Sparkler Fun

This photoset is absolutely amazing.

Photos of things

Hi! I've been splitting my time between playing Psychonauts, going places with people, and lying down in terrible back pain! I'm about to add a Flickr button to this thing, but until then, you can click here and see some photos from the past week.

You might also be able to see a photo in this post; Blogger seems to have added some sort of one- or several-click photo uploading function. If it worked, you might see a picture of two people having a spirited debate about which animal to click on next. PHOTOBLOGGER A-LIST, HERE I COME!!

God Bless America

Sometimes, people look at me funny for not having finished high school properly. There were a lot of reasons, but it all boils down to three factors:

1. My guidance counselor mangled my class itinerary beyond recognition.
2. The "math" part of my brain was accidentally sneezed out when I was 6.
3. The Man has no sense of humor.

I'm in so much pain

Scene: Clara becomes the 27th person to suggest I obtain some antibiotics to fix my bronchitis
Medium: Instant Message

me: "Because acute bronchitis is usually caused by viruses, antibiotics (medicines that kill bacteria) usually do not help. Even if you cough up mucus that is colored or thick, antibiotics probably won’t help you get better any faster."
me: just FYI
clara: lol
clara: shows what I know, eh?
me: well, you're not alone. I should memorize that paragraph simply because I'm running out of ways to say "antibiotics won't work"
clara: lol
clara: make a nametag that says it
clara: "Hello my name is antibiotics don't work"
me: HELLO
my name is
Because acute bronchitis is usually caused by viruses, antibiotics (medicines that kill bacteria) usually do not help. Even if you cough up mucus that is colored or thick, antibiotics probably won’t help you get better any faster
clara: exactly.
clara: now wear that everywhere.
me: I wish my keyboard had a "transsubstantiate digital bits into physical object"
clara: you mean "print"?

Cough Cough MUCUSPLOSION

Everyone wish my girlfriend Laurie a safe and happy two months in Germany! She's in the air right now! You know what else is in the air right now? VIRUSES FROM MY MOUTH!

I'm extremely sick. Just in time to toast the end of my Hectic Weeks of Uncharacteristically Nonstop Socializing, my bronchitis has become feverish. It hurts to type, but it hurts more to lie down. OPERATION: UPDATE WEBSITE CODE OBSESSIVELY TO DISTRACT FROM MISSING GIRLFRIEND will have to be postponed. Anyone know any miracle bronchitis cures? I can't afford to miss any more work!

Speaking of Nonstop Socializing, one of my many friends who fit into the category "leaving California" just called and offered to kidnap me for the evening. This is something I want more than most things to have happened, but I had to decline. Declining was something I already didn't want to do, and the magic technology that is cellular phones decided not to deliver most of what I was saying to the other party. Yes, we as a species has come a long way... from "Watson, come here, I need you" to "CRKCLSTH, BRT-- ET-- CA-- ETTER? ...O? ...GH, I GUESS I'LL SHK-- ...NRGH YOU LATER."

Since this is totally a blog and not my friggin' diary jeez LOL, here's a deliciously curmudgeonly link to an interview with Billy West, the voice of Fry on my favorite television show ever, American Dad.

FOOLED YOU HA HA! It's Futurama. Sorry, that was an awfully offensive joke; normally I wouldn't even joke about liking American Dad. But I'm FEVERISH AND TYPING AHAHAHAHA! And the Internet is surely better off for it.

As downbeat as this all seems, now that I'm rereading it to make sure it makes sense (I'm not sure of that at all), I'm actually in a pretty good mood. It's just that I'd like to be Taking On The World, and not Painfully Hacking Sputum Into A Bag OMG EEW.

Ideas To Write About

When I was 8 years old and in... whatever grade, my teacher would force the class to do some writing in a notebook, on the first page of which was a blank list titled IDEAS TO WRITE ABOUT. Which should really be worded differently if you ask me, but I digress. I, of course, filled in those blanks with stream-of-consciousness gusto because I loved filling in blanks, and I still love filling in blanks to this very day; in fact, that is what I have chosen to do with my leisure time at this exact moment!

The list raises inspires many reactions. Such as:

• Who the crap was Patrick? I even gave him a star!
• "Rabbits" was first?
• I gave a star to "poetry," but not "nonsense?"
• "Writing?" OOOH RECURSIVE
• Why didn't I actually write about any of these things?

It's worth noting that, considering how much I've changed in the last 14 years, many of the things on the list are still important to me. "Life," for instance; also "holes." BUT NOT PATRICK.

Flickr kitty

I hate it when websites ask me to register for them before they provide a functionality that should be a given, such as saving an image to my local drive or reading an entire article. Also, I did not have a camera until a month ago. So I had avoided Flickr, the photo-sharing site so beloved by bloggers everywhere. But last night I was convinced to join, and join I did! As luck would have it, walking home from work today I got a call from my friend Scott, who said there was a kitten at his house! I photographed the kitten! I uploaded the resulting photos and typed a bunch of sentences that ended in exclamation marks!

If you don't like looking at pictures of kittens, for GOD'S SAKE do NOT CLICK ON THIS LINK! Instead, write to me and try to rationally explain why you don't like looking at pictures of kittens. I mean, honestly.

LQQK

Want to buy an amusement park? Heck, who doesn't??

WARNING:

• Is in Kansas
• Supplied trash cans have scary open-mouthed clown heads
• You probably don't actually want it really if you think about it

NINTENDO REVOLUTION REVEALED

I call hoax LOL

Howl's Moving Castle

Last week, I walked about 24 miles more than I walk in an average month, waking up at 4 AM most days. So on Friday, when we missed the 7:00 showing of Howl's Moving Castle and had to wait around for the 9:45 show, I knew I was going to be sleepy. I even fell half-asleep to the soothing tones of the El Capitan Theater organist. I was grumpy when the Disney representative tried to make jokes, grumpy for the Disney trailers, and grumpy when I sat through what felt like six Disney curtains slowly opening to a fanfare.

But all was magical when the movie started. I can't think of any new ways to say "Miyazaki transports you to a magical world of enchanting magical enchanting transportation," but I will say this: despite having been so damn exhausted that I remember only bits and pieces (and general color schemes) of the movie, I can assure you I had a smile on my face the whole time. If you live anywhere near one of the lucky theaters, go go go go go! Hey, that's five go's! And "go" is the Japanese word for "five!" And "Go" is the name of a board game that my girlfriend likes, and my girlfriend went to see Howl's Moving Castle! That series of coincidences can only mean one thing: you should go see Howl's Moving Castle.

Hello, Internet!

Hello! Something was terribly "b0rked" with our "r0uter" so I was sans internetia for quite a while. Sorry about that!

I'm actually updating from the library at the moment, even though my internetia is back, because I'm about to meet up with my grillfiend as soon as she gets off work. (I did not mean to type "grillfiend," but my fingers are having difficulty with this keyboard and also my brain is having difficulty not writing funny words where an ordinary word would suffice.) Then we're going to download a former housemate of mine from the Los Angeles train station. He's visiting from Texas and ahahaha, I didn't mean "download" either! I meant "pick up." But I think "download" should be the new word for "pick up" because we are living in the cyberfuture. Anyway, my grillfiend and some of my regular fiends are then going to catch a showing of Howl's Moving Castle, which is not playing here in Santa Barbara presumably because the people who run Santa Barbara's movie theaters think that everybody who lives here is a 62-year-old left-handed lesbian midget eskimo albino who does not like animated movies from Japan. Anyway, I'm expecting to like it, and I will tell you how it is!

Holy crabs.