Paul Winchell died this past weekend, and with him goes the original voice of Tigger from Winnie the Pooh.

Initial autopsy results show his top was made of rubber and his bottom made of springs.

Last night, I had a dream that I went to an open mic night to do a stand-up routine…

…and only thought up a single joke ahead of time. It did not go as well as I might have hoped.

While walking into work I read the headline “Tsunami Warning Fizzles.”

For those who don’t know, there was a HUGE earthquake off the cost of Eureka California ( magnitude seven point OH ) on Tuesday evening that set off a Tsunami warning along the west coast. While those of us who found out were convinced of our imminent death, the news channels wouldn’t have been more excited if Michael Jackson was caught molesting Scott Peterson’s son at Robert Blake’s house.

They were salivating at the death and destruction the Tsunami would bring; there would be countless wrecked houses to stand in front of, cute orphaned children to exploit, and of course the freak house that had been moved 400,000 miles and remained completely intact.

Which brings us to the word “Fizzle.”

Dictionary.com defines Fizzle as “To fail or end weakly, especially after a hopeful beginning.”

The writers for the San Francisco Chronicle had already booked flights to Tahiti for lengthy vacations. With this kind of abundant material they could have brought Ann Killion ( sportswriter for the SJ Mercury ) on and had her write the entire newspaper. With a disaster of Tsunamic proportions, the news really writes itself. All you have to do is report the number of bodies found today, and the new inspiring story of the dog who carried an entire school bus full of unconscious nuns/orphans/puppies back to their church/happy family/pile of dog biscuits.

But then it all fell apart. It was a huge earthquake, but it was the wrong kind of huge earthquake. What all started out so swimmingly ended up fizzling like Woody Allen’s career.

Bonus: Where did the title of this entry come from?

Upon meeting my new boss:

BossMan: So, what time would you like to start working in the morning?

Me: It doesn’t really matter, I can come in any time you need me to be here.

BossMan: Well, me and Bob normally get here at six in the morning.

Me: I’ll see you at eight.

First day of a real job tomorrow.

Not a job that involves the transportation of individually packaged cheese packets or explaining that despite the persistent rumor to the contrary, buying a service plan for a laptop does not immediately qualify you as mentally deficient; instead, this job will be the culmination of my schooling up to this point, the ultimate pointer as to whether or not I’ve been wasting my life in front of a text editor when I should really be up to my knees in my own feces with the Peace Core or working at starting my own public access show in Aurora, Illinois with my best friend Garth.

I don’t know where to go from here, there are many directions and I’d like to go to sleep soon, so I’ll just do some bullet points:

• I can’t sleep. Ryan compared it to the night before Christmas, but I’m thinking it’s more like Judgment Day Eve.
• You wouldn’t believe the amount of documentation they sent me, I am convinced that the “new hire” packet this place hands out is solely responsible for the destruction of the rain forests.
• Some of the perks my new employer has border on obscenity. They have a service called dock3, where essentially they hired a group of people to be enlisted as indentured servants. The full list of services can be found here, but the one that sticks out for me is that they will take my car to get it’s oil changed while I am working. I thought that’s what interns were for.

Man, that’s a hard life.

The things that were done to myself and others in the Networking final that was administered yesterday surely violates several stipulations of the Geneva convention.

I’ve discussed the actions with my state senator and he has assured me that those responsible for this injustice will be prosecuted as nothing less than terrorists.

Dr. “Smith,” pack your bags, you’re off to sunny Guantanamo Bay.

Did You Know?: This same professor just offered me no less than two jobs in the fall, one of them as a grader for a class I’m not entirely sure I’ll pass.