LAUNDRY SITUATION

The past three nights running, I have come home with the firm intention of doing laundry, because I know I'm running out of underwear. Each time (including tonight), one of my housemates has been using the machines. That's absolutely not a big deal, but it bears mentioning that I am now down to what I'm going to have to call the "second-string" underwear, the boxers that are a little short and raggedy and in general not as good-feeling as my "main" boxers for some odd reason. But you know what? Life could be a whole lot worse, too.

ELECTRO DEATH THROES

My car stereo is in its last stages of life. Now it simply refuses to play any sort of CD until at least ten minutes have passed. What still convinces me this is a heat-related issue is that it works fine after the sun's been out for a while. You should see it leap to life when I start my car in the middle of a hot day! But if I come back to it after leaving it parked for an hour or two in night or fog, I just have to cross my fingers.

Sometimes the mp3 function works from the get-go, but the first five minutes of playtime are filled with the most hideous bubbling and skipping artifacts you've ever heard. It kind of sounds like demons are trying to communicate with me through my car stereo. Or maybe I just left The Meadowlands in there. Ha ha! Get it? Because that one singer from the Wrens is unintelligible.

Seriously, I'm going to get a new car stereo soon, because this is pretty damn annoying.

Other upcoming heart-stopping highlights from the Scintillating True-Life Theater That Is Jon's Blog

- The fridge at work where we keep the free water bottles has been freezing some of them again, rendering them undrinkable until thawed

- Why is the sun always goddamn in my eyes when I am driving home, forcing me to wear this baseball cap that makes me look like a tool*

- Now that it's well and truly summer, the flower- and shrubbery-filled grounds of my office park (where I like to take occasional refreshing walks) are filled with wasps and have hence become enemy territory

* (My driver's-side sun visor snapped off a long time ago and I am too lazy to get it fixed)

POSSIBLE DREAM DANGER

Less than two hours ago, I ate a ridiculous amount of pho. I am now going to bed because I'm so tired it's nearly impossible to see straight,* but I can make no guarantees that I won't have some damn weird dreams.

* There was a going-away party last night for my buddies Josh and Martine that involved a lot of carousing, krumping, karaoke, and a little something we dubbed Dr. Jon's Miracle Tonic.

STICKERFIXTURE

I need something else to put cool stickers on. By way of a for-example, I have this and an unreleased Patches design in sticker form, and don't really have anywhere to put them aside from my guitar case. The case is an excellent place for stickers, but I feel like it doesn't get taken out enough. And I don't know that I'd put these on my car; the designs are too small, unfortunately. Where else, then? It is confounding me.

IT MAKES TOTAL SENSE

I know I have to write about the con, and I will eventually, but I have to get this musical recommendation/comparison out of my head. It popped in there on the way home and I have to know if it makes any sense to you guys.

Modest Mouse's Good News for People Who Love Bad News, if made into a physical object, would be a van similar to the Mystery Machine from Scooby Doo, painted in swirls of no less than four colors. Streamers would fly from the antenna, and occasionally someone would poke their head out of the sunroof and go "WOOOOOOOO!"

The Great Destroyer by Low, on the other hand, is more like an armored conversion van: Heavier and a little slower to power up, but almost unstoppably solid. It's only painted one color all over, but welded to the roof is a giant motherfucking shark fin.

You know I am right about this.

THE MOST NERDICAL TIME OF THE YEAR

In a few hours I'll be boarding a plane and heading down first to LA, then San Diego. This year is an extremely low-key trip for me as compared to last year's. I've stayed out of anything resembling planning, so I'll probably be calling a lot of people when I get down there, to see where people are and what they're doing, but not really being the motive force myself behind much of anything. Which I kind of like! We'll see how it goes. At the worst, I'm left to my own devices, wandering around the largest comic convention on the continent. OH NOES

So if I'm away from the internet from here until Sunday night, don't be surprised.

NOT MUCH TO SAY

Dogblog update went up sometime last night.

This will likely not be a good week for me socially i/t/o my nights, because I've got these meetings every damn day at 8am that require me to get up at 6:15 in order to be there on time. I realize this is a relatively small-scale tribulation, but it's still damn annoying. I really need to get into a store and look at new car stereos.

Also, I haven't linked to this picture of Bizzle in a while. Bizzle.

ALL RIGHT HANG ON

It is time to get back to business, people, and that means discussing potato-based snack products that disappeared from the market years ago for no apparent reason.

Many days ago, my friend Maggie reminded me about O'Boises. That name would've been a link, btw, but the results of my cursory Googling were pitiful. Not that you should need to be reminded about O'Boises. Remember the catchphrase from the commercial? "O'Boises are o'boisterous!" Okay, nevermind that, but do you also remember that they were stone cold fantastic?

Unlike the Tato Skin thing, I have to tell you that there does not appear to be a current substitute for nor thinly-disguised absolute same thing as O'Boises anywhere in grocery stores today. I am sorry about this. I just thought you should know you're not alone if you're wondering where the hell those damn things went.

BATMAN BEGUN

Followup of a sort to previous post -- I saw Batman Begins, finally. It's easily the best Batman movie made to date. I give it a 5/5, but the fight scenes a 0/5. GUESS WHY. As you watched the movie, did you notice that you had no god damn idea what was happening during the fights because the camera was too close, too dark, and shaking around so much you thought you might get a headache? AAAGRHGLRHURHLAHURHG

I know that this was probably a stylistic choice meant to represent something along the lines of "See! Observe! It is confusing and hard to fight Batman!" Except fuck you, movie: I knew that already! They could just as easily have gone the other way with it, i.e. "Look! Watch! Batman is the #1 best fighter in the world on top of being sneaky and mysterious and totally fucking terrifying -- look, see how he takes all these bad guys to school right here!" and actually filmed it decently. That, uh, did not occur.

Aside from this admittedly somewhat minor point, the movie was great. My buddy Chris already did a better job than me of saying why; go read his thing instead.

EVERYTHING'S IN SLOW MOTION

Yesterday's July 4th activities were just the right amount of organized chaos to leave me with a sore body (thanks to Lazer Tag in the park) and a surprisingly clean kitchen, given what had come before (thanks to my awesome friends). I am, somewhat unsurprisingly, exhausted. Before next weekend, I need to find the time to:

- Send the postcards I made forever ago
- Make some more out of the magazines I have piled up (and also out of the ones dropped off graciously by Sarah V)
- Put up another Dogblog update
- Do some work on the thing
- Take care of the other thing
- (You get the idea)

Caitlin remarked to me once that I always seem to be able to make the time to do what I want, but I think if that were really true, I'd've made this weekend last until August.