Well,

the fucking mouse escaped its tupperware. Contributory negligence: I didn't dump the mouse last night as promised, I didn't bother to check the tupperware when I heard all this scratching coming from it (my rationale: how the hell is a mouse gonna scratch its way out of tupperware?), and hence I deserve the blame for the dime-sized hole out of which that fuzzy bastard crawled. GREAT! It managed to fill the tupperware with little black turds before departing. Way to go, Julius, I should've stabbed you when I could. Maybe that's God's revenge for me shaking Julius - which I did, too vigorously, sometime around 2 a.m. As Laura predicted, I really did feel like a sadistic, moon-faced, sociopathic prepubescent in a wizard t-shirt and oozing acne when I did that. Poor little Julius. Next time I will not shake you. Next time I will drown you in porridge or put you in a muffin tin and bake you until you are dead.

Two battles now, M.H.H. v. Civ Pro and M.H.H. v. Julius, both of which I've given up for lost. I'll concentrate on the western theater for a while - i.e., fuck you, New York! I'm going to Vegas! (Apparently, that's not just me blowing air - me and my parents and my brother and my brother's Taiwanese-Australian gf are gonna spend Christmas driving in a cramped bean car from the Emerald of the Bay to the Dessert in the Desert. [That's Palo Alto to Las Vegas, for those who don't trust euphemisms.] These are the trips that give occasion for Christmas day meals at Denny's, with mom ordering steaks, dad and Richard in bloody fisticuffs (oh yes, it's happened!), and me wondering whether the slow service and shitty food is due to racism or just run-of-the-mill Denny's shittiness. Can't wait, folks, intense family plus gambling for the extremely parsimonious and risk-averse. I already got my money on a racehorse named Delicious.)