|
External
|
Rob's Head
January 31, 2005 My fiancee bought an elliptical machine this weekend. For some bizarre reason, she thinks that she's fat and needs to lose weight before our wedding. She actually told me the other day that it's a bad thing when I call her beautiful, because it makes her lose motivation to get thinner. But I'm pretty sure it's not cool for me to call her fat either, so I figure I'm just better off keeping my mouth shut. Putting this machine together is not, of course, the kind of exercise she was looking for, so the task fell to me. It wasn't so bad, not nearly as annoying to put together as any of the pieces of O'Sullivan furniture currently sitting in my apartment, but the real ballbuster is that they gave us two "right pedal arms," leaving me short a "left pedal arm." First of all, it bothers me that they're called arms when they're the part you put your feet on. Should've called them legs. But that's not important. What is important is that this all but completed elliptical machine is just sitting in my living room, crippled and unusable, mocking me. I'm sitting here on hold with the manufacturer, who I am pretty sure does not actually employ anyone to answer the phone. Actually, I did talk to a nice lady from the answering service who took my name and number, promising that someone would get back to me in 24 hours, but I have to admit that I'm skeptical on that score. I have this feeling when I finally do get through to someone, they're going to tell me they can replace the part, but it will take 6-8 weeks to ship, entirely negating the point of my fiancee buying this thing four months in advance of our wedding. January 28, 2005 Awesome train ride this morning. There was this cute
girl sitting down, and a guy standing next to her obviously checking
her out. After a few stops, a seat opens up next to her, so the
guy sits down and starts talking to her. Personally, I've never
had the balls to start talking to strange women on the T, but I
guess when you look as troll-like as this guy, you take whatever
opportunities you can get. January 27, 2005 I'm pretty sure one of the signs I'm getting old is that I'm filled with an irrational rage whenever I see teenagers wearing their hats cocked off to the side. I don't know why it bothers me. There's no logical reason. It doesn't actually make a bit of difference how anyone wears their hat. But for some reason I just want to smack their caps right off their heads when I see them wearing it like that. I really am getting old. I heard kids say "that's hot," for months before I knew it came from Paris Hilton. I didn't know teenagers liked Paris Hilton. I guess someone has to be watching her show if they keep on making new seasons of it. Apparently, this is now the third season of The Simple Life. For a long time no one was sure why Paris Hilton was actually famous, now it's clear that she's just a professional dolt. Except, like Jessica Simpson, she's probably not nearly as stupid as she pretends to be on her "reality" show. I miss the days when network TV wasn't as strange and complicated as professional wrestling. January 26, 2005 You know what would be swell? If it stopped snowing for a fucking second. January 25, 2005 That was a nice four day weekend. I took Friday off, and then the office was closed yesterday due to the snow. That was a pretty nasty storm. We tried to walk down to the beach Sunday, and we actually got as far as Quincy Shore Drive before we had to turn back. The wind just kept getting worse, and I was wearing my glasses, which were completely iced over by the time we got there. Neither of us could see, we were wading through five foot snow drifts, and my snot was freezing on my nose. It seemed like a good time to turn back. And then there's my brother. I talked to him Sunday and suggested that the weather was quite inhospitable. His response? "Eh, I suppose." Right. Three feet of snow, five degrees Fahrenheit, and hurricaine force winds. I'm not sure what exactly would qualify as inhospitable by his standards if that wasn't it. I tried to be a good neighbor during the storm, but it wasn't working out for me. While I was shovelling out our parking space I kept offering to help the old guy next to me. I don't think he spoke much English, but he kept on shooing me away. Fine, have a fucking heart attack, see if I care. Then yesterday morning a guy asked me for a jump, but he was in a parking lot and he had pulled in, and the spot next to him was full of about three feet of snow. I tried getting in there, but I got stuck myself. What kind of dumbass doesn't back in when he knows a snowstorm is coming? Every dumbass in my building it seems, judging by the way they were all spinning their wheels trying to get out of their spots. The city doesn't seem too much better off today than it was yesterday. There's still a lot of snow on the streets. I was expecting that from Quincy, which doesn't seem to have a snow removal budget, but I was surprised how much snow was still on the ground in Boston. I think we should just close the city down until May. Italian cities basically shut down in the summer, why can't we do the same in winter. January 20, 2005 Happy Inauguration Day! I am fucking shocked that the T was running just fine this morning. I thought for sure there would be delays while they searched everyone's bags for dirty bombs and whatnot. Especially since the Red Line runs through North Quincy with its substantial Asian population. Go figure. All I know is that I'm staying away from the Physics and Math departments today, just to be on the safe side. Watching Lost this season has been a really weird experience for me. I usually don't have too many people to talk about the shows I watch with. John's just about the only person I know who watches the same geeky shit as me. But everyone I know watches Lost. I haven't been able to talk to this many people about a show since back in college when all the girls watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's good that this many people are watching a good show, it's just hard getting used to. If only this many people had watched Angel. Here's something I don't get. People are predicting a close game in the Patriots-Steelers game this Sunday. But they're also predicting a winner in these close games. If you think the game is going to be that close, how do you know who will win? If the outcome is going to rest on so little, couldn't the balance tilt either way? If you think it's going to be a blowout, I can see making a prediction on who will win, but if you think it's going to be close, I don't see how you could make a call on the winner with any degree of confidence. January 19, 2005 I have to assume Roger Clemens is just fucking around with his $22 million arbitration number. He's clearly not going to get that, and with the money Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson signed for, $13.5 million seems like a pretty safe arbitration number for the Astros. But I'm hoping that he holds to it and takes them to arbitration. He's left every team he's ever played for with bad feelings, it would be just wrong for him to not end his career the same way.
January 18, 2005 The Boston Public Library is one funky smelling place at about mid-day. Not that I can blame the homeless people for hanging out there. It's warm, dry, and clean, and as long as you keep a book open in front of you, they really can't hassle you and make you leave, no matter how smelly you are. I'd do the same if I was homeless. Of course, not being homeless, I can't really deal with the smell, so I actually try not to spend much time lounging around the library. And if you think I'm being mean to homeless people by calling them smelly, fuck off. They are smelly. They may be the victims of socio-economic injustices beyond their control, but regardless of that, they are smelly. Maybe it's unkind of me to point out how bad they smell, but not pointing it out won't make them smell any better. January 17, 2005 Martin Luther King, Jr. must be rolling in his grave right now to see me working on his holiday. I like to think that if he were still alive today, he'd be fighting for the rights of all Americans to stay home on the third Monday in January. But I'm leaving at four today, so in many ways, his dream is still alive. January 14, 2005 Due to circumstances beyond my control, I watch Joey every week. For anyone who has never seen Friends, Joey, played by Matt LeBlanc, is the loveable, mildly retarded actor Friend. He's also a throwback to Sam Malone and Dan Fielding, the sexual promiscuous Lothario that all but disappeared from television during that brief period in the late 80's and early 90's when straight people were afraid of AIDS. Anyway, Joey is one of the least funny sitcoms I've ever seen. Seriously, none of the jokes are in any way humorous, which is pretty impressive. A blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while, and Everybody Loves Raymond can make me laugh at least once in a half an hour, but Joey just flat out doesn't work. It hurts Joey that the viewers are used to watching him on Friends, where ten years of listening to the same six or seven jokes have conditioned the them to laugh in the appropriate places. Admittedly, the cast of Friends did develop good chemistry over those ten years as well. However, I think you could give the cast of Joey fifty years and they'd still suck ass (I was going to go for a failed chemistry experiment as a metaphor, but I don't know anything about chemistry, so I just went with "suck ass."). The worst is the girl from The Sopranos. Her schtick is that she's an annoying Jersey girl. Fantastic, just what I want to watch for 30 minutes. The other two cast members are Joey's nephew and neighbor, neither of whom are interesting enough to merit discussion. The only person who's all right on the show is Lucy Liu, who plays Joey's boss. Joey took over the timeslot that used to belong to Friends so I guess in the world where TV commercials can proclaim a show that's never aired an "instant classic" that qualifies Joey as a big time show. Still, it seems to me that Lucy is slumming it. I suppose after lending her voice to the Lucy Liu-bot and the Head of Lucy Liu on Futurama, she'll do anything. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I'd feel better about this weekend if Ty Law was playing Sunday. You don't need a good secondary when you're playing the Colts, do you? The Patriots are trying to compensate by getting the field all nice and shitty, a strategy they tried employ last year before the NFL told them to knock it off. I guess we'll see. The Patriot's have had the Colts' number for a while now, but the Yankees were supposed to have the Red Sox's number, which shows that they won't be able to rely on Foxboro Aura and Mystique to win Sunday. January 13, 2005 I put my Bio up, in case anyone wanted to know anything more about me. John's in Vegas, so no Lost recap for at least a couple of days. We'll get to it when he gets back. I'm tired and I don't feel good. I want to go home and go to bed. January 12, 2005 Big news, I think we're up to about a half dozen readers. There's no stopping the Back of the Head juggernaught now. It didn't turn out to be too shitty this morning, though I'm sure it's much nicer in Las Vegas, where everyone else is. Actually, it's supposed to be warmer here than in Las Vegas tomorrow. Go figure. But they won't have to slog though puddles of slush from the melting snow, so overall, they win. My brother lent me a copy of Das Rheingold months ago, and I finally got around to watching it. I liked it, I thought it was cool, but I don't think I really got it all. Because I'm stupid and ignorant. I've never seen a friggin' opera before, I don't know how to appreciate nice things. If you're interested in Das Rheingold, I wrote a quick summary of it here.
January 11, 2005 Do you like winter? Do you like mixes? Do you like wintry mixes? If you do, aren't you in luck this year. I can't decide which is my favorite: sleet, rain, or freezing rain. They're all great. I shouldn't complain. First of all, because complaining about the weather is the ultimate in futility, but more importantly, it's really been a mellow winter compared to the last two. Those sucked. It's not cool when the meteorologist advises you not to leave your skin exposed for more than ten minutes when you're outside. That's cold. I like to have a cold winter, but I usually hope that it's mild. I'm not currently paying for heat in my place, but most of my friends do, so I root for them to be able to save money. Of course, too many mild winters and I'll get concerned about the possibility that we're undergoing a dramatic climate change that will fuck us all over. But for now I'll just be happy that people aren't getting totally reamed on heating costs and fewer homeless people are dying on the street. January 10, 2005 The offices are empty this week as John and Jeff are on a Back
of the Head fact finding mission (if by "facts" I mean
"hookers") in Las Vegas. That leaves me alone to pay the
bills, answer the phones, and update the site. That's a lot of content
for one man to handle. And it doesn't leave me nearly enough time
to find fifty pictures per day to add to every page on the site,
so John's going to have a lot of catching up to do when he come
back. I knew we should've hired a temp. January 7, 2005 I did. I screwed up when I updated the main page today. I didn't synchronize my local site with the server, so we temporarily lost all the changes made since Monday. Everything's okay now, but I've been suspended without pay for the weekend. It's tough, but fair. January 6, 2005 I had flashbacks to my childhood watching the news this morning. "Barnstable, Bellingham, Billerica..., Boxford." They always blew right by Boston. I remember my senior year of high school we got a lot of snow days, but before that, every other town in the state could be closed, but we'd have to go to school. January 5, 2005 I predicted a few weeks ago that Jeff Montgomery would get one Hall of Fame vote. He got two. Tony Phillips and Terry Steinbach both got one each. It's too bad those guys get dropped from the ballot right away, I'd like to see how they make out over the years. Would that one guy just keep voting for them, or was that just a one time courtesy thing? January 4, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
January 3, 2005 |
|||||
 |