Monday, April 23, 2007

Kiss of Death

A long time ago, I had my first girlfriend. I’d tell you her name, but there really isn’t any reason why someone, possibly searching for her on the ‘Net should land here. The indignity. Plus, it was such a long time ago that I can’t remember her name exactly. Something in the Laura/Lori/Laurie family.

This was SO incredibly long ago, kids. No internet, obviously; but barely even any personal computers. My junior high didn’t even have a computer. The school district had one, I’m pretty sure, but it was delivered on a big ol’ truck and it made the news when it came. And, you had to be a member of some technical high priesthood in order to even touch the thing. A bit like how I see Perl these days, frankly.

So Laurie was my first “real” girlfriend. We were both in eighth grade. She had the AWESOME-EST hair you can imagine. Flaming red and she could feather it just like the ladies from Charlie’s Angels. Totally tubular, man.

Laurie were “going together.” Now you have to understand that I was a little unclear on exactly what that meant. I knew that if I asked her to “go together” that meant that we would eat our lunch together. It also meant that I walked her home and we held hands. Unbeknownst to my thirteen year old brain, it also meant that we were supposed to kiss when we left each other’s company. I know, usually most teenage boys would be well aware that kissing was “on the menu,” but I was a bit of a naïve kid. I would have been just as happy to share a game of Space Invaders as a kiss.

Laurie’s friend Andrea patiently explained to me one day that I was supposed to be kissing her, as well as eating with her, walking her home and holding her hand. So MANY duties! I don’t remember much of what Andrea said to me, but it was along the lines of, “Why aren’t you kissing her, you dolt?” I think Andrea later became a professional “intervention-er.” She certainly had the edge.

I was, of course, mortified to kiss a REAL LIVE GIRL. Certainly I had apprehension about doing it wrong and having her bust a gut laughing at my non-existent “technique,” but mostly I was concerned about how to broach the subject with Laurie. Was I supposed to ask? Surprise her? Talk about it first? Seemed logical that we’d kiss when we got to her house, but I was walking my bike and she was on foot. I’d have to put the bike down on the street, turn around and then move toward her and plant a wet one on her. That would take FOREVER, but if I tried to just lean over, I’d drop my bike or something. And I have to admit right here, that though Laurie and I were had been “going together” for week or so (ever since I’d asked her to “go together” at the her Halloween party (I came as a pirate, Yar!)), and I did like her a lot, but there was no way I’d just drop my bike on the ground in any other way but a “gentle, leaf fluttering to the ground” kind of way. Maroon Raleigh ten-speeds don’t just grow on trees when you are in eighth grade, you know?

Cut to a discussion in the AV club a day or so later. We were making fake commercials and we tossed around a couple ideas and came up with this.

Yes, I was in the AV club, you gonna make something of it? I’ve already admitted here that I was a primo geek; being in the AV club should come as NO big surprise.

The premise of the commercial was simple: Two people of the opposite gender are at a bus stop, about fifteen feet apart from each other. They both take a pack of mints out, (the same fake brand of über-mints, natch). The lights go dim and baby spotlights hone in on each person and the camera quick cuts between the two of them, each un-wrapping and putting a mint in their respective mouths. They start to feel “strange,” they cast glances at each other and they begin to move inexorably closer to each other. They begin to sweat a little. The guy loosens his tie and the girl fans herself a little.

It’s the mints, duh! All hail the power of the mints!

They can’t contain themselves any longer! They fling themselves at each other and in an instant they are locked in a passionate embrace.

And… SCENE!

FADE TO BLACK

V.O.: Omnipo-mints! Be careful where you have them!

Or something like that. I can’t remember the fake tag line. But I do know that every time I see one of those Axe deodorant commercials where the women can’t control themselves, that I essentially wrote the premise of that commercial back in eighth grade.

Since we were in the AV club (dork city, baby!) and I was the only one lucky enough to be “going” with someone, I was nominated to be the “guy.” Laurie was totally OK to be the girl; which says something about how dang cute we Deal boys are when we are geeky and thirteen, I guess. I was kind of freaked out that I was going to have to kiss someone, even though I was supposed to be kissing her already, but Brian talked me into it. Brian is probably the number one refrigerator salesmen in Nome, Alaska, that how good a sales weenie he was and probably still is.

So we rehearse the scene and lunge at each other, but we never make lip-ular contact during rehearsals. But then we get in costume we have the lights and Brian even had a fog machine going. (Seriously)

The moment comes and we smash right into each other in the middle of the set. Like a free safety hitting a wide receiver over the middle. WHUMP! And we kind of knocked each other backwards. Kinda hurt as I recall.

Take Two:

Less force, but I closed my eyes about two feet away from impact and miss her mouth completely. I think my lips hit her left eyelid.

Take three:

Solid contact, but again, I close my eyes too soon, and I miss again.

More of the same; missing her face, I tripped once, and just general mayhem until finally:

Take seventeen (approximately):

BINGO! Print that one! After Brian yelled “Cut!” I sat down and didn’t move for a few minutes, if you know what I mean.

So there you have it. Not only was my first kiss dreadfully embarrassing to everyone involved (though usually that would just be the two people actually doing the kissing), but it was saved for posterity on VHS tape.

No, I will not digitize it and upload it to YouTube. I have no idea if it even exists anymore. Kinda hoping it’s lost to the ages.

And Laurie, if you ever read this, I’m *really* sorry about take six and giving you a bloody lip. Totally my fault.

Jon scribbled this mess on 04/23/07 at 12:08 AM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Accept Donations from Me at Your Own Risk

Reha and I are in the car driving back from the South Jordan City Police Department (more on that later, I assure you) and we passed a billboard urging people to become organ donors.

“Reha, you know anyone who needs a kidney? ‘Cause I don’t think I need my left one. Seems superfluous.”

She can see that this is going to be one of those conversations.

“No, Jon, I don’t know anyone who needs a kidney.”

“Well, if you need a kidney, babe, you can have mine. It’s all yours. Serious.”

“Thanks, that’s sweet. But we might not be that great a match. We have different blood types, for example.”

“Right. And, plus my kidneys are probably too dumb to live inside you. Your organs are all smart and stuff.”

“...”

“Yeah, my dumb kidney would be all, [affecting stupid, stoner guy voice] ‘Hey man, I only know how to make pee. Duuuude, I don’t know anything about the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and stuff like that.’”

“...”

“So you can have one of my kidneys, but you should know its limitations before you let it inside you. Plus, though it makes pee pretty well, the left one has a kind of an attitude. I think it feels like it should have been the liver. It’s always making comments about how it could do a better job with excess bilirubin. And that it could do more than ‘just urea.’”

As you can probably guess, the conversation degraded from there.

Jon scribbled this mess on 04/19/07 at 01:41 PM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Emo Poetry, Geek Style

For all the lonely geeks out there who’ve been dumped, here’s some poetry that should speak to you:


sudo rm -rf ~/my_heart/* | sudo chown -R nobody ~/my_heart


Explanation for the non-geeks:

The ”sudo” means we are going to do the command as ”root” (AKA, the admin user).

The ”rm” delete (remove) command. Very powerful.

”-rf” tell the rm command to recursively march down the folder deleting everything in its path. That’s the -r part, the f forces the deletion, overriding any other set privileges on the files. Since we are ”root” whatever we say is *going* to happen.

”~/my_heart/*” says that we are emptying the entire contents of the ”my_heart” folder. Which is conveniently located within the current user’s “home” folder. The “~” character signifies that the folder lives in the current user’s home folder. i.e., where all the user’s files and goodies are. The ”*” is a wildcard character, telling the ”rm” that everything in the folder gets nuked.

The ”|” is the “pipe” character, which means “we are about to issue another command and here it comes!” Whee!

We again invoke ”sudo” so we can make sure we are ”root”.

”chown” is the command to change who “owns” the file or folder that we’ll specify in a sec. On a UNIX system, certain files can only be manipulated by certain users. In this case, since we have invoked the admin user privileges, we can do anything we damn well please.

”-R” says we are going to make the change to a folder and we want the chown command to apply recursively. In other words, start at the folder and march down the directory structure applying the ”chown” settings.

”nobody” is a special user on a UNIX box. In this case, we are just using it for comedic effect, setting the ownership of the ”my_heart” to user ”nobody”.

”~/my_heart” is the folder and its contents we are changing. Again, the ”my_heart” folder lives in the current user’s home directory.

So in Emo English, we’d have something like this:

I have turned out the the lights
I’m in the dark
I have emptied my soul
And my Heart belongs
to no one.

I think I might have to make t-shirts. UNIX on one side, English on the other.

Jon scribbled this mess on 04/18/07 at 10:33 AM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Harry Potter, Book Seven REVEALED!

We have a tradition at the Deal Family Compound of camping out at a local Barnes & Noble or a local bookseller on the night the latest Harry Potter book comes out, buying a copy (or two) and then seeing how long it takes Carrie to read the latest tome. I think last time, the book went on sale Saturday at 12:01 AM and Carrie turned to the last page by that afternoon. She’s a scary fast reader.

Anyway, I have used all my connections in the publishing, graphics and entertainment industry to score an advance copy. Shhh! Don’t tell anyone at Scholastic or Warner Bros. that I’m telling you! They’ll hunt me down and kill me slowly if they find out. Spoilers galore from here on out!

J.K. Rowling has said that at least one main character is going to die. Possibly two.

This is untrue.

What does happen is that Dumbledore comes back from the dead as a smelly flesh zombie and Harry, Ron and Hermione have to beat him senseless with their wands and then they bury him in a unmarked grave and put the invisibility cloak over his rotting corpse so no one ever finds the body.

AND!

All three decide to stop being good-y good-y pansies and they start casting spells on various politicians and adults they dislike. The scene where George W. Bush is wearing only a thong at a White House press conference is particularly nice. Great imagery, J.K.! And then Ron says, “Bat bogeys, I can do MAGIC!” and he conjures the Swedish Bikini Model Team, a Ducati motorcycle and a case of Schlitz and is never heard from again.

BUT THAT IS NOT ALL!

Professor McGonnagal runs off with Hagrid in what can only be considered a “hard R” scene. Who knew she liked the half-giant flava?

BUT WE ARE NOT DONE WITH THE SPOILERS YET!

Snape turns out to be Harry’s real father. At this point over six hundred pages into the narrative, I think J.K. really just wanted to be done and started cribbing dialog from The Empire Strikes Back.

And Voldemort? He turns out to be Dumbledore and has been buried underneath an invisibility cloak since Chapter 6. It’s a non sequitur that is confusing, nonsensical and leaves the reader feeling both cheated and depressed.

The last page is particularly moving as J.K. addresses the reader directly, breaking down the fourth wall as she writes, “I’m richer then the frickin’ queen! You know that lightening bolt scar on Harry’s forehead? Now YOU have a lightening bolt on your ass, sucker!”

I can’t wait to see who Warner Bros. hires to direct the film adaptation!

Jon scribbled this mess on 04/17/07 at 12:03 AM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

Monday, April 16, 2007

Maybe Sabbath Will Tour Again

Or maybe I could con the Academy.

Jon scribbled this mess on 04/16/07 at 12:04 AM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Photos Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link
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