110103
I guess I'm kind of keeping a photoblog now - sad and trendy (yeah, like 6 months ago maybe) though that is... Click photos below and then click on the cell phone.
102503
New photo gallery up in the photo section below - all pics from my new cell phone. Some in there of me skateboarding and lots of assorted crap. I plan on updating it quite regularly since I've always got my phone with me and find myself snapping shots often.
Start work again on Monday. Decided to put Shiny on the back burners for a while. Partly for financial reasons, partly because I was beginning to go a bit stir crazy working from home. I'll say no more than that I'm going to be starting work for a very large hospital in Chicago and that I'm really, really fucking excited about the position. Radness.
101103
Made some minor modifications to my phone theme this morning. In case you're not lucky enough to own one of the splendid phones that supports the theme - here are some pictures of what it looks like: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
I haven't seen Kill Bill yet but this is how I see it in my head.
101003
OK, I pulled my thumb out ("Of what?" you may ask...) and put a nav item in the photos section (below) for the new pictures. Not for the camera phone section yet. Still got to decide how that one's going to work.
As an aside, I've started skateboarding again. Bought this deck a few weeks ago and have been going up to the local skate park every morning. We (Brandon and I) try to get there by 9:00A and then be gone by 11:00A. All of the local, young skate rats start showing up around then and we're intimidated by how much better they are than us.
No serious injuries yet (though I did catch the deck in my snotlocker the other day and it bled a lot) and I'm having an awesome time with it all. Maybe I'll start taking pictures up there and have a section of those?
100903
So, there are some new pictures up (that have been up for about a month now) in the photo section but you can't see them because I haven't put a nav link in yet. To make up for that, I'll tell you about my new phone and give you a present.
My new phone is the Sony Ericsson T616 and I love it. It has a color screen and a camera and it is my new best friend. I'm thinking about putting up a section somewhere just to put the pictures up in, since they'll be going up sporadically. Maybe I'll replace the webcam section with it.
Anyway, if you also have a Sony Ericsson T616 or even a Sony Ericsson T610, then here's a theme I made! It looks a bit like this site and should make your phone a happier place to be. I know I like it. Try it out and let me know what you think.
092403
I just switched hosts! There's some other stuff too but I won't go into it. I wouldn't want to bore you...
072803
There are new photos up in the photo section - had a wild weekend of cycling and camping. Excellent times. I also got a 100lb punching bag and stand off a chum, set it up on the porch. Very cathartic way to get exercise.
On another note, a couple of weeks ago a few friends and I made some commericals for Winterfresh and it looks like one of them will be airing nationally starting next week!!! They picked this one - this is the other one. Shoot me an email if you see either of them on TV.
071803
OK, so I've decided I'd like to write more... so I thought it would be a good idea to do some silly writing exercises before I jump back in - you know, just to get the juices flowing a bit and to train my hand to not get writer's cramp every five minutes (I do *real* writing pen to paper, weird, right?). Anyway, here's Writing Exercise #1, if you read it and have any kind of comment on it whatsoever, feel free to let me know about it.
*Warning* story is short, in PDF format, and quite gory.
071703
Here's a tiny picture of me standing with little Marmite.
Here's one of me riding my bike.
070603
Holy FUCK! It has been what, like 4 months since I updated this site? I'm an awful parent. I feel like I'm letting my toddler out of the closet under the stairs after a week. I meant it as a punishment of some sort to begin with, then I just forget about them and the TV was too loud so it drowned out the scratching and mewling.
What have I been up to? Not a lot, how about yourself?
I say not a lot but here are two pretty significant things that prove that to be untrue:
I decided to quit my job and start a company! It is going pretty well but not well enough to make me a millionaire. Thinking about doing it nights and weekends whilst working at a *real* job again. Altering my five year plan accordingly.
Keri and I are getting married! I tricked her into it with drugs. Got her all doped up and took her to a Mexican restaurant - I had hidden the ring in the salsa section of the salsa/chip sombrero that the salsa/chip midget wears. It was SO romantic.
Keri built the site...
030203
Went to an excellent party at a friend's place last night and had a weird intersection of my interwebben life and my real life - someone that had read this site in the past, that I had an abbreviated email rapport with, was at the party and recognized me.
Claudine, it was very nice to meet you; sorry if I seemed weird - I was pretty drunk and the whole thing blew my mind a little.
It also led me to analyze things a bit, which in turn led to the rather startling realization that I have a more fully developed social life online than I do offline. Which isn't to say that my *real life* is somehow lacking or malnourished, just that I spend a great deal of time in front of a computer. And that a lot of that time is spent on IM, emails, community sites, and general contact with the world at large. I don't think I'm alone in this phenomena - am I?
I like it.
I've lived online since late '94 when I discovered IRC - and haven't looked back since. All of my jobs have been internet-related and most of my *real life* friends were either met through online things, or have some kind of connection to interwebben geekery.
And before you write me off as some kind of weirdo recluse that plays D&D and goes to anime conventions - that's not what I'm talking about. I mean, the people I've met, I've met becuase I was building websites for them or met them at design events.
Whatever, I'm going to stop now... I'm trying to make myself seem less weird, lying to myself perhaps, but I don't think it is working. Think I'll go for a walk outside now.
022803
Guess it has been a while... things that have happened:
- Daniel G. Harmann came to visit (see photos section for *new* pictures!)
- I've taken up bird-watching
- Something huge has been bubbling up and is close to fruition
Paying attention to the world around you is kind of nice; so I bought a field guide type book, read it, and am now able to identify most of the birds I see on my way to the train in the mornings.
Things are good. There's still a huge, dark cloud of uncertainty hanging over a certain overseas part of my life that I love very much - kind of a 'suck it and see' type situation though.
The *huge* thing I was talking about has nothing to do with birds or dark clouds... I'll tell you more about it when it comes to life, writhing on the floor in a puddle of placenta and happiness.
013103 - addendum
Since I knew none of you would go to the trouble of making that picture into a desktop background, I went ahead and did it for you. Umm, your boss just called me and told me that he wanted you to use it and that if you didn't he'd fire you.
013103
Here is an absolutely enormous picture of me - large enough to be suitable for printing and using as some sort of poster.
Large enough for you to save it, trim it down a bit, and use it as your desktop background.
Large enough to zoom right in on one of my nostrils and have happy little dreams about living inside it. Large enough to where if you look very closely at the eyes, you can see that I'm not in fact human - rather some kind of highly advanced, blog writing, bike riding, cat stroking, heavy drinking, Keri loving robot.
Large enough to where you can trace the happiness I've had over the many years of my life in every crease of laugh line around my eyes.
012703
Giant things are made tiny by distance. Emotional, physical, whatever...
012003
I got some earth-shatteringly bad news mid last week from England - as a result I think I'll probably be updating the site a bit less frequently - it all seems a bit pointless, y'know? I'm being forced to re-evaluate my life plans, not the most delightful scenario.
If you're the person (all singing, all dancing...) that sent me the long and interesting email from my site without a return email address, please email me again, that was cool.
Riding the Chicago El at night is a completely unique and altogether pleasurable experience. As the El is "El"evated you end up cruising along at eye-level with people's apartment and house windows - at night this affords you brief glances into other people's lives. *Flash* - someone in pajamas bending over to get milk out of the fridge. *Flash* - a couple watching TV with vacant stares. *Flash* - an empty apartment, a cat perched on the window ledge - watching the train go past. *Flash* - a man in a suit getting home from work.
Every person and every apartment with its own little story, some interesting, some mundane, all left for the El rider/voyeur to fill in with their imaginations.
I've ordered some absinthe that should arrive later this week. Planning on having an 'absinthe night' at my place, perhaps this weekend. Expect photos.
011503
Chicago has turned into a frigid Siberian wasteland, wind-burned and horrible. The wind is bitterly cold. It feels like someone throwing a bag of nails at your face and it is beginning to take its toll on me. Big hunks of my skin are falling off and the little of it that remains is dry and crackly and painful.
I'm almost beginning to miss the sweat-drenched, too humid Summer - never thought I'd say that.
011303
I've noticed a frightening trend of late. As the weather gets colder and colder in Chicago (as it is wont to do at this time of year) I'm seeing more and more women (some might refer to them as 'trixies') out and about sporting big, silly, floppy, furry, goofy hats.
Now, I'm as fashion forward and progressive as the next guy but I'm not of the school of thought that believes these hats look good on people. I'm more of the school of thought that is inclined to snicker behind pursed lips as these people pass me on the frozen sidewalks of my neighborhood, looking like some kind of bastard child of JayKay (of Jamiroquai fame) and Blossom (of looking stupid wearing floppy hats fame...)
011103
I got the letter this week telling me when my naturalization interview is: March 10th. So long as I don't screw it up too much in the interview, I've got a good chance of being made into a fresh, sparkly American shortly thereafter. Some things that were suggested that might make the interview a bit more entertaining:
• Turn up wearing a shirt with a big union jack on it.
• Turn up wearing a shirt with a big maple leaf on it.
• Turn up with a long printed list of, "You might be a redneck if..." statements on it, only have 'redneck' crossed out and write 'American citizen' above it.
You might be a
You might be a
• Ask, very earnestly, when I get my 'Terrorist Stomping' license.
011003
There's a sign in someone's apartment window that I can see from the train; near the Belmont "L" stop. The sign reads "Paul, have a great day at work! I love you, Kathy". It warms the cockles of my heart every morning - in my mind, I'm Paul and Keri is Kathy and the sign is just one more little reminder of how much she cares about me.
Because... you know, if you could see into our apartment from the "L" I know that Keri would do something similarly sweet. She's sweet like that.
I just spent the last half an hour dragging masses and masses of poorly written garbage over from my old Tripod-hosted Remote Controlled Marc. I put it in my blog archive. Some of it is pretty funny, go read it if you don't believe me. Try not to judge me for some of the warped, stupid opinions I held back then. Judge me instead for the warped, stupid opinions I hold now.
Here is a picture of me in my new office.
010703
I was reminded last night (by a friend doing it to me) of the intrinsic humor of calling someone and leaving an unbelievably long and rambling message on their voicemail or answering machine. The trick is to keep the message just interesting and lucid enough to keep the receiver of the message listening through to the very end, sucking as many useful minutes out of their day as is humanly possible - after all, what are friends for if not for frittering away your time? (in a good way...)
So, yeah, for today's entry I'm going to try to bring the humor of this age-old jape to the internet. Feel free to email me and let me know where you stopped reading... (unless it was at the end of the first paragraph, in which case you won't have seen the bit about emailing me about where you left off...)
Today was a damnably fine day during which I used the word, "damnably" on more than one occasion. One of those occasions was when my new boss let me know that I was going to be doing some ColdFusion coding; something I haven't done in a number of years but something that I enjoy quite a lot. I mean, I say, *enjoy* when really I mean, *don't hate a lot* - let's not kid ourselves here, work can be alright but there are still things I'd rather be doing... like sitting on a beach somewhere, drinking fruity, tropical drinks and having my feet rubbed by a midget wearing those little gloves that midgets can get that have the nubby bumps on them that make footrubs feel that much better. Yeah, gloves like that only oily... oiled up with some kind of sweetly scented oil... ooh, can't you just feel it? Something cold and citrusy sliding down your throat and the tingly footrub sensation and the sun on your skin and a faint breeze that carries the faint, sweet smell of oiled midget into your nose... sounds like paradise to me.
Someone emailed me from my site today (I call it *fan mail* but it normally consists of insults, ha ha ha) and I wrote back that I appreciated them writing to me because sometimes it feels like I'm talking to myself when I write crap up here. Just now though I guess I realized that this is a good thing. If I didn't feel like I was talking to myself I probably wouldn't write things about midgets. Not that I've got anything against midgets or that anything I said about midgets could really be construed as sizist (sizeist? I don't fucking know...) or bigoted; just that, you know, it isn't right to single people out for a physical trait in this day and age. Despite that, I still do it all the time in my internal dialogue (my internal dialogue is often very lively and almost always includes very colorful [colorful like a drunk sailor, not like a butterfly] language). Like I'll meet someone that is short and my internal dialogue will make note of said new acquaintance's shortness. Or someone I meet might be taller than average and my internal dialogue (hereafter known as "the voices") might make note of that too. I think that is a fairly natural thing to do. Shit, maybe the overly PC amongst us are in the wrong. Perhaps we shouldn't stifle the urge to call someone short or identify someone as, "you know, that guy with the really big ass and the crooked teeth..." To be human is to be intrinsically flawed - to deny those flaws can only lead to trouble.
Look at the masturbating bear on Late Night with Conan O'Brien... they try to chain him up and put mitts on him but he *always* finds a way to get those big paws of his into his diaper. Oftentimes causing some sort of hilarious ruckus in the process.
With people it is like that, only instead of causing a hilarious ruckus it generally turns out much uglier and people get shot and stuff...
Speaking of people being ugly (on the inside now, silly, we've gone over the other shit already...) I noticed something about England while I was there: there is a perpetual air of latent violence. Everywhere I went I felt like I was mere moments away from a huge brawl breaking out or some angry fuck with a chip on his shoulder coming up and breaking my nose with his forehead. I hated it.
I mean, I guess when you're a teenager and you live in it, it becomes a part of you're everyday life and you don't really notice it. I used to get in fights as a 'lad' and it was no big deal. There were a couple of almost fights this Christmas though and they left me feeling quite introspective and odd. I guess I'm just old now.
I think it is different in America because you don't know who has a gun. In England you can go out, pick a fight with someone (or a group of someones) and you know the worst that is going to happen is that you're going to get the shit panned out of you. Here, you go into a bar and pick a fight and someone is liable to go out to their car (or down the back of their pants if they're gangsta stylee) and get their gun and shoot you. Then you're dead. Threat of mutual destruction, like the whole nuclear arms thing with the cold war - I think it is excellent. Actually, come to think of it, one of the only times I've even been close to a fight in the States, someone did indeed pull a gun out of their waistband and hold it to my head. I backed down very, very quickly and assumed the standard 'frightened rabbit' posture. It turned out to not be a real gun (it looked very, very real though... the guy thought he was being funny, I just thought he was a cunt) but for the 48 seconds that I thought it was real and thought that I might die I was very sad and very sorry for having testicles and testosterone and violent impulses.
I'd ramble on more but I suddenly got bored and Keri's home now and she brought wine home. I like wine and I like Keri, you might say I'm something of a wine and Keri enthusiast... a wine and Keri lover perhaps... one that believes the world would be a better place if only everyone carried guns, had midgets to rub their feet, and was able to indulge in a bit of wine and Keri every once in a great while. (that wasn't an invitation to get with my woman, go find you're own Keri... jerk.)
P.S. - I don't carry or own a gun (I don't trust my coordination skills, I'd have accidentally shot myself within a day of purchase) and I've never had a midget rub my feet...
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