halloween and stuff...

This post could have been titled with something that referenced that damned iPod touch, because its been taking up most of my free bandwidth and a great deal of my bandwidth which has already been assigned to a process.
But, if I start focusing all my non-blogging to it, it will have truly won.
So even though I am clearly talking about it right now, I'm gonna stop.
In a minute.
Album art. Kill me.
I've been spending all my time finding and assigning album art to my music. Why? Why am I doing it? I never cared before.
Because of the nifty flip through your albums interface of the touch. If you don't assign album art AND in a way iTunes likes, the flip through interface is not just worthless, it is angering.
Angering like if you were trying to have an important conversation with someone half in a coma. That blank stare of blankness you'd get. It feels like that. Like you wanna slap it for looking at you like that. Futile stare of incomprehention.
Its so bad that when I was talking to steve about it, I described the place holder useless graphic it uses when there is no or it doesn't recognize the album art as a dopey square with a frustrating question mark looking at you with frustrating, questioning stupidness.
My mind made that up, though. Its actually little happy stupid frustrating music notes of questioning stupidness. Much better.
But we are not talking about the iPod touch or the hours of time I have spent not having fun with it while updating album art.

This post is about Halloween and trick or treating.
I went with Hayley and some friends. Kids are lightweights now. They carry little plastic pumpkin heads to capture treats and are tired and done in just over an hour.
I used to carry a pillow case and didn't stop until I almost couldn't carry the damned thing.
The candy would be gone in two weeks.
Last year, Hayley still had some at Easter.
There were some kids being DRIVEN to houses. Gah. Shame on everyone in that minivan. Shame, shame indeed.
There was one kid in our group who will be suplicating on the floor of a casino pit boss's office some day. He clearly felt he should stop and kept saying so, but then he would say, "Just one more house. One more. Then I can get even. One more. Then I'm out."
As far as I know, he is still out there. I dig his dedication to candy, but I worry for hm.
He was almost the kid I would have labeled the Halloween king, until I saw the kid with the real pumpkin on his head. He had carved an upside-down jack-o-lanternb and was wearing it as a mask. I saw him a number of times and he always had it on. That's hard core. The inside of a pumpkin is moist and stinky.
You mean it if you're wearing one on your head.
You rock kid.

See? Not about the iPod at all.
I'm okay.

acting class again...

It was decided that last night's acting class would not be a class at all. We were going to SEE a play. I guess the idea was to allow us to witness those doing what we'd like to be doing and to see the way what we would like to be doing was supposed to be done. Or something.
I say, or something, because that is what the play was. It was called Weightless.
I would describe for you the plot, if I knew what the plot was.
It appeared as though there was a well-off family living in a high rise apartment. They finally got their piece of the pie, if you will.
The mother of the family was a successful cosmetic surgeon with a hobbling case of agoraphobia. She did all her surgery over the INTRAweb, using tactile-feedback gloves. No one in the play ever used the terminology tactile-feedback, however. The writer could have used a quick tour around WIRED.com. The mom just referred to some gloves she wore and how she could almost feel the skin of the patient.
Using some nice geek-speak would have been a pleasant addition.
The son of the family is on chemical probation. I don't know if such a thing exists, but it sounds like a good idea. Keep a maniac whacked up on goofballs.
In order to whack the maniac up on goofballs, you need a live-in nurse or caregiver. They had one. She appeared to have some ulterior motives that were hard to follow. She kept asking the father for money. She may have been after money. Tough to say.
The father... I'll get to the father.
The maniac son whacked up on goofballs loves that caregiver and likes to gently strangle her until she stabs him with a syringe that looked suspiciously like a Sharpie.
Whatever was in this Sharpie was really strong stuff as the maniac would immediately fall on the floor in, like, a coma deal.
The maid would clean up the coma. The maid was a man dressed as a woman with an undisclosed accent. The mother experimented on the maid with different procedures. At one point, she apparently attaches large pigeon wings to her back. But, don't be afraid, they're gone in the next scene.
The maid, it seems, has had to have her memories and her adherence to the law of gravity locked in a safe deposit box to make sure she is a good worker to the family. Of course, the safe deposit box is in the basement. As the maid no longer is affected by gravity, she can't get to the basement. Like we haven't seen this plot point a thousand times.
The care giver and the mother are having an affair, but only so the caregiver can get information to the father about what's wrong with his and the mother's marriage.
I'm getting to the father.
The apartment itself is a character in this play. There is a large crack down the center of the floor which sometimes opens. I am sure when this crack opens, it means something.
Uh.. the elevators don't work. There is an army contained riot going on below the family and the maid is having sex, sort of, with the father.
The father. The father has breasts. He is growing breasts to try to get the attention of the mother, who loves breasts. His breasts get slightly larger until, toward the end of the play, he turns into a chicken.
Yes. He turns into a chicken. Builds a nest and clucks a lot.
Then the building collapses and everyone dies.

This is one of those plays that I am not smart enough to understand. I know there is a lot of subtext and allegory and implications that are beyond my reach.

The other sentence I could have written here was:

This is one of those plays that doesn't make any sense and is written by someone who wants the viewers to think there is a lot of subtext and allegory and implications that are beyond their reach.

I think, mostly, no one knows what's going on in plays like this, but they can't admit it.
I have no problem admitting it. Unless I have to speak to the people who were in the play and/or who wrote it which was what my class was supposed to do right after the play was complete.
I decided to use the old adage, "If you don't have anything nice to say, run out of the theater before anyone notices and go home and watch Heroes."

BAA! I say! BAAAAAA!!!

Sheep. I am a sheep.
It physically hurts me to report this.
I have purchased an iPod.

To everyone who stood against the iOnslaught, I have stood alongside you and was proud to scoff at the iDrones.

I'm sorry. I really am. I'm sorry.

It was the touch, don't you see? The touch! How could I maintain in the face of something as cool as that!? I mean, come on!
Don't. Don't look at me that way.
I'm still me.
No. No, no. It will be okay.
We can...
We could run away and...

Who am I kidding!? No one! I'm kidding no one at all!!

I cried at a Billy Ray Cyrus song and bought an iPod ON THE SAME DAY!!!

What's next!? Capri pants and sandals!?!?

bumper stickers...

I've often said, "Never believe in anything strongly enough to want to purchase a bumper sticker proclaiming that belief."
If you have something you believe in a lot, good for you. It's good to have beliefs. But keep them to yourself. You don't need to go trumpeting them out to the world. At worst, you are going to piss someone off who doesn't believe what you believe. At best, you are boring.
I guess there is the off chance that someone with the same bumper sticker will drive up along side you on the highway and give you the high sign or the old thumbs up with cheery grin of camaraderie. I guess that would actually be the best you could hope for, but I bet it would weird you out.
An example of the worst was someone who decided to take the bumper sticker concept to a ridiculous extreme and was hauling around a trailer-sized cube of pictures of aborted fetuses behind their mini van. I assume they were not pro-abortion.
I myself don't have a strong opinion either way on abortion. If I am in a relationship where there is the possibility of an abortion happening, I would like to be involved in the decision. Beyond that...?
But, giant cubes of death pictures on the highway make me mad. It's offensive and unnecessary. I wanted to pull the person driving the mini-van out and beat them with a vacuum cleaner, just for an ironic touch.
If I had done so, I would have been labeled as a fanatical anti-pro-lifer and the point just would have been totally missed which would have pissed me off even more and I would have to find other somewhat ironic items to beat other people with. The process would become an intense time/energy drain, so I compromised by making angry faces at the idiot as I drove past them. They were duly chastised, let me tell you.
I am on this bumper sticker kick because I saw one that I just don't understand. It can't possibly be something this dope believes in, but it's not clever enough where someone says, "Oh man. I gotta share this with the world." I mean, I don't THINK so.
It said:

WHAT WOULD SCOOBY DO?

I mean, I get it. Scooby Doo. Right. I got that. And I know jokes so I know that's the joke. But how does this warrant a space on your limited back-bumper real estate? Is it the kind of thing you really want people to know you find humorous enough to share all over the road? I guess, if you think it is, you really don't know any better so why am I asking?
The only possibility for redemption for this waste of 1/16th of an inch of vinyl is if a small child gave it to the driver and begged them to put in on their car. Small children can get you to do a lot of things you don't want to do.
This morning, Hayley was listening to a new song by Miley and Billy Ray Cyrus on Radio Disney. It's called, "Ready, Set, Don't Go". It pisses me off because if Hayley wasn't in the car I never would have heard it or if I did I wouldn't have given it a moments thought, but now I have and it makes me cry.
For God's sake what's wrong with me?
If you have a daughter, who doesn't live with you all the time, I dare you to listen to this song while you are on your way to dropping her off for the week and NOT cry. Go ahead. Give it a shot. Bastards. Shut up all of you.

DIGRESSION ENDS NOW

There is only one bumper sticker I would buy, and I haven't seen it yet, though it could be easily made. I might tote a swarveyland.com bumper sticker around, sure, but I mean beyond that.
It would be WWSKD?
What Would Stephen King Do?

Why? Because not only is he my favorite writer (So much so that I've forgiven him for the catastrophe ending to The Gunslinger Series.), but he is also infinitely bad-ass.
He earned his infinite bad-assity when he was struck by a mini-van in 1999, flew 14 feet into a ditch and did not die. Later that year, he had the mini-van purchased for 1500 dollars with the intention of beating the thing to death with a sledgehammer. He wasn't well enough to do the sledgehammer thing, but he did have the vehicle crushed at a junkyard, which is almost as good.
I love this. Screw you, inanimate object outweighing me by thousands of pounds. You will not kill me, but I, I will crush you into a small cube and server hot dogs off you.
I made up that part about the hot dogs, but wouldn't THAT be cool?

Take a close look at my car and you will find, there is no WWSKD? bumper sticker on it.

errors and ommissions...

Man. I hate being wrong.
Went to dinner last night and Mark called me out for making an error. He was kind enough to do it in person and not in the public of my page for fear of making me look silly.
He might need to read the posts here a little more closely, but I appreciated the concern.
What was the error this time?
I referred to the below fellow as bushy mullet man. Mostly he was a funny looking dude and I really wanted to call him bushy mullet man because I like the way it sounds.
You bushy mullet man!
It's fun.


Mark, backed up by another friend Kerry, explained to me that he does not, in fact, have a mullet. His hair is not the required short in the front, long in the back. It's just long and frizzy all over the head.
They're right. I know. I really wanted to call him bushy mullet man, but in actuality he is horrible, out-of-control, everywhere-yet-thin afro man with cheesy mustache. But, that just doesn't have the same ring.
Kerry explained that in order to have a mullet, it must be short, short, like business short, in the front and long in the back. Hence, business in the front, party in the back.
However, this is only correct in the relative. What is short, is relative to what is long in the back.
So you can have long hair in the front as long as the hair in the back is much longer. Think of Bono circa Red Rocks.
I believe, if you look at the math, you must have a minimum 4:1 ratio of length in the back to the front.
Would this always work? I don't know. If you have one inch of hair in the front and four inches of hair on the back of your head, do you have a mullet?
I know if you have four inches of hair on the front of your head and sixteen down your back, you have a mullet for sure.
It may not be an absolute rule, but I think it is a good rule.
Using this rule and rudimentary GIMP-ing I attempted to create bushy mullet man from horrible, out-of-control, everywhere-yet-thin afro man with cheesy mustache.

Oh, that's one nice mullet, there, bushy mullet man!

In other news, Hayley's teeth have been fix-ed. Hopefully, we can all keep her from smashing her face into the ground some more.

short one...

Please be more specific.

more irregardless writing...

I imagine I shouldn't be very demanding when it comes to the writing level of commercials. I imagine my level of demanding should drop when I am watching a Taco Bell commercial.
I imagine I have a serious problem for allowing the level of writing on a commercial of any kind to take up any space at all in my head.
So, okay. I have a problem. Have we met?
This Nachos Bell Grande with Chili commercial is bothering me. It encompasses about 35 different flavors of cliche'.
A younger and older brother are sitting on a couch. Cliche' number 1. A couch? Could they not have put any more imagination into their whereabouts??
Kidding. That is not the cliche'.
The cliche's start with the appearance of the younger and older brother. Young is nerdy with a nerdy striped shirt and nerdy glasses. Old is safe, pseudo-hip with some army looking jacket on and reasonable spiky hair. He is obviously the most cool of the two.
He is going to share with the younger his rules on life. This conversation itself is a cliche.
The younger, clearly more intelligent brother, speaks intelligently while the older is using hipster speak and is less intelligent.
He uses the, "I am going to tell you three things. Number 1 is blah, bleagh, blah. Number 2 is bleh, bleh, bleh and C is balh, bleh, blargh.."

Um...

There are a lot of cliches and the commercial sucks. I've run out of umbrage.

WORLD SERIES, BABY!! GO RED SOX!! WOO!!

I was watching Cavemen last night. It's not the train wreck I hoped it was going to be. It is not fascinatingly horrible, it is merely mediocre and bleagh.
I would like it a lot more if it was a lot worse.
It is not well written like this here scentence is as well written, however irregardless you might think I am saying.
They are only a couple of weeks, maybe a month, into their series, and they are already using this joke.
A woman, doesn't matter who the woman is, you don't really need the backstory, is on the phone. She is talking to someone about how much of a slut that person is, what a whore they are and do they not have ANY couth? Then they finish up the call by saying, "Okay Mother. I have to go now." Or something to that effect. That lets the listener know that she has been calling her MOM a slut and a whore. Get it!?

I know I spoke about open mic comedy night in a previous post from a couple of months ago, but I don't think I made reference to the fact that this kind of joke shows up an awful lot.
Steve and I were at a show one night, and a young man went to this particular well way more many times than was reasonable.
Some of his jokes were:
I was banging this woman the other night and I attempted anal on her. She wasn't into it, so I said, "It's the 21st century for God's sake! Get with the times Mom!"

and...

I played Little League baseball when I was a kid. I say I played Little League baseball, but I mostly just sat on the bench, because the coach wouldn't let me play. He didn't think I played good enough. So one day, I said to him, "I wish you would let me play. Come on, Dad!"

Several similar jokes later, I realized his Father was a real prick to him. But it was probably because of all the Mother/Son sex going on.

tim horton's and bike news...

On Saturday morning, I had a hankerin' for an iced coffee, which is weird. As I am not a massive ass I wanted to get Jenn a tea as well. I went looking for beverages.
The Dunkin' Donuts were crammed full of jerks looking for beverages and totally disregarding the Swarvey Is The Center Of The Universe rule.
I ran out of patience, again, weird, and decided I'd head on over to the abandoned Tim Horton's who is barely surviving in the jungle full of Double D's.
Tim Horton's is like going to a foreign country. There are a lot of things in there that are similar to what I am accustomed to, but not exactly the same.
Also, similar to a foreign country, the measurement systems is alien to me.
I ordered a large iced coffee and a large hot tea, and got this:

How can this giant vat of iced coffee and this smallish to reasonably sized cup of hot tea both be considered a "large"?
Oh that Tim Horton is a crazy guy.

In other news, I bought my daughter a nifty new bike and helmet combination as she did not have one for when she was with me and hauling her bike from her Mom's house was getting to be a drag.
I continue to be stupidly tickled by the sight of her on her bike, riding well and enjoying it. When she said, "Want to see how fast I can go?", I was even more stupidly excited.
She loves to go fast, she always has. One of my fondest memories of her is from our first trip to Disney world. We went on Space Mountain. She was sitting in the seat in front of me in our car. I could barely see the top of her head. But as the ride progressed, I could see her little fists pumping into the air and hear her screaming above the clacking noise of the ride, "FASTER!! FASTER!! WOOOOOO!!!!"
So, she went to the top of the parking lot outside our building waited for me to say, "Ready, Set Go!", then tore off down the parking lot.
Halfway through the parking lot, she lost it. Handlebars wiggled a little bit, she over-compensated, turned the handlebars way too far in the other direction, the bike stopped... and she got a lesson in inertia.
She did a total Superman over the handle bars, but then quickly followed up with a total Greatest American Hero. She landed mostly on her face. Splat-o.
There was a terrifying second when she didn't move or make any sound. It was very similar to when she was an infant and would fall and her mind and body needed a couple of seconds to line up and get their acts together before she started screaming.
She did eventually start screaming. I took me a lot longer than should have been reasonable to get to her. When I got to her, she looked up at me and parts of her teeth fell out onto her shirt...

I need a second here to settle down...

Okay. So. She's screaming and crying and parts of her teeth are falling out. But it's a scream, not a shriek and when I poke her in various places the scream does not increase in volume. She can stand, she can move her fingers and arms and she seems coherent. I have to tell her she's okay to calm her down, which is hard with the blood and the teeth pieces.
The panic and the screaming last for maybe a minute. I'm proud of her for the way she handled it. She was more concerned about having to go to the doctor than she was about the level of actual damage that was done to her.
She did give her teeth a good smashing, though.

smoking ban and urinal action...

The Oakland City Council in California has banned smoking in ATM lines, at parks, bus stops and outdoor dining areas. So, outside. They have made it illegal to smoke in areas outside now.
The news was asking people in California how they felt about it. Apparently, they only asked non-smoking NAZIs, because everyone was thrilled about it.
"It's great."
"I love it."
"Oh thank goodenss."
"It's really about time."
"To hell with them and their cigarettes. I hope they all get hit by a dumptruck anyway!"

I am a non-smoker. I don't like the smoke stink or the way it smells. I like that I will die with nice, pink, lungs.
But, banning smoking outside, seems like crossing a line to me. Feels like borderline babysitting. Can I not, as a non-smoker, just alter my path a little bit? Do I have no responsibility to my own health and need a big brother to keep me safe?
Maybe they should pass laws banning all sharp edges. Everything should be round and bouncy.
Hmm. Actually, a round and bouncy world sounds appealing to me.

In other news, I went to the bathroom the other day. There was a fellow standing at the urinal beside the one I was going to use. He was using the urinal. He had his hands on his hips while he used the urinal. This by itself is odd.
Now, I was not watching this chap at the urinal though it is about to sound like I was. However, when you are using a urinal, the other urinal is just not that far away and it's hard to not notice stuff. Especially if you have borderline ADD and tend to notice much of the world that really could go un-noticed.
So, out of the corner of my eye, I see the dude who was standing at the urinal not change his body position at all and walk away from the urinal.
Let me see if I can paint this for you.
He's standing with his hands on his hips, using the urinal.
With his hand STILL on his hips, he walks away.
I see none of the pantomime I associate with completing his use of the urinal and requisite putting away of his equipment.
He walks out of the bathroom.
I expected to hear women screaming and alarms going off, but nothing happened.
Oh, he was another guy who just jogged on past the sink without washing.
Now I gotta picture the guy jogging with his hands on his hips and his shame hanging out. His "doodle" to use a Flanders-ism.

I hate that I notice this crap, because I have to talk about it and people wonder about me.
What did he do? Is he a magician? Was one of his arms fake? Does he have incredible lower abdomen muscle control and can withdraw himself like a human tape measure? Does he have force-field pants and pulls himself in with a tractor beam?

And... if any of this is true and he can work the whole using the urinal thing without touching anything, well, I guess he doesn't need to wash his hands.