Month: June 2004

Hmm, maybe this post is a tad more timely than planned, considering last night. 😉

Things That Are Difficult to Say When You’re Drunk:

• Indubitably
• Innovative
• Preliminary
• Proliferation
• Cinnamon

Things That Are VERY Difficult to Say When You’re Drunk:

• Specificity
• “Cogito ergo sum.”
• British Constitution
• Passive-aggressive disorder
• Loquacious
• Transubstantiate

Things That Are Downright IMPOSSIBLE to Say When You’re Drunk:

• Nope, no more booze for me!
• Sorry, but you’re not really my type.
• Good evening, Officer. Isn’t it lovely out tonight?
• Oh, I just couldn’t – no one wants to hear me sing!

(Courtesy of Mindful Musings)

I’ve been debating about the best way to break this news to people. I haven’t even told my family yet. But little by little word has made its way around my various circles and I now must divulge this heartbreaker. Lisa and I have signed a lease, which means that we will definitely be leaving Hoboken at the end of July. That’s right, after nearly 9 years I’ll be branching out beyond the Mile Square City. Now Lisa and I must prepare to hitch our wagons up and make the long trek West. We will be following the many pioneers before us and following the great trail of yuppiedom they laid out. You guessed it, next stop Montclair!

I know, I know, what’s the big deal. We’re moving about 15 miles away and will still have easy access to our beloved town and the City itself. It’s not like we have to cut ties and won’t be seeing folks for ages. Still, once you’ve lived in Hoboken you develop quite an attachment to the area and a rather close-knit feeling for the world. Everything is at your fingertips, and those fingertips never have to go far to get to it. Nevertheless, we needed the change.

The last couple weeks have begun to feel like a farewell tour. We hit the Ristra more in June than the rest of the year combined. I’ve wandered over to the Nag’s on multiple occasions, long after my regular visits had dwindled to monthly drop-ins at best. Last night Dan finally dragged me out to Uncle Joe’s along with Vinnie. Joseph couldn’t make it, so we’ll certainly be out again even before I leave (and afterward), but it still feels odd and somewhat final. It’s been a lot of fun lately, and I think it will continue more heavily once Lisa and I get things into some sense of normalcy at the new digs.

In the meantime, I’ll be looking for a new hosting service as I doubt I’ll be able to handle it myself anymore. And along with that, look for some serious redesigns and some honest-to-goodness photo updates (that’s right Patricia, I will get around to it soon).

A very interesting read regarding both the good and bad side effects of wartime censorship.

(Thanks to eclecticism)

Mark (not the usual) made the mistake of sharing his his favorite jokes. The comments section is now overloaded with bad jokes certain to make milk shoot out your nose. I really shouldn’t read these links at work.

I’m sure most of you have seen pictures of the sign for Fucking, that oddly-named town in Austria. Well, it looks like the villagers have decided to keep the name, inspite of the multitude of stolen signs. All I know is that it sounds like a better place to visit than Vomitville!

(Thanks to Stupid Evil Bastard)

Time to take Gmail’s AdSense out for a test drive. I thought it was funny – maybe just because of how much these two sounded like spambots having a real conversation.

No we won’t let their hunger for power decide
Who we should hate
How we show pride

Don’t let them use the tears we have shed
Don’t let evil be done in our names

Thanks to Joel (sorry if I butchered the actual lyrics – I had been drinking, you know 😉 ). As The Chad said, this is a political drinking song – it’s easier to get the melody if you think “Oom-pa-pa Oom-pa-pa” and imagine swinging a mug o’ ale along with it. Lisa guest hosted the OpenMic on Tuesday (two weeks in a row for us!), and one of the highlights (aside from her performance, of course) was a rousing sing-a-long to Joel’s first acoustic performance of this great anti-Bush song he wrote. We had first heard this at his apartment many months ago during one of our musical get togethers.

Someone more paranoid than me once commented that my generation lacks a Dylan. He’s right and he’s wrong. There are thousands of Dylans all around the country. Most aren’t nearly talented enough, but that isn’t the problem. There is no place for them to gain their support – the yearning masses looking for a vision to lead them a head. When entertainers speak their mind on politics, the public tells them to shut up. They used to look for those they agreed with. I don’t know where I’m going with this, but the music industry today was a reaction to the rather doom and gloom attitude that so much of the early 90’s alternative scene produced. If the huddled messes rejected such a deep, introspective look there is little doubt that they would accept a much more intense political message.

Nevertheless, there are still Dylans out there. Joel is one of them. Ross is one of them. Even Gibby is one of them (albeit a much louder version 😛 ). Now if only more people would bother to open up their ears and listen, they might be able to prompt a change. Well, at least in individuals – and that’s a start.

Have I ever mentioned how brilliant my neighbors are? Lets put it this way, there are four parking spots next to my building, which has four apartments. Guess how many cars each apartment can fit in the driveway? That’s right, 2 or 3. I don’t even mind the extra cars they want to keep around (Hoboken is one of the worst towns for parking). There are even two “illegal” spots at the end that they can use (technically they are fire zones, but they aren’t marked properly). Still they often park in such a horrendous manner that my girlfriend marvels at my reversing skills. Yet all I can do is bitch and moan. This morning, however, is one of the prime examples of their absolute stupidity.

With 3 possible spots open (two apartment spots and one “freebie”), someone decided to park in the middle of the lane used to actually exit. Of course the only car they managed to block in was mine. So I find myself already running late for work, and now I have to start banging on doors. I was a little peeved at first, but I figured it was probably someone who just stopped in real quickly and the timing just happened to be off. Instead I find no one home. Ok, one neighbor out of three apartments is there, and he figures it’s probably from the other apartment like I did. So for the first time in 4 years I had to call the police and ask for a tow truck to come remove a car illegally parked in my driveway. I will be writing a very stern letter to my landlord this weekend explaining how big of an impact my neighbors have played in none of us re-signing a lease. In the meantime it’s about quarter to 11, and all I can do is sit here… waiting for the man.

Update – So it turns out it wasn’t one of my neighbors’ cars, which would explain why I didn’t recognize it. We hadn’t had a problem like that in awhile, so I was surprised when this happened. I wasn’t home yet, but they stopped by simply to ask what had happened (was it stolen or towed) so they knew who to ask. Unfortunately I never got around updating on here that it had been towed, so my roommates assumed it, but didn’t know for sure.

It looks like a friend of theirs was heading into the city, so they told her she could park there during the day – not really a big deal. They told her specifically to pull all the way up. Apparently she thought it would be a better idea to park in the middle of the driveway with the doors unlocked and the keys in the car. The tow truck guy went into the car, but it took us awhile before we noticed the keys (he wanted to back it up since he said he couldn’t tow from behind). I just handed them over to him because I wanted no part of it at that point. But the neighbors were cool about it. Brian said they apologized and basically said she could wait until Monday to get her car.

This is at once the cutest and saddest story. The pictures are just priceless, and the ending isn’t a complete tragedy.

(thanks to eclecticism)

This morning started off in a meeting with a sales rep from a disaster recovery firm. While going over all of the services they offer (which were almost all way more than we need) she touched upon the nation-scale of the company. They have regional centers all over the US that are identically setup to make it easy for companies to recover their data anywhere. She quickly add, “I know what you’re thinking, why wouldn’t we just go use [the closest one]? But God forbid the te-disaster takes out the whole region…” It was the ‘te’ right before she said disaster that caught my attention. Most people wouldn’t have even noticed it as I don’t believe the sound even fully escaped her lips. But I knew exactly what word that was meant to begin – ‘terrorists’.

It was so interesting to me because I knew it was rather subconscious for her. She had no intention of using the threat of a terrorist attack as part of her sales pitch; it just happened to be the first thought to pop into her mind in that context. Our lives have changed so drastically since 9/11 that it is no longer just the big news stories we see differently. When the entire Northeast loses power, there’s no real shock in people questioning the possibility of an outside attack. But even in day-to-day speech those events have become a backdrop for all. Words that we once spoke only in reference to the Middle East and various Third-World nations are suddenly an intrinsic part of our vocabulary. Amazing how even the most subtle miscue can reflect upon the very depth of our transformation.