Band Names

Featured | Posted by

I’ve decided to create a post where I can put all of the things I say would be good band names. I will add to it as I remember old ones or come up with new ones. If you remember any I have said to you, please remind me. Here they are

The Turd Brown Jesus Sleeves

Another Dead Cat

The Lopsided Kittens

The Suicidal Squirrels

Tuesday Night Cake

Hidden Onions

Licking Tacos

Dumpster Pie

Adjective Vegetables!

Inappropriate Orange

Sudden Onset Melancholy

Burnt Macaroons

Sunken Blackbottoms

Shitwater

Mouth Potato

Supernatural Bush

Amish Kindergarten

Hipster Dude Ranch

Terrible Donut Experience

Radical Islamic Sniffles

Drunken Goats

Rancid Nuts

Transient Anus

Unclean Widow

Pity Meat

Cherry Sulfur

Another Goal Check-In

Posted on by

I posted back in January about goals for the year. I checked in before, but it has been a while. It won’t be long before it is time to start thinking about 2020 goals. Let’s see how I’m doing on the ones I set for 2019.

  1. My usual read 100 books goal – I’m way behind on the total number of books, but I think I’m close or ahead in pages read. I’ve read a lot of pretty big books this year. I mentioned reading different authors and older books I’ve never read. I’ve done a better job with this one. I’ve read some of my favorites, but I’ve also read authors I’ve never read before. Running a book club at work has helped with this one. I still think I need to make more time for reading. I also think stress, depression, and anxiety has hindered my reading this year. Getting my mind in a better place will help with this goal.
  2. I would like to spend less time sitting at home on the couch and more time out of the house doing stuff –  Mixed results. I have gone to see a few movies on my Friday off. I’m going to a concert in DC Friday night. We went to food truck night. It’s still a struggle. It’s so easy to come home and sit on the couch. It’s easy to make excuses to stay at home. Time, housework, etc. It’s even easier when you live with someone who has no interest in going out to do things. It’s hard to get motivated to get out of the house when you know you will be going it alone.
  3. I would like to spend more time outside – I eat outside for lunch at work as much as possible. It’s been possible a lot more since we’ve gone from too much rain to no rain. I would read more if I would sit on the deck more instead of trying to read on the couch with the TV on. I take the dog for a walk when the weather is good and will be leaving for a short walk before work as soon as I finish typing this. So, again, mixed results. Doing better, but could do more.
  4. Find some way to not dread leaving the house in the morning – This one is kind of out of my control. Not much I can change about my situation. I can try, but it is up to others so my options are limited. Therapy would probably help. I should really just give in and go.
  5. I want to figure out if I should try to write something besides a blog post I can write in 15 minutes or less – So far the answer is no. I’ve not really even tried to write anything different than my normal blog post. My cousin was on me when I saw her recently to write a book. I’m still not sure I have a book in me, but if  I took the time I could write a more thoughtful, researched article. Unfortunately, these days it is hard for me to even write a 15-minute blog post.
  6. Whenever my friends from high school plan the 50th birthday celebration for the class this year I want to do what it takes to get there even if that again means two days of driving for one day there – If they actually did this no one told me. That seems possible.
  7. I would like to make the time to do a couple more short trips to Kentucky to see my family even if it means taking a long weekend and driving a lot in a few days to do so – I have plans to go to Kentucky over Veteran’s Day weekend. This is the only one I ended up doing.

So, the results are mixed. I feel like I could use these same goals for 2020.

Advertisements

Sometimes I’m Wrong

Posted on by

I know that this is major breaking news to those who know me in real life. I’m a freaking genius. How can I be wrong? I know it is hard to believe, but it happens. Sometimes I make mistakes. Sometimes when doing the schedule I click on the wrong name. Sometimes I miss something that is on a calendar. I hate admitting that I’m wrong. I hate discovering or being told I made a mistake. It’s not a fun feeling. You know what I don’t do? I don’t try to sharpie my way out of it. I don’t spend an entire week trying to pretend that my mistake wasn’t a mistake. I try my best to fix my mistake. I look at why I made the mistake in an effort to not do it again. I try to learn from my mistakes, but I will still make mistakes. I will still be wrong on occasion. Maybe I should buy some sharpies…

More breaking news – sometimes I won’t have the answer to a question. I know this is hard to read. I’m shattering all of the illusions people have of me. I’m not sure how they will go on knowing this. I don’t know everything. Grammarly tried to change that sentence to “I don’t know anything” Fuck you Grammarly. Anyway, sometimes you will ask me something and I won’t know the answer. When this happens I will do the unusual thing of saying that I don’t know and then might recommend you ask someone I think might know the answer or I will offer to ask them myself. I won’t pretend to know something I don’t. Eventually, someone will figure out you don’t actually know. Wouldn’t that be more embarrassing than just admitting it in the first place?

I also won’t pretend I did something I didn’t. I won’t take credit for someone else’s work. I won’t pretend that I did something I didn’t do and then try to do it real quick and pretend it was done all along. I won’t real quick add something to my calendar and pretend it was there and other people just missed it before. If you do that don’t you realize that you aren’t fooling anyone? We don’t all live in a vacuum. People talk to each other. If you tell someone you did something someone else did don’t you think it is possible word will get back to the person who actually did it? Or that perhaps the person you asked to do it asked someone else to do it and now you are telling the person who did it that you did it(based on a real-life event)? Just stop. You aren’t fooling anyone who is paying attention.

So, in short. I am a flawed human trying to do the best I can Sometimes I will fail. I will try my best not to become a person who tries to sharpie my way out of a mistake. I will not pretend to be something I’m not. Unfortunately, it seems the sharpie people are the people who move ahead in life and people like me who get left behind.

TV Is Turning Into a Streaming Pile Of

Posted on by

I was reading the TV business news as I do and I saw an article about the new Psych movie. The movie was due to come to USA Network in 2019. Now, they have decided that the movie will only be available on the new NBC streaming service.  More and more shows are being announced by networks as streaming only. All of the networks have jumped on the streaming bandwagon. Where does that leave the consumer?

I was happy to be the TV dinosaur who still has cable. I like having my local channels, network TV, and other shows and sports that come with cable. I was happy to pay a little more to have what Netflix had to offer. My kids use it enough to make it worthwhile. I pay for HBO on top of cable and we use my son’s Prime account some. We never subscribed to Hulu. I thought we were set.

Now we have Disney + coming. There’s CBS All Access. There is the aforementioned NBC service. HBO Max is coming from Warner. I don’t know what that means for someone who already has HBO. I pay for cable, but can’t watch the Psych movie that was supposed to be on cable. They canceled AP Bio but the resurrected it but only on streaming.

What does that mean for someone like me? Is it time to call cable dead and just use the money to subscribe to all of the streaming? Will I still be able to watch the sports I want to watch with that? Is there a danger that internet providers will enter into deals with some services and throttle the rest? Will streaming eventually be the death of TV?

TV is turning into a streaming pile of something, I just don’t know if it is something good or something that stinks.

Zero Tolerance for Zero Tolerance

Posted on by

I’ve shifted back to trying to write at night but Mrs. Tater is home and I always have trouble writing with others around. So, enjoy this post from almost six years ago(yes, I’ve been boring people for over six years) on zero tolerance policies. I read it, fixed some typos and I still agree with myself

The World's Common Tater

If you are friends with me on Facebook, you have probably seen the “stupid school” articles I share.  Many of the stupid school decisions are based on a zero-tolerance policy. The most recent one that really made me mad was this one:

http://espn.go.com/boston/story/_/id/9826842/high-school-athlete-massachusetts-suspended-driving-drunk-friend

where a high school athlete was suspended after she went to a party to drive a drunk friend home. She did not attend the party and did not drink. She was only there to get a friend who called to ask for a ride. Instead of thinking and applauding the teen for making sure a friend didn’t drive home drunk, the school used “zero tolerance” to make a really stupid decision. I could post article after article of other schools doing the same thing.

Zero tolerance is supposed to be about “making kids safer”. What zero tolerance does is take common sense and any thought out of…

View original post 139 more words

What’s Good in Tater Town 9/15/19

Posted on by

It’s another one of those weeks where I can’t really think of much that stood out. Most of my days are pretty much the same. I should do something to change that, but I’m old and tired.

  1. Football started Sunday and the Ravens won big.
  2. Both kids were home for dinner Sunday night.
  3. Interviews on Thursday mean I will be back to fully staffed soon.
  4. Interviews on Thursday also meant the ability to go see my friends at my former branch on my lunch break.
  5. Free Panera breakfast sandwich meant a relaxing breakfast out before work Friday.
  6. Work on Friday meant two days off in a row Saturday and Sunday.
  7. A relaxing Saturday day barely moving from the couch.
  8.  A Saturday night with friends.
  9. The Braves beat the Nationals Friday and Saturday night.
  10. The Braves have now clinched a playoff spot.

My schedule for next week should mean an easier list of good things for this post. Let’s hope it stays that way.

I Am a TV Dinosaur

Posted on by

One of my social media posts for work this week mentions that the fall network TV season starts on the 23rd. I’m sure there will people who will think, if not comment, that no one cares about the upcoming season because no one has cable anymore. No one cars that new, weekly shows are coming because no one watches shows like that anymore. We just wait until they are available to binge and then we watch them all at once. I think they are right for the most part.

I’m a dinosaur when it comes to TV. I have Netflix and Prime. I watch some originals and some old shows I missed the first time around. I don’t really binge, though, It’s rare that I watch more than a couple of episodes of a show before I’m ready to move on to something else. I think the only two seasons of a show I can remember bingeing the entire season at once were season one of On My Block and season two of American Vandal. Otherwise, I tend to take a while to finish a show and prefer the weekly model of the networks. I also miss how everyone had to watch the shows at the same time. If a big episode of a TV show aired and you watched it you could talk about it the next day because others would have watched it as well. You didn’t have to worry about the whole spoiler thing. TV was more of a community thing. I loved watching Survivor live when I didn’t work Wednesday nights so I could interact with others on Twitter who were watching at the same time. While I’m typing this I’m watching Friday Night Lights. Everyone else who cares about Friday Night Lights watched it years ago. It is and will continue to be, a solitary thing. Even when I watch the newer shows it feels solitary. Not everyone is watching when I watch. They are either way ahead of me, or in rare cases, behind me. It’s hard to talk to people about it.

I got my Fall TV Preview Issue of Entertainment Weekly yesterday. I look forward to it the way other people look forward to the Christmas toy catalogs. I still love this time of year I can’t wait to watch new episodes of my favorite shows. I can’t wait to try the premieres of the new shows. On the 23rd, my blog in the mornings will become a “What’s on TV Tonight” series. This year I might still write a non-TV post in the evening, but I will spend time in the morning posting the schedule for the night and saying what I will watch. I will post my thoughts on new shows as I watch them. I might be the only one who cares.

I am a TV dinosaur but I like it this way.

My Week in Books, Movies and TV 9/13/19

Posted on by

It’s been an off week for me. This is my first original post since Sunday. I never could get any words out when I had time to post. It feels like I had an odd schedule this week but my hours were the same as any other week. I did finish several books, so I obviously had time this week. It just felt like I didn’t.

Movies – We watched The Sun is Also a Star. I read the book and liked the book. The movie wasn’t terrible, but, like most adaptations, I feel like I would have liked it more if I had not read the book. We started Godzilla, King of Monsters when both kids were home, but then realized we didn’t really have time to finish if the kids were going to leave when they wanted to leave so we stopped.

TV – I watched a lot of sports on TV this week. Kentucky football. Ravens football. Braves baseball. Other random football games. I think that’s why I read more. It’s easy to read during the random games and still know what is happening in the game. I watched the first two episodes of the new season of 13 Reasons Why. When my daughter judged me for this I told her that I was invested in these kids lives now and had to see how it turned out. It’s true. I like the characters and I am invested in their stories now. I just need more time to watch all of the stuff I want to watch. When is someone going to pay me to stay at home and watch TV?

Books – I finished three books this week:

Murder of Three Quarters by Sophie Hannah – a Hercule Poirot book. It was OK. I found it too slow and never really was invested in the mystery. I didn’t read a lot of Agatha Christie. Maybe Poirot fans would like the book. I don’t know.

Texts from Jane Eyre by Mallory Ortberg – A collection of fictional(obviously) texts and calls from famous literary characters. It was OK. Some were really good. Some so-so. I listened and the audio was well done, but sometimes my yelling at other cars distracted me from listening.

Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O’Neill – O’Neill was hired to write an article for Premiere magazine and became obsessed with the case. The article never happened. Many years later the book did. The Manson stuff was interesting and brought up a lot of unanswered questions. The CIA stuff was not so interesting and it was a stretch trying to tie it to Manson. In the end, he had no new answers at all. Only read it if you are as interested in Manson as I am.

On Deck – We will try again with Godzilla. I have Rocketman on DVD so we might watch that. We are now working our way through the latest season of Agents of SHEILD. I need to start reading the teen books for Books for the Beast next month. I guess the facilitator of the discussion should actually read the books. I’m starting with And the Ocean Was Our Sky by Patrick Ness.

What’s the Point?

Posted on by

It’s been another “what’s the point” period for me. The only change from this post is that I was offered another job, but turned it down for various reasons. Now I spend a lot of time wondering if that was a mistake.

The World's Common Tater

I almost didn’t write this one. I almost went back to find a happy post to reblog, but then I decided to just go ahead and do it. I’m very much in a “What’s the point?” mood these days.

I’m writing this knowing that on a good day 20 or so people will read it. I sometimes think that someday I will be one of those people with thousands of followers without worry about people actually reading what I write. In reality, I know that I will never have the time nor the talent to write stuff that thousands of people will want to read. So, I wonder this morning “What’s the point?” Why do this if I know no one cares? Why not spend the time I spend doing this reading a book or watching TV?

I still spend time looking at job opportunities in my field.  If the…

View original post 163 more words

Everybody Talks Too Much

Posted on by

If I did it right, this will post again with the edit at the top. If I didn’t do it right you won’t see this. I eat outside every day at work. I sit in front of the building at the tables if it is cool, in the shade near the side doors if it is hot. I read my book while I eat. Many times it is difficult to concentrate because people are outside talking loudly on their phones. People walk into the library while talking. Why does everyone talk so much?

I really don’t understand why so many people are always talking on their cell phone. I spend a lot of time on my phone, but I’m looking at Facebook, Twitter, email, etc and if I’m talking to someone(a very rare occurrence) it is via text, email or Facebook Messenger. I also feel the need to spend less time doing this. Facebook and Twitter are generally either boring or irritating, I don’t get any fun emails and no one texts me. Why am I spending time on the phone? It’s an addiction. I think I should sue Apple. (see my post on Apple Addiction here). One thing I rarely do is actually talk on the phone.

I didn’t even like talking on the phone when talking was the only thing you could do on the phone. Any of my friends and family who have ever talked to me on the phone can verify that I am really bad at talking on the phone. Why would I want to do that now when there are other options(in this scenario I am pretending I know people who actually want to talk to me). I would rather text, email, etc than talk on the phone. I don’t understand why so many other people are always talking on the phone. Who are they talking to? How can they have that much to say? Why is it so important that they talk no matter where they are?

I drive to work and when I pass slow and erratic drivers I glance over the many of them are slow and erratic because they are on their phone. People in line at Starbucks barely move their mouths away from the phone to mumble their order and then go back to the conversation and miss the person asking them a question and take forever to pay because it might interrupt their phone call. People in the library are always getting phone calls and then talking very loudly on their phones. Phones ring during church services, movies, etc. Who are they talking to all the time? Have they never heard of texting? I just don’t get it.

This Bonus Tater Rant Comes With No Cream or Sugar

Posted on by

A lot of people in my Twitter feed have been complaining about coffee shops that do not allow cream and sugar. The general sentiment is that these coffee shops should give the customer what they want. They see snobbery run rampant. What I see is the out of control “the customer is always right” sentiment. They feel that this coffee shop is wrong for not allowing customers to have cream and sugar even if they have signs saying there is no cream and sugar allowed. I can see why you would be irritated as a customer if you went in not knowing this and they denied you your cream and sugar. I agree that there should be a warning so someone who won’t drink coffee without cream and sugar(heathens) aren’t surprised at the rule. I do not agree that the coffee shops should just give the customer what they want. There are plenty of places to get coffee just the way you want it. No one is keeping you from buying your coffee. They are just saying go somewhere else if you don’t want black coffee. There are restaurants that don’t serve meat. I wouldn’t go in one and demand they serve me a steak. A restaurant has the right to refuse to allow changes to the dishes they serve. They have the right to refuse to burn steak for people who like it that way. The customer has the right to go somewhere where they can get what they want. These coffee people might be snobs, but they shouldn’t just give people what they want because they want it.