...fine line between insanity and genius

❝ i've been on top of the world since about six months ago, marking the first time i laid eyes on you. i lost all train of thought as i entered the room. i saw what looked like really good food, then i saw you and so did you. i wanna wake up naked next to you, kissing the curve in your clavicle. kissing your clavicle. i've been on top of the world since about 1 week ago, marking a time when i was drunk enough to talk to you. i lost all train of thought as your eyes met mine. told you i thought you were gorgeous. you gave me your phone number, i gave you mine. before you left i said that you can bet i'll be bothering you soon. you said, 'no bother, please do.' i've called you twice. it's been a hellish fight to not think about you all the time. sitting around waiting for your call. i wanna wake up naked next to you, kissing the curve in your clavicle. kissing your clavicle. ❞ " clavicle " alkaline trio this song was in my head this morning... and th

despite being off today, i woke up at 6:30am so that i could make a birthday card for ariel and meet her and her family for her 8:00am birthday breakfast... a what? a birthday breakfast ! yes. it was strange. and it was in fact, my first birthday breakfast celebration. but it was a genius idea, not only because breakfast is the greatest meal of the day, but also because tonight is reserved for glow in the dark mini-golf. anyways, 8:00am became 8:45am , because elsa broke her leg on thanksgiving (huh? this tidbit of information is for my own enjoyment... it's an inside joke) . we had some great conversation about: guns, ids, children, work, sleeping in ihop, driving, breakfast, and thanksgiving gravy. i had an absolute blast. on the way out, i gave ariel the card i made and we said our goodbyes and i smiled to myself, wondering how i always find myself hanging out with ariel in the presence of her dad and elsa. now i'm thinking, "if i ask her out to dinner... should i m

sent by jim . London PA Voice Fired for Slamming Tube By RAPHAEL G. SATTER | Associated Press Writer 11:39 AM CST, November 26, 2007 LONDON - The woman behind the gentle, even voice which warns London's subway commuters to "Mind the gap" was fired after telling a newspaper she thought the transit network was dreadful. Emma Clarke has been recording messages for London's sprawling subway network, popularly known as the Tube, since 1999. In addition to warning passengers to watch their step in walking between subway cars and the platform, she also reads the trains' stops, tells Londoners how long they have to wait until their next ride, and delivers service updates. Transport for London, the body responsible for running the subway, said Monday that Clarke, 36, was fired for telling The Mail on Sunday she avoided using the subway whenever possible. "The thought of being stuck in the Tube with strangers for minutes on end and having to listen to endless repeated

so i saw this jcpenny commercial today and i noticed two things... number one, jcpenny's marketing department or the ad agency that's helping them, has been doing a great job trying to improve their image. kudos to them. number two, they've been using some great background music in their commercials. i know that regina spektor sang one of the older ones, but in the one i saw, they used the song " all that i want ", by the weepies . and by the way, i don't know if you pronounce it weep-ies, like freebies or wee-pies, like levi's . anyways, i think that if you don't watch tv a lot, you pay more attention to the commercials, and in this particular case, the soundtrack was delicious.

11/26 : crazy day at work. absolutely swamped. got video card for computer. met with danny at wild wings for monday night football. good night. 11/25 : brunch at dave's. watched noon football games. watched first half of bears. drove home. caught last bears drive at buffalo wild wings . crashed a drunken mess. 11/24 : lumen with dave, carol, erikka, irene, gabe, azita, and mia. lucky strike met up with roy, chris, kristine, jim, phuc. regal beagle joined with tim and dar. ate at al's beef . crashed at dave's place. 11/23 : black friday, surprise visit from chris & kristine, dinner at san , solo viewing of hitman , and drinks at stonewood ale house .

holy shit. i've been through two black fridays with express and i never thought i'd ever go through another one. but i did today, and oooo... what a doozy. i can't really explain this, but it was a fast, yet long day. it was a lot of fun, and it was good to get out there and work the floor. if you read chris's blog on thursday, then you would've known that he made a surprise trip back to the states to surprise his family for thanksgiving. as soon as i read this, i commented that he should visit me at work... and he did, along with kristine . yay! i believe that i was talking to a customer when kristine jabbed me in the arm from behind. i thought it was a co-worker, until i saw her guilty smile as she walked around the store. i ended up meeting with them for a quick lunch at the nordstrom cafe for a little sit down meal. we caught up a little bit, but i had to get back to work... meanwhile, it was ryan m.'s last day, so the plan was to meet up at stonewood al

hitman i should know better by now. trailers are made to lure you in to a shitty movie. 9 times out of 10, you will be disappointed with a movie because you've set your expectations to match that of the moments shown in a 30 second clip. the trailer for hitman looked really promising, but i should've held my anticipation back. i went in knowing that timothy olyphant was a shitty actor, but he really outdid himself on this one. don't get me wrong, he's got the right look for the part, and he nailed the presence of the character, he just doesn't know how to deliver a good line. i don't know if the story followed the video game exactly, but it was poorly constructed and the dialogue was mostly ridiculous. the action was decent, like a solid B , but the choreography of the fight scenes could have been a lot better. and finally, like all action films, we come to the hot supporting actress. you probably have never seen olga kurylenko in a movie before, and for good

last year, erin and i spent thanksgiving at cammie's place in the city. it was an intimate gathering of cam's close friends. i made some baked mac and cheese that i was very proud of... it was delicious. but betsy broke my casserole dish on purpose, because she had her own mac and cheese she wanted everyone to eat. just kidding, but i dish really did break, and it really was betsy's doing... accidentally, on purpose. heh. anyways, this is the first thanksgiving in 5 years, that i haven't spent with erin. very strange, and sad too. i've found myself reflecting on the friendships that i've made over the past couple of years... thinking about the people who come into and out of our lives so quickly. as you may be able to tell, i'm a nostalgic little fuck. i live every day like it's a big event. i try to treat those i've just met, like they're my best friend (unless they're a complete douche bag). i get sad at the end of the night when i have

the night before thanksgiving is one of the busiest nights all year for bars and clubs. kids are home from college, and nobody has to work the next day. after a long day at work, i was looking forward to getting my drink on. webs invited me to join her crew at crystals , and even monica called and said i should check out finn mccool's . i was also planning to call danielle g. , to see if she was going to be in the area. lots of options, all local, all viable. so what did i do? i got home from work at about 10pm, took a nap, and woke up this morning. shit.

there are two things i look forward to, after the end of a long day... ...the first sip of that crisp, ice cold draft beer, and the moment i take my socks off when i get home. after each one, i breathe a long sigh, and bask in the thought that i've got 8 more hours till it starts again...

after work today, me and a couple of coworkers had some drinks at the stonewood ale house . it's nice where i work, because the post-work bitching is not about management, unlike my previous place of employment. we had a couple beers and talked about video games, porn, and other sorts of bullshit. i did get a new vocabulary word out of tonight's discussion... knife fighter . this was courtesy of gabe . apparently it's an slang popular on the east coast and is pretty descriptive when you really analyze it. but, since i don't want to offend, i will not give the definition here. and don't try looking in the urban dictionary , because it's not in there. also, the quote of the night was from andy , who said, "anything that makes your penis bleed, is probably not a good thing." and don't worry my fellow perverts, he was referring to kidney stones.

wow. i probably shouldn't have gone to wild wings to watch monday night football. i had a nice enough nightcap that i almost didn't write this... not wasted, but not just buzzing either. anyways, today started pretty early and basically blew by. but then there was a frustrating situation with a customer, and long story short, i ended up having to go above and beyond to keep her happy. this gave me a lot of stress, but nothing a tall glass of beer didn't fix. i got to see heidi and her husband and two kids today. and rob and tita mommy stopped by late in the day as well. i ended the night watching the broncos kill the titans. i had some boneless wings and a couple of beers. the place was packed with all the kids home from college. on one hand, i was jealous that all the kids got to hang with their crews, not worrying about work or school the next day... ah... the days of college. on another hand, fuck college. the best times in college are when you're not in colleg

robyn sent these pictures, for adult onesies... available at jcrew . chuck wants a pair, and i'm starting to think that i do too.

on her 21st birthday, i showed up at sarah's house to find her wasted in her bed, getting fed water... i was there at like 10:00pm. so showing up for her 23rd, i was expecting the worst. i was smack dab in the middle of boys town, right across from roscoe's , calling her cell phone to try to get let into her apartment. after three calls, i was starting to get nervous that sarah had passed out already... plus, some pretty boy in a cashmere coat was eyeing my goods. she finally called me back and i was safe. i haven't been to a real house party in a long time. there were jello shots for fuck's sake. i didn't realize that it was b.y.o.b, so there was a lot of stealing of beers. some of sarah's crew were passing around a bottle of captain, so i took some swigs. i spent a lot of time hanging with nick, alyssa, and kyle , because they were fucking nuts. it was a pretty good time, considering that i didn't know anyone except sarah. by the time i left at 3:00am ,

these pictures were sent by charles , with the caption, "jim & phuc halloween costumes '08". i'm not even gonna try to explain this. you just need to know jim and phuc to understand.

i had a blast at work today. good sessions. had fun meeting some of the new staff. and i had some unexpected guests. first there was lisa v. and katie , stopping in because they heard that i got the new gig. then manny and rachel came in to shop, with sleepy jayden . i gave jayden a happy meal toy that i got from my lunch a couple days prior. finally, my cousins, lita and craig came in with the three boys, carson, cole, and christian . i typically don't get visitors, and if i do, i rarely will have an opportunity to chat. but it's still nice when friends stop by, even if all i can do is wave. i went home to eat before going to sarah web's birthday party in the city. while i was eating, i saw the greatest episode of csi that i have ever seen. maybe you've seen it? it's the one where the 12 year old genius says that she killed the prom queen by putting solid sodium in shower head in the locker room... anyways, when they finally did the reveal at the end, it fe

so i was off today and surprisingly enough, i got a lot of shit done. not that you would care, but i did like 6 loads of laundry, paid the bills online, sent chris something long overdue, checked t-mobile to make sure my service was canceled, cleaned my house, cut my hair, and made it just in time for an 8pm meeting at work. after the meeting, i met up with jim, phuc, al, and danny at chevy's . david showed up and then berated me for not updating my blog fast enough. danny chimed in as well. everyone else just laughed. jim said that there should be another blog that let's people know when i've updated my blog, so that people can just check that instead of going to my page. funny. but they're all right. i set the precedent a couple months ago, by posting messages daily. people got into the habit of checking my page on a regular basis to keep up with whatever ridiculous stories i had to report. so i'm gonna try even harder to post a least a sentence, daily... anyw

so... someone at work got some free passes to a wednesday screening of beowulf . so as you may or may not know, pre-screenings of films allow the local media to view them early so that they can write reviews for the friday papers. here's mine. beowulf when i saw the trailers for this movie, i thought... "i'm never going to watch this picece of shit." but given the opportunity to watch it for free, i thought i'd give it a shot. i'm normally not a fan of cg/animation and after this... i'm still not. however, this is some of the best animation i have ever seen, and when you combine it with the 3D rendering (you get to wear glasses!), and some wonderful p.o.v. shots and choice of depth of on screen objects, you can't deny that this movie is at the top of its game. as far as the story goes, i haven't read the book, but this is one occasion where i am confident to say that the book is better. the pacing was inconsistent and i felt like there wasn't

last night i went to a show at the metro , featuring born ruffians, caribou, and battles . armando set the whole thing up, and the crew included adam, scott, vanessa, rob, and steven . here's the assessment... born ruffians wow. this indie band from toronto really surprised me. when they came out, they looked like a bunch of high school kids lucky as fuck to have gotten the gig. when they began to play... shit was i wrong. they have a style that we've heard a little of before, think modest mouse but a little more organic and reminiscent of the jam band sound. the voice of lead singer, luke lalonde was melodic and effortless and similarly, so was the stage presence of the entire band. in the middle of the set, i told armando that i'd probably be buying the cd. check 'em out here . caribou strikingly different, caribou, was a little more down tempo, and very much psychedelic. i felt like i was transported back into the 60s, and found myself getting lost in the music..

i had the day off today, and i was very excited. as a complete mac nerd at this point, my plan was to clone my current system and then perform a complete erase and install. well before you fall asleep listening to my babble, let me just tell you that things didn't go so well, so i have to bring my computer in for a checkup tomorrow. i spent the rest of the day today running errands, paying bills, taking naps, and basking in the glory of my fantasy football team. mind freak i just saw this strange picture on cari's myspace bulletin... no big deal right? but wait... is the image rotating clockwise or counter-clockwise? give it a minute before you make a decision... try looking away from the picture from either the left or the right side and then let your mind get fucked. at first i saw it only clockwise, but after a bit i could see both directions. it's crazy. the website claims that if you instantly see it going clockwise, then you're right brained (and vice versa for

shit. it's creeping in slowly... the darkness of the winter... the sharp sting of cold, cold air... the aches and pains of a fresh flu coming on... i really don't like going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark. the coat came out of hiding today. yeah, you know the one. the one that people like to describe as the pimp coat or (most recently) the gangster coat (what?!? i don't get it either). i don't think it's pimp or gangster, but when it comes out, one thing is for certain... it's cold outside. i should really invest in gloves with fingers. i pulled out the mini space heater for the bathroom, and i found the heated blanket too, but nothing heats me up quite like the warmth of her delicious sarcasm.

i noticed the other day that woodfield is playing christmas music already. wtf? i spent much of my day singing little drummer boy to myself, in agonizing pain. in lighter news, i ate sushi at sushi station , with tiff . delicious. after that, we picked up ariel and drove to amc, where armando was waiting to watch dan in real life . i got to sit next to ariel (oooo...), and the movie was excellent. the end. ps. to roy and anna... the stories will get better, i'm just exhausted... as always.

"life moves pretty fast. if you don't stop to look around once in a while, you could miss it." i bet you didn't think i'd ever blog again. well fuck. i've been a busy son of a bitch. well, if you're still checking... thanks. i'm sorry i've been slow at updating. roy said that he's unsubscribing, so i guess i'll just have to blog a bunch of shit about him... um... roy eats poop?