Amnesia

Did you miss me? I certainly missed you!

We moved into the house this weekend, and Cox Communications came today and installed phone and internet. For those of you who read this and showed up to help move, thank you soo much. You saved the day.

There is an interesting write up in today’s boston.com about the ‘Steal a Base, Get a Taco’ promotion that is running during the world series. While everyone is shoving free meet filled corn shells into their mouths come this Tuesday from 2-5 at your participating Taco Hell, I will be sitting at home enjoying a nice home-cooked meal. The only reason I’m watching the WS live, is because my favorite baseball team happens to be one of the contenders for the title. Otherwise, I would not be watching at all. I rarely indulge in traditional TV any longer due to the insane commercial breaks. If I hear that a show is worth my time, I’ll catch it on Itunes (commercial free), or grab it off the network’s site with limited commercial interruption.

Stay tuned. We’ll be back after this:

I’m of the opinion that advertising is out of control. I don’t care that DHL sponsors the World Series. I don’t care about the Nissan Rogue in Heroes. I don’t care that GM helped fund the movie Transformers by featuring their cars.

I find it completely hideous that as I walked into my daughter’s daycare for a lunch date a while ago, another mother had brought McDonald’s for their child. As we sat there eating, one child started humming the theme song, “Da Da Da Da Da…” and every single other 3-4 year old child at that table echoed, “I’m loving it.” (with fervor) I think I almost lost my lunch at that point.

Fade to black

“Nissan Versa!” Shouts Hiro in the first season of Heroes. I had to roll my eyes. Why not have him leaning over the counter at the rental place in a pokerstars.com hat, while drinking a Coke Plus? Sure, any marketing exec would be thrilled I know the name of their products that have been featured in prime time, but really, how could you not? Products have practically become actors in today’s entertainment. This is a problem for that said marketing executive, because I think I’d consider myself a product boycott machine.

If you advertise during my time, I’m not going to buy your shit. Sorry. My time is very valuable and I want to enjoy a story, a movie, or songs. This is why I view TV shows the way I do, bought XM Satellite Radio (where most of the stations are commercial free) and do a lot of reading.

It’s the same with web advertising. You will never see commercial ads on this site. Why? Because a.) it’s an eyesore and b.) It’s distracting from the original content.  

Don’t miss out! Back in 2 minutes!

At what point does advertising become the entertainment instead of being the annoying pee break opportunity during your favorite show? Think about it. You can’t go to a movie to which you’ve paid your $9-11 dollars and not get spammed by the next generation in products. It’s only a matter of time before your favorite sports teams jersey’s are covered in logos ala NASCAR. I’m officially throwing in the towel when the Olympics start covering their amateur athletes with the same travesties.

When did watching the ads during the Superbowl become more entertaining than the actual game? When did 15 minutes of commercials (not movie trailers) become acceptable during a matinee? When did…

Oh, sorry about that. I can’t seem to get a word in edge wise with these damn comm…

Oh, fuck it.

In a long line of indirectly related videos, I came across the youtube branding ‘Gangsta Wiggles’.

All of them are pretty funny… but this one is pretty funny. Watch out for language, boys and girls.

You can tell it’s Autumn in New England when there are an abundance of mums and dried corn stalks waiting for homes on roadside stands, the colors of the leaves are slowly changing, and the apple picking season is here. We went to Johnny Appleseed’s today, and had a ton of fun! First we picked out pumpkins and then grabbed some nice ripe apples off the trees.

Unfortunately, it looks like the little girl on the right of the picture above had gotten to my camera before I did, and smudged the lense, therefore a lot of the sunlight pics are abit muddled. Oh well, they still came out decent.

Enjoy the pics behind the cut.

Read the rest of this entry »

…how big of a geek I was in middle school. (It’s nice to know that some things never change.)  One of my favorite shows at that time was Twin Peaks. I was absolutely in love with Agent Dale Cooper. I even bought the book Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes.

In some weird twist of fate today, one of my children removed it from the bookcase and the cover caught the attention of my father. As he started thumbing through it, an article on the TV show fell out.

As I saw him thumbing through the pages, he started chuckling.

I looked over, now very curious.

“Are you reading that?” I asked with a sarcastic tone.

“Nah. I picked it up to put it away, when this article fell out.” He replied still chuckling.

“Why are you laughing then?”

“Well, who is Kyle M., and why do you love him?” He queried, looking up over the top of his bi-focles.

I don’t know why, but I could feel the heat rising in my face as I started to blush. “Oh, God. Did I doodle?”

“Not too much, just a few ‘I heart Kyles’ on the side of the article.”

I facepalmed.

Just to prove I’m not kidding…

No, while girls my age where drooling over the New Kids on the Block, and Neil Patrick Harris, I was going after the older FBI Agent.

It’s nice to know I held standards even back then.

This is my wonderfully friendly and sweet kitty cat named Chloe. (I told you before that I loved alliteration.)

Yes, thats my lovely foot.

I was using Flikr but I remembered a photo album my friend Brian had started using about 6 months ago. It’s got a cool album feature and an easy way to upload pictures.

You can check out the new subdomain and gallery that I’ve set up here. Let me know what you think in the comments section.

And by the way, for those of you who also read Pete’s site, he got the gallery from me. Not that I’m claiming credit or anything.

Keeping in with Pete’s page, here is my Counter Strike Gun Game Screenshot. The Lego map seems to be my best arena for some major pwnage I had almost won this round (it would have been my first evar), but alas, someone knifed themselves into first place. If you haven’t guessed, the name is Angelfire on the counter-terrorist side.

I was doing awesome and had a positive kill to death ratio, which is a feat for me in the turbo mode of that particular mod. Click on picture for more detail.

Just go here and watch. Don’t ask any questions.

 By the Way - John Scalzi

I would like to start audio blogs, so I’m testing wordpress’ ability to host media files.

Here’s a little song I’ve sung that was originally written and performed by Norah Jones. 

Did I mention I’m a karaoke freak?  

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.