Journeys of Jack Tripper

All your Halloweeny chocolatey goodness available at:

http://tburke1.photosite.com

Enjoy, kiddos. The iPod costume is available for weddings, funerals, and county fairs.

Meanwhile, I'm chilling for the moment in between catching up on my readings for the past two weeks related to my Cultural Heritage class. The windows are open, I'm on the sofa, it's comfy, I fell asleep. There's worse things in the world than a Monday afternoon nap, yes. But I really ought to learn a bit of restraint.

My appearance in the Ed Hochuli uniform yesterday resulted in several instances of items being thrown my direction after calls that went against the Bucs. I found it pretty amusing, and pledged to wear fourteen t-shirts underneath a referee's jersey more often. It's a great costume, regardless of the fact nobody gets it.

Oh, and I met someone who seems pretty cool. Stay tuned.

Posted by Timothy at 03:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Seriously. First the entertainmentweakly.com server motherboard gets fried in an entirely properly-executed BIOS update, necessitating the purchase of a new one. This is after the third wireless card failed to work properly, and my realization that it was probably the motherboard more than the cards. Next, I wake up this morning and the Power Mac 5500 that I use as my bedroom TV is kaput. Well, that's not true. The monitor is kaput, the computer itself works fine. Of course, since the monitor and computer are all one unit, you can pretty much see where this leaves me.I'm really not in a position of having the money to go around and buy things, but it's pretty vital that I have EW up and running, since that's where I type my papers and such. It's also where I do the work on my record, which has obviously come to a complete standstill in all this.The lesson? Cheap products are cheap for a reason.Last night's party was the proverbial off-the-hook. I'll write more later. I'll post pics, too, but I'm going to have to use photosite since, well, EW is down.
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Posted by Timothy at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Off to karmaconniption's party. Have fun tonight kiddos!
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sickdogg and Jen have a wedding blog.

That's not what the hooray is for, though. Here's what the hooray is for:

Two major Internet backbone companies are feuding, potentially cutting off significant swaths of the Internet for some of each other's customers. After restoring connectivity to Cogent Communications (USF's ISP), Level 3 will maintain this connection only until 6:00 AM, November 9th.

Hooray, indeed, for a total breakdown in productivity on the part of yours truly commencing right around the time I'll need to be writing my final papers for class! It's stupendous!

Posted by Timothy at 04:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Congratulations to the Bitch Sox, AL Central Division and World Series champions.Pitchers and catchers report in:115 days, 13 hours and 30 minutes.
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I was driving home, listening to the Dandy Warhols' 2003 album Welcome to the Monkey House (prompted by track #2 happening to be the theme song to Veronica Mars and being reminded that I really liked that record once upon a time) and thinking how much I was looking forward to Christmas break. Yes, it'll cost me dearly, more than $200 in gas alone (with flights being even more, and leaving me in Ohio for two weeks without a car and with a lot of people to see) but I was thinking how excited I was to do what I've done for years now -- sit with berrydip on his sofa, drinking heavily and playing videogames for the week following New Year's.

Then I remembered berrydip has a job now.

If anyone out there wants to spend the week after New Year's dipping, drinking, playing video games, making quesadillas, and going out to party every night, give me a head's up. Screw that whole "growing up" thing.

Today is the nicest day mine eyes have ever seen. Sunny, cool, breezy. I'm wearing a sweater for the first time this year. Hooray!

Posted by Timothy at 04:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Them that's got are them that gets, and I ain't seen nothin' yet. - Ray Charles

No school tomorrow, due to... a lot of planned rain overnight. True masters of meteorology, them that's got. So I'm passing the time catching up on the television I missed tonight due to watching the baseball game and working on my album. But I'm inclined to fill you in on something I just picked up on -- courtesy repeated recommendations from Tony.

It's called Veronica Mars, and you ought to be watching it. Joss Whedon says it's "the best thing ever." And since I could never get into Buffy myself, I'm inclined to agree. Veronica Mars is, in essence, the anti-OC. Same set of characters, but written at a bit higher of a grade level. It's AAA to the OC's Top 40. It's like Dawson's Creek back in the days when Williamson was running the show (not surprising, since creator Rob Thomas cut his teeth writing episodes for the Creek's first season). Speaking of Thomas, he also wrote the episode of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast with Terry Jones (the one with the bizarre last-second Glen Phillips cameo) and worked for Channel One. His original background is, of course, journalism. He's like what I'd be if I had aspirations! He even wrote four teen novels!

...getting back to Mars. The soundtrack is kickass (I'm only four episodes into the first season, and I've already heard the Old 97's) and the dialogue trumps the occasional acting lapses. It's what Aaron Sorkin would write if his career sank to new lows due to mushroom overconsumption. It's for those of us who read the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown when we were kids. And did I mention Kristen Bell is the hottest thing since my car's A/C quit working?


yum. She's like a blonde kinky_carpet.

Now, you could tune in to UPN Wednesdays at nine to watch it, too, but since it's extremely serialized I'm going to recommend you seek out your local video store for the season one DVD set or your favorite bittorrent search engine for the complete first season in (gloriously HDTV-capped) divx format. Grab a few beers, pop some kernels, and enjoy a pleasure for which even the most lapsed Catholic won't feel guilt. I don't have school tomorrow, so I think I'll knock off a few more episodes tonight. After Grey's Anatomy finishes on the DVR, at least.

Speaking of, are major network hour dramas still 44 minutes long? This particular episode seems to have a few more commercials than I'm used to. And since Time Warner disables commercial skip on their DVRs, I get to manually scan through every single spot aimed at the 18-35 female audience.

All quiet on the northeastern front.

Posted by Timothy at 01:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Apparently, he moved to the South Side......and has been partaking heavily in the Lou Malnati's.
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If this guy [nsfw language] can get a video made, then I ought to be playing Carnegie Hall.(found through a different link posted by artistchick)
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Posted by Timothy at 08:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

nonsequitur prologue A woman from my ISP called me this morning to inform me they were doing some service and I'd have an outage for about a half hour or so. How cool is that? T-W had outages all the time, they sure as hell never called me.

Memorials purport to serve as testaments to what once was, but is no longer. However, absence often creates a greater meaning than the original (person/symbol) ever exhibited. This is the nature of representation. Prior to 9/11, the World Trade Center represented an architectural past of superiority (for a short time, soon surpassed by the Sears Tower) and financial dominance. Today, the absence of the twin towers stands for a great deal more (and on a broader level). The Lincoln Memorial represents not the life of a dead president but the ideal of liberty. And so on.

I ask here whether the absence of more common objects can similarly retain greater properties of meaning than the object itself held. For sake of this discussion, we'll talk about clothing.

I have, for many years, attributed a great deal of meaning to certain items of clothing. I'm sure many of us have a "lucky" item or a "favorite" shirt. I ascribe meaning to items with the nostalgic memory that grows events into grander, more idealized phenomena than their reality may suggest. The absence, then, of these items can testify to an event or series of events that culminated in the disappearance of them; in this the items acquire immortality.

When I was a kid, my most important items of clothing were baseball caps. I had three significantly favorite ones: a Baltimore Orioles painter's cap I picked up at Cleveland Stadium a week after my nine-year-old draft into the Little League Orioles; a pink Notre Dame cap I wore in junior high; and a white, pinstriped Cleveland Indians hat that was filthy to the point of my strapping it to a pot and washing it in the dishwasher on a weekly basis. I wore that one throughout high school, and in a curious manner; always on the back of my head, bill aiming up, with bangs falling down the sides. Yeah, it was pretty much about the most effeminate way to wear a baseball cap. Hell, I didn't know any better. I don't know the fate of any of the three; I believe two of them were lost at Cedar Point on the Corkscrew and one simply fell apart and was thrown out.

Later in my life, other items developed an awareness and knowledge that their absence attest to and amplify. An example of this is my "lucky boxers." I don't wear boxers anymore, and wonder how I ever dealt with the baggy, uncomfortable things before discovering the trunks I wear now. Yet this pair was a plaid Joe Boxer pair I received one Christmas, and were my best-fitting and favorite pair. At Progman's bachelor party, I parted with them. Our party ran into a bachelorette party on a scavenger hunt-esque project; the bride-to-be was in search of someone who would trade underwear. I was lit enough to engage in the trade, and spent the rest of the night commando with a pink g-string in my back pocket. There's even a photo of us post-trade (god, I was fat and ugly back then):



An item I'd had far longer than that pair of boxers are the "Forbidden Shorts." Either berrydip, sickdogg, or Joel Hammon coined the phrase. Forbidden Shorts were a navy pair of mesh shorts that were part of our high school tennis uniform. The title came from the dictum from my father, our coach, that they not be worn outside of officially sanctioned competition. Of course, they were a great pair of athletic shorts, with pockets and everything, and I've worn them ever since for most strenuous physical activity. Except I don't have them anymore; I parted with them (along with another pair of underwear) in the midst of an interaction with a good friend. I'm sure she'd return the Forbidden Shorts if I asked for them, but their absence stands as a testament to an event difficult to reify in my memory.

Of course, we all know about the red trunks, which have been replaced, but inadequately. The original pair were taken away long ago by Bush Voter, and I think that series of events has been written about far too extensively.

Which brings us to the green jacket.

My friend Lisa likes to refer to my green jacket as "elbow patches." Indeed, the corduroy jacket features lovely green suede elbow patches, as was the apparellistic parlance of the times: 1975. Thirty years ago, my father was a graduate student at Eastern Michigan University, and wore this jacket often when he taught. Years later, he handed it down to me, and I dutifully wore it every Friday of an OU football game for six years. My students have always come to expect me and my a-bit-too-big green jacket on Fridays in the fall.

But today I wasn't wearing my green jacket.

I'm pretty sure I don't have the green jacket anymore. I came to this realization yesterday, while looking for my ATM card. My green jacket usually hangs out in the back seat of my Jetta. I put it on when I get to work on Friday, and take it off when I get back to my car. It's too hot to wear anywhere else. Yet my green jacket was not in the back seat of my car; I realized that I had a faint memory, a silhouette, even, of a girl wearing it. Saturday night. The black heels still in my back seat have served to represent a unilateral barter, it appears, and while I'm relatively sure the jacket was absconded with sans malicious intent, considering how the individual who took it has my phone number, and yet has not called, it seems I might be sans jacket in perpetuity. Especially considering how she lives in Brooksville, a considerable distance from here.

And thus my jacket's absence comes to represent an evening of poor decisions and milquetoast debauchery. I hope the individual whom I believe keeps retention of my jacket contacts me, or I at least see her at the Hangout again. I'd like to get the jacket back. I'll even trade her a jacket, in the style of Maude Lebowski, one that wasn't given to me by my father and thus "[doesn't] have sentimental value for me."

So if you know a tall, attractive blonde in Brooksville named Sarah with an H, tell her I want my jacket back.

Posted by Timothy at 02:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What do you remember, if at all
Only pieces of the night?

I reached into the backseat of my car to retrieve the Museums and Communities book I needed to read for my Cultural Heritage class. My hand was rudely interrupted by a pair of black high heels.
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Upon the desk lie five credit card receipts; all from the L.A. Hangout, and all from this weekend.
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The joint was small; at first, I thought it was a bidi.
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"Cherith?"
"Yes, Cherith."
"That's a name? That's a word?"
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"One for the road?"
I call it safekeeping.
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As it turns out, she was married. 27 years, and I still don't know enough to look for a ring.
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Luis smirked as he slammed the door to his powder-blue Mustang. "What up, Bam-Bam?"
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Goodnight, goodnight
You're embarrassing me
You're embarrassing you

Posted by Timothy at 05:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So the Nazis came to Toledo for one of their crazyass marches. Specifically, they were there to protest gang violence in North Toledo.The march never happened, as the Nazis decided they wouldn't be safe. Meanwhile, a mob of hundreds of gang members (in colors) took advantage of the situation to riot, destroy police cars, fire engines, and ambulances, loot businesses, and burn down a bar/restaurant.So, uh, were the Nazis right?Watch the video and tell me what you think. I've never seen anything like this before, at least not in TOLEDO. Cripes, this happened right by Woodward High School, we've all driven past there a hundred times.
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Posted by Timothy at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Current Mood: drained

What's on: Drive By Truckers - Too Much Sex (Too Little Jesus)

Posted by Timothy at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

http://harrietmiers.blogspot.com/ is the best fake celebrity blog since http://www.tysonblog.com. Yes, better than Darthside.Back to writing.
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Posted by Timothy at 09:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Shootout at a motel on East Hillsborough this morning. Not just any shootout though...

TAMPA - A suspect and the woman he held hostage were both killed following a gun battle by police early Friday at a Tampa motel, police said.

First of all, let's rewrite that lede to fix the misplaced modifier.

TAMPA - A suspect and the woman he held hostage were both killed by police following a gun battle early Friday at a Tampa motel, police said.

Actually, they were probably killed in the gun battle, but we'll leave the lede alone for a while.

Officers arrived, peered inside the room and saw Brewer with the shotgun, a woman and a dog.

Gosh, I hope the dog survives.

Officers heard a shot inside, which turned out to be Brewer shooting the dog.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Multiple officers fired at Brewer, killing him and wounding the woman, McElroy said. She was taken to a hospital and died later Friday morning, police said. The dog survived but was in serious condition.

THANK GOD. Er, wait. They killed the woman?

The captive woman was caught in the cross fire, and later died at Tampa General Hospital. Police apparently did not intend to hit her.

APPARENTLY? You mean there's debate over whether or not they intended to shoot her?



That whole "shoot the hostage" thing? THAT WAS JUST A MOVIE. And they never advocated KILLING the hostage!

McElroy said the officers were forced to return fire to defend themselves, regardless of the hostage situation.

Last time I checked, bullets don't protect you from shotgun blasts very well. Taking cover behind things works WAY better.

She said the officers were "just sick" that an innocent person was also hurt.

Uh, no. "Just sick" is how you feel about Chad Pennington being out for the season. "Just sick" is how you feel when you accidentally eat the last piece of pizza when someone hasn't had a slice yet. "Just sick" is not how you feel when you SHOOT AND KILL THE HOSTAGE.

Current Mood: angry

Posted by Timothy at 02:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Day 3 of Cogent v. Level 3. I'm placing more and more of the blame on Cogent and those who use that cheap-ass ghetto ISP for their Internet access. That would put the blame, vicariously, on USF. I'm not sure what to do. I have fiber internet through RapidSys, a Verizon reseller. The local TW RoadRunner routes through Level3 too. Am I going to have to subscribe to AOL or some shiat just to be able to access USF? Mind you, if I can't get to USF, I can't do any research or write any papers, since I can't get into the USF gateway to access the library databases, etc. My email, which notoriously goes over quota on a daily basis as is, hasn't been checked since Tuesday. I'm really frustrated and upset about this, and a lot of that frustration comes from the fact I can't seem to find ANYONE on the Internet even talking about this. Even slashdot's thread from two days ago has dwindled. I am simply astonished that a huge section of the internet is separated from another section and no one's talking about it. Augh.
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Posted by Timothy at 08:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bush is on television right now, and while I don't know for what reason, he got nary a paragraph into his speech before bringing up September 11th. Has he not worn out the 9/11 welcome? Seriously?

I'm in a crabby mood this morning. Why? Because Level3 and Cogent are being crybabies. What this means for me is that I can't access any usf.edu servers -- which means my email is useless, but more importantly, I can't get on Blackboard to download my readings for class tonight. I'd consider using an open proxy, but I'm not about to send my auth info through an open proxy.

September the 11th. He just said it again. Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda. September the 11th. Nukular. September the 11th. This is getting absurd.

"They aim to create a vast Islamic empire stretching from Spain to Pakistan." Domino theory, anyone? IS IT TIME FOR ISLAMIC DETENTE? He just dropped a Weapons of Mass Destruction. Who takes this guy seriously?

Anyway, the main point of Level3's argument with Cogent is that Cogent is pushing wayyyyyy too much content and not paying for it. Cogent's not a real Tier 1 ISP, and they give bandwidth to customers away like candy. Mainly to porn sites. So my rants and railings against internet porn being the downfall of the internet as a whole are appearing to be more than the unlikely doomsday scenario you all said they were, eh? I can't access my readings for class tonight. I can't email my prof to tell him why I missed class yesterday (my Jeopardy! audition ran long. Oh, yeah, I had a Jeopardy! audition yesterday. It went well. I'm on the list. Maybe I'll write a story about it, but the long and short of it is I was the youngest, and by far the most attractive [by that i mean, not suffering from severe weight/skin issues], person amongst the 100 or so auditioning), I'm pretty much miserable and it's all because of internet porn.

Here's your artifact of the day, BTW. Dr. Alison Snyder-whatever makes a second appearance. Interestingly, I have held this photo since September 1993 and never noticed the caption-writer switched the names of the two girls in back.


"We were not in Iraq on September 11th, 2001. And Al Qaeda attacked us anyway. No act of ours incited the rage of the killers." Really? Is that why they attacked us, and not, say, CANADA? Or Holland?

This speech is scaring the shiat out of me. The rhetorical structure is very, very similar to some of Hitler's early speeches.

Here's some things you ought to be reading.
1. Van Morrison had to record an album to fulfill a contract obligation early in his career. Instead of using it as inspiration for a great song ("One Down") like Ben Folds, he recorded a bunch of nonsense backed by a guitar he didn't even bother to tune. It's quite hilarious. Check out the mp3s here.
2. Zombie takes a look at the anatomy of a photograph, showing how the San Francisco Chronicle's clever cropping changed the meaning of a captured event entirely. It's a good example of media bias.
3. Enough has been written about Harriet Miers that I won't go into it except to say that the one positive quality Bush has said about her is that she is "unwavering," a clear message to conservatives that she's not a Kennedy, Souter, or O'Connor. Yet she was a Catholic Democrat her entire life until only a few years ago. That's unwavering? David Bernstein is much more eloquent than me.

This post was supposed to be about having really unwelcome feelings for someone and how I'm too old to be having unrequited crushes, and how they always lead to inspiration but that my schedule doesn't allow me to write, and how I feel stifled and upset because I can't even get the one positive thing that can come from those emotions, but I never really got around to that, did I?

Current Mood: annoyed

Posted by Timothy at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nipsey Russell is dead.

I don't have time to explain the difficulty with which I'm dealing with this. I can't find my very intimately personally signed "photo" from Nipsey, who was, for all purposes, a bit of a mascot of mine. I'll post it tonight or something. I'm really busy.

I did find an artifact of another kind though, and hope to bring back the daily artifacts. Here it is.



The girl on the left would later become Miss Ohio. In the middle? Graduated from med school at Washington University, and is now married. So, uh, I kind of pale in comparison. Though I have a killer tan in that photo for some reason.

Current Mood: busy

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sickdogg and Jen, as they are officially engaged as of last night. So congratulations to two awesome people, who went from this: To this:To this:I feel like squeee-ing. But I'm not a high school girl. So I'll squeee on the inside.
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Posted by Timothy at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have a story coming. Yes, a story! Remember those? You know, the whole reason I started this LJ? Well, I'll have a new one coming up soon. It's about the baseball game last night. Maybe I'll even have a new song at some point! A weekend with both the Bobcats and Browns off might lead to some productivity.G-D Indians. G-D David Ortiz. Killing me. Absolutely killing me.In response to someone referring to a tailgate party we had four years ago this weekend (the famous "Iron Chef" tailgate) I posted some pictures from that weekend. Man, I had a crappy camera back then. I still do, but the one I had back then was pure trash. It used those Clik discs, which were, at the time, pretty massive storage devices.Click for the rest of the boring photos
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Posted by Timothy at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)