Halloween Storm

I was sent an e-mail at work regarding this fun stuff, and one of the safeguarding tips went something like this:

"If you receive a message containing a link from a person you don't know, or haven't heard from for a long time, delete the message without opening it"

The "haven't heard from for a long time" part is new to me, though I guess it makes sense. At any rate, I'm guessing now is not the time to try to connect to any of my old friends from the Japanese animation fandom days. Happy Halloween, everybody.

756, blah blah blah, "asterik".

I didn't write about the whole home run ball online vote thing because I thought it was dumb (still do--I mean, how much money is being spent on this when there are children starving and fun stuff like that), but I have a couple of questions about it anyway:

1) If, for some bizarre reason, Barry Bonds is found to have not done anything wrong as far as the MLB rules of that time are concerned, do we get to brand Mark Ecko with an asterisk?
2) Am I supposed to know who Mark Ecko is? I'm serious here. I'm not even sure if I'm spelling his name correctly.

I will say this, though: At least that Mark guy (unlike many of the people who have called the various radio stations regarding this topic) can pronounce "asterisk" correctly. Why is it such a hard thing to do? Even in commercials! There's this TV commercial going around right now for one of the cell phone carriers...a young lady is visiting the fake crappy cell phone carrier that has asterisks all over the place (i.e. "Unlimited text messaging!*"), including one of the clerk's hands. The lady calls him on this, saying, "You have an asterik [sic] on your hand."

...Ugh.

words & phrases I probably say too much

"Nice."
"I'm just sayin'."
"I don't even know, dude." (alt: "Dude, I don't even know.")

three-day weekends never come soon enough

So...Friday before Labor Day. People who come into work today generally "mail it in", or something, but seriously, I feel like I've been mailing it in all week. :P Dude. I've had the urge to get out of here, and I've been going outside for a walk (or just to stand/sit in the shade because it's been so freaking hot) more often than usual to try to quell the urge a bit, but I'm not entirely sure why it's there in the first place. It's not like I'm even going anywhere this weekend. But no matter, the day is over now, so the weekend begins. Yaaay.

meeting notes

We had a meeting at work today. I had to do a presentation with someone else, which went surprisingly well, but after that my brain went into this half-sleeping half-rambling mode, which, sadly, is what normally happens during these meetings. The main reason for this is because a high majority of what gets discussed doesn't apply to me, so I just zone out. For example, during a meeting the other month I was sitting next to one of my friends and I wrote the following in my notebook as a way of communicating with him:

My aunt Julie was at the Police concert. She called our house, and all we could hear was the music and her going 'woo!'

I accidentally ate a whole chili pepper at lunch. It was NOT FUN. Kristin said my face was almost purple at one point.

I'm terrible.

Maybe I should take some more time off.

Fake vacation has come and gone. Between then and now, I've been trying to get used to being back at work. I'm not used to it yet. I'm still not caught up. There's also drama going on that I'd rather not discuss. :P I would have loved to have voiced my thoughts on the whole baseball-steroids-Selig-Bonds-Aaron-etc. ordeal as well as why I have a hard time taking some Dodgers fans seriously, but the appropriate moment passed some time ago. Plus Jason Whitlock said things better than I could regarding that first point. Anyway, I'm back here now and I'll be writing more. Yay?

another Saturday night on the couch

I was channel-surfing and somehow I ended up on Bikini Destinations. This show seems to be more or less the same as "Get Out!", and it's on the same channel, so...which show came first? Anyway, the girls were in Alaska and they were hand-feeding baby animals in some kind of park or sanctuary or something along those lines. I thought that was odd, but it held my interest for a minute. Then it switched to focusing on one of the girls' photoshoot footage while she talked about herself and stuff she liked. I went to change the channel, but then I heard this:

"My name is Candice Michelle and I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin."

Candice Michelle is the GoDaddy chick. And she was also in pro wrestling, apparently. I don't know from the wrestling. Anyway, here's the thing: I did not recognize her by appearance. (I don't know if she looked way younger in 2004 or what.) I recognized her by name, because she was on American Chopper for the GoDaddy/Super Bowl episodes...maybe just the first one, I don't remember. Have I mentioned that I watch American Chopper too much? More on that later, maybe.

I remember when I was into this stuff!

I was introduced to TOKYOMANGO today through a link to the Condom Fashion Show in China entry. I was waaay into everything Japanese in the mid-late 90s. Not so much now--I have enough other obsessions to keep up with--but I did spend a few awesome days in Osaka five years ago.

Mmm, forbidden donut. (Or "doughnut", whatever.)

My desire to not go see The Simpsons Movie (as opposed to a lack of desire to go see it) is probably because I'm not big on movies in general--however, the fact that I'm seeing commercials for it every five minutes isn't helping. In fact, I've seen so many of those commercials that I feel like I've already seen the frigging movie. I watched the show for something like 3-5 years earlier on in its run, and phrases like "d'oh" remain in my vocabulary, but then I stopped. Why is that? FOX hasn't changed the time that they're on. Maybe it coincided with my getting into football? Maybe it got old for me after a while? I don't know.

a possible sign that I watch too much tv

The talk regarding NBA referee Tim Donaghy and the inability of many to pronounce his name correctly immediately made me think of 30 Rock, specifically the episode where Nathan Lane and Molly Shannon were guest stars.

Anyone else?

Don't trust me around liquid.

I'm a bit of a klutz when it comes to just about anything. About an hour ago I took the first sip out of a bottle of orange drink, and a drop and a half of it fell onto my pink v-neck t-shirt that passes for business casual in my mind. I decided to wash it out, small as it was, but the water kind of got all over the place. So instead of the possibility of a faint orange stain on a shirt that's old enough to be replaced, hi, I'm here at work and I'm half wet. ...It's still wet, kind of. Bleh. But thank goodness I don't have, you know, clients or anything...and that I'm not wearing white. But that's rare anyway. I only wear white when a) I know I'm going to be outside on a hot day, or b) I literally have nothing else.

Quién es mas "now"?

Those of you who watch ESPN on a regular basis know of the "Who's Now" popularity contest thing that they're doing. While I see it as a really long way of asking "Who do you like more, Tiger or Lebron?", I have been voting every day. I generally vote for who I'd be more likely to recognize if I saw them walking down the street. Last night I came up with the idea to do an different version of this--"Who's Now (Not in the Good Way)"--but I got nowhere beyond naming one of the brackets the "Tyson Region" and giving the No. 1 overall seed to Michael Vick. :P

battle of the bad karaoke shows

So I watched both of those shows that I talked about earlier. On "The Singing Bee", you start out with six people and go through various rounds, ending up with one winner who, depending on how they do in the final round, can receive up to $50,000. On "Don't Forget the Lyrics!", you have one person, and it's more or less like a karaoke version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?", complete with lifelines (er, what do they call them here, "backups"?). I don't know how much I'll be watching of either show, but I like Singing Bee's format more. There's going to be a lot of song overlap. I've noticed two songs so far that have popped up in both shows.

summer = craptastic tv, and yet!

I am excited, because it's that time of year--the Death March with Cocktails. Tim Goodman's writing makes for fun web reading, and since the pathetically high majority of what I read is on the internet...well, it makes for fun reading, period. My favorite quote so far: "But we eventually got there - 40 minutes through some of the uglier parts of Los Angeles, which only hammers home this thought: Los Angeles is San Jose with stars."

As for the TV going on now...I would like to know why there are two different game shows that have to do with remembering words to songs. I'm sure I'll end up watching them both this week just to compare and contrast, which in turn may be the topic of my next post.

Re: Live Earth or whatever it's called

Maybe it's just me, but if you're going to have a bunch of giant events that a bunch of people attend, driving their bunch of cars in the process, for the sake of global warming awareness...isn't that just the slightest bit counter-productive?

I was hanging out watching TV with my father, and he briefly flipped over to the concert coverage. The Pussycat Dolls were performing "Don'tcha", and he was convinced that this was a cover of a Mary Jane Girls song. It took me a while, but I came up with the song he had in his head.

"In My House!"

I guess the two songs are similar. I think they're even in the same key, if I'm remembering them correctly. (E flat minor. Yes, I know it's disgusting that I know that.)

7-7-7

I wonder how many people will be going to casinos today. I don't gamble, so the thought hadn't crossed my mind until now. What will I be doing today? I'll be doing my usual summer weekend routine: going to a fastpitch softball tournament, cheering on the team that my dad coaches. It doesn't sound like much, but it works for me.

welcome to the toilet

Hello, and welcome. I decided to start up my own general blog even though it's been a few years since I last did this regularly. Lately I've been reading the blogs of other people, and I've missed writing about everything and nothing. I begin with something I was reminded of after reading this open letter. While I also come across what's mentioned in said letter from time to time, this issue is a bit different. At my job, the toilet in one of the stalls is one of those low-flow toilets, but the angle of the bowl is such that some objects don't move enough, or at all, after the initial flush. I end up either flushing multiple times or holding the handle down after I flush to rise the water enough that it un-sticks the paper from the side of the bowl. This is all bad, because it completely defeats the purpose of having a low-flow toilet; however, the alternative isn't very attractive. Oh well, what are you gonna do?