Tivo is God to Me

I couldn't stand to watch the Academy Awards in real time last night. I'll fast forward through all the boring parts tonight. It's kind of a pain to be 24 hours after the entire world and there's not much suspense because you already know who won the big awards. But I can't stomach the technical awards for all the random stuff I don't care about.

And now these people don't even get to come up on the stage. Or else they're up there in a group line up. Not a lot of dignity for the lesser awards, but then if we whacked all that crap, you could be in an out in an hour. Chris Rock's funniest line of the night was how next year these people will get their awards in the parking lot.

Star Jones need to shut the fuck up. We don't care what you think, Star. We want to know what the real stars think. It's not about you, Star. Let the others have their moment.

Sorry that Scorcese didn't win again. But Hitchcock and Robert Altmann are both five time losers for Best Director as well. That's not bad company.

Man Sues For Unwanted Pregnancy

Dr. Richard O. Phillips has accused Dr. Sharon Irons of misusing semen obtained through oral sex to become pregnant.

It's true. And my favorite quote:

She asserts that when the plaintiff "delivered" his sperm, it was a gift.
There was no agreement that the original deposit would be returned upon
request."

That's just plain icky.

Whatever the outcome of the case, I'm betting the child will be the "spitting image" of the father.

Wow is that bad.

Dirty Little Secret

I absolutely love Survivor. While never watching the first one, I've been hooked ever since season 2.

It's silly and the truly deserving people never win. Unless you count Rupert. But then they had to make up another million dollar popular vote award so he could win.

They always gang up on the strongest people and vote them off way too early so that they're never a threat. If you're an ex-Navy pilot who teaches survival training, don't bother to unpack your bags. People just fly under the radar and snake into the finals having never one a challenge.

I typically don't like "reality tv" because it's not reality. Most of it's staged and not very well at that.

They should have the next Survivor in Central Park. Let a few yahoos try to camp out there and survive off of hot dogs lifted from cart men and avoid the muggers. Now that would be a challenge and the show would literally be about survival.

When I'm in staff meetings, I think about who I'd vote out of my meeting or how I'd apply Survivor rules to other shows. If they ever put the Queer Eye guys on Survivor, Jai is so gone.

Buy Those Girls Some Kamikazes

When I was younger (why do all these stories start that way), my roomie, Scott, my buddy Petey and I were at the bar. Petey had not initially wanted to go out for the evening and had plead poverty. After much whining, Petey caved and came out with us.

As a little background, Petey was a great buddy. A little nerdy, curly hair, glasses and a dry sense of humor. We didn't think he'd ever been laid and made it our goal to try to change that during our last year of law school.

We had been cocktailing it for a while and by this time in the evening, Petey was both drunk and out of money. We'd also managed to strike up a conversation with two girls around the corner of the bar from us. We were doing okay, but definitely not into full court press mode by any stretch of the imagination.

Petey, who by this point had his head on the bar (and probably was being supported by Scotty and I) raises his head to assess the situation. He saw that Scott and I were making some progress with the ladies, but things were still of an indeterminate nature.

Petey pipes up with, "If I had any money, I'd buy those girls some kamikazes." And promptly goes to sleep on the bar. We were not able to take Petey's advice because the ladies fled immediately after Petey's exclamation.

It was either that or Scotty dedicating a song by Tiffany (I Think We're Alone Now) to me over the dj booth's microphone. That's enough to scare anyone off.

Even Gorillas Love Nipples

In San Francisco, two women are suing the Gorilla Foundation (home of Koko the allegedly sign language speaking ape) for being pressured to expose their breasts to bond with the animal.

It's true, I'm not making this up. Even Yahoo was reporting it so it has to be true.

If you're an AOL subscriber, you might remember that Koko hosted an online chat last year.

As an indication of Koko's nipple fixation, Stephen Sommers (the attorney filing the suit) said, "There's a history with this nipple thing," leafing through the chat transcript and pointing out the word "nipple" -- which he'd highlighted in pink -- each time it appeared.

Well if you're going to highlight the word "nipple" of course you'd use a pink highlighter.

Two Doors Down

We had so much snow in the Great Grey North that my Fabio-mobile (Chysler Sebring convertible so named by my buddy Dan) got stuck in the street two houses from mine this morning.

Luckily, I knew the guy whose house I was in front of. He dug me out and my car is currently sitting in his driveway while I wait for the snowplow to come down our street. They've plowed the main roads, but we've just got too much snow for my little car. I'll just get high centered if I try to go out again.

So I'm multi-crapping from home. Watching tube, doing work email, blogging, enjoying work in my jammies and downloading music to my I-pod. Wish I'd have thought of this before I went and got my car stuck at 7:00 am this morn.

Definitely have to buy Ryan (the guy who dug me out) a bottle of scotch as a thank you. Nothing says thank you like Johnny Walker Black.

The Horrible Napkin Holder Incident

When I was younger and more of a troublemaker, I had an incident with my parents. It may have been the only time where I absolutely stumped my Mom & Pop.

I was dating this girl and we were going to pick up a pizza and go to the park for an impromptu picnic. Plus I knew we'd wind up making out on the blanket and rolling around in the grass. Ah, youth.

Anyway, at the pizza place, I realize we don't have any napkins or paper towels. So I swipe a napkin dispenser. You know, the metal kind that stand up and you pull great wads of paper napkins out of. I steal the whole thing right off a table on the way out the door. And of course, my date sees that I'm a bad boy (at least as far as restaurant supplies go) and smart enough to save my whole MacGuyver plan from going awry.

After my date, I take the napkin dispenser from my car and leave it on our kitchen table. No idea why I did this. The common flaw of hubris is my guess. Just wanted to make sure someone other than I could appreciate the genius that was my caper.

The next morning is Sunday and my Mom is immediately on me. "Where did this come from?" I finally cave to the whole story and promise that I'll take it back to the pizza place at some later time. Really I just figured I'd throw it away somewhere and pretend I was never dumb enough to bring it into the house.

So later we're in the church parking lot along with some lady and her two daughters whom we had given a ride. Just as we're getting ready to get out of the car, one of the little girls gets a huge nosebleed. My Dad is pulling out a handkerchief, Mom is trying to find kleenax in her purse, the lady is scrambling for anything in her purse.

I look right at my Mom and say: "Boy a napkin dispenser would come in handy right about now."

I think that was right about the time when my parents started to realize I was nuts. To this day, my family won't talk about the Horrible Napkin Dispenser Incident.

Grey Goosed

In case you missed it, Retief Goosen is not playing in this week's PGA tour event, the Nissan Open at the Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles. He got disqualified for missing his tee time at the pro-am event on Wednesday at 6:40 am.

Apparently he overslept and a new rule this year states that if you miss a tee time in the pro-am, you're dq'ed. This rule is in place because most professionals notoriously hate playing with the amateurs.

The story gets even better though. On Tuesday night, Retief was the host at a party for his new sponsor Grey Goose Vodka. The LA Times is reporting that during the party he told reporters:

"I have never really drunk vodka, but I've had a few tonight. Somebody is going to have to drive me home."

What makes this story even better is that at the party, they passed out a press release and quoted Goose as saying:

"I have long enjoyed the smooth taste of Grey Goose vodka and am pleased to have the brand join my team of supporters as I play on tour. This will be a lot of fun."

I hate when the truth gets in the way of our public relations.

Pants on Fire

The recent purchaser of the Minnesota Vikings, Reggie Fowler, is in some hot water for the biography his Public Relations firm handed out at the press conference announcing the transaction. A lot of people are reporting this but it makes it no less funny.

In his bio, it claimed:

• He played in the Little League World Series
• He had a degree in Business Administration
• He played for the Cinncinnati Bengals
• He played for the Canadian Football League's Calgary Stampeders

Umm, I'll take "Lies We Tell To Women in Bars" for $500, Alex.

The "clarification" being shopped around is that a draft copy of his bio was inadvertantly handed out. I'm sure some toady at the firm is taking it in the neck this week.

Apparently, the real story is:

He played on a little league team that won it's league and everyone in town called it the World Series. And by winning their league they were eligible for the real Little League World Series which eveyone really cares about and you can watch on tv.

His degree from the University of Wyoming was in Social Work not Business. With the trouble the Vikings get into off the field, Social Work may have been a better choice. Mr. Moss, let's talk about your anger issues....

Played for professional football teams? Well okay, he went to training camps with both teams and got waived before ever playing a down in any game. Yet that's still not what his Fact Sheet claims.

This reminds me of a line from a comedian (whose name I can't recall):

Always bring a copy of your resume to the interview for yourself. You may not be able to remember all the things you made up.

Jordaninan Online Dating

A Jordanian man has divorced his wife after discovering that she was his online girlfriend. I'm not making this up. As reported by the New Kerala (I have no idea either).

Bakr Melhem (the man) had been talking to a woman online for several months. When they finally agreed to meet at a bus station, he discovered it was his wife.

Leaving aside the question of why you'd agree to a hook up at a bus station, do you think the Pina Colada Song was playing when they met?

Ipodus Interruptus

I finally finished re-installing my operating system (Win XP) for the second time on my computer. What a pain. But I really think Gates wants you to do this about every year to keep your machine in tip top condition. You'll never get a virus or an identity theft if you're computer never connects to the internet.

So now I've got almost no software on my machine again. I'm combing through old boxes to find cd's to finish up the re-installation of the stuff I really use. Glad the old Blog is web-based and not machine-based.

Anyway, I also wound up blowing away my entire music library on my I-pod. I think it was when I had never upgraded the software (because I couldn't get to SP2) and when it finally did update, it whacked my old library. It was supposed to keep an old version of my library, but it didn't. I looked in the folder where it was supposed to be and there's nothing there.

That's a lot of work down the drain. Last time I checked, my pod had something like 4 days of music on it. Luckily it was mostly from my cd collection and not stuff I'd bought. I think I only lost an album or two. Clapton's last album was one of them. It was the only one I'd never bought in reality and only had virtually. I've learned a valuable lesson, Record Industry. I know you really want us to have bright shiny objects in our hands to listen to and not just data. I promise I'll go right to Amazon and order the CD.

Snackmaster Monday

Today at Virtucon in honor of Cupid is Stupid day, a bunch of people are bringing in food. Now I don't know what goes on at a normal office. Perhaps a lame potluck where people bring dishes that always feature either a can of Cream of Chicken or Cream of Mushroom soup? Our office rocks though.

If you don't know what a Snackmaster is, it's like a waffle machine, but it's used to make grilled/sealed sandwiches. You put bread in both sides and then it seals them into perfect halves kind of like a home made Hot Pocket. Typically you'll also jam in some cheese. While I don't understand why people need a separate machine to make what is essentially a grilled cheese sandwich, a bunch of people in our team have one. How we discovered this odd bit of trivia, I don't recall.

Anyway, people here go nuts. We all bring in various foodstuffs that we have kicking around our collective houses: pizza sauce, mushrooms, cheese (obviously), pepperoni, green peppers, onions, ham, eggs, smoked sausage, hamburger, whatever. We wind up doing both breakfast and lunch of grilled sandwiches. While I'm sure we'd rather have an omelette cart, it's the best we can do.

So if anyone has any panini/hot pocket recipes, be sure to post them.

So Long Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Adieu

One of my former bosses is leaving Virtucon after 15 years. She was fab, but is leaving the Great Grey North for warmer climes, a better job, and more fun. That's what happens when you abuse people for too long. They vote with their feet.

I don't think the Big Brains understand quite how valuable an employee they are losing. In addition to handling more than her fair share of work, she was great at developing people. She was able to take one of our more difficult clients and handle him impeccably. I guess that's what comes of being a professional.

What made her such a great boss? She always gave us silly little gifts on the holidays. I think I may still have Easter candy from last year kicking around my office. She protected us from the Big Brains when they didn't understand what we were doing, why we were doing it and what good it did for the company. I loved how when she asked you to take on an additional task she was apologizing for it. I had to cover a video shoot with one of her clients once and she was falling all over herself. I'm used to a boss who swoops and dumps. No apologies, just do it lackey. She was awesome.

We wish her well and are already missing her.

Super Bowl Illing

I had to attend a going away soiree for a good friend of mine on last Friday. She's leaving Virtucon after 15 years. (A post on that topic will have to wait as I've been kicking it around for about 2 weeks now.)

So one of the co-hosts of the party is so sick that she can't even talk. But she can scurry around and fetch people stuff and she got me a frosty beverage. Two days later I'm sick with a sore throat and can't talk.

It kept me from yelling the following things at the tv on Super Bowl Sunday:

• I'm $ure Brad Pitt ha$ hi$ rea$on$ for doing that ad.
• Why is McNabb throwing another fucking interception.
• Get off the fucking pylon cam and give me a goddamn real camera angle.
• I don't care who you are, monkeys is funny.
• Run the no huddle offense you fuck.
• Belichick was no genius when he was in Cleveland.
• The Patriots aren't a dynasty because they never cover the spread.

That was the most boring 3 point game in history. McCartney was the highlight of the whole game.

Where is Kramer When You Need Him

We have a great office team at Virtucon. Unfortunately, we can also look across our hall at the not so great teams. And we know they can see us. We're out in our open space: collaborating, adding value, talking about sex, thinking up new ways to make the world a better place one web site at a time.

Unfortunately, one of the people from across the hall saw us. She came over and realized it was okay to talk to other people at work, have fun, kick ass at your job and maybe even enjoy it. Naturally, when she'd return to her team across the hall, she'd just get frustrated at their drone-ishness.

And while she was really nice, she.. ummm....how can I put this in a nice way? She had freaky hair. Marge Simpson hair, Betty Bouffant's do, a freakin' beehive hairdo from hell.

Despite our team's extremely direct nature, no one could bring themselves to tell her, "Why don't you change your hair?"

We had long discussions about who should do it. We tried getting everyone to draw straws. We even got into hairstylist discussions with her about where we got our hair done. Where do you get your hair done? You could feel the tension building in the air as we all danced around the subject of hair. But no one could pull the trigger. We were all too afraid of hurting her feelings. We needed a Cosmo Kramer.

She took another job at another company and is now gone. I'm wondering if her new co-workers are all sitting around trying to work up their courage to ask her about her hair.

How do you tell someone you don't know very well something they probably don't want to hear?

Great Grey North

It's never warm enough here to really melt all the snow we get during the Winter. It melts off the streets, so you can actually drive rather than just aim your car around town.

But because of the snow plows, there are these huge mountains (usually in the corner of every parking lot) that don't truly melt until about July 4th.

It's awe-inspiring to see these great, grey monoliths to the snow removal industry that tower over everything. They're easily 20 feet tall. Every now and then you'll actually see kids trying to either tube or snowboard down them due to the painful influence of the X games on our national psyche. This will only end in tragedy.

I wish they were white, but they turn as they age in some kind of reverse winter rite of passage. Grey ugly monoliths. Ugh.

More Dates? Avoid Showering

Research in England showed that women who used a synthetic pheremone had a 68% increase in "at least four intimate socio-sexual behaviours."

What's a socio-sexual behaviour? Sex and formal dates are two.

What are the other two? Kissing, backrub, foot massage? No idea.

Too bad the pheremone was "from a young woman's armpit sweat." Ick.

From the Times of India, "Women's armpit scent attract men."