My iPhone AC Adapter Replacement Is Here!
Current mood: mischievous
Category: Web, HTML, Tech
And boy, did it come in a big box!
When it arrived, I really had no idea what it was. I had forgotten about signing up for that replacement deal a few weeks ago and even if I had remembered, it never would have occurred to me that this giant box was all for a teensy-weensy, little AC adapter.
I mean, this box is nearly 3 times as large as the original one the iPhone came in! And that included an AC adapter that was nearly the same size!
Sure, this box is also used for the return trip of your old AC adapter, because if you don't return it, they actually charge you for the one they sent out! Seriously, read the letter that came with it! I have a feeling Apple is gonna have a lot of pissed-off customers about 3 months from now who didn't bother to read that through.
Plus, how safe do you need to keep an AC adapter that you're probably just going to throw out anyway? They're not that fragile to begin with. Honestly, a small bubble wrap package would have done the job, don't you think?
Maybe I'm making a big deal out of this, but when you multiply one box times the millions of iPhone owners out there, it seems pretty wasteful. Not just to the environment, but for Apple, which is gonna have to foot what I would imagine is going to be an enormous bill in terms of materials and shipping.
Luckily for them, at 300 bucks a pop, they probably won't sweat it too much.
The day I’m having…
Current mood: frustrated
Category: Pets and Animals
That's some random person's car parked in front of my garage. You can see my car, to the right.
I walked outside and spotted a woman with some dogs in front of my neighbor's house.
Me: Hi, do you know whose car this is?
Terrible Human Being: (snappy) Yes, that's my car.
Me: Um, ok. Do you think you could move it? It's blocking my driveway.
Awful, Soulless Person: (brisk) I need to take these dogs inside!
She leaves with the dogs, I stand there, dumbfounded. After a few minutes, she returns.
Selfish, Miserable Individual (cont'd): (angry) These workmen parked in the driveway, there's no where for me to park!
Well, there actually was somewhere to park. In fact, right next to my garage is an actual parking space that was totally unoccupied. Of course, she would have had to walk an additional 14 feet, so it's understandable that she chose to block my garage instead.
Before I moved to Hollywood to be a bigshot record producer, I sold stocks on the Houston Stock Market in Texas. Since oil is the big thing in Texas, my strategy was to try and corner the market on things that were less heavily traded, like oats. It didn't really work out that well.
Anyway, when I was there, I got a chocolate lab puppy that I named "Ol' Stanky", because he bore a strong resemblance to Joan Collins. Back then, it was a timely and hilarious reference, but it hasn't aged well.
So Ol' Stanky was my best pal and he moved with me to Los Angeles and was even the ring bearer at my wedding to Linda.
He was a great dog, very mellow and everybody loved him.
When he was about 14 years old, it became hard for him to get around. We took him to the vet, who called us with the grim news that Ol' Stanky had cancer. It was a pretty aggressive type and had advanced pretty far along, in numerous places in his body. It's a testament to Ol' Stanky's fortitude that he had only recently shown us any signs that he was in pain.
The vet wanted us to bring him back so he could put him out of his misery. At that point, there were only surgical options and to put an old dog through something so complex and involved was cruel, as he probably wouldn't survive anyway. He told us we could take the day to think it over and spend some time with Ol' Stanky. I thanked him for his kindness and steeled myself to break the news to Linda.
She was really upset but knew that it was the right thing to do. As we spent the day giving Ol' Stanky treats and rubbing his ears, just the way he liked us to, I started to think about what lay ahead.
It didn't seem right that we would just drop him off for the vet to do his business in a cold, sterile backroom of his office. Ol' Stanky should die here, in his home, with the people he loved.
I left Linda and Ol' Stanky to run some errands and returned a half hour later with a handgun I purchased from some youths downtown.
As I showed the piece to Linda, she screamed in horror. I tried to calm her down and explain my motives. She began to see that Ol' Stanky's life really began with me, so if someone was going to end it, it should be me as well.
We spent some more time with Ol' Stanky, but he stopped responding to our affection, lost in his own world. It was almost as if he knew it was time.
I picked him up in a blanket and took him down to the basement. I laid him down on his ratty old dog bed that he loved so much and we offered him some final, tearful goodbyes. I petted his muzzle and he licked my hand. Now, I knew it was time too.
I told Linda she didn't have to stick around for this, but she wanted to be there, for both of us.
I checked the weapon to make sure everything was in order (I had lived in Texas for almost six years, so I was proficient in firearm safety and maintenance) and pulled back the hammer.
I leveled the gun at Ol' Stanky's head and gripped the trigger. I pulled tightly and a loud bang went off. Ol' Stanky let out a yelp of surprise.
Linda opened her eyes and looked at me glaringly, after she surveyed the scene of Ol' Stanky licking at the tiny wound on his shoulder.
"I guess I flinched at the last second," I told her, sheepishly.
"Don't you think this poor animal has suffered enough?" She asked me.
I did, but still… I guess the finality of it all hadn't really sunken in, like I thought it had. Maybe the surgery wasn't such a bad option? His bullet wound didn't seem to be life-threatening.
No. I was being selfish. I had to do what was right. For him.
I pointed the gun at my dog, making sure that where I was aiming would deal a deadly blow. It would be quick, it would be final. He would be at peace.
Another loud bang. Again, Linda's frustrated and angry voice yelling at me over Ol' Stanky's pained cries.
That time, I knew I had flinched. I had nicked the side of his tail and there were little bits of fur still floating through the air.
Well, this went on for another half hour or so. None of my shots seemed to connect with anything important, as Ol' Stanky kept on ticking. He seemed to match my wife's exasperation with my ineptitude. I'm pretty sure that if he could talk, he would have joined her in admonishing me.
As it dawned on me that I had only one bullet left, the ridiculousness of my situation started to hit me. I realized this whole "I'm gonna put my own dog to sleep" bullshit had started not out of respect for my beloved pet, but rather as an attempt to show my father that I was, contrary to his opinion, a real man. One who was capable of making important decisions on his own. One who could, so to speak, "pull the trigger".
Well, looks like Dad was right again!
When I told Linda that I had only one bullet left, she tried to grab the gun from me, because she felt that I was never going to be able to do it. I was determined not to let go, because now I had to show her too. I'd show everyone! Especially my stupid dad!
That's about the time the gun went off. The bullet ricocheted off the aluminum ladder and bounced back, hitting my wife in the leg. I ran upstairs, grabbed the phone and called 911. I returned to find her putting pressure on the wound.
"What the hell is that for?" she asked, referring to the steak knife in my hand.
"Oh, well, I figured I should finish the job before the ambulance gets here, no?"
"Forget about the fucking dog for a second, I'm bleeding, you asshole!"
It seemed cruel to leave poor Ol' Stanky sitting there in his bed, totally annoyed with me, as he tried to lick at each of his 16 or 17 minor wounds, but she did seem to be losing a lot of blood.
When the paramedics arrived, they took my wife to the hospital while a police officer questioned me about the events leading up to my wife being shot.
"You shot your own dog?" he asked, increduously.
"Yeah, but he's fine, he's downstairs," I told him.
"Wait a minute, he's still alive?"
"Yeah, well, I couldn't quite… um, finish the job?" Boy, this was starting to sound bad.
The cop seemed to think so too, as he handcuffed me to the sink while he went down to the basement to retrieve Ol' Stanky. When he was done carrying him out to the car, he returned just long enough to pistol whip me into unconsciousness, before taking him to the vet.
The first thing I remember upon waking up in the hospital was seeing Ol' Stanky, happily wagging his tail on television. A reporter was doing a story about the miracle dog who had come back from the edge of death after an insane monster had accidentally shot out every single one of his cancerous tumors in an aborted attempt to put the dog down.
Look, I know I made some huge mistakes, but I think the fact that my actions are ultimately what saved the dog should be weighed when evaluating my sentence, don't you?
Apparently, a jury of my peers did not think that, as I am now serving a seven year sentence in a maximum security prison. My ex-wife has sued me for everything I am worth, so when I get out of jail, I will come home to nothing. In fact, I won't even have a home to come home to.
As for Ol' Stanky, he's doing fine. He lives on a farm with the police officer who pistol-whipped me now. He's had a full recovery and will probably live another 14 years. I wish him well, even though it was his testimony against me that really sealed my fate.
All of this has further cemented the idea that I am not a real man, in my father's eyes. But he's wrong and when I get out of here, me and my new friends from the Aryan Brotherhood are going to show him just how wrong he is!
If you're reading this now, you got one of the flyers I dropped from the roof of the Popeye's on Hollywood Boulevard today.
Clever marketing aside, I think my work speaks for itself. Interested parties should contact my commercial agent immediately, before I'm all booked up for the fall season.
I will also be entertaining offers from theatrical agents, but if you're not with one of the big three or (at the least) an up and coming boutique agency, please don't bother. I'm not going to waste my time with your mom & pop bullshit dream factory. In fact, fuck you and get the hell off my goddam webpage. You're human garbage. A leach on society. You do nothing good for this world and would be better off dead. Seriously, do us all a favor.
I mean, look at that fucking range of emotions. I visit places in those few seconds that they couldn't aspire to in most of the crap they make these days. I'm not acting, I'm taking you on a motherfucking journey to a magical world you could only fantasize about. And that's on your best day.
You're welcome.
Look, enough. Just fucking call me. Make your case why you think you should be the one I let make me rich. It's free money. You're hardly even earning it. I'm doing all the work. You sit on your ass while I blow peoples' minds and you take ten percent. For nothing.
Seriously, stop reading this and call me right now before someone else does and starts taking your free money you'll be stealing from me.
Rosebugs
Current mood: rebellious
Category: Sports
Our daughter, Xyclops 4, had been missing for over six weeks when the doorbell rang.
It was Christmas morning and we were doing our best to put the past behind us and have a happy holiday.
We always spent the two weeks leading up to New Year's at our family cabin in upstate New York. My grandfather had hand-crafted it with such meticulous care, that my father said it still looked as good as it did the day he laid the final log, nearly sixty years prior.
My eldest, Lucy, even joked that if it had been the cabin that had gone missing, instead of Xyclops 4, I'd still be out there searching!
Seriously though, the cabin was great and was proving to be just the thing to get us over the earlier difficulties dealing with our loss.
We were about 20 miles from the nearest town, so you can imagine our surprise upon hearing the doorbell ring, that Christmas morning. Who could it be? The cabin didn't even have a doorbell!
As I opened the door, I saw no one. There were no fresh tracks in the snow, just a large box.
"It must be from Santa!" I jested.
Lucy's husband, Tommy, bent over the box and read the attached card. "No, it's from Eric Filipkowski."
"Oh," I said, trying to hide my disappointment that it wasn't from Santa.
Everyone else seemed pretty excited, because Eric was Xyclops 4's boyfriend. He had been named by the police as the lone suspect in our daughter's disappearance, but they had to drop the charges due to a lack of evidence. She had vanished without a trace under mysterious circumstances.
"What does it say, Tommy?" asked my no-good brother-in-law, Pete.
Tommy read the card aloud to the family which had gathered around him:
"Dear Anderson Family,
I confess that it was I, Eric Filipkowski, who murdered your beloved daughter, Xyclops 4. When I was done, I took her bones and made this sled for you. I know it doesn't make up for the loss of a loved one, but I hope it comes close. Please forgive me.
xoxo
Eric."
We stood there, in shock, as Pete's son, Elroy, tore into the box.
"Holy shit!" exclaimed Elroy.
"Elroy, language!" scolded his mother, before laying eyes on the sled herself. "Holy shit! That's a hell of a sled!"
And she was right. It was magnificent. It was probably the best sled any of us had seen. It practically begged to be taken up a big snowy hill.
"Oh, but… we can't… I mean… it's our daughter… right?" sputtered my wife.
She raised an interesting dilemma. On the one hand, the sled was made from the bones of our murdered daughter. On the other hand, we had just gotten 2 feet of fresh powder overnight.
Everybody chimed in with their suggestions of what we should do. As the patriarch of the family, I felt it was my duty to hear them out and then weigh in with my decision.
Some people wanted to get to sledding right away, a few thought we should bring the sled into the cops as evidence, along with the note. I guess they harbored some ill will towards Eric and wanted to see him rot in jail.
"Look," I said, "nobody likes Eric and we're certainly not glad he murdered Xyclops 4, but the last thing we're doing is taking this sled to the cops. They'll destroy it when they run tests on it. We won't get to go sledding at all. I think we should hold on to the sled. It's what Xyclops 4 would want."
Most of the family was satisfied with this answer, but over the protests of the dissenting minority, I continued: "Now look, we all hate that stupid son of a bitch, Eric Filipkowski, we'd all love to see him get raped in some jail cell, but we have to stop being so selfish," even as I said this, I was imagining speeding down the big hill out back on my new sled, "We need to think about what's best for Xyclops 4. Being examined and taken apart in some dark police crime lab? Or spending the holidays with a family that loves and appreciates her fine craftmanship?"
They hung their heads.
"I thought so."
I had silenced my detractors. They knew my decision was not only final, it was just.
"Ted is right," my wife spoke up, "Christmas is about family. It's what Xyclops 4 would want. And she would also want her mother to get the first ride! Yoink!"
My wife made a grab for the sled, but I was too quick for her. "Oh no you don't!" I said, pulling it just out of her reach, I ran for the door, followed eagerly by the rest of my family.
We stayed up on that hill the rest of the morning. The sled rode even better than it looked. It was the best Christmas ever!
[thanks to Carol Hiller for the awesome photoshop job]
I am now at a point in my life where I hate the summer and I don't even care about my birthday. This alarms me because this is the exact opposite of how I used to be.
I think this is a terrible list.
I kinda want to move away, but then what?
I wouldn't mind living in a loft.
I can't follow what the hell is going on in the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
That should do it for now.
Oh and I'm worried about the war, the election and all the hurricanes and the earthquake that we'll probably have here soon.
Dude, Where’s My Underpants?
Current mood: disappointed
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes
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When we were kids, my brother and I had this really cute tradition that started when we realized that though every kid in America got a report card detailing how he was doing in school, no adults were being graded on their performance as parents!
We didn't think that was fair, so we started giving my mom a montly report card, to let her know how she was doing as a mother. We didn't give one to our father, because, as the household's chief breadwinner, we felt that would be disrespectful.
Though she may have protested the practice in public, I think that my mom really did appreciate the tips on how she could better herself and indeed did start wearing more makeup around the home, which we felt made her a more professional representative of our family.
Well, as cute as that was back then, I'm almost 33 years old now and what isn't cute is the FAILING GRADES my mother has been receiving on my monthly reports.
Look, this isn't brain science. My mom lives 3000 miles away. I'm 33. Her duties aren't that extensive.
1. Call me every night before (my) bedtime and sing me lullaby's until I fall asleep. She complains that when I go to bed at 2 or 3, it's right before the sun rises on the east coast, so she has been slacking off on this one. I guess I can sorta understand that, so I'll give her a C. No, C-.
2. Buy me vitamins and shampoo and stuff like that. I've got plenty of shampoo, though not the kind I like and tell her to buy, because she has to get what's on sale or use her stupid coupons; it's the "stuff like that" part where she's earning her failing grade.
That's all she has to do!
She doesn't have to clean my room (though she does have to pay for the maid I have do it for me now), she doesn't have to make my lunch, I use her Citi card to buy that.
Am I wrong or should this not be super easy?
If you're reading this, Mom, let me spell it out for you as plainly as possible:
I NEED MORE UNDERWEAR.
People need to wear underpants. I can't be expected to buy my own. You haven't sent me any in years.
It's pathetic.
Ynez keeps asking me if I want her to throw out the ones with holes in them.
HOLES.
This is tantamount to child abuse!
Some days, I'm forced to wear my Simpsons novelty Christmas boxers I got for my 19th birthday! My 19th birthday! That was like 6 years ago!
Half of what I wear on a daily basis was purchased before 9/11. You want to talk about "the day that everything changed?" How about "the day I changed into a new pair of underpants?" That's what I want to talk about. And I don't want "that day" to have been in 2003.
Maybe this is coming off as a little harsh, but when it comes to reverse-parenting, just like with regular parenting: you spare the rod, you spoil the child/parent.
And Mom, you are definitely coming off as somewhat of a spoiled brat. So get your act together or I will ship you off to a home.
mischievous
frustrated
inspired
indignant
artistic
rebellious
blah
anxious
disappointed
triumphant
