...a certain shade of [green] what are _you_ waiting for?
29.7.02
ahh, back in cville. well, stanardsville to be exact. had a great visit with dad. back to work tomorrow. yippee, the daily grind. at least this week we start training meetings, and you know what that means: [1] extra hours and [2] hell gradually ensuing. don't know whether to be happy about the padding in my wallet or sad about the rapid deterioration of my sanity to follow.
oh, by the way - i'm moving my blog permanently [for the next year, that is] to www.people.virginia.edu/~kje9a. just to let you all know... i mean, it's not really a pain to update blogspot as well as virginia.edu, but it's so much nicer to have a one-step process. yau.
alright, i'm a slack-ass. i've been down here in alabama visiting my father [and playing with my nifty new notebook] and i've neglected to use my plethora of free time updating this thing. well, for the 4 people who i know actually read this on occasion, apologies all around. anyway...
so life is pretty good. well, relatively speaking - but i don't have any major complaints. i'm leaving the country soon, i've got a new target of my affection [always unrequited, alas], and i feel like i've finally found a group of people i'd like to stay in touch with long-term. now, if only i could "secure a career" [thanks, alice].
for those of you [out of the previous 4] who follow my links, here's a great op-ed article by michael kelly. i love bitter people.
and one final thing. my new favorite windows xp tool [b/c the rest of the tools are giving me a resounding headache]: album art on folder thumbnails. fucking kick-ass.
so it's been 5 days since i've posted. lagging behind, i know, but i've been doing more important things [like drinking]. let's see, what's been going on... well, i suppose i've finally come to grips with the fact that i am a member of the erc "posse". according to nick i'm a little slow on the uptake for this one, but i felt the awesome power that is the erc posse for the first time only this weekend. and it's not like i'm a bonafide social magnet - i just know waaaay too many people that frequent the shop. and those people i know also know each other. it's like six degrees of kevin bacon or some shit.
what else, what else... for those of you playing at home, i can say with a fair amount of certainty that the Big Mistake/Serious Error in Judgment [or Ordeal, as i've recently learned it has also been coined] is coming to an end. this is due to the presence of new and exciting attention-grabber. not a replacement, of course, as that would be mean, but as katie says, it takes a new one to erase the old one.
and that's pretty much it as far as weekend updates are concerned. the next big ticket item - my trip to alabama to see dad, which will probably be the last time i see him for at least the next year. should be a nice few days down there - even though he lives next door to the "alabama home for the retarded".
by the way, if you need some intellectual stimulation, read this. i vehemently disagree. if you want to know why, email me.
yyyeeeeesssssss no more tuesday block 4! not so much a bother on mondays, when mark is on duty, but two block 4's is quite enough for me. thanks, nick!
tomorrow: work from 1050-1354 [i believe]. then probably tv and/or movies. and most likely at the coffee shop as well. you know, it's about time jacob started paying me for coming there. by the way - i've recently discovered the unbelievable sexy nature of the intro rhythm to michael jackson's "billie jean". and now, fuck me, it's stuck in my head. i don't know whether to say word or [puke].
yippee! post author and email finally work! it's nice when things go smoothly.
so, i think gorski has made it his personal mission to relieve me of my fear of fire. it took 15 minutes of holding my hand onto a lighter to get me to the point where i can light his cigarette. apparently, during my eb tomorrow i am supposed to be reacquainted with the lighter...which i think means moving past the point of lighting other people's cigarettes. i am not sure how much further i can go, but if it means sticking a flame in my face, i'm running.
in other news today: it seems as though cavalier computers forgot to ship my laptop down to alabama, and instead is waiting for me to go pick it up at the bookstore. you know, i wonder if anyone ever gets shipping correctly 100% of the time. i mean, a few slip-ups are fine, but it seems like uva [and thus cav comps] has the worst time with fedex or ups. part of tomorrow's missions shall include a visit to the bookstore.
band of the week - flogging molly. can't get enough of celtic punk. they are playing at the warped tour [along with nofx!] but i'd rather see something smaller. also, if you get a chance, watch hbo's rerun of robin williams' live on broadway show. so un-pc. yeah!
ok. i wrote a great post about my stupid keyboard [the fact that i keep spilling my drinks into it], as well as the viewpoint on the pledge of allegiance deal. and then my "6" key went crazy and got itself stuck. and all of my hard work is lost. goddamnit!
my new favorite brain candy - Harper's Magazine's online Weekly Review. i don't think it's meant to be particularly funny, though of course i find its arrangement quite amusing. not to mention easy to absorb. anyway, check it out.
also, should you get a chance to acquire the printed version of Harper's, be sure to read the essay by stanley fish, one of the preeminent american postmodernist scholars. the basic thesis/gist: yay pomo, boo post-9/11 american conservative cultural tendencies. i can't write a more detailed synopsis without rewriting the entire essay, so you might as well just get the damn print edition. and to prove that i'm a truly unbiased, nonpartisan source of information, check out peter berkowitz's critique.
before i forget: it seems that kat has done my grunt-work for me. check out her rant on american neopatriotism. and if that doesn't work, just frickin go to the scratchin' post and find the damn thing [it's on the links list]. i, for the most part, agree, and couldn't have said it more succinctly. as for my own thoughts on the pledge stink, i should get to them tomorrow [later today?] as i would like to think them over a bit.
here's something interesting that happened to me on the way home tonite: so i was at the red light at the intersection of US33 and US29, waiting to make the left from 29N onto 33W [brief aside - i thought all odd-numbered highways went north-south...is that just interstates? this has puzzled me as of late...]. sitting at the light along with me, though waiting to go straight 33E, was a sheriff of some sort - i'm thinking greene county, since that's where i was. now, i'm listening to puya [if you don't know puya, you should - puerto-rican hard rock and salsa rolled into one, and an amazing live performance to show it off] so of course i'm wiggling and dancing and singing etc. i can imagine how one might take my behavior to be indicative of some sort of chemical interference given the right predisposition - and the thought briefly crossed my mind as i sat at the light - but i didn't think much of it until i watched the sheriff cross the intersection and immediately u-turn around the median on the other side in order to make a right on 29N. strange action, yes, but i still didn't think it really had anything to do with me. so i make my left onto 33W and start the last 4 miles of my trip. i get into about mile 2 or so and i see headlights quite rapidly approaching my car - so rapid that, by the time i figured out that a car was coming up behind me, it had already passed me and was pretty much gone. it's not hard to discern that this car was indeed the sheriff that i saw earlier. he didn't have his flashers or siren on, so i thought he might have been out to take the car for a spin or something, i dunno, something he's not supposed to do during the day or some shit like that. anyway, i continue on my way and then, about a half-mile up the road, i notice that a car is stopped in a median-crossing, completely dark inside and out [no headlights on, etc.] and yet simply sitting in the middle of the crossing. as i passed it, i realized that it was very same sheriff's car that made the u-turn and passed me at well over 80mph. i fully expected it to do yet another strange thing before i made it all the way home, but alas, the rest of my trip was uneventful. kinda threw me for a loop, though.
and while we're on the subject of cops tearing down the road - why is it that, in the 2 months or so i've lived in stanardsville, at least 2 police-chases have made their way down my street such that i am home to witness them? first of all, in neither hampton roads nor charlottesville did i ever actually witness a police-chase. second, in a town as HUMONGOUS as stanardsville, how in the hell can we all manage at least 2 chases in 2 months? fucking hell. it's the only excitement around here. and that's pathetic.
coming soon: a sort of rant-ish deal where i explain why i think this pledge of allegiance thing is so goddamn important. [feel free to chuckle at that pun.] probably tonite...natch, probably tomorrow, seeing as i have tomorrow off and so will most likely be out tonite. so, anyway, be ready for it, b/c it's headed your way in full force.
aside from the excitement that is me ranting endlessly about theoretico-political matters, the only thing i can say is: thanks kat, adam and katie for a great birthday. more on that later, too, as i must quit writing now in order to make it to work on time.
very short post. i am on a come-down from drinking too much yuengling and hungry/thirsty/tired. suffice it to say that [insert grumbling here]. and meredith needs to get laid. kat damnit, where were you at this party? you were fucking needed.
so when i left behind my "posh" little university-subsidized apartment i also left behind a truly glorious T3 connection. that being said, FUCKING DSL ROCKS. good fucking god. no more coffee-and-danish routine waiting for a fucking page full of text to load at 56k. sprint actually did something on time. impressed, no?
here's something that's bothered me as of late: is it not in vogue anymore to teach children that open-mouthed chewing and snorting/sniffling in people's faces are two very disgusting and offensive behaviors? i was driving my gazillionth cfa charter this morning when "snorting man" got on my bus [for the third time!]. he is appropriately named as such because of his horrifying [to me, anyway] habit of sniffling and snorting a god-awful amount of mucus down his throat, all while sitting in the senior driving seat. now, anyone who knows me knows that i am definitely not one for noises like that... but this was just too much, especially given it's occurence in triplicate. i did my best to shudder and make ugly faces into the windshield in the hopes that he would notice and calm his fucking self. but alas, to no avail.
so, hopefully i will have some links up soon. and maybe i'll jazz up the site just a bit. or perhaps not, my recent sleep-log average is 4 hours per night, and staring at a strobing fluorescent screen helps not my ocular anguish.
