I was in Hobby Lobby earlier (craft-kitsch for miles) looking for linoleum for ink prints. That's not the point, though, just the context. As I was searching through the bizarre menagerie of truly awful decorative crap, I passed an old lady in a wheelchair being pushed by another woman. The elderly matron was stooped forward with that sort of listless expression that old people get upon the realization that they've outlived the Prussian Empire, clutching a cane. As I moved down an aisle to get out of her way, I heard her let loose with a belch worthy of a high school tuba player. It was outstanding. I know it was her because I heard her laugh out loud about it right after she did it.

More Google Earth fun: the Sphynx
Go to 29° 58' 32.01" N, 31° 08'13.91" E.
To the north and west are a few pyramids and some ruins of something. Then continue northwest to see a huge cluster of newer symmetrical buildings that I'm guessing are residential. Zoom in all the way you might see a guy in a red fez. If you know why to follow him, you're my kind of people.

Things I have accomplished at work today:

Unlocked door.
Found that I am the only one here.
Logged in.
Checked work e-mail, confirmed that half of the department is out for one reason or another.
Checked personal e-mail.
Turned on music, updated podcasts.
Started working on Emens calendar stuff.
Found conch shell, blew into it. Nobody came to investigate.
Worked on Emens calendar stuff.
Watched the trailer for "V for Vendetta."
Purchased beverage, Dr. Pepper(x1) from vending machine. Stamina +10, temporary "caffeinated" status effect
Stole some fat kid's glasses to try to make fire.
Gave up on fire.
Listened to omnipresent sound of computer fans.
Made umpteenth mental note to have network cable replaced because it seems to be frayed somewhere within the plastic and periodically loses my connection.
Started blogging.
Entered another calendar event.
Listened to Black Sabbath out loud on my speakers, a rare event reserved for when I'm alone in the office.
Killed a wild pig, mounted said pig's head on a stick for symbolic effect or something.
Held my hand up to the vent above me, muttered about lack of air flow.
Sat idle thinking of things to write here, felt a little bad about not working.
Went back to calendar entries.
Procrastinated leaving work due to long walk in weather that weather.com claims "Feels Like: 112°F."
Ate granola bar(x1). Stamina +15
Satisfied with getting most of my work done, logged out and left the office.

Burst into flames.

On Saturday I went to Indy to see the movie Howl's Moving Castle and a Black Keys concert. Between these events, I wandered around as I am prone to do when given leisure time in a city. Howl's Moving Castle was great. Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli have created another fun, complex children's movie full of amazing characters and locations. I thoroughly enjoyed it. After the movie, I drove to Broad Ripple to see what it looks like in the daylight. It was about this time that the rain started coming down in buckets, and the streets were flooding. I got soaked even though I had an umbrella, so I sat in a starbucks until the weather subsided. After I had dried off a bit and changed into my flip-flops, I went to Keystone to look for good stuff on clearance at Pottery Barn. It's that little streak of suburbanite in me that I can't seem to fight. I ended up buying some coasters because I need one for my desk, and I found little candle holders for 45 cents, which according to the employee at the register, was the cheapest she'd seen anything in the store. I felt pretty darn good about that. After that, I ate dinner and wandered around Borders to kill time. The show was going to start at 9:00, and my socks still felt damp, so I made a quick stop at Target for dry socks. I got to the concert early, just in case it started on time. I don't know what made me think it would, but you never know. It turned out that there was an opening act planned, much to my dismay. Spookie Daly Pride notwithstanding, I've never really liked opening acts. I'm there to see a specific band, not a band that sounds similar to the main event but isn't as good. After a half hour of standing there staring at the stage, a voice over the PA said that the opening act had to cancel. At this point I figured that the Black Keys would be on soon, so I made my way to the front of the crowd. I was so close that I couldn't hear the vocals very well, but I was right in front of the drummer and I was getting the guitar sound directly from the amp. It was an amazing show. They played all the songs I wanted to hear, including "the Breaks" from their first album, which I love. The crowd was really into it, which is nice. When I first got there I noticed right away that half the guys there were tall skinny crackers with long hair. It was euphoric for me to be in a crowd like that.

Those of you who use Google Earth, try this:

Go to 29˚ 20'16.54 N, 101˚ 42'17.56W. The object itself is diffacult to see, but the shadow on the ground is unmistakably a giant easel. This is the world's largest Van Gogh sunflowers copy, located in Goodland, Kansas. I was marooned in that little town during a blizzard while on a trip during undergrad, and I haven't forgotten this landmark.

Edit: The above cooridinates should read 39˚ 20'16.54 N, 101˚ 42'17.56W. 39 instead of 29. This makes a big difference. The wrong coordinates put you in the middle of nowhere, instead of the middle of nowhere with a kitch landmark.

I work as a happy little cog in the university PR machine, so periodically I look at what other schools are doing to promote themselves, then figure out how to do it better. Case in point, the map. Well, I just got a link that blows us away. Franklin and Marshall University has a great little animated pitch for applying to their school. If you like Terry Gilliam or historical humor, then give this a look.

This is my new clock. It came with a craptastic Office Depot logo on the face, so I painted over it. It's a cloud from Super Mario Brothers, those of you who missed the 8-bit era. Click on it to see the full-res version and my decidedly sub-pre-Raphaelite brush control.

I had a good three-day weekend, and I have pictures to prove some of it. Gerry, Tom, and I all went to the Indianapolis zoo on Sunday, where we saw several creatures that were more photogenic than we are. Ditto for our trip to Broad Ripple (more on that below). Click each image for the full version.

A young Baboon chewing on a branch.











If there's anything in nature funnier than a baboon's red arse, I have yet to see it.








I wish I could have taken this one closer. It's some kind of monkey lounging in a log.









Tom communes with nature. Lorakeet eats, bites Tom. It would have been a better story if he had shrieked like a schoolgirl, but he was tough. Then we all went and used the free hand sanitizer.







This eel can do whatever it darn well pleases, as far as I'm concerned. It's things like this that keep me out of non-chlorinated water.







After the zoo we drove around downtown looking for somewhere to eat. As a rule, there is never any convenient parking in Indy, so anywhere we wanted to go was going to require a zig-zag trek through the city's commercial center. A short walk later we arrived at the Ram. Tom swore it was good, and it had TVs with sports, so Gerry wouldn't get fussy. Fun for the whole family, right? Well, sort of. The menu was a gallery of giant size burgers and multi-meat sandwiches. I don't like beef, but I found something that fascinated me: a burger made of bratwurst with mustard, onions, and cheese. It was delicious. Maybe it was the euphoric effect of prolonged exposure to sunlight and fresh air, but I really enjoyed that brat burger.

Broad Ripple is the sort of place that people in my demographic go to on weekends. We played pool for awhile, then wandered down the street to see the rest of the area. After a few stops, we ended up at the Rock Lobster. This was probably my favorite place. They play good music, and the back end is an open-air patio, so it isn't too smoky. I had a couple in me, so I had my hair down, and Weezer was playing on the speakers. Some crazy chick started air-guitaring, so I did too, and then another guy was talking to me about playing the guitar. I may have let it slip that I can play Led Zeppelin's "Over the hills" (which is partially true) and "Stairway to heaven" (which is mostly untrue). Yeah, fun times. We crashed with Tom and drove back home the next morning. Gerry and I stopped at Mcdonald's for breakfast, and as we were going to sit down, a septuagenarian man said "hey, nice shirt." We turned, and he was wearing the same American flag shirt at Gerry. Old men have similar tastes.

Later on that day we went to a cookout at our neighbor's house. It was a simple affair of lawn chairs and a charcoal grill. Then we watched the Muncie fireworks display from the roof of a parking garage on campus. This was a good vantage point, as it is safely removed from the rest of the town. Townies and phosphorous charges are a dangerous mix.

I bought a CD after hearing some of it in Tom's car. "A Grand Don't Come for Free" by the Streets. They're a British band that combine strange brass samples and odd drum beats with half-sung, half-spoken lyrics. The album tells a story of a guy trying to get money and handle a relationship with a girl he meets in the second song, then breaks up with in the tenth. The thick accents and the story remind me of Guy Ritchie's early movies. It's well cool.

A couple of noteworthy links:

Liquid Man
An interview with the guy I buy comics from

I'm going to Indy at some point this weekend, but I don't know when. If I remember, I'll take my camera and post pictures here with blogger's new image serving feature. Speaking of which, I tried the new MS blog service that some of the CICS people here would like the students to use. The image upload feature on that reprocesses the image and spits out a really crappy, pixelated image. The test pic I uploaded was 24K, and it looked fine. The pic that it displayed was poorly aliased and the file size was 48K. Unacceptable, if you ask me. I'd almost rather see students using xanga. If anyone out there is looking at different free blog services, I recommend Blogger or Livejournal. I've done a pretty good amount of research lately at work, and those are the two standout choices.