So I was on the road again this past holiday weekend. Visiting the ol' GF. Long distance relationships = fun times on planes. In this case, it was not really fun so much as just time on a plane (which is less cool than Snakes on a Plane). I flew Northwest Airlines this time and have been impressed by their ability to not delay me pointlessly for hours. Something United Airlines seems unable to do.

I've also been taking advantage of the Bluetooth on my cell phone and laptop and $6 a month charge I pay T-Mobile for wireless internet access on my phone. I've been able to preload a number web pages for reading on the plane ride. I just wish that I had an internet connection on the plane ... it would make flying more like spending a typical day in the office.

One of the many things I did this weekend though, was check out the new X-Men movie. I mean, I did have very low expectations so it would have been hard to disappoint me but I actually really enjoyed the movie. I honestly hope they keep making these. With the $120 million opening weekend, it seems virtually assured that they will though. So if you were having a hard time deciding to see this movie or not, you have my recommendation (and you can blame me if you don't like it, whatevs).

And to end, some fun facts about the weekend: 1) getting mad at some guy for playing Guitar Hero too long so that you don't have time to impress your GF with your mad skills is not viewed as cool by said GF. 2) I enjoy shopping, perhaps we need to revisit the stuff about me not being gay 3) My world was shaken when weathermen last Monday accurately predicted the Memorial Day Weekend weather, WTF?!?! They're never right and certainly not a week in advance! 4) My mom likes to tell people that I really enjoy miniature golf (perhaps we should look at [2] again).

That's it for now, in the distant future I may have a post about the wonders of Brat Fest. A distinctly Wisconsonian festival it would seem (hey, it goes well with Wiener Schnitzel).

Because he has been listening to my phone calls. However, combined with recent Pharyngula and Freelance Genius serendipitous postings, it is also possible that I am broadcasting some sort of telepathy that is selectively received by those of similar minds on certain days of the year when celestial alignments are just right for a mind wave to pass through wormholes and burst forth into another human's brain within the same Hubble Universe¹ in a Level 1 Multiverse. In an unrelated corollary, I was reading a Scientific American special report about parallel universes and I suddenly understood faith in a God and also the person with whom I dialogue in my mental conversations. The prior sentence's structure might imply that these two beings are one and the same, but that is not the case. I am talking to myself, but the myself in a different Hubble Universe anywhere from 2 to 10¹¹⁸ meters from my current Hubble Universe.

UPDATE: In other comic news, this comic is not at all a refutation of Decartes assertions about God.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: In a completely different kind of comic news, Eugene Mirman had a thing in the Onion's AV Club.

1 A Hubble Universe is the observable universe. This amount of space is limited by the speed of light and thus also limited in scope by the expansion of the universe which is happening at that speed.²

2 If I can get this crazy after only reading one third of an article about fairly complex physics without having taken physics at any level, why could I only acheive a barely passing grade throughout college? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that I did not know to whom I was talking to in my head all those years.

Forsooth, I speak of Weiner Schnitzel. First of all consider the color scheme of this brazen, glorious roadside monstrosity.


I know there are weighty matters afoot and the relative merits of flightless birds hovers over us anxiously but there are times we have to put those matters aside and consider the meat of the situation. I have discovered an entity that clearly will be of interest to our chosen few. The clan of pork purveyors and the great quest for understanding suburbia and exurbia or whatever burb you may belong to in this lifetime. I presume some of you may already have opinions on this fine establishment as they claim to have 340(!) locations in the US and Guam. Don't forget Guam!

Clearly, this restaurant understands our needs as well. Consider this tasty zen koan:



However, this situation is slightly compromised. Situation: I order a hot dog with kraut -- it comes without ketchup which is surely a less than ideal outcome. I give them a second try, I order the "1/3 lb. BBQ Bacon BIG Dawg." It is clearly from a better, though still not ideal, meat source and it comes wit hBBQ sauce, bacon, and onion rings. It is filling! The gods of takeout food have spoken. It is good.

On Saturday, I was perturbed and went strolling around town. I picked up some necessities in the form of a flash drive, new portable CD/MP3/WMA player, FarCry(dumb idea) and a gigabyte of RAM. I also picked up some luxuries two of which have become necessities.

They are: The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips and Blueberry Boat by The Fiery Furnaces. My poseurness is now without question. I have previously owned the Soft Bulletin, but it disappeared about the time one of 3,467 brothers went back to college in the summer of 2000. Blueberry Boat is pretty damn wild. It doesn't have the songs I downloaded from somewhere (probably Fluxblog) which is even better.

I also bought the Animal Collective's Spirit They're Gone and additional CD. I am not entirely sure of the album name nor am I even sure that this band is not the descendents of the Bremerstadtmusikanten. I think I may like it better at home in the isolation chamber with a big pile of Pop Ren's special faux chorizo niblets on which to munch.

I also stopped by a comic book store on my long walk home (a few miles or so) and picked up some stuff for fulsome and one of my 4,529 brothers. I don't want to give away the surprise before the great day, but it is something of such astounding serendipity and infinity such that fulsome will weep. The scales between us will be balanced and I dare say it slanted in my favor...

Oh yeah, I am just that good.

I have to do a lot of web research¹ for my job. I am asked to find publicity photos for books and movies. I am also asked to add companies to our database so we can email² them. I can usually find enough new contacts that my boss watches the group get too big and never does anything with it. He thinks it takes too much "resources"³ to email 70 people. OK. Fine, as long as you don't harsh me in the next review for doing my job too well. This is the same boss that freaks out about our server being down whenever he encounters a 404 error and demands that I check the server.

"The server is down."
Me: "What kind of error are you getting?"
Boss: "Internet Explorer says that it can't find the server."
Me: "That means the website you are trying to view is out of service."
Boss: "Should I call tech support?"
Me: "No."
Boss: "What about our website? I am going to call tech support to check our website."
Me: "No. I am looking at it now, everything is fine. The website you want to see is on another server that is not working right now. You might want to check the link or the location bar."
Boss: "What?"
Me: "Ok, looks like everything is fine, then, I'll just go back to work on X."

This is the same guy that lost the wireless mouse for the office laptop and then claimed that I must have lost it in the five minutes after he gave me the laptop. Two weeks later, he found the mouse at home. I asked him if he would like me to keep it with the rest of the computer equipment, but he decided that he should keep it to prevent me from losing it. Apparently, I learned how to bend spacetime and teleport to his house and fuck around playing football with the laptop and lost the mouse and then teleported back to the office to report it missing. Whatever, I am getting way off track.

I came across this in my latest batch of web research⁴, Stop Alien Abductions. I was tempted to include the group in the database because I had been instructed to input everything linked from one page. I just bookmarked it and moved on after reading more than a bit of it. That site is simultaneously sad, a little scary and a lot funny. And by funny, I mean it in the meanest emuliscious way. I am laughing at crazy people.

Laughing at these poor bastards is a bit like trouncing the Shoot a Liberal crowd in that neither of them can really defend their lives or opinions. The Shoot a Liberal crowd could educate themselves, but choose not to while the tinfoil hatters are just crazy.

1 I surf and blog and whatever, mostly it is a little silly because I am given hours to complete a task that takes minutes and minutes to complete tasks that take days. The bigger projects are almost always over thought and poorly conceived, but whatever.

2 Spam. We spam them about once every other month in an attempt to generate new advertising revenue.

3 Everything in quotes will be an actual quote from the font of computer wisdom that is my boss.

4 Goofing off.

I don't think I could live another day without showing a few things to you. You being no one in particular since this blog is in the final throes of its insurgency against the final death.

Butternut Squash, specifically Sept 15, 2004 and October 6, 2004. The archives are a little funny and I am nto savvy enough to figure out a proper linky.

Plus, I have found the best birthday present for fulsome in his sad, pathetic enormous wang-less existence. He will need to wait until later this summer to receive the wonderful gifts of the bounty of the infinite serendipity that is the foundation of my philosophy. I shall soon expound in a far more meaningful way on my magnum opus of ill-informed philosophical theories. But not today...

In addition to the bad TV that I watch (see The Rockford Files, MacGyver, and Monk) I am also in the process of trying to watch all those old movies that people talk about but I've never actually seen.

The past couple weeks, my TiVo has been active recording movies off TCM. I recently got Citizen Kane, Dr. Strangelove, Network, the original Ransom, the original Lady Killers, and something else I can't think of now. I've seen Citizen Kane and Dr. Strangelove before but the other 3 I have not.

I also rented Tron and the French Connection last weekend. For some reason I through Tron had Jeff Daniels in it, not Jeff Bridges. Either way, it was enjoyable for its cheesiness if anything else. Coming up soon hopefully: Flash Gordon. The French Connection was actually pretty good. I didn't realize that it was based on a true story until after I saw it though.

Anyway, my recent obsession with old video to watch was recently given a boost when I got a box set of classic St. Louis Cardinals baseball games to watch. They include 4 games from that were before 1990. One of which has pitcher Bob Gibson's 17 strikeout World Series game. I've never seen some of these classic games so this should be a treat. Now to find the time to watch 3 hours of old baseball.

Also, I'm still looking for a video of Jim Edmonds' amazing catch when he was with the Angels. If anyone has any idea of where to find it, let me know.

Hey people,

Sorry to not really post at all for a while (my absence was not Fulsome-esque though). I have been busy doing things that aren't that exciting (wasting time watching TiVo ... that thing is destroying my life).

Anyway, I was feeding my internet addiction lately and I came across the wonderful fake trailer below. These things just crack me up (as long as they in no way relate to Brokeback Mountain).

Chuckles and I went to check out a show at the Black Cat last weekend. It was Leo Allen, Eugene Mirman, and Michael Showalter. A very enjoyable show all around. If they ever make it out to your area check it out (plus, comedians are CHEAP).

Anyway, here's the fake trailer ...

Lots tits and ass and a bit of fish here and there. Try not to be total cobagz to each other and please remember, intelligent design is a crock of bull puckey.

Also, does anyone remember the Reality Club?

Alright, alright already. Many thanks to Chuckles for his diligent efforts and much appreciaton for putting the poetry on a different blog. Many congatulations for what may be his best work yet.

The previous week got ridiculously busy and this week I haven't had much to say.

The longed for gummi bear report still languishes in committee.

More when circumstances warrant.

This is a comic for you. Will you please come out of hiding? We just want to take some photos and draw some blood. Buddy? Pal? Nerd?

My wang is a wang of epic proportions.

INSERT GIANT WANG HERE


SEE!? This is the result of two weeks and no gummi bear torture scandals. Where is the allegedly liberal media in this crisis? I believe they have all buried their heads in fulsome's anus and are now eating whatever he decides to rain down upon them. Cobagz.

A few years ago, I lived in Portland, OR. Besides developing a full-on robot chubby for the King Burrito Chimichanga, I saw some videos on teh interwebs that were hilarious. They were called Kung Fu Ben vs (Enemy of the Day). They starred a Obi-Wan Kenobi toy and were all stop motion plus digital effects. Kung Fu Ben would punch people in the face and spin kick them off screen to a usually disco beat. He would also usually end up making out with a Lando Calrissian toy at the end. They were awesome.

A few months ago, I was bored at work and ran a quick search of the internets. This was all I found. Evilface clearly loves his GI Joe's. That is all.

PS. I miss you, Kung Fu Ben.

Oh god, do I want one of these. I would also like a book on html programming and some network stuff. I have yet to figure out how enable the security protocols in my wireless hub.

I couldn't figure it out in 3 minutes and I already had a connection so I gave up, OK?

Eisenhower said some funny and totally appropriate stuff. I bet he was a total commie, America hating, terrorist aiding loser.

Lately, I have been debating my clothing. I find myself asking myself if my clothign is saying the right thing about me. As a wee junior nerd, I learned about clothing and tribal identity in college. Clothing is very important. For instance, if you see a UN Peacekeeper with a blue helmet and armband, feel free to give him/her all the atomic wedgies in the world because they reall aren't going to fight back (or prevent you from committing genocide). However, behaving this way with the green helmet and armband wearing UN Peacekeepers will result in your death as they are authorized to use deadly force when they deem it appropriate.

Keeping this in mind, I have decided to radically alter my evening clothing style while maintaining professional attire (selling out) during the day. To this end, I also shaved a rather stupid looking mohawk into my hair two weeks ago. I was bored with my previous styles but not enamored of the other options available to me. The goal of this exercise is to attract a person that finds similar activities amusing, but yet is different enough that things remain interesting. To this end, I spent my entire entertainment budget for May (and June and July...) on some awesome t-shirts. I found some of them here in the shop. By the way, that comic is pretty damn funny for those of the spherically intellectual type.

Updatable: I love this comic.

So I was cruising the internet as I often do (sometimes instead of working as hard as I should ... oops) when I came across this link. If you scroll down to May 1, you'll feel a little bad for Right Handed Pitcher Nigel Thatch. The terms of the deal for his trade may have been a little disappointing.

I don't know what else to say but, wow. In an effort to make this post a little more musical (it is Friday after all) I thought I'd give a Guitar Hero update. After beating the game on Easy and Medium, I've been struggling with hard lately. I kind of plateued a week ago (mostly because my hands get too tired to play much) when I got stuck on a Queens of the Stone Age song. Now though, I'm back to my old nemesis (the only song I had trouble with on medium difficulty) Crossroads by Cream.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to finish beating the game on hard sometimes before Guitar Hero 2 comes out and I have new songs to get frustrated at (link provided by Chuckles).

I just thought I'd post a quick entry here because I picked up the new Pearl Jam CD yesterday. It's not too often that I pick CD's up on the day they come out. Pretty much the only bands I do that with are Audioslave and ... well not really anyone else.

After hearing Worldwide Suicide on the radio for the past month, and a couple of the other tracks over the weekend, I figured I should pick up this CD.

I have to say that after less than 24 hours that I'm still enjoying it a lot. I haven't listened to much of what they've done lately but this CD is definitely an interesting step I think.

fulsome is a big fan I know so I'll let him post his thoughts in the comments (or respond in this or subsequent posts), if he's picked up the CD.

BTW, it's only $10 at Best Buy or Circuit City.