the tequila shot clock
2002.01.25 1.17
Sitting on plane watching ''Never Been Kissed.'' Dude in front of me is totally going over all this strategy stuff for getting into the pants of Halliburton. He's using standard ecomm lingo in his little report. Total Cost of Ownership. What the hell does that mean? I remember when the word Enterprise started getting used to describe a large company. I guess that sounds better than Big Ass Business.
Looking to buy some contemporary furniture. Cantoni Furniture is the front runner although they want way to much for the sectional I want. 10K. And I'm not talking about a 10K earnings report, either. I've lowered my sites to a more affordable sofa, love seat and ottoman made of black leather and support by brush stainless steel. Dude, stainless steel. It makes the flux dispersal work so much better. I make the journey to cool furniture in two weeks. Stay tuned.
Kitchen to finished. Want to pay my ex-roommate to come back and do slave labor. Would talk about it even more if the plane weren't struggling through the turbulance. Ding. Seatbelt light just came on. Dude standing in the huge line back at the airport was all talking about what pilots plan to do in the event someone else tries to take over their cockpit. Push the stick all the way down quickly and then pull back up just as fast. This causes anyone on the plane unbuckled to slam into the ceiling and then slam back down into the floor. I like that! Okay, I'm tightening the seatbelt as I type this.
''Don't touch the hydrogen. It's rented!'' -- Never Been Kissed. Gonna go make a list of stuff to do during the weekend. Go Eagles!
Back. They're gonna play the 1965 premiere of Gidget again. Right now they're profiling a 99 year old piano playing chick. When I'm 99 I plan to be living on the moon and takign blood transfusions from my clone who I'll keep locked up in a box labeled ''Backup'' -- I shall call him Marky Me.
Guy that runs the storage place where the DeLorean and Batmobile are stored is nice but he occasionally screws up my bill. I rent two spots and have two accounts as a result. Consolidation is not in his vocabulary, Going to raise hell tomorrow if he doesn't fix the discrepency. Either Marty McFly is gonna be throwing a big time fit , or Batman is gonna be kicking some ass.
Decided I am going to start up the ex-files again. This was an endeavor originally suggested by Jerald and OktoberNight, but it seems to have fallen on the wayside now that they're in decent relationships. Here we go.
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this is the end?
2002.01.15 1.20
I left Philly on Friday just as I had any other Friday. One unusual thing did happen. The plane began to take off, then abruptly shut down its engines and stopped. We then turned around and started heading back. The pilot came on to tell us another aircraft was down field and that it was ''nothing to be concerned with.'' Riiiiight. The plane drove back to the starting point and tried it again. We took off successfully the second time. Nice.The earlier decision I mentioned? I was in. I was out. I was in again. I was out again. I didn't see any change for a while but all of a sudden I'm back in. It's all good. My lucky Magic Senior Ring did its work. Now, if it can only help me win the Texas Lotto tomorrow night, a mere 20 million dollars, I'll be set.
Quick Movie Review for ''Orange County'' -- It was O.K. One-time see.
for russ tray shun
2002.01.10 1.21
I'm a perfectionist. It's annoying. I'm also very fastidious when it comes to details. At the moment I'm in between decisions about what my job is so I'm letting my mind run rampant. I've heard two different takes and I'm waiting for the winner. I hate waiting.where's the beef?
2002.01.08 1.21
We sometimes laugh at things and then years later wonder why we found it funny. It's the same thing as trying to watching British television. What they think is hilarious is often times crude and stupid in my opinion. I'm sure it goes both ways. The ''Where's The Beef'' ads in the 1980's for Wendy's are one such example of this phenomenon. Wendy's founder Dave Thomas passed away last night, so I'm feeling a bit sad that another familiar face is gone. Although Thomas was spokesman for Wendy's since 1989, his ''Where's the beef'' ads were wildly popular and constantly being spoofed and parodied whenever possible. The phrase even found its way into everyday conversation. For example, I have a very clear recollection of going to see the movie ''The Untouchables'' at the Jersey Village Cinema 6 theater in 1987 with my friend John Hall. I hadn't seen John for a while and he was in town during the last few months that I attended high school. During the movie trailers John would audibly speak in a high pitched voice and announce, ''Where's the beef!?'' For some reason females in the audience giggled and even I thought it was such a darn funny thing to say in the middle of those movie trailers. No direct references to beef were on the screen. Just saying it made you laugh. What weirdos we were. Of course, I had to top this later on during the film. Kevin Coster played the main character, Elliot Ness. He was hugging his wife in this one scene. When their embrace tightened, Ness's wife managed to say, ''I love you, Elliot!'' I stood up right then and screamed, ''I LOVE YOU TOO, E.T. !!!!''american airlines flight 2004 en route to philly
2002.01.01 1.22
I realize now that I was updating my blog everytime I was on a plane. Vacation made doing that difficult. ''Sir, you have to have a ticket before we'll let you sit on the plane,'' scolded the ticket counter lady. ''But I just want to write my blog in there!'' I begged. ''Sir, we don't even know what a blog is.'' ''Come on, 5 minutes? Please?'' ''That's it, sir. We're calling security.'' I ran off.I am sitting next to a 7 year old that's drawing realistic renditions of raver chicks. I don't know what this means. It could be a sign. Perhaps it means I should avoid raver chicks. I have a most special friend right now who is not a raver chick. If she is, she's been cleverly hiding her baggy pants and glowsticks. I wonder where I put my pacifier? Oh, that's right. I stopped using it in 1970.
They've left for a poddy break. Yay. I'll summerize my New Year's experience at Number's. Uneventful. I only made one stinky little dollar during the balloon drop. Everyone else also made a stinky dollar, too, so it leads me to believe they were only dropping stinky dollar bills this year. The economy needs to rebound so they can start dropping 20's again, dammit. I took care of the decoy balloons that litter the floor by installing a sharp nail in the toe of each shoe I wore. As I walked across the dance floor, any balloon that I would kick would blow up. It severely confused a lot of people who would then go and try to do the same thing, only to find out kicking the balloons would only send them flying up into the air. Sometimes into people's faces. Not good.
I am going to read my third James Patterson novel during the next few weeks. I've already read ''Kiss The Girls'' and ''Along Came A Spider.'' I have never seen the film adapatations of either novel. My current novel is ''Pop Goes The Weasel.'' There were no spiders in ''Along'' although there was considerable girl kissing in ''Kiss.'' I am hoping there's not a lot of weasel popping in ''Pop.'' I'll try not to get my hopes up too high.
I managed to see a few films while I was in Houston. ''Ocean's Eleven'' was great although I had already seen half of the film earlier in the month of December. I was at what must have been a porn theater. I think it must have been a Thursday night when the proprieter of the theater thought to himself, ''Hey, let's just play mainstream movies here tomorrow.'' The place was filthy. It even made Number's look clean in comparison. Sagging wallpaper and parts of the ceiling were in a sorry condition. Usually I shun a theater if there is no stadium seating. For some reason I was open minded. Bad idea. The floor was sticky. The seats were creaky. There was a smell that I couldn't quite pinpoint. I won't be going there again. Okay, well, maybe if I'm drunk and I've got a concussion, then, maybe.
On the 15th we were treated to a very nice company Christmas party held at our office. In tight fiscal times, we were lucky to even throw a party at all as most other offices waived theirs. Through a combination of pitching in and taking Pot Luck Dinner to a whole new level, we had a great time. There was a flash piece that we did that made it seem like 9/11 was the reason for all our woes. It wasn't, but it certainly didn't help. I have mixed emotions about how the new culture of awareness and patriotism has spilled into marketing. Admittedly, it's a good thing. Don't expect my site to join in, however. A dark gothic/Matrix slant on things doesn't jive well with the flag and Uncle Sam.
Okay, more movie news. I saw ''Harry Potter'' in New York near Lincoln Center at the Loew's IMAX there. Last time I saw a mainstream movie on an IMAX screen was the dreaded ''Last of the Mohicans.'' I remember patiently waiting for that movie to get to the point where I could stand up and yell out loud, ''Oh my god! He's the last of the Mohicans now!'' I'd fallen asleep halfway through so I never got my wish. If you are reading this and you're thinking that it would be clever to rent ''Last of the Mohicans'' and invite me over for a viewing, please lay down on the floor until that idea goes away. Anyway, Harry Potter was O.K. I guess I need to read the book. Same deal with ''Lord of the Rings'' herein referred to as LOTR. I enjoyed the movie. I even remember a very good hacker board here in Houston named The Mines of Moria back in the 1980's. It featured mostly Infocom game cracks and Apple ][ game cheats, although your standard fare of purple box or black box or whatever hack culture instructions were available -- all depending upon what circle you had access to. I was lucky enough to be a member of the elusive Nineth Circle and could access anything on the site. I could write a whole novel about the 1980s dial-up BBS subculture that very few people knew about. We were totally geeks. No wonder I had such a hard time picking up chicks in Junior High.
I have lately been trying to locate really old friends but with no luck. Richard Noble is one such person that I am trying to locate. He attended Jersey Village High School with me and is responsible for my appreciation of Prince, Sade, and some of the lesser known artists of early hip hop. He moved to Atlanta, Georgia last I heard. He was getting married the same week I had to start a monthly training program for my team at Compaq. I didn't get to make the wedding, but I also wound up losing his number. I have tried in vain to find it again. The problem is that his parents have unlisted numbers. I will bet his is unlisted as well. Heredity is an amazing thing. Other friends that I wonder about include Carol Farris. If you go to the Creations section on the site and look up my Mark In The News sections, you'll see she appeared in The Houston Post with me. According to her parents in the early 90's, Carol married an art dealer or something like that and had moved north. It is entirely possible that I could pick a grade in Elementary school and put together some kind of freaky reunion page up. Doing the same with Jr. High or High School would be considerably more work. My 15 year reunion is this year, so maybe I can cut some corners on that respect. Bleah.
I finally re-sampled my Back to the Future 4 short although I messed up the audio and need to resample a chunk again. I also cut out some of the cheesier adlibs as well as changing the beginning where I briefly showed the ending of BTTF3. To establish the film all I really had to show was the DeLorean getting destroyed by the train because I pick up on the same railroad tracks right after the credits roll. You'll see. Well, you'll see after 1/11/2002 when I get back home.
More later. Need to take off jacket. Even at 33,000 feet and what is surely temperatures in the negatives outside this plane, I am breaking a sweat and need to swig my Diet Coke.
