Wildean Shit at the Local

As my landlady is going broke, there is no longer steady internet at home.

As there is steady internet at the local I am rarely home.

Thus I get to hear a range of bon mots. The dude in the fake motorcycle gear was special. Walked in, ordered a Becks for his girlfriend (!!!! well.. ok, I have one, so there's no accounting for taste) and when he heard there were none yelled across the bar asking if she'd take a "heiney-licking" instead? How risible! Repeated 15 times over the next 35 seconds? Not so clever. We can all hear.

The next drink needed to be a cocktail so he ordered a "gin n colonic" and offered to buy a round, without the gin, for the entire bar. Again, in case the subtlety of the joke was lost on a lout like myself, he repeated the joke 15 times.

For his next sally he asked for a drink without a "crap on the glass! My girlfriend hates a glass with a crap on it." To make sure this was true he yelled to her across the bar (she was playing pool) asking if she hated glasses with craps on them. She yelled back that she hated a crack on a glass and when the dude said "well, that's even worse, since crap is protein and crack is illegal," I decided to go home.

Probably for the best, and I didn't want to be about when our local Bob Hope remembered the 'other' meaning of the word crack.....

Woot!

Seems to be a possibility I will get either..

a photo-essay in Education in Asia, or

The cover shot!

Either would be lovely and so now I'm reduced to crossing my fingers. ;-)

And who is to blame?

Cho Sehui notes that one brilliance of industrial capitalism is that it is difficult to point a finger. You can identify the crack-head, but not the systematic murderer...

“They … Who can be more specific than that? One of their characteristics is that until the day they die they won’t assume responsibility for a single thing. They all have plausible alibis. … It’s also a scheme to develop you gentlemen and your successors as human capital. Gentlemen, we are not the ends, you and I. Rather, we’ve become the means without realizing it.”

YouTube Test..

if it works.. this will be my first YouTube.. which puts me pretty far behind the curve. ;-)

One more thing not found on Google..

"who is righteous, what is love?"

I would have thought someone (probably a teen blogger) would have asked that.

And, yes.. I only came up with that phrase because I COMPLETELY missed a lyric.. ;-)

Also.. because BAG is asking pesky questions about old Eddie Poe, we come across..

"addiction is the ultimate freedom"

now really.. shouldn't some juiced up hophead have written that in their 25,000 word post on how only they saw the injustice of the world and how difficult that sweet knowledge is?

And then THAT lead me to an ultimate truth that google has never admitted -

"freedom is the ultimate addiction"

Deeeewd.. that is so right on...

or I need to go to sleep...

Away Blogger

I have been very away recently.. what with all the writing for hire and actual travel. But the BAG, in a display of shocking efficiency, went out and got a temporary job that started the day after the xmas shut-down of her job at the college! And it pays a bit more. Someone should watch that chick, she may be getting it. ;-)

In celebration we went out for sushi and sitting there came across a new sake product. I swiped the table-tent which advertised it and it is scanned here for someone's delectation. First thing I noticed is that this is definitely not aimed at men. As I gazed at its overwhelming bubbly pinkness I could feel a nascent set of ovaries developing, way deep down in my body somewhere I couldn't exactly place. I quickly swigged some of my beer and belched. I'm sure the Japanese characters on the label say something like "girly-man."
I am impressed, however, by the phrase "Sparkling Flower" (although it really should be used to name a firework, not some girly Japanese hooch) and will add it to my list of silly nicknames.

On the other side was this odd layout. I wasn't sure why any self-respecting firm would give their product a "Sake Meter Value" negative rating, but there it is, the "-60". A bit of research indicates this means it is a sweet Sake, but I might take that "Value" out of there. It has multiple meanings. Semi-bad marketing.

Then again there is also the "serve chilled for maximum refreshment" which is often times a warning that if your taste buds aren't frozen, you really won't like the thing.

The remaining bits off the label, the Japanese characters, are semi-traditional stuff: Threats to "get back at the US" for WWII and several lines from an old lease to Dokdo Island.

I wonder if anyone orders this stuff?

But of Course...

It would have to be this way..

You'll die from a Drug or Alcohol accident.

Let's face it - when you get drunk/high you lose all control and do stupid stuff. Unfortunately in your case those propaganda anti-escapism commercials prove true.

'How will you die?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Computer in a body BAG

Really, this is all the BAG’s fault. On any given day I will be the recipient of (from BAG) between 10 and 350 IM messages, 2 – 10 emails, and 3 phone calls. This is now like the sound of the oxygen tank to the dying emphysemic. Nothing but background noise on the rain-slicked road to Hell.

Take it away and things seem mickle weird. So when I didn’t receive a single message from Sunday night until I went to sleep on Monday night I noticed it. Also, given the BAGs skill at driving, at any given moment there is a 13% chance that she is in a wheels-locked skid, at the side of the road being lectured by a cop, or held, upside down, by her seatbelt, in a culvert. The reality and the possibility might have intersected in a hail of glass and a tangle of steel.

I was so worried about this possibility that I went to sleep early.

Not unaccountably, for a man of my advanced age, I woke up Tuesday morning at about 4:30. While deciding whether I would go to the bathroom or not (it was cooooold) I pulled the laptop up onto the bed and turned it on. At which point it told me it was 1969 and that I might therefore have some problems. Not the least of which being the BAG would be pissed I had suddenly become pre-pubertal and that work would lower my wages if not fire me outright.

“I should just shut this down and deal with it in the morning, thought I.” But I had second thoughts.

The problems were odd, but not impossible. OK.. obviously not impossible. So I clicked on control panels, clicked on date and time, clicked on year and rolled it, clicked on day and rolled it, clicked on time and rolled it. Excellent, now time to check IM.

Hmm.. no message from BAG.. I decided to send her one. Which was when I first figured out that while I could click, drag and move (which sounds like an excellent song title for one of those post-pop pop bands) I couldn’t type a damned thing.

“I should just shut this down and deal with it in the morning, thought I.”

This was a thought I immediately ignored. Restarted the thing. Same symptoms. Scratched head. “Aha!” says I! “What if I plug in my external keyboard and see if it works?”

I’m a big thinker, you see. The thought was that this would tell me if I had a hardware problem from the big fall last week.

Lo and behold, the external keyboard worked.

“I should just shut this down and deal with it in the morning, thought I.”

I’m not one to get “third-time lucky” either.

I restarted it again and noticed that the system buttons were now missing initial letters, the battery monitor had disappeared, and attempted restarts just ended in weird grey screens.

So, perhaps, hardware and systems problems? I ran HD diagnostics and they came up completely clean.

“I should just shut this down and deal with it in the morning, thought I.”

Yeah.. you know…

I restarted the thing by pulling battery and cable and rebooted. Then I remembered what architects do when they have a foundation that is rotted and uncertain, condemned and unsafe

----they start slapping extra stories on the mother-fucking building!

Which is why, at about 5:00 that morning I downloaded the latest online system upgrade and installed it.

Which was pretty much like putting a pillow over your aged grandmother’s face until her pathetic struggles stop.

Grey screen.

At 5:30 I was doing a complete system re-install. In a t-shirt and underwear (an inexplicably gross tableau for anyone who knows me) on the floor, shivering in fear and cold.

Since I had only about 4 gigs free, there was not enough space. I briefly contemplated suicide (Not mine.. I thought it would be a good thing for the guy at work who always wears running shorts). Then I started hacking the installation down until it would fit. It still installed all kinds of mac shit I don’t want – “begone foul I-Cal!” And why it always re-installs an old version of iTunes, I have no idea… it really isn't my idea of a "minimum" system install.

Finally, finally, about 6:50am, I had a marginally useful computer. I re-downloaded the updates, ran them and at 7, beaten and too tired to even make sure that my links to online porn were intact, I went back to bed. It took about 10 minutes with whole body under the covers until I regained feeling. Which was a not-so-good idea, because that feeling was painful cold. I slept for about 50 minutes until the pain from the frostbite on my defrosting toes woke me up and I staggered to work on bloodied stumps of feet.

The computer, anyway, was working. ;-)

I blame the BAG. Didn’t even call!

And as a guy, nothing can be my fault. It's the law.

Someone wins at the Intarwebs..

By revealing their desire for Johnny Depp in just this way..

"Johnny's great. And by great, I mean graight. And by graight I mean gay-straight. And by that I mean gay.?

Every Once In a While..

you realize you hate your work..
and you are busy writing someone's thesis
and you are applying for jobs in Korea..

ok.. only once then...

but as part of it you are getting your music collection digitized so that it can follow you wherever you go (Ipod's are small enough to fit in coffins OR urns!).

So then you go through your CDs and try to Limewire anything you seem to recognize. At this point you discover (relearn?) two things....

The Gattdamnt Dead Boys were one of the greatest Punk Rawk bands ever. And the newly remastered version of 3rd Generation Nation is effing brilliant.

And then, as you are congratulating yourself on your brilliant taste you go back and check that last song you downloaded....

Brimful of Asha.....

and you hate yer fucking self...

cause you suck.

Holy Crap! Those Candian...Caendien... Northerners Take Worplace Safety Seriously!

A somber warning to us all...

Oh Frabjous Day

First.. I buy a new Ipod (after I hurled the last one to the ground one too many times - I can't bitch, it lasted 5 years and on the original battery). And it is a thing of beauty and the Apple Store just scans it, hands it to me, and says we'll email you the receipt. In and out in about 3.5 minutes. Beautiful.

Second - meeting with the Pres is as perfect as any I've ever been in. I have everything he asks for, including the things that aren't on our list, and he says if I end up staying next Spring I get me a lovely private office in the Student Center.

Third, I walked in and out of work today, so on the way home I stopped in the local to get a bit of something to ward off the cold. They have installed free wireless access! Fortunately for me I'd left my power cord at work, so I couldn't stay too long in celebration. Besides, I need to work on my conference presentation and the MA for the other person.

But the idea that the wireless will be there when I watch me the NFL whilst drinking an overpriced domestic? Brilliant!

Writing fer Money, Reward in Trash

I wish that little anonymouse I had a few months ago would come back... I'm sure she would have something to say about the fact that I'm writing a friend's thesis. ;-)

For money, of course, so that's ok since it's Capitalism. And maybe it isn't a friend.. you know.. an acquaintance, more or less..

But here's the interesting bit .... I cranked out 1000 words tonight without the slightest problem or second thought. Just line after line of prose as I peered at journal articles on Questia. And it's probably as good as any writing as I do. Which makes me wonder why I have such a hard time with my own writing. If the quality were higher when I was writing for myself, that would mean one thing. But this stuff was sleek, academic, and gloriously, gloriously empty. It will certainly get a degree.

As a reward for that writing I stayed up late and watched.... whatever William Shatner is now starring in. And it is spectacular trash. And by spectacular I mean totally trashy and awesome.....

Aaah.. and I bookmarked all those lovely jobs in Korea...

"shut your whore mouth or I'll cut you again"

now really.. how is that not on the intarwebs... somewhere?

Scrapology

LOL.. the last punchline from evil Friday is that just now, as I looked for something in my backpack, the missing 1 gig compactflash card fell out of a seam. It was there all the time and thus the panicked run to the Snakeway was completely unecessary.

Ho hum…. A perfectly awful ending to a perfectly awful day that actually ended ok.

Walked to and from work today, which gave me a splendid chance to think about things It was a splendid chance I declined to take. It was too nice to think….

Got the two reviews for Acta Koreana done, and will send them off when I get home tonight. I read online they are refereed, but it doesn’t seem I’m going through that process OR, I’ve misinterpreted and I still have to. Then I need to quickly query the other folks about the piece on Korean Marriage, or a review of Three Generations. Might be too much because..

.. I need to send an email to the chick with the Master’s thesis.. I haven’t heard from her and I will need to work like a maniac to finish it if she still wants it. Maybe I’ll start my reading tonight and take a few notes….. If it’s still on I’ll be huddled in a hotel all weekend. One with a gym ;-)

Brainectomy

Is the upshot of my computer travails... After a Saturday morning of repairs I have a computer that works, mostly.

It has issues... CDs mount but don't show up on the desktop every time. Sometimes it won't shut down.

But I got it back and spent all Saturday afternoon backing everything (completely!) up.

So if it should code again, at least I'm protected...

Tomorrow I get the last piece of paper I need for Korea applications.. I hope...

Spent the day at teh Korean Embassy working on stragedies..

we shall see...

Aiiiiiieeeeee!

So I'm photographing a wedding.. a real quick in-and-out job (like the honeymoon, I bet). It's someone from work who met his bride less than 3 months ago, first dated her less than a month ago, and got married today (Friday). The ceremony was moved.. I barely made it since no one bothered to inform me and it was also 2.5 hours before the reception. Being in the basement of the county building, it had a 10-minute time-slot - they move em in-and-out, hereabouts. And once it was done the best man and I decided to head out and get lunch (for me) and drinks (for both). We did and I copied the photos to my laptop, charged my batteries, erased the cards... did all the prep things. It got to be time to go and I picked up my camera case and computer case and...

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzWHAAAAAACK!

That, my friends, is the sound of a laptop falling out of an unzipping case and falling to the floor. And then, of course, not working any more....

So.. this is bad. I back up at least once a month, but this time I actually went 32 days. Plus, there's all those wedding pictures there and the computer just clicks and hangs. I recognize this as the sound of a broken HD. I rush to the reception thinking.. ok.. at least I won't use the card with the erased wedding pics.. they can probably be recovered as they have only been erased, not written over..

Get to the reception... somewhere in all this fun I have lost my other card... Siiiiiiiiiigh...

Quick trip to the Snakeway, which only has one 256mb card left, which I purchase. I dunno how anyone else ever purchased one, since they are not in the computer system and so this whole thing takes way to long....

back to the reception where I have to set picture quality to medium (ick!) and a semi-dreary reception (though I did well with the champagne) in a 1930s semi-German, semi-campground-hall room with a sticky front door and one bathroom.

Shots there and then home in a funk as I see big expenditures looming on the horizon.....