{"id":52401,"date":"2011-07-20T03:42:36","date_gmt":"2011-07-20T07:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/52401\/bits-pieces-quarter\/"},"modified":"2011-07-20T03:42:36","modified_gmt":"2011-07-20T07:42:36","slug":"bits-pieces-quarter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/52401\/bits-pieces-quarter\/","title":{"rendered":"Bits And Pieces from the Second Quarter"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am finishing up my first two days off from work in over a year!! Said like that, it sounds pretty impressive.\u00a0 Well, there hasn\u2019t been a \u201cfrom work\u201d to be off from in over a year, so it\u2019s just a little word trick.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"\"We\u2019re going to start off with a little retail riddle.<\/font><\/p>\n

A guy walks into Lowe\u2019s, finds Joko working there and asks him to direct him to a product.\u00a0 He asks: \u201cWell, how much is one?\u201d<\/font><\/p>\n

\u201c58 cents\u201d, replies Joko.<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay, how much is twelve?\u201d the guy asks again.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwelve would be $1.16\u201d Joko responds.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll right then.\u00a0 How much is one hundred and twenty-three?\u201d<\/p>\n

Joko thinks for a moment and answers, \u201cOne dollar seventy-four cents.\u201d<\/p>\n

All these number are accurate.\u00a0 Nothing is on sale nor are there any volume discounts.<\/p>\n

What is the customer looking to purchase?<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

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These last three months have been remarkable in the amount of video I have recorded that I have not shared with the internet.\u00a0 Maybe I\u2019m getting more picky with what I share; I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 In any case, this period is therefore ripe for one of my compilation outtakes videos that I make every three months or so.\u00a0 Here are scenes that you have not seen even if you have happened to catch everything I make. Outtakes and unused footage,\u00a0 set to The Gorillaz.<\/font>
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I\u2019ve expressed this before, but will do so again.\u00a0 I am so happy to be working again, even if retail isn\u2019t the most prestigious, highest paying job in the world.\u00a0 I love helping people, and I get to do so constantly in my new job.\u00a0 I tend to learn through osmosis, and so working at a home improvement super center that sells 20,000+ items, right now, I may not know where everything is, I can see myself, over the years, becoming one of those amazing dudes you occasionally run into at these store who can help you with every aspect of whatever project you\u2019re working on.\u00a0 I\u2019d love to be one of those dudes.<\/font><\/p>\n

* * *<\/font><\/p>\n

Not to take anything away from my assumed role as a FriendBurst champion (I\u2019d hate if Kevin thought I was cheating on him!), but I\u2019ve had an interesting last week in Facebook land. \"\"En ex-girlfriend from the 90\u2019s, a woman I loved and the first woman I ever cohabitated with got back in touch with me after 15 years.\u00a0 Then, a former best friend, a drinking and drugging buddy, again from the 90\u2019s sent me a friend request.\u00a0 Through his friendslist, I found a couple other old friends I haven\u2019t interacted with in over a decade.<\/p>\n

I imagine that someday, I\u2019ll get back in touch with my friends from my middle school years.\u00a0 That\u2019s the nature of Facebook.<\/p>\n

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\"\"Another unique thing that has been happening to me in these last few weeks are my dreams. Unlike any other time I can remember, when I go to bed at night, I am almost assured of\u00a0 having so many intense, vivid dreams that they affect my whole day.\u00a0 I have dreamed of owning multiple cars, being in love, living overseas and have actually dreamt of waking up from dreams and being told by scientists in white lab coats that I have been given dream-inducing drugs as part of an experiment and now would I please answer some questions about the dreams I was having.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Like I said, I had a lot of outtakes and unpublished video these last three months.\u00a0 Here is a different compilation of the same video I posted above featuring an indie band from California from about ten years ago, SUMDAY.<\/p>\n

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I went and played basketball today for only the second time this year, after spending most of my adult life playing twice a week.\u00a0 It was great being out on the court again, and I had a decent shooting day.\u00a0 Like I said, I\u2019ve been playing the game a lot for a long time, and I can shoot.\u00a0 I also know where to go and what to do, even if I can\u2019t do it as fast or as energetically as I once could.<\/p>\n

\"\"In basketball, you know you\u2019re getting old and slow when you play defense.\u00a0 As long as I was guarding other old, fat white guys, I did fine today.\u00a0 In the 4th of my 6 games this afternoon (of which my team won 5 of 6, so it was a successful day), I had to guard a guy who was 10 years my junior, 3 inches taller than me, really fit and of an ethnicity who is known for being really good at basketball.\u00a0 He made some moves that I have seen hundreds of times before\u2026 but unlike in the past where I could react and counter those moves to some extent (I could at least get to where I could foul the guy), I was simply physically unable to match his offense.<\/p>\n

This is life.\u00a0 This is getting older.\u00a0 I will never be the athlete in my 40\u2019s that I was in my 20\u2019s, even if I can lose the extra 50 pounds I\u2019ve hung on my belly since those days.<\/p>\n

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\"\"On politics:\u00a0 Bill Clinton said today that if he were faced with the kind of crisis that Obama was facing in regards to the debt ceiling, he would go ahead an just use his 14th Amendment powers of the presidency to unilaterally increase the debt limit and let the courts try and stop him.<\/p>\n

Well. Bill.\u00a0 If you really believe that, do you have to go and undermine Obama by saying that and making our president look wimpy?\u00a0 Couldn\u2019t you just call?\u00a0 I\u2019m sure you have Barack\u2019s phone number.\u00a0 Ask your wife.<\/p>\n

Who knows what is going to happen in the next two weeks.\u00a0 Obama may have to invoke the powers Bill Clinton said he\u2019d have no qualms about using. Maybe by Bill saying this now, if that happens, Obama will be insulated a bit in that our most respected living former president said he\u2019d do the same thing.\u00a0 If it doesn\u2019t come to that, which I don\u2019t think it will, then this will look like what it is now: undermining a member of your own party through \u201carmchair presidency\u201d.<\/p>\n

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And here is Part Three of the same footage.\u00a0 Not hip hop music.\u00a0 Not pop music.\u00a0 A little Liszt!<\/p>\n

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I am finishing up my first two days off from work in over a year!! Said like that, it sounds pretty impressive.\u00a0 Well, there hasn\u2019t been a \u201cfrom work\u201d to be off from in over a year, so it\u2019s just a little word trick. * * * We\u2019re going to start off with a little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,10,1428,25],"tags":[1296,81,69,108,1538],"class_list":["post-52401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-life","category-politics-2","category-world","tag-clinton","tag-joko","tag-life-2","tag-music-2","tag-seattle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}