Month: March 2004

You know, the Globey’s

Writer guy

The wife and I saw the Harlem Globetrotters this week. This year marks their 75th year of doing that Globetrotting thing. Here’s some strategies for maximum enjoyment.

Pre-game:
1) Bring children to the game. Lots of them. The larger your brood the better. If you lack a brood, carjack a boy or girl scout troop en route to the game.
2) Make sure the children have empty stomachs. Deprive them of food for at least six hours beforehand. Never fear, once inside, there’s plenty of refined sugar available.
3) Purchase one (1) mini globetrotters style basketball for every two children in your brood. That way they have something to throw against the wall AND something to fight over.

Game:
1) Ignore your hopped up, basketball toting child until halftime.
2) Enjoy the comic genius of the world famous Globetrotters as they wipe up the court with their opponent. They are enormous talents.

Halftime:
1)Either feed the child more sugar or take it home. Whichever stops the screaming.

Post game:
1) If you haven’t bought the child a mini-basketball by the conclusion of the game, now’s the time to purchase them an oversized Globetrotter jersey.
2) If there’s sugar left for sale, please purchase it for immediate injection. Those kids need a quick boost of energy so they can play a basketball game in the aisles as 3,000 people try to exit.

State of the Union

Writer guy

Warning, this blog is very unfunny, but I need to get a few announcements out of the way and Saturday is a good day for housekeeping. Or so the wife tells me when she leaves for work.

1)Site updates. Tech guy worked his little fingers off the last day or so to add some reader requested enhancements. The 2 most major changes:

a)Email a link – at the bottom of every blog, everywhere blogs appear on the site, is a new link named, uh, email a link. Clicking it takes you to a form where you can email your friends a link to that particular blog. Give it a whirl. Now it’s even easier to send someone a link to the site.

b)Karma ratings. Perhaps you noticed other new links at the bottom of the blogs. Those are for you to assign karmic ratings to a particular blog entry. Anywhere a blog appears, you have the option of indicating either you like, are neutral or you hate a given blog. This way I can separate the clunkers from the hits. Your karmic ratings move blogs up and down the ranking list in real time. If you want to see the rankings without voting, click the Reader’s Ratings at the left.

2)Other stuff. Still no agent, but I do have a pile of rejections. I thought it would take longer to get this many no’s, so I must be doing something right. At least they’re reading my queries. : )

Credit Card Conspiracy Theory

Writer guy

I tried logging onto my credit card web site to check the balance so I could pay the bill but it refused my password and user name 3 times. So I had to call a number and give a Customer Service Rep ( CSR ) the security error code on the page.

sam: Hi! I can’t log into the account information website. The page says error WESCREWU1.
CSR: No problem sir, let me just verify your information. Oh, it says here your account is locked because of multiple attempts to access the account with incorrect login information. Your password has been reset and sent to you in an email. It’s good for the next X minutes for one time use only.
sam: Great! Fantastic! Thank you very much!
CSR: Since you’re waiting for your password in the mail, let me tell you about a special new offer for our special customers. This service protects you in the event of identity theft. Imagine if someone gained access to your accounts through a compromised password. Well, you don’t need to worry any longer about that, because you are covered. Our competitors are charging X, but since you’ve been such a valuable customer your rate is Y.
sam: Great! Fantastic! Thank you no very much!
CSR: Are you sure sir? Imagine if an email with information about your accounts was misplaced, or was never delivered? Identity theft has even happened to Tiger Woods. What would you do?
sam: I’d do like Tiger and get engaged to a pretty Norweigan girl, do a few Buick commercials, then call you and complain.
CSR: Sure you don’t want to consider the 30 day free trial period?
sam: I’ll be on my way now.

After I hung up, I realized I’d been telemarketed in reverse. Maybe these weasels can’t call us anymore, but sooner or later, if something we use that they provide breaks, we’ll have to call them and our guard will be down because we need help. Now that’s just evil.

Talk About the Passion

Writer guy

On Sunday night, I saw the Passion of the Christ. I thought about writing a movie review about the film, but words eluded me when trying to describe it. Basically, I’m speechless. For the first time ever, I don’t have a cohesive opinion about something. Paramedics please attend to my mother who is now in a state of shock from the above revelation.

Lots of people are familiar the basic storyline, and the ending is pretty well known so I’ll leave that to everyone else to discuss.

Below is a short laundry list of details about the film that struck me, in no particular order:

1) Blood. There’s a lot of it. How much? Lots. More than any film ever? Not sure, but it’s lots.
2) Violence. I’ve seen more violent films, but this one wins hand down for the length of the torture sequences.
3) Product placement. There were no corporate sponsors for this film, thus there were no products.
4) Trailers. No one wanted their film to appear before this one, so there are no trailers.
5) Latin and Aramaic. Boy those languages are clunky. They sound clunky 2000 years out of context too. Listening to them while trying to follow along with the subtitles was beyond clunky.
6) Romans. They had good haircuts.

In the end, all I know about this moive that lots more people will see it.