You are in the Brett Bugle archives right now. The HOMEPAGE is much more important.
2006-08-31 again
I should have waited until tomorrow to have the premiere of my new webcomic, since tomorrow is the first of the month. Oh, well. Whatever.
2006-08-31
Soon I will start experimenting with my own webcomic. Using syndicated newspaper comics as clipart for my blog is no longer good enough for me. There are some things I'd be able to express in a comic that I would not share as normal bloggy news articles. Stick around and see what happens.
And, whatever else you do, you must view this webcomic example:
Not much to report in the past few days because I've gone back to work. The vacations can't last forever, unfortunately.
Speaking of employment, I just found out that I did not make the list of interview candidates at that one nearby job I wanted. It's probably best that I don't take any local corporate gigs; my custom-software gig will have a huge upswing in activity when it expands to the Newport office in September.
Got a fortune cookie today (when buying a birthday lunch for a Wilmore friend) which predicts that "your business will assume vast proportions." Sure hope so! It's never too soon to pull down seven figures.
Accompany a random babe on a long walk on a moonlit beach
2006-08-20category: TRAVEL
I am unreachable right now. If you're desperate for some Brett time, you could always try my email or Rachel's cell phone. But odds are, in the next 8 days, you're on your own! Maybe Google can help you!
2006-08-18 again
Happy birthday to 3 people in my address book: Dad, Cathleen McGahn, and Daniel Newsom. (Haven't seen or written Cathleen or Daniel in years, but I still wish them well.)
Today kinda feels like September 5th to me because that's when three other birthdays align in my address book. (See my September 2005 archive for more info.)
Local gas stations are celebrating Dad's birthday by dropping their prices to $2.599/gallon. On behalf of my father, I thank you stations for that.
2006-08-18
It's funny to me how much my life is turning into the movie About a Boy (but without the unlimited supply of money that the main character has).
In that movie, Will starts pursuing single mothers because they seem more agreeable than bachelorettes without kids. Me, I've been on many enjoyable dates with single mothers.
In the movie, Will's world begins to shift when a boy begins visiting him at home regularly. In my life, there's a little neighbor boy who rings my doorbell all the time, wanting me to play catch in the front yard.
Finally, here's a relevant quote from the movie: I find the key is to think of a day as units of time, each unit consisting of no more than thirty minutes. In Brett land, when I want to kill thirty minutes, I watch a downloaded TV show. When I want to kill an extra thirty minutes, I do 2 sudoku puzzles. My day disappears in thirty-minute increments. "It's amazing how the day fills up, and I often wonder, to be absolutely honest, if I'd ever have time for a job. How do people cram them in?"
2006-08-17
Really makes you wonder what's going on when you see in your logfiles that someone is clicking through every single page in your archive. You then expect, after they've visited your WRITE ME page, that maybe you'll get an email saying "long time no see" or whatever.
Today my logfiles reveal such a visitor, a reader with an insatiable appetite for Brett news, and this person has the IP address 216.187.200.77, which maps to a DSL account from BTI Telecom (in North Carolina? possibly Marshville NC?). Sure hope I get that "found you on Google; read your entire website" email really, really soon. If your IP address is 216.187.200.77, write me, okay?
2006-08-16
Just like I did last week, today I sang several karaoke songs during the lunchtime break in the courtyard of the UK Medical Center. Today was different, though; today there is a serious story to tell.
While I was singing in front of a vast audience of UK employees, I noticed that a pre-teen boy was near the stage watching me and smiling. When I wasn't singing, I would go chat with him and encourage him to get up on stage and try a song. He suggested "Photograph" by Nickelback, but he never made a move toward actually singing.
At the end of the event, when I left, he tagged along and walked back into the hospital with me, and I asked him his name and if he was at the hospital because he knew a patient there. Yes, he said, his Dad is at the hospital with a clot in his lung. Then he told me that most people don't survive having a clot in their lungs.
Soon after that, I headed off to my car, and Kevin headed off to his family. I wanted to publish this story and get advice on what I should do next time this happens. I'm there to clown around; I go there to entertain the workers eating lunch. I don't know what to do or say when I realize I'm taking a young boy's mind off a life-or-death situation.
2006-08-14
The goddess Rochelle has left NYC for a week to see friends and family in Lexington. I finally have a 3-D photo of her to share with you. (Taken in the shoe department of Dillard's in Fayette Mall.) Enjoy!
2006-08-13
Today's Beetle Bailey comic strip was written by me.
2006-08-12
Oh, I'm so dang bored. Bored, bored. There's been very little freelance computer work for me to do for many weeks now, so I find myself just passing the days by downloading / watching TV shows and movies. This should be no surprise to you because it's a recurring theme in my blog. I hear you saying, why don't you go for a bike ride? Why don't you take some classes in photography or music? Here's my answer. I'm as boring as I am bored. Downloaded shows suit me just fine during this crazy summer heat.*
Coming soon: trip to Destin FL. It's much less boring there, especially on the beaches where the bikinis live.
* speaking of overheating, I saw An Inconvenient Truth yesterday, and it made me thankful that I'm not gonna live long enough to see all the consequences of this serious global warming problem.
2006-08-09
"BRETT. IT AIN'T OVER YET." That's my new motto.
In keeping with the format of the other sumpm-fer-nuttin entries, here is today's news:
Aug 9th @ courtyard of UK Medical Center. There's a summertime lunchtime karaoke deal set up there every week, and I've gone there to sing karaoke in previous years, but this year I hadn't heard about it, so I never went. Then I crossed paths with a stranger lady in Target who recognized me from previous years and asked why I wasn't there this year. She told me they moved it to Wednesdays; fantastic, now I know. Today I pop over there and sing 5 songs (without telling Ariana, my UK Medical Center dance partner, because I figure she doesn't want to know my whereabouts anymore). Here's the something-for-nothing part: as I'm leaving, the food service people beckon me over and offer me a free lunch in exchange for keeping them entertained. Woo-hoo!
Three other cool things that happened during outdoor karaoke today:
A lady fan came up with my new motto (see above). She would say this phrase every time I sang another song.
I met the mayor's mother, who works in pathology at UK.
A music teacher approached me in much the same way a talent scout would, to let me know that I have an excellent counter-tenor voice, and it's hard to find in the world of baroque opera or whatever, and I should think about using this counter-tenor voice in other singing arts besides pop karaoke.
Tons of good things happen when you just keep doin' what you like doin'. I'm living proof. And it ain't over yet.
2006-08-08
Here's a sequel to the August 6 entry below; I call it more somethings for nothings.
Aug 7th @ my snail-mail mailbox. Free sandwich coupons from ChickFilA. Apparently CFA sent these to everyone in my neighborhood — my coupon card was addressed to "resident" — so I ran next door, asked for, and received the card sent to my vegan neighbor. What a bonus! Two for the price of none!
Aug 8th @ Regal Cinemas. Andy, one of my few guy friends on MySpace, scored some tickets to an advance screening of Accepted, so we saw that tonight. The auditorium was really empty. I've been to many advance previews, and the places are always packed, but this screening must not have been announced or promoted at all. I'd guess that I was one of maybe 30 people watching this free movie.
Ever since I got a MySpace account and described myself as a "something for nothing" guy, I've been very aware of all the times when I get something for nothing. Lately, there have been a TON of those times.
Aug 2nd @ Cinemark Fayette Mall multiplex. Free screening of Talladega Nights, two days before it opens, courtesy of Ace Weekly.
Aug 3rd @ Kroger grocery store. The bag of Limited Edition Almond Joy bite-sized candy bars scans at the wrong price, and I point it out, and the cashier gives me a free bag. See, store policy dictates that if I find a wrong price on an item, I get 1 of those items free.
Aug 4th @ Azur restaurant in Beaumont Center. My buddy Tom Cool invites me to see him perform for the Azur crowd, so I go there and sit at a table and watch his show. There is no cover charge, and none of the staff ever comes up to me, not once, to request that I buy a drink or food. Sure, yeah, I know that I should support the restaurant, since they hired my friend, but I am so much happier just sitting and watching in a peaceful, unharassed way.
Aug 5th @ Bogart's bar. Salina invites me to go out with her to see two bands she likes and to dance with her. We arrive at Bogart's before 9, which means there is no cover charge.
Aug 6th @ home. For Christmas last year, I was given a year's subscription to the Sunday paper, sweet; today I find and clip another free bowling coupon for Southland Lanes; sweet!!
Life is pretty dang enjoyable when it's this easy, and life is always better when it don't cost nothin'.
2006-08-03
Gas prices are well over the $3/gal mark in other parts of the country, but today was the first day that gas crossed that mark in Lexington, jumping from $2.759/gal to $3.099/gal in a single day.
2006-08-01 again
Here are two things that idiotic moron computer users do which drive me up a friggin wall:
They assume that every Internet address starts with WWW. For example, I'll tell someone my webpage is at pages dot prodigy dot net slash jbmason. They go to www dot pages dot prodigy {etc} and complain that it won't open. Time to throw away your computer, idiot; you're too stupid to own it. You'll never find any address that starts with "web.qx.net" or "home.alltel.net" in your clueless life.
They email me for information that is already clearly presented on my site, having only seen a simple one-line snippet on the Google search results. Figure out how to read a friggin blog, idiot, and leave me the hell alone. Dumb-ash.
