You are in the Brett Bugle archives right now. The HOMEPAGE is much more important.
2006-07-31 again
Dad left me a voicemail message last night while I was away (watching DVDs at Danielle's house), so I called the parents today. Here's what I learned: Jerry broke 4 ribs yesterday, wow! And after Mom and Dad finish selling their current house and moving to a new one nearby, Lois is willing to drive cross-country with me for a scenic trip down Route 66 with an ultimate destination of Hollywood. It's nonstop excitement in the Mason family.
Seems kind of odd that my family is this cordial and connected right now. No one is pulling away from the pack. If we weren't scattered across the entire USA, we'd probably all have Sunday dinner together every week, or maybe a Saturday morning routine of chocolate-chip pancakes à la casa de Grandma.
Time to take advantage of the blissful bond. Yes, yes, this could be very rewarding for me. I shall ask the mother and father to give me a no-interest loan of 45 large which I will use to pay off my house. Then I can divert the money formerly owed to Chase Home Finance into financing a luxury trip around the world. Yes, yes. (In time, I will pay back the loan, but not until I have stirred up insane amounts of jealousy in the lives of all my cubicle-dwelling ex-girlfriends. MWAH-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!)
2006-07-31
Keeping in mind that variety is the spice of life and you learn something new every day, put these next three links in a handy place for those times when you are crawling the world wide web and want to be surprised by what you find next:
In the good old days, when I needed a quick hyperspace jump to another topic, I'd pop open Blogdex.net. But then it died, and I needed an alternative. The three links above have been excellent, not pants at all.
Did you catch that? I just said "pants" like it was an adjective. Yesterday, I was browsing the first link (LJ images) and it led me to an LJ where the user said "I am pants at flipping pancakes." That stopped me in my tracks, tripped me up, made me totally switch directions in my websurfing. I had to know more about the pants.
Sure hope you start using these links as much as I do now, and I will leave you with this confession: I am pants at ironing pants.
2006-07-30
It's Sunday morning, and I just woke up, and I immediately recorded this exact paragraph in my journal:
7/30 dream = I was in a place where it was paved, but there was a wooden staircase nearby, and I was sitting near the staircase, waiting for Dad. Then a homeless guy came up and grabbed a handful of spaghetti from a bowl sitting on a table that I hadn't noticed before. Apparently Dad had set up a table under the stairs where homeless people could feed themselves. The homeless guy said "dominant spaghetti!" and more homeless people appeared. Two of the homeless ladies were crying joyfully because the paper bowls had been recently washed.
2006-07-29
Saw 2 films at AmStar Cinemas last night; here are my thoughts.
Miami Vice goes way too slowly to be an action movie. Come on, peoplllllllllllle. Put more action in the action movie. Don't drag out your little cops-and-robbers story for 2 whole hours. Sheeeeeeeesh.
Monster House was much more interesting than Miami Vice, but I did not like its use of dynamite. Imagine what will happen when kids start playing with dynamite after seeing this movie. The nuttiest thing is that the hero lit the fuse unnecessarily! He could have accomplished his mission easily without ever lighting the fuse, since there was lots of fire in the monster house already. Note to movie makers: never, ever teach kids to light the fuse on a bundle of dynamite.
Speaking of impressionable kids, my little neighbor boy Zach used to come over and pretend to be Spider-Man. Now he comes over and pretends to be William from A Knight's Tale. He and I have a new game we play in my driveway: bicycle jousting. We use broomsticks as lances, but recently my number-one MySpace friend suggested we use pool noodles instead. Brilliant! Got 'em; can't wait to try 'em. "Adhemar" will get his revenge on "William" at last!
2006-07-28
Been doing a lot of thinking about travel lately, and now I have a question for my audience. Which of you Bugle readers would be interested in going globetrotting with me, if you could afford it? I am not yet independently wealthy, so I can't pay your way, but I sure would like to form some potential plans for you to keep me company as we jet off to foreign adventures. There are at least 3 people who are confirmed as being okay with that; any others? Write me to tell me what countries and cities you'd choose.
2006-07-26
Ace Weekly is hosting another advance movie preview, so pick up a copy of Ace and get details on the Talladega Nights screening. This will be the first one that won't be shown at Regal Cinemas; it's taking place at the new Cinemark multiplex at Fayette Mall instead. (I'll probably attend, since I've decided to postpone my travels for at least a month.)
2006-07-25
The last time I mentioned dark chocolate M&M's was October 2005 because that's when they were last on the market.
Today at Kroger, I discovered that they are back on the market, and they're not part of a movie promotion like before. It seems like they're gonna be a normal part of the candy aisle now, in their purple bags. Dude! SWEEEEET!!
2006-07-24
Every so often, like every 7 to 10 years, I reach a point in my life where I think "I've achieved stagnation. I have no compelling reasons to stick around, but I have no compelling reasons to scoot." Back in '95 was a huge point like that, and it motivated me to do my big 3-month trip to France, followed by my big move to Lexington.
In the back of my mind these days, I'm having this same thought but with more reservations. I have an urge to pack up and leave Kentucky and get a change of scenery, but if I did that, I'd be leaving quite a bit behind:
First, my dream job might be winding down, but it's definitely not over. I should stay in Kentucky until it's over. However, it's possible that I could finish my KY work remotely from another state because my programming is easily distributed to my client's offices over email and FTP.
Second, my social life here is splendid, since I have established certain patterns of visiting with my women friends during their lunch breaks, and then I dance with different women friends at dances. Something new is that I am finding guy friends to hang out with, but that is not working as well as my normal routine of seeing women friends. If I move to another state, I can reinvent myself and find new guy friends and girlfriends in proper proportions. Plus, I can have new adventures to describe to my Kentucky friends on snail-mail.
Third, my house is in a quiet neighborhood with excellent school districts. It'd be a shame to give that up before starting a family. On the other hand, I'm sure I could find another great house as soon as I find a great wife. So liquidating my current house would be a simple way to finance a few years of international travel and international courtships; how tempting.
My 30's will be over soon, and what will I wish I had accomplished by age 40? Geez, I don't know what I really want to do next. That's why I spend every day downloading and watching TV shows and movies and karaoke files; I am choosing to be passive and indecisive about big life-changing stuff, just to see what happens. Idiotic, you say? Wow, that's harsh. Leave me alone. I gots some thinkin' to do.
2006-07-21 again
Come to the Contra dance at ArtsPlace tonight, and bring your kazoo. It's open band (all the musicians are volunteers). You know you want to play with me!
2006-07-21
Today is Ariana's birthday. But I don't want to talk about that. I just made an exciting discovery, and I want to use this blog entry to spread the news.
In my recent searches for karaoke song files in French, it's been extremely difficult to find anything except "Michelle" by The Beatles. But that's because I was looking for the CDG format (a.k.a. CD+G). Francophiles, take note: there is a ton of stuff out there in the KAR format, which is the next best thing to CDG. Glory, glory, hallelujah! Or, as the French say, quelle joie! Do you want some of Laurent Voulzy's or Lara Fabian's (among many, many other singers') tune files for your next sing-a-long party? They're out there, oui oui.
Speaking of overseas adventures, something else I was doing to kill time today was to poke random destinations into Kayak.com. When I pulled up a comparison of ticket prices for a flight to Sydney, Australia, it dawned on me that I will be going through Los Angeles to get there. How perfect would that be, to combine a dream trip to Australia with a visit to my sister in Hollywood? Wow, that would kick ask. Heather hates when I say that, but it's worth repeating, that would kick ask. All I need now is a few thousand bucks of savings that's not already earmarked for getting a new roof on my house.
2006-07-20
Three more notes about this rockin' town I live in:
(1) On my way to see XMen 3, I noticed that the Imperial Hunan restaurant has been leveled. Know what that means? Oh, baby baby, they're building an IHOP at the corner of Palumbo and New Circle soon. It will be the only IHOP in Kentucky, once it's built. Bring it on!
(2) After the lights have gone down to start the show, Carmike dollar theater runs exactly 10 minutes of TV-commercial footage where movie previews should be. Know what that means? Yep; I'm never going back there.
(3) When you learn that WKQQ will run a karaoke contest at Caddyshack's bar, you will soon be surprised to learn that "karaoke contest" is defined as "anyone who sings is allowed to enter a drawing for an iPod." Know what that means? It means nothing, nothing at all. It is meaningless.
2006-07-18
There are two places in downtown Lexington that I'd like to avoid forevermore. I never have a good experience at either place.
The Dame cannot figure out volume control or climate control. The Kentucky Theater cannot figure out surround sound or focus knobs.
No further complaints, your honor.
2006-07-16
And now it is time to respond to viewer mail.
D writes, "You mention 'girlfriend' and then in other entries say you're trying to still learn ways to pick up chicks. I'm confused. LOL"
My reply: LOL, indeed. I have never understood women, despite having two older sisters. My latest girlfriend is not speaking to me anymore, after a crazy incident at a karaoke night, so I need Rob to teach me what he can teach me, in hopes that one day I'll get the whole situation worked out and settle down with a wife for better or for worse.*
H writes, "you don't want to be tied down to the corporate life and yet now you're excited about a corporate job offer"
My reply: Who wouldn't be excited about being on cruise control inside their dream job and then getting offered a respectable alternate job? Mmmm, hmm! My career is rockin', and my options keep piling up. I like that.
* speaking of wives, I attended a lovely wedding today, in an Orthodox church, and during the ceremony and reception, I took over 300 pictures.
2006-07-15
As I sit at home eating Bastille Day leftovers that were lovingly prepared last night by my Gemini twin Shannon, I smile about a couple of things I learned yesterday.
1. There is a bar near my house called Bogart's, and it's Rob's favorite place in Lexington. He is teaching me how to have "game" and chat up women. I've never bothered learning how to do the whole singles-bar thing before, so this is a fun (and mostly pointless) course of study. Once I have "game," I hope to have better luck landing dance partners at outdoor concerts.
2. Since I've been doing a lot of karaoke lately, both at Grapevine and at Caddyshack's, I decided to check and see what kind of karaoke software or files I could find on the web. Lo and behold, what I found is that it is incredibly easy to turn any PC into a karaoke machine. You can get tons of CDG files on BitTorrent, and you can run them through a simple player called KaraFun, and bam, that's it. Can't believe it took me so long to discover this, considering how much I like singing pop songs. The best part is that I can now practice the songs at home, one right after another, saving myself tons of time that I'd normally spend waiting for the screeching drunks to get off the stage.
2006-07-14
What an exciting week this has been. Yesterday was especially uplifting. First thing I did was to go on an Ale-8-One tour (see my self-portraits at the factory), which I've been wanting to do for years. Then during lunch with Bethany at Buffalo Wild Wings, I saw a former coworker who encouraged me to come visit my old workplace. So, later that afternoon, when I did visit him, I found myself with a job interview and a job offer. Followed that up with some karaoke at Caddyshack's, which went very well and earned me lots of compliments. Sweeeeet.
The excitement doesn't end there. Tonight I'm attending a Bastille Day soirée. Sweeeet.
2006-07-12
When you're a guy who loses his hair in his mid-twenties, you spend the rest of your life wondering how much more attractive you'd be to women if you still had a decent head of hair. Believe me, I know.
Plenty of women — actually, most women — have told me that it doesn't matter at all. The only kind of male-hairstyle problem that a woman will admit to finding with a bald guy is when he does the stupid "combover" cluelessness.
Well, now, for the first time, I have an honest girlfriend. Nissa is constantly hounding me to shave my head. She won't be satisfied with my bald head unless it is in any other condition than completely shaved. And two days after I shave it, it's grown out just a tiny bit, and she begs me to shave it again.
How great is that? I finally found someone who properly represents the female population. Without her constant nagging, I would think that it's okay to let my hair grow for a week or so, and I would be completely ignorant of how unattractive that really is. Thanks, sweetie.
footnote: don't forget to come to Grapevine tonight (after 9 p.m.) to either do karaoke with your favorite bald man or watch your favorite bald man do karaoke.
2006-07-11
Shoot, we all missed a big milestone about a week ago.
I have published a Brett Bugle website for exactly 10 years, starting on July 3rd, 1996.
If you want to look for it in the "Wayback Machine" at archive.org, the very first address I had was www.geocities.com/Paris/4788, but archive.org apparently didn't know about me until 1999. Since I've kept every version of every type of Brett Bugle archived on my home computer, let me throw you this screenshot I just made.
In the last 10 years, I've learned exactly what I can offer the electronic world that no one else will. Namely, transcribed lyrics for both "Boogie in your Butt" and "Superman (theme from Scrubs)," images of dulce de leche M&M's, a fan page for Bellamy Young, and a PostSecret archive. Guess I've wasted my life.
footnote: earlier this year, you read on this site that I had my first ballroom-dance lessons in April 1996. So, in addition to me blogging, I've also been using dances to meet women for a full decade.
2006-07-10
In the not-too-distant past, I was a television maniac. You could usually find me wasting primetime evening hours on a couch with a remote in my hand, and you would shed tears of worry for me. Well, good news... it recently dawned on me that I very rarely turn on my TV anymore! Yep, the magical world of BitTorrent has saved me from so very many evil things like TV commercials and cable bills and TiVo subscription fees. In this new world, you can find me wasting every possible hour staring at my computer screen instead, watching shows and movies that I've downloaded off the Internet.
Some people are addicted to TiVo. Some people are addicted to MySpace. I am addicted to BitTorrent. Without BT, I would never have known about the "Boondocks" cartoon on Adult Swim, and I would never have been able to share "Smith and Jones Sketchbook" with Dad.
Of course, I still need a television set to see local news, for those rare times when I want to watch local news* (or local weather reports). And I really miss having closed-captions on my shows. But the tradeoff is that while none of the BitTorrent shows have captions, they also have NO ADVERTISEMENTS; wow. Plus, a much bigger range of shows is available to me, pulled from basic cable and premium cable and British airwaves and everywhere else.
You might want to learn more about all this, soon. As John Belushi says in Animal House, "don't cost nothin'."
* footnote about local news: I have a feeling that I'll get more Lexington visitors if I put the words "Barking Ban" here. We're getting new noise ordinances which allow us to punish our neighbors who do nothing about their barking dogs. Yes! Finally! I'm so happy about this. The one thing I would change about my neighborhood, if I could, is the number of barking dogs residing within. My perfect little neighborhood needs a Barking Ban.
2006-07-09
Need to beautify this text-only page today. It's just not the same here without all the clip art I used to post, huh? Here's what I'll do; I'll use today's entry to send greetings to 2 women I used to chat with occasionally but never see anymore:
Do you remember that empty feeling you had when you saw Kill Bill Volume One, Matrix Reloaded or Back to the Future II — the feeling of not having satisfaction or closure? Get used to it; you will have that exact same feeling when you watch Pirates of the Caribbean II.
What all four of these movies have in common is that they all had two movie portions shot at the same time. After filming is complete, the studios dole out half now, half later. Mmm, mmm, good! Thank you, Mr. Studio, for the repeated lesson in "delayed gratification."
2006-07-08 begins
The lesson I just learned from posting my most recent blog entry (below) is that I should request invites to cookouts before the holiday happens. Found out too late that lots of people would have included me in their Independence Day parties, but they all assumed I was busy. My bad. Anyone having a Bastille Day cookout I can crash?
It is now my turn to invite you. Come to Grapevine bar in Tates Creek Center next Wednesday night. You and I will have great fun doing karaoke together. The Wednesday night DJ at Grapevine is much more entertaining than the Tuesday night DJ, plus, you know me, I'm always a riot.
One person who finds me very entertaining is my Asian girlfriend Nissa. (She's from Jordan, which is in the Middle East, which is officially part of Asia, so I will refer to her as my Asian girlfriend.) Nissa and I went to the blood center a few days ago, and she gave blood for the first time ever and was overjoyed. Today I introduced her to Heavenly Ham, and she was overjoyed again. No matter where I take her, she's overjoyed. Tomorrow we'll probably go digital-camera shopping at Best Buy, and she'll giggle with glee. I can't imagine the amount of uncontrollable excitement she'd have if I learned Arabic.
2006-07-05
i think
mom and dad
should get a
grand piano
when they move to sorrento and i came to the conclusion yesterday when i was watching the lexington fourth of july
parade
from an air conditioned room inside the lexington history museum that the parade was really just a long series of commercials for different groups like the national guard or the clear channel radio companies or the shriners plus i have one other thought about
fireworks
which is that you can get a really good view of them from the
top of any parking garage
like for example the university of kentucky garage on limestone near the student center which is where i watched the fireworks at ten last night
by myself
because i could not get a hold of any friends to go with me and i was not invited to any cookouts and i was all alone
on a national holiday
which reminds me of that scene in when harry met sally where carrie fisher is describing the
benefits of coupling
to meg ryan
2006-07-04
You have a blog. You review your logfiles. You get inspired to post another entry aimed directly at the people who left search results in your logfiles. Yes, you and I are a lot alike.
The following is aimed at my future visitors but not at you.
What can I say about Megan Newquist that hasn't already been said? She's the best. She probably gets all her flowers at Michler's Florist because they have some seriously attractive bouquets. Since she's in the news business (on WTVQ 36), she must know all about the new IHOP coming to the corner of New Circle Road and Palumbo Drive, near Woodhill Plaza, in Lexington. One wonders if she knows about TK Design and Posh Hair Salon, also. It's a safe bet that you'll never catch her going into Priscilla's Intimate Apparel without a disguise. Oh, that Megan Newquist, she's continually gettin' lucky in Kentucky.
2006-07-02
MONEY
Did you land a six-figure contract with the city government recently, a jackpot you don't have to share with your employees because you work by yourself? Or did a mortgage company recently tell you that you have "walk on water" credit, so you can buy any mansion that strikes your fancy? Whoa, mama, two of my postcard recipients are quite blessed.
From what I've told you about my job, you might be fooled into thinking that I, too, have loads of money, like these two people I know. But it's all just empty typing here at the Brett Bugle. You won't find me paper chasing; I am not motivated by big bucks. Truth is, my annual income is comparable to the average Kentucky schoolteacher's income.
Here's a truth I saw recently, one which defines my financial goals: money buys you time.
Why stress out about my career or my paycheck? All my bills are covered, easily. Plus, there's an abundance of room on my calendar for leisure activities. (I have waaay more free time than any teacher would, even after looking at that sweet 3-month summer break every teacher gets.)
I'm clearly lacking ambition. Or maybe, just maybe, I have a fear of success.
2006-07-01
The new version of Internet Explorer (IE7) has a feed-reader built into it. I want to remind everyone that I have offered a handcrafted news feed on my site since May 16, 2005. After you install the latest Microsoft web browser (or the current Firefox browser), be sure to subscribe to my RSS XML! I'm watching you... my logfiles will tell me when you finally get off your hands and get with the program.
2006-07-00
Would you like to read my blog entries from June 2006 or May 2006? Sure you would! Feel free! Go read them! Gosh!
For search engines: Kentucky KY 40504 USA, Brett Mason, not in Lexinton
