Whatever

Track 01 – These Are Days

Just love Natalie Merchant. I had almost every CD that 10,000 Maniacs put out and her first two solo albums. She has released a few more CDs since then, but I’ve stopped buying physical and downloadable music, so the only exposure to her music I get now is when I catch a tune on RadioParadise. The latest one is something called Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience which not only has Natalie singing, but the cello opening reminds me of the theme music for the TV show Firefly.

Track 05 – Don’t Speak

Back in the day I used to participate in CD swaps. You would mail CD mixes, usually with a theme, to an individual who would then mail you back one of theirs. It was a good way to get introduced to different music. I’ve kept some of mine that I mailed out and even a few I was given.

While looking for some empty CD disc cases to put another copy of Orphan Black DVDs* into I stumbled onto one of mine labeled “Quintessential Burn.” Unlike the rest of my burned CDs it had no label on the disc or the case it resided in. I could listen to every song and create a playlist for the disc, but I always used CD Text when doing these burns, so why couldn’t I read it right off the CD. Winamp doesn’t support CD Text, Windows Media Player doesn’t either natively, but at least there is a plugin for doing it.

Anyway, if I can find ’em, I’ll see about posting a video of each tune that I considered of or pertaining to the most perfect embodiment of a CD mix in December 2004. First up is track number 5, No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak.”

Tuesday Update

Shiny

The team car of the Purple Whales from the End Zone Entourage Fantasy Football League got its annual preseason wash and wax on Sunday afternoon. The NFL season starts in 3 weeks and then there won’t be any time on Sunday afternoons for that sort of thing.

I haven’t read the Jack Reacher novel Killing Floor before because I would have definitely remembered it. It is set in the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia which is described as about an hour south of Atlanta, but at one point our hero travels to Augusta to search for a missing character that figures big in the plot. The author has obliviously never been to Augusta and did minimal research, because from his description I wouldn’t have recognized the town. This I would have remembered…

My suspicions were correct on the purpose of the clear lucite sign holders. This morning my bathroom appropriate magazine ads were gone and were replaced with those same First Responders recruitment posters. The plant nurse will be holding informational meeting on joining the few the proud towards the end of next week. If those flyers are still up at the beginning of next month I think I’ll replace them with some U.S. Armed Force posters.

Jack Reacher

KillingFloorWe were in the book store on Saturday looking for some summer reading and I was so desperate to find something I would enjoy that I picked up a Jack Reacher novel, Killing Floor.

I have read all the Jack Reacher books and chew through them like I used to with Robert B Paker’s Spenser novels. Because I was sure I has already read this book I kept waiting for the moment when I would go go, “Oh yeah.” But I’m now more than half way through and that moment hasn’t come. Did I miss this book in the series or is it because it was written in 1997 that I’ve completely forgotten it? I’m thinking I just missed it, but the light of recognition may still go off in the next couple hundred pages.

This is a reprint of the very first Jack Reacher book and it has a new introduction by the author Lee Child that tells how he came to write and why he chose the genre, an anti-hero and how he came to name his protagonist. It also has a new round yellow circle on the front cover that reads “See Jack Reacher now in his first major motion picture.”

The introduction adds nothing new if you have visited the Lee Child’s web site, so what I really wanted was what he was thinking about with the much smaller Tom Cruise playing his 6’5″, 250 pound creation. I have heard that he publicly said he was happy with Cruise in the role. I recently had an opportunity to watch the movie and passed on it just because I knew I couldn’t be so charitable.

I’m Insulted

Early this week they put clear lucite sign holders on every single table in the cafeteria. Inside each one is a flyer calling for volunteers to sign up to be a First Responder. Every one in Maintenance is already trained to do this, but they are looking for a few more good (wo)men. They also put one on each of the six tables in what management refers to as the break area out front or what everyone else calls the smoking area.

For the last couple of days they have been putting up wall mount versions in every restroom. There is one on the wall just above every urinal and one on the inside of each stall door. I figured they were going to fill them with more of the please be a First Responder sheets, but they remained empty. Until this morning.

The ones in the Men’s Room out in the Turned Parts Department, near where my cubical is, had advertisements in them this AM. One of the urinals had a Viagra ad over it, while the other had one for Vesicare and each stall had an Ex-Lax ad, one vintage and very modern.

Once word got out about them, people were going in just to look, conversations ensued as to whether they were for real or was someone just having fun. Seriously, how could it have been anything but a joke. I know sales are slow right now, but would the Valve Store really try and make up some of that money by selling ads on restroom walls?

I’m insulted that no one asked me if I had anything to do with it…

Not A Lot Of Bugs, But A Big Surprise

Big Bug SlayerLast night was the 10th or 12th Master’s Miata Club Bug Splat that Donna and I have organized and while it won’t go down in history as a very buggy event, I predict it will be the most remembered.

We start at the south end of Whiskey Road in Aiken at the Red Bowl and finish up on the south end of Martintown Road in North Augusta at a Sonic. Both ends of the trip are definitely “in town”, but in between I try and get as rural as possible, both to avoid traffic and to increase insect impact chances.

Usually there are about 6 cars that show up, including us, so I printed out 8 maps in a fit of optimism. I should printed at least one more. We had nine cars run the route, including some brand new members, some hardly ever seen members and a previous member couple who had also previously won the Biggest Bug Trophy. But no worries, the maps are usually not used at all because Donna and I in the Emperor lead the train of cars along the route.

About half way through the trip, in the middle of a 3 mile section of a very backroad road I had to slow way down as there was a stopped vehicle in our travel lane. The 9 Miatas that started at about a 1/4 mile long line quickly tightened up because of the obstruction. As I got closer I could see that it was a PT Cruiser convertible with its top down. There was a man standing on the back seat facing the side of the road. At first I thought he was looking for a stray dog or something, so I checked the oncoming lane and proceeded to pass. As I started around I realized I was wrong, he was letting loose a mighty stream of urine out onto the side of the road.

Yes, you read that right, while his wife, girlfriend, possibly date sat in the passenger seat he decided to stand in the back of a PT Cruiser convertible and relieve himself.