2008

2009 blog entry

2009-02-08T05:18:00.000-08:00

boy, i sure did forget to keep a blog this year. i even remodeled this thing at the beginning of 2008 to make sort of readable, thinking i'd actually get around to writing crazy korea stories. then i got here and i got sidetracked and i just forgot about it. so strange how having an active and interesting life makes one less likely to blog about it. i guess if you're busy and active, you have no need to write longwinded anecdotes to imaginary audiences. oh well. i'm pretty bored right now, being stuck in an airport in tokyo, so here are some shallow, meaningless thoughts for you to enjoy. this free wifi almost makes up for the $17 filet o' fish paha.

preachy political rant

it was nice to see the guy i actually voted for get sworn in for a change. i guess now i can't complain anymore. that'll be an adjustment, cuz this is the first time i've backed the winner. well, technically, the guy i backed in 2000 sort of won, but for some impossibly retarded reasons, we decided to put his opponent in charge. that was fun. my first time to participate in democracy brought with it the lesson that one person does not necessarily equal one vote. 2004 was even more depressing, as it showed how easily jingoistic fear mongering will out-publicize sanity and compassion in this culture. but this year, things somehow worked out. many people are attributing this to republican party fatigue or the economic crisis or john mccain's awful, awful campaign, but i'm pretty sure the only reason obama won was because i wasn't in the country to jinx everything this time. i have phenominal jinx potential. i guarentee you that if i'd voted for bush in 2000, the votes would've been recounted and gore would've won. this happens with sports, too. i'll be watching my team get their asses handed to them, but if i leave the room, my team starts coming back. sports, politics, even the korean currency began it's steady decline the very week i arrived in the country.

unlike most of his fans i don't think obama will magically solve all that much (it'll be many, many presidential administrations before the extent of W's damage is cleaned up), but it'll still be nice to have a leader who's not a total fucking embarrassment for a change.

stop sending me online petitions

i've been getting a lot of online petitions on facebook lately. online petitions are really stupid. many of my friends are currently passing around a petition calling on congress to forgive everybody's student loans in order to help the economy. how can (as of this writing) 19,092 people be naive enough to believe this would ever, ever, ever happen? i know almost nothing about finance, so i can't say exactly how unrealistic this is (though i imagine there's some sort of well-kids-it's-really-not-that-simple rebuttal to be given here), but that's beside the point.

whether it's a sound solution or not, can somebody name just one online petition that has ever made the slightest impact on any social problem? just one? seriously. i'm asking. has this ever happened? why do people insist on forwarding these things everywhere? i guess by electronically signing your name, you can clear your conscience and feel like you've "done your part" to support whatever wildly unrealistic change is being offered.

that's another thing. these petitions always have some vague and ideal objective, like "let's end poverty!" or "put an astronaut on mars by next april!", and they rarely, if ever, indicate who the recipient of the petition is supposed to be, let alone how said person is in any realistic position to enforce these changes. the aforementioned student loan petition is at least addressed to "congress", but how is that supposed to work? do the people signing this believe that once the petition gathers enough signatures, somebody will run to capital hill and slam it down on the house speaker's desk, where nancy pelosi will then skim over it and slap her forehead and shouting "of course! stop everything! these facebook douchebags have the answer! how did we not see it sooner?!"

there was another petition floating around (i can't find it now for some reason) calling upon the "CEOs of the top banks receiving bailout funds" to disclose exactly what they're spending their bailout money on, and to apologize for not disclosing this stuff sooner. at least that student loan petition is intended for politicians, whose livelihoods are (supposedly) dependent on public opinion. but i think it's pretty obvious by this point that these "CEOs of the top banks" could give two shits about what anybody thinks of them, particularly facebook users with way too much spare time.

movies

the best film of 2008, in my correct opinion, was slumdog millionaire. frost/nixon was also really good. i never saw the play, but i'm sure any productions of this from now on will seem like horse shit compared to frank langella's performance. milk was pretty good too, and i wouldn't mind seeing sean penn win best actor, but i think the film was only nominated for best picture because of that prop 8 business last year. benjamin button was fucking stupid.

that reminds me. if there are no good movies playing this weekend, DON'T GO TO THE MOVIES. americans tend to flock like lemmings to megaplexes during weekends not because they're all that interested in seeing a particular film, but because they can't come up with anything else to do with their time. i mean, how else can paul blart: mall cop gross over $92 million its opening weekend? at least i hope that's the case.

eggs

i've been watching the food network lately. a lot of these gourmet chefs like to put quail eggs in everything. from what i can tell, quail eggs look and taste just like chicken eggs, except they're smaller. they probably cost more too. that's stupid.

2008-07-31T04:24:00.001-07:00

2008-03-31T03:01:00.000-07:00

some homeless guy came up to me in busan this weekend, so i gave him something like five thousand won, which was more than i meant to give him, but whatever. a little while later i ran into him again, and he tried to act like he'd never seen me before and begged for more money. unfortunately, i don't yet know how to say "go fuck yourself" in korean, but i tried to get the point across the best i could.

2008-03-24T17:39:00.000-07:00

fucking yellow dust.

naturally, they do this when i'm 523,028,239 miles away....

2008-03-11T02:02:00.000-07:00

Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Expected To Headline Lollapalooza.

and saul williams is kicking off his tour at sxsw this year. fuck.

look at what these guys wear to their shows. just a shirt and jeans. no costumes. no eyeliner (fucking greenday). just the same threads you and i wear when doing our laundry. they can get away with that.

2008-03-05T02:34:00.000-08:00

kaylin has been selected to represent her school in the district-wide read-a-thon. they select ONE kindergartener from each school and, yeah, they picked her cuz she's a nerdy bibliophile like her paterfamilias.

she keeps asking to borrow my copy of kingdom hearts II, but we should probably avoid that pitfall.

2008-03-04T02:16:00.000-08:00

they say that shortly after you quit smoking, food regains its flavor. i started smoking in my late teens, and officially quit sometime in college. i don't recall food ever losing or gaining any flavor during this period, but i can't really be relied upon to confirm or deny this theory because i'm a rather unobservant eater. food is placed in front of me and i just kind of shovel it in. during certain meals throughout my life i've been reminded that i have to "peel" the shrimp before attempting to eat it, or that the fish is better if i remove the bones first. wasabi has never really been a problem for me, and a crab's bone marrow goes down fine if you just sorta ketchup it up. i'm like homer simpson eating insanity peppers through his wax mouth. many a dinner companion has been horrified by my belief that anything is digestable, if you allow it to be. in my defense, i seem to have lived to the ripe age of 26 with no notable side effects.

this gift has been quite handy here in korea (i moved to korea by the way), where you're served some bizarre, broiled sea monster nearly everywhere you go. my coworkers are amazed at how well i take to ultra-spicy kim-bop-whatever, implying that most westerners are usually pussies who seek out innocuous fast food outlets upon their arrival. i'll kindly thank them for the delicious chicken soup, only to be informed that i had actually eaten duck stew. whatever. some have asked me if i've tried any dog meat yet. i don't think i have, but the language barrer here makes me even less likely to actually ask about what i'm eating.

i've developed a similar knack for drinking (but who hasn't?). i used to have issues drinking hard liquors. after my mid-twenties metabolism speed bump, i stopped drinking beer in order to thwart an emerging paunch and moved onto whiskey and vodka, which also has admirably prepared me for korean culture. out here, you're expected to go drinking with your boss(es) fairly often. training myself with tequila has allowed me to pound the liver-eroding substance soju with relative ease.

soju is the most absolutely vile drink in the universe. i swear, some of this shit makes absinthe taste like flintstones cough syrup. rubbing alcohol is easier to drink than this. soju could've powered my old suzuki esteem, easily. i think korea is attempting to solve industrial pollution by bottling it all up and selling it back to the populace. i suppose if america had been invaded as many times as korea has, we'd drink like this too. and smoke enough to allow us to eat whatever's at hand.

2008-03-01T02:56:00.000-08:00

jesus goddamn motherfucking tapdancing christ. why is god, or whichever cosmic ballbreaker is in charge these days, allowing scarlett fucking johanson to record an album of tom waits covers? no. no no. does this benefit anybody? at all? fucking cock ass. what, just because she's scarlett johansson,hhh that means she can make pointless cover albums butchering my favorite waits songs..? ㅎㅔㅡㅁㅃㅂ damnit. f david bowie has finally gone senile. why does shit like this keep happening without my permissioN? 쇼돔;ㅗ롣농려sdfaasgd

2008-02-10T10:25:00.000-08:00

over the last few years, my music career has been in the dumps. my old college buddy, ian hawke, who works as a big-time label exec in new york, won't even return my calls any more. he says all the songs i write stink. they're no good. they don't flow. they're not the next big thing. he says i'm a has-been - no, worse than a has-been, a never-was. every time i try to make an appointment with ian, i can't even get past the lobby. back in the day, the young, swedish receptionist would alway greet me with a fruit basket and a bottle of perrier while i waited. now days, she pretends not to know who i am. i've made every effort to reminicse with ian, to try remind of the good ol' days when we dreamed of taking the industry by storm, that when we ran things, it'd be all about the music instead of dollars and cents. but clearly he's changed. he's no longer about the music, just fast cars, faster women, and lots of blow. i'm dead to him now.

but all that's about to change. last december, i was sitting at my piano, bitter and frustrated, when suddenly i heard these soft, cherub-esque voices coming from my porch outside. i peeked out the blinds and saw three tiny chipmunks, roasting acorns on my patio and singing christmas carols. i asked them if they could sing anything else, and they looked at me curiously. the leader of the trio, melvin, said that that all depended on if i had anything to eat. before i could answer, the three critters scurried into my apartment and began raiding my pantry. i went to work writing music with extremely high-pitch harmonizing vocals while the three of them swam in bowls of cereal, squirted whipped down their throats, and launched flapjacks from pans to spatulas, using all of my guest china. when i noticed the havoc they were raising, i shoulted melvin's name at the top of my lungs. the three of the froze and stared at me. i told them that snack time was over, and that we had work to do.

needless to say, these guys are a hit! i pitched their demo to the ceo of sony records and he signed us immediately. we have a video shoot next week, and then we embark on a european tour. i have it on good authority that once ian hawke found out all this, he immediately turned red in the face, pounded his fists on his mahogany desk, pointed at the tv screen and shouted "get me those chipmunks!" so you better believe i'll be watching my back. meanwhile, the chipmunks are getting airplay all over the country, and the royalty checks are flooding in.

looks like it's gonna be smoothe sailing from here on out...

fuck amy winehouse

2008-02-08T16:27:00.000-08:00

yeah, we get it. you're a wild, loose, free-spirit who can't make it through an entire set because you're wasted 24-7. have some more awards.

2008-02-04T06:40:00.000-08:00

statesman endorses obama

scroll down past the article to read a funny, grammatically incoherent, & wildly uninformed comment thread.

By Dale
February 3, 2008 2:23 PM Link to this
If ya’ll back Obama,I don’t need to read ya’lls paper……thanks for the memories

By Bill Roberts
February 3, 2008 4:15 AM Link
to this
I’ll never vote for a Muslim and no matter what he claims, he is. Would never vote for for McClain either because of his stance on giving away out hard earned (not his) Social Security money to illegals aliens who decided to seek amenesty again. Don’t believe OClinton is for anyone but Clinton, but putting a Muslim in office is not a good alternative.
By Nugster
February 2, 2008 11:38 PM Link to this
Its not the economy, not the war in Iraq, or Healthcare, its Israel stupid. Hilary is in the pocket of the Israeli lobbyest, and that’s enough to win the white house.

do these people make it a point to look at the screen when they type? seems like they just close their eyes and pound the keys with their fists.

2008-02-03T18:15:00.000-08:00

sooooooo gassy...

2008-02-01T22:06:00.000-08:00

do any of you happen to have a ringtone on your phone of homer simpson singing that "spider-pig" song? if you do, please click on the little X on the upper corner of this window and don't ever visit this blog again. even if that shit was funny last summer (note: it wasn't), there is no good reason to have that on your phone. or any ringtone, for that matter. what's wrong with just "ring-ring"? or vibrate? what purpose can a ringtone possibly serve, except to announce to everybody in earshot that "OMG UR GETTING A CALL!!! THATS AMAZING ROXORR!!! LOOKAT U!! LOOKIT UR PHONE ITS PLAYING TEH LATEST NELLY HIT LOL ROXOR!!! EVERYBODY'S IMPRSEED MAYBE NOW A GURL WILL HAV TEH SEKS WITH YUU!!! LOLLerskates *hugz*!!" i think ringtones should be deemed a douchebag indicator, like collar-pops or tanning salon visits or putting music on your blog or $60 haircuts, as they have no justifiable purpose other than bringing attention to oneself. just sayin. you know.

this dude at this office party the other day left his iphone on a coffee table, and it rang that spider-pig song every five minutes at what had to be the highest volume on that phone. he had left the apartment for about half an hour to go buy cigarettes or something. when he returned, he walked straight toward his phone on the coffee table, picked it up, and asked "did anybody call me?" while looking at his missed call list. this made everybody suspect that it was him calling himself over and over from a payphone outside.

2008-01-30T21:07:00.000-08:00

2008-01-29T10:16:00.000-08:00

this morning, i was browsing through some family cases from up in the texas panhandle. i just came across a kid whose first name is "bowhunter".

2008-01-28T07:24:00.000-08:00

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UFO Sighting ReportsIt seems that sighting reports are beginning to really pick up now after the holiday pause, so let's take a look at some strange reports I have received recently.
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She was very frightened, and went inside after a minute or so.
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He stopped his car, opened the window as the object flew over his position. A perfect alpine climbing boot for short sections of steep snow and long alpine rock climbs. Ice climbing season is here throughout the country. Learn a word every day! Denton-A man on his way to work early in the morning witnessed very bright lights in the sky.
Online English Story Room! This lot was next to a cornfield.
Well, I didn't know these color names. Soon, it reappeared, followed by two military jets. Kings life and his effect on people and the nation in general. His conversation with Pease Base Operations Officer confirmed hisfacts and figures and helped him contact the USWX. In the words of Homey The Clown, "I don't think so! Der Titel der Arbeit ist eine Referenz an den abwesenden Protagonisten.
He dealt the cards out and everyone placed their bets.
Deep in the Heart of TexasThe stars are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas, and it seems that this line from an old song can now apply to UFOs also.
As a daring soloist and pioneer of bold rock climbs he takes the writers license to the limit with confidence.
Find Up-to-date Information on English topics.
I should be elated and jubilant for the accomplishments of Barack Obama but when I think of him I see images of John and Robert Kennedy followed by the voice of Dr.
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Many patients end up in treatment for the very reason of overlooking their own problems to try and help another fix theirs. How to Set Up a Vacation Auto-Reply with Inbox. Photograph is from Thailand report. Described in this amusing guide are his adventures with friends and lots of informative and essential information.
The movement seemed most remarkable to me, as they appeared to flutter, quickly and weightless across the night sky.

2008-01-27T05:43:00.000-08:00

i hate it when people act like they don't know the lyrics to "everybody have fun" by wang chung, when you know goddamned well that they do.

2008-01-24T18:19:00.000-08:00

the bible sure is awesome. i'm really excited about this talk of mike huckabee wanting to amend the constitution to reflect the word of god. praise the lord. you know, according to the holy scripture, you can rape an umarried woman, and all you get is a slap on the wrist:

"If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl's father firty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives."
-Deuteronomy 22:28-29

but be sure not to make fun of bald people:

"From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths."
- II Kings 2:23-24

slavery's totally cool, though:

"Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly."
- Leviticus 25:44-46

it's really great how this book- despite being written thousands of years ago by random members a borderline tribal society that knew nothing about how the world works while claiming to have been directly inspired by god - is not only 100% consistent, but is totally applicable in the 21st century! take this for instance. where would fred phelps and his inbred clan be, were it not for the lord's sound guidance? how else would they know to picket heath ledger's funeral to show how much god hates movies about homos?

leviticus is easily my favorite book of the bible. i include it in my summer reading list every year. if you ever need any pointers on decorating your tabernacle, hit me up. people love to quote from this book when denouncing homosexuality, but nobody seems concerned about the myriad of equally blasphemous acts that supposedly piss god off all the same, such as men trimming the sides of their beards (leviticus 19:27). you'd think phelps would picket the gillette corporation every now and again, considering the eternal torment that awaits those guys. forget halliburton.

oh by the way, don't ever mix linen and wool. you'll be put to death.(leviticus 19:19)

2008-01-24T10:13:00.000-08:00

lord, why did you take heath ledger? please return him to us, and we will give you dane cook and owen wilson in exchange.

2008-01-24T05:18:00.001-08:00

this is sorta clever.

2008-01-21T20:24:00.000-08:00

2008-01-19T14:49:00.000-08:00

anybody else find it odd that virtually every candidate that's co-opted obama's campaign theme - which he's had from day one - has somehow managed to pull ahead?

i've been trying my darndest not to get too worked up about any candidates this time around. that shit with howard dean broke my heart in 2004. when he threw in the towel, i tried taking that energy and reapplying it to john kerry, and, well, we all know how that turned out. i don't think i've ever experienced such a deep contempt for humanity as i did in the weeks following the 2004 election. i'm pretty sure i didn't speak to my family for weeks, nor could i look at any of my friends who disliked bush as much as the next sane person but couldn't be bothered to get thier asses out to the polls. "meh, i didn't feel like it." fucking christ that shit pissed me off.

i learned my lesson then and i now know to not get my hopes up this time around. people always say they want change, but given the option, they'll go with the most familiar face available. if hillary actually manages to win this thing and goes on to serve (dry heave) two terms, that'll be 28 years with either a bush or a clinton in the white house. does that not seem completely wrong to anybody else? hey, maybe by 2016, jeb will feel left out, so we'll have to give him a turn.

whatever. life will keep on keepin' on (i'm assuming). getting all hissy over this won't make my vote count any more than that of this country's bible-thumping GIT-R-DONE crowds, so i guess it's not worth caring about that much. any painstakingly researched and calculated vote you make will always be cancelled out by a soccer mom in lubbock who likes the other guy's ties.

2008-01-17T19:59:00.000-08:00

when i first heard this, i spent nearly an hour at work looking up every randy taylor in our database to see if CPS has ever dealt with this family.

2008-01-16T22:01:00.000-08:00

so i finally managed to sweep up 9,999,999 of the 10,000,000 pieces. the last one will likely be discovered by my foot sometime next week.

2008-01-16T21:18:00.000-08:00

son of a BITCH. i was just starting to put some dishes away, and i put one of the glasses up on the top shelf of the cupboard. no sooner did i turn away from it, did it fucking JUMP out of the cupboard, landing on another glass on the counter, shattering both of them all over the counter and the floor. i have NO fucking clue how that could have happened. now i have a 10,000,000 little pieces of glass to clean up, and i sort of had other things to do this evening. fucking cock ass. that was the last one of that kind of glass we had too, the others of which all broke in similarly weird ways.

2008-01-15T18:30:00.000-08:00

good god, why have i been falling down so many stairs lately?

2008-01-15T05:13:00.000-08:00

i don't get this:

onion

what's the punchline?

2008-01-14T06:57:00.000-08:00

the news pisses me off sometimes. can somebody explain to me why this story is getting national coverage? or better yet, why is it the subject of bright red BREAKING NEWS OMFG!!! banners at the top of every news site in the cosmos?

i'm sure i sound like a prick right now. it's just that, because of my super-phat connections here at the DFPS, i'm privy to lots and lots of grizzly domestic violence stories, many of which are just as shocking, if not more so, than this one. i can tell you for a fact that this shit happens ALL THE FUCKING TIME but you only hear about it on tv if the victim is white/photogenic, and the media corps needs an easy human interest story. you see? in the state of texas, something like this gets reported at least once a month, especially around fort hood, when PTSD suffering troops come home and find that their wives and girlfriends spent all their savings on their secret boyfriends while they were gone, and all manner of bodies wind up in belton lake. when you hear about this stuff on major news networks, that means it's either a slow news week, or the press corps needs some public distraction from the other news going on that they're too cowardly to address.

i mean, shit, obviously it's a tragic event for the people involved, and i'm not saying it's not worth a brief mention on CNN, but how many people really need to know about it? what is the point of this round-the-clock coverage of every family member's life story? meanwhile, the pentagon's trumping up iranian speedboat shenanigans into acts of war, and president homer is selling bombs to his saudi pals. let's get the iran war machine oiled up now while nobody's looking, and hey, if we're really lucky, we can stir up a fight over the next six months and georgie-porgie can declare a national emergency just in time for the november elections. it's not like we'll pay any fucking attention.

2008-01-07T19:08:00.000-08:00

IGNORANT USERS.

OBEY THE MCP.

2008-01-06T21:29:00.001-08:00

2007-12-22T12:22:00.000-08:00

yesterday at work, i received a call from a distraught lady who's just gone through this rather horrible situation regarding her kids/grandkids/custody limbo. i look up this woman's history in our files and see that she has a history of drug abuse and mental disorders. she sounds clearly intoxicated over the phone, but i'm trying to help her nonetheless.

anyway, she has this nasty situation that she needs help with, but as luck would have it, her situation does not fall under our department's jursidiction. she's trying to regain custody of her grandchildren, and because there is no suspected abuse or neglect occurring in these kids' current living arrangment, there is no cause for CPS to get involved. for a good thirty minutes, i explain this over and over and over again, that we can't help her and that she has to call legal assistance or the county court or so and so, but she won't hear it. she keeps bawling and trying to discuss her situation from different angles and goes off on several tangents, as if this'll change my mind somehow, and i'm trying to point out, as politely as i can, that she's wasting her breath by talking to me, that she needs to call these other people, that there is absolutely nothing we can do for her. but i can't get rid of her. nothing's working. meanwhile there are countless other people waiting on hold with urgent situations, and for that reason i catch hell from my bosses whenever these phone calls go on for too long. i've explained everything i possibly can to her, but she keeps talking in circles, pausing occasionally to snort something or another. i reach my wit's end with this woman and start thinking jesus, shut the fuck up already.

suddenly she stops talking. "what did you just say?

"i'm sorry? i.. didn't say anything."

"sounded... like you told me to shut the fuck up."

"i didn't say anything."

"i'll try another agency." hangs up.

this was so fucking bad. i cannot believe i actually said that out loud. i mean, i didn't really say it. i must've been mouthing those words while exhaling into the receiver.

i'll be accepting my incredible asshole of the year award now.

2007-12-19T16:07:00.000-08:00

I'd like to take a moment to express my white-hot, unadulturated hatred for the phrase "GIT-R-DONE", coined by so-called comedian Larry the Cable Guy (even though he wasn't the first entertainer to use it). I want to pour sugar in the gas tank of every truck and SUV in the tri-county area that sports a GIT-R-DONE sticker, then break into their owners' homes and put crazy glue in their preparation H. Believe me, around here, I would have my work cut out for me.

GIT-R-DONE. Get what done, you fucking knuckle-dragging, Dixie-waving, Bush-loving, inbred retard? Have any of the numbskulls who bandy this phrase around ever given any thought to what in the name of Barney Fife that fucking phrase means? Better yet, how, pray tell, is it funny? Larry the fucking Cable Guy and anybody who finds him the least bit entertaining need to be castrated so as to prevent Idiocracy from taking place.

Just my 2¢!

2007-12-12T07:16:00.000-08:00

2007 has been the most absolutely eventless year since creation. This year managed to suck in spite of new albums from Radiohead, Saul Williams, the White Stripes, NIN, a new Coen Brothers movie, a new Tarantino movie, an Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie, a fucking Simpsons movie, and new books by many of my favorite authors (Chabon/Palahniuk/Russo), and a job that doesn't totally blow. This whole year was tailor-made to please me, yet I still couldn't make it work. This just goes to show that I am a joyless man who is impossible to please and that I clearly suffer from some kind of borderline-personality disorder. There's only so much I can blame on circumstan...

Actually, no. I have to go to work really really early and I'm always too tired to go out. This lack of energy wasn't a problem before I started this job. Bah. No biggie. 2008 is actually looking to be way more interesting, but I'm afraid I'll jinx it if I talk about it here.

2007-12-11T15:42:00.000-08:00

2007-11-25T10:08:00.000-08:00

my my! what a beautiful autumn morning this is! i think i'll get on my extremely loud motorcyle and circle the block and rev my engine five thousand fucking times! then everybody will finally realize how cool i am.

yes yes yes yes

2007-11-17T13:11:00.000-08:00

I just saw Death Proof, the latest Tarantino shindig. I had no idea half of it was set in Austin. I knew all the locations and such. I rule, I guess. Bottles of Shiner were commonplace.

I left out a few

2007-11-15T17:53:00.000-08:00

- The Club Silencio scene in Mulholland Drive.

- When Bill Murray unsuccessfully tries to talk to his kids over the phone in Lost In Translation.

- In Wonder Boys, when Tobey Maguire declines Michael Douglas' offer of codiene pills, claiming he's fine without them. "Right. That's why you were standing in the Chancellor's back yard twirling that little 'cap gun' of yours tonight. You're fine all right. You're fit as a fucking fiddle."

- The movie theatre scene in O Brother Where Art Thou? "Deceitful, two-faced, she-woman!" and "We though... you was.. a toad..."

- John Turturro's swing dance scene in Barton Fink.

- When Mr. Eddy beats up the tailgater in Lost Highway.

- Jack Nicholson's letters to Ndugu in About Schmidt

2007-10-31T18:01:00.000-07:00

In case any of you are writing a research essay about me, here are my top favorite movie scenes of all time, in no particular order:

10. The smurf dialogue in Donnie Darko.

9. "I've had a long day, and I really hate the fucking Eagles, man!" from The Big Lebowski.

8. The end of The Shawshank Redemption, from the point where the warden discovers the hole in the wall.

7. The scene in part II of Kill Bill where Budd gets chewed out by his boss at the strip club.

6. The flashback scenes with Rodney Dangerfield in Natural Born Killers.

5. The last twenty minutes of Apocolypse Now.

4. The first twenty minutes of The Godfather.

3. When Reno steps on Rude's sunglasses in Final Fantasy: Advent Children.

2. The Phil Collins sequence in Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theatres where they discover their origins.

1. When Borat sets that chicken free.

Yes

2007-10-31T17:57:00.000-07:00

Download here, a la In Rainbows. Pay for it if you want.

2007-10-28T18:27:00.000-07:00

"Daddy, what's it gonna be like in the twenty-first century?"

"Well, sweetheart, for your sake, I hope it'll be all peaches and cream, but I'm afraid the end time is near; the cataclysmic apocalypse referred to in the scriptures of every holy book known to mankind. It will be an era fraught with boundless greed and corruption, where global monetary systems disintegrate, leaving brother to kill brother for a grain of overcooked rice. The nations of the civilized world will collapse under the oppressive weight of parasitic political conspiracies, which remove all hope and optimism from their once-faithful citizens. Around the globe, generations of polluters will be punished for their sins, unshielded by the ozone layer they have so successfully depleted, left to bake in the searing naked rays of light. Wholesale assassination will serve to destabilize any remaining government, leaving the starving and wicked to fend for themselves. Blood-thirsty renegade cyborgs created by tax dodging corporations reek havoc. Pissed off androids, tired of being slaves to a Godless and gutless system where the rich get richer and the poor get fucked over and out, unleash worldwide destruction by means of nuclear holocaust, annihilating the terrified masses, leaving in its torturous wake nothing but vicious cannibalistic mutating, radiating, and horribly disfigured hordes of satanic killers bent on revenge, but against whom? There are so few left alive. Starvation reigns supreme, forcing the unlucky survivors to eat anything and anyone in their path. Massive earthquakes crack the planet's crust like a hollow egg shell, causing unending volcanic eruptions. Creatures of the seven seas unable to escape to certain death upon land, boiling in their liquid prison. Disease encircles the earth. Plagues and viruses, with no known cause or cure, lay waste to whatever draws breath. And humankind, having proven itself to be nothing more than a race of worthless scavengers, falls victim to merciless attacks on the hands of interplanetary alien tribes, who seek to ransack our charred remains."

"Wow, that sounds cool! I can hardly wait!"

"Great. Well, there's your story. Night-night."

2007-10-27T13:21:00.000-07:00

I first started keeping a diary roughly nine or ten years ago. Two friends and I had taken a road trip to Port Aransas for Spring Break and while sitting at a rural diner in south Texas, I wrote down the day's events on the back of a kids' menu, unaware that this would become a compulsive habit. I wrote about how none of our parents wanted us to go on this trip and how because the three of us each attended different high schools, we had a hell of a time coordinating our stories in order to successfully make reservations without our parents' knowledge. In the end, we wound up telling our parents that we'd be hanging out at each others' homes during the week, a plan that we knew would fall apart as soon as somebody's parents called somebody else's. But by that time, we'd be long gone, and we were content with enjoying the trip and suffering whatever consequences awaited us when we got home.

What I wrote on that kiddie activity page very likely mimicked the content and prose style of the introductory pages of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which I had read for the first time a few weeks earlier. Of course, instead of the hard drugs mentioned in that timeless memoir, mine probably read something like "We were zooming south on I35 with a glove box full of black & mild cigars, codeine, a couple bags of weed, and some beer in the trunk. We were about a mile out of San Marcos when my buzz kicked in..."

The rest of these diaries are probably somewhere in my parents' attic. As I recall, these musings would start out with Trent Reznor or Depeche Mode lyrics, go into tirades bitching about friends/bosses/teachers/family, and end with phrases like "I NOW KNOW I MUST WALK ALONE WHO NEEDS THEM!!" or some such bullshit. This was before Myspace blogs. It was not yet socially acceptable to do this. You could say I was a pioneer for the losers of future generations. I'm tempted to go home and destroy these, but the fact I would even want to just goes to show how little I've changed.

I'm trying to spruce this design up, and give it as much visual stimuli as possible, but Blogger is not very open-source, or, more likely, I'm bad at coding. I can't get the animated squares to wrap around the text field. I don't know why they just run along down the column like that. There's also supposed to be animated hearts floating around everywhere, but they won't show up for some reason.

filler

2007-10-24T18:23:00.000-07:00

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2007-08-20T07:14:00.000-07:00

Hells' Angels were molested. I am every federal agency chief federal chairman. Life in hell is predictable. School makes you stupid. Age is imagined. College is more garbage in your head. I don't know. Ask my wife. I predicted it. I want to help everybody but I need your ticket numbers. I told the news I was woodchipper proof. God created the world on June 22, 1971. If the studio distributing Superbad says it's the hottest comedy of the summer, it must be true. There's no accounting for taste. Not losing weight; eating mostly junk food. She will be your caseworker. And mankind is kept alive by beastial acts. My neighbor has a 200 year-old nightgown made entirely of hemp and it doesn't have a single hole in it and it might as well have been manufactured last week but it was made in the 1810s and it explains why hemp is illegal because if all of our clothing were this durable there'd be no industry. Brutus was an honorable man.

2007-08-14T05:38:00.000-07:00

There's this horrible new show on VH1 called "The Pickup Artist" that people here in Austin are going apeshit over because apparently the show is being filmed here, and somehow we should be proud of this. The show follows this self-proclaimed master-chick-picker-up-guy known by the dumb moniker MYSTERY!!1!1! as he goes to bars and exhibits his unwieldy ability to get dumb skanks to sleep with him.

I realize that people who watch MTV and VH1 probably don't nitpick as much as I do, and are obviously content simply watching moving objects on a screen, regardless of content. But I'd like to discuss some things that here that just don't add up. This dude MYSTERY!!1!1! has a ponytail and wears these aviator goggles and looks far more like somebody at a sci-fi convention rather than the kind of guy women sleep with. Supposedly, he's hooked up with billions of women all over the world, but how do we know this? If, say, he had a few mouth sores or something to back up this claim, that'd be one thing. But as it stands, my bullshit-detector is off the charts to say the least.

MYSTERY!!1!1!'s job is to teach nerdy guys how to build enough confidence to talk to and sleep with bar skanks. Thing is, the nerdy guys are really more shy than they are nerdy. Shyness, as we all know, can be cured with alcohol far more easily than anything MYSTERY!!1!1! could possibly teach. In fact, I don't even think they're all that shy. They're probably just apprehensive to converse with women they know they have nothing in common with, while wondering what the point of all this is and why they don't just, I dunno, meet some she-nerds and pursue coitus with them instead. I don't think I've ever executed a successful bar pickup, or have ever really attempted one. Any "hooking up" I've undergone has been with someone I met either in a class or at a job or a club or through some common ground slightly more significant than being at the same bar at the same time. I guess I'm a nerd like that.

When MYSTERY!!1!1! himself goes to work, every woman in the room is inexplicably all over him within minutes. This is loosely explained by his "method of false disqualification" or some such bullshit about how he intentionally snubs potential mates, which encourages them to project positive attention upon MYSTERY!!1!1! in order to supposedly regain their dignity. Of course, for that to work, you have to not be a nerd so that your "snub" will actually mean something to the targeted skank. Occam's Razor suggests that the reason he's getting so much attention in the first place is due to the obvious fact that there's a bunch of cameras surrounding him. False disqualification my ass.

stuff that might go wrong later

2007-08-08T11:55:00.000-07:00

blind date hates you; meltdown becomes iminent; accidently toss wallet into trash can instead of kleenex; soup thermos leaks; spend entire lunch break waiting in line to find out taco stand is cash-only; pie gets stolen from window seal; trip over cable while angrily storming off movie set; prosthetic hand flies off while hailing cab; beer can explodes all over you; jingle bells inexplicably logded in rectum; wisdom teeth removal suddenly not covered by HMO; jagged, loose nail on water-slide; disciplined by HR for over use of sticky-notes; forced to watch Knocked Up with parents; caught staring at handicapped person; forced by financial setbacks to drink store-brand root beer; pinched by notebook binder rings; ex-girlfriend sees you wearing sandwich board outside muffler shop; receive full-screen version of DVD as gift instead of wide-screen version; engine coolant runs low; Pantene Pro-V fails to invigorate; fall and break wrist right before puppet show's opening night; discharge; night terrors persist; 12oz Mr. Pibb tastes watered down; family discovers truth; coworkers hold intervention to address your nervous tics; you're still reading this blog at the same dead-end job two years from now; DVR fails to record Get Smart marathon; overbite developes; incantation to undo curse accidentally erased from whiteboard; ex lands that second book deal; feather growth; rear-end another vehicle while staring at attractive jogger; caught in bathtub during apartment building's demolition; nobody realizes Celine Dion t-shirt is being worn ironically; nobody impressed by Guitar Hero controller constructed entirely out of Legos; terrier won't shut the fuck up; discovery that nickname was not out of affection; spouse finds out you were fired months ago; forced to undergo federally mandated attitude adjustment.

2007-08-04T14:51:00.001-07:00

Joeymas has become too commercial.

2007-07-21T09:45:00.000-07:00

friggin awesome

2007-07-18T05:59:00.000-07:00

OP/ED's the July 18 issue:

Girl, That Man Ain't Right For You

I'm Totally Dating A Black Chick!

2007-07-17T10:50:00.000-07:00

I got a phone call from Brian Denehy's lawyer this morning, who curtly informed me that as of noon today, Mr. Denehy is my new owner. =(

2007-07-16T21:02:00.000-07:00

Sometime last spring, Blizzard Entertainment, the diabolical creators of the "online sensation" (whatever it's called), World of Warcraft, among other things, opened up a call center in Austin. This place is apparently close to my office, cuz I saw some guys that work there having lunch at the same Quiznos I go to. There were two dudes and a girl, and they all were wearing shirts with WoW and Blizzard logos everywhere.

I asked them if they worked at that call center. They replied that they did, and that they handled technical problems and reports of suspected cheaters and other such complaints. By cheaters, they're referring to night elves who steal excessive amounts of gold from novice orc players or inconsiderate beastmasters who summon death scorpions while within neutural village boundaries. Then they asked where I work and I told them that handle reports of abused and neglected children and disabled people for the DFPS. Then there was an awkward silence. We fidgeted for a bit. I asked if people ever call in complaining about how the characters don't have cool little speech bubbles over their heads, and how all discourse instead takes places in a separate window. They said that yeah, sometimes that happens. Then they took their sandwiches and left.

2007-07-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

Look at what happened to this little coffee shop!

Six months after raising the curtain on their gourmet coffee shop in the beachside Indian Harbour Place shopping center, Laurie and Jim Hall decided to offer live music on Friday and Saturday nights. The performers, normally duos, mainly covered songs written and made famous by other musicians. There was no cover charge, no pay for the musicians, no limit to how long patrons could sit on a couch with their coffee, playing chess and enjoying the music. No problem.
Then a few months later, music industry giant ASCAP started calling and sending letters saying East Coast Coffee & Tea was in violation of copyright laws. The fee to continue the music was $400 a year.

It also mentions a sports bar that was fined because the four-second clip of Hank William Jr's "Are You Ready For Some Football?" that precedes Monday Night Football was broadcast on a TV.

This actually makes me sorta happy. It sucks for that coffee shop, but it's yet another promising example of how desparate the climate has grown for the music industry. People have the technology to record, produce and distrubute music from their own homes, and so entities like ASCAP and the record labels they represent are becoming unnecessary middlemen, so I guess they have to cling to these royalties to stay afloat. Mass distribution of recorded music will collapse, heralding the return of the travelling minstrel.

2007-07-04T08:18:00.000-07:00

It's the Fourth of July and I'm at work.

This is actually turning out pretty well, seeing as it's cloudy and raining outside (as has been the case this whole fucking summer) and it's a very safe bet that nobody else is having any fun right now either.

Maybe you wonder what I do for a living. For the sake of argument, let's say that you do. I work for the Family Protective Services where I take reports of abuse and/or neglect of children, grandmas, and retards (whoops. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say "retards". The appropriate technical term is "mentally hilarious"). I write up these reports of cases from all over the state, then assign the cases to whichever local ~~poor saps~~ state caseworkers that are available. Last week, I called up a social worker in Lubbock at 7:20am to wake him up and inform him that he needed to go pick up children from a suspected meth lab, and that he would be needing at least four car seats. As always, the voice on the other end went silent for a moment as he no doubt briefly contemplated his resignation without notice. Then he pulled himself together and bitterly asked me to send the case to his workload.

It's been slow today. I guess people are assuming that we're not open. We're still getting our usual calls from hospitals and police officers regarding demented seniors who were found early this morning wandering supermarkets and neighborhoods in their pajamas while shouting obscenities at fire hydrants. These folks never carry any identification and their dementia allows them to speak only in expletives, so police have a hell of a time locating family members or caretakers. All the police can do is wait for somebody to file a missing person report that matches the physical description, which the family may or may not get around to doing. In the meantime, they need some nearby home or state hospital in which to dump this person.

There is no place on Earth more fascinating than a state hospital. Picture a Texaco bathroom that takes up an entire city block. They're like haunted fortresses composed of tiny cells and narrow hallways that intersect at delapidated day rooms littered with torn up board games, incomplete card decks (symbolism?), and urine stains. Normal hospitals decorate with cheery, upbeat colors to provide a sense of optimism for patients and their loved ones, but nobody bothers with that here. Here is where we keep all of God's mistakes. Everything here, the walls/floors/ceilings, is a dull, faded green, designed to minimize any visual stimulation. The doors, the locked gates, the linoleum, it's all the same blue-green color everywhere, save for the many rusty patches on the leaky water pipes that run along the ceiling. There is also no PA elevator music, or anything to block out the sporadic shreiking that echoes out of beat 24/7. The interior accoustics allow these screams to reverberate up and down the corridors from one end of the building to another, giving the sensation that they're coming from all around you. It adds this surreal "Dante's Inferno" touch to the atmosphere.

I just got a call from an ornery black woman who is expressing that she no longer wishes to care for her invalid mother. The mother in question resides alone, weighs over 400 lbs, and has lost six toes to diabetes. She has no cartilage in her knees and cannot stand, so she literally spends all day and all night on her sofa, getting up only when her daughter is around to lift her up onto the potty-chair nearby. The caller is embittered because none of her six siblings wanna help out and she's always left wiping up after her mother who, it is noted, is having unusual stomach problems as well. "She don' even shit right no more," I am advised. Apparently, this woman, in her hayday, could produce stool like a draft horse, but can now only coax a thin yellow gruel from her feeble colon, often without warning. She's apparently tried to hire several home health nurses, but the woman snaps and chases off any strange people that come into her home. A similar case crossed my desk last April regarding an old man confined to an iron lung for which no consistant medical care could be found; he had boils on his leg that would swell up and burst and make sounds like miniature pop-gun blasts. Supposedly, you could hear it from outside the apartment. The man was in a panic over what he thought was large menacing spider on his bed. Turns out it was merely his catheter. He had trouble eating too. His gums had dissolved into a colorless squid-like texture and could no longer support dentures. Supposedly there's a way to fix that. They just secure the dentures directly to the sinuses, I think.

Happy Independance Day! Be careful with those roman candles, keep your thougts with our brave men in uniform who are stuck in that ill-conceived, endless quagmire in Iraq, selflessly giving their lives so that Halliburton might get to build more crap! We also owe our freedom to homeland security heroes like officer John McClain (Bruce Willis' character in Die Hard). They're the true patriots.

never gets old

2007-06-23T12:27:00.000-07:00

I think this is my all-time favorite clip from the show.

2007-06-23T08:26:00.000-07:00

So.. I downloaded and watched that series finale last night.

I guess that ending would make my previous post on the subject unintentionally very hilarious.

Naturally, I thought the open-ended idea was lame, but what truly angered me was that it forced me to contemplate the alleged "significance" of Journey lyrics.

cuz that was my favorite of the series

2007-06-19T19:32:00.000-07:00

OMG LOOK Final Fantasy VI is today's "Featured Article" on Wikipedia OMFGM ROXORO!!!! **Hugz!**

i swear i've blogged about this before...

2007-06-19T19:15:00.000-07:00

For the last few weeks, I've been driving a new car that has no CD or MP3 player, and I've been forced to break out of my shell and actually listen to the radio.

This weekend, 101X, the alternative station around these parts, had what they call a "Nuthin' But 90s Weekend!!!!", or some such nonsense. I've always been fascinated by 101X, not for the music, but because there's so many inherent malapropisms in everything they do. The term "alternative music" itself is a tremendous misnomer, in that it's been a mainstream genre for a majority of its lifetime. Another quirky 101X thing is their identifying soundbites with the abrasively synthesized inflected voice that shouts "IN-DUH-PENDANT! LOK-UHL! ALTERN-UH-TIVE!! AUS-TUHN'S NEEW ROK ALTERN-UH-TIVE!@! WUN-OH-WUN!! EX!!" and is immediately followed by a Pearl Jam single from 1992, or some music that is not remotely independant, local, or new. Surely some program director up there has to notice this.

I found this whole "Nuthin' But 90s Weekend!!!!" odd because 90s music is all they really do anyway. With the exception of that new White Stripes song, and whatever new single Anthony Keadis has pulled out of his ass, 101X is basically an oldies station. They play a mix of alternative one-hit wonders from when I was in eighth grade. They also seem to have some federally mandated quota of playing Nirvana no less than a dozen times every half hour. I guess this 00's decade's had nothing better to offer, although I wouldn't know cuz I've yet to hear any of it.

And another thing is their odd choice of 90s one-hit-wonders. I swear, everyday at noon, they play "Sex and Candy" by Marcy Playground, a semi-hit from 1998 that should have been forgotten that same year. They also do that song "Popular" by Nada Surf. Why are playing that? I mean, did anybody know anyone who actually bought any of those albums? Do other alternative stations do this, or is it just Austin's?

On Sunday afternoon, during the alleged "Nuthin' But 90s Weekend!!!!", the DJ said something along the lines of "And in the spirit of our li'l 'Nuthin But 90s Weekend', here's a li'l Nine Inch Nails for you from Pretty Hate Machine song's called 'Down In It'! On Wun-oh-wun ex!"

For the record, "Down In It" was released as a single in 1988, and Pretty Hate Machine in '89. Anybody who knows anything knows that.

gone to the mattresses

2007-06-15T12:44:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been going to great lengths to block out the world and avoid every type of mainstream media under the sun: radio, TV, newspapers, Internet blogs/boards/chatrooms. I've been deliberately living under a rock and cutting off all communication with all news. I have no CD/MP3 player in car, but I cannot turn on the radio at all. Not even for a second. If I want to hear music, I have to sing. I can't read any newspaper at work or so much as glance at any magazines at the store. If I walk into a supermarket, friend or family's home, office, or any place where any talk radio or TV news show can be heard, I have to turn around and run away. This has been going on for about a week now. I've gone to all of these great lengths, all so I can avoid accidentally hearing about how "The Sopranos" ended.

So far I've been successful, but this is not as easy as it sounds. These precautions have all proven surprisingly necessary. Many friends and coworkers tell me that the ending was spoiled for them because they carelessly turned on a morning radio show or visited a chat room or message board, and they agree that I am doing the smart thing by being obsessive and paranoid. Think of all the news you hear about every day that you have no remote desire to hear about but you hear about anyway, like Paris getting in or out of jail, or Britney Aguilara shaving her baby's head. You try to deliberately distort the facts in your head to make it seem less invasive, but it still somehow made its way in there. Furthermore, you have to avoid people who appear to be talking about it. Your best bet is to just not leave the home, and spend your time rereading a book or replaying a video game, turn off your cell phone, or hide out in a run-down studio loft in some run-down part of town*, or just find some way to shut out the real world until all of this blows over.

I'm only caught up with all of the episodes that are out on DVD, and so I haven't seen any from this season. Where I left off, A.J. started dating the Puerto Rican woman he met at his new job, and some other things were happening, and it ended during their Christmas party, with the Puerto Rican woman telling Carmela that she has a beautiful home and family, and Carmella reluctantly agreeing "Yes... Yes, we do have a beautiful home..." That's where season 6 (part I) ends. I guess I should dig up a torrent file of season 6 (part II) just to get it over with, so I can stop living in this stuffy cave (Why in the hell are they calling it season 6 (part II)? Why not just season 7? Go to hell.).

Torrent files are a pain in the ass. Why can't the episodes be available on iTunes? Or why can't I have a cable package that includes HBO without also paying for two-hundred other boring channels that I will never, ever, ever watch? Who is HBO trying to impress with all this elitism?

It's kind of odd that I'm bitching about this, seeing as I recently posted a video here detailing every last individual spoiler in the show's series (up to season 6). But mark my words, I will thwart any attempt at karmic retribution that God, or fate, or whichever cosmic ballbreaker thinks they can get away with. Just try and stop me.

*that's what the mobster term 'going to the mattresses' means. like, hiding out until something blows over, and living in a secluded place where you own nothing but your mattress. i think.

Isn't Putin Dreamy???

2007-06-04T18:58:00.000-07:00

A week ago, I came across this banner from Microsoft that advertised a free laptop equipped with Windows Vista to bloggers who were willing to blog up the blogosphere with blogolicious bloggings of how they just love blogging it up on their awesome new Windows Vista OS. I guess it's some very misguided attempt at free marketing; they're essentially paying the most uninteresting people in the universe to come up with ways to advertise the biggest venture in their company's history.

I'd like a laptop with Windows Vista. All I have now is a computer with Windows Corrupted. Microsoft should know that I make it a point to blog about the most uninteresting topics imaginable. I write about cartoons, video games, dead pets. In fact, I'm so uninteresting that I don't even really write in this thing anymore. I'm usually too busy trying to determine what to do with fifteen-year-old moms who feed their children crack and potato chips without enough vegetables. State offices usually don't get these software upgrades until many, many, many legislative sessions after they've been released. In fact, right now, we're still operating on Tandy TRS 180s powered by these lawn-mower engines we each had to bring in from home.

My office is in the east side of town in what would probably be a dangerous neighborhood, were it a residenital zone instead of a commercial one. The office park is fairly safe, but a few blocks away is the scariest 7-11 in the scariest neighborhood in town where after about 9pm, a bunch of Dr. Dre-looking cats can be seen sitting in Buicks and Cadillacs smoking Black & Milds and playing that especially unintelligable brand of rap music where that garbled baritone voice mumbles over a slow, dragging beat. During the daytime, nobody's there except a pregnant Spanish-speaking cashier. But whenever I'm working late, I make it a point to stop by this 7-11 and buy a slurpee. I often wonder how late those guys stay there. It does make a lot of sense, hanging out in a 7-11 parking lot instead of some crowded overpriced bar downtown. Inside the store, there's beer and cigarettes and food, all of which is available at far cheaper prices. I guess it's technically illegal to consume alcohol on those premises, but it's not like cops ever come out there.

There's a Wal-Mart near my office that's sort of different than the usual midwestern, inbred-retard Wal-Mart we all know and love. And yet it's the same. There's still the same stench of failure, and it's still commonly patronized by the bowels of society, but it's a lot more ethnic. Aside from the average skin tone being darker, it's exactly like every other Wal-Mart out there. One standard Wal-Mart specimen, and probably the most ubiquitous, is the generic cretinous enourmous sweat-pant wearing woman who oozes along the aisles with her fourteen children screaming about her vicinity. We've all noticed and made fun of her before. She doesn't walk; she oozes. Blah blah blah. Her gut-rolls consume the handlebars and toddler-seat of the shopping cart before her. Anybody who's been inside a Wal-Mart in the last twenty years has noticed this specimen and has ridiculed her a thousand times already. Only difference is this chick's either black or Mexican and has some dude's name tattooed to her neck in blurry green ink. Everything else is the same, from the old people unable to negotiate the self-checkout machine to the onslaught of the seemingly brainwashing words SAVE! VALUE! SAVE! ALWAYS VALUE SAVE! ALWAYS SAVE! ALWAYS! ALWAYS! ALWAYS!, only each sign is accompanied by SALVAR! VALIA! SIEMPRE! SIEMPRE! SIEMPRE! in smaller letters. Aside from those minor differences, WalMart has boldly transcended racial barriers to continue its intrepid campaign of making this country as depressing and homogeneous as possible.

Something this WalMart doens't have are the large bearded guys who walk around in hunting gear. You don't see that so much at this store.

2007-06-01T08:56:00.000-07:00

Spoilers:

2007-05-30T17:22:00.001-07:00

dammit, i can't remember anything

2007-05-23T15:53:00.000-07:00

2007-05-20T19:02:00.000-07:00

Twelve years. For twelve years, I have been scouring the Internet, looking for this:

2007-05-17T11:36:00.000-07:00

Teletubbies - 1
Falwell - 0

2007-05-15T17:25:00.000-07:00

skinny puppy

2007-05-14T19:10:00.000-07:00

The level was designed by hacking the rom. I originally thought it was one of those special hidden levels that came with the Japanese import version. I remember those were a bitch.

2007-05-13T19:07:00.000-07:00

Yelling at the TV

2007-05-12T20:01:00.000-07:00

2007-05-11T15:42:00.000-07:00

2007-05-10T19:23:00.000-07:00

2007-05-09T14:24:00.000-07:00

2007-05-08T16:52:00.000-07:00

2007-05-07T18:13:00.000-07:00

2007-05-06T20:24:00.001-07:00

2007-05-05T16:52:00.000-07:00

Aphex Twin - Window Licker

2007-05-04T15:17:00.000-07:00

2007-05-03T15:10:00.000-07:00

2007-05-02T17:50:00.000-07:00

yes

2007-05-01T18:25:00.001-07:00

Tom Waits - Piano has been drinkin
Uploaded by didjie

2007-04-20T20:07:00.000-07:00

HAHAHA WHAT A DORKOMG

2007-04-18T19:14:00.000-07:00

The guy's from South Korea? Well that doesn't do us any good. If the guy had been white, we could blame Grand Theft Auto or maybe Marilyn Manson or someone. If it were a black guy, we'd blame rap music, naturally. Had he been Arabic, he could be a crazy Muslim and Bush could've made a speech reaffirming his commitment to the War on Terror, etc. But South Korean? That's not even the bad Korea. How the fuck are we supposed to handle that?

Whatever. The important thing for us to do now is to bond together as a nation and stay glued to this grizzly yet addictive 24-hour network news coverage, thereby giving the asshole exactly what he wanted. It was awfully thoughtful of the guy to help the news media milk the story further than they have by sending those ridiculous videos/pictures of himself to the NBC News headquarters. With any luck, we'll encourage all the other aspiring ticking-time-bomb serial killers out there by plainly demonstrating how this is a failproof method of getting massive attention and fulfilling delusions of grandeur, ensuring that this'll totally not happen again in a few years.

I guess Don Imus is off the hook.

2007-04-12T07:25:00.000-07:00

My long-time pal, author and NPR spokesperson Mr. David Sedaris, is being accused of making stuff up and exaggerating details in his bestselling memoir-essays. Not full blown James Fray calibre bullshit, but little details being exaggerated or omitted for comic effect. Like how the midget guitar instructor wasn't really a midget but just really short. Or how the architecture at the Dix Hill asylum was actually Gothic instead of Tuscan Revival.

Oh, heavens, no.

I didn't read the entire New Republic article because I couldn't be bothered to register and sign up for the subscription required to access it, but the clear jist of it is still ridiculous enough. First, there's the fairly obvious point that if you're picking up a David Sedaris book for research purposes, then you have other problems that need dealing with. What comes to my mind when hearing this is, well, can anybody recall a conversation they had twenty years ago, or even twenty minutes ago,and write it all down verbatim?

The supposed argument at hand is that if your book is going to be marketed as non-fiction, then there should not be any not-non-fiction inside your book. Non-fiction's a pretty vague genre. That label can describe anything from books about eBay to Rachael Ray crap or the Unofficial World of Warcraft Expert's Guide. Any book can contain some half-truth if you look hard enough. Rachael Ray is on record of claiming in one of her books that [I] can successfully marinate and roast a turkey and do all the prep work for a remarkable Thanksgiving Day feast in just one hour, when I have proven time and time again that I cannot. The Final Fantasy XI Online guide shamelessly stated that I could execute a lightning-based skill-chain attack by pairing a Warrior's mana-infused Quadra-Strike offense with a Hunter's fire-suplex move, which is a load of crap because the White Mage would always run out of mana and fuck everything up by not putting up the offense buffers in time.

What possible motivation could there ever be behind researching the literal accuracy Sedaris' work, other than resentment and/or too much fucking spare time? Can we hold the inconsistancies of the Bible up to this level of scrutiny? Also, what would the articles in porn magazines fall under? Last night before bed, I was reading a riveting interview with Jenna Jameson in Hustler, in which it is revealed that her favorite junk food is corn-dogs, and that she has never had anal sex (on camera). Could those factoids have been exaggerated for some purpose other than journalistic integrity? Does anybody actually believe Sedaris' life has been as zany as his books purport, that his family and friends and everybody he meets are always conveniently full of quips and offbeat personalities? Everything's made up, all of the time, and you're always going to be lied to by everyone. So there.

2007-04-10T18:18:00.000-07:00

An illegal immigrant drunk driver killed a girl in Virginia, and Bill O'Reilly's using this as an example of why illegal immigration is the scourge of humanity. Geraldo and O'Reilly have a lover's spat on TV:

Despite his plethora of faults, Geraldo appears to come out on top here (not that it was a difficult argument to win). It's funny because they're probably the two biggest taints on professional journalism that history has ever seen. Well, besides Ann Coulter, who's sorta like O'Reilly, but without the estrogen.

The best part is the bullshit in the last two minutes stating "You know, the really swell thing about our network is how fair and balanced we totally are. Like for example, what you saw just now..." Fuck Fox fucking News.

Fuck MSN. Or Geffen, I'm Not Sure.

2007-04-08T18:47:00.000-07:00

EDIT:
Never mind.

A very interesting and fishy poll is being conducted for MSN's Artist Of The Month. Surfers can pick which musician they want to see featured for the month of April '07 by voting between Avril Lavigne, Nine Inch Nails, Pam Tillis, The Bravery, or Patti Smith.

You may or may not be aware of this, but sometimes, a certain musical act comes along that becomes ridiculously popular and attracts a rabid and obsessive fanbase made up of hundreds of thousands of dorks worldwide. Nirvana, for instance. And the Red Hot Chili Peppers. U2. Madonna. Rotel and the Hot Tomatoes, to name a few. These groups have humongous online communities where idiotic-teenyboppers, loser-twentysometings, and creepy 40year-olds will speculate over what new album is coming up, how well it's doing on the charts, what all the bass player did to them that time they got backstage, or what the lead singer eats for breakfast. It's true. But in exchange for a paltry sense of dignity, these people often don't discuss these things out in public, and can be hard to spot offline. Yet, like Canadians and Methodists, they do in fact walk among us. Who knows, you might actually know somebody like this yourself and not even be aware of it (not me cuz I actually have a job these days). But they're out there. And they're surprisingly structured and mobile, to the point that when major website like MSN host online surveys, they lose no time in mobilizing and flooding the hell out of said polls.

Which brings me to why it's really odd that NIN would not be totally pwning that poll for Artist of the Month. Over the last week, NIN has been nose-to-nose with this band the Bravery. Both artists hovering at 45% to 46% of the vote, while the other three candidates remain in the single digits. MSN being a fairly universally visited site, just about the entire gargantuan NIN fanbase has been made privy to this fun little survey (as well as numerous other radio polls, which we've pillaged), and everybody is encouraging each other to go out and cast a vote for good ol' Trent "Stinky" Reznor and . I mean, literally, hundreds of thousands of rabid fans.

I don't know anything about The Bravery. I'm sure they make swell music, and that they're nice enough guys, and that they probably even recycle, and maybe someday they'll prove to be ten times more badass than NIN, Tool, and Radiohead combined. I don't know for sure because I've never heard them. That's just it. And the thing is, I also don't know of anybody else who's heard of them. I did some research (I know I said I have a job but that doesn't mean I have a life) and found an offical fan message board consisting of a couple hundred registered users, but that was it. And nowhere in that message board was there any mention of the MSN survey. So who is voting for them? The most suspicious thing is how the Bravery's vote count remains stagnant and only accumulates numbers when NIN pulls ahead. Every time NIN pulls ahead in these polls, a thousand votes suddenly come out of nowhere and push the Bravery back in the lead.

It'd be one thing if NIN were up against the likes of Madonna or U2 or Dave Matthews or Radiohead or the Chili Peppers. You would expect NIN to lose legitimately against them. But the Bravery? You can argue all you want over which band actually deserves to win this vote, but that wouldn't explain how this relatively unheard-of group is holding a candle to Trent's legions of retards. I mean, unless, of course, you take into account the obvious rigging taking place at MSN, and/or payola from Geffen Records.

I'm telling you, man... I'm telling you...

2007-04-04T18:34:00.000-07:00

"I AM THE GREAT DESTROIEEYUHRRRR" BOOM-BOOM ZOOM THUD BOOM BOOPBOOP BEEP BOOM

this record owns.

check out this unfunny new show on comedy central blah blah

2007-03-30T21:36:00.000-07:00

I downloaded some new South Park episodes off of iTunes this evening. I just now learned you can do that. I mean, I knew you could get TV shows from iTunes, but I always figured the selection consisted of a handful of lame midseason replacement sitcoms or various shows that aren't successful anywhere else, and that producers figured that if they could get featured on iTunes, people would think "Wow! This show must be good if it's available for download on iTunes!" and such. Like how they offer shitty movies on airplanes, in the hopes that you'll watch them because there is nothing else to do.

But no, it turns out iTunes a fucking shitload of actual, popular, watchable shows. I mean they have absolutely every goddamn episode of everything. You just pick the show, pick a season, pick an episode, and it's yours. Individual episodes are two bucks each, or you can also download entire seasons for a bulk price the same way you purchase music albums instead of singles. To think of all those saps out there frantically Tivoing everything and probably paying some service fee that binds you into some 24 month contract (I actually have no clue how Tivo bills its customers, so forgive me for being full of shit just now), while I just log on, dish out two bucks, and watch any episode of anything I want, without any tedious commercials to fast-forward through. Now I can join in water cooler discussions at work, which at my office, consists of Lost, Ugly Betty, and any new information surrounding Anna Nicole's rotting carcass. Goodie.

So anyhoo's, I downloaded some new South Park episodes, and at the beginning of one of them, that Comedy Central announcer-voice ordered me to "Stay tuned!!! After the feature!!! For an exclusive clip of the new Comedy Central Web Show, Meet The Creeps!!!" Sure, whatever, okay. I watched my South Park (it was the WoW ep, I think) and afterwards, they made good on their threat to subject me to something I didn't order, and had me watch a clip of their new show.

From what I saw, Meet The Creeps, Comedy Central's new "Extreme Hidden Camera OMG!!!" show, involves two borish twentysomething fratlike dudes going to job interviews, 99 cent stores, and other such mundane situations where they behave (sort of) obnoxiously, in what producers hope will be totally funny just because they're applying that Borat formula (they say "hidden camera", but it's clear that somebody is carrying and operating the camera throughout the sketch). In the clip I saw, these two guys attend a job interview at a dog kennel, where they shock the lady interviewing them in uncreative ways such as belching loudly, casually taking swigs from open flasks, and lighting up cigarettes in mid-interview. At no point does the lady find anything suspect about interviewing two applicants at once with a cameraman present. She is appalled by their uncouth antics and asks them to leave.

It seems pathetic at first, and almost cute, the way the show is so obviously trying to recylce the framework of somebody else's work and missing the mark entirely. But then you have to start scowling cuz you're slowly realizing that, despite its awfulness, this is going to be the network's next big hit. You just know it. It'll be all the talk of the water cooler in months, just wait. And you'll be the one frantically explaining that farting during a job interview is uninspired and not funny and really stupid, but it'll be too late. The show's canned laughter and the network's repetitive marketing will convince them that they're supposed to laugh at this pig shit, and that'll be it.

It's exactly what happened when they lost Chappelle's Show, and were forced to greenlight Mind of Mencia. Instead of the provocative social commentary Chappelle offered, Carlos Mencia shouted the word "beaner" over and over, under the theory that anything you say can be funny if you just yell it loud enough.

god's mercy on you swine

2007-03-27T16:08:00.000-07:00

2007-03-24T14:08:00.000-07:00

Spooky websites from the future:

revisionism

iamtryingtobelieve
anotherversionofthetruth (click and drag) (check out the sound bites)
bethehammer
105thairbornecrusaders
churchofplano
consolidated mail systems
- (no_one_important)
uswiretap
- 71839J
artisresistance
hollywoodinmemoriam
securebroadcastinformatics assemble the log-in window to reach:
- solutionsbackwardsinitiative
thewaterturnedtoblood
- bridge
judsonogram
- John Ferringer
- Moira Waag
cedocore
themailstrom
operationchipsweep
operationswamp0000

Hey Fall-Out Boy

2007-03-22T18:58:00.000-07:00

Stop it.

2007-03-09T16:29:00.000-08:00

"It is not improbable that in the future there will be a diesel hybrid.
"I am expecting a lot of head-hunters, developers and publishers to be looking around and trolling through the responses and hiring anyone that is good.
4 percent decline in the Nikkei benchmark.
In the original, boss battles also relied heavily on tag-team action, so it is likely that the same will be repeated this time around.

Looking through the window, sitting in the gallery, Licking your lips over hops and condensed milk.After a little rest from the vigorous sex, the fellow got up to leave.I could never shoot my wife," The agent replies, "Then you're not the right man for this job. " The man goes home to his wife and shows it to her saying, "Go put this on and come down to model it for me.Getting a penney for every gray heair you pulled out of your father's hand Fighting for the bowl when your mother made a cake.Dey make you wild at sex like great pasture donkey an ting boy! The cold weather is not so bad.You have to kill her." The Devil answered the phone and said, "Hello, Lord."I can't stand this," said the man tossing the can into a trash container and heading down the road toward the men. The first fella say, "I would like to hear them say that I was a great doctor, and a great family man.The Devil, perplexed decided to drop the temperature and sends down torrential rain that caused massive flood and mudslides. "Two holes further, the Jamaican man's wife tripped on a molehill, and fell.After a few cocktails, the men began discussing their home lives."Boossie, mi was a salesman back home on di streets a Kingston.Ah nearly bun off meh eyebrow an' eyelash.And I pronounce it BOUT, not ABOUT.One sat in the window seat, the other sat in the middle seat. Me sleep wit yuh sister, yuh best friend and yuh mudda."The Trini replied: Well, I will wait. A yankee woman seated near the front is so scared that she loses iit completely. Being tired from playing. And that's just what Charlie did.Finally, the Devil came back to the phone and said, "Lord, I am really sorry, but I can't talk to you right now. Come out here and tek your blows like a man! The Trini yells to his wife, "Beverly, Beverly, come quick nah woman.

2007-03-06T17:37:00.000-08:00

Benji Byron

(199X - 2007)

aka "Sunny" aka "Shit for Brains" aka "Professor Heinrich" aka "I Swear To Fucking God You Do That To My Rug Again I'm Going Shove This Rolled Up Copy Of Parade Magazine So Far Up That Little Rectum Of Your's That I Guaren-Goddamn-Tee You'll Be Physcially Unable To Ever Do It Again" aka "Poochie" aka "Benji-Boy" aka "Licky"

I'm sure we can all agree on the undeniable metaphysical connection taking place around us, the same duplicitous edge we feel as a newborn baby cries his first breath in a hospital room the very moment an old woman passes away surrounded by her loved ones in a room just down the hall; so do we witness the circle of life this perpetuating itself, as Benji somehow dies the very week Li'l Steve gets married. Man, tell me that's not fucked up.

So yeah, my parents' dog was put to sleep today. My mother came home and discovered him four-paws-up in the kitchen. Well, he was still breathing, but he was unable to stand up. So my father took him to a clinic where they discovered a tumor half the size of his heart in his, well, heart. He'd been having more and more trouble walking recently. About a year ago, he had a stroke, and gradually lost the ability to shit in the proper area. Cataracts also caused him to run into several walls during his sunset months.

Back in high school, I used to walk the little fella every night (it was the only way I could discreetly sneak outside for a smoke) and every night he would go apeshit at the sound of a jingling leash, as though he was experiencing the very same nicotine fit that I was. We saw eye to eye, the two of us. Being uproariously stupid with an equal amount of good-natured playfulness, he personified the Byron clan with stunning accuracy as befits any painfully steriotypical American housepet.

So I'll be stopping at the Lakeway homestead this week for dinner and to console my parents in their hour of grief. My father says we'll be having Korean barbeque, whatever that is.

don't get him started

2007-03-01T15:08:00.000-08:00

Look what I bought on Tuesday! It's a documented performance of old-timey folk music by the orchestra known as "Trent Rezzo and his Merry Minstrels" (or "Nine Inch Nails", which, I'm told, is what they're known as in some circles). This is quite nice to have, cuz I did not attend this concert when they came through Austin. Or Dallas.

In fact, I was also in Seattle they same time they were, and I still missed them cuz I didn't pay attention. So that's why I've bought the DVD. Actually, I had no choice in the matter. I have to buy every DVD and album NIN releases, and I have to care about everything this band does, all because of this curse placed on me by the evil wizard Voldemort after he killed my real parents.

It's being released in Blu-Ray, HD DVD, and standard cheapskate DVD, which is the one I decided to go with. It also comes rigged for Dolby or DTS 5.1 surround sound, so as to "emulate the concert experience." Personally, I think it's fairly naive of Trent Reznor to assume that any of his fans actually own a functioning surround sound system, or a high-def plasma screen, or anything more modern than a 13" Daiwood with blown out speakers. Ergo, my own "personal home theatre" (my four-year-old iMac) has failed to recreate the concert experience. Not just because my technology is too cheap. There's still something missing. Along with the overpriced 5.1 setup, I would need to cram roughly two hundred sweaty dudes into my living room, turn up the thermostat to insufferable levels, instruct everybody to casually toss steel-toed boots about their vicinity, and Eddie would have to be throwing up somewhere. It simply is not a Nine Inch Nails concert without all of these things occurring at once.

This does make me kick myself in the pancreas repeatedly for being too cheap to attend this concert last year. Had I done so, I do believe TR and his merry minstrels would have moved me to bob my head violently and raise my fist with pinky and index finger extended.

Speaking of rocking the fuck out, below is a high-quality clip of TR during what was inarguably the absolute pinnacle of his career: singing for a shitty 80s cover band in Cleveland. You'd think this would be included in the 'Special Features' section of the DVD, but oddly enough they omitted it. Maybe it's considered public domain by now, but it's still kinda odd that he didn't renew the copyright.

Whoopsies!

2007-02-14T16:39:00.000-08:00

Man, how emberrassing. I thought I'd actually fixed this thing so that a blog would appear again, instead of an unsettling cat on a state driver's licence. I could've sworn I got it to work...

The weirdest thing is that because I thought it was back to normal, I resumed blogging as usual. I had no idea it wasn't even showing up. All that work and nobody was even reading it (as opposed to the five or six people who previously read this).

Well it's nice to know things are finally back to normal, and that my audience is once again able to spend their lunch breaks reading about my current dandruff status and what all cartoons I've been watching.

You're welcome.

2007-02-06T08:30:00.000-08:00

I received a letter from the FBI or CIA or some such agency stating that as a highly respected contributer to the blogosphere, I am required by federal law to comment on all this Boston Mooninite wackiness. This should have been made evident to me by the rest of the universe's blogs and youtube postings, but I live far too much of a happenin', rock-and-roll lifestyle to keep up with all of that, and so I tend to fall behind. That's just how I roll.

I can (sorta) remember the first Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode I ever beheld. It was the summer of 2004 and I was at a bar with Nick and Frank, and when 11 o'clock rolled around, they said it was time to go home cuz ATHF would soon be on the TV. I asked what in the flying fuck they were talking about and they told me to go home and turn on cartoon network, "and then you will see..." I think it was the episode where an alien spore takes control of Master Shake's brain, or the one about Meatwad's immaculate conception in which Ted Nugent guest-stars. I don't really remember much about the episode itself. What I do remember is being awestruck and quickly realizing that this was going to be my favorite show for a very long time, which, admitedly, is not really saying much.

Before this, TV and I were on the rocks. Nauseating reality shows had been air-dropped amongst the populace to make everybody adequately stupid in time for the 2004 election. Wacky animated families were being produced and cancelled on a monthly basis, each one shamelessly infringing upon its respective predecessor. Dramas about forensics teams analyzing gruesome murders were captiviating white people everywhere, except me for some reason. At that time, I owned a TV for the sole purpose of Kaylin's Dora the Explorer videos and occasional PS2 games. It was a wooden 14" RCA contraption that was built sometime in the Carter administration and I don't even know if it picked up any stations. Maybe it's because my family didn't have cable when I was a kid, or maybe it has something to do with the time I was kicked in the head by a mule when I was two, but whatever the reason, TV has never really held my interest like it seems to do with everybody else, and whenever I hang out with such people, I always feel awkward when they sit around looking at a box in silence. After making the mistake of attempting some weak conversational ice-breaker, everybody will shush me and continue looking at the line-up of broads competing on Who Wants To Marry An Elligable Bachelor? or listening to the tearful confessional of whichever Real World tool just used up the house's toilet paper. I don't mean to sound condescending (wait, yes I do), but that defeats the purpose of congregation. It's so fucking stupid and everybody really needs make an effort to be more like me.

But anyhoo, ATHF, finally, a show worth watching! Something challenging! I believe that the three main characters are symbolic of Freudian psychology; that Frylock is the analytic ego, Master Shake is the impulsive id, and Meatwad is the childish super-ego. The Mooninites are a manefestation of a digital entertainment industry that always preys upon impressionable youths like Meatwad to manipulate and further their own ends. Ignignokt's condescending attitude merged with Err's trash talk are components of 'x-treme' marketing targeted toward chidren such as Meatwad. And Carl is symbolic of, society, or something. I dunno.

Oh, and, um, this stuff in Boston, dunno what to say about that isn't obvious, only that it goes to show how our media just waits with their fingers crossed for some new disaster to milk, and has very few qualms about jumping the gun without doing the slightest fucking research on what their [exploiting].

One of The Onion's American Voices pointed out how "authorities there are obviously aware of the new terrorist trend of bringing as much attention as possible to hidden explosive devices."

I wish I had come up with that.

2007-01-06T20:50:00.000-08:00

Sorry about that whole my-pet-dmv thing. I honestly have no clue how that happened. I need to stay off the Internet after I've taken twenty Ambien pills at once. What really sucks is how i've had to start over with a generic blogspot template, since I lost my old one. That sleek pink/orange 'strobe' layout took forever to get just right(twelve minutes, while multitasking). And now it's fucking gone. *punches wall* Well, shit happens, I guess. And the archives have retained the aold layout, praise be to the Lord. So now everything's back normal, for those of you who enjoy spending your lunch breaks reading meandering stories that go nowhere.

A few years ago I was short on rent and had to hit up my parents for cash. Never a pleasant thing to do, but in my case it usually only required an evening of going home for dinner, making nice with them for a bit, helping out with chore or two, and then asking for money right before I left. This happened a lot in college and it never really caused any problems, except this one time, except for this one time toward the end of my last semester, when my mother said that she'd help me out with rent that month, but only if I agreed to start seeing this therapist she'd been hounding me about for years.

So I had to go see Dr. Romine for a few months. He had an office with a sofa and a computer and some toys and according to mother, he was supposed to dig into the roots of these mental problems she still claims I have, and figure out why I'm such a dick all the time. For $90 a session, Dr. Romine would spend an hour letting me know that I have self-destructive tendancies, how I was drawn toward jobs in professions I had no interest in, that I disengage from potentially meaningful relationships as soon as they happen, and that the only friends I kept in touch with were the ones I didn't get along with.

I don't know about any of that. I think he could make a better case for self-destructive tendancies by pointing out the fact that I'm watching SNL right now. Holy hell, this shit's so lame. They're doing this phenominally unfunny sketch that supposedly involves Britney Spears and a divorce lawyer. The girl playing Britney looks nothing like her. You wouldn't know what the sketch was about had the attorney not opened it by shouting "Good day to you BRITTNEY SPEARS!!! It says here that you wish to divorce your husband, former backup danceer and D-list superstar KEVIN FEDERLINE!!! Am I correct, MRS SPEARS?!!!"

I don't know this actress's name, but her interpretation of Brittany Spears consists of having neck-length blonde hair, smacking her gum, and using a very exagerated southern accent. I guess, for all I know, that could very well be the extent of Brittany Spears' personality, but this chick still looks nothing like the Brittany from the pop star magezines in the check-out lane. Remember when Dana Carvey did G.H. Bush and Daryl Hammond was Clinton, and they actually managed to resemble the people they were impersonating? This shit here is almost on par with Mad TV (almost).

Ooh, but now they're making up for it with this Robert Smigel cartoon. It was a spoof on Dragonball Z, but with that champion hotdog eater guy instead of the DBZ superhero. omg, yeah, this is actually funny. The schoolchildren are all trapped in a buring building, and he's rescuing them be eating the pile of hotdogs blocking the exit.

You probably already know about this, but Bart Oates, former linebacker or something for the New York giants, is apparently coming out with his personal line of food blenders and accompanying grills. I saw his informercial in this dream I had last night. Personally, I think it's a tacky move on his part and he should probably wait until George Foreman dies.

Start 2007 With A Bang!

2007-01-02T15:51:00.000-08:00

Using clubhouse showers always carries the risk of athlete's foot. Well, Liz and John have done the unthinkable and made this available for FREE for a limited time. 18 haben Einzug gehalten. The most important thing is for him to get better.
Now, you probably hear this kind of thing all the time. This keyboard learns and obeys- program the smart keys to launch your favorite applications, websites or folders with one touch.
As the cells sloughed off, they caused nausea, severe internal bleeding and enormous pain. Masked and anonymousV and Evey face the future. The Site License edition adds multi-user team dictionary and requirements. Viduka remains the subject of constant transfer speculation, with his existing contract due to end in the summer and serious talks yet to start between the club and the player. Sometimes, Technology Helps. As stated before, the level of humor and sarcasm in Thank You For Smoking is rarely paralleled. Daniel Hillis, Ray Kurzweil, Steven Pinker, Lisa Randall, and J, Craig Venter.
Frage 3: Was hat sich seit dem 27.
com ran out of stock, but it is on sale at Amazon.

2006-12-24T11:20:00.000-08:00

My shopping is not done yet, but it's further along than it usually is this time of year. For my brother, I got this hilarious "Dr. Laura Game" that my coworker found at a flea market (which warrants its own blog entry for later). For my father, I got the Brokeback Mountain director's cut DVD, and my mother's getting the new Ludicrous album. I also got the Billy Madison DVD for my sister, who, unlike the other family members, actually requested that gift and will get some actual use out of it. My sister gets the non-useless gift because she got me a case of Budweiser for my birthday last year, a gift she thought of as a joke but was actually the most useful and practical gift I've received in years.

I have the kind of mother whose sense of humor dwindles substantially whenever holiday traditions are fucked with, which makes it all the more harder to resist misbehaving. She says it's hard to tell if I'm trying to be mean or funny. A fair enough question, since I'm not too sure myself. Sure, I might get a kick out of giving my 54-year-old mother a lyrically explicit rap album, but everybody else will just be confused. I'm the only one who thinks it's funny.

All I'm trying to do is poke fun at this whole obligatory gift-giving sham. Because we all give each other worthless gifts, but we're all too polite to tell each other. Gifts given to Joey have far too often been various Simpsons or Lord of the Rings related kitsch, or some frachise I used to sorta be into but by now is old hat. A few years ago, my mother got me a Lord of the Rings RISK boardgame, fully aware that I had no friends to play it with back then, the possible exception being my then two-year-old daughter. And I think it was last year when somebody got me this talking Gollum action figure that, when you pressed a button, would play some pre-recorded "My precioussss" or "filthy hobitssses" or "straight up outta west compton bitch". Needless to say, it's been in the the trunk of my car ever since, cos I'm not sure what else I'm supposed to do with it.

Until recent years, I was no better. I would give my siblings and parents books that they would never touch. I purchased a harcover copy of Michael Chabon's 500-page novel Summerland for my brother, cuz it was a children's novel and it was sort of about baseball and I thought he ought to read it. This, even though he's always been borderline illiterate. I'd get my family stuff that I wished they would take an interest in, but should know better than to expect them to.

So these days, I atone for mine and everybody else's half-hearted thinking by making a huge joke out of everything. These days, having proven impossible to shop for, I receive mostly gift cards. Sure, that may be more practical, but I think it's kind of a cop-out. If it's the thought that counts, I still say I've put more thought into finding the perfect gifts that the recipients will have absolutely no use for, as opposed to the universally practiced half-hearted "Oh, maybe s/he'll like this copy of Chicken Soup for Roughly-Mid-Income Family Adolescent's Soul. Yeah, that should work." (F'real. There's about half a dozen Chicken Soup books in our closets that we've never gotten around to selling to Half-Priced Books).

That, and we're all far, far, FAR, too cheap for iPods or game consoles, or those big-ticket presents that other families avoid this problem with.

2006-12-21T10:50:00.000-08:00

THE PRTTIEST GIRL IN ALLL TEH WORLD IS IN A LITTLE SPANNISH TOWN . / WHEN I LEFT HER 4 A BONNNIE LASS / WELL I TOL HER I'D SEE HER A ROUND / WELL THAT BONNIEEE LASS / HAD A HEAARRT OF GLASS / COULD NOT HOLD A CANDLE / TO COMIN' A - ROUND/ SO DON'T CRY FOR ME / FOR I'M GOIN' AWAY / AND I'LL BE BACK SOME LUUUCKY DAY.

Well tell the boys back home that I'm doing just fine. I've left all my troubles and woes. So sing about me, for I can't come home. I've still many many more miles to go0o! Why there's Miss Kelsey! She taught dance at our school. And ol' Johnny o'Toole, I'll still beat you at pool! So don't cry for me, cuz I'm going away, and I'll be back som lucky day!

WELL WHEN I WAS A BOY MY DADDY SAT ME ON HIS KNEE AND HE TOLD ME HE TOLD ME MANY THINGS. AND HE SAID "SON! THERE'S A LOT OF THINGS IN THIS WORLD THAT YOU'RE GONNA HAVE NO USE FOR AND WHEN YA GET BLUE AND YA'V LOST ALL YER DREAMS, THERE'S NOTHING LIKE A CAMPFIRE AND A CAN OF BEANS

let us now praise famous footwear. still looking for the hottest gift this holiday season? why not try new Chocolate Pepsi? Because God died in 1998.

© 1903 - 2006 Pepsi.com, Inc or its affiliates.

why THEre's MISS KElsye! She taught dance at aour school! and ol jonnhy o'toole, i'll still beat u at pool! so dont cryy for me .. . for i'm gonig away . . il'n and i'll be baakc summ louucky day

Currently listening to:
Patsy Cline - The Definitive Collection

Release date: June 22, 2004.

i have fridays off, but none of my drinking buddies do, so i have nobody to go out and drink with tonight.

2006-12-19T19:38:00.000-08:00

Year-End Videogame Round-Up.

About ten months ago, I started this loose endeavor to write a book. I had no "story idea" or "talent" per se, except to just write little narrative scenes and just see if anything comes of it (I go through little phases like this all the time; I'll see somebody plying some art form and I'll have this maddening desire to be like them, whether it requires penning a fabricated memoir, teaching myself to play the gut-bucket, or painting billboard sized murals of Don Rickles). I set up a reasonable quota of one page per day, cuz writing one page of a fictional story for me takes two or three pages or brainstorming and planning and shit, so whenever I actually met that quota, I'd be fairly pleased with myself.

I did pretty good until the end of March, when Kingdom Hearts II came out, and the writing thing went out the window. KH2 was the lengthy, epic-ish adventure game that featured character cameos from Disney movies and Square-Enix games, with all the original voice actors rounded up. Sorta like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, in that two clans of heavily copyrighted icons merge in a single wacky adventure. It was all money-making gimmicks from start to finish, and I just dove into it. You never knew who you were gonna run into next! Look, it's Phil, the little demon-mentor, voiced by Danny Devito! There's Cloud and Tifa, in their Advent Children outfits! Donald keeps yelling at everything! Hooray!

So KH2 was alright in my book. They improved on the flaws from the original, and made it happy feel-good little hurrah. When I finished that, I lent it to a friend who lent me his Gamecube in return. He also let me have Metriod Prime 2, which, in my not-so-humble opinion, was probably the most super-duper fucking kickass awesome game of the GC/PS2/XBOX generation. The only cutscenes were at the beginning and at the end, and the rest of the story unfolded itself in a flawless, deceptively simple building-block style as you explored the world. I tell you that was some methamphetamime-callibre addictive. After inhaling my first burning snootful by selecting "New Game", I immediately rearranged all my sick days and vacation time to accomadate finishing that bitch. Every now and then, you come across a game or a book or a movie that once finished, you're kinda dissapointed that it's over with. After finishing Metroid Prime 2, I had physical withdawl symptoms for a good month.

So after that little episode was when I went to Washington. I got pissed off at my friends (or was it my boss?) for some reason I can't remember, and it somehow compelled me to quit my job and fly to Seattle to sit around my brother's apartment, drink cases of MGD, hook up with one of his coworkers, do a little hiking, and check out the Pike's Place Market. I left KH2 and Final Fantasy X-2 at my brother's place so he could finish them. He had feigned an interest in them to humor me, but I don't think he's touched them since I left. After that, I came back to Texas to show Kaylin the breathtaking hiking pictures I took which did not interest her in the least.

Two new Final Fantasy games came out after that, both of which were quite lousy and required lots of adderall in order to be enjoyed. I popped twenty Ambien pills before playing Dirge of Cerberus: FF7 for an entire weekend, and that made it pretty fun. Final Fantasy XII just blew.

I've been talking to my friend via IM, who's in the Navy and stationed in Hungary. He has some delivery job that takes him to all sorts of different countries, A military gig that lets him actually see the world, instead of some opposing military. He's totally jealous that he's had to spend the entire year travelling around Europe and North Africa and been too busy to keep up with all these video games. I told that we all make mistakes and that he'll be back someday and then he'll be able to catch up with all this *snicker*.

A new year dawns! What lies ahead can only be speculated.. actually, if it's anything like the previous ten years, it'll just bring more video games of the aforementioned titles with different roman numerals by it. Kaylin will likely finish law school this year, and I'll probably chase after yet another impulse career change, or travel across the country again with whatever savings I have jingling in my pockets.

2006-12-18T20:10:00.000-08:00

2006-12-14T16:56:00.000-08:00

At my job, they installed this tracking software on all the phones. The program is called TRACKX or IEX or SITATYOURDESKX or some acronym with an ominous X tacked onto it. This helps the management, or whoever, keep track of every little thing their worker bees do. If we leave our desks, we have to punch in a code that explains where we got the nerve to get up and walk around, cos an iron ball and shackle for every employee would've been a hassle to install. There are sign-out codes for activities such as LUNCH BREAK, FAX MACHINE, MEETING, SPECIAL PROJECT, or if you need to go take a shit, PERSONAL.

A lot of people at the office resent this and find it emasculating, which is understandable. Every job here requires a bachelor's degree at the very least, which people feel should exempt one from needing a virtual babysitter. For some reason this hasn't bothered me until recently. I mean, if it helps some middle-manager satiate his inferiority complex to know about my twice-hourly bowel movements, who am I to fuss? And so when my colleagues did fuss, I always made it a point to suggest that pushing in a code only takes two seconds, so it's not a big fucking deal.

That was before I found this crazy four-page letter on my desk documenting every activity I've signed out for over the last month, and highlighted were these three(3) instances in which I allegedly got back from lunch a few minutes late. And at the end of the packet was a CONCLUSION section where somebody conveyed the general sentiment LOOK WHAT U DID YOU GOT BACK FROM LUNCH LATE UR LUNCH WAS TOO LONG U FAGGASS STOP THAT U DRK.

The funny thing is that I rarely leave the office for lunch (I'm crazy cheap). I usually just eat at my desk while reading some news site like Slate, or the New Yorker, or Nickelodeon News. Odds are that on these days on which the all-knowing X program thinks I was playing hookey, I was at my desk and forgot to sign back in.

The X program is supposed to ensure efficiency, but I have to wonder how much time somebody spend compiling this list and composing this lengthy CONCLUSION statement. Isn't the purpose defeated at some point? Okay, so maybe this is kind of a joke. Whose idea was this? Why somebody always gotta turn informer for the man?