Month: January 2004

There was a time when I thought Dennis Miller was funny. Even if I didn’t always agree with his viewpoints, he generally came off somewhat moderate and could point out flaws from both sides of the fence. Then he became a conservative. There’s no innate problem with that since he already had occasionally conservative views in the past, but the manner in which he made that transition was just embarassing. I remember watching him on one episode of Real Time with Bill Maher be completely humiliated by Arianna Huffington. It became appalling clear through his continued attempts at wit with his typical overdone and nonsensical analogies that he had no real understanding of the issues at hand. His conversion from a political humorist to an avid Bush supporter saw a complete loss of what was once a sharp analytical mind.
Continue reading “Just go away already”

I’ve been waiting a couple days to post this. I felt it was important to make sure as many people as possible would hear first hand before I said anything on such an anonymous medium as the Web. My oldest sister Lisa (not to be confused with my oft-refered to girlfriend Lisa) has been battling cancer for a few years now. She has been diagnosed with 3 different cases over that time and managed to beat the first two. Last week, after the latest attempts at chemo failed to provoke any response, her health faced a serious decline. Lacking any real options at this point we began to prepare for dealing with hospice care and the whole family headed home for the weekend. On Saturday my other sisters (Maureen, Christine, Suzanne, Kathleen, and Laura), my parents, and myself gathered at Lisa’s home along with her husband Matt and much of his family. It was devastating to see what havoc that disease had wreaked upon my oldest sibling – almost more than I could take. But we all bravely took the pain and shared our love with each other and our sick loved one. Late that night, however, Lisa finally succumbed to her cancer and passed away under the loving gaze of Matt. She is also survived by their three children, Jack, Connor, and Kelly.
Continue reading “A matter of perspective”

This post is just to test the functions of (photo)Matt’s acronymit PHP script. Things like HTML, LOL, and even IHOP should now be defined as acronyms. Crossing fingers in 3…2…1…

Man are there some killer time wasters on the Internet. Brian found this gem involving a penguin and an abominable snowman. I don’t think any description is necessary. My current high score is 587.1, although Derrick broke 590. Without skipping I’ve gone as far as 490. This could last me days.

Searching for info on those somewhat cool looking Dell DJ’s, I stumbled across a CNET article about the music industry making the same ol’ mistakes. It’s an interesting read, and if nothing else adds fuel to my fire that these new services still are not the answer. As a matter of fact, I believe sites like iTunes are almost a step backwards – a far cry from the “digital music revolution” they claim to be spearheading. Once I have some real free time I’ll write an article on the whole matter.

…this site was two days old! I can’t believe I forgot to post on Wednesday, but that was technically the 1st anniversary of the current incarnation of neverhood.net. My first post left much to be desired, however it still marked my final attempt to install b2 and start an ongoing blog/journal. It ended up taking me well over a month to post again, and that marked the true beginning of my rather mediocre foray into Internet whoredom. Nevertheless, it was the classic “Hello World” message that displayed I had finally decided to at least attempt to create something to share with my fellow netizens. And fittingly, most of you have failed to notice my efforts… 😛

On that note, I am debating about the future of neverhood.net. No, I won’t be closing the site and, honestly, I really don’t care that much about generating more traffic. But I do feel like I could be offering more to the community than what I have right now. It’s clear that I need to get off my ass and actually work on my rather stagnate gallery (yes, I know I’ve been promising this to people for months… sorry 🙁 ). But now I am wondering if I should break this site in half. Possibly the best course of action I can take is to create a blog area that’s merely personal things, and then have the main site focus on music (especially local bands) and other artsy things. Maybe then I could create an area for more of the folks from the OpenMic to stop by and see updates and maybe even contribute their own stories and pictures. This could be an exciting year… we’ll just have to wait and see.

I have to admit that I love those Don Cheadle NFL Playoff commercials. They’re incredibly clever and actually manage to capture the sheer wonder of the sport. I’m desperately searching for a link that might contain all of their transcriptions, but have yet to find any luck. In the meantime, I though I might share a couple posted on the Eagles Message Board:

Five used to be just a number between 4 and 6.
Five used to be what you took when you needed a break,
Five used to be what you gave and got when you were happy,
Five used to be the bill you pulled out to pay for lunch.
But that was before HE came to Philly, before 4th and 26.
Five is a new attitude.
Five is the hope that every year, you’ll be there in January, playing for it all.
Five is playoff games at the Linc – in the cold – where teams don’t want to come.
Five is a number you see on the back of a jersey that went by you in a flash of green because he’s running away from you getting farther and farther, 50 yards down field…
Passing, running, juking out a defender, the new master of the two minute drill.
Five used to be nothing more than 12-7 or Cunningham minus Jaws but now
five… is Five

Before the playoffs, five was just another prime number. Five was 15 divided by 3, a piece of paper with Abraham Lincoln’s face on it. It’s what you’d give a buddy you hadn’t seen in a while. But now that it’s the playoffs, five means converting a 4th-and-26. It means rushing for over 100 yards when it ain’t even your job. It means carrying an entire city and its desperation on your back. People expect more out of guys that wear 5. That’s how big the playoffs are. They took the number 5 and made it…FIVE.

I made a very small edit to I just realized that the word I added was already in the first one (which I prefer), but I think they’re both pretty cool. Can’t wait ’til this Sunday!

I can go years without watching the show, but catch 5 seconds of the opening theme song to The Nanny and it’s stuck in my head for the next month. Thankfully I found a TV show theme song lyric repository to clear up the second to last line of the song for Lisa and I. She thought everybody else was wearing plaid until I said it sounded like tan to me. Sure enough, I turned out to be correct on yet another useless piece of trivia. Somehow this makes her think I’m smarter, I just think I’m more bored.

There’s very little I can even string together at this point. Lisa, Brian, and Mark got to see my full range of emotions during the Eagles unbelievable victory today over the Pack. I shout a lot of things during the game that I wouldn’t want to be held accountable for, so lets just say that I’m a tad enthusiastic 😀 . Next week will be the third consecutive NFC Championship Game I get to root for them, and hopefully this time I get to look forward to the Super Bowl. This game was too much of a nailbiter, and certainly didn’t help my stomach situation.

I ended up staying home Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I was all set to go back in the way I felt Thursday night. Then I woke up Friday morning around 5 AM. I won’t give you the details, but there was no way I was going to work. That afternoon, however, I got a wonderful surprise from Lisa. She bought me a gift from Amazon.com and had it shipped directly to me so I got to spend the rest of my day building my new toy:

Today she’s risking life and limb to spend time with me (oh yeah, and her heat went off last night so she’s stuck here 🙂 ) and make me soup. Not that she really minds having SSX3 readily available to her:

I don’t know what’s making my stomach feel worse: this virus, or waiting for my Birds to take on the Packers tomorrow.