Now about my temp job... How is my temp job? Well, remember when you were in school and you had to go the nurses' office for whatever reason and enter your name and information on a chart? Ever wondered what happened to those charts? I get 'em and enter the info into a database. Somebody has to do it and the company I work for is the company that is the out in the outsource.

Actually, it's not a bad job as they leave me alone, it's way easy, and THEY HAVE FREE COFFEE AND TEA, unlike a certain huge corporation that I temped for. The only thinking that I have to do is trying to read the crappy handwriting and figure out what the name is. Or, if I have to enter the name from scratch, figuring out what sex the person is. Which isn't as easy as it sounds.

And it can be kind of fun too, reading what the kids write down for the reason for visiting the nurse. Like the one kid who wrote "some fat girl threw me down the stairs." Or "cut myself with scissors." I'm almost waiting for someone to write "ate some glue" (that's a Ralph Wiggum shout out, for those not hep to it).

Today, however, I saw the cutest thing. Some kid went to see the nurse one Sept. day because, as he wrote, his "heart hurt" and had a "headache." The nurse, however, just crossed it out and wrote: "broken heart." Poor little Anthony Joseph.

I hear you, brother.

"I jumped in the river and what did I see?
black-eyed angels swimming with me
a moon full of stars and astral cars
all the figures i used to see
all my lovers were there with me
all my past and futures
and we all went to heaven in a little row boat

there was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt
there was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt"

So I added this little doohickey that can track the numbers of people who click on to this blog and for how long they're on it. Turns out people are actually finding this thing. How they get there and why they come here, I have no idea, but somehow, somebody's actually checking this out.

The thing is, though, that according to the doohickey, people are only logging in for a few seconds. Less actually. The average visit is even less than a second. Like we're talking the amount of time that usually separates speed skaters during races. We're talking the amount of time that it takes the President to think about something. Which makes me wonder why they're even clicking on this site in the first place. Like, are they expecting something else? Or is it that I'm that bad of a writer? Should I spend more time describing what I had for lunch?

So, in order to a)get more people to come visit and b)get them to stick around and read some stuff. I am letting everyone know that I have taken the time to post NAKED PICTURES OF BRITNEY SPEARS somewhere in the Web site. To find out where you can find the NAKED PICTURES OF BRITNEY SPEARS, you're going to have to read some of this stuff as the clues are buried somewhere within the text.

So remember, come to Hooray For Anything- the Blog page and read. You too can find NAKED PICTURES OF BRITNEY SPEARS!

Remember, NAKED PICTURES OF BRITNEY SPEARS!

Gotta love the Grammies. Every year, right before the show, there's always a bunch of stories proclaiming "wait, they're getting hip now. We swear!" This year it was even more pronounced. "Hey, we nominated Outkast! And Tool! We're Hip, we're now, we're happening!"And then they trot out the evidence proving as such. And then, every year comes around and they always do something to prove that it's still not really hip.

"O Brother, Where Art Thou" is a fine album. It's a good album. It's a heartwarming story, especially considering more people probably bought the CD than saw the movie.

But it's not Record of the Year. No way, no how. In ten years, when people look back on 2001, people aren't gonna say "yeah, it was the year of 'O Brother, Where Art Thou" the way, say, people think of 1991 and think of Nirvana or 1975 and think of the Boss.

They keep trying, but they still never quite get it. And why anybody gives a shit is always beyond me.

Things I wonder about:

You know how when you get to heaven, after all the white light and all that stuff, you're supposed to be reunited with all your love-one's? Well, this is what I'm-a wondering about….

Like, for instance, what happens if you die young and most of your loved one's are still alive? Like all of your parents, siblings and grandparents are still alive. Does that mean you're greeted at Heaven only by Great Uncle Schmuley and your Great Grandmother Fannie? Is that really all that exciting? Does that mean that you'd spent a large part of heaven, waiting for another family member to die while you sit around, eat a whole lot of chopped liver and watch Nanna Fannie play Mah Jong all day?

Or, like so many families today, what happens if you're parents are divorced? When you die, I guess you're supposed to be surrounded by both parents, but what if they still don't like each other. I mean, if you divorced someone, my guess is that they're not going to be one of the loved one's they'll want to hang out with in heaven. So does that mean that it'll be Thanksgiving with mom and Passover with dad for the rest of eternity?

And what about those people who are widdowed and then remarried? Like my grandmother. She had a long, loving relationship with my Grandfather, Bernie, but he died of a heart attack. Ten years later, she found another man and had another long, loving relationship with her second husband, Jerry. So, what happened when Grandma died? Did she just get to be with Grandpa or did she get to see both Grandpa and Jerry? And if so, what does Grandpa and Jerry's first wife think about it?

Just think about it, in a way, heaven could just be one, big huge swingers convention.

Saw "A Beatiful Mind" last night. Yeah, I gave in. People who I know who wouldn't have been into the movie still said it was a good movie. So I saw it.

And you know what? While it was a little better than I expected, it was still just Oscar Bait. Lots of crying, lots of emotional scenes, and lots of big dramatic music. Not to mention the always important speech at the end. There's always gotta be a speech. It's your prototypical big Hollywood Oscar flick- dramatic, well acted and told, but never moving into anything beyond that. Yeah, the scenes of John Nash and his paranoid fantasies were kind of cool and well done, but I couldn't help thinking about how much cooler it could have been. Like the movie needed a little touch of Lynchian surrealism. In fact, it would have been kind of cool if Ron Howard (who, actually, is a fine director and deserves the plaudits) handled all the normal, dramatic stuff, then handed it over to Lynch for the dream stuff? Or David Fincher, the guy who did "Fight Club?" That's what all those big Oscar movies lack, a hint of edginess. This movie could have been totally whacked out in bits, but never did because, well, it's an Oscar Bait movie.

In that way, it kind of reminded me of "Saving Private Ryan." "Ryan" was very well done in terms of straighforward, old fashioned, Hollywood movie making. In fact it was brilliant in that capacity, but the movie would have been so much better if it had just a twinge of Coppola's "Apocolypse Now" bad trip grooviness. But Spielberg just doesn't do that and so the movie just never quite took off. Put it another way, in ten years, people are still going to be talking about "Apococylpse Now" in revered tones. It'll still be a movie every college student will still watch after smoking half an eighth of kind green, convinced that somewhere in the movie lies the Meaning of Life. "Private Ryan," meanwhile, will be nothing more than a movie that gets trotted out on tv every Memorial Day as a movie we're supposed to watch because we're supposed to. In ten years, "Saving Private Ryan" will be seen as nothing more than a huge civics lesson.

Anyways, "A Beautiful Mind" is probably gonna take home a barrel full of Oscars. It's got Best Picture Winner all over it (see rule about uplifting movies about man overcoming handicaps always winning an Oscar. Which is fine, I guess, but not my favorite movie of the year. And Russell Crowe is damn good and will probably win for best Actor and probably deserves it. Crowe somehow manages to make you forget that he's a big, hunky Australian dude but instead a meek, fucked up, crazed out mathematician (albeit one with a lot more muscles than most). Which'll actually be a shame because then he'll win it two years in a row when there's no way in hell he should of won it for "Gladiator" and the reason why, like Tom Hanks, he'll never win one again. And Jennifer Connelly will probably win because she does what every Best Actress does when they win the award- a lot of crying, throwing things and looking sad and determined. She shouldn't, though, because that's pretty much what her role is- to be a long suffering wife and to cry a lot and throw things. That's not really much great acting as it is crying on cue a lot. And she doesn't take her clothes off, either, so that's points against her.

As for Ron Howard, he'll probably win too. It's his first nomination, he's a good director, by all accounts a really nice guy and was Richie Cunningham. The fact that Richie Cunnigham could win an Oscar is almost amazing as the fact that someone on BH 9'er did. Almost makes me want to root for him. But just wondering, how much directing skill does it take to have people walk around constantly crying and what not? Is that any more challenging that someone who filmed a three and a half hour epic movie that's already got a die-hard fan base waiting to eat you alive for any sort of screw up? And is it harder to direct someone throwing a glass against the wall in a really emotional way or directing battle scenes featuring thousands of people, half of them dressed up like elves or Orcs. Not to mention having the main character be smaller than a dwarf and constantly have to do tricks to convey it. Not to mention filming a whole sequence in a mine feature thousands of computer generated goblins and a balrog? In other words, go Peter Jackson.

Have a bit of writers block these days. Or, at least, a new version of it.

It's not exactly like I can't think of anything to write or say, because I do. It's just that between all the writing I've been doing, my stupid temp job, and the spending of way too much time online (looking for jobs online of course), the whole upper part of my body is hurting all over. Carpal Tunnel and all that fun stuff. One of the hazards of trying to write in the computer age, I guess.

I used to be able to write by hand. I used to love it in fact- that feeling of pen to paper. To me, it made the writing seem almost like a physical thing. It was work, actual physical work. I wrote all of my college papers by hand even though I had a nifty, state of the art electronic typewriter. And a lot of my earlier stabs at writing were first written on a notebook. But a long time ago, I hopped on the word processing band-wagon and now everything I do is on a computer. Add to that the whole blogging thing, e-mail and message boards and you've got a lot of time typing away at a computer. Which is part of the reason why it hurts to type right now.

Last week, I tried to write by hand again. I went off to a coffee shop around the corner from me, one of the nicer one's in the neighborhood, with plenty of plants and paintings for sale and a whole bunch of other people who were trying to do the same thing as me. I just couldn’t do it, though. I'm so unused to writing by hand that it felt like too much work. It's like when I started playing softball again for the first time in years and couldn't throw as well as I used to or judge fly balls as well. Not to mention being all soar from using muscles I hadn't used in a long time. My hands cramped up, my handwriting fell apart, and I felt tired. I realized too that I actually prefer to write on a computer now. One of the benefits of being a kick-ass typist is that I can type as fast as my head moves and my head moves pretty fucking fast. When I write by hand, my head moves much faster than I write and since the two are never in psyche, I get completely frustrated by it all. My head is always a sentence or two ahead of my hand and it doesn't want to go back. Sometimes I go back and look at what I wrote and realize that in my haste to write what was going through my head at the moment, I'd leave out letters, words even.

So now I'm back to typing away, trying to be ever mindful of any achiness I feel, giving myself as long of a break as I feel I need. Not to mention going to the jacuzzi at the Y as much as possible to soak my aching muscles.

I wonder if Mark Twain had these types of problems?

Ugh, an anti-war rally is supposed to start in Dolores Park any minute now. Which means I'm kind of trapped in my neighborhood as all the marches shut down pub trans for a couple of hours. So I'm kind of forced to sit in my apartment for a couple of hours, having to listen to all those stupid speeches and chants coming from the park a couple of blocks away. On my way to get breakfast, saw your typical Mission/Slacker/lesbian activist type with one of those anti-U.S. by way of anti-Israel posters. Because it's so easy to condemn Israel from the vantage point of being a twenty-something San Franciscan sitting in a coffee shop, sipping your Tazo tea with your sprout and tofu bagel, as opposed to living in a place where there's a suicide bomber blowing something up every other day. Guess I'll just sit here and write and try to drown out the muck by listening to some Van Halen.

Actually, could rip on them some more, but I read a few things yesterday about the Current Unpleasantness that makes me want to protest (which I'll write about later). And the way Smirkboy keeps on referring to anything he doesn't like as "evil" is starting to get to me. He uses that word so much he's starting to sound like some character out of a really bad, Grade B, sci-fi flick that you see on Mystery Science Theater.

Besides, J.T. Snow is injured again. Sigh.

And Charles Jones- aka the man who drew Bugs Bunny cartoons- died last night. That is very, very sad.
Sniff.

Mad typing skills paid off. I start a data entry temp job tomorrow. I'm so happy I can cry. And just when I started getting into the joys of waking up to digital cable and lying in bed for an hour upon waking up watching movies.

Earlier, I had given some love to "Seinfeld." Here's another reason why it is what it is- I interviewed at another Temp/Employment agency today, getting passed around from person to person like a drunken "Little Sister" at a frat party. One of the women I was talking to left for a minute to grab someone else and when she left, I noticed that on a little bowl on her desk, there was a whole bunch of Echinicea candies sitting in the bowl. Now, I'm still a little sick and starting to feel it at that moment, so I start thinking about reaching into the bowl and grabbing one of those candies. But then I start thinking that the moment I did, the women would come back, see me stealing her candy and I'd be able to kiss that agency good bye. For some reason, the image that pops into my head is the scene where George reached into the trash can to grab the half-eaten eclaire, only to be discovered by his girlfriend's mother. And because all I can think about is George in that episode, I didn't take the candy.

I do, however, ask when she comes back. Not only that, as a way of trying to get in good with the women I interviewed with (who was also kind of cute), I told her what I was thinking and that I didn't want to steal the candy because "I'd be pulling a Costanza." And because "Seinfeld" is what it is, she knew exactly what I was talking about and laughed.

I'm sure y'all saw this story in the news as it was given a big play here. In fact, the only reason why I knew about it was because "the Daily Show" mentioned it. Apparently, Smirkboy said the wrong word in a press conference in Japan and almost destroyed the economy.

It's only a matter of time before he gaffes our way into another war.

And what's up with him wearing an American flag button on his lapel? I know, 9/11 blah, blah, blah, but he's fucking travelling to other countries. Wearing the American flag on his lapel is, well, can he be more Ugly American? He may think he's being all patriotic, but to the rest of the world he's saying "Yeah, I'm American, suck it."

There was a story in the Chron the other day about organizers for the SF Olympic bid walking around Salt Lake City and taking notes on what to do and what not to do. The story starts off with a mention that all of the organizers are noticing that in the dance clubs, all the Americans are off by themselves while the rest of the world is busy mingling and socializing together. Welcome to W's world. It's only gonna get worse.

Went to a Temp Agency today to sign up for more temp work. What can I say, I need the money. Kind of a weird thing about when I go to Temp Agencies. They're supposed to help me not only get temp work, but also maybe possibly full-time employment. So, we have an interview, I take a test, sign a bunch of forms and I start to realize something. I have about seven years worth of professional experience. I've coordinated the printing of two to three magazines at a time. I ran a small online store by myself. I have an English degree from a UC school (Go Gauchos!) and a Certificate in Desktop Publishing from an Arts school in SF. Yet, my biggest, and maybe only, marketable skill is that I'm one bad mother (shut your mouth) of a good typer. I got mad typical skills.

I can't believe that my mother telling me that I should take typing classes in High School might have been the smartest thing she's ever said.

I just realized today, after I blew away another Temp Person, or whatever they call the people you interview with at Temp Agencies, with my typing, that I might actually be too good at typing. I just kind of want a cushy office job. Answer the phones, do some filing, just hang out and cruise the Television Without Pity message boards all day, but that's not happening. They take one look at my typing skills and next thing I know, I'm off to some data entry sweat shop where I type a line here, a line there, for eight hours a day, all the while listening to Black Sabbath as loud as possible as a way to numb my mind. Maybe, next time I talk to a Temp Agency, I should fuck up my typing test. But then again, I might not actually get any work.

Word on the streets has it that Flora (Real World Miami), Veronica (RR the stupid season on the boat), Jisela (the RR & RW pass it along girl) and Beth S (Osama Beth Laden from RW LA) are posing in Playboy.

Dear God. Don't they have any shame. Any sense of dignity. Any self-respect?

Nevermind

Just have to say too the RW/RR challenge is better than crack. It's like pure-grade heroin straight from the poppy. Tonight's ep was some good shit. Seeing Chadwick get sent packing was beautiful. Now somebody's gotta take down his "at least we have Him" wife.

Speaking of which, the headline in the Chron today was "Bush pushes Japan on Economy- On Tokyo Visit, he calls for faster, tougher action." What a cocky son-of-a-bitch. He kicks the butt out of some tin-plated dictatorship straight out of the Middle Ages using a bunch of proxys to fight for him and a bunch of pilotless drones, so now he feels like going around telling other countries how to fix their economy. Like he's some kind of expert now. Like he can just waltz into any old country and say "hey, just do this and do that and you'll be able to go around driving big SUV's and getting cinnamon sticks delivered to your door with an order of Pizza Hut pizza just like us." Hey, buddy, what about our economy? Anyone actually pay attention to his budget proposals? Let's see:

Increased defense spending + huge tax cuts for the rich + cuts in social spending x baby boomer generation about to retirement age in the next ten years = oh shit.

Don't know when, don't know how, but Smirkboy is so going down. Or as the Greek's would say- Hubris is a bitch.

Once upon a time, I wrote an essay about the dread every man has when they first sign up at a gym and have to face one of their biggest fears- the men's locker room. While it did start a debate in my writing group about it's political correctness, I think it was pretty dead on (warning- plug coming up- you can read it here. When I was at the Y today, I realized I had completely missed an obvious thing about the whole dealing with naked men thing.

As I turned the corner and saw a man bending over to gulp down some water from the water fountain, I suddenly remembered the whole thing in "Seinfeld" about good nudity and bad nudity. Seeing some guy bent over drinking from a water fountain is not good nudity.

Speaking of "Seinfeld," couple of funny "Seinfeld" related things in the paper today. This one cracks me up. In the Chron today, there was a fairly serious
article about the whitewashing of homosexuality/bisexuality in movies, especially in film biographies (see "A Beautiful Mind"). Right in the middle of the essay was this quote:

"Must we wait for Nash to go on TV and do the Full Oprah before coming to some far from unreasonable conclusions: If you switch mathematics to literature and schizophrenia to garden variety neurosis, is his life not all that different from . . . John Cheever's? (As "Seinfeld" fans well remember, the late novelist's sexual peccadilloes became the focus of a legendary episode.)"

And in the New York Times today, the big Sunday Arts section had this essay entitled "Where Have You Gone, Jerry, When We Need You?

Basic jist of the column is how much the world needs Jerry to come back and make sense of post 9/11 America..

All I can say is amen. Watched the episode today where Kramer gets an intern, George gets kicked out of his office, and Elaine makes a bet with Jerry that she won't get back together with Puddy. It's still funny.

You know, there's a certain advantage to seeing movies twice. That way you can be absolutely positively sure when you to go to the bathroom and when not to. Plus, you get to snicker as you watch people make the completely wrong decision and go to the bathroom at the absolute worst time. Knowing when and when not to go the bathroom during the movie, after all, is an art form.

I just saw "Mullholland Drive" for the second time. Got a big kick out of watching at least three guys make a really bad decision, guessed that nothing important was going to happen in the movie for the next couple of minutes and got up to go to the bathroom only to miss the big sex scene. Bet they were bummed when they came back and found out what they missed. Missing that scene is like missing the scene when Rick first sees Elsa in Casablanca It's like missing Hamlet's soliloquy. It's like missing the baptism scene in "the Godfather". It's like missing the scene in "Boogie Nights" with the snap-n-pop's and the drug dealer whose rocking out to "Sister Christian." Worth the 16 bucks I've put down seeing that movie so far. Naomi Watts puts the zaaa in shiksa.

The movie's as good, maybe even better the second time around too. The first time I saw it, I was too busy trying to figure it out to really get into it. This time, because I read enough reviews tto have some sort of sense of what was going on, I just kind of sat back and enjoyed the ride. Man, nobody does completely fucked up creepiness like Lynch. That scene at "Silencio" is brilliant. It's as creepy as it is beautiful and as trippy as it is powerful.

Joe Bob says check it out.

I'm not watching the Winter Olympics, not even really following it that closely. But, like everyone else, I've been reading about Skategate, or whatever it is they're calling it. Like a lot of people, I find it all slightly amusing. The whole thing points out one of the things that I always hated about figure skating- the arbitrariness of the judging. Well, that and the the whole frilliness of it all, but that's another issue. I like my sports when they end because the game clock ends or the final out is made or the because the ref's change a call after an instant replay review because of some obscure rule about what constitutes a fumble. Figure skating is all too subjective. It's the same reason why I don't like college football. Judging in figure skating is a lot like the whole polling thing. You know, how Miami or Nebraska will always poll high and go to a Bowl because they're Miami or Nebraska, even if they lose a game or two, but East Bumfuck State will never get ranked high because they're not Miami or Nebraska. But I digress.

Anyways, what I find really amusing about the whole thing is the fact that the judge whose responsible for the whole mess, the one who broke down and admitted that she scored a certain way because of pressure, is the French judge. Because who else would buckle under pressure but the French judge? Because that's what the French do. They buckle under pressure.

I wonder if the Russian officials singled out the French judge because they were thinking the same way. You know, like, they sat there and thought to themselves: "to win, I think we're gonna need to pressure someone. Those Canadians were damn good. Who can we pressure? Hmm, hey, let's go after the French judge. We all know what'll happen if we squeeze her a bit. Hell, if she refuses at first, we can just threaten to invade her country. That always seems to work."

Now, I'm not an expert in Napoleonic France, but I've always kind of believed that part of the reason why Napoleon was so successful was because nobody took the idea of the French taking over Europe seriously. Who would? I'm pretty sure that before Napoleon started invading other countries, other countries were warned, but nobody did a thing about it. I can juse see an ambassador to France or a spy or some sort of expert trying to warn his compatriots of the French threat, but not able to get anyone to listen. I'm sure there was a lot of conversations that went something like this:

"Sire, the French army is arming and amassing. No really, the French. Yes, the French. I'm serious, sire. The French mean to take over Europe. Yes, I'm really, really serious... but...but...I know it's ridiculous but I really think we should do something...will you stop laughing at me?"

When you're unemployed, you spend most of your time waiting. Waiting for a decent job posting, waiting for someone to respond your resume, waiting for someone to call you back, waiting for things to come in the mail. Waiting, waiting, waiting. When you start entering the really desperate mode, you find yourself afraid to leave the house lest you miss that one phone call that could change everything. Or you feel like you have to check your e-mail every half an hour to see if there's something there. Or check the job board every fifteen minutes so you can get a head start on sending out a resume before the hoardes of other unemployed people can beat you to it.

But it never really matters. Most of the time, there's nothing in your e-mail box. There's no job posting. And the person whose supposed to call you back never calls you back. All it does is make you feel more desperate, more anxious, more praying that the one phone call or that one e-mail finally comes.

There are so many people you're at the mercy of when you're unemployed. The person who promised you some contractual work. Or the friend of a friend who works at a company that's hiring. Or the person at a Temp Agency. Or the people who reads through the piles and piles of resumes. Not to mention the people you interviewed with. And there's nothing you can really do but wait and hope that they actually come through for you. And rarely do they actually do.

That's the part I hate the most about being unemployed (well, besides the whole not working and running out of money thing) but how you have to spend most of your time bent over, taking it again and again. And all you can do is turn around and smile and say "thank you, can I have another."

"My favorite inside source
I'll kiss your open sores
Appreciate your concern
You'll always stink and burn"

Oh, one more thing. I'd like to give a shout-out to Uncle Bob of Uncle Bob's Dairy O' Chuckles for addding this little ole blog to his incredibly substantive list of blogs. He's pretty funny too.

Check out his little blurb on the Olympics. I couldn't agree more, especially about the whole "messing up Friends" thing:
http://unclebob.diaryland.com/020208_48.html

Pitchers and catchers arrive today for spring training.

The world already seems like it's a better place already......

One more Valentine's Day related note. While going through my things looking for something, I stumbled upon some lyrics for a song I wrote way back in college. And yes, I was in a band in college. Sort of.

Some of my finest work, if I do say so myself. And a very touching sort of love song too. Sadly, only the first lines remain.

Love Chicken:

Going to the Farm
Cruising for some chicks
Want one whose nice and plump
One who knows some tricks
Not here to lie
Not here to pretend
Just want you to be
be my back door hen

Be my Love Chicken
My Love Chicken
My Love Chicken

Squawk!

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So I tried to go through that form for the Temp Agency. It is kind of cool, especially since it automatically arranges an interview for you. Again, no having to get passed from voice-mail to voice-mail and all of that crap. I even made up some fancy, shmancy essays for it (on a side note, why don't they teach you in college how to write those kind of crappy personal essays. You know, instead of learning how to write a lengthy analysis about Neitzsche, Conrad and the "Heart of Darkness," you learn how to write bullshit personal essays that really say nothing but sound really impressive and help you say you just want a fucking job in a really profressional sounding way? But I digress).

Only problem with the form is that it's a Web form. Which means you have to enter certain information or you can't go to the next page. I hate Web forms. I really, really, really do. You have to do everything it says and it has to be cut and dry or you can't go the next page. Sometimes, though, things aren't so quite cut and dry. Sometimes you can't put in a nice, neat answer. Which means, you can't go onto the next page. And so you can't go any further in the process.

Which is why I think I'm going to wade through voice-mail for the rest of the afternoon. Because people at least can understand things that aren't black and white.

Grrr.

Oh, guess I'll be back for some sort of Valentine's crap-fest, but I just had to vent after spending an hour wading through the Web site before realizing that I couldn't do it and I had just wasted an hour of my life.

Okay, so I got Digital Cable. Big whoop. New clearer picture, six-hundred channels, shiny-new cable box. Still haven't made my mind-up. Now I've made it up.

Here in SF, the wonderful entity that is our Cable Company has decided that Comedy Central will share the same channel as CNBC. We get CNBC all day and Comedy Central at night. Fine. Comedy Central isnt' all that exciting most of the time anyways.

But it does at 7. At 7, they reshow the "Daily Show" from the previous night so if I miss it, I can watch it then. I heart "The Daily Show." If you took a hundred pundits and lined them up one-by-one, they still wouldn't make as much sense out of the world as that show does in ten minutes. So, since I missed last night's episode I flipped to good ole channel 53 to watch me some Jon Stewart and what did I find? Hockey. Olympic Hockey. And not USA Hockey, but Finland vs. Russia or something equally as exciting. Why? Because NBC is showing everything that isn't figure skating on all of it's sister stations, of which CNBC is one. And some lameo at AT&T decided that people would rather watch Russia vs. Finland then "The Daily Show."

Look, there are about six-hundred stations available. I can get the Game Show Network and watch six straight hours of old Match Game episodes. I can get the Western Channel and watch nothing but really bad, B-Movie Westerns all day. I can get the Mystery Channel and watch…well, I don't know what it shows because it all looks so boring I always flip by. I get four HBO's and two Cinemax's and for the life of me I couldn't tell you what the difference is between all of them. But I can't get Comedy Central at 7 at night. What the fuck? I mean Comedy Central is a fairly well-known Cable Station. It's got the Daily Show and South Park. It's got the Man Show. Why touch that when you can just put Russia vs. Finland on the Game Show Network channel. Does anybody watch that channel? And if they do, can we keep them from voting? Whose bright idea was that anyways- a channel devoted to nothing bad cheesy game show's from the '70's? Or they could of put it on the Mystery Channel. I'm sure the three people who watch that wouldn't of even noticed.

And another thing. Before I got my new fancy, shmancy cable box, I was able to set the timer so it could record different shows from different stations on the same night. I could on Tuesday night's, for example, tape Buffy on UPN at 8 and then have the cable switch to tape The Real World on MTV at 10. For some reason, the genius's at AT&T took that away. Can't do it anymore. I can, however, set-up the guide that comes up telling you what station you're watching so that it appears on the bottom of the screen if I so wanted it to. Or I could switch it to the top. Or, I could receive very important messages from AT&T telling me what exciting new channel they've just added ("oh, cool, they've added the Love Boat Channel!"). But I can't record more than one channel at a time like I used to, back when I had my cheap, only 55 channel, non weather showing, non-digital box.

And the only reason why I switched to digital cable, besides the fact I got a deal on it, was so I could watch porn on Cinemax. Something I could do, by the way, until AT&T decided to take it off the basic package as a way of forcing people to swtching to digital cable.

Because I got viscously screwed over by a Publishing Company that will remain nameless (Diablo Publishing) I am now, once again, calling Temp Agencies looking for work. Yay me. Anyways, I called one of the bigger and better one's yesterday. The receptionist told me to go to the Web site because they have this cool thing where if you go there, you can enter in a bunch of information and it'll schedule an appointment for you. Pretty cool, eh? No sitting around waiting for them to call you back or spending hours trying to actually reach a live person.

Only one problem, though- you can't schedule an appointment unless you enter all the information first. And the most important part of this section is the Personal Essay section, a section that asks you those great questions like "what do you want out of a job?" or "what kind of job are you looking for." Not to mention the always great "what kind of skills do you think you could bring to a job?"

All I want is a fucking temp job that doesn't suck. I don't want to spend all day writing essays. They're all bullshit anyways. Besides, I don't really know how to answer those questions. If I did, I probably wouldn't be needing a fucking Temp Agency.

Ugh. I hate when I spent like fifteen minutes crafting a resume for a great job, hit click and just as the e-mail is in the process of being sent off, realize that there's a big huge typo that you somehow missed because you were so worried about everything else.

(Editor's Note- the rest of what was posted earlier is no longer up. After some research, what was written was later discovered to be factually wrong. And it was boring and not very funny. The writer has been reprimanded for trying to post while still trying to recover from too much red wine and pizza from the night before.

We will resume our regularly scheduled broadcasting later tonight....)

Have something bigger coming later, but I just had to say this.

To MTV & Bunim/Murray Productions-

When I saw the promos for the upcoming "Real World/Road Rules Challenge" I said to myself that I would never, ever lower myself to watching it. Not gonna happen. Already wasted too much of my precious life watching your shows. But somehow, slowly, I got suckered into it. And after watching last night's show, all I can say is I'm hooked. Hooked like a politician at a Ken Lay fundraising party. Hooked like a Bush child on booze and prescription pills.

Damn you. Damn you all to hell.

Oh, one more thing for the day....

I'm comin up so you better get this party started

Few things to tide you over til I think of something interesting to write-

-I think my favorite show on saturday mornings is that show "India Waves" on one of the foriegn cable stations. It's kind of the TRL Live for Indian Pop Music. Every video is beautifully shot, full of incredibly luscious and exotic locations. Everytime I watch the show, all I want to do is travel to India. But mainly, the videos are just unbelievably, hilariously, completely over the top, grade A, cheese. We're talking melted fondue cheese. Oh, and all of the women in the videos are just plain hot. I think I have a thing for Indian women now. Don't see a lot of them being Jewish though.

- R&B artist R. Kelly just got busted for having underage sex with a 14 year old girl. Police supposedly uncovered a video of the act and have it in their custody. And then there's Russell Maryland, the Raiders football player who is now in jail with some of his friends for rape and a horde of other unspeakable acts. Supposedly, there's a video of that too. I think it goes without saying that if you are able to commit an illegal act, especially any sort of bad, illegal type sexual thing, DO NOT VIDEOTAPE IT. I do not think it gets any dumber than that. Except for having sex with a fourteen year old. Ick.

-I see Britney Spears is advertising something called the "Britney Spears Foundation" on her Pepsi banner ads. What is the "Britney Spears Foundation?" Is it a foundation to help poor, disadvantaged children dress up like ho's? Because it's hard to dress hootchie if you don't have the Benjamins. Poor, poor disadvantaged, non-hootchie children....

- I started a small, very small, debate on the symbolism of dogs and cats in Buffy The Vamprie Slayer on one of the Buffy boards. I am not sure this is a good thing. I also think this definately means I need a job, not to mention a life.

But why did Faith keep turning into a cat in Buffy's dream? And why was Willow extremely concerned with her and Tara's inability to name their cat in the Lynchian acid fest that was the S4 season finale? And is it any coincedence that ever since Buffy died said cat- Miss Kitty Fantastico- has disapeared from the show?

- And finally, why I'm not meant for the business world....

A friend of mine is a big-time, big-shot consultant. He is taking on a new case now, one for a big-time retail outlet, one that does a significant amount of business online. One of the first things that amazed him about the company was that they hadn't institututed any sort of e-mail marketing yet for their online store. As I was busy deleting the ten spam mails that I had recieved this morning, I was wondering if this is really a bad thing.

Was gonna rant about the Savoy Tivoley being shut down in North Beach, or a protestor's stupid comment about Bono hanging out with rich people and doing something as opposed to hanging out in the streets waving puppets, but not now.

I just found out my dad's 9 year-old huskie, Shambles, is being put to sleep. Pancreatic Cancer. Poor Shammy. I'm so sad.

Shambles was a big, huge, loveable lug of a husky. Actually, calling him a lug isn't quite doing him justice because he was one of the smartest dogs I've ever seen, maybe too smart for his own good. No matter how much my dad tried to devise a way of keeping him in the yard, Shambles would always figure out a way to escape and run free. Once, when he was young and in that biting everything phase, my dad was told to use a spray bottle to spray him everytime he started biting into something. That worked for only a few days as Shambles figured out the best way of handling that was to bite the water bottle. I often told my dad that that's what they got for naming him Shambles. They should of named him Flowers or Peace or something like that. Something more calm and less mischeivious.

He just loved to run and frolic. He was a husky after all. Pure Jack London Call of the Wild. Unfortunately, he'd hear the Call too often and couldn't be left off leash. Once off, he'd just run and run and run. When my dad was living in a cottage in the Santa Cruz mountains, he'd try and build a fence to keep him from running. Shammy, however, was too smart and too strong to stay in the pen for too long and always escaped. My dad would get calls from people miles and miles away saying that they had found him in their yard. Dad would have to hop in the car and drive all these backwood roads to go get him.

He and Carol, my dad's wife, would take him to the dog beach on Santa Cruz, a beach where on Sunday mornings they'd let all the dogs run off-leash, play with each other, and run in and out of the water as dogs so love to do. It was Shambles' favorite thing in the world to do and he would run onto the beach with the biggest smile you'd ever see on a dog. It was so much fun to see him run around, chasing balls with other dogs, running in and out of the ocean, just being free. You'd imagine that if there is a dog heaven, it would be exactly like how it was on that beach. But once again, he was too smart and to full of wander-lust to stay on the beach. He eventually figured out a way to get off the beach and escape. They stopped bringing him to the beach after he got loose too many times.

But he was so loveable too. He'd often just come to where you where watching tv and stand in front of you, just hoping to be patted and played with. I used to love wrestling with him, but he got too big for me and too furry. I'd come out of a wrestling session with him with hair all over my clothes and fur in my mouth. Soon after getting him, though, my half-sister Hannah was born and like any first-born baby, Shambles found himself no longer the center of attention. Sadly, the house-dog part of Shambles, the part that wanted nothing better to do than be patted and curl up in the middle of the living room whenever we'd watch tv, never quite got the attention he wanted.

Ironically, my dad even got him because huskies are supposed to be really good around kids. And he was too. Hannah would pull his tail, poke at his face, do all sorts of things he'd never let other people do. He'd just sit there and take it, a resigned look on his face- a face that just looked like he didn't appreciate it and didn't like it, but he couldn't do anything about it. It was like it there was some sort of Husky personal code that he had to live up to- don't attack humans smaller than yourself. Hannah, however, was kind of scared of the dog. You don't think about it as an adult, but when you're young and small, a dog is bigger than you are. And this dog was, well, just a huge, giant fur ball that moved, often made noises, and hopped around. As she got older, she got less scared of him, but often came back from dog shows talking about all of the cute, small dogs that she saw. Even now, she was still a little intimidated by him. She loved him, though. Like we all did. Her first word, after all, was "doggie."

And that's how he was. Equal parts Jack London "Call of the Wild" and equal parts loveable house dog. Too full of wanderlust to want to stay in the house, but too full of love not to try and be nothing but a house dog. So he'd often just lie around the house with a sad look on his face, stuck in between his two worlds. Part of him wishing he'd just be patted and played with for hours. Part of him wishing he'd be up in Alaska, leading other huskies through the frozen tundra.

Poor Shambles. I'll miss him. I hope that whereve he is, he's running and running around doggy heaven with that big huge wonderful grin on his face, wrestling other dogs for the ball.

So there was an article in the paper the other day about they're being controversy over the handing out of free condoms at the Olympics. Seems every Olympics, the Powers that Be hand out free condoms to the athletes as part of their welcoming kit. This, however, isn't going over very well in Utah. Guess handing out free condoms to Olympic athletes doesn't quite jive with uptight morality police in Utah. Don’t' want any condoning of pre-marital sex. Don't want any athletes to think it's cool to hook up with 20-year old Swedish chicks at a club after they've hurtled down a luge run at 100 mph. All of which explains to me just why these upcoming Olympic games are gonna be a disaster in the making.

Let's just come right out and say it- holding them in Utah, bad idea. Very bad idea. Whose bright idea was that one anyways (oh right, Utah bribed the IOC)? If you were a country and wanted to host an Olympic event, Utah would be one of the last places you'd hold it. Utah is the messy room in the house you don’t want guests to see. Utah is the totally freaky friend of yours you don't want other people to meet. Too backward ass. Too full of uptight religious freaks. Not exactly a place synonymous with fun, partying, openness and debauchery. This is a place, after all, that has a porn Czar especially designed to keep porn out of the state. This is a place where they have specially designed video stores that show cut versions of movies so a family could see, say, "Saving Private Ryan" without any of the blood and gore. And most importantly, this is a state where it's still difficult to buy booze.

And this is the state that's gonna host a two week party for the world. Good idea. And not just any party, the Winter Olympics. Which is made up predominately of Europeans. An area full of countries known for it's openness and tolerance, for alcohol having a prominent place in the society's culture, and for a place full of people who like nothing better to do than look down at Americans and make fun of us for our back-ward ass, uptight ways. Especially now, Year 2 of the W. administration and his "oh, screw the rest of the world" foreign policy. Yep. This is going to go over swimmingly. We're not only showing guests the icky, messy room we haven't cleaned, we're throwing the damn party in it.

But all of that might not be the worst of it. No, not by a long run. Not in post-9/11 America. The rest of the world always resented us at these things because our tv coverage is too America-centered, our fans too blustery patriotic, our athletes too crass and classless. But now, all of that is gonna be worse. Now it's just gonna be worse. After 9/11 we all felt patriotic. We all went out and bought the American flags and got teary at the National Anthem. Everyone felt patriotic because it was an awful, horrific thing and we all realized just how much, deep down, we love our wonderful country. But now we've gone way, way past that part, into somewhere past trendy and overlywrought and into kitschy and annoying. Now it's thoroughly okay to be as smug and arrogant about our patriotism as possible. Whereas before there was always some amount of hand-wringing and caution about waving the flag, at least from some people who thought it was kind of classless, now it's more than okay. Now it's incredibly okay to wave the flag, chant "U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A!" and to smugly revel in the righteousness of being an American.

And into the midst of all this patriotic frippery, comes the nations of the world. Well, mainly those who can actually do winter sports. Into our backwards, conservative state and into a country that thinks there's nothing cringe-worthy about recreating the famous photo of Iowa Jima on a football field or having illiterate football players recite passages from the Constitution before the Super Bowl.

Oh yeah, the rest of the world is so gonna love us after these games.

Found this in the middle of an intelligently written and timely article in the Chron about Saddam Hussein and the state of his reign in Iraq:

"Some of Hussein's history has become common knowledge in North America, through such varied vehicles as an A&E biography and the pop culture TV show "South Park."

What? So it is true, then, that Saddam Hussien is Satan's gay lover. Always knew "South Park" was right. And it's alwyas good to see "South Park" used as an example of informative television.

Just to catch up on a few things....

No "Bonehead Column of the Week" from the past week because there was nothing in the Bay Guardian that was that dumb. And I just applied for a job there, so maybe I should cool it for awhile.

I finally heard back from that company that called me at 8 in the evening. They got back to me friday afternoon (while I was at the movies) and told me that they were interviewing tons of people that day and saturday morning and they really needed me to get back to them to schedule an appointment. Thanks for giving me the heads up. Great job, great opportunity, great company, two hours commute. Oh well.

Oh, stumbled onto a whole new way of knowing I didn't get a job. Interviewed for a place last week. Interview went well and they asked me to e-mail them my references. Sounds good right? Sent them my references, plus a little thank you note but the e-mail kept on bouncing back. Being the proactive and extremely desperate person that I am, I called them first thing the next morning and left them a message saying that I was having trouble sending them my references and to let me know if they got it or still need it. They never called me back. Guess they didn't really need my references after all.

Was gonna write about how pissed I am about having to sit around all day and wait for the cable guy to come and hook me up with the latest in cable technology, but the guy got me stoned and left me half of his bag. Best damn experience with the Cable company I've ever had. I think I'm gonna take back everything I said about AT & T.

Tricky thing is now I not only have a brand new remote control, but a cable box too. That means after spending the past six months perfecting everything for maximum channel-flipping, I have to relearn everything again. Have to relearn the buttons on the remote, have to relearn where the channels are, have to relearn all the new channels. It's gonna take me a long time to relearn this stuff to get me back to where I was.

Good thing I'm unemployed.

Oh yeah, forgot this one. After leaving the theater from seeing "Black Hawk Down," my friend and I saw a homeless person locking his shopping cart up. To keep it from being stolen.

Think about it.......

Unbelievable. Stunning. Incredible. Jaw-dropping. Speechless rendering.

The Superbowl?

Nope. Britney trying to play a stoner on Saturday night's SNL. Unbelievable.

So what did I think of the Superbowl (for those two or three of you dying to know)? Great game. U2 did themselves proud and didn't embarrass themselves at all. And that the patriotic stuff was as what you'd expect from the Super Bowl- way over the top.

But here's the riff of the game (with help from the people I watched the game with). Kurt Warner is one of the biggest holy-roller Jesus freaks in football. Everytime you ask him something, he's always thanking Jesus for this and for that, quoting this scripture or that scripture, and saying how much he owes the Big Guy for everything. I don't know much about the Pats (who does) but it doesn't strike me that they don't have as many Holy Rollers types on their side. So, then, you would think going into the game that the Rams, besides having one of the greatest offenses in NFL history also have Jesus on their side too. Major advantage to the Rams.

Somehow, though, the Pats neutralized the Jesus factor. You'd figure with Warner being all tight with Jesus that it would help him out. But He didn't. The Pats did so well that they completely fluxommed Warner and won the game. Now how'd the Pats do that?

Did Bellichik's defensive plans take into account the Jesus factor? Did they have Ty Law guard Jesus throughout the game or did they fake Him out with a blitz or two? Did they take advantage of where the game was played and do some sort of voodoo thing before the game by sacrificing a bunch of chickens? Or maybe they counter-balanced Warner's Baptist beliefs with another belief system. Like maybe they had a Catholic Priest or a Rabbi give the pre-game prayer. This way, it would be like a Battle of the God's type thing- kind of like when Moses and the Pharoah's sorcerers engaged in a battle of "whose God is more powerful" back in the Old Testament, with Moses' coming out on top (not sure about whether he covered the spread though). I guess, then, you could say that whoever the Pats had working for them, they were more powerful than Warner's Jesus.

Since nobody cares about the Pro Bowl, I was thinking that they should heighten people's interest by making it a game not between the NFC and the AFC, but between the Born Again's vs. un-Born Again's (the Unbelievers? The On a Highway to Hell's? The Only Born Oncers?). And by those who aren't, I'm not saying guys like Russell Maryland who are obviously not following most of the Lord's commandments, but, say guys aren't all "I owe it all to the Lord" guys. Like Brett Favre. He could be religious, but nobody knows. He could start against Warner. Or maybe you could have Jay Fiedler, the QB of the Dolphins play because he's Jewish. And also have Az-Hakim cause I'm guessing he's not Born Again either.

Think of all the hype that type of game could generate. It's the ultimate battle between Good and Evil, the ultimate battle between the religions. And it would answer the question once and for all who Jesus really helps out during games.

Hey, I got an e-mail from Pamela Anderson today. Do you think she really sent it to me? Apparently, she's offering me some online viagra. That's so nice of her.

Went to see "Blackhawk Down" today. It was good in some ways, problematic in other ways. A discussion for another time and another place. One thing that was good about the movie is that it made me realize how thankful I am that I never had to be in the military and fight in a war. There is no way in hell I would of made it. I would suck as a soldier.

I am pretty sure that if I was a soldier and had to fight I'd never make it out alive. Not with my luck. I'd be nothing but cannon fodder. I'd be like the poor bastards during the D-Day invasion who got shot before they even made it off the boat. I'd be the one whose gun jammed at the worst possible moment and cause my entire company to be ambushed. I'd be the one who'd be so busy having a discussion why Bud Selig could be the dumbest man on the face of the planet that I'd step right on a land mine and get my leg blown off. Or I'd be the one who couldn't understand the detailed plans well engouh and get lost only to have to have a chopper come and rescue me.

Nope. There's no way in hell I'd make it in battle. Hell, I don't even think I'd be able to make it through basic training, what with that having to constantly get up early or having to do all that physical training. And it's not my fault necessarily. I'm just made that way. That's what my Briggs-Meyer test says, that I'm not good following instructions or being in environments rife with conformity and strict rules. It's what the employment counselor told me too when I went to get help figuring out what I should do with my life. I need an unstructured, creative environments to thrive and the army ain't exactly unstructured or creative.

In a way, it shows why it's not a great idea to have a national draft for the army. If we had a draft I'm sure the military would be find plenty of people who'd be great for them, people who under normal circumstances wouldn't join the military but would be forced into joining. Which would be a good thing. But it also keeps people like me out. In fact, by not joining the military, I'm, in my way, being patriotic. Because I know I'd suck as a soldier, I'm not going to bring the military down by joining. My not serving is one of the best things that I could do for my country.

Uncle Sam doesn't want me.

By the way, I will say this for the movie. There's a scene where one of the soldiers calls home right before the going off to battle just to tell his wife that he loves her. She just misses his phone call by a couple of seconds. As soon as the scene ended, my friend and I just turned to each other and both said "he's toast. He is so dead." Suprisingly, he died (or at least I think he did- it's hard to tell in the movie).

Which made us think that if we were about to go into battle, we'd never call home right before just to say we loved someone. Or we'd never be in the middle of trying to tell someone something back home. Bad luck. Everytime that happens in the movie, they die. Not worth the risk.