you know what i just realized? my wedding anniversary was september 12. i hadn't thought about that for a while and the significance of the date completely passed me by - probably because i'm not married anymore... what's even stranger is the fact that our wedding album had september 11, 1998 as the date (due to an error at the printer's). eerie...

here's something good from nerve about halloween.

and something from succa. thing is that he forgot to mention lesbians. they're really funny. the ultimate in comedy is a midget lesbian with a monkey. if she was a boxer, too, she'd be just like clint eastwood - only shorter.

this really sucks. tim booth is leaving james. i understand that he needs to do what he needs to do, but still. james won't be the same without him. first darren emerson left underworld. now this. what more is going to happen to my favorite musical groups? i live in dread that something will happen to break up cibo matto or, worse yet, the beatles.

quiet has descended upon work now, which is nice. i even got my very own copy of flash that i snagged from the main display computer. now i just have to learn how to use it. cool!

whew. it's monday now, but the weekend was a blast. and well worth it, too. carrie and boa came out from chicago and stayed with us (yay!) for a few days. we went out to dinner at mccormick and schmick's before the club, which was a lot of fun. eight of us, in full makeup and costume, sitting in the middle of the dining room. that's what it's all about. yeah, boy!

so. dinner was at six, which meant that everyone had to start getting ready around 4. and, with daylight savings time, we were out for 12 hours on saturday night! that'll give you a kick in the head.

carrie went as nikki sixx (nicole sixx to you, bub), boa was in a fabulous (of course) dress, shannon went as a bat princess with hair and makeup by carrie monster, while i was dressed in my patriotic pimp suit from the 70s. we have pictures. not up yet, but we have them. john was dressed as scary manilow, also in a 70s suit, so we were going around like two wild and craazy guys. it was fun. joe came as a smiley face. he had on a nice suit and a smiley face headpiece that rocked.

halfway through the night, i swapped my red and blue boogie hat for phil's sombrero and spent the rest of the night in an even funnier hat. it was a blast. we danced, we drank. we made goofy fools of ourselves. it was a party night, which is just what we needed after all of the busy work we've been doing. (shannon's job as a marketing coordinator has gotten crazy. good crazy, though.) the pictures are here.

some last-minute bits.

first, mike jasper has returned with a story about his year of hell. damn, man. that sucks.

second. blogdex. well, let me put out the actual words.

dunno if you've gotten the head's up yet, but blogdex is mentioned in the december issue of playboy under their "all about the internet" section (that's not really what it's called, but that's what it is, if you know what i mean...)

anyway.

matt

the response i got was:

hey matt,

this is hilarious. i'm thinking that i'll have to get a bunch of reprints to hand out to our corporate sponsors. thanks a lot for the pointer.. you get the "best email about blogdex i've ever received" award.

cameron

so we had that knock-down, drag out meeting this morning that basically told the management staff that we were not satisfied with our communications situation vis-a-vis them. carrie was pissed, but said little. but she was angry - you could tell because her eyes were very big and she was very obviously holding back. we didn't get anything that we asked for, though. we asked for more informal communications between us and them and they formalized them to an excessive degree. they asked for a clarification of our roles and responsibilities - something that we were able to go and get from a document that dates back to june. (where they not paying attention?)

they gave us greater freedom and responsibility, but that also means that we have greater accountability. which is fine, frankly. we've always been accountable and we've known that we were accountable, but they didn't seem to think so.

so now we have a month to try to "improve" (their term) ourselves. again, this is an unclear directive, which is counter to what we asked from them. more clarity - not less. they're obviously stressed, and we can tell that. but that's no reason to not pay attention to what's going on in the operations department. i really liked the fact that they told us to mark issues that we wanted feedback on. can't they tell? are they that imperceptive? apparently so.

anyway. here's something interesting (warning: not work-appropriate, although eccles can probably claim that he's researching some kind of patent or something...).

the misanthropic bitch has returned. makes me feel like things are returning to normal, even though i know they're not. still, it's nice to pretend, once in a while. every so often.

and the bosses are spending the day in meetings over at the dot today, so things are quiet here. which is nice, frankly.

i can feel myself getting into the whole "what have i got to say today?" mentality when it comes to blogging. in fact, if i didn't know that i have at least one faithful reader (hi eccles!), i would probably let this whole thing go for days at a time.

the thing is, though, that i don't know what to blog about that isn't work. i mean, my boss is a twit who gets angry when things don't go the way she scripts them in her head (and forgets to inform the rest of the people about) and my coworkers and i are plotting a counter-revolution on friday. not that it'll do any good, of course. my boss can't afford to get someone in to replace his deputy the twit because she's the only one who'll do the job. not that she does it all that well, mind...

so what else? tonight we're going to the drag races. that's where men come out in drag and race down a strip of street in high heels. there's a cash prize and great costumes. good stuff all around.

anything else? why yes! here's an interview with eddie campbell, co-creator of from hell (from which the movie was taken). if you can't be bothered to read the interview, eddie basically says that it's a story, the movie's a story and trying to demand accuracy is well nigh impossible. in fact, the interviewer is more angry than eddie is. i did like warren ellis's quote, though: I think we're about to witness idiocy of conceiving FROM HELL as anything other than a graphic novel.… To be fair, all power to them. But if they makes the center monologue William Gull tour of London work on film, then I will take what I just said back. But I'll put a tenner down now that says the scene will not even appear in the film.

the follow-up to last friday's story about the massive sucking sound that is work involves some seriously good karma. so we went to target (pronounced tar-jey) to get a scumbuster. walking through the parking lot, we found an envelope full of money. $2100 worth. that's a lot of money. no identification. no way to get it back to the proper owner. sure, it sucks for whoever lost it, but for us, we're saying "ka-CHING!" we're thinking london in january.

so we have that going for us...

and our dvd player came. i've been watching the episode i dvd that i borrowed from my brother. interesting? slightly. good picture quality? absolutely.

i went to the maryland-duke football game on saturday because it was my dad's birthday. (happy birthday, pop.) of course, maryland won. big time. 59-17. no challege from duke at all. nice day, too. sunshine, not a cloud in the sky, light breeze. hell, i got a tan.

sunday, we went to see from hell. shannon left 45 minutes in because she couldn't watch the blood (and there was a lot of blood). i stayed because i wanted to see what the hughes brothers did with alan moore's fiction. turned out that they did bad things with it. i, for one, was not impressed. not impressed at all. they could have done such a better job with the material they had. granted, they had to make choices, but i sneer at the choices they made. of course, i'm a purist. so what do i know?

and very little sleep last night. tossing and turning all night long, which is always fun. lunch now. kay?

in the "so what else is new?" folder, we have: fresh stupidity from upper management. they decided that this week's status meeting would be a good time to dress us down about issues that we have never really bothered with before. stuff that hasn't really been a big deal before now, frankly. tim even went so far as to say "we can't promote you because we won't be able to put anyone in your place." that really ignores the obvious corrollary: we can't be fired, either. but we can quit.

frankly, by this point, morale is becoming a serious issue amongst the technical staff. it really doesn't matter if management knows or cares, either. the fact is that we don't care anymore. we don't want to do a good job because doing a good job doesn't really seem to result in any more praise or any less yelling. shitty, but true. do we like our jobs? not anymore.

anyway. on to something besides work. this is funny. snoop! wazzup?

so i had a nice birthday (thanks for asking). i got some cool stuff and some great cards. i put the cards up in my office to amuse my co-workers. i'd take a picture, but there's this whole thing with geocities that i'm not too happy about. anyway...

i've been working on this whole big help file for one of our applications. fun stuff, really. (not really). a lot of formatting and cutting and pasting and whatnot. i hope to be able to do the preliminary compile this afternoon or early tomorrow. with any luck...

one of my presents was a cd by godspeed you black emperor. very interesting stuff and perfect for atmosphere music while i cut and paste the day away.

and that's about it for good news for the week. but, since it was my birthday just the other day, i'm going to stop at the good news. you can hear the bad news from someone like cnn or the washington post. it's out there. you can do the research on your own, frankly.

this is nice: my boss just talked to the analyst in nevada. he said that the people i was working with at the conference (utah, nebraska, colorado and nevada) all just had a great time hanging out and working with me and thought i was the best thing since sliced bread. that was really, really nice. and, i got a "happy birthday" email from the analysts in new york this morning. wow. i guess i'm really bonding with these people. or something.

oy. big weekend. big week. i'm still wiped out (so wiped out that i took the day off so i could get caught up).

first. savannah was fun. i saw everyone and had a great time. i didn't put my foot in my mouth, but i seemed to be the only one who didn't, frankly. still, as work events go, this one was pretty decent.

i got in friday night and, after a $60 cab ride from the airport (!), i was off to sleepy land. i woke up to 600 messages from the culture list, which was mildly disappointing. (i was hoping for more.) the family function on saturday was nice and the tenacious d concert rocked! well, you can read about it for yourself.

then, on sunday, my parents took us out for brunch. why? cause it's my birthday on tuesday! oh yeah!

i hear that eccles had a good date on friday night with the florist. he's the daddy. i just hope he's called her by now. eccles, i'm looking in your direction!

and my list of stuff to do today is fairly long:

laundry. dishes. put stuff away. get stuff out of the car. transcribe chapters that i wrote in savannah (weapons of devotion). call people. mail bills. get stamps. upload pictures. you know. stuff.

good morning, all both of you.

here's an article from the post about the weekly world news. entertainment and tabloid publishing at it's best. the actual wwn website is here but beware of pop-up ads.

i'm going to savannah this afternoon for work. i'm sort of excited about it because it's a chance to go somewhere else and do something else but at the same time, it's a little unsettling. with the war and all. you know.

i'm taking a copy of wonder boys with me on the plane and i'm filling my backpack up with extension cords and power strips. and network cables. this is going to be fun.

the saturday after i return, there's going to be a big party where 90% of my mother's side of the family will be in attendance. that should be fun. and then it's tenacious d time that night. and on sunday, my parents have roped us into attending church with them. and then lunch. (cause it's my birthday on the 16th). busy, busy, busy.

so have fun everyone and don't get too crazy while i'm gone.

so i got a notice from the service department at the car dealership yesterday (or was it the day before?). it was politely informing me that my car was due for a 90,000 mile service call. that's right, the car i sold to the dealership was still in their service department records as belonging to me! i love watching bureaucracy in action. my boss did the same thing today. she booked a shuttle for us to the airport on tuesday, not knowing that i'd already made reservations with the same service. (i just cancelled her reservation. she helpfully provided a reservation number.)

what else? i'm going out to hang out with my cousins tonight. that should be fun. rob suggested that we go somewhere that we know the bartenders, 'cause he's broke. not a problem. greg knows bartenders all over the place. it's like a brotherhood or something. so tonight we're off to george's (a restaurant that greg used to work for that has friendly bartenderettes) for drinks and conversation. more of the latter than the former, i'm thinking.

669,879 on spaced penguin! a personal best!

and i say "thank god." it is refreshing to not have to listen to the meaningless blather anymore. suddenly america feels like the rest of the world and, really, that's what was missing here: a sense that people gave a shit when bad things happened elsewhere. sure, it wasn't until something monumentally bad happened here, but now we're on the right track. sure, that track is bleak, but the world is bleak. politics are bleak. nobody likes being told that the world they live in actually has bad things going on in it. oh well. that's the price you pay for being alive: having to deal with the bad as well as the good.

sorry eccles. rant over.

i spent this morning making plans with my family for next weekend. it's my birthday, you see. or it will be, soon. yay! i'm old! (well, not that old. but old enough.) the plans themselves aren't actually very interesting because my family lives on the other side of the city from me, so going to see them isn't like an event or anything. but it's nice when we can all get together and laugh and enjoy ourselves. we haven't really done that in a while.

and we have friends coming over on sunday for random fun. i don't know what we're going to be doing, but it'll be interesting, whatever it is. or fun. maybe interesting. should be fun. yeah. that's the ticket.

not a lot to report today (which is quite a bit different from saying that nothing happened - quite a bit DID happen. it's just not that interesting if you don't work here. hell, even if you do work here, it's fairly boring stuff).

however, i did find an interesting thing over at the underworld site. make your own t-shirt kits. cool, huh? sort of makes my t-shirt idea seem ahead of it's time. (i made my own underworld shirt last year using this picture. it says "elvis, fresh meat and a little whipped cream" on the back. it's lines from an underworld song. guess which one?) i love it when i'm ahead of the curve on stuff.

we spent the day running around, getting the conference pc working. we had until 2 pm, which meant that i wasn't at my desk for most of the day. but at least the dhcp server works now. so there you go.

shannon's not going to be home until late tonight because she's got to set up for some conference or other. that's what happens when you get a new job doing marketing for your company: you start to work late. long hours, plenty of overtime. she'll be fine. she knew what she was getting into. now, if only she would go to the podiatrist.

check out this view of palpatine's office. pretty fly for a white guy, huh? i especially like the little cut-outs of the people wandering through the model. sort of like the episode ii board game.

anything else? nup. so far, so good.

checking my links, i found this interesting nugget from mark driver. the best part?

In a brilliant display of foreign policy analysis, Taliban-esque Jerry "Jerk Me Off" Falwell and Pat "I'm a Koala" Roberson blamed the terrorist attacks on God's displeasure with the ACLU, pro-lifers, feminists, and homosexuals. No shit. Now I certainly don't have the life experience of a man who has slept with prostitutes, nor do I have the bedrock ethics of a man who stole a religious broadcasting business from his trusting partner, but I'd imagine these guys would be hard pressed to find a problem in the U.S. that wasn't directly tied to the homosexual agenda. Budget crisis? Homosexual agenda. Fall in wheat prices? Homosexual agenda. Scrapped NASA launches? Homosexual agenda. That's quite a sexy worldview, huh? Those guys think about gay men more than the gay men I know.

classic.

this was one of the things i found out about at the baltimore book festival. interesting, no? i'm interested. so interested that i printed out an entire manuscript copy of the podium this morning for submission. i'll let you know what happens.

my bosses weren't in today. still and all, my direct manager gave me a directive that doesn't quite make sense to me, which was nice. i love it when she does that.

what else? not much, really. quiet days. only a week until we hit savannah. that should be fun.

and i'm trying to make progress on weapons of devotion. it's puttering along, but not very fast. sort of like a vespa running on fumes. at this stage, anyway. hell, all i need now is an ending. is that so hard? apparently, yes.