The Bombastion

Nuzlocke - LeafGreen #1

2010-12-06T21:47:00.004-05:00

Pokemon is ordinarily a children's game wherein the player collects and battles creatures know as Pocket Monsters, or Pokemon for short. However, when the player's ability has been tempered by years of experience, there is another challenge: the Nuzlocke Challenge. The rules here are:

Any Pokemon that faints is dead.
You are only allowed one chance to capture a Pokemon in a single area. If that Pokemon flees or faints, you cannot try again in that area.
If all of your Pokemon die, you die, and the game ends.

And so I, Pokemon Trainer Mark, set out from Pallet Town in Pokemon LeafGreen, a remake of the first set of titles released on the Game Boy. I've chosen Charmander because the number of fire types are extremely scarce and the number of grass and water ty

pes are high, so I'm making it just a little bit easier on myself. I've also nicknamed h

im Jeff, after Joel McHale's character on Community.

Anyway, my asshole rival, Ryan, chose Squirtle. Of course he/she would, because he/she's an asshole who would pick Charmander's weakness. But whatever, Jeff tore the thing a new blowhole. Now to begin my adventure! ...after some chores.

Now that those were over, I could catch my first Pokemon! And... it's a Pidgey! And after coming quite close to screwing this up, I've got her! I will call her Britta, and she and my Charmander will hatefuck until getting over their damn selves and becoming close friends while they attend community college.

These two are soon (after nearly losing Britta while trying to level her up...)

joined by a Mankey, who strikes me as a Shirley. It only strikes me now that I can only have six Pokemon with me at a time, which makes me consider which characters I dislike most. I don't like thinking about it.

Soon following that was a Rattata, Joey, for obvious reasons. For less obvious reasons, Ryan shows up. For obvious reasons, I win. For even further obvious reasons, I laugh in his face, go catch a Weedle named Toxie in the forest, and dream about throwing the bug like a lawn dart at him/her. What an annoying asshole.

I emerged from Viridian Forest, ready to conquer the first Gym Leader, Brock Obama. He's a user of rock Pokemon, probably because only they can come close to resembling his rock-hard abs. Ripping off his shirt, he exposed his six-pack to the dimly lit gym r

oom, which still produced just enough light to shine brightly into my eyes. They also shone into his eyes, forcing his eyes closed, hidden away from the brilliance of his own washboard abs. I myself caught a short glimpse, but I was blinded for several seconds. When I came to, there was a man. A man with no legs. A man with two arms. A man with two arms coming out of the sides of his head. That man... was a dude. He drove a 1995 Geo. He was the Geo dude. And he was angry. He foamed at the mouth, but so brittle was he that the froth eroded his jaw. The Geo dude howled in pain that shook the mountains, but because he no longer had a jaw, it came out more like "myuhhhhhhhh." It seemed only polite for Shirley to kick him low, right where his rockbuttchin would have been. Crumbling to pieces, the Geo dude thanked us for our kindness.

Brock Obama fumed. His designated driver had been destroyed. He had but one ally left, and it was the writhing stone serpent Onix. Made out 57 individual stones, the serpent was massive, but too massive. A sly kick from Shirley, however, broke this magical chain of crag even swifter than The Dude had fallen. Barock the Rock collapsed, his magical abdominals too weak to save him from my power and comrades, the members of Greendale Community College and a few stupid animals, one of which was encased in a shell, soon to metamorphosize into a new, beautiful creature. Then there was Toxie the Kakuna, the big yellow bug. But we were tight, and that is why we won against B-Rock. As I pinned the victory badge to my lapel, I knew that we were bound for greatness. Not all of my friends would be, of course. They had terrible stats and movesets and they knew it. But the others... yes. They were bound to become legends.

The Animal Celebration

2009-09-15T02:24:00.001-04:00

There is a dog eatin' a piece of cake.
There is a cat lickin' an abalone steak.
Horse found a fruit medley for him to take,
and a nice cheese omelette is there for snake.

Come all, and be witnesses and partake
in this animal celebration for heaven's sake!
It's Sara's birthday, 22 years, I think, give or take!
But listen to the animals, they caution this mistake:
Don't eat too much, or you'll get a stomach ache!

Size Matters

2009-08-24T19:37:00.009-04:00

I seem to be noticing size – specifically differences in it – a lot lately. So and so is getting fatter. This person is getting shorter. A tall person's height is permanently felt and the difference between him and a shorter person has this powerful significance, like all of a star's mass blasting outwards from a supernova.

It's to the point where I'm noticing this rift between others and myself in the most tangible fashion, like how two magnetic objects tremble when next to each other. But this trembling speaks to some larger idea within me, which ends up producing my own trembling (which I hope isn't visible).

Though this is not to say this happens to me and only me; obviously, physical presence makes a difference: you expect certain personalities from certain kinds of builds, shapes, and sizes. But what I mean to say is that these tremblings occur not just because I stand six-foot-two and I'm dating a girl at five-foot-five. The tremblings instead usually arise from something that stands out, attracting me towards a new direction I hadn't seen before for one reason or another.

It's hard to go into specifics when so many people will read this and immediately know what I'm talking about. But what I can say is that these differences aren't obvious: the height difference doesn't mean that I'm a giant pillar of stability or that the shorter person is looking up to me or is an underdog of sorts. That would be stereotypical and, well, boring and not worth writing about at all.

Furthermore, it speaks to how different this year is for me. I'm a senior. 21 years old. Practically an adult. I noticed how foreign my face looks to me. Anyone on Facebook can attest to that change, but it's especially scary when you fear maturity, because with maturity comes aging, responsibility, bill payments, and dying. Sarah Vowell once recalled realizing that, while for the first time in her life preparing the family Thanksgiving meal, that that was it – she was going to die.

And it does feel like I'm on the precipice of some major dip in my optimism. Things are changing. Friends have graduated or just left school, the exes I loved but were rejected by now all have boyfriends, and somehow, I have a girlfriend. I feel like I'm living a memory from twenty years in the future. It doesn't help that I look at people and wonder how stupid we'll think we dressed back at the turn of the millenium.

But I've experienced change before. What's really striking, though, is the feeling I get from things. The school is under heavy construction. Everything will be gone in a few years, and it'll all be replaced by eerie doppelganger buildings, instead. Turn around, and a building with the same exact design from the same exact architect's catalogue will be right there, staring at you with its big, round glass eyes staring blankly at you. It wants to frighten you, as if you've landed on a movie set, but you just feel emptiness, like nothing's changed, nothing is changing, and nothing will ever change. And you might ask yourself, "Well... how did I get here?"

Rare, then, is it to actually feel something within your gut tell you that things are changing, and that things are different now, and will forever be different in the future. Though while everything is changing for me, this change is really something that has happened to countless people before in every time period, in every country, in every town, in every home, and it is happening to countless people, and forever will it happen – though in a slightly different manner to each of us – for the rest of time.

How weird it is, then, to physically feel a change that isn't changing, to feel myself be forced into one direction while others reposition themselves in the universe. To truly feel that someone is becoming bigger, not just physically but in his or her relation to me personally. To feel weak in the stomach, like I'm yearning for something to be different, when I have no control over it at all. Yeah, size does matter.

Twitter Novels

2009-08-07T02:59:00.004-04:00

About a month ago, Richmond's alt-weekly, Style Weekly, asked readers to submit novels that were the length of a Twitter message – 140 characters or less – and published three of them in last week's issue, which can be read online here. My first story (which was published) was this:

His sweaty palms slid his last token into the machine and he pulled the lever. On the 2nd reel, he blanched. By the 3rd, he bled.

Here are the ones that didn't make the cut:

"Mom," shouted Timmy, "there's a ghost in my closet!" His mother opened the door and narrowed her eyes. "You're adopted."

"Let's go on an adventure," beamed the teen. "But we live in the West End and have no money," the other said. They silently wept.

"We hope LA doesn't change you, Conan," they all said. What they all secretly hoped, though, is that LA would change Andy Richter.

Man wants promotion, makes dubious claim to boss and invites him to his home for dinner. In covering up his lie, hilarity ensues.

He pressed return. "My God... I've done it! I've done it! I've made Twitter useful!"

Each candy wrapper has the chance for Charlie to win a tour of the chocolate factory. He unwraps it. It reads, "Sorry, try again."

And, after writing these, I summed up writing a Twitter novel thusly: The key to writing a Twitter novel: crush your character's dreams before they can even arise.

What I wrote after I finished part one of Gogol's Dead Souls

2009-07-21T02:40:00.001-04:00

First and foremost: is this translation right for you? I read somewhere that Garnett is comparable to eating a healthy salad while Pevear and Volokhonsky are akin to a spicy dish. And that's exactly what you'll get here: more subtle humor in a very tidy package.

At any rate, Dead Souls is different from most anything most immediately because Gogol uses it as an opportunity to teach the reader how to look beyond the text and between the lines to discover why things are in the book and how they relate to the story - he compares one man's living room accents to the man himself, for example. For long stretches, he maintains a healthy dialogue that is never boring, condescending, or excessive.

It's also through this method that Gogol pushes the reader to realize that good characters can't be merely honorable and without blemishes, because such people are boring and, furthermore, nonexistent. The story's "hero," Chichikov, is hardly introduced at the beginning and is therefore easily comparable to a sleazy businessman with some clever plot to become rich and famous. It's not until the final chapter of Book One (the only one that Gogol truly finished) that we really get any background on him, which is when we learn how he got to his desperate situation and we realize that, while he is truly a "bad guy," his motives aren't entirely selfish, that he is desperately trying to build an estate to bequeath to his future progeny. And it's this kind of mixture that Gogol spreads across the town of N.: characters that probably don't exist in real life, but highlight some positive and negative aspects of contemporary Russian society.

And that leads to the last important aspect of Dead Souls: Gogol's sometimes-strained love for Russia. These characters show problems in Russian society, but he explains that most of these are universal (at least amongst the Russian person). Gogol's main argument is against the ever-present theme of contemporary Russian literature: the battle between East and West Europe. In short, we see the influence of an outsider (Chichikov) and that of the countries themselves, especially the infiltration of French culture in Russia's aristocracy.

But what is most remarkable is how Gogol pushes the reader to realize all these things while maintaining the levity and complexity of his short stories (though nowhere near as outlandish as "The Nose"). It's a bit sad that Gogol destroyed much of what he had composed for Book Two, but what is there is undoubtedly a classic.

Transformers: The Hypermasculine World of Michael Bay

2009-06-23T23:33:00.005-04:00

Do not see the new "Transformers" film. Even if you're a fan. Even on the surface, the movie trods along for over two hours as the good robots (Autobots) try to keep the bad robots (Decepticons) from blowing up the sun to gain its energy or something like that. There are so many characters that are so forgettable, so extraneous, that you forget entire sections of the movie by the time the credits roll. I will give Michael Bay this, though: there wasn't a scene that I felt had no place in the film and things ended very quickly once the evil sun explosion plot was resolved.

But what is most immediate and most striking about the film is its total disregard for both female intelligence and other races. There is only one positive character for each, and both are either reduced to a single line or a parade of action movie standards. The black soldier even dons a do-rag when the army makes a mostly useless stand in Egypt. Why Egypt? I can only assume that Michael Bay enjoys his conspiracy theories, as evidenced by the college "nerds" (only one qualifies as a nerd, the others are certifiably nuts) who, on the first day of classes, are running a conspiracy website about the Transformers and by the fact that the machine used to blow up the sun is buried underneath a pyramid. Yes, the Egyptians literally built on top of a giant metallic weapon.

The stupidity doesn't end there. Bay detractors typically point out that he loves his explosions, and the film is no exception. Everything explodes, shoots off fireworks, and flashes past the camera, which is constantly moving. Need to make a car moving at 25 miles per hour look like it's going fast? Shake it! Are your main characters in love? Swirl around them! Unfortunately, when this happens, Bay keeps the camera moving around and around, sending me into an experience topping the worst roller coaster. Bay also think that a fight scene can consisted of a bunch of brain metal twisting around the shot he got when he threw a camera into the air.

The weirdest part about the camera work is the obviously spliced footage from low-quality cameras and shots that could probably come from army promotional material. It's as if Bay said, "Well, hey, I'd like to have a shot of somebody skydiving. I also wanna see some airplanes and tanks!" It also bothered me that they had shots of faces close to computer screens that reflected a different color than what they displayed.

Speaking of color, let's return to the obvious racism in the film. There are two twin robots that transform into Chevy smart cars (red and lime green) who play no real role in the plot beyond a distraction for the giant robot made of 20-some vehicles (and even then, that's only the red one). But when in robot form, they have bug eyes, long ears, and – and this is the worst part – one gold tooth each. They talk like they are right out of the ghetto, bizzatch, and boy, aren't they a wild and crazy bunch! Only good for goofing around and providing a cheap laugh, like this gem: when Shia LeBeouf asks them if they can translate the ancient robot language, the red one comments that he "don't do much readin'." Oh yeah, he's named Mudflap, too. Stay classy, Michael.

Females fair little better. The first woman we meet, Shia's mother, is a slave to her emotions, though there wasn't much of a brain to override in the first place. She's reduced to a babbling child when, as Shia moves out for college, she finds his baby shoes. At college, she buys pot brownies because they were sold as "100% green" (haha, silly environmentalists) and eats it in defiance of her "restrictive" husband. After dropping him off, they vacation in Paris, where the dad drinks a Budweiser and mom gets the escargot, which, of course, is disgusting. Other countries, by the way, are completely ignored. France is demolished, no other country could possibly help the US army fight the Decepticons, and all Egyptians are either goat farmers or evil midgets with an affinity for family members and friends. Haha, he's short and angry!

Anyway, back to the women, who are just as stereotyped as the Arabs and the blacks and the girly Presidential advisor (more on him in a second). If you must watch, notice how every single female (except the soldier who relays an IMPORTANT PIECE OF DATA for about two seconds!) is supermodel material and have no actual lines. Leo, the "hot but crazy roommate," even has set up a system where he'll have sex with 55 girls before the year's out.

Shia's girlfriend fairs little better as she clearly symbolizes the hottest girl that Bay could possibly think of. She's a mechanic, but stunningly hot, unlike all those other female mechanics. She wears short shorts, a low-cut shirt, and her hair down. She's got power, but she's also a mother (as evidenced by the Decepticon "pet"), and is willing to relinquish that power when a strong man is around. She tries to break up with him, but Shia's persistance keeps her tethered to him! When the pair are running, Shia is of course pulling her by the arm in every single scene. What she really wants, though, is for him to tell her that he loves her. Oh women, always trying to goad men into commitment!

Speaking of women, guess which man is portrayed as womanly? You guessed it, it's the aide to the President (Bay had the balls to mention Obama!), who is SHORTSIGHTED enough to PULL OUT OF THE CONFLICT which would ultimately lead to the sun blowing up or whatever the Decepticons were trying to do. Hoho, subtlety! I award thee a plaque, Michael Bay! He drives the point further home when he places the aide (for some reason) on an army plane over Egypt as they attempt to place Optimus Prime on the ground. When called to action, the aide doesn't know how to use the parachute and desperately seeks the help of the army general. Rather than assigning a man to parachute with him, the general tricks the aide into opening his chute on the plane. Hoho, silly aide! Even worse for him is that he is in a FOREIGN PLACE where all his smart-aleck knowledge can't help him because he can't communicate with these Arabs!

I also have one final question, beyond all the racism, misogyny, and ball jokes aside ("Hey, let's have the camera focus on two wrecking balls – HEH, GET IT? BALLS! – for five seconds!"): if Starscream emitted an EMP that wrecked the army's radio signals, then how do the robots still function?

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #11

2009-05-21T03:02:00.004-04:00

K - KHAKIS

I used to abhor jeans. They're stiff, itchy, and blue. Who the hell wears blue pants? Instead, I preferred the khaki jeans family whenever the weather called for them. Sure, it's not as bad as a jean shorts phase, but it was weird all the same. I didn't come around to them until one or two years ago, mostly because I had gained the Freshman Negative Fifteen and a lot of the clothes I had brought with me to college no longer fit. Somehow, the pair of jeans that I had brought "just in case" were suddenly an option.

What was worse was coming home to a closet packed with shirts that were a size too large. Some of them hadn't even been worn; there were others that I wish I could put in that same category. At some point, I had seriously considered wearing a red Hawaiian shirt with a neon teal floral pattern. Another shirt stated that, now that the room was in complete disorder, I had done my job. Wow Kohl's, your selection of shirts really speak to the kind of person I am!

To my credit, I didn't start growing until 10th grade and I didn't care what I looked like for at least another year. Sure, I was a huge dork, but I didn't really care. I went to the information technology center at my high school at my high school, went home, and spent the rest of the day trying to dissociate myself from there. A lot of people consider high school to be the playground for real-life social functionality. For me, it was 8 hours of Chinese water torture. The therapy for that, apparently, is a healthy dose of video games.

To say I'm ashamed of my teenage years is to say eating a pufferfish might upset your tummy. At one point, I figured that I had read all of the books that were worth reading, after I spent my middle school years devouring the formulaic Redwall series and every Calvin and Hobbes collection the library had. The light at the end of the tunnel didn't show until I somehow ran across Kurt Vonnegut and began to branch out musically past They Might Be Giants.

What happened – especially around sophomore year of college – felt like a fog was being lifted, like I was actually able to realize what I was doing and what that meant to myself and others. In that sense, my life resembles that of a robot who learns how to express emotions despite not having them programmed into its hardware. It was almost as if my life were a movie, but instead of acting, I was watching. In terms of Myers-Briggs personality types, it was as if I was a pure Feeler, governed completely by my heart.

The worst example of this was when I played football with a few of my neighbors and I'd run back to my house in the middle of the game to quench my thirst – quite literally – with a Sprite. No, not water, because Sprite tastes good. Oddly enough, being hot and sweaty ruins it. Anyway, when I had finished chugging the thing, I'd wander back out and finish playing rather poorly. At least there were grass stains on my khakis.

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #10

2009-05-20T02:14:00.003-04:00

J - JAR

He was just in the middle of eating. No one should be taken away while they're eating. Nor should they be placed into a glass container. But this is the situation that the caterpillar found himself in.

There are some parasites that find their ways inside caterpillars, usually by laying their eggs inside the thing's head. Once the young are able to, they seize control of the caterpillar's head and turn it into a cute, little zombie. While human zombies are inexplicably drawn to brains, the caterpillar zombie is drawn to the top of a plant, where it can be seen in plain sight. This, of course, provides a wonderfully easy dinner for a bird, which is where the parasite find itself next. Feeding off the bird, it eventually reaches maturity around the same time that it finds itself outside of the bird. This, however, was not as horrible as what our caterpillar was experiencing.

He found that he wasn't alone. There was a stick, too. Oh, and some leaves from a nearby oak tree. He didn't really like oak leaves. He preferred maple.

And then, the sun disappeared from the sky, yet it was still oddly bright where the caterpillar was. It sounded as if God was replacing a lightbulb. The caterpillar was then thrust upward like a rocket and he smacked against the hard sides of his new home. Out of fatigued eyes he saw a great, blurred figure. "If this is God, I wish He weren't so hard to see," thought the squishy thing. He hadn't decided whether he liked God or not. He didn't know whether he liked his new home or his new friends, either.

Then came a muffled shout, and the world shook and was slammed down. Things were quiet, but it was an unstill quiet, where the caterpillar was granted a second to become absolutely terrified. And then the great Thing blocking the sun bent with a great WHUMP. The three amigos were thrown around by it, and again by another. The sun once again shined down, but only bleakly. This was rectified when another series of WHUMPs ensued. And then, they heard the voice of God.

"See, he's got everything a bug needs... food, air, light, and a stick... y'know, for... fun. Do caterpillars eat sticks? I know they eat leaves, but maybe he'd like a stick, too."

And then they moved to a dusty room. Unlike his home, this one was dark, the air was choking, and it was dry. Very dry. Apparently the caterpillar, the stick, and the leaves (which weren't all that tasty) had to condense the dusty, dry air themselves.

And so things went like this for a few days. The caterpillar even managed to climb up the stick before it slipped and he fell to the floor. He contemplated inventing caterpillar origami. But the biggest problem for him was not how to create interesting shapes out of leaves, but surviving. He was hungry and thirsty, but God never showed up. He'd come into the same room, but he never acknowledged the jar, nevermind what was inside of it. On the one occassion that he did, he wondered aloud when the caterpillar would change into a butterfly. He dreamed of the miracle of life that would occur in his room, nay, in HIS jar! He would be capable of seeing the stuff of elementary school science textbooks in real life, and then, one day, he would let the butterfly go and its wonderous colors would shimmer in the sunlight as it flitted across the sky.

The next day, he discovered that his caterpillar had died. What he didn't discover, however, was that this particular species of caterpillar never turned into butterflies.

Sell: A Novel

2009-03-13T02:55:00.002-04:00

EXPOSITION: We see our main character – a financial analyst on a cable television show that is designed to both inform and entertain – provide the latest information about the stock market. The economy has begun to nosedive after a series of poor long-term decisions by money-hungry executives have left multiple companies in multiple industries destitute. [Keller?] then gives his predictions for the market's future and whether or not his viewers should buy or sell stock. Keller professes his belief that a major corporation will be an oddity in this bear market by returning record profits over the next quarter. He repeats himself.

BACKGROUND: Keller never thought he'd be a financial analyst. We discover that he instead wanted to be an evolutionary biologist, largely in herpetology. We also see where his dreams began to take a back seat, where Plan A becomes Plan B, C, D.

ACTION/DEVELOPMENT: Keller deals with coworkers at his first job. When the opportunity presents itself, he seizes it, which also leads to the dismissal of the other members of his team, which worked on lobbying the government for studying human encroachment on amphibian habitats. As a result of this incident, Keller becomes the CEO of the research center. As required by his new position, Keller must interact with the higher-ups in the industry. He follows trends and looks for opportunities to obtain greater funds. He becomes skilled at persuading his representatives in Congress that herpetology research is more than funding the construction of a multi-million dollar bridge to a town inhabited by 50. His success leads executives at a cable finance network to hire him as an analyst on financial trends.

CONFLICT: We return to Keller's prediction. He was wrong. Thousands lose money as stock for the company sells now for $2 each. Media investigations, questioning, interviews ensue. People are angry, some on the Internet calling for Keller's head. A satirist uses the scandal to fill an easy ten minutes of programming. Keller is eventually compelled to confront him on the fake news show.

CRISIS: Keller is put in his place by the comedian. He goes home and reflects on his past, his dreams, his hopes for the earth: humanity, the plants and animals on it, and the well-being of the planet itself. Keller looks to where he could have gone wrong: a Wikipedia page shows that the company for which he advocated viewers to buy stock from has been accused of ignoring state laws that forbid construction on wetlands. This has even lead Fish and Wildlife Services to place a specific species of frog on the critically endangered species list; few exist outside of zoos.

RESOLUTION: Suicide? A change of heart? A public apology on air? A return to his ways because they earn him a gratuitous amount of money?

Lines that made me tingle.

2009-02-12T02:56:00.002-05:00

I apologize for not writing recently; my time has been completely absorbed by classes and the newspaper. Thankfully, though, Meris convinced me to transfer to Prose Writing and it's been truly electrifying. Our first essay is due tomorrow and mine is more or less complete. I won't post the story in its entirety, but here are two lines that made me glow inside with satisfaction as I wrote them:

We wore the masks of our younger selves. We were the king and queen of the playground and upon our jungle gym throne, we could look across our dominion.

~

When I saw her again, she told me about the tape that we had found in the gymnasium. "Just some marching band songs. Nothing special." She smiled.

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #9

2009-01-14T00:38:00.004-05:00

I - ICELAND

There is a saying mostly used by smug nerds about Iceland. It goes thusly: "Iceland is green and Greenland is icy! I am such a clever motherfucker to come up with that all by myself!" Okay, so the last part was made up, but that's what they're all thinking. But what is obvious is that most of these social degenerates have never actually been to Iceland, while I have, and I can report that Iceland is actually a gigantic ice fortress that is home to all sorts of unique wildlife, social customs, and 114-foot tall, natural ice sculptures depicting the end of civilization. Also, the ice is green.

To most outsiders, the music of Björk and Sigur Rós symbolize what Iceland is, and I am here to tell that, in fact, THESE ARE SIMPLY PROPAGANDA DESIGNED TO LURE YOU INTO ICELANDIC FIRE FIELDS. The covers of both artists' latest albums actually provide clues to reality. Björk's magical suit is actually the armor of the Icelandic imperial guard. With Sigur Rós (translation: sugar rows, a street name for cocaine), it shows a group of people, naked, running across a street. They are actually crossing the vast fire rivers to go vote for the ruling party.

Fig. 1: An Icelandic Imperial Army Uniform

Now, you may be wondering, "How in the world can Iceland be both a gigantic ICE FORTRESS and also strewn with FIRE PITS AND RIVERS?" And as you ask this question, I reply that you in fact have answered it yourself! Iceland is in fact NOT OF THIS WORLD, but instead in a parallel dimension, accessible by actually traveling to what the Earth defines as "Iceland."

I know that you have many questions left, such as "Why is the ice green," "How long has the real Iceland existed," "Who are you," and "What are you doing with my baby?" Trust me, all will be answered in due time, though I need your child for an experiment involving anteaters and a gigantic electromagnet. I apologize in advance, however, for Iceland is not what you would typically consider as one of the Areas of My Expertise (har har).

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #8

2009-01-04T00:55:00.005-05:00

H - HELIUM

Psssssssssshoomp.

"Here ya go, kid. A big, red balloon." Justin smiled. Giving away balloons was his favorite part of being a balloon vendor, especially red ones, which turned everything on the other side of the sun the color of sweet cherries.

"Red?" asked the kid. "But... I want blue, Mister J." Mister J was what Justin wanted all of his regular customers to call him. It made him feel like he could be a role model for them while maintaining a certain degree of coolness.

He handed the kid a blue balloon, which shone purple on his face as the sun set. Justin closed up his balloon cart and wheeled it to his car.

Justin has always liked balloons as a kid, ever since he asked for a butterfly at his fourth birthday party and got a net filled with a hundred of the little things seemingly suspended in the air until their eventual capture. However, when he swung the balloon net, it only caught one, small, red butterfly among the many. It had shriveled up long ago, but Justin had tried to replicate it ever since. He was getting close, but when he swung his nets, they would sometimes catch five or ten or two or none at all. He did, however, create a host of other wonderful balloon inventions, such as a frying pan with a pancake that you could flip into the air, a full-size Great White Shark, and the cover of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," all of which were made with (mostly) red balloons.

The obsession with the color red was probably a personal preference thing. Some people tend to buy clothes of one color, others paint their home's walls another, and some people only make balloon animals with the color red.

The next day, Justin arrived at the park and a sneer shot across his face. It was her, that blue balloon bending bitch, Catherine (They were both aware that it would've been a lot more poetic had her name started with a "B." But seriously, what's a good "B" name, anyway? Beth is short for Elizabeth and Bethany and Belinda are just kind of witchy. Catherine's parents certainly weren't expecting that.)

"Ah, I'm glad that you're here," she cackled. "You can have a front row seat to the unveiling of the greatest balloon sculpture ever created!"

Justin's face sagged. "Do what now?" To be honest, he was curious, but he was also nervous, as he hadn't created anything new to provide a witty enough retort to her – the "Sgt. Pepper" collection was entered into last year's nationwide competition. He had won third place.

At noon, Catherine threw up a loudspeaker in front of her face and her voice crackled across the park. "So you've seen the hundreds of squirrels around the park? Well, have you seen one that's 200-feet tall and can breathe fire?" And so, parkgoers came to see her giant, blue, fire-breathing balloon squirrel. Justin was there, too, off to the side. He was smiling.

Catherine screamed. "Let's fire this baby up!" She pressed a single blue button on a remote control and the giant, rubbery squirrel shot a 50-foot-long flame from its mouth. Catherine laughed triumphantly as the crowd ooh-ed and ah-ed, that is, until simple science made its presence known. The latex melted away and the animal quickly deflated into a depressing lump over the mouth of the flamethrower.

An astute man exclaimed, "It's gonna blow!" and the crowd panicked and fled the park. Justin grabbed Catherine and ran her behind one of the brick restrooms before the flamethrower melted itself and ignited its fuel. It resembled a small bomb as the entire park resembled a war-torn city in Palestine as the dust cleared. The two balloon artists emerged unscathed from behind the ripped restroom. Justin's cart had be blown next to them and everything that was inside had been ripped out.

"Hey, what's this?"
Justin sighed. "Another broken dream." He kicked the broken door off of the cart.
"No, I mean, this net-thing. Isn't this what that old guy Tantione made, that butterfly net?"
"Yeah, it's what made me get into balloons in the first place. I never got to figure it out, and now I never will."
"Here, lemme stick some of my blue butterflies onto it. Since red light has a long wavelength, amongst colors, anyway, the net won't work the way that you want it to. You have to balance it out, man. Just because you like red doesn't mean that you exclusively use it."

Catherine finished adding on some of her butterflies to the net. He took it in his hand, and swung at the swarm of red and blue bugs in the air. He smiled. He had caught a blue one.

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #7

2009-01-03T20:29:00.002-05:00

G - GOD

In searching for what to write, I was distracted by looking up interesting animals in response to the trailer for the upcoming film "Earth." As the Space Traveler (aka Unk, aka Malachi Constant) says in Kurt Vonnegut's "The Sirens of Titan," "I was the victim of a series of accidents, as are we all," and that is why (I believe) everything is here as it is today. It's kind of amazing that I'm here, right now, able to type this out on a USB-connected keyboard (as my laptop's fried due to some water), which transmits – as a series of electrical pulses translated to mean one letter or a space or whatnot – to the computer, which inputs it into this textbox, which is here due to HTML, which is a handy shortcut for Firefox to read the page's information and display it visually. When I click "publish post," all of this is sent across the country to a server, where it can be accessed by any other computer in the world. Amazing.

Anyway, that same series of electronic signals landed me on the Wikipedia page for the Rhynchosaur, an extinct little reptile that kind of looks like a naked mole rat. The article says that it disappeared from the earth at the end of Carnian period (somewhere near the middle of the Triasic – when the first dinosaurs were coming into existence) possibly because their food source had gone extinct at some earlier point. At least we still have their cousins today – crocodiles and birds.

I just turned on Cut Copy's "In Ghost Colours" (which I think I'll claim as 2008's best album when I write my feature for the newspaper) as I wrote that. If you haven't picked it up, I wholly suggest it. I bring this up because... it's really good. How can we have good music? Why are some sounds good and some bad? Why is it that what one person considers a good song could be regarded as garbage by another? Why do pop songs all start to sound the same once a new, successful pattern has been established (boy bands, vaguely dancey songs about being dancefloor sluts, the millions of bands trying to recreate the Beatles)?

Well, besides having an easy shot at a spot on MTV and lots of money, it's all about patterns and finding the best ones that manipulate emotions or build the best bridges. I'm talking about fractal geometry. Think of a tree or a river, branching off into different directions and sometimes forking. The reason that they aren't perfect, exponentially growing forks is that they are the victims of a series of accidents, as we all are. Fractal geometry (which I encourage everybody to read up on) applies to bubble formation, cancer cell growth, broccoli, mountains, a microwaved CD, and so much more. I mean, modern movies and video games rely on this technology to create realistic worlds for the individual to escape into.

So how does this all relate to God or gods or a flying spaghetti monster or the all-powerful Atheismo? Either that bastard has been the tried and true method for everything and has left it for us to figure out as some sort of signature or specific marking or, through a series of accidents, nature has stumbled on something that works and has, thus far, gotten us to the point of humanity as it is today – space exploration, morning routines that no other animal could dream of doing (flossing? come on.), different modes of governing ourselves (and the resulting political and military fallout associated with that), the Internet, and so, so much more.

I've already joked to a friend tonight that my view of birth and death and the future is a bit robotic and stale, so I'll get that joke out of the way. BEEP BOOP. GREETINGS AND SALUTATIONS, MR. ROBINSON. I WOULD LIKE TO PROCREATE AND PROLONG THE SPECIES WITH YOUR DAUGHTER BY INFUSING MY SPERM INTO HER FALLOPIAN TUBES, THEREBY ACCESSING HER EGG AND THEREFORE CREATING A FETUS, WHICH IS COMPRISED OF ALLELES FROM BOTH MINE AND YOUR DAUGHTER'S DEOXYRIBONUCLEIC ACID STRUCTURES. I BELIEVE THAT, AS I AM STILL ALIVE AND HAVE NO MAJOR DISEASES AND HAVE REACHED THIS POINT OF INTERACTION, I AM QUALIFIED TO MATE WITH YOUR DAUGHTER DUE TO MY SUCCESSFUL GENES THAT HAVE SURVIVED THE TRIALS OF REMOVAL FROM THE GENE POOL. BOOP.

It all just makes sense to me and that's what so marvelous about life and all of the extras that come along with the package. Allow me to close with another line from "The Sirens of Titan:"

"The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody would be to not be used for anything by anybody."

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #6

2008-12-28T22:56:00.003-05:00

F - FIRE

The fire grew amongst the wildfire. It spread across the forest and it climbed the trees until it kissed the sky. And while the forest lit up and glowed brighter than the sun, there was no smoke. It still acted like a normal fire, in that its flames flickered and sparked, it spread from limb to limb, and it consumed the homes of every animal. But that vile, choking black, that poisonous disease of destruction was nowhere to be seen in the violet sky. By morning, the forest was gone and the sun shone down on the plains, which was soon overtaken, hours later, by a hard rain. The lightning crackled and spat across the storm's canvas as the water painted a battlefield. When the regiments went home, the defeated sun returned to survey the damage and found only seeds and mud. But oh! did those seeds find a home amongst the muck. Despite being surrounded by sludge, the seeds germinated and began taking root before, one perfectly sprightly day, the white threads of life poked towards their life-bringer. The plains began to resemble a brand-new baby's head and, before long, the long, luscious locks burst forth. It wasn't long before insects found new food where there had been none and birds and mammals found homes in the new lofts and dens. When the forest was destroyed next, however, the fire was nowhere to be found, but it was smoke that now permeated the air.

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #5

2008-12-25T02:08:00.002-05:00

E - ELEPHANT

The man rode atop the elephant, in a fancy, wooden box that resembled a castle tower. Rapunzel let down her golden ladder and he climbed out of his box and into the castle window. They talked about elephants and castles and the like, so much so, that whenever he came to her room, he was filled with the warmest glow that made his face shine brighter than the sun. Eventually, the sunlight made his heart grow flowers, which he picked and gave to Rapunzel whenever they were in full bloom. They made love, but the man had never experienced anything so intense, so wild. Her hair seemed more brilliant each day.

A number of months later, however, he noticed that her once-brilliant locks were dulling. When they made love, all of those feelings returned and her hair once again shone, illuminating the entire castle. But Rapunzel was concerned with how far apart their worlds were – her in her castle, and the man on top of his elephant. The man was bewildered. She was just a short climb away, this was nonsense! But Rapunzel truly did love him, so she continued to let down her hair, but told him that each day, it would be just a little bit shorter.

The man continued to enjoy each day that he was her as if he was the richest man in the world, but he was still aware of what was to come. When her hair was just out of reach, he would jump from his box, despite the fact that he couldn't jump very high at all. One day, however, he climbed into Rapunzel's room to find another man, who didn't own an elephant. In fact, he merely walked on the ground and Rapunzel hair had, in fact, been getting longer each day. The man stared in disbelief. Rapunzel's hair shined brighter than the sun. The man's garden had not been tended to and a final, devastating thundercloud appeared in his chest.

Rapunzel offered to continue talking to him, but the man would have to yell at her while she stood by the castle's window. Many times, he considered destroying, burning, and throwing the castle off of the elephant's back, but the sun was always behind the thundercloud, just waiting for its chance to seize control of the sky. The man decided that this chance was one worth taking and continued talking to Rapunzel as he rode his elephant across the desert.

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #4

2008-12-23T21:22:00.003-05:00

D - DRUNK

It was Clay and Sienna's first time. No, they weren't close like that, but they had grown up together in the same neighborhood – three doors down, across the street, to be exact. On the coffee table sat a bottle of Rainbeau Melt.

"Hmph," said Clay, begrudgingly. "Let's just do it."

"The whole thing? Isn't that dangerous?"

"We won't know until we try it."

Clay uncorked the bottle and, with a loud SCWHOP!, it was open and emitting a light blue mist. He poured it into the first two glasses that he found, which were etched with the names of two different restaurants. "Bottoms up," Clay said, and they clinked their glasses together. They drank deep. It was sweet. They drank another glass. The taste was even sweeter. "Pretty good, huh?" asked Clay. Sienna shrieked. "Clay! Your tongue! It's... got every color on it!"

It was true, or at to her eyes. Almost like stripes on a rugby shirt, his tongue had been painted with vertical lines of white, red, black, yellow, orange, blue, green, and purple, from left to right. Clay saw everything only in the colors of the most beautiful sunset ever. Sienna was a brilliant vermilion.

The colors began to become more intense, as if their tint dials on their eyes were turned to their maximum. Clay's eyes filled with color in his eyes, still nicely organized, until they gushed out of his sockets. The paint flooded the room, until it seemed impossible that any more could fit. Then, everything went white.

A splot of red. Bright blue slightly to the right of it. Green dripped. Slowly. Then, a torrential downpour of every color that one could think of (there might have been some sort of ultraviolet color in there, as well) drenched the white world until it tilted, and the colors slid down the slope.

Toucan Sam started singing in a rainforest filled with tall trees with orange leaves. Blue orangutans swung amongst them. Thousands of ants streamed out of a series of mountains, each one a different color, before being eaten by three hungry anteaters.

The paint fell out of the sterile, white room and drenched the rainforest. The anteaters sported polka dots. The blue orangutans were orange. Toucan Sam tripled the number of colors on his beak. The paint rain got heavier, until the sky was black.

Sienna woke up first, and she shook Clay awake. He had been dreaming of soldiers storming Omaha Beach, but instead of bullets, their guns shot globs of color. Once they had realized that they couldn't kill each other with color, the soldiers painted faces on each other and drew vast landscapes in the sand.

Clay and Sienna both stood up, grabbed the bottle, and put it back in the cabinet that they found it in. Sitting down at the kitchen table, they stared at the off-white wall, trying to make sense of what they had just dreamed.

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #3

2008-12-15T01:25:00.003-05:00

C - CHINCHILLA

Rocky crawled out of his cage and into Karen's hands. His platinum fur was especially fluffy today – that hard work was worth something! Her hand ran over the chinchilla's back, and he responded with a chirp, which was followed by her cell phone's ring. She set Rocky down on the floor and answered it.

Aww... hey, what's that? He wandered over and nibbled. Mmm. Leftover carrot. Sweet. Is that more? Rocky shuffled past the door and came upon the air vent, which Karen had taken off to clean. What's that delicious smell? It's coming from down here...

And Rocky tumbled down the air vent. Thankfully, he managed to fall straight down instead of bumping into the sides. He must have been one lucky chinchilla, as he landed in a big pile of clean laundry. Crawling out, he heard a voice shout to him. Peering out of an undershirt's collar, he spotted a gray mouse. "Hi there," the chinchilla chirped.

"You must be Rocky," the mouse said, scratching his stomach. "We hear a lot about you down here, y'know... mostly about how 'fluffy wuffy' you are. It must be nice."

"Oh, you have no idea. I get awesome food and all the water I want, but the best part is the petting and scratches. It's like all of your troubles go away and you kind of fall asleep." Rocky thought about it and giggled.

"C'mere, lemme show you around the place." Rocky obliged and met the mouse on eye-level, who introduced himself as Takk. "Right through this hole is the place where everybody chills after a day with her."

"Her?"

"The neighborhood cat, Vera. What, do you not know that cats eat guys like us?"

"They do what? Eat us? Like... eating a carrot?"

"Do your carrots bleed and cry for their mother as their limbs are ripped off?"

"Oh god. No, that's... oh god. Horrifying. No. That's... oh god."

"Hey hey hey, buddy. Calm down, come get a drink."

The two rodents walked over to where the refrigerator had leaked into the basement. Rocky opened his mouth and let some of the yellow liquid drip into his mouth due to Takk's insistence. A tear came down Rocky's face. "It's... beautiful... it almost tastes like... morning dew on the fresh grass on the side of a mountain." It felt like a hundred Karens were petting his entire body at once.

Takk, however, thought that the stuff tasted like urine, but it at least got his mind off of the cat and let him focus on his new friend. He also briefly forgot the 46 kids that were either currently with his wife or off scavenging for food in the kitchen. He forgot about Suð, who was the dumbest mouse in all of existence. Takk couldn't understand how he was still alive. He forgot almost everything else. But he also got an idea.

"Hey Rocky. Do you like it down here?"

"Yeah... I love it! It's so... different. So real. So wonderful. Everyone seems to know everyone, too."

"What if... you and I... switched places? You know, you can stay down here for a while and meet everyone and really get the whole mouse experience and I go up and see what the easy life is like. It wouldn't be forever. I'd find a way to make it back at some point."

"Oh, but Karen could easy tell us apart! Let's see. First, let's fluff you all up." Takk did this, and Rocky tilted his head to the left. "Mm. Not perfect, but it should be close enough. Now hurry back into the laundry! Karen's probably looking for me and she might have realized that the air duct cover was off."

Takk climbed into the pile of clothes, after Rocky reminded him to look "extra helpless." And five minutes later, Karen threw open the basement door and ran about the room, searching every nook and cranny. She stopped when she heard something moving and chirping, and she chirped, herself. "Rocky! Oh, I'm so sorry, I was on the phone! I should have never let you run around. Come on, let's go sit down and you can eat a big bag of carrots. I bet you're all worked up, too."

As Karen picked up the laundry basket, Takk shuffled to the side. He saw Rocky standing at the hole in the wall, and he waved. "Thanks for everything!" Rocky smiled and waved back. "No, thank you."

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #2

2008-12-12T16:52:00.002-05:00

B - BUTTER

On a glass plate on a long dinner table draped with a crimson table cloth sits a block of butter. Taking a seat, Edward wraps his head around the chair's arms, which are carved with snarling griffins. The butter sits 25 feet away, and Edward stares at it. He leans down onto the table, twists his head to the side, and stares at it, as if at any moment, it will show signs of life. He grabs a butter knife, holding it like a machete. He stands up slowly, careful to not arouse suspicion. He freezes. The butter's watching. Ducking behind the black curtains, Edward peeks out the side for his chance. No good, it seems to have eyes on all five sides. He has one last chance.

In two solid motions, he cocks his arm backs and heaves his mighty weapon at the beast's heart. Just nicked him, he snarled. But at least he's wounded. This may be my chance!

Edward ran like a madman, howling a war cry with both his hands in the air. He leaped onto the table and grabbed the butter with both his hands and wrestled with the foul beast. Gaining the upper hand, he smashed it into a slice of bread, vanquishing the malevolent being.

Edward carried his spoils back to his large chair with the griffins engraved into the arms and sat and placed it next to the five forks, two knives, three spoons, and a cloth napkin, folded in a way that resembled a swan. Unfolding the napkin into his lap, he sank his teeth into the bread, spotting his luxurious mustache with yellow entrails. There was a knock on the door, and a man in a crimson suit (adorned with a brilliant yellow ascot) emerged from the other side of the tall, heavy, wooden doors.

"Prime Minister? I come to discuss a possible treaty for peace."

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #1

2008-12-08T02:57:00.005-05:00

Essentially, you get a word, one for each letter, and write a story. Words were randomly chosen by Ryan. See the first one ever here.

A - ASPIRIN

One more, Brian thought to himself. This was the worst headache he'd ever had, and he'd had a migraine before. It feels like my brain is trying to escape. I wish I could open my skull and let it air out.

Closing the medicine cabinet, Brian looked up at the mirror, staring into his blood-shot eyes. The pain had been there for six days and he was on his third bottle of aspirin. The thought of going to the doctor hadn't seemed necessary, but he was beginning to change his mind. His eyes moved to his forehead and then to his hair, which was thinned out. Dad didn't go bald until his 40s, he complained. But then Brian noticed that his hair wasn't thinning out. It was spread out.

He stepped back. His head must have been twice the size it normally should be. Brian clutched at his head and he felt like a conehead. He called for his wife, but his pained shout was drowned out by a shrill shriek. The pain was unbearable. The ceiling crashed around him. He felt something grab into his shoulders and he was now in the air. His legs flailed. He went higher. His house was now smaller than his head, even when it was normal-sized. He managed to look up, despite the pain in his head and the daggers in his shoulders. Brian screamed.

Brian finally landed in a nest, one at least the size of a football field, except that it was perfectly round, like a cereal bowl. The milk came next – some sort of purple, mucous-like substance filled the bowl and Brian fell under and he choked for air. The pain was gone. Brian stood up. The sky was a brilliant blue, not a cloud in the sky. He was naked.

His hair was all gone or, rather, his head was so massive that it didn't matter how much hair he had. His head was perfectly ovular, but he didn't care. He couldn't feel it, nor could he feel what was gestating inside. A great, big thing landed on his head, but Brian didn't care. The sky was blue. He was going up there. He was going to be the only cloud.

Animal People: The Movie

2008-12-02T15:03:00.003-05:00

...at least, it's the best movie that one can make in approximately twenty minutes. A few students from our Photojournalism class assembled some sound slides about our stories. Essentially, it's a narrated, 200-word story set to about 12 photos of the subject and his/her/its environment. You can view them all here (click on each of our names) and check mine out at this link.

WAR #1: "List of Sudoku terms and jargon"

2008-11-24T00:16:00.002-05:00

WAR, "Wikipedia At Random," is a fun little piece that I'm writing occasionally. Go to Wikipedia, hit "Random Article," and reflect! This week: List of Sudoku terms and jargon!

Well, I'm first struck by the size of the Table of Contents on this thing, and second, by the need for a list of terms for a Sudoku puzzle. Complicated words include puzzle, box, and size - I'm so confused, hang on, lemme figure out what they mean by these...

Sudoku types and classes... yawn. Scroll, scroll... wait, what the fuck is this shit?

25 squares? LETTERS!? COME ON, MATH NERDS, SUDOKU WAS FUN, STOP COMPLICATING THIS SHIT. You people always have to overcomplicate shit and it never gets anything done, like Statistics. I mean, the fact that such specialized terms exist for looking at the fucking puzzle ("scanning") or trying to solve it ("cross hatching" or "counting") is absolutely absurd. This is some OCD shit, come on.

The only redeeming part about sudoku now is that it recently earned me two free Crunch bars from my RA. I'll give them points for naming specific aspects of the board, but it seems like half of these terms are for people who like to use esoteric terms to make themselves feel better about the fact that they're obsessively training for a competition in solving simple math problems.

When people argue that Wikipedia should resemble a real-life encyclopedia rather than a catalogue of all world knowledge, it's article like this and full-on character analysis of an obscure anime that aired two episodes before being canceled that are used to bolster their stance.

WARDROBE UPDATE

2008-11-20T02:05:00.005-05:00

I am now the proud bearer of this fine apparel:

Drawn by the amazing Kate Beaton... read her history comics! http://www.katebeaton.com

DreamBlog

2008-11-16T12:59:00.004-05:00

I get driven to a huge parking deck in a slick limousine. It's twilight, and the sky has painted the world in a warm, orange glow. I step out and walk around the massive complex, but realize that, because I so hastily driven here, I only have one pair of shoes with me - a problem if I'm to be here for a while, which was wholly intended. I begin to walk back down when I notice a couple walking into a room, and I follow them.

They room is carpeted and swathed in bright colors and props. Right, I was at the movie studio because I was being cast. In the room to the left, I meet Joe Biden. We shake hands and I congratulate him, though worry about the relative closeness of the popular vote. He laughs about people he's met on the campaign trail, complete with a classic Biden expression.

I then get dressed up for my big role: Solid Snake (spurred, probably, by this news story). Mario, Link (I think), and I are discussing international politics, but I keep flubbing my lines. Mario has to predictably cheerful and safe for his intended demographic.

We're in some sort of cabana, where the far end is completely open to the sunset and shoreline. To the left of that is a bar, and scattered around are some tables. To the back is a fireplace and a raised platform.

Something goes wrong, however, and Link (?) goes berserk and attacks us. I jump to the side to avoid him, but Mario defeats him, as he throws him against the sides of the wall. To win, he says, I have to kill him before the timer ends. Using a whip (?), I send him out of bounds at the last second. We smile and walk off the set.

Breakfast

2008-10-01T22:19:00.003-04:00

The election is a lot like this bowl of Chocolate Chex, in that the brown chex are so much better than that plain, white ones. Also, Obama is covered in a delicious cocoa powder while McCain is dry and bland - obviously a commentary on foreign policy.

Tea Time

2008-09-21T00:49:00.007-04:00

My roommate knocked on my door.

"So I've tried this tea... I had the mint one, but it tasted exactly like water. I don't really like tea, so here, have this." He handed me the box of Bigelow tea bags. What an odd name. Like that movie.

A few hours later, I decide to make a cup, just to see if it's any good. I open up the rectangular, yellow thing and look at the six different teas that range from "Green Tea" (okay, normal), "Earl Grey" (ooh, exotic), "English Teatime" (uhhh), and "'Constant Comment'" (well... huh), each in a different color. Obviously, "Lemon Lift" is in a yellow bag, "Green Tea" in green, "Plantation Mint" in a darker.

I walk out to the kitchen and my roommate joins me - we're going to try every tea and see how they are. I start with "Constant Comment," a "tea flavored with rind of oranges and sweet spice." Exotic. Interesting. Five minutes later, and it tastes like water. Wait... hm. Another sip. Ahhh.... there's a slight aftertaste of weak oranges.

My roommate goes for green tea, and I, "Lemon Lift." The first is bland, and he used two tea bags. Mine is pleasant and unoffensive, with a nice lemony taste on the way out. I'd keep drinking mine!

And now, we have one left that neither of us have tried: Earl Grey. "Perfectly flavored with natural bergamot." Bergamot. Okay. The tea bag announces the tea's aristocratic history. Well, if the history's behind it...

My roommate smells the bag.

He retches. I, of course, must know how awful it is for a man like him to react like that!

Oh god.

Into the microwave the water goes. He then puts in three tea bags so that there's actually some strength in this batch.

The brew smells as potent as the bag itself was. My roommate readies himself.

He immediately spits it into the sink and sticks his head under the faucet. Not only was it scaling-hot (duh), he says it tastes even more vile than it smells.

Meanwhile, I'm laughing my ass off at him. Regaining my composure, I take a drink.

Oh god. No. Why would you drink this. Why. Why. Why does it have the reputation that it does. No. No no no no no.

We try adding sugar. Oh god. Now it tastes horrible AND it's too sweet.

Fuck you, second Earl Grey. Fuck your nasty ass tea. You could have smelled it and thrown it away. But no, you brought it back to England and let it proliferate. Fuck you, sir.

What Brit Lit amounts to

2008-09-17T01:20:00.003-04:00

I apologize to my multitude of adoring fans for abandoning the blog, but I've been distracted by a lot of nothing and then a lot of everything. I'm going to continue to write to this, though! Expect some crossposts from the newspaper, too.

Studies in Okkervil River

2008-08-06T17:30:00.005-04:00

On Saturday, I walked into Plan 9 with Tiffany, Spencer, and Bob after scarfing some rice bowl thing at Sticky Rice in Richmond and I was immediately greeted with a $3 copy of XTC's Drums and Wires on vinyl.

I wonder if I scared anybody.

After about fifteen minutes of everyone rummaging through the stock and finding something, I was growing frustrated because I couldn't decide on anything. And for kicks, I dove my hand into the "O" section of the used rock CDs. And lo, there was an Okkervil River album! But... hold the phone...! It's... The Stand Ins? That... doesn't come out for another month... holy shit. Holy Shit. HEY GUY STANDING NEXT TO ME, HOLY SHIT.

I wonder if I scared anybody.

Well... turns out that all that holy shitting was worth it. The Stand Ins is Okkervil's best album. All of the sudden, they have energy that only shone through on about two tracks per album. Their quiet songs are still quite moving and beautiful, but "Singer Songwriter." Jesus.

And what the fuck. "Pop Lie," the only pop song that Will Sheff will ever write, is fucking fantastic, even as he blasts pop musicians as liars and those that sing along with them are liars, too.

For some reason, I actually understand the lyrics, unlike 2007's The Stage Names, which also serves as the prequel to The Stand Ins' sequel. That album also feels extraordinarily formulaic, as if the music didn't matter at all, as long as Sheff is spouting too-poetic-to-really-understand-unless-you-are-Okkervil-River lyrics. The Stand Ins finds Sheff writing as stand ins, rather than the headliners and road-weary bands. In other words, the lay-men of the music world.

It's bizarre enough that Okkervil River is playing as a stand-in, because they have never sounded this energetic. The band has returned to sounding organic, like on Down the River of Golden Dreams, but they work together much more powerfully than anything before. They even seem to be having more fun, especially when they aren't constrained by Sheff's theatrics (Black Sheep Boy, The Stage Names).

Sheff hasn't lost his thrill for the music theatre, however, and that's just fine. What he seems to have done is finally find the happy medium between art and fun. Tight and loose. Serious and raucous.

As my more musically-inclined friend points out, Sheff's B-string is off on "Singer Songwriter." But how would he, his band, the recording staff, and others not catch that if it weren't intentional? Given the theme of the song - songwriters that, alas, cannot pull from their boring, wealthy, tasteful lives and won't make a difference (perhaps autobiographical?) - and lines like "And this thing you once did might have dazzled the kids, but the kids, once grown up, are going to walk away." signal that this badly tuned string is a a clever device. Oh, the song sounds nice (it's fantastic), but something is wrong, making it ultimately flawed.

Both the Stage Names and the Stand Ins are flawed, but it's for purely artistic reasons. But those flaws make for better music on the whole on the latter. Both albums feature a song written about Shannon Wilsey (better know as the porn star Savannah), and both are rather sexual musically and lyrically (obviously, considering the subject). However, "Savannah Smiles" (from Stage Names), is from her parents' point of view and "Starry Stairs" is from a fan's. It may merely be personal preference, but I prefer the sexy guitar and horns of "Starry Stairs" over the cute mobile chirps.

And really, that's really what it may come down, to - personal preference. But maybe, for once, it's the stand-ins that should be in the spotlight. Five stars out of five.

Massabloggachusetts, Pt. 2

2008-07-27T19:58:00.003-04:00

Massachusetts, we need to talk.

Your pastramis and reubens are amazing. No other place in the world has come close to your mastery of sandwichcraft. But please, for all that is holy, do not call a cucumber a pickle. A pickle has been soaked in brine for several days. A cucumber has not. A pickle has not been swirled around in brine before handing it to me with my dinner. If you'd point out that you serve cucumbers with your sandwiches, that's fine. But do not call it a fucking pickle and expect me to think that what is going in mouth is one when it is very clearly not.

Thanks.

Massabloggachusetts, Pt. 1

2008-07-26T22:46:00.002-04:00

Vacation... here we are. There's no more work for a whole week, which perhaps is the nicest part of it all. It's nice to be able to settle into days that peak somewhere in the 80s and have more or less zero humidity. It's so nice here, the family (my mom's best friend since first grade) doesn't even have air conditioning. And yet, it's more or less the same temperate feeling that Virginia has, without the pains of the average summer. Granted, the winter will be god-awful, but hey, I'll be back in one-inch-cancels-everything Virginia.

The drive itself was fine. Whatever, it's a long car ride. Final Fantasy 4 on the DS, Stephen Colbert, and tons of music kept me surprisingly occupied for all 11 hours. Colbert's book isn't all that great, to be honest. It's more or less a more comprehensive look at the character on The Colbert Report than anything. Fans of the show aren't missing out, but then again, they're the ones who bought the thing in the first place.

But anyway, we spent our first day at the beach. On the ride over there, my brother said that he saw a frog in a lily-padded pond off the road. I looked out... and it was a turtle. Strike one, dummy.

Being at the beach was a bit blah when you're the only person your own age that you know. You also notice how pale you are, how out of shape or fat you are, and many other physical deficiencies to top off the lovely ice cream treat that made you look like that in the first place. But I combated the first one, didn't worry about the second, and defeated boredom with a camera in the tide pool (see the photos here) and a good, healthy dose of Sarah Vowell.

Vowell makes me proud to be a nerd - so what if you're visiting Salem to learn about witch history (witchtory?) and mocking that tourist trap, too (we haven't done that yet... this year)? So what if Al Gore is a nerd? So what if the guy walking past your little beach campground has a stunning babe around his arm, which, by the way, is twice the size of an average baby? Nerds rule.

Sarah Vowell quotes a post on Slashdot.org:

Geeks tend to be focused on very narrow fields of endeavor. The modern geek has been generally dismissed by society because their passions are viewed as trivial by those people who "see the big picture." Geeks understand that the big picture is pixilated and their high level of contribution in small areas grows the picture. They don't need to see what everyone else is doing to make their part better.

Maybe that explains why my mom yells at me for not seeing the big picture. The big picture is made up of big pictures. So while it may not matter that some girl sitting across from you on a beach that you'll never see again may not be into you, it lends itself to a whole world of issues and ideas and problems. That's not to say I'm letting it affect me, but that's just how it works for me... unfortunately.

Of course, maybe there's a reason why I'm the only one in the family who goes to the library to get reading material for vacation. And it's not required material, either! It's for fun! It may escape my siblings, but hell, I love it.

One other point: after watching the horrifically-depressing-but-advertised-as-a-laffapalooza film "The Bucket List," I think I actually understand a famous Vonnegut quote beyond its face value: "If I should every die, God forbid." It was running through my mind throughout the entire movie, because it humanized death (as if it weren't human enough already). Death is something that happens. Don't make it out to be such a big thing... have fun with your life, it's the only one you've got (maybe).

Hey, two digits in my age changed.

2008-07-18T09:30:00.007-04:00

Today's my birthday. The big 20, except everyone considers 21 to be the important one since you can drink and everything. I don't really care, though. I did promise one of my friends that for her 21st, I would try it. I don't think I could get her a better present, to be honest. There'll be a post about Batman and Jim Gaffigan soon!

Shopping for music can be a pain when I don't have anything in mind. To be honest, I should've just purchased "Empire of the Sun" at Borders and moved on, but no, I felt like buying a CD, too. So I ended up agonizing over their collection for an hour or so. Oh, I've heard them... but the song I heard sucked. Do I even like Elvis Costello? I'm not buying another Beatles album until they remaster them. I want to buy something impulsively, but it'd be nice to be able to sample everything in the store. That cover is nice... it'd be nice to listen to something nice and summery and sweet and nice. Oh wow, they actually have XTC... "Skylarking" is a great album.

Phone rings. Can I pick up some Coke on the way home? Sure.

I wander through the store, poking into the discount bins and the CDs that are on sale... nothing. I start to wonder why I'm even at Borders when this 30%-off coupon I have still won't save me as much money as buying "Empire of the Sun" at Best Buy. I might as well, though... but I still want music, since it's been a while, and I want something new. Arrrgh.

I walk back over to the music section and come to the "S" section and see Paul Simon's "Graceland." You know, everyone seems to compare Vampire Weekend to this album. His son's album (The Heavy Circles) sucks total ass, though. Eh, I'll buy it. And I do. After all that agonizing and part of it wasn't over this album at all. I hate myself, ugh. I'm an idiot. Whatever, at least I actually have money now.

So far, I'm getting more and more into it. Not a total loss.

A glimpse into the past, made easy with the internet

2008-07-11T14:11:00.005-04:00

One of the reasons that I love Richmond is that a lot of the old architecture still stands and is still being used today. I saw Speed Racer last night in the Byrd Theatre, which opened in 1928 and sells tickets to recent movies for $2. How can you beat that?

That just inspired me to write a post about the theatre or maybe Richmond itself, but then I remembered that "The Times" in London recently put all of its newspapers online from 1785 to today for free (you can register for free or use login_hater@mailinator.com and login_hater) . I haven't found much out of the ordinary, but others have! A personal advertisement from November 13, 1832 reads:

INSANITY - Mr. OXLEY, surgeon, begs to inform the public that he has a few
VACANCIES in his ASYLUM for respectable patients. No paupers taken. Terms
moderate. Nurses wanted.

There's also this review for a show in 1970 in which Nick Drake opened:

The other really interesting internet time machine that I've come across is the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Archive. The sheer diversity of what you can find is staggering. The images are (usually) in a wickedly-high resolution, so you can print poster-size copies for yourself!

Departure, S.S. Chalmette from Havana Harbor

Chalmette Refinery, American Sugar Refining Company, New Orleans, La.

Tommy Atkins

Federal Theatre presents "Trojan incident" (heh)

And of course, there's always Archive.org, but I've never found too many interesting things, except for entire Soul Coughing live shows that are too large to fit onto a CD. It's weird to think that the internet can be the both information superhighway and the gateway to Jamie Spears' kid, too. You've just gotta look.

A place where piranha and salmon coexist

2008-07-10T13:57:00.004-04:00

I'm back to playing Animal Crossing, a 2002 Gamecube game. The object of the game is to live. Yes, I play a game in which I go outside, talk to friends, explore nature, and become an interior designer. The odd thing is that, somehow, it's often more fun than real life here.

I may have my own room here, but do I have the money to furnish it with all kinds of weird, interesting stuff? Where can I buy a statue of a boy with water streaming out of him? Can I unearth a Gyroid that dances and makes bizarre sounds, often in sync with whatever is playing in my stereo? What about a frog-shaped chair that doubles as a whoopee cushion?

The thing with Animal Crossing is that you can constantly find and make money ("bells") in order to buy furniture, clothes, and a remodeled house. The best part is that there are no money syphons at all (food, rent, maintenance fees) and the resident shopkeep and tanuki, Tom Nook, isn't breathing down your neck for a minimum payment on your brand-new basement. He's always got something new and different in his small, little store, and yet, he's able to have more interesting items on sale than a Target.

The money for all of this comes from selling things - fruit, insects, fish, and more - to him. Your town comes with one common fruit; it is your task to find the four other exotic fruits and successfully grow the seeds into trees. The insects and fish are caught in the wild and sell for often exorbitant amounts - stag beetles fetch about 2,000 bells, while the coelacanth (a "living fossil") goes for 15,000. To compare, the basement sets you back 50,000 bells.

These can all be donated, in addition to art and dinosaur fossils, to the local museum, which is addictive as hell to fill. It's amazing how quickly and easily you can improve the quality of your town by yourself. That's not to say the inhabitants of your town, animals, don't. They provide much-needed relief from the constant grind of fishing by making you laugh, giving you items, or playing games with you. While there are only five main personalities shared between the 100+ possible animals, it's interesting enough for you to find a favorite townie.

Animal Crossing also utilizes real-world date and time, so that events happen throughout the year and different insects and fish visit your town during different seasons. K.K. Slider, a dog with an acoustic guitar, sings songs on Saturday nights and gives you the music, which you can play in your stereo. New Year's is celebrated with confetti around the town's lake. The sheer fun of just being at these events can pull you away from real-life obligations and friends (thankfully, you can cheat by manipulating the time in the game's settings).

Even worse is that, should you NOT play, weeds grow, the town's citizens miss you, and cockroaches infest your house. At one point, however, I stopped caring about the daily grind of Animal Crossing, which may explain my attitude towards Richmond now. I've picked it back up after a few years and it's as fun as ever... hopefully that experience may cross over into the real world. Otherwise, I'll just have to hop on a train with only 1,000 bells in my pocket and my dreams of a new and different life.

Dispatches from an office desk, just beyond the bathroom

2008-07-09T10:16:00.004-04:00

I need a creative outlet, to be honest. I'm a journalist, and yet I haven't been able to freely write by my own accord, even though I was in the features department at a fairly large newspaper. Of course, I was only an intern there and as soon as my university-owned apartment lease ended, I was out of the best job I've ever had, work, money, food, you get the idea.

Fast-forward a week later or so, when I'm walking my dog in the twilight hours when my mom calls me and says that I can't say "no" to a job that just opened up at the place that she works. So now, I get to do press release materials for an education center. Let me tell you about my short time in PR - it's bullshit. First of all, it's news writing, which can be fun, but I get a lot more out of features writing, simply because I can use colorful, expressive language and am able to do all sorts of amazing, fun things (go on roller coasters, be an archaeologist for a day, see my favorite radio show AND talk to the host while I wet my pants).

Second, PR is biased. PR benefits the place that you work for. You are not allowed to provide your reader (a newspaper editor, not an actual reader) a full view of everything that happened at the event. The place that you work for can do no wrong in its beautiful march towards improving the lives of everyone in the entire world.

I was optimistic at first, even though I had no clue as to what I was working on. The actual work that I've done here is quite minimal and most of my days are spent online and with an iPod (currently listening to "The Wheel and the Maypole" by XTC).

But what horrified me was when the director, an already creepy lady that smiles randomly during conversation (and I do mean randomly) and reminds me a bit too much of Professor Umbridge, gave a PowerPoint presentation on the Center's vision. While it seemed ambitious, the whole speech, and her demeanor, reeked of a power-hungry attitude that frightened me a bit. Professing your desire for America to once again be #1 is okay, but the way she described the need for the Center to influence and have a hand in education curriculum seemed a bit extreme.

Enough about that, though. Let's talk about my office. The room that I'm in is shared by mom and a coworker. If you walk past them, you come to a small hallway within the room itself. This leads to a bathroom with a yellow light and a toilet built for midgets. Past that door is my desk, which I stole from someone that I think still works here. Sticky notes extol various motivational sayings:

- "2 wrongs don't make a right, but 2 Wrights make an airplane!"

- A "Pluggers" comic, and under that is written: "It's time to start Round 2 of our Health Club!"

- A worm looking at a cow's tail and professing his desire for its consumption

- A rather sad-looking drawing of a young great horned owl

Thankfully, I have a dentist appointment today, so I get to leave about two hours early! Hurray!