mundane perhaps haunting things you didn't know about skirb:
Never uses lip balms or lip products!
thinks kettle corn is farmer's market crack.
ELO used to be a favorite band in high school. Thought they were "futuristic."
I say "a" favorite band, because no one or nothing could replace the Who.
Used to be addicted to the soap opera The Guiding Light, an addiction started in high school (due to girlfriend's addiction.
What was I gonna do? I had a flippin' girlfriend for X's sake! Me, giant dork, 11th grader. I considered myself very lucky.) We were required to watch every day after school, a time slot formerly occupied by Star Trek reruns. I got totally hooked on GL, which then horribly carried over into college, where, god help us, half my floor at the dorms would gather for raucous Guiding Light viewing sessions. Note: never even in the depths of my despair would I have even watched even one minute of another soap opera, nor do I remember even one character's name at the present.
Was scared at an early age by three films:
Day of the Triffids
2001 A Space Odyssey (not scared so much as emotionally affected. I cried when HAL was unplugged...)
Yellow Submarine. Parents took me to this at much too early of an age. Was totally freaked out. Still can be unnerved by animated films, even moreso than live action.
On the other had movies featuring Dracula, Wolfman, Mummies, Zombies, etc. made no impression at all...
Thinks new tween star Demi Levato (I have an 11 year old son) has a funny name. Funny because she's obviously named after Demi Moore, who's name was spelled "Demi," I always imagined, because it was a play on her last name, Moore, "Demi" being a nickname for "Demetria," which is more often than not spelled, "Deme," but as "demi" is also French for "half." So you've got your half more. Arr har har har! No, but really, its pretty good. I've known more than one Deme too in my life, but no Demi's! So naming your kid "Demi," out of context in this way, without the pun, is only referent to Demi Moore, and kinda sums up how vacant and illiterate pop culture gets the further it grows, and has something to do with post-modernism, but I don't know what.
Was a big Boomtown Rats fan also back in the day. Was thinking about them when Lavella put up a Rats song on his blog. I have all the vinyl of course and remember them as hook-miners of the most dangerous sort, but also, B. Geldof, as
brilliantly acerbic and funny. So I went and slapped on a favorite song: "Nothing Happened Today," from the seminal "Fine Art of Surfacing" released in... wait for it... 1979. "Nothing" even now stands out as a work of demi-genius (you knew I was gonna write that, right?) but seriously though, it pins the "nothing" ennui that Seinfeld and Sartre and so many other comedians with the letter "S" have noted.
Realized that on Tuesday, on the way to Blue Bottle Coffee (nirvana), that the Mint Alley in SF did not just smell like piss,
but LITERALLY smelled like the zoo. Not like a zoo, but again LITERALLY like the zoo. Like several species of animals shat and pissed and spat and splayed there over a long periods of time, probably starting back in the New Deal, and while it may get hosed down and covered with hay occasionally, like a foul, demonic wind, breaches the depths. ... well, you know what I mean.
Suddenly remembered there was a band named the "Dog Faced Hermans." That name just popped outta nowhere. What a great name! Then I thought of another good band name: "Courtesy Flush."
I have a Chrome video and a Flipper video on my ipod. This was achieved by the following steps:
1. upgraded my laptop to OS X Tiger. Not Leopard mind you, Tiger. That was not easy because Apple don't want you to have Tiger no more. And there wasn't a clean copy of it anywhere on the pirate-o-sphere, so I had to buy the damn upgrade, going against my religion, ethics, morals and standards. Plus I was on craigslist hell half the time with people backing out and making life generally difficult, but then, after really swallowing my pride and driving down to Hayward! Managed to buy the damn thing.
2. downloaded the great, free, "Mac the Ripper!"
3. downloaded about four free programs claiming to convert any media file into something you can play on any device. But only one truly worked: Hand Brake. Not without messing about a bit with its settings and waiting all night for the conversions to take place. But guess what?
Wonders if the Steelers weren't suddenly acquired by the predominantly Jewish law firm of Rothlisberger, Mendenhall & Leftwich.
Can't believe Mr. Mendenhall, esq was sidelined for the season! Arrgh! Too reminiscent of Duce "Giant Disappointment" Staley. Please running game (W. Parker) come back soon. But the Stillers beat the evil Ravens, or Ratbirds as they are known by haters, myself included, last Mon nite, hated of course because they are in our division, but extra hated because they are technically the old Cleveland Browns! There are those in Pgh who hate them even more than the current Cleveland Browns because that's how we roll in the 'burgh. My disappointment now living in Oakland, is that the Raiders can't seem to get back up to hatred status. And that is a crime.
skirb (under his real, assumed name) writes letters to the editor to the website, Alameda Daily News, and they actually publish them! Was recently involved in a flame war with another writer who hurt skirb's feelings real bad by making fun of his last name! BWAAAAA! Its off the site already, but here's a snapshot of it: its in reverse order, so you gotta go to the bottom to start. Yes?
Download alameda_daily_news.htm
any finally, I wrote this poem:
Dwarfs having scarfs made of leafs
on their shelfs
have nothing for warmth
'cept maybe themselfs
