Author: Shawn

Posted on

I think Sirius XM is racist

I admit it, sometimes I sing along with the radio while I’m driving. Sometimes it’s been a long time since I’ve heard the song and I get the words wrong. And sometimes the words in the song aren’t the same ones that I remember.

I was listening to the 90s station yesterday and they started playing Everlast’s What It’s Like. They cut out a lot of words. A lot. To the point of silliness. Maybe they’re trying to be overly protective because some of the words aren’t really that offensive. Everlast uses the line “if I find that man, I’m cutting off his ______” and it rhymes with “calls”… is the word “balls” really going to scar anyone for life?

But people might say, “That’s the way the single was released to all the radio stations, of course that’s how it’s going to sound!” If that’s the case, I’d like to present to you Exhibit B: Blessid Union of Souls’ I Believe.

I hadn’t heard that song in ages, so I was happily singing the words I remembered and stumbling through the ones I didn’t. Then it got to the part where the song goes “One day Daddy’s gonna find out she’s in love / with a brother from the streets.” At least those are the words I’d heard on the radio in the past. That’s not what I heard yesterday.

It turns out the phrase they use on the CD is “with a nigger from the streets.” That is what I heard yesterday. So Sirius XM doesn’t like Everlast’s use of the word “balls”, but Blessid Union of Souls singing “nigger” is okay. If you toss out the race card, can anyone else think of a good explanation?

Posted on

Gratitudes, Day 2

Sunday was hot and toasty outside. My team was playing soccer (I was standing on the sideline… I need to have the doc take a look at my knee to see if I did something bad to it) and we play on turf with a lot of little rubber bits that keep it vaguely soft. They also make the field really hot under the sun, thus making your feet really hot inside your shoes.

  1. Shorts — The air flow around my legs helps cool me down.
  2. Sunscreen — It prevents the sun from turning my nose into a Krispy Kritter.
  3. Air conditioning — Can you sense a theme here?
  4. The WaZoo! Show — I’ve been part of the group for about nine years now and I have fun getting together with a bunch of people to read scripts once a month.
  5. Khan’s Mongolian Barbeque — We eat there afterward and the food is mighty tasty.
Posted on

Five Gratitudes, Day 1

I was watching a video today of a presentation made by Shawn Achor. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the version I watched anywhere, but there’s a similar presentation on YouTube (which isn’t as good, of course). I decided to include a link to the third part of the “backup version” in here, so to speak, because I think it’s worth watching.

Out of that list of ways to enhance our happiness, the easiest seems like the gratitudes. (I could write a journal, but I tried that in Norway and ran out of steam pretty quickly… it’s tough when it takes me four single-spaced pages in a Word file to recap the events of the day.) So for the next 21 days, I’m going to write five things I’m grateful for. He recommends doing them first thing in the morning, but there are days when first thing in the morning for me is get dressed, grab food and run out the door. And some days, grabbing food isn’t on that list, either.

You’re all welcome to join me and, if you’re not sure where to start, you’re all welcome to reference a blog entry I wrote back in 2006: Reasons to be thankful. You can think of the grown-up ones, you can think of the simple ones—just be sure that you’re grateful for them.

Today’s list:

  1. Mountain Dew — I like the flavor, it’s got caffeine and I hate coffee. I mean HAAAAAAAAAAAATE coffee.
  2. Peter Stark — The professor for my Leadership course in the MBA program. He’s a smart guy. I learned a lot.
  3. My warm bed at night — Sleep is awesome.
  4. Sunshine — It’s bright, shiny, warm and a nice contrast to the recent gloomy, cloudy Memorial Day weekend.
  5. Friendship — ‘Cause I get by with a little help from my friends.
Posted on

Accounting on drugs

For those of you who have taken an accounting class before, you know how boring it can be at times. Our professor is trying to keep things as light and upbeat as possible, but I’m starting to wonder about him…

The accounting equation: Assets = Liabilities + Equity. If one side goes up, something on the other side goes up; if one asset goes up, another goes down and so on. “If my cholesterol is 120 and I’m doing lines of coke, maybe that evens out!”

And he has an interesting opinion about people in marketing, too. “Two things marketing people do. One, snort coke. Two, play the ukulele.”

Yeah, things could be… interesting for the remainder of the course.

Posted on

I forgot our anniversary!

I didn’t realize it until, oh, 12:30 this morning, so maybe I could have sent a celebration notice to those folks out in L.A.: June 1st marked the 6th anniversary of the premiere of Beauty and the Geek. The worst part (aside from the fact that I forgot) is that I looked online and the traditional gifts for #6 are iron and candy. I totally could have justified buying a ton of Skittles to celebrate.

Why Skittles? To determine whether different mixtures of colors makes the rainbow taste different. Who cares about the empty calories? I’m doing it in the name of science! Geeks rule! And happy anniversary to my Beauty and the Geek peeps, too!

Posted on

Shaq is retiring… at least I think he’s the one retiring…

I saw a link to this when I was checking my email on Yahoo, so I decided to take a look. I don’t care about the article itself, but I’m a little surprised at their choice of pictures. You’d think that when writing about someone who’s played in the NBA for 19 seasons, they’d use a photo of him and not a teammate from four teams and seven years ago, right?

What a candid photo of Shaq!