October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month . . .
Were you aware of that? Not to make light of breast cancer, but what a waste of a month. I mean, who is not aware of breast cancer? Being unaware of breast cancer is like being unaware of breasts.
Hmmmm . . .
How about this: Breast Awareness Month! More of a fun, celebratory thing instead of the whole downer vibe around cancer . . .
As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I’ve got a little list–I’ve got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed–who never would be missed!
People who say “pitcher” when they mean “picture” . . .
My son and I are watching Monday Night Football when an ad comes on in which every somber, sallow-faced environmentalist in the state is telling me to vote No on Proposition 7.
I say to the boy, “You know, I don’t even know what Proposition 7 is, but if all of these sanctimonious pricks are against it, then I’m for it. GO HUMP A TREE, YOU PUSSIES!”
The dog, who, unlike other members of the family, loves to hear the sound of my voice, jumps up on the sofa and starts licking my face.
“That’s right, pup. Lightning says he doesn’t care about trees either, except that he likes to pee on them.”
My son sighs and says, “We need trees” — very slowly, like he’s talking to an idiot.
“Oh . . . well in that case, put me down as Undecided.”
When Gallant has a question for someone, he walks down the hall and asks it.
Goofus keeps fruitless email threads going for weeks.
Here’s an excerpt from the comment thread on a trouble ticket regarding a database record with an incorrect status code.
comment 7563 posted by goofus on 2008-09-10 8:53 AM
I did change the status code in test and this did fix the problem. However, we need to speak with JS regarding this issue as to how this will be affected in production.comment 7611 posted by me on 2008-09-12 9:15 AM
Let’s get JS’s response so we can close this.comment 7621 posted by goofus on 2008-09-12 9:52 AM
Emailed JS regarding this issue. Waiting on a response.comment 7637 posted by goofus on 2008-09-12 2:49 PM
JS is out of the office until Tuesday, 9/16.comment 7773 posted by goofus on 2008-09-18 2:05 PM
Sent another email to JS regarding this issue.comment 7794 posted by me on 2008-09-18 3:30 PM
You may want to consider walking over and talking to her.comment 7800 posted by goofus on 2008-09-18 3:47 PM
Received a return email from JS and now will be working with MS on this issue. Sent her an email for her input.
Come to the office on a weekend — when you’re not allowed to be there — not to work, but to store some of your personal belongings. Fall down a flight of stairs. Then file a worker’s comp claim.
I’m not saying I know someone who actually did this . . .
The Ashley Harkleroad Playboy photos, while tastefully done by modern standards, are more daring (think pubic hair) than the recent Amanda Beard Playboy photos, which were so tastefully done they were actually boring . . .
Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things.
If I could only give three words of advice, they would be, ‘Tell the truth.’ If I got three more words, I’d add, ‘All the time.’
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
Randy Pausch was lucky in that, thanks to the worldwide fame he achieved from his lecture and book, he died knowing that things he did and said would not be forgotten after he was gone.
Without the pancreatic cancer, he couldn’t have achieved that. Let’s face it, you can’t peddle the kind of pabulum cited above as “wisdom” in the absence of a terminal illness.
We own this book because my mom sent it to my son for his birthday. He hasn’t read it yet and probably won’t, but I read it.
I feel bad saying it, but it’s a tiresome collection of warmed-over platitudes. It’s like being cornered by your most annoying advice-giving relative at a family reunion.
Pausch was also lucky in being able to make an early departure from his famously self-absorbed wife, Jai (pronounced Jay), who didn’t want him to give the lecture in the first place because it would mean taking time away from her.
From a Wall Street Journal story last May:
A friend suggested to Jai that she keep a daily journal. She writes in there things that get on her nerves about Randy.
My wife would totally do that, but I bet there are some women would use the journal to record things they cherish about their terminally ill husbands.
“Randy didn’t put his plate in the dishwasher tonight,” she wrote one night. “He just left it there on the table and went to his computer.” She knew he was preoccupied, heading to the Internet to research medical treatments. Still, the dish bothered her. She wrote about it, felt better, and they didn’t need to argue over it.
Hey honey, just put the goddamn plate in the goddamn dishwasher, will ya? It’s part of living with other people. God knows what sort of minutiae this man would be having soul-crushing arguments about over the course of a normal lifespan.
I mean, I’m no saint, but I’ve put other people’s plates in dishwashers hundreds of times, and they were all in perfect health.
R.I.P., Randy Pausch.
I tell my son, “When you call grandma to thank her for the book, tell her you really liked the part about brick walls letting us prove how badly we want things.”
We went to Souplantation for dinner tonight. I was really hungry but when we got there, there was already a line of people at the salad bar.
I hate when that happens.
Let me tell you what I did: I grabbed a tray and came in swinging, cracked a few people in the cranium, then finished them off with a serrated-edge knife from the silverware station.
It’s a crude plan, but let me tell you why it works: the element of surprise. No one goes to Souplantation expecting to be knocked over the head and stabbed . . .
It was a sickness: this great interest in a medium that relentlessly and consistently failed to produce anything at all. People became so used to seeing shit on film that they no longer realized it was shit.
Haven’t seen it. Might see it . . . not sure yet. I’ve seen the trailer though and I’ll tell you something: Heath Ledger is TERRIBLE!
That’s not acting! Put the same makeup on somebody else, give ‘em a script, let ‘em read the same lines . . . there’s a million people who could do the same thing.
You don’t think so? You don’t think Heath Ledger knew that? Why do you think he’s dead of an overdose?
Outer-space sex carries complications
Hey NASA, I’m no aeronautical engineer but what I’d do is to tether the woman to a stationary object so she can’t move, just like I do here on Earth.
Uh . . . with her consent, of course . . .
Simplify, simplify, simplify!
Thoreau’s Walden had a profound impact on my thinking. It’s hard to achieve the kind of transcendent simplicity he describes when you live with other people, as I do, but if your family is out of town for a week, as mine is, here are some things you might want to try.
When my wife is here, we have to sort and bag bottles, cans and plastic separately. Later on that noise! Everything goes straight into the garbage! Simplify, simplify, simplify!
Drink liquids from the container and eat food straight out of whatever you cooked it in. If you have to clean an eating utensil, put it in your mouth, press your lips together, and pull it back out.
Why walk all the way to the bathroom if there’s a bottle, can or sink close at hand? A real time-saver!
Look, toolbox — you can either back into the spot when you arrive or back out of the spot when you leave. Backing in is harder because you’ve got less room to work with and you don’t want to bang into a neighboring vehicle. If you back out, you’re backing into open space.
But the worst thing is that by backing in, you put your driver’s side door right next to my driver’s side door, so we have to wait for each other to get in and out of the cars . . .
A new set of California Academic Performance Index (API) scores are out . . .
In Irvine, where I live, education is king, and the school district posted a very nice score: 888 out of 1000.
Breaking it down demographically, the Asian kids led the way with a 933. African-American and Hispanic kids were both more than 100 points below the average, but there are so few of them in the district that they don’t affect the overall score very much.
Even the special ed kids scored a respectable 705, higher than the 668 scored by the neighboring Santa Ana district, where education takes a back seat to gang-related slayings.
Irvine: Our special ed kids are smarter than your honor students.
ROME - Italian railway police say an American tourist was hit and killed by a train at a Rome station as he was walking on the tracks in a daze after being drugged and robbed.
Police official Giovanni Piccolantonio said Monday that 74-year-old Frank Phel from California died early Friday at the suburban Tiburtina station.
Arrivederci Roma!
A co-worker informs me that a Santa Ana elementary school teacher has been charged with child endangerment for keeping a gun in her classroom.
“Well, that’s Santa Ana,” I say. “What do you expect from people? Not a day goes by that you can’t pick up the Orange County Register and read about a gang-related slaying in Santa Ana. If I were a teacher in Santa Ana, you best believe I’d be packing heat too. Thank god this kind of thing doesn’t happen in Irvine where I live.”
“There are Asian gangs in Irvine.”
“Asian gangs in Irvine?! What a racist you are. I’ve lived in Irvine for seven years and I’ve never seen or heard of any Asian gang activity. Unless studying for AP exams counts as a gang activity. Blowing their brains out with mathematical formulas . . .”
JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) — Paul Davis, a singer and songwriter whose soft rock hit “I Go Crazy” stayed on the charts for months after its release in 1977, died Tuesday. He was 60.
That’s disappointing.
Not the fact that he died, because who cares, really, but the fact that he didn’t actually go crazy and kill himself in some bizarre fashion . . .
I’m definitely not a morning person. I used to be a night person, but now I’m more of a nothing person. There’s no hour of the day or night that I wouldn’t rather close my eyes and sleep . . . and sleep . . .
According to a billboard I saw today, a child is diagnosed with autism every 20 minutes!
That goes to show how little I know about it. I would have thought that once would be enough.
Is he still autistic, doctor?
I’m afraid so, but I’ll check him again in 20 minutes . . .
