One of my co-workers has been calling me "Mark Wahlberg" all day and is suddenly insisting that I look like I could be his little brother. This is mildly perplexing, given that no one's ever said that to me, and he and I have been working together for 9 months now and this is the first I've heard of it.

When I was 14, I was the spitting image of Sylvester Stallone's son. And I had the unfortunate nickname of "Skippy" throughout my high school career because someone noticed that I look very similar to Marc Price, who played the not-so-complimentary character "Skippy" on Family Ties. But Mark Wahlberg is probably the most complimentary comparison that's ever been made about my looks, though he may have been saying that because of the shirt I was wearing today.

My best friend told me today over lunch that she thought I'd make a great dad, mostly because I'm a big kid myself. Aren't parents supposed to be the responsible disciplinarians? And I thought that was especially odd, since she'd admitted a couple of weeks ago that she was among the masses who believed I was more mature than others of my age, and that if she didn't know how old I was, she too would guess I was anywhere from 3-6 years older than I actually am, as most people are wont to do when they first meet me. It's an odd dichotomy.

How ironic that this remark came only a week after my mom gave me a magnet with this Ogden Nash quote on it that she thought fit me perfectly: "You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely."

(Reprinted from an entry I made on Surreally.com. Again, sorry for not putting 100% original stuff up here, but it's early.)



This chart is from TrimSpa, another one of those get-slim-quick fad drug dealies. I find it ironic that they claim they can help people lost almost 20 pounds over 15 weeks -- which breaks down to about 1 1/3 pounds per week (despite the fact that the drug works because it contains the very-dangerous ephedra), while the FDA says that with enough exercise and proper diet, people trying to lose weight should ditch between 2-3 pounds per week.

Basically, if you're looking for results, the non-drug/diet-and-exercise route will help you lose more weight.

Michele is urging everyone to vote responsibly and not to simply vote party line. I wholeheartedly agree with her, since I've never understood the rationale behind voting party line, but I think the first step in voting responsibly is to get people to actually go out there and vote.

(Ed. note: The rest of this entry is reprinted from a comment I left on her blog. At this point, I'm too tired to come up with a new way to express myself regarding the topic, plus I like what I wrote and I think it sums up my opinions on the issue pretty well.)

Connecticut used to have a lever on their ballot machines where you could flip a single switch and the machine would register a vote for every single candidate on the ballot in that party. It just made it so much easier for people to make that mindless decision.

Voting is a dangerous weapon, and many people don't believe its power. Voting party line is like going out and telling the dealership that you need a car, and they assign you something -- you have no idea if it's a lemon and will break down sixteen times in the course of a month and cause you more trouble than you've ever wanted, or it could explode one day while you're on the freeway, or it could safely get you to your destination and you'll be happy with it. But you don't know, and you have no control over what you're getting.

For all the complaints I hear about current administrations -- whether national or state or local -- it's astonishing that voting turnout is hitting record lows. If you don't like the people in office, vote them out. If you want to make sure you won't have too much cause to complain about the people filling the next term, make sure to vote in someone whose views you agree with. I've heard many people complaining about our current president, but it still amazes me that despite the fact that they knew it was a tight race and despite the fact that they had the ability to go out and do something about it, they didn't and the 2000 presidential race had the poorest voter turnout ever.

For all you people who are advocating that we go to Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein and his dictatorship and institute a fair and democratic government: Before you go charging halfway around the world to impose your way of life and your system of government on complete strangers, did you bother to exercise your right to vote -- and vote responsibly, especially given that voting party line is like that sham of an election they just had where Saddam got 100% of the vote -- last November and the November before that? Because I think you'd look pretty dumb and hypocritical trying to make sure other people in another country vote and have the ability to vote responsibly when you're not even taking advantage of that ability in your own country yourself.

I'm home. Finally. Thankfully. I think I need several days to spend utterly intoxicated while sitting on a beach and having my every whim being tended to by a scantily-clad native island girl.

I can't remember a time when I've been so exhausted, both mentally and physically. I'm all-out depleted. And I have to be back at work on Monday. That'll be interesting.

I should find out within a week or so whether I have to fly back East to ferry my parents' car and final belongings out to Tucson later this month.

So I'm leaving the movie theatre after having seen I Spy and I have this sudden urge to listen to some rap and be ghetto, except I get to my rental car and realize that even though I have DMX and DJ Kool and NWA and Run-D.M.C. and some other rap superstars on the mix CD in the car, it's virtually impossible to be ghetto when you're driving a Chevy Cavalier.

The car just screams "white man with no funk." Screams it, I say.

We here at Remix Central have been trying to keep up with the young Net-savvy whippersnappers out there. As such, with the upgrade to MT and the move to the site's index page, the blog name has become just plain Reality Remixed. But we've noticed that people tend to put taglines up with their blogtitles. And we here at Remix Central think that's a pretty dandy idea.

So, let the balloting begin. Vote in the comments. Feel free to write in candidates. Call or e-mail your friends and get them to vote. Call or e-mail your Aunt Sally to vote. If Aunt Sally doesn't have Net access, bring her a laptop and an AOL disc for a bazillion free hours.

Here are the nominees:
- Reality Remixed: Like disco lemonade (up for now, but changeable based on voting and the Head Llama's discretion)
- Reality Remixed: From the meadow, not the ghetto
- Reality Remixed: Not bought, sold or processed
- Reality Remixed: Wasted and ready
- Reality Remixed: Casper Weinberger's evil clone
- Reality Remixed: Crashing the West Coast party
- Reality Remixed: This dawg needs a kitty-cat
- Reality Remixed: A little drunk is better than dead
- Reality Remixed: And you are...?
- Reality Remixed: Strange things are afoot at the Circle K

Go to it, kids.

Not only do I not have any clue what day it is, but my schedule has been turned upside down time-wise. I'm in the Mountain Time Zone. I'm working between my schedule and my mom's, since she is two hours ahead of my in the Eastern Time Zone. However, I'm also going into my own servers for e-mail and information and it's all set to time-stamp everything an hour behind where I am now, in the Pacific Time Zone, and my cell phone has that time on it too. I am way confused. I could use some ice cream. Or a stiff drink. Or several stiff drinks. Or several stiff drinks with ice cream in them.

The other shoe dropped yesterday when my mom called to tell me that my father was admitted to the hospital for emergency surgery.

It seems that his back problems have become more severe despite the surgeries he's already had, and exerting himself packing up their house in Connecticut exacerbated a problem he'd already had. Mom told me this morning that the surgery will be scheduled for either tonight or tomorrow.

Either way, it's a bit of an awkward situation because they got him to the hospital immediately after they closed on the house and signed all the papers -- Mom said he was lying on the carpet in the living room while the final arrangements were being made because he couldn't move. So the only house they have is the one I'm in right now, and they really don't have anywhere to live while my dad recovers. Hopefully, they'll find some kind of long-term rental for a month while he gets well enough to travel.

Here's the kick in the head, though: Dad won't be able to make the long cross-country drive out to Tucson. He'll probably have to fly. And Mom will probably have to go with him to take care of him once they arrive here. So, at this point in time, there's a decent chance that yours truly will be flying back out to Connecticut over the Thanksgiving weekend and ferrying their car and the last little bit of their stuff back to Arizona.

They don't have a frequent driver's miles program, do they? Across the country twice in a month and the third time this year by myself... Man, I've got to be insane to even be thinking about that kind of thing.