Everlastingtruth.com

I’ve been really lovin’ the new System of a Down cd. It roxxxxx! As always they are so politically charged, but they seem more so in this one, and I gotta say even though they’re heavy and they scream and most of my friends would hate them, they have alot of good stuff to say. I like B.Y.O.B. (Bring Your Own Bombs) it seems very anti-war and anti-bush, plus it’s got a kick A rhythm that just won’t quit. Phil and I were talking about the song the other day and I quoted a line from the song, “Why do they always send the poor?” (Asking in reference to the war). Phil informed me they send the poor because they are lazy. At this I promptly punched him squarely in the nose which cracked under the pressure of my massive, iron fist. He responded by pushing me down on the ground breaking my spleen. “Free capitalism is where its at man….” he told me while shaking his old man finger at me. I grabbed his finger and told him, “You centrists are all the same, just go with the flow of whatever is popular at the moment! Look at me! I buck the trend. Upstream I go! Or better yet I’m like Michael W. Smith I’m going west!”

“Go west young man, go west young man” is what we sang together holding our bloody body parts.

Damn, I freaking hate that song, just about as much as I hate ALL of MWS’s music.

System of a Down is much better.

At Super Cuts getting my hair cut.

HairCutterLady: You have really cool blue eyes, they’re really dark.

ME: Wow, thanks! Yeah most people don’t seem to notice what color they are, even if I ask them.

HCL: Yeah, I pay attention to alot of detail in people, I can always tell what type of shampoo they use, or cologne they wear..

ME: What kind of cologne am I wearing?

HCL: I can’t tell.

ME: That’s b/c I’m not wearing any, HA!

We talk on for a few moments about details in people and she comes back to my eyes.

HCL: Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re eyes kinda remind me of an alien’s eyes.

(How could I possibly take this the wrong way?)

ME: ……..oh thanks………

HCL: I mean they’re just really dark and kind of shiny.

ME: I don’t like my eyes in pictures b/c they’re always so dark and they look weird kind of like……

HCL: An alien’s!

ME: I guess.

HCL: Exactly!

Yesterday K and I went to a store that I lady I work with owns. She has this crazy little toy store that has tons of nifty/weird stuff. The store is ‘Bazaare of the Bizzare’ and its located on 72nd and Glisan. I suggest that you all go there, especially if you like glow in the dark stuff and pirates! Yaaargh, its a swell store! We got K a few pirates for her dashboard (she’s bulding a colony). I got a few little alien type guys that jump up high when you press them down. And one of the coolest things we got was a pirate rubber ducky. He’s black with horns and a patch over one eye. He’s cool. K also got a T-bone steak air freshener that hangs from her rear view mirror, it makes the car smell like yummy b-b-q. They had weird things like this little boxing hand puppets that were all sorts of things, the three that I thought were funny were the Jewish Rabbi, the Nun, and the devil, I thought those three could really duke it out.

After we left there we were driving down Glisan to go to Saturday Market when all of a sudden my back or kidneys or someting started freaking out! I couldn’t tell if it was a muscle spasm or those damned kidney stones coming back. It started to hurt so bad I actually pulled over and stretched my back. It was really freaking me out so we turned the car around and headed home. About halfway home the pain subsided and we decided we were hungry. So we drove towards Powell and decided on Campbell’s b-b-q (must’ve been the air freshener). We’ve heard that Campbell’s is awesome, everyone I’ve ever known that has gone there says it’s da bomb so I thought we should check it out. They make their own sauce called ‘the sauce’ and I’ve already tried that since they sell it at Frey Meyer. We went in there and there was hardly anyone in there! I got the smoked turkey and K got the beef brisket. I got mine with potato salad and black-eyed peas, K had P. salad and a green salad. All of it was awesome The potato salad was so freaking goood and the meat was nothing to shake a stick at! Sooo yummy. Great flavor wonderful bbq sauce and really all for a fair price. After we left food place we travelled down 82nd on our way to Barnes and Noble when we noticed all these tents set up in Clackamas Town Center’s parking lot. We turned in to investigate and to our delight there was a big ‘ol car show!! A/C Cobras, Shelby Mustangs, ‘57 Chevys, Stingray Corvettes and my personal fav two 1970 Chevelle SS 454!!!! One with over 500hp!!! Shiny paint and chrome chrome chrome everywhere! As we were walking through the cars I looked down and told K ‘I think I soiled myself’. It was wonderful. We had only been there for like 3 minutes when we realized that the show was ending! But fear not! This actually turned out to be cooler than just looking at shiny cars. All around us cars were firing up their gas guzzling mills. Like waking beasts in winter. VROOOM………..VROOOOM…………VROOOM!!! Angry engines spat fumes through gutteral pipes growling with power ready to pounce on a moment’s notice. Even the old guys were revving their engines. Then to my delight a guy in a ‘34 Yellow and Purple Ford put his car in gear and let it rip. With one foot on the brake and another buried in the gas his car lurched in place while the rear tires screamed in protest against the hot asphalt. White smoke continued to billow from the tires as he let off the brake and the car shot forward leaving a squilly trail of rubber on the ground. After he did that several other people joined in the fun and it was a burning rubber fest!

K and I went on our way and finally ended up at home. A few hours later we went the Lloyd Center to go shopping and got a few movies. We watched “Cradle 2 the Grave” with Jet Li and DMX. It was ok I kept my expectations low so that helped. I didn’t know that Tom Arnold was in it, and I gotta say he actually provided a goot bit of comedy relief. I thought he did a good job and of course Jet Li kicked some serious A, but nothing too earth shattering. If you don’t see it for Jet Li see it for the wonderful acting of DMX

At work I am merely a web monkey, I don’t mind, since they pay us in bananas it just makes sense. I try to not take on too much responsibility because I realize this job is merely a stepping stone. Despite my efforts my boss has handed our ‘emailer’ off to me. Essentially it is an email sent to our customers that then links them to a cool splash page that show all the specials, sale items…etc..etc.. Both the email and splash page are designed by yours truly. I actually enjoy working on it since its a break from the norm. Today it was requested that we be able to send out two of these special email things a month. This doesn’t seem like a hard thing but the way our system is setup it actually makes it convuluted. Our website has 40,000 products on it and most of the site is run dynamically by ASP. I won’t get into the details here but it’s some hairy stuff. So the owner was going to contact our web guys who get paid $150 an hour to add this new feature he wanted. My boss mentioned it to me and wondered if there was anything I could do. I said, “I’ll take a look”. So I went to work going through the ASP trying to see if I could add on this new feature. Ten minutes later I rose from my seat, stood in the middle of the room with my hands raise and declared, “I am the smartest man alive!” Everyone in the room whipped their heads and said “no way!”. Yes way. I don’t know how but I figured it out! I was soooo stoked. So the boss gets on the phone with Mr. Owner toots my horn and tells him that we got it to work.

BUT Then my boss had to go poking her nose around. Indeed I had succeeded in adding this new feature in only 10 minutes, but there was a link that gets created dynamically that was pointing to the wrong splash page. While not a major problem, it needed to be fixed. I knew it really wouldn’t be that hard, but I just had to find out where this link was being created. I poked my head around in different ASP files and couldn’t find much. Changing things here and there, but nothing was working. I then found the main file I figured I needed to edit b/c it was in control of all the other ASP files. So I changed a few things and then uploaded it onto our server. I tested it out………nothing. Except this time it really spit out an error with all sorts of garbley gook on the screen. Then I hear Jody say, “Hmm….why can’t I get on the website? It was just working!” I whip my head over to her screen and I see the very same error I had on my screen.

Now have you ever gotten that feeling where the blood in your body instantly freezes and you swear your heart stops at the same time your pupils squeeze to little pinholes so that it looks like your in a tunnel? Yeah. That was the feeling I had. “OH $#%#$ (explative, explative)!” I screeched. I grabbed my mouse like a fat man grabs cheese, clicked on a file and drug it back onto our server. Yup, you guessed it. In all my ’smartest man alive’ glory I had managed to tweak something in the main ASP file that brought our WHOLE WEBSITE down. Down to a screeching halt, so all you got was this error and tons of garbley gook. Thankfully, I had saved the original file, and the biggest thank you goes to Jody for her wondering out loud why the website was down. Oh man. If she would have not said anything I would have assumed the error on my screen was something only I could see just as it had been earlier when I was messing with the code. The site was only down for maybe 15 seconds, but as much traffic as we get on our site, there could’ve been alot of people that saw it. Luckily once I loaded up the file everything seemed fine. I quickly went on break and hyperventalated and hoped that the site would still be ok when I got back. It still makes me nervous when I think about it, I think I’m going to go check again….

A few months ago Jake was over hanging out and Karin piped up and said “how ’bout we rent a movie?” which comes as no surprise since that’s all she ever wants to do. I figured this time I couldn’t squirm my way out of it since it was a friday night and we really didn’t have much else going on. After throwing out ideas for a few minutes Jake brilliantly says, “Let’s get The Grudge!”. For some reason this seemed like a good idea to Karin b/c she likes movies that scare her and make it so she can’t fall asleep for the next week without crying herself to sleep. I on the other hand was indifferent, I really never like horror movies save The Ring which is awesome and I knew The Grudge wasn’t going to live up to that. “Fine” says me, “but you have to go rent it, I don’t think I could show my face while renting that movie.” Off she went while Jake and I surfed the Internet for something cool. Karin came back with the movie, big wheels and Tiffany. I don’t know if they were selling Tiffanys at the store, but somehow Karin managed to pick one up and we all 4 crammed on my couch to watch this stellar film.

The film started as any other of it’s type, with dark music and faded colors. It takes place in China or Japan I do not remember which, somewhere ‘over there’. I thought it seemed very oxymoronish to have a horror flick in China since that is the land of everything happy. Where else can you get crazy buildings with ninjas guarding the entrance, and girls with their faces painted totally white, and bound feet, and super-happy-fast-fun roller skates with the face of California’s governor emblazed on the side, and Chinese food on every corner?! Nowhere except for the happy land of China, or Japan I do not remember which. Anyways the movie didn’t really take too long to get going which was fine with me since this provided me and Jake a prime opportunity to suddenly ‘jump’ as if something scared us on the screen. This was more fun than the movie since Karin came off the couch about three feet and Tiffany kept hitting me telling me to ‘knock it off’. So we’re watching and it’s getting really intense as you’re about to see the monster or something really gross. Karin is next to me curled up in a tiny ball hiding her face with my arm, which I expected her to do, but I look over and Jake and Tiffany are slouched so low on the couch their backs are flat against the cushions! Not only that they both have their hands in front of their eyes, trying to peak through the slits in their fingers. After the super intense part is over I turn to Jake, “What the heck is wrong with you?!”. “It’s scary!” he says in quivery exclamation. At this point I remind him that it was his idea to rent this movie and he claims that he was ‘joking’ when he said we should rent it. Sure.

The movie gets over and Tiffany leaves, but is too scared to go home so she spends the night in the living room on the couch. Karin is scared and falls asleep on my bed, while Jake and I look at cool videos on compfused. It’s pretty late and Jake and I are trying to be kinda quiet, but I notice that he’s been too quiet and I turn to look behind me and he’s asleep on the couch. So begins my plan. I first tried to wake him up by tapping his knee and saying his name but he was out. So I go and sit very quietly and gently next to him. ———SIDE NOTE———- In the movie there was a very freaky sound that the monster/spawn of the dead thing would make. This sound can be achieved by opening your mouth real wide and drawing in air very deeply so that you get a nice low rattly sound. Kids do it alot, but it was scary as all get out during the movie.————–END SIDE NOTE————–
Sitting next to Jake I say nothing but I do ‘the sound’ nice and loud in his ear. At this he woke up and threw is big meaty arm against my chest. All the while saying nothing comprehendible, “whaja, seoske, howos, whosea, what’s going on?” is all he could muster. I am too busy rolling on the floor with laughter to even give him an answer. I finally told him what happened and he got a good laugh out of it too. I really wanted to call him while he drove home and do that sound in his ear but I figured it’d probably scare the poop out of him and he’d swerve off the road and die in a fiery crash, and that wouldn’t be fun since I had plans the next weekend and wouldn’t have been able to attend his funeral. So I left it.

The grudge was ok, really nothing spectacular, a few great jump scenes and ‘the sound’ provides some comic relief up to a few days later. Happy fun killer girl! You watch now!

Last night Jake came over to pick me up. He came in and I had just turned on Cops. He was surprised and I said that it is one of my secret indulgences. Maybe it’s because when I’m feeling blue I can turn that show on and realize that my life ain’t so bad. Unbeknownst to me Jake loves the show, alot, maybe too much. We were supposed to go, but he wanted to stay and watch a few episodes. We watched. We happen to catch a particularly fine episode of the Cops seeing some suspicious activity in a van. They pull up and there is a guy in the driver’s seat and a woman sitting in between the seats. We shall call this woman Bertha. Bertha weighs, oh I’d say about 300lbs. When the cops pull up Bertha is wheezing and freaking out like she’s in immense pain, I thought maybe she was going to pop out a calf (baby whale) but Jake thought she was high on drugs. Either way she’s a freak. They get her out of the car and her face is kinda red and bruised. It turns out Bertha is a prostitute. She was wearing shorts that were too short and a blouse that did not cover the fact that her boobs were nothing more than folds of skin hanging down to her waist. It was gross. The story was that Bertha and the dude did the deed but then he refused to pay for it and started beating up on her. The cop seemed like he knew Bertha and wasn’t being very understand of her ‘work’. She got beligerant and started demanding that somebody pay for the ‘deed’. The guy was going to jail and she was going to get nothing out of it. I may seem heartless in all this but she was really getting annoying and blaming everyone else for her problems. So Bertha was all frustrated about her current predicament and she asked the cop:

“Can I at least sit down?” (There was an old couch sitting by a dumpster)

“Yeah you can sit down.”

CRACK!!!!

“Bertha, you ok?!” (The camera whips down to Bertha)

And there to the utter delight of me and Jake was Bertha lying flat on her back like a turtle or a beached whale with all of her limbs straight up in the air. The couch was by the dumpster for a reason and Bertha effectively split the thing in two. Oh man, I could not stop laughing and I swear I heard the cameraman let out a smirk as well. That poor couch never saw it coming. Good times on Fox 49.

Being bored at work my co-worker and I invented a game that I think is only fun at work, because it isn’t work. It started b/c one day he kept putting his hands up in a fighting stance, and I told him that he was fat and slow and would never be able to keep up with the likes of me. He took this as a challenge and we decided to have a face off. Having cat-like ninja reflexes I knew that he would be no match for me. He counted to three and we were supposed to jump into our opposing stances at that time. As you can see this lent him an unfair advantage since he was the one counting. Just like kids do when they say they are going to race on “3″ and the one doing the counting is already running by the ‘thr’. This wouldn’t do, so we devised a neutral paper dropping starter. He’d pick up a piece of paper and throw it up in the air and the second it hit the ground we’d jump into ninja stance. We started doing it so much that without a word while we were working he’d throw up a piece of paper and to his surprise I’d be ready with my killer koo chun chow stance. He was pretty good for a young grasshopper, but I think I had the edge with my keen “micah sense”. Although once he was able to totally catch me off guard, which if we were in the finals would have cost me the title…..very dishonorable.

So apparently in California you can kill your wife (OJ) and molest kids and get off scott free! woohoo!

At work on the radio:

“…yes, that’s right no payments or interest until 2007, father’s day 2007…..“(mattress commercial)

ME: “How can they do that? I mean so much could happen in two years. You could die.

LYNN: “I don’t get it either, I don’t see how they make their money”

ME: “If not dead I bet alot of people’s mattresses are soiled within two years.”

LYNN: “Gross, I don’t doubt it.”

HECTOR: “What if you have to make payments but they just call it something else..”

KAREN: “No, no they can’t do that if they say no payments they have to stick to it they can’t give you any backhanded charge.”

HECTOR: “But what if they don’t call it a ‘payment’ what if they rename it to something like ‘fun deposits’?”

(laughter)

Speaking of fun deposits, my co-worker recently made one in his ex-girlfriend and now they are having a kid, and he may have to make more ‘fun deposits’ for the next 18 years…..suck.

ME: “So how does it feel to be having a kid?”

CO-Worker: “It’s pretty surreal, crazy.”

ME: “So were you guys using anything, like y’know, protection and stuff?”

CW: “No, we weren’t using anything.”

ME: “What?! Why not?!!”

CW: “Because condoms are so freakin’ expensive!”

ME: “hmmm……I think, I’m not sure because I haven’t done the math on this, but I think that a kid is more expensive than buying condoms, don’t quote me, I don’t know.”

CW: “You’re probably right.”

(A few minutes pass………..)

CW: “So Father’s day is coming up, what are you going to buy me now that I’m going to be a dad?”

ME: “Condoms.”

CW: “Yeah, I’d probably better slip one on right there so this doesn’t happen again.”

true.

Phil came over yesterday and he was just a chatty kathy all day long! Mostly he just talked about his woman troubles and the only thing that would shut him up was video games, so we played. We started out with a little Forza, but he’s only a good racer on straightaways, so we put in a little baseball. I won the first game in the 2nd inning (he quit) and the second one as well, his Astros were no match for my Giants. We lolligagged around for a bit anc couldn’t decide if I should buy a new basketball game since the one I’ve been playing is getting a little dated (NBA 2k3). I didn’t feel like spending money so we stuck with the ‘ol standby. I love playing the NBA game but Phil is the only one that is ever willing to play it with me and for the last few months he hasn’t been willing so I felt a wee bit rusty. My team of choice the Blazers and Phil took the Magic. The first quarter started out well as I took a quick 7-0 lead, but in true form Phil quickly caught up. Picking the Blazers is always a risk b/c just like real life they are so hit and miss. The game has a thing called ‘biorhythm” that will tell you how the player is doing. Some players start the game “ice cold or struggling” while others will be “normal or on fire”. Phil swears that this thing doesn’t make a difference but I say it really does. The good news is that your can get your players to heat up if you have good shot selections and he keeps making them, although I’ve never seen a player come out of being ‘ice cold’. During the first quarter I quickly realized that Rasheed was feeling it. He was hitting everything! And he was a dunking fool! During the first half I stayed ahead of Phil and thanks to ’sheed’s halftime buzzer beating three pointer I was up by 6 or 7. Third quarter the Blazers stayed strong and Wallace showed no signs of slowing down. Phil would close the gap and come within 2 points and I was always able to open it back up with the lights out three point shooting of the Blazers. Phil’s voice kept getting very shrill in exclamation, “That’s impossible! This could never happen!” Oh, but it was. During the fourth quarter I put Stodourmire back in and he went crazy! The game was set on simulation meaning for dunks the players are close to accurate on how high they can jump in real life. Never in the last three years of owning this game have I have seen Damon dunk, but last night he not only did it once, but THREE times~! This seemed to fuel Phil’s anger/disbelief fire even more. It was nearing the one minute mark on the game and I still had a ten point lead when all of a sudden Phil’s digital teamates decided that they were going to start hitting everything. He was throwing down three pointers like no tomorrow, but Phil’s ear-piercing voice had no victory b/c he thought it was too late. But before I knew it Phil hit yet another three with 9 seconds left and we were tied 107. I threw the ball in and gave it so Rasheed who had only missed 4 shots the whole game and at the buzzer I pulled the trigger…….and he missed. We went into overtime sweating and writhing on the couch (we’re not gay). Phil’s beloved Pat Garrity had fouled out so I hit him where it hurt! Not really. Unbelievably the whole OT we were neck and neck. I’d make a shot, he’d make a shot. I’d make a three, he’d make a three. Nothing I could do to shake him. With under a minute to play I was able to steal the and make a three which gave me a five point advantage. Phil was screamin’ “That’s it, that’s seals it” But amazingly in the last 30 seconds to play he was able to tie it up yet again~! This was probably the most intense I’ve ever been playing any game. With 15 seconds left I in bounded and stalled passing the ball around and with a few seconds left Damon shot the ball and made it! I jumped up in exclamation, but there was still .9 left on the clock. Phil timed out and then threw the ball to T-mac (who is a deadly shooter) but I was actually able to block his shot (really hard to do) just as the buzzer went off! Whew!

Blazers 127 Magic 125 —-best game ever.