just right.

Anyway, some media below the cut.  … Hmm, actually I’m tired now.  So, pictures and a bit of video of Chris deepthroating a corndog to follow tomorrow.  Check back.  🙂

I was just thinking today, that often when I’m talking online and someone mentions something that I’ve never heard of, I just quickly Google it. Unfortunately, you can’t do this in face to face conversations. But… wouldn’t it be great if you could

So I started thinking about what it would take to do that. The technology for it definitely isn’t there yet, but it’s getting surprisingly close. Here’s how it would work. As you converse, the system is constantly listening in with speech recognition software, as well as scanning your brain. The software running in the background is also constantly filtering for items of interest, separating out keywords from the conversation.

So let’s say someone mentions Plato’s allegory of the cave in conversation, saying how citizens here are seeing a shadow of what war really is. You’ve heard of the allegory of the cave, but you aren’t really familiar with it. So you have an, “I wish I knew what that was,” moment. The brain scanner detects this. The software looks for the most recent keywords, gets “allegory of the cave.” It has a built-in Wikipedia-like database, and brings up a nutshell synopsis of the allegory of the cave onto your contact lens HUD. Now you seem erudite.

Of course, this could be implemented in a simpler way, without the brain scanner and contextual speech recognition, too. My friend Grem suggested a subvocalizer — maybe you just subvocalize, “look up allegory of the cave,” and it does so. That would also prevent false positives, so you’d only get displays of things you specifically request.

And since the entirety of Wikipedia fits into 2 GB, you wouldn’t even have to have an Internet connection. So really, this technology is all almost ready. The main thing would be the contact-lens HUD, which is still in early development.

Since Spring is upon us, I thought I’d share a couple of pictures of the trees that are blooming in my yard.  Mainly because soon, I know the pollen will come (take “come” however you wish).

Here’s a tree in the front yard:

And here’s one in the back:

“What you think about comes about.”  Trite little nugget of faux-wisdom, stating the obvious.  But like all such trite nuggets, it’s there to remind us of the obvious when we for some reason overlook it.

Standard disclaimer: This post is not aimed at you in particular, dear reader.

Everyone knows at least one negative person — someone who is always complaining, nothing seems to goes right, and their life always seems to suck.  I think that this sort of person brings it on themselves.  Everyone’s life sucks; everyone’s life is hard, and has difficult and sometimes seemingly-insurmountable obstacles.  If you focus on the negative, then you magnify it in your own head.

That’s not to say that it’s bad to vent when something’s going wrong.  I think venting is quite healthy.  But there’s a difference between venting and dwelling — when you vent, you get it out and it’s gone.  But if talking about it only puts it on your mind more and makes it worse… then don’t talk about it.  I know I’ve fallen into that trap before, and sometimes it’s hard to realize that you’re in it.

So how do I get someone out of this if I see it?  Well, the short answer is: I don’t.  It’s something that they have to work through.  In my opinion, the best that you can do is to help them realize they’re in a funk, and then maybe give them some inspiration and hope.  But in the end, it’s up to them.

It’s rare that I get into that sort of a mindset, but the times in the past when I have, what works for me is to just get up and do something positive.  I find that even if I don’t feel like going out, or hanging out with friends, if I make myself do it, then I have fun.  Something to break up the norm, shake things out of the rut.

What about you — when you notice that you’re in a rut, what do you do to get out of it?  This is sort of related to the question on music and mood, I suppose, but on a broader scale.

EDIT: I fixed this in Photoshop… corrected typos, and tweaked the timing for readability.