recycled

I’m a pack rat.

last week I recycled a whole bunch of paper-products cluttering the workspace.

I held up the packet of information from that firm — the one with their “Top 10 places to work” re-prints, the description of their benefits package, the business cards of the people who I interviewed with…  I evaluated the packet for several moments.  it had been a year since I had interviewed, and I was thoroughly disappointed when they didn’t extend an offer.  since then I had reconciled it to myself; it would have been a good move, but it wasn’t a make-or-break moment in my career.  it’s probably all for the best.

normally, I would have held on to the packet — a memento of the process and something I might look back and reminisce about in the future.  but this time I tossed it in the recycling.

and this week, that firm made a deal to buy our firm.

this only serves to reinforce my pack-rat tendencies.

overheard

omg.  I’m dying here.

“he picked a woman for vice-president thinking we’re stupid and we’d vote for a woman.  and it was just a white woman.  I mean, why didn’t he pick… oh, what’s her name, uh… Conda-lay-lay”

and no, she wasn’t saying it like Condi is her friend, she said it like she really didn’t know what Ms. Rice’s first name was.

“and I was disgusted when that person in the crowd called Obama an arab and he said, ‘No No, he’s not an arab’, like being an arab was a bad thing or somethin’…”

ugh.  the woman called Obama a Muslim, which was clearly trying to tie him to muslim extremists and terrorists.  what should McCain have done?  if he didn’t refute her comment right there and then, he would have been perceived as condoning it…

I need a set of in-ear noise-canceling headphones before this cubical-hell drives me batty.

game changer?

I know the night is early and there are a lot of votes out in California, but I’m looking at Obama 13,786,707 — McCain 13,533, 528 as the popular vote stands right now.

That’s Obama’s 49.9% to McCain’s 49.2%.

Sure, the electoral college is 174 (Obama) to 69 (McCain), but where is the big landslide?  Where is all the rejection of the Republican party?  Where is the mandate for Change?

20M ‘extras’ in the next season of Lost?

that’s the only way I could logically interpret this AP headline:

UN: financial meltdown will create 20M lost jobs

I mean, why would someone create a lost job?  some kind of insurance fraud?  looking for a government handout?  “I swear, I just created a bunch of jobs, and now their lost — can I get reimbursed somehow?”

look between your sofa cushions; these lost jobs have to be around here somewhere…

W, what is it good for?

actually overheard this morning at the cubical:

Awww, W came out this weekend?
I wanted to see that.

What’s that about?

It’s all about George Bush,

aw yeah, I wanted to see that too.
What’s the “W” for?

[no response]

“W”… “w”…
war?
ugh ah, War, what is is good for,
absolutely nothing, uh huh…

I swear I was sitting beside a live-action episode of Get Your War On, only with the IQ turned down by about 50%…

oh, and this just in, curtousy of my cubical-neighbor:

we aint’t even gonna have Christmas this year.  you want Christmas, you better send us another check.  send everyone a thousand dollars, and then maybe we’ll go shopping.  and I heard the stores aren’t even gonna have sales this year…  [nuh-uh!?]

I’m thinking of quitting my official job here and just declaring myself an embedded reporter.  yeah, I’ve been watching too much Generation Kill; but it’s eerily similar.

I’m Oscar Mike…

least original vanity plate ever

I drove past an IS250 today with the vanity plate: LEXUS.

why, WHY, would you waste the extra money to re-iterate the manufacturer of your car?  I know the word “Lexus” is on the car somewhere, and it has all the little (L) emblems; it’s not like it was a rare or customized/un-badged model.  odd.

“invest in college affordability”

this was something Obama said in the debates tonight, but I have no idea what it might possibly mean.

how do you invest in college “affordability”?  invest in technology that makes delivery of higher educational ‘services’ more affordable?  or are they just talking about cutting the cost of college through some subsidies/loan-programs?

college has never been so accessible to so many people — by definition, that’s affordability.  look at the numbers of people attending college year over year for the past 10 years — I bet it’s never gone down.  those people are all funded by something that is making it affordable enough to not skip and jump straight into the labor force…

I joked about this with several MBA students last week at an alumni event I attended; I said, “oh yeah, you guys have it so hard,” — and they all laughed back.  it was nervous laughter, because they’re unsure if the investment in this Masters degree will pay off for them when the Wall Street jobs they aspired to are being cut back, but they know they’re investing in their futures and that’s a good bet.

Oktoberfest, part duh

I forgot to post the pictures yesterday…

This is the pumpkin painting areas for tots, directly in front of the stage.  I’d like to say it was far enough away to be safe on their tender ears, but it wasn’t.  Luckily it didn’t turn into a mosh pit.

To get a fuller appreciation, here’s the video of happy families trying to ignore the menace onstage.

Strangeways, here we come

[maybe if I wrote this two weeks ago when it first occurred to me, it would have sounded half-way original.  but instead a quick Google brings up my exact thoughts as written by The Zone Blitz…]

the NFL network is using Morrissey’s “Everyday is like Sunday” to promote their “NFL Replay” service/option/channel (something).  it’s (almost) brilliant — with NFL Replay, you can watch any game any day of the week, so everyday IS like Sunday!! kind of like if you pumped a Tivo full of steriods, enabling it to record 15 games every weekend…

but aside from the title/refrain, this song is the antithesis of the NFL.  it’s mopey, dark, artsy, and unapologetically nihilistic.  lyrics:

Trudging slowly over wet sand
Back to the bench where your clothes were stolen
This is the coastal town
That they forgot to close down
Armageddon – come armageddon!
Come, armageddon! come!

Everyday is like sunday
Everyday is silent and grey

Hide on the promenade
Etch a postcard
How I dearly wish I was not here
In the seaside town
…that they forgot to bomb
Come, come, come – nuclear bomb

Everyday is like sunday
Everyday is silent and grey

no joke.  the video is below.  Mouth Piece Sports rightly called the NFL usage ‘bastardized’:

Morrissey, one of the saddest vocalists of the 20th century, writing a postcard to no one and wishing for nuclear death because life is just that miserable. Wooo! Are you ready for some football?!

Violent Femmes “Blistered in the Sun” for Wendy’s, Stone Roses spread the love for Cadillac, Iggy Pop was used to convince boomers to fulfill their “Lust for Life” on (royal) carribean cruises.  we live in weird times.

[Headline reference; I always thought Strangeways was a mental institution, go figure; and Strangeways was Moz, not The Smiths, I realize that.]

bizzarre. fascinating.

seriously, sometimes I marvel at how people stumble onto this blog.  here are actual search terms that people have used and then clicked through to st4rbux…

Search Engine Terms

These are terms people used to find your blog.

Yesterday

Search	Views
hockey songs	7
phelps 12000 calories	2
clinton’s responsibility in mortgage cri	2
,stormtroopers	2
i believe in hockey	1
stupid people think they are smarter	1
witty photo album names on facebook	1
when people think they are smarter than	1
palinfey	1
stormtroopers	1
laws murder	1
snl palin fey	1
law against murder	1
dialing out on cell phone need to dial 1	1
best old songs of all time	1
5 best hockey games of all time	1
earth moon orbit perspective	1
fireworks hockey	1
archives cartoon	1
best theme song music of 2008	1
what did cavemen fear	1
is there a federal law against murder?	1
down shirt breasts	1
snl-palin stetch	1
two seat commute cars	1

“down shirt breasts”?  stormtroopers?  “is there a federal law against murder?” — I mean, some search-bot must be pulling my leg, because that’s almost the exact title of an old post.  “fireworks hockey”?

whatev.  “I believe in hockey“.  amen.