Disks in Rotation:
DVD • Silence of the Lambs
CD-ROM • WinXP
CD Player
• Marilyn Manson - Portrait of an American Family
• Mad Season -  Above
• System of a Down - Toxicity
• Metallica - Garage Inc.
• Metallica - The Black Album

Books Lying Open
• The Encyclopedia of Things that Never Were, Michael Page & Robert Ingpen

Soul-Devouring Worry
• Insufficient motivation.

When I Grow Up:
• Prawn toast will rule the day.

Curse of the Day:
• May your age exceed your wisdom.

Daily Update
Tiring day.

I managed to stay up until 8:30am, knowing I needed to get to work by 12:30, and therefore needed to get up around 11:30.  Which I did, and actually didn't feel all that tired, oddly enough.  I even had energy at work, despite the weather being the hottest it's been in a month.  It was 95ish at my house, 85ish at work, and cloudless.  After work I came back here, showered, and left.  I was not sitting around here and sweating for 3 or 4 hours, until the evening cooled down by 8pm or so.  Weather has been odd the last few days, hot and dry in the day, and then we're getting an on-shore flow in the evening, which brings in a light fog and heavy humidity.  It sort of sucks, since that just holds the heat down.  It's 4am and 74% humidity right now, as well as 76 degrees.

As for work, it was profitable, at least. As they usually are on Sundays, there were a ton of marines, fresh from basic training at the game.  Around 600 of them, enough to fill 3 full sections in Loge, with 5 rows of spill over to a 4th section.  And as always they were starving for anything to eat, after nothing but basic army chow for the last 11 weeks, and loaded with money, after 11 weeks of having nothing to spend a penny on.  I always feel sort of guilty selling them such an absurd amount of crap, but if I don't someone else will, and they are certainly eager to buy.

I sold 28 loads of frozen lemonade, 12 cups per load, $3.25 per cup.  Of that total, probably 25 loads were to the Marines, so that's around 300 of them actually sold there, or basically one for every other guy.

Not that all they bought was that, they go through 300 boxes of donuts, hundreds of ice cream sammiches, hundreds of slices of pizza, nachos, hot dogs, soda, water, Dove bars, etc, etc.  Usually about half the vendors in the stadium are bivouacked around them.  Today was odd since there weren't that many vendors, and lots of them weren't at the marines.  For a while around the 4th inning I and one other guy selling ice cream were the only two up there, and we were selling so fast we didn't even move.  I'd run up with 5 loads of frozen lemonade, sit it down front and center, and deal 30 or 40 of them as fast as I could take money and make change.

I'm always amazed at how dumb most of the other vendors are.  There were 5 or 6 guys selling frozen lemonade, same as me, and they were all elsewhere for most of the day.  I ran down to get more in the 5th inning and one guy was checking out having sold 8 total loads.  I was buying 5 at that one time, and had sold 18 or so already, and I actually went up, sold all 5 loads in about 20 minutes, ran back down, and the guy was just checking out, since he'd had to wait for some other stuff before the manager had time to get to him.

Other vendors there are always amazed how much more than them I sell, but to me it's just common sense.  I've come to work, I'm making money, so I'm going to work hard and make more.  I mean what's the point in showing up and just dicking around?  You've got all day for that, when you're not losing money by not working.  Most of the kids there are happy to make $70 or $100 on a good day, and will check out in the 6th inning and sit around talking to friends or watching the end of the game.  I'm unhappy if I don't clear $150, I'll work until the 9th inning if it's still selling, and then I get out ASAP, to beat traffic.  True, I need the money now, but I was like this 10 years ago when I was first working there, and still in high school.  I don't understand the lack of work ethic, when being lazy is coming directly out of your pocket.  The whole pay there for what I do is commission; it's not like you're getting paid $8 an hour just to be there, and it doesn't matter if you work or not (which is the case for most jobs).

One odd thing about me there is that my satisfaction with my job performance isn't really tied to money.  I can make $150 and be really pissed off, or make $70 and be happy.  What determines it for me is how much I sold compared to how much I could have sold.  If there is ample product and not a disproportionate amount of vendors selling it, I'm satisfied, even if the total sales aren't that good.  Conversely, if the sales are great and I make $140, but the stuff I'm selling runs out in the 5th inning, the stand is out of quarters one time I come back, there are more vendors than there should be on the item, etc, I tend to be angry about it.

Sunday was awesome for money, but the game went really fast, and I was sort of angry about that.  If there had been a big long inning or two I could have sold literally 10 more loads in 30 minutes.  The day was hotter at 4 than at 1, the marines were all dying for dessert, most of the other vendors had checked out... but the game was in the 9th inning at just over two hours.   That annoys me for the money I didn't make, but mostly it's just the lost sales opportunity.  If sales had been dead by the time I quit, I wouldn't have given selling 10 more loads a thought.

Anyway, that's it for baseball games.  A week off now, and I don't work (at the stadium) more than twice a week until April, and usually work just once a week, and then about once a month from Jan-March.  The Superbowl is here this year, and it'll be the second time I've worked at one of those, which is sort of cool.  I mean people pay $1000+ a ticket from scalpers to be there, so I should be happy being there for free, right?  The last time the Superbowl was here was in 1998, I believe, and my main memories are of blisters.  I had new shoes and due to the enormous traffic crunch I had to park way up a hill from the stadium, and walk down.  It was about 90 degrees that day, and I was stuck selling pizza, rather than soda which guys made a fortune on.  My feet were killing me, the pizza ran totally out by halftime, and I just left, trudging back up the hill with a double-legged limp and going home to take a cold bath and soak my feet.

I hope to improve upon that memory this year...

One last sports mention, in which I'll bring up the fact that I predicted a 27-14 Chargers win.  They actually won 23-15.  So I wasn't perfect, but not a bad guess.  The local team looked pretty good in the effort, getting up 23-7 before letting Arizona come back and nearly tie it in regulation. SD's offense wasn't so boring/conservative this time, and their young quarterback, Brees, looked pretty good, other than one bad interception. SD had 3 long passes that went incomplete by inches, or the score could/should have been a lot bigger.  In a bit of a reversal, I thought the defense was way too tentative, almost never blitzing, and not really trying to stuff the run.  It was like they were happy to just allow 3 or 4 yards a play, and hope for a fumble or INT.  It worked pretty well, they got two INTs, one for a touchdown and the other ran back to the 6 yard line, and a fumble that led to a touchdown also, but that seemed mostly like luck, when they could have really gone for the kill once they had the lead. 

I did something tonight that I do from time to time, and usually enjoy.  Night driving. Just coming back from dad's house around 10pm, in the balmy warm evening, I rolled down the window, turned off the tape deck, and just listened to the wind and the other cars.  It's not all that exciting in San Diego, since there are like 3m people in the county, so you're not exactly alone on the roads.  Not on 12-lane freeways, anyhow.  No traffic at that time of night on a Sunday, but it's far from an empty road.  However it's still sort of peaceful, with the darkness, and the relative quiet.

True, I was doing it mostly since I was so tired and had a headache, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it somewhat anyway.

Ideally night driving involves open roads, rural ones usually, both windows open, and medium speeds.  You just cruise along, smelling the night smells, hearing little besides the rush of the wind, perhaps talking to your riding companion.  I used to do that years ago with an old GF, driving her home after a date or night school, and it was very peaceful.  I'd like a convertible to do it in, and some nice mountain roads, but that will have to wait until later.  Just like everything else I really want to do.

One site update, to the Truths in Advertising page. I was moved to add a mention of the relatively idiotic new 2003 Honda Accord commercials, and while there I snipped a few things and elaborated on some others.

Some news.

• Disney is planning to make a live action version of Snow White, with kung fu.  No, it's not April 1st.  Read about it here.  Walt's going to defrost at the rate he must be spinning over this one.

• Humorous and enjoyable story about a woman kicking some ass in Jordan.

Witnesses say a Jordanian woman ripped off her enveloping black cloak and veil — to reveal a traditional long dress that was nearly as enveloping — and punched and kicked into submission three young men who had been verbally harassing her.

The official Petra News Agency reported Sunday that shopkeepers and passers-by believe the unidentified woman must have had martial arts training. In Friday's incident on the main street in Zarqa 13 miles north Amman, the three men were too shocked to react at first and ended up knocked to the ground, screaming in pain. They then scrambled up and fled.

The woman quoted the title of a song made famous by the late Egyptian star Umm Kalthoum — "patience has its limits" — before continuing on her way as a crowd cheered her.

This sounds almost urban legendish, like the sort of thing the opposition party papers would run to stir up popular support of anger about something.  I don't think it is, but it's just a little bit too perfect.  Also it's not real specific, with no quotes from anyone, no names, etc.

ere's a news item about a practice I find outrageous; the re-editing of films to remove "objectionable" material from them.  Bleeping out the language and nude scenes, that is.  Networks have long aired censored versions of films, but these are done by the director or studio, and everyone concerned knows that they are edited for TV. The new issue is private companies that are editing movies how they see fit, and then selling them for profit.

The Directors Guild of America, the union representing Hollywood directors, said it asked the U.S. District Court in Denver on Friday for a permanent injunction to block about a dozen companies from distributing unauthorized versions of films that have been re-edited to remove content such as nudity and foul language.

"It is wrong to cut scenes from a film -- just as it is to rip pages from a book -- simply because we don't like the way something was portrayed or said, then resell it with the original title and creator's name still on it," Directors Guild President Martha Coolidge said in a statement.

The directors told the court that offering the re-edited versions of the films violates a U.S. law that prohibits trademark infringement, false advertising and unfair competition. The directors noted that this law has been applied in the past to protect artists' rights not to be associated with unauthorized, edited versions of their work.

What's outrageous is that these companies are getting existing movies, chopping them up as they like, and selling them.  I don't see how that isn't illegal on numerous levels, but apparently they've been getting away with it. As the article mentions, CleanFlicks, one of the chief offending companies, has actually filed their own lawsuit against a bunch of the most famous Hollywood directors, in a sort of preemptive strike, suing for their right to exist.

A quick web search on CleanFlicks turned up this article on the topic, and this one. I guess it's not surprising that these companies are successful at it.  Article here talks about the expanding store chains in Arizona, and other areas with high concentrations of Mormons and other uptight religious types.

"I have always wanted to see Shakespeare in Love, but didn't because it was rated R," said a happy Jolene Wells, 48, a Mesa mother of six and Shakespeare fan, as she picked up a sexless version at a CleanFlicks store in Mesa.

One could argue that she still hasn't seen it.

A comment made in several articles is that no one is blocking out parts of paintings they find offensive, or selling books with naughty words crossed out.  I think the best response to that might be, "Not yet."

Censored music is what we get on the radio, censored films are what we get on TV.  I haven't heard of censored books yet, but that's probably because people who read (as opposed to idiot box viewers) aren't such idiots, there are billions of books so options abound, and when there is an offensive book religious types tend to want it outright banned or burned, rather than just trimmed here and there.  As for the painting part, artists are constantly being protested or attacked for things in their work some group finds offensive.  Ashcroft and pals blocked off the statue of Lady Justice since they don't believe in justice. I mean since they didn't want her uncovered stone boobie visible, in an extreme example of artistic censorship.

The argument against the censorship is that authors, artists, directors, etc, have their vision for a work, and release it in a form that matches that vision (editor or studio interference not withstanding) and no one else has the right to alter their work.  Consuming entertainment is optional.  You don't have to watch or read it if you don't want to.  People have the option to fast forward over nudity or gore, the same way I have the right to rewind and watch it again.  I can see why there is a market for sanitized versions of popular works, and if I were kooky enough to have such issues with nudity or language that I couldn't sit through an R-rated film, I'd probably appreciate a PG cut of it that was more my style. 

However if I were the director of it, I'd be furious about my work being chopped up by some third party.  In theory I put in the violence of language or nudity since I felt it was essential to the story and the characters.  It's not like these companies are cleaning up pornos, where the only point is the sex.  They are mutilating quality films that happen to have some scenes that some people object to. As a writer, if someone couldn't handle my writing and wanted it hacked up to remove bad words, my reaction would be that they should go read Harry Fucking Potter again, if they can't handle a story not targeted at 9 year olds.

Probably the best thing would be for the movie companies and directors to just do this themselves, put an edited version on the DVD, and charge a bit more for it.  Directors wouldn't like it, but they'd get extra money for very little additional work, and people would have the choice if they wanted to practice self-censorship.

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