While I’m gone, you should read Bloody Hell. His posts are good, but it’s the little things that keep me coming back. Like the way he says “bangarang” when he thinks something is cool, or the time he said ” but soft!” instead of “there’s more.” I’m a sucker for cute verbal tics.

“Today marks the first day when my grandma
begins fertilizing greener pastures. People keep
saying, “my sympathy is with you”. I
understand the niceties are a subset of living in
some semblance of a civilized society, however,
it isn’t really warranted.

I’m not sorry she gupped the giffer. In fact, I’m
not really sorry many people do. I’ve expected
this. I expect I will die as well. It would definitely
be a surprise if I didn’t.”

“Expectations vs. reality.

Make it fast,

Make it good,

Make it cheap.

Pick two.

Yay.”

“Noody noody noo is all I have to say today.”

“Who is Dana Gould? Some guy who said this:

‘We all enter this world in the same
way: naked, screaming, soaked in
blood. But if you live your life right,
that kind of thing doesn’t have to
stop
there.'”

prerecorded

So I’m posting from the road, which is kind of sad when you think about it. I’m half a block from a monkey forest and instead of walking around outside, I’m locked in a little bamboo stall typing. Bali is wired, my friends. There’s an Internet cafe about every three feet. They know about the Backstreet Boys, Tommy Hilfiger, and those horrible bottled Starbucks drinks. Shoot me now.

Also, everything costs two bucks. Well, everything except for the four-foot-high wood carvings of masturbating monkeys, those are about $250. If only I had a bigger place.

[editor’s note] Fixed Mighty Girl’s link to Annie from yesterday if you’re interested.

While I’m away, you should read Little Yellow Different:

“On a tangeant, this whole Asian-chick-and-labor thing reminds me for that Tide commercial. You know which one I’m talking about, right?

(Japanese woman speaking to the camera, cut to shots of a white guy playing basketball and pagoda’s in the background. Cut to another shot of same white guy kicking back a beer while watching sumo wrestling.)
“You know, I love my husband. But when I moved to Japan for work it took a while for him to get used to his new surroundings. The clothes he bought in America are precious to him. That’s why I wash his clothes in Tide!”

Now, I’m not a militant Asian, by any means. But let me get this straight — Asian woman has a job overseas while her husband mills around the house drinking air-mailed Budweiser and watching sumo wrestling. And SHE STILL DOES HIS FUCKING LAUNDRY?! Oh, hell no. If I was her, I’d get his gaijin ass to the fucking laundromat and tell him to wash his own damn clothes. *breathes deep* Okay, I’m better now. Carry on…”

“So I’m talking with my girl, Belinda. My very attractive, very feminine female friend Belinda. And she’s yelling at me over Instant Messager.

“WHAT? What do you MEAN you’re borrowing a copy of Diablo II?! You have to get your own copy so you can register the key and play over battle.net.” I could almost see her roll her eyes and toss her hair as she types that. “And if you’re lucky, I’ll even let you on my team.”
This is fucking surreal. Just the other day she was talking about the outfit she bought at Banana Republic. “Really?” I stutter. “How strong is your character?”
“Level 65 Ice Sorceress. You?”
*cough* “Uhmm.. Level 18 Necromancer.”
“Ugh. I guess I could help you out. Did I mention I play Tekken Tag Tournament too? Get a Playstation 2 and I’ll kick your butt anytime. Anytime.

You know, it’s a damn shame I’m homosexual. Because I think I just met the hottest girl. Ever.”

prerecorded

[editor’s note] It occurrs to me, as I post today’s message that Mighty Girl left me, she might have at least assumed that I had some big Presidents’ Weekend plans. The fact that I’m posting this at 1:00AM Saturday morning, after having spent the evening playing video games, has nothing to do with it…

While I’m away, you should visit Annie. She doesn’t update often enough, but she’s one of my favorites.

Four Kraftwerk-lookin’ indie rockers stood on the
platform with me; they were thick-spectacled, pale, and thin. I felt instantly uncool for
wearing my purple pajama top under my coat, even though they wouldn’t see it. Indie
rockers make me nervous.

Wearing a white shirt and black pants, along with a tie worthy of placement in the International Male catalog, the
young man slinked his way toward our party. He began to gyrate his pelvis and wave his hands in the air like he just
don’t care — all in front of poor Ophi. Upon closer inspection of Rico Suave’s getup, I noticed that he was sporting a
tacky gold chain around his neck. Obviously someone got a good prize in his Burger King Kids Club Meal.

[Regarding a battle with depression:]

What people say

How long were you on medication?

What people mean

Exactly how crazy were you?

What people say

Do you still go to therapy?

What people mean

Are you still crazy?

What people say

It doesn’t seem like someone like you could have problems.

What people mean

Oh my god, what if I go crazy someday, too?

[One of Annie’s New Years resolutions:]

more rock, less talk.

prerecorded

While I’m away, you should read BoingBoing

“Jesus.com is owned by a guy who looks like Jesus and wears a Jesusonian robe. He hopes to meet women who are turned on by the idea of dating a real live Jesus. He’s also inviting women to bathe with him. At least one woman has taken him up on his offer, and you can see photographic evidence on Jesus’s site.” Link

eCompany interviews Bruce Sterling. ‘What would happen if I could turn my IQ up to 450? I would be a completely different kind of entity. I would understand things much more thoroughly, and I would be really thrilled by it for, I don’t know, maybe six months. Then I would have a routine of some kind. I would be a posthuman entity with an IQ of 450 who had a routine. And I would be bored a lot of the time. And my behavior would me mostly habitual, and embarassing things would happen to me. In other words, I wouldn’t be some kind of shining godlike creature. I might be super intelligent, but, you know, I’d probably have diarrhea. A super intelligent being with acne. I would still have a toothache. My wife would also have an IQ of 450, and we would have domestic arguments that were on the level of super genius but still about housework.'”

prerecorded

While I’m away, you should read Caterina:

“Jim’s roommate, let’s call him Lester, was a prodigious serial
seducer. He seduced more women in college than anyone would ever have
believed, being kind of an unassuming computer programmer kind of guy
with very average looks. His secret was, I guess, charm, but mostly that
he never told a soul. Never bragged, never raised an eyebrow, never
brought it up in casual conversation, never said a word. Kissing but no
telling. No one knows to this day what a Don Juan Lester was in the early
90s at Vassar, not the women he seduced not his CS classmates, only
his roommates, and their confidantes, such as me.”

“Main Entry: lapsus calami

Pronunciation: “lap-sus-‘ka-la-“mE, “lap-sus-‘ka-le-“mI

Usage: foreign term

Etymology: Latin

: slip of the pen”

“When I was little I was over at at the
Vance’s house playing with John Vance, the youngest of six
brothers, whose immediate predecessors were Matthew, Mark and
Luke� John was showing me the hamster that
he and his brothers had gotten for Christmas, which I had come
especially to see. He lifted it out of its cage and showed it to me. It
had twitchy whiskers and I petted it tentatively with my forefinger,
finding it very very soft. I was completely smitten. Then he kissed the
hamster and said, “I love you SOOO MUCH” and squeezed it so
hard he killed it dead.”

prerecorded

While I’m away, you should read Squirrel Bait. Her tagline says it all, “Love is misery in the pupal stage.”

[regarding a new make-your-bath-a-jacuzzi toy:]

“Even on the gentlest setting, the BubbleSpa made the water boil furiously, spurting five-inch jets of water into the air. Worse, the suction cups weren’t strong enough to hold the air-bubbling mat down; as air in water is want to do, it rose briskly, with me on top flailing and fighting it back down. The air-hose kept coming detached and flying wildly through the bathtub, sending water spraying everywhere. Plus, the water was churning so hard and taking in so much air that it went from almost-too-hot-to-sit-in to ice cold in less than two minutes… even with the BubbleSpa set to add heat.

Basically, imagine me buttnaked in rapidly boiling ice water, thrashing around on a 1×4 air float and trying frantically to grab a hose doing its best rattlesnake-on-crack impression.

It was my first aerobic bath.”

[on marriage]

“Yeah, I think I’ll just get 75 cats, a collection of Franklin Mint commemorative dolls, and a really big vibrator and skip the whole thing. ”

“Men of the world, please do me a favor. All I ask is a little truth in advertising. If you’ve got something you’ll be saying to me later under awkward, pained circumstances, just say it to me when you meet me! It’s not so much harder than hello, really it’s not! Repeat the following phrases after me:

1. Hi, I’m Andrew. I’m exclusively homosexual. Hitting on me will do you no good, and will only embarrass us both.

2. Hi, I’m Stephen. I’m proposing to my girlfriend this weekend. Although I may seem to be interested in you, in fact I am merely an incredibly friendly, touchy-feely sort of person. Please don’t misinterpret my attentions.

3. Hello! I know we haven’t seen each other in a while, so I thought you ought to know that while it used to be okay for you to grab my wee-wee, I now have a girlfriend and such behavior is no longer acceptable. And how have you been?

See how simple that was? Cleared the air right up front, didn’t it?

I am going to go blush into my pillowcase now.”

“From here:

A few years ago, Fisher recalls, a typical Silicon Valley cube might have measured 8 feet by 8 feet. No more. Now cubes are more likely to be half or two-thirds that size. In some cases, companies are ordering cubicles as small as 5 by 6, or 30 square feet.

As a result, cubicles — sometimes referred to sarcastically as “veal fattening pens” for their claustrophobia-inducing size — are now smaller than enclosures provided for calves.

In fact, according to recommendations from the University of California Cooperative Extension, a calf should be allotted a minimum of 35 square feet, possibly 30, in structures known as “superhutches.”

The guidelines did not address how much space a calf needs to program in Perl script while drinking diet soda and eating cheese puffs. ”

prerecorded

While I’m away, you should read Stuff and Stuff.

Dave is the greatest untapped genius of our time, and the ladies love him. Perhaps you think I’m only kissing his ass because he’s posting for me while I’m gone, and the world may never know. But before you get all high and mighty, try handing your Blogger password over to some schmo off the street and spending your vacation nights in a cold sweat wondering if he’s entering Necrophilia and Neo-Nazi into your meta tags.

I also like Dave because he can take little jokes like that without doing anything nasty to exact retribution, like, oh say, entering Necrophelia and Neo-Nazi into my meta tags. Right Dave? Did I mention how handsome you are? And funny too:

I had the most awesome Bachelor-Morning today. Not only did I wake up to find that I had no more clean underwear,
(forcing me to wear yesterday’s pair) but, I also discovered, upon shoving a spoonful of cereal in my mouth, that the milk
had gone decidedly bad. The best part was, (as I sat on my chair half-dressed in dirty boxers) that I looked at the bowl
with a quizzical expression on my face, smelled the milk, and then went in for another bite. Just in case my synapses had
mis-routed the “ummm, good” message to my brain, you see. It was like I was that lab rat that keeps going back for the
electrified cheese.

They say the world gets smaller and smaller as the means of communication get easier and
easier. Consequently, I am taking up a small collection for a select group of us to move to
Jupiter. On second thought, I am taking up a large collection for a large group of everyone else
to move to Jupiter. Operators are standing by.

As if we needed more reminders that we are decidedly not a Thirld World nation, McDonald’s
has entered into a devil’s pact with Compaq to put video-game McKiosks in their stores. I
suppose this is better than the cool playgrounds McDonald’s had when I was growing up, as
this new system protects children from both the dangerous sun, and inconvenient exercise.

prerecorded

[editor’s note] The above wouldn’t have been possible without the help of Evhead, ’cause Meg forgot to give me her ftp password. Nice. Thanks Ev…

You know what’s not pleasant? Drinking at the water fountain and feeling the stream of water dip when someone flushes the toilet in the bathroom next door.

I saw a commercial this weekend for an E-Z Bake Oven CD-ROM. Two girls sat side by side giggling in anticipation over the rising cake… on their monitor.

GAHHHH! First they take away candy cigarettes, then toys that spark, and now this? Excuse me, Orwellian Overlords? The whole point of the E-Z Bake oven is to mix the tap water and pseudo-chocolate powder, spill most of the “batter” on the floor while you’re pouring it into tiny pans, and let it bake for three hours under the scorching heat of a 60-watt lightbulb. Now that’s entertainment. The day I catch my child watching an animated cake and clapping her hands in glee, I’m unplugging the Telescreen and sitting down to wait for the Thought Police to take me away.

3:30 p.m.

Walking me to work this morning, Fred kept nudging me into the parking meters. I finally asked if I could switch sides with him. He seemed frustrated and said, “I know I’m supposed to walk on the curb side, but in San Francisco all the bums are on the inside.” Good point.

10:06 a.m.