12:09 PM
It's the end of the day and a guy calls his wife to tell her he's going to hang out at a bar with some guys after work.
"Okay, but you better not start drinking again! I don't want you out all night drinking!"
The guy agrees, but goes to the bar anyway and gets loaded. He throws up all over himself and turns to his buddy.
"My wife's gonna kill me. Look at this. What am I gonna do?" His buddy says "Hey, don't worry. Tell her I threw up and you were in the way. Put a $20 bill in your shirt pocket and say it was from me to cover the dry-cleaning."
The drunk guy looks at his buddy and realizes that this is a perfect idea, so he does exactly that.
When he gets home that night, his wife is up waiting for him. "Look at you! You're a mess! You drank too much again, you stupid bastard!" The guy goes "No, no! I just had a Coke. Joe threw up on me and gave me some cash to cover the dry cleaning. There's a twenty in my shirt pocket." His wife reaches into his pocket and takes the money.
"There's two twenties here," she notices.
"Oh yeah," he says, "He took a crap in my pants too."
11:52 AM
I spent the weekend at Tammy's and we had fun. Saturday night I watched her play Final Fantasy until 2:30 in the morning! That's dedication. You so wish you had a video-game-playing girlfriend. Admit it.
Sunday we saw the Time Machine. It was really good! I'd like to compare it to the old 60s version, but I can't remember too much about that one. I remember it was kind of slow.
Last night it rained like a mofo. We even got some thunder! Whenever we get thunder in Los Angeles we'll only get like one or two thunderclaps, and then that's it. The rest of the storm is just rain rain rain. No more thunder, and you're lucky if you see lightning. That bugs me. I want to hear thunder that rattles the windows and makes you think your house is about to explode! You just don't see that too much out here.
12:32 PM
I used to get really depressed in high school. I'm not sure why. I think it was just normal teenage depression that everyone gets growing up.
At some point, I grew out of it. I think maybe it was around my second year in college when I realized that i just don't get bummed out anymore. About anything! I think maybe my brain has a chemical imbalance - for the better! Nothing can get me down! I mean yeah, September 11th was a bummer, and yeah it was horrible, but I got over that in like a day or two. Does that make me a bad person? Maybe. Personally, I think it just makes me a happy person!
And it doesn't take a whole lot to make me happy, either! When I watch TV I laugh out loud at stuff that's hardly funny to average Joes! A few weeks ago I was watching the Seinfeld episode where George has Elaine take this IQ test for him, and man. I was crying I was laughing so hard. I had to pause the show just to let myself laugh. And I had seen the episode at least once before!
Sometimes I wish I could share my gift with the world.
11:02 AM
Today I am wearing yet another pair of new pants! I don't really have money to spend on clothes right now, but I was down to one decent pair and they were getting pretty worn.
It's amazing how long shirts can last compared to pants. I've got shirts that are several years old and still look good. But pants, no way.
9:19 PM
This morning I woke up with the worst headache I've had in a good year or so. I wasn't really sure how long it would last, so I took the day off and just hung out at home all day. That was a bad call on my part 'cause I was feeling better by noon. I didn't feel like driving two hours to be at work for four, so I stayed home. I took a nap, had a sandwich, and played some Final Fantasy.
I actually felt unproductive today, for the first time in a long while. It was awesome. If I could find someone to pay me to do nothing, I could see myself being very successful in that line of work!
BOSS: BRETT hello how are you today?
ME: BOSS I am good how are you?
BOSS: I am good what are you up to?
ME: NOTHING SIR! Also, please do not ask me to do anything becuase I am very busy!
BOSS: That is what I like to hear BRETT! By the way, here are some tickets to a Laker game! It is a sign that you are working hard and being appreciated!
ME: AWESOME!!!
At first I did not think that this would be an attainable goal, but a search at monster.com for 'nothing' gets 216 results! 'lazy' only gets 2 though. It is a good thing that I am not lazy and am good at doing nothing!!!
11:25 AM
Every now and then I get these weird notions that make me want to learn how to do stuff. Almost all of these notions require money that I just don't have. I bet if I was a millionaire, I'd do weird millionaire things like skydive every weekend and build huge indoor swimming pools and maybe even open my own theme park!
Today I've decided that I want to learn how to play the vibraphone!
Unfortunately that means that-
A: I'll need to learn how to read music, and
B: I'll need to rob a bank.
Have you ever heard a truly amazing vibraphone performance before? It will blow your mind. Listen to Tu Crees Que? and tell me you don't want to learn how to play too.
$4000, folks. That's all I'm asking for. Don't hold back now. Send it my way.
10:14 AM
I don't know why, but when you format a drive using NTFS under Win2k or XP's installer, it won't let you format the whole thing. It insists on leaving 8 gigs of unpartitioned space at the end of the drive. I have no idea why this is.
Today I used Partition Magic to resize the NTFS partition to the full length of the drive and now I'm 8 gigs richer! Go me!
10:44 AM
I had an 8am dentist appointment today. I have lousy gums, so I have to go in every three months instead of the usual six. It costs me $112 every time. My dental insurance isn't as comprehensive as I need it to be, but I don't really have any options for beefing it up. Oh well.
I made an appointment to go in Monday to get a wisdom teeth removal consultation. I took a look at my xrays, and it's pretty bad. My new teeth are basically coming in horizontally. I haven't ever really felt any pain back there, but I should probably get this taken care of before it starts to cause problems.
The people in my dental office are nice, and they do great work, but man...they sure know how to make money!
2:36 PM
There's this amazing feeling of satisfaction that I get in my mouth when I bite into a roast beef sandwich. It's a pretty unique sensation that you just don't get with turkey or ham. Weird.
Last night I had a dream that a tooth fell out of my mouth while I was flossing. It's one of the ones in the front, on the bottom. I went to the dentist to have them put it back in and they were like "Okay! But we have to put you to sleep 'cause it'll hurt like hell." I'm all "Bring it on! Just fix my mouth!!!"
Here's where it gets weird. Instead of gassing me, they put this weird paste in my mouth that was supposed to knock me out. I think I've seen a vet use it on a horse once as a tranquilizer. It was weird. I instantly started to pass out, but I never really fully lost consciousness. They're like "Can you hear me?" and I go "Umfummungff" and they're like "Okay, just wait a little longer and the next thing you know it'll all be over!" Then they leave the room.
So I'm laying there half awake/asleep for a good 30 minutes sucking on this chunk of horse knockout paste in my mouth, and nobody comes in to see me or anything. I'm like "What the hell. I'm going to look around." I tried to get out of the chair, but my arms felt like they weighed about 50 pounds and I couldn't lift my head at all. Eventually I managed to throw my arms over the side of the chair and I landed face-first on the ground. I managed to get up on all fours about five minutes later. So I'm stumbling all over the office, knocking stuff over and trying to open my eyes enough to see where I'm going, but I'm just too screwed up from the drugs. The dentist hears me and she comes in to see what all the ruckus is.
"What's going on? Did you want a magazine?" And I'm all crawling on the floor shouting "OMMFAHRLAGABAHH TOOTH!" So she leaves to get me a magazine. Then I start thinking "I can't read a magazine like this!" Then for some reason I decided that I'd really like to listen to the news on NPR and that I needed to buy a radio right away. So I managed to crawl to the front door of the dentist's office, get to my feet and stumble through the parking lot to Long's drugstore like a hunchback, all the while dodging honking cars that I can't see because I can barely open my eyes.
When I get to the front of the store, the chinese ladies from the dentist's office were waiting for me. One of them had a bat, but they mostly looked like they were worried for me. I blacked out as soon as they saw me.
When I woke up in my bed this morning and my tooth was back in place, I knew that I had chosen a good dentist.
12:31 PM
Friday night Tammy and I hit Disneyland. We ate at the somewhat reasonably-priced Carnation Cafe and I scored dining pin #2 for my collection.
After dinner it was a quick walk over to the Disney Gallery in New Orleans Square to check out the new 100 Mickeys exhibit. Lemmie tell ya, Eric Robison has got to be sick of Mickey by now. It was pretty hard to find a surface in the gallery that didn't have one of his hundred paintings on it somwheere. Every piece was truly unique, and there were a handful that I was tempted to purchase, but I showed some restraint and walked away empty handed. (I wasn't about to drop a few thousand on any of the originals.)
You can view all 100 here. The tiny scans don't give you any idea of how many different media were used in the creation of each piece, nor can you see any of the textures of the materials used. One Mickey was charcoal on cardboard, another was made by scratching through wax with a paper clip, and another was a larger-than-life "throw handfulls of paint on the wall and somehow make it look like Mickey" piece. You really have to see these things in person to get an idea of just how much work went in to making all 100.
The print-on-demand pricing is pretty much what I expected. A 36"x48" print is $45 on art paper, or $150 on canvas. You pick the image that you'd like to own, tell them the size and type of paper you'd like to have it printed on, and they then print it on a twelve thousand dollar HP DesignJet 5000ps printer in the back room. You can then pick up your print later in the day, or you can have it FedExed to you for free.
The canvas prints look a whole lot better than I thought they would. They catch the light and reflect it back at you just like a real oil painting! The only thing you lose is the texture, and that's only visible up close.
On Saturday night, Tammy and I went to Josh's surprise birthday party at Dave & Buster's in Orange. A good time was had by all. Drinks and dinner in the bar were followed up by hot arcade game action and finally an all-out karaoke extravaganza. We left shortly after that, and I was almost too tired to drive us home. I made it though!
Sunday we looked around at some more places in Redondo Beach (mostly overpriced dumps this time) and Tammy logged a few more hours in her Final Fantasy efforts.
Today I am tired. They're going to start digging up the concrete right next to our office window today, so I'm looking forward to that.
10:47 AM
Record album covers from the 50s and 60s (and to some extent, the 70s) had some of the greatest bizzare photography you'll ever see in your life.
Finally, I've found a website that puts some of the greatest ones on display. Check out the galleries.
![[Powered by Blogger]](http://buttons.blogger.com/bloggerbutton1.gif){kind=small}
