BLESSED ARE THE CHEESEMAKERS.
RETIRED BULLETIN ENTRIES
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|  | 15.14: And On a Lighter Note...
NIDA: A friend of mine forwarded this to me this morming. I did NOT write this, I do not know who wrote this (but whoever did is a genius), or where this originated. If the original author somehow happens to be a reader of this blog (wow Dad, I didn't know you had such a wicked sense of irony) with conclusive proof that they are the original author and would rather not have this posted, I will happily take it down. Until then, enjoy.
TO: All Employees
RE: Swearing at work
It has been brought to management's attention that some individuals throughout the company have been using foul language during the course of normal conversation with their co-workers. Due to complaints received from some employees who may be easily offended, this type of language will no longer be tolerated.
We do, however, realize the critical importance of being able to accurately express your feelings when communicating with co-workers.Therefore, a list of 18 New and Innovative "TRY SAYING" phrases have been provided so that proper exchange of ideas and information can continue in an effective manner.
1) TRY SAYING: I think you could use more training.
INSTEAD OF: You don't know what the f_ you're doing.
2) TRY SAYING: She's an aggressive go-getter.
INSTEAD OF: She's a f_ing bit.
3) TRY SAYING: Perhaps I can work late.
INSTEAD OF: And when the f_ do you expect me to do this?
4) TRY SAYING: I'm certain that isn't feasible.
INSTEAD OF: No f_ing way.
5) TRY SAYING: Really?
INSTEAD OF: You've got to be sh_ing me!
6) TRY SAYING: Perhaps you should check with...
INSTEAD OF: Tell someone who gives a sh.
7) TRY SAYING: I wasn't involved in the project.
INSTEAD OF: It's not my f_ing problem.
8) TRY SAYING: That's interesting.
INSTEAD OF: What the f_?
9) TRY SAYING: I'm not sure this can be implemented.
INSTEAD OF: This sh won't work.
10) TRY SAYING: I'll try to schedule that.
INSTEAD OF: Why the f_ didn't you tell me sooner?
11) TRY SAYING: He's not familiar with the issues.
INSTEAD OF: He's got his head up his a.
12) TRY SAYING: Excuse me, sir?
INSTEAD OF: Eat sh and die.
13) TRY SAYING: So you weren't happy with it?
INSTEAD OF: Kiss my a.
14) TRY SAYING: I'm a bit overloaded at the moment.
INSTEAD OF: F it, I'm on salary.
15) TRY SAYING: I don't think you understand.
INSTEAD OF: Shove it up your a.
16) TRY SAYING: I love a challenge.
INSTEAD OF: This f_ing job sucks.
17) TRY SAYING: You want me to take care of that?
INSTEAD OF: Who the f_ died and made you boss?
18) TRY SAYING: He's somewhat insensitive.
INSTEAD OF: He's a pr_ck.
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| | 10.03: The Oswald Montecristo
NIDA: I don't really feel like touching the Rageahol today. For the first time in weeks, I'm not freezing, and I can almost taste spring in the air. So instead of handing out a Rusty Spoon this week, I am awarding GO's first ever Oswald Montecristo, handed out to the noun that best exemplifies extreme awesomeness. Like awesome to the max. You've earned a reprieve this week, Market Days, Tourists, the Prince Street Parking Garage, the Architect behind the Prince Street Parking Garage, Tourists Who Circle Around the Prince Street Parking Garage Going the Wrong Way Down a One Way Lane, and People Who Insist On Driving at More than 25 MPH in Parking Garages without Stopping at Intersections, and Dick Vitale (you know what you did), but you are hereby warned!
The First Ever Oswald Montecristo for Extreme Awesomeness to the Max is hereby given to ABC's Knights of Prosperity for their genius plot twists, hilarious punchlines, and for the super awesome clip that gave the world "Oswald Montecristo". If you have not watched the show, and judging by the fact that ABC has not picked up anymore episodes, most of you out there haven't, you should go watch the entire season on ABC's website. Every episode is available and every one is an absolute comic gem. Initially, I scoffed at the premise of a bunch of blue collar bums spending an entire season or series run trying to rob Mick Jagger, but after watching the first episode, I've been hooked. Like Arrested Development, 30 Rock, Margeret Cho's All American Girl, and the first season of the John Larroquette Show hooked. That whole Mick Jagger thing is a pretty big hole to try to dig yourself into, but the bigger the hole, the bigger the rewards when you climb out of it. The plot twists are excellently paced, the sight gags and punchilnes are witty and delicately intelligent, and the acting is great. There are two main reasons I love the show, besides how tightly it is written, acted, directed, and produced. First, it's not dumbed down yet it's humor is broad enough for just about everybody. And second, it is about everybody-about the rest of us who aren't hotel heiresses, who can't sing our way to fame, who aren't betting on our good looks for fifteen minutes of fame, and who aren't degrading ourselves and others trying to claw for a sixteenth minute. This cast is possibly the most diverse on television right now (3 Caucasians, 1 black, 1 Latina, and 1 South Asian), and the most democratic. These guys are all on the lower rungs of society, the people who clean our toilets, serve us our food, guard our homes, and drive us around, and the despair that comes with their lack of status have made them all equals. I'm fairly sure that it doesn't work like that in real life, but I like the idea of the little guys banding together to get theirs.
So please please please watch ABC's Knights of Prosperity. It's a little Marx, a little Robin Hood, and a lot of LOL.
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| | 11.39: I Need a Hero
NIDA: If you took anything away from my ranting and raving last week (our government's impersonation of third world totalitarian dictatorships and the dumbing down of our culture (they criticize the Jigga Man for it, yet they all yell "Holla!") I hope it was the need to stop mucking about. Because nobody likes a mucker. And I will stop mongering on about it sometime soon. Until then, please Choose GOOD.
17.17: Ryan vs. Dorkman 2
NICK: Two of my favorite Star Wars geeks return with a sequel to their previous lightsaber duel short flick.
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| | 11.37: I Am All Out of Words
NIDA: I am pre-emptively apologizing for the quantity and quality of my posts this week; I am totally blocked. No more words. Just. Blank.
I have two websites to write for Friday. So. Blank. Not. Good. Brain. Bad.
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| | 12.50: Blockage #247
NIDA: I will just keep spewing crap. I will ignore how crappy the crap I have already spewed is. The more crap, the more something has to stick. After all, 3 rights make a left, right?
Until the crapfest ends, please support the awesomeness that is 35mm and 120mm film. And for some reason, ending a post with a link really craps things up, so allow me to end with the following quote from my favortie fictional fake security guard, Rockefeller Butts, AKA Liquid Cool AKA Stan L. Cool AKA Morris Eisenberg AKA Reginiald Van Hoogstraaten:"B***h tried to run/but his pants too tight." Good times, good times.
16.26: Better than the Glistening Sheen of An Oiled Up Bodybuilder
NIDA: Back in the day, my JV soccer coach was this hot HVAC guy named Trip who took a razor to his beat up old Sambas and made the coolest sandals out of them. Picture Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden, if Tyler Durden lived in his car and rolled into Elizabethtown, PA, every spring afternoon to coach high school JV girls soccer. Totally hot. For some reason I think Trip was the one who first introduced me to Blues Traveler, although it could have been my friend May, who as a petite Asian girl looks nothing like Tyler Durden and is overall very clean and lives in a nice house.
I know better than to get caught up in the whole celebrity nonsense and that I should not patronize TMZ.com and legitimize it by directing others to the site, but this is too awesome for words. Because you know what makes for a good night out? High speeds, a batch of the mj, a hidden arsenal, and a vest full of harmonicas.
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| | 14.32: Daylight Savings Fiasco
NIDA: As you may have heard by now, anything with a digital clock will blow up in your face, burn down the house, and start a mini nuclear holocaust sometime between 1AM and 3AM Sunday night. The government tells us that this switch to an earlier and longer Daylight Savings Time is an energy conservation method. Something to do with having to use fewer lights in the evening hours. Although I'm not sure that having a few extra house lamps is really what's causing the problem here. I don't know, call me crazy, but I think it may be our increased and uncontrolled dependence on TVs, computers and their peripherals, and I don't know, the extra heating due to the FRIGID ARCTIC CLIMES that is the Northeast that could be driving up heating bills. That and the fact that we are a nation of Hummer drivers. (Honestly, people, do we need to drive a tank to pick up the dry cleaning?)
I'm sure that there is something more behind this. Mainly because Luke (Bunting, of Plan B) said so. I checked around on the interwebs and the cybertubes and those theories are all plausible, but they're missing the bigger picture. Let's think about this logically. Who really benefits from daylight savings time?
1) Bill Gates. Anyone who apparently does not have Vista, with its magical Daylight Savings Time clock-changing program, is screwed. You can tell who these schmucks are because they will be one hour behind everybody else, stuck in their own little time warp. Unless they know how to manually change the clocks on their computers.
2) The Clockmakers. Why go through the hassle of changing all your clocks when we live in such an instant-gratification disposable society? Just buy a new clock that's already been programmed to the right time.
3) Librarians. I don't really see the connection myself, but hey, it was on the Web so it has to be true, right?
4) Katie Couric. I'm not sure if she's covered the whole Y2K7 DST disaster, but she's losing the ratings war, so I'm sure she could benefit somehow by a potential chronometer catastrophe.
5) Bees. Did you know that honey in its liquid form will never go bad? Don't you think that's a little weird? They've opened up mummies' tombs and found jars of perfectly good honey. And now the little buggers are all disappearing. It's all mighty suspicious, if you ask me.
19.53: Cheating at the W House
NIDA: Check this out if you love the Waffle House as much as I do. Which, honestly, is not that much since I have yet to see anyone behind the counter wash their hands.
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| | 12.12: In Russia, Shirt Wears You
NIDA: When confronted by a weird squeaking alien monster on the open seas, the best thing to do is show it who's boss.(From Neil Gaiman's blog.) Apparently, "You are what you eat," does not translate well in Russian.
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| | 12.16: Bracketing the Madness in March
NIDA: Has anyone else realized that presidential primaries offically start next February? That means we have to endure 18 some odd months (I'm backdating here) of the three-ring nonsense that is the next presidential election. I thought we kept those things four years apart so us average citizens would be bombarded by only 6-8months of news coverage of Senatorial ambition.
In other news, March Madness has officially started, and I will be officially unavailable to take any calls or respond to any e-mails during any Duke games. If you need something to occupy yourself while waiting for me to respond, check out these brackets on Slate.com. I think I had "Be all you can be" winning it all as the best ad slogan of all time, but some of those first rounds were ridiculously tough.
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| | 12.35: "My Mufifn Top is All That / Whole Grain, Low-Fat / I Know You Want a Piece of That"
NIDA: Check out this NYTimes article on laughter. I consider myself a pretty hi-liarious person, but I don't get it. I also don't get Seth McFarlane's Family Guy, Seth McFarlane's American Dad, and Seth McFarlane's The Winner. What I guess I 'm saying is, if I ever meet Seth McFarlane, I'm going to wind up and kick him in the nuts. Apparently, that type of thing is funny. That and ridiculous non sequiters that have nothing to do with anything except the perpetuation of illiterate fart and dick jokes. Not that I know of any literate fart jokes. I do know I once woke myself up laughing over a dream about a large Viking woman, complete with horned helmet and everything. It was so funny I got up out of bed and wrote it down so I would remember it in the morning. And in the morning I found this scrap of paper with "large Viking woman with helmet" scrawled across it, and it really wasn't that funny.
I heard somewhere that a baby will adopt the first laugh it hears. I have no idea if that's true, but it's a good way to freak out new parents.
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| | 10.53: Red Alert: Hollywood Actresses are Rapidly Disappearing!
NIDA: [insert lame joke about actresses being so thin they become two dimensional and virtually disappear when viewed from a perpendicular angle] Ok, that joke works out much better visually, specifically in the Calvin and Hobbes strip I stole it from. If I were your boss you would totally laugh at that - note to all aspiring unpaid interns out there.
I read this in the ol' Gray Lady this morning. I know it's in the Fashion & Style section, and I loves me my goss every now and then, but I am severely disappointed with the reporting coming out of the New York Times lately. Are we all supposed to turn a blind eye to the fact that all of Zoe's clients listed in that article are dangerously underweight? And that their popularity and the burgeoning popularity of Zoe, which is burgeoned even more by the Times article's implicit approval of her "style", thereby encourages millions of girls to imitate their lack of poundage? I'm not saying that the article is in any way biased, though it does appear to involve a generous dose of suspended disbelief, but by giving her column inches and having the article link featured on their home page, it gives her credibility and validates whatever methods she uses to make her clients look "good". It's enough to make me glad I don't live in an area where the Times will deliver to my door. Those bastards.
I can't imagine growing up today, when people like Rachel Zoe have control over how people dress and look. I'm a Big Eighties girl, and when I was a kid, my TV only bombarded me with images of starving girls when Sally Struthers was asking for money. Of course, now Sally Struthers has a recurring role on a popular one-hour drama and starvation is required to get a gig on a popular one-hour drama if you are not Sally Struthers. But back in the day, we had "real" people on TV, though this was ages before reality TV. I am, of course, referring to the T (first name: "Mister", middle name: ".") and Sherman Hemsley and Nell Carter and the entire Huxtable clan. No one was plastic and everyone was black and everything in the world was right. Those were the days, the days of the Dunkin Donuts man. More than Nell, more than George Jefferson, more than Theo, I loved the Dunkin Donuts man. He seemed so kind, so generous, so giving of donuts. Whatever happened to the Dunkin Donuts man?
And that take us to the main thrust of my post today- the Dunkin Donuts across the street (Queen) officially opens this Saturday! For all you Rachel Zoe clients out there, I will be more than happy to buy you all the donuts you can eat, should you happen to be in town on Saturday.
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| | 09.24: O Those Tricksy Ides
NIDA: March has never been kind to dynasties. And so my boys, thank you for your hard work and better luck next time. And please take better care of the ball next season. The weather's turned nasty outside and so has my mood. So let's roll out some Rusty Spoons!
This week's first Rusty Spoon (oh yeah, we're going multiple here) is the OED. I realize that language, much like history, is a living thing, a hairy pink blob that threatens to engulf foreign language speakers everywhere. The outerlying extraneous bits will crust up and fall off to die the Shakespearean death while new words are assimilated and digested elsewhere. This happens, I know. But until now I've thought that this was the province of graduate students and professors looking for tenure everywhere. But now fake news commentators and computer geeks have that power! Gah. I'm going to have to punch some deck and try to hack the Gibson to keep up. An extra Rusty Spoon to one Dr. Coles, who decided to whip out "subalternity" during an 8:00am, 4-person political theory class. I don't know, Dr. Coles, what is the erotic?
Our next Rusty Spoon goes to Brutus. Shove that up your stoic pride, you easily manipulated traitor!
Our final Rusty Spoon is hereby awarded to prognosticating rodents and their Inner Circle. It's been six weeks, Phil - where the fudge is my spring!?
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| | 12.25: A Case of the Mondays
NIDA: I'm sure I'm not the only one out there who thinks that every day has a certain feel. And today is very definitely a "Monday". I'm not quite sure how an entire case of them would feel, but I imagine it's something like the hangover you get from drinking an entire bottle of red wine (O those tannins will get ya!) in eight minutes, when you're PMS-ing, and the rusty spoon you want to use to scoop out your uterus is instead being used to scoop out your brains through your right temple, while you've been waiting in the ER for four hours to stitch up a one-inch cut down the center of your left pinkie. That would just about be a case full of Mondays. Today is not so bad and involves none of those things, thankfullly, but still. Monday. Meh.
Maybe I need a rival, someone to spur me on, to challenge me with the verbal fisticuffs that will become the stuff of legends of yore. Garcia Marquez was one of my favorite writers before I read that article, and now I heart him so much more. Other things I currently heart: that time Friday night when you realize that you have an entire 48 hours to just let go, Ricky Nelson, his son Sam but definitely not Matthew or Gunnar, and the idea that someday I will bear a son and name him Gunnar.
15.27: Finally. Now All I Need is a Hoverboard
NIDA: Back to the Future II made many beautiful promises, one of which involved clothing that would automatically fit itself to your proportions and automatically dry itself (and you) off. We are now halfway there. If only my car could run on banana peels and beer...
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| | 17.14: If It Talks Like a Wanker and Walks Like a Wanker...
NIDA: I suppose at some point in the history of this blog, someone will post a blog entry about design. This is after all a design blog, or at least, a blog on the website of a design, branding, and advertising company. And if I were to further my suppositions, I would then suppose that that person, while commenting on design, might then log some thoughts on design in Lancaster. Being as how we are headquartered in downtown Lancaster. But that person would not be me and that blog entry would not be today's.
Personally, I feel that there are numerous design and/or advertising blogs that do the job much more adequately than I could, and I could point out those sites and posts but then this blog would only be a portal to those blogs. Not that I don't link to those sites occasionally, and if I have some compelling insight that I think has not been brought up already and needs to be discussed (as much discussion as can happen in a blog system that does not allow for comments), then I would write something. But I don't want to be that didactic maroon who lectures everyone else on design basics or principles as if I were the first person to discover them. Alls I know is what I like and what I don't like, and since aesthetics and style are the province of the right brain anyway, I'm not sure anything beyond a visceral reaction is necessary.
Talking about art is like dancing about architecture. Or something. So this whole art criticism thing boggles me a bit. As if I need to know the psychosexual ramifications of the subtextual tension underlying the dialogue between the inner monologues of color and texture that play off each other through the inner glow of the work created by the artist using his naughty bits as his brush and his less naughty bits as his canvas. Or something. I am currently mired in some of these books for a project, and it's making me question my own literacy a bit. Because I understand all these words individually. Stringing them all together in one sentence (exhibiting as much inner tension as possible), that's what gets me in trouble. And sleepy. With a headache. (I wonder if I can write off a new couch and a bottle of Tylenol.) I should put a disclaimer on this by revealing that I've never studied art or art history, so that may be part of the problem. But I don't think I should need a highly specialized vocabulary in order to "access" art. If I wanted to sail off on my own pretensions, then yes, bring on the transcendental subalternity of the inner glow. Until then, I'll stick with my gut. As long it promises to remain unirritated and non-inflamed and unruptured.
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| | 11.43: The Unfacts
NIDA: "Two Truths and a Lie" is my favorite icebreaker/warm-up game. Sadly, I know a lot of icebreakers and warm-up games, which do not so much break up the ice with their cameraderie-building hi-larity so much as their shame-inducing corniness.
The Interwebs have made this game more interesting, what with the wiki and the snopes. The promulgation of news and facts is made much easier, but so is the distribution of truthiness and unfacts. The factchecking industry should either blow up or implode. So here are some things I've heard this morning and will spread as the gospel truth only because I have the power of blogs behind me. If it's on a blog, it must be true, right?
(1) Polar bears' livers are rich in Vitamin A. So if you eat too much polar bear, you will die.
(2) Babies are born with all the brain cells they'll ever have, and those cells expand as they grow.
(3) The human eye never grows, which explains why babies' eyes are so proportionately ginormous.
(4) Vitamin B makes you happy and turns your pee neon yellow.
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| | 11.16: And So It Begins...
NIDA: You may have heard of or seen by now the "Vote Different" Hillary Clinton/1984 smash-up video floating around Youtube. Arianna Huffington, in all her glorious Greekness, has uncovered the auteur behind the video. I applaud the man's active citizenry and his creativity. This is the Interwebs and the Cybertubes at their best, allowing for the easy distribution of a plurality of opinions. My only concern is that our current education system, literacy rates, and lack of attention span do not enable many of us to distinguish between fact and opinion. And most of us know that and say "bugger all this" and decide to avoid the whole conundrum altogether, judging by the percentage of eligible voters who actually vote. While I like this attack ad, this may not encourage people to vote different so much as not vote at all.
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| | 15.44: "Standing Tall on the Wings of My Dreams"
NIDA: The humidity is hovering around 95%, the dew point is up, and the world outside is a cozy wet womb. Mmmm, womb. You know what goes great with womb weather? An Oswald Montecristo!
This latest Oswald Montecristo goes to the people who invented the Oswald Montecristo. Unfortunately, I am in Oswald Montecristo withdrawal, as ABC has YANKED my new all-time-favorite-show-until-something-shiny-catches-my-eye. Rumor has it that there are four more episodes shot, produced, and ready to be aired, and I'm hoping that they'll pull an Arrested Development and air them all in a mini-marathon, just so I can have one last big hit before going into comedy rehab.
Rusty Spoons to all broadcast network executives! Sadly, my mental list of good comedies is that much shorter, with the passing of the Knights of Prosperity, and my mental list of dead good comedies is that much longer. I also have a mental list of comedies I wouldn't shake a dead horse at, a list which funnily enough, used to include the ol' Knights. Which tells me something about book covers, mainly that I should buy the ones advertising Mick Jagger and/or grand larceny. So maybe I should give this Geico caveman thing a chance. I liked Small Wonder back in the day, though I was only 5 or 6 at the time. And 3rd Rock from the Sun was funny enough, though it was helped dramatically by an excellent ensemble cast.
Good acting has bailed out many a television series, but great comedy is a different matter. Great comedy requires some combination of good acting, intelligent writing, well-timed pacing, deep characters, and the unexpected. LIke Arrested Development or the glory days of The Simpsons. I don't know whether I'm eager to see the Simpsons movie or anxious about it, especially considering the meh-ness of this current season. It's not good when the show that invented "Meh" is now itself "Meh". I haven't paid attention to who's writing the show now, but it seems that they are not so much writing the Simpsons as writing like the Simpsons. They've taken all the funny that was a mere byproduct of a length drafting and rewriting process and tried to turn that into a formula for funny, turning surprising sight gag into predictable punch line. Of course, this is all to be expected, given that the Simpsons have been part of our cultural context for the past 18 years, and droves of writers and producers have undoubtedly come through the door and then been put out to stud (or sent to the glue factory) when their racing days are over.
This is what worries me about South Park, which has been up and down the past couple seasons. I feel that they started picking up steam in the 2nd season, really hit their stride in the 3rd season and managed to maintain that satiric excellence up until the 7th season. Now in its 11 season, the show has lost its consistency. Some weeks you can tell when Matt and Trey are interested and other weeks they're definitely phoning it in. But it's understandable that a show that's been on for that length of time has struggled to be consistently funny from week to week. And it's sad when a good show that is funny doesn't get that chance to decline gradually over the years.
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| | 16.33: I Should Really Stop Reading the Fashion Section of the New York Times
NIDA: I try not to regret too much the choices I've made or at the very least, learn from them when the consequences don't match up to my expectations or my sense of self. And Universal Truths of Nida, Number 8 is "Measure yourself against yourself," if only because it allows me to sleep better at night (those nights when I'm not sleeping on my millions - small denominations, I like my bedding soft and fluffy).
But this is going to take a little while to choke down with my greens. Not that I knew the kid well or have any sort of vested interest in either his success or lack thereof, but our runs on the political theory circuit intersected a few times when we were undergraduates. Our paths have obviously diverged a bit since those American Democratic Thought days. But he had a weekly column in the school newspaper that I enjoyed immensely, so I look forward to reading his book and thank him for bringing some semblance of good news to the old alma mater.
If any book editors are reading this, I'll just put it out there that I would be willing to entertain a $650,000 two-book deal on, say, a behind-the-scenes look at the fast-paced, high society Lancaster nightlife through the eyes of a plucky young copywriting entrepreneur. Zhang Ziyi could play me in the movie version.
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| | 12.48: Oh My Humps
NIDA: I once did a stint in suburban mall retail hell, mainly because I had developed a slight allergy to red and khaki and figured that the best way to buy a whole new wardrobe (one involving color) was to work in a clothing store. It's not the most logical reasoning in the world, but in my defense, I have very little common sense. And I was drunk on power, the power of being able to ask myself, "What do I want to wear today?". One byproduct of wearing the same uniform day in and day (2 pair khaki pants, 3 t-shirts, 1 dress shirt, 2 mock turtlenecks, one sweatshirt, bring your own socks to the party) is that the days tend to bleed together without different outfits to divide them into definite chunks. It's difficult to remember something when you are unable to say, "Oh, that happened on that day when I was wearing that outfit and doing that thing." Because "that outfit" is THE ONE OUTFIT YOU OWN.
And I'm sure I started out writing about retail hell (the 7th circle of hell, reserved for people who do not proofread emails, cover letters, and resumes sent to potential employers - and there are many, MANY of you out there) for a reason, but I don't know what. At least later I'll remember that I forgot, because it was the day I was wearing the blue shirt and grown-up shoes.
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| | 12.35: March: In Like a Lion, Out Like a Crapfest
NIDA: March has never been kind to me. My boys lost. My girls lost. Josh McRoberts is jumping ship. My laptop is acting weird (the kind of weird that makes you nervous about the projects you've been working on since the last time you backed everything up and oh dear, why don't you back everything up every night and seriously, from now on everything is getting backed up every half hour from now on) and my home PC is making a funny noise again, so I think I need to drop a few double sawbucks on an air purifier. And the Phantom Menace is scarred for life. Two years old, not even 9500 miles, still has that new car smell, and I crap it up in a head to head donnybrook with a big jagged rock. It turns out that Paper beats Rock and Car beats Rock, but Paintjob does not.
The last good March I had was when I backpacked around Europe in 2001. We won a national championship that year, I saw Michealangelo's David (one lone security guard frowning at everyone, with his hand ready on his truncheon, should anyone have the impudence to use the flash on their camera) and the Sistine Chapel (long line, stiff neck), and the world was generally a kinder, less terror-filled place. But I shouldn't really kvetch, since I can afford a laptop and a PC and a Phantom Menace and colorful outfits I can mix and match as much as I like every morning. And April is almost here and that means the lilacs will bloom soon and everything will be dandy. Just dandy.
And should anyone be willing to fund another backpacking trip for me next March so I can avoid this whole nonsense next year, that would be the dandiest thing of all.
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| | 19.17: I Am Officially Boned
NIDA: How boned am I? Officially. Boned. The laptop gets sent off tomorrow to the Macheads people, who will probably have to send it off to the Apple people, and who knows which people the Apple people will send it off to. Probably the Koreans. Korea is the new Japan.
I know everything is going digital and wireless, but I'm not quite sure the benefits outweigh the hassles. My laptop is boned after less than a year, my cellphone is dying on me after only 2 years, and my iPod is also acting up, because apparently, iPods get boned after a year or so (having a tiny hard drive that should not be moved when in use, after all). Whatever happened to durability? Did that become a bad word? D--k, b---h, a-s, f--k, s--t, d---------y. Huh.
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