June 2010
1 post
5 tags
Crystallization.
I do a lot of thinking. Kind of why I keep this thing around. At any rate, the other day I sort of considered, during a quiet moment, who I am at this period in time, and how I seem to have discovered what I want to do. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I can do my job without being miserable. Which is important. Not only do many people dislike their jobs, I feel sometimes a little guilty...
May 2010
5 posts
8 tags
Scraps 5/18/10
It’s hard for me to type “10” at the end of the date, after 10 years of putting a 0. I suppose I must have made similar adjustments at the turn of the millennium, but I have no memory of that.
Anyways, in the spirit of ranting, this is SCRAPS. Blammo, internet. Blam. Mo.
1) I just returned from going on a spirited adventure to see Robin Hood, Ridley Scott and Russell...
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RIP: Frank Frazetta 1928-2010
Frank Frazetta did so much quality painting and illustrating in his 82 years that it seems stupid to attempt to pick a favorite. Here’s a random assortment of images from the man who redefined—No, hell, defined fantasy artwork, influencing countless fellow fantasy artists, comic book illustrators, and when you get down to it, the guys who drew the covers to every book I ever loved as...
April 2010
3 posts
4 tags
The Despair of Middle-Apes
I somehow assume that the smarter monkeys are always sad. They haven’t mastered the tools of great apes/hominids, nor do they experience the poo-flinging abandon of those retarded lower primates.
I suppose, in a way, they are the baby bears of the ape world. Neither noble nor base, they are in fact, just right. Maybe that’s why they hold such appeal to us.
In all seriousness, I...
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“I do not season steak. Start seasoning steak and before you know it?...”
– Warren Ellis.
I had a manly weekend, felt like this summed up the willingly idiotic attitude I may have adopted at various times. Now, to limp over to Dave’s to watch UFC 112.
RJC
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Scraps 4.1.2010
I’ll dive right in.
1) Like so many other people, I assume the golden age of pranking to be the 1890’s. I mean think about it: the gullibility of man as demonstrated by snake oil salesman and the dubious invention of soft drinks as medicine, the advent of electricity (which opened new doors in pranking technology), and the simultaneous love for and suspicion of all things new and...
March 2010
1 post
7 tags
Scraps 3/26/09
As with all great procrastinated works, I’ll begin this post with the solemn regret that I don’t do this more often. Of course, that’s a bit disingenuous, in that it doesn’t occur to me to write on here until I exhaust most of my other things-I-could-be-doing. But today it is a seasonably cool, gray Friday afternoon. When the employed portion of the world wouldn’t...
February 2010
1 post
8 tags
Scraps 2/11/09
I likely need to get on here and rant and rave more often, but the fact is that I’ve just been keeping busy. Staying out of trouble. Keeping myself off the streets, as it were.
However, in the past couple of days, I have seen some things that seem to be worth commenting on, so here goes. Come to the shiny metal bowl and get your scraps, internet puppies.
1) Snow-maggeddon/Snow-pocalypse:...
January 2010
1 post
8 tags
A New Lease
So, I haven’t written anything in nearly two months, since that faithful, Total-Recall-reference-titled entry summing up my mood two weeks from my return to the United States.
I’ll sum up what’s happened since then fairly quickly. I have returned to the United States. Much to my pleasure, my mood has not crumbled. I came back home, yet somehow avoided returning to the anxiety...
November 2009
8 posts
7 tags
Two Weeks.
I’ll start off by saying that I feel like something of an asshole for constantly lamenting my lack of interesting things to say, then spouting 1000+ words of apparent opinion, fact, and bullshit.
The fact is that sometimes I do get ideas, concrete building blocks on which to build bloggery. Most of the time though, I’m winging it. This has been true of many things in my life. And...
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(Boring) Tales of (Self-Involved, Mostly Illusory)...
I have virtually nothing to say. But wait, I can’t go into this second guessing myself. This is, after all, a blog, by the process of elimination. In that, I mean that I am not selling anything, providing truly noteworthy (Up-To-The-Minute Sports And Weather) content. It must be a blog. And if one is to write a blog, one must have the unerring conviction that no matter how infantile or...
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Scraps 11/09/2009
I begin writing today at 10:17PM, and it is a slightly unpleasant 82 degrees fahrenheit in the house. Outdoor temperatures got up to over 100 today, which is not really that fun. I spent much of the day at the mall engaging in air-conditioned browsing, something I normally wouldn’t do. Sheer heat, illness and an urge to see a movie compelled me, despite the dearth of anything hugely exciting...
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Nightmare Music (And Visuals)
Meshuggah’s “Bleed” is one of those tunes that makes you feel really overwhelmed and frankly, a little afraid. First off, the speed the drummer’s feet must be travelling at for most of the song is terrifying. Second, the whole thing has an off, seasick feel to it. Sliding around somewhere outside the rhythmic constraints of conventional Western music. Combine that with the...
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Scraps 11/2/09
Hrrrk.
That’s the first thing I said this morning, and I feel like it should go on here. I just spent a day dealing with children who did not want to be dealt with, and that’s still how I feel. It’s a somewhere between the sound of someone realizing they made a mistake and the sound someone would make as a slender blade slips between their ribs. A sharp intake of breath colored...
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Halloween Happened?
Seriously. I had no real idea. I was dimly aware that the last day of October was passing me by, but instead of the autumnal pastiche of yellow leaves and party vomit, I was basking in sunlight. I took in summer sights and weather, and saw only a modicum of particularly enthusiastic young people dressed in costume. They wore black and wigs. Make-up ran with sweat. I chuckled and trundled onwards.
...
October 2009
7 posts
9 tags
Inner Workings 10/28/09
With an ungainly bump and a thud, I’m off on another internet adventure. Come journey with me through the rippled silliness of my grey matter, as I project it (word-wise) onto the screen before me. All for your consumption, my special special friends. Meaning anyone who bothers clicking onto here.
Which I hope is everyone, really. I hope there are people learning English just so they can...
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Scraps 10/27/09
1) Is Australia racist? Following the Harry Connick Jr Blackface Outrage (see here) and the ill-fated release of Oreo rip-offs entitled “Creole Creams” (evidence), Australia finds itself being asked that question. As a completely unqualified outsider, I’m going to answer it right now. On a whole, no more so than anyone else. In specific clusters, perhaps in a greater percentage...
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The Final Outlet
See, the issue here is that while it raises an interesting point, it’s ultimately stymied by the number of crudely drawn phalluses that dominate the walls. Admittedly, the crudely drawn phallus has been a staple of art going back some 20,000 years now. And seeing them in the bathroom stall, they were drawn with a certain haste, a sort of time-limit performance art. Unless the perpetrator...
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Me-time.
Surroundings: Unpleasant tiny fluorescent bulb in lamp, as white as light can be. So white it sucks the color out of everything it hits. Myself included. Headphones in, music blaring. Cheap office chair not built or adjusted or whatever for someone my height, or width for that matter. Large glass of water.
Sounds like a decent setup for writing something mostly pointless and putting it on the...
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The Benefits of Adventure
Again I’m treading into the waters of writing without the foggiest idea where I’m going. Bad metaphors aside—I assume they’re just a given now—I feel good. Weirdly good. Able-to-do-a-handstand good. No joke, I checked earlier.
I don’t necessarily think Australia is the reason for this, but I think decontextualizing myself (leaving everything I know, normally...
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Scraps 10/11/09
Likely to be titled “Scraps 10/11/09,” I begin this entry with utterly no idea of what I’m planning on saying. That’s a little scary, but mostly freeing. Especially in such a disposable medium as the internet. The little red X, your permanent escape ladder.
I will begin with my immediate stimulus. I’m listening to Clutch. No surprise there, and I need something to...
September 2009
9 posts
9 tags
Shaking Off The Shackles of Socialization
Earlier today, I assaulted Facebook and Twitter. This is nothing new: those are my tools for the most part when honking malevolently into the silence of net-space. It’s also how I keep in touch with friends, (some) family and the construct we all possess known as the “outside world.” At any rate, I came up with a plan which is utterly flawed but I am in love with. I said,...
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Scraps 9/29/09
I just wrote an extremely lengthy entry and deleted it. First time I’ve done that.
My reasoning was that it was unsound. Not as a piece of writing, because that’s a fairly arbitrary decision; but as a representation of my own thoughts. I don’t think it did me any good to put out a confused jumble of anger-tinged words. Clarity is the whole goal here. Expression and in a very...
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Scraps 9/26/09
I need to get some things out of my head so I figure here is the best place to do them. Screaming mutely into the abyss of the internet is one of my favorite pastimes, and scream I shall. Let’s number these suckers.
1) I went to a museum exhibit on Pompeii today. When you walked in, the first glass case of bricabrac and household whatsits were coins. Laid out in concentric circles, growing...
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Weary Weekend
I’m on an alliteration theme right now, mentally, and I just can’t seem to escape it for some reason. But, that is likely not what concerns anyone. Hopefully the quality or even just plain quantity of prose herein is what draws people. Because it sure as hell ain’t the funny pictures. There haven’t been any of those for quite some time.
I’ll be honest with you,...
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Redundant Roadtrip
Today I awoke in a hotel in the small city of Warrnambool. No joke, that’s how it’s spelled. We piled into the car and began a drive to Portland to go see a variety of things.
The previous day we had traveled The Great Ocean Road, a stretch of 2-lane surprisingly fast highway a bit reminiscent of California’s Route 101. Its curves and switchbacks render all but the driver ill...
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Just a quick one...
Until I get photographic evidence (which necessitates going to a store that sells cameras and buying a little cable with a jack on it that only Olympus uses, thank you very much), words will have to suffice to describe my experience. I realize this can be troubling, because I am suspect. As a blogger, which is a bit like a narrator but without the prestige or built-in credibility, one falls victim...
7 tags
Yet more from the bowels of the Earth.
On the top right hand corner of my Tumblr menu, it informes me that I have followed 0 people and liked 0 things. Is my blogging so anti-social? I prefer to think that I like all kinds of things, and I follow the fossil footsteps of all living things that have walked the ground before me. Rather than needing to hit a button to inform the world that I follow or like something, I will simply take it...
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A Week In...
And what have I learned so far…
I’ve learned that other people’s poo isn’t really that bad. It’s not good, but it’s not worth vomiting about. Even baby poo, which is particularly nefarious and… curiously yellow. I’ve learned that the ability to cook, when combined with putting up with small children, will get you room and board in some...
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Airline Travel, and Why It Sucks All Hard.
Yes, I know it’s not the most eloquent title I’ve ever come up with, but sometimes… Sometimes to get to the core of a thing, to reach inside it and tug out its reluctant essence, you just have to beat it about the head and neck with words you learned when you were seven.
At any rate, I had planned this first post form Australia as one filled with pictures of the travelling...
August 2009
5 posts
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A Taste of Things to Come..
The future will be disconcerting. And I have had an idea. A useless, stupid, wacky idea. And I think I’m going to chase it down, grab it by the haunches and mount it against its will, riding it into the sunset of obvious-mistakery.
More to come, but for now, enjoy the frightening bubble-headed doombot.
RJC
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Quite a day...
So, today, I awoke, immediately turned 27 (I always set the birthday alarm for the birth minute, if I don’t have somewhere else to be at 11:21AM), and rolled back over to try to avoid reality.
I woke up for real about 10 minutes later, after the nagging fact that I had stuff to do. Where to begin? Should I begin with the tale of how, a week and a half ago, my car broke down on the trip to...
July 2009
15 posts
3 tags
Operation #googlyfarts.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have never been big on internet trends. I see the internet chiefly as a tool by which I can annoy people (meaning keep in touch) from increasingly long distances as I travel through the real world. But the other day I was engaging in one of my favorite boredom-fighting activities, randomly googling phrases to find funny pictures, and I thought to myself: why not make a...
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Flatulence in Antiquity
From Martin Luther’s 1545 “Depictions of the Papacy”, here we have German peasants expressing their distaste for the fire and brimstone preaching of Pope Paul III by farting directly into it. Now, that seems potentially dangerous, as brimstone is mostly sulfur and already quite noxious, and the flammability of German flatulence (often cabbage-based) is well documented. Despite...
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A True Hotel Hell
The Wall Street Journal’s website recently put up a photo set of a new hotel that opened in Sevelen, Switzerland which is being marketed as the world’s first zero-star accomodation. You might be asking yourself “Why on earth would they want zero stars, let alone market it that way?” Frankly I have no idea, but if you’ve ever wanted to go on the most depressing...
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