I had a dream that I was in an office sitting at a desk. The second that I finished the thought, “This place is such a joke,” an explosion went off outside the window. Confused, my coworkers and I walked to the window to see what was going on. When we got within a step of the window, the tentative silence was split with bursts of gunfire. A few of my co-workers took off, but I stood for a few seconds trying to process what was happening.

As I backed away from the windows the gunfire started sounding like it was coming from the stairwells. I turned to run, and ducked down a back hall. Instantly, I realized that I was heading into, rather than away from, the gunfire. I looked to the right and saw two executives in a conference room. Knowing that the danger in the stairwell just ahead was close at hand, they looked at me and quietly closed the door. In a split second decision, I hit the ground flat, hoping that whoever came out of the stairwell in front of me wouldn’t notice, and I could run down it once they had turned down the main hall.

It was then that I felt a pistol at the back of my head.

“Not so funny now, is it funny man?”

It was more of a statement than a question.

Before I could get through the thought, “How can I possibly get out of th…”, I heard the shot.

I knew it was at my head. “Oh Shit,” I thought, “this is it.”

And everything went black.

A few moments later, I was approaching my desk, and everyone was asking me how I was. I was a little confused until I heard someone say I that had been in the hospital a long time. I reached up with my right hand and felt the bandages on my head. “Did anyone die?” I asked. “Yes, lots of people. But, you’re here.”

I sat down at my desk confused about how I had survived a shot that should’ve taken my head apart. And why couldn’t I remember anything about the hospital? I reached up with my left hand and touched the soft, round, scar tissue above my left eye. In a fit of anger, and confusion, I screamed, “FUCK!” and threw something stupid like a pencil against the wall and headed for the stairway. I had no idea why I had come back, but I wasn’t about to stay.

Walking down the stairs, I met a strange woman who didn’t seem sympathetic to me getting shot in the head, but her relaxing smile indicated that she liked being around me. She walked with me down to the lobby where I sat with her mixed crowd of friends. One took my bandage off because I wanted to see my head, but no one knew how to get it back on.

It was at that point that I started getting concerned that my head might fall apart.

I woke up touching my temple, relieved that I had a second chance, and concerned that I might be wasting my life.

A couple of weeks ago on a Friday afternoon, a co-worker and I turned down a hallway, just as a young woman approached from the opposite direction. On first glance, I couldn’t say that there was anything unusual enough about her that I’d be able to pick her out of a lineup of young college grads working in the financial industry.

As she approached, she gave me a sideways glance. A few seconds later, another. As a six foot tall, 210 pound guy with an accidentally angry face and a big, sloppy beard, I wish that I could claim this was unusual, but I’d be lying if I say that I was surprised. What did surprise me though, was that when she got within a foot of me, she burst into song. It wasn’t like singing to yourself singing, either.

It was “singing by yourself while vacuuming the living room with a Walkman on” singing.

Yea. There was no Walkman, there was no vacuum, and there certainly was no living room. To add to the insanity, even though there was plenty of volume, I could not figure out if the lyrics of her song were made up of actual words.

You know when you pass by someone who suddenly seems batshit crazy and you want to ask the people you’re with “What the fuck?” but you know that the minute you go once decibel above mouthing the words there is a pretty good possibility that you’ll end up in the middle of a shitstorm of insanity? Because I had made it through the whole week without a shank in the neck, I kept my mouth shut until we were safely out of earshot.

Once safely back within the confines of nerd village, I related the story to several coworkers. None of them could come up with a reasonable explanation for the young woman’s behavior until someone chimed in,

“Maybe she thought that singing was the recommended defense against the Sasquatch.”

Sunufa.

Co-worker 1: Hey did you see Armed and Famous last night?
Co-worker 2: What’s that?
Co-worker 1: Oh, these TV stars are sworn in as cops in India.
Co-worker 2: Indiana?
Co-worker 1: No. Muncie, India.
Co-worker 2: Are you sure?
Co-worker 1: Yes.
Co-worker 2: Not Indiana?
Co-worker 1: No.
Co-worker 2: The continent? India?*
Co-worker 1: Yes, the continent. IN-D-IA.
Co-worker 2: That’s weird. Were they pulling over elephants or something?
Co-worker 1: No, it was normal.
Co-worker 2: Were there any Indian people on the show?
Co-worker 1: Well, no.
Co-worker 2: So, it’s all white people, but it’s in India.
Co-worker 1: Yea. It said right on the police station ‘India’.
Co-worker 2: Not, Indiana?
Co-worker 1: No. It was India.
Co-worker 2: Oh that’s it. I’m putting a call into Mr. Google.
Co-worker 1: [click tack click tack] Here we go: ‘Armed & Famous: The series follows five celebrities as they train to become reserve police officers for the Muncie, Indiana police department’.
All: Laughter.
Co-worker 1: I thought it was weird when they showed a Trailer park…
All: Laughter.
Co-worker 2: Were you drinking last night?
Co-worker 1: No, not at all.

*It should be also noted that India has not recently been promoted to continent

Nimoy & Shatner

Don’t ask me why, but while waiting for the Democracy player to download some Attack of the Show episodes, I found myself perusing The Ultimate Leonard Nimoy Music Site. While I will admit to owning both Shatner and Nimoy albums, I would not go so far as to encourage you to download a copy of Spaced Out - The Best of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner if you happened to come across it in Google’s cache.

Lucille, Are You a Lesbian?

I would, however, fully encourage the downloading of
Music Nerve’s In With the Out Crowd Podcast, which I ran across while trying to remember who sang “Lucille, Are You A Lesbian?” What this DJ lacks in professionalism, he makes up with a plethora of strange musical classics. Included are Lucia Pamela’s “Walking on the Moon”, Wesley Willis’s “Rock N Roll McDonalds”, T. Valentine’s “Lucille, are you a Lesbian?” (26 min in), The Fabrications’ “I’m Sorry (I neckpunched your man)”, and a number of others. If you are a fan of musical oddities, you may have heard a number of these already, but that doesn’t detract from the fun. If you’ve never heard them before, oh man, are you in for a treat.

People’s Court Freak

And if that podcast was a weirdo sundae, this People’s Court video would be like the cherry on top. I can watch this video over and over because the guy just seems like he doesn’t have to put in any effort to come off like a genuine freak. Even the bailiff is laughing in the background. My favorite part? The guy’s answer to “What’s the hardest part about being you?” was simply, “Mustache.”

I took a four day weekend this week. I can’t say that it went as planned…

Day 0: Notar Hero

After last week, all I wanted to do on Friday night was escape into a few hours of Guitar Hero II. I put on my free GHII winter hat, applied the free sunburst sticker to the guitar controller, and waited for the PS2 to warm up. Unfortunately for me, the awesomeness that is Guitar Hero proved to be too much for my crotchety old PS2, and it revolted with a series of growls and grinds that made game play impossible.

After a little investigation, I found that I had to do a more advanced version of my last PS2 dismemberment, this time not only removing the laser, the laser guides and the snake motor screw, but I actually had to melt and bend a plastic clip to give the laser a better ride up and down the screw (meow). Needless to say, now that the PS2 is at the tail end of its life cycle, I am finally well versed at repairing it and have ithumming along better than when it was new.

Note to self: In a pinch, a hair dryer will not miraculously act like a heat gun no matter how MacGuyver the idea seemed at the time.

Day 1: Raked/ran errands

I went raking at #1GF!’s family’s house. On the ride down, we listened to Howard Stern on her brother’s satellite radio, and I found that even though I throw around more f-bombs than an angry trucker with sore nuts, I got really tired of hearing swears on the radio. I guess there is just something about DJ’s having to dance around swears that seems more fun than the swears themselves.

Within a few hours of our arrival, the gutters were cleaned, the yard was raked, and we were on our way back home. On the way back, #1GF! was beyond delighted that her brother had a remote control to the truck radio, and sat in the back seat flicking through the channels in her own impromptu version of “Name that Tune“.

the day ended with us running some errands and picking up some delicious chicken cutlets, which I ate while jamming through the easy and medium levels of GH2.

Day 2: Attended a wake for a good friend’s grandmother

It’s a strange to admit, but when people in my family die, I sometimes dream about them the night they pass away. It has happened for a few of my family members, and although it doesn’t happen all the time, I get nervous when people that I know are the only other people in my dream.

On Thursday night, I had a dream that I heard a noise in my living room. When I went to investigate, I found a friend that I’ve known for 26 years standing there looking confused. When I asked him what he was doing in my living room, he just sort of stared at me and said he had no idea. When I woke up, I spent a few hours convincing myself that my dream had nothing to do with my superstitions, and it only happened for family.

Two days later, my friend called to let me know that he had been with his grandmother when she died on Thursday night. I didn’t mention this to him, and I’m not claiming anything other than it’s weird. If I was superstitious, I might say that “family” is not always about blood.

Day 3: Broke up with IPOWERWEB & found out my aunt died

I talked about the ipowerweb fiasco yesterday, but that was relatively minor compared to the news of my aunt passing away.

About a year ago, my aunt had been diagnosed with three to six months to live. She had beaten her diagnosis by a long shot, and was actually doing relatively well, when she took a sudden downturn and within 48 hours had passed away.

My aunt had a raspy laugh that came from her toes, which was hard to resist joining in with, and like all of my Mom’s siblings, she had been blessed with a quick wit and a great sense of humor.

For only the second time in my life, I will be a pall bearer. And even though I can’t do anything to repay her for all the laughs she gave me over the years, I have to say that I’m honored to have been asked to do this for her.

Day 4: Waited…

Wakes and funerals are difficult by nature, but waiting for them to arrive can be tough, too. I couldn’t really relax yesterday because my aunt’s wake and funeral are coming up. It’s not that I think that wakes and funerals are grueling affairs, but waiting for them brings out those feelings of being a little helpless, a little distracted, and a lot like you’ll never know the right thing to say to those people who feel worse than you do. I wasted time and ran errands until I went to dinner with my parents, yesterday, but if I were smart, I might’ve spent the day living.

I can’t believe that Halloween is almost upon us. And everyone knows that a good Halloween starts with four basic ingredients: decorations, music, video, and a costume.

Decorations

Let’s start with the decorations. You can carve a pumpkin like everyone else, but that’s not very novel is it? What about carving one from one of the Homestarrunner Pumpkin patterns? No one will get it, but on the off chance that someone does, they will think you are cool.

If that’s just too much work, or you’re worried about getting pumpkin goo all over your officially licensed, 100% authentic Captain Kirk shirt, why not take a stab at making some ghosts or bats to hang around the house? You could do that, right? Look at this cute little bastard:

Bust out that box of tampons and the provided instructions and get your place decorated.

Music

Once the place is decorated, you’re going to need to fill the air with spooky toons. For those into musical oddities, Louie sent over this massive list of 90 (yes, 90!) obscure Halloween records from the Forbidden Crypts Of Haunted Music. There is so much good stuff in there that it might require that you pick up the Firefox extension “DownThemAll” to rapidly download all of the tunes without inadvertently click click clicking your way to madness.

On the same wavelength, even though I have to say that this year’s Oddiooverplay Halloween album was pretty disappointing, they still offer Ghouls with Attitude Volume 1 & 2 and a Munsters remix called “Munster Beat!” for your free downloading pleasure.

If you are still unsatisfied with the level of weirdness in your newly acquired tunes, you can download all of the original sounds recorded from Disney’s Haunted Mansion to play over and over to ramp up your Halloween spirits.

Videos

Once you’re in full Halloween swing, make sure you download (or stream) Nosferatu, Night of the Living Dead, and other old horror movies courtesy of the Internet archive.

If those don’t scare the kids, then kick it up a notch with the next videos. There’s nothing that can strike fear into children’s hearts on Halloween night like a pedophile and his dancing army of Vampirezombies. You know I’m talking about: MJ’s “Thriller”. Watch all 8 glorious minutes below…

…But unless you count sexual habits, Thriller doesn’t add much to the “weird” theme of this post now, does it? That’s why I dug out the Indian version of Thriller. You haven’t seen anything, yet. Oh enjoy this one…Enjoy it to hell!

And once you’re videoed out, wind down with last years Homestar Halloween Adventure and dig those crazy costumes.

Crap. Costumes. If you’re actually one of those social types without bodies to dispose of, you may find yourself in need of something to wear this weekend. Let’s tackle that now.

Costumes

I tried to find you something cool like a “Fletch in the LA Lakers dream sequence”, but from what I gathered from online costume shops, if you’re a guy, every costume is going to make you look like a dork. If you’re a girl, every costume out there will essentially make you look like a filthy, filthy, dirty, filthy whore. I’m not just saying that because I know you like it. No. I’ve provided the proof below:

Boy Judge and Girl Judge (Yes, it says “Guilty” across her ass):

Sno White and the Seven Dwarves:

Whoredy Ann and Pedophile Andy:

He-devil and She-devil:

And even the “Biblical” Costumes Get In on it (Yes, that is a Nun costume):

God bless America.

The Wrap Up

By this point, you have the tunes, you have the vids, you’re dressed like a whore or a dork, and you have strung tampons from every hangable surface. You should be well prepared for the holiday, and I seriously hope you are taking pictures.

Happy Halloween!

Me: Good morning!
Female: [sullenly] Good morning.
Me: What’s the matter?
Female: Eh, my uvula has been bothering me.
Me: [thinking and staring] Why is she telling me this?.
Female: Yea, it was stuck to the back of my throat when I woke up.
Me: Wha?? Ohhhh uvula. I’m an idiot.

There was Kitt, Bruce Lee, Commander Adama, that Dude from Def Leppard with only one arm, and now this.

Happy Birthday, Asswipe. Many happy returns.

I never do quizzes because they’re pretty much for teenage girls, but I really couldn’t resist a quiz called “How Evil Are You?” I actually tried to answer honestly rather than engineer the results, so imagine my surprise when the little indicator arrow was so far off the charts that it looks like there is none more evil that I could get. Either I am a sleeper Antichrist, or this quiz is flawed.

On the other hand, it’s hard to claim any moral ground when your family crest has three fucking goats on it.

- GameSpot, August 15, 2006 - Boston, MA

In an unexpected press release, it was announced today that in addition to releasing the new videogame “Guitar Hero II” this Fall, Harmonix will release two companion products that it hopes will take its popular franchise to new levels.

“I loved the original Guitar Hero,” Ravi Shankar told us. “I thought it was a very novel idea, but I wasn’t very happy to have beat it on the expert level in just under 2 weeks. I thought, they should ramp up the difficulty on this bad boy with a sitar version. Before I knew it, I was on the phone with Greg over at Harmonix pitching the idea.”

“When Ravi called I actually hung up on him,” said Greg, Vice President of Product Development at Harmonix, “I thought it was IBM support playing a joke on us. When I realized that we don’t use IBM support, I was horrified and called Ravi back immediately. Luckily for us, Ravi was pretty cool about it, and I’m glad he was. Without him, Sitar Hero would be just another idea instead of the signature edition game that will inevitably return the sitar to it’s rightful place in popular music.”

“That’s right. He did hang up on me,” chuckled the 85 year old Shankar, “But he called right back and the project took off. We have been working hard to keep the whole thing quiet, but while hanging out and playing a little Guitar Hero with my buddy Herbie Hancock, I accidentally let the Sitar Hero idea slip. I remember his jaw just hit the floor, and he immediately missed like thirty notes in a row, allowing me to solidly wail him on “Cowboys From Hell.” When he snapped out of it, he wanted to know if I would mind if He called Greg with a similar idea. I told him to go for it.”

“When Ravi told me about Sitar Hero, I lost it, because if there is a forgotten instrument that needs resurrection, it’s the keytar. The sitar has been around for thousands of years, and has had plenty of popularity. The keytar, on the other hand, danced America right through the 80’s, only to get dumped like a pair neon leg warmers as soon as the 90’s rolled around. If I didn’t have to play 15 more rounds of GH with Ravi to prove that I’m the bigger hero, I would’ve called Greg sooner, but I called him as soon as I got home the next morning.”

“You’re not going to believe this, but I actually hung up on not only Ravi, but Herbie, too. I mean it’s not that often that two legends call me in the same week. This time, I thought it was Mike cranking me from the conference room. I actually said, ‘Whatever, Love Bug, call me back after your next tune up,’ and then just hung up. Before I could finish (accidentally) filling Mike’s cube with Styrofoam peanuts (Sorry, Mike!), Herbie called me back. Herbie is one serious dude when it comes to the Keytar and I have learned to respect that. After his rendition of Rockit, I wanted to be a Keytar player myself, and I had to give Keytar Hero a solid green light.”

The company is keeping quiet on the track listings for the games, but they have said that both “Rockit” and “The Final Countdown” will appear on Keytar Hero, while “(Listen To The) Flower People” and “Up, Up and Away in my Beautiful Balloon” will grace Sitar Hero.

To keep the experience uniformly great, Harmonix has stated that the current Gibson guitar controller will not be compatible with the companion games, which will require their own unique controllers. The companion products will be released in the US in November 2006.

Images from the Games:

While reading another article about dirty keyboards…

“If a researcher puts out an article that claims that something (keyboard, cell phone, etc.) is dirtier than a toilet seat, they should be forced to lick either a toilet seat or the item they claim is dirtier. If they lick the toilet seat, the article gets published. If not, they are told to go back into the lab, suck down a tall beaker of shut the fuck up, and do some real research for a change.”

While doing the daily puzzle…

Co-worker 1: I need a Seven letter word for Satan.
Co-worker 2: J-o-n-D-y-e-r

While Walking down the beach…

Old man: [to woman] Alcohol is like an aphrodisiac to me. Oh, it makes me so Hoahny”

While talking to a 21 yr. old…

34 YO: Yea. All that emo stuff? I can’t get into it. I grew up on SSD, Minor Threat, The Misfits, and Slayer. The whining usually just ends up pissing me off.
21 YO: You know skaters don’t even wear big shorts anymore?
34 YO: What?
21 YO: Yea, they all wear tight pants and have bad haircuts like Emo kids.
34 YO: WHAT?
21 YO: Yup.
34 YO: How do they do tricks in tight pants?
21 YO: I don’t know.
34 YO: Oh, that’s just wrong.

While getting ready for work…

#1GF!: How do you like the new Slayer?
Me: Awesome.
#1GF!: That stuff seems like it’d be easy to play.
Me: (The comment caught me so off guard that all I could do was give a confused, “No,” pretend to play air guitar, and say “fast.”)

While trying to get some work done…

Person 1: Hey, what do those guys say before they die?
Person 2: What are you talking about?
Person 1: Akabaka?
Person 2: [Thinks for a minute] Oh my god. You need to retake diversity training.
Person 1: What?! Nobody knows it!
Person 2: It’s Allahu Akbar. And you need to get to diversity training now.
Person 1: What is it again? Abakaba?
Person 2: Oh man. Allahu Akbar.

While listening to music…

Co-worker 1: I was just listening to a nice death metal song, and the singer ruins it by screaming, “IIIII. IIIIII Flushhh my soooouuul down the draaaiiiin.”
Co-worker 2: Did you say “nice death metal?”
Co-worker 1: Yea. It was going good, too. When I listen to a song, I want enough screaming that I can’t possibly decipher how retarded the lyrics are.
Co-worker 2: I hear that.
Co-worker 1: That line just made me picture some guy in black clothes trying to clean his bathroom with Evil.
Co-worker 2: If he was really evil, he would’ve crapped his soul right on the floor for someone else to clean up.

Oh man, don’t ask me how I came across this, but when I did, it pushed today’s regularly scheduled post to the back burner.

You go to this site, select a few personalizing options, and get a personalized message sent by Samuel L Jackson by e-mail or phone. The turnaround time between answering the last question and getting the call seems to be about three minutes.

It not only doesn’t verify the phone numbers that you put in, but it spoofs the number that you input into the caller id of the person receiving it. Remember, I have no idea if they’re collecting the phone number data, so you might want not want to send it to your grandma’s unlisted number, just to be safe.

I realize that it’s just a cheap promotional gimmick to push Samuel L. Jackson’s Snakes on a Plane, but I and everyone I showed it to seemed to say, “Best. Message. Ever.”

Personal Message From Samuel L. Jackson by E-mail or Phone.

Enjoy!

12:43 AM Several calls reporting loud parties all over town, and the police were dispatched to send the revelers on their way.

3:02 PM Caller reports that he came home from the beach and a vehicle was parked in his driveway. He asked the person that he was doing, and the operator said, “It’s a free country.” The operator drove off, heading out of town.

4:36 PM Caller reports there are two ice cream trucks operating in the area and the drivers are yelling at each other.

11:05 AM State Police reports receiving a report of a male superglued to the toilet seat at the comfort station… State Police sending unit. Fire Dept reports medical waiver signed, no transport. State Police looking for two white males, mid-30’s, wearing jean shorts, white sneakers, one wearing a Red Sox cap, seen coming out of the comfort station and wearing latex gloves…

For close to a month now, I’ve been having trouble with one of my eyes. It’s been red and itchy, and even drained a little, but because it was only irritated on one side, I didn’t think it was full blown conjunctivitis.

Like low grade pink eye, the symptoms seemed to go away on their own after a couple of weeks. Not 2 days after I thought I was in the clear did the symptoms return on the opposite side of my eye.

This went on for another week, making me think that I had some mutant strain of low-grade pink eye that had the ability to reinfect itself. I responded by wearing my glasses, washing my hands a lot, and being very careful to avoid touching my eyes. I even developed a pattern of only touching my eyes with the hand on the same side of the body to avoid spreading the issue any further.

Again, the eye itched and drained a little, but there weren’t boogers everywhere, so I waited for it to run its course. Another week later, it did. After that, I was cured… until it came back a couple of days later, then went away, then came back again, and so on for yet another week.

Today, I got up and the eye felt crappier than it had since this started four weeks ago, and I had no choice but to wear my glasses. It was so bad, that during the morning commute, glancing over my right shoulder to switch lanes was making me wince as if I was being poked in the eye. After several lane changes, all discipline went out the window, and I started rubbing my eye like lunatic to try to relieve the burning.

And something glopped onto my cheek. And my eye felt instantly better.

“Oh now you’ve done it,” I thought. “They tell you not to rub it, you rubbed it, and now you’ve unleashed full blown pink eye. All this being careful and now there’s a big booger on your cheek. Nice job.”

I swiped at the glob on my cheek to get a better look at the first example of the massive boogers that I thought would be gracing my eyelids over the coming weeks, but before I could, it flipped off my finger and onto my lap. Because I was in heavy traffic, I quickly realized that the several quick looks I could spare for my crotchal region weren’t going to be enough to triangulate the location of said megabooger until I got off the road.

When I finally parked the car and did some searching for what I swore was going to be big enough to require a kleenex with +2d6 damage against boogers, it took me almost a minute to piece together what I found. Some night a month ago, as I was pulling a video game dried, disposable contact lens from my eye, half of it had somehow remained behind and lodged itself up in my eye socket. It then remained there for the last month to become the beaten up, wet, boogery half of a contact lens that I held in my hand.

Co-worker 1: “How was your day off?”
Co-worker 2: “It was good. I didn’t drink at all.”
Co-worker 1: “That’s cool.”
Co-worker 2: “I only had three beers.”
Co-worker 1: “I thought you said you didn’t drink at all?”
Co-worker 2: “I didn’t.”
Co-worker 3: “Wait. Didn’t you just finish saying that you had a couple of bottles of wine last night?”
Co-worker 1: “Oh well, sure, wine, but that’s not drinking.”

This weekend, I went to a graduation party for my cousin and my god daughter. As in all graduation parties since time immemorial, the graduates headed for the basement, and the older folks stayed upstairs. That’s how I did it, that’s how you did it, and that’s how they do it now. At most mixed-age parties this is the standard: The kids go one way and the adults go the other.

I know where the lines are drawn. Even if I could stand the sing-song conversations of an 18 year old crowd for more than ten minutes, there was no way that I was going to be that guy who thinks that he can successfully integrate with a bunch of 18 year old kids by lamely imitating them. So, if I accepted my station, why did I feel a little left out? Maybe it was because I usually can be found entertaining a bunch of little kids more often than adults. Maybe it was because that even though I still think of myself the same way as I did when I was 18, this was solid proof that I really wasn’t.

As I was contemplating the situation, I mentioned it to my uncle who looked at me with a grin and said, “At some point, you’ll be the oldest one at these things.”

Instantly, I saw myself as a very old man, sitting on a wooden chair in the middle of the kitchen. People bustled around me, but didn’t seem to notice that I was effectively alone. The imaginary me looked at the daydreaming me and grinned, snapping me back to reality.

And I suddenly felt really, really out of place.

When I was leaving, I wanted to give my god daughter four-hundred and fifty-two pounds of advice: Don’t be that kid that gets alcohol poisoning during orientation, meet as many people as you can in the first week, don’t smoke anything given to you by people you don’t know, be as many different people as you can, hide your valuables if you have a party, try everything, don’t get hooked on anything, join the radio station for the free CDs, have fun, learn something…

And I realized that like the old man in my daydream, I was gearing up to offer unsolicited advice to a kid who hadn’t asked for it.

After looking at her for a second, her brassy grin told me that she was going to earn her bumps just like the rest of us, and all I could offer was,

“Just be careful, okay?”

From the Police Log:

“2:45 p.m: Alsada Rd. caller reports Windmill II is disturbing him. He states that his house has depreciated $100,000, and the noise keeps him awake, and he wants the police to make them turn it off. O/Flaherty spoke to the party and advised him that the windmill cannot be shut off. Party was advised to call the town manager…”

I woke up this morning to the sounds of a bunch of birds squawking outside my window. As a city kid, my familiarity with bird calls extends only so far as knowing what a pigeon, chicken, and maybe a hawk sound like, so while I sat there and listened, I found it very strange that one bird’s call seemed making a familiar pattern.

As it made it’s way through the complicated call, I realized what the bird was imitating and listened intently to it run through a second time. The bird was doing his own rendition of a multi-pattern car alarm. After dumfoundedly blurting “No way,” and waiting for the third round, the bird made four short beeps, imitating a remote shutting the alarm off.

I googled some backup to prove that I’m not insane.

Yesterday’s post spawned a discussion about actors who tried to make of a go of it in the music business. It was noted that Chuck Norris actually sang the theme to Walker, Texas Ranger, and I know I used to have the Paradise Alley Soundtrack, which featured an impossibly awful Sly Stallone on vocals, but I have to say that I drew a major blank on the topic and didn’t make much of a contribution.

When I got home, I started compiling a small list to post, and whole bunch googling later it’s three fucking AM. The list has grown from Gadzuki to Godzilla, and I’m dangerously close to comatose. As you peruse, if you find that you can’t remember where an actor might be from, mouse over their album to get a tool tip containing at least one show that they were in. If you find that you need even more info, most of the albums link to Amazon.

If you see me being walked out of the building tomorrow for sleeping at my desk, at least you’ll have this MegaList to remember me by. And to the poor bastard who might have to take over my job: again, I say, sorry I’m such a spaz.

Enjoy.

(If you think of any more than this, add them into the comments.)

The weirdest thing happened today. We got this freak snow storm that caused a total white out for a good portion of the day. Then, it started raining. Then, went back to a white out. Then, it started to thunder.

In the middle of all this, I had to walk to another building on our campus to help out on an after hours project. It was snowing like hell, but it was only a couple of hundred feet, so I didn’t think it would be a big deal.

And once I got out there, I got an instant ice cream headache that I could only stop by taking my hand out of my glove and pressing it against my forehead. By the time I had walked 200 feet, the hair of the woman that I was walking with was a sheet of ice. I can only assume that I looked the same.

And the weird part: I couldn’t breathe. I go to the gym 3 times a week, and I can only describe it like being in high altitude. After about 50 feet, one of the people that I was walking with turned back. I thought that I was imagining things until I talked to other people that walked between buildings who reported the same symptoms.

I can only assume that we must’ve had an unbelievably low pressure system in the area that caused this crazy storm.

While I was working on the project, 2 of our admins took it upon themselves to push cars over the new speed bump in the road outside our building when they looked out the window and saw people getting stuck. After about 15 minutes, one of the managers on the job called security to let them know that LAN admins were out in the cold pushing cars to keep traffic moving (which if I remember correctly, is technically not part of a LAN Admin job description). Security exasperatedly reported that they were working on the problem, but I never saw anyone relieve the admins after they were too cold to continue.

The roads were so frozen on the way home that when I wasn’t driving on a 1 inch thick sheet of ice, my car was vibrating through barely formed ruts like the rally car that it’s modeled after. At least the gym was empty and I got to safely drive sideways through some parking lots on the ride home.

(Netflix: I sent 3 movies out on Monday and got only 2 back by Friday, and I have strong doubts that they were picked from the top of my queue.)