PHB: "We have all these pages and they don't have anything on them."

Me: "Uh-huh, and?"

PHB: "Well, Loogie (not her real name) in PR wanted to know what those pages were and I didn't know."

Me: "Those are blank pages. Those are the pages that need content. Those are the pages that Loogie has to write content for."
PHB: "They aren't blank on the existing site."

Me: "No, they aren't. They have a photo and a block of graphic links. But the new system creates dynamic links in the sidebar, so we need a paragraph to explain what each section contains. Otherwise, we have a blank page."

Really. A page with nothing on it is: Anyone? Anyone? A blank page, you fucking moron.

So, for the last three months? when I've been flapping my pie hole at you? telling you that there's all these blank pages with no fucking content? Yeah. That's what I've been talking about.

That. A page with nothing on it. That would be the definition of a blank page, a page with no content.

Repeat after me: There is just not enough alcohol in the world.

P.S. Just in case you guessed, yes, Loogie is the person who keeps sending me PDFs, even after I have explained, requested, begged, pleaded and stamped my little foot and pouted that I cannot use them on my site. I cannot use a PDF. I cannot use them here or there. I cannot use them anywhere. I do not like them in a file, I do not like them in a pile. I do not like them on a floppy, I do not like them as a copy.

Sorry. Got a little carried away.

The office I'm in has four walls and a door. These are real walls, not wall-ettes: they go all the way to the ceiling, not nose level. There isn't a window, but hell, I have the real walls and the door.

Today, and for the last month or so, I've been particularly thankful for the door. I've mentioned before that my team shares office space with another team. Their work habits require me to use my door as a sound baffle.

The woman across the hall leaves her door open, and only uses speaker phone. All day. She also listens to particularly bad radio and sings, but that's a walk in the park compared to her speaker phone abuse.

The Toxic Manager manages by standing over his employees, way too close, and watching them work. And sits behind them and tells them what to click on with their mouses. And just hangs around pontificating in an unidentifiable accent that makes everything he says sound like Laurence of Arabia talking to his camel "hut hut hut".

I had a dream the other night. I was forced to go on a date with President George Bush. We were going to the opera. It was black tie. I didn't want to go with him, and kept protesting that he was already married, and so was I, and we were not wed to each other.
To no avail. I had to put on an evening gown and go. I was in my parent's house, but it had been appropriated as a temporary White House. The Bush women were ridiculing my mother's decorating. They stuck their heads in my bedroom and made loud noises about how this room certainly was NOT part of the official residence.

I told them that it was my childhood bedroom and off limits. Then I had to go into their area to put my makeup on in their bathroom. They didn't know how to turn the lights on and were only barely polite when I showed them where the switches were.

We (the President and I) finally got into the limo to go to the opera. Only it wasn't a limo, it was a Lincoln, and the POTUS was driving it himself. I was pissed because we were late and they were holding the curtain until we arrived. I felt that he was taking advantage of his position, and that the curtain shouldn't have been held.

When we finally got to the opera house, the POTUS had someone take off his overcoat, and I saw that he was only wearing a tux jacket, shirt and tie, and that from the waist down, he was dressed in jeans, boots and leather chaps. He then left me in the lobby to tip the help and pay for my own program.

I thought he was a major ass hole. By the time the opera was over, I had organized a demonstration in the lobby, and the crowd was chanting "Defeat Bush" when he came out.

End of dream.

This weekend was just tits, man.*

It started on Friday, with the RLA and I meeting up with my friend, The Coolest Person In the World TM, who has been in the area for a while.

After seeing the two of us slam back the (first) vodka, the RLA decided not to even try to keep up with us. It was wise. It would have been wiser for me to remember that I can't keep up with her. Nevertheless, I gave it my best shot, and didn't get sick. I'm pretty sure that the end of the night saw me promising to meet her and her husband in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, as the spouse will be riding with one of the big Krewes this year, and so would entail hanging around with a much higher caliber of riff raff than would other wise be available to the likes of me.
I did sleep for half the night in the bathtub, but I never puked. The RLA says that when he went in to check on me, I was lying in the tub with a shit-eating grin on my face, and the hot water trickling over my toes, and he figured that it was some kind of sauna cure, and I was fine.

I was. And had only the teensiest of hangovers. But he still made me pay the next day by dragging my sorry ass all over Miami to grocery stores, shoe stores, book stores... oh, it was an ordeal, I'll tell you.

There was some heavy lifting in the kitchen on Saturday, as I prepped for a Fourth of July party. Tabouli, fruit salad, my mom's cole slaw (the recipe for which she stole from the Pink Pony circa 1948) and which is just to die for, a mango upside down cake. Burgers. Chips. Beer. Mango daquiris. More beer.

Our guests were two couples, one from San Francisco in town for a visit, and the other newly-made friends from across town. All six of us are artists of one stripe or another, and aside from hanging in the pool drinking, the major activity of the day was doing a jam painting on the wall around the koi pond. It isn't finished, but it is way cool. There's a fish, a mer-man, leaves, and swirls, and bubbles, and color. Photos will follow.

We also indulged in fire works (shhhhhh). The noble dog Nails proved his worth by attacking the tanks. This caused much consternation among the adults who had to tackle him, pry the still sparking fireworks out of his mouth and toss them away before the actual fire crackers exploded. What a dog. Not afraid of anything, and he should be.

Yesterday was a day of cleaning, resting and recuperation. And painting and swimming. Tonight there are vague rumors of getting together with The Coolest Person In the World TM again. I only hope my liver will one day forgive me.

* for reasons I cannot remember, back in college, this was the highest accolade my buddy Andy could bestow on something.

Marlon Brando. R.I.P.

Damn. He was fine in his youth. He was tortured and brilliant throughout his career. He was the size of a small village at the end, but he'll always be Terry, from On The Waterfront to me.

Or the mincing, lisping Fletcher Christian.

Ah, well, another icon, down. Think I'll watch Guys and Dolls this weekend.

This is what was driving through the hospital campus today while I was at lunch.



You can't see the writing on the side, so I'll include the literature they were handing out of the head pig.
"The largest pig shows the financial cost ($200 billion)1 of America's attack on Iraq, including the projected minimum cost of reconstruction.

The smaller pig illustrates the annual federal spending on K-12 education ($34 billion)2.

The wee little pig shows annual federal spending on reducing world hunger and poverty ($10 billion).3

For the same amount of money that we're spending on the war in Iraq, we could:

provide Head Start for all elibible kids,

provide Healthcare for all uninsured kids,

build 2,500 new elementary schools, and

reduce grades 1-3 class size to 15 students

for the next 5 years.

1) Eric Schmitt and Robert Pear, New York Times, Feb. 3, 2004. Also see Congressional Budget Office, "Estimated Costs of a Potential Conflict with Iraq," September 2002.
2) U.S. Budget, FY 2004
3) U.S. Budget, FY 2004

For more information, visit www.TrueMajority.org/pigs"

And just think, this was going to be a post about the lousy customer service offered up by Circuit City.

I am so loving the little pink i-pod. I have new regard for the a-holes I see everywhere with headphones on. I am now one of them, and I couldn't be happier.

Today I was listening to the greatest song in the world, ever. Period. End of discussion.
Layla. The original recording, by Derek and the Dominos. Eric Clapton and Duane Alman exchanging licks. Both at the height of their youth, not that Duane ever got past it. First one, then the other, delivers up these wailing guitar solos of the pain that comes with love. With headphones on, and cranked up so loud that the entire train could hear the music leaking out of my head, it was a wonderful way to start the morning.

It put a rhythm to my step. It put a smile on my face. I didn't care that the PHB accosted me before the last notes died to ask a typically stupid question.

I was one with the greatest song ever. Until tomorrow, when it may be a bootleg cut of Bruce Springsteen from 1978, doing the extended version of Rosalita.

I'll see your emergency project and raise you a crisis.

Please drop the extremely urgent project you are working like a dog on, to do a quick graphic link for another urgent project that someone else has been assigned to complete, at the expense of their previously most urgent and emergent crisis project.
Because I'm the boss, and I committed all of you to do it, that's why.

We are all rats on a sinking ship, and my boss's new management mantra is the same as my old boss's:

It doesn't have to be done right, it only has to be done.

My mantra is: This isn't my ship. I don't care if it hits the reef, as long as I survive the shipwreck.

That pretty much sums it all up. I'm back, and my PHB did, in fact, manage to screw things up during my absence. Shocking. Just shocking.
The hospital continued to lose money. The Herald continued to report it. The PR department continued to not communicate about change to the employees. The hospital's president sent out a memo to upper management complaining about the Herald's reporting of our dirty laundry.

Yep. It's a bitch being a government entity having to do your business in the sunshine. It justs sucks, don't it?

The only thing that amazes me about all of this is that no disgruntled employees have forwarded that memo to the Herald. Or maybe they did, and the Herald chose not to run it. But that is so far removed from the realm of possibility that I must discount the premise.

Ah, well, it's been fun, but I must go off and update the most important page on the entire hospital site: our cafeteria menus.

Sad, isn't it? My life: creating electronic ephemera.

As if I needed any proof to points 1,2 and 3 below, I came home from my little vacation to discover that my e-mail had been rendered null and void by the simple expedient of my brother (who has his undergraduate degree in computer science, by the way) sending me a 3mg file of photos...
My in-box being filled by that largesse, there was no room for any other communication. A fact I discovered upon my return, because, as I told everyone, I would not could not pick up my mail while I was on the other coast.

Thanks a lot. I was only expecting communications from a commission, an update from Blog Moxie on the new, secret redesign, my usual riff raff of friends, meeting agenda and papers for Tuesday's board meeting, and like that.

All bounced. All lost. All requiring re-registration to mail lists, no doubt.

The irony is that the same thing happened to me last year, when my friend known as the King Geek (because that is his actual job in life) sent me a 5mg photo of his son. Like I don't see the kid on a regular basis.

And both he and my brother did this on the first day of my vacation.

In any event, I am rested, tanned, well fed and even got in a baseball game. Florida Marlins lost to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. But it was another ball park in my life list, and a nice, albeit domed one, at that.

Since I live here on the East Coast of Florida, when I head due west, it only takes me a couple of hours to reach the other side. And friends, the other side is where I am going today.

I'm pretty sure that there's no DSL in the little beach hut I'll be inhabiting for the next week, so you'll have to entertain yourselves while I'm gone.

Here's a handy little guide to seeing the world through my eyes:
1. the world is made up of idiots
2. they are all on this earth to torment me, personally
3. stupidity is a gift others like to share
4. oooooh, stop and smell the roses, pet the doggies, pull off the road to stare at a double rainbow
5. my job sucks and the people I work with suck worse (not my immediate team, maybe ... except my boss)
6. go to the gym and work off the excess anxiety and stress
7. drink
8. appreciate the friends and family I love and who love me, especially the RLA
9. create art
10. watch Deadwood, the Sopranos, 6 Feet Under, CNN, America's Next Top Model, Dead Like Me
11. complain with scathing wit, sarcasm, a fine vocabulary, and liberal use of the word fuck

That's pretty much it. You can randomly rearrange the elements. And you'll have to get your own to fill in the blanks on number eight. Most of my tv addictions are in reruns.

I'm off to the other coast, taking with me mangos, beach reading, an assortment of sun screens, and my brand new, pink mini i-pod.

Have fun while I'm gone.

The mangos this year are fragrant and heavy and plentiful. It starts with one. Then you have three or four on your kitchen counter, and then, within a week, you are sneaking out in the dead of night to leave them on your neighbor's front steps. I have four trees, and they are of three varieties. The Smithfels are an Asian varietal, huge and paisley-shaped. Their flesh is so soft, you can eat them with a spoon. They are slightly redolent of pineapple, and the color of their pulp is paler than the deep orange of the Haydens. They are sort of rare, I'm told. I just know that they are delicious.
In this sub-tropical town, at this time of year, there is no better way to spread joy to strangers than to hand out mangos. Today I had a bag full of Haydens and Smithfields from my yard, and I was a veritable Johnny Mangoseed as I handed them out to random folks I passed on my way to work.

Three burly Hispanic Wackenhut guards at the train station. The old-school Black gentleman who wears a red silk rose in his uniform pocket every day and drives the Metrorail.

I debated about going up to the woman engaged in a loud diatribe at the other end of the train, but I couldn't determine if she was engaged in a dialogue or a monologue and decided that discretion would be the better part of Valerie, and so did not share with her.

The old blind beggar was not at his usual station, but he has received my fruity largesse on other occasions.

I still have three, but the day isn't over yet.

"In-duh-vidual's name removed: in order for me to be able to use this (thing that she sent me)in the site, and have it be a part of the site, not a static window opening in a separate program, I need the original art/format.

I cannot use a PDF. I cannot pull the art out of it, I cannot embed it in the HTML. When you have a graphic image that you want to use as an element on a page, I need it in jpg, or gif, or as an original Photoshop file, or Illustrator or Freehand, or even as a bmp or tiff.

Just to reiterate: I cannot use a PDF."
What I Wanted to Say:

You stupid fucking git, how many times must I tell you that a PDF is not an acceptable format for me to use on this site? Obviously, at least once a fucking week, since no matter how many times I tell you that a PDF is not a graphic format (OK, well, it is, but not one that can be used as part of HTML), you insist on sending me PDFs and telling me to add them to the hospital's site.

Just in case you were in a coma for the last couple of years, and haven't actually used the fucking internet for anything other than passing lame ass jokes around, the whole fucking point of this endeavor is to be interactive, not fucking brochure ware. Which means, to sum up: I cannot use a PDF, I cannot use a PDF, I cannot use a fucking PDF.

I need the graphics sent to me in a graphic format: Photoshop, Illustrator, Freehand, gif, jpg, bmp, or any other kind of image openable by the first three programs listed. I can use animations, Flash or Fireworks. The one thing that is absolutely pointless to send me is a three fucking megabyte PDF file and expect me to do anything with it.

Thanks for letting me vent.

I have this girlfriend, see. And normally, I wouldn't write this kind of dish about a friend, but she isn't normal. She's a luddite of the first water. She has an e-mail address, but no computer: she has someone pick up her mail, print it out, and fax it to her. I don't even want to contemplate how the reverse works. I know it involves a typewriter. A typewriter, which, in all due honesty, is, in fact, electric.
So this girlfriend has issues with men. Specifically, she is a man-hater. Except for their dicks. Those, she assures me, she likes. But I have to wonder, seeing as how she holds men in such low regard, why she just doesn't keep a vibrator around and save herself much aggravation.

Every time we talk about men, and let me assure you, I try not to, she ends up in this rant about "men retreat to caves when they are in relationships, because they can't handle intimacy."

She goes on and on and on and on and on, and did I say she goes on at great length? about how men can't communicate; how men are all dogs; how men can only exist in one of two planes: the vertical in which you can do business or converse, or the horizontal in which you can do the horizontal mambo. The two planes, she believes, are mutually exclusive.

She informed me during our last conversation, that every single man she has ever been involved with, has cheated on her. I should note that by single man we mean every individual, because she is not so refined in her sensibilities as to stick to the unmarried variety.

This led me to consider the possibility that A) she only chooses men who are emotionally unavailable because she herself is emotionally unavailable, or B) she is more of a psycho than she appears to me, and drives the men, screaming, into the arms of other women -- and let me say that she looks like a bona fide psycho to me, so being more of one is a frightening proposition, or C) she only thinks that they cheat on her (and where does the married guy doing his wife fall?) or D) all men are pigdogs and I should think about my own track record.

I did. And nobody (except the Antichrist, and of course he would) cheated on me in my grand single days. Or if they did, I didn't know or didn't care, seeing as how it was a matter of goose and gander.

In any event, she is currently embarking on a new, dysfunctional and long-distance romance with a man she can barely stand being with when they aren't between the sheets. At least, that was the gist that I gleaned from her last hour-long screed about what sacks of shit men are.

She allowed as how, despite his bad politics, his paternalistic pandering and his harping on her to quit (chain)smoking, she had no desire to change him, and that made him a first in her long line of rejects.

That was a telling sentence, huh? All these losers she's been keeping company with, all these dogs who had to go mark other territory, she's been trying to change them all. Into what? Sausages? Lawn jockeys?

The whole point of men, in my opinion, is that they are not women. They are different. They communicate differently, they hold their silverware differently, they channel surf differently. As the French would say "Vive la difference!" Sure, they're dogs. But hell, I love my dog, too.

But I digress. In fact, I've digressed so much I forgot what the point was that I was trying to make.

I guess it was that if you think the opposite sex is from another planet, maybe you should check your own home address first.

I worked out with Nic Cage last night. Not the real one, the ersatz one who is my trainer. I was so done in at the end of the hour that I almost couldn't get home.

The clutch on Zelda Bleu (a VW Cabrio) is like the clutch on any VW: made of cast iron and requiring a strong leg. I got in last night, and I couldn't press the clutch. My legs were like unset Jell-O. Wobbly. Weak. I couldn't hold the clutch long enough to shift. I thought I was going to need someone to come and rescue me.

I finally got it in gear, and managed to get home with only one episode of losing the gear at a light. Then I poured myself a drink, which was another challenge: getting the screw top off the whiskey, and floated around in the pool until I could feel my toes again.

I think this is going to be great. If I can live long enough to see the results.