While ((e:Jim)) is ranting about the serial rape and dismemberment of the English language, I thought I would share an experience from atop the ivory tower of academia... not Saurumon's ivory tower.

Tonight I went to orientation for new grad. students at Buff. State. The director of financial aid was giving his little spiel and said. "Your PIN number is like an ATM machine PIN number."

Let me rewrite that without the acronyms. "Your Personal Identification Number number is like an Automated Teller Machine machine Personal Identification Number number." Notice anything intrepid reader? If you didn't get it turn to page 34 where you are locked in the basement of your dirty uncle. If you did, congratulations, you realized this guy has just committed a crime which is the linguistic equivalent of premeditated murder.

Also note how saying one PIN 'number' is like a different PIN 'number' fails to illustrate what the hell he is talking about. "You see, your junior whopper bacon cheese burger is much like the junior whopper bacon cheese burger. Are you with me class?"

In short, remember that our language is the raw material used by Blake, Williams, and Creeley. Don't fuck up daddies saw horse pumpkin.

My favorite restaurant in Buffalo is closing

My favorite bartender in my favorite restaurant in Buffalo has left.

Laurie Sweet you will be stalked! We are following you to your new job!

Le Metro, you will be missed, but not nearly as much as Laurie.

Buffalo, is not full of celebrities. This should not be shocking news. However, a sea of minor celebrities are creeping about in plain cloths all round us in each and every city.

I was upset when I lived in Albany and never met lang. poet extraordinaire [link="http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/"] Ron Silliman[/link]

A few months after moving to Buffalo my then favorite poet alive, [link="http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/creeley/"] Robert Creeley[/link], passed away.

Disappointment abounds.

But then the other day I had my first minor celebrity encounter.

While at work a woman needed to order something. When she handed me back the order form the name looked very familiar. A few days later my manager mentioned, while unpacking a delivery, that this particular case of cranberry juice was for Leslie Feinberg, the woman I helped. It was then the name rang a bell. It was [link="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/156341029X/102-3320292-0107335?v=glance&n=283155"] this[/link] Leslie Feinberg. And that was no woman! That she was a hir.

So, while I hitting lower and lower on my list of boyhood fantasy encounters, at least the disappointment is becoming slightly more mild.

have a good weekend kids

oh you!

Ya know, you Buffalonians have some pretty crummy weather. I mean, it isn't all that bad, but it is not exactly warm year round and humidity free.
So, this guy comes into my store and talks about the lovely weather (it was that day with the record high a few days ago) and he starts telling me about how wrong the world is about Buffalo. How we have the best weather in the country.

excuse me?

I know, I know. Winter is coming and we need to keep our spirits up lest we carve up our neighbors like a stranded rugby player. But now, in the maw of winter, is not the time to try to pull one over on me.

All you Buffalonians know I am not a native

All you Buffalonians are trying to get me to stay.

Stay! Stay!

You just want to eat me when we are snowed in! I am on to you. Oh, you may eventually get my meat, but not without a fight. HAVE AT YOU!

Let me preface this by saying I am not a Harry Potter fan. I have nothing against the books now that I am not working in a book store (I once refused to call him by name and referred to him angrily as Henry Porter). There have always been better things to read, places I would rather venture in literature and so forth. Now, let me get on with it.

I just came back from watching the 4th movie in an Imax theater. I noted that my jokes surrounding the universe and the movie were very sexual in nature. Harry and Ron needed to get it on. Hermeine and Harry needed to get it on. Harry and Cedrick needed to get it on. Dumbldoor and everyone needed to get an A, and thus get it on. When I realized this, I began to wonder, why?

Could it be that my bizarre interest in the horrors of fanfiction (never read the stuff, just read the synopsis) informs my sick, latent desire to see perfectly platonic characters do the most out of charecter things to each other?

Or maybe three characters who are going through puberty with perfect skin and stylish, shaggy haircuts must have a torrent of raging sexual energy hiding behind those wands.

Or maybe, we are all pedophiles.

What ever it is that is doing it, Robocop could have used. Just imagine the depraved lust he and the T-1000 could have had!