Time travel companion wanted

The following listing recently appeared on the Springfield, MO Craigslist:

“I have a functioning time machine (i know it sounds unbelievable, but I assure you it works) that I need a 2nd person to operate with me. I’m looking for someone who is adventurous and reliable. Preferable a male; or a female that can do heavy lifting. I am leaving on January 20, 2011 , in the morning and plan to return February 3,2011. I am going to June 1983 to handle some business.

If you are serious about time travel and are reliable, then please contact me. You do not have to pay anything, but you would have to provide someone to watch my cat for the time we are gone. The only qualifications needed are that you are reliable and that the circumference of your head is no more than 64cm.

We will be leaving from Springfield,Mo. Let me know if you want to go with me.”

My friend David Brazeal responded:

I stumbled upon your advertisement on Craigslist on the afternoon of January 20, 2011 — too late to join you on your excursion into the past.

Fortunately, having dabbled in time manipulation myself in the late 1830s, I was able to travel to January 17th, one day after you posted your listing, from which time I am responding.

I am both reliable and adventurous, and well-acquainted with 1983, having spent that summer as an intern in the State Department’s Office of Botswanan Affairs. In addition, I have an elderly aunt who loves cats.

Regarding your qualification that my head be less than 64cm in diameter, I assure you that, although my head is slightly too large for a standard time travel headpiece, I have crafted an adapter from a 1960s Oster beauty-salon hair dryer and the innards of a PlayStation 3 controller.

Please let me know as soon as possible whether you still require a companion for your trip. If you have filled the position, I need to return to January 20 to take some brownies out of the oven.

One more thing…

David is leaving our company (after 17 years) in a month or so, to strike out on his own (uh, should I rephrase that? Fuck it). The post above is just one more example of what I mean when I describe someone as “too funny for their job.”

David Brazeal: Too funny for his job

My friend and co-worker, David Brazeal, is leaving Learfield. After 17 years. He has two kids and he doesn’t have another job lined up. David is casting his fate to the digital winds (and his wife has a good job) and I admire him greatly for taking the leap.

David has been spending nights and weekends covering Republic Tiger Sports (the local high school). He’s built a strong following (blog and facebook) and wants to turn it into a real business if he can. I’m betting he’ll be successful. David is very good at this kind of stuff. It’s what he now does for Learfield clients.

This is happening all over the country. What was once the exclusive turf of the local newspaper and radio station is being invaded by bloggers and podcasters who operate with virtually no overhead and –more importantly– no legacy media baggage to weigh them down.

Another Learfield alum, Chuck Zimmerman (and his wife Cindy), have built a very successful business built around event blogging and “new” media consultation.

David is one of the most creative people I know. He’s quick and smart and way too funny for the job he’s leaving. He’ll be able to give full vent to his creativity in his new venture and I’m looking forward to watching. I won’t miss David because we’ll be as connected as ever.

Top 10 Reasons Chicago Failed to Win the 2016 Olympics

From my friend (and recovering Bush apologist) David Brazeal:

10. IOC delegates disappointed to discover Oprah hadn’t hidden portable DVD players under their seats.

9. Voters perturbed by President Obama’s effort to lead them in a chant of “USA! USA!”

8. US credibility damaged when Michelle Obama expressed her hope to meet “international soccer star David Beckett.”

7. Many of Chicago’s most supportive IOC delegates still partying in Pittsburgh after last week’s G-20 protests.

6. Chicago officials bribed delegates with US dollars instead of euros.

5. Delegates unswayed by promises that Chicago Olympics will “save or create 8-million jobs.”

4. Withdrawal of US missile defense from Eastern Europe swayed large bloc of Polish and Czech soccer moms to support Rio de Janeiro.

3. Voters creeped out by Joe Biden’s pro-Chicago video presentation, praising “northern girls with the way they kiss.”

2. Delegates turned off when American Kanye West interrupted Tokyo’s presentation to say Beyonce really deserves to win.

1. It’s all George W. Bush’s fault.

The boys remains one of the funniest people I kn0w. [Files under: Too Funny for His Job]

Radio station streaming live video from Palin event

Hit99fmvideoSarah Palin is holding a rally in Springfield, Missouri, and radio station Hit 99 FM is streaming video live from the event. They could have made it easier to find but deserve props for the effort. I’m having trouble getting audio but perhaps that will change when the event gets underway.

Interesting that this is a music formatted station, not a news/talk’er. David Brazeal is there and might interview someone from the station. We’ll post it here if he does.

PS: This is what we lovingly refer to as “a face for radio.”

Monkey Fez

The Order of the Fez now has enough members to play ping pong doubles. Please rise and join me in recognizing David Brazeal, Order of the Fez #4:

“Hereby is submitted my application to the Order of the Fez. Thanks to ebay, I have obtained a fez from a monkey trainer in Tel Aviv.  It belonged to his dear, beloved macaque, Ahmed, who was recently crushed to death in a fruit stand accident.”

Another one bites the Mac

Learfield pal David Brazeal has looted his son’s college fund to buy himself a new MacBook Pro. He’ll be Mac-dazed for bit, unlearning the thousand things you need to know to make a PC go, but we’ll try to keep up with his progress here.

On the off chance my own Mac experience contributed to David’s high dive into the Mac pool, I’ve added him to the Mac Gallery.

Casio Exilim EX-Z1000

My beloved Casio camera started giving me some weird white screens and rather than wait for it to completely fail at a critical moment… I upgraded. The Casio Exilim Ex-Z1000 is the new, bigger brother to the model I had. Slightly larger form factor but that allows for an even larger display. Lots of megapixels and some optical zoom. But the real clincher for me was the video. With a 2 gig SD card, I can record up to two hours of video! Amazing. Sound is pretty good, too. Here’s a little 2 min clip (13 meg .wmv) I shot last night. John Fougere and David Brazeal doing the weekly high school football scoreboard show.

I owe it all to squirt cheese

“To this day, the taste of squirtable cheddar is forever paired in Mays’ memory with the hot, dusty stench of chicken manure and mayonnaise; and yet, he cannot help but consume the delicacy at every opportunity. And though that day 50 years ago may have seemed trivial at the time, its lasting influence on the state of the blogosphere is but more evidence of the power of Squirt Cheese in History.”

— David Brazeal

More Squirt Cheese in History

“It was against this backdrop that Marco Polo floated into Japan in a hot air balloon, carrying with him the most luxurious goods from his homeland: extra virgin olive oil, Venetian blinds, and his 5 remaining bottles of squeezable parmesan cheese. The Japanese people, after years of gustatory oppression, gobbled Polo’s golden ribbons of delight with gusto. They rose up against their oppressors, won their freedom, and never looked back.

Is there a lesson for the modern reader in Japan’s tragic romance with its scrumptious first love? Perhaps it is this: we fight the good fight for that which we hold dear, but ultimately, to win or lose is a mere footnote to our having tasted our bacon-flavored life to the fullest.”

Wouldn’t you love to know and hang out with someone that can write like this? I am so pleased to know David Brazeal and so sad we don’t get to hang out.