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2.27.04/01:35 price of lamentation
Stop me if you’ve heard this one.
My point is that from far enough away, everything can look trivial. Take your life, for example. It seems okay to get up every day before dawn and spend eight or nine hours behind a desk, and two more in traffic. Minute by minute, it’s bearable. If you step away and see that you’ve done this for ten, perhaps twenty years, even this thing you call your life can seem a little trivial.
We build these little piles of shit and call them houses. We build bigger piles of shit and call them cities. We even have these really big piles of shit we call countries. They won’t outlast the stars. Heh, they won’t even outlast the next ice age. The question you need to ask yourself is: why do we keep doing this when we know it will only end in failure? Why do we keep building sandcastles just so the tide can wash them away?
That little picture in the top-left corner, those are your direct instructions from god. They are the advice that should have been tattooed onto you when you were born. Once you figure out what it says, you will know exactly what to do next. You will know why you're here. Maybe you'll even put down your bucket and your shovel.
2.25.04/22:37 the mad samurai strikes again Ouch. My wrists are still sore and black and blue from blocking shots yesterday. Kind of a good kind of pain though. And today, we got to watch the sequel to Yojimbo...yokatta da nee.
The other day I read A Brave New World. I have this bad habit of reading novels whenever I'm stuck staring at a screen for eight hours at a time with no escape. It's a really good book though. I was a little hesitant to read it, because all I was hearing from my stoner friends was "Duuude, it's like all about drugs and stuff."
But I think they completely missed the point. I liked it and I don't think it's such a terrible thing that the world will eventually be like this if we don't manage to blow everything up first. I wouldn't even mind being an Epsilon, if that's what I have to do. Though I doubt I'd ever get to hook up with any of those pneumatic Beta girls...
And I don't know if I'm going to have time to post for awhile. Tomorrow I'm going to Ohio because Kim wants to take me out to dinner, and Friday I plan to fail my midterm and come home and nap the nap of the dead 'til work and Saturday,
Chubbs is coming to visit!
I am so excited. I don't know what we're going to do. My sister is so freaking cool. Much cooler than you. Much cooler than me. She was supposed to stay until Monday and hang out with me Sunday, but her time constraints won't allow it. Either way, it's all gravy to me. I'll get to see her in a week and a half for spring break, regardless.
2.23.04/19:40 you don't win friends with salad My beard is getting so long and fierce. All my power and confidence is directly proportional to the firceness of said beard. Too bad there's only 3.5 weeks 'til I have to shave it off for the wedding. Why'd I ever make such a dumb promise? All I know is, should I ever decide to get married, I'm not shaving. Whoever she is, she will be lucky if I even shower.
To your left is some sushi. Yesterday I went to a sushi party at Heather's friend Guido's place. It was fun times and really really excellent sushi. There was Monty Python and tickling and cartoons and fun times all around. And I even got to use the sushi set Chubbs got me for my birthday.
I told Stephanie I would post this dirty haiku that she wrote the other day. It's in Spanish and it's been decorating my profile for the past few days. Maybe some of you speak Spanish and will enjoy it as much as I do.
And this special little picture to your right is my official check for thirteen dollars and eighty-six cents from winning my class-action lawsuit. It feels like justice. Some of you probably got similar checks, too. I'm still trying to decide what to spend my hard-earned free money on. Maybe a chocolate milkshake...
Soon there should be a new song. I've discovered a chord progression I really like and I'm trying to write some upbeat lyrics for it. Haven't really been playing the ol' geetar as much as I would like, but that's just the price of being incessantly busy with all the things that keep me incessantly busy. But like I said, soon. Maybe this week even.
2.21.04/18:37 feminism is adorable It's evidenced by this picture I took of a flyer, right beneath this paragraph. Actually, I took the flyer too, as a souvenir. You can learn all sorts of useful things from the hundreds of multi-colored 8" by 11" mini-posters located all around Pitt campus.
So I spent all last night searching for the tab to the Sealab 2021 theme song. I found out it is performed by calamine. There was no readily available tab for it, though. So I came home today and chorded out what I think is a good approximation of how they play it. If you can do better, send me changes.
And I realize it's been like five days since I've done an update, and that's just poor form on my part. I should be concerned about keeping y'all entertained and all that. I should write sarcastic social commentary for you every day.
Riiiight.
2.17.04/22:03 transcendental limitations Today, I am so happy. I feel like I could jump through my ceiling and be okay. Wait, never mind. What I mean is that I'm not happy. If I jumped through the ceiling it would probably hurt for a little while at first and then I would start to bleed.
Right. So I'm manic is what I'm trying to say. Alternating periods of extreme pointless glee with ennui and stagnation. Stagnation? What does that even mean? It means I am starting to become trapped in my own four-dimensional prison. It means my routine is becoming monotonous.
[swordplay] 5MB mov file
Since the last movie was such a big hit, here is another one where I don't even have my geetar. Just me being stupid and unnecessarily dangerous with a sword.
Solution? Yes! There is one. Which is great news for me. In 2.5 weeks it will be spring break. I think I'm going to take a road trip to Indiana. I think I'm going to stop by the 'ville and visit my sister and a few other of my favorite people. And I think I'm going to go to B-town and visit my friends at IU.
And I really like this CD of Neutral Milk Hotel. It's been spinning in my car for the last three days. Um...right...go listen to it and buy it. Now!! Right now!! Quit reading this and hesitating and do what I say before I have to hypnotize you.
That's a joke. I can't really do hypnotism. If I could, I would have so much women and power and money and women. That would be great. And I am definitely rambling now. And you've caught on to this fact. But you're still reading this. Why? Weird. You should stop staring at this screen and do something productive with your life before it's too late.
Fine. Don't. But check this out: Broken Lizard is coming out with a new movie in a few weeks. Those are the people who made Super Troopers, which, if I were pressed to pick a favorite movie, might fall into that category. Maybe.
[sacred cow] short story
And this is a short story I wrote from the point-of-view of a character who is my complete opposite. Nothing like me. Not a bit. If you're nice, I might post some other stuff I've been writing. But only if you use polite-style and follow all of the ritual customs accompanied with it. Like taking off your shoes when you enter my home and putting on sandals.
2.15.04/18:30 donkey punch, not just a drink anymore If you don't know what that means, I can't tell you. It's bad even for the glossary. Maybe you could do a google search on it. I don't know. Something I picked up at work.
But that's not what we're here to talk about today. Today's technological advancement is a short movie clip of me playing a little part of a song you already know the words to.
[30 seconds] 8.5 MB mov file
You shouldn't download this unless you have a really fast internet connection and won't be disappointed by the very low-quality movie-recording properties of my digital camera. Mainly I just want to see if it will work.
2.14.04/17:59 friday the 13th + 1 If any of you ever wanted to be as cool as Amanda, you should just give up. Because it's not possible. Because you just can't do it.
Amanda sent me a package and it has Japanese writing on it and a CD in it of Neutral Milk Hotel and I'm listening to it and also there's a card featuring a cut-out of the elusive Billy from the Waffle Crisp box, and with commas I could make this sentence even longer but maybe I shouldn't.
And, uh, I don't know. Today is Valentine's Day. Kind of that's important to some people I think. Grandma ate all the chocolates I got the other day, but it's okay. She can do that.
Yeah. I have cool friends. Annie said she liked my story about the peaches, and she sent me a picture of herself. She's hot. When I very first met her 1.5 years ago, she was crying and it was the saddest thing ever. But that really doesn't have anything to do with anything, does it?
Also, I got to hang out with Jesse yesterday. He's visiting from Arizona. His little brother, Josh, rocked me at Tony Hawk and I think I need some kind of revenge to boost my self-esteem back up to pre-Sunday levels.
It took you probably like 70 seconds to read those three paragraphs, but it took me about 20 minutes to think of how to write them, and to crop the pictures, and to fix the fonts and paragraphical arrangements. In the time that has elapsed, I have listened to much of this CD and I definitely approve. Good stuff.
2.12.04/23:43 boku ga ichiban awesome!!!
Okay, so maybe ichiban awesome is a bit of an exaggeration, but if you enlarge the picture to your left you will see that I can't be too far from it, after all, I happen to be a whole foot taller than Rayden. Yeah, so I was bored. I figured if I could do it for Crono I could do it for me too.
Today was a weird, weird day. On the bus, this girl sat next to me and I am completely surprised I'd never seen her as a patient before. She was kind of fat, making animal noises to herself, and kept staring at me and smiling and twitching her eyes. And she kept making these erratic facial expressions and laughing hysterically and crying to herself.
But that's not all. She kept taking up more and more of the seat and talking really loudly on her cell phone to some imaginary person, and here is the kicker: she was wearing a french maid outfit. I think it's the only time I've ever seen one and been so repulsed. And as I reached for the ringy-dinger for the stop she knocked me over and grabbed it first.
[peaches] short story <very graphic>
So you really want to know where the peaches from "peachycomics" come from? This story is the answer. I wouldn't recommend reading it though. It was just something I kind of had to write and I'm not particularly proud of. Creating this literary monstrosity was like giving birth to an economy-sized jar of pickles, and it's just something I'm glad to be rid of.
Until I do the rewrite.
2.10.04/22:25 'cause that's what tiggers do best I cut myself yesterday. No, not like that. On accident. There was a staple in my pants and I was putting them on and it ripped through my hand. And there were no band-aids. None to be found. Be wary of stray staples. As grandma said, "At least all you cut was your hand."
So I have a small dilemma. My friend has this scroll hanging on her wall and she wants to know what it says. I can't really read this because it's cursive and I don't know the characters. Some of you can probably read this...would you be so kind as to tell me what it says?
Oh, and I keep getting complaints about the lack of comics. Sorry about that. The truth is, I haven't been able to draw a picture since June. I don't know what's wrong with me. I used to could be able to draw all the time. Even in class. Now I'm just a pathetic, sketchless shell of a man.
Yeah, I know "used to could" is a phrase that doesn't exist north of the mason-dixon line. And check this out. I bought myself a box of chocolates for Valentine's Day. It was one of those Hershey's Pot of Gold things with the little turtles and the caramel things and the whatnot. Mmmm...turtles.
2.9.04/23:26 pididdle!!!
Yes. It's my car. According to the local rules, because I spotted this one before all of you did, each of you owe me exactly (1) article of clothing. Probably this headlight thing is something I should fix. Maybe soon.
Oh, by the way, daikirai. If you know me, you know what I'm talking about. I'm almost glad I left 'dangling it' open-ended because I think it's time to turn it into a novel. Better yet, a trilogy. Just so much. So much daikirai.
And yes, that is Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the Japanese and the english version. There's a valid reason why I have them, besides the fact that I'm becoming an otaku. Crap. I said otaku. That's the first step. The second step? Hellsing! Wow.
I took a side-trip to Columbiana today where I watched Run, Ronnie, Run and would have been horribly offended if I still had a soul. Since I don't, I thoroughly enjoyed it. So this Hellsing thing, I don't know. The scene with the vampire kids and the girl doing the thing with the, yeah. How 'bout that.
2.8.04/07:38 cryptography In high school, I developed an interest in coding and decoding things. Once you get the basics down, it can be pretty simple. Take this little example:
First, find the word and the letter repeated the most times. Usually, the word is 'the' and the letter is E. Now you know 3 letters and are well on your way to cracking the code.
[monky font] TrueType (ttf) file, 4kb
I will save you the effort this time. The sentence above reads: 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.' It's a font I made in 10th grade for MS Word. If you want to install it, download the file, go to My computer -> C Drive -> Windows -> and open the fonts folder. Put this one in there.
Open a word document and put the caps lock on (it only works with caps). Switch to the font called 'Monky' that should now be in your drop menu. Type something.
Here are some tips for good message encoding: -Don'tputspacesbetweenyourwords. -Use PrintScreen to save your message as an image so people can't just highlight it and switch to a different font. -Use ungood grammer and spel thingz rong. -dont use punctuation -Nihongo de kaite. Wakaru?
2.7.04/19:07 green day rocks! (well, USED to...)
[dominated love slave (acoustic green day cover)]
Enough about that. So I finished Dude, Where's My Country? and My Uncle Oswald and now I'm ready to move on to some new books. I'm thinking Snow Falling on Cedars and 100 Years of Solitude because the eminent doctor recommended them to me.
If a samurai's sword is his soul, then it occurs to me that I need to get a new soul that isn't covered with rust and pumpkin mush.
And I keep having really weird dreams. I've never been good at sleeping. When I was 7, I slept with all the lights on. When I was 16, I still had a nite-lite. Now I sleep in a big basement in the dark. It's not that I was scared then and now I'm suddenly brave or something. It's more like indifference.
Oh. You want to know about the bottles. I stole this idea from Reid like 2 years ago. He used liquor bottles, but I just use Voodoo Rain and SoBe ones. What you do is take ONE highlighter and rip the core out. Then you cut the core into eight or nine little chunks. Put one chunk in each bottle and fill it with water. That's it. During the process you will probably turn your hands bright yellow. For colors other than green, you will have to try something different (i.e. bleach).
2.6.04/01:04 gomi no hi (mai-kinyoobi) Kyoo wa, basutei de kawaii zyosee ga denwabangoo o kureta. Boku wa, denwabangoo o kaita kedo, bangoo no tugi ni TIGAU namae o kaita. Hazukasikatta da nee. Raisyuu no getuyoobi ni, kanozyo o denwa-suru ka mo sirenai...
That was an anecdote too embarrassing for english. Regardless, today was a pretty good day. It seems that getting an accomplice for my scheme will be harder than I suspected, especially one with the necessary implements.
I went thrift-shopping with Megan and found another sweet pair of cords. I was looking for bowling shoes, but they didn't have any. I almost got this awesome shirt that said "Hempfield Coaching Staff", but it was entirely too big for me.
And it's trash night. The thing that sucks about all this rain and ice is having to pry all the bags loose and get that six inch deep iceberg out of the bottom of the can. I know, it should have been covered in the first place, but it's too late for good intentions now.
The secret to getting rid of the ice, by the way, is to stand the can upside down and drop kick it a couple times. Sure, it's no mean trick to get a good running start when EVERYTHING is a sheet of solid ice and your shoes have no tread left, but I managed.
Also I fixed a little superficial glitch that was bothering you and you didn't even know why. The spacing between the paragraphs was off a little, but fear not, it's been fixed by your benevolent webmaster.
2.3.04/22:02 devising the blueprints Oh. So I have an idea. All I need is an accomplice. Once the plan is complete, there will be pictures and a detailed story of the escapade. Until then, I shall speak no more of it. It's along the same lines as my last evil plan, but that one didn't work for reasons this maxim makes clear.
"I can't be held responsible for the shortcomings of others."
Or to rephrase it with a personal quote, "Everybody sucks but me." And I don't know what else. I need to just never talk and just keep nodding and I think I will have far better luck with the female persuasion. I just have NO common sense when it comes to saying offensive things. Ever.
Here is a special surprise for all of you. Remember the dirty haiku contest? I still need to make Sarah a t-shirt, but I didn't forget. Her winning entry came from a batch of over 50 dirty haikus, and I think I will just post them all for the hell of it. Should be moderately appropriate for Valentine's Day.
[55 dirty haikus by Sarah] (graphic)
2.1.04/17:38 bubble wrap/feigning competence
This is a poem that I wrote yesterday at work. I like it a little better than the poem I wrote the day before. There is no need to post the other one. If you can't read my handwriting, click here to read the text version.
Today I made an amazing discovery. There is a Long John Silver's within 15 minutes of my house.
I thought they were nearly extinct, but this one survives as an LJS/A&W hybrid. But that's not the coolest thing. When I ordered my food they gave me a FROSTY MUG for my soda. Wow.
2.1.04/07:56 another rabbit rabbit day Before the Lord of the Rings, there was the Book of Five Rings, written by Miyamoto Musashi. Who is he, you ask? He was the coolest samurai ever, and we have been watching the movie trilogy about him in my Westerns and Samurais class. Though his book is roughly 350 years old, it's still a good read and I encourage you to check it out.
Oh yeah, it's rabbit rabbit day yet again. I won't explain it again, but if you want to know about it go to the August posts and scroll to the bottom for the detailed dissertation on it. And I wrote a new poem and a new short story, but I'm saving them for later today or tomorrow.
On a side note, I think my subconscious mind is trying to kill me. I went out to start my car the other morning and when I came back the garage was a toxic cloud of deadly carbon monoxide. Hmm...perhaps I should've opened the garage door. Sometimes I can be so dense.
It also occurs to me that I never made new buttons for some of the things that you used to be able to get to from the main page. Things like the artwork section or the little bio about me that will give you insight on why things here are the way they are. |
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