JOINED THE FUTURE

Switched to T-Mobile, got a Googlephone (HTC MyTouch, the G2 by any other name), pretty happy with it. I can't get it to talk to iTunes, though, which isn't a big deal (it can detect the music I throw on it using raw USB transfer) except for the fact that I'd like to be able to put playlists on it. Maybe there'll be an app for that.

Some things you should know:

- Updated the Dogblog

- The Definite Articles are playing Bottom of the Hill tomorrow (Thursday) night
-- We're opening the Pinkerton cover show
-- Get there as close to 8 as possible, we go on first
-- It'll be a damn good one

- You are rad

EVERYONE NEEDS A PLAN FOR THIS

The dream I had last night is apparently proof that I can come up with the correct strategy for anything, albeit slightly late:

- Exploring an unknown planet with some people
- We open a vault in some ruins that the native creatures seem really apprehensive about
- There is a tall, charming Asian man inside
- It turns out this dude is The Devil
- As soon as I figure this fact out, he turns to face me, and I know we're gonna have to fight
-- As he prepares, he stretches one leg out in a way that somehow tells me "The Devil knows tae kwon do"
-- My next thought is "I don't know tae kwon do"
-- Followed by "I'm gonna get my head kicked in"
- HOWEVER
-- This is where I wake up, and somewhere between waking up and attaining full consciousness, the plan comes to me:
--- Wait for him to throw that first high kick, and then break the ankle of his weight-bearing leg with a savage heel stomp

I'm not sure why I thought I could pull that off, but it was the best plan my half-asleep brain could come up with. What do you want.

THE POINT OF TWITTER IS THAT IT IS OPT-IN

Can anyone tell me a reason why I should give even half a shit whether spambots follow me on Twitter? It's not like I follow them back. Whatever they're saying doesn't appear on my timeline. I don't have to read it. At all. Because I don't follow them back. I don't understand why bots would bug someone at all unless s/he followed them back and had to read their bullshit all the time. It's opt-in communication! Do I care whether a spambot reads my tweets? No! Hell, probably half my follower count is bots. Go ahead, bots! Read away! BASK IN MY GLORY ETERNAL

The only user I've ever blocked was an actual human that looked to me like a conspiracy-theory nutcase. Crazy people bug me. Bots don't. I'm pretty sure this means I am one with modernity.

OLFACTMYSTERY

On Friday when I left the office, I smelled something terrible as soon as I walked out the door -- kind of a strange, manure-like odor. It turns out a bunch of people smelled it. All over the city. Are we ever going to find out what in the fuck that was? How can something smell like that over the entire city of San Francisco?

- I don't think we experienced a massive, city-wide sewer malfunction; I'm guessing I'd've heard about that
- To my knowledge, there are no farms or massive animal rendering plants within city limits
-- If there were, I'd bet we'd've smelled it before, and it would be a known thing
- I did not witness an army of trucks festooned with animal parts and fecal matter driving through the whole of the city at high speed, flinging garbage everywhere

After I'd been home for a bit and saw reports of the weird stink popping up literally everywhere thanks to Twitter, I started to consider much stranger theories:

- Someone killed a god, and its vast, invisible body is floating above the city and beginning to decay
- Aliens landed for a mission of observation, and were walking among us wearing cloaking devices that emitted radiation that stimulated the human olfactory nerve in a way that was not anticipated

Can you think of a more plausible explanation? And don't say "chemtrails."

MORE NAMES, MORE TINY TINY STORIES

Friday. Time for some more character duos again. I wonder if I'm going to end up seeing an actual pair of comedians one of these days; it hasn't happened yet, but I'm not ruling it out!

- Herskovic & Ohms: A pair of inventors who build made-to-order robots, work out of a surprisingly dingy basement laboratory, and you get the sense they might have ties to the Russian mafia. You may or may not be right; just don't ask 'em about it, and it'll be all good.

- Matto & Nessner: One is a girl with curly hair who works at a radio station, and the other is her boyfriend who thinks he's the only blond white guy with a beard to have ever picked up a guitar and done a cover of a rap song. It won't last. Now's your chance.

- Swanick & Frasso: Lawyers who are always utterly impeccably dressed, and whose office is an unadorned twenty-foot glass cube in the center of the city.

- Silsby & Wenrick: A British rabbit and badger who were transformed into humans about ten years ago, and have quietly adjusted to life in their new shape living together in a cottage on a meadow somewhere.

TIMEMACHINEGO

Oh shit! I didn't forget about Dre! I forgot about Sarah McLachlan! Remember her?! A conversation among some friends of mine a day or two ago resulted in my putting Fumbling Towards Ecstasy on my iPod and hitting PLAY, and a time portal opened up in my mind that led back to 1998 or 9. It was spooky. Remember this album? No? Did you have something else from that era that was basically ubiquitous, but that you haven't thought of in years? You should put it in your ears and see where it takes you now. I have to see if I still own Throwing Copper by Live or what.

EVENTUAL CAR PLANS

I'm not saying it's going to happen immediately, but I will eventually be getting a new car, and it's going to be a Honda Fit for a number of reasons. I had an idea, though, that you might as well know about now: I'm going to get a white one, and put a Ghostbusters sticker on the driver and passenger-side doors. Because I can. As long as I can find two Ghostbusters stickers of the right size.

CONTROVERSY MONDAY: FUCK YOUR GRAFFITI

"These things might as well be enormous banner ads," a character in a Leisure Town comic I read once* mused aloud as he looked at the graffiti he and his pals had been spraying around town. "Nobody cares."

He's right.

Note that I'm not talking about stuff like the sidewalk sprays, or whatever's on the wall on Valencia between 23rd and 24th, or the murals all over the city that incorporate graffiti-style lettering or themes. I just mean the incomprehensible bullshit tags. Who gives even half a shit about those? Nobody can read them. They all look the same. Who else is even paying attention -- other graffiti dudes? Congratulations: there are probably five of you, all talking to each other in a moronic code that gets in the way of my enjoyment of the urban landscape. And don't give me shit about this being some kind of art form! I would rather that there be art there, not your tenth-grade "drawin' on my backpack during history class" bullshit. It's not a "logo" or a "brand," either, not if I can't fucking identify it. Or rather, it might be, but you know what? It's a shitty logo/brand. Fuck that, and fuck you. Find something else to do with your time and talent.

This Controversy Monday brought to you by this, I guess

* "Down by the Freeway," if you're curious

ALWAYS ADVENTURES WITH THESE NAMES

Friday. It's fake name time again!

- Kahn & Yunan: Does anyone other than me want to see a sitcom where two barbarians open a tea shop in the savage wilds of ancient mainland China?

- Hulslander & Schwerdtfeger: Boutique sausages sold only in the priciest neighborhoods, brought to you by two guys who are almost incomprehensible. But their mustaches are amazing.

- Menjares & Montecillo: You know what I see? Two naturalists who've found a way to open a portal to the dimension where fairies live, but since they're scientists, they're trying to catalog all of the life therein first, before they tell the rest of the world what they've got.

- Frizzell & Duve: Two people who've invented a great new shampoo that's just on the cusp of becoming a major mass-market product. I can't explain how I got to this point; it just ... popped in there.

MAYBE YOU ALREADY KNOW THIS

I have determined that my technique is superior to all other techniques that may exist, even though I don't know what they could possibly be. I refer here to my method for sticking bars of soap together. I do this when the one in my shower gets a little puny -- I stick it to a fresh new one. You do this too, right? Or am I crazy? I might be crazy.

ANYWAY

1. Use a tool of some sort to score a series of deep, cross-hatched lines into one surface of the new bar. You want the lines to be somewhere around 2mm or 1/16" deep.
2. Do the same with the old bar.
3. Get both bars wet.
4. Stick the two bars together, with the scored surfaces touching.
5. Squeeze as much as is reasonable; you don't want to destroy the old bar entirely. Just make the two bars be firm friends.
6. You may want to leave them on the soap dish with the new bar on top.

This is more or less the same technique I remember using to "weld" pieces of clay together back during my ceramics class in high school. It works pretty well, is all I'm sayin'.

This has been a public service announcement that may not have been necessary.

DATES TO RESERVE

Some dates you should keep in mind if you're around:

Thursday 8/27:
- The Definite Articles return to Bottom of the Hill
- It's the Pinkerton tribute show
- Doors at 8:30p
- I think we go on first?
- $10

Saturday 9/19:
- I'm thinking of declaring a game of Ultimate Team Cardboard Fortress Battle
- Possible new location TBD
- 11a
- Free, obviously
- Stay tuned

SOMETIMES I WONDER

Now that the national "debate" on health care has basically revealed itself at ground level to be a bunch of idiots shouting at each other, do you find that the notion "only smart people should be allowed to vote" carries perhaps a bit more weight with you than it once did, despite the terrible things it has the potential to imply? Or what about "only people who did the reading should be allowed to talk"? It's only eight pages long, slapdicks. The last page is just references.

One of the greatest fears people of my generation have is this: getting sick enough to have to seek serious treatment, or getting into an accident that requires hospitalization. They don't fear dying: medical science is strong. What they fear is their savings being wiped out. This shit costs. Anybody I know could tell you this. A child of twelve could tell you this.

Let's put it this way: suppose you show up to one of these town hall meetings yelling about "death panels," which causes my friends and I to decide we've had enough of your ridiculous bullshit nonsense and slap the stupid out of you. When you wake up in the hospital with casts on your limbs, is your first thought "I hope I survive this"?

Or is it "I hope I'm covered"?

IT IS NAME TIME ONCE MORE

It's time once again for some more names out of Lore Sjoberg's hat and the characters they conjure. It's probably not surprising that this is still entertaining to me, given how my brain works.

- Lagrant & Ashline: All their lives, these two aspired to go into business together as attorneys, architects, or anything that would allow them to use their last names in conjunction like this as the moniker for their enterprise. Instead, they somehow got streets named after each of them instead, and where they intersect, there's a park.

- Crescenzo & Swaner: A rail-thin, dark-haired man with a pencil 'stache and a brunette who likes to wear fancy dresses; they're "opera security," whatever that means. Don't mess.

- Portugal & Szymanowski: The title characters of a sitcom set in the trenches of WWI, featuring a jolly fat guy and an excitable thin guy who get up to all types of wackiness. That's right, I said "wackiness."

- Mentkowski & Klinefelter: Scientists for hire. Doesn't matter which specific discipline. Why? Because they have PhDs in everything.

ATTENTION!

Humans of Earth:

I have found what may be a universal all-purpose JPEG. It is located here. Go forth now in peace.

HOW BIG IS OUR RUG

So! Uh, this, then? Is anybody particularly surprised? Will anybody be further surprised if this is the last we hear about it?

I would really like it if we heard more. A lot more. I wonder if there's a way to make coverage of stories like this just as exciting to the masses as Us Weekly's nonstop Jon & Kate parade.

SORRY, MUSIC PEOPLE

I'm just going to say it: I don't like Bitte Orca. To my ears, it's the spiritual successor to Blueberry Boat, and we all know how I felt about that album. I don't know how ironic you'll find this sentence, but I react very poorly to anything that smacks of pretentiousness to me, and this didn't smack of it so much as shriek aloud with the voices of a thousand maimed robots.

Was I listening to the same album everybody else is? This thing is a fucking mess. Every track sounds to me like a junk catalog of suddenly-abandoned ideas for songs that were partially executed and thrown together after the fact in an utterly arbitrary, haphazard fashion. I'm all for a song that progresses through movements, but these tracks have no cohesion or logic to them that I can detect. It literally sounds like The Dirty Projectors had an idea for song A, then abandoned it utterly for a wholly different song B, then threw that shit out the window and started song C, all in the same five-minute track. Then they do it again. And again. It's horrible. Why do that! The Fiery Furnaces already went there! There's no need to follow them into that blasted, desolate land.

There's like one track on this album that I enjoy. Someone let me know if that's because I'm somehow crazy, or because this thing really just isn't that good.