April 2007 Archives

the beans are ready for spilling.

while i have not yet been offered anything to sign, it looks certain that i will, for the next three months, be blogging on a Live Space blog for MSN / Live Earth.

as in blogging professionally. for money.

in case you haven't heard, Live Earth concerts -- 7 of them on 7 continents on 7/7/07 -- are sponsored by Al Gore, MSN, and SOS to promote awareness of climate change. they're being produced under the Live 8 / Live Aid model. only the NY and London concert line-ups have been announced, but artists include The Police, Madonna, The Beastie Boys and many many many others. There will also be concerts in Sydney, Shanghai, Rio, Johannesburg, and frickin' Antarctica.

i suspect the Antarctica concert will feature the Snow Patrol and the Arctic Monkeys and be attended by a few very excited and lonely scientists. if i can go to that one, i will. my gig includes a travel budget and who wouldn't want to visit Antarctica in the middle of winter?

i probably will blog less here, but then, maybe not. it's hard to say how it will all work out. i'm going to be blogging primarily for american audiences so my work week will be screwy.

feel free to send me links / ideas for blog posts concerning Live Earth and climate change. part of my job will be building blog traffic so ideas you have there are also welcome.

now i am going to walk around the house for a while punching the air and saying "i am the man" and "woo!"

known him a long time. call it just shy of twenty years.

i remember quite clearly when i met him; at a week long youth group event.

i went back to my bunk to get something and i saw him slouched in a chair, bags packed. going home early, sick. i told him i was sorry, that we hadn't really met but he seemed cool.

and then we were friends, of the getting into trouble variety. i used to drive out to his place, a few towns over. run amok. try and pick up girls. occasionally succeed.

he called me today and it's almost shocking how unchanged he is.

he left a bad job a bit ago. they mistreated him, denigrated his work. told him he was lucky to be keeping his job. so he found a much better one, got a firm offer, and told his boss he was leaving.

surprise surprise, the boss' story changes; oh no! you can't leave! please please stay!

my friend declines. the new job is much better and comes with a much better boss. his boss pleads with him not to say anything to his cow-orkers. he promises he wont.

so he goes home, gets his girlfriend to write "I QUIT" in sharpie across his ass and photograph it. puts the picture up as his computer desktop at work.

he didn't say anything, though. not a word.

he lives in SF now, so if you're one of my SF friends and you'd like to meet such a fellow, lemme know. i will connect you.

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went to see Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) today with Dorje. i don't remember the last time i saw a movie that made me want to cry with both sorrow and joy. go see it.

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slow progress on my world-saving news. i'm through gate 1 of 4 so i'll release a corresponding amount of details.

it's a professional blogging job. for a big company for a short term. it could represent a significant step towards my career goals, such as they are. i should find out more by the end of the week.

today has been a BIG day.

first, i was made featured traveller of the week by this new community website called Matador. just scroll on down the main page to see me in my finery. also, i sent them my ethiopia article, so perhaps they'll publish it? they seem to like me, so that's a good sign!

the other news involves the fate of the planet. i'll tell you more if it solidifies. the news, not the planet.

it's a possible job that's pretty much just what i'm looking for.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr., a writer who truly knew how to poke your brain-eye with a stick, has died today at 84.

his work was an inspiration to me. his bizarro sci fi theories, as voiced by alter ego kilgore trout, still make my head spin.

it was kvj who suggested that life is a sexually transmitted disease and also that life is nothing but an elaborate transportation system designed by water. he was a drunk and a coot and an irascible old goat. basically all i've ever dreamed of being.

so a moment of silence for him. if you live anywhere near lake michigan, tonight would be a good time to be prepared for the giant lampreys to come. and rest assured; they will come.

in order to counteract the preponderance of depressing blog posts here lately, i thought i'd share some good news.

because there is good news too. it's just less fun to complain about online.

1) katawin got into UC Davis biz skool! i helped her write her essays so it's almost like i'm an MBA now.

2) D Hex is on the road as his alter ego MC Frontalot, dishing out a national tour and his second (and even better) album. if you've ever wanted to hear a white boy rap about asperger's, now's your chance. frankly, i recommend it.

3) after half a year we are finally getting a new cook top! imagine the glory of a gas burner that lights all the frickin' way around! evenly cooked omelettes here we come!

4) my folks are coming here in june with my godparents and they're going to take us to see uluru and put us up on some great barrier reef island where the beds are made of gold and the fish have been taught complicated busby berkeley dance routines. so it's a good thing i don't have a job or i wouldn't be able to go.

5) i think my ethiopia article is ready for sale. now i just gotta figure out whom to sell it to and, uh, how.

today i made a lot of notes on a piece of paper. there were all sorts of arrows and stars and circles. it looked like some sort of implausible gridiron play designed by coach cappuccino.

i was attempting to get together something resembling a plan.

i wrote down some goals (remain solvent, meet yeti, win pulitzer) and made a list of my skills (reciting the gashleycrumb tinies, hooking up VCRs, saying "okay" when i mean "no") and then tried to connect them all in a grand unification theory.

the magic eight ball suggests that i would be a good at downloading movies about alliteration while on a train.

wait. where are the cheerleaders going?

welcome to wax-on weekend!

yes, much as you dreamed, this, finally, is the weekend where you get to clean the entire house and hang a bunch of pictures! oh wait. i meant me. this is the weekend where i get to do those things.

and although it is slightly disturbing how overjoyed my wife is by such cleanliness and orderliness, i must admit:

things look better.

for example, you can see light through the back windows now! there are no happy trails of last month's syrup down the cupboard fronts! all the glass jars of foodproduct have been re-labelled incorrectly for maximum confusion!

my favourite is the coffee. the jar does not say coffee any more. now it reads, "grandpa."

this is how we will foil the roving gang of grocery thieves that plague the neighbourhood.

this weekend i have been also struggling with the sad fact that i'm just not making enough money. it's not for a lack of WANTING, because surely i want money. it might be for lack of earning, but tests are still inconclusive.

truth is, if we are ever going to be able to afford to fly back to san francisco and eat burritos i must convince the sultan of brunei that my sock drawer would be a fine place to hide some mad money. does anyone know the sultan?

alternately, i might have to get a temp job or something. that would be cool. i look good with a zombie pallor. i have a dress shirt somewhere.

i do believe that my whole freelance copywriting plan will work, it's just not quite working yet. i am optimistic and realistic and spastic.

i'll try one more big push, including trying to convince people in the states to hire me from afar, and then i will get a job slinging slushies at Big Nate's Weiner Shed. there is only so much not-earning a man can take.

anyone need anything written? i can distribute writs good.

to prove this, i have finally (almost) finished my article about ethiopia. i like it again, except for the ending.

it is entitled Vampires from Venus.

i will leave you with this cheery little song:

Sing a song of sixpence, A pocket full of rye;

Four and twenty blackbirds, Baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing;

Was not that a dainty dish, To set before the King?

The king was in his counting-house, Counting out his money;

The queen was in the parlour, Eating bread and honey.

The maid was in the garden, Hanging out the clothes,

There came a little blackbird And snapped off her nose.

wink wink.

this has not been the cheeriest of weeks.

i'm a bit homesick because it was just passover; my family's combination xmas/thanksgiving/new years eve and i was an ocean away. again.

also, i have fallen down the no-work hole. this place i occasionally find myself in when i have no work and no project and no inspiration and a sense of impending doom.

plus i found out two of my best friends broke up and one was eaten by a lion. (actually, i made the lion part up)

so, you ask, what do i do when i'm in the town of no cheer? i get myself all revved up. i stomp around a bit and say things to myself like, "go," and "you are full of awrsome," and "i wonder if i got any email?" then i check my email but there isn't any.

then, i stomp around some more and say, "no, really. go!" and pick up my hat and find my wallet and then sit back down because i have absolutely no idea where to go.

this lasts about five hours then i give up. or maybe go out to buy some coffee and feel a little guilty about spending money on coffee when i'm not working.

ideally, i'd be writing something marvellous or at least profitable. i'd have some wild scheme to fiddle with. but i don't. so i pretend and that works like caffeine does. it's a good rush for half an hour and then you crash. like this morning when i opened up my in-progress ethiopia article only to discover that a) i hate it and b) nobody would publish it even it wasn't sucky.

i did find some woman today on line who publishes a zine and asked her out for coffee. she seemed to know folks and to be my sort of person. perhaps she will write back.

i'm sure i'll pick up soon. that's the way it goes.

My computer doesn't work right. How do I fix it? And don't give me a bunch of Internet dweeb IT Star Wars Dr. Spock FORTRON MySpace Mom's basement mumbo jumbo about error messages or the precise nature of the problem or what kind of computer it is. Can you do that, you sexless freaks?
posted by swirlieman to health at 9:16 AM - 16 answers +

My girlfriend's boyfriend says that polyamory is all about the sex, but I agree with my partner's life-slave that the deep intellectual connection is what drives truly functional polygeometric relationships. We all want to get a kitten. What should we name it?
posted by secretaltpolyhandshake to just answer the damned question at 9:16 AM - 111 answers +

How long can a normal, healthy 8 week old kitten survive inside an adult python? URGENT!
posted by :-O ^x^ to pets & animals at 9:16 AM - 23 answers +