First things first:
1. Giada De Laurentiis is not a dwarf. Period. I still think it's odd that people even ask that - and odder still that they come here after this blog pops up in their search results - but there it is. No. Not a dwarf. At all. Some people also apparently wonder if she has "dwarf blood," by which, I assume, they mean to ask if somewhere in her family tree there is/was a dwarf. I neither know nor care. (I'm assuming that's what they mean, and that they're not asking if she actually has dwarf blood, like in a decanter or something.)
2. Evidently, she was pregnant at some point. Is she now? Has she been recently? Will she be again? I have no idea, and further, I don't especially care.
Okay, and now to the point...I don't know what her bra size is - or whether or not she wears a water bra (cf. the part about me not caring), but for all of the people who end up here as a result of searches related to Giada's breasts, here is a link to Giada's Cleavage. I am no way affiliated with the site, but given how much of what little traffic I get* is related to Giada's boobs, I thought I would provide the link as a public service. You're welcome.
*Ordinarily I'd be grateful for the traffic, but people who end up here as the result of Giada-related searches don't stick around and don't come back.
Showing posts with label links. Show all posts
Showing posts with label links. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
A Conversation (And Some Links For Context)
First of all, this.
Second of all, this.
Finally...
(Via IM)
Me: i used to have the book that he's talking about, but never got around to reading it (and lost it somewhere along the way)
Me: got it as my award for being "top student" in the class i took my last summer in upward bound.
Scott: ah
Me: at the ceremony, the instructors said that they'd thought about framing my answer to one of the questions on the final and putting it on their wall so that they could refer to it whenver they felt like their vocation was meaningless.
Me: restored their faith in the Humanities, apparently.
Me: i have zero recollection of what i wrote.
Scott: Well done, there.
Me: i think i benefited from a lack of competition.
Me: after all, Lorie was among my classmates, and whatever redeeming qualities my ex-wife may have had (she must have had some), a dizzying intellect wasn't among them.
Scott: heh
Me: or rather, it was, but not "dizzying" in a good way.
Scott: Your lips are erratic?
Me: heh, pretty much
Me: i think my favorite of her poor word constructions was when she would intend to say "or lack therof."
Me: "therefore lack of."
Scott: ugh
Me: yeah
Me: otoh, she was willing to have sex with me
Me: (sometimes)
Me: so...
Scott: That's a very weighted scale item
Second of all, this.
Finally...
(Via IM)
Me: i used to have the book that he's talking about, but never got around to reading it (and lost it somewhere along the way)
Me: got it as my award for being "top student" in the class i took my last summer in upward bound.
Scott: ah
Me: at the ceremony, the instructors said that they'd thought about framing my answer to one of the questions on the final and putting it on their wall so that they could refer to it whenver they felt like their vocation was meaningless.
Me: restored their faith in the Humanities, apparently.
Me: i have zero recollection of what i wrote.
Scott: Well done, there.
Me: i think i benefited from a lack of competition.
Me: after all, Lorie was among my classmates, and whatever redeeming qualities my ex-wife may have had (she must have had some), a dizzying intellect wasn't among them.
Scott: heh
Me: or rather, it was, but not "dizzying" in a good way.
Scott: Your lips are erratic?
Me: heh, pretty much
Me: i think my favorite of her poor word constructions was when she would intend to say "or lack therof."
Me: "therefore lack of."
Scott: ugh
Me: yeah
Me: otoh, she was willing to have sex with me
Me: (sometimes)
Me: so...
Scott: That's a very weighted scale item
Friday, June 04, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
Friday, April 30, 2010
Random Links And Observations
I went for a walk this afternoon, and here are some things I encountered:
A tall, gangly teenaged boy on the phone, arguing with his girlfriend:
"You said you'd be there! I didn't know you were going to fuckin' Pittsburgh!"
A little further along the way, there was a tiny, yippy little dog chained up in a yard that was yipping its yippy little head off at this older woman and large young man, who were just standing there staring at it. The yipping was so high-pitched and cartoonishly annoying as to sound like a parody of a yippy dog, or as if someone had forced it to breathe in some Helium.
The woman was saying, in a soothing tone, "Just calm down. It's okay."
Meanwhile I'm thinking, "Why are you trying to reason with the dog? Just keep moving," as it was clear that they, like me, were just passing by. "Why are you standing there antagonizing the thing? Are you retarded?"
It was at that point that I noticed that the woman was not talking to the dog, but to the guy, who, despite his size, was covering his ears like a child, and was letting out a similarly childlike groan.
Oh.
Whoops.
The guy then let out a howl and started to rush the dog, which backed away and increased its yipping to even more manic levels, which caused the guy to retreat, clutch more tightly at his ears, start crying, and wailing, "Nooo-oooooo! NOOOOOOOOO!"
So, yeah.
*****
As a reminder to those who knew about it, and to inform those who didn't, tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day.
*****
It was my friend Eric's birthday yesterday, and today, to celebrate, he and a bunch of his friends are hitting up a local strip club, which is having an amateur night, and he invited me along.
Unfortunately, that's "local" for him, which means it's in Delaware.
Still, I seriously considered going, since I haven't seen Eric in over seven years, and haven't been to a strip club in nearly eight.
I would actually like to go to a strip club, but I'd hate to go alone, and the circumstances of my life are such that I don't really have any friends that would or could go with me.
But ultimately I decided against it, as, under the best of circumstances, I hate driving anywhere that it takes more than an hour and a half to reach, and being in the thick of Northern Virginia/DC/Maryland traffic on a Friday afternoon is about as far from the best of circumstances as you can get.
If I'd had any sense, I would have taken today off and headed out that way during the non-peak hours.
But then, no one has ever accused me of having any sense.
*****
I have a doctor's appointment on Wednesday - I'm hoping I'll be put on different medication and be able to get off the insulin - which includes a complete physical. I figured that would take the better part of the morning, so I decided I might as well just take the day off.
When I was considering making the trek to Delaware, I decided that since I'd be losing the better part of my weekend I might as well take Monday and Tuesday off as well.
So now I don't have to be back to work until Thursday.
Too bad I don't have anything to do with that time off...
It turns out that I wouldn't have been able to take today off anyway, as I ended up having some meetings that I couldn't really afford to miss.
*****
My Boss: I'm planning for us to do an off-site team-building kind of thing pretty soon. Just a day to get out of the office and do something like go bowling, or play pool or something.
My Boss: Or we could just go someplace nice for lunch or something.
Me: Well, as far as the bowling or whatever...I pretty much suck at everything across the board, so I vote for lunch.
(We ended up, based on my suggestion, deciding to have lunch and then go to the Udvar-Hazy Center to see an IMAX movie.)
*****
I've started hitting stories from around 1981 in my Savage Sword of Conan reprints, and I'm finding that the nudity is starting to disappear, so it looks like my theory that The Universe got them to stop featuring nudity just as, in early puberty, I was on the cusp of becoming a regular reader was the correct explanation.
*****
I really wish this were real so that I could direct all of the people fruitlessly coming here in search of boob size-related knowledge to buy themselves a Droid:
A tall, gangly teenaged boy on the phone, arguing with his girlfriend:
"You said you'd be there! I didn't know you were going to fuckin' Pittsburgh!"
A little further along the way, there was a tiny, yippy little dog chained up in a yard that was yipping its yippy little head off at this older woman and large young man, who were just standing there staring at it. The yipping was so high-pitched and cartoonishly annoying as to sound like a parody of a yippy dog, or as if someone had forced it to breathe in some Helium.
The woman was saying, in a soothing tone, "Just calm down. It's okay."
Meanwhile I'm thinking, "Why are you trying to reason with the dog? Just keep moving," as it was clear that they, like me, were just passing by. "Why are you standing there antagonizing the thing? Are you retarded?"
It was at that point that I noticed that the woman was not talking to the dog, but to the guy, who, despite his size, was covering his ears like a child, and was letting out a similarly childlike groan.
Oh.
Whoops.
The guy then let out a howl and started to rush the dog, which backed away and increased its yipping to even more manic levels, which caused the guy to retreat, clutch more tightly at his ears, start crying, and wailing, "Nooo-oooooo! NOOOOOOOOO!"
So, yeah.
*****
As a reminder to those who knew about it, and to inform those who didn't, tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day.
*****
It was my friend Eric's birthday yesterday, and today, to celebrate, he and a bunch of his friends are hitting up a local strip club, which is having an amateur night, and he invited me along.
Unfortunately, that's "local" for him, which means it's in Delaware.
Still, I seriously considered going, since I haven't seen Eric in over seven years, and haven't been to a strip club in nearly eight.
I would actually like to go to a strip club, but I'd hate to go alone, and the circumstances of my life are such that I don't really have any friends that would or could go with me.
But ultimately I decided against it, as, under the best of circumstances, I hate driving anywhere that it takes more than an hour and a half to reach, and being in the thick of Northern Virginia/DC/Maryland traffic on a Friday afternoon is about as far from the best of circumstances as you can get.
If I'd had any sense, I would have taken today off and headed out that way during the non-peak hours.
But then, no one has ever accused me of having any sense.
*****
I have a doctor's appointment on Wednesday - I'm hoping I'll be put on different medication and be able to get off the insulin - which includes a complete physical. I figured that would take the better part of the morning, so I decided I might as well just take the day off.
When I was considering making the trek to Delaware, I decided that since I'd be losing the better part of my weekend I might as well take Monday and Tuesday off as well.
So now I don't have to be back to work until Thursday.
Too bad I don't have anything to do with that time off...
It turns out that I wouldn't have been able to take today off anyway, as I ended up having some meetings that I couldn't really afford to miss.
*****
My Boss: I'm planning for us to do an off-site team-building kind of thing pretty soon. Just a day to get out of the office and do something like go bowling, or play pool or something.
My Boss: Or we could just go someplace nice for lunch or something.
Me: Well, as far as the bowling or whatever...I pretty much suck at everything across the board, so I vote for lunch.
(We ended up, based on my suggestion, deciding to have lunch and then go to the Udvar-Hazy Center to see an IMAX movie.)
*****
I've started hitting stories from around 1981 in my Savage Sword of Conan reprints, and I'm finding that the nudity is starting to disappear, so it looks like my theory that The Universe got them to stop featuring nudity just as, in early puberty, I was on the cusp of becoming a regular reader was the correct explanation.
*****
I really wish this were real so that I could direct all of the people fruitlessly coming here in search of boob size-related knowledge to buy themselves a Droid:
Monday, January 12, 2009
Quick Shots
Too lazy for a regular post, so please accept these assorted links.
"K" is for "Kirby"
The Jack Kirby Alphabet
(Found via Mark Evanier's blog)
Everyone knows that girls can't animate, especially Uncle Walt
or
More like Walt Dickney
Walt Disney rejection letter to an aspiring female animaor from 1938
(Another one from Mark Evanier)
Not for the faint of heart, but often funny
The 50 Most Loathsome People of 2008
(Currently throwing a 503 error; found via Pharyngula)
It's not the Longbox, but it'll do
Welcome back, Dave Campbell!
(Found via The Invincible Super Blog)
...and other elements that are not suitable for children under 16 years of age
Robot Chicken Humping Robot!
(Found via Topless Robot...wow, that's a lot of use of the word "robot.")
"K" is for "Kirby"
The Jack Kirby Alphabet
(Found via Mark Evanier's blog)
Everyone knows that girls can't animate, especially Uncle Walt
or
More like Walt Dickney
Walt Disney rejection letter to an aspiring female animaor from 1938
(Another one from Mark Evanier)
Not for the faint of heart, but often funny
The 50 Most Loathsome People of 2008
(Currently throwing a 503 error; found via Pharyngula)
It's not the Longbox, but it'll do
Welcome back, Dave Campbell!
(Found via The Invincible Super Blog)
...and other elements that are not suitable for children under 16 years of age
Robot Chicken Humping Robot!
(Found via Topless Robot...wow, that's a lot of use of the word "robot.")
Monday, November 17, 2008
Some Links
Some relevant links in support of my previous post:
The sad, sad state of college English
The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks
Unnecessary Apostrophes
and of course...
Dictionary.com
The sad, sad state of college English
The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks
Unnecessary Apostrophes
and of course...
Dictionary.com
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Threshold Departments
I’m far too lazy to write up a proper post today, so instead I present you with these assorted Threshold Departments:
You’re Going To Hell Department:
Hairdresser turned evangelist, convicted pederast, and fugitive from justice Jonathan Bell wants you to know that he’s NOT AN EXTREMIST!
(Kevin? Is he talking to you?)
Show Your Tits…I Mean, Stand Up For Your Rights Department:
This is a movement I can get behind, or rather, in front of: Bare Your Breasts on “Go Topless Day” This Saturday!
Ladies, show your support for breasts by taking off your breasts’ support and showing your breasts!
I…But…I Can’t…I Don’t Understand…Huh? Department:
Watch the video featured in this Topless Robot post, which I think may very well be some sort of Zen Koan, then contemplate the sound of one hand clapping.
I’ll Put That Burning The Surface Of The Entire Planet In The “Maybe” Column Department:
I find myself mostly in agreement with the comment listed below from an io9 post on the news that Sam Raimi and Tom Cruise are working to bring an adaptation of the Ed Brubaker comic Sleeper to the big screen:
People, if Tom Cruise plays Tao, all will be right with the world. Be at peace.
If he somehow ends up playing Holden, however, let us unite and burn the surface of the entire planet.
For the record, there’s only one reason to not read Sleeper: you hate things that are awesome.
Special Bonus Department:
I give you Keyword Kraziness: No Kommentary Edition:
shower enclosure simpleton
sexy vacation solution
meaning society net neutrality ninja alien hulk
goat herders band
charlies theron untidy & lazy at home?
dainty penmanship
You’re Going To Hell Department:
Hairdresser turned evangelist, convicted pederast, and fugitive from justice Jonathan Bell wants you to know that he’s NOT AN EXTREMIST!
(Kevin? Is he talking to you?)
Show Your Tits…I Mean, Stand Up For Your Rights Department:
This is a movement I can get behind, or rather, in front of: Bare Your Breasts on “Go Topless Day” This Saturday!
Ladies, show your support for breasts by taking off your breasts’ support and showing your breasts!
I…But…I Can’t…I Don’t Understand…Huh? Department:
Watch the video featured in this Topless Robot post, which I think may very well be some sort of Zen Koan, then contemplate the sound of one hand clapping.
I’ll Put That Burning The Surface Of The Entire Planet In The “Maybe” Column Department:
I find myself mostly in agreement with the comment listed below from an io9 post on the news that Sam Raimi and Tom Cruise are working to bring an adaptation of the Ed Brubaker comic Sleeper to the big screen:
People, if Tom Cruise plays Tao, all will be right with the world. Be at peace.
If he somehow ends up playing Holden, however, let us unite and burn the surface of the entire planet.
For the record, there’s only one reason to not read Sleeper: you hate things that are awesome.
Special Bonus Department:
I give you Keyword Kraziness: No Kommentary Edition:
shower enclosure simpleton
sexy vacation solution
meaning society net neutrality ninja alien hulk
goat herders band
charlies theron untidy & lazy at home?
dainty penmanship
Sunday, June 29, 2008
This Is How I (Blog) Roll
So I tried to add a fancy, newfangled blog roll like the one Scott has on his blog, but when I went to edit my Blogger template I found that I don’t actually have the option of adding new page elements.
I’m not sure what’s up with that, but the end result is that you’re going to have to stick to just clicking on old school links if you want to get to other blogs.
But why would you want to do that, anyway? What, Threshold isn’t good enough for you?
Oh, so sorry; I didn’t know you were such a blog connoisseur. Oo la la, look at the blog snob!
You know what, fine. Just click away. Who wants you here anyway? I don’t need you! I don’t need anyone!
*Cough*
Umm…sorry about that, but you know I’m not great at handling rejection, or even the perception of rejection, and sometimes I can be a little needy and end up lashing out and pushing away the people I actually want to have stick around.
Umm…*Cough* again…
(Let’s all pretend like we didn’t just get an uncomfortable insight into Jon’s psyche, shall we?)
Where was I? Oh, right, the blog roll thing.
Anyway, at first I thought my template issue might be an Internet Explorer issue, so I decided to download Firefox to see if that made a difference (it didn’t).
I think it’s obvious that I really don’t care about the lingering browser wars. I use IE not because it somehow matches my browser ideology, but simply because it’s there and I don’t have a browser ideology.
In any case, for as wonderful as those who do have such an ideology seem to think Firefox is, I feel I should mention that upon launching Firefox after installing it, the very first thing it did was crash.
Immediately upon being launched again it complained about needing the Flash plug-in, then failed to actually install it automatically, leading me to have to manually install it (which required actually closing Firefox). This was made more frustrating by the fact that I just installed a new version of Flash on my computer yesterday.
So, if I did have a browser ideology…well, I think you can figure out what it would be.
Not much else going on today. Looks like clicking one of those links and heading to another blog might not be such a bad idea after all.
I’m not sure what’s up with that, but the end result is that you’re going to have to stick to just clicking on old school links if you want to get to other blogs.
But why would you want to do that, anyway? What, Threshold isn’t good enough for you?
Oh, so sorry; I didn’t know you were such a blog connoisseur. Oo la la, look at the blog snob!
You know what, fine. Just click away. Who wants you here anyway? I don’t need you! I don’t need anyone!
*Cough*
Umm…sorry about that, but you know I’m not great at handling rejection, or even the perception of rejection, and sometimes I can be a little needy and end up lashing out and pushing away the people I actually want to have stick around.
Umm…*Cough* again…
(Let’s all pretend like we didn’t just get an uncomfortable insight into Jon’s psyche, shall we?)
Where was I? Oh, right, the blog roll thing.
Anyway, at first I thought my template issue might be an Internet Explorer issue, so I decided to download Firefox to see if that made a difference (it didn’t).
I think it’s obvious that I really don’t care about the lingering browser wars. I use IE not because it somehow matches my browser ideology, but simply because it’s there and I don’t have a browser ideology.
In any case, for as wonderful as those who do have such an ideology seem to think Firefox is, I feel I should mention that upon launching Firefox after installing it, the very first thing it did was crash.
Immediately upon being launched again it complained about needing the Flash plug-in, then failed to actually install it automatically, leading me to have to manually install it (which required actually closing Firefox). This was made more frustrating by the fact that I just installed a new version of Flash on my computer yesterday.
So, if I did have a browser ideology…well, I think you can figure out what it would be.
Not much else going on today. Looks like clicking one of those links and heading to another blog might not be such a bad idea after all.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Valentine's Day Greetings...
...from other blogs.
Still More Legion of Super-Heroes Valentines (Polite Dissent)
Spider-Man's Valentine's Day Cards...The Polite Dissent Way (Guess which blog?)
Romance Special: My (Allegedly) Funny Valentines 2008 (Chris Sims's Invincible Super-Blog)
Still More Legion of Super-Heroes Valentines (Polite Dissent)
Spider-Man's Valentine's Day Cards...The Polite Dissent Way (Guess which blog?)
Romance Special: My (Allegedly) Funny Valentines 2008 (Chris Sims's Invincible Super-Blog)
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Saturday, October 06, 2007
The End Of An Era (But Not Really) Also: Left Behind Fridays!
I forgot to turn on my alarm last night and woke up five minutes late as a result, though somehow I managed to get in to work a couple of minutes earlier than usual. How does that work?
Today actually marks the last time I’ll be making this particular commute as, come Monday morning we will have moved to the new NOC. This is good news, as it’s actually closer to home than Reston is.
Though I’ve been working here for nearly five years at this point, I can’t honestly say that I’m sad to leave it behind.
It’s not that there’s anything particularly wrong with or bad about this place, it’s just that I’m not particularly sentimental about that sort of thing.
Okay, more accurately, I’m not particularly sentimental about much of anything.
Even if I were, a shorter commute would trump sentiment anyway.
Last night Verizon called to confirm that I would be home on Monday for my scheduled FiOS installation. Hello, I’ve been without Internet access since I moved into the new place; you honestly think I’m not going to be there when I’m scheduled to get it?
Here at work I’ve been downloading some of the TV shows I’ve been missing due to not having cable, which will help me pass the time until Monday morning.
I’ll be extremely pleased to have cable again, not just because I’ll be able to watch some of the shows I’ve been missing, but because using the HD antenna has been a pain in the ass.
Each channel requires having the antenna positioned differently, and frequently things will be working just fine and, with no changes, suddenly crap out.
The thing is that with the digital signal, if you’re not getting a strong signal, you don’t get static or “snow.” Instead, if you’re using Media Center like I am, you get a blue screen with white text that says that there’s no signal, or you’ll get a perfectly clear picture that doesn’t move and has no audio, or that does move in a jerky fashion, out of sync with the audio, and full of digital artifacts.
And finding the right configuration can be infuriating. What works one night may not work the next, and sometimes will be dependent on me standing in a particular spot.
So yeah, in addition to providing me with televised entertainment, getting cable will bring my stress level down a little, and lead to me spending less time screaming, “There is to a fucking TV signal!” at my TV.
In addition to some specific comics that I buy, such as Fables and Jack of Fables (which I still love and will, in the future, get back to listing the reasons why I love them), and Welcome to Tranquility, I’ve found something new to look forward to: Left Behind Fridays.
What are Left Behind Fridays? Well, first I should explain what Left Behind is. Left Behind is the title of the first book in a series of books published under that title that tell the story of a world in the not-too distant future after the event known by certain branches of Christianity as The Rapture has occurred. There have been a total of 16 books in the series, as well as a PC game and a movie adaptation starring Kirk Cameron. The books have sold extremely well, being something of a Harry Potter for fundamentalists.
I’ve been aware of the books pretty much since the first one came out in 1995, and I have been curious about their actual content beyond understanding the basic premise behind them, but I have not, of course, been so curious as to actually seek them out.
After all, while they would have a sort of ironic appeal to me in the way that Chick Tracts do, being actual novels, they’re not so easily digestible as Jack’s works, nor are they freely available the way the tracts are, and I’m certainly not going to add my filthy lucre to the piles and piles of it that authors LaHaye and Jenkins have managed to rake in from the foolish…er, faithful.
However, one day while perusing some of the non-Chick Dissection posts on Enter The Jabberwock, I found a mention of a blog called Slacktivist, which has a regular feature summarizing and humorously critiquing the books.
Or, really, at this point, book, singular.
It’s been over three years since he started, yet Slacktivist (Fred Carter) has not managed to get all the way through the first book.
But I’m not complaining, as that only means that I have, hopefully, many more years of Left Behind Fridays to look forward to.
Over the course of a weekend at work I managed to get caught up on all previous posts and am now forced to wait – rather impatiently – for each new post. I often go back to the site dozens of times in the course of a Friday in the hopes that I’ll see that L.B. in the title of a post.
What I’ve learned so far thanks to Left Behind Friday is just how stupefyingly bad the book actually is, and how grateful I am that Fred is taking the bullet for me and reading the books so that I don’t have to. His wonderfully witty examinations, filled with brilliant observations (and more than a few well-placed Buffy the Vampire Slayer allusions) about the book’s quality, or lack thereof, and the acumen, or lack thereof, with which it is written pretty much make my (Fri)day.
What makes the entries even more interesting is that Slacktivist is himself an evangelical Christian – albeit an extremely liberal one – so the books to him represent more than just bad writing, but bad theology, and are, as a result, not just bad, but full-on evil.
Thus he’s very passionate in his disdain, and that only serves to add to the fun.
(And also to the horror, when you think about just how many people there are out there who believe this nonsense.)
Beyond the posts themselves, the comments section is actually filled with some of the most intelligent and articulate discussions I’ve ever encountered on the Internet. I know that’s not saying much given the level of discourse found on the Internet, but honestly, I look forward to reading the comments almost as much as reading the posts themselves, and since there are constant additions, they can help fill the void until Left Behind Friday finally returns.
If you look through the comments you may even see a familiar name throwing his two cents into the discussion.
So Left Behind Fridays are, for me, a very good thing all around™, and I think that they are a little bit of joy that should be added to everyone’s life.
I’ve added a link to Slacktivist over on the right. Here’s a link to the L.B. Archives.
In any case, that will do it for this entry, I think.
When I return, sometime on Monday, I should be positively gushing about my hot new super-fast Internet connection, which will allow me to become bored with the Internet faster than ever before!
Today actually marks the last time I’ll be making this particular commute as, come Monday morning we will have moved to the new NOC. This is good news, as it’s actually closer to home than Reston is.
Though I’ve been working here for nearly five years at this point, I can’t honestly say that I’m sad to leave it behind.
It’s not that there’s anything particularly wrong with or bad about this place, it’s just that I’m not particularly sentimental about that sort of thing.
Okay, more accurately, I’m not particularly sentimental about much of anything.
Even if I were, a shorter commute would trump sentiment anyway.
Last night Verizon called to confirm that I would be home on Monday for my scheduled FiOS installation. Hello, I’ve been without Internet access since I moved into the new place; you honestly think I’m not going to be there when I’m scheduled to get it?
Here at work I’ve been downloading some of the TV shows I’ve been missing due to not having cable, which will help me pass the time until Monday morning.
I’ll be extremely pleased to have cable again, not just because I’ll be able to watch some of the shows I’ve been missing, but because using the HD antenna has been a pain in the ass.
Each channel requires having the antenna positioned differently, and frequently things will be working just fine and, with no changes, suddenly crap out.
The thing is that with the digital signal, if you’re not getting a strong signal, you don’t get static or “snow.” Instead, if you’re using Media Center like I am, you get a blue screen with white text that says that there’s no signal, or you’ll get a perfectly clear picture that doesn’t move and has no audio, or that does move in a jerky fashion, out of sync with the audio, and full of digital artifacts.
And finding the right configuration can be infuriating. What works one night may not work the next, and sometimes will be dependent on me standing in a particular spot.
So yeah, in addition to providing me with televised entertainment, getting cable will bring my stress level down a little, and lead to me spending less time screaming, “There is to a fucking TV signal!” at my TV.
In addition to some specific comics that I buy, such as Fables and Jack of Fables (which I still love and will, in the future, get back to listing the reasons why I love them), and Welcome to Tranquility, I’ve found something new to look forward to: Left Behind Fridays.
What are Left Behind Fridays? Well, first I should explain what Left Behind is. Left Behind is the title of the first book in a series of books published under that title that tell the story of a world in the not-too distant future after the event known by certain branches of Christianity as The Rapture has occurred. There have been a total of 16 books in the series, as well as a PC game and a movie adaptation starring Kirk Cameron. The books have sold extremely well, being something of a Harry Potter for fundamentalists.
I’ve been aware of the books pretty much since the first one came out in 1995, and I have been curious about their actual content beyond understanding the basic premise behind them, but I have not, of course, been so curious as to actually seek them out.
After all, while they would have a sort of ironic appeal to me in the way that Chick Tracts do, being actual novels, they’re not so easily digestible as Jack’s works, nor are they freely available the way the tracts are, and I’m certainly not going to add my filthy lucre to the piles and piles of it that authors LaHaye and Jenkins have managed to rake in from the foolish…er, faithful.
However, one day while perusing some of the non-Chick Dissection posts on Enter The Jabberwock, I found a mention of a blog called Slacktivist, which has a regular feature summarizing and humorously critiquing the books.
Or, really, at this point, book, singular.
It’s been over three years since he started, yet Slacktivist (Fred Carter) has not managed to get all the way through the first book.
But I’m not complaining, as that only means that I have, hopefully, many more years of Left Behind Fridays to look forward to.
Over the course of a weekend at work I managed to get caught up on all previous posts and am now forced to wait – rather impatiently – for each new post. I often go back to the site dozens of times in the course of a Friday in the hopes that I’ll see that L.B. in the title of a post.
What I’ve learned so far thanks to Left Behind Friday is just how stupefyingly bad the book actually is, and how grateful I am that Fred is taking the bullet for me and reading the books so that I don’t have to. His wonderfully witty examinations, filled with brilliant observations (and more than a few well-placed Buffy the Vampire Slayer allusions) about the book’s quality, or lack thereof, and the acumen, or lack thereof, with which it is written pretty much make my (Fri)day.
What makes the entries even more interesting is that Slacktivist is himself an evangelical Christian – albeit an extremely liberal one – so the books to him represent more than just bad writing, but bad theology, and are, as a result, not just bad, but full-on evil.
Thus he’s very passionate in his disdain, and that only serves to add to the fun.
(And also to the horror, when you think about just how many people there are out there who believe this nonsense.)
Beyond the posts themselves, the comments section is actually filled with some of the most intelligent and articulate discussions I’ve ever encountered on the Internet. I know that’s not saying much given the level of discourse found on the Internet, but honestly, I look forward to reading the comments almost as much as reading the posts themselves, and since there are constant additions, they can help fill the void until Left Behind Friday finally returns.
If you look through the comments you may even see a familiar name throwing his two cents into the discussion.
So Left Behind Fridays are, for me, a very good thing all around™, and I think that they are a little bit of joy that should be added to everyone’s life.
I’ve added a link to Slacktivist over on the right. Here’s a link to the L.B. Archives.
In any case, that will do it for this entry, I think.
When I return, sometime on Monday, I should be positively gushing about my hot new super-fast Internet connection, which will allow me to become bored with the Internet faster than ever before!
Sunday, May 13, 2007
A Mother Of A Day
First of all, Happy Mother’s Day to all the good mothers out there, like my mother, and hell, even the bad mothers out there, like Shaft.
Shortly after getting up today I called my mother, only to be rushed off the phone and told that she would call me back, as my brother Brad had called first.
Once she called back we talked about the usual things, and had our standard Sunday conversation, one that goes very much like this:
My Mother: What are you doing today?
Me: Probably nothing.
It brought to mind something I just read yesterday.
Several years ago a company called Paradox Press (a division of DC Comics) began putting out a series of “Big Books” that contained all sorts of facts and stories about particular subjects, done in standard comic form by a variety of artists.
Some of them included The Big Book of Conspiracies, The Big Book of Death, The Big Book of Scandal, and, the one I was reading yesterday, The Big Book of Weirdos (sic).
One such weirdo was a British aristocrat who was famous for doing nothing.
In his whole life, he never really did anything. He even spent a significant portion of the last part of his life just lying in bed not doing anything.
I’ve already done a lot more than he ever did, but that may just be a function of my not being a wealthy aristocrat, but one passage of his story in particular stood out for me: The less he did, the less he wanted to do.
That pretty well sums it up. The more of my life that’s been spent not doing the things I never felt especially inclined to do, the more I’ve become disinclined to do things.
And one of those things I’m disinclined to do? Pursue this topic any further.
Yesterday I got my purchase agreement for the buy-back in the mail. I’ve got to sign it and get it notarized, and then within 180 the deal should, presumably, go through, and I will no longer own this place.
In the meantime I need to get cracking on finding a new place.
I asked Brian just how bad the “bad” areas of Leesburg are, and he said that for me, it probably wouldn’t be too bad. My car might get broken into, which would be a hassle, and I’m sure there’s probably a lot of noise and domestic disturbances going on, so overall it would probably be too irritating, but the thing is, the prices on places in the bad areas are pretty damned tempting.
Of course, so are some of the prices in places like Maryland and West Virginia, though I really don’t want to move further away from work now that work is going to be moving closer to where I am now.
(Right now I’ve got a Ninja Talker yammering in my ear. Somewhere in one of the buildings in the immediate area there is a girl in her teens or early twenties who talks like this? Having a conversation? On the phone? Her conversation is reverberating around the parking lot and coming in through my window and making it sound like she’s in the room with me, but I can’t spot where she actually is located. Not quite as irritating as the two birds who were apparently practicing their Vaudeville act right outside my window at 6:30 this morning.)
Yesterday at work was another slow day, and in addition to reading the aforementioned Big Book, I also borrowed Night at the Museum from Scott and watched it on my laptop.
It was pretty entertaining, though I have to say that I found it pretty unbelievable.
I mean, a smart, beautiful woman like Carla Gugino’s character who’s actually single? As if.
Speaking of smart, attractive women who aren’t single because this is the real world, the other day I caught a glimpse of the no longer mentioned (because she’s far too into sports, is married, and I almost never see her anymore) Flame Chick (so called because she had shoes and a jacket that featured embroidered flames on them) the other day and noted that she’s gotten some ink done on her arm.
It made me sigh, as she is one of the very few attractive women I’ve ever encountered at work, and so it was a shame that she’s so into sports (which just can’t help but be a deal-breaker...though there never would have been a “deal”to begin with because I’m Jon) and is no longer single (if she ever was when I saw her around).
Oh well.
(Ninja Talker seems to have wrapped things up, but New Dog is still pissed about having been left alone 6 hours ago and so is still barking about it. I will not miss this place when I move.)
It is, necessarily, kind of a slow news day today, so I will leave those of you – if there are any of you apart from Scott – who are interested in comics-related stuff with the following links to sites I’ve been spending a lot of time on lately.
First up is Polite Dissent, which is a blog maintained by a doctor and comics fan who often writes interesting examinations of the use of medicine in comics, among other things.
Next up is Comics Should Be Good, which actually seems to have moved here, and more specifically, the entries on Comic Urban Legends. Very entertaining stuff.
And for the rest of you, here’s a link to something totally unrelated to comics, but still entertaining (It’s possibly NSFW, depending on whether or not anyone is looking over your shoulder, and is not for the easily offended, but if you are easily offended you have no business being here in the first place, so piss of and go be offended somewhere else. Or don’t. What do I care? You’re a weirdo who has some sick need to seek out things that will shock your sensibilities and offend you so that you can get some kind of righteous indignation-based boner [or its female equivalent], so what you do or don’t do is of no concern to me, you uptight, wadded-panty freak.)
Shortly after getting up today I called my mother, only to be rushed off the phone and told that she would call me back, as my brother Brad had called first.
Once she called back we talked about the usual things, and had our standard Sunday conversation, one that goes very much like this:
My Mother: What are you doing today?
Me: Probably nothing.
It brought to mind something I just read yesterday.
Several years ago a company called Paradox Press (a division of DC Comics) began putting out a series of “Big Books” that contained all sorts of facts and stories about particular subjects, done in standard comic form by a variety of artists.
Some of them included The Big Book of Conspiracies, The Big Book of Death, The Big Book of Scandal, and, the one I was reading yesterday, The Big Book of Weirdos (sic).
One such weirdo was a British aristocrat who was famous for doing nothing.
In his whole life, he never really did anything. He even spent a significant portion of the last part of his life just lying in bed not doing anything.
I’ve already done a lot more than he ever did, but that may just be a function of my not being a wealthy aristocrat, but one passage of his story in particular stood out for me: The less he did, the less he wanted to do.
That pretty well sums it up. The more of my life that’s been spent not doing the things I never felt especially inclined to do, the more I’ve become disinclined to do things.
And one of those things I’m disinclined to do? Pursue this topic any further.
Yesterday I got my purchase agreement for the buy-back in the mail. I’ve got to sign it and get it notarized, and then within 180 the deal should, presumably, go through, and I will no longer own this place.
In the meantime I need to get cracking on finding a new place.
I asked Brian just how bad the “bad” areas of Leesburg are, and he said that for me, it probably wouldn’t be too bad. My car might get broken into, which would be a hassle, and I’m sure there’s probably a lot of noise and domestic disturbances going on, so overall it would probably be too irritating, but the thing is, the prices on places in the bad areas are pretty damned tempting.
Of course, so are some of the prices in places like Maryland and West Virginia, though I really don’t want to move further away from work now that work is going to be moving closer to where I am now.
(Right now I’ve got a Ninja Talker yammering in my ear. Somewhere in one of the buildings in the immediate area there is a girl in her teens or early twenties who talks like this? Having a conversation? On the phone? Her conversation is reverberating around the parking lot and coming in through my window and making it sound like she’s in the room with me, but I can’t spot where she actually is located. Not quite as irritating as the two birds who were apparently practicing their Vaudeville act right outside my window at 6:30 this morning.)
Yesterday at work was another slow day, and in addition to reading the aforementioned Big Book, I also borrowed Night at the Museum from Scott and watched it on my laptop.
It was pretty entertaining, though I have to say that I found it pretty unbelievable.
I mean, a smart, beautiful woman like Carla Gugino’s character who’s actually single? As if.
Speaking of smart, attractive women who aren’t single because this is the real world, the other day I caught a glimpse of the no longer mentioned (because she’s far too into sports, is married, and I almost never see her anymore) Flame Chick (so called because she had shoes and a jacket that featured embroidered flames on them) the other day and noted that she’s gotten some ink done on her arm.
It made me sigh, as she is one of the very few attractive women I’ve ever encountered at work, and so it was a shame that she’s so into sports (which just can’t help but be a deal-breaker...though there never would have been a “deal”to begin with because I’m Jon) and is no longer single (if she ever was when I saw her around).
Oh well.
(Ninja Talker seems to have wrapped things up, but New Dog is still pissed about having been left alone 6 hours ago and so is still barking about it. I will not miss this place when I move.)
It is, necessarily, kind of a slow news day today, so I will leave those of you – if there are any of you apart from Scott – who are interested in comics-related stuff with the following links to sites I’ve been spending a lot of time on lately.
First up is Polite Dissent, which is a blog maintained by a doctor and comics fan who often writes interesting examinations of the use of medicine in comics, among other things.
Next up is Comics Should Be Good, which actually seems to have moved here, and more specifically, the entries on Comic Urban Legends. Very entertaining stuff.
And for the rest of you, here’s a link to something totally unrelated to comics, but still entertaining (It’s possibly NSFW, depending on whether or not anyone is looking over your shoulder, and is not for the easily offended, but if you are easily offended you have no business being here in the first place, so piss of and go be offended somewhere else. Or don’t. What do I care? You’re a weirdo who has some sick need to seek out things that will shock your sensibilities and offend you so that you can get some kind of righteous indignation-based boner [or its female equivalent], so what you do or don’t do is of no concern to me, you uptight, wadded-panty freak.)
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