Category: Life

Phishers are getting smarter every day. I’ve had two messages to my hotmail recently that were really clever. One was supposedly an ABC News item, and was actually a news story copied from ABC News, but the unsubscribe link went to some dodgy web address. Although you had to mouse over the link and see the actual address of the link. Today I got a message that purported to be some legal settlement information about Google AdWords.

If I could deliver one message to every Net user it would be this: never trust anything not written personally by someone you know. Be suspicious; avoid clicking any external link from an untrusted message. Verify the address before you click (the lower left of your browser will reveal the address of the link before you click it). To any site requiring a login, type the address yourself – especially Ebay, Paypal, your bank, or any place you store sensitive information. Even places that don’t store sensitive info – myspace, google, etc. I’m beginning to wonder if the major industry of former Eastern Bloc nations isn’t Internet scams. That seems to be where a lot of this stuff originates.

If you’re eating a moisture-rich pizza (from Damgoode Pies, let’s say), and you bite down on something that’s not hard, but will not yield to your teeth, don’t pass it off as tough bread or cheese and keep chewing. It’s cardboard. It’s the thin top layer of the corrugated cardboard box you’ve been eating off. Just remember that next time.

My parents’ musical tastes have always been a big influence on me, and one album stands out as having a particularly unique taste and texture, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. This is an album every household in America should own, and probably does. There are a lot of good lessons in love on it. Specifically, “Dreams” has always had a power all its own in times of turmoil. And as I am this weekend experiencing the death of yet another small dream, I was led back to it by Cameron Crowe, in an article in the 1,000th issue of Rolling Stone[1]. I found myself admiring John McVie’s bassline, which takes only a few minutes to learn but a lifetime to master. The lesson that this two-note bassline teaches is that throughout all the dynamics, the “thunder” and lightning of the chorus, it remains almost completely unchanged. Life’s rhythm goes on. With those two notes, the entire song is anchored, and only during a brief guitar interlude does it alter its path. I couldn’t stop playing along with it this morning. It’s such a magical song; it reminds me of why I got into this music thing and it helps me to remember that women, they will come and they will go.

1.) Yes I’m a subscriber again, but only because it was a free gift.

I’ve been selected to perform in a couple of plays at Hendrix’s Playwrights Theatre this September 15. These are “reader’s theatre” performances, meaning we’ll just be reading a play that is still in the working stages. The purpose being that it helps the playwright hear the dialogue and get an idea of how everything flows. At Hendrix for several years now they’ve been staging these as public performances. I did one a couple of years ago, too. It’s great fun – it’s almost like doing a play but without the tedious memorizing or makeup. Plus they’re going to pay me, so I can once again say I’m a professional actor.

Once in a generation an invention comes along that truly changes your life for the better. Every day new inventions come and go, promising that slice of pure joy that only Real Ingenuity brings, but so few ever deliver. Today I discovered a technological breakthrough that will forever reshape my very existence. It is simple and elegant, a fusion of two concepts so elementary I am amazed that it has not come to pass sooner. It removes one more layer of suffering from my life, and of how many technological advancements can we truly say that?

Ladies and gentlemen…I give you…Glad Trashbags with Odor Shield®

Seriously. It has forever altered the catbox-changing experience. What was once a despicable, nigh unbearable task has become a significanly less unpleasant experience. For all the useless crap that corporate America puts on the shelves, sometimes – not often but sometimes – they do something right.

Stinkfoot was wounded in his latest battle some weeks ago, and I had to get him fixed up at the vet ($80) and keep him on some antibiotics while his wounds heal. He has two shaved spots, one between his ears and another above his left eye. Naturally I’ve been keeping him indoors while his wounds heal. He hates this. His constant attempts at escape are not nearly so annoying as his whining by the door. And when I’m sleeping he sits outside my door and paws at it and complains. I yell at him to go away and he comes back in two hour intervals. I keep a squirt gun by my bed so that I can shoot at him under the door.

Fed up at this morning’s 4AM wakup call, I put him in the utility room out back. This worked well. Perhaps as a protest, or perhaps because he’s retarded and sometimes forgets to chew, he threw up on the kitchen table while I was in the shower.

After cleaning that up and eating my breakfast, I had to contend with Billie’s constant puddle-making as she attempts to grab fistloads of water from her bowl, pulling it off its mat, creating puddles. Three times we went through the process of me repositioning the bowl and her moving it.

CATS.

Why can’t I have normal pets? Is that so much to ask? I have three animals in my house and I only asked for one of them. They’re like roommates who don’t pay rent and just make messes. If anyone wants an afffectionate, retarded orange feline, let me know.

It started off poorly. Saturday morning the weather was terrible, and I dropped off Zoe at DeLaine’s house, unaware that she already had a total of three dogs in her house, one of which was a belligerent yappy little bastard who did not like the looks of Zoe. I drove from Little Rock to Russellville in an unrelenting torrential downpour. Around about Alma the sky cleared up and I drove up 540 to Fayetteville under sunshiney skies.

Arriving around noon, I wasn’t set to meet up with anyone until 3, so I did my usual stops: Blue Moon Music, Ben Jacks Music, Hastings, and Le Maison de Tartes. At Ben Jacks I received bewildered compliments for rocking out on a Fender Hello Kitty guitar. They’re awesome. Not many people pick them up and go bananas, apparently. At Hastings I was the beneficiary of some pricing errors: I got the Supreme Beings of Leisure‘s self-titled CD for $.02 and Neil Diamond’s Stones CD for $2.50. I also picked up some early Genesis, 12 Rods, Shane Theriot, and Prokofiev for $.99 each. After that I chilled out at Maison des Tartes with a sausage and egg tart and coffee.

At 3 I met up with Nica and her boyfriend Trey at Hugo’s. I haven’t seen her in I don’t know how long. We caught up for a few hours before they had to go. I went upstairs and checked out Sound Warehouse, which is a place that has a remarkable ability to show me things I didn’t know existed and must immediately buy. In this case it was the DJ Shadow/Cut Chemist Freeze DVD, and a live record from Praxis (featuring Mixmaster Mike, DJ Q-Bert and Shortkut). Life is good.

After that I was off to Margot‘s place, and we jetted out to La Hacienda for her birthday dinner with a largish group of people. Interestingly Margot’s boyfriend is also named Trey. Afterward the weather was getting weird so I opted to crash on Margot’s couch rather than go on over to Harrison, which turned out to be a very good choice, as Sunday morning was ecstatically beautiful weather for a country drive with the windows down. After breakfast at Arsaga’s (the newer one at Mission & Crossover), I set out east. The occupants of the car in front of me were apparently smoking weed because I smelled it for several miles. My soundtrack was the Hoops McCann Band Plays the Music of Steely Dan – all instrumental jazz arrangements of Steely Dan tunes. A fine way to spend a Sunday morning.

I made it into Harrison in time to have lunch with my mom and vist with my grandmother. She’s doing very well in her fight against cancer, I’m very happy to report. I brought her a lunch and we chatted and watched Come Blow Your Horn, an old Sinatra comedy/musical. After that I went over to dad’s and showed him the wonders of IMDB.com, which will definitely be a primary source for his research as he prepares for the Film Classics course he’s set to teach in the fall at the community college. We looked up Blade Runner and High Noon. Beyond that, he’s still thinking.

Heading back to Little Rock, the weather continued its excrutiatingly beautiful behavior. I nearly got a sunburn from driving with the windows down. The traffic was light, and much of my soundtrack was the 3-disc The Otis Redding Story I borrowed from dad. I let him borrow a CD of early Elvis tunes in exchange.

All things considered, it was as fine a weekend as could be had with little to no planning.