internet boredom

I get an ironic enjoyment out of reading screeds or complaints or jeremiads or concerned missives about the dangers that the internet and constant over-connectivity are bringing, especially when I find them online via link aggregators like Arts and Letters Daily. But there is a lot of truth in this line:

The truth is that we are often bored to death by what we find online—but this is boredom on the installment plan, one click a time, and therefore imperceptible.

That should be the new motto for this blog.

Johnny Cash's memoirs

“Willie, Waylon, Kris and I weren’t just good friends who loved to make music together. We’d also been wrongly accused of a crime and imprisoned, promptly escaping to the Los Angeles Undergound. If you had a problem, if no one else could help, and if you could find us, maybe you could hire… the Highwaymen.”

[...]

“The first time I met Bono, he asked me to play a song with U2. I looked him up and down and said ‘Son, I ain’t never played with a man couldn’t beat me at NBA Jam Tournament Edition.’ A half hour later, I was in the studio to record The Wanderer. It’s gotta be the shoes.”

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Let's watch my new favorite commercials

There's an honesty in his "I don't always drink beer" that I love.

What is the source of the LESBIAN BARBECUE?

This could out-batshit Dr. "Mean" Gene Ray if whatever jaded hipster writing it actually believed what he was saying. Spaceship Jesus even gives a shoutout to the Cubist and Wisest Human. So, either someone actually buys into the timecube mythos (Tha Captain can't live in a world where that can happen) or it's a cute little farce. Note: It's the second thing.

Crazy points would be awarded for not trusting the Gorton's Fisherman. That guy is on the level.

Tiananmen Square Massacres

Twenty years ago today, folks.

mix an explodin' drink

Not literally so. With Mentos.


I love the look on that guy's face. Oh man it's exploding!

Wired

3E approves

Sometimes you want to drink some dark beers without feeling like you just ate a loaf of bread.

3e endorsed.

Now I want a list of exclusively English words

Thirteen words not found in the English language, which is not really an accurate title as virtually all foreign words are not part of the English language; it's a list of concepts for which there is no easy English translation. Some of my favorites:

1. Waldeinsamkeit (German): the feeling of being alone in the woods

3. Taarradhin (Arabic): a way of resolving a problem without anyone losing face (not the same as our concept of a compromise - everyone wins)

4. Litost (Czech): a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery

5. Esprit de l’escalier (French): a witty remark that occurs to you too late, literally on the way down the stairs…

no comment

Up

I really liked it. It continues Pixar's notable tradition of making fantastic films about entirely unlikeable or unrelatable characters: a rat, a mute robot, an old man. If I had to explain aging to a small child, I would just show them the first ten minutes of it.

My favorite part is the dog, Dug, who talks exactly how a dog would talk if able to do so. This movie gets three E's up.

Shit I found on my computer.

...Apparently some kind of dream journal (gay!) that I tried to keep up.


10/19/06

Chopping through a box of books with an axe. Green, bulbous slime in the box with hypnotic, mind-control powers. Retards chained together and hitting railroad spikes into large wooden stakes with an axe. Part hellraiser, part Friday the 13th part V. A midget, maybe part clown. I chop his arms off and then steal them. He runs a video rental store that uses keys instead of video tapes. I go to rent Hellraiser. I have a ring of power. Jewel Staite is on a chair inside, cut in half, covered in shit. She’s in a movie called Thought Vacation. Upon arriving I ask the midget/clown/video clerk “Where are your arms? Oh yeah, I chopped them off and then stole them.” He says something to the effect of “Water under the
bridge!”

03/07/07

Someone’s family doesn’t like me. Thanksgiving dinner. I’m squeezed in at the table.

Swimming in a lake. Fantasizing about having my hand bitten off by a bull shark. Wouldn’t be mad at it. If it came to my house, I’d be mad. This is his territory. Harold Reynolds is there. Tells us how he’s gotten his life back together. I slide along algae covered rocks doing the robot dance. I get really pissed off that Caroline forgot to invite NASCAR driver David Gilliland.

10/30/07

Tim Tebow teaches me to hunt for clams. It makes sense because he is a clam.

"I clearly miscalculated how popular it would be to show Calvin urinating on a Ford logo." - Bill Watterson

So I bought a real, physical copy of the newspaper for the first time in months recently. I saw this in the comics section:



It's not particularly funny -- in fact, it doesn't really make any sense -- but there's a certain, what shall we say, familiarity to its execution.


It will only get stronger when you read a few more comics -- the main character, the eponymous Frazz, is a brilliant underachiever with blond, spikey hair. I remember when Frazz came out, but it was right at the end of the my regular paper reading days, and I never followed it online. So, it's news to me.

It turns out that the strip's creator, Jef Mallett, is not Bill Watterson. He simply draws like him. I don't read the strip regularly, so I have no idea if it's as much a copy or effort to replace Calvin and Hobbes as it looks like. Mallett says it is not, but frankly I don't believe him.

The real point of all this is for me to point out how much I miss Calvin and Hobbes, a magnificent creation that was the last really good comic strip. I wish Watterson would start producing comics again online. He could completely avoid all the hassles (syndication, merchandising, etc) that seemed to bother him so much as a newspaper cartoonist.

You mean the bad guy from Rocky IV?

Dolph Lundgren has a master's degree in chemical engineering, was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, and has at least some knowledge of seven languages.

for John

Indigo children

The indigo phenomena has also been described as not the next step in human evolution, but rather the reaction of children watching television shows with an emphasis on magic and New Age-compatible language. An example of this was illustrated in a Dallas Observer article discussing indigo children, a reporter recorded the following interaction between a man who worked with indigo children, and a purported indigo child:

Are you an indigo? he asked Dusk. The boy looked at him shyly and nodded. "I'm an avatar," Dusk said. "I can recognize the four elements of earth, wind, water and fire. The next avatar won't come for 100 years." The man seemed impressed.

Readers of the Dallas Observer later wrote in to inform the newspaper that the child's response appeared to be taken from the storyline of Avatar: The Last Airbender; a children's cartoon showing on Nickelodeon at the time of the interview. The editor of the Dallas Observer later admitted they were not aware of the possible connection until readers brought it to their attention.

3E Detritus

It's been accumulating in 3E's colon for far too long. Enema, players.

For the uninitiated, reasons this is funny:

• That's not Brad, it's his brother Brian!
• There was only one (1) RA on the 3rd floor!
• He has a unibrow!
  

Bumbling, yet endearing. Also lucky not to be a vegetable.

Let me first say that I like Lee Corso more than most people seem to. However, even after a potentially life-threatening ordeal, he finds a way to lapse into hackneyed self-parody.

Corso issued a statement in which he called the stroke a "small bump in the road" and a "not so fast, my friend, in my game of life" -- a play on one of his more well-known quips.

Or is it that after potentially life-threatening ordeals people are most likely to whore themselves out to trite-nicities? I can never remember.

From the Blurry Collector's Set

Would Jesus Wear a Rolex?

Preseason SEC football poll

The SEC's spring football fling just ended, and here are some results. Sports information directors voted their choices for each division and for the conference overall. I've got to say, this is about the least imaginative preseason poll one could create.


Except for the odd but not surprising elevation of Tennessee to third in the East, that is almost exactly how the teams finished last season. Very creative, SIDs.


In the overall vote, it looks like Florida voted for Ole Miss, not Alabama, to win the Western Division. I wonder if that's because they actually think Ole Miss is the second-best team in the conference or simply the result of (entirely understandable) distaste for Alabama, Saban, or some combination thereof. It's also interesting to look at the differences in order when the divisional votes are together -- Tennessee loses the tie breaker with South Carolina, and Vanderbilt falls into a tie with Kentucky. Given that a school could not vote for itself, only one person out of eleven with the option to do so did not pick Mississippi State last. The poll is only more certain that Florida is first overall.

Last year, the only team to finish where predicted was Arkansas, barely, in a three-way tie for fourth in the Western Division.