January 2005 Archives

yeah. sure. to you it is a grandious waste of time.

to me, however, it is a mind-numbing way to make the work day end.

after endless trial and error i have successfully set up an RSS feed for the Dark Alleys sideblog. now you can be on the cutting edge of internet time wasting and be alerted to my web discoveries in delayed-real-time!

what? uh. i dunno. i just STARTED working on it this morning and now it's 3:41.

our Troublonian tourist office is proud to announce an upgrade to our directionitational services. where as before a visitor to our proud land had only one type of off-site link to follow, now we present you with three distinct ways to get lost.

we are happy to help!

in the sidebar you will see a few inviting Dark Alleys. these are places that remain appealingly unexplored by our guides at this time. perhaps they will present a nice aromatic corner in which to pass out? maybe inside you will find an industrious salesman with an underpriced watch reminiscent of one you lost at the airport? maybe he will offer you the traditional coin-filled sock of friendship? go in and see!

we also offer Unfiltered Water. this is good. you must drink your unfiltered water every day or you will get dehydrated. all the sources in this list are establishments i know well. i have spent, as we say colloquially in Troublonia, many an hour in the commode of their company.

finally, there are the Carpet Emporiums. have you come all the way to Troublonia and not purchased a carpet? for shame! you must let one of these hospitible salesmen teach you a thing or two about our exquisite and very affordable carpets. it will only take a brief moment of your time. a cup of tea, perhaps? a biscuit? please. come inside, my brother! you like carpet?

no. i insist. you like carpet.

you do not care.

today i did not blog. today i converted my blog to a php blog. this let me set up a sideblog for, uh, stuff.

hell. i dunno. i'm working on it.

if you find a link isn't working that used to, it means you're looking for an html page and it's now a php page. just change the extension.

today we learn:

1) do not mess with dooce
2) sideways was a book first
3) stay in bed at all costs

also, if you make an error regarding any of the above your blog will receive lots of comments. nine is like a new record!

ergo: be poor at fact checking, mildly insulting, and ever-groggy and your blog will become flameous.

see? i just created a new word. flameous. it's like infamous, but with snarkier email/comments.

today i note the nominations for the 2005 Bloggies.

i wonder, how do it work? what weird combination of content and community makes a blog world famous?

how does a dooce go from being some woman who knows mormons to being a word in the dictionary? how does a personal life spread like melted butter across the fake crab that is the bloggosphere?

how, from the millions, do a few rise to the top?

i feel like old crackers.

a little stale. not inedible, just mushy and slightly gross. i blame work.

not that i don't like my job, it's just i don't really like jobs in general. my brain is slowly sludgifying.

ergo; i needs me a project.

now that i'm back from jury duty i feel i can see work with new eyes.

on jury duty, i could only go to the bathroom at predetermined times. at work, i may only relieve myself in predetermined places.

on jury duty, i could not wear a hat. at work, i cannot wear a codpiece.

on jury duty, i could not read, or surf the net, or blog, or listen to music. at work, i cannot do foxy striptease numbers on the photocopier.

on jury duty, i got an hour for lunch. at work, we take two and a half to go to the ramp and sit in the sun.

yeah. i think i'll stick with work.

i have indeed figured out how to get excused from jury duty.

i was quite nervous on day two of the voir dire. by my count nine of the twenty-four seated prospective jurors had made statements along the lines of "due to the fact that my son just died of horrible throat cancer i believe i could not be impartial in this case."

now math isn't my strong suit, but 24 minus 9 equals 15. that's not enough jurors for a six week case.

my stomach has been all hurty today, but i wanted to spread the word about this:

Committee to Protect Bloggers

check 'em out. know that it exists.

i've been thinking a lot about this whole jury duty thing.

we watched Inherit the Wind last night. Spencer Tracy was very compelling but the jury decided that teaching evolution was against the law anyway.

so should i serve? or more accurately, should i try to get out of serving or not?

they denied my hardship excuse.

so unless the corporate lawyers hate my guts i could be stuck on a twenty-five day jury.

anyone have a "fuck the police" t-shirt i can borrow for the jury selection wednesday?

today i wrote an email to my boss.

you know, one of those emails that's all like: here's what i really think.

i told him that if he kept on touching me like that i was going to quit.

no. ha ha! just kidding. i love it when he touches me.

it really said: if we don't start making our music available for digital download we're going to be as relevant as wax records. it said that there's practically no money to be made, but we can either make a dime and remain in the mix or we'll make nothing and wave forlornly to the kids as they walk past with thier iPods cranking. and maybe one day they'll take their date to a concert.

when i was in malaysia, i met this guy named steve. steve was a dive master at coral sky divers on palau perhentian kecil. he had all these really fun hand signals for stuff you'd see underwater.

he would mime disrobing and that would mean "nudibranch." he would pretend to shoot you; that meant "trigger fish."

we ended up getting to be friends. he's about my age, a scouse (from liverpool) and a souse and a roustabout. he had been a businessman, but he chucked it to travel around diving. when i was there he got his monthly paycheck. it was negative since he'd spent it all on booze. trying to roll one, the gum on the paper fails him time and again. he looks at the pack disparagingly, sighs and curses softly, "muslims."

today, there are two new blogs in the world!

will they grow up to be chemists? or poets? or actors? or football heros? or pole dancers?

it's so goddamned exciting i'm going to have to stand on my desk and wiggle my bum provocatively whilst singing the blog national anthem!

ahem:

oh, keys of type and screens of pixel
you draw us close so we can mix all
pro-cra-stin-at-ing at work or school
we write every day to describe our drool

un. der. wwwweeeeeaaaaarrrrr!

i really think it's time that Emil Minty got some respect.

i mean, mel gibson stars as mad max and goes on to become jesus of hollywood -- but emil minty? the Feral Kid in Road Warrior? he was much better then mel and where is he today?

that's right! he's selling used office supplies from a dingy warehouse outside of adelaide! (i made that up, actually it looks like he's sort of normal and goes to mad max reunion stuff.) it's a crying shame. we, i think, need to raise money to fly him over here, arm him with a sharpened metal boomerang, and give a map to the stars homes.

it would be an emil minty-gram.

i got invited to dinner at nine tonight.

what? is this freakin' europe? do i look, uh, like a castle? am i wearing a goddamned speed-o?

that would be funny, 'cause i'm at work. i dare you to go to work on monday in a speed-o and goggles. you could also shave your chest. you know, to cut down on the drag.

dinner at nine is about two hours after i'm hungry. plus, if we say "nine" that means by the time everyone shows up and sits down and the food comes it's gonna be at least 9:45.

that's when i want breakfast.

last night i did not sleep well, oh no.

then i got grumpy. and woke up grumpy. and was stomping around grumpy. and at work i had to schedule all these meetings. i hate scheduling meetings.

but this song came on the iPod. Youpi by Cornu which consists of a woman saying nice sounding things in French and then going, "Yipee." or Youpi, i guess. madhavi put it on a mix for me.

it's hard to be grumpy when someone says you make them feel yipee. or youpi. as long as you pronounce it yipee.

i went to buy some flowers yesterday. for madhavi because she's been sick.

i have a thing about flowers.

i used to live next to the best florist, Church St. Flowers. now i have to go to Flowers by Tony.

you'd think the Castro would have a better florist.

today, someone said one of the stupidest things i've ever heard.

she said:

it's so hard coming back from vacation, that i think it would be better to not have vacation at all.

in response i shot her in the thigh and kicked her down the stairs onto the bike rack.

no. i did not do anything so grossly inhumane. i just looked at her as if she had told me that giant hairy spiders were living in her nostrils. she quickly recanted, but don't you see! the man! the man is spreading his evil mind control.

you don't want vacation, right? it's too hard to come back. just stay and work like a good little drone until you're too old to rise up in rebellion and demand more cheese-flavored treats to go with your weak coffee.

i say: rebellion now! bring on the cheese-flavored treats now or we'll shoot you in the thigh and kick you down the stairs onto the bike rack.

i did not sleep well last night. i blame the double feature.

madhavi and i went to see Life Aquatic and then Million Dollar Baby.

rather than talk smack about the "best movies of 2004" i'll just...

wait. why would i pass up talking smack?

um.

not really. but hey! Happy Frickin' New Year's woo woo woooooo!

i am very happy to announce the completed redesign of this blog. i hope you like it, 'cause i do. i even made me a new icon which should be showing up in your title bar. if it don't, try dumping your cache and reloading the site. it looks kind of like a little hungry tick instead of the bio hazzard glyph it came from, but hey, either works just fine for a Troublonia logo.