what were you going to do with your $100 rebate?

yeah so you heard that you were going to get $100 for gas? that's coming immediately after they start paying reparations to the descendents of slaves, because apparently this happened:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, under pressure from business leaders, retreated Monday from a plan that would have used a tax increase on oil companies and other businesses to pay for a $100 gasoline rebate for millions of motorists.

WTF? are you kidding me? what's $100 gonna do? and is it really the oil companies fault that they're making all that money? weren't they in the oil business back when they weren't making much money, in 1999? i'm not sure what people expect the oil companies to do. it's like people are irritated because chevron and exxon are getting paid. i'm not. that's why they are in business. I'm not going to do a connect the dots from failed oilman becomes president to oil companies make a fortune during his time in office. I'm taking a break from political analysis, because it bugs me.

and, lastly, this was the best analysis about the NFL draft that I heard:

To everyone's surprise the Lions actually drafted players that they were in definite need of this year. 9th overall pick was (LB) Ernie Sims out of Florida State, I am pretty sure that he has been in prison before so he is probably pretty tough.

the view from the top (sort of)

super. got the new office put back together.
I was going to write a funny post about some funny stuff that happened, but then I realized how much time I spent playing videogames over the weekend and it was just sad. so no. we're not doing that. i was even going to write another silly political essay, but that's like Paris Hilton: its been done repeatedly, and not well.
on the upside, high-level executives (and by high-level, I mean fourth floor) everywhere are jealous of my window office and my view. (I saw some birds out there the other day, and I think they're married. if you know what I mean. and I think you do.)

the execs are probably not jealous of my standing desk. i considered trying to get my company to actually buy me a real standing desk, but they're kind of expensive, and it's not like i had back surgery or anything. they did get me a really nice chair. and health insurance. so I can't complain. I built my own standing desk. it's pretty sweet, if you're into cardboard. I'll post pix.

I was all set to say something interesting about the NFL Draft, but I remembered that you don't care. best part: my fav teams first round pick was so happy he got drafted he wept tears of joy. that's what I'm talking about. i'll weep tears of joy myself if he learns to block his position instead of just try to play WR as a tight end.

oh, snap!

no reason. just wanted to say it.

"our addiction to oil is a matter of national security concern" - Mr. G. W. Bush

greetings from the OC. we're coming to you from a new office, w/ a new desk, etc and so forth. glad you could make it. i'm listening to the Matisyahu cd. it's surprisingly good; definitely the best reggae cd by a white hasidic jew that I have ever heard. i think he appreciates the musics history. most of his fans, the ones that think he's the best thing ever, not so much.

lots of fun stuff to talk about this week. none of it is interesting to you, so i'll get right back to the same old, same old.

The leader of the free world just isn't much of a public speaker. He is supposed to be very charming in person. Clinton was a magnetic speaker on the tee vee, and I've read that he is amazing in person: magnetic, charismatic, etc. i dunno. they won't let me near either one of them, because of that other thing. anyway, GW's leading quote on CNN today is the title of today's blog. speaking in public is tough, because you end up being quoted and quotes of spoken language don't read too well. so we'll just let it go for now.

I'm pretty sure that the best way to keep gas prices down is to not destabilize the region where most of that gas comes from. pretty sure. now that it's been destabilized, the best way to lower prices would be to try to re-stabilize, which is tricky when you've stepped on your dick in one country (Iraq), and you're talking about nuking it's even-more-psycho neighbor (Iran).

don't get me wrong: I like Iran, because it's nice to have an international figure running his mouth when he's more stupid than Bush. I also like how Iranian people call themselves "persian". When was the last time we had a Persia, anyway? that's like me telling people I'm celtic (hard c in celtic, thanks). it hasn't been PC to be Iranian since that unpleasantness back in the late 70's. but I digress...

getting back to the high gas prices issue, let's look again at his plan. he's going to suspend deposits to the reserves. (according to cnn) that's 30k barrels per day, in a country that burns 21 MILLION per day. again, i'm no math major, but saving one tenth of one percent of whatever you're using doesn't look like a viable savings plan to me. (the actual number is so small my calculator bugged out and gave me some scientific notation, which I will reproduce here, just for kicks: 1.428471E-3)

this blog is getting long, so I'll reproduce CNNs summary of the plan here:

The plan calls for making sure consumers and taxpayers are treated fairly, promoting greater fuel efficiency, boosting the U.S. gasoline supply and investing aggressively in gasoline alternatives.

• treated fairly? by oil companies? whatever.
• greater fuel efficiency? good luck with that. this is the only thing on the list that will actually work: stop using so much gas.
• boosting US gasoline supply? the best way to overcome consumption of a non-renewable resource is to increase production? GW, go rob Peter to pay Paul.
• Invest in alternatives? I guess. ethanol isn't it. but you never know. what about biodiesel? what about NOT DRIVING HUGE EFFING CARS EVERYWHERE and then crying about it when gas prices go up when the president you elected freaks out and invades a country after he goes to war on a concept (terror)? no? my bad.
  

I should have called this blog "hypocrisy on parade."
if you're still reading you're either my mom or unemployed. thanks.

For Sale By Idiot

the interweb has eliminated the middleman in a lot of transactions, and that is good news for everybody. unfortunately, it has also given people the opportunity to display their idiocy in prominent, exceptional ways. for example, the guy around the corner from my townhouse here in Costa Mesa has listed his property on forsalebyowner.com, and his descriptive paragraph is everything you need to know about why you should get a realtor and/or a high-school education. here it is:

Newer Paint Interier and Exterier.The Property is located just minutes from South Coast Plaza in the highly desired South Coast Metro area. Many upgrades, a must see. Priced right for quick sale. Great starter home. Check dates for open houses or call for private tour. To view more pictures go to www.forsalebyowner.com. Listing ID#20593283.

the most annoying thing about all this is that the douchebag that posted this will NOT get full value for his home, which will bring down property values, which affects all the homeowners in a negative way (i.e. me). it's good for buyers and retards, though. it gives them hope.

also in his description, he lists a "clubhouse... patio ... spa/jacuzzi ... tennis courts". let's take these one by one: clubhouse I have been in once for an HOA meeting; it looks like an old set from threes company: the 70's never left, they're right there, in the "clubhouse".
patio: the patio actually exists and doesn't suck. weird.
spa/jacuzzi: are these the same thing? too lazy to look it up. google takes so loooooooooong.
tennis courts: yes, there are two tennis courts. they haven't seen any tennis since first Bush was president. again, a picture would be great but I can't do it. just imagine the most overgrown, leaf-strewn, dirty tennis court you've ever seen. that's the village creek tennis courts.

what Mr. Deal (contact name for property - Daniel Deal - I can't make this stuff up) doesn't mention is the water treatments and fake creeks in the back. they are a legitimate selling point. too obvious, I guess.
don't get me wrong, most realtors are useless, but if they do a good job then they can make you, and save you, a lot of money. on the other hand, they can really f you around. i guess it's better to just f yourself, like Mr. Let's Make a Deal is doing.

i've been away, but I still love you

greetings from post-op.
i haven't posted for a while b/c I've been recovering from Monday's back surgery. doc says it went well, no surprises, and i'm now on the road to recovery.

the road to recovery is paved with oversized vicodin pills. sweet. sort of. they give me hiccups, which is annoying. and I'd really rather take vickies when I don't have pain to suppress. it's not as good when you can't get around very well. in any case, I haven't had much to write about, until my buddy Sam told me I should just post whatever pops into my head when I'm strung out on opiates. good idea, Sam. so here we go:

1. best not to make any sudden moves when you've got 12 staples in your back. this seems self explanatory, but when I was taking my old-man stroll this morning and somebody's dog rushed me I forgot and flinched. oops.
   
2. hiccups suck. a lot.
   
3. I heart naps.
   
4. I want to gulp from life, not sip.
   
5. look for the lakers to give the suns a run for their money in the playoffs. maybe.
   

----------------------
got some interesting feedback on the weird note that my friend Jetta Driving Jen sent me. Jen lives in Austin, and I haven't seen her in a while, but I'll bet she still looks pretty good. for the record, she was ridiculously good looking in college.
anyway, here's more from her stalker, which she was nice enough to type out and forward:

"Those four or five moments a week that I see you have
become one of the highlights of my day. I can't resist
watching you - something about your purposeful stride,
the look in your eye, the sidelong glance you seem to
throw me as you pass - I love these moments, and I
look forwrad to them each day. To me, they are
magical. Its as if - almost as if - everything around
you dissolves into slow motion. The sounds of birds or
nearby conversation cease while you walk from your car
inside to buy your lunch.

A part of me wants all this to stay just as it is - to
live those short, intense moments that last only for a
few heartbeats, and then fade for 24 hours.

But another part of me is filled with curiosity. I try
to imagine your name, the sound of your voice, what
interests you, what makes you laugh, what music you
play over and over. But to discover those things, I
have to risk ending those precious moments of quiet
anonymity when we are in the same place at the same
time.

So I have been trying the last few years to live a new
philosophy - Gulp from Life - Don't Sip. Maybe sharing these
thoughts with you is a small gulp, but it's not a sip.
-Your lunch time admirer."

goodness gracious sakes alive.
latest word is that the cops said he was a weirdo for sure, but she hasn't heard anything. she's still a lot paranoid, but she's working through it. crazy.
thanks for reading. I'll post more as I start to feel a little better.
call me if you're bored. I'm not up to much. xoxo -c-

so much good stuff; plus, weirdos!

some weeks I don't have a lot of stuff to write about in the 'blog, and by "blog" I mean "monument to self". this was not one of those weeks. I've just been busy moving offices, doing dr stuff, traveling, and (perish the thought) getting work done. rad.

first, a quick update on the 40 year old from 7 weeks ago: she's done with her surgery and feeling good about herself. I know this because she told me. we exchanged numbers all those weeks ago and now we're casual friends. it's easy to be friends w/ women that you don't have a sexual interest in. I'll let you know how she looks when we go to lunch in the next couple weeks or so (after the swelling goes down a little more). she's happy, so that's good. she spent $20g on surgery, so she should be happy. she should be effing ecstatic.

in other news, my white jetta driving friend Jen has a stalker. (who doesn't know a girl named Jen? and a girl that drives a jetta? whatever - Jen is cool.) this weirdo has managed to strike just the right note of desperation and creepy obesssion. I was going to add my own comments but I realized the awfulness would shine through all on its own. I really, really liked #2. I think it's my new shorthand for "complete douchebag".
anyway, here's her email:
-----------------------------
hmm....what else is new in my world...well, I have a
stalker. That's right. A stalker. I'll include his
latest note he left on my car at work:

#6 is the creepiest given this is my (or should i say
was my) exact routine every day.

"Top 10 Reasons why you should email me and/or say
hello at lunch some time"

10. Because I'm not a serial killer or an
axe-murderer.

9. I'm actually reasonably polite, often nice, usually
sarcastic, sometimes intelligent, occasionally
interesting, very well traveled & i don't smell bad.

8. Maybe we're long lost Siamese twins separated by
birth.

7. Because I dont' really care if you have a
boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, 14 children or 20
adopted kittens - i'm just curious who you are.

6. So I can stop obsessing about being at Whole Foods
every day between 11:45 & 12:15.

5. Because i know some funny stories and a couple good
jokes.

4. Maybe you don't speak english - no problem. I can
butcher my way through spanish, french, italian,
german, and i can embarrass myself thoroughly in
portugese, danish and i used to be able to count to
10,000 in bahasa, count to 5 in quechua and i can
still count to 3 in mandarin.

3. Because i used to own a VW.

2. To gulp from life, not sip.

1. So I can stop thinking of you as "White Jetta Whole
Foods Salad Bar Girl."

Yeah. His earlier note basically professed his undying
obsession & devotion to "living for those few moments"
he sees me everday. great.

this is actually my life. i have a stalker. awesome.
--------------------------
oh snap!
thanks for reading.

red flags

because I'm such a huge success at dating I thought it would be fun to go over some Dating Red Flags*. not for any particular reason, except maybe as a reminder to myself. anyway, in no particular order, here's some stuff to look out for, and/or that I've encountered in my dating life:

• an open sore on her face - I went on a first date with a girl and she had a "cold sore". she should have had the good sense to reschedule, put her best foot forward, etc. she had some issues she was working through, no doubt about that. I found out later that she was a lesbian. (really)
  
• a girl that takes more than an hour to get ready - if you can't take a shower, get your hair sorted, get dressed, and get your makeup on in sixty minutes or less then we can't hang out. The problem with a girl that takes a really long time to get ready is that she probably...
• looks super weathered in the AM - if you look really rugged first thing in the morning then that's a Red Flag for sure. if a girl looks cute w/ her makeup all smeared and her hair all over the place, then she's a keeper. side note: close friend was telling me about his crazy roommate, and saying she meets guys on myspace and she's constantly meeting new guys and they only last for 2 weeks, and then they bounce. I said yeah for sure, she's cuter in pictures than in person. He says, no, it's not that; they bounce after they stay the night and see her the morning after. ohhh, snap!
  
• girl that doesn't work out - trust me honey, it'll catch up with you someday. and by then it'll be too late, b/c it's much, much harder to lose weight than it is to stay in shape.
  
• girl that doesn't eat - please, eat something.
  
• girl that has a miniature dog she treats like a child - you, as the new guy, will be competing for the dog's attention. forever. you're better off dating a girl that has a kid. note: if the girl has a full-sized dog then it's okay. you can take the dog for walks, hang out, etc. it's the toy dogs, and their owners, you need to avoid.
  
• girl that thinks cosmo is gospel, and/or that thinks she is "just like" a character on Sex and the City - Cosmo is full of lies from the pit of hell, and it's just crazy to think that you are someone on TV. I think I stopped dreaming about being someone on TV when Knight Rider went off the air in 1986. I was 12.
  

that's my partial list. I'll add more as time allows.
thanks for reading.

* = if you follow my dating advice you may be condemned to the same dating "success" that I have, so take all this with a grain of salt.

do you know what time it is? this guy doesn't....

ran into a post on the Guardian (not the Bay Area Guardian - GJAW is international, remember?) about a guy that took forty thousand hits of ecstasy. as in, 40,000. as in, up to 25 a day at one point. who could afford it? here's an excerpt from the article:

Though the man, who is now 37, stopped taking the drug seven years ago, he still suffers from severe physical and mental health side-effects, including extreme memory problems, paranoia, hallucinations and depression. He also suffers from painful muscle rigidity around his neck and jaw which often prevents him from opening his mouth. The doctors believe many of these symptoms may be permanent.

Yikes! it turns out that the guy also smoked a lot of weed, and there's no way to know if that also contributed to his memory loss. also, it's not mentioned directly, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that a guy doing 20 hits a day, and smoking weed, is also shooting/snorting/swallowing/smoking whatever else he can get his grubby, money-filled hands on. personal side note: i, ahh, know people that know people that do recreational drugs, and they are not very particular about mixing their poison, so to speak. it's not a clinical trial, controlled conditions, etc and so forth. it's more like watching a comptetitive eating contest on late-night ESPN: excessive, and you feel like you better stand back or you'll get sucked in.

so we're not talking about just an epic E bender for Mr. A (guy in the article). also, I think 40k is a little high (pardon the pun! HONK!). let's cut the estimate down by 25%. damn. 30,000 hits of e. that's a lot. let's do the math: at 2 pounds a pill (the going rate for hits in London), he took, umm, let's see, carry the one, add several zeroes, lose appetite, start sweating just thinking about it, ahhhh... about $120,000 in drugs. where did all the money come from? he had to be a dealer or a rich kid, or both.
moral of the story: don't do enough drugs to wire the entire city of Oshkosh, WI (est. pop 63,916).
thanks for reading.

the new single mom in my condo complex is kinda hot...

I don't know where this girl's babydaddy is, but she brought her little ones to my back porch yesterday, looking for a handout. maybe dad was out looking to score. I dunno.
I snapped a photo so I could show you how we hold it down in CM.
also, since I'm a fan of single moms, I went ahead and threw some bread back there. mom isn't too picky, since she also ate some kind of leaf off the back porch. what the heck? after she ate they all wandered over to the little creek (background) and paddled away. awwwww! cute!
okay get back to work.

ever'body seen a leprechaun say yeah! YEAH-YUH!

I wish I were clever enough to make this stuff up.
but I'm not. you need to get yourself over to ifilm.com immediately if not sooner and watch this video. it is work safe. no swear words. it's a news program from alabama. I think local news is retardo, but sometimes they come up with some genius. here's the address, in case the link doesn't come through. http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2714833

I think i'm related to the one guy w/ the flute. in the body armor. the one with the Irish grandfather? that guy.

ever'body seen a leprechaun say yeah!
YEAH-YUH!

taking sketchy pervyness to a whole new level (not me); plus, did you make out?

so I work at an office that's fairly standard in my office experience. there's the usual cute receptionist girl at the front desk; sales guys talking on their gay star trek earpieces ("buy buy! sell sell sell!"); the shady corporate real estate guy I run into down at the bar sometimes (not wearing his wedding ring, hitting on girls); the regular guy that swings by my office to talk about his kid, his family, football; and the hot women from the HR staffing company (alas, uninterested in me in anything but a professional capacity).

there's also the older creepy perv, an older character common in any office environment. but this guy has taken old creepy perv to a whole new level. now, i'm no spring chicken at 32, but this OCP is a good 2x my age if he's a day. here's what happened:
I walk up to the front desk at about 1530 and the girl is answering the phones (as per usual), and the creepy perv is handing her a small shotglass of clear liquid (definitely not as per usual). has to be water, because what else could it be? he gives me a funny look and scuttles away, and the girl looks at me and says, "don't worry, i'm not drinking it." I look confused because she says, "really, i'm not; I don't drink at work." I said, "was that booze?" she says, yeah, tequila, he has a bar in his office and he thinks i like to drink, so he brings me a shot EVERY DAY. all I could say to her was "ooooookay. that's disturbing."

WTF? brings you a shot of booze? just to get you through the day? what's next, he's going to ask you to sit on his lap? ugh, so creepy.

and also...
i'm on the phone with a close friend, catching up. I ask if he's got any ladies, or any prospects. he says, well, kind of - I went on a date last night but she drinks too much. me: huh? he says, she told me a story about how she got so drunk last weekend in [unnamed city] that she fell on her face, then she went out and kept drinking.
Me: wow, sounds like a keeper. great story to tell on a first date, btw. did you make out?
him: no, she still has a couple scabs on her face from where she ate shit.

ouch! double ouch! love you too!
thanks for reading.

is that hot?

ahh, can we get back to some pithy social commentary? no? okay.
what about some good old-fashioned criticism? yeah? super.

is a statue of a pregnant Britney Spears bent over on all fours, on a bearskin rug, with the baby coming out of, her, ahh, babymaker, hot? is it? the article says the baby is "coming out the other end." nicely put. you can't see it from this angle, but you can imagine K-Fed getting ready to make a play on the ball, as it were, and catch the little tyke on his exit. maybe you can't imagine it. I dunno.

the sculptor claims that this is a pro-life image. I don't see that, but the bear looks pissed he got turned into a rug.

going under the knife - 17 April (mark your calendar)

the fat kid (me) scheduled surgery on his lower back (17 April! mark your calendar!). oh, pardon me, "low back". when you talk about these things all the time you leave out the "-er". very official sounding.
just in case you thought a "right L4-5 microdiskectomy" was a routine procedure, allow me to reproduce part of my surgical consent form. It lists no fewer than 18 potential risks and complications related to this outpatient procedure. Some highlights (numbers correspond to where they appear in the actual list on the form):

2) recurrent herniation [not so bad, all things considered.]

5) nerve root injury resulting in temporary or permanent loss of function, causing pain, numbness, and/or weakness [now you have my attention]

6) paralysis resulting in loss of all lower extremity function as well as loss of bowel and/or bladder function, and/or sexual function [item 6 is worse than item 18]

7) persistent or increased pain

10) disc degeneration resulting in chronic back pain which may require spinal fusion

11) instability, causing excessive motion in spine, resulting in pain that may require spinal fusion

14) pneumonia [from the anesthetic]

16) pulmonary embolus [this would cause paralysis or brain damage, or #18]

17) stroke

18) death [yikes!]

on the upside, the doc says that none of these things is likely. I was thinking about it, and I realized it's easy to fret about the probability that bad things might happen. you could get hit by a car on your way to work, fall down some stairs, get dumped on valentine's day, whatever. does no good to worry about it.
the best news about the whole deal: I might get better.

surgery details:

• operation lasts about 90 minutes.
• I go home the same day. take a week off of work, spend time playing xbox, reading, practicing guitar, watching movies.
  
• pt starts 4-7 days after surgery
• after 8 weeks they expect I'll be 90% healed. just can't run.
  

reprinted without permission

this is a cartoon by David Rees.
it is reprinted without permission, but I doubt anyone will notice. I didn't hear about David Rees until he started getting his cartoon printed in Rolling Stone.
You can go and visit his website to learn more about his other cartoons, his causes and commitments, and his public engagements. I also encourage you to read his essay on the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; it is fascinating.
in the mean time, just embrace the hell out of this little gem.

dispatch from norcal

trying an email post, since my intrepid computer system in the frozen north can't seem to stay connected to the blog server. or something. you don't care.
insight from this week:

• response from this weeks earlier post about "getting your ex back" was good. I aim to please. I heart your feedback. it's weird, because there are a lot of other posts that I thought were much more funny than that one. but I just work here. and take naps.
  
• "red eye" is a crap movie.
  
• newest harry potter movie is pretty good.
  
• not swearing for lent is going okay. I have to give $2 to charity every time I stumble. I'm up to $72 so far. I figure I'll just cut the church a check when I get to $100 and then cut another one when lent is over. there was some disagreement between a friend and I about whether or not it was fair to give up swearing, since I shouldn't be doing that anyway. he's a catholic, and we're never going to see eye to eye anyhow, but I said it was a vice, so it was a great thing to give up. he said, not much of a sacrifice. I said, yeah, then you try it. he gave up sweets.
  
• JJ Redick and Co. got bounced out of the ncaa tournament by LSU. the man guarding him was precisely the type of player he'll have to compete against in the NBA. he might find his niche shooting the ball, but I doubt it. oh well. Duke will have to get by with another 3 or 4 McDonald's all-americans next year. it helps being on tv 30 times, too. oh, and having your coach in those chevy ads that run every 14 seconds. i think they'll be okay.
  

that's all I have for now. i've been out of town on business all week. so nothing funny has happened. at least, nothing I can write about yet. i'll have something for you next week. probably.

it's that easy: get back with your ex!

every now and then I discover something so superb, so delicious, and so damn AWFUL that I have to post it on the blog for everyone to see. immediately if not sooner.

today's little gem comes from exback.com, which is a website devoted to "getting back" your ex-boyfriend or -girlfriend. full disclosure: I was in a relationship a while ago and I was bummed when it didn't work out. I did some venting on the interweb, but I never thought to search for ways to "get her back." I guess i just wasn't brokenhearted enough. or maybe I realized, deep down, that as much as I liked her she wasn't the right girl for me. probably a little of both. moving on, let's take a closer look at this website and its proven techniques...

ignoring the sales stuff at the top, let's get to the section that says:
"Please don't do any of this..."

The scary thing is that the natural reaction people have when they try to get back together with their ex is actually pushing their ex's further away... even though it seems like the right thing to do!

Have you tried any of the following to get your ex back:

• Telling your ex you love them over and over? [no. I told them I was in love with someone else, but that didn't work, either.]
  
  
• Apologizing and swearing that things will be different from now on? [apologizing? different? how about, promising that things will be the same, but better?]
  
  
• Using money, kids, jealousy, or some other kind of manipulative leverage to "force" them to come back? [using money is what pimps do. so yes, I have done that.]
  
  
• Acting depressed so that your ex will feel bad for you and come back? [acting depressed? who was acting?]
  
  
• Giving your ex reassurance that you have changed so they should try again? [if by "changed" you mean "gotten fat because I have been drinking heavily" then yeah, for sure.]
  
  
• Trying to reason and argue with them about why they should give the relationship another chance? [no, I have never tried to reason w/ a woman, because that is like trying to smell the color blue: impossible, and crazy.]
  

The thing goes on and on about how to get back with your ex and repair your relationship. It could be really good, but there's no way I'm going to put $24 in this guy's pocket.
this is his PPS to the whole thing:

P. P. S. Don't be frustrated and confused for another day. Just CLICK HERE to get started now.

yeah, no more frustration and confusion in relationships for only $24? cheap at twice the price! sign me up!

shorter entries: good; more pictures: gooder

Big weekend. I celebrated St. Patrick's day by watching basketball and drinking a lot of beer. None of it was green. I also ate some corned beef (not green), fish and chips (not green), and mexican food (you get the idea). Hooray, st. pat's. saturday and sunday were pretty slow. I really need to get out more. I also practiced guitar (still sucking!) and read some books.

On the Fire Dick Vitale front, he's still not fired, and he's still retardo.

I wish I had a good story about text vs. subtext because I've been thinking about it a lot lately. but i don't.

unrelated: sometimes things don't go my way. but sometimes they do.
I have tattoos on my arms (it's just a skin picture!) to remind me of this, but it's too easy to focus on the negative. you have to give the negative and the positive equal weight. if i do that, I realize that things have gone right for me in every measurable way except one: I'm not dating anyone right now and I'm bored. so I focus on all the other things that go right, and try not to let it bug me. i'm not even looking to date anyone right now. i just like the distraction. it's fun.

in roommate news, we got a new guy. he's cool. and I think he'll pay his bills on time, which I appreciate.
more later.

what has two thumbs and kicks ass?!?? THESE GUYS!!!; and so much more

yeah it's been a busy week at GJAW.
I get these blog ideas but then I have too much paper to push and I can't get to it. first, the latest picture. I am much too proud of it, but there you go. you have to take your laughs where you can get them, I guess.

I got pummeled in a sparring match on monday. bloody nose, scrapes on my forehead, sore ribs. I am not good at boxing. at all. it was kind of depressing. it IS kind of depressing. God humbles the proud, but did I have to take a beating? I guess so.

while I was at the gym, I heard "i'm in luv wit a stripper". yes, that is how it is spelled. I read it in rolling stone yesterday. and yes, that's the name of a new song by T-Pain. it's all over power 106 (crap radio station in so cal) and I think the album dropped already. ata kid, T-Pain. If you have not heard this song, please check it out immediately. This guy is in love wit a stripper, yo. It's so bad it's good. I bought the 12" single (on vinyl). two copies. (only $3.50 each!)

tattoos: it's just a skin picture. really, it's not a big deal. if you see some kook with words where his eyebrows should be, just say to yourself, damn, that guy needs therapy. the same thing you'd say if you saw somebody with a really gnarly facelift, as when you blink and your ears move.

I was going to write an entire blog entry about a woman who lost her son Iraq to an IED. he was killed with 8 other marines when they were riding in their humvee. She was on the front the provincial OC Register's Life or Local section. I forget which. here's the thing: this poor mom, she memorialized the soldiers by getting her new Hummer H2 painted with their pictures. on the whole thing, front, back, both sides, top. she said (paraphrasing) "my favorite part is where it shows them in heaven." let's explore this thought process a little bit...

1. son and 8 of his friends dies in awful, miserable country, thousands of miles from home/girlfriend/cheeseburgers/etc. [this is awful; I support the troops by suggesting they be brought home YESTERDAY, but we can't, because of our dependence on foreign oil, about which see #3, below]
   
2. mom grieves [so far, I got it]
3. Mom decides that painting her [huge, gas guzzling] SUV is best way to remember their sacrifice. [what. the f*ck. are you talking about. not sure how she got from step two to step 3. but I don't have kids, either. my mom has done this kind of stuff, and she is crazy for sure.]
   

St. Patrick's day is tomorrow. I took the day off. I don't get any work done that day, anyway. Here's some toasts you can try out as you raise a glass:

• May your house be too small to hold all your friends (got that from gramps)
• May those that love us, love us. And for those that do not love us, may God turn their hearts. And if he cannot turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles so that we may know them by their limping (that from the interweb a couple years ago)
• Here's to old, new, and future friends (it's good to plan ahead)
  

some people are big fans of this eye-contact-while-cheersing thing. I am not. it's awkward with guys, and with girls I feel like they want to bone me. turns out that most of the time they don't, but it's still a little awkward. a little.

you can put your NCAAA tournament bracket on the list of things I don't care to hear about, directly below your fantasy football team, but above your rotisserie league team. I do like to talk about the individual games, though. I like Monmouth to beat Villanova. (for real.)

re: guitar playing - I suck spectacularly. and my fingers hurt. on the upside, if I practice for 2 years I probably won't be in danger of taking a beating (unlike my other hobby, boxing, about which see above).

this could have been two blogs, but what the hell? I'll revisit it later. thanks for reading.

i'm out of town all week next week and can't post. I'll be back on Monday, 27 March.

new(ish) music, and I now suck at playing guitar

One of the roommates works for a music distributor. He gets a lot of free music, and nearly all of it is crap. Every now and then he'll loan me a cd to listen to, or, rarely, give me one. When he does, it's up to me to put it on the ipid, play it at home, or listen in the car. Sometimes he gets stuff before it breaks, and I ignore it (Matisyahu was on my floor for 3 months before he realized I never listened to it and he took it back). Other times he'll have a choice between two cd's at work, such as Fall Out Boy and, umm, The Lashes, and he'll grab the Lashes cd. bust.

But every now and then he comes home with something really good. Late last year it was Andrew Bird and and album called The Mysterious Production of Eggs. If you like Bright Eyes, or the Decemberists, or Sufjan Stevens, then you'll dig Andrew Bird. He must be huge in the Netherlands, because he's doing a bunch of shows there and his manager is dutch. who knew?

more recently, the roommate brought home Panic! At the Disco, which was good but they're the indie-hipster band of the moment so that was easy. recently big in the UK and looking to break here in the US is Hard-Fi. if you like Bloc Party then you might like Hard-Fi. they're on Atlantic now, so i'm sure you'll hear about them fairly soon.

in other news, my friend sam sold me his old guitar. This is a great opportunity to suck at something. haven't had a chance to do that recently (relationships excepted), so i'm looking forward to it. sort of. the guitar sounds great. I do not. i tried to get it to make beautiful noises last night. no luck.
thanks for reading.

the ONLY thing that would make that picture any better...

... is if it had Chuck Norris in it.
I think that's him in the background, in the serape.
I mean it.

long on pictures, short on content; plus, is it fun to be your ex's buddy?

I have been recently jealous of images posted on other blogs. and then somebody sent me a picture of a naked david hasselhoff w/ two little shar pei puppies, one in his lap to cover up his junk. i refuse to post it; resolution was poor, but it was definitely him. I hear he's huge in germany. if you know what I mean. and I think you do.

I wanted to post my desktop picture so that you can see how we do it here at GJAW. it's pc, it's big 80's, and it's easily the sweetest interweb photo i've ever gotten. best part is I've only gotten it a couple of times. it's a relative rarity. and resolution is good. I invite you to send it to all your friends. I'd put my initials in the corner, but I have no idea where it came from, and I can't take credit for it.

in other news, is it fun to be your ex's buddy? I'm saying, umm, no. I can't do it. I have had two friends that were really good at it. one turned out to be gay, and the other is just very sensitive. me, I can't do it. if you can, more power to you. I figure, if you could be buddies then why break up in the first place? in my case (pun intended - HONK!) you get dumped because you put too much pressure on the relationship and keep having freakouts. nicely done. that's not a good foundation for buddy-ness. it also depends on the girl. some girls, they heart being buddies. I think my ex would loooove to be buddies.

somehow that makes the breakup suck even worse.

pointless commentary: Dick Vitale still gets a paycheck

I read that Dick Vitale is on the ballot for the Basketball HOF.
(begging your pardon, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.)

I'm unclear exactly what The Dick's contribution to basketball has been. He is bland, witless, vague, and utterly useless as an announcer. Maybe he was a better coach, although if he were, he would probably still be coaching. Instead, he found a niche for himself as a rah-rah hoops announcer, where ability is less important than bombastic tone. Fortunately there is room in the ESPN studio for guys like Jay Bilas, who isn't afraid to describe game action in measured tones. DickyV just screams cliches and catchphrases and adds nothing. For this he gets nominated to the HOF? How does that happen? The guy might know a lot about basketball, but we'll never know. It's too much "awesome, baby!" and "diaper DANDY!!". tedious.

for an example of saying nothing about something, see the following articles "written" by dick vitale.
http://espn.go.com/dickvitale/060301VitaleonAssistantCoaches.html
http://espn.go.com/dickvitale/060303VitaleRoundballtalk.html

I really liked the one on assitant coaches that were former head coaches. Dicky V always shills for assistants to get head coaching jobs at new places because he got fired once and it sucked for him. What he doesn't do is identify coaches that are doing a bad job and need to move on. Everyone always does a great job in dickyland. Where are these new jobs going to come from? Isn't somebody doing a bad job somewhere? we'll never know.

back, but still mediocre; lenten commitments: son of a b!

hello faithful readers. I have not rewarded your vigilance with an update in quite some time. I just haven't felt like it. the general malaise that came over me 3 weeks ago still lingers. sure i've had a chance to shake it off. sort of. but it's tougher than I thought. these things happen, etc. and so forth.

I watched most of a carolina/duke basketball game and it was great because Duke lost. at home. dick vitale was so overblown with his superlatives that I thought his fat head was going to go supernova and black hole all at once: explode, and then collapse in on itself because of its tremendous mass. the black hole would have wiped out Cameron Indoor Arena, a nice bonus.

but it didn't happen. if it had, you probably would have heard about it. probably. Duke dropped all the way to number 3 in the polls after they lost 2 games in one week. Fairly generous, if you consider that other teams might have dropped out of the top 10. However, I felt it was fair, because Duke was very good all year. Not the best team in the country (hellooooo, UCONN!), but very good.

the olympics were on. I didn't watch much. there was some curling. and some figure skating. and that skier that liked to party didn't do well. he came off as kind of a jerk, but i never met the guy, so who knows? he probably just doesn't care about being on TV. he obviously doesn't care about doing well at his job, since he's been sucknutsass all year on the world cup circuit. so he was sucknutass at the olympics. who cares? maybe nike and atomic. and the other skiers that know they can beat him every week, they care a lot.

re: lent, per a suggestion from a friend, I am giving up swearing. even my tried and true swear words I used when I was a more hard-core christian (b**** and a**). i've let them all go. it took me all of 20 minutes this morning to stumble, so this is going to be a bit more work than I anticipated. but I'm working on it. I was going to give up my only other serious vice, booze, but st. patrick's day is coming up. some things even I can't do.

nascar: not just for white people (yeah that's a lie); plus, dating insight!

I take a passing interest in nascar. I know people that know people so I get to hear firsthand stories about the inner workings about the France family, some of the drivers and sponsors, etc. if I was lucky enough to have a similar relationship with people in MLB then I'd probably pay a lot more attention to the Woodland Hills Angels of Huntington Beach. anyway, I'll throw a race on the TV since it's in HD and i'm not busy.
I should have done it last week for the DAYTONA 500 but I was too hung over.
some observations for this first race in Fontana:

• An african-american woman sang the national anthem. I didn't know they allowed black people at nascar events. the field and the grandstands remain lily white. given that the US population is 12% black, there should be one or two black drivers.
  
• the duff sisters are honorary race officials. 'duff said.
  
• I like that the announcers recognize that this is the start of the real nascar racing season. the daytona 500 is "the great american race" but restrictor-plate racing sucks. it's just not nascar.
• this was my favorite part of the whole deal: during the race, one of the announcers explains that tony stewart refuses to talk about last weeks race (stewart was penalized for driving too aggressively). according to the announcer, stewart tells journalists "one thing I learned about history is that no one has ever changed it!" [interesting, though unsophisticated, argument from someone that didn't finish high school] one of the other announcers, Michael Waltrip, chimes in with, "and, you don't LEARN from it!"
  indeed. you don't LEARN from history. got it. I'll write that down. so profound, and yet so RETARDO.
  

that's all I have, because I went to lunch with my buddy. there's only so much not learning from history that I can take.

oh yeah, in case you forgot: girls are lame. I mean it.

dude, where's my muse? ; plus, cougars

yeah I haven't felt like writing this week.
it's a copout, writing about not writing, but there it is.
usually funny stuff happens to me and then I write about it. but not lately. hmm... that's not completely true. check this out...

I was at a wedding on saturday and me and my buddy were putting the finishing touches on our buzz after the reception. so we went to a bar in Corona del Mar (i was in my tux). while at the bar, I overheard the following exchange. I overheard it because one of the participants was me, and the other was a 40 yr old woman (for the record, she was attractive).

40 year old woman [indicating my stockpile of drinks on the bar]: are you hoarding drinks? [smiles]

drunk case [wobbling slightly]: no. i'm stockpiling. [leans on bar, looks bored/drunk/sophisticated]

40yow [tosses hair]: huh! you guys are soooo cute!

dc [still wobbly]: hmmmm... ya think?

40yow: for suuure! so, you guys like [name of bar]? is it because of all the hot older women?

dc [looking confused/ill]: no.

40yow [eyeing another woman jealously]: I can't wait until I get my surgery done.

dc [aghast]: huh?

40yow: my surgery. I'm getting the full workup now that i'm 40 - lipo my hips and waist, plus new boobs. I'm gonna be hot! [giggles]

[partner makes joke here - all laugh - I can't remember, except that it wasn't that funny]

40yow [steps closer]: so, what's with you younger guys going after older women? why do people do that?

dc [in inexplicable moment of clarity, esp. given current condition]: same reason as all other human relationships, both parties get what they want.

40yow [steps closer still]: wow! i've never heard that! you smell gooooooood! [sniffs neck, touches lapel, etc.]

dc [sensing danger]: uhh, yeah. we gotta go to... uhh... the other bar.

40yow: already? well, okay. you boys have a good time tonight! [giggles]

[exeunt all, rapidly]

only in Corona del Mar. or La Jolla. or LA. or lots of other places. but especially in CDM.

having your birthday off is sweet, and by sweet I mean totally awesome

today is my 32nd birthday.
i'm working to embrace 32. not having any success so far, but i have it pretty good so I cannot (rather, should not) complain. today is a good day.

****************
[Sappy Theological Interlude]
it was kind of a bummer of a week, so I asked my friends if they could pray for me. i'm all about specific prayers, so I asked them if they would ask God to show himself to me in a tangible way, because that's what I needed. By asking for that, I also helped prepare myself for the idea that I would be able to see it when he did. (God is with you all the time, but that doesn't mean you're willing/able to see him.)
God did show himself to me, and he did it by surrounding me with great friends. I got more calls, kind words, and positive attention in the past week than I can remember. I don't think I'm worthy of that kindness, but I'll take it where I can get it, and I'm intensely thankful.
It's good to be me, and I wasn't feeling that a week ago. Thank you God, and thank you, peeps.
[STI concluded]
*****************

having your birthday off is sweet. I have time to do some laundry, play some xbox, gym, enjoy a late lunch, and make myself a cake. good deal. it's back to the usual tomorrow, but the usual is the same as today, but I have to go to work. and there's cake.
thanks for reading. -c-

the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away

my requests have been answered: I finally found a way to blow $650 of my hard earned on a new video game console. I bought an xbox360, extra controller, and a couple games (call of duty2, and Madden '06).

I'd like to thank best buy for answering the phone, Visa for giving me credit where credit is due; plus a special thanks to Sara for freeing up my social calendar so completely (by dumping me this past Tuesday).

on the whole I would have rather kept the girl and f'd the xbox, but what're you gonna do?
the lord giveth, the lord taketh away.

monuments to me: shallowness on parade

hey I worked it out. got a picture of me in the profile.
it's not my favorite picture but whatever. i don't have that many since I'm the one that's always holding the camera.
next step, add a link to myspace page. I might have to get some work done before I do that.
i'm loving this monument to me. so narcissistic, yet delicious.



me.

ketel one and soda: not a good solution, but an excellent stopgap measure; also, Cheney takes responsibility?

ahhh, nothing eases you into a spell of depression like a hangover.

thank you, ketel one, for allowing me to embrace the suck in my life, if only for a short time. our affair was fleeting, but I cherished the time we spent together. it'll be a while before we get a chance to get together like that again.

I'll miss you, dear ketel one. don't think of this as good-bye. think of it as... until next time.

----------------------
in unrelated news, the VP of our great nation shot a man on Sunday. It was a hunting accident, and he spoke to Fox "news" about it today. One headline from earlier this week said, and I quote, "Cheney may have broken one of the first rules of hunting". That was on Yahoo. I have done a little bit of hunting.

to get a hunting license in CA you have to take a hunter safety course, take a test, etc, etc. I took it, and I don't remember if they stated the rule about not shooting one of your hunting buddies explicitly, or if it was just implied. In any case, i'm pretty sure it was one of the first rules. Definitely in the top five. If number 1 is "Don't shoot yourself", then number 2 has got to be "don't shoot somebody else".

-------------------
can anybody, and I mean anybody, get me a deal on an xbox360?
i might have to break down and just buy one on ebay. this is getting ridiculous.

tomorrow is a new day; write that down.

getting dumped: not my favorite; plus, it's past my bedtime

yeah so the ex, or until very recently, the GF, dumped me today. yesterday, by the time you read this. yes, it was on valentine's day. also our little nascent anniversary, and also a couple days before my birthday. but hey, if it's coming, why delay the inevitable? and while we're at it, why bother making an emotional investment in a person at all, ever? S. Pinker has some intelligent things to say about this (in the book How the Mind Works) , but i'm too drunk/lazy to look them up. and lonely. as per usual. ahhhh, I forgot what that feels like. allow me to take a few months and embrace the lonely...

so that happened. and I'm not too pleased about it. I really liked her.

that's all I have. shit happens. she sucks. I suck. fuck it. I don't have anything nice to say. I don't have anything funny to say, either.

happy valentine's day.

blog was edited to correct spacing error and wrong word

so much good stuff; happy valentines day anyway

ahh, lots has happened since yesterday.
the SI Swimsuit Issue hits newsstands today. you can find photos online here: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/features/2006_swimsuit/

also, the olympics continue. Bode Miller was DQd in his latest race and his best chance for a medal. reports seem to indicate that he's out of shape. he had a big year last year and I don't think he's all that motivated right now. Winning the world cup (like he did last year) is a superior achievement to winning a gold medal in Turino. (that's a joke, not a typo, thx.) I doubt he'll get it together, but you never know.

And finally, I'll try to post a picture today. you can always go over to myspace.com/casewriter, but I like blogs that have a photo of the author. so I'll get on that.
also, my birthday is Monday, 20 Feb. Be sure to call and say something nice about how good I look for 32.
xo

world whatever classic

so a bunch of overpaid steroid-addled freaks are going to get together this winter and bore me to tears in some type of athletic contest? where do I sign up to not watch/read/pay attention to this non-event?

I'm not talking about the winter olympics, I'm talking about the "world baseball classic", or MLBs attempt to grow the business outside of latin america. Mike Piazza is playing for italy, for pete's sake. Not sure if the Russian team is going to be any good, and I know that the cubans were almost banned for, umm, castro living so damn long, but i'm sure there are some third world countries where this is important. I can't find any on a map (do you know where the Dominican Republic is? what about Venezuela? I thought not).

On the upside, Cuba was finally allowed to play after they agreed to some such limitation or other. I really have no idea why they weren't going to be allowed in the first place. Human rights violations, I guess. I think selling these useless games as a form of entertainment is a human rights violation. What, exactly, did Castro do? Probably he prevented people from speaking out against him. Fair enough; that is a violation of human rights. My guess is that after 30+ years of ineffective sanctions that telling Castro he couldn't play in the WWC was the last straw. He has had all he can take. You don't have him to, umm, saction, any more. I don't think the cuban team will have any of the defectors on it, which makes it a non-factor from a comptetitive standpoint. From an entertainment standpoint, I hope Castro tells Bud "Milquetoast" Selig to Get Fucked.

re: the superbowl - way to play it, Big Ben. You looked good out there. And by "good" I mean "extremely bad". Seahawks, not much better. You played just bad enough to lose to a team that didn't look good enough to win.
thanks for reading.

making love out of nothing at all

I want to throw a shout-out to the jerk that stole the Air Supply Greatest Hits (gold edition) cd out of my car a couple years ago. You also took my All American Rejects CD, and a couple others. Maybe the Ataris. I haven't been able to find that one. My roommate didn't take it. Anyway, what the hell were you thinking? you took my car registration, too. apparently this was of use to you or some registrationless friend of yours. Did you even look at the cd's? Air Supply? sheesh.

This past weekend was a big one for the fat kid. I'm not talking about the olympics. I'm talking about re-caulking the master bathtub. who knew how much fun this could be? first, removing the caulk. a chore, but with some elbow grease and planning this wasn't that bad. it wasn't that good, either. then, you dry out the area. that's easy. I own a fan, so I put it to work. then the hard part: actually getting the caulk onto the surface. this is where things got a little cockeyed.

the caulking gun, though serviceable, is not really made for caulking a steady bead. also I'm a retard. these two things together make for a less than superb line. ahh, if there's isn't time to do it right there's always time to do it over. and over. and over. i ended up doing a couple sections numerous times, employing a variety of implements, and generally making a mess of it. repeatedly. I tested out the f word a few times.

I just don't know how to handle a big caulk. (honk!)

i hope that it'll hold up for a couple more months before I have to go back and do it again. enh, it's not that bad.
but it's not that good, either.
-------------------------
raves: mom got me a new jacket for my birthday. dear mom: you rule. if you want to check it out, go to mountainhardwear.com and view the men's Alchemy jacket. yay, mom. I've wanted one for a while. mine is black. it's bitchin. it's also 85 degrees in the oc today (not a typo), but it's always winter in the office. so i'm wearing it at my desk.

beatings will continue until morale improves (email test)

greetings from lovely Northern CA.

I still can't quite get the blogger to work from my desk at the home office (maybe the company is trying to tell me something?), so I'm trying out this "mail to an address and post" feature. absolutely no idea if it works or not. we'll know soon enough.

in news of the week I was scooped for a blog topic by Super Sam. he writes at length (on donttouchmystuff.blogspot.com) about the idiocy and hypocrisy of the people that are rioting over cartoons that depict the image of Mohammed. I agree with his post so I'm not going to reproduce it here. I don't think people protesting over this perceived slight is a big deal; I think people killing others and firebombing stuff and throwing rocks at embassies (like the US embassy in Afghanistan? what are you doing? what did the US have to do with this?) are retardo. And I think most rational people would agree.

from the raves department, I get to go home today. and I'm pretty damn excited about it.
more later.

things that don't suck: when you get to meet your hero and he's not a jerk

I didn't get to meet my hero.
but I do follow soccer, and Freddy Adu got to meet his favorite soccer player (coincidentally, also my favorite soccer player) - Zinedine Zidane. he had this to say on SI.com:

I had a nice conversation with Ronaldo, and Zidane was a great guy. It was funny. He'd read a couple interviews I'd done, and I'd said he was my favorite player. So he came over to me and said, after the game, I'd like to take a picture with you, and if you need me to sign anything I'd be happy to do it. He was pure class.

that is bitchin. kind of how you'd hope a super megastar would act if you met them: aloof, yet accomodating. you can't be buddies, because you don't have anything in common. but they can be generous with their time, because it doesn't take much and it goes a long way.

taken to school

I got my lunch money taken away on the basketball court last night.
I used to play a little basketball, now and again, in my free time. my buddy Dave (the MVP of the night) was getting a game together and said come on down. I figured, sure, why not? i don't play that much any more but it's still good to get out there, shoot a little bit.

except it wasn't good. it was about as far away from good as you can imagine. I was terrible. execrable. it was humiliating. adding insult to injury, the guys on my team were even worse. at least I know how to play and can contribute on the defensive end. my teammates, not so much. my teammates? well, you know that part in hoosiers where the little guy dribbles the ball off his foot and it goes out of bounds? my team was like that, only worse. missed layups and airballs were the order of the day. a jump shot was a haphazard, rotation-free chuck at the rim. and NO ONE would pass, at all, ever. so, let's list the keys to sucking at playground basketball, and see how we did:

1. no passing - check. every guy (except me) was a black hole. I would pass the ball, make a cut hoping to get the ball back, and no. once I got rid of it, there was no getting it back. and forget about getting the ball in a position to score. forget about getting the ball.
   
2. no moving without the ball - check. hey everybody, stand around and wait for the ball so you can keep it, throw it out of bounds, and/or throw it towards the rim (and out of bounds). superb.
   
3. no screening, either on, or away from, the ball - check. this goes with no moving without the ball, so forget about getting a pick, or expecting anybody to run in the right direction if you set a pick for them. idiots.
   
4. big guys playing the wing, small guys playing the block - check. you can always identify a bad streetball player when he doesn't use his size to his advantage and he's got no skills. which brings us to item 5
5. one-hand, or absent, dribbling skills; no shooting; uni-directional post-up play - check. team retardo really showed their mettle here. all of these elements were on prominent display, usually on each posession. you would think it would be easy to defend, since a guy could only go one way. you would think that, except you didn't see team retardo.
   
6. bumblebee spacing (on offense, everyone runs towards the ball, enabling a single defender to guard more than one person) - check. this happened a couple of times, when I'd be in the open floor and one of my teammates would run right at me, along with his defender. what the hell are you doing? take your sorry self and your guy somewhere else.
   
7. (my favorite) super-slow-mo decision making - check. if you do decide to pass: before you throw the ball out of bounds, wait for the defender to catch up. heck, wait for him to tie his shoes, eat a cookie, blow-dry his hair, do some light ab work, whatever. then let him catch up with me, and then throw me the ball. I promise I'll give it back to you so you can score, and by "score" I mean "suck".

i'm looking forward to getting back on the court, working on my game. there is no doubt it needs work. dave and ryan gave me a basketball lesson. taste it.

why the name change, and so much more

thanks for reading.
apologies for the broken bookmarks. I'm glad you found your way back.

I've been pondering a title/address change for a couple weeks now. the scope of the blog has expanded and I wanted a title that reflected its new direction. I couldn't think of one, so I used greatjoballweek instead. it came to me in a vision, and by "it came to me" I mean "I had gas" and by "in a vision" I mean "I couldn't sleep".

it's less copycat than firedickvitale; that was a blatant ripoff of someone else's good idea. GJAW (Great Job All Week, get it?) is a bit more original, esp. since nobody else had used it yet. you would be surprised how many good blog titles were already taken. I felt lucky to get this one.

this is my new favorite time waster over at mousebreaker: http://www.mousebreaker.com/games/uberbreakout2/play.php

download the new shockwave player and tell me how you do. level first, and then score. if you can't get to level 13 then I don't know you. if you do, then we can talk; the score is a tiebreak only.
xoxo

liveblogging the Duke at BC game on espnHD - or: Fellating Coach K, JJ Reddick, Duke, et. al.

greetings from my living room. not to be confused with my other living room. (anyone that has been to visit chez casey would get this joke.)

i'm watching duke play at boston college on TV. I think if Duke played the Ojai school of the Blind then ESPN would carry it.
I thought I'd come to you live because it's easier to make fun of Mike Patrick and Dick Vitale this way. we (and by we i mean dick and mike) just got breathlessly describing how great Reddick is. this is a common theme when they are on TV. probably because he is really good. he hits an open 3 in a 5 on 1 break (nice job hustling back, BC), which is my favorite kind of decision making: the kind that's good only when it goes in, and it's all JJ all the time. then he misses an open shot and Patrick says, "he hasn't had that good of a night shooting the ball". really? he's 6 of 13 you tard. that's just under 50%, and an exceptional rate when you factor in the fact that he takes a lot of 3's.

ahh, sideline reporter tells us that one assistant GM in the NBA thinks Reddick will succeed in the NBA because he has the "heart of a thief". what the fuck does that mean? Patrick tells us that he means that "in a good way." Heart of a thief? how about being a guy that makes a lot of shots? how about competing in a league where everybody is faster than you and can jump higher? it doesn't matter how many shots you can make if you can't get rid of the guy that is in your hip pocket. Reddick won't be able to. Not at the NBA level. JJ will be Danny Ferry, circa 2006. bummer.

cue montage of reddick making shots (to Fall Out Boy). I just threw up. I admit, he does fill it up.
okay, the girl is here. I have better things to do (thank God).
great job all week. xoxo

32 is the new 27; plus, big momma's what?

I have a birthday coming up.
it's Monday, 20 february. I am turning 32. I am doing a lot better with this one than I did with 31. I won't be sorry to see 31 go, although it was a good year. I started the blog, met a girl, got some work done, traveled a bit, listened to some good music, laughed a lot, and read some really good books. If 32 is much the same then I can't complain. I will complain, because as my mom pointed out years ago, I've never needed a reason.

32 feels a little better than 31 because it's 2 to the fourth, which is a good number. it's divisible by 2 (dur), 4, 8, and 16. that appeals to my OCD nature. it's a number that's got some balance, and I could use a little balance in my life.

I won't accept presents but I do appreciate a phone call, so put me on your calendar for Presidents Day. My birthday is a holiday this year. Thank you very much mr's Washington and Lincoln.
-----------
super sam has a sweet entry about the movie Big Mama's House 2 over on the donttouchmystuff blog. I recommend it.
this new movie stars martin lawrence in fat suit. who knew that they could mine such a sweet premise for another 90 minutes of hilarity and hijinks?

I also have these words: no one ever lost when betting on the bad taste of america. for examples, see: Idol, American; survivor; Bachelor, the; wife swap; Vitale, Dick; etc.
thanks for reading. call me. I miss you.

here we go again...

greetings from the OC.
I noticed I had a nice run of postings there for a couple days, and then I sort of lost my focus.
I still haven't found it, but we're going to keep you current anyway, just for fun.

here's an update on some past topics:

1. dick vitale is still the main "color" announcer for ESPNs college basketball broadcasts. yes. and by yes, I mean suck.
2. the girl that sent a picture of herself in a penguin costume to my friend Jeff recently sent him another email that said, "Are we fighting? hehe! -shan" really, this happened. Jeff didn't write her back because she sent a picture of herself in a penguin costume. and she's ugly. we don't know for a fact that the girl is ugly, but we don't know for a fact if the earth is round, either. do we? I do know that if the earth sent a picture of itself in a penguin costume then it would be ugly.
   
3. I heart moosejaw. this is a short version of the "raves" theme I started last week. go here: www.moosejaw.com and just embrace the madness. special points if you read the moosejaw daily remark. or buy me something expensive (I wear a size L in all mountain hardwear stuff).
   

more sports criticism and related commentary to follow at the end of the week. there's only so much firing dick vitale that I can reasonably do. sure, there's lots of other retardo out there, but it's not always that easy to track down. ahh, who am I kidding? it's super bowl week! there's enough idiocy to fill a daily column. i'll keep you posted.
xo -c-

kobe scores 81 (yawn)

so Kobe Bryant scored 81 points in a basketball game? 55 in the second half! it's surreal, but it happened. and we have video of it, which is one thing we don't have of the Big Dipper's game in 1961 or 62. there are a few players in the league that could score that many points in a game, but you have to be playing on a really bad team to do it, and you have to also be playing a really bad team.

I yawned about it because it's not going to help the lakers win a championship. who cares if you lead the league in scoring if your team sucks and you don't win a ring? I think kobe makes a lot of noise about winning a championship, but I'm not sure he really means it. we won't know until he gets some better players on his team. if he trusts them and works within the system then i'll believe it. Jordan won his rings with Pippen and a bunch of role players (Bill Cartwright? Steve Kerr?), so Kobe can do it, too. Whether he'll actually let that happen is unknown. I tend to doubt it. he's much too "me first". I guess he should be, but you can't do it by yourself against a letitimate (read: playoff) team.

an english lesson; plus, raves!

this from the dictionary.com definition of impertinence:

im·per·ti·nence (m-pûrtn-ns)
n 1: an impudent statement [syn: impudence, cheek]
2: the trait of being rude and impertinent; inclined to take liberties [syn: crust, gall, impudence, insolence, cheekiness, freshness]

here's a real-world example from some correspondence I received:

i noticed a conspicuous absence in the blog of the lesson you received
(no charge by the way) last weekend on how to play basketball. if you
are going to comment on a basketball commentator, the audience would
probably like to know that you are doing your best to learn the sport
from a superior player. i'm just sayin'. next time i am dropping 81
on you.
taste it old man,
z

Full disclosure: I did get a basketball lesson this weekend, and I did lose 2 (as in, two) games of 1/1 w/ Zach. I am not happy about it. not even a little bit. I'll be better prepared next time.
old man? how is it going to look when the old man beats you? it's best not to hurl insults; you never know when they might come back to haunt you.
------------

in the raves department, I decided that I needed to inject some positivity into the blog. not "I'm positive I'm going to whip zach like a rented mule the next time we play basketball." rather, something new or old that I like and think you might enjoy. I'll come back to it (like text and subtext) in future blogs.
I'll save it for a new entry, though, so that we can focus on something truly superb, instead of Zach and his bad manners.

bad statistics are really retardo

so I'm reading an article (you can try to find it here, but the link might be broken by now) by Stewart Mandel, a normally very reliable writer for SI.com. he is explaining how unlikely it is that NDSU (go Bison!) beat Wisconcin on Saturday. I take exception to Mandel's use of scurrilous statistics to support his claim that home court advantage is most significant for men's college basketball. here's the relevant portion:

homecourt advantage plays a bigger role than in any other major sport.

not sure what he means by "major sport", or if college basketball is a major sport; I guess it's paying his bills, but is it bigger than golf? bigger than NASCAR? Is NASCAR a sport? I digress...

Entering Saturday's games, Big Ten teams had won 90.2 percent of their home games this season. Jeff Sagarin factors in a 3.8-point advantage for home teams in his college basketball computer ratings, higher than he does for the NFL (3.51), NBA (2.98) or college football (2.48).

Let's compare apples to apples here, Stewie: Do the scores of home teams in the NFL and home teams in college basketball equal approximately the same number? No. Is the overall average home score for D1 men's basketball in the same ballpark as the average home score for an NBA game? it's probably closer, but no. The notion of comparing college football and basketball home scores is so retardo i'm not even going to consider it here. You get the idea.

So Stewart's point, that the home-team point advantage somehow indicates that college basketball teams have more of an advantage, than, say, an NFL home team, is silly, because what is relevant is not the total point advantage, but what percentage of the points that advantage represents. 3 points is a lot in football. You might score 21 points, and that field goal was 14% of your total output. In a college basketball game you might score 60 points (if you play slowly), and that 3 points? it's 5% of your output. Which is a long way from 14%, and which means that you're just making stuff up.

okay if you're still reading you're either a huge geek or my mom. thanks.

intelligent design vs. evolution: crap science vs. evidence

I posted this comment in response to a blog entry over on the donttouchmystuff blogspot.
you can read his original post there. my comment also appears there, but i thought it warranted some words here, as well.
------------------------------------

let's deconstruct your question, because it reflects a commonly held opinion.

a) intelligent design is religious. you won't find any secular proponents.

b) intelligent design is bad science. you won't find any credible scientist that suggests it has any basis in scientific fact.

c) evolution is good science. you can agree or disagree, but smarter men (and women) than you have worked hard to disprove it. they haven't proven anything. on the other hand, you can experience evolution firsthand the next time you get the flu.

d) people that argue about keeping intelligent design out of the classroom don't have to bother arguing about religion (although it's relevant, see item a), because it's crap science.

e) there is no "debate" in the scientific community about ID vs. evolution. if you're not sure, go here: http://www.natcenscied.org/

xoxo -c-

mix tapes rule, and dancing is good for you

have mix tapes improved since the advent of cd's and cd burners? I think I only ever made one real mix tape. you know the kind, where you had to play cd's and record onto an actual tape. it took hours and hours and although I guess the tape was well received I don't think it was time well spent. it was really just a huge pain in the ass.

now, with itunes or winamp, you can put together a playlist and burn a cd for somebody in less time that it will take you to finish reading this blog entry (do one now, while you're reading this). so is the gift of the mixed cd any less significant than the one you had to spend hours and hours on back in the 80's and early 90's? I say no. I think that the advent of the burned cd is just the evolution of the mix tape. how much time it actually takes you to burn the cd is irrelevant.

what's important is how much time you spent choosing the songs, creating a mood with song order. I did a quick search on "mix tape" and found entire websites devoted to the art of mix tapes, plus a website devoted to mix tape culture that sells hip hop vinyl, cds, and dvds. Tiny Mix Tapes has their own mix tape generator, which I didn't test but seems pretty damn cool to me. And Art of the Mix is a website devoted to the fine art of making mixes. As a hobbyist dj, all this stuff is pretty cool. I invite you to check it out. I even found a site that sells vinyl, mix tapes, cds and dvds. It's not uncommon for some artists (usually urban) to break out by appearing on mix tapes. DMX, Jay-Z, and 50 Cent all got their start this way. respect the mix tape!

finally, my adopted sister is passionate about her dancing. she dosen't like to perform, but she loves to take lessons and study dance. she is scheduled to take an exam (level 8, if you're keeping score) in a couple weeks, and I wanted to give her big ups for continuing to learn, study, and practice what she loves. she claims she'll be the second-oldest person ever to study for a level 8 test (she's 31), but I say she rules for doing what she loves and challenging herself. we should all follow her example. and make mix tapes. yours should be done by now. give it to someone you care about.

FDV caption winner; looking for roommates; paying for lunch; and can we please get back to firing the fuck out of dick vitale?

greetings from the OC.
the FDV caption winner was submitted by B-Real in his guest post. "March of the Mondays", while not as original as some of the others, made me laugh the most. Scooter MacGruder pointed out that everyone in the picture (see below) is looking off in some other direction, which I hadn't noticed and found very amusing. Thanks to all the participants. B-Real, the check for $6 is in the mail. Or I'll just buy you a twack when I see you. I can probably get a deal on the PBR up there in the frozen north.

this just in from the FDV wires: looking for a new roommate kind of sucks. a lot.

re: paying for lunch, I got sandbagged by a pro this weekend. I go to lunch with my homie that writes the new http://donttouchmystuff.blogspot.com and he says that today is his big day: he's going to pay. I say, damn, I forgot my ice skates, did hell freeze over? he says very funny, suck it, let's have lunch. so we eat a nice lunch at the gypsy den (okay food, very cute wait staff), and his girlfriend (works there) sorts it out so that there is no charge. I was thinking maybe a discount, but free? [I heart independent eateries. good luck getting your lunch comped at TGI Just ate a Crappy meal at a mall-day's.] anyway, we can't leave without dropping a tip, but of course mr. "today is my big day to 'buy' lunch" doesn't have any cash. not one red cent. so who comes out of pocket? me. as per usual. enh, at least the company was good. maybe good-ish. fair. we'll say fair.

let's talk about dick vitale a little bit, because we haven't had a chance to look at his idiocy for a couple of weeks now.
fortunately this hiatus has worked to my advantage, since The Dick has literally clogged espn.com with his inane commentary (as opposed to me, who just fills my blog with inane commentary). the dick still flat-out sucks, but it gets kind of old just picking on him. he says the same thing over and over again, and while that works really well for him, it doesn't make for very entertaining blogging.

we'll hit a couple items, just for kicks. the Dick's verbage in glorious bold, my responses/commentary in plain text.
from the Stock Watch on 10 jan:

Former Virginia Tech quarterback Marcus Vick for being thrown off the team and then being arrested for brandishing a weapon at a McDonald's. It is a sad story.

A sad story? It's a story of a spoiled brat making one bad decision after another. A sad story is when you find out your friend has cancer. A sad story is two strong, handsome cowboys having a torrid love affair, and then getting torn apart by society and their own... huh? oh, I got carried away. my bad. uhhh, where was I? Vick is not a sad story. He's an asshole.
this from Roundball Chalk Talk on 16 Jan:

At Missouri, coach Quin Snyder would be the first to tell you that pressure has mounted about his job status.

"pressure has mounted about his job status?" what does that even mean? How many grammatical errors are there in that sentence? Let's do a rewrite, as if we were in sixth grade: Quin Snyder would agree that if he doesn't win more games his job is at risk.
moving on...

All he has done is rolled up his sleeves, gone to work and shut the critics up by beating Oklahoma State and Oklahoma (in Norman). That's the quickest way to silence your detractors.

Umm... yeah. So you're saying he did his job, got some wins? That's weird, because I am under pressure to do my job, too. And the way I "shut the critics up" is to do my job. Quin, big ups from FDV for doing your job. I wish I had a howler monkey like Dick Vitale to stand up for me at my place of employment. Then I could really "silence my detractors" by doing, umm, what they hired me for. It would reduce the mounting pressure in my lower bowel.

great job all week.

march of the mondays! (guest contributor)

this one comes from another guest contributor.
official FDV nickname: B-Real.
I know that's some mid-80's c-list rap guys nickname, but I think it's funny.
here you go:
--------------------------
March of the Mondays

The reasons your friend might want to avoid the
penguin are many. First off, and kinda shallow, is
that the lady beneath the penguin suit is patently
unattractive. Not passing judgement here, just
providing analysis. It just so happens that I, like
Thomas, the protagonist in the unbearable lightness of
being, actually prefer women with creative body shapes
and distinctive looks. That being said, if our
penguin friend was cute she would probably a) not be
playing the theme park circuit in the first place or
b) have secured a roll with a better respiratory
situation than that provided by the ‘guin. Read; snow
white, cinderella, any character sin full facial
coverage. Okay, not cute. Perhaps, like most of us,
simply average? If average, a fake mole and plastic
nose would be adequate to lock in, at minimum, a role
as the wicked witch or an evil stepmother. Alas, our
friend required not only a character with complete
face concealment but also one with a suit capable of
disguising her body as well.

Okay, looks aren’t everything, you say, and your
right. Well, our the penguin appears to be none too
sharp neither. Similar to casey’s sentiments about
the use of “we” and professional sports, I feel it
poor form for those employed in the “entertainment”
industry to drop quotes pilfered from movies regarding
office culture. Granted, office space is diabolically
and catastrophically funny and the “mondays” line was
given by a service industry employee “brian” (no
relation). Regardless, this irony is beyond the
capacities of our lady friend. But the dramatic irony
need not end there. Those of us (myself included) who
moonlight in the service industry, as a very condition
of employment have to work nights and weekends i.e.,
the times the rest of you paper-pushing nine-to-fivers
have off. As a result, the penguin can not even
relate to what “the mondays” would be like, as to her,
mondays represent a break from dressing up like a
jackass for the enjoyment of the spoiled brats of the
aforementioned paper-pushing nine-to-fivers. These
not so nuanced nuances appear to have just “slipped
through your [her] fingers”.

Now now, in her defense, perhaps she truly enjoys
rocking the burqa-esque ‘stume on the weekends which
allows her to spend her mondays at home, getting high
and watching office space for the seventy-ninth time.
Actually, now that I think about it, smoking some dope
and piling a chick in a head-to-toe penguin suit might
be just what the doctor ordered for my itchy new case
of the mondays.

March of the Retards

I have a friend who's mom hasn't gotten the memo about him having a girlfriend. Exactly why mom didn't get the memo is unknown. I think she's on board now. in any case, she works overtime at getting him dates. she wants grandkids, and she is definitely the type of person that will tell you what's best for you. so she got together with somebody else's mom in a yoga class and the two hens decided that their respective chicks should meet. you follow so far? neither mom has seen the other one's kid. it's all just hot air. only a mom or a retard would ever do something like this.

email addresses are exchanged. Jeff gets in touch with the girl. Unlike his mom, he decides he better do some pre-screening before he invites this girl out to meet the homies. he asks what she does for a living, what for fun, and etc. and so on. also he sends a picture from a recent social event. he's trying to initiate some blind-date, who-do-you-know type of dialog. straightforward stuff, really.

turns out the girl works part-time for disney, and this is the photo she sends back:


I can't make this stuff up.


and the photo is titled "Shan as penguin". really.
I encourage you to come up with your own best title.
best one wins a 12-pack of PBR.

look at the photo again. LOOK AT IT!
is that what you call putting your best foot forward?

you want to meet a guy and you send him a photo of you IN A PENGUIN SUIT?!?!

her email also contained the following line (copied verbatim):
"I hope you weren't sporting a case of the Mondays today..."

sporting a case of the mondays? what does that even mean? and did you really send a picture of yourself in a penguin costume?
remember: best photo caption or title wins a twack of PBR. get there.

and if you're interested, I can forward you this girls email. she doesn't get out much. maybe you're into that.

wanted: girl to distract me until I get the new xbox

I've been getting some requests to re-post the sweet (and by sweet I mean totally awesome) personal advert I threw up (pun intended) on craigslist the other day.
it's kind of cheap to recycle content but you'll read it anyway. you jerks.
I got one response from a girl that said she would "distract me." I emailed her back but she didn't respond. that's probably for the best.

for the record: I still don't have a new xbox.
-----------------------------------------------
wanted: girl to distract me until I get the new xbox - 31

I got to thinking about exactly what I was looking for in a relationship and I realized that it's not much.
just someone to keep me distracted until my new xbox gets here.

about me: I like to read, work out, travel, and eat mexican food.
i'm fit, 6 feet tall, brn hair and brn eyes.
decent looking. dry sense of humor. if you're interested I'll send you a picture.

about you: 22-34, fit (this is a must - don't email me if you're thick),
willing to eat out or get coffee once or twice a week, pretend you're interested,
and chat about music, books, religion, politics, etc. i'm not looking to make out with you, and sexual intercourse is neither implied nor guaranteed.
you just have to get my attention for a few weeks, maybe as long as a few months.

after the xbox arrives I definitely won't be able to fit you into my schedule. just 24 hours in a day, and I can't compromise one of my other hobbies. I like to go out to the bars with my friends, so i'm not going to quit doing that. I can't give up working out or I'll turn into a butterball. can't make time during the workday because I'm working. maybe we can compromise and catch up at the gym? we'll see.

I look forward to hearing from you.
.
. this is in or around in newport

celebrating the sports landscape; the royal "we"; also, swinging the hammer of ambition at the nail of sloth

this is a great time of year if you're a football fan.
The USC Trojans were, well, used like a Trojan by the Texas Longhorns, and the best player on the best team is going to take his chances in the NFL draft.
This past weekend, and the upcoming weekend, bring us a full football calendar, w/ 2 games each on saturday and sunday. Plus it's playoff football, which means that the games really do mean something. right now there's a nice ratio of hype to game. the hype machine ratchets up the later we get into january, which is odd, because there's less football to actually watch. I am a fan of football, but not a die-hard fan. My favorite team (the niners) are unwatchable. But I do enjoy the game, and I appreciate that there are a lot of losers out there that use the word "we" in reference to a particular team. This makes me laugh.

here's the deal: if you were never on the payroll for a particular franchise, then you cannot accurately use the word "we" in reference to the team's performance. I understand you feel a strong connection to the squad, and that you bought the jersey, and (as Seinfeld pointed out) you're in love with laundry. That is no excuse. This "we" stuff has got to stop. Here's a list of defintions of the word from dictionary.com:

1. Used by the speaker or writer to indicate the speaker or writer along with another or others as the subject: We made it to the lecture hall on time. We are planning a trip to Arizona this winter.
2. Used to refer to people in general, including the speaker or writer: “How can we enter the professions and yet remain civilized human beings?” (Virginia Woolf).
3. Used instead of I, especially by a writer wishing to reduce or avoid a subjective tone.
4. Used instead of I, especially by an editorialist, in expressing the opinion or point of view of a publication's management.
5. Used instead of I by a sovereign in formal address to refer to himself or herself.

at no point in there does it say, "used by a member of the unaffiliated general public in reference to a particular sports team or club to imply an affinity or (nonexistent) relationship." glad we [definition 4] cleared that up. a ha.

as far as the hammer and nail thing goes, I'm doing my best over here. really. we'll get back to firing dick vitale later this week. it's only monday. I'll post again on friday at the latest.

Dear USC Dynasty: suck it; Texas knows cheerleading; and: Vegas on NYE = Hell on earth

Yes! Yes! Yes! why! eee! ess! YES!
I've been away for a bit. I was out of town for NYE, visiting Las Vegas. That's a supposedly fun thing I'll never do again. More on that later.

The most important thing we can talk about in today's entry is what excellent news it was that USC lost last nights national championship game. If you're reading this then I don't need to give you all the details. Suffice to say that the game lived up to the hype, and that USCs winning streak came to an end. I live in USC central, and there are few things more annoying the USC fans that didn't go to the school. (Maybe Notre Dame fans that didn't go to Notre Dame.) One thing more annoying than fans that didn't go to the school are the fans that did. USC grads just suck (with some exceptions). It's possible that rich, white american high school kids already have a strong sense of entitlement and superiority before they get there, but USC must put arrogance on the curriculum, because the students seem to master it before they graduate. I don't even notice when someone from USC doesn't remember that we've already met a couple times, or that we have mutual friends. If you didn't go there then you don't rate.

Thus it was nice to see USC lose so I don't have to hear about how great they are for the next 3 months. they will contend next year and beyond, because they have a good program and they're on TV a lot. But the streak is over. And not a moment too soon.

Re: Texas and cheerleading - they do it right down there. For better or for worse, cheerleading is SERIOUS business down in Texas. When you are a boy growing up in Texas you want to play high school football. If you're a girl, you want to make the cheerleading squad. (this is outlined at length in the seminal book on hs football in texas, Friday Night Lights.) Cheer at UT Austin is a big deal, and I have to give the UT squads props for being much, much cuter than the USC cheer squad. SC had the edge in outfits (best cheer outfits in any sport, college or pro), but Texas girls were way cuter, and there were a lot more of them. respect.

Finally, I have experienced hell and it looks like Vegas on NYE. I didn't know what I was getting myself into but I went to the strip on NYE and next thing I know I was having a freakout. at one point I just picked my feet up and there was so much crowd pressure i just hung there, continuing to move in whatever direction the crowd took me. not a good feeling. lots of screaming, anxious people. tens of thousands. no room to turn around or control your direction. just thinking about it gives me the willies. yuk. don't do it. ever.
fireworks were pretty good, though.
and my friend Dave showed us some sweet, sweet moves on a stripper pole.
go to my myspace page for pix: http://www.myspace.com/casewriter