here comes the big blizzard of feb 28th. Thankfully tomorrow I am scheduled to work in the ci-tay (look at me america, look how krix is liiivan', for the ci-tay.)

it's a conference about search engines and all that crazy junk. so hopefully the ci-tay will stay awake and alert and not shut down tomorrow on account of we've got a date and all.

as far as outgoing, well, my stats class has been successfully dropped from my schedule. I'm a little sad. . .no Dean's list this year. s'alright. been pretty successful up to this point.

Note to self: it is the small failures that nag the most. Must not let them detract from larger picture.

it is rumored that a troll will be placed in the same cell as me.

I must pray to Zod to intervene:

Dear Zod,
please allow me to do my life's work by not delivering the distraction of the LOUD complaining troll who tells bad jokes, unto my cell.

Thank you.
your loyal subject,
Krix

My jailers are spiteful.

things I have learned about the dutch.

They like to bang things.

They are fond of carpentry.

They are fond of Ikea.

They enjoy the cold.

They are preternaturally reticent.

people I am in hate with today:

there is always one bad neighbor on the block. We have one that has an aversion to shoveling the snow from their shaded portion of the sidewalk. They leave it there to freeze over into a glacial deathtrap for all of those unfortunate enough to cross.

At the corner I glance down and see something that looks like a wireframe of a rat. It takes me a moment to realize that the skeleton is not made of wire but is actually bone, infused with matted hair. It's next to a broken bottle of vodka (old Murmansk, perhaps?) I wish the owner of the store would clean up his shit.

I cross at a sidewalk, supposedly under the protection of an octagonal red sign with the word STOP printed on it in bold white letters. An SUV drives through the intersection, oblivious to the sign. I feel the wind of the SUV on my heels. I think the side mirror grazed my aura.

A pair of teenage thugs walk behind me. They are out of earshot of their parents so it must be time to talk shit. Between the loud incomprehesible crap that spews from their mouths is the declarative sentence, "My ma pregnant but she still know how to fuck." This turns my stomach and I try to get away.

A woman crowds into the seat next to me on the train. SHe is a nervous woman and a compulsive hand rubber. Rub rub rub. Her skin scratches against itself making a waspy sound that insinuates itself into my ear drum. rasp rasp rasp. rub rub rub. raspy waspy hand rubber.

Please leave me in peace, all of you. Perhaps today would be a good day to make plans for a country retreat.

I think Gnomes got into my wallet Thursday night and used my debit card. I know they were there because they left the receipts with a little note that said "Please balance your checking."

Gnomes are considerate that way.

Trolls on the other hand are not as nice. I've got trolls that keep sending me letters asking for money that I allegedly owe them. I will begin to send the trolls money because I'm am trying to get in good with their master, the Wizard of Finance.

I wonder if the Wizard of Finance knows any spells to quiet the dutch bangers.

Did you know Jesus has a personal website? It's called dateJesus. This post in particular sums up my feelings of GWB so I'm going to qute it here.

Americans got the president they deserve, and most fittingly, one that really represents them. He's a little dumb and simple minded, but makes up for it with a combination of ignorance, arrogance, and self-assurance. He may not understand how the world works, or what goes on in civilized nations, but knows how to reduce complex problems to only a question of whether you stand with him or against him. He doesn't care for the big picture because it disorients his biases, and he has no use for facts that get in the way of his opinions and baseless convictions.

He is brave enough to go alone when the whole world points out what horrible mistakes he is making and how he defies reason and logic. He is willing to use novel economic theories to cut taxes and expand government services despite a national debt of over $7,000,000,000,000. Somewhere Osama bin Laden is laughing about the U.S. doing his work by bankrupting itself.

God is on the side of George W. Bush, and most other imaginary beings also support him. God will likely ask him to serve the Chosen Race by murdering more Arabs with an invasion of Iran and Syria (but not North Korea or Israel who actually have weapons of mass destruction and crazy leaders). While the rest of the world is repulsed by his barbarism and inconsistancy, America's president boldly takes action to do the work of his puppeteers.

Despite depriving some Texas village of its idiot, President Bush helps provide a clear path for the nation's future with his appropriately representative leadership.

Go Jesus Go!

yesterday's record high seventeen blogger post should collectively be titled, "The ramblings of a procrastinator." Good god. Before blogger, you should have seen how clean my bathroom would get when I had a deadline to meet.

I slept like the opposite of a log. I woke up every hour on the hour. I know because I had the radio playing really softly but not softly enough for me to miss the DJ telling the time.

"And it's 3:04 am on the east coast"
"And we're rolling up on 4:06am"
"It's just about 5:05am. Good morning!"
"stay tuned for news and weather. It's 6 o'clock."

Around seven I fell asleep in the superman position with my arms stretched out above my head as if I were trying to fly out my window. When I woke up, my arms had fallen into a deeper sleep than I had and my face was buried into a drool soaked pillow. I did have a weird dream though and I will break my own rules and recount it for you:

I dreamt I went to a kid's birthday party at McDonaldland. If that weren't scary enough, Patrick the Starfish from Spongebob squarepants was there. We had to pay $7.00 to get in and ride the McDonaldland rides. Everyone was bitching about the price. I walked in and went over to the play area which had one huge water ride, like splash mountain. So there was only ONE ride but you could go on it as many times as you want.

I was standing in line to ride with this dude. I knew him in my dream but I don't know this person in real life. Some younger guys came up and started picking on the dude and calling him names and being smart. I got a little pissed and started giving them a severe tongue lashing. SUddenly I realize the line is a wedding reception line and I have to stop arguing because it's my turn to meet the bride and her mother, neither of which I know. I quickly turn on the charm and let them know how deligted I am to meet them, etc etc. I am carrying my pillow. People are walking by with trays of McDonald's food.

I never make it to the water ride.

I am going to the gym with Kristeena today. I need to get out of the house.

Resources for crossdressers

see what I mean about zeros and ones?

01101100011000010110110101100101

Decode the message here.

we have new downstairs neighbors. I think I mentioned the wall-eyed athletic super boy. He has a female partner/girlfriend/manservant/whatever.

They are dutch. They control our thermostat.

They like the cold evidently. They are mean. They bang around a lot. Not in the good way, more in the "we're moving in and we like to hang things and bang the walls."

Must turn up Patti LaBelle. I hear the dutch hate Patti LaBelle.

Unfortunately I must confess, my grandfather's mother was on the boat from Denmark, so I guess I am related to the neighbors.

That sucks. I am disconsolate.

I want to understand.

But I cannot.

Guess I'll have to listen to more Chuck D. instead.

isn't the beer store still open? I need a distraction from this cage. Today the only thing that is distracting is the Merman.

I'm melting. MELTING. Melting into a random series of zeros and ones. A boolean alphabet. A logical constructor. An illogical destructor. A subclass of nothing. Inheritance is futile.

I hate Java. Remind me to have no more to do with it after this.

JAVA I WASH MY HANDS OF YOU.

WHY ARE THE FUCKING PET SHOP BOYS ON THIS COMPUTER!!! FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!

Where's my Tinactin?

hey Kool Thing
come here
sit down beside me
there's something I got to ask you.

I'm ready for a hard core reggae skank fest.

Need:

one ticket to a hot place -- not hell
sunscreen
red stripe
disposable income

Not need:
cell phone
computer
internets

I don't even like reggae anymore. But, I COULD like it, given the right circumstance/atmosphere.

Hey, always remember, no woman no cry.

first feedback from the man called Cole was positive. all is not for naught. thank the maker.

here is the first round of mockups

home page
details page

of course it still needs work. at least it's a start.

who knows how to do this, please raise your hands.

http://bellsouthpwp2.net/m/f/mfanti/Session6Assignment.htm

I give up. God mommy don't make me. I swear I'll be good. I swear it.

in spite of myself, I am making headway away from the greener fields of procrastination, with their dainty posies, intoxicating breezes, and mind-altering elixirs.

alright enough. I sent two comps off for the cole site, and finished a Java homework. Only four more to go in order to wipe this evil incomplete from my permanent record.

I still need to work on my thesis; it has the working title of "I don't know what the fuck I'm writing about yet and the class is halfway over I am screwed." Also a Javascript project, the virtual fucking baby shower.

I hate babies. I must smite them like an old testament God.

(JUST KIDDING MELISSA DON'T FLIP YOUR GOURD.)

I must confess this one thing before I go: I'm afraid of Americans.

and one more thing: I like steak.

That is all.

I just wrote a post and you blew it up you warthog from hell.

ergh. be nice to me or I will ditch your ass for typepad I swear to god.

I have complied with Minerva's request for the noize. The noize seems a little out of character, a bit goth like. The noise calls itself Bauhaus.

I am sore afraid.

But since the noize is alphabetical in nature, its next incarnation will be the Boys of Beastie.

Statcheck: system running in the background: Krixfort attempts to clear out residual Java programming homework.

Emotioncheck: Krixfort fucking hates computers and wishes she never took this stupid fucked up Java class. I ALREADY TOLD YOU PEOPLE I AM A SPECIAL OLYMPICS STYLE CODER. WHAT PART OF MEDIOCRE CAN'T YOU UNDERSTAND.

I wonder what Oscar is doing?

I will call Mandy now. Or Katherine.

my enemy must have felt my evil vibe because my connection to the military industrial complex has been re-forged.

back to plan stay-at-home. Minerva has also ditched the journey to the gym in favor of cleaning her cage and vestements.

All is right in the world when my slothy will prevails.

well FUCK.
One of my incompetent enemies has failed to provide the necessary services that I require to complete my tasks. I am stranded here in my little cell, with no connection to the larger cell where my secret documents are stored.

FUCKFUCKFUCK.

So I guess I will join Minerva and move even farther behind on my path to enlightenment.

Note to self: This week will be all about focus. NO distractions. Do not get overwhelmed by enormousness of demands. DO not flee to watering hole. Do not require anti-distration medication. Do not go to Danger Planet.

Minerva says our potted plant looks like it's flipping us off. It's giving us the big F. U. as its leaves fall lazily to the ground, victims of our neglect.

Minerva will not allow me to type. SHe wants me to bring tha' noize.

I must comply now.

Minerva is going to the working out place because she is committed and I am not. I am going to work on two web sites that are past due, one for a class and one for friends. The friend's site I am farther along on but, like all my obligations this month, I am having a hard time finding the motivation.

Perhaps I need a personal motivational speaker. A tiny pocket sized motivational speaker, like a fairy butler. Perhaps the demands of school are starting to wear me down. Perhaps I need to win a lotto.

New websites coming soon:

Cole Smithey
The independent voice of film since. . .I forgot when.

Melissa's Virtual Baby shower
games, gags, gifts, gruesome, generosity, gum

bye.

Minerva has refused to wake in a timely manner, therefore the opportunity to go to the working out place has passed, IMHO. I have work to do anyway, websites to build, research to research, enemies to smite and whatnot.

But first I need a hearty breakfast. It is noon thirty, sheesh. Where's my coffee? Where's my hossenfeffah?

I am supposed to go to the gym with Minerva. I think I will try to hide instead. Maybe I'll hide under the bed with the rest of the monsters.

You can travel safely to Danger Planet now. You don't need a Visa or a passport to go there and George Bush is nowhere in the vicinity. There is however, a curious evil that has invaded Danger Planet. It is an increasing threat to inhabitants of Danger Planet.

It is your job to go to Danger Planet and help the heroes fight off the encroaching predator.

So go there. Now. I command thee.

I've been thinking about Mountains lately and one mountain in particular. That Mountain would be THE MOUNTAIN - KMTT in Seattle.

If you want to hear Imaginary Lover by the Atlanta Rythm Section, this is the place. Or you could hear Horse With No Name. OR Bob Seger's On The Road Again. Have fun with THAT. I've decided I don't care for Meatloaf. OR Bread. Or Cream. Well, I like all things dairy actually, so I guess I do like Cream. I don't know if I like classic Rock anymore. It was kind of cool to smoke pot to, back in high school. It's kind of fun to hear around a campfire, drinking shitty ice cold beer. I suppose I like Freebird. I suppose I like Magic Bus. I absolutely loathe Stairway to Heaven, House of the Rising Sun, and Bad Moon on the Rise.

The cat is looking very pointy.

My hangover has subsided. Now I am bored.

Maybe I should just go to bed. First porn. Then bed.

zzzzzzz.

I think I was smote last night by the king of beers. But I DID get to see Tom Clark and the High Action Boys, who play and sing like angels.

Unfortunately my travels did not end on Avenue A. No my friends, they did not. I ended back at my "local" and closed it down, good and hard.

nuff said.

the complaining man was hired today.

I can see the future and it is spelled D.O.O.M.

Prayer to the St. Poindexter, patron saint of programmers:

St. Poindexter, defend us in our day of battle; protect us against the deceit and wickedness of the evil one. May ZOD rebuke him with his laser eyes, we humbly pray.

Amen.

I am but a soldier of ZOD. Unfortunately it looks like ZOD wants to snow us in today.

My prayer for today:

Please ZOD, don't let me get snowed in here in Central Jersey. Do not deliver me to the Sheraton, but instead, deliver me safely to my friend Craig's show at Sidewalk on Avenue A tonight at 10pm for I yearn to hear the High Action Boys play and sing your praises.

has an impressive resume. I have not been able to contribute to the blog today because I am ZOD's slave and the power of ZOD compells me to do his bidding, which is NOT writing in this blog.

I pine for the days when I was not controlled by one so great as he. Soon I must escape to Danger Planet. My escape plan is unsure. Stay tuned. All will be revealed.

P.S. George Bush Sucks.

apparently the Chix-fort fajita burritos weren't such a hit with my gastrointestinal system. I suffer still.

While I suffer, I'll let you talk to Voltron. Voltron fights evil. Sometimes Voltron fights more than evil. Sometimes Voltron monitors my internet activity. Sometimes Voltron returns my email undelivered.

This is what Voltron told me the other day:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

noreply-comment@blogger.com

Technical details of permanent failure:
PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 10): 554 : Recipient address rejected: Access denied

I think Voltron may be trying to get me fired.

hope you're not on the West Coast because I'm going to spoil it for you. . .HOORAY FOR JAY!!!!!!!

YAY JAY!

I have settled in at home, forsaking my Javascript class for the Project Runway Finale.

I don't even give a shit about fashion. Why am I hooked on this show??? damn you Pepper. You have cursed me.

so anyway, Just cooked up a little dinner. Chix-fort fajita burritos. Perfect for the Runway.

Bring it Pepper. Bring it.

words from Mr. Craig Chesler, of newly minted CD FAME:

we're playing tomorrow night. come out and see us.

tom clark and the high action boys (acoustic show)
thursday, february 24, 2005
10:00pm SHARP!

IT'S FREE!!!

sidewalk
94 avenue A (at 6th street)
new york, ny

www.tomclarkandthehighactionboys.com
www.craigchesler.com

i'll let the master speak:

Subject: Tom and the Boys...Acoustic...sort of!
From: Thomas Clark
To: Tom Clark

Man, it's NICE outside....but I'm here writing to you...but that's good!
Cause I'm here to fill ya in on a faux Spring happening! Tomorrow night, at
Sidewalk (corner of 6th and Ave. A) were gonna do a full band acoustic show!
And hey, it's FREE!! It's at 10 Sharp...looking forward to it, myself!
Oh....by the way.....if you're in your trailer, watching NASCAR (or
something like that...) and you see a Tylenol commercial with NASCAR
drivers....the hillbilly singing the song.......is me! Fun stuff.....
On a side (and sad) note.....my Uncle Bill, the hunky blacksmith on the
back of the "Cross-Eyed and Bow-Legged" cd, passed away a couple days ago at
76. He felt like a rock star, having his picture in there! We should all
feel like rock stars....all the time! Oh, and I got these famous bowed legs
from THAT side of the family! See you tomorrow!

-- Tom Clark and the High Action Boys

the krixfort response team endorses both Mr. Craig Chesler's breakout album CD and the seminal work of Tom Clark and the High Action Boys, "Cross-Eyed and Bow-Legged."

Craig has some samples on Mperia.com.

And while I am shamelessly promoting those I know, Mr. Kevin Wheeler has finally completed his first website, coded from scratch in vi I think, where he is showcasing his photographs. Check it at Kevarts.com.

Heartily I endorse thy artful ministrations, oh friends of mine.

so, I'm looking through the blog stats to see just where is that people come from and I see that someone was at dailythreat.blogspot.com just before coming to Hell's Half Acre.

The first post that I see on The Daily Threat a.k.a. Something Wicked This Way Comes starts off by saying. "Folks - we have to tighten our borders... it's a key issue of National Security." Stubborn curiosity and mind numbing awe forced me to read on against my liberal will. There is a lengthy diatribe about the impending doom that will ensue as we run out of fossil fuels, he quotes an article about "The Myth of Greenhouse Gasses", he speaks of Amerika's impending terrorist war.

what do they put in the water down in Texas?

I really should be less of a puss and challenge the guy on the oil diatribe. Yeah, we will run out. Oil is not an infinite resource. So my question is, Why wouldn't you, as a global oil corp. really start pouring money into developing alternatives? I know that as the reserves dwindle, companies stand to make more money from shrinking supply. Is this really what holds back the push to find an answer to the oil question? And the other thing is, the dude's website doesn't ask any questions. . .it just goes on and on, spouting and harumphing, and blathering and lip-smacking and harranguing. Ask no questions. . .Get no answers. Get no discourse. No solutions. Just an angry rant. That his blog took this much time out of my day is a disappointment.

Tonight I predict that America will witness the demise of Wendy Pepper.

At 9pm EST, all eyes should be turned to gaze lovingly on television, our collective unconscious wrapped in a box of flickering light. It is there, and only there, where we will all find the truth that we seek. Truth in advertising. Truth in Journalism. Truth in Government.

What are you saying Krixfort? Are you being facetious?

Oh so I'm saying, am I? What am I? Your "say-boy?" I'm just a "Sayer?" Is that it? "say say say?"

I'll tell YOU what I'm saying!

I'm saying: PEPPER YOU ARE TOAST.

P.S. if I have to see/hear that fucking Banana Republic commercial with Claire Forlani and the John Mayer song, I'm going to have a fucking anuerism. Didn't anyone else sponsor Project Runway? Fuck. I won't shop at that place ever again. Not that I can fucking fit in their size fucking two overpriced trousers anyway. Owwwwwww. My v-chip is sparking. FUCKFUCKFUCK. OWWWWWW sizzle.

say it isn't so, say-boy.

got some focusin? kick it over.


anyway. . .sometimes I don't just blog on my blog. Sometimes I join in the conversation in other places. Want to eavesdrop. You know you do.

Perv.

Peeper.

While you're at it, here's another. Hey, I can't do all the work here. There ARE other bloggers.

Sign this important petition.

Honestly, I'm going to organize a march.

I promise I will wring a couple of seconds out of the day to provide the world with a truly innovative and fabulous insight about Loehman's or Hillary Duff or the merits of Neopolitan Ice Cream (it's strawberry-choco-vanil-icious!)

OH! Super Milk-Chan, I have to go now before I am punished.

only 24 more hours until the Project Runway Finale!!!!!

hoo haw!

I don't need NYU!!!

I'm going to school to pursue a degree in Airport Security!! I'll double major in Bartending so when I finish my day shift at Terminal C, I can head on over to my night time bartending gig at The Cock Pit.

I'm so glad I got this Spam email!

P.S. What's Vicitimology???

so apparently I was wrong about how to blow a job interview.

The same dude who wants to slack it at ye ol' e-commerce company is here again for 2nd interviews.

Must. Hold. Tongue. Opinion. Doesn't. Count. Here.

alsdjfolshdf;lsh;lfja

ready to go home now. If General Zod were here, he'd make that guy kneel. And then He'd zap it to him with the laser beam eyes.

hung out with Oscar the dog last night who likes to lay in the middle of the floor like a turkey. Evidently hanging around dogs can make a girl powerfully thirsty because I managed to pound a few back. I'm bummed because I ended up losing my evil elf hat that I really liked. Better than losing my wallet I suppose. SOmeday, Oscar the Dog will be pictured here but I'm STILL WAITING for Mark to email the awesome Oscar phone pic.

My friend Michelle finds the best shit on the Internet. She is the new queen. I cannot take credit for these things.

She introduced me to General Zod.

She also sent me here: http://www.crazymofo.com/mofos/

and here:http://www.springfieldisforgayloversofmarriage.com/

that's all I can do for today. I managed to kill all my creative brain cells last night.

this is what I love about the internet:

The new philosophy of message distribution.

MUSIC
From the Mperia website:

So here's the deal, folks: it's a new millenium. And if there's one thing we've learned, going into this shiny new epoch, it is this: the medium is not the message. "Music" does not equal "compact disc". Music is data. It doesn't matter whether you burn it to a CD or rip it to an iPod or a Memory Stick or store it on your hard drive. It's still music.

Take a minute to internalize this concept.

Once you get past the notion that music has to come in the form of a shiny little Frisbee that retails for $16.99 at your local MegaSuperMusicPavilion, certain other truths that once seemed self-evident begin to unravel -- such as the idea that the only way to become a successful musician is by signing a recording contract with a giant corporation. . .

. . .The record labels are afraid of the Internet because they can't control it. They can't stop you from selling your work directly to your fans. You don't need them anymore...and they know it. Peer-to-peer software isn't a cause, it's a symptom. The world is changing.

. . . We believe that the Internet is the most powerful system ever devised for bringing art directly to the people who love it -- whether it be East Coast hip-hop or West Texas swing. Whatever you do, there's going to be somebody out there who wants to add your music part to the soundtrack of their lives. And we're here to make that happen.

COMMUNITY
from the Cluetrain Manifesto:

There are other questions possible, better questions. Questions that come from the heart, not the wallet, the gonads, or the lobe of the brain responsible for smugness. Questions that open the future instead of making sure the dead bolt on the door is nice and tight.

For example, take the ever-popular question, Will the Web become a broadcast medium? Will it become TV? That’s vitally interesting to media titans who see the Web as a threat to how they make money. But that’s not a question of the heart.

What the heart wants to know is, When the buttons at our fingers let us talk with the polyglot world’s artists, how will we cope? What will we share as a culture and community? What will we talk about together? What will we laugh about? What type of laughter -- mocking, ironic, cynical, sinister, belly-shaking guffaws -- are we going to hear? Will we find we all share a common sense of humor, or will we learn to laugh in new languages? When will we record the first case of Web inebriation, a trans-global xenophilia induced by pure, uncut connectedness?

. . .our hearts have a different set of questions: when we can’t rely on a central authority -- the government, the newspaper, the experts in the witness box -- for our information, what new ways of believing will we find? How will we be smart in a world where it’s easier to look something up than to know it? How will we learn to listen to ideas in context, to information inextricably tied to the voice that’s uttering it? How can we reverse our habit of understanding matters by jumping to further levels of abstraction and instead learn to dig into the concrete, the personal, and the unique, told as stories worthy of our time?

. . .We’re asked, How can you tell if the person you’re talking with is really the person you’re talking with? when our hearts want to know what people we will really become online and what having a disembodied identity will mean.

I think about this all the time. How long will it take to have a global shared cultural context? What needs will the virtual world effectively satisfy for us and how will it enrich those experiences that can only exist in the physical world? Now, I can glean a better understanding about what is happening globally than I could have 10 years ago. Now, I have more insight into the political views peppered across this country.

What will the next 10 years bring? How will we interact?

my new internet boyfriend, El General ZOD!!!!!

Zod rules. Zod rules me.

I believe he appeals to the part of me that is constantly searching for that authoritarian/father figure that was missing throughout my childhood.

Look how my master Zod challenges the foolish St. Patrick. . .

Look at him... he actually believe he is superior because he can command some lowly snakes to kneel before him? The truth is, this "saint" is lower than the snakes which he commands. Snakes do not have knees, foolish Patrick, but humans do. Oh but you've found ways to make them kneel as well, haven't you Patrick? Do not think you can even begin to compare yourself to the almighty Zod, for while I make my human slaves kneel because they fear for the termination of their very lives, the only way you can make them kneel is by drugging them with a green elixir. No style at all...

every day, I die a little. . .

Hunter S. Thompson, the maverick journalist and author whose savage chronicling of the underbelly of American life and politics embodied a new kind of nonfiction writing he called "gonzo journalism," died yesterday in Colorado. Tricia Louthis, of the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office, said Mr. Thompson had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Woody Creek, Colo., yesterday afternoon. He was 65.

read story. . .

I have a friend who is a private investigator in Denver. She took a Hunter S. Thompson case once because she thought he would be colorful and interesting. He was. He also made it a habit to get really drunk and call her at three in the morning. I told her she should edit all his drunken voice mails into a killer answering machine message but she said that was unethical.

Did gonzo journalism open the door to the eventual blogoshere? Thompson never held back his voice, regardless of who controlled the media. That's a long evolution to contemplate but I suppose one could draw a line if one wanted.

another randomely generated spam poem found in the webmaster inbox

separable for cranky

holystone was blackbody with version
and campsite helps conference not aileen,

hoot was schoenberg with breathy
and tropopause helps pennyroyal not bangladesh.

politburo was stadium with jelly
and onion helps ransom not palo?

police was ezekiel with masseur
and token helps rumpus not earthquake!

so I can't log on to my computer this morning. Something has co-opted all the memory. My roommate and I just figured it was because we play too many crap games that have memory leaks or something.

So I go to task manager and look at the processes and see what's hogging all the memory. There's some executable called muori.exe. I search for it in google, hoping I will be enlightened by the holy one. Google ain't got jack. So I go to Yahoo. Every result with the work muori in it is Italian.

So I go to Alta Vista's Babelfish translator type in muori, and select Italian to English translation.

Ugh. In the translator textbox up pops "You die."

I don't like it when my computer gets all sinister on me in the morning. We're supposed to wake up and go to a happy place.

Evidently, after searching the registry, muori.exe is associated with some game called "Firestarter" which I don't remember playing but maybe my roommate does.

Translate this you italian hacker gamester jackoffs!

tua mom muore!

so there

My roommate and I are trying to discern Wendy Pepper's astrological sign. Kristeena thinks she's a Scorpio. I'm trying to figure this out mathmatically. She turned 40 around Episode 9. What was the shooting scedule. That will give us a better time frame.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Isn't there a reality show where contestants can compete for a life? Because if there is, I'm signing up. Oh yeah, I guess there is one. It's called Life AHAHAHAHAAHAAHAHAHAAHA!

fuck.

Seakrix Out.

great Simpsons tonight.

There’s Something About Marrying

To boost tourism, the town of Springfield decides to legalize same-sex marriage and one of Springfield’s own comes out of the closet...

If you didn't see it, I'm not going to spoil it. I have to say, the writers nailed it, so to speak.

Go Simpsons.

This link was sent to me by Mr. Jet Brown who offers this comment:

while not the first paper to offer an editorial, the first to do so in a truly aggressive manner, begging the biggies not to take a bite.

http://www.oregonlive.com/editorials/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1108818080222430.xml
He's been following the Gannon/Guckert story fairly closely.

If Bush were not Bush. . .say, if it were Bill Clinton in his position during this press "snafu", the right would be screaming for investigation and it would be all over the mainstream media. If it were Clinton in this position, Kenneth Starr would be rolling up his sleeves and going to town, while the rest of the right readied itself for impeachment hearings.

I find it so extremely ludicrous that the current jackass in office deceives, lies and cheats with impunity, simply because he was delivered a stunned and terrified nation, who couldn't fathom the betrayal ahead when they finally decided to trust this fucker, on September 12th, 2001.

Fuck him and fuck his administration.

Kristeena and I are on a rampage to excercise and eat properly. She went to the NYU gym with me yesterday and gave me a tutorial on how to use all the weight machines. It's been too long for me and some of them I have forgotten how to use properly.

So rawther than bore you with the tiresome details of my efforts to better myself, let me tell you a little story about the REAL BIGGEST LOSER.

Back in the early 90s I was a young slacker epresso jockey with a severe haircut, extreme lipstick, a leather jacket and most importantly, a car. My Doc Martins and I LOVED to take road trips around the western United States by ourselves. One of the doozies I took was a twelve day loop trip on a budget of $800.00, starting in Seattle and finishing in Seattle. HA HAHAA. Okay. Here's where I stopped.

Portland
San Francisco
San Diego
Phoenix
Denver
Bozeman
Home

During the San Diego portion, I decided to drive to Temeculah, San Diego's wine country. I left early in the morning ready to breathe in the semi-desert air, redolent with the scent of ripened grapes. I was ready to make pithy conversation with other tourists and to try to walk the balance between wine tasting and overall drunkenness, especially since I was driving.

I drove to the first winery and parked up above the main winery in the parking lot on the hill. Everything was so beautiful I knew I had to take some pictures. I dug through my car and found my camera and took some pictures of the vineyard, a lizard, some cacti, a palm tree, the main building, myself. It was around noon and it was much warmer than I was used to so it was time to put the camera back in the car and drink taste some wine. Oh and let me say, I had stashed the majority of my travelers checks back in the hotel so I wouldn't run the risk of overspending. AND because I was a young slacker, I had no credit cards after destroying my credit in another life.

I turned to open the driver's side door. Locked. Reached into my pocket for the keys. Not there. Hmmm. Weird. Where were they? Sticking out of the lock? no. On the roof of the car? No. Resting gently on the driver's seat of my turquoise Geo Metro? Yes. Of Course. No panic. SImple solution. I trot down to the winery and ask if they have a wire hanger. No, BUT they do have a flyswatter. Not the best candidate for picking a car door lock since the wire from the flyswatter was coated in some kind of vinyl. I notice that the winery people don't seem very friendly. They're eyening me up and down, noticing the difference between the way I look, and the well coiffed, bejeweled republicans, getting out of their winery tour limos.

I take the flyswatter back up to the car, deconstruct the thing and attempt to pick the lock. Not working. I go back to the winery and ask to use their snotty phone. I call the tow company. "How much for lockout service?" $40.00. Great. I have $30.00. Remember? Slacker. No credit. Fear of overspending on wine. Small panic starting, like teeny tiny earthquake. Make collect call to grandparents for emergency monetary bailout. No one home. Where the fuck did THEY go? They NEVER leave the house.

I walk back up the hill, in the broiling fucking sun. I have no sunscreen -- I'm from Seattle. A foursome of older tourists, wearing resort wear, strolls by and says a polite hello. They keep walking and I survey the area, looking for something that will enlighten me as to what to do. I decide that breaking a window is my only option and I'll have to finish my road trip with a stylin' ghetto window made of clear plastic. I decide I can live with that.

I survey the area for a rock. A big rock. There are no big rocks. There is a medium sized rock that will fit nicely in my hand. I grab it and start tap tap tapping on the driver's side rear window. Tap tap tap. TAP TAP TAP. BANG BANG BANG.

It's hard to break a car window when you don't really want to break the car window.

I start to cry. Tap tap tap. Sob sob sob. Tap tap. sob.

Finally I just sit down on a log, and sob, sunburned arms wrapped around my knees, shoulders heaving, tears streaming.

The polite twinset foursome come back from the winery, a little friendlier. A nice grandma type, leans over with a gentle hand on my shoulder and says, "What's the matter dear?"

"I *sob sob* l-locked mysel-hf *sob* out of my car *sob* and I don't have enoughmoneyforthelockouuuuuut.*sob sob sob cry* It's mostly all back at my *sob* hotellllllll. *sob sob*"

I am the biggest loser.

"Oh honey. It's okay. Can we help you out? We can give you some money and you can give it back to us later. . ."

Let me wrap this story up. The tourists were two couples visiting from Minnesota. Had a son that lived in Seattle. They lent me $20 bucks which was enough to successfully get the car unlocked, and have a little extra for an emergency wine tasting.

I left that winery and found this cool wine dude way off the beaten track who had coincidently moved from West Seattle, where I lived. One day, he quit his job at Boeing, came down south and asked the real estate agent to help him find an affordable parcel of land where he could grow grapes. And that's what he did. Grew grapes, made wine and waited for sad adventurous souls to travel past the wine limos and find him. I regaled him with the harrowing story of my day and he in turn, fed me cheese and crackers and many glasses of his wine, both red and white. I couldn't buy any bottles that day but I promised him I would come back and take some bottles on my way to Phoenix the next day, which I did. His name was Barrett Byrd and I wonder if he is still at it.

When I got back to Seattle, I had to prove that I was not really the biggest loser. I put together a gift basket, resplendent with the culinarry bounties of the Pacific Northwest; Great wine, coffe, teas, smoked salmon, Chukar cherries, blah blah blah. I also slipped in a card with the $20.00 and sent it off to my geriatric angels from Minnesota.

Heh heh heh. Is there a moral to this story? Dress for success? A penny saved is a penny for a lockout? do unto others?

I don't know but if you are that couple from Minnesota or Barret Byrd and you are reading this. . .I just want to, once again, say thanks and Cheers!

After my brilliant realization I hustled to the computer to see if I could drop the class online. No dice. The System is down for software upgrades. I pick up the phone to see if The System will take my call. The lady robot voicemail told me, "The System is currently unavailable. Goodbye." *Click*

I think The System is being a little standoffish. In fact, after all the money I've spent on The System over the last three years, you'd think The System could at least put out. I've bought that fucking System dinner and expensive drinks and what thanks do I get!?!??! Nooooo, The System has a headache. Wah wah wah. The System is too tired. The System just wants to be friends.

Well you KNOW what I have to say to THAT!

FUCK THE SYSTEM!

Where IS the people's army?

I'm dropping Statistics. I had this realization when I was sitting on the can (hey, that's where a lot of realizations happen. not just for me either.) I realized that I bit off a little too much this semester. There is no way that I can digest my entire courseload. Really. I'm not being lazy about this.

This is serious krixfort evolution. I generally over promise and under deliver, with the exception of work because I've learned with software development that the reverse is better. That lesson never carried over into my academic life. I realize that for me, Statistics will be one of those classes that I will need to take, by itself, during the summer. I would rather understand the material and pass the class then make bargains with my self, which I am doing now, about what grade I'm willing to accept. (Currently willing to accept C-.) I have a Seniior Thesis Project that I want to pour myself into, I have my Incomplete in Java that I NEED to finish, I have a goofy Javascript class that I WANT to learn shit in, I have two side projects that keep getting pushed way to the side, AND I just got pulled into a huge 3rd party software integration project at work that promises to be challenging yet, dare I say it, fun?

(ps the cool thing about the work project--HAHAHAHAHA, it's all in XML so my technical learning curve is . . . ZERO. I don't actually have to wrestle with understanding the medium, only the message, which is how it should be. The other programmer who will be working on this is FUCKING AWESOME too, and he's excited to work on this project as well. It's going to be a gas.)

Whew. I feel so much lighter somehow.

so I am very ashamed when I say this but I believe that I have had a relapse.

I am once again addicted to the internet. I. Can't. Get. Off. It.

looky what I found:

Bears will attack
The Cuddly Menace
Co-Worker: The Little Idiot That Could
anyone that can make me laugh out loud IS GETTING LINKED DAMMIT!!!

okay, that's it! It's freezing in here again. We finally have a downstairs neighbor that I can stomp downstairs to and demand that the thermostat be turned up to an appropriate level.

But maybe I'll wait for Kristeena to come home and ask her to do it.

NO. I will be brave and meet this new downstairs, male neighbor. Who has a kayak. And a mountain bike. Note to self: spray body with febreeze so health nut neighbor does not smell the stale cigarette smoke clinging to your frozen body.

Kristeena said he has a wall-eye. Note to self: do not stare at wall-eye and make athletic super boy nervous.

brrrrrrr! bye.

apparently I come up number 45 in an Excite.com search for "teeny fuckers". That's just great.

Here's some more good blog lovin'

Defective Yeti

he's a hometown boy who's got some funny stories to tell. . .

The Dullest Blog in the World
you have to admit, it's funny

Beats reading this:
Understanding File Upload
i am a special olympics style coder. . .

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

I was surfing around looking for tech info, and I got a little sidetracked and ended up on Scobleizer. Scoble was the keynote speaker at the BBS and blogs for Microsoft and works on Channel 9. I looked at the Channel 9 about section and they have this video. In the video, five guys are pictured and one on the extreme left looks really familiar. So I look a little harder and poke around some and I see that this dude named Bryn is on the team at Channel 9. When I worked at MSDN he was a member of the team I worked for. I think that the guy in the video is Bryn. (Again, let me just say, my time there was brief and I didn't have a chance to do much so I'm sure my impact was unnoticeable.)

Then I looked up Barta. I shared an office with him. He edited a Wrox book called Professional IE4 Programming. I'm sure he's done more than just that. He had a HUGE brain. I still remember going to Barrier Motors in Redmond and fondling the Porsches while he test drove a TT.

If I had stayed there, would I have become a super coder instead of persisting at the level of mediocrity I am at now? Probably. Did I love it that much? Hmmmm, I'm not quite sure. Those guys really loved it. I was really geeking hard at the time I worked there (1999) but I don't know. . .I might have been Microsoft material at the time but now. . .

Is the decision to not stay there one that is going to come around and bite me?

What I like about the web is not the technology behind it as much as the community. HA. The fact that technology is less than important to me can be evidenced by my antiquated cell phone and my 1000 year old Gateway computer (16 powerful MBs of RAM baby, YEAH!)

I don't know why this is troubling. Since the BBS, I've been feeling like I missed a chance, when I know I didn't. My life has been a gas since 1999 and the people who have helped fuel my life along the road up to now have been phenomenal. I regret nothing.

If I regret nothing then why am I pondering this?

I emailed the web designer who made the afore-mentioned NYUnited site and asked why he used a picture of Seattle. I guess I'm obsessive that way.

The response was "I dunno. Just found it on a stock photo site. ;-P"

DUDE. Pick a stock photo of the right city. Your work screams "Hire Me. I pay attention to details."

Alright, alright. I'll lay off the poor kid.

who saw that piece of crap movie Pet Sematary?

There is the scene toward the end when the little evil zombie kid cuts Herman Munster's achilles tendon with the scalpel. That scene haunts me. I have a bedframe that sits high off the ground. Any number of small evil zombie children with scalpels could be hiding under there at any given moment. I have a big problem walking into my room when it's dark. Of course I can't tell anyone about it because then somebody might tease me and call me a big fat baby. So the drill is, when I walk in the room, I run over and turn on the lamp by my bed before I will even allow myself to glance at the floor near my bed. I know one day if I look down there at the wrong moment, I'll see an evil pair of glowy eyes staring back at me.

The main reason I would like to have someone sleep over is not for the intimate huggy kissy touchy feely stuff that goes on between the sheets. No, that's not it at all. I would mainly have someone over so that they can sleep on the outside edge of the bed. That way when the monster reaches up to kill, Person X will be the sacrificial lamb and I'll have plenty of time to escape.

I didn't feel that the Project Runway highlight show was worthy of comment except for the fact that I HOPE JAY McCARROLL RULES THE RUNWAY NEXT WEEK. And what was up with Vanessa storming off.

WHAT-EV-ER.

HOW-EV-ER. I do have some interesting questions posed by Michelle:

What was Austin’s problem?
Who’s that stupid Aussie bee-otch?
Where does Wendy Pepper go when she turns deep inside herself and stare blankly out into space?
WHO DREW THE MUSTACHE???????
Was Kevin sleeping with Michael Kors?
Where does Morgan buy her drugs?

Inquring minds want to know. And also, what's up with Plotkin's skills in the ARTS? THE LANGUAGE ARTS??!!!!! Holy smokes! (funny tho.)

NYU has this website for this week long thing they are doing for Tsunami relief. On the website it have a picture of a city, which of course I thought was New York. But then I was looking at it and I was trying to figure where exactly in NYC the picture was taken from because it seems off. Look at it closely. Recognize any buildings. Yeah you do BECAUSE ITS TOTALLY SEATTLE! Why would they do that? I don't get it. Do you think the kid who made the website thought the picture was of New York? And the link I'm giving is for Brain Bowl. Who's the freaking braniac that made the site? Or are they seeing how long it will be before someone catches it.

NYU Version:



but it's really seattle.



Do your own research then, if you don't believe me.

This is the kind of stuff that makes me feel like I'm having an acid flashback. It's like a dream where you believe you are in one city but it looks like another. AND I'll TELL YOU EXACTLY WHERE THE SHOT IS FROM. It's from the stoopid Space Needle. The first building you see in the bottom of the picture is this one.

Tell me if I'm wrong. I defy you.

I knew I had a meeting that started at 9:30 this morning but I had no idea, until after I printed out the agenda, that it is scheduled until 7PM. AND TOMORROW TOO. 8:30 AM until 1:30.

FUHHHHHHH!

And I have to do statistics homework tonight. (Who doesn't like statistics, raise their hands. okay, one, two, three, I see a lot of you don't care for it so much.)

Well then, I'll leave you all with this to contemplate. Each day, when I am too lazy to get the direct bus to this place, I'm forced to ride NJTransit, then take a $10 cab ride from the train to my office. I'm not sure where this cab company found it's employees, most of with whom I'm on a first name basis now.

There's Chez, the guy who reminds me of my grandfather and who DRIVES like my grandfather which is to say, I love the guy but fear for my life everytime I get in his car.

There's Johnny, the 5 foot four (and I use this term lovingly) guido who wears a lot of cologne, a leather trench coat, heavy gold chains, and a mullet toupee. I don't care for his driving much.

There's Lacey. She tailgaits and stutters when she tries to make a joke.

And then there's the guy who drove today. I don't know his name, Ferdinand or something. He's a real Magellan alright. Anyway, I had the pleasure of driving with him and he had this tape on in the car. I thought it was the easy listening station at first. Then I realized, No, he was actually listening to Endless Love, by choice. AND SINGING ALONG! And at the breakout part where Lionel Richie is busting out with the ". . .AND NO ONE CAN DENY, THIS LOVE I HAVE INSIDE!!! I’LL GIVE IT ALL TO YOU!!!! My love. My love, my love. My endless love." Well Ferdinand was loving that part. He was just belting right along with Lionel and Diana. He may have even been fantasizing that he had changed the duet into a trio. I don't know.

Nice enough guy but bloody hell. It wasn't even nine in the morning. And now I'll be in a meeting for 10 hundred hours with that song and that guys voice ringing in my head.

*names have been changed to protect the innocents.

clueless clueless clueless

three hours of sitting in a computer lab, watching a guy type. He wants us to copy what he is doing. For fucks sake. Is this the third grade.

When I was in high school, the language department was rolling out this "new way" of teaching foreign language. I was taking French and Spanish so I had to endure two hours of the "new way." It had some bullshit acronym called TPR which was stood for something like Total Physical Response. So the teacher would bark out some verb in command form or a phrase like "brosse les dents" and you would have to pantomime what the fucking action was. And the teacher would be up there making like she was brushing her teeth and you'd be sitting there like a monkey trying to figure out if she was hitting herself in the face, brushing her teeth, or having a breakdown.

I don't know what they teach the kids nowadays. I think they just jack 'em into a computer and let the computer do the talking.

Back to the guy. He keeps typing in syntactically bad javascript and none of the examples he gives us work. I learn nothing tonight. Need a cigarette.

Next week, I will bring in my JAVA homework from my incomplete class and work on that while I am sitting here.

I've got good news from Mr. Craig Chesler. I'm going to copy this directly from his email.

Howdy:

Some news for you.

***With the official CD release approaching quickly on March 1, 2005, we’re in the beginning stages of a national radio campaign. We just received the initial report and so far about 50 stations around the country are playing the CD. From Maine to California and from Florida to Washington (State) and so so so many points in between we're getting played. We almost have the whole country covered and we’re only just starting out! If you would like to hear Craig on the radio, call your local independent, Triple A, college, etc. radio station and request a song. If they don’t have the CD, refer them to www.craigchesler.com so they can contact us and we’ll send them a copy immediately.



***CMJ New Music Monthly Magazine has selected the lead track from Craig's CD, “Nowhere Too Far,” for inclusion on its sampler CD to be included with the March 2005 edition of the magazine. Look for it at a newsstand near you sometime around March 18, 2005.

***Tom Clark & The High Action Boys will play an acoustic show at Sidewalk on February 24, 2005 at 10:00 p.m. (94 Avenue A at 6th Street in NYC). The last show was loads of fun as Tom insisted on playing covers the rest of us had never heard (let alone played) before. I’m sure he’ll do it again. Of course, we’ll also play a dazzling array of Tom Clark originals. Tom mentioned if I was a good boy, he’d let me bring my ukulele, ...but I have a sinking feeling I haven't been that good.

Until next time,

Craig & The Whole Gang at Blacksmith Records (and Cindy, too)

www.craigchesler.com

tomclarkandhtehighactionboys.com

rock and rollah, ayatollah

so my EFC (Expected Financial Contribution?) is something like $15,191. Hmmmm. I hope that means I can still get the student loans to finish out my edu-ma-cation. I would hate to have to crap out in the last year, especially when I keep running around telling everyone I will be graduating in a year.

Now begins the special time of year when I get to sit for months and slowly percolate an ulcer as I wonder what the department of education, the national student direct loan program, and Sallie Mae have in store for me.

FARK.

What I have in savings right now is not even enough to pay for one two credit class.

I just want this damn degree. C'mon NYU. Is that so wrong?

my stomach. ow. ow. ow.

Jesus Christ! It's fucking Sky-Net. llllllggghhhhh.

A New Model Army Soldier Rolls Closer to the Battlefield
By TIM WEINER
NYTimes.com
Published: February 16, 2005

The American military is working on a new generation of soldiers, far different from the army it has.

"They don't get hungry," said Gordon Johnson of the Joint Forces Command at the Pentagon. "They're not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has just been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes."

The robot soldier is coming.

The Pentagon predicts that robots will be a major fighting force in the American military in less than a decade, hunting and killing enemies in combat. Robots are a crucial part of the Army's effort to rebuild itself as a 21st-century fighting force, and a $127 billion project called Future Combat Systems is the biggest military contract in American history.

The military plans to invest tens of billions of dollars in automated armed forces. The costs of that transformation will help drive the Defense Department's budget up almost 20 percent, from a requested $419.3 billion for next year to $502.3 billion in 2010, excluding the costs of war. The annual costs of buying new weapons is scheduled to rise 52 percent, from $78 billion to $118.6 billion.

Military planners say robot soldiers will think, see and react increasingly like humans. In the beginning, they will be remote-controlled, looking and acting like lethal toy trucks. As the technology develops, they may take many shapes. And as their intelligence grows, so will their autonomy.

The robot soldier has been a dream at the Pentagon for 30 years. And some involved in the work say it may take at least 30 more years to realize in full. Well before then, they say, the military will have to answer tough questions if it intends to trust robots with the responsibility of distinguishing friend from foe, combatant from bystander.

read article. . .

so I did that thing where I fall asleep on the couch with the TV on and I wasn't even watching anything.

I woke up and put myself to bed -- and let me tell you, I hate doing that. I'm like a 10 year old when it comes to going to bed at a reasonable hour. So, I put myself to bed, and then what happened?

I tossed. I turned. I itched. I stretched. I started thinking. Right side. Left side. Think think think. Thinking about my project. Thinking about my incomplete. Thinking about Project Runway. Thinking about my statistics homework. Thinking about my neice coming to visit this summer and what do I do to entertain a 12 year old. Thinking about the blog. Thinking about my lack of fiction skills and Danger Planet. Right. Left. Blankets off. Fan On. Blankets back on. Scratch foot.

So I came out here and started reading blogs, AGAIN. The wonderful world of blogs taught me that even Alpaca Insurance has a home on the www.

One of my retirement dreams is to own land in western Colorado and raise llamas. I would own a bed and breakfast and take people on back country hikes and the llamas would help out by packing all the heavy stuff. I hear llamas spit though. But that's okay. Oh, and on the land, I would grow my own grapes and make wine. I would actually hire people to guide the back country hikes, lest anyone be mistaken that I actually know something about that sort of thing. If I led the hikes. . .I can see the headlines now.

Area Wingnut Leads Five to Death
AP
06 June 2025

GRAND JUNCTION, CO -- Five unsuspecting hikers were led to their deaths yesterday, in what investigators are now calling the most random act of carelessness known to mankind.
"I just can't believe that those mountain lions were that bloodthirsty", said Krix Fort, alleged guide for the party of five. "I encouraged everyone to get closer to nature. I had no idea it would come to this."

Ms. Fort, local area hostelier, entrepreneur, and resident wingnut, has been detained by the state wildlife service for questioning. "We think there is evidence of foul play. As the only living witness, we believe Ms. Fort may hold some clues to cracking this case."

Among the clues in question, were several wine stained life insurance documents signed over to Ms. Fort.

--

Okay, I've got to get to bed. No more tossing and turning.

doh! here are some funny S.O.B.s
I laughed until I . . .well until I stopped laughing. But I actually haven't stopped. I'm laughing on the inside.

The HOT Librarian

Running With Lawyers

Naked Drinking Coffee

I tried to leave. I really did. But then I found THIS

The Pedantic Pundit

this crazy pundit serves up a heapin helpin o' links. Where do he find the time? It makes me look like a novice.

which led me to THIS

Asbury Park site

sidenote: that's where Minerva and I go to swim when we feel the need to bust it down to the shore. The place is in bad shape but hey, no one's on the beach, and my neighborhood ain't all that great neither.

and then I also found THIS

Google Zeitgeist

see what all the monkeys were looking for on Google last year

AND THIS

SEE!!! Everyone Blogs!

I'm tired of the internets today. It's about time to sign off. So I'm going to unwrap my towel turban, dish myself up some curried chicken casserole (wow eating dinner at a reasonable hour for once), settle down on the couch and watch me some long slow ass but beautifully filmed cinema (the Black Stallion.)

Sigh. I could get really used to this workin' from home gig.

well, I'm not a man. But just think, if I worked for myself, I could bitch about myself! And I could fire myself. But then I could turn around and rehire myself.

But then I would quit to myself. And I would grin wickedly while I begged myself to please reconsider and not make such a rash decision. Then I would sigh and say, okay, but this pitiful contract will have to be renegotiated before I would EVER THINK to work for myself EVER AGAIN.

And then I would buy myself a good chair like this one.


And I would say to myself, "here you go! YOU deserve it!"

hmmm. I'm trying to write a new fiction blog called Danger Planet. So far, all I can come up with is the name. Maybe I am destined to only write diary entries for the rest of my life.

I was thinking about Danger Planet because Sunday, I almost got sucked into watching "Joe Dirt." I had to rescue myself.

And then as I was sitting here, typing on the computer, alone in my apartment with only my thoughts (the most dangerous planet of all) the travelocity commercial came on with the Roaming Gnome and I wondered if the roaming Gnome could ever pose as a spy. I mean, he's expected to travel. And who's going to think that he's up to anything? He's a fucking Garden Gnome for chrissakes.

And then Danger Planet popped into my head.

I once had a dream about a cartoon dog named Icky. I drew this great picture which has gone into the cyber trashcan from hell, never to be found. I keep trying to reproduce the original but it's never quite the same. Anyway, I think that Icky lives on danger planet, along with his owner Binge-y. And some asian girl.

I'm working from home today. Once again, I'm enjoying a nice relaxing work environment, just me and the cat and WGBO (did I get the call letters right on that? I always mix them up.)

I'm working on a form, data feeds (always) and a bug fix. All I need is coffee and I'm set.

It's supposed to get up to 60 today so I think I'm going to open up some windows and air this stinkhole out.

Okay, all of this chit chat about the weather and my mind numbing tasks is really a cover. What I want to write about, what I'm longing to write about, is content edited

so 60 degrees. Tennis anyone?

I grew up so liberal that I forget shit like this exists. GAH!!!!!! HELP US ALL!!!!

I was reading another blogger, who is worth checking. She has a post which talks about an article, posted on the Southern Poverty Law Center website, about the Washington Times and what creepy, psychotic, right-wing fucks their writers are. Here are the first two paragraphs of the article:

Feb. 9, 2005 -- Marian Kester Coombs is a woman who believes America has become a "den of iniquity" thanks to "its efforts to accommodate minorities."

White men should "run, not walk" to wed "racially conscious" white women and avoid being out-bred by non-whites. Latinos are "rising to take this country away from those who made it," the "Euroamericans." Muslims are "human hyenas" who "smell blood" and are "closing in" on their "weakened prey," meaning "the white race." Blacks, Coombs sneers, are "saintly victims who can do no wrong." Black solidarity and non-white immigration are imposing "racial revolution and decomposition" in America.

Shiz-nit. Is that fucking backwards or what? Anyways, the main purpose of the blogger's post (codename Peacebang) is to get the peeps over to the Southern Poverty Law Center site. They have a section called The Intelligence Project whose mission is "dedicated to monitoring hate groups and extremist activity in the U.S." And here's a little bit about the Southern Poverty Law Center:

The Southern Poverty Law Center was founded in 1971 as a small civil rights law firm. Today, the Center is internationally known for its tolerance education programs, its legal victories against white supremacists and its tracking of hate groups.

Check them out. Bookmark them. Support them. Pass it on.

ooof. hard to stop at just 10. I need another 10. I was never good at abiding by the rules anyway.

11.)Coldplay - Rush of Blood to the Head

12.)Blues Brothers - Briefcase Full of Blues

13.)Ry Cooder - Paris Texas Soundtrack

14.)English Beat - Special Beat Service

15.)Parliament - Mothership Connection

16.)Beck - Odelay

17.)Beatles - Abbey Road

18.)Talking Heads - Remain in Light

19.)Dead Can Dance - The Spirits Within

20.)Morphine - Good

this was sent along to me from my friend's mom. nice words to live by.

And remember this motto to live by: Life should NOT be a journey to the
grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, pecan pie in one hand, wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "What a Ride!"

mandy just sent me this cool thingy realted to blogging. PS122 in Queens is doing some crazy performance art thing featuring BLOGGERS!!!.

Check it.! The Wysiwyg Talent Show!

Meanwhile, working on a new fiction-y blog called Danger Planet. DON'T GO THERE YET!!!!!!! TOO DANGEROUS. First we have to send in Ripley and the crew of the Nostromo in to check out that signal on Danger Planet. . .ooph glorhdouhwefhasjdbciwebfcna.

Whew! That was close.

happy Valentine's day, SUCKERS!!!!

Tower Records.

Okay let me start off by saying that I lived in the Tower Records dumpster on 5th and Mercer in Seattle when I was a kid. Is that a stretch? Well, my dad had a studio apartment across the street and when we would go spend the weekend with him, my sister and I would go across the street to Tower and look at all the music. They also had a store called Tower Posters which sold BONGS. Yes, Tower sold bongs, ahem, water pipes, for all of you out there that smoke loose tobacco in a water pipe. My sister and I would dumpster dive at Tower and retrieve all the promotion posters that were in decent shape. My prized possesion was a gi-normous Journey album cover poster that graced the walls of my room for years. I didn't even like Journey that much but the poster kicked ass.

So tower had a publication that they put out which had band interviews, marketing crap and the coolest thing, Desert Island Discs. People would write in and say what 10 records they would need if the were stuck on a desert island and why.

So here are my desert island discs for the week of 02/13/2005.

1.)Tribe Called Quest - People's Instinctive Travels And The Path's of Rhythm

2.)Lyle Lovett - Joshua Judges Ruth

3.)John Coltrane - Blue Train

4.)Pixies - Doolittle

5.)Southern Culture On The Skids - Dirt Track Date

6.)Beastie Boys - Check Your Head

7.)John Lee Hooker - Mr. Lucky

8.)Steely Dan - Aja

9.)Groove Armada - Vertigo

10.)Prodigy - The Fat of the Land


Those aren't in any particular order of liking. I think that would keep me cool for awhile.

Oh wait, I mean desert island. (I love mixing those two up.)

So if I was stuck on Dessert Island, I would have to pick cheesecake. Any kind of cheesecake. Or creme brulee. Or flan. Or panna cotta.

Obviously there would be a dairy farm located somewhere on Dessert Island.

Shouldn't I be doing homework right now?

ni·hil·ism ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-lzm, n-)
n.
Philosophy.

1.)An extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence.

2.)A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.

3.)Rejection of all distinctions in moral or religious value and a willingness to repudiate all previous theories of morality or religious belief.
T
4.)he belief that destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for future improvement.
also Nihilism A diffuse, revolutionary movement of mid 19th-century Russia that scorned authority and tradition and believed in reason, materialism, and radical change in society and government through terrorism and assassination.

Psychiatry. A delusion, experienced in some mental disorders, that the world or one's mind, body, or self does not exist.

Welcome to the special Valentine's Day edition of Hell's Half Acre.

Here's a loving tribute to all the creeps I've loved before. I use the term love loosely. Very loosely.

Hi Marcos, you mind twisting coke freak. Thanks for the psychological torture and the stitches in my wrists.

Hi Chuck, you self proclaimed nihilist. Note to self, when someone says they are a nihilist, look up the word first before spending a year and a half wondering why he can only be intimate when he's drunk.

This is fruitless. It's only making me more depressed. Usually Valentine's Day comes and goes and I don't give it a passing thought. And I wasn't really thinking about it much today either. It's just giving me something to focus my bitter ill will toward.

I'm hoping tomorrow will be better. Oh wait. Tomorrow IS Valentine's Day. pfffft.

hmmmmmm. yeah. All my energy is gone. I don't give a shit about statistics, my thesis project, outside projects, my incomplete.

Just tired. Want to sleep.

Democrats Want Investigation of Reporter Using Fake Name
NY Times
Published: February 11, 2005

Two Democrats in Congress are pressing for investigations into how a Washington reporter who used a pseudonym managed to gain access to the White House and had access to classified documents that named Valerie Plame as a C.I.A. operative.

The two Democrats questioned how a person with "dubious qualifications" had access to such a document. The Democrats also wrote to the Secret Service seeking an explanation of how someone using a pseudonym was cleared to enter the White House daily press briefings as well as a presidential news conference last month. They said in their letter that allowing such a person in "appears to deviate significantly from heightened security measures you have employed recently."

Mr. Guckert resigned from Talon saying he had been harassed by liberals on the Internet. Bloggers grew suspicious of him after President Bush called on him at the news conference and the reporter suggested that Democrats had "divorced themselves from reality." Spearheaded by a Web site called Media Matters For America, the bloggers discredited him.

So the liar was outed by the blogs. One point for the power of independent plublishing and the internet.

Susan G at the Daily Kos interviews former US Ambassador Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame's husband, Washington D.C. truth teller, and one of my personal heroes. Valerie was outed by the Bush Administration because Mr. Wilson had the courage and moral integrity to step forward and say that the Bush Administration was blantantly lying in its claims that Iraq sought to procure yellow cake uranium from Niger in an attempt to create WMDs. Mr. Wilson makes an interesting comment on blogs:

I think that in the absence of a responsible national media, the blogs play an important role in trying to shed light on various issues, including the bona fides of so-called White House correspondents as well as tackling questions overlooked or ignored by the national journalists. I also believe that the nature of the profession has changed to the detriment of good investigative journalism. No longer is there a quest for the truth so much as there is this apparent need to present both sides of an issue even if one is nothing but lies and distortions. Giving the same value to fiction as to fact in the interest of so-called fairness is to mislead the American people and the press has become party to that.

and there is another interesting comment to Susan G's interview:

I hope everyone realizes what we're seeing here. This, I believe, is the birth of an entirely new kind of media and journalism: "blognews?" We are witnessing the death by entropy, cronyism, and sheer cowardice of the mainstream media, to be replaced by a diffuse, decentralized set of independent (and yes, often quite partisan) blogs, news sites, investigators, and rank amateurs with little more than curiosity and an Internet connection.
The vast majority of TV and press news outlets are rapidly sinking into irrelevance. How long before all of them are regarded by the majority in the same way we look at Faux News?

We ARE the media, by God and by golly. Hell, burgeoning blog-broken stories like the 2004 voter fraud covered by BradBlog, Fairness By Beckerman, and others, and now GannonGate, may end up being studied in whatever replaces traditional journalism schools.

Thanks to Susan G at the DailyKos for perservering. And thank god that everyone can still have a voice in this country.

There is this guy I run into occaisionally who is really sweet, but THE MOST BORING person imaginable. He came to New York from some bland, midwestern town, and from what I can tell, has just existed here for a number of years. He reminds me of a slacker, in the worst possible sense. He slacks because he has nothing to do in his life except show up for work, go home, and occaisionally go out.

In passing conversation, I have yet to find any discernable interests of his. He either hides them cleverly or he has none. He showed some interest in his hometown baseball team once and sports in general. Of course he was engrossed in the Super Bowl. You're practically not an American Alpha Male if you don't at least feign some interest in the high holiest of sporting events. It seems as if he were subconsciously trying to make sure he's checked off all of the things he is supposed to be thinking about in accordance with some prescribed formula of interest attributed to the stereo-typical American Male.

Yet, he's the nicest guy ever. And he'll bore you to tears.

I don't understand how you could move to New York City and be bored? I don't understand how you could live in this city and be devoid of passion? Why not move to Peoria, or Dallas, or Tallahassee, or Portland OR.? There is so much that happens in New York on a daily basis; surely something could light a spark in this guy.

It boggles my mind.

I don't mean to sound like an NYC elitist snob. NYC one of the most vibrant cities that I've lived in so far but definitely not the easiest. I don't understand why you would make the effort to live here--because believe me, NYC doesn't exactly invite you in to stay. To visit sure, but to stay. . .well, staying takes a bit of tenacity. And that tenacity is rewarded by the city. The city provides more outlets for creativity, for debate, for emotion, for passion than I've seen in other cities I've lived in. To not take advantage of those rewards seems silly. Go live someplace where it's not so hard to get by.

Jet Brown and I used to talk about San Francisco. He used to tell me "This city tells you to FUCK OFF in so many ways." Jet Brown has tenacity. He reaps SF's rewards daily.

SF told me to fuck off. So far I'm not sure how NYC and I are doing. We've been going steady for awhile but I'm not ready to get engaged just yet.

not Bill Gates. THE GATES! The Gates are being unfurled in Central Park this weekend. I'm trying to figure out when will be a good time to get my booty up there. I'd love to go during the week sometime so that I could go on the roof of the Met and take a look at it from a viewpoint higher than ground level. Perhaps I'll have to take a personal day.

Wie geht es, Gates?

sometimes I get an ass kicker of a programming task that threatens to do me in.

I have just emerged from a battle royale with a bunch of programming acronyms I'm too tired to list. Suffice to say, I have emerged from the battle, bloodied and battered yet ultimately victorious.

So now all my datafeeds which have been broken for two days are now running.

pfft. ptewy.

mood ring = Golden Yellow

9/11 Report Cites Many Warnings About Hijackings
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
NY Times

The report takes the F.A.A. to task for failing to pursue domestic security measures that could conceivably have altered the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/politics/10terror.html?th


and this not just in. . .

an excerpt from Condoleeza Rice's report to the 9/11 commission:

"Yet, as your hearings have shown, there was no silver bullet that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks. In hindsight, if anything might have helped stop 9/11, it would have been better information about threats inside the United States, something made difficult by structural and legal impediments that prevented the collection and sharing of information by our law enforcement and intelligence agencies."

AND

"And I said, at one point, that this was a historical memo, that it was -- it was not based on new threat information. And I said, "No one could have imagined them taking a plane, slamming it into the Pentagon" -- I'm paraphrasing now -- "into the World Trade Center, using planes as a missile."

As I said to you in the private session, I probably should have said, "I could not have imagined," because within two days, people started to come to me and say, "Oh, but there were these reports in 1998 and 1999. The intelligence community did look at information about this."

To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Chairman, this kind of analysis about the use of airplanes as weapons actually was never briefed to us.

I cannot tell you that there might not have been a report here or a report there that reached somebody in our midst."

If no one KNEW or no one had BEEN BRIEFED, then how is it that the FAA is being taken to task for information that hadn't even been communicated at the highest levels of government. It's just finger-pointing and diversion.

Mood ring today: BLACK.

blech! Wendy Pepper won the freaking challenge this week!! At the expense of poor Austin. gah!!! Is there no justice?? Is nothing sacred?? I'd almost be devasted except that my little friend Jay made it in. And of course, the ever lasting Kara Saun.

Bets anyone? ooooooh! and next week everyone comes back to stick it to the Pepper. HooRAH!

I don't see the Pepper doing anything fantasic after this show. But I DO see people like Austin, Kevin, Nora, and Robert Plotkin making names fro themselves.

this guy that is teaching this class is (DOH he's walking around. minimize minimize!!) Anyway, I'm keeping a blog of my javascript notes. Right now we're watching him stuggle with something really boring and he won't get off it. He's definitely more of a programmer than a teacher. He's all over the place. If I didn't already have experience with this, he would have lost me. I'm trying hard to stay focused here. This is the bad thing that I've had to deal with all my life in school. He's explaining elementary concepts so I tune out. And then he'll slip something in that's not elementary and I won't be paying attention (like right now.)

Plus he told me I couldn't answer anymore questions. Other people need to participate.


I am tuning out now. . . .just give me the assigments for the quarter and I will have them done in 2 weeks. He seems to be the type that wouldn't be down with that. Now I remember why I didn't like high school. I took a programming class in 1984. I raced ahead of the class, did all the assignments, all the extra credit and was about 3 weeks in front of the class. I went to the teacher and asked him for more stuff to learn. Not only did he tell me I was out of luck, he couldn't even point me in a direction where I could turn to learn more on my own.

So I spent 3 weeks in the photo lab dark room waiting for the rest of the people to catch up.

gotta go pay attention now.

1.) I am downloading firefox tomorrow.

2.) Here I am, in class (Javascript), blogging.

Have browser, will blog.

In Javascript class we will be learning about the DOM for both IE and Netscape/Mozilla.
We'll also learn javascript basics(variables, arrays, functions, etc.) The other thing we'll be doing is screwing around with DHTML. Hopefully this will help me in my web development career. I should have picked this up long ago but I just never had to.

Here we go.

I win!

Yeah boyeeeeeeeee!

I got my stoopid stored procedure working. Sweeeeet.

soon I will be a SQL swami guru.

so the rumor on the internets is that Kara Saun is getting booted from Project Runway. This is unsubstantiated PEOPLE.

Isn't it?

And if it were true, it would be a TRAVESTY.


*Sob* Oh god, say it isn't so.

1.) the first thing out of your mouth should be something about how much you hate your current situation

2.) the second thing out of your mouth should be something about how your current employers aren't paying you enough

3.) the third thing out of your mouth should be how your current employers put restrictions on you, forcing you to do shoddy work.

3 strikes. You're out.

We had to interview a prospective programmer yesterday and all hit all three points. I just kept thinking to myself, "here are things NOT TO DO in a job interview." I asked the guy what he envisioned it being like working at an eCommerce company. He said something lame like, "I'd look forward to being able to kick back and relax."

I don't care if you're interviewing for the sleep institute, that's just something that you don't say unless you want to portray yourself as a lazy ass.

I vetoed him. Too complain-y. And I should know. I told my boss that kind of thing follows the person wherever they go.

I'm sarcastic and sometimes negative but I actually try to keep a positive attitude about the work I do. I'm pretty proud of the work I do, actually. Having someone around who is constantly bitching can be a real buzzkill.

Mini Bruce rocks my world.

let me once again mention Venture Brothers. They fucking rock. I think this cartoon has been out for awhile but I've just started catching it recently on Adult Swim, saturday nights. This thing is great. It's like a mutant Johnny Quest rip-off and funny as fuck.


How can you go wrong with characters like these:


Dr. Venture: A disgruntled and embittered super scientist, Dr. Venture is at best a laissez-faire father.

Hank Venture: Hank's outfit resembles that of Fred from Scooby Doo. Any other resemblances are purely coincidental.

Dean Venture: Dean. What's the story on this kid?

Brock Samson: Brock is hellbent on exercising his license to kill.

The Monarch: Perhaps my favorite character, the monarch is an insecure super villian who is the self proclaimed arch nemesis of Dr. Venture. His evil plans are often ill conceived.

Dr. Girlfriend: Dr. Girlfriend has a voice like Harvey Fierstein. He/she is the steadfast girlfriend of the Monarch.

And episodes like these??? These are great!
The Terrible Secret of Turtle Bay
Everyone at the Venture compound is off to NYC so that Dr. Venture can introduce his Ooo-ray at the United Nations. Oh, and Hank and Dean meet a prostitute.

Dia de los Dangerous
When the Venture family visits Tijuana for a lecture Dr. Venture is giving at the (community) university of Mexico, the dastardly Monarch weeves a cocoon of villiany that leaves the Venture Brothers trapped in his clutches, Dr. Venture kidney-less and Brock...dead? If only Dr. Venture would return his calls.

Midlife Chrysalis
The Monarch sends Dr. Girlfriend undercover to seduce Dr. Venture in order to inject him with a body-altering serum. Meanwhile, Brock is deeply depressed to learn his secret agent license to kill has expired, but the boys are hellbent on helping him cram for his government exam.


The magic eightball says "ALL SIGNS POINT TO YES" for Venture Brothers.

listen up you Project Runway junkies. . .somebody has spilled the beans. Well, they spilled a couple beans. No spoilers here BUT. *dramatic pause* ha HA! There are pictures out on the internets which preview a little bit of the Project Runway show at Olympus Fashion week. Someone got lucky and scored tix to the show and wrote a little piece on it.

Lucky.

Oh ps. during the course of posting this post, the article I reference was moved to the archives so if you want to read it you have to fill out the website's crappy registration form. Do what I do. fake it up. I apologize if I sent anyone on a wild link chase. If I did, Yahoo has a write up too.

sp coming along okay. But even more interesting than that little tidbit. . .My friend Craig Chesler has got a solo accoustic gig on Thursday (2/10) @ Sidewalk.
here's the scooper, party-poopers:

Craig Chesler
solo acoustic performance

Thursday, February 10, 2005
10:00pm SHARP!

Sidewalk
94 Avenue A (at 6th Street)
New York City

go out and support your local lyricist. If I show up, I'll buy you a beer.

I'm still struggling with this stoopid SQL stored procedure. For those of you that are used to cranking these things out, feel free to skip this entry.

Ugh. I'm equating this thing with my statistics homework. I know how to do it. It makes sense to me. I can read up on it. It's all logical. But, when it comes to executing, I'd rather do a number of other things. File my nails, stare out the window, read about the last 11 episodes of the Amazing Race, repeatedly check my emails, watch a datafeed file being written (multiple refreshs show the file size increasing--yeah, exciting.)

There is a great cartoon from Canada called Getting Started. I saw it at an animation festival back in the mid eighties. In it, the protagonist is supposed to be practicing the piano for an upcoming recital. It just goes through all the crazy outlandish things that he does INSTEAD of practicing. I think it was put out through the National Film Board of Canada, whose support for animators was unsurpassed at the time the cartoon was released.

Enough procrastination. Time to get rockin'.

I was sent this email today and it made me crack up. Whoever wrote it definitely knew what they were talking about.

IF YOU WERE A LITTLE GIRL IN THE 70'S...
You wore a rainbow shirt that was half-sleeves, and the rainbow went up one sleeve, across your chest,and down the other. That would be me.

You made baby chocolate cakes in your Easy Bake Oven and washed them down with snow cones from your Snoopy Snow Cone Machine. That would be me also.

You had that Fisher Price Doctor's Kit with a stethoscope that actually worked. Not me but I did have almost every little peoples establishment known to man, including the houseboat. Fun in the tub.

You owned a bicycle with a bananaseat and a plastic basket with flowers on it. Si.

You learned to skate with actual skates (not roller blades) that had metal wheels. I learned on real skates at Skate King, where I attended All Day Skate from noon to 5pm every Saturday that I could get someone in my family to cough up the $5 dollar admission cost.

You thought Gopher from Love Boat was cute (admit it!) I still do.

Your Holly Hobbie sleeping bag was your most prized possession. I actually collected all the HH rag dolls. They are still in the attic at my grandmother's house.
You had either a "bowl cut" or! "pixie," not to mention the "Dorothy Hamil" because your Mom was sick of braiding your hair. People sometimes thought you were a boy. I was constantly mistaken for a boy. And I got the Dorothy Hamil cut because I ended up with head lice. See photo.

You wore a poncho, gauchos, and knickers. Again, see photo.

You begged Santa for the electronic game, Simon. Got it.

You spent hours in your backyard on your metal swing set with the trapeze. The swing set tipped over at least once. That would be me.

You had a pair of Doctor Scholl's sandals (the ones with hard sole & the buckle). You also had a pair of salt-water sandals. Actually I had Famolares, the big wavy soled shoe.

You wanted to be Laura Ingalls Wilder really bad; you despised Nellie Olson! I read the entire LIWilder series. After that though, it was Narnia all the way. I wanted to live there.

Your hairstyle was described as having "wings" or "feathers" and you kept it "pretty" with the comb you kept in your back pocket. It still looks like that, unfortunately.

YOU had Star Wars action figures, too! No doy.

It was a big event in your household each year when the "Wizard of Oz" would come on TV. Your mom would break out the popcorn and sleeping bags! Yeah but. . .I couldn't watch the part where the witch melted until I was like 9. I had to close my eyes because it scared the bejeezus outta me.

You often asked your Magic-8 ball the question: "Who will I marry.Shaun Cassidy, Leif Garrett, or Rick Springfield?" Never asked the magic 8 ball that. Anyway, I was a Mark Hamill fan. And I had a crush on Steve Martin. How's that for strange.

You completely wore out your Grease, Saturday Night Fever, and Fame soundtrack record album. I wanted to sing like Yvonne Elliman ("If I can't have you, I don't want nobody baby. If I can't have you, oh ho uh oh".

You made Shrinky-Dinks and put iron-on kittens on your t-shirts! Shrinky dinks stunk like burning toxic plastic. And I ironed on Holly Hobby.

You used to tape record songs off the radio by holding your portable tape player up to the speaker. high tech krix.

You couldn't wait to get the free animal poster that came when you ordered books from the Weekly Reader book club. Double score if it was a teddy bear dressed in clothing. Who cared about the poster? I just wanted the books.

You learned everything you needed to know about girl issues from Judy Blume books. Sigh. That would be me.

You had a Big Wheel with a brake on the side, and a Sit-n-Spin.

You had subscriptions to Dynamite and Tiger Beat. yep.

You spent all your allowance on stickers for your sticker album! affirmative.

Oh boy. Memory lane. How tedious!

Saturday night I fell asleep on the sofa watching Venture Brothers on Cartoon Network (very hilarious by the way.) I woke up around 3am and crawled to my bed. I was foiled in my attempt to go back to sleep by a cacophony of conversation coming from the ssidewalk, beneath my bedroom window. The squabble was between two women and a guy and it sounded like a barnyard chicken coop. Here's a little bit of what I overheard:

hen 1: "cluck. CLUCK cluck CLUCK cluck CLUCK!"

hen 2: "cluck CLUCK??!! cluck CLUCK cluck CLUCK CLUCK cluck!"

hen 1: "cluckcluckcluckcluckcluckcluckcluckcluckcluck. CLUCK. CLUCK. CLUCK."

rooster: "brrrrrrrrak bok bok. BOK!"

hens 1 and 2: "bokbokbokbokbokbok BOK bok bok!!! BOK! BOK! Ba-kACK!"

I have no idea what the argument was about. I really wanted a bucket of water so that I could open my window and douse them with it so that maybe they would shut their beaks or go back inside the coop.

BOK!

I wasn't going to rest until I found that crazy Hossenfeffer cartoon title.
It is called Shishkabugs and it is also missing from both collections.

Now I can go do my statistics homework and whatever else it was that got put on hold while I obsessively delved into the Warner Bros. cartoon catalog.

Whew. time to rest and have a bit to eat. Maybe I'm up for Hossenfeffer.

I have to get this today, without fail:
Looney Tunes - Golden Collection Vol. 1


This has classic Looney Tunes and MOST of my faves like:
Rabbit Seasoning
Bully for Bugs
Water, Water Every Hare
Rabbit of Seville
Duck Amuck
Scaredy Cat
The Scarlet Pumpernickel
Wearing of the Grin

Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century
Feed the Kitty
Devil May Hare
Bugs and Thugs

Volume Two is out also!!!!


Broomstick Bunny
What's Opera Doc
Three Little Bops
One Froggy Evening


Missing from both:
Knighty Knight Bugs. . ."Dragons is so stupid."
Ali Baba Bunny -- "Uh. . .Open Septugenarian??"
8 Ball Bunny. . ."HOBOKEN!?!?!?!?!"
Beanstalk Bunny
Duck, Rabbit, Duck!
Robin Hood Daffy -- "Friar . . .Duck."
From A to Zzzzzz -- starring Ralph Phillips, the kid with the overactive imagination.

And there are two more that I don't know the titles of.
The one where the king is shouting, "Cook! Where's my Hossenfeffer!!??" and Yosemite Sam runs around trying to catch Bugs Bunny because rabbit is the key ingredient of Hossenfeffer.

And another with this old confederate guy who had a bulldog named Belevedere. All I remember was that Belevedere seemed to be caught in the middle of something. "Oh Belevedeah!! Come heah boy!"

Please, if there is anyone out there in the blogoshere who knows what the titles of the last two cartoons are, please leave a comment or email me. Or, if you know of a publication that lists all the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoons, like a catalog, send along the title or ISBN number. This is one of those geeky type things I would like to have at my fingertips.

If I enter the word Hossenfeffer in google, I get quite a few people who quoted the line, but no links to the actual cartoon. But, lo and behold, I typed in "Oh Belevedere" and I not only got the cartoon's title "Dog Gone South", but I also got a link to a page with sound bytes. "Ahhhhh. Magnoliahs!"

today for the first time in months, I was able to move a signifigant chunk of money into SAVINGS!!!!!!!

it's about fucking time!!! I guess that's what not going out five nights a week will do for you.

What a relief to not have to live paycheck to paycheck. Now, to buy my neices and nephews their x-mas presents. . .

Copy Gold Leader.

Trying very hard to focus on one thing at a time this morning but the A.D.D. is kicking in.

I had a little Edison adventure last night. For some reason the road coming into this office complex was shut down (accident or something.) Probably some X-File and they're calling it an accident . . . .hmmmmmmm. sure.
No, anyway, it was really an accident and no cars could get to me; not no busses, not no taxi cabs, not no nothin'.

So at about 8:30 last night after chain smoking on a sidewalkless street, flinching from semi trucks and fedex vans, I finally walked to the Sheraton, got me a couple glasses of wine, a big fat juicy burger and a king size bed. I figured, why not turn a night that was rapidly turning to shit, into a pleasant, albeit a little pricey, experience. So I did. I did my statistics reading, watched porn, woke up refreshed, had breakfast, came to work--late as usual. Hey, just because I'm a block away doesn't mean I'm going to break with tradition.

Besides. . .I worked late. nyah.

so if Bush wants to change it to privatized accounts where I invest my social security tax dollars for my individual retirement fund instead of the current pay-as-you go system, then . . . why can I not just elect to NOT PAY that portion of my taxes, keep the money and invest how I see fit. I don't particularly trust the stock market and don't believe that the president can safely guarantee that the market will exhibit "performance exceeding benefits of the current system". No one can.

Talk to heavy investors who were sunk into the market prior to the Microsoft ruling of April 2001 and coincidental free-fall of the market. Have they made back everything they've lost? I doubt it. The DJIA as I write this is at 10,566.94 -29.85 (0.28%). I guess it's close to its high point on 01/14/2000 @ 11908.5 (numbers courtesy of Yahoo Finance/CSI--yahoo's data provider.) But the NASDAQ has never come close to its high back in the day (high of 5039.35 on 3/10/2000--same sources as above.) The NASDAQ Composite Index today is at 2052.56 -22.50(1.08%); below where it was solidly in 1999--6 years ago.

So hmmmmm. what does all this gobbledy-gook mean. Do you want your social security tax dollars to be invested in this?
(nasdaq over five years)


or how about this:


or this?


The Bush Administration says it will have safeguards in place within this new system that will prevent people from squandering their $$$$ on risky stocks. So we'll all get a list of government approved stocks? We'll all have our own personal investment banker? Christ, I can barely manage to get a good return on my "managed funds." And I have an okay handle on this stuff. Not great, but not entirely clueless. There are going to be people out there that won't be able to get their heads around this stuff no matter how hard they try. There are going to be a lot of people who will need help and advice on how to invest. Will the governement provide the financial equivalent of the public defender? Don't get me started on the trillions of dollars of debt to be incurred during the switchover.

I'm not saying the current system is great. I just have questions, that's all. I'd like to have these and other questions answered before I can embrace this change. And I'm not sure I like the combination of my tax dollars X governement X stock market.

I'm still going off about Wendy Pepper but that's only because I haven't made my way to the State of the Union Address. I'm trying to keep my headache at bay. I keep seeing the words "social security" peppered through my NYTimes daily email and in the other news notifications I receive. nnnnnngggggnhhhhhh.

On the way to Seattle I read a good article in Newsweek about the current state of social security. More on this later. . . My gut tends to not agree with George Bush's solution but before I can truly take a harsh stand on this, I needs me some stats and facts and junk.

And as I sign out of this post, with my fist waving in the air, and my scowling face looking to the sky, I say this: "CURSE YOU PEPPER! If you foil the designs of Jay or Kara Saun or even Austin for that matter. . . you'll RUE THE DAY!!!!! CURSE YOU PEPPER!!!! I'm coming for you!!!!!!"

(okay. no. not really. that's all sarcastic. I hate that I feel I have to put that there. but you never know how some peeps will take things.)

CURSE YOU BUSH!!! GAR!!!!

bah!

I can't believe Wendy Pepper didn't get eliminated. Feh!

so that last post with the puppy was pretty silly. Might as well have been a kitten, hanging from a branch with "Hang in there baby!" printed across the bottom. Ugh. Time for bed.

Wendy Pepper. pffffft! raspberries.

I love you little puppy.

HEY! STOP CHEWING ON MY BOOTS!

eeeuuuuuuwwwww.

I admit it. I have to get a new pair of snow boots. The skechers that have served me well for the last two winters (hey, fashion? it's snowing babe. Take off the fucking stilettos. I'm so sure.)

yeah. so. my boots. they stink. As in, they're becoming extremely odiferous. I need new ones because no charcoal odor-eater is going to cancel this stench out.

I like my boots but I don't want to be stomping around Manhattan like a big stinkfoot.

I'M GOING TO MISS PROJECT RUNWAY TONIGHT!!!

oh the agony.

Maybe it runs again. . .you know how cable runs their circuit of shows and then re-runs them. I used to think it was because of a lack of programming content but now I realize, it's really just for my consumer convenience. How thoughtful.

oh c'mon! get real. It's because networks are too cheap and they know they have a dip like me who tunes out and becomes functionally retarded while laying on my couch, drooling, half asleep, remote falling out of my limp hand. . .WHA?? Oh yeah, T.V. is on. What's on? Again? Oh good, this is the part I fell asleep in two hours ago. Glad I didn't miss anything. Besides a real life.

I am glad that they're re-running it though.
Wendy Pepper. You are going DOWN.

I used the word ambivalence yesterday only after I went to the dictionary and looked up it's meaning. I always thought if you were ambivalent about something that you were indifferent or dejected but after reading the dictionary entry I see that was a false assumption. Anyway, I ended up choosing the word despondency because that's what I really meant when I was thinking of ambivalence in the first place. Political despondency. Political ambivalence. Two entirely different things.


am·biv·a·lence ( P ) Pronunciation Key (m-bv-lns)
n.
1.)The coexistence of opposing attitudes or feelings, such as love and hate, toward a person, object, or idea.
2.)Uncertainty or indecisiveness as to which course to follow.

non·cha·lance ( P ) Pronunciation Key (nnsh-läns)
n.
1.) the trait of remaining calm and seeming not to care; a casual lack of concern [syn: unconcern, indifference]

de·spon·den·cy ( P ) Pronunciation Key (d-spndn-s)
n.
Depression of spirits from loss of hope, confidence, or courage; dejection.

Dictionary.com, my best friend

wish mom happy birthday

draw site map/wire frame of Cole's site

download Firefox browser

meet Katherine to discuss Cole's site

kick some ass

Firefox. Reminds me of Fox Force Five.

so hard not to write about work. Especially when I'm listening to . . .. eeeerrrrrrWHWEHEGEWJEASHEANBDKAJBHDJKADHKJAHDHADHA somebody talk sh** blah blah blah about blah blah blah who blah blah blah out of a jam. blah blah blah. Again, I just don't think that's very fair or ethical to attack blah blah blah because . . .well, whatever. And how embarrassing. blah blah blah . . .it just makes the talkers look bad.


nuff said.

well, I was on my secret boyfriend OddTodd's website and he has some crrrrrazy letters!

There is a series of letters he has received from on Mr. Deng from Suzhou, China. The letters are hysterical and worth a read.

Also you can read about a most private moment that he, like other bloggers before him, felt compelled to share with everyone in the world. Even though I could not relate exactly, I felt his pain (sort of.) And laughed my ass off.

gotsta go.

There are a lot of them, let me tell you. Here's the Order of Skull and Bones Whitepaper which provides:

. . . a glimpse into the most powerful organization in America--the Order of Skull & Bones. This secret fraternity is based at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where many of the leading members of the U.S. government and the American intelligence community received their formal education. The Order, as it is referred to by its members, is a bastion of White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) culture, which is at the core of the American 20th century outlook.

Hmmmmmmm. I feel like I watch too many movies.

But you know, looking at something like this or watching Fahreinheit 911 or simply discussing some of the taboo topics that are now whispered on the internet like 'did our government help orchestrate September 11th' makes me wonder if we'll ever know the truth about what goes on behind the government's closed doors. Gives new meaning to "Don't Ask. Don't Tell." Maybe within the most ridiculous conspiracy theories, there is a subtle grain of truth. I don't know.

By the way, if I disappear tomorrow, please note, I didn't have plans to go anywhere besides work. Look for me on the list of "non-enemy combatants." BTW, Human Rights Watch has a page on U.S. Counterterrorism and Human Rights available for your perusal.

All of this makes me sound like a freak for spouting about this stuff. But I'm not the only person who is thinking about it. I know this.

I once read an interview with the Canadian author Margaret Atwood in Bloomsbury Review (Sept/Oct 94). In it, she talked about why she believed conspiracy theories are so much more popular in the U.S. than in Canada. I'm going to butcher this as I try to remember what she said because I read it so long ago. She said something to the effect that citizens of the USA get a little overwhelmed because the population is so huge, it's hard for them to feel like their voice makes a dent in larger realms, specifically government. Canadians on the other hand, feel like big fish in their small pond because their population is dramatically smaller than that of the US. They feel like they can have an impact on policy and government and don't carry the same political despondency that Americans bear. I'd like to add that when citizens feel like they have no place or means of excercising their voices within the system, they tend fixate on how the system works without them; what secrets and political underpinnings make the system twitch and moan. Because of the detachment from the political process, Americans tend to feel non-participatory and have a vague understanding of how the political process works. It's this vagueness combined with the opacity we see from our leaders that fosters the ambivalence toward the ever present conspiracy theory.

Yes, I do feel a little lost in the governmental process and I do doubt the party line. I'm not ready to cast my vote yet as to whether any of these theories floating around the internet are valid but I think the questions ARE valid. And the right to question hasn't been stripped away yet, has it?

I am addicted to Project Runway. How completely lame is that? But seriously. I am really addicted to it. Is it Wednesday yet?

I'm betting that Wendy Pepper gets thrown out on her ass this week (keep fingers crossed.) She's the Amarosa of the fashion world. Too manipulative.

My predictions for the three finalists:
Kara Saun
Austin Scarlett
Jay

I suppose Robert could stumble into it somehow, but that's only if one of the other designers is courageous enough to take a risk and fails. Robert has been consistently mediocre. He executes his designs well but in the way he is presented in the show, he appears to be muddling through. Since "REALITY TELEVISION" is not really reality, I can only base my impressions on what I see. So if you're Robert Plotkin and you are surfing the web and you happen to come across this post, don't take it personally. I liked your suit for the "Envy" challenge.

I would be pleased if Jay or Kara Saun won. (*sigh* I have no life.)

Where is the Project Runway discussion boards. . .I need to discuss!!!

P.S. This just in:

In what's likely the death knell for "Trading Spaces," TLC has announced its given perpetually perky hostess Paige Davis the boot in order to pursue a "new creative direction," specifically a "host-less" format. "Paige helped make 'Trading Spaces' a great success for the network and we wish her the best of luck in her future endeavors," the network said in a statement. Davis' final episode will air in March.

I started writing a post about conspiracy theories that is turning into its own dissertation. So I'll start something different. . .a couple of bullet points for the day.

What we've learned from this site

Ligers exist

Monkeys are funny

Krixfort is neurotic

What I've learned from this site

must test all sites I build in Firefox

dissing co-workers on the net can be hazardous to your health

not every detail of my life is interesting

blogs are more than the sum of their parts