Day Thirty-Five: Blogsperiment Results Show

Bivins' First Law of ElectroWonk Success states that success on the interwebz comes not from talent, but from determination. A flood of shit-awful content will always beat a trickle of brilliance.

Bivins' Second Law of ElectroWonk Success states that if you talk about topics that people frequently do Google searches for those people will end up on your blog.

What am I getting at? Well, the hypothesis of my Blogsperiment (stated above as the First Law) was pretty well supported, my traffic over this period nearly doubled or quadrupled from the month before depending on which numbers I'm looking at (the thirty-five day thing didn't work well with my hit counter). However looking at the numbers DID reveal something which seemed to confuse the results: the Blogsperiment month was the highest traffic month in a year...EXCEPT FOR DECEMBER 2008 WHEN I POSTED A GRAND TOTAL OF FOUR TIMES!

Now you could (and I usually do) just chalk that up to "sometimes the Internet does weird things for no reason" (I guess that's Bivins' First Law of Sometimes the Internet Does Weird Things for No Reason) but looking at the posts I have another explanation. In this Stray Thoughts post I allude to my innocent posting of this goofy picture earlier that year, which when the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still started getting buzz began sending random internet search monkeys to The Blog in massive numbers, predictably peaking in December 2008 when the film was actually released. I'm STILL getting hits off that picture (and "nut puns", which I've yet to make up a law for except I guess Bivins' First Law of Sometimes the Internet Does Weird Things for No Reason).

So I GUESS the Second Law ought to be First as it seems being topical in a search engine friendly way trumps posting lots of original content, but anyway the Blogsperiment was still a success! Based on this result though maybe the next Blogsperiment should be going a month posting something provocative and searchable about Twilight every day. But that might involve more research than I'd be comfortable with. I'd actually have to know the names of the characters and have a notion of what the hell the books are actually about. What are they about? Is Bella a teenage girl who befriends a guy with some kind of weird cancer or radiation sickness that makes him all sparkly (Edward) and then there's like pink ponies or unicorns or something I'm just trying to imagine why girls are so excited about these damn books and movies. I don't remember if I mentioned it here but last year I was at a movie theater to see Frost/Nixon (and now I can't picture Nixon without picturing Frank Langella, that guy's good) and a middle-aged woman in front of me in line had a really long conversation with the ticket taker (also a middle-aged woman) about Twilight and apparently they were both HUGE FANS. OF BOOKS AND MOVIES INTENDED FOR TWELVE-YEAR-OLD GIRLS. For my parting comment I direct you to the title of this post.

(Oh man I didn't think it was possible but I think I've somehow become MORE self-referential over the years.)

Day Thirty-Four: I'm Probably Not Going to Post Again for a Year After This Thing Ends Tomorrow

So I made a new Soundclick page and put Acoustafuckit up there and I've put a little player in the sidebar here that you can listen to all the tracks (except for the Secret Bonus Track for Closers Only, which is only on my personal version of the album.) You can also go to the page and download all the tracks individually, and here's the front and back covers if you want them. (Also it seems when you download them it replaces the song title in the metadata with the file name from my computer, which means track one is named "Track1" and so on, so that's aggravating (and confusing, since the original files all had their titles filled in correctly.)) I kind of hate Soundclick for a number of reasons, mostly irrational but also they censor song titles, album titles, and lyrics sheets, and they do it in an obnoxious way, replacing whole words with asterisks so they're unintelligible, so for them I put the title in as Acoustaf*ckit but the picture I used for all the songs was the album cover, zoomed in so that the title would be legible even in the tiny version they put next to the songs on the page. If they ask about it I'll tell them it says Acoustafiickit and the dots are there, they're just not looking hard enough. See, that makes it their fault!

EDIT: Forgot to mention: on Soundclick's site earlier I had Ad Block Plus turned off for once (normally I forget to turn it off ever, I only have it to block nasty ads on nasty sites) and I encountered an Evony ad in the wild for the first time! I'd only ever seen them in articles discussing how shitty the ads and the people behind them are and how they are engaging in generally shitty and fairly illegal behavior all around. Again, I probably would've seen one sooner but I keep forgetting to turn off Ad Block Plus.

Day Thirty-Three: Animals in Nature with Weaponized Junk

Holy crap did you read Dinosaur Comics yesterday? Quoth the T-Rex:

"Yeah, when people talk to me about intelligent design I yell 'BEDBUGS HAVE INSTITUTIONALIZED STAB RAPES!'."

The title text also references "weaponized junk", which might be the best neologism yet coined in that comic (jennifing included).

Yesterday it was cold (but not freezing) so my mom, my sister and I went to the beach. We don't like to swim we just like to walk around and stare at the horizon. We sat awhile on a blanket and a bunch of little birds kept hanging around us, we believe because they were hoping we had food to give them. We did not.

All over Thanksgiving I was trying to remember this description of Sarah Palin's book from this article to tell my mom because I think it's the best thing ever:

"Sarah Palin is the Empress-Queen of the screaming-for-screaming’s sake generation. The people who dismiss her book Going Rogue as the petty, vindictive meanderings of a preening paranoiac with the IQ of a celery stalk completely miss the book’s significance, because in some ways it’s really a revolutionary and innovative piece of literature."

I'm so glad I'm following Micheal McKean on Twitter or I never would've read that.

Day Thirty-Two: Footsteps, Counted Them Myself, Thirty-Two Footsteps

Google.co.uk search: "nut type puns"

Gotta love them wacky British type people.

I've been listening to Acoustafuckit over and over again trying to decide if I want to take another whack at any of the tracks. There aren't any terribly noticeable mistakes, but in abstract musiciany ways I feel like some of the tracks could be better.

In a public restroom the other day I encountered for the first time possibly the greatest invention ever: the sanitary door hook. It's a plastic handle set high on the door that you grab with your forearm to avoid getting stranger's pee germs on your hands. There's still the possibility of getting stranger's pee germs on your forearm but unless you're licking your forearm that's not such a huge deal.

Day Thirty-One: Harry from Third Rock from the Sun HASN'T had an acting gig in a really long time. It's sad.

Have to do this early before I go to my mom's house. I'm not leaving for hours but I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep so we're doing this now. Also I've been wanting to pay off the Third Rock joke since yesterday.

Last night I went to the mailbox to put a DVD back in it (I know it won't leave till Friday but I didn't have anything better to do.) The trailer park was chock full of Thanksgiving visitors, the prodigal hillbillies having returned to their aluminum wombs.

I thought that paragraph was going somewhere but I was wrong. But I did just remember that I saw something sitting on my porch overhang yesterday but it was too high for me to reach it to examine more closely. I will now go outside to see if I can get it with my reaching claw.

(Goes outside with reachin' claw.)

(Comes back inside a few minutes later.)

Okay whatever it is is apparently integral to the structural integrity of the overhang. It's this plastic nipple thing, kind of a giant Sorry piece, if you remember that board game. It's screwed down. I cannot imagine a function that this beige plastic nipple could serve on my porch overhang. If there are any porch experts in the crowd who could clarify this matter I would appreciate it.

Day Thirty: Dick from Third Rock from the Sun IS a freaky serial killer on this season of Dexter

Well, I finished the acoustic album I've been working on for the past few days, and made album art for it, AND got Windows Media Player and my mp3 player to display the correct album art for it (though WMP kept me on my toes by mixing up the front cover with the back at first, but I fixed it). This illustrates the amount of work I put into a typical project. Time from inception of idea to finished product: three days. And I slept most of yesterday. And I watched a lot of TV all those days. And I already had all these songs written. I'll have to put it online somewhere I just don't know where exactly yet. Here's the cover I made:


I can say that I listened to it about five times while editing it and making sure it sounded good and also I've left it on repeat for the past few hours while I was working on other stuff for it and it's not totally awful. And most of the songs on it have never been heard by human ears (besides mine, since I wrote them.)

Day Twenty-Nine: Tommy From Third Rock From The Sun IS Cobra Commander!

Like I said last week when I bashed Transformers 2, up next on the chopping block is another toy-franchise-turned-cartoon-franchise-turned-much-delayed-motion-picture: G.I. Joe: The Most Ridiculous Idea for a Movie Since Transformers.

It's been a string of epically bad blockbuster films lately, before Transformers 2: Revenge of the Robots That Turn Into Cars and Some Other Things was Indiana Jones Meets the Kid from Transformers and Cate Blanchett Does a Bad Russian Accent and Has a Sword for Some Reason. But this one, THIS is a piece of shit I can get behind! IT HAS EVERYTHING! Gratuitous destruction of recognizable landmarks, jetpacks, holograms, TWO ninjas (FIGHTING TO THE DEATH), a Wayans brother, a car chase (featuring a motorcycle and a hummer with MISSILE LAUNCHERS), a British guy playing the President of the United States, Dennis Quaid, a cameo by Brendan Fraser for some reason, an invisibility suit for no apparent reason, jarring and unnecessary flashbacks, a secret arctic lair which is ALSO an UNDERWATER BASE, several really impractical elevators, and of course, the Ninth Doctor (doing a bad Scottish accent which is barely different from his natural super thick Northern accent)! And a surprising amount of submarine sequences, I mean I guess with an underwater base submarines are going to be involved but there did seem to be an awful lot of submarine action. Oh, and former sitcom child star Joseph Gordon-Levitt. As Cobra Commander.

But what sets this movie apart from T2 (not Terminator 2) and ID4 (not Independence Day) is really the attitude: most of the people making this movie clearly understood that they were making an epically stupid movie. I don't know if the director did, at least one writer knew due to the number of tongue-in-cheek jokes, and most of the better actors knew (I don't think Channing Tatum did...poor fool.) Was the acting bad? Yes. Was the writing bad? Yes. Was the plot ridiculous? Yes. Were the special effects cartoony and gratuitous? Oh GOD yes. But this is a movie based on a toy and it carries itself like one, unlike Transformers which spends far too much time justifying its idiotic premise and setting up its absurd plot. And Indiana Jones 4...well again I don't think they could have saved that movie.

Day Twenty-Eight: Bad Food and Rude Noises

Last night I went out to put my Netflix movies in the mailbox and then I went over to the 7-11 to get some snacks. After I ate the snacks I recorded myself playing some songs and as I was kind of urpy (from the snacks), while singing one song I burped directly into the microphone. I haven't listened to the whole thing yet and I can't remember which song it should be on but I REALLY hope it's audible. It was a rather quiet burp. If it didn't register I'll just have to project better next time. I need to retake some songs that didn't come out good and ALSO didn't have burps in them! I mean, no burps? What's the point!

Anyway that anecdote just illustrates my old rule of "Never eat junk food before performing" which for me becomes "Never eat at all before performing." Because when you take the junk food out of my diet there's nothing to replace it.

Hey, how does one record whistling without it coming out as mostly wind noises? On one of my older wacky songs I sometimes do a whistle solo and it never records correctly.

Day Twenty-Seven: Day Three Times Three Times Three

Watching Office reruns again. Bored. Bored? Yes bored. Bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored. And now I've come on the Internet to inflict my boredom onto you, unsuspecting reader! Searching for nut puns or that funny picture from The Day the Earth Stood Still I made or "jennifing" (surprising how many people Google words that Ryan North made up.)

Is it not weird that they congratulated Prince Charles and Diana on their recent wedding at the end of An American Werewolf in London? I watched that the other day. Also how could the ghost zombies touch things? Were they ghosts or zombies? Could other people see them? Did you notice Rik Mayall (later of the Young Ones) in the pub at the beginning? I did.

Oh my neighbors are having a cookout. I'm going to sit a chair at the window and stare at them through the blinds, holding them open so only my eyes are visible. THEY WILL RUE THE DAY THEY INVITED FOLK TO THIS TRAILER PARK.

Day Twenty-Six: Here's What *I* Heard

I have no need for an attorney, so the ones who constantly bombard me with commercials whenever I watch TV are annoying as hell. One of them makes several questionable claims and whenever I hear it my brain makes up a more believable version:

"If you have questions about your case, email me at my personal email address. This is the same address I use to make appointments with hookers on Craigslist and correspond with deposed Nigerian princes. Or call me at this 800 number, which rings directly to my cell phone. Even if I'm in the middle of a tryst with two Asian whores I'll pick up and talk to you about your case. You'll never have to talk to a case worker because all my case workers quit after I sexually harassed them. Collectively."

Day Twenty-Five: :eviF-ytnewT yaD

Ack, nothing on TV. Why am I being punished for not liking shows about women who talk to ghosts or professional wrestling or Dateline or reruns of crappy shows or Shrek the Third (they haven't been good since the first one...and even that was just okay)?

While trying to come up with something else to write, the Blog was spammed AGAIN. It's always the same post that gets spammed, too. What is it about that one post that the spambots love? It's not even the "nut puns" post, that's the post that gets the most traffic. People all over the world, usually on college IP addresses, search Google for "nut puns" and are sent here. This leads me to believe there is a void on the internet that needs to be filled with a website dedicated exclusively to nut puns. Somebody jump on that. THE PEOPLE DEMAND IT.

Day Twenty-Four: Living Crap

What the living crap am I watching? (looks it up) Crossroads Cafe? Originally aired on PBS? That explains this lengthy educational segment between scenes. It's kind of like Twin Peaks without all the interesting stuff. Or Saved By The Bell but without the young people.

Hey! The douchey guy with an acoustic guitar show is on! "Yeah, when I wrote that song I was getting over a bad breakup. My hair? Yeah the frosted tips are a bold choice but I make it work. Especially with the puka shells and rugby shirt. Now I'd like to play some John Mayer covers."

Heh. One time on that show I saw a guy playing a slide bass guitar, which was fairly awesome. Mostly they're just douches, though. That's a major reason I don't like to play solo acoustic is I don't want to be the douche with an acoustic guitar. Also I'm not a great rhythm player, I'm better at solos, but I can't sing and play lead at the same time and I can't play solos properly without a second instrument to play rhythm. But also there's nothing terribly interesting about a solo acoustic guitar. If there are no other instruments to interact with there doesn't seem much point.

Day Twenty-Three: Things I Only Noticed the Second Time Watching the New Star Trek

• Uhura is apparently already a Lieutenant when they leave for Vulcan even though she's still at the academy.
• McCoy says something to Nurse Chapel in the first sick bay scene but she is off-screen.
• Apparently in the alternate universe stardates are now just the year in AD plus some decimals. I hope they realize some Trekkies actually think there was a logic behind the old stardate system!
  
• The uniforms in the Kelvin time period use blue for command, which with the gold TOS command uniforms and the red TNG command uniforms hits the confusing-the-fans-with-arbitrary-color-scheme-shuffling trifecta. (Full disclosure: I noticed that the first time I saw the film.)
• Planet Vulcan is REALLY BIG in the sky on Delta Vega. Like crazy big. Bigger than our moon. Where exactly is that planet?
• I still don't understand why Tyler Perry is in this movie. From the commentary it sounded like they actively pursued him.
• The Star Trek: Countdown comic book (which is full of problems anyway) is totally inconsistent with the events as explained in the film. That hurts my nerd cortex (nerd cortex: (n) 1. the invisible extra piece of brain that only nerds use).
• Did you guys see T'Pol from Enterprise on House this week? She wasn't so great. She didn't have much to work with, though. The Vulcans in the new movie? Major assholes. I'm glad most of them are dead.
• My chicken tenders are getting all cold. I blame you. I'm going to microwave them for a sec.
• I hope the next movie has Yeoman Rand. Yeoman is a weird word. They'll probably make her an ensign if they bring her on. Also I hope Chapel has some screen time.
  
• Oh, I'm still annoyed the redshirt guy that dies in the space jump is an engineer. The reasons guys in red shirts always got killed on the original series is because those were the security guys and that was their job!
  

Day Twenty-Two: Transformers 2 Was Fairly Sucky

I watched Transformers 2 the other day. That movie was all kinds of awful. Even worse than Transformers 1, actually. I realized while watching it that my main criticism of the first film was that the robots take too long to show up, but Transformers 2 STARTS with a huge robot fight and honestly that's even more boring. The big fight at the end of 1 was intensely boring and the big fights ALL THE WAY THROUGH 2 were even more boring. And both movies needed more John Turturro. That goes for all movies ever. On the upside I was glad the Decepticons had personalities this time but Megatron's voice was too much like Optimus Prime's.

Next sucky movie on my watchlist: GI Joe. I can only imagine the suckitude.

Day Twenty-One: Two Hours Too Late

Judges? Oh right I'm the only judge. STILL COUNTS FUCKERS.

I was out all day, took a road trip up to the panhandle with my mom and my sister. Mom had business up there, I love long car trips, and my sister doesn't like to be left out.

We managed to avoid any semblance of civilization after leaving the Orlando city limits, truckstops were our reality until we reached our destination, a string of rundown buildings and scattered fast food franchises nestled in patches of thick forest with a highway running through it. I alternately compared the place to Bithlo, Sanford (cities in Florida), and Costa Rica (an impoverished nation in Latin America).

On the drive back I discovered most of the route was so dark that I could actually see the stars properly, which of course meant I spent as much of the ride home slumped back in the rental car's backseat looking up out of my window at the half of the sky I could see. There was apparently a meteor shower tonight, I knew this ahead of time but I would've been looking up anyway, I've been trying to get a decent look at the stars for months, there are too many street lights in my trailer park. I saw three shooting stars. After informing the others of the first I was subjected to a joke that I should wish for good gas mileage on the ride back. Needless to say I kept the second and third sightings to myself.

Surreally, we were seemingly followed all the way back from the panhandle by peculiar patches of what I call "rolling fog", a phenomenon I'd seen before but which still amazes me. Puffs of mist wisped around cars and sheets blanketed fields and concealed lighted billboards for offramp nudie bars. (It pains me greatly that Firefox's spell checker recognizes offramp but not nudie.) The whole way back I listened to music in my headphones, the only appropriate accompaniment to these events was obviously the Twin Peaks soundtrack.

Best of all, we went just far enough north that I was able to find some Jones Soda, in the bottles no less. Had a FuFu Berry and a Strawberry Lime, saved a FuFu Berry for home (I already have a stash of canned Strawberry Lime that I'm saving.) Outside of a convenience store up there I saw a series of guys I declared to my companions to be "douches." They all seemed independent of one another, so I was highly amused to see the five of them all in the same SUV a few minutes later.

Day Twenty: Trailer Park People Are Assholes, Aliens(?)

&&&&&&&&& &&&&& && &&& && && &&& &&&& && && && &&& No I'm just kidding folks.

Last night the people next door had some sort of gathering, I believe to watch a sporting event as I could hear an announcer blaring on their television and the kind of shouting they were doing was clearly related to an athletic competition.

The night before I went out around 10:30 to go to 7-11, I started to walk up my street but quickly doubled back and went around the other way because someone up my street was shouting in Spanish. I went around the other way and I continued hearing the shouting until I was out of the trailer park.

When I moved in the trailer on the other side of me was one of the nicer trailers in the park (besides mine which is clearly the best). Just after I moved in the people who live in that trailer began painting it an ugly beige color. They painted most of ONE SIDE but did a horrible job, missing big spots and letting paint drip down the trim which they didn't paint at all, and when I had occasion to look around the other sides they painted them in a completely different clashing color with much the same attention to detail. It is no longer one of the nicer trailers in the park.

Another one of my close neighbors (whose trailer I can see from my window) has bedroom windows which glow blue at night. I've never seen them but assume they are small green creatures with antennae.

Day Nineteen: Here's a Bunch of Underscores!

___ __ _______ ____ ____ ______ __ _ _____ ____ ____ ________ ______ ________ ____________ ___ ____ __ ___ _____ ____ ____ ____ ______ ______ ____ _____ _____ __ ____ ___ ___ ______ ___ ____ _____ ____ ____ _____ _____ ____ ___ ___ ____ _____ ____ ______

___ _____ ___ _____ ___ _____ ___ __ ____ _____ __________ _____ ___ ___________ ___ ________ _______ _______ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ ____ _____ ___ _____ ___ _____ _____ ____ _____ _____ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___________ ___ _____ _______ ___

____ ___ ____ _____ __ _ _____ ____ ______ ___ ______ ____

Day Eighteen: TWICE AS HARD

From the engine revving noises there would seem to be a biker gang outside my house. Better break out my good numchucks (I am now committed to writing it AND saying it that way) and put on my faded jeans and white tank top and go 80's AMERICAN NINJA STYLE ON THEIR ASSES.

I don't know if anyone but me is getting that joke. I don't care I think it's great.

Part of me wants to get up and look outside to see what the hell the engine revving noise is about but the rest of me is really lazy and also it keeps going away and then coming back after a few minutes.

I do have good numchucks by the way. I just have the one good set, I want to get a matching set so I can have one for both hands and injure myself TWICE AS HARD.

There are these styrofoam panels over my bedroom windows to keep the light and heat out; I discovered immediately that they make cracking noises. It took me months to figure out WHY they make noises: my windows aren't sealed well and the panels are moving in the wind. It's windy today and the damn things are cracking up a storm. I have to fix that, it's really aggravating when I'm trying to sleep.

Day Seventeen: Boy do I suck at life!

Cold in my house today, wearing my KICK-ASS ACTION COAT. Speaking of, I worked on the comic WHICH FEATURES SAID COAT last night, and by "worked on" I mean I sat with the word processor open glancing intermittently at the script while watching The Office on Netflix. BOTTOM LINE: not much progress! Boy do I suck at life!

(time passes)

There are train tracks not very far from my place, I can always hear the train when it goes by. Also when I'm sleeping in the daytime I can always hear the guys mowing the lawn and it sounds like they're inside my head. I need better soundproofing in my bedroom. And better light-blocking.

Day Sixteen: Mail holidays screw up my Netflix schedule.

God damnit is there no mail today? DAMN HELL ASS.

Why can't they make Veteran's Day one of those always-on-a-Monday holidays? It's not as annoying when the mail doesn't come on Monday as opposed to the middle of the week. The only reason it's on November 11th is because of Armistice Day and I think just about everyone who fought in World War I is dead now anyway. I love that Michael McKean quoted from Breakfast of Champions on his Twitter.

Look at Presidents Day: Washington's Birthday, which is February 22nd, was a holiday until 1971, when they decided to make it the third monday of February but then kept calling it Washington's Birthday as though his birth date changed annually. Most places call it Presidents Day now because most places agree Washington's Birthday is February 22nd.

Honestly I see no reason why the mail should stop on any holiday. I mean I'm sure there are plenty of good reasons I just don't care about any of them.

Day Fifteen: Fuck this day. This day is fucked.

Only because I can't think of anything else to write, here's a story: yesterday I went to the store and Bailey (the cashier that pissed me off last week, and that is definitely his name by the way, I confirmed it yesterday) was working. As I walked in I briefly caught eyes with him, and he totally gave me the stink-eye. Somehow I found this extremely validating and I was in a good mood the whole rest of time I was shopping.

...Yep that's all I got. After my Blogsperiment ends I'm going to have to cut back to three days a week max. My life is just not eventful enough to do this every day.

Day Fourteen: We then take a moment to soak up the irony.

I'm going to do the bleary-eyed half-asleep thing again because...I don't know why but I'm doing it though.

Last night at midnight while taking my Netflix DVDs back to the mailbox I passed one of my neighbors with his hands full of mail HA! I'm not the only one in my neighborhood who uses the mailbox in the middle of the night! I wonder if he's a vampire? He didn't look it.

(several minutes pass)

Last night with Hannah Montana on Family Guy gave me an idea for a JBMG story where the Jonas Brothers are some kind of monsters and the only way we can beat them is to resurrect John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, and Kurt Cobain. THE MAIN PROBLEM is that all three of those guys are guitar players so there's no rhythm section. Early on in the story we land in California and find the trailer has crushed Miley Cyrus. We then take a moment to soak up the irony.

Last night's Cleveland Show was pretty good. That show has been mostly pretty awful so far but last night's was pretty good. I can't believe Fox is stuck with two seasons of that show. They better get much better REALLY QUICK or Fox is all kinds of screwed. Then again they're still showing the Simpsons which has been so bad for so many seasons it is now able to cause actual physical bodily harm to casual viewers. They need to put a warning on there. Hey, remember when the Simpsons was a really good show? I believe Clinton was President still.

Day Thirteen: How Long Now Until I'm Famous?

Oh dear, I seem to have run out of thoughts.

(time passes, the outside world continues on as normal)

I'M GOING TO BREAK OUT MY SEGA SATURN AND PLAY VIRTUA COP I GOT THE LIGHT GUN AND EVERYTHING. No, I won't. But BUT my Saturn is already out so if needed I can get set up in like NO TIME. Need to get a big giant HDTV so the guy in the white jumpsuit is big as life when I shoot him right between the eyes FUCK YOU WHITE JUMPSUIT GUY WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING JUMPING OUT AND YELLING "DON'T SHOOT ME!" JUST STAY BEHIND THAT CRATE AND LET ME KILL THE TERRORISTS DAMN YOU!

I wonder if anyone's done a heavy metal cover of the theme from Daytona USA? That game has the best awful Japanese music in it. Japan your culture is ridiculous.

Need to get back to work on the Christmas comics. Will I finish them in time? Smart money says no fucking way. But nobody's taking bets. Because I'm the only one who cares. And I only sort of care.

Can't find a replacement for my Cartman sunglasses. How are people supposed to respect my authoritay without my highway patrol aviator tea shades? The nose rest fell off my old ones. All the ones I've tried make my head look huge. It is but the point of the glasses is to make it seem less huge.

Wait, wait. I need to complete the Sega Saturn trifecta: if you stick the CD of Virtua Fighter II in a music CD player you can listen to the BGM tracks! There! Referenced three Sega Saturn games, actually the three games that used to come free with the system! LIFE'S MISSION COMPLETE!

Day Twelve: I. GOT. NOTHIN'.

THIS PROMISES TO BE THE SHITTIEST POST YET. I. GOT. NOTHIN'.

(fourteen minutes pass)

STILL NOTHIN'.

(three more minutes)

I need to clean out my ears. The right one mainly.

I'm not sick anymore. My nose is stuffy but it's always a bit stuffy.

Was away all day. Watched the last twenty or so minutes of Kill Bill Vol 2 on Spike. Can't decide if my favorite part of that movie is "Are you calling me a superhero?" or when Darryl Hannah gets her other eye ripped out. No, it's definitely the eye thing.

Bought some more of those Tootsie Roll Pop Drops because I finally happened to be in another Albertson's which is the only place I've seen them. I can't remember if it was here or the Twitter where I last mentioned them, they're basically Tootsie Roll Pops without sticks. The last time I bought them the bag proved impossible to open and it exploded all over the floor of the movie theater and I lost a bunch of them. I then threatened violence against whoever designed the packaging. On the internet.

Apparently my concerns were noted because this time the bags have little notches punched in the bags to make them easy to rip open. Also this time I didn't eat them in a movie theater so I could actually see them and could tell what flavor I was getting.

The Blog has been spammed twice since I started the Great Blogsperiment, which proves at least that if you post more often you'll get spammed more often. Or it proves nothing. Correlation is not causation. That's both a fact and a Soul Coughing lyric!

Day Eleven: Damnit! I Forgot Day Eight Was Supposed to Be "Day Eight: Jason Takes Manhattan!" NOW EVERYTHING'S JUST RUINED!

Every word of it true. Instead I listed a series of colors that are also names of songs from Whirlwind Heat's first album.

The other day when I was in the store an old man who works there greeted me enthusiastically with "Happy November!" which confused me because I didn't think that was a thing. Are we just saying "Happy Whatever" these days? Won't that detract from actual holidays?

Oh man I'm totally saying "Happy Whatever" to people come Xmas-time. And I'll pause in the middle like I'm trying to decide which politically correct expression to use!

Anyway the same old man greeted me today with an equally oblique non-standard expression which I can't specifically recall. This again confused me.

I woke up early this morning and started to go back to sleep, but then as I lay awake I had an idea for a short film (or a long film or a series of short films, depends how I feel). It's a Seventh Seal parody, which might as well be a genre unto itself, and I've only written a little bit of it but first I need to figure out who I can get to act in it. I need at least a Death and a Dead Guy and everyone needs to be comfortable with me bossing them around a bit. The main problem is I only know about eight people and I don't think any of them really work. I might end up playing Death but then I need someone to work the camera and I don't trust any of them to do that.

IDEA FOR BOOK: Again following the Spurlock paradigm, I watch nothing but Fox News all day for 30 days and write a diary of the inevitable nervous breakdown which results. PROBLEM: I don't have cable. ALSO: It would be horrible. NEW IDEA FOR BOOK: I pretend I watched Fox News all day for 30 days and write an imaginary diary of the inevitable nervous breakdown I imagine would result. BONUS: That version could have aliens and sexy teenage vampires in it!

Day Ten: THINGS ON MY COMPUTER KEYBOARD TRAY

• keyboard
• mouse
• folding knife
• screwdriver
  
• flosser and refills for flosser
• pocket sewing kit
• pocket note pad
• mechanical pencil
  
• tube of off-brand Neosporin
• bottle of ibuprofen
• some receipts
• A/V switcher box
• 1/8" stereo to 1/4" stereo plug adapter
• keyring (no keys attached)
• tweezers (no twees attached)
• guitar pick
• toenail clippers
• MP3 player (with USB line leading back to my computer to recharge it, if I forget that it is plugged in and my computer turns off it REFUSES to reboot until I unplug my MP3 from it)
• battery tester
• two AA batteries my tester says are fine but my XBox insists are too flat to operate my controller and it starts blinking and then it turns off when I'm in the middle of missions. Fuck you XBox.
• dust mites, I expect
• ghost of the person I killed to get this swanky Tablemate II like you done seen on the TeeVee.
• now I'm just making stuff up
• treasure chest
• Hope diamond
• SNAKES!
• that's enough of this list
  

Day Nine: FUCK THAT SPOTTY SCRAWNY LITTLE SHITSTAIN

I'm kind of fuming because just now at the store I got some serious passive aggressive shit from the cashier. The sitch:

So what with my extreme social phobia I very rarely speak to people when I'm out in public. And unless someone asks me a specific question, like say "What time is it?" or "Did you just see that boy scout run through here?", when someone speaks to me I never manage more than to mumble something unintelligible back, or as my mother puts it, I grunt.

The second dimension of the dealio is that I HATE the question "How are you?" or any variation thereof. There are several reasons, first of all nobody cares how I am, they've just been socially conditioned to consider that a reasonable greeting, which it is not, therefore I object to it on the grounds that it is bullshit. The second and more important reason is that there is no reasonable way to answer the question honestly, the only acceptable answer is "fine" as it is the only answer that does not invite further discussion, and as I am severely depressed most of the time the only honest answer I could give is usually "I feel like a rancid pile of shit" or something equally colorful but then they might feign sympathy or worse yet try to give me advice and that I could not tolerate.

In most stores these days it seems the cashiers are actually REQUIRED to ask how I'm doing, and as it is part of their job but it also makes my head hurt whenever someone asks me that I usually just ignore them or I grunt slightly to signify that I hear and understand them and that they don't need to say anything else. Most of the cashiers I deal with get the picture and especially at the Winn-Dixie that I do almost all of my shopping at (ONLY because I don't have a car and it's right near my house, otherwise I'd go somewhere cheaper and not covered in a perpetual layer of grime) the two or three cashiers I usually deal with I think have all figured out that I don't really talk.

However today I dealt with a different one, who I think I've gotten before, which could explain the escalation of his attitude. He is rather short and scrawny and has a pretty major acne problem (also I would wager he has chronic halitosis and his penis is three sizes too small), his nametag said "Bailey" I think (which would tend to have one's panties permanently twisted) and identified him as a "Customer Service Manager" (interesting as he seems to lack the qualifications to perform adequately in such a position).

Bailey had a rather long involved conversation with the woman in front of me about her superhuman sense of smell (meanwhile I desperately tried to ignore the small child in her cart, who stared at me and babbled something I couldn't make out). When it was my turn I approached my place and Bailey, like the predictable register-monkey Corporate America has made him, greeted me and asked how I was doing. As is my custom, I said nothing, preparing mentally to deal with the little card reader that irritates my OCD, which flares up in these stressful situations. Upsetting my usual routine (which is already a poke in the kidneys to anyone on the Autism spectrum), Bailey repeated his initial pointless question. My ears detected an annoyed tone this time, I muttered "fine," which as I said is the only acceptable answer to the question. (Rather awkwardly, as is everything I do, I want to remind people here that I also never make eye contact, which I don't know if that contributed but I think is relevant.) As I began inputting PINs and answering questions of the little demon card reader box, Bailey continued bothering me with stupid questions, the next one, also I believe required of him by his employers, "Did you find everything alright?", I suppose expecting the answer "No all this stuff in my cart was put there by fairies!". By my terms we were already having a conversation, so I responded, stammering through the fog of my mind, "Yes." This time it was I who was audibly annoyed, but that was the best I could manage in retaliation. For the parting shot, as I walked away, Bailey committed what I think is the cardinal sin of small talk and I think ought to be a capital offense: he called "You're welcome!", passive aggressively criticizing me for not thanking him for DOING HIS FUCKING JOB and not very well I might add.

Another note about me: I almost never say "thank you", mostly because I don't believe in saying things I don't mean. Unless someone has done me some kind of favor outside the normal course of their day, "thank you" is just another bit of conversational tat that I would prefer to do without. In a retail situation the only time I would thank someone is if they've been particularly helpful and kind or if I've asked them some kind of question that they've answered and "thank you" is the only way to communicate that I no longer need their help and I'd like them to leave me alone now. Just saying "go away" would be rude. See? I'm not completely unversed in these matters.

I got progressively angrier on my way home, and I guess Bailey is lucky my temper is so efficiently reined in by my crippling social phobias or I would probably have caved his skull in with a brick. For me, I couldn't even manage to tell him to fuck off, I couldn't even cut him to ribbons with my rapier wit, I couldn't even stare him down with my cold eyes and angry eyebrows. This is the kind of emotionally bare stuff I usually think better of and delete before posting it on The Blog but this is literally the only outlet I have left and I need some kind of catharsis, however paltry.

Day Eight: Orange, Black, Purple, Pink

LIKE A TRASHBAG HELMET MAN.

Yeah I had a song stuck in my head earlier and I remembered that I didn't have it on my computer because it was from back when I used to buy CDs and also is one I haven't listened to since I've owned an MP3 player so I've never ripped it. So I got into my box of CDs and decided this was the time to rip all the CDs I haven't ripped yet that I keep wanting to hear again. I ended up with a stack of about ten CDs and while ripping them I realized they were mostly from the same year because I stopped buying CDs when I stopped having spending money. As each one finished ripping I grabbed a couple of random songs and added them to a playlist that I am now listening to and so now it is a MARATHON OF MUSIC I LIKED WHEN I WAS SEVENTEEN WOO. I had long luxurious hippie hair the last time I heard most of these songs! Also I wore flannel shirts and ripped jeans! It wasn't the early nineties I was just ten years out of style!

DAMNIT that's confusing. I always see birds sitting on this power pole out my window (but through the closed blinds) but I never see them when I'm outside or when I have the blinds open. Just now I saw a bunch of them landing on it and I jumped up to look out there and when I got to the window: NO BIRDS. You know what it probably is? GHOST BIRDS.

So I'm virtually not sick AT ALL today, which means tomorrow I'll either be perfectly healthy or VIOLENTLY ILL. It's also weirdly kind of cold today, probably because it is again completely overcast. This is the third day in a row it's been cloudy but not rainy and as this is Florida where it rains ALMOST EVERY DAY that's really weird.

Yeah screw it this post is over. See ya tomorrow.

Day Seven: Hope of rescue seems bleak, cannibalism starting to look tempting.

Told you.

Slightly sicker today. Will continue to not leave the house and lay around watching TV and drinking plenty of fluids. Ah crap but I'm almost out of soda. Will continue to do those things after I go to the store later to get some more soda.

Trying again to come up with an idea for a book. I have decided my last idea, which was NO IDEA AT ALL, was stupid and pointless and I already have The Blog anyway. This is The Internet's Number One Home for Stupid and Pointless! And I've found the new header message!

Anyway I'm thinking maybe of doing a loose parody of another book and after reading an article about how Ayn Rand was dangerously insane (which I link to even though there's a good chance the only person reading this is the person I got the link from in the first place, which reminds me of a time I told a story to my friend Dan and he had to remind me that he was there with me when it happened) I think this might be a good time to parody something of hers. I read Anthem in high school (which even then made me question the sanity of my tenth grade English teacher) so I already know how utterly silly her writing is, I would just need to find a good spin to put on it to make the idea seem clever and to make it fun for me to write. And I guess if I was going to do one the one to do would be Atlas Shrugged as that seems to be the tea partiers' Bible. Of course the fatal flaw with this idea is I'd actually have to READ the book I was parodying. That would be all kinds of suck.

Day Six: AND NOW THE BLOG FOLDS IN ON ITSELF!!

HEY: shut up!

Okay apparently this is the time of year that I get a cold because I woke up last night with ONE swollen gland ASYMMETRICAL GET IT? Just the one on the right, so freaking aggravating. It's always a little different but it always lasts about a week.

Went on a long bike ride today with my mom (yes my life is just that exciting). On a paved bike path we passed a bunch of weird back yards including one with a little canopy that it looks like someone is living under (there were a bunch of suits hanging on it) and one that looked like a survivalist training camp and we passed a couple churches and neither one of us could remember the word chapel. It was observed by me that only two howling atheists such as we are would forget such a word. I also discovered my bike horn, whose primary purpose is startling squirrels (it's great at that), is also good at getting the attention of dogs (it is squeaky and they always look). As always we made fun of people on fancy bikes in fancy biking outfits and also rollerbladers and a guy with no shirt. My mom attempted to hook up somebody who lost a small dog with somebody who found a small dog with little success. Then we had Italian ices.

Last night for Halloween I watched Nosferatu (which I've seen before but this time I managed to not fall asleep). On many of the captions they referred to "goddamned soil" which I understood but the tiny comedian in my head kept saying "Wow they are cursing up a storm on those captions!" Then I got tired and went to sleep really early and woke up in the middle of the night with ONE swollen gland AND NOW THE BLOG FOLDS IN ON ITSELF!!