The Lynnster Zone

babbling since february 1997

Archive for the ‘game theory’ Category

The Biggest Time Sucker Ever Invented

Posted by Lynnster on June 17, 2008

Kat Coble posted the other day about the coming release of The Sims 3. I have a love-hate relationship with The Sims. I love playing with Sims because it’s fun and I could sit there for 15 hours straight every day playing with them. I hate it because it’s fun and I could sit there for 15 hours straight every day playing with them.

I actually broke myself of the habit not too long after The Sims 2 came out. My computer couldn’t run it very well, so I never really got it into the second version, and much later on when I had a computer that was sufficient, I just never installed it. I went back to playing with the original edition for a while, but eventually I kicked the habit… not without having spent countless more hours building a couple of new neighborhoods though.

That actually was the best ever Sims period I had because that was when I built the Twin Peaks Sims neighborhood. I had every house populated with Twin Peaks folk – Pete & Catherine Martell and Josie Packard in one (naturally Josie and Catherine hated each other), the Palmers in another, the Haywards in another, and so on… and my best Sims house ever, the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department – all of them plus Agent Cooper lived together, and it was the greatest house. I built it on one of the empty lots and made it look very police station-y on the outside, and it had EVERYTHING. At one point, there was nothing left for me to buy for it because I had played that house so much and had bought everything there was to buy and stuck it in there. What a great house. Yeah, I’m twelve.

I think I still have the files on my computer. Hmm… nononononono I better not…!

Posted in game theory, other obsessions, television | 1 Comment »

Silent Night

Posted by Lynnster on December 30, 2006

In case you don’t know (which you probably don’t because, unlike me, you probably do have a life and things to do on a Friday night) – the blog world basically DIES on Friday nights.

Man. I nodded off for a few hours and when I woke up, tooled around the blogiverse in search of stuff to read and there’s, like, NOTHING.

Oh well, guess I am forced to go install and play Diner Dash 3 now.

Posted in blogstuff, game theory | 3 Comments »

Popsicle of Love

Posted by Lynnster on December 9, 2006

1. I do believe you could break my toes off my feet, like icicles, right about now. Not only do I live in the Ancient House from Draft City, but this will be my second winter trying to get by on two (safe and not left on while sleeping) space heaters. Which can’t be on at the same time or they flip the circuit breaker. Yes, I DO get tired of living like a 19-year-old college student sometimes. Except they probably live in better places nowadays than I do, probably.

2. I got so busy switchin’ all my stuff over to Firefox tonight, I forgot all about the newly released Diner Dash 3. Obsessive stay up all night playing games desire being overruled by desire to crawl into warm bed full of covers though, I think. After I warm up the bedroom with the other space heater first, which means I get to sit out here at the desk for an hour freezing some more while I wait.

3. “Icicle” is kind of a dumb word when you think about it.

Posted in about the weather, firefox rocks, game theory, in my head, lynnster logic, my so-called life | Leave a Comment »

Hey Jack, What’s Happenin’?

Posted by Lynnster on December 8, 2006

Ready for this one? THEY FORGOT ABOUT MY CAR.

Oh, yeah, they sure did. They forgot to tow it to the other mechanic for the electrical work. Dude didn’t think about it ’til this evening, when I guess he was squaring away all the pending work at the shop before the day was over.

I was so busy working all day, I didn’t really think about it until late afternoon and decided since I hadn’t heard from ‘em that it probably wouldn’t be fixed today, and planned to call them when I finished working. The guy at the auto shop had remembered and called me before I had a chance to call. Needless to say, apologizing profusely and planning to take care of it first thing Monday morning.

I’m really not that annoyed about it, since (A) I don’t know how much this is going to cost me yet, so that’s one less thing to ruin my weekend, (B) I can pretty much get by without until Tuesday or Wednesday or so if I have to, and (C) it’s too danged cold today to get out anyway. I can’t get away from my ceramic heater for two minutes without my fingers freezing (this house is old and cold). But still it figures that something like that would happen, always to moi. Sheesh.

Anyway, I’m in the process of resubscribing to all my feeds via one of these way cool Firefox add-ons I picked up, it’s very neat. Just taking a while, no easy way to transfer them out of my IE-based reader so I am having to manually input them individually. I am finally right now up to the P’s. I read way too many blogs. Wait, there’s no such thing as too many blogs!

I am definitely going to be checking out StumbleUpon thanks to the recommendations from Frank and Ivy. As if I need more things for time suckage, so I’ll blame them when I have no more time because I’ve wasted it all, hehe.

And speaking of time wasters, I got an e-mail notification this morning that Diner Dash 3 has been released, so there goes my weekend. Well, after I spend the next 12 hours or so in bed because (A) I’m tired and (B) it’s too cold! Well, when I go to bed anyway, which is probably going to be sooner than later because my toes and fingers are turning to ice. Stay warm, people!

Posted in about the weather, blah, firefox rocks, game theory, i sleep too much, my luck sucks | Leave a Comment »

Shootin’ Dirty Pool

Posted by Lynnster on January 11, 2006

So here we go… The Lynnster Zone v2.0.

In the meantime, while trying to get back in the habit again, for a little while I’m going to post something old and something new each time.

New… would be general updates on the past year or whatever, but you know what, I’m so tired right now I’m going to sit on all that a bit longer, not that there’s a whole of news to report.

Old… because I keep thinking of, just stuff that I don’t know where it came from or why I even thought about any of it lately. Random observations out of nowhere for no apparent reason, it would seem…

One of my fave time wasters is the Pogo online game site, and one of my (many) fave games over there is their High Stakes Pool game. And, I’ve gotten pretty good at it over time.

Which is odd ‘cos… girls in Camden weren’t allowed to play pool.

Wasn’t a parent thing or anything like that. We just never had the opportunity to learn how ‘cos… the guys were always playing. When Video Village opened down on the Court Square in the early ’80s, I got to play all the video games I wanted usually… ‘cos the guys were always playing pool.

Might I add mostly under false pretenses as well, at least for those who were still under 18. When the arcade opened, they required written notes from parents in order for those under 18 to be able to play, and the notes were all taped up on a wall for public (and I assume law enforcement) view.

I’m going to take a stab at guessing that at least 10 of those notes were probably penned by yours truly, and most of my girlfriends were responsible for another 5-10 each or maybe more, as well as other Camden and New Johnsonville chicks who could adequately forge a note in what appeared to be someone’s mom’s handwriting. Mostly said things like so-and-so “has my permission to play pool at Video Village”, etc.

One of my favorites (actually written by another girl from school and not me): “Greg (last name edited) can play pool if he wants to.” Heh.

Anyway, I don’t know that any of us ever asked to play (or rather, be taught HOW to play) since it was difficult as it was for the guys to get a table back when the arcade was in its heyday, was THE place to meet up every night uptown, and was so busy all the time. So they sure weren’t going to give a table up to us or waste table time teaching any of us how to play.

So nope, never learned how to play pool for real, only online. That’s OK tho, I can still play a mean freakin’ game of Galaga and was the high score ahead of most of the boys for years, until the arcade finally closed after I went to college and the machine went wherever it went…

Posted in * top general babble, ancient history, game theory, updates to the zone, west tennessee | Leave a Comment »

I’m Cold

Posted by Lynnster on January 5, 2002

For those of you who haven’t been here in a while and were surprised to see it’d been updated, the Wall was updated in October and again in December 2001 – please see the Archives if you missed those updates, which were the first since January 2001.

Christmas was good, New Year’s was uneventful, and overall, to borrow a phrase from the infamous Duncan DeG., there ain’t jack happenin’ ’round here ‘cept the weather, baby. I am behind in not only updating and making the promised changes to the site but also pretty much everything else since I am having continued and extreme computer probs lately and have managed to corrupt practically every program in my path… integrating two working computers operating on different Windows versions without starting over from scratch seems to have been a mistake, and considering I’m about to add a third (with yet another Windows version) I expect to be crippled indefinitely, ha. That would be funny if I wasn’t getting so sick of having to boot my computer up three or four times just to start it every day. However, if I ever get all these problems solved I should have a fine system again.

Anyway, I haven’t really been doing anything but trying to stay warm – it’s so unbearably cold down here in the Mid-South right now – and listening to a lot of Iggy Pop this week, I’ve been on one of those kicks, talk about my punk rock roots, I’ve had The Stooges, Fun House, Raw Power, Lust for Life and The Passenger and the Nude & Rude compilation on constant loop in the CD player this week. And in some kind of weird coincidence that Trainspotting (which of course features “Lust for Life” prominently and “Nightclubbing” as well) just happened to be on HBO last night, which I watched for the first time in many years. Gotta love those weird coincidences. I have a big recommendation to make that probably belongs on the Music page but I can only update so much right now… generally I won’t recommend many “Best Of” compilations, but Iggy’s Nude & Rude: The Best of Iggy Pop is an excellent one to have, covering everything from the first Stooges album in 1970 up thru 1996, and it’s a terrific retrospective… I like a lot of his ’90s stuff as much as the early stuff so this is a really nice disc just to throw on and it really has such a varied variety, there’s at least one track that would appeal to just about anyone. One thing I thought of this week which is not true for all musicians who have been long in the profession – Iggy’s stuff is just timeless and never gets old, rarely ever is there a case where a song sounds dated. Something like “Search & Destroy” sounds as fresh now as it did in the early ’70s and could easily take up a spot on current alternative radio and not sound out of place. Gotta love it. I feel a T. Rex kick coming on next…

Wish I had some real news but I don’t. I’m really too busy and having too much fun manipulating the lives of my Sims to bother with anything else and am staying offline most of the time. Talk about a totally addictive game. If they keep coming out with more expansion packs for The Sims I may never leave the house.

By the way, some kind soul sent me a Gurus file back in early December, which was right before my mailbox and half of everything else on my system got corrupted, and thus since I lost all the mail I had in the queue, I don’t know who you are and would like to thank you properly. If that’s you, please e-mail me again.

In regards to some of the many names who occasionally grace these pages, let’s see…. I learned recently that Steve Kane is currently off doing some kind of saint-like volunteer work on the other side of the planet, and I understand that his main link to available communication these days is the WWW, so in deference to that I will try to keep the Graffiti Wall a little better updated and newsier. (Hi Stevie!) Jo is staying in Nashville and holding down the fort while Steve makes his way to sainthood. KC, his ornery self, remains in the UK with no apparent plans of returning anytime soon and if my e-mail is any indication is as grumpy as ever. Duncan and Greg remain in L.A. where it’s likely much warmer than it is here at the moment, but will be coming home for a visit soon so I’m thrilled they will get to share the joy of all this 20 degree weather soon. Everyone else is fine as far as I know, and hopefully this time next year we’ll be looking forward to Brian being back out here with the rest of us soon.

Anyway, I’m outta here for now…. going out to Andra & Troy’s to play the new ’80s music trivia game Troy got for Christmas and likely beat the crap out of him, as I am the music trivia goddess, you know. Later gang, stay warm & Happy New Year!

Posted in a family thing, aussie music, friends are good, game theory, holidays, hoodoo gurus, music, music junkie stuff, techgeekchick stuff, updates to the zone, west end boys & girls | Leave a Comment »

What is My Life Without You

Posted by Lynnster on December 1, 2001

For those of you who haven’t been here in a while and were surprised to see it’d been updated, the last updated Wall prior to this was October 2001, please see the Archives if you missed that update, which was the first since January 2001.

So stunned yesterday to hear of George Harrison’s passing, reading the news online as I always do each morning while desperately trying to get ready for work. Wept buckets, indeed. The Lennon-McCartney-penned “Hey Jude” was one of the first three records I ever bought at the record shop around the corner from our drugstore in my little hometown of Paris, Tennessee, when I was three years old, and most of my earliest additions to my eventually gargantuan LP collection were Beatles albums, even though the Beatles had long ceased to exist as a band by the time I started spending my allowance money on LPs instead of 45s. My two teenage aunts were Beatle crazy before I was born and when I was little, and I used to play The Beatles’ Flip Your Wig board game with the youngest of my aunts frequently way back when, where you had to pick a Beatle to be, and I always had to be George. The White Album remains one of my favorite records of all-time, it, Rubber Soul, and Revolver being probably my favorite of Beatles albums, all with significant George Harrison contributions.

But during the time I actually grew up through, of all later Beatle solo efforts, George’s solo releases of the ’70s probably most significantly shaped my musical world of today. In the midst of years of studying Bach and Beethoven and Mozart as a child, George’s “What Is Life” was one of the first non-classical pieces of music I ever learned to play on the piano, and remains a favorite tune of all time today, as well as “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)”. When I was a kid there was always a radio going at the country club pool every summer, and those as well as “My Sweet Lord” and numerous solo efforts of the other Beatles as well way too many other songs of the day to list here, there’s my whole childhood right there, pretty much, before curious interests in things I’d missed before (the Stones, The Who, The Kinks, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Hendrix, etc.) and exposure to The Ramones and Lou Reed and punk rock took me down another path musically altogether. Ten songs that would make up the perfect album of that period in my life for me: George Harrison’s “What Is Life” and “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)”; Ringo Starr’s “It Don’t Come Easy” and “Photograph” (the latter of which was partially penned by George Harrison); Paul McCartney & Wings’ “Junior’s Farm”; Elton John’s “Rocket Man” and “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”; The Who’s “Squeezebox”; KISS’ “Rock and Roll All Nite”; and Aerosmith’s “Dream On” I guess would be the tenth, or maybe the Stones’ “Brown Sugar”. Along with a whole of ’70s AM radio bubblegum, that pretty much sums up the first half of the ’70s for me right there.

And so I am mourning, I guess probably like millions of people in the world are, and the Zone remains shrouded in black for now. And in thinking about it in the hours since I heard the news, I found something odd. As I’ve mentioned before, my dad was nearly as much of a music addict as me in younger days, yet many – while certainly not all, but still probably many more – of my parents’ musical heroes are still alive – Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, to name a few… and George Harrison was my parents’ age, born the same year as my mom. Seems like scads more of the people I looked up to are gone, or probably will be before too long, I don’t know, it’s just weird. I guess this year, with Joey Ramone and now this, it’s only the beginning, I’m just sad. Jeez, I hope Pete Townshend and Ray Davies and scads of others are and remain in good health for a long time to come.

No other real news, except I’m really happy to have a great big giant monitor now, thanks Troy. All the better to play The Sims on endlessly. Later y’all…

Posted in a family thing, game theory, in memory of..., music, music junkie stuff, sad stuff, updates to the zone | Leave a Comment »

You’re Wrong, You’re Wrong

Posted by Lynnster on June 10, 2000

Yeah, I KNOW… I really suck at this lately, and I apologize. I sort of accidentally created what’s become nearly another full-time job for myself, and I’ve either been so overrun with stuff to do that by the time I could really take a breather and do other stuff, it’d be 3 a.m. or something, or else times when I didn’t have work of some sort to do, the only thing I felt like doing was like a mindless game of Mah Jongg or something, or goofing off reading, or whatever wasn’t going to take up a whole lot of energy and brainpower, and the thought of Graffiti and other webwork and such has just been plain evil.

Really to tell the truth you really haven’t wanted to be in my head much lately anyway, it’s an awfully strange place to live at the moment.

My e-mail box, which I’ve been griping about being behind for at least two years now I suppose, has truly reached a totally unmanageable level and I’m at this point now, kinda like I get when the house has reached the point where I just can’t stand it anymore and I have to clean and do housework, where if I don’t do something about all that e-mail soon it’s just gonna keep bugging me, so maybe some weekend soon I’ll just get motivated and crack down and knock it all out in one fell swoop… the pitiable thing is how much junk mail or near-junk mail is in there that I just never got rid of. My eBay mailbox is so nice and organized in comparison and I just want my personal mailbox to be like that, everything I need to take care of right there in small doses and none of this getting so far behind I can’t tell what’s what anymore.

Speaking of eBay, I am now approaching the 600-mark on my feedback rating, that’s cool… who woulda ever thought one could make a living off old Barbie stuff? My god, I’m just so darn happy not to have to be out nights pouring coffee at Starbuck’s or something…

Anyway, yes, I know I have been sucking mega regarding the site lately and I know I’m pretty much incredibly behind in everything, there are so many of you I need to write back, especially folks who just recently moved to St. Louis and other cool stuff I keep hearing bits & pieces about… I’m so sorry I’ve had to so prioritize lately. Actually it’s probably a good thing I’ve been, for the most part, not really online lately (or not online as I know it, rather), ‘cos I think I sort of needed a real break from a lot of things… when online time & things like that that must be done become a chore, you need to just take a break.

I wish there was really some halfway decent news to report, there’s not… I go to work, I come home and work some more or else I go comatose within an hour of getting home and don’t wake up again until dawn, but it’s mostly just been work, work, work. Thank god there hasn’t really been any real Monarchs news lately or the boys would probably be really upset with me… I just haven’t had even a smidgen of time for either website, or what I might have, I don’t like to do important work when I’m half brain-dead, tho I did just update some news on there. And then there’s the editing of the daily China Beach episodes, which is about to come to an end as it’s about to come to almost the end of the show… but don’t even get me started on the fact that TVLand apparently did not secure the rights to the last several episodes and, therefore, unless something’s changed recently it isn’t going to be shown totally in full… there are a number of things I could compare that to, but for the sake of being polite I shan’t. In any case I have gone from being ecstatic that I was going to finally be able to get one of my fave shows of all time on tape in its entirety, only to find the last season will be missing. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there, really.

The inimitable Mr. Greg Breit and I have decided amongst ourselves there are most definite advantages to not dating anyone, tho the advantageousness for females far outweighs the same for males, in my biased opinion anyway… there are many specifics, yes, but I’m not going to spell them out as I’ll never hear the end of it if I do (and don’t even think it, yes I shower regularly and yes I shave my legs regularly, heh… and let’s face it, you guys have it sooooo easy and I really have no sympathy for you whiny things that whine about having to shave your face every day, gimme a break.) Maybe I’m just getting old & awfully set in my ways (probably) but you know, having to deal with the whole dating deal this-and-that stupidness just really makes me dang tired. I think I may just make it a rule that I won’t go out with anyone that I haven’t already dated once before, for some reason that just seems so much easier and less tiresome, of course given certain past & current circumstances (like numerous deceased boyfriends, for one) that kinda narrows the field down to, oh, I don’t know, two? Maybe three.

Anyhow, the recently de-married Greg & I actually did discuss, oh what the heck, dating each other – after all we’ve been swapping spit on microphones and stuff for nearly fifteen years, right – but that was just too gross to even really consider (and naturally KC, aka Conscience Central, was thoroughly disgusted & grossed out by the whole idea – snicker). I’ve been down that “yuck, it’s like kissing your brother” road before and it didn’t work once, I’m not about to go down that misguided road again. Shudder. (giggle)

Anyway, back to business… The Wall itself is still a quandary of sorts to me, in any case… to tell you the truth, I haven’t been much wanting to be here, seeing as how some Wall matters fairly recently sprung forth an argument, which I suppose is the second or third time that’s happened in the years the Wall’s been up, and I’ve really kind of just had it with that. At least one of the other times there was good reason for argument – admittedly I was picking a fight at the time, tho not exactly overtly, no. The Wall is really mainly newsy bits & fluff & nothing particularly important, tho I have been known over the years to drop an occasional hint or throw an occasional slam in the mix, and intentionally so. Successfully, obviously, since a few of those in the now-quite-distant past resulted in one heck of a row. And likely you, the average Wall reader, never noticed because you weren’t the target(s), whom I suspect anyway have gone on their merry little ways ‘cos I can’t imagine why on earth they’d still be hanging around here.

I am rather slain, tho, by recent problems stemming from Wall stuff because it’s stuff that came totally out of left field out of just what 99.99% of Wall stuff is made of, newsy bits & fluff & basic BS that should mean nothing to anybody, basically the stuff that Daytimers are made of… you know, I went there, I did this, I saw that. I often prattle on about what I’ve been doing since I last made a Wall entry, sometimes detailed but more often than not, pretty doggone vague for no other reason other than it’s often pointless (and would be boring) to go into great detail about some things. I mean, really.

Basically what I’m saying, I guess, if you’re here because you know me or sorta know me, or you don’t know me and for whatever reason my general babble piques your interest, fine, dandy, great. But if you’re here and think you’re picking up clues and information and whatever else you think you’re looking for, no matter what you may think you may know, you should be sadly disappointed, because there’s nothing here and, if that kinda thing is what you’re doing, you don’t need to be here. Don’t go looking for things that aren’t there, and don’t go assuming things because, frankly, unless you ask me directly yourself, you simply do not know anything for certain.

Why all this? Well, I recently got hit with a supposed version of My Life According to The Wall, when little could have been further off the mark or further from the truth… not that the Wall entries are untruthful, no, but things that were assumed were completely off the wall and basically quite wrongly used against me in an argument. I simply won’t have it. If I say “I went (here)” or “I saw (so-and-so)”, don’t just assume you know the rest of the story because you know what, you’re probably wrong, and it’d probably be a good idea to ask me first before accusing me of some misdeed or whatever. Just because you see some information here, don’t presume to think you know everything that’s behind it and about it, because it’s now been a proven fact – there’s a darn good possibility you’re likely, again, wrong. It’s not that I am untruthful here, not at all… the point is, rather, that for every tidbit that’s ever written here, there’s probably bunches more info behind & regarding such tidbits that aren’t scribbled here along with them.

In other words, be careful rushing to judgment unless you know for a fact that you are 100% correct. Walk in my shoes for a while, trade places with me, or at the very least, maybe you should just ask before you go just assuming anything.

I don’t know, it just had to be said. If you’re rushing to some concrete judgment on me, what I do, where I go, who I see, whatever else, and it’s solely based on what you read here, then you need to not be here, and that’s my final answer on that. Bye bye, so long, sayonara…

Anyway (oh, you thought I was finished? snicker)… I just think it sucks that it’s come to this with this page, because it’s really never been a chore and has always been something I kinda dig doing. Now, even tho the particular matters at hand are a dead issue, I am (A) not really wanting to be here right now and (B) feeling completely self-censored, whereas before I dug it and self-censorship was voluntary, so the way things are at the moment could make for an incredibly boring and rarely-updated page. Maybe I’ll get over it, maybe I won’t. It’s kind of a shame, because I have recently been extraordinarily inspired by some online writings I’ve been reading of some folks I find much like myself – both names that would be quite recognizable among a few, one probably many – and this recent crap has pretty much destroyed any possibilities for now of my taking that inspiration to be creative myself here. So that really sucks.

Actually I’ve had a thought of having a passworded, alternate Wall of sorts – I certainly have non-AOL webspace to spare and god knows sometimes you just feel like naming names, getting it all out there, and swearing like a sailor (shh, don’t tell my grandmother and my mom, you know I’m supposed to be a proper Southern LADY)… but that kinda would just suck too, although on the other hand it would be fun and quite freeing to be so uncensored… so I dunno.

Anyway… until I figure it all out, don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. Biting my tongue or not, I’ll be back…. tomorrow is my Dad’s birthday, so I’m off to make a trip up there. (Another good reason to be crucified I’m sure… you know, I think most everyone here knows my father has a terminal illness, so really anyone that would use my making a trip up there against me has bigger problems than I or anyone short of a psychiatrist could ever help them with.)

That said, hope all is well with most everyone, have a good weekend, and ciao for now…

Posted in a family thing, aussie music, blah, friends are good, game theory, happy birthday, in my head, my so-called life, pissed off, television, the monarchs, west end boys & girls | Leave a Comment »

It’s Such a Strange Strain on Ya

Posted by Lynnster on January 29, 2000

You would not believe how many times in the last two weeks I have attempted to get a Wall update up and just haven’t followed thru with it, for one reason or another. Much of what follows has been written for some time, yet has just stewed here languishing on my hard drive, and for that I apologize to those who wait. Be it narcolepsy, severe addiction to Mah Jongg, or just being darn sick and tired of most everything, in any case I’ve been too mentally pooped to lift much of a finger and, as recently pronounced by the all-knowing KC, unfit to speak to anyone in any form or fashion including HTML code. Heh.

Right at the moment a number of adjectives to describe yours truly come to mind, which would include: resentful, hateful, spiteful, moody, ill-tempered, make that very ill-tempered, annoyed, aggravated, frustrated, irritated, and once again and most important of all, resentful… so basically I’ve been saving you all a whole lot of grief by keeping my mouth shut, that’s the silver lining to that cloud I reckon.

In any case, if I can find the energy to put on the happy hat for a few minutes, maybe we’ll have a Wall entry here. Wow.

So… I was freezing to death once again all last week, tho I suppose my relatives in Rhode Island would laugh at that seeing as how they’re having daily lows of, like, 3 degrees right now. It’s awfully cold for the Mid-South right now, tho. I don’t really have much “news”, so to speak, except that I was super pleased to read this week that there are plans to build – I won’t get this right, and forgot to keep that section of the paper, but it’s something like – The Stax Museum of R&B or something like that on the old Stax studio site on McLemore (which has been a vacant lot since 1989). I wish I could remember what all the article said about it, but it sounded like it is going to be really, really neat. And it will be so good for that neighborhood, hopefully this is the first of many good things for that section of town. Very historical musically for sure and especially I’m psyched since everyone knows I dig all things Stax.

Speaking of music, I’m sure there will be a host of whiners who will be completely overjoyed to learn that Greg, JJ & I absolutely hate the new Bush CD. Hate it. I know, I know, it’s a tremendous surprise, but all three of us tried to give it a chance and all came to the conclusion that it sucks. So, all can rest easy that there will be no further added to future appearances, there will be no “The Chemicals Between Us” or any other of that tired proto-electronica sh… I mean, stuff.

New possibly-regular or at least maybe-occasional feature to be added to the Wall soon, or should I say Off the Wall (in more ways than one)… had intended to get it up the other night but unfortunately taking more editing than I’d planned, and I’ve been more interested in napping this week than doing anything that could be mistaken for chores.

We got snowed on mega-bigtime this week, wasn’t as much as had been predicted, but still, it was kinda nice and got me a day off work Friday. About three inches – that’s a big deal for Memphis – shoot, I haven’t seen this much snow since the first year I was here, 1988. About two in the morning on Friday it was just gorgeous, the sky all lit up from the reflection of the snow in the clouds, snow just falling and falling, everything silent, the whole ground and all the trees white. It was neat, for about five minutes I felt like I did when I was a kid and we used to have snow all the time in the winter, fascinated. Now it’s mostly melted, but Friday was a good day, and Dare and I shared a bowl of snow cream for breakfast… that’s milk, vanilla, sugar and snow, for those of you who dunno.

I saw Girl, Interrupted last week and it was okay but I was mostly unimpressed, thought it should have been better, tho Angelina Jolie is fabulous in it… even better tho, one day last weekend I flipped on the TV to find a Kids In The Hall marathon on Comedy Central, there is a god. I only caught the tail end of it, I could have watched for days. And honestly, I hope all of you have been watching – and those that haven’t yet – will watch Freaks and Geeks now that they’ve moved it to Monday nights from that Saturday night TV deathtrap… what an absolutely great show, it’s sooooo funny.

Anyway… I’m not in much of a mood for chatter so I’ll go for now, maybe more shortly, still working on some stuff, tho it looks like I will be AWOL from the Wall (pun intended) for most of February, not by choice. So, for now, Happy 34th Birthday to a friend I haven’t spoken to in about fifteen years, and later ’til whenever…

Posted in about the weather, blah, cats, film fiend stuff, friends are evil, game theory, happy birthday, i sleep too much, lynnster's zoo, memphis, music, television, west end boys & girls | Leave a Comment »

Bad Moon Rising

Posted by Lynnster on August 27, 1999

What’s up? Well, I have gotten really bogged down in various and sundry necessary chores and stuff this week as well as having had the week from you-know-where at work, and continue to be so sleepy most of the time I nod off without even trying, but thru it all I’m sorta trying to catch up my e-mail box again so who knows, when you least expect it and have given me up for dead, you’ll probably get an e-mail.

Did I mention I saw the infamous Kelli, and Melanie, over the weekend? Probably didn’t, yup, I got to hang out with my doppelganger for a little while on Sunday… we had an errand to run, something to pick up at another old friend’s house not too far from mine, and we actually didn’t get to see that friend (Cindy) because she’d gone into labor that afternoon, now the proud mom of a newborn baby boy. So instead – and remember, this is a friend of mine from high school days – we saw her eldest son, who’s now fifteen years old (!!!!) I am, like, ready for Medicare and the nursing home right now, ugh.

So anyhow, we did that and then went off to eat crappy food and deal with rude hostesses at Chili’s out by Wolfchase – a hateful place, don’t go there – and that was that.

Not much else to report, other than I love driving down East Parkway on the warm sunny days, just thought I’d share that piece o’ fluff. Anyway, even tho I’m suffering fits of narcolepsy, I feel a major pre-fall-cleaning undertaking coming this weekend, we’ll see how that goes.

I’m getting whiny notes from Greg, and I think he’s paying off other people to whine about it too, wanting to know if I’m going to put his “Sheena the Amazon Wonder Girl” or whatever it is short story up on the site, so here’s my public statement that I’m taking it under consideration. :P And for those keeping score, the current number of people I would like to see boiled in oil is still holding at two.

Anyway, I gotta go for now, I twice tonight narrowly missed winning a bunch of money at a certain game site on the Web that I’m not telling anyone where it is because you’ll all go there just like you did with Uproar and I’ll never be able to win anything again, so I’m in a bad mood and going to bed. Ciao ’til later…

Posted in friends are good, fun with food, game theory, i never sleep, i sleep too much, memphis, pissed off, west end boys & girls | Leave a Comment »

Children By the Millions

Posted by Lynnster on September 8, 1998

Have returned from the “wilds” of Northwest Tennessee, beautiful trip, nice to be among lots of hills and trees and stuff again. I know there are gorgeous places all over the U.S. but I’m here to tell ya, there are fewer spots prettier than my old neck of the woods where I grew up. I took a turn which I thought would be a shortcut and ended up temporarily lost for a few minutes – cut me some slack, I haven’t been down to the marina at Birdsong in probably fifteen years almost – but it was nice little extra scenic route anyway. I chose the exact right schedule for the weekend too ‘cos I didn’t see a single state trooper going either way Saturday or Sunday, wow (which is probably a good thing being that everyone knows what an I-40 leadfoot yours truly is).

Spent late Saturday afternoon by my beloved river and it was just plain darn nice. I actually got almost sick driving the twists and turns of Birdsong Road… this used to happen to my mom all the time back before I-40 was finished to Nashville (if you’re under 25 you won’t remember that).

Anyway, it was a pretty fun weekend. Got to see Jay Dangit and a very pregnant & lovely Michele and their two kidlets for the first time ever, Andy for the first time in a decade, and all grown up little brother Chris and his very pregnant new wife… and later got to see my buddy Cole and a very pregnant Donna… no, it’s not something in the water up there, since neither Jay & Michele nor Chris & Jennifer are living in the proximal vicinity.

Anyway, there will be lots of new pictures of bunches of folks I’ve run into in the past year if I ever get around to getting all the film developed, I think I have ten or twelve rolls now, ugh. Andy & Jay posed for some new wide-open-mouth shots that I will be putting up in the infamous Maiden brothers section eventually.

Had a lovely dinner Saturday night at a sorta-new and real (!!!), i.e., non-fast food or chain, restaurant in Paris called The Fresh Market. I noticed while driving from Camden over to Bruceton that there’s now what looks to be a junkyard where the old Camden Drive-In used to be and that kind of depressed me, seeing as how I basically developed several probably ill-advised but oh-so-fun habits at that place… oh, detach your brain from the gutter. (giggle)

So anyway, in essence, I learned two things from this trip… all my friends are married & pregnant (well, almost), and all the landmarks of my youth are slowly but surely disappearing from the face of the earth. Trust me, it’ll happen to you too… (snicker)

Soundtrack for the weekend, with the cool CD player that finally works, included the Gurus on the drive up – it was such a nice summery day, Electric Soup and Crank were just the perfect picks – the Gurus’ Crank again, The Velvet Underground, and The Replacements’ All for Nothing side on the way back, and dig this, “Alex Chilton” came on just about the time I crossed the Shelby County line, pretty cool, no?! I liked it…

More news, hey, I won a food processor, no lie, my name’s up on the site I won it from and everything, even tho it’s spelled wrong… and I also got notice that I won an old Jefferson Airplane CD last week from another site, if I keep up this winning streak I’ve had lately I won’t have to spend any money on Christmas presents this year, woo.

And the kitty finally has a name… Rocky. No, not like Rocky & Bullwinkle… not like Sylvester Stallone… don’t be silly. Like “Rocky Top”, of course! He’s orange & white, so, much in the same vein as my kid sister who named her orange & white cat Kelly (i.e., Andy Kelly), I have an ultimate Vols cat!

And speaking of the Vols, how ’bout that very scary game against Syracuse on Saturday… ugh, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a scarier Tennessee game in my life. I was running around getting ready to split town and turned the TV on right at the end of the 3rd quarter, and we were ahead so much I started to turn it off thinking it was a done deal… my mistake, luckily I left it on instead, we wound up almost losing and pulled it off with four seconds to go in the 4th quarter and won by one point. Shudder.

Well, that’s pretty much it for now, hope everyone had a good & relaxing holiday weekend and I’m sure I’ll catch up with everyone at some point… I’ve got a lot of stuff going on plus dealing with something that’s really pretty new for me, the ins and outs of caring for an elderly cat (I just never have had one to live this long, Dare’s pushing 13 now).

One more thing before I go, by the time this gets up there will be trivia from Uproar (a very cool games site that I hang out at a lot, and you can win some moola) available to play here on the Zone; you can play once a week and be entered for their weekly drawing for $25, so check that out. Once you’re registered you’ll be registered to play any of the games on Uproar’s site… I’m so addicted to their Bingo now I feel like one of those little old ladies that drives across the line into Mississippi to play Bingo every weekend. Anyway, check it out sometime (super easy questions too) and ciao for now, dreading going back to work today, ugh ugh ugh…

Posted in a family thing, ancient history, cats, friends are good, fun with food, game theory, holidays, music, music junkie stuff, travelin', west tennessee | Leave a Comment »

I Don’t Think So

Posted by Lynnster on September 2, 1998

September is upon us, I am sooo happy (sarcasm). Well, actually, fall’s my favorite so that’s cool… I just miss things, that’s all.

You guys should see my hair! Thanks to a local pal with a quickcam (even one that works & wasn’t dropped into a cup of coffee, go figure), I got to spend a little phone & video time with my fave curmudgeon across the Atlantic who pronounced, “Wow, you look almost… normal.” (Excuse me, what did I look like before??!!) Like I said, this is probably as close to being a brunette as I’ll ever get, it’s taking a little getting used to, but it’s OK. (shrug) Probably one of those cases where it’s really not as much of a big deal as it appears to me, but I’m still a bit shocked every time I look in the mirror right now.

Onto other things… so, I was going to answer some e-mail last night but got sidetracked by what had become a growing pile of snailmail and some intense reprobation of an entity that charged my bank account unauthorized, which I’ll not name at this point (but you better believe if they don’t fix it fast I will)… I wound up paying nearly 100 smackers for a (again, unauthorized) $29.95 charge due to overdraft fees, needless to say I am more than just a little furious. Beware those ever-present 30-day trial offers, folks… seems even when you cancel ‘em, some of ‘em don’t get the picture. Grrr.

Well, anyway, that probably expended my allotment of fury for the week… so, sorry Stef and anyone else, e-mail later in the week hopefully.

Next, looks like Dobie, who’s probably already one of the more famous dogs on the Internet, may get a shot at becoming even more famous… as I mentioned last month, I won a pretty cool gift certificate to Amazon.com via Webstakes. Of course, if you win something, you have to go thru all the rigamarole of giving them a picture and/or some quote and all that kinda junk, which I did. Well, from the looks of my e-mail, it sounds like the Webstakes people were duly impressed with the cuteness of my fairly useless canine, so be watching their site for the Dobester’s goofball face to maybe grace their pages, hehe. Technically I could win, let’s see, seven more prizes and just send another picture of a canine or feline every time and have the whole Zoo on there!

Let’s see, what else… I have some really terrific Replacements news! A very reliable source has informed me that a ‘Mats tribute album is to be coming out before too long in Australia, and my fave former Hoodoo Gurus guitarist Brad Shepherd and some cohorts have cut “Alex Chilton” for the album… pretty swell, huh?!! That news made my week. I am hopefully getting a copy of this CD when it’s available but will be sure to let all interested parties know how they can get their hands on one when it’s out… the aforementioned very reliable source has already heard the track so this definitely isn’t just a rumor.

In more news, as everyone I’m sure knows, Northwest remains on strike, right after I finally get my frequent flyer stuff in the mail (Murphy’s Law…). From all reports the Memphis airport is just about comatose, seeing as how Northwest makes up something like 83% of air travel in and out of Memphis. Surely the Pilots Association did not foot the verbal bill for the interview one of their senior pilots gave The Commercial Appeal last week, discussing things like how he makes $10,000 a month and that just wasn’t enough… I understand the paper got all kinds of angry and annoyed calls after that appeared.

Coffee Update: the Swiss Almond Chocolate has quickly outdistanced the Butter Rum as my current favorite, and I don’t even like chocolate, but this is good stuff! I guess it’s a little late for me to stop drinking coffee for the summer now, so I guess I’ll just set my sights on next summer and have a nice little Swiss Almond Chocolate fall & winter. (big smile)

More stuff… Memphis wasn’t lucky enough to get the new Howard Stern TV show broadcast here, but there are some (wink) who may be interested to know this little fact… I forgot that I have a pal who owns a satellite, and said pal just happened to mention the other night over Huey burgers that he taped the show in its entirety and has duly promised to make yours truly a copy. Let’s give a big round of applause to our man in high technology, Phil Arnold! And finally, another round of rousing applause for secret web pages that make me laugh out loud… (I suppose this is kind of funner, on some level, hehehe…)

Well, that’s about it for now, folks, my ISP is down for some reason right now so I can’t play Bingo so I guess I’ll go to bed. (giggle) This should be enough to last a few days if it must, ‘cos it may be Thursday or something before anyone hears from me, since I’m thinking about going to see 54 tomorrow night, plus I’m getting geared up for my still-undecided what-to-do-about this weekend, so it may be next week, even. If I only had about eight more hours in every day, I’d be just fine… ‘night, me.

Posted in about the weather, aussie music, blah, dobie is a dog, dogs, film fiend stuff, friends are evil, friends are good, game theory, hoodoo gurus, memphis, memphis gripers, other obsessions, west end boys & girls | Leave a Comment »

You Burn Me Up and Down

Posted by Lynnster on July 11, 1998

Hiya. Sorry for the lack of update Friday, just had stuff to do. Here’s something unusual – we had a thunderstorm Friday evening and the temperature actually dropped to a little below 85 degrees! What a concept! (sarcasm)

Anyway… having renewed my interest in Mah Jongg (like I needed something else to do, but hey), I’m wondering if there’s more than just a few people in Memphis who are into the game (better yet, someone who knows how to score well, which is always my worst point, there’re so many scoring rules in Mah Jongg)… if you do or know someone who does play, please e-mail me, that would be cool to get about 8 people or so up for regular games.

BTW, note to Windows users… my ISP is reporting that people are having a terrible time with Win98 as far as it working with their dialup programs to get on the Internet, and are suggesting that you don’t install Win98 until the first pack of help files comes out from Microsoft in a couple of months. My ISP also has a job opening for a project manager right now, here in Memphis… click here to go to their website for more details.

More rain in the forecast for the weekend, which is good. That’s about it for now, glad the weekend’s here, check y’all later…

Posted in about the weather, game theory, techgeekchick stuff | Leave a Comment »

Summer and Lightning

Posted by Lynnster on July 9, 1998

This week just gets no better… still hot, still tired, we had about a 20-minute thunderstorm this morning which probably did nothing for the drought (just got my neurotic dogs all freaked out). I’ve barely done anything this week but sleep and play Mah Jongg (my favorite… I bet some who even know me well didn’t know how addicted I am to that game).

And Northwest sucks this week, blah on them. I’m usually a pretty big proponent of Northwest except when they do things to tick me off… that’s about it.

Smiling & giggling but would like to lay down & sleep for a week, ’til later…

Posted in about the weather, dobie is a dog, dogs, game theory, i never sleep, lynnster's zoo, memphis | Leave a Comment »

Misery

Posted by Lynnster on May 17, 1998

It’s been an evil 24 hours or so. This Sunday couldn’t much compare to last Sunday when I watched hockey & went out to G’town for dinner on the patio on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon at Bosco’s, but I digress.

Let me back up… we all had a really swell time out at the airport Friday, Jay W. & JJ’s arguments and KC & me having a war with Sweet ‘N Low packets notwithstanding. For once KC & I didn’t argue, so someone should probably mark that day down… I guess we miss each other too much nowadays. Sigh, I just miss everybody… anyway, it was a blast, tho too short, special thanks to KC for the loot… I luv presents.

Anyhow, so Saturday was good but mediocre & throwaway (read into that what you will and some of you are probably right, Josie) and I made the first mistake when I got home Saturday night, which was already late to begin with. Those of you who are well-acquainted with my addiction to horror games on CD-ROM (Sierra makes the best) will not be surprised to hear that around 1:30 a.m. or so I made the fatal mistake of putting Phantasmagoria 2 in the CD drive and, well, I never went to sleep, that was the second mistake. (Not only can I usually find something better to do than clean house, I can almost always find something better to do than sleep.)

Anyway, the deal about P2 is that the game has a possible known error in the very last sequences of the game, and, because my luck always sucks, I ran into the error last summer when I bought and first played it and could go no further, nothing in Sierra’s troubleshooting guide at the time was helping. Nothing like spending hours and days on a game and not being able to finish it… especially when you’re a horror game-junkie like me.

So, after yelling a lot and beating my head against the wall for a while, I put it away for almost a year. Well, earlier last week I’d started playing it again thinking, well, maybe if I start all over and check out Sierra’s website I can finish this sucker, finally. Lo & behold, Sierra had a patch fix that worked and, manymanymany hours later, voila, I finished. It’s an excellently creepy game and so is P1 and so is the Shivers series, for that matter… but I digress again.

Now, this part wasn’t really a mistake on my part or anything, but I’ve had this slight pain in my upper back, just under my neck, for weeks or months now, off and on, thought I’d pulled a muscle or something playing tennis a while back and it’s just been sort of exacerbated over the weeks whenever I’m on the computer and online for a long spell, which is probably entirely too much anyway, but anyhow… in the midst of all this, I get up to get more butter rum coffee (of course) and there’s this… pop from that vicinity. Like a rubber band breaking, and you wanna talk about pain… :( I’ve been dealing with this muscle strain, or whatever, for weeks and now there’s a pop… and I know that can’t be good (and it sure didn’t feel good). And now I’ve been dealing with that all day, this pop, tho as long as I don’t make a wrong move everything seems cool (OK, you’re right, I’m getting old and ancient and falling apart, that’s it.) So OK – so far, I’ve had zero sleep from staying up entirely too late playing computer games, and now there’s this pop.

Mistake #3: By now it’s mid-day, and I don’t really want to go crawl in bed, and it’s gorgeous outside anyhow, woulda been a great day for hanging downtown but I digress a third time… so I think, well, okay, I’m sleepy, I’ll just go lay out, get some sun, that’ll work. Even tho most Southern women are pretty much just born with this – some people are born smart, some are born dumb, some are born straight, some are born gay, and a majority of Southern women are born with the attitude that “if it’s 70 degrees outside, I must lay out” – I am one of the world’s worst at it, I hate it. I lay there, get all fidgety, think of a million other things I could be doing, sweat to death (I’d much rather be cold than hot any day), all that, just hate it, always have. But I am a Southern chick after all, so just like the little old Southern ladies who go to fixing casserole dishes to bring for the masses as soon as there’s a funeral, like legions of Southern chicks before me, there I go. No, skin cancer is not a funny thing at all, but I dunno, for us modern-day Southern belles, especially those of us who grew up on the rivers and the beaches like me, getting a tan’s just as much human Southern Chick nature as going out to breakfast and ordering grits. (shrug)

So there I go, and I’m thinking, well, this’ll be okay, I’m sleepy so I’ll just probably fall asleep and that way I won’t get all fidgety and stuff, I can handle it today, I’m so tired I’ll just snooze a little while. Wrong. Even tho it was a pretty nice, mild, summery day, it was soooo hot in the sun you could have fried an egg on me. I couldn’t fall asleep to save my life, within an hour an already-in-progress headache from sleep deprivation had turned into such a pounding I thought I was having heat stroke or something, and to top it off it felt like even the skin underneath my swimsuit was frying. So, I gave up, came in, and collapsed in a miserable, sweaty, headachey fetal position in the nice cool air conditioning on the couch and slept like the dead… at least once Dobie quit licking all the Coppertone off my legs. I felt fried, fully expected to wake up looking like a lobster. Wake up a few hours later with my head feeling like it’s going to absolutely explode, go to the mirror to see how much damage was done and… nothing. I might as well have not even been out there at all today. Totally messed up my sleep schedule, totally evil day, and all for naught, all of this for nothing. Well, actually, I just got up for something else and looked and am beginning to see the signs of some sun, maybe delayed-reaction sun… but it just ain’t worth it. Whoever got the idea that laying out was the thing probably died from skin cancer long ago… pffffft. To heck with tradition, I can find fifty billion better things to do and get a tan otherwise, or not. In a way this is probably all KC’s fault anyway because he told me I looked anorexic and anemic (double pffffft).

So anyway, that’s my evil weekend, onto other, more pleasant things… wow, if I’d known a few words in Matt Tomich’s ever-wonderful Replacements mailing list ‘zine, The Skyway (which can also be read on the Skyway website, at least I think so), would put me in touch with so many cool ‘Mats fans around the globe that have come to visit the Zone since, I’d have found something to write about in there a long time ago! Wow, this has been really cool, I have heard from so many supercool people in the last couple of weeks. All I did was respond to an article someone else had posted by this chick who felt slighted because she felt the ‘Mats were a “guy’s band”, that she never could understand why guys were so into them and didn’t feel girls could dig the vibes, so to speak. Anyone who knows me well knows I’d turn my nose up at those kinda statements in a heartbeat, so of course, naturally, I responded en opposite. I even heard from someone I felt sure was going to verbally kick my butt in e-mail due to past history on alt.music.replacements – when I saw the name come up in my mail download I just cringed – and was totally shocked to find this person in full agreement! It’s been totally cool, and I have talked ‘Mats with so many cool people I didn’t even know existed now, and thanks to everyone who’s come to visit the Zone and said such nice things and shared ‘Mats stories and stuff, I luv it. Well, I guess I’m not all that surprised, the ‘Mats have always been kinda lucky for me anyway…

One more thing, there is the most incredible tale linked to the Link of the Week this week, click here (sorry, link’s now gone) to see, it’s really funny. ’til tomorrow or something, stay outta the sun, sleep well, and good night to all…

Posted in a bit accident prone, about the weather, blah, dobie is a dog, dogs, friends are evil, friends are good, fun with food, game theory, i never sleep, music, music junkie stuff, pissed off, the internet is..., the replacements, west end boys & girls | Leave a Comment »

September Gurls Do So Much

Posted by Lynnster on September 1, 1997

(NOTE: September 1997 entries have been moved from an old site of mine in one big chunk for the sake of convenience… sorry & thanks – L.)

09/01/97: Well, I took a little vacation in August and did lots of touristy-type stuff here around Memphis that I’ve never done before. I guess you could call it The Great New T-Shirt Hunt as I came away with a new Sun Studios shirt, a Stax Records shirt from the Memphis Music Hall of Fame, and another cool shirt from the Hall of Fame (and a Sun Studios baseball cap, natch). T-shirts I desperately wanted to buy but didn’t included the “Will Work For Blues” and “No Black – No White – Just Blues” shirts from a little shop on Beale. Anyway, I can’t say enough good about the Memphis Music Hall of Fame (if you’ve read the Memphis page on the site you’ve already read this, so forgive me for repeating myself here). Having thought it was on Beale (and it once was), I discovered that it’s now on Second near Union downtown, across from The Peabody Hotel’s parking lot. This may just be the best-kept secret in Memphis for music lovers. There is an incredible amount of stuff to look at and listen to, whatever your poison – blues, soul, rock, rockabilly, you name it, they’ve got it. I could have easily spent two whole days in there. And they’ve also got some really cool t-shirts too. It’s located right next door to Rod Hanks’ Guitar Shop, which you should definitely slip into after spending a day in the MMHOF and look at (and drool over) some pretty cool vintage guitars. Anyway, it was neat. That’s about all of any real interest I have to report at present. Saw JJ over the weekend and his hands are improving splendidly, they are hoping he may be able to play again come December or January. If you’ve ever played guitar, you can imagine how annoying it is to not be able to play at all for months and months, but he’s holding up and even played a teeny bit of impromptu riffage Friday night on a parody of a song from a here-unnamed superstar ’70s band in makeup that Greg & I renamed “I Hate Your Guts” (snicker… I know, Scott, I kill me too). Next, apparently the big invisible sign over my head that says “SUCKER” was working correctly last weekend when I stopped at a gas station and found two abandoned kittens, who are presently cavorting all over my guest bedroom having a high old time. They’re precious and friendly as heck and just adorable. Wish the same fate of abandonment would befall the jerk who dumped ‘em off up there in the first place, but right now they’re safe and happy with full tummies. Heard most of the Tennessee Oilers vs. Oakland Raiders game Sunday from my vantage back yard behind the Liberty Bowl, and it was a winner. You know me, unless there’s orange involved I’m not too big on football games, tho I plan to catch the home game against the Pittsburgh Steelers in December, likely. Finally, my biggest condolences to the family and friends of Anthony “Flash” Lashlee, CHS Class of ‘82, who died in a car wreck in Carroll County in July. Flash was one of the nicest guys of all the ones I grew up with and he will be missed. I guess those of us from Camden are kinda used to losing people after all this time, but it just doesn’t get any easier or any less sad. Drive safely, everyone.

09/02/97: Oh man, did I goof. I hope no one caught my screwup before I fixed it… without going into detail, suffice it to say that I, in my delirium of having spent too many hours into sunup playing CD-ROM horror games this weekend, managed to misspell someone’s name (that I have known since I was fifteen years old) in the same sentence as I spelled it right in another instance. DUH. Well, it’s fixed now, so some of you can just wonder if it was your name or not, heh. And while I’m on the subject of horror games, let me tell you it’s pretty annoying to spend 15-20 hours on a game and get stopped in the last chapter, right before the ending, by a bug… grrrrrrrr. Spoke to KC last night who sends regards to all his fans and plans new acts of evilness towards yours truly on the site soon… Messr. Callicott has been in LA for a few weeks and should have taken me with him, but that’s OK, just another thing to go on the list of things he owes me for. Nothing else new, been a much-needed lazy Labor Day weekend at the real, offline Lynnster Zone, just been trying to come up with names for the new kittens. At present Fender & Gibson are the frontrunners, however, since the babies are girls (we think), I’m not too sure about that yet. Got five minutes to spare and RealAudio 4? Check out the South Park Christmas video short by clicking here (sorry, link now removed)… I’ve watched it five or six times already and been on the floor laughing every time. Unfortunately due to AOL TOS standards I can’t repeat some of my favorite lines here, heh. Happy back-to-work day, everyone…

09/03/97: Oh yeah… many thanks to the nice and wonderful Memphis police officer who pulled me over Saturday night on Park, gave me a warning and let me go without giving me a speeding ticket. There is a god and come to think of it, he was kinda cute, hmmm. Dobie the Dog of Destruction is now getting fan mail, as I got an e-mail this afternoon that said, “Hey! What’s Dobie up to?” Dobie has not let all this international fame go to his head, however, he still loves his milk bones from Super KMart rather than demanding that hoity-toity doggy stuff. Well, in answer to your question (and this was someone in Germany asking about Dobie… shaking head and laughing)… Dobie’s not been up to much, just barking at the Dachshund/Dalmation behind us, barking at the squirrels, barking at his mama, and barking at apparently invisible entities, napping a lot, and he needs a bath. My ex informed me a while back that while driving through Arkansas, he saw a sign that said “Doby Mart” and did a double-take…. turns out it was fruit stand, to which Drew added that it just goes to show that yes, Dobie is a fruit. Anyway, enough about Dobie. Dobie’s mama has finally discovered that there are kittens living in the guest bedroom and has been standing outside the door salivating, which I don’t think is a good sign, but we’ll be working on that. For those of who you haven’t checked the Music Page lately, my current pick is the Dandy Warhols’ “Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth”, which features what’s fast becoming one of my favorite lyric lines ever… “I never thought you’d be a junkie because heroin is so passe’…”. Hair Update: In honor of fall and winter soon to come, the Malibu Barbie hair is on its way out so if you didn’t see me in ‘97, you missed your chance on that one. I decided I liked it better the way it was last winter so we’re going a bit darker for fall this year. I know Scott will be distressed to hear this, but I also switched shampoos and hair spritz, so now instead of smelling like breakfast cereal (apples & cinnamon) I’ll be smelling like rose hips and kiwi and jasmine ’til I get sick of this, sorry dude. Now, aren’t you glad you read this page? You know the state of my hair is always an important issue. Finally, any ideas on kitten names feel free to e-mail me, I’m totally stuck. Pictures coming soon! Bye…

09/21/97: Somewhat poetically, clouds began to cover Tennessee (at least West Tennessee) as the dreaded Tennessee vs. Florida game was coming to a close. I have no real complaints, the Vols played great and Peyton played fabulously. It just wasn’t enough apparently to beat the Spurrier machine, with an ending score of 33-20. Thomas G., that Tennessee-transplant-turned-Gators-fan (ugh!) sent me a joyously crowing e-mail prior to game time and I was gracious enough to send a sincere congratulations back… but just wait, Florida will go down someday!!! In other news, well, I can’t think of anything much. The baby kittens, Molly & Maggie, have been integrated into the rest of the population and are having a blast having the run of the whole house to destroy things and jump around in. They have so much energy they make me exhausted and make my other cats look a million years old. ‘Til later…

09/22/97: How I managed to forget this priceless little piece of information I don’t know. The Lynnster Zone’s Klutz of the Month Award goes to Mr. Kevin Callicott, our very own KC, or as we like to refer to him back here at the ranch, “Klutz Cargo”… (snicker) Get this… a couple of weeks ago Our Hero steps out of his car onto completely dry, completely oil-free pavement, slips (on nothing), falls, smashes his face into the car door and, you guessed it, breaks his widdle nose. (I know there will be one or two out there saying “Why didn’t you tell me this already?”, but I was saving it for the website for the entertainment value.) I hear thru the grapevine that Mr. Vain & Macho Himself is going around telling people he got it in a bar fight, but you heard it here first, hehe. This somewhat makes up for all the years of abuse I’ve taken at his (albeit klutzy) hands. (And people call me dizzy or klutzy…) Yes, I am loving this!

In other news, the Gripe Gang gathered on the patio at Buffalo’s on Winchester Sunday evening for munchies, brewskis and some excellent live music from guitar guy Mike Strickland. Highly recommended for Sunday nights when, as per usual on Sunday nights in Memphis, there’s nothing better to do. We were all pleased to be joined by the newest little Griper, young Daniel Goe (congrats to proud parents Frank & Tina), born three weeks ago, tho he wasn’t too interested in the munchies, brewskis or music. Those in attendance included your GuruNess herself, the slightly toasted Dr. GFS, the inimitable GCobb and Feel, and was good to see those I don’t get to see often – Mike & Susie, Roxy & Lewis, and of course Frank & Tina & the newbie. Everyone have a good week, see ya…

Posted in a bit accident prone, cats, dobie is a dog, dogs, friends are good, game theory, holidays, i never sleep, in memory of..., lynnster's zoo, memphis, memphis gripers, memphis music, music, music junkie stuff, other obsessions, sad stuff, the ex files, vols, west end boys & girls | Leave a Comment »

August & Everything After

Posted by Lynnster on August 9, 1997

(NOTE: August 1997 entries have been moved from an old site of mine in one big chunk for the sake of convenience… sorry & thanks – L.)

08/09/97: Well, things have been pretty busy and I apologize for not putting up anything new in a while. Among other rather horrible occurrences, G-man & JJ were in a pretty gnarly car crash in Nashville the weekend of July 4th, for those of you who haven’t heard. After a few worrisome days both were out of the hospital and doing well, however, the bad news is that JJ’s got an arm and several fingers on both hands out of commission, so Apocalypse Wow’s hiatus is extended until probably December or January at the earliest. No other real news… been out of town a bit, have had a multitude of various things going on, back in the New York Groove, everything’s just been kinda wild. My e-mail box is full to bursting so anyone that’s waiting for a reply, I’m sorry, and will hopefully talk to you soon, I just can’t seem to get caught up and many other things are demanding my attention these days, mostly bad, some good. Urge everyone in the Memphis area to check out the Titanic exhibition before it leaves in September – it’s really cool. Scott wants everyone to know he’ll be in Memphis over Labor Day weekend, so all inclined come from near and far and we’ll do the Pinch-to-Beale Crawl again. Will be doing some heavy-duty housecleaning on the site soon… in the meantime, I’ll be fighting Tennessee Oilers traffic on top of the usual NCAA traffic (oh how I hate living by the Liberty Bowl this time of year, but hey, it’s football season, GO VOLS!) and some other interesting things which I’ll be able to mention soon. Happy weekend, drive safely, and take care all…

08/09/97: Oh yeah – Happy Birthday this week and last to Jay “Dangit” and Linda S.! It’s always a good thing when people finally become as old as me.

08/19/97: What a couple of weeks! I finally upgraded to Win95 weekend before last and man… now that I’ve finally repaired everything that went berserk and got most everything running well, I kinda like it, but whoosh, this was a huge headache (and I got like maybe eight hours of sleep total all week up to Thursday last week, phew). I guess it’s probably easy for people who haven’t got a million things running in the background, but that ain’t me, of course. And now, along with the Pentium CPU and all the stuffs I bought new in March, I now have a more-or-less totally brand new ‘puter, since my CD-ROM said “Uh-uh!” when I put Win95 on. (One of these days computer parts companies are going to make things that don’t become obsolete in less than two years, sigh.) So now I’ve got a new 12x CD-ROM and a pretty darn cool SoundBlaster card and spent the better part of Sunday night making .wav files of stuff just ‘cos it was fun. Well, let’s see, what else…. didn’t make it to the Eric Johnson show tho I wanted to go, had a previous commitment. Did go see The Untamed Shrews for the third year in a row at The Loony Bin, nee Comedy Zone, on Overton Square. Susan & Marge (the Shrews) are the funniest chicks in comedy today and if you’re not easily offended, go, nay, run to see them if they come to your town! Let’s see, what else has been going on… well, I was supposed to do something cool last week but it didn’t happen so there’s nothing to tell, story of my life. Got a slight case of food poisoning or something after eating at an unnamed local restaurant Monday, that was fun. Dunno where KC is so don’t hold your breath for page updates, the last thing I was told was he (ahem) didn’t have time for me (ahem) so that usually means he’s having girl troubles, got me. JJ is continuing to improve and in fact tried to play a little guitar Saturday so that was cool. Went walking down Beale Street Thursday afternoon and was just in a state of awe at the number of Elvis impersonators (oh, excuse me, Elvis Tribute Artists) walking around in street clothes shopping for t-shirts and stuff, very Twilight Zone. My old pal Joe Kent, probably Memphis’ best-known ETA, was playing around town too but again, I didn’t go. Nothing much else except man, I should go out to East Memphis/Bartlett/Cordova more often. Six lanes of interstate now at Sycamore View, SIX! And four the rest of it. Wild. I had a new quote for the main page but since it’s probably got an AOL TOS violation I guess I can’t use it, oh well. Anyway, I’m on vacation now and have company coming to town so I’ll be out of pocket a bit, I’m intending to stay far from the computer most of this week, I have many better things to do, so everyone just stick a sock in it for a week or so. And once I return, now that I’ve got Win95 going on this bad boy of a machine here, I’m gonna be whaling on Ultimate Yahtzee and Phantasmagoria 2 (woohoo!) so you know, don’t hold your breath or nothin’… I don’t get to feed the horror game addiction that often, I’ll be tied up in CD-ROM blood and gore for a while. Oh, and before I go… still accepting donations to send my happy butt to Australia in November (hint hint). Donate a couple thou, send Her GuruNess to one of the final Gurus shows in Sydney in November, make Lynnster very very happy. (Oh, I’m just kidding, sheesh. Buy a sense of humor. In fact I’m also accepting donations to buy KC a sense of humor.) Happy August everyone, ciao!

Posted in a bit accident prone, friends are good, game theory, giggles, happy birthday, memphis, nashville, techgeekchick stuff, travelin', vols, weird wild & whoa!, west end boys & girls | Leave a Comment »

In the Month of June

Posted by Lynnster on June 2, 1997

(NOTE: June 1997 entries have been moved from an old site of mine in one big chunk for the sake of convenience… sorry & thanks – L.)

06/02/97: I have, like, no spare time right now but suffice it to say all is well. S.H., you don’t need e-mail from me, you can read the Graffiti Wall, heh heh. Congratulations and celebrations to JJ, Kev, G-man and Jay W. on some jobs well done the last several weeks, you guys have been a lot of fun and I thank you for letting me be a part of it … AW is for the most part on hiatus until after summer, and we all thank everyone heartily for the support and good words, it’s been a pleasure. Special thanks to the mighty dudes at the Musitron and also at Strings ‘N Things for various and sundry good deeds. This last weekend was the best ever and the second all-KISS deal was a righteous amount of fun. In other news, the Gripers are planning yet another Gripefest, this time a pilgrimage down to Mud Island for Summer Daze ‘97, 06/20/97, featuring a virtual myriad (heh, Heathers reference) of ’70s guitar nostalgia whatchamahooey, featuring Foghat, Blue Oyster Cult, Pat Travers and Steppenwolf. Come join us and see a bunch of 30 and 40 years olds (well, except for Drew and Julie) act like a bunch of plastered teenagers and Ed & Greg invariably yelling “Hey (insert name here), you suck!” At $10.03 a ticket, you can’t even buy a pizza for that (not Ed & Greg yelling, the concert). For other news, please click your pointer at the May 1997 Graffiti Wall. I am just swamped. Hugs to all…

06/06/97: Sad day in Memphis here upon the news of musician Jeff Buckley’s death becoming a certainty after a weeklong search in the Memphis Harbor and the river. Though there was some speculation at first that he’d up and disappeared, I pretty much suspected the outcome, as the mighty Mississippi is not a particularly nice and easygoing river. Jeff came to Memphis in February from New York and had been living here in Midtown. I had not had the opportunity to make his acquaintance, but many folks I know did, and my sympathies are with all of you who had the good fortune to know him – I understand from friends he was a super good guy. (More details appear on my Memphis page as well as a link to one of the Buckley sites on the ‘net.) Condolences also to Memphis musician John Kilzer, a favorite of mine, on the recent loss of his mother. Seems like a couple of weeks’ worth of bad news on the rise. The good news is that I’m kicking butt on The ’80s Server this week and I just plain rock. I also hereby defer to John “Cochise” Cosper that, indeed, Sam Cooper Blvd. (AKA I-40) to Summer to White Station is quicker than Walnut Grove to White Station. Bite me. KC says he has pages ready to be updated so everyone wait with bated breath, I’m not holding mine. My laryngitis is gone and I know everyone’s just jumping up & down for joy about that. Otherwise, happy weekend, all – well, most, not all – I’m ready for it, dead tired. And in the words of Lloyd Dobler, “If you start out depressed, everything’s kind of a pleasant surprise.” Ciao…

06/09/97: Well, let’s see. #1, KC lies so don’t listen to him. The only real truth to that is that it was an amazing weekend, as was this past one. (Oh, I suppose some of those things actually happened, but not precisely as Mr. Exaggerator tells it.) A big highlight apart from working was the long-awaited much-planned Mini-Trip to Clarksdale (no, that’s not Clarksville and there’s no last train, Bill Ruef). ‘Twas only a mini-trip because we didn’t have time to do and investigate all we’d planned, but a lovely day trip in any case. Having the blues feels great, heh! (And them’s Delta blues, baby.) Thanks (this really kills me to say this) KC for springing for me as I am flat busted broke (not only do I have the blues, I am the Epitome of Delta Blues, baby. Check that $100 word there out, Bill P.) Anyways, ’twas a stellar (that word’s worth at least $50, B.P.) weekend started off by the wonderful news that an old good friend in longtime need of a liver transplant finally not only got on the list but got one on Friday, thereby proving to me that Fate and Luck are not necessarily the crock of dog poop I often proclaim them to be. Then having two great probable-last-time-’til-fall AW gigs going on, and the weekend was capped off with a rowdy bacchanal (another $100 word there, B.P.) at The Place Whose Name We Shall Never Speak Again downtown where we all spoke to each other in British accents and toasted Friendships That Shall Not Be Dissed and drew up and signed FTSNBD Vows in blood…well, not blood, red Flair pen, but that’s beside the point. The way this last year or so’s gone for most people and then “Someone” (you know who you are and we know you read my website) winding up on everyone’s Bad List (but especially Josie’s), it just seemed fitting in our rather gleeful, English-speaking state that we create these Sacred Vows, first and foremost of which is Thou Shalt Not Incredibly Dis a Friend…now, what “incredibly” actually involves is up to the judgment of, well, us. Second and equally important, as well as being my favorite, is: If Thou Incredibly Dis a Friend Over a Member of the Opposite Sex, Thou Shalt Waive All Rights and Hereby Give All Friends Permission to Shoot Thou. (This was KC’s idea, by the way, not mine, surprising, I know.) Works for me…if I ever Incredibly Dis a friend over such, I hope you all shoot me. Billions of times. Anyway, the nice thing about these Sacred Vows is even if you’re all or one of our buddies and you weren’t there, we signed in fake blood by proxy for you, so you’re covered. (Former friends need not apply…that’s the point. Duh.) These vows were signed by the usual cast of characters…moi, KC, Jay W., G-man, JJ, Kev, Kev’s new girlfriend (um…no, I bite my tongue here), CarolJoJosie, and some guy I’ve never seen before named Damon or Demon or something but we let him sign anyway. More the merrier, can’t have too many friends, watch out what bridges you burn, all that hooey. So anyway, the Sacred Vows are now written in fake blood and “Someone” (by the way you owe Josie a few hundred $, “Someone”) and all other “Someones” past best just hope we didn’t put the mojo whammy on you while we were all bopping around down in the vicinity of the Crossroads this weekend, heh. By the way, I want everyone to know that JJ’s one true brush with greatness is that he once hung out with Sweet, Sweet Connie of Little Rock (she of Grand Funk’s “We’re An American Band”). Matter of fact, last time I looked at Rock103’s website they had a recent pic of SSC up there. Not that that has anything to do with anything. Anyhow, in more news, many congratulations go out to my cousin-by-marriage who may as well be a cousin-by-birth as far as I’m concerned, Blair, and her fiance, Noel, who will be wed in a smashing affair here in Memphis this coming weekend (hopefully with lots of single, available men in tuxes and nice suits). I’d say welcome to the family to Noel if he hadn’t already been a part of it anyway for so long, but welcome anyhow. And finally, my new fence is finally up (thanks, Art) and Dobie and Baby and I are very happy about it. And my flowers are blooming and I’m simply ecstatic about that as well. Scotty H., I hope you do truly get a kick out of all this, you know I only really write it for you, love (and I think you’re about the only one who reads it besides KC anyway, heh). Catch y’all on the flip side of next week, I gotta traumatically busy week ahead. And no, Mom, I’m not on drugs. Luv, L.

06/11/97: Happy Birthday to my Dad!! The only man I’ve ever really loved. (smirk) Love you, L.

06/13/97: I saw that, KC. Next time you ride tied to the top of the Neon like a dead deer.

06/16/97: Well, this will likely lose something in translation, but I just had to tell everyone about my new One Sick Puppy t-shirt Art gave me, it’s the coolest. It has a cartoon of a dog and his owner-guy with a rolled-up newspaper, and the dog’s going, “Spank me hard! I deserve it! Oh yes!!! THE ROLLED UP PAPER!! Yes, yes, yes!! Spank me like never before!” And at the bottom it has the One Sick Puppy logo on it. What a great shirt, I love it. OK, on to more personal matters. Congratulations to Noel & Blair who were wed in a lovely ceremony Saturday night and the band rocked and all was just neat. Dear JJ & Greg – I know you miss me, how many other women give a damn about your guitar solos or what equipment you used on what and yada yada yada, hehe. Miss y’all too. I hate Sundays ‘cos I dread all day going back to work on Monday. Another weekend shot to heck, back to the ol’ salt mines…

06/21/97: After one of the truly suckier weeks in Lynnster history, the week redeemed itself with a finish Friday night at the Summer Daze show at Mud Island. For $10.03 and $4 for these GIANT cups of beer, I more than got my money’s worth (especially since Greg wouldn’t let me pay for my ticket – thanks darlin’ *smooch*)! Now, first of all, it’s been a long time since I’ve been to a show at the Island, and I’d really forgotten how great it is…Mud Island is the penultimate place to catch a concert in the summertime. Ya ride the monorail (as seen in the flick The Firm with Tom Cruise, natch) or walk the bridge across the river, then ya walk around the park treated to the awesome view of the Memphis sunset facing Arkansas, then ya find your seat in the ampitheater and, while treated to whatever fineries are onstage, you get the added plus of a fantastic view of the entire Memphis skyline and Riverside Drive and the bluffs all night, kinda an awesome sight both in the daylight and at night. So I was like, happy enough on that, the weather’d been hot all day but was just perfect last night with the river breezes to boot. We managed to miss most of Pat Travers’ set but did catch the final tune, and then (I really must commend the folks that put this show on for the quick changes between sets) out comes Foghat, which I would have been happy to listen to all night. Because there were four bands playing, each act only did about 4 or 5 songs each, and the Foghat set included “Drivin’ Wheel”, “I Just Want to Make Love to You”, “Fool for the City” and “Slow Ride”, and I think that was it, but man, that would have been worth the $10.03 by itself. The set was awesome and I sat totally in jaw-dropped awe of Rod Price’s guitar extraordinaire. That done, the rest of the show (Blue Oyster Cult and Steppenwolf) was good but I’d seen who I really came to see and proceeded to imbibe many more of those huge $4 beers and really could have cared less who was on stage after that, tho, again, the rest of it was good, heavy on the Steppenwolf, who closed the show. The Gripe Gang headed to The North End in the Pinch District for a snack afterwards (I think I won the Most $4 Beers Award last night). My head has finally stopped pounding with every step I take today, the day after. If you have the opportunity to catch the Summer Daze show on the road, do go. The Foghat set alone is well worth it, tho I must admit the ambience of being out in the middle of the river in summer did it for me, I am reminded once again of why I love Memphis, this city ROCKS. Planning to recuperate the rest of the weekend and watch my just-gotten, three video set of Hoodoo Gurus shows, interviews and such (thank you oh thank you Mike Watters, you are a god among men). Everyone have a swell weekend…

06/22/97: Well, KC says a hangover never killed anyone, but I’m not so sure about that. My apologies to anyone I ignored on Saturday, the computer and phone were on but, tho literally, figuratively no one was home and I wanted to die most of the day. I did, however, spend a good bit of the evening with over four hours’ worth of live shows, TV appearances and interviews from 15 years’ worth of my beloved Hoodoo Gurus. Watching Brad and Dave’s hairdo changes over the years as well as Brad’s choices of various guitars each tour was loads of fun (KC, 100 Lynnster points if you can guess what guitar Brad mostly used on the Crank tour, heh heh). Probably the greatest thing about this video set is I now have a live Gurus show off the Crank tour, which was the last I saw and I guess now will ever see. (Anyone who wants to send me to Australia in the winter is still welcome to do so.) Anyway, thanks again to Mike Watters for making this video set available, and thanks as always to the Gurus camp for always being so terrific to us Poison Pen List folk … thanks to y’all we get to enjoy some stuff other bands and artist’s fans could only dream of, there’s a good reason why the Gurus are #1 to us. In other news, those of y’all who come here once in a while have got to see my new fence! Not only do I have a new backyard fence, but Art built me a new side fence last week and it’s great! Every time I walk out my back door I feel like I live somewhere cool, hehe. I’m so happy about it I could just spit. Now here’s hoping before the weekend’s over maybe I’ll feel human again.

06/25/97: I did survive… I know how sorry some folks may be to hear it, but I am alive and well after the weekend’s misdeeds. We are now smack in the middle of my least favorite time of year in Memphis, and what’s worse, it’s not even August yet! 92 degrees on Beale Street at 6:00 p.m. yesterday and I’m over this heat already. Hurry up, October! This is also my least favorite time of year here because, no matter what color your vehicle is, it might as well be yellow, because no matter if you wash it every day, it’s going to have yellow pollen all over it. Blah. Baby killed a bird in the back yard today and is in bigga trouble. Other than that, no news worth repeating (or okay to repeat by TOS standards, anyway). Personal notes… Dear Andy – you better e-mail me you Vegas-bound slug. Dear KC – like I care or ever have. Kiss my…

06/27/97: Well, just when I thought nothing could possibly get worse than the last year’s been, there’s always something around the corner to surprise me. This site may well move sometime in the near future so just remember that for future reference. Ummm anyway. Happy Birthday to longtime pal Julie Cox today! And Amy K. & I rule the Manic Medley on The 80s Server this week, we are goddesses and don’t none of y’all forget that. Good weekend to all & I’ll answer all e-mail as soon as I can…

Posted in a family thing, about the weather, aussie music, concerts & shows, dobie is a dog, dogs, film fiend stuff, friends are evil, friends are good, game theory, happy birthday, hoodoo gurus, in memory of..., lynnster's zoo, memphis, memphis gripers, memphis music, music, music junkie stuff, rumors & lies about me, sad stuff, the ex files, wasted, west end boys & girls | Leave a Comment »