smacky and bucky

These are my rambling, Larry Kingesque thoughts for Friday:

• I'm wondering how hard it would be to train for a marathon, considering I have a desk job and it's November now.

• I really like New Order's first album. I'm listening to a live show of them from October 1980. The lead singer of their old band Joy Division had just killed himself in May of that year, and the new band still sounded like Joy Division. Very cool stuff. Not yet the dance music they made later.
  

• The Red Cross secretly tested my blood when I gave it a few months ago and sent me a letter saying I have "super plasma." It means my plasma can satisfy three women at once. (Okay, it could help three men too, but I prefer the idea of my plasma helping the ladies. Sorry, I'm a pig.) As a result, the Red Cross calls me at work at least once a week and begs me to give blood. I'm giving it tomorrow morning at a Masonic Lodge. I'll try to find out the secret code they wrote on the back of the Declaration of Independence.
  

• Ha! I just had a thought: Maybe all the American Treasure movie plots are true, and the Masons retaliated by taking all of Nicholas Cage's money. I also read that when Nicholas Cage was married to Lisa Marie Presley, he got a secret tour of Graceland, including the upstairs area closed off from the public. And yes, including the bathroom where Elvis' body was found, which is supposedly untouched since his death over 30 years ago.
  

• Speaking of Elvis, in 2010, Elvis would have turned 75(!) and Memphis is planning a number of events that make it tempting to make next year the year we finally go for a visit.

• I have a strange soft spot in my heart for this little guy:

• The Washington Capitals play tonight and tomorrow night. Our weekend is planned!

I had a dream last night that was so vivid, I repeated it to myself when I woke up at 1:30 am. Here it is:

Sir Christopher Lee, wearing a beard like in the Star Wars prequels, was traveling in the south with Paula Deen. They were stopping at bakeries and sampling wedding cakes, with the winning cake being the one a young woman got for her wedding day.

Christopher Lee took a bite of a chocolate bundt cake and exclaimed, "It's full of cream!"

Paula Deen then excitedly turned and looked directly at the camera and yelled, "THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!" and laughed and laughed.

Then I woke up.

W. T. F. ?

We had a great time on our vacation. We visited one of the wife's sisters in Brooklyn, had drinks with one of her cousins in Boston... and, well, saw no one we knew in Newport (ha!).

On our way back south, we stopped at Foxwoods, a HUGE gambling resort in the freaking middle of nowhere. It was rainy, and as we drove up the hill, it appeared out of the fog like Xanadu (not the Olivia Newton-John movie).

Foxwoods was founded in 1986 as a bingo hall. The casino was financed by Lim Goh Tong, a Chinese Malaysian who founded the only legal casino in Malaysia. Tong died in October 2007. In 1992 the owners, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe, added table games, followed shortly by slot machines in 1993.

It's one of the largest casinos on the planet (for better or worse). According to Wikipedia, slot machines at Foxwoods pay out roughly 91.5% of the money that gamblers bet. We only play slots (such as when we went to Vegas last November and Atlantic City last spring), but for some reason, we have pretty good luck. My "system" (if one can call it that) is to insert a $20, play for a while, and if it gets down to $10, cash out and try a different machine. If the opposite happens and the slot is winning, I cash out at $35 or above. As you can see below, we ended in the money:

We aren't retiring on it, but we had fun for a few hours on a rainy Saturday, and it covered our meals and hotel for the day, with cash to spare. Also: It's important to have fun doing it. Because, that's the whole freaking point, right? Otherwise, it's work. So, I tend to avoid the "poker" style machines in favor of "chance" machines (like Hot Hot Super Jackpot!) or "themed" machines, like... STAR WARS!!!

How cool is that?!? We played the Empire Strikes Back game in Vegas, the Star Wars (A New Hope) game in Atlantic City, and now we've completed the original trilogy!

It played clips and music from Return of the Jedi.

The pic above is me on the way to winning lunch money!

Some people go new places and check out the historical sites. I tend to pick up music:

Two parallel stories are told in the novel, in alternating chapters. The first is set in 2003, as the crew of a Russian sub fires its missiles at Alaska, thinking they are responding to an unprovoked attack from the United States (rather than Skynet). They soon learn the horrible truth. This plot is interesting because it shows the early days of Skynet's master plan to eradicate humankind, as well as the ealy days of the resistance.

The second plot is set in 2018, and follows a group of resistance fighters in Alaska. They've heard John Connor's radio broadcasts, but they've never seen the man or expect to ever meet him. They're just trying to stay alive in the wilderness. They get Skynet's attention when they attempt to steal oil from the pipeline one time too many, and a terminator is on their trail.

You can read a short excerpt of the novel here and it's a good one: An unarmed terminator, tracking humans in the snow, comes across... well, let's just say he goes one-on-one with something very, very big!