Where Is Hawkins?Where travel is cheaper than psychotherapy.

Neoconservative quiz

Neocon quiz results

Based on your answers, you are most likely a liberal. Read below to learn more about each foreign policy perspective.

Laffo.

I want one now.

Michael Moore Simultaneously On Voter Rolls In New York, Michigan.

I really think he’s got that Chicago voting thing down pat.

A few things:

1) Housekeeping: I added Reinvigorate’s site traffic/stats info on the page so I have an idea of where people are visiting from. It’s better than Blogger’s stats program, because that doesn’t like to resolve or provide up to date info.

2) 2 more days until I’m off call. Then I can sleep.

3) Self abuse is rather fun. 5-6 nights a week at the gym, 90 minutes at a stretch and all cardio. It’s rather weird to summon up self hatred and just abuse your body. Sydney’s the mental goal – gotta look decent if I decide to lie on the beach with a book on Bondi Beach.

4) I still miss Philly girl. You’d think that after – wow, two months – that feelings would have subsided and that I would have been able to try to gain some closure and move on but I’m still at the level of hurt from Day + 1.

Hotel Tips:

If you’re still at the stage where sleeping on a friend’s couch is perfectly acceptable and you can’t justify the outlay for a really nice hotel, you’re not alone. Personally, I can’t swallow $119 per night for a 3 star hotel in a crap area when I travel, so I stick with Priceline for hotel bidding. I don’t trust them for anything else, but hotels I swear by them. I love them for hotels – even more than I love taffy, and I’m a man who loves his taffy.

The question becomes “Where am I staying?” and “How much do I bid?” – both perfectly good questions. BiddingForTravel.com is the source of truth for not only what hotels you’ll end up at, but sort of a running baseline of what to pay for hotels. My current dilemma is that I’m looking at 8 nights in Sydney and I’d like to stay at a nice hotel. US$183 a night without tax to stay at the Sheraton on the Park in Sydney versus US$88 with Priceline, using BFT as the baseline total.

I’m sure that my philosophy goes against the grain, but I’m spending my own money, not my company’s money. I want to stretch my dollar as much as possible, and have a vacation where the money I save upfront can go to hedonism, having fun and chotchkis for people at home.

Other useless hotel tips:

1) Be prepared to lie. If you get an unsatisfactory room (crap view, noisy, just looks plain hideous), what you can do is dishevel the bed and the bathroom, then call the front desk and say the room wasn’t cleaned and you’ll get another room. This falls under the “Nick’s bastardry travel tips”, but if your room truly does suck, then by all means. Use this sparingly.

2) Avoid hotel bars. They’re either filled with businessmen, boring couples or escorts. And the drinks generally suck and are overpriced. This is a good thing when you’re somewhere where the local drinks are 1/4th the price of what you normally pay, yet your hotel charges you street prices at home.

3) Better yet, avoid food service altogether at the hotel. When you travel, you might want to consider having fun and experience something other than the hotel restaurant. Ask for a local bar/pub/restaurant (ask the concierge, never the front desk staff because they’ll just refer you back to the hotel bar/restaurant). Get out and meet the locals.

4) Try not to order hotel porno. *They* know at the front desk and will likely make fun of you upon checkout. Bring your own porn.

5) The minibar. Beware the RFID minibars that mistakenly charge you for opening the door for $40 worth of Kit-Kats and wine. If you “have to have it now”, then make sure it’s something you can easily replace with by purchasing the same item at a local convience store/Walgreens/News Agent. Better yet, remember to grocery shop.

I found an auction on eBay for a Real Time Machine for Time Travel

The time coil headband sends the vibrational energy of that time into your third eye.

Insert gay joke here…

I am officially a loser for spending my 4th of July doing a Mileage Run.

ORD-DFW-LAX-SFO-ORD. 4383 status miles for $153.90. The good news is that I will most likely be bumped up to first class for all except for the LAX-SFO segment. I will probably just rent a lot of movies from Blockbuster and watch movies for the day. And drink, of course. If I gun champagne the entire way, the trip practically pays for itself.

This effectively means I need to fly 39343 miles by years end for under $1588.40 to meet my own financial goal. I’ll probably fail, but still, it’s worth trying. Hope those cheap Asia fares pop up soon… real soon.

Big fucking deal. Jack Ryan wanted to have freaky sex with Jeri Ryan. Good for him. He’s not alone and with the legions of Trek fans, he could become a cult icon.

A few things:

1) You know Michael Moore sucks when Christopher Hitchens dogs his ass out. You have to like this comment:

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental.

2) The high energy over Sydney has come crashing down, and like most of my trips, I won’t start planning until August. I have no idea what I want to do there. I figure I’ll worry about it later, and just remember to bring home a shitload of boomerangs for people. It’s just another place.

3) It struck me tonight that I’ll always be “the friend” when I meet women. I’ll never be that guy who is an object of pursuit or obsession. It’s a little depressing and you start to wonder, gee, maybe I would be liked more if I read and thought less and worried about Reality TV and the Cubs instead. Or maybe I’d be liked more if I listened less and stared at a woman’s chest instead of her eyes when talking. Or maybe I’ll be loved instead of being used as a stable center to lean against if I worried about fashion and trendy music instead of world affairs and doing the right thing. My conflict is that I can’t change who I am, so I’m stuck in a cycle. Meet nice person, court nice person, then am told that I’m “just a friend”. Repeat. I just wish I could find someone who respects those things like integrity and the fact that I will always do what I feel to be the right thing. But I probably won’t.

4) And an effort to make myself smile, here’s The Gayest Link in the World.

Well, I got a head start on my birthday planning by purchasing airfare to Sydney. Pretty decent pricing, including the AA codeshare so I get all my miles like a good boy, plus I get treated nicely because of OneWorld Emerald – well, I hope.