November 1999 Archives

ahh. I'm back from Vegas and it was every bit as Vegas as I'd hoped it would be. now, unfortunately, I have jury duty. there's something really amusing-ha-ha about having jury duty immediately after going to Las Vegas, but I'm tired and as sharp as a donut. more updates soon. :)

snow, slushy slushy snow today.

One Swell Foop's weblog and hacked page made me smile this morning: "Alright, your front page is toast. Don't ask for any more favors."

from McSweeney's: Bad Names for Professional Wrestlers, The Next Generation. my favorite: The Plum-Eating Bastard.

the nubbin will be on hiatus for the next few days as she wanders the fun pit that is Las Vegas.

having mailserver problems. email to the nubbin may be bounced. nevermind.

1 day to Vegas.

so. after watching that insipid Y2K movie last night on NBC, it finally dawned on me. the Y2K bug has now morphed into something completely new. but old. I'll explain: it's a convenient media gift (with a delightfully evasive buzzword) that nurses all our twentieth-century fears - nuclear meltdown/fallout; airplane crashes; escaped convicts. if January 1st goes the way the movie dictates, all prison doors shall swing wide open, water pumps at nuclear power plants shall fail, babies shall die, and airplanes shall crash. the movie was really a thinly disguised nuclear-meltdown disaster movie, with one really beautiful explosion (the movie's budget must have been drained by the pyrotechnics, because it certainly wasn't spent on casting) saved toward the end. and you knew the movie was really a piece of ridiculous crap when you realized all the kids at the new year's eve rave were dewy and sober, and a kid in a van hacked into a VIP list at said rave. from his van. and I won't mention that they mis-spelled "Scandanavia" [sic] in a computer graphic, or had a character in the control room whose only lines were to cover the phone and shriek alarming statistics about the impending meltdown. anyway. back to my theory. there are really 2 Y2K bugs. one is cheerfully dressed by the media, and suggests that technology will suck the humanity out of our souls and bite us in the collective ass the first chance it gets. and the other Y2K bug is the one that keeps a few dba's and sysadmins a little closer to the office on January 1st.

thank god his 15 minutes are finally over.(I hope.)

for those times when your cat wants to hack a little code, send email to that cute Siamese next door, or spam your office, get PawSense!

Andy Kaufman is still alive.

another prediction about the collapse of the internet "bubble." seems as though more lateral partnering is going on among existing "e-business" players, as the number of freshly minted dot coms slows down.

ThirdVoice is amusing for about 10 minutes, which is about when you realize that one more "YOU SUCK YOU SUCK" note isn't going to enhance your experience of the World Wide Web. there are exceptions, however, they're too far and few between.

oh no. the Keirsey Character Sorter tells me I'm an artisan and a composer. there was only a 4-point spread between all 4 personality types: I was one point away from being an Idealist, 3 points from being a Rational, and only 4 points from being a Guardian. (read: I'm a mutt.)

from the Adventures in Fast Living Dept.: I was in a fender bender last night. I was a) concentrating (too much) on finding my friend's apartment and b) thinking that a car stopped at a green light was parked. a delicious recipe for disaster, yes! but I'm trying to re-contextualize the incident, and I believe it was my initiation into a world of fast living and a rock-and-roll lifestyle. I mean, I hear about Rock and Roll Stars having these little fender benders and run-ins with the law all the time. after all, it can't be a coincidence that Fender is both a car part and a brand of guitar, can it?? it must have been a sign, a rite of passage into my predestined Rock and Roll Lifestyle that I have been denying myself for too long. my subconscious took over the wheel, and I was a hapless bystander, waiting to collide with my glitter rock future. ...right? (my insurance company will understand, don't you think?)

I feel unusually rested today. I'm not used to this. it's strangely disarming.

they removed eleven crystals from Petunia's little body. dear god. they showed me 2 of them. eleven of those in me would have put me in the hospital faster than you can say morphine drip.

so I asked Cecil about the origin of "86" when referring to a restaurant item being out of stock, but I'm not holding my breath on his reply. if you know the word history/etymology, or if you've at least got an amusing theory, tell me.

Wendy Testaburger died.

thank you Jason for helping solve the mystery of 86!

At one time, taverns served both 100 proof (50% alcohol whiskey, and 86 proof (43% alcohol). Two-fisted drinkers would order the stronger alcohol - sissies would order the weaker stuff. If a [two-fisted] customer became unruly, the bartender would switch him to the weaker (86-proof) alcohol, i.e., he would "86" him, before resorting to throwing him out.

Today's Secret Clue is: 6.0221367 x 10²³. Today's Secret Hollywood Square is: Lorenzo Amedeo Avogadro.

you'd already forgotten about them, hadn't you? you saw them once, with morbid fascination, and you managed to shake it off and go about your day. but they're still there. alive. waiting. doing mole things. Naked Mole-Rat Cam.

When Moles Attack.

during a lifetime, an average person will spend 2 weeks kissing. heh.

8 days to Vegas.

once again, my account at Epinions has been screwed up. sigh...I'll have to find another way to finance my retirement. at least my cash cow, the one on dirt, is still bringing home the most "money". god bless america.

the site for PBS' fabulous Sessions at West 54th offers WinAmp skins customized by artist. get a Beck skin, a PJ Harvey skin, etc. some artists' pages also offer screen savers and desktop patterns. (warning: you've got to fill out a short form to get your download.)

so it turns out my cat's ailment, and the source of her otherworldly middle-of-the-night "MROOWWWW"'s, was a handful of stones in her bladder. my heart broke when I saw the X-ray and imagined the pain she's been suffering. she has surgery next week. speaking of surgery and breaking hearts...I can't watch E.R. I tried to watch it last night. again. but I can't do it. there's just too much...death, sadness, people dying. my face was scrunchy after only 10 minutes.

We Need a Way to Get Rid of Jesse Helms.

isn't Microsoft stooping a little by forming an "alliance" with Tandy "potato clocks and shoddy electronics" Corporation? it doesn't make sense.

the best thing I've read in a long, long time: An Interview with Dave Hickey. "I hold this sort of 'electric meat' theory of the human condition and I am as spiritual as snot."

aha. Avarice, Greed, and Holiday Need is now online in the form of my wish list at amazon.com. you'll be able to search for it tomorrow, according to Amazon.

Victor shared another nubbin with me. my stars! there's nothing cuter than a rottweiler behind a bucket!

Old Faithful WebCam. Mammoth WebCam.

from the Snowball's Chance in Hell Dept.: is it wrong of me to research the genealogy of my name to find out if I'm related to Melinda French, wife of Bill Gates? if we were indeed related...wow. that would like totally make my day.

everything you ever wanted to know about sushi but were afraid to ask. "Etiquette is so important in Japan and table manners so elaborate that Americans are not expected to have any at all, and almost anything you do will be excused."

interesting idea whose time hasn't really come (yet): della.com.

P.J. O'Rourke's An Alphabet for Schoolboys.

I can't really think of a witty intro or rib-tickling summary about this link, other than to say I laughed out loud. but I didn't pee in my pants.

squidfactory: better than peanut butter falafel.

about-face.org encourages a more positive, healthy portrayal of women in mass media. their Gallery of Winners spotlights the kinds of images they'd like to see more of in women's advertisements. (aside: though it's nice that the waif ideal is a little less popular than it used to be, it'll never go away. women's insecurities, especially those related to body image, are too convenient a source of motivated buying power. I'm certainly a motivated hair color consumer after a breakup/argument/[insert trauma here].)

I can't wait for vacation

though they've been around for quite some time, their..."sound" was new to me. The Shaggs' "Philosophy of the World" album was called "...the sickest, most stunningly awful wonderful record I have heard in ages: the perfect mental purgative for doldrums of any kind." (Debra Rae Cohen, Rolling Stone) ...all I can say is - if you get a chance to listen to them, um, think about it first.

if you enjoyed the "I KISS YOU!!" page, you'll enjoy this turkish delight.

last night I had a dream that I had a ride in the space shuttle. once we got out of the earth's atmosphere, we looked at the universe through a glass-paneled floor, like on one of those glass-bottomed boats you can take over reefs around Florida. and it was so incredibly bright with all the stars - surprisingly bright. but suddenly we had to cut short our trip, though they couldn't tell us why. we re-entered the earth's atmosphere by going down a ramp - kind of like a spiral parking ramp. as we were driving down it in the space shuttle, some guy in a beat-up Pinto merged into our lane, and I thought to myself: I wonder if he realizes he's driving right beside the space shuttle.

Bloom County!

from the I-Need-A-Conspiracy-Dept.: Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention described fluoridation as one of the century's most significant advances in public health. Mrs. Hendershott isn't convinced.