September 30, 2005

It seems that writing is not my greatest skill. I am probably the last person on earth (counting only those who have read my writing) to realize this. I realized it rather suddenly only about ten minutes ago. How could it have taken so long? When I refer to writing I am not talking about the mundane things like grammar and punctuation, nor the archaic art of penmanship (which I failed constantly all through grade school), but of the actual writing part of it. I can have a story in my head and see it happening in vivid detail, then type out the most bland 20 pages you have ever read when I try to describe it. If I were to tell the story verbally I am sure that I could get it all out there and make other people see the vision that I see, yet writing doesn’t seem Continue reading September 30, 2005

The days blur by

I know that, many times in the past, I have mentioned that my father died on Christmas Eve in 1990. I have also mentioned that he was only 38 years old when he died. Of course since I was only 16 at the time, 38 seemed older than dirt. I guess it takes you a lot of years to realize that you weren’t really an adult when you were 16, it did for me at least. I remember looking at my dad in the weeks leading up to his death, the death was totally unexpected and doesn’t have any actual bearing on my memories. I can remember that, in my sixteen year old eyes, he really looked old. He had the crow’s feet around his eyes, lots of gray hair, his skin was becoming leathery, he just looked old to my sixteen year old eyes. 38 is well over the Continue reading The days blur by

The 40-Year-Old Virgin

My wife had a pair of free movie tickets that had to be used by end of September so we went to see a movie today. While we had decided that we were going to watch The Corpse Bride Which is getting far better reviews than I would have expected, it turns out that the free tickets wouldn’t get us into that movie since it is still considered a “limited engagement”. My second choice was the latest Jodie Foster movie, something to do with an airplane, that would have been nixed anyway since “limited engagement” seems to mean that the tickets will only work on films that are not likely to sell out. I think opening weekend of anything would definitely be out of the question for the purposes of the free movie passes. As we stood at the window wondering what to do next, since I think we both Continue reading The 40-Year-Old Virgin

Cheating death: my favorite sport

It seems to me that there really must be a God or something. I have recounted several stories over the last couple of years where I did something so monumentally stupid that it would and should have been ruled suicide, except I lived (thus proving the existence of God. There has to be someone out there keeping me alive even though I clearly want to die, right? Stupid God and his stupid keeping me alive all the time!). Today is more of the same. Imagine, if you can, a ladder leaning against a wall (come on imagine it). Now imagine standing on that ladder about ten feet up. Then imagine that while you are facing one wall you have to work on a device that is not only on the left side of the ladder but, also a couple of feet behind you. I would have loved to have leaned Continue reading Cheating death: my favorite sport

Jumping the shark

I guess I am going to have to show my age a bit for the purposes of this post. It is all about Jumping the Shark. I have always assumed that the phrase came from that episode of Happy Days where Fonzie, quite literally, jumps a shark (I think there was more than one shark actually). The miracle of the internet, as well as the endless information at Wikipedia, seem to prove me right. However, there is a site called Jumptheshark.com (I linked directly to the Happy Days page since they use a horrible frame format that makes it tough to find anything) that has hundreds of people arguing that the show jumped the shark long before the actual shark jumping episode. That got me to thinking… Do you remember the theme song? I do, but I remember two different theme songs. A quick google search found me a page Continue reading Jumping the shark

Truth in advertising

This bitch is pretty specific. Car insurance companies seem to be getting away with the worst false advertising ever, unless you count the “Employee Pricing for Everyone” programs that every car dealer is now using. I will even get a bit more specific: The company is Allstate. They are running commercial ads that say that you can save ( I forget the exact number ) $300 dollars a year by switching to them. I was intrigued. How can that be true? It took watching the commercial a couple of dozen times before I figured out exactly how they were making that claim; they are flat-out lying. At the very bottom of the screen, and only when they make the claim of the “average savings”, there comes up a little line (and I mean tiny) that says, “Savings claim based on customers who reported saving when switching to Allstate.” Okay, that Continue reading Truth in advertising

Guild Wars again

I haven’t actually played Guild Wars very much since I purchased it, there is no particular reason for that. There were no pressing time/schedule issues that would have kept me from playing it, no ultimatims from the significant other, I just hadn’t been playing it much. I am pretty sure that the reason I hadn’t been playing it much is that it is one of those games where it takes me a good half an hour to remember my skill keys (for each character) and even longer to figure out what the hell I was supposed to be doing the last time I quit playing. Guild Wars solved that all, damn it. Guild Wars now has a slick new mission interface that tells you every quest that you have started in any town, listed immediately under a big old town heading. Hard to say you don’t know where you need Continue reading Guild Wars again

The things people say

I have long believed that the only ones who actually listen to shows like Rush Limbaugh are far removed from me. I don’t mean in a partisan sense or simply based on ideology, I mean that I thought that those kinds of people lived in other regions of the U.S., regions far from here. Rush Limbaugh is only the first name that came to mind when I was trying to think of the very conservative radio shows, I am sure there are dozens of other names that I could have thrown out there had I been thinking about it. Not that it really matters for my purposes right now. Hurricane Katrina was a horrible disaster that destroyed a major city. The same kind of devastation happens overseas fairly frequently but here in the good old us of a it’s pretty rare. Turns out that when it does happen we are Continue reading The things people say

Staggering down memory lane, again

Think back to the time when you were a very small child, you know the time, back when you thought that your parents had been granted the gift of ultimate wisdom; they knew every little detail about every little thing, or so you thought. It turns out that thunder doesn’t have anything to do with God moving his furniture around (if it does I am on a bee line to hell), it is all about atmospheric conditions. Things like the hot/cold fronts clashing against each other, the charged particles in the clouds looking for a surface to release their potential energy, a conveniently placed ground that can make the lightning happen, then, BAM you get the thunder. I doubt I would have been able to wrap my mind around something like that when I was six, but still, “God moving his furniture”, what kind of an answer is that (a Continue reading Staggering down memory lane, again