25,000 Cent Pyramid

"you left me in the trunk of a hot car in the sun in the middle of August in Miami, ya idiot."

"ummm... Things My Lunch Would Say!"

they should make the whole show out of the black box

Sometime, The Daily Show should do a joke where they play a clip of a politician saying something that sounds ridiculous, then cut to Jon Stewart saying "Waaaaa?" and mocking surprise. Wonder why they never do that.



Maybe when that's done we could have a movie where someone sees the police coming and shouts "We've got COMPANY!" Ya know, because that's ironic.

kids... don't hit yourself in the knee with sledgehammers!

So, a random thought that came from an even more random conversation... from the "and knowing is half the battle" PSA things on GI Joe...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KXCD5BQiM4

The message was, "Kids, don't hide in abandoned fridges." "Seriously, don't do it. Don't hide in a fridge you might come across."

Looking back, I realize I got this message a LOT as a kid.

"Hey! You!"
"Who me?"
"Stay the hell away from fridges!"
"What, like, don't get fat eating between meals? Got it."
"No. Random fridges you'd find playing around town. Don't crawl inside them."
"Wow, umm, wasn't tempted to do that, but... thanks. Hey, shouldn't I more, ya know, not be talking to strangers like you?"
"Oh yeah, I guess. Whatever. Just remember, go near a refrigerator and I'll come back here and beat the snot out of you."

I swear, it was just short of Sexual Harassment Panda from South Park coming to tell us in school assemblies that one of the worst things you can do is play in the fridges that apparently dot the fruited plains.

Now, admittedly, I grew up with a pretty sheltered life in Bal Harbour. But I don't recall hardly ever seeing piles of giant fridges lying around in playgrounds and open fields and such.

Maybe it's my swiss cheese Sam leaping memory, but I swear I was told to stay away from fridges way more than I ever heard anything like don't smoke.

Maybe that's where the gut comes from. Me rebelling against GI Joe.

Like I'm going to take advice from someone who couldn't hit the broadside of a barn with a laser-guided-laser thingy. Probably have bad eyesight from playing in fridges.

a little color (well, red and blue anyway)

Haven't figured out yet (aka too lazy to look into) putting this as a separate section, so for now I'm putting it in as a post...


alt="Go to electionprojection.com" width="150" height="211" />

Election Projection's a very good site that incorporates the latest polls on the only thing that ultimately matters --- how the electoral college looks like it'll break. They say this map should update at least every day so keep an eye on it :)

stay tuned...

I've been rolling an idea around in my head, and as a result I've got about 2/3 of an idea for a short story "done". Hope I can get it to work...

The Godfather in 2 minutes

Good stuff.

technicalities

Got caught at a Christmas party on what some might see as a small yet critical detail... for reasons I still can't particularly articulate, though if nothing else at least now I have a new story for people who are bored of "Alabama Girl".

Very nice event, at a lovely home on the water, hosted by family friends from back before my days anyway... and I somehow introduced TLMS as "My wif.... errr girlfriend, Sarah".

I can't think of anything better then that's how I've heard people presented at parties over the years... though that doesn't even make sense to me and I said it!

Helpful advice from Carrie, as per usual... the guidance to "don't screw this up." Always a good idea.


Happy 29th birthday Katie Holmes!

I can make it there... but why would I want to?

Was asked the other day with incredulity (incredulity is a 10 cent woid) why I don't move to New York City and take an offer there.

Offhand, ummm... one good reason is that this is the view from my apartment building.








Another is that it's 74 degrees out with a 13 mph wind right now.

Being 28 and having to have someone explain to you what the phrase "Wintry Mix" means isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Helps that it's 10 minutes to the office, and I'm NOT paying unreal rent for my place that would be "big" by any NYC standards.

Well anything to be a snob...

Anyone who knows me (and honestly what the hell are you doing here if you don't) knows that at sometimes I can be cheap, sometimes I can be stubborn, and sometimes I can be elitist. So given that, perhaps this isn't all that surprising...

I don't have cable in my new apartment. I've been here for almost three weeks and I still have just what you get from pluggin' into the wall.

Of course, I've been very merrily distracted as of late, so that's part of it. Plus I don't want to say what cable company I'd be doomed to but let's just say it rhymes with ComSchmast, and they don't exactly have the best of deals.

Who knows, maybe I'll even READ on occasion.

Or maybe I'll just go back to quasi-disgruntled blogging.

the laptop thing... aka "My Own Personal Beautiful Mind"

a pitch black, cold, rainy night in Washington. I come out of the airport in a long old trenchcoat, carrying nearly every piece of respectable-looking clothing I own in two bags that weigh so much the plane skipped into town. Add to my load a satchel with my checkbook, an organizer that I've had since several jobs ago, directions to my new office, and a laptop with everything I've read, thought, or written for the past two years. I was about to begin a month-long special assignment in our DC office knowing almost nobody in the town and never having ventured more than about three blocks from any given monument before.

I walkstumblecollapse into a yellow cab, having deposited the dufflebags in the trunk and electing to cling to the laptop bag.

I should take a second here to interject that I am a borderline OCD traveler. That's not to say that I have problems with the actual flying/driving/busing etc.... rather I'm the kind who will check my ticket 5 times between the house and the airport, and have often arrived at the airport in excess of 3 hours early just because I'd rather be the first one sitting at the gate reading a book then have to Pink Floydesque Run Like Hell.

Alas, back to our story... I'm clutching a sheet of instructions half-convinced that if I put it down, it will evaporate. Of course I can't go straight to my new apartment --- that would be too easy. I have to go to an empty, closed office building in the night, go up the dimly lit path in the rain, and reach into an old-style cast iron black mailbox on the front steps and hopefully pull out a large manila envelope with my name on it in big letters that contains special instructions, a map, and my key. I have to do all this while the cabbie presumably waits patiently with all my earthly possessions.

So, being the manic traveler that I am, while in the cab I try and remember what I can --- the name of the cab, the time I picked it up, etc. I key the driver's permit number into my cellphone to have a permanent record. The notion of two stops in a cab just never set well with me.

I get the instructions and the keys from the deserted office's dropbox. I get back in the cab and go on to the apartment. After a few misses, we finally get to the apartment (honestly, how hard can it be to find 234 6th street SE in a town where the numbers actually correspond?) By now it's approaching midnight. I wearily get out, grab my two checked bags, and start thinking about how to get them up a flight of stairs. I'm not thinking about the fact that the cab is pulling away with my laptop bag in the backseat.

I'm standing there like a damned fool, half-expecting the guy to turn around and come back upon realizing I've left several thousand dollars worth of technology on his backseat. Without my bag, I don't even have the address of the office I'm supposed to be going to in the morning.

More in chapter 2... if I ever get around to writing it...

sagelike wisdom

One of the most valuable lessons I learned in college was in one of my communications classes, but it had (almost) nothing to do with the communication process.

It was in Dr. Brey's argumentation class, and he told us once, apropos of nearly nothing, "If you learn nothing else in college, remember this...don't drink and dial."

Of course, a wet-behind-the-ears freshman girl in the front row raised her hand and said "Don't you mean don't drink and drive?"

He said "No... don't drink and DIAL. Everybody in this room has either experienced this lesson or will soon... but someday this might be one of the most valuable lessons you've ever learned."


It took a while, but I know exactly what he was referring to... because when you're in your mid-20s and have had a few cups of the ol' fire-water, suddenly it seems like a fine idea to call up old girlfriends and profess your love, question why you ever broke up, etc. It always seems like a good idea when you're warm and buzzing, and, well, isn't.

Of course, I suppose nowadays there's a Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which is "don't drink and text", "don't drink and e-mail", etc.

I was fortunate in that I had a pretty good "out". My best friend moved to Hawai'i after college, so even if I was leaving a bar at 3 AM I could still call her because it was a fairly reasonable hour in Honolulu, they're five hours behind. And before that when I was still in college, well... if I was out at 3 am I was probably with her :)

You could often pick out the freshmen. My first semester at Florida State, I printed out a copy of my schedule of classes, and color-coded it so I would know which one was which and when my breaks were (I had a color printer and was playing with it, plus I was my usual paranoid about now knowing where the rooms were)... I had it in the front pocket of my public speaking class folder. First week of class a girl looks over and says "You're a freshman, aren't you?" I said "How did you know!?!" :-P

So, to paraphrase Wag the Dog, "There are two things I know to be true. One is that there is no difference between good flan and bad flan, the other is don't drink and dial."

...you know who you remind me of?

I was walking into a local watering hole, when I saw coming up the other way on the street what looked to be a young woman I used to work with and occasionally chat with but hadn't seen in about a year.

I smiled and waved, and she got the same look on her face everyone on Earth gets when someone's being very friendly and you have no clue who they are.

"Jackie, it's me, Bradley! How's it going"

"Oh! I'm not Jackie... I'm her identical twin sister, Cristy."

My next statement was one of those things that... even AS the words floated past the teeth and the lips and out into general consumption, I wanted to smack myself and go find a hole to crawl into...


"Oh, really? You look just like her!" Doh!


Yeah, umm, that's kinda the idea behind the whole "identical twin" thing, ya see... to her credit she did not say "Ya dumb prick", though she certainly would have been entitled to.

What I meant was that not only was this girl her twin, she had the same exact build, same haircut and length, same wardrobe, many of the same mannerisms, etc... I did not mean "derrr you look like your twin, yuh-hup."