Tx_doc - Archived Blog Posts

[tx_doc]

I got selected for jury duty this week. Rather, as the judge put it, I was not deselected. I'm not complaining, but I just want to know what I should do with that $40 a day that I am going to be getting. Perhaps I should give it to Rachael Ray to do a show about it. BTW - the food in the courthouse is SHITE.

 

[tx_doc]

Well, I'm done with jury duty. I'm sitting in the park across from the courthouse because they have free wifi and I'm debating on what I am going to do for lunch.
There was a woman who was suing her insurance company because they wouldn't pay to repair the foundation on her house. We ended up siding with the plaintiff. She was very happy. The insurance company said they wouldn't pay because she filed her claim too late. But they did send her a check to repair the old pipes. We figured that if they sent her a check to repair the old pipes, then obviously the claim wasn't too late. She had her policy renewed 3 years before the foundation cracked. We also figured, if they renewed her policy, they inspected the house so if the damage was old, they still had it covered by renewing the policy.
Both sides had expert after expert talking about soil samples and tree roots and pipes for hours on end. The soil samples are called "Boring Samples" and at one point the judge could tell we were falling asleep and said "boring samples... interesting term" which caused the jury box to erupt in laughter. Well, I think I'm going to walk to Noodleism and then bus it home. I'm not going to come into work today.

 

[tx_doc]

My boyfriend came home from work last night late and decided to make himself a sandwich. While cutting the bread he sliced his left middle finger open. Instead of using the cutting board he was holding the bread in his hands. He made a gasp noise and I knew what happened. I took a look at his finger and drove him to the hospital.
After filling out all the information in the waiting room, we sat in there for an hour and a half just waiting. We saw that House was playing on the waiting room TV and laughed at the irony. Finally, someone called his name. They triaged him and put us back out in the waiting room queue. We were in line for the "fast track" room.
While waiting the next hour as his finger continues to bleed, we get called over for the insurance information. She asked us our "relationship" and in a moment of bitchiness I responded "...well, we can't legally get married in this state..." She responded, "uh... I have life partner." I think my statement made her feel guilty.
Finally, we get into the "fast track" room so we can get "in and out" of the hospital ER. We had a nice nurse named Teresa who looked strangely like my sister in law who lives in Michigan. People are walking in and out of the curtained room. Finally the doctor examines his finger - pulling at it and examining the blood coming out of it. "You're gonna need some stitches". My crankiness kicked in and I had to stifle myself from saying "no shit Sherlock". He gets 3 stitches, we pay the $100 co-pay and are sent on our merry way. While paying for the visit, I made a comment on how busy the ER was and the clerk behind the counter said "Yeah, you never want to come in on a Monday. It's always busy."

 

[tx_doc]

This afternoon we went to the Drafthouse to see the new Bond movie: Casino Royale. It was all about how well we thought Daniel Craig was going to do as the blond Bond-shell. Seriously, he did quite well.
But I am a little pissed. I was told that there was going to be full frontal; that he and Eva filmed a few scenes nude. The closest scene was a "sidal" shot of him. I know I can go rent some of his other films, but I thought it would be interesting to see a different Bond. Even Barbara Broccoli mentioned that she was in favor of the full frontal.
I think I was just pissy because we showed up to the theatre 45 minutes early. We sat in our seats, ordered our food and almost an hour into the movie, I was wondering where our food was. I ended up summoning our waiter and asking where my food was. He said that the kitchen was busy and I said that I understood that but I had been waiting almost 2 hours for my food. They ended up comping my meal but I'm still irritated. Also because he has to ask what our order was again.
I love Judi Dench. But I was disappointed that John Cleese wasn't in this movie as Q. There was no Q in this movie. I also didn't care for the Bond theme song... where are my divas?

 

[tx_doc]

I have a good friend that I've known for about 10 years.
I bought a new laptop last year and he asked to buy my old one. I spend almost $2K on the laptop he wanted from me but I decided to cut him a great deal and sell it to him for much cheaper than I bought and included lots of software because he really needed a computer and I already had 4 at home. I sold the computer to him and said that it would be fine to make payments. Well, I deposited one of his payment checks and the check bounced. Of course, this causes a chain reaction where my bank had to cover some checks I wrote and charged me over draft fees.
I called him a couple days ago to tell him that the check bounced, but he won't return my calls. He won't return my emails. This isn't like him. I'm starting to get annoyed almost to the point of going to his job and causing a scene (because I learned from my mother to be a drama queen sometimes).
And now I find from another friend of ours that he's going on a vacation this weekend. I'm just seriously pissed. He probably wrote me a hot check so that he could pay the deposit on his vacation. He better be in the hospital with a cathedar to be ignoring me for this long.

 

[tx_doc]

I just got an email from TxCare - Texas Coalition for Adoption Resources & Education™. This is an adoption support group that I've belonged to for a few years. I recently updated my contact information on the website. I was recently contacted asking me to verify my birth certificate number to see if it matches a number that they have in their registry. Immediately, I became lightheaded.
When I was 20 or so, I was contacted by a woman claiming to be my mother. She said she got my name from another adoption registry. She was living in New Jersey but said she moved there from Texas. She told me about her 7 children. At that point, I stopped. I really didn't need to have another large family like that. I already had a huge amount of siblings. More would be overload - greedy, almost. I never thought about contacting my birth parents after that letter.
Since I got this new email, I'm obsessing. I've googled the woman's name on the birth certificate. She still lives in Austin. Her information closely matches mine. Not only does she live in Austin, but she lives minutes away from me. I need to get off the internet right now, becuase I keep looking at her name and phone number and thinking to myself "should I just call it? What would I say? Should I pretend to be a representative for TxCARE to pry more information from her to see if we match? Do I want to deceive her like that before we ever meet? Does she have any other kids? Does she still know my father?" I'm actually making myself sick from it all.
So, tomorrow I'm taking the day off from work and getting my happy ass down to the Texas Bureau of Vital Statistics. I need to get a copy of my original birth certificate to see where this is going.

 

[tx_doc]

It's been a rough month for me and my friends.
Death has surrounded us this entire month.
I had a friend who lost her mother right after new year's day. Her father (they were divorced) was driving to the funeral and got into a car accident. He attended the funeral in a neck brace and a couple weeks later was still complaining of a headache. He dropped dead. He had an aneurism they think was caused by the car accident.
Another friend had to bury both her grandmother and aunt in a period of 2 weeks.
Another friend was celebrating her niece's baby shower when the niece went into labor. She wasn't due for 2 more weeks. The baby was stillborn because the cord was wrapped around his neck and they weren't able to get him to breathe.
My dad's brother recently died. He and his wife were in Europe celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary when he had a stroke. He was in hospital for almost 2 weeks but didn't survive it.
I'm just glad that January is finally done so no one else can die during it.

 

[tx_doc]

This Friday, some friends and I are cutting out of work early to go see Barack Obama speak. He originally was going to be speaking at the University of Texas campus, but they had to get a bigger venue because of the high interest. I'm very excited to hear him speak and actually hear him talk about his platform, instead of just reading it.
If you're in the Austin area and interested, here's the website to sign up to go. It's free and at Auditorium Shores. They only ask that you register and bring a copy of your confirmation email to get in.

 

[tx_doc]

Woah. Someone was off their meds recently. There's a girl I work with... rather, used to work with who was on some medication for her being bi-polar.
Last week she had some freak out moments. She was convinced that people were plotting against her. She knew they were whispering about her behind her back... but the reality of it was that they were planning someone's surprise birthday party. She started talking about how everyone was backstabbing her by telling other people that she's bi-polar - which they didn't - but now everyone knows because she's freaking out. I suggested to her that she call her psychiatrist. She said that she's "cycling too fast" and her dr. refuses to call her back. Then she said that there were 2 girls in the office who better not fuck with her today because they don't know what she could do. She said "I can fuck them up.... I brought the big truck today."
It was at that moment that we decided to tell our boss what the hell was going on. Moments later, she was called down to the HR offices and they walked her out of the office after taking her badge and handing her a box of all her desk stuff.
She doesn't technically work for my company, but for a 3rd party temp service. It was the temp service that told her that she wasn't a fit for their company.
Unfortunately, I thought she was gone - after a few hours had passed. I'm walking out of the back of the building I work in and there she is. Shaking. Holding a cigarette in her hand. She tries to talk to me, but I'm kinda moving fast to get away from her. My immediate thought was, she left and got a gun. I didn't want to be the one to piss her off. She said she wanted me to tell a few of her co-workers that she wasn't coming back and that she wanted to make sure that they were able to finish her work for her. I said "sure" and told her that everything would be alright. She said "no, no it won't be" and then took off.
I go back in the building and there's a girl who comes up to me and tells me that the one who was let go has been freaking out at work for the last week or so and when she gets stressed out she will sit in a bathroom stall and cut her arms and legs with a box cutter. I asked her why she never told anyone. She said she didn't want her made at her. I don't understand some people.

 

[tx_doc]

So, I joined a new flickr group. This one has you post a self pic every day for a year. It's actually a surreal and cool idea, I think. This is my first pic in the series. I decided to take a pic of myself as soon as I woke up - at 5 in the morning (because we all know that you look MARVELOUS first thing in the morning.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/docinaustin/443410262/

 

[tx_doc]

Last week was the end of our fiscal quarter at work. I busted my tail and it shows. My boss set a goal. I had to get 85% of the goal made. I ended up making 127% of my goal. Success. I feel like I accomplished a great deal. Now, I want to sleep for the next week. I went so far as working on last Friday from 7:30AM to 5:30PM and then coming back that same night at 1AM and working until 9AM. My internal clock is so fucked up from that now. Oh well. C'est la vie!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/docinaustin/445379281

 

[tx_doc]

Welll, if you've been living in a cave or under a rock you have no idea what today is. Today is iPhone day.

Today is also the day that Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon get pissed with Apple and AT&T because so many of their clients jump ship.

During out potluck at work, I noticed that they were setting up an enormous iPhone display in the lobby. This seems to be the same display they are placing in the Apple stores across the US. Like the überdork that I am, I had to get a pic of myself in front of this display. And I don't care. I have no shame.

Speaking of shame.... check out Susie's new hairdo!






Her mother wasn't too pleased when Susie called to let her know that she went more "Austin" with her hair. I think it'll take some time to get used to but I think it suits her just fine. She seems to be much more happy with this style and color. She's gonna be the last of the mohicans next week at work. Hopefully, all the stress that a certain someone is causing will just go away. But I doubt it.

​

 

[tx_doc]

Big Brother 8 - Premier

So, it's definitely summer. How can I tell, you ask? Because CBS is showing Big Brother. And now Showtime's gotten in on it.... they are children from the same parent company after all. If you can't pimp your shows on another network, then.... Oh who cares.
This year's trick is.... houseguests who know each other. Big fucking deal. But now they had to add another trick. America's Choice. This is a guy, let's call him Eric, who is going to do anything that you ask him to do. Wait, you don't really get to ask him to do anything. CBS has a pre-set idea of what you want him to do. Like make Eric cry. Have him pretend something traumatic happened in his life and work on the sympathy of, honestly, one of the only people on the show that I like (despite her "I don't want my children coming up to me telling me they picked a gay lifestyle").

Now this season is about hair products and girls with ear piercing voices. And by hair products, I mean the guys. You would think that Queer Eye was working on Big Brother now.... their show is over on Bravo so it's not like some of them don't have the time.... Jai Rodriguez, hello? I've never seen so many "straight" guys spend so much time primping and preening in the bathroom. And yes, most normal people would have changed the channel at this time. I just don't have the energy.

This season is also about GIANT NIPPLES. I kid you not.

This guy's nipples are larger than silver dollars. Joe has no chest hair. And the nipples are the color of burnt caramel. It's really distracting. And he's got enough fat deposits behind the nipples to compete with an eleven year old girl. It's really gross and distracting. Someone who runs the Big Brother house, please stop letting him take his shirt off.
If you don't believe me... check this video out. It's gonna crack you up.... and there's a bit of the cute ex-football player admitting that he's given guys blowjobs before.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9oFlpxH61M

Oh and tomorrow night is the premier of Psych. Watch it if you haven't before. I love this show. It's on USA Network. Check your local listings. It's gonna be worth it. The season premier is going to have BOTH Gina Gershon and Tim Curry. Excellence.

 

[tx_doc]

Yesterday was Halloween day. Blayne, Walker, Chris and I went to see the latest "revisioning" of Halloween as imagined by Rob Zombie. I think I've come to the conclusion that I just really don't enjoy any of his movies. I didn't care for the "Devil's Rejects" or "House of 1000 Corpses". The only thing I kinda enjoyed was his trailer for "Grindhouse" - "Werewolf Women of the S.S."


Now, don't get me wrong, Halloween had some moments that I enjoyed. Unfortunately, they didn't have much to do with the movie as opposed to moments of "hey! it's that guy".
Malcolm McDowell played Dr. Samuel Loomis and was so preoccupied with his hair piece that I kept only thinking of the moment in the Charlie's Angels movie where they told Cameron Diaz to "flip her goddamn hair".
Brad Dourif played the Sheriff, Lee Brackett. He was Doc Cochran in Deadwood. And he played Chucky in the Chucky movies. That was one of my "hey, it's that guy" moments that made the film enjoyable. I'm totally lying here.
Tyler Mane was Michael Myers. Well, adult Michael. I'll get into the young Mikey in a moment. Tyler played another semi-mute character in X-Men when he took the roll of Sabretooth. My white trash readers will probably know him as Big Sky from the WCW (that's wrestling, if you didn't know). No moment of "coolness" with him playing the character. All you needed was someone over 6'5" with long hair and who know how to wield a knife/sabre/sword/2x4/etc.
Let's not forget Zombie's pièce de résistance.... Sheri Soliel Moon Fry Unit Zappa Zombie. Ok, her name is Sheri Moon Zombie. And if you don't know who she is... she's Rob's pole dancing wife. Seriously, she looks like Sheryl Crow if she never was a backup singer for Michael Jackson and worked at the Yellow Rose. The woman can't act her way out of a paper bag. Now I do had to admit.... sometimes she looks like Elizabeth Shue.
Ok, I'm not going to do a biopic on each of the rest, but here's a rundown of the other cameos from the movie. William Forsythe - not to be confused with the guy who was the voice of Charlie in Charlie's Angels. Udo Kier, not playing a vampire. Clint Howard, Ron's younger, creepy big-headed brother. Danny Trejo who currently seems to be the hardest working man in showbiz, if you check out his IMDB page. Leslie Easterbook was one of the police officers - ironic that she's playing a cop again.
Now the young actress who played Laurie Strode was amazing....ly horrible. My gods! When it boiled down to it, I was rooting for Michael just to off her so I wouldn't have to see or hear her anymore. She just needs to go back to the Disney channel.
Danielle Harris, who is 30, returns to the Halloween chain but by playing a completely different character. The 5' actress was tormented by Michael Myers in Halloween 4 and Halloween 5. I do have to admit, it was good keeping her in there... just for her screams. Not bone chilling but I enjoyed her.
Oh I almost forgot one of the most bizarre cameos yet. Micky Dolenz. Yes, Micky Dolenz of the Monkees. He was a gun dealer. I didn't really catch anything he said, because I was laughing so much. It wasn't until I looked him up on IMDB where I found that he was the voice of Arthur in the Tick.

I'm sure you're familiar with the Spy Kid movies directed by Robert Rodriguez. Well, the son from the movies makes a cameo and dies (not that I'm ruining anything for you) at the hand of creepy young Mikey. Poor Daryl Sabara - he's grown to be such an ugly young man. UGLY, I say.

The kid who played Michael Myers as a child was gross to look at. Perhaps that's why they gave him masks to wear throughout the whole movie. Seriously, the kid was creepy.
Here's the creepiest part of the whole thing. The movie raked in over $30M this 4 day Labor Day Weekend. Guess this mean we have more Rob Zombie films in the future to look forward to. Shit. The original movie took in over $60M worldwide, which for the 70s and being an independent film, was outstanding.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP720aGUFh0

 

[tx_doc]

Now, I have a problem with this. I've had friends who have attempted (and even succeeded) suicide. Notice the direction of the scar. This is what we refer to as "for fake". Going in the direction of the vein is "for real". Perhaps he was hanging out with his brothers and saw a trailer for the movie "Drillbit Taylor" and was joking with them that this is the beginning (or somewhere in the middle) of his career going down the crapper.
I'm so tired of everyone going to fucking rehab. "I'm gay!" - go to rehab. "I'm a raving racist wackjob!" - go to rehab. "I'm a spoiled teen who drinks like a fish and crashes into things while my nose is still numb from cocaine!" - go to rehab. Remember the good old days when celebrities (comparing them to modern day celebs is quite a poor stretch) kept their private lives PRIVATE? Sure Rock Hudson was a flaming 'mo, but no one was taking polaroids of him getting/giving it Greek style. Well, not that we're aware of. It was because he respected his fans.
If I see another blonde bimbo flashing her twat all over the interweb.... well, someone's gonna pay for it.

My advise to young Hollywood: close your legs, buy some panties, when you're under 21 just have a private party at your home and stop acting like the world is against you when you get busted. It is because we ARE against you. But you brought it upon yourself. You don't have any redeeming qualities that makes us feel the least bit sorry for you. We hate you.... we really hate you.
To quote David Cross: Shut up you fucking baby!

 

[tx_doc]

So, Taylor Dayne is coming out with a new album next week. It's called "Satisfied". Wow. It's been about 10 years since her last. I've been wondering what she's been up to just the other week and I get an email from Amazon.com notifying me that I can pre-order the CD for 9.99. Not an interesting blog, but it's something that was just on my mind.

 

[tx_doc]

Whether you celebrate Christmas, XMas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, the Winder Solstice or any variation of these.... I want to wish all my pals on JUB a very wonderful time and here to looking forward to the New Year. I hope everyone stays safe and plays safe.