DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

I saw Pixar’s latest animated film, Monsters, Inc., a few weeks ago, and was somewhat disappointed that there were no “outtakes” during the closing credits. Today Pixar has re-released the film, including outtakes. You can sample the outtakes at the Monsters, Inc website.

The Pixar Theater hosts the original outtakes from A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2.

In related news, if you have Apple’s Quicktime software (free for MacOS and Windows), Apple’s movie trailers page is just awesome.

David Lazarus, tech columnist for the SF Chronicle, tells an interesting story about telemarketing in his 11/5/01 column, No free PC, no comment. In brief, a particular telemarketing company leaves voice mail messages promising free computers, and explains only after gullible victims call back that there are significant strings attached to the “offer.”

“I know it’s misleading,” Greg [an employee of the telemarketing firm] said quickly, “but it’s not illegal. It’s just a marketing ploy. It’s just a way to get you to call back.”

The marketing ploy to which Greg is referring is commonly known as lying.

So, I know it is commonplace, so much so that we generally ignore it, treating it as an unfortunate but harmless case of free enterprise going too far. But why do we stand for it? Is it enough to simply opt out, or should we be fighting back?

Even if I liked stock car racing, I don’t think I could have brought myself to watch the Pork The Other White Meat 400.

That name is a real mouthful, wouldn’t you say?

I was surprised to see that porkracing.com is a real website — I pictured a satirical description of, I don’t know, kids pushing slices of ham around an oval track.

But maybe it is already silly enough to offer access to both race schedules and pork recipes in one place.

We did finally get the slab all cleaned up and the tile floor installed. The result is great… it totally justifies the 10 hours of backbreaking work getting the vinyl floor out of the kitchen — but only, I admit, because I didn’t have to do it myself. Nothing would justify that!

We survived the minor inconvience of not being able to enter the front half of the house for a few days… an easy task compared to what the contractors were going through.

The tile is an 18'' x 18'' ceramic from Italy, with a slight texture to the surface. I like it on the floor even better than I liked it in the showroom. It complements the 3 shades of brick better than I expected it would.

Next up: baseboards, windowsills and framing, and then a home-office remodel that will take weeks. This homeowner stuff never really ends — by the time we get “done” we’ll have outgrown the place, and we’ll be starting fresh somewhere else.

This is a transcription of a groove performed by Herman Matthews III on Drum Workshop’s American Dream II video. The look on Matthews’ face as he lays this down is pure funk.

    1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +     (1/4 = 110 bpm)
RB  x   x   x   x   
SD   o o  O  o  O
KD  o  o      oo o
HH    x   x   x   x 

Patronize these links, man:

• Virtual Drummer loop
• MIDI
• MP3
• RealVideo