A LITTLE TOO FAST

Going through the automatic spam-deletion ritual of my Gmail, I noticed the title of a spam in the brief second before its death: "housewife joystick." I briefly imagined the entertainment possibilities that opening such a thing would have offered, but by then it was too late. Now I guess I'll never know.

NEW SONG KING

The previous King of Songs was "Too Little Too Late" by Metric. It has now been supplanted by "Beauty*2" by Ladytron. Update your heraldry accordingly.

FURTHER ASTONISHING ADVANCES

In the bathrooms at work, they've replaced the normal, outmoded, manual paper towel dispensers with these fancy motion-activated ones that dispense a pre-set length of paper towel for you to rip off. Except that lots of times, they get kind of clogged up, so when you wave your hand beneath the slot, the motor whirs and you can see a length of paper towel -- your paper towel -- bunch up inside the housing. And they're rigged so civilians can't open them up, presumably to keep us from stealing the sweet, sweet candy within. End result: The machine keeps your paper towel, and you walk out with your hands wet. Great.

Technology is awesome, except when it doesn't damn work.

TAGBACK

A blogmeme escaped LJ and tagged excellent Jenni, who in turned tagged me! There is no escape.

1. I've picked up a lot of my recent verbal tics from an online comic strip. (c.f. "such as" placed before actions, "ain't" substituted for "can't," "don't," or "won't")


2. After I've gone to a show, I turn the stereo off on my drive home; it's like the music has to marinate in me for a while.


3. I stole some binder clips from work for the express purpose of using them to close my bags of chips and whatnot at home.


4. I keep an mp3 CD of stand-up comedy in my car for traffic jams.


5. When considering an amount of money, I tend to split it up in terms of CDs it'd buy. A million dollars is a damn lot of CDs.


6. Through a mix of coincidence and generosity, I own one of each of the last-generation videogame consoles (PS2, Gamecube, Xbox), but I only have two games for each one. At least they're system-specific titles. I only ever seem to play with them when people are over; they're that kind of thing.


7. Spiders and disgusting insects are the only things that bother me; I don't mind snakes, and I probably wouldn't be afraid of rats either.


8. I wonder sometimes whether a parallel-universe version of me would have entered the military, since I have displayed not-inconsiderable skill for organizing things and telling people what to do, but then I remember the whole taking orders angle.

I can't tag anybody else, since I'm not too sure who reads this thing, but if you want to do your own, I ain't stop you.

SEE

YOU COULD NOT ESCAPE THE MONTH

Guess what I just updated

You have been informed

Information cannot be contained

YES, MORE, ALWAYS

There are some days when I just want to smash and loot everything in my line of sight in order to gather money to funnel into technologies like this. I sometimes have fantasies about getting a bunch of billionaires to join together into a League of Science Justice that would travel the world in a hypersonic jet with an awesome logo on the side and throw fat sacks of cash at all the scientists working on alternative energies and cures for diseases and technosocial adjustments and god dammit who wants to get on board this plane with me right now

A GOOD WEEKEND

In brief:

- The show on Saturday night went almost spookily well; the evening was in no small part additionally enhanced by the appearance of excellent friends from far away that I don't see often enough

- The weather was also unrelentingly, mercilessly beautiful for like 48 hours straight

- I think I just like being reassured every now and then that I know fantastic people

The thing now is that I need to contemplate what to make for dinner tonight and I'm having something akin to writer's block. I might marinate some meat for tomorrow's dinner, but that still leaves the question of what I am to eat tonight. I'll think of something. I have confidence in this.

TOMORROW, TOMORROW

Be advised: Tomorrow (Saturday) night, the Bazaar Cafe at 5927 California St (between 21st and 22nd) will be the site of acoustic musical devastation starting at 7pm. Yes, I posted about this already, but this is my blog and I make the rules.

BEYOND CLASSIFIED

I've had a lot of conversations with cab drivers that have ranged from the amiably mundane to the delightfully erudite. The one I had just a few hours ago, however, takes the cake. It takes all possible cakes. If you are looking at or contemplating cake, the ownership of the cake is not in question: It belongs to this conversation.

INFORMATION I LEARNED FROM MY CAB DRIVER (DELIVERED IN COMPLETE EARNESTNESS, WITHOUT A HINT OF IRONY OR SELF-AWARENESS)

- "Chemtrails" in the sky above metropolitan areas -- similar to contrails -- are evidence of a plot by the New World Order that uses crop dusting aircraft to blanket said metro areas with aerosolized Prozac, aluminum, and beryllium in order to keep the populace anesthetized and complacent.

- Thirteen families secretly control the world, including the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, and the Medicis (he called them the "Medicinis," but I read between the lines a little). It's unclear whether these comprise the New World Order or the Trilateral Commission (more on that below).

- The Trilateral Commission is an organization dedicated to global domination through the establishment of three massive conglomerated fascist states: The United States of the Americas, the United States of Europe, and whatever Asia is supposed to be.

- The Bush family has been ruling America for the past five generations, financed by Nazis, who were in turn bankrolled by the (Jewish) Rothschilds, who by the way initiated the Holocaust in a (successful) attempt to drive the Jews toward the territory that would eventually become Israel.

I cannot emphasize enough that this was delivered to me in completely reasonable, conversational tones from a man in his 40s who drove a cab for a living and truly appeared to be a functional, even amicable human with all his brains in his head despite clearly having been positively steeped in, well, some dodgy information. Let's just call it that for now.

I guess I just have to wait for the black UN helicopters to come take me away. We didn't get that far, but I think that's the next logical step, isn't it? I wonder if the Mossad figure into this at all. I can only wait and see, I suppose.

SIMPLE QUIET PLEASURES

- Discovering something on an mp3 CD you made a long time ago that you'd basically forgotten existed

- Getting a pretzel rod out of the bag that has exactly the right amount of salt on it

- Tearing open a new box of tissues*

- Cutting up the absolute most correct amount of strawberries to make the breakfast-creation process effortless for the rest of the week

- Banking a wadded-up paper towel into the work bathroom trashcan off not one but two walls

* I still do some sneezing at work; not as much as I used to before the days of Constant Alavert, but some

APOLOWARNING

First off, I want to say I'm sorry to the excellent people at Printz Dance Project whose fundraiser I missed last night; I can only blame myself inasmuch as that self is inextricably connected to a set of organic pipes, ducts, and solvents whose malfunctions were being smoothed out.

Secondly, you have roughly a week to prepare for this:



Come see some music, and when the music is done, we'll go get some drinks or some fries or possibly both.

DIGESTIVE REINFORCEMENTS

I think my guts are returning to normal, though I may have sabotaged the recovery inadvertently by accidentally drinking some milk that had just started to go south. I followed it up immediately with a lot of yogurt, though, in the hopes that friendly bacteria would help handle that business before anything untoward began. I'll keep you posted. Or not! I mean what part of the world really wants to read about what my guts are doing.

GASTROINTESTINAL MISCOMMUNICATION

Let's just say that last night my stomach area was giving me some problems executing on the sleep deliverable. What I want to know is: Is this some sort of stomach virus, or is it possible to get mild food poisoning? Does that even exist.

SUPERFLUOUS LEXICAL ITEM

I am addicted to the Penny Arcade podcast for two reasons:

1. They are an excellent thing to listen to on my commute to/from work.
2. "Tycho"* talks a lot like my pal Chris, by which I mean the rhythms of his speech, the words he chooses to use, and the way he constructs sentences are very similar. In a weird way, listening to this podcast is sort of like hanging out with Chris by proxy.

Anyway, the point is that a new one came out, about the process that led to this strip, and it's excellent. What I now wonder is whether we need yet another new name for the internet, and maybe we do. This one would be for people who remain in that precious, clueless state regarding the internet where they might still think it's called "the information superhighway."

I kind of like "the turbo porn boulevard," but that's probably not as good as it could get.

I have a friend who mused on this once, the fact that near-ubiquitous wireless means that we are constantly being bathed in pornographic imagery at all times. Like being stranded in a luminous nebula. A porn nebula.

* This presents an interesting puzzle because I know the dude's real-life name, but feel weird about referring to him by it because doing so feels oddly presumptuous to me, so I have compromised by deploying quotation marks around his chosen internet alias.

THANK YOU, COGITATION STATION

An idea popped into my head a little while ago that's been steadily gaining traction. I should say first that this isn't something I personally need (I seem to have the self-discipline necessary to wake up and actually do exercise), but that doesn't prevent it from sounding good.

My mental image of personal trainers has always been of someone standing over you while you work out, generally saying encouraging things but probably having to resort every once in a while to harsher tactics (sarcasm, yelling, etc). Well, what about inverting that a little and hiring a personal trainer prostitute? Basically someone who offers incentive to exercise in the form of sexual favors. That, at least, is an incentive that seems more or less guaranteed to never wear out.