This site looks like hell. I'm working on it.

I was checking out my Amazon.com Gold Box offers today and came across the worst offer ever.

It's for a safety harness set. The only thing that made this offer less crappy was the picture of the item. Check out the dude on the right and tell me he's not happy being a model...

It's a dark picture, but that's me and a bottle of Kikkoman! Show me! Show you! KIKKOMAN!

And I've done this the last two years, so I might as well do it again. Happy Birthday Depardieu, you still suck.

Additional note: Kyle and Sarah have been located. Thank you.

Anyone else have to work today? And where the HELL are Kyle and Sarah?

HUGE news! Jeff got engaged to Mary this weekend! Congratulations! That bastard caught everyone by surprise! Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations!

At least my father is getting press...again.

I feel a hiatus coming on...

You know what I've been thinking? We need to start a "Random Santa" thing. I was thinking about this the other day. During Christmas, we always end up buying some crap for ourselves right? So why not spend that $15 - $20 on someone else...but here's the catch.

A lot of people have their Amazon.com wishlist on their websites, so why not find some random site for some person you don't know and buy them something for $15 - $20? Total random acts of kindness.

I just sent one to someone, guess you'll have to wait and see who...

So, being that I'm admittedly a total dork, I was searching around StarWars.com and came across a very disturbing photo.

Take a look at this and tell me what's wrong. If you need a hint, WHAT THE HELL IS THAT BETWEEN HIS LEGS!?

Oh Lucas, how far have you fallen?

This is just really, really horrible.

The title of the e-mail is "Another School Shooting" and when you open the e-mail there's the usual "I'm a naked lonely girl with a webcam."

That's probably the lowest I've ever seen anyone stoop to sell porn. I replied to the e-mail, we'll see how far it goes...

...already rejected. Assholes.

This is just really, really horrible.

The title of the e-mail is "Another School Shooting" and when you open the e-mail there's the usual "I'm a naked lonely girl with a webcam."

That's probably the lowest I've ever seen anyone stoop to sell porn. I replied to the e-mail, we'll see how far it goes...

...already rejected. Assholes.

I'm proud to say that when you search for "empire diner" in Google, I'm the top search find baby!

I expect to hear from the s of the Empire Diner soon telling me via lawyers to no longer use their name...

Bathroom code aside, I'm proud to say that I am the of the second most stolen car in America...

...and yet, no bastards have stolen it yet. What the hell are you waiting for?

I'm going to push for this to be called, "The Kyle Ford Survival Technique."

I kid you not, on the way to work this morning, I saw all three members of Wilson Phillips packed together in the front seat of a Ford pick-up truck. I had to do a double take, but I'm pretty sure it was them.

Dance Pack!? Why didn't anyone tell me about this!? I would have asked for it for Christmas! [Please note that the previous statement was said in jest. If I receive any copies of "Grease" in the mail, I will hunt you down and make you eat it.]

Ready to piss your work day away? Play some Pac Man! [Link yoinked from Meigan]

The webcam ordeal is looking more promising. Kyle and I had our digital video cameras hooked up to share sight and sound with the world. We found out that the server that is supposed to track the camera's abuse on our own server had been down, so that might determine the ultimate fate of the webcam function.

"Billy Zane sucks" showed up in my search report this morning. I think the people are finally starting to understand that.

Toughest scooter ever. Hop on that bad boy and expect to tangle with Aunty Entity...

NOTE TO THE AUTHOR: Looks like this needs revising.

Actress Patricia MacHannaford comments (El Presidente) on a scene in Pons Fiction where she is seen holding a desk lamp off camera:

"That's right, I had forgotten about me holding the lamp. The delicious irony of it all is that 90% of the film is horrendously backlit and you can't see anyone's face. BUT you get to catch a glimpse of me holding an end-table lamp...you can't make this stuff up, people."

To celebrate the 2 year blogiversary of my "Napkin Notes at the Empire Diner," I copied my entire blog history into Microsoft Word to grab the crucial stats. 365 days ago, I had typed roughly 87,000 words. 365 days later, I've added about 38,000 words. So either things have slowed down, or sped up or I'm just less wordy (ha!).

And as I did last year, I went through a list of words I though I commonly used and counted them up. The numbers marked in red are the total number in two years. Some have increased a lot, some not at all. Take a look...

• Biblical figures: Jesus (25) [38], God (71) [98], Devil [5], Satan [1]
  
• Choice words [parental advisory here]: Damn (82) [101], Crap (48) [75], Ass (228) [323], Shit (51) [59], F*ck (21) [22], Hell (41) [80], Bastard [29]
  
• Friends: Stick Bus (83) [108], Kyle (244) [334], Bruen (108) [202], Jeff (124) [132], Sarah (58) [81], Connie (104) [131], Mark (27) [41], (21) [34], Krycek [10], Owen [5]
  
• Famous People: Al Gore (2) [3], Ichiro (22) [46], Natalie Portman [2], Samuel L. Jackson [3], Billy Zane [6], Christopher Walken [13], Osbournes [4], Kikkoman [4], Domo-kun [21], Wilco [26]
  
• Places: Chicago (61) [73], Illinois (22) [29], Los Angeles (32) [53], California (22) [38], Barney's Beanery (12) [16], Libertyville High School [8]
  
• Etc.: Blog [336], MT [18], Love [149], Hate [117], Sex [29], Drunk [14], Beer [15], Dead [38], Evil [19], Saved By the Bell [2]

I'm going to end this with what I said last year because I'm pretty sure it's going to be like that again...

"And this is where I am today, one year later. Many things have changed in my life, most for the better. And trust me, the next 365 days are going to get interesting. Pretty much the last year has been other people's lives shifing around mine. This year, it's my turn. I'm sure my site will fall prey to slow times and be plagued by hiatus graphics, but behind the scenes I'll still be at it and trying to win whatever battle comes next."

I want to thank America for making the idiot that invented the Christmas light reindeer a millionaire.

Thank you.

I completely forgot that the two year birthday of my blog was November 28th! Here's how I celebrated last year, we'll see if I can do something similar this year...

Happy birthday Empire Diner!

I now present to you, the movie that started the once-famous, Stick Bus Films.

Each chunk is pretty big, so people on modems, forget about it. If you primitive modem users really want to see it, e-mail me and we'll talk about me sending you a copy on CD.

And if you're still not sure about downloading it, check out the trailer.

I give you, Pons Ficition...

Chapter 1 (29MB) | Chapter 2 (25MB) | Chapter 3 (23MB) | Chapter 4 (19MB) | Chapter 5 (12MB)

Does anyone out there care to tell me why THIS showed up in my refer reports...NINE TIMES!?

Freak.

I've taken steps to allow readers from all over this great planet to be entertained by my simple American musings. Please select the language you wish to read this site in:

Spanish | Chinese | French | German | Italian | Japanese | Korean

And yes, even you Portugal.

Now, I'm not fluent in any of those languages, please for give me if I accidentally insulted your mother or your God. Thank you.

Idea yoinked from lightningfield.com.

It happened again!

How can someone seriously expect me to go to work when "Saved by the Bell: Wedding in Las Vegas" I mean really, how bad does this ruin my day?

Recently, I've been just bored enough to start opening the porn e-mails for humor's sake. The other day I received one such e-mail from "Donky F**ker." Now really, how hard is to spell "donkey?" It's a sad day when porn throws grammar by the wayside.

So today's e-mail comes to me from "Vikki" and cleverly disguised with the "no subject" line. Clearly, this is porn for I don't know anyone named Vikki.

I open the e-mail and there's a chart with pictures of the girls on the left, and their biographies on the right. The bios are CLASSIC, read and laugh with me. I'll toss in my comments along the way...

K@ylani - [I had to change the "a" to an @ because I'm getting a sick amount of porn traffic]

This bad-ass exotic nymphomaniac showed us just exactly what makes her top the charts in all-over nastiness [there's a CHART for ALL-OVER NASTINESS? Since when?]! This tight little 4'11" package takes a f**kin' & keeps on truckin'! Come see all of K@ylani's pics for FREE!!

Krystal -

Spoiled rotten & a total bitch, Krystal is used to getting what she wants. This 19 year old Californian native [Does the fact that she's from Cali somehow make her more desirable?] knows how to work it to have guys eating out of her hand [Like that's a secret, it's called "bringing home a six-pack." Duh.]. Come see all of Krystal's pics for FREE!!

Trisha - [This is my favorite]

Far from a good girl, Trisha is prone to sneaking out at night, drinking excessively & f**king almost anything that moves [I love how she's "prone" like it's a mental disorder.]. "Gangbangs?!," she says, "I'm usually the one instigating them!! It ain't no fun if the homies can't have none!" [Classic! "It ain't no fun if the homies can't have none!"] Come see all of Trisha's pics for FREE!!

Autumn -

The day we hung out with Autumn, our cameraman's wallet got stolen. Coincidence?! [For some reason, when I read, "Coincidence?!" all I could hear was Scooby-Doo's voice. "Corinsidence?! Yoinks!"] Luckily we got a TON of HOT PICS of Autumn before she was hauled off to the police station [HAHA! Luckily! HAHA!]. Come see all of Autumn pics for FREE!!

This is probably the worst trailer I've ever made so please don't base your opinion of my skills on it.

I give you, the Pons Fiction trailer (4.2 MB)...

On November 25th I posted about that weird Kikkoman Flash piece. Since then, 90% of my search referral hits have been for Kikkoman. I think I get an extra 70 site visits a day from people in search of Kikkoman. All they have to do is say, "Show you! Show me!"

I can't believe I missed the one year "sell-iversary" of my Big Maroon Machine. It was the 13th of November. I miss you truck! That also means I've had that crap-ass Honda for over a year and I'm yet to have killed it. I learned something new about the crapmobile this morning, when you push the button to roll up the window, the little engine can't handle it and the entire car shudders. Nice, eh? I should send it back to Honda via FedEx with a complaint letter.

In memorium:
Big Maroon Machine 1999 - 2001

I've been in the process of digitizing the very first Stick Bus movie, Pons Fiction. Actually, for the record, we weren't even called Stick Bus Films then, it was some other name that was just randomly generated. I want to say it was winter of 1995 when we did it, I'll have to make Kyle dig up the timeline on that one. It was before we had decent editing equipment, our sound was generated from a stereo in the background, I had a bowl cut, and there are faces in it that are long gone from the Stick Bus circle (although some are coming back). Right now, I have a full version stashed on my Powerbook that weighs in at 106MB. There's no way I'm dumping that on my site because I know it'll probably melt our server. So what I plan to do, is break it up into chapters of about five minutes each. Of course, it'll see be about 100MB total, but it'll be easier to download (especially for you modem chimps). With luck, they'll be online tonight.

Thank you Sarah and Amy for ruining U2's, Electrical Storm for me. The song smells like California now.

I finished my Christmas shopping already. This is the first time in 24 years that I won't be running to the mall for presents on December 23rd. Thank you Amazon.com!

Classic.

"Man, there's not a year goes by that I don't read about some escalator accident involving some bastard kid that could've been easily avoided had some parent -I don't care which one- but some parent conditioned him to fear and respect that escalator!"

- Brodie Bruce, Mallrats (1995)

What could be better than a television show where all the female participants are blatantly lied to for the duration of a season, only to be set up and probably humiliated on national television for millions of people to see?

"In the end, he must reveal to her that he's basically broke," Darnell said. "We get to see if she still wants to be with him. It's a spectacular show with a spectacular ending."

It's like a gladiator event without the mercy killing. Mr. Darnell, you're an idiot.

[Co-worker enters the area, too cheerful for a Monday morning and singing, "Let it Snow."]

CO-W1: Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. [whistles a few bars]
CO-W2: Hey Bob...shut it.

Silence falls across the unit.

Too tired. Too cold. Snow is on its way. Don't want to work. Just want to hide under the covers again.