Introducing the Hot New Social Network, PhoneBook « Borowitz Report

Introducing the Hot New Social Network, PhoneBook « Borowitz Report

We No Speak Americano ft. Cleary & Harding

We No Speak Americano ft. Cleary & Harding from vepaks on Vimeo.

The Wackness

See this movie.

My Favorite Things

I lost a favorite mug nearly eleven months ago but have managed to replace it with two others that will never replace its memory but will comfort me in my quest for not only a good cup of coffee but one that delivers. What, you ask? Satisfaction, my friend. Java should never be taken lightly - neither in its composition nor in it's delivery.

The new cups are:

1. A plain white one that features Snoopy on one side, lying on the red roof of his doghouse, which satisfies my need for whimsy at any hour, and
2. A tiny cup and saucer that I purchased from an antique shop in Poulsbo, which replaces the Starbucks shot glass I broke and satisfies my need to draw a shot of espresso in something that isn't labeled with a logo.

I'm behind on posting photos but I have several that I would like to get organized and posted.

Stay tuned.

Home Again

Travel day today. Goodbye, sunshine. Hello, rain.

(Wish our extra hour was in Southern California.)

No Pot For You

No more psychics or bail bonds paid for by the California welfare system. No more bingo halls, gun shops, bars, race tracks, smoking shops, tattoo parlors or cruise ships either. Where's the fun in that?

Pumpkin

Just finishing my first cup of coffee, lounging around in bed, wearing a yam and pumpkin enzyme peel on my face. Great way to start the day.

Yesterday's headlines in The Desert Sun included:

Suit Filed By Man Accused in Priest Attack

Police Search Plaza After Copper Theft Attempt

Was the white collared man violent? Did he hurl insults? It's dangerous to be Catholic anymore.... (You can find this article in several papers but I couldn't find the one linked to The Desert Sun.)

I actually had to read the second one to realize a police officer wasn't either the perpetrator or the victim.

The coffee fairy just showed up to refill my cup and I've moved on to a tomato lycopene masque. Feeling lazy, are we? I usually have several hundred words written by this time but I haven't even started yet. But my skin will radiate so that's something, right?

Nothing planned for the day. I'm thinking about hopping a local bus just to see where it takes me. Cheap entertainment, and the buses are air conditioned. Yesterday was The Living Desert which was fabulous and the day before was putt-putt golf. Meanwhile, we've been eating and drinking ourselves across all of the Palm Springs/Palm Desert area and counting ping pong as our exercise.

Death Is For Old People

Another thing I like about the print edition of The Desert Sun is the obituaries are printed in a larger font than the rest of the newsprint. I suppose that makes it easier to read for the bifocal set.

Anonymous

The print edition of The Desert Sun reports in the Community Calendar the following:

Debtors Anonymous meeting,

Mondays except on bank holidays.

5:30pm at U.S. Bank

Isn't that something something like a Tax Evaders Anonymous hosted by the IRS?

Officials barely address naked officer questions

Guess we better keep the noise down to a minimum or we could end up with a naked policeman in our pool.

Flotsam At Night

Palm Desert

Apps

I have this credit at the app store - woo hoo! So far, I have:

• Facebook
• Jared
• Angry Birds
• My Very First App
• iBooks
• Scrabble
• Sudoku

Some of these were free but the point is, I am very well entertained.

Hearty

I received a coupon for Hearty Sausage Crumbles which look pretty disgusting. They actually look better on the Jimmy Dean website than they do in the coupon. In the promo I received, the product looks disturbingly like dog food. In fact, I thought it was dog food until I read the copy.

I think they might want to consider a new campaign.

NaNoWriMo

I'm on a quest to write 50,000 words in 30 days. That's 1666 and two-thirds words per day, if you would like the math on that, although I don't know what qualifies as a two-thirds w .

But just to make things interesting and to add a little challenge (not to mention true Avoidance fashion), I've scheduled a vacation for the first week of November. Now, this could be a good thing, or a very distracting thing. We'll find out.

I will have a laptop with me, however I will have to share it. And, we are sharing accommodations with two other couples which makes sneaking off to one's Happy Place (Creative Corner, whatever) a little less subtle.

I did purchase a new spiral bound notebook - if I can only remember where I put it - so I have a backup for the laptop dilemma and which I can use to draft story ideas and characters poolside where I might have much inspiration to draw from.

I'll try to keep you posted on my progress at Once Upon A Time with weekly word totals, perhaps.

Or, I will go am completely insane.

To Do

As if you needed to ask, never - ever - post your To Do List anywhere. What was I thinking?

I've added another page entitled "What's Sayin'" and I'm pretty much bored with it already. I did see a spike in ratings using key words such as Brangelina and Jessica Simpson but is it really worth it? Isn't it a bit like selling out? It wouldn't be so bad if there was some actual selling going on here but there isn't so, again, what was the point again?

I did have another entry I was going to add about Britney Spears but I can just save myself the trouble by dropping her name right here. Done.

Added comments. Done.

Added a Story Ideas page. Done. See Once Upon A Time.

Don't Get Me Started

I have a habit of sticking it to banks whenever possible. It's not only legal, it's at their own suggestion. It's a bit of a pain in the ass, but when they offer me $100 to open an account - well, I take their offer. It's free money! I open the account, stand on my head, and wait. When I qualify for their offer and they pay me, I have a nice steak dinner and move on. I got my iPod Touch this way, thank you very much.

But they - the banks - have the last laugh, I guess. What's really frustrating is I know I'm not the only one. I can't imagine what it's like for the poor guy who gets jacked around every day. And it happens, I have no doubt.

I had a $3 ATM fee the last time I used my card. This was the first, only, and last time I've used this debit card to extract cash and it was issued by the same bank that issued my Touch. Which is to say we don't have a long and mutually satisfying relationship. Those fees piss me off but at least the machine gave me notice and the opportunity to back out if I didn't agree to highway robbery. (Usually, in such circumstances I withdraw about a year's worth of cash to minimize the fee's effect on a percentage basis and make future withdrawals from beneath my mattress instead.) What really hacked me off is when I got my monthly statement there was an additional $2 for using an ATM not belonging to the issuing bank. What? $5 to get my own money from a non-interest bearing account? You should be paying me!

The bank, when I called them, disagreed and told me to have a nice day.

Okay, so $5 isn't so bad. Especially if you want to throw the Touch into the mix. But how's this one? A credit card company just took a very large sum of money from me by mistake. This was one of those deals where they offered me credit for a year for 0% interest if I would please roll over the balance of another card. I've done this before so sure, I love free money. When the year was up I got two more similar offers for another year. One from a different credit card company and one from the very same credit card company.

So I call my credit card company and say, why don't you just extend your current offer and we can both have a very nice day. Nope. We don't value your existing business. Only the business we have not yet attained. Fine, I said, I will have a very nice day with this other credit card company and so paid off the entire balance by rolling it to Other Credit Card Company.

After I paid off the balance - and confirmed said balance was paid - I changed the monthly payment plan on this card to Pay In Full which is my usual arrangement. I received in writing that my payment plan had changed and that my balance was zero. So the next due day how much do you think they took from my checking account? Zero? Nope, they took the entire balance again. How much was it? Mucho dinero is how much it was! Times two!

So now I have this massive credit on my credit card and my checking account is drained. Completely. If that's not crazy enough, I checked the balance the day it happened and called the credit card company right away. I was told the electronic blips were all in place to make the transaction as of midnight that night. Great! Just reverse the blips and we're good, right? It hasn't happened, right?

I can't remember what they told me but no, it wasn't that easy. They would get a supervisor on it right away - yada yada - and it would take two or three business days - yada yada - but as a special thank you they will give me extra miles on all future purchases. Are you kidding me? How about just giving me back my freaking money?!

Today is three business days later and guess what? No money. Called them back and said WTF? So, sorry it's really two or three days from today this will happen. Not two or three days from when they stole my money. Get this! They couldn't return money they stole until the stolen money cleared the bank! Now that it has, they can give it back.

Have a nice day.

Click.

If It's Going To Happen It's Got To Happen Before Noon

But of course it never does. I don't get up until the sun does. (Why, exactly, should I?) But by the time I have my coffee and a shower, it's lunchtime and nothing's been accomplished.

I want to make a few changes to Chocolate Chip Mint:

• I'd like to post here more often. Does thinking about it count?
• I'm thinking of changing the Home tab to "What's Doin'" and adding a "What's Sayin'" page. (Or, "Cheap Talk" or "Who Cares?") The general idea of the new page is to see if I can spike my ratings from two to maybe four by mentioning Brangelina as often as possible.
• NaNoWriMo is around the corner so I'm thinking about story ideas and how to write 50,000 words in a month.
• I want to add a Comments area to my Photos page and any others I might add.
• Thinking about adding a Story Ideas page. I have two cooking right now and another I'm saving, maybe, for November. A story I started earlier entitled "Now & Then" (mostly because I like the title) has fizzled out for the time being. I've started another and am trying to write 1,000 words per day - which for the three days I've been writing, I've managed to do. This is what I usually do during nap time which is the current time here so that's what I'm supposed to be doing right now.

There's only an hour left of nap time and 1,000 words to write. Probably should get on that....

And I would, too, except my computer seems to be napping, too.... I think my nephew has hijacked my router so I can't even write! (Keeping my Work in Progress in Google Docs for the time being.) I guess it's pen and paper for me today which is cool. I like retro.

Because I Can

Blogging from Starbucks....

Pop

If one has to sew on the same button over and over, the issue may not be the button but the belly it tries to contain.

Finally

It took me all morning but I'm connected to the internet and am posting from my new iPod Touch which finally arrived yesterday. Getting acqUainted with this touch screen keyboard, as you can see. It'll take days before I figure out what this puppy can do. Meanwhile, looks like I'm late for work.