…get a job

Oh The Royal Wedding™. I’m so happy that I don’t live in the UK. The amount of attention given to this hullabaloo is mind-boggling enough for us Americans. I cannot begin to fathom what it must be liked to be choked with the pomp and circumstance on my way to work, however.

The picture above is the headlining snap on MSNBC. The Royal Wedding™ must be a big deal now that people are camping out to catch a glimpse of….what, exactly? A feathery fascinator? A coat with tails? The backs of other gawkers’ heads? If you’re into this thing, how much fun can you have standing in a sea of people with no food, drink or access to a toilet? It’s like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Sure, you may be there for history but look at all the creature comforts you’re sacrificing for the cause. There is no cause significant enough for me to give up the bare necessities in life. NONE. Not an endless supply of money, eternal salvation, a bottomless cup of coffee or cigarettes that magically do not cause cancer.

Then there is that whole question of what does one actually expect to witness that cannot be witnessed in the comfort of one’s home, on the sofa, in front of the teevee? As with sporting events, if you don’t have a decent seat, maybe your ass should just stay at home and watch things you can actually see via the miracles of modern technology.

I dunno. Maybe the freak of nature (above) has some logical excuse for parking his ass on concrete for a week? I’m sure the people watching (of the crowd, not those invited) is worth the price of no admission. Alas, it’s certainly not worth not being able to move from a spot, eat or tend to Mother Nature.

New Kids On The Block

New Year’s Day – wee hours of 01 January 1989 – Philadelphia, PA

Having been relieved of our babysitting duties unusually early for the night and knowing that our parents were not expecting us until the follow morning, my galpal *Brie and I decided to go into town to see what sort of hell we could raise. Aside from sucking face in the back seat of the car with two very drunken, hot male students from Penn (drenched in the aroma of Drakkar) who were waiting for the Mummers Parade, my best memory would be the soundtrack. The soundtrack of a perfect night. Rosalita by Bruce Springsteen. Houndog by Elvis. Livin’ on a Prayer by Bon Jovi.

Also included in the mix was one of the best R & B bands of our generation. That’s right. New Kids On The Block.

The first time I heard “Right Stuff” my world was rocked. And it wasn’t rocked by the tongue of a stranger stuffed down my throat. It was rocked by the BEAT.

Oft overshadowed by the contributions from Seattle in the 1990s, Boston was cranking out some serious shit in the 1980s. Some of the unsung heroes of the time are Mission of Burma, Dinosaur Jr and The Pixies. For the R & B inclined, New Edition was the gold standard. Alas, what Beach Music did to Motown, New Kids On The Block did to New Edition. Those white boys showed Bobby Brown and company what true R & B was all about.

For those of you unaware, New Kids On The Block was formed by Maurice Starr who took George Martin’s stewardship of The Beatles to its logical conclusion. Starr had a vision of taking five talentless hoodlums destined for a life of petty crime and/or musical theater and turning them into the Greatest R & B Act of All Time.

Although their early releases were unappreciated by the connoisseurs of Top 40 radio, they served as the building blocks for a career that would make The Jackson 5 sound almost as solid as The Osmonds. Starr and company struggled with finding the perfect hit to unleash their greatness on the world but once “You Got It (The Right Stuff)” debuted on the airwaves, the world was transformed.

In early 1989, the magnum opus that is “Hangin’ Tough” became an anthem for young America. Gone were the days of listening to hip-hop and old skool rap. New Kids On The Block captivated mall and arena audiences throughout America, dethroning the Queen of the Malls, Tiffany, and raking in trillions of dollars in revenue from poster sales to the tweenage girl demographic.

The NKOTB catalogue is as solid as it is stellar. Throughout their career, NKOTB released an astonishing 19 singles from eight compact discs. Of the 19 singles, three of the songs took their rightful place at the pinnacle of the pop charts.

Musical greatness aside, NKOTB busted down doors for scores of oppressed white boys throughout America. Had it not been for the brilliance of Starr and the temerity of these rapscallions, the music industry would have ultimately been denied extraordinary acts such as Backstreet Boys, ‘N Sync and 98 Degrees. A world without Justin Timberlake is a world not worth living in.

I could wax philosophic about the contributions of NKOTB, the boy band era and Starr for ages. Rather than sully their collective magic with my simple prose, I shall let the music speak for itself.

Enjoy the YouTube clips and bask in the glory.

*names changed to protect the naughty

…get in the car

If you know what’s good for you, you will get in the fucking car.

Word of the Day: this is not the SAT

Miss Kitten and Shark are otherwise preoccupied this evening. Therefore, the High Priestess will fill in. Please do not expect much.

Sesquipedalian
\ˌses-kwə-pə-ˈdāl-yən\
adjective

having many syllables : long
given to or characterized by the use of long words <a sesquipedalian television commentator>

Origin of sesquipedalian: Latin sesquipedalis, literally, a foot and a half long, fromsesqui- + ped-, pes foot — more at foot

Example: Concatenate is a sesquipedalian way of saying the word link.

…housekeeping

While I loved the simplicity of the previous theme, I found the teeny-weeny font beyond annoying. Furthermore, I couldn’t abide by older posts being compressed. Ergo – new theme.

Please be sure to leave your feedback in the comments.

…say it in llama

Llamas. They are adorable, fuzzy and spit at people. Nature’s perfect creature!

Now, nature’s perfect creature is the world’s most perfect font. Have a love letter to send? Say it in llama. Have some bad news to share? Say it in llama. Would you like attention the next time you send out your CV? Write your cover letter in llama. After all, llamas make everything better.

…fuck Time Warner Cable

Seriously. Fuck it hard with shards of glass and sand.

I don’t ask for much out of life. All that I really need is a little financial security, a happy and healthy toddler, a home with Tiffany lighting and an internet connection that doesn’t suck greasy, hairy ass.

I’m woefully addicted to connectivity. I go through withdrawal if we lose power and my iPhone battery runs out of juice. I shake. It’s worse than going without a cigarette, in certain ways. That said it’s not just a consistent internet connection to me. It’s my livelihood since I work out of my home.

Years ago, I was able to work off-line. Since I transitioned to my new position last year, I no longer have the luxury of keeping things on my own desktop as I work with patient data which must be double-sooper-seekrit encrypted in llama and wingdings. Trying to download and upload any document is a complete pain in the ass on a good day. When the size of the file is the cyber equivalent of the entire State of North Carolina, the task is odious. The process takes so damn long that I’m able to empty and reload the dishwasher and do laundry.

While I appreciate being able to multi-task like no other, I am far too impatient for this madness. Around middle-March, I upgraded my service to uber-maximum-light speed performance. Or so I thought. Our service may be faster but I wouldn’t know as I am now unable to maintain a connection for longer than a mouse fart.

After sitting on the phone with the diagnostic staff stationed in, oh let’s say Bangalore, they finally agreed that it’s an actual physical problem. Being the nice folks that they are, they agreed to dispatch a technician to make some repairs.

The technician showed up in a torrential downpour with a surly attitude. I suppose I’m having flashbacks from all of the acid I did not drop in college because he made us believe that the problem is in our heads. My seven years of living in this house and dealing with the same fucking problem over and over and over again did not matter. Jesus could be standing next to me, explaining the problem to the tech and I would still be wrong. Oh. And going to hell, too.

After slamming my head off the wall and hopping up and down in the foyer (not really), I finally convinced the surly tech that the problem is, indeed, with the actual cable running to the home. Yay! Unfortunately, surly tech did not bring the appropriate equipment to make such repairs. Our only recourse is to schedule another appointment.

I can certainly appreciate the fact that not everyone is a prognosticator and not everyone will bring every fucking tool in the shop to a service call. What I do not appreciate is paying for an upgrade and receiving a downgrade or a no-grade.

So, again, I will have to call Time Warner and sit on eternal rot with Bangalore to have the same surly tech dispatched to the home where I will have the same irritating conversation about what is actually wrong. Because, you see, I have an infinite amount of time to spend on this issue. I will end up dropping to my knees, with tears streaming down my face and pleading with someone who couldn’t give a flying fuck that the problem is not with the router. It’s not with the modem. It’s with that tangled up mess of a cable outside of the house. In short – it’s not me. It’s YOU! It’s you and your shitty cable that does not deliver a consistent bleep-blip-bloop signal to my damn house, Time Warner.

In the interim, I will spend, at the very least, ten minutes trying to access my WLAN to spend an additional ten minutes trying to upload a document. Then I will spend an additional ten minutes trying to explain to my boss why it takes me twenty minutes to complete the simplest of actions.

All because of an upgrade.

…om nom nom!

Yes. I should be making a proper Passover dinner. Instead, I spent some time at Target stocking up on plastic eggs and candy for Milkface’s school. I am the worst Jew in the world.

Anyhooo…I don’t have much to say as my mouth is full of sweet delight and it’s impolite to talk with your mouth full.

zomgwtfbbqrolo!!!111!

…central north carolina tornadoes

We have some wacky weather in the Tarheel State. For example, stand in your front yard where it is sunny and look across the street at your neighbor’s home to see rain. There’s not much snow but we have snice (snow and ice mix). The humidity in the summertime defies description and how people lived here before air conditioning mystifies me. We have hurricanes.

Seldom, if ever, do we have tornadoes in this part of the state. The last tornado to tag Raleigh visited in 1988. I used to live in a house that hosted that tornado for tea. Before that, it was 1984.

Then there was yesterday. Late afternoon came the beast that ate the piedmont. The estimate of fatalities stands at two dozen as I write this post. According to the most recent report, a total of 62 tornadoes touched down.

Mother Nature’s fury cannot quite be captured in words. One needs pictures to process the destruction. Far be it from me to not deliver.

More information on the storm can be found at WRAL’s website. The viewer submitted photos are astonishing.