how to ruin your marriage on national television.

okay, so i'm sure you all have heard of that "moment of truth" show on fox.

it's basically the most awful gut-wrenching show i've ever heard of. i have yet to actually watch it, but i read about this clip on the internet and had to see it for myself.

basic synopsis:

this girl is on the show, she's married and her husband and whole family are sitting there watching her. a surprise guest comes out and it's her ex-boyfriend and he asks the question "do you wish you had married me instead?" keep in mind, this girl is strapped to a lie detector. if she answers falsely, she loses $100,000.

fucking INSANE.

Sweet car fin!

music to listen to while on hold

so my company asked me to make a mix cd. this is quite possibly the coolest thing i have ever been asked to do by an employer. the songs will be loaded onto our phone system and will become the new company hold music. so if you happen to call me at work, and i put you on hold, you might instantly feel hipper and more awesome because of my hold music.

here's my "i'm on hold" mix:

brand new - fork and knife
nada surf - beautiful beat
the owls - all those in favor
band of horses - the general specific
iron & wine - boy with a coin
the format - snails
puressence - drop down to earth
the color wheels - pirate ship
alison krauss & robert plant - stick with me baby
anthony hamilton - do you feel me?
arcade fire - une annee sans lumiere
cocunut records - west coast
death cab for cutie - all is full of love
feist - 1 2 3 4
glen hansard - fallen from the sky
imogen heap - goodnight and go
jose gonzalez - heartbeats
lucky soul - add your light to mine, baby
ryan adams - the hardest part
the shout out louds - tonight i have to leave it
maserati / mercury program - you give me problems about my business
mew - fox cub

25 pairs of panties.

"i musta been killin' em that day, boy."

my mom

i have an issue with a lot of my girl friends on myspace.

in their "who i'd like to meet" section on their profiles, many of them write "my mom when she was my age".

i think that's pretty limiting in imagination. i'd like to meet my mom when i'm her age and she's part human, part cyborg future robot.

the price of ONCE

anyone who has hung out with me in the past month or so has probably heard me geek out about the movie ONCE.



i saw it about a month ago after seeing it randomly in blockbuster, and then next thing i know they've won the academy award for best song. definitely well-deserved!

well, i am looking at the show calendar for toad's place here in richmond and it turns out the two actors in the film are touring and playing songs they wrote together for the movie. totally awesome, right?

WELL, not quite. it's $25 for a ticket. and that's advance. tickets at the door are $30.

is this normal? have i just been going to too many shows under $10 to know what bigger shows cost these days? i feel like two independent artists with some (movie) buzz should be like $15 tops. i would pay $30 to see tom petty or phil collins.

so yeah, i don't think i'm going to go. even though i loved the movie and i loved the music. the truth is, i bought the DVD for the movie and paid less for it. lame!

some awesome things about my first day of work

1. i'm getting paid to blog.
2. i can surf the internet without worrying about the temp job gestapo monitoring my every move.
3. i had a shiny new MAC waiting for me at my desk.
4. i can listen to music all day as loud as i want.
5. i can take tropical pictures of myself with my computer's webcam.


it's so good, it's like freedom week is still ongoing, except now i'm getting paid.

awesome.

star wars according to a three year old

Tattoo party!

Commemorating freedom week!

The science museum knows whats up..

the mall

against my better judgement, i went to the mall today. short pump mall to be specific. i had my mind set on an experiment and i had decided to carry it out.

my goal: play with an iphone for 30 minutes to make sure it was actually as cool as i think it is.

verdict: it is so fucking cool.

my main concern was the whole typing thing. was i going to be able to work the touchscreen with my man-hands and to be honest, it took a little while to get the hang of it, but after about 30 minutes i was already twice as good as when i started.

not too shabby.

so, come june when my verizon contract ends, i will be jumping ship to the world of the iphone. this is good for two reasons. a) i don't have the money for an iphone right now and b) i have a feeling they might drop the price one more time before june. after a few months of employment and a few months of slowing iphone sales, the timing will be just right.

of course, the negative side of going to the mall today was that i didn't realize it was PRESIDENTS DAY and every kid in junior high and high school had the day off. so where do they all go? the mall. i was dodging these little assoles left and right. so annoying. i wanted to grab these kids by their headbands and flourescent band t-shirts and yell "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE WEARING?" for the past three years, i've seen the kids dress more and more ridiculously and maybe it seemed less obnoxious before because it was in the context of a rock show. sure, it's flamboyant, but they're surrounded by 100 other kids wearing the same shit, so it's safety in numbers. but somehow seeing it at the mall, outside of a music element, it just made the kids look 100 times more ridiculous.



since no 14-year-olds read my blog (to my knowledge), my rant will fall on deaf ears.

i hate the kids.

i love the iphone.

happy freedom week!

wedding dj

i spent all day today downloading and previewing music for this wedding that i'll be playing music for in a few weeks.

since i have no actual DJ skills, i am the cheapest DJ around.

anyway, from about 2:00pm all i've listened to is clean edited hip hop songs, 80's dance music, and cheesy pop from the 90's.

i kinda want to die a little inside.

in order to detox, i'm going to listen to low and play my acoustic guitar. with how much i've fried my brain on cheesy music, don't be surprised if i have subconsciously learned how to play rick astley songs.

Last temp job lunch: a review

For my last lunch on my last day of temping, I decided to go all out and get some BBQ at Red Hot and Blue. The sandwich gets 4 out of 5 stars. The fries were crispy and delicious and received 5 stars. The pickle was pretty average. 3 stars. The beer, which most perfectly represents the principles of freedom week, of course, gets 5 stars. Overall score 4.7.

blogs in review format are (c) rory sheridan 2008

End of an era.

With tears hidden beneath my sunglasses and my motivational moments 2008 calendar clutched closely to my chest, i bid a fond farewell to my temp job. Freedom Week officially begins tonight but its important to take time to remember the treasured temping moments. Farewell, old friend.

some thoughts on valentines day

1. taco bell by yourself on valentine's day, not as un-romantic as you might think

2. LOST LOST LOST LOST LOST LOST LOST

3. why didn't anyone tell me about the twilight sad? no one ever tells me about awesome bands and then i find out about them on my own and realize i was an idiot for not checking them out sooner. (see: band of horses)

4. my life is awesome, but it's also a mess.

5. for all the hype, i feel like freedom week might consist of a lot of a) sleeping b) bored internet surfing, which will ultimately lead to c) more blogging and d) netflix

6. if all my friends bitch out on laser-tag because it's $15, and my night turns into sit-at-helens-drinking-PBR-tag, i'm gonna shoot my arms off with a laser gun.

7. happy valentines day. don't hate.

Get stoked!

Freedom week is almost upon us...

hmm... how can i get rich?

OH SHIT! A GUY WHO IS RICH! THANKS!

olympia show

i wrote this on monday, but with all the craziness and leaving town, i didn't have a chance to post it.

so last night was the olympia show at jaxx.

we sat through quite possibly one of the worst line-ups of all time. we arrived to find out there were nine bands playing, which is about five more bands than is EVER necessary. the first three bands were your standard junior high first-band-ever type deals. moms and dads were there taking photos and hanging out by the bar while their kids muddled through their instruments that they barely know how to play. the first band can only be described as "reggae emo metal". just try to imagine the implications of combining those three genres, and then subtract any possible talent. there was a touring band from philly who thought the empty room was actually a warped tour date, shouting "WHAT'S UP VIRGINIA?!" and "Okay guys, CLAP YOUR HANDS WITH ME!" i wanted to vomit. the next band sounded like coldplay if coldplay woke up from a collective coma, forgot how to play their instruments, and then were rushed onto the stage immediately still groggy and not sure where they were.

my favorite band of the night was this college rock fratboy jam band. these guys had to have been ripping bong hits in the parking lot, then played the show, then packed up their gear to head to the Sigma Chi luau late-night style. highlights include inviting one of their dads up on stage to jam out a harmonica solo and the increasingly amazing slap bass solos every few songs. if i was in a fraternity and i wanted to have the best kegger of my entire life, this band would headline the party and play for a minimum of three hours.

the olympia set was really intense and i don't know how to describe it really. normally when we play, i get a little lost in the music and don't really pay attention to what's going on around me. i know the songs so well that it takes very little active thought and i'm moving and singing purely from muscle memory. sometimes i'll get off stage and the entire set was a blur. a lot of times too, i'm out of breath, straining my voice, and my thoughts are centered around my next opportunity to get back to my water bottle and to catch my breath. last night was different. i was overwhelmed with this clarity, this hyper-awareness of everyone on stage, of how everything sounded, of every line that i was singing. it was like everything was going in slow motion and instead of everything being blurry, i had the chance to take everything in completely. i was singing as hard as i could and i never ran out of breath. it just felt like everything was burning just a little bit brighter. i could see out in the audience the faces of the friends who had come out to see us and i could see people singing the lyrics back at me. for those thirty minutes, i wasn't at jaxx at the weirdest longest show in memory. i was on stage, feeling everything perfectly, playing the songs that i love with some of my best friends and just living in that moment.

when the next band played, i quietly watched, re-living the last thirty minutes in my head, knowing that soon i was going to walk out of that club and the night was going to end, and in less than ten hours, i was going to be exhausted, back at my temp job that i could care less about.

i said goodbye to the guys and started the drive back home to richmond. in the end, for those thirty minutes, it was one of my favorite shows.

You gotta go all the way to ohio to find snow. Virginia is dropping the ball. We are on our way home now... I am sick of being in the car already.

Love is watching someone die.

It doesn't matter what it is i want to write about because odds are that Ben Gibbard has already done a much better job of it.

Kill me now.

Jaxx: the best strip mall metal club in northern va. So glad we are playing here.

Fuck obama. If he really wants me to vote for him he can find me at empire.

Politics.

Somehow i accidentally ended up at a barack obama party.

Holy shit.

When they encouraged employees to make themselves feel at home in their cubicles, this lady did not fuck around.

paperwork vs. bad sex

so i'm working on these two requests this morning at work.

it's two different guys who want to remove a restriction that will allow them to sell their stock in this company, but the catch is, you can't be at all affiliated with the company to do this. so i get the request in this morning for these two guys and the first one says "CEO" and the other one says "Director". these two guys RUN the company. there is absolutely no way in hell they're getting this restriction removed.

but because of the paperwork rules, i have to go through all the motions of printing out all these documents, requesting certificates, setting up a folder, calling lawyers... instead of just e-mailing them and being like "are you serious? this is definitely not happening."

it's like bad sex in an unhappy marriage.

i'm going through the motions, my heart's not really in it, and in the end i know it will only end in failure and rejection. but here i am, fumbling my way through the process, knowing that it is all a giant waste of time. no one's getting off.

it's a little early in the morning for bad sex metaphors in relation to my temp job, but there it is. welcome to my paperwork hell.

Cubicle Propaganda.

I can feel a cubicle rebellion brewing at the office..

ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

so i really wanted to start this blog to document the ridiculousness of cubicle life in my oh-so-boring temp job. i've been temping on and off for the past 5 years. i think i could probably write a book about it. however, i feel between dwight schrute and the guy from office space, cubicle humor is pretty well-tread comedic territory.

obviously none of that stopped me from starting this blog though.

so maybe it's for the best that i found out today that my temping future might have a much shorter shelf-life than i imagined. i'm in the middle of a job search and i might be getting a real actual non-paperwork, non-filing, somewhat fulfilling job in the near future.

this is mildly terrifying. each time i leave a temp job and move to a job where i'll actually have real responsibilities and challenges, i always have a temporary freak-out. i start to think that maybe in all the years of paperwork, i've actually forgotten how to do real things like make decisions at work. what if i've numbed my brain to a point where it's partially paralyzed and all i can do now is alphabetize files, enter numbers into spreadsheets, and staple things?

let's hope not.

anyway, nothing to report or anything. everything is really preliminary, but we'll see..

in other news, best superbowl commercial award goes to:
TALKING STAIN!



maybe i can relate because i have job interviews on the brain, or maybe it's because it's just so goddamn weird, but i loved it. if you go to their website, you can download a talking stain ringtone, which i am now the proud owner of.

Ian earns his title of King Of Man Status with the full rack of ribs.

PHIL?! PHIL CONNORS?!

it's 2008. welcome to my new blog.

it's groundhog day. so to celebrate, i'm going to watch the famous film starring bill murray. of course, there's a drinking game involved.

i am going to take a drink every time the day resets. i plan on being wasted after about 45 minutes.



with portugeuse subtitles for all my brazilian friends!