So it’s been a while since I’ve posted here. I have VERY LOGICAL reasons why. And they don’t even include the fact that I’m mostly incapable of writing less than 500 words on a given topic.
We’ve been traveling. First we spent the post-holidays in Oklahoma with my family. I got to go to Pete’s Place, which is still awesome.
I was home for about 72 hours, then headed out again, this time to Anaheim to work social media at a trade show for a client. We kicked ass, trending twice on Twitter. That’s a big deal for a craft & hobby company to become such a hot topic in the midst of the Brett Favre/Purple Jesus Vikings meltdown.
On top of the travel, we began a transition to a new email server at my office. Did I mention I’m now the IT guy? You know how hard it is to transition people over, especially when some of them are used to big city-style massive IT departments? We have Macs and PCs, iPhones and Blackberrys, people using Outlook, Entourage, Mail, Thunderbird and Gmail, we have people who are in the office everyday and people who don’t even know what it looks like.
What I’m trying to say is I’ve been working essentially around the clock, and I’m tired of looking at computers.
But it’s my job, and I want to remain employed. Even if I’ve pulled out every one of my hairs and still haven’t solved all the problems.
Okay, so there’s my excuse for not posting for a while. Moving on.
This is the post I had hoped to make at the end of 2009
What a strange ten years.
My initial reaction upon looking back was to say “What a crappy ten years.” I thought about 9/11, wars, the current financial crisis, toiling for two years in the bowels of the Delta Center for basically nothing, struggling to find a job after jumping out of college, the death of my grandfather and on and on…
Then I thought about how good it was. Amazingly good, in all the ways that truly matter. I graduated college, got married and had a son. I’ve advanced in my career as a writer/PR guy/IT director, and have a home plus two vehicles.
I have nothing to whine about.
Now for the part where I stroke my own ego and share what I think was superior from the Aughts
Top Five Albums of the 00s – Not based on some artsy-fartsy trend crap, like Animal Collective, but based simply off of the albums that I listened to over and over again:
5. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
4. Kanye West – The College Dropout
3. Muse – Black Holes and Revelations
2. Radiohead – In Rainbows
1. Queens of the Stone Age – Songs for the Deaf
Top Five Movies of the 00s – Again, this is what I liked, not what “advanced the art of film making” or “the movie that speaks for a generation”:
5. Pineapple Express
4. All 27 hours of the Lord of the Rings trilogy
3. O Brother Where Art Thou
2. The Kill Bills
1. The Dark Knight
The Best Oklahoma Football Teams of the 00s:
5. 2001 – Ridiculous defense, terrible offense
4. 2008
3. 2003 – Put Quentin Griffin on this team, and they destroy LSU
2. 2004 – Still don’t know what happened in the USC game
1. 2000
Politicians Who Were Corrupt and Will Continue to be:
1. All of them, stop supporting one side or the other. None of them give a damn about you until it’s time to vote. Find ways to work with people for the sake of ousting corruption, not working against people for the sake of standing behind some entitled scumbag “public servant”
Best Food I had:
5. Ganesh Indian here in Utah
4. Jambalaya on Bourbon Street
3. Red Iguana in SLC
2. Crepes in Cancun
1. Ribeyes at Joe Allen’s in Abilene
Things I’m looking forward to in the 2010s:
5. Growing my little business
4. Time Travel and Hovercraft Skateboards
3. The birth of my niece, which will be in May this year
2. By the time the decade is over Nate will be a teenager. Okay, I’m actually not looking forward to that.
1. Another child (not right now, dangit, but eventually)
Favorite screen-cap I snagged in the 00s:
Favorite screen-cap I grabbed yesterday – this kid had just committed to play football at USC and was celebrating on Twitter:
My entire life the dentists I’ve been to have all told me that there was no need to remove my wisdom teeth. They were growing in fine and generally an excellent addition to a subpar group of chompers overall.
Then I moved to Utah and all the dentists here said I needed to have them out. I trust them here, because approximately 60% of the population here are dentists. So instead of having mine yanked out around high school like most other folks, I had mine extracted at 28.
This is my sad, sad story.
15 minutes!
That’s right, 15 minutes.
Basically we walked in the door at 9a.m., just ahead of a 17′ish girl who was probably also having her teeth yanked. Within 3 minutes I was getting a needle stuck in my arm and fading to black.
Just before I went out, I managed to make sure the people in the room knew I wanted the teeth. I don’t know what they usually do with teeth, and to be truthful, I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with the teeth… I just wanted them. They were in my mouth for 28 years (I guess less, but still…), I want them to come home with me.
Which makes me wonder if people who lose other body parts are allowed to keep them.
Personally, if I had to lose an arm or something, I would want it. Unless they were going to donate it to a poor, armless person or something.
I would keep it in formaldehyde and pull it out for guests, maybe slap them around a little bit. Maybe tuck it into a sleeve then have it fall off when shaking someone’s hand and be like “Ahhhh! You tore my arm off you strong bastard! Ahhhh!”
Or if I lost fingers, I could preserve them and scare kids at Halloween or hide them under my wife’s pillow.
Anyways.
The surgeon was done with me after 15 minutes. My teeth were grown out pretty much all the way, but that’s still some serious hacking. After a few minutes in the recovery room, Lori and Nate came and put me into the car.
This is what I do!
I remember none of this:
While in the car, it seems I was pretty desperate to get a gory shot of my bloody mess, so I tried to stick my iPhone in my mouth. When Lori objected, I told her “this is what I do!”
Which is mostly accurate, when you think about it. I do weird crap like that all the time. I’m a slut for the shocked reaction.
After getting a good photo, I rolled down the window to try and spit some blood out of the car. I don’t think I said it again, but it’s the type of thing I do frequently, mouth surgery be damned.
Back Home
Lori put me straight to bed when we got home and I snoozed off an on for the next few hours, waking up to take more painkillers and penicillin.
At 3, I woke up and decided to work. Remarkably, all of the emails I sent out over the next two hours were coherent and on-target. This is now what I usually do.
By the way, those cotton swabs they put in your mouth are horrible. I know they’re supposed to help create clots that are crucial to healing, but sweet Lord they’re awful.
Hydrocodone
I was excited at the prospect of spending a few days doped out of my mind, because it sounded fun and was better than PAIN.
I also watch Intervention and knew the stuff could stick with me for a lifetime of numbed insanity if I didn’t keep it under control.
Not a problem. The first 24 hours were bliss, but around Wednesday night, approximately 36 hours after the surgery, my world turned to crap.
I could sleep during the day but was constantly itchy. I couldn’t sleep during the night and even began hallucinating.
I was riding a unicorn and eating a deer. Not a deer leg or other small part, but a full on deer, biting chunks of hair and raw meat. I was wholly convinced it was real.
Then I would come back to the real world, where I vibrated and shook rapidly. Not a violent, crackhead shake, just like sitting in one of the nice chairs at Brookstone. Still, I wanted to sleep, not vibrate.
I sat and took notes from the stream of consciousness that poured through my head, and it was some great stuff. I wrote out political theories, diatribes (politically-minded white guy who hates Kanye West for the things he says yet worships at the altar of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh is an unfailing megadouche for lack of his own awareness) and other nonsense/genius.
(My all-time favorite: I love how “right-wing political activist”, “religious kook”, and “world-ending conspiracy goof” have all merged into one Mighty Morphin Power Douche.)
By Friday morning I was exhausted, itchy, dizzy, nauseous and teetering on oblivion. I ditched the drugs, and vowed to not mess with hydrocodone again. I still may end up on Intervention, but it’ll have to be for something else.
Where are we now?
Good question. I made it through the weekend just fine, except for one rough night when I developed a sudden cold and had to breath through my mouth. The cold air constantly hitting my empty sockets caused me to wake up about 3a.m. in intense butthurt.
I managed to remove most of my stitches via tongue harassment but I don’t think it hurt anything. Last night I dug some random chunks of food out of the holes, which are now close to being sealed off. I regret not having photos to share of this.
In fact, I wouldn’t be in any pain at the moment if not for dueling abscesses on my cheek caused by a couple stitch knots popping out.
I really only go three places during the week: My house, the gym and my office. Since I go to the gym late in the evenings the parking lot is mostly empty and I don’t have to deal with bad parking (though I have been there around noon on a summer day, and the housewife putting on makeup while on the cell with her seven kids screaming at her from the back rows can hardly be expected to steer her Armada Tank Edition between two TINY lines).
My office is a different story. For whatever reason, these people can’t seem to get it right.
First up, this car gets extra space because it’s in the handicap spot. Whoo! It’s like the last bathroom stall! Truly the executive suite of parking spaces.
The trick this car pulls off is almost as bad as the four-spacer. I don’t know what to call it, but the person only managed to get about half the car in the space. Even then, he wasn’t able to get inside the lines. If we as a human race can’t achieve even the most basic principles, such as pulling our Man Moving Machines into the designated areas, then we deserve the destruction heading our way at the hands of God’s great laser beam in 2012.
Man I wish this picture was better. This is the Matrix truck driven by the she-beast. No one does more to further the art of bad parking than this woman. In this particular picture it as if she got sort of close to a parking space, and just hit the brakes right there in the middle of the driving aisle. Failing to even come close to any yellow lines? She may just be the Rosa Parks of bad parking.
The terrified bug eyed looks. The sadistic emotionless face of Ronald. The Hamburglar, who has a serious hamburger addiction issue, prepares to give in to his habit with lustful glee.
It’s not in the photo, but to the side of this scene is a river, where Grimace, pantsless as always, is attacking the fish. In other scenes, Birdie the Early Bird flies away with a chicken McNugget that is desperately reaching out for it’s mother* with tears streaming down it’s nuggety face. The mother has her own issues, as Mayor McCheese has declared her his next “intern.”
Nightmare Fuel.
Click on the pic to get a larger version. This is part of a mural painted on the walls of a McDonald’s in Sandy, Utah. A mural of terror.
*- I’ll assume it was a mother. I’m not up to speed on the sex characteristics of McNuggets. If I find something out, I will report it to you.
I consider myself a college football savant. Those of you who have started reading this blog for the PR posts will discover very soon that in the fall I am a different person.I have very few obsessions in life, and football is probably the biggest one. College football is damn near a religion to me, so expect many posts about it once September rolls around.
The good news for everyone else is I’m a reasonable, level-headed fan with an appreciation for the history of the game. I do go insane for the Oklahoma Sooners and Tulsa Golden Hurricane, but I find myself quite reasonable when it comes to objectively analyzing these teams (pats self on back).
I’m NOT this guy
So I can appreciate your teams while acknowledging my own teams’ weaknesses. Isn’t that nice?
With that in mind, I’ve decided to draw up my 2009 Top 25. Unlike other services you see, this is NOT based on who I think is going to win the national championship, but I think are the top 25 teams TODAY.
Point of contention here – I listen to a lot of experts talk about “strength of schedule” or the “strength of the conference” when explaining their rankings and quite frankly that has NOTHING to do with an opening top 25. In fact, I think those things factor in on late-season rankings and maybe only the final ranking. How good the SEC is this year has nothing to do with Florida’s Day One Top 25 ranking. The fact that OU has the toughest non-conference sked in the Big XII has nothing to do with how good the Sooners will be on day 1.
“But my top 25 is a prediction of what I think the top 25 teams will be at the end of the year!”
Then maybe you shouldn’t have a top 25, holmes. There is no caveat on the ballot (as far as I’m aware) instructing voters on what the criteria is, so I won’t go any further on this…but my interpretation is the top 25 is a week-to-week assessment of the top 25 teams in the nation at that point in time.
Thinking of how teams will look on day one of the season, these are who I think the top 25 in the nation are…
1. Florida Gators – there is no argument here. Saint Tebow and Co. are loaded again this year on both sides of the ball. While his Tebowness gets all the pub, (and statues, and panties) it’s the defense that wins games. No further evidence is needed beyond last year’s title game against…
2. Oklahoma Sooners – Yes, I’m a little biased, but the components are there for greatness: Bradford, two returning 1,000-yard rushers in Murray and Brown, the nation’s best TE in Gresham, maybe the best DL in the nation, two experienced CBs and good prospects filling holes. The OL is going to be raw, but like the QB position, OU coaches have proved they can recruit and train players at this position every year. Plus, God loves OU.
3. Texas Longhorns – They suck in the overall sense but will be very good in the football sense. Mack Brown’s clapping, spitting and doing interviews during other people’s games have not hampered Colt McCoy, who is a tough little booger. They’ve got a lot of question marks, particularly the DL, but they’ll be a force just like every year. And yes me having them at #3 means I like OU in the Cotton Bowl this year.
4. USC Trojans – Normally I’m very hard on teams that are breaking in a new QB, particularly a freshman QB like Aaron Corp, but this team is so loaded at every other position thanks to USC’s open-door policy toward agents. Taylor Mays is like Troy Palomalu without all the cheap shots.
5. Alabama Crimson Tide – Running game is good, defense is great, line will be good enough, legendary head coach who looks like Huey Lewis. They were a quarter away from playing for the national title, with a pedestrian at QB. They’ll be there again this year so long as McElroy doesn’t turn the ball over hyperactively.
The Saban-Huey Lewis Connection
Also: Saban as Bill Lumbergh.
6. Virginia Tech – This is the same team we’ve seen every year from Va Tech, sans the Vick years. Tough defense, great special teams, average offense. They won’t win a championship, but they’re be a tough out every year. Look for them to start out around here, fall way down after an inexplicable loss, then somehow end up here again after beating some Big East patsy in a BCS game.
7. LSU Tigers – This is one school where I just assume the talent will win them a lot of games, despite the fact they have an untrained wildabeest acting as the head coach.
Arrrghhh gabberbabbin nergen tarko doogaber!
8. Ohio State Buckeyes – Conventional wisdom has this team way up top due to the weakness of the Big Ten and the likelihood they’ll breeze through the conference unscathed. See my comments above. They’re good and will win the conference, but Terrelle Pryor needs another year (though he’ll improve a TON this year) of growth and the defense has to be more consistent before I move them up (I’m sure they’re desperate to impress me). I also predict they lose to USC at home in week two. Look for Jim Tressell to get busted for meth at some point too. Dude has to have some cracks in the sweatervest.
9. Oregon Ducks – This is probably higher than most folks will rank them, but I think they’ll be damned good, especially after solidifying the QB spot with Masoli at the end of the season. Blount will be a good RB and the defense is beyond serviceable. The defense, as always, will be big when it needs to and disappear at times too. After writing that, I’m not sure why I have them so high. They’ll be very good though. Also: Masoli continues the Chase Daniel legacy of dorky white dude with a chin beard.
CHIN STRAP BEARD
10. Mississippi Rebels – I’m not as ready as everyone else is to buy into the Rebels hype, mainly because I think it builds off of two impressive wins from last season – at Florida, Texas Tech in the Cotton Bowl
11. Georgia Tech – I love the old school option and while some people think it won’t be as good this year after opponents have had a year to see it, I think it’ll be even better. Two reasons – 1. Another year of seasoning for the guys running it and 2. The difference between Nebraska and Air Force running the option is talent. GT has way more talent than Navy did, and that’ll be pretty evident this year for Paul Johnson’s crew.
12. Nebraksa Cornhuskers – Another team I’ll have higher than most folks will. Why? There’s nothing to do in Nebraska except college football, and Bo Pelini gets that. Bill Callahan tried to change that – Beau Bridges lookalike contests, interpretive dance, homeless strangling were some of his community initiatives – but failed miserably. They’re a year or two away from contending nationally, and they’ll take a whupping from OU at home this year, but they’ll also surprise you with how good they are.
13. Notre Dame – Yeah, I’m a jerk for having them this far up here. My reasoning: they get a boatload of talent, and Charlie Weis wastes it. This is me hedging my bets on a slight resurgence to maybe 9 or 10 wins. Which would be enough to get them into a BCS bowl, where a rabid SEC runner-up will be waiting to tear apart their innards.
14. Oregon State Beavers – Jacquizz Rogers and his brother (whose name I’m too lazy to Google) are both dangerous and as long as Moivaio can keep the ball in the stadium I think this OSU will be dangerous. Few others have them in the top 25, I’m putting them in my top 15, lawya.
15. Penn State Nittany Lions – They’ll be good, but not great due to inexperience at a lot of positions. That being said Penn St is one of those schools that replaces talent with more talent. They’re perfect for this 15 slot, because it says “I like you a lot, and maybe even enough to take you home. But I wouldn’t want you to stay for longer than a couple hours.”
16. Oklahoma State Cowboys – They’ve got a lot of offensive firepower, but still no defense to match it. The opening game against Georgia in Stillwater will be a huge test that, if passed, earns them a ton more credibility. What loses them credibility is the molester nightmare fuel mascot, Pistol Pete.
17. Texas Tech – the dread pirate Leach keeps improving the situation down in Lubbock. Out goes Graham Harell, in comes another robo-QB, ready to throw for 50 touchdowns and 10,000 yards. Tech now competes against UT and OU for top talent in the state of Texas, and these kids will be moving into key roles on both sides of the ball. They’re not sailing away any time soon.
18. Cal Golden Bears – Jahvid Best is one of the better running backs in the nation. Ha! See what I did there? Oh, and Nate Longshore is gone, and so is the whipping boy of Cal fans.
19. Cincinnati Bearcats – Another team with a great offense and puny defense. Still, that offense is damned good. How good, you ask? I just told you: Damned good.
20. Georgia Bulldogs – They have to replace way too much from a team that wasn’t even that great to begin with. Richt is a good coach, but might be Frank Beamer – very good each year, but probably never a championship. Which isn’t awful. He’s ready and waiting for Mark Harmon to retire from that awful NCIS show, which could hurt recruits who have ever ventured outside and away from their television.
21. North Carolina Tar Heels – Butch Davis is getting his John Calipari on, spending big bucks to get the big players to a school not traditionally known for winning. Soon he’ll take his golden spaceship to a bigger gig (hello, Notre Dame!), but in the meantime he’s put together a good unit at UNC. I bet Jordan shares his collection of co-ed booty with Davis when Charles Oakley is out of town.
Welcome to Mid-Major Row (this wasn’t intentional, I swear)
22. Texas Christian Horny Toads – These guys are tough, as BYU and others learned last year. They’ve got Texas talent, thanks to A&M taking the decade off, and a coach who is vaguely aware of what he’s doing in Gary Patterson. They took Utah to the wire and shut down OU’s run game in losses last year. I think they win the MWC this year, and earn their trip to a BCS game.
23. Boise State Broncos – I always find this a tough team to read. They beat OU in what was the game of the century for them a couple years back, but it was really the only big, national stage game they’ve ever had. You can’t get up like that for every game, especially in the WAC, which is the conference of the Sisters of the Poor, and Utah State, who even has the pity of the sisters of the poor. That being said, put them up against any of these teams with a few weeks to prepare, and they’ll compete.
24. BYU Cougars – Similar to Okie State, BYU has a lot of talent, but lacking in defense. I think last year proved that against the Wyomings, Utah States and other slow, plodding teams, they can dominate. When matched up with speed, BYU looks lost (see: TCU, Utah). Having tough, hard-working walk-ons makes for great stories and gritty players, but it makes for a very, very vulnerable defense. Still, their white guys are generally better than your white guys, so there’s that.
25. Utah – Yeah they were awesome last year but Brian Johnson was a special player that will be hard to replace – particularly if the answer is Corbin Louks, more of a running QB than the thrower that Johnson was. They do however have a salty defense that returns one of the better secondaries. And their unis are made by Under Armour, who despite having European tendencies in their spelling preferences, tend to have cannibalistic American themes in their advertising:
Those are my thoughts. I could be wrong, but you’re probably wrong too. Please share your venom and blessings in the comments, if you could.
I was tooling around my yard a couple months ago, digging up the insufferable “tree weeds” that are so prevalent in Utah, when I noticed an old newspaper had blown into my yard. It usually happens that the biggest storms come on trash day, so the wind blows debris everywhere and most of it lands in my yard.
I picked up the paper and was heading for the recycle bin when I noticed the date line:
The Salt Lake Tribune, March 1, 1979 The Deseret News, February 28, 1979
The paper was nearly 30 years old to the day. Upon closer inspection it wasn’t an editorial part of the paper but an advertising insert for an upcoming electronics show that boasted of showcasing the electronic home entertainment of the future.
The front page of an advertorial printed in the March 1, 1979 Salt Lake Tribune and February 28, 1979 Deseret News (click on image to view the full size)
Click for hi-res
Click for hi-res
I kept the whole thing and only recently got around to scanning it. I tried to pair up the images as well as I could, but this old fuddy is still learning Gimp. Sue me (which the SL Trib and D-News might, for reproducing their paper, I suppose). There are a few more pages that I’ll put up here later, but for now enjoy these radical pages.
It’s amazing how things change. I can envision being a 20-something dude with a new car and wanting desperately to upgrade the old eight-track for that hot new European cassette deck. Billy Squier and REO Speedwagon never sounded so good as they did on that Kenwood AR9600.
Happy Weekend to all, and just 72 days until Sooner Football!!!111!!!
I know I talk about Twitter quite a bit. It’s really not that exciting.
It DOES help my business as a PR guy and every time I mention it here, I get a lot of hits. So you WILL have to put up with it from time to time. You WILL be okay with this.
You’re bully right I’m okay with it, good sir!
A lot of my network on Twitter is comprised of Okies. I follow people like @SamSims @Newson6 @trey_brown and others because they keep me comprised on what’s happening in my home state, which in all honesty, I’m more concerned about than the state I live in. Sue me.
I consider some of them good friends, at least in that “never met you in person” way. I value their opinions and pay close attention to what they send out. Every week I add a couple more friends from the OK (as well as Utah and other places, don’t get all pissy with me).
So it came as no surprise a few months back when I was followed by one @tulsaoknews. The feed is basically a stream of links related to Tulsa from some unknown source, but they have some pretty good info. Sports stuff, national news that mentions Tulsa, local news, and the sort. I followed them back.
I was a little bummed a few weeks later when they unfollowed me. It’s a common tactic to build what looks like a “guru” profile: Follow tons of folks, wait for a lot of them to follow you back, then unfollow them. The end result is a lopsided number that let’s you walk around and say “People listen to me! And I don’t have to hear what they say back! LOL Nurdzzzz!”
I don’t go with it. I follow several people that don’t follow me back (like Shaq), but mostly if you don’t care to hear what I have to say, then I don’t care to hear what you have to say.
That little rant aside…I found myself surprised when I went to the TulsaOKNews profile page to double-check the unfollow, and there were a lot of familiar faces among those the account followed.
In fact, I knew every one of those faces.
I attributed it to the simple fact that it probably followed folks with an expressed interest in Oklahoma. But wait. Is that…
Those profiles with the circles around them are all Utah people. I know each of them personally. None of the give a hoot about Tulsa, except for the lovely wife, @loriloo310.
Did @tulsaoknews hijack my follow list? Yes, in fact. Every person on that list is someone that I follow or have followed in the past.
What’s interesting is they’ve developed more followers (like I said, it’s a useful stream), yet still only follow my old chunk.
I don’t know what to say about it. Is it bad or good? Like most things with Twitter, it’s really neither I suppose. No one has to follow anyone they’re not interested in, so I don’t pity the Utah folks it followed.
I think I’m more curious what tool they would’ve used to do such a thing. I’ve always considered creating a fake account for the fun of it, and I think @the_effiminate_shaq would want to follow @the_real_shaq’s people.
I guess more than anything I’m just pissed that they (@tulsaoknews) unfollowed me.
