Month: April 2007

inside scoop: the final sopranos episode

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

you may not know of my cassandra-like abilities.

you may not be aware of my similarity to nostradamus.

i try to be modest about my ability to see the future through my dreams. i reveal this ability only when i know that i can do good by its revelation.

so, having dreamed of the ending to the sopranos last night, i’ve decided to let you in on the secret, so you can sleep nights yourself, and stop wondering.

and of course, this comes with a definite:

«spoiler alert»

and a definite:

«sick & twisted mind alert»

first up is tony. he’s on his way to surprise carmela for her birthday–she’s at the strip joint she works at now.

didn’t you know that? i guess she gets the job in the last episode.

anyway, tony looks at the marquee for the strip joint. damn! uma thurman is appearing tonight!

he’s pissed. parking is going to be a nightmare.

so he drives, and drives, and finally finds a parking space. he quickly locks his suv and dashes across the street toward the strip joint.

but no! he doesn’t make it! he’s hit by a car! he flies through the air and off the road.

but it’s not an accident. the car is driven by a horde of gypsies, and they quickly carry his body to a waiting tent, where they cut out tony’s vital organs to sell on the black market.

carmela is a different story. turns out she never made it to work at the strip club that day. she was at home, recovering from her brain surgery. to operate, they had to take off the entire top of her skull, from right above the ears. and afterwards they stitched it back on, but rather crudely.

she’s still a bit dizzy, evidently, because she stumbles and hits her head on the coffee table.

and the top of her head flies off.

she stands up, momentarily confused by what’s happened, and tries to feel the top of her head. of course, her fingers plunge into her grey matter.

not good. she immediately starts hallucinating. she sees all the people who have died on the sopranos before her. big pussy. adrianna. ralph. all of them, around a dining table.

she sits down at the table. and falls backwards, and dies.

then a dog comes up, and starts chowing down on her brain. and a few more, and pretty soon there’s a whole gaggle of dogs, munching away.

fade to black.

remember.

you heard it here first.

unsolicited aerogrow recommendation

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

rarely am i impressed enough with a company and a product to give a shout-out. i’m pretty anti-commercial, in spite of my employment in the marketing department of a fortune 500 media mega-conglomerate.

so it goes, as our lost friend kurt vonnegut would say.

but i am so impressed with the aerogrow that i’m going to tell you all about it.

i ordered one of these contraptions for kirk after seeing it described in the pages of a magazine. it’s a one-piece grow light and hydroponic feeder for plants. you fill it (and refill it) with water, add the provided nutrients, and in a few weeks’ time you have herbs or tomatoes or strawberries or whatever you chose to grow. it is absolutely foolproof–built-in indicator lights tell you when to add water and all, and the lights cycle on and off to provide just the right amount of light and whatnot.

kirk had tried to cobble together a grow system in our dark apartment kitchen with little success. this thing works perfectly, though. we started with the herb schmear, though on the second go-around we’ve decided to grow just basil because that’s what we use the most.

and the aerogrow company’s customer service is outstanding. we had a dill failure the first time around, and they sent us a replacement at no charge. and our second round of herbs (the basil exclusive) came with explanations of just what to do to replace the old stuff and get a successful second wave.

the company really has thought out every thing you could possibly want to know or do, and has you covered. and they’ve thought out every way you could screw it up, and engineered the product, packaging, and instructions to avoid the problems. it’s the best-designed system imaginable. when we move to riverdale, we will probably buy a second one, so we can grow tomatoes along with our basil.

kudos to you, aerogrow.

we have a contract

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

the seller of the coop we are trying to buy returned the signed contract. we have a verbal commitment to a mortgage with the letter forthcoming.

next stop, the coop board.

fingers crossed.

if this all works out as planned, we could be in our own apartment [that we actually own] by early fall.

notes regarding the site

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

first, and most obvious, is the site design. i’m a great fan of scott wallick‘s design philosophy and his wordpress themes that arise from it. i used a modified version of barthelme since i moved the site to wordpress from greymatter, but i thought it was time for a change.

enter plaintxtblog, another scott wallick theme, which is what you are seeing now. i like the three-column design, which allows you to see more sidebar items more quickly. and with minor modification here and there, the theme is working quite nicely for me.

i’ve even left the all-capital letters in the post headings, though i’ve taken care of capital letters everywhere else via the theme’s css. you know, the lack of capital letters is a queerspace tradition since my site went live in 1998, and i can’t change now. but i can make a small concession to modernity via the headings.

scott, paypal coming at ya, as soon as kirk explains how to do it. he has a paypal account. i don’t. i’m like a technological idiot savant in so many ways. i can tear apart website coding like nobody’s business. but the concept of paypal confounds me.

secondly, my host, invision power services, has had some uncharacteristic server problems that they promise will be ironed out today. if you’ve been having trouble accessing the site, the problem should be gone shortly.

finally, i’m all a-twitter now. you can see my latest doings in the sidebar to the left, under “what i’m doing”.

god help me for following trends.

the office basketball pool, part deux

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

third place this year–$70 cash, baby.

for the second time in three years, i’m in the money.

i would have been in the money last year, but even though i suspected florida would do well, i didn’t have the guts to pick them to go all the way, and i should have.

i didn’t make that mistake this year. i nailed the final four, the two teams that went to the final, and the winner. i messed up a bit in the early rounds and lost crucial points that kept me from winning, but i’m happy with third.

let me make this clear.

i know absolutely nothing about basketball. i hate the game, and i never watch it, and i don’t follow the results, and i couldn’t name five nba players if you had a gun to my head.

i do, however, have a system. it’s really complicated, but i’ll try to explain it.

download the odds.

fill in your bracket according to the odds.

pick the underdog to win the final game.

i pick the underdog to win the final game because so many people in contention at the end will have picked the favorite, and that can make the difference between winning it all if you get down to the wire.

this year i picked florida, even though they were the favorite. i lived in gainesville for several years, and i couldn’t dispassionately abandon them again this year.

i’m glad i didn’t.