The Net Dog Blog

Terri Schiavo died today. I can't believe that this poor woman became the center of all this controversy over the past couple of weeks. For those of you who have been living under a rock, Terri Schiavo has been in a "persistent vegetative state" since 1990. Her husband believed that she would never have wanted to live like this and should have been allowed to die. However her parents wanted to prolong her "life" and won the support of several conservative Christian groups and, inevitably, George Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress who quickly passed a bill allowing Terri's parents to take the case to Federal court for review.
Isn't it funny how Republicans are always saying how we need less government, yet they are constantly wanting the government to regulate morality?
Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis, said after the vote, "In our public actions, we must build a culture of life that welcomes and defends all human life." Well, all human life except Iraqis or the gays, I guess. Eh, Jimmy? But I digress ...
The thing is I can sympathize with Terri's parents. We all find it hard to let go of our love ones and it is very easy to try to find a ray of hope that they will pull through something like this. I also I can't imagine how difficult it was for Terri's husband to make the decision to let her go and move on with his life. Hopefully now Terri's parents can do the same.
I realize that "quality of life" is subjective, but I just wouldn't want to be kept alive by machines... especially if it was not because there was actual hope of getting better but because somebody couldn't let me go.

There is one sentence that, no matter how it is said or what the intention behind it is, will instantly make me see red. "You are just like your mother."
Don't get me wrong... I love my mom but she definitely takes nagging to a new level. No matter what you do she knows a better way to do it and she's angry that you didn't think of it to begin with. However, if it's something she has to do she's completely helpless and you have to do it for her. Especially if it involves a computer. Last week, for instance, I had to order something off of Amazon for her and today I had to bid on something on Ebay. The thing is she owns, like, four computers. She was a computer operator for an electronics supplier. She may not be hip to all the ins and outs of Windows but she's not helpless around a computer. I hate to use the word lazy to describe my mother so I'll just say she has got the whole delegation-thing down pat.
The thing that pisses me off the most about my mother is that I can see myself becoming her. I definitely like things a certain way and I am the first to tell somebody my opinion. The thing that differientiates me from my mother is that I realize I'm doing it and I really want to stop. I wonder if there's a 12-step program for nagging?

Nothing pisses me off more than driving. I can really understand when somebody gets cut off on the interstate and subsequently pulls out a shotgun and starts blowing away any car who happens to pass by.
I get mad that old people who can barely walk are allowed to drive. I get angrier when I look over and see them wearing those big Terminator cataract glasses! Why don't we have to take a sight test in order to renew our driver's licenses???
Don't even get me started on cell phones. I can't say that I never talk on the phone while driving but what gets me are the people who try to park while they are chatting away on their cell phone.
And what's with everybody having to back into a parking space? Listen up. I will only say this once. IT IS EASIER TO PULL IN AND BACK OUT THAN IT IS TO BACK IN AND PULL OUT!
It's just so dangerous on the roads anymore. Everybody has to be in front of anybody else. And god forbid if you want to merge into the next lane. You'd have more luck threading a needle than getting your car between the two assholes next to you.
The one thing I'm looking forward to most when I move to England is that I won't have to drive. Then I'll get to bitch about the Tube!

P.S. I found this site all about driving. It might be worth a click.

Since February Sweeps are over and we are currently in the throws of March Madness, my poor little TiVo hasn't had a lot to do lately. I will be the first to admit that I watch a lot of TV so with the total lack of anything to watch combined with Blake being in London, I've been bored out of my mind. So, I've been looking for some new things to TiVo. By the way, isn't it funny that TiVo has become a verb?
But I digress ... BBC America is running a Kumars at No. 42 marathon today. I first discovered this funny little talk show on a flight to Thailand a couple years ago. The first show featured Boy George. Lord! What an odd bird! He has painted his head black and his face and hands red and green. He's also wearing a strange charm bracelet that extends from his ear to his nose. I believe the charms spell out Boy George but I can't be sure. I can appreciate the desire to set oneself apart from the pack, but I think Liberace would agree with me when I say "Bring it down a notch, sister!"
I remember the hell my dad put me through when I came home at 17 with a pierced ear. I can only imagine how fun life would have been if I ever came home looking like a Sith from the Star Wars movies.
Oh well. It could be worse. He could look like this! Yikes!

Recently, while dining at one of my favorite restaurants, I found a wire inside my grilled chicken sandwich. Apparently it was from the wire brush they use to clean the grills. Ewww. Needless to say, I didn't finish the sandwich ... but I have been back to the restaurant.
Last night, my friend Terry tried to gross me out by emailing me an article about a woman who found a human finger in the bowl of Wendy's chili she was eating at the time. Coincidentally, he was enjoying a bowl of Wendy's chili himself when he came across the story.
I asked him, "Did you eat the rest of your chili?"
"Well, yeah," he replied. I laughed so hard I think I let out a little pee.
But this just makes me wonder that if there are fingers floating around in Wendy's chili what else can be found in our favorite fast food?
A lot, according to a recent MSNBC piece called "Dirty Dining."
This really shouldn't come as a surprise though. I mean, all you have to do is step inside a Taco Bell and you can tell that hygene isn't a top 10 priority to most of the workers there so why should they care if there's a little booger in your Fiesta Taco Salad?
Maybe this goes back to what I was saying about buffets a few posts back... if it's fast and cheap, we will eat anything.
Oh well. I'm hungry ... could you please pass the fingers?

Okay. It's decided. I have got to find a new barber.
Last night on my way home from work, I stopped by the Great Clips by my house to get a haircut. For the third time in a row, this girl with a pierced nose and lip cut my hair. Well, apparently this time my instructions to "cut a little off the top" meant "give me the haircut you give to kids with head lice." It's so short! The silver lining is that my hair grows really fast so in two weeks this hair-don't will be a memory.
By the way, the title of this posting, in case you were wondering, is a line from
"Steel Magnolias," which is being revived off-Broadway next month. This new production stars Delta Burke, Christine Ebersole, Rebecca Gayheart, Marsha Mason, Lily Rabe, and Frances Sternhagen. I'd love to see it. I've seen the movie like 20 times but I've only seen it staged once. My best friend, Jim, and I were talking about taking a weekend trip to New York sometime before I move to London to see it.
I just hope my hair grows out by then...

I paid Blake a visit in London a couple weeks so we could go apartment hunting. While there, I saw an ad in a magazine for a restaurant touting "American-Size Portions." Now I'll be the first to admit that we Americans are typically a bigger people compared to our Hobbit-like British cousins, but I hardly think we wrote the book on hearty portions. I mean look at Henry VIII ... he definitely appreciated a big ol' turkey leg.
We Americans, though, do understand the joys of a buffet. It doesn't even have to be good food. Just slap a sign on the door saying "All-You-Can-Eat" and we'll pretty much eat anything. Trust me on this. I've eaten the $2.99 lunch buffet at Circus Circus in Vegas.
I like to say that I go to buffets because I like to try a variety of things but the real reason, and I think Blake will agree with me, is soft-serve ice cream. I am a total whore for ice cream. We will rate a buffet by the quality of their soft serve. "The ice cream is a little beige today," I might say. "They must have changed the formula."
Anyway, lately I've started to get a little disillusioned by buffets. Maybe it's because I've realized that the food at a Chinese take-out place is much better than what's on a buffet or maybe it's because I'm like 20-pounds overweight ... ok 30.
So this is my plan. I have 2 and a half months before I move to London. I figure I should be able to at least lose 10 pounds by then. So no more buffets ... even if their ice cream is really good.

The more I thought about this blog business the more I realized that the people reading this probably already know my back story. For those of you who don't, here is the Reader's Digest version: About 18 months into my relationship with my significant other (don't we look cute?), he informed me that he was being transferred to London for 2 years and wanted me to join him. This was not the easiest decision for me to make for a variety of reason that I won't go into here. Several months later, he is already in London and I'm awaiting the sale of my house.
Well, I finally got an offer a couple days ago. I wasn't thrilled with the offer, mind you, but it probably was the best offer I was gonna get. One of the drawbacks was that we wouldn't close the deal until late May because the lesbian who bought the house wasn't going to start her job in Louisville until July. But I'm trying to look on the bright side ... that gives me two months to get everything together as well as plenty of time to hang out with my friends.
Anyway, I hope to share my experiences leading up to the big move as well as life in London, which I'm sure will be an adventure whatever happens. :)

Let me start off by saying that I have no idea why I'm doing this ... but it seems like everybody is blogging these days and I'm nothing if not a sheep. Is sheep singular? Can you have one sheep? Oh well something to research I guess.
If you are reading this (and I hope you are), you're probably wondering why I'm The Net Dog. It's not as interesting as you might think ... or maybe you didn't think anything in which case the reason is more interesting than what you thought. Anyway, after high school I got a job at the Courier-Journal, which used to be a well-thought of newspaper in Louisville, KY but now is just another Gannett clone. For 10 years I worked in the news library as a research technician ... which is a fancy way of saying "librarian" (kinda like how garbage men are sanitation engineers). Basically it was my job to research anything and everything for the reporters and even the public (for a fee, of course).
I think I was pretty good at my job. I prided myself on being able to find anything so when AOL came along and I was looking for a cool screenname I came up with The Net Dog because I was like a bloodhound when it came to finding things on the net. See? I told you it wasn't very interesting. Most people thought it was something dirty ...
Anyway, I left the CJ after I finally graduated from college and took a job as a programmer at UPS. Well, let's just say that the rather rigid corporate environment at UPS was not my cup of tea so I took a job with a smaller shipping company. The more relaxed enviroment (blue jeans instead of suits and ties) suited me much better and I've been there for the past 5 years.
That is going to change very soon ...

To be continued ...