Friday, April 29, 2005
Three words:- Almond.
- Joy.
- Cookies
Thursday, April 28, 2005
I went for a short run tonight, to clear my head. Partly from the stress of nightmares last night, and partly from the stress of a horrible horrible run yesterday afternoon. My route today was in my neighborhood, 2.5 miles total, and thanks to the wonders of mapping software, I know where each half-mile point is. My plan was to take it easy every other half-mile, but aim for as close to a 4:00 mark on at least two of the segments. Since it's an out-and-back route (the middle half-mile is actually a quarter-mile one way, then turn around and come back), each half is a mirror of the other. The first half is almost all downhill and therefore the second half is almost all uphill in equal measure.
During the run, though, I realized that if I throw out the middle leg, I can average the times for the first and last mile and have a pretty good idea what my flat, no-hills time would be for a mile.
And I'm pretty pleased with the result. Here are the individual times:
- 4:24.90
- 4:22.85
- 5:23.94 (I really took it easy)
- 5:04.20 (This is the toughest uphill segment, very steep)
- 4:19.74
So my first mile was 8:47.75, and my last mile was 9:23.94, making my average 9:05.85! If you average over the whole thing (including the half-mile of slow-poke) then my average is still a respectable 9:30.25!
Yay, me!
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
What the fuck? George Lucas had to force himself to write Episode III? He lacked "inspiration"?What a crock of shit!
Listen, this is the middle part of a story that has already been told! There are no surprises here, none. We already know that Anakin is going to become Vader. We already know that Amidala is going to give birth to twins. We already know that Obi-Wan and Anakin are going to fight it out, probably above a volcano. We already know that Vader's going to hunt down the Jedi, and that Obi-Wan and Yoda will escape.
This movie should have practically written itself!
What, did Lucas need inspiration in how to fuck up everyone's childhood memories? Did he need inspiration in how to include stoopid CGI characters that nobody liked? Was he not "feeling it" in trying to figure out how to include characters like Han Solo, in order to make his galaxy seem as small as a rural country town?
...oh, don't get me wrong. I'll see it. I have to. It's a compulsion, like buying Cake CDs just so that you don't have an incomplete collection. Argh.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
I missed a friend's birthday this past weekend.Happy Birthday, Christi!
Just for her I'm turning comments back on. I mean, she won't be the only one who can comment, but she's been the most vocal about my not having them on.
I kinda feel like a blog without comments is like a motorcyclist riding with a helmet, but what the hell.
So comment away, commenting motherfuckers!
Monday, April 25, 2005
Good: running just over 3 miles at a 9:48 average pace. Yay! I'm a rock star!Not-so-good: having the bus simply drive on by as if you weren't standing there five minutes early, slowing only to turn the corner where you were standing.
Bad: having two Pop-Tarts (400 calories!) for dinner.
Sunday, April 24, 2005
How I know I'm (finally) addicted to running:Since Friday morning, I've been feeling like I'm coming down with a cold. Sore throat, runny nose, general aches and tiredness. No energy for much of anything. Once I'm moving, I feel extreme inertia pulling at me to stop moving, and once I've stopped moving I'm pretty much there for the next couple of hours. Can't focus on stuff, can't think clearly, people have to repeat themselves 'cause it's like I'm wrapped in a thick blanket of soft cotton padding and their words are slow to penetrate.
...except that I've gone running, even feeling like this. Twice, Friday afternoon and this morning. And done OK, too.
It's as though I have energy for nothing except running. It takes me a while to get moving, but once I am, I'm in auto-pilot mode and my body responds. But afterward... nada. Nothing. Lying on a couch, or slumped over in a chair, or, if I have to move, zombie-like and lurching around looking for a place to stop moving.
Bleh. But at least I'm running. I guess.
Running update:
- Monday: 3.0 miles, approx. 9:50 pace (indoors, on treadmill)
- Tuesday: 3.5 miles, approx. 9:50 pace (indoors, on treadmill)
- Thursday: 2.8 miles, total: 27:33, 9:50 pace (with Caleb)
- Friday: 2.8 miles, total: 27:48, 9:55 pace
- Sunday: 4.0 miles, total: 39:28, 9:52 pace
- Total miles for week: 16.1!
A very good week for me, running-wise. Lots of miles, and quality miles, too. Very consistent, time-wise. I did it in spite of my allergies and an oncoming cold. I'm ready for another 10K, I think. Maybe the Cinco de Mayo one next weekend... We'll see.
Saturday, April 23, 2005
Joss Whedon is helming a remake of Wonder Woman?There's some bogus MTV "poll" on who Joss should cast that has its results rigged to give one of three answers: Catharine Zeta Jones, Angelina Jolie, Queen Latifah (pardon me for being non-PC but WTF?!) and "unknown actress". No, I'm not gonna link to the poll; I already said it was bogus.
What a lot of people don't realize is that the creator of Wonder Woman, Dr. William Moulton Marston writing under the pseudonym of Charles Moulton, was, well, into bondage and submission -- which is why in every single comic he wrote, Wonder Woman ended up being bound somehow. And loving it. Often, other women and men were bound up somehow, too; the most obvious way being with Wonder Woman's golden lasso.
Dr. Marston was a fascinating character. Inventor of the pseudo-scientific "lie detector", a feminist theorist, and apparently happily polygamous, fathering and raising two children with two different women. He claimed to have created Wonder Woman in an effort to get boys to enjoy being bound and dominated by women:
"Wonder Woman satisfies the subconscious, elaborately disguised desire of males to be mastered by a woman who loves them."
But, apparently, the woman-dominated society Dr. Marston attempted to create by means of comic books did not come to fruition. Even the sight of Halle Berry in a leather dominatrix outfit with a whip didn't save the truly awful "Catwoman" from dying a horrible box office death, f'rinstance.
So casting Wonder Woman, a modern one, at least, is a tricky proposition. Sure, the obvious choice is Angelina Jolie, but, well, in my opinion she's a little too into the whole B/D thing. Not that that wouldn't be fun, mind you.
There's lots of non-obvious choices, or should I say, less obvious choices. But for me, there's really only one actress on my personal list of "wouldn't mind being tied up by".
My vote? I'd write in Kate Beckinsale:
Rawr
...I'm sorry. What were we talking about? Oh, right, Wonder Woman. Yeah, OK, Kate looks better in black leather/spandex/vinyl, I suppose, than the bright red-and-gold of a Wonder Woman costume. I just lost my mind there for a second.
...c'mon, you can't tell me you didn't see that one coming?
Friday, April 22, 2005
Friday Night Cat Blogging!
...and here's some more!
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Smacky may have allergies.He's got these scratches on his neck and they're scabbed over. I've been treating him for fleas (Frontline works like a champ; no more fleas) thinking that once the fleas are gone he won't scratch, but still, he scratches and scratches, and, y'know, his claws are both his best friends and his enemy. His wounds weren't getting any better so I took him to the vet.
When Dr. Bruno examined him, she suggested that he might be allergic, which was news to me. Cats can get allergies? Poor thing. I guess it's only fair, since I'm allergic to him, but still...
She gave him a cortisone shot and I've got to torture him with an antibiotic twice a day, so those of you who see me in person, expect fresh scratches on me for the next week and a half. And not entirely confined to my hands and arms, either.
I ran again tonight (I have a lot of frustration from work lately) only this time, because the weather was gorgeous, I ran outside, in my neighborhood.
I did my normal 3.5-mile loop, but pushed myself extra hard, and managed an average 9:33 pace for the first 3 miles, finishing the 3.5 miles in 34:28 (9:50 pace average -- had to walk part of the last half-mile).
I'm proud of myself for the past two runs.
Just wanted to mention that I had a great run last night, even though it was at the gym. 3.1 miles, 30:32 total time, for an average 9:50 pace, which is the fastest, farthest I've done this year. Yay, me.
I got to sit in a meeting yesterday, and have a manager look me right in my face, and justify his cover-up of a plan to use thin client to eliminate 10 jobs from my department by saying the following:
"You've caught us at an awkward point in the project implementation process."*sigh*
No, we've caught him in a lie. He's been putting the tools in place to implement this for over a year, while training the people he's hand-picked and lying or just saying nothing to the rest of the work unit, and spitting in the CIO's face and telling her it's rain, and now that he's finally being called on it, he can sit there and tell me that "there's no plan; it will only be implemented if the customers drive it."
Then why the fuck have they been allocating resources to this for over a year? And evaluating nothing else?
Does senior management have any idea how ludicrous their lies make them look? Do they not understand that we don't believe them any more?
Welcome to the Lie Factory.
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Found this on one of the internets and had to preserve it for future reference:A Girl's Guide to Geek Guys
It's almost enough to make me turn on comments again. Almost.
Friday, April 15, 2005
Friday Night Cat Blogging!
...and here's some more!
Yeah, not much posting this week, not since Monday anyway. I was going to turn the posts about meeting women in Portland into a series, and I still intend to keep writing about that, but I'm not sure I should post about girls I've met whom I might continue to see. Not without their permission, of course. But since I've had many many (many) first dates that didn't pan out, I'm not hurtin' for material, for sure.
I also have been noodling around with fiction, which I have posted on this blog before but I'm not sure I want to continue doing that. I might set aside another blog for just fiction, and leave the basically-true emotionally-filtered stuff for here.
At any rate, just popping in to say "Hey". I know that the 2 or 3 people who read this blog may have been wondering what happened to me.
Tun in later tonight for more Friday Night Cat Blogging. Smacky's been really cute/psychotic this week.
Monday, April 11, 2005
Meta note:Sorry for any potential confuzzlement. I rearranged the previous two posts so that they would follow the chronological order of the events they describe.
It'll all make more sense when the series is finished. Yes, they're parts of a series.
Just another Saturday night in Bridgetown. I'm on the west side, downtown, actually, the left side of Portland's brain. I'm ready for transport back to my stomping grounds, the east, creative, right side. A river runs through it, eh? Good thing the two halves of Portland's soul are connected. I guess that makes me, what? A nerve impulse? Yay. A tired and isolated nerve impulse, boarding public transportation along with all the other biochemical messengers.
A girl gets on the bus ahead of me. Petite, shorter than me, long dark hair with shock-streaks of blonde. Talking on her cell phone. I feel a brief tug of interest, how could I not? But as we walk down the aisle I grab my usual seat near the front and she continues on towards the back of the bus.
Except... before the next stop, she gets up and sits down directly behind me. She's still talking on the phone. Her voice has not stopped talking. I consider drowning her out with music, and make ready to pull my iPod out, when what she's saying sharpens into focus.
She's ranting. About men. "They're just so phony. Do they really expect me to tell them what part of town I live in? Do they really expect me to tell them if I have a boyfriend? I'm nothing to them, it's a means of control. They ask me that as a means to control me. Yeah, sure, I'll tell you where I Live. Like I need another stalker. They stand there, grinning, unable to conceive of any other approach, with their pants worn low and their stupid hats on sideways, and I'm just an object for their pleasure." So much anger. She's barely not taking a breath, let alone letting her friend on the phone say anything. The words tumble out, no, they stream out like a firehose.
Do I drown her out with music? Hell, no. This is interesting.
Instead, I reach into my backpack and pull out the book I bought just a half-hour ago. Ironically, a men's self-help book. "No More Mr. Nice Guy" promises the book, or maybe threatens, while the girl behind me rails against phony Mr. Nice Guys. I can't tell if she's reinforcing the book's lessons or if her anger is undercutting the message.
She begins describing, instead, the boys she likes: self-aware, complimenting her on her verbosity (yes she uses that word), her taste in clothing, her interests in art and music. These boys make fun of themselves, they laugh at themselves; this, she declares, is a sense of humor. She compares these boys to the inauthentic ones who are simply trying to get into her panties. She much prefers the ones who earn their way into her panties.
Is she a student? I'm trying to see how much I can glean from what she's saying. She still hasn't stopped talking and she's giving out a lot of information. For instance, who uses the word "verbosity"? Without turning around I can picture her, lost in her conversation, unaware of her surroundings.
Her tone, the pacing of what she's saying, suddenly strikes me; it's the sing-song cadence of someone reading something. It's an essay. She's reading it to her friend on the phone. Are these opinions hers, or does she agree with them?
I remember being lost in that same way, my consciousness existing in whatever cyberspace a phone conversation takes place, not really on the bus, rapping out some work gossip to a friend, when I became aware of others around me listening in. I apologized and explained to my friend what had interrupted me, but a man sitting in front of me smiled but couldn't look me in the eyes when he said, "No, no, go on, it's interesting. Who is Susan sleeping with?" Surely this girl is in a similar headspace.
The girl behind me, Blondestreaks, has wound down, but hasn't stopped talking. She asks her friend for advice, criticism, on what she has just read. So it must be her own writing, although for what purpose I'm not sure. Is she in school? Dare I ask her? The book in my lap urges me to ask for what I want in clear, direct language; her bitterness and polarized view of men leave me wondering which category I would fall under. Better to just keep listening and learning if I'm uncertain.
She explains, "I want to verbally castrate the men who pry into my personal life, but I want to encourage the ones with more charm. Did I get enough of a balance? Did that come through?" In my mind, it's a very fuzzy distinction. Doesn't that all depend on her mood? Does she realize this? It's not the men, or at least not necessarily, it's her reaction to the men. She's ranted out a tautology, self-defining: she likes the ones she likes and despises the ones she despises. While she continues on, granting the ones she likes with "depth" and beating the ones she doesn't with "shallowness" I turn back to my book.
I read advice about not trying to please women, but rather trying to please only myself. I read about covert contracts, where a Nice Guy does something for a woman with the unspoken understanding that they, in turn, will do the same thing back, a sneaky way to fulfill a need.
Her voice, behind me, turns to a new subject as well. "I have a Gmail account, yes, but I hardly use it." Pause. "I have a Mac. When I first tried to go to Gmail it told me something about incompatible browser or something. So I hardly use it." Pause. "I have Safari. Well, I have Internet Explorer, too. I have both. I don't know."
It's like she's there to give me an opportunity to put the book into action. Gmail works fine with Safari now. It didn't at first, but Google updated it shortly after rolling out Gmail. Do I tell her? I glance back at her but don't turn all the way. She sees the motion of my head but keeps talking. The author is asking me to list all the ways I seek approval from women. Is this one of those times? Am I just considering interrupting her conversation to show off as a "smart guy"? Paradigms clash. I turn and meet her eyes, smile, and then turn away. I've used up all my courage for the moment.
While I'm thinking, her conversation rolls on, the bus rolls across the river, and we enter the creative east side of Bridgetown. I've tuned her out as I read more about acting from confidence and not neediness, but snap back to internal attention when she says, "In Portland they cannot touch you."
She's talking about strippers now?
"In Florida... it's a grope fest. I look to my left, I see a girl humping some guy. I look to my right and I see some guy playing grab-ass, groping... They have rules in Portland. I can't touch them. They can't touch me. Portland, Los Angeles, Seattle." Now I'm sure she's talking about herself, but I still don't see how her essay fits in. I mean, I can see that she was probably talking about her customers, but did she write it for school, or for herself, or for a local paper? Is it public, or private?
She goes on about Florida. "When they interview you, they might as well just come out and ask you, 'Are you willing to sleep with the customer?' because that is, that is totally what can, and will, happen." Words are tumbling out, her anger is back. But she likes Portland, "I get to set the boundaries here. Portland is just a better place for this." I remember my earlier courage to talk to her and feel it drain away. I feel better that I didn't talk to her. Dancers have baggage. It may not be their fault, however, and with the state I'm in lately I think I'd only add my baggage to theirs. This girl seems to be dealing with it well, if I can tell from hearing a small part of her conversation... with a friend? A therapist? Another dancer? A boyfriend?
Why is it I only seem to run into the damaged ones?
Another night in Bridgetown.
Standing on the track at the Tualatin High School, I ogled the women around me, all clad in clingy tech materials, and all in decent shape or better. Yeah, there were men, too but I didn't notice them.
I turned to Caleb, who, like me, was getting ready for the start of our race. "On my way to pick you up this morning," I said, "I drove by the Portland Running Company store and saw a group leaving for a run." I paused significantly. "And they were all women. Maybe I should join that group..." I smiled.
Caleb looked briefly uncomfortable. "If you're looking for a woman without baggage, I don't know that you should be looking at runners. They're always running away from something."
I smirked, "You mean, like you and me? I don't think it's just the women, actually. Everybody's got baggage."
"I'm just saying that a higher percentage of women run because they're avoiding something." He chuckled. "I have other ways of avoiding things, I don't need running to do that. I run for other reasons."
I looked around at all the toned bodies. "Do you mean that you think everyone here has baggage?"
"No, I said a percentage. I'm just saying that you might not want to date a runner." He smiled again. "I should know, right?"
"What percentage, then?" Even though I knew Caleb was speaking generally, I pushed for specific number from him, for what reason I don't know, but asking the question allowed me some time to process what he was saying. I honestly couldn't think of any category of woman that I might meet that didn't retain the possibility of having at least some issues. Considering my hobbies and my habits, where else am I going to meet women? And what the hell; I know I've got issues, too.
"Sixty percent." Caleb stated it flatly. I suspect he knew I was pushing for an unrealistic assessment from him, but he accomodated my defense mechanism.
"OK, sixty percent," I said, as we shuffled forward towards the starting line, "I like those odds."
Saturday, April 09, 2005
My unofficial time in today's 5K race is 30:27.52, for a 9:48 pace. I kept track of my splits: Mile 1 - 9:32.19; Mile 2 - 10:16.00; Mile 3 - 9:46.96. (The middle part had the most uphill portion; the first and third miles were mostly downhill). Not my personal best (I did that last year in the Lake Run 5K) but a decent time.Caleb did at least 30 seconds better than me, probably even more than that.
It was an awesome day for a race, though; no clouds, just a small bit of wind, a little cold but not once I got warmed up. All in all it's a nice race.
Friday, April 08, 2005
Friday Night Cat Blogging!
...and here's some more!
Since I passed on running in the pouring-down-rain in the Bridge to Bridge 5K, and I still wanted to do at least one race this month, I signed up for the Running with Wolves 5K on Saturday.
It's supposed to be a hilly course so it should be challenging. I ran up Terwilliger Blvd. yesterday (Duninway Park to the Charthouse and back down) in preparation. Yay.
Why? Why do things have to change? Can't things stay the same forever?
*sigh*
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Poor old Philip K. Dick. A writer born with an immense amount of talent and an eager, open mind, but easily hurt by the cruel-seeming ways with which his fellow travellers treated him. One of Phil's major themes in his stories could be summed up in the question "What makes us human?" Time and again, he came down on the side of empathy as the most essential human trait. People who could show empathy to others were human; those without that ability were synthetic beings, as eerie as a life-like but otherwise empty mannequin of a human.
To be sure, playful Phil liked to turn his themes upside down from time to time; witness the android Abraham Lincoln in "We Can Build You" -- technically a mechanical man, but still capable of a surprising amount of emotional life, quite possibly exceeding that of his creators.
Examples of Phil's ideal humans are often the main characters in his stories. But the ones we remember most are the female characters who embody his duality of human-or-android. Rachel in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" or Pris in "We Can Build You" show what Phil imagined was the less empathetic end of the scale. Pris, for example, was borderline psychotic and unable to love Louis, the protagonist of the novel. Louis is forced to compare the flesh-and-blood PRis to the gears-and-springs Abe Lincoln and, sadly (maybe inevitably, due to Phil's world view) the flesh falls short, as it ever does.
Phil's biographers have drawn paralels between Phil's view of humanity, particularly his view of femininity, and Phil's personal life. The connection seems obvious, at least to me. Phil was always searching for a woman who would allow him to be as close to her as possible, who would not take the opportunity to hurt and attack him if he showed his human vulnerability. A woman who would recognize that there was a part of him that felt pain when someone lied to him. Phil was aware and mature enough to recognize that people were far from perfect, to be sure; however, he also needed others to acknowledge their imperfections in a specific way. While he was hurt, as he was by the young runaway Donna with whom he lived for a while, he also desired others to speak to him about their actions, to try to repair the damage done to him and to the relationship that existed between them, to make amends. That was the best use of empathy in Phil Dick's mind; to use positive, healing actions and words to salve the wounds caused by our human imperfections.
The Five-factor model gives us a way to describe complex human behavior, and rates its subject on five different scales. In a strict scientific sense the Five-factor model has flaws; for one thing, it makes no predictions and it appears to be unverifiable (there's a similar model, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, that shares similar flaws) but if used simply as a way to describe a snapshot in time of a subject's personality, and not as a hard-and-fast definitive view, it can be a useful shorthand.
The factors are: Extraversion, which measures the energy level of the individual in seeking social contact; Agreeableness, which measures cooperation and social harmony; Conscientiousness, which meausres how well an individual handles impulses, needs, and wants; Emotional Stability, which rates a subjects sensitivity to their inner emotional life; and Openness, which attempts to rate the person's creativity and flexibility of thought.
Using this scale, and having read several biographies of Phil Dick's life, I think that it's easy to see that while Phil would score high in Agreeability and Openness, he would likely score low in Extraversion and Emotional Stability, a mixture that informs the characters he wrestled with in his novels. He liked being around people and would willingly continue an interaction, but would rarely initiate contact. And then, as people would reveal their discomfort for the intense intimacy that Phil preferred, or the less scrupulous would take advantage of it, Phil would feel an almost physical pain, cut to the core by their actions.
Like most of us, Phil tended to assume that the world would be a much better place if most others thought the same way he did, a blindness that caused him to elevate what he thought were his better values to absolute virtues; namely his love of positive interaction with others, his concern for people's immediate well-being, his need to feel that concern reciprocated. His empathy.
Rarely did he find it in his sadly shortened life. But the few times he did were the hallmarks of a very human life.
I find it easy to identify with Phil's values, since I believe I share many of his personality traits. I would imagine that our scores in the Five Factor model would be very similar, although I might score a bit lower in Agreeableness than Phil. But, certainly, the ability to not only feel other's emotions, but to respond and react to them, to attempt to redress the negative impact one has on others and to encourage the positive impact on others is an immensely valuable quality. And rare.
Consider the case of someone who recognizes that lying and shutting others out and showing disrespect to someone with whom they wish friendship is bad, recognizes that that is the result of their actions... but continues to insist that they are friends. There's a strange disconnect, treating these very negative traits as though they were simply a part of them, like their fingernails or their height, something that needs to be accepted, that in fact must be accepted as the price to pay for their superficially friendly interaction? There is a chasm between what I value and the actions they take that, I believe, preclude friendship. Such a person would be so alien to my way of thinking that I would have to borrow Phil's term and call them an "android".
My low score in Extraversion suggest my strategy for dealing with this; avoidance of the person involved. But a high score in Openness and moderate score for Agreeableness likewise suggest (accurately, but, then, bear with me as I abuse the model to drive home a point) that I would be amenable to the other person attempting to make amends.
But it would have to start with an apology. I would need to see that not only does the other acknowledge the conflict, but is attempting to redress the conflict.
If such a person stated that they were aware of these conflicts of values, how, then, could they consider leaving a door open for friendship without attempting to change? Behavior is not like the number of toes on your foot or the placement of your eyes; behavior can be changed, can be modified. It's mutable, within limits. And if, as I realize that others may believe, it's not able to be changed, then continued interaction is only going to continue to hurt at least one and probably both participants. And we only tend to hurt those we see as less than human, or we attack to cover our own vulnerabilty, or we lash out when we ourselves are fearful of impending hurt. Assuming one cares about the well-being of people we call friends, and assuming one doesn't want to purposely hurt people one cares about (need I assume that?), and assuming one has relinquished all control over ones behavior... the only remaining solution, then, is complete avoidance.
Is it that unimaginable that someone would see the contradictions and want to exclude such a hollow person from their life? I understand that not everyone values the same things I value; I put a very high value on honesty and openness, maybe sometimes too high. But I also recognize that folks who have other values, and who place a low emphasis on the things I value, are poor candidates for friendship. And so I'm not going to push myself on people who exist in such a different world than myself. I accept my limitations and I seek to minimize them in my normal, day-to-day interactions with others.
But unless someone else has the self-awareness to understand that I have a part of myself that can be hurt by actions that they see as insignifant, I am not going to seek a closer relationship to that person. I am, in fact, going to avoid them, and to defend myself whenever someone like that reveals themself to me. It's not a judgement I make quickly, by any means. But once I'm aware of that conflict in values, I am going to be constantly on my guard, and it would require greater and greater efforts by the other to overcome that defensiveness. That conflict in values is going to color even the simplest interaction I have with them. I'm open to change, but if the other states that change, for them, is not possible, what choice do I have?
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
So there's this contest Pepsi and Apple are running. Certain bottles of Pepsi products have yellow caps and in 1/3 of the yellow caps have codes in them that are able to be traded in for free song downloads at the iTunes Music Store.I've been playing it since it started. Turns out that, by tipping the bottles back, it's actually pretty easy to tell if the cap is a winner or not. After a few misses, I got to the point where I could win every single time.
I normally like Diet Vanilla Coke, or Diet Coke with Lime, but I figured that if I'm going to be drinking soda anyway, might as well be building up downloads at the iTunes Music Store, right?
For a while, I was winning at least once a day. But after a while, I think the word got out about the game, and all the stores I frequented ran out of Diet Pepsis with winning yellow caps. And then they ran out of any Diets with yellow caps at all. And Diet Pepsi was the only diet product that had the yellow caps.
For the past couple of weeks I've been stuck at 29 free songs to download. That un-round number, just one away from a nice even 30... man, it nagged at me. I even started looking under the non-diet Pepsi products, but by the time I gave in, there weren't any winners among the non-diet drinks, either. Argh.
So, today, at work, I was helping another tech in the basement of some County building, scrounging up power cords (don't ask) and we entered a musty old room and turned on the light...
And there were two empty pop bottles, left behind by someone else. One of them, a Diet Pepsi with a yellow cap.
I scooped it up, unscrewed the cap... and, yep, there was a winning code!
Whoo-HOO! We have a WINNAH!
Hellooooooooo, thirty downloads!
Frickin' robotic shark.
Where's the frickin' laser beams on its frickin' head?
Monday, April 04, 2005
Note to self:Continue avoiding people who are empty and have nothing to offer you.
Side note to self:
Also don't forget the lessons blogged here and here.
Valentine's Day marmot.
Mmmm...
4:30 AM - First alarm. Woke me from a dream about a meeting of everyone I've ever known, discussing the possible next things President Bush is going to do to stay in power. Damn all this political thinking is getting to me. Sleep without rest, too tired to get up (the first alarm is set to the time I'd need to get up to go running before work) so I shut off the first alarm and slide down the slope to sleep again.
5:03 AM - Wake up again before the alarm. Hate it when that happens. As my consciousness gathers itself I realize that I was awakened by Smacky meowing and scratching at the door. My bladder is full but I judge that it can wait until the actual alarm goes off. I roll over, find a cool spot in the bed, yank the covers up over my shoulders, and sleep again finds me.
5:35 AM - This time the dream is about being caught by my mom in bed masturbating. Which never actually happened. I suppose this is better than the political dreams... but maybe not. The shame of it has awakened me 10 minutes before the alarm will go off. I hate that. I feel even more sleepy than an hour before, and I start to seriously consider calling in sick to work. I mean, I always think about it, every single morning, but this time I give it a serious rundown of the drawbacks and advantages. Or at least, I start to before I remember that I've got 10 more minutes of sleep I could be getting. Nighty-night (sorta).
5:45 AM - Second alarm. My heart explodes into action, my entire body spasms at the noise, but my eyes stay curiously clenched shut. I pry them open to confirm, that, yes, I am still in bed and not, say, plastered to the ceiling. Also the bed's in my own bedroom, and not, say, in Abu Ghraib. Yay. My first thought upon being able to think again is to calculate how much sick time I should have, which turns out to be exactly one day, 8 hours, since last Friday was the start of a pay period and I should have earned another half-day. Damn, I really could call in sick. And what would I do? I would sleep all day, then regret taking the day off but not doing anything constructive. It's not like my job is that difficult. Heck, with my new boss it's much less stressful than before. I know! Maybe I'll just call in late.
5:55 AM - I drag myself out of bed, carefully step over the meowing Smacky in the hallway, who has prostrated himself at my feet begging for attention, and stumble down the hall to the computer. Still suspended between sleep and not-sleep, I log in to my work email. I'm looking for an option to delay sending an email until a specified time. Outlook has this feature but since I'm at home all I have is the web-based version.
5:56 AM - Smacky is stretching himself out and up, reaching for my shoulders. With a twitch he jumps up on my shoulders, purring, as I sit in front of the computer, and settles himself in. I have my answer about the email option: nope. What to do? Back to bed, set the alarm for later, get up and send the email saying I'm going to be late, then back to bed for a while? Or... groan... now that I'm up I might as well stay up. Smacky starts biting my shoulder through the thin t-shirt, prompting a yelp from me. I twist and shake him off, shouting "Nononono! No biting!" He scampers off, now in a playful mood, since I'm too sleepy to pet him, and attacks the chair in the living room. I hear the skritching sounds of him tearing at the fabric.
5:07 AM - Until I glance at the clock in the bathroom I was unaware of two things: a) that after shaking Smacky off I had sat, barely conscious, in front of the computer for at least 10 minutes, and b) I had missed the bathroom clock during my Daylight Savings Time Reset "Spring ahead, Fall back!" Extravaganza. Luckily, all the important clocks in my house set themselves (cell phone, computer, laptop, VCR). I'll deal with it later. I start up the shower, which always prompts Smacky to attack my feet, which always prompts me to jump into the shower before it's entirely hot water. I reflect on having gone from "too tired to go to work" through "too tired to go to work on time" to "too tired but going to work anyway".
Pretty normal for Monday.
Sunday, April 03, 2005
The only way I was not going to participate in the Bridge to Bridge 5K today was if it was pouring down rain....so, yeah, I didn't participate. Stupid rain.
In penance I did 4 miles at the gym instead. Not quite the social gathering a race is, but...
Did you know that cycling backwards on the elliptical trainer really works the booty? There was this girl who already had it goin' on but was goin' at it bass-ackwards like it was goin' out of style.
It was... hypnotic. My four miles were done before I knew it.
I want to become less anti-social.
Is it possible to do that, and still hate people?
'Cause that's what I want.
Friday, April 01, 2005
On my way back from getting lunch (SubWay sandwich. Don't ask me what kind; they all taste the same, anyway) I was waiting in a lobby for the elevator with a coworker. When the elevator came, she (I'll call her "N"), a petite and thin Asian woman, pushed forward but had to stop as the three folks riding down got off. I laughed as we got on the elevator and said, "Out before in, didn't you know that?"
She laughed, nervously, and said, "Oh, I know." After a reflective pause, she confided, "I got a fine once in Asia for that."
I was delighted! "You did? That's awesome!" I pictured a white-gloved uniformed man with a whistle writing out a ticket for her.
"Yeah. They don't do that here."
"No, no, they don't. Here it's just a rarely-observed matter of etiquette."
"Yeah."
After a brief silence she said, "I lived in Singapore and in Singapore they will arrest you and beat you up for spitting your gum out." She paused, smiling, then emphasized the point, "really beat you up." I was confused by her mixed signals. Was she embarassed by this? Or happy? Or lying? I couldn't tell.
"Oh, I know, I've heard about Singapore. Where were you when you got the fine?"
"Japan."
"Ah. Right. Right. Those silly Japanese."
For the record, I hate the internets on April Fool's Day.
Case in point -- both of these appeared today:
Click on image for full size 'toon. Pops in new window.
Argh. OK, OK, I get it.
Oh, and, also for the record? It's funnier when Bucky does it. Just sayin'.
Update
Looks like Pearls Before Swine was in on the joke, too.
I shouldn't eat sharp things (like deadly Doritos Black Pepper Jack chips) while my mouth is still healing from a burrito-induced burn last night.
Owie.
