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Archive for November, 2004

November 5th, 2004 No comments

I may have mentioned that the repairs to the support beams here on the first floor of The Mill at White Clay Creek continue. They have now finished the drywall enclosure very close to my desk, so I can report the following amusements:

  • A great deal of welding. I can see the light reflecting through cracks in the drywall. I’m assuming it won’t blind me if I’m not seeing directly. Either way, I’ve contacted a lawyer.
  • Enough banging and bashing of metal objects to cause me to start twitching like my Ritalin ran out.
  • The sound of very loud drilling, followed by someone saying, “Just keep pressure on it,” which could mean either they are having difficulty getting into the concrete, or that someone has managed to run the drill bit through their own foot and are trying to stem the flow of blood with a flannel shirt.
  • Someone behind the wall spontaneously bursting into song: “I’m in the Mood for love . . . simply because you’re near me!!!” I swear to you, this really just happened.
  • Okay, he just did it again. I’m getting kinda scared.
  • Additionally, there is a heated discussion going on involving Murphy Brown. Something involving Kramer being a secretary. I don’t know what it means, but now I’m truly terrified.
  • Someone behind the wall has apparently dropped an entire bag of either screws, tuna cans, or 3rd century Roman coins all over the floor. They’re doing it again. And now they seem to be dancing on the detritus. I’m both frightened and confused.
  • Uh-oh…a mistake has apparently been made. There are hushed tones, periodic “oops”es, and a complete lack of audible work.
  • Now it sounds as if someone is crying…I’m not sure what’s going on, but I need to get out of here. Oh, there goes another bag of Roman coins.
  • It occurs to me that someone may have been injured inside that little drywall room, and they are currently chopping the body up and hiding it in the concrete. Note to self: don’t ask any questions.

I think it would probably be best if I closed this up and snuck the hell out of here before someone comes out of the walled-off-area and asks me what I may or may not have seen and/or heard today. If nothing appears in this space over the next few weeks, tell Carl that we have a love that will transcend death.

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November 4th, 2004 No comments

So I was starting to think, “Maybe I should change around the format of the site.” Luckily, Blogger was kind enough to help me out by destroying half my template! YAY! MY ENTHUSIASM IS OVERWHELMING!

For right now, you’ll have to deal with whatever this craptaculousness is until I can try and save my links, blogroll, etc. Give me a few days to recover.

[UPDATE as of about 2pm: I managed to bring back all the usual links on the right, and things seem to look pretty cool. The upside to losing my whole template was that I finally had to redo the basic look, which is now greatly improved. There are still a few kinks to work out, primarily: why the hell the “Wir haben keine Bananen” up there is atop the picture, rather than to the left of it; the Blogger preview shows it to the left where I want it. As usual: Blogger sucks.]

Last night HW and I went to see Bette Midler, much to Milo‘s chagrin:

MattHearnCSC: Where do you actually work? At the Wachovia? Or is there an office building somewhere?
MiloBloom34: no, i’m at the wachovia.
MattHearnCSC: I was there last night myself.
MiloBloom34: oh christ, you were not.
MiloBloom34: you did not come to that s&#t.
MattHearnCSC: What?
MiloBloom34: why were you here?
MattHearnCSC: To see Bette Midler.
MiloBloom34: I repeat, you did not come see that s*@t.
MattHearnCSC: Yes, yes I did. It was rad.
MiloBloom34: Jesus.
MiloBloom34: At what point did you realize that you’d become gay, and does sarah know?
MiloBloom34: I mean, was it the manpurse?
MattHearnCSC: She came with me.
MattHearnCSC: It was fun.
MattHearnCSC: Although the parking situation needs some work.
MiloBloom34: I’m aware she came with you, but does she know you’ve made a complete transition to fag?
MiloBloom34: you didn’t actually pay money for the tickets, did you?
MattHearnCSC: Sure.
MattHearnCSC: They were like $60 apiece or so.
MiloBloom34: that’s horrifingly disturbing.
MiloBloom34: and for the love of god, I’d be much more concerned about doling out $120 to see that circus act.
MiloBloom34: I felt sick to my stomach every time I walked past that f#&$ing gaudy-ass stairway that she rides on.
MattHearnCSC: It was totally sweet.
MattHearnCSC: I daresay “Supersweet.”

The concert really was quite incredible. Bette puts on a hell of a show, and her backup band was incredible. I enjoy watching drummers; hers was very grood. She also had what appeared to be Tina Turner playing piano and directing the band.

Bette, amusingly, drops more F-bombs than Chris Rock. I enjoy a good bit of ribaldry, so I was pleased, although some of the old ladies sitting near us were slightly put off.

My only complaint about the evening was that parking at the sports complex is still pretty poor. I would have thought they could devise a better way to get everybody into the parking areas, but unfortunately no, you still end up stuck in traffic on the Girard Point Bridge. It took us 30 minutes to get from our house to the Broad Street exit, and then 30 minutes to get the additional mile from there to where we parked. Getting out wasn’t great either, although it was a bit easier because we ended up being parked right next to a lot exit on South 11th Street, so we were home about midnight.

Okay, I better get back to trying to recover as much of my original website as I possibly can, probably while weeping. I’ll try and keep you updated as to what’s going on.

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November 3rd, 2004 7 comments

Sorry for leaving everybody hanging yesterday; my normal workday of periodically checking my tickets, answering email, not responding to voicemails, and working frantically to staunch the flow of blood from my coworker’s ravaged neck was interrupted by a nice fellow who needed to watch me work on tickets and things all afternoon. So I had postpone anything fun, like watching the exit polls, or updating this dreck, until I went home.

Then a server broke and I was stuck at the data center until 7:30pm, and by the time I got home, pork chops and beer took priority over updates. Mmmm…pork chops.

As I write this, it looks like President Bush is going to continue to be President until 2009, and I can’t say I care either way, really. Neither candidate really had anything to say that I care about, so it matters little to me which of those idiots is in office. The only thing that scares me is that 11 states banned gay marriage, but I just won’t go to those states for my gay marriage needs.

What topics DO I care about? Gee, I’m glad you asked! Although you won’t be.

  • Gun Control – Statistics prove that gun control prevents crime. Unfortunately, statistics also prove that gun control causes crime. So clearly you can trust statistics about as far as you can throw them (not very far, if the book is long and thick). So if gun control can’t be proven to prevent crime, then basically it restricts a right based on the fact that many Americans, usually Democrats, are scared of guns. Many Americans, usually Republicans, are scared of gay people. We shouldn’t control either.
  • Abortion – What a woman does with her body is pretty much her affair. I don’t think a handful of cells in a uterus is a child any more than I think that the large hairy growth I just burned off my ass with a soldering iron is a child.
  • Morality – Anyone who feels that “morality” is the primary issue when selecting a FREAKING POLITICIAN should be prevented from voting ever again. Why? Because morals are the most subjective thing ever. Your morals may say that homosexuality is wrong, and black people should stop being so uppity. My morals seem to follow along the lines of “do whatever you want, as long as you don’t prevent me from greasing up and wearing leather gimp outfits to work.”
  • Education – I’m starting to think I should homeschool. Not because I necessarily think the public schools offer a bad education; I went to public school and I learned as much there as I did in college. But unfortunately, the government schools have a slight tendency to turn people awfully liberal, and I don’t need my kids coming home and telling me “Daddy, it’s wrong that you own guns!” because the teacher browbeat it into them. True, not all teachers are like that, but it’s not as if I can pick and choose.
  • Porn – Porn should be legal. And if you want to show nudity on TV, do it on HBO. And tell Paris Hilton to cover up, because girlfriend is nasty skinny. It’s foul.
  • Drugs – If I’m snorting cocaine in the comfort of my own home, how exactly does that harm anyone else? And if you say, “Drug gang violence blah blah blah,” then slap yourself upside the head. Right now. There wouldn’t be any drug violence if the Drug War didn’t make drug violence so lucrative.

I think that’s enough political manifesto type stuff. Moving on. I have a bunch of pictures from the Halloween party last Saturday, but I haven’t found time to edit and put them up; I’ll try and get to that soon. In the meantime, I leave you with this bit of wisdom, courtesy of The Family Guy:

“Hey Americans, you like movies? I’ve got ‘Dude, My Car Is Not Where I Parked It But Praise Allah We Are Not Hurt!'”

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November 1st, 2004 1 comment

Okay, lesson learned: it is far better to have excess candy on November the First, than it is to have too little candy on October the First plus Thirty.

Actually, we started out well; we had 3 big bags of candy, including the unholy trinity of Reese’s CupsTM, ButterfingersTM, and Kit KatsTM. We even managed to not eat all of it ourselves in the days leading up to Halloween. And yet we still ran out. Twice.

I blame Sarah, for the following reasons:

  1. At the beginning of the evening, she was deeply into the festivities, and apparently began blacking out and handing out 3 or 4 candies per child. Since we started with 3 bags, and each bag contained roughly 20 pieces of refined sugar products, we were going to run out after approximately 20 children.
  2. At approximately 7pm, we realized we were going to run out, so she ran to the store to pick up more candy. While she was gone, we DID run out, and so I found myself handing out strawberry granola bars to young children. I felt like some kind of hippie dentist. Sarah returned at approximately 7:20 with one bag of ButterfingersTM. We ran out again by 8.

In the end, we were forced to turn off all the lights and huddle under blankets in the back room of the basement, muttering incoherently to the furnace (which replied by periodically warming our home slightly), and hoping the eggs that children were throwing were reasonably fresh.

They weren’t. Oh, the horror!

Luckily, we had blown out the candles in our Trogdor and The Cheat pumpkins, so they went unnoticed by the midnight hordes of surly teenagers and are still sitting on the porch, gathering slugs and mold like nobody’s business. I’ve already posted a picture of the Trogdor punkin, but one of The Cheat is forthcoming.

Speaking of The Cheat, she has developed yet another amusing nickname: Don Cheadle. Why? I don’t know.

And speaking of pictures, we had a riotous time at Kris Ungkasaahgaslksky’s party on Saturday night, and I have many, many disturbing photos. They shall hopefully be posted this evening, although I may decide to spread them out over the week to whet everyone’s appetite and add to the terror.

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