One of the funniest things I've ever seen.
Now, I didn't get a chance to take any childhood literacy classes in library school, and I'm certainly not opposed to using technology to teach, and of course reading can be fun... But I think the Journal of Amphibious Species is being unfairly maligned in this commercial. Don't you? That little kid isn't going to be so flippant when his science project on pants wearing sea sponges gets an F.
My new favorite blog?
"Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb."
Earlier this summer I helped Rosemary Furtak and Barbara Economon from the Walker Art Center Library (I'm doing my practicum there) put together an exhibit in the library's vitrine. Rosemary has made some beautiful displays over the years, but because the library is only available to the public by appointment, very few people get to see them. They really deserve a wider audience. So, when I discovered that Rosemary has photos of all her exhibits and that the Walker has a Flickr account, it wasn't hard to convince everyone that creating a photo set for the library was a good idea.
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
It's hard to believe I only have one more week at the Walker, one more class meeting, and one more paper. I can't wait to be done. The countdown has begun....
When I graduate, I'm either moving to Montana to work at this library or moving as far from Montana as possible. I haven't decided yet.
This is episode four in an ongoing series.
I'm redecorating, please excuse the mess.
This interactive flash-thingy for Arcade Fire is pretty cool:
http://www.beonlineb.com/click_around.html
Q. How cool is my new robot favicon?
A. Way cooler than the metadata final I'm supposed to be writing.
It's this guy, but much, much smaller.
http://www.usiwireless.com/service/pricing.htm
The $20 service is only 1Mbps. Their 6Mbps is a little cheaper than Comcast, but it's still more than I want to pay considering 99% of my home internet use is a complete waste of time. My neighborhood is last on the build out schedule, so I guess I'll just wait to see if it actually works.
Courtesy of site meter, my new favorite search string resulting in a visit to my blog is.... drum roll....
"pigs are all pregnant, too wet to plow"
You can now preview four tracks from the upcoming Electric Six album on MySpace. Says the band:
"With 7 weeks (give or take) to go until the street date of "I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master," we think it's high time to put up some of the tracks. On our MySpace site jukebox, you should find "Down at McDonnelzz," "Randy's Hot Tonight," "Feed My Habit," and "Sexy Trash." The first and the third tracks are there to prove Valentine can sing using a falsetto. The second track is there to prove that not every song on this record will include a falsetto vocal. The final track is included to demonstrate that Na$hinal is on acid. Enjoy."
Sexy trash is very Captain Beefheart. I put it on repeat and after about 15 minutes started to daydream about day-glo ponies. I'm not sure why, because normally I associate day-glo ponies with Quintron & Miss Pussycat.
Also, I think it's great that a bunch of guys out to exterminate everything around them aren't afraid of tea cups and pink. I do wish, however, that someone would put an end to the wearing of white socks with black shoes and black pants. I don't mean to pick on Tait, because we've all been there before, but...it's a pet peeve of mine. But other than the socks, everything looks good to me. I'm looking forward to October.
How did I not know about this until now?
I'm not a huge fan of Valentine's Day. And it's not just because of all the mushy, lovey stuff. Lately, it seems even anti-Valentine's Day sentiment is a bit cliched and annoying. However, I found the list of "Bad Valentine's Day Gifts" over at Amazon.com refreshingly funny. The list itself was witty, but I think the best part of the list was seeing the strange variety of stuff Amazon sells. I never in a million years would have guessed they sold barbed wire and praying mantid babies. Highlight: reading the customer reviews for "Fresh Whole Rabbit."
I've suspected for a while that my theory about the news (if it's important enough for me to know it will show up as a top story on my yahoo news feeder) has a few holes in it.
According to Yahoo, this was the most newsworthy thing happening in the world when I logged in this morning: Elvis-Nixon meeting has fans shook up.
And the winner (all the way from Denmark) for best Google search ending with a visit to my blog is: "bad girls with knifes photos."
She/ he must have been so disappointed. FYI: I keep those over at Flickr.
Turns out that debate over how much facial hair Phil needed on his drawing of The Colonel was important after all.
Phil of electricsixyrics.co.uk made a pretty cool flash video for "Pulling The Plug on the Party." It's full of nice touches like turkeys falling out of airplanes and fires in discos. I'm not in this video either, by the way.
Despite a plethora of exciting things going on in Minneapolis last weekend (Musicapolis, Tapes n Tapes, Art Car Parade, Golden Smog, etc.), I opted to go to Amish Country and do things uncharacteristic of me like learn to play frisbee golf and cards. I spent the weekend with my aun'ts family at a cabin in Whalan, MN, which is near Lanesboro and Harmony. There's a sizable Amish Community there, though a lot of it is kind of a farce. One of the shops in Lanesboro was selling Amish jelly that contained yellow #5 and blue #2--I don't think so. We all got donuts from an Amish women at the park. It had a strange flavor, which we eventually determined was probably bacon. Our best guess is that it was fried in lard. Ick. My cousin almost ran over a rattlesnake with her bike. Did you have any idea there were rattlesnakes in Minnesota?
Anyway, it was a bizzare weekend and I'm thinking that "Amish Country" would be a fun way to describe, figuratively, those times when I do things like turn off my cell phone and forget to turn it back on for three days.
My behavior in general has been odd lately. Last Thursday I went to Canterbury to bet on the horse races. Wednesday I ate a hotdog. Today, I'm wearing a skirt. What the hell?
...who inadvertently find my blog.
The internet is amazing! I have diagnosed myself with the following ailments using the symptom checker at mayoclinc.com:
dickvalentinnitus: inability to hear both sounds and reason after encountering Dick Valentine
dickvalentinosis: the belief that one has caught a cold from Dick Valentine
dickvalentinemia: fatigue brought on by vitamin E6 deficiency
***It is worth noting that Zycam did absolutely nothing to help or prevent any of the above condtions. Robitussen is proving almost as worthless at curing them.
At least the nurse at "ask mayo" said I don't need to see a doctor yet. I don't have enough "red flag" symptoms. I have three more weeks of coughing to go before you need to start to worry about me.
Bigger Problem: assuming that I recover by Saturday, do I go to the Dirtbombs show at the Entry or to Langhorn Slim at Triple Rock?
Oh yeah, (it is strangely addictive Nate) Kung Pao FM. Go now before you miss it. Wait... nevermind you already did. I'm going to miss that Chinese pop.
I have caught a cold that has sent me prematurely running back to the couch. Not even pretending I got it from Dick Valentine is making me feel better. (What's the incubation period for dickvalentinosis? Four days?) To occupy my time I've decided to try to remember EVERY SHOW I'VE EVER BEEN TO. An impossible task, yes, but I'm going to try anyway. I started by making a list of every ticket stub I've held on to over the years. (I keep them in a vintage English biscuit tin under the microwave!) Now I'm filling in the shows from venues without tickets as best as I can remember, mining old emails, gigposters.com, howwastheshow.com, the wayback machine at archive.org and uber-show-archivist Kidneybingos's list for clues. I'm missing a lot of dates. It's definitely a work in progress. See any glaring omissions? Big errors? I need help--tips are welcome!
Stuff like this is why I love the Internet. Amee and I saw tons of signs like these in Ireland.
I'm realizing that maybe I don't need to know how many people end up at my blog because they are looking for photos of sixteen year old girls. I'm the #1 result for Google search "16 year old girl cream corn wrestling." It was only a matter of time. Good thing 99% of my posts are all malarkey and hooey. I guess I could rename the blog? But, if I was to rename it, the replacement would have to be longer than the current one.
By the way, the dictionary entry for hooey is:
Main Entry: hoo·ey
Pronunciation: 'hü-E
Function: noun
Etymology: origin unknown
: NONSENSE
Triumph the insult comic dog vs. Michael Jackson supporters
Almost as good as the Triumph vs. the Star Wars fans.
What's the best thing about finally owning my own computer? Is it being able to access OCLC 24/7? Nope. Is it being able to obsessively check my email every five minutes, even on weekends? Nope.
What is it then?
My magic 8-ball widget! Best $2000 I ever spent. Will I be in debt for the rest of my life, I ask it?
"Outlook Good."
Was it dumb of me to lay down the extra hundreds of dollars to get the Powerbook instead of the ibook mainly because the white ibooks in the Apple store looked grimey?
"It is decidedly so."
Will anyone believe me when I tell them it was really because of the better screen resolution and nicer keyboard?
"My sources say no."
Is Dick Valentine day dreaming about me right now?
I hate beer, but even I can appreciate this:
A message from my cat, Mr. Jones.
This is great: http://www.bugmenot.com
It's not good for everything, but I'm guessing it will help with spam.
I'm several years behind, but I finally broke down Wednesday and bought a cell phone. I feel very weird about it, sort of grown up and ashamed. Hopefully it won't make me rude.
The good and the bad of last week:
Good--Finding Neverland, even though my friend Mary said that a couple of those Davis boys committed suicide later in life. The kid who played Peter was pretty good, which gives me hope for the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie.
Good--Springtime.
Good--Hip Art that's Square @ the Goldstein Gallery. My favorite album cover was "Mambo for Cats." I had no idea there were so many parodies of "Whipped Cream and Other Delights."
Good--Smoking ban. I went to Dusty's last night and there was no smoke to bother my allergies.
Bad--pollenating trees bother my allergies.
Bad--pizza from Manhatten Loft on the East Bank
Good/Bad--Closer for free at Coffman Union. The movie was good, but the film was slightly out of focus and the sound was funny. But it was free.
Good/Bad--"Girlfriend in a Coma" by the Smiths. But it was a bad week to have it stuck in my head. I blame the circus that claims to be the news.
I just love reading reviews of movies at pluggedinonline.com. As you can imagine, they found no redeaming qualities in Team America. What do people who can't even type the word "h---" have to say about this new film by the makers of "South Park?" READ
