Missouri Loves Company

Labels: Dork Forest, Games, World of Warcraft

Adam West AND William Shatner in one television show? Be still my geeky little heart!

Alexander the Great

IMDB page here.

Oh, yeah, and apparently John Cassavettes and Joseph Cotten were in it, too.

Wow.

Labels: Dork Forest, Necessary Things

Not really sure what's worse:

• That they were rained out;
• That they could not legally light a bonfire for the books;
• That they couldn't find better fuel for their fire than Tom Petty and Megadeath.

Labels: Fail, Idiots, TEOTWAWKI

So I went to the deli here in my office building for lunch, and the sandwich special of the day was the New Yorker. I know what a New Yorker is supposed to be like, but I think they called this sandwich a New Yorker because the meat came from one of two remaining species indigenous to Manhattan Island: a sewer rat or a Puerto Rican.

Anyway, I ate this greasy, cheesy mass of heated corned beef sandwich, and I gotta tell you, I'm already feeling ill. Greasy-pork-sandwich-served-in-a-dirty-ashtray ill. This feeling has been aggravated by a rather nasty lop of dried grease and cheese that I discovered a few minutes ago on the knuckle of my thumb.

It's worth noting at this point that I do not moisturize my hands like my wife tells me to do. Couple this with some minor, compulsive hand-washing issues and you've got a recipe for hands that even soaking in Palmolive won't necessarily help. My hands actually ache in February they get so dry. This is important to note because I have discovered something that might help this out, if only it didn't make me so ill.

Ordinarily, I'm a fairly tidy fellow. All bets are off if I'm wearing a white shirt, naturally, but by and large, I do a better than average job of staying reasonably clean while I eat. When I noticed that I had somehow missed a lop of cheesy grease (greasy cheese?), my first reaction was, "Gah! WTF?!?" My second reaction was, "Why is only my knuckle pink?" You see, that grease and cheese had moisturized my knuckle like you wouldn't believe. The rest of my hand is alligator skin, but my knuckle looks like I just left Madge down at the beauty parlor. I have since washed my hands; still, my knuckle is silky smooth.

Things Not to Think About When You Feel Nauseated:

• Eating greasy pork sandwiches served in dirty ashtrays
• Drinking warm buttermilk with lard chunks
• Using Port-o-Lets in New Orleans during Mardi Gras
• Finding a strange short hair in the bristles of your tooth brush
• The smell of stale felafel when you open a rental car
• Licking urinals in Grand Central Station, NYC
• Maggots crawling on the back of your tongue
• Two Girls, One Cup
• Using sandwich grease to moisturize your dry skin

Gotta go now. Gag reflex kicking in. 'Bout to hurl.

Labels: Esoterica, WTF?

If you guessed Bruce Parrott, you would be right! And the reason I know this is because I received a phone call from them last night to remind me that voter turnout was low and that I, as a member of the Alliance, should go vote for him and stuff.

This ticked me off because:

1. I was in the middle of a tense fight in World of Warcraft when the phone rang, and
2. FOR THE HORDE! Down with the Alliance! And
3. I was expecting a call from my mama, so I didn't bother checking the caller I.D. before I answered, which meant that this disturbance was my own fault.

In the random scariness department, they were calling because I have not voted early this time around, and they wanted to remind me to vote. This means that whether or not you care to vote is a matter of public record, and while I think that kind of information is fair game when the election votes are being tallied and the history books are being written, it seems wrong somehow to have that information during the election. And I say this knowing full well that this is vital information to professional campaign strategists, my wife being one. I know it's not cheating, but it just feels weird when some guy calls you in the middle of TV prime time to admonish you gently for not being all-American enough to vote for the candidate of your labor union's choice.

So, I did what I do whenever I accidentally answer a telephone sales call: I screwed with him.

Guy: Did you know that voter turnout is particularly low this year, and you should probably go vote as soon as possible?

Me: Yeaaaah, I dunno.

Guy: I'm sorry, what?

Me: I don't know if I'm going to do that. It's not like District 3 has any kind of choice.

Guy: (pause) Uh, do you need more information about Mr. Parrott?

Me: No, not really. All four candidates are pretty much the same.

Guy: Well, er, uh, your union, the Alliance-AFT, fully endorses Mr. Parrott because--

Me: Oh, I know, I know. I just don't see much point in voting at all this year.

Guy: What?!?

Me: Hey, I just want to thank you for calling. You're a really nice guy. I'm going to hang up now and go do anything else. God bless you and maintain the purity of your bodily fluids.

Guy: Well, okay, be sure to vote if you can.

That was probably needlessly cruel of me, but I can't resist an opportunity to throw in a good Dr. Strangelove line. And really, if early voter turnout is really all that low, what difference does it make to me? The fear of standing in line to vote on Election Day does not rule my life, and isn't that the only purpose of early voting? To avoid lines?

I suppose that I should be nervous that Penny Anderly or Bea Whatserface--you know, the two without college degrees--that one of those two might actually edge out Parrott or Ellis. Granny Anderly's recent mail-out essentially says something along the lines of "them slicked-up college-degreed fellers downtown don't know nothin' 'bout book learnin' your young'uns." (Yes, I actually read her flyer, and it reads like some semi-literate Palin supporter from the "real Dallas" used one of them fancy cipherin' machines over at the public li-berry to do the layout.) Ellis' campaign flyer has cut a bunch of photos from the DISD website in an effort to take credit for what teachers were able to do in spite of her tenure on the school board, and all Bea Martinez has is a clever campaign slogan (Bea for the Children). I don't remember Parrott's mailer, which paradoxically speaks volumes for his campaign.

So there you go, Alliance-AFT guy, that's why I question the validity of the District 3 race. I really do think I may write in my own name if only out of exasperation.

Labels: DISD, DISD School Board, Fail, Idiots, WTF?

I was trapped in the elevator for a whole THREE minutes, the most harrowing three minutes of my... well, morning I guess. At any rate, the elevators in my office building are still randomly imprisoning people, so I would recommend taking the stairs.

Because--like--you want to come visit me in my office, or something.

For the record, I pressed '3' which is important to note since I often press 'G' when I’m on the ground floor and '3' when I’m on the third. The elevator didn’t move. I waited. The elevator still didn’t move, so I pressed 'Door Open,' and it didn’t. I then pressed 'G' to see if the elevator would unfoxtrot itself without outside intervention, and it didn’t either. By the time a live human answered the panic button, the doors opened magically. My Elevator Ride from Heck--which wasn’t really all that bad, hence it being from Heck rather than Hell--lasted a whopping three minutes, and that was enough time to convince me to take the stairs.

Have a nice day.

I know, I know, I said I quit, but I had to take a look at the Dallas Morning News' DISD Blog for old times' sake, and what I ended up with was this.

• We don't get a paragrpah that is more than one sentence long until paragraph five.
• By the author's admission, the story was published before it was fact checked.
• There's a strange, half-assed interjection of first person opinion in a piece that is supposed to be informative.

Anger and digust prevent me from elaborating further: Anger that my subscription fees fund this to some small extent, and disgust that the editorial board of the paper thinks this is good enough.

I do realize that it's a blog, but come on, DMN. This is supposed to be a form of beat journalism. I don't mind you referencing your own stories, but what you're cranking out here is simply awful writing the likes of which are insufficient for the average Facebook or MySpace entry. If this is what constitutes journalism then this blog is Pulitzer Prize-worthy.

(Psst! This blog isn't really Pulitzer Prize-worthy.)

Labels: DISD, WTF?