Extraordinary Popular Delusions

Dear WSB

2007-05-31T09:02:00.000-04:00

I’ve held off on sending this e-mail because I assumed the situation would eventually play itself out. Unfortunately (if not unexpectedly), you’ve proven me wrong. But I have a lot of respect for your station, and I figure you’d like the opportunity to correct this problem.

These two news stories have nothing to do with each other, except that they’ve been linked in my mind because of the way one of them eclipsed the other one. A few weeks ago, I caught a mid-day newscast (probably 12:00 or 12:30) and heard that “There’s been an arrest in the south Georgia wildfire case, but we’ve got this breaking news for you: There are allegations that Michael Vick is involved in dog-fighting!!”

At the time, I remember thinking that I didn’t care about Michael Vick, but I was VERY interested in the wildfire arrests. I’ve got family in southern Georgia and northern Florida (because of the smoke, my mother hasn’t been able to see the house across the street from her for weeks), and I was following that case pretty closely until you decided it wasn’t worth my time. Yet because Mr. Vick is a celebrity (and a not-very-well-behaved one), you’ve dedicated yourselves to the arduous task of giving us regular updates into the status of his case.

How many people were arrested in the wildfire case? What were their ages? Where do they live? What are their names? Are they accused of starting the fire maliciously or through negligence? Where did the fire start? To what extent were the adults involved? Did they help the kids start the fires, or encourage them, or watch? Or are they simply being held responsible for the actions of the teenagers in their care? Where are the fires burning now? How many are there? To what extent are they contained? Unfortunately, I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, even though my clock radio has been set to your station for years and I hear probably 90 minutes of your morning newscast every day.

I don’t know if someone on your staff has a personal vendetta against Michael Vick or if they’ve simply got a man-crush on him, but I do wish you’d stop fellating him so. There are other news stories out there that have FAR FAR greater impact on the lives of your listeners and their families. Do you think we could dedicate a little bit of time to them?

Bated Breath

2007-05-30T08:31:00.000-04:00

OK, it's been over a week now since I sent my nice little message to Avery Dennison, or CD Stomper, or Click N’ Design, or whatever they call themselves now.

Hang on a second. I can tell by your face that you don't believe me. Really, it was a very nice message. Yes, I know what I wrote here last week, but that doesn't mean I'm incapable of professionalism and compassion for my fellow man, and it hurts that you could think such a thing. I'm a delicate little butterfly, and you wound me so.

So anyway, it's been over a week now since I sent my nice little message to Avery Dennison, or CD Stomper, or Click N’ Design, or whatever they call themselves now. It's actually been eight days, which would normally be six working days, except one of them was Memorial Day. So screw it. Five working days. Basically a week. And I haven't heard word one back from my request for support. Click N’ Design still doesn't work for me, and apparently Avery Dennison could give a shit.

And I know that both of my adoring readers have been unable to sleep, having been pulled into a story of passion and intrigue only to be left hanging, wondering whatever will become of our strong, young, handsome protagonist.

Fear not, gentle readers. Even if I never hear from my beloved Avery or anyone in the Dennison clan again, know that I shall be waiting right here, head held high, carrying a torch for the love that, apparently, was never meant to be.

Stomp This

2007-05-22T15:58:00.000-04:00

Alright, Avery Dennison, or CD Stomper, or Click N’ Design, or whatever you call yourself, you have just pissed me off in a BIG way. And I’m taking time out of my busy day (indeed, a day so busy that updates to this blog are quite rare) to write this so that I can make myself feel better. You see, I know it’s entirely possible that nobody will ever see this blog.

Then again, wouldn't it be great to score another Brent Beadling?

Here's the back story. We’re in the process of putting together a professional demo CD for hubby’s company, but it’s not going to be ready for a month. He’s got a group of important clients coming in to town this Friday, and he’s asked if I can burn him six copies of the demo. Of course, this needs to have a nicer label than my standard chicken scratch with a Sharpie pen, so I need to come up with some sort of label.

Now, mind you, if we’re going to get the real, professional demo produced before a regional convention in Atlanta next month, then I need to finish it by the end of the week. It still needs to be edited. I still need to get text to the graphic designer, and at some point we’ll need to approve whatever she’s doing. On top of that, my editor is retiring at work, and I’m going to be taking over some of her responsbilities, and I’ve got A LOT to learn before she leaves in a couple of weeks. And then, I’ve been assigned to a project that requires me to have PGP access, and the act of getting that set up is taking WAY more time than it can possibly be worth. And finally, we’ve got people coming to the house for Memorial Day, and while we’re almost finished with the renovations that have been going on since Christmas, there are still a few things that need to be done. Things like cleaning, for example, so my friends don’t end up wading through half-empty paint cans on their way to the Bubba Burgers.

As you can see, I have plenty of other things to do besides burning one-off CDs and printing semi-professional labels for them. But it’s a big deal and potentially a big contract, so I’m doing them.

At any rate, there’s a reason why Avery Dennison is the leader in labeling products. They’ve been in bed with Microsoft Word for years, so that you can simply give MS Word the product number of your Avery Dennison product, and it automatically generates a new document for you, based on the correct template.

So today, on my ever-shrinking lunch break, I drove to Staples and asked about CD label kits. Now normally, I’m cheap and don’t have any problem spending extra time or effort to save myself a nickel, but as I pointed out, I just don’t have time this week, and this CD needs to look great. I spend several minutes evaluating the products on the shelf, and I decide to go with the CD Stomper CD/DVD Labeling System. I chose this one for a few reasons:

The design is going to be simple (maybe 10 words and a corporate logo), but I don’t have time to figure out how to make this work on a standard template. (Have you ever seen a CD design template?)
I’m not convinced my hand is steady enough to center the label exactly on the CD, and the CD Stomper CD/DVD Labeling System comes with, well, a CD Stomper.
The name CD Stomper has been around a very long time, so I’m thinking that maybe they’ve got their design right.
After scanning the box, I find that CD Stomper is a trademark of the Avery Dennison corporation, and lets face it. Avery Dennison has been at the top of the label heap for years now.

I damn sure didn’t buy it because it was the cheapest thing on the shelf. In fact, it was the most expensive thing on the shelf. But I’m paying for convenience, no? I plop down my money and come back to work.

Now, a word about design software. All of it sucks hind tit. Every. Bit. Of. It. And I’ve been around long enough to know better, having purchased a couple of ill-fated 45,000,000+ FONTS FOR YOUR COMPUTER!!!!! packages in my youth. They never work. They’re buggy as fuck, and when you finally realize the gravity of your mistake, they’re considerably harder to shed than leprosy. So I bite my lip and install Click N’ Design on my Microsoft XP at work. Because I’m still convinced that Avery Dennison and CD Stomper couldn’t possibly lead me astray.

I shit you not. I start the software, and the first thing I see is this:

What. The. Fuck. You mean to tell me that I just plunked down good money for the Avery Dennison CD Stomper, and it comes with EVALUATION FUCKING SOFTWARE???

Then I calm down and read it again. No, it seems that Avery Dennison and CD Stomper used evaluation software to create their Click N’ Design POS software. I can’t be-fucking-lieve this. And of course, the evaluation license has long since expired.

So I take a deep breath and start looking at my options. I go to the CD Stomper website and I start through the long litany of clicks that it takes to find anybody in support. I don’t have time to call and sit on the phone. I damn sure don’t have time to send them any snail mail. I search for TE Developer’s Kit. Nothing. I scan the FAQs and find plenty about checking on the status of my order. Yeah, except here’s the thing. I’m not waiting on an order. You see, you already got my money, and I already got the useless product. I finally find the “click-here-because-you’re-so-important-to-us” form and send them a very nice e-mail.

Really. A lot nicer than I’m being now.

Of course, you’ve all filled out these forms before, and we all know just how much I expect to hear back from Avery Dennison. Or CD Stomper. Or Click N’ Design.

Next option? Hey, maybe MS Word has an Avery Dennison template already for my CDs. Of course they do. Go ahead and pull it up and look at it. I’ll wait.

See that? Two squares on a sheet of paper. Absolutely nothing to restrict the text that I’m typing to a circular shape.

Having exhausted my options at the CD Stomper site, my next stop is the Avery Dennison website. And there I find something that looks hopeful. Something called Avery Design & Print Online. Apparently you can use Avery Dennison templates online and design for just about anything, and then print it to your own little inkjet. How cool is that?

So after a few attempts (and in a moment of weakness, actually clicking the button telling Avery Dennison how much I’d love to get spam from them), I finally get to the start screen. Yes, I see the message that says I agree to print my project only on Avery brand products. But I’m not worried about it. You see, I actually paid for Avery brand products. Remember? CD Stomper is a trademark of the Avery Dennison corporation and all that?

So I finally get to the start screen, and that’s when I realize that the labels made by Avery Dennison are configured differently from the labels made by CD Stomper. Even though CD Stomper is a trademark of the Avery Dennison corporation.

So I'm back at square one. I've got to figure out how to format these CD labels so they can print on my CD Stomper labels, because apparently CD Stomper is a completely separate fucking universe from Avery Dennison. And after paying good money for your software, and your name, and allegedly for a convenient experience, I just don't have time for this. I'm supposed to be editing or training or meeting or installing or cleaning or designing or some other thing than this. I mean, you were supposed to be the easy way out.

So fuck you, Avery Dennison. Fuck you, CD Stomper. And fuck Click N’ Design while we’re at it, though I’m sure it would be a horrible lay. I mean, it hasn’t been any good for anything else.

So that’s it. I’ve completely blown off work and not gotten a single thing accomplished all afternoon. And you know what? Even though I couldn’t really afford the time to type this, I feel better. Apparently I'm just petty like that.

RIF

2007-05-03T14:41:00.000-04:00

Methinks the Journal-Constitution has fallen for a red herring. It's not that people don't read books anymore. It's that they don't read the AJC anymore.

Today's top-left story on the website? "A two-year transition from urban chic to pastoral chic has been a natural progression at this Johns Creek home."

Top story under news buzz? "Prosecutors want Paris Hilton in jail."

Oh yeah. You'll have to register if you want to read those stories online.

And they seriously don't understand when people find more substance in Bunnicula?

Wow

2007-04-26T13:11:00.000-04:00

I have no idea who Mike Penner was. I'm not a sports fan, so I certainly don't have any need to follow sports news through a writer a full continent away from me. Having said that, however, this writer showed up on my radar screen this morning. It seems Mr. Penner is taking some time off from writing and will return in a few weeks as Christine Daniels.

Christine has written a column for her readers explaining clearly, nervously, and unapologetically why she's doing this: because it's the only thing she can do. Or in her words:

When you reach the point when one gender causes heartache and unbearable discomfort, and the other brings more joy and fulfillment than you ever imagined possible, it shouldn't take two tons of bricks to fall in order to know what to do.

It's well-written and thought-provoking, as well as unexpectedly humorous. (Be sure to catch her anecdote about using a movie to come out to her friend Tim.) It's also about 20 years behind my own coming out as a gay man. I had hoped we'd gotten past the point where anyone felt it necessary to live their lives so far in a closet, but apparently that's still not the case. Maybe one day we'll reach that point, so that future generations don't have to endure so much heartache for a little bit of happiness.

Godspeed, Christine. Know that someone you've never met is pulling for you.

Jaws

2007-04-23T14:40:00.000-04:00

We’re back from Southeast Sharkfest in Asheville, and WOW what a show! Kai and Nat (and John and Anita and Maggie and Eugene and everybody else) have every right to be proud of the way this one came off. There’s a lot I could say here, but it would sound like a really cheesy letter to my mother, so I’ll just give you the highlights.

Hilton and Lucy, our former next-door neighbors (and quite possibly the best next-door neighbors ever invented) were there. Yes, this in itself constitutes a highlight. If you live in Atlanta and wonder whatever happened to Mambo, it’s been reincarnated as Mojito.
Dinner Friday night was at Mediterranean restaurant in Biltmore Village called Rezaz with appetizers at their sister restaurant next door, Enoteca. EVERYTHING that landed on a plate in front of us was really phenomenal. I had the Paella Catalonia, which was very good but a little different from Lucy’s Paella Catalan. Phil had a lamb shank that was to die for.
Saturday morning, we arrived at the Biltmore Estate for a panoramic photo of cars and owners in front of the house, before the gates were opened to the public. The proofs look great. I’ll see if I can wrangle a digital version for both of my adoring fans.
Saturday afternoon, while all of our friends were picking through the sharks, we committed an act of heresy and signed up for a Land Rover driving school. Oh stop it. BMW used to own Land Rover, so it’s OK. Besides, the allure of getting somebody else’s Range Rover dirty in a back corner of the Biltmore Estate was simply too strong to ignore.
Saturday night at the banquet, we one 3rd place in class (not a bad achievement, considering the number and quality of sixes there). Then I won a really nifty poster in the raffle, courtesy of bigcoupe.com. And since I never win anything aside from the occasional t-shirt, I thought that was pretty cool. And then I won the grand pooh-bah prize: a complete refinishing kit from Gloss Haus. I made a lot of enemies when that happened. Apparently the world is full of haters.

Those are the biggies. Yeah, it was a great show, and it didn't end with a wreck. (This in itself constitutes a great show.) Watch this space for photos as I get them uploaded.

Oh the places I've been

2007-04-19T12:19:00.000-04:00

So it occurs to me that you’re probably wondering what I’ve been up to for the past year. (Yeah, I know you’re not. Humor me.) Honestly, there have only been a couple of notable developments.

My grandmother Pauline passed away in February. I’m always going to miss her, but I’m finding it hard right now to convince myself that she’s gone. We lived in different cities for the last 20 years, so I didn’t get to see her as often as I’d like. And that means that right now, I’m still convinced that she’s alive in Moultrie. She was one of only two grandparents that I ever knew, and her husband (my grandfather) died in 1983. Both of my dad’s parents died before he was grown, and my dad died in 1995. That means that my mother is my only living “ancestor,” for lack of a better word. That’s a really odd feeling, as if the grave made a quantum leap toward me when my grandmother died. Maybe that’s why I'm finding it easier to believe that she’s still alive.

By the way, something happened at her funeral that everyone saw and no one mentioned, at least to me. It’s been bugging me, and I want to explain what happened. Even if it’s just for my lone reader in France.

My brother and I were asked to be casket-bearers, so we met with the funeral director before the funeral so that they could explain what we needed to do. Yes, I paid attention, but you’ll understand if I had other things on my mind. The instructions were pretty standard: roll the casket toward the hearse, lift it into the hearse, follow the hearse to the cemetery, take the casket from the hearse and carry it to the gravesite. From there, we load it onto… that mechanism thing that lowers the casket into the grave, whatever it’s called. They told us the gravesite would be “dressed,” whatever that means. They also told us that they would be right beside us every step of the way in case we messed up.

Things went pretty smoothly until we got to the cemetery and my family gathered around the gravesite. We lifted the casket out of the hearse, and started carrying it toward the gravesite. I was on the front left corner of the casket, with two people directly behind me. There were two people already buried in this family plot: my grandfather Everett and my mother’s older brother Dick. I never met Dick. He died as a little boy when he was hit by a car.

Anyway, as I approached the gravesite, I realized what they meant when they said the grave would be dressed. It was already open, of course, and they had laid Astroturf around the grave so that we could walk across it. And as we approached the grave, I looked down and realized that I could see the edge of Dick’s grave sticking out from under the Astroturf.

I’m sure every mother thinks that part of her job description is to continue preaching the same sermons over and over in the hopes that her children will eventually listen to her. My mom and I even joked about it. “Mom, is this sermon #37 about being careful and not driving too fast? Should I just go get it out of the filing cabinet and re-read it so you don’t have to go through it all again?” I’m sure it was the same with your mother. But what amazes me is that there are a few things that she told me only once, and they will probably stick with me all my life. In this latter category is something that she told me years ago when we were visiting a cemetery somewhere. I couldn’t tell you where. Maybe it’s where her grandparents are buried. Anyway, I was a little boy, and I was walking and playing everywhere in the cemetery, as little boys will do. And she told me that it was very disrespectful to walk over the top of a person’s grave. And for some reason, I haven’t ever been able to shake those words.

So flash forward 30-something years to the day that I’m burying my grandmother, and I’m approaching her grave and realize that I can’t do this without walking across my uncle Dick’s grave. And I can’t. I just can’t. The mechanism thing that we’re going to put the casket onto has wheels on the top, much like the back of the hearse, so obviously the casket is supposed to roll. It made sense to me at the time, but like I said, I had other things on my mind. I put the front edge of the casket onto the rollers… and I just stopped walking. I refused to walk across the grave of an uncle I never met. The men on the right side of the casket kept walking, but the men behind me couldn’t go anywhere. Fortunately for me, the funeral director was close by, and he did grab the handle and pull the casket forward while I just stood there stupidly. With my family in the little folding chairs in front of me, watching. I’m sure they thought I was grief-stricken, and in a way, I guess I was. But honestly, I didn’t go any further because my mother told me that would be disrespectful.

It’s weird. I nearly typed “because my mother always said that would be disrespectful.” But that wouldn’t be accurate because, in this case, she only told me once, and once was enough. I have no idea why.

So that’s it. Like I said, there have been a couple of other developments in the past year, but all of a sudden they don’t seem so important. I’ll get to them one day if you’re interested.

Is there anybody out there?

2007-04-18T12:21:00.000-04:00

Wow. I didn't mean to take a sabbatical of nearly a full year when I last posted, but it looks like that's what happened. At any rate, the show in Helen is coming up again this weekend, so this seemed like a good time to move that headline a little further into the archives. I know you're tired of looking at it, too. That is, assuming you're still looking at it.

I've considered coming out of "retirement" on a few occasions during the last year, usually when there's a news story that I have strong opinions about, one way or the other. And I know that blogs are, like, so 2005. But you know, I actually just miss writing here. It helps me keep my thoughts straight (no comments from the peanut gallery, please). Plus I've had a few aimless days lately, and blogging always makes me feel better.

Incidentally, we're not going to the show in Helen this year. We're taking a different car to a different show in Asheville, North Carolina. It should be a good weekend. The weather's supposed to be nice. Plus, we're supposed to run the Tail of the Dragon on Friday; I've always wanted to do that but haven't yet had the chance. I'll report back and let you know how it goes.

So that's about it. I'm back, and I'll try to be here a little more often. I know I don't have billions of adoring fans, but I've got a couple of folks who still check in from time to time. I'll see if I can't come up with something a little more interesting for you to read.

Helen says Hey

2006-04-24T12:50:00.000-04:00

Well, we survived the trip up to Helen with nary an incident. There was a late-night storm on Friday, but it cleared out by late Saturday morning and left us with beautiful weather. In the show, we took People’s Choice in the Late Open class (late model convertibles). And they closed down the main drag through town on Saturday afternoon to let the Tour de Georgia pedal through.

Aside from that, there’s really not much else to tell. Of the five meals that we ate while in town, one was an awards banquet, one was lunch at Wendy’s, and the other three were Huddle House¹. Not my choice, I might add. I stopped by Hofer’s Bakery (more bad polka alert; enter at your own risk) looking for German magazines, but all they had were the German equivalent of Women’s Day. I did pick up one of their Bavarian cream muffins, though. Those alone were worth the trip.

We forgot to take the flamingo with us, though. He stayed home and watched the house.

Last night, Trailerboy turned me on to the wonders of Starbuck’s Light Frappucino, or however you spell it. Basically it’s a Frappucino made with skim milk and Splenda, and no whipped cream. The tall ones² are three points for most flavors, but the mocha is only two points. I had a caramel one last night. It’s actually very much not bad.

Tonight is more Deutsche mit Hans-Peter. I’m actually more comfortable about tonight’s class than last week. I did OK last week, but I’ve been brushing up, so I ought to be able to follow him better. We’ll see how it goes.

¹They have French fries, you know.
²That’s “small,” for the English-speakers in my audience.

Such a vicious attack monster

2006-04-21T10:04:00.000-04:00

Apparently my Aussie doesn't like the buzzer on our new dryer at all. Last night I was watching...whatever they call that Presidential TV show with Geena Davis and Donald Sutherland. When the dryer buzzed, she roused herself from her floor-slumber, hurried over to where I was lying on the couch, and proceeded to climb up onto my torso. With all four paws. That wouldn't be a big deal except she's never been allowed on the furniture and she knows it. And she's a stickler for rules and structure.²

Her brother (read "70 lbs of blonde fur and slobber") slept like a baby through the entire ordeal.

So much for my watchdog.

¹The dog, not Geena Davis.
²If that sounds funny, you've never had an Aussie.

Und jetzt fang ich es an

2006-04-20T12:47:00.000-04:00

So Rob and I started German classes at the Goethe Institut on Monday. So far, mostly so good. I think I may have referred to Rob as my boyfriend during class. Rob mispronounced a word when the teacher called on him to read and thinks he may have said a bad word in its place. All in all, not a bad start.

Since I didn’t start with the first course in this series, the class has studied some things in earlier courses which I haven’t learned yet. So to help me figure out what’s going on, I’ve got a browser window open to Babelfish. It’s helping, but it’s far from perfect. I’m also availing myself liberally of german.about.com (Gott liebst du, Hyde Flippo!) and my Oxford German dictionary and grammar. I’m telling you, if this is what it’s like to learn a new language, it’s no wonder 2-year-olds are cranky.

Well said

2006-04-19T15:20:00.000-04:00

In Andrew Sullivan's absence this week, Walter Kirn has addressed the poor child that had the misfortune of being born to the only folks who can even be considered for the title Weird Public Couple of the New Millenium. To quote:

If unborn children really had rights, the infant daughter of the actress Katie Holmes and the temporarily-humanoid immortal starseed that styles itself 'Tom Cruise' would have been delivered by a lawyer. Breaking the absolute silence of the delivery room, the lawyer, on the infant's behalf, would have sued for spiritual guardianship and demanded that all profits earned from sale of the child's story and image-- including 'virtual' profits in the form of publicity for its parents -- be deposited in a trust account to fund its lifelong psychotherapy needs.

That poor child will need more help than any of us can give her.

Farewell to Fiver1

2006-04-19T15:17:00.000-04:00

Dang... they’re dropping like flies. First order of bidness, though, is to correct my earlier math. Our totals went from 1957 in January to 1217 to 917, and then climed back to 1147.

As of today, we’re now officially back down from 1147 to 612, or we will be when the new owner comes by later this week to pick up the car. (But he’s already given us a check and taken the keys.) Now hubby’s asking if I really want to drop that number to 606... and I still sorta think I might. I mean, it’s just a car, right? And hubby’s not giving me any pressure at all, but I feel sorta guilty because he's gotten rid of a couple in good faith.

So that just means that I have to explain my blog address² as “Oh, I used to have one of those cars.” And I can always find something else to replace it. Right?

¹I still don't think anybody ever recognized where this name came from.
²Like I ever have to explain my blog address.

Our neighbors to the south

2006-04-19T09:18:00.000-04:00

I’d never thought about this before, mainly because it never occurred to me that Mexico might have illegal immigrants. According to this report from the Center from Security Policy (a right-of-center organization, so do with it as you will), Mexico affords even fewer rights to their illegals than America gives to ours.

Strength

2006-04-17T14:12:00.000-04:00

Something came up this weekend that reminded me of one of my favorite tarot cards. It’s called Strength, and it shows up as #8 in most Major Arcanas. (This image was taken from the Robin Wood tarot, by the way. It's available from Amazon.) Strength is all too often used as a measure of physical power, but it really should be considered more a measure of skill, because let’s face it: the most powerful person is the person who can make things happen.

In other words, the girl on the card will never force the lion to close his mouth. But if she keeps scratching him behind the ears, she can make him want to do it. And that is what strength should be.

Cars and weekends

2006-04-17T10:40:00.000-04:00

We spent last weekend up in Charlotte¹ for the Food Lion Autofair with the Lambda Dogwood Region. We showed with the Queen City Corvair club (a terrific group of folks) and won Best In Show with our 1965 Corsa convertible. That was a nice change from last year, when the Corsa was stolen from our locked car trailer as we prepared to go to Charlotte. We ended up schlepping ourselves to Charlotte with our tails between our legs, asking if anyone had seen it and keeping a close eye on the auction to see if it showed up there. (The Duluth Police Department found it a few weeks later. We picked it up the day Jennifer Wilbanks disappeared.²)

For the most part, the weather in Charlotte kept most folks away. There were reports of tornados and hail in the area, but the speedway only had a few heavy showers... and they were gone by early afternoon. It was really odd seeing the track quite that empty.

The most entertaining part of the weekend was coming back to the car mid-day to drop off the umbrellas and finding a large stuffed pink flamingo (in top hat and red bow-tie) sitting in the car. Apparently some of the Corvair folks have been trading this bird back and forth, leaving him in the car of unsuspecting fellow members. Said bird came to us by way of hubby’s dad. Bad move, me thinks. He’s entirely too dapper for us to give him up so easily.

This weekend was plant-o-rama. I put 81 plants in the ground, most of them through landscaping fabric. I hurt this morning. Bad. Also, our dryer died Friday night. (Props to Lowe’s for delivering on Easter Sunday.)

AND the automotive shuffling at our house continues. Our total dropped from 1957 in January to 1217, to 817 a few weeks later. As of Friday it’s back up to 1047. Mars Red with Black leather inserts. Gorgeous and fun, and a far better sound system than BMW has ever produced. Maybe I’ll get to drive it one day.

Next weekend, we’re off to spend the weekend in Helen.³(I started to include a link, but the website plays bad polka music. Search for it at your own risk.) More Corvair-itude, in a faux Deutsch sort of way. I’ll let you know how it goes.

¹She’s fine. Thanks for asking.
²I shoulda kept that “Missing Lady” flyer. I’m curious how much it would have gone for on eBay.
³I’ll tell her you said hey.

This was rigged

2006-04-17T09:41:00.000-04:00

Alright, there were some good ones on this list. I really can't argue with Nirvana, or The Smiths, or Radiohead, or Coldplay¹. And U2 definitely deserves mention for Where The Streets Have No Name. But can somebody tell me how that tripe from One topped the list when Pink Floyd's Time didn't even get mentioned?

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

¹Incidentally, the first few times Coldplay showed up on my radar screen, people referred to them as the next Pink Floyd. And I disagreed, so therefore I didn't like them. Sometime later, I heard somebody refer to them as the next U2, and I've been OK with them ever since.

OK, it made me laugh

2006-04-17T08:34:00.000-04:00

Seen this morning on the liftgate of a late model Jeep Cherokee:

My other car is a defunct prototype.

A dilemma I never thought I'd have

2006-04-14T09:59:00.000-04:00

OK, I’ve got this quandary thing working over here. It’s actually a good quandary to have, but it’s still a quandary. I’m open to suggestions if anybody has any.

I haven’t quite reached my WW goal weight, but I’m within 10 lbs (down nearly 45 lbs overall) and I’m happy with that. I’ve still got a small gut, but apparently I’ll never be able to get rid of it without making myself look like an Auschwitz refugee. Hubby and several other folks have told me I don't need to lose any more. So my goal now is to maintain my current weight and maybe build some muscle mass. I mean, if there’s gonna be any flab there at all, I’d rather it rode on muscles and not ribs.

In the meantime, hubby’s down about 40 and still wants to lose 20 or so more. And therein lies the rub: how to help him keep losing without losing more myself, and without gaining back what I’ve lost?

Since we’re eating together a lot, I could just make myself a larger portion than I make for him, but I’m not really hungry. I mean, one of the biggest adjustments I’ve made is not eating if I’m not hungry, because that’s what garnered me a fat ass in the first place. And I don’t think I could bring myself to force down a huge plateful of food that I don’t want, especially if he’s just across the table and still hungry.

I could add some higher calorie foods (like cheese and fried foods) back to my diet, but I don’t really want them. Besides, my cholesterol is still higher than I want it to be, and I want it to come down. (I’m still over two-freaking-hundred.)

Logic tells me that since I want to build muscle, I need to add more protein to my diet, like maybe peanuts or peanut butter. And I certainly don’t mind the taste of peanut butter, but I don’t really crave it. And since I’m not hungry, and I’m not craving it... there’s no point in eating it.

There is, however, one thing that I do crave: Pastries. Scones. Biscotti. Cookies.

Dare I say it? Yes, muffins too.

I’d love to add one of these to my diet every day... but I know from experience that my weight will start climbing back up. I’ve already tried it a couple of times. Plus, those kinds of sweets are sorta like a drug addiction. First I start feeling like a deserve a scone. Pretty soon, one scone isn’t enough. Then it’s a scone and a cookie. Next thing you know, I’m broke and hanging out in the Starbucks just so I can watch other people eat their muffins and hoping they’ll leave a few crumbs behind so I can lick the table.

I’m telling you, it isn’t a pretty scene.

So that’s it in a nutshell. I wanna help hubby keep losing, but I don’t wanna lose any more weight. I don't want to give my cholesterol any reason to climb again. I don’t want to eat anything I don’t really want, and the food I do want is going to lead to a desperate life of fat-assedness and rummaging through the trash for Otis Spunkmeyer wrappers. Any ideas?

Gardening tip of the day

2006-04-06T09:34:00.000-04:00

Poison Ivy sucks. That is all.

My voice in Washington won't shut up

2006-04-05T13:04:00.000-04:00

Dang. Have you folks seen this yet? When you get to the point that CNN refers to your interview as “bobbing and weaving,” and Soledad O’Brien pleads for “somebody, anybody... lawyer? congresswoman?” to answer her question... and all of that happened 3:45 minutes into an interview that lasted nearly eleven minutes... can we get this wench arrested?

U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer deserves a medal for having the presence of mind to say “People cannot hit policemen when they disagree what the policemen are doing....Even the high and the haughty should be able to stop and say, ‘I’m a congressman’ and then everybody moves on.”

Soledad also gets extra points for ending the interview with, “If I had gotten answers a little more quickly, maybe we could have gotten [into other allegations] as well.”

Don't let the door hit you where the Lord God split you

2006-04-05T09:09:00.000-04:00

For the record, I didn’t really have any problem with Tom DeLay. There might be one or two people in Washington whose existence keeps me awake at night, but he wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t even on the radar screen. He struck me as not much more closed-minded than the rest of the GOP, at least as far as those letters G-O go. But Sully makes note of some public comments that he made recently to a “War on Christians” meeting in Washington:

"Sides are being chosen, and the future of man hangs in the balance! The enemies of virtue may be on the march, but they have not won, and if we put our trust in Christ, they never will ... It is for us then to do as our heroes have always done and put our faith in the perfect redeeming love of Jesus Christ."

With those words in mind, is anybody short of James Dobson gonna miss this guy?

And he's off!

2006-04-05T08:33:00.000-04:00

Well, hubby officially finished his first auto painting project late last night. The 535i is back together, cleaned up, and he’s driving it today. And I have to say it looks pretty darned good. Not perfect, but excellent for a first attempt. Let’s just hope he makes to South Carolina and back today unscathed.

Why is this news?

2006-04-05T08:29:00.000-04:00

Does anybody really care where Katie Couric goes or what she does? Has anybody at all lost sleep over this??

Some things just leave you speechless

2006-04-04T10:58:00.000-04:00

You know those movable-letter backlit signs that you see outside cinderblock beauty shops? The church just down the street from my house has such a sign. As I drove past this morning, it read For all you do, His blood's for you.

But my dog eats dead animals too

2006-04-04T10:15:00.000-04:00

I get home from work yesterday to find a flyer taped to my mailbox. Alternative Living: Change your Life, Change your Heart, Change your Diet. No more killing – Be healthy and loving

Yup. I’ve been targeted by a roving band of vegetarians. No idea who created it, but it’s in color on high-gloss paper, with crappy clipart graphics of a hen and her chicks saying We Pray For You. And a Dolphin saying Long Life. And they give four different web sites for my perusing pleasure. Yippee.

I'll let that sink in: the hen and her chicks are praying for me.

I’m guessing this went over better at my house than it did with my neighbors. Them boys lervs their ribeyes out there in the burbs.

Fresresh Greereen Cabbabbage

2006-04-03T13:09:00.000-04:00

I figured I needed to post something today, so there it is, basking in the glow of its random absurdity. And my brain is still trying to parse the phrase, “Doo-doo in your soul, Miss Candylicious.”

My voice in Washington

2006-03-31T13:11:00.000-05:00

If you’re not from Georgia’s 4th District, you may not have heard of Cynthia McKinney... but those of us around here have. She’s back in the news for slugging a Capitol police officer who had the gall not to recognize her. Her “official” statement makes it all sound like a big misunderstanding, sung to the tune of Kum-Ba-Yah. More telling, though, is the statement she released yesterday. Apparently it matters that the police officer was white.

And for those of you who have no idea who this woman is*, let’s take a moment to revisit what dear old dad Billy McKinney said in 2002. Apparently she comes by it honestly.

*Lucky devils.

For the budget-minded grandmother or queen in your life

2006-03-31T12:58:00.000-05:00

Has anybody else checked out Grower’s Outlet in Loganville? It’s a tiny property wedged in behind a QT on a dead-end street, but they’ve got the best prices on plants. Here’s their current inventory, and here’s their latest ad. If you need plants in bulk, this is the place to buy them. I’m afraid to go on the weekends. It’s crazy enough at lunchtime during the week.

You're gonna love this one

2006-03-29T09:43:00.000-05:00

Jerry Taylor, city manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma, went to the city’s website to make some changes. He finds an error message on the website and mistakes it for a hacking attempt. He sends a nasty e-mail to a CentOS support worker, who tries his best to correct the problem for Taylor, but Taylor won’t have any of it. He even threatens to contact the FBI.

Original story here. Follow-up story here. And the original e-mail exchange here. Go ahead, it’s worth the click.

Bloody flowers

2006-03-29T09:16:00.000-05:00

This is gonna be the gayest post you’ve read all day. Deal.

So apparently the powers that be really liked my flowerbed the way it looked last year, because they’re doing everything they can to stop me from overhauling it.

Since I really can’t start planting anything ‘til the county shows up to fix the driveway, I’ve been spending my time planning what’s going to go there. I’ve sketched out the shape of the flowerbed, and I’ve made little color cut-outs of different plants that I can move around on paper until I’m happy with the way it looks. I’ve considered plant heights, so that I don’t stick salvia¹ in behind a bunch of lantana where it will never be seen. I've considered colors too, because I don't want my flowers to clash with each other.

Yes, I’m obsessing about it. But it’s been so scraggly for so long that I want our neighbors to really really notice it this year.

Anyway, I found a plant in a garden catalog this year that I’d never seen before, and it was so striking I planned a lot of the flowerbed around it. It’s called Japanese Blood Grass: a vertical, deep-red to burgundy grass that grows to about 24” tall. I’ve never seen it before, so I prepared myself to order it². I showed the picture to hubby, and he didn’t care for it. And I thought to myself, screw you, I don’t care what you think, I’m ordering it anyway³.

So I trot my happy ass into my friendly neighborhood Home Depot Landscape Supply Company^{4, 5} yesterday to inquire about ordering these. How long, how much, blah blah blah. And I know they can get it, because the place where I found it is a Home Depot catalog. The guy I talked to had never heard of it, so he picks up the phone to call someone in another store.

Turns out this plant is a relative of bamboo and is so invasive that it now shows up on the Federal Noxious Weeds List (Imperata cylindrical). They can still get it for now, but it’s technically been banned.

Good thing I haven’t bought any other plants yet, because I’m quite literally back to the drawing board.

¹Did you know the English word for salvia is sage? I didn’t.
²Something I never, ever do.
³Something else I never, ever do.
⁴By contrast, something I do all the time.
⁵Do y’all have these where you live? It’s like Disneyland for gardeners.

Richard Peck would be so proud

2006-03-28T08:41:00.000-05:00

OK, I had some lame spring breaks when I was a kid, mainly because I was working around my dad's shop. And even when I wasn't working, we never did huge spring break trips. But I don't think it ever crossed my mind to spend my spring break at Wal-Mart.

Beards

2006-03-24T13:08:00.000-05:00

Vanna White will tell you never to throw away belts, shoes, or scarves because they always come back in style. Apparently the same is true of facial hair. And doesn't that beard look good on George Clooney?

Playing in the dirt again

2006-03-24T10:00:00.000-05:00

OK, apparently there’s some government conspiracy to keep my lawn torn con-damn-pletely up. It started last fall, when a county water line developed a leak under the corner of my property. After a couple days watching water trickle out of the curb and run down the gutter, I came home to find a backhoe parked in my yard and the street in front of my house covered with mud. And it happened just as the Zoysia grass was going dormant, so I haven’t been able to re-sod. There’s been a huge gaping muddy hole there ever since.

Then a few weeks ago we got notice that the county needed to do replace water lines leading to everyone’s meters, so last week they dug up the area between my meter and the street. And in the process, they drove something across the corner of my driveway and broke up the concrete. Normally this wouldn’t be such a big deal except I’m trying to landscape the flowerbed beside the driveway and I don’t want to go any further until they repair it (sometime in the next couple of weeks). At least they’re coming back to repair it, and this time they re-sodded around the meter.

Then Tuesday night, I came home to find one of these...

...sitting in my heretofore-well-established bed of English Ivy. Parked there. As in we’ll be back tomorrow to use this monster, but for now we’re just looking for a place to leave it overnight. Nope, it’s not on the big gaping muddy hole, it’s next to it. I mean, we wouldn't want to minimize the damage, now, would we? These are both on the front corner of our yard, and since we’re the first house in the subdivision¹, the gaping muddy hole and the barren ivy wasteland now compose the first impression for anyone coming to visit any of my neighbors. This particular bit of landscaping was done by the phone company², who drove over a landscaped traffic island causing more muddy ruts and leaving a trail of dirt on their way out of the neighborhood.

Ah, spring.

¹Which is not completely unlike being the only gay in the village.
²Why yes, that would be the phone company that I fired 18 months ago. No, no, this is the one we fired before we fired Vonage.

Legal review

2006-03-24T09:18:00.000-05:00

Next up, Eugene Volokh in the National Review Online has a very good analysis of the various states' efforts to keep Fred Phelps from annoying mourners in his attempt to cash in on First Amendment lawsuits. It's definitely worth reading.

And I'm still not sure why more people aren't asking about the death of Debbie Valgos.

A Way With Words

2006-03-24T09:09:00.000-05:00

OK, it's Friday, which means it's time to clear some things out of my brain and make room for the weekend. First up, Jonah Goldberg is usually worth reading for his political ideas, but even more so this week for the phrase "that thespian carbuncle of bile." Check him out here.

Now it all comes clear

2006-03-17T09:53:00.000-05:00

When I wrote about Fred Phelps and his roving band of inbreds demonstrating at the funerals of fallen soldiers around the country, I noted that several states were considering legislation to limit their protests. I did not realize at the time that Georgia was one of those states.

First, a little housecleaning. In that post, I claimed Phelps was an attention-whore. The only other explanations I’d heard at the time didn’t seem plausible to me: that he was gay and closeted (and incredibly self-loathing), or that he was just a whack-job. But none of these really made sense. Sometime shortly afterward, I stumbled across comments posted to this thread by a user named El_Camino_SS at 2006-02-21 08:34:10 AM. You can search or scroll through to find the original. A couple of excerpts from his argument (emphasis here is mine):

Fred Phelps does not believe what he is doing. This is a scam. It's a business. They travel the country, set up websites telling you exactly when they'll be there, and using the most inflammatory statements all over the place, just to get someone to violate their rights for profit. Then they sue the military, the police force that was to protect them, and everyone that is around them for money. This is a sham, and it is a trap to get people sued. Every member of his family is an attorney. Phelps does not break the law. What he does is try to make you break the law by trying to punch your sensibilities about everything you hold dear, and then sue you and everyone municipality around him to the max...
His boards are laminated on hardwood, because he pulls them out of trucks at least five times a week...
The most telling tale about all of Phelp's behavior is the schedule he keeps, and the company he keeps as well. The parties sometimes split up and go to two seperate state funerals to maximize the profitability of them. There are, at maximum, twelve members to the party. They never stay more than thirty minutes (I assume they realize that someone will do something to them the MOMENT they come out of the vans, and really, after that, they get their camera shots to cause the outrage for the next stop, and then they move on) to maximize their profits, because time is money, and really, they're not interested in the message, because they're just interested in the lawsuit....

See? It’s a brilliant ploy, and we’ve all been falling for it. And it’s even borne out by Phelps’ own words:

"I want congress to pass a law that says I can't picket so we can immediately get it to the nation's attention in one gulp,"says Fred Phelps, Pastor of Westboro Baptist Church.

Of course that’s what he wants, so he can file a fat, federal, First Amendment lawsuit. Be sure to tell all your friends.

At any rate, it concerned me that Georgia and other states were considering legislation to keep him from disrupting these funerals. It’s the price of free speech, no? But a couple of issues have changed my mind on this.

1. The Georgia bill does not prevent anyone from demonstrating. It merely creates a 500-foot buffer so that he’s kept a small distance away from the family.

2. I went back and re-read the First Amendment to see what it says. (I fully recommend that everyone partake in this exercise from time to time.) And one word in particular jumped out at me:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

His purpose is not, and has never been, peaceful. His purpose is to create a disturbance so that he can cash in.

And my purpose? To make sure everybody has heard about Debbie Valgos.

Care and Feeding of Your Introvert

2006-03-16T14:15:00.000-05:00

In 2003, Jonathan Rauch wrote a partially tongue-in-cheek essay for The Atlantic called Caring for Your Introvert: The habits and needs of a little-understood group. It continues to draw more traffic to their website than any other article and led to a recent interview with Sage Stossel, another introvert and senior editor for The Atlantic. If you’re an introvert, none of the information in these two pieces will surprise you. If you’re an extrovert, you may understand the concept of introversion, but you probably don’t comprehend it. Or as Rauch wrote:

...someone you know, respect, and interact with every day is an introvert, and you are probably driving this person nuts.

I remember going to restaurants as a kid and watching older couples eat dinner together in near-complete silence, and I remember thinking, “What a shame that those two old people are so unhappy that they don’t even want to talk to each other.” Then, as I got older and fell into my own long-term relationship, I realized quite the opposite: part of the joy of growing old together is that you don’t have to entertain each other 24/7. The line that Rauch quoted from Waiting for Godot summed it up beautifully: Don't talk to me. Don't speak to me. Stay with me.

A note for my friends: when we cook dinner for you at our house*, and I disappear late in the evening to start cleaning the kitchen, it’s not because I care more about the plates than you. It’s not because I wish you would go home. It’s because I’m perfectly content saying nothing, and you’re in capable conversational hands with my hubby. And if I ever fall asleep at your dinner table, please take it as the highest compliment, because it means that I’m very comfortable with your company.

My name is Ben, and I am an introvert.

*Please note that we never have more than 10 or 12 people MAX over for dinner. I’m actually more comfortable with 4 or 6. And as you may have gathered, the one event I dread every year is the Christmas party that we give our friends, co-workers, and clients. Because I know that I’m going to be on-stage for 6 hours or more. And hubby doesn’t understand why that bugs me.

A little chlorine, please?

2006-03-15T16:20:00.000-05:00

In case you're wondering, this is the gene pool that I crawled out of 16 years ago. Behold the seductive power of Pelham, Georgia.

I'm dying for a Twix bar over here...

2006-03-10T15:30:00.000-05:00

...and there aren't any in our vending machine. If I walk down to the next floor to get one, will I burn enough calories to enjoy it?

In which the Normans go back home

2006-03-10T13:24:00.000-05:00

My, wasn’t I ambitious? It turns out that it may be humanly possible to achieve all the goals I set for myself, but only if you don’t care about having any chance at any social life whatsoever. With that in mind, I’m officially marking one of my goals off my list. French, for me, is done.

At this point, I speak and understand it as well as I ever did, so I can’t say that I’ve failed. And I did make it to the end of Pimsleur Level II. But I don’t see much point in continuing to practice, seeing as how it’s not really a language I want to speak. If we end up going to Paris next year (dates set: June 24 to July 1), I’ll brush up a little before we leave so I can at least ask where the toilet is located. Outside of that, my traveling companions will just have to find another translator.

And it’s pretty much official: Rob and I will be taking German classes next month at the Goethe Institut. Now if we can just do it without going out for ein bier oder drei after class and totally blowing our diets...

More cuteness

2006-03-10T12:41:00.000-05:00

OK, so the cookie thief got disqualified for being a sock puppet. This should fill your need for authentic Friday afternoon cuteness.

Spiffy Redefined

2006-03-10T10:35:00.000-05:00

Alright. I’ve been pretty lax about this for the last week or so. Not for lack of material – for lack of time. Let me see if I can catch up a little.

Sunday, Hubby and I went down to Spiffy Hall to hear Paul Jacobs play the big Rufatti organ there. It was our second trip to see him there and the first for our friends Jim & Steve. If you have any interest at all in organ music, you owe it to yourself to find him in concert, somewhere in your area. Truly. He's worth the drive. Obviously I can’t play any of his recordings for you here, but these quotes from his bio should give you an idea of his abilities:

Paul Jacobs came to national attention as a concert organist in 2000 when he twice performed the complete organ works of J. S. Bach in 14 consecutive evenings, in New York City and Philadelphia. Later in the year he trumped that achievement by performing the complete works again in a spectacular 18-hour, non-stop marathon in Pittsburgh.... [He] has memorized the complete organ works of Brahms, Franck, and Duruflé, much Messiaen, most of Bach, and a vast range of other organ literature.

He was appointed chairman of the organ department at Julliard in 2003 at the age of 26, making him one of the youngest faculty appointments in the school’s history. And unlike some other performers, he lives up to the hype. He’s not only computer-precise in his playing, he’s musical. And he’s personable, and he makes it look so very effortless. We heard him play the snot out of Max Reger’s Fantasy and Fugue on "Wachet auf! ruft uns die Stimme.” When he finished, hubby turned to me and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that piece before.”

And I responded, “That’s because nobody else can play it.”

I’ve been all week trying to find a good recording of it, but I think I’ll be disappointed in anybody else’s performance. If nothing else, I know they don't take it at the blinding tempo he used.

And on top of everything else, near the end of the concert, he ‘fessed up that he had forgotten his organ shoes in New York City. He played the entire concert in his Gold Toe socks.

By the way, I thought the faux marble technique at Spivey Hall was a little on the tacky side... until last summer when I realized the Katholische Hofkirche in Dresden got exactly the same faux marble treatment.

This SHOULD be cause for celebration

2006-03-07T08:31:00.000-05:00

Well, after promising myself that I’d post something every day, I’ve been quiet for nearly a week now. Time to fix that, and this time I’ve got good news.

At my weigh-in on Saturday, I achieved two notable milestones. I’ve officially lost 40 lbs (42 and change, actually), in just about five months. And my fully dressed weight, including shoes, is under 200 lbs now. It’s a big enough change that the picture on my work badge doesn’t quite look like me any more. I was a real porker. And wouldn’t you know it, I’ve still got a spare tire.

I’m not sure how much longer to push it. Crystal has told me (twice now) that I’ve lost too much. So has Theresa (she’s also on WW). And last night, even hubby asked me when I was going to stop. I really don’t think I’m in any danger of become anorexic, but I’m not quite ready to stop just yet. According to the BMI, that infallible tool created by the National Institutes of Health that only compares your weight to your height, I’m still freaking overweight. 25.2. And I’m using my all-starkies, post-pee, no-shoes, early morning weight to calculate that one.

Bunny stealing a cookie

2006-03-01T09:55:00.000-05:00

Because you didn't think it was possible to be cuted to death, did you?

Stupid traffic updates

2006-02-28T13:55:00.000-05:00

Alright, I knew this was going to be painful. Still, you don't realize how much traffic funnels through I-85 and GA-316 until it all gets routed off onto the surface streets. But if you're one of the many inconvenienced souls who has to travel through this way everyday, GDOT has a website dedicated specifically to the I-85/GA-316 project so you can see what they're gonna be doing and when.

Dead Even

2006-02-25T12:16:00.000-05:00

Well, if you've checked in at Trailerboy's place, you already know that he & Rob were both down this week. (Congrats to you both!) Having reached 38.8 lbs last week, I was really hoping to make 40 lbs today.

No such luck. Hubby was own .8 lbs; I was dead even from last week.

That's actually OK. After one or two days this week of feeling like a Somalian refugee¹ and gorging myself accordingly, I fully expected to gain a pound or two. So when some chick in the back row of my meeting hit her 40-lb mark today... I smiled and said congratulations.

Yeah, it just kills me to be civil about this. ;o)

BUT I'm still on target to reach my goal weight by late spring or early summer. And I had a terrific moment yesterday when a co-worker told me that I'd lost plenty of weight and shouldn't lose any more. The thing is, she doesn't ever see me without my shirt, or she'd know exactly where my last 20 pounds are located. Onward and downward...

¹Ticket for one, express train please. Can I have a window seat?

Good God

2006-02-24T16:23:00.000-05:00

This has to be one of the most disgusting displays of any sort to take place in the world today. Fred Phelps and other members of the Westboro Baptist Church (which consists almost solely of his spawn and other low-lifes who are just sick enough to marry into this dysfunctional clan; I refuse to link to his website) have started to demonstrate at the funerals of soldiers who are killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. His reasoning? You see, God doesn’t like the USA because we tolerate homosexuals. Therefore, God is taking out these soldiers, overseas. One and two at a time.

This man is a liar. He’s demonstrating at these funerals because he’s an attention-whore. Plain and simple. Fortunately, he’s been such a loose cannon for so long that he’s created his own brand of counter-demonstrators. A group of bikers called the Patriot Guard Riders will, at the family’s request, show up at the funeral location and place themselves between the family and the demonstrators in an effort to drown out Phelps and his hatemongers. Their motorcycles don’t exactly let the family mourn “in peace,” but they at least reduce the chances that a soldier’s mother will hear taunts like “You sent your own child to hell” on the day she’s trying to bury her son.

Truly disgusting, disturbed people. As someone told me years ago, “If that’s the word of God, it’s sure changed since I was in Sunday School.”

I wrote just a couple of days ago about freedom of speech in this country and how it’s under fire from outside sources. It seems that Minnesota (the site of the latest funeral demonstration) is considering legislation to make funeral protests like this one illegal. As much as I’d like to see the whole Phelps clan spontaneously combust, I think that’s a bad idea. Yes, his speech is incredibly tasteless and very unpopular. But the First Amendment was intended specifically for such garbage; after all, popular speech doesn’t need to be protected. I’d much rather the government either used existing laws to remove these cretins (inciting a riot, perhaps?) or remained neutral and allowed people like the Patriot Guard Riders to offer the help that they can.

Besides, if the government starts limiting what Phelps can say and where, then people like me might not be able to ask questions like what happened to Debbie Valgos?

I can't for the life of me understand why women get so worked up about this

2006-02-23T13:16:00.000-05:00

Well, it looks like the sun may actually reappear before the end of the day, so my spirits have improved drastically in the last few days. In addition, I got to spend my lunch hour doing something that usually cheers me up: I got to go shopping. But you know, the thing I bought today is the one thing that brings me absolutely no pleasure in the shopping. I had to go buy shoes.

Back in the fall, I went with hubby as he shopped for new shoes for himself, and I stumbled across a good price on a pair of generic brown oxfords like I wear all the time. (They’re dressy enough for work and casual enough for jeans. Along with a pair of white tennies and a pair of hiking boots, I have shoes for every occasion.) Hubby snickered when I picked them up because they looked exactly like the pair I was wearing at the time. I ignored him and bought the cheap shoes. And likewise, I tend to go about every 18 months to stock up on black cotton Gold Toe Fluffies. They just go with everything, and I don’t break my neck searching for sock mates in the laundry. So when my socks started developing holes in the toe sometime back, I figured it was time to replace them. I tossed the old ones and picked up another bunch of Fluffies. And in the last week, I’ve developed four more holes in the new socks.

Ladies and Gentlemen, my new cheap shoes are rubbing holes in my new socks.

I didn’t wanna go buy new shoes. I just did it, and that was supposed to last me for two more years. But my original oxfords had finally just deploded, and the new ones were eating my socks. So I went to Discover Mills for lunch, had a bowl of Popeye’s Jambalaya for 6 points, and picked up oxfords and sneakers at Rack Room shoes. I hope that’s it for a while.

Now, while shoes bring me no pleasure at all, the same can not be for books, electronics, movies, CDs, house supplies... even groceries¹. So it irks me to go shopping for something I don’t really want, especially when there are a couple of things that I do want and can’t afford to spend the money on right now. Well, I could afford it if they were critical. But because hubby is self-employed, he’s officially one of those Evil Corporations that robs from the poor and gives to the rich. And the way his corporation is structured, he may very well end up paying more in taxes for 2005 than he made in salary last year.²

Anyway, these two things are German classes (Rob & I are planning to sign up together at the Goethe Institut) and monitor speakers for my studio. I’m getting antsy enough about my other potential purchases that I’m starting to carry around my unofficial audio equipment test CD in the truck. It’s the Symphonie Concertante by Belgian composer Joseph Jongen, performed by the San Francisco Symphony, with Michael Murray playing the Ruffatti organ at Davies Symphony Hall. If you don’t already own a copy, you should. The first 60 seconds will tell you everything you need to know about any audio equipment in the world. If you’re test-driving a pair of speakers, be sure to watch the salesman’s face when you remove his R&B thump-matic crooner CD and show him what you really expect his equipment to do. Added bonus is the folks who wander over from other departments to see where “that music” is coming from.

It’s quite possibly the most exciting orchestral composition to be written since Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Seriously. And you don’t have a copy yet?

¹That’s obvious. Can’t you tell?
²No, I’m not kidding. Yes, it can work that way. And this year, it looks like it’s going to. Don’t freaking whine to me about your freaking social programs. Some of us just want to keep some of the money we make. Especially when we're providing jobs for other people.

OK, this cheered me up

2006-02-21T16:09:00.000-05:00

Apparently Andrew Sullivan's beagles are just as easily entertained as my dogs.

Blech

2006-02-21T13:08:00.000-05:00

I’m in a bit of a mood today, and I’m not sure what caused it. Hubby thinks he might be coming down with a cold, and I may be catching it. In addition, it’s just a skanky day all-around. The kind of day that looks like wet cotton. The kind that feels like you stumbled into a Dan Fogelberg¹ nightmare and can’t get out. The kind that epitomizes winter in Atlanta. For all my adoring fans who live on the Great Lakes, yes. I know it could be colder and darker out there. But still, I don’t think it’s possible for this town to be any drearier than it becomes every year at this time.

I’ve never been on a pair of skis before. Or a pair of ice skates. Or a snowmobile, for that matter. Yeah, all those things sound vaguely interesting to me, except that I’d have to travel several hundred miles to make any of them happen... and if I have to load my butt up on a plane, I’m making it somewhere warm. Here, we just get cold, and wet. And grey.

It’s better this year than last year, when I was taking a certain anti-inflammatory nasal spray used to treat the nasal symptoms of indoor and outdoor nasal allergies and year-round nonallergic nasal symptoms. I still contend that it made me very unbalanced and caused much more depression than usual. But you know, I haven’t heard anyone complain about it, and it’s not listed as a side effect on their website. Apparently I’m the only person in North America who was reduced to a blithering idiot by this drug. Therefore, I’m just going to continue not mentioning their name. I mean, all I need now is for some big pharmaceutical company to come after me for libel. And even though truth is a perfect defense in such cases, it just wouldn’t be worth the hassle.

Our stupid little groundhog did not see his shadow this year, which allegedly means winter’s over. That was about a week before the temperature plummeted into the mid-20s and stayed there for three days. My lawn is starting to green up... or was before winter’s last hurrah. And last Thursday, it was 67 degrees and sunny. And Friday, the fog and clouds and spitting rain re-appeared, and the temperature dropped back below freezing again, just in time for the weekend.

So when we retire, hubby wants to move up to the mountains. I can’t blame him so much for that; it’s where he grew up. I, on the other hand, did not grow up in any mountains and rarely saw temperatures below 40 degrees. I mean, I'm seriously starting to feel like Anakin Skywalker, and I’m thinking that somewhere like Phoenix² would be a terrific place to live whenever I decide to become a grumpy old man.³ 120-degree summers? Piece of cake. 121 days without rainfall? Meh. As long as the sun is shining, I don’t really care about much else.

So how 'bout it, Mr. Sun? How much more of this blah shiat am I gonna have to tolerate?

¹I used to think Auld Lang Syne was the most depressing song ever... I mean, it’s only ever sung by drunks who interrupt the biggest party of the year to croon their way through it. Fact is, it’s not nearly so depressing as the pop song it spawned. Can you tell me where you keep your razor blades?
²I mean, Tatooine.
³You know. Like next week.

FINALLY!

2006-02-20T08:44:00.001-05:00

Well, after they started pushing down trees a couple of weeks ago, today they're going to have a ground-breaking ceremony for the new interchange at I-85 and GA-316. This must be a big deal. Even Ed Asner is going to be there.

By the end of the day, the left-hand lane of I-85 south will be closed between Boggs Road and Pleasant Hill. No word yet on where the GA-316 traffic will go when that happens. Me, I'm just dreading the day they demolish the Old Norcross Road bridge across I-85. Dunno how I'm gonna get home when that happens.

Censor This

2006-02-17T15:32:00.000-05:00

So now a Muslim cleric has called for the head of the cartoonist [sic, bastard] who dared to draw the face of Mohammed. And like any good extremist, he didn’t even have the story right. There were 12 cartoonists, bubba. Not one.

Just around the corner from me, a Chinese-American was recently beaten in a home invasion. He thinks he was beaten by Chinese agents because he’s associated with Falun Gong and works for a newspaper that’s critical of the Chinese government.

You know, for all the protracted battles over freedom of speech that the USA has hosted in the last 230 years, the First Amendment is still alive and very well. It’s very rare for government at any level to encroach on this basic human right. (Though various governments try occasionally, they hardly ever prevail in the cold, hard light of a courtroom.) Which is one of the reasons I’ve always felt safe to say whatever I went, just about whenever and wherever I want without much fear in this country.

Now, that right is being threatened by outside sources, of all things. By thugs who just can’t stand the thought that we might not believe the same things they do. Maybe that means they feel threatened. If that’s the case, maybe these attacks could be considered a good thing?

I don't know. It honestly scares me.

At least at the far brighter end of the spectrum, we still occasionally get stories like this one. And as long as that happens, at least we're safe from our own government.

The Other English Andrew

2006-02-17T12:50:00.000-05:00

Andrew Sullivan doesn't get much respect from anybody. He writes for such publications as Time magazine and The Sunday Times of London, as well as serving as senior editor of The New Republic. He's an open, unapologetic gay man living with HIV. He's a pro-life Catholic. He usually embraces conservative causes over liberal ones, but he endorsed John Kerry in 2004.

That said, he's usually able to piss off both sides in any political debate. And today, he makes a few observations about the "tolerance" he's found from folks who ought to know better:

No right-wing group has picketed a book-signing with posters depicting my face behind the cross-hairs of a gun, as the gay left did. No one on the right has gone nuclear on my private life, as the gay left did. No one on the right has threatened to find me in Ptown and split my skull open, or called me the anti-Christ, as some on the gay left have. Yes, I get homophobic hate mail from the right all the time; and many conservative blogs have blackballed or slimed or smeared me in various ways. But that's, sadly, what you get for being provocative and opinionated on the web.

Can we get back to some middle ground? Does anybody even remember what the middle ground looks like?

Another spiffy little red convertible back on the road

2006-02-17T08:35:00.000-05:00

Congratulations are in order for Mr. Evan Person. After many months of ordering parts, waiting for parts, cancelling parts orders, starting over with other parts suppliers, and using a bigger hammer to force parts to fit, he successfully got the turbocharger installed and running in his little Miata last night. He brought it by the house last night on his way home... it sounds pretty mean.

So Evan, did you make it home without encountering Our Lady Of The Silver Broach?

We have a winner

2006-02-15T12:03:00.000-05:00

Not that I'm going to shirk my blogging duties in favor of pointing you folks to other places, but Jon hit it right this morning. It's not about the cartoons.

General Lee-Roy

2006-02-15T08:56:00.000-05:00

Well, somebody gets points for being ballsy.

Love, Waldo, and Cookies

2006-02-14T16:28:00.000-05:00

Molly gets it right.

I'm still fat, but at least I'm not stressing about it.

2006-02-14T11:04:00.000-05:00

Update: Dang. When I blogged about this commercial, I had no idea it was gonna keep garnering hits the way it has. Apparently that commercial is getting a lot of attention. But now I’m curious what people are hoping to find about it. If you’ve stumbled across my blog because you searched for “feel good pill,” would you leave me a comment (anonymous if you want) and let me know if you’re:

Considering Relacore as a weight-loss aid
Considering Relacore as a mood-enhancer
Not considering Relacore but intrigued by these latest claims

I don’t work for Relacore or any other interested party, and I won’t use the information for anything but to satisfy my own curiosity. Thanks!

A few days ago at the breakfast table, I saw yet another one of those commercial for weight-loss pills. This time it was Relacore, and this time it was different. Instead of telling me how much weight I was going to lose, they told me that belly fat is caused by stress, and that even skinny people can benefit from taking Relacore. In their own words:

While millions are taking Relacore to help reduce stress-induced belly fat, millions more use Relacore as a “feel-good pill.”

Really. They even registered the domain name http://www.feelgoodpill.com. Klicken Sie herein to see the commercial.

And that’s followed by a parade of skinny, beautiful people (well, most of them are) telling me how Relacore changed their lives. That includes the requisite whiny bride who’s dealing with the stress of her wedding.

Here’s a thought. Elope. Your family and friends will love you for it.

Another quote:

My wife really does notice because I come home, I’m more calm throughout the night, I’m able to focus with her and the kids...

Of course, all that’s followed with the disclaimer that you should use Relacore in conjunction with any sensible diet and exercise program. But you know, any sensible diet and exercise program would net you a weight loss anyway. So can somebody tell me exactly what Relacore is supposed to do, besides dope you up so you don’t care that you’re fat?

Le Jour des Lapins

2006-02-10T12:48:00.000-05:00

I've recently encountered a phrase in French that I learned years ago and promptly forgot: C'est une bonne idée. Word for word, it means, That's a good idea. Very useful, common phrase, yes?

Unfortunately, I haven't yet been able to say it without snickering -- same thing back when I was in school. It's not that there's anything wrong with the phrase. The problem is, it sounds for all the world like C'est une bunny day when you say it aloud. And how can you talk about a bunny day without smiling?

Update

2006-02-09T13:38:00.000-05:00

I finally spoke with Andrew last night, for the first time since he called last week. He was very down: they buried his mother one year ago today. There’s not much other news, except that he’s managing about as well as you can expect. Marcus will be cremated this weekend, and there will be a memorial service on Monday. Andrew’s taking a few things to be cremated with Marcus: a teddy bear, a photo of their cat Spookie, and a photo of them taken just after Marcus proposed last year. Marcus’s parents have been staying in their (Andrew & Marcus’s) home, and Andrew was staying with his brother & sister-in-law. On Tuesday, everyone returned to their own homes. Fortunately he’s got many good local friends who are taking care of him.

In trying to make arrangements, Andrew expected to get a lot of grief from police officers and other officials because he’s technically not “family.” But he’s been pleasantly surprised in that regard: he figures people are a lot more accepting now that the law in England has changed.

He’s told me again how much it means to him to hear from each of you, and he truly appreciates it. Thanks for keeping him in your thoughts.

Looks like it works

2006-02-08T16:09:00.000-05:00

When I imported all of my CDs into iTunes on my work PC, I set up a playlist called “Cheer Up Music.” Whenever I noticed that a song had the potential to seriously affect my mood in a positive way, I dragged its butt into this playlist. The theory here was that eventually I’d have a bad day and need something to cheer me up, so I may as well stash something away for those days. And then I mostly forgot about it.

Well, today has been my first seriously blue day in a long time (I binged on chocolate and now I'm regretting it), so I plug in my earbuds and give it a shot. For the record, it looks like this:

Morten Lauridsen: O Magnum Mysterium (recorded by the Robert Shaw Singers)
Babble: Tribe
Emilie Autumn: Across the Skies
Babble: The Stone
Manhattan Transfer: Soul Food to Go
Duran Duran: Hungry Like The Wolf
Yaz: Don’t Go
Enya: Book of Days
Manhattan Transfer: Shaker Song
Nine Inch Nails: Closer
Thompson Twins: You Take Me Up
Thompson Twins: The Gap
The Cars: Let’s Go
The Cars: Magic
Concrete Blond: Bloodletting (The Vampire Song)
DJ Bobo: Chihuahua
Duran Duran: The Reflex
K’s Choice: Believe
Wendy Carlos: March from A Clockwork Orange
Yaz: State Farm
The Cars: Hello Again
Culture Club: Time (Clock of the Heart)
Pink Floyd: The Great Gig In The Sky
Yaz: Situation
Yaz: Walk Away From Love

It’s a veritable cheesefest, and I love every minute of it. :o)

For the record, the first song in the rotation was The Reflex. I was better before the initial fade-in finished.

Translation please?

2006-02-08T14:34:00.000-05:00

There's a church just down from my house that has one of those lighted message boards out front. The message this week says, "Good without God is O."

I don't get it. If it's trying to be clever, it failed. If it's trying to be humorous, it failed. If it's meant to be taken literally, it still failed. Am I missing something?

Mmm, chocolate!

2006-02-07T12:56:00.000-05:00

Weight Watchers has tips on getting through V-D for those of us who can't say no to chocolate. Good news: dark chocolate may not be so bad.

Spring cleaning

2006-02-07T10:35:00.000-05:00

From the time that I first started blogging here, I’ve known full well that I’ve got a lot of stuff going on. I always do. Always have. I’m not sure I can help it, and I know I’m not alone in this. That’s one of the reasons that I took some time to decide if I wanted to start a blog or not. Yeah, I know. Some kids today¹ have no problem starting a blog the way I start a grocery list, the electronic equivalent of scribbling on the back of an envelope. I didn’t want to go about this in that way. On the one hand, it’s a journal for me to examine thoughts that are bothering me... pick them up, look them over, and put them into a box with other similar thoughts. It’s also a creative outlet. (If you haven’t done it lately, I’m finding that creation takes a lot of practice. And I haven’t done it much lately.)

But also, it’s a vanity project and – schmarmy as it sounds – a way to present myself to the world. And if I’m not making myself look good, I don’t wanna do it at all. I mean, if my house is a wreck, why would I invite the world in to see it? So in the beginning, I promised myself that I would post something every day. And lately I haven’t done that. Partly that’s because I’m busier at work. Partly it’s because I’m not sure I have anything worth presenting to my audience.

So today, you get to come in and see the whole mess. All the stacks of all the things that I’m trying to tend to. Maybe I’ll decide to chuck some of the stacks... but that’s going to make me feel like I’ve abandoned a project, which makes me feel like a failure², which is gonna bring up self-esteem issues. Or maybe I just need to decide what my goals are (i.e., how far I want to push each project) so that I can check each one off my list.

OK, enough blocking the door. It’s time to let the neighbors in.

Weight Loss: I’ve lost about 33 lbs since the beginning of October, and according to Weight Watchers, I’ve got about 20 more to go. If I can do that, I’ll become a lifetime member. I joined WW as a teenager and was thoroughly disgusted with the goal they assigned me then, and I gave up. (See failure.) I thought their adult goal was a little low too, but it’s been going very well, so I’m going to keep trying. I’ve had a pot belly literally all of my life, and I want to know what it’s like not to have one. This morning I realized that I don’t have near the muffin-top I used to have. I'm also taking a lot more pride in my appearance, my physical presentation to the world. I should be able to clear this stack within the next two months, and then I’ll be very, very happy. I will not to give up on this one.

Working Out: While I’d like to get to my target weight, I’d also like to achieve some semblance of a muscular body. My kid brother³, who was always skinny as a child, popped up a few years ago with a really beefy body, and I’ve been jealous ever since. I don’t necessarily want to be Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I’d like to turn an occasional head. I’ve got a Bowflex at home, and I’ve got a decent workout that doesn’t consume too much time. I’ve actually built up muscles before, but they were always covered by fat. This goal is also very attainable, so I’m not giving up on it either.

Languages: The language I've always most wanted to learn was German; however, my high school only offered French and Spanish courses. Of those, I decided I’d rather speak French. My college offered German, but I took the course of least resistance and re-covered all the French I took in high school again in college. Several years ago, I decided to study German on my own, and I worked at it off and on for years. Last year, hubby & I took a group tour of eastern Germany, and I mostly didn’t embarrass myself. That was my primary goal. Yay, me!

The same group is planning a tour to France next year, and I’d also like not to embarrass myself there. But there are a few problems:

I forgot most of the French I learned in school.
German makes sense to me. French really doesn’t.
I’ve been studying pretty hard for a few months now, and French is still not quite natural for my tongue or my ears. I find it easier to comprehend a spoken German conversation that a spoken French conversation.
Besides, my friend Rob is studying German and making great headway. He’s outpacing me pretty quickly.

I’d like to be able to hold a decent conversation with a native German and not feel the need to apologize for my accent. Honestly, I’d like to be able to list German on my resume and maybe get the chance to travel there occasionally. I’d like the same thing for French, but if I had to choose one, German wins. And I’m not even sure that French is second anymore. In fact, I can see me happily going along, collecting languages for the rest of my life. I’m tempted to revert back to studying German, but I don’t want to abandon the French again. I’ll let you know how this one plays out.

Guitar: Hubby gave me a six-string acoustic for Christmas several years ago, even though he really doesn’t like guitars.⁴ I’ve never gotten good at playing it. He says he didn’t expect me to make as much progress as I’ve made, and I really appreciate the sentiment, but it’s not enough for me. I’m not confident enough to play in front of anyone. So on Sunday, I acquired a music stand (which has been a huge obstacle to setting up any music in front of me), and I started from the beginning of Adam Kadmon’s Guitar Grimoire. I’m planning to set aside a few minutes each day to practice. Eventually I’d like to play this beast in public, but as long as I can see incremental progress for now, I’ll be happy.

Piano: We bought a baby grand Yamaha several years ago, and I haven’t played it nearly enough. I used to play for high school choirs, church choirs, weddings, receptions... and it’s all fallen by the wayside. I don’t necessarily want to accompany anyone or play for events, but I’d like to play again for my own enjoyment. This one’s a back-burner goal.

Recording: Several years ago, I assembled a small studio in my home, and I’d like to be able to make and sell my own music. It would be great to do this full-time, but I don’t have any delusions. It will probably always be a hobby that maybe makes me a little money on the side. Trouble is, I’m scared to death of failure... of producing something awful and being laughed at. I’ve got a few pieces underway and some of them will probably pan out, but I can’t bring myself to finish them. My latest excuse is that my headphones are a little too bass-heavy, and of course that skews my perception, so I need to get some good monitor speakers. Trouble is, it’s hard to create if you don’t have an audience. I recently uncovered a website that allows musicians to post songs and offer feedback to each other. I’ve even found a couple of local musicians that I’d like to approach about collaborating, but I’m not going to do it until I have something of my own to show them. I’d love a collaborator, but I need to prove myself to myself first. Back to the trenches. At least I now have a near-term goal and a reason to finish some of those songs.

On top of all that, hubby’s painting a car (which he can mostly do without help from me, thank goodness), and we’re trying to keep his office running while he hires an office manager. I spent a couple of hours there last night filing because there’s simply nobody else around to do it. And my Triumph needs brake lights, and two other cars just need to be assembled, and we haven’t done any renovation work to the house in a couple of years.

So that’s why I was wary of starting a blog, and it’s also why you haven’t heard from me in a few days. I don’t want to undertake any more projects, but I also don’t want to abandon any of these. I want to be able to say that I finished them, or at least most of them. And now that I’ve got a goal for each of them, maybe I can.

¹Get off my lawn!
²Well, that’s a strong word, but you get my drift.
³He hates it when I call him that.
⁴That’s an understatement, and there are actually business reasons why he doesn’t like them. He's really not that much of a curmudgeon. Most days.

From Andrew

2006-02-04T12:59:00.000-05:00

I got a text message from Andrew late last night. It arrived on my phone at about 9:30, so if it didn't get held up in the transmission, it means he sent it at about 2:30 am his time. He asked me to thank everybody for your e-mails and to let you know that it's a huge comfort to hear from everyone here.

I called a few minutes ago to check on him, but he didn't answer. I'll try again later and let you know if I get hold of him. I'm sure there will be some kind of memorial service, but I don't know when. I'll keep you all posted.

Thanks.

Huh?

2006-02-03T16:11:00.000-05:00

I'm spending my Friday afternoon importing music from CDs to my iTunes program at work. If you've done this, you know that iTunes checks some online database whenever you insert a new CD and automatically downloads the album and track names, artist, genre, and all that stuff. So you don't have to type it in.

So I'm importing an unusual CD, which was produced in a very limited run. It's a recording of the dedication concert for the new Nichols & Simpson pipe organ at the Cathedral of St. Augustine in Kalamazoo Michigan, played by Ken Cowan. When I put in disc 1, the database search finds nothing. Well, duh. This ain't Coldplay. But when I put in disc 2 - which is a single track (a 19-minute work called "Jesu, Meine Freunde," written by Sigfrid Karg-Elert) - iTunes downloads the following info:

Album name: Charge Tension Discharge
Artist: ChopShop
Album: Charge Tension Discharge
Genre: Jazz

Um... No. Don't think so.

It shouldn't be this hard

2006-02-03T12:52:00.000-05:00

My partner has always been wary of paying bills automatically – either by credit card or with automatic deduction. I always sort of understood why that gave him the jibblies, but it wasn’t until last month that this became crystal-clear for me. Last year we signed up for Vonage service at home and at his shop. After six months of trying to fix problems with his fax line, we attempted to cancel the shop service last summer. They dicked us around for six months, swearing that they would cancel our service, “forgetting” to do so, and continuing to hit our credit card. When we called back to yell at them, they claimed that they had no record that we wanted to cancel, and that they would take care of it. And we would start all over again.

No lie: I finally called my credit card company to report my card stolen solely so that I could obtain a new card with a new number.*

Vonage = Evil. Do not EVER give them a single cent.

Now XM Radio, which up to this point has made me a very happy customer, is dancing dangerously close to the same edge. Last month we sold my car, and I called on January 13 to cancel the XM service on the radio in that car. Keep in mind that I’m not canceling my account. I’m keeping two radios and canceling a third because I sold that car. I tried to cancel the radio for the first time on January 13. That was a nightmare experience, but I finally got hold of someone who said she would cancel the service. And then she offered to send me a new radio for my new car, pre-authorized and ready to go.

“What kind do you want?”, she asks.
"I don’t know,” I say.”
Well, we can give you up to three days to decide if you’d like to call us back.”
"Cool. Thanks.”

That was three weeks ago. Yesterday I realized they hadn’t deleted my radio yet... and that’s where things really start to go downhill. Here’s a list of everything they’ve done wrong since then.

I sent one of those “contact us” e-mails asking how to delete a radio (and gave them my radio ID) and got an automated response that they would reply in 24 hours. They didn’t.
They do not provide any way to disconnect a radio online. Or if they do, they damn sure don’t make it easy to find.
Their automated attendant (which has a cutesy name like Kylie or Kayla or Skank Whore or whatever) requires you to announce your needs so that all of your co-workers can hear you. I don’t know which company started that idea, but it sucks. STOP IT NOW.
Kylie/Kayla/SW cheerfully tells you that you can interrupt her at any time, and she’s lying. If you try to interrupt, you find yourself trying to shout so that you can be heard over a computer.
At one point, Kylie/Kayla/SW suggested that I should say “Manage Account” if I want to activate or deactivate a radio. And when I got hold of Joey $2-an-hour, he said he couldn’t deactivate radios. “Then why is that an option on your automated attendant!?”, I ask, clearly losing my patience. “Yes sir, we know, and we’re working to change it.” And he gave me another number to call.
I call the other number and get hold of someone from a foreign country. I’m really NOT a xenophobe. I’m trying to learn two different foreign languages because I think it’s a mortal sin to visit another country without being able to speak the language, and I’m trying my damnedest to minimize my accent. And I don’t care if you want to hire little green men from Neptune to staff your phone center, but hear this: If I’m calling customer support, there’s a good chance that I’m already pissed off, and I NEED TO BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND THE PERSON ON THE OTHER END OF THE PHONE WITHOUT ASKING HER TO REPEAT EVERYTHING SHE SAYS.
After I explained that we were canceling the radio because we sold the car, and I turned down her offer to purchase a replacement radio (because I have a feeling that’s why they refused to cancel my service last month), she went through an entire script about how wonderful XM is, and do you know that you can hear sports, commercial-free music, and local traffic and weather reports? Yes, I do. Because if you were paying attention, you’ll notice that I’ve had the service for 18 months, and I’m keeping two other radios.

She did do one small thing that redeemed XM radio in my eyes. She offered to credit me for a month’s service since the last lady obviously didn’t cancel the radio. So to recap:

Give me what I ask for the first time. To do otherwise is called stealing. (That comment is aimed more at Vonage than XM, since XM did correct their error.)
Either let me handle it myself online, or give me to someone who is qualified and willing to give me what I ask for.
Have a human answer your e-mails.
Screw it: have a human answer your phone.
If you have to make me talk to a machine, let me use the keypad to navigate.
If you change your options, MAKE SURE YOU UPDATE THE ATTENDANT.
If your caller calls the wrong number, you better be able to transfer them. Especially if you don't publicize the number he was supposed to call.
If you must ask your call center to read marketing scripts to customers, make sure the scripts are appropriate. Your employee wasted a whole lot of breath telling me something I already knew.

Final summary: they did finally fix it, but I had to go through A LOT of trouble to make it happen. But if that radio still shows up on my account, you’ll hear about it here.

*Yeah, this is a nasty way to deal with it, but after six months of trying to be nice and continuing to be charged, they honestly left us with no choice.

One of Marcus's legacies

2006-02-02T13:56:00.000-05:00

...is that he and Andrew turned me on to hot tea last summer while they were visiting. I've found it's a good way to kill my appetite for afternoon munchies with virtually no calories. And the latest offering from Bigelow is really, really good: They've also got Vanilla Hazelnut, Vanilla Chai, and Vanilla Almond. Ooh, it's good. :o)

Progress, finally

2006-02-02T08:44:00.000-05:00

I work just off of Georgia Route 316 just NE of Atlanta. It’s the primary highway that runs from Atlanta to Athens – a serious college party town – about 38 miles one way. Remember the B-52s heading down the Atlanta Highway, looking for a love get-away? GA-316. (And the love get-away was an old bar called The Cove, but that’s another story.) This road was woefully inadequate when it was completed 15 years ago, and it’s just been getting worse. Four lanes might handle the traffic that travels this road every day, but the stoplights every 3-5 miles only serve to bunch the cars together, which means you’ll never get a chance to pass anyone. And westbound, as you approach I-85, both lanes are funneled into a single lane, which then merges with I-85 from the left. Into the fast lanes. Yeah, Sparky. Great plan there.

I know some parts of this highway date back to the 1960s, but that I-85 merge debaucle was all 1990s action.

Well, GAyDOT has finally decided to do something about it, and they’re starting with the I-85 mess. 40 miles of new lanes in that interchange alone, plus a buttload of new bridges. And it’s only going to take a mere 40 months to complete. (If they were gonna play football on it, they would have already finished it.) But they started clearing trees this week to make way for the construction. At least they’re moving in the right direction this time.

Marcus

2006-02-01T16:34:00.000-05:00

I haven’t posted lately because I’ve been busy at work, and because I figured there wasn’t much news and I wouldn’t bore you with trivia. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the kind of news I was waiting for. This is an amalgamation of a couple of e-mails that I just sent to my friends and my boss.

I just got a call from my English friend, Andrew. Marcus, his partner of 15 years, was killed earlier today in a workplace accident. He was trying to repair a piece of machinery that was malfunctioning in the factory where he worked, and something dropped across his neck and suffocated him. It happened at the beginning of a tea break (about 2:30 England time; 9:30am here), so no one found him for about 10 minutes. He died at the hospital. The police came to tell Andrew at work.

There’s not much that I can do at this time other than talk to him on the phone (which I’ve already done). If we lived in the same area, I would take time off to attend the funeral, but it’s really not feasible to fly to England. I met Andrew in high school, when my French teacher suggested that I put my name in a pen-pal database to meet students from foreign countries. We’ve had an odd relationship in that we’ve written and called each other for more than 20 years, but we’ve only been together for three extended visits: in 1991 when Andrew visited here alone (just after he met Marcus), in 1993 when we visited them in England, and last summer when they were both here. Last year’s trip was a gift from Andrew to Marcus for his 40th birthday: a visit to Vegas and Atlanta. While they were in Vegas, Marcus surprised Andrew with an engagement ring. They were planning to be married this year in England.

Andrew’s at home now, alone at the moment. His sister & brother-in-law came to get him from work and take him home. She then took her husband home and is headed back to spend the night with Andrew. Marcus’s parents are on the way into town tomorrow. I don’t think there are really any other details yet.

Andrew is numb. He’s able to laugh, mainly I think to keep himself from crying. He’s also still talking about Marcus in the present tense, so I don’t think it’s hit him yet. He says he’s at home, waiting for Rosemary to come back, and he’s calling everyone he can think of. Me, I’m at my desk, getting ready to go home for the day, and I can’t really do anything to help him. I don’t know whether to send flowers or what. If I were there, I’d be with him at home. If he were here, I’d hurry home to put a casserole in the oven. (I don’t know if the rest of you Americans do that, but southerners sure do.) I’m sure my boss would understand if I wanted to leave work early... but for what? So I can sit alone at home until my partner gets there?

Anyway, I feel really, really helpless, and I don’t know what to do.

So there. There’s some news for you. If you know Andrew and want to write him, let me know and I’ll get you his address.

River Blindness

2006-01-31T10:19:00.000-05:00

My good friend Jon has taken an interest in my vision. So much so that he sent me the following test to see if my color-blindness has cleared up at all. Sadly, the answer is no. I (and Evan) are both just as color-blind as ever.

By the way, if you’re color-blind, and you’re at work, you might not want to leave this up on your screen while you try to figure out what it says. Chances are your boss can read it.

Progress and a cool website

2006-01-30T14:42:00.000-05:00

I haven't been here much lately because I've been pretty busy at work for the past few days, but I stumbled a very cool site a few minutes ago. Joan Salge Blake has lots of cool stuff on her website, but the coolest by far is her Virtual Pizza Parlor, which lets you design your own pizza and see how many calories you're racking up. (I've been taxing my knowledge of geometry trying to decypher how many points are in a standard pizza.) Lose Weight in 52 Small Steps is another useful read for us fat boys. I've spent beaucoup time over there today. Check it out when you get a chance.

Oh, by the way, Saturday morning my home scale registered me at 199 lbs -- below 200 for the first time since the early 1990s. Now, I tend to be about 6.5 lbs heavier fully dressed at Weight Watchers, but still. That was a nice landmark to reach.

I can't be reading this right

2006-01-26T12:07:00.000-05:00

I like Neal Boortz, a lot. I really like his view of employer/employee relations, especially now that hubby is self-employed and providing jobs for 6 or 7 other people. I like the FairTax. And as far as talk show hosts go, he's one of the few who's willing to call out his own side when they do something stupid. Most of the time. Having gotten all that out of the way...

You heard about the wreck in Florida yesterday that killed 7 kids. 15-year-old driving, six siblings in the car, stopped behind a school bus. A tractor trailer rear-ended them without touching his brakes. The car was pushed into the school bus, and all seven kids were killed.

Did Boortz really say that if the 15-year-old were not driving these seven children may well be alive today?? (Third item down). What, because someone else might have been there? Or maybe the truck would've hit the bus directly. I can't believe I'm reading that right, and I've triple-checked myself. That's a direct copy-and-paste from his website. To be fair, he also said:

...it is true that the driver of the car ... the 15-year-old driver of the car ... did not cause the accident. The blame for the accident goes to the dump truck driver who smashed into the car while the car was stopped behind a school bus. No skid marks. The dump truck never hit the brakes.

Come on, Boortz. Even your insensitivity isn't that advanced.

Update: I screwed up the "future" link yesterday. It's here now.

On tolerance

2006-01-24T13:38:00.000-05:00

I haven’t posted for a couple of days now, not since Scott Slade brought me biscuits on Friday, and you all gave me hell about it. (BTW, the photo is supposed to be here, eventually. But it ain’t yet.) I’m having an attitude again, so maybe it’s time to drain the poison again. At least, it’s sorta feeling like poison again.

Nasty weather aside, we had a great time in Pigeon Forge this weekend. We got into town late on Friday, so we didn’t see any of our group that night. Saturday morning after breakfast, we loaded up a couple of cars and headed down the strip to race go-karts¹. Saturday afternoon, hubby and I hit the outlet malls where I bought my first pair of size 34 pants in over a decade. Then we drove through Gatlinburg and back to the hotel in time for dinner with our crew. And because Sevier County is mostly dry, Saturday night we picked up beer at a local convenience store and drank in our room while we watched Craig Jackson sell a 50-year-old bus for $4.1 million. Sunday morning, back in the Disco, across the mountain, through Cherokee, stopping at the Dillard House for lunch, and heading back to the house by mid-afternoon.

That’s the secular version of events. The sacred version is somewhat different.

I knew full-well going into this that Atlanta is a beacon of blue in a very red land². I also knew full-well that Pigeon Forge is a very conservative place, I knew the folks there take their religion very seriously, and that there was at least one religious conference going on this weekend³. And I knew that I was only a visitor there. If they like viewing the world through stained-glass glasses, then who am I to argue?

I should have known that all these facts add up to a town full of people whose smiles drip with the most venomous fluid imaginable, such that when you pass one and she says “Good morning,” you’re fully aware that she considers you not only fuel for the hell-fire but also a very real threat to the spiritual welfare of her brood. But because she's a good southerner, she's in danger of suffering the same fate as your own wicked self if she doesn't acknowledge your presence.

Example: Saturday morning, I’m standing in the lobby waiting for hubby to come down, when I overhear the desk clerk giving directions to four young bible-carrying adults. (It caught my ear, because we got the same directions at check-in the night before, and it took us forever to find the elevator.) So they did the same thing we did: walk back through lobby, out the front door, and look around like lost puppies. And then they came back in and stood in front of the door, letting the cold air in. And then they proceeded to discuss whether they had the right directions. So assuming they were looking for the elevator, I did what all good southerners do: I offered to help.

“Excuse me, what are y’all looking for?”
The fat chick⁴ visibly recoiled, visibly sneered, said, “a finance class,” and turned back to her friends.

Maybe that set the tone for the rest of the weekend, but my tolerance level for religious freaks⁴ just dropped when that happened.

Over the course of the weekend, I saw more “Christian”-themed businesses and wayward scripture verses than I’ve encountered since bible school. I saw two different bible outlets and three other “Christian” bookstores – in a town of just over 5000 people. I watched some man block a friend of his from getting on an elevator because "This elevator is for Christians only!"⁵ And without trying to eavesdrop⁶ I heard – in separate conversations – I heard comments like “well, but he has lust in his heart,” and references to “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego”.⁷ And one lady, in describing her rapture at whatever seminar she’d just sat through:

Wasn’t that just wonderful? You know, Jerry’s hard of hearing, but I just prayed, “Lord, let⁸ his ears be opened so that he can hear this.” I just thought it was wonderful. I’ve never read much in The Song of Solomon⁹, but I can see I’m going to have to change that.

Actually, when I heard her, I thought, “Wow. Knowing how much gays hate evangelicals and evangelicals hate gays, I wonder how much good karma I could build up if I refrain from making fun of her behind her back?”¹⁰

So Sunday we stopped at The Dillard House for lunch, just in time to dine with all the church folks. And yesterday, I came back to the office hoping to leave all that behind for a little while. And I sat at my desk and listened to an allegedly private phone conversation¹¹ in which a co-worker extolled the virtues of whoever leads her bible study and how much he speaks Greek, so obviously he’s an expert.

At any rate, I tried to just let all of this go, hoping the poison would just sorta drain on its own. And a few minutes ago, when my lunch total came to $6.66 -- and I was actually surprised that the cashier didn’t comment on this obvious sign of the apocalypse – I realized I probably needed to lance the boil. So here it is. Try not to step in the puddle.

1Witness the beginning of my mid-life crisis, all ye who enter here.
2While the political implications of these colors certainly hold true here, I’m using them to describe the religious landscape.
3There were actually several, but I only knew of one of them ahead of time.
4Yeah, well, I was nice once.
5.It's humor! Get it?
6. Really, because I didn’t want to hear any more of it.
7.For the record, lest you think I don’t know what I’m talking about since I’ve obviously never had the opportunity to feel the grace of Our Lord Jesus ChristTM, I double-checked the spelling of these names. Looks like I spent enough time in churches that I remembered how to spell them.
8.Notice the way this is phrased like a command. Lady, didn’t your mama teach you to say please?
9.Of course it’s wonderful. Archeologists lost the first couple of verses that said, "Dear Penthouse, you'll never believe this, but..."
10.Obviously we’ll never know.
11.I didn't set out to set a new world's record for footnotes, but sometimes ya just gotta. I say "alleged private" because throughout the entire conversation, she talked at her normal speaking volume. Except once. When describing a certain restaurant's burritos, she dropped her voice to a stage whisper to say they gave her diarrhea.

The Can Monster

2006-01-20T09:45:00.000-05:00

There's an annual competition called Canstruction which invites entrants to create sculptures entirely out of canned food. The seashell you see here won the 2005 award for structural integrity. I'm still trying to figure out how they did it.

After the judging, all of the component cans are donated to local food banks. So if you never quite escaped the third-grade, you can now play with your food, donate to a charity, and maybe be recognized for your efforts in the process. Check out their website for photos of other winners.

Brokeback Vatican

2006-01-20T07:57:00.000-05:00

Andrew Sullivan thinks Benni Sue might just be the Gayest. Pope. Ever.

You knew this was only a matter of time

2006-01-19T08:31:00.000-05:00

Now you too can show your support for Ray Nagin and his confectionary vision for New Orleans. Shirts are available from... you got it! www.imnotchocolate.com

Better hurry if you want them in time for Mardi Gras, though. The overwhelming demand for these shirts means there's a 7 to 10 day backlog.

Red State Retreat

2006-01-18T10:27:00.000-05:00

On Friday, we’re headed up to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, to spend a weekend with one of our car clubs: a group of Corvair enthusiasts called “Nader’s Raiders.” There’s no car show planned, just a weekend in the mountains. Dolly won’t be open this weekend, dammit, but if I see her, I’ll tell her you said hello.

Hubby’s parents (also Corvair owners) are going too. So on Monday, he tells me to decide whether we’re staying at the host hotel (a $68/night Holiday Inn) or in the hotel with his parents (who are saving a whopping $12/night at the independent Willow Brook Lodge across the street).

Folks, I might be a little slow sometimes, but even I know this is a no-win scenario.

So I check out their websites. Both look to be nice, spacious, clean, cheap for what you’re getting. Then I see it. There, on the banner for the Willow Brook Lodge, is a bible verse. 1 John 2:25. And this is the promise that he promosed us, even eternal life. Complete with misspelling and everything.

Now, I really try hard not to be a word snob, and this blog is riddled with misspellings. But they’re not in the banner for a business that I’m advertising. Besides, it’s not the misspelling that concerns me. It’s the bible verse that doesn’t really even offer any wisdom. I mean, if you have to put a bible verse on your site, try to pick one that says something more than, “Jesus is gonna kiss it and make it all better.”*

By the way, I also checked the Pigeon Forge chamber of commerce site to see what there is to do there. The big industry seems to be outlet shopping (good for boys who can’t fit into their fat clothes anymore), but there’s also another event taking place this weekend. Toby Dix and Be Real Ministries are gonna be having a "meltdown" at the Smoky Mountain Convention Center.

Hoo boy.

*Incidentally, when confronted with this information, Hubby picked the Holiday Inn.

De-ranged

2006-01-16T15:36:00.000-05:00

For the former first lady: Strong Bad takes on Death Metal.

A new pogo stick

2006-01-16T09:44:00.000-05:00

So if you checked out Jon’s blog this morning, you’ve already heard the news: I think we found a vehicle over the weekend. A 2003 Land Rover Discovery II. Yeah, we actually drove several smaller, more efficient cars on Saturday... and I was falling asleep by the time we got to lunch. This one I actually like.

I loved my 1994 Jeep Cherokee, so we looked at the Jeep Liberty Friday night. Smaller, cute... and pretty much the same gas mileage as the Disco. Why bother?
Out of curiosity, we drove a Hyundai Sonata (3.3-liter V6). Really not bad, especially for the price. They need a little more help with trim items. A little chrome would help. (I’m a gay man. What do you expect?)
At hubby’s suggestion*, we actually drove a couple of VWs: a 1.9-liter TDI turbo diesel and a 2.0-liter GLI turbo 4-cylinder. The TDI was a little slower than I like but not bad**. And the GLI was pretty hot. But we had two complaints: the side bolsters on the seats were pretty tight, and the power steering was too power. There was too much disconnect. But we both actually liked the car. Yes, even hubby.
We stopped by the Honda lot and found a 2001(?) Mercedes C-class Kompressor. Nice car. Good price. Long story behind why we didn’t buy it, but it had something to do with the dealer being sleezy. But if the Lexus sells, hubby may be in the market for one of these.

So we ended up back at the Land Rover dealer. I know these don’t have the best reputation for reliability, but it’s a certified pre-owned model with a 75,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty, and it looks to be in good shape. The dealer is making a couple of small repairs, and we’ve got to sign the paperwork. Hopefully we’ll pick it up by Wednesday or so.

*Really. Yeah, I nearly dropped when that happened.
**Until the salesman pointed out that the fuel mileage was 36 city/41 highway. Then it was just lovely.

How I'm gonna die

2006-01-16T09:03:00.000-05:00

"While drunk with friends, you fall down a flight of stairs and break your neck. Thinking you've simply passed out, your friends ignore your lifeless body for hours."

So sayeth the oracle over at The Death Psychic. Like that's never happened to me before.

Untitled

2006-01-13T09:25:00.000-05:00

So... my car is gone. Or I guess it’s not my car anymore. Phil’s meeting the new owner today to drop off the car and pick up the check, so I guess I’ve seen the last of it. I’m trying to cancel the XM radio subscription for it, but our internet connection is down at work. And I tried calling 1-800-XM-RADIO, but they’ve got one of those stupid automated attendants that requires you to announce everything you want to do... but my office is silent right now, and I don’t feel like doing that. I’ll try later.

Anyway, I went out to the car this morning to get the XM serial number so I could cancel the service. Phil asked if I was going out to say goodbye. And I wasn’t, really. I mean, I loved the car (did love? Still love?), but it never excited me so much that it took on a persona of its own. Even with a voice like Nancy, the teutonic hausfrau who kept insisting that I needed to make a u-turn. It was a great car. The Bluetooth worked great, the XM worked great (so much that I never listened to CDs anymore), the memory seats were flawless. It didn’t feel so much like a car as a bionic extension of my personality, and I’m sure I’m going to miss that. But it didn’t feel like an old friend.

I’ve only ever really had trouble saying goodbye to one car: my first. A 1971 VW squareback in Twinkie Yellow. I felt odd parting with the 91 Jetta and the 94 Cherokee (totaled in a wreck), but I didn’t feel the need to say goodbye. And I didn’t really say goodbye to my 530 either, mainly because I imagined it all-grown-up into the 740. Maybe that was a defense mechanism. Maybe I’ll miss the 740 in a week or two, when I keep looking out the window expecting to see it in the driveway.

I’m sure I’ll miss my Triumph whenever it goes. That car took on a name (“Trevor”) that just fit perfectly, and it assumed the personality to boot. He’s a lot of fun. That one’s gonna be tough.

So yeah. I’m OK (at least for now), and I don’t know what the new car is going to be. Maybe just an automotive appliance. Stay tuned to see what happens next.

Um. Yeah. That's it.

2006-01-12T08:30:00.000-05:00

Andrew Sullivan linked to a very cool time-waster today. When you get a chance, stroll over to myheritage.com and try the beta version of their face-recognition software. The site lets you upload a photo of yourself and search their database to see who you allegedly look like.

So because I can't pass a button without pressing it, I uploaded that photo of The Old Man and The Sea from my profile. And guess who I'm supposed to look like?

James Donovan (63% match)
Diego Maradona (57%)
Mick Jagger (56%)
Arthur Ashe (56%)
Bruce Willis (55%)
Tom Hanks (55%)
Oliver Kahn (52%)
Tom Selleck (52%)
Leonard Nimoy (52%)
George W. Bush (51%)

Yun-huh. Then I tried another photo, from last summer in Berlin. That one's even funnier. And more insulting:

Roman Abramovich (62%)

Italo Calvino (58%)
Luis Figo (51%)
Theo van Gogh (49%)
Gerry Adams (45%)
Gordon Cooper (45%)
Buzz Aldrin (45%)
Billy Bob Thornton (45%)
L. Ron Hubbard (44%)
Burt Lancaster (43%)

Theo van Gogh? Buzz Aldrin? Leonard Nimoy??? OK, that's enough of that.

Can somebody tell me how this constitutes On Schedule?

2006-01-11T10:52:00.000-05:00

I'm all out of hope

2006-01-11T09:52:00.000-05:00

So I finally got around to seeing that Billy Idol flick last night. Oh, sidebar in case you're not following...

Les Yeux Sans Visage means "Eyes Without a Face." And if you listen to the background chick in the song, she's singing "les yeux sans visage" during the chorus. Oh, another sidebar for a funny story...

Back in 1991, in a little bar on 6th street in Austin, I heard this song performed by a cover band that was actually surprisingly good. My only nitpick with their entire performance is that the back-up singer for this band (the drummer, I think) made his best stab at the lyrics... and got them wrong. He sang, "pleasure's always ours." Which, as you can see, isn't correct.

So now, we return you to your regularly scheduled sidebar.

So, the lyrics don't have much to do with the movie, except for lines like Don't call me on the phone to tell me you're alone. Or I'm all out of hope. Or Got no human grace. You're eyes without a face.

On second thought, maybe they do. Anyway, we return you to your regularly scheduled post.

So, at Molly's suggestion, I saw the movie last night. What a freak-ass flick. The blurbage inside the Criterion edition of the DVD says:

There is a moment in Eyes Without a Face -- you'll know it when you see it -- when, according to L'Express, "the spectators dropped like flies." At the Edinburgh Film Festival, seven viewers actually fainted...

"Really honestly fainted? Hmph. I wonder if I'll know it when I see it?"

Oh yeah. I did.

1959 black-and-white French horror flick. It's just as creepy as the name implies, and quite graphic for its time. Funky sort of dysfunctional-haunted-carnival music by Maurice Jarre (father of Jean Michel). Costumes by Givenchy... at least Christiane's gowns were. Re-dubbed in English and released as The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus.

Considering that it had nothing at all to do with Faust, I can't imagine that was a good idea.

And this is the second French flick I've seen in a row that prominantly featured a Citroen. Except this one featured two: a 2CV and a SM. Or DS. Or S&M. Or whichever model they made that looked like a squatting catfish. Apparently the Genassiers were a Citroen kinda family.

Anyway... WOW. Just wow. I'm gonna have to have a movie night for you local folks and see what you think.

Dang

2006-01-11T08:47:00.000-05:00

OK, it took a moment for this one to sink in. But when it does, you'll realize it's a very, very cool pic.

A Real Adjustment

2006-01-10T12:38:00.000-05:00

Well, the automotive total at my house has dropped now from 1,957 to 1,217. And I just put gas in it, too.

Only a mother could love

2006-01-10T12:24:00.000-05:00

Hubby was online this weekend looking for a used car. The conversation went something like this.

Hey, what color is Alpaca?
Sort of a dirty off-white, I guess. Why?
Oh, this car has an Alpaca interior with dark piping.
Ah. Haven't you ever seen an Alpaca?
Don't think so.

So I sent him a picture.

Now he wants to known why Alpacas in the wild don't come with piping.

My two cents worth

2006-01-10T12:05:00.000-05:00

There's a restaurant near my house that has a wall-hanging* displaying a sheet of postage stamps that were released for the 1996 Olympics** in Atlanta. 10 years ago, a first-class stamp was 32 cents. In ten years, that cost has gone up nearly 22 percent.

I've got a letter in my car that needs to be mailed. It's a bill, actually, for my DirecTV service. I put a 37-cent*** stamp on it and didn't get it in the mail by Sunday, so now I have to acquire one of those elusive 2-cent stamps.

Monday morning, I stop by the post office on my way to work. The "postal store" is closed. The automated stamp dispenser is sold out of 2-cent stamps. The over-engineered postal meter machine computer thing won't deal with postage below $1.00. Can't be bothered. Yes, I'm serious.

Today at lunch I try again, at a USPS distribution facility near my office. Their automat doesn't even have 2-cent stamps. And their "postal store" is backed up with a dozen disgruntled customers watching dead lice drop off of the "postal consultants."

When are those people finally gonna go out of business?

*Well, you can't really call it art.
**Yes, I said it... the "O" word. Sue me too.
***And where exactly did the cent symbol get to on modern computer keyboards? Was this some government plot to force us into accepting inflation or something?

The tightest ship in the shipping business

2006-01-10T11:53:00.000-05:00

See that screen cap? That's alleged proof-positive that I can drop off a Fedex package at 1140 Hammond Drive as late as 8:30 pm. So after driving 12 miles over there from Hubby's shop last night, and searching for the drop box in the dark, and getting there at 8:25, I see the sign on the front of the dropbox. The latest pickup at this box is at 7:00 pm. It has occurred.

I drive 12 miles back to the Fedex distribution center near my house. Their latest pickup is at 6:00 pm. Which makes perfect sense, because we wouldn't want to make them drive all the way out to the corner of their own building to collect these packages.

I stop by my local Kinko's, which has now been assimilated by Fedex. Their latest pickup is 8:00, which doesn't surprise me. But I want to know if they can point me toward a late-late-night drop box. It's by the airport.

I drive another 30 miles to the address they give me, and I can't find it anywhere. I find a huge freakin' Fedex distribution facility. I ask for directions from several people in the area, to no avail. I find a lot of hotels. I share the highway with jumbo jets. I make a wrong turn and end up at the north terminal passenger pickup for Hartsfield International*. I give up and go home. I guess I was mistaken when I thought it absolutely positively had to be there overnight.

*I don't care what Jabba did or did not do for the airport. It was every bit negated when his family chose to take a building that was named after another Atlantan and add his name to it. And I refuse to recognize their intrusion on its name.

Exciting news from the frozen north

2006-01-09T15:21:00.000-05:00

XM radio recently started broadcasting through Canada, in addition to the lower 48 states. Normally this wouldn’t mean much to me, because I don’t often find myself with an excuse to drive my car into Canada. However, in an effort to tailor their programs for their subscribers (what a concept), XM has made some changes to their channel lineup. First of all, they added a hockey channel (well, duh) and a channel for unsigned Canadian bands. That’s in addition to their channel for unsigned bands in the US.

But they’ve also dropped two world channels in favor of a couple of music channels broadcast in French. (Don't worry. You can still get the pot channel.) And they’ve added some new talk channels as well, also broadcast in French. Maybe I’ll find sports less boring if I can’t understand what they’re saying.

Nah, I doubt it.

Thinning the herd

2006-01-09T09:09:00.000-05:00

So a few weeks ago we realized that we’ve got, like, a billion cars in the stable, even though our household only contains four critters – and two of those don’t drive real well. That’s because while we’ve mastered the skill of acquiring cars for the collection, we haven’t yet learned how to let go. So we decided to sell a car or two in an effort to free up some space and also some cash flow. Maybe we’ll retire some debt. Maybe we’ll start working toward building the bigass garage that we want.

Our goal for the new year was to put three cars up for sale and see which one goes first:

My daily driver (2000 BMW 740i sport). Because I can drive a much cheaper car to work every day.

Hubby’s daily driver (2006 Lexus GS300, aka Charlie McGee). Because he’s been hanging around Chris too long, and this is to be expected, I guess. Oh, and because he can drive a much cheaper car to work every day, too.

Fiver (a 1998 BMW 535i). Because I don’t know why. I mean, it’s a cool car.

So that was the plan, except that Hubby’s still painting Fiver. (I think this is a fully conscious attempt to keep from selling that car.)

So last Wednesday, we listed the two newer cars on Autotrader. And guess who got a nibble.

Yup. Some guy looked at my car on Saturday, and he seems to be very interested. I’m taking the car to his mechanic today for the full exam.

So what do we do now that the sale of my car seem imminent? Drive the older BMW? Drive the Triumph? Drive Hubby’s truck?

Nope. Go car shopping, of course.

So we trooped through several used car lots in the area to find a less expensive replacement. And of all the places we stopped, exactly one car really, truly appealed to my redneck heritage. And I think it surprised Hubby.

Available in two colors: Top Banana (shown) or the cleverly named Go ManGo!.

An educational opportunity

2006-01-06T14:20:00.000-05:00

When I moved to Atlanta lo these many years ago, Fernbank was a small brick science center on the edge of Decatur that offered presumably boring educational experiences to grade-school kids. And thus it remained for quite some time, an extension of your 7th-grade science class.

Nearly four years later, the foundation behind Fernbank opened Fernbank Museum of Natural History, which was considerably cooler than Fernbank Science Center... mainly because it had dinosaurs. A few years later came the first IMAX theatre in the area. In a stroke of marketing genius, that was followed by Martinis and IMAX^(R), a hip place for young adults to spend Friday evenings sipping $10 martinis, making a meal of appetizers, listening to live music, and visiting all sorts of exotic places against a soundtrack by Sting or The Moody Blues.¹

Well, I've just seen an ad for their upcoming exhibit on chocolate, arriving on 2/11 and sticking around 'til August. If my weight is up this week², I'm blaming it on the billboard I just passed.

No word if they'll hand out free Hershey bars at the end of the tour.

¹One would think the camera movements would induce copious amounts of audience members to lose possession of the martinis they've already consumed, but I can tell you that it hasn't happened while I'm there. Then again, I tend towards the early shows when I go
²It was down again last week. Yay, me!

Fallen comrades

2006-01-06T09:43:00.000-05:00

Dang! Must be something in the water this morning. In my department of 13 people, 6 are out sick today. My manager fell during Christmas; she broke one ankle and sprained the other one. Actually, she tripped over her flip-flops. It's OK. She's laughing about it too.

Four other co-workers are out with something nasty... and we all happened to be here discussing it when the fifth one showed up sniffling. We sent her home before she ever got her door unlocked.

Poor Karen. She looked so shell-shocked.

The world's tiniest violin

2006-01-05T10:34:00.000-05:00

...or, "Why it would be a good idea if we all woke up one morning and discovered that all the gay people in the world had inexplicably turned purple overnight."

Professional courtesy

2006-01-05T08:21:00.000-05:00

I'm interrupting my regularly scheduled perusal of comics and columns to bring you this tidbit, so you know it caught my attention in a big way. Hat tip, Andrew Sullivan.

Marion Barry, D.C. councilman and former mayor, was robbed at gunpoint last night. Apparently the robbers helped him carry his groceris from his car up to his apartment, then pointed a gun in his face and stole his wallet. But the real news here is this quote:

"There is a sort of an unwritten code in Washington, among the underworld and the hustlers and these other guys, that I am their friend," Barry said at an afternoon news conference in which he described the robbery in detail. "I don't advocate what they do. I advocate conditions to change what they do. I was a little hurt that this betrayal did happen."

Apparently this man really is sleazier than Bill Campbell. I didn't think that was possible.

Best mugshot ever

2006-01-04T16:12:00.000-05:00

Props to thesmokinggun.com

Lost in translation

2006-01-04T15:03:00.000-05:00

This is incredibly cool, if you happen to be one of other six linguistic dorks in the world. Apparently some say pop, some say soda, and some say coke.

Confessions of a Trailerboy

2006-01-04T14:52:00.000-05:00

So it appears that when I follow Jon over the cliff, Chris will be just a few steps behind us. Ladies and gentlemen, the friend-formerly-known-as-MDHL has started a blog*. All hail the automotive terror that is Trailerboy.

For real, if he follows through on his threat to chronicle all of his cars, there won't be enough bits left on the intarweb to feed the rest of our blogs.

*Which raises a question. With all this peer pressure, can the new MDHL be far behind?