New Brigadoon pictures! Just an update of 5, though. If you already saw the previous nine, you can skip ahead to the new ones by clicking this jaunpiece, or if you weren't paying attention when I posted the original set, you can click this defness to view them all.

Textual update tomorrow. Subject: road construction, and why it SUH-UCKS.

posted at 12:36 PM | 0 comments

Can someone please explain to me America's fixation with not-so-great singers? I'm not talking about Kelly Clarkson, although pop stars as a rule usually do reach a level of suckage normally only approached the experimental prototype Bissell built a few years ago that runs on weapons-grade plutonium. No, I'm talking about actual "classical" singers, like Ronan Tynan and Andrea Bocelli.

I was just listening to a recording of Bocelli singing "Con Te Partiro," and it was, well, bad. I guess he must be putting all kinds of emotion into the performance that I can't sense, because all I noticed was that he kinda sounded like a 74 Datsun. He was wheezing, and hitting high notes with a technique that he clearly developed in an effort to sound as much like canine flatulence as possible.

Ronan Tynan, of course, is the famous "Irish" tenor that sings at all the important Yankee games. He also performed a few numbers at President Reagan's funeral, most notably a version of Ave Maria that put me to sleep. His voice itself isn't that horrific, but he sings with all the energy of a corpse. Not to mention that every time I see him he appears to have gained 30 pounds; if he starts waving around a snotty white handkerchief I'm gonna try to hire a hit man.

I do think that Josh Groban is pretty decent, although every time I hear about him I picture a massive lizard being interviewed by a horribly un-politically-correct John Candy with slanty eyes.

What I really can't figure is what's up with Americans recently that they're suddenly into this pseudo-classical stuff. The best I can figure is that it's all just pretentiousness, which is something I know about, because you don't get more pretentious than I. (I own leather pants.) I mean, get a person a Josh Groban CD and they're all "Wow! I've wanted to listen to him for ages!" Get him a CD of King's College Cambridge singing an evensong, and they're all "Uh . . . cool. I, um, sure do like organ music." What the hell, yo? I guess the average American just wouldn't recognize decent music if it bit him on the butt.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go sort my Toto bootlegs.

posted at 10:26 AM | 0 comments

Oh, MAN. I have to stop listening to the voices in my head. Especially when those voices say, "Hey, Jared's got a point, we should go to Hooters."

At 9pm on a Sunday night.

Let's set the stage: Sarah leaves town at 4pm to spend the next few days in Dover. I decide to celebrate this fact with 1 or 8 gin-and-tonics. Jared, who came up for the Blue-Gold Game on Saturday, is present. We play a few video games, watch some TV, when it happens.

Hooters commercial.

And the seed is sown. I hastily run a razor over my face (with no shaving cream, just water, which turned out to be one of the first mistakes), rub on some deodorant, and put on my muscle shirt. (Don't ask. Just . . . don't.) The actual visit was uneventful; we had some brews, some wings, some laughs with the waitress, and headed home. Jared was remarkably sober (Oh right, he hadn't been pouring Tanqueray down his throat for 6 hours!), so we made it home with no incidents other than the fact that singing "Insomniac," and hitting the 4-measure F# at the end, is not recommended by the American Dental Association.

I then went to bed, entered oblivion, and dreamt of embarrassments past.

I don't think I actually woke up. I still have the sense of dreaming, although really it's more of a nightmare, as I feel as if somebody is pounding a golden railroad spike into the base of my skull. And then peeing on it.

I had forgotten to activate my alarm last night, so I awoke this morning at approximately 9:45 when Discover card called to tell me they wanted to increase my credit limit (from $6500 to $7000 . . . wow! Color me honored!). Luckily I only missed about half of my Monday morning meeting, and almost nobody else was there either; I'm not sure why, as I didn't see any of them at Hooters last night.

Not that I'd have remembered if I did.

posted at 1:19 PM | 0 comments

* * * WEIRD DREAM ALERT!!! * * *

I need some analysis again. This one is just bizarre, but strangely enough it kinda makes sense, I think, although not to me, and probably not to anybody with an ounce of sanity remaining.

Inexplicably, I'm at an obstetrician's office with Sarah and a friend of ours (who will remain nameless), who are both with child. (In the dream. In real life, neither of them are pregnant, to the best of my knowledge.) Then later it turns out Sarah's NOT pregnant, and in fact is no longer there with us; I'm just there to talk about how long it takes for someone to get knocked up once they go off the pill. Our other friend IS pregnant (again, only in the dream), although why I'm there with her instead of her husband, I don't quite understand.

Also it comes out that Sarah and I have moved in with the other couple in some kind of townhome, but the other couple is having a new house built somewhere in Chester County and they'll be moving in there in a couple of months.

Then I think I must have woken up a little bit, because the dream switched gears. Suddenly I'm living by myself in a farmhouse somewhere rural. I remember going to a church nearby for some kind of meeting, at which Dean Peggy (the dean at the Cathedral Church of Saint John) may have been present. Then I got into some kind of old red Ford pickup, drove back to the farm, and changed into a strange tuxedo that made me look like a priest, to sing some kind of concert.

Then I woke up because one of the cats was vomiting under the bed. What does it all mean? (The dream, not the puking.)

posted at 2:42 PM | 0 comments

Brigadoon pictures are up! A couple warnings:

1. The pictures are pretty big, in many cases, and I saved them in the highest quality JPG format. If you're on dialup, be prepared for some significant download times. I may fix this in the future; I may not. I'm lazy like that.
2. There are two pictures of me in the current set of 9. I know nobody wants to see that, but my ego knows no bounds so I put them in anyway. Deal with it. Or merely avert your gaze. Whatever you gotta do.
3. I used a cheap and easy gallery-maker to make the HTML, and it's not in a format that I like at all. I'm sure I'll change it later to something much easier on the eyes, but for right now just work with me. I don't have time for a lot of editing today and I wanted to get this posted. Expect the design, and URLs, to change probably by Monday.
4. Some of the pictures are kinda dim and blurry, because we rehearse in a large space and my flash isn't powerful enough to reach more than 15 or 20 feet away. Sorry about that. Hopefully I'll have some nice pictures when we get to Longwood and we're under the lighting, but that's a month away.

I guess that's about it. Have a superb weekend.

posted at 12:04 PM | 0 comments

Why yes, of COURSE I forgot to take my camera to rehearsal last night and get pictures! And I think you know why this is: I'm a dumbass. I swear to you I'll Thursday. (Last night would have, of course, been the best possible time to do it, since I ran a few scenes and then sat around watching the chorus learn a dance routine.)

Anyway, rehearsals continue. I'm pretty much off book at this point, and I'm marginally less stiff. Hopefully by mid-July I'll be gallivanting around the stage like some kind of massive, horribly palsied Fred Astaire! Good times for all, that is. Good times.

As added evidence that I'm an idiot, I also forgot to take my camera to a wedding we went to on Saturday. As a result of me forgetting my good ol' pitcher-taker, it turned out to be the most hilarious wedding of all time, at least from the point of view of superb hairstyles from 1984. I would go into more detail, but I never know who's going to randomly happen upon my website; these folks were really really nice and I don't care to insult them. (Three important phrases: "Steve Perry," "shaved-head-braided-ponytail," and "horrific combover.")

The primary thing that made the bride and groom cool was the fact that they had chocolate cake with real icing (as opposed to that hideous crap that most supermarket bakeries have been using for a while; I think it has sour cream and chicken stock and crap in it), which means my diet went straight into the crapper as I feasted on four pieces of cake. Ouch.

It got worse: the following day we had dinner with my parents, and my mother was kind enough to make whoopie pies. A whoopie pie, for those of you who were born and raised in Cambodia, is two cookies of soft devil's food cake held together by fluffy white sugar cream. I ate 7. I think I gained 11 pounds last weekend.

Okay, sorry about the crappy update today. I can't guarantee I'll have more tomorrow, but if I don't have Brigadoon pictures by Friday you have my permission to beat me with a garden hose. Meanwhile, Brian actually posted to his website twice in the past week, and Monday's post is worth a giggle or twelve.

posted at 10:09 AM | 0 comments

I'm working another all night outage tonight!!! Let the running diary begin . . .

• 2317 - Well, I've been here at the data center for about a half an hour, got all my stuff set up, haven't started hallucinating yet. Annoyingly, I've actually been working since about 6pm, since the guys on the SAN (Storage Area Network; basically, they have massive amounts of disk that they allocate to my servers and attach to them via fiberoptic cable) team are doing a change that requires me to periodically check a couple of servers to make sure they haven't disconnected all my disk. Of course, my servers are working fine, because HP is the bomb. The NT boxes, as usual, are having all kinds of issues. So I was stuck on the phone for 5 hours for no reason. Not good times. Horrible times. Depressing times.

  At least I was at home; it gave me time to tune the piano a little bit. I got it about half done, although it's not exactly accurate because I lack the necessary mutes to tune individual strings exactly (which I have just ordered from Ebay; I love Ebay). After moving it twice since it was last tuned (in about April of 2000), and having it finally end up in a very dry house, it's dropped about a half step low. So I'm gonna just get it back to actual concert pitch, and then have trusty Pete Mayforth come out and temper it properly.

  Of course, Lord knows when I'll actually be able to finish it up, since I'll be stuck here all night, sleeping tomorrow morning, and then going to various parental units' homes tomorrow for a day of fatherly homage. I'll need beer, and plenty of it.

• 2359 - Nothing like typing "Oops . . ." to a coworker over AIM and have him think he's going to have a myocardial infarction. (At the time, I was performing a possibly destructive change to a production server.) Good times . . . good times over here.

• 0100 - Eyes starting to get heavy. I'm not sure if the coffee I drank has done any good. I don't even have the usual diahrrea or anything. Perhaps a large Pepsi is in order.

  I should've brought a hip flask full of gin. I have some excellent gin at home. I can't remember what kind, but it's got a little dancing dude on the front; Gordon's maybe? Gilbey's? Gilbert Grape? Oh well. (SAY THANK YOU GILBERT!)

• 0158 - Second cup of coffee, and my innards are starting to squirm from all the caffeine. In other news, it's hot in here. I'm going to take off my clothes.

  Much better.

  Okay, so all I took off was a sweater I put on to enter the raised floor (which is kept at a temperature of about 60 degrees F). It was a sexy sweater, too, all vertical ribs making me look hell of slender. You should be sad I took it off, but happy that more of my skin is exposed.

  Looks like we actually might get out of here early. Not sure, though. All the work appears to be done on our part, but as usual the DBAs (DataBase Administrators) have to test a bunch of crap and we have to wait until they're done.

• 0203 - Yay! Milo's up!

  matthearndotcom: I've decided I need a tuba.
  matthearndotcom: A guy played one at the memorial service this (yesterday) morning.
  MiloBloom34: you should have beaten him up and stolen his.
  matthearndotcom: You haven't lived until you've seen a guy playing "Amazing Grace" and some showtunes on a C tuba.
  matthearndotcom: I couldn't have beaten him up; he was really cute.
  

  (Plus his mom had just died, so it probably would be bad form.)

• 0207 - I really do want a tuba, though. Somebody hook me up, as I am poor. (I also need my garage cleaned.)

• 0234 - Holy crap. I'm going home. This is good news for me, I suppose, although it means this particularly diary doesn't get all that interesting, because I haven't yet begun to hallucinate, which really is the bread and butter of all quality writing. Next time I'll bring some Quaaludes to the data center with me. (Do they actually still make Quaaludes? I dunno. Better ask Dad.)

  Hey look, Walter's sprouted horns. Good times. Good night!

posted at 11:16 PM | 0 comments

I was HOPING to have a bunch of great pictures of Brigadoon rehearsal to share with y'all today, but unfortunately they keep expecting me to actually PARTICIPATE in the rehearsal. And I find it hard to stay in character when I'm also taking pictures of my costars. So I'm afraid you'll just have to wait. Next time I'll try and remember to just give the camera to Sarah and have her discreetly snap some shots, maybe even some video. Unfortunately, my camera doesn't do sound.

Although, now that I think of it, that's probably a good thing, since you won't be able to hear the sound of Sarah's teeth gnashing while I get my love on with Jennifer and Arianne. (The latter plays Jane Ashton, Tommy's fiancee in New York; I don't think I mentioned her in my Brigadoon update earlier this week, for which I am greatly remiss. Arianne Langsam is HILARIOUS. She is also extremely good looking, and highly flirtatious. I get to spend the entire show making time with attractive women other than my wife. Life is good . . . life is very good.)

As of last night, we pretty much have all the scenes staged, and I'm actually about 90% off book. Those of you that have worked with me on shows in the past (which would be high school) are probably wondering what's come over me, since back then I was notorious for not learning my lines until about 2 weeks before show opened, and even then I would mostly paraphrase, which went over very well with my costars who are trying to listen for cues that I never gave them.

Well, dammit, this is the new Matt Hearn, and he's taking his job seriously! It helps that many of my costars are semi-professional actors; Jennifer won some actual acting awards for work she did out in Indiana (although now she probably thinks I'm a stalker for looking up that stuff; hey, whaddayawant, I sit in front of a computer all day and Google people). Dave (playing Tommy's hunting buddy Jeff) has been almost entirely off book since the first rehearsal. There's not any real pressure on me yet, but I sure feel like a schmuck if I'm the only guy wandering aimlessly around the stage with a book in my hand. So I spend all day looking at my script instead of, you know, doing my actual paying jorb. Nobody's noticed yet, of course.

Speaking of my jorb, I had my annual performance review a few weeks back; apparently I am highly rad. I've been the Technical Lead for one of our smaller clients for a few months now, and apparently the client has been greatly pleased with my efforts. Plus, it has been noticed that every time somebody is sick or busy on a day when they have SMOD (Systems Manager O' the Day) duties, I cover for them.

I still probably won't get a raise, though. ARGH.

Of course, "Technical Lead" is something I definitely enjoy having on my resume. I should get my Sun certification, then I'd be all kinds of groovalicious and pulling down mad bizank.

Or maybe my Broadway career will finally take off. Not that I knew I wanted one until, uh, this month.

posted at 10:14 AM | 0 comments

I gaed a waefu' gate yestreen,
A gate, I fear, I'll dearly rue;
I gat my death frae twa sweet een,
Twa lovely een o'bonie blue.

'Twas not her golden ringlets bright,
Her lips like roses wat wi' dew,
Her heaving bosom, lily-white-
It was her een sae bonie blue.

She talk'd, she smil'd, my heart she wyl'd;
She charm'd my soul I wist na how;
And aye the stound, the deadly wound,
Cam frae her een so bonie blue.
But "spare to speak, and spare to speed;"
She'll aiblins listen to my vow:
Should she refuse, I'll lay my dead
To her twa een sae bonie blue.
     Robert Burns

posted at 8:56 AM | 0 comments

Not being a professional philosopher, I don't really understand it, but this guy purports to have proved the existence of God. I think he's going about it the wrong way. I can prove God exists, and here is why.

I like getting up early. I don't actually do it, but when I'm forced to, I usually enjoy the early morning hours and the fact that I can get so much done in the morning. Unfortunately, when my alarm goes off at 6:45, I just hit snooze, snooze, snooze until usually around 8 or 8:30. Hence my inability to get to work before 9:30 every day. I've had enough of that.

Monday night, among a variety of other prayers (some requests, some thanks), I prayed to God to help me actually get out of bed when my alarm goes off. I set my alarm for 0600, and asked Him to actually force me out of bed when I awoke. He did me 5 minutes better.

At 5:55 by my bedside clock, Pete threw up all over the bathroom floor. This is not terribly surprising; he sprays half-digested Meow Mix all over the house, pretty much every night. However, and this is why I know God was involved, none of the cats EVER throw up on linoleum or tile, anything easy to clean up. We have lived in our home for just over 6 months, and the carpets are already pretty much ruined, covered wall to wall with little dark orange stains that just don't come out.

Call me crazy if you will, but I believe God caused my cat to vomit noisily to wake me up and get me out of bed, and He had Pete do it on easy-to-clean bathroom tile because He's just a cool guy sometimes.

posted at 8:56 AM | 0 comments

I'm getting a little concerned with my ability to find quality merchandise at low, low, LOW prices. Time was, I could find a great deal on things like computers, underwear, cigar store indians, minor league hockey teams, etc., but apparently my skills have waned.

It's not that I'm missing the deals; I'm still buying stuff at significant discounts. However, the quality of the material I'm getting seems to be particularly crappy recently.

Example 1: Lawnmower. When we bought the house, I knew I'd have to snag a lawnmower, and so I went to the used mower sale up at Toro (corner of Foulk and Shipley; everybody in New Castle County is now nodding). They had a deal on a nice big used 2-cycle push-mower for $100, and the guy would throw in some 2-cycle oil. I said "sold!" and threw that jaunt in the truck.

It seemed to run fine for a while, except that after about 3 mowings I realized the thing leaked gas. The tank holds something like a half-gallon of gas, which should suffice to mow my 5000 square foot lawn at least twice, but I'd fill it up, mow, sit it in the garage with a half a tank left, and next week when I went out it would be almost empty. Oh well. I just fill it half full and file weekly environmental impact statements, no big deal.

Except last week, I went out and tried to start it, and the pull cord was sticking. No problem, the second pull got it started. But yesterday: no dice. The pull cord was sticking, and I'd get it loose enough and give a yank, and it wouldn't catch. Then the pull cord would stick again. After a while, I think I flooded it, which I wasn't aware you could do, but when I pulled the air filter (which is basically a sponge) off, it was soaked in gas. Oh well. Hopefully it'll run this afternoon, else I have to try and find the receipt and take it back to Toro. I have a one year warranty on it, but I'm not sure how I'll mow my lawn for the next month if they have to fix it. Eventually my neighbors will vote me out of the bridge club.

Also, I now have a blister on my left hand from jerking the starter cord roughly 37,384 times.

Example 2: Dryer. Got it in December for $300, or 40% off the $499 retail price, by going to the Sears Outlet Warehouse on 273. They sell scratch-and-dent stuff, things that customers have returned, that kind of thing. Anyway, it ran fine up until the end of May, and now it does not produce heat. I figured it might be because the exhaust tube was crimped, and sure it enough, that thing was pinched off like it had gotten a cheap vasectomy.

After ripping a new hole in the wall behind the dryer to line everything back up, and fixing the crimped part, I plugged everything back in. Still no heat. I'm rather at a loss, and of course I can't find my receipt, so I have no idea how to make Maytag come fix it. Right now we're air fluffing our clothes dry, which reduces shrinkage (and we're all about reducing shrinkage at Hearndom II), but takes approximately 4 days per load.

I was going to pull the thing out into the family room and take a look at it yesterday, but unfortunately I forgot and spent the evening playing poker (up $2 for the day, $5 lifetime) and watching "Rounders."

Example 3: Camera. My Olympus is a reasonably nice camera, but unfortunately it suffers from several fatal flaws:

• No external flash, so any indoor picture is nothing but red eyes. It's like all my friends are vampires. I mean, they are blood sucking vermin, but I think it's more of a lifestyle choice more than a genetic mutation or anything.
• It stores pictures SLOWLY. So if I take a picture, and realize instantly that the guy with the mullet walked behind another person just as I take the shot, I have to wait one or two seconds before I can hit the button again. It's even worse if I'm using the crappy on-board flash, which takes upwards of 15 seconds to recharge.
• A flaw in the optical sensor that sticks a couple of bright green pixels in the lower portion of most of my pictures.
• An owner who knows as much about photography as he does about the mating habits of plankton.

I must be losing my touch, assuming I ever had one. Early on-set Alzheimer's, perhaps? Oh well, at least I'm still beautiful. I think. I can't remember.

UPDATE: The mower was indeed flooded, and possibly a bit over-oiled. After taking the filter off and opening the throttle wide enough, I could hear it trying to catch when I pulled the cord. After 10 or 300 more attempts it finally stayed running, although it was belching white smoke. I put some straight gas in to try and counteract the overoiled situation, and it worked like a charm. Yes, as it turns out, I am hell of smart.

posted at 7:51 AM | 0 comments

posted at 8:57 PM | 0 comments

A lot of you have been wondering what's up with this whole Brigadoon thing. Questions I've received include:

1. What's with the tartan on the main page? Are you Scottish now?

   As it turns out, I have like 1/16th Scottish blood, courtesy of my mother's mother's mother, whose maiden name was Shaw. The tartan in the current logo is the modern Shaw tartan, probably invented by well-meaning lowlanders in the early 1800s. I'd get a breacan-feile (the massive Highland kilt) of it, but it turns out getting roughly 18 yards of it costs something like $800. As I can barely afford to keep myself in sufficient athlete's foot medications, it's unlikely I'm coughing up $800 for something I'd wear approximately once per decade. At least until any future daughters I have bring home boyfriends, in which case I get to put it on and wander around the backyard trimming the foliage with a claymore. Or a band saw. Whatever's handy is fine.

2. Isn't Brigadoon a band? I think they opened for White Rice when I saw them in Hartford last summer. Don't they have a song called "My Monkey Wears OshKoshB'Gosh (When He Spits In The Pasta)?"

   Brigadoon is not a band that I know of, although that is a very evocative song title. I feel that we should attempt to put lyrics to it. I'll start with part of a verse:

   I got a monkey at the store
   He was dressed up like a whore
   I bought him some new duds
   And then he and I were buds

   I'm feeling that, oh yeah.

3. Another stupid site redesign? Are you some kind of interior-decorator-wanna-be?

   My ability to redecorate is limited to what I can do with paint. Which, it turns out, isn't much, without nice curtains and pretty throw pillows. The site redesign is a reminder for everybody to come see Brigadoon. (Read on.)

4. Please put up more pictures of Dave Chappelle's Asian Wife.

   No.

Most of you are probably aware of this already, but I can't remember what information I may have posted here, and I'm FAAAAAAR too lazy to actually look and see, so here's the full Brigadoon update:

I auditioned in April for the part of Tommy Albright in the Brandywiners' production of "Brigadoon," a musical in which Tommy and his buddy Jeff go to Scotland and meet hot girls. (The plot's more complex than that, but I'm trying to get people to come, and I figure between the prospect of musical theatre and hot girls, we'll get all genders and sexual orientations.) I got the part, and we started rehearsals the last week in May.

Things are going SUPERBLY. I hadn't acted since high school, so they're having to rebuild me completely, which I'm sure is as frustrating for them as it is for me, but it's working out. I'm still a little stiff, but I'll get over that.

My costars are so money. Fiona (Tommy's love interest) is a HILARIOUS girl named Jennifer Kennard, and we get along great. It makes things much easier for me that both of us were equally uncomfortable when we had to smooch for the first time yesterday. (The fact that she's a stunning redhead doesn't hurt either.)

Jeff (my hunting buddy) is a fellow named Dave Munch who, I'm told, plays a hell of a guitar. (I should get him to come jam with me and my coworkers...hm.) He's a laugh riot, so playing Dick to his Tom (Footnote 1) is easy.

Charlie is played by a guy named, well, Charlie Hannagan. Which makes things easy on us. We just hope he shaves before the show; he's got the beard of a playoff hockey player. Meg is played by Cindy Goldstein; to say she's just "funny" is like saying Tom Jones "just" has a slight bulge in his groin. Harry Beaton is in the capable hands of Matt Weaver, a kid that I directed in a few high school shows at Brandywine; he dances like Baryshnikov, so we're looking forward to hoping he doesn't cut his foot on a sword.

Anyway, that's pretty much the lowdown. The show goes up July 29th, 30th, 31st, and August 5th, 6th, and 7th; tickets can be purchased by calling 478-3355 or (800) 338-6965. Come one, come all! Plenty of good seats left, but we're planning on selling out all six shows, so get your tix now. Now! GET TICKETS NOW, DAMMIT!

---

Footnote 1: The Smothers Brothers, you idiot.

posted at 1:28 PM | 0 comments

Man, has it been a while since I posted anything substantial! You know why that is? Because I don't like you. Okay, that's not true; some of you are okay, and you know who you are. The rest of you smell faintly of prunes.

This morning I had serious sticker shock at the gas station; I paid $45.94 to fill my tank. Admittedly, I drive a massive pickup truck and I bought almost 22 gallons, but damn. I remember once watching my grandfather pay less than that to fill up his RV. $45.94. That's a video game at Walmart, people. Or if you don't care for video games, it's like 2 DVDs and a pair of really cute sandals. Or if you're not white trash and therefore don't shop at Walmart, it's like half a shirt at J. Crew. (Of course, most of the ladies' tops at J. Crew only have half the material of a real shirt anyway.)

More on Walmart later, the idiots.

Also at the gas station, I witnessed something truly terrifying. A scary middle-aged woman drove in in a little old Chevrolet of some kind, like a 94 Nova or something like that. The gas cap on this particular model was on the left side, meaning she had to park on the RIGHT side of the pump. (Sorry, I have to assume most of my readers aren't too bright, else they'd be reading Gene Weingarten or The Daily Sun or something.) However, all the right-side-of-the-pumps spots were taken. What to do, what to DO?

Here are what I consider to be valid options:

1. Back into a spot on the left side.
2. Drive around the service station and pull in from the other side.

Middle-aged-scary-lady, of course, went with option 3: just sit and wait until one of us cleared out of the way. Many of you are probably thinking, "So what? She didn't want to back in." You're all missing the point, which is this: there is a woman driving on the public roads who is a bad enough driver that she's afraid to back into a parking spot next to a gasoline pump. And worse, she KNOWS she's a bad driver and still goes out on 273 every morning to get to work. And people wonder why I usually just sleep until rush hour is over, and then work from home.

I guess she scares no one but me, then. Moving on:

Last night I was busy mowing the lawn, fixing cars, doing manly man type work around the house, mainly so I could avoid having to clean. Sarah went to Walmart to pick up a few things, so I asked her for the following:

• Some new cargo shorts
• A grill cover
• Some good hangers for my suits and sport coats
• Mulch

At Walmart, a massive store that you would think would have everything you could possibly desire, my wife was able to find:

• Some cheapass hangers that will not suffice, as they are little better than wire, and cause my jackets to look like they were costume components from some horror flick entitled "The Wrinkling."

What the hell, Walmart? You are the Super-Store of Super-Storedom. I can understand not having mulch, perhaps, but a grill cover? You have an acre of stupid outdoor crap that nobody over the poverty line would buy, and not one cheap vinyl tarp to throw over my poor rusty grill? And no decent hangers? Well, I take that back. I think Hearnwife said they had some nice wooden hangers, but they wanted $4 a pop! I could just make my own, thanks, whittling them in my copious spare time.

Apparently all the shorts they had were nasty elastic-banded jaunpieces, and that's just completely unacceptable. I've just spent six months losing 30 pounds so I don't have to wear elastic fat-boy pants, and I'll be damned if The New Svelte Hearn is going back to that stretchy hell.

Walmart, I've been coming to you for my fashion for years. Only recently have I begun to stray in favor of quality, more expensive stuff. But you know I keep coming back! Right now I'm wearing those cool black moccasins I bought that one time! I would never betray our love!

I guess I'm saying: please restock your grill cover collection. Ideally something in a nice blue to match my siding.

posted at 7:50 AM | 0 comments

If I change all the colors on the page, and make a new kickass logo, does that count as an update? Yes....yes it does.

Come see Brigadoon, dammit!

Okay, okay, here's something amusing:

posted at 9:50 AM | 0 comments