Happy Easterween.

Here's my Million Dollar Idea for the week: As an adult, I want Halloween candy too. Sure I can buy all the candy I want, but don't want a bunch of bags of candy... I just want three Fun Sized 3 Musketeers and an assortment of random other stuff. I want a bag of candy that seems like I took it away from a kid: random candy from all the different manufacturers, some mary-janes, maybe an apple, a popcorn ball, a toothbrush and three quarters at the bottom of the bag.

Come on free market! Fill this niche market without the need to mug a youngster or nurture a child of one's own.

*Easterween, as many readers know, is the holiday between easter and halloween, or between halloween and easter, or perhaps either of those days, in which one knocks on their neighbor's doors, shouts "HAPPY EASTERWEEN!", throws candy at them, and then runs away. I suggest disguising oneself as a different neighbor.

Back from Kansas

Another roadtrip down. A handful of new izone pictures on flickr.

World's Largest McDonald's
Vinita, Oklahoma

I love the izone. I took this yesterday and it looks twenty years old.

My new new favorite radio program.

I love This American Life. I've loved them for years, even after I learned what Ira looked like. The show has made me weep openly and I even bought the TAL comic book. The day they added a podcast was a red letter day.

But I found a program that's even more amazing. From WNYC, Radio Lab follows the same format: an hour show with a few segments. Radio Lab is ostensibly a science show, but I didn't realize this until I'd listened to a couple episodes. It's "how does the world work" science, not "let's do our chemistry homework science". Think Newton's Apple on the radio, for grownups, only way more interesting than I'm making it sound. I spend most of the episode with my mouth hanging open with amazement. Or with tears in my eyes with how emotional the stories are.

Take the episode Detective Stories. It starts at a Egyptian garbage dump that contains 1000 years of garbage, including 117 lost sayings from Jesus. Next a goat standing on a cow leads to a heartbreaking story of lost love, letters and the great inherent value of mystery. The final segment of the episode takes us to central Asia, where researchers discover millions of people who are very likely share Genghis Khan as an ancestor. It's fascinating, remarkable stuff presented masterfully. Other episodes feature a computer program that captures the essence of composers and generates new "Bach" and "Chopin" works, a spellbinding conversation with Ann Druyan (Carl Sagan's widow), and a doctor who finds a way to amputate a phantom limb.

The downside? There's only ten episodes. And only five are in mp3 format on the web. Still, amazing stuff: Radio Lab.

Firefox 2.0 - Thumbs up.

I was reluctant at first to switch... Firefox 1.5 was so great, so stable, so usable... how could it be improved? Five minutes in and it's clear that Firefox 2.0 makes a good thing even better. Antiphishing measures, session restore (if your browser crashes it reloads what you were working on... even blogger posts), Safari-like closeboxes on each tab, a way to reload accidentally closed tabs, shiny buttons and (my favorite) built-in spellchecking. Even the bookmark menu is greatly enhanced. It sports the favicon for each bookmarked site (pikamac.com's favicon is a 1969 Volkswagen) and will display the current title for each bookmarked page (handy for word-a-day pages).

All this at no cost to you.
getfirefox.com

Edit: I was asked awhile ago to share some favorite extensions. Extensions are little nuggets of software that add features to Firefox. First up is Adblock Plus, which blocks banner ads, flash ads... basically all advertising.

Next is Greasemonkey, which I've already spoken about for it usefulness in KoL.

I've just installed Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer but it sounds handy for people using more than one computer (one at home and one at work, for example).

CoLT is essential for bloggers: right-click on a link to copy the link and the destination. Shines when I do the movie posts.

I don't use VideoDownloader very often, but it's necessary to save YouTube or similar videos.

This is interesting...

From Toward Freedom (digg mirror):

Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder."

This could be a tool for dictatorship or a method to prevent another post-Katrina chaos situation, but I don't think I approve. First habeus corpus... now Posse Comitatus.

via metafilter

What I'm Playing: October

Even though it's movie month, I still have to find time to play games. I'm a gamer. That's what I do. The usual suspect is still there: Kingdom of Loathing is still number one. I just hit my two year anniversary not to long ago. It amazes me that there could be a game that I play nearly every day for two years solid, but there it is.

Lumines would also be at the top of my monthly list but I wore out my PSP playing it. The drive started making funny noises and then the music stopped and then 20 minutes later the game froze up. Now it won't recognize discs. Even without the ablility to play games, there's a lot of life left in the PSP, wireless browsing and movies on its rich, buttery screen but I need to get a new one. I'm missing my hypnotic Lumines fix. Luckily, the Xbox 360 version is rubbish, so I don't need to buy a 360 yet.

I found a cheap copy of Metroid: Zero Mission for GBA and played through that in a day. I've got a copy of Metroid Prime: Hunters waiting in my travel bag for me, but Pokemon Rescue Dungeon pushed it out of the game slot on my DS. I'm considering selling all my consoles, because I haven't touched them in months. Maybe I need to have a 30 games in 30 days month sometime.

October Movies: the next seven.

The cinematic onslaught continues:

15. Gangs of New York - Great, but only OK compared to The Departed.

16. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow - Could have been an Indiana Jones movie had it starred Harrison Ford. Remarkably enjoyable, but a failure at the box office and not a critical hit. Doesn't matter, still a very cool movie.

17. Cube- I'm not normally a gory movie guy, but this was fun. I have to give away the ending though: turns out it wasn't a cube, but a rhombus.

18. Man of the Year - If you've seen the preview, you've already seen all the jokes. I'd seen the preview. Robin Williams is obviously talented, but has he made a great movie since Good Morning Vietnam? Alright, maybe The Fisher King.

19. Young Frankenstein - Shamefully, shamefully I admit: I'd never seen this movie before. Let the drubbing begin in the comments. Proudly I can now say: It's great! Every old joke had a twist to make it new and even funnier.

20. I <3 Huckabees - I really wanted to like this movie... a slew of good moments and actors and lines and shots, all adding up to less than the sum of their parts. The opposite of synergy. Maybe I just didn't get it.

21. Minority Report - Another movie I expected not to like, but really enjoyed. I'm a huge Phillip K. Dick fan and movies based on Dick's work have been hit or miss. This was a big hit. Very enjoyable.

Today's post has been brought to you by...

Released today is Sesame Street - Old School (1969-1974) on DVD. While this isn't a large, multiseason boxset, it is an affordable, "best of" collection from the first five years. Favorite sketches and musical numbers as well as the full season premiers from the seasons one through five. Best of all: no Elmo!

Thirty dollars at Amazon

Polaroid izone200: a modern relic

Even casual Pikamac readers have likely noticed an obsession with photography on my part, particuarly found and lower-tech pictures. This weekend I picked up a Polaroid izone 200 camera and a mess of expired film. The camera cost two bucks and the film as a dollar for twelve shots. Here's the izone as taken by an izone:

This camera was originally targeted to the teenage market. The camera was cheap by Polaroid standards: $25 dollars for the camera and $6 for 12 shots. $7 if the shots had a peel-and-stick backing on them. The easiest way for Polaroid to keep the cost down was to make the pictures small. And by small, I mean tiny. Here's what my Panaphonic says the camera looks like:



The quarter gives a nice sense of scale. The developed prints are 1 inch by 1.5 inches but they still have that muddy Polaroid charm. The camera has a fixed shutter speed of 1/250 second and three settings: indoors (used at 2 to 8 feet), Sunny outdoors and Cloudy outdoors. The three settings control the intensity of the unexpectedly powerful flash (as far as I can tell). Here's the easy to use wheel:



Please note the camera also has a attractive "bass boat" metallic flake finish. Unlike the digital cameras that I've grown used to, the izone must be reset before each picture, as this setting winds the spring that the shutter releases. In fact, the camera will operate happily without the suggested two AAA batteries, although the low-light response is abysmal.

The camera has many less-than-positive features, to be sure, but they could be thought of in the same way as the Pixelvision, Game Boy Camera or for that matter the Holga or Lomographic cameras. Flawed, but in a good way. In the case of the izone, the film is already expired, so the urge to "horde" the film is blunted... encouraging the photographer (in this case me) to shoot as much as he can before time turns the instant-developing chemicals into goo.

The last thing I like about the izone, is that it's so easy to simulate pictures from the 60s and 70s. Wash the color out just a bit, and the eye reads the image a thirty years ago.



I'd say to go out and get one (or three, as I did, along with 40 rolls of film), but they're not sold in stores anymore, the film isn't being made and even eBay is relatively dry. This isn't the sort of camera that's going to be a niche treasure in the coming years but it's fun to play with now. More images can be found in my flickr gallery.

Happy Birfday to me!

Now that I'm another year older (and have become crotchety in the last few hours) I urge you to GET OFF MY LAN!

Lego my Eggo

How has it taken this long for this product to exist?

That's right, it's waffles with Lego studs on the top so a breakfaster can build a tiny creation and then eat it.

Sure, there's just bricks now, but I'll bet it 30 years, every Lego Waffle will be some custom piece. We'll long for the days truely creative waffle works could be built.

At the bar

Goaltender's eye view: Mountain Grove, MO

Scooterturtle!

This would have probably been more appropriate on Candyland, but since it is a picture of a turtle I'm posting it here.

NaBloPoMo

Over at Fussy, M. Kennedy has organized an alternative to NaNoWriMo that she's calling, National Blog Posting Month (or NaBloPoMo for short). The goal is simple: blog every day. Of course, those of us who do both will celebrate a happy and prosperous NaNoWriBloPoMo, followed by a SleepAllDamnMonth (or SleAlDaMo) in December.

Now, if I post my novelings each day on the Pikamac, does that count as both NaMo's? Will it alienate the Pikamac's vast readership? Will it discard the vital and desirable "first publishing rights"? Will I be tempted to end each day's writing with a cliffhanger?

Stay tuned!

October Movies: halfway (part 2)

Here's the second half of the movies that I watched in the first half of October:

9. Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events- It's nice for me to watch a Harry Potter-esque movie without being caught up in the differences from the book to the screen. Really enjoyed this one... a great role for Jim Carrey and the set design and cinematography were top shelf.

10. Clue- Liked this one more than I thought I would too. Made me wish there were other movies based on board games. Perhaps a reworking of "Citizen Kane" starring Rich Uncle Pennybags, dying alone in his hotel on Park Place, pining for his scotty dog. Or a wartime drama: a battlefield shrouded in fog, each side trying to depose the enemy leader. This summer... beware the bombs! Stratego: The Movie.

11. Joe Dirt- Not bad, for a David Spade movie. Plus: Christoper Walken!

12. Kicking & Screaming- Some good moments (the scene in the coffeeshop stands out) but a disappointing Will Ferrell movie, particularly in comparison to Talladega Nights.

13. The Departed- Really amazing storytelling. Ultraviolent, yes... and I thought the very very last scene was unneeded, but best movie I've seen in the theaters this year.

14. Animal Crackers- Not my favorite Marx Brothers movie (that remains Duck Soup), but essential viewing for Marx fans for "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" alone.

AAH! Very exciting!

It's no secret I have a boycrush on Chris Yates.
Oh wait, it was a secret. Forget you read that.

I'll start over.

I love Chris Yates.

Dammit, I did it again!

Anyway, if you read this before 10pm Mountain Time today, please go to reprographics, read his comic, gauge how exciting it is, read another comic from a dude in England, determine which is more exciting, using specialized equipment (if need be), and vote on the most excitingest.

Buying Chris Yates' cereal is optional. For you. Not optional for me. Because of the secret boycrush. That you've already forgotten about.

What happened in Vegas.

Billionaire art collector Steve Wynn owns the Wynn Las Vegas casino and this painting, Picasso's Le Rêve. He recently agreed to sell it to another collector for $139 million dollars. Not a bad deal, considering he paid just under $49 million for it in 1997. As he was showing it to some friends before finalizing the sale, he gestured with his arm and put his elbow through the canvas, leaving a silver-dollar sized gash in the figure's (Picasso's mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter) left arm.

He called off the deal and called a art restorer, who promises that the painting will be completely fixed.

The New Yorker article and Nora Ephron's first hand account.

(via Kottke via Zach Klein)

October Movies: halfway

October is Movie month for nanowrimo'ers who are me. I've watched this month, in no particular order:

1. Wet Hot American Summer- much of the creative force behind The State does a summer camp movie parody. Very very funny and well done.

2. The Black Hole- As a kid, we had this movie on one of those "book on record" deals. The imagery in the film is very unusual (robots who are actually zombies) and I always thought the story was much different than what was presented in the movie. Slow by today's standards.

3. Star Trek: Nemesis- Next Generation had their chance... Deep Space Nine and Voyager need movies too!

4. Shock Treatment- I like this one better than Rocky Horror Picture Show, and I've had the songs stuck in my head for the last two weeks.

5. Sorcerer- Transporting dynamite through a South American jungle? What's not to like? Very suspensful and enjoyable.

6. Sin City- Probably the best comicbook based film made to date - incredibly true to the source material. I was very impressed.

7. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy- Expected to hate this one, but didn't. Some good moments and some embarassing ones. I missed Ford convincing Prosser to get in front of the bulldozer most, and hated Trillian as the love interest. Trillian ought to be... just Trillian, you know?

8. The Hudsucker Proxy- One of my favorite Coen brothers movies. Crackling filmmaking.

I seem overly effusive, but I suppose I've only picked movies that I wanted to watch. Life is too short to watch boring movies!

Part two tomorrow.

Picturesofturtles.com

Five Musicians of Note

I had so much fun reading what everyone else was in the middle of reading, I thought I'd share five musicians that have recently worked their way into my rotation that others may not be familiar with.

Caitlin Cary
Caitlin Cary was formerly with alt-country Whiskeytown until the band broke up and she headed out on her own. Cary's musical range is wide and impressive, hopping from rock to soul to country with aplomb. Guests on her albums include Mary Chapin Carpenter, Don Dixon, Black Crowes guitarist Audley Freed, Mitch Easter and Thad Cockrell.
Listen to Thick Walls Down via caitlincary.com

Sarah Harmer
Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah Harmer crafts intricate emotional landscapes scored with guitar, cello and clarinet. She was the lead singer of Weeping Tile and has worked with Rheostatics, Bruce Cockburn, Skydiggers, The Tragically Hip and The Weakerthans. Harmer's songs are more pop/folk than alt-country, and eminently sing-along-to-able.
Listen to Sarah Harmer via The Hype Machine

Bettie Serveert
Dutch band Bettie Serveert is comprised of Carol Van Dijk, Peter Visser, Herman Bunskoeke and Berend Dubbe. I first heard the group doing a set on The Current in the Twin Cities, and the acoustic version of Dreamaniacs blew me away.
Squarely in the rock category; check their cover of Dylan's I'll Keep it with Mine on the I Shot Andy Warhol soundtrack.
Listen to Bettie Serveert on their MySpace page.

Mike Doughty
Forget beer... Mike Doughty is proof God loves us. Former frontman of Soul Coughing, Doughty is making music that, if anything, is even better than his former band. Love his voice or hate it, his songs are lyrically surreal and musically catchy. Doughty opens for Barenaked Ladies on their tour this fall.
Listen to Looking at the World from the Bottom of a Well from mikedoughty.com

Rilo Kiley
The enigmatically named Rilo Kiley is a group based out of Los Angeles fronted by two former child actors: Jenny Lewis and Blake Sennett. Lewis also sang backup on many songs by The Postal Service. The band is known for their energetic rock, dense lyrics and enthusiastic performances.
Listen to Portions of Foxes (and many more) at Rilo Kiley

59 New Blank White Cards

...bringing the total up to 856 on the Blank White Card page. There's a bunch from KoL Con 3-D and a slew from our own local efforts.

The most recent 34 of the 59 are here. The rest are in the mix somewhere... Only 144 to go until one thousand!

The cheapest handwriting font ever!

I've always wanted a font of my own handwriting so that I can type stuff and have it have that "personal" touch. Plus, then people would say "your handwriting is excellent and consistent!" I've tried using professional-level font-o-graphic software, but it's very tedious. Do you know how many letters there are? Many many. So, when I found a web page that offers to convert one's handwriting to a font for super-cheap. The site is Fontifier. The cost is nine dollars.

Fontifer has a form to download with all the popular (and lesser-known) letters. I filled it in, scanned it and uploaded it to the Fontifier website. They'll give a free preview of the potential font prior to purchase. Here's my preview:

And here's how my actual, factual handwriting looks. Ooh, that's pretty!



The lettershapes are ok (the .gif file is scaled down a bit) but the kerning (spacing between the letters) is way off. Also, note the nifty linked "Th"es and other cursive relics in my sample, and how they're absent in their sample. I don't think a whole paragraph of the font would look like I wrote it. Still, only nine dollars? Perhaps I'll take a few more practice forms and see how they turn out.

Don't Forget Your Mushiking Cards!

When I was in Phoenix I played an ideal arcade game. Ideal? Here's the premise: beetles fighting each other. It's called Mushiking and it is one of the latest fads from Japan. Hear's why I think it's a great arcade game: first up there's no joystick. Three buttons, one for throwing, one for pinching and one for hitting. Read as "rock, paper, scissors". That's the mechanic behind the game. Pick what you think will beat your human or computer opponent. Secondly, the game is narrated and the player is guided by Popo, a earnest and exuberant forest elf. Popo explains to the player how beetles lead by an evil wizard are destroying the forest! And how the player has to use their beetle to defeat him! Very exuberantly! Finally, after defeating (or being defeated by) a series of evil beetles, the game gives you a trading card. This card has a barcode on the edges and when playing the game the next time, scanning this card will give your beetle new and more powerful moves. It's fun and strange and I wanted to tell everyone!

There's also a Dinosaur King and a similar game called LOVE AND BERRY Dress up and Dance!

She Doesn't Remember...

Some guy called my mom recently. He asked if she remembered him. She told him she remembered his name.

He reminded her that they had dated each other in high school. Even better, the cops caught them kissing in his car one night!

But even those salacious details did nothing to jog her memory.

This could only happen to my mother.

Primitive hand-drawn goodness.

In addition to the ASBM 24 pager, I've also rescanned and PDF'd ASBM's Under the Hill adventures (includes eBay adventures) as well as the ultra-rare Our Heros story, which features Rike and Jike. The PDF's for those last two are munged: they read ok when enlarged, but printing likely won't work.

Just for reference: ASBM 24 is from 2006, the UTH adventures date from 1994-1995 and the Rike and Jike story is from around 1987. Also, expect to see the original half-sheet-of-notebook paper issues (circa 1991) posted soon. I save everything.

Mixtapes, continued.

Aah! I prickle with embarrassment at some of my song choices... I guess the prickle means quality posting, as more truth is revealed than my natural tendency would have. Two more mixtape stories, a suburban artform that may never come again.

My proudest mixtape achievement is this - analog audio tapes have a five second lead at both ends, a portion of tape that isn't coated with electromagnetic dust. This lets one start playing the tape without having music start right away. One of those subtle facts about things that one tends to take for granted. I opened up a cassette and cut the tape so that there were magnetic bits all the way up to the end of the reel. Then, when recording side A, I left five seconds of silence at the beginning, as normal. For side B, I picked the song I wanted at the end... in this case, Prince's Batdance (there's that prickle again...). Then I picked songs of just the right length so that when the last song ended, and Batdance ends abruptly, the cassette recorder shuts off immediately, rather than waiting 5 seconds. On the larger, heavy recorder I used, the effect was very disconcerting.

Less clever was this: Rain's roommate her first year in college was a huge David Wilcox fan. I'd never heard him before but I wanted to seem like I had. My mistake was this: I went to a soulless chain record store, rather than the many stores in Duluth staffed by helpful, friendly music fans. I left with a David Wilcox fan, but not a key piece of information. There exists a David Wilcox (link contains music) who hails from the United States: a relatively mellow folk singer. There also exists a Canadian David Wilcox: a brash, irreverent blues musician (this link has music too). My CD was the latter. So my mixtape contained the latter. The response I got was something along the lines of "There must have been a mixup, because the cassette I got was full of music you would never put on a tape". I can only assume the lyric My name is David Wilcox / I am the high sheriff of hell must have been misconstrued. I've never told this story, but I still enjoy both David Wilcoxes.

24 Hour Comic Day... complete

This post reserved for display of the 24 page Apple Sauce Brain Man comic (once I scan it... and possibly digitally reletter it). Turns out most people start at noon, rather than midnight as I did. Despite taking a five hout nap at three in the morning, I finished at eleven tonight. I could have done a whole 'nother page! I've read it a couple of times and it's laugh out loud funny for me. Of course, I can read my own handwriting and all the jokes are tailored to my sense of humor. Other people's milage may vary.

The handwriting thing is definitly an issue though. I could make a font based on my own handwriting (tweaked for recognition), use someone else's handwriting font, find a human letterer or learn to write properly myself. The other option, I suppose, would be to start making animated cartoons instead...

Edit: Here is is! A 24 page, four megabyte PDF. It's a bit raw and I don't have all the pages aligned correctly and I'd like the inks to be a lot darker when it prints, but otherwise: Hooray! Enjoy!

Coming next, an option that I hadn't considered: Typing up a script for readers to consult when they can't understand my handwriting. Also it can be the Commentary Track!

Lost Possesions

When I was a little girl, I read a story about the place where all lost, discarded, and broken toys went to live. If you went through the hole in the fence at the seven hundredth and seventy-seventh slat alone, you found a pile of rubbish. But if you went through the hole with a friend, all the things you'd ever loved and lost were there.

If I went through that hole, I'm sure I'd find my "Shouting from the Subliminal" tape. I still have the tape case, so here's a list of the songs Erik and I listened to at some point in high school. I'm thinking Erik made this tape for me circa 9th grade.

Side A (Thursday at 4:30)
Depeche Mode - People are People
B-52's - Channel Z
Tom Petty - Don't Have to Live Like a Refugee
Bto - You Ain't Seen Nuthin' Yet
The Who - Magic Bus
Alen Harvey
We Will Rock You
B-52's - Cosmic Thing
Faith No More - Epic
Eye of the Tiger
Pop Singer
TMNT* - Count on Us
Midnight Oil - Blue Sky Mining
Grumpy Old Man

Side B (Thursday 5:00)
Midnight Oil - Beds are Burning
Prince
Living Color - [I have no idea what this says. Maybe "tight"?]
Soho - Hippy Chick
MC Hammer - Pray
Human League - Hear [?] like a [mcreal? satchel?]
R.E.M. - Stand
Sesame Street - [again, I don't think these letters go together. This may be the klingon, or written in the cyrillic alphabet.]
Jon Bon Jovi - Blaze of Glory

The note on red paper obscuring the song list (except the arrows pointing to Beds are Burning) says:

Hey! Don't look at the list of songs until you have listened to the entire tape At least once. (Maybe 2 or 3 times) There are a couple of surprises...

*Yes, this is in fact Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Maybe this tape was made in eight grade? That would probably explain the Hitchickers Guide to the Galaxy reference on the cover.

I’m A Rock Star!

So, I’m walking through town and this guy stops me.

Guy: Hey! Aren’t you in that theatre company?
Me: The Redundant Theatre Company Theatre?
Guy: Yeah!
Me: Yes, I am.
Guy: You guys rock! I see all your shows!
Me: Wow! Really? Thanks!
Guy: When’s the next one?
Me: February.
Guy: I’ll be there!

Then the bus pulled up and he got in and rode away.

An oldie but a goodie

Selections from The 213 Things Skippy is No Longer Allowed to Do in the US Army:

33. Not allowed to chew gum at formation, unless I brought enough for everybody.

34. (Next day) Not allowed to chew gum at formation even if I *did* bring enough for everybody.

113. There is absolutely no need to emulate the people from “Full Monty” every time I hear the song "Hot Stuff".

129. The Microsoft ® “Dancing Paperclip” is not authorized to countermand any orders.

142. “Calvin-Ball” is not authorized PT.

167. Not allowed to operate a business out of the barracks.

168. Especially not a pornographic movie studio.

169. Not even if they *are* “especially patriotic films”

181. Pokémon® trainer is not an MOS.

202. Despite the confusing similarity in the names, the "Safety Dance" and the "Safety Briefing" are never to be combined.

It is truely a great world in which to be an adult...

Exhibit A: Lego bar-ware. Lego coasters, corkscrews and ice cube trays. Cool your drink or play an elaborate "melting house" joke on some minifigs. I'm in the precise center of the bullseye of their target market.

eight dollars, direct from Lego

But Is It Incest?

A co-worker cornered me at the bagel table and asked if that was my girlfriend she saw me with the other night. She mentioned how similar we looked to one another. Now, I don’t think we look alike at all. I mean, only one of us is 6 feet tall, blonde, blue-eyed, lanky, and muscular. And that’s not me. I’m barely 5’8”, (the only people who think otherwise are men who are shorter than me—which is a whole nother* topic), I have not been remotely blonde since my second birthday, my eyes are green, and muscles imply sweat, a state to which I am vehemently opposed. People also tell me I look like my best friend here. It's the same sort of problem, except that she's 4 inches shorter than me and her (extremely blond) hair is 8 times longer than mine.

And is this at all related to people looking like their dogs? Because I do look more like my dog than either of them.

*I realize this is phrase is grammatically indefensible. Naturally, I have a defense: The intersection between the oral and written word is utterly fascinating. I read a lot of people’s writing over the course of my day. People who speak more than they write (or who were not trained to think differently when they write) use vocabulary, spelling, and grammar in unique and highly illustrative ways. They tend to write words and phrases the way we would use them orally, not the way we would use them literally. Nuances of language and meaning are revealed through oral writing in ways literal writing can’t touch.

An example: I only used your toothbrush once. While something a person might say, it should be written: I used your toothbrush only once. The placement of the word only in the first sentence implies "This really isn't a big deal at all. It's just a toothbrush and we kiss each other anyway." The placement of the word in the second sentence implies "It was an accident! I won't do it again--I promise!" Okay, perhaps not the best example, but a long day of transforming oral writing to literal writing has seriously compromised my critical thinking abilities.

Hammer down? Rabbit ears?

I hereby proclaim this day to forever more be "Talk in 70's Era Citizen's Band Radio Slang Day". Next year I just need to publicize T70ECBRSD better, and maybe announce it prior to, you know, the actual day. I encourage readers to listen to C. W. McCall's Convoy, watch Smokey and the Bandit and peruse this list of CB Radio slang.

Let's party like it's 1978! Again!

October is...

Poster courtesy of the Great Depression.

(Apparently October is also the month in which Rain cannot get the picture function to work. Oh well, perhaps Erik will fix it for me.)

Geocaching at the old tower

Links for my father

Two links I've mentioned that can be accessed via a handy web interface (this one):

The Coleman Stirling Power Electric Cooler is a highly efficient portable electric cooler that will run on 12v or 120v and will keep its contents at near-freezing temperature. The Stirling engine is the key (where most electric coolers use the Peltier effect (aka TEC) to cool. This unit seems better suited to camping or expeditions than casual or vacation use because of the higher price (around $400) but this is a case of getting what one pays for. Holds about thirty or so twelve ounce cans. Back-to-the-landers, a 75 watt solar panel could run this one.

Google Analytics is an order of magnitude better than the tiny "counters" one sees at the bottom of web pages. The tiny snippet of code inserted into webpages tracks hits, but also where site visitors are visiting from, what pages people have been looking at and the search terms used to navigate to the page. It's powerful, it's easy and it's free (to Gmail account holders (I have 98 more Gmail invitations if there's anyone who isn't)).

Four Books I'm in the Middle of Reading

...in the sense that they have bookmarks located somewhere inside of them and are next to my bed.

Corelli's Mandolin by Louia de Bernieres

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

a/k/a by Ruthann Robson

On the Justice of Roosting Chickens by Ward Curchill

24 Hour Comics

Saturday, October 7th is 24 Hour Comics Day. The challenge is to write and draw a 24 page comic book in the span of 24 hours. It's the invention of Scott McCloud.

I just finished reading Scott's making comics and it's excellent and inspiring. Highly highly recommended for comic makers, comic readers or anyone interested in storytelling through visual means. The section on depiction of facial emotion is worth the price of admission alone.

With luck, Saturday should bring the first 24 page Apple Sauce Brain Man story into the world, which will probably triple the number of ASBM pages in the entire universe. Wish me luck!

The Things I Learned Today

It takes a special sort of person to appreciate ginger raspberry cereal first thing in the morning. I am not that sort of person.

The plural of momentum is momenta.

Humble pie is actually a dish, not just an expression. The filling is the internal organs--like intestines--of a pig or cow. [NSFV.]

I need to stop getting dstracted when looking things up in the dictionary.

An ant's body is perfectly designed. It cannot reach a termial veolocity that will kill it. Its shape, combined with its mass, is so low that it can fall from any height without harm. Once again, this lends credence to my theory that insects are the true Masters of the Universe.

Parricide is the murder of a mother, father, or a person to whom one owes credence or respect.

A cortege is a funeral procession. As in: "That nameless hour in which the sounds of the evening would rise up from every floor of the prison in a cortege of silence." (I've been reading The Stranger.)

My life is blessed by wonderful friendships.

Unlike an ant, my terminal velocity--if spread eagle--is 120 mph.

To stand akimbo is to stand with one's hands on hips, elbows out.


[From my journal, 9/20/05. It would be interesting to figure out what words I was actually supposed to be looking up when I found these other ones.]

Positive Ape Index: Antique Store Spacesuit

Supernifty Kansas antique store find at Positive Ape Index... a vintage Gemini-era spacesuit. I'm so jealous I ache.

(via)