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Archive for October, 2006

October 31st, 2006 7 comments

You know I can’t resist an idiotic meme of any kind. This one is entitled:

HOW MUCH HAVE YOU CHANGED IN 10 YEARS

TEN YEARS AGO………………………………………………………

How old were you?
18, and ignoring my responsibility to vote.

Where did you go to school?
Peabody Conservatory, where I learned to hate musicians with a fire equalled only by my hatred for people who sit in the left lane without passing. (The hatred of musicians has abated, mostly.)

Where did you work?
I manned the soundboard for the recording department at Peabody, taping people’s recitals and The Like, until I got fired for incompetence.

Where did you live?
Baltimore, although I still maintained offices in Wilmington, DE. (My parents’ house.)

Where did you hang out?
Mostly on campus, smoking heavily and ignoring my studies. I was a real winner!

What was your hairstyle?
Unkempt.

Did you wear glasses?
Nay nay. Still don’t. Shoot, did I give something away? Forget I said anything.

Who was your best friend?
Hmmmmmmm. That’s a toughie. I had sort of a crew of pepys from back home that included Sarah (my future wife), Josh, Milo, Stefan, some others.

Who was your regular-person crush?
I think at the time I was still all up onz my wife.

How many tattoos did you have?
None.

How many piercings did you have?
None.

What car did you drive?
I was living in the city, so I didn’t drive much. I borrowed my parents’/sister’s Saturn occasionally if I was home.

What was your favorite band/group?
Criminey, who knows. Jackson Browne, maybe? My tastes change daily.

What was your worst fear?
I’m more afraid of bein’ nothin’ than I am of bein’ hurt.

Had you driven yet?
Heck yes, hoss. I’d been driving for two years, and had multiple citations for speeding.

Had you been to a real party yet?
The first party I went to in college was at some guitarist’s house, and I drank vodka punch until I threw up all over his kitchen and someone rolled me up in a blanket and left me there for the rest of the night. Classy evening.

Had your heart broken?
Yeah, sure. Happened all the time, because I was basically retarded. Still am.

Single/Taken/Married/Divorced/Bitter:
Taken.

FIVE YEARS AGO……………………………………………….

How old were you?
23.

Where did you go to school?
I had just graduated from U of Del.

Where did you work?
Computer company in Newark. Same place I work now, in fact.

Where did you live?
We had just moved into a righteous rental house near Price’s Corner. It was out-damn-standing. I miss that house, occasionally, even though the location was for crap and it only had one bathroom and the basement occasionally flooded (the first time, approximately 12 hours before my parents 30th anniversary party).

Where did you hang out?
Mostly at the Charcoal Pit that was roughly 50 yards from our house. No kids at the time, so HW and I would get home, walk down, eat burgers, drink too much, and then stumble home. It was the bomb.

How was your hair style?
Varied. Usually fairly short.

Did you wear glasses?
Hecks no.

Who was your best friend?
In the interest of marital bliss, let’s say my wife.

Who was your regular-person crush?
(As opposed to my irregular-person crush?) In the interest of marital bliss, let’s say my wife.

How many tattoos did you have?
Just the one, I think, I got it that summer.

How many piercings did you have?
Zero, junior.

What car did you drive?
Ah, my pickup. 2002 Ford F150. Black. Stick shift. I miss that truck immensely.

What was your favorite band/group?
I have no earthly clue. It’s all I can do to remember my name, most days.

What was your worst fear?
Never paying off my credit cards.

Had you been to a real party yet?
I’d thrown a few of my own, at which I frequently removed my pants. For charity.

Had your heart broken?
Hey, sure. Why not.

Single/Taken/Married/Divorced/Bitter:
Married.

**OCTOBER 2006**

How old are you?
28

Where do you work?
Crappy computer company. Same one, in fact.

Where do you live?
It’s locked down in New Castle, beotch!

Where do you hang out?
At my house with my little boy, mostly.

How is your hair style?
Long and ridiculous.

Do you wear glasses?
No sir. 40/20 vision. Which means I can see what you are doing right now. PUT THAT AWAY.

Who are your best friends?
Sarah and Charles.

Do you talk to your old friends?
The ones that will still talk to me, sure.

How many piercings do you have
Still none.

How many tattoos?
Still one.

What kind of car do you have?
Driving Sarah’s old Mazda Protege with sorority stickers on the back. Wooooo!

What is your favorite band/group?
John Mayer, at the moment. I have a mancrush on him.

What is your biggest fear?
I try not to put voice to my fears (I find it tends to make it a little TOO real), but since I have a 5-month-old son, you can probably figure it out.

Have you been arrested, if so how many times total?
I have no recollection of that, Senator.

Has your heart been broken?
Not recently.

Single/Taken/Married/Divorced/Bitter
Married. Still bitter, though. Ha ha! Just kidding! Put the knife down, honey!

Oh, Happy Halloween and whatnot.

Categories: tmi Tags:

October 30th, 2006 No comments

I got pulled over on Saturday, but received no ticket. Wooooooooo, says I.

It was rather late (I had actually just turned the clock in my car back, as it was 2am EDT and 1am EST) and was heading home from the Carmen cast-party (Carmen opened TEH BOMBZORZ, as expected) and traffic was heavy (I don’t know why; this is the third parenthetical aside this sentence, a new record even for me). Over on the right hand side of I-95, the cops were sitting with their flashers going, which usually indicates they’ve already pulled over somebody, so slowing down is dumb. Everybody, of course, slowed down, including one idiot that swerved in front of me and then hit the brakes.

So I flashed my highbeams, swerved around him, and accelerated back to a healthy seventy miles per hour. Apparently the policefolks disapproved of this move, so they chased me down.

“What’s going on?” he asked. He appeared to be one bright policeman. What does one say to that? I went with

“Um…nothing, officer.”

“Where you goin’ in such a hurry? I saw you whip in and out of traffic back there.”

“Well, sir, the fellow in front of me swerved into my lane and hit the brakes when he saw you folks, so I had to swerve around him to keep from hitting him.”

The officer grunted at this. “You have anything to drink tonight?”

“Yes sir. I had two beers about 2 hours ago.” This was true; I’d stopped drinking at the party around midnight.

“Just two beers?”

“Yes sir.”

“Got your license, registration and insurance?” I handed them over, and he went back to his car, while I sat and waited. I couldn’t figure out exactly what they intended to charge me with; he couldn’t possibly have clocked my speed from where he was. I assumed they might charge me with an unsafe lane change, which I figured I could probably fight successfully in court, since technically a guy did change lanes in front of me and hit his brakes. I assumed I would probably get a warning for having one headlight out (the Mazda seems to go through them like Rush Limbaugh goes through oatmeal cream pies). After a few minutes, the cop returned.

“Slow down.”

“Yes sir.” I drove off. A surreal experience, all in all.

Categories: dear diary, wtf Tags:

October 27th, 2006 No comments

The migration continues! Some of you may or may not have been able to send me email today; I completely asploded my mail quota by moving all my old mail folders in there, and I’m an idiot so it took me like 4 hours to figure it out. I’m a big dip. If you got a bounceback for me today for mail, kindly resend, s’il vous plait.

If you can read this, the DNS (Domain Name Services) change has propagated to your nameservers, which is great. I may try and set up some kind of forwarding on the old page to get to here for those folks that have slow DNS servers, but honestly every DNS server in the world should be aware of my new location by Monday, and it would take me about that long to remember how to do automatic forwarding in HTML.

In other news: had our dress rehearsal for Carmen (call and get your tickets! Grand Opera House, 302 652 5577! Shows 10/28 8p, 11/2 7:30p, 11/4 8p, 11/5 2p) last night, and it was spectacular. Somebody arranged to have a bunch of kids and their owners bussed in, so we had a good crowd to clap and giggle at jokes and whatnot. I didn’t die during my swordfight, and didn’t forget any words! Yay us!

Come see it. It’s good people.

Categories: geek Tags:

October 26th, 2006 No comments

Just as a heads up: I’m moving matthearn.com (and charleshearn.com) over to a new hosting service over the weekend (probably starting sometime Friday), so things are guaranteed to be hella shaky around here while various DNSes catch up with one another. I don’t expect anything to be DOWN, perse, but it’s entirely likely that if, for example, I post an update tomorrow, those of you with particularly slow name resolution might not see it until Monday.

That last paragraph contained a lot of big words for the non-computer-savvy, so let me break it down for you a bit better:

Stuff will be screwed up here over the weekend.

It’ll be back to normal on Monday.

Although, if you DO notice anything awry next week (I rely on quite a bit of PHP and database jaunpiece around here, and the whole database has to move as well, and the new one doesn’t name anything the same way, so half of everything will be broken if I don’t catch it, which I undoubtedly won’t), please let me know (leave a comment is the easiest way, it emails me when you do that).

That is all. Read down below for the amusing post I did earlier today regarding why I look like Julie Andrews.

Categories: geek Tags:

October 26th, 2006 No comments

Hey great, I look mostly like a chick.

Most of you were already aware of this on some level, but I have proof! I ventured over to MyHeritage.com at my wife’s suggestion, uploaded a picture of myself, and said to it, Sir, please tell me which celebrities I look most like!

It responded with 5 chicks, 3 dudes, and 2 little boys. I’m stoked! In order, I look most like:

  • Cameron Bright – 78%
  • Julie Andrews – 64%
  • Andy Kaufman – 61%
  • Neils Bohr – 60%
  • Richard Pryor – 57%
  • Piper Perabo – 55%
  • Christina Ricci – 54%
  • Yoon-Jin Kim – 54%
  • Minnie Driver – 54%
  • Jonathan Taylor Thomas – 53%

That’s, in order, a 12-year-old boy, a nearly 70-year-old woman, a dead man, a VERY dead man, a dead black man, various broads, and a child actor who is not aging well. I’m looking forward to when I can go to ShootMeInTheDamnFace.com!

Categories: Uncategorized Tags:

October 25th, 2006 No comments

OMG WTF XMAS IS S0 LIKE JUST 2 MONTHZ AWAY!!!!1!!!! LOL

As usual, I am stoked, and plan major decorations that can be seen from space. Also as usual, I will probably get a few lights up and spend too much money on presents. I love Christmas.

I’ve done some shopping, but of course I feel unbelievably behind. My main problem is that I never know what to get people. No one should have this problem with me, because I maintain a truly comprehensive Amazon wish list of stuff that I want. Since no one else bothers to do this, you’re all getting John Mayer CDs!

Haha! Just kidding. I’m sure you all already own all his CDs.

I need to come up with some fun stuff to get my wife. I’m pretty sure I know what big things to get her, but she and I have an annual competition in which I spend a lot of money, but still “lose” because in the end I give her like 2 pricey presents and she gives me roughly 3 dozen individually wrapped gifts, most of them fairly inexpensive, each of them unbelievably thoughtful and useful.

It’s also hard buying stuff for my parents, because if they want something, they go out and buy it. So I’m left with trying to find things for them that they wouldn’t be able to find themselves, which is increasingly difficult because of the internets and QVC. They’re both getting thong collections, I think.

I think what I’m going to do is just buy a bunch of presents for Charles, and let everybody open them. Not because he won’t be able to open them himself; I fully expect him to be able to open each one in turn and fling them at the cats.

Categories: Uncategorized Tags:

October 24th, 2006 No comments

Ye gods, two political posts in a row? Sorry! Come back tomorrow, when I get back to my usual discussion of various wangs.

I was reading Tuesday Morning Quarterback today, and came across something I think needed a response. TMQ is penned by Gregg Easterbrook, with whom I agree on most football topics (he likes to see more running and less passing in the NFL, for example), and disagree on most political topics. I am coming around to his side of things a bit, since it’s becoming clearer that the Bush Administration is single-handedly destroying the fundamental freedoms of the greatest country the world has ever known, but I found this a bit, well, unfocused:

A few months ago President Bush said the estimate he has been given by military intelligence is 30,000 Iraqi deaths caused either directly by our military or set in motion by our invasion. . . by invading Iraq we made ourselves responsible for what happened next, and what has happened next is killing of the innocent.

And here’s my emailed response:

Now, I’m no defender of the President or his tactics; I believe that our invasion of Iraq was justified, but GROSSLY, even criminally, mismanaged by this administration. However, I don’t think that we’re responsible for every dead non-combatant Iraqi any more than we’re responsible for those who were killed by Saddam while we made no effort to stop him.

I think we can categorize civilian deaths thusly:
a) Those who died of natural causes, and can be ignored for this discussion.
b) Those who were killed accidentally by American military action (happened to be standing nearby when a laser-guided bomb took out a weapons depot, etc.). Obviously, America bears the bulk of the responsibility for these deaths (although the use of “human shields” by Saddam certainly didn’t save a lot of innocent lives).
c) Those who were killed purposely by American military action, which obviously is murder. Obviously this happens, although I don’t think it happens much. (I don’t have any statistics to bear this out, so I’m willing to admit I’m wrong if I turn out to be so.)
d) Those who were killed by Saddam’s loyal troops and/or insurgents (which I believe to be the bulk of the of the deaths).

I agree that category B is sad, but a necessary consequence of war. I’m no professor of military history, but I think a major bungle in the Vietnam conflict was the government’s attempt to soothe open public relations sores by halting the bombing of targets in North Vietnam. Attempting to prosecute war and making the lives of non-combatants the first priority results in the deaths of Americans. Am I placing the value of the life of an American soldier over that of an Iraqi child? Yes. Yes I am.

Category C is murder, and everyone involved in it needs to be brought to justice. I believe that this is what happens in those few situations.

Category D is, flatly, not our fault. In WWII, the Nazis made a practice of getting revenge for successful missions by the French Resistance (and other underground groups) by simply grabbing innocent citizens and gunning them down. Knowing that this would happen didn’t stop the Resistance from operating, nor should it have.

Put a different way, if a Mafioso gets convicted of a crime and sentenced to jail, and in response he has the prosecutor’s family killed, is that the prosecutor’s fault?

This email is ridiculously long and needs to be edited, but since I just read all 8742 words of TMQ, I feel no guilt.

Your thoughts? Keep in mind, when it comes to political discussions, I am completely out of my depth and basically an idiot.

Categories: Uncategorized Tags:

October 23rd, 2006 No comments

To all of my liberal, semi-hippie friends: I surrender. I concede. I confess. You win.

I don’t often discuss politics in this space, for the simple reason that I disagree with almost everyone, and no one would really bother reading my stuff if all I did was rail about the Drug War, or the Iraq War. I’m more interested in discussing human interest stuff like the Pee War, which is a game my son likes to play during bath time in which he pees all over the kitchen (we wash him in the kitchen sink) and we attempt to block the urine stream with our hands. This is Fatherhood in a nutshell: getting pee all over your body in an effort to prevent said pee from getting in the toaster.

Nevertheless, those who know me well know that for a long time I have espoused fairly libertarian views. My thoughts have long been, well, if it doesn’t hurt anybody, who cares? What I hadn’t considered, unfortunately, was how completely incapable the average American is of knowing when he might be hurting someone else.

Until recently, I believed that if you want to talk on your cellphone while driving, and you don’t drive into anyone, you should be allowed to do that. Personally, I try to avoid it, but then I talk on the phone as little as possible anyway. I have changed my mind on this subject, because I realize now that the the majority of Americans are simply too flat-out stupid to be allowed this privilege. I was caught behind a guy on the way to work today who:

  1. Pulled out in front of me, causing me to have to decelerate to avoid hitting him.
  2. Drove significantly under the speed limit.
  3. When the next light turned yellow, he, despite being about a 1/2 second away from it, actually braked as if he was going to stop, causing at least 2 people behind me to miss the light.
  4. Didn’t use his signal once to indicate any lane change or turn.

He had his cellphone to his ear the entire time. I’m not sure if the cellphone CAUSED him to drive like an idiot, or if it’s just an indicator of his general stupidity. What I do know is this: of the various idiots that ride in the left lane when they aren’t passing, fail to signal lane changes and turns, and cut me off in traffic, at least 85% of them are on the phone at the time. Of course, 85% of drivers are usually on the phone at any given time, so this might be statistically pointless, but it still makes me want to beat them to death with my bare damn hands.

So yes: I will probably vote Democrat in the next election because a jerk cut me off in traffic. I am one fickle bastard.

Categories: anger Tags:

October 20th, 2006 No comments

I have mixed emotions over the Cardinals’ big win over the Mets last night. On the one hand, I hate the Mets. On the other hand, I’m fond of both the Tigers and the Cards, so picking someone to root for in the Series will be difficult. It almost would have been easier if the Mets had won; then I could root for the Tigers (the likely champs anyway) with great gusto. Still, any time the Mets lose, I get a warm feeling in my belly.

I think I’ll probably root for the Cards. They and the Phils are both in the National League, so there’s a whole “Bros before Hos” thing going on (the NL teams being Bros, and the AL teams being Hos). Also, the Cardinals have been fighting through the playoffs for the last 4 or 5 years in a row and haven’t won a championship yet (memorably getting swept by the Red Sox in 2004), so I think they’re due. Plus, they’re considered the underdogs, which means they find a soft spot in the heart of most Americans. Lastly, every time Albert Pujols comes to bat, my wife giggles.

I don’t know if all of you have been watching any of the baseball postseason, but if you have, you’ve undoubtedly seen Tommy Lasorda’s playoffs commercials. For those of you that haven’t, here’s the basic gist: Tommy shows up (in a tux?!?) at a house in which there are between 1 and 5 baseball fans hiding in trees or cabinets because their team(s) didn’t make the playoffs. Tommy exhorts them to come out and watch the games anyway, because while they are [Indians|Cubs|Phils] fans, they’re “bigger fans of baseball!” He then yells “TO THE TV!” Kills me.

My favorite one is the guy in the tree, in which Tommy asks the guy’s wife, “Who’s his favorite team?” She responds, “The Cubbies,” and Tommy makes a sound like somebody had just wiped a turd on his shirt. I’ve nearly wet my pants every time. (It’s funny ’cause the Cubs suck.)

In other sports news, the Flyers have lost four straight, but luckily it’s hockey so nobody cares.

Categories: Uncategorized Tags:

October 19th, 2006 1 comment

I’m heck of busy today, running around like a wild man (who isn’t?), but I wanted to share something amusing with you, and so therefore I give you this. Just pictures, not a movie or sound, but highly entertaining. The one that keeps making me wet my pants is this one:

Phenomenal times.

Categories: dear diary Tags: