Snatched from bugchicklv When you see this, post in your own journal with your favorite quote from The Princess Bride. Preferably not "As you wish" or the Inigo Montoya speech. I'm also trying not to repeat her quotes...

You've been mostly dead all day

Is this a kissing book?

Grandpa: She doesn't get eaten by eels at this time

Boy: What?

Grandpa: The eel doesn't get her. I'm explaining to to because you look nervous.

Boy: I wasn't nervous. Maybe I was a little bit "concerned" but that's not the same thing

I love that whole exchange :D

I only dog paddle

Death first!

And you: friendless, brainless, helpless, hopeless! Do you want me to send you back to where you were? Unemployed in Greenland!

I could go on and on and on...

But I'll leave some for others!

I'm learning Dvorak again. For real this time. So if you catch me typing really slowly in the next few weeks, that's why. (I remember more than I thought, which is good, but the punctuation is a bitch.)

EDIT: Case in point: my HTML failure. Sorry about that.

Snurched from kradical

When you see this, post in your own journal with your favorite quote from The Princess Bride. Preferably not "As you wish" or the Inigo Montoya speech.

ONE QUOTE??!?!?! From my favorite movie OF ALL TIME? Yeah, right. Here's a few:

Westley: Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

Westley: There is a shortage of perfect breasts in the world. T'would be a pity to damage yours.

Vizinni: Inconceivable!
Inigo: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Inigo: Let me explain... No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

Vizinni: I've hired you to help me start a war. It's a prestigious line of work with a long and glorious tradition.

Vizinni: You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is "Never get involved in a land war in Asia," but only slightly less well known is this: "Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!"

Humperdink: I always think everything could be a trap, which is why I'm still alive.

Grandpa: When I was your age, "television" was called "books."

Miracle Max: Have fun storming the castle!

Impressive Clergyman: Mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us togethew today. Mawwiage, that bwessed awwangement, that dweam within a dweam. And wove, twue wove, wiww fowwow you fowevah and evah… So tweasuwe youw wove…Have you the wing?

Yo! I be twittering myself!

• 23:10 @kingzgurl Missed it too. Am downloading as we speak. Er, type. Whatever. #
• 06:45 @kingzgurl EZTV #

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It's the first surf carnival of the season! Fortunately it's here at our beach so for once I don't have to travel. But we're still going to be busy! The little guy has (I think) five events today and five tommorrow and I'm supposed to be actually swimming in the surf race!

Wish us luck!

The cat is kittyloafing on top of my cell phone.

I'm tempted to call it just to see what happens.

Among all those earth shattering questions we've always wanted to know -

Is there a god?

Can Nicholas Cage act?

Did Shakespeare really write his plays?

I want to add one more...

Why would anyone want a padded exercise bra?

*has a happy*

Does anyone want to give a quick look over a Jayne/Wash fic? It's only about 650 words and plotless fluff. I'm not looking for anything deep, just grammar/spelling/typo fixes.

Thanks!

Hey, asshole:

When I politely ask that you respond to my FDA mandated questions with either YES OR NO, please to be saying only YES OR NO. Not "uh huh" or "Uh uh" because it really does sound the same sometimes and is not YES OR NO. Also, I can't hear your brains rattle. Nodding is not YES OR NO.

In addition, it would behoove you to wait till I finish the fucking question because interrupting me only sends me back to the beginning of some seriously long ass questions ("Have you or are you currently taking Tegison, Soriatane, Accutane, Proscar, Propecia, Avodart or any other medications or have you recently had any vaccinations or shots?" ) and each time you do it I will remind you---with a smile (so as not to bite your head off)--to wait until I am done.

No, I am not second guessing your answers, idiot. YOU ARE NOT OBEYING THE RULES. I don't CARE if no one else does it that way, or how long you've been coming here. THEY ARE WRONG and when an independent auditor comes in for an inspection, THEY will get in trouble. NOT ME. YOU are not worth my job. Kthaxbainaow!!

**********

And for the WTF?

In 2002 I worked for another plasma center until I had to quit (maternity related issues and whatnot) so I was only there for a little over 7 months.

Somehow or another, the home office (wherever 323 area code is) of said company (world-wide GINORMOUS BIOMEDICAL ENTITY) got my CELL PHONE NUMBER and called me, leaving a message (since I don't answer while I am at work or between 11pm and 7am) requesting that I call them back as soon as possible.

I figured lunch time today was good enough. Unfortunately, we don't have long distance access and woe is me I was almost out of minutes...so a co-worker allowed me to use her phone. When I called, I was immediately forwarded to, get this--

The Recruiting Office for the US Plasma Division of said Ginormous Biomedical Entity..

Well, their voice mail anyway.

So I leave THEM a message (TAG!) asking them to call back...and even *I* can hear the "WTF are they calling me for?" in my voice.

Guess when they called back? Yep. (TAG!) So when I got away long enough to check my messages, the WAY TOO PERKY employee confirmed in ANOTHER message that yes, indeed! They DID call me.

About a Medical Supervisory position.

Really? REALLY? WTF? Yes, I was (am?) anal retentive when it comes to following SOPs, manuals and handbooks...and I really was a perfectionist when it came to my duties. But I wasn't there long enough to leave an impression (I didn't think so anyway--unless you count sleeping with the guy who later became the boss after I left) (shut up; I wasn't pregnant then) and I can't help but wonder if they are THAT HARD UP that they had to go digging through ex-employee files looking for help...and to offer the SUPERVISOR'S job to someone with 7 & 3/4 month's experience?

My co-worker (phone lender) says I should call them back and hear them out.

What do YOU think?

Poll #1275902 Boss Bug?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Should Bug call back and find out what these people are offering?

I've been practicing that drawing thing... And now I can't find my scanner anywhere. Where on earth would I put it?

I had to take pictures instead so it's not great. Not that they were great to begin with. Dude... It's gonna take me forever to get back into drawing shape. And utter fail, I can't find the sketches I did of Castiel that came out looking more than half-decent. :(

On the plus side, totally bought a drawing humans book so with practice, lets all hope from some visual porn soon. ;)

Sketches under the cut. Pleeeease, no concrit. I can handle it with fic but with art, it makes me cry. My fragile art ego can't handle it just yet. :P

( the recent crap )

And I want to sketch more but I'm not really sure what. Really, I think I'm just gonna drink tea and write Jayne/Wash galley porn.

Stanford center Jayne Appel is expected to miss the team's exhibition games while she recovers from last month's arthroscopic knee surgery.

I'm startled at the number of forecasts that name Stanford #2 after Connecticut. This is a team that lost Candice Wiggins!

I'm even more surprised at the pundits who predict it will be sophomore Kayla Pedersen's emergence that will make up for Wiggins' graduation. But if they're right — if Pedersen becomes a bigger force than Appel — then Stanford could be #2.

However, I think the timing is perfect for California to be the Pac-10's highest-ranked team. They have three terrific seniors: Devanei Hampton and Ashley Walker are two of the best players in the country, and Alexis Gray-Lawson was the only Bear to win Pac-10 freshman of the year.

Across the bay, Stanford's best senior, Jillian Harmon, has heretofore played a complementary role to the likes of Wiggins and Brooke Smith. Appel's a junior, and Pedersen's a sophomore. JJ Hones and Roslyn Gold-Onwude are both juniors. The Cardinal seems to be the second-best team this year, whether that's a sign of apocalypse or not.

***

The Big West Conference basketball media day is Oct. 29, said the press release, but I started working on my conference preview articles in June. I had Big West Conference media summer.

***

Paul Westphal was named vice president of player operations in Dallas.

Westy is a Suns legend as a player, and he's the last coach to lead Phoenix to the Western Conference championship, so his rise through that cowflop Cuban's organization can be forgiven.

I was getting excited about the NBA season, but that was when I was sure I was getting a job writing about the Warriors. I've mostly resumed thinking that Pacific's Midnight Mania on the 17th is the next big thing on my calendar.

Yo! I be twittering myself!

• 17:35 @kingzgurl That's how it is at work...but I don't mind as I overheat easily (low temp=infection control) #
• 17:35 @itinerant_vae We played today again. I had fun. #
• 17:36 Seriously? Dishes done again? I..I...I might have to put out it's such a pleasant surprise (positive reinforcement ya'll)! #
• 22:08 @cheshire_monkey *hugs you* #

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got myself the three new Torchwood novels today... I'm seriously considering skipping any kind of socializing this weekend XD

Amusing sidenote? Almost perfect, the book that genderbends Ianto? Starts with a list like this:

Five Rare Times that Ianto Jones Swears (in no particular order)

Does James Goss, who wrote it, read fanfic? *cracks up*

A few days ago, I wrote about re-creating the Phoenix Suns' 1980-81 season with the Statis Pro Basketball board game, and then my friend Petrel said he did the same with the 1987-88 Golden State Warriors.

That Warriors team was horrible, losing 62 games and getting George Karl fired. Petrel said he managed to keep injury-prone Ralph Sampson on the floor, which meant Petrel's Warriors were better than Karl's, because the 7-foot-4 stick figure was second on the team in defensive rating and defensive rebound percentage, and fourth in usage rate.

There was something special about that game — during one of the first conversations I had with Associated Press sportswriter Dave Hogg, we discussed Moses Malone in Statis Pro terms — so when I discovered Phil Graham has been producing Statis Pro card sets for the NBA and WNBA annually — even though Hasbro/Avalon Hill quit in 1996 — I asked for his story.

"I'm just another guy who likes to play tabletop games," Graham said. "I couldn't bear to see my favorite game fade into lifelessness, so I decided to share cards I have been making."

Graham said his cards are an improvement over the originals. "When Avalon Hill gave away the formula [a method for homebrewing Statis Pro cards was included in the rulebooks], it wasn't complete and wasn't 100 percent accurate. It was pretty much just a tease that allowed one to create decent cards, but not good cards. I have spent thousands of hours perfecting a formula to my satisfaction, and the formula isn't the same for every season." Graham's task is made greater by adjusting for rules differences in the NBA, WNBA, ABA, and college games.

"I have been fascinated with Statis Pro Basketball since the mid-'70s," said Graham, "I have that same level of passion with both APBA and Superstar Baseball." His latest projects are all-time all-star sets for the baseball games, and then he said he'd have time to create the 2008 WNBA cards for Statis Pro Basketball.

For which I paid in advance.

( Spoilery Part ) ... a honeymoon couple. "

*accidentally spits coke*

I'm sorry ... what?

Not that I don't appreciate the reference, because I do, but something requiring a little less brain bleach would have been preferred.

Yo! I be twittering myself!

• 18:10 @itinerant_vae IJ is down or DOWN as in GONE? #
• 18:10 @cheshire_monkey Make a list of all the things that would not get done or fall apart if you were gone and tell them that THIS LIST... #
• 18:11 @cheshire_monkey Is WHY YOU SHOULD GIVE ME A RAISE. #
• 21:19 I FORGOT: GUESS WHO DID THE DISHES AGAIN? *dies* #
• 13:26 SO bored. used all peeps on firefly & sg1/sga & spn.... #

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and I'll stop spamming LJ, but...

Can I shoot people who post 'a drabble' that's not a hundred words? It's not a drabble, dammit!! It's a ficlet, vignette, flashfic whatEVER -- but it's not a drabble unless it's

a. 100 word (not 98, not 102 and definitely NOT 500+!)

b. is a selfcontained story -- ie has a beginning, middle and an end -- and stands on its own.

*feels slightly homicidal and wonders if it's nearing that time of the month again...*

I got my ballot in the mail yesterday. Biggest ballot ever in the state of Colorado, as I've heard. Two full pages, both twice the size of normal paper, printed front and back.

I've got it all filled out, folded back up, placed in the privacy sleeve and sealed up in the envelope. Once everyone else in the house is done, we can drop them off and save on postage (It costs $1.17 to mail these things!).

Does this mean the pollsters will stop calling me now?

I envy many aspects of Great Britain's electoral system. They have, what, two months? Six weeks? to campaign. None of this yearlong bullshit.

(Also, there are four different bathrooms in this house. WHY IS EVERYBODY USING THE ONE I NEED TO SHOWER IN AAAARGH.)

... good news?


How evil are you?

I met comedian Maria Bamford after her San Francisco show Tuesday to buy CDs. I said I'll take one of each, and how much do I owe you.

"Twenty. Two times 10. Seven. Where did that come from?" she said, taking my twenty.

I blinked at her, partly in agreement that "seven" is an odd number to barge in on that sentence, and partly because I still wasn't sure how much I owed her. Was 'two times 10' a description of our transaction, or the price of a single CD? What if she thought I was trying to cheat her?

"I don't make sense sometimes," she said. "Would you like me to sign a special card for you?"

"Please do," I said, and she took a Sharpie to a picture postcard of herself that includes FAQ, a Mad Lib, jokes, and helpful advice.

While she was marking, I said at a breathless fanboy rate: "I left my notebook lying open on the table in front of me, and it might've looked like I was a thief and a horrible person!"

"Oh, no, you could not be a horrible person wearing that mouthful of hardware."

"They confiscated my notebook!"

"Did they return it?!"

"Yes."

"Are you a comedian too?" she said. Which I'm sure was a 100% nice question, but in this teeny-tiny, narrow context of the conversation — during which I said club management thought I might've been a plagiarist — I was a little shocked.

Someone with some guilty conscience might've said: "Jesus fuck no! Is this a test!?", but I said "I'm a sportswriter."

"That's a lot like what I do. Everybody has strong opinions," she said.

I laughed. "It *is* a lot like what you do, just not ..." I was gonna say "... as funny", but then I thought "What a suckup fanboy thing to say" and my voice trailed off.

"Hecklers," she said about our shared work experience.

I laughed, and I took off. I was all set to get home to write about my cool meeting with Maria Bamford — the postcard makes it official: "I officially met Maria Bamford. She is a comedian. She was pretty nice — if not slightly distracted and highstrung."

There's a page missing from my notebook.

***

Want to know what I was writing all night?

When I said I re-created the 1981 Phoenix Suns season with Statis Pro Basketball, friend Petrel (I think it was Petrel) said he did the same with the 1988 Golden State Warriors. Statis Pro Basketball is just the best tool for that type of long-range simulations, according to me and another guy who didn't go outside ever while the simulations were running.

I wondered how much Statis Pro boxes are selling for these days. I did some web searching.

I discovered a guy who develops Statis Pro card sets for the NBA annually (Hasbro/Avalon Hill stopped maintaining Statis Pro Basketball a dozen years ago), and also the WNBA.

I made a hypothesis:

I believe that the 2008 Phoenix Mercury's record would've been better if rookie Brooke Smith had played in more than 10 games.

I suggest that if I re-created the Mercury's season — while simulating 700 minutes played for Brooke Smith — I would win more games on paper (I improved on the real-life 1981 Phoenix team's record, yay).

I also made some wishes for the Pacific Tigers. On the page that's torn out of my book, I wished that forward Whitney Price shoots better than 80 percent from the line, which would improve her contribution in two ways, I think: 1) Whitney would get more points from the line, and 2) After opponents knew that consciously or not, I bet they'd be more reluctant to foul her, and she might get a little more space to create her floor shots.

And I wrote down a question for the drink waitress: "Have you ever spilled a tray from laughing?".

Food and drink servers astound me with their understanding of balance. Watch them shift glasses around on a tray before removing one. And how they walk around without spilling shit! But what happens if someone on stage just nails some joke that's of deep personal meaning for the waitress? I wrote that in my book to remind myself to ask the waitress later.

Halfway through the headliner's set, the floor manager peers into my notebook with a flashlight, and tells me that he has to take it. I nodded, and as he disappeared, that's when it hit me he thought I might have been stealing.

I was a bit freaked while my notebook was out of my possession. Was he gonna dig through *every* page looking for incriminating material? What's in that book?!

He returned it, and said: "If you have to write anything down while you're here — even if it's a note for yourself — take it outside."

Of course I agreed with that, and put the notebook away. At the end of the show, I looked for the manager so I could apologize (which means I didn't look for the waitress to ask her if she's ever lost her balance to a punchline). "I'm sorry," I said. "That must've looked horrible!"

"It's OK," he said, and I got in line to meet Maria Bamford, thinking no more about the episode until I opened the notebook here on my desk.

Cripes, dude. I jotted a question for your waitress — who did a great job, but I don't like the cream liqueur you've put in place of Bailey's — and reminded myself that I wish a forward in Stockton to improve both of her shooting percentages. What's offensive about that to you personally, or club management officially?

Maria Bamford supports me in my journey of scribing notes about women's basketball in coffeehouses, elementary school cafeterias, and comedy clubs before the opener goes on.

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