Woof

the department of homeland security is like a little puppy that keeps shitting and pissing all over the house, but bush brought it home and doesn't have the heart to take it to the pound.

Can't Unring a Bell

in one of my earlier posts, i linked to a ny times story about hillary clinton criticizing democrats when she was in fact criticizing republicans. here's the "corrected" version, as if the casual reader would notice the small "editors' note appended" at the top or read the story to the bottom where the correction appears. the average person only reads the first 4-5 paragraphs of a story. result: correction = worthless.

Selective Reporting Redux

bad words vs. treason accusations and hangings. seems fair to me. doesn't it seem fair to you?

Archives

i just spent a good 40 minutes copying and pasting posts from this blog into a word processor, then reformatting and saving them. yaaaawn. at least now i have a complete record of all my twisted ramblings over the past 10 months. wow. i've kept this up for 10 months. i think i might be able to eke out a 10 page short story sometime soon. keep your fingers crossed. i'm off to the sanctuary of my bed. crash.

World Jump Day

sounds kind of hokey, but i'd say it's blog-worthy. check it out.

Famous Bowls

this story in west magazine, the section of the los angeles times i intern for, is too hilarious. right on the money.

Launch Party!

my new literary invention, skp magazine, is up and running, with a new post fresh off the presses. at this juncture, i will most likely desist from posting on enough necktie, and any facetious ramblings will appear on skp. i will leave enough necktie up for archival purposes while i go through the process of copying and pasting those postings into a word processing document for safe-keeping on my hard drive, but it will inevitably vanish within the week. it was enjoyable, but ultimately purile and somewhat unrewarding. i will, of course, keep you all up to date on the day-to-day events of my life on this blog. i hope you enjoy my new direction and show your appreciation by offering high paying positions at well-regarded publications, commenting ceaselessly about the ingenuity of my writings, or mailing blank checks to my home address in fresno (i am, as you may know, going to be moving quite a bit in the next few weeks, and wouldn't want to miss your generous donation).

A La Atrios: Journamalism

ny times screws up with this article about hillary clinton. she's talking about the republican-led congress, not democrats, as evidenced by a transcript of the speech.

Winna At Minna

i'm back, with plenty of stories. i don't have time to tell them all. i have to leave for the times in about 20 minutes. but it was certainly an interesting weekend to say the least.

i just checked, and i have about 14 days left in los angeles. this summer, as all summers generally do, is flying by. and this is my last real summer. i'll be extremely lucky to have a three-month gap of freedom anytime in the next 40 years. oh well, i can't be a kid forever.

salman rushdie once said, "what one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy." on that note, i have a new blog prospect i'm working on, one that will probably supplant the jocose yet sophomoric enough necktie venture. i'll keep you all posted.

Please Step Forward

it's not you, it's me. i just need some space. we're stuck in a rut, you and i. i need to get away for a while. see some new places, eat some new food. i hope you understand and can appreciate my honesty. i've agonized over a way to tell you this. so i'm going to use an analogous situation from "the door in the floor" (movie). one of the characters starts telling a joke. here's how it goes: while out at sea, one of the mothers of a naval midshipman dies. the captain of the ship stays up all night trying to come up with a way to tell midshipman abernafee that his mother is dead. he finally comes up with a good way. so the next day he lines up all of his crew on deck. he looks at them all and says, "please step forward if your mother is not dead. hold it a minute, abernafee."

please step forward if your favorite blogger is not going to san francisco until sunday. hold it a minute, population of planet earth.

Conquest Strikes Again

in an email from my lessor, conquest housing: "Everybody is probably very excited to move into his or her apartment at Tuscany, and we are looking forward to meeting all of you. The building is now 95% complete, however we are going through our final set of inspections with the city. These inspections are required to be completed prior to move-in, and are taking longer than originally anticipated. For this reason, the Tuscany building will not be available for move-in until Friday, August 18th....We apologize for this inconvenience....See you soon!"

get this. they are going to pay for one storage unit and will pro-rate the month of august. and they included a handy guide to hotels around usc, for "temporary housing." thanks. assholes. yea, i can afford $219 a night to stay at the biltmore downtown. that's only, what, $4,000? chump change. un-fucking-believable. there isn't a hotel on that list that's under $100 a night. so let's do the math. i would've been paying about $300 to stay in tuscany for the first half of august. it's not ready. so they suggest i pay $2,000, in the very least, to stay in a hotel for those 18 days. that's only a 570% markup. totally fair. fucking dickweeds. oh yea, thanks for copping the storage fee. makes a huge difference. jerkoffs. the los angeles times, the california better business bureau, the california state attorney general's office and the conquest management will all be receiving scathing letters from yours truly. there's nothing more to say about this. un-fucking-believable.

update: i've consulted many legal experts and they all tell me i have no legal leverage. it's still a shitty move on their part. after telling us repeatedly that everything was on schedule and we would be able to move in august 1st. forshame conquest, forshame.

Rant Transplant

i had some free time at work today, so i paid a little visit to the fresno bee website. what a pile of festering excrement. who designed that thing, pablo picasso? finding anything on that site is like trying to find a needle in a haystack, if the haystack was made out of needles.

here's the story: there is a guy suing ralph's supermarkets because he was fired for wearing inappropriate pants. he alleges he was fired for taking his lunch break, and i have no idea if that's true or not, so i'm not passing judgment on whether he was fired justly or unjustly. he says he's worn the pants before and it's never been a problem. anyway, i'm not here to argue the merits of his case. i'm here to argue the absurdity of the following excerpt from his lawsuit. the plaintiff says that due to his being fired (for whatever reason) he "suffered and continues to suffer embarrassment, humiliation, emotional distress, mental anguish and severe shock to his nervous system, and thereby sustained serious injuries to his physical and mental health, strength and activity, causing him extreme physical and emotional pain." really? serious injuries? serious physical injuries? unless they ripped his pants off upon firing him, thereby forcing his undergarments deep into his nether regions, i see no possible way he could have suffered physical pain as a result of his firing. and the emotional injury argument is shaky at best. again, the only way i might believe he suffered embarrassment and mental anguish is if a certain cottony article of clothing was forcibly embedded into a certain sunless orifice. give me a break.

will someone please tell me what the following phrases mean? these are a few items i happened across during my job at the business school:

1. application evolution on a parallel path - increasing modularization

2. horizontal process integration requiring seamless application integration

3. national knowledge manager

the first two sound like techo-bureaucratic rabble. and the third...what in the name of bethany is a national knowledge manager? how do you manage knowledge? is it someone whose sole purpose is organizing and looking after an encyclopedia britannica?

Winter in the Summer

well folks, it's the start of another week, and i managed to drag myself out of bed this morning to swim in that overheated cesspool of a dive tank and lift weights with the other early-morning workout crazies. it is a string of what will hopefully be a full week of exercise that will return me to a glimmer of my former self. unfortunately, the pool is closed this coming weekend for a swim meet, so i'll have to find other methods of self-torture.

i did laundry last night. wait, let me rephrase that. i did something slightly resembling laundry last night. wet clothes were involved, but that was about it. the washer and dryer at my apartment complex are, to put it gently, somewhat deficient. after a wash and two dry cycles, my clothes were still damp and smelling a tad worse than when they went in. because when i think wash and dry, i'm really envisioning smelly and damp. makes sense, right? so that was an enjoyable debacle. one of many to come this month, i'm sure.

well, i've settled on a name for my mystery guitar, the one that appeared on my doorstep without a hint of from whence it came (did that even make sense?). apparently it was a completely altruistic gesture. so phantom benefactor, if you are reading this, accept my gracious thanks. oh, and the name. well, i tossed around a few ideas for a few weeks and finally settled on winter, on account of it's pale spruce top and bright, crisp sound. so sera and winter are now splitting playing time and i'm pretty happy with both.

Sent Out An S.O.S. Call

it's been a few days, so here's the haps, chaps:

1. back to running and swimming as much as possible after a long, lazy few weeks

2. work was officially completed on our interim apartment as of saturday, 8 days into our stay

3. everything is pretty much unpacked and in its proper place

4. went to a brand new concert last night and it rocked (brand new is a band for those not in the know out there that thought it might be possible to go to a slightly used concert)

5. realized that to get drunk at a bar would cost me around $35, depending on the classiness of the joint and the quality of alcohol

well, that's about it, i guess. still looking for that escape to nature. car owners, help me out.

How to Circumvent Dissent

brendan nyhan talks about how the administration has been "playing the treason card since 9/11."

Mind Screaming

well, the fridge was finally installed, along with the oven. so now all we are waiting on is the small projects. you know, like a bathroom sink. and maybe something to prevent random people from staring into our living room.

why are there mosquitoes around here? there is no standing water? my legs look like they've been attacked by some flesh-eating virus. okay, not that bad. it's just so hard to resist the urge to scratch.

McCarthy 2: The Return of the Red Scare

more government suppressing the flow of ideas: click here to be outraged (hopefully). apparently he's in a "communist-esque" political party in greece.

Still Waiting

well, you can obviously tell from this post that the internet was installed. however...the rest of the items mentioned were not completed. big surprise there. i'm beginning to see why people hate their landlords. at least i can maintain contact with you guys at all times now, through aim and facebook and this blog and email. did you miss me? or were you too busy shooting up red lace heroin?

Queen of Technicality

i'm still at work and have been whipping around the blogosphere. i grew tired of reading atrios comment boards and decided to head over to the internet headquarters of infamous hate-mongering facist ann coulter for a few laughs (i'm not linking to her site, because i don't want her getting any more hits courtesy of my blogging, but if you have to see it for yourself, a google search will direct you there easily). anyway, here's what i found, from an interview ann apparently had with a ny post reporter that never ran (it's from her side, so who knows if that actually happened, and of course, she most likely doctored her responses):

NY POST: Your characterization of liberals paints them as extremists. But with people like Pat Robertson telling us how God keeps telling him who He's angry at, isn't it fair to say that there are extremists on both sides?

A: Pat Robertson opposes capital punishment, opposed the impeachment of Bill Clinton and supports trade with China, just for starters. Seems like a pretty mixed bag to me. So what makes you call him extreme? That he believes he has dialogue with the Lord? Do liberals now call anyone who thinks this an "extremist"?

umm...yes. basically. talking to mythological father figures generally tends to register as extremist in my mind. am i alone on this one? not enough for you, ann? how about his claim of leg pressing 2,000 pounds, aka a ton? or his suggestion that we assassinate venezuelan leader hugo chavez? not extremist? oh yea, definitely not, ann.

Vive Les Bleus!

today is supposed to be the magic day, the day we get an oven, a refrigerator, cable internet, and cable television, plus completion of a plethora of other small projects around the apartment, such as light fixture, bathroom sink, and window blind installation. i'll get back to you on how many of those were actually done today at my next opportunity to blog. today was a pretty slow day at the times, and i am glad. after a wild independence day barbecue party, i was left in pretty tattered shape. in addition to minimal sleep and legs that have been chewed to pieces by mosquitoes, i also took a heavy blow to the shoulder during an overenthusiastic celebration following a beer pong victory. i won't name names. i'm just going to say at that point in the night, i was in no shape to support the weight of another human being. so with a very stiff shoulder and a delirious mindstate, i was more than enthused to learn that i would spend much of the day following the france/portugal soccer game via espn's internet gamecast and scanning the internet for mindless entertainment. hopefully i will be updating you all on the state of my life later this evening from my fabulous comcast-internet-wired personal computer. but don't hold your breath.