Wednesday, March 29, 2006

My vote for biggest Scam



Keeping that unfunny ball rolling.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

I think you know where this is going

Friday, March 24, 2006

Insider's Guide to the questions you didn't ask

Q:How do I let them know?
A:Flat top and a rat tail. Dead giveaway.

Q:Any Surprises?
A:Superfluous Gills will be better than we think.

Q:Long term plans?
A:No, but I should quit coming up with excuses when it's who I like.

Q:Why is it still the same?
A:Looking for a sink, can't rush that.

Q:Which was the weakest shake?
A:Eddie Taubensee.

Q:When are you changing that crappy picture?
A:When I order one of these.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

What do they all have in common?











Happy Birthday, Birdflag

You look like a monkey
And you smell like one, too

Monday, March 20, 2006

The time to act is now




Legendary lost meeting notes of The Coltrane's first strategy meeting. Notice it mainly involves dong, height limits, my phone number, and hucking.
To wash that taste out of your mouth, cuddle up with some TH.



My ability to make much sense has never been that important.

Friday, March 17, 2006

What are you Watching?

I was tired of looking at Kyle's day old news. I propose that we discuss what you are watching on TV. I already know that Danimal will say he is watching 24, the NCAA tournament and The Sopranos at my house.

I have watched some of the World Baseball Classic, and I love it. Baseball needed this. I've been rooting for the Dominican Republic from the beginning. The U.S. lost last night and were eliminated. The final four teams are Japan, South Korea, Dominican Republic, and Cuba. Most of you probably hate baseball, especially baseball on TV. Understandable, there is a certain something about baseball that you have to like. I'm a fan of all the thinking that goes on. It's a great strategy and skill game, but definitely not the most cardiovascular intensive.

Other than sports, my guilty pleasures include Desperate Housewives and as you might have guessed, Smallville. The WB is dumb and hasn't had a new episode on for a long time. Clark better start doing cooler stuff with his powers than the fast running. He needs to use his super vision. When is he going to fly? What happened to his freeze breath? Geez. Seriously though, my newest guilty pleasure is Veronica Mars.

Everyone should start watching this show. Waaayyy better than Gilmore Girls. The dialogue is witty, great character development, and cool stories. I caution one thing though, you need to watch the show from the beginning. There are season long story arcs that go throughout the entire season and everything is tied together extremely well. Now go watch it. Wednesdays at 9 on UPN. Stop watching Lost, nothing ever happens. The thing in the cloud is the hulk (gray hulk, not green).

Thursday, March 16, 2006

It Falls To Me to Spread the News.

Like the Drudge Report, a Scott McClellan briefing, the Weekly World News, or a phone call between Margi and Danimal, it is up to me as the last bastion of Real News, to finally let out the truth. The truth is a fickle beast, as fluid as water, yet rabid like a pack of lone sharks. So the truth will come out, they couldn’t say it because it is a sensitive topic and will affect how everyone thinks of them, so it is up to me, and I’ll now let you all know.
You will all know the story of:
The Maimings of JR O*******.

In 4th grade, I was testing my newfound love of Scienceä by conducting a classic experiment. Newton Hypothesized that all matter is swung around on earth like water in a bucket, this is called centripetal force. An object that moves in a circular path undergoes a continuous acceleration towards the center of the circle. The net force that causes this acceleration is called a centripetal force (from Latin centrum "center" and petere "tend towards"). This term refers to the effect of the force (namely, to maintain the circular motion of the object); the origin of the centripetal force can be anything that causes a force to exist. An object can travel in a circle with a constant speed only if the net force acting on it is a centripetal force. This is different than centrifugal force in that it is a term which may refer to two different forces which are related to rotation. Both of them are oriented away from the axis of rotation, but the object on which they are exerted differs. People used to say it was fake, but those people were denounced as frauds and killed during either the Spanish Inquisition , the McCarthy Trials, or maybe the Watts Riots.
My experiment involved swinging around my backpack in a circle until I got really dizzy. I got so dizzy one day that I tripped while swinging and hit JR smack in the puss. Hit him so hard he didn’t get up, I did the honorable thing and left the scene of the crime. He showed up to school two days later with a giant white patch over his eye since he had suffered a scratched cornea. He did not know that I had done it, and I wasn’t about the offer myself up for punishment since he got the social benefit of looking like a medicinal pirate for the fortnight. Everyone wins if I stay quiet. No one likes a stool pigeon, especially if the pigeon cooks his own coop.

The second time I maimed JR was at a soccer retreat in high school. This wasn’t the soccer retreat that was a thinly veiled homoerotic leerfest run by our math teacher, Mr. L*****, the man who used to hand me back my tests with the comment “Daddy won’t be happy.”, this was the one day soccer retreat at our coaches parent’s house in Indiana on a lake that had septic tanks leaking into the water. I was skipping rocks at the lake, perhaps trying to recreate the renowned Little Opie Taylor rock skipping forays, when JR, owner of the star crossed peepers in matters pertaining to kyle based projectiles, surfaced fro mthe murky depths of the aforementioned lake and put his face right into a skipped rock. Once more down for the count, JR was lucky enough to carry a shiner that would have made Hagler proud.

The whole event got me paid forward because I ended up getting some sort of water born sickness and was really in a bad way, in a bad way like I was the kind of boy that Came From Circumstances, one that would eat hotdogs on white bread with blue KoolAid for the majority of meals.


This all brings up another question of semantics. JR’s sister had fantastic tits. She also spent a lot of money on her hair, and various skin care products. Many of my friends in high school were interested in her for these reasons. Her personality was dull, and did not factor significantly into the equation. The best conversation we ever had was when she tried to get me to buy the New Jack City Sndtrk for her since she thought she might get in trouble for attempting to buy an album with a Parental Advisory warning sticker on it. Anyway, my friend Adam did make out with her, and either spread a false rumor, or legitimately thought that she had really bad breath. Her popularity plummeted and she was forced to date people I don’t even remember anymore. I went to college with her, and never saw her once. The question of semantics comes in that if I fondly look back on girls I liked in high school, does that make me a perv? If so, then please ignore the fact that I thought Patty F***** was really hot back then even if she has now changed her name to Harmony and is a yoga instructor. Adam could tell you a hilarious story about that too, but it’s not my place.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Tired yet?

So yesterday I went out for a jog. My plan was to go for like 30-35 minutes. It's important to start slowly when getting into shape. Anyway, the Jackson Bottom Wetland Preserve is right next to my neighborhood, so I thought I'd go run there. Lots of trails, wildlife, etc. However, there is a problem. The entrance is not anywhere close to my house. Google Map. My house is at the top right, entrance at bottom left.

Anyway, it takes me 20-25 minutes to get there. By any rights I should have turned around, but I'm stubborn. I decided to proceed because I felt pretty good and I just got there and wanted to check the place out. The map they had there was shitty, and there were no paper ones that I could take with me, so I decided to wing it on the trails. It was really muddy, but fun like running in the mud should be. I decided to run on a trail that went towards my house. Everything was grand until the trail just stopped and I found myself running through a marsh. I ended up wading through ankle deep swamp water. Not fun. I eventually got back to the trail and went home the same way I got there. Luckily, I saw one of these, so it was worth it.

I finally made it back to my house after 55 minutes of running. I'm sore.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Mailbox Challenge



I would like get away for a second from the computer based society we all live in and get back to what's important. Postcards. This year's Mailbox Challenge 2006 will be very simple.
Rules:
Get a novelty postcard.
Write "Wish you were here!", a short message and sign with your nickname only.
Get a sticker roughly 3/4" x 3/4".
Affix the sticker to the postcard.
Address postcard to my friend;

Carl Nostrander
4727 SE Franklin
Portland OR 97206

Mail them from a streetside mailbox.
NOT from your office or home.
Carl is just interested in whether or not the mail will be delivered without adequate postage and without a return address. It is in the interest of science that we attempt this.

Best postcard received by April 1 will receive a jar of whole peppercorns from Penzey spices.

I have a tape I want to play

Monday, March 13, 2006

check engine light

So do you promptly take your car in for service, or do wait it out, and drive it until it sputters to a stop someplace totally inconvenient?

I am opting only to postpone taking it in by one day so that I can carpool w/ my co-work and go to a 7:00 dentist appointment tomorrow. Bad things come in pairs, huh. Last time I was at the dentist I was still on crutches -- that just ain't right ;)

Thursday, March 09, 2006

The Sound of Science


My ipod is set on shuffle for the most part. I could listen to Fugazi’s “In on the Killtaker” album in order, but I know that I only really want to listen to “good cop” before I skip the rest of the songs and switch to the “Repeater” album.
Shuffle allows me to at least hear a couple songs before I ditch the rest after I am sated.
One of my other playlists on the ipod is called “5 stars”. They are all songs that received 5 stars from me when I ranked them, regretfully, scientific studies have shown that the human brain can only render empirical judgments on a sliding scale of 1 to 7, so most of my 5 star songs are anything but the pinnacle of recorded history. For example, David Bowie’s “Hang on to Yourself” gets a 5, as well as “Queen Bitch”. Even a man as deaf as Roy Orbison was blind could tell you that on a 7 point system, “Queen Bitch” is a 7, while “Hang on to Yourself” is a tenuous 6.
Anyway, back to my point about shuffle. Playlist “5 Stars” contains 560 songs. Too many songs to listen to in one charge of the batteries, so how does ipod shuffle know that I like Poster Children’s “Western Springs” and Bob Log III’s “Wag your Tail Like a Dog in Back of a Truck” more than most songs and puts them on every time I recharge?

Last five songs delivered to me by shuffle.

1-Jolene-Dolly Parton
Even when Dolly is being sad, she still sounds like she’s smiling.
2-You’re so Cool-Hans Zimmer
In Soviet Russia vibraphone owns you.
3-Sandpaper Blues- Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros
World music usually needs to be shot. Leave it to Joe to make it work.
4-Poster Children-Hollywood
Nerd Rock from Champagne. Wonderful.
5-Zombies-This is the Dream
I skipped this track, it should really be a 4 star selection.

Food For Thought: (Fight or Flight)


"Concrete is second only to water as the world's most heavily consumed substance. Slightly more than a ton of concrete is produced every year for each human being on the planet, some six billion tons a year altogether."
-John Sedgewick

That's an interesting, interesting quote. Can you even imagine that? Of course, concrete weighs about ten pounds per square foot, so that means if a Maori Bushmen were short his quota, we could always just ship over a 3’ dia by 7’ tall concrete column to New Zealand to make up the difference. So it’s not that much. I’m beginning to think this bit of trivia is in fact more like lie-ia, because I’m pretty sure at least two tonne (metric) of pizza flyers is generated every year for me by Dominoes.
Perhaps the lack of Dominoes chains in British Angola skews my perception though.
Someone ought to do a study.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

nothing much and lunch

I didn't want to look at Kyle's musings on numbers and sex and architecture anymore. No offense ;) So moving on.....

So this afternoon's topic is crappy lunches. You know, you don't want to go out, save some bucks. But you also don't really have anything at home. So you grab some stuff and take it to work and call it lunch. It sucks, and ends up leaving you totally unsatisfied for the rest of the day.

Today mine was almond butter and jelly sandwich, too ripe banana (yuck), applesauce, and some trail mix. Let's hear your crappy lunch stories!

Monday, March 06, 2006

Birdflag's Index


Percentage approval rating of Bill Clinton the day after impeachment and George W. Bush in November, respectively: 73, 37

Total mileage on my car: 209,610

Number of times I have had sex in 2006: 0

Percentage of Americans who said in November that the Valerie Plame leak scandal was of “great importance”: 51

Percentage who said, two months before President Nixon resigned, that Watergate was “very serious”: 49

Percentage who said it was “just politics”: 42

Number of times that I have had sex in 2006 now that I remember about the whole midnight is a different day thing: 1

Years since a White House official as senior as I. Lewis Libby had been indicted while in office: 130

Different colors of highliters that I use during the average day: 3

Number of layers in my latest section drawing: 143

Number of layers that are color locked as cyan: 32

Number of U.S. prisoners serving life sentences with no parole for crimes they committed while juveniles: 2,225

Number of prisoners serving such sentences in all other countries worldwide: 12

Weeks that either John or I have won Mercury trivia night in the past 2 months: 7

Number of years the United States could meet its energy needs by burning all its trees: 1

Tons of hurricane-related waste still waiting to be hauled away in Louisiana: 22,000,000

Tons of waste produced by New York City each year: 8,500,000

Percentage of my co-workers that I can’t stand being anywhere near: 8

Percentage by which circumcision reduces the risk of HIV infection, according to a study in South Africa: 60

Average height gain, in inches, of adolescents who use human growth hormone over five and a half years: 2

Cost per inch that represents: $41,000

Amount of numbers that are the same in my home phone and work fax: 6

This Day in God

This may be a little late in coming, but regardless, I thought it might make good fodder for Monday morning banter.

I thought I'd give this Lent thing a try this year. I was never any good at it as a Catholic, so that may not bode well for my attempts to try now. Whatever.

Most of friends of mine are going the willpower route. No coffee. No cookies. I'm going to try to stop swearing. I see it as a self-improvement project of sorts. Sugar beets!

So, what would you give up?

Friday, March 03, 2006

Getting Ink

In my job sometimes I get to have a few fleeting moments of print fame. In the most recent issue of Pages Magazine (a book and publishing consumer magazine)I am not only quoted, but got the "pull quote" You designers know that means using an enlarged quote as a visual element.

Just a quick note to say that we contributors to this here blog are certifiably eloquent in the larger world as well ;) And Happy Friday, And cheer up Kyle, it's sunny!!

Quote: Article about West Coast publishing

"There is a wealth of innovative and creative thinkers, artists, and untapped ideas here that's very different from the East Coast," says Laura Bartroff, communications and publicity manager for 13-year-old Collectors Press, Inc., which specializes in publishing pop culture titles like Pulp Culture: The Art of Fiction Magazines and Science Fiction of the 20th Century. "We try to find that and utilize that as best we can."

Leading question: Where have you been quoted? Or had your moment of fame?

A Sound of Thunder

Once again I need to use my Marty powers, this time I use them so as not to overshadow the L-boogie post above.
After calling Daniel to apologize for showing up 2 1/2 hours early to Jaceys art opening, he informed me that it was okay, because she was more than 1/2 an hour late to even show up for her opening. Yin and Yang, we keep the world at balance.
It was time for basketball. We were playing a rousing game of three on three waiting for a few more bodies to show, when a large man popped his head in the gym and asked if “this was the Yshai League?”*1 We told him to suit up, we needed him. Well, once we got a closer look at him on the court, he was in the neighborhood of 6’-6”. Sort of like if Sellwood was 6’-6”, he lived in Brooklyn. He was also thick, “a powerful man” as Hemmingway would say, “an imposing figure” as Fitzgerald would say, “a giant of a man if he was even a hill” as Tolkien would say, “Shit, he’s like a white Shaq” as Ted from Yshai League did say. Of course, my luck put him and the only other post threat against my team. It would be “THE PEOPLE WHO KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING” versus “THE HUSTLE GUYS WHO SOMEHOW MADE THEIR FREE THROWS EVEN THOUGH NONE OF THEM CAN NORMALLY SHOOT”. Even though we finally had our numbers, there was still a second to wait before the tip, because one member of his team needed to use the restroom. In our downtime, he decided to break the ice, explaining to my team that he would not dominate this game for two reasons.
Reason 1-He had not played in over a year.
Reason 2-His right eye was made of glass.
The return of his player marked the opening of the night. On their first possession, White Shaq tried to set a devastating screen for a back door curl, which I deftly avoided because I don’t like to leave my man open for Js. I fought back through the paint and heard a loud thud directly behind me. Restroom Player had rifled his first pass into the post. Into the right eye (still made of glass in case you had forgotten that part of the story, or had skipped down a paragraph) of White Shaq. Into the head, and out of bounds. Luckily, there was no harm done, probably because the ball contacted less organic matter than normal, and the only short term effect was change of possession. White Shaq calmly told Restroom Player, that maybe he had missed the pregame introductions, or had at least missed the part about White Shaq only having one functioning eye, he reiterated this point, probably to ensure he would not leave the court with two non functioning eyes. Restroom Player responded with his nervous laugh, and deflecting excuse as he is wont to do.

What happened next?
That my friends, is a story for Another Time….



*1 It was theYshai league, don’t worry about what that means. I’ve taken care of it on my end, so just let it go, and keep reading the story.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Ides of March

That last post is a minor fender bender. It should have been a train wreck, those are more entertaining. March has started now, we got off on the wrong foot, me and this month, but I’ll make it better. We’ll work it out, we always do. March and I have a long history, I’ve been around March more than any other month. We have to keep this together, or I don’t know what.

February went pretty well. Work is going good, except for the whole part of changing our entire structural system on the building we already got through permitting. Removing a diaphragm slab and structural wall joists to go to an exterior brace system is the kind of thing that is important. It’s important to everyone, even you. Please think about my structural brace system for at least 5 minutes today. Especially since the diagonal members are 8x8 HSS so they mess with my cavity wall studs. Another thing about February is I should have written about black history month. It would have been a mess though, probably some ramblings about how much I like Chuck D or something.
I ended February with another rousing win at trivia, this in conjunction with my new trivia team. Comprised of my old friends. We worked well together, not too much bickering.

March started well yesterday. I had a good shower. The highest possible water temp at my house can fluctuate about 5 degrees, so a shower can either scald, or be not hot enough. It was perfect yesterday. Then, my next effort was a disaster. I poured a bowl of cereal, got out a glass for juice, and promptly poured OJ on my flakes. I stared at them for a good 15 seconds before I used a big fork to strain the OJ into the glass and then fill the bowl with soy milk as nature had intended. The cereal ended up with a weird tang to it, and the glass of juice still had small flakes in it I had to spit out. I feel this just bodes poorly for the rest of the days. I better make sure to pay my bills this month, that is the sort of mistake that could happen. Taxes too. Keep on my toes.

I should have had this for breakfast instead

I’m running out of insinuating questions and leading topics. You know I’m bringing up the subject in round about ways, don’t make me resort to the final anecdote. “BadAss” doesn’t read this, but if she does sometime in the future, I should keep it on the quiet side.
Just leave it at: more history than college, MultCo activism, and similar but different deja vu.

What’s your unlucky month?

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Fuck all this Depression Bullshit