Puked On By Art
Posted by Sam at 3:16 PM

Well, it's Saturday and I'm hanging out in JavaNet. Surprise surprise. What makes today's JavaNet excursion post-worthy is the fact that I'm sitting in a brand new location... directly under some local artist's sculpture. It's a sort of found-art/trash-art hanging face, with a wide open mouth, elongated nose piece, and a chain link goatee. Really interesting. Really cool. I'm proud to sit underneath it. The one exception to it's coolness is that I'm pretty sure that it's throwing up on me... at a frequency of about every ten minutes. Yeah, every ten minutes or so, I feel crud fall from its direction and land on my head. I look up at it and I'm pretty sure that I see it stifling a sinister chuckle. I told the dude sitting next to me that, "I think this sculpture is throwing up on me." He smiled, nodded, and slid his chair a few inches away. I guess that I don't blame him. I wouldn't want to sit next to the target of art puke either.

Comments: 1 | Post a Comment | Permalink

Technical Thingies
Posted by Sam at 9:20 AM

Ok... I'm back. Did you even notice that I was gone?

Anyway, I just made the move from iPowerWeb to Lunarpages. Why? Well, duh! Check out the slick front page at Lunarpages:

Comments: 3 | Post a Comment | Permalink

A Metric Shit-Ton
Posted by Sam at 10:13 AM

Hey y'all.

First of all, sorry about the absence of posts lately. It seems that I've got a lot on my plate these days. School and work are wearing me down. But, I love teaching! And work... well that's a different story. I only have to suffer through another few months though. And then I'm off to graduate school! Yippee! A wise man once said (oh... you know who you are), "Grad school is the snooze button on the alarm clock of life." I hope that he's right. No no... I know that grad school is going to be a ton of work. Perhaps even a shit-ton. Yep, a metric shit-ton. That's a lot of work.

In other news, my little sister is moving to Georgia tomorrow. It really hasn't sunk in yet. My little sister isn't allowed to move away. This is all wrong. Wrong wrong wrong! Of course, I'm allowed to move away. But she's not. And, to top it all off, she's taking my puppy away from me! Well... I guess it's her puppy. But still...

Last thing... sambot.com may be a bit wonky over the next week or so. I'm about to change hosting companies. I wish that I could be more specific about the timing... but the interweb is an unpredictable place where time and space have no meaning. Everything will be the same when I come back online. I promise.

End transmission...

Comments: 0 | Post a Comment | Permalink

Fuck Valentine's Day
Posted by Sam at 7:54 AM

That's right. You heard me. Now, click here to gratify your rage.

Also...

The other night, at the show, I found some thought-provoking art on the walls of the Men's Room. Of course, I whipped out my trusty camera phone and snapped a few lo-res shots. I sent them to the Graffiti Paparazzi... a great and truly inventive blog. He posted them. This one was very Valentine's Day appropriate. The other is a bit more political.

Comments: 3 | Post a Comment | Permalink

Songs of Love and Hate
Posted by Sam at 8:58 AM

This Valentine's Day will be spent listening to Leonard Cohen's Songs of Love and Hate. The festivities will conclude with a dramatic suicide performed by yours truly. That is all.

Ok, ok... there will be no climactically suicidal end to my long 26 years of life... tonight anyway. However, I will be listening to Leonard Cohen all day long in preparation for this evening's performance at The Elevens in Northampton. They are hosting a Leonard Cohen Tribute thingy. It should be depressingly swell. If you decide to show up, please stop by and say "hi." You'll find me in the darkest corner of the club. I'll be sobbing uncontrollably...

Comments: 3 | Post a Comment | Permalink

All Four Food Groups
Posted by Sam at 1:54 PM

I just finished up one of the most satisfying lunches that I have ever had. In fact, it was so satisfying that I simply must blog about it.

First of all, I'd like to say that I hit all four food groups full-throttle. Let's see...
1) Dehydrated. Check!
2) Frozen. Check!
3) Carbonated. Check!
4) Pill Form. Check!
Yep. I got all of 'em.

Lunch consisted of a frozen burrito, dehydrated ramen soup cup, root beer, and a multi-vitamin. If that doesn't power me to go, I don't know what will.

Comments: 2 | Post a Comment | Permalink

You're Definitely Not On Fire Like a Peasant
Posted by Sam at 1:40 PM

Today, I found that the Homestar Runner peeps made a trailer for a movie based on their Peasant's Quest game. It's really well done and really funny. I'd suggest that you watch it, whether you've played the game or not. However, much of the humor is taken straight from the game... so it helps to have played.

Need some background? Ok. A while back, the geniuses over at homestarrunner.com (the creators of Strongbad Emails) released an old school styled flash game called Peasant's Quest. The game was like the games that Sierra once put out... on like 23 floppy disks per game. Remember Space Quest and King's Quest? It was like the early versions of those. Essentially, you would move your character around a crude pixelated world with the arrow keys and then type simple commands for him to perform. Like "climb ladder" or "take sandwich" or "throw baby." Peasant's Quest is very much like that. The basic storyline is that you, a peasant named Rather Dashing, find your thatched roof hut BURNINATED! You go on a revenge styled quest to kill the evil menace, TROGDOR (a big "S" shaped dragon responsible for the burninating of your hut). It is tons of fun... in fact, I think that it is the only video game that has been able to capture my attention since Tetris. It is pretty intense too. It took me about two days at work to beat the game... and I think that I actually needed to download a walkthrough to finish it! Pathetic... I know.

If you're new to all this Homestar Runner stuff (what!? do you live in a cave... with a 56k modem!?), I'd recommend watching this, and then definitely watching this (which highlights the origins of TROGDOR, THE BURNINATOR!).

Comments: 2 | Post a Comment | Permalink

Sausage Links
Posted by Sam at 4:40 PM

I have two more links that I'd like to share. Why? Because, damn it, I can't bring myself to do any actual work today. (Who are you calling a slacker?)

The first link is quite funny... especially if you are, are trying, or have tried to do the blogging thing. The article is titled How To Start Your Very Own Blog In Fifty-One Easy Steps! It walks you through the beginning steps of blogging... the true beginning steps of blogging. None of this sugar-coated "blogging is easy and fun!" crap. This is the real deal. Give it a read... and while you're there, read the rest of Kuro5hin. A good blog and well worth your time... at least, well worth my time... my time isn't worth much...

The second link is for the let's-get-down-to-business side of your personality. This little application, called 1-Click Answers, is so useful that it's making me dizzy (oh, wait... that's probably the Percocet). This utility allows the user to select any word in any application and get instant information about it. Yes yes, I know. That's more or less what the internet does. But this little gem is accurate and fast and thorough. In one swift key command, I can select the word information from the text that I had typed above, and get the word's dictionary entry, thesaurus entry, wikipedia, translations, legal info, technology info, etc... It's really sweet. Go get it. It's a free download and available for Mac, Windows, and as a Firefox plugin. (Oh... you can also go to the website and type the word in there and get the same results... but where's the fun in that?)

Comments: 1 | Post a Comment | Permalink

Prepare to have your dreams haunted for the rest of eternity
Posted by Sam at 2:12 PM

Click here to see the most bizarre and nightmarish commercial that you've ever seen. Kana Hakkliha? Sure... why not. This video came from a page of Estonian TV commercials from the 80's (I discovered this link while reading ~stevenf's blog).

Whoa... let's move to Estonia. Where the f is Estonia?

UPDATE: ~stevenf is running a little remix competition with this commercial. If you got skillz (and iMovie) give it a go!

Comments: 0 | Post a Comment | Permalink

Four Less Teeth
Posted by Sam at 11:01 PM

This morning, at 9:15 a.m., I had all four of my wisdom teeth yanked unwillingly from my skull. Surprisingly enough, the entire endeavor was mostly uneventful. I was knocked out for the procedure. I remember the nurse jabbing the intravenous into a vein... she mentioned that I have "easy veins." I asked what makes them so easy. She said that they are popping out and not moving around. I think that I tried to say something clever like, "Well, I told them to behave..." but, I probably just started to drool and trailed off into unconsciousness. The next thing that I remember is sitting on my sister's couch and defending myself from some hardcore puppy lovin' (my sister's puppy is the cutest thing in the world, but she loves with her teeth).

Like I said, I don't remember much. According to the reports (a.k.a. what my sister tells me), I was insistent on thanking every one of the staff members at the oral surgery place as we left. Apparently, it was imperative that I thank everyone in the waiting room too. Ah drugs... is there anything they can't do?

Speaking about drugs, I just popped the first of about ten Percocets that they were nice enough to prescribe for me. We'll see how that goes. If it goes well, I'll probably be inspired to post a bit later... and I know you are looking forward to that.

Oh... I almost forgot. They let me keep my teeth! The gross thing is that they didn't even clean them off. It's like they went straight from my bloody jaw into a little plastic baggy. Doesn't that seem odd? Wouldn't this be considered biohazard? Oh well. I'm just stoked that they let me keep them. I can't wait to turn them into a necklace... and one day give it to my true love. Am I smooth or what?

The Percs are kicking in. Which means that it's definitely time for me to go.

Comments: 2 | Post a Comment | Permalink

Suicide Rabbit Needs Pie For Her Goat Plug
Posted by Sam at 8:20 AM

Finder windows should have tabbed browsing just like Safari.

Wouldn't that rock? Doesn't that make so much sense? Someone code that up. I'll buy you a donut.

Exercise 1: Imagine that you aren't a Mac/Tech geek. Now reread the first sentence of this post (I'll paste it below, you lazy bastard).

Finder windows should have tabbed browsing just like Safari.

Now doesn't that sentence seem like some sort of secret agent code? Like, "The clock strikes toast at the mall of your mind" or "Suicide rabbit needs pie for her goat plug" or... nevermind.

Anyway, that's all. Oh, right... someone code me up a finder replacement that adds tabs to finder windows. The reward stands at one donut (of your choice) for successful implementation of tabbed browsing in finder windows. Good luck and godspeed.

UPDATE: Andy Budd knows what I'm talking about. That image came from his site too.

Comments: 5 | Post a Comment | Permalink

Downward Spiraling Torrent of Poo
Posted by Sam at 3:12 PM

Yesterday, I watched most of Metallica's documentary Some Kind of Monster. It was... um, different than I had expected.

(begin rambling digression)

I can still remember hearing Metallica for the first time. Let me see if I can paint an accurate mental picture of my life 16 years ago... just to set the mood: It was circa 1989. I was 11 or 12 years old (oh my god... I'm an old man). I never left the house without my skateboard (a Per Welinder street model, as I recall). I was in the process of growing a nice rat tail... you know, a long tuft of hair that descended from the back of my head. Yep, I was one stylish pre-adolescent (come to think of it, that's probably why I am bald now... the Gods of Good Hair are punishing me for having such bad hair). As far as music went, I was listening to whatever butt-rock MTV threw in my direction; Bon Jovi, Poison, Motley Crap... Until one glorious day, when my good friend, Brendan Walsh (no, not Brandon Walsh) took me into his basement and played an audio cassette that forever changed my life. It was Metallica's last great album, ...And Justice for All.

...And Justice for All was like nothing I had ever heard before. It was dark. It was aggressive. It was fast. It was precise. The distortion was overpowering, yet somehow smooth and accurate. The percussion was tight and it never seemed to fit within the confines of standard 4/4 rock drumming. The vocals... those magical James Hetfield vocals... growled with a subtle tonality that lead the uncompromising music into a realm of epic intensity. And the signature rasp at the end of each lyrical progression... no one has been able to do that like James did.

As I had mentioned though, ...And Justice for All was Metallica's last great album. With the release of their next album, the Black album, Metallica began a downward spiraling torrent of poo that has yet to conclude. But that's not really what this post is about. I'm sure you can google "Metallica" and "poo torrent" and come up with a bizillion rant pages about how Metallica sold out. What this post is [supposed to be] about, is the Metallica documentary.

(end rambling digression)

As I watched Some Kind of Monster, I found these themes to be prevalent throughout the film: frustration, anger, regret, uncoolness, receding hairline, feelings, etc... However, the following is a list of what I wanted from the film: footage from the 80's (when Metallica still rocked), more hair, drunken rowdiness, tight black jeans, explosions, etc... Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed.

For me however, the highlight of the documentary was the Dave Mustaine part. Dave was kicked out of the band early on. I think it was a drinking problem, or maybe he was just a jerk... tough to imagine Mustaine as a jerk... I know. But, bear with me. Dave and Lars (Metallica drummer) sit down and have a little heart-to-heart. It was simply great to hear these two rock legends sit down and politely whine to each other. It was almost like a "who's more washed-up" competition. It was great.

And now, my final comment:

I may have thought that I wanted to see Metallica in a group therapy session... but in actuality, I just wanted them to be cool again.

the end.

Comments: 1 | Post a Comment | Permalink

Epiphany
Posted by Sam at 1:28 PM

Life is too uncomfortable as is, to have to tuck in my shirt. From now on, the shirt stays untucked. Yee-haw!

Thank you for your time.

Comments: 2 | Post a Comment | Permalink

Saving the Day... Again
Posted by Sam at 9:10 AM

My pal from the far off desert lands of Arizona sent me a surprise package. It arrived yesterday, it was full of little Pez creatures, and it totally made my day. The following is the return email that I sent to her... with a blow-by-blow account of the pez/alien encounter:

You'll never guess what happened today... so don't even try. Instead, let me tell you: a mysterious package landed at my back doorstep. A mysterious package postmarked with a mysterious zip code. The zip code started with an 8... "What the...? Do they even go up that high?" Upon further inspection, I realized that the package hailed from the land of AZ. Clearly, this was an alien package. And, it was probably full of alien radiation. And the alien radiation was probably going to mutate me into some sort of super-being. So, without hesitation, I tore into the package, thrust my face into the newly formed opening, and inhaled deeply. Nothing. No mutation what-so-ever. "What a rip-off!" I exclaimed. While my face was still firmly inserted in the alien packaging, I noticed a small group... a humble assemblage... a wee congregation... of tiny alien creatures.



They had no visible appendages, and seemed to be comprised entirely of insect components atop brightly colored plastic boxes. I recognized them immediately as a threat. In my quick thinking/over-reacting, I snapped their necks... one by one... until they were a threat no more.



"Phew! That was a close call. Earth is safe once again... thanks to me. I deserve cake!" What I noticed however... after I killed them, that is... is that their innards are full of tiny, rectangular fuel cells. What powers these alien creatures, is very similar to what we earthlings call, "candy." Bonus! I get to save the day and eat candy. Things are really looking up for mankind...

Comments: 7 | Post a Comment | Permalink