asides — 1 comment
11
Nov 05

Paris Hilton is mesmerizing

Let Paris Hilton hypnotize you with her practiced smile. Mesmerizing.

Good online soul / R&B station. Soulful Classics. “Hey my brother, can I borrow a copy of your “Hey Soul Classics”? No, my brother, you must buy your own.”

Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0 “You scored as Batman, the Dark Knight. As the Dark Knight of Gotham, Batman is a vigilante who deals out his own brand of justice to the criminals and corrupt of the city. He follows his own code and is often misunderstood. He has few friends or allies, but finds comfort in his cause.” Je suis Batman.

Take a stand on important issues. There’s no middle ground.

Personal — Comments Off on Enrique Omar Sivori
10
Nov 05

Enrique Omar Sivori

Omar SivoriI had a great conversation with Mariano, one of my clients out in California. I had never gotten a chance to speak with him much before, but when I returned his call about an email problem the first thing he asked if I was related to “Big-head” (I forget the Spanish word he used) Sivori, Enrique Omar Sivori, one of Argentina’s most famous soccer players, named by Pelé as one of the ” top 125 greatest footballers”. He pronounced Sivori as “sivery”, which seems to be the usual Italian pronunciation despite the fact that my family has always pronounced it as “sivoori”, which I think is the proper Klingon pronunciation. He gave me the whole run down on Argentine soccer and how there are so many Italians in Argentina that it is more like Italy than Italy is, especially the north of the boot, which he said has become very commercialized and fast-paced like America. All the talk of soccer and Italy made me want to buy a Juventus replica jersey.

Another bit I learned while researching: “oriundi” is a word meaning South Americans of Italian stock. I created a wikipedia account just to make a minor edit to the sparse english language version of the Omar Sivori article, and to add a stub for a definition of “oriundi”. Watch out Internet!

asides — 1 comment
10
Nov 05

Free World of Warcraft

Try World of Warcraft free for ten days It’s been difficult to keep myself from reopening my account. I just keep thinking about all the fun I used to have with my friends chasing down level thirty newbs with our mounts to pwn them. When I quit, my warlock alter-ego, Sivori, was level 43. One of my favorite tactics was to have my succubus run up and seduce the opponent with a kiss so they would be mesmerized. Then I’d dump some high damage spells on them and fear them a couple times so that they ran off uncontrollably. Ah, memories. By now all the people I played with have advanced to 60 if they’re still playing, that is. It’s crack though. I must stay away.

iWorkWithFools Rant about stupid coworkers. “She could get an Academy Award for her performance as a tired yet plucky single mom, struggling against all odds to be the best darn homemaker and mother she can. But listen closely to the personal calls; the content revolves around her soliciting free childcare for the night/weekend so she can devote attention to the pursuit of happiness (hers) and the boyfriend du jour.”

Whimsical mouse taxidermy. Yeah. I like the mouse version of the martyrdom of Saint Sebastien.

asides — Comments Off on Stupidest Holiday Trend Ever
09
Nov 05

Stupidest Holiday Trend Ever

Upside down Christmas trees. Stupidest Holiday Fad Ever. Hell, let’s just turn everything upside down.

Literature — 2 comments
09
Nov 05

A Feast for Crows

George R.R. Martin’s A Feast for Crows is now on sale after a long wait. Amazon’s got it for $18.48. Dang. I need to read this. Is Santa Claus listening?

On a related note: Caught with my book pants down

Personal — Comments Off on Passing notions
09
Nov 05

Passing notions

Added to my enemies list: Goobers who wear their bluetooth wireless headsets when they’re not on the phone. It’s an epidemic. This is worse than the tendency to wear cellphones on the belt.

Consumerism / frugality: Both Colgate and UltraBrite toothpastes are made by Colgate-Palmolive and have nearly identical ingredients, yet UltraBrite is half the price of the equivalent Colgate. I have been a sucker.

Literature — 1 comment
08
Nov 05

Book reviews for people with gnat-sized attention spans

I’ve been reading a lot lately, although I should probably be doing a lot of the things on my to-do list.

Deliverance This is the 1970’s answer to Fight Club. Modern man in a search for meaning, what’s real and vital. The desire for meaning and the brutal force of the reality they find. The book is so real it makes you wonder if James Dickey had the experiences described in the book. The book is fast-paced and full of action and violence, and of course, the whole backwoods sodomy thing the movie is well-known for. I’d be curious to hear thoughts from a female reader.

Blind Assassin I gave this four stars too. Margaret Atwood makes me ache. She is able to reach inside and touch that quiet center we all have. Her metaphors are delicious and the depth of the story is meticulous. It’s one of those time machine books where you travel into the story. It did leave me feeling wistful and sad, but not in a bad way. More like a lingering sigh.

Day of the Locust This book is depressing. It’s the literary equivalent of watching a “Cops” marathon. It’s got a gritty all-too-real thing going, but after a while you want to go home and take a shower so you can forget about all the cockfighting (literally), midgets, and human misery.

Neuromancer This could have been written yesterday and it stands up amazingly well for 1981. For a book about the future it’s remarkably relevant despite the obsolete references to “RAM”, dot matrix printers, etc. A great story, very Phillip K. Dick in so many ways, despite it’s more pronounced techno-fetishism.

Cool Tools / General / Software / Internet — 3 comments
08
Nov 05

Flickr Plugin for WordPress

Wow. I guess I’ll need to use Flickr more now that everyone is supporting it in all the various tools such as WordPress. Like del.icio.us, it has become the de facto standard in what it does due to its flexibility and openness. A guy named Joe Tan produced a cool plugin for WordPress that adds some cool Flickr-ish stuff to WordPress.

The WordPress Flickr Post Bar plugin very simply allows you to easily insert your Flickr photos into your blog posts. Once installed, this plugin will display your most recent Flickr photos as thumbnails in a bar across the bottom of your WordPress post form. Clicking on the thumbnail of a photo you want to use will then automatically insert the proper HTML snippet into your blog post.

Personal — Comments Off on There can be only one
08
Nov 05

There can be only one

A couple of years ago I figured out that there was another guy out there with the same name as me, Chris Sivori, some distant cousin of mine I imagine in Louisville, Kentucky where my father’s family is from. It galled me that he was popping up first in Google searches when I searched for my own name. This search result is not surprising considering he played/plays college football, and I am just, well, me. A person of no consequence, especially in the world of college sports. Now I have finally made it to the top of the list and I can cross another pointless, petty crusade off my list. This would be more difficult if there were more than two people with my name.

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