how often can you come in third in a contest and walk away saying, "i got bitten by a hundred mosquitoes and i have 500 eggs to show for it"? that lucky bastard.

usually, when i get a song stuck in my head, it's one that irritates me -- something far too catchy to bear the brunt of repetition. today is different. today, i have "you be illin'" stuck in my head. oh yeah, baby. run d.m.c. (this is from memory, so i could have it all wrong):

one day when i was chillin'
in kentucky fried chicken,
just mindin' my own business,
eatin' food and finger lickin',
this dude walked in
lookin' strange and kinda funny,
went up to the counter
with a menu and his money.

he didn't walk straight,
kinda side to side,
he asked the old lady
yo yo, is this kentucky fried?
the lady said yes, smiled, he smiled back.
he gave a quarter and his order:
small fries, BIG MAC!!

you be illin'

it's really fun to walk downtown with "you be illin'" as my soundtrack.

when did that song come out, anyhow? 198-? i remember that it came out when i was in grade school, because we were doing the limbo for p.e. at sassarini elementary school, and one of the boys started singing it. i think it carried over into the dodge ball game, as well. it was probably the first rap song i ever became aware of. i can't even think of when the last time i heard that song was, and yet, the whole first verse is right there, in my head... if only i could remember the important things we learned in school as well...

i was tailgated by a nun today.

boston.com removed the article about the guy who chewed off his fingertips and inspired a full day of haiku here at work. lucikly, i thought that might happen, so i saved a copy. it's now available at the top of the fingertip haiku page.

yesterday, i found a link to an amusing article on badassmofo.com. i shared the article with my co-workers, and it spawned a slew of haiku.

today, it's raining inside, too. i do love the rain, and even more so when suddenly, without warning, the cieling falls down and water starts dripping out of it. this is what happened in the hallway at work, but it's most likely not the outside rain causing the inside rain. more likely, it's caused by a leak in the air conditioning unit or the sprinkler system, or even the toilet of one of the floors above ours. the maintenance staff has upgraded our small plastic trash can/water catchers -- now we have a big huge plastic barrel to catch the water. that should last us until tomorrow, at the very least.

gene ray, self-proclaimed greatest thinker and wisest human, has updated timecube.com. be warned: "Ignoring 'Time Cube' is Evil. You are an educated stupid ass."

i've been listening to leonard cohen a lot. i dig. also, my boss brought in a pink martini cd today. listening to them makes me want to go to paris, drink martinis, and get a long cigarette holder, which i will hold daintily between gloved fingers. in this scenario, i am also incredibly graceful and poised and my hair is perfectly coiffed.

the most impressive thing about tomb raider, the movie, is that angelina jolie did the whole movie with those enormously large breasts (augmented, of course). the weirdest thing about the movie was that during the big fight scene at the end, i expected kung fu or something similar, but jolie adopted a boxing stance, and there were a couple of wwf moves thrown in for good measure. the least impressive thing about the movie was, of course, the plot and the acting. but it's not like i expected a whole lot there to begin with, and after all, it's all about your expectations.

i'm all shook up. yesterday was the 24th anniversary of the day elvis presley died. i got to thinking what an incredible public phenomenon elvis presley was (and still is). how do rumors that you're not really dead get started? how do you get to the point where people of all nationalities impersonate you and there's a big debate over what picture of you to put on a stamp (young vs. old)? women used to actually faint in this guy's presence. preachers would preach about the evil of elvis... is anybody that famous anymore? can anybody become that much of a celebrity and have that much of an effect on the cultural landscape? it's truly amazing, if you think about it. methinks maybe we're all too jaded to really get that excited about anyone anymore.

according to the times article (see link above), "At his death, Mr. Presley had been an indelible part of the nation's musical consciousness for 20 years." so now it's been 44 years. holy cow.

has yahoo really stopped with the pop-under ads on their headlines page? i have been going out there over the past week and haven't been annoyed yet. how wonderful! i have switched back to that as my home page, temporarily. until they annoy me again. cnn.com is okay, but i don't like their format as well. i know you were all losing sleep over this, so i thought i'd fill you in.

want something to get excited about? there's a new jet li movie coming out in november!

inspired by lysistrada?

and apparently, the cost of cardboard boxes is skyrocketing.

"...excessive marketing is cheapening the human experience--in short, life is in danger of becoming downright tacky."

the above is a quote from an article in a recent willamette week about how over-advertised we are these days. i can't help but agree as my browser is constantly hijacked by pop-under ads and pop-over ads and everything in between. the pop-under ads are my newest annoyance. i close my browser, and there they are, smirking. okay, they don't smirk, and it's probably not even a personal attack against me and my browser. it sure does feel like it, though.

new subject... i don't generally get all preachy about how we all have to share this planet and we should all try to practice a bit of common decency or anything like that. usually, such talk bores me. but usually, i don't see people popping each other's zits in public. and so, i offer this plea: don't do that. ever. please.

emma sent me a link yesterday to the bad boy rebel asian prince. i forwarded this to some co-workers and we had a good chuckle over it. later that day, we were talking about the endangerment of the salmon (it may seem weird, but people in the pacific northwest talk about salmon A LOT). anyhow, after the salmon conversation, dana sent me this picture with the subject line, "Why are the salmon endangered??" it's still making me giggle.

i finished the harry potter book yesterday, so my sleep schedule can return to normal. i was a little disappointed with the book -- seems like rowling didn't take the time to carefully craft that one as much as the others. still, it was an enjoyable read. how wonderful it must be for rowling to have that world to escape to and make up stories about... imagination is a wonderful thing.

yesterday was a terrible horrible very bad no good day. i'm moving to australia.

to start things off, i've been sleepy all week because i've been staying up late reading the fourth harry potter book, so i was tired and grumpy and a little anxious because poor harry is having a rough time of it. then, i got to work and sent out a virus to everyone in my company via e-mail. it was a strain of the "i love you" virus, which not only hosed my computer, but made me feel like a complete ass. i still don't know where it came from or what set it off. the tech support people are doubtlessly snickering at my claims that "i didn't do anything weird... i didn't open a .vbs attachment or ANY attachment, for that matter..." my certainty that they don't believe me comes from the fact that i used to work in tech support. in their position, i'd be rolling my eyes and scoffing, "user error. what a moron!" then i couldn't get any work done, because it took forever to get my computer back up and running, so i sat around reading a jsp book and feeling useless and stupid (a brilliant combination). today can only be better, right?

so, napster's gone, but music city is going strong. or morpheus, their new napster-esque client. apparently, they have all the legal issues ironed out -- they're not exposing themselves to a lawsuit because they're not hosting anything on their servers. hmm... sounds suspiciously like napster when they said that they weren't exposing themselves to a lawsuit because they weren't hosting anything on their servers...

i know these have been around for awhile, but i rediscovered star dudes the other day. even if you've seen 'em, they're worth watching again.

this is so rad: now there's a stickman kung fu fighting game!!! i got the link from badassmofo.com, which generally points me to interesting things.

if you haven't seen extreme stick death, you really oughta check it out before playing the game.

happy birthday, mom!!

i was happy to see that eugene mirman has some new song clips on his web site. eugene mirman is crazy.

happy birthday, mike!!

i have returned from sunny chico, ca. my grandmother turned 80 yesterday, so most of the family converged on chico to surprise her and help her celebrate. it was great to see my dad's side of the family again, not to mention all my friends. all in all, it was a rather eventful weekend. i was a little concerned about surprising an 80 year-old woman, but she handled the whole thing pretty well. grandma's a trooper.

the first thing i noticed in my inbox when i returned to work this morning was a link to the tardsite. it's an entire site dedicated to idiocy in driving. lots of the stuff out there is lame, but the tard of the month photos are pretty cool.