:: Track Zero ::

:: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 ::

:: 10:19 AM :: 0 comments ::

just what i wanted to hear...

From msnbc:

-------------------------------
Health
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Amount of sleep, heart disease linked
Sleeping too little or too much may increase the chances of developing heart
disease, a study shows. Researchers say the right amount of sleep may be as
important for heart health as diet and exercise.
[more...]

so i was right. work is killing me...

-J



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:: 4:29 PM :: 0 comments ::

damn viruses

so after the 3:32am post, posted while still awake, i got called in at 4am to help protect against a computer virus. that was two days ago. i just got home.

and i still have to go in to work in the morning. yippee.

-J

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:: 1:32 AM :: 0 comments ::

i have a hat full of waffles.

(yeah, don't ask. i honestly don't know.)

-J

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:: 9:40 PM :: 0 comments ::

on lazy coding...

yes, thank you. i noticed that when someone comments, it says "1 comments" and when more than one has commented it says "# commentss."

and yes, i could fix it. but i'm not going to. and you know why? it's because i'm lazy. is that what you wanted to hear? are you happy now? do you feel better about yourself for pointing out my flaws? and you know what's really sad? i'm talking to myself. that's right! no one else even mentioned the screwed up plurals. but it was all i could think to WEASEL about besides the new car, and that's gonna get old for everyone except me really fast.

and sure, there's plenty going on out there. i could talk about the shitty economy. i could talk about the multiple threats of war from both sides. i could talk about how few people are happy in their current jobs. but that's all depressing and boring.

on the lighter side, i could talk about Sim City 4, but i think that game has sucked away enough of my time without getting editorial coverage. i could talk about how sony just sent me an invite to some sort of gamer's panel for the PS2, but the wife is a bit embarrassed to officially consider me a "gamer." better than having to think of me as a "playa," tho. i could also talk about Star Wars Galaxies, due out in april, if those bastards would just invite me to the beta test.

or i could always WEASEL about monkeys. i have about eight of them now, but none of them are real. i thought about starting a new website, called "sendmeamonkey.com," sort of in the same vein as "savekaryn.com", but to be honest, i was a little nervous someone might actually send me a live monkey. and as cool as that sounds, i think it might get a little old. especially if the monkey wanted to drive the vette. because i'd have to explain that his tiny little legs couldn't possibly reach the clutch, but he'd just jump up and down in his little fez, crashing his tiny cymbals together and making that angry little "ook ook ook aiee aiee" noise until he got a bad case of monkey-laryngitis but still his legs would be too tiny, poor little monkey.

alright frank, i updated my page per your comment. i hope my rambling lives up to your lofty expectations.

hate to disappoint the fans, you know. well, the fan.

if you, too, would like to join my fan club, just send me a monkey, and a self-addressed, postage-paid monkey shipping container. you will recieve as a part of your membership, one shriveled dead monkey and a photo of the accident and/or conditions of neglect leading to the poor fellow's demise. please allow six to eight weeks for horrible monkey-killing accident.

-J

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:: 8:25 PM :: 0 comments ::

one week later...

well, it's quite a bit of fun...


And it's all paid for...

...of course, now I'll have to start really paying for it:

-J

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:: 8:35 PM :: 0 comments ::

the 'vette shipped on monday, jan 13.

one to two saturdays from now and i'll be driving it home!

UPDATE: 10:39PM 1/16/2003: I'll be driving it home in 33 hours and 21 minutes.
-J

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:: 12:20 AM :: 0 comments ::

i want the toys of the cartoon bad guys

so it's 2am on saturday. as usual, i'm working on my tech-editing because i'm seriously behind schedule. further as usual, the tv is tuned to the cartoon network because that's about the only channel that isn't running infomercials at this time of the week.

and i'm envious. the cartoon bad guys get all the cool toys.

i don't even need the not-to-likely-to-happen super-power-granting types of things. i just want one of those two-knob video displays that allows a bad guy to fiddle the knobs and automatically tune into anything happening anywhere to anyone, simply by doing what appears to be the equivalent of searching for a keyword to find matching events. for example, they search on "bank vault" and see exactly when the guard at the bank vault falls asleep. or they search on "commissioner" and they see exactly where the commissioner is, and what he's doing.

these cartoon-bad-guy displays are much cooler than microsoft's latest smart display. and at least if i had a cartoon-bad-guy display, i'd have something to watch besides cartoon network at 2am on saturday.

-J

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:: 8:18 PM :: 0 comments ::

the car is built! I got the VIN this morning!!

not much longer...

-J

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:: 6:43 AM :: 0 comments ::

btw, i got the confirmation call earlier today...they're building my car this week. i should have it by the end of the month.

here's how it works.

-J

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:: 9:05 PM :: 0 comments ::

stop terrorism...buy american weed...

so i don't know if you've seen 'em or not, but there's a bunch of new commercials about drugs and terrorism starring nick and norm. i'm pretty sure nick is the drug user, and norm is the voice of logic and reason. not necessarily valid logic or reason, but whatever. anyway, these commericals basically make the statement that every time you do drugs, a terrorist can afford to buy another bullet, which they will undoubtably use to kill a child. in the latest one, they talk about the "moral loophole" in the word "might." nick says, "might. the money might go to a terrorist." then norm guy says, "so you're saying your money just might go to allowing a terrorist to slay a child" or something like that. then nick feels like a jackass, because norm is totally harshing his buzz, man, and stoners can be emotionally vulnerable too.

disclaimer break...first off, i'm not making light of terrorism. second, i'm not using any drugs except prescription allergy meds. i'll even pee in a cup to prove it, but it'll cost you $12,000. protecting myself from potential falsification of dna evidence, you understand. third, my point here is more to knock these dumbass commercials than make a valid argument for the legalization of drugs, but what the hell, side-effects are side-effects. personally, i preferred the "this is your brain on drugs" stuff from the 80's...make it about risks and damage you're doing to your own body, don't make it guilt-ridden propoganda...

and by the way, if this is my future child reading this, all drugs are bad, and if your tracking chip shows that you've even been thinking about using them i'll kick your ass, i don't care if you are bigger than i am i'm still your father and i brought you into this world i can damn sure take you out of it.

anyway. i think pot, for example, has legitimate clinical uses. it helps with glaucoma, and it helps ease certain psychological disorders. and there are certain social benefits, too...just ask the retired guy that gave us a tour of Richmond, VA...we asked him about the reputation Richmond had of being such a violent, murder-ridden city. he said, "oh, yeah...that's from the days when everybody was on heroine. they get all hopped up and go crazy, shooting at each other. but now they're all smoking the marijuana, so they're more mellow and there's not all the crime."

MDMA, or Ecstasy, is another one that needs some additional consideration. it was actually used by psychologists until some bonehead in dallas got the idea that it would be cool to sell at dance clubs, ruining MDMA's reputation and earning it an FDA ban before clinical studies could be completed showing the benefits.

which brings me to my next point (did I have a first point? i don't know)...i mentioned clinical use of pot & mdma...some studies show that one drink of wine or beer or something a night might actually have some health benefits....but your doctor isn't going to be prescribing a Guinness any time too soon...alcohol remains primarily a recreational consumable...legalizing things for clinical purposes will still leave a wide-open black market...it's the recreational outlets that create the demand.

so back to nick and norm. buying drugs funds terrorism. but i think they might be having the conversation in a bar. why is that? why doesn't buying scotch, or wine, or beer, or cigarettes fund terrorism? consumption of those legal items seems to have just as bad of an effect on one's mood, reaction time, health, danger to society, etcetera...yet no one ever says that drinking zima causes a zifferent kind of terror...because terrorists aren't interested in selling liquor. you know why? no one would buy liquor from terrorists, because they can get liquor from wal-mart. not worth the risk, buyin' it from a terrorist, when you can pick it up from a store. plus, you know you can rely on the quality and contents of Jack Daniels...but what kind of camel piss might you find in a vintage bottle of Usama's Bin 550 Scudfunder Whisky? so there's no market. because there's a legal outlet for a known quality.

remember prohibition? sorry, for most of my readers (self included), remember reading about prohibition? it didn't work because people wanted to drink. so the mafia provided. organized crime to the rescue...but these were the days of cute and cuddly organized crime, with guys like "baby face" nelson, weapons like the tommy gun, and those kick-ass hats and rockin' classic cars. and americans embraced the illegal alcohol, because it made them feel good and damnit, we're in a depression, we deserve to spend our last few hard-earned dollars drinking away our concern for money and even though the government says we shouldn't be drinking we're gonna, so there. well, this is the same damn thing. but the terrorists aren't as cute and cuddly as the good 'ol american mafia. hell, even the good 'ol american mafia doesn't want to tangle with 'em, sticking instead to offshore gambling and other "loophole" activities.

so back to nick and norm. how can nick still toke up without giving norm another reason to throw some assinine argument with faulty logic in his face? the answer is simple...home-grown weed. sold over-the-counter. regulated, of course, the same way that alcohol is. still don't want minors gettin' hooked on it...and by all means, tax the hell out of it. but as long as it remains illegal but in demand, people are going to buy it, and all the bad arguments from all the norms in the world won't stop that. at least if it were regulated, norm could say, "you know what you're doing every time to take a hit from that American Flag commemorative edition hookah?" nick would say, "sure do norm. i'm gettin' myself a righteous buzz." and norm would say, "no, you jackass. every time you take a hit, you're helping put some underprivileged kid through college. you're helping repair our nation's roads. and 50% of every purchase goes straight back into the public school system, so that the teachers that previously made such paltry salaries that they couldn't qualify for a mortgate loan in the pre-legalization era can finally get paid something closer to what they deserve. you, nick, are a Good American. God bless you." and nick would say, "and it leaves me much less depressed than thowing all my money away on Powerball tickets, because every ticket that lost only furthered my feeling that i was nothing but a big loser." and then norm would take a hit, and then they'd both go to some all-night pizza place, which until recently closed at 11PM, but now stays open all night to handle all those folks with the munchies, so the pizza boy who wasn't previously making enough money to pay his rent is able to work overtime, which allows him to finish paying his way through college, where he realizes he's really good at chemistry and biology so he enters the medical industry and cures cancer.

yes, that's right. by legalizing some drugs, we could stabilize the economy and cure cancer. and then nick can finally kick norm in the face for being such a pompous jackass for all those years.

-J

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:: 6:28 PM :: 0 comments ::

the other weasel site

since there's no link to it here yet, and since i think i've told everyone who reads this page of WEb ASsisted E-Letters, here's the first official posting of the link to my other weasel, eBaby.

at some point, i'll add it over on the left bar as well.

-J

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:: 6:09 PM :: 0 comments ::

fun with refrigerator magnets

so here's how i entertained myself on new year's eve...drinking, and magnetic poetry!

(CAUTION: Rated R)
(~300KB)

(mouseover lines circled in red for translations. note, i only added popups for my own manipulations.)


-J


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:: 1:22 AM :: 0 comments ::

and you get paid for this?

there are a lot of people who have jobs that they shouldn't be getting paid for.

here's a good example: man gets paid to tie shoes.

it's things like that that make me wonder why i pay taxes. and i know he's from australia, but you and i both know that our money goes to equally insane causes.

-J

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:: 7:15 PM :: 0 comments ::

jesus, beethoven, and emeril

flipping thru the digital free-on-demand biography channel programming the other day (not my normal class of programming, but south park was a repeat) and i stumbled across this rather telling lineup:


what a great society....we put a television chef in the same class as one of the most historically significant military generals in recent history, one of the world's greatest composers, the only man in the world who can visit every child in the world within 24 hours, and the most recognized religious figure in history....

-J

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