On January 16, 1926, the brand-new Shea's theater opened to great fanfare with a screening of "The King on Main Street." The baroque-decorated movie theater, seating 4,000 and incorporating imported Czech crystal chandeliers, was erected at a cost of $3 million [approximately $30 million today].

Five months later, the German silent film 'Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens [a Symphony of Horror]' made its American debut. Nosferatu paved new ground, being one of the first German Expressionist films and the first [albeit unauthorized] screen adaptation of Dracula. It's still pretty fucking creepy.

On Tue 30 Oct at 7:30p, Shea's will once again screen Nosferatu, with a musical accompaniment by the Devil Music Ensemble [admission $15.50]. I am going and so should you. That goes double for the non-(e:peeps) who read this, and triple for the Buffalo n00bz who have never been to Shea's.



Let me know who's in [non-peeps can email me], I'll run down to the box office & pick up tix.

- Z

There's no way I'm the only person here who thinks this is super funny.

[(e:dragonlady7)'s previous place of employment made a database system for nursing homes. They released an update and started getting complaints from their clients that they couldn't enter Irish patients. It took them a little while to figure out that the backend was tripping over O'Malley.]

- Z

- Z

The future perfect tense (WIKIPEDIA - Future perfect tense) is used when, at a certain time in the future, you will be able to look back in the past and say that the event happened. It's a somewhat esoteric construction, but it does come up occasionally: by this time next year, i will have made a million dollars.

The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (WIKIPEDIA - Schrodinger's cat) states that all of the possible outcomes of an experiment - even if contradictory - are true until the outcome is observed. This is a purely theoretical thought experiment, since it can only be validated by observation and it's not possible to observe an experiment before it has been observed. Thank you, Bohr and Heisenberg, for being such jackoffs.

Which brings me to the point I was trying to make: health insurance. We signed up for Healthy NY and our coverage took effect 1 August. We were shuffling around finances at the time, and missed our first bill. We received a notice postmarked 10 September saying that they'd cancelled our coverage effective 1 Sept, and if we wanted to continue coverage we'd have to pay for coverage received and prepay one month's worth. I sent the payment off, but upon further inspection I thought, damn this is a lot of money. Instead of the two months' payment I had expected [August, the payment we missed, and October, the prepayment], it was for three months. So I called.

Me: Am I covered?
Univera: ...no.
Z: OK, I sent my payment 27 Sept. How long will that take to process?
U: Couple days, don't worry about it. Any other questions?
Z: Yeah, so I [explain the situation]. August and October I understand, but where does this third month come in?
U: That's for September.
Z: OK, but I got a letter saying that I wasn't covered in September.
U: Because you didn't pay.
Z: Right. So what am I paying for?
U: August, September and October.
Z: What about this letter I got?
U: When your payment goes through, you will have been covered for September.
Z: Woah, hold on. When I was told I didn't have insurance I canceled my doctors appointments. [Not true but it could be.]
U: We would have covered them.
Z: But you dropped my coverage.
U: We would have covered them once the payment went through.
Z: OK. So let's say I broke my leg today.
U: You are not covered, but once your payment goes through you will have been covered.
Z: So am I covered today or not?
U: You are not covered for today. But once your payment goes through you will have been covered for today.
Z: I don't understand. Was I covered in September or not?
U: You are not yet covered for September, but once we receive your payment you will have been covered.
Z: So this letter I got ... was I actually dropped or not?

And I basically just talked in circles for fifteen minutes with two separate customer service representatives until we reached an agreement: that I am completely incapable of understanding my own health insurance coverage.



- Z

Thank you, Wikiquote, for providing this afternoon's waste of time!

- Z

"Cat and Girl" is a different kind of awesome.

- Z

Two very confused bloggers arrived promptly at 6pm. 'Are we in the right place?' Two tables sat reserved and unused in the corner of someone else's event. Middle-aged Cheektowagans, many of whom had never heard the word 'blog' before, eyed the empty chairs. 'Can we take these?' 'You'll have to find the person in charge.' 'Who's that?' Who indeed?

Roll call: Mr. and Mrs. Punaro were there, and also seemed to be the only people who knew what was going on. We were told Michael Rebmann was 'here somewhere, I think ...'

Meanwhile (e:strip) managed to send a full delegation on short notice [(e:dragonlady7) (e:james) (e:jim) (e:libertad) (e:metalpeter) (e:mike) (e:paul) (e:terry) (e:zobar)] and then hauled our asses out to Youngstown for another (e:strip) event [+ (e:theecarey) (e:vincent)]. I filed a motion with (e:paul) to change motto to '(e:strip) - the blogging community that organizes events ... and then goes to them.'

- Z

_______________
xpost:

Work just bought me an iPhone. No really, WTF?

- Z

This is what you get when you start a company, name it something completely idiotic like AMP'D Mobile, and convince them that you're so awesome they need to buy you a Ferrari: Guess what! You've wasted all your fucking money and now you've got to peddle your ass for nickels! This is a complete inventory of everything they chose to spend their company's money on, and they have to sell it all now that they've [predictably] gone out of business. Looking through this stuff is almost anthropological. Christ, it's like the .com bust never happened.

LOT 352: 1997 FERRARI 550M RED/TAN 19,000 MILES, MANUALS, TOOLKIT, VIN#ZFFZR491A1V0109057, CA PLATE 5K0G100 - CALIFORNIA CAR

LOT 353: 2006 FORD F350 DUALLY KING RANCH EDITION 14,500 MILES, V8 6.0L TURBO DIESEL, 4WD VIN# 1FTWW33P06EC47159, NEVADA REGISTRATION

LOT 547A: HUMAN TOUCH BLACK MASSAGE CHAIR WITH OTTOMAN

LOTS 629-632: CPU [?]

LOT 1002: APPLE 30in HD CINEMA DISPLAY 81083

LOT 1196: BGW 1100 POWERED SUBWOOFER

LOTS 1238-1241: [Exceedingly cool classic arcade games]

LOTS 1242-1244: ROCKET

LOT 1245: FOOSEBALL TABLE

LOT 1246: BASKET BALL HOOP

LOT 1385: 20in RIMS


Part 2: I guess the Internet finally killed somebody.


- Z

1: My ISP sold my DSL account to EarthLink when they got out of the business. Tech Support said they were sending me a new modem, but it is nowhere in sight. Today was our sixth day without tubes, and things were getting a little tense. I finally h4x0r3d my b0x3n and now it tells me "Line Status: SHOWTIME." That is a good thing.

2: One of my coworkers lived across the street from these girls [NSFW]. She says they're total bitches.
2a: Anyone you know on here? It's tough to tell, they've got some stuff on their faces.
2b: No offense to all yall, but Buffalo is not exactly the place I would start looking for hot porno chicks.

That is all!

- Z