The Chronicles of Charlie: The Assassin Who’s Not Very Good At His Job
Dan | January 31, 2005
I linked to Not My Deskover on the right. The guy doesn’t need the traffic, but….he’s just about the best writer around if you want to read about the cold, endless mess that is temp work. If you’re at your desk, be glad you’re not at his.
Dan | January 31, 2005
My temp agency called on a Wednesday morning in May. It was around ten am; I’d gotten out of bed but hadn’t done much at that point; read some news, made some breakfast, read part of a decent book. When the phone rang, I jumped on it; broke and unemployed means you answer [...]
Dan | January 31, 2005
So I wandered over to the Crooked Fingers website this morning. Not only do they have a new album coming out on the 22nd, but they’ve got the thing basically streaming on random. It’s good. Oh, man, it’s good. It’s as good as a large chocolate brownie with hot fudge sauce [...]
Dan | January 29, 2005
I went to a Save The Children/Tsunami Relief benefit show last night. Erich Bachmann (Archers of Loaf, Crooked Fingers), Mark Kozelek (Red House Painters, Sun Kil Moon), and Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie, the Postal Service). It was completely sold out, and an awesome show. The legendary Jonathan Richman showed up [...]
Dan | January 28, 2005
So I was doing work today, watching videos on Launch, and somehow the 1990 video for “Live it Up” by Crosby, Stills, and Nash came on.
Oh. My. God. Three fat old guys, plus special balding old guy Phil Collins on drums, starring in a hip-hop video. It’s all there, the boats, the babes [...]
Dan | January 28, 2005
It’s a long-standing belief of mine that a huge portion (say 60% or more) of the people in this world are there merely for the purpose of getting in everyone else’s way. They’re the folks who walk along the sidewalk at half speed, rambling into their cell phones, weaving back and forth with just [...]
Dan | January 27, 2005
Check this guy’s replies.
Dan | January 27, 2005
I’m a firm believer in beat cops walking the street as a preventive solution to crime. This quote from today’s Chronicle is kind of annoying:
Commissioner Gayle Orr-Smith, who lives in the Bayview, said Mission residents expressed concerns similar to those of residents in her neighborhood. Adding more officers may not be the best solution, [...]
Dan | January 27, 2005
Latte with vanilla, bagel with cream cheese, and a very wonderful comment from Ellie on the last page of the book. This is going to sound trite and cliched, but that kind of stuff puts me on cloud nine. The time I spent writing that thing in (hold your breath): Boston, Los Altos, [...]
Dan | January 26, 2005
I know I have a few women that read this on occasion, so please answer me a question to help solve a debate: do girls get pro wrestling references?
Specifically, were I to write:
As Wrestlemania II was to Wrestlemania I,. Wrestlemania I was good (Hulk Hogan winning the title), II was better (Hulk Hogan beating [...]
Dan | January 26, 2005
So, San Francisco is going to ban smoking in public parks. I’m just waiting for the Fark headline, which will definitely be: “Having solved all other problems, SF supervisors vote to ban smoking in public parks.” (I haven’t looked at Fark yet. I’m now going to look. Not there yet)
I don’t smoke. [...]
Dan | January 25, 2005
Went to the library, picked up the following:
Faithful by Stephen King and Stewart O’Nan
Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States by Edward Blakely and Mary Snyder
Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About by Mil Millington
Rocks of Ages by Stephen Jay Gould
So I’m a baseball nut who hates the suburbs, is into sensitive boy [...]
Dan | January 25, 2005
Hey, someone read all the way through Guy Stuff and was nice enough to post a review on her blog. Her review is dead-on, and she caught a couple of very humbling errors. Thanks, Jennie!
Here’s the question–do I fix these errors now that she’s pointed them out, calling it still an editable [...]
Dan | January 24, 2005
Note:This is the beginning of a semi-regular feature. Those of you who’ve read the book (linked on the right) know that some of the characters have had to sit through boring, faceless, useless jobs. As you may have expected, some of the inspiration for these jobs came from my real life. You [...]
Dan | January 24, 2005
A woman who was fired for blogging is in the Chronicle today. I don’t really care about the subject of the article…people get fired for stupid reasons all the time, and there’s nothing you can do about it because your employers own you. Deal with it.
What bugs me is the caption on the [...]
Dan | January 24, 2005
Mathier and Ross have a little blurb today relating to the guy who scammed San Francisco into letting him film the Golden Gate Bridge. The city thought he was making a bridge documentary, turns out he was filming jumpers.
This has led for renewed calls for an anti-suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge to [...]
Dan | January 21, 2005
From The Ridgecrest Daily Independent:
…I don’t want to read any more letters from Liberals suggesting non-believers should be allowed to express their superstitions just because we Christians can express ours.
(got it from Eschaton)
Dan | January 20, 2005
SWM, 29, ISO female person. I’m really cool. Seriously. How many other guys on (this online site) have written a whole novel? None of them. Plus I’m in shape. I run and stuff. And bike. And snowboard. And hike in the mountains. But I’m not [...]
Dan | January 20, 2005
Dating sucks. “Dating” is a construct of the ’50s, left over from a time when guys hung out with guys, girls hung out with girls, and if you wanted to cross gender lines, you had to do it with some sort of rigidly formatted activity.
Let’s assume that you’re on a “date,” [...]
Dan | January 19, 2005
Bought a snowboard, boots, and bindings for $120 today. Thank all of the gods (even if they don’t exist) for Craigslist. Mountains are a callin’ this weekend.
I realize that there’s an innate hypocrisy to this. I’m a crunchy hiker boy, and I hate golf courses partially because they take what is always [...]
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