The Online Personality Quiz

I've seen these eharmony.com commercials day in and day out. Usually, they pop up in the lonely hours of the early morning when I'm downing some baked tostitos and watching reruns of Living Single. I've never been interested in cheeseball dating services. But my good friend Brian (guy incognito to you all) got me interested recently.
Apparently, they were unable to match his "unique" personality style with any of the "tens of thousands of members."

Ouch.

Confident that I would have better luck, I signed up for the test myself. After several grueling minutes of stupid questions, I was finally ready to receive my matches-made-in-heaven.

Apparently, I'm also "unique."

Essentially, my "personality profile" offered just about every nicely worded form of "anti-social, surley bitch" that you can think of. I'm sorry. I meant to say that I "may seem aloof due to my cautious nature in my relationships."

At least it beat brian's profile, which informed him that "fire safety" was one of his wants/needs.

Undaunted by this rather unwelcome view of me, I went over to colorgenics.com to find out what a bunch of squiggly lines said about me.
And I swear to you, I am not making this up:

"Like a crow [you] are attracted to shiny objects"

That settles it. I'm an aloof bird of the night who hates people but can't keep my paws off of aluminum foil.

Works for me!

Much love

Much love to the fine folks at Park Avenue CD's (http://www.parkavecds.com/) in Winter Park, Florida. They were keeping a much sought after (by me) Julie Ruin CD, which I am currently rocking out to. Not only that, but I was able to score the Rock Against Bush compilation put out by Fat Wreck Chords for a mere $9. (Of course, if you want to buy it straight from fatwreck.com, they have it for an astonishingly low $6.)

But that's not all! I also got a lovely plastic bag with a black and white pic of Meatwad from ATHF (http://www.adultswim.com/shows/athf/index.html) to carry my purchase home in. It's so cool, it was almost worth the 25 bucks all by itself.

But back to the compilation CD. Honestly, people. This is a 2-disc compilation for six freaking dollars. If you don't have it, freaking get it. It's worth it for the Sleater-Kinney song "Off With Your Head" alone. I honestly think this could be the Best. Song. Ever. And that's a title I don't take lightly. I've previously reserved that title to apply only to the L7 song Wargasm. But I think this one might just knock it off it's deliciously angry and politically relevant throne.

Besides that, there are songs from well known and loved groups like Rancid, Hot Water Music, No Doubt, Green Day, Operation Ivy, Bad Religion, Lagwagon, Dropkick Murphys, Bouncing Souls, Flogging Molly, No Use For A Name, and the list goes on. Go buy this cd. I'm not joking. $6 can buy you some crappy take-out fried rice, or it can buy you a killer compilation cd that you'll treasure forever.

Today Ruled- and why I love effed up friends

Okay, so yesterday sucked royally. Between the TA situation and a few other dumb things that I managed to screw up all by myself (it is my forte), it was really not a great day for yours truly.

But today made up for everything. My good buddy, who we'll call Jon Thomas (because that actually is his name) was in town. Now, I haven't gotten to see ol' Jon for quite a while. He's had the misfortune of being tied down to a court ordered intensive rehab program. Oh, jon. But today, was just like old times. We started out with the usual conversation, about how he couldn't get arrested anymore because they won't be so lenient with him next time. Then it took a turn for the surreal:
Jon: So, since I don't actually live in Orlando, I think I could probably get away with grabbing a few ipod's from the Office Depot and running out.
Me: Uh, dude. Didn't you just say you couldn't get arrested again?
Jon: But, if it's not for drugs, you think it still counts?
Me: proooobably...
Jon: well, maybe I could just tear up and say that I steal to support my addiction... my addiction to free shit!
Me: We're not going NEAR an office depot today.

So, a few moments later, where do we end up but Office Depot? I was assured it was okay, though, as this particular location did not dabble in the ipod buiz (apparently, it had already been scoped). Our good friend Brian works at the copy center there, so we stopped in to talk with him.
As we walk up to the counter, Jon actually says (and I swear I am NOT joking)"Copy This!" immediately before dropping trou.

The customer standing next to us started cracking up and looking around suspiciously for the hidden camera, convinced that he was on some reality show. Sorry- no reality show buddy. Welcome to my life.

We made a, well, rather hasty exit after that.

From there, we went out to have a peek in Brian's car. Apparently, Jon had left his little-black-book of sorts somewhere and was desperate to find it. There's a good chance that it was left at a pay phone, unfortunately.

What's in it that's so important you ask? Apparently, the numbers for all his dealers. Now, like me, you probably would have said that maybe, just MAYBE, it was a good thing that he lost it.
"Yeah, well, I just don't want some fucking cop to bank off that shit." was his startlingly honest reply.
Touche, Jon. Touche.

You know, they say that you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. That's such a worthless load of crap. If you took a random sampling of my friends, you'd know that I was either a smarmy goody-goody, or a crack addict with an arrest list longer than a roll of toilet paper. Clearly, there's a large standard deviation involved here. What do my friends say about me? I don't know. But as long as they don't say "Drive faster and I'll give you a free ipod if we're not caught!" I really don't care.

The TA from hell

For those of you not in the university lingo, a TA is a teacher's assistant. These folks are underpaid grad students who do the shit work for professors. Usually, they grade the papers and help the students with problems they have. Until now, I've had the good fortune of never having known any of my TA's socially. That's a good thing. The situation I'm about to explain, is a BAD THING.

So, I'm sitting in class, minding my own damned business when our new TA walks to the front of the room to introduce himself. Casually, I look up, when who do I see... but the TA FROM HELL.
That's right, my TA is this dude I used to hang out with socially. We had mutual friends and whatnot. We went to the beach. He surfed. I sank. He made sexist jokes about women and how we all like to cook. I sneered. He mentioned that he preferred to date "girls" who were "barely legal." I said fuck this, I don't need to spend my time with some misogynistic wanker.

And now, he's my TA.
As I mentioned, he'll be in charge of grading my papers. Now, I honestly can't say that I'm concerned about him being unfair to me. I'm not. For all I know, he may not even remember my name. I only remember him because of the seething hatred I developed for him in an astonishingly short amount of time. But I do have concerns, and they are as follows:
1. I will not go to him for help because I have an abnormally large ego and I don't really want to look at his wanky smirk. This could really hurt my grade.
2. I don't want him grading my papers because of said ego. I don't want him smirking wankily over stupid mistakes I make. And, come on. I WILL make stupid mistakes.
3. If I don't do well in this class, which is always a distinct possibility, I don't want him thinking he's right about his fucked up views on women. But, I really resent the fact that I'm wanting to work harder just to prove to some wanky-ass wanker that I have a right to be there.

Did I mention that he's a wanker? Well HE IS.

So what do I do? I could drop the class, but there's no guarantee that he won't TA it next semester too. Or the next semester. Grad students never actually graduate, you know. They just kind of wander the halls of universities, mumbling about archaic research projects, until someone physically shoves them into the real world.

So what do I do? I blog about it. And I release my bitterness onto you poor saps because I honestly don't want it for myself. Too bad I can't release my homework onto you suckers, too. Anyone know C++?

Oh, Charley. You got me this time, buckaroo!

Okay, okay.
Note to self: Don't taunt a hurricane.

We've now been without power for... 6 days? And don't even get me started on the smell from the backup of raw sewage. Dear god. There was a tree on top of our apartment, but thankfully, it has been removed. Amazingly, our apartment was not damaged. I have some crazy pictures of crushed cars and obliterated billboards that I'll post as soon as I have electricity again. Right now I'm at work, but there's no scanner here.

So, yeah. Things got ugly after my last post. Someone was looking out for me, though. Just as I was starting to get REALLY hungry, the front door was ripped open by the wind and a bag of completely unopened mini-doughnuts landed at my feet. It was sorta like manna from heaven. You know, if god worked at a Krispy Kreme.

We cleaned out the fridge last night. Man, was that a disaster. If I had known what kind of hell I would be releasing by opening that door, I would have thrown the whole thing out and bought a new one. It was like unleashing pure evil in the form of rotten veggie stink. We still haven't managed to completely destink it.
Note to self #2: Febreeze was not made for refrigerators.

One good thing to come out of this though: by the time we went to Target to get flashlights, the flashlight section was (surprise, surprise) completely ravaged. The only flashlights left were the kind that you wear on your forehead- for construction and stuff. Scott and I pretended to be disappointed and embarrassed at the thought of having to wear flashlights on our heads. But honestly, I think it might be a regular addition to my wardrobe. I mean really. It's so practical. I'm saddened to think that I've been wasting the space on my forehead for all these years when I could have been strapping a flashlight to it.

Riders of the Storm

Blogging to you live from Orlando, Florida where Hurricane Charley is tearing us a new one.

I'm at work right now. Yeah, I know. It sucks. I'm night operations, which means that I don't do much unless there's some sort of off-hours emergency. Such as, oh, a hurricane.

So I'm sitting here next to a giant glass wall. It's fucking AWESOME. The winds have officially been upgraded from heavy and boring to wicked cool and freaky.

We have one skylight down and water is pouring in. That's the only major damage so far. The doors (which are all glass. thanks guys) are bending and rattling like crazy. We've had a pretty much continual power outage, but thanks to working at a technical college, we have backup power.

So, I'll be here all night. Right now, I'm keeping an eye on things but it's getting REALLY ugly REALLY fast. Just moments ago a small cyclone nearly tore the doors off. I may have to move to the interior of the building momentarily. Shit this is cool.

Crack Rats

A new study finds that rats can get addicted to drugs..

Where's Nancy Reagan when you need her?

The Liberal Media Are At It Again

From FAIR:

Crowd estimates ranged from 500,000 to 1.15 million, but it was clear that the March for Women's Lives was one of the largest protests in the capital's history—and perhaps the largest ever. The previous record for a women's rights rally was the up to 750,000 who marched in 1992; the 2004 turnout rivaled and likely surpassed landmark gatherings like the 1995 Million Man March (estimated at 870,000) and the 1969 Vietnam protest (approximately 600,000). The historic nature of the event, though, was not reflected in mainstream media coverage.

USA Today, the most widely read newspaper in the country, ran a single march story (11/25/04)—on page 3. While some newspapers, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, published a handful of march-related stories over a few days, others ignored the event almost completely: The New York Daily News made two brief mentions of the march, one buried in an article on Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (4/24/04) and another in an article on Kerry's wife (4/26/04). Of the three mainstream newsweeklies, only Newsweek published a single story related to the march (4/26/04).

A look at national television news also turned up remarkably few reports: A Nexis search of the week surrounding the women's march found a total of eight stories on the march from the broadcast networks (not counting incidental mentions). ABC, CBS and NBC all ran two stories the day of the march; CBS also ran two stories the next morning. CNN, as a 24-hour cable news outlet, gave more extensive coverage to the event, running several reports on Sunday. But even CNN failed to treat the march as the historic occasion that it was, running just a small handful of brief march-related stories on Saturday and Monday.

To put the women's march coverage in perspective, FAIR conducted a similar Nexis search of the week surrounding the Promise Keepers march in 1997. The Promise Keepers, an evangelical men's organization with an anti-feminist and anti-gay theology, drew an estimated 480,000–750,000 demonstrators to Washington—roughly three-quarters the size of the women's march. Despite its somewhat smaller size, the Promise Keepers received far more media attention: Stories began appearing on network news three days before the march and continued for two days afterward, with a total of 26 stories between the three broadcast networks—more than three times the coverage the networks devoted to the women's march.

Though USA Today doesn't publish a weekend edition, it still managed to run four stories on the Promise Keepers the week before and four stories the week after the Saturday rally. The three major newsweeklies published a total of five articles on the Promise Keepers rally (U.S. News & World Report, 9/29/97, 10/6/97; Time, 10/6/97, 10/6/97; Newsweek, 10/13/97). Even the New York Times' seven march-related stories and two photos were outnumbered by its 10 stories and six photos on the Promise Keepers rally.

At the same time, some news outlets elevated the significance of counter-protesters, a few hundred of whom demonstrated along the march route—roughly one-thousandth of the number that marched in support of women's rights. Though it ran an editorial in support of the march on April 25, Long Island Newsday placed its march story the following day on page 5—after its page 4 article on counter-protesters.

Cable news gave remarkably heavy coverage to the march opponents. Of three Fox News stories found on Nexis related to the march, two focused on anti-abortion activists (Special Report with Brit Hume, Hannity & Colmes, 4/22/04). Special Report examined anti-abortion opposition to the National Education Association's endorsement of the march—a story that MSNBC also covered (4/27/04) in that network's only march report found in the Nexis database.

CNN, too, played up the presence of the counter-protesters. On Live Today (4/26/04), for example, an anchor explained that "both sides rally to get their point across"—as if the two rallies were at all comparable in size or newsworthiness. CNN Sunday Morning (4/25/04) described Washington as "the site of opposing rallies" and interviewed an equal number of abortion opponents and march supporters, in both soundbite quotes and full-length interviews.

and on it goes.

My life can't get any weirder

A scene from my night:

I'm sitting at my desk holding my cellphone. A man runs by and yells:

"BAT PHONE!!! You got da bat PHOOOOOOOOOONE!!!"

Please, I couldn't make this stuff up.

Personal Dilemma

I pride myself on being an independant person- strong willed and able to stand up to anything life throws at me. But I find myself at an impasse over a very personal issue. Some decisions will make or break you. Some decisions have the potential to redefine you as a person.

I can only download 4 new rings for my phone. And yet, there are 6 that I am interested in. So, I need opinions and I need them FAST. Below are the possibilities:

1. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by I-Ron Butterfly (as pronounced by Rev. Lovejoy)
2. The Pulp Fiction theme song (you know the one)
3. More Than A Feeling by Boston
4. The Fresh Prince theme song by The Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff. Hooyah.
5. New Year's Day by U2
6. White Wedding by Billy Idol

So there you have it. I'm sure you can all see what a tough decision I have before me. Please, think it over carefully and respond in the comments section.

Dance, bay area residents, DAAAAANCE!

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=2&u=/ap/20040812/ap_on_re_us/hurricane_charley_2

So here's the latest word from those hoity-toity, college edumacated forcasters I was telling you about:
Hurricane Charley is heading straight for Tampa.

Ha! Boy are THEY off base. Apparently they aren't buying my forcefield-of-boredom theory.
Listen up. I put in 18 long, hard years in the Bay Area and I'll be damned if they're going to see some action after I finally move away. You hear me Charley? So you just take your big, scawwy floods and back off, all right?

You're not going to die.

Hurricane this, hurricane that.

If there's anything I've learned after living for 18 years in Tampa, FL it's that there is some sort of hurricane forcefield that prevents them from ever coming close to the bay area. We may have some wind. We may have some rain. And certainly, we'll have forcasters telling us to stock up on water and beer because THIS one is coming straight for us, people!! But it never happens.

Never.

Now that I've lived in Orlando for 4 severe-stormless years, I'm assuming that the same is probably true. I feel like a fraud. I mean, after having spent my whole life in Florida, you'd think I'd have some better hurricane memories than "remember that time when it like, got kinda windy? You know, the Great Storm that knocked 2 shingles off of the roof? Man, I BARELY survived that one. Don't TREAD ON ME, MUTHA FUCKAA!"

But Tampanians are seriously in denial. Everytime there's a blip on the radar, the bottled water flies off the shelves and the battery powered radios come to life. Hurricane parties are EVERYWHERE and all the drunken attendees are convinced that THIS will finally be the storm that we can all tough out and tell the grandkids about. We'll have our day in the sun, gawddamnit. Miami ain't stealin' the glory this time 'round!

So there's this Hurricane Charley that's supposedly bouncing around somewhere to the south of us, allegedly making it's merry way up here. Am I concerned? No.

I've been disappointed by one-too-many hurricanes, people. I'm not getting my hopes up again just to have them dashed. Georges was supposed to be my knight-in-shining-armour back in '98 but he just breezed on past me for the southern bells of Mississippi.

Well, I'm not sitting by the phone on another lonely friday night, waiting for this one to sweep me off my feet. I'm not buying the bottled water. I'm not stocking up on beer and ribs. I'm not even going to make a clever t-shirt to taunt the storm. It's not coming here. I'm in the middle of the fucking state. No catagory 1 is that ambitious.

But apparently, I'm one of the few people who realizes this. Everyone around me is already caught up in Hurricane Hysteria. I work in a college, you see. Colleges have two opposing forces at work during a hurricane: the students want to get drunk, take their clothes off and go surfing, while the parents are freaking out because they know that their kids are really, really dumb.

So the students are calling me every five minutes claiming to be soooo worried because like, they don't want to DIE going to class, man! How could anyone expect them to go to class when there might be, like, RAIN on the way??
Then the parents are calling every two minutes wanting me to assure them that precious little Billy and Suzy won't drown in the apocalyptic downpour that is sure to envelope the world.

But the main flaw with both groups isn't that they really annoy me, although they do. It's that they're assuming that this hurricane will come anywhere near us, just because some hoity-toity, college-degreed forcaster says it will.

So listen up, everyone. I've got 22+ years in the "wanting a hurricane to tear through this joint cause I'm bored" business. If that's not an impressive resume, I don't know what is. And based on a lot of highly top-secret, beer-induced research, I've concluded that it's statistically impossible for it to happen in my lifetime. No Hurricane Charley. No Hurricane George. Not even Hurricane Flavian.
They aren't coming here.
They aren't ever coming here.

But, you know, on the off chance that I'm wrong, I might set my cell phone ringer to play "Rock you like a Hurricane" by the Scorpians. I don't want to look like I was caught completely unaware if this shit goes down.

Public Service Announcement:

This time, it's a real public service announcement.

The Florida primaries are coming up on August 31! Floridians will be voting on the Republican and Democratic candidates to replace Senator Bob Graham's place.

In the democrat's corner you have:

Betty Castor:
Ms. Castor has a killer education background as a former teacher, president of the University of South Florida and Commissioner of Education. Unfortunately, the "issues" page of her website is pretty weak compared to her main rival's. She doesn't give as many specifics as Peter Deutsch, but she must be doing something right as she's leading him in the polls.

Peter Deutsch:
Mr. Deutsch has a long record of public service both in the florida legislature and as a US congressman. A bonus to this is, of course, you can check out his voting record. He seems pretty a-ok to me... except that he was rumoured to be involved in the smear campaign to paint Ms. Castor as an evil terrorist protector.

Alex Penelas:
Mr. Penelas has served 2 terms as the mayor of Miami-Dade. The main thing that sets him apart from Deutsch and Castor is his desire to pull the majority of US troops out of Iraq. His "issues" section is also kinda lame, but I highly recommend the "Meet Alex" section if you want to know some of what he's accomplished for South Florida. Working against him is the fact that he's seen as a democratic party traitor for not sucking up to Gore enough.

There's also some shmuck named Bernard Klein running. No one seems to know much about him. He doesn't seem to be bothered by that. So, I'd probably recommend against voting for him, even though there was a much-loved Maniac Mansion character named Bernard and we all know that goes a long way with me.

As far as republicans go, you can look them up yourselves but they all look like jackasses to me.

Always a threat to national security. Always Coca-Cola

Forget WMD's people. According to an internal memo from the Navy, coca-cola is the real threat to national security.

If you look closely, you'll notice that coca-cola is actually an anagram for Al-Qaida. Well, if you look closely at a completely different word, that is.

It's another damned boy!!

Okay- one more addition to the wankershanks family! Everyone welcome Guy Incognito! Guy comes to us from sunny florida. He likes waxing his bikini line and eating turnips! Guy will be our entertainment (primarily gaming and dorkery) blogger, although he's kind of an asshole, so he probably won't stick to that.
He has previously been referred to in this blog as both Brian and Flavian, when he's referred to at all. Usually, I just leave him out of stories.

Let's hear it for Guy Incognito!

words fail me.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5626850/

really. goddamn it.
*****edited- I just rechecked the link and apparently it doesn't go to the same article any more. So... nevermind, because I don't remember what the article was about. That'll teach me to write a 3 word condemnation, eh?

If there was any justice, Fox News would be next on the chopping block

According to cnn.com, the Baghdad office of al-jazeera, is being shut down by the interim iraqi government.

Apparently, news is too upsetting to be seen.

From cnn.com:

Government ministers have been critical of the Arab-language network, saying it has been airing dangerous, inciteful images and reports. Among those images are videos of people abducted in the recent wave of kidnappings.

"I got an order from the National Security Committee to close Al-Jazeera starting from today for one month just to give them the chance to readjust their policy against Iraq," said Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib.

When asked why, al-Naqib said "you know exactly" what the network has been doing.

Now, I've read the english portion of aljazeera from time to time. I don't read it ALL the time, so it's quite possible that one day when I was sleeping in, they decided to just lay down a headline like "kill whitey" to spice things up. But from the articles I have read and the headlines I have seen, they've reported news. Kinda like what you'd expect from a news outlet. It's not really surprising to me that the whole war thing might have cast a bit of gloom over the news. When there are abductions, bombings, and frequent power outages, shouldn't they report on that? I think it's understandable that the heartwarming human interest stories might be few and far between.

But more importantly, what the hell are they trying to accomplish? If someone's trying to increase iraqi support for US involvement and the interim government by shutting down what is arguably seen as one of the last bastions of non-puppet media in iraq, then they're fucking screwed. I can't even count the ways that this is going to fuck with their shit.

People will be pissed. The US will be seen as even more oppressive than before. Stories of abductions, murders and assorted atrocities aren't going to disappear! They will simply be passed through less official means, destroying even a trace of credibility or accountability. Bad things don't stop happening just because you stop talking about them.

AlJazeera may well have been biased against america. But it's existance was something at least. It was a show of good faith to the people of Iraq: that even with everything going on, some dissent might be allowed.

But what's also important, to me at least, is my faith in my country. As if it wasn't shot to hell already, this has pretty much done it in. A country that is so afraid of it's own actions that it tries to eliminate public proof of those actions is not a country I'm particularly proud to live in.

for your consideration

In case you've ever wondered how to knit a teletubby hat, here ya go.

If you need to know who the patron saint of "backward children" is, here ya go.

If you're in the market for a piranha, here ya go.

If you want to learn the finer points of talking like a pirate, here ya go.

If you really love big gulps, here ya go.

If you'd like to look at pictures of muscle cars, here ya go.

If you're looking for cool quotes from the NES game Maniac Mansion, here ya go.

And there ya go. Enjoy everyone!

It's a Boy!!

We have a new addition to the loving family of Wankershanks! Well, the posting family of Wankershanks. Which up until now was just me. Soooooooo, forget the family thing.

Anyway, please welcome our newest wanker:
RCWanker!

Mr. RCWanker, who has been referred to in previous posts as both "Ryan" and "Flavian" will be our political commentator. Unless, of course, he doesn't feel like posting about politics.

But mostly, politics it is. So, without further delay, I give you RCWanker!

The pedicure nightmare

Attention nail salon workers:

When someone goes in for their first pedicure ever, don't look at their feet and immediately start laughing and talking to your coworkers in a foreign language. Really. It makes people a tad self-conscious.

That's what I've been told anyway. By a friend, of course.

The tift of the iceberg

When you think about great tourist destinations, what comes to mind?
Las Vegas, Rome, Orlando, London, or perhaps Paris?

God, you're stupid.

On my way through Georgia to visit my inlaws I learned, via 10 million billboards, about a little place called Tifton . It's like the crappy little town that could. It would have been heartwarming, if it wasn't so lame. They had signs all over I-75 proclaiming loud and proud that THIS town was a place you wanted to stop. THIS town wasn't your average small southern town. THIS town was:

READING CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!

That's right. But it's not JUST the reading capitol of the world! No! There's more fun where that came from! It is also, according to many proud billboards, "A HIGH SPEED INTERNET CITY!"

Shit! I mean, Shit! Everyone put on your party hats! Some yokels discovered AOL broadband!

But it's not just ANY high speed internet city, it's one of Georgia's TOP-TEN cities for broadband. Any town that can beat the fat cat city boyz from Tallapoosa, Georgia clearly deserves our respect.

I thought about stopping to visit, but I think I'll wait a few years. You better know that once WiFi hits, the place will REALLY start hopping.