The Rants of Mister P

*Hic*

Those of you who know me realize that I'm not much of a drinker. I will take a Mountain Dew over a beer just about any day of the week. I do admit that on those few times a year when I do drink, I am a lightweight and get loopy pretty quickly. Anyway, as I mentioned earlier we have a New Guyat work and I'm convinced he thinks I'm a drunk.

I realized that during his first week, several casual conversations around the office brought up the time I threw up in the stall at the Christmas party. And how I tend to get drunk at our Vegas conventions and tell my bosses how I REALLY feel. And then the other day I was on the phone (right across hall from New Guy) telling a friend "we got wasted downtown last night and were screaming in the glass elevators at the Bonaventure like an amusement park ride."

So Blair, if you're reading this, I'm really not a haloholic. A calacholic. A lush.

Mystery Song, Part Deux

So we got a new guy at work. Which means a new blog. He, too, is looking for a song. Only this time he knows the name. And the artist. And he even already has a copy. But he's still looking for a cleaner .mp3. Anyone?

Stairway

I have an accountant do my taxes. (I don't want to hear about Turbo Tax. I'm no tycoon but my portfolio is complicated enough that I want a trained professional to go over everything.) This year, my combined state and federal refund will be $x,999. I thought it was such a shame to be so close to the $(x+1),000 mark. So when it came time to pay the accountant fee, I took $1 off.

I then attached a one dollar bill to the check "for her troubles".

Forgetting all about the political/ethical issues surrounding the Terri Schiavo case, can somebody explain what this protest means?



People wearing tape over their mouths saying "Life"? I don't understand it. Life silences people? Are they saying Terri has no voice? But then shouldn't the tape say "Courts" or something like that? It reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer protests the postal system and makes a mailman dummy with a bucket on its head:

George: "Why is the mailman wearing a bucket?"
Kramer: "Well, it symbolizes our persecution."
George: "Then... shouldn't you be wearing the bucket?"

UPDATE #2!

Thank you Matt P.!
Matt came up with the song- it's "Twilight Zone" by "2 Unlimited". This is the same group that does "Get Ready For This" which you hear at every sporting event ever played.

I still say Marky Mark could have done a good version.



UPDATE: I have a small sound clip of the song I am looking for (see next entry). It was recorded by my phone off the car radio, so it sounds terrible. But maybe you can at least pick up the beat:

Mystery song

I am looking for a song. It has the words "in the twilight zone" in it. This is NOT the Twilight Zone song by Manhattan Transfer. It came out in the late 80s, was very techo/club/dance-ish, sung by a white rapper guy, possibly Marky Mark.

Ring a bell?

Whippersnappers

This weekend I played a game of Trivial Pursuit: Pop Culture Edition. We split up into teams, and I was paired with Courtney, who declared "we're gonna do great! We got the cross-generation thing going on!" Excuse me? "What I mean is that we have both generations on our team so we have everything covered!" EXCUSE ME?!

We lost big time.

Oh, and Karri took a picture the night before.

Geeks on parade

I went to the "Sci-Fi Summit" in Pasadena this weekend, basically a huge
Star Trek/Science Fiction convention. It's a little depressing to be in a room with 400 dorks and realizing "these are my people", but what can you do?

They had a HUGE range of celebrities on board, from Mark Hammill to Bob May (the guy who played the Robot in Lost In Space.) I didn't really have anything to say to most of these people, but I did stop by one table and had a conversation that went a little something like this:

Me: Hi, I'm a fan of your blog.
Wil Wheaton*: Really? Thanks.
Me: I work at Disney, and my boss has all of us blogging.
WW: Mike Pusateri?
Me: Yeah, that's him.
WW: He's a great guy
Me: Yes he is. So anyway...
WW: He seems to really know his stuff.
Me: Yes, he sure does. Very smart. So...
WW: I mean, I don't really know him well, but whenever I hear from him he just seems like he's a wonderful person.
Me: Yes. Wonderful.
WW: He's such a handsome man too.

OK, so maybe I embellished a bit at the end. But Wil Wheaton is in fact a big fan of the Cruft Man, and I can't think of higher praise.

*Wil Wheaton played Ensign Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation

It's tough making jokes about terrorism without being offensive, but I thought comedian Daniel Tosh was kind of clever with this one:

"Airline travel has changed a lot since eleven-nine... (I'm European)."

I don't understand how Life works.

Last week I got 3 seperate checks from the county of Los Angeles - several hundred dollars each - as "Refund Due to Adjustment of Property Tax Assessment." I also received an "Adjusted Property Tax Bill", which was within 10 dollars of the total amount of the 3 refund checks. So it seems that last year I both underpaid and overpaid my taxes.

I just don't get it.

Ski Utah

I went skiing in Park City, Utah for the past week. California does have some nice mountains, but I'm sorry: in Utah, the sky is bluer, the trees are greener, and the snow is whiter. I have a short clip of me coming down a slope, and all I can say is that the video doesn't do the scenery justice. (It sounds like there is a lot of wind noise, but it was actually very calm.)

Utah Skiing (600kb, QuickTime)