RIP Mitch

Entertainment -- TwinCities.com

Mitch Hedburg was one of my favorite comedians. He had the deadpan one liners, the same kind pioneered by Steven Wright.

"I like escalators because they never break down. They can only become stairs"

RIP Mitch. I saw you on tour with Lewis Black and you kicked ass.

First Day of My Life

I was feeling disconnected from the world today, so I called up my friend Kandra after work to see if she would be up for some beer and conversation. I already knew the answer would be yes before I called her. Kandi is one of those people who has a perpetual exuberance for life that can only be matched by a child. She didn't even get pissed when I mentioned the sidewalk chalk drawings of rainbows on her driveway looked like the Apple Dumpling gang had a turf war She laughs at my lame jokes, listens to my complainings, and talks with enthusiasm about whatever topic springs to mind. She is a beloved friend who never ceases to remind me to enjoy life as opposed to wandering around in my own introspective nightmare.

As I got in my car to go home, the song "First Day of My Life" by Bright Eyes popped on my CD player. Thanks for the wake up call, Kandi.

Matador Records | Yo La Tengo

Matador Records | Yo La Tengo

I'm going to go buy this pronto. Yo La Tengo has always been among my favorite indie bands, and now I'm treated to a 3 disc set with their "hits" and unreleased material. If you've never partaken any Tengo, you are missing out.

I wish I had more to report today, but I'm kinda stuck in a general malaise. I wonder how many hours of my life I've wasted just drifting in thought. Oh well, if you want to go read something cool, check out my brother's new post. It's got penis-shaped cookies, you can't go wrong with that.

Lucid Dream?

I had a dream last night that I was sitting at Denny's with the Righteous Brothers, eating a bacon cheeseburger, and discussing how their role in the soundtrack of "Top Gun" revitalized their career in the 80's.

I'm not big on analyzing dreams, but I'm sure it's deep and meaningful.

This is my shortest post ever.

Rock Me Amadeus!

Okay, so the uber-crappy techno tracks have uploaded to my temporary host. I'll probably keep them up there semi-permanently, bandwidth permitting. They are in WMA format, so you Mac users may have to download the WMA codec to give it a listen. I tried to put them in MP3 format, but my lame Lame encoder doesn't seem to be up to the task right now.

1. Mack Mahogany --originally conceived about a retarded kid with a boner
2. Chain-smoking Bus Driver --an ode about Adam's bus driver on his class trip to Germany
3. Warble Warble -- we listened to a lot of Mr. Oizo back in the day m'kay
4. Fun with vocal samples -- spot the lame sampled vocals
5. High School Biology Teacher -- another Adam inspired track (okay so he did the most work)

That's all for now. Maybe if I want to rape more ears, there will be further collaborations.

Hot Item for the Day:

Schecter 006 Blackjack

(I wants)

Ch-Ch-Changes

Well, those of you who have seen my new profile pic, might wonder what fucking drugs I was on in that picture. Truth be told, that pic ended up on the crappy numetal band's website (from several posts ago). I was getting bored with looking bored, and I put it up until I can get something else doctored up. I wish more of my killer metal posing ended up on the site, though.

It also appears that I am banned from watching NCAA games with my family after my impromptu performance during the KU/Bucknell game. It was kind of sad watching KU losing in the first round, it was the first time that had happened in my lifetime. Yet, I was endlessly amused at the horrible 3-point shooting by both teams. KU had missed 5/5 3-point shots, but what amazed me was Bucknell's insistance on a 3 point attempt every possession. It became so absurd that my brother and I kept shouting "Go for the Tre!" no matter who had the ball. This pissed off everybody. Eventually, we had to tone it down a bit and just make facial contortions and hand signals mimicing the Bucknell coach every time he signalled for a 3-point shot or was just plain pissed. We took pictures of some of those expressions and will post them soon.

Also in recent events, my brother and I also found the CD we made of our excrementally shitty techno collaborations. I had mentioned in one of James's comments that we had made some crappy techno in the past, and he had reccomended that we call ourselves the "Dust Bowl Brothers". Look for a download of the Dust Bowl Brothers demo soon.

More Sharks = More Drama

Several other people (MPH/Insane Preschool Mom) have beaten me to the punch as far as posting about the revolutionary new made for TV movie, Spring Break Shark Attack. The movie looked fairly interesting as crap movies go, but my brother and I have found a much more interesting scenario. Instead of a crappy fictional tale of paid-actors posing as spring breakers, I say let's turn it into a reality game show. Real college students, real sharks. Whoever survives in the shark tank the longest gets a Saturn Ion (hey, it worked for Real World Vs. Road Rules). There has to be at least some semblence of danger, because face it, safe kids = bad television.

In other news, I got krunk this weekend and danced my legs off to classic motown jams at the 80's bar. Then I woke up the next morning and fed my hangover with pancakes at the Cracker Barrel. Good times. Cracker Barrel coincidentally is down the streeet from BTK's house. One of the people who passed out on our couch from the night before, wanted to see BTK's house. Just to mess with her, we drove down a random street and pointed to a random yellow house. It's fun to mess with with her.

Before my ADD kicks into overdrive, here are the answers to the quiz from last time.

"OK, it turns out we don't have very much geek running through our collective veins... which is strangely both sad and comforting at the same time. Since nobody actually got all of the answers correct, I will choose a winner using a sophisticated highly-confidential algorithm and present the semi-decent prize to the winner.

Captain Kirk v. Gorn

Kirk, duh. And with rocks and a piece of bamboo, no less! He's like Macguyver... only he didn't even need duct tape to off the giant green lizard creature.

Anakin Skywalker v. Obi-wan Kenobi

Something of a trick question... but since I referred to him as "Anakin," the reference was for the upcoming movie (our only real reference point looking back to the first movie is to call him "Darth"... oops... did I just spoil the obvious?). Obi-Wan by KO in the 12th round.

Spock v. Horta

This question allowed for 2 possible answers. While technically a tie, since a negotiation was worked out between the humans and the silicon-based rock eating creature (reference "no kill i"). However, it would be no stretch to consider this a solid victory for the logical superiority of Spock since it was his tactically superior decision to use the Vulcan Mind Meld that led to the truce. Victory goes to Spock.

Chewbaka v. Spangles Deluxe Combo

I was castigated for my (mis)spelling of the name 'Chewbacca.' For this, I must apologize. I had originally spelled it correctly, but did a Google to make certain... and Google's "fuzzy logic" offered me the alternate spelling as a "correction." With regard to the battle, while Chewie is quite an imposing figure, and could easily tear through just about anything put before him, his species prefer fowl over beef, and so would almost certainly go for the Turkey Club or Buffalo Ranch Chicken on pita. Winner-- Spangles Deluxe Combo.

Captain Kirk v. Luke Skywalker

If you have to think about this one, you've already lost the quiz. Somebody emailed me asking whether we were talking about the ST:TOS Kirk or the movie Kirk. On the surface, this might seem like a reasonable question... but it really just reveals that the questioner is a neophyte in the world of Sci-Fi. The only Kirk you might have to be worried about is the ST:G one. This is the movie where he (seemingly) falls to his death in a battle with the devious Soran. But think about it... he'd been living in a dream world for who knows how long, he didn't have a good breakfast that day (eggs were burned), and he was forced to fight along side the wimpy (though strategically capable) Pickard-- in a fight, that's worse than being by yourself. So you can see how he might not have his best day.

All of the above is factual information and can be scientifically proven. Any ideas to the contrary are simply wrong. ;-) "

--Kenneth, Krull's boss

There are no times that don't have moments like these.

Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day. It was fairly uneventful (had a couple beers with friends), but there are still a few things I wish to comment on regarding the occasion. What the fuck is up with green coloured beer?!?! I simply don't understand why everyone gets a little excited when somebody adds a few green dye drops to an otherwise typical pint of beer. Especially when it's to the point where if I have a logically coloured beer someone is chasing me with a dye bottle to give it that green festive glow. Only I don't give a crap about being festive. If it doesn't add anything to the flavour, texture, ect., I don't want any. Besides, what if there are roofies liquidated in those little green drops? I can't say I want the 5-10 second shock of wondering why my pee is glowing kryptonite green later that night/morning either. I'm pretty sure if you asked someone in a REAL irish pub for green beer, that they would take you out back and kick you in the head repeatedly.

My brother sent me a fun little quiz the other day that someone in his department made. Had I gotten the results in earlier, I could have won a limited edition Star Trek canvas of William Shatner. Here's the quiz if any want to take a crack at it:

The first person to correctly identify the winners in each of the following battles wins a semi-decent prize...

Captain Kirk v. Gorn
Anakin Skywalker v. Obi-wan Kenobi
Spock v. Horta
Chewbaka v. Spangles Deluxe Combo
Captain Kirk v. Luke Skywalker

Stay tuned for answers later...

In other news, I've updated my "People who pretend to like me" list. If your blog was left off my list and you wish to pretend you like me, please let me know and I'll remedy that.

Random Musings

This weekend I was once again called in on my duties as the best Wingman in Kansas. One of my best friends has just started dating a girl, and was sequestered to go on an outing with a group of her friends, most of which he hadn't met before. Enter the Wingman. My duty: to make sure this fine timid fellow doesn't get eaten alive by this pack of dubious women.

So her friend plays in this band, and Craig was supposed to go to this bar and watch them with her friends. So far so good. I enter the bar and notice it looks like all the roadies from Judas Priest's reunion tour have decided to set up camp here. No worries so far, I've been in worse places. I've been to hip hop clubs in the wrong part of town before; with metal detectors on the outside and people fashioning makeshift shivs out of toothbrushes on the inside. Once I meet up with Craig and his pseudo-girlfriend, we got some beers and listened to her friend's band. Her friend's band unfortunately, was some horrible numetal crap. It was bad enough that it made Linkin Park sound as classic as the Beatles. There was also the world's smallest mosh pit up by the stage. There couldn't have been more than 4 people, noticably three skinny-short white guys with a tall butch woman in the middle. I knew that if I approached the stage, my spine would have been folded into a pretzel shape by the trucker-looking woman I will refer to as "Big Wheel Betty". I did learn something that night though:

1. NuMetal is still alive and kicking in Kansas
2. Mosh pits look just as ridiculous as they did in high school
3. Sometimes you can tell just by walking into a place that the beer will taste like piss
   

The next day I picked up a new practice amp since my other one sounded like a cardboard box filled with pissed off snakes. I'm pretty happy with is so far, I can actually practice my chords and scale changes since I can now tell when I'm playing broken notes.

In other news, today is "White day" in Japan. On Valentines today in Japan, the women present their significant others with chocolate gifts. The women have to wait until "White Day" until it's the men's turn to present them with chocolates. The Japanese need to learn to concatenate their holidays. One Valentine's type holiday is retarded enough.

Also my departments at work keep getting consolidated. Now I'm having to do 3 different job descriptions (Internal Help Desk, Product Support, and now Pre-sales). As a result, my normal pensive thoughful profile pic is going to be taken down in favor of a less inspired pose. I may post a happier pic if I find out I'm getting more money.

Blogger comments aren't working and it pisses me off. I would like to remain in MPH's camp and not go to HaloScan, but if this keeps up I may have no choice. You see, an important part of my work day is spent scanning blogs and commenting frequently inbetween tech-support and pre-sales calls. In fact, those of you who have site-meter probably notice I check pages with the tenacity of a stalker with a hefty food/water supply. I used to try to read books in my downtime, but it seems I end up reading the same paragraph over and over. Since I'm still stuck reading Seven Types of Ambiguity, it also seems I'm having to look up the same big-ass words on Dictionary.com every time also, which I attribute to Pop's-like level of ADD. Here's a list of things I've done to fill the time today as I haven't been able to comment:

• Counted how many business related e-mails I've sent. So far I've sent over 300 e-mails this week. Shizzat, that's not even counting my personal e-mails.
• Memorized some chord charts to prepare for my guitar lesson tomorrow.
• Threw nerf footballs at co-workers who were minding their own business.
• Deflected counter-attacks of nerf footballs with my head
• E-mail co-workers about midgets in pink socks (sad but true)
• Listened to waaaaaay too many mp3's
• Chatted on yahoo messenger and AIM with peeps

In short, I was bored, boring, and cranky. My allergies are still making me feel miserable and I couldn't eat meat today as I'm Catholic and it's Lent time. Make that extra cranky. One thing I don't understand is how Catholic vegetarians deal with Lent. Surely for them not eating meat on Friday is no sacrifice. If I have a tofu burger on Friday, it's penance. If they eat a tofu burger on Friday, it's the day after Thursday. In fact, to sate my arrogance they should be forced to eat meat on Fridays. I wanted to eat some chicken tacos tonight and was forced to consume a veggie burrito from Chipotle instead. Now I'm doomed to a case of what Dave Chappelle lovingly refers to as "mud butt". In order to appease my nowhere near righteous sense of indignation about this, I'm going to go find a Catholic vegan tonight and force him/her to eat a bucket of the colonel's special recipe right in front of my face. Do it for Jesus....

Surely my blaspheming ways probably isn't elevating anyone's opinion of me or Catholics in general, but I read on this site that my kind conspired to assassinate Abe Lincoln too.

Oh well, I hardly ever post about religion or religious topics, so it'll be back to beer drinking and kareoke stories next week.

I am a 25-year-old 3rd Grader

I've always really wanted a cool job like Tom Hanks did in "BIG". Back when that movie came out, I thought designing and testing toys would be the best job a person could have. That was back when action figures were still cool, though. Back when we (me and those unfortunate enough to hang out with me) would have funerals for our brave GI Joes that fell in the war against Cobra.

Now the action figure market suffers from merchandising overkill. Mattel currently ranks among the worst with their over merchandising of Batman. We have such awful incarnations as "Artic Wing" Batman, or "Crocodile Armor" Batman. Batman lives in Gotham City... defending Gotham probably doesn't require special Eskimo or Steve Irwin powers. I swear, every time I open an issue of Toy Fare at Charles's house (Geek comrade) we spurn at the crap that passes for Batman toys. In fact, Charles and I thought we could create something at least as awful without even trying. And thus our new action figure was born. Before you comment on how horrible the Photoshop is, Charles turned this out in the time it took me to eat a 2-inch stack of Pringles.

In other news, my brother finally updated his blog. What a rare occasion today is. Now if you'll excuse me, I have 5 hours left of my shift, and a lot of Anti-Bush game to play.

"Dance Like No One Is Watching" OR "Lance Armstrong and His Cycling Buddies Can Eat My Ass"

I'm too lazy and/or ADD ridden to decide on 1 title and topic today, so enjoy this bit of randomness.

Saturday, I went to my usual spot to listen to 80's music, drink, dance, and sing in no particular order. What made this weekend a little different from my normal outing was the addition of an Elvis impersonator to the mix. Some people at the club were throwing a 50th birthday party for one of their friends and had hired him as entertainment. He sang a few songs with the house band, and wasn't too shabby. After his set, we snuck our way onto one of the tables in the private party and hung out for a bit, and got his business card. I didn't realize that the Wichita market had an Elvis impersonator. From the wording of his card, he had competition in this market. He claimed to be the finest impersonator in the state. I would think if he was the only impersonator, he would have that information on the card. I wonder if there is a hidden Elvis impersonating subculture in Kansas that I'm blissfully unaware of. Perhaps they have meetings at the American Legion to discuss issues plaguing impersonators in this state, whatever they may be. I can imagine the Elvis-impersonating lobby would be a lot stronger in other states like Nevada, but not here.

In other news, the weather is getting warmer here, which means two things. Firstly, my allergies are going ballistic and I'm quite miserable. Secondly, there is an army of cyclists that have come out of hibernation to terrorize my neighborhood. Packs of 20 or so cyclists all in tight shorts, conical helmets, and "Live Strong" yellow rubber bands, hoard the city streets whilst making me late to work. Several things about this bother me.

1. Someone is able to ride bikes instead of working Mondays like the rest of the rest of us.
2. Traffic laws apparantly do not apply to cyclists.
3. A bicycle is slower than a car. 20 bicycles is slower than molasses.

If I had a snow plow I would push them all in the ditch while yelling "Live Strong Motherfucks!".

Fosset, Now First Person to Fly Solo Around The World

7Online.com: Fosset, Now First Person to Fly Solo Around The World

Well, Steve Fossett successfully completed his 23,000 mile flight around the world and landed safely back in Salina, KS. Having been to Salina, I would have to say if I were flying around the world, I would want to land somewhere more interesting than Salina. Last I remember, their major attractions were a McDonald's and a Super-Walmart. Of course I haven't been there in awhile, so if any Salina residents read my blog, I don't mean any offense. Your town could have spontaneously gotten cool in the year it's been since I've stopped to refuel on the way to Kansas City/Lawrence. I just highly doubt it.

Not that Wichita is any tourist gem, but at least we will get the occasional Japanese tourist who wants to see the Home Depot where BTK shopped.

nos·talgic (-jk) adj. -- A bittersweet longing for things of the past

A couple of years ago, back when I first started blogging (as a Xanga-whore), I tried deeply to have purpose to my entries. I was political, but I didn't really enjoy ranting about it too much. Instead I went the route of the pop-culture junkie. Kind of like the character Rob from Nick Hornby's book "High Fidelity", I would want to quantify and review everything cultural either using bulleted/numbered lists or slightly retarded rating systems. Well, that and make thinly-veiled racist remarks about Teresa's Korean husband (she liked that pic so much she hung it up in her desk at our college newspaper). However, Xanga was/is the breeding ground of really bad teen cliques (Dawson's Creek/The O.C webrings), so I abandoned blogging for good (or so I thought at the time).

As I started my new job, I quickly became agitated about how process driven IT work is. I felt every last bit of creative oomph sucked out of me after just a few weeks. So the blog got restarted with a new name and new ambitions. I thought I could write witty pseudo-humorous essays kind of in the mold of Sedaris or Eggers, but that just wasn't me. The closest thing I came to an actual essay was about Socialist Fraggles. Most of the time, it's just typical brain droppings, though.

Anyhow, I think I'll get back to doing the occasional review, starting with my brother's blog. I rate it one gay Skeletor as he never feels the need to update or drink pitchers of beer with me anymore. Well, all the dribblings have passed from my brain to fingertips/keyboard, so I'm ending this now before I end up with a Pop's narrative. Hope everyone is having a superlative day.