do you have the guts to take the honest bloggers-only quiz

1. which political party do you typically agree with? green

2. which political party do you typically vote for? democrat

3. list the last five presidents that you voted for? nader, clinton, clinton, bush, reagan

4. which party do you think is smarter about the economy? democrat

5. which party do you think is smarter about domestic affairs? democrat

6. do you think we should keep our troops in Iraq or pull them out? pull them out now.

7. who, or what country, do you think is most responsible for 9/11? obl and the saudis.

8. do you think we will find weapons of mass destruction in iraq? yes, ours.

9. yes or no, should the u.s. legalize marijuana? hell yes.

10. do you think the republicans stole the last presidental election? yep.

11. do you think bill clinton should have been impeached because of what he did with monica lewinski? no.

12. do you think hillary clinton would make a good president? yes.

13. name a current democrat who would make a great president: hillary

14. name a current republican who would make a great president: mccain

15. do you think that women should have the right to have an abortion? yes.

16. what religion are you? Christian.

17. have you read the Bible all the way through? yes.

18. what's your favorite book? Cruddy by Linda Barry.

19. who is your favorite band? tsar

20. who do you think you'll vote for president in the next election? Kerry.

21. what website did you see this on first? tonypierce.com + busblog

atrios + instapundit + welch

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why spelling doesnt matter. by tony pierce.

met a girl at work today who's pretty hot. shit, theyre all hot at work. fucked up and read my review again today. weird how in the heat of the moment you're skimming so much the words jump at you and the details get lost. on one hand it was a worse review than i thought but on the other hand it was better because so much is completely wrong and unprovable. and the rest is totally provable. why do i care? why do i stay? am i really staying for the chicks? god i hope not.

last night somehow miss montreal became more beautiful than ever. maybe it was cuz i mixed her a marguerita and chilled out. my negative vibes affected her in a terrible way and for the first time, maybe ever, we didnt bone, and i was invited more than once. i know, gay. maybe tomorrow she'll let me make it up to her. writing isnt what i do best.

but today, its all we've got.

so lets rock.

sammy is hurt, kerry is hurt, everyone is hurt. im coughing for no good reason. im not sick. i havent been sick in years. i think its the pollen. i think its the stress. i think its the pressure.

people talk a lot of shit and youd think at some point i would be prepared for it. youd think by aging you get used to it. but weirdly i dont get used to it. maybe because its the longer that i live the more cool people i meet, and therefore the not-so-cool people stick out more, and you think... sorry I think "why cant you be cool like this one?"

when i was younger i thought that once i grew up there would be two things that i would do more. i thought i would go to church three times a week. and i thought that i would go sit at my neighborhood bar every day after work. i do neither of these things.

good part is, i get laid far more than i ever expected. even more than i thought i would 5 years ago. im not sure why thats happening other than murphys law. im also happier being alone than i ever thought. bizzare.

i know a lot of younger kids read this. im sorry that i always forget about you. im sorry that i dont tell you the lessons from the other side. so heres one: rock out with your cock out till youre 30. then worry about wife career car baby lifeinsurance bullshit. then rock out for 5 more years.

if you vote republican before youre 35 youre a loser and a tool. remember that. vote green at least once on every trip to the voting booth. i dont care for what. president if you have to, but if you dont do it youre a sellout and a fool and borderline unamerican.

but always remember that if i stop loving you, Jesus never will.

so read the Bible, give to the poor, and quit driving beemers.

your pal,

dumbass

miceland + flagrant + gorilla mask

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this week in rock in LA

tonight 5/21
death cab for cutie, wiltern
donavon, troubador
arrested development, hollywood park ($1 beers)
train, roxy
styx + peter frampton, universal
brian sezter trio & the blasters, rusty's surf ranch

sat 5/22
james brown + etta james + keb mo', doheny music festival
AC/DShe, spaceland
dirty dozen brass band, amoeba

sun 5/23
los lobos + robert cray + lucinda williams + john mayall, doheny music festival
cat power, troubador
jj cale, mccabes
king's x, house of blues

mon 5/24
cat power, troubador
madonna, forum

tues 5/25
wilson phillips, santa monica pier (free - tix at tower records)
tenacious d w/jack black, the improv
dido, wiltern
HR, club lingerie
madonna, forum

wed 5/26
jill sobule, largo
dido, wiltern

thurs 5/27
joey mcintire, knitting factory
johnny winter, house of blues
rhino bucket, club vodka
madonna, the pond

sarah + chokey chicken + ten gallon hat

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cure to your woes: get interviewed by a big time newspaper about your stupid little blog.

thats what happened this morning and it worked like a charm.

nothing i like to talk about more than the cubs. and when i cant do that, talking about blogging and the web and the busblog comes in a close second.

the paper hadnt heard of me and im not sure how they got my name on their list but they did and im grateful and im stoked and if i make it in there in the next few weeks or whenever it comes out i will be sure to let you know.

the reporter was great. he was very knowledgeable about the blogosphere and seemed to recognize all the names that i gave him like the instapundit and makeoutcity and some of the others who i recommend that he should also talk to.

but then came the uncomfortable moment when he asked me my age.

as a former college journalist, i understand the need to say stuff like Tony Pierce, 79, from Hollywood California runs the busblog...

so i explained to the fella that i dont reveal my age because age shouldnt matter when it comes to writing on the web. people shouldnt be judged by anything other than their writing. i tried to explain that i didnt know that SE Hinton was a chick when i read those books and that was part of her plan. i tried to explain that JD Salinger didnt like pictures on the covers of his book because he wanted people to just read the stories and have the stories tell the story.

similiarilly it might distract people if they found out that indeed i was 16 years old in the same way that it might confuse them if it turned out that i was truly 110 years old.

like ive said before, theres lots of experiments going on in this blog and one of them is the age thing. i want people to like the posts or the blogs solely on what they read and not because im black, live in hollywood, voted for clinton, or root for the cubs.

its idealistic as fuck, but whatev, hopefully people could deal.

and the only thing that would give me a brighter smile would be if one day someone would write, Tony Pierce, 110, writes his busblog from the closet of his hollywood cabana...

the other thing he asked me about was where i worked.

since i didnt have time to explain what the xbi was, i had to say, "just write that i work in an office in hollywood."

hopefully those two things wont ruin my chances for a nice mention in the paper since my mom would be so happy if she saw my name in print in such a fine journal of american daily news.

p.s. thanks to all of you who said nice things in my last few posts

kool keith + true + unfogged

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my man matt wants to know if im depressed. the answer is yes.

he wants to know if its the job thats making me this way.

the answer is a reluctant yes.

and as dumb as it might sound, its also the web and the president and iraq and politics and the fact that some people just cant let go of this two-party system where if their guy completely fucks up they wont let themselves admit it publicly.

i dont think that anyone can make me sad. or anything.

i believe that we decide for ourselves how we want to feel about something.

yesterday i got a damaging review about my performance at work. of course they were wrong, but still it hurt, i felt disrespected, i felt insane, i felt wronged, i felt like the little room i was sitting in had no concept of reality.

at that point i could choose a variety of emotions, and i chose to just be resigned to the fact that i work in a place where in these reviews people feel like they cant give you high scores if you really are very good at certain things, but they can give you very low scores, in fact the lowest score possible, if they feel like it.

on one hand they told me that i have improved this year, but on paper i was given the lowest score possible in an important category. meanwhile they were saying that they wanted me to continue to grow within the company because there is a future for me there that they want me to be a part of.

ive never seen such mixed messages.

but the only one i could see was that score in that one area.

the lowest score possible.

and i told a beautiful girl and she offered to take me to my favorite chinese restaurant and she picked me up at work but i wasnt feeling it so i asked her to take me home. so we went home and ate cold leftover pizza. the whole time i just wanted to cry. but i cant cry. theres something inside me that always stops me from crying. she even opened her arms and said, please cry with me. but come on. a man cry infront of a woman?

so we slept together and didnt make lust, didnt fool around, didnt do anything but sleep early and wake up early. and here i am up early and writing. the only thing that really makes me happy consistantly.

i need a new job in the worst way and the thing about this spectacularilly obscene review is it might just be the motivating factor to get me out of this little three year employment rut that i have allowed myself to be a part of.

last night this girl said that she might have to stop dating me because it kills her to see me, the smartest person she has ever met (her words), suffer for no reason. the pay is ridiculously low, the work is dangerous and emotional and retarded, and the pace is so fast that i barely have any time to take my two government mandated 15 minute breaks, never mind a full hour for lunch.

still i tried to explain to her that out of all of that ugliness is where the busblog was created and where it has flourished.

put a seed in the stinkiest of shit and watch it grow fast and huge and strong and wild.

and with that she kissed me and begged me to take her. but i couldnt.

i had to write. i had to get something out. i had to publicly explain that when we let these things bother us we are listening to the little demons in our head who right now are joined in the chant of lowest score possible lowest score possible.

i am as competitive as one could be without being annoying. it kills me that im not in the technorati top 100. but i know that i havent done the things necessary to get there.

one of the things i know that i, sadly, have to do to get there is write more politics. the stupid little truth about popularity on the web, and hits and links, is that in order to proceed up the ladder you have to gain the attention and links of those already on the ladder.

but those on the ladder are mostly right-wingers talking about the news and politics and they would much rather link like-minded right-wingers and pretty girls than anything else.

lord knows that i would be a lock for the technorati top 20 if i just threw in the towel and joined in on the george bush blowjob competition like the others because i write better than most of those jagoffs, i bring it harder, and i say it in a way that they could never.

what makes me sad is that some of those who i respect dont even want to discuss the other side in an interesting way. they dont even want to acknowledge that the president's uncle is a saudi money launderer who might be directly responsible for money that got to the 9/11 terrorists.

and i can understand why they dont want to bring something like that up. in theory.

i can understand the sort of pressure 150,000 hits a day means to your email inbox and your blogad revenue stream and your opportunities for more and better and richer and etc.

and i can also understand the desire for others to want to get some of those hits sent their way. agree with the top 40 and they will shower you with readers and some of those readers may stay and some of those readers might click your stupid ads and some of that might turn into a few sheckles and some of that might turn into your shit getting more popular.

if theres one lesson i can teach you in the last year of writing the busblog is this: do not kiss the ass of those on the right, stick to your guns, write what you believe to be the truth, and your hits, except for the rare exceptions, will not go above 1,000 a day.

unless youre wil wheaton.

and it's not because most of the planet are conservatives. and its not because most of the people who get the big hits are such great writers. its because the majority of the hits come during 9am-5pm and the majority of people who can surf the web for news and politics have jobs where they sit in front of a computer and have the freedom to surf, and my belief is most of those people are white-collared conservatives who dont want to hear that the emperor has no clothes.

so yes, matt, i have been a little sad lately but i plan on feeling better within minutes.

i appreciate your concern.

daily pundit + subverted reality + matt

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today is big tanky's birthday. so you think they would have given me a break in my yearly performance review but they didnt.

if there are any prospective employers out there who are considering hiring me, know that there is a lot of stuff that i could write about the hour that i just spent

funny things

sad things

incredibly curious things that would have you scratching your head thinking, "why on earth does pierce put up with that?"

things that made me seriously consider crying tonight,

despite getting my annual $300 raise.

no, the xbi isnt for everyone, and it really isnt for me any more. and even though it could be huge blog fodder full of interesting characters, fascinating situations, and deep deep insights into hollywood i will not be typing about it.

why?

because i think that there is something to be said about pissing where you eat. not that im afraid that i will lose my job. "losing" this job would be the best thing that could happen to me at this point of my life. tantamount to losing a tumor. losing a tapeworm. losing 20 pounds.

call it idealism but i think that what is done and said in the privacy of a closed door meeting should be kept private for the benefit of all parties.

unless of course the screenplay could be sold for millions.

which this one could.

especially if i wrote it.

which of course i could.

cuz its funny and bizarre and twisted and real and probably what lots of you go through every day.

but today isnt bitch about the xbi day.

today is celebrate big tanky's birthday day.

which im fixin to do with this hot cuban girl reading peacefully on my black leather couch.

and in the morning i will do something i havent done in three years.

i will go to the corner, get a paper

and go straight to the classifieds.

and start living up to my potential.

at the ripe old age

of 110.

happy birthday big tanky, i hope today finds you happy, healthy, and drunk.

atrios linked my thing about the instapundit after brian linse did, and i thank them both.

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people write in to my gmail address and they ask me things like if i hate america so much why dont i move to canada.

it makes me wonder why only idiots have my gmail address.

for the rest of you its busblog at gmail dot com.

but they do have a good point. canada has basically legalized weed, theres free medical, and i assume free dental. they dont run around blowing people up who they are trying to "liberate". and they're close enough to america that if you need to see a concert you can just make a little road trip.

unfortunately for my detractors, i was born here. infact i was born in the nations capital.

i grew up in the midwest and ive lived in california for my entire adulthood.

as an african-american, my "people" have been here for around 400 years.

if anyone should move away, which is rarely the solution, it shouldnt be me.

plus i dont want to have to learn a foreign language.

although i wouldnt mind having raymi as a neighbor.

i got a very nice comment from a canadian who said that he wanted to write something about the current american political situation but he didnt feel that it was his place.

my neighbors to the north, consider this an open invitation: any time you want to add to the discussion about how you feel about whats happening in the world, particularilly whats happening in america or america's influence on the world, feel free.

although you people arent blessed with the same freedom of speech that we are granted, pretend that you can say anything. consider this blog a small portion of america and as a guest here you are entitled, nay, requested, to throw in your two cents.

or pesos.

or whatever you people up there use for money.

if anything you are a better judge of whats happening since you're not biased.

canada's fucked no matter which president steals the next election. just look what america has done to the health of pam, michael j., and tom green.

raptor blog + raymi + three bed two bath

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went to the dentist today. huge mistake. the dude was cool and all. everything was fine. just sometimes you end up at the right place at the wrong time.

i left the place just wanting to die. every single one of my teeth has something wrong with it. it was like a bad dream. the lights were bright and i had to hold a mirror up to see and they were on the tv all yellow and gross and sick and disgusting.

five grand to fix em up the lady said and i work for a living. how am i going to get five grand to fix my teeth. and another thing: my teeth have never looked all that great. ever.

so the lady had me apply for a dental credit card through citibank. that was embarrasing too cuz working for the xbi ruins your credit.

so we had to settle on a root canal in a few weeks which will drain my insurance in one swell foop and i got on the bus right in front of the larry flynt tower in beverly hills and i thought so this is why the guy has naked chicks pissing in the pages of his magazine, so when he walks into situations and it all boils down to money he can say groan, "charge it."

plus i hadnt eaten all day. as in all day. plus i hadnt slept all night. plus i could feel a disturbance in the force bigger than me and hark, the cubs got one-hit by big fat jason schmidt up in frisco

and in a perfect world today i could pick anywhere to be and it would be at pac bell park which is called something different now and i woulda written you from frisco and told you how life is there right now and i would cover the cubbies for your asses and i would be blogging right now from the 500 club with a full belly of a nice burrito from 24th and mission. el faro lito. mi amore.

theres a pretty girl sleeping quietly in my bedroom right now. she looks like a painting from a 50s watercolor from the changing room of a boutique on montana in the 60s. her eyes will devistate you and her lips will make you believe in fairy tales and her ass and her legs and her neck and her hands on your head and her toes and your legs

in two weeks i will have called california home for exactly twenty years.

in illinois i was part of the state's best highschool marching band, i kissed mary huber, and i kissed laura hesterman, and tracey degrazia.

other than that, everything cool that ive ever done, i did in the golden state.

and if my teeth are beginning to rot its because ive eaten up every day here

and i'll get plenty of sleep when i retire in vegas.

50 fishy circumstances about the nick berg beheading + mc brown + jack bog

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was up till 430am last night writing that salman rushdie thing. i dont know what it is about my body but if we're up writing all night it doesnt need any sleep, really, to revitalize. but if we're drinking then we're fucked.

i knew i wasnt going to get that many comments and i knew instapundy wouldnt bite. he sorta did but not really. not in a cool way. not in a smart way. just in a dumb boring way.

when i was younger i had heroes and idols. i had people who i thought did it right or knew something that i didnt. i was wrong. for a while i thought teachers knew something and you should respect them for even being there, but nine out of ten times i was wrong there too.

and then there were the bosses, vice presidents, and so ons who i respected in the workplace who i always gave the benefit of the doubt to, but alas, it turned out that they were fuckups like the rest of us, not particularilly perfect for the situation at hand any moreso than we were in our little world of shit.

its when i write something like "the president's uncle just got busted for making it easy for the saudis to fund 9/11" that i realize how many courageousless conservatives i have who read my shit. and i realise that its not always in your best interest to insult your core audience but i'll tell you whats truly not in our best interest and thats to let anyone, dem or repub be allowed number one to have access to 95% of all the banking done by the the embassies in washington dc, number two, allow the ceo of a major division of that bank to be the brother of a former president and the uncle of the sitting one, and number three play partisan games when it is something directly related to the greatest tragedy on american soil since the civil war.

but you motherfuckers dont give a fuck.

you think this is all a huge college football game.

go blue!

this shit has never been a huge college football game where you root for who your daddy rooted for because his daddy rooted for them.

this shit, if you havent "logged on" to the internet is some serious stuff, which in act one involved huge buildings (and the pentagon) being smashed into with suicide civilian airplanes; in act two bodies were being dragged through a bombed out town, prisoners were getting things shoved in their asses, psychosexual mind games were being levvied on those who we volunteered to "help, and the curtain fell with a surprise beheading.

its not like any college football game that ive ever seen. its actually like Nothing ive ever seen. and whats particularilly interesting is that even though the quarterback continues to fumble the snap theres no sign at all of him being pulled from the game even though his fuckups are costing the team one billion points a day.

but the sportswriters keep typing go blue go blue and not wtf wtf

which in reality you would never see in sportswriting, which is why its the purist of all disciplines of journalism.

political writers have an agenda, and the courageous ones are honest about it. and the way that they analyze the political day is generally to reinforce their personal beliefs. and as long as theyre honest about it, alls fine.

entertainment writers are constantly fighting to appear cutting edge, intelligent, and right. theres not a serious established entertainment writer who would give bob dylan or paul mccartney a scathing negative review, and it would be rare to see the young writer gush over the two icons. it's predictable and useless.

sports writers are encouraged to bash the home team. theyre expected to knock the leadership and monday morning quarterback the speech given the day before by the head coach. my kingdom for a quote from drudge ever writing that bush fucked up on any speech or any big program ever.

yet the sports writer will turn his back on a pete rose, a sports writer will crack jokes about a mike tyson, and a sports writer will come right out and say shaq's crappy free throws are killing the lakers.

but good luck trying to get a conservative to write that bush has no clue how to turn around this economy, has no clue how to get us out of this war, and has no clue how to stop this neverending trainwreck.

because they are under the delusional belief that their sorry excuse for writing

could acutally hurt

the home team.

and this idiocy is tripled when you're talking about a blogger.

gmail swap + suburban nights + lick blog

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why i write by tony pierce

for the hotties. right, mr. rushdie?

mainly. but also because my hero the instapundit, doesnt seem interested in it any more.

over the last few days two incredibly juicy stories about the never-boring Bush administration popped up and very few of my favorite warbloggers including the mightiest one chose to even acknowledge them.

the first happened on friday when President Bush's Uncle, Jonathan Bush, (his daddy's brother) found himself in a Saudi money-laundering scheme.

Uncle Jonathan works for Riggs Investment Management, a "major" arm of Riggs Bank, who was fined Thursday for a record $25 million for violating anti-money laundering laws when it failed to report millions of dollars of cash withdrawls from Saudi accounts.

Jonathan Bush not only works for Riggs, he is President and CEO of Riggs Investment Management.

"Riggs failed to properly monitor, and report as suspicious, transactions involving tens of millions of dollars in cash withdrawals, international drafts that were returned to the bank, and numerous sequentially numbered cashiers' checks," the Treasury Department said last week.

Riggs Bank, the Associated Press describes as having a "near exclusive franchise" on the banking needs of Washington DC embassies, serving 95% of them including the Saudi one.

of course.

so where's my favorite university law professor on this one?

bro gets 150,000 hits a day, more eyeballs than most local newspapers, doesn't he think that any of them would be fascinated to learn that the president's uncle, the brother of the first george bush, is the CEO of a company that is very closely tied to monies that may have funded some of the terrorist acts committed on 9/11?

i mean, fuck, man.

the last time Riggs was mentioned by the instapundit was about six weeks ago when Newsweek reported that the feds had identified about $27 mill in suspicious transactions from the Saudi Embassy through the president's uncle's bank. Transactions that included "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to muslim charities being investigated for funding terrorist activity.

"keep tightening the screws," the Instapundit typed.

last week they did just that, and what does Prof. Reynolds choose to talk about today instead of this interesting lil tidbit of the $25 mil fine? oh, gay marriage, a link to a restaurant in manhattan that serves caviar omlettes, the debate over watching films in law school classes, and a few paragraphs on an article about an ROTC cadet in "Campus Life" which the most powerful blogger on the web sez is "pretty interesting".

pardon me while i continue not to give a fuck about the opinions of a random rotc cadet via campus fucking life.

the feds said that Riggs didnt even pretend to monitor the activities of its richest client until they were forced to last year and then began letting the government know that the Saudis were wiring $461,341.72 in Jan of 2003 to the Muslim World League who has officials abroad who have been linked to al Qaeda, on top of the 25-30 other suspicious 2003 transactions that totaled over $25 mil.

i admit that im a hack.

i tell everyone straight out, dont believe me, im full of shit.

and i try to prove it by making up lies that super hot chicks come to my apartment night after night and watch tv with me, and party, and get naked, and make sweet lust to me as today's sounds play through my computer.

but the instapundit is supposed to be the real deal.

smart and stuff.

which is why when i hear about such bizarre fucking dealings going on between a new Bush and the Saudis the first place i go to is prof. reynold's incredibly popular site.

and people say to me, dude, he didnt cover rummy's testimony earlier this month, he knocks kerry for anything he can, hes a shill, hes on the take, hes another foxnews guy in the making.

and im all, shut up, we had beers and talked about tractor punk a few years ago.

and they go dude.

and then they just go.

the other story was just some little thing from pulitzer winning investigative reporter seymour hersh who says that the cia tells him that rummy expanded a highly secretive operation originally intended to find Al Qaeda, to include the aggressive and sexual interrogation of prisoners in Iraq.

Hersh says, "The instructions were let's get tougher, let's use much more coercion, let's use sexual intimidation because it's� in the Arab world that's the easy way to make somebody talk and maybe you can even get somebody so frightened he'll go back into the community and become an asset."

the article which will be published in the May 24th issue of the New Yorker is already getting reviews from the pentagon:

"This is the most hysterical piece of journalist malpractice I have ever observed," said Rumsfeld spokesman Lawrence DiRita.

and yet not interesting enough for my boy glenn.

maybe if campus life covers it, the good professor might give it some pixels.

tiffany owns me + as does flagrant + and zulieka + but i would have definately bought bunny a few stiff drinks this weekend

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stole a car this afternoon when i shoulda been workin. it was in the valley. it was hot in the val. dropped the top down. it wasnt a convertable but now it is.

xbi has "lasers".

drove around listening to r.e.m's "electrolite" since it was in the car. they had a DAT player cuz this is LA and if youre in the industry you have DAT players.

hadnt hear that one in a while and it was nice on an afternoon of sin playing hookey from work on a spring day where the smog chilled at 10 thousand feet and the traffic on the 101 was minimal.

sped past palm trees and wondered if they liked where they were, watching traffic, witnessing accidents and tragedies. i think about trees alot. especially palm trees.

your first year at the xbi they try to see how far you'll go, as far as breaking the law. usually that means who will you steal from and how much and how big.

cars are the easiest.

i once stole a man's pool table from his condo on wilshire. after that they asked me not to steal things any more.

the man was my boss.

now and then people try to call me old because my belly is growing or my bald head blinds them or because i cant run as fast as i once could, and in those times i think of little ways to remind them that i am not only the man, but the best agent in the agency.

so this afternoon i stole a car, turned it into a convertible and drove it from sherman oaks back to our westwood office which is carefully hidden underneath the mormon tabernacle on santa monica.

the car's owner? the cheif's wife.

the cd: r.e.m's "In Time: The Best of REM 1988-2003".

yes im playing with fire.

yes, i think it's sad that over the last 15 years this is what r.e.m's best songs are 1)man on the moon 2) night swimming 3)losing my religion 4) electrolite 5)everybody hurts and 6)what's the frequency, kenneth?

i thought gay guys were supposed to be more creative than that?

even though he came out, im starting to think stipey is straight, cuz shit man, six good songs in 15 years is pure hetro production. whaddup g?

parked the woman's beemer on the lawn of the tabernacle broke the cd in four places and placed it carefully on the hood.

simpleton + chokey chicken + kenneth cowan

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before i joined the xbi, i used to work for an internet company. we provided world class customer support to dot coms who did business over the web.

the coolest thing we did was support through live chat.

this weekend i was bidding on some Prince tickets at Staples so i could take my truest.

while bidding, i realized that the auction seem too good to be true. yes it was in the last row of the upper deck, but why was the guy offering free shipping? and why was it that this guy had never had anything for sale before?

so i wanted to ask eBay if it was ok for me to retract my bid for those reasons.

the biggest thing that we wanted to do at my old company was have The answer. and deliver it friendly and quickly.

did eBay's Live Help do that? you be the judge:

Your chat session started.

Anthony L.: Welcome to eBay Live Chat! My name is Anthony L. and thank you for waiting. How may I help you?

tony: hello

Anthony L.: Hello,

tony: i dont trust an auction that im bidding on

tony: can i retract my bid for that reason?

tony: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2243758506

Anthony L.: I am very sorry, since there are only 2 hours 0 mins left, you cannot retract the bid.

Anthony L.: There must be at least 12 hours left for you to retract a bid.

tony: what happens if it's a fake auction?

tony: can i buy insurance?

Anthony L.: That is a good question! I appreciate you for asking that and I am glad to guide you to the right place so you can get help for this although I am unable to address your concern.

Anthony L.: This situation requires the attention of a Safeharbor representative and you can send them an email using the following link:

Anthony L.: http://pages.ebay.com/help/contact_inline/index.html

tony: ive seen ebay insurance before, is it for only the seller,or for the buyer too?

Anthony L.: It is intended for buyers (Buyer Protection Program).

tony: great, thank you.

Anthony L.: You're very welcome!

tony: so if i buy these tickets and its fake, i get most of my money back right?

Anthony L.: Yes, that is usually the case.

Anthony L.: Our Safe Harbor department will be able to investigate this situation and help you further.

tony: awesome

tony: thank you for your help!

Anthony L.: You're very welcome! Is there anything else I can help you with today?

tony: no thanks!

tony: bye

Anthony L.: You're very welcome! Thank you for contacting eBay Live Help and you have a pleasant afternoon.

Anthony L.: It was a pleasure chatting with you. Goodbye.

You ended your chat session.

bluecad used me as a model for her layout... again + allison is taking cool pics + broken train

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im running into a situation with miss montreal that i ran in with my true love several years ago.

the problem is, what do you do when you want to hang out with a girl who is superclose to her best friend who is also her roommate?

in the past i told my truest that i wasnt dating two girls, i was dating one, and she needed to tell her best friend that she had to pick between me and her pal.

it was an ugly situation and i regret that it went down the way it did.

so now its interesting that i find myself in the same conundrum. (new game: every time i use a big word you need to take a shot. so, drink.)

the lovely miss montreal, in this instance, has a lovely roommate who is going through a rocky period with her beau. in order not to "rub it in the face" of the young lady, miss montreal has begun limiting the amount of time that she spends in my many mansions.

at first this hurt my ego, and made things a little more lonely for me. although i probably could have a girlfriend right now, i chose not to, but it is nice to have someone as sweet as this canadian young woman and beautiful and fun, as an overnight guest. it would be nice not to have to even consider the feelings (and possible loneliness) of another adult, like her roommate, who is exceedingly attractive and mature, but i must, even though one would think she could find a new boytoy in the snap of a finger.

so this weekend she came over, we hung, she used me, and when she was done she left me dazzled and dehydrated in a mess on my couch.

alone.

i felt good, but i was alone.

problem with dating hot babes is theyre in demand.

is it annoying? oui.

is she worth it?

oui.

so i fired up the tv, ordered a pizza and watched Best Week Ever on tivo, and then the sopranos.

and passed out on my couch before 10pm.

woke up alone at 3am and made the walk of shame upstairs to my bedroom.

and fell asleep again. only to wake up a few hours later.

alone.

again.

with nothing but strands of pom-poms littered around my front door.

as apparently clipper girl had tried to wake me up last night but i sleep like a figgin rock.

danielle + leah + it was bunnie's birthday this weekend and i forgot cuz i suck

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when the sopranos have dream sequences it reminds you that there is plenty of room for art in television drama. it harkens back to a more simpler time when Twin Peaks was throwing curveball after curveball at the viewer tripping us out with backwards talking midgets and whispering homecoming queens.

dreams are the lies that our minds tell us at our most vulnerable, and for a show that is set around the discussions between a shrink and the head of a mob family dreams mean much much more.

last night the sopranos spun us so far into a dream sequence that at one point we didnt know if it was an entire dream episode and even though it could have been an incredibly amazing alice-in-wonderland of psychedelia and psycho-self-awarness through one of the most compelling tv characters, tony soprano, it fell flat and was neither hallucinatory or important to the plot.

it seemed like a lazy way to fill an hour during a week when the writers didnt know how to move the story along.

it was a waste of terrific artistic device: the dream as truth serum.

it was a waste of momentum that the sopranos have had over the last few episodes.

and it a waste of a great opportunity to get meadow and christopher's fiance into a bikini.

and yet still it was the most interesting programming on television last week next to the spurs+lakers game on thursday when derek fisher changed the destinies of karl malone and gary payton with :004 left on the clock.

the college of creative studies at ucsb, where i attended college, was pretty unified against dream sequences in stories. they considered it too easy for the writer and too cheap against the reader. in a dream you never know whats true for the character and whats bullshit. they could have put tony soprano in a dress last night in his dream and it could have meant 1,000 things, none of which would have been true.

the arguement in creative studies is, if youre going to make your character reveal something in a dream, let them reveal it while awake and the consequences are much more interesting, and the effect will be more powerful.

for example, in last night's dream episode, tony soprano recalls a former love who is no longer with us. he dreams that she is now his shrink and they have a discussion. my former teachers would have asked, "why don't you just have his shrink role-play with tony? have him pretend that dr. mulfrey is his deceased ex-love-interest and have them talk to each other using the same lines in the dream sequence. this way conscious tony soprano is more than just a bright-eyed open-mouthed doe freaking out at the craziness happening around him and instead has the ability to break down and cry or say things to the now-dead woman that he didnt have a chance to say to her."

instead, as jeff jarvis pointed out, there is no satisfying payoff. the plot development has been stymied with watered-down shadowplay and the audience is left scratching their heads and possibly dissapointed on an otherwise lovely sunday evening in the springtime.

no more dream sequences, sopranos, unless it involves talking fish, crossdressing mafia-men, or pole dancing from the protagonist's mother daughter and wife at the bada-bing.

weissblog + my single mom life + oriental redneck

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the best thing about last night's saturday night live season finale is the promise that it was jimmy fallon's last show.

the problem wasnt that he was gay.

the problem was that he was gay and not funny.

and he tried to rip off and replace adam sandler.

in a gay way.

but mostly it was that he wasnt funny.

there was tina fey feeding him all the best lines, and there he was fumbling over them. laughing at himself like it was funny.

it wasnt funny.

it was sad.

it was the equivalent of a dumb blonde minus the cleavage.

dumb blondes however are at least funny sometimes.

remember when jimmy fallon went through two entire seasons without being funny once?

amazing.

only colin quinn before him was as ridiculously unfunny and yet was allowed to keep the prime gig of anchor of weekend update.

pretending that there were no better people in america for that role than colin quinn or jimmy fallon.

im glad his album failed.

im glad he probably wont be guest hosting the show for at least a year

and im glad he thinks he can start a movie career.

and i cant wait to see him in a "where are they now" special in about 10 years.

tina fey should host weekend update alone next year.

and tsar needs to be a musical guest.

miss poops + xero79 + tales of ordinary madness

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