Home of the Soul Cookie

Rebel that I am (yeah, right), I’m blogging my answers instead of emailing ‘em. I took out the questions about others’ emailed responses, as well as the questions about my parents’ birth names. (Putting my mother’s maiden name on a public blog = A bad idea.)

Get to know your friends better.� Make sure you read the instructions at the bottom and have fun.

1. What time is it? 11:15am
2. Name: Kevin Sean Barrow
3. Nickname: Batman, NSP
4. Number of candles on your last birthday cake should have been: Twenty-nine
5. Tattoos: None
6. Pets: Two cats, Joxer and Toby (aka the “Kitty Boys”)
7. Natural Hair color: brown
8. Eye color? brown
9. How much do you love your job on a Scale of 1 to 10? It varies between 6 and 8.
10. Birthplace: El Centro, CA
11. Current Residence: El Centro, CA (Don’t look at me like that. My folks moved away when I was about six months old. I was silly enough to move back a little over four years ago.)
12. Favorite food: Chicken Parmigiana or prime rib, depending on my mood
13. Been to Africa? Nope.
14. Been toilet papering? Nope. Been “taping” though. (Duct tape on street, sticky-side up. Car drives over it. Car stops because it sounds like it has a flat tire. Kids run away in the dark, giggling.)
15. Love someone so much it made you cry? Yes.
16. Been in a car accident? Yes. Got rear-ended in a little bitty Honda Civic by a drunk driver in a huge-ass Ford pickup. The Civic lost its trunk and part of its back seat; the Ford got a wee scratch on its chrome grille.
17. Croutons or bacon bits? Croutons (both, really).
18. Favorite day of the week: Saturday
19. Favorite word or phrase: Judging by frequency of usage, either “cool” or “fuck.”
20. Favorite Restaurants: Ones with good food and good service.
21. Favorite flower: rose
22. Favorite sport to play: bowling
23. Favorite drink: Cherry Coke
24. Favorite Ice cream: Vanilla (with chocolate syrup)
25. Favorite fast food restaurant: Jack in the Box
26. What color is your bedroom carpet: White…ish. (Thanks, kitty boys…)
27. How many times did you fail your drivers test: None. I’m an excellent driver.
28. Besides this one, from whom did get your last e-mail? A co-worker.
29. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Tough call between Best Buy and Barnes and Noble.
30. What do you do most often when you are bored? Doodle. You’d think I’d be good by now…
31. Most annoying thing people ask/tell me: “How do I…?” after they’ve asked me the same bloody question a hundred different times. It doesn’t bug me when they can’t understand it. It bugs me when they don’t listen to and parse the answer.
32. Bedtime: Midnight, but out of work-borne pragmatism and habit only. My natural tendency is somewhere in the 2-3am range.
33. Favorite TV shows: My current “make sure I tape it!” list is: Charmed, Alias, The Joe Schmo Show, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Smallville, Angel, Survivor, Scrubs, Coupling (so I can later see how superior the British original is), and Justice League.
34. Ford or Chevy: Don’t care.
35. Time you finished this: 11:52am (silly work, expecting me to do my job instead of filling this out…)

Return Directions: Now, here’s what you’re supposed to do…and do not spoil the fun. Copy (not forward) this entire email and paste it into a new email that you will send. Change all of the answers so that they apply to you. Then send this to a whole bunch of people you know INCLUDING the person who sent it to you. The theory is that you will learn a lot of little known facts about those who know you. Remember to send it back to the person who sent it to you.

One of these things is not like the others; one of these things just doesn’t belong. http://www.fridayfive.org/

Some of these might be a bit skewed because I live with roommates.

1. Name five things in your refrigerator.

1. flavored carbonated water
2. spaghetti sauce
3. cheddar cheese
4. hot sauce packets from Del Taco
5. batteries

2. Name five things in your freezer.

1. ice
2. chicken breasts
3. microwave burritos
4. bagels
5. ice cream

3. Name five things under your kitchen sink.

1. I don’t look under there.
2. It’s scary.
3. Seriously.
4. I’ve lived in the house for almost four years and I think I’ve had to look under there perhaps twice.
5. The cleaning products are kept elsewhere.

4. Name five things around your computer.

1. pens
2. RPG character sheets
3. CDs
4. padded mailing envelopes
5. PHP reference printouts

5. Name five things in your medicine cabinet.

1. toothbrush/toothpaste
2. deodorant
3. tweezers
4. Neosporin
5. ibuprofin

If you ever, ever have the opportunity to see Pepe Romero perform in concert, do it.

Pure sonic alchemy.

There’s a new season of Joe Millionaire starting on Monday.

I’m gonna be in the Bay Area in a week! I’m so excited!

From Yahoo News:

80-Year-Old Woman Knocks Rat Unconscious

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A supermarket rat that had dodged a number of poison traps got its comeuppance when an 80-year-old shopper knocked it unconscious after it tried to steal her cheese, a Belgian daily said Thursday.

The rat had been hiding in the supermarket for a month, but staff attempts to trap the rodent had repeatedly failed.

The woman told the daily Gazet Van Antwerpen how she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her hand after picking up a pack of cheese at the supermarket just outside Brussels.

“A rat the size of my hand was hanging on my finger,” she told the newspaper.

“I grabbed the rat with my other hand and smacked it on the floor. The animal was on the floor, completely knocked unconscious.”

‘e’s not dead. She just stunned ‘IM.

Also tonight: Going to a concert by “World-Renowned Guitarist Sir Pepe Romero” put on by the Imperial Valley Symphony.

Up tonight: Antonin Dvorak’s New World Symphony and Celedonio Romero’s Concierto Málaga.

It’s not Neil Gaiman, but it should still be cool.

I was thinking to myself yesterday that I’ve been doing a good job of keeping up on my time-shifted (read: videotaped) TV show viewing this season. Which, of course, was a mistake to do, inviting as it did the retroactive influences of entropy to the party.

Case in point: Tuesday night, I had set up the VCR to record The Joe Schmo Show and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy but happened to be home at the time and so watched both broadcasts live. Doublechecked my setups for the Wednesday taping of Smallville and Angel and went to bed.

Fast forward to last night. Jay, Kris, and I wait until our respective VCRs stop, mine in the recorder in the family room, theirs in their bedroom, and then settle in to watch their tape of new episodes of West Wing and Law and Order. Only when we fire up the tape, it’s not WW, it’s Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. Fifteen minutes of Jason rewinding and fast-forwarding through their six-hour SLP tape later, we conclude that WW wasn’t on. Fine. Forward an hour, on to the new L&O.

…which wasn’t new. It was a repeat of an episode none of us particularly enjoyed the first time it was one. (Interestingly, the Yahoo! TV programming schedule still listed the new episodes as being aired, but the NBC site had a parenthetical note at the top of their home page stating that a new WW would air on 10/29.)

Okay, fine. At least that meant I was going to get to watch my Smallville/Angel combo. Except for the fact that:

a) I record in SP mode - much better quality, but it means I only get two hours of recording on a two hour tape.
b) JS and QEftSG are each one-hour shows.
c) I’d forgotten to rewind the tape.

Oops. Oh well.

Tonight: Survivor: Pearl Islands and Scrubs but no Coupling this week. (Preempted by Whoopi. Big whoop.)

I’ve built two (so far) alternate styles for the Soul Cookie. You’ll be able to find the links at the bottom of the page. Your preference will even be remembered on your next visit (providing you have cookies enabled)!

Check ‘em out:
Space
Tangerine
and good ol’ Soul Cookie Classic.

The really cool thing is that the different styling is all done through CSS - the structure of the pages is unchanged from version to version.