The image is explained in the last paragraph, I swear.

I'm sure everyone knows about this, but firefox's Google search bar offers some really profound, troubling, head-scratching revelations about web-based humanity. Put in the first few letters of something, and "suggestions" will pop up, based on popular searches. Every so often I like to type in a few words and see what America is up to. Some (abridged) examples:
root: "I am"
suggestions: I am bored; I am legend; I am sasha fierce; I am the walrus lyrics; I am pregnant; I am sam; I am green today
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root: "where is"
suggestions: where is the love; where is chuck norris; where is my mind; where is my g-spot; where is waldo; where is dubai
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Oddly, the top search suggestion for "help me" is "help me howard." Either there's a movie out there called Help me Howard, or somewhere a superhero has been born, and the only way to invoke him is by searching for his help on Google.

There is also the fantastic feature that lets us see what we ourselves searched for in the past, before the suggestions even start. So, if I put in "potato" for example, I see not only the suggestions (potato soup, potato salad, potato recipes, potato pancakes) but also what I have searched for within the past year involving potatos (potato famine, potato farm, potato gun furry porn). I truly don't know where that last one came from and I swear I didn't make it up for this post. I think I must lay traps for myself across the internet, and then forget about them later. I can't imagine what potato gun furry porn would look like, much less why I would want to find it.

On the topic of strange things my internet habits lead me to find, and which you probably didn't need to know about... the Japanese will make porn out of anything. Despite the movie coming from their culture, somehow someone Grossly Misunderstood and decided that The Ring would make good hentai material, and that girls coming out of your television screen would actually be pretty neat. The picture above is one very tame sample of a much larger and more graphic body of work. Anyway... The Ring scared the crap out of me personally. I guess making porn of it is somebody's coping mechanism.

Another nail in Walt Whitman's coffin.

I've noticed that the great majority of my literative spew has moved toward the dreamy and hallucinogenic, and usually ends with, or involves, someone's death. There will be no more of that. With that in mind, here is a poem about a jackhammer:

O jackhammer, my jackhammer! our fearful task is done.
here stands a mighty mega-mall, complete with Cinnabon.
the I-beams came to make a frame, the plexi-glass surrounded.
built on the very concrete that we pulverized and pounded.
But heart! heart! heart!
Though the digging has been dug
My jackhammer has died this day
For someone pulled the plug.

Dammit, still got the death in there. I suppose it can't be helped.

I ordered three umbrella hats this evening, with pointy tops to spin plates on. We shall put them on the heads of unsuspecting audience volunteers, and I think they'll have a grand time. I've always wanted one of my own. An umbrella hat, that is. I'm pretty well set when it comes to grand times.

A Different Spin has been invited to join the performer roster of Urban Circus, a Boston-based talent promotion company. We have a photo shoot with them on February 4th. The guy I talked to at the agency also said he was interested in bringing me on as a birthday entertainer and performer for their "pirate parties". Semi-regular gigs that I don't have to do any booking work for? Sounds pretty ideal to me. And of course ADS is going to the APCA conference in Atlanta in March, which is the big leagues. From what we've done so far in the show-writing and skill-development departments, we're actually ready for it. Our juggling and volunteer acts are legitimately hilarious. I'm proud of what we're doing here, and I hope it keeps going for a long time.

crossing the streams of consciousness

Down on the docks the concert was in full swing. Colors flew from the keys and into the evening air like wild confetti, streaming down onto the adoring crowd. Walder's teeth flashed under his visor, his head swooping back and forth to follow his keyboard strokes: if Ray Charles had been blue-haired, white-skinned, and possessed of Walder's transmissible synesthesic talents, they would have been indistinguishable. The touch of Walder's fingers on the keyboard sent out not only music, but also waves and flavors in every sensory channel imaginable: a symphony in dreams.

The crowd drank in the torrential harmonies, tasting the warm swirls of cinnamon chords in stereo. A fizz of sixteenth notes burst from the keyboard reef as a school of electric blue angelfish. The speakers thrummed. In seat nine of row MM, an old man peed himself. The warmth looked distinctively like a D minor.

In the chaotic frontal moshpit just under the stage, a group of the young and impetuous felt their synapses overload, sizzle, and collapse. They had disregarded the banners warning emphatically against the use of hallucinogenics at this particular concert, and as a consequence were now being psychically torn apart by the fifteen-layered tempest of overlapping and conflicting sensory inputs. The synesthetic mutant Walder left an unfortunate trail of hyperstimulated, maddened fans in the aftermath at every venue, gibbering creatures capable of nothing but humming tunelessly and chewing at themselves.

Among the victims on this night was Jacquelin Luff, a pink-haired cartoon enthusiast. As her neurons informed her that seven levels of fractal reality were simultaneously converging on the bridge of her nose, she prayed to Voltron for salvation.

the land is doomed

I may at last have joined the ranks of the motivated. This might have something to do with the fact that I have definitely joined the ranks of the poor. I am a rank-joiner. Wikipedia informs me that "a joiner differs from a carpenter in that he cuts and fits joints in wood that do not use nails."

Free health clinics are a new and interesting experience: waiting for 5 hours in the waiting room of a clinic and finally being told that you can't be seen today, despite what they told you on the phone, is pretty awesome.

I've got a 3-month gift subscription to Netflix, courtesy of my family. This means I can stream any movie they have, any time I want. Unfortunately, the movies they have available for streaming are usually ancient, technicolor beasts that lurch their way to 2 and a half stars before their budget expires and they slurk back to their fetid back lot spawning pools. Amidst this metaphorical swamp, I found a neat little anime called Paprika, whose soundtrack has been going through my head nonstop ever since. I also watched Kevin Costner's The Postman, and found it quite satisfying.

There are no more unrelated paragraphs of irrelevant autobiographics. We are both free to go.

A Different Spin Jugglestuffs

Look for do this it to be a vidjo.

a new twist on animal crackers

Yesterday in a large asian market with an overpowering fish smell, Ashlyn found a sort of do-it-yourself Pocky kit, that included little cookie sticks and a chocolate frosting dipping pit. Each stick had an animal on it, with some little characteristic written in big blocky (safe to eat?) ink. The cookie sticks had things like "ELEPHANT: JUMBO" and "TURTLE: SLOWLY" on them. But there was one that was too good not to share.



Bat: Only in the Night

Yes indeed.