Oprah knew "The Secret" all along...

I did have to report to jury duty at 7:30 this morning. I had to go to the new Regional Justice Center and I don't know much about courthouses but this one seemed really nice to me. They had these incredibly tall granite walls with quotes about justice etched in them at random points. I thought it was pretty cool. The jury room had much comfier chairs then I was expecting and the vending machines were only 75 cents for stuff. There was a tv on which some woman watched possibly the most annoying "Oprah" episode ever about The Secret. (I like Oprah and all but sometimes I just want her to stuff a sock in it. We get it, Oprah. You're great. Yay for you.) They only needed two juries and my number was at the very end of the group that had to report today so I just sat around for five hours doing crossword puzzles and kriss krosses until the clerk went to check when we could go to lunch and instead was told we could go home. So I went to Fremont Street and played some penny slots at Fitzgerald's and saw Because I Said So at the Neonopolis. It was cute. I have a rather embarassing love of Mandy Moore movies. Plus, I developed quite the crush on Gabriel Macht in "A Love Song For Bobby Long" and I didn't know he was in this. That was a nice surprise. I wish he was in more stuff.

Then I came home and found out Anna Nicole Smith died. Which totally shouldn't have shocked me but it did.




ETA: There was this woman at jury duty who looked just like Meg from Family Guy. She wore the little knit cap all the time and everything.

It's too early to think of a title...

I reserved my Harry Potter book at Borders on Sunday. Yay. Now I just have to wait six months for it to come in. They offered me a choice of a "Trust Snape" or "Snape Is A Very Bad Man" sticker. I went with the "Trust Snape". And I better be right. If Snape turns out to be a very bad man I'm going to be quite unpleased.

I went to see The Scintas Monday night. Frankly, I wasn't expecting to like them very much. I thought that they would be mildly talented and the show would be way to corny. Instead it was very, very good. It's an old-fashioned lounge-type show for sure, but they're extremely talented and very funny. It was a good night except for the $20 that I might as well have just thrown on the floor for all the good the Family Feud progressive machine did me.

I might have jury duty tomorrow. I'll find out after six tonight. I'm sort of curious about the process but I still hope they tell me I don't have to come down. My company doesn't pay for jury duty and I really don't want to use my vacation days at the courthouse. Not that I have anything else planned to use them on. I just hate not having any just in case days in reserve.

Check out Harry Potter...

More pictures here.

Including some almost full frontal ones.

Of Daniel Radcliffe.

The Harry Potter kid.

Almost full frontal of Harry Potter.

It's just so wrong.

I can't stop looking, though.

Knee deep in the hoopla...

Starship starring Mickey Thomas was filming a DVD at the Hilton this weekend and they gave out a bunch of free tickets so I went last night. I knew that they had recorded We Built This City ( the worst song of all time according to Blender magazine) which I love (bite me, Blender magazine) so I figured I'd at least like that one. It turns out that Starship recorded tons of songs that I like. They didn't record a lot of songs that the many, many senior citizens who showed up for a free show liked, however. The old people were escaping the showroom at a record pace. Old people running away aside, it was a fun show. Actually, the old people running away made it even more fun.

Based on how loudly I sang along, this is apparently my favorite Starship song.

">

I'm not big with the porn watching...

So, I got free tickets to see Gordie Brown and I arrived at The Venetian just as the annual porn convention was letting out for the night. Now, I've lived in Las Vegas for 13 years. I've seen a lot of strippers and many, many billboards and flyers and ads for "exotic dancers direct to your room". Plus..you know...I have cable tv. I've seen things. I have never been in a crowd of porn people before, though. Just one right after another after another of the porniest looking people you can imagine. They really put it out there. It's not like your going to mistake any of them for a teacher or pharmacist or something. They clearly are getting paid to have sex on film. They're porny. And being stuck in the middle of them sort of freaked me out more than a little bit. That's all I'm saying.

Gordie Brown was cute and funny, though.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

There's about 300,000 people like twenty minutes away from me listening to bands and gawking at Britney & Pamela & Kid Rock and waiting for all the casinos to shoot off fireworks. I'm watching it on tv. Every time I decide to stay at home on New Year's Eve I get a little bummed that I'm not down in the thick of things. But the four times I was down in the thick of things I kind of wished I was at home. Last year I just went to bed and fast-forwarded through the festivities on the DVR to see if anyone made a fool of themselves or got arrested or something. At least this year I'm staying awake.

Only five minutes until midnight!! Yay!! Good riddance to 2006. Hopefully 2007 is the best year ever.

I think it really can read my mind...

This was supposed to be a gift for someone but it just guessed that I was thinking about a tv, nail clippers, a volcano and a lava lamp. What the heck? I figured it might get lamp but lava lamp?! It's the coolest toy ever! I'm totally keeping it for myself and playing with it until I win or go insane trying.

Replacing a rant...

I had posted a rant here about how crappy my afternoon was but, in the spirit of my New Year's Resolution to be a happier person who doesn't let work stuff annoy me, I'm replacing it with a list of a few things that I've been enjoying lately.

StumbleUpon There used to be a web browser that would send you to random sites that I loved. I can't remember the name of it but I missed it. This is actually better than that because you can tell it what kinds of websites you like to be sent to. I've found tons of games and photo sites and things that might be illegal that I never would have found on my own.

Internet Archive I've only used it for the great Old Time Radio collections but I'm planning on spending quite a bit of time snooping around the ephemeral films section soon.

RUSC and OldTimeRadioFans are also great places to download old radio shows. I'm completely obsessed with them now. I've been listening to them all day every day at work and the days are just flying by. My favorite is still the sci-fi series "X Minus One" but "The Saint" (with Vincent Price) and "Dragnet" are great, too. I'm also really enjoying all the WW2 era variety shows and the commercials. Really fun stuff.

The Lost Room I watched all six hours twice last weekend. They totally better make this into a series or at least do another miniseries because I haven't had that much fun with a tv show in a long time.

Merry Holidays...

Office Christmas party today! Woohoo! There were a couple of cute magicians and a sort of lame hypnotist. The sort of lame hypnotist "hypnotised" a totally hot car wash manager who proceeded to tear off his shirt, dance like a ballerina and do some awesome kung fu fighting. There is much discussion about whether he was faking it or not but he was quite entertaining either way so yay for him. I was included in a group picture where I look positively hideous. Like truly horrifying. I stole the picture but I think there are copies so I'm sure it will be included in some sort of company scrapbook anyway. They had great prizes like Ipods and portable DVD players and a $500 Best Buy gift certicate. I won nothing. On the way out I did steal the really pretty flower arrangement from my table, however, so yay for me.

Bellagio Christmas

A couple of pictures from the Bellagio Christmas display:




This is from the candy story down the hall from the flowers. It's all edible.



I feel as if I should write more. I'm not going to though.

I don't have a title...

They’ve been doing explosives training for the past few days at the abandoned building next door to where I work. I’ve just been sitting at my desk pretending to be busy when BOOM! It’s quite distracting. Even more distracting is that I’ve been told that today’s explosions are going to be even louder than the previous explosions but, thus far, they haven’t been. So I’m just sitting here anticipating the big one. How am I supposed to concentrate on my work? I’m just saying that I shouldn’t be held responsible for today’s productivity.

I was very unhappy with last night’s Survivor episode. Jonathon? Why? He had slowly become one of my all-time favorites. I wanted a Jonathon/Yul finale. It better not get down to Parvati and Adam. I’m also not particularly excited about Becky and Sundra. Ozzy’s ok but I really want Yul to win. Please let Yul win. If Yul doesn’t win I will never watch Survivor again. (Which is, of course, a total lie because I totally will watch Survivor again even if Adam wins and then proposes to Candice on the reunion show.)

That Girl marathon on TV Land this weekend! Awesome.

I am Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout...

This page is an interesting read: The Forbidden Library

Some of my favorites:

Clan of the Cave Bear. Jean Auel. Coronet. Challenged at the Berrien Springs, Mich. High School for its use in classrooms and libraries (1988), Banned from the Cascade Middle School library in Eugene, Oreg. (1992), Challenged, but retained on the Moorpark High School recommended reading list in Simi Valley, Calif. (1993), despite objections that it contains "hardcore graphic sexual content." (Purchase)

In junior high we all knew what page to turn to for the good stuff.


Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. Anne Frank. Modern Library. Challenged in Wise County, Va. (1982) due to "sexually offensive" passages. Four members of the Alabama State Textbook Committee (1983) called for the rejection of this book because it is a "real downer." (Purchase)

I have noticed that most of the holocaust stories are real downers. Didn’t anyone write a diary where they just had fun with it?


A Light in the Attic. Shel Silverstein. Harper. Challenged at the Cunningham Elementary School in Beloit, Wis. (1985) because the book "enourages children to break dishes so they won't have to dry them." Removed from Minot, N.Dak. Public School libraries when the superintendent found "suggestive illustrations." Challenged at the Big Bend Elementary School library in Mukwonago, Wis. (1986) because some of Silverstein's poems "glorified Satan, suicide and cannibalism, and also encouraged children to be disobedient." (Purchase)
Where the Sidewalk Ends. Shel Silverstein. Harper. Challenged at the West Allis-West Milwaukee, Wis. school libraries (1986) because the book "suggests drug use, the occult, suicide, death, violence, disrespect for truth, disrespect for legitimate authority, rebellion against parents." Challenged at the Central Columbia School District in Bloomsburg, Pa. (1993) because a poem titled "Dreadful" talks about how "someone ate the baby." On the other hand, this book does present the negative consequences of not taking the garbage out. (Purchase)

This just makes me want to go read all of my Shel Silverstein books again. And then take some drugs, break some dishes and lie to my parents about that wild weekend where I worshiped Satan and got a tattoo of Ricardo Montalban on my shoulder.

Dear Santa...

All I want for Christmas is my own revolving drum corp. Awesome.

">

YAY!!!!! 4 1/2 day weekend!!!!!!! Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!!!

Robin Sparkles rocks...

"How I Met Your Mother"'s Robin has a dirty little secret.

It's catchy, though.

">

So now I can't blame my father anymore?...

Last night my mother and I were chitchatting about before I was born. My mother apparently wanted a boy because she thought my brother was the bees knees and figured a girl would be harder to raise. She says that she worried the whole time she was pregnant with me that, if I were a girl, I would get my heart broken and possibly worse by men. Fast forward about 36 years and I'm single and have absolutely no interest in dating. So I'm thinking maybe my mother imprinted her worries into my little fetus brain causing me to avoid relationships for fear of getting my heart broken and possibly worse. That's heavy, man. Heavy and deep.

On a completely unrelated note: I can't get the song "SexyBack" out of my head and it's really sort of driving me insane.

Stuff of no importance...

This website is awesome. I now have a big crush on Bob Hope. Alas, I was born about fifty years too late to do anything about it.



I love "Brothers and Sisters". I hope Justin doesn’t have to go back to war. Hopefully Calista can use her wiles on Rob Lowe to get him out of it. I realized last night that I only know two of the characters' names on that show. I just call everyone else by their actors' names. Except for the gay one and his cute boyfriend. I don’t know the actors' names so I call them the gay one and his cute boyfriend. I really need to make more of an effort to learn all the characters' names.



After much thought I’ve decided that I would like to have Hiro’s power to bend space and time a smidge more than Charlie’s power of amazing memory. Profit’s power of flight is pretty cool but sort of limited. The cheerleader’s power seems like it’s just asking for trouble. Same with the hearing of people’s thoughts. I certainly don’t want to be radioactive or have a crazy, murderous altar-ego. Those seem more like curses than super-powers. And the future painting dude has the whole heroin issue that doesn’t seem too appealing. Walking through walls wouldn’t be that fun after the first couple of times. Controlling technology might be ok but it’s certainly not better than stopping time. Hiro totally lucked out with that one.

Random work tip...

If you’re training on a new job and you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t throw away pages of the training notes that you consider unimportant. If they were unimportant then the person compiling the notes probably wouldn’t have included them. Finding out that you threw them away might make the person trying to help with your training very, very annoyed with you.

The Office brings the sexy back...

">

Everybody back in the pool...

No jury duty. I called last night and they said that if my badge number fell in between these two numbers I had to be at the courthouse at 8am. If not, then I would just be put back in the jury pool and receive another summons later. My number was way higher than the ones they called. I sort of feel like I dodged the draft except...you know...no one would have shot at me if I had to go to jury duty. I hope no one would have shot at me, at least.

I love the movie 12 Angry Men....

I may or may not have jury duty next week. I’ll find out on Monday night at six if I have to go in the next day. I don’t really know how I feel about it. First I got pretty upset because my company doesn’t pay for jury duty and I only have five days of vacation time which is supposed to last until next August. I imagined this scenario where I was chosen for some three month sequestered mob trial and I’d have to file bankruptcy because I couldn’t pay my bills and I’d get evicted and end up living in one of those scary little motels behind the MGM Grand. Or that I was picked for a case and all the other jurors hated me and I had to spend all day locked in a room getting bullied by them until I cried. Or that the judge would ask me all these incredibly personal questions and I’d have to answer in front of everybody or he would find me in contempt of court and I’d have to go to jail. So then I started getting really angry about how unfair it was that I was being forced to give up my vacation time and getting yelled at and going to jail and maybe having to move into a scary little motel behind the MGM Grand when all I was doing was trying to fulfill my civic duty. I mean, really! How dare the government treat me this way!

Once I stopped making up horrible jury scenarios, though, I started to get a little excited about it. Or, if not excited, then at least interested. I’ve never been to the courthouse before so it might be kind of fun to see how everything looks and works. I used Google blog search to look up other people’s jury experiences and, other than a couple of clearly deranged people, everyone seemed to get through the process without anything too horrible happening to them.

Google blog search is pretty fun, by the way. I’m going to have to use it more often.