megan says it's also good for your hair.

who knew?

is there anything else that apple cider vinegar can do to change the way we live?

apparently, apple cider vinegar is the cure-all of the gods. last night at the cedar door mark, kelly, and i were discussing the houston mosquito plague when our ever-so-polite bouncer/cocktail waiter broke in with: "apple cider vinegar."
"what?"
"apple cider vinegar. it gets rid of mosquito bites."
"you mean, it, like, sucks out the poison and shit?"
"yeah, and it'll keep it from itching and everything. also works for other bug bites. my grandmother told me about it. she said it will heal anything."

step in an ant bed?
apple cider vinegar

live in houston infested by mosquitos?
apple cider vinegar

strange rashes?
apple cider vinegar

extremities falling off?
apple cider vinegar

is there anything this stuff can't do? keep a jug with you at all times!


as a side note. i am pleased to announce the arrival of murphy's paw.

trimmin' grass today.

it was around my 24th hour of consecutive awakeness when i finally laid down to rest.

i dreamt of code.

it was based on html tags, only this code, was the code that was making my brain operate. i'm not sure, but i think that my dream revealed to me the precise method by which the human brain receives and processes information. i feel pretty good about this.

i woke with a terrible migraine. apparently, human's aren't meant to figure out the code to their brain. and of course, you can imagine the endless loop that i got caught up in: thinking about the code that allowed me to figure out the code that made me think about the code that allowed....

i'm typing it out in bbedit later. if you'd like a copy, they're five bucks each.

went to the midnight showing of stop making sense with andy tonight instead of going to austin like i planned. davíd was there as well with a few of his friends.

it is very clear that david byrne was the driving force behind that music and that energy. it's a good film that lovers of music should certainly see.

so, seeing as my body clock is working on its usual time table, i have decided to make the drive to austin now...at 3:00 a.m. load up on caffeine and away i go.
if i don't blog tomorrow, start to worry.

ciao!

why didn't anyone tell me the archives weren't working?

sokay. sfixed.

i've been a bad little blogger; or non-blogger as it seems.

still here however. still alive.

i leave today for austin. i'm planning on spending a week at the ranch with dear ol' dad, driving his new tractor around, movin' dirt. there are some things that make a man feel more like a man. working on your car makes a man feel more like a man. fixing a broken faucet makes a man feel more like a man. and, certainly, movin' dirt with a tractor really makes a man feel more like a man. i can't wait to feel more manly.

RANT

while i didn't expect to really have a life altering experience watching tomb raider, i did expect the visual effects to be at least on par with every other single movie released the past couple of years.

it's no mystery that the main attractions for this film were the enhanced breasts of angelina jolie. (the lopsided, enhanced breasts) and while the most expensive scene to shoot in the whole movie had to have been the grand finale where an entire room is exploding and falling down around the brave heroine as she sprints in slow motion to safety, she might as well have been sprinting in slow motion through a papier maché set. it was the quintessential "money shot." breasts, fake or not, jumbling in slow motion for a good thirty seconds of film.

yes...i thought it was pretty nice.

the real let down, however, is one i will try to describe without giving away too much for those of you not persuaded by my blog to miss seeing this movie. they have these "stunt" knives that they use in movies/plays/low-budget-student-films with a blade that slides up into the knife handle to give the appearance of the blade going in or, in this case, coming out of a victims body. some(one) missed the fact that said blade had blood on it which was slowly revealed as it slid from beneath its handle hiding place. from thirty, forty feet away, you could get away with such a mistake. but when the blade is projected to a size of 10 feet tall on a screen in front of you, it becomes obvious that some(body) gave up trying to make this a good movie.

don't see this movie. if you want to see jumblies in slow motion, i'm sure there are plenty of places on the internet you can find them.

that is all. if you want to respond to this opinion, bring it on.

there is something fun and freaky about reading and listening to music at the same time and having the singer sing out a word aloud just as your eyes pass over it in text.

been happening alot lately. perhaps i'm either reading too much, or listening to music too much. or just listening to music while reading too much.

perhaps it's just fun and freaky.

suddenly the wind stopped. the leaves stopped rustling and the little bits of paper in the street settled to the ground as though they had found their place and would move no more. how could it go from such chaos to such calm like this? what force decided that it was time for all to be quiet?

the storm that had raged moments before was now a distant rumble beyond my line of site. brief flickers of yellows, whites, blues, and reds dotted the horizon. i found myself longing for the return of the torrent that had so recently frightened my soul. why should i desire to feel that fear in place of the peace that had now come over me?

there is another storm on the horizon.

there always is.

tonight is the going away party for adriana. i've opted not to go to the dinner, but instead just visit with them afterwards. limit my exposure as it were. i'm not sure if it is a lack of maturity, or just an uneasiness with the way everything ended but i still do not feel comfortable when i'm around her. so now she will be off to miami. closure of the geographic kind.

that's fine.

find the smile and wish her luck.

so i found another guy that already had the blog "never trust a monkey." what a shame. so until i move over to my new site (which is in the works, believe me), i have tried to dig up what little of french i can remember. it's sloppy at best and likely quite wrong. so get to it all you frenchies, correct my grammer and let me know.

i need a better presence anyway.


adam has decided to sublet his room here at the house and move to austin to be close to his lady friend. this is disheartening on a couple levels at best. adam is a great roommate and we really get along. it'll be a little less fun around here without his complementary humor. by which i mean, he doesn't make complements in funny ways, but rather his humor is complementary to my own. of course the other drag to this is that now we must find another roomie to take his place and it may be tough to put "coolness" requirements on any prospective cohabitors.

so if you fancy yourself cool, live in dallas or have always dreamed of living in dallas, and are/soon-will-be looking for a place to be, please contact me.
single, attractive twenty-something females encouraged to apply.

Michael and Richard will be taping at Austin City Limits at the end of the month. Michael has asked if I would like to come to the taping. I lived in Austin for ten years and never did get to go to a taping although it was a goal of mine since the first day I got there. So without sounding too excited about it, I informed him that I was planning on being in Austin for a week or two around that time anyway and it would be really "nice" to come to the studio and see him play in front of millions of Americans.

I was very excited when I heard that Michael would be playing with the Blind Boys of Alabama on David Letterman last May 7th. I reminded myself daily to watch or record that show.

I forgot.

But I won't miss this ACL show.

It was as if there were a height requirement posted on a little sign by the door.

NOTICE
You must be
at least 5'10"
to enter this
establishment.
City Code 412.576.2

I'm used to seeing very tall women fairly often, but every female in there was nearing six feet or taller and was wearing some form of platform shoes.

Sometimes I get too overwhelmed to even begin translating thoughts into type. I've been detached entirely from the goings-on in Houston and all of the deaths associated with it save the occasional report on NPR, or tv. Most of my knowledge has come from reading Alison's posts over the past week.

One of the most horrifying ways I can imagine dying would be drowning alone.

Urgent 5:00 a.m. Post!

A lot of things on this crazy internet thing can cause disgust and fear to rise within. I've seen sites that display suicide notes, animal sacrifices, and scenes of death. Not to mention all the sick types of porn you can easily come across.

Well, tonight as I browsed Blogs and worked my way around the globe, I came across these chaps who have a simple little script that randomly creates a URL and sends you screaming through cyberspace and dumping you on some unsuspecting web administrator's doorstep. They call it "random URL."

"random URL"

This sounds like fun.

My first click on "Go" and seconds later I'm staring at...nothing. O.K. That's to be expected. I mean, generating a random link has to come up with non-existent servers all the time.

Close that window. Click on "Go" a second time.

I swear I could see the beam of infared light shooting out of my monitor as this uk web server scanned my brain. My eyes slowed the refresh rate of my screen such that I could watch my computer communicate with the world weird web as billions of 0s and 1s crunched and I was able to forsee the server I would soon be "randomly" conversing with.

w w w . a m p l i f y . c o m

Wait a second...

...that's my server! At first the recognition meant nothing. I know what our splash page looks like. It's just a place holder. I've been here before. But I was just sent here by some random script generating URLs from a heap of online data containing dictionary words that it tags with a .com.

OK, look. "Amplify" is not that uncommon of a word. Sure. But this was the second shot I gave at this little game. I'm not a gamblin' man by nature, but if I could obtain those odds on a ten-spot bet and get the same result, I'm sure I wouldn't be worrying about my next check from Uncle Perry.

Please, somebody explain this away as advanced technology scanning my hard drive and trying to freak me out.


Or maybe it was that fifth cup of coffee.

Livin' La Vida Unemployed

To date, I've submitted resumés to roughly 220 different companies in over 10 states and 4 countries. This is since being jettisoned in the first round of layoffs in what would become a reduction in 94% of the workforce of my thriving former employer. Should I be questioned by the state as to my honesty in collecting unemployment checks, I think they will be quite horrified at the paper trail I will bring to them.

Today I surrendered some of the waning remainders of my dignity by filling out an application for a "retail" position at REI. What I did only a couple of hours later has obliterated any doubts that I have become a desperate, foolish man. Now some will unwisely think what I did was cool, or has the propensity of being cool. There is a slight possiblity that my action may have changed the course of my life forever.

I applied for a Graphic Designer job with Hugh Hefner. That's right, I sent my resume to Playboy.

I had visions of me designing away on my Platinum G4 Laptop while beautiful topless Bunnies played volleyball and croquet, and basically pranced around me topless. What guy wouldn't want that? And yet, the thought that I have become so low that I would go into the porn industry makes my stomach turn.




I hope they call for an interview!

So which is worse... trying to figure out what to do with my Tuesday nights this summer while the WB runs old episodes of Buffy and Angel, or the fact that I care that the WB is running re-runs?

"We didn't think this was a slam dunk. There was some risk that this would happen and that risk wasn't zero."
-- NASA Rocket Scientist and Hyper-X program manager, Vince Rausch

Spoken like a true Rocket Scientist