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Sunday, November 30, 2003
my favorite part about this:
Ellzey said Wal-Mart officials called later Friday to ask about her sister, and the store apologized and offered to put a DVD player on hold for her.
so, the most important thing about this to wal-mart is that they keep her as a shopper. this reminds me of another wal-mart incident from last year.
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
ok, this seems like honest-to-goodness good news, but check out mr. senior economist and his techno-jumbo...
"Growth is now super-super strong compared to super strong,'' said Joseph LaVorgna, senior U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank Securities.
super-super strong? um, can i get a job at deutsche bank securities? i'll be super-duper good!
Monday, November 24, 2003
william's been sick. i guess the flu's going around something fierce. i always stop to think, is it getting worse? and of course, it starts with the flu, but this slowly evolves into what i like to refer to as "everyfreakin'thing." are things getting better or are they getting worse? too much kierkegaard i guess. i've been rereading bits from this present age and i start to think of everything like a demonaic, a false spirit...
In order for leveling really to occur, first it is necessary to bring a phantom into existence, a spirit of leveling, a huge abstraction, an all-embracing something that is nothing, an illusion--the phantom of the public. . . . The public is the real Leveling-Master, rather than the leveler itself, for leveling is done by something, and the public is a huge nothing.
The public is an idea, which would never have occurred to people in ancient times, for the people themselves en masse in corpora took steps in any active situation, and bore responsibility for each individual among them, and each individual had to personally, without fail, present himself and submit his decision immediately to approval or disapproval. When first a clever society makes concrete reality into nothing, then the Media creates that abstraction, "the public," which is filled with unreal individuals, who are never united nor can they ever unite simultaneously in a single situation or organization, yet still stick together as a whole. The public is a body, more numerous than the people which compose it, but this body can never be shown, indeed it can never have only a single representation, because it is an abstraction. Yet this public becomes larger, the more the times become passionless and reflective and destroy concrete reality; this whole, the public, soon embraces everything. . . .
he wrote that over 100 years ago and it sounds like he's discussing the michael jackson arrest. at any rate, we've been giving william medication like crazy. he's been to the doctor twice. we're properly worried parents. perhaps too worried, wondering when the next shoe will drop, when the next sad thing will happen. just like everyone else. stirred up into something, not sure what...confused and worrying. of course, of course, everyone says. but it's not getting worse. nor better. you just have to [insert blah and blah fucking blah stupid-ass statement here]. rinse. repeat.
Thursday, November 20, 2003
How Not to Get Fired Because of Your Blog
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
office email poetry
i am sorry
to hear
that you have decided
to leave.
however,
i understand
that you have to
do
what you feel is right for
you.
(idea ripped off from dirt press)
Monday, November 17, 2003
if you don't know how to say it...let them sing it for you
i've pretty much gotten over massive attack, or so i thought, and then i was listening to them on musicmatch. man, that song antistar on their last album (100th window) really kicks the bucket.
also, trouble by pink. i realize this invalidates my previous statement. probably all of them.
trouble
yeah trouble now
i'm trouble ya'll
i got trouble in my town
it's that part right there when she's singing and her throat almost gives out, you can hear her rasp. they could've smoothed that bit out or electronified it (or whatever the heck they do to brittney's voice), but they don't. goddamn them, they don't!
Saturday, November 15, 2003
well, i guess kevin let the cat out of the bag (in his comment below), but i got a new job.
via new republic: sullivan does a decent fisking of clark on kosovo vs. iraq. i think with all the talk of quagmire, the illegitimacy of the iraq campaign and the press' continued fascination with clark, it's useful to note clark's contradictory positions on both kosovo (a war he pursued) and iraq (a war he supported and then didn't).
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
this is perfect.
i think we should have a last email contest.
"dear everyone, you suck, but not as bad as you've been led to believe."
or
"and kevin, thanks for that one time that you let me hang my head out your camry and puke all up and down it. you're a winner."
or
"i didn't have any self-respectable way to break off our friendship while i was alive, but now that i'm dead, it's over."
or
"think about this: me and God are tight now and i have a few things i'm gonna tell him about you."
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
i'm the tooth fairy again. i almost forgot, but lonanne whispered it in her sleep. "don't forget the tooth fairy.". i crept in and snuck the little plastic bag full of his tiny front tooth out from under thomas' pillow. he smacks like his mom and grinds his teeth like me. so many thoughts already, so many things crammed sideways into that head. god help him, i whisper and slide in the other plastic bag with the quarters, trying not to make a clink, trying not to wake the kid and ruin the whole thing for good. yeah, your dad's the tooth fairy. that's why there's only four quarters in a plastic ziploc. if you had another dad and another mom, maybe you'd get drawings or a letter in a gold macy's bag with glitter and shit. maybe the tooth fairy wouldn't be a cheap old hag. but then, maybe she's crazy. i mean, she doles out money for teeth? i hid the tooth with all the others on the top of lonanne's great-grandmother's china cabinet. it's under a bunch of blankets. i imagine us moving some time in the future and all the ziplocs full of teeth falling out. i've been thinking of what i'll say when this happens and i think it will be something along the lines of "so that's where she kept them!"
Monday, November 10, 2003
latest dirt PRESS. they selected one of my stories [st. james church road] for this one.
this past sat. william turned 4. we had a birthday party for him up in salado with the requisite hayride. me, kyle and mason made strafing runs at the trailer with the john deere gator, throwing nuts at the kids and adults until mason's mom gave us the disapproving nod. we found the horses and fed them apples and hay until leaping leon ran them off. william's favorite gifts so far are the lord of the rings hobbit sword, the transformer car, and the gumby and pokey dolls (from kyle and jenny). william's favorite video is an odd gumby movie that a friend of ours got him last christmas. i swear, it must be twenty years old and it's one of the most bizarre children's flicks i've ever seen. it's called "gumby 1" and, as near as i can follow, it's about these evil robots who hatch a plot to clone gumby. the evil gumby robot/clone then chases gumby through all these books. when they jump into the books, they enter that world. meanwhile, pokey gets stuck to this lizard creature and a doctor performs some sort of cutting edge surgery to separate them. and then there's this weird ten-minute music video stuck in the middle. i've watched it half a dozen times and it still feels like a david lynch student film.
Sunday, November 09, 2003
via kevin: 5 reasons not to buy an ipod.
the dell digital jukebox dj looks good and much cheaper, but it has its limitations as well...
dem-onomics. this is mostly to fuel my arguments with kyle about which party was responsible for the boom back then (and the one that is coming).
Long-term interest rates actually rose through most of 1994, peaking on the day Republicans took Congress promising to cut spending and taxes. The much bigger bang came from the Gingrich revolution. Only with it did rates fall, the budget move toward balance, the stock market soar and the boom begin.
no matter if you disagree with these and other stats, or if you can roll your own, i do find it odd that all the democratic candidates are proposing tax increases. that just seems foolhardy. even if your economic policy dictates that we fund every (insert your favs here) important gov't program, most americans are going to realize this will mean less money in their pockets. esp. if the economy maintains anything close to a recovery.
Saturday, November 08, 2003
this is indeed scary and if that was my kid laying on the ground, i'd mos' def. be up in that principal's ass crack like a rabid german shephard drug sniffing...ok, you get the point. but what i'm left wondering is this: how stupid do you have to be to raid a public high school and NOT find drugs? i remember this spot at my high school where kids went to smoke pot. it was on the side of the theatre. don't worry mom, i was too much of a striver (read: geek) at that point to do it, but i knew about it. the kid living next door to us (i actually never told you this one) baked crack in his oven and sold it. as dumb as the la porte pd were, they'd send drug dogs in every month or so and bust someone. they didn't need to throw everyone down on the floor to do it either.
Friday, November 07, 2003
via geekpress: latest logo trends
notice my old company verio falls under #8. shadows! i'm still a sucker for #2. refinement? seems more like industrial. or modern?
another big surprise
pretty funny
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
do yourself a favor and check out the latest outkast video, the way you move. i know i'm gonna get the sexist vote on this one, but hot damn outkast has the hooks and the style. they are straight up making the best pop music around. and is it me, or does big boi do a better bobby brown impression than bobby brown?
ah, i would be remiss, however, if i didn't also link to my prof's essay on evil in the same issue.
so i guess things even out in the wash after all.
ok, i'm sorry, but louis black has clearly gone from shrill annoying liberal hack to shrill annoying purveyor of bad taste.
The sorry state of American film criticism is not exactly a revelation, but cruising the Net for Secondhand Lions reviews made it so painfully clear.
um, yeah.
there was a time when some of his rants made a sort of delusional sense. now he just goes after anyone who dares to criticize his friends and then twists it all around into being either for or against the war in iraq. i didn't realize that if i didn't like kill bill it made me incapable of seeing my own bloodlust, but now that louis has held up this brilliant essay, i do see it, i do!
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
don't let the facts stand in the way of a good story.
Saturday, November 01, 2003
there were no fewer than four fall festivals at various churches in our neighborhood. i think there are seven churches in our tiny, old neighborhood, which i'm guessing is the size of wrigley field. maybe two wrigley fields. i counted the churches once, but now i've forgotten. there may be eight. and they are all old churches. founded in 1940s old. anyway, three things about these "fall festivals."
- why can't they be called halloween festivals? or halloween-o-rama? or fright night II: the awakening? i mean, i sort of understand that it started as a pagan festival and all, but didn't the church coopt christmas as well? everyone dresses up like it's halloween and they have all these spooky games/events/rides. is it the word halloween? some of them even say "fall harvest festival" which is more absurd. what harvest? other than the pot growing in crazy joe's backyard, who's harvesting shit? i grew up in a strict southern baptist church and even they had the good sense to call it a halloween festival. they had a haunted house to boot. (sidenote: not like the one in hell house although that is a great documentary. "this church wants to scare the HELL out of you.")
- everyone skips trick or treating now in favor of these fall festivals. whenever anyone talks about it, invariably they say the festivals provide a "safe" environment for the kids. one guy poisons his own son in houston on halloween back in the eighties and EVERYONE FREAKIN' WORRIES ABOUT SOMEONE POISONING THEIR KID (sidenote: i was living in houston at the time this happened and my parents still let me trick or treat). maybe michael moore was right. we're a culture of fear. i mean, people walk up and down our streets all day long and play in the parks and talk to their neighbors, but once it turns dark on October 31, the neighborhood becomes a DANGER ZONE where evil old retired people give out poisoned pixie sticks. seriously, our neighborhood is probably 50% retired old couples or widowed old ladies and 50% young married couples with kids. watch out, danger!
- the fall festival has turned pro. what was hunter s. thompson's line? when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro? they've got everything. moonwalks, extravagent buffets, constructed mazes, petting zoos, more games than i could even begin to mention, each room of the church or school put to serious use. and cake walks. did i mention the cake walks? you walk around in a circle to music and at the end of it, you get a cake. beautiful! thomas' must have walked around ten times, but he finally got a cake. i had to carry it around as we trick or treated afterwards. at any rate, they have tickets or punch cards and maps. i walk away from these things thinking that given six months, a budget of $150,000 and an army of PTA moms, i'd maybe manage to have a bobbing for apples booth. i don't know how they do it. at the gullet carnival, they had a freakin' jazz band in the playground. curra's catered. there's definitely a minor halloween-moonwalk cottage industry crop crop cropping up. get it? crop up? fall harvest festival? i'm losing it.
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