later dudes.

this blog is fucking over!!!

i'm moving this shit over to my actual website because, well, myspace blogs are gay.

be sure to check in over there and comment and all that good stuff. it's gonna be... you know... whatever.

later.

8:00 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

anyone know how to make sweet websites?

i'm moving my page over to movable type and i don't know what the fuck i'm doing. i've got the actual software up and running but i don't really know anything about css. if anyone can help or knows someone who can help for cheap (a 12 pack of fancy beer? and some homemade brownies?) send me a message.

3:30 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

it's time to feel good (part 2)

Consider part 1 the 101 - a crash course in Katrina and The Waves (did anyone pick up on the obvious Hurricane Katrina parable there, what with the waves and everything? whatever). It's time to move on to 102. The meat and potatoes that I initially wanted to blather on and on about in the first place. It boils down to a simple question:

How much money would I have to pay you to listen to Walking On Sunshine constantly for one entire year?

Let me tighten this proposal up a bit. It would be unreasonable to demand you listen constantly, and it would probably generally inane answers like "a million dollars" and nobody wants that. To be fair, I'll cut you some slack. The song would be played only during waking hours, assuming you don't pull a fast one and try to effectively sleep the entire year. Let's say the song would play 16 hours a day. That leaves you 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Should be more than enough, don't you think?

As for the volume, that's a little trickier. I'm convinced that if you heard it at a constant level those wailing horns would eventually slide out of your consciousness, like living next to a train line or listening to minimal techno. To counteract this effect (if I were a scientist I would name this "the aural shift," which I think sounds pretty fancy), the volume would be constantly increasing in tiny increments. It would range from fairly audible to slightly less than comfortable, and it would increase either over the course of the day or over the course of the entire year - your choice.

The sound would be coming from tiny headphones installed in your ear canals.

Under these restrictions, how much would I have to pay you to listen to Katrina and The Waves' Walking On Sunshine for one year?

The original recording of the song in question is 3 minutes and 57 seconds long, or 237 seconds long. That means that in a year you would listen to Walking On Sunshine 133,063 times, but if you subtract the 8 hours of sleep per day it would actually work out to only 88,708 times. It doesn't actually sound like that much when you work it out like that.

Would I have to pay you more to listen to just the chorus for a year? What about the verse?

I can tell you right now - there is absolutely no way I would attempt to do this. No amount of money could compensate me for the irreversible damage that year would do to my psyche. Fuck chinese water torture - this is the real deal. I would be a shell of my former self. Half the man I used to be.

Would you do this for less money with a Stone Temple Pilots song?

There is only one way I would even consider it, and it would still most likely end in failure. I would need a comfortable couch (going to work would be out of the question), a reputable dealer with a wide range of products and, perhaps most importantly, I would need a million fucking dollars.

11:35 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

It's Time To Feel Good (part 1)

So we're all on the same page from the very beginning, I encourage you to reacquaint yourself with the song in question:

Katrina and the Waves - Walking on Sunshine

Be advised: I'm not talking about listening to a midi version of this song. That would actually be palatable - the midi orchestration gives it a Kraftwerk-meets-childrens-song lilt that is almost charming. If I had a baby, and it was that baby's oh, I don't know, say, its third birthday, and a bunch of other parents brought their babies over to have some sort of party (I guess we could call it a "party," although we'd probably put a spin on it like "Diaper Jam 2K5" or something), I think we could probably pump up the stereo, flip on the midi version of Walking on Sunshine and bounce our toddlers around to the beat like fleshy, drooling beach balls until it's time for cake. That could be fun, even though punch doesn't go with cake and everybody knows it. That is one situation where I could see myself listening to the midi version of Walking on Sunshine in its entirety, but I don't want to talk about the midi version of the song. No. I want to talk about Katrina and the Waves.

Katrina and the Waves formed in 1981, but didn't break up until 1999. They hailed from Cambridge, England and scored their first major label record in 1985. The record had two hit singles on it - in addition to the better known Walking on Sunshine (which peaked at number 9 in the US) was another single called Do You Want Crying (which peaked at number 32, and for which there is no midi file available on the internet. You can hear a clip of it here though). Billboard's Hot 100 of 1985 puts Walking On Sunshine at number 75. Not surprisingly, Do You Want Crying didn't place. And why would it? 2 of the top 3 spots for that year belonged to Wham!. It wasn't a year for crying - we're talking about the same year both Super Mario Bros. and New Coke came out. As a nation, we were walking on sunshine. It felt stupendous.

How quickly things change.

In the blink of an eye, all the market research data was proven wrong. People didn't like New Coke. "It's too sweet! Wah wah! I'm a big baby!" Coca Cola winced and rolled out the old, "classic" formula, but it was already too late. Kids across the country sucked down can after can of New Coke (it was being offered at a very generous discount, and what sensible shopper can resist a bargain like that?), playing Super Mario Bros. until their thumbs were raw. Far past bed times, Warp zones were discovered in levels 1-2 and 4-2. Bowser was a piece of cake - if you could get to him. Now, with the help of warp zones, kids crept past the mediocre boss, saving Princess Toadstool with an indifferent shrug. Second quests remained unconquered. Soda remained sugary (in either "new" or "original" formulas, really - they were both really fucking sweet). Which is all (of course) to say that America changed forever in 1985.

Now here we are, some twenty years later, and I am not walking on sunshine. I don't want to walk on sunshine, nor do I want a lollipop-lollipop-oh-lolly-lollypop, nor do I want any Sugar-Sugar-Oh-Honey-Honey. Not even a Bit-O-Honey. Nothing. I don't really like candy that much, and although I admittedly enjoy sunshine from time to time, it's not a freakishly manic kind of enjoyment that Katrina and the Waves were clearly experiencing. It's not electric. In the sunlight, my hair doesn't stand on end. Rainbows don't shoot out of my ass. I look up at the sun, let the rays warm my cheeks, and I think to myself, "Ahh." Then I go inside a building.

What I'm trying to get at here is that I'm not the type of guy who typically walks on sunshine.

I would like to quickly present to you a few choice lyrics for your consideration:

I used to think maybe you loved me now baby I'm sure
And I just cant wait till the day when you knock on my door
Now everytime I go for the mailbox , gotta hold myself down
Cuz I just wait till you write me you're coming around

I'm walking on sunshine , wooah
I'm walking on sunshine, woooah
I'm walking on sunshine, woooah
and don't it feel good!!!

If you're like me, you're hung up on the obvious problem: how can you "go for" the mailbox if you're holding yourself down? Get over that for a second and see the bigger picture here: this is a song about a girl who is finally sure that somebody loves her (probably her boyfriend, who I imagine looking a lot like that asshole skier in Better Off Dead). She's so excited that she's... well... walking on sunshine. It clearly feels fucking fantastic. So let me ask you this, Katrina: where the fuck is the guy? Maybe the next verse will shed some light on the subject:

I used to think maybe you loved me, now I know that its true
and I don't want to spend all my life , just in waiting for you
now I don't want you back for the weekend
not back for a day , no no no
I said baby I just want you back and I want you to stay...

I don't mean to be the bearer of bad news, but I wouldn't get your hopes up, lady. From the sound of it, there are only a few possible explanations:

1. The guy is a travelling salesman.

2. The guy is in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, or Peace Corps. Or jail.

3. The guy just doesn't like her very much.

None of these options are very attractive. The life of a travelling salesman, while somewhat romanticized (like hitchhiking and farming), isn't that glamorous. You live out of a car and your survival is tethered to your commitment to what is, most likely, a shoddy product. You're on the road all the time, which actually could explain why she doesn't only want him "back for a day" - he's a travelling salesman. He's going to have to leave again and she knows it. It could work, but I'm not buying it. She doesn't strike me as the type to be walking on sunshine for a travelling salesman type.

Knowing that Katrina and the Waves were British helps nip option 2 in the bud. How many active troops were there in England in 1985? That's not a rhetorical question - I really don't know the answer. My creative googling keeps bringing up a fire at a soccer stadium in Bradford that killed 53, but that doesn't help us much. Forget the number active troops in England, 1985 - she says in verse 2 she doesn't want to "spend all [her] life" waiting for him. Why would she have to wait her whole life? Tours of active duty aren't generally more than, what, a few years maximum, right? Armed Services are out. Jail is more likely (as it would explain all the letters), but if she might have to wait her whole life we can assume that he's in for something pretty serious. Maybe she likes a bad boy. Maybe he's wrongfully accused of murder, or maybe he's rightfully accused of stock manipulation but sitting on a huge nestegg she just can't stop thinking about. Maybe she's an accomplice who could potentially face jail time herself, and she's using the song to suppress her guilt and project a cool front to her would-be prosectuors. Or maybe we should obey Occam's Razor and admit what we've suspected all along.

The guy just doesn't like her that much.

Who could blame him? She's more than a little pathetic. Even though he's gone and she has no idea when he will return, she's still walking on fucking sunshine. Maybe it's best for her health that he never come back - if she's this happy when he's not around, she would probably spontaneously combust if he ever came back. Think of the guitar line in the verse of the song - that obnoxious rhythmic strum, the tinny timbre of the guitar. Once you've got that looping in your head, throw the horns in on top of it, that joyous, brassy yelp best personified as a cheerleader on some kind of stimulant. Got it? Now imagine if they made a sequel to the song where the guy actually came back. Can you imagine how much happier the song would have to sound? They would have to record it behind four foot thick layers of steel and concrete. It would be so happy the mixing consoles would explode and the sound engineers would have to be hospitalized. It would be so happy it would cause irreversible nerve damage to hear it. We're talking weapons-grade pop. Maybe that's why there was never a sequel to it.

Or maybe Do You Want Crying, that obscure peaked-at-32 follow-up was the sequel. You can hear it in her voice. The excitement has died down a bit. She's keeping the tempo up, but her stiff upper lip isn't fooling anyone. There's a scratchiness to her voice that wasn't there before, maybe a touch of cynicism brought on by a newfound understanding of the way things work. It would be naive to assume the story would have a happy ending, wouldn't it? Anything can happen, yeah, but from the looks of things this romance is one-sided and hopeless, regardless of what the upbeat melody might lead you to believe. You have to remember that the song is, in all likelihood, being sung by a borderline personality clinging desperately to her own delusions. Would you come back to that? Think about it. After a moment or two of consideration, the opening lines to Do You Want Crying should come as no surprise:

So long now - since you walked and left me.
Why did your love grow cold ? Don't you think you need me ?
I see that smile
it's your face. I feel you holding on and on.
I hear your voice
it's saying: bye bye love.
I count my teardrops as they fall.
Do you want crying? Look.
I'm crying.

to be contined...

3:23 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Recolored

so i just spent a few minutes screwing around with the beta version of a sweet little prog called Recolored. You can use it to colorize black & white photos by just scribbling whatever color you want in the approximate area you want it. pretty sweet. I colorized the Goaticorn. It went from this:



to this:



pretty snazzy, eh?

wizards love purple.

10:11 AM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Lancelot The Unicorn

I didn't believe this when I heard it, but from what I can piece together it's totally true. Wow.



You're looking at Lancelot - billed by the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus as The Living Unicorn.

The two people responsible for creating this monstrosity are Oberon Zell-Ravenheart and his wife, Morning Glory. Go figure. Lancelot is apparently, in addition to being a GOAT, a very accurate representation of medieval unicorns. Forget what you THINK you know about unicorns. Yeah, I thought they were more like horses too. We were both wrong. Trust me. No, wait. What do I know? Don't trust me - trust Oberon Zell-Ravenheart.



That's right. The motherfucker is an actual wizard. Here's another one just os you know that one wasn't a screenshot from Final Fucking Fantasy.



Anyway, more accurately, the motherfucker is the founder of the Church of All Worlds, one of the "oldest incorporated Neo-Pagan churches in the United States." According to their website, The Church of All Worlds is dedicated to "lifestyles that support personal freedom and responsibility, environmental stewardship, progressive and cooperative social order and pluralistic democracy."

Speaking of personal responsibility and environmental stewardship, here's a picture of Oberon (a self-described "naturalist") with his freakish, man-made Goaticorn.



Some dream big. For Oberon, it wasn't enough to incorporate a church inspired by a science fiction novel. Nor was it enough to found a 5,600 acre "Pagan Retreat Center," or to get involved in countless Pagan initiatives (including, according to his website, "The Council of Themis, the Council of Earth Religions, the Covenant of the Goddess, the Universal Federation of Pagans, and the Papal Apology Project.") That would've been enough for most people, but not Oberon. So in 1977 Oberon and his wife Morning Glory co-founded the Ecosophical Research Association and got to work.

The Living Unicorn Project was born.

So Oberon made a Goaticorn. Several Goaticorns, actually. But a horn does not a Goaticorn make. In addition to totally fucking up the goats' domes, he also "conducted appropriate magical rites, invoking the spirits of Nature and the Horned God, and focusing the light of the waxing Moon onto their [the unicorns'] foreheads through a quartz crystal."

Then he sold one to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1980.

Then the ASPCA got really pissed.

They examined Lancelot: The Living Unicorn and determined that - get this - it was a GOAT. Good work, guys.

They also decided that the goat was pretty well taken care of, so they moved on and got pissed off about some other crap.

I'm not sure what happened to Lancelot or any of his Goaticorn kin, but if you're out there, guys, this blog's for you. May you carry on as freakishly as the pagan wizard from whence ye came.

10:44 AM - 4 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

this kid is completely out of his mind

someone's always gotta go and wreck party.

2:07 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

back in effect... sort of.

howdy ya'll. it's been a minute.

i don't have too much to say right now, it being 10 am monday morning after a long weekend, but i wanted to share with you guys a news story that is really, really bizzare. You might have already seen it as it's been floating around the web for about a week already, but I just reread some parts of it. man. it's really fucked.

also, i thought it was kind of funny that a bunch of celebrities are begging a celebrity governor not to execute the founder of the Crips. Thanks, Chicago Redeye. You've got the cure for my information blues.

but enough about the news. let's talk about me and my super amazing friends and how awesome we are. particularly when we end up at Woodfield Mall. particularly when we end up at Woodfield Mall because we can't decide where to eat lunch and figure a food court would make it easier. what do you do at a mall, you ask? easy - get lots of 7 dollar cocktails at a shitty stir fry place (or one 23 dollar, 60 ounce one if youre Atomly), and take shirtless soft-focus photos at a portrait studio. yeah - apparently you can do that.







pause. yeah - any one of them would make a great desktop background. you know - for the holidays. but this one - geez. this next picture was taken at the exact fraction of a second that i looked the gayest i ever have in my entire life.  On the flipside, Rory and Spex both look retarded.

7:49 AM - 5 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

ten things i'd rather do right now than data entry

1. play video games
2. oil spill cleanup
3. mix stuff from the kitchen in a blender, drink it
4. lick the bottom of a shoe
5. file down a stick against the sidewalk
6. chew foil
7. drink whiskey
8. drink molten lava
9. take apart pens, examine mechanisms inside
10. fill out a FAFSA

2:01 PM - 3 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

word association

bang
gun
shoot
ladder
climb
wall
building
hammer
nail
finger
stab (?)
maul
tiger

bang to tiger. does that mean something weird? fuck it.

starting over...

shoe
leather
cow
feed
corn
stalk
alleys
streets
cars
audis
nintendo
japanese
kamikaze
battleship
sink
drain
hair

this is dumb.

1:58 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

wisconsin fucking rules

Laugh if you want, but to the average Baraboo citizen this is much more useful information than any of that Harriet Miers bullshit.


Our first stop was the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, which is where the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus first started. All these handsome devils grew up there.


They had a buttload of sweet lithographs and woodcuts.






It was kind of weird being there off-season. There wasn't really anyone there.


Yeah, yeah, I know. Nature is gay.


Next stop was the House On The Rock. Holy fucking shit. It was really hard to take pictures inside because the lighting was really crappy, but I did my best. These don't do it justice at all. If you've never been, you gotta go. It's the most insane thing ever. (there's a collection of photos here that kind of rules. check 'em out.)









If I had to pick one picture that comes close to summing up the insanity that is The House On The Rock, I'd have a hard time deciding between these two.

Yeah dude. It's a bear fighting an eagle.


Yeah dude. It's a naked unicorn lady thing.


We stayed at The Holiday Motel.



They had a lovely pool.


When I asked the lady at the front desk what the room themes were, she told me they were all "nicely decorated." I figured maybe by "theme" rooms they just meant "nice" rooms. She gave me the key to room 10. Can you guess what the theme is?




We counted over 60 elephants total.

They fucked up though. This is not an elephant.


The motel was right next door to the Wonder Spot.


Rain or Shine my ass.


They were closed for the season.


We went to Paul Bunyan's and got in a fight about eggs. Then we went to Denny's and I ordered some eggs.



Our last stop was Dr. Evermor's Forevertron. It's a scrap yard and art gallery. Dr. Evermor had a stroke recently and isn't doing so well. A woman was there who we think was his wife. The Forevertron was originally supposed to be a time machine that would transport him to heaven, but now, according to his wife, he's saying it will transport him to "space" instead. He says he doesn't know if he's going to heaven or not. The Forevertron is the really big thing in the background in the first picture. It's fucking huge.













That's about it.

11:40 AM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

List: Sentences I Got Paid To Write Last Night

-The G6 coupe is a monster on the road.

-Lion and tigers and bears, oh my!

-Cleveland might not be much of a surfing city, but Pontiac thinks you deserve a little fun in the sun.

-On November 7th, ProGrade Milwaukee members are in for a real hoot—Hootie & the Blowfish, that is!

-Twin City nu-metal fans: this one’s for you.

1:39 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

shameless self promotion

my newest zine is available online at quimbys now. if you're not in chicago, or you're just too lazy to get off your ass and go there, you should buy one. seriously. it's easy. just use the "internet."

pick it up here.

oh - the other 2 are up there too. buy them.

hypocritical mass 1

hypocritical mass 2

7:29 AM - 0 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

holy crap.

this guy goes to my old high school.i don't even know what to say about that. it's like it's so funny i can't even laugh, or it's so fucked up i just don't even know how to process it. either way i'm scared he's gonna arrest me for posting his picture. and yet...



wow. that is seriously the most terrifying white 19 year old of all time.

2:20 PM - 3 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

my favorite song

ever.

1:28 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment