Nice to see you

If you're wondering where I've been, I'm doing just fine. The emergency room episode was nothing major.

However, since then, I've just felt like I have nothing to say. Not sure why, though. In any case, don't worry. I'm sure a fit of inspiration will strike me soon.

In the meantime, here's another good blog to read.

Happy Memorial Day!

Nothing says Holiday Fun like searing pain and a trip to the emergency room. And to top it all off, it's monsooning outside. Again. Or perhaps I should say, still.

Drugs, don't fail me now.

Score one for Jolene the music sleuth

I found out what the song is! What song? This song from the Michelob Light commercial. Yay me!

If you too were wondering, "the original version was released on Giant Step Vinyl in 2001. The 'Bonita Fly' mix was just recently made, specifically for the Michelob Light Commercial. It will only be available commercially on the upcoming 'Turntables on the Hudson Volume 4' CD In Stores June 3rd", according to this site.

Jolene's Oh-So-Wild Trip Report

So, last week, I was away for a few days. Did you miss me? Aww, of course you did. I was planning on posting my write-up a little sooner than this, but life has this unfortunate habit of getting in the way. Sigh.

Now, before I start in with the recounting of my myriad madcap adventures, let me just say how much I recommend, if you have to travel for business, making sure your employer sends you to places where your friends also happen to live. Because visiting your out-of-town friends and not paying for it? Rocks.

There were probably two main themes to last weekend’s trip: 1) rain; and 2) transportation follies. Be forewarned: this post is extremely long, mostly because I have quite a talent for blathering on and on about nothing. I debated cutting it up into several shorter posts, but then I thought that was dumb, because even if it’s not visibly broken up by hand-dandy graphical dividers, there’s no reason you can’t still read it in sections, if you’re so inclined. Or if you have a short attention span. And I’m not judging. I have a short attention span myself. You don’t actually think I wrote this in one sitting, do you?

So. Anyway.

Friday morning, I dragged my ass out of my warm bed, packed, and was ready to face the world at 5:55 am, five minutes before my cab, the one I’d arranged for the day before, was supposed to be there. I was quite proud of myself for being not only on time, but a few minutes early, because I am famous for being a chronic oversleeper. A morning person I am not. So, there I am, all ready to go, watching out the window for the cab to show up. 6:00 passes with no cab. 6:05. 6:10. Nothing. I call the cab company and get a recording. Wait a few more minutes. Decide to call another cab. Before I can dial, my phone rings, and it’s the driver. He has overslept. He apologizes profusely and says he’s about 10-12 minutes from my house, but I should feel free to call another company if I want to. Since getting another cab will take at least that long, maybe longer, and also because this company is a fancy one my company pays for, so it’s preferable to the grimy regular cabs, I tell him I thought there would still be enough time to get to the airport, and he should still come.

But instead of being 10 minutes away, it was more like 25, and then he drove by my house before realizing he’d gone too far. By the time I was in the car, it was 6:40. I got to the airport 25 minutes before my flight, which ordinarily would have been enough time given that the airport wasn’t crowded, but for some reason known only to god, who is apparently trying to get back at me for my heathen ways, my flight was boarding not from a normal terminal, but from this weirdo satellite terminal I had no idea existed. Getting to it required taking a shuttle bus across vast expanses of tarmac, and the bottom line is that I missed my flight.

This was decidedly not cool, because I was supposed to be on the same flight as my boss, and we were both supposed to be attending the same meeting at our destination, and driving to it in the same rental car. Even worse, I had somehow neglected to bring his cellphone number, and no one was in the office yet for me to call because it was so early in the morning. I managed to get on the next flight, and luckily got in touch with my secretary ten minutes before boarding. She found my boss’s number for me in my address book, which was of course a much better place for it to be than, say, saved in my cellphone. Sometimes I mystify myself with my own stupidity. But then, not really. I consider myself very lucky that my boss was not only not upset, but actually quite amused over the fact that I had missed my flight.

Because nothing on this trip was allowed to easy, I was stopped and searched at security. It wasn’t a random search, either. They took me out of line after x-raying my bag because they thought they saw something suspicious. An overly-agressive securitywoman proceeded to rifle through my bag and remove a number of metal objects, none of which could be remotely useful as a weapon. What annoyed me most was not that this had to be done in the first place (although I suppose it should have), but that the woman, after she was satisfied that I posed no threat, didn’t put anything back in my bag in the same place she had removed it from. For the most part, this annoyance was corrected by sitting down for five minutes and moving everthing back. What I didn’t realize at the time, however, was that she had put my keys in a pocket I never use, one which has no zipper. I only found this out when I arrived home at the end of my trip and thought I had lost my keys, because they weren’t where they were supposed to be. I am incredibly lucky that they never fell out of that unzippered pocked, because that bag was thrown around and held upside down numerous times.

The flight was mostly uneventful, except for the fact that there was this really mean stewardess. She yelled at me, and then at another guy, for opening up a closed overhead bin, because apparently it was being used for crew storage, or something. How we were supposed to know we couldn’t use it escapes me, because it’s not like it was marked “crew only” or “do not open”, and it looked just like all the other overhead bins. I don’t begrudge her the use of the bin, but she could have been a little nicer about it, is all I’m sayin’. She also totally came just short of bitchslapping a guy who wouldn’t stop talking on his cellphone while the plane was about to take off. He did kind of deserve it, though.

I arrived at my destination to be greeted by a torrential downpour, which would continue through the rest of the day, and off-and-on into the rest of the weekend. I think I must travel with a black cloud over my head, because every time I visit this particular destination, the weather is absolutely horrible. The last time, I arrived at the same time as a massive blizzard which shut down the entire city and trapped my friend and me in her apartment for three days.

One thing I love about visiting people is that you get to eat lots of yummy food. Tops on this trip included soft-shelled crab, duck, sangria, and super-garlicky green beans. Not all at once, of course. We also had brunch at a French chain restaurant. The first thing we were greeted with upon entering was a prominent sign emblazoned with an American flag, which said something to the effect of “Proud to be an American company for twenty years.” Okay, I understand why they felt like they had to do this, and I know this subject has been thoroughly beaten to death by countless people already, but it really pisses me off. Even more than making me angry, it just makes me sad that such ignorance exists to make this sign necessary.

What else can I tell you? Well, it’s lucky I made it back alive, because we came close to getting caught the in the crossfire of urban violence. We were walking down the sidewalk and saw a cab cut off a bus. At the next intersection, the bus driver actually got out of his bus and went up to the cab and started yelling at him. I’ve seen road rage before, but it never escalated to the point where someone actually exited a vehicle. Like I said, you’re lucky I’m still here to be writing this. (Okay, yes, I’m being a little dramatic, I know. But please, let me have my little fantasies, won’t you?)

Saturday night, I went with my friend to a party for the friend of her friend, and met a cute boy (and possible potential suitor!). This party was actually chock full o’ cute boys. Honestly, it wasn’t fair. The parties where I live never have a selection like that. I think I need to move.

Whew, this is long. I think I’ll end it just like I began it - with transportation woes. For my return flight, I managed to make it to the airport plenty early, which didn’t matter because the flight was delayed an hour. There had been a jet fuel spill on the tarmac right by the gate, so they had to park the plane at some far-off location and drive us over to it in, what else, a shuttle bus. They herded us down the jetway and then had us line up to wait for the bus. The bus wasn’t there yet, though, so we had to wait there while the official airline woman rushed back and forth in and out of the jetway trying to appear useful, but not appearing to do much of anything. After about fifteen minutes, she figured out that standing there breathing in jet fuel fumes was probably not healthy, so she suddenly appeared with a stack of surgical masks. We all put them like good little soldiers, but I’m not really convinced they did much of anything, because the smell was still just as strong. But at least we looked cool. Except not.

Still, it was all worth it just for the priceless looks we got from the passengers who were entering the jetway. They had just gotten off the shuttle bus, and the plane, we would soon be getting on. It was truly hilarious to see their faces go from the standard haggard traveler look of “Omigod, I’m so glad we’re finally off that plane” to “Omigod, has there been an outbreak of SARS???? Why in god’s name are these people all wearing masks????”

When we were finally allowed to board the bus to our plane, the official airline woman asked us all for the masks back, and I sincerely hope they weren’t going to reuse them. Even more importantly, I really hope they hadn’t been reused on us. Because that’s just gross.

And that was my trip, in a nutshell. If the nut was the size of house. I did tell you I was good at blathering on about nothing.

Magazine Report

I read a lot of magazines, mostly because reading big, unwieldy newspapers on crowded subways is very difficult, and I don't like lugging around heavy, bulky books.

One of the magazines I read is Entertainment Weekly, although it's mostly out of habit. It's kind of sucked the last few years, and I don't tend to agree with its reviews, but I just can't seem to get rid of my subscription.

The most recent issue featured the Top 50 Cult Movies, and I really would like to know what kind of crack they were smoking when the put this list together. I wouldn't have expected myself to have seen most of these movies, but I would think that I would have at least heard of most of them. For instance, I've never seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show or This is Spinal Tap, but I have heard of them, and I am well aware they are so-called "cult" movies.

What bugs the hell out of me is that the list contained a whole slew of movies I've never heard of at all, and yet somehow managed to leave off The Holy Grail. Are you kidding me? That's a cult film if there ever was one. Even I quote lines from it, and I really tend to look down on that sort of thing.

I know that anytime someone publishes a list of the Best or Worst Anything, there will always be people who will argue over whatever was left off. It's impossible to makes lists like this that everyone will agree with. There are simply too many people with too many opinions, and you'll never be able to satisfy everyone. But COME ON. This is a no-brainer.

Furthermore, there are movies on this list that are simply not what I would consider cult movies. The Shawshank Redemption? Great film? Yes. Cult movie? Not according to any definition of "cult movie" I've ever heard. I don't know, maybe I'm talking shit about a subject I really know nothing about, but this really makes no sense to me. Perhaps there is some parallel universe where The Shawshank Redemption is a cult movie and The Holy Grail is not, but in this one, that is just not right.

*****

I also read Newsweek. In the last issue, there was this long article on American Idol, and as I was furiously turning the pages as quickly as I could, in order to prevent anything relating to that dreck-laden-sorry-excuse-for-a-reality-show-whose-popularity-I-will-never-ever-understand from accidentally getting into my brain, I happened to notice a little chart listing a bunch of actual rejected reality show pitches.

Most of them were well deserving of their rejected status, but not this one: "Pimp House", where six real-live pimps live together in a house. No challenges, no voting. They just live in the house, and they pimp.

I would so totally watch that show. A show about pimps? Seriously? That's fucking genius.

*****

Oh, and um, still working on the trip report. It's going to be funny and witty and everything, I promise.

Tired

I just got back from a fun but exhausting trip. Highlights (or lowlights, depending on your perspective) included, in no particular order: yummy food; scary movies; oversleeping cabbies; mean stewardesses; cute boys; rain, rain, and, oh - did I mention rain?; almost losing my keys due to the actions of an overzealous airport security screener; more shuttle buses than you've ever seen; French restaurants that made damn sure you were aware that they were, in fact, American; possibly homicidal bus drivers; and finally, a jet fuel spill masquerading as a SARS outbreak.

You're on the edge of your seat waiting for the full report, I can tell. Stay tuned.

Man, am I ever a loser

So the new Matrix movie is out, and I seem to be hearing about it everywhere. And I keep hearing people talking about some "Neo". Apparently this is Keanu's character. I've never seen the original, so I wouldn't know, but I'll take people's word for it.

What's really sad is all I can think of when I hear the word "Neo" is "G418 selection" and "stable transfection", and if you don't know what those words mean, you should take that as a really good sign.

A recipe for the funny

1. Put this lady on Late Night With Conan O'Brien.

2. Seat her next to manly-men Tom Selleck and a seven-foot/five-hundred-pound wrestler.

3. Have her demonstrate her collection of toys.

I saw this exact scenario last night. I was in tears.

Lordy

It's a good thing Blogger finally wisened up and let me publish all the posts I just made. I was getting dangerously close to unleashing a barrage of expletives in its direction if it didn't give in to my repeated publish requests. The great irony is that I would have just been screaming at myself, because it would have only happened had I not been able to publish anything.

I'm going to bed now.

More linkage

Somehow, the less time I have to waste, the more time I spend reading other sites. I'm going to need a twelve-step program if I'm not careful.

Following a long trail of links led me to a quite entertaining blog called Que Sera Sera. I do have to say, though, that I am not fond of the color scheme (it's got not one, but two shades of orange!). But then again, who am I to judge?

Even though they're already linked at the right, I feel like I should give some additional props to the Damn Hell Ass Kings. DHAK is a fabulous collection of sites run by some amazingly talented people. Many (most?) of them write professionally, I think, so you know you're getting quality stuff. I haven't looked at every site listed there, but my favorites are Tomato Nation, Hissyfit, Squishy, Dancing Brave, Ultra Tart, and Hashai. Be very careful, though. They are addictive. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I've been conflicted about whether to also add permanent links to my favorite individual DHAK sites. Part of me thinks I should, but part of me wants to avoid clutter, especially since the main DHAK portal leads to all of them anyway. For now, I'll just mention them here. It's not like I can't change my mind later.

Yeah, Anyway

So, um, it turns out I was sort of wrong about the whole Google thing. You know, the thing where I thought I was so smart and said that the reason I wasn't getting any Google hits was because it was better at filtering out all the irrelevant crap. Yeah, remember when I said that?

Well, it has been brought to my attention that Google in fact has a lag time, or something, so you won't get any hits until some defined amount of time after you've made the post.

This seems to be true. Why do I belive this to be so, you ask? Well, let me tell you!

All of a sudden, I've gotten a barrage of Google hits. They've come on like gangbusters. Well, perhaps not that many, but I've always had a secret desire to use the word "gangbusters," and this seemed like an appropriate place.

You can probably guess what searches led to the hits, and you'd probably be right, but I have resolved to never again mention her name.

Hello... Hello... Hello...

Blogger is giving me some serious attitude right now. If this post makes it to the blog, I'll consider it a major victory.

Call me Jolene

I have decided that I need a new name.

When I first started this blog (well, actually, when I first started The Blog Formerly Known As Have Fun, Go Mad), I chose "HFGM" as my name. It made sense at the time, as the unique part of the original blog URL was "hfgm", the acronym for Have Fun, Go Mad.

I was trying to make the name as anonymous as possible. Some people have their real names attached to their blogs, some don't. I chose not to.

I find writing to be incredibly terrifying. Even if you're just writing about the boring, mundane goings-on of your daily life, it still feels to me like a little window into your soul. In the past that's part of why I've always hated doing it. When I had to write things in school, I never let anyone except the instructor read what I'd written, if I could help it. Forced peer editing sessions were a form of torture.

Being anonymous sort of takes away a little of the scariness. Kind of like, if they don't know who you are, they can't judge you. I don't know.

With a blog, there's also the issue of certain people you know, ones you didn't want seeing the blog, finding out about it and reading it anyway. It feels like spying. I know, it sounds really paranoid, but you know what they say - just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't trying to kill you.

Anyway.

The thing is, the longer I have this blog, the more I realize how awkward "HFGM" is as a name. Because it's not a name, it's an acronym. You can't address me as "HFGM" without it sounding really weird. Signing my name as "HFGM" doesn't look right either.

So I'm adopting a new name. I shall henceforth be known as "Jolene." No, it's not my real name. It's still anonymous. But it's a hell of a lot less cumbersome than "HFGM." I should have just chosen something like this from the get-go, but I never anticipated how much the non-name would annoy me. The name "Jolene," incidentally, comes from a Cake song of the same name. It's a good song, by a good band.

So, that's it. I'm Jolene now.

Help a girl out, won't you?

I occasionally buy CDs based on having heard a song in a TV commercial. Usually, I figure out what the song is by sticking a snippet of the lyrics from the commercial into Google. It works pretty well, as long as the commercial has enough decipherable, unique lyrics.

There's this new Michelob Light ad that has this great song that I would love a copy of. Only problem is that the song is in Spanish, and I don't know Spanish well enough to pick out any of the words. (It's actually possible it could be in Portuguese, but it's hard for me to tell. I do think it's probably Spanish.) It's sung by a woman. The commercial has a guy in a hotel hallway, and then at some point there's a woman, and she invites him into her hotel room or something, and it ends with one of them putting a tie on the doorknob.

Has anyone out there seen this commercial? More importantly, does anyone know what the name of the song is and who sings it? If you do, please email me.

Of course, with my luck, whoever sings this song will turn out to be the Spanish equivalent of Britney Spears (or Mandy Moore! Ha! Ha ha!), and I will be forever shamed by having publicly stated that I liked it. I guess there are risks with everything in life, and this is one I'll have to take.

Links Ahoy!

I added some links at the right. Yay!

Sasha Undercover is a damn smart chick who's on the right side of things (and by "right," I mean "correct"). Don't try getting in a battle of wits with her if you haven't got any. I've seen idiots try to take her on, and it wasn't pretty.

Miscellaneous Ramblings is where Kim rambles miscellaneously in her highly funny and entertaining blog.

random acts of alex is a blog I found through Weblogs.com. I don't know the guy, but I love his blog.

At least the orange is gone

Well, I did a little more template editing and found a color for the links that's acceptable. I still can't say it's exactly what I want, but I'm tired of the endless trial-and-error. There must be a better way of going about this.

I love random humor

I generally don't feel any need to post links to things in The Onion, because I figure everyone reads it themselves, anyway, but this article about the Chicago meatwave had me laughing out loud, literally, which is no mean feat. I couldn't not point it out.

I have arrived

I got a Google search hit. Yesssss.

Of course, they were looking for Mandy Moore. Again. I don't know why I keep feeling compelled to mention her name over and over again. I have no idea who she is beyond the one time I saw her on TV, and yet she's taking over my blog.

Alright, that's just a slight exaggeration, but you get my point.

The thing is, the more I mention her, as I'm doing here, the more it probably increases the likelihood of getting search hits related to her.

Basically, I'm creating a monster.

Oh, and by the way?

One whole week. Still no spam.

Just saying.

Aaargh!!!!

This will teach me. From now on, compose important entries offline and then post into Blogger.

Why does this happen again and again, and yet I don't learn?

I had this whole entry typed out about the great irony over the fact that I had posted this ridiculous entry the other day, and then today ran into the last guy I had dumped, and how it was hysterically funny.

I just couldn't get over myself about it, actually.

Perhaps you had to be there.

Anyway, I go to post the thing, and Blogger craps out on me! And I lose the whole thing! Bastards!

Yeah, yeah, I know I don't pay for this site, and I should be grateful I have it at all. But shit, man, I want to whine about it, and I'm going to, dammit.

That is all.

Why are all my headlines questions?

I'm not sure, really.

Be Careful What You Wish For is what they say, right?

You know how when you break up with someone, and you're really bitter about it, and you always imagine what will happen when you next run into them? It doesn't really matter why you broke up. Maybe he dumped you with no warning. Maybe he cheated on you, and you you dumped him. Maybe he was just an all-around asshole.

Whatever the reason, you always spend inordinate hours fantasizing about what you will say they next time you see him.

Sometimes, you release a stream of expletives at him the moment you lay eyes on him. Sometimes you meet his friendly greeting with a cold, aloof, empty, "Hi. Yeah, I'm fine," and then walk away without giving him the satisfaction of really knowing how you're doing. Sometimes you purposely ignore him after you've made sure he's seen you. Sometimes you hide so he doesn't see you at all. Sometimes, you're all about class, and you act friendly and warm, to show him you're above being bitter and petty.

Sometimes, you want to run into him, so he sees how great you look, how well you're doing, without him. Sometimes the pain still lingers, and you don't want to ever see him again, because it will only make the pain worse.

Regardless of whether you want to see him or not, you always know, in the back of your mind, that it could happen. You try to plan for it. You try to run over all the possible scenarios in your mind, so you're prepared for when it does happen.

And then it never goes the way you think. Suddenly you turn around, and he's there. You're so surprised, you can't remember a single word in any of the scripts you've written in your mind. You go blank. You fumble for words. You are a mess.

And then afterwards, after you've kicked yourself a thousand times over for muffing the opportunity to dictate how the run-into should have gone, it starts all over again. Except instead of imagining what might happen, now you can't stop thinking about what happened to all your grand plans.

Why?

What is it THIS time?

I hope it's only Blogger acting up, as it does from time to time, but my May archive link won't show up. The individual link to the last post works just fine, but there's no May link under the Archive heading on the right.

A bigger question might be, why am I obsessing over this to such a degree? A simple answer might be that I obsess over everything. A more complicated answer would probably delve deeper into my psyche than I care to venture at this juncture.

Okay, one more republish, and then I'll go to bed.

I swear.

Events in real life currently have me wanting to stick my head in a vise and twist the crank real hard.

In other news, it's been one day since I registered my new, nineteen-letter email address (see it in all its glory at the right), and I am happy to report that I have not gotten a single piece of spam. Not a one. (Knock on wood, of course.) By way of contrast, the four-letter address I was using previously started getting spam immediately upon registration. It happened so quickly, I got email whiplash, if such a thing exists. And if it doesn't, well, I just made it up.