Tuesday, September 30, 2003

Troubled Waters
Hey, what happened to global warming? It has been so cold in Chicago it seems like Halloween. The kind of Halloween that, when you were a kid, caused your mom to make you wear your coat over your costume and nobody knew what you were supposed to be; all that was showing was your rubber mask, and you had to take that off because it was filled with frozen sweat mixed with snot. Click more.. below.
posted by @ 08:43 PM CST [more..]

Saturday, September 27, 2003

I'll Miss Him
A scent can sometimes bring a rush of memories so complete that you find yourself transported to the remembered setting and experiencing the same emotions. A song on the radio can work this same kind of magic, particularly when you're driving alone and it's late at night. A poem can also set a very deep memory hook. Click more.. below.
posted by @ 07:26 PM CST [more..]

Friday, September 26, 2003

The Real Shit
This is the best just for fun Flash I have ever seen. This blurb is from the site:

It was February 2002, a month before the opening of the Whitney Biennial. Miltos Manetas and Peter Lunenfeld were at the ElectronicOrphanage in Los Angeles discussing the upcoming Whitney Museum biennial exhibition.
"It would be nice to make an Internet show that would challenge the Museum show. What about registering whitneywhitney.com," Manetas proposed.
"Why not whitneybiennial.com?" Lunenfeld suggested.
"What, you don't think...?

Don't Miss This!!! Click Here!!! Link opens in a new window.

posted @ 04:27 PM CST [link]

Blood and Honor
Don't trust anyone who can bleed for five days and not die. You know who you are.

posted @ 04:22 PM CST [link]

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

Bunches and Wads
That is how things come at you, all at once, in bunches and wads. Another way to put that might be, "when it rains, it pours." I don't have a problem with that because that's just the way it is, but I do wonder why that's the way it is. In this case it was a couple of proposals to do at the same time. Projects are good to have, so I can't complain, but what mysterious forces are at work that cause two people you haven't communicated with in six months to choose the same hour of the same day to press your button. I'll tell you about my observations. When I was in high school and was sick of stocking shelves and bagging at the Jewel, I worked in a gas station on summer evenings. Click more.. below.
posted by @ 09:32 PM CST [more..]

Saturday, September 20, 2003

Skin Rotation
If you have been admiring "This Week's Skin" all week, but have been too lazy to download the file for your desktop, it's too late. Saturday is skin rotation day. Check out the new shot. If you like it, download it now. If you prefer pictures of men you'll find several of me, soaking wet, if you click the "This Week's Fantasy" link. "This Week's Fantasy" will not be rotated until Wednesday. Mark your calendar. If you want a picture of me, wet or dry, suitable for your desktop, please e-mail your request.
posted @ 02:26 PM CST [link]

Life's Lessons
I originally made this entry yesterday, but in looking at it further I realized that I had missed the boat. Here is the new version. I received an email yesterday, Saturday, with one of those anonymous attachments that people forward because they're funny, or because they're cool in some philosophical way; "forward this to five friends and the world will be a better place." Anyway, I liked it so I just pasted it into the body of the page without any sort of preamble and called it Life's Lessons.

Where did I miss the boat? Opportunity knocks, that's where, and I wasn't listening. Click more.. below.
posted by @ 10:25 AM CST [more..]

Thursday, September 18, 2003

Mull It Over
I want to tell you about the funniest web site I've seen in a long time. It's run and maintained by people who are obsessed with a hairdo called the Mullet. From the web site: "The term Mullet(hair context obviously) traces back to the 1967 prison film Cool Hand Luke, starring Paul Newman and George Kennedy, in which Kennedy's character refers to Southern men with long hair as "Mullet Heads." Common names for the mullet include (but are not limited to) : The Ape Drape. The Tennessee Waterfall. The 10/90 (the proportion of hair in front to hair in back). The Mud Flap. 7 (shape of the #) The Long Island Ice Teased. Business on Top-Party Out Back. Achy-Breaky-Big Mistakey. Yep-Nope". Click more.. below.
posted by @ 08:40 PM CST [more..]

Wednesday, September 17, 2003

All Excited
Now that I have you all excited about new features and links, I'd like to mention the "Review My Blog" link. This is one of many cool features at Blogarama (see link section). If you have always wanted to tell the other readers of this blog that you think I'm an asshole, and you didn't because you knew I could edit or delete comments if I wanted to, this is your chance. Review the site yourself, and/or go to Blogarama and read the reviews. This site is listed in the "Counter Culture" section at Blogarama. Another new link for Blog fans is the Blog Search Engine. We are listed in the "Humor" section there. Got to keep them guessing.
posted @ 02:17 PM CST [link]

Fantasy Life
Yes, I have a very rich and active fantasy life. Some of these uncontrolled imaginings wind up as entries in this blog. Others, because they're visual, or too long, or too good (read too much work to write) to be buried after a couple of days like a blog entry, potentially missed by the casual reader, have no place to go. So, I gave them some place to go in a new feature called "This Week's Fantasy." Link opens in a new window. You can find the link with "new!" next to it, on your right, in the group of links called Cliff's Ongoing Projects. I will be rotating these weekly fantasies, as the name implies, weekly. Don't go to sleep at the switch.
posted @ 12:50 PM CST [link]

Sunday, September 14, 2003

Pocket Guy
He was about 5 ft. 10 inches tall, trimly built, but with arms and shoulders that looked like he had been doing some weight lifting. It was my first time on site with this client; I had no idea who was who, but every time I left my office I saw this guy. When you're new in a pretty good-sized office, the people you see all blend together at first, but what stood out about this guy was that he was wearing a nylon belt around his hips with four or five pouches attached to it. It looked kind of like a toolbelt that a telephone repairmen might wear, except the pouches were closed and made of nylon instead of the typical leather with tools and tape sticking out of the top of each pouch. Anyway, I guessed he was some kind of network or hardware support guy, so when we were standing by the pop machine together, I introduced myself and said, nodding toward the pouches, "so, you're a network guy?"
"No, I'm a programmer," he said, and began to study the raggedy dollar bill belonging to the guy in front of us while the bill repeatedly slid, rejected, back out of the machine. Click more.. below.
posted by @ 08:45 PM CST [more..]

Saturday, September 13, 2003

Weekly Skin
I've added a feature to this blog that might interest you. I'm calling it "This Week's Skin", and you'll find the link in the group headed "Cliff's Ongoing Projects," in the right hand panel below the calendar. Skin is an ongoing project? Well, kind of; I've always been quite fond of the female form, and I got into scanners and Photoshop early, so it wasn't much of a leap for me to begin entertaining myself by creating interesting backgrounds for my desktop. Click more.. below.
posted by @ 08:13 PM CST [more..]

Thursday, September 11, 2003

Yo Mama, Osama!
Yes, our collective memories of the September 11th, 2001 atrocities are reaching their terrible twos. And, unless you've been in jail, in the hospital, or otherwise out of touch with the media, those memories have been freshened. They're ugly memories of fear and helplessness followed by outrage and anger. I still can't watch a large passenger jet at low altitude maneuvering to line up on the runway without remembering that chilling piece of videotape that turned up a day or two later, showing the second plane, from the rear, very low and looking huge, as it maneuvered to line up on the second World Trade Center tower. Jesus Christ, that plane was full of people looking out the window and thinking God knows what. We're reminded now of those images, the images of the World Trade Center towers collapsing, and of the army officer who worked in the Pentagon and whose son was aboard the plane that crashed into it. And, we should be reminded. Our collective memories have reached their terrible twos and now we are allowing our leaders to play politics with our outrage and anger. And, more importantly, we are allowing them to play politics with our national reaction. Click more.. below.
posted by @ 09:14 PM CST [more..]

Monday, September 8, 2003

Horse Race?
Yes, it's a horse race. You don't have a problem with that? I did (see The Track); but not anymore, it's without a doubt the best game in town. Arlington Park is in Chicago's northwest suburbs with free parking, six dollar admission, no lines to wait in, beer, and spacious, clean, air-conditioned washrooms everywhere. And, you're not pegged to a cramped, hard seat with a number on it for the duration, where as likely as not, at many sporting events, you'll be stuck with six drunks behind you spilling beer on you every time they stand up to let one of their party stumble out to the washroom. There were no Damon Runyon characters, no guys talked out of the sides of their mouths, the women were good-looking, and the horses were beautiful. Add to that, the spectacle of the paddock parades and the racing itself -- nine trips to the paddock and nine trumpeted "calls to the post" -- all spiced with the opportunity to bet on your favorites to win, place, or show each and every twenty minutes, and you have one helluva show. If you would like details, pictures, and my betting results click more.. below.
posted by @ 02:00 PM CST [more..]

Saturday, September 6, 2003

The Track
Tomorrow, for the first time in my adult life, I'm going to "the track" to watch the "ponies" run. I'll be able to find out for myself whether it is indeed "The Sport of King's" or just a place for unemployed squirrelly-looking guys to gather and talk out of the sides of their mouths to one another about what they know that no one else knows. Of course, it will be somewhere in between, but there is a lot of room between camo and flowers. The racetrack is Arlington Park, located in Chicago's northwest suburbs. The Chicago area has four race tracks, at least, and I'm a newbe. I'm going with friends because they want to go and I have no idea why I've never gone before. No, I haven't seen the movie about Sea Biscuit. Maybe if I had, I wouldn't have my background color so confused but I doubt it. I have always loved horses, but "my heroes have always been cowboys," and not the characters in Damon Runyon storys. Kentucky bluegrass and bookie joints being raided in the movies just don't mix. Let's kick this around; click more.. below.
posted by @ 06:03 PM CST [more..]

Thursday, September 4, 2003

Let's Whine
Tomorrow's Friday, and I'm still not over the Labor Day weekend. My office looks like a teenager's bedroom when Mom is out-of-town, and I still haven't found the perfect home for my new life-size, standing cardboard cut-out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to live. Next, I'd like to say I just rebooted my testing server because, as a Windows 2000 box, it needs an occasional reboot to stay healthy, but the truth is, I popped a circuit breaker running the microwave too long on the same line. Don't ask me why it's on the same line, or how long is too long. Hey, that makes me about as reliable as my ISP has been these last two weeks. They blame e-mail viruses; what's my excuse? The answer to this question, along with an analysis of whether I will survive shooting a picture of my girlfriend's butt and posting it on the Internet, are available should you wish to click more.. below.
posted by @ 09:16 PM CST [more..]

Wednesday, September 3, 2003

Tasty Burger
"English, motherf---er! Do you speak it?" Don't be like the unlucky and slow learning Brad, and stammer, "what?" again. You know where that leads.

Of course you speak English, or at least you can read it; that's why you're here. You want the Cliff's Notes to truth and beauty. And, you've come to the right place. But you don't have time to read everything now; that's why you want the Cliff's Notes in the first place, to cut to the chase. Right? Right, I understand, so I'm going to provide you with the optimized time management for dummies reading list entitled, "What Did Everyone Else Read?", at least during the month of August. Click more.. below for links to August's top 10 entries.
posted by @ 08:47 PM CST [more..]

Monday, September 1, 2003

English Bob
Remember when, during cocktail hour, you were trying to read your latest issue of The Economist, and I was regaling you (read irritating you) with the fantasy suggestion that we should work out hard for the rest of the winter and appear the following summer, strong as spring steel and huge. We could then, I went on, have suits made with capes and some kind of crest on the chest, and fight crime nights and rainy days while on vacation in Michigan. Click more.. below.
posted by @ 05:01 PM CST [more..]