Roughly verbatim quote from the lead-singer of The Waifs, an Australian folk-ish band playing at the Santa Monica Pier last night:
We’ve been travelling for eleven years now… It’s really easy to travel around Australia, there’s only one major highway (pause pause pause). It’s called Highway 1
It struck me funny.
Yeah. So I’m commuting again, for at least a week, joining the work-a-day world as a contracted employee. It’s for that company that I wanted oh so badly, only to find out later that they didn’t have a permanent postion for me. Turns out if you ask again nicely, they might be able to find a little spot for you on a contract basis. Hopefully, this is my foot in the door for a long-relationship.
As a friend of mine recently told me, “When I think ‘Dave’, I think ‘relationship.”
I’m not sure how to take that.
At any rate, phrases like, “we have some work for you for about a week… but maybe longer… we’ll see how things work out,” keep getting thrown around. Which (to me), means I’d better quit blogging during the day perform well despite the distractions.
You know what infuriates me?
Voicemail. Voicemail is the thing that infuriates me.
And here’s why: voicemail is the only technology (to my recollection) that coddles us more in its present advanced stage than it did when we were neanderthalian (yes, that one’s all mine) and needed the extra help. Back in the 80’s (or “The Day” as the kids call it), we were introduced to the answering machine. No longer were we burdened to actually speak with a live person whom we really only called for appearances sake anyway; but, instead we were dazzled by the wonder and convenience of an electronic date-maker, date-shunner, social-butterfly, and vocal-chord-preserver all rolled into one. And what kind of instruction did we get for such a high-powered, complicated device? Just this:
BEEP!
That’s pretty much it. Some witty repartee like, “Hey y’all! Can’t come to the phone right now. Leave a message!” Then:
BEEP!
No explanation as to what the loud noise was, no detailed instructions about what to do with said noise, or after said noise, nothing. And that was fine. We didn’t need any!
Ah, but now, NOW at the height of our technological age we need ever so much more:
Please record your message after the tone. If you need assistance, press 1. After you have finished recording, please hang up or press 0 for more options
…
…
If I need assistance press 1? How much assistance could I possibly need?!
me: ah, yes, hello? Yes, uh, I’m having some difficulty with leaving a message and need some assistance
murmur murmur
me: well, yes um, I did try that and it didn’t seem to work. My question, um, is what do I actually do after the tone?
murmur murmur
me: Oh! Oh! I see… OK YES, ahhh that’s much clearer. OK, thanks a million, you’re a real lifesaver!
Are we really that dumb? (don’t answer that)
I was on cam briefly tonight. I’m betting you missed it. You can, however, see the sexy, though washed-out, results via the link on the left.
Ah sexy results; if only all activities ended so grandly… as they would if The Simpsons were as much a part of reality as they are in my own special world.
Going to The L.A. Times and having a smattering of pop-up ads, err, pop up makes me feel dirty.
This sort of thing really doesn’t fill me with confidence:
I think the intelligence I get is darn good intelligence. And the speeches I have given were backed by good intelligence.
And I am absolutely convinced today, like I was convinced when I gave the speeches, that Saddam Hussein developed a program of weapons of mass destruction and that our country made the right decision.
Wasn’t it, oh I don’t know… yesterday that we learned that the scapegoat CIA provided some erroneous information about Iraq’s supposed nuclear weapons program? Didn’t that bring the whole ball o’ wax into doubt, and begin to justify the fears and arguments of tree-hugging liberals like myself both here and abroad? I thought it did.
Whatever happened to ‘Don’t shoot ’till you see the whites of their eyes’? Obviously it was replaced with the more popular, ‘Shoot first, ask questions later’.
As far as slow, laborious processes go, trying to find work in your dream industry during a difficult recession may be one of the slowest and most laborious.
Southern California Edison customers will get a rate reduction of between 8% and 19% beginning August 1, giving millions of Californians their first tangible relief from the 2000-2001 energy crisis that paralyzed the state and sent prices soaring.The average residential customer would see their monthly bill decrease by $11 to $135.
Isn’t that a bit broad?!
“Hey Cletus, I’ve got this great girl you just have to meet: she’s young-looking, somewhere between 13 and 47. Tall… I’d say something like 5’1″ or 6’4″. Very skinny and voluptuous. You’re gonna love her!”
The thing about living near the beach is that everyone wants to visit you… everyone. There’s your family, and your friends, and your girlfriend’s friends, and your girlfriend’s family. Salty water is, for some reason, the great equalizer and is obviously the biggest draw since Jesus. In fact, based largely on my observations of this phenomenon, my next rock band will be called Salty Water, or perhaps Agua Salado for the international flair.
The visiting of the people, by the way, is not the problem. I love the visiting of the people as the people are my friends, my family, my girlfrie… you get the picture: people I like. The problem is the doing of things.
The doing of things is not the problem.
>I like the doing of things combined with the visiting of people whom I also like. The problem is the me knowing of what things to do with the people that are visiting. I’ve only been here for a few months, you see, and though raised a SoCal guy, I didn’t live near enough to the ocean to ever get tired of it and have much motivation to do anything else. Except Disneyland. I must have been to Disneyland at least a half a dozen times.
At any rate, “the beach” remains my favorite thing to do, whatever that means… which probably explains the incredulous looks and the, “OK, but what else do you do?”‘s that we get from the aforementioned visitors. All the best restaurants, clubs, and sightseeing places are still a bit new to us, which personally sends me into a Shame Spiral.
Not really. But if you want directions to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, don;t be surprised if I answer something vaguely with words like “Hollywood” and “Sunset Boulevard” as I back out of the room and run to my computer.
I get a lot of hits (and I mean “a lot” relatively, not absolutely) from my “old” site at www.floorpie.net/stuff.htm. You see, back in the day I thought I was going to be coming up with new and exciting non-blog content every day, so I had a splash page of sorts at floorpie.net instead of the inane chatter you see now. The idea, you see, was to direct you to all this fresh, invigorating content, blog notwithstanding.
I soon abandoned that approach, obviously, and decided to showcase the real draw to floorpie.net: ummm, floorpie.net… or stuff and stuff, whatever. For some reason, though, a lot of people still go to the old location, just to be redirected here. Why is that? Where do you come from? Are you all new people sent here by someone who hasn’t updated their links? Are you all regulars that are just too lazy to change your bookmarks? Are any of you still getting there from here?
