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RANT 1.04.A: November 1, 2000: "New, Amazing Sitcom-In-A-Can!" ...
So here I am, watching the season premiere of "Normal, Ohio", and I'm genuinely amazed. Why? This is the first time I have ever seen an ENTIRE 30 minute TV show based entirely on jokes(?) about homosexuality. It's just sickening how modern television beancounters think that any flat, cheezy show can be greatly enhanced merely by adding a homosexual character. But...this is just disgusting. There's NO plot, no storyline, and no character development beyond "Look! He's gay!". The writers for this show ought to be bound tightly to cheap office chairs with giant cable ties and left there having to watch their work continuously on a big-screen television until they suffer complete and total psychological breakdown. The Chinese Sitcom Torture...!!!
RANT 1.03.A: October 31, 2000, last f***ing time I ever work on Halloween:
I know I said I was going to get a new comic up here tonight, but unforseen circumstances have prevented it; namely, a serious electrical burn caused by a malfunctioning esclator at work. I have very little feeling in my right hand, and that which still exists is all crosswired, making any pressure yield a sensation of sharp, biting pain. I'm typing with the ends of my fingernails now to avoid such... Blah. I'm just lucky the power from that steel booger didn't travel through any other parts of my body, or I might not be here to type this (somewhat ainfully) now. That isn't my only brush with near-death I've had today; the Dollar Rent-A-Car shuttle bus almost ran over me after its usual manuever of cutting off three lanes of traffic... I ran out of its way just in time; it stopped neatly right upon the spot where I had been standing. As I was riding the Tri-Rail shuttle out of the airport terminal area, I saw the remains of an Alamo Rent-A-Car shuttle which had, for some odd reason, decided to get up close and personal with a tree.... there were about 30 feet of tree underneath it, and the floor was totally collapsed upwards! Luckily, there were no passengers on board, and the driver walked away (though I doubt he'll be walking tomorrow morning). Other fun stuff that occured tonight included the high speed traversing of some EXTREMELY rough track on Tri-Rail, which threw some people out of their seats; and a Metrorail car which liked to mysteriously cut power to itself at random intervals. DAMMIT...that is the LAST time I work on Halloween!!!!!!!!!!!!
RANT 1.02.A: October 30, 2000 - Aaugh...
I had a most completely and totally messed up dream last night. I was in some room I didn't really recognize, but seemed kind of familiar... I was getting ready to leave on a trip somewhere when some unwelcome and rather official-looking visitors arrived. One of them, who was not in uniform and refused to identify herself was asking me bizarre and very pointed questions about my artwork... she was very carefully investigating every page of my sketchbook, which she had somehow managed to get her evil little hands with bright red painted nails upon. I, spotting a computer over in the corner with a 14.4 external modem sitting on top, told her, "Oh, I don't have anything interesting in there, all of my really good stuff is on here...", and stalled her by leaving her reading the entire Blue Neon archive over that godawful connection. She eventually let it slip that she was an FBI agent. I suddenly became aware that our conversations were being recorded (by a very poorly placed microphone hanging out of a potted Dracena plant), and turned on a beautiful massive old console radio in the corner to screw up their recording. While I sang along at an obnoxious degree of volume to a Spanish song I didn't understand but somehow knew all the words to, she looked at its row of glistening brass and mahogany knobs, trying frantically to turn it back off, and couldn't figure it out... so she just reached around the open back and started pulling the warmly glowing silvered vacuum tubes in an effort to silence it. I was extremely pleased when the evil shellacked-looking fingers on one of her hands touched B+ (for the uninitiated and Spanish, Mucho Voltaje) somewhere, and the lethal surge of current sent her falling to the floor. The last thing I remember was myself laughing over the harsh buzz from the radio as the investigator's makeup-drenched body shorted the power supply... a buzz which transformed itself as I awakened into that of the alarm clock.
DAMMIT, she reminds me way too much of Mrs. Del Pino, the fake "psychiatrist" they had at the elementary school program I was in... The image of her as an FBI agent must be a dire warning of something to come, but then again, it could just be the kind of dream that's trying to once again remind me that I'm slowly but definitely destroying my mind and body through constant and intense stress. I didn't get an actual summer vacation this year, and I've been going for entire weeks without leaving the house except to go to "work", the obviously unrewarding experience that it is. The only things that keep me going back are that it gets me away from my parents, and I'm required to do it, for the public education system is set up such that they believe every modern teenager's time, energy, and other resources to be completely and totally expendable for their every mandated whim. Just about everyone asks me now why I'm not able to get a REAL job, one which actually yields something more than greasy five-alarm airport cafeteria food and the opportunity to ride around on various trains for four hours a day to get there and back...
Argh, I need a break. END OF RANT
RANT 1.01.A: October 27, 2000 - School Insecurity
All we asked was that they turn down the music at my little brother's school Halloween party. They turned it up instead, and an obnoxious parent decided to follow us outside and try to get into an actual physical fight.
After we left and called the police, the school security officer who pushed in front of this guy to keep him from going all maniac postal worker on us decided to pretend it never happened when asked about the situation by two police officers.
I suppose this was mainly to cover his own ass... but I can't stand knowing that the students, parents, and teachers of Blue Lakes Elementary are supposed to be protected by this guy and his cadre of inept dumbasses.
Hmm...they'll suspend students for wearing a black coat to class, but they'll let anyone's parents beat up on two innocent bystanders....
Foon.
-END OF RANT-
RANT 1.00.A: October 24, 2000 - Community Disservice
Worldlink 2000 was supposed to connect students in 189 countries. Of those, I think we got through to 15 or 16 of them.
I've spent a great deal of time on this project, which I now know was completely and totally wasted; however, it is time that I get to count towards my community service requirement, so I'm somewhat satisfied in a half-assed sort of way.
I was on the web design team, which was supposed to be logging all of our "touchdowns" in various countries to the Worldlink 2000 website. However, most of them seemed to be a lot more interested in downloading bootleg movies on the school's extremely fast 'net connection, insulting each other on our dedicated chat rooms, and smoking.
The project almost completely and totally lacked adult supervision and coordination.
Sometime around 10 AM (I worked from 10 PM to 12:30 PM, 14 1/2 hours)... a couple busloads of elementary school students were released in the area. They weren't really able to participate, short of a couple of them being able to send off e-mails, and they left soon afterwards.
Special thanks go out to register.com e-mail services for losing all of our stored webmail, erasing our address book, and f@!#ing up our original website.
My mom, who insisted on lingering around constantly while I was trying to do what little work there was available and complaining, thinks that nobody (not excluding myself) should get any credit for the project.
I personally think everyone should get credit for the time they wasted on this idiotic project... and whoever failed to coordinate it worth crap shall be credited with failing to do so.
What a waste.
Tina
The Troubled Teen, from The Brunching
Shuttlecocks. Is she not cute? (Netscape appears to like violently murdering her via HTML messiness, oops.)
This is the end of the road, you might want to turn around.