death by b12

Today, I saw a guy drinking an XS Energy Drink. I remember my friend Steve used to be really into these, not sure why. Although they did taste quite good, I was always a little scared when I looked at the nutritional information on the side. Here's what I mean:



If you can't read this, click on the picture to get a full view. Now skip down to the part of the label where the Vitamin B12 is located. Look at the % Daily Value. Holy crap! 4900%!! The Vegetarian Society claims, "B12 has very low toxicity and high intakes are not thought to be dangerous."

That's good to hear. At least no one's going to die from this stuff anytime soon. Or will they...

An excerpt from "Nutrition for Vegetarians" by Drs. Agatha and Calvin Trash reads "In animals studies, there have been cases of increased cancer production in animals receiving high levels of B-12. It has been noted that the animals have an increased production of white blood cells such as occurs in chronic myelogenous leukemia. A case has been reported of acute myeloblastic leukemia resulting from B-12 overdose in the treatment of pernicious anemia."

CANCER!?!?

This is where my research stops and I start making wild generalizations. My theory is that XS is made by the same people who made (or still make) Tab. Cancer terrorists.

everyday life should have musical interludes

I finally made it up to Baltimore this weekend to hang out with Justin. I had a great time.

On may way there after work, he called to tell me that I should still come, even though his apartment was flooding. Apparently a pipe somewhere started leaking and spread through his bedroom, hallway, and part of the living room. I was able to make it to his apartment from Virginia before the maintenance crew, who couldn't have been that far away, got there. They removed a large section of the carpet pad from his bedroom and left giant, noisy, industrial fans to dry the place out. Justin asked one of the guys, "So will I be sans carpet for a few days?" Justin then had to explain what sans meant and the guy did his best to use it in a sentence. "With sans carpet." Close enough, buddy. Meanwhile, I'm in the corner laughing and the guy comments, "He's trippin'." Luckily, all of Justin's stuff was unharmed by the water.

On Saturday we went on a tour of Clipper City Brewing Company. The tour was great. The head-brewer was really funny and interesting and entertaining, not to mention helpful with questions and just generally friendly and nice. We got to eat some malt, which is essentially just roasted barley. They even had four taps available for free samples before and after the tour. Justin took a couple pictures with my camera. If any of them look cool I'll post them here in the near future.

We also saw a matinee showing of V for Vendetta. Very cool. I recommend it highly. Not as action-packed as I had expected, but that was certainly not a bad thing. The movie kept me interested the entire time, wanting to know what was coming next while trying to decide if I agreed with the tactics "V" employed. I would love to learn more about the possible future painted in this film. For example, the movie made multiple references to "the former United States." Why "former?" And how did this occur?

While we were driving around talking about malls in the area, Justin mentioned that malls never really have many stores for men. I agreed. Justin's idea, was to capture this huge demographic by creating a store for men called Fuckin' Kill Shit. I know what you're thinking, because I had the same reaction: "I don't know what they sell, but I'm gonna shop there." Just picture an indoor skeet range with cute, fluffy baby bunnies.

don't open the door for anyone

It's amazing what people will try to sell you. Two guys knocked on the door to my apartment the other day and I, being the idiot that I am, actually opened the door. They launched into this thing about how they were doing this leadership exercise for their high school. I was, of course, skeptical, but I did my best to keep an open mind in case they really were on a leadership exercise. I'll save you some suspense and tell you they were not. The one guy said the exercise was to practice public speaking by going door-to-door and talking to people. Alright. He explained that if he did well enough, he would get to go to Paris. For going talking to people door-to-door? Damn, my high school gypped me. He then asked me which magazines I would like to subscribe to in order to help him. Lemmme make sure I got this here. You want me to buy magazines from you so that you can go to Europe while I sit here with my thumb up my ass watching SportsCenter? Do people actually do this? If so, who are these people? I have a bridge I'd like to sell them.

The best part of this whole scenario came at the end when I told him I was just leaving and that I wasn't interested. As I started to close the door, rather than just leave, the guy says, "Where's the weed, man? Where's the weed? Where's the weed?" He repeated this at least 5 times and I have no idea why.

duke sucks

Hahaha. Pure genius.

i am a huge dork

If you're reading this, you probably already know what a huge dork I am. It's something I enjoy. In fact, I'd like to share a little bit of my dorkiness with you, my dedicated (yeah right) readers.

First up, we have an incredibly useful link I found on Fark just the other day. It's a great website with a large list of free open source software for Windows. They also have a link to some open source Mac software, if you roll that way. Here are a couple items that deserve special notice:

• Mozilla Firefox: a better web browser than Internet Explorer.
• Gaim: one program for all of your instant messengers.
• OpenOffice: great if you can't afford Microsoft Office.
• GIMPShop: great if you can't afford Photoshop.

My second item comes from a random link I followed while surfing the interweb. It's a hilarious article from a great writer at Wired News called Not Your Mama's Online Assistant. In the article, the author, Lore Sjöberg, recaps the version history of a fake online assistant. It starts out a little slow, but it gets better the more you read (trust me).

lost in dc

Yes, I got lost driving around DC today. It wasn't a lot of fun. I was on my way to this week's Ultimate Frisbee game when I took a wrong turn. The directions provided on the website, although seemingly clear sitting in the comfort of my apartment, were not entirely adequate when driving on a busy freeway in DC. So, instead of arriving at the park 20-30 minutes before the game, as I had planned, I never arrived at all. Maybe next week I'll actually be able to find it.

Just because I thought this was funny, here's a link to an XBox 360 commercial that I never actually saw on TV. It's especially funny if you play or ever have played any first person shooters. Enjoy. (Site is not safe for work.)

friends are for hugging

What a great weekend, so far. I spent a couple days down in Newport News with Emily. On my way down to visit Emily I called my friend Stef and talked to her for at least an hour. I hadn't talked to her in a long time and we talked about just about everything you can possibly think of.

It was so good to be able to hang out with Emily, who I hadn't seen since she moved to Virginia a few months ago. We spent all Thursday night just sitting in her apartment, having a couple drinks and talking. It was really nice.

We went shopping on Saturday. When we stopped at Best Buy I picked up American History X (another Edward Norton movie to add to the collection) and Bottle Rocket (my favorite Owen Wilson movie). Bottle Rocket was $16.99, but only rang up at $5.99. It was fantastic getting such a great movie for so much less than I thought it was going to cost me! Suck it, Best Buy!

ncaa tournament for dummies

I just stumbled across this one today. Actually, I think I found the link on Fark, but I can't be sure. Regardless, it's still an interesting little program. It takes seeding and randomly generates a complete NCAA tournament bracket. This is perfect for those who want to join their office pool, but don't want to take the time to actually fill out a bracket. Maybe I should have called it "NCAA Tournament for Lazies" (as if that's a word). I'm tempted to fill out my own bracket and then print out one of the randomly generated ones to see if I can beat it. Sort of a stripped down version of Kasparov verses Deep Blue.

I went to Brickskeller (their website is terrible) on Tuesday night. It was only the second time I've been there and I've really enjoyed it each time. I got to meet up with some friends I hadn't seen in a while, Matt and Chris from Mississippi who I hadn't seen since I graduated. Met up with Justin there too. It was nice to get out and have a couple drinks with some friends, something that's not so easy when you don't know many people in the area you live. I mentioned that our waiter bared an uncanny resemblance to Adam Brody, so Justin called him Adam a couple times. I don't think he even noticed. I'm not sure he had things completely together that night anyway; Chris' parents ordered some dessert and he said, "Do we even serve that?"

what in the world?

While I'm thinking about it, I found this picture some time ago on a website while browsing digital cameras. Funny, but I'm not sure it helps to sell cameras. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that one.

*Click the picture for full size.

random argument

The strangest thing happened at lunch today. I got busy doing other things and didn't actually make it to lunch until 2:30 this afternoon, which was fine by me because that meant most of the places wouldn't be as busy as they are at my normal lunchtime. I went to Subway because it was close and also empty. I gave my order to the first lady behind the counter, a six inch Cheese Steak on Italian Herbs, and she proceeded to place my sandwich in the oven. She then turned around and said to me, "Yes?" I was taken aback. What does she want now? I wondered. "What?" was my clever response. I was really on my game today. "What would you like?" was her response. It was like a slap in the face. "You just took my order," I told her. This statement must have shook the foundation of her existence, because she stared at me for quite some time. After a long period in which I could almost hear the gears in her head grinding, she asked, "What would you like?" Luckily for the both of us, another employee who had been listening in on our conversation said, "I got it." He pulled my sandwich from the oven and gave me a look that said, "It's ok, she's crazy." I suppose it is only Subway, but how do people like this get jobs?

Common sense, not to mention general customer service, has gone the way of the dodo, T-Rex, and chivalry.

thank you, young lady

On my way to work this morning, I saw something interesting. As I was walking, I noticed a woman walking in the opposite direction. By itself, this is not a noteworthy or unusual event (women often walk in the exact opposite direction I do). What made this passing more interesting was that this woman had perhaps the largest jugs I've ever seen in my life (and I don't mean she was carrying a lot of water from the river back to her village). The best part of this whole scenario came when she stopped at the corner to ask a cop for directions. I have to give it to the man, he did an excellent job of maintaining his focus and not staring at her chest, but I thought his neck was going to snap at any moment.

I saw Thank You for Smoking last night and it was fabulous. I recommend it very highly to everyone. The smoking bit doesn't matter at all. In fact, despite some of the reviews I've read, the movie didn't affect my feelings about smoking, good or bad. It's just a hilarious movie that should appeal to just about everybody. The writing is quick, the characters are quirky, and Adam Brody (yes, I watch the OC, I admit it) steals just about every scene he's in. Go see this movie!

is your name on the list?

Congratulations! You've made it past the bouncer and found your way into the VA Lounge. You must have great connections.

Some of you, I'm sure, are curious as to the origin of the name. You see, I live in Virginia and I thought "the VA Lounge" sounded funny. "The Lounge" will be my little getaway during the day. I hope you'll all take some time once in a while to visit "the Lounge" and make it your own little break-spot from your life (and read about mine). Please comment on everything, it makes me feel as though people will actually read this!

I'm going with Tysen tonight to a free screening of Thank You for Smoking. I've heard some good things about the movie and I'm interested to see it. Plus it's free and that's my favorite price. Then this weekend I'll probably be heading up to Baltimore to hang out with Justin. It'll be good to have a close friend to spend some time with.

*Interesting note: the Blogger spell check apparently thought Justin's name should be Justine, which I felt was strangely appropriate.

Just a quick hello for now. Check back soon for periodic updates, which are sure to follow.