Nothing, Infinity and You

Michelin Man - BJTB

thenothing — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:48:00 -0400

As I'm eating my banana pudding (with cookie crumbles (yum)) I realize that I'm eating too much. I'm starting to look like the Michelin Man. Then I got to thinkin', there is a Michelin Dog; is there a Michelin Wife? And if there is a Michelin Wife, why aren't there Michelin Kids? Is it because the Michelin Man (aka, Bibendum or "Bib the Michelin Man") uses rubbers (tee hee)? [pondering] Hmm, a mystery.

Lost Tunes

thenothing — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 11:01:00 -0400

No, this is not a reference to the new soundtrack from television series "Lost". It's funny how companies like Microsoft can take an average term or word® and make it their own trademark. ABC did the same thing when they created the show "Lost". Anyway, this is about my car being broken into last night before midnight. My iPod® was stolen. Luckily, that was the only thing that was in my car. I usually keep my $1000 digital SLR camera in the glove compartment (are you taking notes, you miserable bastards?) as well as my $1500 flute, my $2200 Mac®Book® Pro® and my wallet (ok, that last item really has no value).

Even thought this atrocious incident happened, I was able to stop at my local Starbucks®, on my way to work, and get myself a $1.90 cup of coffee and accept my barista's command of "Have a nice day"®. Well, it's 8:15AM EST. Let's see what this "nice day" has to offer.

Burger Time

thenothing — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 17:36:24 -0400

Back in the '80s (1980's for those of you who time travel and can't tell which century I'm talking about), there was a game called "Burger Time" where you were a little chef creating "perfect" burgers by walking across the humongous burger layers (top bun, meat patty (or "meatwad", but that's allusion to something else), lettuce, cheese, etc.). To thwart your creations, Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Egg and Mr. Pickle chased you around. You were armed with a pepper shaker whereas you would shake pepper (black pepper, I presume) that would render your "enemies" useless for a few seconds while you continue your delectable creations.

Anyway, I just ate a Double Whopper from Burger King. I'm not sure what the reason is, but EVERY burger, no matter where you get it, is NEVER assembled as nice as in their TV commercials so you wind up wearing your burgers as well as eating most of it. It's quite a delectable grossness, if may be so bold as to coin a culinary phrase. Not too long ago, David Hasselhoff was filmed by his most evil daughter eating a burger, practically off the floor, while he was wasted; either by drinking or drugs, I couldn't tell. All I was fixated on was the burger and how it is remeniscent of the burgers of lore that I have conquered gastronomically. D. H. said in the video "...this is gross..." (I'm paraphrasing of course). You can watch the video here. So now every time I eat a burger, I am reminded of the horrific visuals of D. H. eating off the floor. It makes my stomach a bit queasy.

We can now create a version of Burger Time and add Mr. Hasselhoff to the list of enemies that you, as the struggling chef, will encounter in your quest to create the perfect burger.

NIY Goes Mobile!

thenothing — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 19:09:50 -0400

This post is coming to you from my BlackBerry. My blog has reached the 21st century! Now I can blog on-demand. Whenever I'm bored in a waiting room or when I see something interesting while in the car! THIS opens up possibilities1 Back to work.

Star Wars - 30 years later BJTB

thenothing — Thu, 24 May 2007 13:09:01 -0400

I love the movie Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi and I am aware that they are not the most artistic pieces of work, but they allow me to escape the hum drum of my life and for the approximate 2.5 hours that each run, I'm in a world where I would not mind being. This article is by a gentleman who's avoided watching Star Wars for 30 years! Finally he watches it and he has some interesting comments on it. I totally agree with his assessment of the movie and the impact it had/has to our society. It makes me sad to see the truth of the situation. It makes me sadder to see that true art, very creative art can go by unoticed and unappreciated by our society in lieu of shallowness. Perhaps people nowadays don't want to "think" and just want a drug effect and their addiction is shown in the form of obssessiveness over the story line, characters and their "lives", trivia, etc. Is this the demise of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Picasso, DaVinci, et al, to name a few? Is the pop culture the new classical era? Something to think about.

A Game After My Own Heart - BJTB

thenothing — Wed, 02 May 2007 13:41:59 -0400

Just bought a Wii (damn marketing!) and with it, I got Super Paper Mario. The premise of the game is basically to stop The Nothing (they call it The Void; same thing). The game takes FOREVER to start because it forces you to read the dialogue. If anybody knows how to by-pass the useless dialog, let me know.

Deep Insights - BJTB

thenothing — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 14:27:28 -0400

Wow! I just read this article on Mary Tyler Moore and thought to myself how did this guy get all this insight on the show? I never saw the show like that! What made me read an article on MTM? Well, I'm writing this post from Minneapolis. 'Nuf said.

Well, the act of reading about MTM and the fact that the Internet is the ultimate source of referencial topics, I was able to link to the following articles as well.

Article1

Article2

I need to revisit these episodes. TV Guide seems to regard them as an absolute must see! I'm sure I've seen them. I may have seen them as a kid which is probably why I did not get the meaning of MTM. The last time I watched MTM was in college: I was drunk and hobbled to my former roommate's dorm room around midnight. I woke him up and walked in the room only to take a chair and sit in from of the TV and watch MTM reruns for 6 hours.

Gawd those were the good ol' days!

TO ALL MY FANS!!! IMPORTANT!!! IMPORTANT!!

thenothing — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 16:08:45 -0400

Ok. Now that I got your attention, just wanted to let you know that I've disabled the "Send" button on the comments form. Some a**h*** is spamming my blog via the comments page. I need to put a graphic verification thingy on that page. Does anybody know how to do that?My blog is written in PHP. Thanks.

NYC - BJTB

thenothing — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 13:00:30 -0500

This past week I was in New York City on business. Mind you, I am not foreign to NYC (as the locals call it), but I keep getting a wake up call every single time I visit the place. New Yorkers or "Yorkies", as the locals call themselves...wait...actually I was referring to dogs. Never mind. Anyway, New Yorkers (as I was saying), are eight million plus people with their proprietary mode of behaviour (notice how I used the British version of "behavior"; it's just so cool). You WILL NOT find that kind of behaviour (hehe) anywhere else.

Before I talk about their (here it comes) behaviour (gosh that's so cool!), I want to say that Apple made a KILLING on with their iPods there. Like, every other person has one! It's no longer cool to have an iPod, though I did notice that those with iPods have some sort of click that's internalized. In other words, "clicks" are when people with common elitest values hang out together and "talk shop" amongst themselves and don't let anybody else hang out with them unless they have "the profile". Well, in NYC the "profile" is person with iPod. The strange thing is they don't interact with one another, but they are demanding attention nontheless. Hmm. To support my claim, I sat next to a young man with a crew cut and thick glasses (just thinking about it creeps me out) in the LIRR train (Ooops! My bad. I thought *everybody* knew that LIRR stands for Long Island RailRoad <smug expression>) from Baldwin to Penn Station.

This guy, henceforth known as The Geek, had iPod earbuds with is the trademark of the iPod click. The alleged music player was in his pocket, which is also a tradmark of the iPod click unless you happen to have an iPod Shuffle in which case you HAVE to mimic the TV commercial and "wear" it. Apparently, he needed to change the music he was listening to. When he took out the device from his pocket, it was nothing but a retro CD player! What a poser! In desperation, he tucked it back into his coat pocket, but I cought wind of it (actually, that's another story which I'll get to in a moment). He caught me looking and he knew that I knew his secret. It's no use: geeks are not destined to be cool.

Without words, we stared at each other. My stare told him "I know your secret, geek poser!" His stare said to me "Talk and you die!" Then, silently, as he leaves the train, like a scene from a B-rated mobster movie, he points to himself with one finger, points to his bottle bottom clad eyes with two fingers and then points to me with one finger. Obviously I didn't take it seriously, because it's hard to look dangerous when you're a geek.

In another incident, also in the LIRR, I was on my way back to Baldwin. I was sitting opposite a sneaky looking man on the phone. He was slouched in his seat with his feet propped on the seat next to me. It was a tight fit for both of us, but there were no other seats available for me. In comes this slightly obese man. Actually, (tee hee) he was more obeser than me. He claimed the seat in front of me (the one next to sneaky) by plopping his magazine on it. Obviously, one can tell that he will no fit there, especially when I'm sitting in front of the seat he claimed. But this is NYC. He proceeds to take off his coat. In the process, he takes out numerous object and foods from his pockets; all to make *his* journey more comfortable. Once that ritual was over, he then plops himself on the seat, thereby crushing sneaky and hitting me on the knees. Apparently, this is a common occurance since sneaky just kept on talking on the phone and merely scooted the extra inch that he had left. Fatty, on the other hand, just said "sorry" [for crushing move]. He didn't bother apologizing to me.

Fatty proceeded to eat his soft pretzel and drink his Coke product, all which reading and breathing heavily (we fat people excel on breathing heavily; it's what we do). I thought it wouldn't get worse. He farted. Yes, I said farted. Not "break wind", not "flatulatory indulgence", not "dropping a cookie", farted (for more synonyms go to http://www.heptune.com/fartword.html). I was SO glad I was congested. Farticus didn't even bat an eye on the situation. He just kept on eating, drinking and breathing heavily.

There is more to say about this trip, but I think I will stop here for the moment. I will be going back to NYC next week. I'll keep you posted.

Kidnapping water

thenothing — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 20:55:08 -0500

It was my turn to cook today. I took hot a package of spicy Italian sausages from the freezer and put them in the sink to thaw. I turned on the faucet only to see the water trickle out of existence. "Hmm..." I thought to myself, "...I *just* washed my hands two minutes ago and there was water. Unless...NO!!!!!!!" I ran to the living room window. I saw a man from the county shutting off my water.

I opened the door and saw the red notice. I picked it up and read that I owed, like, ten gazillion dollars! So I'm running behind the county guy (henceforth known as "CG") trying to flag him down. He sees me on his rear-view mirror and floors the little truck! What a bastard! I wasn't going to kill him. Maim, but not kill.

Thiry minutes later, I'm at the county water works office explaining the situation. Needless to say, the red notice amount was correct. The county extorted money from me because they had to come out to turn off my water! They, without hesitation, tacked on a deposit and a reconnect fee ON TOP OF my normal bill. Almost $200.00!

So I wrote the rubber check and, impressively, they were out to turn on my water within the hour. This ordeal made me go back to nail-biting plus I drank almost a whole bottle of 2002 White Merlot (de-lish). So I'm a bit sloshed as I write this. In fact, why else would I write this?