April 2004 Archives

So I run over to McDonald's tonight after work to pick up a bite to eat. There just happens to be one right across the road from my apartment so it makes it very convenient. So anyway, I'm standing in the lobby at the counter waiting for my food to come up and I notice two boys sitting at a booth near the window.

These boys were between the ages of sixteen to eighteen I'd say, yet they were giggling like little schoolgirls. I take a step closer to eavsedrop a bit and see what's up. After moving a bit closer I can clearly see what they were laughing about -- outside the window standing on a bench right at the window is a seagull. This bird is sitting there, following the french fry through the glass that's in one of these boys' hands like a puppy with a dog treat. Occasionally the gull would attempt to snatch the fry out of the boy's hand only to find the invisable barrier that separated them.

I was thoroughly amused, and a bit dissapointed that I didn't bring my camera. But I was also hungry, so I turned back toward the counter and finished up my order. When I was turning back around, one of the boys is running back into the McDonald's all excited."

"Did you see that?" He asks his friend.

"Yeah, he snatched that up right in the air. He was just like A-Rod. Awesome!" I hid back my chuckle, but only until:

"Sure was. Hey, let's buy him a $1 fry...."

I laughed all the way home.

Now that's just funny.

In their own words, "Chickenhead is a sickening repository of tasteless and hopelessly puerile garbage, produced by a detestable clique of New York City losers, who toil needlessly in abject poverty and well-deserved obscurity."

I spent some time poking around on their site, and there's much more satire than you'd know what to do with. You should take a few minutes and check it out yourself. Be sure to check out their "feedback" that they've recieved from people who've seen their sites. Seeing how incredible bent out of shape people get is almost as funny as the satire itself.

I've been extrememly busy lately, so much that I haven't been able to find much free time to screw around at work, or to post onto here. Fortunately I have plenty of stuff that people have sent to me, or pointed me to on the Internet that I can post here for everyone's viewing pleasure. Just remember, I take no credit for these, they're just copied from somewhere else.

01) If you do a good job and work hard, you may get a job with a better company someday.
02) It's only unethical if you get caught.
03) The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off due to budget cuts
04) Doing a job RIGHT the first time gets the job done. Doing the job WRONG fourteen times gives you job security.
05) Sure, you may not like working here, but we pay your rent.
06) If you think we're a bad firm, you should see our rivals! (We suck less!)
07) Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings, they did it by killing all those who opposed them.
08) We put the "k" in "kwality"
09) If something doesn't feel right, you're not feeling the right thing.
10) Artificial Intelligence is no match for Natural Stupidity
11) A person who smiles in the face of adversity... probably has a scapegoat.
12) If you can stay calm, while all around you is chaos... then you probably haven't completely understood the situation.
13) ABANDON ALL HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.....
14) We make great money! We have great benefits! We do no work! We are union members!
15) 2 days without a Human Rights Violation!
16) Your job is still better than asking "You want fries with that?"
17) We are Microsoft. Resistance is futile.
18) Plagiarism saves time.
19) If at first you don't succeed - try management.
20) At least you're not being rectally probed by aliens.
21) Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether.
22) This can't go on for ever, even the Third Reich only lasted 12 years
23) Never quit until you have another job.
24) TEAMWORK ... means never having to take all the blame yourself.

https://www.norml.org/

Today I'm just going to link to a few things that have been sent my way by friends in the past few weeks. Both links will open in a new window.

Trials and Tribulations - A quick cartoon.

The End of the World - A Flash cartoon. Make sure to have your sound turned on and Flash Player installed.

That's all for now. Peace.

I am constantly getting on my friends' cases for forwarding me anything to my e-mail. It's not like I don't get enough junk e-mail as it is. Yesterday I was forwarded a piece of satire, though, that really made me laugh; but, instead of forwarding it to everyone I know -- I'll post it here. A much, much less intrusive way to get the word out there.

Now just to e-mail everyone I know that I updated my blog...

Hello, my name is Greg and I suffer from the guilt of not forwarding 50 billion fucking chain letters sent to me by people who actually believe that if you send them on, a poor 6-year-old girl in Arkansas with a breast on her forehead will be able to raise enough money to have it removed before her redneck parents sell her to a traveling freak show.

Do you honestly believe that Bill Gates is going to give you, and everyone to whom you send "his" email, $1000?

How stupid are you?

"Ooooh, looky here! If I scroll down this page and make a wish, I'll get laid by a model I just happen to run into the next day!"

What a bunch of bullshit.

Maybe the evil chain letter leprechauns will come into my house and sodomize me in my sleep for not continuing a chain letter that was started by Peter in 5 AD and brought to this country by midget pilgrims on the Mayflower.

Fuck 'em!!

If you're going to forward something, at least send me something mildly amusing. I've seen all the "send this to 10 of your closest friends, and this poor, wretched excuse for a human being will somehow receive a nickel from some omniscient being" forwards about 90 times.

I don't fucking care.

Show a little intelligence and think about what you're actually contributing to by sending out these forwards. Chances are, it's our own unpopularity.

The point being? If you get some chain letter that's threatening to leave you shagless or luckless for the rest of your life, delete it. If it's funny, send it on.

Don't piss people off by making them feel guilty about a leper in Botswana with no teeth who has been tied to the ass of a dead elephant for 27 years and whose only salvation is the 5 cents per letter he'll receive if you forward this email.

Now forward this to everyone you know. Otherwise, tomorrow morning your underwear will turn carnivorous and will consume your genitals.

Have a nice day.

P.S. Send me 15 bucks.

-Original Author Unkown (Possibly "Greg")

I know I haven't offered a B&P on here in a long time and I just got these two shows so I'll offer them to the burnerless.

This offer takes a total of six (6) CD-R's, three (3) for each show.

The shows:

Strangefolk
April 3, 2004
The Bombshelter - Manchester, NH

Set 1:
Bait, Open Road, Who I Am, Criminal, Take It Easy On Me, Drill

Set 2:
Like You Anyway, In Deep, Leave A Message, Gustav, Whatever, Anchor

Encore:
Life During Wartime

Strangefolk
April 4, 2004
Higher Ground - Winooski, VT

Set 1:
Gets You Moving, First Time, Round, Sad*, Don't Mind Me*, Lost Souls, Pawn

Set 2:
Lucy Down, Window Seat, Family Tradition, Cabin John, Livin It Out, Escalator, Fallin

Set 3:
Anchor, Happy, Wind Wont Blow

Encore:
Water

*Gordon Stone sat in on pedal steel.

I was at both of these shows and they are nothing short of amazing so I will take as many of these B&Ps that I get. Please e-mail me if you're interested.

If you're unfamiliar with how a B&P works, please visit here for more information.

Dot5Hosting is out of my life, forever! This morning my domain, phishvt.com was finally transferred completely over to EhostPros.com. It took 24 days before the entire process was completed, and the holdup was all on the part of Dot5Hosting.

Apparentally when a domain is requested for a transfer, the registrar to whom you're switching to needs to initiate the move. An e-mail is sent to the current registrar and it's required that they reply to the e-mail to approve the transfer. According to EhostPros, who I contacted after two weeks when nothing had happened yet, Dot5Hosting never responded to their transfer request. They re-initiated the request and I waited again.

Nothing happened in the following days so I decided to go to Dot5Hosting's website and harass their live support technician. After half an hour of me trying to prove to him I was me, he finally accepted the transfer. Here it is a few days later, and my website is up!

The website itself here is the minor half of my worries. The site I have parked here is a site I am no longer maintaining, but it's a nice piece of work so I want to maintain a good web presense and possibly someone out in the web world would want to work on it and put it back in to production one day. Feel free to check it out if you wish, but keep in mind that after the move to a different server certain things don't work. These will be fixed in the near future.

My e-mail address was my major worry. For three weeks I had gone without my main e-mail address. Also, isn't it ironic that as soon as I post the previous entry about soxphan.com and my e-mail address there, do we cancel that account in order to look for a Movable Type friendly website. More on that project to come at a later date, as we're pretty much on hold for now.

Anyway, at this point if anyone needs to contact me, my perminent e-mail address is mickeyATthemickeyzone.com.

This morning my mother told me that she was going to the Church store to buy a candle.

I told her she better get there early, because I heard that today they have altar boys half off!

Recently a friend of mine has approached me an asked me to post his thoughts about a lecture that he attended that was provided free to the University of Vermont community and the Burlington township. The orignal invite for this seminar looked like this:

Wednesday - March 31st 7pm

Practical & Profound Benefits for Mind & Body

Increases Creativity, Intelligence & Happiness
Improves Mental & Physical Health
Reduces Stress & Anxiety
Improves Interpersonal Relationships
Increases Clarity of Thinking & Learning Ability

Sponsored by UVM Environmental Program & the Burlington Peace Palace.

Contact Information: Thomas Hall, 863-8469
ThomasHall@alum.mit.edu, www.BurlingtonPeacePalace.org

Having not attended this lecture, I can not comment, but I thank you Nick for your insights, comments and warnings:

Transcendental Meditation is a nice concept. Imagine a technique that can increase creativity, intelligence, happiness, health, relationships, and reduce stress and anxiety. For the minor sum of $2,500, you can have all that and more! What more? You will also get a 6 hour training (divided over 6 months) and a to secret mantra. (cult watchout #1)

Secret mantra? $2,500.?? Where do they come up with this stuff? I'm going to save myself the $2,500 and google this stuff. What I found was pretty damn scary. Apparently this entire movement is questionable at best, a powerful cult at its worse.

https://minet.org/mantras.html (get your mantras free here!)

https://www.classicalyoga.org/cont.html

https://unstress4less.org/

Where you sign up? On the form that they provide at the end of the seminar. Under no circumstance is that form allowed to leave the room. (cult watchout #2)

The information they collect also raised a few eyebrows-- (usual personal stuff, along with such interesting tidbits as "other meditation techniques tried and results", "hallucinogenic substances tried", etc.) may be used for yogi knows what? Rest assured, the form "Will be keep confidential." There is a disclaimer at the bottom which states that individual results may vary. (this-place-was-sued-watchout #1)

The lecturer drew diagrams on a post-it pad which showed us our current way of thinking, and the problems with that. We were asked about the number of thoughts we had in a given day. (i lost count at 2,500) The diagrams were actually rather interesting, if viewed from a Mondrian perspective. Many studies were quoted (cult watchout #3) which showed the superior results of TM as compared with any other scientific or medical approach to stress and the ailments it apparently generates. However, nothing of substance was mentioned, until the cost was let known, in the last 5 minutes of the seminar.(cult watchout #4)

If its inner peace you want, I would suggest any of the other free meditation techniques/practices espoused everywhere. If you feel you must pay money to achieve a "blissful" state, there are lots of drug dealers on the corners and books at Barnes and Nobles.

-Nick Ogrizovich