Roll Over, Play Dead

We had an unbelieavably good time using the celebrity soundboards last Saturday night. We used Jack Nicholson’s soundboard from A Few Good Men and called Lisa. She was even responding to the questions Jack asked like:

• Have you ever served in an infantry unit?
• Ever served in a forward area?
• Ever put your life in another man’s hands, and asked him to put his life in yours?

And the real kicker was the classic, "YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!" Looking back at it, I can’t believe they didn’t recognize Nicholson’s voice, but there were at least 6 of us dying every time she’s respond to another soundboard item. Give it a whirl sometime.

This is a good day/Tomorrow’s the same way/All because of you
-Breaking, by Sam Bisbee

Before you read this part of the post, I’d suggest going to check out Sam Bisbee and listening to “Breaking” (at their site, click on Music, then it’s at the bottom on the left…and while you’re there, listen to “You Are Here” as well..or even better yet, watch the videos instead…both are pretty interesting.

Came across a new band called the other day while clicking around. I have to say I just might pick up one or two of their CD’s. The music isn’t groundbreaking or revolutionary, but it’s catchy…and “Breaking” gives me a good vibe - something. I don’t know what the word is, but it’s good. It’s almost like a nostalgic look at the future, if that makes any sense, which it very well may not. Looking back at parts of life, both good and bad, and realize that the future will likely be much more of the same, but not in a mundane sense. For lots of reasons (and some of you can probably guess one or two good reasons, if you know the story), I believe the best experiences in my life are yet to come, though on second thought you’ll probably feel as though I’m discounting the times that you and I have spent around each other–but that’s definitely not the case. Makes me think of 100 Years by Five For Fighting. Thinking about my future in context of the past, knowing that there is time left to live, but that my time will surely come to an end. I guess it’s an optimism of sorts. I’ve never really thought about putting that into words before, so I think it came out pretty scrambled…I’ll have to marinate on that for a bit. Wow that got off topic.

But on to the rest of the music: Colleen L. turned me on to a band called Cross Canadian Ragweed. I guess you could put them into the country-rock genre, but I’m not sure that’s 100% accurate either. You can listen to them here. Track 11 is one of my favorites, and once I listen to the album a couple more times I’ll list a few others.

If you’ve been to my house, I’ve probably already forced you to listen to Lucero, but if not, do yourself a favor and listen to a few songs of their songs here.

On an entirely different musical page, BYOB by System of a Down and Remedy by Seether make me want to break something, know what I mean? Nickelback has a new song out that is pretty good, too, so I’m looking forward to snagging that CD when it comes out.

Here are two more prank calls that are pretty awesome…I might even have to put these under their own category if I keep finding this kind of quality material: Office Space Jack Nicholson Jack Black In case you didn’t know, these type of prank calls are done with something called a "soundboard" where you sample clips from movies, television, etc and play them to people over the phone. Enjoy.

Man I’m slacking here. I gotta get more updates on this beast than once a week. 10-4.

Overall, the week was pretty exciting. We had a presentation to the President and the Provost, along with a ton of university VP’s on Wednesday regarding a website I’m working on for a large project here at USF. The demo went smoothly and the site received a warm welcome. There’s still quite a bit of work left to be done, but it was nice to get some validation on the project. I’ve been working on another project that could mushroom into quite a bit of work…the good news is that it’s fun. The project is a SharePoint portal for our department where we can collaborate on projects, manage tasks, create shareable documents, etc. In addition to that, I’ll probably be designing a website for our newly created Office of Decision Support, along with the 4 workgroups that are under ODS. The web work is quite enjoyable, and I get to manage our two departmental servers as well, which is quite a kick. You can see one of the servers in action with a website I designed at http://www.ie.usf.edu.

If you haven’t been to the new Green Iguana on Henderson, make that priority #1 in your life, preferably visiting on a Wednesday. You just can’t go wrong with $1 domestic bottles for everyone. Get there by 10 or 10:30, though, because the line gets insanely long.

I was trying to come up with some entertaining content, but I can’t. Sorry.

I listened to these crank calls by Junkyard Willy the other day and could not stop laughing. It’s one guy who uses a synthesizer and hijacks incoming calls to major corporations. He plays the fool and gets the callers pretty riled up. Don’t miss these.

Corrupt Phone Company
Quote: “Listen, listen. If we want your opinion, we’ll beat it out of you. I don’t need a commentary…”

Pen Replacement
Quote: “Just pick a price and sell it to them. What are they so picky that they gotta have a specific price? I mean how ridiculous is that…charge her whatever you want!”

Wow, time flies when you’re having fun. Or when you’re drinking a Natural Light. Anyway, it’s been a whole week since I got something up on this beast so the topics are going to be a bit varied. In a way, this will also be a salute to some of the feedback I’ve been getting about the blog lately. And oddly enough, it’s feedback that I’ve received in person. Now, right there your interweb red flag should go up and you should be asking yourself, “Do these people understand the point of online communication, or are they Metallica fans? I’m going to side with the latter, but that’s just my opinion. So here’s a finger to those who think my topics are “too varied.” This bitch will be as varied as the Various-artist titles you find in the CD aisle at your local Megalo-Mart and you try to figure out what the hell the connection is between Black Eyed Peas “Don’t Phunk with My Heart” and Ben Folds Five “Brick.”

Various Topic Numero Uno
Censorship’s Trial Balloons - What happens when wartime news gets censored? By Liam Callanan
This comes straight out of the book titleed “Shit Our Government Does But You’d Really Rather Not Know About.” Did you know that there were 6 deaths on the US mainlaid during WW II? No? Well, neither did I. And that’s mainly because the government covered it up in the interest of “national security.” Turns out that Japan launched thousands of balloons from their shore that had bombs attached to them. Many floated to the US shore, and when some kids were out with their mother in Oregon, they thought the bomb was a toy and decided to drag it back to the car. You can imagine what happened next. Blam, 5 dead kids and a dead mother. But since the all-knowing gov’t thought we’d panic, they decided to keep it a secret and surpressed the press. All they had to say was that there’d been no property damage from the balloons, which was technically true. No property damage, just 6 dead people. Turns out that some of the balloons haven’t been discovered yet, so if you ever come across a bomb with some Japanese writing on it and a balloon attached, don’t fuck with it. I guess it serves us right, though, with all of the unexploded ordinance and radioactive waste we’ve left around the world on our conquests of any communist-dictatorship in the axis of they-must-be-evil.

Various Topic Letter B
Tallahassee Democrat | 06/06/2005 | FWC officers give warnings over pay issue
I don’t have a whole lot to say about this one, but I think it’s pretty screwed up. For the record, I’ve been the recipient of officer discretion once, but I’ve seen and heard a few things in relation to this that really get my goat. For the must part, they both could be grouped into one story that relates to a speeding checkpoint where I received a ticket. Fine…I speed…I get ticket. Cause and effect, I understand that. But when the officer tells me how they’re ticketing everyone (emphasis from Officer herself) no matter how small the infraction, then they (unsuspectingly) pull over another officer. The speeder asks for a reprieve and is turned down. Not 10 yards away from my vehicle, he pulls out his badge and lifts it just over the door for the ticketing Officer to see and they send him on his merry way. WTF? I love watered down terms like “officer discretion,” which really should read “people in power do whatever the fuck they want so that laws aren’t really laws but ‘guidelines,’ but not really guidelines either, so do as you please.” Except that wouldn’t read so well in a press release or news article. On a related note, read this article, which details how Tampa Police would give Bucs tickets that were confiscated from scalpers to friends and family. Now that’s officer discretion, yes sir.

Various Topic Numero III
Wired News | Man Gets Life Under Fetal Protection Law
Let me sum this one up for you: women tries to kill her unborn baby multiple times and is unsuccessful. She asks her boyfriend to help her out by stomping on her stomach, like any good mother would do to her baby if she didn’t want it. Boyfriend agrees to help, like any good boyfriend should. Boyfriend is successful and baby is aborted.

Recap: 1 dead baby, 1 happy mother, and 1 life sentence for boyfriend. Astute readers may ask themselves if the woman will receive any punishment for her attempted murder of the fetus? Nope, thanks to laws that guarantee her access to an abortion under the right-to-choose mantra. Lady justice, where art thou?

On to more light-hearted topics, because there is no sense in getting riled up over a few dead kids from WWII or a baby who died from stomach stomping.

I learned to wakeboard last weekend on Shawn’s boat. I’m trying to decide whether wakeboarding or skiing is more fun, and right now I’m leaning toward wakeboarding. I’ve been able to catch air over the wake, but not much more than 6-8 inches. I have to say it feels higher than that, though. Alas, I’ll have to practice more, which means hanging out on a lake and at Gator Joe’s with pretty girls and Bud Light. Sing it, Shawn and Justin…”Gator Joe’s, Gator Joe’s!”

Random side note, but has anyone gone shopping at the K ‘n K next to Home Depot in New Tampa on a Monday at 5:30 pm? If not, let me know when you can go. There’s quite a few talented business women who need groceries at that particular time of the week.

Now that I’ve run the various-topic-gamut, I’m going to see about removing some of these items from the front page of the blog. I’ll probably do a new section where interesting topics like the WW II deaths and the FWC officer discretion can go, so that you don’t have to read through the random bits. Although I think the random bits will probably be the most entertaining part of this site, I’m a bit biased.

Seacrest out.

InternetWeek | Study: Shoppers Naive About ‘Customized’ Retail Pricing Online

One of the better blog entries I’ve read lately…quite amusing!

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