Bright light and explosions

There's no such thing as Tourettes Syndrome anymore. No such thing as crazy. No such thing as MPD, or whatever they're calling Multiple Personality Disorder now. Only people on hands-free cell phone headsets talking to themselves. Yelling. Holding intimate conversations with the back of my head. Asking me what's for dinner. Wanting to know if I picked up the kids.

They're saying:
"Hello."
"Hi."
"What's up?"

Old friends who I've never met in my entire life. They're telling me their secrets. They're telling me their wife wont be home tonight, the ball and chain is in Virginia. They want to know if I picked up toilet paper. They need their prescriptions. Their drycleaning. Condoms.

They follow me around talking to me like I know them. Hounding me. Wanting to know why I'm breaking up with them. Wanting my permission to stay out just one more hour.

I'm at the mall today. I have some time to kill while my rear car-stereo speakers are installed and I'm wandering. I took my camera but ended up only getting one picture I really liked. I walk by all the empty Kiosk stands in the center of Mall Avenue. I walk by them, no one ever stops at those things. That's like screaming you have a shopping problem. There's always one though. One nobody, I mean nobody stops at. You know the one, they sell shingles or gutters, or something house related. No one is ever standing at that one listening to a sales pitch. I wonder how they stay in business. I wonder how old that water is they keep cycling through for demo after demo that nobody watches. The Kiosk that time forgot.

I imagine this place after the end, after the bright light, and the boom that comes way after we're all dead. Time is no longer a factor. The wastelands of our once mighty consumer empire. I imagine I'm walking around the wreckage of an exploded Gap, picking through the remains of Express Men. Covering my nose and mouth with my torn shirt as I walk past the rotting food court. Grabbing what I can from CVS and Sears. Hoarding canned goods, tools and Twinkies. Riding around a shopping cart in the vacant Marshalls parking lot.

I can still hear the voices of my friends asking me when I'll be home, wanting to know if I want to eat there or go out. They're asking me if I'm happy, if I need a place to crash. They want to know what I'm doing tonight and I tell them everything.

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I took the plunge

I did it. It's been 4 years since I've had a respectable SLR and finally I'm back in business. I mean, I have a freaking bachelors in photography for crying out loud.

Anyways, Canon just dropped the new Digital Rebel XT and pretty much improved on everything that was great about the original Digital Rebel. Including increasing the megapixel rating to 8. And let me just say. WHOA! It's freaking nice. Even at the highest settings with everything jacked the write speed is amazing. Clarity, don't get me started. Every setting is customizable, F-stop, ISO, all the regulars. I cant wait to start making new work.

It feels good to be a photographer again. It feels real good.

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Worms!

It was a more specialer Easter this year. There were gifts of Worms, Adult Swim shirts, and Minieggs. Best Easter ever.

And yeah, I know this isn't what Easter is really about but man, it's fun.

Show me the worm love.

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Everything I knew it could be

Iriver just released a new firmware for US H10 players, it fixes all, and I mean all the bugs. No more bass distortion on some of the lower range EQ settings, no more alphabetical track listings, tracks now list by track number. It's great! Battery life has been marginally extended and the clock now keeps the correct time.

As you can tell the H10 was a little buggy when I got it but was still a great player regardless. Now it's perfect!

If you're reading this and you have an H10 go here NOW and get the update.

*swoon*

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Origami was never my thing

I've been occupying my free time as of late with Paper Mario. Actually it's surprisingly intrinsic. It's about it's self. It's about Mario when he's not off being Mario. A VH1 Behind the Mario if you will and it's got me enthralled.

Yes, at it's core it's an adventure RPG. You're Mario set out to rescue Princess Peach. During your journey you have to find these things called crystal stars, which hold the key to The Thousand Year Door. You want these stars, they gain you new abilities and if you don't collect them evil Emperor Grodus and his clumsy band of hapless x-nauts will. And as we all know, evil emperors are always bent on world domination. However, Paper Mario is so very much more than it’s clichéd story line. It makes fun of it's self and posts all these questions about what it means to be Mario in this crazy mixed up mushroom world.

Guess who’s excited? Well, this guy in a review of Paper Mario on ebgames.com is excited. The English language has never been put to use so eloquently.

“paper mario2 seems tight I'd PLAYED ever mario game,but paper MARIO IS THE FUNNIEST OF THEM ALL.I LOVED PART 1 I KNEW YOU WERE GOING TOMAKE A PART TWO JUST THE WAY IT ENDED YEAH AND YOU SHOULD PUT PART 1 IN THERE JUST FOR WE COULD REMEMBER HOW IT ENDED LIKE THE END PART NOT THE WHOLE GAME .EXEPECT ALOT OF MONEY ON THE FIRST WEEK.”

Okay…

Guess who else’s excited? Your teammates. Mario isn't alone in the in one, he brought a posse. Each with their own out spoken predilection, they express a 'go get em' attitude toward fighting the evil in the world. Especially a little Yoshi you find along the way. He doesn’t have a name so you get to give him one. I went with GoNAD. Lets hope I never have kids.

Guess who’s pissed!? I mean, besides GoNAD.

Bowser’s pissed. He’s pissed because he didn’t get to kidnap Peach this time around, he’s pissed because he harbors secret feelings towards her. Dirty giant turtle feelings. Gamera feelings. He’s also pissed because every time he turns around someone is telling him what Mario is doing. I mean, really, like he gives a turtle crap. Cant the koopas leave him alone? Being an evil fire-breathing turtle surrounded by idiots must be hard.

And Mario? Mario doesn’t like Luigi’s long boring ass stories. He’s long winded man. For. Real. Mario does like to gamble though, and he and I play the lottery daily. And when I say daily, I mean my time, not game time. New numbers are announced every night at midnight. That’s real time.

You have to wonder what goes on in that cute silver shell of the Gamecube when it’s turned off. Does that little disc spin around by it’s self, creating a gravity field for this world that seems to exist even when you’re not there? Does Mario sleep in there when you’re not around to control him? I guess he could since it is Paper Mario and everything is flat, only millimeters in width. I guess it’s possible.

Does Bowser decorate his room with posters of Princess Peach?

Where do Bob-ombs go when they explode?

If a tree falls in the mushroom kingdom and no one is playing, does it still make a sound?

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Everybody's gaming for the weekend

Okay, I got my tax return in the mail today and it's perked me up a little. Funny how 14 hundred dollars will do that to you. Anyways, here's some of the pics from the gaming party. Ideally I'd like to host these images myself and create a little sidebar to house a gallery, but that would take hours of tinkering with HTML, and frankly we don't have hours. ;)

So yeah, it was fun, what more can I say. The Gamecube sucks for networking but I'm glad everyone bought/brought their network adapters cause Mario Kart was a blast.

I suck at Halo 2.

The 2 Projectors were awe inspiring and I'm sure I've made friends for life out of the gamestop kids.

All in all, it was a good time but drained me for two days. I'm not hosting the next one. That's all Scott.

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God Bless Catastrophe

This is not about the gaming party. This is about this morning. This is not a happy post.

6:15AM. Howard Stern is barking at me to wake up. Ever since 99.1 was taken off the air I am no longer privy to waking up to the Junkies in the morning. I’m now forced to wake up to Howard Stern. Lucky me, it’s one of the only other stations that comes in on my crappy clock radio. He’s better than waking up to some pop station and getting a top 40 song stuck in my head for the remainder of the day. He’s better, but not by much.

This morning however, Howard was a little different. Instead of porn-stars or b-list celebrities avoiding questions about whom they’ve slept with, Howard had this woman on the phone. This woman, she thought Robert Redford, Robert Urich, and Ronald McDonald were trying to kill her. She said they were plotting her demise, some political game that involved Redford running for president. They wanted her out of the way, they wanted her silenced. Rubbed out. Especially McDonald.

They must have had her on the phone for 30 minutes, because every time I hit snooze, there she was again ten minutes later. They had her husband on. They even got Redford to call in. These days this is real celebrity. This is how I woke up.

I pulled myself out of bed, flinging my legs over the edge of my mattress. This is the point of no return, the defining line between staying home, and going to work, fighting the ongoing war between having money and having happiness. Today happiness lost. During the week it usually does.

I get in the shower.
More hair down the drain.

I brush my teeth.
Not as white as they used to be.

I wash my face.
The cheeks are coming back. I need to stick a little closer to my diet.

I put on deodorant, cologne and think about shaving. I think about it, then I don’t.

Boxers. Wife-beater. Socks. Pants. Belt. Shirt. Tie, and shoes.

Shoes. I need new laces and I forgot again. They’re ragged. The black fabric that covers the inner lining of the lace has come loose and I now have a white lace in sections. It just doesn’t look right and every morning it bugs me. And every evening when I get home -- when I can actually go out and buy new laces -- like an idiot, I forget.

8:00AM. Headed out the door. Jacket. Gotta take the trash out. Putting the pizza boxes inside the empty beer case boxes, I stack them in my arms and close and lock the door behind me. It’s about half way down the stairs when I realize that inside one of the pizza boxes -- inside one of the beer case boxes -- there is a garlic butter container and it has leaked all over the front of my pants and jacket.

F*CK!

I walk the leaking mess to the dumpster trying carefully not to get any more on me, holding the boxes at arms length and down wind.

Running back into the apartment I throw my jacket on the chair, I’ll deal with it when I get home. Since there is no time to change I do my best to scrub the grease out of my pants. I find a new jacket and run out the door.

8:15AM. On the road and listening to some Alkaline Trio, thinking about that woman I woke up with. That crazy one. I was thinking about how when you have schizophrenia you create your own reality. You live in a place all by yourself and you totally believe every ounce of it is really happening. It must be like living in a perpetual dream, never waking up, every turn yields another never-ending corridor. It must be nice to be crazy.

And suddenly it hits me like the proverbial ton of bricks. This is me. I live in my own little world, the one I believe is so real because I can touch and feel it. Because I can see and hear it. This is my dream world that I’m never waking up from. My everyday waking nightmare. My everlasting Monday morning.

God bless catastrophe, it’s the little things that go wrong that break us out of our normal routines. This is the kind of morning you pray the person in the car in front of you buries their foot in the brake pedal at the exact moment you’re trying to find the piece of your Slimfast bar that has fallen into your lap. I guess I better be careful what I wish for. At least I have someone who loves me even if I only get to see her at the gym, and for a half hour 4 nights a week.

9:00AM. At work, going through the motions, saying my good mornings. At my desk, the florescent light behind me erratically flickering. The stack of work thickening. Everyone wants to know how my weekend went and all I can think about is this morning. All I can think about is that crazy, perfect woman on the radio. The one who thought Robert Redford, Robert Urich, and Ronald McDonald were trying to kill her. That blessed, lucky woman.

It’s still better than having a Creed song stuck in my head all day.

---
I’ll post pictures and write about the gaming party later, I had to get this off of my chest.

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I hope someone brings me new pants

Cause I think I just made in mine.

So yeah, I'm throwing the gaming party by which all other gaming parties will be measured this Saturday. I'm pretty sure this event will be recorded on some kind of stone Monolith for future generations to look upon with great awe. The kind of sight that causes the immediate loss of bowel function. Maybe the stone will be marble. Marble is pretty.

Here is the equipment list I just put together. Essentially, here is the black coal that will run this mammoth fire-breathing beast for 12 hours, or however long it goes.

Paul & Dennis:

• Gamecube
• Gamecube net adapter
• 4 Gamecube controllers
• Mario Kart
• Xbox
• 4 Xbox controllers
• Halo
• Halo 2
• Ps2
• 2 Ps2 controllers
• GT4
• 2 - Projectors
• 1 - 27' TV

Jon:

• Gamecube
• Gamecube net adapter
• 2 Gamecube controllers
• Mario Kart
• Xbox
• 3 Xbox controllers
• Halo
• Halo 2
• Ps2
• Ps2 net adapter
• 1 Ps2 controllers

Manny:

• Gamecube
• Gamecube net adapter
• 4 Gamecube controllers
• Mario Kart
• Xbox
• 4 Xbox controllers
• Halo
• Halo 2
• Ps2
• Ps2 net adapter
• 2 Ps2 controllers
• GT4

Scott
(or what Jon should bring for Scott):

• Gamecube net adapter
• 2 Gamecube controllers

Kevin:

• 1 Gamecube controller
• 3 Xbox controllers
• Halo
• Halo 2

Bone:

• 2 Gamecube controllers
• Xbox
• 2 Xbox controllers
• Various network cables, switches and powerstrips
• A Metric Butt Ton of Music (including Classical) and Anime

Emily:

• Gamecube
• 1 Gamecube controller
• Mario Kart
• 2 Xbox controllers

Kelly:

• 1 - 27' TV

So yeah, this thing is gonna be big, I mean BIG. Like the way people imagine the galaxy to be. Infinite big.

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Page design and randomness

I guess I should actually write about something.

So, um, well I just finished making this here page all pretty, I may add some pictures here later. It's got the whole Metal Gear Solid feel goin' on. That's kinda my thing.

I think this would be a cool place to upload some of my artwork or other junk. Yeah, I may do that, which would mean in turn that I should start getting creative again.

I went to the DC Improv on Tuesday. My mom is in this Improv troop, she really likes it. Therapy is what she calls it. To get up on stage and just let go, the feeling must be pretty amazing. I don't think it's something I could ever do. I get too nervous. I'm not really the type to 'bear all.' Anyways, I do enjoy going, and even more so I go and film it and get paid. Yeah, cash is good.

I'm going to be host to one of the biggest gaming parties this side of the universe on Saturday. It should be silly. 16 player Mario Kart action on two 100+ inch projectors and two 27-inch TVs. Mecca isn't the right word, but it's the first word that comes to mind.

If i'm still alive afterwards I'll blog about it and post pictures.

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Hello from the world of tomorrow

I guess I'll be writing again. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with it. This should be interesting.

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