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Sunday, March 7th, 2004
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9:49 pm - Shall we?
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Went to see a ballroom dancing competition down in Yokohama today, mostly because a friend of mine was competing in it.
Competitive ballroom dancing is more interesting to watch than I was expecting. (My expectations were pretty low.) I would tense up when the couples spinning madly towards each other, sure they were going to crash. Most times they would swing right by each other, passing nearly inches apart. Once in a while they actually would bash into each other, but they would recover as best they could and keep going.
Strangest bit was the music for one of the quickstep pieces was... the "George Of The Jungle" theme! They actually had the vocals singing "George, George, George of the Jungle..." but those were the only lyrics. I was the only white dude in the audience, and I think I was the only one that recognized it. What could I say?
current mood:  calm
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| Saturday, March 6th, 2004
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5:23 pm - In other news...
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I've been using some of my time off to catch up with recent movies. I went to see Return Of The King on Tuesday, which was quite good. I'm still not sure it was Best Picture good, but it was still good. I had received my special extended edition of The Two Towers the previous day, so when I got home I finished watching it. I hated TTT in the theatre - I fell asleep twice because the pacing was so poor. The extended edition is MUCH better. Makes me very interested to see what the extended edition of RotK will be like.
Thursday I went to see Master and Commander, which was also quite good. Hoping to see "Love, Actually" next, which has been recommended to me and well-reviewed. Already saw Once Upon A Time In Mexico, which was... not as good as I was hoping, but I loved Desperado.
As I was making my way out of the theatre in the dark as Master and Commander was ending, I noticed a muffler at my feet. In the dark, I figured it was mine and it had slipped out from under my arm or something. I picked it up and realized it wasn't mine. Where was mine, then? I had left it back at my seat and had nearly forgotten it. It was a nice one, cashmere, and would have sucked for me to lose it. So I stood there with a lost scarf in one hand, my copy of "The Portable Jung" (as in Carl) in the other, and noted that it was lucky I stumbled over someone's lost scarf to cause me to notice I had forgotten my own.
I hung the scarf on the railing next to the aisle and went back to retrieve my own.
current mood: still weird
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5:06 pm - "Wake up, time to die."
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A funny thing happened to me on the way home from work last week. I was almost hit by a bus.
I was riding my bike home, and stopped at a traffic light at a major intersection near my place. I was distracted and not paying enough attention, so when the light turned green and people at the crosswalk started moving, I hopped on my bike and started across the intersection... but something felt wrong to me. I looked up and the light had turned green in the opposite direction. A full size bus was coming at me at a good clip.
I clenched the brakes and scrambled back out of the street. The bus rumbled past. I realized that if I hadn't noticed what was wrong, there was no way that much mass could have stopped or even slowed down too much, so it would have hit me and I would have been killed or seriously injured.
This is "funny" because I was heading home from the office, where I had just walked out of my job, turning in what was essentially my immediate resignation.
I have deliberately not discussed my job in my journal because it would just be me bitching about it, over and over, which is not terribly interesting to read. Also, what you put on the web comes around again when you usually don't want it to, so it's best not to slag your employer too much, particularly if your employer is full of technical people who read the web. So I have left a lot of things out.
I hear and use the phrase "what if so and so was hit by a bus?" to mean that a company should not be so dependent on one employee that if that employee is suddenly gone than certain work cannot be done. I had just put my company in a "Jim was just hit by a bus" situation... and then gone out and very nearly got hit by a bus.
Strange how things work out sometimes.
current mood:  weird
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| Tuesday, February 24th, 2004
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6:48 pm - Great.
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So here I am, drinking a plastic bottle of "Austrian Mountain Caffeinated Water"...
I don't want any more caffeine! All I wanted was bubbly water and this is all the local convenience store has. Last thing I want is to get even more tense because of the water I drink.
current mood:  hyper
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(comment on this)
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| Friday, February 6th, 2004
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7:03 am - Oh fer crissakes!
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| Thursday, February 5th, 2004
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11:51 pm - And while I'm thinking about it...
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Was the Bono "fucking brilliant" comment such a big deal either? I dunno, man, have you been around Irish guys much? It's a set phrase. I don't think the lads can even speak the word "brilliant" without a "fucking" in front of it. Do the Americans really need to be so uptight about this stuff? Is there any way I can get an Irish feed of the Oscar broadcast so I can actually hear the Real People version of the dialogue?
current mood:  irritated
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(comment on this)
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11:45 pm - About the breast...
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Right about now I feel like just about the only guy on the planet who has not seen the video of Janet Jackson's boob on the Superbowl (but would like to).
I am surprised, though, that so many of the followup articles have been coming down on Janet for this. It seems to me that Justin Timberlake was just as involved, and he seems to be getting off scott-free. If it was actually an accident, Janet is the one who just got her tit flashed against her will to darn near every male in the US. That's gotta make her at least a little uncomfortable, eh?
It all just seems like a big deal being made about something that isn't. It's just a tit, fer crissakes. It's not the end of the world or anything. I'm only going off the still photos I see on the web sites, but she looks pretty flustered and embarassed about it, so why not just give it a rest?
Anyhow, I haven't actually seen the Superbowl in years. Not so much voluntarily, though I am not a sports fan, but it's not available over here as far as I know. If I could watch it, I would watch it to see the commercials. But I just watched a selection of the commercials on the ifilm site this morning, and they were pretty... unimpressive. This is it, guys? The best you can do? Half a million bucks' worth? Come on. The rejected MoveOn.org commercials were a helluva a lot better done and more interesting to watch.
current mood:  cynical
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| Wednesday, February 4th, 2004
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8:37 am - So shoot me.
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8:21 am - He's back
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8:07 am - I made up a word.
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"Debedrification - the desire not to get out of bed in the morning."
Pretty good, I think.
current mood:  creative
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(comment on this)
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mischievous