NFL week 2 horah!

Did I mention I love Football?

Falcons over Cardinals
Cowboys over Bears
Steelers over Titans
Bengals over Ravens
Eagles over Lions
Vikings over Dolphins
Chiefs over Browns
Panthers over Buccaneers
Packers over Bills
Seahawks over Broncos
Rams over Raiders
Texans over Redskins
Patriots over Jets
Chargers over Jaguars
Colts over Giants
Saints over 49ers

maps

the gps systems for cars could be one of the greatest inventions for the wandering driver.  I always think I'll beable to home in on my destination somehow using magic powers, so who needs directions?  While a success rating of about 40% is respectable, it still leaves much to be desired.  So now I turn to the helpful garmin as my co-pilot.
maybe I should invest in an awesome side-kick voice for my garmin...
Jarvis?
Scottie?
no.  I'm going to get a welsh language option for the garmin.  It will be great, someone to yell at as he gabbles away in some incomprehensible dying language trying to tell me to just TURN LEFT YOUR THERE!  I can even make so sometimes it's in welsh and sometimes it's in heavily accented welnglish just to mess with my head.

too much guitar hero

How much is too much? 
If, instead of random sparks of color flashing in front of your eyes when you close them, you see the scrolling circles of guitar hero behind your eyelids, you've played too much guitar hero.
If your dreams involve a strange blending of playing guitar hero and living the life of a rock superstar because of your intense level of play, you've played too much guitar hero.
If your fiance comes over to you while you're playing, and you actually think that she's admiring your fretwork, you've played too much guitar hero.
It's time for a break.

The Irony Alligator

Sick of people who misuse the word irony?  So is my friend the irony alligator.  He's made it his life goal to hunt down misuse-ees and spring upon them suddenly out from the bushes, making them flee in terror.  He won't hurt them or anything, he's a pacifist; which is NOT ironic (but close).  The irony alligator also wears tee shirts with the cookie monster cooking up chocolate chip dough like it's drugs.  These tee shirts aren't ironic either, but the fact that the irony alligator acts like this is ironic so boo-yah!

fear the irony alligator.

ps.  the irony alligator now has an arch nemesis:
the grammar griffon.

My mind on exercise

Yesterday, as I was bike riding down the town path, I went by a bench that had 'I heart tits' written in graffiti on it.  The first time I went by it, I thought:

what a coincidence, me too!  hehe.hehe

When I went by it on my way back from an hours worth of exercise, my brain had reached the point where it thought:

I know!  Doesn't everybody heart them, though?  Wellll, maybe not everybody, but I bet about 80% of any sizeable polling group would.  Ha, with an opinion poll like that, tits should run for office; they'd be the perfect running mates.  4 out of 5 voters agree, tits should be running this country...
...if they aren't already.

from the fog of crazy dreams

all I can remember was that I was trying to stop an atomic baker..

his sweet pastry breads,
hid nuclear war-heads.

I was a rhyming cia agent apparently.

a brief list of cars..

white buick from the 80's.... sold for parts
red saab from the 90's......... wrecked
beige ford from the 90's...... sold for parts
red nissan from 00's............ given to family member
black volvo from the 90's... wrecked
red ford from the 00's.......... sold as a real car!

so what's next?
how about this volvo:

I like it

Fantasy Football... in 3D!

Two things I am just too old to get into gear with, I think.  Why would you want to have to wear special goggles just to watch a movie?  Also, just watching football games takes a large chunk of time.  Trying to manage a fantasy football time must be all-consuming.  Can you possibly have time to do anything else during the football season?  I think not.

wii-nternet

The wii does have great extra features, like internet and picture viewing (I've heard rumors of video watching too, but haven't tried it out yet).  Wouldn't it be great if you could do all of those things easily on a wii instead of nintendo making it so hard to accomplish that it might as well not be possible? Of course, if I really wanted all of that, I would just get the new playstation console upgrade.  It only took them half a decade to reverse engineer that wii remote...
...although it will apparently take nintendo a full decade to figure how to let us watch dvds on the wii...

the return of guitar hero

Now that all the dark crystal shards that make up our wii guitar hero have been reunited, I can play again!  Only not as well apparently.  Three years away from the game really takes you skill level down, I guess.  Oh well, at least it's back; here's to pretending that I can play the guitar.

I need a smaller pile

If you had to take everything you owned and put it in a single pile, how big would that pile be?  bigger than you think.  I can't imagine how many truck loads it would take to move my pile into a new place, but I bet I'll find out sometime later this year...

it's her world, I just live in it

The cat thinks that the desk is her personal bed domain.  It isn't making typing any easier, and yet she seems to be ok with that.

I need me a robot!

Part of my dream last night involved being in a robot war with a neighbor down the street.  I would build a robot to stalk him, and he would build one to hunt me.  I was just beginning to introduce a defense robot to guard my homestead.  It had a freeze ray.  stops time, tell your friends, etc etc.

odd dream

My dream last night was almost all chase scene.  I had stolen back my sneakers from the ocean state job lot where they had been mistakenly donated.  Thus ensued a federal marshall run pursuit, which ended up in a large yacht where I earned my freedom by helping collar a drug lord.  Go me!

everything must go

today I get to try my hand at the fine art of garage sale-ing.  Let's see how many people want all of the junk that I've collected over the years.  I'm sure it will all get snapped up quick as a flash; after all, I was stupid enough to buy it once before, surely someone else will be just as bad today...

tap wood for luck!

scarecrow for tourists

so on the road near my parents house there is an oddly placed scarecrow.  It has a pumpkin head and sticks for arms that are a little too straight and long.  During the daytime it looks like it could just be a family name sign holder, or maybe a mailbox holder.  At night the silhoutte it makes in the glare of the headlights make it look like an irate farmer standing at the fool of his driveway with a shotgun.  It's actually quite shocking when you don't expect it.  I imagine it's there to scare off his daughter's perspective suitors.  It's the north woods equivalent of a moat.

unfortunate if true

So last night we joked that the only way the sox could come back to win the game was if we went to bed and stopped watching.  Last night it worked out great for us, because well, we were exhausted.  It seems like almost immediately after we shut off the television, the red sox did indeed manage to come back in a big way.
My point is this:  how much would it suck to have a true superstition that your favorite sports team only wins games when you don't watch them?  Of course we're leaving out the whole irrationality of it, but if it was somehow magically true, I think it would be a curse the likes of which deserve it's own Twilight Zone episode.  Just imagine, if you will, not being able to do something you really enjoy for the fear of ruining it for everyone (including yourself) that could enjoy that activity.  At that point you might be considered a fanatic, but no longer are you really a fan.
I'd much rather be left blind in the library at the end of the world.

An ode to hops

Of all the things I missed, and there are quite a few, american beer is one of the biggies.  I don't know why the english refuse to flavour flavor their brews with hops, because it makes the beer taste oh-so-much better.  On the flip side, their beer is pretty conducive to quaffing by the pint... so it's a wash in the end.

the past in box form

Do you remeber all of the things that you dutifully collected and saved as a child, sure in the knowledge that it would be worth a fortune by the time you grew old?  Yeah, me too.  What the hell am I supposed to do with 30 lbs. worth of baseball cards and two crates full of well-thumbed comics?  Also, why aren't they worth the fortune that I was led to believe it would be; I've got a #287 x-men comic that I thought was going to pay for my first house here...

sigh

day # 517

Last night I had a dream about the difference between the words eccentric and insane (spoiler: it's wealth).  There was one guy building a nuclear bomb shelter in his back yard, which is just insane.  There was another (rich obviously) guy building a complete stone castle to help fend of the coming zombie hordes, which is of course a bit eccentric in the main, but what else should rich people spend money on?

bedhead

The hair on my head looks like a horrible cross between the cookie monster and shepherd Book.  I feel like it is about to attack tokyo.

more football

wow. for a team that seems to spend a whole lot of time on the ground faking injury, brazil is quite a good team.

football

time to kick it up a notch usa.  I would love to see us go on to the next round while england hangs itself up to dry.  I'm not vicious about sports by nature......oh wait, baseball....wellllll anyhow go usa!  it's time to show those algerians home!  wherever that is... (google in progress)
oh now I see. their calling code is 213 by the bye.

so close

It was a day of near misses for me.  It started with my nemesis camped next to the recycle bins, watching to see if I mis-recycled anything.  It seemed as if it was going to rain, like it was just seconds from it, all morning.  In the afternoon, a pigeon flew right over my head, and then a second later deficated all over the pavement.  With all of that, it makes me wonder what else I just nearly missed today.  Here's hoping it was mostly bad stuff at least.

me vs. the dust(wo)man

As starts go, today had quite the bad one in store for me.  I was slightly yelled at by a city worker for... throwing my garbage into a bin instead of leaving it on the side of the road.  You heard me.  While it was a small trash bag instead of loose litter, and given that leaving it on the street for the dustmen to pick up is technically the right thing to do, it still felt like littering to me.  And as I looked back at the dustman, with her hi-res trouser rings glistening in the dawn's light, her self-satisfied glower told me that it was worth it to her -following me down the street, around the corner and through a parking lot- just to tell me off.  Now I may be jumping to conclusions, but I think I may have found my nemesis.  This short, aged worker woman will be the tweety bird to my sylvester.  Let the games begin.

yes, but it's not a hen

so today I saw a fox walk down the road.  He paused to look at me as he went by, cocking his head slightly before he continued on.  It made me double-take.  And I thought that was just in adverts .

Catan!

We will get this and we will play catan on it and it will be good.

glorious

There is nothing that beats sports night along with chinese food.  Even if it isn't american chinese food, it still rocks.
I'm just sayin'

black books

'half ten? half ten?! I've never been up at half ten before. What happens at half ten?'

This is the last of the cranes

You don't need to worry about me going over the top with the whole origami cranes business (too late I guess), because after this I'm done with 'em.  I just had to find something to do with all of the cranes I had folded up on my travels last week.  All told I think I have done about four dozen this year... so many more to go until I reach one thousand.  Until I reach that mark, they're a thing of the past.

cinco de mayo felicidad

O joy to the world, mexico has done
something worth drinking about!

it's really great, to drink piss beer
that has a lime in it!

and so on and so forth.

anyhow it seems appropriate to raise a bottle of corona to a country without drinkable tap water, seeing as how I just got back from a city where there was no tap water.  This is not irony.

oh well, that can't all be winners.
or any maybe.

jumping on the band wagon a bit late...

I got house of leaves while I was over in the states, which is apparently some kind of cult hit from way back that is just beginning to break into the mainstream (or did break into the main stream awhile ago but is just getting on my radar).  It has all the things that I love in my media: quirky-ness a hazy line between the created history of the work and the cult beginnings of the actually book as well as having the advantage of being described as 'ergodic literature ' (whose definition is fairly impossible to break down into nice english but may be summarized as having a large amount of hypertext).  As I look back on my blogs, this last description clinches my love of this book; any blurring between inter-text and printed media sends my into some sort of reader's dance of joy.  The only draw back is that it apparently drives it's readers so crazy trying to figure out the meaning within it (one of the layered sub-plots, it's about a guy who reads a manuscript) that they end up having to kill people in order to stave off insanity... that might just be a self defeating action right there.  Anyhow more to follow on whether or not it sends me over the bottom, so to speak!

that's all folks!

To sum up:
ten nights
four different beds
one wedding
two families
one great big group of friends
roughly 72 hours of travel time

all adds up to a vacation that I'm going to need a vacation to recover from

boston booze day

I will now attempt to drag from my hazy memory the names of the bars we crawled to and from yesterday in the tradition celebration of urban drinking.  We met at Parish's for some lunch and a few beers; this is where I first learned about Sammy's brick red.  Given my love of all things limited in availability this beer became my go to ale for the day.  After that we wandered through the park to blank to watch some of the sox game (you're killin' me by the way sox) more beers, and one stolen chair piece later we find ourselves at the Black Rose for some irish drinking songs.  I was able to remember a few lines from whiskey in the jar which made me feel practically irish.  By then it was time for supper so we made our way along the waterfront to the barking crab for some fried clams, crab dip, etc.  All in all it was a great day.

Location sorted!

At last, after months of online searching, weeks of phone call debates and days of onsite visits, we have chosen a venue!  Stonehurst will be hosting a drunken celebration of the union of our two families whether they are ready for it or not.  Granted we had to book a year and a half in advance, which I think is excessive but many assures me is necessary.  Indeed the guy that is in charge of that sort of thing at Stonehurst was telling us about all the appointments that are coming to see the grounds in the next week; we may have just squeaked in to assure our wedding date.  Also, we are beginning to gather all of our thoughts together on my better half's (still no call name as of yet) website.  So check it out and make some suggestions!  Also get ready for some sort of website to respond to the save the dates that we'll be sending out as soon as we make them.  It'll be a place to let us know what songs you'd want to hear that night as well look at some maps on how to get there, etc.  Also you might be able to rsvp to the wedding, but the other things are way more important.  But I digress;  visit her blog and view the awesomeness we have collected from the internet!

The best hot dogs. period.

This is a shameless plug for a hot dog place in hartford by the name of woody's.  It has apparently been on some television show, but more importantly it has earned my endorsement for serving me a dog with both sauerkraut and swiss cheese on it.  Delicious.

I like to call it 'eccentric'

As we were traveling past Gillette castle the other day and decided to stop and take a look.  It's the product of a newly wealthy actor by the name of william who was the first to portray one sherlock holmes on the stage.  That job must have made him insanely wealthy, because the castle he made for himself on the connecticut river was entirely stone on the outside (even the faux banners are stone) and came with it's own scaled-down train service for after dinner trips around a pond.  As horrible taste goes, it's right up there with a rhinestone piano.

the return of the polaroid!

One of the things that made me sad last year (or whenever ) was the closing down of polaroid en masse.  The instant gratification and the feel of having an actual photo in my hot little hands couldn't be beat by any digital facsimile.  Now they're back with a new model and they're reproducing the type 600 film, which is what my old polaroid takes.  Here's to cameras that only produce one copy of those illicit photos!

more jet cranes

(photo by my better half(who is a stickler for credit apparently))

As the whirlwind tour of family, friends and wedding venues continues, it was nice to take a little time out to sample some of the local brews on the way.  Since I was going to be sitting still for a little while anyway, I decided to fold myself another crane or two (i'm now up to a couple dozen or so).  The best part  A great part about visiting the states is the option to buy your beer by the paddle.  This paddle went from a nice white ale all the down to a stout.  It was a spectrum of hops gloriousnicity.

On the subject of Barns...

As we look at wedding venues, I've noticed that we tend to gravitate towards farmy-looking old barns.  They have that hoe-down feel to them which just screams upper crust.  Then there's the opportunity to have wedding photos like this, not to mention the tractor.  We, of course, go nuts for all the exposed beams and joinery; add a wrought-iron chandelier and we're just in heaven.

Great Scott!

Since my subconscious is such a genius, it figured out how to travel through space at speeds faster than light while I was dreaming last night.  I woke up with the crazy-big maths parading through my brain like some crowd of hooligan sports fans.  Not having a pen to hand, I've lost the thread completely.  All I remember is that, due to gravity's warped sense of humor, not only did you travel through space, but also randomly in time.  I think that would be quite confusing, but ultimately fun.  Think of all the people who want to get in line to punch hitler in the face circa '33!

the best ice breaker yet

So my embarrassingly fun parents brought along the best party favor to the rehearsal dinner we all went to for my cousin's wedding.  Since the 'dinner' was more of a cocktail hour that lasted all night with some nibbles past around, they did the smart thing and waited for everyone to get their fill at the open bar.  After the whole room had managed to get sociable, out came a gigantic bag of wax lips for everyone to wear.  The wedding photographers loved them, because they made us all look foolish and those are the pictures that people will remember.  There was enough for us all, from the aged grandmother to the two little kindergartners.  Don't worry, there will be photos!

leaving on a jet crane

What with the volcano (conveniently named kevin for those of us who fail at icelandic pronunciation), who knows when I'll be coming back again.  In order to keep up my weekly art goal, I'll be making paper cranes out of whatever scrap papers come to hand during our whirlwind tour of family and friends back in the states.  It's a great way to keep my fidgety hands occupied during long, and boring, stints of siting upright in the one cubic meter of space that we're allotted as we travel coach in these modern times.  There's a great challenge in trying to make them as small as possible.  My goal is to beat my current tiniest folded paper crane, which is pretty f*%^ing small.  If I can manage that, I'll definitely have won this vacation.  Stay tuned for photos of the cranes I fold in the coming week.

blue is the new green

Happy earth day!  In the spirit of all things tree-hugging, I'm going to spend a few minutes rambling on about a few of the more pop-cultury (I am my own dictionary) moments from my earth day past.  First off, those images of earth from space have been classic ever since the first of them came back in the 40's.  It was the alpha and omega of the p.r. campaign to save the earth.  That was back when all we had to do to save the earth was recycle our newspapers and bottles/cans.  That and stop those evil loggers from destroying the rainforest.  Now, of course, we're just f*<%#d whatever we do.

My earliest earth day commercial was a coca-cola ad naturally.  All the problems in our world could be solved if everyone just got into one big hand-holding circle and sang it out.  That advertisement, coming as it so often did during the tv showing of 'the sound of music', just served to reinforce the point that you should never sing along with the television.  A point my farther made through example.  Typical scene from my childhood living room:

Dad: 'The hills are alive..'

chorus (the rest of the fam): 'no dad! stop it!  arrggghhh my ears are bleeding!'

that last one may have been an exageration.

My other great memory from saving the earth is when somebody got ben & jerry's to sponsor a litter clean-up in a national forest picnic area.  Ice cream and nature are a very good combination.

black books

I've decided that this series will be the next obscure tv series that I sink my teeth into.  I've been a cbc junkie for quite some time (who would ever suspect the canadians of coming up with quality programming?  I was shocked. shocked! well not that shocked) but after they axed the jPod show I kind of lost heart.  It had the dry wit of douglas coupland set free in a world of surreal carnage.  It also had one of the greatest websites to flog it's tie-in merchandising, complete with free online video games and everything.  Sadly it's gone now, or I would totally be linking it right now.  le sigh.
Anyway, I breezed through the dollhouse last fall and haven't had a cult tv series since.  Let me tell you, there is nothing quite as cult as something that joss whedon has been at the helm of.  Now I'm ready to get back on the horse, so to speak.
Who wouldn't go for a show about abusing the people who wander into small bookshops, browse for 20 minutes, and then leave without getting anything?  I look forward to some wit at it's driest.

I just had a dream last night about this website that the better half showed me yesterday.  When I first saw it, I thought that it might be nice to see all the data that a website poll like that could produce.  My subconscious took it one step further, and last night I made a stirring argument about how this must be somebody's sociology dissertation.  I must have tapped the big word part of my brain (the broca obnoxious), because I was using words like 'cogent' as I related it to another experiment going on in my dream.  This experiment was about drawing in some way, and the adult participants were told to use the babies stacked up like cordwood on a nearby pallet.  Surprisingly, nobody thought to complain about the misuse of infants.  I guess as long as they weren't loaded up by men with pitchforks there's no reason to worry.  Last but not least, Ralph from the muppets was living in a recycle bin with a corrugated metal roof out behind some school yard.  He had one slice of wonderbread for his thanksgiving feast.

And that's all the craziness that was inside my head last night.

Hedgehog fundamentalism

There is a quote from some greek that says:
'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing'
This quote is great for philosophers; they've used the quote to talk about everything from the internet to religious fundamentalism.  I think it's great because somebody came up with this photo of hedgehogs in

gas masks. I mean, how cool is that?!  Inspired by this obviously undoctored image, I've decided that someone needs to come out with an animated series about the wars between the hedge and the heath that is destroying the english country side.  As long as it's light on the references to religious extremism, I think it could be great.  Think of it as 'the Secret of Nimh ' meets 'Tankgirl ' in way even small children enjoy.  Special characters would include a hedgehog wearing a TNT vest (we'll call her dyna), and possible some field mice with rapiers; because among my many other foibles is Narnia-fandom (BEFORE those horrible movies).  Maybe even a team of three sword-wielding mice; they could be the three mouseket (sorry).  Anyway, I'll leave you with a quote from this imaginary series:

"the foxes may know many things, but I know how to blow them straight to hell"
                                                            - Dyna the hedgehog

shabby sheik

... or maybe side-of-the-road sheik.  Whatever else it is (be nice) this is also the collage/map of shoreditch I just put together this morning.  It's hanging up in the kitchen as we speak, adding a much needed bit of color.  I'm particularly hoping that the collage will distract the eye from a dead pigeon that's been stuck in some webbing right outside the window next to that wall.  I was going name it 'we are absolute vintage' but my fiance (hereafter referred to as babydoll ... hedgehog ... that girl ...), she suggested 'stuff I found on the street' which I like more than the other title.  The whole collage is made of fliers that I picked up in shoreditch, usually on sunday morning when we went to bricklane for the markets.  It's the perfect time because all of clubs and parties have left their saturday night detritus lying about and the cleaning crews haven't had the chance to sweep up all the art lying on the pavements.

So this is my first try at making one Art each week; we'll just have to see if I can keep it up.

And I've finally thought of a callsign for the fiance:  Goose.
That's right, she is the goose to my maverick.
Thoughts?

back to the drawing board I guess...

Star Wars travel boutique

So this is just one of the retro-style travel posters (by Justin van Genderen) that I came across on my way through a great website called drawn! which I look through from time to time.  I love it because it satisfies two types of dork within me at the same time.  Who doesn't love retro-artistry mixed sci-fi geekdom?  Nobody, that's who.  Now what would be even better is if there were travel posters for other great fictional places.  I'm imagining a series for the places visited in Doctor Who or even the lands travelled by Gulliver.  Come see the country-side of Lilliputia, with its majestic views!

selling out never looked so easy

So I used a link in my last post that sent you to amazon.com, becasue I thought that the cover art of the snorks vhs was just wicked.  While I stand by it, I noticed today when I logged into my blog account that there was a banner ad from amazon telling me that I could earn money by adding more amazon links into my blog. gasp. Now I'm not one to say that free-market capitalism is ruining the internet, or even that it's what I was just offered......well, yeah I think I can safely say that it was (latter) and it is (former) or perhaps that it could.  I remember reading about some sort of system that allowed members to earn points by using ad space as an incentive.  Posting ads would earn you points that you could use to buy, in turn, your own ad space on other sites.  While that seemed like a pyramid scheme just waiting for a sucker to come in and use real money, it seems to work for people.  It also has the benefit of being right out there for everyone to see.  

wow, this has actually run on a fair amount. apologies.

Anyhow, the insidiousness of taking amazon's money in return for linkage makes me want to take a shower.  Let it be known that I will try to avoid linking back to them again, and ebay and other similar sites I suppose.

I leave you with the thought that the internet will soon grow to be a huge pyramid scheme.

a little trip in the way-back machine

So if you're lucky, you remember saturday morning cartoons the way they were supposed to be.  I'm talking about good old fashioned wake-up-before-your-parents fun.  I myself switched between Captain O. G. Readmore (try remembering his name after a few decades when all you remember is a leopard in a funny hat that sang between cartoons.  not easy at all) and the Real Ghostbusters (on ABC) and the Snorks and Gummy Bears (on NBC).  God bless you Hanna-Barbera.  Last, but nowhere near least, was the ultimate in large robots that came together to create an even larger robot... that's right it's Voltron!  It was an action packed morning of animated fun, before being sent outside to play until supper.  Remember when young kids could just roam around unsupervised in public without the massive paranoia?  It's probably because we were just that much tougher than todays model.  And with that, I leave you to roam around in the voltron nostalgia.

What's that you say?  I've left out the Transformers?  Nonsense, I watched that movie so much as a child, it'll get it's own blog entry someday.  As for those communist smurfs, they too deserve a blog all to themselves.  

What's in a name?

It's those five little words that every guy, at some point, says to their drinking buddies:
"we should buy a bar!"
I hope that you're all ready for a whole bunch of himym references. Just sayin'. Since the chances of me ever owning a bar are slim, I thought that I would use my list of kick-ass pub names for this blog. So here, in no particular order, are the top ten:

The Goose & Cloud (from this wicked cool website)
The Wallace & Grommit (with cheese!!!)
The Draughtsman's Pint
The Bricklayer's Arms (which is just a great pub to drink at in shoreditch)
The Long Man (pickup lines much?)
The Pig & Whistle
The Obvious Syrup (A syrup is slang for a wig)
The Fox and the Hedgehog
The Figs & Mice (who's a WOT dork? I'm a WOT dork. I will not apologize)
and finally...
The Blue Bollard (which has a fine tradition)

I think that the blue bollard just sort of rolls off your tongue, although I wonder how easy it would be to say drunk...must research this later. Anyway, we have a name for this blog, so let the games begin. New template and some bollard drawings will soon follow.