Russel's Teapot

The internet.

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 06:17:37 GMT

So, I lost my cell phone on Friday.

That sucked, and I'll likely get a new one within the next week or so.

Today, I get online for the first time in a long time to tell people this and what is the first news I see?

George Carlin, one of the funniest motherfuckers ever to walk the earth, is dead.

He's dead.

This is the closest I've come to real tears of sadness in a long time.

Almost enough to make one forsake this marvel of information and communication.

Fuck.

I had more to say, but fuck it. I'll get to it when I get to it.

Wasn't gonna drink tonight, but how can I not, now?

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:28:01 GMT

Howdy, y'all...

Break time, watching BSG and surfing the web. What a life I lead...

Ze plane, boss, ze plane....

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 08:38:41 GMT

Arrived in Honolulu safe and... well, I wasn't particularly 'sound' before, so I can't make that claim.

Had a lovely hour plus delay of my flight from San Francisco followed by an uncomfortable flight during which I couldn't raise the arm rest on my outside near the aisle, the only bathroom that wasn't constantly occupied was out of order, and I couldn't get comfortable enough to sleep.

Lots of changes in my department since I left, but I'm just here to do my job to the best of my ability and stick out the 4 cruises this boat has left.

Now to watch Letterman for the first time, then go to bed.

Back to Work

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 23:12:25 GMT

Here I am, sitting at gate 82 in the San Francisco airport, waiting for my flight to Honolulu in about an hour. The airport is larger than most malls I've seen, and bears a strong resemblance to a mall, food court and all.

Nothing else to report at this time.

Just a note:

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:40:49 GMT

Haven't posted in a while, which will change sometime in the relatively near future, but after reading a few links in LJs on my friends list I needed to state this. I hate everything and everyone in the news, and that create the news, and that report the side.

NCLA: a play in one scene

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 17:48:27 GMT

Cast of characters:

The Retarded Frenchman (RF)
The Persistently Angry Englishman (PAE)
The Friendly Englishman (FE)
The Psychotic Short Woman (PSW)
The Deranged Short Man (DSM)
Yours Truly (YT)
Everyone Else (EE)

The place, an office on a rickety shambles of a ship. The time, recently.

DSM: I'm getting a new position, so you'll need to put your paperwork for my job in again.

Yours Truly: I'm thinking about it. Not sure I want the headache.

DSM & PSW: Get that paperwork in now!

Yours Truly: Fine. (Turns in paperwork)

Training begins, with annoyingly stressful circumstances. Enter PAE and FE,

PAE: This place is a mess, if we're going to pass this inspection a LOT of work is needed. It WILL get done.

Everyone Else: Ok

YT: This is going to be fun.

DSM: Lots of it.

PAE: This and this and this are wrong. Fix them now, or peoples jobs are on the line.

EE: Ok.

FE: Good job guys, just a few more things to fix.

PAE: This and this and this are still wrong. Fix them now, or peoples jobs are at stake.

EE: Ok.

DSM, YT & PSW: You can only have your job threatened so many times before the threat loses effect. Daily is far too often.

Elsewhere. Later.

YT: I needed this cake earlier today. Why isn't it ready?

RF: I dont know about this cake. Nobody tell me anything.

YT: The email was sent out almost a week ago.

RF: I dont get this email.

YT shows RF where he's had said email for two days.

RF: I don't have the materials I need.

YT: How long should I give you before I come pick it up?

RF: What? (Random garbling of might-be-english and might-be-french)

YT: Can I get a rough estimate on how long it will take?

RF: What? (Random garbling of might-be-english and might-be-french)

YT: How long is this going to take?

RF: Oh, twenty five, thirty minutes.

YT: Thanks.

Back to PAE, FE, and EE.

PAE: People are going to get fired if these things I just now said are wrong and arent in your control arent fixed immediately.

EE: So what else is new?

FE: If they're not fixed, let me know and I'll do something about it.

EE: Yay!

PAE: I'm leaving today. Everything better be perfect.

Scene fades on Yours Truly twitching from stress at well before seven in the morning.

This has been NCLA: a play in one scene, the story of my life for two weeks.

Thank you, and goodnight.

life, beurocracy, and video games

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 07:14:25 GMT

Ship life continues to be pretty good. Not working the living dead shift anymore as of yesterday, and am highly amused by people welcoming me back after 5 or 6 weeks on board.

Only one thing keeping life from being truly vonderful. Found out the only reason I haven't been promoted yet is that the paperwork I submitted to HR after interviews and things didnt get put in and processed. Now they seem to have no recollection of even seeing it. Yay for updating resumes and resubmitting paperwork. Oh, and retaking interviews for a position I already interviewed for. Like I said, other than that, life's grand, but it'd be better if not for this teensy snafu.

As for video games, I recently picked up The Orange Box for the xbox 360. Didn't even know it was going to be released for consoles. Go me. Anyway, Portal is a fantastic game and would be worth every penny of the 60ish dollars if it were a full length stand-alone game. Unfortunately, without a regular internet connection, can't play Team Fortress 2, but Half-Life 2 seems pretty interesting so far.

Only an hour and a half-ish until I can go to bed.

Hooray for bed.

I'm not dead... I feel better...

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 17:56:13 GMT

Ah, the ship life.

Much less stressful and much more fun when you realize how very important you are not. More on that later.

In other news, been watching Heroes on dvd. Fantastic show. Got that, Eureka, and Invader Zim. Haven't gotten around to so much as opening the other two, but I know from past viewing that they're good shows. Also been reading a fair bit. S.M. Stirling's Dies the Fire and it's sequel The Protector's War about a catastrophe that effectively disables the world's high technology is quite good. Also read, but can't for the life of me remember the author of, The Looking Glass War.

I'm gonna try to take a page out of dethtoll's book and start a week-in-review type thing. Won't be anything in-depth, but it'll be something besides silence here. Heh.

Paz y amor,

cues jefferson airplane

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:23:30 GMT

Welp, folks, back to the cruise ship I go.

it's been fun. catch y'all later.

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 09:47:36 GMT

the ancient cave bear battles its natural enemy... the robot.

phones, laptops, internet, and booze

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 06:04:56 GMT

So, I'm about to go watch LOST, but before I do, 4 things:

1 - I loves me some cheap scotch.

2 - I'm going back and forth between Mac and Alienware for future laptop purchases.

3 - I think I may decide to go with nextel/sprint for my cellphone service once I get back out to the Boat.

4 - Anyone know anything about this whole 'mobile internet connection' thingy? I've been trying to research it, but not finding too much useful info.

discuss at your liesure, and any comments or advice on any of the above is welcome(nay, requested!)

that is all.

peak-chewers

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 23:02:28 GMT

I was bored today, so I shaved my face and head, and used my camera phone to document

mememememe..... since I've no other content to share right now

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 03:48:08 GMT

1. Grab the nearest book
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest."

"Is this the greatest? So when it set, he said: O my people! I am clear of what you set up (with Allah)."

~The Qur'an

Fun Stuff

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 09:23:59 GMT

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0110100001110100011101000111000000111010001011110010111101110111011101110111011100101110011100000110110001101001011011100110101101101111001011100110111001100101011101000010111101100010011010010110111001100001011100100111100100101111011101000110111101100010011010010110111001100001011100100111100100101110011000010111001101110000

when in an irc chatroom...

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 07:32:31 GMT

best line I've 'heard' in a while...

"now i'm thinking about squashes penetrating watermelon :( "

heheheh

wow

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 05:26:10 GMT

I missed two days with the new word thingy, but got one today.

A word I recognized but didnt really know. Palindrome. A word, sentence, or number, that reads the same forwards and backwards. Neato.

heh

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 09:46:47 GMT

This is the funny.

One of my resolution thingies...

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 07:44:23 GMT

Well, I dont make resolutions for new years, but this year I've decided to make up a list of things I'd like to accomplish or at least start over this year. One of them is to learn a new word every day.

On the 1st, I was reading through the Questionable Content archives and came across the word "trope", meaning in that particular case an overused or cliche theme or idea.

On the 2nd I dont know what I was reading that I came across the word "rube"... I kinda knew what it meant before, but never would have used awkward or unsophisticated to describe it.

Today, I had to look at an online dictionary to find a new word, but that's ok... todays word was "parse" meaning to break things down into their basic parts and examine them.

Yeah. that was exciting, wasnt it?

happy new year, motherfuckers

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 12:04:48 GMT

love some of you to death.

hope some of you die horribly.

you know where you fall in this spectrum.

happy new years, regardless.

Something that might be of interest to one or two of you...

Sat, 30 Dec 2006 06:43:54 GMT

well, at least one.

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=52824

Goodnight, sweet prince...

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 06:05:27 GMT

While it's sad that Ford died today and that Brown died yesterday, but I didnt know either of them in the least bit.

Found out earlier today that a friend I hadn't talked to in a while died on August 21st.

This one's for you, Jeff. You've earned it. I'd say rest in peace, but you're probably kicking ass and enjoying that joint you've been looking forward to for so long.

more of the usual crap

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 08:15:04 GMT

I've noticed that I much prefer to keep my LiveJournal entries more or less impersonal, tending to save the personal crap for when I'm actually chatting with folks. This is fine by me and will likely continue indeffinately. Just an interesting observation.

Now... hmmm... movies!

2 movie reviews for this evening, one of a new movie and one of a DVD.

Movie 1) Eragon.

It was a nice light 'young-adult' fantasy flick. Nothing too heavy, or well developed. It was entertaining, and I look forward to what they might do in future installments, but it didnt even have the depths of a Harry Potter flick. Having never read the book, I dont know how they compare. More on that when I've read the book.

Movie 2) Clerks 2

I've heard great things about this one, and come to expect much funny and entertainment from Kevin Smith. Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, and Dogma were all fantastic in their own ways. Clerks 2... well, it was leaps and bounds better than the pussy- and fart-joke riddled fiasco that was Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, but it fell short of both my expectations based on what I've seen before and what everyone's said. It was a good flick, but some of it seemed forced. The 'porch monkey' bit was great, but the donkey show... yeah... annoying.

Now that I've done movies... time for... ah, Television!

I've seen two fantastic shows and one show that was so bad it was funny. I'll start with the bad.

'Identity' featuring the more vociferous of the duo Penn and Teller. This is a game show where the contestants attempt to profile the 12 people standing on a stage and match them with one of 12 identities like 'Mall Santa' or 'Mayor' or 'Playmate of the Year. Kinda like a truck full of
chickens hitting a bus full of circus clowns. Horrible and amusing at the same time.

My new unfortunate obsession on tv is Battlestar Galactica on scifi. Thanks to BitTorrent I got caught up in time to watch the season finale on friday. So much better than the old BSG that theyre hardly the same at all. Better writing, acting, and production value. Now, of course, I get to miss the new season when I go back to the ship. Were it not such a good show, I would question why I bothered getting caught up, but it is. Watch it. I command you.

And, a show I started watching on hillbillie's reccomendation, The Prisoner. Yeah, it's not been on tv for nigh on 40 years, but its great. More when I've watched all of it.

Books... books... books...

Recently read a few good books, and one less than satisfying one.

Jasper Fforde is fast becoming my favorite author. I just read(in the last few weeks) both Something Rotten and The Big Over Easy, and they're so dorkily fantastic that I can't even find words to describe it.

As always, Terry Pratchett is great. Just read The Last Hero last night in a couple hours. Had me giggling the whole time.

Kat Richardson's Greywalker, reccomended by my buddy Steve, was pretty good. A new take on the paranormal urban fantasy deal, and set in Seattle which added to my enjoyment.

Now, my sadly disappointing book review. Heinlein's The Number of The Beast.... I enjoyed every moment of this book until the last chapter. I absolutely hated the last chapter. It was like eating a really good steak only to find maggots on the last bite's worth. It ruined the experience of the book for me. It had Heinlein's usual great characters, great story and pacing, but that last chapter was a big kick to the balls.

More later.

A rambling, of sorts

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 07:05:39 GMT

I was intending to write something this evening about 'how didnt we elect Kerry president, oh woe is us the president is a miserable failure.' spurred by reading Al Franken's latest book, but I'll not do that. It has been done to death.

Maybe another night.

Tonight, rather, something interesting happened. I was watching some mindless tv show, and I mean something truely godawful and stupid. Oh yes. It was a Barbara Walters tv special thing... I admit it, I'm a sheep. My mother had it on the television and I'll watch damn near anything if it's already on. I dont excuse that, and will attempt to work on it in the future, but that's not the point.

My point is this. One 'celebrity' type person showed on screen and my dad walks in and says something about him/her. Dont remember or care any longer who it was or what he said, but he mentioned that he heard it on Howard Stern. Now, I couldnt care less who listens to Stern or what he does or says. I just tag onto his little schpiel the words 'according to Stern' and I get a rant the intensity(and coherence) of which rivaled anything I've ever heard from a christian when their religion or messiah is insulted or questioned. Apparently to his devoted listeners Stern speaks the unadulterated 'Truth' that shall not be questioned by anyone, he is more 'real' than any other entertainer...

I had not known I was insulting the Messiah/Prophet of the modern age.

I be a re-re-retard

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 06:44:01 GMT

Crown royal, beer, and tequila do not mix well. I feel like refried death.

The complete sucker-punch to my immune system that all that wonderful alkiehall done did just highlighted a fact that I was trying so very hard to deny. I's getting sick.

Yay me.

bookiwooks

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:53:53 GMT

First, I'm now about 3/4 of the way through my fifth or sixth reading of Heinlein's Time Enough For Love. Not sure what it is about some books that I can reread them time and again, but others are fantastic once through but intolerable for even a second reading.

Other books I'm reading:

Jasper Fforde's Something Rotten and Keith Olbermann's Worst Person In The World and 202 strong contenders. Both light and amusing, but in different ways and for vastly different reasons. More when finished

Coming up soonish:

Re-reading the Hitch Hikers Guide series for the umpteenth time.

Laurell K. Hamilton's Guilty Pleasures. Kinda trashy series, I know, but fun.

Al Franken's The Truth with jokes.

Robin Hobb's Royal Assassin.

Wow, that was a lame post. More when I have something actually worth saying.