Thursday, June 14, 2007

What American accent do you have?

I have a Midland American accent, which isn't very surprising considering that I grew up in Indiana. I'm glad to find out that living in the South hasn't rubbed off on me too much and that I haven't developed a draaaawl.

Monday, June 11, 2007

everything's better in vinyl

So my friend Scott and I went to VooDoo Chile last night, a.k.a. "Jimmy's." If you are not familiar with VooDoo Chile, it's, well, amazing. It's this shop in Deep Ellum owned and run by Jimmy. Jimmy is this stick thin Japanese hippie who is always wearing skin tight bell bottoms and has long hair. He is super nice and always friendly and always serving wine. His shop is sort of a vintage shop but there is newer stuff too...everything from records and record players to VHS tapes to books to clothes to art to Halloween costumes. He told me last night that he's moving the shop to Lower Greenville in August, which is probably smart on his part because he will get a LOT more foot traffic, but stinks for me because he will no longer be right around the corner.

Last night I picked up some good vinyl:
Talking Heads More Songs About Buildings and Food produced by Brian Eno ($3)
Elvis Costello & The Attractions Armed Forces ($7)
Donovan's Greatest Hits ($1)
Jan & Dean Golden Hits Volume 2 ($3)
Ricky Nelson Ricky ($3)
The Beach Boys Surfin' Safari ($7)


Today is my Saturday so I am going to do laundry and swim! Hopefully also do some freelance work. Ok, now it's time for that swimming part....

Sunday, June 10, 2007

logo oh no



It seems there is some serious (and well-deserved) controversy over the recently approved logo for the 2012 Olympics in London. It has even made the front of a gossip mag with the headline "Olympics Logo Triggers Epilepsy" (this headline referenced the animated version of the logo). An online petition has even been started demanding its immediate withdrawal. It harks a bit of Keith Haring in my opinion, but not necessarily in a good way. I can't imagine how hideous it will be on all that merch they'll be selling...just picture it embroidered on hats and sweatshirts and printed on everything from pencils to pins to thermal mugs. Ouch...that's a headache.

self served

I loathe the self check-out line. And the place that irritates me the most as far as the self check-out line goes is Home Depot because 90% of the time they don't give you another option. Checking out at Home Depot would be about 5 times faster if someone did it for me in a regular old check out line. And I hate that the call it the "express lane." There is nothing express about some calm machine lady voice bitching at me that there is an "unknown item in bagging area" when she was the one who just told me to "place item in bagging area." Besides, it was a friggin shelf that wouldn't fit in the stupid bagging area to begin with. And the person watching over the self check-out just stares at you while you struggle instead of being helpful. I end up looking like a crazy person because I start talking back to the calm robot lady sayng "but you JUST TOLD me to place the item IN the bagging area - make up your mind!"

The same goes with those automated calling robot people who want me to tell them outloud what I need on the phone. Today I call Sprint to make an account change and I get "please say outloud what you would like to do today. You can say something like 'make payment' or 'billing question.'" So I say "upgrade my plan." And the machine says "did you say 'billing question? please say YES or NO." I say "NO." Robot lady says "our billing options have changed, please hold while I transfer you." CLICK. I call back and finally get it to understand "upgrade my plan" and she says "ok, I will transfer you to a representative." I hold for fifteen minutes. I can't take it anymore. I go clean my bathtub.

Hipster Bingo