Holy cow. We made it past the 25th, and the site is live.

I must admit I am super excited about a lot of the features we’ve got coming up. So yeah, keep your eyes peeled Space Racers! It’s gonna be killer.

Dark sludge. They call you Joe, but I’d rather call you liquid portent of long nights and lines upon lines of code. They may call you friend, Joe,

but I know. Oh, I know. You only want me for my kidney.

So, through a series of events that I’m still not sure how it all happened, I managed to buy a like-new 9″x12″ Wacom Intuos 3 Tablet for only $200.

That’s a $270 savings.

Yeah. Wow.

You see, I was planning on picking up the 6″x8″ Intuos 3, and basically the cheapest price I found that for was $330, directly from Wacom’s site. Even froogle didn’t list anything lower than $270.

And now, I’ve got a tablet that’s physically larger than my monitor. I am sooooo geeking out over this.

Wow. I guess I can actually talk about what I’ve been working on for the last year at BIG Images, now that we’re so close to our public beta release. That’s the funny thing about NDA’s… whenever somebody would ask me for detail about what I’ve been doing, I’d fumble about, hyperventilate and eventually pass out from the stress. True story.

And so, without further ado, the delicious:suite, and the delicious:designer. Yeah, they’re pretty much the same page, just with different background images, and will continue to be until the 25th (more on that later). I’m really happy, though, with how the page turned out, you know, in terms of the code I wrote for it (mmm… PHP + CSS, and check out that day ticker I wrote… T-minus 15 days indeed), the marketing copy (?Producing something worthwhile doesn’t need to be more difficult than helping a walrus move into a skyscraper.? Man, that’s good.), but also mostly for the illustrations. That spaceship’s pretty much the shiniest thing I’ve ever done. Something that’s also pretty amazing is that it’s a completely separate file from the rest of the site’s images. That’s right, transparent PNG at it’s best.

And so, the 25th is coming, and I’m pretty scared. This is the largest project I have ever been involved in. I mean, we’re launching the public beta of a design program in just over 2 weeks! And I’ve got a list of ?to do’s? that is a mile long.

The world’s only cross-platform, cross-browser vector viewer and editor. Works wherever the internet does. Indeed.

Another month, another BIG Images newsletter, another group of illustrations, such as they are. Let’s kick this!

My article, which you’ve seen some previous example illustrations for. It was tough for me to think of the right imagery to convey “simple imagery.” At one point, I considered illustratiing a hand flipping the bird. That’d be pretty simple.

The illustration for Jon’s article, in which I used my mad single-point perspective skillz. Maximum pwnage. Also, I really like how the negative space creates a floor for the character. If I’m not too mistaken, that’s an example of gestalt imagery, more accurately, the principle of reification. Zing!

Ken’s illustration was the first one I completed. I just loved the concept, and when it came to helping edit the article, I went a little overboard. I think at one point I wrote in “I know that you’re tired after a long day at the trade show; your puny human limbs can’t possibly withstand that sort of pressure. I don’t know how you do it.” It was quickly edited back out by pretty much everyone… Anyhow, my initial idea for this was a little more over the top, as I’m sure you will agree.

All in all, another fun round of illustrations. Not quite as groundbreaking as last issue, but a little more unified.

Thursday, SpiderMan passed on. No, not the comic book character, but our mouse. This is a couple of months after his archnemesis, Doc Ock, our other mouse, was defeated in what we’re pretty certain was a supreme battle of good vs. evil.

It’s kinda hitting me harder than I thought it should. I guess I just have this feeling that we didn’t spend any time hanging out with him, really, you know, bringing him into our world. We tried that once, but the puppy tried to eat him.

I read something online that referenced wwii, and wondered why someone put an extra w in front of Wii. Once I realized they were, in fact, discussing the second world war I realized I wouldn’t find any information there on Super Paper Mario.

I kinda felt guilty when I navigated away from that page. You know, deep in my gut. Luckily for me, the internet rewards ADD.

To call this last weekend camping is definitely a stretch. It was fun, don’t get me wrong, but camping that involves a hot tub, swimming pool, and sleeping on the floor of a ranch house seems a little… I don’t know… pampered.

So, I’m here to announce that I’m still camping free since ‘93.

I did get to go rattler tracking. However, because it was raining, they were all underground, and so we hiked, checked for the rattlers radio signals, then recorded the GPS coordinates. Rather, those more accustomed to this work did it, and I just enjoyed getting rained on.

The best part about the entire experience was the junkyard that was about a three minute walk from the ranch. There were two automobiles there from the ’30s and a very very old airplane that looked like it had crashed and broken into two parts. I loved climbing into the cockpit… it was all very surreal, just being in the middle of a rusting hulk in the rain on a hill in the middle of the plains.

The worst part was the fact I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know if I was too cold, totally congested, or just never comfortable on the mats I was on. A three-hour nap on Sunday cured me though.

All in all, a great trip. Again, not camping so much as ?camping.?

Tonight and tomorrow, I’m going on a camping trip to the Carrizo Plains. Mind you, this is the first time I’ve gone camping in something like 14 years. I’m almost afraid the technology’s completely surpassed me.

I think it kinda odd that I’m so hell-bent on not looking like a total city slicker out there… Certain things can’t be helped. I have no boots, so my kick-ass New Balance’s are going to have to hold out. Also, I can’t find my swimming trunks, so I guess I’m going to have to improvise with my Frisbee shorts. So, basically, I’m going to be dressed for Frisbee, but not anywhere near playing it this afternoon.

Ah, I miss frisbee. Next week, I swear…

The latest BIG Images’ newsletter is pretty much done, except for my perennial illustrations. This is pretty unique, given that we’re usually scrambling around last minute to get the text just right. So, expect sometime next week to see the final illustrations, if I get around to it. Things are a little hairy around the shop, and we’re working on rolling out something pretty special in the months to come.

Something I did want to share with you, though, is the example illustrations for my article. Now, my article is about how to use and how not to use negative space.

The left is how NOT to do it. The right is how to do it. Without really going into it more here, you can check out my article.

I walked out to my bike at the beginning of my lunch break, only to find my flash drive on the ground and my keys still in my bike lock. They had been sitting there for nearly 4 hours. Luckily people don’t typically walk around where I work, otherwise they’d have a new bike and flash drive.

During lunch, I found a bird had gotten trapped in our laundry room, flapping against the window trying to get out, even though there was an open doorway three feet behind it. I threw a towel over my hands and gently grabbed it. After I carried it a good five feet into open air and let it go, I realized something. I don’t think I’ve been more proud of anything I’ve done in the last week than that simple act.

I walked out to my bike at the beginning of my lunch break, only to find my flash drive on the ground and my keys still in my bike lock. They had been sitting there for nearly 4 hours. Luckily people don’t typically walk around where I work, otherwise they’d have a new bike and flash drive.

During lunch, I found a bird had gotten trapped in our laundry room, flapping against the window trying to get out, even though there was an open doorway three feet behind it. I threw a towel over my hands and gently grabbed it. After I carried it a good five feet into open air and let it go, I realized something. I don’t think I’ve been more proud of anything I’ve done in the last week than that simple act.

And death is when someone behind you keeps calling
and calling
and you no longer turn around to see
who.

- From The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai

Wow, I need a life. Or, I just need to read all 6 books again before the 7th comes out this summer. Yeah, that’ll do.

So, whenever you’re about to save a file, or rather, whenever a system dialog box comes up, hold down the Apple key, and it’ll show you the key command for the options, so you never need to have your hands leave the keyboard again.

Just for those people who don’t like the mouse, but still like the Apple.

Over dinner, Nicole asked me “So,
what the heck is poetic about studying fish?”

And no Over dinner, Nicole asked me ?So,
what the heck is poetic about studying fish??

And no sooner had I opened my mouth to reply,
when a movement hooked my attention
down to her glass of coke.
A sea horse, Hippocampus fuscus,
blinked at me between icebergs and carbonation, floating
through a galaxy of bubbles previously sworn inhospitable.

I tried to ignore it, fish wasn?t on the menu, and I was thinking
of the perils of a first date gone terribly wrong:
Nicole choking on a somewhat saltier drink than she had ordered.

And at that moment, a bang of thunder fills the restaurant
like six year-olds squeezing the bubble wrap
that is the fabric of space-time,
and all over, fish appear and fall.
A calico rockfish into one lady?s steak pizzaola,
a kawakawa knocking off her man?s toupee.

And as the fishfall turned from a drizzle to a summer storm,
waitresses and busboys twirl their umbrellas from who-knows-where,
and I swear I could hear a collective chim-chim-cheree,
but believe me: I found no part of this magical.
That was when I decided I wasn?t leaving a tip.

Flicking a goldfish out of her hair,
I grabbed Nicole?s hand. We dove through the front window
into the street, throwing a fifty over my shoulder
with the urgency of a hand grenade. And I would have ducked.
I should have looked away, but I was reeled in to the scene.

Right at that moment, Ahab tumbled out of the bathroom,
I crap you not, pegleg and spear and crazy eyes
and he was screaming something fierce. When he hurled
a harpoon into the kitchen, that’s when the whale
breached the wall; the air shuddered like a depth charge.

That was when I turned to Nicole, and I answered
?Nothing.

There is absolutely nothing poetic about fish.?

Stay quiet when she says,
“my God, I think I know him.”
After all, she’s from this town.
It’s to be expected.

And then, when she whispers,
almost conspiratorially,
“that’s my Animal Behavior professor,”
simply nod assent.

The rest of the table will try to joke
about what one says to a professor
when he’s sighted off-campus, you know,
when his behavior can be observed
in the confines of his natural environment.

Be a gentleman. Keep your eyes down
and smile to yourself.

But when she waves him over, and says to him,
“I really didn’t know how to approach you
in a manner befitting your subject.”

that’s when you turn to him and say,
“I thought it’d be a good idea
if she went over and sniffed your butt.

By the way, I’m Ben.”

Does anybody remember KaBlam!, the Nickelodeon cartoon short-show? I do. And I was reminded of it’s brilliance upon listening to The Toaster’s “2-Tone Army”, which is the song they sampled for their theme. Soooo good.

Come to think of it, I believe that KaBlam! was the only show I’ve ever seen that had a ska theme song…

That wikipedia article linked above has a lot of information about the show, such as this little tidbit:

A live-action Prometheus and Bob film was announced in 1998 to be directed by Harold Zwart and produced by Amy Heckerling, but apparentally fell through due to lack of interest.

Wow. Prometheus and Bob, about an alien who goes back in time to show a primitive caveman how to use futuristic technology… like tv’s and ray guns and the like. That one was probably my favorite…

April is National Poetry Writing Month, or so I’ve been told. Well, I’m going to celebrate it by… sigh… writing a poem a day in April. Oh, gawd, lop off my head with a kitten. This is seriously going to cut into my Resident Evil 4 time.

But seriously, I’m pretty excited about this. In much the same way as this little blogging bet has me blogging more, I think this particular exercise will be good for my poetry. If it’s actually decent, I think I’ll post some.

Don’t ever say I didn’t do nothing for me.

Last weekend I picked up Resident Evil 4 for the Gamecube, and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a game so visceral, especially because I don’t even exactly know what that means.

But whatever it means, trust me when I say it’s a thrill-ride so haunting, I’m not entirely certain I’m not still playing the game.

Hold on, let me dispatch this dude coming after me with a chainsaw.

Sorry about that… where was I?

The main draw for this game, for me, is that there is not a single zombie in this game. Just hoards after hoards of extremely pissed-off villagers (and some creepy crawlies, who are also pissed).

I mean, a Resident Evil game without zombies. I never even thought that possible before. If I had, I’m pretty sure the game would be about filing taxes.

Now, that would be evil.

As it states in the title, this post will be as spoiler-free as humanly possible.

Thank heavens for last night. BSG ended it’s third season on quite a note, answering some questions but still leaving us mostly with a collective what the hell…? It’s like a normal BSG season-finale-cliffhanger, but completely different. They didn’t jump ahead a year. They didn’t shoot anybody important in the chest, leaving them to die on a table with everyone screaming and crying. But they did have a lot more fleshing-out of the mythology, which is why I adore the show.

Red has mentioned several times that he likes the show for different reasons than I do, which kinda makes sense because he found something in the latter half of season 2 that was worthwhile. Good for him, because I can’t possibly imagine what it was. In between clumsy assassination attempts and utterly useless deaths, there was nothing in those 10 episodes that drew me to the show in the first place… except that they were still in space. Which is still pretty awesome, when I think about it. Then again, even Andromeda was in space, and had Kevin Sorbo. Boy, I don’t know how they screwed that up, but somehow they did.

Back to topic. This season was amazing… It had all the stuff I liked and very little that I didn’t. For example:

• Socio-economic problems. I can’t tell you how much I geeked out when I heard Tom Zarek in the first season talk about the fact that? in a post-apocalyptic future? people still need to be paid. They still need vacations. They basically still need reasons to work and go about their day-to-day lives. That means that these people are that much closer to being real. And this season’s Dirty Hands had that in spades. Real people, in horrible situations, trying to get by. That’s something Star Trek really never did (well, they touched upon it in DS9, with the Bajorans and the Maquis and all, especially in the first season, but the Dominion War chucked that out the window when they could have used the war to highlight this struggle). Also, seeing certain characters get new roles and jobs to pick up their lives in the wake of their second apocalypse (and the New Caprica incident was definitely a second apocalypse) was pretty awesome. Anders and Seelix as pilots-in-training is cool.
• Mythos. Oh, the mythos. How I crave it! The struggle between the monotheistic “bad guys” and the polytheistic “good guys” is such a rich plot point for me, and the real question of “who are these deities?” is something they’re making me ponder more and more as time goes on. Season 2? after discovering the map to Earth? had no real mythology, and that saddens me. Now, I can’t believe they’re making us wait until January 2008 to deliver any kind of answers to how or why the events of last night’s episode happened… I believe that’s pretty much a crime against humanity. The last four episodes of the season gave me the same kind of excitement for the future of the story that I had after seeing Matrix: Reloaded oh-so-long-ago… I can’t wait to see what happens next, and to read every single theory online until that point.
• The action! Yeah, there wasn’t as many space battles this season, but the special effects in Maelstrom and The Passage more than made up for it… and then there was the rescue in the beginning of the season. The shot of Galactica jumping away in atmosphere quenched my geekiness straight down to my very core.

And so, last night I couldn’t sleep. I think I probably got a good three hours. And it’s all because I couldn’t get the last five minutes out of my head… All Along the Watchtower… The song that will haunt me till January.

I so need these.

I can see it all now:

Jon: Hey Ben, whatcha doin?

Me: Not much, just doodling on my mouse pad, which is freaking awesome.

Jon: Yeah? Get back to work!

Blogged with Flock

This was soooo me and Patrick growing up… only with Star Trek, arcade games and comic book cards. Yeah, definitely comic book cards.

Blogged with Flock

And so, the third issue of our newsletter was released today, and I can finally show everybody what I’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks. We decided to keep up with illustrations, and I wanted to up the ante a little bit.

This time, I had some major trouble thinking of imagery for my own article, about mastering contrast for maximum legibility. I had this idea of a bunch of green apples surrounding one red apple in a bucket. You know, like diving for apples. Well, the illustration I made of apples seemed to fit Jon’s article on color illusions better, so there it went. Something to note: I had never tried using gradient meshes in Illustrator before this, and I was inspired by these photorealistic illustrations. So, I wanted to do an entire issue’s worth of illustrations using gradient meshes and a lot of grayscale with a little splash of color… I guess it was my personal goal. Oh, and bitchin’ typography. Yeah, gotta have that.

Next was Christine’s article, and I was trying to convey this sort of sterile environment, something that is both labratorial and biological at the same time. Eyeball in a cup? No… too creepifying. So, this won out.

When Ken first told me what he wanted as the illustration for his article, it was almost exactly as it turned out above. But I spent so many times desperately almost fighting against this image, and I just couldn’t come up with anything better. So, when I finally embraced it, I really tried to get this atmosphere that was very film noir. I just love grayscale gradient meshes!

Well, it was finally time. I couldn’t run away from it anymore. And so, for my article I went super abstract, yet kept the idea of the apples in the bucket. I spent a bit of time on it, trying to lend it a bit of depth, something a bit more contrast-y, and making the dark sphere have a bit of internal reflection just did it.

Okay, okay. This is a long shot, I know it. But there’s something in me, something that is slowly dying every single day Nintendo doesn’t utilize the Virtual Console’s full power. So far, the VC has delivered some pretty decent content from consoles of old, and it’s great, but why should it stop there?

Seriously, they should let us fork over some serious Wii points for some of the games that were exclusively on handhelds. Make it something akin to the functionality of the Super Game Boy for the SNES or the Game Boy Player for the GameCube. Heck, I don’t suppose it’s possible, but give us the ability to play games from the Virtual Boy or the DS, and I’d be in utter nirvana.

So, here’s my list:

1. The Wario Ware series. What a great bunch of games, and even though there’s already a Wario Ware game for the Wii, I still wish I could play the other games in this crazy ADD-afflicted series without plopping down money for a handheld I’ll seldom play. Even the tilt functionality added in Wario Ware: Twisted would be easily emulated with the motion sensor in the Wiimote. This is my ultimate wish, and the real reason that I’d want any handheld VC titles…
2. The Mario series. For the sake of having a complete Mario collection on one console, getting all the Mario Land games on this console would be awesome, as well as New Super Mario Bros. from the DS… man, that’d be cool… Geez, I still have dreams about the submarine levels in Super Mario Land 1.
3. Metroid II: Return of Samus. Because it was probably the title on my original Game Boy I spent the most time on. And that’s saying something!
4. GTA2/Driver. Yeah, the Game Boy Color was the only Nintendo system to see either of these franchises. I own Driver on the Game Boy Color, and it’s a whole lotta fun. I’ve heard that the GTA series on it suffers from low framerates in some places, but with the Wii emulation, that shouldn’t be a problem.

Now, before I go into this, I just want to say that most people don’t have the problems I do. And most people, if they’re using Windows, would do much better to use Firefox 2 than IE7, or even *shudder* IE6.

Now, with that out of the way… I did something that I never thought I would do. I mean, it’s unheard of, I can barely get the words out now, and everywhere I go I feel disapproving eyes follow me… I… it’s almost too terrible to bear…

You see, I uninstalled Firefox on both my PC and my Mac.

There, I said it. I feel like Chandler going “I want to quit the gym! I hate it here, everything you have is very heavy!” </end obscure Friends reference>

The problem was that, for some reason, every time I was typing out an e-mail or a blog post or anything on my PC, I had major slowdown issues. You know, like, it would pause for five seconds every half a minute. Annoying. I was talking with a couple other people who have had similar issues recently (and I believe that the recent 2.x releases of Firefox are to blame… who knows?). Then my Mac’s install of Firefox was being slow too… not to the extreme extent that the PC was, but enough for me to notice.

And so, in it’s place, I’m using Camino on my Mac and trying to decide between Flock and Opera on my PC. So far, Flock is winning.

Camino is a great little web browser that is built on the same engine as Firefox, but is actually a native Cocoa app, so it runs real smooth and integrates really nicely with the entire Mac environment. So, it’s fast, and it’s pretty. I do have a couple of gripes, however… Well, you can’t open a bookmark in a folder in your bookmark toolbar with the middle-click. You have to Shift-Cmd-Click it. Minor annoyance. Oh, and when you get too many tabs open in a window, it’s not very easy to navigate beyond the first 8 tabs or so. Then there’s the lack of Cmd-Shift-T, you know, the “Undo Closing Your Last Tab” command, and then utter drought of Camino add-ons (except for PimpMyCamino.com, thank heavens for that site)… These are all power-user gripes, and many other people are probably not too concerned with it. I’m just hopeful it gets resolved in the next release.

Flock is also built on the same engine as Firefox. It’s meant to be a “social” browser. That means it has tools to completely integrate your browsing experience with many social uses of browsing. So, it integrates with my del.icio.us bookmarks (in fact, forgoing the usual local bookmarks for it), allows me to click and drag photos to and from my Flickr account, and lets me post to my blog with a single click. There isn’t much to like, except for when it comes to using my bookmarks toolbar. Every time I put a link on my bookmarks toolbar, it adds it to my del.icio.us account, even though it’s a link I always use and I don’t find that I want to necessarily share it. Also, I can’t add a folder with links to the toolbar.

So, I guess I got too used to Firefox… I’m sure I’ll go back in a couple releases, but until then… c’est la vie.

It’s been over a year since I bought my PC. I can’t believe that. It seems like yesterday that I was scrambling around trying to frantically get work done after the last computer I was using was *cough* needlessly ripped out from under me. But I’m not bitter.

What this post is about, though, is that it’s also been over a year since I’ve used Microsoft Office. When I got the laptop, I decided I would try out OpenOffice, and as a free alternative to something I used to pirate, I’m super pleased. In fact, for what I do, heavy word processing and light spreadsheet management, I don’t ever miss Microsoft Office. And heck, I don’t ever put together Powerpoint presentations (opting instead to use PDF’s at full screen for the same functionality, but always presented cleaner) but I’ve opened many Powerpoint files in OpenOffice’s Impress program, and it works like a charm.

I think that’s a great selling point for the program. You can seamlessly open and save files in Microsoft Office’s extremely restricting and bloated file formats. And it just works.

So, I remember last year, trying to persuade my friends who were wanting to borrow my copy of Office that they should just go with OOo, but I didn’t have any personal experience to back up my suggestion. Well, now I do. Just wanted to let you know that.

When I was a wee lad, I think I had some kind of speech impediment. Whenever someone would ask for my name, I’d say it, and they’d get “Wallace” instead of “Lawless.” Personally, I’d be flattered if my name wasn’t already the most awesome name in the universe (true story).

And so, I spent the last 15 years of my life enunciated, even hyperpronouncing my last name, or even adding that my name is like Xena’s whenever anyone asks on the phone or otherwise.

Well, I just got my new DSL modem shipped to this address:

Again, it starts…

Panic! At the Disco’s second LP will be produced under the careful eyes and ears of Muse frontman, Matthew Bellamy, the band announced yesterday. “I first spoke to Matt at Reading festival, shortly after our set” claims singer Brendan Urie. “He told us how unlucky we were to be treated by the crowd, and he really enjoyed our set. We soon recieved an email from the Muse management, saying that he wanted to help with our new album in some way, so we invited him over to the studios and played our new demos and he loved them”.
The boys also state Muse as a heavy influence for their new album. “Fever [You Can’t Sweat Out] had some danceable songs,” says Ryan Ross, the band’s main lyricist “but we heard ‘Supermassive Black Hole,’ and thought ‘we want to make songs like that’”. “Matt’s also a very talented pianist, most of my piano on the new LP is influenced by his work and technique”, says Brendan, “he has been teaching me new styles and ways to play, and it feels like I’m now becoming him!”.

Bellamy has also allowed the band to cover Muse’s anthemic ‘Hysteria’, “although it seems that it will live life as a demo, or perhaps a b-side, it’s not good enough to be on the new LP” says Brendan. Panic! release their new LP later this year.

? From microcuts.net

So, it has finally happened. The ultimate fusion of my and my sister’s favorite bands.

What’s funny is that I didn’t originally like ‘Hysteria’ when Absolution first came out, oh so long ago. I mean, there’s no denying that it’s pretty much the sweetest bassline ever written, but I wasn’t sold on the lyrics. Especially during the chorus… “I want you now, I want you now. Give me your heart and your soul” just is a little bit too… emo? for Muse and is pretty creepifying to boot.

But it didn’t take me long for the infectious melody to stick in my head, and then I started singing along, and no genuflecting or hail marys would save me from the dark road I started upon.

Ninja games… sometimes you just can’t get enough of them. Here’s three games I’d love to see on the Virtual Console that either will never come out, or will just take a long time.

1. Ninja Gaiden Trilogy (SNES): This probably won’t ever be around because Nintendo’s going to want to get every last dime from us by making us buy all three of the Ninja Gaiden games for the NES, but some minor enhancements to the graphics and only taking up one slot on an overburdened channel selector on the Wii just seems like a better deal.
2. Shinobi 2 (Genesis) - Slash, slash, hack. Awesome. Purely awesome. Great graphics and just fun to play.
3. Strider (Genesis) - Okay, maybe not a ninja game, but when I first saw this game in the arcades, I was drooling. Give it a near-perfect port to Genesis, and you’ve got something I’d shell out some Wii Points for.

Did you know, Putnam, more people are murdered at ninety-two degrees Fahrenheit than any other temperature? I read an article once ? lower temperatures people are easy-going, over ninety-two it?s too hot to move but just ninety-two, People. Get. Irritable!
    ? Sheriff Matt Warren, It Came From Outer Space

On Sunday, I had the pleasurable experience of getting to see It Came From Outer Space in 3-D in theaters at the SLO International Film Festival. It was glorificent. Especially awesome was that the 3-d in the film never felt tacked on ? it seemed like a seamless part of the cinematography of the feature. Now, if only they could make more movies like that and less movies like eXistenZ. Word.

I figured I’ve talked so much about Apple Crack, and that there’s a great lack of information concerning exactly how to play, and so I’d like to take a stab at some instructions .

Apple Crack is Your Friend
Apple Crack is a homebrew variant of the popular party game “Apples to Apples,” published by Out Of The Box Publishing. At its core, it is a game of word association, but even though that description makes it sound like only kindergarteners would play it, it can be an uproaringly good time. Particularly when drinking is involved.

This game is for 3 - 15 people, but a decent-sized group is around 5 - 7.

For set up, you’ll need:

• Two different decks of 3″x5″ index cards, in two separate colors. For our games, we used white and yellow index cards.
• One pen per person, preferrably all of the same kind.
• Did I mention alcohol?

Everyone draws five blank yellow cards. For player one’s turn, she picks up a white card and writes an adjective or topic on it, like “Things I would do for a cookie” or even simply “Awesome,” and then they state the card and show it to everyone else. Everyone except for player one writes an answer for the prompt on a yellow card and turns it in face down, like “Man with 12 hula hoops” or “I can’t believe it’s not butter.” Once everyone’s finished writing in an answer, player one shuffles the cards and starts reading them aloud. Then she picks one card as the “best” answer to her white card, and the owner of the winning yellow card gets to hold on to the white card and keep it as a point. Save all the cards in a pile elsewhere, you’ll use them later, and draw more yellow cards to keep five cards in your hand. Rinse, and repeat. Usually, the game ends when one person reaches 7 cards in their white pile, but oftentimes, we’ll just see who’s got the most once we’re all too tired to play anymore.

Once your group has played through the game a few times, you’ll have amassed a large collection of white and yellow cards, and you have essentially made a deck to play with from here on out. And so, we usually have on hand a whole bunch of blank cards, for whoever feels the need to add to the deck. I typically draw four filled yellow cards and one blank one to make my hand.

And so, that begins my ongoing coverage of Apple Crack here. In future weeks, I’m thinking of blogging about the different cards we’ve written in (edited for content, of course) and variants of the game. I’m also considering writing up a Wikipedia article on Apple Crack.

If you have anything you’d like to add or revise about my instructions, let me know in the comments.

About two months ago, we bought Apollo a chewtoy. It took him about two weeks to even notice the darned thing. After that, it was “chew on it” this and “let’s bury it” that. For weeks at a time, we wouldn’t see it and couldn’t even tell where he had buried it, but he had the muddy paws to prove his precious indiscretion.

Earlier this week, we brought Doc’s dog Kashka over, who is, in many ways, Apollo’s little girlfriend. As their romping about in the back yard, Kashka digs up the chew toy, and they get in a little tiff about the darned thing. Something about “I buried that there for a reason, b!$#*” and “I just got accustomed to this way of life.” Things got brutal.

So, Kashka wins and chews on the toy for a good long while, and all Apollo does is sit in the corner looking dejected. I suppose that when we took Kashka back to her home, Apollo figured he would, once and for all, bury his bone where no one would ever look for it. He was on a mission, and he succeeded. Upon returning home, we couldn’t find the toy anywhere.

That is, until I went to bed, and found that Apollo buried it under my pillow.

Ken, at work, tried to trip me up, like he often does. “Who originally did the song Tainted Love? Was it Depeche Mode?”

I looked down at the playlist on the work server, and indeed it says that it’s playing Depeche Mode’s Tainted Love Remix. I look at him, and say, “Of course, it’s Soft Cell. They made it a hit in 1981. It’s amazing.”

He looks at me and says, “Nay. It was, in fact the Ramones.”

And so, I had to look it up, and it was not the Ramones, even though they did perform it before Soft Cell. I’m so glad we didn’t slap bet over it.

Tainted Love was written by Ed Cobb of The Four Preps for Gloria Jones in 1964. It became a popular song in the Northern Soul scene at that time, but it didn’t gain national recognition until Soft Cell covered it. Marilyn Manson recently covered it a while back, and whenever Soft Cell plays it in concert nowadays, they say, “This is a Marilyn Manson song.” I think that’s funny.

Gemini 8 and a rough landing
By Benjamin Lawless

Neil Armstrong grit his teeth, I’m sure of it.
I’m sure he grit his teeth so hard
they wanted to fall out of his head.
He sat and tried his hardest not to freak out,
spinning above the Earth’s thermosphere
years before the moon and you and me.

And in this winter night in the 21st century,
where our breath makes the ghosts of words
drift toward heaven, we’re trying to save our mission.
Trying to save face, to keep every
secret name we made for each other
secret from each other. We’re trying to deny
we’re saying goodbye.

And on Gemini 8, the misfired thruster
twisted the capsule
into a nuclear powered barber pole. Neil had no hope
but to go down with his ship;
after all, an ejection-seat suicide,
what the space monkeys call
a pop-fly into deep left,
would’ve been very bad PR for NASA.

And that’s when we close our eyes, turn around,
and by all instruments, we’re flying off course,
a shaky free-fall into the the black.

I use bloglines, which is an online feed aggregator, and I check it pretty regularly. It’s great, because it collects the latest posts from blogs, news services, and weather sites and brings them to me. That means I don’t have to spend hours navigating from one site to the next, wondering whether anyone I know has updated their sites. It’s all there. I can see everything.

Well, here’s the rub: every site that can be indexed by bloglines needs to publish an RSS (or atom) feed. Basically, it’s a file that has every post in it, without any formatting information, and organized in such a way that it is machine-readable. If you’re using Blogger, Word Press, Movable Type, or other similar blogging services, it’s something that your service automatically sets up and provides, though I remember that I had to manually activate it back when I was still using Blogger.

The point is I know a fair number of sites I wish published feeds and don’t. Commercially, Barney’s Blog, which is a blog about the fictional character Barney Stinson, played by Neil Patrick Harris (of Doogie Howser, M.D. fame) and easily the most interesting character on television’s best and funniest sitcom, How I Met Your Mother. It’s a great read, with tons of very in-character references to things that happened on the show, week by week.

In terms of friends of mine, I hate to single people out, but here goes anyway: Ellen can’t really have an RSS feed published, because she doesn’t use a blogging engine and does all her blogging by hand, which is still pretty awesome. And Sarah, you’ve got a great blog, but I miss out on a lot of your updates sometimes. I think you should check your Blogger settings for publishing a feed, it should be in there…

So, yeah. That’s my plea. Please appease!

Last night I dreamt that Madonna Mountain was a volcano erupting and filling our apartment with molten hot magma. Nicole turned to me and told me to quickly save only that which was important.

Looking back on the dream, I can’t help but giggle at the fact that I ran out of my house clothed only in my underwear and a laptop under each arm. I’m assuming Nicole saved the puppy, but I just can’t be sure.

So, Lindsay Lohan was in SLO last week, filming her new movie, I Know Who Killed Me, which has got to be in the running for worst movie title ever.

She was filming scenes at SLO High and on Higuera St. in the middle of downtown, and so they had to shut down Higuera for almost a day of filming. They shut down the area with some of the best shopping in the area the day before Valentine’s Day. That’s right, on February 13th, no one could shop at Fanny Wrappers or even Bath and Body Works.

Now, supposedly, they would have shot these scenes a month earlier, but she’s been in alcohol rehab (and she’s still just shy of 21! But that’s a whole other rant). So, because of rehab, they pushed the date back and Hollywood had no concept of a pretty darned important shopping day.

I guess Lindsay Lohan is the reason Justin Timberlake had to bring the sexy back. It’s all making sense to me now…

Last week, Red posted a dissertation on Why Anyone Would Buy a Wii, which basically amounted to thus: you would buy it ’cause it’s awesome. Today, I’d like to focus on a list of games I would love to buy on the Virtual Console. Now, I completely believe that these games will probably NEVER come out on the Virtual Console, just because I think I’m one of the few people in the world that even remember games like To The Earth, but this is my wishlist, and I can wish for whatever I want, damnit.

1. Super Spike V’Ball: I buy Virtual Console games mainly for one reason: multi-player. And a little known fact is that there were a handful of four-player games developed for the Nintendo, basically needing an adapter to plug four controllers into it. I LOVE Bomberman ‘93 that they’ve thrown in on the VC from the Turbographx 16, mainly because it is FIVE player. Anyhow, V’Ball was awesome, and everywhere I look, this seems to be the only four player game worth playing that was developed for the Nintendo. I want it. Bad.
2. Pin*Bot and High Speed: It’s no lie that these two games are the best and most innovative video pinball games ever released. They’re just so much FUN. The VC’s recent release of Alien Crush for the Turbographix 16 is awesome, but it doesn’t approach the feeling you get when your ball suddenly morphs into a cube, and has appropriate physics to boot. I don’t understand why every other pinball video game I’ve ever played is just a vague shadow of the greatness of these games, and in most cases, just suck.
3. Deja Vu: Recently, there’s been a lot of talk about a recent game on the Nintendo DS called Hotel Dusk: Room 215 which is, essentially an interactive mystery novel. Every time I read an article about that game, it makes me think of Deja Vu my favorite game that could be a novel ever. And a little bit of tweaking to the interface could make it truly a point-and-click adventure using the Wiimote. I want this game, but only if they do it right.
4. To the Earth: I’m probably not the only one to wonder why there hasn’t been any emulation of the Nintendo’s zapper in the Wiimote yet, and that there hasn’t been any Duck Hunt. Well, another Nintendo shooter game was To The Earth which was a helluvalottafun, but also gut-blisteringly difficult. Basically, you use the zapper to shoot down incoming spaceships, and most spaceships would require multiple hits to take down. It was fast, it was difficult, but it was also a late-night addiction of mine.
5. Metal Storm: Sure, it’s just your typical side-scrolling action game, but you can reverse gravity at the punch of a button. It’s more addictive than you may think.

Another month has passed, and for our second newsletter at BIG Images, I decided to up the ante a bit. I forget where it was, but recently I read an article criticizing modern pseudo-journalism, like blogs and the like, for not having enough illustrations… not counting A List Apart or Daytrotter, of course. Illustrations run rampant in other media, why not online journals, especially corporate ones? Have we found ourselves so lazy with the ease of publishing online that we’re no longer willing to go the extra step and do things right? That’s definitely what’s happened with this blog recently, I suppose. I just haven’t had the time to scour the Library of Congress website for awesome photos.

And so, in an effort to regain lost blog credibility, and flex my graphic design skills, I approached the challenge with determination and gusto. One of my first acts was to reduce my color palette to only ten colors, mostly shades of green with very little saturation. My second act was to sprinkle awesome liberally.

My article was the first I illustrated, as a sort of proof-of-concept to myself and my bosses. I had to make sure that I made a 500px wide image look BIG.

This one was tough, given that I didn’t have much to go on, other than Ken’s title “The Sales Team” and the fact that he wanted to make some kind of sports analogy. And although I know that Ken hates American Football, I couldn’t keep away from this image, of helmets lined in a row ready to be plucked by eager sweaty… salesmen.

Not quite the first idea I had, but a fitting one nevertheless. Initial sketches were too far away from this idea to really focus on, but I loved illustrating the stance and the light coming down on the fighters… Fun fun fun.

And now, how the heck do I illustrate ink? By doing an abstract soothing piece, I suppose.

We’ve had a lot of good reactions come from the latest newsletter, which you can see here. I can’t wait for next month, the color issue. It’s gonna be rad.

If alien overlords were to come down and enslave humanity, my top three jobs in the New Order would be:

1. Scientist furiously reverse-engineering alien weapons for the human rebellion.
2. Graphic Designer for the aliens, making posters and using typography to subjugate and placate the human population.
3. Receptionist.

Sometimes, three or four great ideas collide all at once, producing a massive spectacle that is sure to back up the 101 for miles upon miles. This time the four ideas were, in no particular order:

• Valentine’s Day is difficult. There’s nowhere to eat and very little to do that isn’t infested with googly-eyed, well-dressed people. Blech.
• Single Awareness Day coincides with most celebrations of Valentine’s Day.
• Why celebrate two different holidays on the same day?
• Don’t we know a few single people that are probably not doing much on a Wednesday night?

So, Nicole and I had our Valentine’s Day last Saturday. It started out as a bit of a disaster, because I phoned in an order for food from North China in Santa Maria, and didn’t call to cancel when I decided to not drive an hour on account of the rain. To keep this story short, it ended up well enough with Nicole’s family enjoying a “free” meal for three, and we ended up going to Orchesis, a dance recital at Cal Poly. It was pretty darned awesome, but unfortunately it ended just a few minutes after 10, otherwise we would have walked to the theater building next door to see the stand-up comedy show at Smile and Nod. Instead we went home and checked out a couple episodes of Buffy. Totally romantic, I know.

Anyhow, on Wednesday, we had a totally laid back evening enjoying the company of some of our favorite people who are not shackled to the… atmosphere surrounding togetherness. Nicole and I staged a mock fight, and spent the night pretending to make each other jealous. And we laughed and joked around a game of Apple Crack.

And it totally took the edge off of the pressures of a “forced” holiday celebration. It got me thinking about other holidays, and what if there could be a Christmas that truly was just about spending time with the people we call family. Or even, celebrating times like that when we can, and not necessarily tethered to a date on a calendar. Think of it. No massive crowds of people at the mall. No major rush of people traveling thousands of miles. Just a relaxing day not dealing with people we don’t know and don’t want to deal with.

Eh. Perhaps it’s just science fiction.

So, my boss Ken and I are helping out this woman today at BIG images. We’re suggesting things she can do to make the image she’s brought us printable.

She asks, “if I make it larger, won’t that just make it too huge?”

I look her in the eye, and I tell her, “ma’am, we deal with huge on a daily basis.”

The One Girl at the Boys’ Party
by Sharon Olds

When I take my girl to the swimming party
I set her down among the boys. They tower and
bristle, she stands there smooth and sleek,
her math scores unfolding in the air around her.
They will strip to their suits, her body hard and
indivisible as a prime number,
they’ll plunge in the deep end, she’ll subtract
her height from ten feet, divide it into
hundreds of gallons of water, the numbers
bouncing in her mind like molecules of chlorine
in the bright blue pool. When they climb out,
her ponytail will hang its pencil lead
down her back, her narrow silk suit
with hamburgers and french fries printed on it
will glisten in the brilliant air, and they will
see her sweet face, solemn and
sealed, a factor of one, and she will
see their eyes, two each,
their legs, two each, and the curves of their sexes,
one each, and in her head she’ll be doing her
wild multiplying, as the drops
sparkle and fall to the power of a thousand from her body.

if (Hip-Hop Nerds == $a
&& Math Nerds == $b) {

$a + $b < Word Usage Nerds
}

fo’ real.

So, I’m at Staples, checking out one of those shiny new laptops with Vista on it. Everything’s going good, stuff is loading, I’m double-clicking and alt-tabbing and only barely feeling the technonarcolepsy.

All of a sudden, I look down, and my right hand is covered in blood. I kid you not, my own blood. I have an open wound on my finger, and I can’t be entirely certain that Vista wasn’t to blame. Or at least, had something to gain from tasting human blood.

And so, I think we should keep a close eye on installations of Vista. If anybody thinks I’m joking, watch I Robot. Will Smith knew what I’m talking about.

I’ve been reading a lot recently about the importance of keeping your email inbox clean. Something about it helping with never losing an email and whatever, and I’ve always been like “Shoot, foo. I totally rawk out Gmail’s search feature, yo, fo’ real!” That was a time of darkness… I had forty new messages out of 480, all stuffed within my itty-bitty-Inbox. I didn’t know what to do!

But then epiphany struck. Something had to change. And so, I spent about 30 minutes archiving and deleting, sweating and crying, pruning, bending the very internet to my will.

And so, now it’s down to single digits. I toast to this day, let’s hope it lasts.

I so want one of these!

I can’t believe how awesome this looks. It almost makes me want to get a 360 to prepare for this dang thing… or I’ll just go over to Red’s.

Sobbing sky
by Benjamin Lawless

Today is a downtrodden mother beating the horizon
like the bread dough on the fifth floor of a tenement dangling
off the edge of the city. It breathes deep
of unpaid bills and disappointment,
kneading its knuckles into the miasma as the flour
explodes off the cutting board, and I look at this
oil barge around me, where the sickly guts of this machine we live in
drips in silence like only the arctic knows.

And I stare across a sea as glassy as melmac into
the face of a sobbing sky
reaching with arms towards a broken sea.

The barge groans, and I can hear it ask
Is this what it feels like to be a speck
stuck in the ocean’s pocket protector?

And we wait to see
water smother the sky smother the water,
waitress mother mother another waitress
and throw cuticles bleeding into flour and dough,
salt of oceans’ tears and liquid sky,
preparing bread that won’t ever bake.
The ovens are frigid like slate heavens,

cause here it seems
this spinning wretch we live on couldn’t make the gas payments.

Some of you may remember that Nicole was taking care of a pair of freshly hatched kittens almost a year ago, named Xavier and Jezebel. She fed them and took care of them at all hours of the morning and night and we were really sad to see them go, but after all, they were going to households that would take care of them and love them and be totally awesome to them.

Well, it’s a year later, and the answer to the unsaid question is a resounding not quite.

Jezebel’s owner supposedly doesn’t want her any more. But the real tragedy is Xavier. He’s been renamed to something so gawdawful I can’t even quite begin to know how to spell it, something very… french. But that’s not the worst of his problems.

Supposedly, his owner brought him in to Docs with a very bad urinary tract infection. This is the kind of bad infection that can only happen after a couple of weeks, or even possibly a month of ignoring symptoms and being negligent. Nicole explained to me, in extremely graphic detail, what’s been going on inside our Xavier, and it involved lots of blood and crystals building up in his kidneys. It’s uncertain whether or not he’s going to make it, and if he does, he’s going to have to be constantly looked after until… well, until the end of his life.

I got the chance to visit him tonight, helping Nicole check on him and a few other patients at the hospital. He’s grown up. I used to be able to hold him in the palm of my hand, and now he’s this beautiful cat that’s very sweet and really doesn’t want any more pain.

I would so take him back, if the owner would let me.

And so, I’m only about 30 pages into Robert Nye’s hilarious Mrs. Shakespeare: The Complete Works but I just know this is going to be a great book, just for the myriad of insults for poets Robert Nye litters throughout the work, in the voice of Anne Hathaway, Will Shakespeare’s estranged wife.

She really didn’t like her husband. It’s the way she didn’t like her husband, in this work, that is so compelling.

What do they do, poets?
(Reader, I married one.)
What do poets do, when it comes down to it?
Poets play around and about with words just to save themselves thinking.
You have to have words to think.
But it’s not right or enough just to fool with them.
These metaphors: all they are really are high-class compliments or insults.
One thing cannot be another thing.
It stands to reason.
Thou shalt not commit metaphor, I say.
Especially not in the name of marital sarcasm.
Because, if you must know, I was the eight years older than Mr Shakespeare.
And because Mr Shakespeare never let me forget that small little difference in our ages.

I stood up, twitched onto the stage. I was seriously nervous, hadn’t been like this in almost never.

“Hey everybody, I’m Ben Lawless. I haven’t read in front of anyone in about a year, and I’m a bit shaky. Geez, this is like a confessional… you know, with a much larger room, and about 200 more people.”

And then I read.

I recently had the distinct pleasure of watching Pan’s Labyrinth, a colossal movie by director Guillermo del Toro. If you’re at all into good cinema, check it out. At metacritic, it’s the only movie I’ve ever known to get a 98, and it got a 96% at Rotten Tomatoes.

When we went to go see Volver, another truly amazing movie by Almodovar, who hasn’t directed a movie I haven’t liked, I saw the poster for Pan’s, thought it looked amazing, and then promptly thought about it, until…

Thanks to BIG Images’ involvement with the SLO International Film Festival, which also resulted in me getting to hang out with Morgan Freeman last year, I got two tickets to the pre-screening of it at the Palm. It was a big hubbub too: the effects house that did all of the visual effects for it, Cafe FX, is located thirty miles south of here in Santa Maria and they came to talk about their work on the film and to show a special effects reel about how they really did a lot of the effects work. We also got to go to the pre-party, drink some wine, and generally act like a film snob.

It was fantastic.

At the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Nicole turned to me and said, “See that fish there? It stays really close to the window because it can’t swim well.”

I said, “really?”

“NO! It’s a FISH!”

This Sunday, if anybody would like to join me, I’ll be attending the Matt Costa and Satisfaction show at Downtown Brew at 7pm. It’s $15.

I’ve seen Satisfaction before when they opened for Sherwood, about two years ago. They reminded me of… well, they reminded me of good music. So, Brian and I have been looking out to see them again since then, and tomorrow night they’re opening for Matt Costa, whom we had never heard of before. Well, turns out Matt Costa did a duet with Jack Johnson for the Curious George movie, so if you’re into that, you’d be wise to come with us. His latest album, Songs We Sing, is pretty great too.

And check out his video for Sunshine. It’s awesome.

Frequent reader Andrea asked in a comment recently why there are comments on this blog that make no sense… Well, I suppose if you’re not running a blog on your own website (meaning, if you’re using Blogger, LiveJournal, Xanga, or whatever), you probably don’t often run into yet another scourge of the internet: blog spam.

Blog spam and email spam are essentially the same problem. Some malicious program out there figured out your address, and how to automatically send you links they hope you’ll click on. They typically do this by spouting either grandiose claims (”You are the rightful heir to an instant-microwaveable girl-on-girl viagra fortune off the coast of Idaho. SEND US MONEY!”) or complete gibberish (”Your copy of Windows XP is completely safe to use.”).

Luckily, my installation of WordPress came with a great spam-management application, called Akismet. At the time of this writing, Akismet has caught 6,032 spam comments. Sometimes, though, spam gets through. I try to deal with it as soon as possible, but I am but one man.

So, hope that answered your question. Good heavens, I… need… a martini.

The Cord
Leanne O?Sullivan

I used to lie on the floor for hours after
school with the phone cradled between
my shoulder and my ear, a plate of cold
rice to my left, my school books to my right.
Twirling the cord between my fingers
I spoke to friends who recognized the
language of our realm. Throats and lungs
swollen, we talked into the heart of the night,
toying with the idea of hair dye and suicide,
about the boys who didn?t love us,
who we loved too much, the pang
of the nights. Each sentence was
new territory, like a door someone was
rushing into, the glass shattering
with delirium, with knowledge and fear.
My Mother never complained about the phone bill,
what it cost for her daughter to disappear
behind a door, watching the cord
stretching its muscle away from her.
Perhaps she thought it was the only way
she could reach me, sending me away
to speak in the underworld.
As long as I was speaking
she could put my ear to the tenuous earth
and allow me to listen, to decipher.
And these were the elements of my Mother,
the earthed wire, the burning cable,
as if she flowed into the room with
me to somehow say, Stay where I can reach you,
the dim room, the dark earth. Speak of this
and when you feel removed from it
I will pull the cord and take you
back towards me.

Okay, so I’ve been a huge fan of Switchfoot for a long time, ever since I’ve seen the music video of “New Way to Be Human” a long long time ago. That album is one of my favorite albums of all time. It’s seriously that good. There’s just something about the pop sensibilities and touching lyrics of that second album of theirs.

Skip forward an album, and we’ve got The Beautiful Letdown, which was good, but definitely started them down the path to harder, guitar-driven tracks like “Meant to Live,” which is also amazing, but seriously, it’s tracks on that album like “The Beautiful Letdown” and “24″ that save that album from mediocrity.

Unfortunately, mediocre is definitely what their follow up, Nothing is Sound, was. I mean, “Stars” is amazing, but I just can’t get into the album past that. I’ve heard a lot of people give it two thumbs up, and I just felt like it wasn’t different sounding enough. Just not awesome enough.

Well, have no fear, because Oh! Gravity is almost as good as New Way to Be Human. Seriously. Download tracks like “4:12” or “Awakening” or “Yesterdays,” and weep, for you will discover, just as I have, that beauty can once again return to the world. It’s the trumpets. Gotta be.

By the way, if you’re only going to click on one link, click on 4:12, you’ll love it.

* Update: I fixed the 4:12 links. Thanks for pointing that out, Mom!

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, this isn’t the only blog I post to. That’s right, dear friends, my blog-love is shared with another.

Now, don’t be mad. It’s strictly business. Strictly business.

At BIG Images, we’ve started rolling out this monthly e-mail newsletter, which links to blog posts on the BIG Images website. I just started a series of articles about effectively designing for large format posters and banners and the like.

Oh, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t shared this with you yet, but it’s pretty cool: A few months ago, I designed a logo for Banner-Works, and Jon wrote up a little something-something about it.

Look at the back of a Splenda single-serving bag, and try to tell me it doesn’t say “OMG Sodium.”

Nicole tells me that there’s no Sodium, something like Zero milligrams, but then why OMG Sodium? Why OMG Sodium?!?!?!

Slicing Ginger
by Ralph Black

Not sex. Not sex,
but sexual: the way
the weather hangs
at the edges of sight,
the way the paring knife,
pressed and warm as any
lover to my hand, slides
just under the soaked
brown skin, opening
the earth of it, opening
the undiscovered white-
fleshed seam in the scarred
and sacred earth: the
lemon-sweet, lemon-
sweet ringing of bodies
through the room.
Plumes of longing bleed
in my hand as the small
blade pares into the
mole-blind, uprooted,
incantatory fruit ? the
slices hitting the
hot oiled iron with
a singing of fire on
wet wood, and the tiny
suns exploding there:
huge and redolent and
almost human.

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one?s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.
    ? Scottish mountain climber W.H. Murray

Either that, or you could be attacked by Snakes, on a Plane. For most people, that pretty much nullifies any good that might have come from your decision. This doesn’t apply if you’re Samuel L. Jackson, Chuck Norris, or Hitler.

On another note, I’d love to see a fighting game that pitted those three against one another. Or a drinking game.

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one?s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.
    ? Scottish mountain climber W.H. Murray

Either that, or you could be attacked by Snakes, on a Plane.

A couple of weeks ago, Nicole and I had a… discussion. It wasn’t an argument, but it did get pretty heated. She argued that video games have little value because they’re an inefficient use of time for a medium that doesn’t tell relevant, or even interesting, stories. She asked me what sort of story does Super Mario Bros. tell, for instance. Or Pong, for that matter. I countered with the fact that Pong has more of a plot than many action movies we see today.

And then, I read an article that has found video games fulfill a psychological need in some people.

Then, about a week later, my parents gave me Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem for the GameCube. Since then, she’s been glued to the Wii. Not because she likes playing the game. No, she just enjoys watching. She gets positively giddy about helping me solve puzzles whilst watching a tremendously intricate plot unfold, and I can’t blame her. The game is stunning.

So, I win. Nanner-nanner.

Last night and tonight, the Central Coast is hitting all-time low temperatures for this time of year. Experts have been talking about us getting snowfall as low as 1000 feet. That means Madonna Mountain (at an elevation of 1250 feet), which is within a mile of where I live, may be snowpeaked tonight, and that means that Cuesta Grade (at 1500 feet) will almost certainly get some, if anybody does.

I dreamt I was driving through an orange grove in a white-crested world with an overcast dusk overhead. Excepting the dream, I’ve never seen oranges covered in snow before, but I have seen frozen cherry trees!

As you can see, much fun was had at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. What a vacation!

Oh, and if you guys want to blow $80 for an UNBELIEVABLE SUPER AWESOME MEAL, you might want to check out Latitudes, at Lover’s Point. Unfortunately, though, it doesn’t exist on Google Maps… so just follow Ocean View Blvd. I couldn’t see much around it, other than the ocean, given we showed up after dark in the middle of a huge windstorm.

But seriously, the calamari there is ungodly.

How to catch a fart in a jar:

1. Eat a fantastic dinner of anything that will bring up pleasant memories from your backside.
2. Make a bath.
3. Get a jar and hold it upside down.
4. Fart.
5. Capture fart bubble in jar.
6. Repeat until satisfied.
7. Affix lid to jar while still upside down and underwater.
8. Label appropriately.
9. Give to Jim for his birthday.

I figured this out during the vacation in Pacific Grove, whilst taking a bath. Capturing bubbles in cups is super fun. And you can be assured, this is a gift that can keep on giving!

Warning: Do not give to that special someone, for ANY occasion.

So, the new year came, and on the 31st I was sitting in a circle of 12 people round our living room table, drinking major amounts and playing Apple Crack. Given that this was my first time playing, I had no idea it would be as big a success as it was.

Apple Crack is a variation on Apples to Apples, a game about matching word pairs. It’s actually far more fun than it sounds, but you seriously have to play it to believe it. Anyhow, David introduced me to the concept of Apple Crack, which involves everyone writing in their answers, and thus makes way for a slew of inside jokes indicative of the group dynamic. Or, it makes me shoot champagne out my nose in front of 11 other people.

Oh, the hilarity.

For My Son, Noah, Ten Years Old
by Robert Bly

Night and day arrive, and day after day goes by,
and what is old remains old, and what is young remains young, and grows old,
and the lumber pile does not grow younger, nor the
weathered two by fours lose their darkness,
but the old tree goes on, the barn stands without help so many years,
the advocate of darkness and night is not lost.

The horse swings around on one leg, steps, and turns,
the chicken flapping claws onto the roost, its wings whelping and whalloping,
but what is primitive is not to be shot out into the night and the dark.
And slowly the kind man comes closer, loses his rage, sits down at table.

So I am proud only of those days that we pass in undivided tenderness,
when you sit drawing, or making books, stapled, with messages to the world…
or coloring a man with fire coming out of his hair.
Or we sit at a table, with small tea carefully poured;
so we pass our time together, calm and delighted.

The BBC News Magazine Monitor had a list of 100 Things We Didn’t Know a Year Ago. I love this stuff.

And so, in that same spirit, here are 5 things I didn’t know a month ago:

5. The iPod Shuffle, my newest little toy, recharges and transfers data through the same jack I plug my headphones into! Squee!
4. PHP. And using multi-dimensional arrays. Awww, yeah.
3. In the right outfit, I look like Bono. I guess it’s better than Screech.
2. In business, if a deal goes south, don’t stress it. Don’t back out. Whatever money you’ve lost in this small deal, you’ll more than make up for by keeping the client, and getting referrals. That is, unless you’re dealing with the Cylons. Then you just nuke every frakkin’ toaster trying to get the Eye of Jupiter off the algae planet… Sorry, maybe I’m a little obsessed.
1. Nikolai’s a browncoat!?!?! And in Done the Impossible?!??! I haven’t seen that guy since High School!

His name is Andy McKee, and wow. You can see a lot of him on youtube, but first, check out “Drifting.”

Song for the Deer and Myself to Return On
by Joy Harjo

This morning when I looked out the roof window
before dawn and a few stars were still caught
in the fragile weft of ebony night
I was overwhelmed. I sang the song Louis taught me:
a song to call the deer in Creek, when hunting,
and I am certainly hunting something as magic as deer
in this city far from the hammock of my mother’s belly.
It works, of course, and deer came into this room
and wondered at finding themselves
in a house near downtown Denver.
Now the deer and I are trying to figure out a song
to get them back, to get all of us back,
because if it works I’m going with them.
And it’s too early to call Louis
and nearly too late to go home.

As you may recall, I am an avid lover of type. It even, sometimes, borders on the obsessive. Just know, though, that it could be far worse. Far, far worse.

I came across this article, in which the author rates movies, both new and classic, on the basis of their attention to type. The most interesting of these would happen to be that a period piece set in the 1920’s has a billboard showing a font that wasn’t lovingly, painstakingly created until the 1970’s.

Or, in the case of Ed Wood, they took a real newspaper and digitally transposed new type over it. This is a novel idea, except the font that they used was completely different from the type all around it!

So, yes, I suppose I am that bad. And the only barrier between me and silver screen type-casting would be time. But oh, the atrocities!

So, you could say I was surprised on Wednesday when, upon coming into work, a $200 Christmas bonus wrapped in an origami square was waiting on my desk. I was even further surprised when I found out it was wrapping an iPod Shuffle!!!!!!! WOOT!!!!

And so, in one of the most amazing PR moves in recent history (at least in my life), BIG got on the map, and they’ve been digged 2009 times as of me writing, and had an independently written article on it via Gizmodo. The original article is here.

I mean, hey, if giving me an iPod shuffle and 200 big ones helps the company in any way, I’m definitely happy to oblige.

So, the latest issue of Women’s Press was a sort of surprise. We usually release one issue every two months. Well, this is a mid-issue, weighing in at 8 pages, and it showcases the new mission of the Women’s Press. Namely, to become more read and more successful in many other ways, including monetarily. Well, the cover art this month was mine, and I’m even in a photo on the front page. So, yeah… check it out! The direct link to the pdf is here (1.7 megs).

Super Monkey Ball for the Wii is a horrible, horrible mess of a game. Don’t rent it, and heaven help us if you were tricked into buying it this holiday season, you poor poor deluded fool.

So, if you’re still interested, here’s my reasons I returned Super Monkey Ball 45 minutes after I rented it last night:

• The menus are virtually un-navigatable. Essentially, you’re rotating a circle by twisting the ‘mote, and it’s way too easy to either not twist it enough, and do nothing, or to twist it too much, which sends the menu flying by at Ludicrous Speed.
• The single player was okay. Controls were tight, graphics were so-so, and the characters I guess resemble something cute. It’s just… not fun. I got no satisfaction from beating any of the puzzles nor mastering any of the controls.
• Once I finished defeating the first boss, 8 levels after starting, I was “treated” to an interactive set of end-titles which had my monkey flying around the screen collecting bananas and bouncing off the rising names. The controls for this were HORRIBLE. Not only that, but this mess of a “mini-game” felt like it lasted at least 10 minutes, and there was no option to skip it. To think I’d have to sit through that every 8 levels for a 100 level game makes me want to defecate on some poor programmers head. And right then, I turned to Nicole and said, “if the multi-player is this mind-numbingly bad, I’m returning it.”
• Well, it was.
• There are 50 mini-games for 1-4 players. We chose three to play at random. Again, the menus suck, but moving on. There are sometimes 3-4 screens of instructions for these games, with 3 instructions per screen, diagrams for each. This is a lot of information, and they don’t allow you to read them at your own pace. Instead, they loop through them, so you have to let them cycle through 3 or 4 times before finally getting to play.
• The instructions also weren’t very informative. Usually, it would take me half the mini-game before I could finally move my character to collect bananas, and the character didn’t respond in any way that felt like I had any control over it.
• FRUSTRATION. SUPER MONKEY FRUSTRATION.

Admittedly, I had a really bad couple of hours prior to renting this game, which I’ll probably blog about next… But suffice it to say, if you’re already thinking about punching someone and you want to wind down with a video game, do not pick up this game. If you’re thinking about being able to sire offspring in the future, do not pick up this game, because I feel impotent after 45 minutes with it.

I understand this is the third game in a series. Supposedly the first one is good, but I don’t know. If this crotchfruit is any indication, no way do I want to try the rest.

Running on Empty
by Robert Phillips

As a teenager I would drive Father’s
Chevrolet cross-county, given me

reluctantly: “Always keep the tank
half full, boy, half full, ya hear?”

The fuel gauge dipping, dipping
toward Empty, hitting Empty, then

?thrilling!?’way below Empty,
myself driving cross-county

mile after mile, faster and faster,
all night long, this crazy kid driving

the earth’s rolling surface,
against all laws, defying chemistry,

rules, and time, riding on nothing
but fumes, pushing luck harder

that anyone pushed before, the wind
screaming past like the Furies…

I stranded myself only once, a white
night with no gas station open, ninety miles

from nowhere. Panicked for a while,
at standstill, myself stalled.

At dawn the car and I both refilled. But,
Father, I am running on empty still.

The coolest. Video game. Commercial. Ever.

And I’m done.

Two nights ago, I had the craziest dream where I escaped from a prison, high up in the Alps, in spring. Once free, Sir Ben Kingsley taught me the fine art of boxing, but I had to interrupt it for a moment so I could dance the foxtrot with Brian and Olivia.

I was really really good at the foxtrot, and that’s no lie.

Many of you know of the amazing multi-player-Solitaire-meets-Speed-goodness that is Nutsy, and if you don’t, it’s supposedly a variation of Nertz, though I’ve never played Nertz, so I can’t say for certain.

Well, for Nutsy night, there’s been a sort of competition to find the coolest cards ever to use. Nicole got me an awesome Sushi deck a while back, which is almost unusable in the game given it’s nonstandard colors for the four different suits (seriously, clubs are brown, spades are green, hearts are orange and diamonds are bright yellow), but still pretty cool, nonetheless.

These stainless steel playing cards are my holy grail of cards. For only about $350, I could get a deck, that if properly sharpened, would ensure that no one will ever put down a card before I do.

Bwa ha ha ha HA!

Hugh Jackman seems to have the market cornered on time-travel-based-love-story movies, doesn’t he?

I mean, you’ve got the stellar Kate and Leopold in which Wolverine drops in from 1870-ish to the middle of a 21st century love-gone-wrong story. And now, The Fountain, which is supposedly three different love stories from three different times in history. Let’s see, there’s a 16th century conquistador searching for the fountain of youth, a 21st century scientist trying to cure his dying wife’s cancer, and a 26th century man in deep space traveling into a nebula… it all sounds a little confusing, but what adds to the geekiness factor, for me, is the fact that although one of the stories involves a trip into a nebula, there is very little CGI in the film. They manage to accomplish this strange feat by using macro photography.

From The Fountain’s Wikipiedia article:

One creative solution was uncovering Peter Parks, a specialist in macro photography, who had retrieved deep-sea microorganisms and photographed them in 3-D under partial funding from the Bahamas government. Parks brewed chemicals and bacteria together to create reactions of which Schrecker and Dawson shot 20,000 feet worth of film in the course of eight weeks for The Fountain.[13] To create the effects, Peter Parks had taken advantage of fluid dynamics, which affected the behavior of the substances that he photographed. “When these images are projected on a big screen, you feel like you’re looking at infinity. That’s because the same forces at work in the water?gravitational effects, settlement, refractive indices?are happening in outer space,” Parks said. The specialist’s talent convinced the film’s creative department to go beyond computer-generated imagery and follow Parks’ lead. Instead of millions of dollars for a single special effects sequence, Parks generated all the footage for the film for just $140,000.

How cool is that?!?!

I swear to all high heaven that in Michael Jackson’s perennial hit Beat it, the lyrics from the chorus go

Just beat it, beat it
No one likes an Edith Keeler

I don’t care what some over-hyped lyrics website might say, this is my story and I’m sticking to it until my bleeding, sobbing end.

I kid you not, this was in todays newspaper:

A church group that protests at military funerals around the country will be barred from services for an American Indian soldier on a reservation, tribal officials say…. Church members say the deaths of soldiers are punishment from God for the country’s tolerance of homosexuals.

What?!?!?!

Unfortunately, Renaissance has come and gone at the Palm… Sigh. I would see this in a heartbeat. I guess I’ll just have to wait for DVD.

Alright, so I’m pretty sure all of you know how horrible the recent Fantastic Four movie was. I have a friend who still swears by the movie, saying she sees it for what they wanted it to be, a fun movie. See, I saw it as a colossal wreck that had plot holes barely large enough for an entire world of product placement. The acting was bad. And I mean baaaaaaad, and even the fact that Jessica Alba is hot didn’t save it. And I mean, she’s HOT. That’s how bad it was.

So, what’s my point? Well, faithful readers, it could be worse. No, wait, it was worse.

One of the lesser known facts about the Fantastic Four franchise is that, way back in 1994, there was a Fantastic Four movie made. Supposedly, after post-production, the director decided it was so bad that he went on to purchase the rights to the movie, in the interests that no one would ever see it.

Thanks to the miracle of the internet, I actually found it. And I skipped around, watching bits and pieces of it. And guess what, it’s worse than the recent Fantastic Flop. Far worse. If you’d like to commiserate, check out the movie here:

Fantastic Four, Part One, and
Part Two

Here are a few things I’d like to share about my experience with the movie:

• The Thing has the same kind of puppetry that all the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies had. Pretty cool? Nope. The dialogue pretty much ruins whatever geekiness it might have inspired in me. You know, like the fifth time he says “It’s clobberin’ time.” Ugggghhhh.
• They just couldn’t shoot ANY part of the movie during the day. I suppose the part of Hollywood they were shooting happened to be under perpetual darkness in 1994.
• Doctor Doom wears a metal mask. This part follows with the comics, but every time that he speaks, it’s muffled to the point that not a single word is understandable. Added to this is the fact that he goes on three or four veeeeery long monologues, and he likes to talk with his hands. So, you have a wildly gesticulating incomprehensible super(?) villain. Wow. His might is impressive! Sarcasm afoot!
• Until the end, the Human Torch is only able to shoot fireballs from his arms. Every explosion and flame, even in the end, is animated by hand, very poorly. Also, I have never heard or read the Human Torch douse his flames by yelling “Flame OFF.” It just doesn’t happen.
• Alex Hyde White, as Mr. Fantastic, cannot act. Nor can he react. It’s like watching Jell-o harden in the fridge.

So, if you want a laugh, and a look at how bad things really can be, check it out. You might not regret it.

Meteor shower
by Bob Hicok

It’s the one shower I take each year.
Naked in the field with skeletons
of corn. Water’s got fresh skin
but crack it open and there’s filth,
the sundry goos we’ve given away
coming home to lick us.
To get clean you need something
out of this world. But what sadness
pushes stars to suicide? In truth
they’re rocks, we call them stars
to speak kindly of the dead.
When they fall nearby I hear a fizz
that makes me think the universe
is made of champagne. If you wash
with light you rinse with air,
it’s good for the complexion.
Real stars are the womb of everything,
pebbles and the bright logos
of tropical fish. If naked
in a field I ask the long-legged
corn to dance, a twirl is certain.
Who can resist this hot music,
these ballroom lights?

As all of you know, I got my Wii on launch day. One of the greatest things about it is its backwards compatibility. So, for a $25 controller (less if you don’t care about getting the quality of the Nintendo brand), you can essentially have a fully functional GameCube. Add to that a $13 copy of Super Mario Sunshine and a $6 copy of Viewtiful Joe, and my total comes to around $45 for a new system and two games.

And so, here’s wishful thinking: I’m updating my Wish List section slowly, and it currently has Wii accessories or games I want, but for those who were already thinking of grabbing a gift for me, a cheap gift would be a used GameCube game.

You know, if you love me.

One of the best field trips I’ve ever had when in college was to this huge printing plant in Merced (sorry, I can’t remember it’s name). It was the one place where they print all the Yellow Pages for the entire state of California. This printing press was monstrous. Think four stories tall, with enough of a footprint to basically make you think you’re walking through an apartment complex, and it’s just one press. The paper stream runs through at 30 mph, and any thoughts of paper cuts on that thing (which could easily happen) still make me cringe.

One of the coolest things I learned that day was that, contrary to popular belief, the yellow pages aren’t actually printed on yellow paper. It’s printed on white paper, and all the yellow is actually ink. Yellow ink is the cheapest ink to purchase, and so it justifies the expense. Also, using white paper means that they’re able to reproduce accurately four color process and have certain ads and letters in white.

Flash forward to a week ago. A salesman for the Yellow Pages came in to my work, asking if we’d like to put a bonafide ad in the upcoming edition. And he made a huge fuss that we can print any color, except for white. When my boss asked about this, the salesman said that it costs more to bleach the pages.

Bull.

So Matt Dixon calls me on Saturday evening, around 6, and asks me how bad I want the Wii. And he knows the answer. He doesn’t even have to ask. Already, he could almost see the drool collecting on the bib I’d been wearing for weeks because of this thing. He could hear the heavy breathing, the heart pounding, the rumble of my stomach. I was palpitating, seriously.

Well, he had just dropped by the local Best Buy, where they had 84 units, you know, just to see what the line looked like. Turns out there were 60+ people there, and it was only 6pm the night before launch. And I, with a sister having just arrived an hour earlier, couldn’t immediately drop everything and camp out all night. So, to make a long story short, he spent an all-nighter studying whilst waiting in line, and I was essentially his biatch. Nicole says she doesn’t love me nearly as much as Matt, because she wouldn’t do that. Maybe for herself, but not for me…

So, I got it. I was number 82 out of 84, and picked up Rayman: Raving Rabbids and Red Steel, but no second controller. Turns out they’re SOLD OUT almost everywhere. My kingdom, my kingdom for a wii-mote. But here’s the crazy thing, number 86 in line paid $70 for his place there, and didn’t get anything to show for it… Ha.

I’m so mean.

But, I digress. It’s AMAZING. The BEST. EVER. Get one, when you can.

Beavertown
by James Tate, from his book Return to the City of White Donkeys

Thanks to the new beaver dam, Mr. Foley’s
yard was flooding. He was furious and called
the police. Officer Crothers stood there, shaking
his head. “It’s a real beauty, isn’t it?” he said.
“But it’s flooding my yard, and soon it will be
in my basement,” Mr. Foley said. “Well, there’s
nothing we can do about it. They’re protected,
and you’d pay a very stiff fine, and possibly
do time in jail if you so much as ruffled the
fur of one of them,” Crothers said. “You mean
a beaver is more important than a man, than my
whole family?” Mr. Foley said. “I didn’t say
that. I didn’t make the law, I just enforce it.
The beavers didn’t think they were building a
dam, you know. It’s their home. They’ve got
wives and kids, too. They’ve got grandparents,
and aunts and uncles. They might even have little
beaver TV sets for all I know. Let them be,
Mr. Foley. Let them be.” Officer Crothers
started to walk away. “One hand grenade right
in the middle of it is all it would take,” Mr.
Foley said. Crothers stopped and looked Foley
in the eye. “After four hundred years of slaughter,
we’re finally at peace with the beavers. They’re
happy, and we’re happy. They’re hard working,
intelligent and strong. Have you got a problem
with that, Mr. Foley?” “But my yard is flooding,”
Mr. Foley said. “For god’s sake, pretend you’re
a beaver. That’s what the rest of us do,”
Crothers said.

Jean arrived for a week long stay on Saturday evening. Her train, after she got off, simultaneously crashed into a family of penguins, caught on fire, and derailed into a suburban shopping center. It’s all in the family, you know.

Tuesday night was AMAZING. Any of you on the Central Coast need to go the Great American Melodrama at least once in your life. Tuesday was the opening night of their annual Holiday show, in which we got a stunning rendition of A Christmas Carol followed by a fractured fairy tale called Snow White and the Five (Don’t Ask) Dwarves and a Vaudeville Revue to wrap things up. I seriously busted up when, during the fractured fairy tale, the Jester turned towards Prince Charming, and proclaimed:

Save the Princess, Save the World.

.

Here you’ll find fan-made Serenity comics. They really kick some major gussa, and that’s a good thing. In fact, I’d wager that a good number of them are better than the pre-movie, Joss-written, canon comic series Those Left Behind, of which I’m proud to say I own every issue of the first run.

So far I’ve only read The Black by Bill Mudron (who also drew the fantastic art of Jayne above) and Serenity Park by Lux Lucre, which is, as you may have guessed, a post-Serenity comic in the style of South Park.

Enjoy!

Switchfoot’s Oh! Gravity comes out December 26th, and this song makes me wish I had one of these.

Switchfoot’s last album Nothing is Sound didn’t particularly impress me much, but this song makes me feel like the good ol’ days of New Way to Be Human could come back in a big way.

Defining the Problem
by Wendy Cope
I can’t forgive you. Even if I could,
You wouldn’t pardon me for seeing through you.
And yet I cannot cure myself of love
For what I thought you were before I knew you.

—————————-

No, there’s not anything wrong between Nicole and me. I just ran across this poem, and it just seemed to be timely. I was just thinking about everything that has changed in this past year, that’s all.

From the list of 40 things that only happen in movies:

8. Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to learn to speak German. Simply speaking English with a German accent will do. Similarly, when they are alone, all German soldiers prefer to speak English to each other.23. If being chased through a city you can usually take cover in a passing St Patrick’s Day parade - at any time of the year.

25. You will survive any battle in any war UNLESS you show someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.

37. Most musical instruments (especially wind instruments and accordions) can be played without moving your fingers.

And from my own list of things that only happen around Jim Bentley:

1. Voices can and will issue forth from Jim’s pants, asking for Door Shims for some unnamed “project.”

23. My car explodes.

47 1/2. Digging a huge freakin’ hole where the kitchen used to be is actually a good idea.

To further delve into the mystery of the last post, in which I guess I’m the last to know about what’s going on atop of my own head(!), I share with you a story which happened about two weeks ago.

Now, as you can see from this picture, Nicole gave Apollo a fauxhawk a while back. Our neighbor’s friend comes over for the first time, and upon looking at our puppy, declares “My, aren’t you the cutest little eurotrash!” I walk out from the room, and, meeting her for the first time, say “Eurotrash, huh?”

To which she says, “yes.” … I wanted to smack her.
I think that was funnier in my head than when written, but, for those of you who aren’t as amused by the ability of this woman to simultaneously grow a pair and make me wish for anvils from the sky… well, you also get a picture of me and the puppy rawking our ‘hawks. Admittedly, it’s not the best picture, but it’ll do.

Getting my haircut yesterday was a bit of a harrowing experience. Now, this was the first time this particular student at the Beauty School attacked the tousled mess of my hair, but seriously:

He mentioned three times in a half hour that I have a receding hairline. Am I the last person to see this?

I’ve never been someone to freak out at the possibility of growing old, but wow. That’s exactly what’s happening.

For anyone who is interested in the future of the Internet, Web 2.0, and computing in general, here’s a recent article on Blake Ross, and it’s a must-read.

Ross has been one of the major forces behind the Firefox browser since day one, and one of the public faces of the project. Given he’s roughly my age, it’s amazing that he’s contributed so much to something as integral to my life as Firefox. I mean, it’s the program I have open the most on my computer, and it’s been that way for a very long time.

So, he’s setting up this new project called Parakey, which takes the idea of “desktop computer online” that YouOS and others have been working on, and ups it a notch. The article describes Parakey far better than I could, but think about having a means to deal with the photos, movies and documents on your computer through a web browser, and being able to share them transparently, without jumping through the hoops of Flickr or some other service.

Seriously, read the article.

The Gin Blossoms show on Friday was pretty damn awesome. Given that this is a band that has an 18 year history, a couple of best selling albums, plenty of well-known 90’s radio hits, a Grammy nominated song and a pretty decent following. I can think of no one that hasn’t heard their songs “Hey Jealousy,” “Until I Fall Away,” “Follow You Down,” and “Found Out About You.” You might not recognize them from their song titles, but if you were alive and listening to any radio in the 90’s, you know them.

Anyhow, they broke up in 1997, reunited in 2002, and just released a new album this year. I haven’t heard it, but all the new songs they played at the show sounded pretty awesome. Historically, I’ve heard they’ve just been a cool band to see live. They’ve always been taper friendly, and so you can download a few of their shows from Archive.org’s live music archive. All that is awesome, but what really put it over the top on Friday was Jessie Valenzuela, as the lead singer, picking up fan’s cell phones during songs and singing into them whilst also on the microphone. I thought about handing up my phone, but then I realized the only person I’d call and not wake up hasn’t been on speaking terms with me for almost a year now. All in all, a fantastic evening.

Not the best show I’ve seen at Downtown Brew (that was Calexico) but definitely in my top three.

So, the completion of five days of torture wasn’t really that bad. I got sick last Friday, and spent Saturday and Sunday recuperating. Now, that’s all fine and dandy except for the fact that Saturday and Sunday was meant for working on Women’s Press.

But, everything worked out okay. In fact, better than okay. About 90% of the content came in before Friday, which is definitely different than last issue, when we had content still coming in half an hour after I was supposed to have delivered the files to UGS.

Also, the design wasn’t rushed, so I think this is truly the issue I’m most proud of. I didn’t take as many risks with design as I did two issues ago, but it’s just a pleasant issue to look at. If you’d like to look at it, check it out here (PDF 4.0 megs). Watching it get printed was a great joy, as the color was nearly flawless within two minutes of the run.

So, yeah. It was actually the kind of experience every issue should be. I’m excited, and maybe a bit naiive for the next issue.

Teaching the Ape to Write Poems
By James Tate

They didn’t have much trouble
teaching the ape to write poems:
first they strapped him into the chair,
then tied the pencil around his hand
(the paper had already been nailed down).
Then Dr. Bluespire leaned over his shoulder
and whispered into his ear:
“You look like a god sitting there.
Why don’t you try writing something?”

—————————————-

This was a 1973 poem by James Tate. He’s pretty amazing. Nicole bought me one of his most recent books of poems last Christmas, called Return to the City of the White Donkeys. Now THAT book was filled with an otherworldly sense of humor and chaos. Although each poem in that book told a very specific story, you never knew how it would end… nor even how it would middle. I’ll post something from that book soon.

Nicole was very surprised last week when I told her I had never carved a pumpkin before. It’s true. So, Monday, in the midst of Women’s Press madness!!!! we had our neighbors over and carved us some crazy vegetables. Oh, the drawn-on koi pumpkin was Apollo’s. I swear, I need to post a more flattering picture of him. He’s quite the handsome one.

Oh, and thanks to Brian Lampert for his PacMan idea. I thought I was going to do Pong, but realized that was kinda lame.

I’m thinking of carving Tetris next year.

This post on Wired made me geek out just a little too much… Basically, imagine you’re playing Dance Dance Revolution, with a 12-foot projection screen, giant pads, and you mis-step. At that point, you get hit by 3,595 degrees of flaming propane from nine jets.

It’s like Dance Dance Revolution, only in hell. You know, with a really heavy flame-retardant suit on.

So, anybody who’s talked to me in the last couple of days will know I have the plague. I took yesterday off from work, and today’s been mostly lounging, because I can’t do much else. But the Nov-Dec issue of Women’s Press is due on Wednesday, so I’ve been doing a little bit of that…

So, yeah. Busy. Busy. Busy. And sick, but hopefully getting better.

Oh, and CONGRATS to my sis for getting an A- in Math this quarter! Rock on!

And, congrats to Matt Dixon for turning one year older tomorrow. You the man!

Well, it had to happen sometime. I succumbed to the plague of iTunes. I had to do it.

As I previously mentioned, any album of My Friend the Chocolate Cake’s is about $30 to import. On iTunes, it’s about $7.97. So, although I hate the DRMtasticness of iTunes and really wished there was a better way to get stuff that’s really available nowhere else…

I blame pandora. But the album is sooooo good. And here is the song I was gushing over:

My Friend the Chocolate Cake - Fingerbone (mp3, 5.46megs, 192kbps)

Wired had a cool new post today, called Very Short Stories, in which they asked authors to submit their best six-word-long stories.

My favorites are below:

The baby?s blood type? Human, mostly.
- Orson Scott Card

Failed SAT. Lost scholarship. Invented rocket.
- William Shatner

Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so.
- Joss Whedon

?Cellar?? ?Gate to, uh ? hell, actually.?
- Ronald D. Moore

It?s behind you! Hurry before it
- Rockne S. O?Bannon (creator of Farscape)

I?m your future, child. Don?t cry.
- Stephen Baxter

We went solar; sun went nova.
- Ken MacLeod

Batman Sues Batsignal: Demands Trademark Royalties.
- Cory Doctorow

Dinosaurs return. Want their oil back.
- David Brin

So bloody awesome. You know it.

Be prepared to rejoice, my brethren. Two days ago, Firefox2 was released in all it’s non-beta-release glory.

I’ve been a user and staunch supporter of the project since 0.5 days, back when it was called Phoenix and the idea of tabbed browsing was the most innovative thing since zombies first started carrying squirt guns. I was there when it was renamed Firebird, and then finally Firefox. And I will be a staunch supporter of it until I find something better.

Firefox2 is a joy to use. It’s funny that it is now supported by more Windows OS’ than IE7 is, given that Microsoft has only released IE7 for XP SP2 and Vista. It also looks and behaves more like a Windows application than IE7 does… I mean, there’s still a file menu, for heaven’s sake!

I think that my favorite feature of it so far has to be the inline spell check. Crazy cool.

Anyhow, go to GetFirefox.com to procure the latest and greatest web browsing experience.

A couple of weeks ago, I was really surprised when I told my sister to download GAIM and install it, and she didn’t know how. I think I felt a little like my older brother did when I, 13 years old and wanting to play a game on his Sega Saturn, asked him how to take a CD out of its case. On my defense, the CD felt flimsy and was securely lodged in there. Growing up on casette tapes all my life, how was I to know you press the center to pop the disk out?

And so, it’s this idea that the next generation will naturally know more than you do about computers, as if the knowledge is genetically hard wired into youngsters minds, even when there’s been a lack of exposure to said technology. And myself, like my brother before me 10 years back, just happen to be major technofiles with all the latest gadgets… I mean, I just got Synergy to work on my two laptops!!! I guess I’ll save that for another post…

So, I felt a bit like my sister when I decided to install IE7 yesterday. I figured it’d be similar to downloading any other program, or at least similar to downloading the uber-awesome Firefox, but boy, was I in for a shocker. I grabbed my laptop and headed to the crapper, because I thought it couldn’t possibly take very long to download… and that was the last anyone has heard from me.

So, I head to Microsoft’s web site, downloaded the installer, which was about 14 meg, if I recall. And right here, I’m expecting to do only two things in the installer. 1) Accept some crazy long-winded legalese, and 2)  Tell it where to download to.

It asks for neither.

Instead it goes through validating my copy of XP SP2 (which is genuine, WOO HOO!) and asking me if I want to install more programs. Ummm…. okay, sure.

Then, it spends almost 10 minutes downloading additional content, updating said content, and finally installing. And guess what?!?!? NO PROGRESS BAR!!! That’s right. I thought it might take 1, maybe 2 minutes, enough time for the foul feeling of downloading Microsoft products to leave me with my fecal. But there I am, counting away the time, thinking how silly I really am and finally getting off the toilet.

Oh, and the best part: It overrode IE6 without asking. Now, this is good for most people, but for a person who does ANY website design, not being able to test a site out on a browser that whether I like it or not 95% of the population uses is like a divorce on Christmas day. You just. don’t. do. it.

So, aside from that, it’s pretty, has a bunch of security fixes, deals with tabs a little differently than Firefox, and will be pretty awesome once it’s shoved down everyone’s throats in the next couple of months.

But, if you care about being able to surf the net freely without your computer crashing, go with Firefox. They know how to write installers.

For a while, I’ve been giving a bit of thought about what my “dream job” would be. You know, the job I’d first apply for if ever I move to the big city. And lately, that job has been to work as a designer for a book publisher. Designing books, inside and out. I just think it’d be the most awesome.

And I don’t know if I’d rather design the interior, or the exterior. Book covers are pretty awesome, but in the last two years, I’ve understood that the upper echelon of design is in laying out text. It’s beautiful in it’s simplicity, and is utterly unique in one major way: in almost everything that is designed, it is meant for design to be seen and noticed.

In book design, the layout of text should be completely transparent. If there’s anything on the page that is so cool-looking that it makes the text more difficult to read, then you’ve done a poor job, because the only purpose of the guts of a book is to be read.

Anyhow, aside from a tirade into my own ego, I wanted to share this with you. It’s a blog showing off cool book covers. It’s FREAKIN’ Awesome. Check it out, check it out, check it out now.

I’ve had an itching to update my site for about a month now. Update my portfolio, show off my new art, and basically completely revamp the appearance, merging the journal and portfolio sections. So, that’s going to happen soon,

Recently, I thought I hadn’t been doing much art in the last year. I have a lot of projects, school and otherwise, but not art… well, I came to the realization that’s simply not true.

So, to see some of the 80+ pieces I’ve done over the last three months, check out my deviantart site: penciledin.deviantart.com. It’s scrumchtaculous!

Maybe we’ve become rich suburbanites. Maybe we have nothing better than to turn art and the inner turmoils of the human soul into a feckless competition. Maybe we just like Shin’s sushi bar.

I don’t know exactly why, but when Red approached me with his wager, his voice almost cracking with glee… well, how could I turn him down?

So, here’s the dealeeo as I understand it: We write blog posts. We write more blog posts. We write better blog posts. At least four a week, from Saturday at 12:01 am to the next Saturday at 12:00 am. In the coming weeks, that number may grow, and we may institute a word count requirement. Whomever doesn’t fulfill the ever-mounting requirements buys dinner for the other at Shin’s.

Ah, I can see it all now: in a year we will be huddled around the keyboards for warmth, our sites blooming with nearly slashdot-like omnipotence, and we but two hulking shells of men. I CAN’T WAIT!!!!

Update: Now, I know how to spell Shin’s. 

Well, my external drive went kerplunk. Last week, Brubeck, as he was affectionately called, suffered a great fall. Doctors tried to resuscitate him to no avail.

Memorial services will be announced soon. In his passing, he leaves behind a void where the entire series of Farscape, Sliders, Battlestar Galactica (the original), and many others used to be. 160 GB of storage will be donated to the landfill in the near future.

In grief, I’ve begun ordering the Farscape DVDs… I just don’t know what I’m going to do with my life now. You just believe that data will last forever, and then poof. You become a shell of a man who used to have a 160 GB hard drive. Oh, woe is me.

Wow. The third season is blowing me away. Well, not as much me as some of the characters. Egads, perhaps I’ve said too much…

But really, the first two episodes, shown last Friday, were absolutely remarkable. I had begun to argue that Battlestar jumped the shark somewhere in the back half of last season, but now I’m seriously rethinking that.

Penguin just released a new collection of their classical works, called “graphic classics,” with modern-day illustrators tackling the cover art in very new and fresh ways. Check them out here.

I especially like the covers for Voltaire’s Candide and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (both of which I must read again).

Last month, it seems that Bike Sumo got a little out of hand, and there was a whole bunch of trash and a wrecked fence left behind afterwards. Not to mention tons of cooked chicken on the ground (long story). So, they had to change the location, and it didn’t seem that anyone knew where it was going to be until the very end of last night’s bike happening. Those who stuck out the bike happening to the end crossed the bridge over the railroad station and continued down a bike path I had no clue about. Everyone finally met in the parking lot of this business park off of Laurel, and the hullabaloo started.

Unfortunately, neither Nicole nor I stuck around much longer. I suppose it’s easier to justify going to an event that might run later than 11 if it’s a simple walk home. As it was, Nicole had class this morning at 8 and I had work at 9, so I don’t know if I’ll be attending too many bike sumos in the near future… until there’s a more hospitable location.

Bummer.

So, there are many Star Trek fan films out there, in the internet, and there are even some series. Most of them are plagued by annoying little things, like horrible acting, bad scripts, or simply filming everything in front of a green screen. I’m not saying these groups shouldn’t be making these films, I’m just saying quality could be improved in many cases.

And Starship Exeter was one of them. That is, until they succeeded in putting together something that is a joy to watch. It’s set in the original series timeframe, like New Voyages, but there’s no original Enterprise pulling a barrellroll or flying through a giant Guardian of Forever. Instead, this latest episode actually felt like it belongs on television. The acting still has a little ways to go, but the directing was AMAZING. This is coming a long way from the first episode, which felt like a bunch of 20 and 30-somethings running around LARPing in the woods. I guess the first episode was a proof of concept, so they could prove they could make a full-length episode. This second episode, entitled “The Tressaurian Intersection” proves they can make great television.

They release the episodes in five parts, and the first three parts of the latest episode are online. I kinda see it as a sort of serialized Buck Rodgers sort of thing… so instead of the fact they don’t have the ENTIRE episode online, they have three parts of a five part story online. Don’t wait for all the parts before you check it out.

Oh, and if you want to laugh, check this out.

Last night I had a crazy dream in which I moved back to the mansion, and was paid to live there. I remember calling Devon and he was screaming “get out of there NOW, it’s a TRAP!”

Also, there was a pretty crazy party at the pool in the back, and a lawyer came up to me to discuss the medical benefits I’d be receiving from living there.

Pretty sweet deal? I know!

That is, until I realized I joined a cult and got shipped to Guadalajara in a suitcase…

Epson salt is a strange strange thing.

You know, up until yesterday I thought it was a fake product, or at least something they don’t sell anymore, available only in fairy tales and “when I was your age” stories. So, when complaining of a foot strain I got from frisbee to my grandmother, she told me I should get some. And I go to the store. And I look for it with all the other salts. You know: table salt, rock salt, ice cream rock salt. Nowhere to be found.

And then I realized, perhaps Epson salt is not something people eat. So, how does one who has NO IDEA what Epson salt packaging looks like actually find the darned thing? Ask someone? Heck no.

Well, after about 10 minutes of hemming and hawing, I finally ask a courtesy clerk, and it’s all sorted out.

I get home, start soaking, and ahhhhhh blessed relief. But check this: the water gets cold pretty quick, and after taking the foot out of the soak, the grand rapture of a life without pain only lasts about 10 minutes.

And we’re also keeping the bowl away from the dog. I believe it is not befitting of our dog to drink my foot juice. Also, Epson salt, when combined with water, is supposedly a very powerful laxative, and we already put up with enough of the dog’s crap.

Things I didn’t know two days ago…

Note to self:

Maybe it’s not such a good idea to play Ultimate Frisbee with bare feet. Bad things happen within five minutes of me taking off my shoes, and they’ve happened multiple times.
The first day I did it was maybe three months ago and within two plays I had a bee sting on the bottom of my foot. It’s funny, it didn’t hurt as much as it did when I was a kid, but it was pretty annoying.

Last week, I take off my shoes, and during practice throws Dan tosses a doozy over me. As I run it down, I step into a small hole and hear my leg pop in three places. After sitting down for a fiver, it really wasn’t that bad. Just a little scary.

Today, I take off my shoes and my first step is into a pile of dog poo. Great, just great. But there is an upside to the entire affair: I was taking stock of my environment more. And there was a lot of crap on the field, presumably left from people who CAN’T PICK UP AFTER THEIR DOGS.

Let that be a warning. Someone who will never meet you may curse you all the rest of his days. You might think I’m being a little harsh, but oh no — this is war. You know… the silent brooding kind.

Sigh, Red caught me.

I’ll admit it: this month, I’ve been trying to post something at least once a day, trying to net the most posts per month on this site since January 2003. And really, it’s been about trying to make more reason for you to visit, oh dear reader.

So, now that I’ve been caught… I don’t know what to do with my life… I think I’ll take up GOING TO THE BIG BAD VOODOO DADDY CONCERT TONIGHT!!! WOOO!

In case you haven’t, I highly recommend a listen to The Early November’s new album, The Mother, The Mechanic and The Path. This whopping three-disk album took a couple of listens to get, and I’m still trying to slowly digest the first two disks before getting to the third, but it’s pretty darned amazing.

So far, my favorite tracks are Decoration, Little Black Heart, Hair, Is It My Fault, and 1000 Times a Day.

Their website is theearlynovember.net.

This is amazing! One screen that shows up to three different images, full screen, at the same time, depending on which angle you view it at.

Stunning.

The Echoing Green have been one of my favorite bands since high school. They’re synth-pop. You know it.

So, they released a new song on their myspace page. It’s pretty amazing, but don’t just take my word for it. Unless you don’t like it, then take my word for it.

Posted on Craig’s List: 

OAKLAND, CA — Oakland Raiders football practice was delayed nearly two
hours today after a player reported finding an unknown white powdery
substance on the practice field. Head coach Art Shell immediately suspended
practice and called the police and federal investigators. After a complete
analysis, FBI forensic experts determined that the white substance unknown
to Raider players was the GOAL LINE. Practice resumed after special agents decided
the team was unlikely to encounter the substance again.

Just to follow up on a previous post, unfortunately, Boo Boo Records did not carry Rob Dougan’s Furious Angels, but they did have the latest issue of Women’s Press out. So, that was pretty awesome, seeing my work in a record store.

Well, so I resorted to online trickery to get the cd. I figured I might have to, but sometimes it just makes me feel dirty.

Major kudos to Aaron Sorkin. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip’s pilot episode was one of the most engrossing things I’ve seen on television in a long time. Bradley Whitford and Matthew Perry, two actors who shone in West Wing, rock the scene with flair, and dare I say panache. Oh, and Amanda Peet is so on my list. Gosh, she’s been on my list since The Whole Nine Yards, but now… sigh.

I tell you, I nearly cried.

So, today will be the third day this week I will have tried to procure Rob Dougan’s album Furious Angels in a store in SLO. First, it was Best Buy, then Cheap Thrills, and now, finally, I’ll head over to Boo Boo’s before I resort to paying $10+S/H to the Internet gods.

When I first heard portions of the album at work, I thought, How interesting, someone’s taken the soundtrack of the Matrix and spoken over it. Well, it turns out that it’s the other way around. He recorded the album with his gruesomely dark and amazing lyrics, and then the Wachowski Bros. used the instrumentals of many of the songs for some of the more amazing action sequences in the films. So, think lots of strings and choral arrangements meets titles like “Clubbed to Death” and “I’m Not Driving Anymore”.

You don’t understand. I need this album. AAAAAGGGHHH.

This is an interesting, if short, look at how vinyl sales are increasing in Europe. They’re saying that, in this age of iPods, the CD might be a dying format, and vinyl could perhaps get the final laugh.

Ha!

Sorry, that one was a bit premature.

Now, I don’t usually like Coldstone’s ice cream. I guess I don’t really have anything against it, but I’ve always liked Bali’s and Country Culture as two places to get an icey treat that is more delicious and cheaper than Coldstone’s, but after last night, I think I might have to change my mind.

Here’s my advice: try the waffle batter ice cream there. It’s positively earth-shattering. A good mix-in is almonds. Good golly, I’m drooling just thinking about it.

There’s gotta be a downside to this ice cream. I mean, it has to cause blindness in kittens, ruin marriages, or something. So, if it does… I guess you’ve been warned.

Nicole woke me at 1:30 two nights ago, telling me to look outside. There was a bright light shining through the trees in our yard, so I laid my head back down and said “don’t worry, the aliens are just going to abduct us. Go back to sleep.” But she was adamant; there was somebody out there amongst the apple trees. And sure enough, I could see the shadows moving.

So, I walked into the living room and flipped the porch light switch on. It blew out. Greeeeaaaat.

Hey, let’s turn on all the lights in the house! Maybe that’ll give this weirdo the hint.

Nope. It was still out there. Creeping me out with every long shadow cast. Although I thought about calling the cops, in the end I decided to grab some clothes and the lantern and head on out to get to the bottom of this.

Well, I found a lady, around maybe 35, picking apples off the ground under the trees. Mind you, this is 1:45 in the morning. So I ask her if there’s anything I can help with. She politely says her name and that she lives in the trailer park down the street. She heard that there were some good apples here, and she came by to pick them up for her horse.

Well, I told her about the light she’s shining in our window that’s keeping me up, and she apologized. Smiling, I said “I just wanted to make sure there weren’t any crazies running around out here.” To which she replied, “oh no, I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy!”

Somehow, when someone says that phrase twice, it completely makes me think they’re crazy.

Next time, though, when I get my lantern, I’m grabbing my nine iron too. Whether I’m using it as a bludgeoning instrument when things get a little… hairy, or if I want to chip a few apples at them, I don’t know yet.

According to the Devil’s Dictionary, the future is defined as:

That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.

It doesn’t take into account, though, that the future never arrives.

Another nice tidbit of skepticism from a friend.

Have you ever wondered the best way to kill a fly? I mean, they buzz around all day. Swatting them seems to not quite work. Sometimes the air currents you create by slapping at them actually push them out of the way.

Well, at the end of my first year of college, I learned a very useful skill from one of the many denizens at the mansion.

What you should do is, first, sight your target. Make sure it has landed, resting on a flat surface.

Second, prepare your killing implement, the only one you’d have if you were stranded in a South American jungle with 18 hungry panthers: your bare hands. Hold them about six inches apart, directly perpendicular to and about three inches from the surface your victim is resting on.

Third, and finally, clap. Clap like your life depends on it, because although they’ll tell you that flies are completely harmless, both you and I know the truth. If everything worked out, the fly, disturbed by the sudden motion, should fly RIGHT INTO YOUR CLAPPING HANDS. You are, in fact, taking advantage of one very important piece of fly anatomy: they can only take off vertically. Know your enemy, and then strike with utter ruthlessness.

One clap should be sufficient, though. Don’t get too carried away. You don’t want to be the one to incite a war with it’s species. Also, make sure you’re not killing any flies that are ambassadors. They tend to frown on such behavior. And finally, don’t act like a goof. Seriously.

With this method, I’ve had about an 85% success rate, once I figured out timing and distance. Hope it helps!

I knew that I grew up when… today, an unfastened lid made me dribble coffee onto my pants. Christine politely informed me that we do have a bathroom at work.

Arriving home after sitting in traffic for two hours, I said to myself, “Oh, wait, I don’t live here anymore.”
- Chester

For all those who believe some stories are best told in one sentence, or for any who think that could be a great idea, I submit this site for your review.

I realized that with yesterday’s post about how it felt to get punched in the face after coming back from Arkansas. You see, then I was speaking metaphorically. This beauty was real.

I like to tell people I got it defending Nicole’s honor. Nobody believes me.

Actually, I got it playing Ultimate Frisbee. I jumped for a pop-fly, but another player jumped higher, then came down on my face with his elbow. After playing for another half hour after this, I thought I probably should go home and put some ice on it.

But yeah, this photo was taken at work, two days after the incident.

If you were ever wondering what my desk looks like, well, here you go:

If you weren’t wondering… well, I’ve got nothing for you.

I was dreading this.

A Cingular store, 5:30 pm. I walk in, and the lady behind the desk asks what she can help me with.

On a slight tangent, I don’t think I really talk about a lot of misfortune on this thing… Recently, I tend to believe that there’s so much to life that perhaps saving misfortunate deeds for posterity would be a poor waste of time. This time, I think I need to illustrate how bad things can be before we can move to how great.

The trip to Arkansas was great. Coming home afterwards was a little tough. It was sort of like getting continually punched in the face. You see, Nicole and I tallied up what we lost, monetarily, by going on the trip. This included gas, hotel, food, car repair, and two weeks of missed work. If we hadn’t gone on the trip, we would have saved $2500.

Now, don’t get me wrong, we’ve been able to have a great last two months since coming back. A little penny-pinching and some creative thinking in terms of how to cook meals, not to mention the generosity of friends, neighbors and family, have definitely kept us on the up and up. But one of the foremost things I’ve dreaded is paying my cell phone bill, which was just about $350. $250 of that was roaming whilst in the midst of nowhere.

So, I told the lady behind the desk my story: I had specifically come in a week before leaving on the trip, asking about what kind of roaming charges I might be incurred. One of the reps there told me my plan gave me nationwide coverage. Unfortunately, he didn’t actually look at my plan, he just assumed I had the nationwide plan, which had less minutes but cost just as much as my plan.

Well, to make what could be a gargantuan post shorter, because she recognized their fowl-up, she was able to cut down my bill to $112, and that’s including this latest month’s bill. So, I suppose she cut it down to $62. That’s a lot better than otherwise. Also, I got a better plan with more minutes, nationwide coverage and free mobile to mobile with other Cingular customers. This means I’ll most likely be less prone to the overage charges I hit more often than I’d like to admit, and I’ll probably feel better about talking to my clients on the phone.

So, it’s been a good day.

Ever wondered how to hate a font? You know, not just think “oh dear heavens, I’ll never use that, and will eschew anyone who does,” but rather, “I am disgusted by this vile, horrific crime against humanity that is this font.” I have a similar issue with a font my bosses love, which will heretofore remain unnamed… that is, until they read my blog and ask me about it.

Well, if you’ve ever wondered how anyone can hate a font, this is a perfect example. In singular fashion, he reminds me why I’ve gone crotchety in my old age, and it’s because there is ugliness out there pawned off as design. Sometimes, I’ve added to this ugliness, but I’m waiting for the day I can say that the buck stops here. But I’m too much for a wuss for that.

It’s funny: I generally am not a fan of the fact that it’s so easy to bastardize a typeface by stretching, squeezing, or otherwise screwing around with a beautifully designed typeface… but in an example that Mr. Bierut outlines in the article linked to above, I actually disagree with him. Apple made ITC Garamond actually bareable by squishing it horizontally to 80% back in the good ol’ 80’s. But I digress. It’s time to have standards.

For work, I had to find an image of a mobile. You know, one of those spinny things that the “youth” these days have in their “cribs.” Well, I tried searching for mobile on google and iStockPhoto, and all that came up were cell phones and the like. Change the search to “child mobile” and you get little people on cell phones.

Finally “crib mobile” in google elicited the response I needed. Talk about homonym craziness!

A physicist, a biologist and a mathematician are hanging out in a park one day, and they notice two people walking into a house across the street. Half an hour later, three people walk out of the same house.

The physicist says, “we must have had inaccurate measurements!”

The biologist says, “they must have reproduced.”

The mathematician says, “if one more person walks into the house, then the house will be empty.”

So, on Thursday night, I finally joined the SLO Bike Happening. It’s almost zen to be in the middle of several hundred people riding bikes down Higuera street, one of the busiest streets in SLO, and pretty much taking over Downtown. I think it’s akin to this video I found here.

According to Fun-Motion.com:

The excellent Trackmania series of games includes a beefy replay editor. The obvious use for a tool like this is to edit spiffy camera paths for your replays. But, you can also merge multiple replays into one. You could use this to scrutinize lap times among your racing buddies to improve your route. Or, you could merge 1,000 replays from the Trackmania community into a single video. Someone did just that, and the results are amazing.

Yeah, that’s about how it felt. You know, with bikes instead.

Recently, I think I’ve been too busy to allow the passage of time to really affect me, but this morning I realized that

• one year ago, I started working at BIG Images,
• two years ago, my car exploded,
• three years ago, I moved into Jim’s house,
• four years ago, I started to realize that living at the mansion perhaps wasn’t a good idea,
• and five years ago, I was working at VONS in College Heights, biding my time before I moved to SLO.

So, here’s to September. All the glamour, the splendor, the money, the lack of money. To leaves dropping. Hair falling out. Radiation. The rising tides. Polar bears for neighbors. Flying cars. Flying car wrecks. A new century begins. Zombies are the new black. Everybody gives 110% but only gets 5%. Zombie slaves build new pyramids. Twinkies are healthier than broccoli.

Okay, the twinkies thing I made up. But seriously, folks… what was I writing about?

For me, yesterday lasted 48 hours.

Now that I’ve graduated, I have far more homework and many more all-nighters. I’m looking for irony in that, but maybe I’m just too tired to see it.

And so, the latest issue of the Women’s Press has been completed, and I delivered the files to UGS yesterday. It should be ready for pickup on Friday, but if you’re impatient, you can download the latest issue here (PDF, 3.7 M). This latest issue cements the new design aesthetic we started rolling out last issue, but also includes the new logo and front page design.

I’ve been working on this redesign since early May, and I’m excited about this issue. The paper looks better and better every two months.

What’s next? Lots and lots of sleep. You know, when I’m not working.

by Miller Williams

I held it in my hands while he told the story.

He had found it in a fallen bunker,
a book for notes with all the pages blank.
He took it to keep for a sketchbook and diary.

He learned years later, when he showed the book
to an old bookbinder, who paled, and stepped back
a long step and told him what he held,
what he had laid the days of his life in.
It’s bound, the binder said, in human skin.

I stood turning it over in my hands,
turning it in my head. Human skin.

What child did this skin fit? What man, what woman?
Dragged still full of its flesh from what dream?

Who took it off the meat? Some other one
who stayed alive by knowing how to do this?

I stared at the changing book and a horror grew,
I stared and a horror grew, which was, which is,
how beautiful it was until I knew.

You might recall yesterday my post about Pandora. I hadn’t really listened to it in the last six months as much, except for when I was on computers with… limited music libraries (like my old Ubuntu box or my Mac a few months back).

The service is an amazing way to discover artists you’d never have listened to before. I’ve heard my brother talk about the iTunes music store that way too; pop in an artist name and find similar artists. I suppose there are pros and cons to both services:
1) iTunes serves you DRM like ice cream during a heat stroke. This is all fine and dandy, until you want to use any music player that isn’t Apple-endorsed. I’m not yet ready to completely become a part of the cult of Mac… well, I’m probably closer than I might think. But this is a matter of principle, and I often like to think of Mac as an underdog in the computing world. Why should I sully my relationship with other underdogs by befriending an iPod, taking it home and asking Nicole if I can keep it (even though it is pretty cute…) But I digress. Keep your iPod. Don’t give it to me. See if I care.
2) Pandora, because of it’s music licensing agreement, doesn’t allow you to replay songs it’s played or allow you to automatically jump to a song you want to hear. It encourages you to actually discover new music, which I suppose is it’s main purpose, but oh boy, it’s been torture. Let me tell you why:

Yesterday, I heard a song on Pandora that caught my ear. I’m sorry, that’s probably not the right word for it. It was like a chorus of angels kicked me in the face. It’s by this band called My Friend the Chocolate Cake, and the name of it is “Fingerbone.” Honestly, the name is cute, but the mood was deep, filled to the brim with sorrowy goodness. It gave me the same chills I got when I first heard Sufjan Steven’s “Flint, for the Unemployed and Underpaid” and “For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti.”

So, here’s the good: this band has been around since 1993-ish, and has released five or six albums. “Fingerbone” is off their first full-length, so, their newer stuff should be even more refined. And after hearing one other song on YouTube, I think this band is amazing.

Here’s the bad: they’re from Australia, so unless I want to pay outrageous fees for imported cds, I’m going to have to find some, ahem, pir*cough*ated music of theirs. So far, my search has yielded nothing. Also nothing on the Live Music library at archive.org.

And all I want is “Fingerbone.” Just to hear it again. Pandora won’t just let me hear it again in it’s entirety, unless I want to deal with their randomized system and possibly hear it once more in the next ten years.

Man, what a whiner.

For those that listen to music online at any point, and are interested in discovering new music, you should really check out Pandora Internet Radio, a website where you can input one song or artist that you like, and the program will create a playlist based on your choice. You can choose whether you do or do not like a particular song, and that decision will decide how the program creates the rest of the playlist.

I found out about it maybe half a year ago, but only recently have I really been listening to it with any regularity. Check it out. Also, note the flash interface they used; it’s very simple, but tremendously functional. Not a lot of flair, but just enough in the right places to make you feel like you’re jumping into a fluid process.

Tonight. This is when I thank the virtue patience.
After work, we trade our dress shirts and dirty smocks
for nightfall and satin. Brown eyes touching blue.
Etta James and C sharp. And we’re away.

Tonight we dance four left feet through the desert.
We luck past Las Vegas at midnight.
And tonight we are lightning storm, Arizona.
Momentary bright cactus, soaked and laughing.

Tonight I count constellations on your back.
We sauté the onions. Olive oil. Suburban streets.
Tonight we build a temple of two forms,
cascade hair like waterfalls rushing over pillows.

Tonight we claw from the grave into life. Tonight
we are mountains settling after avalanche.
But still we scream go baby go after a setting sun.
Cachuma Pass, the 154 at ninety.

And afterwards, though in the still
I watch for advancing armies,
at dawn, arm and chest rest. Stop signs. Wheat fields.
My head gently on your bosom we split back into two.

It’s amazing how much I love being home. We’re currently taking care of Nicole’s dog Apollo. No, not “taking care of him” like the mafia would “take care of him,” but rather, keep him company, feed him, give him a place to stay. One of these days Apollo’s going to get his butt off the couch and get a job, but you know, I suppose it’s tough to find a suitable career for someone in his position.

So, Nicole and I are also taking care of Doc’s dogs while Doc O’Connor is away in Africa. Every evening, they get a walk. On one of these walks, we look at the window and notice Apollo looking at us from on top the table. Not only is this a no-no typically, but this time, he managed to eat the half a stick of butter that was sitting on the butter bowl on the table.

He wasn’t a very happy dog that night. We weren’t very happy people having to clean up after a not very happy dog that night.

But all in all, Apollo has been a great joy. Somehow, having a pet around makes a house feel more like a home. Vomit not included.

Oh, and P.S., The Format has a new album out. It’s called (appropriately enough) “Dog Problems” and it is FRELLING FANTASTIC! They’re first album, “Interventions + Lullabies” was really good, but this album takes their pop formula and adds a weight that is very odd to find in pop rockers of this day. Check out their website here.

Our trip was wonderful. I’ve never seen such amazing country, and the greatest part about it was how different every town in America really is. It’s easy to tell the difference between Roswell, NM, Amarillo, TX, and Wayton, AR. Of course, those are three very different towns, but the entire country seems to be like that: the tones and chords of the countryside resonating through the fabric I’m made of.

We stayed twelve days at my grandparent’s house in Wayton, Arkansas, in the middle of the Ozark National Forest. It’s green, really green. And there’s this species of tree frog that sounds nothing like frogs I’m used to. They sound like you’re in the middle of an insect, as if the entire Ozarks are built on the back of a bumblebee, and the sounds surround.

All in all, it was a fantastic trip. And my first day back at work was great, but exhausting. And now, I’m up almost an hour after Nicole’s gone to sleep, and I think I should toss myself in bed.

So, I’m alive. Blissfully alive. And I’ve got the bug bites to prove it.

Introducing BIKE SUMO!!!
Raise shields!And I shall chase you round Mutara’s nebula and round Perdition’s flame before I give you up….

KHAN!!!!!

And so, if you’re really interested in finding out WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON in these pictures, and why there were about fifty drunk people playing BIKE SUMO in our backyard… and why half of them are dressed as pirates:

Nicole knows more than I do… and these guys know even more, I swear.Geez. Time to go to bed.

Danny Elfman’s dancing kinda reminds me of my spaztic craziness on the dance floor. And I hear that’s just how they danced in the 80s.

I think I’m going to have to pick up Dead Man’s Party on vinyl somewhere.

Those of you who aren’t tremendously in the know about Oingo Boingo, or Danny Elfman, here goes: Danny Elfman was the lead singer of Oingo Boingo. They had such hits in the 80s as Weird Science and Dead Man’s Party. After Boingo, Elfman went on to score every Tim Burton film ever produced, was the voice of Jack Skellington in A Nightmare Before Christmas and did the themes for Batman, The Simpsons, and a bunch of others.

It’s pretty cool. By the way, I roxored my MySpace page. Check it out.

The internet is once more in my life!

And if anyone was interested to spend a good 45 minutes having your MIND BLOWN, you might want to listen to the new Muse album Black Holes and Revelations here on their MySpace page.

Oh, and if you’re a fan of either the classic Nintendo game Metroid, or of heavy metal, you might want to check out MetroidMetal.com.

Nothing beats rock.

I really love the new place. That is a weird statement, given that I hated — hated — it the first day.

To begin with, I hadn’t seen it before I paid my first month’s rent. I knew that Nicole had housesat for the prior tenants (I’ll just call them the Jerks Who Left The Apartment A Horrific Mess, or the JWLTAAHM), and she said the place was nice. Knowing the Doc, our landlord, I’ve heard that she doesn’t really fix things. The burden is on you to get things done, and then she’ll take it off the rent. My greatest fear was that the JWLTAAHM would have taken advantage of the fact that Doc wasn’t going to check the apartment prior to them moving…

Well, I show up the first morning to quite a sight:

• The bedroom had an interesting value-added feature, one where the window was replaced by empty space and giant shards of broken glass. What fun!
• There were five other windows that were either boarded up, cracked, or also missing parts of glass. Gee golly willakers!
• Let’s not forget the bleach stain and iron burn in the carpet. Somebody pinch me!

Although that isn’t an exhaustive list, you get the idea.

Time has gone on, though. Old wounds have healed, all the windows have been replaced, thanks to Doc, who fronted the bill. A clever arrangement of furniture covers up any carpet abnormalities. And it’s beginning to feel like home. What an odd thing, for in this time of great change and life flying by at breakneck speeds, I never thought I’d find home so easily.

And now, it’s been a long week and a half, and I’ve finally moved the last of my stuff from Jim’s. I’m sitting on his couch now, because there’s no Internet at home. And I know I will miss this place, Princeton manor. It has seen me through three years of exploding cars, women, floors and rooftops. I can only imagine what life will be like in this next year.

My only regret upon completing this part of my eduation at Cal Poly was that I never wrote in “Because I am a ninja” on a test when I didn’t actually know the answer.

So, today was my last class of my education at Cal Poly. Sure, I still have the Spring Banquet tonight and both of my finals on Tuesday, but I can’t help but feel like I’ve been blindsided with a ten foot pole. My Senior Project is done. Well, the first draft anyway, and I’m currently waiting for my advisor to bring it to me before I leave for work…

This last quarter has been the most action-packed three months of my life. My first trip to Magic Mountain, enduring a giant hole in my house where a dining room used to be, et cetera. It’s funny, though; Although this event, my graduation, is awfully similar to five years ago when I was finishing High School, moving 300 miles away and leaving everything I knew, there’s actually nothing similar about it. It’s the end of a five-year era in my life, for sure, and it’s the beginning of another one… but I’m going to still be in San Luis, I’m still going to be working at BIG Images, I’ll still have my freelancing stuff. I will be moving much closer to downtown, though, and I think I’ll have much more opportunity to get back into the open mic and local music “scenes.”

I’m also really excited about unveiling the new design I’ve been working on for Women’s Press, the newspaper for which I’m the layout designer. It’s been coming along well, and I want to kind of pitch an entire shift in the design, including possibly working on more dynamic photography and illustration work in it.

And so, I bet you I’ll still be busy as ever from here on out, just busy in more of the ways I want to be busy.

And so, it all comes down to tonight, finishing the first draft of the rest of my Senior Project. All I can think of is a Jim-ism from this evening:

“I haven’t had this much fun since Auschwitz!”

If anybody was interested in catching a glimpse of a fantastic track that will be on Sufjan Steven’s upcoming July 11 release The Avalanche: Outtakes and Extras from the Illinois Album, then you might want to download his song Dear Mr. Supercomputer here at Pitchfork.

I can’t wait. I have both of the vinyl recordings of Greetings From Michigan, the Great Lakes State and Come On! Feel the Illinoise! because I’m awesome and wanted to have 7 extra songs off of them… So, yeah.

You have to see this! It’s basically a public service announcement to the Earth about it’s infestation of humans.
I love it.

So, today it rained in San Luis, kind of unexpectedly given that this is the end of May. Of course, any kind of weather is a little unexpected to me given that before today, I hadn’t looked at the weather report once in the last three months.

I have a communication problem, currently. No, not with Nicole, nor with the powers that be… it’s with Vera. You know, my car. She… poops out. No, NOT FECAL MATTER. Just… gives up on life.

Turns out she has a problem with me leaving the headlights on. This has happened a ridiculously large number of times in the last few months. I blame it on the fact that she doesn’t beep like other cars do when I leave them, letting me know I’m a moron and someone should shoot me in the face. No, she prefers to suffer in silence.

So, does anybody know someway I can either fix the beeping or fix my brain so that I don’t do this anymore?

Tonight, I was at Farmer’s Market here in SLO, which is in and of itself a very rare occasion. I guess I just don’t like crowds that much, but today was really great. Ran into old friends, caught up, joked around about what it means to wear “professional attire” to a function if you happen to be, say, in a line of work where professional attire might be a bit uncouth. I’ll let you fill in the blanks there…

And so, I return from going to the restroom to see a friend of mine being accosted by a “believer.” Now, I know that many people are tremendously sensitive to discussions regarding religion, and so I do recognize that for many there is a fine line between discussion and accosting, however, even I felt that she was being accosted. I couldn’t believe how much I disagreed with how someone presented and represented a philosophy I agree with.

So, on that topic, tips for anyone that wishes to talk religion with me, or anyone, for that matter:

1) It might be a good idea to recognize that everybody believes things differently, and that’s the beauty of our lives, of the free will we’ve been given. I’ve found that with wisdom comes the knowledge that we are nowhere close to knowing it all, particularly when we talk about deities that are purposefully outside the realm of our understanding. Even though I call myself a Christian, I don’t believe the same things that many other Christians do, or at least I don’t believe them in the same way. I often believe that truly trying to understand what others believe adds depth to understanding my own beliefs.

2) Don’t assume that you can make grand, sweeping generalizations that pretty much nullify centuries of philosophical thought. For example, saying “we know murder is wrong, because it comes from hate, and our sense of right and wrong was given to us by our creator,” presents a few logical flaws. I told her that I believe that sometimes people can murder out of love, and that human motivation for action isn’t as cut and dry as she was making it out to be. My friend and I also added the fact that there have been all sorts of people who believed it was within their religion to commit human sacrifice, or the great number of people who were murdered in Christianity’s name (and probably are still, somewhere in the world).

3) This is perhaps the most important one of all: Listen to what the people you’re talking to are saying. Don’t interrupt. Interrupting, particularly when you’ve been asking for input by saying “Am I right?” just means that you’re only interested in attacking and proving your point. People get awfully resistant to anything you say when they have to go completely on their guard. And when I mention that you are interrupting me, please don’t interrupt me to contest your point some more. If you want to try to convince a wall, then you’ll probably get further than you were with me today.

Anyhow, I’m really not trying to bag on Christians. The truth is we all get passionate about things, and it can be a little overwhelming for others in conversations when we get passionate about our point. I can be a little overbearing when I talk about, say, Farscape, which is seriously one of the best TV shows ever made. I’m sad to say I’ve actually been in arguments about it. So, be calm, be patient, be willing to learn something from the conversation instead of just trying to teach.

I bet you’ll probably find yourself with an increased understanding of your passions.

Well, the latest issue of Women’s Press is finished, as is almost everything for my Magazine project… all that’s left is the Commencement Cover, due Monday. I feel tremendously honored to be the guy designing my own graduation’s commencement cover, and I’m really glad that now, I have time to work on it.

So, Saturday, I’m going to San Simeon for the day with Adam Toqe. It’s going to be awesome.

And, in case I forget to call…

Happy 13th birthday!

So, I’m just working full speed for the next issue of Women’s Press. Wednesday at 6 is when the files are due, and I’m really lucky that I don’t have any more classes until Thursday morning.

Dr. Keif, if you’re reading this, thank you for being out of town this week.

So, on a whim, I went to SmashingPumpkins.com and as you can see, they’re currently recording A NEW ALBUM!!!!! Their first since Machina II: Friends and Enemies of Modern Music.

Ah, the joy brought to my heart.

Happy Holy Zombie Day, everybody!

So, my roommates decided last Saturday to start a five-day fast. They told me I should join them, get all the crap out of my system and let nothing in this world control me. The problem here is that sleeping and eating are my two most valued activities… Seriously. I mean, I know college students that stay up all the time to get what they need to get done, but I don’t value what I need to get done that much.

So, around day three Jim’s doing horribly. He mentions maybe every five minutes to me that he’s going to quit and that he’s going loopy. I think he was mildly overexaggerating.

Jim borrows my Dremel power tool (yeah, I actually own a power tool. Masculinity!) like usual, but this day he actually manages to burn it out. Amongst him profusely promising to acquire a new one for me, acrid smoke wafts across my nose (wow, what a sentence!).

So… how do I fix this smell? Well, easy, I make popcorn. And torment my roommates with the sweet smell of melted butter and salt and fast food death. I’m a great human being.

So, last quarter, I had an all-quarter-long project where my group and I were evaluating the human resources department at the design firm Art Machine. They’re a bunch of really cool guys, and really we couldn’t tell them about too many improvements that they could make HR-wise, because of the size of the company they are. You see, they’re a really small design firm that does a whole bunch of movie posters and whatnot. They hit the big time when they won a really prestigious award for the poster for Saw, which they designed. And they’ve done a whole bunch more, from Ultraviolet to Lord of War.

Well, in the line of work they do, they often have the opportunity to see the movies they are developing promotional materials for way before the public does, typically so they can get a good idea of the film and accurately represent it in movie poster film. Such was the case with Lucky Number Slevin, an upcoming film starring Josh Hartnett, Lucy Liu, Sir Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman and Bruce Willis. It’s basically a mobster film, violent and funny and everything you might expect if Snatch was made in America. I was very fortunate to see several dozen drafts of the poster that they had drafted, and then the final poster they had designed for it. The poster’s made it look good. And Nadare, the production manager, said everybody in the office thought it could easily be movie of the year. He said to see it.

So, I did. I found out they were having an advanced screening here in SLO at the Fremont theater, and I had to go see it. I brought this up to my bosses at BIG Images, and they gave (!) me a VIP pass to the event. Tickets were $20, but this was a VIP pass to the entirety of the weeklong events for the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival, of which this was a part, and this pass was worth $75. We got it for free because we printed quite a few promotional materials for the week.

And so, I watched the film one Saturday afternoon almost a month ago. And it was excellent. It completely rocked my socks off, and I’d see it again in a heartbeat. And I’d even pay for it this time. Check out the trailer here at YouTube.

Anyhow, the main part of the story is still to come. You see, Jon Beebe, his roommate and I had seats in the second row of the theater, and right after the show, none other than MALCOLM McDOWELL!!! sat down in the seat in front of me. I could have kissed his forehead, he was that close. This shows that the greatest event of the evening was not, in fact, the pre-screening of the movie, but rather the fact that Malcolm McDowell was there to present Morgan Freeman with the King Vidor award for acting excellence.

Oh, it was great, watching them onstage, discussing different roles they had been in, the career of Morgan Freeman (which is totally remarkable, seeing it in the way they presented it) and just generally joking around with each other.

And so, the length of this post is the reason this journal hasn’t been updated in so long this time. Here’s hoping I fix that.

Midnight by Richard Jackson
for Terri

It?s midnight because the windchimes have replaced
your voice. It?s midnight because the porch chair
rocks as if you?ve just left it. It?s midnight
because the dogs are barking at a raccoon. The moon
begins to limp across the sky. The coyote we saw
chasing those three deer must still be chasing them.
The streetlights shiver behind the branches.
It?s midnight because suddenly there?s this thought
of you that lurks in a distant doorway, a match
someone strikes ominously in the dark, a fear
that has no source and quickly shuts its eyes.
I can hear your name in what the trucks report
from the distant highway. The sky is in rags.
Storms of blackbirds. Sleepwalking stars.
It?s midnight because that thought of you still stands
at the edge of these words like a soldier waiting
for an order, like a hole the unspoken word
drills in his heart. Because it?s midnight,
I turn, terrified at this thought of you, turn
to our room, to you asleep on a sea of nightingales,
to lie beside the midnight of your own troubled
dreams, ashamed for my own foolish fears,
until the dawn shakes the darkness from the wings
of who we are and who we will always be,
until these words, wandering aimlessly, return
like the martin carrying its bright darkness to the feeder.

And so, I’ve been bedridden this last week, the foul work of one of the streptococcus strains (damn that strep!) but I’ve been alive. Barely.

I’ll tell you, the throat being on fire thing is pretty crazy. I’m looking forward to never having to deal with stuff like this soon… but honestly, I’ve been really lucky. I finished everything I needed to do for school on Monday, and Monday night is when I came down with my fever, getting all the way up to at least 101.7 at one point this week.

But I digress. Tomorrow, I’m going to go see V for Vendetta, the latest Wachowski Bros. film, and I’m a little perplexed. There have been a lot of differing opinions about this movie, as you can tell from the Metacritic review I just linked to. I guess I’m just glad that the brothers aren’t too scared to make another movie, given the general public’s disdain for the second and third movies of the Matrix trilogy. I liked em! But most others thought they sucked…. so… here’s hoping tomorrow gives me another movie I like. Maybe I’m just too easy to please, but that means I’ll most likely enjoy my time in the theater anyway.

This entire week has gone ape-crap. I kid you not.

For those that don’t know: since the beginning of the year, I’ve been the design layout editor for a 16-page newspaper about women’s issues and stories, called Women’s Press. It is bi-monthly, has a run length of 6,000 copies, is written very well, is distributed everywhere from Santa Maria to Cayucos, and pays me pretty good for each issue, which excites me because I like to eat.

Well, the files for printing my second issue were due on Wednesday. Unfortunately, this week has been dead week, the week before finals when all things not finals-related are due. So, it’s been a little stressful, but working on the paper was far easier this time than it was for the first. This being said, there was still a huge problem with cutting deadlines right to the wire. In fact, I had to miss the final all UGS meeting for my internship this quarter. Visiting the offices later (because they happen to print the Women’s Press) with the files to print, I was informed that that night,

I was given the award for Trainee of the Quarter. And I wasn’t there to accept it.

Bittersweet victories run rampant these weeks, but I’m sure that quite soon, rest will be mine. Oh yes.

I’ve decided I’m going to take a little break from soda.

It’s not because I have a sudden new-found need to live healthier. It’s just that I want to make certain that when soda and I reunite

it’s just going to be that much sweeter.

It’s here… oh how beautiful.
I think I’m going to cry.

I found that beauty whilst bumming around the Pant’s Press Sketchblog. Tasty stuff there. Makes me wish for more talent and time.

And then, also while procrastinating and not working on my senior project (arrggghhh), I’ve found thumbnails on Google Images of work done for a Farscape anime series, but when I try to click through, it’s a 404. Anybody know anything about the series?

Cause, dang. I just finished the last episode of season 3 this week, and I think I need some time to digest it.

So, it’s not here yet. I called them, and they refunded my $30 for next day shipping, but not because they feel bad about me not feeding kittens… but rather because they finally figured they couldn’t do next day shipping from Shanghai (where they have been building it).

But, holy bloody eyes, Batman! It is now in Louisville, Kentucky, with an expected arrival date of Tuesday!!! COME ON HOME, MAMA!!!

Before I start, Dean! Thank you so much for commenting! Shoot me your email at ben @ penciledin.com. I’d love to catch up!

So, Toshiba has finally given me what (I hope) is their final date that I can expect the laptop on, which is next Tuesday. This is funny, seeing as how I should have had it today, according to one rep. Of course, according to their quote, which gave it eight to ten business days to assemble, and then next day delivery, I should have had it at the latest on this last Monday…

So… tomorrow I call them, and let them know that every day I am without a computer is another day I die inside. Maybe they’ll grow a heart.

It is unseasonally warm here in SLO.

Above are a series of posters I made for the on-campus printing company I’ve been interning with the last three quarters. I’m pretty proud of them, and they should be going up around campus at some point in the next two or three weeks.

So, I bought a new laptop, with a great deal of help from my brother and his wife, and my brother’s mom. I am so thankful for that… but I really can’t wait for Toshiba to actually send the derned thing. Hopefully, I’ll get it this week. Then I feel my life can begin again.

Spell with Flickr.

This is the coolest thing ever… well…maybe not the coolest… But it’s a whole bunch of awesome logos, for inspiration purposes.

Keepin it real.

This is the coolest thing ever… well…maybe not the coolest… But it’s a whole bunch of awesome logos, for inspiration purposes.

Keepin it real.

The projects that suck the most while I’m working on them tend to be the ones I’m proud of the most. I suppose that’s human nature, but there’s some part of me that seriously thinks I’m getting gipped on the entire deal.

Sorry I haven’t been able to post to this thing lately. Aside from the fact that I’m mad crazy busy, most of my free time at school I’m surfing the net using Safari, and for some reason, Safari won’t show more than the first half of my last post, and none of my links…
So, I’m hoping this post will fix that. Here’s hoping.

Here’s an email I got from CD Baby, a pretty decent online independent cd store, after I purchased a cd from them.

Dear Benjamin,

Thanks for your order of Parallel Universe by Leiahdorus!

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

Portland waved ‘Bon Voyage!’ to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Tuesday, January 10th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as ‘Customer of the Year’. We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you once again,

Derek Sivers, president, CD Baby
the little CD store with the best new independent music

What sweethearts!

Lots and lots and lots of rain.

I redesigned ZFire’s website and I’m much much much happier with it now. Ah, the glory of CSS positioning.

The holiday season turns crime
into gag. I swear, if you had been there,
you’d have gotten righteously indignant,
kicked the bumper
of that bastard who always parks
in the spot you dream about
and it would have sagged right off the car,
defeated after thousands of miles of battle
with a San Diego rush hour.
Instead, I watched the fog crowd the world,
1 am,
and traced the “AWS” some asshole
scribbled on my door, white spraypaint
like permanent pigeon droppings
slowly cracking through the reflection
of the empty parking lot across the street,
in the middle of a ghetto I called home
so long ago.

And then, like a five year-old who’s just seen
an evil clown magician
with half a cigar exploding out his stubby face
stab a knife into the kid’s favorite stuffed animal –
like a five year-old that discovered that all magic
is nothing but a cruel parlor trick,

I chipped the spraypaint off with my thumbnail,
and realized it was just sprayed-on frost–
the kind that overzealous employees coat storefronts
and yorkie-poodle mixes with. Crime into gag.
Drama into comedy. Except noone saw me slap my knee,
guffaw, or even so much as hiccup.

Instead, it makes me wonder what kind of people
dance around this world of fog, lacing the night
with egged houses and holiday fear.

I’ll bet anything they’re on the naughty list.

I haven’t really messed around with Litestep since I was back in high school. But seriously, I’m geeking out on it now.

Litestep is a shell-replacement utility for Windows. Basically, it allows you to completely customize the way your desktop looks and functions… it can be minimalistic or cluttered, colorful or black and white, and it pretty much makes you not need a start menu any more.

Depending on how you use it, it could also take up less system resources than the normal Windows shell (called Explorer). It’s good times.

Anyhow, I’ll be in San Diego today through probably Monday or Tuesday. Keep it real.

Rest is great. Unbelievably grand.

Honestly, Farscape has to be the weirdest, craziest, most amazingly fresh sci-fi series I have ever seen. It’s sci-fi in terms of biology more than anything else… how does a ship with a small crew, all made of very different kinds of biological life-forms, interact? I was watching an episode where the entire crew is suffering from starvation, and one of the characters, who happens to be plant-based, grows spores and starts trying to seed the ship, and everybody is allergic to her.

I don’t know about you, but coming from someone who is intrinsically familiar with Star Trek, where most of the problems with alien species come mostly from not being able to find a common ground, it’s kind of refreshing to see aliens who vomit, fart, mutter obscenities (like “dren”, “frell”, and others) and basically are so different from humanity that there is no way you could ever confuse them. Jim Henson’s creature shop did a fantastic job on the show, and every episode there are crazy aliens running around. For example, there’s an episode where the crew comes across a mining colony inside of a moon-sized creature that looks like a humongous dinosaur fossil.

Man, I’m geeking out.

A Noiseless Patient Spider
by Walt Whitman

A noiseless patient spider,
I marked where on a promontory it stood isolated,
Marked how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be formed, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

The edge
by Bob Hicok

One day the kid showed up with a tattoo of a stapler
on his shoulder. The others had tattoos of geckoes
and fish and the Incredible Hulk, an emerald
Lou Ferrigno against a background of fire. He’d
have been beaten up except they were dazed by it,
not just the precise cursive of the word Swingline
or the luster of the striking plate but the fact
of the stapler itself. He got the last pizza
at lunch and was touched on the wrist by a girl
at the fountain. This made him believe he was real
in a way breathing never had. Over the next
few months he stopped feeling he lived
on the wrong side of the mirror. There
was an election & his name was penciled in
on a few ballots. The guy with the red Camaro
gave him a ride home and let him pick the music.
In second-period French he stood to ask
what Harcourt Brace knew all men wanted to know,
if Monique and Evette would join him Saturday
on the sailboat. First the teacher cried,
then the students sang the Marseillaise
because in four years all he’d ever said
was comment allez-vous? No one questioned the tattoo.
Who’d believe he got up to pee and it was there,
just as the image of the body of Christ
appeared one morning on the thigh
of St. Barthelme of Flours. Otherwise
their stories differ. St. Barthelme was stoned
to death. The kid went to homecoming in a tux
with blue cumulus cuffs and a girl
embarrassed by anything but the slowest dance.

Last night, I was still awake in bed, and every time I closed my eyes I felt the gears and pulleys of a giant grandfather clock closing around me. I spun through this hallucinatory state, probably brought on by tears and sore throats, and at one point I coughed so hard I threw up a little. Every time my eyes closed, I felt claustrophobia set in, and all I could think of is a line a friend in my poetry class wrote once:

The world is a formula
and we have yet to crack it.

Today, I have to say I’m confused, more than anything. I think that in any situation, I am constantly reminded how, no matter what kind of effort I put into a bad situation, it cannot become a good one. I wish I would have learned that lesson a long time ago. I still don’t think I’ve learned that lesson.

I walked along the beach in Morro Bay with Jim yesterday, it was overcast but the sun slipped a few orange meanderings on the horizon, and the sea mist was so tremendously concentrated right at the waters’ edge. As Lucy, the pink schnauser, ran after birds I could never have named, I felt the world was complete there. But this old grandfather clock, these gears, this fear of being crushed in the workings of a world that is far too small and much too dictated by timing and rules for where pendulums are to swing… this old grandfather clock haunts me.

I have no interest in cracking formulas. I am only interested in being happy.

Today, I need to watch the hilarious comedy “Down with Love” starring Ewan McGregor and Renee Zellweger or I need to borrow Brian’s copy of Dawson’s Creek’s third season. I need to eat lots of chocolate ice cream, and I need to pamper myself with shiny smelly things.

Actually, I might submit this as being the worst photo of me ever taken. Gosh, two of these in two days.

My tux from senior year of high school still fits!!!

I submit this is the worst picture ever taken of me. Ever.

Just me and the boys. Luke is graduating on Saturday… what am I going to do with my life?

No one wants to die, even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you.

But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 60’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along.

I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stuart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-70’s and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

- Steve Jobs, from a commencement speech given at Stanford

Jim has been hearing a rat above his head, in the attic, for the last two weeks. With a tear in his eye, he set a non-lethal trap with a savory, delectable pile of meat. And so, leaping through the air like kids running towards a Christmas morning, we found the little rodent peeking it’s furry nose at us from within our cage of love.

Ah, who am I kidding? The dogs tore into that little rat bastard. They rocked it’s socks off, and I have never had as much respect for the animal kingdom as I had today, seeing a dead rat we had to pull away four ravenous dogs from.

But, oh yes. I will let my light shine. Let the suuuuuuuun shine iiiiiiiiin.

Being single again is strange. I’ve been running around, tripping over my own feet so much, it feels like I’m back in high school.

With the fall banquet coming up, I asked a friend in GrC if she’d like to go with me, given that it’s a “Prom” themed banquet (another reason to feel like high school again), and even though it was just a friendly thing…

man, was I nervous.

I swear, nerves are a little frayed. I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving break more and more with every passing moment.

So, I’ve been sick the last week and a half, and I think I’m sick of it a little. I think it’s about time I start rebelling against my body, ignite the masses and start a revolution.

I’m sure my body’s pretty much laughing itself silly about that idea right now. But I’ll show it. I will win this. Just you see.

Foundation on Fire

Christmas was a month ago,
but the apartment was decked in flame
when I found it. She had collapsed on the floor,
her eyes drizzling over her cheek
like useless fire sprinklers
making flat puddles that only reflect flames.

Can you walk? I screamed over the cackle
of the breaking doorframe.
                    What?

Can you walk? ‘Cause I’m not going to be able
to carry you very far in this.
                    That’s nothing new.

And the downpour in her eyes alone could have
quenched this entire million-dollar insurance nightmare…
if she gave a damn.
But, she would say, not giving a damn is my speciality.

So, in protest, I threw myself against
the nearest burning doorway,
holding together what all first-graders in California know
is the strongest point in any house.

My feet crawled along the frame, my spine
playing the same game on the other side,
and I felt the wood bend like sweat curling
around my brow
straight for my eyes.

When you’re ready to leave this burning building,
I shouted, you go ahead and let me know.
                    Yeah? And maybe I’d rather
                    die here. Have you thought about that?

The truth was, the thought sat on my mind,
just like the entire condominium sat on my
searing
busted
shoulder blade, and my pained muscles
couldn’t help but feel we’ll all die here,
not far enough from a forecast
of evening showers
to justify dying any day.

    * * * *

A friend of a friend introduced us.
                    I think we’ve met before, she said.
                    I think a long time ago, we dove
                    from edges of pillows into
                    newspaper headlines
                    together every morning. When it rained outside,
                    you were the thunder and I the stream,
                    and we tumbled through the doorway
                    treading fingers in passion along my freckles.
                    I think we lost that somewhere along the way,
                    somewhere between me giving everything I had
                    and you leaving.

And while I was pretending
I couldn’t read all that from her embarrassed eyes,
I was just trying to remember her name.

In that instant,
it started to pour
a cloudburst over our chafing recollections,
and I offered my umbrella.

It was like a dance right then,
your face turned away and my lips forming
small talk I couldn’t sound out
over the drone of passing cars.
But I could swear I almost saw you smile

before the taxi ride
                    before the awkward proximity

before we collapsed, soaked on your couch
                    before we felt it come back

before I paid bills for two again
                    before my father died

before another awkward proximity
                    before you drifted away

and she left the heater on all night
because I was gone again.

    * * * *

The fire report would say it was a spark
leaping towards a gas line
that did us in —
the way we sometimes
leap toward each other and then explode.

Autumn is here once again… nervous smiles and downcast gazes. I can’t say the season isn’t bringing me down a little, but that’s really nothing new. These months are always pretty tough…

But! I have a car! The ‘92 black Civic with only 70k miles!

I call her Vera. She’s my favorite.

So, the newest iteration of my site is now up!

http://www.penciledin.com !!! Check out the portfolio. It’s pretty much the most comprehensive listing of my work I’ve ever put on the web.

And that is why I worked on Most Music after all this time. Just thought you should know.

If anybody remembers the project I did for my web design class for the fake local music store “Most Music,” then you get a golden star for the day. Unfortunately, it hasn’t seen the light of day for the last year or two because it was chunky and didn’t work right in all browsers…

Well, I’ve spent some time the last couple of days fixing this site, which is probably my favorite site I’ve ever done. Now, you can check it out here. Hopefully, in a couple of days, I’ll show you why I have been working on it…

So, last night I went to a party, drank a lot, danced a little (I wish there was a lot more dancing) and then went home, and for the first time

I played 8-bit handheld Tetris in a porcelain bowl, if you know what I mean. Little gray and green Tretrads working their way towards the bottom of the screen.

Man, wow. I’m definitely going to go to a party on a full stomach next time…

If I haven’t offended all my faithful readers at this point, then I’m doing pretty good.

Technorati Tags: Freaky teaky, Everyday life

Today, I downloaded the developers’ preview of Flock, version 0.5beta. It’s MAD CRAZY COOL!!! My gosh. I never thought I’d say that I may actually leave my first true love, Firefox, but once this becomes a completely stable release (with all the features it promises) I’ll be the first on the bandwagon.

Flock seems to be the first “social” web browser… allowing virtually seamless connections between web browsing, blog writing, and del.icio.us tags. I think the best part about it is the ability to drag and drop images from my flickr account directly into my blog post, and the Shelf feature (go to “tools > shelf”), which holds items you can later blog about, such as images I collect from the library of congress that I use for most of my blog posts…

I think I’m in like. Major like.

So, this is my project due tomorrow morning. I wrote a 500 word essay on Adrian Frutiger, designer of the font Univers, and had to take the essay and make an informative poster out of it. Or rather, two posters, one horizontal and one vertical… but yeah, click on them to get a larger view.

Man, I love this class.

So, I woke up on Wednesday with a cold and I think today is the worst it has been yet. Hopefully, it’s as bad as it’s going to get. I just feel bad, and it’s made me not want to do any kind of school work… of course, maybe it’s the school year that’s making me do that…

Senioritis, hooray!

Actually, I’m keeping up pretty well in classes, it’s just working on all the little freelancing stuff that’s been real difficult these last couple of weeks.

Man, at church today, I found that the book of Revelation is doubly freaky when you’re already sick.

(A Fiction)

When I attained enlightenment,
I threw off the night like an old skin.
My eyes filled with light
and I fell to the ground.
I lay in Los Alamos,
while at the same time,
I fell
toward Hiroshima,
faster and faster,
till the earth,
till the morning
slipped away beneath me.
Some say when I hit
there was an explosion,
a searing wind that swept the dead before it,
but there was only silence,
only the soothing baby-blue morning
rocking me in its cradle of cumulus cloud,
only rest.
There beyond the blur of mortality,
the roots of the trees of Life and Death,
the trees William Blake called Art and Science,
joined in a kind of Gordian knot
even Alexander couldn’t cut.
To me, the ideological high wire
is for fools to balance on with their illusions.
It is better to leap into the void.
Isn’t that what we all want anyway?–
to eliminate all pretense
till like the oppressed who in the end
identifies with the oppressor,
we accept the worst in ourselves
and are set free.

In high school, they told me
all scientists
start from the hypothese “what if”
and it’s true.
What we as a brotherhood lack in imagination
we make up for with curiosity.
I was always motivated
by a ferocious need to know.
Can you tell me, gentlemen,
that you don’t want it too?–
the public collapse,
the big fall smooth as honey down a throat.
Anything that gets you closer
to what you are.
Oh, to be born again and again
from that dark, metal womb,
the sweet, intoxicating smell of decay
the imminent dead give off
rising to embrace me.

But I could say anything, couldn’t I?
Like a bed we make and unmake at whim,
the truth is always changing,
always shaped by the latest
collective urge to destroy.
So I sit here,
gnawed down by the teeth
of my nightmares.
My soul, a wound that will not heal.
All I know is that urge,
the pure, sibylline intensity of it.
Now, here at parade’s end
all that matters:
our military in readiness,
our private citizens
in a constant frenzy of patriotism
and jingoistic pride,
our enemies endless,
our need to defend infinite.
Good soldiers,
we do not regret or mourn,
but pick up the guns of our fallen.
Like characters in the funny papers,
under the heading
“Further Adventures of the Lost Tribe,”
we march past the third eye of History,
as it rocks back and forth
in its hammock of stars.
We strip away the tattered fabric
of the universe
to the juicy, dark meat,
the nothing beyond time.
We tear ourselves down atom by atom,
till electron and positron,
we become our own transcendent annihilation.

- by Ai

I just like this poster. It’s from the New York WPA Federal Art Project in 1936.

That’s pretty much it.

Thank you, Brian, for the most awesome poster ever. This makes me pretty much the coolest kid on the block. Serenity will be here for me soon…

In front of my house.

Another photo for my Mom and my bro. You guys have never seen me with black hair… until now!!!

The car flipped, we exchanged ground for sky,
and in that second, you and I
found the truth more solid than ever before.
My right hand gripped yours,
the other white-knuckled the steering wheel –
and the autumn sun tiptoed through the windows like
a disco-ball slow dance on fire.

Baby, the truth is
sometimes we’re a forty car pileup
and nothing will ever fix that.

(this is the first poem written for an exercise in my Poetry Writing class. I’m still kinda trying to crash it… I hope I get in)

UPDATE: I got in!!!! Yes!!!

Last night, Costco had a crazy open-house thing where they opened up the store, didn’t sell anything, and gave free dinner to whosoever came. I feasted on smoked salmon, buffalo wings, shrimp, hot dogs, pizza and all the broccoli I could stand…

You know, for an evil corporation, they’re okay in my book.

Sigh. That’s it. No more freelancing stuff from the summer. slolaw.org is up! I made the logos and the site.

And I’m beat!

The book I’ve been designing for months has been finally published, and you can see a lot of the details (including cover art and layout, done by yours truly) at BeanFit.com. Be sure to click on the “Excuse Examples” section to see some of the spreads I’ve been working on. Also, details on how to order the book are there.

If you’re in the SLO area tomorrow, check out the Book Fair at the Mission. I’ll be there with Jeanne Murdock, handing out postcards featuring the book and generally schmoozing, from about 1 pm to 4 pm. Say hi. See the book. It will be an exciting day for me.

It’s my last day at Pacific Beverage. I don’t think I’ve laughed harder at a piece I’ve printed until today:

The file came on a CD, I open it, and it says

Our drinking team has a skiing problem.

Santa Margarita is a curious place.

There’s a general store across the street from Pacific Beverage, where I purchase my snacks for during work. It’s called the Margarita Mercantile And Company, and right over the door, it says “Provisions”. Real old-timey.

Perhaps what’s a little more old-timey is that next door, there’s an old abandoned office building. It has an old looking painting of an ad for RC Cola on the side, and a bath tub halfway filled with dirt and weeds in front of the door, on the street. I kid you not, an old dirty porcelain bath tub on the sidewalk.

So, I decided to shack up and buy a bag of jerky yesterday at the Provisions shop. It’s amazing how much that stuff costs: I mean, $5.99 for a 4 oz. bag?!?!?! Geez.

I take it to work, open it and start eating some of it. Thing is, fourth or fifth piece into it, I see some white stuff on a piece I pull out. Turns out that it’s mold. Looking into the sides of the bag, I couldn’t believe I didn’t see it before, but yeah, white hairy mold over maybe 3 or 4 pieces.

I take it back and get a different bag which is, thankfully, mold free. But that leads me to my next question: isn’t jerky supposed to last a very long time? I guess Margarita Mercantile and Company is more old-timey than I previously thought.

Well, most of you reading this may have heard me talk about Firefly before, but I figure I should give it a shot on here, for all of you who don’t see me too much.

Some of you may have seen the stunning previews for the upcoming science fiction/western movie Serenity. Turns out that movie is a continuation of the story set forth in Joss Whedon’s Firefly series, and I am in crazy anticipation for this movie. It’s not just because the Firefly universe is so dark and compelling, the characters are so real and human with senses of humor, the special effects are unbelievable, the storylines rich with actual character development, or that it has both a priest and a prostitute among it’s characters. It’s because of the promise that the success of this movie might fulfill for other beloved television shows crapped on by major networks.

This show has met it’s fair share of adversity on the corporate level. Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy and Angel, decided to pitch a story of frontier living in space to Fox, and once they filmed the original pilot (also titled Serenity) Fox decided it needed more action and less storyline. So, Joss made The Train Job, a one-hour fantastic joyride in which the bandits rob a futuristic train but realize the cargo are precious medicines needed by a town on the brink of famine. This second pilot did a great job of reintroducing all the characters without making anything from the first pilot moot, and it was the first episode shown on TV.

After that, the story is a mess. Fox decided to air the episodes out of order or not air them at all. So, in the fifteen episodes on the complete series DVD set, three were never aired, while the others were in such an order it’s no wonder people trying to follow it week-to-week scratched their heads — they had no idea really what was going on. The original pilot, which was meant to introduce viewers to this complex universe, was only aired last, right before cancellation.

So, fans started buying the DVD’s, and sales went through the roof. Through word-of-mouth, the phenomenon grew. There were so many DVD’s sold, Fox decided to give Joss Whedon his wish: to make a movie and wrap up some of the threads running unanswered throughout the show. Now, Joss had a unique opportunity and challenge: to introduce newcoming audiences for a third time to this crew and to satisfy long-time browncoats (Firefly fans) with the same consistently good storyweaving and dialogue we have come to expect.

I can almost guarantee it will be a cash cow. They have shown an unusually high number of pre-screenings that have all ended with thunderous applause, so I hear. The three-part comic series, which bridges the six-month gap between the final episode, Objects in Space, and the movie is sold out online and in every comic book shop I’ve been to. If it does well, then perhaps it will come back to television or be brought back some other way.

If it does well, then perhaps other beloved series, such as Enterprise will have a chance at another go.

Right now, Firefly doesn’t resemble a bug as much as it does a phoenix.

I love this blog: PencilRevolution.com! It’s basically a review site and cool things all revolving around pencils…

Gosh, I think I’m in love!

And with these too! Meaning, photo illustrations by Korean artist Komusin!!! Soooo cool!

And so, what do I find, but Klingon Fairy Tales. I think my favorite is

“The Hare Foolishly Lowers His Guard and Is Devastated by the Tortoise, Whose Prowess in Battle Attracts Many Desirable Mates”

Looking around the same site, I found Ten Precepts from The Art of War that Never Made it Past Sun Tzu’s Editor which includes the great suggestion

All warfare is based on deception. When the enemy draws near to you, cry out, “Look out behind you.” When he turns to look behind him, attack.

Blindside is coming out with a new album, “The Great Depression,” and I’m totally rocking out to their first single. Check out the video for “Fell in Love with the Game” here. The video looks like it’s straight out of our favorite love-to-hate or hate-to-love HBO foulmouthed series “Deadwood.” So freakin’ cool.

You know, I guess I’m easily amused. I like poop jokes, sometimes.

For example, there’s this sign in the men’s bathroom at Pacific Beverage. Over the toilet, it reads:

We aim to please.
You aim too, please.

After three weeks, it still cracks me up.

Jean Marie is here in SLO! Oh, happy days!!!

Finally, the first day I’ve been at Pacific Beverage, and haven’t wanted to kill myself on my way out the door… It’s been a really good day, which means

• I kinda know what I’m doing.
• The salesmen aren’t returning everything I do because it isn’t what they wanted. (Meaning, I’m learning about all the little things they don’t tell me they want on their banners.)
• and I actually feel good. Isn’t that weird?

Still, though, I definitely have problems. Can’t get the car smogged until I get an inconsistent idle fixed, and that might be expensive. Can’t get the car regisitered until it’s smogged, and I’ve got a fix-it ticket that will be expensive unless I get it registered by the end of the month. I can’t sell the car to mom until it’s registered….

What a headache!

I’m looking forward to the weekend. Kristen’s meeting my folks for the first time and I’m stealing my sister to the Central Coast for a week. It sounds like the first time I’ll be able to take a deep breath for a long time.

Speaking as someone who enjoys his media without dealing with problems such as… legality or whatnot, I found this article really interesting. It is a discussion of copyfighting for newbies, and brought to light a bunch of stuff I didn’t know.

There are so many times when I’m talking to Kristen, or anybody (but mostly Kristen), about my media collection habits, and she wonders why I get angry about certain things… You see, according to another site, Downhill Battle, services such as iTunes (among others) claim that they’re fair for artists, but the artists still get only 9-11 cents a song. That just seems a little wrong.

Alright, I’ll shutup now… but still.

So, I got the Pacific Beverage job, and after sitting and learning the ropes from Melissa, the girl who currently has the job, it becomes absolutely clear to me that this is one of those jobs you have to spend time at the job to really learn much.

It’s cool, though, yesterday I printed a banner three feet wide by twenty feet for the mid-state fair.

Now just to take care of business…

A lot of pain.

We were starting our second day of breaking our house, and I had just emptied out the wheelbarrow we had on the roof, bringing it back to fill it up again…

I guess I just wasn’t paying attention, for what do I find but a GIANT FREAKING HOLE where the attic vent used to be. I should’ve remembered we’d taken that out yesterday, because when you find a hole, you usually wish you had found it with your eyes, not with both of your legs stuck in it.

So, a bunch of small scrapes on one leg, and a giant circular raspberried scrape on the other… After two days, it doesn’t hurt much anymore, just looks pretty gnarly.

It was pretty cinematic, though… the wheelbarrow fell away from me, clamoring to another part of the roof, falling to its side in utter confusion, with its wheel still slowly turning…

So… update, update, update.

The internet was down for a while, and now we have it back. We’re paying for it now, which means, no, we weren’t paying for it before… it’s quite a story, and sometime, when I have the time to do it, I’ll tell you.

Today we spent the day tearing off our roof, beginning what will be the second of Jim’s many improvements to the house over the summer. Earlier, last week, we installed recessed lighting into Matt’s room, which we will do with mine, once it is time for me to change rooms in the house.

I am absolutely beat from today’s tearing. And I probably shouldn’t be writing in this thing, but since I am here, I should.

I spent the weekend helping Devon move to San Francisco, for law school. He happens to live just three or four blocks from the Great American Music Hall, and Sunday night, Sufjan Stevens played there to a sold-out show. I wasn’t able to go, because I had to be back in town to get up to break my house, but…

thinking about summer, in the strange city, Sufjan Stevens and the Great American Music Hall. Thinking about the last time these four occurences collided…

I need to make many phone calls. I don’t call people enough. I don’t call anybody enough, and if you’re reading this, and you’re one of those people, know that you are being thought of far more than my telephonical behavior dictates.

Tomorrow, I will continue breaking my house, followed by a AAAAAHHHHH hair appointment at noon. Then, a meeting with a friend that may hire me to do some banner work for his printing company, and then, at 4:30, an interview in Santa Margarita for a job I need to have. Pacific Beverage Distribution needs a designer, and since they do all the advertising for Anheuser-Busch from San Luis to King City, this is pretty big time.

Tomorrow… woo-hoo.

I’m sorry I haven’t been updating much lately. What seems to be an annual event, the internet has been down at my house since I came back from down south. Last summer, the net was down for over a month and this year, it might happen again.

Good news, Jim’s back from Mexico. Now, the craziness can start. We’re demolishing the kitchen and part of the back yard, and a couple of walls in Matt’s and my rooms. So, over the next couple of months, I’m going to be moving into Matt’s room for a bit while we work on my room. I get to decide whether or not I want to move back, but I think I will. I like being a little farther from the tv in the living room.

On my way back from down south, I saw a white delivery van on the side of the 101. It had caught fire and was melted so much I could see the inside of the engine and almost every other part of the vehicle. The fire had spread to a nearby hillside and it, too, had caught aflame. As the fire crawled on it’s belly across the yellow summer grass, a neighborhood nearby was being evacuated. You could see the smoke for miles.

It gave me some crazy flashbacks to my own inflammatory vehicular adventure. I patted the Red Baron on the dash and said, “don’t worry, that won’t happen to you.”

Funny thing, I’m driving north of Santa Barbara on the 101, and I start tuning into San Diego’s very own 91x. It must be because they’re transmitting out of Tijuana they don’t have the restrictions on how far they can send their signal that other, US-bound stations have. Rock on.

praise song
by Lucille Clifton

to my aunt blanche
who rolled from grass to driveway
into the street one sunday morning.
i was ten. i had never seen
a human woman hurl her basketball
of a body into the traffic of the world.
Praise to the drivers who stopped in time.
Praise to the faith with which she rose
after some moments then slowly walked
sighing back to her family.
Praise to the arms which understood
little or nothing of what it meant
but welcomed her in without judgment,
accepting it all like children might,
like God.

What kind of world do we live in where people get power hungry, ready to attack and make children feel bad just because they decide to do things a little different, such as in this story.

(Read it. Believe me, it’s funny.)

I want a job. Jobs are nice, because with one, I can be assured I will be able to eat for the rest of the summer. Sure, I’m working on the book for Jeanne, and it’s coming along, but I’m not getting paid on an hourly rate, rather I’m being paid for the actual project.

I sent a cover letter along with my resume to the Animal Science department at Cal Poly, because they had need of a graphic designer/writer for their Stock Report. I was pretty excited about this, but somehow now I’m trying to get a job working on the Animal Science website… which isn’t so bad, just not something that I was expecting. So far, they haven’t given me a date to do an interview with them. They keep on telling me “next week…” and next week I will have been waiting for three weeks to have an interview with them.

I think the worst part about it is that I’ve been waiting to see what my schedule will be like for this new job so that I can head home for a couple of days and not miss my chance for an interview. I’ve not been back in San Diego for almost 7 months, and it’s bugging me.

So… I just had to get that off of my chest.

I think… tomorrow… that I’m going to go to the Cal Poly career center and find another job to pursue.

To Dr. Thulin of the Animal Science department: as the Hippos once sang, “am I wasting my life waiting for you?”

Godspeed, good friend.

And so, I’ve been walking around the last couple of days thinking that today was Mother’s Day.

So, I called my Grandma in Arkansas today, wished her a happy Mother’s Day, and she was a little confused.

“You’re a little early,” she said.

“Nope. It’s today. A special day. Happy Mother’s Day!!! I remembered!”

“Dear, it’s not until Sunday.”

“Oh.”

So, there you have it. Better early than never, I suppose…

Happy twelfth birthday, Jean Marie!

As John Mason once said, “You were born an original. Don’t die a copy.”

Gosh, that’s a little morbid. Think of it this way: birthdays are healthy things. The more you have, the longer you’ll live.

I recently downloaded The End is Here which is a recording of Five Iron Frenzy’s final show in Colorado back in late 2003. The download came in at an average of 350 kbps, which is freakin’ unbelievable. This meant that the 100 mg file came in at about six and a half minutes. My hair stood straight back and my eyebrows were singed. It was that amazing.

But what’s truly incredible is the show itself. Just listening to it, particularly around the end, as they start to sing “Every New Day” and you know it’s the last time they ever were to sing that song… I almost started crying. Not to mention when they broke out into Amazing Grace at the end…

Wow.

So, Red alerted me to Darth Vader’s blog and I’m definitely geeking out over it. My favorite part about it is the comments left by readers. Here’s my favorite from the last post:

Mr. Vader,
We at the Internal Revenue Service have had our eyes on you for quite some time. We have watched you crush people with a lack of mercy that would stun a cold fish, we have watched you destroy entire fleets on a whim, we have watched you pay less than acceptable taxes…

We in the I.R.S. firmly believe in intimidation, destructive whims, and the execution of lesser officers round the clock.

And so we have decided that you are more than qualified to accept a position in our administration. The job would be management, with several people under you whose tracheas you could crush. It would require almost no real work and frightening other people to give you their lifes’ savings.
Like we said, you’re over qualified, our one question is, will you take the job, or do we have to send some people over there to, “convince you”?

The Internal Revenue Service: we want your money!

To which Darth Vader responds:

Dear IRS,

I understand that your offices are located in the distant Sol System, which I believe has been scheduled for demolition.

I’ll see you in Hell.

Sincerely,

D. Vader

C’mon. Isn’t that awesome?!?!

What? Hoo-hah!

Sometimes I feel the heat of the flames, the cruel tang of battery acid and rubber tires stinging the inside of my nostrils. Sometimes I feel the hair of two dogs under my arms, trying desperately to leap out of my control to establish their control elsewhere because they’re scared of 65 mph bright lights in darkness, a dusk in Anaheim on fire. Sometimes I feel utterly alone in entropy, staring at the wreckage of my car.

And then I wake up and realize that was months ago.

Last week, I got eaten alive by a mosquito. I had two bites on my lip, one on my side, one on my neck, one on my forehead, one on my thigh. The two on my lip were the worst; my lips were numb and swelled up to a size that made me very much not want to go to school, particularly because it happened the morning of the first day of two that I was going to be high-profile: giving tours of the GrC department and the Screen Printing lab.

Going to the health center on Friday afternoon was nice, particularly with the doctor saying “You just need to learn to not be so delicious!” Ahhhh, taste me, I’m delicious! But they gave me Allegra, which has helped.

Giving tours of the screen printing lab all day during Open House was fun, but tiring. I swear, I must have given the same spiel maybe 30-40 times. My throat was definitely hoarse by the end of it.

The best part about it, though, was when I was showing the light table we image screens on to a seven year old, and he looked at me and said “What if you were to look straight into the lightbulb when it goes off?”

I look at him, and I say in my most menacing voice: “Your eyes would liquifyyyyeeeee. It would be like a science experiment gone wrong.”

I miss telling the youth a bunch of untruth. Particularly teasing my little sister. Definitely miss that.

Hallelujah!!! The car started!!! IT’S ALIVE!!!!

but…

all the problems it used to have are still there, such as not going above 15 mph when I really want it to, which is all the time.

This is my favorite poem right now:

Well,

A new quarter begins. This one will be pretty neat, methinks. I walked into my ES X335 class with wonder: it felt like High School again, but with a filipino Mr. Lunsford. “The Filipino/a American Experience” is a seminar oriented, not lecture oriented class, and boy does it feel like sitting down back at Morse, in a very good way.

I’m only taking 13 units this quarter, so it seems like it’ll be a bit easier than of late. This seems like a good quarter to get into two different internships. I’ve already started my first quarter at UGS, the on-campus printing company run entirely by students, and I’m really excited to get an interview pretty soon with Big Images, a wide format printer on Broad St. run by the guy who used to live in my room. If I get the internship, it’ll make my day. The guy told Jim he’s looking for somebody to learn the ropes so they can eventually be an actual employee. If all goes well, I’ll be able to stay in the area after graduation next year, and that sounds swell!

And it rains again. This time, in the city of angels.

Hanging out with Abe for a couple of days has been definite good times… I really felt like I had to get the heck out of Dodge after finals week finished. I was getting… restless and bored.

I’ll be arriving back on the Central Coast tomorrow, helping Kristen move back from her victory over the UCLA educational system.

Ciao.

Sigh. It’s finally over.

Finals week was a monstrous labyrinth. Fire, ogres, pain sticks, hot MAGMA!!! And I survived. With black hair, no less.

That’s right. Kristen helped dye my hair black. It’s pretty freakin’ cool.

Mom told me about the new Moby album coming out next week, and lo! and behold! Two hours later I have it! Tis pretty decent. Very 80’s new wave.

Now, I’m in that part of the year where it’s the all-of-a-sudden death stop. Going going going in class, and then STOP. I don’t want to do anything with my days, but I feel I should be doing something. Sigh…

It’s not so bad, though. Just rainy.

Shotgun rain

Every day this week I’ve felt
the cool steel of the Winchester.
My knuckles, white,
gripped hard over metal
and envied my innocent eyes.
After all,
on this dark morning
when the clouds cover us like taxpayer dollars,
a steady eye cannot be faulted…

If I fail, it is the trigger finger that should crawl away in shame.

So I walk past cherry blossom trees
and move straight to crimson roses.
I stop where I can get a
straight bead on the sky,
fill a chamber with verse
and let fly.

After a glancing shot, the sky bleeds the ground.
I find no part of my body innocent,
and in me, no remorse.
Consider this poetic justice:

In this world of blossoming black umbrellas
rotating swiftly in clockwork fashion
above the heads of the protected,
when a girl turns to her neighbor in the crowd
and says,
“the rain just kills me inside sometimes.”

I wish I was there to say back
“It seems like you’re always just waiting for it.”

And I carry my Winchester, sans umbrella,
down the street, turning right
and find the second house on the left.
I’ll sit down in my chair, eyes closed,
and just listen to the wounded animal in the sky above.

Today, I purchased a phonograph player from Dave. I figure that everybody else is doing up their music all digital-like, and so the new trend is to go hyper-analog. And that’s just what I’ve done.

I made my first record purchase today since I purchased Paul Simon’s Graceland back in tenth grade. Both of the Ryan Adams’ Love is Hell EPs have been floating circularly around my life these past few hours. These EPs are the new Rush of Blood to the Head, and just as good, if not better. Just listen to the songs “Political Scientists” or his cover of “Wonderwall” or even “World War 24.” My attention is a needle in it’s groove.

Another LP purchase of the day is Crowded House’s self-titled album… you know Crowded House… Don’t Dream it’s Over. The song that Sixpence None the Richer recently covered. It’s a pretty decent album, reminds me a bit of INXS, with a little less flair.

I am so tired.

Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Sigh. Why Sun Tzu’s The Art of War?

It’s printing right now. No real problems, just a head cold and I’m here at the lab later than I expected.

Many of you probably have already heard the news: Enterprise has been canceled, and the last episode shows sometime in May. It’s sad, especially with how good this season has been, but I think I can say that as long as the new Battlestar Galactica continues, my world will still be complete. It’s tough to put into words just how good that series is. It’s like taking speed. Not that I would know, but I guess it’s like how I’d imagine taking speed. But yeah, BSG starts it’s second season this next summer.

And then the Goblet of Fire comes out this November. I read on SciFi Wire (thanks to my brother’s suggestion that I keep a close eye on that site) that the Weird Sisters, who are the band that play during the Yule Ball, are going to have members of Radiohead in it. This news pleases Kristen to no end, she’s the biggest Radiohead fan I’ve ever met.

Me? I’m fine. Still alive. The stomach flu has gone away, but is being replaced by a pretty killer head cold. I think my body’s ganging up against me.

This is what happens when I write on the whiteboard that I’m “the life of the afterlife” and that “it’s time to love myself all over again.” I just thought it was funny. Seriously.

Now I’m rambling.

Somebody smack me.

And so, with much fanfare, this weekend is finally over, and I’d like to extend congratulations to Matt Valentine, Matt Dixon, Kristen Dewey, Red Wagner, Daniel Treachler, Rebecca Giordano, Anthony Pessagno, and all the other recent grads I know.

In a year, you’ll look back, and if you have the joy of attending another graduation, you’ll realize although we’re glad we’re there,

speeches are twice as boring for the audience than they are for the students.

I tell you, there is nothing, nothing more troubling than to hear a student give a speech in front of just over a thousand people, and to tell everyone that the deepest, most emotional insight she’s had over the last five years of her life was that at Cal Poly, when you’re ten minutes late, you’re really right on time. I think my heart threw up a little.

I mean, I understand that these students don’t have very long to craft something, but you’d think that they’d have an English major go up there, or a Theater major, or a Communications major.

Anyhow, I’m rambling. Congratulations, friends. Stay in touch.

I’d been having some pretty extreme neck and shoulder pains the last few weeks, and so, I went to the chiropractor last Wednesday. To make a long story short, I was having these pains because my caffeine intake was so high that some adrenal gland was getting tired out, and started messing around with the nerves around my spine.

Now, I’ve always prided myself on not drinking a lot of caffeine. Not getting addicted to the stuff. I mean, it used to be that I’d probably drink three cups of coffee a week. You know, only when it was being made at work. And with the product launch, that was going up to two or three cups a day. Add to that the fact that for some reason, I subconsciously didn’t count Coke or even Red Bull as being caffeinated beverages. And I got an entire case of Red Bull, expecting many a long night during the launch. Needless to say, I had a reality check.

So, as of today, I’m six days off of caffeine. I had some pretty major headaches on Thursday, during Brian’s musical (which was hilarious), but other than that, it’s been alright. I never drank the stuff to stay awake, really. It was always because it was just something to drink.

In the Bible, there is talk that, once you decide to believe, you’re what’s called a ?new creation? ? basically, you don’t want for the things that ruined you in your old life. I never truly understood that until I stood in front of the fridge on Wednesday, gazing at Red Bulls and Cokes, a dozen each. That was when I realized I didn’t even want it any more.

I am a new creation. Those are exciting words to type.

And then, there is the inevitable understanding that, although evil is a noble pursuit,

it will always be a lonely one.

Part three of three.

Thanks to Andrea for taking the photo.

Sometimes, you are bombarded with something so cute, you just have to chuck it into the ocean.

Part two of three.

Thanks to Andrea for taking this wonderful picture.

When you see this photo, I don’t want you to think about how I’m about to kick the puppy. No. There is something deeper, something very… very Sylar going on here.

I want you to notice that I’m still holding the leash and I am holding it taut. That this is puppy tether ball. And I’m pretty sure I’m winning.

Part one of three.

Thanks to Andrea for taking this wonderful picture.

Tomorrow, Saturday the 23rd of June, join me as we kick off the first ever (that I know of because Nicole and I invented the game) Ultimate Water Balloon game.

3:30 pm at Cuesta Park, San Luis Obisp0 (google map)

If you have any squirt guns, feel free to bring them. Balloons and water will be provided, but you can always bring more balloons and heck, if you’ve got a Slip n’ Slide, we could use it.

Following the game, at 7 pm, we’ll have the 2 million 673 thousand and first barbecue in the history of man (figure may be less than precise) at our place. Bring your own meat! Donations of chips, soda and beer are always welcome.

And yes, it’s my birthday, but don’t feel obligated to bring a present or a card or anything. Your presence is all the gift I ask.

I need this shirt. Unfortunately, they don’t have any in stock right now. But good golly, I need this shirt.

I cannot express my glee. One of my favorite albums of the last year, The Format’s Dog Problems is now free for download until July 16th, no strings attached. All you have to do is sign up for their mail list (which you can opt out of at any time). It’s infectious, wonderful, indie happy pop and you need to download it and listen to at least Time Bomb or Dog Problems or Pick Me Up or The Compromise, because if you don’t and tell me I’ll probably cry. And if you don’t and don’t tell me, shame on you.

The greatest part about The Format is that they self-released this album. I think I heard that after their first (fantastic) album was released with Atlantic Records, the record deal went horribly south. Well, self-releasing has its perks. Actually, the greatest part about The Format is that they’re awesome. All that other stuff is just really cool.

Check here for some rare tracks by The Format, including a cover of The Kink’s Apeman. I know my mom will like that.

And I’m seriously thinking about going to see them Wednesday, August 1st at 7:00 pm at Avalon Hollywood. It’s $17. Anybody wanna come?

Claude Garamond was a 16th century Parisian type designer. But that’s not who I’m really talking about.

Clawed Garamond is my three month old orange tabby, a fantastic present from Nicole for my birthday. I know, I know, just the kind of name the cats at school will make fun of him for. It’s just, this is only the second pet I’ve named, after the ill-fated Doc Ock (may he rest in piece).

See full post for more pictures.

If you haven’t seen the show Pushing Daisies, you need to. It feels like Amelie or Big Fish, with probably a hint of The Addams Family, only in a weekly hour-long programme.

The basic premise is this: as a boy, Ned found out he had a special ability. Whenever he touched something dead, it came back to life forever. Once he touched them again, they died. Forever. No amount of touching will bring them back. If he doesn’t touch them, within a minute something else will die in the area. Ned would say it’s a “random proximity thing.” This also leaves Ned with a fear of really getting close to anyone. His faithful dog, who is the first to receive his gift, lives on, never being pet except by strangers or tree branch.

It’s now 20 years later, he owns a pie shop, called The Pie Hole, and he solves mysterious deaths with a private eye: Emerson Cod. They touch dead people, ask how they died and collect the reward money. Watching the tv one day, he learns that his childhood sweetheart, Charlotte Charles (nicknamed Chuck), was murdered on a cruise boat. He touches her at the mortuary, and can’t bear himself to touch her again. And so, she lives forever, and they’re in love, but they can never touch for fear of her dying again. Now, all three of them work together to solve these mysteries.

The real breakout star in the show is Olive Snook, played by Kristin Chenoweth. Olive is Ned’s only employee at The Pie Hole, and she’s in love with Ned. The fact that he’s in love with Chuck, someone who’s “re-living,” and someone he’ll never touch, is really confusing to her, given she has no idea about Ned’s power. She’s amazing though, a simply stellar actress. Even better than when she was in the West Wing. Just listening to her sing They Might Be Giant’s perennial hit “Birdhouse in Your Soul” a couple episodes back was amazing.

Anyhow, if you find yourselves wondering what to watch on Wednesday nights, check out ABC, I think at 8. Or, watch the episodes online at ABC.com. I don’t think I’ve seen television this funny, complex, quirky, and child-like all at once, ever.

For some reason, recently I have been very interested in non-canon Star Trek stuff… old school 60’s-era Gold Key comics (more on that later), discussions about Phase II, et cetera.

Something I hadn’t read, though, was about the failed movie project Star Trek: The Beginning, which would have taken place after Enterprise but before TAS. It’s an interesting read.

Check it out, you know, if you dare to geek.

The days are deflating.

Good morning, Clawed the Destroyer.

In other, slightly related news: I’ve been spending some time painting, when I get the chance to relax. Don’t worry, it’s still a geeky pursuit because it’s digital painting. This program, called ArtRage, is super easy to use and actually makes digital painting fun, not like trying to do it on Photoshop. It’s neat, mainly because it eerily reacts the way real paint would. The demo runs for as long as you’d like, full version is $25. PC and Mac. I’m gonna buy it.

A middle-aged woman walked into the shop last week, saying she had noticed us from the street and wanted to know what we do. Given my bosses were in a meeting, I gave her a tour. You know the one: “here’s an 84-inch wide printer. Yeah, we print that big. 84 inches by 150 feet if you want…”

After we’re done, she says I look familiar. “Do you work at the Apple store downtown?”

No, ma’am. I’m not that kind of hipster yuppie. I’m a completely different kind of hipster yuppie.

10 years ago, my father was struck by a grand maul seizure and a stroke at the same time. Amongst the numerous things it did to his mind and body, he lost complete control of his left side; no feeling, heavily impaired mobility, et cetera. This sucked all the more given he is left handed. When the doctors told him he’d never walk again, in grand Lawless fashion, his response was “like Hell!” Before too long, he was walking pretty darned well.

On Wednesday, he called me to let me know that, for the first time in 10 years, he was washing his hands and actually felt hot water on his left hand. And aside from some pain he felt on his left side a few days prior, this has been a sudden occurrence. When he called, I can describe his mood as nothing but jubilant; he had spent the day celebrating by walking around with a mug of coffee, as well as throwing and catching a ball. I honestly cannot fathom what that must be like — to welcome the use of your body back to your mind, as two long-separated brothers.

This situation has made me realize that I am not someone who believes in miracles — I hadn’t ever known that about myself before. It’s not that I feel offended by people who do believe in miracles, nor do I think them foolish; it’s just that within a quarter-century of my life, I’ve seen some pretty ugly things, and the end of ugliness has always felt more like a return to normalcy, rather than a miraculous occurrence.

My father’s recovery is a miracle, as much as I can tell. And it’s left me dumbfounded. Oh, and most certainly jubilant.

There’s been a scarcity of posts lately, I can attest to that. But rest assured, there is plenty goin’s on.

Not the least of which, BIG Images has moved from it’s home of the last four years to 767 Francis Street, three blocks from where it was and pretty much next door to the Co-op. This space is almost three times bigger, and by golly, it’s been quite a whirlwind affair.

Anyhow, today’s the first day in the new shop. You can read more about it here at BIG-images.com.

I’ve been telling myself for two years I should seriously update my site. It hasn’t been updated in three years. The kitten is sleeping on my shoulder now so I should probably stop typing now.

Just check it out.

In the image above, as you can see, I’m flying. And Jim is scared for his life.

Last Wednesday, on the eve of his move to Seattle (long story), Jim took me up in his plane, and oh, it was good.

More photos after the jump.

Me and the plane. Little does it know… you actually have to sneak up on these things to ride it, you know, like a Hippogriff.

Avila Bay

Boats look like sprinkles.

Well, he’s back, but he’s got a cast, because he broke his hawx, which is like our ankle. It’ll be about 4 more weeks before he can take it off (and, consequently, before we can give him a bath… uggggh).

See how Clawed rawx the hawx after the jump.

I can’t believe he let me get this close…

If anybody wants larger versions of these, let me know.

Tonight, Nicole suggested that instead of a Nativity scene, we could have a Cognitive scene.

Anyone care to venture a guess as to what that means?

I’m going with a giant brain on display that people can walk through. Or three wise men… existing.

It’s been a long time since I’ve spent much time in the public sphere of the local poetry scene. Gosh, it wasn’t that long ago that I was hanging out on Wednesday nights at Linnaea’s, listening to the classical guitarists, the poets, the singer-songwriters, and the occasional senior-citizen white rapper.

Actually, that was probably four or five years ago. You know, that seems like a real long time ago, now that I put it that way. But I still write. Occasionally.

Anyhow, the next couple of weekends is the 24th Annual Poetry Festival here. I’m going to try to go to every event I can. Let me know if you’re interested in joining me.

Here’s a list of the events. Here’s a not as pretty list that also includes the monthly poetry events around the area.

Boo yeah.

So, I’m very very sorry if you came to my blog earlier and found… well… anything somewhere between a blank screen and a screenful of coder gobbledygook. Turns out I broke WordPress when I thought I was upgrading it.

Tip for everyone, including myself: TURN OFF ALL PLUGINS BEFORE UPGRADING WORDPRESS. I seriously hope I’ve learned my lesson.

In other apologies: the last week or two, I’ve been trying to work up the courage to call an advertiser for the Women’s Press back and apologize to her for how I treated her on the phone. Suffice it to say, it was nearing press time for the paper, and I was nearing the end of my rope when she asked me to do some simple changes to her ad. Basically, I feel like I was a jackass. I’m meaning to call her up any day now and apologize.

We’ll see how that goes.

For the most part, I’ve been doing really good not having caffeine these last several months. That is, until I see stuff like this.

I know I’ll probably never start a band, but I’ve kinda been holding on to these names for a while, and I thought I’d share them with you, dear loyal viewer.

Supply and The Band
The Drunken Cadavers
A Garage Full of Hurt
We Start With a Bang
Ap*llo the Dog

Saturday was a little problematic for me, in terms of getting work done. I’m currently in the middle of a much-needed redesign of BeanFit.com, and I can’t work on it, or update my totally awesome blog, because my internet is down all day. A half-hour on the phone with SBC Yahoo support on Sunday morning makes me figure out that the order that I’ve been resetting my modem and router is all wrong. That’s really funny because I’ve been doing it the way Charter told me about for the last four years.

Finicky technology, sanity is for others! So, yet another reminder to myself, and those who might benefit from this knowledge: Unplug both router and modem, then plug in the modem and let it fully boot up before starting the router. Mumbo jumbo, sprinkle the cow’s blood, and then spin in three very awkward circular motions, counter-counter-clockwise.

I found this image in a very enlightening and entertaining post from ilovetypography.com, entitled Typoholism: An Addict’s Tale. Naming children after typefaces is now my new goal.

Oh, and I’d buy that game, pictured above, in a heartbeat.

Speaking of games, it seems I took a quick nap and all of a sudden Super Mario Galaxy is out! IGN gave it a 9.7, and their video review should not be missed.

I can’t believe I haven’t yet written about this, but my good friend Kevin Toqe recorded a magnificent E.P. this summer, and it’s exciting to me for three reasons:

1. It’s really quite good.
2. He’s released it for free on his website.
3. I designed the packaging and liner notes for it.

So, whatever you do, I highly recommend you at least stop by his site (KevinToqe.com) and give it a listen. There’s a media player at the top of every page that plays the songs in their entirety, or you can download the entire album, including a PDF of the liner notes.

It’s interesting to note, though, that neither the digital booklet nor the actual physical cd (when it’s produced) will have the complete packaging. The digital download has all the lyrics, while, in the interests of space, the physical cd has no lyrics, but does have the tray art, of which you’ll see the inside of the tray card above.

I highly recommend the song “Keep the Faith” which is track numero uno. It’s super catchy; I find myself singing it in the shower almost on a daily basis.

In the last several months, I’ve been super interested in the field of generative art. Basically, it’s writing a program that will generate randomized (or not) pieces of art based on specific criteria. I’ve been following it without knowing it for a while now with the works of Joshua Davis (here’s his website, and here’s an article about him on Apple.com).

I’ve been looking at doing generative art on my own. Two programs I’ve found for it are NodeBox and Processing. NodeBox is definitely the easier (and kinda nicer looking) of the two, but it’s Mac-only and only deals with vectors (which you can do some cool stuff with. The image above, from build 40 of deliciousdesigner.com was made in NodeBox), while Processing is multi-platform, and deals with raster graphics entirely.

Today, I found a neat website where Chad Udell programmed a generative art piece using Actionscript 3 (Flash) and Adobe Kuler’s open API. You just type in a search term, and it searches Kuler for a color strip, and creates a random piece of art with it. You can play with it here, or see some of Mr. Udell’s generative art on his Flickr page.

Last night, Apollo the dog had a bad cough. It was the sort of thing that woke us up at 1:30 am and didn’t really stop until 3. It was really scary; he’d get caught up in it, and couldn’t stop until we rubbed him to try to calm him down.

I was especially scared when I did a search online at 2 for “dog coughing,” and found this article. Of particular note is the heartworms; they’re fatal and are spread by mosquito bites. I was swatting at a mosquito right before I went to bed, too.

Luckily, though, the diagnosis was simply bronchitis, and he’s doing much better today, especially with the chicken broth, lukewarm ice cream and guacamole we’ve been feeding him. Well, the guacamole is what we put his antibiotic pill in, but still. He’s gotta be digging this attention.

I have to hand it to my friend Dave McFadyen, he makes my musical taste feel so utterly pedestrian. In the last few months he has introduced me to three of my favorite albums ever. And it’s stuff that makes me feel so damn smart, like after listening to it I have a license to walk around being indier than thou. Let’s rattle off the list:

1. The Long Winters - Putting the Days to Bed.  Best song off this album is “Teaspoon.” I really don’t know what it’s about, something to do with being in love with a woman who loves a pilot, and all you can do is turn to a life of robbing banks… it really doesn’t matter. Those horns buffet my soul.
2. Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha. One listen to “Plasticities” (which is where they title of this post comes from) makes me feel like falling in love in autumn. But really, it’s one stand out track in an album of stand out tracks. He used to be the violinist for the Squirrel Nut Zippers, and has released plenty of albums over the years as Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire, and most recently as just Andrew Bird. His “Bowl of Fire” discography is a lot like the Squirrel Nut Zippers, with him borrowing many of the conventions of early 20th century music. Check out this show on archive.org at Mad City in 1998 for a listen to his previous stylings. He’s pretty dang slick.
3. Radiohead - In Rainbows. I have to admit, I just haven’t “got” the last several Radiohead albums, but this one is truly stellar. It’s easily the most accessible album they’ve released in a decade. “Reckoner” reminds me of my favorite songs off of Moby’s Play, but far more beautiful.

All of those links above you should be able to play the songs right off the page. Thank heavens for Hype Machine and the Live Music Archive at archive.org.

At work today, I was extremely pleasantly surprised when I was given a copy of OSX Jaguar as well as a new Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse, designed specifically for the Mac. The mouse on the freakin’ thing has EIGHT BUTTONS.

Gosh, I love where I work.

Nicole’s favorite story of the week to tell about me happened the night of Apollo’s bronchitis attacks. You see, I had a bit of trouble getting to sleep when I went to bed, and then there was the 2 hours staying by his side comforting him. When I finally got back to bed, I crashed. But Nicole was supposedly wide awake.

Well, as she tells it, I’d snore, wake up the puppy, who’d give half a cough, and then I’d respond with an unconscious “There, there Apollo. There, there.” And then immediately start snoring again, which would begin the cycle all over again.

Apollo is doing much better. As responsible pet owners, we’re not walking him for fear of other dogs he may greet and gift with bronchitis. He’s been enjoying getting his cough suppressant in finger-sized chunks of guacamole. Oh, and he still has cute puppy paws.

One of my favorite programs ever is called Synergy2. Essentially, it runs on Mac, PC and Linux and allows you to share the same keyboard and mouse across multiple computers, regardless of the operating system. So, today, I am copying text on my Mac, pasting it on my PC, and essentially being more awesome than my license for awesomeness allows for.

Unfortunately, the GUI I’d been using on my Mac for Synergy, QuickSynergy, doesn’t work on Leopard. It’s all good, though, because a quick Googling helped me find SynergyKM, a far better GUI that I probably should have been using from the beginning.

Yay for Leopard breaking my life less than I thought it did.

(Actually, it’s really freaking cool. Thanks Red, for your part in it. I’m sure all the awesome parts were the ones you put in it.)

Batman: The Animated Series was amazing. It was as visually impressive as it was deep and rich in plot. I don’t think I knew how good we had it. Until now.

You see, a couple nights ago I managed to stumble across an episode of The Batman. It’s the new anime-inspired cartoon that seems to take a lot of it’s cues from the Adam West live-action Batman series, particularly in it’s puns.

And these are serious turbo puns. For example, Mr. Freeze is walking down the street after he’s just robbed a bank. It’s the hottest night of the year in Gotham City, but he’s making it snow. He stops and says, to no one in particular mind you, “Baby, it’s cold outside.”

Batman ends up catching pneumonia after getting frozen solid by Mr. Freeze. Once Alfred suits him up in a “weather-proof” Batsuit, Batsy decides it’s time to let the poetry flow. What does he say? “Let it snow.”

The worst part about it is how they neutered Mr. Freeze’s character. He’s no longer a scientist who is fighting to keep his wife alive in a cryogenic chamber. No, he’s just a bank robber. A bank robber who blames Batman for making him fall into a cryogenic tank and get electrocuted at the same time. This turns his blood into, *cough cough*, electric ice particles. I don’t think I’m creative enough to come up with stuff like that.

And one last scene; Mr. Freeze ends up robbing a cruise ship in Gotham Harbor, where all the debutantes are holding some kind of ball. He says to a couple of hapless victims, “Just hand me the ice.” When they give him a puzzled look, he says, “Think about it.” And then he snaps off their giant silver necklaces. Jumping off the side of the ship, he tells the captain, “Have an ice evening.”

And so, dear reader, I weep, for the end is most certainly nigh.

Nicole decided to let me have my Christmas presents last night: Super Mario Galaxy and Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition were my reward.

Mario Galaxy is seriously the most amazing platformer I think I have ever played. To be able to jump off a tower, get caught in orbit of a small planetoid, and then land on the other side of the world is something that constantly astonishes me. I started playing it this morning, got a half hour in, and seriously considered calling in sick.

RE4 is more of the same amazing game that I’ve already beaten twice on the GameCube, though now, with the Wii controls, it’s faster, more accurate, and yet more challenging. I can’t wait to take on the Ganados again.

Something tells me Nicole thinks I’m pretty special…

Yep. New Years ‘08 at midnight. It was quite crazy. I was very nervous. Nicole was very surprised.

You’ll notice in the second photo above, that I was not expecting her to laugh in my face. And I hope she said yes to what I think she did, because I don’t remember actually asking anything that night. It could have been “Oh my gosh, some midgets ran by and clocked me in the knee with a baseball bat. Oh, look what I found! Isn’t this pretty? I think I’m going to keep it all for myself!” Funny thing is, though, she won’t give it back.

Sigh, women.

So, I’m maybe 90% done with my first book of poetry. It’s not a big thing; I’m going to self-publish through Create Space, a great Amazon-owned company that happens to have some really kick-ass Ultimate Frisbee players working for it, because, you know, that’s important when picking how your first 11-year long opus is produced. Nor is it going to be a big book, clocking in at probably under 50 pages.

I meant it to be a Christmas present last year to a bunch of people, but since I kinda missed that deadline, I had a lot more time to put back into the editing and design of it.

I’m having some problems coming up with titles, but I think I’m almost there. My first working title was Get Thee Behind Me, Gravity but since that was completely lame, I was, for a time, thinking of calling it what it is: Pretentious Crap, by Ben Lawless. Jason has been helping me out with a lot of ideas, like Underpaid, and the previously mentioned Pretentious Crap. Lots of people have a problem with that one, though…

Recently I was thinking:

• Somewhere Along the Way, This All Got Out of Hand
• Absolutely Unremarkable in Every Way
  
• I Am Lawless (Soon to be a major motion picture starring Will Smith)

But then I considered, what if I actually had titles that related to the poems in the book?! How novel would that be?! So, my current picks are:

• Exchanging Sky for Ground (or just Sky or Ground)
• Years Before the Moon and You and Me
• The Spark That Did Us In

If anyone would like to help in any way, toss me a comment, or something into this remarkable little thing:

If anyone has seen the first part of Star Trek: Of Gods and Men (Wikipedia link), you know that the Guardian of Forever makes an appearance. Right at that part, I paused it, turned to Nicole and Matt and asked “You remember what that is, don’t you? You know, from The City on the Edge of Forever?”

Nicole said, “Yeah, that’s where they found God in the middle of the desert, right?”

Matt pipes in and says “No, that’s in the Center of the Galaxy, this is the Edge of Forever. It’s a bit different.”

Anyhow, if you’re a Trek fan, I recommend Of Gods and Men, even though it’s not quite as awesome as some other things. Anyhow, you can watch it here. 

Last night, Nicole and I went to a fabulous dinner at the Paso Robles Inn and then followed it up with a refreshing soak in the Paso Robles Hot Springs. It was great; we looked great and had great fun. I know I don’t get many chances to dress up. And so, I wore a white button-up shirt I think I haven’t worn since high school.

I believe my exact words at dinner were “It feels like I’m getting strangled ever so slowly by a precocious midget.” After unbuttoning the top button, I just felt like I had something stuck in my throat. It didn’t go away, no matter how hard I tried to cough it up, and then at 2 this morning I woke up and it was nearly unbearable. In addition to the sore throat, I started getting the chills… Seriously, the “something in my throat” seemed like it grew into a family of four, inhabiting my throat.

Good times.

So, I took the day off of work, which is neat, but I really wish I could be there. And the day seems like it’s nap, watch Buffy and Angel, and hydrate us to the poor house.

Here’s another thing: people say “Yeah, it’s going around.” How do they know? Perhaps I have too small of a sample size to figure that out, given I probably am around less than a dozen people in my day, but seriously.

• Read them
• Ignore them
• Add to them via comments

So, NaBloPoMo is extended beyond just November, and this month’s theme is “lists.” So, here’s my first list, expect 30 more over the month.

• Sinew
• Pilcrow
• Whimsy

• The wedding has been pushed back to April 2009. It just didn’t seem wise to divide Nicole’s attention between Senior Project and planning a wedding. What’s the rush, anyway?
• I’m starting to think about actually submitting my poems to magazines and journals and the like, before I do the full book. Part of it is because I think I need a few more poems ready for prime time before I can justify it… I’ll keep y’all apprised on the situation.
• The new Speed Racer Trailer is amazing. I’m going to be first in line. But what’s this? Only 20% of the actors talking like they’re overdosing on sugar? Man, it’s definitely going to be nothing like the cartoon.

• Perfect portable microwave
• Remote control for crosswalk buttons
• Yipping dog extinguisher

• delicious:suite’s website: Had a lot of fun redesigning this site again. Love PHP includes. The copy on it is still a work in progress, and we need to actually add a portfolio, but it’s up, and it’s got DROP SHADOWS. I swear I’d never use drop shadows on the internet. This is a year to break rules.
• Firestone Walker Brewery’s website: I was the head of the team working on this at delicious:suite, and we built this according to iii design’s wonderful comps (I hope we did them justice). It uses some pretty nifty AJAX/PHP/Flash magic so the video never refreshes, although the rest of the page does. Oh, and we got some free beer from the deal. SCORE!
• Designer Sleeves’ website: Definitely want one of these, but haven’t justified it to myself yet. Built this at delicious:suite according to a Kraftwerk design. It was nice getting to see Anthony Pessagno occasionally when I’d walk into their offices, but ZenCart and I are probably going to be lifelong arch-nemeses.

• Politics
• Religion
• Genitalia

• Self publish through Create Space or Lulu.co
• Get it printed as a chapbook through some small press.
• Photocopy and use it to build a fire, then share via smoke signal (note to self: sign up for Amazon’s new smoke signal service)

• Use Papyrus on a design.
• Eat anything within a spinach wrap. The green pita-like substance is a deal breaker for me.
• Decapitate adorable* puppies.
  •    * Puppy must be adorable to escape decapitation.**
  •    ** All puppies are adorable.

• Skirmish
• Ventricle
• Atrium

• Dirt?
• It’s like peanut butter, unfettered by peanuts, butter, or sugar! Leaving only the fact it sticks to the roof of my mouth.
• Still, I have a strange inclination for another piece.

• There’s no way, as far as I know, to transfer contacts from your old SIM card to the iPhone. That is, without jailbreaking it. So I spent about an hour in front of Address Book on my Mac, making sure I had everybody’s info imported by hand. (Note: I didn’t actually try to put my sim card into the phone, I just read online that it wouldn’t work.)
• What, no flash support in Safari? W-w-w-what?
• On the other hand, it’s a freakin’ iPhone, and there are so many cool things it can do. For example, I love it’s integration with GMail and regular POP boxes, as well as the Facebook App. Mmm Facebook app… Oh yeah, and having Internet everywhere in my pocket. And visual voicemail. Happy (four month) early birthday to me!

• I love everything that goes into fried rice, but I prefer steamed rice by a factor of five Godzillas.
• I got my degree in printing, but I’m scared to death of desktop printers.
• I’m marrying a woman:
  • who broke up with me twice in one day,
  • who has, on many occasions, mentioned she is going to kill me, slowly and painfully,
  • and who bought me an iPhone… so I guess we’re even, at least for the next rest of my life…

• I’d like to say the better man won, but that’s a lie.
• You may have taken my queen, but I’m doing your mom.
• Losing just makes me forget I didn’t win.

• Don’t drink apple juice too fast, lest ye be afflicted with all manner of stomach cramp.
• If you value your digits, don’t keep knives in the soapy water when you wash dishes.
• Honk if you’re ****ing Ben Affleck.

• Lochness monster
• Vlad the Impaler
• The zombie apocalypse

• Cascada (waterfall)
• Encantada (enchanted)
• Lo siento (I’m sorry)

• catacomb
• catatonic
• catapult
• Caturday
• catalyst
• catastrophe
• Clawed Garamond

True credit for this post goes to the incomparable genius of my mother and Nicole.

• Pay Apple $2 to make a ringtone from a song I already own.
• Purchase iLife for $79, use GarageBand to export a track as a ringtone.
• Do it for free:
  • Download Audacity and MakeiPhoneRingtone
  • Clip track in Audacity to something shorter than 40 seconds
  • Import into iTunes, and click Advanced > Convert Selection to AAC
  • Drag the new file onto the MakeiPhoneRingtone window
  • Connect and sync!

Unfortunately, this method only allows me to put one ringtone on my phone at a time. If I put more than one, all of them appear as duplicates of the first one in the iPhone.

Woe be unto me.

• Jon Foreman - Fall and Winter EPs
• Something Corporate - Leaving Through the Window
• A few songs from the original Ghostbusters soundtrack, especially Mick Smiley’s “Magic”
• Grab bag of songs from the Sound of Superman soundtrack, including
  • Paramore covering “My Hero,” originally by the Foo Fighters
  • Jack’s Mannequin - “Meet Me At My Window” (sooo good)

• His 1953 novel, Childhood’s End, was my favorite book when I was a teenager. What a sad and startling story.
• He, in many ways, is the forefather of the modern telecommunications satellite.
• He was as prolific as he was artistic: over 100 novels to his credit, and I’ve read more stories by him than by any other author.

Sir Arthur, you will be missed. Rest well.

• The em dash. Looks like ?, write with &mdash; Please please please use it instead of — (two dashes).
• The pilcrow. Looks like ¶, write with &para;
• The section sign. Looks like §, write with &sect;
• The middle dot. Looks like ·, write with &middot;
• Script capital P. Looks like ?, write with &weierp;
• Blackletter capital I. Looks like ?, write with &image;
• Therefore. Looks like ?, write with &there4;
• Latin-style small f with hook. Looks like: ?, write with &fnof;

• Oh look! Godzilla’s attacking Tokyo!
• Hold on! Your lunacy is making me vomit uncontrollably.
• Exclamation! Improbable story and/or made-up physical condition
  requiring you or I flee the area.

• Enervate
• Nomenclature
• Asymptote

• we get a little crazy.
• spam in the comments on this site are dealt with. Let’s see if these new countermeasures work…
• you hate Sarah Marshall too.

• Wow, they wrapped that up quick!
• Joss sure likes to kill characters. Had I seen this before Serenity, I could have predicted some of the deaths in that film.
• Best last line of a TV show ever: “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m gonna slay the dragon. Let’s get to work.”

• Moby’s album masher mix from his new album “Last Night” - moby.rcrdlbl.com
• Dan Wilson - ‘Junior‘ and then ‘Closing Time‘ - a live show in Dallas, TX on Nov 15 ‘07
• Shout Out Louds - Very Loud (Live @ SXSW 2008) - hypem.com

• Every step a skip, every word a smile. Take that, haters.
• Pen a nobel prize-winning book of poetry. No big thing.
• Piss on a dog’s leg.

• Don’t drink and derive.
• That’s pretty much it.

• Elephant - my go to beer when I’m suffering.
• Firestone Walker Reserve - only had this one on draught. Tastes like
  burnt toast, which is good for beer.
• Smithwicks - one heck of a good Irish brew.

• boil
• congeal
• queue
• consume

• On a season 4 episode of Dawson’s Creek, Dawson hands in a letter for college applications in COMIC SANS!!! Dunh dunh DUNH.
• I don’t know when the law gets passed, but I swear I see more people everyday driving while on their cell phone. Get a hands-free set, or use your speaker-phone, people! Or better yet, GET OFF THE ROAD!
• Darkwing Duck: Let’s get dangerous.

• DuckTales (from Grade School)
• Bonkers (from Junior High)
• Batman Beyond (from High School)
• Invader Zim (from college)

Today, Nicole has had a bit of a rough day. She had to get up at 6 o’clock this morning in order to be at a field trip for a class she’s T.A.ing. She got back home just in time to hop into work at noon, and currently it’s just after 9pm, and she’s still there. She called a few hours ago to say that a dog was having complications post-op and that she had no idea when she’d be home.

As a society, I feel it’s so easy to blame the bad things that happen to us, instead of recognizing the worth of the person that lives through it. I do it all the time, but I’d like to stop it here.

Nicole is a woman of indomitable spirit, willing to demonstrate a dedication that I can only hope to emulate. The truth is, she didn’t have to sign up for the Teacher’s Aide position, but she did it anyway knowing full well the requirements (and evidently not getting enough of the early morning jaunts when she was a student in the class). Plus I hear she’s a tremendous help at the hospital, putting in hours she would rather be sleeping in. And that’s not the only thing that she carries the torch in without much recompense: teaching swimming at the Elks every summer and putting up with me are two things that come to mind.

Personally, I have never had the opportunity or the will to put that much of myself out there, not without grumbling about it, anyway. I am honored to know that when we have children (which will be a long time from now, mom), the woman I am marrying will be able to pass that quality on to them. It’s a wonderful gift.

I love you, baby. When you get home, if I’m asleep drooling in front of a flickering computer playing Sports Night, wake me up. I’ll heat up your dinner. Oh, and don’t let me forget to get out the chocolate pudding I made.

I’m a little bit anxious; I’m going camping for the first time since I
was 12. Nicole’s Senior Project studies have her traveling up to Hi
Mountain most of the weekends this quarter, and this time I get to
join her. I hear there’s a spot on the peak where you can see both the
ocean and the Sierra Nevadas at once.

So, if I get mauled by bears, I expect all of you to visit me in the
hospital. Laugh now, but Nicole has been trying to convince me that
it’s standard for campers to leave bits of raw meat all around the
campsite right before bed.

Tomorrow night, Kevin Patrick Sullivan is going to be reading from his latest book The Space Between Things, at 7pm at the SLO Art Center (in the mission).

This is pretty special to me because I designed this book, front to back, guts to glory. So, if you find yourself with little to do on a Friday night, join me!

You can see more photos of the book in the Book Design page of my portfolio.

So, here’s a strange predicament: Thursday, I updated my site to Wordpress 2.5 (mmm-mmm-mmm, good) and on Friday, 2.5.1 comes out, so I upload it to my site. Coda, by Panic software, is my FTP manager of choice. I think they added a new option when uploading, but I didn’t pause to take it in. When you upload a directory, you can either Replace or Merge. I have always just had the option to Replace, which, believe it or not, replaces the files that are new and leaves all the other files alone. Turns out this the behavior I want is now Merge, and Replace destroys the entire directory, and then rewrites it.

That means all my photos I’ve uploaded to my blog are lost, as well as the themes I’ve collected o’er the years. It’s not a huge deal, but if you were wondering why my site was sporting Kubrick until this morning, that’s why.

So, Crayola is debuting some new colors. In them, a new shade of magenta is named “Awesome.” I’m so not kidding.

Join me in welcoming next year’s new colors:

• Insolence: deep fiery red
• Tenderloin: brown with a hint of pink
• Suffering: chicken pox red
• Valhalla: dark blue
• Nom-nom-nom: pink
• Corporate America: puke green

I know, I know, better call the waah-mbulance, but here’s my official bitchfest:

• Yesterday was so hot here, my computer just died about 6 or 7 times. I finally realized it was overheating. I’m not looking forward to any more warm weather now that it’s officially Women’s Press crunch-time.
• I gave back my Powerbook G4 this morning; the company had a better place for it, and since I got a new iMac for my desk at work, it wasn’t entirely necessary. It’s okay, I think I still get visitation rights. Since I only have my PC, which works occasionally in a heat wave, I’m a little freaked.
• The warmer weather has brought the bugs into my home, and with bugs come bug bites. I’ve started taking my Centrum, but not soon enough to stop the dozen or so bites on my arms last night.
• My sister went missing this morning, gone before my mother woke up, and after 12 hours of non-stop worrying, we found her again. During that time, all manner of awful things ran through my head, and, hoping against hope, Nicole spent a good portion of her day checking the train station, to see if she came up here on a whim. After only hearing the ten second version of why, I am forced to conclude two things:

1. My sister is one of the bravest people I’ve ever met, to face her fears and problems and let others in to be there with her, and
2. I am officially pissed off at mankind.

I forgot for a while that not everything I touch turns to gold.

Nothing could have prepared me for giving my cat a bath.

So, regardless of what the critics say, I love the new Speed Racer movie. Sure, I have an affection for the old cartoons that borders on the obscene, but gosh darnit, it’s one heck of a zany, colorful, ridiculous roller coaster ride. It had it’s laughs, and it had it’s slight twists and turns. And it had ninjas.

To be honest, I’ve never been disappointed with the Wachowski brothers’ films. Not even the third Matrix. It wasn’t what I initially wanted to see in the movie, but it was a decent movie.

I went into Speed Racer after reading some pretty scathing reviews. And they’re justified, but I have to say: the cinematography in Speed Racer is top notch. I mean, it’s an hour and a half long movie that feels like an hour long. I even teared up from the sheer mind-numbingly sugary sweet ridiculousness that was the end of the last race. Seriously, it reminded me of the end of 2001: a Space Oddysey.

So, if you have any love for the old cartoon, and even enjoy Wachowski brothers’ films, I’d say give it a shot. For me, it was as enjoyable as Iron Man, though it lacked universal appeal.

If you need a bit of refresher on how awesome Speed Racer the television show is, watch some on Hulu.

Wow. That’s solid parenting!

What a mid-season ending. I’m still reeling. Yet again, they did it.

Too bad we have to wait for the last ten episodes till 2009! AAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGHHHH! My life force!

I don’t think I’ve been as excited about the wedding as I am now, but finding a site and picking a date kinda did that to me!

So, for all of you that want the skinny before almost everybody else, save May 2nd, 2009 for a totally face-kicking good time. We’ve put down the deposit for the Dana-Powers House, and believe me, it’s far more beautiful than the site shows.

Oh, it’s on.

Sure enough, that is a canine next to Apollo, and not a mop, or a bush, or a cavernous maw into the underworld.

The answer is yes.

At BIG Images, our street has notoriously horrible parking. Walking a block (or just biking from our houses) isn’t too much hassle for the people who work here, but sometimes people park in our parking lot and go to other businesses nearby rather than walking a block themselves. If they ask us if it’s cool, we pretty much give them the go-ahead, never mind that we have signs saying “PARKING FOR BIG IMAGES AND iii DESIGN” right in front of every parking spot.

Heck, sometimes people even stop and leave their car fully blocking the driveway. That really grinds my gears.

My mind often fills with possible avenues of revenge:

• Slapping a few BIG Images stickers and letting them advertise for us around town, you know, as a trade for our inconvenience.
• We have a giant slab of styrofoam that looks an awful lot like a boulder. We just pick it up and set it behind their car.

Friday a “gentleman” in a gigantic Ford F250 blocked our driveway to go next door. Completely blocked.

I wrote a note on a piece of paper saying,

“Please be more considerate to others. Respectfully, BIG Images and iii Design”

and stuck it under his windshield.

A few minutes later, he walked out to his jerkmobile, grabbed the note, and yelled back at the shop, “next time I’m going to block the entire f***ing driveway!” before peeling away. What a class act.

Something I re-learned yesterday: sometimes when I’m cranky, I need a nap.

Last night Clawed caught his fifth mouse in the last two months. I’m very proud of him except when he and I get in this grotesque tug-of-war, the wide-eyed mouse trapped between Clawed’s maw and my paper napkin. Then I just feel a little creeped out.

So, for over a year I’ve had a dream of starting an online version of Apple Crack (or Apples to Apples, whatever you want to call it). In it’s most awesome form it’d be a place of technological wonder that would take several months to code and a crackpot team of web experts willing to debug and make it their entire life. In it’s simplest form, it’s a blog.

So, in the interest of actually finishing something I’ve started, behold! TheShork.com!

The main idea is that a series of moderators will take turns posting topics, once every two days. For two days, common people can visit the blog and comment on the topic, and after two days, comments are closed and the moderator updates the post with information on who they picked to win. Very exciting!

If you’re at all interested in being a moderator, let me know! It’s really fun and you’d only have a responsibility to post probably once a month or so.

Let the game begin!

So, love the Dark Knight. Everybody who sees the Dark Knight falls in love with it, but yeah, I’ve got a couple of gripes. Number one is Christian Bale’s voice when he is Batman: the first movie had him with this very laughable growl… not sexy or intimidating by any means. Dark Knight ups the ante with, on top of the fake emphezema, a lisp. I swear to you, listen! It’s there. It is tough for me to get past that…

However, looking back on the rest of the summer’s blockbusters, I really feel like Iron Man filled me with far more joy. Certainly, Dark Knight had a far more compelling villain, but Iron Man wins with a far more interesting hero, and a much higher excitement factor. I like dark and gritty as much as the next guy, but Iron Man proves that modern day superhero flicks don’t have to be dark: they can hit the emotional rollercoaster while serving tons of “OMG that’s cool” scenes. That’s why Speed Racer was such an amazing film for me: it served the source material well, even if it didn’t make people feel dirty, like a Sin City would.

Evidently, Robert Downey Jr. also finds his movie wins. In an interview clip I read from here, he said:

“I feel like I?m dumb because I feel like I don?t get how many things that are so smart. It?s like a Ferrari engine of storytelling and script writing and I?m like, ?That?s not my idea of what I want to see in a movie?Didn?t get it, still can?t tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character and in the end they need him to be a bad guy. I?m like, ?I get it. This is so high brow and so f$%&ing smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie.? You know what? F%$# DC comics. That?s all I have to say and that?s where I?m really coming from.”

I love that guy.

So, a couple months ago, I was emailed by a representative of Screen Printing Magazine, because they wanted to print an article that combined all of the “7 Steps to Effective Large Format Graphics” that I had written for BIG Images newsletter, as well as one new article that I wrote that answered a particular topic they wanted to address.

Well, yesterday I received a very nice check from them. This makes me a nationally published columnist. I believe that’s one step away from sexy international spy.

I just found this video I took back in January 07 with Nicole and Mr. Fish, the Professional Swimmer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Man, that takes me back. I remember this interview… Mr. Fish had a major hangover that day. Boy, that guppy can party!

So, a few things have changed. The wedding is now DEFINITELY on May 23rd 2009, not May 2nd as originally planned. Still super excited. Got lots of fun ideas and a lot of monies to save.

Also, my first book of poems, There is Nothing Poetic About Fish, will be out soon, and I’m having a book release party! More details will follow, but I think dinner is definitely in order 5pm January 18th 2009. Stick around after that as I’ll be a featured poet at the Corners of the Mouth poetry reading that evening at 7pm at Linnaea’s coffeeshop! I’ll be reading with Los Angeles’ own Sherman Pearl. From what I’ve read of his work, he’s a fantastic poet and I’ll be in good company. Check out some of his poems here (especially “Who’s Next?” and “Rocket Science”).

Whoo. Time to catch a breath.

So, i love typography is one of my favorite blogs ever, and they gave me a neat little shout out. In this post, the last paragraph reads

I?m only about a third of the way through my list of things to post this week, but it?s back to work for me. I will try to post more during the week. Have an inspiring, productive, and happy week. And, on a light note, this has to be the ultimate pet name.

Go ahead and click on the link. Clawed Garamond for the win!

I commented because, in the last post, they were gushing over someone’s choice of “Serif” as a name for their cat… yeah, Serif is really good too.

Now, if only I can convince Nicole that our first child should be named Ace Lawless…

I’m so excited for the new Star Trek movie next May. I’m glad that the world is finally realizing

People should make Trek, not Wars.

So, I love Pushing Daisies… it’s a beautiful show about a man that can resurrect dead people for a short time, and he uses that power to solve murder mysteries. Oh, and he makes a mean pie.

Google just gave me a new take on the show I never got from watching it, that Ned has another power. From the screenshot above:

Ned possesses a rare gift — the ability to … Watch Full ‘Pushing Daisies‘ Episodes Online

That’s one heck of a special power.

Seriously, this makes me feel like I’m back in the early years of college. Thank heavens they’re still making music.

I purchased this off of lala this morning… supposedly they might not actually release this EP in physical form.

The Jealous Sound - Got Friends, off their EP of the same name.

Yep, I voted.

From Yo Gabba Gabba.

Jimmy Eat World-Beautiful Day-Yo Gabba Gabba

I think if I were in a band, I’d want to make a video just like this one.

This afternoon, my breath caught, my eyes lidded, my heart beat faster.

I knew, from first glance, I was in love.

Picture from EW’s Popwatch blog.

So, I’ve finally done it. My first book of poetry, There Is Nothing Poetic About Fish, is due to be out in the next month or so. I’ve just sent in my files, and if all goes well, I’ll have a proof in my hands by the end of the week!

So, check out the cover below!

Today, after a many hour battle with IE6 on a site I’m developing, I emerged triumphant.

I am truly a master of time and space.

That’s right, order your own copy of There Is Nothing Poetic About Fish at Amazon, through the following link:

http://tinyurl.com/Bens-Fishy-Poetry-Book

Good times!

Love the video (could stand to do without the music), but seriously? The lead singer of your band decides that he’s tired of being lonely, and he’s going to just drive the spacecraft (possibly humanity’s last hope) into a star. The rest of the crew, after freaking out about solar flares and OMG we’re going to die, gives up and watches the star crash into them.

Let’s forget about the fact that they’ve been zooming around in space for uncountable years, and that they’ve spent 300 bajillion taxpayer dollars on their mission. No, let’s just kill everything and everyone because our lead singer is emo. What a waste.

In other news, totally looking forward to rocking the poetry on Sunday. If anybody’s interested in joining: 5pm dinner at McClintock’s on Higuera. 7pm reading with Sherman Pearl at Linnaea’s on Garden street.

Sunday’s reading went marvelously. In fact, I felt like it was the best reading I’ve ever done.

For those who are interested, here’s one of the new poems I debuted that night:

=================================

Johnson Elementary School’s 12th Annual Spelling Bee

Men do stupid things for women,
and in sixth grade I learned this
when Kennessa Marshall bet fellow classmate Brigham Toskin
twenty-five whole bucks
that I’d take first place in the spelling bee.

So, two weeks later I stood on the stage,
a snap-on dangling from my collar
and the microphone growling at my nose.
Without proper study habits
I neglected to study any words
more challenging than “vice president.”

The first word for me was “undaunted.”
My mouth became an aquarium
with algae sliming my cheeks over a fake coral reef
and “undaunted” lay sideways on the surface,
dead and stinky.

I had to stall, so I asked my questions,
and the judge made the facts solid for me,
that my rotting fish of a word
is synonymous with “courage,”
or the latin coraticum,
cor meaning heart –

and he never finished
because right then the windows
on all sides of the auditorium shattered.

Seats rumbled and doorways splintered.
The earthquake crawled through the aisles
and split the stage open like a pomegranate.

The rest of the contestants, still in their chairs,
fell through what was left of the stage
straight to the molten core of our planet.
There were no survivors.

And that’s how I won my sixth grade spelling bee.