and why this entry is late.

I learned a few things today. Most of them kept me from posting this Friday entry until most of you have already gone home from your work day. I know you hate it when that happens. I’m sorry.

First of all, the first day of fall doesn’t mean that it’s going to be colder outside. No matter how many days in a row Eric tries to wear his new sweater, it’s just not going to be cool enough for him. True, we’re experiencing a cold front, but that means it’s only 95 degrees instead of a million.

Second, when you post .wav files, people are going to download them. Twelve second .wav files are pretty big. I was like, “Man. When I posted the beatboxing .wav files it wasn’t this big of a problem!” That’s because there weren’t 2000 of you downloading them at the same time. Thanks for your patience on this big ol’ screw-up on my part. If you were trying to download them yesterday and either they didn’t work or you couldn’t access them, they’re there now. We shut down my texas.net account in two hours. Isn’t that incredible? That’s 2 Gigs in two hours.

Then Erik the Helpful wrote with what could basically be transcribed as, “Why didn’t you just make them .mp3’s, ya jag?” So I downloaded the .WAV to .MP3 transformer-dealy-thing and — huzzah! They’re only 10K now. What a smart guy, that one.

So if you didn’t download them yesterday because it seemed like it was taking too long, they were missing, they were broken (who knew that you can’t just put a mac .wav on a website. It has to be translated for the PC! I know, I’m dumb.), or they were being held by the texas.net people screaming, “Who is this pamie and why is she suddenly filling up her bandwidth?” then you can now go back to yesterday and hear Eric’s promos for Journalcon as long as you’ve got an .MP3 player. Huzzah.

Third, I learned that taking a lunch break can be very fun. I don’t think in the past three and a half years I’ve ever met Eric for lunch at a restaurant. We’ve brought each other lunch, or we went out together, but we’ve never met for lunch. It was a nice break during the day.

Fourth, I’m pretty busy on Fridays, as that’s when a few of my deadlines are due, and when everyone else’s deadlines are due at work, so a giant stack of work is generally thrown on me at some point in the middle of the day. That’s not fun.

Fifth, if I’m going to fool around on the forum, and try out new hacks that people have been asking for, I probably shouldn’t do it in the middle of the day. I done broke the forum real good for about fifteen minutes, and had a small panic when I wrote over the wrong file without a backup. Luckily, the machine I was using was also the machine I installed UBB with, so I had a backup in the original install files. So, the forum was restored, and working, but the hack wasn’t. After about an hour with my co-worker, going line by line through the code, we found the missing } and the hack worked. Great. Now when you check out your profile, your member status shows the right level. Huzzah. I also had a freak-out when I realized that some people had already made it to “Science is Tight” status, which is over 350 posts. Man. I’m impressed. I only have 852.

Sixth, I have a small smile on my face because I got to write this week’s Webhead about Radiohead. But not about Radiohead, but just sort of tossing them out as a band that I like. I think Omar was happier about it than I was, though.

Now, if you’ve been wondering what I’m going on and on about when I talk about anime, or if you like anime, or if you just want to understand what I do a bit more, there’s an excellent article in this week’s Austin Chronicle about ADV Films, the company that I work for to do both voice-over work and scripting. It even mentions me. Twice. But who’s counting?

And, uh, having a conversation in the smoking area about how we used to do our hair with hairspray and walls of bangs can end up being a half-hour conversation that takes up the remainder of your afternoon. So here I am at home, with Eric napping, Taylor napping, Cal napping and me typing furiously to keep up that five-days a week quality you all have come to expect.

I really wanted to love Jane Magazine as much as I loved Sassy, but it’s becoming pretty obvious that each and every month I’m more and more disappointed. Now it’s become pathetic, and I don’t want to torture myself any longer.

I’ve stopped renewing Jane Magazine.

And I’m sure I’ll falter every once in a while and pick one up, but I don’t want it delivered every month.

Last month they did an interview with Elizabeth Hurley, and if you haven’t heard this story yet, I’ll tell it to you as much as I can recall. In the article the interviewer is asking Elizabeth some rather personal questions about Hugh Grant. She goes on to say that sex with Hugh wasn’t all that great and that she doesn’t really miss him and all this other sort of stuff. The interviewer clearly has a thing for her and keeps talking about how sexy and beautiful she is. Then he says as she’s getting up to go he notices that both of her breasts point in the same direction and that she’s mutant freak breast girl. After discussing how even perfect models have flaws blah, blah, blah lessoncakes, she stands up and he realizes that it was just the way that she was leaning against her arm to give her mutantboob. So, she’s still perfect.

Just as Whitney’s Jane article made news, this one did as well, and Elizabeth released a statement saying that she never said any of those things printed in the article. Jane Magazine said back that they have the interview on tape, and that she did indeed say it.

Elizabeth wrote a letter to Jane. Jane printed a retraction. After reviewing the tapes they determined that the tapes had possibly been altered. Then after professionally reviewing the tapes, it was clear that they had never discussed Elizabeth’s sex life during the interview at all. Jane apologizes.

If I was an editor, or an editor-in-chief, and I was going to print something about someone’s sex life, wouldn’t it be smart for me to fact check the fact checker? Before you go and make assumptions that the interviewer must be telling the truth, shouldn’t you hear the facts for yourself? And for Jane Magazine to think that just because they have tapes then they must also have the facts inside those tapes without listening to those tapes, that’s just as good as saying, “Well, I heard it from someone who swears that it’s true and he had like an email or something that says it.”

I also think that Elizabeth handled it very classily (although I’m still not buying her “I didn’t know there was a strike” bullshit when she did her recent commercial) by simply stating her disappointment with Jane Magazine for spreading lies and gossip about her saying it was word, saying that they had her on tape, when in fact, they simply didn’t.

Or at least for now, that’s the story we’re hearing. The truth might be dirtier, involving Elizabeth’s people threatening to sue Jane Magazine, or putting down some sort of anti-defamatory cease and desist. It might be that Jane Magazine had to print the retraction, even though they do have her saying that on tape. We don’t know the truth, here, because we only get to read what they print.

The truth is, it’s none of our business, and I’m surprised that this magazine is involved in it.

I’m also just getting rather annoyed with the content itself. This month had a stirring “How to tell if your man is gay” essay. Five tips. I believe they covered the spectrum of “He acts like he’s gay” to “He doesn’t act one bit gay.” And if he watches gymnastics on the Olympics. Then he’s gay. If he likes music, I think, might have been another telltale sign. If he’s sensitive to your needs, or cries, or remembers little things. If he’s a nice dresser, or has nice hair. If he’s a homophobe. If he’s not a homophobe. If he likes Barbra. If he hates Barbra. Basically, if he’s any man, and you’re dating him, he’s probably gay. Or not.

Even Jeff Foxworthy made more convincing arguments for rednecks.

So, I’m tired of Jane telling me that they’re all about my positive image and then do a fashion spread of very small, very tired-looking women in strange clothes that I can’t afford sitting underneath the words, “You Bitch.” I’m tired of the recommendations of makeup that costs over twenty-five dollars a piece. I’m tired of them pushing this expensive hippie look on me. I miss the fun of Sassy. I miss the quick side-notes to each other. I miss the feeling of a group of friends telling me what’s going on and why I’m cool.

But I really miss feeling like I could trust what they were telling me and be entertained at the same time.

For more on the Hurley situation, you can read here.

And now, the weekend. Ah.