And now for the weekend update. This weekend was pretty much going to
gatherings of Sunday School classes with Holly. Saturday afternoon I
rented all my scuba gear for the upcoming trip and then jammed with the
bassist from Corporate Red. He wants to form up again and play whatever
I want, so I am thinking about it. Saturday night we went with another
couple to "On the Border" and then went back to my place and watched
movies. Sunday we did the usual and ended up at another Sunday school
gathering. This time when I fed the homeless I had a big bottle of
Gatorade water. I must remember that. Not much else going on. I watered
my lawn the other night, for the first time this summer. The ChemLawn
people left a note on my door begging me to put water on it, saying they
had put double the amount of fertilizer this time. I guess yellow is not
the standard color of lawns. Apparently when you are in your 30s your
yard becomes your sanctuary. Tonight I should get the sprinklers
fixed(they have never worked) and my lawn will start growing. We shall
see.

Thought of the Day
"It's crowded, the grass has big brown patches in it, they don't rake
the sand traps. Not to mention the caliber of people you have to play
with!"
- Kramer, disdainful of public golf courses, in "The Cheever Letters"

Since this blog is a way for me to talk to the world I often wonder what is it the world would like to hear. Sometimes I think,"an accordian?" but then I remember Weird Al and how he kinda overplayed the accordian shtick. I think bass beats has finally ran its course. You know those car stereo's that shake buildings? My band has called it quits without ever having a show. That was sad. Oh yeah, here is something I rather enjoy. It is a radio spot of Holly telling the world "happy anniversery" to me on the radio. Click the link or paste it into your browser.

http://www.brianaldenbass.com/holly.mp3

I guess the world doesn't really care, but I sure do like it ;-)

Thought of the Day
"I never met a man who knew so much about nothing."
- Tia the model to Jerry, in "The Airport"

Hmm, anything interesting happening? No. I guess I am still recuperating
after I shisked on Sunday. Whenever I say that people are like "shisk?"
What does that mean? It goes into the "words" that we don't like. My
group of friends all have words they hate. Words that just make you feel
oogy when you say them. For instance Peetey doesn't like "beautiful" and
"entertainment center". His sister doesn't like "frosty" and
"refreshing". I don't like the Russian word "nyet" and the word
"shisk-a-bob". I explained that is because the syllables reminds me of
someone throwing up, so the term "shisk" was coined for it. Later on we
started replacing the word shisk with famous actors to mean the same
thing. Like I "Jim Belushied" all over the place or "Yakov Smirnoffed"
in the car. In the end it went back to shisk and I actually like the
word now to refer to "the act". It is like a code word cause I don't
like the word "throw up" even more. Do ya'll have any words that make
you oogy?

Thought of the Day
In a Family Guy episode, Peter Griffin plays around with his new car's
navigation system, and turns it to "Yakov Smirnoff Mode". The navigation
system says, "In Soviet Russia, car drives you!" Later in that episode,
it says, "Turn right at fork in road. In Soviet Russia, road forks you!"
(The comment made by Peter Griffin: "Boy, is that getting old.")

Well, I am officially turning into Darth Vader. I think it was
inevitable. First I get his light saber. Then I go dressed up as him to
the premiere of Episode III and now I get to wear a mask to bed that
helps me breathe. All I need is a son that chops off my hand and I will
be complete. I heard back from the doc that I have "severe sleep apnea",
where I wake up more than 100 times a night, and I need to come in again
to get a CPAP machine tested on me. That is the same machine my mom uses
for her sleep apnea. I did some research though and found that the CPAP
machine also helps with GERD so I might be fixing 2 thing with one
punch. The downer is that I have to wear a mask to sleep, which might be
very uncomfortable. I guess I will have lots of dreams that I am scuba
diving or using the force. Apparently I am only 31 and have the health
of a person who is 61. I think it is a sign. It is written on the wall.
I should retire, get Bermuda shorts, move to a Florida retirement
community, take up golf and buy lots of hard candy.

Thought of the Day
"Kramer, you can't live down here. This is where people come to die."
- Jerry, discovering Kramer has moved to a retirement community in
Florida, in "The Wizard"

First of all, I am just fine. Now I shall tell the story of my weekend.
It started off innocently enough with me having dinner with Holly and
her mom at a fancy Italian restaurant where they say one of the finest
chef's in Dallas cooks. I had a lovely chicken fettuccine Alfredo. Then
it was off to a "prepare for the Cozumel trip" event in which the scuba
store gave us an itinerary and talked to us about what we need to do. I
had to leave Holly at the very beginning of it because I had an
appointment at the "Sleep Center of Richardson". I was to be checked for
sleep apnea and other sleep disorders to find out why I was so tired all
of the time. Unfortunately this required me to be sleeping by 10pm, way
too early for me. I usually get to bed by 2am. So I then proceeded to
have a very bad night of sleep. To top it off my GERD came back since I
had eaten less than 5 hours before going to bed. So there I am at the
sleep docs grasping my throat, sitting up, tossing and turning, kicking
my legs, and even willfully holding my breath so I will get tired and
fall asleep. I am sure my diagnosis is going to come back as having
every sleep disorder out there. They woke me up at 5am and I proceeded
to drive home and go back into bed and sleep for real. On Saturday I
went with Holly to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2. I really liked it. It
was one of those movies that is like Empire Strikes Back. I can picture
a whole gaggle of toys that come out of it.

Sunday was the day of the "Take a walk in my shoes" event that Holly had
thought of. The idea was to spend a day seeing what it is like to be
homeless. My conclusion, I would die if I was homeless. I have a lot
more respect for them now. So we start off at 11 and take the DART to
downtown Dallas. I had packed a bag of bottled water. So I then proceed
to drink just a little of this water. We all remarked at how it was such
a nice since it was only 95 out and not the usual 105. I am with the
"power walkers" group. It is me, Holly, and William, the guy who runs
the Rip Parker Homeless Ministry. They are walking really fast(kind of
like Spike, Robbie's step dad) and I am struggling to keep up.
Eventually we hit groups of homeless people(they are all spread out) and
talk with them a while. One guy was shot in his leg and didn't have any
money to pay for medicine. Then we stroll by all of our usual places
where we feed at. We ended up at the resource center and I proceeded to
help give out water. By then all of my muscles were sore. All of a
sudden I felt real faint and had to go into their truck and sit down.
They then noticed and took me inside into the air conditioning and gave
me 4 glasses of water while I lied down. After 15 minutes I felt better
and it was decided that we should go home. Unfortunately the truck had
already left so we had to take the train back to our cars, which meant
more walking. So we go on our way and I start to feel weak again and
again and again. We stop and rest and eventually end up at the train
station. Once we got to our final station we go out and get into a
restaurant, at which point I feel faint again and lay down in the booth.
Holly put a cold towel on my head and gave me some water. Eventually it
was decided that William would get his car to take us to our cars. So we
all get into Williams car, at which point all of the water I had drank
decided to come out of me. Of course his windows don't roll down so I
open the door and proceed to shisk out of the car. I thought, how
lovely. It was at that point when I said,"hospital" and was driven to
the ER. All the while Holly is worried about me and I am worried about
her cause she is worried about me. Heh. I spent about 2 hours sleeping
in the waiting room and by the time I got to a room I told the doc I
felt good enough to go. By that time I had already read up on heat
exhaustion on my phone and knew that that was what I had exactly. But he
says, better safe than sorry. So I proceed to get lab work done to
check my kidneys and they give me an IV to replenish myself. I was
finally finished by 12:30 AM and walk out in the waiting room to see
that Holly had made friends with everyone in the ER and was helping them
all out. I can't tell you what it is like to have a girl that will stay
with you in the bad times. I am so lucky. I am sure my week will be
better than my weekend. How was yours?

Thought of the Day
[*Garth fears throwing up if he talks to his dream girl.*] *Wayne
Campbell*: I say hurl. If you blow chunks and she comes back, she's
yours. If you spew and she bolts, then it was never meant to be.

Ah yes, the Ruby Story. I still hear jibes about that incident to this day. I often wonder why. Let me take you back. There I am in 4th grade at the Episcopal School. I got a little pudgy around then cause I had figured out how to make my famous cheese sandwich and had it for dinner alot. Well I guess 4th grade is the definite beginning of the "awkward" phase for most kids. I think the "awkward" phase lasts until 9th or 10th grade. At that point your zits have decreased and socialness has increased. But I digress. My mother liked giving us these Time-Life series of "Science and the Future" books in which many technological inventions were discussed. They talked about everything from cloning to computer graphics to space. There was this one article that talked about lasers and how they were made. I read it and noticed that lasers were made out of rubies. So I proceeded to come up with the idea that I could in fact, make a laser as long as I had a ruby. I then proceeded to tell the whole 4th grade class this information. Why? I have no idea. But the class was all abuzz. There were some skeptics, "You can't make a laser!" they would say and then I would say "Oh yes I can! I just need a ruby. Anyone got a ruby?" and so it was on. Except, I really knew I couldn't do it. So the next day I bring in my mothers parabolic mirage thing and show the class how cool it is and say "this is like a laser." "No its not!" they say. And thus my bragging about what I couldn't do ended. Funny how bragging is especially wrong when you can't even do what you say you can do. I often wonder why I did it. I think it must've been the kids in 4th grade were oftly mean, ehem, mr.benz? I would now like to announce to the world that if you gave me a Ruby I would not make a laser, but I will accept it.

Thought of the Day
Don: Hey, Napoleon. What did you do last summer again?
Napoleon Dynamite: I told you! I spent it with my uncle in Alaska hunting wolverines!
Don: Did you shoot any?
Napoleon Dynamite: Yes, like 50 of 'em! They kept trying to attack my cousins, what the heck would you do in a situation like that?
Don: What kind of gun did you use?
Napoleon Dynamite: A freakin' 12-gauge, what do you think?

So you are probably wondering, what in tar-nation happened to Brian's website. The weird thing is this site has been up all along. I shall now explain in lay-men's terms. Let's say my house has a sign on it called "BrianAldenBass.com" and the sign blows away. My house is still there, the sign is just gone. Each URL like yahoo.com, google.com has a unique address. We call that an IP Address. For instance this site's new IP address is 72.64.68.35 -Try to type that in your browser and hit enter. You should still see this site. You just are accessing it by the correct IP Address. Now back in the day people got tired of putting in numbers so they came up with the Domain Naming System. This allowed people to associate IP Addresses with URLs. So when you type BrianAldenBass.com into your web browser it gets sent through the Internet to find a "Name Server" that has the correct IP Address to point to. The IP Address that you typed in earlier will then get called and send back the correct page. So this site itself has not been down, all you needed to know was the IP Address and you could've hit it directly. Every site on the Internet usually takes 24-48 hours to change the IP Address. This time since I changed the Parent Name Server it had to take 24-48 hours to cancel the existing name server and 24-48 hours to bring up the new one. If I was smart I would've setup the new Name Server and waited for it to be up before I cancelled the old one. But I didn't do that, duh. All problems should be fixed now. Life is good.

Thought of the Past Week
"This Page Cannot Be Displayed"

Well, I finally got my site up and running again. That problem lasted 4
days. I went through 3 routers. One of them burned up, one of them got
configured wrong, and the other didn't do multiple static ip routing in
its firewall. Now I have complete control over this site. Did you know
that I was paying $20 a month for just 100meg in webserver storage. Now
that I have the site on my 250gig hard drive I can do anything I want,
woot. I tend to get stressed when a problem lasts more than one day. I
always like to end the day with all problems solved. In other news, if
you read this before the day is out catch 89.7fm at 5:20 and 7:20
tonight. My girlfriend is doing some kind of spot for the station. She's
famous! Have a good weekend.

Brian Bass
Deb: And here we have some boondoggle key chains. A must-have for this
season's fashion.
Napoleon Dynamite: I already made like infinity of those at scout camp.

This is another test, this is only a test. Had this been a real post it would've been funny. I think.

This is a test message. If it appears on brian alden bass.com then brian bass has successfully hosted his own site!

And now for the weekend update. This weekend saw Holly goodness ;-) On
Friday we went to the "Silver Fox" a famous steak place in Grapevine. It
has an award in 2001 for the world's best steak. It did not disappoint.
They bring out a rib eye with the rib still attached. Then when you take
a bite the flavor explodes in your mouth. It was the best steak ever. I
noticed there was hundreds of pictures of famous people with signatures
on them. This was the kind of place where even if your water gets half
filled they will refill it for you. It is like a barrage of waiters
running around. The chocolate cake for dessert topped it off nicely.
Holly said the salad was real good too. Then I heard a band was playing
at the "Taste of Dallas" festival so we went to West End in Dallas.
Unfortunately the band I wanted to see had already played so we stuck
around for the headliner, a guy name Bob Schneider or something.
Apparently he is famous for light songs or something. I could tell they
had a commercial sound, but it was kind of a Dave Mathews mimic. Then we
went back to my place and I played a song I wrote for Holly and gave her
an emerald necklace. That took her by surprise ;-) Yes, we are in love.
Six months in a relationship is a personal record for me. On Saturday we
went to "Murder at South Fork" at the South Fork Hotel. Peetey would
love it. It is a murder mystery dinner theater kind of thing. They get
the audience involved in the acting and we have to figure out who killed
J.R. Spewing. We had it narrowed down to 2 people and picked the wrong
one. The acting was really funny and I was laughing a lot at J.R. and
his hokey comments. Sunday we did the usual church/Sunday
school/homeless thing. Anyways, this week should be another busy week.
All is well on this end. How was your weekend?

Thought of the Day
"You've got your shirt in my oven?"
"Well, I didn't have enough quarters for the dryer, but this is better
anyway. And it's more convenient."
"Oh, for both of us."
"Yeah, and I have a lot more control. I got a shirt going for ten
minutes at 325."
"What's wrong with your oven?"
"I'm baking a pie."
- Jerry and Kramer, in "The Calzone"

It has been a while since I have updated my blog. I have been at a
"Family Reunion" in OKC these past three days. A funny incident happened
on the way up to OKC. I was in IHOP for lunch and ordered the classic
"rootie tootie" breakfast and got pancakes with my meal. Right in front
of me was this huge blue container that looked like a syrup container.
So I decided to pour syrup on my pancakes. Low and behold the syrup
looks awfully liquiddy. I stare at my pancakes in amazement as the smell
of coffee comes percolating up. I can just imagine the look on my face.
I then see this old lady staring at me and howling. She couldn't contain
herself and I say," I thought it was syrup". By that time another table
started looking and laughing and my face turned red. Then my mom had to
add her two cents to the waittress,"Ma'am my son poured coffee on his
pancakes can he get some more pancakes." I tell the waittress,"I'm sure
I'm not the only one to make this mistake." and she walks away quickly
holding her laughter. Then I hear the waitress go back to the back of
the restaurant "Earl, can I get some more pancakes, some guy poured
coffee on his." And so I had to laugh. Yes, it was funny. I still think
I am not the first guy to do that. I suppose the label "coffee is hot"
should've warned me, but alas I was on vacation. OKC was pretty good.
Met with family, watched an old slideshow during which the same Randy
Newman song played over and over again. I was waiting to see who in my
family would get irritated first, my sisters husband won that award.
Everyone was doing well. My new niece is cool. My young nephew is
rambunctious and I met my other 7 year old nephew as well. The Bass men
compared cell phones and cameras, a standard thing. Then we ate dinner
at PF Changs and I ended the evening in the room watching fireworks out
the window. So ends the vacation. Everyone asks me how was Oklahoma. I
always say," It was OK"

Thought of the Day
"You have no idea of the magnitude of this thing. If she is allowed to
infiltrate this world then George Costanza as you know him ceases to
exist. You see, right now I have Relationship George. But there is also
Independent George. That's the George you know, the George you grew up
with... Movie George, Coffee Shop George, Liar George, Bawdy George."
"I love that George."
"Me too, and he's dying. If Relationship George walks through this door,
he will kill Independent George. A George divided against itself cannot
stand!"
- George and Jerry, in "The Pool Guy"