This Vapid, Vacuous and Vain World We Live In

A certain Actor guy, a certain ball player and a certain television show.

1. The Actor guy-
Comments and publicity abound from and around this certain individual these days and I for one am pretty sick of it. He is a freekin nut job. Just like that guy that did the jesus movie last year. I refuse to name names here because everyone already knows who these people are and we don't need to hear or see their names anymore. I don;t give a crap about this stuff except when these people make comments about things that they really truly do not understand. To say that chemical imbalances don't exist is to be misinformed. The brain is the most complex thing that we as human beings have ever tried to comprehend. There are functions of the brain that may never be explained and yes there are a number of "theories" as to the hows and whys of brain activity. What this actor fails to realize is that the brain works electrochemically and chemically and one of the processes of causing the release of chemicals through the glands of the endocrine system. Key words here being CHEMICAL. Things can go wrong with the way a brain functions and there is still a lot to be discovered about how and why these things occur but I can tell you for sure that they cannot all be solved by taking vitamins and exercising although that would be great if it was true. Depression, while not fully understood, is caused by CHEMICALS. While I am not a proponent of over-medicating our society and often times these pharmaceuticals are over-prescribed as a quick fix for depression, ADD, etc. I am no expert and I don't plan on being una psiquiatra but I am tempted to say that perhaps this actor guy read one article that was written for that "religion's" weekly brainwash...I mean newsletter.

2. The Ballplayer
You should be on your knees thanking "God" or whatever that you are able to do this with your life and be paid very well for it. You self-invovled MF. Talking like you are doing the world a favor by taking a pay cut. "It's not about the money" you said but you are still clearing 8 figures, making more than some country's GDPs you prick. You are talented sure, but you can't carry a team and your defense is questionable. You know how many talented players there are out there who play the game because they love it and not giving a damn what team they are on or even if they are playing in the majors. I am holding you (and a few other players another of whom happens to play on the same team that you do) personally responsible for ruining the game of baseball. You think people are going to look back on your career and say now that guy could play...uh...sorry no...they are more likely going to remember you as being an overpaid big pompous jerk face and maybe that is ok with you. I am glad that you are telling teams not to trade for you, who would want to play the game with you anyway and what other city would want to watch you play. You better start producing for the team you currently play for and especially during crunch times otherwise you are history.

3. The television show.
Reality TV is really...uh...wrong. So there is this show that is on some network which I honestly can't remember. It involves regular guys and some hot wannabe actress and a bunch of wannabe model/bonehead guys and collectively all of the guys try and get the girl to pick them for a date or something (I honestly don't know the premise of the show). What I do know thanks to other people in my office is that on the last version of the show the girl didn't pick one of the regular guys she picked one of the beautiful/bonehead guys and I imagine that this is what is going to happen again on this upcoming season. Although now, the regular guys are going to be able to get cosmetic surgery and makeovers and the like so that they can compete with the beautiful boneheads. So the first season of this show ends with the girl picking a guy because of the way that he looks as opposed to what is on the inside....WHAT A FREEKIN SHOCK...and so now the producers are trying to even up the score by making the REGULAR GUYS change their appearance so that maybe the girl will pick one of them this time. What I want to know is why anybody would want to watch this show in the first place if we already know that the girl is going to make the decision based on appearance? Is this fascinating TV? I think we need to start building an ark or something cause the rapture is a comin'. There is some other show based on appearance where they do "makeovers" (read: facelifts, tummy tucks, breast augmentation, etc) for "ugly" people and the producers did a show where they helped a couple of people who were disfigured from accidents to try and prove that they weren't totally hollow worthless human beings. I could end with some sort of dumb cliché about how you are only as beautiful as you think you are or something like that, but that would be really really lame. HA!

I write what I feel and it may not always be the best written nonsense but then not everything Dostoyevsky wrote was gold. Goodnight all, goodnight actor guy, goodnight jerk face ballplayer

QUOTE OF THE DAY
Marge (singing): "There once was an ugly duckling"
Lisa: "Are you saying that I'm ugly"
Marge: "No...No...you're one of the pretty ducks...that makes fun of the ugly one"

Sitting here eating some Cool Ranch Doritos and enjoying watching the temperature of the air rise from my comfortably air conditioned office

I swear that I can see people sweating from way up here on my floor. Yep...it is another hot day out there, but you know what they say: "It ain't the heat, it's the humidity that gets yer" yuck yuck yuck chuckle guffaw. And so here we are in the world today with a leader who will be telling the American people that everything is A-O-K in Iraq and things are looking up.

Question for everyone out there. I understand sending someone to prison for a life term etc, but why would you send someone to prison who will serve 6 consecutive life sentences. How exactly does that work? So a guy is 85 years old and he is now in the prison hospital because his health is failing. He goes into cardiac arrest and dies does this mean that they will bring him back to make sure that he serves out his sentence. And if they had to resuscitate him 6 times say in a week would that count as 6 life terms? If all of this happened would they have to let him go? Ok, retarded question but just something that passed through my mind as we send Edgar Ray Killen (It is hard to believe that with a last name like that it took the courts this long to say that he did it..sheesh) to jail for 60 years. The guy is 80 years old and apparently his health has been declining rapidly over the last couple of years. The NYT reported "he may have seen his last of freedom" He "may have"????? I don't think he "may have" much of anything. I understand that the sentencing was based on the crime 20 years for each life that he took and all of that, but why couldn't the judge just say something like...you will be confined to a wheelchair (which he already apparently is) and watched by one armed guard for the rest of your life in a prison hospital ward which is where he is going to end up any day now. Does this man present much of a threat to anyone? Is his time in prison going to teach him a lesson? Is he going to be alive much longer? It just seems a little silly to me and no I am not saying that we should just let him go and forget about it. Listen, I am all for jail time, capital punishment, etc for when you break the law or commit really horrific acts of violence (especially for world leaders, corporate CEO's etc but I am not going to name any names here). The bottom line is that there is no way in hell this guy is going to finish serving out his sentence. My guess is that he'll be dead in the next 5 years and if he did do these things and all signs point to "yes" than good riddance. I'm just glad that maybe the victims' families can have some closure. And what is going to happen in the next year with Mr. P.Y.T. or M.T.A. or B.L.T. or whatever the hell he called himself. If I were the judge I would sentence him to 46,002 consecutive life sentences in the Phantom Zone (I mean being trapped in a small piece of glass for that long must be torture right?). I must also point out that the guy was a boy scout leader and a church president. And for those of you who are going to ask...yes he was president of the "Church of Satan". He apparently spearheaded the "highway to hell" school initiative and successfully lobbied to have Judas Priest get back together and begin their new world tour in Wichita.

You ever have a boss who has an office, has expensive taste and underpays you while he spends well over $3000 a month just on going out to "business meetings" (read: take my friends out to dinner so maybe they will give me business, but they never do, but I still have to act like it doesn't hurt me so I'll also pay for a driver and a car that I don't need because I live less than 10 blocks away from my office, because after all it is all about appearances.) Motherf**ker. He came into my office today and told me that I and another person (the only other person in the office) had to start cleaning out all the files that we have and throwing away what we can, after all he has to have some sort of reason for keeping us around. Some sort of reason for keeping us around. Who the hell says that to an employee? So everything that I do means absolutely nothing to him, I am only good for cleaning up the office files. This guy really knows how to make someone feel good about what they are doing and how they are doing. I've been here for nearly six years now and I have seen his core staff leave him because he treats everyone who works for him like this and eventually people just cannot take it anymore yet I stuck around. Many people have come and gone since I have been here and this is what you have to tell me while you jet off to the hamptons every thursday afternoon for your long weekend. Well I'll tell you what, you can come into the office after spending all morning in school and you can write all the checks for all of the credit card bills, phone bills, computer bills, xerox bills, rent bills and all the other bills that come in. You can worry about where the hell the money is going to come in for all of your expensive habits (at least they aren't illegal habits, then I'd be really pissed off). You can write $1000 checks to your frickin driver who sits around all day and does a couple of errands for us on a weekly basis. You can sit on the phone and argue with the 50 employees from the phone company who don't give a crap about you or your company. You can walk your own f**king dogs. You can clean up this f**cking office yourself you *&($Y$(#&)$&*)@$#)*$&*%#(*&%*(#%*(#%. You can sift through all of the bills and re-invoice all the other companies that use us. You wanted someone to come in for you part time because you were tired of paying someone who sat around all week. Someone who could come in and balance the books, pay the bills, do the outgoing invoices I stepped up and told you the time that I could be here and you said perfect, and I even accepted the money that you offered. And not that you would notice or anything but more often than not I am here longer than the agreed upon time that I would be here. I have no regrets about my job or the thigns that I have done and the people I have met I just wish that my boss had a little more tact when it comes to speaking to his employees.

Whew...feel better now.

QUOTE OF THE DAY
Luke, be a Jedi tonight! Just be a Jedi tonight!
Do it for Yoda, while we serve our guests a soda.
Uh, and do it for Chewie and the Ewoks, and all the other puppets ...
Luke, be a Jedi tonight!

So I also need to just stop talking about the sox altogether on my blog. They took a 7-0 drubbing from the Indians. So there it is. I am going to do my best not to talk about them anymore....cause I am a superstitious man on the plus side I do actually know that it was not me that caused them to lose tonight, I mean they can't win them all right?...right? Well annyone don't want to take anymore chances so this will now not be a forum for me to talk about the sox. I will mention them again after the season is over....ok so now I know that I am flat out lying. I have a big mouth and yes I will continue to brag about my team even when they take a beating....cause that is what a fan does.....at least a sox fan....are there any current yankee fans who remember Rick Cerone or that Steve Sax played for them? doubt it and AB will atest to that being a true yankee fan and all. Yeah I might be pissing some people off but this is what you are going to get when you start throwing out your little dumb ass comments about how the sox suck....so there..........

Good night all, Yankees fans, Sox fans, baseball fans...man I love this game.

Day 3,456,642,988.567849394

I really need to review what I have written before I post things. Although it is interesting for posterity sake to keep in all the typos and such...alas tis what it tis.

The various intricate measures that one takes to avoid studying and working at any given moment of time in the span of a 12 hour day

Oh yes, there is nothing that I like to do more than to shirk my worka nd school and jsut go off on random tangents about hell and back and not giving a crap about anything that is going to happen as a consequence of a particular action of sloth or of merriment or both. SOmetimes the best thing for me to do is to just start writing whatever comes into my head. I am very nervous right now and it is beacuse of a number of things. When I get this nervous about things I get a sensation in my toes like someone is scraping them against a chalkboard. Sometimes the feeling is so bad that I cannot sleep. This happens every once in awhile to me and I cannot figure out why. Perhaps it is because I tend to drink to much coffee sometimes or perhaps it is beacuse I am immensely afraid of failure. It may also have a lot to do with the fact that I have a great deal of guilt and pain in my heart from things that I have done in the past. Perhaps it is an unresovled issue that I have with my family. Maybe it is because I never really knew my father. Maybe it is beacuse I have things better now than a lot of people will ever have in their life. I am a very lucky person to have become the man that I am and for the most part I have me to thank for this. Selfish? You bet! But I cannot say that I was always able to do this on my own. Now, for instance, I have the love and support of an incredible woman who changed my life in so many ways (for the better I might add!) and I could not possibly think of going on with my life without her in it. I have the love and support of friends, most of whom I have met in the last five years thanks to the incredible woman mentioned above.

So I was in Brooklyn last night and my wife and I were walking to the train. I happened to be wearing my Boston Red Sox cap and naturally, because of this, I leave myself open to a barrage of comments from whomever walks by. I got the usual "Boston Sucks" comment. Is this supposed to upset me or somthing? I mean the boys from beantown are 9-1 in their last 10, have won 7 straight and are currently in first place with a 2½ game lead in the American League East. Uh yeah..they suck alright. Meanwhile the "evil empire" are one game above .500. There are also the comments about winning only 1 championship in 86 years. Blah, blah, blah, this does not change the fact that they won right? And a team that has increased their payroll exponentially in the last 5 years (mostly for a bunch of sorry ass pitchers who end up doing better as soon as they are traded away the following season) has been unable to get it done since 2000. Does it strike anyone as a little odd that Fenway will be sold out on a regular basis irregardless of how the team is doing and when the "evil empire" is doing poorly you can always get tickets for games....except when they are playing the Red Sox....weird eh? It is a grand thing to hear fans at Yankee stadium cheering for the Red Sox. Yeah I don't really know where I am going with this but it leads me to another story about a friend of the family who took my wife and i out ofr dinner once. This guy is pretty big and he has a heart of gold, but he is no fan of the yankees. Towards the end of our dinner, about six teenagers came into the restaurant and they were all wearing Yankees jerseys (one of them had a Soriano jersey on which is sad because the yankees got rid of him and he has turned into one of the best things to happen to the Texas Rangers, I would take him over Womack or Sheff any day of the week, but I am a foward thinker not a right now thinker and I am also the type of person who will never ever get a jersey with the name and number of one of my favorite players because you never know what is going to happen in the near future) Anyway, our friend caught sight of these guys and in a loud booming voice yelled out "Yeah, YANKEES SUCK". This, mind you, was said in a busy restaurant in New York City and I gotta say this took a lot of balls. I'm laughing out loud to myself about the whole incident and the kids, I think, were so shocked that they did not know what to say.

Well I gues I should get back to work...I leave you all with warm fuzzy feelings on this hot humid rainy day in NYC.

QUOTE OF THE DAY
Marge: Homer, is this how you pictured married life?
Homer: Yeah, pretty much, except we drove around in a van solving mysteries.

Destinos- An Inroduction to Spanish

So we are 3 weeks into class and we have done 17 chapters chock full of telenovela excitement. Don Fernando la patriarch de la familia Castillo has fallen terribly ill shortly after revealing to his familia se tenía un primera esposa en España antes de La Guerra Civil. Se Pensado que ella estuvó muerta en atentado de Guernica, para que él mudó a Mexico y compró un hacinda que llama es "La Gavia". Don Fernando recibio una carta de Teresa Suarez. La Carta dijo que la primera esposa está vivo! ¡Hay! Comedy ensues.

Actually not a terrible thing to watch considering it is a tool for teaching Spanish to people. I think I have learned alot but with the above I probably made many mistakes. At this point I can translate well, but as far as writing anything that will make sense to some person who is fluent is beyond my power for the time being.
I have a 200 word letter to write about a relationship between Raquel Rodriguez, una abogada Y Arturo Iglesias un doctor de psicología por este martes.
*************************************************************************************

Are you ever just walking down the street and something funny (you heard, saw in a TV show etc) pops into your head and you laugh out loud and cannot keep this dumb grin off of your face. Happens to me all the time.

I am having a hard time finding crazy people on the streets now. Through the magic of cell phones now anyone can look like a babbling crazy person. Just insert an earpiece, dial some digits and let the fun begin.

Why do comic book artists like to make their super-women or female characters have the biggest breasts in the world. Do all comic book artists fantasize about women with really really big breasts? I'll field this one myself and say yes they do. Are there female comic book artists? And if so, Do they make their male characters have enormous genitalia?

So I have to go off to study and do my hospital volunteer stuff. Hope you all have a marvelous weekend!

QUOTE OF THE DAY
"Remember the time he ate my goldfish? And you lied and said I never had goldfish. Then why did I have the bowl Bart? Why did I have the bowl?"

Day 85

So I was thinking to day about the movie "Gung-Ho". It is a terrible film with Michael Keaton, John Turturro, George Wendt, Gedde Watanabe (who was on ER from time to time an dof course who could forget Long Duck Dong). A car factory is bought by a Japanese car maker who says that they are going to close the plant unless they can make a million cars in a month or something like that. There is one point in the film that makes me think about americans and I know that this is sad that I can remember this part of the film, which came out almost 20 years ago. So Micheal Keaton's character is saying that the workers will receive an extra bonus if they can make a million cars, and they ask him if they will still get their regular bonuses even if they don't manage to make a million cars. Now the reason that this sticks in my head is because I think that a lot of Americans are lazy and want to be paid the most for doing the least amount of work possible. Now I know that there are always exceptions to this rule, but on the whole we are a lazy lazy bunch. Not too many Americans have much of a work ethic and this is kind of sad. Hell, I don't know what I am trying to say anymore. It's a crappy crappy film. But it must have done pretty well because they had a tv show based on the film and called the same thing with Scott Bakula in the role that Keaton plays in the film. Whew...hope somebody got fired for that one.

No dog yet.....

Spanish is going "o.k."

QUOTE OF THE DAY

I'm normally not a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me Superman
-Homer Simpson

Day 83

So Matsui is the only Yankee that seems to be showing up for work these days and that is fine with me. One person does not a team make...unless you are Robert Horry.

So here I am once again at work. My boss is driving me frickin crazy...he is very manic and has enormous ups and downs and is not someone who can just sit back and relax. If there is nothing going on with the business he will find something for you to do no matter what it is. Even if it is standing over him while he tries to do something on the computer. He is also the type of person who will not let you try anything on his computer while you are watching him try to do something on the computer. It is maddening to stand there over him and you are trying to pay attention to what he is doing while he is talking to you and you can see exactly what it is that he needs to do and yet there is no way to explain that to him. He thinks that looking at the "Properties" option is the solution to EVERYTHING!...and I mean EVERYTHING! He also has no patience for things to load and will click on an icon over and over again all the while saying "why isn't it opening" and you can see the little hourglass working, hell you can even hear the computer working but he has pushed the icon and the computer over the edge and it freezes and then he wonders why the file didn't open in the first place. "Maybe if I look at "Properties" that will tell me why it won't open." So then he looks at "Properties" and there is nothing there that is going to help us except to tell us where the file is located on the C:/ drive and what kind of file it is and what kind of security options we have on the file. It's like watching me adjust the dials on a car stereo (obscure simpsons reference # 1) Absolutely killer on the nerves.

I've decided I need a new wardrobe....I definitely need to rethink my style a little bit. The jeans, T-shirt, docs thing isn't really going to get me through the rest of my schooling. Done the goth thing, the punk thing, the business casual thing. Maybe I need to kick it up to wall street executive style. Perhaps a new suit will help brighten my day. Who knows. Not that I have any money to buy a suit, but someday I will. Maybe when I am fifty. I figure that once I am Fifty I might acutally be making some money by then and at that point I might be able to squeeze in a suit for myself before I have to send my kids to college. Here's to hoping.

I'm really glad that our apartment is not above or below a couple of bowling alleys (obscure simpsons reference # 2). Can you imagine. I'd have to kill somebody. I lived in an apartment in Brooklyn for three years. It was a 3 story walk-up (we were on the third floor) that was right next to the elevated subway (what used to be the B line, but I believe is now the D line). So naturally about every 15-20 minutes or so a train would come roaring by. If the windows were open it felt and heard like a runway at La Guardia (the windows closed weren't much better). The people that lived below us, I believe that there were two families (about a dozen people or so I think, and I am not kidding), had a couple of car woofers/amps (the kind that are in cars that are so loud that you think the world is coming to an end when someone comes driving around the corner) that they used as home stereo speakers and just about every saturday night from 11:00pm at night on a saturday to about 10:00am on Sunday (I am not joking) we would be blessed with th worst kind of music. I have nothing against any kind of music, but my god could you change the beat for just one song. 11 hours of the same music with the same beat can really drive a person to drink.

Once when I was coming home from work I was walking into the building and up on the second floor cove there was a freakin rooster or chicken or something just hanging out there. Perhaps one of the strangest things that I have ever seen. The rooster was pretty much just hanging out in the cove for about two weeks, crapping on the floor and what not. Pretty nice eh? One saturday, I left for work in the morning and when I came back that evening the "animal" was gone and the music was playing. I can only imagine what happened to it.

Thought I would throw everyone a curve ball and do an exchange of the day instead of a single quote:

EXCHANGE OF THE DAY
Homer: Are you saying you're never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal.
Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.

Soldier

Burning eyes meet the morning sun.
Weary feet greet the ground.
Hands reach for a loaded gun
as the platoon leader comes around.
Fleeting dreams of coming home
Slowly lost in the black smoke
and the group begins to roam
with some still crackin' jokes.
Towards the red sandy dunes they head
with boots caked with clay.
Yearning for an etxtra hour in bed
while morning sun turns to day.

Day 79- A Dead Horse

The current administration owes the american people an apology. Simple as that. We are stuck in a place that we don't want to be and our sons and daughters are being killed everyday. The violence escalates and then it subsides for a day only to become more violent in the days to come. The administration counts those days where only one or two bombs go off as a victory for democracy. To date the defense department has acknowledged the death of 1706 American soilders. The military is in dire straits in terms of having enough personel these days. Television stations across the board are running commericals that are pretty much begging people to join the national guard, army, air force, marines (the commercials are even running as one of the precursers to number of films in wide theatrical release. I recall there being one before Stars Wars III that was not very well received) The part that they don't tell you about in these things is that they will immediately send you to Iraq after your 12 weeks of basic training because this is their only resource now, so the commerical should actually say something like "Join the National Guard...so you can go to Iraq and die in a war that was absolutely misrepresented to the American public and is continuously being reinvented with some new cause and some new reason for us being over there"

I'm off to the ER to help brighten some people's day. Stick a fork in me....

Day 78

So it seems that the "Viral Escapade Round Intestinal Zoophagous Nodes" has once again entered my life. One hour solid on the phone with people that refuse to give our business a break in billing. See "gun" post. Just crazy. Going to let it go....I swear.

So for those Coldplay fans out there I imagine that none of you are disappointed in the new album. I think it is a damn good record. Despite having Speed of Sound" sounding very similar to "Clocks" in terms of tempo and rhythm, and a song that sounds incredibly like U2 circa War/Unforgettable Fire ("Low") it is still a great album. Thought about writing about them because I happen to be listening to the album right now.

Cheers to Giambi for his game winning home run last night. Can't say that I feel bad for this guy's slump though. In the Billy Crystal show, he talks about real baseball players like Mantle and Maris, who didn't need steroids to be great ball players. The hardest thing to face as a ballplayer now is that if you are good most people are going to think that you are on steroids. That is sad. I trust and hope that none of the boys of beantown are on that road. That would be devastating to me.

So I received an email from a friend that had a link to an article about a young girl whose little league jersey is going to be put into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The reason: Not only did she pitch a perfect game she also fanned every batter she faced. I think that this is pretty darn cool just because it is quite an acomplishment. Why not put her jeresy in the Hall it makes perfect sense to me. The article which came from the associated press seemed to be insinuating in not so many words that it is a travesty that this young girl's jeresy would be in the same hall as artifacts from Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Mantle, Williams, etc. To this I say what is so wrong with that? Is it becasue she is a girl? It shouldn't be since the hall has a place commemorating the women's leagues that were around during WWII. Is it because she is in little league? Isn't the hall of fame about the game and about all the amazing things that have happened in the game? Bottom line: I applaud the Hall for doing this.

So I spent my 3 and a half hours in Spanish this morning and had a quiz. The first part of the quiz was to write a short paragraph about something that a friend did yesterday. We are working on preterites. We had to use the verbs: ayudar, oir, comprar, hablar, practicar and one other one that I cannot remember. The next part of the quiz was to write a brief statement about what "gauchos" are and about the region of Argentina called "La Pampa". It was not a fun quiz, considering that the day before he was only going to give us a quiz on numbers... ala cien, doscientos, quinientos, etc. So most of us were pretty much caught off guard by the whole thing. I did recall what "Gauchos" were and I knew a bit about "La Pampa", as for writing a paragraph about yesterday for someone else, I was a little lost.

All I got in me today folks....have a great night, day, morning wherever you are.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"If you came to conquer you'll be a king for a day, but you too will deteriorate and quickly fade away."
-Bad Religion
(As with all BR songs past and present a certain current world leader comes to mind)

Day 76

Yes indeed it is day 76 and there are no four legged animals in our aparment yet. It is almost my wife's birthday and naturally she has said that a dog would make a great present, but I will not give in....we just can't afford it right now. We are both in school and not making any money. I just don't think it would be fair to the dog, since:

A: We live in a one bedroom apartment.
B: We can barely feed ourselves and the bird that inhabits a cage that is proportional to the size of our bedroom.
C: We are hardly ever home.
D: My wife has a problem picking up poop that is more substantial than bird poop.
E: Walking the dog in a foot of snow at 12:30 at night with a windchill factor that is -30 does not sound like a good time to me.

And so once again I say that we are not getting a dog.....yet.

Tomo un clase de español este verano. Es muy difícil y hay mucha aprender en uno mes. Mi profesor es muy bien, pero no habla mucha ingles en la clase. Tres y media horas solamente en español. ¡Hay! Es muy interesante y frustrante. ¡Espero que hacer bien!

My pathetic attempt to practice spanish. I will say that this class is pretty intense. Bascially two semesters worth of material in one month. I find myself starting to think a bit more in Spanish as opposed to english which is pretty weird for me. I am anxiously awaiting my first dream in spanish.

I am sick. I have a cold or a sinus infection or something. I am always amazed at how much mucus is created by our bodies. Just tons and tons of it constantly coming out of my nose. It seems like it is never going to stop. I must have released an amount that is equivalent to at least half my body's total weight in the last three days. Just nuts. So my regimen of vitamin C, Echinachea (I never know how to spell this dang word), Airborne, Daytime decongestant, Nighttime decongestant, and antihistamine seems to be working. I am now about to enter the coughing phase which generally means that you are entering the tale end of your illness. Can't wait to be coughing all night.

Recently saw the closing performance of "Billy Crystal 700 Sundays" on Broadway. The guy is a consumate performer and there are rumors that he will be doing a few tour dates of the show. If you have the means I highly suggest seeing the show. It is fantastic. Full of humor and very touching. You will want to call your mom and dad when it is over. His family is just like everyones family, including the wacky uncle, the relatives who live in Boca Raton, and all the rest. One must take into account that his uncle was Milt Gabler (google the name if you are interested in finding out more about the man who recorded songs by some of the greatest jazz musicians in America in the 30's and 40's and beyond) so his life was a bit more extrordinary than most of us. Billie Holiday took Mr. Crystal to see his first movie. Freakin' Crazy. Anyway...you should see the show.

Received my Organic Chemistry textbook in the mail the other day for my upcoming fall semester. Let's jsut say that I am less than thrilled about all that I have heard. I hope I am up for it. Gotta keep the faith, and I will certainly keep you all posted.

So I must say one last time that I finished with a 4.0 last semester and will hopefully hear from a particular school about a particular linkage program that is a pathway to early acceptance into Med School. I am officially keeping my fingers crossed on this one.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:
"Michael is Innocent"
-Some moron in front of the Santa Maria Courthouse
(These are the same people that think Britney Spears is talented)
(The same people that eat McDonald's everyday and wonder why they are overweight)
(The same people that spend $2.99 every week to vote for their favorite "idol")
(The same people that...you get the idea)

Day 72- The day that Milhouse decided "it is a good thing that I do not own a gun"

So I have made through another week without a dog.

Here is my open rant about a particular company. If you cannot handle your customer base than you shouldn't tout that you can. You should also consider hiring people who have some skill in speaking properly to customers. I think, of the ten people that I have spoken to today from "Very Egregiously Revolving Incorporated Zone Of Nonfeasance", only two of them actually had some skills in speaking to customers on the phone. I chalk this up to the fact that these two people are ones that I have spoken to many times before in the last 3 months. If you are in a business do not under any circumstances use a channelized T-1. "Very Egregiously Revolving Incorporated Zone Of Nonfeasance" also hires out other companies to handle parts of their service because they are too overwhelmed. The materials that they and these hired out companies use are defective and will cause you many many headaches in the future. Also, with this channelized T-1 from "Very Egregiously Revolving Incorporated Zone Of Nonfeasance" you supposedly have the convenience of having your internet service and your phone lines all on one system. Here lies a huge problem. A former employee of ours who once wrote that he is ten times the manager I will ever be set this up not realizing that if the system goes down our entire office and our productivity is completely shot to hell. No system means no phones, no faxes, no internet, no email. Naturally this problem occurred 5 months after this employee was "let go". And so we were out of commission for three days while the good people of "Very Egregiously Revolving Incorporated Zone Of Nonfeasance" stood around trying to figure out what the problem was. It was at this point, once we were back up and running, we decided that the first priority was to get off of this T-1 line and on to something more cost effective like a business DSL or something like it and to have our phones all on seperate copper wires again. In the process of having this all set up our "business rep" from "Very Egregiously Revolving Incorporated Zone Of Nonfeasance" quit (or was fired for incompetence) and we were left hanging in the wind. With our order not complete and our nerves frayed we called, and called, and called many people and tried to get this all squared away. Finally in April/May we had our DSL line (one which was outsourced to another company by "Very Egregiously Revolving Incorporated Zone Of Nonfeasance") installed. Earlier this week a technician from this marvelous company came to do some work on some phone lines for the office next door to ours and in the process managed to knock out our DSL line and he, of course, had no idea where the cord had come from. 3 technicians and 24 hours later it was still not fixed. They finally sent someone over who knew what the hell he was doing and we were fixed.....now all we had to do was wait for the move over to copper wire and we would be done with this horrible nightmare. I get to work this morning and gues what THE FREAKIN PHONES AREN'T WORKING! Turns out that they decided to start working on the switch to copper wire a week early and without telling anybody including..us!!!!!! So I found out about this problem at 9:15 this morning it is now 4:00pm and we have one phone line out of ten (incl. a fax line which is also down)that is working. The lovely repair people told me that they are working on it..... you *$&$%()#$_(#$(*#@$&#*($&#*(&$(#*&$#)%_$&%*()&$%)$% I am freakin pissed. I am stuck here at work. I was unable to make my shift at the hospital where I volunteer and these freakin people are still charging us for the T-1 line!! I remember fondly making one of many phone calls and the person on the other line saying that it was our fault the T-1 line isn't working...that it was our equipment...not realizing of course that they are the people who gave us this #$&*@($ equipment in the first place....or outsourced it or whatever the hell they did. Earlier in the week during our lack of internet service no one that I spoke to could find any record of our phone number or our agreement for the DSL line...turns our they had outsourced it and didn't even know that they had. How many morons does it take to run a company..it appears that "Very Egregiously Revolving Incorporated Zone Of Nonfeasance" has cornered the market on this. One woman acutally said to go out into the hallway and tell the technician that we are on a T-1 line....I remind the readers that we have been on DSL for over a month at this point. I could go on and on and on..but the bottom line is "Very Egregiously Revolving Incorporated Zone Of Nonfeasance" doesn't give a crap about you, your business, your productivity, your sanity....but they do care about getting your money...service be damned. I cannot believe that a company can operate this way and still be in business. If our business was run like this you can bet your ass that we would not be around for very long. I expect stuff like this from the current administration (gotta get my digs in before the new and improved paitriot act is approved) but by god not from this company. Did I forget to mention that each department within this company has no contact with any other department in this company so that when you call one place there is no record of that call if you call another department. So for instance when I call this company to get some credit against our future bill I can guarantee that I will talk to at least 4 people before I get someone on the phone who might sort of know why I am calling. I went through this problem when our T-1 line went down and for losing 3 days of business (potentially thousands of dollars lost, I have not done all the math on this yet and since we don't have phone lines I will have the time to do it) we were credited a whopping $52.14. Thank you so much "Very Egregiously Revolving Incorporated Zone Of Nonfeasance" I appreciate everything you have done to make my life so easy and care-free.

Oh...and the Red Sox are getting their butts kicked!! Arghhh!!! 14-3! against the CUBS jeezum crow....this is just a bad day all around.....

That's all I got in me today folks...tune in next time...

DAY 63

...but the day is not quite over yet.

So I started summer school today. I am taking Spanish Intensives which will manage somehow to occupy all of my time this summer. The teacher, who is also a pastor, began the class with "buenos dias" and rattled off a ton of stuff in spanish. Um...I know this is intensive and all but most of us have no idea what the hell you are saying. This is intro right? That's what my schedule says...but...why are you speaking only in Spanish. Did I miss the first 30 classes? I thought school started today, not last fall? So then he says, in English, if you understood what I was saying than this class will be a waste of time and money for you. Whew! Okay now that that is out of the way he is going to speak mostly in english right? Because we are all beginners right? Bascially three hours of class and 99% of it in Spanish. I took Spanish 15 years ago. I do not remember much of it. Many people have told me that it would come back to me. They were wrong. I was very flustered for most of the class and seemed like I was the only one who had no idea what the hell was going on. It's not like I could raise my hand and say hey pal slow the f down, I mean he's a pastor for chrissakes. I remember a few words and phrases but jeezum crow man give us just a little bit of a break. I know that this is probably the best way to learn the language, but I'm not sure this was the way to start a class. I expect many people to not be there tomorrow. Me I don't give up that easily and unfortunately I need to take care of this requirement, the sooner the better. I can at the very least thank my lucky stars that I have had some experience with this language otherwise I would be really really frustrated rather than moderately frustrated.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:
"All right, we are going to use a fan brush here and uh why don't you take some hunter green and we are going to put a happy little bush right down over here in the corner there and that'll just be our little secret and if you tell anyone that that bush is there I will come to your house and I will cut you."
-Bob Ross