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It's OK, Shake, because whoever you decide that you are, I still gonna love you. But just not in a gay way, because God makes all people in different sizes and shapes and problems, but he only makes the people he hates gay. That's you. You it, boy. You gay!

There are no words to describe this...... well, describe what I saw. See? I can't even find a NOUN to describe it... "it" is the best I can do. Impersonal pronoun. Now, officially, "it" is called Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, but after watching it on Joox, I've decided that that name isn't even up to the challenge of describing it. It's even moved beyond "good" and "bad"... it just is, and it... is... ow. Truly, it is a marvel of modern technology that I can be paid to design fancy buildings and resort developments, and be able to watch it simultaneously, without detracting from either activity.

Either that, or am I finally acquiring a dual personality.

...

About fucking time, I wanted one years ago.

...

Moving on, this is my first of what will hopefully be many pop-free days. Yesterday, I enjoyed a coke, and two ginger ales (what? I was thirsty, and it was the House season premiere). Today? Even though I put a full tank of gas in the car, and I was at the Petro in Dallas, which has the nice selection of Jones.... I resisted. Shut up, that's a big step for me!

The walking yesterday, by the end of the night, took a lot out of my legs... which is really, really sad, since I used to walk double that, on a much steeper slope, every day when I was in college (before I got lazy and started taking the bus). Much like Rufus, the 13th Apostle, I used to walk everywhere, before the advent of money and convenience into my life. Now, I like my convenience, and in a lot of cases it's necessary for me to park this close to my office (emergencies, and whatnot).

However, I am going to be instituting a new policy in my life, wife-permitting (of course). I'm going to go to work half an hour early, and park in my usual spot at the back of the building. I am then going to take my new edible iPod shuffle and my headphones, and walk for half an hour at a good clip, and just... just see what's around here. I'm right next to the Heritage Hills area, which is chock full of wicked steep roads, old houses and beautiful landscaping. I'm right near all of the various riverside parks, including Riverside Park. I'm right near the train yards and the coliseum, and all sorts of fun downtown things I've never seen (at least when I wasn't drunk).

Averaging 1.33 steps per second, that's about 2400 steps, which will... almost double my current number of steps in the average day.

...

That's very depressing.

Enjoy the movie!

The Bother With Bloggers

BEAUTY: An aesthetic radiance that delights the soul; a quality much admired in women, landscapes and tropical fish, but curiously out of favor in art throughout the modern era."

Like with everything in life, if I go long enough not doing something, it becomes easier to... not do it. I didn't blog for two days, so it was easier to say on the third day "Well, I haven't blogged in two days, three's OK." Then four... nine... thirteen... what's it up to now? I don't know, I'm too lazy to scroll up. Whatever the duration, I'm breaking it today. Go me.

I'm breaking it today because, well... ok, I'm not totally sure, but there was a few atypical events today, and I figured I'd talk about them here, to try and get back into the blogging.... thing. Everything's a thing, so it's just a matter of finding the things that make good things happen inside.

This morning, I had to drop CarCar off at Rapid Radiator, and then hoof it through the North Shore, accross the Overlander Bridge, and then downtown to my office. According to Google Maps, it's 2.5km, so doing that in 25 minutes isn't that bad for me. I love walking early in the morning, or late in the evening... in the middle of the day, the light is too bright, too harsh, and unflattering to everything except shade trees and deep caves. The sun is not beauty's friend, but the sun at 8:40am, rising between the slopes of a valley, sure is, and it's amazing what, seen for the first time, can be beautiful. (Boy, that was a lot of commas, huh?)

There was an old wood-tie retaining wall just past a closed down auto sales shop by the railroad tracks that was valiantly holding up the soil around a Russian olive tree, and it was beautiful. There was the space underneath the end of the bridge where a water pumphouse was located and being smothered by weeds , and the sunlight was coming from behind me and the cruddy gray large-aggregate concrete tilt-up slabs was dappled and golden, and it was beautiful.

"The moment one give close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. Through light and joy is the world opened up, revealed for what it is: ineffable beauty, unending creation."

I know it probably seems silly, especially to the people who read this AND know me, but I just felt it was something worth saying.

I'm going to blog tomorrow, hopefully, about yet another reason for me to lose weight... while walking, I saw my profile reflect in the glass of the closed down auto shop, and reminded me that I saw a profile of me in the living room window last night, and it occurred to me that I actually didn't know that's how fat I was. To people who know me, that's probably even stupider, but I think it's a good thing that I know.

Now watch the fucking movie and shut up.

Giddy-Up Go!

Well I don't want to be some puppet on a string
And I don't want to learn of things you can't explain
And I don't want to have your views on everything
I just want to scream

Fuckin-A! Thanks to my friend making me burn her a copy of MST3KTM, I found a CD I had been looking for for two years! See, I had to find her a case for the disc, so I open up the Irish Drinking Mix case, and pull out the Irish Drinking Mix CD... and there, underneath it, is this!




Now this album has TONS of great songs on it, particularly Shine and Sister Don't Cry, but I was so happy to find it because then I could listen, in high quality, to the song featured at the bottom of this post....

Enjoy!

The Raptors Of Penzance

So, just on a wierd sort of a whim, I started editing the words to the Gilbert & Sullivan play, The Pirates of Penzance, when someone on the forums said "I am the very model of a Moderator General". It's a forum joke.

Anyways, this came out.

I am the very model of a Moderator General,
I've information intertubal, real and ephemeral,
I know the kings of forum, and I quote the flames historical
From General to Serious in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

I'm very good at integral and differential calculus;
I know the scientific names of forumites fantabulous,
In short, in matters intertubal, real and ephemeral,
I am the very model of a Moderator General.

I know our mythic history, Belial's and Randall Munroe's;
I answer hard acrostics, I've a pretty taste for zombie toes,
I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of hellish Anfurny,
In conics I can floor peculiarities that are furry;
I can tell undoubted Jalapenos from SpitValves and Owijads,
I know the croaking chorus from the frogs of Aristophan-as!
Then I can hum a fugue of which I've heard the music on iPod
And whistle all the airs from that infernal book all about God.

Then I can write a washing bill in COBOL or assemb-a-ly,
And tell you ev'ry detail of the Windows flaws security:
In short, in matters intertubal, real and ephemeral,
I am the very model of a Moderator General.

In fact, when I know what is meant by "Okita" and then "Meaux Pas",
When I can tell at sight a newbie from a seasoned great-grandpa.
When such affairs as meetups and get-togethers I’m wary at,
And when I know precisely what is meant by "commissariat",
When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gamery,
When I know more of tactics than most World of Warcraft lamery
In short, when I've a smattering of intertubal strategy—
You'll say a better Moderator General has never be.

For my military knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventury,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century;
In short, in matters intertubal, real and ephemeral,
I am the very model of a Moderator General.

Some of the references might be a bit obscure if you're not a forumite, but the cadence follows. Even more incredible, I got these replies:

MightyJalapeno, I'm filing a lawsuit against you for an attempt to break my brain with AWESOME.

That is not just awesome. It is not even just awesome AWESOME. It is AWESOME awesome AWESOME.

It is, in fact, an awesomeburger pattie covered in awesomesauce and placed on a fresh sesawesome seed bun.

...Hopefully by this point the word "awesome" has lost all meaning to you after seeing it so many times.
Somebody definitely needs to record that. I wish I could sing so I could do it myself but alas, I can not. But if somebody records the vocals I could add instrumentals and polish.

*brain melts due to pure awesomeness*
You'll be the death of me!

It's official, MJ has won the internet. We bow before your peppery might.

ZOMG. That was awesome. I think if MJ isn't a General, he should at least be Major Kong or something. That guy rode a nuke! And had a cool hat.

I'll have mine with a side of win, and a 60-ounce Un-Frickin'-Believable.


If it's any consolation I thought it could've been a lot better.

The last guy's a jerk, though...

That's Wiggity Wiggity Whack!

Excuse me, everybody. I have an announcement to make. Jesus was black, Ronald Reagan was the Devil, and the Government is lyin' about 9-11. Thank you for your time, goodnight.

Thank you, White Jesus, for bringing this show back. New episodes of The Boondocks starts next month, and... and I'm just so damn happy. One of the greatest cartoons of the modern age, and despite the subject matter, more than transcends the apparent cultural barriers. People need to watch this cartoon. Most of the episodes deal with serious issues in a very frank manner, but some of them have to rely on amazing animation and tremendous hilarity to get by (I think they manage it.)

And the winner of the "Black Artist Most Likely to Commit a Sexual Offense Involving a Twelve-Year-Old" award is... y'know, it's bad enough we even have to have this award, but this year it's a tie!

Watch the damn cartoon. I had some other stuff to say, but.... but I don't have anything else to say.

Farmers Are SO 10,000 Years Ago....

Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished for ever. Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.

This was a creepy article, I have to say. As reported widely in business and mainstream press, the ILO recently released world market employment statistics. Most outlets focused on US economic competitiveness vs. China and Europe. However, there was an important and often-overlooked bit of info in the report: for the first time since the invention of agriculture, farming is not the biggest sector of the global economy — services is. Workers are now moving directly from agriculture to services, bypassing the traditional route of manufacturing, since manufacturing is now directly a robotics process and indirectly a service industry.

"At a time when doom-sayers were hopping around saying everyone was going to starve, Norman was working. He moved to Mexico and lived among the people there until he figured out how to improve the output of the farmers. So that saved a million lives. Then he packed up his family and moved to India, where in spite of a war with Pakistan, he managed to introduce new wheat strains that quadrupled their food output. So that saved another million. You get it? But he wasn't done. He did the same thing with a new rice in China. He's doing the same thing in Afica -- as much of Africa as he's allowed to visit. When he won the Nobel Prize in 1970, they said he had saved a billion people. That's BILLION! BUH! That's Carl Sagan BILLION with a "B"! And most of them were a different race from him. Norman is the greatest human being, and you probably never heard of him."

I've learned a lot from my wife, and from her parents farm. With the current world population, did you know that it works out to 4.2 acres of land surface per person... that's man, woman, AND child? The average family would have 20 acres to themselves. A person can produce all the food they need for a whole year on less than once acre, CONSIDERABLY less if they work it well. Taking into account that roughly 50% of the world isn't arable (mountains, deserts, New Jersey), that still means that if everyone used half of their 2 arable acres for food, everyone would have all the food they could possibly eat, as well a 3 acre lot with excellent views of the family garden. It's simplistic, but it gets the point across.

I think we risk becoming the best informed society
that has ever died of ignorance.

Well, that's my global opinion for the day. We now return you to your regularly scheduled video.

Hell Of A Weekend

Kazakhstan is the greatest country in the world!
All the other countries are run by little girls!
Kazakhstan is the number 1 exporter of potassium!
All other Central Asian countries have inferior potassium!
Kazakhstan is the greatest country in the world!
All other countries is the home of the gays!

I couldn't think of a quote to start this off with.

So, the weekend starts off with me wrangling both kids while the little woman goes to stay with her mom so they can go to the Farmer's Market early the next morning. No problemmo. Throkette, my lovely one-year-old daughter, however, elected to spend most of the night tossing, turning, and kicking me in the face after the 1am feeding (where we usually crash on the futon so she'll stay asleep). Not my best night for sleep.

Saturday, we head to the IPE... the Interior Provincial Exhibition. 20,000 people descend on a carrot-and-cheese town of less than 5,000 people. There's cows and horses and clowns and lumberjacks and baking and giant vegetables and ferris wheels (which my son is ONE INCH TOO SHORT TO GO ON, YARG!) and there's tractors and chuck-wagon races and food booths and lots and lots of people. I was almost dead by the time we headed home.

So Sunday, I head to work while the family heads to the farm. I work with my boss for hours and hours on Plans B, C and D for several projects which are in the process of being FUCKED, and then I head out to the farm. I'm not there for an hour when my father-in-law walks into the living room with a loaded shotgun and says to me "Hey, I got an idea, wanna come outside for a minute?" Now, he's had lot and lots of chances to kill me over the years, and during those first few years I wouldn't have blamed him for it, so I trusted him this time. He used me to flush out some starlings in the cornfield so he could shoot them (one round of birdshot, four dead starlings, THATS cool...) When I come back inside, my wife and mother-in-law are both laughing, and saying "I can't BELIEVE you went outside with him like that. 'I've got a gun, wanna come outside?'"

Then home, laundry and dishes, bed, midnight feeding, face-kicking, shower, and I'm back at work. A long weekend, and I work two of the three days. Yippie-ki-yay, motherfu*blam*! Had a great thing happen this morning... some sort of prefrontal burst of Soundgarden-induced creativity, but I finally wrote, in my brain, the end of Book 2 and nearly all of Book 3 of one of my stories, New World Samurai. Been trying to end Book 2 properly, and been trying to muddle through Book 3, and it all happened this morning.

YAY BRAIN!