#1 – You can take the road that takes you to the stars.  I can take the road that will see me through.  –Nick Drake (Road, fr. Pink Moon)

#2 – Nothing befalls a man except what is in his nature to endure. – Marcus Aurelius

#3 – I will always love the false image I had of you. – anon.

I Will Always Love the False Image I Had of You, originally uploaded by Aaron G Stock.

The iPhone is a fantastic device, but the keyboard recognition software blows donkey balls.

At least I can type this while sitting in front of my new bff – my 52″ hdtv.

5 hours of Canadian-feed high definition hockey is a damn good evening.

My Bronco’s dashboard navigation unit allows customization of the vehicle icon.  Big fun.  Today, I changed mine to a freakin’ cannon.  Yes, I now drive down the road in the digital form of a muzzle-load explosive-based propellant device!  Take THAT little Prius!  BOOM to you hybrid!

I may get 8 miles to the gallon, but I can shoot a hole in your front quarter panel, board your vessle and steal your gas if it pleases me.  Yaaaar~

Today is the day that I became a viral video star. 

A year ago I shot a cell phone video of my pug puppy jumping off a curb.  It was a goofy test of the ability to send a mobile video straight to YouTube.  I laughed when it got about 500 views and forgot about it. 

Cut to – today.  Someone ELSE captured and REuploaded MY video to MySpaceTV – where it is now:

• “Top 10 Most Viewed Today” on all of MySpace for Feb 8, 2008
• over 193,000 views and counting
• over 3,400 comments (up 200 since I checked the total a cpl hours ago), many commenting on my “serial killer voice” :-]

A good friend of mine just relayed that he has left two decades of high profile record company and marketing agency jobs behind to become an executive recruiter - and I couldn’t be happier – for a couple of reasons.  This is a good man, who is smart enough to write the majority of his own proverbial ticket.  I’m happy because he has chosen a career path based on his interpersonal skills and his desire to connect people with professional situations that suit them.  I fix people’s computers when I go over to their houses, he hooks them up with a good job – he wins.

I’ve had my own fair-to-midland experiences with recruiters and hiring execs.  Most are pleasant, but ultimately not in a position to help everyone they come accross due to the unfortunate mathematic ratio of candidates to open positions.  Certainly very few of them seem cognizant of, let alone sympathetic to, the tough situation most job seekers are naturally in.  And even fewer seem compelled to display even a basic level of professional courtesy.  In the music industry, good people have adopted very very bad habits and no one can do much about it given the industry’s current state.

My personal and professional propensity for start up and tech-oriented companies has put me in some exciting yet ultimately short-lived work situations.  Dot coms, indie labels, and HD concert companies have been damn exciting, but not too good for the ol’ longevity fix. I do love being employee #3 of a start up, but that does seem proportional to the amount of times I’ve been, ehm, “in between opportunites”.  So, I know better than most what it’s like to be blown through or ignored by an entertainment marketing executive.   The accumulation of roughshod treatment I’ve received while job seeking has made me keenly aware of how my own behavior will change when I am in a position to hire and/or deal with applicants.  And that brings me back to my friend and his new career path.  He has already erased, in one week of communication, my feeling that recruiters are basically the human resources version of a overcaffeinated day trader who has swapped jockeying commodities for resumes.  Now if he could only get more entertainment marketing executives to realize that it’s good form to reply / respond to that small group of 2nd interviewers when you hire someone else…

1. Mellifluous – Another in the series of “words that actually sound like what they mean”. 

2. Grok – It’s been around since 1961 or so when that guy wrote that book about that thing, but lately I hear it used byweb 2.0types to relay a deep knowledge of an issue or program. It’s a neat word, and I tried to actually use it in a sentance on someone but I ended up feeling like a complete tool the moment it came out of my mouth. Caveat utilitor here big time.

3. Ergo – Just say “therefore”, will ya?  That’s what you mean anyway, before you tried to get all Latin on us.  Ergo’s place in pop culture is safe now that it was used, not once but twice, in the Matrix scene where Colonel Sanders tries to explain to Neo that he is the keymaster of a world that resembles a Berzerk video game maze run by Gozer The Gozerian – or something like that.

4. Oscillate - Everything associated with oscillation rules!  Who wouldn’t want an oscillating fan and an oscilloscope in their office right now?!

 5. Tie – Irregardless / Acoustical - Bands do NOT have “acoustical performances”, they “perform acoustic”.  Irregardless is the “bastard multi-species human-fly monster crying ‘kill me’” hybrid of irrespective and regardless.   If you say either of these words out loud 3 times while looking into a mirror, Noah Webster will appear and shoot you in the face with a cross bow.

“A man should have a blade and a light available to him at all times.” To that end, every place that you sit, work, sleep, drive, or go, you should have a flashlight within arm’s reach. 

I have a lot of flashlights. At least 16 and counting, because, well, I sit, work, sleep, drive, or go in a lot of different places.  I use #4 and/or #2 every single night when I walk the dog. #16 is on my keychain and can kick out 90 lumens (which means my keychain beats most people’s primary flashlight). #12 is on my truck’s visor. #11 doesn’t get a lot of real use, because, well, it’s a fireman’s “Search & Rescue” model and can illuminate a whole tree from more than a mile away or even turn off a street light after dark – there just aren’t many times that I need to do either of those.

I’ve actually heard the term “flashaholic” on a Discovery Channel special on the making of flashlights.  I prefer “flashlight fetish”.  Fetish derived from Latin (facticius, “artificial” and facere “to make”) and defined as an object believed to have powers, or in particular a man-made object that has powers over others - so it’s not what you were thinking, perv.  But I suppose there’s a video of that out there in the tubes somewhere…

Jay’s flashlights: 

1. Surefire D3 Defender
2. Surefire 9P, w/ a #3
3. KL3 Conversion LED head
4. Surefire G2 Nitrolon
5. Coast 3-in-1 Write Light
6. Petzl Zipka
7. Inova X5 (1^st generation)
8. Pelican 3600 “Little Ed”
9. Mini Maglite 2 Cell AA (red) w/ LED Conversion head
10. Battery spares carrier
11. SR-2000 500,000 Candle Power Search Light
12. Eternalight 4x “EliteXRay”
13. Streamlight Scorpion
14. Photon Micro Light 1
15. Pelican 2600
16. Fenix P1
17. Fenix E1

For individual photos – go to my Flickr >> http://www.flickr.com/gp/51935165@N00/539H0W

In 1978, William Shatner was the host and musical guest at the Science Fiction Movie Awards, where he bequeathed us a psueudo beatnik spoken word “Rocket Man”.  ”The Shat” even rolled his own “jazz cigarette” for the shoot.  Please note the 2:58 remaining mark where the 70’s video editing culminates in a superimposed 2nd Shat, doing the chorus.

Family Guy’s Stewie Griffin nails it 25 years later.