BillyStyle

Finally! I have been waiting for this concert to be released on DVD for many years. My Dad has it on Laserdisc (yep, he’s still got the player), and I’ve had it on VHS for a while. Finally, on DVD, I love it! Probably the greatest concert I’ve ever seen in person or on television.

This concert took place at Earl’s Court in London, England. The size of the stage, the elaborate lighting and theatrics of the show are unmatched by any other performance I’ve seen. There are moments in this concert that seem to be musical and performance perfection. I just can’t build it up enough. It runs a good three hours, so clear an evening to turn out all the lights, pop in the DVD, crank up the volume, and get taken away to the best concert performance ever…that will have to wait til this fall (release date is September 12, 2006) of course.

Go get it!

I’m weird. I realized around a year ago that I just don’t get offended by people. I am oft offended by their ignorance, stupidity, lack of tact, and other things along that line. The offended feeling I’m talking about is the kind that makes one harbor up feelings of personal sorrow or angst toward somebody due to something that person has said or done to you. I’m not too sure why that is the case. It isn’t something I’ve worked at and finally achieved. In fact, I can’t remember if I have ever been offended by someone. My best guess is because of my religious and family background. I am LDS and have a great family with great parents. One principle I was taught, but never thought too much about is to love my neighbor. Part of that was to be forgiving, realizing that everybody makes mistakes. I also never remember my parents outwardly displaying that they had been offended by anybody. I don’t know if these are the whole reasons, but they’re my best guesses at this moment.

Now, never being offended in this sense has its ups and downs. Ups, of course, are never having those feelings, being able to remain friends with anyone despite petty differences, and easily brushing aside differences that may have arisen just for a moment or short amount of time. The main down side is that I tend to expect others to act like me and take no personal offense to what I say or do. As you may notice in this blog, I am a very observant person. I like to pay close attention to how people react to certain things or situations, then discuss it with them. I do this more from a psychological standpoint than anything, but most people seem to think that I’m being very judgemental.

If I do something stupid, or something embarrassing, I’m usually the first person to talk about what in the world I was thinking and why I’m like that, I find it very interesting. Most people, I’ve found, are quite different than me. They like to avoid confronting any unusual things about themselves and just hope they go unnoticed. It’s something I have a hard time comprehending. This may go hand in hand with my indifference toward people’s opinion of me. I do care about what some people think about me, but for the majority of the masses, I really couldn’t care less about how they see me. I’ve heard other people proclaim to have the same outlook on life, but I seem to get in trouble for that attitude more than others I’ve seen.

Since I don’t care what most people think about me, I will say whatever is on my mind in many cases. Plenty of times this offends people, and I don’t really care that they are offended. I say I don’t care, because that is another of my weaknesses. I figure since I’ve never had a problem with being offended, others ought not as well. I obviously have some work to do on all this, I just thought it was an interesting trait, and have never met anyone else who shares the same attribute.

Good stuff here. Note the music from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, one of the all time great movies.

The past two days here in St. George, Utah have been pretty bizarre for this area. It has snowed for about half of yesterday and today. I’ve lived here for over five years and have seen it snow for probably a total of three hours in that time.

Anyway, I just looked out my window to see something very strange. I saw two standard balloons falling from the sky pretty rapidly. I’d never really thought of it before, but that’s just something you don’t see. It’s not uncommon to see balloons float up and out of sight. I imagine those come down somewhere, but I’ve never seen it happen, maybe they go into space and to some far galaxy, who knows.

So yeah, two balloons, falling fast. They both hit the ground so I went outside and looked up and saw probably 20 more balloons that go thousands of feet into the sky, probably going on past what is visible, all of them are falling toward the ground at a good rate, with a little breeze from the south. I figure they must have all escaped from a car dealership when it was a little warmer outside, gotten up pretty high, then cooled down significantly and started their decent.

I stayed outside for a while longer, just watching the balloons fall and bounce off of buildings and streets, parking lots, just rolling around. It was kind of a surreal moment.

No, I’m not a workaholic, I don’t drink while on the job. What you say? That’s not what a workaholic does? I beg to differ!

Unfortunately, the word workaholic has become commonplace amongst the masses. Let’s take a look at what comprises this horrific monstrosity of a “word” shall we? It is sad, but Webster has this word in the dictionary. From Webster:

Etymology: work + -aholic, alteration of -oholic (as in alcoholic)

Part one: Work. Work is the root of this mutant freak of a word, that is fine. Part two: Alcoholic. For starters, the aholic part for some reason changed the O to an A which makes no sense. Now to dig deeper into the word alcoholic. Let’s see what was changed about the root word to make it addictive in nature. The only change is an added ic. So alcohol becomes alcoholic, simple enough.

Now, someone who works so much that it’s comparable to the drinking habits of an alcoholic. Some genius decided to mesh the two words as workaholic which bothers me to no end. When I hear that word, I think of somebody who just can’t stop drinking while on the job. This is because it’s alcoholic not alcoholaholic.

I submit that if we are going to compare working to drinking (a horrible comparison that is a whole other story), the word ought to be workic. That’s right, simply workic.

He can’t leave the office; he’s a workic.

I’m a bit of a workic.

She was the top salesperson of the quarter. She’s quite the workic.

There, isn’t that nice? No implications that the person has a problem identifiable with that of a compulsive drinker. From now on, I urge you, the reader, to simply add an ic to words to make them addictive. Let’s not make everybody with a passion an alcoholic.

Hetian is a term I learned in St. George. Some friends and I decided that would be a good way to spell it. It is pronounced “hesh-in”. What does it mean? As far as I’ve gathered, it’s the local version of white trash – local being Saint George, Utah.

Anyway, tonight I wanted a little Carl’s Jr. so I figured I’d hit the drive through, so no need to change out of my sweat pants I was wearing, because I wasn’t going to actually be in public. My plan got a chink in it when I showed up to find about 10 cars in the drive in line. I decided I’d white trash it and go inside. Now Utah is a strange place. Most places I’ve lived, you don’t see people in sweats in public very much. Here in Utah, it is common to see people wearing sweats even in decent places. For instance, I work in a very large top quality furniture store. I see well-to-do women and men come into the store (it’s hard to spend less than $1,000 there if you’re buying something) wearing sweats frequently. Anyhow, I felt more like a Utard being in sweats in public than I ever have before.

This story kind of sucks, but I’ll keep it up anyway, I’m in a weird mood.

I got a response today from my complaint about the Q-tips. Here tis:

Hello,

Thanks so much for writing!

We do apologize for the experience you had with our product. Please
understand that the condition you’ve reported does not represent our
usual quality. We will forward your comments describing your experience
on to our Brand Manager and Quality Assurance staff.

We will certainly forward you a replacement coupon.

We again apologize and thank you for your interest!
Your friends at Unilever HPC