I had a friend request on MySpace tonight from a guy whose page background consisted of South Park, which is fine on its own but made me a bit skeptical when combined with large, red font and a friends page of chicks in bikinis.
However, I tend to treat MySpace people the same way I treat telemarketers: I want to either find genuinely interesting people or I want to make them hang up on me. Or, in the case of the Internet, make them never send me another message. It's just so much better when they make the choice. So I sent the guy a message, saying, "Give me a reason why I should friend you." He replied, "im just trying to do something nice for you by sending you a friend request."
That response wasn't exactly promising, and then I got distracted on other more interesting things. An hour and eight minutes later, he was back with this: "never mind the request im tired of waiting for you to make a decision it is your loss not mine dont bother to try to contact me you have been blocked from trying to do so."
It looks like he really did block me (one down, millions to go!) but just to make sure I had the last word, I replied, "Thanks for giving me blog fodder." Sometimes I just love the world.
There's no end in sight to the heat wave that is roasting Californians to death -- literally. Somehow, I've managed to stay alive despite having no central air and living upstairs on the side of the building that gets afternoon sun. My window air-conditioning unit only does so much, and only in one room at most.
I'll come back to me in a moment, but I must highlight one insane line in a weather-related story. Power shortage is one of the main worries, and that extends to St. Louis, where 200,000 homes still have no power after days. From the article (toward the bottom) comes this line: "The power company has been running TV commercials asking people to be patient." Um, if people have no power, how are they going to see the TV commercial? I think the company should fire its public relations people and find ones who will consider things like giving out food to the people who lost everything in their refrigerators.
To those of you who say the heat is no big deal, let me give you an idea of how hot it has gotten in my apartment. I take a cool shower that borders on cold. I open the shampoo bottle and dispense hot shampoo into my hand. When I get out, the floor is hot to the touch. My towel is hot. By the time I escape to the carpet in the living room, the shower has proven pointless.
P.S. - I recant the statement in my previous entry about July typically being this hot. Five days later, Mother Nature has whole-heartedly made a blazing (in more ways than one) liar out of me.
As most Americans know, it's been really, really, really hot lately. Of course, this is July so we shouldn't be especially surprised -- unless you're my slightly off-balance neighbor who insists that July has never, ever, ever been this hot.
This is when reporters cringe because they're probably going to be assigned the dreaded weather story. I had one editor who loved those things so much that I could actually recognize his "I have an idea for a weather story!" look. And then I could run, mumbling something about breaking news on the police scanner.
As it turns out, that editor was not the only one. Such things happen to Philadelphia reporters, too.
Every once in a while, a not-so-normal obituary makes news and reminds me that I really should sit down and at least write out a few basic requirements. The latest interesting obit appeared a couple days ago in a Virginia newspaper, in the form of Frederic Arthur Clark's self-penned obituary. Among other things, he "loved to hear and tell jokes, especially short ones due to his limited attention span," and "was deprived of his final wish which was to be run over by a beer truck on the way to the liquor store to buy booze for a double date to include his wife, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter to crash an ACLU cocktail party." And his ashes will be shot from a cannon.
The obituary is legitimate, and became the subject of an article in today's Richmond Times-Dispatch. Family members had received a lot of feedback, and they seemed to appreciate it. (After all, they filled in a few details of the obit and then submitted it to the paper.)
That's how I'd like to be remembered. I don't want to be the cause of any more sadness than necessary, and I'd much rather have people remember me with a grin. I've heard that even at age 2, I was trying to cheer people up, so why should that change? So maybe I should get around to that will and obituary. It seems like I'd thoroughly enjoy writing them, and there are a few things I should make clear in writing.
For instance, there will be no separate services for different sides of my family; everyone must be invited, and if they don't show up because they're afraid of seeing someone, that's too bad. Any part of my body that can be saved is to go to transplant patients. No expensive caskets and flowers are to be purchased -- unless an insurance company is paying for them, in which case I don't care. If any lawsuits are filed as a result of my death, all money must go to charity, specifically to legitimate pregnancy resource centers and adoption organizations. Because of this, the lawyers handling the case should be willing to take a lower-than-average cut of the money. If not, take the story to the media.
See? I'm having fun, and that's just the beginning. I'm sure any family members reading this are now worrying about what's next. But that's OK, because many of my family members were born worriers.
Rob Thomas is incredibly cool. The Ironstone Vineyards ampitheater is also quite cool. Put the two together, throw in a beautiful night under the stars with no city smog, then add good company. The result is a very good concert.
So I wrote about a MySpace-related arrest for work (teen posts picture of girl on his MySpace page, her boyfriend's friends threaten and then try to beat him up) again. I had fun finding the suspects' sites and quoting from them, and I've since watched as the kids' friends read the article and react. A lot of the response is hidden on private MySpace pages, but some of it has spilled over onto my article, because we allow people to post comments at the bottom of stories online. So far, the funniest comment is from "Lodi teen," who writes: "All you old people and parents need to stay off myspace! It's for us teens to use! Not you!" I wonder if I, whose MySpace page keeps mysteriously growing, would be considered among the "old people."
Articles about MySpace are nothing new, and I even wrote about it a while back when a teenager met up with a firefighter online and they were found in his truck at 3 in the morning. (And, boy, that ever make for talk in this town, because both the teen and the firefighter were male.) What infuriates me is when people blame MySpace for such things. I was talking to some cops today, about how once upon a time when the telephone was first invented, people probably said it was evil because it could be used to make threats. We had a good laugh when one officer said they probably once said smoke signals were bad, too.
In other words, it's not the mode nor means that should be blamed, but the users. Fortunately, a lot of the people commenting on my story seem to realize that. Not too long ago, the reaction was much different, so maybe that means more people are realizing that the Internet is not just full of evil.
In other news, tonight's episode of Rockstar Supernova is about to start.
You know, I was really enjoying TV-free existence for a while there. May sweeps ended, the season finales were over and my TV was off most of the time. But then Rockstar Supernova started tonight.
I wasn't even going to be home when the show premiered tonight, but then plans changed and I was home, after all. And what kind of person can avoid a show in which a bunch of potential rockers audition to become part of a band including Tommy Lee (of Motley Crue), Gilby Clarke (of Guns N Roses) and, last but certainly not least, Jason Newsted (of Metallica fame)? Not this kind of person, that's for sure. It doesn't hurt that they've already narrowed it down to 15 contestants who actually know music. Sure, American Idol is fun for the horrendously bad performances and the smack-downs by Simon Cowell, but hours of fairly decent rock each week, including some musical legends and the irresistable Dave Navarro? I don't see how I can say no.
And thus begins my descent into doom. The show is on again tomorrow night, and I'm already thinking, "Hmm, yep, nothing is preventing me from watching it."
Impatient MySpacer
I had a friend request on MySpace tonight from a guy whose page background consisted of South Park, which is fine on its own but made me a bit skeptical when combined with large, red font and a friends page of chicks in bikinis.However, I tend to treat MySpace people the same way I treat telemarketers: I want to either find genuinely interesting people or I want to make them hang up on me. Or, in the case of the Internet, make them never send me another message. It's just so much better when they make the choice. So I sent the guy a message, saying, "Give me a reason why I should friend you." He replied, "im just trying to do something nice for you by sending you a friend request."
That response wasn't exactly promising, and then I got distracted on other more interesting things. An hour and eight minutes later, he was back with this: "never mind the request im tired of waiting for you to make a decision it is your loss not mine dont bother to try to contact me you have been blocked from trying to do so."
It looks like he really did block me (one down, millions to go!) but just to make sure I had the last word, I replied, "Thanks for giving me blog fodder." Sometimes I just love the world.
Posted by Layla at 11:41 PM, July 27, 2006.