This weekend the lot of us went to see "Satchmo: The Life and Times of Louis Armstrong". A neat show, and I learned a lot about great music that I'm woefully ignorant about. Though the musician playing Louis did say "Oh yeah" a lot. Afterwards, we went to a classy Spanish tapas restaraunt. How grown-up!
Nothing else really exciting is going on around here...(wink)
And you thought that Hunt's Snack Pack had forever solved the problem of eating pudding while away from home. Witness the wacky snacky genius of Hershey's!
Go here for one person's take on the "graphic" nature of the package graphic.
Speaking of graphic - Is that a Pickle in a Pouch or are you just glad to see me?
Above is a favorite image that has stayed with the gang for some time.
Meanwhile - aren't people funny? Aren't blogs funny? Just goes to show you, the old saying goes - only the person saying that doesn't actually go and show you. Kind of like this blog entry.
The Dinghy, a very bent web log, seems to be back, with a lengthy post dated March 31. As an English major, I enjoy "Kelvin's" writings about shining Cordovan shoes with mustard stained cloths, and playing bridge with Vin Diesel, but I realize that stuff's not for everyone.
WHAT ARE THE CHAINS THAT BIND?: This is a question often asked by seekers of the sufficient life. I DON’T KNOW THE ANSWER. DAMN THE TORPEDOS. OK? ALL RIGHT? WE WILL TRANSMOGRIFY MOLEHILLS AND POUND THE EARTH WITH OUR UTTER MONOTONY. WE WILL EAT OUR DINNER OFF THE GREAT PLATES AND WE WILL THEN WIPE THEM CLEAN! I AM BINGING ON INSANITY AND I AM PURGING VENGEANCE! I WILL NOT REST UNTIL I HAVE RE-CONSTITUTED PANGAEA IN MY OWN IMAGE.
Check it out, if you dare. In other news, I resolve to be a better blog reader / commenter to all my bloggy friends.
Whenever I get an Ohio quarter, I keep it, thus taking it out of circulation and keeping some poor collector from having all 50 states. I just can't part with them, even if it means going without a Diet Coke. This means I have a few good luck charms lying around.
Ohio is my homeworld, and I think I hold it in such high esteem for pure nostalgia. That was the part of my life before my parents divorced, before I had to worry about things like school, college, lack of social life, paying bills, etc. Yeah, I know it's cold and sometimes overcast for days up there, that snow is a pain to drive in, they have a state income tax...I happen to like clouds and cold.
P.S. - Normally I don't have a sense of humor about the stinkin' Ravens (death to Modell!), but the following graphic, from Thomas H. Twine's home page, cracked me up. I must be in a generous mood.
I visited Mum in Jacksonville this weekend. I lived in Jax from grades 6-12. I never cared for the city much when I lived there - the town has a weird smell because of the paper mills there, it's conservative and religious, and it's not Ohio. Though to be fair, they've gotten rid of most of the smell, there is a Maxwell House coffee roasting plant that does smell good, they now have pro football, most people there are friendly in a Southern hospitality way, and does any teen like where she lives?
Anyway, as mentioned before, Jax is very conservative, and I had to laugh at a local newspaper article about a church play. Only this was no ordinary play, it was one of those "Scared Christian" deals, where they show people going to either heaven or hell. What blew my mind was that one of the characters is "considered a good, religious person but who didn't have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ" - and for that reason, is condemned to hell. Where in the Bible does it say you and Christ have to have a "personal relationship"? And exactly what does that mean, anyway? Are we supposed to get together with Jesus and have a couple of beers every now and then? I don't mean to knock people's religious beliefs, but I just don't get that. Oh, and I saw a billboard for the "High Intensity Training Center" - that has to be a reference to that old joke about Special High Intensity Training.
In other news, Mum made a couple of anti-French remarks. While I did tell her I thought that changing the name of French fries was going too far, I gave her leeway since she grew up during WWII. We had a nice visit, visits with her are laid back, normally she sends Jeff and me to go out for a while. This usually consists of hitting the fabric stores, book shops, and The Great Big Honkin' Craft Store. My brother came over Sunday morning for breakfast, it was cool to see him. Though he made a startling revelation, he recently bought a 12-gauge shotgun. Greg doesn't seem the type, though his reason fit him, he intimated that he thinks society is on the decline and that is why he may need 12-gauge protection someday.
We stopped by Jeff's parents on the way home. They cannot fathom us just stopping by for an hour or so of chat, FOOD MUST BE INVOLVED. So we had a late lunch with them. Note to everyone: compliments like "you look so much better without all that extra weight" imply that one looked like crap before. My parents-in-law are nice, decent people, I find that if I don't contain my laughter when they say wacky things, the visits are easier for me, for some reason.
I approached one of the woodpaneled, aquarium-embellished bars at the XO Club slowly. "I'd love a beer," I told the bartender. "Um, I have bottled imported beers for sale. You can get a free draft at the other bar." How could she tell that I was a woman who was only interested in free beer? I was dressed for work, so it's not like I was in a tube top and Daisy Dukes.
Anyway, mad props to the well-connected Lunchbox for getting a girl like me into a high-class joint like the Ice Palace's XO Club last week. I like going to posh places like that and pretending I actually belong there. And mad props to the Lightning for making the NHL playoffs since sometime in the late 20th century. Me like hockey!
Ladies and gentlemen, all of us Americans were robbed by our government yesterday. We had one precious hour whisked away by the nefarious Project: Daylite Savings Crime. Admit it, most of you were late to work today, weren't you? Hell, I'm one of the very few early birds in existance and I was late, I fell asleep on the sofa this morning!
I've finally discovered the real reason that this antiquated time shift schedule is maintained. It's to keep us just enough off our natural Circadian rhythm so that we are too tired to protest things like the unfair income tax code. Fight the power! After hitting the snooze button a couple times.
Chuckie, one of the victims of the "staff reduction", is now working here on a contract basis. We are not supposed to help him prepare his Power Points or technical papers, as he's a hired gun now. Since he has no idea how to use Visio, Freehand, PageMaker, or even Word, (he doesn't even know, despite being told a number of times, to save drafts of his long-winded e-mails while he's working on them, and is always mad when his laptop locks up and he looses a morning's worth of work) you can see that this is going to prove difficult for him, as well as my department, since we still need to get the work out of him.
I can't believe I actually almost miss the old man. He was out of the office half the time, so he'd call me periodically and bug me (he likes to repeat himself, so I'd wind up hearing what he'd eaten, who he'd met, and how his presentations went at least twice per conversation). Then when he was here, he'd make me do all his work first. His office was very messy and cluttered with volumes of paper, it must have taken a day of him throwing stuff out into a giant office paper dumpster to clean it. I wondered if they had to pay him for his time to do that? Anyway, things just aren't the same without him around.
Some sobering (and unsurprising) news about the resurgence of the Taliban, courtesy of Jen's Very Big Blog.
While you're at it, check out this feature about Big Brother going after some hip-hop artist for having an anti-war stance.
I'm so depressed about this that I'm going to go make a box of brownies. Okay, they're the fat-free kind, but chocolate is chocolate when the world's going to hell.
Belly laugh, guffaw, etc....
"Get # of bounces from Linda and update e-mail binder"
"Wayniac's bio info on m-bus paper"
"Ham!"
"e-mail reps w/contact list in 'Sales' mailbox"
"webster03"
"(e-mail addy of el presidente)-add to mailing list"
I think I'm vaguely depressed, yet I took my happy pill this morning - discuss. Kind of weird for a Friday afternoon. Maybe I just didn't have enough caffeine today.
The president of the company I work, for that is. Not only is he cool enough to take notes with a fountain pen (and he's a lefty - he must have a specially-designed fountain pen that takes our unique way of slanting into account), he also is very deft at handling Mr. B. El Presidente actually talked Mr. B out of his insistance that our web pages must all fit on one page when printed. Though he can't dissuade him of the notion that the Print Screen key only fails to operate on the company web pages (?). Also, El Presidente let me out of the meeting once I had presented the latest web page I had designed, which was nice since I have no engineering knowledge whatsoever and was just starting to doodle as the rest of them droned on an on about something lame.
P.S. - the pages I designed were well-received, yay!
Here are my answer's to GreyDuck's contribution to blogging, Past, Present, and Future:
Past: When we're kids we want to be noticed, adored, and most of all, world-famous. What crazy, improbable scheme did you plan to ride to the top? I was going to be a famous author. I was going to be on the Mike Douglas show. I guess I just showed my age there, but in my defense, we are talking elementary school.
Present: What would you like to be famous for now? Same thing, or maybe an artist, but my artwork is probably too realistic to make a favorable impression on the art world. Maybe a comedian, but I’m not sure my humor is stand-up style.
Future: The eyes of the world are upon you as you stand, award clasped to your chest, before the cameras. Who, in your acceptance speech, do you thank? “Wow. Wow. ‘They like me, they really like me!’” (Pause for laughter.) “I’d like to thank my mom, who always said I could be whatever I wanted, my dad for giving me my sense of humor, my grandmother for helping me through my first year of college financially…my husband for putting up with me, all the teachers and librarians who encouraged my love of reading and writing, my friends for also putting up with me, and my employer for eliminating my job in 1995 – it was a tremendous catalyst for me, and I hated that job.”
Amanda Hugginkiss turned 16 this weekend. That's not her real last name, of course, but the nickname I gave her, a reference to one of the names Bart Simpson used to taunt Moe the bartender with on those prank calls. We went to her party to wish her well. She's the daughter of a former coworker/ current friend. She's gorgeous, if I went to high school with her I'd probably have hated her, good looks AND she's nice. She was in our wedding, we dressed her up and had her greeting our guests and passing out programs; Amanda had more genuine enthusiasm for the occasion than one of the bridesmaids (live and learn).
Amanda suffers from RSD, Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, a rare disorder, and suffer is the right word for it. RSD is "a chronic neurological syndrome characterized by: severe burning, pain, pathological changes in bone and skin, excessive sweating, tissue swelling, and extreme sensitivity to touch." The pain is intense for her, she's missed lots of school over the years and endured many procedures, too many for someone her age. I just can't imagine having to deal with all that at such a young age. Her mom works two jobs to keep up with the medical bills. I think Amanda has to go to the hospital again this week.
It just makes me so mad, when there are so many mean, souless, heartless people out there who never have to deal with this sort of thing, and then there are so many young innocents who are burdened with something like this.
Blood blisters are icky - discuss.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to Windex my scanner glass. That is all.
Wow. I spent a lot of time laughing (and thinking) on Micah Wright's website, The Propaganda Remix Project. Oh, and FYI, he's an ex-Army Ranger and combat veteran, too.
I need to ask Mom if the same thing that's happening today happened during WWII, if it was considered unAmerican to exercise one's fundamental right to draw conclusions different than the president. I'm guessing it did, considering the bulk of the artwork in Wright's project comes from WWII posters. Isn't it weird that "supporting the troops" = sending them in the direct path of danger?
I was blog-hopping today, and someone had posted some e-mail that's going around, about a little boy asking his daddy why we were at war. The daddy uses the analogy of a battered wife. "Son, what if you saw a man beating his wife in his front yard, what would you do?" And the little boy says he would call the police. "What if the police (aka the UN) took your call but did nothing? What would you do?" And the little boy says he would just close the blinds. The daddy explains that you can't do that, that you have to get involved and save that woman.
What that e-mail fails to detail is this: Okay, you've saved the woman and her children. Are you going to take them in, give them a place to live, pay all their bills until the mother can take care of her kids? Are you going to make sure the next man this woman gets involved with is emotionally stable? Or are you just going to solve the immediate problem?
There are lots of dictatorships where people live in poverty - like Cuba, menacing the state I live in, merely 90 miles away. We only took out the dictatorial Taliban after September 11, we barely did anything in Bosnia. I know that Saddam is (was?) a Bad Man, but I don't see that we can "get in and get out" quickly and easily, in a region that has known little freedom and no peace. I guess that's the problem when you can see all the shades of gray, and start thinking farther down the line than the next week or month.
Well, to quote Forrest Gump, "that's all I've got to say about that." Hopefully now that I've put my doubts and fears out there, I can get back to writing about things like belly button lint and white chocolate truffles. Oh, and I really hate those schmarmy e-mails, I bet they're all phony.
Good news, everyone! The Browns are gonna be on MNF, December 8 vs. St. Louis!
What do I do till then?
In completely unrelated news, the Barenaked Ladies (the musical group, not a bunch of naughty co-eds) have their own blog.
From Mindless Chatter, a link to an article that says Saddam starred in gay porn? Is this just Western propaganda started by South Park, or is this for real?
