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June 2002
June 21, 2002
Come home, Stumpy. Come home.
Nice to see that the CIA and the FBI aren't the only government agencies at the top of their game. I'm pretty sure one of these things is going to fall on my head.
June 17, 2002
On this day after Father's Day - the first Father's Day I could celebrate as a, uh, father - I think I'd like to impart a little of the wisdom I've earned.
First off, Gerber's Banana and Orange baby food is like crack to infants. Actually, I guess crack is like crack to infants (ask any crackbaby)... but, if the way my little girl lurches forward with arms swinging erratically in little cirlces and a look on her little angel face that says, "Fucktard, if you can't find a way to shovel faster, maybe you should think about passing the feeding baton to the cat," is any indication, this stuff is a close second.
Second, having a kid will change you. And I don't necessarily mean in the warm-fuzzy, Hallmark card, ain't-life-grand kinds of ways. I now find myself regularly sickened by stories in the news that wouldn't have made me flinch in the past. Everytime I read about some trailer-livin', slackjawed, Southern piece of trash leaving his or her baby in the car during a heatwave to die an unthinkable death (sure, these tragedies occur everywhere; I just like picking on the South), I want to crawl under my desk and weep myself silly. I can't take it. The firsthand knowledge of just how vulnerable a young life is... it's a terrible thing to possess. It can make you fiercely protective whether or not there's cause to be. For someone like myself who distrusts 99.9% of humanity (I'm reserving judgement on my kid until she can crawl), it can be the final nail in the half-full-half-empty coffin.
Third, the first time you make your baby laugh, it will right every wrong you've ever experienced, real or imagined.
June 14, 2002
If Christ is truly planning on making another appearance and calling his people home, now would be a good time to do it.
I'm an old-fashioned sap at heart. I long for simpler times. Times when you wouldn't expect twenty first graders to get sent to the hospital after being beaten with a broom by their substitute teacher, or a mom to try to bake her kid, of a father to mutilate a corpse to frighten his son.
June 11, 2002 (later)
Jesus Christ when did I stop having a nauseous reaction to "Come Sail Away"? How the hell did that happen?
I don't like the way this is playing out. At all.
June 11, 2002
How is it possible that the best that Warner Brothers can do for Scooby Doo (via computer generated imagery) is to make him look like the little orifice-burned-out schoolchildren-zombies from The Wall?
June 10, 2002
What's with these sites that feature grey text on a grey background (example 1, example 2)? Can't they just set every element on the page to #000000? I mean, I'm going to have to select the text to make it readable anyhow (example 1, example 2), might as well make a game out of it.
I'm sure these folks are super nice, cool, nifty and swell, and I mean no offense here, but I just keep running across these sites that seem to go out of their way to make it difficult for me to read their content. Kinda blows my mind. In many cases, these are people who purport to be something of design or development proponents, which makes the whole deal all the more ironic. I suspect most of such sites were built on Macs, with their "bright as a thousand suns" default monitor settings. But, ya know, most peeps aren't going to see these sites on a Mac. They're going to be viewed the way God intended - on a PC.
Sorry folks - slow news day. Stay tuned - tomorrow I blow a gasket over the chic, teeny-tiny font sizes and miniature user interfaces favored by uber-cool, design sites (example 1, example 2 - in example 2, I defy you to read the text under the right column heading, "LOVE THESE GUYS." HATE THESE GUYS. I'm sending THESE GUYS the bill for my next pair of glasses. God forbid I should have my resolution set higher than 640x480. Jesus Christ in a Cooper MINI.)
June 6, 2002
Dee Dee Ramone He founded the Ramones, and his wife founded him dead.
June 5, 2002
Just when I've managed to lull myself back into the warm and cozy stupor that is my day-to-day countenance, this appears, making HULK want to SMASH.
Here's more for your vomitus-ridden enjoyment:
A choice selection of incriminating church documents
How can the catholic church not be bankrupted by lawsuits following all these discoveries? I'm fairly certain even I could win a case in court against these evil, vicious, perverse, little demons.
I imagine it'd go something like this:
Me (dropping fifteen thousand reams of church documents showing beyond any doubt their duplicitous, evil doing): Judge. I mean, come on.
Judge (slamming gavel down): I hereby find the catholic church... GUILTY. All of their assets shall be redistributed to the people whom they have brought great misery and ruin. And a coupla mil shall go to their savvy lawyer.
June 1, 2002
I Am An Idiot - Part IV: No New Hope. Ever.
We live in a neat townhouse, which gives the illusion of owning without the pesky equity. I've noticed that I have more home improvement urges, now that I no longer occupy a faceless apartment in a faceless building in a faceless complex. For most, that'd probably be a good thing - the inclination to improve one's surroundings through honest labor can hardly be considered a vice. For me, it's shit waiting to be hurled toward a fan.
My Dad can build a house by himself. I'm sure a lot of people can, too, but you'd actually want to live in a house built by my Dad. He's all Bob friggin Villa Strangiato (just seeing if Chriz is in attendance today). I, however, have a hard time discerning how to pick up a hammer without consulting the manual. This adds to my suspicions that I'm the mailman's kid. Further evidence: my Dad is a monster sports fan, and I'd be hard pressed to tell you anything about most sports besides the team with the most points at the end is usually declared the winner. I think. Also, my Dad is the most even-tempered person I've ever met. I'd describe him as temper-challenged. Actually, he simply doesn't have one. I can count the number of times in my life that I've seen my Dad act in anger on two fingers. And that's fabricating one case. Of course, my therapist says that's one of the roots of one of my many problems - that my Dad doesn't seem to deal with anger. To which I offered, "Mention my Dad again and I'll show you your ocular nerve."
So, it was with all giddy home-fixin-jones that I decided to put up a paper towel holder in the laundry room. Can you see where this is headed, kids? A paper towel holder. Sigh. I decided to needlessly complicate the task by using my cordless Makita drill (with the philips screwdriver bit, no less). I decided to drill pilot holes into the exposed stud before afixing the apparatus with screws, since I saw something like that on The Home and Garden Channel/Discovery/The Learning Channel once. With aplomb, I selected a drill bit slightly narrower than the screws I was going to use, to ensure the screws would really do their job. Shit, maybe I am my Father's son!
The fun started when I noticed I had to lean all my 500 lbs. into the drill to get the pilot holes drilled. "Hm." I thought to myself, "Well, I guess it's good that the place was built with concretewood. Sturdy." Then, when I swapped bits and tried to screw that damn paper towel thing to the wall, the screws popped right back out after I pushed like a mother to get them in. Bizarre. I haven't put more than 20 man-minutes of drill use in over my entire lifespan, but this was not the behavior I expected. I examined the drill, expecting to see smoke escaping from the casing, the fruits of my obviously disproportionate labor. Instead, I spied a little switch towards the back of the drill. It was flipped to the right and read, "R." Wondering what the opposite of "R" was (and I think you can guess, can't you? Show off.), I flipped it to the left. "F." Ah. Ha. Ah ha. "Reverse." "Forward." Right.
I was unscrewing both the pilot holes and the screws into the wood.
Tool time over.
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