Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Elf on a Shelf - 2 thumbs up!

Co-worker just told me of a holiday purchase gone horribly awry; thought I would tell you all about it.

She purchased the above product, for use with her 5-year-old son. There are directions for the parents (place the elf on a shelf, and leave the book around. Then, whichever one the child sees first, you help them find the other, so that you can read the book together.) The book tells the story of the elf, who has been sent by Santa(!) to watch the child, and report back(!!) every night(!!!!) As described by my coworker, "The elf has this creepy little smile, that wasn't evident with the original purchase. Even *I* started to think this guy was reporting on me."

"As I read the book to C. (her son,) his face paled, and his eyes kept getting bigger and bigger. He would take furtive glances over at the elf, wondering if its omnipresent gaze, judgemental and stern, was still there. (It always was. Omnipresent, you know.) I began to wonder if this was too much, too fast - but there was no backing out now. I feared that if the elf simply disappeared, C. would believe that it had gone back to report to the big guy himself that C. was a lost cause. Alternatively, perhaps he would decide a fairy restraining order wouldn't be worth the trouble, and turn into a Santa agnostic years before his peers. What had started out as a cute idea about a new Christmas tradition had morphed into a smirking self-evident superego, looking disapproving at my preschooler. I'm still not sure if he got any sleep last night."

From an Amazon review:

"I work in a store that sells 'Elf on the Shelf'. There is an accompanying video, which has a song: "Elf on the Shelf is watching you, what you say and what you do. Elf on the Shelf is judging you, each and every Christmas."



I love this product, and am repelled at the same time. . The true sense of fear, never knowing when this creepy little plastic stalker is watching - i foresee a day when I would place him on a shelf in the bathroom to frighten Nugget. Or LN. I imagine potty training will go beautifully in that case.

PS - I might have taken a LITTLE literary license with my co-worker's story. Also, alliteration.

PPS - edited to correct silly spelling errors.

Friday, October 23, 2009

OK - I cried a little in the middle.

Fresh Air interview with Tracy Morgan - it's both funny, and real. (hopefully the embedded link works - if not, click the title above.)

Or, you might have to click thru to tracy morgan link.

Friday, September 18, 2009

The Referendum

OK - this quote made me break my self-imposed blog-a-torium.
"I have never even idly thought for a single passing second that it might make my life nicer to have a small, rude, incontinent person follow me around screaming and making me buy them stuff for the rest of my life. [Note to friends with children: I am referring to other people’s children, not to yours.]"


We'll see if i'm back here soon, with more better news.

Friday, May 08, 2009

A Fox news chatbot passes the Turing test. - By Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine#p2#p2

Chatterbox - i have loved you a long time - but this, your informative whirlwind tour through the history of both AI and right wing blowhards have really made my day. Tip of the hat, indeed.

Friday, March 06, 2009

Sean's Hawaii Trip - Day 2.

OK - this is the second (and, as it turns out, FINAL) verbal history of my work trip to Hawaii. I am not sure why I stopped being verbal at this point, but do know that I did take a boatload of pictures. Those will be uploaded anon. Or, possibly, day after anon.



2/8/09

OK – here’s a picture of my day.


Um. Here's a VERBAL picture of my day. Started off a little slowly. Sandy had asked me to give her a call when I got moving in the AM, and I did. Was pleasantly surprised to wake up, sans alarm, at 6:58 AM. Yay, for getting rid of jet lag. I asked her if she wanted to do the breakfast buffet at the hotel (I have a deal for 16 bucks, which I think that I will take advantage of. At some point.) But she said, no, lunch at a local hang-out, which sounded like exactly what I was hoping for. That meant no breakfast for me – so it was back to the ABC. (of which there are at least 20 in my neck of the woods.) So, for breakfast, I ended up having something deLICIOUS. OK, not really THAT delicious. But the fresh pineapple and spam musabi. They DO love their spam.



See photo documtation below:







(ASIDE) OK – weird video on the telly. It’s a Dave Matthews video, where a brunette Julia Roberts with dreds is getting chased by a faceless guy. And Dave is creepily watching her. And many black guys are helpful to her, including at least one without a shirt making her breakfast. That seems very unsanitary. Especially if he is cooking bacon. OUCHOUCHOUCH

(UN-ASIDE) Went down to the hot tub about eight thirty. There were a bunch of couples there, two middle aged couples from Montana, three army looking kids (ok, maybe they were early 20’s) with Japanese girlfriends, and one older middle-age drunk guy. When the Japanese girls got back, the drunk guy completely tried to hit on them. And I am really surprised that the guys didn’t just kick his ass. But they eventually left, and, after telling us all how lucky we were, he left. And then went down to the pool. And stripped out of his suit. In front of the four middle school cheerleaders in the pool. Stay classy, drunky-drunk – stay classy.

There was a navy lady in town for a Conference, as well; conference topic was updating naval procedures. Or something. She seemed nice, and was from Virginia Beach – we’ll see if we see her again.

Very tired now – see ya in the AM

Spoiler alert - we didn't see her again.

Pretend it's a month ago - sean on flight to honolulu

On trip to Florida - I've plugged back in the laptop, and found two posts almost lost in the cyberspace. I'll go ahead and show you what I was feeling, on the way out to the islands. I'll likely follow this up with how I am feeling NOW, as well as with some Facebook & Flikr uploads, so, lucky you - Sean overload.
Stardate Feb 7, 1:13 PM, OK – the inflight magazine lied. We were supposed to see – (brief pause while I figure out exactly what we were supposed to see.) As it turns it out, I figured out in that brief intermission that *I* was wrong. They started out with a Tyler Perry movie – first time that I have seen one of those. The Family That Preys Together. Mildly interesting – I have seen better – it was not necessarily as good as the same story would have been on an afterschool special. For grownups. Teaching you not to chat on your loved ones, even if you are rich. Otherwise you will get beat down, unless you are Madea. Wait - wrong movie.

Had jambalaya for lunch-fest. It was tasty. Suprisingly(?) so. Wall-E is on right now. More difficuly to see because one guy on the left side of the plane has his window down so he can read his paper. Hop hop hooray. Outside Albequrque, but don’t see Bugs Bunny at all.

The audio at my chair is mono, too. So that is awesome. On the other hand, I am borrowing Mom’s noise-canceling headphones, so THAT is awesome too. (one of those may have been sarcastic - not sure which, tho) (but that might have been sarcastic too... very confusing.) (OR IS IT) (nope) ((ANYWAY) They work pretty well at getting rid of most of the ambient aircraft noise. I will have to see how they work with sound coming into both earphones, just not on this flight.

OK – time to do a little bit of work. Probably. Talk at you in a minute.

Or two. Watched Wall-E. Still a good movie. Harder to just listen to while working, of course. Some of the funniest silent movie moments I have seen. 3 PM now. Can’t really see out of the window, and the screen isn’t showing us where we are. Must be because we are over the water.

OK – I ask (secretly) and I shall receive. We’re right between San Francisco and San Jose. (which, swear to god, I spelled Hose the first time.) Wish I could say hi to Red – wait, I can. It’s just time-shifted a little. I’m only 10 miles away from you now, Red- unless you are on vacation somewhere. Anyhoo. We’re almost halfway.
4:25 hours in, and 4:50 to go. Or something. Hmm.. not sure how this works, but
we have a tailwind now. 33 MPH. I thought the winds went the other way?

Anyhoo. I am going to take one more lttle break. We’re hitting some turbulence, and I want to use the rest of this batteries life on more important stuff, like work. (J’skiddin, Pipsquirt- want to save some battery life for later. Not sure why.)

OK – 5 PM. Just saw Ghost Town, with Ricky Gervais. His humor (or humour, I suppose) remains one of my favorites. His acting, however, sometimes is over the top. This was a good movie – at least 5 times better than the Tyler Perry movie. That was likely because of Tea Leone, tho. Never understood why she ended up with Mulder; I agree with what MNO said, he was always a little too mush-mouthy for me. I’ll have to go ahead and list her as one of my favorites. Who else is on that list, you ask? (or rather, I pretend that you ask?) Well, Jennifer Anniston has to remain on that list, where’s she’s been since at least the first season of Friends. Jenna Finch (Pam from the American version of “The Office” has turned out to be a remarkably sympathetic character, but I don’t think that has pushed her into my top five. I know that will be a huge disappointment for her.

We’ve got at least three more hours, and are 1060 miles away from San Fran. I wonder if we get another round of food. Apparently six point five hours since we left, and now we have a little less than three remaining. Teeny screen tells me we have a
headwind of 55 mph (now THIS is what I was expecting on the way TO Hawaii.)

Getting to hear some Death Cab for Cutie on Delta Radio Channel 12 -> I think that I like them. Might have to leap up if one of my bookends were to get up à if that happens I will let you know later. I feel like I want to get up, but I don’t want to irritate them more than necessary. (I wouldn’t be surprised if the young lady who has been asleep the whole time takes this opportunity. BRB


But sadly(?) I never was heard from again.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Awesome Album Meme



THANKS MARK :



This is obviously my band's new album cover. My mid-80's Europop band.

Steps taken:

1 - Go to Wikipedia and hit hit “random article” (or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random).The title of the first random article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to the Random Quotations page (http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3).The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your album.

3 - Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” (http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days).Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

So I got a small town in Switzerland, a quote from This Guy, and this photo. I wasn't sure whether to run with 'to be taken too seriously' instead, but decided that was a little too pretentious.