Huh? What's that? Huh?

I need to get new earplugs.

I initially got them because the Smashing Pumpkins nearly deafened me on the Adore tour. I had great seats, but it was at Constitution Hall in DC, which has the most atrocious acoustics I've heard, ever.

They had the subwoofers (low frequency, like the bass) jacked way up, and I was apparently right fucking next to them, because every time D'Arcy hit a certain note, my whole head would rattle and my right ear would hurt like a motherfucker. My head hurt like hell after the show, and I had a really, really bad ringing in my right ear for about five days after the show.

So I got these really nice custom fitted earplugs at an unrelated visit to an ear nose and throat guy when I almost broke my nose by diving the wrong way onto a bed and smacking my face into a big cabinet behind the bed.

TANGENT WARNING: I also discovered on this visit that I've had a deviated septum (the little thing in the middle of your nose that seperates it into, you know, nostrils), and have apparently had it for years. I had just kind of been under the impression that usually only being able to breathe through one nostril was normal, or that this was a product of my allergies. The doctor told me this was likely the result of a very old break and that the only way to fix it was to re-break my nose so it could could be re-set. I was like, no thanks, I'll just sniff halfheartedly.

So anyway, I got these really nice earplugs, and I caried them around with me for about three and a half years. And then they began to disintegrate, and they finally bit the dust about six months ago. This wasn't a problem, since until last week, I hadn't been to a concert since October.

At the Patty Griffin show, this wasn't really a problem, since her band was not terribly loud. But I was at a show tonight at Nevin's because Ellen Rosner, who I've been bugging to let me know when she had an 18+ show, was among the people there.

When I left, I came back and I could tell my hearing was not what it ought to be, though it wasn't too bad, since Nevin's isn't that fucking big. But I was still shouting when I came in to talk to my roommates.

So the ear nose and throat people will be getting a call from me soon. Probably a very loud one.

D'oh

these wouldn't post last night because the server was being a pain. enjoy!

Cleaning solutions

So I mopped the kitchen and the bathroom in my apartment today. The entire apartment smelled like Jewel-brand Pine Cleaner for several hours after I finished.

To an alien arriving on the planet Earth, this would seem like an odd phenomenon: "So let me get this straight. You're going to take your living space, which you created prescisely to seperate yourself from the outdoors, and try to make it smell...like the outdoors? Why?"

And when I respond that it seems cleaner when it smells like pine, he will respond, "But pine trees have all that sap, you know, the kind that makes the pine needles stick to your shoes if you're hiking, or your pants if you're stupid enough to sit down in a pine forest."

Becuase this is an unusually knowledgable little alien.

Eventually I will make him understand that artificial pine scent is a much more pleasurable smell than eau de burnt hamburger, which has permeated this apartment for a couple of days after I tried to cook a mega burger (the kind of burger you get when you accidentally get too high a proportion of the ground beef you get from the store into one patty) at too high a temperature and ended up just burning the damn thing.

And the alien will smile, and dance. Because that's what aliens do. I think.

Blink your way to better web design

The one thing that really drives me absolutely bananas about web design is that I can only seem to do it between the hours of one and six in the morning, and I always end up with a massive headache from staring at a computer and not blinking for several hours.

I think I need to invest in some Vizene. Either that or start taking breaks.

Blah

I have come to the conclusion that the ideal career for me is Idle Rich. And I don't mean Powerball rich, I mean Bill Gates rich, but without that whole antitrust thing. I could sit around and just buy crap online and play the guitar all day, and not have to worry about money. Because I wouldn't need a college diploma for that, so I could quit school like, now.

I have spent the last hour or so reading the world's most pointless articles for a class called "News Media and American Society," which consists entirely of things you learn simply by living in D.C., which I did for eighteen goddamn yeras. This, by the way, is the same class and the same articles I bitched about having to spend three hours printing. It would have been nice had all that money and time I spent actually produced something worth reading.

But no, as is the case with many of my classes, these articles produced nothing worthwile, or even amusing. At least my film history class had a wonderful quote from a West German director named Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who was reviewing six films by Douglas Sirk, and specifically talking about All That Heaven Allows:

"Later on, Jane goes back to Rock because she has headaches, which is what happens to us all if we don't fuck once in a while."

So true.

But nothing like this has hit me today, so I'm convinced I need to be idle rich, so I don't have to read articles like "News Icons and the Mainstreaming of Social Change" for one goddamn second longer.

Technology has its revenge

I was feeling rather confident and nerd-like yesterday, marvelling over the immense amount of knowledge I have somehow come to possess about computers. It doesn't mean a damn thing when it comes to getting them to behave, but nevertheless, I seem to have soaked up an unusually large amount of knowledge about computers.

And then, the VCR struck.

I have been fighting with this thing ever since my roommate Jamie and I lost the original remote freshman year. I've been trying to get a universal remote that works for it and have gone through half a dozen that wouldn't even respond. I finally found an RCA brand one (it's an RCA VCR) that can turn it on, play, rewind, etc., so I was like great, now I can finally program it.

Except the VCR doesn't recognize the menu button.

The menu button, it turns out, is a crucial part of controlling my VCR. I can't program channels (which means I can't tape anything higher than channel 13), I can't program the clock, I can't set it to tape at a certain time. This defeats much of the purpose of a good VCR.

I think I'm going to call RCA and see what the possibility is of trying to find a remote that will actually make the goddamn thing work. I may just crack and get a new VCR and sell this one to someone who doesn't care about taping shows off TV. If you are that person, email me and make me an offer. The picture quality is still really good, this thing is just making me insane.

And I feel bad that I constantly have to ask people to tape The Real World for me, though I usually try to get people who are watching it anyway. At least I'm home for ER and don't have to subject anyone else to the festival of bad writing that show has become this season.

Blog This

I keep seeing all these stories about how (we)blogging will change the world and how it empowers people and enhances debate. I think that's a load of shit.

I think those types of weblogs that address serious political issues should all go sit in one little corner of the web and fight and spit at each other, and leave those of us who either a) wish to entertain others, or b) wish to simply bitch about life, and not debate issues of great political import, the fuck alone.

Are you open 24 hours or aren't you?

I went to White Hen on the way back from a midnight IHOP run for the second time in about a month, and for the second time in about a month, White Hen was closed for cleaning. Employees were shooing people away, even as I looked down the door to the sign that says "Open 24 Hours."

Either you're open 24 hours or not. If you close for an hour or two to clean the store, then you're not open 24 hours, you're open from 4am to 2am. Maybe I should sic the FTC Truth In Advertising gang on them.

White Hen has laid a lead egg.

Hmm...

It has occured to me that either the TA or the prof of my News and New Media course may get bored with reading fake AP stories and click on my weblog link when they hit my index page, and thereby end up reading my last post, thereby leading them to strongly consider failing me summarily.

In my own defense, I can only say: [sound of Ellen running outside, locking the door, running down the stairs, leaving the building, starting the car, and peeling off á la the Simpsons]

"I'm gonna make this a little easier on you all..."

Beware these words when they come out of a professor's mouth. They THINK they're making things easier for you, but nine times out of ten, they're making your life more difficult.

Case in point: My comm studies prof told us he wanted to "save us some money on coursepacks" and decided to not have a coursepack made this quarter, and to just put everything on Electronic reserve. He said this would be easier than having us all go stand in line at the copy shop (which, I'm sorry, is not that fucking hard).

What "electronic reserve" means, for those unfamiliar with the term, is that everything that would otherwise be photocopied and waiting in a nice little booklet at the copy shop is instead in PDF form online that each person has to print out. Another thing this means, incidentally, is that he doesn't have to pay copyright fees for using other people's material.

All this printing took me three hours, several hundred pieces of paper, and half a printer cartridge. If you say that my time is worth $8 an hour (more than Blockbuster thought I was worth and less than what I think I'm worth), and my printer cartridges are generally about $50 a pop, then i just wasted $40, for what in coursepacket form would have cost me $20 or less.

Thanks, Professor!

I could never be an ice cream vendor

Mark always used to talk about how everything would be all right if he were an ice cream vendor. But I note a couple of flaws in his logic:

1. The Music. You have to listen to the most obnoxious sound on the face of the earth: Essentially a giant, really loud music box directly above your head, playing what I only know as the tune for Wakko's America from Animaniacs. If it annoys the shit out of me for the five minutes a day the ice cream man stops at the park across the street for the kiddies, it'd make me homicidal if I had to hear it on a daily basis.

2. Chicago Weather. Our schitzoprhenic seasons have now switched back to winter after two days of summer. Three days ago I had my windows open and was only sleeping under one thin blanket. the last two nights I've been sleeping under five blankets and trying to figure out why it's still so cold. That and the tendency to go from Bright, Gorgeous Sunny Day to Raining, Miserable, Blah Day in 0.6 hours has got to piss you off. You're out there, all ready to make big bucks selling kiddies ice cream to cool off, and then BA-WHOOSH, mother nature comes and drenches everyone.

Though the smart ones do what a guy in DC used to do: He'd park outside my high school, and give the first couple of people to wander over (we had open campus) free ice cream to go back to the school and say "the ice cream man's here," which people would quite happily do, and the guy would make hundreds of dollars, and only have to deal with bratty rich high schoolers instead of small, screaming children.

Which is a much, much better idea in my book.