fa fa / goodbye 20th century
2000.12.29 18.31
Need to get ready for a surprise party for my pal Nate. He has joined the aforementioned Big Computer Company, or rather he will at the end of January. It is his birthday tonight. I have 60 minutes to get ready and drive to Sugarland to find the place. No problem. Maybe.
I have spent the first part of this evening thinking about donating blood tomorrow at the Tinseltown 290 movie theater. My blood type is O Negative (herein "0-") and it is the perfect blood to donate because anyone can accept that type. The downside? I can only accept O- blood. No A-. No A+. No B-. No B+. No O+. No AB+. No AB-. That's not a good thing. It's for this reason that I am a very defensive driver and will do whatever necessary to avoid getting mangled. Two lane asphault roads? I avoid them. Turning right without stopping first? Never. Take a bullet for the president? Not me! Let him fend for himself. He's a Texan. He should be packing. I wonder if there is a policy against the president carrying his own gun? True, he has secret service agents ready to counteract any possible danger, but it could't hurt, could it? Maybe a nice laser pistol. You know, like the kind they got off that spaceship in Roswell, New Mexico back in the 50's.
Not sure where I am going to spend New Year's. Possibly #'s. There is champagne and it is usually very pleasant (they actually clean and decorate). Last year they had a money drop from hundreds of balloons in the ceiling. About 10 minutes to midnight, I noticed there were already several hundred balloons on the floor (none of which had any money in them). This would not do. I borrowed two cigarettes, lit them, and started popping balloons as fast as I could. After 4 minutes of serious puffing and popping, I eventually destroyed all remaining balloons. When the stroke of midnight fell, I made plenty of money. I think I actually made a $25 profit over what I'd already paid for that evening in door fees and drinks. That rocked. However, if I go this year I am bringing a box full of needles.
|
| In a bold move, the FDA approved the use of caffeine in dog food. Dog owner Sally Starks was among the first to buy some for Nessa, her poodle. When asked about the change in her pet's demeaner, Ms. Starks said, "This is great! Nessa can walk three miles in two minutes now. Almost makes me want to eat some of that stuff." |
i dreamt that i was vapor
2000.12.28 0.51
Woke up at 6:50 AM this morning. How? Not because of my two alarm clocks. I used the Task Scheduler on my computer to start playing MP3s at 6:30. I started off with the acoustic piano verison of Gary Numan's Down In The Park. That version of the song is my current favorite. At 6:40 it's Blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear The Reaper. I love what they do in that song, but seriously, I've got to have more cow bell! At 6:50 it is Marilyn Manson's take on Down In The Park. It gets very loud at this point, so if I'm not already awake, this will push me over the edge. Of course my other two alarm clocks are making feeble attempts to rouse me but they usually fail. This will likely work for a few weeks. I almost bought an alarm clock for the deaf a few years ago, but figured I could annoy myself with everyday appliances and save the money. The 'strong bed shaker' feature is the really attractive feature. There are also alarms that shine a really bright light in your face, but since I have an enormous down comforter, that would probably not affect me. I have also used my VCR to start recording at a certain time in the morning which causes the stereo to start blasting whatever is on the TV at the same time. That never worked, however, as I'd always throw a shoe at the stereo and that would be it. No snoozebar on your VCR. I've toyed with the idea of having something dangerous start in the kitchen (like cooking a meal on the stove automatically), but I figured I would sleep through the fire. I considered sleeping in my car, completely dressed and ready to go. All I would have to do was wake up and start driving. Bzzzt. Never worked. I always wanted to take a nap 'for the road' before leaving. A great alternative is actually sleeping AT YOUR OFFICE. That rocks if you have the space. When I was working at The Big Computer Company we had a 'Sleep Chamber' area for this type of activity. It was great. I have asked that we get bunk beds for our new office, which would be great, but my dog wouldn't be very happy if I didn't show up to feed him once in a while. You never can win.Wake me when it's over.
bulk
2000.12.27 0.20
Went to Wal-Mart. Need light bulbs. Picked up one 4-pack of bulbs. Looked at price. 96 cents. Grabbed seven more packs. Not sure why I only buy them four at a time. Toy department was obliterated. Bought two more spray cans of metallic black paint. Bought lots of dog food. This time the cashier did not scan each of them. I think the giant scary cashier lady from last month had 'special' instructions about how she should scan in multiple items. I can see the manager saying, "Man, she's a special lady and special ladies need special instructions." Okay, so that's not funny. Work with me, it's late and I am dreading going into work tomorrow (holidays rock).Saw What Women Want last night. Very funny movie. Not sure if I liked the last three minutes, but still well worth my time. Castaway was also a very good film. The third act (the last 25 minutes) left me feeling sad. Wondering how I can get in on those test audiences that they preview the movies to before deciding if they should change the ending. They must have been on a mental holiday to let these slip by. I will give everyone a month to watch these movies before I detail how I think they should have ended. Going to buy a Digital-8 camera and start making movies again. Watch out.
Have to go to Harris County Precinct 5 courthouse tomorrow to drop off proof of defensive driving. Dreading that even more now that I think about it. So many tickets. So little time. My next date with the law is January 5, 2001. Houston Police Department. 70 in a 60. I've plead not guilty and plan to use the Jedi Mind Trick to the best of my advantage. Need to get that dismissed because I took deferred adjudication for the 30 in a 20 school zone dealio a few weeks ago. Bleah. I will master this one day. Considering trading in the Mitsubishi Eclipse Turbo for another DeLorean to use as a daily driver. Probably won't do it since it is only a two-seater and has minimal trunk space (plus I'd miss the convertible top). [sigh].
Taught my dog how to close a door and turn on a heater. Next week he's getting his learner's permit.
oops, i did it again
2000.12.25 4.37
Presents wrapped. Goofing off almost complete. I am freaking out a bit from a mistake I made a few hours ago while connected to my machine at the office. I copied the files down that I needed. The phone rang. I answered. Talking ensued. Half an hour later I went back to my desk. I got an email from a photographer dude I have known for years named Dave Thompson. I clicked on the link he'd mailed me and checked out his site. He sells stock glamour photography, as well as doing aviation photography extensively in Austin. So, I'm looking at his site of girlies when I suddenly realize I am still connected to the network at the office where the Firewall Gestapo are watching my every move. Crap. I disconnect. I break a minor sweat. Then I figure, what the hell, I'm not at work. It's not business hours. It's Christmas. What could happen? Hmmm. Plotting move to Mexico.Put up the pictures from Numbers on Friday. Check 'em.
castaway
2000.12.24 2.12
Writing this on my wireless email device while sitting in a line to see Castaway. First in line. Been here for 30 minutes and still have 60 to go. Back hurts. Legs going numb. But I am still first, nyah nyah. Was driving car to gas station and decided to just continue on to the theater to catch the show. Some old dude is standing by the auditorium door of the 8:20 show and eying us like we are freaks. I was alone for the first 20 minutes and now 50 people are behind me. From this vantage point it is easy to people watch. Some older high school guys are buying those 25 cent gumballs from the machine that has that spiral little gumball slide in it. Who is the freak now?Last night went to Numbers and the crowd was larger than usual. Rich, barkeep of the overlook (AKA upstairs) made me two tasty Bloody Mary cocktails that were awesome. After the second one I had to switch to coca cola to offset the spice. The spice must flow. And it did. Brought my new Sony CyberShot cam with me and took lotsa artsy cool photos. Will post them soon. Cam has a 64 MB memory stick and, through no coincidence, my new computer has a memory stick port. Wish I'd brought the cam here to the theater to document the heavy freak traffic. After Numbers went to the mexican place whose name I forget off Montrose/Studemont. I had some very well cooked Carne Asada (in an effort to avoid further trips to the toilet while thinking about Michael Jackson). Drove home very sober at speeds ranging from 65 to 100 MPH (I hate to wait). Bed was nice and warm and comfy. Took a risk cleaning my enormous comforter in my washer/dryer a few days ago but the results were awesome. It's big, soft and warm. Like that wampa in Empire Strikes Back... You know, the one that Han Solo slices open with Luke's lightsaber to keep Luke warm? Only... my comforter smells like Snuggle fabric softner and there is no snow or Empire to mention.
sick II
2000.12.22 20.47
Terrible week. Ate nice juicy hamburger at Beck's Prime on Monday night. Woke up feeling funky on Tuesday morning. Tried to get ready but felt a raging fever coming on. Wasn't hungry. Stomach felt... full. Strange. Showered. Shaved. Attempted to find clean clothes. Then the pain began. Severe. Wrenching. Aching. Wanted to die. Laid down on bed with full on fever. Sent email to my boss to say I was probably going to be dead shortly. Woke up in sweat and still feeling terrible. About 5 P.M. I couldn't take it any longer and drank a giant heaping glass of water. Went to bathroom. Waited. Waited more. Tapped foot. Looked at watch. Thought about Michael Jackson's face. Threw up. Ralphed. Yakked. Chucked. It was wonderful! Still felt weird. Tried to sleep again but couldn't. Stomach felt like it was harboring my missing cell phone. Wednesday came and went. Managed to get to work late in the day. Feeling nauseous and dizzy from minute to minute. Decided to buy a desktop computer once and for all to replace my crappy Presario from 1993. Nice computer. Pretty. It is warm against my face. Thursday came and I made it to work again, albeit late. My track record for arriving by 9 A.M. is shot. Made it through several Microsoft Visio diagrams. Wrote up some UML. Thought about Michael Jackson again. Nothing. Began to get my appetite back. Ate a fairly decent meal on Thursday night. Friday morning came and I was back to square one. Went straight to big glass of water and thought about Michael Jackson again. Me: 0. Toilet 2. And I thought the pizza from weeks ago was bad enough. That was like a vacation in Lubbock compared to this.Got letter in company email saying we can't surf porn anymore. When the company started I recall the founder surfing porn. Employee #1 was surfing porn. Hell, they introduced me to AnaCam. New day and age now that we are corporate. Old mentality must be shaken off. The graphic artists were especially vexed that they were being watched. Made promise to self that I would keep my porn at home (on my nice new desktop machine). Porn is such an ugly word. Trying to think of more positive replacement. In the running thus far: happypix, woohoo images, reproductive artistry, anatomy & physiology: the later years, prictures, and one of my favorites: eye-poison.
Added new scans of Oktober now that I have a decent machine that my scanner likes.
none
2000.12.18 0.22
|
| While departing a private jet in Washington, D.C., reporters question President-elect Bush about what the sum of two and two are. "This many!" responded Bush. |
shock treatment
2000.12.17 19.35
The photo to the left is of my friend Oktober. I have three rolls of film just like this (minus the special effects). I bought a flatbed
scanner a month ago and my laptop doesn't like it. Any other computer, however, does like it. I still haven't bought a new machine yet.
This nice girl I know from work won a Sony desktop just like I want. If she needs any help hooking it up, I'm there. The company
Christmas party has always bestowed neat gifts upon the employees for as long as I've been there. So far out of three Christmas parties,
I'm still zero for three. Bleah. Maybe 2001 will be my year to win. Funny thing -- our company photographer won a camera. Fix!
Let's see. Where was I? Seems like my group of friends who keep up logs and I are all getting caught up in the business of the holidays. Shopping. Hoping someone will buy us stuff. Wondering if we should buy other people stuff. Hoping other people don't want us to buy them stuff so we don't have to buy them stuff. Vice versa. Versa Vice-uh. Visa Visa. Discover Discover.
So, Bush won. And the economy has been slumping for the last few months. Wondering if they'll try to pass the blame of that onto W. I really like that he's the pres. It's easy to do impressions. Friend at work found this site with hilarious impressions from the election drama. I am starting to do W. impressions now. Thought up a new term to describe what happened when I got kicked out of my office last month. I was having a Gore Moment.
Need to catch up on the movies. Found a sneak preview pass a few weeks ago for The Grinch and just barely got to the theater in time. Droves of people were walking away, pissed. One stopped me and said, "Too late now! They'll all full in there." Ha. I saw it as a challenge. I went straight in and walked past a couple of people who were turning folks away. "Just coming back in" worked for me yet again. Check out my October Blog for the last time I used those words to my advantage. So, I found a seat next to a big ol' family -- on the aisle! Could barely hear the audio as this theater is fairly old. It is the Loew's Memorial City theater here in Houston. It sucks. The chairs squeak. The management there likes to turn off the air conditioner during the last half hour of the last movie. Jerks. One of the best things at that entire mall is the exit.
Strength and honor!
tired of cnn?
2000.12.10 16.39
I am not sure what path I took to find it, but there is something on the web called The Naked News that you must check out! It's a legitimate broadcast that covers daily news, weather and even Hollywood gossip. The best part is that it is done by very attractive news anchors who slowly strip down to nothing, all while maintaining professional delivery of the news. You won't be seeing Tom Brokaw doing this anytime soon, I can promise that. Actually, that would be more of a punishment (for me at least). You won't believe it. This is much better than the neverending number of sites with gross out pictures and stolen glamour photography. This is like, another level. A new plane of existence. You know, like Super K-Mart as opposed to just regular K-Mart.thumbing a ride
2000.12.09 23.59
Haven't bought a videogame system since 1985 when I paid way too much for a ColecoVision. Compared to, say, a Playstation 2, it sucked ass. So I bought a Playstation 2 from my buddy Will, the guy who saved me from being crushed by hot and sticky fans at the Manson concert. I only want hot and sticky cute girls to crush me, not hot and sticky people in general. Went to Best Buy and bought an extra controller and the game DOA2. Extra controller is bait to get friends to come over and play. Game DOA2 will lure friends over on the chance that they can beat me up (or get beaten up) on the TV in hifi blasting stereo. I've been playing the game so much that my right thumb is throbbing. Friends tell me I'm pushing the buttons too hard. They're right.I love the election drama. This is better than Survivor. This is better than Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. I hope they never figure it out. This is cool. At this point I don't care who wins. I have been numbed. I'd even entertain the idea of Clinton sticking around for another two years while we invent perfect voting machines. We should invent non-partisoned robots to run our court system, while we're at it. We could get these robots to wash our cars and mow our lawns while they are not at court. And since they don't have to sleep, they can also guard banks and my house. At least 10 of them should do. So, any robot inventing volunteers out there? I have a PlayStation 2 you can play while you're not busy inventing my robots.
Played basketball today. Most of the time we play at the Jersey Village basketball court we are fairly evenly matched. Even the last time we played those guys and gave the loud mouth a heart attack, we were fairly matched. However, today there was a slew of Jr. High school aged kids awaiting us. They talked smack. They were scrawny. They kicked our ass. If I see the one named Sam again I'm going to knock him into a crowd of grandparents. I'll admit it, I accidentally passed the ball to one of them a couple of times. He resembled Shawn ("Pike"), one of our team members. Pike is not very old looking and outfitted with a gut like some of us. Let's be blunt. I could stand to be chained to a stairmaster for a couple of days. You can only suck in your gut so much. Like Chandler Bing on Friends. Ever notice how he's always wearing untucked shirts? That's right. Gut. Mine isn't like totally out of control, luckily. I find it funny that I can always spot the other dudes who are sucking in their guts, too. Whenever a girl is around, we all do it. I may be breaking the Guy Code by talking about this. Need to check my rule book.
That dude who locked his ass into a block of ice in Times Square ("David Blaine") is on Howard Stern right now with his really cute girlfriend ("Josie Maran"). She apparently brings other girls home for him. Lucky bastard. She claims she first discovered she was bi when attending an all girls school. So, now I'm having crazy thoughts about attending a 10 year reunion for one of those schools! It will save me a hell of a lot of time having to search them out one by one. On the Stern show, Josie said they have "an amazing hot tub" which leads me to believe that my next purchase should be an amazing hot tub. Problem is I don't have a room to put it in. Considering taking out a loan for one of those 'Rooms with a View' extra glass room things and putting the tub in there. My parents probably won't complain as I'd be increasing the resale value of the house. If I had those two things (glass room and an amazing hot tub) I would probably be motivated to mow my lawn and clean up the house more often. Again, if people would start inventing the aforementioned robots as soon as possible I will stop bitching about how I haven't kept up my place. No, wait, I need three things. The glass thing, the amazing hot tub, and Josie, David Blaine's girlfriend. I'd promise never to lock myself into a block of ice and I'd let her play with my Playstation 2 whenever she felt like it. And we can attend her 10 year reunion whenever it comes around.
late
2000.12.06 2.19
What if I lost sense of time?
What if I nursed this infection?
Maybe the worst is behind.
Anyone perfect must be lying,
Anything easy has its cost;
Anyone plain can be lovely,
Anyone loved can be lost.
Haven't updated in forever and half (however long that is). Been making mistakes in judgment as of late. Need to be more
careful and think things through. Mistakes aren't work related, for those of you depending upon my Ninja Technical Lead
skills and/or time travelling abilities. Speaking of... I took the DeLorean back in time earlier this evening and spent
a few hours 30 years in the past (December 4th, 1970). Basically, the roads were terrible, the corner stores were scary, and money was dirty. Literally.
Must have been some kind of soap issues back then. Everything at the grocery store was in an aerosol can. Very strange.
Cop from 1970 started to chase after me on 610 so I went three minutes into the past to get a good head start on the dork.
Remembered that I shouldn't do anything to disrupt the future timeline. Decided to drive somewhere where I knew nothing I would do
would ever change the future (Pasadena). Ate dinner at McDonald's. Wondered if one less burger would change anything. Nah.
Thought I'd look up George W. Bush while I was there and spent forever on the phone tracking him down. Eventually got him on
the phone and tried to give him advice for the election in 2000. He hung up on me four times, but I thought I got my message
across. Of course when I got back nothing had changed. Forgetful bastard.
Feel like I might be getting a sore throat. Counteracting the feeling with positive feelings and orange juice. Trying to give more
and take less. Been helping out
a blog celebrity with her web site. She is so distant and removed. I feel like she exists in a parallel universe and is not part of
my own. As if she is lost somewhere
in the ether. Unreachable. Distant. Out of phase. Out of touch. Ohio.
