Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Net Neutrality For Dummies


Prepare to be enlightened!

DJ Ted Stevens Techno Remix:

Monday, July 24, 2006

How Do They Do It?
I'm amazed that some people can blog everyday. If I write something 3 paragraphs long, I need to lie down for the rest of the week.

This is SO much harder than I thought it would be...

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Quick Mom Update

She found the "Caps Lock Light" on her keyboard today!
(see post from Tuesday)
She just emailed me to tell me. I LOVE that woman!

okay, as you were...

Saturday, July 22, 2006

Have You Heard/Seen The Dresden Dolls?


The Dresden Dolls - Sing

...from a few years ago...

The Dresden Dolls- Coin-Operated Boy
Love them, love them, love them!

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Mom Is Online!
My mother, God love her, is finally getting into her computer.
She bought a laptop a few years ago and was overwhelmed. When family found out, they started emailing her loads of crap and telling her to check this out, and check that out.
She just wanted to look around at QVC and HSN online, and suddenly, it turned into "Be a Geek like Us, Mary Jo! Hurry up!" She wasn't having it.
Within weeks, she boxed up her little laptop and sent it back.
I understood. My family knows better than to forward me little jokes, dumbass cartoons, or anything that wasn't originated by them. Don't clog my inbox up with forwarded stories of cute puppies, starving children, or the second coming of Christ. I can find all that stuff on my own, you know. Afterall, that's why God created blogs.
I have personally threatened family about including me in any kind of chain-email.
So, she very quietly buys a new one recently. A desktop pc. She tells no one in the family but me, at first.
Cuz, you know, who can blame her?
I've begun getting phonecalls from her, and they are so precious, I could just shit.
"Jimmy, honey, you'll never guess what I did!
I found my bank's website and I set up an account with them,
so I can see all my banking transactions from right here!"
"Mom, that is great!"
"I can even pay my bills from this site.
It's amazing!"
"Yes, it is!"
"I'm having a little problem, though."
"What's that?"
"Well, when I have to type in my password,
sometimes I type it in all capitals,
and I can't tell when I'm doing that,
because the password doesn't show up
on my monitor, you know.
I just get little x's"
"yes..."
"Well, how am I supposed to know
if I'm typing all in capitals
when I can't see what I'm typing?"
"Well, Mother,
do you have the Caps Lock button on?"
"I guess I must,
so I just punch it a few times and try again."
(a few times? ...that's my Mom...)
"Look, on your keyboard,
do you have a number pad over on one side?
You know a little cluster of keys
with numbers on them?"
"Yes, yes"
"Well, above those keys,
do you see some lights?"
"No.
What are you talking about?
Don't get technical on me!"
"Your keyboard doesn't have a light
that lets you know the Caps Lock button is on?
Is there a light on the Caps Lock button itself?"
"I guess not.
(I can tell she has lost interest
and is no longer paying attention)
This isn't a very fancy computer, you know.
I bought this on QVC
for three hundred and ninety -nine dollars!
Anyway, I've figured out what to do."
"Well, how do you know when
you have turned the Caps Lock off?"
"I type something
in another field and check."
"Oh... well... okay.
There you go!"
She figured out her own problem, and was proud of it.
I'm proud of her.
QVC should be proud of her, too!

Saturday, July 15, 2006

A Quick Check at what is going on at Bateman365 today:
click it!
Ah, the power of Fatherhood.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

...Everything But The Kitchen Sink...



Total Eclipse of the Heart

How can you not love YouTube?!?

- this version is about a gazillion times better than the original piece of crap.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

The Straw That Broke The Camel's Back
Bruce and I had been drifting apart for months. The last time we had serious physical contact had been around Halloween. It was now Christmas and things were getting progressively worse: the distance, the Cold War, the obvious detachment. I just wasn't sure what the war was over. And he wasn't offering any clues, though I would persistently ask. I suggested that we go to couple's counseling together, to try to figure out what was going on. He promised that we would go after the first of the year. As a matter of fact, he made an appointment for January the 8th. I was hopeful that we were on a track to work together to solve our issues.We had many issues, to be sure. Too many to list here and now. Just, trust me, we had problems. I was deep into therapy on my own at this point, and delighted that he seemed willing to get a third-party perspective on Us.
If we could just make it to January 8th!

Christmas Day was quite lackluster. As opposed to past Christmases, there was no excitement, no thrill of gift-giving from him. In fact, he kept stalling about opening our gifts to each other. I could tell his heart just wasn't in it. It saddened and frustrated me, because I had really tried to find gifts that he would appreciate this year.
I've always been a "one big gift" kind of a giver. Bruce was just the opposite. He could take a hundred dollars and turn it into a dozen or so cool, thoughtful, and wonderful little surprises. I had always just tried to find the "pony", ya know?. Christmas was always me handing him one big box, getting the "O0h, how nice! Thank you." once and then me opening little package after little package the rest of the day, with much giggling, cooing, and delight from each gift received. My strategy never paid off, his always did.
So this year, I had tried to change my modus operandi, and I bought him lots of smaller things.
He changed his as well, as it turned out, and I got one gift: a blood sugar monitor ("Oh. How...nice. Thank you."- came from me this time). I already owned one. He knew that. What the hell? He opened little package after little package. But, there was no giggling, cooing, or delight. My change of strategy was obviously too little, too late.
The one gift I gave which seemed to please him was a Showershot. "A MUST for any homosexual's bathroom!", he was wont to say. We had his old one installed in the bath and it was in terrible, dilapidated shape. He had complained frequently about it. When he opened it, he smiled and said "I'm going to put this in right now!" Silly me, I thought that was code for impending Thank You Sex. He ran upstairs with a wrench and I bolted for the downstairs bathroom to brush my teeth, comb my hair, and groom for some long-awaited physical contact.
Like I said, silly me.
I sat in the livingroom after cleaning up, listening to him tinker with the appliance in the bath. A few grunts, some talking to himself, peppered with some choice curse words. I always loved it when he tried to be butch. It was cute. No, it was hilarious.

Bruce was a guy's guy until he opened his mouth, then he was a queen's queen. At first I loved him despite of that, but then I learned to love him because of it. For, you see, Bruce never apologized for who he was. He was Just Bruce. And I wanted to be as comfortable with myself as Just Jim.

After much ado, I heard him turn the shower on. I called out, asking how it was working. "Well, it's working...it's the best I can do" was his reply. He turned the shower off, came down the hall to the top of the stairs and called down to me.
"Thank you for Christmas, " he said, very formally. "I'm going to take a nap."
And, with that, the bedroom door closed and I was alone in the livingroom, wondering what it would take to get through his cold aloofness. He wanted nothing to do with me anymore.
I sat on the sofa and stared at my blood sugar monitor for quite a while.

The next morning when I woke up, he was already awake and, as usual, puttering around downstairs. I slogged my crusty frame to the bathroom and crawled into the shower. I stood in the tub for a minute, shower curtain pulled, brushing my teeth with the tub faucet running. I like to brush my teeth naked in the shower, because I can get pretty vigorous and not worry about slinging toothpaste everywhere. Then, mouth fully frothed, I bent over, scooped a handful or two of water to rinse my mouth out, and turned the water on for the shower.
Water gushed everywhere. His little plumbing job from the day before was, quite certainly, half-assed. I screamed downstairs to him while I frantically tried to tighten the connections to the Showershot with my fingers. Water was squirting me in the eye, up onto the ceiling, and the nozzle was dancing around below me blowing more water all about.
"Shit! This thing isn't connected right at all!" I bellowed.
I hadn't needed to scream. While brushing my teeth, it turns out that Bruce had entered the bathroom, sat down on the toilet right next to the tub, and was reading one of his gazillion interior decorating magazines. The leaks from the hose were apparently getting him wet as well, on the other side of the curtain.
"I told you that I did the best that I could do, you fucking idiot!" he shreiked back, pulling the shower curtain tighter across the span of the tub to protect himself.
Me, "The Idiot"?!? I wasn't the guy who couldn't figure out how to use a fucking wrench to tighten a nut on the thread of a pipe. I wasn't the guy who left this boobytrap to explode all over the room. I'm "The Idiot?" I wasn't the guy who bought his partner UNNEEDED MEDICAL TEST EQUIPMENT as a Christmas gift. I beg your fucking pardon?
I pulled the shower curtain back and aimed the Showershot at his snotty little face, sitting there reading his fagzine.
I soaked him.
I pulled the shower curtain closed and turned off the water.
Here we go.
I heard him jump up, sputtering, and race to the bathroom sink. I heard the bathroom sink faucet. I opened the shower curtain fully and stood there. He was red-faced, filling a large plastic cup full of cold water. I knew what was coming. He was shaking, he was so furious.
"Don't you EVER speak to me like that again" I said, calmly.
He turned to me and chucked the whole cup of cold water at my head. It hit me on the shoulder and bounced against the tile to my side. I shrugged. He had always thrown like a girl. A little more water on an already drenched floor.
"You won't ever have to worry about that anymore," he sneered. "I'm done!"
I knew it.
And, with that, he stormed out of the bathroom, out of my house, and out of my life.
I stood in the shower and sobbed for a while. I stood in the puddles of water and added my tears.
Turns out, he was right. I was "The Idiot". I was the guy who thought we could work this out. I was the guy who thought we were equals and respected each other. I was the guy that was tip-toeing on eggshells with this cold-blooded bitch. I was the only guy in the relationship that seemed to care that it was dying a slow, painful death. Well, the slow part was over, anyway. Our relationship was now DOA.
It took him the better part of 6 weeks to find a place to live and move out. I cried several more times during the process. He never showed a trace of emotion. His heart had been walled up and protected months and months previously, I just didn't know it.
Yep, I was "The Idiot". I was a naive fool. But is that wrong?
No way.

Saturday, July 08, 2006


"Cell Phones For Dummies"

My first-ever audio blog entry!




this is an audio post - click to play



Wednesday, July 05, 2006

"Derka derka muhammad jihad!"
Kim Jong Il did WHAT?!?
(for the record: he built some missiles, which will someday contain nuclear warheads and he launched one on July 4th, 2006. This coincided with the USA launching the space shuttle Columbia and the inauguration of South Korea's new President. The launch, he claims, was a "test" but I suspect if he hadn't buried the missile in a clay pot in his backyard first, it might have actually HIT something!)

Are you kidding me? Does he really think the world is going to put up with his crap? Could someone please explain to me how he has gotten THIS far into the process of building atomic weapons without getting squashed like the bug that he is?

Colin Powell said: "To have done it on the day of the inauguration of the new president is an exercise in drawing attention to themselves, and trying to create a sense of crisis when none is necessary.

"I regard it as entirely unnecessary and provocative."

How to win friends and influence people, huh?


And, since you're explaining things to me anyway, could you also explain how the guys that bring us "Southpark" (- a CARTOON, fer chrissakes!) can see far enough down the proverbial hall to know that this guy is a dangerous lunatic years before we all wake up and smell the missile contrails?

I'm not a warmonger. I don't think it's the United States of America's job to police the planet. But I'm sick of this shit. It's time to start rubbing out Retardedity when we see it. Time to kick some puppet ass.

Saturday, July 01, 2006

A Few Words About Paris Hilton
and the fact that she has a hit single...
* It's proof that ANYONE can make a record, if they have enough money.
*If you dole out even a penny of your money for this, you are a fucktard.
*She symbolizes what is wrong with America, and some of us idolize her spoiled little ass?!?
*Even if I weren't gay, she'd make me consider switching teams.

Come On! She's nasty, disgusting, talentless, and evil, and you KNOW it!

So WHAT if she can carry a tune, so WHAT if the song has a good beat, or whatever. She has millions and millions of dollars at her disposal to put together a team of music professionals to manufacture a piece of product.

Fucking vomit.

I'm not kidding about calling you a fucktard if you buy into this monstrosity.

Thank you, I'm done.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Thursday, June 22, 2006

A Little Lesson In How God Can Fuck With You
prologue
Spring, 1984
I was working as a bouncer in a little rock and roll bar on 6th Street. I was minding my own business. I wasn't looking for heartache and rejection. I stood at the front door and took cover charges and checked IDs , escorted the ocassional drunk out the door, and took the trash barrels, full of warm, half-empty beer bottles out the back door and emptied them into the dumpster at the end of the night. Some nights, I got lucky and took someone home. Often, I was slipped joints and lines of coke for letting friends get in without paying cover. I was in my mid-twenties. Life was good.
i
It was Easter Sunday night. Kinda quiet, not much going on. Sunday nights are easy on a bouncer. Most customers don't get shitfaced on Sunday night. I got paid the same.
As I stood at the door, looking out onto 6th Street, two men passed by. One looked at me as they passed and stopped in his tracks. He called to his partner, and looked back at me, smiling. The second guy came into the doorway and smiled broadly as well. They both stood there, grinning at me, for a full second. I'm a friendly guy. I smiled back.
They entered the club and the first introduced himself. He said his name was Kevin Reynolds. He said he was a movie director. He asked if I had ever been in a motion picture. No, I assured him, I had not. He introduced his partner, a skinny guy named Costner. Kevin Costner. Okay. Never heard of him. I shook his hand. Howdy.
They were in town, about to go into production on a movie. The director thought I might be right for a part in the movie, and would I like to read for the part? Well, sure. He gave me his business card, and wrote a phone number onto the back of it. The number was for the Ramada Inn where he was staying. He also wrote down the suite number he was staying in. He asked me to come by at 1pm the next afternoon. Yeah, sure. See you there.
They smiled big again, Costner kind of got close to me to see how tall I stood next to him, and they both disappeared down the street.
ii
The next day, I showed up, really curious if this was anything at all, or some kind of joke. When I knocked at the door of the suite, and was ushered in by a woman who introduced herself as the casting director. She looked me over, ooh'ed and ahh'ed a bit, and pulled out a Polaroid camera and began taking pictures of me. I didn't know what to do. I just smiled.
Then Kevin Reynolds appeared from behind another door. He shook my hand, asked me to sit down and began asking me questions. How long had I lived in Austin? How long had I been a bouncer? Had I ever gotten into a fight? Where was the best place in town for barbeque? I think he was just asking me things to get me to talk. To see what I sounded like. I talked. I'm friendly. I already told you that.
I was given a softbound folder with a white front cover and the word "Fandango" typed in the middle of the page. I was told this was a script and was asked to sit out by the pool in the back and give it a read. Sure. Cool.
I also notice under the title on the front cover was the typed line "Kevin Reynolds". This guy wasn't only the director, he was the writer.
That was when I first said to myself, "Holy shit! Is this really happening?"
As I walked to the pool area, the guy named Costner was walking in the front door, carrying a tuxedo wrapped in plastic covering. We shook hands again, told me to have a good read, and was gone. As I settled into a chair, poolside, I heard the whoops and yells of some kids on a balcony behind me. I turned to see two guys, just a few years younger than myself, yelling "Hey, Dorman!" and "Die Dorman!" and shooting little plastic pellets at me from goofy toy guns. I had no idea what they were talking about. I smiled, waved them off, and turned to do some reading. Shortly thereafter, one of the doofuses ran to a balcony of another room, and they yelled and hooted at each other to die as they turned their war upon themselves.
(I found out later that the two doofs were Judd Nelson and Sam Robards. Judd had just made "The Breakfast Club". I had heard of him. Sam is the son of Lauren Bacall and Jason Robards.)
iii
I found reading the script really interesting, technically and format-wise. The story, well, not so much. This was the story of a small group of friends who graduate from the University of Texas in the early 70s. The group is struggling to figure out what to do with their lives. One is one his way to Vietnam. Another wants to talk him out of that decision. The five of them decide to jump into a car and drive into West Texas on a little quest. From there on out, it's a road picture.
A badly written road picture.
I could tell right away what part I was up for. One of the five buddies is a big, burly, quiet goliath named "Dorman". I was delighted to see that Dorman was in many, many scenes in the movie. I was saddened to see that he rarely had anything to say. Mostly he read comic books. But, he was there, in the shot. I knew I could do this. I knew how to read comic books!
What really fascinated me was the actual format of the script. Paragraphs of description, chock full of details of everything from what is seen by the audience to basic blocking movements of the actors and camera angles and moves. And wedged in between all of this was the dialogue.
Each page had an approval stamp from the studio, and was initialed by someone. I noticed that the studio was called "Amblin".
I couldn't make out the initials.
Some chunks of the script did not have the studio stamp on them. In fact, there was a big dream sequence, when the buddies are all out in the West Texas wasteland, sleeping in the car. Each buddy has a dream. Dorman dreams of running through a forest surrounded by little people who take him into a cave. He finds a monster-sized lobster prepared for him to consume. The lobster is the size of a small whale. Dorman dreams that he dives into the lobster, slathered in melted butter and begins to eat.
Well, I thought, at least I'll actually get a chance to act. It was stupid, but I would make that scene MINE!
I read every word on every page. I was delighted to see that Dorman had the last line in the movie. Sweet! It was a lame line, but I didn't care. I wasn't an extra that gets killed off, or floats by in a scene or two. The character actually has a little story arc of his own. A very slight one, but I'll take it.
I marched back to the room with the casting director and director. I was Dorman. Now, I had to sell myself and convince them that I was as well.
iv
We talked alot more, me, the director, and the casting director. I read a passage of the script that was a poem Dorman had written to his friends. It was the second scene in the movie where I would get the chance to "act". Man, threw my back into it. I noticed, as I was auditioning, that this soliloquy was on a page without one of those initialed studio stamps. They took more Polaroids. Then we talked money.
There were offering me $1000/week guaranteed for 11 weeks, extending to possibly 15 weeks. Did I have a problem with that? I assured them that I did not. Could I take that much time off from my job to go trapsing around West Texas? I assured them that I could.
They said they were very excited to find me. They said they needed to get in touch with the studio and they would call me the next day. Would I be available Tuesday morning for a phonecall. I assured them that I would.
They thanked me for coming in and I left the Ramada Inn, floating just above the ground by an inch or two. I was going to be in a movie!
v
yeah, like I got ANY sleep that night...
vi
Tuesday morning came and went and the phone never rang.
I waited until nearly 2pm before calling the suite at the hotel. The casting director answered the phone. She was sorry she hadn't called back yet, but they had been very busy all morning. Late the night before, on a trip to a local convenience store, the director had met a security guard. He was slightly heavier than me, and more fit the physicality of the character.
They offered the role to him, and he accepted.
But, it was nice to meet me. Thank you and good luck.
I hung up the phone and reached for the bong.
I don't remember the rest of the day.
vii
The local paper had a big write-up about it the next day. Chuck Knox was his name, minding his own business, doing his job when Fate stepped up and changed his life. They had a picture of him with the article. He looked like he could have been my brother, he looked so much like me. But fatter.
Yeah, Fate. Motherfucker.
epilogue
Fall, 1985
I wasn't wrong when I said this was not a good script. The movie never had a theatrical release. Nope, straight-to-video.
This pleased me greatly.
Still, my friends and I collected when the videotape came out and we had a party. They listened patiently as I recounted, blow by blow, my experience in meeting everyone and what I went through.
Like they hadn't heard it a thousand times in the previous year.
But, we watched it together. My friends laughed and made fun of how stiff and amateurish poor old Chuck was as Dorman. I joined in, laughing at him. Truth is, he did a fine job. The script stunk.
The best part was finally seeing what I had read on the page now turned into pictures on the screen. It was fucking magical. And, by the way, those scenes not stamped with approval by the studio? Nowhere to be seen. No dream sequence where Dorman frollicks in the woods with the little people and dives headfirst into a monster lobster in a cave. None of the characters got a dream scene, except for Kevin Costner. His dream was about a girl he secretly loved. Of course, that had to be in there. The poem Dorman reads was also cut. If I had been in the movie, that would have chapped my ass. "Acting" scenes = zero for poor old Chuck.
My friends all hugged me as we watched, and told me how much better I would have been.
I loved them for that.
For years after, the movie would pop up on Bravo, the cable channel. I would flinch and wince.
I still happen by it once in a while. Jesus Christ, what must professional actors do when films they were up for yet didn't get are all around them? I really wonder what that must feel like.
Kevin Reynolds went on to make "Robin Hood:Prince of Thieves" and "Waterworld" with Kevin Costner.
His movies suck.
Amblin Entertainment is Steven Spielberg's studio. This was their first production.
I've always wondered if those were his initials on the approval stamp.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Happy Anniversary to Me!
June 13th, 1985 was my start date at my current place of employ, Time Warner Cable, here in Austin Texas. Yesterday was my 21st anniversary.
I've now worked here long enough to legally drink at work.
I love my job, I love the company I work for, and I love the people I work with.
I'm one of the lucky ones, I guess.

Saturday, June 10, 2006

May I recommend a wonderful site?
It's called Post Secret and it's a place where people can make little postcards out of their deepest secrets and mail them in. This guy compiles them and publishes them every Sunday, then compiles THOSE and makes them into books. If you just check it out twice, you'll be hooked. Some of the secrets are funny, some of the secrets are horribly sad. Some of the secrets are yours, as well.
Beyond the secrets, though, is the creative ways in which people make their little cards. This site stops me in my tracks every single time, and it's why I have it listed as a favorite, over in the "Links" section of this blog.
I'm trying to find the courage to send in a secret of my own.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Jon Stewart is my hero!
...and this is a fine example of why!

Thursday, June 01, 2006


Can We Agree On A Definition?
Okay, I was out on the road over the Memorial Day weekend. Bigass car trip. Was gonna be fun. I found myself, at one point, in need of replenishing some homo acoutrement. Now, when I need sex supplies (like condoms, or lube) I'm not the kind of guy to hit a pharmacy. I buy that kinda stuff at...well... sex shops. You know, places where you can rent porn, buy vibrators and stuff. I feel less "conspicuous" there. Besides, it's fun to windowshop all the toys. Have you seen the pricetag on a big dildo lately? Whooosh!
So, I'm on the road and in need of some stuff and I pass by a little shop just outside of a major metropolitan area (Ft. Worth, Texas!) that has a big sign that says "XXX" and "Open 24 Hours". I pull into the parking lot and wander into the store.
At first glance, the inside looked pretty much like any adult video store I've ever been in. Rows and rows of videotape boxcovers on shelf-like displays being mawed and fondled by middle-aged, beady-eyed men who seem intent on scrutinizing the pictures on the boxes and squinting at the fine print of any descriptive passage that might be there. Finding the right pornography is a very serious quest. Hunters hunting.
I ambled to the cashier's counter at the far end of the building. The woman behind it, was busy affixing pricetags to stacks of yet more of these boxcovers.
"May I help you?"
"Yes," I replied, "could you point in me in the direction of where you keep the lube?"
"What?" She looked shocked.
"I'm looking for lube. Where do you keep it?"
"Sir, this is a video rental store!"
I noticed that my fellow customers had stopped milling about and were listening, transfixed, to this conversation. It was then that I noticed that there certainly was no other product offered in this store. Missing were the vibrators, handcuffs, blowup party dolls, and nipple clips.
Just videotape. Period.
"Oh, ooookay" I said with a shrug. Suddenly everything I was experiencing seemed really odd. Off-kilter. When I turned on my heels, the eyes of the other shoppers quickly turned away from me. I wondered if I had managed to walk into the first porn store owned by a Southern Baptist church as I headed back to the front door. Approaching the door, I noticed something on the tapebox covers in the display next to the door. Each box had a little white sticker on it, all located in exactly the same place on each box. I stopped and picked up a box.
"Cable TV Edited Version"
is what the sticker said.
I looked down the rows of tapes. Every box had this sticker on it.
I couldn't help myself...
"Excuse me?" I called back to the counter attendant. "Every tape you rent and sell here is edited?"
"Yes, of course."
"Of course?"
"It's the county law!" She rolled her eyes at me like I was an imbecile.
Wait a minute! My mind was racing: this was a videostore that only sold and rented chopped-up soft porn? Tape after tape of nothing close to the color pink in sight? There wasn't a clitoris, erection, or clenched sphincter on any of these things? No buried tongues, close-ups of discharges, or gaping holes? This wasn't pornography, this was Cinemax After Dark. This was The Playboy Channel. This is shit unfit for masturbatory needs. You have GOT to be kidding!
"You have GOT to be kidding!" I blurted out, laughing and indignant at the same time. I looked over at one of the beady-eyed box gropers. He kind of shrugged as if to assure me that this was, in fact, the case. "But your sign says XXX!"
"County law," she repeated.
"You should change your sign, then" I said over my shoulder as I opened the door to leave,"before you are sued for false advertising!"