20030731 
Too much personal is too much boring, so says the pierce, and he certainly has me pegged because if I wrote about my daily here you'd all have gone and left me a long long time ago.
Everyday is not what the rockstars would have you believe. Everyday is not a winding road. Some days, sure: they wind, they curve, the race up and through mountain passes. Some days are like racing down the boulevard in your t-tops 'bird with gidget, a big mustache, and a goofy grin. Some days are like riding a lawmower across the country. Some days, though, are just plain white bread - a few lanes of traffic, a toll, an exit or two, 4 or 5 or maybe even 6 traffic lights. Some days, you see, are like faded signs.
So you're all lucky I don't write down here what occurs in my everyday. If I did, it would look like little snippets of conversation:
XXXXXXXXX: you're a bread man right?
BritCoal: uhh?
BritCoal: you mean breast man?
XXXXXXXXX: HA HA
XXXXXXXXX: you're like, so fuckin funny
xxxxxxx: yo
BritCoal: yo
xxxxxxx: sup
BritCoal: nada
BritCoal: you?
xxxxxxx: chillin
BritCoal: fun
And then, as if to make matters better, along comes Friendster - but it's a sham. It connects me up with all my friends. I have, oh, maybe 7 people on there. I'll do it because I'm bored at work and welcome anything that diverts my attention to the daunting task at hand, but I don't really get much out of it. The 7 people on there consist of 4 people I see almost on a daily basis. The good thing about friendster is that it allows me to keep in touch with people almost on a daily basis. Whoa. Quite the coup there. The other 3 people are old school pals that aren't in my area. I keep in touch with them via email every once in awhile but now that I have friendster I can log in, find that person, and send them a message within the friendster network so that when they check their email they'll get a note from friendster saying they have a note from me at friendster and then they can go to the friendster network and log in and get my message. It's a lot more efficient now.
Friendster is a sham because it's not honest about it's feelings with you. It should be called hookupster. If I had a site that ripped off it's idea from an old failure, sixdegrees, I'd just call it as I saw it:
You are connected to Carol through:
You (had sex with) Jane(who cheated on)Dick> (who made out with)Mary(who became lesbian with)Carol (who met you through hookupster and gave you a blowjob in the parking lot of that seedy bar)
The tagline would probably lure people in by promising them sex with their best friends girlfriend.
XxXxXx: ahrrrr
BritCoal: ?
XxXxXx: i'm a pirate
BritCoal: are you a pirate?
XxXxXx: yes
BritCoal: mmm
BritCoal: i see
We wouldn't let pirates on hookupster. Only girls-next-door and nice middle class white guys. Harmless people. Or, as Ford Prefect said, Mostly Harmless. That way people would feel free to sex and sleaze with all their friends without the chance of VDs or STDs or, *gasp*, a bad reputation. It would be perfect.
XXXXXXXXX: i told you about my last night in colorado when my brother's girlfriend went crazy, right?
BritCoal: no you didn't
XXXXXXXXX: she hit his car with hers on purpose and then tried to back up over my bags...
Everyone would want to be on hookupster so they could hear about the latest story from so-and-so and what they did to what's-his-face and how he retaliated by sleeping with whose-her-name. There would be message boards and forums and gossip would be encouraged.
XXXXXXXXX: she really pissed me off
BritCoal: why?
XXXXXXXXX: not so much her, more the idea of her at the time
BritCoal: uh huh...
BritCoal: tables turned, lessons learned, you get burned by playing by the rules...
XXXXXXXXX: i guess so
After awhile people would stop worrying about every day. They'd stop trying to polish their faded signs and they'd just start playing by the new rules. They'd feed the gossip, and even act it out like a sick soap opera that runs, live, 24 hours a day.
XXXXxxxx: so i found this place online you can buy viagra
XXXXxxxx: im tempted
XXXXxxxx: but then there was that guy you know who popped a woody and couldnt get rid of it
Only the actors would be even worse.
xxxxXXXX: my girlfriend and i play this game where, for example, i try to stick my finger up her butt while she's just about to fall asleep
BritCoal: uhhh...... okay?
xxxxXXXX: it's cute and funny...whetever
xxxxXXXX: so i was drunk the other night
xxxxXXXX: and she thought it would be funny to try to do it to me
BritCoal: this is starting good...
xxxxXXXX: but i was too drunk to care
xxxxXXXX: so i just let her do it
BritCoal: dude.. I'm laughing out loud .. I never laugh out loud..
xxxxXXXX: and i woke up the next morning
xxxxXXXX: with a poop stain on my underwear
BritCoal: i'm biting my lip here...
BritCoal: That's pretty funny shit, dude..
BritCoal: no pun intended
xxxxXXXX: yeah. when i saw my underwear i thought maybe it was a fart stain
xxxxXXXX: but then i remembered
xxxxXXXX: i also vaguely remeber her smelling her finger afterward.
And the name of the show would be called Life.
The U.S.P.S. has to charge me 37 cents to send an envelope across town because it only charges me 37 cents to send an envelope to Hawaii. The U.S.P.S. has to charge 37 cents to send an envelope because they need that 37 cents to support their racing team, headed up by a superhero named Lance.
And I'm complaining. Who the fuck do I think I am?
Someone happened upon this site today searching for "seal front balancer shaft honda recall". Perhaps you will recall, a little over a year ago, when in fact I had my front balancer oil shaft seal go on my honda. You might recall that I, for once in my life, complained to Honda themselves (my car fell outside the recall range by one year yet was the same engine and body style as all the others within the recall). Little did it get me but a few free oil changes but at least what it did get me was a good explaination to the someone who happened upon this site today. And that's all I could ask for really.
Lance is an odd name for a superhero but we really gotta take what we can get these days and herald the ones we love and show them to our little boys so they can go out and mimick them in the streets. It's funny the guys name should be Armstrong when it would appear to be his legs that did most of the work. Regardless, amazing.
Here is to #5
Looking forward to #6
20030730
Tony is over at the busblog saying where he be at is fine but where he wants to be at is finer. Apparently playing with titties ain't enough for the greedy bastard.
Bunnie is seriously thinking of up and driving to the west coast, just cause.
People feel like they have to get out all over the globe, and here I am just chillin' like a villian. I can't really complain. I mean, sure, I could, but no one would listen anyway so I won't.
But I'm still not worried about getting out of here. It's all the same. I see the ocean I see the trees, I see the motion I see the leaves. It's all the same, kids, all the same.
At least Michael seems to think everyone *else* should get the heck out - mainly the tourists... and as much as I know my fine state relies heavily on tourism, now that deforestation isn't quite as trendy as it used to, I do have to agree with him:
Last night, down at trivia, we were enjoying a wonderful evening of fine dining, fine weather, fine wine (or beer), and fine friends when, not half way through our meal, in barged a mob of crazy and drunken tourists. Normally I'm all for a few more people in the bar - more cute girls to stare at - but this was a bit off. By the sheer loudness I could have punched someone. There were so many people I almost thought I was witnessing a flash mob, ala New York style, playing "drunk revellers". The bounced in. They bounced out. Some stayed, some went, but they all had glow-in-the-dark plastic necklaces and they were all drunk.
20030729
Met a dude in the supermarket line the other day. He was bouncing one of those 99 cent beach balls - orange - and he told the cashier girl "Hey, if I can bounce this and hit the ceiling, you should give it to me for free". "uhh, I can't really do that," she said. "Well, if I can't hit the ceiling I'll pay double.." She looked skeptical and said "I can't take double for it, either," and she scrunched up her face.
He was buying 10 or so bananas, a few boxes of soy milk, some soy protein bars, and a lot of yogurt.
"My mom told me once that I was going to grow up," he said, looking at me and palming the beach ball, "but she liiiied!" He grinned. He had a scruffy orangish beard and blonde hair. "I'll give the extra money to him," he said to the cashier, pointing at the bag boy. "No no! To me!" she said, smiling.
He tried to bounce the ball and hit the ceiling.
Hung out a lot at the mexican watering hole this weekend, chatchi's.. we call it chatchi's(sp?) cause it's the place we go all the time, sort of like those poor bastards in the movie office space go to that franchise joint (which they refer to as Chatchi's) just to get the hell out of the office.. Except we go at night. For beer. It's really called Amigo's and it's got a seedy side to it, but in a good way, and pretty much the best patio you'll find in town so summer's are spent sipping pitchers of PBR for $5 till 8pm and $8 there after and I can't really complain too much. The darts are free and the pool is 75 cents and the tables have recently been replaced. The upstairs has been renovated and the mexican food up there is cheap and generously portioned and all in all, minus a hefty dose of tattoos and cigarette smoke it's a quality joint to hang in.
Jan 1st, 2004, I won't much have to worry about the smoke part anymore.
This weekend I was there both Friday and Saturday evening - unoriginal, perhaps, but this was my relax-don't-think weekend. I saw the Jerks of Grass play on Friday, an absolutely fabulous bluegrass quintet of banjo/guitar/mandolin/upright.. sometimes with a fiddle switched up for the banjo. About the best in local music you can get, as I've seen so far. As luck would have it, I saw more bluegrassy stuff on Saturday. The normal bartender had taken the night off and his fairly new band took the small stage and I ended up more impressed than I figured I would be. There's something just cool about raw, unproffessional music that gets me going.
The cool part about the whole thing was that inbetween sets they had their friend get up and do a routine. Stand-up. Comedy. First ever stand up act at Amigo's, he announced, and he wasn't on fire but he wasn't a bore either, and I sort of enjoyed the juxtaposition of a busy downtown bar patio and a stand up comic rockin' the mic. It wasn't your normal cup of tea.
20030728
I've bid on three different machines this morning alone. I came close to winning a $1600 machine for $1175, but someone snatched it out from under me with 26 seconds remaining. Ebay, you are the bane of my existence. You taunt and haunt me. You tease and I please, but you say no. You are an evil evil temptress, you create within me a churning burning tempest. I can only hope to get out alive, I need wash this brain out with soap, avoid the dive.
Rock on.
It's July - late July - and it's about that time again. It's about that time when I forget the rent and I forget the bills but it's okay cause my landlord is pretty chill and all the bills aren't due to mid-month anyway, so I always sneak by. Somehow it's the sorry ass broke bastards that never manage to submit their bill payments on time and end up getting late fee after late fee. I always get them in just on time - pure luck really, because I don't plan it. I just happen upon them, write a check, and send them in.
I hate writing checks because it means I need to buy a stamp. Only checks I write are to pay bills through the mail and if I'm writing that check I know it's gonna be another 37 cents out of my pocket to send it. 37 cents! Who does the U.S.P.S. think they are? Usury, I tell you.
I had a checking account at another bank for a long long time. I took out all the money from an ATM but I was too lazy to actually go to the bank and close it out. Finally, I called them up and found out I could do it through the phone. "Well, you have a remaining balance of 17 cents. Where would you like me to send you a check?"... Uhh.. Look lady, just keep it. It's 17 cents. Really. Next nice old lady that comes in for a cashiers check - just deduct 17 cents from her fee, cause we all know you're gonna stick it to her with a $2 or $5 or $200 charge just to write her a goddamn check. "Well, I have to send you the check to close out the account sir.". Yah. Whatever.
A bank can't do it - the very institution that is all about the money money money - but my local pizza joint can. American Pie Company down on India street sold me a pie the other day and it was $10.10, or something like that. I struggled to find the change deep in my pocket and the guy shook his head: "No worries, man". Ten whole cents! This wasn't like pennies from the share-a-penny-take-a-penny cup, either. This was ten cents. I found the change and I paid him the ten cents but that doesn't make his offer any less gratious.
Anyhow, it's July, late July, and it's about that time again. It's that time when I get antsy and think too much and money starts to burn a whole in my pocket. Being the thrifty and frugal (some say cheap) guy I am, I want to get that money out of my pocket just as fast as I can so as not to ruin a perfectly good pair of pants. I can't really explain what sets the money on fire. I can't explain when or why it happens, it just does. It's usually in the range of 5 or 6 months since the last episode. I know a lot of girls who manage to quash the attacks buy simply spending money all the time. They do it in small doses every day - like and IV drip. For me, though, I prefer the big rush every once in awhile. A recreational user, really - party hard when I do, but rarely. I know that if I start the drip I'll become accustomed.. and I don't want to become accustomed - I want to get high.
Last summer at about this time the feeling came on particularly strong and thanks to a healthy dose of motorcycle-mania from my pal KC I found my bank account woefully lacking in no time, though a nice shiny yellow bike sat in my driveway. The great thing about the bike, in this case, is that it's a Ducati, which makes for expensive and frequent maintenance.. If I do it right, I can time them with my bouts of money-spending and kill two birds with one stone. This spring I managed to line up a major service to the bike right as I was jonesing for a fix and the two sort of cancelled eachother out.
This summer though, it's been a slow fast summer. Slow drippy days like watching a popsicle melt in the sun but fast weeks, fast months, going by faster than I can count them and see them and feel them. I tried to stave off any major episodes with the occasional purchase of DVDs and CDs but the urge has caught up to me without any warning and I feel a hefty purchase coming on.
Often the urges come on with little direction as to what I should buy. I'm like a drug addict whose forgotten their drug of choice and I sure as hell don't want to waste all my cash on the wrong one. Uppers. Downers. Anti-Depressants. Fucking Ludes, man.. Ludes. I dunno.
Today I think it's back to the basics - the one thing that has always managed to be a good pick me up: computer equipment. The purchase of an iBook last year helped me satisfy the urge without breaking the bank and it's treated me well ever since. The discovery of my neighbour's wireless broadband has only helped matters. Recently, I've maxed out the space on the drive with MP3s and developer tools and other nonsense and I found a very unfortunate flaw in the otherwise sexy Mac OS X - the thing just craps out on you if you run out of hard drive space. iTunes resets itself and looses all settings, the dock, the finder, everything really - it all just gets discombobbulated - in a big jumbled mess, kind of like this sentence. The poor machine got so confused it needed a reboot just to recognize the space I had freed up.. Needless to say that was the end of it's uptime reign - coming in at 48 days.. not bad.
So at first I thought I might just stick a bigger drive into the thing. 40, heck, maybe even 60 gigs. Why not. I could get my spending fix, aquire a project (swapping out the old drive for the new - no small task on the iBook), and end up with a heck of a lot more space. But, the more I think about it it's just not worth it. $100 or more for the drive, $50 of my time, and a machine without $100 more in resale value. At the prices these machines are going at these days I'm convinced I'll do much better just buying a new (used) one.
I can't really add anything else, either. The problem with the laptop is that it's not really a very upgradeable machine. So since I'm onto these portables, I just need to start looking around at the newest models. Time to trade up. Trade in. Go new. If I do it right I think I can get out of the whole thing for a few hundred dollars and some pain-in-the-ass selling on ebay of my old stuff.
Anyone looking for a nice iBook?
12.1"
500 Mghz
10 gig
384 RAM
CD
8 VidRam
Runs and looks great .. it's just getting in the way of me spending more money on stuff I don't need ;)
20030725
I just got such a kick out of Jeff's copyright notice on buzzmachine that I think, for the sake of a little humour, I'll rip it off. Word for word. Yeah.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE:
It's mine, I tell you, mine! All mine! You can't have it because it's mine! You can read it (please); you can quote it (thanks); but I still own it because it's mine! I own it and you don't. Nya-nya-nya. So there.
COPYRIGHT 2002-2003-20?? by Michael Batchelder
In this day and age of pervasive technology and every media format you can think of as just another data packet, cameras are becoming the norm. Almost everywhere you go there is someone with a little hunch in the neck from the weight of a digital hanging off them. Now you can even catch glimpses of people pointing their cell phones in various directions snapping stills of the most ridiculus things. We are, decidely, a picture happy nation. Between television, magazines, newspapers, posters, movies, and our own minds we are a nation obsessed with our own image. We can't even order food without a picture of it presented in front of us. It's no wonder publications like USA Today sell so many copies. It's no wonder that magazines have more and more pictures and less and less text. The image is a more raw format than text can ever hope to be and it shows.
Yet despite all this people still cringe at the business end of a camera lense. Walk around in your home town and snap a few photos of store fronts, parks, police officers, and you'll find more people staring at you, wary, than not. Perhaps because the act of taking a picture is tantamount to saying "Hey, look at this!" - which is most often expressed with a hint of "hey, look at this FREAK". Why would someone want to capture, on film, something normal? That is what the everyman is thinking to him or herself as they walk down mainstreet with their eyes narrowed to slants and directed like raybeams at your hands, which are raised with camera cradled in them. So if you aren't capturing something normal on film (and why would you?) then you must be capturing something awkward or strange or funny looking or just plain dumb.. and if you are then that is a reflection of the everyman walking by, down mainstreet of his or her hometown. They are being reflected upon at that very moment - and while the picture is not published in some magazine or tabloid yet, it could be, and at the very least at that very moment there is at least you, gawking. Why else would you raise camera to eye? Why else would you capture an image?
The photographer makes a great antagonist. He is the ever-present parasite, waiting to get paid for showing you the things you did not want to see about yourself. The film is the weapon, cutting you like a harsh comment or a rude remark. And if this is true, then we - we the people - we are the readers of this book and we are curious and intrigued by the problems that plague our protagonist. We want to see the problems our hero faces. We want to see an imperfect world. We want to know that it is normal to struggle and normal to be awkward and weird and disfigured and crazy. But we want to see our protagonist win out over the evils of the world. We want to see our protagonist come out o.k. in the end.. Because really, we are our own protagonist and we just want to feel normal.
We just want to come out o.k. in the end.
This amphibious RV is,well.. pretty silly.
This bit on flash mobbing is.. well, pretty weird.
UPDATE: Another article, via gawker, over at Salon
And..
Even poems can get down and dirty and have "sex"!
Ever go out.. go to a bar.. look around and just see all the people and think how many of them are possibly nice enough people and how many of them you *could* get along with and how many of them are potential mates, or friends, or soulmates, or lovers? It's mind boggling. It's all circumstance. Perspective.
Shit like that bothers me, a little bit. See, most people think that if you believe in Darwin and you believe in evolution and the big bang and all that then you can't believe in the weird stuff like religion, and spirit, and all that jazz. Maybe they are right, but there is something in nature - even if you're a die-hard scientist - that is on the edge of logic and reason, and it's called chance. Chance is as coincidental as it comes and chance is fate and determinism's worst enemy at the same time, if you get me. When you get down to it - down to the bone - there had to be this chemical next to that chemical which interacted with this other chemical, just enough to create the first RNA.. or whatever it was.. enough so that it reproduced at some point, and then again, but it mutated somewhere in there, and mutated again, and again, and a few moments later there was man. MAN. Man came from a few chemicals floating in the primordal soup that happened to veer into the same swimming lane and - ooops - life is created. If that isn't as black a magic as things can get, I don't know what is.. and despite every bit of technology and wisdom and science we have gleened from the earth in our short but long stay here, we still don't quite get the black magic. True attraction among two people is still as hard to pre-determine as it is to pick the right cup out of three under which god has placed the little red ball. I had it, I really did, but then he sort of shuffled them around and then switched 1 and 2, and then 3 and 1 and 1 and 3 and then 2 and 3 and 2 and 1 and then I lost track and I was as much guessing as I was determining. And that's what gets me. I'm still guessing at this game. I don't have it figured out, not completely. Not yet.
20030724
Like a lot of bloggers, I find it awfully hard not to write about people and about the things they write when all I do all day is read read read.
At work, I come in around 8.. okay, 9. Well.. to be terribly honest, I probably average 9:45.. but regardless, I do show up every day! And when I do I show up and I fill up my coffee cup 2/3rds of the way (it holds about 20oz) so that I don't have to worry about spilling. I sit down at my computer and sort of think about what I might work on and then I fire up my browser. I'd like to say I use phoenix, or opera, or something appropriately trendy but I'm stuck with internet explorer just cause it's quick and painless, in that "i accept you satan" sort of way. I fire up my browser and I hit yahoo mail first because maybe someone wrote me. I read emails from friends, I learn new words from AWAD, and I hear about various people's motorcycle problems from the Ducati CD-ROM mailing list. Then, depending on my mood, I hit slashdot for a quick parusal but rarely linger that long these days. I used to hit up boondocks, the comic, but I got sick of reading the tiny print, quite frankly. I used to hit up Get Fuzzy and pearls before swine, too, but I find I like reading it in big portions, day after day after day of comic all at once.. reading just one a day is like having a hot girl flash her boob at you only to disappear around the corner never to be seen again - appreciated, but much more frustrating than anything else, really.
And then I get down to business.
I muss that Bunnie has probably not posted anything yet, since she is running on west-coast/mid-west time and also tends to post large chunks at a time so she isn't on top of things by 10am, my time. Sometimes I check anyway.
Then I check up on Tony. He's always got one or two or even three new rants about old people's driving skills, or about how nothing is true and he is just lonely and old. Well.. steinbeck was a fucking downer, too, so maybe he has something there...
More and more lately, despite the link being at the bottom of my bookmarks, I check on Jaime. He doesn't post often, but somehow.. I dunno.. a little glimpse into a New York hipster's life. It's funny, cause at first I didn't take him for a hipster.. He seemed more like a lifer. He seemed like he tread a lot of water in his mind - which makes for good muscle but doesn't get you anywhere, really. But then he talks about delivering clothes to celebrities, having all these friends around the glob, eating at diners with pretty girls.
Every life is so rich in different ways it blows my mind. Of course, looking out of my tiny window of perspective I feel as if mine is less rich, less interesting, less intense, less exciting.. But there is probably someone out there, someone close or someone far, who thinks I have it pretty good. They probably say things like "he went to school abroad" as if I were terribly cultured... I just don't think that way. I don't look at it that way. I'm just me.
When I get home I rush out to meet someone, usually, eat on the run or at a restuarant or not at all. I have a beer or two or ten and if it's ten I usually cave and have a late night pizza or take home fries. When I'm finally curled up in bed I'm checking the email again and I'm reading one of the many magazines that keep coming and coming and coming even though I have never paid for them. GQ, Stuff, Wired, Maxim, Rolling Stones, Blender, Spin.. Junk mostly, but I try to keep up. I do the GQ and the Wired mostly cover to cover and flip through the dumbass Stuff, Maxim, and Blender. Spin is alright but used to be better when it was in it's larger format. Rolling Stones.. eh. Then it's on to my books. Sometimes I switch it up - non-fiction, fiction, biography, drama, comedy. If I had my way I'd put in an hour or two but I'm old and responsible now and I turn the light out far sooner than I'd like. Sometimes as few as 8 pages.. sometimes as many as 100.
But the worst thing - the WORST thing - I read every day is the clock. At home it has alarm 1 and alarm 2 and I set them both 45 min apart and when they ring I stumble up out of bed to shut it off. A long time ago I put it across the room in an attempt to force the getting-up issue, but my body has quickly adapted. I shut alarm 1 off and fall, face first, back into my pillow. Alarm 2 never comes as much of a surprise, but it makes me cringe regardless. I shut that off too, and then I spend the next half hour peaking across the room every few minutes from my bed, squinty and blurry eyed, trying to make out the time on the clock.
9:02
9:14
9:23
I set the clock 20 or so minutes ahead, another jedi-mind trick. Only problem is jedi's have a hard time playing tricks on themselves. You have to believe in the illusion for it to work.
In the car I read the clock on my way out the driveway. It's 7 minutes fast, or 1:07 if it's daylight savings, and I mark the time in my head because I know how long it takes to get to work and I know I'll round down to the nearest 10 minute interval on my time sheet. It's never rounds down as early as I want.
In the office the computer's time doesn't match up with the phone system time which doesn't match up with the server times. I use the fastest one on my way out the door. If I stayed late I'm running behind and someone's waiting somewhere for me. If I leave early it's earlier than I should and I'll be making it up tomorrow or the next day or even on my weekend.
And when it's all said and done, here I am.. writing this down and, to be concise and correct and not repeat myself, I'm reading it over. I'm checking grammar and spelling and context and sense and I'm reading my own words, like an Ouroboros.
20030723
Got a few hits from punked.org and thought firstly that it was a blogsnob connection so discounted it.. Then I had another hit on another day and that made me think it probably wasn't just BS and gee, I thought I might as well say hi to the punked finding their way here. I don't hate you, so how can you hate me for hating you?
Site statistics are amazingly interesting. Tony will tell you they don't matter, and they don't really, but they are interesting. As anyone who knows me somewhat well can tell you : I love statistics.
In 1992 14% of survey'd Americans thought using a little violence to let off some stress or anxiety was "okay". That number had jumped to 31% in 2001. I can only attribute this to two things:
1) Bush entering the office of the President of the United States of America: Good loving liberals, up to this point having been complete pacifists, should now have a strong desire to inflict personal pain on this dude. He makes Reagan look like tylenol to his morphine. He comes on strong like a dumb bell and he acts like one too.
2) 9-11 was unfortunate. People get fearful. The Media instills fear into the American people like a syringe - slow, but with practiced care - and it enters the mindstream like a drug - ahhh... euphoric. I think this is what Michael Moore was trying to say before he lost his noggin'. He has commited the same crime - he got scared.. He got scarred of his government itself - the king - not the dragon outside the gates. And when people get scared they do odd things. They make unwise decisions. Bodily produced drugs start pumping all throughout one's system and one's eyes tend to bug out a little - and no one trusts a dude whose eyes are bugged out a little.
At least I don't.
But back on the site statistics. One computer keeps showing up on my radar screen. It's IP is blocked but it shows up every once in awhile and I get 30, 40, 50 page views from that one session. What the heck is this dude doing?
Another interesting phenomenon is the spike days. Every week I have one day that has a significantly higher hit count than any of the other days. Sometimes it's on a Monday (like this week, so far). Sometimes it's on a Wednesday, or a Tuesday, or a Friday, or a Thursday. I think you get the picture. Well, this is unsettling because it refuses to adhere to any sensical pattern. Sure, there are Holidays such as the 4th to account for.. and there are variables such as how many posts I post, what I post, and who links to me.. but invariably, those never really seem to matter. Sometimes my hits come on days I don't post at all. Even when Tony or Bunnie link me I'm not getting a huge influx of folks - just 3, 4, maybe 5.. not enough to skew the results terribly so.. The bottom line is that it's a crap shoot - it's like life, a box of chocolates - you never know what you're going to get.. Though that quote always bothered me.. you know exactly what you're going to get. There is always that "chocolate map" on the inside of the cover that tells you exactly what and where each piece of chocolate is. WTF? God, Forest, you're such a retard.
Sometimes I wish blogging had a little map on the inside of the cover. Sometimes I wish life had a little map too... But then, it's the little surprises that make life worth living I suppose.
20030722
1) DVD or VHS?
DVD sucks cock. I mean, sure it's great and all.. but why, really? SVHS did the trick and even when your fucking dog chewed up UHF22 we could still watch it cause we spliced the tape back together. VHS can get shittier and shittier and still be playable - albeit in a shitty quality. Gotta be something in that, no?
3) Meat: rare or well-done?
Rarer than not.
4) High Speed Internet-Cable or DSL?
Free broadband from the neighbour.. whichever s/he happens to have, I guess..
5) Women: 1-piece bathing suit or Bikini?
Depends... reeeallly depends.
6) To be fair--Men: Boxers or briefs?
boxers, dude.. boxers.
7) Beer or Liquor/Wine?
Both.. makes the puke that much better coloured.
8) Coke or Mountain Dew?
Fucking Do the Dew, you pansy.
9) In honor of my 10/18/03 nuptials: Morning or Afternoon/Night Wedding?
Afternoon/Night. That's the dumbest question I've ever heard.
10) Carpet or Hardwood Floors
Hardwood.
11) American cars or foreign?
Foreign.
13) Coffee: Caffeinated or Decaf?
Caffeinated.
Jaime is like the Duane Moore (of Texasville) of bloggers. Solid and stable in that exhausted/depressed why-do-I-bother way. That's just fine with me. Things like that make me feel ... well, not safe really, but just.. normal. People like him make me feel like the world makes sense, for the most part. Then there is raymi, who I don't know why I mention - she gets enough post-play as it is, but she is the sort of Raoul Duke (of Fear and Loathing), in her own way. And if she is Raoul, then Anti is the fat Samoan "lawyer" played by Del Torro, I guess.
Tony is the Don - the Godfather... almost. But he's got his troubles too and he lets them show like a modern-man, all sentimental and out on his sleeve like that. The Don wouldn't have ever done that, but maybe that's why today is better than yesterday?..
I could go on and on but my point is that it's nice to see others out there, doing their thing.. leading their lives. Maybe I'm crazy but it seems like most of the blogs I read are written by people rich with social culture - people who have tons of fun, and even more friends, and they're just happy to be able to jot even the slightest portion of that down for all of us to enjoy.
It's nice to see different strokes, different folks, and the world still goin' round as if there weren't any problems at all.
That being said, I feel like I'd get more free shit if my name were something like Ashton.
Not only was this whole drudge/kofman conundrum mentioned by two of the blogs I read, it was mentioned by two of the most different blogs I read.. tony and kate, so it must be news!
In short, it's a bunch of whining about :
a) a soldier who (gasp) said Rumsfeld should resign.
b) a reporter, jeffrey kofman, who reported said soldier's remark
c) a purported administration leak to a cybertard, matt drudge, who reported that kofman was not only gay, but Canadian as well.
I, for one, find it hard to classify this as news, quite frankly.
For one, a soldier - especially an American one - has a right to his or her own opinion. No biggy there, right? No news. Everyone knew that. Right?..
Secondly, does a journalist's citizenship or gayness come in to play if that journalist reports a remark made by a soldier? What if the journalist were Russian? Czech? American?... what if the soldier had reported his quote to a tape recorder, which was sent to a news room? What if, and here is the big one, what if that tape recorder was gay?
Thirdly, who cares?
20030721
Sometimes I don't know why I do the things I do. I don't know why I waste so much time doing the things I don't want to do and have such guilt when I do the things I do want to do. I don't know why I have such regret and such remorse but I do know I'm happy to have a high-maintenance pain-in-the-ass Ducati.
For me, cars, bikes, computers... all these things should "just work". I shouldn't have to be bringing them into the shop every other day and I shouldn't have to worry about the oil burning out the tailpipe and I shouldn't have to be replacing burnt out motherboards all the time. I enjoy the satisfaction of changing one's own oil and other petty maintenance issues, but that's more a matter of maintaining than a matter of fixing.
The Ducati, however, has proven it's heritage: high cost of ownership. Okay, to be fair, I've been riding it for about 4 or 5 months total and I haven't really had many issues. I rode it forever with a rusty-ass gas tank which was clogging the fuel filter like crazy. I rode it forever with what was probably a lean mixture, due to said rust. I clearly taxed the hell out of the fuel pump. I rode it lower in the RPM range than it likes to be ridden - and as a result taxed the battery a bit as well. All that being said, it has performed for me. I guess more things could have gone wrong and so far so good - minus this one itsy-bitsy little problem of the fuel tank.
After a few attempts at getting someone to try and help me remove the tank I just resigned myself to a solo job. I spent a few hours figuring everything out and finally got the fuel removed, the tank off the bike, and the innards pull out (fuel pump, fuel filter..etc). I drove the tank up to a radiator shop half an hour away and I paid them $50 to acid-wash the rust off the inside of the tank and seal the thing right up..
A few weeks later I returned to pick up my tank and managed to rebuild everything, again by myself, and fit it back on the bike. I re-connected the hoses and fill the tank up. I fired up the bike and it ran like a dream - better in fact than I had ever remembered it running. It ran down low in the RPMs without as much chug and lug and it cruised up high in the RPMs with a nice consistent rumble.
But then of course it randomly died on me every once in awhile. I finally figured it out - the radiator shop had (accidentally) sealed over the air breather holes in the tank. My bike was, as I rode, slowly depressurizing the tank as gas was removed and no air was replacing it. This, of course, made the pump work harder and harder and finally it gave up the ghost and fuel slowly dribbled off at the engine. Then it would die. Then, worrying about the fuel pump's integrity (without the benefit of knowing what was happening) I would open the gas cap and turn the bike on to see if I could hear the pump running properly.. In the process, I was equalizing the pressure of the tank and thereby fixing the problem without knowing it. This, of course, made for a longer discovery time of the actual problem but now that I know - I am no closer to a solution. The hole(s) in question are way up inside the tank, completely sealed over and smooth to the touch, so I have no way of knowing where they are and how to work through them.
For the time being I am riding around, very unsafely I imagine, with the gas cap slightly ajar - just enough to keep the air pressure equalized in the tank. I am at a loss as to how to correct the aforementioned problem.
All that being said, I love this bike to death and it makes me grin ear to ear every time I see it. I love the low rumble and the torquey growl. I love the feel of the air rushing by and it is the chatter of the dry clutch at stoplights that makes me happy she is a Ducati. It's a part of Ducati lore that evokes a deep seated pride and I can only think (to quote another ducati rider), as I pass cars along the highway:
I ride a Ducati - everyone look at me you poor, poor people in your silly cars
McGill grabs another piece of Bronfman History, this time from Vivendi Universal.
The entertainment firm, which bought the Seagram liquor empire in 2000, has donated the striking House of Seagram on Peel St. to McGill University
In this bit over at Slashdot, there is mention of Sony's announcement that they will be using "Processors manufactured by themselves in their next generation of CLIE handhelds"..
Now, I assume they mean "manufactured by Sony" but it certainly sounds funny..
Eh. Maybe it's just early on a Monday.
Sorry.
20030718
At least 2 people in this world love you so much, that they would die for you.
And it's been said that every night, SOMEONE out there thinks about you before they go to sleep.
With that in mind, does it not make sense to always tell someone how you feel about them? No matter what the outcome, will you not feel much better knowing they know?
What if you never get another chance?
What if today is the day, the end of the world, the last hurrah..
And you're spending it inside.
On a computer.
Reading this blog.
Sometimes I get free pizza.
Sometimes I get free beer.
Sometimes, when I'm lucky, I get free beer and pizza and wine and cheese and once I got free mead.
Mead is wine beer. How fucking brilliant is that?
They say nothing in this world is free but I say bullocks, you just have to work hard enough for it. If you put your mind to it, put enough effort into it, plenty of free shit will start coming your way and you won't even know what to do with it all.
Friend of mine's parents won a contest. I don't really know why they call it a contest when all you're doing is dropping your name in a bucket, but they call it a contest I call it a drawing and they won any way you look at it. They got a free 56 inch tv. Big. Huge, even, especially in their moderately small tv room. Then, not a month later it happened again. They won an ATV. A 4-Wheeler.
Two people, their kids gone, the house nearly paid off, living the slow life nearing retirement and spending a few weeks a year in Florida playing golf together - a shared passion, something we should all hope for in our waning years of matrimony - and they win a giant tv.. an atv.
Life certainly throws some curveballs sometimes, and a few sliders.. and even a knuckle ball or two.. but the good thing about all that is, even if you sit there frozen by the speed of the pitch, swingless through 3 strikes, every once in awhile when you're up at the plate the grand old pitcher upstairs is going to get a little too fancy even for himself and the ball will go sailing above the catcher's head, or glance off the bottom of his glove, or go rolling to the backstop, and even though maybe you aren't getting anything out of it, maybe your team mate out there on first base can make a steal to second - to get into scoring position.
Cause afterall, this is a team sport.
And anyone can play baseball.
For free.
20030717
Bunnie says:
Everything is full of salt
It’s just a matter of the ratio
Of salt to flesh
That determines when the snail curls up.
Which is funny because in that same forward with the animals representing elements in life such as love and money and pride, there was a set of words to relate to things:
Write one word down for each of these words - whatever first pops in your head
Dog
Cat
Rat
Coffee
Sea
The dog is, of course, yourself. Loyal, I said. Faithful, someone else said. Cat - your lovers, your partners. Personality, I said. Rat? My enemies. Resourceful, of course. Coffee is sex, and bitter to me, but the sea.. the slow slap of the waves and the blue glimmer of sun and moon against the warm waters.. the sea is what you think of your life, it says, and I had but only one word to say:
Salty.
Alongs the lines of the gag where you put the search phrase "weapons of mass destruction" into www.google.com and hit the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button and are sent to this page which is a spoof on an Internet Explorer error page, I mocked up my own little guffaw over here. Too bad I don't have a good google-search joke to go with it.
There comes a time in every man's life when he has to shave.
Luckily for me and my babyface, that time is about every 4 days or so. The unfortunate result of that, however, is that shaving is not as routine or habitual as perhaps it could be so I tend to forget, put off, and otherwise ignore the situation. This results in what is commonly referred to as shag.
Luckily for me I think I look fairly good with a bit of shag as it detracts a bit from the general consensus that I'm Ben Seaver's secret twin.
However, when I do finally get around to the shave the shag has reached such a point that the Mach3 pulls and tears it's way painfully through my hairs. They're just too long.
The trick, I have discovered, is to employ the use of my heavy duty hair clippers - the ones you see at the barbers that plug in the wall - to trim the beard to a reasonably short point where shaving with the Mach3 becomes mostly bearable. This works every time...
Unless someone has borrowed your electric clippers and not returned them in a number of weeks... which, as you can guess by now by the very mentioning of this issue, is exactly what has happened to me.
Needless to say, when I walk into a room of familiar faces I have, of late, been eliciting such exclaimations from people as:
"Hey, Mountain Man!"
and
"Whose looking a little scruffy today!!!?"
Not particularly helping the situation is the rug of hair I am developing atop my noggin' which has not seen a pair of scissors in some time. The situation is in dire need of rectification.
As an interesting side note, I have not seen - in my entire 25 years of existence - my father's shaven face. He has sported the full ear-to-ear-mustache-beard-combination since before I was born. At least he shaves the neckbeard.
I'd heard stories of mad cool boys 'n the hood (okay.. weird guys in the mall) that'll just run out and hit on pretty much anything that moves or walks or crawls.. I'd heard stories of them working magic and getting digits and I always wondered, well, firstly:
Is this an urban legend?
And secondly, of course, I wondered who the hell actually talks and interacts with these fellas other than to shhhussh them away with a wave of the hand and a quickly retreating view of their rear-end?
Hurrah, though, for the power of the internet, the power of the good word, and the proof and explaination of these heretofor mentioned phenomenon: A Day at the Mall with MadPony Lauren
And a sidenote from madpony.com, always on the bleeding edge of cool and fashion, they just have to rub it in, don't they?
"your browser is out of date, as a result this page is simplified. please upgrade to view this page as it was intended by it's authors."
20030716
With baited breath, I am sure, you all await the latest update from Tuesday night trivia.
Alas, it was another false climax this week as she failed to show for the second week in a row. I'd all but signed her off and sent her to the dumpster today when, strolling into my friend's cubicle here at work I noticed his magic eight ball.
I asked a few questions about the doktor that I shall not repeat here.
"Most Definitely" it said.
A mixed bag, if you knew the questions I asked, but somewhat hopeful nonetheless. But, regardless, I had truely signed the whole ordeal off as a bad episode..
So I was stepping out of the cubicle, the past behind me, when I overheard the next guy over on the phone:
"..Doctor at that Practice, her name is the doktor.." (names changed to protect the not-so-innocent)
A little history here - one of my company's many markets is medical software, of a sort. It is, in fact, the sort of stuff I work on here.
Now, I'm not superstitious and I don't believe in fate and that sort of stuff.. but things just started getting weird. The coincidence of me being in that cubicle asking the eight ball doktor-questions at the exact moment that her name was uttered not more than 8 feet away... hullo creepy.
I relayed the story to my co-worker but before I could finish he said:
"Oh, I know her.. she delivered my last kid"
... uhh
"I know her cousin"
... uhh
And as they sing, It's a Small World Afterall.
I start to feel weird when I have been talking for too long
The average man, statistics say, speaks 2,000 words a day.
The average woman, statistics say, speaks 7,000 words a day.
Found a neat little indie label sifting through Slashdot articles: Fight For Rock. They're ramping up their MP3 sales site and wow, at $4 an album, you really can't go wrong. No DRM. Just simple old MP3s. Bravo... Though I'll be interested to see if it can turn a profit in some way (in dollars, or at least in market share / market awareness). I've never heard of any of the few bands on there but at $4, as stingy as I am, I'm even tempted to give them a whirl.
I got one of those silly forwards the other day.. You know the kind "Scroll down and keep scrolling, answer the questions but don't look at the next one till you've answered the current one.."
It was silly, but there was one interesting bit:
Given these five animals, rank them from favourite to least favourite
Cow
Sheep
Horse
Pig
Tiger
Once you've written them down, or ordered them in your head, keep reading.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Okay - this is the schtick - each animal represents a given element in your life and the importance of that element to you is related to the position in the list of animals you gave it:
Sheep - Love
Horse - Family
Pig - Money
Tiger - Pride
Cow - Career
Interesting, if you're into that sorta thing. I was, of course, heavy in Pride, Career, and Money, with Family bringing up the rear - but I just don't like horses, honest! That crazy lower lip they have just freaks me out.. It's like it's own little creature, hanging out on the horse's chin, and doing it's own thing - grabbing apples, nibbling fingers.. creepy, dude.. creepy.
It tickles me pink when someone mentions the Pixies on their blog these days. In fact, it's been tickling me pink for some time. Used to be it was mention of They Might Be Giants that tickled me pink.. they still tickle but more of a tickle me purple now, than pink.
Mike D. broke his clavicle one hot New York summer riding his bike around and my concert got cancelled. I didn't really want to see the BBoys makin with the freak-freak in a fucking football stadium, so I wasn't so disappointed. I'd rather see them jamming in my basement, frankly. I happily refunded my tickets. Not happy to see Mike get hurt, but tickled pink that he would write us all a personal note saying sorry guys, I'm really sorry.. but, you know.. circumstance. He's sweet like that.
But right now it's the Pixies that tickle me pink and they've been doing it for quite awhile, really. Black Francis, the Pixies, Frank Black and the Catholics, Frank Black solo, the Deal sisters as the Breeders, Kim Deal as herself with that damn voice. Oi.
I'm pink, I tell yah, I'm pink.
I'm pink all over to think
that the pixies might fixies
Alls those problems they had.
I'm pink all over to think
that the band might land
back on this soil for just a tad.
How about 12 megabits that includes _free_ VoIP (within the network - rates as low as 3cents/min for a tokyo to new york call)? How about streaming on demand movies in DVD quality? How about a company that can do it and will turn a profit after only 15 months of your business at $21/month? How about one Big Fat Pipe in your home?
Well you're going to have to move to Japan, I guess.
20030715
A few articles recently have me in a tiff and thinking too much and here I am. I'd link them but I'm home, in bed, with my comforter around me and the fan breezing the light ocean air on me. Which means I'm in Laze mode. Which means I will only briefly mention the articles:
1) I think it was mentioned on Slashdot - a bit on the IT business and the global economy and the governments inability to protect the interests of the individual - the citizen - the people - over the corporation. The textile industry was used as an example where no matter union nor strike, it fell and it fell hard to the east and to the south and to the cheaper labour. One can make the arguement that as we move to globalize there will be a natural stabilization period in which there are inequalities and imbalances - well, yah! But it's going to be a long goddamn stabilization period! This isn't an oil-and-water-in-a-jar experiment from 5th grade science.. This is big time and big time takes time. Lots of time. More time than I have.
1 in 2 Billion people live to 116.
Time is what it takes and if you really want to do it you can trace the ideas of globalization back well before _my_ lifetime and yet it's still a new idea and my job is at stake. Do I feel specifically threatened right now, this instant? Personally? No, of course not. But I'm worried about the face of business in this country and I worry about the gutting of the American way of life that is going on right now, here, today.
Once great companies synonymous with words like stability and quality have been replaced by companies that remind us more of fraud and mistrust.. not to mention even more terrifying phrases like cost cutting and ROI.
ROI is about the most evil concept in the whole world. It doesn't take into account the intangibles. You can only get so analytical before you lose sight of the original goals.
Quality product at a reasonable price.
Is that so much to ask?
And this very culture of re-use, re-duce, re-cycle is the very culture that is supporting this fall of the last great empire. First you throw away your coffee cup then you throw away your clothes and pretty soon you're accepting an average car lifetime of three years and you actually expect and accept that your job will be exported to a small child somewhere in india who was lucky enough to get his hands on "Learn Java in 21 Days".
We did it to ourselves.. and we'll do it again.
Intangibles. That's the problem. You just can't get people to grasp the intangibles and it's going to kill this great way of life we have.
People think life is about BBQs and a two car garage and watching fireworks on 4th of July and 2 weeks in August and 11 holidays a year.. and they're dead wrong. We didn't just wake up one morning to this rosy life we lead. We sweat for it. We died for it. We longed for it and worked for it and we put the time in for it.. and luckily we had the vision for it... but people are forgetting, losing sight, losing focus. It's becoming intangible, these ideas of human suffering.
We, the people, We, the country, We the United States of America -
We're wiping out the human condition.
We're wiping out the very engine that carried us to where we are.
But this is no car that we rode in on. This is no truck or bus or train. It is a helicopter - an elevator. We are forgetting to re-fuel the engine. We are forgetting to keep it going.
So much Potential energy.
So little Kinetic energy.
There is only one way to go from here...
20030714
A Rant on Pay-Per-Music
With all the music in the world where do you draw the line between listening to stuff you've already heard and know you enjoy versus finding new and enlightening stuff? When do you decide you've had enough with a song and move onto something new?
I had a roommate in college who'd put one song on and press the repeat button. He'd keep listening over and over to that one song and eventually fall asleep. Sometimes I would come home late at night - 3am, 4am - after a late night in the computer lab or a long study session in the coffee house and I'm come into my apartment with it's big long hallways and tall ceilings and I'd listen to the silence of a sleeping household .. and then I'd walk past his room and I always hear the same song softly seeping out at me through the cracks between the door and the it's frame.
There is something comfortable about familiarity. There is something nice about seeing the same things and doing the same things and feeling the same things. It's safety. It's security.
And nothing makes people less motivated than security. (Which partly speaks to my previous diatribe on marriage, but i'll leave that alone for now)
Necessity is the Mother of Invention.
Desperation is the Mind of the Motivated.
But I'm not desperate nor necessary. I listen to the same two or three thousand songs an awful lot. I buy a new CD here and there but it's always a band I know. The new stuff I hear is always burned off of friends or heard on the radio or streamed off this here innernector.
The RIAA should be taking note.
Take note, RIAA, hear me here and now: I am consumer -- hear me purchase. See me make decisions about my spending habits. Hear the the proliferation of new music - for free - over the air waves and over the light waves and over the ether waves and microwaves and any freaking waves you can think of - hear that it is good. Hear that free music makes for music later bought by die hard fans.
Do any of you think Tony isn't going to buy every single album Tsar comes out with? Do you think I don't own every single weezer and beastie boys albums?
I've never burnt a beastie boys album in my life.
Does the RIAA get money for the ads you hear on the radio? No.. so why isn't the RIAA worried about the FREE music on the radio waves? Why aren't they worried about all the free shit we're getting through this very air we breath? They need to take a chapter out of their very own book, re-write it for the new freaking millenium, and get over it.
and give me more free shit.
I'm a boob man, too. So when aardvark.dj started going on about them and pointing to all these various crazy boob sites and talking about brit tabloids and their wealth of nekkid flesh.. well damn, I'm at work. I know enough when the right time and the wrong time to look at boobs is but it doesn't make it any easier not to click on the links.
Boobs, I have to say, are some of the oddest things. Based souly on the utilitarian usage, one has to wonder why size is so variant among the women of this earth. Surely if an a-cupper can breast feed a child than there is no real need for the d-cup. Yet it is a natural phenomenon regardless. Sure, general size and obesity can sometimes be a factor in the size of the boob but we've all seen that tiny girl nearly toppling over from a top-heavy situation. We've all heard about breast-reduction. How much does the boob enter into Mate Value(tm).
Mate Value is a fairly obvious and self-explaining term, but for the sake of being thorough: My pal Alex, an occasional guest poster to this very site, is a Evolutionary Psychologist - or at least he pretends to be. He pretends to go to school for his PhD. As much as he pretends, he has a lot of very real opinions about the people on this earth and how they interact and why. Most questions directed to him, though, are easily and simply answered right away with two very simple words:
Mate Value.
So, inevitably, his general advice on women - men - love in general - is to increase your mate value. To quote the Tao of Steve, "If you desire a woman, first and foremost you must not desire the woman. Secondly, do something excellent in their presence."
Easy enough, right? Right.
But back to the main point - where do boobs fall in? I would suppose the natural tendancy is to see a woman with larger boobs as more fit to bear children - as more "healthy" and "able" to feed her children. Is it that simple? Where does the Oedipus complex enter into it? Did nature intend to account for that, or is it a slippery by-product of our emotional minds?
Then there are the small boob guys. Some of them say a handfuls enough, the rest is a waste. Others say a mouthful. Some don't seem to care at all. Where do they enter into the equation. Are they the inevitable anomalies in the system - the mistakes? Or is there a reason for them as well?
Is it as simple as variety is the spice of life?
It's late and I just stumbled in from work but I thought of something so I came to write it down, here, for you good folk.
I think I figured out why people go soft and get dull and stop moving when they get married. I think I figured out what makes people stop being people and start being couch potatoes and start being so uptight.
It's the direct result of infusing two people's bedrooms (or more generally, two people's living spaces) into the same one. It is the result of two messes that cannot co-exist because there is space for only one. And, as a result, both people must put so much energy into keeping that space clean - energy into keeping the place free because if one person can't have a mess than the other certainly can't - that they simply stop being people and becoming cleaning machines. I know.
Every once in awhile I go through my room like a tornado and it becomes the cleanest you'll ever see. I pack away clothes into drawers, I stack CDs, I shelf books. I throw away old magazines, I change my sheets, I even sweep. I take out all the trash, I collect all the loose change, and I dust off the top of the tv and the top of the dressers and the top of the mirror. I throw away ripped clothing, I cram things into boxes, and I put all the posters back up that have fallen down over the last few months. I try to get the grime off the fan. I try to hide as much of the speaker wire and electrical wire and computer wire and phone wire and cable wire as I can. I route it behind the desk and under the rug. I pick pictures up off the floor and tape them back up. I consider throwing away the girls phone numbers that I'll never call again.
And it all takes a lot of work. To be quite honest it wears me out. I get tired of it. But by the time I am done I am pleased and satisfied with my work. I look over my new kingdom with a smile and a certain sweaty-tiredness that is rewarding in it's own right.. And for a few weeks after that I come home from work and I hang up my dress shirts. I fold my pants and I put my shoes away. I make my bed and I pick the pillows up off the floor and place them just so on the bed and I sweep again. I put my backpack away and I pile the dirty laundry in the corner and keep a neat pile of spare change on the dresser. I use one glass for water and one glass only..
And it all takes a lot of work. To be quite honest it wears me out. I get tired of it. After awhile I put the shirt on the back of my desk chair. I throw my pants across the seat and I toss my socks on the floor. I leave that old magazine lying around because I haven't quite read all the articles yet and I might get to it. The laundry starts piling up and spilling into the rest of the room - have you seen "The Blob"? It's just like that. I stop making the bed and half the pillows disappear under the bed or off the side. Dust begins to creep. Shoes lay strewn across the floor and books get stacked one on top of another on top of another on the dresser. Water glasses and cereal bowls and dinner plates appear out of nowhere. Large pack animals begin to congregate in my closet and the mob moves into my hallway..
And all because it's just a little too much work. It's tiring. So is it any surprise that, forced to keep such a level of clean - such a level of complete unclutteredness - that someone would turn into a complete zombie? When is the most satisfying TV watching?... That's right! What's more enjoyable after a big spring cleaning than just plopping your ass on the couch and sucking in some quality cable? Is it any wonder that marriage kills the geniuses? Is it any wonder that marriage tames the wild ones? Is it any wonder at all? Not really, folks... it's just the cleaning. It's the cleaning that'll get you.
It's late and I just stumbled in from work but I thought of something so I came to write it down, here, for you good folk.
I think I figured out why people go soft and get dull and stop moving when they get married. I think I figured out what makes people stop being people and start being couch potatoes and start being so uptight.
It's the direct result of infusing two people's bedrooms (or more generally, two people's living spaces) into the same one. It is the result of two messes that cannot co-exist because there is space for only one. And, as a result, both people must put so much energy into keeping that space clean - energy into keeping the place free because if one person can't have a mess than the other certainly can't - that they simply stop being people and becoming cleaning machines. I know.
Every once in awhile I go through my room like a tornado and it becomes the cleanest you'll ever see. I pack away clothes into drawers, I stack CDs, I shelf books. I throw away old magazines, I change my sheets, I even sweep. I take out all the trash, I collect all the loose change, and I dust off the top of the tv and the top of the dressers and the top of the mirror. I throw away ripped clothing, I cram things into boxes, and I put all the posters back up that have fallen down over the last few months. I try to get the grime off the fan. I try to hide as much of the speaker wire and electrical wire and computer wire and phone wire and cable wire as I can. I route it behind the desk and under the rug. I pick pictures up off the floor and tape them back up. I consider throwing away the girls phone numbers that I'll never call again.
And it all takes a lot of work. To be quite honest it wears me out. I get tired of it. But by the time I am done I am pleased and satisfied with my work. I look over my new kingdom with a smile and a certain sweaty-tiredness that is rewarding in it's own right.. And for a few weeks after that I come home from work and I hang up my dress shirts. I fold my pants and I put my shoes away. I make my bed and I pick the pillows up off the floor and place them just so on the bed and I sweep again. I put my backpack away and I pile the dirty laundry in the corner and keep a neat pile of spare change on the dresser. I use one glass for water and one glass only..
And it all takes a lot of work. To be quite honest it wears me out. I get tired of it. After awhile I put the shirt on the back of my desk chair. I throw my pants across the seat and I toss my socks on the floor. I leave that old magazine lying around because I haven't quite read all the articles yet and I might get to it. The laundry starts piling up and spilling into the rest of the room - have you seen "The Blob"? It's just like that. I stop making the bed and half the pillows disappear under the bed or off the side. Dust begins to creep. Shoes lay strewn across the floor and books get stacked one on top of another on top of another on the dresser. Water glasses and cereal bowls and dinner plates appear out of nowhere. Large pack animals begin to congregate in my closet and the mob moves into my hallway..
And all because it's just a little too much work. It's tiring. So is it any surprise that, forced to keep such a level of clean - such a level of complete unclutteredness - that someone would turn into a complete zombie? When is the most satisfying TV watching?... That's right! What's more enjoyable after a big spring cleaning than just plopping your ass on the couch and sucking in some quality cable? Is it any wonder that marriage kills the geniuses? Is it any wonder that marriage tames the wild ones? Is it any wonder at all? Not really, folks... it's just the cleaning. It's the cleaning that'll get you.
20030712
Well this isn't really particularly surprising: Marriage may tame genius. I'd say it tames a lot of other things, too. Like humor, free will, and get-up-of-the-couch-ability.
20030711
.. got really bored at work today so I ordered out chinese and logged into Yahoo! Games and looked for a cribbage partner.
I surfed around in the intermediate areas for a bit but there was just a bunch of people looking to crank out games and get "points", whatever that's all about. Points. Ha. I was just there to play chat and eat my chinese food. Sometimes there isn't any alterior motives, yah know? Sometimes points aren't involved. Anyway, I got sick of the pukes down in intermediate and wanted something akin to a challenge. It's been years since my last - a full out shoot out between me and Capt. Crib - the fastest draw this side of the 'ssipp. Capt passed away and passed the crown and Pops sometimes tries to wear it but he's a lotta talk.. Plays a mean game and he's a quick pegger but you can still pick him off when he's not paying good attention.
Anyhow, I was looking for some serious cribbage. The kind that makes your eyeballs hurt and makes you shuffle your hand about three or four times before commiting to the crib cause things are that unsure. Good quality challenge shit.
So I wander into the expert lounge and I found this guy waiting. His screenname was gwbushy2000. He sent me a message - did I want to play?
Sure.. sure.. I'll play
So we started a game up and he started creaming me from the start. He drew an ace to deal and then he pulled out a 4 - 5 - 5 - 6 - 6 on his first crib and jumped the first leg like a jack rabbit. I pulled in a few good pegs and an average hand and the next round through managed a healthier than average 6 in the crib but I wasn't smiling cause he was still a good 25 up on me.
We started talking a bit inbetween play and he told me how his dad had taught him cribbage and how he was really really good at it. He told me he was the best cribbage player he knew and that he always beat all the other players he played.
Then I started winning. I was slowly creeping up on him, peg by peg, with timely runs and 31's. I nabbed him on a triplet of 7's that landed on a 31 for 8 points. He started to sound upset. He whined a bit and when I actually passed him for the first time he *RE-CUT THE DECK*! I couldn't believe it. I didn't even know you were allowed/able to re-cut with the yahoo software. WTF? So somehow he overrode things and he ended up winning by 2 holes.
"I CREAMED you," he said.
Well.. you barely won, actually..
"No no.. I creamed you. You're so dead."
Uhh. yah.
ewp
Saw some lyrics today. Confused them for Avril Lavigne.. but they were Pink Floyd..
Oi it's been a long short week.
A man is stranded on a desert island, all alone for ten years. One day, he sees a speck in the horizon.
He thinks to himself, 'It's not a ship.'
The speck gets a little closer and he thinks, 'It's not a boat.'
The speck gets even closer and he thinks, 'It's not a raft.'
Then, out of the surf comes this gorgeous blonde woman, wearing a wet suit and scuba gear. She comes up to the guy and she says,
'How long has it been since you've had a cigarette?'
'Ten years!' he says.
She reaches over, unzips a waterproof pocket on her left sleeve and pulls out a pack of fresh cigarettes. He takes one, lights it, takes a long drag and says,
'Man, oh man! Is that good!'
Then she asks, 'How long has it been since you've had a drink of whiskey?'
He replies, 'Ten years!'
She reaches over, unzips her waterproof pocket on the right, pulls out a flask and gives it to him. He takes a long swig and says,
'Wow, that's fantastic!'
Then she starts unzipping this long zipper that runs down the front of her wet suit and she says to him,
'And how long has it been since you've had some REAL fun?'
And the man replies, 'My God! Don't tell me you've got a motorcycle in there!'"
You know those big juice containers you can get at Costco or Sam's Club? Those big family sized ones that are clear-plastic with a big wide-mouth cap on the top and even the plastic handle that comes off from the opening?
There is one of those in the company bathroom right now. It's just the right size and even has the plastic handle just like they normally do. The liquid inside is sort of a golden color - like apple juice - and looks mighty inviting.
Only it's Pine Sol.
I really want to sneak it into the company fridge.
Somehow I don't think most people would get the joke, though.
You people keep showing up and I keep writing dumb shit.. It's like a nice little symbiotic relationship - but with just the slightest bit of melancholy thrown in.'
Some fish live up other fishes butts. No kidding. It's like the little fishy is the "rim job" fish. They hang out up inside the butt and sorta pick off the unmentionables and generally "houseclean". Only thing is, this french maid eats the trash she sweeps.. if you get my drift. Now that's what I call symbiotic.
Finally got the bike back together. Reinserted the gas guage pod, put the fuel pump back into the tank, resecured the power leads, clamped down the fuel filter. Then I added the drain tube and screwed the gas cap back down. I hooked the tank back up to it's hinge on the bike, stuck the drain hose onto the outside pipe. Tightened the backflow on and then secured the delivery hose onto the metal nipple.
Turned the key in the ignition - from LOCK, past OFF, to ON. Heard the gurgle of the pump inside it's cavern and watched gas slowly seep out around the metal threads of the shutoff valve. Damn. Rode it to work anyway, cause I didn't have a proper wrench - just so long as I kept the engine going there wasn't much pressure to push the gas out at the connection. Tightened her up when I got there but I did notice a little hesitation half way through my ride to work - strange, and disconcerting.
After work I took it out to a friendly BBQ and she ran fine but coming back that night (I smartly had someone follow me home) I again had the hesitation and this time I knew it was going to die on me. Coasted into an intersection with a street lamp, took my helmet off, stuck my ear in the tank and listened for the friendly hum of the pump - yup.. still going. Damn. Perplexed. Probably junk in the filter since I was too lazy to spend an hour and a half going out to the closest dealer to get a new filter - all $4 of it. This filter seemed pretty good - it was mostly clear and wasn't too heavy. My only concern was the thick clump of red rust-dust on the lower side which seemed to be pretty set in it's position. I figured I'd chance it and just reuse. I let the bike sit for a minute and then fired her back up. She sprang back to life with no hesitation. No problems. Rode her the 8 miles back home and didn't experience even the slightest problem. If anything it's actually running better since I cleaned out the tank. More responsive. More smooth. Less coughing and sputtering.
Who knows.
And, like I said it would, it is raining here today in the port city. After two solid weeks of bright blue skies, yellow sun, and hot temperatures, it is raining. After two solid weeks of waiting for my tank to be signed sealed delivered back from the shop, it's raining. Like I said it would.
20030710
Finally gave the White Stripes a chance and - hullo? Pixies? Frank Black? Hullo - Rolling Stones? Hullo?
Not to say it's "rip off" music.. I just think it's quality rock.
See, here is the secret - it doesn't take much to make quality rock and roll. Not much at all. A few cords. Some anger.. Some melancholy. Mix it all together with a drum set and you get good stuff. It's not nearly as hard as everyone wants to make it out to be. That's just it. that's just it.
But maybe people just need their heros. People need their hope and their dreams and they really want to feel like someone out there can make it a-ok for them - cause even if that person doesn't go ahead and make it ok for them - they are at least out there..
See.. everyone is doing math in their head, every day, without even realizing it. They calculating the probability there is someone to save them. They're realizing the the mathematical possibility of happiness. They are meeting, greeting, dating, hating.. everyday.. like a big hunk of graph theory for breakfast.
Einstein had nothing on us social lites.
Einstein and Watson (no.. not that one.. no no, not that one either.. yah that one) and Crick and that heiny fella with that whole uncertainty thing.. they got nothing on us.
Which reminds me. Nixon thought he'd make a good Pope. What's up with that?
Heard a bit about the guy who just came out of a 19-year long coma on my way home from work while listening to NPR. Then, tonight, I get an email from my good buddy Ross pointing me to this article about it.
Note the last line, which basically reads:
He was in the car accident on Friday the 13th 19 years ago and came out of his coma just now, on Friday the 13th
Now, normally no one would think that is very creepy at all.. but a careful observer would note that in the fine worldly game of cribbage, the only single-hand score between 0 (the lowest) and 29 (the highest) that is literally impossible to get is 19.
Sure.. coincidence that he happened to fall into and come out of the coma on the same date...
but 19 man
that's just creepy.
20030709
The latest round of the doktor was.. well.. not much of a round, quite frankly. She didn't show at trivia. Seems things are a bit complicated when you're a resident. You know.. busy and such. Plus, seems like you gotta ignore people and not call them back too.. or something like that. Okay, I'm being a little bitter and it's not directed at her. It's my own fault quite frankly. I don't take the bull by the horns like a good person should. I let the bull route around and go on it's business of rampaging and destroying property and I don't even really care.
I probably won't make much of a parent. I have the morals, the ethics, the responsibility.. I don't have the caring. I'll be the dad who let's their kid stay up late and watch South Park uncut on Comedy Central and eat junk food. I'll be the dad who shrugs at bad behaviour and poor academics. Just so long as they don't irritate the hell out of me, which I'm sure they would anyway. Kids. I really don't know.
So the doktor is slippery and I'm at a boiling point. I need to make some quick and fast decisions about what I'm going to do with this one. Finish the meal and be stuffed, or just throw it out? Perhaps wrap it up for a leftover meal later?
I wish this post was longer. I wish I had something interesting to say about the ongoing saga. I wish but I don't so this is all you get.
Well this site: Dirty Questions is certainly fun. Go take a peak.
I got a rash man.. I got a rash.
My rash is blog comment windows. My rash is inefficiency and unease of use. My rash is with the damn email/website/im/contact/whatever links left by commentators. Due to the nature of the windows, as decided by some faceless dude out there somewhere who first decided to do comments in a sub-window.. Cause he caused a wave - a push - a trend.. and that trend continues today, across thousands of blogs.. and when I hover over those commentator links, I can't see what lies within them because my sub-window has been robbed of it's status bar.
Call me a useability freak. Call me a HCI zealot. Whatever you'd like. It still pisses me off.
Article over at motorcyclenewswire reports a new law: Beginning July 1, Tennessee motorcyclists can legally run red lights -- if they stop first and "exercise due care".
I've only been riding a few short months in this very long life of mine and already this is a major issue for me - stopping at lights and not having the sensors pick me up. It may seem trivial but really, what can you do? Especially late at night. Yah just gotta run the light.. either that or back up, take a right on red.. but if you're in the left hand turning lane in a three lane light..
20030708
Looks like Jaime and I were on the same page this weekend.. both making a mad dash for the northern border and the "cleaner gentler america".
And in the meantime I can't for the life of me own a white shirt for more than a day without staining it. I'm sure there is a scientific law that declares exactly that, with some varying inputs, but essentially my white shirts just weren't meant to stay white. Most of the time it's just a gray smear or a yellow spot and faded at that and I never know what the hell it came from but I do know it's not white anymore.
Sat around this weekend and thought up cool button/t-shirt ideas. Funny stuff like
"What's that Smell?"
and
"Let's Play Mind Games"
Ha ha.
Just back from the great great city of Montreal that is most likely better than pretty much every city this world has to offer. The City of Angels. DC Metro. Bean town. Motorcity... even TdotOdot.. they don't hold a candle in the wind, I suspect, to the amazing city of Montreal.
Back in the 90's it was a rough economic situation in Montreal and people feared a fall and worried the island city would become the next detroit - dirty and tired and D-pressed. But instead people just kept on keeping on. People went out and drank some good fucking beer and ate some good fucking food.. Granted they did it for $5/pitcher and $5 a plate instead of $10/and $10... but they kept on keeping on and the immigrants kept on coming on and the fracophones kept on.
Montreal has more restuarants per capita than any other city in North America.
Montreal also has such an amazing outlook on things that they immediately grant liberties to any sort of festival that comes across it's doorstep. I was in the city for 4 days and ran across no less than 4 different festivals all with their own trappings and blocked off streets and gads and gads of people. I saw no less than 100 bongo players gather in the park to bongo, or tam-tam as the in-crowd says, for no other reason than it was sunday and that's what they wanted to do. I saw no less than 20 circus types all juggling and twirling and doing hand stands for no other reason than it was sunday and that's what they wanted to do. in the park. in the burning sun. on a sunday.
My eyes, over four days in the city, probably recorded over 500,000 faces. 1,000,000 even. I saw drunk people and little kids and bums and beggars and carribeans and middle-easterners and far-easterners and russians and czechs and lots and lots of beer. I saw cigarettes with pictures of black lung on their packages and still everyone sucking them down and I saw fire breathing and fire twirling and I saw some good fucking friends and had a good fucking time.
Not once did I see a single altercation.
Not once did I see a fist thrown or a hurtful word uttered or bad glare stared.
Not even in one million people.
Not even at 95 degrees with stifling humidity and everyone sweating more bullets than a nicaraguan gorilla platoon.
Saw one guy tell another guy he couldn't bring his glass beer bottle into the blocked off street where music was playing.. but he was happy to provide him with a plastic cup and dispose of his bottle for him. Even though they were selling beer inside the blocked off street. Even though drinking beer on the street is illegal.
Saw one or two or three people light up joints in the park while they watched the bongos but they didn't watch for cops cause they weren't too worried about it.
Neither was I.
Went to a bar and ordered some beer and then some more beer and stuffed the foosball table with tissue paper so we didn't have to pay and strangers wandered up and put down their looney to take winners and we said 'sure, but we don't need your money, we're stuffing' and he said 'Ha! I work here! You're busted!' and we said 'shit' and he said 'Ah, whatever.. I don't care' and he played with us for an hour. For free. Cause he wasn't worried about it.
Neither was I.
Made it back into ptown in time to see the sun set and get a beer and watch my favourite bar tender tend her bar and listen to some good local music that I'd never heard before. Made the trip in 4:30 which is faster than it should be and I didn't even speed much cause I wasn't too worried about getting back at any particular time. Had some crazy dreams last night. Happy dreams. Normally I don't ever dream, but these were some awfully dreamy dreams.
Came back to work and got my coffee and sat down and Tony had left me a happy fourth of july note.
Came back to work and saw that Bunnie left good wishes and pointed some nice folks in my direction.
Sat down and thought maybe I should get to work.. maybe I should. Then looked around and no one seemed too worried about it.
Neither was I.
20030705
Nothing really beats free jazz and a free pad to crash at where people are grateful to be able to cook you crazy good omlets when you wake up in the morning. And in the greatest city in the world to boot.
Drove up all by myself - solo trip this year - and it was a long 5 hours. The sun beat down on my poor little car and she coughed and sputtered up the mountains and clunked down the other side of them and by the time I got into the city the sun was down but the heat hung around anyway. Man it was hot.
Man it *is* hot.
Nothing beats an old pentium laptop crankin win95 with dialup to really make you appreciate the broadband but to also make you realize life isn't so much always about getting there as quick as you possibly can. Stop and smell the packets, I say. If life is a journey through time and you don't take your time you'll just end up at the end that much faster. In a casket. Or in a little coffee can. Whatever, it's all the same so my point is smell the packets on the way.
Sittin here with some terribly smart academics. Dude is deciding whether he is going to accept his med school offer. Dudette is busy at the United Nations in Rome. Dudette #2 just finished her Masters. Nice enough folk. And here we are on a sunny Saturday afternoon (mostly morning, to us) drinking coffee and bobbing our heads to the real slim shady.
Music is what you make it.
Just like life, and the journey, and all that shit. Dudette is half way through cutting Dudette #2's hair. They keep looking over at me slyly. They have razors. If you see me without hair you know what happened.
Went out yesterday afternoon and caught the movie 28 Days Later. Whoa. Fuckin' A. That's some scary shit. Sure, there was some cheese factor but I guess I expect that without question in most every movie that comes out these days. That way, when a really quality piece comes out I'm that much more impressed. A cynic's view, I suppose. A pessimist's. Or just realistically satisfied. You decide.
20030703
Haven't posted all day cause I'm working on big stuff here at the office.. you know - all secret squirrel demo bullshit that makes the customers wet their pants. Well, that's the idea anyway. The sales force would like to think that changing the color of a button and adding a whole new feature set take the same amount of programming time but they don't. They would also like to think that it's just a matter of push and shove, based on the amount of time they haggle us for new stuff.
But none of that is all too important. What is important?
July 4th is important. July 2nd is important too.. yah know why?
The Doktor is important to me because it represents a whole lot of stuff.. Not her, but it. The whole thing stinks of revelation and finding a new life meaning. It smells of change and maybe we all say change is great but change is change and change takes time and energy and change.
It's sort of circular like that.
And because it is and because I know it I'm going up to Montreal. I'm leaving the country, leaving everything behind for a few days so I can go relax, think deeply on the state of things, and get piss drunk. Mostly piss drunk. I thought for sure I was getting too old and that my body didn't want the drink anymore but this week has been hard and fast. Cheap, fast, and out of control. A few 40s (fohties) were involved. A beach was involved. My favourite bartender and the doktor and many pints of beer were involved. Lots and lots of coding was involved. Coding at break-neck speed and fast updates and new graphics and slick enhancements. One 12 hour coding marathon after a 3:30AM bedtime was involved...
And I don't feel to much the worse for wear, really. I'm awake and alert and I want more beer. I'm happy and it's sunny and I'm going to Montreal. I'm hydrated, fed, and not hung over and I really really like myself.
I'm going to drink some beer.
20030702
Tony is a wild man and it makes things hard for me. I know he never tells the truth and I know he keeps things on a (generally) PG-13 level over at the busblog but all those scantily clad women make for watch-over-the-shoulder-paranoid-work-www-surfing.. if you know what I mean. Plus, I have to spend all my time looking celebrities up on the web cause he refuses to tell me who the scantily clad women *are*. Plus, he writes an awful lot. Most of my co-workers, in fact, probably think I am a prevert of the utmost degree since they usually find me starring at yet another one of tony's many scantily clad celebrities.. when in fact I am reading tony's long ass post. So what I'm saying is he writes too much. I can read Bunnie for hours and hours.. I can read about furious finger-fucking and lesbian make-out sessions and never worry one bit because it's all just words.
See.. a little secret for yah all.
The common man can't read.. and by can't I mean doesn't want to and won't. Same difference in my book since the common man ain't reading it anyway.
So when my co-workers come by they stare blankly at the lines and lines of words on the screen and, as long as they don't look real close and notice there are words in there like the and a that they might actually be able to understand, I get off scott free.
But Tony... oh tony.. he just doesn't know when to stop. Like the fourth scoop of ice cream the cute little high school shoppe girl throws on when you pay for only three, tony is dangerous. He writes and writes and writes, and like the shoppe girl he even winks every once in awhile.. and I'm awful afraid of getting caught.
In other news.. genrich is back from some dark and dingy hospital room with tails of bacteria and some wit to boot.
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the guys: philogynist jaime tony - the gals:raymi raspil
