Category: words mean things (Page 140 of 223)

Had lunch at your basic Poor Man’s Planet Hollywood chain restaurant today. Just as we had been served our food, some unlucky sucker at the next table was having a birthday.

I think you know where this story is going.

It happened that the staff member who was bellowing out the military-themed birthday greeting, alongside 40 or so of his compadres, was standing right next to me. So he was essentially shouting into my ear. And don’t forget the clapping. Ugh. “There should be a law,” indeed.

My two reactions to this event, in order, were:

1. We should get our lunch for free.

2. If I were the guy who had to shout out birthday greetings, I would get a different job or kill myself.

Recently some friends and I have been playing Dungeons & Dragons.

[pause to let snickering die down]

Well, snicker all you want, but it’s been incredibly fun. Playing a game like this, which is all marks on paper and your own mind, makes you realize how little imagination we are called on to use in our everyday lives. We have so much entertainment in this society, we are drowning in it. But 99 percent of it requires no imagination whatsoever – it’s just poured over you like syrup on a pancake. You only have to look at the toy aisles to see what I’m talking about. There’s still a huge Lego aisle, for example, but they’re all pre-measured kits that make a Star Wars figurine or some such. Try to find just a big box of regular Legos, with maybe some of those green platforms to build things on. It’s harder than you think.

Yes, I am a grumpy old man. Let’s move on.

I played D&D a little in high school, and getting back to it has been a mind-expanding experience, especially with the imaginative group we have going. They’ve been pressuring me to be the dungeon master next time. I have some ideas about an enchanted cathedral, with a dark side (all ebony and black marble) and a light side (all glass and pearl).

After all, how bad can a game be that lets you command monsters like the black pudding and gelatinous cube?

Watched Fox’s “24” for the first time tonight (yes, I’m woefully behind the times with pop culture these days). I thought it was pretty much a standard action series, with way too many portentous looks and pounding music at every turn. Maybe I just missed my chance to enjoy it, since 12 “hours” have already gone by in the story. But does it strike anyone else that Kiefer Sutherland’s wife seems more the age of his mother, and his daughter more like his girlfriend? Just wondering.

John C. Dvorak, the Jabba the Hut of computer punditry, wrote a snarky review of “The Cluetrain Manifesto,” a book I believe is brilliant and one of the best business or technology books I’ve ever read. Chris Locke, one of Cluetrain’s authors, responded with perhaps the best use of the phrase “blow me” I’ve ever read.

I love it when things get interesting.

Finally got around to writing some editing pages for the links database you see to the right. So I updated the URLs that had moved, and added some additions. Hope you enjoy checking them out.

Apparently in Alabama, things other than Osama Bin Laden merit the designation “inherent evil.” Apparently they have an unusual interpretation of the separation of church and state there as well.

I found it interesting that even Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, not exactly the champion of the downtrodden, took it upon himself to blast the judge’s words as “way over the line” and “un-Christian,” and even went so far as to wonder if you’re gay in Alabama, will you get a fair trial?

Even Bill O’Reilly can surprise you sometimes.

My friend Mike Van Sistine is furthering his burgeoning photography career with another show, beginning Friday at Mother Fool’s coffee house, right in my neighborhood. Follow the link on his name to the portfolio site I designed for him, and while you’re there, send him some e-mail and tell him what you think of his work. Artists like that. And if you happen to be in town next week, stop by and take a look for yourself.

I need some hits

So I was talking with my close personal friend Britney Spears about the Winter Olympics figure skating results. She said she thought the whole thing was a bigger embarrassment than the Enron mess, and wondered out loud if Osama Bin Laden or Dick Cheney had anything to do with it. She was writing about it on her weblog, which she maintains on her new flat-screen Apple iMac. Then she had to take off, as she had a Pepsi commercial to shoot and then she had to meet her boyfriend Justin Timberlake, who was still trying to convince George Lucas to keep in his performance in “Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.”

When I Said Before That Our Culture Was Doomed, I Was Just Kidding

Tonight on Fox (who else): two hours of something called, I am not kidding, “The Glutton Bowl.” The “contestants” in each round watched as an industrial drum was lowered from the ceiling and the contents tipped into a giant bowl – butter, mayonnaise, hard-boiled eggs, brains, beef tongue, bull testicles, etc. Then they ate it. Sports-style commentary was provided as the eaters struggled to use their abdominal muscles to rearrange the food in their stomachs. Judges had to decide how much “smearage” of things like butter and mayo on the combatants’ clothes should be allowed before disqualification.

I think it goes without saying that everyone involved in this production should be pressed through a sieve of piano wire, with the remains fed to wild dogs.