Guy Fawkes tequila

One of those days on the internet.

2012-01-09T00:17:00.000-05:00

Last night I made a random autobiographical post to sexxit (the subsection of Reddit devoted to sex conversation) and woke up 8 hours later to discover that it had risen to the top of the page and gotten several comments. I am not a big poster-of-things-to-Reddit, so the fact that this post was getting so much attention made me start monitoring it. Over the course of the day, it has gotten over 800 upvotes (people liking what I have to say) and over 200 comments. As of now, it has been the top post on the Sex subreddit for nearly 24 hours. This is an unprecedented, if ephemeral, experience of internet celebrity for me.

Even weirder is the fact that someone involved in the Boston Circus Guild found the post, which has very little in the way of identifying information, and invited me to join his all-male burlesque troupe, Sirlesque. What might be even weirder than that is the fact that the post has also gotten 295 downvotes. Haters gonna hate, I suppose.

Internet. Social networking. Interconnected humans and their globally interconnected subcultures. What a bizarre and wonderful time we live in.

Minecraft returns

2011-12-11T16:35:00.001-05:00

Minecraft is Minecraft, and there's a whole internet full of people who discuss it and describe it. So I won't do that. Instead I'm going to talk about why I play it and all the other games I play with people in the wide world of internetdom.

Every so often I'll get involved with (or instigate) a bunch of people playing a game very seriously. I'm going to start with my idea on why I (and other people) do it.

Persistent online games are an opportunity to have a little world where you can have measurable progress toward defined goals. How many bars are you away from the next experience level? What life percentage did you get the Lich King down to before he inevitably devoured your souls for the fourth night in a row?

Real life has no achievements and no progress bars- contemplating the world as a massive game where one could potentially reach the highest levels of accomplishment is a dangerous contemplation. You don't know your class, you don't know your level, and you can't look at any objective metrics of success or completion. Class balance regarding whether the Banker is exploiting unintended player-built game mechanics and the Mystic Practitioner is generally well-tuned but needs more incentives to engage in large-scale multiplayer modes is not a conversation you can have with the developers, and most importantly, you (simulationism aside) can't decide to reroll and try another game mode. We play games because they condense a life experience and let us make long-term memories over short-term time commitments.

Topics, as a species, are hard to stay on. We should probably give up on domesticating them as beasts of burden.

Anyway, to skip ahead a few box cars in the train of thought because I don't feel like writing more analytical paragraphs about why people game, we have a new minecraft server, and I've been playing a lot of it, and as soon as Felix gets nether portals working I'm going to build a horrific arcane tower in the middle of the desert, surrounded in devious traps made of cacti, dynamite, and geographically-anomalous snow golems, which can only be accessed by tunneling through Hell.

It's not World of Warcraft, and it's not League of Legends, and it's what we want right now.

another drawing

2011-12-09T00:59:00.001-05:00

My willpower made a deal with my incorrigible uselessness today. In exchange for being allowed a white russian to wash down my incredibly spicy Thai food (Twitch ordered the food specifically with the request "make us cry") I would create and post some piece of art to the internet. So here I am. Once again it's D&D character sketch time. It's not that I always play ladies... it's just that I enjoy drawing them more, I think.

[edit 2 minutes later] I looked at the posting I just made, and realized my new snake-blooded (third generation medusa) sorceress takes up a lot of vertical space, while the one lonely paragraph above does not. So let me tell you about the "willpower" with which I have made the aforementioned deal. Impossible, you say. Me? Willpower? And this skepticism is well-founded: willpower and discipline have as much chance of turning up in my life as unexplained cases of hundred dollar bills. There are even days when I think these two scarcities are related!

Anyway.

I've been reading a book by Roy Baumeister, a researcher whose stuff I read back in undergraduate Vassarland. He has very interesting things to say about willpower, which are better summarized in the amazon link I just embedded than they will be here. On the practical side, it means that I now spend a lot of time during my day willing myself to do meaningless things, and because of it I seem to be better able to will myself to do less meaningless things. Someday I may even work my way up to meaningful things, but I'm trying not to get ahead of myself. Drawing impractically-breasted sorceresses and preventing internal Thai-induced hemorrhaging of the stomach is about my limit right now. Realistic goals and all.

I'm watching the Occupy Boston livefeed, and the announcement just came that the camp isn't being cleared tonight. If my bike was functioning, I'd like to think I'd be out there. Realistically though, I suspect I would find another excuse. I'll continue my donations, my membership in organizations that forward the cause, and my limited social media support, but god damn I don't like being in large groups of people. I've spent maybe a total of twelve hours in the camp, and I am just amazingly bad at it. Maybe that willpower thing will come around someday. The people standing out there in the camp blocking the police from clearing the occupation out are mighty, glorious beasts. Thanks internet, and thanks fellow humans. The future will be awesome, and I love everyone who's helping it get there sooner.

Ha. Vertical space filled. Take that, enormous picture.

first productive all-nighter since college

2011-04-04T09:41:00.004-04:00

Sat down at midnight last night do to concept art for a game being made for "social change". Ended up staying up all night drawing several 32x64 pixel sprites, some with walk, crouch, and jump frames, and some environmental things. Here are the pictures, and the explanation of the game, as explained to Sasha via gchat:

Dogwaffles the jocky, bluntly honest goat; Spork the unicorn; Handsome Jack the ambiguously gay, fashionable tiger.

me: It's a game. unicorn, tiger, and goatpunk are the player options. One's a jock, one's a superhero, one's a drama nerd, and they each assume the others hate them
so you can play through the game as any of them. it's a role playing game, you can interact in a few different ways
they're high school students
Sasha: nice! those look great!
me: their high school is Sinister Mountain High, which due to zoning laws is located in the former fortress of Baron Darkness von Sinister
Sasha: ahahaha
me: it was the only available real estate
Sasha: just like how buffy's school was on the hellmouth
me: so navigating the hallways involves lava and robots
Sent at 9:13 AM on Monday
Sasha: like y'do, in high school
so it's a game about how types interact?
or expectations?
me: yeah. it's a game on perspective taking
when you pick a character you get a briefing on how they're "supposed" to act, and why
for example, Handsome Jack the Tiger is part of the drama club, which frowns on socializing outside its ranks. And everyone assumes jocks are ignorant assholes.
and the unicorn, Spork... she's secretly a superhero, but can't tell anyone, so she has the classic peter parker dilemma- she looks unreliable and flaky to others, because she's always running off and skipping class
Sasha: that's so interesting
me: so you play through once, going "wow, these guys are assholes" then you play it again as one of the others, see what was driving them, and ultimately get that no one is a bad guy.

xboxmas

2010-12-24T18:07:00.008-05:00

Today I went to Best Buy, where my family braved a 20 minute line (in which we had quality parent-son time and I explained the concept of micropayment game economies when I saw the League of Legends pre-payed cards by the checkout) and ultimately bought only some cheap headphones and a DVD of Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey at my sister's half-intentional request.

As we sidled and crab-hopped our way through the christmas eve aislethrongs, I was impressed by the number of Kinects under people's arms. There are moments that remind me how I really, truly don't understand the scope and scale of what gets manufactured, bought, and sold in this world. Within the past few years I've gotten a better understanding of money, earnings, and better living through disposable income (all new information for someone who has always gotten more enjoyment out of a cardboard hat than a hundred dollar bill), but today I saw at least six $400 Kinects sold within twenty minutes, at a single Best Buy in a single New York suburb. I can't extrapolate total sales without population density information, an economics degree, and a reason to care, but goddamn capitalism is huge.

squibbidy bop dop blam

2010-12-23T00:53:00.006-05:00

My program at Tufts seems to directly impact and address my life issues. Whether this is because I see the issues as I study them or because I choose to study issues close to home, I have spent a semester learning about creativity and motivation, and why I can't seem to lasso either of them into my personal existential corral. If there is one take-home message I've gotten from the whole thing, it is this: creativity does not come from moments of spontaneous inspiration. Waiting around for that inspiration that will lead you to write your bestselling novel and quit your shitty job at the office will not actually do either.

Which is not to say that inspiration never strikes. But like other things that strike (bowling balls; lightning; labor unions), ideas are more likely to hit you in a land where they normally dwell (bowling alleys; open fields; sandwich shops). If you want to be savaged by a pack of grizzlies, you should probably go to a grizzly den. If you want creative inspiration, you should probably spend time working and thinking in the same domain where you want inspiration.

Actually, if you want to be savaged by a pack of grizzlies, you probably shouldn't go to a grizzly den. You should probably come over here, so I can make you a sandwich and talk about why you want to be savaged by a pack of grizzlies.

They might not even come in packs.

But what DOES come in packs (segue, bam) is Five-Hour Energy. Packs of 12. Of which I bought two, platoons armed and ready to push the beachheads of academia and keep me functional. As with everything else I bring into my life, these inevitably got combined with alcohol, and I can tell you there is nothing good about this union. Chaining 5-hour energies and whiskey is the only way I've ever managed a hangover that lasted for three full days. It's good to know I have talents.

The picture accompanying was drawn for MeghanTwitch, who picked "leopard" when I asked her to pick an animal because she was folding leopard print undies at the mall at the time. Meghan has the distinction of being the only human in the world who can play the little spoon for an entire night without putting the big spoon's arm to sleep. This one's a keeper, ladies and gents.

new things

2010-09-16T22:40:00.005-04:00

I have poured grad school into the pot and turned on the burner. Within a few weeks hopefully there will be bubbling, and then I can pour it into a bowl and keep myself alive with it for a little while longer.

Grad school is apparently canned soup.

To switch metaphors and help me along the way, I've bought myself a sleek and sexy technological companion to strut around campus on my arm: an iPad. Like any good trophy wife, it constantly wants to go shopping and wears a lot of leather. The shopping is for apps to turn what is essentially a device meant for consumer-whoring and looking at kitties into a useful academic tool for data organization; the leather is so it will survive the inevitable bike accident that's going to happen as I bike the serious business commercial roads to and from Tufts.

I drew the accompanying drawing with my finger on the iPad. There is potential here, but I wish potential meant "a larger canvas size."

Aside from the academic, there's one major new situation: with Ashlyn moved to London I've fallen off the good ship Cohabitation into the salty, sultry waters of singledom. The singles pool? Does existing metaphor say it's a pool, not a sea? I guess it doesn't matter; kids pee in both. Which is gross.

I haven't had real experience with hunting, dating, and sexing outside the college bubble of "I'm going to stick my head in the sand and pretend STDs don't exist because I (foolishly) trust the people in my circles to be intelligent and take care of themselves." So now I need to do that thing where you're intelligent and responsible. Fortunately I seem to be getting better at that.

Fish oil, biking, rigorous academics, and whiskey. These four things are keeping me consistently happy, and consistent happiness is new for me. Things Are Going Well.

my carrots are rotten

2010-07-30T10:59:00.004-04:00

A brand new bag of carrots, opened only to discover that slimy texture that tells you "this is not for eating." I'm sure they wouldn't hurt me, but when the only reason I'm eating is for my own entertainment, vegetables covered in suspicious mucus-y film are not what I ordered from culinary netflix.

I am making a game. A storytelling game. The king of the Beowulf-era mead hall is dead, and all would-be successors need to boast of their heroics to prove their worthiness to assume the crown. It's building itself into a hybrid of Munchkin and Once Upon a Time with a side of Liar's Dice, as whether you are mighty enough to do the things you say you've done is never really certain.

When this game is complete, I will launch a site where all the materials from all the games I've ever made will be downloadable. There will be The Jungle, Zombies vs Elves, Fishin' With Cthulhu, Time Machine Junkyard, Tiki God, and the as-yet untitled forthcoming creation. There will also be a Paypal button on the off chance that someone feels like buying me a sandwich, or perhaps a bottle of Snake Peel shower gel. Hopefully Ricky, Ashlyn, Tim, and I will keep making new things too.

and you make a neat gun for the people who are

2010-07-27T23:49:00.003-04:00

...STILL ALIVE

and how. Alright, my little internet captchalogue. Here we are again.

As I type this, I am endlessly refreshing the login screen and/or server status of League of Legends. The talons of Maripongides, Lord of Video Games, remain lodged firmly in my tender mortal flesh. I spent the better part of a week in Canada doing A Different Spin shows (and being put up in the Hilton, which sounds swanky and pleasant until you realize that nothing is complimentary in classy establishments and you'd be better off with the Holiday Inn) and spent much of my downtime staring glassily into the screen of the Nintendo DS that I bought on an impulse to try Scribblenauts. This is why I'm bad at making friends.

F5. Server unavailable. F5. Server unavailable.

Going to try to swim back to this little boat of mine and turn it upright from its prolonged capsize of many moons. It's just hard to get leverage when you're neck deep in ocean.

the gallopy gallopy

2010-05-26T01:20:00.003-04:00

As long as this gif is playing, I am laughing uncontrollably. This may be the funniest thing I've ever seen, and I want to know whether that makes me crazy.

holy mother of what

2010-05-06T00:45:00.007-04:00

the fun.

First a note from real life, as a tip of the hat to the idea of "keeping a blog" as updates on one's actual doings: I am, in fact, going back to school in the fall. They have my money, I have a student ID number, and it's all very official and ivoried. In Celtic mysticism and the Tarot, fire is the element of inspiration, the start of the journey of an idea. I am now literally putting the fire behind me and moving on to the next stage. If the tarot is to be believed, I'm in for heavy rainstorms and will probably end up pregnant. Let's hope that's metaphorical.

And now, while I am on a watery note... a stream of consciousness. Pun! Pun! KaCHOW!

Tobie Bobbin had always suspected there was more to the toaster than met the eye. With two brothers dead in the war and his parents under a spectral, ever-present weepiness as a consequence, Tobie often found himself confined to the kitchen. The living room contained the uncomfortable silence of his parents' staring and sniffling, and his bedroom contained his brothers' ghosts, whose generally nasty dispositions had not been improved by traumatic, violent death. Tobie had tried to explain the situation to his parents after Compley, the eldest, had broken Tobie's model of the Empire State Building using ghostly telekinesis, but it only earned him five weeks of grief counseling and Compley's ghost ethereally peeing on him as he slept. This situation left the kitchen, with its mysterious toaster, as the main focus for Tobie Bobbin's hours and attentions. As the third day of continuous toaster contemplation drew to a close, Tobie was overcome with a sudden surge of understanding. He climbed inside, and played the saxophone So Hard.

The End. Suptacular, clopdandies. Which is a Shetland pony with a cravat. That is what a clopdandy is. Right now, on the other hand, is what bedtime is. Put that in your clop and dandy it.

2010-03-31T21:29:00.000-04:00

image may be forthcoming, but I pray it isn't related.

2010-03-15T23:38:00.003-04:00

It's been a while (a whole three posts) since I discussed gross things. So let me tell you about the trash can. The northeast has been flooded with a three-day deluge. Here in Brighton we have gotten at least ten inches of rain. I can say this confidently because there were at least ten inches of water in the garbage can that Tim and I just had to carry down our rickety back steps. Sharing the garbage can with the days-old water were two full bags of household refuse, which sent their olfactory essence brazenly out to explore the surrounding filth like tiny stink-particle Vikings. We walked it the half block to a storm drain and emptied the bilge water, wondering how anything could smell so bad.

If you took twelve pounds of shredded cabbage and packed it into the unclean anus of some sort of enormous hyena, starved that hyena for ten days before gorging it on a bowl of extra-meaty chili and prune purée, then caught the resulting rear-end explosion head-on, I suspect you might recreate that smell.

And that's the exciting news for the day. Also, Tufts didn't give me enough money, so I'm asking them for a deferment. We'll see how that goes.

yet another fantasy picture

2010-02-21T10:47:00.000-05:00

Look, another D&D drawing!

rabbits from hats!

2010-02-20T09:53:00.010-05:00

I just finished the only full-time work I've done since the beginning of the summer, working a week at a local arts center instructing YOUTHS! Or, as I have been known to say on camera for national television, YOOFS! I'm sure all my toys and equipment are now covered in a putrescent slime in which all manner of microtic biological transactions are taking place, a veritable United Nations of pediatric germs who are learning and advancing from this bounty of exchanged culture, in every sense of the word. I'm going to take a bottle of Lysol and empty it into the prop bag. Millions of voices will cry out in terror and be suddenly silenced.

In other news, I got into grad school. Depending on professional prospects and financial aid, I may be going to Tufts in the Fall. More on this story as it emerges. Also, yesterday I witnessed a goose fight, something I've never seen before. Three male geese were Having it Out with one another, roaring and hissing and honking and swelling up and tearing one another rather apart.

I have lost track of time and need to go make pancakes for a Circus Guild potluck. Time management, like so many other things, is not a skill I have.

naked lady

2010-01-30T17:46:00.013-05:00

D&D character sketch go! We're trying out the fancy new edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and Ricky's taking the Dungeon Mastering helm to chart a course into dice-infested waters. I, of course, am taking this opportunity to play a hot chick who transforms into toothy things like wolves, winged turtles, and velociraptors. When the transhumanist revolution comes, this shall be my ultimate destiny.

That wolf on the bottom is thinking about a double chocolate baconator. He's been thinking about it allll day.

Dungeons & Dragons. What a great idea. I'll pour one out on the curb for you, Mr. Gygax. You did good work.

disgusting vocabulary, science, and dogs

2010-01-27T00:45:00.006-05:00

A new scientific theory of observed human anatomy, based on personal experience while on a night-time run in late Boston January without the forethought of bringing along tissues:

the philtrum (the little ridge under your nose) acts as a remarkably effective and remarkably gross snot channel. In much the same fashion as some historians -and SCA members- postulate fullers on the blades of stabbing weapons to have functioned with regard to the lifeblood of a skewered foe, the ridge-and-dimple structure on our faces seems to flow nasal offerings right down into our mouth, where they can be conveniently spit out on the street. If that image didn't gross you out, hopefully the grammar of that last sentence did. But grossness aside, it gave me an excuse to use TWO vocabulary words: philtrum and fuller. Both things that people occasionally talk about but whose proper names are almost never known! The moral of the story is, bring a tissue when you go out in the cold.

And the title of the post tells me I should write something about dogs. They have wet noses. Which, now that I typed it and think about it, is remarkably relevant. Gross.

The Lagolier

2009-08-20T12:56:00.005-04:00

Not to be confused with a "langolier" which is a Stephen King creature that never really made any sense but likes to harass people in airports. Homeland Security should probably look into that.

I wonder why so many of us start blogs and let them slip by the wayside. I suppose it's one more thing in the day (or week) that has to get done, but I think maintaining them is almost meditative. I know for me, whether I'm creating some slapdash oddity -the only type I'm capable of- or actually talking about my latest feats of sloth, it becomes self-reflective and I often find that I feel differently about something than I had originally thought. Or at least I am often surprised at what comes out when I open the bloggity-box.

That said, meta-blogging is NOT very interesting- posts of "I should post more" or "why do we maintain these or fail to maintain them" are apologetic and unproductive. I know that in four years when I go back and read this as a bit of grinning nostalgia, there will be things that make me slap my knee and say "I remember that chapter of life; that was fun!" I also know that this will not be one of them.

In closing:

Down under the plates of the hull, the anaerobic newt looked out curiously. It had slunk its way onto the reflective plates of the shuttle to bask luxuriously on the heated surface in the sun, and then had crept under the plate for its growth phase, having absorbed all the light and heat it would need to finish the metamorphosis to adulthood. The dark, narrow crevice was perfect- millennia of evolution told it that no predators would be likely to find it here. The newt's body had begun secreting its self-cocooning sticky silk, and with bonds like titanium it had woven itself a bed, held fast to the hull and hibernating peacefully through the final checks and double checks, the blast of lift rockets and the rush of flight. Now, a million miles above the surface of its world, the newt awoke and crept out. In the joy of newly strengthened legs and cramped muscles, it did an exploratory leap.

Cake Batter Geese

2009-07-25T00:17:00.002-04:00

Harold forked another mouthful of bean salad past his teeth, and chewed it halfheartedly. It was cold, sour, and vinegary. When he was three, he had told his mother he wanted to be a cook, but thirty-two years later he seemed cursed to permanent and extreme culinary tragedy. Even after buying several recipe books and stocking his kitchen with the best ingredients an air conditioner repairman's salary could afford, he still bungled hopelessly anything more complicated than basting a microwave hot dog with a half pint of mustard. Bean salad. How do you manage to muck up a bean salad, he asked aloud. Harold tipped the barely-touched plate into the garbage and reached for a delivery pizza coupon. He found that had used them all.

Python oil! This excellent keepsake now proven to repel ticks and vermin, draw in wild financial fortunes, and make sure no one's making a squinty face in the family portrait. Keeps change in your pockets and God in your heart, yours for the low low price of $45.79 and the last whoop of the eighth inning. Don't be caught out in the dark without it, friend. Immigrants and carnivore heliotropes may lurk these parks. At the end of days, the signs will crackle and letters fade. PER TO & S OP will spell out the nightmare name of him that comes, and all will be paper or plastic.

"Here's the deal," said the devil, "I'm gonna tear your arms off and leave you to die bleeding and vomiting, flexing bloody stumps to move limbs that are only an agonized memory. Why? Because I'm the god-damned devil, and you shoulda took off running the second you saw me." He smiled, and snarled, and reached.

you must constrict additional pythons

2009-07-20T12:42:00.007-04:00

Ashlyn and I started playing Starcraft over the weekend. It didn't last long, though it would be fun to play some multiplayer, even though that would mean buying the game again to be able to play on Battle.net. I just looked, and it can be downloaded for $15. Right under the download button, Blizzard has posted a quote from the New York Times: "The game has become practically the national sport for South Koreans under 40". I wonder how effective that is as an advertisement for North Americans who might be considering buying it. To me, it just brings back the memories of trying to play the game online and being handily buttrumbled by Korean hordes.

It's sort of funny to me that both this drawing and the last feature very unhappy looking people. This pixel-lass is Clariet, who is a very unhappy girl. She was supposed to be the heiress to a badass magical family, but has discovered that she has no magical spark whatsoever. Though she had tutors, textbooks, and a castle full of magical apparatuses to learn from, she can't magic her way past a graham cracker. Which is fine, since should one ever be presented with a graham cracker as an obstacle, there are probably more efficient ways of getting past than magic.

Summer has remembered that it's supposed to be hot. I wish it hadn't.

Break out the combover and black spidey suit

2009-07-15T22:40:00.009-04:00

because it's EMO TIME. It's actually not emo time, but it IS stream of consciousness time, and this stream has a current like a hot cross bun. Which evokes an image of trying to swim through a river of piping hot currants, which I imagine would be agonizing. And sticky, and dark. You would emerge on the opposite bank discolored from sticky fruity napalm juice and your own burned flesh.

And with that, we take a cliche metaphor and an antiquated pastry, and turn it into an image suitable for nightmare. Somehow whenever I start typing into the blogobox this is the result.

I don't imagine many people still check our tiny cross-linked blogosphere of Vassar expatriates and Boston folks, especially now that we've all more or less stopped updating, but I'd love to know who is out there. Aside from the tigers. Tigers... I know you're out there, and I'm watching you.

So life update, because that's what blogs are for. I'm adjusting to cohabitation, living with Ashlyn living in the same room. It's a very different existence. Anyone who knows me at all probably suspects -correctly- that I do some fairly strange things when I'm alone. Now, "strange" does not mean "twisted and obscene," just odd little irrational nonsense. The state of "being alone" is something that is gone now, and that fact has changed my existence profoundly. One of the side effects has been that this blog has fallen by the wayside. It's not a bad thing, and I can certainly still find ways to be alone, but it is a big change for me.

I've got ten million (actually around eight) projects that I'm working on, everything from a young adult fantasy romp in the style of the Lioness Quartet, to a wordless solo street performance routine that would ideally, theoretically, allow me to travel to foreign countries where my vocabulary consists of "thank you" "bathroom?"and "please remove the handcuffs, I did not kill those people" ("Kérjük, vegye ki a bilincs, nem én öltem meg azokat az embereket" in Hungarian, according to Google). I will try to use this blog to post progress on these projects, as a way of forcing myself to work on them. Comments, encouragement, and harassment are all highly encouraged.

The lad on the right is named Oswald. He is a doctor's assistant who had the grave (har har) misfortune of digging up an infamous thief while on a routine search for cadavers in the name of medical science. He tried on one of the thief's perfectly preserved gloves out of curiosity, and has discovered that it has a mind of its own, often leading him to pilfer things when he's not looking, and filling his mind with all sorts of burglarly knowledge. What's more, no matter how he tries, he has found that the thing is utterly impossible to take off. Oswald was originally one of the illegitimate children hatched by myself and Sally Slade, but he's had a major overhaul since then. Next up you will meet Clariet.

llamaFace

2009-07-01T23:08:00.003-04:00

When they were building the tree house, Tyler's dad always told him he used too many nails to hold each piece of wood in place, and that wood was a lot stronger than he gave it credit for. As the monsters outside his house howled in rage and slammed their bodies against his boarded-up windows, Tyler prayed that his dad had been right.

"Here's the deal" said the devil, "I'm going to give you this knife and this spear. Then I'm going to put you into a one room studio apartment plus kitchenette with a ravenous bear. For every ten seconds you stay alive, I'll give you 100 grams of gold (about $4000). Once the bear kills you, I'll bring you back to life and give you the money, but you and I will both treasure forever the memory of a bear mauling you to death. Of course, if you somehow manage to kill the bear instead, the gold keeps on coming, and you are set for life."

Don't fuck with me now man, I am Ahab!

2009-06-15T15:12:00.008-04:00

A while ago in one of those "lets talk about game development and virtual worlds" conversations I have with other people and myself every now and then, I proposed that if someone ever succeeded in making an MMO game that managed to draw in the facebook and bejewelled casual webophile crowd, that person would rule the world. Apparently Sony Online Entertainment is trying to do it. They've just come out with a game, creatively entitled "Free Realms" where you can make a character straight out of a Lisa Frank sticker sheet and run around playing mini-games, beating monsters, and questioning your personal life decisions. I've only played it for about 20 minutes, but so far I've trained as a Brawler, doing standard MMO button mashing to beat up hobgoblins, and trained as a cook, playing a hybrid Bejewelled/Cooking Mama set of silliness to create stews and porridges. It apparently has video integration with youtube, and has a real-life trading card game that has in-game benefits and vice versa on top of all the pet-training and go-kart racing and ninja roleplaying you could ever imagine, so all the little boys and girls can get all their favorite hobbies amalgamated into one game. Basically I think it's interesting that someone is making a super-casual MMO game, and blurring even further the line between "gamer" and "kid who spends all his time online looking at facebook". Technology is weird, and it's doing strange things to the chilluns.

The attached image is the character I made to explore this online debacle- there is absolutely no way to make a dignified avatar in this universe, so I opted to shoot the moon. I'm trying to pretend I'm just dabbling in the game as an observer watching an interesting development in the sociological phenomenon of Online Worlds... but it's entirely possible that I just want pixie wings.

2009-06-13T22:16:00.002-04:00

hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiey hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiry hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiety hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosirey hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery hosiery

gentlemens

2009-05-13T09:58:00.004-04:00

Holy wow, what the damn. Cheese and crackers.

This is probably one of those videos that everyone but me saw two years ago. I found it linked as a "similar video" when I clicked the A Different Spin youtube account. I WISH we were similar to these madmen. If you like, check out the user's other videos, he has a lot more of the same.

Throw down, Moses. Way down in Egypt land.

2009-05-12T09:27:00.007-04:00

Photoshop photoshop ooh laaa la photoshop, photoshop!

Ba doom doom doom doooooom. The computer and I continue to improve our relationship, though I think professional counseling could speed the process along. We've worked out the "pressure-sensitive tablet pen" issue and are now working on "starting up when I goddamn tell you to."

Last night as we were driving back from Spin Jam we observed a license plate, "637 EGO." Someone suggested that perhaps this gentleman (or lady) had intended to spell Eggo™(see that alt-key combination there? Windows and I are high-fiving.) to brag about how many instant waffles (s)he has consumed over the course of a lifespan. But thinking about it further, we realized that 637 is actually not that impressive a waffle body count, as far as lifetime achievements go. I've only been around 24 years and I think for most of my K-12 years I ate Eggo™ waffles at least once a week, and at least two at a time. All those waffles add up. We do a lot of insignificant things, and we build up some pretty impressive numbers in our lives, if anyone bothered to take note. As Ricky pointed out, I wish the user interface of life had a statistics-tracking feature that let us see exactly how many pine cones we've kicked, dandelions we've blown, and foreign objects we've accidentally hit ourselves in the eye with. Oh no here comes the dangling preposition wagon to take me away to grammar jail get in the grammar foxholes and fetch me a grammar bazooka colonel. Grammar thank you.

a speedboat peels away

2009-05-06T22:36:00.015-04:00

Just underfoot, there were dozens and dozens of pancakes. As field day continued, the children gleefully romped through relays and races and water breaks and orange slices. The subterranean pancakes had minimal effect on the proceedings; maybe the displacement of dirt caused by one particular flapjack made Tommy Chumbles lose the three-legged race, or maybe it didn't. It was irrelevant. To Principal Hob, who had spent four dark and silent hours the night before digging up the field, sowing the unassuming breakfast cakes under the topsoil, and replanting the entire field of grass in time for the 7 am bus arrivals, it was the most life-affirming sight imaginable. Because Principal Hob was absolutely, terrifyingly insane.

Horris stands on the roof, looks down, and gives the hushed crowds below a smile. Across the street, a dozen unique and deadly vipers are loaded into the cannon and fired. Horris straps nine pounds of bleeding raw ham onto his bandolier and leaps roaring into the twelve-story high emptiness. Horris and the reptiles clash high above the city streets and begin their deadly dance. The ham, the snakes, and Horris's mismatched limbs and tube socks intertwine and begin choking one another. Blood is drawn and bodies are broken. They plummet through space, none of them able to breathe, and slam into the pavement. The ball of man and meat and serpent explodes, and Horris's gore-drenched cravat lands squarely at the stockbroker's feet.

"Here's the deal:" said the devil, "you tell me how many people you're going to kill. I'll give you two hours to do it, and at the end I'll give you ten thousand dollars for each person. Plus if you manage to kill as many as you said you would, I'll rewind time, set the whole thing to rights. Nobody's dead, nobody remembers you did anything wrong, and you keep the cash. But if you DON'T reach your quota, you don't get the money and you don't get the reset. Sound fair?"

deserting

2009-04-22T19:43:00.000-04:00

I got a new computer. It is a Windows machine. I'm still getting used to it, and I suspect I'll keep getting used to it for a good long while. It feels rather completely different from the old laptop, and I keep making typing mistakes, but I'm sure it will come to feel like home. As soon as I can wrangle something with which to make graphics, I will do so.

I killed the first zombie.

2009-04-14T13:31:00.005-04:00

I might have saved the world. Or I might have just killed a man. Either way I want to write this fast because something may be coming. I was driving to go pick up an air mattress for the trip this weekend and I swear I saw the first zombie. A man shambling toward the gas station with his neck at a broken angle, dragging one leg and foaming at the mouth. He was headed for the minivan parked at the far pump. I slowed the car down to see what was wrong with the guy, and he turned his head around and sniffed for a second. His eyes were black, with some kind of red skin irritation all around them. He was moving toward the van, and the van had kids in it.

I know zombies aren't real. But I know that if they were real, they'd look like this guy, and if he bit even one person it would be over. It would spread like it does in all the movies, and we would just have to find out whether this one has a happy ending where only 99% of the population dies, or if this is it. I can't say whether what I did was sane. I just know that I would rather risk my own insanity and incarceration than risk the lives of every person in the western hemisphere.

I killed him. I stopped my car in the middle of the lane and I grabbed a golf club from my bag in the trunk. I ran into the gas station lot and while the two other people standing by the pumps started to scream, I bashed the zombie's head in. I caved in his skull, and I scattered bits of zombie brain all over the club, the pavement, my face. I didn't get any in my eyes. I was careful.

The people were screaming, and I could see the guy in the gas station looking out at me and dialing something on his phone. I ran back to the car, covered the license plate with my shirt, closed the trunk on it, and drove home. I checked the news for any stories that sounded like a zombie infection, but nothing has come up. Whether it was a virus or black magic that made the first zombie, I think I stopped it.

I don't know what to do, and I don't know how long I have until the police find me and put me away for murder. Maybe they won't. I don't know how it works, or how many cameras or how many witnesses there were. Obviously putting this online might not be the best idea, but I want you all to know what happened if I disappear, and I want you all to be on the lookout in case the one I got wasn't the first, or wasn't the last.

I killed the first zombie. I might have saved us all. I might never sleep well again.

hamfists. Fists of ham. Pheasantfists. Fists of absolute nonsense.

2009-04-09T04:37:00.009-04:00

Good morning fiends and bestiaries. I am once again in Atlanta, this time to receive money instead of spending it. We did a flawless show at Georgia Perimeter College, and are getting fully paid not only for the show, but also for the transportation costs there and back again, the rental car, all the fuel, the hotel, and all our other expenses. Our clients are flying us across the country. We're making it.

I also got to catch up and hang out with most of my old Atlanta friendfolks in the wee hours of this morning, roving from a four-tiered Irish pub to the basement apartment of Admiral Nicholas Turbo Benson and Victor B. Bicycle. Bless their hearts, one and all. There's a part of me that is uniquely Atlantan. And it's been a while.

I still don't have a real computer. This is being written in the glamorous environs of the Sheraton Atlanta hotel lounge, and up in Boston, 1300 miles away, I still have the darling little piece of shit that Wildfire Chad is lending me. I ran a time test for it- I measured the time it takes the laptop to open Firefox against the time than it takes our toaster oven to toast a bagel. The laptop won this contest by exactly twelve seconds. Truly technology is amazing. Truly I miss having Photoshop to draw some poorly-conceived ostrich-hammock to accompany this post.

How the words Ostrich and Hammock might possibly interact is something I'll leave up to your sultry little wonderminds. Release ballast, Mr. Hannibal! We float easterly!

A Tale of Two God Dammits

2009-03-27T17:46:00.004-04:00

The Best of Times:
*We now have an agent for A Different Spin, who is jovial, friendly, and thinks he can make us a lot of money.
*We have military and college gigs for all sorts of exciting locations, which can also make us a lot of money.

The Worst of Times:
*My computer was stolen out of the exhibit hall at the APCA conference in Atlanta. There seems to be some kind of investigation happening, and I may get some money for it, but I still lost a lot of writings, art, and personal documents. I also -obviously- don't have a computer, so updates will be even rarer than usual until that gets fixed.
*Tim hurt his neck at practice this morning while doing the Atlas balance, and got Emergency Roomed. He is now in the warm embrace of prescription drugs and Soul Calibur, and nothing serious is wrong, but nobody knows how long it'll be before he can flip and juggle again. This takes down our financial outlook significantly. But he should be fine in the long run, thank Flying Spaghetti Monster.

who radishes the radishmen?

2009-03-14T23:26:00.008-04:00

I had a thought today as I was putting on my shoes in the living room. The thought was: "If a doberman jumped at me out of that doorway right now, I would now be prepared to kick it in the mouth." This thought immediately went to a man reviewing security footage of my living room in this scenario and wondering "man, I wonder how that kid was prepared to kick that doberman in the teeth. That's some reflexes, that is."

I am always prepared. Unfortunately, the things I'm prepared for (fuck you grammar) never happen.

life is full of unhappy men in dapper suits

2009-03-11T20:19:00.001-04:00

Tonight at 3:15 am we will be having our second annual vacuum sale blowout right here at Marvin’s Vacuum Emporium. Whether you don’t own a vacuum or you’ve been waiting for just the right time to buy that new vacuum for the family, tonight is the night! Drop by our lot for huge savings and unbeatable deals on name brand models, and don’t forget to enter your business card in the drawing at the door for a chance to win a horse!

pissing all over the floor

2009-03-06T18:40:00.003-05:00

This is what we're doing tomorrow for the audition. We're also giving them a DVD of all our fire stuff, and telling them to imagine that the clubs are on fire (that's what they told us to do, rather than do fire acts for the preliminary screening) Yes, it has the same music as the last juggling video. But this one's set in the Teen Center of the local YMCA. ...awesome.

I am adorable.

2009-03-06T01:51:00.016-05:00

I decided it was blog post time, because there are a few things that have come up that I want to yell about from my tiny soap box. First and foremost, I bought Ashlyn a tarot deck so she can start playing with all fun hobbies a tarot set allows: spiritual reassurance that it's okay to have another cupcake, and turning over the Death card at small children while saying "booga booga" are the big ones. To commemorate the event I also drew an aww-thats-precious picture in Vaguely Amazing style. You can see it off to your left. Yes, it's precious. I also think it's Neat, which is why it is here instead of back in my private life where it belongs.

(I realized after posting this that "Vaguely Amazing style" might be meaningless to some of you -how many of you are there?- who only met me recently. Vaguely Amazing was a factually-impeccable autobiographical account of Ricky and my Vassar years in web comic form. That adventure can be begun here if you're curious.)

Secondly, on the A Different Spin front, we have decided that our America's Got Talent audition will consist of the four of us going on a diet of nothing but food coloring (one color for each of us) for the 24 hours preceding the audition, and then urinating a full-color map of the United States of America all over the floor of the studio. We'll show them variety talent. Even if this act doesn't get us a spot on America's Got Talent, I'm pretty sure Stephen Colbert would give us a luxurious all-American yacht fleet in appreciation of our art.

Along the same vein of humor... an earlier discussion among the house regarding highways and sexual deviancy led to one of my patented Bad Idea google searches, and this gem came out in the wash.

There. Pissing all over public television and adolescent sex jokes about highway numbers. Is all the Adorable gone now? No? Alright, well then here's an alternate picture. You can just imagine I put it up instead of the tarot card.

My google ads are all about odor removal. The things that show up on that little side bar never cease to amaze. I really hope someone stumbles on this blog by accident while looking for "Septic Smells" or "Soup Recipes" or "Children's Sleep." A little befuddlement is good for the brain.

Hi-Ho Cherry-O was a great game.

2009-03-03T11:11:00.004-05:00

It taught counting, and colors, and introduced the idea that birds and dogs can take away everything you've worked so hard to build, instantly. I've never trusted them since.

Last night at Spin Jam we had a serendipitous and surreal experience: some of the other performers there had responded to a Craigslist ad for America's Got Talent, and are going to audition this weekend. This prompted a conversation in which we wondered whether we might also Got Talent, and whether we should go in to audition too. Opinions were mixed. We probably would have decided not to, except that Mooch immediately got a phone call from America's Got Talent, asking us to come in and try out. Apparently Johnny Blazes had recommended us, and (s)he has some connection that makes hir opinion count over there. Neat. Maybe if all goes well, you can make fun of us on national television. You can even put on a Simon Cowell hat. And if you do, I can beat you to death with a golf cart.

And then I'd probably get arrested.

Anyway, we're apparently going to try to merge our literal circus of juggling and fire calamity with the metaphorical circus of the national media. This union, like that of Pasiphaë and the Cretan Bull, will probably spawn a monster that will consume entire generations of young Greeks. I'll make sure to bring a ball of yarn to the audition to make sure we can find our way back out again.

flippin out with the pancake squad

2009-02-27T23:36:00.002-05:00

So. When I graduated from the Vassar machine I was pretty confident that that was it. There would be no more extravagant evenings of liquoring up, bizarre forms of Twister, smooching on strangers, and wantonly flinging balls of flame around one's body. Fortunately, it turns out that in the city of Boston there are wonderful creatures that are more than happy to continue these traditions.

We have friends! We go out to see people, and people come to see us! I love when things work the way they should!

[The picture accompanying was drawn by me as an entertainment during a neverending game of Risk: Godstorm™ and colored by Katie. It is a loverly birdimal.]

Overcast Orange with a whiff of sewage

2009-02-19T22:20:00.016-05:00

Orson speared the last of the fish creatures. It gurgled a fluidy protest as it clutched the weapon sticking out of its gut, as if to argue that Orson's move had not been entirely fair, and if it had just been ready, the fight might have turned out more in the fish's favor. Orson emphatically kicked the shaft of the spear, sending it and the attached monster splashing unhappily into the slime of the bay. He swung his leg back over the seat of the bike and wiped a smear of fish blood off his leather sleeve- hopefully the smell wasn't permanent. Shaia gunned the engine and in the usual choking cloud of foul, particle-filled smoke, the two sped off down the dock in the fading, dusty light.

When they’d finished telling Dodd about the ordeal, back at the lounge, two hours and twelve beers had passed. Dodd gave a heavy sigh, leaning back on the cracking green fabric of the booth and peering across the bottle-strewn table. “Sixteen fish-men, and all of them carrying weapons. Spectacular. At this rate, next time they’ll probably have semi-automatics.”

Orson leaned forward. “Making gunpowder under water…” he began. Shaia sighed loudly to cut him off.

“We stopped them before they made it into the city at all,” she said, “they still don’t know anything about us except that we kick their asses every time they decide to come up to the surface. What I don't get is, why do they keep coming back?"

“I don’t know,” said Dodd, “but they’ve attacked the docks five times so far, and there’s no reason to think they’ll stop. We just need to be prepared, and make sure they don’t steal any more supplies. They may not have our resources, but they’re inventive with what they get their hands on.”

“You sent out submarines last week after the first attack though.” Orson said, “did you see how many of them there are, or where they live?”

“The water’s still too polluted,” Shaia sighed, “I took a sub down there myself, and it’s nothing but sludge and radiation. I can’t see anything, and the sensors just get scrambled. I say the fishes don’t understand us, but we don’t understand them any better. I can’t imagine how they can even survive down there, let alone communicate and hunt. I don’t like how little we know about them.”

Dodd stood up. “Neither do I,” he said, “but our hands are tied. They can come into our world more easily than we go into theirs. We just have to wait for them to make their next move. I’m putting three volunteers on watch tonight, and installing a heavy gun down there first thing in the morning. You two should get some sleep. Make sure to get a patch for that cut, Shaia. Rations are tight, but we don’t want you getting infected with whatever bacteria the fishes might have to offer.”

"Another beer first," Orson suggested, "I'm not quite ready for the night to be over."

Dodd grudgingly agreed, and the conversation changed to lighter matters from there: the pulley rigging in ship house D and the mongrel dog that Haskell found hiding in his mail bag. By the time they each had drunk another two rounds, the worries of the skirmish on the docks was far from their minds.

horrible adventures in the snake world

2009-02-13T13:39:00.006-05:00

I've started a new part-time job at an after-school program for troubled yoofs. Helping kids with homework at the 2nd grade level sounds incredibly easy and as intellectually stimulating as stapling one's own finger to a turkey sandwich (challenging) but I'm actually having a lot of fun. Watching the concepts develop in their mind, and seeing the difference in rational thought and reasoning between an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old is something that my other work with kids has never shown me. Plus I get to spend 2 hours a day doing whatever I want, so naturally next week I'm running circus workshops, and after that we'll be populating islands with fantastical hodgepodge creatures. I'm sure it ultimately will get boring, as all "jobs" do, but for now it's a solid source of income, and something I'm happy to do every day.

For my next trick, I will mix slapdash art with meaningless photoshop layering, and excrete it into the public eye, off to the left. I will then ponder the fact that you already looked at it two minutes ago as soon as the page loaded, and I will point out that this "next trick" therefore must have involved time travel. Ta-DAaaaaa.

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

2009-01-31T01:43:00.007-05:00

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
---------------------
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
---------------------
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.

2009-01-30T01:00:00.009-05:00

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

2009-01-24T15:24:00.013-05:00

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

2009-01-21T22:59:00.007-05:00

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

2009-01-15T01:13:00.000-05:00

Look for do this it to be a vidjo.

a new twist on animal crackers

2009-01-08T19:53:00.003-05:00

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.

Glow balls. Balls that glow.

2008-12-31T16:38:00.005-05:00

In a dark room, with low video quality, they look really neat. The music was... unintentional and atmospheric, just what iTunes shuffle had up at the time, but I left it in because
a) it actually works pretty well, and
b) I'm a lazy horse-stealin' sonuvabitch.

2:31 am counts as Christmas morning

2008-12-25T02:31:00.016-05:00

I am really bad about giving presents. Really bad. I just don't think of it. Couple that with the fact that I don't have enough money to buy myself a pack of winterfresh gum, and I am in a bit of a holiday pickle. Fortunately I have excellent last-minute oh-shit abilities to pull something together that just barely fulfills the necessary requirements (see my Vassar transcript for details) and so on the evening of December 24th I managed to make things for my brother and sister that I'm actually pretty proud of.

For my sister, I made a goofy-looking comic-book cover of her musician self, Sticklips (who you can hear on MySpace, and is really quite good). For my brother, I made an expansion set to the board game Ashlyn and I made for him last year, in which you play an embattled team of elves trying to keep zombies out of Santa's workshop. I WOULD put up pictures, but I think that might cheapen it a bit since they were intended as gifts, not for me to show off.

Instead, you can have THIS little tidbit. I really can't imagine what these gentlemen could be talking about.

Christmas gift update: I got a box of chocolate liqueur cherries! Chocolate AND alcohol in tiny delicious packages. I am already delightfully allergically buzzed from just two. What a fantastic holiday.

Olives make an excellent sausage substitute on pizzas. (edited post)

2008-12-23T13:06:00.029-05:00

Preamble (does anything other than the US Constitution have a Preamble? That's definitely the only place I've ever heard the word used):

Off to your right, behind the capital building, you can see a lovely picture of a dolphin slumming around in the deeps. I am rather fond of this dolphin. Now, to your Slightly-Down-The-Page, you'll see several paragraphs of dreamy keyboard vomit documenting postmortem hallucination. I am also rather fond of these paragraphs. But unfortunately, I really don't like them together and next to each other. But nevertheless, here they are.

And now on to the aforementioned hallucinogenic fiction. If verbose nonsense was mops and I was an elementary school janitor, man would I be set to clean up some vomit.
--

After he fell down the well, he barely remembered the suffocation of submersion at all. His frenzied panic plunged everything beyond the first burning breath of water out of his mind. Instead, the thing he remembered was the cat. The buzz in his drowning ears lowered in pitch as his waterlogged brain slowed, becoming a rumbling purr. He looked up and saw the cat, ethereal as any ever encountered by Alice, sitting on a pebble-strewn shore and watching him patiently. He stood up in the surf, dragged his heavy, watery clothes up with him onto the beach, and reached out for it. The well had gone, and there was no explanation offered or necessary. Here he was, and here was the cat.

It shook its head, ringing the bell on its collar. And then there were more. Out of the waves, out of the pebbles, climbed hundreds upon hundreds of lithe ghostly felines. They ringed him, walking head-to-tail in concentric circles, a sea of shifting ghostly fur and twinkling, tingling chimes. He tried to speak, but his senses gave in to the vertigo of their hypnotic pacing. And then the aural seascape of jingling collars shifted again, to the pattering of rain on the endless South Carolina hills he used to know.

He opened his eyes to gray skies and a warm summer wind, the rain soaking him and warming his spirit. The rustling rain through dogwood and magnolia found his ears, and the rich smell of the Southern soil drifted lazily up to him. He lifted his arms and stripped his shirt off, inhaling this perfect world. A flash of brown drew his eyes to the trees nearby, and he watched the flicker of a white tail bound away through the brush. He chased gladly after it, unsure of whether it was a deer or a cat leaping through the wilds of his afterlife, but joyful regardless. The water closed in one final time, and all was nothingness.

where do you get a green bowtie?

2008-12-04T11:13:00.006-05:00

I have three plastic bottles on my desk: a life water I stole from a pizza place, a diet coke I received free from a job interview at "TOMB" a sort of live-action Legends of the Hidden Temple dungeoncrawl in Boston, and a seltzer bottle I bought on the drive up from Vassar on Tuesday to mix with the leftover gin we salvaged from Port Ewen. There's some kind of symbolic trinity there if I want to look for it. Fortunately for you, I don't.

I recently picked up an "Employment Guide" from a free newspaper machine somewhere out and about in Boston, and its contents really confuse me. There were almost no actual job listings within. Rather, it was filled with opportunities for me to go back to school or receive specialized training to become a medical assistant, trucker, or nuclear inspector. My favorite is a colorful panel with the heading "Attention Shooting Sports Enthusiasts! Motivated telemarketers needed to fill immediate openings!"

What?

A note on the walrus above: I owed one to Sasha, but I figured I'd just make it public property. But it's technically Sasha's walrus, so if it gets up to anything unsavory, you can direct complaints over to our lady in Amsterdam.

It is, more or less, ok.

2008-11-18T11:54:00.003-05:00

There is, in evolutionary theory, an idea that within a society, some genotypes may be selected not because of their ability to survive and reproduce but because their behavior, while individually detrimental, benefits the entire population and thus is worth keeping around. I believe the millions of people who are dumb enough to leave unsecured wireless networks named "Linksys" lying around fall under this category, and I love them for it. Without them, this post would not be possible.

In fact, neither would any kind of internet access from our new Bostonian den, which is still mostly made of cardboard boxes and uncertain financial forecasting. Don't misunderstand, it's a very nice apartment. We just need to make the transition from "corrugated hairball hacked up by a U-Haul truck" to "legitimate residence".

For those who don't know or don't care, there is a new World of Warcraft expansion out. I haven't played much of it, but there's a very strong sense that if I want to keep playing WoW, I'll need to spend some very serious time with it very soon, since all our internet friends are already at level awesome and I'm still level... not. As Penny Arcade put it, "if I wait too long it'll be like going to high school with an older brother who refuses to recognize you in the hall." But maybe that's a good thing.

It is noon. It is now time to unpack the kitchen. Tally ho.

well hello again

2008-11-04T13:22:00.005-05:00

So. I "dressed up" as the Corinthian for Halloween, a man with an excess of teeth. Ironically, I actually ended the night with fewer teeth than I'd set out with, thanks to a high-impact dental brawl with a candy apple whose shiny sugary coating would have challenged most bunker-buster warheads. But $250 and a pleasant half hour of drilling later, my tooth is back in business. Better yet it's artificial, which I've just realized qualifies me as a cyborg. You humans can go back to your smoking blue-soundstage hovels; I've got lasers to calibrate.

By this point we've all voted. Bully for us. Mother suggested this morning that it might be worth it to save Obama paraphernalia so we can later dig it out of our musty horrible old man attics and wave it at our uncaring grandchildren as they sit in their virtu-pods- so we can tell them We Were There. It's a neat idea to think that this might be a major historic event, but I think I'm too cynical to believe that the kind of change people predict will really happen. The issue to me is that Americans are still slothful, ignorant, religious wump-bugglers who don't know what they want, and the political system is designed to make change slow and gradual. I will not tirade here though: I am not well-enough informed to make my particular brand of wump-buggling stand out as anything special, so there's no reason to inflict it on my (future) self or anyone else. That said... I'm just as fingers-crossed hoping-with-bated-breath anxious about this election as everyone else. God dammit I hope he wins.

Tomorrow I will make a pretty picture. Today I will not. In its place, I give you permission to picture an alto sax wrestling Al Pacino on the inside of a tube sock.

coolant toobs inclooded

2008-10-18T11:53:00.008-04:00

My computer's dead, I'll get it back in a week. Probably won't update before then. They're replacing literally everything except the monitor. The most exciting part is this: because of the sinister machine's overheating, some of the silver paint on the part where my wrist sits had rubbed off. I didn't think that was a big deal. Turns out, there is no paint on that part of the laptop, and the heat actually caused the aluminum to oxidize into my skin. I don't think that will have any ill effects, except apparently an overenthusiastic use of italics.

Also, I've added something to the "Collaborative Fiction Project" Tim started a few weeks ago. The theory here is to use a line from a poem Karen wrote as the first line and jumping-off-point for a poem of your own. So here is my offering, double-posted because I am too lazy to write something else here today. I think the poem works better in the semi-ironic context of everything else up on the other blog so far... but it is what it is. Not like we're getting paid for this shite. Mayhap I shall illustrate when I have my tablet back.

I've sewed my butterfly chest all together
with straps made entirely of soup-stewed shoe leather
butterfly patches and butterfly stitches
the scars are still burning, the rotten flesh itches

To creak my neck forward sends head-spinning pain
through cold coils of copper I've hooked in my brain
I look down my body through eyes dried and wired
and electrically flex muscles long since expired

One leg's from a dead man; one leg is a wheel.
I've a cranial disc made of thrice-folded steel.
I've no nose to speak of, but that's just as well,
since I'm made of cadavers I've no wish to smell.

A mortal no longer, I've shed my old skin
passed through death and returned, transcending my sins
the police, when they killed me, my spirit unfettered
and thus I return, all the stronger and better.

I lurch down the stairs, my sucking chest heaving
to wish all the village a... memorable evening.

ten fifteens thrown to the halfwinds

2008-10-06T01:44:00.006-04:00

The rocks were cold and wet; his feet slipped treacherously. Already there was a lightning-fork of blood running from just below his knee, and he knew his shins would be swollen soon, bruised by the uneven vertical stones. But he was higher than he had been a moment before, and though he couldn't see the top of the slope through the downpour, he knew it lay somewhere above, and on it, the lighthouse. To reach it was the only option now; to climb down these rocks would be even more difficult than the trip up had been. Somewhere below, the tide was rising, a slow and steady pursuer to his climb. The boy raised his bloody knuckles and reached for the next rain-slick rock.

Seventeen homeless men in seventeen cities reach simultaneously for seventeen stray dogs, offering their hands as if to say, "it's all right, we're both still here aren't we?" Fifteen of them are bitten.

There is a mote of gold in everything she says, if you can find it. Like the princesses who spoke in diamonds and frogs, she creates matter from words, and in parsing and panning we can become the tiniest bit richer.

The truck can still find you.
Look the part and get the man.
Shopping carts are no safety.
Six pence for a tie.

Look the part and get the man.
Lurk the unders; man the drains.
Six pence for a tie.
But the filth can cling on the inside.

Lurk the unders; man the drains.
Hold your bag of seeds close, and save it.
But the filth can cling on the inside.
Breathe it out when the cities are ashes.

Hold your bag of seeds close, and save it.
Shopping carts are no safety
Breathe it out when the cities are ashes,
The truck can still find you.

*snark taco sauces, this is the end*

Thirty-five stories above, Howard clapped the top back onto the mayonnaise. He didn't see the shadowy thing grinning behind the refrigerator door. If he had, he would never have seen anything else.

cranberries

2008-09-25T12:36:00.001-04:00

Devastation and flooding rocked the delta today.

The ten-day intensive circus training time is gone, taking with it any hope that any of us will be genuinely productive for more than a few hours a day. While it was running, we kept a schedule of what we were supposed to do, hour by hour. Over the past few days I've tried to keep a similar solo schedule for myself, but realistically it might as well read

11 am- eat a soup, check webcomics
12 pm- watch the daily show
1 pm- think about cats

Ashlyn and I have recently burned through all 26 episodes of The Vision of Escaflowne, a disgusting blend of starry-eyed-romance girl anime and giant-robot-smashing boy anime, whose soundtrack primarily consists of a chorus of Japanese men singing the title over and over in Gregorian baritone. That, combined with the usual bullshit Japanese philosophy, reminds me why I hate anime. The theme song, seen here... reminds me why I love it.

Wow, it's almost 1 pm... I should probably get started on cat-thinking. I'm really glad the world isn't covered five feet deep in them. Really, really glad.

my car punched itself in the face

2008-09-14T18:38:00.007-04:00

Still here. The A Different Spin training time is becoming less super-intense as we get better at what we're doing, but I suspect the dropoff also has something to do with the fact that we've been at it for 5 days now. It starts at 10 am, give or take cooking time of a bagel, and ends at 10 pm, give or take when we run out of lamp oil and muscular integrity. But it's jolly good fun, and we're all getting a lot better at everything we do. I have every faith that both the shows we're working on will end up ravishingly fabulous. The fire show is great; the daytime show will be great as soon as we can write some decent patter instead of shouting profanity at Tim and gibbering on about cranberries.

make your hadron last for hours with natural male enhancement

2008-09-11T00:47:00.004-04:00

The Large Hadron Collider is not going to destroy the world; unfortunately that's about all anyone seems to know about it. To remedy this, the scientists behind it (who all appear to be attractive, intelligent, 20-something-year-old women) have released a rap video to help explain the purpose and workings of their rather arcane ten billion dollar project.

Science... is awesome. The fact that we're exploring our world and figuring out how the whole game works is great, and it makes me sort of abstractly sad that my life isn't on any kind of track to contribute to that great work.

edit/addendum: yes, of course anyone working on the LHC is intelligent, and it doesn't take a video to show me that... my particular combination of adjectives was just born from the fact that smart girls who rap about their giant underground particle accelerators are automatically members of the hottest branch of femininity: brilliant women with a sense of humor. Yes, the video is too pixelated for me to see how attractive they are. The point is, it's irrelevant.

Whatever, it's my birthday, I'm drunk. I'm excused.

Ricky tells me that those girls probably weren't really the scientists involved. I am unwilling to accept this hypothesis. Leave me my dreams.

Good morning, me.

2008-09-10T01:28:00.009-04:00

It's my birthday. And so, at midnight, I put on the gas mask, fishnets, and dance belt (for Tim and Ricky's sakes) and lay in the tub for several minutes with the shower running cold, drinking a teacup of rum and cackling gleefully. I then went out to the living room, turned off all the lights, and juggled glow clubs while wearing an eye patch just to see if I could do it. When there are no parties to be had, one must resort to madness.

And now it's bedtime; tomorrow begins the great odyssey of A Different Spin.

Nothing to be done.

2008-09-09T21:47:00.005-04:00

The Art Nouveau Philadelphia Society for Beckett in the Nude will have its first public exhibition this Saturday in the chapel at 7th and Hildebrandt. Formal dress is encouraged for audience members; Friends of the Society displaying badges will be admitted free of charge. Questions and concerns should be addressed to director Oliver McKittish, especially regarding the media coverage of the May 23rd shutdown of metro stations in the Glasgow area for tech night and dress rehearsals.

We hope to see you there!

I draw a thing, then I write a thing. Who knows.

2008-09-04T02:28:00.017-04:00

When Captain Ferrier first invited us on the cruise I thought it would serve as nothing more than a lark, a flippant getaway to the skies aboard the most modern of airship luxuries. I was unaware at the time of the workings of such crafts, and thought them merely another item on the daunting list of things that would never be relevant to my own life, and therefore never worthy of serious research. Leave the baking to the bakers, the shoemaking to the cobblers, and the workings of highly inflammable airborne dirigibles to the obscenely rich, I thought.
However, when Melinda and I boarded the craft in person, I knew there was something here beyond mere goggle-sporting hobbery. There was a majesty to the swelling canvas balloon above; a regal air described even in the rudder fins on either side of the humming turbines on the rear of the ship, ready to carve the sky and cut wisping trails through the clouds. It was a commanding craft; I had never seen anything so grand.
But beneath the magnificent blimp there was an element that struck me as out-of-place. The entire "crew" of the ship seemed to consist of one squat, unpleasant mechanical man who, presumably due to his lack of a visible mouth, never said a word to myself, Melinda, or the captain during the entirety of our voyage. It clunked about on oversized mechanical feet, performing tasks which I, as an admitted aeronautical novice, can only assume were vital to the maintenance of our flight. At one point as we drifted above the Melbingian Sea, the automaton actually approached me, looking distressed, and would not leave until I gave it my pocket watch. The creature stared at the watch for no less than two full minutes before handing it back to me silently and clanking onward about its duties. I suspect I shall never know the meaning of this behavior, and it troubles me somewhat.
Perhaps when I have returned to the university I shall read up on these matters. Airships and mechanical men. I cannot name the curiosity this voyage has awoken in me, but somehow it feels truer than any previous pursuit I have undertaken.

turkey goes bad surprisingly quickly

2008-08-30T01:22:00.003-04:00

Someday I actually need to learn Photoshop. But not tonight.

At least I'm not reading webcomics.

New things

2008-08-26T14:39:00.002-04:00

First off... I added Stuff to the top of the page, and to the borders as well. Please tell me if they aren't working or if it all looks horrible, so I can change it to be more browser-compatible. Obviously I only see the internet through a wide-screen Firefox lens.

Secondly, I edited together a new A Different Spin promo. It looks like this:

again the text and picture are unrelated both to my life and to each other

2008-08-26T00:56:00.008-04:00

He assumed he would need all fifteen of them eventually. There were social dinners, rain storms, and possible mining ventures in his predictable future, to name merely a few of the more probable scenarios in which a man might find himself wanting a very specific hat. One could never be too prepared. Plus, they were on sale.

it was his only friend

2008-08-23T22:19:00.009-04:00

I've been waking up most mornings and writing. It feels nice to have a creative flow going, a forced, set time for world creation. Like D&D, but without having to have friends around.

The vaguelyamazing.com domain is expiring, and we don't especially want to re-up it. So we won't. Which means all my image hosting will go down the tube, and I'll need to go back and fix all the links that will break on the old bloggums. The Flash token you see above is hosted on FileDen, which is an ulcerous skank of a website, with popups, advertisements, click-through promotions, and other horrors of the plebeian web. They're the only file dump I found that allows direct linking though, and it's free. I guess beggars can't be choosers, and I'm glad there are services like that.

World of Warcraft. It still has me. I still love spending hours cuddled up with it, projecting consciousness into the little glowy screen as my sweaty wrists erode the paint around the keyboard and the cookies in my stomach bolster their fortifications of gut tubbery. An elegant mess indeed.

SAVORY CHEESES!

friends are for censoring

2008-08-18T22:26:00.007-04:00

There are wasps, sometimes, that climb into my room on some grand mission of insect exploration. The screen on my window doesn't quite cover the whole area, and apparently there's a wasp nest somewhere outside on the wall of the apartment.

None of said wasps have expressed any kind of hostility yet; mostly they've just died quietly behind one of the other window panes or in the long-ago-forgotten and slightly-less-long-ago-encrusted soup bowl on the back of my desk. I think it will take at least five more of these intrepid little fools before I call any kind of maintenance people to Deal With It.

There is an online dating site catering specifically to World of Warcraft players. I, being both a World of Warcraft player and an internet sex fiend, decided to investigate. What I found was more of a networking site, a facebook kind of thing with its own friend networks and message boards and the like, where people leave almost-suave messages on the walls of everything with a vagina within 200 miles of their den. But that's typical internet. The thing that strikes me is that this is an online community dedicated to people who live in an online community. Recursive nerddom. But it goes even further. There is a guild in World of Warcraft (on Lightninghoof, a word whose uttering awakens an Ancient Wrath in Tim Ellis) dedicated to people who network on the site. So. A true supplicant in the church of e-poon spends time on World of Warcraft, sets aside time within his WoW time to go play specifically on the realm of the dating site, and spends time on the dating site discussing the time spent on the realm dedicated to the dating site. Goddamn I hope these people are having amazing WoW sex for all their efforts.

The site is called Datecraft if you want to see it for yourself.

And now, the end-of-post semi-creativity, courtesy of Sally Slade's endless patience in putting up with me: This worked a lot better when I was frantically stream of consciousness typing and with the unexpected google image search at the end. Reading it in this form sort of has the punchline spoiled.

But I trust you all to use your imaginations.

The rain in spain is spiky like cocaine

2008-08-10T13:06:00.009-04:00

Being wet is nice.

There are lakes and pools and rainstorms and all of them instantly make me feel elevated and loosely immortal. They're also a great way to get exercise without sweating all over yourself...

Dungeons and Dragons is still the greatest possible use of time in the world: Cooperative storytelling and going into a world with your friends that you are creating together is the definition of "team-building exercise". Maybe I could take that show on the road... "Dear Corporate Overlords: bring your cubicled minion bonnies out for a few hours of escapism and shared hallucination. You don't need True Strike to know it'll be a guaranteed hit!" If only I could turn the storytelling skills of D&D into actual, publishable trash.

This is the protagonist of a fine little bit of nonsense Mike, Ricky, and I wrote this morning while making crepes.

...his initials are FAG... that really is too bad.

2008-08-03T00:59:00.012-04:00

to clarify: every so often Mooch gets an email from someone with a name, request, and email address that is clearly nonsense and scammery. Every time such events transpire, there will be one of these posts. They will never be relevant. But reading the first one first will make more sense.

Hesitantly, but with infinite patience and the hope for a better tomorrow, Fernando Alvero Gomez picked up the phone. Ever since Kofi Mbambaa disappeared, Fernando had been assaulted by a neverending stream of desperate men trying to wire their questionable third-world finances through his telephone and email. But perhaps this would not be such a call, he thought. Perhaps it would be a friendly socialite, or a long-lost love.

It wasn't. All the bright hopes and uncertainties vanished with the first pathetic whine from the voice from the other end of the telephone.

"The account owner is late Fernando, I am heard you are the one to contact."

Fernando gritted his teeth. "Is this a solicitation call, my dear and grammaticaly destitute friend? Perhaps a need for some kind of money transfer?"

"My reaching for an American is underway, an unknown player who the account owner can claim as next of kin. J10million unclaimed is an amount no reasonable man could pass up, and if an American like you will just respond to my fabulous offer."

There was complete silence from Fernando's end of the line. The solicitor took it for consideration; it was not. It was the silence of unfathomable rage, drilled from depths of the human soul that no man previous had dared to glimpse, let alone attempt to harness. Fernando Alvero Gomez, in that moment, tapped such depths and found himself the stronger for it.

The solicitor, a shockingly Anglican-named man called Peter Henry, was still wet behind the ears when it came to dealing with dangerous men on the telephone; his preferred medium was e-mail. It would be his undoing, as well as, ultimately, the undoing of all life on earth. He had no inkling of the repercussions of his actions, and so drove on undeferred.

"J10 million unclaimed!" he announced again. "I am seeking for your cooperation and understanding to enable us claim the fund from the bank. Once the money is moved any lucrative business in your country. So as to enable me decides on what to do next."

Peter Henry heard a crunch through the telephone. He thought it sounded like cereal. A more informed person might have recognized it for what it was: the screeching peel of telephone handset plastic crushed in a fist of rage, splintered and shuddering through the telecommunicative wires it once protected.

Halfway across the world in a tiny apartment in Paraguay, the fire alarm went off. Fernando Alvero Gomez stood steaming, his very clothes cooked off of his flesh by the heat of his foolishly-wakened wrath, cackling in the insipid shower of the apartment's automatic sprinkler system.

Fernando's briefcase was not a heavy thing, easily lifted onto the bed and opened with three simple, practiced twists on three complex, intricate latches. Inside, the laptop sprung to life. "Good morning Mister Gomez," the cheery AI intoned through the pouring sprinkler system, "would you like to end it all?"

Fernando nodded, took a breath, and prepared himself for the void. He input the line of code, looked to the sky, and went to make a cup of lemonade while he waited for the missiles to fall. There would be no more telesolicitations. Not a god-damned one.

smarmy nightlings

2008-08-01T01:37:00.010-04:00

It’s been a bad night. The kind of night when the howling psychopathy is calling, when the calling blacklingness wants me. Giggling and tapping at the windows, it is asking me to come play with it. It tells me things will always be different out on the mad road; that we can have everything we need from everyone who doesn’t need it as much. Kill and take, it says: slash the walls, burn the bills, and sow the kind of terrorific seeds that chill through the minds of everyone who hears. Never look back, never face consequences; if you have no pattern or motive you cannot be beaten, and if you're going to be alone in the world anyway, why bother? In a world of cooperative people, the individual willing to be the unspeakable cheat comes out on top.

Emo emo emo. Yeesh. No... I’m still good, I still don’t want that. But it’s there, and every so often when life gets tiresome, it comes out to say its leering, tongue-waggling hello. I suppose it’s better than its predecessor, horrific depression. Maybe. Why would I post this? Jesus I need something to do. I'm chewing a dollar bill. That could probably give a man unpleasant diseases. I should be working on any number of things; tomorrow I will be more productive and call more colleges and offices and such. I only got one confirmed show today, and it's a small daytime gig up in the midst of nowhereland, Maine. Things need to pick up. But I truly believe that they will. I just need to find some more money in the meantime. And more importantly, I need to make games, run through the woods, make music and art, and generally remember all the reasons that life is worth celebrating.

It's just been one of those nights.

It has not been 21 days

2008-07-29T20:14:00.004-04:00

or anywhere near that. I suspect it has actually been closer to... three. Days are easier to keep track of when the numbers are smaller. But it is good to be keeping this monstrosity alive again. I think it has to do with unemployment.

Stacey wants to play Final Fantasy VII. I am not sure that I want to play Final Fantasy VII again, but I would like to have the recent experience in my mind. 60 hours seems a bit much to devote to such an endeavor, but it WOULD be nice to have fresh memories of subquests, airships, horrific chocobo inbreeding experiments, and a certain attractive jailbait materia ninja fresh in my mind once again. The last time I saw such things was middle school. These are dire straits, and should be navigated.

...maybe I'll just be productive while she plays, and juggle unobtrusively while she gets wtfpwned by the secret boss you have to kill to unlock Vincent. No, Stacey, I'm not telling you how to beat him.

There is a bear, sometimes. There is bad drawing, sometimes. Sometimes, these times overlap at the same time.

off-topical cream

2008-07-27T18:26:00.008-04:00

I don't think I have Lyme Disease. I had a bizarre rash on the back of my leg which could -with a little imagination and squinting- be described as bullseye. Fortunately the rash itches from time to time, which the internet assures me is a good indicator that what I have is not Lyme disease, but is rather some kind of random flora- or fauna-inflicted skin condition that it would really be better if I kept to myself. And so, of course, I'm telling you all about it. Rational thought wins again.

Anyway, I think I dodged the lyme disease bullet (I just noticed that every time I've written that, I've capitalized it less than the time before). But it got me thinking: it's very possible that I could develop some horrible debilitating neurological condition, and with no money or insurance, there's not a hell of a lot I could do about it. My immediate reaction is sort of worrisome... I think if something like that were to happen, it would just mean it's time to go off and live la vida loca with the little time I had left, rather than try to scrape money together or beg friends and family, despite the fact that I know they'd be willing to help. I'm way too passive in terms of just playing the cards I'm dealt. I would do something about that... but to do so would be paradoxical.

A Different Spin: East Coast Edition slowly sloughs forward, and other opportunities are presenting themselves. Nothing worth writing about... I think that's why I've stopped writing; nothing noteworthy is going on.

But enough whining and personal business and actual blogging. Here is a picture of a man and an octopus high-fiving in a peach orchard. And isn't that what life is all about, really?

roosinetes

2008-07-04T10:44:00.005-04:00

"It was a pleasant and breezy night, and the four horses each had a delicious bucket of bones. Mouthwash the Soporific, Malaise the Solipsistic, Moliere the Solecistic, and Harold the Bland gnawed gleefully and chilled the fuck out."

Fernando Alvero Gomez sighed and shut the laptop. Kofi Mbambaa, the lawyer, was at the door. His normally slick Colombia 'do was matted sloppily across his forehead, and there was evidence of some sort of rodent's recent habitation therein. Kofi took a bottle of pills from his suit coat, drank it in its entirety, and began his daily lament.

"Without our America backers, we will never to be able to transfer the money from the fifth princess Dubai, and the empire will be ruins! You must send out more of our desperate plea to the Americans if we are ever to regain our fortunes."

Fernando slumped in his chair. He thought about the handgun in his top desk drawer; how easy it would be to pull it out, kill Kofi Mbambaa where he stood, extricate his kidneys and profitable vitals, and continue his simple life undistubed for at least a few months more, courtesy of the black market transplant cartel. But he had promised the sweaty little man that he would finish the contract, and he had every intention of seeing it through. Even if it meant his novel would have to stay quietly seething on the back burner of his agenda. As a private problem solver, the customer had to come first.

"Kofi," he said patiently, "your princess is two provinces away. I can almost piss across the border. You have the money, the guns, and the total lack of moral scruples to get her out. Blasting in there with a tank and two hundred men would cost you what, two hundred thousand plus the assassins' contracts afterward?" (Killing the families of the dead was cheaper than paying widow and orphan benefits, by Fernando's math) "You lose more than that every day she stays in her father's castle. Kill the old fuck, steal his daughter, make your marriage happen, get your shitty little ducks in a row, and for god's sake work on your english."

Kofi's lower lip started to wobble. "But the Americans. Our email correspondence, we are making such progress and friendship..." His eyes began to tear.

Fernando saw it, and in one easy motion slid the drawer open. The silencer worked; with a tiny squeal Kofi crumpled backward and expired unhappily. Fernando walked across the room, closed the door, and went back to his computer.

"Mouthwash the Soporific, Malaise the Solipsistic, Moliere the Solecistic, and Harold the Bland gnawed gleefully and chilled the fuck out. Their riders would be home soon, and then there would be housecleaning to do."

giant birds

2008-06-11T18:27:00.004-04:00

So far as we know, they don't exist. If they did, they would have been picked up on radar by now, or spotted by some wildlife enthusiast. Unless they are invisible, as some die-hard alternate reality lunatics postulate dragons to be... invisibly curled up in forgotten corners of the world or perhaps under our very noses, pining for their forgotten heyday sailing the blazing skies and devouring virgin maidens and fearless knights alike.

Fuck those hippies.

So ten days since last post. That's longer than I've gone before. Slowly I slip back to the old habits, under whose slothful intolerance no endeavor can survive.

I have ordered fifty feet of electroluminescent wire. With this wire, I plan to lace and line myself an Outfit, and hit up the 4th of July festivities in westchester county armed with glow toys and business cards. If that doesn't get birthday party and private lesson bookings, I don't know what will.

Here is Anton Chekhov, not wearing pants.

Ricky did one, so I did one.

2008-06-01T00:19:00.003-04:00

Been sitting around doing a lot of nothing. A whole lot. Here is an over-photoshopped scratchboard WoW character sketch. Because WoW is all we've been doing. God dammit.

whiteboards get harder to erase, over time.

2008-05-27T02:31:00.007-04:00

Senior week at Vassar, culminating in a fabulous graduation ceremony I didn't see. Here's the quick rundown, for those who weren't there and for me, later in life when I look back (from my yacht) and read over my youthful foolishness:

The week was scattered; there was no set place or group of people that was Home. One night was in Kingston, one was in the main suite, a few in the THs, a few in the TAs. One splendid afternoon was palooza'd away at Chuck E Cheese's, where a kid can be a kid and a wandering twenty-something can steal pizza, break the whack-a-mole machine, and climb inside the soccer game questing after wayward sandals. They sell beer there. We didn't buy any. I must have been ill in the mind.

I went to the bonfire, in a semi-impromptu disguise of a wig and empty-frame glasses. While there, I also discovered that cardboard serves as remarkable heat protection. Strap a tiny piece to your forearm and hold it up in front of your face like a 300 extra, and you can get within a few steps of a raging Vassar bonfire. I had no idea. It really works; powerful voodoo. Powerful voodoo a smart man would not have attempted while trying to keep a low profile. Oh well. Fuck em.

Life really does improve if you leave your laptop at home for a few days and just go find something to do. The computer is a vicious virtual novelty pit, and I'm seriously considering a shock collar for myself, to be activated every time I sit down in front of it. The part of senior week when I didn't have the computer turned out a lot more memorable than the first part. Forcing the issue of "and now we find something else to do" is incredibly important, as I'm sure we all know.

And now it's over, and people have moved on. Some will be seen again, others will not. All will spread through the world and find places to go and things to do. And I shall try to keep in touch. There are now more couches to be crashed on throughout the country. And now there's a horrible noise coming from below the apartment in Kingston, as though someone is sawing through the support pillars holding up my house. It really is worrisome.

It is late. I wish to orlop down to sea level and delicately consume a platter of jello jigglers by dangling them above my mouth and dropping them, shape by delicious shape, into my waiting maw of obesity.

expensive whiskey doesn't taste any different.

2008-05-21T13:52:00.003-04:00

There once was a baker from Boston
who found kids in his shop quite exhausting
so he baked up with glee
a pink cake that said "FREE!"
and had cyanide baked in the frosting.

Stacey and I made a dollar store board game about frogs. They need to enlist the aid of Community Helpers like firemen, nurses, and telephone repairmen (from a Community Helper hearts deck) to overcome challenges like Ravening Hobos, Travis Craw, and Grandpa's War Stories and win gold coins. These challenges are hidden deep within five thematic zones on the board: the City, the Sea, Space, the Volcano, and Inside a Third Grader. It's a spectacular drinking game of absolute nonsense. I just wish I had a constant posse of people to help play, make, and test games. Board games, RPGs, Flash games... I want to try the Alternate Reality Game thing, fishing around in the web and across cities to find clues and race other players to uncover something that doesn't actually exist. Except that it does.

Forgive my nonsense; I haven't had a vegetable today.

more whining

2008-05-18T22:56:00.005-04:00

On break for 2 weeks after an incredibly intense NCP program. Getting a show together involving 190 children, including two special ed classes, takes the life out of you. But on the other hand, getting it done and emerging the other side left me with a vibrant energy and a feeling of competence and purpose. But I let myself slide back to a few days of doing nothing and lounging around on the computer, and now it's gone. It's hard to even force myself to spend 30 seconds drawing something and write a paragraph or two for the bloggums. Being entertaining is out of the question for now.

There are some shoes in the world that look like they could serve as excellent vehicles . In the sprawling fourth grade games of action figure capture-the-flag shoes were always tanks, capable of mighty airborne leaps and crushingly awesome landings. How they were propelled or why they were stylized with laces and logos was irrelevant. They were powerful machines of terror on the battlefield. Those were the goddamn days.

he doesn't even need a suit.

2008-05-14T20:39:00.005-04:00

For the past two days I've come home from work and not been productive, so today I promised it wouldn't happen again. And so I give you the result of approximately 200 minutes of work, and exactly zero minutes of rational thought.

Enjoy.

The truth is, I just wanted an excuse to meow into my computer microphone.

pots and pants and blowsifh

2008-05-11T02:18:00.004-04:00

In space, as it turns out, popsicles don't taste as good.

The boy was afraid to leave his house. Without clean socks, it couldn't be done. He wasn't about to put on the dirty, crusty ones, and walking barefoot was out of the question. And so he starved.

Kangaroo pouches are not warm and fuzzy. They are external incarnations of the womb. They are sticky and amniotic. You'll never look at Kanga the same.

If confronted with all the cardboard we have consumed in our lives, we could produce extremely functional shelters, sprawling and leaning in a corrugated shanty town. If confronted with all the plastic we have consumed, we could waterproof it.

If confronted with all the dogs we have ever seen, we would be buried in dogs.

What did chickens look like before we domesticated them? Were they bigger? Are they a species new to the world and created by humanity, like Dachshunds and Furby™s?

When she made him the scarf, she had been afraid he wouldn't like it. Or that he would say his proper thank yous and give her a hug, then leave it in an unceremonious heap in the back of the closet. She wasn't sure if men wore scarves, or at least, if he did. She still knitted it though, and every hour she worked she held him in her mind. The scarf she gave him was warm and wooly, and full of life.

A single toaster strudel, left unattended, is capable of burning down your entire block.

the novelty of this is wearing off.

2008-05-07T21:56:00.005-04:00

Again with the computer. As real life picks up, my need for blogging drops down. I do like the image-a-day (that I haven't been doing), forcing oneself to be productive. I miss webcomic format though, having something almost continuous, drawing and text bubbling and building on itself episode after episode. I just have limited need of Bloggery anymore. I want to move on and create instead of just recording. The blog was about a transitional period. Everyone knows what I'm doing with my life. Everyone knows how I generally feel about things, and how I generally work. I want to move away from the blogging and toward the creative output. Vaguely Amazing 2.0?

but seriously, enough soup ads.

2008-04-29T23:24:00.012-04:00

Commercialism has gotten to me. I finally understand the purpose of ads, and their real ability to permeate the human subconscious and implant their cargo of insidious capitalism. It's dependent on the TV being constantly on.

Al watches a lot of TV, sort of. The TV is always on in the background, clamoring flickerously for a place in the spotlight of conscious attention. I mostly ignore it, but this media-vomit of sci fi channel and Miley Cyrus pseudo-boobies still assaults me with the same lineup of happy, jingly advertisements, dancing around the hotel air, probably twenty or more times per day. And so, I get the indie-sounding new Subway™ song stuck in my head while I'm walking around the park... and I keep buying five-dollar footlongs when dinner time rolls around. The model works. Blast the same crappy ad enough times, and people will open up to it.

I wish I could take a college class again. Ironically, now that I've been out of school for a while, I think a lot more clearly, and I remember and learn things a lot better. I have a drive for knowledge that I never had when I was at Vassar. I especially wish I'd paid more attention in my developmental and abnormal psych classes, since now I work with kids with autism and learning disabilities in my day-to-day work. But then again, maybe I should just learn by Doing and interacting instead of through academia... I tried to listen to an audiobook lecture on consciousness while I drove up here and ended up falling asleep at the wheel. Don't learn and drive, kids. Don't learn and drive.

To switch over from learning and productivity to its complete opposite... I've landed in a pickup Shadowrun game tomorrow at the local gaming store. I stopped in tonight on my exploratory run around town, lured in by a Munchkin window display, and found a group of friendly, stereotypical dorks making character sheets. So tomorrow I'm in for some classic cyberpunk/fantasy Shadowrunning. I'm-a get me some 9 mm pistols, a Rat totem, and a SmartLink system that runs on epinephrine.

...just like in 7th grade.

Shang Tsung can turn into anyone.

2008-04-23T22:32:00.007-04:00

I was watching Limit videos today, and reading the comments on them. I wonder who the commenters (commentators?) are and how they found the videos. One of them apparently is someone's younger sibling, and one of them was a visitor to the college researching their academic future. I guess the Limit must turn up when you search YouTube for Vassar. Good to know we're presenting a solid front of hobos and jelly sandwiches to the next generation of pilgrims on their way to the Ivory Tower. Also, thanks to "The Game", my nipples are on YouTube, free for the world to view.

...hooray for friends.

This week I'm in Livonia, NY, a rather linear little town with a fantastic lake. I spend my afternoons wandering around said lake, juggling in the grass and sleeping under the trees. I do this because my hotel room is occupied by a Puerto Rican clown who starts drinking at 2 pm and is, at this moment, watching Ultimate Fighting Championship (he was a kung fu tournament fighter in his youth). I've made friends with the old man who works at Arby's, and the pretty girl who works at the receptionist desk in the hotel. I have a cooler full of strawberries, spinach, and beer. Every day at 10:30 am I eat a hearty brunch courtesy of the school cafeteria. Today was mashed potatos, turkey, and grape juice in a plastic bowl. All of these factoids serve no larger purpose, but they are a snapshot of life, and that is, after all, one of the purposes of my little bloggerydingo. Which is unlike a regular dingo in that it is not a quadruped, but like a dingo in that it eats unattended Australian children.

I do wish I had a refrigerator or a means of cooking so that I could live a little more cheaply. Also, all the fire sword fights on YouTube still suck.

an iPod is a friend sometimes

2008-04-17T22:52:00.010-04:00

Nothing especially brilliant to write about; just putting up an image. Didn't get to do one yesterday because I was in Hastings sans graphics tablet, and because my internal defensive militia had conscripted all available body energy to fight off some kind of bizarre sleep sickness that knocked me out for the entire evening. Lament lament lament.

I feel a research paper coming on. I'm intrigued by the beautiful masqueradey world of Dave McKean and cirque du soleil, the world of gangly imp-like dancers and twisting dreamscape sorcerers, and I want to see how old it is, where it comes from, etc. Comedia del arte? Greek drama? As I try to come up with a performer persona for myself, I keep finding myself drawn back to that style of costume and demeanor, the masked trickster shaman archetype. Not that it's especially practical for working with kids, but it's definitely something worth keeping in mind if I want to do my own (our own) stuff. The people here don't do it at all. Most everyone in the NCP is from the Barnum & Bailey All-American-Clown school of thought, or in the case of my partner this week, the loud, boisterous comedy club juggler school. It's a very cool culture, and it's awesome to learn from it and make pieces of it my own, but it's not the place in the entertainment universe I want to stay.

Or maybe I'm getting things confused. I'm reading all this non-empirical spirituality and psychological mentalism stuff, and my head and philosophy are going to weird places. Not that I'm going all new agey: Science Is Our Friend. Maybe I'm just trying to mix and match everything I'm interested in. But maybe there's nothing wrong with that. Not enough hours in the day. Not enough friends around to DO things with.

like a street urchin but pointy

2008-04-15T23:46:00.003-04:00

I am not buying a Nintendo Wii... yet.

2008-04-14T23:14:00.008-04:00

Spent the day reading and writing clown/performer routines. It feels uncannily like writing a research paper and a Limit sketch at the same time. I also logged onto facebook last night and did a small bit of profile updating, for the first time in probably two years. I don't know that I care about facebook, but I suppose one's internet presence should get a shave and a haircut every now and then. I can't decide whether to change the Power Rangers picture or not. I do love it. I really do.

Having money in my bank account is leading to an increase in tiny expenses that would have been a big deal before, and that SHOULD be a big deal now. I can afford to eat out, I can afford to grab a candy bar or a soda when I stop to get gas, I can afford to keep a bottle of fucking Vitamin Water in the room on the off chance I feel peckish for a slurp of citrus. Of course all of this is an illusion, and I can't actually afford it, but I just don't notice tiny expenses anymore, which is very dangerous as I nickle and dime away my daily cash dollars. Suddenly I can see how people with real jobs shop at malls, a phenomenon that has always baffled. I should probably just accept that a healthy lifestyle involves spending money; stop worrying and love the dollar.

Why are my google ads still about soup? There wasn't even anything in the soup-titled post about soup. Simply by writing THIS I have created more soupLinks than anything that has come before.

Sunday night bedtime

2008-04-13T21:37:00.005-04:00

I decided to try the whole "low opacity photoshop" thing that has worked so well for Ricky, so I drawred this for the daily shitty image (I know, the "daily" part of that hasn't been on, but I'll try to get back on it).

I have my own room in the clown house this week, for the first time. That's exciting. I can close the door and have my own space. I brought down the glow staff to play with, and apparently the equipment manager here is amazing at staff-spinning and told me he'd show me some things in exchange for my help editing the manuscript of his book. Sounds fair.

The Vassar weekend reminded me of everything that is good in life: late nights, lots of running, shameless flirtation with beautiful exotic people, and that breathtaking sense of standing in front of a crowd with enormous speakers, fading twilight, and glow toys. That scene and sense that something special is about to Happen, and you are a part of it. The festival.

Absolutely stellar.

You Suck Pronto

2008-04-12T14:24:00.000-04:00

I have cans of soup but no bowls.

2008-04-10T20:01:00.004-04:00

Fishcoat was a mustachio'd gentleman of the upper class who was never seen out and about without nine flavors of monocle, all of which were bitter and horrid. He liked to lick at least one around 4 pm, as an afternoon tide-me-over sort of snack between luncheon and supper. He never wore the same suit of clothes twice, and had never once been late for an appointment. Such was the world of Fishcoat. I am going to tell you how he died.

It happened the day the lollipop girl appeared on the doorstep. Fishcoat, who was enjoying his daily operatic in the bathtub, was most perturbed at the interrupting chime of the doorbell, which cut short his warbling rendition of the Barber of Seville. Fishcoat stood, his sudsy fat rolls bouncing soapily out of the tub and into a towel. He made his way down the stairs and opened the door.

A tiny waif confronted him, wielding a bushel of crystallized sugar-pops on a bushel of wrapped paper sticks. "BUY A LOLLIPOP!" she enthused. Fishcoat gasped. He did not know how one deals with children, especially when one is clad in a towel. He slammed the door in abject terror, and ran back to his suite. He opened the window, and peered down below. The tot was still present, still waiting patiently at the door. He withdrew his bulbous head, and assured himself that the lollipopper would inevitably disappear.

Five minutes passed. Fishcoat had clothed himself in a new suit, regained his composure, and poured himself a flagon of tequila. Such was life. But as he steeled himself for the impending floodtide of alcohol, he was snatched up in the hooks of a sudden and irresistable urge to go have a gander once again out the window. He looked. The lollipop girl was gone. No sweet candy vendor stood on his doorstep. Fishcoat smiled, closed the window, and blissfully quaffed his pint of pick-me-up, which immediately knocked him into unconsciousness.

In the terrifyingly pristine corridors of his upper-class mind, Fishcoat drifted. Behind his senses he heard a rumbling with a backbone of mariachi cornet. His mind flopped tequilishly around to confront this intruder. Juaxtango, he cactus loa of the wastes, loomed into his vision, his ectoplasmic tango shutting down all possibility of resistance. Fishcoat's will jellied. Juaxtango bellowed a psionic roar of maraca that carried one simple demand: BUY A FUCKING LOLLIPOP!

Fishcoat awoke with a wide-eyed howl, his pristine mustachios curled perplexingly upward. He leapt to his feet, grabbed his overstuffed wallet, and bowled down the stairs, flutting money unceremoniously in his path. The door, painted and bevelled in the most urbane style, was shattered by the barreling corpulent missile of Fishcoat's bulk. Unimpeded, the fat man ran on.

He ran as only a man recently confronted by a sombrero'd mexican tequila spirit can run, careening forth in search of the tiny fundraising lollipop vendor. Three blocks down the road, after trampling a bulldog and traumatizing its aged master forever, he found the wee tyke. Foaming and wild-eyed, he demanded a candy.

"one dollar and fifty cents!" she exclaimed, holding up one of the tasties to Fishcoat's flaring, fur-lined nose. The heaving rotundus snatched the offered sweet, and dug through its wallet for a bill of such small denomination. Having found none, he threw a hundred at the girl and bowed graciously before sticking the lollipop in his mouth and descending in a torrent of bottom-first fat rolls onto the curb.

The sweetness was overwhelming. Fishcoat closed his eyes and Juaxtango appeared behind them, cackling and backed up by a quartet of sombrero'd mexican towel boys sporting mustachios every bit as impressive as Fishcoat's. They handed the drunk and sugared fat man a mouth harp, and faded blissfully into the tequila-lollipop sunset of Mariachi Voodoo Hell.

a manly scrubdown

2008-04-05T23:21:00.010-04:00

I have taken a shower, and am now clean. This alone is a rare enough event to be newsworthy, but tonight it is not the top story. On the shower rack, nestled in with the Head and Shoulders (which I forever associate with the movie Evolution) I found a marvel of modern marketing that I'm still struggling to fully get: Axe "Snake Peel" Shower Gel. I went to the Axe website to try to get a picture of this manfully bottled scrubble, but then gave up on the mission when confronted with a loading bar that informed me that my "mojo" was loading. But here's their product description:

Feeling more than a little dirty? Axe Snake Peel Shower Scrub with desert minerals + cactus oil deep cleans and exfoliates to remove dirt and dry skin. Use daily to scrub the slate clean.

Normally in ads you hear the word "exfoliate" as a flurry of rose petals wisp across a silky white backdrop, to mask the word's actual meaning: scraping the fucking skin off your body. To be perfectly honest I've always thought the concept was pretty badass, but I think having an "exfoliating" product in your bathroom without an accompanying double-X chromosome setup is a good way to get your ass kicked. By Tiny, the 300-pound bulldog-man whose only joy in life comes from looking through people's bathroom cabinet for sissy bath products and beating the living Loofah out of them.

But I digress. Cactus oil? Snake Peel? Getting men to worry and stress about keeping our skin delicate and fresh by conjuring up the dusty rugged desert? It's twisted, it's absurd, and for some reason it's stuck in my head enough to write two hundred ninety-two words on the topic and invent a hulking fictional bathroom snoop.

Anyway. My man-parts have been exfoliated by cactus oil. I thought you'd all like to know.

Everything, with extra sausage

2008-04-04T23:09:00.009-04:00

My technology is breaking again. The computer's battery is dead, the fans are overworking themselves, and the CD burner seems to have cooked itself. I still have AppleCare for almost a year, so I might need to go harass, threaten, and politely request my way into a new computer at the Apple Store, since this isn't the first time it's made an attempt on its own life. Last time they gave me a new motherboard and swore the problems would never return. They were right, for about two weeks.

It's funny how whatever you're doing with your life, whatever you've done with the past few days, becomes what you're used to doing, and what feels normal. We are compulsive little animals of habit! Waking up with a day of nothing to do, at the parents' house, feels foreign now. Of course, I'm sure if I spent today and tomorrow lounging around playing WoW, by Sunday night that would feel natural, and I would resent having to go back to ClownTown in time for Monday morning.

And now... things that have been on my mind:

•We can work together in the future on some grand manifestive dig into the strobe-painted catacombs of subculture. There's no rush; we've got plenty of time.

•Toward this end, motherfuckers need to update blogs, send emails, comment, and generally stay in touch better.

•Mentalism, hypnosis, and unconscious are amazing. The more I read about them, the more I want them and love them. This is what I wish my Psych major had been.

•I need suggestions for how to attend Founder's Day. The alternative is unthinkable.

•I would hang out at skate parks more if this happened more often:

Google ads today:
Online Bible Study
Life of Christ
Bible
God

Good to see my internet reverend status is still strong.

go read Transmetropolitan.

2008-03-31T16:46:00.007-04:00

the circus is keeping me busy, and there's not much to tell. I don't have my scanner or my graphics tablet, so the daily drawings have stopped too. This is a tragic state of affairs, and as soon as I can remedy it (by buying a new graphics pen) it shall be remedied. In the meantime, it's high time for an update.

I am learning. This week I'm paired with this guy who doesn't talk at all in his act. Which means I had to MC an entire 45-minute show, and do all the talking acts (including club and ball juggling). My patter is about as fresh as the cancerous muskrat that fell into the well three weeks ago. But it's mostly good enough for the younglings, and I'm learning what I need to improve.

I want to do a fire sword fight. Ricky, I'm talking to you. We need to get flamingswordfights.gay off the ground and into the airy dew-speckled dreamSky.

I tried to buy food today. That is to say, I succeeded in buying food, brought it home to Clown Haüs, and discovered that there is no room in the refrigerator. There is a towering, haphazardly stacked cityscape of leftovers that brings to mind a cyberpunk neo-York slum, complete with unexplained colorful oozes and territorial scrawl unintelligably Sharpied on the walls. There are three containers of cucumber dip. When I try to comprehend this or its possible explanations, my neocortex simply shuts down.

Neeeeoooocorrrteeeexx.

There are no visual words in this.

2008-03-19T14:48:00.006-04:00

Sheldon DeLoach had never played basketball before. Nevertheless, he stepped onto the court prepared to do his best, and confident that he could succeed at anything he put his mind to and eager to defend his honor in the heartless arena of before-school one-on-one.

Martel Guapo had also never played basketball before. But he had a name that meant "the Handsome Hammer," which is really difficult to top. The bets were taken, the court arranged.

The ball went up. It should have come down and been snatched by the grubby, unskilled fingers of one of the two boys, launching a riveting game of fumbling, rolling basketball in the 7 am mists. The other kids should have cheered as the hopeless lads bungled shot after painfully easy shot. All this and more would have unfolded that day, if only Martel Guapo had closed the garden gate.

Alas, Martel Guapo had not closed the garden gate, and so had been followed all the way down to the school by the enormous lizard who had taken up residence beside his mother's parsley. Thus, as the ball came down it was snatched not by Sheldon and not by Martel, but rather by a joyful airborne predatory reptile. The beast sailed across the court, hit the ground, and savaged the rubbery sphere in ways that would almost certainly have traumatized the surrounding middle-schoolers had the ball possessed innards, guts, or other such gore-covered tasties. The carnivore lizard, who had been expecting no less, was quite put out.

Children screamed. The lizard panicked. These events, as they continued, formed what a Thinking Person might call a positive feedback loop. Sheldon DeLoach did so in his head -he was an intelligent lad- as he watched children and lizard whip one another into an elaborate frenzy of shrieking and flailing adolescent/reptilian abandon. It shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone that the panicking lizard dropped the ball and ran.

What did come as a surprise, particularly to a certain Marian Brubbles, who held the second clarinet seat in the middle school band, was that the lizard dropped the ball and ran toward her. It hit her at the knee-caps, and sent her face-first into the asphalt before vanishing into the woods. She chipped a tooth, and after the full story came out later that day, vowed never to speak to Martel Guapo again. Had there been no lizard incident that day, things might have turned out differently between them. In fact I can say with the greatest assurance that they would have lived happily ever after, somewhere in the Netherlands. But they will never know.

And that is why basketball has been banned from the county of Hamshap since 1987.

snakes driven from ireland

2008-03-17T22:48:00.010-04:00

Ricky had the stupendous idea of watching Boondock Saints and drinking Guinness. It went well. I would rather have been covered in green body paint and surrounded by celebratory naked people with lots of piercings, but we can't have everything, now can we?

I can't seem to get .swf files to embed properly, so this madness too will have to be linked. The nonsense that can be accomplished within 10 minutes of sitting down at the computer never ceases to amaze.

hambone. bone from a ham.

2008-03-15T03:04:00.003-04:00

First week of the circus job:

I have to get a lot better at a lot of things, a lot fast. But I basically knew that. It's like I'll be putting on a Barefoot Monkey show every week, with only one other person. That means there's no reliance on lines of choreographed moves to fall back on, just patter, music, and dazzling arrays of circus savvy. I've got to expand(refine) my music library, get at least a few acts solidly choreographed, memorized and performable, and of course learn to teach and control a gym full of 80 or more screaming children.

And it's that last part that's the hardest. All the circus skills are things that need to be personally taught, and yet my job is to teach five different grade levels five different skill levels, tailored to their cognitive and motor development, culminating in a show put on by the fifth-graders at the end of the week. I have to make a show, with discrete acts and spotlighting every kid in the fifth grade, in five days. Really challenging, but really rewarding when you pull it off.

The biggest difference between this and anything else I've ever done: you can't miss a day. Calling in sick, or really bungling a week, or even an act, can make a huge difference for these kids. I'll be putting these things together every week, but they only get to do it once, and most of them are incredibly excited to get the chance do spin a diabolo (or whatever) in front of their parents.

Thankfully the company doesn't completely throw me in unprepared. They're professionals, and they're only pairing me with people who've been in the business for a while, so they can pick up the slack while I learn the ropes. Ha. Two rope metaphors in one sentence. Continuity reigns!

The bottom line is this: its a professional performance job, and a professional teaching job, and I'm not QUITE qualified for either. But I'm being given the chance to work my ass off and get there, to work with international-level performers and getter done. I'm incredibly lucky to have landed it.

media platform

2008-03-07T04:03:00.009-05:00

Most of us have no idea what is inside our pillows. We never look; we will never see what's in there. We will never even consider it. We trust that there is some sort of foamy faux-birdStuff substance on which we rest our heads, but there could be anything, as long as its texture kept up the illusion and it never strayed far enough from our scripted Pillow Expectancy Parameters to warrant attention from our conscious parts. Every night you sleep on something whose innards you do not know the color of. Whose innards' color you do not know. Then again I suppose I don't know the color of most of my own innards, and I get along pretty much alright. Still. Astounding some of the things we never think about. There are so many completely irrelevant, show-stoppingly useless things that one could think about if one chose to, but which are so stupendously unworthy of any cognitive attention that even thinking about their stupendous unworthiness is a waste of perfectly good neural traffic. This is getting recursive. Time to move on.

I have done all of my crappy five-minute image-a-days in photoshoop, with the drawing tablet, and I realized I need to stop doing that all the time. Drawing there has a very specific look to it, and it's hard to draw well on a tablet or, god forbid, a mouse (see exhibit A, below). Pencil sketches are fun, and they feel more satisfying to do. I don't claim to be a good artist, but I do draw BETTER on paper than on a tablet.

exhibit A (mouse-drawn)

I miss having parties.

wenus

2008-03-05T14:56:00.011-05:00

god I hate that fucking word. Who the hell calls the skin on your elbow your wenus? Seriously who the fuck thought that up? I'd like to stuff ham under his skin and leave him out for a pack of starved dachshunds with crow-bars and sand paper. Of course, I wouldn't starve them myself. Who starves a dachshund? They're adorable little vacant-eyed balls of uncomprehending love. If someone's starving them, I'll punch the sick bastard. Right in the wenus.

And why doesn't the dishwasher ever clean that last goddamn bowl in the back row? FURIOUS

I shaved Hillary Clinton's head and put it in a robot. Why? Because this is America, and we're allowed to do that kind of thing here. God bless it.

Not that I have anything against the lady. I'm pro-Obama, but that has more to do with xkcd's endorsement of him than any real awareness. God dammit, I'm a fucking politics-linking blogger. I'm gonna go introduce a fork to my cornea and/or wenus. Fuck.

dressup time

2008-03-05T02:49:00.006-05:00

This doesn't really... CAN'T really have explanation. You can click the clothes to move them.

Here we are in the wee hours of the morning again, and I'm torn as usual. On the one (rational) hand, there's the desire for that really satisfying feeling of curling up under an unreasonably large pile of blankets and going away for several hours. On the other hand, I'm completely awake, and enjoying being productive. If only I can find some way to force this feeling of productivity during the day. Maybe it's isolation that does it, other people having gone to bed. Or maybe some sense that the day is done and I can do whatever I want now... I definitely have a psychological work-delaying mechanism that keeps me putting off useful things through the day with the logic of "if I have fun now, I'll still have time to do the work later" that inevitably leads to me NOT doing work and NOT enjoying the procrastinative fun because of the looming snowballing pile of responsibility I'm so vigorously ignoring.

And so I end up in the wee hours, making bizarre little flash beasties. Clickyclicky. (same link as above)

dreams

2008-03-04T11:23:00.004-05:00

Last night's dreams were clear and narrative enough that I thought them sharing-worthy. However, they're also a rather long read, so in the interest of space I'll just link to them.

licking blenderblades: safe? sanitary?

2008-03-04T03:43:00.006-05:00

I have a tablet again, and I'm not doing anything with it. With it or anything else. A bright and creative future may come in the nearlybies, but she is not here yet. Yes... yes, I still suck at things.

Water tension is neat; I will always be hypnotized by watching a liquid refuse to leave its container and snake over the brim and down the side of a cup when you hold it at just the right angle. Welcome back to third grade science. As the hours get later my mental age gets smaller, evidently.

Watching my google ads change is an enjoyable pastime, and a whole new reason to update this monstrosity. Honduras! Unmentionable buboes! Republican primary candidates for the liberation of jamFetus07! Walk the walk google wordSnatchers; for my talking is stuperfundous inevitable.

two kinds of ice cream

2008-02-26T00:42:00.002-05:00

I seem to have done it.

I seem to have found work that will actually be fun, and pay ridiculously good money. The circus thing today went phenomenally well; I got to teach kids diabolo, plate-spinning, and juggling, and the director is really excited to hire me. So I'll be doing shows and leading workshops in schools all over New York. Unfortunately, 50% or more of these shows will be in the NYC/Long Island area, which is, significantly, Not Ulster County.

In fact, its really fucking far from Ulster County. If my parents didn't already live in Westchester (45 min or so from the National Circus Project home base) taking this job would be unthinkable. As it is, it will probably mean spending most of my time either at the Familial Residence or sleeping in the NCP building (they have international guest performers, and apparently have several guest rooms and showers for people who need to stay in the area for up to a week) between days of a show. Fortunately I've never had a sense of one particular place as "home" and so I should be fine.

On the topic of things I've never had... this also means I might suddenly have A Lot of Money. And I need to decide what to do with that. Savings account? Tattoos? Gas-efficient motorcycle for all this commuting? First I suppose there are loans to pay off. Ick.

Well that's the life update. I'll be back in Port Ewen tomorrow probably, where I have a drawing tablet and can get back to the image a day plan. I really like doing that, and keeping creative/nonsensical postings forthcoming here. I don't claim they're all good, or worth reading. That's not the point. The point is to create at all, because discipline is not a skill I put a lot of points in when I was making this character.

Baffling. Waffling.

old habits

2008-02-19T03:06:00.004-05:00

played a lot of WoW today. More than I meant to, as always. Self-discipline is my downfall. Given endless hours in a day, freed from the office, I cower from more than a few hours of juggling practice and end up tanking heroic dungeons and farming materials to get fire resistance plate armor to tank the Flames of Azzinoth.

...awesome.

WoW is not the problem. If it wasn't WoW I'd be reading graphic novels, or torrenting massive archives of Bruce Willis movies and tentacle porn, or updating this. The problem, as usual, is that I'm afraid to look myself in the eye and say "I'm going to do my best at this, and I'm not going to fail." And that's the only way I'm going to get to keep this circus job.

I always hated people who used musical quotes in their blog, but good ol Eminem's Lose Yourself came on in the car the other day when I was driving, and the words he told me were the god given truth. This is the chance to "seize everything I ever wanted" and I'm gonna be pissed if I just let it slip by.

Post is getting on toward "too long; didn't read". No more whining.

There are days when I shouldn't even post these

McShaman

2008-02-15T15:44:00.012-05:00

I have somehow become addicted to the Japanese Ronald McDonald insanity video. Couple that with a long Friday of unemployment, and this is what we get. I'm probably ripping off American Gods... but I never read it:

she slurps the air and ice at the bottom of her Mountain Dew™
and paints on another coat of watery ketchup lipstick.
Totem aspects must be observed after all.
She grounds her will, drawing on and merging with
billions and billons served.
The candle bursts to life,
and she's lovin it.