Chuggnutt!

Month: October 2002

  • Snow! Good grief!

    Winter’s coming early this year; it snowed in Bend today, about three weeks early. Ordinarily Central Oregon doesn’t get its first snow until late November, and that melts off and it doesn’t snow again until after Christmas. (When I say snow, I mean a significant amount that covers everything under a white blanket, not a light dusting that’s gone before the end of the day.)

    At least that’s the pattern I’ve noticed over the past four years or so.

    I hate driving in the snow, especially the first snow of the season. Traffic jams up, because everybody forgot how to drive on slick roads and panics, and cars creep along at 15 miles per hour or slower. Worse, many people living here are transplants from elsewhere that doesn’t have the snowy conditions we get here, so they don’t have a clue. Not that I’m the best winter driver, but damn.

    We carved pumpkins tonight. I always get a big kick out of pumpkin carving, especially now that the kids can start appreciating it more. I outdid myself this year; I carved my pumpkin (a big one!) with the likeness of Charlie Brown.

  • Random Thoughts

    Two of the best shows on TV are on Cartoon Network: Justice League and Samurai Jack.

    I filled out a quiz on Emode today, “What’s Your Best Quality?” It tells me I am Reliable.

    phpMyAdmin kicks serious ass.

    In an odd moment, I realized today that vampires are violating the laws of physics by not casting reflections. This bothers me.

    Of all the things I want to buy from ThinkGeek, the first thing is going to be either the WTF? coffee mug, or the beer glasses. Much to my dismay, they don’t seem to carry the “All Your Base” mugs anymore…

  • One for the kids

    Here’s something to mull over. I was emailed this a few months ago, incorrectly attributed to a commencment speech Bill Gates gave at a high school graduation in California. The reality is, it’s from Charles J. Sykes (view snopes.com for the whole story and list). I think this is brilliant and well-said, and definitely needs to be said more often.

    I’m paraphrasing a bit here.

    Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School

    Rule No. 1: Life is not fair. Get used to it.

    Rule No. 2: The real world won’t care as much about your self-esteem as much as your school does. It’ll expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself. This may come as a shock.

    Rule No. 3: You won’t make $40,000 a year right out of high school. And you won’t be a vice president or have a car phone either.

    Rule No. 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait ’til you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure, so he tends to be a bit edgier. When you screw up, he’s not going to ask you how you feel about it.

    Rule No. 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it opportunity.

    Rule No. 6: It’s not your parents’ fault. If you screw up, you are responsible.

    Rule No. 7: Before you were born your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way paying your bills, cleaning up your room and listening to you tell them how idealistic you are. And by the way, before you save the rain forest from the blood-sucking parasites of your parents’ generation, try delousing the closet in your bedroom.

    Rule No. 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life hasn’t. In some schools, they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This, of course, bears not the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.

    Rule No. 9: Life is not divided into semesters, and you don’t get summers off.

    Rule No. 10: Television is not real life. Your life is not a sitcom. Your problems will not all be solved in 30 minutes, minus time for commercials. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop to go to jobs.

    Rule No. 11: Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them.

    Rule No. 12: Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic.

    Rule No. 13: You are not immortal. If you are under the impression that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously haven’t seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.

    Rule No. 14: Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school’s a bother, and life is depressing. But someday you’ll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid. Maybe you should start now. You’re welcome.

  • Reality TV?

    This is apparently the season where the limits break down on primetime TV.

    And I’m not just talking ’bout cable.

    For instance, tonight was the second week now that “NYPD Blue” has used “bullshit” out of the, er, blue. On ABC.

    Bullshit.

    I wasn’t as blindsided by it as I was last week, but still. Remember when “NYPD Blue” first came out, there was such an uproar over the use of “adult” language on TV? And partial nudity? Anyone?

    With that in mind, I’d’ve expected to have heard something about it, somewhere, beforehand. But no, not a peep.

    In general, too, this season on TV looks to be testing boundaries all around. From the… incident… on “ER” (I’d hate to spoil the surprise for those who might not have seen it yet), to the first episode of “Firefly” where the captain kicked the bad guy into the massive spaceship engine. I feel like I’ve been rubbing my eyes in disbelief.

    And I hope this trend continues.

    Random Web Link: The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Go check out my favorite bit, titles.