Another Christmas Special

You're welcome

It Snowed Yesterday

Which means, among other things, that figure C's relevance is in full effect.

It Is Black Friday

Which means that many of you (well, not you, because if you're reading this site then you've got some sense and know not to go out into terrible locations on the biggest shopping day of the year) are getting all caught up in the raging, stabbing, hateful spirit of kicking in doors and buying the everloving hell out of anything stacked up near a checkout counter. It also means that you are officially in the market to buy me (yes, me, this is my site and you are reading it which means you must have some vested interest in my happiness, a happiness best fed by material possesions) what I want, be it for Christmas or otherwise.

Now, I know I rarely make it easy for those in your position, and this year will be no exception, mostly because I hate to break tradition. So, to those looking to curry favor, this is your charge*.

Be aware: You will likely be competing with a legion (more accuately: a handful) of collector-types, a couple of whom might have grown-up incomes. You will also be competing with me, a person who is not above sniping ebay auctions and who is selfish enough to spend more on himself than on you during this terrible holiday season.

Oh, and if you're feeling really ambitious there's also this and this and this.






*Listen: I do not actually expect to get this - I know how auctions like these turn out , frequently it gets ugly and staggering and depressing, at least when you are the guy who does not win. This post should mostly succeed in getting across my views on Black Friday, as well as serving as a permanent "Do not" to people who say things like "you never tell me/us/anyone what you want and blah blah blah," not as an official or functional guide to what I want for Christmas.

A Beautiful Holiday Tableau

Edit: It appears there is some confusion. I apologize, sometimes I forget that others do not have the same Thanksgiving amenities that I have grown accustomed to. The following pictures will hopefully clarify matters. HINT: THERE IS A TURKEY IN THE POT.

Where Am I Right Now?

An Airport, of course. An Airport is the worst place to be starving at 9 in the morning.

Now you Know

The Daily Robot is Happening

PLAN ACCORDINGLY

What kind of Tuesday is Today?

Listen: it is not easy to be me, ever. Today, however, it is especially not easy to be me, and here’s why: that PC from those smug commercials has just released a book that does what this blog is supposed to do, only it does it more eloquently, in print, and to a greater degree than I do. God damn him.

He's even interested in exactly the same things I am, the joke is that I have already heard this item.

Oh well, right? At least I’ve got one thing he doesn’t: drawings of robots.

URGENT POLITICAL COMMENTARY FROM THE INTERNET

Is it Time for Another Drawing of a Robot?

There is only one answer to such a question right or wrong.



Anyway, goodnight.

Want

What Am I Up To?

Information Bullets:

• The basement has become a terrible place
• I started working at That Program
• New pants
• To Everyone who has been hassling me about what I want for my birthday, Here is your top priority, but don't worry - my hopes are not Up.
• Paul Newman is still Dead
• TV is a Thing again
  

Time for a Game

It's called "Find the Typo on the Official Government Thing."

What did I do this Afternoon?

Listen, before anybody hassles me about my lackluster blogging (we can’t all live fast-paced lives in the world of politics or start blogs about what we look at on screens), let me tell you what I accomplished today: I made a font out of my own handwriting. That’s right America, my handwriting is now a font.



So there.

Also, if you want it, I can email it to you. The hyphen doesn't work though, so, you know, that's an issue.

What is the Most Remarkable Thing About Coming Home?

This blog is now for 12 year-olds by a 21 year-old. Thank You.

Here is the Only Piece of Political Commentary you will get from me At Least for A While

Fuck Y'all (the Comic): Going off to College

You will almost certainly have to click on it to read it.




Anyway, talk to you later.

FY(tC)

Listen: I have backed myself into a hell of a corner on this one. Here - I’ll explain.

About fifteen minutes ago the current members of The Place, myself included, were gathered around the kitchen table eating items from Starbucks that had been brought home for us. For whatever reason, one member of the gathering mentioned that she’d spent the better part of the day reading the webcomic XKCD, which elicited apathetic responses from two people seated at the table, and a roll of the eyes from me. I know that if this were a blog that any real number of people read I’d draw some serious ire for feeling negatively about XKCD, but my humble status being what it is, I will be frank: that comic is not my thing. It’s not that I don’t get it (it’s really important that I stress that fact to you over and over again so you realize that I am not dumb, not dumb at all), it’s that I feel, when reading it, as though the author is standing right behind me giggling and smirking to himself at how clever he is. And that bugs me, even though it’s probably not the case.

This is all backstory for what’s really important: in a moment of impulsive/misguided ambition and resentment, fueled by sugary pastries and fancy orange juice, I exclaimed that I would make my own webcomic “about stick figures and graphs,” and that it would be called “Fuck Y’all” and that “everyone will love it.”

Listen: for the most part, I am a man of my word, at least for a day or two. Because of this, you 3 readers are welcome to tune in tomorrow when the first ever strip of Fuck Y’all (the Comic) will premiere right here to the kind of overwhelming praise and sympathy the likes of which hasn’t been seen since that other comic I did.

What Remarkable Thing did I Eat Today? (And other Remarkable Things That Happened)

Listen: I thought today would be just another normal day in my life (currently on day 7,966), and that nothing fantastic or remarkable or atypical would happen to or around me.

Not the case.

• First: I woke up like 4 times this morning before it was time for me to get out of bed - not typical
• Second: I ate breakfast - not typical
• Third: I got a real terrible sick feeling walking to work because I saw all the university’s incoming freshmen and their parents and cars and siblings and belongings creating a traffic disaster on campus - not typical (inasmuch as it is not typical to see incoming freshmen, it is very typical for such sights and many others to give me a terrible sick feeling)
• Fourth: I ate a Second Breakfast courtesy of one of my supervisors at the Media Center, and here is where the day gets remarkable (not the free food from a boss part - that happens basically weekly at this point).

Look at what I was given



Your first instinct, I imagine, is to recoil in disgust at the idea that someone would eat a hamburger for breakfast. Then, upon reflection, you might decide that this is some kind of a sausage biscuit, and while more breakfast-appropriate, the enormous size of the alleged meat patty would give anyone who isn’t a trucker a moment of pause. Listen: you are incorrect if you think the item in the above photograph is a hamburger, or a sausage biscuit, or anything that isn’t a doughnut inside another doughnut bun.

That’s right - A Doughnutburger.

There are probably some stuck up people who are not immediately enthralled by this idea on account of caring about Nutrition, or because they think that foods made to look like other foods aren’t awesome, or because they just don’t like doughnuts very much. This time, those people are Wrong about what is Awesome, and I’d be willing to bet they’re wrong most other times as well. This is, without hyperbole, the most important food-related thing that has happened to me since that time I went to this restaurant.

Will other important things happen today?

Everything that Happens Will Happen Today Happens Today

Listen: This is not a music blog (I think I might have mentioned that before), but I felt like I had an opportunity to both spread minimal awareness of David Byrne and Brian Eno's new album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today while at the same time being the only person on the internet with enough wit to come up with a blog entry title whose cleverness is proportional to its time-sensitive/short-lived accuracy and relevence. That being done, I will go back to putting together that information about typewriters which was requested and promised sometime over a year ago, and assembling some information regarding Ohio, a place from which I've recently returned.

They Have Knighted a Penguin

Listen: this blog is not supposed to serve as a means to broadcast to you all of the news stories I see in a given day (estimated number of news articles I read in a given day: 2?), but this story is too important not to yell all over the internet. A penguin has been Knighted.

Now You Know!

I Forgot to Tell You about Al Pacino vs Robert Deniro Week

And I am infinitely sorry, I can’t believe it slipped my mind for the better part of a month. The trouble was that my scanner wasn’t working properly, and then I set the materials and records aside and buried them under someone else's stuff, and didn’t find them until about twelve minutes ago when I was looking for-

You know what? That's not important.

Important: The Second Annual Al Pacino Vs Robert De Niro tournament.
When: You missed it, it’s over.
What: People vote to show their opinion of who is better.
Why: Because while at work I sit at a desk about 12 feet from 6500 (and counting) DVDs, and not enough of them get checked out on the merits of whether or not they speak to Robert de Niro or Al Pacino being superior to one another.
How did it Turn Out: Robert de Niro won, which was not really a surprise given that his volume of work is, for the most part, more watchable. Pacino won last year, mostly because it wasn’t a real competition that time, and more just a weekend when we watched Dog Day Afternoon and Scent of a Woman and Taxi Driver, and you know how those stack up*. I wish that the library had Midnight Run† so I could have put that on display and declared De Niro the winner five seconds after the tournament began, rather than after a week and a half. Oh well.
The Best Part: it was illustrated.




Anyway: I hope this annual contest is not rendered moot by the upcoming Righteous Kill.


*If you don’t know: Taxi Driver is just ok, Dog Day Afternoon is excellent, Scent of a Woman is very good.

†Midnight Run is the best.

What Do You Need to Know about The Olympics?

Nothing. The Olympics are boring and only last for like two weeks, during which time they are always on TV when all you want to watch is Anything But The Olympics.

What Happened at That Furniture Store?

I have not presented information in quite some time. You, as a reader, are no doubt used to this, so I will forego apologies and excuses and get right to today’s Information, which is almost definitely of little or no concern to anyone outside of the Boston area.

Listen: here’s how this came about. Last Thursday an Associate and I did our best to make good on plans to see a certain wildly popular superhero movie in its larger, louder IMAX form. Doing this required making our way to the nearest IMAX equipped theater location, which, the internet told us, was also a furniture store, “Jordan’s Furniture.” No doubt your thoughts mimicked ours: “Wait. A furniture store?”

A furniture store.

So I activated Google Maps on my you-know-what phone and she unlocked the doors to her Lincoln Continental and we made our way, with relative ease, to the furniture store. With an IMAX theater.

An IMAX furniture store.

Listen: we had no clue what we were getting into, on a number of levels. First, from a purely conceptual standpoint - we had not had the foresight nor (at the time) the how-to knowledge to buy tickets beforehand, and so found ourselves faced with a blinking ‘sold out’ sign upon reaching the theater. But second, and more importantly, we were not adequately prepared for the theater itself. The theater, I hope you remember, is also a furniture store.

Now, if I were an eastern Massachusetts native, or if I watched local TV stations and their culturally-illuminating commercials for local establishments I might have been better prepared for Jordan’s Furniture. Things being what they are, I was not. So try to imagine how it felt to be faced with what I’m about to describe: a building the size of small stadium, clearly advertising itself as a containing within it a furniture store, IMAX theater, and a Fuddruckers. The side of the building also made clear that within it were held “liquid fireworks,” and a store called Beantown, as well as an ice cream parlor. The building itself, like an Escher drawing of an alien spacecraft, had managed to confound me both in its presentation and in its mere existence to begin with.

Despite being put off by the Fuddruckers, I was intrigued by the promise of liquid fireworks, and at this point was not yet aware that the movie we’d come to see was sold out, so we made haste into a furniture store, something I’d never have thought myself likely to do. Entrance was gained through an enormous revolving door, the kind that can hold about 5 people in each of its compartments, the kind I’ve only ever seen at the Cincinnati airport. A recording of a man with a New England accent warned us to be careful, since the door was apparently a dangerous contraption prone to slowing and stopping unpredictably. Once inside we were greeted by a woman wearing a headset and simultaneously assaulted by a myriad of strange impossible sights and disorienting sounds.

Listen: Jordan’s Furniture is an insane place. To the right of the front door was an auditorium sized room with a ceiling 50 feet high or more. Along the left side of this room was a counter beneath a large sign for Richardson’s Ice cream, featuring a staggering menu. The right wall of the room was covered in an enlargement of a photograph of the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge in front of the Boston Skyline. Along the wall was a metal framework of poles and columns, with cables above and netting below. A man on a trapeze hung by his knees and swung lazily back and forth, while a girl on a platform across from him was strapped into a harness before swinging out towards the upside-down man. The far wall appeared to be a kind of stage from which some classic piece of music was blaring. Jets of water, illuminated by spotlights above (and likely strobe lights below) shot up from the stage nearly to the ceiling, and did so in a complicated and choreographed manner. Liquid fireworks. Closer to the door was a small candy store specializing in Jelly Bellies, and around the room were enormous items constructed entirely from the candies. An entire garden tableau, for example. I do not have a photograph, and for that I apologize.

As exciting as all this was, we still expected to see a movie, and getting to the theater part of this outlandish location required us to walk through a kind of maze of long halls that ended with signs pointing the way to the theater. Naturally, these halls were tastefully lit with polished tile floors and neutral colored walls, as they served as Jordan’s Furniture’s labyrinthine showroom of dining room sets and king-sized beds. In order to reach the only aspect of this destination in which we originally had any interest, we had to walk through an entire furniture store stretched out into the form of a winding pathway instead of one enormous room. This fucking place is, first and foremost, a furniture store.

The movie, as I mentioned, was sold out, so we left after spending a little time examining the candy sculptures and watching the liquid fireworks. That is the end of the story.

I can’t think of anything perfect and well-understood with which to compare Jordan’s Furniture. The closest I can come is a Vegas casino, minus the gambling, and with more children. Both Jordan’s Furniture and those enormous terrible casinos elicited the same kind of Lovecraftian blend of confusion, awe, intrigue, and repulsion in me. I was drawn in by the bright lights and spectacles of liquid fireworks and IMAX, while being repelled by having to look at furniture and being near a Fuddruckers, the same way casinos throw entertainment and the false promise of riches at you, but you have to walk by the soul-crushing picture of hopelessness presented by the flocks of elderly women stationed at slot machines to get to the empty promises inside.

It was really Something.

What am I Most Looking Forward to in Life?

This should make about perfect sense to anyone at all acquainted with me.

(more information for the 1 to 2 people who actually care)

Here is an Illustration

Which was inspired by the last eight words in the following sentence:

Man on motorcycle with pilot goggles opens enormous coat to reveal enough lit explosives to destroy the Entire West.

Logically, the sentence was inspired by the poster for this movie which is hopefully awesome. Anyway, here:

What Is the Weather Doing Right Now (Special Video Edition)

These days it takes a lot of water to get me blogging.

It is Fathers' Day

So here:

What did We Find at the Airport?

It is too much for words, so I am not going to try to use them to describe the majesty. Please, behold:








Alright, take a moment to really absorb what's depicted above.

Okay. There are a number things worth noting, and a few questions:

• A cactus with sunglasses appears on every completed page
• The cactus with sunglasses is not the narrator
• The credited author is Willowbelly Conbreast. Willowbelly Conbreast!
• The Gliding Spider Wheelchair: organic or not?
• While obviously incomplete, the book is stapled and numbers 30 pages
• What is the significance of the Canoe Ride?
• In the first non-cover illustration the narrator appears to be holding open his coat, which contains scissors, a hammer, and an unidentified object that could be either wrenches or a plasma lamp.

I encourage any and all readers to share their thoughts/speculations/reactions about/regarding/to this remarkable find. Thank you. YOU'RE WELCOME


p.s. - or - I can't stop thinking about this.

We googled everything in this text - Willowbelly Conbreast, gliding-spider-wheelchairs, hidden shows at bonfires, Eh·o'nites, canoe ride uncertainty - all to no avail. We picked apart every page looking for clues, debating aspects of every illustration, and questioning the motives and reliability of our narrator. I know that this story has remarkable potential, and I hope that by some internet miracle we are able to establish contact with Mr. or Ms Conbreast. If such hopes go unfulfilled, however, can I in good conscience continue what has been started?

More Evidence of My Brother's Existence

Listen: My brother has graduated law school, and in honor of the occasion I went to New York and sat through the reading of a number of names. Photographs were also taken. This is one of the few instances in which my brother is not making a terrible face in a family picture. I know that in the past the existence of my brother has come under a lot of scrutiny and skepticism, and I hope that any readers' lingering doubts are finally put to rest.

In other news, This is what my extended family looks like, in case you were super curious, and this guy's dad made a really excellent speech.

I am on a Bus with The Internet

The Mind Boggles.

It is going to New York though, so it's far from perfect.

A Brief and Triumphant Return pt 4

I've either come a long way or no way at all

P.S. I have one last thing.

A Brief and Triumphant Return pt 3

Etc



[Special Thanks to Muffin MacGuffin for his relentless approval]

Sorry But Seriously

I hate to be a guy who mindlessly posts links to Things he saw on the internet, but this is too important not to share with the 4 people who read this. So: Adorable Robot, for real this time.

Now you know, you're welcome

A Brief and Triumphant Return pt 2

Here is another comic, it is different from the one posted yesterday in that it is almost all words. Also it has a few colors. This is by no means an indication that it is any better, because it almost certainly is not.

This is This Blog's 100th Post

The weather is perfect outside.

A Brief and Triumphant Return Pt 1

Listen: this past academic year I did a few more Abandoned Astronaut comics. I don’t know if they are any good or not; I don’t hate them yet, which means that they must not be absolutely terrible. The trouble is that I have long since run out of ideas for the character that make any sense and/or are funny, but anytime I am presented with a blank sheet of notebook paper and a pen I will wind up drawing the guy, though it is remarkably rare for anything to come of it. Also, a lot has changed in terms of How Things Are Now compared to How Things Where Then, where Then is the period when I did these all the time. This makes it difficult to do the same kind of stuff, and I’m probably less likely to share this sort of thing nowadays than I was then. However, I am in a generous and blogging mood, so here they come. I think there are four, one of which remains unfinished. You know the drill, one-a-day until there aren’t any left.

“Sorry” to the handful who hate these, and “you’re welcome” to the two who used to like them a lot.

Opinon Poll: Do you Hate This or Not?

This is a logo I made at the request of my dad, who, as you may already know/have made jokes about, is a urologist. Does it make sense to you? Do you see What I Did There?


P.S. Here is a logo for a pretend soda that doesn't exist (yet).

Follow-Up Information about The Lousy Hour

Listen: I know that a lot of you (there are not actually a lot of you reading this if Google Analytics is to be trusted - and it is) did not like The Lousy Hour. I know that a couple of you (literally, like 2) said that you liked it because of Obligations You Have To Those Involved. I get that, Really. Nevertheless, I thought it was worth mentioning that last Friday my colleague stopped by the Desk I Get Paid To Sit Behind to give me a confusing object. I will describe this object: it is a MiniDV tape, the kind you would use in a pretty regular camcorder, only it had been spray painted gold, and a handwritten label that read "The Lousy Hour, Miles Donovan" had been put on the the tape. On the other side, written on the cardboard sleeve of the tape's case was "best sitcom, 07-08." I will not take a picture of it for you to see, sorry.

Apparently they came from one of the higher-ups at TUTV.

Listen: at first I thought it was an extremely silly thing, and to some degree I still do, for a few reasons: 1) the show is not a sitcom, 2) the show is not the best anything, and 3) the show was made in part as an act of self-serving vengeance for how poorly-received our previous project was, despite how hard we had worked on it. But now that I've thought about it for a while, I realize that it probably took someone a good 5 minutes to spray paint that tape, not to mention the 20 minutes and five plus dollars it no doubt took to buy the spray paint in the first place. They did that for us. That was nice of them. They were nice, even though we did a bad job. We got an award. That never happens in real life.

Information about an Earthquake

Listen: an Earthquake killed maybe ten thousand people in China yesterday. Ten Fucking Thousand People. Do you get that? That is so many people to god damn die in an earthquake. That is Insane.

What Awful Thing Am I About To Subject You To?

Looks like That Guy and I did a thing of making a television show, again. I hate to be a person who makes the same mistake twice, but here I am. Regardless, feel free to watch it, it should appear below these words. It's called The Lousy Hour, and I promise that it lives up to its name in at least one capacity.

Here is Why I Can't Abide Micro-Blogging

Listen: I’m not about to pretend to be on the cutting edge of anything these days, because keeping on top of the internet is like trying to build a sandcastle in a tsunami, so when micro-blogging started existing (and eventually became more prevalent) I really didn’t take much notice for a number of reasons:

1. I am not a guy with an enormous number of internet-only contacts, and even fewer internet-savvy-internet-only contacts
2. I am not that interesting
3. I don’t have the kind of self-worth that allows for me to write down every small thing I have done in a day with the expectation that the world gives a god damn about it
4. I have a decent attention span and a pretty firm grasp on the written language, and as such have graduated to paragraph form (most of the time) for things I feel worth writing and sharing
5. I am not a 12 year-old

Ok so, issue resolved, right? No, not right. For awhile the existence of sites like twitter were of no concern to me - I did not use them, and I did not know anybody dumb enough to hassle me to use them, and so we went along respectfully ignoring one another. But then Facebook, a site in a sort of steady state of information-overload-collapse, started integrating with these micro-blogging sons of bitches. Before you get on my case about anything, I’m well aware that the status-update field on Facebook was oft-abused before this integration, and that people were already capable of using this feature for dumb purposes at essentially any moment with mobile integration, but the truth of the matter is that this was usually too complicated for dumb people to set up, so it wasn’t a problem.

Now, however, it is kind of a problem. Anytime I sign onto the aforementioned social networking site I am faced with a fair number of people twittering about their terrible minutia. I realize that I am not forced to read this, and that I can adjust settings in order to cut down on this garbage, but what really bothers me is not that this technology exists (I am sure there are valid uses for it somewhere, somehow) it’s that people use it for the dumbest reasons possible. The fact that some of the people I am friends with are the perpetrators of such internet bullshit calls into question the decisions I’ve made in terms of the company I keep (digital or otherwise) becuase it is not easy to get onto my reasonably short list of contacts.

Here, let’s look at some of the information I’ve been given in the last few days (despite not requesting it) about people I kind of know:

Kelly is twittering: finally rolling out of bed... hooray, 12 hours of sleep!
11:50am

Jon is twittering: Cereal supplies running low. Next at-work breakfast: back to Pop Tarts.
12:13pm
Jon is twittering: BTW, I think I've finally found the correct size boxer briefs from H&M, which took longer than you'd think.
12:52pm

Robert is twittering: Quick shower and off to work.
3:14pm

This isn’t news. This isn’t interesting. This isn’t Funny. This isn’t anything.

Here, for the sake of argument, is how I might do a micro-blog post about what I'm currently up to:

Miles is Twittering: I can't hang out with my friends right now because they're watching Desperate Housewives in the other room and I am the last man on earth with a beating heart and honest Standards.

Was that a lot of fun? Did you enjoy reading a sentence about exactly what situation I found myself in? You better not have, because if that is the case then you have not been paying attention.

Please Stop it.
You’re Welcome
Now you Know.

[edit/p.s.]

Weirdly enough (and I hate to be the guy who tells you this) Penny Arcade and I are really on the same wavelength as far as this matter is concerned.

Do You Think it is Okay to Like Brian Eno?

And I'm not talking about the Brian Eno that produces Talking Heads records and sometimes makes an album about taking a mountain by strategy, no no. I'm talking about the Brian Eno that just sort of gets in front of some kind of music making device like a simple piano or control board and makes background noise for a body to listen to when that body is having conniptions. Because I'm not sure it's okay to like this Brian Eno, but the fact of the matter is that I really, really do when the Time Calls For It.

Listen: as a person who is pretty prone to panicking and worrying about things that don't make an enormous amount of sense I can tell you that the sensation is god awful at best. One time, about nineteen months ago I found myself in a situation that got me real worked up, worked up in a looking-desperately-for-the-exits kind of way. Eventually I did find the exit (it was a door), and I made my way back to where I needed to be. Somehow, through logic that now escapes me, I got it into my brain that I needed to listen to Music for Airports. I don't know how I knew about this album, and I'm also not sure that I'm allowed to call it that. Maybe I'd heard it at some point before that time 19 months ago, but I wouldn't testify to the fact. Regardless, that is what I listened to, and back then, much like now, I found it remarkably soothing.

Listen: I bring this up only because in the past couple of days I have been getting myself awful worried about something that, now, in the light of greater preparedness and a healthy dose of Ambient 1: Music For Airports seems a lot less threatening and terrible than it did about eight hours ago. In conclusion I am making this album the first-line treatment method for when I get too upset, okay? So now you know.

Also, if you were wondering, the second-line treatment for when I get too upset is putting this on a screen and myself in front of that screen. Thank you.

What Was that Fortune Cookie Trying to Say?

"Diligence is the mother of good fortune."

Examination:

• This is not a proper fortune, this is just a baseless claim about diligence.
• I have not been being particularly diligent recently, which is why I am awake at 2:30 a.m. with half two-fifths of the MS Office suite open and humming away on my desktop.
• Given my current situation it is arguable that this fortune cookie is in fact a warning about what may turn out to be misfortune in my future.

Conclusion:

I am Worried.

in other news: I was right about how this would play out.

What Have I Been Up To?

While I am loath to self-report, and, even worse, self-congratulate, because it is Casual Time here at this blog there is no excuse for me not to make my main accomplishment of the last week into something you will wind up reading about. I do not want this to become a habit though, and I know you don’t either. I will try to keep things brief.

As you may or may not already be aware, I am essentially always on the lookout for objects the likes of which will serve dual functions of being utterly indispensable in my daily life while also lending credence to the widely-held theory that I am secretly an old person. While this collection of useful and reassuringly heavy items did a decent job of writing things and sometimes cutting my face, it did nothing for my time spent at a computer or walking around in a typical fashion. Fortunately, somebody else had the neat idea of taking olde time radio headsets and putting modern-day headphones inside of them, so this past week I co-opted that idea and made these. And also these.

Listen: there is nothing more dangerous than being met with success when undertaking projects like these. Typically when I set out to do something that isn’t dependent on sitting passively in front of a screen things do not turn out positively, which reinforces the important “do not try things” lesson. The last time this happened was when I got it in my head that making these was a good way to spend the last summer I’d get to be around my old friends, and things got pretty out of hand*. Unfortunately, the outcome of this most recent endeavor has given me the same kind of reckless ambition I had the last time I got to cut things apart with a Dremel tool. Pretty soon I will become a fixture down at the hardware store and the only website I’ll ever check will be Instructables. Sorry in advance everybody.

*Listen: going through the dungeons of the internet to find the picture of those light saber hilts turned into sort of a beautiful and terrifying photographic summary of a brief period of my life. Now you know the wonder and the shame I felt then and now.

What Must be Done?

Listen: I’ve been looking at the right-hand side of this webpage, and it occurred to me just how bad a job of Information I’ve been doing for the past remotely memorable period. There are a handful of possible solutions to this issue: 1) do not change anything, and occasionally remark about how poor a job I do, 2) find more information to share, or 3) be less self-conscious/restrictive about the whole matter and post anything I feel like, creating a lawlessly magnificent environment like the one in which this place started last summer back when nobody knew about it.

Anyway I chose number 3. Things are going to get more casual around here, and we’ll see how it goes, okay? Ok.

The Latest Disappointment from the Letdown Factory

Situation: Campus Movie Fest(ival) reared its ugly head on the confines of Tufts University this past week. In a fashion similar to the two other times this has happened my accomplice and I were interested enough in the annual ordeal to fill out the necessary online forms and offline papers in order to be granted custody of a simple camcorder, black Macbook, and unnecessary tripod, the first and last of which were left unused for a week or more, while the laptop was put on loan to an ally upstairs for purposes more noble than poor movie-making.

Yesterday evening, however, the deadline for our completed movie was looming within the 24-hour mark, and it became clear that something had to be done. In a trademark easy-way-outist decision, we opted to adapt something written months ago into a workable solution to our as-yet un-thought-about movie conundrum. Eighteen hours later the following emerged, springing fully-formed from the head of iMovie '06.

Enjoy, I'm sorry, you're welcome, and now you know.




Prediction: The powers that be at CMF will opt not to screen this labor of love at the University's finale event, and I will not be there to see it not happen.

Here is a Robot

In the stead of any better, more actual Information that I might have to provide for you. Now is not the best time for Information - and neither was the last week, if this website is any indication (and it is).

About the Robot: As might be obvious to the moderately trained eye, it is not complete. Also, it is in kind of an ugly ink-gone-vector-filter-terrozone, for which I will make no apologies. This robot turned 4 on February 19th of this year, meaning that it has been alive for longer than I care to think about. Also, while determining its age (by finding the scan of the original drawing which was done during both AP U.S. History and AP Biology - no you may not see it here) I realized that I have forgotten a lot of its details and also reversed its arms. It does not have a name.

What Went Wrong this Easter?

I will tell you: I did not eat a single Cadbury brand Creme Egg this Easter season of 2008. This is not for want of trying or lack of opportunity - I visited two CVS stores today (Sunday) and one the previous day, but all searches of their shelves proved fruitless*. I would have gone to a Grocery store or a more Reputable Confectionery had I the time, but I was busy being a human being who doesn't expect to have to buy his God Damn Easter Candy in Advance I'm Sorry. Would that I could raze this city to the ground for this (as I see it) slight against The Lord's Tradition, but I know in my hollow heart-cavity of hollow heart-cavities that the machinations of this catastrophe were of my own design, and that is the bitterest egg of all to have to swallow.




*I did find a few Cadbury Orange Creme Eggs, which is a lot like coming home from sleep-away camp to find that, in your absence, your whole family has packed up and moved away, leaving only a note on the front door that reads "sorry," and on the back of which is written "that nobody will ever fucking love you for as long as you disgrace the planet with breath in your lungs."

Why Am I Going to New York?

You might already know my general sentiments towards the Empire State's main city and its surrounding nebula of Paved Areas, and if that is the case you are probably surprised to find that I am returning to That Place, just as you might have been surprised the Last Time it Happened. If you don't, the previous link should illuminate things in harsh, harsh words. The question is obvious: why would I go back there?

The (approximately two) answers I have to that question are not good, so I will not share them with you, unless one of them turns out, over the course of the trip, to have been right enough to justify the minimal bus fare and maximum hassle involved with what's to come (regardless of how matters go I am guaranteed two cool things). Don't worry - I've packed everything I'll need: tooth paste, my Swiss Army knife, and twice as much money as a person ought to need to last 4 days in order to buy food and T-shirts that prove to strangers the fact that I've been somewhere. What's ultimately important is that I may or may not wind up have information about the journey to share with you in the form of one of my world-renown travelogues. You're welcome, in advance.

P.S.

Here is some Information about how I spent a fraction of my weekend.

This is an Example of Problems

Today is My Brother's Birthday

That is the main fact of today. Despite raised eyebrows from the small but vocal minority that remains skeptical of his existence, I sent him a brief and to-the-point email wishing him a good birthday. If you see my brother in the two hours that remain of his birthday please congratulate him. If you see him tomorrow tell him you are sorry to have missed his birthday but that you hope it went well. Thank you.

Soon: Information that pertains to You Personally.

El Triste, El Verdad

I don't think either of us are worried about the way this blog is slowly turning into a gallery of things I draw in class.

On Nature and its Wonderous Creatures

I realize the heading "More Information about Nature's Best Friends" might at first be confusing to some of you, as in all likelihood unless you spend a fairly specific two and a half hour period of the week with me you have not received any information about nature's best friends. I will explain this concisely now: in nature, the kookaburra and the koala are best friends, and have the best best friend relationship (inter-species or not) of any two-critters on earth*.





*Some (including myself) have considered that the friendship between cats and ducks (patos and gatos in Spanish-speaking locales) have a better best-friendship than the koala and the kookaburra. This is an issue too complicated to get into right now, suffice to say that the matter is not settled.

Information for Parents - or - a P.S.A.

In other news I realize this place has not been "up to snuff" in fast and efficient delivery of Information. Let me assure you that this is not because anything interesting or remarkable is in the works, my taciturnity is the sole product of poor planning, reticence, corrective lenses, and bad weather. Look forward (or don't) to more of the same in the immediate and distant future.

They Showed a Looney Toon Before Casablanca Last Night

And in other news the world is a livable place. Casablanca, however, continues to be a wildly inappropriate movie for Making Out Valentines Day Couples Who Deserve Misfortunes.

What Kind of Day is Today

It is the kind of day where this story seems almost feasible and you must occasionally consider cutting off your own feet because there doesn't seem to be any realistic way for them to ever be warm and dry again, so removal becomes higher on the triage list than the endless cycle of sock-changing and towel-drying.

What is the Weather Doing Right Now #10

It is 16 degrees with winds at a terrifyingly steady 33 mph. This is the kind of weather God brings out when he’s doing dry-runs for the apocalypse. Everybody should say whatever it is they need to say because weather like this is a good reminder that tomorrow is not guaranteed.

What is the Weather Doing Right Now #9

It is 47 degrees and sunny. No one has ever felt this good about a 47 degree day.

Why I Haven't Blogged in Awhile, or What Has The Weather Been Doing for the Past Month, or Some Information about SSAD

I will admit that I am a person of excuses. If given the opportunity to give an excuse for a failure, shortcoming, or fuck-up I am entirely comfortable with explaining away whatever problem has cropped up by introducing an external factor or three. For example, if someone were to ask me why I haven’t devoted any time to this stupid information blog in the past two and some weeks the answer would be “SSAD” and also “Fuck you” (it is a two-part answer). The second part is easier to understand, so I’ll give you some information about the first.

To start, I did not make a typo. Most people have heard of SAD, or seasonal affective disorder, a mental situation where you have depression because of the winter. SSAD, or subsyndromal seasonal affective disorder, is like SAD Lite. In terms of excuses it is a much more reasonable, believable, and comforting than a disorder whose acronym is tragically self-descriptive. There are two main problems that accompany psychological problems trendy enough to have wikipedia pages and television commercials. The first is that they often cause arguments between people who accept the prolem's existence while only holding a dim understanding of what the problem entails, and people who reject their existence because they refuse to believe that chemistry is a pretty viable explanation for everything that has ever happened anywhere, ever. The second is that the first kind of people mentioned will all the time believe they have a problem they don’t actually have because they do not understand the problem.

Having SAD is like having Bad Depression for some time of the year due almost entirely to the fact that it is is a certain time of the year. Bad Depression (expensive books and professors who would be upset if they read this would call it Major Depressive Disorder) is a problem (not the preferred clinical word) that makes people kill themselves, gain weight, lose weight, do mistakes, and not do anything, all while feeling terrible all the time no breaks. They have to do this for six months before they are allowed to go around bragging about their problem (not recommended), which makes it hard to do on a seasonal basis. Some time ago, however, people from Alaska and Finland complained and suicided enough to get the psychiatric world’s attention for long enough to come up with an official problem to give these people, and thus SAD was born.

The trouble with SAD is that everyone thinks they have it because people think that depression is eating a whole bag of chips and then calling your friends to tell them that your day has not been good enough (for the record this is a symptom of someone who should be suicidal but who opts instead to just be a huge fucking pain). The truth of the matter is that a lot of people feel lousy a lot of the time, and during the winter most people feel lousy some of the time, and during winters that seem to keep going on and on forever with no end in sight some people start to feel like shit. But they don’t want to kill themselves and they can get out of bed if you give them long enough and they don’t just listen to this on repeat. So they don’t have SAD, right? Right, they have SSAD, and so they start keeping snack food in their desk drawers instead of pencils, and they don’t return calls or emails, and they forget to take a shower every day, and they have a hard time preparing meals that are any more complicated than just a starch and peanut butter, and they don’t have as much motivation to write blog posts explaining everything in the fucking universe to the 8 people who read it. Now you know you're welcome.

How do Cavity Fillings Work?

Recently (that is to say, between now and when I last blessed you with Information) I made a trip to the dentist to have a cavity filled. Now before you assume that I’m some kind of low life who doesn’t brush his teeth every day, I’m not. I’d like to make it clear that this cavity was discovered at a recent dental appointment, my first in nearly two years (the last of which resulted in the discovery and subsequent treatment of between 3 and 6 cavities - I do not remember the exact number, only that it was the worst spring break ever ever). Before you try to tell me that biannual and not biennial checkups are the norm for educated and insured people in this country I’d like to make it clear that I’m not the kind of person who makes appointments as a measure of preventative physical upkeep, which is why I have not been to a doctor in two years and four months. I’d argue that, factoring in my Coke consumption and general failures at providing myself “good nutrition” on a regular basis, developing only one cavity over the course of two years is a victory in a battle that’s part of a war that only ends when I die or have everything in my mouth replaced with titanium. One or both of these things will happen. Regardless, I am not here to complain to you about how terrible a dental procedure having a cavity filled is, because it’s really a kind of entry-level affair in terms of its brutality and pain. If comfort and convenience were monetary assets then having a cavity filled is like being pick-pocketed (to clarify this metaphor having braces is getting swindled in a long con and having teeth pulled is like being mugged by a guy with pliers and a vendetta). Regardless, I’m sure you will be relieved to know that aside from a half-hour wait in a chair post-lidocaine administration the procedure went off without a hitch, but one part of cavity-filling always made me curious - what the hell is the deal with the UV ray gun?

Maybe it’s best to describe how having a cavity filled works. I assume incorrectly that everyone in this blog’s meager readership has had to deal with situations like this one because I come from a line of people whose teeth immediately begin to turn to dust as soon as they breach the gums. So here’s the short version: the dentist puts some topical anesthetic goo on the gums, then injects (yes with a needle) the gums with a local anesthetic - usually lidocaine - and then everybody waits around for about ten minutes. After you, the patient, are (hopefully) numb in the face-area a drill is administered to your decaying tooth, the purpose of which is to remove all the shittiness that you have let happen because you haven’t been flossing. Usually this doesn’t hurt more than a little bit, though the smell and sensation of ground bone fragments flying into one’s cheeks can be extremely off-putting, and sometimes it does hurt, especially if the rot is far along. Back when I was like seven or eight years old and was having my first batch of cavities dealt with the dentist had two drills, one of which made a low and terrible noise, while the other made a much higher pitched terrible noise. Being a pediatric dentist he liked to personify the drills to his child-patients, and their names were Mr. Bumpy and Mr. Whistle, respectively. This has stuck with me for fourteen years because it is so, so terrifying. I did not have to have parlance with Mr. Bumpy in this most recent procedure, which is always encouraging. Anyway, after the trouble’s been routed a filling is put onto the tooth. This is where I used to get confused. Back in old times, and still occasionally in this modern age, gold or silver were used as the topmost part of the filling. More common now are teeth-colored fillings, made of some kind of science-paste. You see, as best as I can tell the filling material is of some kind of malleable consistency when it’s being shoved into one’s tooth. Then (and this is the science part) the dentist or lowly assistant tells the patient to close their eyes while some kind of futuristic light-gun zaps the newly-placed filling. After this the materials is solid. I’m pretty sure the same stuff is used on braces in some capacity, as I have memories of the orthodontist buzzing my teeth with a similar instrument, but my recollection of those dark times is foggy at best, both from chronological distance and the brain’s natural middle-school-amnesia defense mechanisms. Regardless, this technology has always baffled me. How can exposure to ultraviolet light change something’s consistency so dramatically in a matter of seconds? Well, twenty seconds on Google nets a lot of answers, and apparently I am the only person in the world to be confounded by this kind stuff. According to wikipedia the whole affair is a bunch of chemistry well beyond the scope of anything I’m willing to understand, but the fact remains that it’s very cool. I am happy to have solved this mystery that had been nagging at me. I am glad to have this Information.

Here is 2008

Author's note: It has been a while since I spent any significant amount of time crafting a New Year's Blog Entry. Please enjoy this afternoon's endeavors.



A lot of the internet is busy listing things from 2007: best-of lists, most important this or that’s, lists of authors who died, etc. Stuff like this is all well and good, and merits existence inasmuch as it makes it easy for amnesiacs and the absent-minded to review what it is that's happened since last January 1st, but they do very little in the way of preparing us for the upcoming year, and it’s always been this website's job to present some things that are urgent, and some that are not. Well, the future is urgent, and the past is not.


In the interest of preparedness I will go ahead and give you the main important information of the upcoming calendar year.

Best Movie:
The Brothers Bloom

Why will this movie be the best movie of 2008? A lot of reasons. The first is that Rian Johnson directed it. If you’ve been paying any attention to living your life you’ve already seen his first movie and spent a lot of time figuring out how the hell he accomplished this. Furthermore, The Brothers Bloom has Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo and Nora Zehetner (who, you might be interested to know, won a grammy for Best Shoulders in 2006, 2007 and will again win in 2008). Also, it is about con men.

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Best Album:
The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride

A year from now all the music blogs and the seemingly-informed will be collecting their best of 2008 album lists, and there’s a good chance that this album won’t show up on those lists; this is because most (though by no means all) people who run sites of the aforementioned types are the kind of mistake-makers who put the lackluster, the lousy, and the downright annoying on their best-of lists this year. Why will Heretic Pride actually be the best album of 2008? Because it’s fucking awesome, that’s why.

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Best Video Game:
Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Nintendo Wii

This does not require an explanation. What’s more, I’m aware that, save for a few, the audience to whom I’m writing is not one that is particularly interested in video games. Those interested don’t need this choice explained to them, and those who aren’t don’t want to have to read about it.



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Other Things That Will Happen:

America Gets a New President (this doesn’t happen until November, but everyone seems pretty set on broadcasting every detail about the stuff that leads up to it starting last month. Some stuff has to happen before we even know who we’ll get to vote for, so don’t worry about it right now.)

NASA Sends Another Thing to the Moon or Whatever

California will have a natural disaster

I will get tired of doing this blog and abandon it

Now you know, plan accordingly. And you’re welcome.