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The attempt to drag myself kicking and screaming into adulthood continues at an encouraging pace. I wrote about my insane-librarian-frat-basemesnt-esque bedroom a few months back (re-reading it, it’s damn funny if I do say so myself) and I haven’t lost the maturity redecorating zeal just yet. Monday my new desk and shelf set showed up, and I’ve spent every night this week jamming that square peg into the round hole – namely, Dave in a room that doesn’t look like it belongs to Quentin Tarantino with a drink problem.

Tuesday night I gutted my bedroom – and I mean gutted like a TaunTaun. Bags upon bags of stuff I didn’t really want to throw away – but forced myself to. It’s not so much about improving the decor as it is lightening my collective load. There’s was stuff in my room Allston hippies wouldn’t pick up for free off of Craigslist.

Last night Matt came over and helped me assemble the new furniture in the now empty room. I specifically invited him because I worked with him on the sets for the play, and I know how incredibly handy he is. The guy built a secret room in his apartment, for God’s sake. It’s together, looking good and I am incredibly excited. As I type, my boxed new garment rack was just wheeled in (yes, I am blogging at work) and things are really coming together. I have an incredibly small closet, and am tired of jamming all my good clothes in there and coming to work looking like, um, Ron Livingston with a drink problem.

Tonight I get my hands on the sister’s photo printer, and I plan to hit CVS and buy a whackload of frames. I will take my favorite digital snaps, frame them and use them as the basis for the new room design. I’m not going to bother to paint, because I may move in September, but this is going to look cool regardless. The movie/band posters are history, my workspace looks amazing and there’s almost enough room left to get to the bed without an Olympic long jump. I haven’t created space with the new effort, but I’ve eliminated 6 years of crap. It feels good, and I’ll post some photos when the task is complete.

Alright you fat little bastards. This is it. All participants have until the end of today to send me their current weights for the first checkup of the official Pye In The Face Pork Ass Challenge. Here is how it will work:

– The Challenge will run from now until Wednesday July 5th – 11 Weeks.
– Every Wednesday, participants will email me their current weight and I will post it here on the blog for all to see/encourage/mock.
– Since we’re all of varying sizes and sexes, a’ la Celebrity Fit Club, we’ll set a target weight for ourselves, based on realistic personal experience, and the measure of success will be whether we hit that target in the 11 weeks allotted.
– We need full disclosure for this to work properly, and we’re all on the honor system. No telling porkie pies, mate!
– Prizes and awards are to be determined, but at the very least will include bragging rights and the ability to put on a swimsuit without crying and cutting yourself on the forearm with shards of beach beer bottle glass.

Now who the fuck is with me?! Let’s drop some blubber, buddies! Here is the tale of the tape so far. If you want to get in on this, send me your info by the end of the day, and be prepared to go the distance:

– Monster >> Current: 270 – Target 255 – Lost – 0
– Smash >> Current: 139 – Target 129 – Lost – 0
– Pyeman >> Current: 230- Target 210 – Lost 0
– Greg >> Current: 205 – Target 170 – Lost 0
– DVS >> Current 252 – Target 210 – Lost 0
– Aubz >> Current: 135 – Target 125 – Lost 0
– Ka-Rista >> Current: 160 – Target 140 – Lost 0
– Venditti >> Current: 238 – Target 219 – Lost 0
– Sly >> Current: 218 – Target 205 – Lost 0
– LBN >> Current: 155 – Target 135 – Lost 0
– BDoyle >> Current: 190 – Target 173 – Lost 0
– AllMusicFan >> Current: 185 – Target 170 – Lost 0
– Brick02 >> Current: 154 – Target 144 – Lost 0
– Piglet >> Current: 151 – Target 135 – Lost 0
– Richard >> Current: 185 – Target 170 – Lost 0

I’ll eventually get some sort of graph software to chart this out week to week, but for now – let’s just get the numbers on the board. There is room for many more. Best of luck to us all – this will be quite the reverse-culinary adventure.

Before I go any further, and on a sorta related hippyish note – Neil. My beloved Neil. You’re killing me. OK – I feel a little better now. Back to business.

I’m on a bit of a health kick at the moment, one I hope will last longer than a Tootsie Roll Pop, and I’ve purchased a whackload of Green Tea to sip at the office. A great guy who used to play for the Revolution once interned here for me, and he swore by it. I think I saw him drink 8 cups in one day, and I’m not exaggerating. I asked him if he was trying to ward off some sort of mystical Chinese dragon that maybe I couldn’t see, and he said that “It is the best anti-oxidant you can get”. I then wondered if he perhaps drank Crisco all day at home and this was his way of countering that bad habit. Regardless, he had a jawline like Marv and must have been doing something right.

Gosh knows, if anyone needs a little anti-oxidizing it’s probably me. A winter’s worth of beer, questionable red meat, french onion dip and Reverse the Curse has left me feeling like one giant arterial clog with shoes on. Other efforts include – walking to and from work (50 minutes a day roughly), oceans of water, salad, fruit and veggies followed by a health shake thingy for dinner. So it’s a crash, boom pow system shocker for a couple of weeks, and then back to the gym every day once the metabolism is back up and the lion’s share of the winter weight is gone.

Why do I write about this potentially embarassing stuff on my blog? First of all, I could use some opinions and advice. Smash said it best on her site a week or so ago while running down a very simple list: “3) If you do more and eat less, you’ll probably lose weight.” That’s really all there is to it. However any words of wisdom for myself and others may be left in the comments. Second of all, when one makes obnoxious public declarations about their sveltness like anyone actually cares, people will hold you to them. “Glad to see you went right ahead and didn’t get back into shape the way you said you were going to, male Sally Struthers“. That always feels great.

The only way to get rid of this turkey gobbler, which is making me look extremely old and decrepit, is to get myself back down to fighting weight (210 lbs.) – and that’s not going to be easy. So I’m putting my sloppy, poulty-esque neck out there on the chopping block and calling my shot – I will weigh 210 and look studly by Independence Day. Or I will shave my head. Who’s in? Any other chubbies want to get in on this and set up a similar wager? And shaving pubes doesn’t count, because I do that already. Let’s fuckin’ go, eh?

For the love of all that’s holy. Please get me off this demented carousel that is Roach Brooch. Now even the Boston Globe is writing about Hissy and I. T’was good timing, because I just added a Carmen Electra category featuring pictures of the real deal which I took myself last week. The real deal being Hissy – not Carmen. I photoshopped the Hisster smack onto her right funbag. A good job, if I do say so myself.

I also built a related Cockroach Jewelry Squidoo lens, as I am prone to do about absolutely anything, and it actually has a great feature. The Technorati module pulls in RSS feeds of bloggers around the world talking about Roach Brooches. And there are a lot of them! Take a peek, courtesy of your favorite bug geek!

Since I’m already re-exposing myself as a tremendous toolshed today, why don’t I mention some other recently created lenses that I’d like to see spidered? Fantastic then. You know, nothing gets me more excited than a sizeable collection of diabetes supplies. Except maybe for pre-paid calling cards – how could I forget those? I also think it’s a good idea to keep a healthy dose of Guelph, Ontario in your life at all times. And I can’t say enough good things about mesothelioma, either.

I saw the little girl I gave Hissy to Friday and you’ll all be happy to know he’s doing just fine. As she was leaving the restaurant I’d met her parents at for dinner, she turned to me, made little antennas on her head with her fingers and shouted “Hissy’s in the hizzy!” I’m sure her Dad is to credit for that imparting. Across the street and down the road from simple ‘cuteness’, at any rate.

I saw them again Saturday morning, when they dropped by my apartment to give me a copy of the New York Post. As the munchkin was chasing Boss around, I noticed the front page:

“This really reinforces my theory that society is imploding,” cracked Pete Donelan of Princeton, whose meal at a tony wine bar was interrupted by the sight of our live cockroach – Kafka – scurrying up its wearer’s arm. Kafka is a fucking pussy, man. Hissy should have been the covergirl, and you bloody well know it. Hissy’s jewels are tri-colored and this embarrassment of a Brooch has only two, for a start. Plus, Hissy owns his own home, has a human girlfriend and made out with Andy Dick at a party last weekend.

Thanks also to Allie from upstairs who sent me the photo and link. Can I please be snapped back into reality now? I’ve spent more time talking about friggin’ roaches in the last two weeks than an entomologist. Let’s wrap this saga up – because at this rate, they’re going to start infesting the North End, looking for me. I am the Roach King. I can do anything.

I travel to Harvard Square about as often as I punch myself in the genetalia. Last night I made an exception to go have dinner with a friend, and was amazed that I was technically still in the same city I woke up in this morning. Boston proper is a very small city, compared to most of the other global urban death mazes, but it’s peripheries stretch out forever. Cambridge is definitely a parallel galaxy as far as I’m concerned, but as interesting as it was to get out and stretch my horizons, I felt quite happy to be back in the North End come the witching hour.

Travel used to be my favorite thing. I had been all over the world and lived and worked in 3 different countries by 25, and went to 3 different high schools. I haven’t had an inkling of wanderlust in the last 7 years and have only been off the continent once in all that time. My current universe extends between the Banknorth Garden and Copley, and I’m not even beginning to lament that.

Writing this, however, I see that I am indeed due for a trip. I spend loads of time travelling back and forth to Canada every year, but obviously that doesn’t really count. So where should I go? I have lots of friends in England, Ireland and Scotland, a first cousin in Spain, and a gang of peeps in California. I think I have to go somewhere I’ll have a contact this time around, because I’m about as close to finding a life partner as an earthworm. I think I’m leaning towards Spain. Suggestions?

“No promises – I’ll bring her over, and if she likes it we can tell her it’s hers”. My friend’s adorable little daughter has been on the market for her first pet, and after reading Hissy’s exploits here last week mumsie had an idea. I initially figured she was just being polite, and trying to help me solve my cockroach dilemma. But then I remembered how smart the sprog in question is, and the idea of her actually digging a Madagascar Hisser as her first domestic house pet didn’t seem quite so ridiculous. Couple that with the fact it comes with a nice chain, pin and itself is encrusted in enough jewels to make it look like someone tried to kill it with a Lite Brite – and I felt we may be on to something.

The muchkin loved what she saw, and Hissy now lives with a family here in downtown Boston: Roach relations are still quite good. She has found a lifelong (well, Hissy’s life anyway) friend. She’s a little upset that I am not letting her take him to school, bed, park, etc. But she’ll live. – Mom

Her Dad said I could post this photo, and I think you’ll all agree that with the exception of the enormous insect visible in the terrarium, it’s beyond adorable. I am happy at how things worked out, but I will miss my short-lived little hissing friend. I felt a poem was in order.

Oh dear Hissy,
We’ll miss ye.
But please let’s not fret,
You’re a bug, I’m a man
That’s as close as we’ll get.

Should I miss you,
Want to kiss you.
And my life is a bore.
I’ll go visit the munchkin,
Or just leave trash on my floor… for extended periods of time until 1300 of you move in and force me into a homeless shelter like that movie with the guy named ‘Joe’. A final word from the newly adoptive family:

She is still yelling “MOMMY! Look at HISSY! HE TURNED UPSIDE DOWN!”And we say, “Yes, they do that.” Everybody at work is still thinking how odd it is that her first pet is a cockroach. Now, I am their friend from work who has a daughter whose first pet is a cockroach. Like everybody can have a friggin dog. – Dad

Just to recap, I have had Roach Brooch acting as an affiliate site for Black Chandelier – where they sell the live cockroach brooches you’ve been seeing on TV and reading about. This means, if someone clicks through to their site from mine and buys a roach, I get credit for the sale thanks to a tracking system, and I get 10% of the roach bounty. Obviously, I ran several test orders after I set it all up to make sure that it worked.

The problem is, they sent one of these things to me by mistake. Actually, I’m not entirely sure it was a mistake because the guy emailed me yesterday and said he wanted me to have a mascot. Either way, when I got up Tuesday morning, there was a package waiting for me from Utah and I knew exactly what it had to be – A live Madagascar Hissing Cockroach.

Not wanting the thing to die, I ordered a terrarium online and it arrived yesterday at my office. I brought the Utah parcel into the office, set up the tank, called a few of my coworkers over to observe, and carefully introduced the ginormous beast to its new home. “Hissy” as I named him is currently chilling on my windowsill eating the heck out of a piece of banana from the Park Plaza Au Bon Pain.

I’m not one for bugs, but it’s a pretty cool creature. In addition to it’s size and girth (it doesn’t look much like a traditional roach) it has the accoutrements that warranted it a place on America’s Top Model and bring it’s price tag up to $80 before shipping – it’s encrusted in a pattern of multi-colored jewels, and also comes with a silver chain you can clip on to this belt it has which acts like a leash. You pin it to yourself, and the critter can roam around your shoulders and chest unchecked. Hence, it’s a roach brooch.

I edited a bunch of photos of the adventure last night, which I am going to use on Roach Brooch, so I figured I’d upload them to my own galleries so my readers can see the full drama unfold. I’m still not sure what is to become of Hissy. I am in talks with a friend to give him to her daughter as a pet. Your first thought is – what would a 5 year old girl want with a cockroach? But then you have to remember the jewelry angle – it looks like a demented, post-apocalyptic My Little Pony. So stranger things have happened. Enjoy the photos, and remember – my ownership of Hissy was an accident. I swear I don’t own any wizard hats or 20-sided dice.

It is with a heavy heart that I must announce the untimely demise of Wednesday Wadio. I hope that the hiatus will be a temporary one, but the software I use to play the songs also makes them searchable in a big worldwide network. This wouldn’t be a big deal if people who wanted to listen to songs I’ve featured actually came to the site to do so – but they don’t have to. My bandwidth is simply sucked away to God knows where, the source completely anonymous.

Last month, songs from Wadio Pye were download over 20,000 times by various people around the world. They type “Gorillaz” into the search engine, for example, and 2.5 megabytes of my bandwidth are used to play the song for a 13 year old girl somewhere in Spain. Now that I think about it – that’s kind of hot. But – no – it’s still an enormous strain on my expensive bandwidth.

There’s always another tool to use. If it hsn’t been thought up, it will be soon. I may also resort to just posting MP3s on my server and giving interested parties and friends the password to get access to them. That way, as opposed to the current Radio.Blog system, which converts the MP3s into smaller Flash files, you’ll be able to get proper MP3s of the songs for use on your own iPods. Perhaps that’s the best course of action. I mean, who hasn’t wished they could listen to Liquor and Whores while jogging? I’ll make it happen, you lucky people.