TEENAGE DISCO MISERY

teenage disco doldrums

I’ve been struggling with new content lately.  Frankly, I’ve been uninspired.  Today, it occurred to me that my sights are set too high; insipid uninspiring nonsense is the backbone of a good healthy internet.  With this new attitude I hopefully will have a lot more updates and probably a lot of pointless dreck.  (Unlike most posts I guess.  Anyways.)  Today here’s some recent meditations on the squirrels in my yard.

More and more, I find myself gazing absently at the birds in my backyard.  I’ve installed a modest bird feeder and draw no small satisfaction watching the western scrub jays feed and frolick.  However, a pair of squirrels in the nearby black walnut tree have made a habit of invading and despoiling the feeder, packing their bellies with seed and nutmeats and leaving desolation in their fluffy-tailed wakes.  In retaliation, I purchased a plastic umbrella-shaped squirrel deterrent.

After watching their earnest and futile attempts at a meal, my heart began to soften.  Surely these creatures, though despicable in their puerile tenacity, hunger the same as anyone else.

And thus I decided to feed the squirrels.  $9 later and I was the owner of a simple bolting-apparatus to attach a brick of condensed corn meal to the black walnut tree.  Cassie could not understand my sympathy towards these vermin and even I concede it may be a form of Stockholm Syndrome that inspired this action.

YEAH CASSIE, IT’S LIKE AYN RAND OR SOMETHING.  (Also, sorry I drew you so stupid looking).

The squirrels completely love this goofy yellow block dangling from the tree.  They do not nibble from it so much as make love with their mouths.

And yet with each day, their flock grows larger.  Today I counted six squirrels.  I worry: am I giving squirrel youths an inaccurate expectation of life?  Am I dulling their wits and ruining their futures with these handouts?  And they’re burning through a log in like four days now!  Come on guys slow it down a little. These things are not exactly cheap.

cartoon transcript of actual nightmare

Is there anything more boring than hearing someone recite a dream they had?  No there is not.  Regardless, I have done just this in cartoon form.  This is a super scary nightmare I had last night:

I’m watching Star Wars for about the millionth time on a gigantic television.

For some reason James Gandolfini plays a major role in the film.  He has an enormous pompadour hairdo.  I find this all extremely unsettling.  Also, C3PO has a girlfriend.

At some point, James Gandolfini’s character sneaks off and strangles C3PO’s girlfriend to death.  This takes FOREVER.

No one knows who killed Lady C3PO.  The dream turns into a lengthy “CSI” style forensic investigation scene.  There is a sense of dread permeating through all of this.  Eventually, the crew agrees that they must go to a “crime lab” in Japan.

Oh also I just remembered that 12 year old Natalie Portman (as she appeared in the Professional) begins narrating the story, “I can’t believe we’re actually going to Japan!”  The continuity errors alone startle me awake.

part 1

wherein i blog about marvel comics for a while

If you’re like me, you read a lot of X-Men comics in the 90s and probably saw a lot of the Marvel superhero “Cable” but never actually understood what he did. Most of the X-men are pretty easy to figure out—Cyclops shoots eye-lasers, Wolverine flips out. Cable though—always a mystery. Just look at this gigantic doofus:

Is glowering a power?

Anyways, friend Nate and I chatted for pretty close to an hour yesterday about this guy and tried to come up with a definitive list of his known powers:

Nate: what i know about him:
Nate: a. he and i have the same first  name
Nate: b. his mutant power is something like “leadership”
me: awesome power!
me: i’m pretty sure he’s cyclops’ fictional son or something
Nate: he has a lot of prosthetic parts! but only his eye glows.
me: i think he can teleport? this might be robot aided
Nate: and he’s like the malcolm x to professor xavier’s dr king? i might have made that up.
Nate: also he is never not without a gun.
me: i think we’ve done a pretty good job of figuring out cable

Not content with this AIM convo brain-trust, I turned to Wikipedia and the Marvel web site for more insight. Aside from being a 1990s zeitgeist of Schwarzenegger action films and grunge rock cyber-sulking, he has about a million other super powers.  Here’s a further list of some…::SOME:: of my favorites. (Quotes are taken from Marvel’s web site)

- telepathic
- “ability to rearrange the atomic structures of matter”
- robot arm that can hack computers and travel through time (!)
- can lift several tons
- “possesses an intellect that may be superhuman”
- “fast enough to evade high-powered bullets in-flight (after they have been fired)”
- “Cable also holds a diploma in Law.”

Come ON, Marvel Comics! Why don’t you just call him Jesus Christ Super Star? Anyways, if you think this is all an elaborate introduction to an mspaint drawing I did of Cable taking the bar exam, you’re right. Here you go

what i got at the record show (nsfw)

On Saturday night I went to the always awesome Night Owl Record Show.  At previous shows I’ve pulled some pretty amazing finds; this one didn’t quite live up to that level of insanity (I’m SUPER mad at that dreadlock dude for grabbing both Holiday Rap AND a sealed copy of mmm…Food? COME ON, GUY) but I did end up with some pretty good records.

patent pending, ok?

Here’s an idea I had in ‘06 for an invention.