Do it yourself, with shredded foam!
|
9.30.2001 |
So
one more post to end the evening. Tonight I did my normal Sunday night
Television viewing. The Sopranos is currently re-running the entire
series at 7:00 Central, so that's where my Sunday night TV viewing
begins. After Sopranos, I've been watching Band of Brothers. That
show rocks. Saving Private Ryan was a cool movie, and this mini-series is done much in the same style. The big difference is that Saving Private Ryan mainly focused on a small group of folks, and the majority of the movie wasn't really "in the shit", if I can use that phrase... Band of Brothers takes place right on the front lines. I think the thing that really gets me about this show is how they handle the battle scenes. When people are killed, it's never done in cheesy dramatic slow motion... Everybody is just doing what they need to do, and some of them just don't make it. The battle scenes are shot in more or less real time. If somebody is shot, they go down, and everybody else just has to keep doing what they need to do. The medics attend to the wounded, and the soldiers battle on. Anyway, this brings me to the point of this post... After Band of Brothers, there's a lull until Space Ghost: Coast to Coast comes on. Tonight's episode of SGCTC was "Fire Ant". I've probably raved about Fire Ant more than once, but I can't remember having done it before, so I'll go to it now. Fire Ant was the last new episode of SGCTC before the two new episodes that were just aired in the last three weeks. It was originally aired December 10, 1999, and I was watching at the time. Episodes of Space Ghost are normally about fifteen minutes long, and they normally show two episodes in its allotted thirty minute time slot. The episode starts with a shot of Space Ghost's desk, and a fanfare. As the fanfare continues, his guest, Conan O'Brien's screen is lowered. The fanfare continues. And it continues. Finally it dies off, but Space Ghost is still nowhere to be seen. Conan tries to say something, and the fanfare starts up again. After more than a normal amount of fanfare, Space Ghost is lowered by a pulley into his chair. "That... Was Awesome," he says... The episode continues with more definitely above-average comedy for the next ten minutes or so. Eventually, Space Ghost becomes bored with Conan, and notices an ant on the floor. He is distracted by the ant, and spends the next minute or so talking to it. The ant bites him, and he blasts it with his power bands. He talks with Conan briefly, then sees the ant again. "This is that ant the just bit me. He must be one of those self-repeating ants. I'm going to follow him home... Kill his whole family." I shit you not, the next twenty minutes, no commercial interruptions, were nothing but shots of an alien landscape with Space Ghost slowly crawling in stage right, crawling across the screen, and exiting, stage left. Finally, he gets to the ant's home, and sees one of his parents, a 40 foot tall ant monster of some sort. "Your son just bit me. I want to know what you're going to do about it." The ant squeals and attacks... Then there's a two second shot of Space Ghost running away, shouting, "Your son is a moron!!!" They have repeated this episode a number of times, but the cool twenty minute part with Space Ghost following the ant is always edited down to a text screen saying "later that day" or some such nonsense. That episode changed my life briefly. Now I rarely try to figure out what an artist is trying to say with their art, but that episode affected me on a profound level. It seemed to me that what they were doing was forcing us, the viewers, to sit through twenty minutes of boring, uneventful crap. But we just sat there and watched it, like the sheep we are. That kind of grated on me, and about two weeks later, my lease was up on my apartment. My roommate moved to a different city, and I moved in to a place by myself. When I moved into my new place, I chose not to activate cable, directly as a result of seeing this one episode of Space Ghost. Of course eight months later, football season started up, and I've had cable ever since. But for that eight months, I really, really enjoyed myself. I read a lot. I listened to a lot of music. I played on the computer. I updated my web site often. I went out with friends on weekdays. I rented movies and had friends over to watch them. Honestly, football season or no, even if it meant no more Sopranos, no more Band of Brothers, no more Simpsons, if I didn't have a roommate I would have canceled my cable service again about a month ago. Once he's gone, I'm dropping it. But much like cigarettes, it looks like I'm stuck with television for the foreseeable future. We can put a man on the moon, but our finest pharmaceutical researchers can't make a willpower drug? Someday... |
|
9.30.2001 |
Today
was a good day. I watched my normal Sunday morning political roundtable
shows, then read a bit. Football came on, and as usual the Packers'
game was not on TV. So I decided I should head off to a sports bar
so I could catch the game. When I got to the bar, there were a bunch
of other folks in Green Bay jerseys gathered around a TV in the back
of the bar. It looked ugly for the first half, but then they boys
turned it up a notch. The second half was a lovely blowout. While I was there watching the game, I noticed a lovely lady sitting by herself at a table... As the fourth quarter started to wind down, I decided to head over and chat with her. I started playing a game of Golden Tee next to her for an excuse to start talking. We started talking, and I eventually abandoned the game to sit and chat with her for a while. She was really cool, and I didn't make a complete ass of myself. After several hours of very good conversation she had to head in to work, so I asked her for her number. And she gave it to me. She said she's free this weekend, so I guess I'll be giving her a call tuesday to make plans. I've already called just about everyone I know to tell them about this monumental occasion, so I guess I'm not jinxing it any more by posting to the site... But there it is... After two straight days of going out with the expressed purpose of meeting chicks, I head out to a bar just to see The Pack, and I meet someone. God Bless you Green Bay Packers. You truly are America's Team. |
|
9.30.2001 |
I
also mentioned that I grabbed a record while I was out. I've been
into the band Chase
since High School. All of my band geek friends (not that I wasn't
one as well) and I used to go to Drum
Corps competitions. One year's show by the now defunct Freelancers
was the music of Bill Chase. I had some friends who were in that corp,
and they had a tape copy of the Bill Chase album that their show was
based on. I had listened to it several times, but never got a copy
myself. Anyway, I later found a copy of the song Get It On on a 70s music compilation. University of Houston SVN viewers may remember this song as the theme song to Pirate TV, as well as its use in a couple of the Young Pups shows. I then began my search for original copies of Chase's albums. I found a copy of Ennea at a record shop in Houston. A girlfriend of mine managed to secure me a copy of their self titled album, and I think that the copy of Pure Music I just picked up completes my collection of stuff by the band Chase. Bandleader Bill Chase is a bit more prolific, and it appears I now have more collecting to do. And I don't even own a turntable. I had checked years ago, and none of these records ever made it to CD. Only just now did I discover that all three of their albums were released on CD over four years ago... Well, it's getting about time for me to break down and buy a turntable anyway. |
|
9.30.2001 |
Well, that comic I picked up yesterday has a website. If you're bored, you can browse his stuff at Sparrows Fall. I prefer the paper version. On the website, he does this think where each individual panel is on its own page... On the printed version the pages are split up into oddly shaped panels, and it just kind of looks weird on the web page, and a bit hard to follow. But if you're bored enough, check it out... |
|
9.30.2001 |
Well,
I did go to see Ghost World yesterday. I don't know if it beats Memento,
but it definitely ranks up there as one of the two best movies I saw
this year. After the movie, I went on a little walk around the neighborhood where the theater was. I went to a vintage clothing shop for a bit before deciding that I wasn't nearly hip enough for that place. I did see some sweet jackets that I may have to go back for sometime. After the vintage clothing shop, I went to a tobacco store to see if I could get anything to clean up this sweet pipe I got last time I was in Wisconsin. They were mainly a cigar shop, not really catering to pipe smokers, but I did get a tin of Penguin Caffeinated Peppermints while I was there. After the tobacco shop, I went to a record store and did some browsing. I did end up getting a record which I will most likely describe in a future update, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to do so now. I spent the rest of the afternoon in a coffee shop drinking iced mochas and Earl Grey tea and reading some free comics done by a local artist. It was pretty cool, since the artist hung out in the area, and one of the scenes took place in the coffee shop I was hanging out in. Anyway, indie films, vintage clothing, purchasing '70s records, and reading comix in a coffee shop. I just felt unbearably hip yesterday. Somebody kill me... |
|
9.29.2001 |
Well, no biking for me today. I'm heading off to see Ghost World now, I guess... |
|
9.29.2001 |
Yesterday,
I revisited the Time
Cube. I'm sure you remember the rambling, incoherent Time Cube
site. Of course, I enjoy being stupid. Anyway, now it's time for the Time Cube humor. Here is a fictional interview with Gene Ray, discoverer of the Time Cube. Yesterday, I got the great idea to get Gene Ray's phone number and call him for an interview. I got his phone number, but just now I noticed that somebody has already beat me to an interview with the man himself. If you do not enjoy being stupid, and choose not to word-murder your children, you can sign the Time Cube debate petition. |
|
9.29.2001 |
Well
I just finished up the episode guide for Episode 5. They're all done
now. And it only took me just over a year and a half. Again, any cast
member comments are welcome. Remember, I was tired when I put these
together, so if anybody would like to edit the skit descriptions,
please feel free to send me updates. But I think I'm going to pack my bike up and head off to Lawrence to see what they have for bike riding around there. |
|
9.29.2001 |
Wow,
I actually finished up the episode guide for Young Pups Episode 2.
Only one to go, but I'm far too tired to work on the guide for Episode
5. Once I finish up that one, I guess the next thing to do is to capture
higher bitrate versions of the shows, and maybe try to make videos
of individual skits. Or I could give it a rest. But I still every once in a while run into someone who has just seen our shows for the first time and actually liked them. I guess that's why I still do this. In Bob's words, "Doesn't it suck to have reached your creative peak five years ago?" Indeed... Bedtime for me... |
|
9.29.2001 |
My
roommate is out of town this week, and the folks I hang out with at
work aren't the going out type, so I was out solo for the first time
in a while tonight. I talked to many people, but the ladies were unimpressed.
But at least I got out and made an attempt. It's better than I've
done recently at least. I'm actually doing the episode guide for Episode 2 now. I hope to finish it up before I go to sleep, but I'm starting to get tired, the two Red Bulls I just drank notwithstanding. |
|
9.28.2001 |
I always had a bit of a survivalist streak going, and recent events seem to have revived it somewhat. Though it doesn't seem like much is going on now, I think that there's more going on behind the scenes than they're telling us. Enter DEBKAfile, a "news" site out of Israel. It does have a strong pro-Israel slant, and its reporting is along the lines of the Drudge Report, but it does have some nice stories to scare the piss out of you... |
|
9.28.2001 |
I'm sure you have received a copy of the "Mommy Liberty" drawing... It was drawn by Eliza Gauger, a high school student from Washington or something. You can go to her weblog here. Wired News did a cool story about her here. |
|
9.28.2001 |
Saturday Night Live has its season premiere tomorrow night. My prediction: A lot of bad recurring characters punching Osama Bin Laden. |
|
9.26.2001 |
Well,
the guys at The
Onion has done a great job again. My favorite would have to be
"God
Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule". Comedy's been tough
since September 11. I watched Jon Stewart struggle through tears during
his first monologue back after the attack. I hear that Bill Maher
got
in trouble for some comments he made after the attack.... Personally, I still have very little to say. I know that the US has had made some incredibly ugly foriegn policy moves in the past. But that in no way excuses what was done on the 11th. I guess the way I look at it is that the whole world is dug into a pretty damn deep hole right now. I have severe doubts about this "war on terrorism" working, but I still support it for some reason. I've even considered enlisting, and still haven't ruled it out. But you know what... I don't think anything I've seen or heard since the attacks made more sense than that article in The Onion that I mentioned earlier. Bah... I'm going to read my book and go to bed... And I still haven't smoked, and I'm gaining all kinds of fucking weight. At least racquetball is tomorrow. |
|
9.26.2001 |
I
got some complaints recently about the
shows... I set them up originally so that you can only watch them
online, becuse that seemed to be the way things were done. But I had
some requests to include links to download the shows, so on the episode
guides for Episode
1, Episode 3,
and Episode 4,
there are now links to download the shows. I hope to get some better quality downloadable shows up there eventually, and I've actually been doing some work on the episode guides for episodes 2 and 5. Cast members, your comments would be appreciated (again). I'm fairly certain that some of you sent them before, but I was lazy and have since lost them... In the meantime, since I haven't done up episode guides for 2 and 5, if you really want to download those episodes, I'll provide a link for episode 2 here and episode 5 here. Download away... Anyway, if anybody actually enjoys the shows, I'll get them to them in any form I can... It's cool to go to a party and hear folks quoting the show... |
|
9.26.2001 |
Well I've quit smoking again. I had my ceremonial last cigarette at just after midnight Monday night. So I guess I'm at about 31.5 hours right now. Going well so far, but NTN Trivia night at the bar with a bunch of smokers was a bit tough. Oh well... |
|
9.21.2001 |
I
haven't updated in a while because for a while I thought that if I
couldn't come up with anything profound to say, I should just keep
my mouth shut. I actually wrote three long rants, which I then discarded
because they were a bit too incoherent. Then I got an email from a
friend asking me for my thoughts. I wrote her another long incoherent
rant... Anyway, I'm not in the ranting mood anymore, so I'll just
bring you more of the same crap... Hunter S. Thompson has some comments on the events of the past week and the coming war. These days he's the paranoid survivalist I've always aspired to be. I've seen this before, but in case you haven't, check out an archive of World War II era political cartoons by Dr. Seuss. Some of them are pretty damn cool. This cartoon which was run in UC Berkeley's student paper sparked some controversy on campus. Apparently some people found it racist. I personally don't think it is trying to stereotype all muslims as thinking this way, just fantasizing about the perpetrators of the terrorist acts burning in hell. Sometimes I wish I believed in hell... I guess that's about it for now. Take care of yourselves folks... |
|
9.13.2001 |
I feel like I should say something, but I just can't get my thoughts together enough to try to say anything coherent. I'll just bow out with this. |
|
9.12.2001 |
My thoughts are with the families of those missing in the multiple attacks on the US yesterday. My thoughts are also with the investigators, who I hope will soon uncover evidence of who is responsible. I hope we find out soon so we can track the responsible parties down and string them up from the nearest tree. |
|
9.10.2001 |
And I guess I'd better fess up that I'm smoking again... Only when I go out, though. What a moron. |
|
9.10.2001 |
I
played racquetball for two hours tonight. I am exhausted, but I got
a new low
out of it. This particular one made Excel re-scale my Y axis, so that's
pretty cool. As I said, I'm exhausted, but thought I'd update here
really quick. Last weekend I checked out the This American Life staff favorites section. I listened to an excellent show called The Fix Is In. It was an excellent story about price fixing of agricultural products by ADM. Read the description, but I'll paraphrase. It certainly doesn't sound like riveting story matter, but it's really a cool story. There's an informant working with the FBI and they have some excellent audio tape of the actual meetings between Korean, Japanese and American officials where they are dividing up the world market and setting prices. Lots of intrigue and double-crosses. I also listened to the 1996 Christmas episode, featuring David Sedaris' Santaland Diaries. When I started looking for other books by him, every review would mention that in particular, so I figured I ought to give it a listen. Pretty good stuff... It's his account of working as a Christmas Elf at Macy's in New York. OK, I think I have about enough energy to hit about 31 more keys. I think I'm going to go pass ou |
|
9.08.2001 |
So
I've been sitting here drinking Jack and Cokes this evening. I watched
a Dennis Miller special, then popped in the movie I rented last night,
Requiem
For A Dream. It may just be the whiskey, but I think it was mainly
the movie that made me sick to my stomach. The only other heroin movie
I think I've seen is Trainspotting.
Trainspotting had the rather disturbing toilet and baby scenes, but
still kind of ended on an up note. Requiem was a whole other beast. Absolutely no sugar-coating on this one. An excellent movie, but not for the faint of heart. I thought I had been thoroughly desensitized, but this one really hit me. And I got it from Blockbuster, so this was the edited version... Well, excuse me now while I find something on HBO Comedy so I'll be able to sleep tonight. |
|
9.07.2001 |
OK,
so earlier tonight I need to get some coke to mix my Jim Beam with.
So I run up to the K-Mart up the street from my apartment. I grab
the bottles of coke and run up to the register. There's this kind
of tired looking chick working the checkout. She has the dyed black
hair that I go for, and is wearing this cool Heiroglyphic necklace.
I attempt small talk, but fail, so we continue with the transaction.
The credit card processing takes forever, and we're re-starting the
process several times. Finally she says "Fucking Microsoft..."
I ask her if their stuff is running NT. She says she isn't sure, but
she just isn't a big fan of Microsoft. So I say, "Yeah, I run
Linux at home." (Which isn't entirely untrue. This website is
hosted on my Linux machine... I do use Windows on my primary computer...
Better email software, plus I can play Age of Empires.) She says,
"Yeah, I use Red Hat..." I say, "I've been using Slackware,
but I'm giving Debian a try." She says, "Oh yeah, Debian
is nice." And I walk away. Fuck me. |
|
9.07.2001 |
Well
I've been turning into quite the NPR
junkie lately. (I just never got into Prairie
Home Compainion) For about the last three or four months, I've
been listening to This
American Life every week, and listening to it on their website
if I miss it. A show a couple of weeks ago included an interview with
author David
Sedaris, which I found rather amusing. I remembered that Amazon's
recommendations
section has been trying to get me to buy his book Me
Talk Pretty One Day for quite a while. So I decided to grab it
for some vacation reading. It's been amusing the whole way through, but the last half of the book has been just laugh out loud funny... So I was bored a while ago and decided to see if he's doing any readings anytime soon. Well, aparently he is. Out of the twenty or so appearances he's making, one is in fact in Kansas City. Unfortunately, out of the twenty or so appearances he's making, Kansas City is the only one that is already sold out. What a bunch of crap. Where exactly do you go to get scalped tickets for speaking engagements? |
|
9.06.2001 |
Every once in a while I make the mistake of going more than two days without visiting memepool. When I do, I always miss gems like the new White House web site. |
|
9.06.2001 |
Hornet Super Juice. |
|
9.06.2001 |
A cool periodic table. |
|
9.05.2001 |
My god. As if the robotic apocalypse isn't coming soon enough, we're going to let them tinker with our brains. (Thanks Gurney Halleck...) |
|
9.05.2001 |
Quick
thoughts on the previous weekend: Those folks in Wisconsin sure can drink. Sleeping under the stars isn't nearly as romantic as it sounds. It's really more cold and wet than anything else. There are some nice places to ride a bike in Minnesota, but not as many as I had originally thought. Camping is fun. Space Ghost Coast to Coast is still good. |
