Please update your links and whatnot. The new site isn't fully functional yet, but it is more functional than this page ever was, and has all of my blarchives (that is, blog archives) going back to the day I started my first web log in 2001, so there's a lot to read if you have time to kill and feel like being totally bored and annoyed.
This site served me well, but I've been trying to start a new one for like a year and a half now, so I am glad to be moving on. Please join me!
I've spent some of my labor day weekend working on a new website, which should hopefully be ready to unveil tomorrow night. Regular posting will continue once that's all squared away and everything is shipshape. I hope you will like the new design!
1. While looking through my bags (which are still only halfway unpacked) for a computer cable so that I could scan the Bhagavad-Gita the other night I found, wonders of wonders, an old, beat-up POG! A zombie POG even! I really wanted to scan it in so y'all could see it, but I still can't find that doggone computer cable. Then I thought that maybe I could just describe the POG and tell you that I held it up to the computer screen hoping that would be enough. Then I thought that I would have to actually DO that if I was going to write about it, which would look pretty silly. and THEN I realized that yes it would look silly, but I could at least take a picture of it with my webcam!
AMAZING, right? Hardcore!
It says "HORRORS CAPS 2001" on the back, which means it's the best kind of POG: a generic one!
2. Speaking of horror-related things and cap-related things, all the episodes of Monster Bash are now apparently freeware! This is great, because it means I no longer have to ask myself the awkward question of whether or not I would pay $30 dollars for a game that is nearly 15 years old. I hope this means that the original Jazz Jackrabbit is freeware now as well. For whatever reason, I simply have no desire to play video games that were released after I got a driver's license.
3. I was pleased to learn that Yahoo Buzz does not actually have a Wikipedia page yet. This means that no one who knows how to use the Internet actually cares about Yahoo Buzz. Which is good to know, because Yahoo Buzz actually sounds like it should be the name of a caffeinated chocolate drink. Wait, I guess that would actually be YooHoo Buzz. Is that a real thing? I would bet money that it is.
Yahoo Buzz also sounds like what Archie Comics would name a stereotypical punk character who would only appear in one story: "Hey Archie, who's the new kid on the SKATEBOARD? He NEARLY ran Betty OVER!" "I heard his name is YAHOO BUZZ! I guess he's from OUT OF TOWN." "Yeah, and Mr. Weatherby is STEAMED at him already!"
Oh man, the hijinx that would ensue...
(as a side note, I REALLY want to try writing Archie comics now. I wonder if they take unsolicited submissions...
If my first creative writing class of the semester left me feeling inspired, my first lit class left me feeling quite numb. It is on epic and romantic literature, which I guess sounds good on paper, but in practice, it means we will be reading this book:
It is gigantic. It is bigger than the copy of the Bhagavad Gita that I bought for a quarter from a Hare Krishna at the Los Angeles Airport, which itself is a brick of a book. In fact, it looks less like a book and more like big, pulped chunk of TREE. Fortunately no one made me read the Bhagavad Gita, because a lot of it is Hindi. It also includes some illustrated pages, which are pretty scary -- although not quite as scary as that the picture of Queen Elizabeth I on the cover of The Faerie Queen. Sadly, my scanner isn't working right now, and the online gallery I found has slightly different, less glossy and less creepy versions of the pictures. One of my favorite pictures in the book features a chariot driven by horses who are each wearing a symbol of a body part around their neck: an eye, an ear, a nose, etc. There are a couple of dudes in the chariot and they are really freaking out.
The caption reads: "The chariot of the body. The five horses represent the five senses (tongue, eyes, ears, nose and skin). The reins, the driving instrument, symbolize the mind, the driver is the intelligence, and the passenger is the spirit soul."
Neat! It's so much less disturbing when you just put it in words!
Allegories and metaphors are usually easier to depict in writing than they are in art -- which I think is why a lot of religious art is so horrifyingly bad. The Faerie Queene is supposed to be an extended allegory about how great Queen Elizabeth was, and also there's supposedly some metaphorical jazz about how to live a virtuous life. But even if it's a really brilliant metaphor, I feel like I'd rather look at some silly pictures of doves and shining souls than read The Faerie Queene, because not only is The Faerie Queen about a gazillion pages long, it's also a dang poem! And it was written before anyone thought about standardizing the way you spell things, which means it took me a couple of tries to even find the darn thing on Amazon.com, since Edmund Spenser apparently liked his vowels too much to just call it The Fairy Queen. You couldn't get away with that kind of stunt today, no sir!
So by next week I'm supposed to have read hundreds of pages of misspelled poetry that was written 400 years ago, but made to sound like it was written 500 years ago. I would have started this evening, but I still haven't bought the book, and since I've had a couple of late nights in a row (and not by virtue of doing anything exciting), I was probably too tired to read archaic verse tonight. I had a hard enough time staying awake in class. In fact, I may have dozed off to the extent that while my head was leaning on my hand and my eyes were focused somewhere on the air floating over the page we were reading, my mouth may have lolled open and I may have actually drooled on the table. Maybe. I don't think anyone saw if I did or not.
Fortunately, while reading The Faerie Queene may be hard, other things are easy! Like downloading old DOS shareware games and playing them on my Mac! Who knew? I didn't even think this was possible, but within minutes of googling Monster Bash, I had downloaded it, found an emulator and was reliving my childhood.
For a game staring an eight-year-old boy in blue-spotted pajamas, this game was really gory -- everything exploded into bits of flesh when you hit it with your slingshot (even skeletons!). But the best part was that after you killed a zombie, his head would fly off of his body and roll around on the ground trying to attack you until you shot that, also. The plot of the game was that you had to rescue a ton of dogs and cats which had been kidnapped by monsters and scattered around graveyards and haunted houses. It was actually a lot of work and didn't really make a lot of sense, but on the other hand your character could jump 20 feet in the air, never had to sleep or go to the bathroom, and could get sewered five or six times without dying, so it was a pretty decent trade off. I spent hours and hours playing the game as a kid, bashin' monsters and freein' the pets.
It would be very easy to spend hours and hours playing it again, and not reading a single misspelled word of The Faerie Queene. Should we take a vote? How do YOU think I should spend my time, dear readers??
Just got back from my first writing class of the semester. I think it's going to be really good. I don't usually take a lot of notes in class, but tonight I ended up filling up three pages. I'm excited to start on a new story, which I'm planning to write about the Days of Rage, which was a youth riot in Chicago in the winter of 1969. Check it out:
This picture came from the Days of Rage wikipedia article. It blew my mind. That football helmet! Those sun glasses! College kids riding Greyhound buses cross-country to march in the freezing December winds and fill the Chicago streets with burning trash cans and smashed glass from shop windows ... If that's not a story, brother, I don't know what is.
... Also on the creative writing front, there was a question here a while back about whether I'd ever post more of the the pinball stories I was working on. I guess the answer is that you'll see them when I can bear to look at them again without burying my face in my hands. At this point, it isn't looking very likely, but you never know.
Apparently Miss Teen South Carolina is the new biggest thing on The Internet. I know this thanks to Yahoo Buzz (which ... it sounds like a news from a late '70s sci-fi novel: "Melvin took a sip from his UltraNutri, then turned on the Holo-vision and took in the latest beat from Yahoo Buzz." Pleasingly quaint and kooky, but not exactly cool). I guess she flubbed a question about geography pretty badly, and Yahoo Buzz is reporting the fall out:
"Searches on 'miss teen south carolina' jumped 831%." Goodness! That is a LOT of percent! I thought people were ALREADY searching for "miss teen south carolia" a ton before this, but that is like, so much percent that it would get you kicked out of most math classes! 831%. Wow. I hope Miss Teen North Carolina can keep up.
But that's not all! According to Yahoo Buzz "Her convoluted response also spurred queries on 'miss teen south carolina video,' 'miss teen,' and 'miss teen usa south carolina.'" This is the kind of hard-hitting news you can report when you are a search engine. I hope Google issues a special report soon about whether "USA" or "Iraq" gets more searches, because I bet that it would be really revealing!
Anyway, in case you happen to not be among the 831% who have seen this video, here it is:
I'm almost afraid to comment on it because I know thousands of bloggers have already beaten me to it, so the chances of me saying anything new are one in roughly 831%, but I will say two things: First of all, as much as I really enjoy phrases like "the Iraq," and "Everywhere, like such as." (yes, with a period), not to mention "Aimee Teegarden," the poor girl really just looks less like she knows nothing about geography and world issues (I mean, she has at least one basically good idea: MAPS! People need 'em!), and more like she is completely nervous and scared out of her mind. And I would be, too! After all, as this movie: (which I saw in the theater) reminds us, behind the scenes of most beauty pageants is someone trying to take of the world or kill a prime minister or ... ok, I don't really remember. But I am sure it is nefarious.
Secondly, and the real reason I wanted to bring up Miss Teen South Carolina 2007, is that I have a story that can one-up her. THIS IS THAT STORY:
We have student assistants at my office who help us with work that is easy and also boring. Sometimes they are reasonably professional and sometimes they are jaw-droppingly NUTS. One of them is a girl who often visits my desk to use my fax machine (which is the only one in the office). She struck me as a polite, basically competent kid, until one day we were discussing a staff member who started a charity to help kids in Ethiopia (which you really should read about), and she said to me, "It's really great that he's doing this, but do you know where Ethiopia is? Because I don't." "Well, it's in Africa ..." I said. "OK, but ... where's Africa?" she asked, completely earnest.
OH NO! This was not the response I was expecting. For a brief moment I thought, "Oh dang, that is a good question. "Africa" is the name we've given to a huge region of land, but is anything separate from anything else? Where does Africa stop and the ocean shelf begin? Is "Africa" truly a place, or only a concept? Does it only truly exist in the minds of those who live there?!" Then I realized this was not what she was talking about.
"Um," I said, "It is a continent. It's below Europe and Asia." She looked at me and there was no flicker of recognition on her face. I was very afraid that she was going to ask me where Europe and Asia were. "I'll draw you a map," I said. As I proceeded to draw a not very to-scale map of the world, she said apologetically "I'm just really not very good at history." I gritted my teeth and told myself, "She just used the wrong word, you don't have to say anything. She's IS a college student." "Out of all the people who go to this school, I probably know the least about history," she said. "The least." "The thing is," I told her as I sketched out a lumpy Cape of Good Hope, "This is geography." "Well yeah, same thing," she said. "Yes, they are related," I admitted. "Because when things happen, they have to happen SOMEWHERE."
This is the sort of thing that makes me fear for our country and our future. Maybe 20 years from now, instead of history and geography, college students will internet study search results and website hits. Who needs a map when you have Yahoo Buzz?
See, Miss Teen South Carolina will tell you that you do in fact need maps. Otherwise, HOW WILL YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE?
A lot of my job involves the same thing every office job involves: the paper trails, the endless e-mails, the unfathomable memos, the crashing waves of existential angst, the giddy excitement of ordering boxes and boxes of pens, the acting need to act aloof when using the copier so that it doesn't smell your fear and start jamming again and again, the carpal tunnel, the interoffice small talk (everyone is "doing ok!" or "hanging in there!"), the desire to hang up after an annoying call so hard that the phone explodes, and so on, etc. But every once in a while I get to do something that uses my own unique talents and abilities! For example, I received this photo that had to go in the employee newsletter:
Ignore that it is a boring picture, ok? It was important to include the three people in the front row, but the picture was way too wide to fit comfortably on the page I was laying out. I had to get rid of all that empty space between them in order to make it fit. So, I bust out my mad photo-manip skills, and BEHOLD:
Now, this sort of thing is very common thanks to Photoshop. Normal-looking women are made to look like terrifying beauty queens in order to sell magazines EVERY DAY! But I do not have Photoshop at my office. Nor do I have any other comparable photo-editing program. But I do have .... MS_PAINT! Which is to say, for those of you old enough to understand, that I have a stripped down version of Kid-Pix. But I am undaunted! I was able to take my old school skills to the mat here and convincingly COMPRESS TIME AND SPACE (ok, so probably just space) in such a way that I bet when the people in that photo see it in the newsletter, they won't even think, "Wow, did I really sit that close to that dude?" They will just assume that, yes indeed they did. They might wonder why they don't remember that dude smelling as badly as usual, but they will not doubt that they were mere inches from his (or her) armpit.
That's right, my skills are esoteric, BUT THEY GET THE JOB DONE!! Wait, let me say that in MS_PAINT ....
(hang on a second here)...
BAM!
YES! Ok, that took a really long time, but wouldn't it make a great tee-shirt? Of course it would! If for no other reason, than because MS_PAINT has such terrible compression that it makes every image look like it was printed on cheap cotton and sent through the wash about three dozen times. See, that would be cool if grunge were still in. But soon grunge will be coming back again! Just when you think worthless skills are worthless, they become popular again.
