Thanks to the wonderful and smart Sempereadem for pointing at this one.

A real life type update

I don’t do these much because really there’s not a lot going on that I can talk about. I mean I go to work and then I come home. Sometimes I hang out with friends. Most times I come home and write. Then I’ll watch something or read for review and go to bed. There might be phone calls in there.

That’s my life. Mostly it’s work then work then work and sleep.

So sure, the Monday Night Recaps (didn’t go to the bar last night but Vin and Hammerpants came to my place and hung out) may make my life seem exciting but those are the exceptions. Mostly my life is all about work.

Worse, right now, it’s a lot of work I can’t talk about. There’s some comic stuff possible I can’t discuss, and some new comics stuff I also can’t talk about. There’s a bunch of prose I can’t talk about and some other media things that can’t get a word in public. Isn’t that fun to write about?

So yeah, I don’t write about my day job for a whole host of reasons and it leaves me with little to discuss on most days. So instead I post funny things that make me laugh. It’s a living.

But on the other hand I don’t want to remove myself completely, either. That’s no fun. Heh. This summer shall see adventures, if everything goes right. A full week of them, while I’m off and out of town and having adventures that I will then share. In a few weeks I will be stuck with Jury Duty, so the opposite will be true and I won’t be posting until I get home.

In between? I have a few short weekend trips I need to take, but then May got busy as hell. So I am trying to see if I have time for as surprise trip this weekend. God only knows.

And now? Back to work.

(via the BBC): Thai cops punished by Hello Kitty.

Police chiefs in the Thai capital, Bangkok, have come up with a new way of punishing officers who break the rules - an eye-catching Hello Kitty armband.

The armband is large, bright pink and has a Hello Kitty motif with two hearts embroidered on it.

From today, officers who are late, park in the wrong place or commit other minor transgressions will have to wear it for several days.

The armband is designed to shame the wearer, police officials said.

“This is to help build discipline. We should not let small offences go unnoticed,” Police Colonel Pongpat Chayapan told Reuters news agency.

“Guilty officers will be made to wear the armbands in the office for a few days, with instructions not to disclose their offences. Let people guess what they have done,” he said.
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Oh dear lord this is pure genius! Shame the cops by making them wear Hello Kitty arm bands! Do the really rebel cops have to wear Badtz Maru arm bands as well? Maybe a Chococat helmet! Or My Melody gloves!

What about the Thai cops who love Hello Kitty? Will they misbehave in order to get in trouble and get the arm band for free? Will we see black market Thai arm band sales on ebay? Of course we will, duh.

But will you by one? Of course you will, duh.

Anyway, yeah, I just… wow. Look at the guy in the picture. He loves the arm band. He doesn’t fool me. Neither do you.

Remember the Japanese guys in bug suits doing a strange jumping game? Well this time they’re running up a slide. The slide gets steeper and steeper, of course.

Recently purchased: Payback - the director’s cut, Tap, Chorus Line, Scrubs season 5, War Stories by Joe Haldeman. (none of these have arrived yet, mind you)

Recently desired but not purchased: The ebay auction for an Atari 2600 with 100 games and multiple controllers of every type there was.

Recently desired but possibly to be purchased soon: Treo 755 (the 650 is getting old on me)

Currently reading: The Einstein Intersection by Samuel Delany

Any other questions?

Headline of the day: Microsoft Urges Antitrust Officials to Scuttle DoubleClick Deal.

I mean come on. Seriously? But it gets better. witness this paragraph:

Microsoft was joined today by AT&T, a company that traces its lineage to the Ma Bell monopoly that was broken up in the mid-1980s. “We think antitrust authorities should take a hard look at this deal and the implications,” said Jim Cicconi, senior executive vice president for external affairs at AT&T. “If any one company gets a hammerlock on the online advertising space, as Google seems to be trying to do, that is worrisome.”

It’s like the “Beaten by the Monopoly Stick Players”. Think they have matching sweatshirts?

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The Peeing Boy drink dispenser. Yeah. Have a statue of a little boy pee your drink into your cup for you. Yup. Uh huh.

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Or you could buy the Blow Monkey. It’s a little thing to help you dry your nails, see. It’s… God help us. It’s the Blow Monkey.

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In case you missed it: This weekend I mentioned I was on Twitter. I am using it, 99% of the time, to write fiction in 140 characters or less, as started by Ariana. It was a great idea and I’ve been doing a few a day so far. Here are 4 (of the 5, mind you) that I’ve written to date, including the one from this morning:

Every day I try again. Every day I fail. Lashed to this tree, I struggle. My empty eye socket itches. Wisdom had better be worth it.

Stars above. Stars below. I drown in them and they become my only company in this beautiful silence. Fuck, air’s gone.

We won’t back down. We won’t surrender. No matter how many swords they have, no matter how high they kick. Damn ninja are going down. Arrrr!

Vampire’s bite. It kills me, but it will make me so much more soon. The power is worth the pain. Oh! The pain! Jesus! Three days to go.

So there ya go. Little drops of fiction. These are fun as hell to work up.

Dealing with a lot of people asking me for a lot of things today. Which lead to this exchange:

APK: And I’m like “Did you get me a pony? No. Then why should I give YOU anything?”

Joe: What if one of them got you a pony?

APK: Then I’d jump on the pony and trample them.

You see, I’m a problem solver.

Well, we’re back.

We are that, Feldog. So what’s up this time? Saving the universe from the plans of your evil brother that no one knew about until just now?

I was thinking more along the lines of “Celebrity gossip” and less “Star Trek V”

What does God… need with a… spaceship?

What did… we… need with…. that crappy… script?

All right fine, bitch. Who’s up first?

Scarlett Johansson. She was, according to rumors, a total bitch on the set of Justin Timberlake’s new video.

Woa. Only rumors? Come on now, Feldog.

I know, ShatAttack. But PR-Inside says she denies them, but then reports them. Anyway they say that she was bitch and demanded to know why she couldn’t smoke when they had fire dancers on the set anyway.

She has a point. If she did it. Or said it, or whatever. And besides. It’s Scarlett Johansson. If she wants to smoke on set you ask if you can watch her lips work the filter. You don’t complain.

Right-o, Bill. And for all those anti-smokers who are going to want to bitch and moan about this? Find a real cause, for today at least. Thanks. Yes, it’s evil, horrible, bad, wretched… but she smokes and that’s her choice. Except on the set of a Timbersexy video.

There’s also speculation about those two now isn’t there?

J-Tim and ScarJo? Yeah. Word has it he’s putting his dick in her box, if ya follow.

The blind could follow that one, Feld. Let’s move on to Angelina Jolie. Have you heard this?

Which?

In an Elle interview she said: “I think I feel so much more for Mad and Z because they’re survivors, they came through so much. Shiloh seemed so privileged from the moment she was born. I have less inclination to feel for her… I met my other kids when they were six months old, they came with personality. A newborn really is this… yes, a blob! But now she’s starting to have a personality… I’m conscious that I have to make sure I don’t ignore her needs just because I think the others are more vulnerable.”

So where’s the problem?

Some people are saying “Oh look, she isn’t a holy saint she loves her adopted kids more.”

And those people are fucking idiots, Bill. Come on, this is a woman who seems to be perfectly honest. She feels more for these kids than for the one she had, because Shiloh was born into grace. And she’s a newborn so there’s no personality to latch onto. But she’s trying and she knows the problem and is doing her best.

If more parents were honest about shit like this…

Haim wouldn’t have happened.

Word. Anyway I think we might be out of time for now, Feldog.

So soon?

It’s heart breaking. But what does God… need with a…

Closing line! Until next time, folks! I’m, Cory Feldman.

And I’m Bill Shatner. And this has been Talking Heads.

I am such a child.

Sure I might be 31 according to your stupid solar year reckoning but realistically? I’m like a 5 year old most days. I have Firefox 2 here at this desk. And sometimes I can zone out just mousing over the scrollbars so that they change color.

Light blue. Turquoise. Light blue. Turquoise. Light blue. Turquoise. Light blue. Turquoise. Light blue. Turquoise. Light blue. Turquoise. Light blue. Turquoise. Light blue. Turquoise. Light blue. Turquoise. Light blue. Turquoise. Light blue. Turquoise. Light Blue.

On my desk I have a little twist of red ribbon, a small binder clip, a mini wrench and two twist ties. These have nothing to do with my day, I just play with them. Currently the ribbon is looped through the binder clip while the wrench is decorated with twist ties. I’m sure that’ll change in a few hours.

In restaurants I will shred paper with all my might. Drives people nuts but I can’t help it, if I find something to play with I’ll play with it. eventually paper self-destructs, you know? Then I end up with a pile of fallout on the table and I’ll just push it around with a finger.

That can keep me entertained for hours, sadly.

It’s partly why I am not allowed to have those large industrial sized rubber bands anymore. They always end up painfully around my head while I sit and wonder why it hurts and try to get free and generally feel stupid. You’d think I would know enough now to not go there, right? Oh how wrong you would be.

I still, to this day, want one of those globes with the electricity in them that you touch and they look all zappity at your fingers. I have a lava lamp I hardly use on my desk at home. Just because I like to look at it when I remember to turn it on during long writing sessions.

I would keep writing this entry, you know, revealing the sadness that is my attention span and shit, but the Firefox sidebars call to me.

Light blue. Turquoise. Light blue. Turquoise. Light blue. Turquoise. Light blue. Turquoise. Light blue. Turquoise. Light blue. Turquoise. Light blue. Turquoise. Light blue. Turquoise. Light blue. Turquoise. Light blue. Turquoise. Light blue. Turquoise. Light Blue.

There’s a new issue of The Footnote up! Not only does it have two new columns, Dustin Grovemiller talking about video games in a way that makes me go “Oh, yeah EXACTLY like that” and D.J. Kirkbride making me laugh and shake my head, it also has a new Just the Right Bullets by me as well as an expanded Arm Fall Off Boy article.
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CNN is reporting that Indian Jones 4 is done script-wise, it will shoot in 2007 for a release in May ‘08 and Harrison Ford is, of course, going to star in it. I’m glad that didn’t take far too long to work out and solidify or anything.
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Pitchfork Media did a list of their 100 top songs of ‘06. You can stream, download or watch the video for each song (depending on what they could provide). Which is kinda cool.
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I think we’re too harsh on the year that’s going out. And by “we’re” I mean “y’all”, honestly. I watch it every year. How many years now, go look, have you said that “This last year was kinda sucky (or variations on that theme of suck) but this coming year will be better”?

No slice of 365 days will be perfect. At the end of a slice it will always tend to seem worse than better if you tally it. I suggest breathing, letting it go and generally not giving a fuck about if a given year lived up to some expectation.

Instead? Make sure every DAY counts. Fuck years. They’re too long to work out for you. It’s like the house. The house will always win. Happiness is not an ongoing constant concept. Nor should it be. It simply doesn’t work that way. So sure, on any extended scale the effect will be the same. Reduce the scale. Have a good day. Then have a another one. Focus on the better ends of it instead of the worse.