I knew there was something else I needed to add… People ask me, “Ian, why do you like Warren Zevon?” I, typically, answer something about his ability to write biting sarcastic lyrics… From his latest album- Life’ll Kill Ya My Shit’s Fucked Up Well, I went to the doctor I said, “I’m feeling kind of rough” He said, “I’ll break it you, son Your shit’s fucked up.” I said, “my shit’s fuck up? Well, I don’t see how–” He said, “The shit that used to work— It won’t work now.” That, ladies and gentlemen, is a man with his finger on the pulse of this world.

The beauty of this digital age is that anyone can make a movie. Todd, Josh, and I had a great idea for a movie… a monastery of venture capitals whose main pleasures are martinis, pre-IPO companies, and motorcycles. Each monk would have his specialty like, The Evangelist, who would be a marketing machine, with a penchance for sailboats and gin martinis. There would be the Brother Bean, counter of the beans… making sure that you books are in order and the coffee is fresh roasted… There is endless room with this idea. So much to write about… none of it makes sense. Did everyone else like the dancing monkey eTrade ad? I thought it was the best one out there… otherwise the Superbowl ads were a waste of time and effort. In other news, Josh has been on a quest to make liquor. There is this drink called lemoncello… it’s Italian. Jess raves about the stuff. Well, Josh found a recipe. It involves lemons, lots of lemons, and grain alcohol. It about two weeks we’ll have a sampling at Toledo. We went shopping on Saturday… that was a mistake. The combination of pre-Superbowl and ice storm was just brutal at the old Safeway. People are far to serious when it comes to shopping. They have this face like, “If you squeeze one more of those lemons, I’ll beat you senseless, drag your body to the dairy section, and leave you for dead.” Check out lines are great places to work on new material. I think we have perfected ability to have a funny conversation and watch people around us try not to crack up.

… not easily at least. 7 people… total tab $152. We had some road blocks: no kitchen, not many people, not a lot of time. Roughly, one page of a tab equates to $50. Kudos to Josh, KC, Viv, Ev, Lisa (out of town liver in the house), and Di for comin’ down and trying to break the tab. Well, we made it. Nobody got blow’d up. Nothing broke. New Year’s passed as we had hoped, quitely. In fact, this New Year’s will go down as one of the most quite over-hyped events in recent history… that and any of the Holyfield - Lewis fights.

Hope you had a) a great weekend and/or b) a merry Christmas. Not a lot to report from my end. Last week, Dianne braved the cold to come to Toledo… kudos to her. I doubt that many/any of you around for tomorrow, but tomorrow night is the first night of my vacation, so I will be there. But I do want to spent a moment on this Saturday - Break the Tab Day. So, Chris has asked what exactly is the tab? Well, the record holding tab is $950…give or take a buck or two. It wasn’t so much a bar tab, but a party. I have done a bit of math and here’s what I come up with. There are about 40 people on the list. That means that each member of the list must drink $24 worth of liquor or eat some amount of food to make up for their shortfall. Now, there are members of the list who went to Syracuse and thus can be counted on for more booze than the rest of us. So let’s say we target $5 per person. But, Ian, you say, I can’t drink that much… rubbish! Of course you can… if you pace yourself. The idea is to get to Toledo around 4 and drink slowly and consistently throughout the day and night… we can do this! BUT, there is a real problem here. The problem is that we are known at Toledo. Suzie, bless her soul, gives us a lot more drink that we pay for. My concern is that being undercharged will hurt our attempt at the record. So let’s break it down for the home audience:

So on Sunday, I was a big lump and was strewn about the sofa watching TV. The Muppet Christmas Carol was on and I caught the tail end of it… long enough to see something that worried me. Kermit the Frog, playing Bob Cratchet, and his blushing bride, Miss Piggy (if she’s married why is she Miss?) have children… a veritable posse of small frogs and small pigs. My question is where were the progs and the frigglets? I mean, I can suspend disbelief as much as the next Muppet fan, but I mean where were the green bacon flavored creatures? Oh, yeah, I forgot the other scary thing in the movie. Towards the end, as we all know, Scrooge buys the prize turkey from the butcher and delivers it to Bob Cratchet. But, OH MY GOD, in the Muppet version of this, the have a stuffed and cooked Big Bird on a trolley deliver to Kermit. THEY KILLED BIG BIRD!!!

So, Thanksgiving is a funny thing. Let’s make the rash assumption that the Pilgrims actually started Thanksgiving and not , say Empire Turkey. Well, the Pilgrims were a… ah, grim bunch. No booze, no smokes, no dancing, no lust, no gluttony, no nothing. What is Thanksgiving really about? Gluttony! That’s right. It’s not about family; it’s not about giving thanks; it’s not even about football. Thanksgiving is purely an exercise in seeing how much coma-inducing food in as little time as possible without choking… and I love it! I had a rant built up for pumpkin pie… how typically this yummy pie comes from a can which is far removed for what a pumpkin looks like… but it wasn’t very interesting.

New houses, like anything else, need to be debugged. The process of discoverer glitches in houses in unfortunately, an unscientific one: Wait ’til something obvious goes wrong, like a fountain in the middle of your living room, and then repair the most obvious symptom of said problem. This waiting for something to go wrong is at first a bit taxing; it induces paranoia. Every creak, every pop, every little sound, speck, and smell attracts attention. Most times, there is nothing wrong. Then the really obvious things go bad… water flowing up the walls in an Exorcist-esque manner, washing machines behaving like garbage disposals, and the like. Most recently, I woke up chattering. I checked the usual suspects a) did I fall asleep in the bathtub… no b) did I fall asleep in the freezer, or perhaps, outside… no again c) was there heat… no! Having a likely candidate, I went exploring in the house. Fuses looked good, thermostat seemed to work, ice cubes were falling from the “heating” vents. Next step, call the builder. It’s great calling this guy, because he has seven other apartments in this building alone filled with bitchy yuppies… there is a black cloud over this guy’s head. So the builder sends the “fix-it” guy. The “fix-it” guy has demonstrated to be a better “break-it” guy. Mr. Fix-it can’t find a problem, so he invents one, “The, uh, capacitor, yeah that’s it; the capacitor is, uh, bruised and needs to be replaced.” Enter Mr. HVAC-Man. Mr. HVAC-Man has a Haitian accent thicker than molasses. He takes one look at the unit and cries, “Who installed this? This is all wrong.” Needless to say Mr. HVAC-Man has not yet fixed the problem.

I firmly believe that the X-Files has just a) lost a large poriton of its viewership and b) gone off the deep end. a) By killing off Mimi Rodgers off-screen, Chris Carter has eliminated that chance for a huge Gillian Anderson - Mimi Rodgers cat fight in a pudding factory. Instead, we get a deep sensetive caring moment at the end of the last episode. For the viewing population who was only looking for said cat fight, there is no reason to watch. b) Mulder-as-Christ is a bit hard to swallow. Did anyone else notice that the whole episode was “The Last Temptation of Mulder?” Were any Catholics in the audience bothered by this?

I haven’t read all of Judge Jackson’s finding of fact. From what I have heard, it reads a bit like the Adam West-era Batman shows…

• “At the same time that Microsoft was trying to convince Netscape to stop developing cross-platform APIs, it was trying to convince Intel to halt the development of software that presented developers with a set of operating-system-independent interfaces.” KERPOW!!!!
• “If OEMs removed the most visible means of invoking Internet Explorer, and pre-installed Navigator with facile methods of access, Microsoft’s purpose in forcing OEMs to take Internet Explorer capturing browser usage share from Netscape would be subverted.” BANG!!!!
• “Not only did Microsoft prevent Navigator from undermining the applications barrier to entry, it inflicted considerable harm on Netscape’s business in the process.” POW!!!

How different a world would we live in if anti-trust law extended to non-corporate issues? For example, how ‘bout suing Hallmark for leveraging their monopoly of the greet card industry and forcing their cheer and mild humor upon us all?

What exactly is back bacon? Me and my tribe are not exactly well versed in the ways of pork products. Suzy, at Toledo, spouted went out on this back bacon / ham rant a while ago and I just haven’t had time to relay it to you. I’m back. Two weeks on the road is a damned long time. It proved to me that I was not meant to be a consultant flying from town to town like some sort of technological Johnny Appleseed. San Francisco gets hot in October… who knew. Orlando is always hot and muggy. Why exactly do people live in a malaria infested swap like Florida? While in Orlando, I went to Universal Studio’s Halloween thing one night. The best thing about theme parks is the amazing amount of white trash you see. I mean, wow! Sociologists need to spend more time at these places. How many of you like Puddin’ Pops? I certainly do. Apparently, they don’t make Puddin’ Pops any more. Just thought you might want to know.