I ain't no damn good
I just wrote a whole paragraph about the homeless that wasn't terribly funny so I erased it and started over with this. What really bugs me is that the homeless aren't funny, not that I couldn't write something funny about them. Something I read over at another blog (Seven) made me think of the homeless today. I don't generally give money to the homeless, since I'm one of them except that I have a home. That is to say, I'm unemployed, a little scruffy, and possibly dangerous. I don't think I smell too bad at the moment, so I've got that going for me. I guess I should have written that as my Thanksgiving entry- "I'm thankful that I showered earlier and put on fresh flannel jammies." I'm spending a lot of time in my flannel jammies lately. Hef doesn't have TOO many years left, so I'm practicing for when they need a replacement. His thing is silk pajamas, so I'm going with flannel and calling them jammies. But I digress. The homeless around here aren't very creative with their signs, which might be part of the reason why they're homeless. I really don't want to play the blame game, but if they were a little more creative with their signs they could probably get work as Flash designers or something. Most of the signs are something to the effect of, "Homeless vet - God Bless You." BORING! I saw one guy the other day with a sign that read something like "I only need 67 more cents for a six-pack." Obviously going for honesty, but a little creative I thought. The best all-time homeless sign I've ever seen was in Austin, fall of 1990. A guy sitting huddled on the sidewalk with a sign at his feet that read, "Can you help me find where I left my spaceship?" Again, going for honesty because parking near campus is truly horrific. If I were ever homeless I think my sign would read, "I know the lottery numbers but can't afford the ticket." I think that's the perfect message to send- I just need this one dollar and then I got it from there. What would your sign read?
I want to give a shout-out to everyone reading this, especially those of you who have just recently found me. I
totally get off on any and all praise and I
am reading your blogs everyday as well. As my pawpaw (God rest his soul) used to say, "You've got to give blog to get blog." I'm sometimes tempted to futz with the template, add haloscan or blogroll, any of that nonsense. I'd really rather concentrate on the writing, so please don't be offended if you've linked to me and you don't see a linkback. I intentionally disabled anonymous comments so that I, and the other readers, can stalk you back to your own blog. MAYBE someday I'll dedicate a post to all the blogs I read, but I'm not promising. Also, don't be offended if I haven't added some funny comment to your latest post- I'm either reading the whole thing from the beginning and haven't gotten to today yet or I'm just waiting for the perfect zinger, dick joke, or
flirt to make my presence known. It should be creepy enough to know that I'm watching you too.
I just got it
I watched
Gattaca this evening. I totally get everything about that movie, but the name didn't make any sense. Since I'm the kind of person who would obsess about that sort of thing, I had to watch it over and over until I got it. The name 'Gattaca' uses only the letters (ATCG) used to represent the 4 basic amino acids that compose DNA, one of the major things in the film. The movie was made in 1997 and I just figured it out. Of course, when I looked it up on IMDB to make sure I was spelling it right and to check the year I see the bit of trivia at the bottom of the entry. I told you I wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed.
Maybe I shouldn't watch so much TV
I watched
Love Actually almost back to back this evening. It was the Saturday night premiere on HBO, and since I get both HBO East and HBO West in high-definition I couldn't pass it up. Nevermind that it's an amusing little film by Richard Curtis (damn funny bloke) and features lots of great British accents to copy in my mind's ear. There's about a 2 second bit in the middle that I particularly like- Carl has asked Sarah (who not-so-secretly loves him) to dance when the music suddenly changes to a slow song. It's those 2 seconds, when they're trying to figure out how to adjust themselves to the change that I like.
Subtlety of timidity is the note I made in my notebook. Anyhow, I want to believe that I'm most like Colin, a nice enough guy whose troubles will all be solved by a change of continent. Truth is I'm a little bit of all the characters, especially the dysfunctional bits. Oh well, soldier on, eh?
In between airings of the movie I caught Austin City Limits, featuring Norah Jones & Chris Isaak, two damn fine musicians. You should listen to
Let Me Down Easy by Chris Isaak if you get a chance. While you're at it, listen to
Watch the Wind Blow By by Tim McGraw. Despite my unfortunate location I don't really like country (or western) music. There are one or two songs that I like though, and I think you might like them too. I won't do a full-blown music edition though since the feedback on those is, well, less than overwhelming.
Fun with family
Turns out an aunt and cousin came for Thanksgiving after all. The real news is that my dad is going senile. We were talking about pictures and started talking about the best picture my dad has ever taken with his camera, 20 years ago. He's not a pro photographer or anything, he just got lucky. It's a picture of a guy in 18
th century costume playing a recorder on the steps of a cathedral in either York or Bath, England while a couple of little (non-costumed) children dance in front of him. It's one of those spontaneous moments and you know how little children are- they hear music and they can't control their little bodies. Dad was insisting that the picture was taken in front of the Notre Dame in Paris, but since I wasn't with him when he was in Paris and I was present when the picture was taken it couldn't be Paris. So the rest of the day was spent teasing him about the pictures we took this summer of the Great Wall of Paris and Le Forbidden Cité. That's how my family operates- we make fun of each other until
just before someone leaves the room to cry.
The sticky twins (my sister's boys) were there too. The little one has begun a biting-phase, just as the older one did at about this age (18 mos). I call him 'skeeter' to reinforce our white-trash image. The older one scratched the hell out of my face, so I'm either going to not shave until it heals or I'm only going to shave the un-scratched side of my face and just tell people I'm test-marketing a new brand of shaving cream. After he scratched me I punched him so hard he blacked-out for nearly 5 minutes, but at least he wasn't crying. I love being bigger than him.
I mentioned my sister is pregnant again, but I don't think I ever told you she's getting the little girl she wanted. They're going to name her "Lilly" which is nice and I like the name, I just wouldn't name my child that. I don't know, it's just
too old-fashioned and sounds contrived to me. Our mother's mother's name was "Lillian" so that's where it comes from. On the subject of names and due to the pregnancy/hormones, we've started calling my sister "Spongebrain, stretchpants."
I got nothing
but rather than not-blog, I'll implant this little holiday nugget into your lobes for you to enjoy while everyone else at the table is stuffing face:
I said a hip hop the hippie the hippie to the hip hip hop a you don't stop the rock it to the bang bang boogie say up jumped the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie the beat.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Fun and games until someone loses an eye
I received my water/sewage bill today, no big whoop. Under the chart of my last 12 months water usage, it says "Your water conservation target is 2 Thousand Gallons". It doesn't tell me what I win if I hit the target, which I have for more than the last 12 months. What fun is a game with no prizes? (And don't give me any of that 'you're saving the ecosystem' bullshit- I want stickers or a stuffed animal prize. I'll settle for a refrigerator magnet.)
I also spent the day trying to rid my attic of the bushy-tailed rats that decided to move in without paying rent. I bought something called "Deer Off" that says it's also good for squirrels and other rodents. It's mostly liquid pepper. I sprayed it all over the attic, especially where they were nesting and around the hole they've been using for ingress/egress. I couldn't actually plug the hole because it's where the roof meets the rafters and I'm not 6 inches tall. Honest to God, my attic now smells like buffalo wings. What are the odds a 'Hooters' girl or two will want to move in?
But I drove down to mom & dad's to borrow his extension-ladder so that I can plug the hole from the outside. Big storm on the way back, so I had to drive slow. Do you have any idea how long it takes to drive 40 miles at 40 miles per hour!?
It's been raining hard off and on for over a week now and a lot of the city has flooded. I saw an interview on the news with a woman whose brand-new neighborhood was flooded. She said, "They say it's because of all the construction, but all the new houses are being built way down the street there." Jane, you ignorant slut. It never occurred to you that rain water doesn't soak into all the concrete streets and slabs in your brand-new neighborhood, or into the parking lot of all the new (empty) strip malls that had to be built around your brand-new neighborhood. Rain water won't be absorbed by all the trees you mowed-down to build your brand new neighborhood, or into the additional lanes of freeway that I have to pay for (both directly and indirectly) so that your brand-new neighborhood can be 50 miles away from town but still be within the city limits. Gee I hope you file a flood-insurance claim with the same company that insures my home.
Family
The Thanksgiving holiday, as celebrated in America, is this Thursday. No doubt most of you foreigners knew this already, but I felt I should point it out nonetheless. Traditionally, families gather together and celebrate an enormous meal together...the thought of my family gathering makes me both ill and pensive. Fortunately, my entire family isn't getting together. An uncle (by marriage) is off in Florida helping the continued reconstruction of this year's hurricane damage, so he and his family won't be with us. My sole-surviving grand (-mother) will be going to Florida to visit another uncle and his wife, so that's three more down. The twin brother of that uncle will be with his wife (and daughter) at her family's house- scratch 3 more. That just leaves my immediate family; mother, father, sister, (idiot) brother-in-law and their two sons.
Coming from solid coon-ass stock (that means cajun, if you're not from Louisiana), we give different names to specific familial relations, some of which you may have heard before. A grandmother is usually 'mawmaw' and grandfather is 'pawpaw', although spellings vary. Once upon a time I had great-grands who were mamee and papee. A godmother is 'marain'
(pronounced ma-dan) and godfather is 'parain'
(pronounced pa-dan). Godmother is sometimes 'nanny' and when I was little, my godfather was 'pie'.
(aside: I say, when I was little, because I haven't heard from my godfather since I was maybe 6...I could easily track him down, my father's cousin, but why bother him?) My sister asked me to be godfather to her first child, which I gladly obliged. It's little more than an honorary title, of course. My ex-wife is godmother, but he'll probably never see her again. Related story there, but for another time. As my nephew/godson approached the age at which he would begin to recognize me, we had to decide what he would call me. I don't mind 'parain', as it's part of my heritage, but it's not terribly unique...and I'm nothing if not unique. My first request was that they simply call me 'sir'. Nobody thought that would work, so I requested 'padrino', an homage to a Smash Mouth song of the same name, and a nod to the more formal (and Italian) role of godfather. In the end, it defaulted to a diminuitive form of my actual name, one given to me by the wife of one of the twin uncles. Everyone calls me that now, which I don't really like, but it stuck...oh well.
So why did this aunt
(aside: I prefer the pronunciation awwnt, as opposed to the harsh-sounding ant) give me this name? Maybe it's because when her daughter was an infant, I had her in my arms and was throwing her up into the air. Most children like this sort of play, and I'm only too happy to oblige. Only, I wasn't paying attention to the ceiling fan...
I still don't know what mufatango means
I'm writing a Houston guide for Frommer's, my favorite guidebook company. They don't know about it yet, so we haven't discussed money. I'm betting on a HUGE payday plus residuals, so I went shopping today for bling.
(aside: I must have gone to the wrong Target, because I didn't find much bling.) Here's a snippet from Chapter 2- Getting Around:
Getting around Houston requires the use of a car. While it's true that there is public transportation (including buses and a very unpopular train that kills people and smashes their cars) as well as taxis, Houston is such an enormous city that you're better served by having your own car. Unfortunately, Houston is where they make bad drivers (there are several big factories where raw sewage is processed into bad drivers) so be aware that driving in Houston is nevertheless a bad idea. The best advice is to rent a car at the airport and drive to a nearby sporting goods store (see map, appendix A) to buy a handgun and ammunition. Do not use the handgun on other people! (It is considered rude, and may be illegal if you're not rich and/or famous.) Shoot yourself in the face repeatedly, until the desire to drive a car in Houston subsides. Your insurance carrier will thank you.
In other news, it's the rainy season this year. It rains a lot here and, since it can't be predicted worth a damn, one of the local television stations adopted a mutt from the pound to distract us from the fact that they can't predict the weather. It's kinda like a street magician doing sleight-of-hand: Look over here while my partner secretly lifts your wallet. Even when it's not raining, it's so humid that the air actually molds. Think about that for a second- I don't mean an air filter, or the siding on your home, or even your patio furniture left outside. The air itself actually molds. Other interesting weather phenomena: It rained in my backyard for a full 30 minutes before starting to rain in my front yard.
(aside: I'm trying to not make this a habit, since it's very Springer and I don't approve of him, but...)
Final thought: If a blind man had ESP, would they still call it 6th sense?
Pretentious professor plagues pitiful pupils
I don't do the story justice, but my finance professor is at it again. Name-dropping. Self-aggrandizing. Nauseating. She told us, for about the 5th time, the story of one of her students who works for a local restaurant chain
[aside: No name without an endorsement check] in the finance department and she's SO great that she helped this student write a spreadsheet that forecasts all sorts of financial data that they hadn't been doing, all on a Saturday morning and she did it from memory and, oh yeah, our final exam is going to be take-home and we should expect to spend between 7-10 hours on it, but she spent 30-40 hours on her take-home finals when she went to [Name-Drop] business school and she made 100% so they used her paper as the grading key. Somebody just dip this bitch in bronze already.
I listened to a LOT of music today and danced in my flannel jammies. I came up with a quiz for you, but it's only one question:
When you get invited onto your favorite talk show as a special guest, which Beatles song would they play as you walk out from behind the curtain? I've narrowed it down to either
'Please Please Me' or 'The Fool on the Hill'.
(aside: HA! I bet you thought I was going to say "I'm a loser" :p) I have guesses for some of you, but I'll give you the chance to embarass yourselves first.
Final thought: Who would win a boxing match between a T-Rex and Bill Cosby dancing?
Set up for the let down
Tina tried to let me let her set me up. I'm not sure why she thinks it's ok for her to do that. Tina is in one of my study groups and when I offered up my place for the group to come study & work on our group project she kind of hemmed & hawed and came up with something like "well, I don't really want to spend a lot of time trying to find your place" as if you need the secret decoder ring. I saw right through that, but instead of calling her on it, when asked by the other group members where we would meet (in fact, one of the others asked if we could meet at my place) I said my place wasn't available and we'd just have to meet at the university. Later, I told the story to one of the guys who knows her a lot better, and he said it has something to do with being a married woman and I'm a single guy and she was brought up to be distrustful/careful around strangers. Well, great explanation. I feel SO much better about myself now that I'm considered an unregistered sex-offender.
During that same study session, she asked about my wife. When I corrected her, and said EX-wife, she backtracked all over herself again. Ok, maybe she didn't want to come to my place because my wife might have been there and I guess two women can't be in the same room together or something. Whatever. A little while later she started asking a few personal questions, eventually getting around to 'did I think there were any cute girls in class'. As a matter of fact I do.
Here's where it goes off-the-scale stupid: We're sitting in class tonight and she starts passing notes. 33 fucking years old passing notes in school. Kill.me.now. "Which girl?" she wants to know, "The one closest to the door?"
She's alright, but maybe I should pass her a note after gym class, I respond. "Want me to set you up?"
Now, this might have been remotely acceptible if a) Tina didn't think I was a perv
(aside: which I am, but not until you get to know me better), or b) she even knew the girl in question. The reality of the situation is that she would have walked up to a total stranger to ask her to go out with a different stranger, to whom she is only slightly less of a stranger. In other words, I'm the huge loser.
(aside: Where's Vince Vaughan when you need him? Who's the big winner? MIKEY's the big winner!) Oh yeah, c) I wouldn't need any help getting that girl to go out with me.
I let it go and she didn't press the issue. The fact is, the girl she was talking about is ok, but the one I really like was sitting directly in front of us. She played with her hair all night and I really enjoyed that.
(aside: She was only 2' away, so I fantasized about leaning forward and kissing the back of her neck. I know, perv.) I heard her speaking to the girl next to her, and it definitely sounded like Chinese, so revise my previous guess. I missed my opportunity though, when after class it was raining and she didn't have an umbrella. I should have walked her to her car, but I was preoccupied chatting with two other guys. It didn't occur to me until another girl walked up and offered, at which point I had most definitely missed my chance. Well, it occured to me, but really I don't have anything to offer the pretty girl (or the just-ok one, for that matter) right now. I'm divorced and unemployed, two pretty tough conversation-killers. I'm not a dead-beat though- I pay my own bills, cook my own meals, and clean my own house. I know, I don't have to be ashamed of either one, but I'm old-fashioned and my self-esteem is in the shitter with 'nanner and her would-be boyfriend. I can't do anything about being divorced, but I don't see how I'm much of a catch until I get a job. I know part of me isn't trying very hard- thinking that I can keep hiding from my personal life until I get a job. I'm dreadfully lonely, but very comfortable in the safety of it.
(aside: sorry, much deeper than I planned on going...flame away)
Here we, here we, here we, here we...go
Name it. Nothing coherent again today, so bear with the short takes:
1) Have you seen the PBS mini-series
Regency House Party? It's basically reality TV set in the early 1800s. Nevermind the details, but they're all British, so they've got cracking accents. The "host" of the house party is Mr. Gorell Barnes. Gorell is not his first name, it's Tom (I think). Why didn't the British tradition of having 2 last names ever catch on here? My middle & last names, which I won't share with you at this time, would make a grand British name if I do say so. Part of the problem is that my middle name is of Scottish
(aside: Why isn't it Scotch?) origin and my last name is of French origin. Who's going to believe that a noble French family united with lowland Scots? Fortunately Americans don't think about that sort of thing and it wouldn't occur to them until hours later, after I've slept with their women and gone. So I could probably get away with it if I could just get people to introduce me as Mr. So & So. Doesn't happen very often I'm afraid.
2) Blog talley from Sunday- 1:41:1, although the jury is still out on the first 1. I'll let you know.
Ahh, screw the rest...just trivial crap like registering for Spring classes (STILL can't take a class in Mandarin Chinese due to schedule conflicts), having dinner at an Irish pub with a couple of astronauts singing on stage, bumping into the mayor at the mall, and I have yet to work "booboisie"
(aside: read Mencken) into a conversation.
Don't hate me because I'm beautiful...
Got my haircut today. Monday afternoon haircuts are great, since you can just walk in, snip snip, go home. Getting my haircut always reminds me of going to confession: It's one on one, you tell [her] how long it's been since the last time you were there, you tell [her] all the bad things you've done [to your hair], you drop a tip in the jar and leave feeling better about yourself.
At any rate, I got the prettiest Persian woman in the world cutting my hair. She washed my hair too, which is usually delegated to the beginning stylists but when it's not busy I guess they can't afford anyone sitting around. So imagine my delight at having this woman lay me back in the chair, run her fingers through my wet hair, then towel me dry. The best part was having her shave my neck. The electric clippers they use for the fine hair tickles just a little bit, which drives me WILD, and to top it off she would blow little puffs of air to clear away the clippings. Blowing on my neck like that, I was seriously considering committing some sort of sex act I'd have to explain to a judge in open court. It's a good thing I was wearing the cape, let me tell you. It's dangerous to fantasize too much though since the shaving is the last thing they typically do, so you don't have much time from when she's done shaving and the cape comes off. Nobody wants to see me having a 9th grade moment at the mall.
Walked the mall again. There's some pretty decent sales going on, and some pretty decent salesgirls too. One in particular at the rhinestone hair-clip shoppe. It's all chick stuff in there, so I have no excuse to go in, not that I'd know what to do if I did. Saw the new 2005 calendars at the MoMA store- I want the Japanese art prints calendar.
I seem to do some pretty good thinking at the mall. Today's nugget: If the meek shall inherit the earth, who has to die for me to get my share now?
Pop quiz
Can you spot the commonality in these seemingly discontinuous thoughts?
-Last week I had a dream where the President (W) and I were really good friends. We were supposed to go somewhere together but he was running late, so I was charging around the White House trying to get him moving. I scribbled a quick note the next morning to help me remember the dream- 'befriending the President' is all I wrote and that's all I remember.
-I saw a link to
http://www.belief.net in someone else's blog. They have a quiz where you answer several questions about your spiritual beliefs and it attempts to tell you which major religion you most closely identify with. My beliefs are a moving target, but the answer I got was Theravada Buddhism, something I've suspected on my own for a while now.
-I walked the mall today and it was very crowded. The only thing I came home with (since I couldn't get a haircut) was that beautiful women don't
need big breasts and big breasted women don't
need to be beautiful. That's not to say that the two are mutually exclusive, it's just a function of
need.
-Unless it's funny, disregard everything you see on TV. I watched a program on the Travel Channel called "George Foreman's Houston" and it was total crap. He claimed that
Luther's is the best BBQ and the best seafood is at the downtown
Aquarium restaurant. I'll say it again: I believe that everyone is entitled to his own opinion, except when that opinion is just plain wrong.
Yet another
Friday night with Joan, but still no nudity. Well, I suspect it'll take a couple of weeks before my script suggestions actually get filmed. I guess I can wait a bit longer.
Apart from the usual drama, Joan had her first official date with Adam. He gets all cleaned up, she gets all dressed up and there's the classic 'coming down the stairs' scene as he sees her (dressed up) for the first time. I remember when I was there, it was almost exactly the same. Unblinking, mouth agape, wondering "is this really for me? what have i done to deserve this?"
ACK!
Writer's block. Yesterday was a homework emergency. Today the lobes are dry. I wrote a half-page about Skittles™ since they've mysteriously been on my mind lately. I spared you the torture and deleted it. I'll be back when I think of something.
What time is it?
It's GO time. Talks with the rodents have collapsed and they have recalled their ambassador. Yes, the squirrels have declared war. The English Ivy hanging basket was the latest casualty, so the Tiny Security Counsel has unanimously ratified the opposing declaration. Rather than a long drawn out conventional war, I'm going nuclear right away. Using surveillance from the second floor of the stairwell, I've determined that tactical nukes will be deployed from both the garage side-door and around the air-conditioning unit creating a cross-fire at the patio bench. Statistically speaking I expect to lose one of the potted ficuses
(aside: fici?) and one or both of the succulents. An acceptible level of losses. Both CNN and MSNBC have refused my offers to embed journalists, but the UN has sent monitoring inspectors and the Red Cross is standing by.
I just realized that I forgot to title Thursday's blog, so I've remedied that.
I also neglected to blog Friday, so here's what I would have written:
Friday night is
Joan of Arcadia night at the Tinyhands household. I know it's a rather juvenile and overly-moralistic show, but it's either that or the hard-edged reporting of
Dateline NBC (aside: because 8 Simple Rules is off the table, end of discussion). But what's really important is that Amber Tamblyn, the young star of the show, really needs to start doing nude scenes. On the show she's only 17, but in real life she's 21 and that makes it all ok. It's not that I find her overly attractive, although she's not bad to look at, but the show is definitely missing something that a little soft-core would cure. Aside from the fact that it wouldn't do one little bit of harm, it would do me personally quite a bit of good.
On a similar subject, although it's not going to work out with the woman I thought I really liked, it turns out there is a cute girl in my finance class after all. I'm not sure how I overlooked her, so maybe I should start each semester by going up to the podium as the classroom fills up to get a good look at everyone. Bringing my digital camera might be a little obvious, but I'm not ruling it out yet. In any case, the cutie-in-question is asian
(aside: Japanese, if I had to guess, but I only scored a 7 at www.alllooksame.com, so maybe I shouldn't guess) which I find exotic and I've never dated an asian. She sat next to me for the mid-term review a couple weeks ago, and although she has returned to her normal seat, I noticed a few furtive
(aside: great word) glances last week and made some good eye-contact. My ex- was awarded custody of my mojo in the divorce, so I don't remotely have a plan of action. Sorry, it's not nearly as hot as Steverino or Jay but this is as good as it gets for me.
Step 1: Wang Chung
Holy kee-rap traffic was bad today, but I figured out why: There was an accident. I was in it. I was killed. Statistics class was relocated to room 116, 7
th concentric circle of hell. Look people, it's Thursday. If you haven't yet figured out that the clocks changed a few days ago you need to stick sharp little bits of wood under your fingernails so that you won't reach into your pocket/purse to get your car keys. The sun going down does not mean that you need to get on the freeway and rush to the supermarket to buy canned meats and vegetables and bottled water. The sun will rise again tomorrow...stay in your homes and offices until my class starts. The sooner you people realize that the world revolves around me the easier things will get for all of us.
And while I'm thinking of statistics class, the funk returned. This time it entered the room after I did and it was obviously attached to an individual. So, to the middle-eastern guy who I'm
sure reads this and is a nice guy if you get to know him, the olfactory jihad against the barbarians who ritually splash clean water and scented oils on their bodies needs to end. Couldn't you just do that 'la-la-la-la-la' thing with your tongue? If you have any questions, I refer you to the above, re: world revolving around me.
I think you're all fucked in the head. We're 10 hours from the fucking fun park and you want to bail out. Well I'll tell you something: This is no longer a vacation, it's a quest. It's a quest for fun. I'm going to have fun, and you're going to have fun. We're all going to have so much fucking fun we'll need plastic surgery to remove our goddamn smiles. You'll be whistling zippy-dee-do-dah out of your assholes. Ha ha ha! I've got to be crazy, I'm on a pilgrimage to see a moose. Praise Marty Moose! Holy Shit.
Dad, you want an aspirin or something?
DON'T TOUCH!
Fun Music Edition- Damn it's hard to only pick 5!
I haven't done a music edition in a while, so I figure it's about time. In case I never spelled it out before, the idea is to take a few minutes to find and download one or two of these. Those of you who are over-achievers (you know who you are) will get all 5. While I don't
officially condone stealing music...ahh fuckit, make your own moral decisions. If downloading 5 freakin' songs is beyond you, you might get to hear a clip at
http://www.allmusic.com.
1. Manu Chao & Tonino Carotone -
La Trampa
You'll recognize this as the theme to Drew Carey's Green Screen Show which in itself is just silly. Whether or not you like the show, the song is fun even if [especially if?] you don't speak Spanish (which I don't).
2. Jimmy Buffet -
Volcano
Hey, he don't know!
3. Hall & Oates -
You Make My Dreams
I will always associate this song with the movie I Love You To Death, as this song is playing in the night club scene and Kevin Kline is one funny-ass bloke. Then of course there's Phoebe Cates' ass. *drool*
4. Save Ferris -
Come on Eileen
New twist on an old classic...I loves me some ska.
5. Jo-El Sonnier -
Jambalaya
Release the inner coon-ass in all of you.
Honorable Mention: Barenaked Ladies -
It's All Been Done
But only if you sing the woo-hoo-hoo-hoos.
More about me
Here are answers to the most frequently asked (and a few unasked) questions:
1. Nuzzle
2. Yeah
3. Touch
4. Coughing
5. A mockingbird's song
6. Nails on a chalkboard
7. Writer
8. Dry-cleaner
9. Cunt
10. "Here's the remote, flip around if you want."
Other answers:
Actually, I did- Nader 6 1/2 months 2 years and 2 days 18 3 6.5 Dec. '06, I think Yes, in a heartbeat
Why I didn't vote
My polling place is far enough away that I needed to get in the car to drive there. Along the way, several traffic lights were out (blinking red) causing what is normally severe traffic congestion to become unbearable. The
obvious conclusion is that there is a vast right-wing conspiracy trying to keep people from voting. Since I had a lot of time sitting in traffic to think about it, I remembered that we had quite a storm last night and that is why the lights were out. So you put 2 + 2 together and conclude that Republicans are powerful enough to cause massive weather disturbances that interrupt traffic signals and ultimately influence the election. Now, with that kind of power do you think I'm going to just waltz into the elementary school, identify myself, and vote? On the other hand, I
generally consider myself one of those right-wing Republicans so I really shouldn't have to worry about a highly localized tornado appearing out of nowhere to, at best tussle my hair, at worst suck the air from my lungs killing me instantly. But I'm pretty vain about my hair so I turned around and went home. Since I didn't vote for Bush, maybe some hot chicks will like me.
(aside: yes, it works like that inside my head)
Lest you think I'm a terrible person for not engaging in my civic duty, I fully intend to participate in the riots and looting that are sure to take place when a winner is eventually announced. I've had my eye on a really nice pair of wingtips at Johnston & Murphy, a camelhair sportcoat at Brooks Brothers, and as long as I'm at the mall I might as well loot an iPod. I bought shells for my shotgun earlier in the week, since I believe in being prepared.
