Blue Christmas

I went to see Rocky Balboa tonight. Now let's never speak of it again.

I came home to find a homemade DVD slid under my door. What was on it? Nothing less than Laura flexing her awesomeness muscles.










Best present ever.

Maybe I won't, maybe I won't

It took me long enough, but I finally remembered to look up Neil Diamond's "Porcupine Pie". As much as I detest and abhor downloading mp3's without proper recompense to the artists involved, I'll make this one mp3 available just this once. Here (right-click and "Save as ...", svp).

What troubles me is not the way he moans "Oh my god ..." at the 55-second mark, but rather the fact that this is the live version off the Hot August Night (Live) album and not the studio version available on the albums Gold, Moods, and Play Me: The Complete Uni Studio Recordings ... Plus! According to the iTunes Music Store, those versions are 2:04 whereas the Hot August Night (Live) version is 1:57 (and nine seconds of that are applause).

I'm as mystified as you are that this song got any applause, much less nine seconds' worth.

But seriously ... What is on that extra seven seconds?! I'm thinking it's maybe a spoken word intro, explaining the origin of this too-good-to-be-true tune.

I guess this will have to remain one of those mysteries that $0.99 is too much to pay to solve.

OK, I got a title ... and a thesis!

Well, it's down to the conclusion, the part of an essay I hate writing the most. Why should I have to conclude anything? If I've done my job properly and you've been attentive enough while reading, you should have been able to figure it out yourself.

Ironically, writing this conclusion saved my ass because I was on the third sentence of it when I came upon a thesis for my paper. Talk about ass-backwards! The extra bonus sad part is that it's not that great a thesis.

Happily, the thesis led to a title, which doesn't even reflect the thesis. Oh, this paper is a beast! I'll never willingly let you read it, but maybe if you're lucky I'll slip into coma and you'll be over at my house going through my papers to find my living will when you'll find "Creeping Featurism, or 'Can God write a program so big that even God's OS can't run it?'"

Soon to be a major motion picture!

1, 2, I've got a crush on you

The Clash is the perfect music to write papers to. Why couldn't I have found this out years ago?! I'm making a delightful amount of progress on my paper on Creeping Featurism. Bear in mind, "progress" does not mean "clear thesis". I think I'll keep writing and hope a thesis appears. If not ... well, I'm already in trouble with the professor for being a useless deadline-breaker, so maybe he'll just be glad that I handed something in before the new year. A character reference, a sure thing mere months ago, is now right out of the picture, I think.

The thing that annoys me about lacking a clear thesis is it prevents me from coming up with a snappy title. Right now the closest thing I have is "Creeping Featurism: The Monster That Ate Redmond". Because, you know, Redmond is the town where Microsoft is based. Yeah, it sucks, I know. I was originally thinking something like "The Word Processor That Ate Pittsburgh (and other tales of creeping featurism)", but the "Why Pittsburgh?" question may prevent my prof from concentrating on the paper's content. Come to think of it, that may not be such a bad idea ...

I'm enjoying writing this paper, and not just because I'm doing it to the accompaniment of the Clash. It's kind of an interesting topic. I just wish I didn't have to write so many pages about it. If the grand paper about it is less than six pages long, how can I be expected to eke out more?

How?

With plenty of screenshots, that's how! When you're out of words, pad with pictures! And when I run out of pictures ... bar charts!

Groovy times ...

The orange juice is nice, though

When I heard that a mail-in ballot in Florida was sent using a rare stamp worth $100,000, I thought, "That's Florida for you: delightfully absentminded old folks everywhere!"

The news today indicates that the stamp is a fake. My first thought was, "That's Florida for you: thieves and conmen everywhere!"

Steganalysis? Don't make me laugh

Fig.1: Wally Wood's "22 Panels That Always Work"

"Don't question a lumberjack and never look one in the eye."

Fig.1: Unpaid advertisement

Amy Sedaris' I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence is amazing. This should come as no surprise. Please go buy it now. If you go buy it now, you'll be glad you didn't wait until later, because it's just that good.

Here is a picture of Amy from the section on hosting parties for children:

Fig.2: Future ex-Mrs. David Y. Bushnell with child (paternity unclear)

It's important to organize activities for children so they don't end up playing their own made-up games like "rub doodoo on the couch" or "doodoo in the fish tank":

Fig.3: 2 of the 16 activities

No really, go buy it now so you don't have to wait until your birthday for me to get it for you.