I've noticed a pretty odd side-effect to my owning a 65" television.

Because the screen dimensions are 16:9 instead of the normal 4:3 most shows need to be stretched horizontally so the picture fills the screen.

This makes everyone look short and fat.

I've become so used to this that the women that are hot are STILL hot when they look short and fat.

So now in real life I've become much less critical about chunkier women than I used to be.

So while I still have pretty high standards, I now find myself looking at, and appreciating, women that six months ago I wouldn't have paid any attention to at all.

The next thing you know I'll be stocking up on midget porn.

I've been spending some time trying to decide who to pine away for.

I generally feel most like myself when I'm obsessing over some girl that is (a) completely inappropriate, (b) wholly unavailable, (c) way out of my league, or any combination of the above. Then I also have the standard requirements like attractiveness, intelligence, and personality.

There also has to be an inkling, however slight, that some slight change in circumstances could allow a real relationship. Perhaps if she wasn't married, or if I was more attractive, or if I moved to France - that kind of change.

For the last few months that niche was filled by LaptopGirl, but for reasons best left unsaid she no longer meets enough of the requirements.

So I've been thinking about a replacement.

I've got it narrowed down to a trio of candidates.

VigilanteGirl
Her main qualification has to be her age. I'm old enough to be too old for her mother. While that's fine by me, in a dirty-old-man kind of way, I'm sure that the age difference would make her completely unavailable to an old coot like me.

There also the issue of her workplace competition. VigilanteGirl is not the only candidate that I considered from that establishment. To truly pine for her, I'd have to stop thinking about some of her coworkers; notably TwinSisters and NeighborsDaughter.

There's also the issue of the flirting. At least a small part of me has to suspect that there may be something behind her innuendos, and of course if there's any chance that she's available for me then that blows that deal.

FilleFrancaiseSexy
The hot French girl that came into Rich O's last weekend would at first glance appear to be perfect. The age factor is there, making her quite inappropriate for me. She's possibly third or fourth on the list of the most beautiful women I've ever laid eyes on, so she's so far out of my league that, as they say, she can't even see my league. And oh yeah, she lives in France, so availability should never be a problem.

I'm concerned that I've never successfully pined away for anyone that I couldn't see on a semi-regular basis. My limit seems to be about a month - after that much absence I'm usually out looking for someone else to torture my soul over.

HotWorkGirl
I'm hesitant about even writing about HotWorkGirl here. I'm not sure that she meets ANY of the requirements I listed earlier. Her only real chance to be inappropriate or otherwise unavailable is to be a LOT older than she appears or to be a lesbian. She's just too new for me to have categorized her yet.

I can't decide. Perhaps I should widen the list of candidates.

There are several likely women - each more beautiful or young or married or gay or drugged-out than the last - that could possibly step up and occupy enough of my thoughts that a full-scale crush COULD ensue.

I suppose I'll just wait and see how things play out.

There are millions, maybe billions, of ineligible bachelorettes out there. I'm sure I'll find the worst possible one someday.

For reasons that I cannot fathom I haven't honored my July 11th Hottie of the Day until now.

Paige Davis is the host of TLC's Trading Spaces, one of my favorite shows.

Paige's perkiness would likely get old very quickly, but her sexiness may just make up for it.

group-ie
n. Slang
1. A fan, especially a young woman, who follows a rock group around on tours.

Saturday night was much like Friday. It seems that most of the regulars were in attendance at one time or another and I spent the night in the living room area talking about various topics ranging from my quiet demeanor to the severe lack of attractive, single, straight women at Rich O's.

I had the same beers I had on Friday, in probably the same order.

What a wild-man I am.

As I left I spotted LaptopGirl sitting in her car so I said hello and left before I got drafted into chauferring her and her new boyfriend someplace.

ex-ot-ic
adj.
1. From another part of the world; foreign.
2. Intriguingly unusual or different; excitingly strange.

I'm having a tough time thinking of anything to write about Friday. Everyone was at Rich O's and there were a lot of interesting conversations, but nothing really sticks in my mind...

...EXCEPT the presence of FilleFrancaiseSexy who was there with CanadianGirl and her entourgage from work.

I heartily recommend that CanadianGirl bring more sexy French girls to Rich O's. They're just what the place has been missing.

For the beer part of this report the only experimenting I did was to order a Great Lakes 15th Anniversary Ale. This is a Belgian Ale, and it had all of the appleness that I've come to expect from Belgians, but this beer had a lot of other characteristics that I cannot even begin to describe. It was one of the most complex beers I've ever had.

I liked it, and so now the Great Lakes Brewery is about 5-for-5 when it comes to making a beer that I like.

Other than that I had a few of my regulars; NABC Beak's Best, Arcadia Scotch Ale, and Alaskan Smoked Porter.

Got the bill for my truck repairs today.

It cost me four-hundred for a new radiator (which I needed) and another three-hundred for a new timing belt (for which replacement was way overdue) so it was like, eleventy-zillion or so total.

Today's the first time I've been broke since I refinanced my mortgage and got all that lovely money back in the Spring. Being broke sucks.

I've heard that most people don't dream in color. I do, and I always have as far as I can tell.

I've also heard that lucid dreams - dreams where you know you're dreaming and so you can control the action - are pretty rare. I have them all the time.

Those two things make me lucky I suppose, but all is not perfect in my dream worlds.

To tell if I'm dreaming or not I've used the trick where you find some printed words, read them, then read them again. If the words change then you're certainly dreaming. A watch can also be used if you can't find any writing.

More often, however, I just use the jump test. This is when I simply jump into the air and then try to delay my landing. If I can delay it for even a second I'm dreaming.

In my dreams I can walk through walls. This is something I had to develop. I started by passing through glass windows, then through closed doors, and now I'm at the point where no room can contain me, and no locks can prevent my access. The trick is to flash my hands at whatever barrier I'm about to collide with - I do that and I just pass right through.

I'm also working on my invisibility. This comes in quite handy when I'm skulking around looking for some cutie to molest. Some especially sensitive characters seem to sense my presence, but all they ever do is watch me pass with a quizzical look on their faces.

I can of course also fly, though that ability has the annoying habit of diminishing as I use it. It's like I have a certain amount of flight time allocated at the start of each dream, and once that quota has been used up I'm limited to just fast running, or maybe sliding around like I'm skating.

Height is also an issue. I seem to be limited to just a couple of dozen feet above the ground. Trying to go higher uses up my quota very quickly. I'd reasoned that If I could just get high enough I could then just drift back to to whatever destination I wanted. No such luck.

It's very annoying because my dreams typically start out at home - either my current one or the one from my childhood - and I can never get to where I want to go by flying. My flight time allocation just isn't long enough.

Driving isn't much of an option either. It seems that all of the cars in my dreams are limited to maybe 5 MPH at most.

Running can get me to where I want to go - and I'm a very fast and relaxed dream-runner, but then I run into the most annoying thing of all.

I wake up.

All of my dreams are too short. I'm such a light sleeper that nearly every time I get to my destination I wake up. Just for a second, but enough time to have to start all over again.

I've been trying to develop teleportation to cut down on my travel time but I haven't had much success with it yet. I'll keep trying though.

How's this for an awkward ending to this entry?

I thought I'd jot down some ideas for future 'blog entries so that the next time I find myself in a little creativity drought I'd have some ideas ready and waiting.

Despite my stated intention to make an entry at least every couple of days there have been way too way too many times where I fail to meet that goal. This entry may help ease that problem.

1. The Mystery Hottie. This is the person you see while driving to work, or the girl at the grocery store. You don't know their name or anything about them yet you still want to have sex with them.

2. Asshole of the Day. The people who take up three parking spots. The people who won't use their turn signal. The ultra-Liberals.

3. The Stupidest Thing I Heard Today. I could make an entire website devoted to this topic.

4. Stuff I Didn't Know. They say you learn something new every day. Maybe I should write about the things I learn each day. Like yesterday I learned that the first man to go over 100,000 feet in a balloon got back to Earth by jumping and parachuting. How cool is that?

There's a saying - at least I think there is, maybe I just made it up - that bad things come in threes.

As I type this I'm waiting for the trifecta to complete.

First, I'm relocated to the worst position possible at work. Then on Saturday my truck developed a radiator leak.

Now, as I type this, something in my computer is making an awful racket. I can hope that it's just one of the cooling fans, but I fear that it's one of my disk drives.

If it is a disk I hope it will hold out until I can buy a replacement and transfer all of my files.

Playing with the Terragen Strata plugin and made this one.

I like this image. I think it can be a lot better than it is. Maybe it should just apply itself instead of being so lazy all the time.