Inglorious Basterds

Brad Pitt leads a team of American Jew military men behind enemy lines to lead an Apache based guerrilla warfare type Nazi slaughterfest. So why are there only two scenes with Nazi slaughtering? Goddamnit Tarantino.... Brad Pitt was such a bad ass character. You let him carve 2 swastikas into 2 guys heads, and thats about it. You create the Steiglitz character, the rogue SS Gestapo-targeting serial killer and he doesn't do shit except stab a dude in the neck and then die. Damnit man. C'mon. The chick with the movie theater was a sweet back story and good job, she burned it down and killed the high command of the Third Reich but did that really deserve half the movie? The Basterds and her never even directly cross paths. You made two movies and just combined them. Damnit man, you're making me mad. Lieutenant Aldo sooooooo cool with the O' Brother Where Art Thou George Clooney southern drawl and happy go lucky confidence and you sequester him into less than 1/3 of the movie? Jesus man. Just tell us his story from beginning to end, burn down the movie theater in the end and either get rid of the vengeful Jew girl or give her 15 mins to establish her backstory. Why does she need a lover? Why does the main actor need to fall in love with her?

Two movies:

Movie one: Inglorious Basterds

8 Americans go behind enemy lines and mercilessly slaughter Nazis with baseball bats, machine guns, knives, booby traps, and end up sabotaging the der feurer at the movie premier. Boom. Great movie.

Movie two: Jewish Girl's Revenge

The sole survivor of a family slaughtered by the SS, she makes it to Paris and opens a movie theater. By coincidence she catches the fancy of German war hero starring in a new movie. He talks the producer/director into hosting the premier at her movie theater. She crosses paths with the man who murdered her family and she has to earn his favor to her horror. Finally, her and her black lover take the ultimate revenge and burn down the theater with the entire Nazi high command inside watching a masterpiece of propoganda.

So make up your fucking mind next time, Tarantino.

Cooking

I am making steaks right now. I seasoned them with salt and pepper and steak seasoning (which I'm pretty sure is just salt and pepper) and Worcestire sauce. It is bottom round flat steak. I have never cooked such a steak before, and am worried about cooking time. I am cooking it on the broiler because A) I think the grill is out of gas B) It is raining C) I like them broiled just as much as any other way prepared.

I like to cook a lot. Lately, I made a bomb pork loin marinated over night in balsamic vinagrette, and other spices. I served it with a side of rice and wilted spinach. Also, I made a pot roast. Pot roasts are easy to make, cheap to buy, and so super delicious. I should look into making more pot roasts. Well worth the time. In the past I've made orange glazed sword fish, bacon and brie burgers, and some nachos that would blow your mind. Hold on, I need to check on the steaks. They were good to be flipped. In a few I will retrieve and consume them. Well, I consume one of them, my roommate will handle the other. We didn't have any fresh garlic. Normally I stuff a whole clove of garlic inside of the meat and let it cook like that, then cover it in olive oil. It is bomb. These steaks will be sub-bomb. Also, we are going to watch Inglorious Bastards. Tonight should be a good night. Tom is making Ratatouille for tomorrow. I'm not sure if I have faith in his skills. He's a french man though, so he should be able to pull it off. I'll be back later with some thoughts on Inglorious Bastards.

The reason for the training

I want to hike the Appalachian Trail with Gency. I wanted to do it this summer. The problem is, the trail takes about 6 months to hike. I'm hoping I can squeeze in a trip from my Grandparent's house in VT to my dad's house in NC. That's part of the reason I'm working so hard with Gency. I figure that stay and come will be the two most important commands on the trail. I'm trying to get her to respond to strangers or dogs on the street by sitting and waiting patiently for them to approach. We are making progress, but she still likes to make the first move, and that won't fly with surly hikers. Also, most of the trail has strict leash laws for dogs which I don't plan on following. Ideally, Gency will walk by my side, explore the woods to her heart's content, and ignore any hikers and animals that don't feel like being bothered.

For Christmas, I asked for a dog back pack for her. That way she can carry her own food and water, and while we're training I can fill it with sand to get her to build some muscle. She should like that, due to her inclination to pull. It would be really great if I could pull this off. A logistical obstacle is money. I might have to increase my student loan to fund the trip. I could justify that if I could get the Eng dept to give me some sort of independent study credit for the trip if I wrote about it or something. I've always enjoyed camping and hiking and that sort of stuff, but usually with other people. If it ends up being just my dog and I, it will be a very different experience. I've heard there is a very large social aspect to the trail, like people meet up and walk a few days together. So maybe that will happen. Perhaps I can find someone to do it with me though. That would be pretty cool. Wish me luck!

Gency

My dog is my best friend. Man's best friend is literally my best friend. Like, I'm more likely to hang out with her any given night than anyone else. For awhile I was interested in training her to do cool tricks like crawl and roll over, but now I'm working on much more practical stuff. More than anything I am focusing on sit, stay, come. She's getting really good. Whenever she thinks I want something, her go to reaction is to sit, so that part is pretty easy. She is really good at stay as long as she can see me. I walk for a couple of minutes down the alleyway away from her. I turn around and shes just sitting there waiting for me to call her. However, if I walk the opposite direction that she is facing, it is very hard for her not to pivot on the spot to watch me. Which is ok, I suppose, and it doesn't really interfere with the whole staying part, but I'd really like it if her stay was super solid. Also, "heel" is a pretty essential skill I'm teaching her. Teaching her to walk well on the leash is the hardest thing I've done with her. By nature, she just likes to pull. At first, I tried just walking the opposite direction every time she pulled. But then she just got kinda confused and started pulling in circles at the end of the leash. Finally I got through her skull just by having a piece of meat in my hand that she follows. Now, if the there aren't any distractions, she follows by my heel almost naturally. She'll do it if I'm jogging too. If I can get her to trot next to my bike, that would be awesome, but she's a little bit terrified of the contraption from our first attempt at that. Also, whenever people are hanging out outside, and she decides to lie down, I throw chunks of dog biscuits at her, making sure she doesn't realize the source. Apparently, it should reinforce the desire to lie down and chill out when people are around. For the most part, she's super chill, which is great, and a top notch cuddler. When new people arrive, though, she tends to jump up on them, especially women. I'm using pepperoni to interrupt that behavior.

Poker

I started playing poker again. Well "started playing poker again" has connotations that I haven't really fulfilled yet. I used to play a lot of poker. For a month or two I supported myself by playing 2/4 and 3/6$ limit on the website PokerStars. I was worth about 7$ an hour. So, I was making minimum wage, basically, but it was fun. I burned out and didn't want to play anymore. I went through phases where I would go back to the past time, but I never took it seriously like I did back then. I lost money overall, I'm pretty sure. If you look my pokerstars name up on sharkscope.com (Azraeel) I show a profit of $600 or so dollars. If you go to trackmybets.com and look at my Beaver Dam profits, its well over $1000. I'm pretty good at poker. My number one problem with it is taking it seriously. I want to play big, deep stack tournaments, but the problem with those is that they last for like 5 hours and I just get kinda bored and burned out. I put $100 online before thanksgiving planning to spend the break pursuing riches (not really, my outlook on poker is realistic and pragmatic, and I know that playing the appropriate stakes with a $100 bankroll is a verrrrrrrrrry long and slow road to riches). I've been playing 180 man sit and go tournaments, and showing a healthy profit from those. I've also played some of the larger, 1000+ tournaments, and like always I succumb to the boredom and fall victim to my own apathy as far as game play goes. When you're in a tournament with 7,000 people, generally the top 700 get paid. It can take three or four hours to get to that point, and the good money doesn't start coming until the top 70. And that takes a verrrrrrry long time. You really need some concentration and drive to stick in it that long. When the buy in is $2.20 it is very easy to do stupid stuff knowing that it was cheap to do so. I really miss live games of poker. I was better at live games because of the physical chips in front of me. They held my attention a lot better than a screen can. All the money online is virtual. It is hard to attach realistic significance to those numbers if you don't feel the green in your hand.