cancun (part 2)

Raul dropped us off with the other salesman... and we listened to him blabber on with lies for 2 hours. But we got a free golf game and 200 bucks for the spa.

We signed up to go on a couple of trips, and then split up. Me, my dad, and my mom, went to watch football. The Packers slaughtered the Panthers, the Bears got beat but the highlight was the incredibly drunk fifty year old fuckers who came and sat behind us. She was from Wisconsin (Packer fan) and he was from Illinois (Bear fan) and they were both pissed drunk. They yelled at each other much about how they were going to withhold sex depending on the results of the game. I turned around at the wrong moment as the woman pulled up her skirt revealing nothing but what looked like a poorly manicured bonzi tree and yelled "See this, you'll be getting none of this!" Thank fully I have no pictures to put here.

The next day we got up early and ran, then we grabbed some food and headed for the bus to Tulum. Tulum is a port city for the Mayan culture. We got our own little tour bus, cause there was not enough room on the bus for us. We stopped at a tourist trap type place where I bought a bobbly head turtle thingie for Rachel's mom and we saw this dude with the most ridiculous mullet known to man. He was a German guy and his mullet reached the middle of his back.

Talum itself was beautiful. A beautiful green plains with spattering of these stone buildings. The ocean was right next to the settlement as it was a port city for the Mayans.

We ended up in a place that was a resort/zoo. Over half of this resort was ravaged by a hurricane and left to rot. We snuck around the baracades to check out the damage. But the highlight was the animals. alligators, flamingos, wild cats. My brother fed a alcohol soaked lime to a spider monkey who really likes it. There were also these really cute rodent creatures.
Here are some pictures of some of the zoo creatures.


Alligator:

















Spider Monkey:



















Dignified Neanderthal:

















Cute Rodent Video:

Everything's coming up Milhouse!

In the past week the cubs signed Fukodome their number 1 target...

I had my last class in my graduate career...

and I have gotten a new job. I'm going to be a project director here:

http://www.chestnyc.org/

I will be running day to day operations for a new grant they received, and adding a piece to it that will be my dissertation. So while it may take me a little longer to finish then expected, I have a feeling I'm going to come up much more prepared for the real world of research than I would have other wise.

PS. I also found out I'm getting the marvel zombie toys for Christmas... OH JOY!

I'm such a dork.

I went to Cancun for Thanksgiving (part 1)

And while I wait for these gigantic data sets to calculate I figured I'd share a little of the trip.

So I traveled on a red eye to Mexico City and on another flight from Mexico City to Cancun. It was Mexicanna Air. They were a different kind of airline. The seemed so laid back and so used to delays they didn't even bother confirming seats. Needless to say this was disturbing to a time obsessed American but all worked out.

We got to Cancun and the hotel, The Moon Palace, and checked in. We got these bracelets and as soon as we did some dude came over to give us drinks. Which was sweet. We dropped our stuff off at the room and went out by the pool and had quite a few drinks. That was the best thing about this place... all the food and drink you want. So after sleeping off the morning buzz my parents showed up. We had a nice meal with some mayan coffee, I don't know what was myan about it but it was alcoholic, had ice cream in it, and had been set on fire. And after quite some delays that night my brother showed up with his boyfriend, sadly without their luggage.

That morning we met Raul. A shady character Rachel immediately spotted as being placed in the hotel by the witness protection program after he turned states evidence against the Mexican mafia. He was there to inform us about the various options at the hotel for entertainment and to talk us into their two hour soft sell of shares of the hotel.

Don't let smiles fool you. Raul here wants to kill me for taking his picture, but is well aware of the assassin in my family (code name: Mother) keeping a close watch. That arm sling isn't fooling anyone Mom.

One name I hope is in the Mitchel Report

Mark Prior... you stinking little whinny bitch. You are the lowest of the low... I hope they catch you cheating.

I hope you go sign with the reds so we can rough you up 3 or 4 times a year.

And now a photo montage of some of my favorite prior moments.

































So long you over-payed, under-worked, whinny, childish, disloyal, pitching prima donna.

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Blast from the past

Saw Mudhoney last night... performing all of SuperFuzzBigMuff. God damn they still rock. At 45 they look a hell of lot more clean cut than they did @ 30... but the music was still as dirty and "grungy" as ever. I had forgotten how much Mudhoney rocked live... hell the last time I saw them I had to pay some dude to buy me a beer and my parents picked us up from the Cabaret Metro in Chicago afterwards.

A bunch of other folks in their mid thirties took the opportunity to create the first mosh pit I have seen in close to a decade... certainly the first one I've seen in new york aside from idiots trying to touch Robert Pollard at a GBV show. The pit was funny... clearly a munch of older folks attempting to bounce around like in the good ole days... but it was definitely the safest pit I was ever in. Some idiot durring the second encore attempted to stage dive into a sparse crowd and face planted... sending an echo of laughter through the audience that was audible even over the music. And feeling proud of himself for entertaining the masses the jackass did it again... the second time it was not funny just a little sad.

The Mist

I saw the Mist. Do yourself a favor and go see it. This is one of the best horror movies to come down the pipe in a long time. The critics missed the boat, I think, as they often do in the world of the horror movie. It was gruesome and bold, both the monsters outside and the depravity of humans Milgram showed us is on display. It was fantastic... Rachel scraped my arms several times, no one's grabbed on to my arm that tight since I was in 6th grade and watched the fly. Anyone who has bug issues will freak out.

BTW the ending was unnecessary... but what can you do... they were just trying to make it even more horrible.