Well, last night I had a series of weird dreams. That usually happens when I eat bologna an hour before bed, but this time I don't think I did. First part of the dream I dreamt that me and my friends were playing with Legos on my living room floor. Then my dog had to go to the pet store so we got in Peetey's car. Then we drove down a bad part of town and no one noticed the crack house and the gang that was living there (they all looked like Humpty the rapper). I told my friends to drive really fast past it, but they slowed down and the gang was upon us. I think we were able to escape by going down some other alleys, but somehow I was able to give them a fake address so they wouldn't find my home. Then when we got back to my place our girlfriends wanted to drive the car but I was adamant about them not taking it and they drove off quickly without me stopping them. Many things about this dream strike me as weird. First, I don't have Legos, a dog or a girlfriend. Second, I didn't dream anything about the pet store, which was the major goal of the dream. I think I will analyze it. The Legos on the floor represent Christmas because I used to get Legos at Christmas. The dog represents my inner animal wanting to get stuff. The bad part of town and the gang represents rap music - which I no longer like. The alley maze and the fake address represent programming and how logically I can get out of anything. The girlfriend wanting to drive the car represents my love of cheese and how I recently got a grill from the cheese sandwich competition. As usual I move in my sleep and when I woke up my hand had fallen asleep because I was using it as a pillow. I think this dream really represents the fact that my body wanted to wake up and slap me.

Thought of the Day

"I've been eating a lot of cheese lately. I don't know why. You think that's like an allergy? I don't know what it is. I can't get enough of it. I'm like a big mouse."

-- Uncle Buck

Well, this Thanksgiving went well. Went up to OKC to visit the family and saw my sister and her new kid. I might post some pictures if I have time. I saw the movie "National Treasure" with my Aunt. On the all I'd say it was pretty good. I liked the plot and the direction was a lot like CSI if you ever watch that show. However, there were many levels of suspension of disbelief. I think the main character must've been a genius, no one can figure out that many clues in such a little amount of time. It takes over 200 years to figure out the first clue and then 24 hours to figure out all of the others. I was glad they didn't go into too much with the main characters relationship because they really didn't have that much chemistry. Also, the main character's father could've been the same age as the main character. They tried to make him look old by dying his hair white, but his skin complexion was that of a 30 year old (probably Botox or some other such thing). So if you go into the movie and throw out your brain then you'll enjoy it. Luckily I was prepared for it and it was pretty good. On Sunday I took my tree out the garage and played the classic "Christmas Vacation". I am now gearing up for this season they call "Christmas". Which, according to Charlie Brown, has been too commercialized, and that was 50 years ago.

Thought of the Day

"Clark, go in the living room and get my stogeys"

-- Christmas Vacation

Since I will be off for the next couple of days for Thanksgiving I will make this my official Thanksgiving post. As a kid, I remember singing the ole tune "Thanksgiving is coming, the goose is getting fat, time to put a penny in the old man's hat, if you haven't got a penny a half penny will do if you haven't got a half penny then God bless you." However, I never understood what I was saying. Whenever I said half penny I thought of those pennies that were cut in half by the railroad tracks and I also thought the word goose was synonymous with turkey. Now that I think about it I didn't understand half of the things I said as kid. I had just heard others use it so I tried to use it the same way. Like the old Halloween song - "Skin and Bones". I don't think that as a 6 year old I could conceive of what bones really were. For instance I knew that Long Johns was something you wore but I had no idea what they were. I thought they were pajamas that were too long. Larger words didn't make sense either. I suppose it was ironic that I didn't know what the word "stupidity" meant. I knew stupid, but stupidity escaped me. I do remember grandma telling me it was a bad word and I wasn't to use it. Then when you hit high school and finally get all of those words down you have to learn a cornucopia of SAT words just to get into college and then you feel stupid again. Like ameliorate, insipid, exacerbate and mitigate. Words that I never use nowadays. Then when you are in college you are told to keep your writing on a 6^th grade level, and that's when you are like "Aha high school was just an exercise in futility". So what does all this have to do with Thanksgiving? Well, if it wasn't for Thanksgiving and the pilgrims landing on Plymouth rock then we wouldn't have turkey at thanksgiving, we'd have goose. Wait, I just researched it. They had geese and turkey, it was 1621, and my namesake John Alden, age 22 was there. For more info on Thanksgiving go to here . So what does all this have to do with Thanksgiving? I guess I am thankful I don't have to speak like a college professor. In reality I'm thankful for sooo much more, but it's fun to be thankful for insipid things as well.

Thought of the Day

Ralphie: "It was gone, all gone. no turkey legs, turkey ala king, no turkey sauce, turkey leftover, turkey sandwiches. Gone all gone."

-- A Christmas Story (paraphrased)

Today I am going to talk about this weekend. Before I get in the evening I must talk about the "Great Hair Tragedy of 2004". I'm thinking about making t-shirts that say "I survived the Great Hair Tragedy of 2004". That comment just took me back a t-shirt I had in Alaska - "I survived the great blizzard of 1981." Anyway, this Saturday afternoon my goal was to get a haircut. I went to my usual place in the mall and they were all booked, so I went into another place nearby. I had this women who I guess could not understand english. I told her that about twice a year I get it colored dark brown. So she brought out some samples of the browns. I suppose it is my fault that I didn't ask the name of it and I just picked one. I also told her I like to use the cutters on "3" around the sides and leave it messy on top. I guess in her language that means, use the cutters on "3" on the whole head. Needless to say, my hair is now fuzzy and "cherry" brown, or as commonly referred to as "red". I really was in shock and wasn't sure what to think, when all the other hair stylists were like, "wow, that looks good". So naturally I didn't get mad and paid while I was thinking "what just happened". I notice now when people shake my hand, their eyes naturally gravitate towards the top of my head. I can hear in their minds "Is that red?"  Before this on Friday I jammed with band mates at my house and didn't get to bed till 4 in the morning. On Saturday night I started off the evening at a Sunday School Thankgiving dinner. I had a turkey leg and rolls. When I walk in the door, people are like, "What happened?" I really didn't want to say the whole story so I always said "someone else did this to me". Anyway, I still talked to some girls anyway. Apparently girls don't think it is that bad, or they are feeling sorry for me. Then I left to go to a club in deep ellum where my friend rented out a club and had a big party. I even got up on stage and did some acoustical numbers with our other guitar player Tito, The people at deep ellum were like "cool hair." Apparently now I look like I'm in a band. I had some girls hanging off me and even got a number. I didn't get home until 5 in the morning. Then I got up at 10 and went to Sunday School. It was also special feed the homeless day and we had a group of 5^th graders out there feeding them turkey and stuffing, I acted as a "runner/bouncer" just in case anything got out of hand. Nothing did, but it was fun being the supposed "tough guy". Ha, I couldn't hurt a flea, well maybe a flea.   By Sunday night I was exhausted and red in the head. Now I am at work and the guys are like "what happened?" and the girls are like "cool hair". Hmm, maybe I'll keep it this way...

Thought of the Day

Jan Brady wearing an afro: " Hey everybody! It's the new Jan! Wow, I'm really making a splash."

-- Brady Bunch Movie

Have you ever been lost? I have many many many times. Especially here in Dallas. I am finally comfortable with finding where I am in half of the city. It has taken 6 years, and yet I still get lost sometimes. Last night my friends and I tried to find a place in UTD where our ex-drummers band was playing. After dropping in on an Aggie Moms convention we actually had to do the unthinkable and that was to ask for directions. I remember when I first came to Dallas six years ago I was afraid of driving on the highways, so naturally I would map out side roads to get where I wanted to go. So invariably I was always late for stuff. Sometimes the sideroads were wrong and I got lost. That was when I became ever so thankful for the little compass on my car. If I was south of where I lived I would get to roads that would go north so I knew I was at least going in the right direction. My thinking was that eventually I would hit a major highway. Problem was, back then I didn't know where to go on the major highways. I ended up doing a circle around my apartment till I found something I recognized. Nowadays, I get lost when someone gives me house directions. Some of those housing complexes have roads that curve way away from where you need to be. It all takes me back to when I got lost in 6^th grade on Halloween... We had first moved into the house and I went on a bike ride. I rode around the neighborhood and decided to venture out of it, driving in other neighborhoods that had winding roads. I ended up at the carmike movie theater miles away from where I started. It took me 3 hours of getting lost on a bike. I tried to use the sun as a compass - never do that.  Finally in tears I called mom collect to come pick me up. "Where are you? ","At the movie theater" "You're where?"

Thought of the Day

Audrey: "I saw a detour sign back there when you were trying to fold the map."

Aunt Edna: "You're lost!"

Clark Griswald: "When they close the roads they put up big signs, like this, AAAAAHHHH!"

-- Vacation

Today I'll talk about the great sport of basketball. Let me take you back...to 1989...Wichita Falls... junior high. There I am, a strapping young lad, joining the basketball team. I had high hopes, which proved to be crushed by what I refer to as a coach's nightmare. I was in an awkward phase. As we all are around that time period, and I guess I was deemed not athletic (probably because it took me 20 minutes to run a mile). Now coaches are not nice people to the awkward students. Most of them never got out of being 12 in their mind and some of them decided military coaching is the best tactic. Drills, drills, drills and if you mess up, bear crawls for punishment. My first experience with humiliation came when at the start of the season the coaches bet on me. I think coach Hawkins said I would score a basket during the season while the other coaches said I wouldn't. They said if I scored a basket I would get a game ball to motivate me. Ok, it is just one basket, one lousy basket, and I was looked on like a pathetic looser who couldn't score. And yet I did score, and I got the ball and everyone celebrated when I scored. At least when I scored a touchdown in football it wasn't looked on as a false achievement, even though it was a 2-yard touchdown. One factor had to be that I only got to play about 2 minutes a game. It is hard to score when you are a bench warmer. The other awkward coaching moment happened when I wanted to get out of practice. I had my mom write a note to excuse me from practice so that I could go Christmas shopping, even though we weren't actually going. Anyway, in the middle of basketball practice I tell the coach, Coach Carmichael - 7^th graders love him, 8^th graders hate him. After I tell him he flips out of his gourd. He throws the basketball to the ground so hard it ricochets up into the rafters of the gym while screaming "Christmas Shopping!" Then he calms down and says "go, just go". That's not where it ends though. Months later I was talking about it at practice and didn't realize he was standing behind me. He heard me say it was all a rouse to get out of practice. Needless to say, I had to do bear crawls after practice. The coach asked me if I learned anything about it. I said, "Yeah, when I tell the truth, make sure you're not around." I think I ended up doing more bear crawls.

Thought of the Day

"You no-brainer rotten stinking @$##$ #$%#$%"

"Ralphie, Your mother, your mother, your mother, ewww"

-- Christmas Story

In the latest offbeat news, a retired man recently turned in over a million pennies. That's over $10,000 to you and me. I once heard that pennies were the only denomination that didn't include the words "Legal Tender" on it, thus allowing people to not accept pennies as real money. Can you imagine saving a million pennies, you get to the bank and they say, "Sorry, we no longer accept pennies." Luckily they do have those machines at the supermarket, but they charge a percentage, so I wouldn't think it would be worth it. In other news a retired janitor from the University of Great Falls left the college $2.3 million when he died. I guess he really did love to clean. I remember in Office Space they said if everyone had a million dollars no one would be a janitor, well, I guess they're wrong. Finally, in Jewish news, Madonna now has a ranking as one of the countries most powerful Jews. She's No. 51 for making Kabbalah "a worldwide trend." For some reason I think this is funny. I don't know, I am not an anti-dentite or anything, but I have vivid memories of Madonna singing "Like a Virgin". I suppose she should change the lyrics and talk about "Like a Married Women", but I don't think it would have mass appeal..

Thought of the Day

"That's stupid, because if everyone had a million dollars, no one would be janitors"

"Samir, I think your missing the point, the point of the exercise is to...stupid fax machine...PC Load letter? What the #@$@#$ is that?"

-- Office Space

Well, yesterday I received a surprise in the mail. First, let me take you back in time... I was about 4 years old living in Nebraska when I discovered the power of the microwave. I vaguely remember me and my sister going to someone's house, an old person's, and getting to watch them make cheese sandwiches for us. It was the first time I saw a microwave make a cheese sandwich. The sandwich tasted delicious and I seem to remember falling in love with cheese. At that time I developed a cheese fixation in addition to my previous "Hubba Bubba" bubble gum fixation. I vowed I would learn the art of the cheese sandwich and have it for myself. I got the chance when my parents got divorced. I was about 10 when I got control over what I ate. Being a latch-key kid, I had a lot more freedom to experiment with such things. Just remember not to put a magnet in the microwave, unless you have water readily available.  It was then when I learned the art of the Microwave Cheese sandwich. It required 6 pieces of cheese 2 pieces of bologna and 2 pieces of bread. I guess that's why I was a chubby 4th grader.  The best thing to do is to melt it until golden brown and let the bologna form into a cup to hold the cheese. Then use a spoon to devour all of the cheese. So a couple of months ago Kraft was having a world's greatest cheese sandwich competition on the web. I was one of the first 500 entries out of 6000 to enter and thus I got a prize. They sent me a handy stovetop cheese sandwich maker worth $30. I can now jump from the microwave to the grill. I guess that's why they call it a grilled cheese sandwich.

Thought of the Day

Postmaster General: "Now I am not only a postmaster, I'm also a general. And you know it's a general's job to gosh well get things done. Now we got a stack of mail with your name on it. Are you going to take it?"

Kramer<wimpers>: "yes..."

-- Seinfeld

Well, this weekend was ok. I went out on Friday on the prowl. I did the ole "wingman" strategy with a friend of mine. We were able to zero in on a couple of young phillies. But, alas, after 5 minutes they always ended up going to the bathroom and never coming back. I think I'll call the ladies bathroom at Carson's the Bermuda Triangle. On Sat I gave blood and setup my home recording studio. About giving blood, I have a disease I call Yesitis. It is an inflammation of saying "Yes". I get a call from someone I say "yes".  I've had this disease ever since I came to Dallas and was actually making money. It all started with a call to Time Life and ordering a Gold and Platinum Album. Then they got my number and called me for "Sounds of the 80s". I said "yes" and 18 months later I got around to canceling. I think I still have some albums in the wrapper. Then there was the dating service that got me 0 dates for $1800. I said yes to that and in the end took em to court and won, but they never paid me anyways.  Then there was the first gym member ship for 18 months at $40 a month.  I said yes to an initial appointment and got suckered. Right now I am paying a gym $30 a month and I haven't gone since January. I am also paying monthly for a computer game that I never play. On the bright side, I say yes to blood donations and charities and church events. They keep on calling me though. You say yes "once" and you're on their list. The do not call list doesn't work if you say yes. Over time I think I have become a little more discerning since the days of the dating service. Yesitis is not fatal, but I must watch out for it. Just don't call me up and ask for something, I might say yes, but I mean no. Oh yeah, tonight they're replacing a pipe connected to my heater that is not regulation and in the coming weeks they'll come to exterminate my pests(another contract) and mow my yard(contract). How do I get Noitis?

Thought of the Day

 "Is that all you say? Yes?"

"No"

"So you say Yes and No?"

"Yes"

"Ah you must be a bit"

"Yes. Yes. Yes."

-- Tron

Well, I was off yesterday, being Veterans Day. But really I was off Wednesday night and spent Thursday recuperating. I didn't get home until 4 in the morning. It all started Wednesday after work when my ex-coworkers wanted to go to happy hour. So I obliged. It's weird. In the past 3 days I feel like I've been on "this is your life". I've met co-workers from 3 different jobs I've had (lunches, happy hours) I've talked to my step-brother, sister, grandmother,nieces and nephews. Am I about to die? Anyway I went to happy hour and then went to a cool movie theater called the Granada. It's basically a dinner and movie place at once. You sit down at a table and order your food while the movie is showing. It was a DVD release party of the infamous Crossroads Guitar Festival I went to back in June. They gave away really cool prizes like an autographed guitar signed by Eric Johnson and pictures signed by Steve Vai. I didn't win any though. I was there with a friend, Travis, who went to the festival with us. He then persuaded me to go to Deep Ellum and watch the acoustic chaos. Wednesday night is famous for having all of the bands in Dallas hang out at this one club. It is good for networking a band and getting new shows. About Travis, we used to work at AT&T 6 years ago. Since we both played guitar and were in bands we would party together all the time back then. Yes I had some wild nights where I would wake up in Austin and Denton and wonder "How did I get here?" He had this cool Chinese girlfriend and one time I awoke to find myself surrounded by people who spoke only Chinese. I thought I ended up in China. I awoke on the couch, they were all eating lunch on the floor and their shoes were in the corner. I think during the night someone took my shoes off and put them in the corner as well. I was like "waaa?" Then Travis pops out of the bedroom and I know what happened. Good times, good times.

Thought of the Day

"HELLLOOOO!!"

-- (One of Jerry's girlfriend's bellybutton)

Hmm, what to talk about today? Since I'm on the subject of childhood, I'll talk about school and teachers. Ah, back then my goal was not to make straight A's, it was to get out high school. As you all know my sister is a bookworm genius. I remember in high school getting straight A's was like her dream. She would come home after school and study every day. Towards the end she became vicious about being valedictorian, discussing it with the principal all the time, making sure she was at least tied with her nemesis, David Minor.  We all thought she was crazy. I still do. No one should love studying that much. Now, try being the brother of such a prodigy. I got told by many a teacher "how come you're not like your sister?" Since she was just a year ahead of me all of my classmates knew about her. They all thought I was similar and thus I was labeled a nerd as well. I suppose it didn't help that I was really good at computers back then. I remember making programs for science teachers to use in their classrooms. To top it off my mother, being a teacher, made sure all the other teachers knew I was her son. I remember hearing my mother get reports from my German teacher on a daily basis.  "Brian is notten trying hard, I know he can do betta. Bitte." I remember me knowing I could've done the exact same as my sister if I would've tried hard. My mother got told by my teachers that I wasn't putting in the effort. They were right. Now that I look back, would I have tried harder and gotten into a better college? Would I have worked hard every day studying just so I could eventually do what I am doing now? Not on your life. So who is the smart one - the one who looks to the future and plans their intellect or the one who has no idea of the future and plans for everything? Eh, either one works.

Thought of the Day

"I knew when Mrs. Shields would read my essay I could then get the illustrious sought after BB Gun. Words flowed from my penny pencil with feverous fluidity."

"Margins, Margins you dolt! What do we have here? ... Ralphie Parker, A++++++++++++++++++++++++++++!"

-- A Christmas Story (paraphrased)