Ultranormal

  • Bowling Asses

    I am going to bowl my ass off tonight! Why? Because my ass now officially weighs less than my bowling ball.

  • The Lavatory Library

    I’ve finished two books in a week and have started on a third with gusto. The first, I’ve told you about repeatedly: American Gods. I just finished Jolie Blon’s Bounce by James Lee Burke. It’s pretty short for a Dave Robicheaux novel, and I’m starting to get the feeling that Mr. Burke is running out of creative steam. His last three or four books, not counting the amazing To The Bright And Shining Sun have followed the same formula of some preternaturally bad dude, a horrible person from Dave’s past and a crime. I read Bitterroot over Thanksgiving, and felt a sense of deja vu. He’s written some amazing stuff. His descriptions of Louisianna, the South in general and sense of dialogue are uncanny. He can spin a great tale. If you haven’t read Heaven’s Prisoners or Dixie City Jam, go get them now. You could skip Joli Blon’s Bounce and not have really missed anything.

    I’ve started on A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. I’ve read lots of posts from people about how funny his writing is and spied this book on the bookshelf in our bathroom (don’t ask… I’ll take pictures eventually) and said, “Hey, where did this come from,” to the yawning bowl, pulled the book down and went to find Jen to ask her. Apparently, her mom gave it to her (my mother in-law is a great source of literature… she’s always giving us books) at Thanksgiving and Jen just got around to putting it up on the shelf. I’ve only gotten through the preface and acknowledgements and laughed my butt off through them. I can’t wait to really start the book.

    I go on these tears every six months or so and just rip through books until my literary demon has been sated and goes back to sleep. If I finish this one, I have Jen’s Christmas present to me, Wobegon Boy by Garrison Keilor waiting for me in our lavatory/library.

  • The King of Mosey

    He ambled up the street, peering in shop windows and wondering at the people with hands shoved in coat pockets rushing from place to place, disappearing, reappearing as others doing the same, going somewhere he wasn’t. They walked in long, fast steps, covering as much ground as possible without running or looking desperate to be anywhere but going. He wandered, slowly, feet never going too far in front of himself, propelling him just enough to change the scenery. He wasn’t going anywhere, had no where to be but with himself doing nothing. He’d lost his purpose somewhere, and didn’t remember where it had gone to. He walked from one end of town to the other for no other reason than it kept him warm and passed the time while he looked for his purpose. He was the King of Mosey and wandered until he wandered clean out of sight.

  • Flummoxed

    I’m in a bad mood. I’m mostly in a bad mood because I came home sick from work yesterday and spent all today feeling like microwaved elephant dung. I’m fatigued, congested, my various pains are paining me and I’m just plain old grumpy. It’s time like these that make me want to say all the unpleasant things I normally keep to myself. Which means this is a good time to stop.

  • Need Fonts?

    Oh boy, my friend Jon linked to BlamBot – WOW. They have some of the coolest free fonts I’ve ever seen: clean, well done titling fonts. Sweet, sweet stuff.

  • Coldplay and Transvestite Funny

    As you’ve probably noticed, I resist what’s popular until I just can’t take it anymore and then embrace it as soon as everyone else has found it and proclaimed it to be the Best Thing In The Whole Wide World™. Well, here I go again. Heather got Coldplay’s Parachutes for Christmas and wow, it’s just great. I haven’t heard the new one yet (because Heather hasn’t let me borrow it yet), but Parachutes is just great. It’s moody, mellow and is great “float away into what you’re doing” background music. I’ve been listening to the album for a couple hours now, and I’ve finally figured out why it sounds so familiar. Colplay’s lead singer sounds an awful lot like Jeff Buckley, especially on the second track, Shiver. I loved Grace, and this album sounds a lot like it, which isn’t a bad thing. I know you all know this already, but I figured I’d share anyway.

    Speaking of things I know that you probably already do too, I got Eddie Izzard’s Dress to Kill on DVD for Christmas. Now, I’d seen the show on HBO about a million times, but wanted a DVD to watch when I’m sick, and something I can loan to friends who haven’t been indoctrinated yet. The coolest bonus of the whole thing is that there’s a show Eddie did in Paris as a prep for his new show, Circle. It’s all in French, but has sub-titles, which were nice for them big words and funky conjugations I didn’t get. It’s mostly his older material, but there were some great new bits in it. My favorite being (and this is a paraphrase, because it was in this big thing about the Renaissance), “You know, I’m just like Leonardo Da Vinci. He invented this helicopter that doesn’t work, and when I was seven, I also invented a helicopter that doesn’t work!! I’m a bloody genius, I tell you.” It was funnier in French… I swear it was.

  • Completely Baseless Predictions for Blogging in 2003

    Here are my completely baseless blogging/internet-related predictions for 2003:

    • This year will sound the death knell for the Meme. All the cheap content creators (weekly impersonal questionaires and personality tests) will go out of style and people will be forced to actually post stuff that won’t be seen in a million other places.

    • This year will see another giant explosion in the sheer number of people who blog. With the big ISP’s like AOL and MSN soon to be offering blogging platforms, there will be an exponential growth in daily content to read and/or ignore.

    • As all these new folks come into the blogosphere (jeez, I hate that word), we’ll see a mass departure of the second and third generation bloggers who have now been blogging for a year or two now will either get bored or they’ll find they have nothing else to say.

    • With all this new content, people will stop visiting sites directly. They’ll still go to the photoblogs, and design sites, but for text-only blogs, people will begin using an aggregator (like NetNewsWire). This will stymie the folks who want to start making money from their blogs as they’ll need to take into account the fact that people get to their content from another application.

    • Major sites will start incorporating blogs as either an incentive for signing up, or as a way to build their brand (think Salon, only crappy – “Get Your Coke Blog Now!”). Oh, please spare us.

    • Several high-profile bloggers will “sell out” and go corporate either through corporate sponsorship or incorporation into a larger site (like Slate or Salon), giving false hope to all of us marginally talented/interesting bloggers that someday we’ll hit it big through our blogs.

  • American Gods

    Because I’m always late on these kinds of things, I won’t make you any later. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman is out in paperback. If you haven’t read it already, run out to your local bookseller and get it. It’s amazing. I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s the most fun I’ve had reading a book in a very long time. It’s original, funny, exciting and thought-provoking. It’s an incredible story, and I can’t wait to see how it ends, though the whole while hoping it never does.

    There are so many movies and books and albums to talk about that I’ve just not had the time to tell you all about. I know you’re upset about it. I keep meaning to catch up, but just haven’t gotten to it. And I swore I wasn’t going to do a Best/Worst/Most Mediocre List for 2002 because everyone else is doing it, and I just have to be different. So, I will do nothing and just tell you that I’ve lost ten pounds in two weeks and dropped my blood pressure twenty points. Not bad for dieting over Christmas, huh?

  • Lazy Holiday Recovery Day

    We did nothing today. I tried to go buy a lighter bowling ball (why kill my back bowling when I can throw something light with an amazing amount of force?), but the drill press was broken at the sporting goods place and I don’t feel like waiting two weeks for a new ball. I got lunch, and brought it home. That was the extent of my accomplishments today. Max and I played with his new Matchbox cars in the basement while we watched Full Metal Challenge. We played and played and played. Then, he ate dinner. Jen read to him, we played a little more, then he went to bed. Now, Jen’s watching Felicity (her new filler now that she’s seen all the Buffy‘s ever committed to video). I’m surfing and trying to recover from a week of family, frivolity and trying to keep on my best behavior.

  • I’m Here, Really

    I’m been whooping it up family-style all week, what with Chistmas and all. Christmas was fun, mostly because Max is three and had a ball. With all this family around, he’s been unstoppable. He’s got this endless supply of energy, and this wicked three year-old sense of humor that just catches me off guard.

    He taught his Uncle Tim to do jumping jacks and it was the funniest thing I think I’ve ever seen. Max’s jumping jacks are basically jumping around while spinning in circles and waving his arms frantically as if he’s trying to be the world’s first human helicopter.

    And, back to the main topic of the past couple weeks, I have good news. In about ten days (over Christmas and many many big family dinners mind you), I dropped three pounds and dropped my blood pressure 20 points. How cool is that?

    I’m gonna go sleep for a week…