Last night Payton asked Emily what she would wish for if a genie gave her 3 wishes. She said she’d wish for 1,000,000 more wishes. “No, you can’t wish for more wishes,” he says. So she says she would wish for 1,000,000 more genies.”
That was lulzy enough for me, but when Emily asked Payton what he would wish for, he said he would wish to punch her in the jeans all 3 times. This is probably only hilarious if you’ve heard this Lonely Island song.
At 7-Eleven, a customer in front of me was complaining at the cashier because they turned the pizza ovens off too early at night. He kept hitting his fist on the counter to make his point, so I started doing it along with him and he kept eying me, but didn’t stop yelling at the cashier. He started walking away from the counter, still complaining, and I picked up his keys and said, loudly and obnoxiously, “Don’t forget your keys, MISTER COMPLAINER!” He shut up and came back to take them from me, looking like he wanted to hit me. It ruled. That really made my day. Even moreso than this Slurpee and hot dog. Oddly enough, the cashier didn’t seemed amused by my behavior at all. If I worked there I would love for someone to shut up a loudmouth customer.
The Spessas & Family came to visit me for a week and left just yesterday. As usual, details are sketchy. On Monday we did The Phone Show on our brand new station, Manic Radio! That was a blast, because the regulars in the Manic Radio chatroom didn’t like us at all. The PLA listeners were saying hilarious things to the mods and other regulars, which was easily upsetting them. The station owner was woken from sleep and told to come in the chat room to see all the craziness going on. Things were crazy, both in the chatroom and on the air. Two days later, Manic Radio fired me. It was the best thing ever! More details are on the PLA Forums.
Wednesday I went to the Veterans Day parade with the kids. Eventually we jumped into the parade and started marching with everyone else, walking the entire length of the parade. Last year we kind of blended in, but this year we were in sort of an empty section so we were more noticeable. We got frequent claps from people and even cheers a couple of times. We had a little candy with us, so we threw that at some little kids. Some old guy yelled at us to throw some candy and Emily says “Okay!” and threw Nerds at the ground in front of him. Not boxes of Nerds, but open candy. It was great. There’s a small video clip of all this on my Facebook, which I will attempt to embed below, but I’m not sure if my privacy settings will allow it.
I think it was also Wednesday that we drove to Portland, sans kids, and saw the Mountain Goats. It was a pretty small venue and we were just 20 feet or so from the stage. Was an awesome concert. On either side of the stage there were giant flatscreen TVs and while waiting for the show to start I tried turning one on with my keychain remote and it worked. On the screen there was a Verizon page that allowed people to text words and pictures onto the screen, which people immediately started doing. I managed to get a few messages on it myself before the show started.
As the show started, the TV was turned off, but I kept turning it back on during the show. Since the lights were down, it was really bright on the crowd. The staff eventually decided to shut off the Verizon feed, so that the screen was black when I turned it on. But after about 30 seconds of blackness, the screen would turn bright blue, flooding the crowd with light. It was enough to make everyone squint. I kept doing it in between songs, hoping the Mountain Goat guy would say something about it, but he never did. Finally the staff cut the power to the TV so I couldn’t do it anymore. I resisted the urge to make my way to the other side of the auditorium to start in on that TV. I need to get a more powerful TV-B-GONE.
A lot of other things happened throughout the week, mostly kid-related. We took the kids to Wonderland (the nickel arcade) and to see 2012 and some other miscellaneous things that I can’t remember. On Saturday we went to see The Pixies in Eugene, which was really great. They played the entire album Doolittle, in order. Halfway through the lady announces, “Okay, here’s side B.” Then after that they played a bunch of stuff I didn’t recognize.
I can’t seem to get this song out of my head. I heard it last night while listening to Luke & Carrie’s Bad Rapport podcast. I ended up playing it on The Phone Show a couple hours later.
Two months since my last update. Hrmmm. I was in Idaho for a couple of weeks, doing all kinds of things. I built the Spessas a bathroom, which was great. I miss doing home renovations a lot. Now they can stop going out in the woods to poop. We went to see live music at a bar – a band called Stillborn. If that’s not an awesome band name, then I don’t know what is. Too bad it didn’t make their music awesome, but we still had a lot of fun there. We also went gambling in Washington and bar hopping, where Mr. Spessa kept disassembling bathrooms everywhere we went. And we did the best Phone Show episode ever.
This past weekend I went with Angela to a Facebook party in Portland which was lots of fun. I spent Sunday recovering from the Facebook party, which was not fun. Oh yeah, last week I went by myself to see live music at a local bar. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this on here before, but this bar in Albany features tons of local hip hop bands. You’d think Albany would have lots of local country bands or lots of local hair metal tribute bands, but no, they have lots of local hip hop bands. And the music is actually pretty good. The problem is that this bar never has many people at it. When I got there, the band was hanging out outside, smoking. I sat down and commenced Facebooking. Soon I noticed that the entire band was playing video poker while a CD of their music played on stage. One of them was occasionally singing with the CD as he played poker. After about 45 minutes, I left. Guess they just didn’t like playing to a nearly empty bar.
I catsitted for a week for Kate’s cat. That was cool, having another cat here. I know there’s more that’s happened in two months, but I can’t remember. I always say that. Each Halloween I try to find scary movies to watch with my kids, which is usually really old movies. Tonight it was Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. That was fun to see again. My kids have seen just about everything by Stephen King now. This weekend we’re going to visit Albany’s House of Terror, then trick or treating on Saturday. On Friday Jessica is going to a haunted house with me.
I met a few old friends on Facebook recently. Jeff Boggs from high school and some other girl from the 80’s. It’s so weird seeing everyone I’ve ever known in my entire life on a single web site. I keep getting all these people from my high school adding me as friends, even some people that I never said a single word to. Which weirds me out a little, but I let them add me anyway. I guess they just want tons of friends and don’t care who they are. I responded to one with, “Wow, I’ve learned more about you in 5 minutes than I did our entire 4 years of not saying a single word to each other!” and she replied with, “LOL sorry i was such a stuck up bitch then but not no more!”
Speaking of wanting tons of friends and not caring who they are, add me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bradthecarter! Facebook is the reason I don’t update much here anymore.
Oh yeah, I wrote a new song called Play The Game, based on Curtis Lee Jones. He’s hilarious.
I’m sucking at this whole blog thing lately. Stuff is happening, but I’m just too busy with other stuff to write about anything. I’m going to Vegas soon. And other places after that. I biked and geocached alone a couple weeks ago and got pretty sunburned. I made a song and video, based on one of my favorite 80’s movies. I’m addicted to finding apps for my iPhone. Mostly just the free ones, but I can occasionally part with 99 cents for one too. I need to get the WordPress app so I can update this thing from my phone.
Also Geocached the other day with Mr. Spessa and the kids, which was fun. Their visit netted us a full week of insanely fun fun fun, much of which I’m not going to talk about. But it was fun. Last Monday we did The Phone Show together, which was so great that it lasted 2 hours instead of 1. Spessa taught all our kids to play D&D, which I couldn’t figure out on my own. She found a cool D&D store in Albany too.
Today I was quoted in this Fox news article, which is about Dex and PrankNET. I’ve been tired all day. All last week I stayed up late and got up early. I need a Pepsi. Tonight I’m going to a concert in the park with Kate & Co.
Yesterday Spessa dragged me, kicking and screaming, to a tattoo shop to get my very first tattoo. I put about 15 years of thought into the design before finally deciding on the 1969 Bell logo. The PLA forum people gave a few suggestions but I just wasn’t ready for Roy Orbison on my butt. Maybe next time. Here’s a series of pictures from yesterday, the first being the parental consent form that Spessa signed for me. Thanks Spessa!
I picked the Bell symbol since the phone company has been a life long obsession for me and because I’ve always loved the simplicity of their logo. Also because the name Bell as a phone company is almost dead now, which is kind of sad. Only Cincinnati Bell and Bell Canada are left, I think. Everything else has been assimilated into AT&T and Verizon.
It took about an hour and was $80. They put my image into Photoshop and made a transfer out of it to stick on my arm, then just traced the lines. I thought that a skilled artist would just draw it from the picture we brought in. Not too surprisingly, the tattoo guy says it’s the first Bell symbol he’s done his 14 years as a tattooer.
Yesterday I was driving Payton home from school when this car pulls up next to me and the fat lady in the passenger seat is loudly arguing with the 3 heavily tattooed men in the car with her that my Ford Focus is a Nova and they’re wrong about it not being one. So she decides to get confirmation from me and I say, “Yes, this is definitely a Nova!” and she seems satisfied that she won the argument as one of the tattooed men eyes me from the back seat like he wants to kill me. I wonder how many more confrontations like this I can expect with my new Nova emblem.
On Wednesday I had lunch with some friends, then soon after I got back home my eye is suddenly really itchy and it’s driving me crazy. I search the house for eyedrops and can’t find any. So I take some Benadryl which seems to help a little. Later I go to a mirror to check out my eye and it’s completely red and puffy and in pain. Looks kind of swollen. Pinkeye? I dunno, I’ve never had it. I check the internet and all the symptoms seem to match. Finally I find some eye drops and I think that helped a little.
Yesterday it’s better but still kind of itchy. I took more Benadryl first thing in the morning, not realizing that Benadryl makes you really tired. I’m rarely sick so I just don’t know these things. Spessa clued me in about this later in the day after I complained about how tired I was. So I spent the day eating tons of junk food to stay awake. I got a gigantic Slurpee from 7-Eleven which helped a lot, but kept giving me major brain freeze issues. Ate a whole bag of Fritos, half a can of Pringles, pudding cups, toast, and KFC for dinner. Around noon I took a 20 minute nap, but then forced myself up to continue working. Kids and I went to Payton’s open house and then to the gym/pool. I was really happy to finally go to sleep last night.
Today my eye is looking much better, but still a little red and slightly itchy. No Benadryl today, since I need to be awake. Sleeping in tomorrow will be nice. This weekend I’m catsitting for a friend, which means instead of sitting around my house on the internet all day I’ll be sitting around her house on the internet all day. While my own cat sits at home, bored, alone and ignored. I might be going to see Star Trek this weekend too.
This week Spessa and I had fun messing with a FreeCycle group, which is in a protected area of the PLA Forums or I’d link to it. One little spoofed message by me to the group caused a huge uproar from the members. It was great. Said goodbye to Molly – she’s moving to D.C. for a job.
I joined the collective this week – I upgraded to an iPhone. I’d been a Blackberry user for nearly 2 years up until now, which I really loved but it still lacked in a lot of areas. Like effortlessly syncing podcasts, which I really missed after giving up my ipod. Plus the Blackberry has been crashing a lot lately. I’m really loving the iPhone so far though. I thought I would hate not having a real keyboard, but I’m already typing pretty fast and mostly error-free on its virtual keyboard.
The Geocaching app is not only a billion times cooler on the iPhone, but it’s not $5.99/month like the BB one was. So I’m saving money on that now. And the Slacker streaming radio program actually works on the iPhone and it sounds great. On the Blackberry is was either cutting out constantly or was at a horribly low bitrate that sounded awful. It’s almost enough to make me want to cancel my Sirius radio subscription and just listen to Slacker in the car. Skype and YouTube also works really well on the iPhone so far. It’s a $200 phone, but I’ll be making around $150 by selling my Blackberry on Ebay.
A couple weekends ago I was at a flea market in Eugene and happened across a metal Nova emblem that goes on the back of an old Chevy Nova for $3.00. I thought, “Gee, this would look awesome if I put it on the back of my 2000 Ford Focus! It would cause at least a few instances of WTF from passing motorists who happened to notice it.” So I bought it. And tonight I finally scraped the plastic Focus lettering off the back of my car, drilled a couple of holes and hammered it permanently into the hatchback.
You can still see traces of the word Focus under it, but I plan to blast those away the next time I end up at the car wash. This is how I spend my Friday nights.
This week I’m really loving Silly Really by Per Gessle and We Made You by Eminem. I know I’ll get sick of the Eminem song eventually, as I do with most of his hits. But for now it’s hilarious.
Yesterday the kids and I went to Burger King, just to use their free wifi. Emily bought herself the new DS and wanted to try out the online features, but the thing stupidly doesn’t connect to WPA-protected routers. Only WEP. How stupid is that? Get with it, Nintendo! Guess I have to buy one of those stupid USB wifi things that Nintendo makes. Anyone know if that just opens up a WEP backdoor to my network? So if I’m going to use it I may as well just be using WEP on my existing router?
As we’re leaving I notice a cell phone sitting on the seat of an empty booth. A Motorola Razr which belonged to one of the teenage girls who’d been sitting there earlier. She was the loud, obnoxious girl who was yelling across the restaurant at the bus full of soccer players. The screen was caked with her makeup. That’s when you know you’re wearing too much makeup, when you can barely make out the text on the screen because it’s covered in makeup.
Anyway, I pick it up and bring it home with us. I’ve found cell phones before and we’ve used them for all sorts of nefarious purposes, but I decided that I didn’t really want to do anything with this one. If The Spessas were here, sure. But they weren’t, so today I looked through the phone’s address book and called her dad to tell him I had the phone.
He was really happy to hear that it’d been found and said he’d like to come over right away. He even said he’d give me a reward for it, but I told him that was okay. He showed up about 30 minutes later to retrieve the phone and tried to give me $10, but I told him he should tell his daughter to repay the good deed to someone else instead. He laughed and said he would.
Oh yeah, I changed the phone’s background wallpaper to one of the girl’s many slutty self-portraits she had stored on it. Hope her dad loved see that when he turned it on. Even when I do nice things, I’m a huge jerk.
