Year: 2010

Tonight my grandfather died.

On the eve of Thanksgiving, particularly, I am mindful that I should be thankful that I even knew him to begin with.  In truth, the man had a signifigane influence on my life, in several ways, at many stages.

This was not unexpected, but that does not mean it was anticipated.

This was not desired, but that does not mean it was a bad thing.

This is the first domino in a long row – I hope something resembling sanity is left standing at the end of the rattling road.

I hope someday, to wear his ring.

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
the Gunpowder Treason and Plot,

I see no reason why Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, t’was his intent to blow up King and Parliament.

Three score barrels were laid below to prove old England’s overthrow;
By God’s mercy he was catch’d with a dark lantern and lighted match.

Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

Hip hip hoorah!

A penny loaf to feed the Pope
A farthing o’ cheese to choke him.

A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.

Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.

Burn his body from his head.
Then we’ll say ol’ Pope is dead.

Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah hoorah!

There is a hollowness that takes you over, somewhere between the second and third cup of coffee, and three hours before your coworkers are going to start showing up "early" for work.  It is not caffine jitters, those don’t start until around ten, usually about the same time as the butterflies that accompany the beginning of recording the live show.  It is not the lurch that time seems to exist in catching up to you all at once, when you step outside the cave, and see that the sun now dominates what was black when you entered the building.  I’ve learned, in the past few weeks, to embrace this hollowness, not to run from it.  It is the center of my  morning now, this shelled-out calm before the storm.  It fuels what tranquility I can muster – seperates me from the frustrations and the chaos which ensues every time we go through this. 

The cycles of  the last day of the week have become the launching of a ship, from dry dock to foamy waves, from darkness to brightened skylights.  Sound checks, color matching, timesynching, stream buffering  – they are the rigging, anchor chains, and bare ribs covered in plank that are my Friday mornings.

Fridays are a dream state, for most of the day, for me.  Waking up to make a 5am call is pretty brutal, when you have to work a normal day after the rush and the yelling and caffine are all echoes of another time and place. I’m apparently on the call sheet now, which is cool, but, I still don’t get a copy of the call sheet.  Today’s call was postponed by 30 minutes, since we don’t have to film any music today.  I stood on a dark city street with nothing but the wind and a cup of coffee growing cold faster than I could drink it.  I looked around, as I often do, for something to squirrel away, for writing, or in photo form.

Over the Western horizon where the Hudson lay, the clouds seemed to be illuminated from the street level.  I assumed perhaps some club in JC had rented searchlights or something for an opening, and carelessly left them on.  I actually chuckled a moment, realizing that if the place was in NY, it was probably just last call, but I don’t know what time bars close in Jersey anymore.  As the time went by, and the clouds began to thin, it became apparent to me that the illumination was not coming from below.  It was the moon, trying desperately to shine through what seemed to be very stubborn clouds.

She was only visible for about ten minutes, creating silver daylight where no sun yet shone.  By the time all the people with the call sheet started showing, she was hidden again – secret.  Maybe the moon was trying to make up for the fact that I didn’t get a call sheet.  

Of all these marathon Fridays (which, oh gods below, I heard may be going on in perpituity for at least another year), today has been my favorite.  I had my secret moment with the city, and with the goddess of the sky.  I am sure there are hundreds of other people across the city, whose lives are more tuned to the dead windows of time in the City who allegedly never sleeps, but certainly passes out on the bar stool before the bouncer kicks them out, who shared that same moment I did.  It is part of why I love it here – so little is owned by you alone, but, at the same time, so many things that people never even notice, which create such a feeling of wonder…

I can tell you with certainty, while I might not be alone in my moment with the moon, nobody else had the exact same vantage point that I did, on a windy street, alone, in the dark of morning.

My escape was a most wretched experience, though I was grateful for the slack and sallow faces of my fellow refugees as we boarded, to help contrast the sharp horrors still festering in the back of my mind.  Every time I blinked, the experiences of the day waited expectantly, ready to claw away at my inner eyes with their gibbering and little black mandibles. I found a seat in a near empty compartment – a luxury, I hoped, which would easy some of the weariness from my frame as I left behind the madness. I would have slept, but I was terrified of what my unconscious might unleash on my already fragile mind, if unfettered by Morpheus.  Instead, to prevent myself from drowsing, I shifted my focus to my traveling companion, hoping to distract the overbright images of my imagination with a flood of external sensory information.

Across the compartment sat a portly gentleman, in a ruffled grey suit, reading the paper.  Most of my companion’s upper body was occluded from my visual questing by the newsprint.  The seams of the sleeves of his jacket had several times been mended by a clumsy hand, and the suit and his shirt were in dire need of dry-cleaning. The cloth of the suit was so soiled it exuded a nearly slimelike quality, and his shirt, which may have once been white, had yellowed to an unhealthy ivory. He wore neither rings nor a wristwatch, but had carefully manicured fingernails, which were the only well-kept thing about his appearance.  Many times, while reading, he would shift to a one-handed grip on his broadsheet and run one of his palms over his stained pants legs, as if the slime might be wiped away in the motion.

I noted as he did this that the gentleman was suffering from some sort of acute psoriasis, or the aftereffects of a bad burn, perhaps by chemicals.  His pasty skin was red and inflamed in places, and large flakes of dried skin were plastered to his wounds by some sort of fishy-smelling ointment. It was only after noting his hands that I realized the odor of the man’s medicinals had rather permeated the compartment, as the odor from burnt toast might – gradually, but once realized, impossible to banish.

I tried vainly to figure out a way I might politely start conversation, drawing him away from his paper, so that I might further inquire about the state of his injuries and his treatment.  Failing any inspiration, I hit upon a solution to more than one problem – I opened the window to the compartment.  The rush of air considerably lessened the stale fishy scent, and the man’s newspaper was quite disturbed in the process.  I had expected a comment or retort, but my traveling companion simply readjusted the pages which had blown around him, and settled back into his seat, continuing to read.

I wondered what had him so engrossed – what was in the paper that was of such interest? Vainly, I tried to scan the headlines from across the compartment, but found myself unable to do so – the lettering was foreign to me.  It looked almost Arabic, but with much sharper corners and lines, in lieu of the graceful curves and dots I was more familiar with.  At last, I had hit upon a simple way to interrupt, without being overly forward or rude.

I pardoned myself to the gentleman, and inquired about the language that his broadsheet was set in.

With a gurgling grunt, the gentleman in the grey suit put down his paper.  If his hands were the ruin of a burn or accident, his face and neck were surely more central to whatever event had rendered them so.

The gentleman had a thick brow, and broad cheekbones, well padded by jowly cheeks flecked with patches of scaly scar tissue.  His head, as well as his face, were completely hairless, and his skin had an uncomfortable greenish tint to it.  His lips were overlarge, and liver-like, but did not completely cover the mishmash of teeth, which, judging by what protruded from between his lips, were all in crooked disarray.  His eyes were bulbous and bulging, as if they were twice too big for the eyelids which seemed strain to breaking, simply performing their duties, and preventing his orbs from freeing themselves from the orbit of his skull.

The most startling aspect of my companion’s visage was his nose, or what was left of it.  It seemed that whatever process had led to his skin condition, which permeated the landscape of his curious features, had claimed nearly all the flesh of his nose.  There was a white sliver of bone visible in the vacuous hole where his nostrils should have been.  The flesh surrounding the area was scabrous, and the skin so thin you could see the forest of thin capillaries radiating from where his cheeks ended and the hole began.  With the paper removed, I noted, for the first time, that the gentleman’s breathing was a bit labored, and though he inhaled through his mouth, he clearly exhaled through his nose, causing a nearly imperceptible whistle from somewhere far within his sinuses.

He looked at me curiously as I stared, like a fish noting people beyond the glass of it’s aquarium for the first time, and grunted again in his peculiar phlegmy manner, eclipsing his face once again with his paper. It was only the train made its stop at Heartsdale, that I realized that I had not escaped at all, but was simply trapped in an extension of the horrors I thought I had left behind on the White Plains.

@delascabezas: Wyclef Jean at Lincoln Center! Catch it at WSJ.com 10am tomorrow!

Rar

I would start by saying that I would not have taken a vacation this week, had I my druthers.

I mean, I don’t mind a week away from work, but between the hassle of prepping, and the nightmare that will be catching up, with Fashion Week right around the corner, I’m unsure of the total return on investment.

A. had no qualms though, and I guess she deserves the mental R&R as much or more.

Going back to the Adorondacks is odd.  It has been almost a decade for me, and this was a very different trip from my last here.  I think I come back to remind myself of the permanence of memory and the impemanence of reality.   Those who think that time passes without leaving a heavy wake never go back to the places they once frequented to examine the erosion.

Highlights of my trip include meeting and getting to know Horace, the 70something lothario of Speculator NY, who drives a white 1980 Dodge Challenger (hand spray-painted) full of fishing acoutremont, and a decal dashboard header that reads: "Horace is my name, fishin and lovin are my games."

Horace was sort of a lift from "Grumpy Old Men" – a half-mix between the black guy who ran the bait shop, and Burgess Meridith’s character.

I did some fishing, so did A.  We did some canoeing, and I made a lot of fires.  I drank like three cases of Twisted Tea (they have a new flavor called "Backyard Batch" – holyshitgood).  I even did some writing.  Not as much as I would have liked, but more than I would have if I had been home.

Work boiled over twice – once I could do anything about.  The project I have spent weeks working on got cancelled in my absence, and I am curious what that means for the long view.

Mostly, I did a lot of navel-gazing into the stars, the moon, and embers of a fire.  I managed to only piss off/hurt A’s feelings once, which is pretty close to a record for me, I think.

I think two beavers, in one summer, made more lasting impact on the world than I ever did.  I was within 6′ of almost my height in water, held back by twigs and mud.  Absolutely breathtaking – would that all life’s accomplishments were so simple.

For those in the writing game, I highly reccomend Q10, I got more done with it than I have any piece of writing software since Lotus Amipro (back when I was pulling over 10k a week).

Back to reality tomorrow – sofa delivery, dog pickup, and work on Monday,  At least my boss is out for a week when I get back.  Perhaps that will make the return to the grind bearable.

Two weeks until classes start!

Mumford & Sons – The Banjolin Song / Awake my soul – A Take Away Show #105 from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

Watch This!

Lemme know.

This weekend was amazing lamb, a ton of unpacking, and barbecue aquisition.  My goals for the week include completion of unpacking, budgeting for next quarter (I am way broke) and aquisition of propane for said bbq.

Next week may kill me, but if I survive it, I will be that much stronger for it.  I am starting to hit a major burnout point with my work life.  I’m on day 17 without a break, and it is really starting to chap my ass.  I just need this project to finish for better or worse.

I gotta register for classes too.  Ug.

T-minus 12 hours to BK.

Dark gods below help me.

image, originally uploaded by delascabezas.

The three-legged no pants dumpster gnome guards Manhattan’s trash!

My electricity bill from june5-july5 was 374$! We share a split of utils in my building, apparently, everyone has been running all a/c units, on high, all the time!

Sweet jeebus.

We had two different people come into IT today, to try and have _us_ deal with Apple on their dropped calls.  One of them actually said "I already waited on line once today, you can do it this time."

::slow clap::

Mostly because I think I could see this happening with a number of my friends.  Click through for the full read at sugarboukas.com

I love that they used the original footage…

I know this is only a teaser, but from everything I’ve read, it looks like they are finally doing a Star Wars MMO right.  Even if you have no intention of buying or playing, you should scope this out.

See you in 10 daze.

This has not been much of a holiday weekend. I worked Saturday, and had a few side jobs today that kept me out until the early evening. Tomorrow, I hope to do something relaxing, before my three day pre-Maine grindhouse.

Perhaps because of the Memorial nature of the weekend, I was quite contemplative today. Most of my running around was in upper Weschester, and, due to the nature of travel in this part of the world, that necessitated a vehicle. My folks were nice enough to let me borrow one, but that meant walking around places I once haunted, and now mostly reminisce over.

In a single day, I visited:

-the first bar i was ever thrown out of, and later banned from. It is a nail salon now. Talk about a letdown.
-three places i almost died… All were vehicularly related, and all near misses (two got me into the hospital)
-the spot where I lost my virginity
-the first house I lived in after my folks’ place (I was at their place too)
-the house I lived in with my first fiancee
-the server room I built up from nothing but a card table and a power strip
-the pool and pond I frequented every summer for over a decade
– a 7/11, which has been the only thing consistently open in my parent’s town for my lifetime

It is a lot to contemplate in a day – all the might-have-beens and odd twists of chance and fate. On the way out of the 7/11, I was asked by a local kid (who, in hindsight was probably not born when I was pulling similar tricks) to buy him a Dutchie, which are now almost 2$. I obliged, enlivened, somehow, by the exuberance of youth and pot in opposition to the weight of time weiging on my contemplations.

The event I worked yesterday was for the 30th anniversary of CU’s graduate program for Arts Administration. There were several speakers (one of whom was the founder of the program), but in all the speeches, there was one speaker in particular, whose words resonated with me.

She was talking about dichotomies, and how often, people feel the need to choose between extremes – rigor and creativity or nurture and nature. She visualized these dichotomies, during her speech, using her hands, holding them far apart vertically, she visualized the weight and distance often generated around such decisions. To show how she dea

lt with such situations, she brought her hands around 90 degrees, into a horizontal line, then brought them together.

This gesture (some of her speech was about dance and gesture, and how the two were historically interrelated), to her, represented the way to overcome a lack of willingness to compromise on seemingly disconnected extremes, perspectives, or agenda.

My memory road wanderings left me thinking about this point in her speech. I cannot regain the trappings of youth, but, at the same time, the knowledge and perspective I have traded that mantle for are quite dear. The continuing payments required to maintain that upkeep are what make one yearn for the freedom of youth, perhaps, but the powerlessness of that time in life was almost like a slap in the face outside of 7/11.

I am trying to be the joined hands of these two ideas – youthful memory and cynical experience. There is a middle ground, but it is transient, like a rainbow or fogbank. You cannot dwell there, only occassionally glimpse and reminisce as your heartstrings dance.

To all those, before me, and now, who gave of their lives, or gave their lives, so I can work and walk and think about all this, there are no sufficient words to adequately encapsulate the debt incurred in that exchange. Suffice to say that my meanderings, and the memories of all those intertwined in them, as well as the livleyhoods of all those close to me, exist at the whim of your sacrifices. For that, there should be more than a paid vacation day of barbecues. Accept my paltry thanks, and hopes that when the check arrives, you are/were satisfied with how the bill is paid.

They must be planning a really weird talent show in the afterlife…

Tonight, A. and I finished the last episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  I forgot how good it was, the end of that series, particularly the rendition of "My Way" on the horn, crossfaded with the show’s anthem.  One of the things that has been bouncing all over the ‘net today is the end of Lost.  Honestly, I don’t give a shit – gave up on that show after three episodes.  What does interest me though, is something I noticed watching DS9, which, tangentially, is connected to the end of that series as well.

Time.

There are a bunch of flashbacks in that last episode of DS9, which jump across a number of seasons.  The show happened over less than a third of my life – it was something that I can link, season by season, with things that were going on, in my world.  Now, A. and I got through the whole thing in what, a little more than half a year?  It was still enjoyable, but less remarkable.  The digitization of episodic shows have changed the viewing interaction – that doesn’t increase or decrease the production values, cast, or writing, but it does change the way those things affect you.

I guess I have come to realize something that is a pretty big negative about the "on demand" phenomena.  The art (or entertainment) which one absorbs in an episodic manner (which is part of the enjoyment) becomes less relevant, or, at least, less poignant, looking back, because there is no waiting for the next episode.  I’m not advocating cutting back to network schedules and commercials, but there must be some sort of medium in here somewhere…

This is something the Losties can relate too – they had to wait for that episode – happy or not, they slogged through seasons to get to it.

I had a similar revelation finishing the last of Stephen King’s Dark Tower novels. Without delving into spoilers, the circumstances of that last book impacted me because I had been reading those characters half my life – I was invested in what happened to them, in a way I don’t think I would have been if I sat down to read the whole thing in a weekend.  Same with Dune, or Wheel of Time, or Game of Thrones.  I’ve read entire series end-to-end, and thoroughly enjoyed them, but they were not as poignant as the ones where I slavered after the next book’s release.

Fiction is part of our familiar world – when it grows as we grow, it affects us, just like atmosphere or what is in the water.  It changes us, over time, as our perceptions and interests change, over time.  I wonder how that ebb and flow will be altered, as attention spans grow ever shorter, and the crap to chrome ratio reverses itself, before it is all meaningless drivel, with an occasional high point of land sticking out here and there before it is eroded.

Content may be king, but patience is the government-in-exile.

Many moons ago, I became one of those LJ users who got a lifetime account.  This was a good thing, I thought, to have a permanent space that was floating out on the net, that I wouldn’t have to maintain any infrastructure for.  I made the switch to LJ in 2002, and, since then, have been a faithful user.

Unfortunately, recent events (mostly surrounding Sixapart’s handling to EDMD) have left me realizing that I’m tethered, rather than free.

There are still a lot of people here where LJ is my primary form of communication, or keeping up-to-date.  I am not leaving, but I am going to start crossposting.  I set up an actual blog on my website (which is a two year old project which dies today), which will sydicate here.  You can still comment here, if you want, but I set up openid so you don’t have to keep logging in after the first time, if you want to comment on my blog.

This, of course, presumes that there is something I say worth commenting on.  Supposing that is true, I’m working on making it as simple as possible.

So A. and I went apartment hunting today, ostensibly to scout neighborhoods, and see what we thought was a decent fit.
We ended up putting down a deposit on a 1200+ sqft duplex with a washer, dryer, 2.5 bathrooms, and a freakin backyard!

I cannot say I am thrilled to leave Manhattan. All I can hope is that I can entice some of you to no-mans-land on the occassional weekend for barbecue. It will be a schlep to get there, but a pleasure once you are there.

For the record, I am calling hate on the G train in advance. I will likely be walking to the C, or getting a bike, and back-and-forthing to the 2/5.

Now I just need to figure out how to swing paying two rents for two months, and being able to afford movers.

Whee. I just gotta keep looking at this pic to remind myself why I am doing this.

this makes me hope someone will buy one, rip the audio out, and create an android hack.

was one of the days you wish you could take back, right from the getgo.

It is funny how sometimes the best mirrors in life come from re-discovering people who have known you well, for long periods of time, but haven’t talked to you recently. While I was in California, I met up with someone who I had last seen when I was a very little kid. N. was an astounding human being, and one who I owe a great deal of correspondence. As an adult, I have a completely different view of, and interest in speaking to this person, than I did when I was wee.

I’ve had a couple re-connects in the past week, that have left me wondering who, or more specifically, what I have become since last I saw them. Our society so often labels people by profession. From that angle, I guess I am a technologist – but that is also a part of who I am, and what I am about. It seems an inefficient container – all cellophane and impossible to open without a screwdriver and a jackknife. I’m more than that – I write, I game, I volunteer, I take pictures, I answer questions… Mostly, I try to make people laugh. I haven’t thought about doing that for a living when I was a kid, back before I first met Neil.

I think the central challenge to that whole “What am I?” connundrom comes from work – spending more time than anything else on a given week doing something so that the remainder of the time can be spent fed, in shelter, preferably with additional ameneties. I don’t know how to make a transition from thinking of myself as a patchwork quilt of interests and talents, to a holistic picture of a person. I’m good at some things, I suck at others – I’ve never wholly dedicated myself to any one interest, talent, or aspect of my life – I think that has kept it interesting, for sure, but it has also left me wondering if I’m missing something. Given unlimited funds, I’d be an entropenour, instead of a technologist, and, shortly thereafter, I’d become a bartender at the best bar that never turned a profit.

I’ve always kinda wanted to be a blacksmith – I bet that would probably create some pretty holistic changes…

Part of all this crap is why I am going back to school – to get that one thing that says “someone formally recognises you are a smartypants about this one thing”. I think that is pretty dull, honestly, and am kind of dreading the process – most of my academic pursuit, at this point, is limited to preventing opportunity denied. Beecause that “work-mirror” refuses to see people for what they have done, but, rather, focus first on if you have gone through the expected processes, then, second, where you did those things, and eventually, you come around to “so what experiences have you had?”. I like to think that the patchworks that I am is what makes me interesting, and that the experiences and wild stories are far more important than the things so many people have in common, with blends of tiny difference.

I need to make some lists, and get some shit done – hopefully, I can hold off my life preventing me from finishing them, as it often does. The two big things on my horizon are Maine and Moving – after that, I should be in the gulf of summer, which has always been a productive time for me – hopefully I can tap that to bring some of these half-developed embreos to ambulatory disasters.

Hopefully. Seems odd writing it. I’ve always been a pessimist – my greatest comfort being that the real world has to work really hard to come up with scenarios that match my “worst-case”. Maybe that needs to change too, for me to get through everything I want to, in the time alloted me.

Maybe. I don’t know. If anyone finds the user’s manual lying around, please forward me a copy so I can dig up that answer.

I bet the Mayor’s press aide is really happy that he turned Times Square into a pedestrian mall, and that he was in DC Saturday.

Added updated .dat file from McAfee to a keydrive, so it can be moved to c:program filescommon filesmcafeeengine. If machine is stuck in “no taskbar” mode, that is because svchost.exe has already been quarantined. If you right-click on the mini-taskbar, you can open taskmanager, then open a command shell by creating a new task, then typing “cmd” (sans quotes) in the popup prompt. Once you have a command window, you can xcopy the .dat file. Reboot the pc.

Copy the file svchost.exe out of this zip file to a key drive. You can then copy it to c:windowssystem32. Reboot and you should be OK.

If you are on xp sp2 or greater, you should be able to tab-complete paths for your xcopy command. THis means you start typing, then hit the “Tab” key on your keyboard, to help autocomplete the path/filename you are looking for. if you don’t have tab, remember to put your path for c:program files… in quotes, since windows can’t execute a command that has a space in it without them being wrapped in ” “.

If you don’t know xcopy, here is a fast man page.

i think doing the rain dance backwards worked!

I’m a RHCT!

So I still vehemently hate L.A.

It seems like a lot longer than a week ago that I was still fighting the jetlag of spending a week in California. The trip was pretty rad. Did a lot of hanging out in LA – had some unbelieveable food at Nickel Diner and saw one of the best live shows I’ve seeen in a while – Vaude and the Villians (scope their myspace for some live aduo samples).

Went down to the beach, and stopped at a very awesome Hindu temple on the way back.

I caught up with some friends, old and new, and, overall had a pretty great time, despite the smog, traffic, cheap glitz, and styrtafoam people.

As a thank you to friend Nick, who put us up while we were in L.A., A. and I took him to Mozza, where I had some of the most delectible dishes I’ve had served out of a Batali kitchen, as well as the most expensive Manhattan I’ve ever purchased (note to self – do not order NY artesinal bourbons in CA). After L.A., it was a cross-state trek to Yosemite, where we saw giant trees, beautiful vistas, and had _anbother_ awesome dinner at the Tenaya Lodge‘s Ember Room (which I highly reccomend to anyone looking for a place to go to have an awesome meal near Yosemite).

So now, it is back to the whirlwind. I am trying to get a Red Hat cert next week, which is kinda stressing me out, and I am going back to school in September, which is defintiely stressing me out. A. and I have to move, somewhere between here and the end point that is fall, and I have the annual trek to Nowhere, Maine coming up soon.

Still jobhunting in the midst of all this.

Pics here – Yosemite is not up yet, but will be added to the set when it is.

2012 – Faerie realm reunites with our world across ley lines
All faerie tricks, green mist. Unlocking guardians.

Faeries fled to new world ahead of christianity, went into hiding before conquistadors & co got here. Tried to warn NA, only succeeded in getting Incas/Aztecs – Tie-in with Roanoake

Armies of the Fey – trick/trap/kidnap/transform humans at ley line points to bring over more of their world. Green mist/fawrie dust EMP powder, completely rendering tech inert, and, tehy have magic…

< brouge >
Six retired Irishmen were playing poker in O’Leary’s apartment when Paddy Murphy loses $500 on a single hand, clutches his chest, and drops dead at the table. Showing respect for their fallen brother, the other five continue playing standing up.

Michael O’Connor looks around and asks, ‘Oh, me boys, someone got’s to tell Paddy’s wife. Who will it be?’

They draw straws. Paul Gallagher picks the short one. They tell him to be discreet, be gentle, don’t make a bad situation any worse.

‘Discreet??? I’m the most discreet Irishmen you’ll ever meet. Discretion is me middle name. Leave it to me.’

Gallagher goes over to Murphy’s house and knocks on the door. Mrs. Murphy answers, and asks what he wants.

Gallagher declares, ‘Your husband just lost $500, and is afraid to come home.’

‘Tell him to drop dead!’, says Murphy’s wife..

‘I’ll go tell him.’ says Gallagher.

♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣

Into a Belfast pub comes Paddy Murphy, looking like he’d just been run over by a train. His arm is in a sling, his nose is broken, his face is cut, and bruised, and he’s walking with a limp.

‘What happened to you?’ asks Sean, the bartender.

‘Micheal O’Connor and me had a fight,’ says Paddy.

‘That little O’Connor,’ says Sean, ‘He couldn’t do that to you, he must have had something in his hand.’

‘That he did,’ says Paddy, ‘a shovel is what he had, and a terrible lickin’ he gave me with it.’

‘Well,’ says Sean, ‘you should have defended yourself. Didn’t you have something in your hand?’

That I did,’ said Paddy, ‘Mrs. O’Connor’s breast, and a thing of beauty it was; but useless in a fight.’

♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣

An Irishman who had a little too much to drink is driving home from the city one night and, of course, his car is weaving violently all over the road.

A cop pulls him over. ‘So,’ says the cop to the driver, ‘where have ya been?’

‘Why, I’ve been to the pub of course,’ slurs the drunk.

‘Well,’ says the cop, ‘it looks like you’ve had quite a few to drink this evening.’

‘I did all right,’ the drunk says with a smile.

‘Did you know,’ says the cop, standing straight, and folding his arms across his chest, ‘that a few intersections back, your wife fell out of your car?’

‘Oh, thank heavens,’ sighs the drunk. ‘for a minute there, I thought I’d gone deaf.’

♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣

Mary Clancy goes up to Father O’Grady after his Sunday morning service, and she’s in tears.

He says, ‘So what’s bothering you, Mary my dear?’

She says, ‘Oh, Father, I’ve got terrible news. My husband passed away last night.’

The priest says, ‘Oh, Mary, that’s terrible. Tell me, Mary, did he have any last requests?’

She says, ‘That he did, Father.’

The priest says, ‘What did he ask, Mary?’

She says, ‘He said, Please Mary, put down that damn gun….’

♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣

A drunk staggers into a Catholic Church, enters a confessional booth, sits down, but says nothing.

The Priest coughs a few times to get his attention, but the drunk continues to sit there.

Finally, the Priest pounds three times on the wall.

The drunk mumbles, ‘Ain’t no use knockin, there’s no paper on this side either.
< / brouge >

MASTER CLASS SERIES IN COMICS WRITING

3 sessions, TUESDAYS, March 16 & 23; April 13, 6:30-8:30 pm

*March 16: CHRIS CLAREMONT
*March 23: TOM DeFALCO
*April 13: DENNIS O’NEIL

Series Cost: $100 | $90 for MoCCA members
Individual sessions: $40 | $35 for MoCCA members

CHRIS CLAREMONT, TOM DeFALCO, and DENNIS O’NEIL will each hold a master class session in comics writing. These three extraordinarily accomplished writers have written some of the highest profile and most acclaimed comics of all time, with bodies of work that have played significant parts in defining the modern versions of The X-Men (Claremont), Spider-Man (DeFalco), and Batman (O’Neil). Each of them will condense the most important things they know about writing into highly-concentrated (and entertaining!) lecture form. This is a rare opportunity to hear these top names in the field speak about what makes for great comics writing.

CHRIS CLAREMONT has encountered more success than most writers ever dream of. Best known for his work on Marvel Comics’ X-Men, he has written other seminal characters such as Batman and Superman, originated several creator-owned series, is published throughout the world in many languages, and has authored nine novels. His unbroken 17-year run on Uncanny X-men is the stuff of industry legend. The story arc “Dark Phoenix,” with its radical treatment of its central character, paved the way for the reinterpretation of superhero mythos. Current projects include the ongoing Marvel series X-Men Forever, X-Women, drawn by renowned Italian artist Milo Manara, the young adult novel Wild Blood, a contemporary urban dark fantasy, and the screen play Hunter’s Moon.

TOM DeFALCO, a former editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics with over thirty books currently in print, has written comic books, graphic novels, short stories, prose novels and books like Spider-Man: The Ultimate Guide and Comic Creators on Fantastic Four. He was also a major contributor to The Marvel Encyclopedia and The Marvel Chronology. DeFalco has recently worked on Star Wars: The Clone Wars for Titan Comics, The Man From RIVERDALE for Archie Comics, Flash Gordon for Ardden Entertainment, The Flying Fool for Moonstone Books, The Super Seven for Stan Lee Comics and, of course, The Spectacular Spider-Girl for Marvel Comics.

DENNIS O’NEIL is an award-winning comics writer and editor (best known for his landmark work on characters such as Batman and Green Lantern), and an educator at institutions including New York University and The School of Visual Arts. He has also been a journalist, critic, television writer, best-selling novelist (novelizations of The Dark Knight film and the epic Batman: Knightfall comics storyline, and the original novel Green Lantern: Hero’s Quest), and has published dozens of short stories. He lives in Nyack, N.Y. with his wife, Marifran.

I got to talking to one of my friends this week en route back from my brother’s birthday celebration about passions. I have long wondered when or if depression would rear its head at me – I finished IT this week, with all its roller-coaster effects, and realized some things about myself.

Part of how I hold depression at bay is through play and storytelling. The times when I get the most maudalin are the times when I can’t tell stories, or, worse, they rot in my head without me getting them out. There are a lot in there, great festering corpses of tales that have to be circumnavigated around in the still of the night or the glow of the morning, for fear that treading too near will leave their unmistakeable scent on a day.

Passions are funny things – they fuel us, they keep us going, in my case, they keep me ahead of real or percieved weights racing just behind me.

Ignore them, and they burn you up from within – follow them, and they make you feel alive.

It is when you acknowledge passions but do not act on them (for time or energy) that I am jousting with these days. Perhaps because of professional disatisfaction, perhaps because, seven (a powerful number) years after I figured I’d be dead, I have a load of freinds, and a great life, but I still haven’t amounted to much, and probably won’t outside of a very specific and small hemisphere.

I’m okay with that – I just need to keep the innerspace moving. If that stagnates, I’m screwed.

Twitter: The Criterion Collection from sween on Vimeo.

Blade Runner – Tears in Rain (in LEGO) from Zach Macias on Vimeo.

So Discovery channel makes these commercials (I love the Myth Busters back-and-forth):

Then XKCD, which I love, makes this comic:

Which NoamR animated:

I Love xkcd from NoamR on Vimeo.

Then, Olga Nunes got together and got “Neil Gaiman, Wil Wheaton, Cory Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig, Bruce Schneier, Jason Kottke, Google Zurich, Hank Green, MC Frontalot, Patrick & Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Mr. Toast, Miss Cellania, Team Genius, Phil Plait, Allan Amato, Maddy Gaiman, Charissa Gilreath, Belinda Casas, Chuck Martinez, Jeremy James, Joanna Gaunder, Lee Israel & Octavio Coleman Esq. of The Jejune Institute.” to make this:

The internet is a pretty awesome place.

I feel like New Year’s just passed.

What have I done… let’s see.

I went to that beer,bourbon,and barbecue festival, said goodbye to a friend who moved to vegas, and A and I also went to the zoo in the winter.

I’ve lost about 15 lbs. I have about another 30 to go before I am comfortable again, 60 before I am where I want to be.

I kickstarted the tech for a discount ticket box office (which involved a cameo to the guts of the discount ticket center at Times Square – holy crap was that intense). I’ve downshifted into new responsibilities in my job. I’ve absorbed a huge amount of data for a call-center system automation system. I’ve learned more about telefundraising than I ever wanted to. I’ve started trying to think about my future in a scalable way, rather than an infinite thread spiralling out ahead of me. A late-night conversation with had no small hand in that, but also A.’s reaction to my regular extra hours, and off-hours firefighting.

I’ve grown increasingly dissatisfied with my lot, and increasingly convinced that it is not a great time to be shaking trees in a paralell or advancement move. I’m not at the point where I can be considering demotion – too many things on the horizon. As long as I can rein in my frustrations at the crux moments, I should be able to skate for a while. I need to get signed up for a certification course.

Every spring since the year after it came out, I’ve read Stephen King’s “IT”. Usually, sometime around April/May, I have a dream, which always makes me crave the book. This year, that dream came the eve of a day that was tied to both a huge flood in Germany in the 60’s, and the mudslide in the Phillipines a few years back. The dream always features a flood, and always links in to the opening scene of the book. Maybe because of Hati, maybe because of some springtime connection, this year, the dream featured both water and mud. I am wondering if on some level my subconscious is parsing all this stuff, creating patterns for me, or if this is all just coincidence that I am ascribing meaning to. Once that dream comes, the book has to follow, or the dreams get worse – there is catharsis somewhere in the story that lets the valves blow off the steam that accumulates through a year. A horrifying thought, abstractly, that something like “IT” is what it takes for my brain to stretch out the fatigue, particularly coming two/three months earlier than usual, but I do not question the tonic what heals my woes.

I’ve not written much of note, despite stories moving along rapidly, which irritates me. I’ve tackled innumerable side jobs, in an attempt to finance a healty tax biil, and a vacation planned prior to the establishement of said tax bill.

I need to focus on appreciating the largesse of good things in my life, instead of bemoaning the neighbor’s lawn.

I definitely need to get back into a better writing groove.

Bill O’Rieley and Jon Stewart

The full interview. Damn good.

for those that missed them, or care.
It seems that most of the ones I liked were not industry ads, but created content, which I find interesting.

That is, of course, leaving out the newest Abe Vigoda sighting.

The Coke/Simpsons ad just confused me.

Enjoy each individually for a grin, play them at the same time for 12-14 hours with just enough time to pee (sometimes) to emulate stress level.

To say my life has been hectic of late is a pretty serious exercize in understatement. Aside from the Beer, Bourbon & BBQ Festival Saturday (and I did end up working about 15 mins satruday during the festival), I haven’t had a clean day off this year.

Yesterday morning, I was running late, so I hopped a cab to a meeting I needed to make on time (and failed, despite the expense and effort). When I got out of the cab, the cabbie decided he was going to shoot across the street before I was totally out of his cab. It was a van cab, and I had one foot on the curb, the other was still in the cab, with the door open, before he decided to try and cut across Broadway to pick up a fare down the block. My foot hooked the door, and I was spun around like a paper mache dredel in a blender. I don’t think he ever noticed.

My bag, which I had on one shoulder, caught on a streetsign before my face hit the sidewalk. The shoulder strap is the only thing that stopped me from totally wiping out into the middle of traffic. This makes twice in a year I almost died on Broadway.

I was in enough pain, and angry enough, that I didn’t realize in the abrupt spinning crane kick I was thrown into had split the seam in the crotch of my pants. When I say I split the seam, I obliterated any rememberance of stitching from the base of my fly to halfway up my ass. I do not wear yoga/workout pants to work – these were dressy suit pants that were exposed to G forces and rapidity that they were never designed to withstand. I didn’t hear the rip, but I am sure it was mighty.

Thanks to draft, I instantly realized (wearing white boxers, of course) that I was standing on a center island, on Broadway, essentially showing off my undies to all passers by (pedestrian and vehicular alike). This is a prelude to a recurrant nightmare for much of the population. All thoughts of rage and contemplations of charging across traffic to snag the cabbie and pull him out his window (he was stuck behind someone else who managed to snag the fare) evaporated.

I always carry a roll of gaffer tape on my bag. Aside from all the other impliments of destruction I keep handy in case of need, that tape has saved me in many a tight spot – yesterday was no different. I managed to fashion a fast double strip which I slapped over my crotch-area as serruptitiously as possible, so I could make my way across the street to the first restroom available. Thankfully, yesterday was a black-pants day. I hesitate to think what may have befallen me crossing Broadway, had it been a khaki day.

Once in the public restroom, I secured a booth, and managed to re-assemble the seam from the inside out, after creating a multi-strip reinforcement patch of gaffers tape on the _inside_ of my pants, where it was invisible. That patch held me until around 9 last night, when I managed to get out of the office. When I got home, I threw away the pants, but momentarily contemplated keeping the gaffer-tape undergarment they housed, in commemoration of the event. After about three seconds of contemplation, I tossed the tape in with the pants.

I usually pay cabs by card, and would, then, have a follow-up reciept, but, I was in a rush, and I paid cash, and had no reciept. I’m out a pair of pants, and a few minutes of dignity – but I managed to survive the day.

At least I still have my bag.