so tonight I noticed this weird finance charge on my credit card bill. it was only for $1.44 but what the fuck, I’m not gonna give these fuckers any more than I spend on their behalf. I pay off the entire balance every month and the only reason I carry anything over is because I may send my payment in like a day late or something.

so I called the fuckers up (had to navigate a goddamn labyrinth of pushing one button after another to speak to a human) and asked what this $1.44 was all about. evidently this lady was given a script that told me the only way to get rid of it was to pay for it (what? fuck you, lady!) and I kept asking her HOW it got on there.

after about 10 minutes of an absolute standstill she finally conceded. she must have noticed in my records that I’ve had this card since NINETEEN EIGHTY NINE (1989). I’ve had this damn card for almost 18 years, son! woman you better step DOWN.

so yeah, she is waiving the $1.44.

victory.

how in god’s name did this fly under my radar?

first, stephen colbert was on the o’reilly factor

goddamn.

holy shit. jeffrey, the designer I had been pulling for since day 1 of project runway season 3, WON THE WHOLE DAMN THING TONIGHT.

want proof that I’ve been pulling for him since day 1? look at what I said back in july 17.

…right, I also did say he probably won’t win but that’s because I am just that pessimistic by nature. I fell out of my couch when they announced it.

congratulations, jeff!

it’s almost as if italy had just won a sporting contest of some sort.

almost.

the nathan’s annual hot dog contest has just ended and kobayashi is still the world champion. this is his sixth in a row.

2006 saw the highest level of competition this contest has ever seen with the two top competitors nipping at the world record. coney island has never seen anyone come close to challenging kobayashi so when the clock ran out with less than a 2 hotdogs separating the two the crowd went absolutely nuts.

kobayashi bested his word record by ONE QUARTER HOTDOG (fuck!). so now the record rests at 53 and three quarters.

until next year.

today’s games were absolutely ridiculous. george mason in the final four? no number one seed in the final four since 1980?? I was just happy that 2 SEC schools made it in when we were tagged as being a weak conference all season long.

but, damn, what about george mason? here’s a team that’s played well above their heads throughout the entire tournament — playing against uconn, a team that’s played down to its opposition and barely squeaking by each round. it was an interesting match up to say the least, but the outcome was something I never would have imagined.

but now that they’ll be facing an SEC team in florida come final four I’ll be rooting against them. here’s to hoping for an all-SEC championship game between florida and LSU.

I ate two dinners last night. back-to-back.

in other news, UK spanked the fuck out of louisville.

sorry about the delayed follow-up (if anyone cared). blogger wasn’t accessible for a while and I was SO FREAKING BUSY all week.

anyway. what I can tell you of day 2 of JURY DUTY is more or less what happened on day 1, except it has the one kicker of me “dropping the hammer” on the attorneys that left them with absolutely no choice but to cut me loose from jury consideration.

and by this point I’ve personally told everyone who could possibly give a shit about how I pulled it off. so.

yeah. a whole week of non-post and THIS is what you get.

actually … I might say a thing or two about The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

so I’ve been freelancing with this one talent agent, see. he has me going to these auditions, mostly print ad auditions.

I get to these auditions and I’m seriously surrounded by morons. absolute morons. the one for yesterday for example, there are signs around the waiting area that say that if you came in for the same audition last week you don’t need to be here (no shit). well, this woman who appears to be coordinating this audition comes out of her office at one point and makes an announcement that reiterates what’s said on the sign.

well this one dude pipes up and is like, “I don’t know if I was here last week.” WHAT. the woman didn’t even blink, probably because she’s so used to this flakiness (usually reserved for a pie crust). the dude’s explanation was that he goes on so many of these things he can’t keep them straight. meanwhile this other dude asked the woman to repeat the announcement, and proceeded to go way deep in thought. what’s to think about? either you were there or you weren’t. and then this conversation took place right next to me between these two dudes who weren’t listening to anything what the other one said. and over on the other end of the room some woman was bitching about the rates she was getting paid as a union extra.

so now I look at the millions of advertisements we’re bombarded with on a daily basis and I wonder what kind of flakes these people are/had to put up with in order to get that gig. and I come out feeling REALLY FUCKING SMART.

something tells me I’m going to have a similar experience when I have my jury duty next week.

so I got the new static lullaby cd on my lunch break. I popped it my PC fully expecting iTunes to chime in and tell me it’s ready to grab the songs off the cd.

NOPE.

no media programs (iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc) even recognize there’s a disc in the drive. instead there is this dinky pop-up menu telling me I can only rip it to WMA format OR some sony digital walkman nonsense. it won’t let you directly grab the songs and convert to mp3.

but you know what, if it’s important to you to have mp3s of songs on these “piracy-proof” cds there’s a way around it and here’s how. you’ll just need:

1. a blank cd
2. a cd-rw drive

step 1: grab the songs off the cd (via the dinky menu) as WMA format.
step 2: burn the WMA files onto a blank cd.
step 3: grab the songs off the cd like any other cd.

yeah, fuck you sony. I paid for this cd and I’m fucking putting it on my ipod.