Never smile at a crocodile

for many years, I have harboured a longing, hidden deep within the dark recesses of my being. For although I live a mere 40 minutes out of London (depending on the traffic/weather/almighty's mood) I have never attended the Notting Hill Carnival. Until today. Hooray, I hear you all shout !!
I now have a pink crocodile painted on my face, with teeth that nicely coincide with mine. Plenty of compliments/pitying looks have been enjoyed. My lovely friend Heather had her face painted as a butterfly, a rather more classic look, complete with glitter. A man with a megaphone in the tube station preferred hers to mine, but what can you do. Sadly our male friends declined to be painted. There is little doubt in my heart that had Mike been there, I would have been walking accompanied by spiderman. The rest of the carnival was really good too, beer, drum and bass in the middle of the street, nearly naked dancers, yada yada, but.. face painting!
Also, the other day I was contemplating the splendour of life whilst out walking the dog, and got dragged into a patch of stinging nettles whilst she ran through a hedge and chased a chicken. I can't help but feel someone up there was laughing at me. That story should have been set up sooo much better, but I am an engineer, apologies.

It's...it's....A THING!

As many, if not all, of my loyal following are aware, ThinkGeek is a wonderous place full of very, very shiny things. Very shiny. So what did I find when I opened the box bearing the mark of the very same company this afternoon? A BOOKWORM PLUSHIE FROM CHRISTINE!

Hell yeah. Bookworm rules. Not that I'd ever obsessively play that at all.

Oh emm gee

There comes a time in any man's life where he must attend training for the big V sales floor. It's not entirely unlike kindergarten, in that the bulk of your time is spent playing games designed to augment your self-worth and the self-worth of your classmates. Key differences include being paid buckets, and smoke breaks.

It occurs to me that I should try to talk about those interesting aspects of my life, the set of which includes all places I do not, generally, spend a mere 50% or so of my waking life. At any given non-Verizon time (abbv. !V), I can be found climbing, gaming, going to the gym, and/or abusing internet telephony to speak with my lovely other half over the pond for free or Damn Near It. Ironically, at present we are spending a great deal less (this cannot be overstated, I mean hundreds of dollars) to talk now that we are separated by continent than when she was within this country and merely far away.

I agonized over comma placement in that sentence for nearly 15 minutes. That may very well be a giant, snaggle-toothed, over-hyphenated, and bold-faced lie.

Relevantly, this morning we were asked to write a description of ourselves from a small quiver of nonsense ego-boosters (such as "professional"...HA), and then to translate that into a license plate which would be both creative and not so difficult the slow folks wouldn't be able to figure it out. I chose, and this is PURE, UNREFINED CREATIVITY: "Fun-Spirited One-Stop-Source." From this, I orginally crafted HYPHENS as an easy plate absolutely no one would fail to distinguish from my chosen intrinsics. After more thought, I went with ALL4ONE, as this may or may not share a name with an R&B band I once helped karaoke with a hilarious bunch of swishy fruits named Mike. I swear (HA) I am not making this up.

...

By the moooon and the stars in the skyyyyy
I'll beee there (I'LL BE THEERRREE)

whoo!

So...

after considerable coaxing from the delightful Seiler, [one of them, but you know which one I mean] I appear to be adding something to this spiffing blog. I'm not really sure yet about etiquette and such, but one only learns by trying. As I speak Mike is doing his best two upload a horrendous picture of the two of us, so as to scare of any unwanted bystanders. This is all I have to say right now, because I am sure you emphatically do not want to hear about how my day was spent stuffing envelopes with free gifts for an insurance company, nor how I spent the evening tying gold ribbon around pink napkins. Fare thee well, broccoli.

O Frabjous Day! Calloo...

etc. So I hear Jonbenet Ramsey's killer finally got nabbed! I was worried, you know, for a moment, that the killer would never be brought to justice. Then I saw something shiny, and honestly I forget the rest.

Welcome to my humble abode! Apologies for the not-so-deft second posting, but I've been quite busy. You see I have this job-thing, which has been beneficial solely for this really neat system they "in the know" like to call "Health Insurance," or "If I give you money and then crush my pelvis in a freak see-sawing accident, I won't have to pay for it." I am now employed with the big V, yes, that's Voldemort (colloquially: Verizon), and charged with the dubious honour of informing customers how it was exactly little Timmy managed to charge 6000 text messages to their account, when his service plan clearly ceased to cover the cost of such an absurd communications medium approximately 5900 text messages earlier. "Not Timmy," they might say, "he has great difficulties putting on pants in the morning, let alone utilizing such an impossibly complex piece of telecommunications equipment I still consult the manual for each time I want to make a call, get frustrated, give up and then write a letter." Not to worry, I remind them. Did you know your son is also being charged to receive messages? Ah yes, this must be it. Timmy is wholly absolved of all responsibility, as clearly his friends have sent him 6000 text messages. Would that all children had as much such discipline as little Timmy!

At which point -- and I swear I am not making this up -- the mother proceeded to wander aimlessly around the store proclaiming this dire truth (our children are text messaging victims) to such likely parental sources as mothers, fathers, and bill payment kiosks.

But I don't mean to brag. Honestly, though, I love my job, and am quite thankful that it generously provides enough "bread", as it were, to allow me to focus on my dream of moving to England this fall. Yes, that's still coming. When there's a date, you will know. Because it will have passed and I will be updating abroad.

Hell yeah.

Update your bookmarks! Sorry about the abrupt redirection, but xanga apparently doesn't support the whole "delay" thing. Fuckers.

Welcome to the NEW SITE. Zifty is a name I'm officially retiring. I've been using buttons for longer and honestly the name "zifty" was a bastardization of "nifty" I'd concocted once while heavily intoxicated, so you'll forgive me if I don't exactly consider it sacred.

I've chosen blogspot because it has an orange logo, and because anything google owns is probably something I should be worshipping, anyway. I mean, I'm just sayin'.

There's a strong chance I'm going to update this on a briskly regular basis, so keep your eyes peeled (ew?) and your fingers firmly nestled in the soft groove of the "F5" button.

That's "refresh" for anyone that thinks their mouse is the holy grail of navigational productivity tools, or happens to be clinically retarded.

:)