So, the other night the harsh news came to me that my family reads my site. Ok… That’s a bit of a shock, since I come here to be pissy and full of bile and all that. A little bit of swearing goes on too.

The shock wore off, and I realized I was pretty ok with that.

The bigger shocker came today, when I reconfigured my logs, and started parsing them, for comedic effect.

httpgate.ftc.gov - - [22/Aug/2002:11:17:48 -0700] “GET /weblog/arc4.html HTTP/1.0″ 302 213 “http://www.google.com/search?q=weblog+%2B+pantyhose&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&start=30&sa=N” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0; T312461)”

If you’re not used to picking information out of this stuff, let me translate for you. This means:

“Hello user at the Federal Trade Commission. I see you googling my site for pantyhose pictures.”

The other night I bought the best piano ever. It was delivered yesterday.

Of course, to be difficult, I had them put it in the basement. So I had to remove all the doors in the path of the piano. THEN, to get it into the room, I had to remove the door jam.

It was pretty amazing to watch these two guys take it down the stairs. This piano must weigh half a ton.

Anyhow, it used to be owned by the “Lake Washington Skippers”. A barber shop quartet. They had the beautiful instrument… red mohogany… painted tan. Then they had the “Skippers” painted on the piano. Then, in the center, the symbol of the [SPEBSQSA]. That of course being the society of people who sing in barber shop quartets and have the world’s longest acronym.

Without further delay. Here it is. The world’s tackiest piano. I love it.

[Japanese Arnold Movie from japander.com]
I want to move to japan
And there I want to be the Japanese Gedde Watanabe.
Now
I understand Gedde Watanabe is japanese.
But he’s America’s Gedde Watanabe.
I want to be Japan’s Gedde Watanabe.
You know, be in Teen movies, as the butt of racist jokes.
“HA HA HA HA I EAT HAMBURGERS!”

Over the course of my life, I’ve been prone to two violent episodes. While reading [this article] today over on [retrocrush] I caught a glimpse of the first deadly weapon I ever laid hands on. Also, it’s also the first object I ever attempted to harm another human being with.

[lawn darts]

One day, all the kids in the neighborhood were playing lawn darts. Except me. They all laughed at me. When I tried to butt in and play too, the older kids surrounded me and told me to put the lawn dart down. My recollection on this is somewhat hazy. The exact sequence and reasoning behind the events escape me. I was 6 or 7 at the time. What I do remember, is that I ended up throwing the lawn dart down in 6 year old indignation.

Before the lawn dart connected to the ground, it connected squarely into Amy White’s knee. HO HO HO! FUN TIME ABOUNDS!

I’m pretty sure I’m one of the statistics that made lawn darts harded to get ahold of than automatic weaponry.

The other day, after dabbling a bit in the theare arts, I went home.

There, waiting for me in my mailbox from Qwest was a colorful envelope containing Qwest’s undying love for me as a consumer.

Yea. I bet they’re in love with me.

“Shawn, You’re the best customer ever! Here we are, looking to make up [all] [that] [money] that we weren’t [accounting] for correctly, and we’ve found we can just extort it from you! WE LOVE YOU SHAWN!”

A Play in 3 Acts:

ACT I

Setting: A contemporary office. A calander shows that it is July 30th, 2002. At act’s rise, Shawn is sitting center stage at a desk. He has a phone to his ear, and has presumably been on hold a while. A voice is heard through an off stage speaker.

Technician. “Thank you for calling Qwest, may I help you?”
Shawn. “Hi, my DSL service is bouncing up and down more than a $117 a month Yo Yo”
Technician. “Would you like a tech to come out and check your line?”
Shawn. “Sure, that would be wonderful!”
Technician. “Ok, He’ll be by tomorrow. Your ticket number is 23432.”
Act drop.

ACT II

At act rise, Shawn is sleeping uncomfortably in a bed. He is tossing and turning. There is a cellphone on the ground at the side of the bed. There is a Giant Cisco 675 Router hanging on the wall. It is roughly the size of his bed. There is a red, dinner plate sized, light marked WAN. It blinks at random, and then stays solid. At every blink, the light emits a terrible screech. It torments Shawn as he sleeps, causing him to twist and turn, with every wink of it’s angry red eye. He is drenched with sweat from this fevered sleep. While sleeping, his cellphone rings. A beeping indicates a voicemail has been left.

Moments later, Shawn awakes, startled, panting. He notices the cellphone, and listens to the voicemail. Again, the sound is piped in from off-stage.

Technician. “Hi, this is Qwest, your line is fine, we’re closing the ticket.”

Behind Shawn, the WAN light turns a gentle green, and stays solid. Sunlight filters in through the window blinds. His cats purr.

Shawn. “Finally, the nightmare is over.”
Act drop.

ACT III
Again we find Shawn at his desk. He is paying his bills via the telephone.

Shawn. “I’d like to pay that with a Visa. Do you happen to have the balance?”
Operator. (From Offstage Speaker) “One moment sir….” (Time Passes) “Two-Hundred and Two dollars, sir.”
Shawn. “I must have a balance forward, right?”
Operator. “No sir. We show a credit for a payment in July of $117. Your current balance is $202 sir.”
Shawn. “This is messed up!”
Operator. “I see a charge here for $85. A trouble report.”
Shawn. “Yes, My DSL wasn’t working.”
Operator. “None the less, it is payable now sir. Don’t make us take drastic measures.”
Shawn. “This is Robbery. I refuse to let you bully me and my wallet.”
Operator. “Bully you, that’s a good idea. Guido, Bruno, Help Mr. McBride find his pockets.”

Two large men enter from stage left. They are dressed in suits. One is carrying a pipe, and the other a bat with a nail driven through it.

Bruno. “We’s gunna put you’s in a sack and hit it ’til the lumps go ‘way.”
Shawn. “HELP!”

They proceed to beat Shawn with their instruments. He is left bloody and unconscious, center stage.

Act drop.

The End.

The president of our company came by this morning and asked if I could let him and his guest into the CNOC (Central Network Operations Center) here at work.

I walked around the corner to let him and his guest in and about stopped in my tracks. His guest was Senator Tom Foley, former Speaker of the House.

What do you say to someone like that?

All I could come up with was “hey… good morning!” as I swiped my badge to allow them access.

I’m a dumbass.

I received an e-mail from Todd this afternoon. He’s been in Cincinnati. This city is a topic he and I have discussed before.

Todd writes:

You said Cincinnati was a burnt out hell hole, well now so is the place I live, a man set fire to my building and I wrote hell on my door in ash. I am safe, but I am coming home soon. Don’t ever come here.

I advise the viewers at home to heed his advice.

I read a lot of these weblogs/livejournals/missives on the walls of public bathrooms.

They all seem to say 1 of 2 possible things.

“FOR A GOOD TIME CALL 342-838-5309″

-OR-

“Today I went to Amazon and purchased [a book on accents and dialects] and then we went over to [dennys] and had their [big texas chicken fajita skillet®] which is always so nummy and priced at a reasonable $5.34…”

Memo to journalists:

(and I mean those that keep a journal… though, the Capital-J-ournalists are doing much more to sell you something than the homebrew folk…)

Turn off MTV. It rots your mind. You sound like my 6 year old who has been addled by commercials during the cartoons on [fox kids].

“I saw in the commercial, where they all get [baby bottle pops], and all of the kids turn into babies, but one of them ran out and he turned into an adult, and I saw that [chuck e cheese] is where kids can go and be kids…”

Sometimes I swear he quotes this stuff verbatim from the T.V. That’s alright though. He’s 6, and he has his mom and I to shake him out of the consoomerstooper.

You don’t. Stop it. I bet as I type this, thousands of people are gibbering about PDAs, Video Games, and etc, and linking back to Amazon or where ever they link to.

Knock it off. You’re getting rabid foam all over your new shirt.

Just a quick note. Site redesign.

See, it was quick. The old content is still up, but will be gone. This is it. Nice and generic. Like the old cans of White Label beer. Just a white can, and a black word in Times New Roman. Almost. This is black label with a white word.