A Tribute, No. 1

just because I can.

"Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise"

"Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free"

"Blackbird fly, blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night
Blackbird fly, blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night"

"You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise"

~McCartney

My name is...My name is...!

So I traveled back to the ‘ville for some Homecoming fun this past weekend. And, yes, fun was had by all. I’m slightly disappointed in the quality of the floats though. They seem to have declined since I was a freshman. The best one was the van turned into a tank. Major points for that.

Driving by McD’s was a bit nostalgic for me. I meant to stop in, but the people I would know the best work in the mornings, and usually not on Saturdays. I did see some of my regular customers at Walmart though. I saw one lady who always got a number 10 (back when it was the nuggets), and a large Dr. Pepper, two BBQ sauces. We were good buddies, but alas, when I saw her there was no recognition. I guess without my McVisor, I become a normal citizen. Kinda like Clark Kent and the glasses. Ah well.

--

I’m rooting for the Astros, but they’re letting me down big time. They hung in there last night, but come on, bases loaded, ONE stinkin’ out and you can’t get a single person across the plate? Obnoxious. I do like the parts where the pitchers hit the batters. I saw (not heard of course) some ‘language’ being used after Crede got hit. Surprisingly, I saw about 3 people use the same word to expres their anger, just in different forms. Creative! Anyways, I think a good hit in the arm to back someone off the plate isn’t so bad. That’s old-school baseball right there. Around the 4th inning, some of the White Sox needed to be backed off a little. I did see ol’ George’s wife Barbara in attendance, although I couldn’t figure out who she was sitting next to. Maybe she has a new man in her life. She didn’t seem very energetic at first but I did see her join in with a hearty “DEO” during a rousing crowd chorus. Well done Barb!

--

So I think I’m going to become a mail-order bride. I figure it will kill two birds with one stone – solve the “who are you going to marry/why aren’t you married yet” question, as well as the “what are you going to do with your life?” question. It could work.

I’ve been craving sushi lately. And Eminem.

Facism at its finest

I was a fax-monkey the other day at work and while I was standing there, I noticed that on the side of the cabinet that holds everyone's mail cubby (makes me think of kindergarten), there were leftover magnets. The magnets were probably about three inches long and maybe a half-inch wide. Perfect for playing with! I found myself making designs and shapes while waiting for my faxes to go through. Then, I started making this design that looked really cool. I put a few pieces up, decided that looked cool and kept the design going. As I was putting the last piece in place, I realized that right there, on the side of our mail cabinet, I had managed to create a magnetic replica of a swastika. There it was, in all its despotic wonder. Needless to say, I 'erased' it and began a, um, safer design.

A tribute to Marx...

In tribute to Karl, I'd like to pursue further the comment left by Blacklinefish which stated:

The smurfs represent a collectivist society sparking a debate on dialectical materialism in a post-modern art form.

So what was it then, that pushed this world into chaos? What was the final proverbial grain of corn that transformed this into a heap? If in fact this was the work of Gargamel, was it the constant singing and "smurfing" that had been seeping into his self-consicous day after day until, as the final hair is plucked, he became bald and exploded into action?
Ah, and yet the system will right itself, as it reaches synthesis. But what will this new Smurf-world look like? They can't return to their afore-smurfness as their society has been altered. But then, even before this tragedy occured, true to dialectics, things had been constantly changing. For example, the introduction of Sassette - what a brat! She was too opinionated for her own good (kinda like Scrappy on Scooby-Doo, NOT a wise move). And you would think that eventually, the system would collapse with Smurfs such as Brainy, Lazy, and Dreamy running around unchecked. If you're going to run a successful commie system, people like Dreamy and Brainy will spoil that for you. Allowing the free-flow of ideas? Papa! I'm disappointed. You have much to live up to. So, in conclusion, I will echo G-Had's final comment, "Freakin' blue commies."

You be the judge...

I've heard that the Smurfs were a bunch of commies. They even had the red hat for Papa Smurf. Kinda made the collectivist society seem not so bad. Equality and mushrooms, what more do you need?

*on a side note, this is where I found Papa's picture.

La-La-La-La-La...BOOM!

I find this amusing on so many different levels.

First of all, I'm a little miffed that the Belgians still get to enjoy this quality cartoon, and we've been cut off. Secondly, I never knew it was created by Belgians, so...there you go!

I was slightly amused at the quote "UNICEF traditionally uses real life images of playing and laughing children but decided to change it for something that would shock people." I find it ironic that it takes the theoretical destruction of mythical blue creatures to shock people out of apathy. I suppose the real thing just doesn't cut it. But mess with the Smurfs, oh that's a whole new issue!

I wonder if Gargamel had anything to do with this? He's been hard at work in his cave!! Speaking of which, does anyone remember the name of his cat? I could go look it up, but I'm curious if anyone knows off-hand. Okay, back to the picture/article. Smurfette lost her shoe, which always intrigued me. Why the heels? I would think she would get tired of wearing heals all the time. You would think Brainy Smurf would have done something or had some anti-weapon device to combat this. I wonder which Smurf is beckoning to Baby Smurf?

Comments?

Open A's

So my not-so-great week continues. Two more days and it’ll be over! Hopefully next week will be better. But still, my evenings are raising the bar, but as of yesterday, the conference at my church is over. We used to have it all week long, but for some reason we went to three days. Anyways, our last orchestra performance last night went REALLY well. I wore black pants for two nights, and I always forget that wearing black, and handling my bow is never a good thing. No matter how careful I am, I end up getting rosin stripes all over them! But no worries. I disobeyed our, I suppose you could call him our, ‘section’ leader for the violins. Kinda odd because he’d only been there for two practices. Hmm…Anyways, he said that he didn’t want us to play any open strings on a few parts. No big deal, but on one part, we have to play an A and then up to an C or D or something. So, all on the A string right. Well, he wanted us to play 4th position on the D string to get the A, and then switch to the A string for the rest of the measure. Not so easy to do and be in tune. Maybe it’s just me though. My 4th finger on the D string never sounds right to me. I tried it, but then went back to my open A, because I KNEW it was in tune. It’s harder to play 4th on another string, if you’re already on that string. Okay, that made no sense I’m sure. So---It’s hard to play A on the D, or E on the A, if you’re already on the A or E string respectively. Clear as mud, right?

Oh yeah, so the offering from Tuesday night. That night was our NEGRO spirituals night (I emphasize “negro” because someone changed the program from “negro” to “old.” How PC of them! They really AREN’T that old, and they really are NEGRO spirituals, so why the change?? Not sure). Anyways, the majority of the score was acapella for the choir. The orchestra totaled up our rests, and we had altogether 185 measures of silence. Well, before we started playing, they announced that they were going to take up a loose-change offering to help pay for the Bibles we made. A good idea, because we raised over 4,000 dollars. But if you can imagine, they wheeled these big trash containers down the main aisles, and dumped all the change from the plates into them. All of this being done during our song. Not a great addition. Might as well give everyone a tambourine and tell them to have it. The song started with an acapella solo, and he began to sing, and then CRASH! Change in a bucket. Silence, then CRASH! More change. It was slightly distracting! Luckily, the change thing didn’t take too long, so we could finish the song without the addition of loose change. Our choir was amazing that night! I was very impressed!

All in all, the conference was really awesome. The speakers were really good, the Bibles got done, and orchestra/choir was fun and did a good job.

Portuguese and Nareesh

Song of the Day

"Open Arms"

I too, like A-Rez, have been neglecting my blog these days. Mostly it stems from a lack of anything blog-worthy. Let’s face it, my life has seen a major drop in the “fun story-ness” since my departure from McD’s. I also spent a lot of my online-writing time on a forum, but I’ve burned myself out on that and it’s time for something new. So I return to my blog, which has been waiting for me with as much eagerness as it can muster. Writing this has triggered the song "Open Arms" in my head. "and so I run to you...with open arms..." Hmm...

This week has been pretty lousy, except for the evenings. I had been looking forward to something and that just came crashing down yesterday so now my days continue as they were – working, eating, sleeping. The evenings though have been fun because my church kicked off it’s Fall Bible Conference. That means we have some guest speakers and most importantly, we make Bibles! We’ve been doing it every year since I can remember, but this is the first year that we’ve done the entire Bible, rather than just the NT. It’s in Portuguese so that’s fun. We’ve done Spanish before and some other languages in the past. Pretty fun stuff! The pieces of the Bibles come in sections, 30 I think altogether. So they have different stations set up – a few to put the sections in order (by a few books), tables where you roll the binding to take out the air and make it flat, then stations where you put the whole shebang together, and then a table where you check to make sure the whole thing is in order and not missing anything. From there it goes to the gluing and binding, and then the cutting room. I worked at collating the smaller sections, then moved to the final checking tables. You memorize the numbers after awhile! We did catch a few mistakes- some missing or doubled pages, and then a few were out of order. Can’t have the rapture before the resurrection!! Our goal was to make 10,000, and we got it done yesterday. So we made 10,000 Bibles in a span of about two days! Not bad! It was good times had by all. The Bibles are being sent to Africa, mostly to Mozambique and Angola. Portuguese in Africa you might wonder (all you non-geography majors…)? Ah the joys of colonization! The Portuguese took their 5 little pieces in Africa and left their stamp on them. Gotta love it! I think we should bring back colonization. We should go colonize France or something. Maybe the Swiss – at least they’d offer no resistance! We (orchestra/choir) also perform each night, which has gone REALLY well. I'll tell you about the offering later...

So, the new job. So far, one of the most annoying things is people who call and INSIST that THEY dialed the right number, and you obviously have NO idea what you’re talking about and must’ve come to work in the wrong place today. They call:

C: Hi, may I speak to Nareesh?
G: Who please?
C: Nareesh. Extension 20.
G: I’m sorry, there’s no one here by that name.
C: Well, is this xxx-xxxx?
G: Yes, but we don’t have anyone by that name
C: It’s extension 20. At so-and-so company
G: I’m sorry, you have the wrong company.
C: Well, do you have an ext. 20?
G: No, I’m sorry we don’t
C: The name is Nareesh.
So what do you have to do to let them know that THEY HAVE THE WRONG COMPANY! What, am I lying? Am I trying to cover for Nareesh? Extension 20 or no, we have no Nareesh!! I get lots of calls like that. They insist that they dialed the right number and obviously you must be mistaken.