It had to happen sooner or later, and how fitting that it occurred within a few days of the implosion of Eliot Tower. I always used to say how Eliot will stand long after we're gone and the Admiral will outlive all of us, but sadly both of those predictions were dashed this week.

Last night the Admiral looked rather sluggish, although he's looked that way for the last month or so. I've had him for over a year, and who knows how long his previous owner had him, so I knew it was just a matter of time before he swam off for good.

The good news is that now we're off the hook for his exhorbitant contract that he signed for his role in Apartment 12: The Movie. The bad news is that, unbeknownst to my roommates, the Admiral was covering half of my rent and utilities, and now I'll have to pony up the full share. I'll also have to start doing my own laundry, cooking my own meals, and picking out my own clothes in the morning.

While driving down Delmar yesterday I noticed a guy in the parking lot of a gas station with a couple of tables set up. On these tables were boxes and boxes of what looked like Nike shoes, and next to the tables were a few motorized scooters. For a second I thought I was in New York City. There's no way in hell the shoes weren't either a) fake or b) stolen, yet this guy was operating out of the back of a van in broad daylight. The Stealingest City has reached a new low when lowlifes can sell their stolen wares on the streets in broad daylight without fear of repercussion.

I heard a rumor that you can pick up a free brick from Eliot this week, Monday thru Friday, from 7 AM to 3 PM if you stop by the construction site. But you might want to verify this with someone who actually knows what they're talking about.

As you are all well aware, Eliot Monstrosity came tumbling down this morning. It must've been a slow day in St. Louis, because the entire city was here watching the Big Event, including a number of helicopters. WashU has been trying for years to get nationwide name recognition, and clearly the solution has just presented itself: blow up a building a year.

I figure now that Eliot is gone, my old home Ruby and the other freshman dumps are next. They could do one a year for the next 6 years, and they still wouldn't have even touched the old sophomore suites. And money-grabbing WashU could sell the wreckage at a profit to sappy former residents who want a piece of history. And because the buildings they've erected in the past few years are apparently patched together from sticks and paper mache, it'll soon be time to take those down also! It's a neverending media frenzy waiting to happen, and each one is a photo op for Chancellor Wrighton and WashU.

Lots of people were heard commenting things like "so sad" and such after Eliot fell, but I don't think I'll be too heartbroken in 20 years when I hear that Ruby is getting replaced by futuristic space-age dorms that hover above the Earth and relocate themselves to higher ground when Wohl floods. I didn't mind much when I lived there, but upon visiting the old girl and her sister dorms recently I can't imagine how I ever could have lived in such tiny, dirty, carpetless rooms with disgusting public bathrooms.

And then there was the smell, built up from years of rushees puking all over the floors following their hazing. Even a demolition will never remove that smell, it's the odor of disease, pestilence, and death and will remain in the land there until the end of time.

Any of you who read my away messages during the day have most likely noticed a pattern. All I do these days is work, go to the gym, eat dinner, and sleep. Day after day, all the same. And because 9 hours of the day is spent on the computer, the last thing I want to do when I get home is look at a monitor for any reason, and unfortunately this limits my ability to post, since no one has yet invented the super USB cable that plugs directly into my brain.

It's probably for the best that I don't post as often, though, since I work so many hours that the topic of most of my posts would be how much my job resembles Office Space (without the grand larceny, arson, or Jennifer Aniston) and how I spent the last 4 days programming in .NET for 9 hours straight with barely a lunch break. It's a lot more difficult to make observations about popular culture when my only experience with it is the advertisements I see on the Metrolink.

But one thing I have noticed during my rare forays into the outside world away from the warm glow of the computer screen is that, in an effort to alleviate the traffic burdens on Delmar due to the Forest Park closing they've put up a sign that says "Delmar is congested, use alternate route through Olive". Well there's the understatement of the year, Delmar is congested. It took 15 minutes to go 1 mile on Delmar before they closed Forest Park, and now it's even worse. But last time I checked a map, Olive was not a desirable alternate route, since it is has a traffic light approximately once every half a block. I might as well take 64 during rush hour. It moves at the same speed, and is just as far away from Forest Park as Olive is. Are 3 years of construction closings over yet?

Today Pete and I became Vin Diesel and That Other Guy and sharped our xtreme sports skills at the Mazda Rev It Up event at the former Riverport Amphitheater. We learned how to "performance drive" (read: race) and then got to try out our skills on a number of closed courses before getting feedback from professional drivers (read: retired NASCAR people).

As much as you often want to speed around on the road when you're driving normally, it's surprisingly difficult to make yourself drive a car hard, accelerate around tight corners, and swerve around obstacles. The first time I ran through a tight corner track, the pro told me that I needed to "drive the car like I would drive a rental car. Slam on the brakes and squeal the tires". But it definitely took me a few runs before I really drove aggressively, and even then my course times were not even close to how well other amateurs were doing.

Tomorrow is the last day it's in St. Louis, so I encourage everyone to go. It costs $40 to do the races and competitions (but you get to go on some of the courses as many times as you want), but even if you don't pay this you can test drive some other Mazda cars on a closed course, play free arcade games, and drive go-karts that go 30mph (for a fee). Plus parking is free.

Everyone should go practice up, especially if they want to audition for a part in Apartment 12: The Movie.

It must really suck to be a writer for something in the Superman franchise. Part of what makes a plot gripping is that the reader or viewer, while of course knowing that the good guy will win, actually believes that it is in the realm of possibility that the bad guy, even by some stroke of blind luck, could defeat the good guy. This is rather difficult when the good guy is impenetrable, has superhuman strength, can move extremely fast, has heat and x-ray vision, and has super breath.

The creators of the Man of Steel soon realized this, so they decided that there was, after all, one thing that could hurt Superman: rocks from his former home planet. Don't ask me how this makes the least bit of sense. I can see it negating his super powers perhaps, but killing him? If his planet hadn't exploded in a ball of flaming wreckage, wouldn't he have been living on a something made of this toxic rock?

Even this presents a bit of a problem for those who make a living off making cartoons or movies about the continuing adventures of Superman. Kryptonite is supposed to be a "rare mineral", yet in order for there to be a plot, Lex Luthor pretty much has to have an inexhaustible supply of it. In an episode of the Superman cartoon that I watched this morning on Tivo, the bad guys are able to hurt Superman with high-tech weapons provided by aliens from another dimension.

And then there is Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, in which Superman fights Luthor-created "Nuclear Man" in a 90-minute social message about the dangers of nuclear weapons (and it came out in 1987! This is no 50's monster movie) that borders on laughably bad.

Rumor has it that they're still working on a new Superman big-screen adaptation. Let's all hope they tune-down the superpowers a little bit or we'll end up with plots like these.

Nowadays when we go to the store we have come to expect to get ripped off. We see the "Buy one get one free" sales at Schnucks and realize that just last week the price for the same item was half of what it is now. CDs cost pennies to manufacture and $15 to buy. That's why I need to recommend that everyone does business with the Texaco Xpress Lube on Clayton Road near the Galleria Mall.

I brought my car in today to get the oil changed, since it has been about 4 months and they sent me a coupon in the mail. After looking at it for a minute, the mechanic came in and got me out of the waiting room, showed me that the oil was still both full and clean, and told me that changing the oil now would be a waste of money. He very easily could have just changed the oil, charged me $25, and I would have been none the wiser. In exchange for their honesty, I give them a free testimonial on one of the hottest sites on the web (at least if you're looking for Monkey Fashion Show-related material).

And while I'm recommending businesses, like Brian Lewis I heartily endorse WonTon King as the place to go for great Sesame Chicken, large goldfish in a tank, ducks hanging in the window, strange Asian music videos, and everything else you'd expect from a fine Chinese restaurant. It's on Olive in the "Chinese Restaurant District".

In summary:

-You should get your oil changed at Texaco Xpress Lube.
-You should eat at WonTon King.
-You should never listen to Dave Matthews Band.

While making the daily commute this morning on the Metrolink I happened to notice that the woman sitting in the seat in front of me was reading one of those overpriced corporate books with a buzzword-laden title like "21 Secrets to Success: How to Shoot to the Top of the Corporate Ladder By Synergizing Your Life and Becoming a Model of Maximum Efficiency in the Workplace". Of course I read over her shoulder so that I could also become a successful corporate sellout (and a much cheaper one since I didn't purchase the book) and here's what I discovered:

-When writing a book, it is not important to have actual content. Rather, you can simply quote people who are generally considered successful, such as former presidents, generals, or Winston Churchill. The average page in the book had 75% quote, 20% margin, and 5% actual thoughts by the author.

-Generalizations are a great tool for obscuring the fact that you don't know what you're talking about. For instance, "All successful people realize that when the time comes for them to take that first step across the bridge they should stride confidently and not gingerly." Metaphors are great too.

-If you're the CEO of a corporation, a quick way to make a buck is to have one of your desperate underlings write a book about being successful, then slap your name on it.

It's a billion dollar business, that of writing instruction books for how others can make billions of dollars in business.

I went to the Cardinals game on Sunday with the express purpose of securing a Scott Rolen bobblehead that was being given away to the first 30,000 fans in attendance. I managed to snag one, and I held on to it despite being offered $20 for it by the guy sitting next to me. As soon as I got home they were already being offered on eBay, and there are tons of them on there now going for around $40.

But Scott Rolen isn't nearly as cool as Football Jesus, or the king of all bobbleheads: Giant Life-Sized Jesus. For only $2750.00 you can own a life-sized fiberglass Jesus whose head bobs up and down when you slam the door.

Dave's Geico Gecko bobblehead, an Apartment 12 staple, is even available online, while michael's Mike Matheny is going for upwards of $65 on eBay.

And of course, what better way to show your patriotism than this historical reenactment of Saddam Hussein with his pants down and a missile coming out of his ass.