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February 19th, 2005

Catch It While You Can

I often make the joke here about TeeVee being my best and only friend. The background of that is that there have been times when that was absolutely true.

One of the last was just after we moved to Wisconsin in the early 90s. For about 2 or 3 years there, I didn't have a single friend. Within a couple weeks of arriving, I was in my schedule of commuting to school at 7am, coming home in the mid afternoon, then working until 11pm after which I had to do any homework and such for the next day. Since I lived at home and not dorms, and was in a strange new (flat and cold) land, there was very little time for enough socializing to batter down my usual shyness.

What I did have was the TeeVee shows during those couple hours after work when I was trying to get ready for the next day or, when lucky, unwind. The main shows were Animaniacs, the Batman cartoon, Simpsons (though that wasn't in syndication until later) and Night Court. Lots of Night Court because one Milwaukee station showed an episode, then a Chicago station did right afterwards.

I don't say all that for a "wah-wah, woe wuz I" because that period of time is also the last time I could say I was consistently happy. Not only that, but confidently creative. I wrote a ton of things then, mostly plays for some reason. Sure, they were all shit, but I was writing and reading and researching and loving it.

I was reminded of this time watching the recently released season 1 DVDs of Night Court. Seeing them all in succession reminded me how much my speech and humor were shaped by these shows and this time. Tons of phrases and references I use come from the early years of that show (before it got unredeemingly awful in the last few years). It's the same feeling I had recently when I got the Simpsons season 5 DVDs, which was the first full season after the move.

So, last night I'm watching the episodes, for once the full versions as shown in 1984 and not the horribly hacked and slashed syndication versions, enjoying a nice swim in nostalgia when Dan Fielding (at this time the pre-lecherous version who was just a sycophant uninterested in anyone unless they could help his career) says in a non sequitur, "So I was talking to Donald Rumsfeld the other day."

Amazing how fast you can get snapped back into the present.

Posted by fad at 1:11pm

February 18th, 2005

Out

Yeah, it was a lousy week of effort around here, but still time to call it a day. Hope most of you have a good weekend.

Posted by fad at 5:51pm

Let's Take One More Rocket To The Moon

In three months, the shuttles return to space.
Friday it has set May 15 as its target date for once again launching shuttles into space.

NASA said Discovery's launch is to be followed by a July 12 Atlantis launch.
Nothing too special on either mission, though.
Both the Discovery and Atlantis missions will be test flights to the international space station to demonstrate the shuttle is once again safe to fly.
At least it's something, I guess.

Posted by fad at 5:02pm

I Help

It's Friday afternoon, weather's not too bad outside, you're trying to kill those last few hours and you think to yourself (As if you could think to someone else. No matter how constipated you make yourself look, you're not telephathic. So stop that. Stop it right now.), what's a nice, morbid story I could read?
In the case of a natural disaster or terrorist attack, some emergency officials in Western Washington plan to be prepared - with a large, shrink wrap machine.

The Thurston County Coroner's Office recently won approval to purchase a machine able to shrink-wrap human remains. The process would make it easier to transport a large number of bodies.
[...]
The shrink-wrapped bodies could be moved with forklifts, and the extra plastic covering would seal in biohazards such as anthrax in the case of bioterrorism.
Glad to be of service.

Posted by fad at 3:59pm

Damn Lo-Flo

Welp, off to help a friend buy a toilet. Are you helping someone buy a toilet today? I didn't think so. Suckers. Think about how much better this world would be if you were.

Posted by fad at 2:03pm

Devils Hate Idle Attorney Generals

Another state attorney general declares, "I'm a stupid consumer!".
New Jersey Attorney General Peter Harvey sued Blockbuster Inc. Friday, claiming the video rental chain is deceiving customers with its new 'No More Late Fees' rental policy.

The lawsuit accused the movie rental chain of deceptive advertising and violating the state's consumer fraud laws.

"Blockbuster boldly announced its 'No More Late Fees' policy, but has not told customers about the big fees they are charged if they keep videos or games for more than a week after they are due," the attorney general said in a statement.
He then sued the Catholic Church and the estate of Charles Darwin because, while it was announced to him that he needs to breathe in, no one mentioned he also had to breath out. And his lungs hurt like a motherfucker now. Not even the pretty stars and magenta pony visions make up for his distress.
Under Blockbuster's new policy, put into effect on Jan. 1, customers can keep a rental for one week past the due date at no additional charge. After that, they are charged a restocking fee of $1.25. And if the overdue item is kept for more than 30 days, Blockbuster will charge the customer the retail value of the item.
Blockbuster cleverly hid that information by making sure it was included in every article and press release. At least those I saw.

Posted by fad at 12:34pm

Pointless

I can't remember the names of the movies, but over the last few months there were commercials for two or three whose entire critical endorsement was Larry King calling it the "best [insert genre] movie since [insert comparative movie of same genre]". Does the Larry King Sole Endorsement really carry any weight? To me that's almost worse than those weeping orgasm style endorsements from fake review houses like moviesnme2gether4ever.com or whatever. I think I need to make it my goal to get some drop quote from me mentioned for some shitbomb like a live action Jetsons movie.

Nah. I hate goals. Leads to easily identified failures. I prefer my failure to be in general.

Posted by fad at 10:56am

Hobbies

Does this mean I'm going to have to stop spitting on everyone?
Researchers on Thursday said techniques now being developed for analyzing saliva may in the future replace many of the blood and urine tests that now are used to detect drug abuse and disease.
Damn. And hocking one up on the nearest passerby was one of the few joys I had in life. Now all my loogies are belong to Big Brother.

Posted by fad at 10:23am

Third Beer

I have always had a passion for the arts.
In 2001 the Boise City Council passed an ordinance banning total nudity in public unless it had "serious artistic merit" -- an exemption meant to apply to plays, dance performances and art classes.
[...]
[One] strip club charges customers $15 for a sketch pad, pencil, and a chance to see completely naked women dancers.
Since strip clubs are the only way a guy like me gets to see the naked ladies, I heartily approve of this effort to bring a sense of enlightenment to the experience.

Posted by fad at 9:31am

Cop Out On A Cop Out

Since this month the search hit list is a bit too long to dig for gold amongst the steady stream of "lemon party" and "tub girl" searches (If you are lucky enough to know nothing about them, stay that way. Especially if you're at work.), here's a new twist on it. These are search hits from people working in government offices. These are what your tax dollars are paying people to look for. Yes, it's unfair to single them out for things we all do, but it's the easiest grouping.
punch & pie
That's what they're looking for over at the FTC.

Dr Pepper Muppets Commercial
Someone working for the Wisconsin courts system was among the many, many looking for that.

Football Fan & Severed Testicles
That's from the National Institutes of Health, so I suppose there could be a link. Note the careful capitalization of every search term.

story about the wrong wisconsin quarters
wisconsin quarter error
These came from the General Services Administration and, again, the NIH.

botchulism
Someone at NASA had a pressing need, along with hundreds of others each month, to find my misspelling of 'botulism'.

tub girl
Oh dear, someone at the US Postal Service was amongst the flood of tub girl fans this month.

survey conducted among 172 musicians greatest song
We got a music fan at California's Department of Water Resources.

lemon party
how to pronounce scheme
In the foreign edition, someone working for the British Canadian government wants to join the lemon party (warning, due to google adding images to the top of some searches, even that search may not be work safe depending upon the sphincter radius of your workplace). Another is unsure how about their English.

Posted by fad at 6:50am

Whoops

Ok, I know this will be hard to believe, but I didn't go delete everything. The other posts are off the front page from the usual archiving process. I swears.

Posted by fad at 6:24am

No Point. Just Trying To Get Going Again

Good page design can bring in some viewership, but, to use obviousness for the appearance of insight, readership requires content of some sort. That's why some hideously designed sites can still manage to be popular. Back a few years ago, Something Awful had one of the worst nested table designs seen by mortal man. It would kill any old Netscape browser, Opera would send out "Why are you doing this to me?" errors and even IE, which has always taken a casual approach to HTML, would sometimes churn a bit. Any time a new browser came out, first thing we would do is give it the Something Awful Table Test (as I worked in web applications at the time, this actually fell under the job in a way).

But the king of eyescreamingly bad design, from color, font size, font choice was always Ain't It Cool -- or as I call it "Ain't I A Big, Fat Fucking Tool", but that's because I'm clever and you are not. There was nothing like trying to parse prose thicker even than the fingers that typed it all presented in oversized (appropriately colored) purple text in all caps. Add it to the odd compulsion list that I still visit that site. Or call it morbid fascination.

Anyway, this all came to mind because AIABFFT is going through a re-design. Believe it or not, that's a massive improvement. Though they should count themselves lucky that the US is not part of Kyoto as use of exclamation marks is one of the major causes of warming, and their use of them could burn a hole through James Wolcott's heart.

Posted by fad at 6:20am

3 Random OCDs/Compulsions

Posted by fad at 6:00am

February 14th, 2005

I Doubt It Will Stand

This will be more chum for the sharks, gators and lions in the big, sparkling swimming pool of blogs/news media.
A federal judge ruled Monday that Gov. Robert Ehrlich can freeze out two reporters from The (Baltimore) Sun by barring all state employees from talking to the journalists.

U.S. District Judge William Quarles dismissed the newspaper's lawsuit, saying the paper wrongly asserted a greater right to access to government officials than private citizens have.

"The right to publish news is expansive. However, the right does not carry with it the unrestrained right to gather information," the judge ruled.
Have fun storming the castle, kids.

Posted by fad at 3:04pm

Ahhht

Oh no! The dead* have risen and are creating massive scale, installation art!

*Slide #2

Posted by fad at 2:17pm

In Which I Consider Scientology

Hmmmmm....

Nah.

Posted by fad at 7:21am

Treating Like Shit Seems To Be The Secret

Turns out that cat trying to arrange a big Feb. 14 online suicide really was a devil with the ladies.
Combing through old chat-room records, investigators said they found that [he] had been enticing women across North America to commit suicide as far back as 2000[...]

"The common theme is that these were women who were vulnerable, who were depressed. He invited them to engage in certain sexual acts with him — and then they were to hang themselves naked from a beam in his house," the sheriff said. "He was indicating in these chat groups to these women that he had a beam and that it would hold multiple people."
Are they sure that talk of a "beam" that could handle "multiple people" wasn't just a cheezy line?

Posted by fad at 6:46am

One Was Enough

You know, every morning, after my yell of horror, I wonder if the world will ever find it's new strung out screecher.
Janis Joplin's estate has thrown its support behind a three-pronged celebration of the late singer's life. The key component will be "Search for the Pearl," a TV talent search to uncover the next Joplin that will begin production later this year and air on a channel to be announced.
So if you've a voice that reminds of cats fucking, burn your bra, put on your tinted specs and caterwaul your way to fame.

Posted by fad at 6:19am

Story Time

Since only once have I had something going on on Valentine's Day (and that nearly a decade ago), and that involved spending way too much on an ok dinner and too much wine so that she could get drunk and once again catalog all my failures as a human being until she passed out, I prefer to tell this story, my only other related one.

Two years ago, Valentine's fell on a Friday. Though the couples were off coupling, since it was Friday I still wanted to go out and have a few drinks, at least. I managed to find a couple friends without anything else going on. One because his wife had to work until late, and he wanted to kill the time until she got home. The other was on one of those two week breaks from her boyfriend, which, I suppose, is better than those pathetic break-up-to-make-ups which happen at 7pm, and they're fucking again by midnight. Repeat weekly or so. Remember, not being alone is more important than however shitty the other person may treat you.

We decided to meet at 7:00 at a bar/grill which had good food and a near 100 different beers available. Since I have a weird thing about being early, and because there was a good chance things would be busy given the day, I showed up at about 6:45 or so to get a table. The table given was dead smack in the middle of the room in a manner that was unavoidably visible to everyone else.

By about ten after seven no one had shown up, and I was starting to get some glances from the other tables since I had been sitting there for over 20 minutes, in the middle of the room, alone but clearly expecting someone to show (one advantage to never being able to get a date is that I've never actually been stood up, but that's like bragging about never taking a bullet when no one has ever shot at you in the first place). There were lots of furtive, "Oh, look. The poor fat, ugly man has been stood up. No! Don't look directly at him! Use the 'casual glance-n-lookaway' that makes the fact you're looking more obvious!" looks. Since this was more of a more of a grab a meal, a couple fancy-ass beers and then head home to commence the fucking type place than a fancy restaurant where you felt you had to stay to get your money's worth in ambience, after about 40 minutes another set of couples filtered in and began the same process of discovering that this poor, fat, ugly man had been stood up.

Now I wasn't just sitting around for nothing. I had made a couple calls to discover that one friend was caught up at work and the other thought we were meeting at 7:30. However, no one else there knew that. At about the same time the second wave of couples came time, the pity started to kick in. The waitstaff started offering me free bread and cokes all with a barely disguised, "Awww...." in their voices. This was starting to get really, really funny. I couldn't help laughing the whole time when I would catch someone looking over or a snip of conversation about my aloneness.

Finally, it reached its peak. One group had been there the whole time and had been watching closely. It was a slightly older (than me) couple there with their 8 or 9 year old daughter. Since, for them, the purpose of being out was actually to enjoy an evening out, they stuck around. As 7:30 closed in, suddenly at the side of the table was the daughter.

"Excuse me, sir. But my mom and dad said you can come eat with us."

Now it was officially hilarious. I thanked them for their offer, but assured them that there really were people showing up. It was just a miscommunication over the time.

Within about 5 minutes, the first of my friends, who happens to be rather attractive, showed up. There were actually startled looks when she came in and sat with me. "Wait...he's not being stood up, and she's with him???" Which wasn't true either and made it all that much funnier to me.

The looks when the other guy showed up were a little more confused.

Posted by fad at 6:03am

February 13th, 2005

Two Quick Thoughts After Seeing Cannibal: The Musical

  1. Cannibal movies always remind me of those times wasting away in some stupid class where, instead of paying attention, we spent the time discussing who, if we were trapped in that room we would kill and eat first, and why.
  2. The commentary reminded me of a drunken fumple between the commentary for Airplane! and 8 Bit D&D.

Posted by fad at 7:17pm

Here I Go Impossible Again

Yes, there were a raft of deletions today. Sorry about that, but they just had to go.

Posted by fad at 4:43pm