Or should that be "wimmin"? I guess it should really be "woman" seeing as there's only one.

Got a reply back from Melissa with a photo.

From: Melissa

sorry about that so here is a picture of me its old but still me

Go ahead and click that link up there. She's posing with a cute teddy. Here's Xibit's answer:

u lookin fine, baby. F-I-N-E. fine.

i gots all yo shots togetha an u made the cut on friday. u headin toards a pimp ride fo sure!

we gots one problem tho. unfortunately we been having some fools signin up from anonymous mail hosts (like hotmail). seems people like to just send shit in to us and they tryin to punk us. shit aint even real and shit. now i believe youse real but that donÂ’t fly wit the whole crew (and the dam blood suckin lawyas).

so anyway, me and funk mastah flex worked out a way to make sure people was real. heres what you need to do so we knows you is real. take a picture of you and you mens car. now that donÂ’t tell us that u real. what tell us u real is you need to be holdin a sign that say something specific that we didnÂ’t tell nobody else to use. yo sign needs to be:

“High on SBD”

that donÂ’t mean drugs, yo. sbd the hydraulic lifts we use wit ground effects.

the person in the pic can be u, yo boy or your kids (cause they so cute – the kids are cute that is, not yo boy. he good looking but Xibit doan float that drection). just reply to this mail with that pic and we get you set straight baby.

keep on watchin Pimp My Ride, baby!

Xibit

Also got a new hit from "Kyle" and sent him standard photo request #1 (modified not to ask for a bikini shot). And of course everybody's got the disclaimer too.

So, will I ever get a picture with an SBD sign?

Posted by: Jim at 03:48 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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The closing won't be tomorrow but it will be on our original planned date of the 23rd. That's Wednesday. I'm going to be a homeowner.

Holy shit, y'all!

Our broker is just fan-freakin-tastic. Not only has he bought down our rate (this is banker talk for "I'll give you money now instead of later), he's finagled the closing numbers so well that our out of pocket expense for buying this house is hovering at or below zero dollars. Yeah - at or below zero dollars to get into this house.

As in, pay no money and get into the house. Have a month on us and just pay your mortgage starting in August.

The appraisal also came in at just a hair under $135,000. Our mortgage is for $130,000.

We're putting zero dollars down to get into a house that we'll have almost five grand of equity in as soon as the ink dries.

I love the Navy. I love the VA. I love my broker.

Posted by: Jim at 03:26 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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We had our team meeting this morning. This was a bit odd since our Product Architect and temporary team director (did I mention that there's STILL no executive in charge of Development yet?) is in Hawaii. The reason became clear when Project Manager Girl ran out of things to say and admitted she was dragging it out because President Guy had said he wanted to stop in on the meeting. For all y'all who aren't in a corporate setting this was the equivalent of Project Manager Girl standing on the conference table and screaming out "This is a set up! This meeting was only held because President Guy wanted y'all for a captive audience while Product Architect is away!"

Except she's stubbornly clinging to her Pennsylvania speech patterns so she wouldn't have said "y'all".

He wanted us to know how proud he is of our product and how important it is to the company. He went on and on about how the quality of the product is so fantastic that we are in a position to leverage our synergies to extemporate our marginalizations, or something like that. The vast difference in product quality since release X.0 was mentioned a couple of times. How life was horrible at X.0 and earlier but that now we've only got legacy issues left from the bad old days. Everybody who's using X.1 through X.4 loves us to tears and wants us to have babies with them.

Know what the big addition was after X.0? The big change that was made to address the massive quality problems? The one constant that has been in place during the increasing reliability and decreasing incident versions of X.1 through X.4? A dedicated Quality Assurance Analyst. Me. I came in to a product that had devastating quality problems. Now we have a product that is so reliable they don't even need to think about quality any more. So they're getting rid of the QA Analyst position.

Stupid mother fuckers.

I'd like to say that I don't hope the product tanks when I leave but that would be mostly a lie. It doesn't really matter what I hope for anyway. Programmers working as part time quality people are not going to put out a reliable product. They already proved this in the pre-Jim versions.

History will repeat itself and by version X.6 this product is going to be a dog again.

Posted by: Jim at 01:07 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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The 29th Bestofme Symphony is up at The Smallest Minority. Join our host Kevin for a tour of the very best in the Blogosphere.

Next week's post extravaganza will be hosted by Xset.

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(Groped from LeeAnn in a powerful and confident manner.)

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President Announces Controversial New Educational Initiative

Standing in front of the Los Angeles Times building on Spring Street and surrounded by aides, President Bush put forth a new and long-overdue proposal today, to the cheers of thousands of long-suffering readers of that paper, to start to repair the tragic situation with the American journalism system. He called it "No Reporter Left Behind."

"For too many years have we seen the sad evidence accumulating that our nation's media outlets and journalism schools simply aren't achieving what they must for our nation to maintain its first-place ranking in freedom of speech and a properly informed public," he declared. "Compared to journalists of a few decades ago, today's reporters show an increasing inability to comprehend simple English or basic statistics, to exercise logic, or to even recognize that they're Americans."

Thank goodness and about damn time!

(Hat tip to No.2 Pencil) more...

Posted by: Jim at 07:29 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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These are movies that are so bad you killed them (had to turn them off or leave the theater because you could not stand to watch them any more). I'm pretty tolerant and have a high pain threshold. I can generally watch even really bad movies (like Lifetime channel ones). Either I'll mentally ridicule it and amuse myself that way or I'll just use it as a two hour brain nap. But even with my inhuman resistance there are movies that I simply could not finish watching.

I want to work up a list of these killer movies, sort of a "worst of" list. I'll start it off with one of mine and then y'all pile in on the comments and I'll update the list periodically. No rules except you must literally have walked out on it or turned it off, never to return to it again. Let's keep it limited to first run movies too. If it was direct to video even the distributors knew it was lousy. Give some sort of clue why it was so bad, too.

The List of Killer Movies:

About Schmidt (Trey): I hate him for peeing on the floor. I hate him for making me see those huge, gross boobies. I hate this movie because like Eyes Wide Shut it is boring, except instead of being about walking, this movie is about driving, which is just as boring. At least it's day time.

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (Mark): As if watching Jim Carrey talk through his butt wasn't enough, there's a truly excreble love scene with "In The Jungle" in the background. My brother and I, though only having paid a dollar to witness this cinematic treat, raced each other to the car after that.

Battlefield Earth (Ilyka): My boyfriend rented it as an exercise in masochism. Turns out he's a much bigger masochist than I am, because he made it all the way through and I had to quit at about 45 minutes.

Blood Work (Trey): This is a movie about how some women really just want to have sex with really old, gross, wrinkly men. That's their business, but it should have been on the poster so that I would know to avoid it. Also, there is some boring talking. I swear I saw a boom mike come into the frame a couple of times. Oh, and there's a kid that stands as a good argument for abortion.

Cabin Fever (Trey): Ok. I take it back about there being an exciting movie about flesh-eating bacteria. This movie has that and it's just dumb. Dumb + about 75 million gallons of fake blood. It's a movie about how movies sometimes don't have any relationship at all with reality. The only good thing about this movie is that it's the movie TGD and I watched on our first date.

Eyes Wide Shut (Trey): This is a movie about walking. Tom Cruise is a good walker especially after dark. It was almost a movie about Nicole Kidman's Heiney, but it doesn't show up enough to make it worth watching. There are some other naked people, too, but they also do not outwiegh the apparent vast importance this movie places on walking. And also some talking about boring things. [ED - This one's on my list too. It's a terribly serious movie too. I turned it off when I realized I was waiting for a crying clown to appear.]

Farewell my Concubine (Simon): Had me wishing I was in a room with someone actually draggin their fingernails down a blackboard. Not only did my girlfriend at the time and I walk out, it was so bad it put paid to any chance of sex that night. Damn that movie.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Me): Yeah, the definitive 'guy' movie was so bad I turned it off. It was shortly after Lee VanCleef's character beat some information out of a whore that I realized that this movie just flat out sucked. The dialog is too over the top to survive even the suspension of disbelief rule. The characters are so universally reprehensible that I was hoping for a three way shootout with no survivors. The dubbing and sound effects were unbelievably bad. There was at least a half-second difference between the video track and sound tracks and that gave it the feel of a Japanese monster flick. There were no sounds except dialog and guns and an occasional door. Just a horrific train wreck of a movie overall.

Insomnia (Trey): Insomnia is not an exciting affliction. Name a movie "Flesh-eating bacteria" and then you can talk excitement, of course, the movie would be much shorter than Insomnia, which if the movie IS insomnia wouldn't be a bad thing. Robin Williams isn't scary like Hannibal Lector. He's scary like Chester the Molester and that's also not good. I don't think there's a likable person in the whole movie. I want them all to die.

It's Pat (Emma): Proof that Hollywood hasn't had an original idea since 1940 and that not all SNL skit rip-offs are a good idea. Horrific.

Johnny English (Me): It was so trite, juvenile, predictable and plain not funny that even the promise of Natalie Imbruglia in tight cleavage-revealing outfits could not entice me to endure it.

Lost in Space (LeeAnn): Such horrendously "written by the sappy woman at the end of the assembly line" Hallmark dialogue that even Gary Oldman couldn't save it. One of the few movies I've walked out on.

Lost in Translation (Trey): This is movie about an old and not very funny man who fancies himself to be either not as old as he is or way older than he is and definitely more funny than he is. And he stays up late at night. This movie should be stopped after the "Lip my stocking, Mr. Hallis" scene. Again, boring.

Meet Joe Black (Harvey): Beloved Wife & I figured it ought to be good, what with Anthony Hopkins. Bleah! Bad dialogue, turtle-paced-plot, a lot of blank expressions, and conversations that did nothing to advance the plot or story. I think we lasted half an hour.

Naked Lunch (Me): I only rented this because it starred Peter Weller. If Robocop was the star it had to be good, right? Oh man was I shocked when I discovered it was actually a porn/snuff flick featuring a lunatic fucking a typewriter. This one got turned off the first time Gizmak the Typer licked itself clean with its twelve inch tongue.

Passion of the Christ, The (Helen): I had thought it would be inspired, but instead it was like watching defrost meat get whipped on a kitchen counter. Dude, can you say "gratuitous"?

Punchdrunk Love (Trey): This is a movie about what if Adam Sandler were just a smidge more retarded than he already is and is still able to convince a pretty lady to put up with him for more than five seconds. If I were Adam Sandler in this movie, I wouldn't be retarded, but I just might kill everyone I know with a tire iron or a steak knife.

Scream (Mark): I also made my friends get up and leave the theater after the beginning of Scream (when the girl gets her throat slashed and can't scream to her parents) because I realized I could no longer stomache slasher films. We saw Beavis and Butthead Do America and had (at least I did, and I'm not much of a fan of Beavis and Butthead) a grand ole time.

Seabiscuit (Ilyka): I probably could have stayed with it if I'd tried harder. As it was I was mocking the condescending narration a lot: "Now y'see, back in the 1930s was a time known as the Great Depression, because it was very depressing not being able to find 'nuff to eat. But it was Great if you were rich." But I cracked and we walked out of the theater halfway through.

Starsky & Hutch (Susie): I think it was the first movie I literally walked out of the theater on since The Man Who Fell to Earth. Thank God it was playing at my theater and I hadn't paid anything to get in. The absolute bottom-scraping of "let's turn old tv shows into movies between making remakes and sequels because thinking is hard" school of film making.

Touch of Evil (Ilyka): One of mine is one which repeatedly makes the "best" lists by people who know far, far more about the art of filmmaking than I do: Touch of Evil. Couldn't watch the damn thing. Couldn't take Orson Welles' mumbling. Couldn't buy Charlton Heston (yes, Charlton Heston) as a Mexican. Couldn't stand the female lead. Couldn't even follow what was going on because, oh my God, did I mention the mumbling? So I guess I have no taste in cinema.

Toxic Avenger, The (Clancy): I remember being in the video store with my (then) girlfriend and looking at the (then) old campy movie section. A guy stranding next to me said, “Hey Pal, watch this one. I just say it and it was good.” So we took it home. And had to kill it about 30 minutes in. I still wonder about that stranger. Did he really think it was good, or is he still laughing?

Truth or Dare (Dopple-G): It was all about girlfriend secrets and stuff like that. I was really looking for tits and ass - you know, spank material - and this was targetted for girls and homosexual guys.

Posted by: Jim at 05:33 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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Get your submissions in for the next Bestofme Symphony. Send them to bestofme@jpeacock.net and they'll be in Monday's edition at The Smallest Minority.

The only requirements are that you think the post is good and that it be at least 2 months old. It doesn't even have to be from your own blog. It just can't get any simpler!

The basics of the Bestofme Symphony.
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Get reminder emails.

Posted by: Jim at 01:25 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Terrorists in Saudi Arabia have carried through on their threats to kill their American hostage. I'm not going to hot link to anything because I honestly don't want that traffic. It's going to be everywhere you look in a few hours anyway so you don't need my links.

Paul M. Johnson Jr. was a contractor in Saudi Arabia, our "ally" in the fight on terrorism. His captors beheaded him as they previously murdered American Nick Berg.

Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of the majority of the 9/11 suicide mass murderers. Saudi Arabia is where Osama bin Laden was born and where he made the millions of dollars that started his criminal empire. It is the stronghold of Wahabiism, the ultra strict fundamentalist Islamic sect that makes all of this possible.

In the past several months, foreign (pronounced "American") facilities have been attacked by terrorist strike teams and bombings. In each instance the Saudi police have allowed terrorists to escape, either through negligence or by disengaging contact.

I won't be saying anything at the moment that I might have some slight chance of regretting later. Instead I will just take this space to express my deepest sympathies for Paul Johnson's friends and family.

Posted by: Jim at 02:32 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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The Analogia Star Estimator compares me to these guys:

Kyle MacLachlan and Matt LeBlanc. Yeah, I guess they could hang with me.

Hey, wait a sec. Would that make me Chandler or Ross?

(Filched from the exceptionally lovely Sandra McDowell)

Posted by: Jim at 02:11 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 Only fair, considering I think you're Sexiest Male Blogger, anyway.

Posted by: Emma at June 18, 2004 02:31 PM (NOZuy)

2 Not a bad combo....although a little confusing...a cross between Agent Cooper and Joey...hmmmm

Posted by: Tif at June 18, 2004 05:56 PM (jCFyL)

3 Why, thankee ladies. >:-) (That's supposed to be a naughty grin. Is there an emoticon for that?)

Posted by: Jim at June 18, 2004 06:30 PM (IOwam)

4 Happy Father's Day, Jim.

Posted by: Ted at June 20, 2004 07:38 AM (ZjSa7)

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Possible problem with the new house (which is still going pretty smoothly and still scheduled for closing on the 22nd but our broker said don't count that day as gospel cause it could be a day or two later and why did we bother specifying an exact date on the legal documents if it's subject to change based on stuff we have no control over anyway but that's not what this post is about so I'll drop it for now). The current air conditioner isn't the original air conditioner. That's not a problem at all. Newer is generally better and in this case it's a very nice air conditioner. The problem is that the original fuse and breaker are 40 amps and they weren't changed when this new unit was put in. This unit is rated at 30 amps. More modern, more efficient, pulls less juice.

Is this a problem? We made changing out the breaker for a 30 amp breaker one of our requirements but the sellers have been advised that it's a no-use change (no reason to do it, in other words) so they don't want to do it.

Is there a real problem if the cutouts are rated at 40 amps and the unit is rated at 30 amps?

Posted by: Jim at 11:51 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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It was a bit too sweet and the hot fudge was too runny.

Actually I really did have one. I'll clue y'all in later after I flesh it out and talk to Lovely Wife about it.

Posted by: Jim at 07:19 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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From: cheryl

I would love to have a new car, but unfortunately I cannot afford one, but if you can pimp my escort, I would be forever grateful!!
Give a girl from Arkansas a break and pimp my ride.

and

From: Ashley

I would love it if you would put my brother Johnathon Norris on your show because he always says i wanna pimp my ride.

Thank You
Ashley Norris

The mail I'm sending both is fantastically similar, differing only in the details that they've provided. I've decided to go for specific graphical targets. The pictures I'm getting now are useless and it's too much work to keep building up the scam waiting for these brain challenged folk to figure out that this is fake. Instead of that, I want a collection of pictures of people holding up Snooze Button Dreams signs. Now is that a noble goal or what? more...

Posted by: Jim at 01:43 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Jimmie of Suburban Sundries Shack has won immunity this week. Congrats Jimmie! Now we wait for tomorrow when we hear who gets voted off of Blogtiki.

The contestants are behaving far too much like a 12 step support group in the comments over there. We want blood and braggadocio. Go poke them with a stick.

Posted by: Jim at 09:07 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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There are a lot of sucky things about job hunting. One of the suckiest is that you have to give at least a cursory examination to all of your email. Even the ones that SpamBayes absolutely guarantees are spam. I know that SpamBayes is 99%+ efficient but if I miss a chance at Ultimajob because their HR guy uses too much marketspeak and SpamBayes equates his missive with a cia|is mailing and I didn't catch it before deleting it I would be seriously pissed. No, wait a sec. I wouldn't be pissed because I wouldn't actually know about it if I didn't catch it.

Ah, hell. You know what I mean - I don't want to miss anything and as a person looking at a lack of employment I'm motivated enough to do something that I haven't done in months - read the Subjects of a hundred or so porn and drug spams on a daily basis.

On the plus side I got a genuine giggle out of this one from Grover Oneill (no apostrophe please, thank you very much): The Beeeeeest Lubeeeee For Your Johnsooooooon.

Hehehehe. Now I can't stop thinking about my Johnsoooooooon and what the Beeeeeest Lubeeeee for it might be.

Hehehe - Lubeeeeeee. That's a winner.

Posted by: Jim at 07:15 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Melissa wrote back too. Dey jess caint get enuff o this ride pimpin, yo!!

From: Melissa

it taking me a little longer because i can't send u a picture of my mens ride it's not working i'll keep on trying

She would have gotten back to me sooner but she's having some email problems. Damn those Hotmail addresses! She sent me two very large pictures (over 900 KB each). This wouldn't have been too bad except she sent one of them six times. Damn, girl! Lay off my inbox! But in Melissa's defense, I did already determine that she's clueless and I instructed her to send pictures. It doesn't take the Oracle to figure out that this is a recipe for disaster. more...

Posted by: Jim at 02:11 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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I'm an irredeemably eejitous, liberal, tight as fuck, pathetically simple-minded, dribbling child!

How rude. Calling me a liberal*...why I aughta...

See how compatible you are with me!

(Snaked off Robert's beal post, and if that doesn't sound naughty then I don't know what does.)

* I kid. Being one of those folks mostly in the middle a lower case "L" liberal label fits as well as a lower case "C" conservative label. Which is to say, not tolerably well at all.

Posted by: Jim at 10:39 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Heathony wrote back again. I think I scared the little guy a bit.

From: Heath

Hey Xibit its my dad (anthony) just that im usein my friends heath e-mail address cause i don't have one k dogg srry for da confusin but ill try gather some hunnies up n send em to ya k

peace out

Now hold on a second here. His dad is Anthony and his friend is Heath. So who the hell is he? I guess he'll remain Heathony for now. What's up with using a friend's Hotmail addy? Did they start charging for these things and nobody told me? Ah, screw it. I'm having fun here. more...

Posted by: Jim at 08:04 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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The Supreme Court overturned a 9th Circuit Court ruling against saying the Pledge of Allegiance in schools because of the controversial word "God". Unfortunately they didn’t actually rule on the Constitutionality of “under God”. The lower court ruling was overturned because part-time dad Newdow didn’t have proper custody to sue in his daughter’s name.

Which means weÂ’ll be seeing this again sometime soon.

Incidentally, today is Flag Day and the 50th anniversary of the addition of "under God" to the Pledge.

(Hat tip to Lovely Wife)

Posted by: Jim at 01:42 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Due to popular demand I present Heathony's dad!

What do we know about this fella? Well girls we can be reasonably sure that he's employed. These photos were taken behind Radio Shack and he's wearing a Radio Shack shirt! Either he works there or Heathony got Pops entered into a shirt giveaway at the Shack.

We know that Heathony is very fond of him. That's cool and says good things about his character.

We know that Heathony isn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier. That doesn't necessarily reflect on Karate Man himself but you know the old saying about fruit not falling far from the tree and all. Take it under advisement.

He was in the Air Force and that really doesn't tell us a whole lot except he couldn't get into the Navy and that he is very, very lazy.

Ha! I kid. I'm such a kidder. So he's a veteran and that's also very cool.

He has a lot of tattoos. This could indicate gang affiliation or show a predisposition for hepatitis or Aids. Then again he's a veteran so there's every chance in the world that he was never off on a drunken bender getting inked. We'd give mad props for the tats themselves but we can't really see any good looking ones. We'll reserve judgment on this one.

He's a kick boxer and looks to be in pretty decent shape. A bit of the Steven Seagal paunch showing up but otherwise quite solid looking.

From that last picture we see that he keeps his truck very tidy. A clean truck is a sign of an orderly mind (or a disturbed one). Speaking of the truck, he's driving and maintaining a 20 year old vehicle so we know he's frugal (or cheap). Okay, this one's a wash too.

One thing we know for sure is that Karate Man wants you. Yes, you. And he's going to get you too because he is indeed Karate Man. Just look into his eyes. Oh yea, baby. Oh yeah.

Posted by: Jim at 01:24 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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