"tis the Season

It's finally after Thanksgiving and before Christmas. Just the time of the year to avoid the malls. Not because of the blatant commercialization of the holiday season: Hey look kids!! Let's pay 50 dollars for a blurry polaroid of you with Hannakah Harry or Kwanzaa Kinte!!! I grew up in the 80's, conspicuous consumption is all around us in the form of extra large houses and SUV's so we have more room to put our double sized double stuffed chairs which fit our double wide asses so nicely. To the The 500 dollar PDA's with 245 gigawhosisbytes of memory so you can store the names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail address, favorite food, names of the pets and spouses, and shoe sizes of all the people who "you would love to get together with sometime, but you're going to be too busy entering the newest information into your NEW PDA and couldn't Possibly risk losing some information because you never know when you might want to get ahold of someone.
No, I'm used to this, I've dealt with it my entire life. I'm not even against the stores that start their Christmas sales in September or early October.
What truly bothers me about the holiday season is that the music sucks. Even worse than normal mall muzak. I'll take a lame piano and vioin duet of Wings "Live and let Die" over the umpteenth Neal Pert wannabe trying to put a disco beat to "Little drummer boy" anyday. Here comes santa claus here comes santa claus.. no here comes the fucking winter solstice, accept it, love it, but please don't write a damn song about it.
But the argument goes it's all happy music showing the joy of the season! Fuck happy, fuck joy and fuck you you overly happy hippy piece of shit. Show me Peace on earth and I'll join in the chorus, but until that day.. make mine Marvel!!
Sorry, wrong tagline.

BLACK FRIDAY!!!

Ah, the biggest shopping day of the year. And me with no desire to elbow my way through people to spend money I don't have on junk that's overpriced even when it's on sale.

What kind of an American am I?

Unemployed.

Thanksgiving

Just what this country needs. A day for people to sit around and eat, without feeling guilty because it's a special occassion. Liek we aren't fat enough already. Like the other day I'm in Wendy's. Not because the food is good, but because it was late, I was hungry, and they were open.
So I'm standing there in Wendy's realizeing that I'm aready fat enough, I don't need to eat the items on this menu. I Can stop by the store jsut behind me, buy something healthy and make it myself at home.

As I turned to leave I thought again.. this time with my stomach and ordered 10 dollars worth of hamburgers and chicken tenders.

No point to this except to say that perhaps part of the problem with.. wait, no, there is no point.

Update on Four more years post.

Once Powell officially leaves we will only be a clip away from our first Female president as well.

Found the problem.

Actual Telephone Call (abridged) between myself and the NYS Dept. Of Labor.

Ring Ring
"HELLO AND THANK YOU FOR CALLING THE NEW YORK STATE..." (Loud voice reading out option menu. It should be noted that this voice is clipping my phone, so not only is it a mechanical voice, but it's damaging the speaker as well)

Beep (For English)
Beep (1st menu option)
Beep (2nd Menu Option)
Beep (3rd Menu option)
Beep beep beep, beep beep, beep beep beep beep (SSN)
beep beep beep beep (Password)
Beep (4th Menu to get to a human being.
Silence.. blissful silence
THANKYOU FOR CALLING THE NEW YORK DEPARTMENT OF LABOR. ALL OF OUR REPRESENTATIVES ARE BUSY AT THIS TIME. ESTIMATED WAIT 5 MINUTES OR LESS!!
Silence again.
Ring Ring
"Hello Thank you for calling NYDOL, What Can I do for you today?"
"Hi, I was wondering, who do I talk to about working with the Department of labor to improve its response time, and user interface?"
"Hold on"
Ring Ring.
"Hello, thank you for calling NYDOL, What Can I do for you today?"
(Same question almost verbatum from me)
"Hold on, let me redirect you to a supervisor."
Ring Ring.
"Hello, How may I help you?"
(Again Same question)
Well, I'm sure if you submitted your concerns in writing somebody would..."

So if I ever wondered WHY the N.Y. budget was late, or why it takes any body in government ten years to answer a simple "Who do I talk to for this information?" style question. I now know.

They hire idiots.

I Called Back about something else. The person I talked to had a very pronounced Southern Drawl. Apparently we didn't have enough idiots in the state to foul things up.. we're now outsourcing our idiocy to other parts of the country.

Bill Hicks was right, there IS a definate anti-intelectualism in this country.

Finally good news

I'm moving out of New York at the beginning of the year. I have found An apartment In the Town My girlfriend is attending Grad School. Which is also where I will hopefully be attending soon as well. I just feel like I've been out of Theater for too long to bother submitting my resume anyplace, even though it's only been 8 months. Not so much on the technical side, but I haven't been in front of an audience since August of 2003, and I um.. how can I put this politely .. I fucking bombed like I was 2000 feet over Nagasaki.
So yeah, Beginning of the year I'm out of here. Why? you ask, this is a nice community, it has beautiful Scenery, the people are friendly, your family is here.. etc.
Basically its because My Family is here, I'm allergic to the scenery, and the people, aren't as friendly as my girlfriend.

Why the liberals will never win.

In the aftermath of the 2004 election, I have heard many so called intelligent liberals talk about how they are beginning to think of armed rebellion if there really was voter fraud.
There's just one problem with this.
Statistically, the conservatives have the guns.

Although to be fair.. considering the job the administration is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.. liberals might have a chance after all.

So I'm thinking...

Not writing, just thinking.

I miss 1996

Actually, I just miss the internet, being employed and having an articulate president.

You see, the internet of yore was not the cash cow it is today. Search engines were slower, computers were slower, Web Sites weren't as flashy, and there were less sites.
However, there were also less pop up ads, less spyware/adware, and a sense of community on the sites.
When looking for a band, author, or artist through a search engine, you didn't have to wade through 5 pages of links to amazon.com. You got maybe one or two stores, but the rest were fan sites, and sites the artist themselves had posted, or approved of. usually with information, news clippings, and more rarely samples of their work. BUt it was information, not just an ad. Unless you were looking up the sex pistols.. then it was 20 pages of porn links.

Four more years (To reload)

Kerry Conceeded, Schmuck. But I knew this was going to happen. Somewhere in the back of my mind was this nigling suspicion.. wait, is nigling actually a word? Ah well, The point is I knew this would happen. Why? Because W was elected in a year that ended with 0. Lincoln, Kennedy, Reagan etc. all died in office. (Ok, Reagan didn't die, but he forgot to tell us he had Alzheimers until the mid 90's.. I think dying just slipped his mind.) AS the election greew closer and he had still not gotten a really bad flu, a grazing bullet wound, or even a stubbed toe. I began to get worried.
I'm not sure how I want to see him go however.
You know he's not going to get shot in a theater: "Weeel, Gawlee Laura I do believe that thur is the biggest durn tv I ever seen. Where's the remote? Footbawl is on!!"
Motorcade, Highly unlikely, I think the guy drives a double bulletproofed fire resistant, all wheel drive dual airbag SUV made out of black boxes from airplanes.
Shot on a street corner? No, that would have been Bill Clinton. Picking up an evenings entertainment.
Pneumonia? We can only hope.

Now, this is not to say that I want Cheney in office. I think a nice double dose of Pneumonia/ heart attack would help this country to no end.
So all you snipers out there remember.. we're just a reload away from our first black president.

(Yeah, this entry will probably get me flagged by the CIA. Fuck 'em.)

Election results

Well, we're still counting. But looking through the ballot measures of different states I have found alist of states I won't move to. As the majority of people in those states appear to be bigots. Each of these states passed ballot initiatives to make sure that certain groups of people are not afforded the same rights and priveledges accorded the rest of the people in the state.
Here's the list.
Arkansas
Georgia
Kentucky
Michigan
Mississippi
Montana
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Utah

shudder

Well, for the second time in my life I voted for a presidential candidate I did not fully support. I held my nose and pulled the lever marked Kerry/edwards just because it wasn't Bush. It's too bad there isn't a way to vote against someone without just voting for their primary opponent.