kapgar

Devilman, devilman...

From time to time, I find myself amused by the images that Google News chooses to use to accompany news stories. I know it's probably some complex algorithm that picks the image based on metadata incorporated into the image, blah blah.

If that's the case, explain to me what the hell metadata was embedded into this image to make it algorithmically associated to an article about Microsoft's Bing search engine?

Click image to excite it

I can only guess (and shudder) at what the "5 Turning Points" are based on the image.

I went back into Google News five hours later and found this...

Again, click the image to give it a thrill

Seriously, is Google trying to create a mental image of Microsoft as a bunch of crotch-grabbing child molesters? I knew Windows was evil, but this?

I was on Goodreads last night and I entered a bunch of contests for free books. It had been a while since I entered any, so why not?

One of the books was a comedy about a road trip (I think), another about a woman trying to bring to light in America the problems in Darfur, a third was about a female photojournalist in Vietnam. The fourth I entered -- just for kicks -- is about a woman's voyage of self-discovery... in the world of BDSM.

Guess which one I'm probably gonna win?

Oy.

Danger on the tracks...

Happy Snippet Wednesday to you.
Happy Snippet Wednesday to you.
Happy Snippet Wednesday, dear reader.
Happy Snippet Wednesday to you.

How sad is it that when typing that, I accidentally keyed "dead reader" at first? That's truly not how I think of you all. Honestly!

Sales
Already I'm loving the holiday sales season even if I truly believe it's blasphemy to be thinking about the holiday season this early. I almost violated my own Christmas list by purchasing the complete series of Life on Mars (US) yesterday when I saw it for $17.49 at Best Buy. It's a $40 set. Same original price for season four of The Closer, which I actually did buy for Katie yesterday at Target for $12.99. How do you pass that shit up?

Santa
Speaking of holidays, I had flipped on some news broadcast last night and they were reporting that the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas is pushing that their employees be given higher priority on H1N1 vaccine shots. While I laughed at first, it does make perfect sense. They are exposed to a ridiculously high number of children on a daily basis, many of whom are probably sicker than dogs and still go to see Santa anyway because their parents won't deny them this childhood privilege even if they are hacking their lungs out all over the floor. And a lot of the guys playing Santa (the real-bearded ones, anyway) are older and some quite overweight. Yeah, give them the vaccine. Last thing we need is a class-action lawsuit against a Santa who infected a few hundred kids. But I do still laugh at the idea that Santas are unionized.

Trains
The reason I have no idea what channel this newscast was on is because it was whatever channel was left on the TV before switching over to my DVD player last night and watching one of the better thriller movies I've seen in a while, Transsiberian. In a nutshell, it's about a couple (Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer) who take a train trip across Siberia to Moscow after completing volunteer work in China. While on board, they meet up with another couple (Kate Mara and Eduardo Noriega) who may or may not be drug mules. Murder, intrigue, and police investigating ensue. It also stars Ben Kingsley as a Russian narcotics detective. Is there any nationality that dude doesn't play? Offhand, I've got German, Jewish, American, British, Indian, Russian... Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised considering its low-budget and low-distribution nature. Very enjoyable. Oh, and it was directed by Brad Anderson, the guy behind the disturbing The Machinist starring Christian Bale in what I consider one of his finest performances.

Mojo
Just when I think I can have all my snippets related, I throw in one that's not. Well, pretend it is. Let's just say I was reading this before watching Transsiberian, okay? I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Mojo magazine. It's basically another music mag with reviews and interviews and the like, much akin to Rolling Stone but without the political leanings. And, as a bonus, it comes packaged with a CD of music related to the theme of that month's issue. Sure this makes the mag cost $9.99 per issue, but I don't buy it often. This is actually the first issue in a few years and I had to do it because the CD is all electronic music including M83, LCD Soundsystem, Tangerine Dream, OMD, and an exclusive track from Kraftwerk, along with 10 more. Yes! I like electronic music, okay?

Ken
Must. Break. Addiction. To. KenKen. Puzzles. But. It's. Too. Much. Fun. Help.

I'm gonna set you free...

Um, yeah, so it's Snippet Wednesday. Sorry, I got nothing more original. I need to make a couple lunches before I head out for work.

Fall
While I'm upset that we here in Chicago still never seem to have much of a fall in terms of nice autumn weather, we did get some beautiful leaves for the first time in about two or three years. Lately, the odd times during which we've had rain have made the leaves go from green to brown with no color variations in between. Something worked this year and we got some magnificent colors. Thank God.

I'll upload some more pictures soon.

Victims
Talk about death and decay, police in Cleveland have discovered the bodies of 10 victims in or near the house and yard of a suspected serial murderer. The kicker is that people have been complaining about strange odors emanating from his house for years. One person went so far as to describe it as the smell of a dead body. And it took Cleveland cops how long to investigate? There's something severely wrong with this story.

Superman
Funny thing about this particular Dilbert strip is that I could see this sort of thing as an outtake in the original Superman. How funny would that have been?

 

Swell
I was totally stoked the other day when I discovered that The Swell Season (featuring Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova of the movie Once) had a new album out. Cooler yet was that there was an iTunes code in it for an additional free song. But they had two codes, one for the US store and one for the Canadian store. So, if there are any Canadian fans of The Swell Season, drop me a note in the comments and the code for this song is yours. I'm not sure if it cancels out after I redeem the US code, but it's worth a shot. First come/first served.

Married?
Archie is marrying Veronica? Not Betty? Six-part comic arc? WTF? This is so not cool.

Time for lunch making. With a tear in my eye on Betty's behalf.

Mother, tell your children not to walk my way...

I knew I wanted to use that lyric for this post but I wanted to get it right so I Googled it. I was so damn convinced it was The Cult. But it's Danzig. How the hell did I mix that one up? Oh well, on with Snippet Wednesday, anywho.

Foo
Ack! New Foo Fighters!! NEW FOO FIGHTERS!!! NEW FOO FIGHTERS!!!!

(iTunes | Amazon)

Did I get the idea across that I'm excited? Really? You didn't feel it? Lemme try again...

NEW FOO FIGHTERS!!!

No, I won't go so far as blinking text. Not even for the Foo Fighters. Sorry.

Malfunkshun
The other day, while shopping for decade-related costumes for Katie to wear to school in their weeklong celebration of the school's 50th anniversary, we came across a Mother Love Bone T-shirt. Of course we bought it and she wore it on Monday. But it got me a bit wistful for the band and I've subsequently been going a bit nuts listening to their music as well as reading about them and their late lead singer, Andrew Wood. I discovered that there was a documentary made about his life called Malfunkshun, after the name of the band he fronted prior to MLB, and I tried to find it on Netflix. They clearly didn't have it as this mixed bag of search results would indicate.

But seriously, a cult horror film followed by an NC17-rated steamy, dark, cerebral romance about a kid's forbidden desire for his mom, and then... Mulan? A Disney flick. Family animation. I can just see some kid putting Ma Mere in their queue as a mother's day tribute.

Music
I'm sure all of you already think I'm a music addict ("whore" might be more appropriate). But just to confirm the theory, my iTunes account is now showing that I have...

Yes, 10,794 songs that clock in at 29 days, 12 hours, 51 minutes, and 13 seconds (including the copy of Danzig's "Mother" that I just picked up because I felt so guilty). I can listen for nearly a month without hearing the same song twice (unless you're talking February; I so rock that month, even on leap years). Yeah, my name is kapgar and I'm a music junkie.

60
Katie and I are actually going to try watching The Amazing Race again after giving it up for about two or three years. We kinda miss it. But the problem is that CBS, the network that airs TAR, always seems to have something programmed during the day on Sundays that bumps the start time of everything else after it, including TAR. So I get severely annoyed having to open my TiVo viewing of something we want to watch by seeing snippets of crap we don't want to watch in the form of 60 Minutes, a show that I feel has absolutely no newsworthiness or cultural significance at all. Why is that show still on the air? Somebody please pull the plug already.

Rogue
Why is part of me morbidly fascinated about the pending release of Sarah Palin's memoirs, Going Rogue: An American Life? Am I doomed to damnation if I read it? Could my damnation be any worse than it already is having forced myself to read an Ann Coulter book as I did a few years back?

Funny thing... I couldn't remember Coulter's name for whatever reason. So I Googled "conservative freakshow blonde pundit" and, lo and behold, a link to a CBS news page about her shows up first in the results. 

I'm off too work. Enjoy!

Help... not just anybody...

I found this ad on Facebook today.

It disturbs me for a few reasons.

One, why is it that only dads can take advantage of this debt-relief program? No moms? No childless guys? What exactly is involved here? Will they be selling their kids into child slavery behind their wives' backs?

Two, I could be wrong, but in that image I see long blonde hair, a pregnant belly, and boobies. How does this image depict dads in debt? Or is it meant to imply that all men are in debt because of women and pregnancy? Are they claiming women are the root of all evil including excessive levels of debt? That's a bold statement.

Three, what exactly is this woman doing in the picture? It would appear she is sitting/standing in the glow of a TV, but otherwise, what is this image depicting? Looks like her hands are doing an Al Bundy with the waistband of her pants. Is there porn involved in this deal?

So many questions...

Once in a while, I love scrolling through the Chicago Tribune's "Mugs in the News" section. You find a great random sampling of life there.

For example, here's a guy who was charged with first-degree murder and aggravated battery. Well if you were near a dude looking this sullen who was wearing a shirt that says "Most of the people that drive me nuts are in my family" and you didn't treat it a sign of things to come, well, you probably deserved it anyway...

This girl is actually pretty cute and looks happy to be there getting her mugshot taken. Prison fetish, I'd suspect.

I was going to ask why this guy looks so damn happy after being arrested and booked, but I think we all know why, don't we?

I have no words.

And oh so many more!

He's the world's biggest...

Fasten your seat belt, if you can (more on that later), 'tis Snippet Wednesday!

Disclaimer
For any of you reading this or any of my posts in the Notes section of Facebook, you might have noticed how I talk about photo albums or videos that don't seem to be there. This is a quirk of the Notes application. It imports text with some degree of efficacy (minus some formatting) and the occasional embedded image. But photo galleries or videos? Nuh uh. I recommend you all just click on over here to www.kapgar.com to view these posts in all their gory glory.

Photos
Here are some pictures I took recently in and around Union Station in Chicago for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Signature
The reason I was downtown and able to take those pictures last week was because I was going to that showing of Million Dollar Quartet where I was going to get my copy of The Last Starfighter signed by Johnny Cash/Lance Guest. Well, here's what my cover looked like prior to the signing...

Wanna know what it looks like now? Exactly the same. Turns out after going all gaga for the showing, Lance Guest wasn't in the cast that night. Actually, he's out of town for a few weeks and they expect him to rejoin, they just don't know when. 

Damn you, Alex Rogan! You owe me a signature!

Toner
I can honestly say, there are few things in life I hate buying more than replacement cartridges for our printer. I dread this deed simply because they cost so damn much and rarely last long at all. I'd go to those refill places, but the one or two times I've tried refilled cartridges, they didn't work well at all and did a number on my printer. This may have changed in recent years, though. Any experiences positive or negative?

Belted
As I was driving out to pick up the printer cartridges last night at OfficeMax, I discovered that the button on my seat belt buckle was coming loose. The seat belt still works, but it sometimes takes a little fiddling. Thank you to the guy at Advance Auto Parts, though, who told me about a local junkyard that has what effectively amounts to a freeform Saturday. I just drive in, find what I need, grab it, and pay about half price off the normal junkyard costs. He told me he redid the entire interior of an SUV for about $50. Guess where I'll be on Saturday?

Jackass
Am I the only person who applauds President Obama for calling Kanye West a jackass? Regardless of whether it was off record or not and whether it was appropriate or not, it needed to be said and by someone from whom the message would actually bear some weight. Hey, if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and steals the spotlight from a VMA winner like a duck...

Well, time for work. Adieu.

Here come the story of the hurricane...

I feel like the floor of a taxicab. Hmm, must be Snippet Wednesday!

Bose
I finaly got my new earbuds and I did wind up getting the Bose in-ear buds again. Turns out those of you, including Katie, who said to talk to Bose were absolutely right. They actually do have a replacement program. Turn in your old ones and get a new pair for half price. Sure, this half price is still more than I was looking to spend, but Katie even said I use them religiously and we know we like them, so I might as well. Can I tell you how nice it is to have bass again in my music?

Crowes
And what better to listen to with my new earbuds than the new double album, Before the Frost... Until the Freeze, by one of my longtime faves, The Black Crowes. Glad to see they came back from their hiatus. I only hope the Foo Fighters do the same.

Parents
Not only can I see parents doing this, it's really not a half-bad idea. Funny though it may be. And when The Onion, in an attempt at lampooning morning "news" shows, does a better job than the shows themselves, you know something is wrong. Or maybe it's right. Hmmm...

Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids

Poll
The idea that somebody would pick Spider-Man 2 over Superman in a head-to-head superhero poll just floors me. Please avert this travesty of superheroic injustice by visiting Cinematical and changing things before it's too late! (I agree with all the other results so far, though).

Kevin
Yeah bitches! I'm a hurricane this year and I'm bearing down on Mexico! Rock on!

Check that. I've been downgraded to a tropical depression. I guess I pussed out. Talk about depression. I was so excited when I saw the name "Hurricane Kevin" on the Google Earth hurricane tracker. This blows, but apparently not enough.

Fetch
Somehow I don't see that a subject line of "Jerry plays fetch with himself" on a spam e-mail message is really going to make me want to open it. Just so many things about that I'm much better off not knowing.

And it's time to head on out into the void.

I got a devil's haircut in my mind...

Welcome to Snippet Wednesday, where we take three parts debonair, four parts sexy, five parts awesome, and... completely disregard it all in the name of blog tripe! Wooo hooo!!!

Fiber
If you read this on a product, would you ever eat it? "NEW USERS: Increase your fiber intake gradually. Gastrointestinal discomfort may occur until your body adjusts." This warning is on the wrapper of the new Kellogg's Fiber Plus bars. I'm thinking the original warning "You will have gas the likes of which have not been seen since Vesuvius" was nixed at the last second. C'mon, be honest with us here, okay? TRUTH IN ADVERTISING, DAMMIT!!

Porn!
If you're under 18 and having, er, urges, you might want to take a hop across the pond to get your fix...

Rampage
Fatal cow attacks in Britain? Well, duh, they obviously want their porn, too, before the three-week grace period is up!

Jet
Holy crap! I had no idea Jet was even still around and now they've got a new CD. I was way more addicted to Get Born than I should ever admit. But I will say it anyway. And their new album, Shaka Rock, is only $3.99 on Amazon for a limited time. Or pay full price on iTunes once the promo period runs out. Gotta say I'm loving the Amazon store more and more every day.

Faces
One of the things I always loved about Sports Illustrated was the "Faces in the Crowd" section where they give little sentence blurbs plus a photo highlight to regular people who have made some major athletic accomplishment. I always hoped I would see someone I knew in there. To the best of my knowledge, this has not yet happened. Have you ever known anyone in the "Faces in the Crowd"? Oh too funny, while searching for "Faces" on their Web site, I found that the swimsuit edition is on Twitter. I'm shocked there aren't more followers. 

Targettunes
I'm curious... for at least the last several years, Target has had an online affiliation with Amazon. Amazon is in direct competition with iTunes in digital music sales. So how come Target is now aligning itself with iTunes for exclusive online music sales starting with Pearl Jam's new album Backspacer? What am I missing? It's an online menage-a-trois of pain ("I hear you have to pay extra for that kind of action, Cotton"). Clearly I need to be hired as their proofreader, though. Found two errors in that tiny little paragraph below.

Time for work!

You were a vampire...

Today we will talk to a 12-year-old girl who was impregnated by her seven-year-old half cousin who summarily left her for his 52-year-old social studies teacher. Now she's working as a greeter at a local Wal-Mart while living in a mobile home that she shares with a family of dogs that sought refuge after escaping from Michael Vick's, er, kennel and traveled halfway across the country with a bunch of crack-addicted carnies. All this and more, today on Snippet Wednesday!

Talkies
Something like that might actually get me to tune into Maury or Tyra or Oprah or whomever. Alas...

Coraline
Instead, I watch movies like Coraline, which, in all honesty, completely underwhelmed me. And I was a fan of The Nightmare Before Christmas. A big fan. But Coraline? Meh. The animation was pretty cool, but the story just didn't flow well for me. It felt too forced and no fun.

True
The good thing is now that I'm sending back Coraline to Netflix, I will finally be starting up on HBO's True Blood, season one. My only complaint about this is that each disc of the set only has two or three episodes on it. I've become so accustomed to four or five episodes per disc (House does five per disc from season three on) that this is just not gonna be enough to whet my appetite. I know it's all about the timing. Network shows are shorter because of commercials. But HBO shows aren't that much longer. They still have commercials, just at the ends of the episodes. Most episodes of Deadwood still clocked in at only about 45 minutes each and that was HBO as well. Stinks of a plot to upcharge for the DVD set, if you ask me.

NFL10
It was time to renew my subscription to Sports Illustrated and I saw that they had a new offer... subscribe for a half year and get a free copy of EA Sports Madden NFL 10 on whatever gaming platform you want. So I checked, and they do have it for the Wii. I'm not a huge fan of the Madden games. They just get too damn complex for me. But on a Wii? This could be fun. And Katie wants to play it with me. We can be terrible together (I was going to say "we can suck together" but I know how you perverts think). 

Lebanon
Is it wrong that I saw the headline to this article -- "Arlen Specter Faces Angry Lebanon Crowd on Health Care" -- and all I could think was "what the hell is Marie doing now?" Of course this time, they actually are talking about Lebanon, Pennsylvania, not the country that Marie is currently visiting. My bad.

Lego
I'm a fan of nearly all things Lego (except maybe for Bionicle). I love these little bricks and have since I was about five years old. I still get excited when new sets get released and I love going in Lego stores. It's just too much fun. But this announcement of a combination live action/animation film featuring Legos? I dunno. I can't say I'm looking forward to it at all. Please, just nix it before it goes too far.

Don't you forget about me...

If you were raised at all in the 80s or into the early 90s, you were dealt a bit of a blow today with the sudden passing of John Hughes at the age of 59 from a heart attack.

Yeah, I know that everybody in the world is talking about this already. It's been Twittified to the ends of the Earth and back. But I don't care. I'm talking about it anyway. And if you don't want to read it, then move on. Nobody's forcing you to stay.

For those of you still with me... thanks.

John Hughes was a big deal to a great number of us. He wrote, produced, and directed some of seminal films of our life. Just to name a few of the ones that might help set the stage: The Breakfast Club; Sixteen Candles; Weird Science; Ferris Bueller's Day Off; Home Alone; Some Kind of Wonderful; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; National Lampoon's Vacation (and the European and Christmas varietals as well); Uncle Buck; The Great Outdoors; Pretty in Pink...

You get the picture?

And that list only scratches the surface.

The man told stories from the heart. They were funny, they were painful, they were silly, they left you heartbroken. But, most importantly, they were real. Sure, you might look at that list and think, "what the hell are you talking about, Kevin?" But look beyond the surface. There was somebody or some event in each and every one of those films that you related to, that defined who you were and who you are.

And what made John Hughes so great was that, despite how you viewed yourself or what similar situations you found yourself in, he let you know it was okay. You could be the jock, the nerd, the wastoid, the punk, the princess, the slacker, the overachiever. It didn't matter. To John, everyone had some kind of redeeming value and that's why he took such care in crafting his characters.

Those of us who grew up watching his films learned about love and hate and pain and fear and joy and sorrow and, well, life. 

Sure, you won't see any of John's films on the AFI100 lists. But his legacy is much greater. He made us human. And his films will be with many of us in our hearts forever. What greater legacy could you ask for?

Even you naysayers cannot deny the impact he had on our generation.

To John Hughes, rest in peace.

On a side note, I'd like to personally thank you for Mary Stuart Masterson in fringed, fingerless gloves playing the drums. *sigh*

Oh, and if some dude named Avitable comes asking for an interview, run.

I gotta thank Rory for this little montage he shared on Google Reader. It's good times.

I know a bear that you all know...

And welcome back to my neglected stepchild of a blog. Just in time for Snippet Wednesday!

CDs
I love getting CDs from the library, as many of you already know. What I hate, though, is that it seems there are few to no libraries that believe in CLEANING their CDs. Of the tonnage of albums I've picked up in the last few days, both Morrissey's "Maladjusted" and Ray Lamontagne's "Gossip in the Grain" are scratched beyond listenability (is that a word?). To librarians everywhere, do not just check that discs are in the cases when they're returned; you also need to make sure they're in good condition. There's nothing more frustrating than waiting a while for a disc (be it CD or DVD) to become available only to have it rendered unusable. Not good.

Scoots
I told you, Scott. Once I met your new dog, Scooter, I'd talk about him here. And he is an awesome dog. He's half Doberman and half Schnauzer, so he's a slightly larger-than-medium dog who thinks he's either a purse dog or a cat. This claim was evidence by his utter need to lie on people's laps or on the top edge of the couch. The latter proved somewhat disastrous as he fell between the back of the couch and the cushions and couldn't figure out how to get out. Here are some photos. If you can't view the gallery in Reader, click on through either here or to the Flickr album.

Secondhand
Now that you all have read my two guestposts from Monday and Tuesday and know the sort of thing I like to do while guestposting, I need your help. A week from this Saturday, I'm guesting over at Secondhand Tryptophan as part of Karl's Summer of Love. I want to know what you'd like to see me write about. Within reason, of course. I'm not going overboard as I'm neither unemployed nor self employed. I do have gainful employment that I'd like to retain and my employers are aware of my blog so don't expect anything too wild. But still have a little fun. Let me know.

Tweet
I've been cleaning up my Twitter follower list a bit lately. Yeah, yeah, I know I was recently considering dumping it, but I didn't. Instead I took it private and have been trying to reduce my following/follower lists to just those I know or really give a damn about. But it is possible that I accidentally deleted one or two of you. So please, if you were removed from my Twitter list and feel it was an error, let me know. I have a ten-page application I can send you for reinstatement that needs to be filled out in triplicate. And I need a note from your third-grade teacher. Can't be too safe these days.

Ultrapsychotic
I know I railed against marathons some time ago, but I must apologize. Compared to this dude, not only are marathoners completely sane, but they're measurably pussified, too. Nothing personal, marathoners, but you got nothin' on this dude. How many times was he dropped on his head as a child?

Bearly
And in pure LeSombre tradition, I will save the last snippet for the Park Ranger should Wil Wheaton's tweet come true... "I know I'm not first to think this, but just once, I would have liked Yogi to tell the ranger, 'I'm a fucking BEAR, man. Just walk away.'"

Whenever you need someone...

Is there a point where mocking contempt actually becomes sympathy?

Confused? Yeah, I think I would be too after reading that statement.

What I'm referring to are the young Hollywood starlets who have made such shows of breaking down over the course of the last several years and have edged close to or over the verge of a nervous breakdown and into complete career and personal life destruction mode.

Sure, like many others, I've watched with morbid fascination as someone like Britney Spears who, despite some protestation, is actually a very talented young woman and seems to have it all just erupts. I don't need to recap it, we all know the story. And I will admit that I enjoyed the roller coaster ride. It was more thrilling than a day trip to Six Flags. You watch the news reports, you read some of the trashy tabloid articles while waiting to pay for groceries, you check online reports... and you're enraptured. Sometimes you laugh, sometimes you shake your head in disbelief, and you always wonder what will happen next. That was the fun part, a veritable game of Celebrity Limbo - how low can they go?

I think most of the fascination comes from the fact that I cannot even fathom having that much fame and money and then to sit there and watch it all be squandered. Maybe it's a boring thing to see for someone who is at a similar level professionally or financially, but I'm not, so I typically kick back and watch.

However, at some point, to me anyway, I start to feel a little pity. I don't know what causes it. I don't know where the line in the sand has been drawn that these starlets are crossing. But it's there. I feel bad for them and I almost want to help. Sure, from where I stand, all I can really do is be a bit of a cheerleader, but it's something.

With Britney, I have actually been hoping against hope that her career is permanently on the rebound and that her personal life will similarly follow suit. I want her to finish this tour she's on and make a lot of money and recoup her fanbase. I want her to find love and establish a positive relationship with her kids.

I don't know why I actually care, but for some twisted reason I do.

I'm also starting to feel this way about Mischa Barton. I'm not even a fan of Mischa and part of me, after seeing some of the stuff printed about her the last couple weeks, wants to reach out a hand and help pull her up to her feet.

The thing is, they're doing this to themselves so why do I actually care?

That's the $64,000 question. Although I think inflation may have raised the value a bit.

Lindsay Lohan? I don't know that I've reached the sympathy point with her yet. I still feel a bit ticked because I was such an early adopter fanboy of her performances in The Parent Trap and Mean Girls. LiLo's got some work to do to make me cross the threshold to true sympathy. Keep going, girl. You may get there yet.

Can I just say I'm dying for the return of Mad Men? I want season three and I want it now, dammit! I want to see how far in the future they jump, if at all. I want to see who is doing what and where and with whom. Please, just give me Mad Men or I'm going to have to keep doing stupid stuff on the Web like drooling over promotional stills or creating stupid images like this...

 

Yes, that's me as a character on Mad Men. Sure I may have fudged the body type a bit, but damn I look good. And I'm there with my own Betty Draper. Nice! Go ahead and make your own!

Please, AMC, make the madness stop and just give us season three already! I beg you. August 16 is too long to wait.

Oh lolli, lolli, lolli...

Eventually, if my eyes ever peel themselves open (ha! not freakin' likely), it will truly be Snippet Wednesday. Yet I fear it's gonna be a drag-ass one at that.

Birthday
First a Happy Birthday wish to my Dad who turns God-only-knows how old today. Actually, I might really know if I wasn't too tired to do the math in my head. But he might not want me posting the truth so perhaps this works out for the better. Happy birthday, Dad!

Lollipop
The picture of me with Tori, Kim, Sizzle, and Nilsa the other day? It was pointed out to me by a couple of them that coming up with a name might have been easier if I had posted an alternate photo. One of the others that was taken by Sweets who snapped quite a few with my camera while Steven was taking pictures with everyone else's camera. So, below, find the picture they suggested and you all get to choose which name is better... "Kevin and the Hot Licks" (Nilsa's suggestion) or "Lollipop" (my suggestion). If you pick the last one, I'll get to strut into work like Jerry O'Connell and Corey Feldman as they sang "Lollipop" along the railroad tracks in Stand By Me. Oh, who am I kidding? I'll do that anyway.

Jinx
I swear I gotta stay away from big-deal sports events. Last night, while typing up my weird post, I received an e-mail alert from the Chicago Tribune that White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle had another perfect game going into the fifth inning. If you recall, last week, he pitched what is only, by official definition, the 18th perfect game in baseball history. And now, on his first game back after that accomplishment, he had another one going. There have never been back-to-back perfect games ever. So I turned on the TV and saw him get two guys out in the sixth against the Twins, only to give up a walk, a couple hits, and a run immediately afterward, thus negating not just a follow-up perfect game, but any shot at even a no hitter. So to White Sox fans, I apologize. I'll stay away and never watch anything of this sort again. Promise. But to Buehrle, 45 consecutive retired batters? Nicely done. At least you're doing your part to make Chicago baseball exciting.

Renewed
Yay! Both Burn Notice and Royal Pains have been picked up for additional seasons by USA. And I do believe Wil Wheaton Tweeted from ComicCon that The Big Bang Theory was renewed for two more seasons. Happy days!

Mal
Oh, dude, Nathan Fillion is on Twitter? Sweet!

Ripped
And in pure LeSombre tradition, I will save the last snippet for myself for when someone truly pisses me off and I must go all Whitechapel on their ass.

And the spies hide out in every corner...

Oh, the PR person for the CIA is gooooood. Like real good. Like deceptively, manipulatively, strike-and-retreat-under-cover-of-night good.

I saw a headline on my Yahoo homepage this morning that read "CIA was a long way from Jason Bourne" and just had to read it. I am always curious how similar real life is to the movies. It's cool to think, sometimes, that the shit we see on the big screen can really happen. And, when it comes to government-recruited-and-trained assassins, well, I wholly believe it's the truth. There are so many deaths out there attributed to natural causes or some convenient accident that are clearly the work of paid hitmen.

You don't buy it? Here's an example right off the top of my head... Billy Mays... the shillman for products like Oxy-Clean. Totally a hit. Why? He was selling a product that promised to do all your cleaning FROM ONE BOTTLE! Do you know what a product like that can do to the American economy? It's devastating! People no longer need to buy detergent, bathroom cleaner, floor cleaner, shower cleaner, sink cleaner, toilet cleaner. Oh no... it's all right there waiting for them in one container. And Billy Mays was the man popularizing it.

Still don't believe me. Well tough noogies. I totally believe it. *

And now here we have the CIA's PR rep trying to say that all kinds of clandestine missions that they were accused of being a part of were unattainable given their resources and logistical planning.

Mmm-hmmm. Right.

The article says all the right things. It admits to them wanting to do some of these things, but not being able to. It uses all the right catchwords like "deniability" to make them seem like they admit to having this negative image. And they even try to claim that other government-funded groups, such as Special Ops teams, do these sorts of things regularly.

Oh yes, they're realllllll gooood.

Now let's all open up our arms and give a hug to the new family-friendly CIA, shall we? C'mon over, we're having s'mores and singing "Kumbayah." Leon Pannetta is making hot cocoa and then we're having a J. Edgar Hoover lookalike contest. It'll be fun!

* No, kapgar is not really a conspiracy theorist. He's just in a weird place this morning. But if you don't hear from him on this blog, Facebook or Twitter for an extended period, you know who's responsible! Just sayin'!

And my insurance company rejected my doctor's referral for chiropractic treatment. No surprise there.

Instead they'd rather me constantly go in for physical therapy (which I've already done), doctor's appointments, maybe an occasional ER visit when I throw out my back after the doctor's office is closed, and repeated cycles of prescription drugs.

So, yeah, in the short term, it's potentially more expensive, but they'd save a ton in the long term.

Asshats.

Never coming back until I touch the midnight sun...

Welcome to Snippet Wednesday number one billy-yunnnnnn. Okay, so that's not entirely accurate.

Props
So do you think I can lie and pretend I live in Scranton just so I can unload a bunch of my crap to the producers of The Office and hopefully see that shit appear as props on a future episode? That would be soooo cool!

Ride
I'm hoping to have some pretty good photos later this week. A local park district decided to reserve a couple days of the week for BMX riders and I am friends with the guy who was behind the request. So he's gonna make sure that a bunch of guys are out there tomorrow, weather dependent, so I can snap some shots of them in action. That could be serious fun!

Plimp'd
I didn't even know Martha Plimpton was still alive let alone still acting and now she's going to be a regular on Grey's Anatomy? The last thing I saw her in was Pecker with Edward Furlong (don't ask).

Guest
It's weird. I don't guest post for the longest time. Then I receive an invitation from one person... and then another... and another... until I have three gigs all within a couple weeks of each other. Guess whose blog is gonna be rather neglected during that time? Anyone want to fill in here for me? But I will have fun during these posts. I actually already have one written for It's Me Penelope. It's one that will guarantee she never asks me to guest post again! Muahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! ha.

Tupac
Holy crap! Not only is Tupac alive, but he's... purse snatching?

Simpson
And in pure LeSombre tradition, I will save the last snippet for myself for when all the rest of my hair falls out save for two strands. Then I can groom it and be stylin' like Homer Simpson!

The ice is getting thinner...

I'll tell you one thing I don't like... starting your day with an appointment at the doctor's office.

Seriously, who in the hell schedules an appointment at 7 a.m.? Oh yeah, me. Because my doctor's office doesn't like evening or weekend hours. Bastards. So I dragged my ass out of bed this morning and nearly stumbled in the shower (at least I made it past the bed without falling). I gotta do something about that. I also ate breakfast, got dressed, read some blog posts, left some comments, loaded some new podcasts on the iPod, etc. (not necessarily in that order) and left.

I'm not a big fan of the doctor's office. No, they don't frighten me or anything. I don't get severely panicky like some people do. I'm just one of those people that doesn't believe in wasting either a doctor's or my own time with "little things." A cough or cold? Allergy med refill? Sore muscles? Cramps? Bad headaches? Phone them in for a prescription, don't drop by. What's the point? That's just how I operate. I hate how much work it takes to schedule and how long you sometimes have to wait for an appointment. By the time you go in there, any problem you had is gone.

But now, with my back bugging me a little and being in my mid-30s, maybe I should go in. Get those regular physicals. All that jazz.

So I went in and, as one would expect, the first thing they do is weigh me. The dreaded scale, which gets followed up by the dreaded sphygmomanometer (blood pressure machiney). This is the one time I do get a little tense. I hate being weighed. I hate the reality of having those high numbers come crashing down on me. That, of course, results in a higher-than-usual blood pressure reading. A double whammy.

But, holy hell, neither turned out so bad. Since my last doctor's visit last February, I'm down 23 pounds and I only really started working on that in the winter. And my blood pressure, despite my scale anxiety, was actually within range. The doctor was impressed. I was impressed. Katie was impressed. The Gods on high were impressed (I know because the drive to work was actually quite clear and it's a pretty nice day out and all these seem to be rarities in Chicago this July).

Hmmm, maybe the doctor's office isn't so bad after all.

Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday, dear Spongebob.
Happy birthday to you!

Why did I think he'd been around longer than just 10 years?

Easy as 1-2-3...

Hey everyone. Hope you're having a very happy 7/8/9 Snippet Wednesday. Don't forget to make it an über-celebration by going hog wild for a whole second at 12:34:56 p.m., too!

Obsessed?
I was driving behind a little PoS car this morning when I noticed an odd license plate. It said "TWI HARD." I wasn't quite sure how to take it until I read the license plate frame that declared "My heart belongs to Edward" and was accompanied with a litany of bumper stickers in the rear window including "I like my men cold, dead and sparkly" and "My other car is a shiny, silver Volvo" (Edward's car), among others. Yeah... obsessed much? I've got one thing to say to that and I'm going to let the Count from Sesame Street do it for me...

Rollin'
Also on the way to work, I was driving up a hill when I saw a can in the road up ahead of me rolling uphill. Yes, uphill. That had to be some strong wind. Not that Illinois is full of mighty hills by any stretch of the imagination. Heck, I live in an area where "mountainous" is used to describe any natural formation that is greater than 100 feet above sea level. Ah, scenic northeastern Illinois!

Redesignland
Did I mention that Tales From Redesignland has returned? Oh happy day!

1901
A couple weeks back, my Pitchfork buddy Eric introduced me to a French alt/electronic band called Phoenix by way of the video for their song "1901." I was hooked. So I purchased the "1901" single... only to receive a copy of it free the next day as part of a Facebook indie rock sampler. Go fig, eh? There's something to be said for patience.

Deck'd
Tweetdeck supports multiple accounts simultaneously now??? Oh, this is dangerous. Seriously dangerous.

Rochambeau
And in pure LeSombre tradition, I will save the final Snippet for myself in anticipation of the day when the apocalypse will be determined by a game of Rock-Scissors-Paper (and I hope the other guy picks "paper").

Don't cry for me, Argentina...

Just a brief one for you, today. Sorry if you were expecting something grandiose, but c'est la vie.

This exchange happened this morning as Katie and I lay in bed watching Today Show reports on South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford:

Katie: Are you going to leave me and head for Argentina?

Me: No.
     
       ...Maybe Brazil.

You gotta be pretty secure in your relationship to have a convo like that one. ;-)

I love you, hon. (I fully expect her to smack me when she gets home tonight)

I saw this question linked on the Typepad homepage and thought it was pretty cool. If you want to answer on the page linked below, go for it, but I'd like to hear it in the comments here as well (if they're working today; I've heard of some people having issues). Here's the question:

If you could bring back a canceled TV series, which would you choose?
submitted by The Good Girl Gone Blog

You gotta shock the monkey...

Zip your lips, slouch your butts to the seat, and listen hard! It's Snippet Wednesday.

Quote
I'm hoping one of you can catch the reference in my intro sentence. C'mon... anybody?

Air
Yes, the air conditioner is on the way to being fixed. Get this, the guy comes out yesterday and I explain what I think is happening so he flips on the power from the thermostat and... it works. Seriously? You're gonna play that game, A/C? The guy told me, though, that the bearings on the fan motor are shot and it will die. He was guessing that after this initial use of the A/C to bring the temperature down (which it did quite nicely), that it would shut off and likely not turn back on. So he's coming back out later this morning to replace the motor. All told, we are going to be spending about $300. Much less than what Katie was thinking we'd be charged, so that's good.

Film
In an attempt to cool off on Monday night, Katie and I went to the theater to see The Proposal. Pretty predictable, but still funny and enjoyable. And, as would be expected, Betty White was brilliant. But this is not the point of this snippet. As we were leaving, there were several hexagonal shaped cases by the door of the theater, which I immediately identified as film reel shipping cases. And the label read Transformers 2. I wanted so desperately to snag them and throw them up on e-Bay. I wonder what they would have fetched.

Shocking
Typically when I read a headline such as "Girl dies Tweeting in the tub," my initial thought has something to do with my dumbassed fellow USian. It's quite reassuring when I find out we are not the only idiots in the world. This girl, who actually took her laptop in the tub with her to update Twitter, was Romanian and, if she was dumb enough to do this, deserved it.

Okay, time to go to work. Adios!

Come on let's take the long cut...

Welcome to a sopping wet edition of Snippet Wednesday.

Rain
It began pouring here yesterday and didn't let up much. Of course, at work we had an outdoor event and I wound up drenched. I'm thankful that I had some workout clothes and a pair of shorts that I was otherwise going to take back to Kohl's to exchange for a smaller size. Sure I didn't match all that well, but it beats walking around in sopping wet dress clothes. Yay. Even after wet clothes dry up, they still feel wet, you know what I mean? Softball tonight should be fun with how flooded the fields are likely to be. Thank God I'm not playing because...

Dentist
Yeah, my six-month cleaning with the dentist is tonight. My only question is whether I'm going to wind up with the nice, cute hygienist or Hygienist Ratchet. Any bets?

Serrated
Here's a hint for any one of you... when cutting a loaf of bread with a serrated knife, make sure the serrated edge is toward the bread and not toward your guide finger. Just sayin'. Some fuckin' Eagle Scout I turned out to be.

Faced
I got a little freaked out the other day when I received an Facebook friend request... from my mom. My mom is on Facebook. This scares me. I love you, mom, and I know you're reading this, but it still freaked me out.

Year
I didn't realize that a couple weeks ago I hit the one year anniversary of Snippet Wednesdays. Holy cow! That's the longest I've stuck with any theme on this blog. Way to go, me!

Forgotten
I had another thing I wanted to mention as a snippet. Thought about it this morning on the drive to work. Of course, I didn't write it down and now it's forgotten. And I'm sure I'll think of it again precisely one hour after this post goes live. Because that's just how my brain works.

Okay, time to get ready for yoga and then figure out what to do for lunch. I forgot (seems to be going around) to bring anything to eat today. Go fig, eh?

It can't rain all the time...

If I didn't wait so long to post, maybe I could have come up with something snappier as an introduction. As it stands, just accept that this is Snippet Wednesday, albeit for only a few more hours.

8
I know it's already been said better by both Dave and Neil, but I just wanted to chime in on the news that the courts in California upheld the vote in favor of Proposition 8 banning gay marriage. I seriously am disappointed. That's all I can really say. While I do agree with Neil that it wasn't the California court's place to overturn the vote of their own people, the fact that it passed back in November in the first place is just sad.

Huckleberry
Reading this entry on Not Always Right reminded me of a time (don't ask me why as they're not really related other than being stupid stuff about classic books) when I went to a Waldenbooks back in high school to buy a copy of Huckleberry Finn for English class. I walked up to the counter and asked the salesperson, "where can I find a copy of Fuck Hinn... I mean Huck Finn. Dammit." They couldn't stop laughing. Several of them. I bought my book and walked out.

Porno
Speaking of titles and controversy, can someone tell me if the official name of the most recent Kevin Smith film is Zack and Miri Make a Porno or simply Zack and Miri? I ask because I see it both ways. I think I've seen it in stores as Zack and Miri Make a Porno, but I just got a copy from the library that was titled Zack and Miri. What gives? Censorship? IMDb says the shortened version is just a promotional title. But I'm thinking if copies are being sold in that name, it's more than just "promotional."

TwitTV
Am I the only one who thinks Twitter is starting to "jump the shark," as it were? First there was the inability to keep the servers up to snuff for just the early adopters. Then they fail to improve their server farms resulting in huge crashes after being hyped by The View and Oprah. Then Ashton started his race to a million with CNN. Now there is Twitter on the big and small screens. This just sounds terrible. Part of me just wants to quit before it gets any worse. And, honestly, I barely use it as it is. 90% of my Tweets recently are just RSS-fed updates from my other sites. Have any of you quit the Twit?

Softball
Dammit, I was so hoping it would rain today so I wouldn't have to play softball tonight. I want to go to the gym and then go home and watch the Blackhawks. Stupid rain doesn't come down when I want it to.

Or else it gets the hose again...

It puts the lotion on the skin or else it gets Snippet Wednesday again.

Liege
Google is starting to scare me, folks. I think it can read our minds. Yes, I'm anthropomorphising it to some degree, but, to me, it is no longer a corporation... it has become an entity all its own... a sentient being. Right now, I'm just waiting for it to start breathing and eating. I got an e-mail from my buddy Eric and, at the end, he says "Or...we could meet for lunch Thurs or Friday." Off to the right of the e-mail (in Gmail, for the record), at the top of the yellow Sponsored Links box, I see...

Okay, it's not perfect, but the simple idea that it scanned the message and picked up on this without Eric having created some sort of formal calendar request or .ics file or even listing specific dates, well, it just scares me.

I think we should all just give up now and declare Google our Overlord.

Twit-Tees
As much as I love that Twitter has launched a T-shirt shop with Threadless and as cool as this "In Space, No One Can Hear You Tweet" T-shirt, I gotta admit a little disappointment that they didn't create their own official Fail Whale or Foul Owl shirts. Yeah, the purpose of this is more of a contest to get the coolest Tweets on a shirt, but you need a Fail Whale T-shirt, regardless. It's a moral imperative.

Site
You remember that Web site I was working on when my thumbdrive corrupted and I lost it all? Well, with Katie's input, I redesigned the site a month or so ago from scratch and it's done and the customer loves it, and so do I. Much more than the first site I created, which I kinda hated. So big thanks to Katie for the help and big thanks to technology for crapping out on me.

Wolf
I seriously want to know what the reviewers of this T-shirt on Amazon were smoking and if they're willing to share. My God. Dems some creative folk.

Vandapples
One of the windows of the flagship Apple Store on the Mag Mile in Chicago was shattered by a drunk guy with a brick. Best part of the article is the comment from MB, "Windows doesn't need help getting broken - Microsoft has done a great job making it break down for you" or the one from Bill, "Maybe he was a PC."

Dream
Okay, Chris Milk is one talented guy. He created a 43 second video meant to encompass a lifetime's worth of memories into a single "life passing before your eyes" sort of video and it's hauntingly beautiful. Some segments are borderline NSFW, but not too bad. No nudity. Although I can't say the still frame below is necessarily one you want your boss to see over your shoulder.

I still can't believe it had as big a crew as it did, though.

If only the final Lord of the Rings movie could've been this concise... I may have actually enjoyed it more.

Last Day Dream [HD] from Chris Milk on Vimeo.

Belongings
I wanted to go out on a positive note and that honor goes to US Airways who have spent the last several months restoring, to the best of their ability, the belongings of the passengers from Flight 1549 that went down in the Hudson River early this year. This week, those belongings began making their way back to their owners. Considering US Airways had no legal responsibility to do this and had already given money to the passengers, it's pretty cool that they did this anyway.

Can't you smell that smell...

I am making a concerted effort to ensure that this blog is more environmentally friendly. To that end, this Snippet Wednesday is 100% compostable and can be used as a very potent fertilizer (read: kapgar.com is more full of shit than ever).

Mac
I can't wait... less than a week... however, after buying my new camera lens, I may have to hold off a bit. Money, yanno. But enjoy this fake video promo for the new Punch-Out!! on the Nintendo Wii, all the same. Funny stuff.

Bite
Well, my bite hasn't completely healed yet, but no rabies indications either, so that's a good thing. However, I don't think I ever mentioned how Katie asked if Noelle, whom I sometimes refer to as "Devil Dog," might actually be a vampire and this bite would thus turn me into her very own Edward Cullen, complete with great hair. Then she proceeded to stare at me wide-eyed in anticipation of the transformation. Yeah, she was a bit disappointed.

Trek
Katie and I saw the new Star Trek last night after running at the gym. Yep, we're still with the whole running thing, but on to Trek. We both enjoyed the heck out of it. Great movie? No. But damn fun. And, as I always say, if Katie can enjoy a scifi film, all the better. I will say that one of her reasons for seeing it (Eric Bana) was a bit of a letdown as he was so caked in makeup you couldn't tell it was him. But the overall movie was definitely cool and Katie has said she'd watch both the sequel (in which I really hope they do more with Zoe Saldana as Uhura) and maybe even some of the original films with me. Oh, and Simon Pegg rocked that film.

Religion
Sorry if yesterday's post turned some of you off. I know religion is not a favorite topic to talk about. But I know it's bad when the first two comments are from 1) a person who is completely unidentified (Google ID that didn't populate the form fields correctly; perhaps Whall? I think this has happened to him before on here) and 2) another person I've never seen here before. But I thank you all for the comments you did leave. They did confirm my own views on the subject at hand.

Heart
Sadly, no, I didn't see this myself, if it's even real. It was sent to me by my mom. Still funny, though. C'mon people, think about the roaches!

Here come the Hawks, the mighty Bla-a-ackhawks...

I was at a funeral yesterday.

I was listening to what the priest was saying during his sermon and, at one point, he said that he is very much looking forward to going to Heaven. That he is just living through the mundane details of life on Earth in anticipation of eventually being given the privilege of returning to be with his maker in Heaven. He also said that he anticipates that anyone who goes to Heaven has absolutely no desire to ever return to Earth.

This got me thinking.

Is life really mundane as he says? Just a detail? Why does he view life as nothing but a time out between birth and afterlife? Why isn't he enjoying it more? Wouldn't his god want him to enjoy it and make the most out of it? I don't mean that he should live the life of a heathen or anything, but I don't understand why he would think God would just stick us here as though it's a train platform that you sit on as you wait for the express line to the afterlife. What would be the purpose of that? To me, that comes across more like God saying, "meh, I'm just not ready for you and I'm sticking you there until I feel moved to do something about it."

I always viewed our Earth-bound existence as a time to test ourselves and prove ourselves worthy of a permanent afterlife in either Heaven or Hell or to be reincarnated (yes, I have a wide range of beliefs). To one of these ends, we need to make the most of this time here in our corporeal beings.

Obviously, this would be affected by your own personal beliefs. If you don't believe in an afterlife or God (or a God-like being), then you might have a totally different viewpoint.

I'm curious what you think. What say you?

Sure, most of you aren't going to give a damn about this, but I don't care. I must party like it's 1995... the last time the Hawks went this deep in the playoffs.

Photos and video stolen (with love) from CityGirl912.

Oh, and my condolences to Brandon and anybody else who was rooting for the Vancouver Canucks to overcome. No, wait, I'm not really that sorry. ;-)

Welcome to my nightmare...

I'm fine with being 34 years old. It doesn't bother me. I don't feel old (except when my joints creak). And, to me, age is really just a number.

However, once in a while, something happens that makes me wish I was young again. Something, like, say, a CASTING CALL FOR EXTRAS IN THE REBOOT OF THE NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET FRANCHISE THAT IS HAPPENING AS WE SPEAK JUST TWO TOWNS NORTH OF ME!!!!

AHHHHHH!!!!

Oh how freakin' cool would this have been? Sadly, they were only casting teenagers. And, even though I've been told I look much younger than 34, I don't think I'd make the cut. "Almost" only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear warfare.

It would've been so much fun. Even just a walk-on bit.

Frederick, dear friend. So close, and yet so far.

Well it only took about two years, but the Illinois State Police finally got enough of something to justify arresting that dipshit Drew Peterson in charges related to the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. Sure, this doesn't help with finding Stacy Peterson, his fourth wife who is still missing, but it's a step in the right direction when it comes to getting this jackass behind bars. Ideally permanently.

My favorite line in the article is "Police arrested Peterson at 5:35 p.m. in a traffic stop at Lily Cache Lane and Weber Road in Bolingbrook." That's about a mile from where I played dodgeball and is right where my buddy Eric (Flaming Lips Eric) used to live a few years ago. Am I right about the street, Eric?

Doctor, doctor, gimme the news...

Just drop your pants, put your hands on the table, spread your legs, turn your head to the side, and cough. It's Snippet Wednesday.

eTextbooks
Oh thanks Amazon. Where the hell were you when we were still buying textbooks for Katie in grad school? You come up with this killer idea for creating a larger screened version of your Kindle e-book reader for use with textbooks, newspapers, and magazines. Only you wait until after Katie is done with all her textbook-based learning to introduce it. Damn you!

OTweet-GYN
I was looking at a random stream of Tweets the other day, and these two showed up one after the other. I wonder if the events they are referring to are related.

Tinted
Everything about my musical upbringing is telling me I should hate the new power pop supergroup Tinted Windows. Why? 1) "Power pop"; 2) "supergroup"; and 3) the lead singer is Taylor Hanson of, well, Hanson.

But I don't hate it. I actually kinda dig it. But let me justify this decision before you all scream foul. 1) The other vocalist is Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne; 2) the drummer is Bun E. Carlos of Cheap Trick; and 3) the guitarist is James Iha of the Smashing Pumpkins. How in the name of all that's holy do these four guys come together and record an album? I dunno. It's not great, in all honesty, and many of you may not like it. But I do. Guiltily.

Pooh'd
This came in an e-mail from one of my dodgeball teammates. It cracked me up to no end. It looks pretty clear to me as I'm typing this, but if you are having trouble reading it, just click to enlarge (that's what she said).

Ah, I just can't enough of Swine Flu jokes.

Customers
A site all about the conversations employees in various industries have with severely stupid customers? Yeah, Not Always Right is quickly becoming one of my favorite Web sites of all time.

Oh-oh-oh-oh-operator...

"Mom, do you ever get that, er, not-so-fresh feeling?"

"Yes dear. Every Snippet Wednesday."

Swing
I'm up at bat. The guy in front of me in the lineup just belted an in-the-park homerun. I have to keep up the momentum. If I strike out, the side is retired. I hate being the one to end an inning. It sucks. I've done it before, but I don't want to do it again. The first pitch drops way short of the plate. Ball 1. The second pitch is sailing right where I like it. I can feel this one. I know it's going to fly the second I make contact. I pick up my shoulders a little bit and start to lift my lead foot. The bat begins its movement through the air. I can visualize exactly where in the air the bat and ball will make contact. A split second from now and... my alarm goes off. Dammit.

Miles
Well, that's one athletic fantasy that went bust, but my running has improved. After getting severely worse. A few weeks ago, I reported to a few people that my lazy ass had hit the mile and a quarter mark running on a treadmill. I did that a few times in a row and I had set a goal of keeping a certain distance for three runs before increasing it. I went in to begin the fourth run after that distance milestone, but all I could do was a mile. Three times I did only a mile, and then I had one really bad day where I could only get a mile done by running it in two half-mile spurts. I was starting to get bummed out. As I'm wont to do when exercising, I started feeling the desire to give up and began to use the elliptical machine instead. Then it hit me, I was trying to go too fast. Slow it down. Live the old "slow and steady wins the race" maxim, after all, I'm not actually in a race. So I dropped my speed a bit last Thursday. Not too much, but apparently enough for my body to feel the difference. I was back up to a mile and a quarter last Thursday, mile and a half on Friday, mile and three quarters on Monday, and I hit two miles yesterday! This is the first time I've run two nonstop miles in five-odd years. Dude, this is nice! Eventually I'll pick the speed back up, but I need to condition my body to get used to the physicality of running first. Then I think it will all fall into place.

Chuck
[Only very minor spoilers for people who haven't seen the finale of Chuck yet]
"Guys... I know Kung-Fu." Okay, I loved the finale of Chuck on Monday night. Whether this is just the season finale or the series finale remains to be seen. It is a bubble show right now. But Katie and I enjoy the hell out of it and would love to see it return. C'mon NBC, make it happen.

Vienna
Sorry if the title of this post gave you an earworm of Falconian proportions, but that song came up on shuffle on my iPod while at work yesterday and made me very happy. It has been stuck in my head ever since. Even this morning, after waking up, it was the first thing signaling that my brain was indeed awake. Hey, there are far worse songs to have stuck in your head than Falco's "Vienna Calling."

Filthy
I've been tracking some of the responses to this outbreak of Swine Flu (which has now supposedly made its way to the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago) on the Web and I came across a site from a health department in Wisconsin that had a picture of a big ol' sow right on the page. I began to feel sorry for the poor guy and, for some reason, Vincent and Jule's debate about swine from Pulp Fiction popped in my head. I don't know if anybody else out there has already done it or not, but I became inspired and created the following. Miramax, please don't sue me. It's all in fun. Really.

Hey, I'm not the only one having a little fun with Swine Flu.

Okay, time for work.

Shame that everyone's the same...

I swore I had written about this in the past, but I have trouble coming up with the keywords when I try to search for old posts, so I'm going to assume I haven't mentioned this and start this post under that assumption.

My wife has a cousin named Lauren. They've always been really close despite the more than 10 years of difference in age.

A couple months ago while we were working out at the gym, we both looked over at one of the treadmills and saw her... Lauren... only it wasn't Lauren... it was someone who looked EXACTLY like Lauren.

When I say "exactly like," I mean just that. Same height, same build, same facial structure, same hair color, same hair cut, same look on the face. Katie was almost tempted to go up to her and ask and make sure it wasn't her. And it wasn't just a fluke that she happened to look like Lauren on that particular day, we've seen her several times since then and it never ceases to floor us how doppelgangerish the similarities are. Katie was also almost tempted to take a picture of her using her iPhone (yes, phones aren't supposed to be used in the gym, but when it's also her iPod, she doesn't have a choice) and send it to her cousin to freak her out a bit.

I've taken to calling her "Clone Cousin."

We still haven't spoken to her, but I'm sure she's felt our eyes watching her in amazement.

Last night, though, we were leaving the gym and the attendants leave the IDs out on the counter so, in case they're away from the desk, people who didn't have a locker can just grab their card and go. Great primer toward identity theft, I'm sure. Anyway, the Clone Cousin's ID was out on the counter and guess what? Her name is Lauren, too.

C'mon. Seriously, what are the odds of that? This is just getting creepier and creepier.

Singularly the greatest marketing idea ever... Trojan2Go... two condoms in a card-sized sealed case that fits in your wallet like a credit card. A little thicker, of course, but still and all the same. I saw these at the register at a Walgreen's last night. Brilliant.

With all the movies and TV shows featuring guys carrying condoms in their wallets that have aged to brittleness from lack of use, I'm shocked that this sort of thing wasn't developed sooner.

Now we become part of it...

Sorry blogging hasn't been much of a priority lately. I guess when you have nothing to say, well, blogging gets a bit tough. Know what I mean? I do have some stuff to last me the next couple days, though, so that's good, right?

Katie and I had some fun on Saturday. The first part of the day was spent with Katie getting some shopping done while I spent a couple hours at a cemetery. Not your idea of fun? Well it was for me. First off, it was my friend Mike's 35th birthday, so I stopped by to say hi to him and ran into his dad again. So we talked for a while as we cleaned up the area around Mike's marker. Then, after he left, I wandered the cemetery and took photos. There were some beautiful stones and little tribute trinkets left at several that were just great and heartbreaking all at the same time. The pictures are below in a Pictobrowser (or you can see the album on Flickr).

Then we headed down to the city to meet up with her brother, Scott, and his girlfriend, Becca. We did go down primarily for the Rocco DeLuca concert. But we started in and around Millennium Park and got some more photos (again, you can click through to Flickr if you prefer).

After this, it was off to the show. I don't really think we can fairly call them Rocco DeLuca and the Burden anymore because, as my buddy Brad warned me, it was just Rocco and his drummer performing. We thought it was for the purpose of a stripped-down show. However, after talking to Paul Doucette, the opening performer (of The Break and Repair Method and Matchbox Twenty), as he was wandering around in the crowd, we found out there was a big band rift and the drummer was the only guy to survive the cuts. I guess when your name is the name of the band, you can fire whoever you want and still keep the name. Katie preferred to refer to him as "Unburdened," though. Made me laugh.

Rocco put on a good show despite only being a two-man crew. However, his sound tech really needs to work on the feedback issue and someone needs to teach Rocco about moderation with his sustain pedal. Woah.

Let's get back to Paul Doucette, though. The opening act officially was billed as The Break and Repair Method, however, as Paul explained to the audience, it's a recession and he couldn't afford to bring the rest of the band. So he performed several new songs he had written and limited himself to just that which he could sing and play either on acoustic guitar or keyboard. He was damn good. To think he is the drummer for Matchbox Twenty and can do all this as well? That's talent. And, as often happens when we go to small shows like this, Katie and I bought his CD. If there's one thing we've discovered about small shows, the opening acts tend to be great. More often than not, we've enjoyed the opening acts more than the headliners... Amos Lee opened for Norah Jones, Ollabelle for Diana Krall, Sara Bareilles and The Last Goodnight for Rocco a couple times, Paul Doucette for Rocco this time. These headliners gotta be careful.

I think Katie best described the Break and Repair Method CD as sounding inspired by Ben Folds Five. Heavy on the piano, which we both like, with some good vocal work. Sure Paul's voice isn't quite as smooth and radio ready as Ben, in fact it's much rougher, but we like it a lot and are enjoying this CD. So, yanno, if you're interested, check out Milk the Bee on iTunes. 

Katie told me about this last week and I never got around to blogging about it. Some guy in Russia went to his doctor to have what they all thought was a cancer-related tumor removed.

Imagine their surprise when they opened him up to find a five centimeter spruce tree growing inside his lung.

I think those people who walk around wearing breathing masks might be on to something.

A pirate's life for me...

Batten down the hatches, mateys, thar be pirates in the open seas. This particular swashbuckler go by the name of Snippet Wednesday.

Rocco
I can't believe that I actually forgot that Katie and I are supposed to be going to a Rocco DeLuca and the Burden concert this weekend. Not that I completely forgot about the concert, just the date. I actually thought it was going to happen in May for whatever reason. But it's not. Good thing I e-mailed Scott to find out when it was. His response... "Saturday." Me... "This Saturday??"

Bears
I know we're only a couple weeks into baseball season, but I'm already dying for football season. Hell, I've been dying for football season since the second week of February. Can you tell I like football? Well, I guess the NFL sensed my anxiety and released the schedules for the 2009 season. Here's the Bears list o' targets...

• Week 1: Sun, Sept. 13 at Green Bay Packers, NBC, 7:20 p.m.
• Week 2: Sun, Sept. 20 vs. Pittsburgh Steelers, CBS, 3:15 p.m.
• Week 3: Sun, Sept. 27 at Seattle Seahawks, FOX, 3:05 p.m.
• Week 4: Sun, Oct. 4 vs. Detroit Lions, FOX, noon
• Week 5: Bye Week
• Week 6: Sun, Oct. 18 at Atlanta Falcons, NBC, 7:20 p.m.
• Week 7: Sun, Oct. 25 at Cincinnati Bengals, FOX, noon
• Week 8: Sun, Nov. 1 vs. Cleveland Browns, CBS, noon
• Week 9: Sun, Nov. 8 vs. Arizona Cardinals, FOX, noon
• Week 10: Thu, Nov. 12 at San Francisco 49ers, NFLN, 7:20 p.m.
• Week 11: Sun, Nov. 22 vs. Philadelphia Eagles, NBC, 7:20 p.m.
• Week 12: Sun, Nov. 29 at Minnesota Vikings, FOX, noon
• Week 13: Sun, Dec. 6 vs. St. Louis Rams, FOX, noon
• Week 14: Sun, Dec. 13 vs. Green Bay Packers, FOX, noon
• Week 15: Sun, Dec. 20 at Baltimore Ravens, FOX, noon
• Week 16: Mon, Dec. 28 vs. Minnesota Vikings, ESPN, 7:20 p.m.
• Week 17: Sun, Jan. 3 at Detroit Lions, FOX, noon

I do not like that the 49ers game is only available on the NFL Network, but I do love that we play the Steelers for our home opener. My two favorite teams. But, sorry Steel City... GO BEARS!

Heavy
United Airlines has announced that they may start implementing a double charge for people who purchase tickets but cannot fit in the seat in which they are assigned or if they cannot lower the armrests or cannot fasten the seatbelt with a single extender. I am just in shock. Seriously in shock. I guess I can understand the reasoning that if a person needs two seats, the company needs to recoup the costs somehow. But damn, this is just plain cold blooded.

36
Oscar De La Hoya has finally retired from professional boxing. This is something that has been a long time coming to sports fans. People have been saying he's needed to retire for years now. But he just kept powering through the fights. Now he's retired after what has seemed like an eternity of a career. The kicker? He's only 36. He's two years older than me. I don't get that. I swore he was like 30 when I was a teenager. WTF??

Music
I know I was attempting to keep my sidebar clean with this redesign, but I decided to add back in the button ads for the free stuff you can download from iTunes. No, I'm not gaining any money from these buttons whatsoever. Just a service to you if you are looking for free music or videos. If you have iTunes, just click them. Seriously. I triple dog dare you.

Photos
My friend Eric just sent me a zip file with a bunch of photos he offloaded from his camera phone recently. A bunch are from our old place of work. Mind you, he hasn't worked there since early 2004, so these are old. But some are just damn funny reminders of the "old days." I'm hoping he loads the whole group to his Flickr or Facebook accounts. But, while we wait, here's one of him and me that cracks me up.

Is there life on Mars...

Ladies and gentlemen, please keep your hands inside the car at all times and for the love of God, do not stand up until the end of the ride when directed by one of our employees. Now have a safe ride on the Snippet Wednesday Tilt-a-Whirl!

Mars
I didn't want to write anything about the U.S. Life on Mars series finale until I'd really had a chance to gather my thoughts. And, after watching it twice (with a third one forthcoming, I'm sure), I feel I now can. As controversial an ending as I'm sure it was for the true fans, I gotta admit the writers did a pretty fine job with it, IMHO. Sure, it doesn't answer whether Sam stays in 1973 or returns to 2008 as most people would've liked, but it ties together all the little clues and oddball details that Sam collects while in 1973 very nicely. A majority of the characters and events are explained and so are names and places and that little robot probe he keeps running into. And, honestly people, how can you expect them to just pick if Sam returns to 2008 or stays in 1973? If you pick one, half the audience will be unhappy; and if you pick the other, you alienate the other half. The simplest solution is to not pick. Besides, I couldn't decide even for myself which time I would've rather seen him in so this ending works nicely. If you were a hater of the finale, give it another shot with an open mind. It's pretty decent. I will be buying the DVDs when they come out on September 29 and I'm even debating the UK version when those DVDs come out on July 28 (I've heard it's far superior to the US version and considering how much I love the US version, this must be damn good). But I am sad that I will no longer have my weekly Sam and Annie fix. I love seeing Gretchen Mol on TV.

Lovin'
There's just something both cute and twisted about this story. I know animals in captivity need love, too, but how do you explain to your family, when asked how your day at work went, that you sat there playing matchmaker to a polar bear?

Music
Now that the Time Capsule is completely set up, I've finally gotten around to raiding my collection of CD and DVD music backups and putting them back on my computer. I'd forgotten how much I've missed a lot of this music. Let's see, I've added back into iTunes albums from Björk, Velvet Underground, The Replacements, Dinosaur Jr., Sage Francis, Iron & Wine, The Pogues, MC5, The Black Keys, The Arcade Fire, Uncle Tupelo, Patti Smith, Los Lobos, Loretta Lynn, Leonard Cohen, some Smashing Pumpkins, the White Stripes, Nick Lowe, The Hives, Chris Isaak, Dave Pirner, Gary Jules, The Kinks, The Smiths, The New York Dolls, David Bowie, Evanescence, Doves, Clinic, Cheap Trick, Rage Against the Machine, Mr. Lif, Red Hot Chili Peppers, LCD Soundsystem, ELO, and some R.E.M. Yeah, I've got a ton to listen to. Nearly 10 GB of music with which to reacquaint myself.

Phone
Say you and another person (AP) share a common friend (CF). If AP were to ask you for CF's phone number, would you share it? Sure you both know CF, but isn't a phone number kind of a sacred thing? I had this happen to me today and I felt awkward giving out CF's number so I didn't. I actually texted her and asked if it was okay. Too much? How do you handle this sort of thing?

Okay, time for yoga.

Where a kid can be a kid...

Just about two miles up the street from where I live is a Chuck E. Cheese pizza joint. I used to visit these and Showbiz Pizzas a few times here and there as a kid. They were fun.

For a couple years now, Katie and I have talked about going back just for kicks, but never have. No real reason for this decision from what I can tell, we just haven't.

Apparently we're missing out! Some employee of our Chuck E. Cheese just got busted for serving alcohol to a minor.

Since when did Chuck E. Cheese start serving liquor?? If I had only known!

Can you imagine how much fun Whack-A-Mole would be after a half dozen tequila shots? Or Skee-Ball while hopped up on Jägerbombs?

And if this Chuck E. Cheese is serving to the underage, I'm thinking you may really not want your kids anywhere near the ball pit.

Woo nelly!

What is the area called on the reverse side of your arm from your elbow?

The elbow pit? The ante-elbow? I dunno.

Whatever it's called in anatomy circles, I have a problem with my right one. There's this one spot on my, oh what the hell, ante-elbow that constantly gets what I think is either a zit or some other dermal malady. It stays there for about a week and then goes away on it's own. Nothing I do will get rid of it on my own terms.

So why is it a big deal? Because when I wear short sleeve shirts, it shows and makes me fear that people are going to look at it as though it's my heroin needle stickpoint. I'm sure it's just paranoia on my part, but that's what it looks like.

Thankfully there's nothing there resembling a trackmark. How would I explain that one?

The price of gas keeps on rising...

It's weird, but you would think that a snippet or bullet post would be easier than a regular post. But these last two weeks have been difficult finding stuff to fill in the holes for Snippet Wednesdays. To think I'd have to take a break to recharge from what should be a gimme day of blogging is kinda unnerving. I shall power forward.

Lost
No, not the TV show. Actually, it's a reference to the fact that I'm pretty certain I've lost some weight! Why just "pretty certain"? Because I don't weigh myself, too arbitrary a means of measuring success when getting in shape, IMHO. I prefer to measure based on how my clothes fit and how much of a workout I can continuously do and not die. I'm pretty certain I've lost weight, though, because I was able to tighten my belt one more notch without sucking in my gut. I've never been on this belt notch before. I'm finally giving the nearly worn-out hole a bit of a break (wow, that really sounds bad if you have no context). Oh and I'm up to one mile of running consecutively. May not sound like much, but it's a big deal for me. And I've kept it up for the last two times I've gone running. Woo hoo!

Fridge
Dammit, why won't our fridge close anymore? It used to be that anytime the door was open, it would automatically swing itself shut. Now it swings to within an inch of being shut but won't finish the job. And there's nothing in the way obstructing it at all. Stupid fridge. Yeah, I just got up after that last snippet to close it... again.

Gas
Y'know? I've always been kinda curious. Now I know. Plus, it's a cool T-shirt. I want one. Just for the reaction.

Effects
While I was at the gym last night, I saw the strangest commercial regarding a lawsuit against the company that makes a drug called Requip. The drug is meant to abate tremors caused by Parkinson's Disease and Restless Leg Syndrome. However, the side effects of the drug are what is at issue in this suit. I thought I'd heard about nearly every potential side effect out there... constipation, dry mouth, difficulty sleeping, irritability, et al. But the one at issue here takes the cake... compulsive gambling. Apparently there is a big problem with people who take Requip becoming compulsive gamblers. I think I just solved the world's economic woes. The government just needs to spike water supplies with Requip and what little remains of our hard-earned cash will be cycled back into the economy via excessive gambling! It's brilliant! Move over, Tim Geithner! There's a new treasury secretary in town! And he's got a plan that will work!

Fools
Happy April Fool's Day. Yeah, I got nothin' this year. Sorry to disappoint. Actually I did think of something last October I was going to do for April Fool's Day, but I have since forgotten it. I knew I should've typed it up as a draft post. Dammit.

I'm about to detonate and demonstrate...

Why does the news of my day always have to play out like a Clint Eastwood movie? Specifically The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

The Good: An Apple Store is moving in literally about four blocks from where I work. Okay so this is good news for my Mac Whoredom while spelling disastrous news for my wallet. I wonder if they need part-time help? But, hey, we are getting a tax refund, so that's good, too!

The Bad: My two-month old 8GB Toshiba thumbdrive began a quick decay last night. I plugged it into my Mac to open up a post I had written and intended to use today only to discover that the post file was bad as well as one other folder with a couple of PDFs I used for taxes yesterday. I thought it was a PC glitch since I'd copied the files to the thumbdrive on a Windows machine and tried to open on a Mac. So I checked it on a Dell laptop I had at home. No luck. Couldn't even delete the bad files. I took it back to the Mac and discovered...

The Ugly: My only copy of a Web site I had worked on for a friend had now gone bad as well. In the time it took to move the thumbdrive from one computer to the other, the entire folder had corrupted. And it was my only copy. I kept telling myself to backup the thumbdrive to my Time Capsule, but I never got around to it. So I quickly made copies of everything else that had not yet corrupted and now I'm going to reformat the thumbdrive. The site is lost, but it's not entirely terrible because I hated what I had designed. Sure I lost an entire week's worth of work, but Katie helped me come up with what I feel will be a better design. And losing the files certainly constitutes more than enough impetus to start it over from scratch. Like I have a choice.

Still, though, the pain of knowing what happened and watching as it continued to self destruct is painful.

Tell me, is it worth reformatting a thumbdrive? Will that help?

You all know I hate crowds. People milling about, bumping into each other, spilling shit. Not fun. The only way I go to concerts is if I know I have seats which represent my own personal space.

So why did I purchase tickets to the final day of the Pitchfork Music Festival on Sunday, July 19?

Aside from being slightly masochistic, THE FLAMING LIPS, baby!

Somehow or another, this indie rock festival known for having some of the best pricing around -- counter to the much more ridiculously expensive Lollapalooza Festival (although Lolla does have Depeche Mode this year), also in Chicago -- managed to land The Lips! And I am stoked. I'm going with my buddy, Eric, who got me into The Lips in the first place. No one better to go with, right?

[image courtesy of pitchforkmusicfestival.com]

But the fire is so delightful...

Sure, the weather has been anything but predictable this spring. In one week's time, we've gone from highs in the 50s and 60s to lows in the teens. But nothing, not even weathercasters prepared me for the shit I saw when I woke up this morning.

It's almost freakin' April. What the bloody hell?