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.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the wedding of my old friend Sarah and the newest induction to the Fools, Kris. The services were held in the lobby of the Embassy Theatre, a beautiful old building with handmade wall sconces, intricate floor tile patterns, and naught but the finest metal folding chairs for the guests. The ceremony proceeded as such things do: music, vows, and that feeling of giddy solemnity that is exclusive to weddings. The collective esteem for the happy couple was palpable. This wasn't one of those weddings where you sit there and cynically envision the pending union as a commuter train careening off of the tracks into a herd of cattle. These two are far too cool and likeable. Gerry and I will die alone, so we can at least glean some vicarious matrimonial joy from this. The open bar and the large dinner spread at the reception didn't hurt, either.

The reception was quite pleasant. I wore my brand new coat that I purchased at a significant discount, along with a newly-acquired dress shirt that wasn'’t such a good deal, but actually fits my Ent-ish frame pretty well. The social setting was peculiar though. The party consisted of people with the stamp of approval from two very nice people, so socializing was easy enough even for me. Sarah is still as sweet as ever, though she has developed an assertive wit in the years since I knew her in high school. Kris is, in all regards, a great guy. I caught up with a few other people who I hadn't seen since high school, and met a couple of new people as well.

If you're like me, with such an insufferabley high opinion of yourself that you must tell the world about the minutiae of your life via a blog, then click on the link graphic below to take a blogging survey created by a PhD candidate at MIT.

From an interview with Billy Corgan:

"They proved me right, which is that the whole indie thing is just a pose. I can'’t say that about everybody, but our general feeling in the Pumpkins always was that people took the indie route because deep down they knew they didn'’t have the talent to make it on the mainstream level... If you'’re going to play music at a high level to a large audience, it can'’t really be about you. You have to make it seem like it's about you, but it has to really be about others, it'’s really about sharing. And their indie-cred mentality really is about, '‘What'’s it got to do with me?' and '‘Can I find people who agree with me, who think like me, who dress like me, smoke pot like me?'’ They'’re just assholes. It'’s simple." -Billy Corgan in Paste magazine, referring to the Zwan breakup.

This pretty well sums up quite a few people who have frustrated me, particularly in undergrad. Just because someone dresses as though they are avant-garde, and their work doesn't make sense without lengthy discussion or knowledge of the inside jokes of their peers, that doesn't mean they're genius. I used to hold myself to their odd standard, and I eventually gave up drawing because I didn't feel I was at their level. Only in the past year has it become clear to me that I needn't conform to the standard of people I don't care about. I'm an animator, damnit. I'm a content designer, a storyteller, an (extremely) amateur musician, a decent writer, and I came here to use these skills to better myself and learn to create new things. Gad it feels good to say that.

My brother and I just scored 3424 on Oregon Trail. He didn't want to start as a carpenter because they have no money, but I wanted to because they can fix things. Case in point- an axle broke and we fixed it. Booyah! And being a carpenter means that your score is doubled in the end. We lost one member of our party, a poor sap named RED SHIRT. His name was in all caps because the Apple IIe emulator defaulted to caps. This poor soul bought it while crossing the second river we came to. Since this was a watery demise, we didn't have to bury him with a clever epitaph. He probably just floated out to the gulf of Mexico. It's just as well, though: he kept eating all the hard-tack and he kept telling us all that he was the Les Claypool of the jawharp. We continued on westward at a strenuous pace, stopping on occasion to hunt. My years of bragging about what a mighty hunter I am went up in smoke when I only brought back 75 lbs of food. Then Michael tried and killed a bear. Another time, he got stuck walking around when he ran into a pixelated cactus. We ate well. Further along, we came across a tombstone from the previous owner of the game. It was a simple affair with this curious etching: "Here lies andy" next line: "peperony and chease" (misspelled pizza references suggest that this person probably should never have left Independence, Missouri). EDGAR was bitten by a snake, and MICHAEL came down with cholera after we let some strange Shoshone Indian help us cross a river. The stupid jerk didn't know what he was talking about- the wagon tipped over and we lost two spare axles. I should have known something was up when he requested two sets of clothing as currency for his services. Everyone lived through their particular ordeals after that, and we made it to the cool part where you have to guide the wagon on a flatboat down a river, avoiding identical rocks as you float by. This is where I made up for my inadequacy as a hunter. I deftly maneuvered the wagon down the river, past the three arrow signs to the trail on the shore that marks the end. We made it, in fair health but good spirits.

Summer is an odd time here. You’d think it would be easier to get around in a college town during the summer when the population around campus clears out, but it actually got worse. The amount of road construction around here has made everything inconvenient.

I went out to dinner with several of my classmates last night to the local Mexican restaurant. It’s not quite on par with what I’ve had in California or Fort Wayne, but the cheese enchiladas satisfy the monkey on my back just fine. We talked about all the things you might expect- Star Wars, the Office, David Sedaris- stuff like that. Then, much to my foundation-rattling shock, I was asked about doing some freelance animation. There’s a lab here on campus that I can use for such a project, and I’ve been looking for an opportunity to ply my trade. Sometimes I feel like I haven’t used Maya since it was installed on a UNIVAC. The project is a promo video for a company in Indy that makes gigantic lawnmowers. The kind of mower that causes a noticeable decrease in oxygen output from the grass it mows over. The big selling point is something about how the blades move, so in lieu of holding the camera three inches away from a six foot span of gas-powered spinning blades (ostensibly blades of death), a CGI shot will serve just as well to show the process in detail. That’s where I come in. I do hope this pans out. There has been an offer of money, but before I give a quote I need to know exactly what sort of shot will be needed. The way it looks now, there will be modeling the under side of the mower, animating the action, match-moving the model to live footage, and compositing the video- which might be done by somebody else, I’m not sure. Ye Gods it feels good to talk about this stuff again.

I’ve been meaning to blog my feelings about Revenge of the Sith for some time now. It'll be long-winded and geeky, and probably meandering, so skip this unless you really care about Star Wars. Obviously, spoilers abound, so stop reading if you haven’t seen the movie (then find the nearest available geek and explain your situation- we are available 24/7 to remedy this problem). I have a new perspective on the Jedi and the Old Republic now. I always held the belief that the Jedi that kept order before the Empire were wise and just heroes, and above all that they were independent of any governing force but virtue. This is the model set by Ben Kenobi in IV, and this paradigm endures in every other piece of supplemental material. In this movie, we see the Jedi in a different light. Their ties to the Senate are so complete that they can’t fathom why the Chancellor should ever be considered a threat until he kills four Jedi right in front of Mace Windu. Anakin enters at the Shakespearianly awkward time of seeing Master Windu about to kill the Chancellor, and suddenly everything the council has said about justice and fairness is called into question by the wrathful expression on Master Windu’s face. But why should Anakin even listen to him? The Jedi council made it abundantly clear that they didn’t like him even when he was just a grubby little kid from Tatooine. Anakin represented a break from the status quo. He wasn’t an adorable little youngling waving a lightsaber around in Yoda’s intro to laser blocking class; he was a sweatshop mechanic from the ass-end of Hutt controlled space. Anakin’s tenure as a Padawan learner the academy on Coruscant was difficult as well, even though he possessed natural ability. Obi-Wan was the only Jedi who didn’t regard him with disdainful eye-rolling, but it was several years before he saw Anakin as a friend and not an awkward inheritance from Qui-Gon. Anakin persevered out of a desire to promote justice in the galaxy. Strictly speaking, this desire is against the Jedi code. But Obi-Wan, one of two surviving Jedi when all is said and done, points out "only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes." Yoda, by contrast, persists in advising Anakin to go against his natural instincts. Anakin is constantly caught between the opposing viewpoints of those who seek to maintain or create some kind of order after their own design. The one good thing Anakin had going for him was Padme and the possibility of becoming a father. In less turbulent times, when he would have time to think rationally, Anakin may have realized that this was his way out. He could move out to a little chateau on Naboo, raise twins (surprise!), fix up a T-16 with Luke and Leia, learn to talk to his wife like a grown-up, and grow old bullshitting about podracing with the old men in the village. What would be the alternative, really? If he had allowed Master Windu to kill Palpatine, the Jedi would be pariahs. As we all know, even the most self-serving weasel can attain unparalleled popularity if he manufactures a war against beings that look different to boost his career. The Jedi were too close to the senate to see what was going on, all the while preaching a life without attachment. Alas, the Last Temptation of Anakin ends as expected. I blame the Jedi council for what happens to the galaxy. Yoda takes a different tack with Luke on Dagobah, much more straightforward than he was with Anakin. No more platitudes about avoiding the dark side- he sends Luke into the cave to face his dark side before he ever learns of his heritage. That's the Yoda I remember- not the CGI imp acting as a general in the clone wars, but the wise old master preparing a farm boy to save the universe by showing him what he will have to overcome.

There it is. Most of you shouldn't have read all of that. If you did, well, on your own head be it.

I've finally ended my self-imposed boycott of all music published by RIAA-affiliated record labels. I still don't like them as an organization that takes money from artists and files massive scattershot lawsuits, but my big reason to stop buying their music was that they wouldn't endorse a legal download alternative. That was the case two years ago when I started my self-righteous stand. Now you can't go anywhere on the internet without finding somebody who will sell you digital music- even walmart is trying some sort of download system. The classic litmus test for when a technology has caught on firmly is when the yokels get access. If wallyworld is digitally offering their brand of sanitized pop and rock music to the hilljack masses, then it appears that digital music has caught on.

My first purchase? The new System of a Down album. It rocks quite a lot. If you could imagine a huge truck full of rock with big letters on the side that spell “ROCK” speeding down the highway on fire, then you'd have a good idea of what is on this CD. The second track contains the oft-repeated lyrics “why don't presidents fight the war/ why do they always send the poor.” If there is one good thing about corporate music, it's that the desire to sell music and make money trumps the right-wing pressure to quash dissenting material.

One other thing is worth blogging: on my way back to school, I almost hit a deer on the interstate. I saw one run across the street just in front of my headlights so I slowed down, and then a second apeared on the road. It saw me coming, got scared, and ran straight across. I pulled over on to the shoulder and avoided it by probably ten feet or less. My reaction saved us both. All the deer did was panic, crap on the side of the road, and run. Yet again, thank you violent video games. The deer and I would have been in serious trouble without the reflexes I've developed during countless nights fragging zombies and terrorists.

Done.

"The next time you see the homie and his rims is spinin',
Just know my mind is workin' just like them (The rims that is)" (Jay-Z, 2003)

The time before finals week that some refer to as "dead week" is truly a magical time. Long stretches of desperate productivity punctuated by periods of sitting perfectly still to wait for my head to stop throbbing and my vision to clear. This is the time when I prove that I've retained a semester's worth of learning by going through a week that, due to sporadic nourishment and restless sleep, I will not remember when it's over. I'm living on sandwiches from the atrium, tomato soup cups, and horse-pill multi-vitamins. I'll go on record as saying that grad school is a terrible idea, and should only be attempted by people with the willfully stubborn chutzpah to ignore the good advice to stay away. Thankfully, I get that ability from both of my parents.

And yes, I cited Jay-Z according to my AP style manual. I'm only being mildly sarcastic there.

T.S. Elliot was absolutely, prophetically right when he wrote "April is the cruelest month." The weather was great a week ago, and then on Friday the temperature dropped along with every form of precipitation possible. Last night at 11:30 it was snowing as Gerry, Tom, and I worked to unload a couch and an entertainment center from a moving van. It's a bit of a long story, and I'm tired and hungry right now, but suffice it to say that you find out who your friends are right quick when you need people to help carry an overstuffed sofa down a slick, snow-covered ramp, across a wet parking lot, up four steps, through two doors, up a narrow flight of stairs, and (somehow) through an awkwardly shaped entrance to an apartment. For whatever reason, nobody wanted to help us, so the three of us worked out the problem through trial and error involving angles that no furniture should ever be in.

Operating Instructions:

1. Connect the spoon to the handle.

2. On the base of the handle, push the black power switch toward the spoon bowl to turn the power on.

3. Push the red button on the top of the handle to activate the spoon light.

This poetry adorns the transparent bag that formerly held my newest tchotchke, a light-up lightsaber spoon. Gerry and I were at walmart earlier to buy food and examine the summer movie promotion swag. Naturally, it's all Star Wars stuff, especially the cereal. Menacing portraits of characters from the third prequel mugging over bowls of milk-soaked cornflakes for the length of the aisle- it's quite something. We stopped to admire a box of crispix with a mail-away offer for an R2-D2 bowl that makes character-appropriate noises when acted upon by some outside force, such as the weight of cereal in the bowl. Gerry and I deliberated over this and determined that the cereal would indeed be a worthwhile purchase with the offer of a bowl resembling an astromech droid. How can you go wrong? A few feet from this was a box of apple jacks emblazoned with Anakin Skywalker. I'm not sure the cereal company meant for me to associate their cereal with the character responsible for the wholesale slaughter of nearly all of the Jedi in the Republic, or the personification of Campbell's archetype of evil, but the important thing is that the box contained the lightsaber spoon. I don't eat cereal, as it doesn't work to carry milk and cereal in my cupped hands as I walk to work. Gerry is more the cereal type, so we agreed that I would buy the cereal and he would eat it, but I get the spoon. For just shy of three bucks, I'd say I got a good deal. I opened the box and the prize was right there on top. We could hardly contain our enthusiasm as I struggled through the layers of plastic packaging to assemble my new utensil. I deliberately avoided pressing any buttons to save the surprise of the color of light that would soon illuminate the plastic spoon and every bit of food I will ingest for the next few weeks. I assembled the item according to the instructions above, moved the small black switch up, and pressed the power button. Gerry and I both gasped audibly as the spoon lit up blazingly red. It looked even cooler with the light out- my kitchen was illuminated by a spoon. It's worth waiting for the sun to go down to eat with a lightsaber spoon, in case any of you need a little extra incentive for Passover.

I'm in the library doing research in the journals and publications archive section right now. As I was returning what I needed, I found a collection of book-bound issues of "The Illustrated London Press." I opened up the January-March volume 1937 to peruse the old European art-deco advertising that I like so much, and I found a big article from February 6 with photos of Nazi Germany. One line from the article jumped out at me: "...the Chancellor declared that the Versailles Treaty was now at an end, and that, Germany having attained equality, there would be no more "surprises."" Hmm. Surprise! I'm always fascinated at how the world kissed Germany's collective ass when it was kind of obvious from the photos of their army marching in the street with rifles that they weren't done causing trouble. Folks were simpler back then.

So, what did everybody else do on Saturday? I worked on homework, saw Sin City, and later in the evening Gerry and I watched Rudy with one of his co-workers who may or not be my best friend in the whole world, I don't know. She left around 1:30, and Gerry and I hung around for a minute. He gave me a comic to read, and as I was leaving we both heard a strange buzzing noise. It wasn't in the kitchen, it wasn't the computer; curiouser and curiouser. The noise was louder in the hall and up the stairs, so we went to investigate. The smoke alarm was going off in number 10 upstairs. Being the noble Jedi that I am, I pounded on the door, but received no response. The next logical step (courtesy of Gerry) was to check the doorknob for heat a la the method demonstrated by Dick Van Dyke in the old filmstrip we all had to watch every time the fire marshall came to the school, or the cub scout den visited the fire station. No heat, but no answer at the door either. So, though I am loathe to use the phone except to call Gerry or a relative, I dialed 911 and tried to describe the abstract concept of theoretical fire through a locked door to the bleary-eyed third-shifter at the other end. She said that she would send someone out. I waited at the window for the truck while Gerry bravely brushed his teeth in preparation for dealing with the firemen. Dental hygiene goes a long way with our brave civil servants, after all. I waited outside in case the driver had trouble finding an apartment complex on the third busiest street in north Muncie, and my phone made a noise. It had made a little chime when I dialed 911 the first time, so I looked to see if I had missed a call. There was no evidence of this, so as near as I can tell the fire department pinged my phone to triangulate my location from the tower. In short, very cool. The truck arrived shortly, all lights and sirens like a bat out of hell. I went out to meet the firemen and to explain the situation. Gerry and I tried to reach our landlady and got her voice mail. The firemen climbed up a ladder to the third floor window and determined that the alarm was going off even though there was no smoke. The truck left, and Gerry said that I could post this from his room. He's trying to sleep right now, so if I may I'll speak on his behalf: "Loyal, get the hell out of my apartment. It's two damn thirty." Well said, fool, well said.

I've felt pretty good lately, despite a newly acquired sore throat from one of several germs that have hit half the campus recently. I was a little concerned earlier this week when I came home expecting to find a package from Amazon and all I found was a note saying the box was on the floor. I looked down, and much to my disappointment, there was no box. I didn't pay Amazon thirty bucks for a nice note of intent from UPS, so I set about searching the area for my stuff. It wasn't in the other building, and it wasn't on the other two floors, so I immediately assumed that my box had either been mistakenly picked up by another student living here, or that it had been stolen by some grubby little neighborhood coke addict. I hoped it was the former option, so I could get my stuff back without going to a pawnshop, but I also secretly hoped it would be the latter, because in my mind that scenario ends like the “stuck in the middle with you” scene in Reservoir Dogs. I got back from class later and found the box by my door with a nice note from #9 saying that she had picked it up without looking at the address. The funny thing is that the box was meticulously taped back together with scotch tape over the packing tape. Funny because the box only had to go two flights of stairs down to me, and because that means that the accidental recipient opened the box to find the new Dropkick Murphys CD and the latest book by Sarah Vowell. I'm sure that she didn't expect that, but it would be great if it was a coincidence because that would mean there was somebody really cool living here. I'd have someone to talk to without having to walk across the parking lot.

I have the CD on now, and I love it. The second track is a cover of “Fortunate Son.” It rocked on the live CD, and this studio recorded version is just awesome. Picture a skinny cracker standing in front of his computer speakers rocking air guitar and mouthing the words. It's funny. There's also a cover of a song by Motorhead. Dropkick Murphys doing Motorhead is the best combo since black and tan.

The book in the box was a surprise. It isn't actually supposed to be released until next month, or so I thought. The computer at Amazon wasn't going to ship my order until the book was released. I wanted my CD as soon as I could get it, so I set it to ship the items separately. The package shipped that day, and the invoice said that the book was included. Yadda yadda, now I have the book.

I got another CD that I ordered in the mail recently as well: Carla Bruni. I can't spell the title, and I'm looking right at the CD case. It's something foreign, probably French, and about as far removed from drunken blue-collar punk as one can get, but I like it. I heard a song from the album on WBNI (Fort Wayne public radio) while driving south of Hartford City a few weeks ago, and it really stuck with me. I couldn't write down the artist's name while driving in the dark in the middle of nowhere, so I just chanted her name like a lunatic for about five miles so that I would remember what to look up on Amazon. The CD is about to be released domestically, but the new edition will be on V2- a subsidiary of Virgin, a member of the RIAA. Luckily, the import is from some European label that the RIAA Radar site said was safe. I paid a little extra, but I can sleep soundly knowing I did the right thing.

Just a quick note to welcome Tom to the blogosphere. He brings a wealth of knowledge and raises the bar for personal hygene among the people that I link to.

I've added more links to the list on the right. It's "Drawn," a blog devoted to graphic design from all over the place. It's an RSS feed too, for those of you cool enough to care. I'm also adding Penny Arcade because I read it and enjoy it. I put boingboing up there too, since I get almost all the interesting stuff I post or forward from there.

Break is going well, as breaks go. That is to say, I haven't done anything strenuous. I've gotten some reading done, visited my alma mater, and played video games. Any of these could be worth blogging about, if I had the accumen to do so anymore. I've lost that bloggin' feeling. I don't plan to quit, but I'm not all that happy with my blog writing of late. I think I wrote better when I was miserable and unemployed a year and a half ago. I had more time to sit and think, rather than constantly running around without time to think. I am quite a bit happier now so I suppose it's a fair trade.

It's been said by someone far more altruistic than myself that we should try to leave the world a better place than we found it. This is a lovely idea, but I think my fellow students and I may have blown it this past weekend. We shot a movie in an old building full of rusty nails, splintered wood, over one thousand various athletic t-shirts, bats, beautiful antique wood panels, and water damage worse than the Lusitania. It did not have heat, running water, or electricity in the traditional sense.

I started a post about this after the first weekend of shooting, but it occurred to me that the post would contain spoilers galore, and some of my blog audience will see the movie at some point. It's a shame, too, because there were some good stories involving me in the back of a cop car and a temperamental fog machine.

This past weekend was my second weekend working on the movie. The presence of feeling in my legs was a sign that the weather was better. We worked for over twelve hours a day both days, relying on flashlights to work where the work light didn't reach. There was a funny incident on Saturday night when an actor stepped into a dark hall and two bats swooped right over his head. He wouldn't go down to the other end of the hall where his next shot was, so I took my flashlight and the fog machine to smoke the bats out. This must have worked, because we didn't have a problem with bats for the rest of the weekend.

For some reason, many of the eating establishments in Hartford City do not take any sort of magnetic card payment. The first weekend we ate at a recently opened Chinese buffet where the young woman at the register claimed that they could not accept electronic payment because it was Sunday. I'm not sure what that meant, but we figured that since they had only been open for a few days that their system wasn't perfect yet. I'm also not sure what was significant about it being Sunday, but it would be funny if the bank owner was a burn-out turned born-again fundie who refused to let his computer work on Sunday. The next weekend we went to Subway and my order and my friend's order were half done when we learned that they didn't take cards either. This is a national chain, mind you. My friend commented that he and his girlfriend had paid with a card at a Subway in the hills of Virginia just a few months prior. Fortunately, Pizza King was up on current technology circa 1995, so we enjoyed mediocre pizza and luxuriously standard indoor heating.

It was a good weekend for me.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I will not be going overseas this summer. The cost of the trip is way above what I’m capable of paying for. This presents a problem, because I need some sort of “cultural immersion” to graduate. This can be done in America, according to the vague guidelines laid out by my advisor, so I’ve been looking for somewhere to go, some place to stay, something to look at, and some way of presenting it online. I know someone who went to Southeast Asia to work at an internship for a few weeks, and this sounds appealing. If I could get a month-long internship at some game design place it would definitely help me more in the long run, and maybe even pay a little to offset the cost. This is, of course, a best-case scenario. I may end up reading a Paris travel guide and building a web page with the photos I took a few years ago when I was there with the USF art department.

I sat down here in the library with intent to blog, and now I can't think of anyting to say. Spare moments like these are few and far between. I have a few minutes before work, and I can't think of anyting on my to-do list that can be effectively accomplished in twenty minutes or less, so here I am. With nothing to talk about. Maybe something interesting will happen later, like an armed peasant revolt from south Muncie, or something.

I haven't blogged in a while because I haven't done anything blog-worthy since my last post. My lack of leisure time coupled with weather patterns rivaling the last ice age have made any real activity impossible.

I went to a concert in Indy the other night. The main act is one of Michelle's favorites, which is why I was there, but it was the band before them that really caught my attention. They're called Spookie Daly Pride, and to try to explain their music in text would not do them justice. Most bands have that one guy who looks kind of odd, like he was raised by wolves. This band was four of those odd guys. The lead singer/piano player would play the piano with his feet, pretend to fly, and every time he finished a cigarette he would place it on an amp, and the guitar player would pick it up, take a drag, and stamp it out. This happened several times, like a ritual. I bought their CD before their set was over, I was sold.

Yesterday I assisted in taking a stray cat to an animal shelter. This may seem remarkable in itself, but it was nothing compared to the interior of the shelter. Cats. Wall to wall, floor to ceiling, everywhere. The odd mix of strays reminded me of the asylum in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Some were friendly, but all of them had their own unique neuroses. One of them had a thing for climbing on backs (I have little claw marks on my shoulder from that one.) One of them was the largest cat I have ever seen from being overfed by some old lady. Seriously, this cat was immobile. It was chapter one in the lesser known of T.S. Eliot's works, "Old Possum's Book of Impractical Cats." I can laugh at it because it can't chase me.

Tomorrow I'm going to a Halo fragfest with people from my classes. It ought to be fun, if the last one was any indicator.

My apartment has power again as of last night. I've had the heater on as hot as it goes to try to bring the climate back up to room temperature; so far, so good. The apartment above mine has had the heat on full too- when I got up this morning, the kitchen floor was cold but the air around my head and up to the ceiling was noticeably warmer. The refrigerator works, the hot water heater works, the clocks are all reset, and things are getting back to normal.

Much to my own surprise, I've been productive in the past few days. I drove back to my apartment to check my mail for bills and to make sure the possum hadn't figured out how to open the window from the outside yet. So far, so good. The place was cold, but the water wasn't frozen, so things seem to be okay. As I was leaving, I did see smoke coming from Gerry's window, but it was only a little, not the sort of thing that is really worth freaking out over. :)

The day before that my brother and I helped the new pastor at the church I'm most likely to attend when I attend such things move in to her new house. My brother and I hooked up her computer and fiddled around with her TV, VCR, and DVD player with some degree of success. I assembled a couple of TV stands, which made me quite happy.

Today I did actual work. My brother and I rented a "Rug Doctor" carpet cleaner from the local grocery store in order to fill our grunt work quotient for the month by steam cleaning parts of the carpet here at home. When I was about four or five, I wanted to get one from the store because of the little cartoon Rug Doctor had arms and a face, so I thought it was a robot. It turns out that Rug Doctor is, in fact, not a robot at all. Instead, Rug Doctor is a moderately heavy red plastic shell with a water tank and a vacuum motor. The instructions are printed in a peculiar fashion on several surfaces of the machine. Ideally, this is so the operator can refer to them while standing behind the operating handle (provided that the operator is no more than 4'5'' tall). It worked well enough, and now I'm waiting for the carpet to dry so that we can put the furniture back where it belongs.

All time before this week was spent resting and recovering from the semester. The best way for me to do this is to read, watch TV, and play video games. This provides a serviceable segue into me listing the media that I've enjoyed and why, as I am prone to do now and again.

Books:

• Superman/Batman: I started this one almost as soon as I got home because I needed a break from academia. Something fun, but still well-written.
• Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes: I've put off reading this series for years, even though I've heard glowing praise for it and I like the author's other works. I've enjoyed it so far- it's very subtle in it's storytelling method, (not at all like my normal comic choices) and almost perfectly diametrically opposed to the aforementioned Superman/Batman book.
  

yet to read:

• Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency: I got this one for my brother for Christmas. He thanked me, and then told me for the umpteenth time that I need to read it. I'll see how far I can get before I return to school.
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance: I've found that it helps me to read at least one book that isn't required reading every semester, usually a little bit at a time in bed at night.
• Eats Shoots and Leaves: Because punctuation can be fun too.

Games:

• Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater: Periodically, I play a game that reminds me why I love new media so much. This game serves as a rebuttal to the crotchety old Philistines who see video games as digital playthings with no real value. The game takes place in a jungle in western Russia in 1964, where several people are vieing for power over things that could mean the difference between a prolonged cold-war and widespread nuclear war. A scientist trying to defect to America with plans for a nuclear capable tank, a huge unclaimed war chest pooled from the resources of several nations left over from World War II, a radical faction within Kruschev's army looking to seize power, and several other characters all play significant roles in the story. There really isn't a way to accurately describe the game, or to relate the impact the story had on me. The whole time I was playing, I kept trying to think of how to use this as an example in classroom discussions next semester. It's a shame that the nature of the game makes the story inaccessible to so many people, as it must be played in order to be understood. As the title suggests, the main character does in fact have to eat snakes. This means spotting them in the jungle, killing or trapping them, and eating them in order to keep the character's stamina up. Not just snakes, though: rats, birds, stolen Soviet rations, and eventually packs of ramen noodles found in a base supply closet are all required for survival. When the character is injured, he must tend to his wounds with medical supplies. For a bullet wound, the bullet must be removed with a knife, then the wound is treated with disinfectant and two different kinds of bandages. The level of detail is spectacular, and it kills me that I don't have anyone at school to discuss this with.

I head back to school this week. My classes are all in order now, and my schedule looks great. I have evening classes Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and a project that I can schedule whenever I want. This will make my work schedule so much easier to figure out- no more six-hour Fridays.

There's a new link in my list over yonder, a site my brother pointed me to. It's cartoons based on spam headlines. Self-published original content via RSS is the way of the future, according to my HCI final paper. That means it's true.

I'm done. My last final was yesterday and it probably went well. I felt like I knew what I was talking about. There was one question that asked if video games were character driven or plot driven. I said character driven because the player experiences the game through the avatar and any emotional impact comes from the character, but in retrospect I could say that games are plot driven because the story and the environment define the character's actions and are shaped to reach a specific end and there isn't anything that the player can do to change the conclusion. Yup. This is like undergrad in that I keep thinking "you're letting me major in this?"

Here are some highlights from the semester:

• Arriving for the first day of grad orientation and finding out that I get a kickass graphics computer with a monitor as big as all outdoors.
• Finding out that my friend and former high school speech duo partner is enrolled in grad school here as well.
• Being pounced upon by Michelle while waiting in the buffet line and learning that I would be seeing her in every class, thus beginning the Meyers-Briggs mayhem of my existence here.
• Living next to Gerry, which means that I always have someone to read comics with, watch movies with, and hold my spare key so that I can get back into my apartment when I'm locked out in a t-shirt and pajama pants a half hour before I have to be ready to go to the Wynton Marsalis concert. Not my proudest moment.
• HCI class, where I had the distinct pleasure of being among a disparate group of geniuses for a few hours each week, often followed by a post-class trip to Scotty's.
• The narrative theory class where we did an ideological criticism of GTA: Vice City, and I got to play as the whole class watched. As I meandered around the game, I asked how antisocial I should be, and Michelle called across the room for me to "punch a hooker!" Grad level class. The matriarchal amazon woman in the class who is a good deal older than I was horrified that it was possible to do such things in a game. The look of horror on her face when she asked me if I enjoyed the game was priceless.
• The Halo 2 party.
  

For now I need a rest. I can't think of anything more to say, and I have a stack of good books from my friends to read.

Quoth the Cookie Monster:

Now what starts with the letter C?
Cookie starts with C
Let's think of other things
That starts with C
Oh, who cares about the other things?

C is for cookie, that's good enough for me
C is for cookie, that's good enough for me
C is for cookie, that's good enough for me
Oh, cookie, cookie, cookie starts with C

C is for cookie, that's good enough for me
C is for cookie, that's good enough for me
C is for cookie, that's good enough for me
Oh, cookie, cookie, cookie starts with C

(spoken)
Hey you know what?
A round cookie with one bite out of it
Looks like a C
A round donut with one bite out of it
Also looks like a C
But it is not as good as a cookie
Oh and the moon sometimes looks like a C
But you can't eat that, so

C is for cookie, that's good enough for me, yeah!
C is for cookie, that's good enough for me
C is for cookie, that's good enough for me
Oh, cookie, cookie, cookie starts with C, yeah!
Cookie, cookie, cookie starts with C, oh boy!
Cookie, cookie, cookie starts with C!

(Cookie Monster eats the cookie)
Umm-umm-umm-umm-umm

Yeah, that's right. I passed narrative theory. I get credit for that ordeal. My GPA will take a hit, but I should be alright. It doesn't matter much to me, though. An animator needs a good GPA like a fish needs a bicycle.

It was still better than art history.

Whenever I mention how much work I have to do, someone invariably tells me "only one more week" with the best of intentions. In truth, I'm all too aware that I only have a week or less to accomplish everything.

The creativity class Dust-O project is coming along well, I think. I've been match-moving for the past few nights and I have yet to figure out how to make the lips move how I want. I have a MEL scripting book that may offer some insight.

I'm genuinely worried about passing narrative theory. I talked to the professor and she gave me some good advice for the final, and I have a couple of friends who have offered to help. The bright side is that it's not art history or graphic design. I really hated those classes.

Digital storytelling class is OK, I suppose. I'm not sure how I'll do there. Not great, but not terrible.

Human computer interaction is my favorite class, though the final paper is huge and I have yet to actually type anything. I have plenty of research, though. My topic is Bittorrent as a content delivery system, and I plan to include information about RSS, as the two work together effectively.

Aside from all of that, things are going well. I like the people I get to work and study with, and without them I don't know if I'd still be here. Coming to grad school was, in some ways, a bad idea. If I am as intelligent as some people say, it doesn't show here. This is still my only way out of a lifetime of servile retail work and hopefully my ticket out of Indiana. This state eats youth to fuel a dead economy. Everywhere I've worked, I've seen several people who could be better used in other fields. Great writers, philosophers, and historians reduced to hocking Dan Brown novels and other airport terminal best sellers. Then I hear about people my age and younger in other states doing great rewarding work and living better than I can even fathom. I have to get out. Currently I'm thinking Boston. I don't know what's there for me in my field, but I know it has to be better than where I am now.

I went to my first BSU basketball game last night. I don't see it becoming my favorite thing in the world, but it was enjoyalbe. We won, which was exciting enough. The reason I mention this event at all is because of something that I found funny. (Is there ever any other reason I mention sports, really?) It is customary for the crowd to stand and clap during the fight song; this much I remember from high school. I didn't feel like standing after the day I had lugging camera equipment around the library, so I remained in my red plastic seat. The hunchbacked octagenarian woman in front of me, however, fought her way to the closest thing to a standing position she could manage to cheer for the team. I felt kind of ashamed to be so slothful, but I still didn't get up. I'm a grad student, for heaven's sake.

The semester will be over soon, and I'm already considering a project for next semester. I want to make something interactive, though I'm not clear on what. Is something interactive just because it has a clickable menu? I define true interactivity with immersion and a sense of agency. A video game is interactive, while a VCR menu is merely an interface. I'll have ample time to develop this by experimenting with interactive interfaces in an extensive joint study I plan to do in conjunction with my brother, a classics major at Kenyon.

The following is an actual conversation I had this morning. The screen names have been changed to avoid IM spam.

(11:14:26) firesetterninja: I miss my dichotomy studies.

(11:15:07) firesetterninja: there's still a big huge comm geek inside me just waiting for the opportunity break out at a moment

(11:15:47) elvee: At what point did "dichotomy" become a real word? Seriously, this was not a term invented by hunter-gatherer society.

(11:16:29) firesetterninja: how about when we moved beyond the hunter gatherer society? :-) Burke argues that the use of the negative was the point when this all changed.

(11:16:39) firesetterninja: because the negative does not exist in nature.

(11:16:52) firesetterninja: it was at that point that we began to think in the abstract

(11:17:37) elvee: There was a point in human history when the brain evolved to think in abstract concepts.

(11:17:44) firesetterninja: I dont know if that was the answer you wanted.

(11:18:01) firesetterninja: exactly. the closest we can pinpoint is to the understanding of the "not"

(11:18:16) firesetterninja: which stood as the basis for dichotomy and metaphor

(11:18:27) elvee: That makes sense, actually.

(11:18:30) firesetterninja: and where would we be in abstraction without that?

(11:18:52) firesetterninja: yes! I RULE! I just explained burke to an animator. :-)

(11:19:06) elvee: I'd say that we wouldn't have abstraction, but that would be a negative, so I fear my brain is tied in knots.

(11:19:14) elvee: Good job. You get a cookie.

(11:19:14) firesetterninja: now, this all ties in with perspective by incongruity....but that's a whole other lecture. :-)

The work here seems to have let up a bit. I'm ready for this semester to be over so that I can get on with something educational and worthwhile. Narrative theory makes my intestines bleed, but everything else is going along well enough. I think Human Computer Interaction is my favorite class, even though I don't talk much and I stumble through the material I present as if I've never had any sort of public speaking experience. Creativity as a class is a little grating lately; the last few guest speakers have been very boring. The work outside of creativity class is fun, though. I'm working on making lip-synch animations for puppets made out of dusters called "dust-os". Digital storytelling class is good enough, but kind of pointless. I got to talk about video games while we were on the subject the other day, then it was back to things I really don't care that much about. I'm not opposed to the material, but I really can't make myself care about usage studies of a handful of NPR station websites. My job is getting a little more hectic now. I'm finally moved in to a new office with working internet and a festive purple wall. The library video I shot a few weeks ago looks like crap, so I'll be reshooting after break. The problem was that I did the whole thing myself after I told people that I know how to shoot video. Suddenly I'm in charge of shooting and editing a video tour of the library all alone. Robert Rodriguez did less on El Mariachi. This time I get to have lights set up and my boss will direct, so I don't have to do everything myself.

I saw Squeaky today, eating in the atrium and talking louder than anyone really has to outside of the base of Niagara falls. I don't know why I'm so fascinated with this little misanthrope. Maybe it's his oddly shaped bald spot surrounded by preposterously curly hair, maybe it's that he reminds me of a duck/rodent love child, maybe it's because he wanted to start a heated argument in the only swanky bar in town. I just don't know.

Outside of school, things are good, or so I'm told- I wouldn't know. For whatever reason, everyone I hang out with left for the weekend. Not left as in Indy or Cleveland, left as in boarded an airplane and crossed several state lines. Tomorrow night I'm going to see a concert at the Heorat. Good bye, lungs, liver, and brain cells; I wanna rock.

So, what can I say about the election that hasn't been said already? I'm no fan of most pundits from any side, and I'm really not all that well-versed in politics domestic or foreign. As appalled as I am at the result, I do see how it happened.

A topic that doesn't come up quite as often as it should is the growing divide in America between the mid-to-upper-class and the lower class. The middle class from the past forty years has split noticeably in the past decade, mostly since 1999/2000 and the start of the recession. Manufacturing and skilled labor jobs have been moving out of our borders for years, irregardless of who sits in the oval office or policy, be it Reaganomics or NAFTA. Most of these jobs were based in small towns, where the atmosphere is conducive to small business with low overhead and return. With diminished local economy, small towns have fallen apart. The people are still there, though, because for many it's all they know. Moving to somewhere more viable isn't an option for the older generation that live on the same street they were born on.

The social stigma of being poor in a small town is perhaps a larger factor. The popular vernacular refers to them as derisively as "white trash," and as affectionately as "redneck." I'm no better, I admit. The average person in a small town dresses sensibly and purely for utility on a normal day, never like anything from Vogue. Urban popular culture shifts with the wind and the internet. Small towns, as a rule, do not. Tradition and simplicity are valued by a fiercely proud manufacturing class. With the loss of manufacturing and small businesses, a large degree of pride and purpose were lost as well. Agriculture has been in similar shape. Young people are urged to escape from small towns to pursue opportunity, assuming they can afford it. Often the only employment to be found is at large national chain retailers. Workers dress in cute little uniforms and adhere to dehumanizing policies under perma-day lights. This is a far cry from the locally owned furniture factory where the foreman knew each employee by name.

With these facets of small town culture fading away, it seems that the people in these areas have fallen back on the one thing that cannot be exported away: the church. Poverty and religion have always gone hand-in-hand because of the solidarity found in both. Evangelical Christianity has swelled to enormous levels all over the country, and I believe that this is the reason. The community within this establishment is some of the last vestige of humanity to be found in some of these small communities.

This is exactly where the right wing found traction. Historically the aristocracy has avoided contact with what they view as peasantry, often with disastrous results. The French Revolution comes to mind. The American ruling class has been different since the revolution, though. They know where their labor comes from, and where their soldiers come from. The American Revolution was, as my old history professor put it: "a rich man's war, a poor man's fight." The Republican Party plays this angle well historically, dressing up as common folk when they have to.

Many in the fifty-one percent of voters claimed to have voted based on "values." These things have nothing to do with how to run a country, nothing to do with the economy or health care or education; nothing to do with the prosperity of a nation. Have small town communities really become so disconnected from the rest of the world? If so, then this is a problem. This means that the majority of America is disconnected like this. They voted for what they see as the survival of their way of life, never mind what else was riding on the ballot.

I don't know how to fix this, but something must be done. A large portion of the population has become economically obsolete, but it is still important to recognize them as human and therefore possessing potential. Apparently, just paying them lip service is enough to become president.

If there is a witness to my little life,
To my tiny throes and struggles,
He sees a fool;
And it is not fine for gods to menace fools.

-Stephen Crane

Have you ever heard the phrase "busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest?" That would be me. Here's a recap of things that are worth mentioning.

Halloween was fun. I dressed as Alex from A Clockwork Orange, complete with codpiece. I've never been punched in the balls so many times in one night. The party host hit me, strangers hit me, Gerry hit me, I hit me, it was not the sort of thing I envisioned a year ago when I decided to come here. It was multicultural too- kids from Japan were lined up to cheapshot me in the fellas at Gerry's friend's house. Gad, what a weird night. The coolest costumes: Flint from GI Joe, and a girl with a post-it note on her that said "Hello, my name is Dave Coulier."

My election reaction blog post is kind of long, so I'll post it later.

I'm tentatively looking for a creative project advisor now. I've been carefully evaluating people, and I'm quite sure of one comittee member. The rest will come in time. I'll be pretty low-maintainance, so I just need somebody who is cool with new media and knows production pretty well. More on this as it develops.

I haven't seen Squeaky lately, which is for the best. I have learned that other people have seen possums outside my window on different occasaions, which is forboding.

Here's something my family will enjoy. By family, I mean my brother, but others might get a chuckle. Hamlet's soliloquy for socks: link

As I'm typing this, there's a geeky guy at the computer on the other side of the table helping a cute girl with photoshop. I'm quietly cheering for him.

I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving already. You know the semester is bad when I look forward to a break. This is because I'm in the vaccuum of unapplied theory hell. If it weren't for the dust-o's project, I'd be climbing the belltower with my hat backwards as we speak.

I'm still formulating my opinion about the election, but here's a nice article I found that helps put things into perspective. link

As of this post:

CNN projects: Bush in the lead.

Fox news projects: Open season on A-rabs 'n civil rights queers!

I project: "cancel my subscription to the resurrection; send my credentials to the house of detention"

I care about this election quite a bit more than I've cared in past years. I worry about the future of the country, because I see pictures of my boss's daughters every day at work, with their goofy little kid grins, and I think about the country that they'll grow up in. I'm kind of okay with America falling apart, as I take an optimistic view of it. The Brittish empire fell pretty hard and fast, and England eventually found it's footing again. Every country goes through an asshole phase (Germany, Italy, England, Germany again, N Korea, Russia, N Korea again?), ultimately falling from whatever superpower status they had. But they recover eventually. I've been screwed over by world events well out of my control in the past few years, and yet I think I'll be okay because I at least got a running start during the last economic and cultural boom. I'm probably over reacting, but I needed to vent that, hence the purpose of a blog.

I've tried twice to post in the past week, and both times the system screwed up. If this makes it, it'll be nothing short of a miracle. Not that it matters, though. North Korea could nuke us and the EM pulse would probably wipe out this blog. Don't blame me- I voted for Kodos.

I've got a paper due tomorrow for narrative theory, and I really don't like that class. It's not as bad as art history, but I really don't think I'm getting anything out of it but dent in my gpa. (I think I actually have to care about my gpa now, in order to stay in the program.) There's one old lady who talks in a bizarre meter and says "m-hm" repeatedly. It's like listening to that old Crash Test Dummies song in fast forward. I am encouraged by this, though. The third bullet point especially.

I've got some good stories from this past weekend that I'll try to post when I have time.

I'm up to my arse in work, but I still feel the need to post. It's a kind of validation, I guess. I have no actual news. All I have is frustration that there are possibly only two copies of the Cambridge companion to Goethe in the state, both in Fort Wayne. Go Red Sox.

Today's news will carry some measure of schadenfreude for my brother. The rest of you probably haven't known me as well or as long. I'm getting reading glasses. (I'll pause now, for Michael's friends to retrieve the defibrillator from the closet and start his heart again.) My vision is good, better than what the Air Force requires of jet pilots. However, I haven't been reading very well lately. This has probably been the case for quite a while, as the only materials I have been able to read at length are things that don't require prolonged focus on small print. Comic books, e-mail, and some magazines are easier because I can refocus my eyes periodically. In summary, only sub-grad level, or sub-Michelle. Making up new terms for things is fun.

I took a little side trip to the new instrument store on Jefferson. They have a nice selection of guitars and amps, as well as a lovely young woman who showed me a guitar and amp that I'm thinking about purchasing at some point. Well, sort of. The amp isn't that much, and it really sounds nice, but $230 is something I'm going to need this summer in Italy. The guitar is way out of my price range; Victory-class Star Destroyer expensive. It sounds fabulous, though, even in the hands of a hack like me. Maybe I'll focus my energies on concocting a scheme to tie this nice stuff in to my studies and get a grant for it. Yes, that's the ticket.

This is my first Fall break ever. USF didn't believe in such luxuries, but we did get a "reading day". I don't mind the break, considering how the semester has gone. It's been nothing but reading thus far, aside from my GA job. Sometimes the reading is important for class, but most of the time it's never discussed. Theory is all well and good, but I need some way to apply it or it goes in one ear and out the other like a TV commercial. What really sold me on the program was the tour I got last spring from my advisor. I liked his attitude, and I liked the building: a two-story toy box for super-powered AV equipment courtesy of a massive chunk of change from Lilly. The digital storytelling program is full of great people from several backgrounds, and I feel fortunate to have met them. With so much positive, I feel bad complaining that I'm bored and lost. I've been told that grad school is supposed to be a sort of do-it-yourself education. This would be great, if I had enough time to take any sort of initiative outside of my classes. Things look better in the long-term, as my course load will lighten and probably include something more technical. Ah well, end rant. The rest will do me good.

Last night I went to see Sarah Vowell read at Butler University. She was great, and I wrote down a few lines that made me laugh. They make more sense if you've read her books. For those of you who read nothing but Greek and Douglas Adams, or read only as much as you absolutely have to, here is what you need to know: the author loves history and pop culture, and often relates the two.

"I learned that John Kerry is descended from John Winthrop, which I found thrilling."

Speaking about the guilt that comes from being raised to be a nice girl, the "guilt that becomes narcissistic", she thinks about Pol Pot: "Whatever I've done, are there piles of skulls lying around? Most of the time, no."

"Assassinations are my Kevin Bacon" -referring to her ability to relate anything to a presidential assassination.

Comparing working at NPR to working at Pixar:"It's like a scratchy brown sweater vs a Cosby sweater."

It was an enjoyable evening. I got a signed copy of her first book, "Radio On", and even she was incredulous when I told her my name was Loyal. I had to spell it.

Today is my birthday. It's been a good day of web design work thus far. Well, that and blogging. I alternate back and forth. Tonight I'm going out to dinner with my friend Michelle, and later I'm going out with a huge gaggle of fools. A confederacy of fools? A murder of fools? Whatever. It'll be fun. I'll report the details that are appropriate for the internet tomorrow.

Check out these articles from McSweeney's. They made me laugh.
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Here is the news I wanted to post yesterday, but couldn't because I was busy. I got to take a tour of Paws Inc, the place where Garfield is drawn. As much as I tried to maintain my composure, I was giddy over getting to see the place. I used to read Garfield books and collect as much Garfield memorabilia as I could when I was younger, so getting to see all of this was really great. Doc was the tour guide. I'd seen him before a few years ago at the Castle Gallery show where I met Jim Davis (I sang what I could remember of the Abu-Dhabi song and he laughed). What really impressed me about the whole facility is that it's the family business. It's global and very successful, but it's run mostly by relatives.

I just read this- Sarah Vowell will be at Butler U tomorrow night at 7:30. She's one of my favorite authors, and she also did voice acting for Pixar's "The Incredibles." I'm pretty sure I can make that- I get off work at 5:30, but I might be able to knock off a little earlier. This geeks me out on a cerebral level.

It's Tuesday, I'm hungry, and I really don't have time to blog now. But, I do have a couple of links I feel a strong need to post.

The visual thesaurus is probably something somebody is trying to sell, but the demo on the site is fun to mess around with. Little by little, hypertext is taking over, and I for one welcome our benevolent technological overlords. Please don't crush me.

A New Kind of Science, by Stephen Wolfram, is now online. The whole thing. The immense mass of it is capable of forming and supporting a life-sustaining atmosphere, given time. That's just how big it is.

More actual news tomorrow if I live through today.

Any big news I might have to post here has already been covered by my fellow bloggers. Gerry covered the season's end for the Cubs, and my brother posted this glorious news. Beyond shameless plugs for other blogs I love, there's really only one piece of blogworthy news left.

The other night, long after the sun had gone down, I was walking to my car to drive to Walmart. I was parked behind my building, near the windows of my single-bedroom subterranean. As I fumbled with my keys, I noticed motion in the shadows of the building behind a few plants. Neighborhood cats often walk past my window, so I assumed the slinking shadow to be feline. I called to the cat in the voice I reserve for animals smaller than a breadbox, but I could tell something was amiss. My eyes adjusted to the dark, and in the ambient orange glow of a street light half a block away, I saw the true beastly form of the creature under my window. A possum. Those of you who read this with any regularity may recall that I had a run-in with a possum last winter. I made a powerful enemy that cold day, not just in an ill-tempered rodent, but in a primal force of nature. The genetic memory of the north American possum is forever ingrained with the knowledge of "tall one, hurler of ice." We recognized each other, there in the night behind my apartment. He knows where I live, and we both know that there won't be any snow on the ground for at least a month or more, thus putting me at a marked disadvantage. This isn't over.

Gad, what a night. I fell asleep at 9:00 last night while reading a particularly boring chapter in my HCI book, only to wake an hour later in the stupor that commonly follows an impromptu nap on the couch. Backing up a bit, I am now the proud owner of my family's old family room couch and kitchen table with three chairs. My apartment is a feng-shui fever dream. Later on, I couldn't sleep for the life of me. I had tea with dinner, forgetting how much caffeine is in that stuff. I even tried reading from my HCI book, as that had worked before, but the next chapter was really interesting, so that got my brain working again. BUT! At about 4:30 in the morning, I dozed off a little bit and came up with an idea for my creative project animation. I stumbled over to my computer desk and typed out everything I could think of into a haphazard treatment of sorts, because I would have forgotten otherwise. It'll be a ton of work for one person, but it's something that I can do myself. I can't really relay the specifics yet, as I'm still figuring them out, but I plan to show it to my old Communications professor at USF, as I know she'll get it and give me good advice. It'll make sense soon, I hope.

Today has been a little different. I used to go on minimal sleep in undergrad because I had the solidarity of my sleep-deprived friends. I also had gen-ed classes to sleep in, so that helped too. No such luck now. I did see something cool, however. At lunchtime I walked over the student center and there were a bunch of promotional booths set up outside. They were all technology themed, but the coolest ones were a jeep outfitted with at least five different Nintendo Gamecubes and a tent full of guitars and effects emulators. The Nintendo jeep had buttons with pictures of classic characters in their original pixel glory. I picked out Mario and Bowser, grinning like a 24 year old third grader. I went to the guitar demo tent and I got to mess around with a $400 fx box and a $4,000 Gibson guitar. It needed tuning, but the tone quality was glorious. The guy in charge recommended an Epiphone, because it's a lot cheaper and the sound is comparable. It was great, though.

"And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities..."
-excerpt from Carl Sandburg's poem "Chicago."

Gerry has informed me that the Cubs are currently ahead in the baseball wildcard race, which is cause for excitement. It reminded me of the Carl Sandburg poem quoted above, in which the poet also refers to Chicago as the "ciy of the big shoulders." That's where that moniker came from, if you ever wondered.

In my last post, I expressed some disdain for Flash. I still don't like it very much, but yesterday I used it to solve a problem on the forthcoming BSU teachers college website. (The current site, by the way, is not my doing. Whoever designed that monstrosity probably jumped off a bridge a la Javert in "Les Miserables".) The new site will feature randomly selected Flash graphics; a new one each time someone hits refresh. I didn't make the animations, but I did make the loader file in Flash to make them load randomly. Score one for cracker.

Six months ago I was standing at a cash register watching yuppies graze stacks of bargain books. This was when I first wondered "what do you call an animator who doesn't animate?" I figured that I would solve this problem soon enough, as I was planning on enrollng at BSU in the Fall.

I've been here for a month, and I'm starting to wonder the same thing again. The closest thing I get to animation is a little flash project I'm troubleshooting at work. It's mildly amusing, but Flash is very dull and clunky compared to Maya. I'm told that there are computers on campus with Maya on them, just waiting for someone who knows how to use it. I'm typing from one of those machines now, actually, but it doesn't have Maya like I was told.

Yarr! September(edit- September 19th) be "national talk like a pirate day!" I wish it wasn't on a Sunday, because I'd like to celebrate this particular day in narrative theory class. Arrr.

Here's a link to a stereoscopic image site with a novel twist- the images flicker back and forth to give the 3d effect. I need to experiment with this in Maya. http://ofwonder.com/blink.html (for some reason, blogger isn't displaying the toolbar to make the link in the text)

Also, the new trailer for Pixar's the Incredibles is online on the apple site.

Three great CD releases are sneaking in under the radar in the next month or so. I already mentioned the new Tom Waits album, but two more also have me excited. The Black Keys just released their third album, which I promptly bought to celebrate my first check. Oh, the neighbors are going to love me for the next month and a half as I learn to play the new songs. Third is Billy Corgan's solo album, slated for a late October release. I'm not really holding my breath, as he is notorious for taking several months in the studio, but whenever it gets released I'll be frantically scurrying down to Best Buy to get my grubby mits on it.

Work is getting better and better. It turns out that the nice young woman who I met at the Heorat last week works in the office down the hall a couple days a week. She loves music, and the two CDs on her desk right now are my copy of the Breeders' Title TK, and Johnny Cash's American IV: the Man Comes Around. Great taste, I must say. Elsewhere around the office, I found out that my paycheck is delivered to me. This is after I walked all over creation yesterday trying to find it. Convenience. Today, I met the head of BSU marketing. He's a good guy, and that means something from me, as I typically hold marketing majors in similar esteem as middle school gym teachers. I first met him when I accidentally walked in on a meeting with him and my boss and my boss's boss. I wanted to buy a coke out of the refrigerator behind his chair, so his first impression of me was a tall guy with an iPod loping through the door and wedging in behind his chair to acquire a canned beverage. I was introduced by name and then as a student in the Digital Storytelling program. His affirmative answer, like so many others, said that he didn't know what that meant either. Later on, as I was saving my work and preparing to leave, he came in with my boss to tell us about his great idea for the video tour. Something new and innovative- computer animated tourguides! The user would have a choice of three fun characters to watch, and... Something about a greenscreen... Something else... I was thinking "wow, I'm blogging this." He asked me if I thought this sounded good, and I told him that a little animated character was going to come across like the MS Word paperclip. It would disconnect people from the message. I didn't mention that it would mean about ten grand in equipment upgrades and more to hire a staff to create these to have online by March at the earliest. Later, my boss (a saint, I should mention) told me that she was happy that I stood up and told him the truth.

I got to thinking, though. What would an animated tour look like? Imagine Gollum at BSU. "Ahh! Tricksy bursarses, steals your monies! No, they's's good to us, the school cares for us. No! All our monies go to losing football team! We hates them! Hates them! Curses!" It would go on like that, and enrollment at IU would jump through the roof. I find it weird that being an animator has meant that I spend much of my time in such discussions telling people how much harder animation is, and how live action is simpler.

Tomorrow night I'm going to see Wynton Marsallis for ten bucks. I'm going with Gerry and a few other friends, and a few total strangers. Discount tickets to good events is another great thing about BSU. USF would be lucky to get Tito Jackson and John Oates.

Tom Waits has a new album coming on October 5th. story

Today, September 13th, my blog is one year old. I remember starting it after hearing about a purportedly free service that would let me type stuff and post it on the internet. Bored as I was, I decided to check it out. The purpose, for me at least, was personal growth. I didn't really have a goal in mind, I was unemployed and bored, and it was free.

After one year, things have changed for the better for me. I entered the workforce as a retail drone, helped various people move, tried my best to avoid purchasing music from RIAA-affiliated artists, waxed pseudo-poetic about movies and television, went to Texas, watched the Cubs on TV, bought a belt, applied to grad school, got accepted to grad school, exited the retail workforce, and moved several furlongs south of home to start grad school. I started this last year because I was bored, and now I almost forgot that I wanted to make a post at the one-year mark because school has me so preoccupied.

The funny thing about all of this is my audience (hi Mom). Once, I new for a fact that I had three readers. I'm not even sure who reads this now, but it is more than three. We had a discussion in HCI class about blogs, and some people couldn't fathom why anyone would want to read somebody else's blog. I'm mystified myself, but I read at least half a dozen that I can think of off the top of my head.

As for the title of the blog, Misplaced Commas, I plan to keep that. My punctuation has improved somewhat, but I can't think of a better title. "Siamese Dream", "Never Mind the Bollocks", and "Swordfishtrombones" are all taken.

I planned on making a list of my favorite blog posts, but I think I'll just post a few. There's a big archive up on the right, and clicking randomly will take you to different points in the past year. It's interactive hypertextuality fun for the whole family.

There was this one...
The time I went to Texas and then wouldn't stop talking about it...
There was that possum...
And then there was the two part moving weekend post. Part One and Part Two

Don't bother reading them if you have something better to do. They're some of my longest writings ever.

The big cultural question of this generation will be, for better or for worse, "where were you on September 11th?" Much like the deaths of John and Robert Kennedy, this otherwise innocuous early autumn day has become an immediately recognized day of infamy and sadness, so much so that the corresponding year of 2001 is left to the shared assumption of the populace. To be more specific, then, where were you on September 11th, 2004?



In 2002, there was a solemn memorial held across the nation. The dust in New York City had settled or blown out to the ocean, the Pentagon had been repaired, and the burned scar in a field in Pennsylvania was beginning to grow wild grass in patches of dirt not too saturated with jet fuel. Similarly, the nation as a whole seemed to exhale a bit. One year later and at least two hours back on the Damoclean doomsday clock, America was still on the map. My own choruses of Barry Allen's "Eve of Destruction" had turned out to be premature, thank goodness.



In 2003 we lost our sense of humor. Coping mechanisms that had been the chic of the past two years became sources of shame and embarrassment. Overeating due to stress became the "plague of obesity" on the nightly news, reinforced with pictures of overstuffed children and anonymously photographed giant adult midsections, cropped in and blown up in hi-definition for the world to see and scorn. Stress in general became any number of "anxiety disorders" or even "adult ADD." However you feel, there's a pill so you won't. Rational discussion also fell out of favor, as often happens to groups of people under pressure. News programs degraded into gladiatorial shouting matches for the favor of the public and the patronage of advertisers. The extremes on both ends screamed world war III at anyone who would listen. Whether America falls to ruin tomorrow or miraculously enters an era of peace and prosperity, the pop-pundits will emerge from this period each with their own personal fortune to retire in luxury.



In the weeks approaching September of 2004, I began to wonder how this year should be marked. More quiet reflection with video montages on TV? Eat a lot and yell at someone who disagrees with me? Spending another day reliving the bloodiest day in American history and recounting two of the most trying years since the last big war era is not how I wish to spend the rest of my finite and chillingly precarious life. But to try to forget and pass the day like any other would be callous, and would require avoiding other people, lest someone self-consciously mention the date in conversation. After some thought on the matter, I decided on a third option.



In 2004, I smiled. With conviction. I woke up in the house I spent most of my life growing up in and came downstairs to my parents. Mom made cookies for me to take back to my apartment, Dad sat and drank his coffee from the same sacred ìDadî mug he's used since I was little, the dogs ran around barking at squirrels, and I was happy to be visiting home. I bypassed the front page for the sports section where I found that the Cubs won the second of a double-header, and I was happy to cheer for my team. I called my brother to ask where the spare set of car keys went, and, upon hearing that he was out on a Saturday morning with no foreseeable time to return, I was happy that he is happy and prosperous. I was happy to hear that my high school marching band started their season today with two contests in one day. In general, I was happy.



Upon arrival back at BSU, I spent much of the remainder of the day with my good friend Gerry. We laughed, celebrated another victory for the Cubs, and wandered around the mall with no real shopping agenda aside from a gift for his co-worker. In the later evening, I went to the Heorat to meet my fellow graduate students and see a band fronted by another of our classmates. We drank, sang along to raucous blues rock, and the whole bar smiled in the cloying atmosphere of dim lighting and thick smoke.



Allen Ginsberg posited the volatile question: "America, why are your libraries full of tears?" Ours is a tumultuous history, inexorably intertwined in the history of the world. The calculated actions of madmen who export fear and rigid obedience to the rest of the world are regular footnotes in the record of the centuries of civilization, but they have never defined or altered the course of history completely. This may be because the most fundamental defense against them is to smile, laugh, and remember why life is worthwhile in the first place- friends, family, and a belief in a better tomorrow.

I rented Taxi Driver last night, at long last. I'd tried in vain for years to get it at the Fort Wayne library and I think they lost the DVD at some point. It was a good movie, kind of like Catcher in the Rye with a lot more guns and drugs. What really impressed me was the editing. It's obvious that Martin Scorsese trusted his actors enough to leave the camera running during long exchanges between characters instead of editing every sentence back and forth between shots. The famous "you talkin to me?" monologue is one of these shots.

Back to class today. I'm current on all of the reading so far, so it shouldn't be a big deal. I feel a little like Harold Hill (or perhaps Lile Lanley). "Yes, digital storytelling, that's the ticket! Media convergence, narrative, paradigm, blah-biddy-blah-internet." I'll feel a lot better when I'm able to get back to actual video and animation work.

"If we were talking face to face, ... you would have heard me say just now to someone climbing the stairs outside my window 'Your pants are falling off, you retard.' And I guess saying that isn't very PC, but neither is walking around without really committing to wearing pants."

-My brother Michael

Today I was working on encoding videos for the teacher's college website at work. I've told everybody who asks that "yes, I know all about digital video editing." It appears some people take this statement at face value, because today I got to use Final Cut Pro, which I haven't really dabbled in since USF, to color correct these videos. It kept crashing, and this happens enough that the video guy here has this note below his monitor: EXPECT A CRASH. Yup. After a while, I started looking for other options. I ended up signing away my masculinity and self-respect by using iMovie, the generic Apple box video editor to fix the contrast and export video suitable for the web. It worked surprisingly well, albeit clumsy for multiple video file exporting. So, I got an important lesson about techno-hubris, and Apple got a fat stack of OS X crash reports to ignore.

Gerry and I ware going to the Football game tonight. We get in free, and the school gets to use the new lights for the first time. More importantly, we'll see our newly acquired friends in the band. That counts for something. Gerry also promises that we'll leave if they get blown out early, which is likely.