Saturday, September 30, 2006

the new

there's a short story thing now. i have always had a staying up too late on weekends thing, and perhaps this is an offshoot of it because at the moment i am staying up late writing a short story. i wrote a short story last saturday as well. this one is almost completely factual, so far anyway. i am listening to gomez and it's not bad, but if i were paying attention, there are some things about the music that are a bit annoying.

Friday, September 29, 2006

reading

this post was censored. i don't think it's always wise to say things out loud, and by the time i was done, i figured it was one of them. i will read a lot this coming week; i managed over 120 pages since the evening of the 26th, which ain't bad. keeping statistics on your reading is so wrong, isn't it?

Thursday, September 28, 2006

craft project for the day

i was making some tasty egg rolls in the oven...i was heating up some tasty egg rolls in the oven and i had more than i could really eat. so, i felt inspired to take them over to some people, and wrapped them up in foil. that was far from enough, however, presentation being so important. after carefully rolling the rolls in foil, i borrowed scissors and duct tape. i cut down a full-sized envelope, which came with a calendar inside, and left the clear plastic window to show the food. in case anyone couldn't figure out by the bulge that there was something within, now they could see the foil that wrapped the egg rolls. before inserting the foil-wrapped foodstuffs, i drew a picture on the back, using the clear plastic window as a mouth. it looked awful, but this did not deter me. i continued with my original plan, and wrote 'everyone is special, even egg rolls,' with the "v" and the "y" in "everyone" written in cut out duct tape. the letter "i" in "is" was a huge strip of duct tape, big enough that one might think the message was really "everyone s special, even egg rolls." i used more tape to cover the address of the people who sent me the unwanted calendar, and gave myself a big pat on the back.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

bye bye rowboat

it's really bye bye time to...my mullet. there are times in life when you have to give up something you care about to gain something you need. i needed to be able to look in the mirror and see that i didn't have crazy ringlets of hair sticking in all directions off of my neck. many girls in the city seem to have a similar hairstyle to mine, but they pull it off much better because their hair hangs straight down in back like it is supposed to. while i am no longer able to enjoy having the guy version of what i consider a sweet haircut, at least i can sleep better at night knowing i look less like someone's nerdy 11-year-old brother. perhaps the sheer ridiculousness of my mullet means i had one of the greatest mullets ever. however, i have grown fond of my new combed down scruffy hairstyle, and i needed some sanity from the back half of my head to match the brilliance exhibited elsewhere. rest assured, i do enjoy getting my hair cut for free. thx!

Saturday, September 23, 2006

happy eaters

if I am going to get sick of cereal, it has yet to occur. not only do i eat it almost every day, i almost exclusively eat it for dinner. several others i know have the same habit; it seems to come with the life here in the burg. the sad state of things as they currently stand is that anything requiring more than 3 minutes' prep time doesn't make it as a dinner option. too often, i will get home at 10pm with the goal of being in bed by 11. even boiling pasta takes too long; it requires at least half an hour from lighting the burner to finishing the sauce left on the plate. cereal can be fixed in a minute, doesn't go bad if you forget to eat it, and tastes so so good. even the issue of milk expiration dates can be skirted by having such long-shelf-life substitues as yogurt and unsweetend soymilk around. they also help in the event that hardship or laziness prevents me from getting more milk in a timely fashion.

back to music

I had the distinct pleasure of attempting to tune both my guitar and my bass today. I still could use a tuner, but I think with the guitar at least I am getting better. I managed to play a number of simple, catchy, repetitive bass lines without getting bored. As I gear up for a shot at the local music scene (seems crazy, I know), I'll need to be able to stick to basics. I don't really know what level of skill is actually required to play bass in the sort of band that plays around locally once in a while. I wonder if social skills are more necessary than musical ones, as bass players just don't have to do that much as part of the typical rock act. This all leads to the question: what sort of band should I be playing in, anyway? I think something folkish, singer-songwriter type stuff would be good. That way I wouldn't need to provide much creative input. Perhaps singer-songwriters go straight for the flawlessly talented backing musicians; their music is pretty much about them, and they need decorative embellishment from the supporting cast, not personality. More collaboratively creative bands could be welcoming to someone they simply thought was fairly interesting, or they could be overly picky about who they think is worth welcoming into the fold. Right now I am getting too tired and hungry to think about it, but maybe that's the best hint. More than anything else, the success of my foray onto the alleged scene will depend on how many people there are that play bass.

Friday, September 22, 2006

Coke Zero - for men, not for killing Diet Coke with Splenda

It's funny enough that someone decided it was time to create a new diet cola and sell it to men. It gets even worse when people get very upset about it, thinking Zero was just a corporate conspiracy intended to kill Diet Coke with Splenda. Did Coke go overboard with 3 straight-up diet colas? Sure. I don't think it's worth questioning their motives, though. The evidence is clear that Zero was, from the start, intended to be a distinct brand - the undiet cola, the sugarless cola for men. Yes, its presence in the marketplace could have helped spell Diet Coke with Splenda's doom, but there's no reason to get conspiratorial about it.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

shoes

i have two pair of shoes i don't even wear outside. this is a large percentage of the shoes i own, but i am waiting on the one pair of sneakers to wear out before ruining the next. as for the second, they have been around a bit longer but one must be careful with purple suede. i have a third pair i had intended only to wear at work and never outside. they were thoroughly ruined rather quickly, as i wore them outside a few times by mistake. which goes to show, it's not all that silly to refuse to wear the other 2 pair outside.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

you beat me to the punch

you, i said you beat me to the punch
i'm a lonely staring dunce
you're no empty seats at lunch,
yeah you beat me to the punch

Sunday, September 17, 2006

picture frames

you ever feel like your life doesn't fit into any of the picture frames they sell at the store? neither do i. you can always pay for a custom one anyway, which is expensive, but you use the internet so you're rich.

scuttle the rowboats, it's quittin' time

When do professional goals become more important than personal happiness? I suppose it's all right to spend 6 months in a lousy situation because you'll learn a lot at work. Many people don't like their job or where they live, so maybe there's no big deal in any of it. On the other hand, I find myself wondering this weekend whether I should pack it up and go back to the soda counter.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

the wheatgrass conspiracy

wd-50, socks, and iron lungs? vegetative states and ordely fashions. is wheatgrass taking over our culture? people are growing it, and not just in lawns. i thought grass belonged in lawns. it's like the opposite of bonsai; it's larger than life, or at least larger than typical domesticated grass plant life. we're not sheep, you know; i'm not so sure we should be eating the stuff. wherein lies the fascination. i am increasingly done with green as a favorite color.

Monday, September 11, 2006

making peace at the grocery store

"i need to punch you in the head so that i can get my organic oatmeal" doesn't go over well, but neither does complaining. perhaps i can be ok with the fact that a lot of people like to buy good food. not every store has the same number of pushy shoppers, however. maybe it could be a selling point?

get out of my head

sorry, just kidding, you can stay. sometimes, though, there are certain artists whose music gets stuck in my head and drives out all creative thought. in some circumstances, that could be a good thing, but usually it is bad.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

vacances

what defines a vacation? does going somewhere for the weekend mean you are on vacation? is it important to accomplish certain things on vacation? why is it that when i go on vacation with my family, we spend the whole time on our feet?

Thursday, September 07, 2006

the killer app

just got a new phone, a free one, and boy am i sad about the lack of features. it's not the camera, which it has, or bluetooth, which it doesn't. it's not the games, which are only previews, or the menu system, which is hideously rendered monochrome. it's the fact that the clock is only displayed when the phone has been idle long enough for the display to go blank. i tell time almost exclusively by my phone's clock, and this is way too annoying. close second is the fact that the time of call is not displayed when you hang up.

guo(4) qi(2) le

expired

ni(3) zen(3) me le

What's wrong with you?

hao(3)bu(4)hao(3)

ok?

streaks

there is one thing i can think of where i have had at least one victory against everyone i have ever played. chinese chess. today, one of my coworkers broke out a chinese chess set and we played checkers with it. i can't remember the rules for real chinese chess. sad.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

revelations

i am in love with several major corporations. you see, i depend daily on them for support - self worth flows naturally from the finest foods, clothing, entertainment, retail experiences, and travel accomodations. i hope some day to share my passion with the world.

the making of lists

top man-made things that i would like to fish out of the ocean

rubber ducks

lobster trap marking buoys

a very buoyant canister vac

a combination harvester

floating fishing knives

Monday, September 04, 2006

congrats, u have no idea what you're doing

so i might be visiting this place but they sure don't have a real safari-friendly site. looks much better in firefox. then again, google hates safari as well. uk indie genius boy fionn regan is a pretty worthy cause for continent-hopping concert plans.

you don't take it with you

camping hasn't really been roughing it in the true sense most of my life. i think on-site wifi is a bit much, however. maybe if you brought the laptop to your car campground and then drove/rode/walked somewhere to use the internet, it wouldn't seem so bad. then again, people had portable satellite radios all over the place. which reminds me. why use one of those things ever? the signal gets blocked by trees, of all things. new hampshire must not have very many happy satellite radio listeners.