Thursday, March 31, 2005


Easter and hot dogs really *can* go together when you jump out of the ceiling
this is an audio post - click to play

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Wake up time story

Well people, it is time to tell you a little story. Grey Poupon and thyme there was a little alien named Barry Green. Barry had a hard life. He was the victim of child labor, for you see, on his planet there were no child labor laws. Barry's daddy would send him off every day to the telescopes where children young and old would scan the skies for sign of hopelessly unlikely life in outer space. "How could such things exist?", Barry would ask himself every day. "How could there be life on planets with so much water, like Earth, for instance?" Yet day after day, little Barry (he could not have been older than 10) would stare out into space until his little eyes would hurt. One day Barry decided to ask his daddy if he could go to school like the children of politicians. Daddy's face grew long -- I mean longer than normal long. Daddy said, "Barry how do you expect me to feed my various addictions? You must serve the family, like I did for my father and he did for my grandfather. We are not politicians, we are mere common people. Besides, maybe you will be the first one to spot humanoids or something, and we will all be rich." Barry did not like this answer. Barry decided it was time for him to leave this planet. Barry did not know that running away from your problems can only complicate them. But Barry wanted to do something big. Barry decided to see if he could build a spaceship. This had never been done before on Barry 's planet. The politicians had cut the space program in fear that extra-terrible life would be indeed found. They feared that if this happened it would make it so that there was no more use for the slavery of the children. This would be bad. Then the children could get an education. Then the common children could grow up and ruin their monopoly on power. Instead, they continued to keep antiquated lenses on the telescopes, and kept many of them busy with manual labor for most of the day. So one night Barry snuck out into the backyard to build himself a rocket. But when he went out in to the dark, there was a spaceship already sitting there casting a shadow in the red sand! Barry thought maybe this was a good sign or something. He entered the vessel slowly and respectfully. But the rocket did not return his respect. Suddenly, it shot off into the sky, without prompting! Barry was scared! Suddenly a crackly voice spoke to him, but he did not understand it. The voice seemed to be saying the same thing a thousand different ways, each of which he did not understand. The voice was way too loud, anyway. Barry looked out the window, and all at once wished that he was back at home feeding his father's addiction. What Barry saw was a planet coming toward him at such an amazing speed that he thought he was dreaming. Closer came the planet. Closer came the blue. Closer came the water! Barry was afraid of water. Water is not good for little green aliens, and Barry knew this. BOOM! came the sound of Barry's impolite craft hitting the water. Barry blacked out. When Barry came to, he saw creatures. He saw creatures very different than he had ever seen. They seemed to be speaking. They looked blurry. Barry was afraid. Suddenly one of the creatures came very close and spoke something very strange to Barry. It sounded like it was trying to greet him. It kept saying unintelligible things like the voice in the spaceship. Among other things, it said noisy things like "HELLOW" and "OLAH." Barry did not care for it's tone. Finally, and amazingly, Barry DID understand something it said: "BOWLZHURE." Wow! It could speak his language!

Find out what happens to poor Barry, the French speaking Marsian, next time...

Thursday, March 24, 2005

102.8 Weird Things

I had to get a new cell phone. My old Nokia phone was shutting off every 5 seconds, and other nonsense. I am now going to rant and rave about various things.Warning: Some language may not be suitable for young cell phone users, or those could care less about the features of their phone.

To start with:

PICTURES FOR ADDRESS BOOK ENTRIES:

Fact: Most people with flip phones use the "open to answer function." This is especially true if you have a flip phone like mine, which has ANOTHER display on the OUTSIDE of the phone, to tell you who is calling. ("Open to answer" means that when you open the phone, it automatically answers the incoming call. You can turn this function on and off.)

Fact: This phone has the option to link a picture with an address book entry.

Now tell me, what is the worth of having a picture linked to an address book entry if you never see it???! There are 2 likely scenarios:

With open to answer turned off:
Phone rings; User looks at outside display and decides whether she/he/it (hereafter referred to as "it") wants to open the phone and answer it; User opens phone and briefly sees the picture which is linked to the address book entry while pressing the green button;

With open to answer turned on:
Phone rings; User looks at outside display and decides whether it wants to open the phone and answer it; User opens phone and pushes the green button, never seeing the picture which is linked to the address book entry.

Get the point??? In both situations It doesn't use the picture to identify the caller, It uses the outside display to identify the caller!

Here is an unlikely scenario, which SOMEONE at Motorola had apparently delusionalised about:

With open to answer turned off:
Phone rings; User either never noticed that there was an outside display, forgets about it while in a reverie about what it would be like to be a human cannonball, or It just sees the value of getting hand exercise by opening the flip to see who it is -- even if it turns out to be someone they didn't want to talk to; User opens phone and sees the picture which is linked to the address book entry; User laughs at how dumb it is; User decides whether to press the green button;

Bummer. I don't have time to write about the 101.8 other weird things about this cell phone and the general lack of logic that cell phone makers have. Maybe another time? Argh.

Oh....A lot of people do dumb things like this on their blog, so here goes.

Here is my Nonsense Run On Sentence of the Day:

I wish that people would quit thinking about why they have to go to work every day and just look at it as a privilege to serve major corporations who provide us with so many things which improve our life on a daily basis and make us all feel special in ways we didn't even know even existed or desisted or withstanded the tests of time and slime and sublime beauteous layers of well meaning stuff that people say just to make us feel better when we are down or up or just loitering about as though we were wondering what the meaning of life is even though we really do know what it is and just don't want to pop their's or their friend's bubbles.

Thank you for your quite sacrificial readership. Believe me, there is no better way to spend/sacrifice your time.

Saturday, March 12, 2005

Jallagher Games

James Gallagher is a busy person:

Things I have been up to lately...(Click on each of them for details)

Getting mega-shunned Celebrating St. Patrick's day Playing soccer Playing football in Australia Becoming a Doctor Doctoring AND boxing Going missing Going deaf -- and blind Commiting fraud Going insane Commiting treason

OK, so very funny, right? But here's the point, google has made me lose my sense of identity. When I searched for myself, I realized that I wasn't the only James Gallagher out there. It is scary. It makes me feel kind of like...not unique. If you have an even half-way common name, you should try this. It is quite a reality check. There is this strange urge to compare myself to all of them, to kind of see how I measure up against all those other James Gallaghers. Some of them I am tempted to covet, others I am tempted to look down on. For some, I feel sympathy, others, I feel of a sense of shame to even share their name. This is can be somewhat disturbing.

Monday, March 07, 2005

But...um, it's still mooing



Hope and I went out to Culpepper for our 8 month anniversary. It was our first time there, and we are not wont to haunt upscale steakhouses on a regular basis. You will understand my wife's surprise then, when the waiter told her to cut into the steak right then and there. "Ma'am, would you cut into your steak please?" "What?", Hope replied. He had really put her on the spot, unexpectedly. "Yes. Would you please cut into your steak and see that it is to your liking?" My wife is not that type. First of all, she is not that picky. Secondly, she would not think of cutting a steak in front of the whole restaurant, and sending it back to the kitchen to be simmered to her preferred perfection. "Oh. No -- I'm sure it's fine. Thank you.", she stammered gently." As soon as he was gone, it was all both of us could do to keep from breaking into laughter. I guess we still have a lot of learning to do about upscale dining. The question is, do we want to learn it?

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Thank You For Not Joking

I think that the world would be a better place if people who have a voice mail box, but hate voice mail boxes, and intentionally never check their messages, would simply call up their wireless company and have the voice mail turned off. (You really CAN do that, you know.) I'm not talking about the people who check their voice mail once in a while. I am talking about the people who have NEVER checked their voice mail, and forgot they had one. You see, it is really annoying to call up someone and leave them a detailed voice message, which goes into a black hole somewhere. I have some friends who have this black hole voice mail syndrome, who nonchalantly admit to having never checked their messages. Sometimes I feel like calling up their voice mail and saying a bunch of goofy things -- maybe do a Ed Norton imitation, and sing My Country Tis of Thee in a minor key? Maybe I could start an audio blog, on their voice mail. Maybe I could use it to spill all those things I never have told anyone. Maybe I could... Hmmm... Maybe this post will provoke them to check their voice mail. Not necessarily good.
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