...As in Biblical. God has decided to smite us. Only one of us believes in God, but you know... we're a couple so we share everything, including wrath.

Things have not been so great lately, Our dog died in August. She had been sick with a degenerative genetic spine thing for quite some time. Being a pure bred the lack of gene variety causes these sorts of illnesses in many dogs. Breeding is a man made concept, There's no such thing as a Terrier. And much like your retarded cousin the results of Show dogs and inbreeding are often similar. Studies show that Genetic diseases are becoming more frequent in pure breeds. I can only assume this, is payback for man playing God. None-the-less we had to put her down and it took a few weeks to get back in our groove. Grieving, for a pet or a person is a process, it's over when it's over.

Like the proverbial...uh... proverb? God had decided to fuck with something else we hold dear... Squidpod. After 4 solid days of shooting and two feverish weeks of editing. God deleted a huge amount of work off my external drive. in literally seconds. One minute there, gone the next. The nerds will tell me that it was due to a bad B-tree catalogue or some such heresy, but I know, this was no act of mere machine.

"But Job* at least you have your health!" good point. Except I don't. I'm also diagnosed this month with Barette's Esophagus. A fun medical condition which restricts my diet, limits my drinking and puts me on the Cancer watch list. Oh and we get to sleep on a super fun bed that's sloped 25º at the head so that gravity will keep stomach acid in my stomach. Thanks Satan you dick... you're gonna win this bet on a technicality.

No matter how much lamb's blood we painted on the door, the last plague came for us. No, the locusts haven't shown up, but our landlord did with an eviction notice. He made a cool million dollars, selling our place to a guy who "can't be bothered by tenants" and would rather have vacant property. Awesome! We love this place, it's exactly right for us. We got everything exactly how we like it and boom, six months in... See ya. Fuck them, I'm taking as much copper as I can out of the walls before we go.

If we're being tested, one of us is going to fail. If this is coincidence (which it is) chaos is not as organized as I care for it to be. Either way I don't think we can take much more of this.

We've got two things left to hold onto; Our Jobs and getting married. Somebody invited God to the wedding so we're good there... and I can't get fired if I don't twitter from work anymore, right?

I may not believe in God but I fear him just the same...

*God and Satan made a bet that the devout Job (pronounced Jobe) would renounce his faith if God ruined his life... He didn't... Satan was God's slave for a month.

Update: November 1st, 2009

Trying to get married in a foreign country when both parties are divorced is insanely expensive. After dropping a few hundred on paperwork, we found out that the translation fees would be another grand. At this point I might as well have stood on t the street corner with my wallet open inviting people to help themselves.

So just to add a whole new level of stress, we decided to get married at City Hall one week after we move.

The move itself went well then, second day in Jenn Realized that during the workweek we live below a bowling alley (figuratively). There is no sound proofing, and it wasn't exactly advertised as such. And the Coupe de Grace, wait for it... wait for it ... while hanging a shelf I managed to put a screw through a water pipe causing a minor flood... the cost of that damage is TBD.

Knock on all the wood you can find for us squiddies.

Artist rendering: My eggs don't look this nice.I've been making devilled eggs as my standard for BBQs and house parties and If I may... I make a mean devilled egg!!! But not mean enough, I need a meaner devilled egg for a meaner world. Turn it up way up, fuck some shit up y'know? Then it occurs to me… horror movies were mean, but Japan made horror meaner. Gangster movies were mean, Hong Kong made them WAYmeaner. So let’s take a page from Asian cinema and turn it up to Ju (or Sup)!

Hey, Chow Yun-Fat let's make some tea eggs!!!

Ingredients

* 12 eggs
* Water
* 3-4 tablespoons salt (can be quite liberal with salt)
* 3 tablespoons soy sauce (go nuts 4,5,6 whatever)
* 2 tablespoons grated or pureed Ginger
* 1 tea bag (any kind of plain black tea)
* 1 bag of licorice tea

Directions

1. Bring the eggs to the boil in a large enough pot and simmer for 3-5 minutes. Seriously …SIMMER don't over boil.
   
   
2. Drain and cool. When cool enough to handle, gently crack the egg's shell all over without removing the shell. This can be done in a tea towel by rolling them.
   
   
3. Place back in the pot, cover the eggs with water, add the remaining ingredients and bring back to boil, turn down and simmer on low heat for an hour or more, this helps the flavour infuse the egg. Turn the heat off and leave them overnight if you want.
4. Drain once more. They should have an awesome marble effect or look like they got some sort of disease. Yum!!!

Hey, Yorimitsu, It's Oni time...

Ingredients

* Wasabi
* Japanese Mayonnaise
* Kelp (Seaweed)

Directions

1. Peel the eggs. Oooo...tea stained! Using a sharp knife, slice each egg in half, lengthwise. Gently remove the yolk halves and place in a small mixing bowl. Arrange the egg white halves on a serving platter, or a plate, or a hub cap... or a naked lady, We're not judging.
   
   
2. Using a fork, mash up the yolks and add Wasabi, I like mine pretty spicy but maybe start with a quarter sized dollop and go from there. Add Japanese mayonnaise, 1/2 a teaspoon of ginger, a teaspoon of soya sauce and a sprinkling crushed seaweed. Spoon egg yolk mixture into the egg white halves. Sprinkle with crushed seaweed.
   
   

Make these in the morning or the night before your bris or wake and you’re good to go for the next day. Be sure to keep them refrigerated, unless you’re planning some sort of sabotage, then I’d suggest keeping them in a not quite sealed Tupperware container under your enemy’s car seat. Plan ahead eitherway.

Makes 2 dozen demon eggs. There you go: Oni Tomago! By the way this is probably the best idea I've ever had (this week) and if someone else has thought of it, suck it. I've never seen it.

(Photos By Jenn)

Waaaaah! Apple makes a stupid mouse! Waaaah! It never works! Waaaah! There's too many buttons! Waaaaa! Okay children, listen up. When I was growing up on computers, they had a bunch of silly mice. Some had one button, some had three, most were nicotine yellow, but all had trackballs in the bottom. Guess what? We had to clean those trackballs or our mice wouldn't work. If you think that's too hard, stop reading, go spend $20 on a new mouse and shut up. For the rest of you too cheap or lazy to buy a superior mouse, I'm going to show you why my Mighty Mouse doesn't suck that bad.

Ergonomic it ain't: If you survived the puck mouse apple rolled out in the nineties, you remember how bad it actually could be. Apple fixed the shape... kinda. Now it gives you Carpal Tunnel Syndrome much slower. In the year 2005 A.D., 75 years after everybody else in the known universe had adopted (at least) two buttons and a scroll wheel, Apple made a huge leap from 1 button to 4 with a SCROLL BALL! The scroll ball we'll get to later.

The biggest problem is where the extra buttons ended up. Button 3 is the Scroll ball, activated by clicking down. Button 4 is the most annoying button and is placed right where you grip the mouse. Despite what some of you whiners say, this is a super sensitive button that inadvertently opens Dashboard (or whatever you set it to) every time you grip the mouse for precision work. I got fed up after a few times of losing a long lasso session in Photoshop, only to be replaced with the weather widget. Buttons 1 and 2 are like any other mouse—right and left. These are pretty much all I need. If you need more buttons... then Jog on, this is not for you.

Turn it off: Go to your System Preferences and turn the side and top buttons off. They are excessively stupid and you don't need them. The only buttons remaining are left click, right click and the trackball.

These are good.

Clean your cheese out: Officially Apple says just turn the mouse upside down and wipe it with a damp cloth. Yes, this is a very good thing to do, but unless you actually work in an Apple store, your less than minimalist workspace will require more. In fact, when I was a freelancer, I had been sat at desks where I've had to clean up sticky keys and clogged mice before I could even begin getting any work done.

The technique I developed as a Tech-Hobo involves one basic item: The Post-it Note. Take a post-it fold it in half, then tear it on the fold. Take that half, fold again and curve it into a "U" shape. Jam that sucker into the trackball as deep as you can then run it around in a circle.

That should unclog most of you. If not, use Apple's upside-wipey-thingy, and then repeat the post-it cram again. This has never let me down and my mouse works just fine. I do this about once a month or if I feel something sticking.

So there you go - if you're stuck with a Mighty Mouse at work, you can deal. Why not clean your keyboard while you are at it? That'll kill an hour.