Dude today sucks. Both Korea and USA got eliminated. Sad emo tears are streaming down my face right now. In addition, my belly is full of beer.

For those of you who want to follow along at home, here’s the list of winners and losers. As you’ll notice, I am one of the losers.

Last night I went to the deli to buy some beer and the deli-man is this old Korean guy who makes the same joke over and over again. When he gives you the total, say $8.99, he’ll say “THAT BE EIGHT THOUSAND NINETY NINE DOLLAR!” So last night he makes the joke again, and then says, HOLD ON A MINUTE, are you Korean? And then he got all proud of me for being Korean because obviously that’s quite an achievement, and said that I shouldn’t be drinking alcohol, but that I should be eating raisins instead. Then, he gave me a box of raisins. Which I am eating right now. You know how there are kids who hate raisins and then they grow up to be adults who hate raisins? I’m not one of them. I fucking love fucking raisins, man. They are delicious little rabbit turds. I mean goji berries? Acai berries? Whatever, man. Raisins, this is what I’m saying. When I got them in my Halloween sack (which was my Empire Strikes Back pillowcase, which I still have by the way), I totally ate them. I ate them way before the candy corn. Dude, candy corn is gross. It’s like sugared wax. Why should I eat that when I could be eating dried grapes? You know what else is gross? Necco wafers and Smarties (the American ones not the British ones which taste like M&Ms and are delicious despite the fact that they come in lame Easter egg pastel colors and therefore inferior to M&Ms though I do not approve of those stupid blue ones. I want the tan ones back!). American Smarties taste like vitamins and chalk combined. All of the sudden this blog became about candy. Curious.

Ok so I guess I’m rooting for Argentina now. In a related note: I don’t know anything about Argentinian candy.

Have you guys been keeping up with the AnnieCup? You can find the latest here. As you can see, I am not winning. That is really the only thing that matters. I am not currently a winner. I suppose this shouldn’t come to a surprise to me. And yet, it does. I am disappointed, people. I am disappointed about the way things are turning out for me. Am I happy that Bibit is currently in first place? Sure. Sure I am. That’s great. For her. However, I also know that there’s still, like, 100 World Cup games left to play. And surely in those 100 games, I can make up the points and be a winner. Of course I can do that. So, really, I am a winner, just not right now, on this particular day, in this particular hour. That can change.

It is also interesting that Mr. Pony’s strategy of basically picking only ties is not working. Currently, Mr. Pony is in last place. I happen to think he will be in last place for a long time. Maybe even forever. This is the man who in a March Madness pool picked schools based on mascots, which is nice, if you think about it. Mascots never get any credit. And plus, there are some really lame mascots out there (Stanford, University of Hawaii I’m looking at you). I think actually it got him kind of far. Until it didn’t. Then he was the loser. Which is a mean way of saying he didn’t win. Because he’s a loser. Man this circular logic is making me hungry with it being circular and all, much like a cookie.

In squee news, I went to the Bronx Zoo yesterday, and took pictures with MY SWEET NEW CAMERA. I’m not going to “boar” you with pictures (ha ha ha!) but I will share two picture things and one fact thing.

First the fact thing: I learned that 1/3 of all animals on Earth are beetles. It makes sense, since insects are basically the most numerous type of organism here, but when you put it that way, it makes me really want to hurl.

Now for two picture things.

The “Dancing Crane Cafe” has many food options, including Kosher food. Unfortunately, their kitchen is not actually Kosher. As a result, Kosher food is dispensed out of a Kosher vending machine. You can get things like onion rings and fries and some kind of sandwich maybe, hard to tell from the picture. But this begs the question: Wuhhhhh? How can a machine dispense fries? Are they fried INSIDE the machine? Does the machine get stocked with Kosher fries, so does that means someone has to delivery already cooked fries and put them in a vending machine where they will sit for….hours? Days? It is a mystery. A Kosher mystery.

I like this turtle because it has a strange pig snout for a nose. I believe it lives in the waters of southeast Asia. I do not believe this turtle is Kosher.

GUESS WHAT IS IN THE CONTAINER?

HINT: IT IS AS BIG AS MY FINGER AND HAS THREE (3) TIMES AS MANY LEGS AS I DO.

HINT: IT IS A FILTHY DISGUSTING VILE PEST THAT LIVES IN SHIT AND GARBAGE AND ALSO APPARENTLY IN MY KITCHEN.

HINT: IT KIND OF LOOKS LIKE A DRIED DATE.

HINT: I MEANT DATE THE FRUIT, NOT DATE, LIKE THE HOTTIE YOU ARE MEETING TONIGHT AND GOING OUT FOR DRINKS AND DANCING.

HINT: NO ONE REALLY DOES DRINKS AND DANCING ANYMORE, SOUNDS KIND OF OLD FASHIONED. LIKE HEY LET’S GO CUT A RUG!

HINT: THESE DAYS KIDS ARE MORE LIKE YO LET’S GO TO A RAVE.

HINT: OK KIDS DON’T REALLY SAY THAT UNLESS THE KIDS ARE LIVING IN 1994. HONESTLY, I’M NOT SURE WHAT KIDS DO THESE DAYS. THEY PROBABLY DO TWEET UPS OR SOMETHING. I DUNNO. THAT’S NOT REALLY THE PROBLEM RIGHT NOW.

HINT: THE PROBLEM IS THE THING THAT I TRAPPED IN THIS CONTAINER BECAUSE I WAS TOO SCARED TO DESTROY IT. IT’S THE HARD CANDY SHELL AND THE JUICY CENTER THAT IS THE PROBLEM.

HINT: OMFG IT WAS CRAWLING ALL OVER MY OLIVE OIL WHICH IS SERIOUSLY MAKING ME WANT TO THROW THE WHOLE BOTTLE OUT EVEN THOUGH IT IS BRAND NEW, DON’T WORRY I WILL JUST DISINFECT IT WITH BLEACH WHICH WILL PROBABLY RUIN THE OLIVE OIL.

HINT: YES I’M A BIG FAT BABY CHICKEN WHEN IT COMES TO THIS SHIT, BUT DUDES, IT IS BIGGER THAN MY FINGER. HOW CAN YOU KILL SOMETHING THAT IS BIGGER THAN YOUR FINGER? I THINK IT WAS SMILING AT ME AND DID THE CABBAGE PATCH.

HINT: I GUESS THE ROACH IS AS OLD AS I AM. NO ONE DOES THE CABBAGE PATCH ANYMORE. ANYONE WHO KNOWS HOW TO DO THE CABBAGE PATCH IS PROBABLY DEAD OR IN JAIL.

HINT: SHITBALLS, I THINK IT JUST VOGUED.

I am not sure what do with this. It is…a situation.

Hey friends! There are 11 total people in the Annietown World Cup Pool, which means the winner will win $55 USD! ZOMG! Now you can finally buy that American Apparel unitard for your mother.

You can see everyone’s picks and the standings HERE. You can re-read the rules HERE. You can see a picture of a squid HERE. I will be updating it as much as I can as soon as I get the scores. But, sometimes, I’ll be watching the games, and I might be drunk, so I might have to update the scores the next day. I’m just warning you now. I want to be upfront and open with you. Because I love you and respect you blah blah blah zzzzz. Now go forth and be a winner.

In the meantime, I will publicly humiliate Mr. Pony, Toi, Bibit, and Aquafortis. GIMME MAH MONIES, NATCH!

Hello friends! I think we have enough people to join our little World Cup pool. So far, there are maybe…5 or 6 people. That’s like $30 USD of champion cash monies! OMG! You know what you can GET for $30?????? Holy shit! You can get like, five copies of my book (qualifies for SuperSaver shipping and, dudes, I think you can find it for six bucks now, sad and awesome at the sametime. A bargain!). You could ALSO get $30 worth of cheese. A really nice bottle of wine. Or 4 really, really crappy bottles of wine. You can get a unitard from American Apparel (just kidding, I just checked and they are over $30 USD). You can get about 30 mousetraps because they are only 99¢ each. You can get maybe 4 and a half cans of cockroach spray. You can get really, really, really nice soap. Like a soap that costs $30 must be pretty fucking nice. I bet your skin will feel amazing. You can get a lot of french fries. If you go to Taco Bell you can get a lot of Chalupas. So the point of what I’m saying is that you risk $5 USD for the chance to win enough Chalupas for your whole office. Maybe you can get that KFC chicken sandwich thing, the one where the ‘bread’ is two pieces of fried chicken, and it has mayo and bacon on the inside. Holy cow what is that about. This is why we’re fat, people.

Ok so here’s how it works. Go HERE and download the World Cup form. My friend Mike made this one, so big shout out to him, he’s the king of the spreadsheet.

Then, you fill it out and mail that to me, your friend, Annie Choi. It’s annie at annietown dot com in case you didn’t know. (There’s a thing in the corner that says “share” and you can choose “email as attachment”). Then I will email you a sweet, touching response with directions on how to Paypal your $5 USD to me. Remember, Europeans–$5 USD is basically free in Euro. You may not even need to send me money. IN fact, I may owe you money.

Problem! Warning! The tournament starts FRIDAY morning if you’re in the United States. But a few Annietown readers are from not the United States and from places whose languages include cute letters that wear hats or ties sooo you guys have to do that math for that. I hate time zones. We should all be free from time. So let us say everyone gets the picks to me by Friday morning 8 am eastern time (basically, if you cats do it tonight or Thursday night we’ll all be cool).

Ok give me questions in the comments section!

This is very exciting. Mostly because I’m about to not win $30.

UPDATE: Here are the RULES in case you were wondering how this whole thing works. Also I stole this from Mike Moyer. He is organizing a very spendy pool, and this pool is for cheapos like myself. All of this doesn’t matter because I’m not going to win, so wtf you know?

World Cup begins this week. I do not know anything about soccer. I don’t. Seriously. I know that the ball is black and white. I know that people chase this ball and that other people chase the people with the ball. I know there’s a net with someone in front of it. I know at some point, a bunch of bros line up in front of this net and cover their testicles with their hands. I don’t know why they do this because from what I understand, people are aiming the ball at the net, not at testicles. But what do I know? I don’t know anything about soccer. Oh, but I do know that many of these players are rather good looking gentlemen who are much younger than I am, not that there’s a problem with that. Nope, no problem at all.

Here is something else I know: I love to bet money on sports I know nothing about. Interestingly, I love to bet money, and yet I hate to lose money. And I often lose money because I don’t know anything about sports. This creates a situation. A situation in which I lose money and have complicated feelings of anger, confusion, loss, regret, despair among others. I should also mention that I hate losing. Maybe somewhere there are people who lose and think “It’s not about winning or losing, it’s about how you play the game.” You know what? Good for them. They are better than I am. I’m sure they floss every night and use ethical traps to capture and release mice. Listen, I’m not a good person. I like to WIN. I hate to LOSE. I want to DESTROY mice.

The point is, I have joined my friend’s World Cup pool. During the March Madness pool, I believe I came in second to last. It was truly madness. I was pretty mad, in fact. Mad that I WAS NOT A WINNER. DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? I AM A WINNER. EVERYONE TELLS ME I AM A WINNER, LIKE FOR EXAMPLE, MY PARENTS. Actually that is a lie. My parents do not think I am a winner. Mostly because I have not produced human offspring and also because I am not a doctor.

So yes, World Cup soccer. Very exciting. I cannot wait to watch some games and HAVE NO IDEA what is going on. Sure, I could read about it on Wikipedia, or have one of you cats out there explain it to me. But, you know what? I’m ok this way. I love mystery. It’s tasty.

Sidenote: If there is an award for best username/handle, then I should win it. Because mine is Clam Scene Investigation.

If you want to see my picks and follow along at home, you can do so here. Send me your picks too!