low inertia

Verizon - almost enough to spur me to agency

steve — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:19:52 +0000

Verizon’s customer service has failed me so many times, it’s like they’re a summer school teacher. I generally avoid calling them, because they know much less than I do, never have a solution to any problem I’m experiencing and generally waste about an hour of my day. However, sometimes, there’s a problem on their end, so I call them to confirm because I can’t do anything else.

Today was such a day, and it was a problem on their end, but they didn’t know it. Dealing with them is Sisyphean. It’s almost enough to make me want to complain to the top. Almost.

Man, what a soul sucking day. I’m trying to not let this stuff bother me so much, to realize it’s pretty inconsequential, but it takes just as much energy to be conscious of that as it does to rage over the incompetence. Still a good trade off, but wow.

Comics

steve — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:12:58 +0000

I had a great conversation with Mikey about the comic medium, and how it hasn’t yet evolved to its full potential. Despite having the ability to capture the best of film and literature in one form (pictures AND text!), 90% of all comics ever made deal with boyish fantasy heroes. Can you imagine if the vast majority of movies made every year were about super heroes? Oh, wait.

It was something that I had never thought about, and made me a lot more interested in re-exploring the comic world. A tangential thread in my thread was the discovery of drawer Keith Jones via Paul Laffoley’s guest book, which is great way to find out about all manner of cosmic things. Keith has a comic coming out called Catland Empire late this year, which I’m excited about.

Baltimore Faces

steve — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:17:15 +0000

Baltimore is a city of characters. A character is someone who has transcended person status via extreme regularity in location and/or unique attitude. A character is someone you can count on to be who they are at all times. An even keel, if you will. Spectacularly even.

the crazy guy in Charles Village
Stacy, the dude from Thairish
Elka

I liked this post about a character in Pigtown.

God’s own prototype

steve — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:25:28 +0000

Tru Raven 4 life.

Why we watch sports

steve — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:21:48 +0000

My all time personal favorite for announcing!

How to rock the party

steve — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:17:18 +0000

Found via YASLY - props

Looking into the future

steve — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:32:41 +0000

The future will feel exactly the same as today.

More surprising mail

steve — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 23:06:20 +0000

I got some direct mail from Spartan Fireworks last week. Here’s a list of all the products they were promoting. They’re all fireworks of some kind.

V.I.P.
B.M.F.
Best of the Best
America’s Rhythm
Touch of Evil
Extra Loaded
Trump
One Bad Mother
Red, White and Blue
King of the Brocade Crown
Double Your Money
Return to Glory
Chopper
Cooking with Gas
Loyal to None
The Big Dog
Rolling Thunder
Mother of All Bombs
United We Stand
Goliath
Trilogy
Instigator
Critical Acclaim
Artillery Shell
Excalibur
Merlin
Super Magnum
Beach Bum
Hostile Takeover
Crazy Exciting
Fearless
Cracklin’ Color Palm
Color Pearl Flowers
Size Doesn’t Matter
Hard to Beat
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Boiling Point
Double Cross
Land of the Free
100 Shot Saturn Battery
Death Wish
Money Maker
Rocket Assault
Biggen
Armageddon
Laying Down the Law
Rocket Time
What a Girl Wants
King
Stars and Stripes

polaroids

steve — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:27:20 +0000

I wish new photographs had a border like Polaroids, or old photos with the scalloped edges. It’s like an instant matte.

Paul Laffoley

steve — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:16:32 +0000

His site.

sudden wisdom

steve — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 23:53:44 +0000

The secret to happiness isn’t doing what you love, its loving what you do.

what’s up with me

steve — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:44:36 +0000

Been a super 6 weeks or so, since whenever I last posted. Since I define my life by how productive I am now, I’ve been very productive. Lots of clicking and clacking on the keyboard, some fetch and running about with the domesticated beasts up in the wilds of Mt. Washington, a massive bruise and incapacitation of my left shoulder is just the tip of the iceberg! The body of the iceberg is not much larger than the tip; it’s a very small iceberg. Perhaps more like an ice cube.

Last night we watched “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead”, a gripping crime drama of family intrigue, tits and men who are unable to express themselves except via money and violence. I enjoyed it a lot, and I also found it to be very reminiscent of Ratpack era gender roles. There’s a gay drug dealer who wears a kimono around his pricy Manhattan apartment. C’mon, is this Madame Butterfly?! Anyway, this all makes sense, because it was directed by the 80+ Sidney Lumet. I’d recommend it - it felt about 8 minutes shorter than the billed 2 hours.

The garden is springing into bloom. This was the first morning of the season where I watered it. Very nice! Once my shoulder heals up, I’ve got big plans. Watch out dirt, I plan on being up in your grille with my $3.98 perennials purchased at Lowe’s. I also have my eyes on some flora from White Flower Farm. Thanks mom!

Annie and I also did a living room makeover of her old studio on the second floor. We replaced some rotting studs in the back wall, and patched up the wall real sorta nice. Fresh paint is on the way, six years from now. Once we have a guest bed, we’ll be set up FOR REAL. TRUE.

Party on Memorial Day Weekend at our place. Let it be known.

The door locks after all

steve — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 04:34:48 +0000

I’m in upstate NY to visit my mom for her 65th birthday. It’s been great so far. It’s always pleasant to come back to this house I spent some formative years in. One of the things I always remembered about this house is that none of the doors ever latched. The house was built in the 20s or 30s, so I always just accounted this to age. My bedroom door never shut, my mom’s bedroom door never really shut, the bathroom door downstairs never really shut, the other bathroom door shut like crazy. Scarily so. Like “Oh shit, I just trapped myself in the bathroom, I’m going to have to call the fire department” shut.

The other other bathroom door (the house has four bathrooms, and only three bedrooms) also never shut, but since it is a little bigger than the other two bathrooms, I couldn’t hold the door shut with my foot or hand while I was going. Going to the bathroom. Going to the bathroom in the bathroom. Urinating. You get it. It was always just a few inches out of reach. When I was younger, I would worry that a cat would push the door open while I was on the toilet, and someone would walk upstairs and see me, and I’d be…. on the toilet, I guess. Being embarrassed. Oh fear, you irrational creature you!

Today I was in this bathroom, and I noticed that the door had a deadbolt.

I lived in this house for 5 years.

I was shocked. I could shut the door after all! Amazing!

“Mom, can you believe this? I’m retarded. I JUST NOW realized this door has a lock.”

“It does?”

She’s lived here for 15 years.

Sweet gherkins

steve — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 00:09:49 +0000

Sweet gherkin pickles are my favorite snack right now.

My new favorite word is whenish. As in, “Whenish are we meeting up?” It’s a pre-emptive strike on imprecision. Ha!

Band name freestyles are my favorite pastime.

ffffound.com is still my favorite site.

Irresponsible amounts of coffee is just for today.

WETA is my favorite PBS station.

Date night

steve — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 23:19:39 +0000

It’s date night! Hi Annie! I know you’re probably reading your feeds, or browsing around Etsy right now. Come give me a kiss when you read this! <3 steve

Here’s a time when men were men, women were women, and enormous trees were cut down by cartoonish band saws.

My favorite passive aggressive activity

steve — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 23:27:23 +0000

I’ve been using Google Reader these days. One of my favorite activities is unsubscribing from people’s feeds. It’s like my private, under your breath, behind the back “Fuck you” to people exactly like me who live many miles away. It’s curiously satisfying. I will be subscribing to sarcastic blogs aplenty now that I’ve discovered this tiny pleasure center in my brain.

Speaking of Google Reader, I had an interesting chat with Neal a few nights back about posting frequency. He thought sites that post 20+ times a day, mainly the biggest blogs like boingboing, are posting way too often. That people simple don’t read the content because it’s too much to keep up with. I can definitely relate to the sentiment. In boingboing’s case, I’m not sure if they give a shit if anyone reads it, but I think that the sites that get revenue from readership may very well see this themselves. I look forward to the growth of information slowing every so slightly in certain nodes. Time shall tell, as usual.

In a similar vein, Jake de Grazia offers some thoughts on what type of posts get an attention payment.

This post is so meta! I’m blog obsessed at this moment! Yeah!

words

steve — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 15:38:17 +0000

I stumbled upon Visual Thesaurus today while thinking about words. It appeals to me. It’s a subscription service. I’m considering it. Take a look at their visualization applet. It’s really convenient to see a whole bunch of relations simultaneously, though the visualization at this point doesn’t really take advantage of positioning. All the nodes are equidistant from each other. I’m not exactly sure how you would implement this, but it seems natural that some words are more tightly linked as synonyms, so the relationship should appear stronger/closer/more prevalent than others.

Actually now that I really think about it, that’s a stupid idea. If I think that, it’s because I don’t have a real understanding of how multifaceted a word really is. However, I’m glad I left the above paragraph, rather than delete it, as it shows a thought process. I always find it more gratifying to follow along with an author, than to be at the receiving end of some pronouncement.

It could stand to group adjectives and nouns and verbs into easier to spot groups though.

Check out Protege and Ontoviz if you’re interested in mimicking visual thesaurus for some other dataset.

Much life here

steve — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 21:27:10 +0000

This is a remarkable conglomeration of life!

Snap!

steve — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 02:09:40 +0000

That’s HILarious!

steve — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 18:40:21 +0000

A few days back, I saw that Steve Martin had written a book on his comedy career, which surprised me because Steve Martin hasn’t been funny in my lifetime. In fact, the most recent thing I’ve seen where he was prominently involved was Shopgirl, possibly the worst movie I’ve seen in the last three years or so. Plot development was either forced, non sequitur or nonexistant; the characters were one-dimensional, unsympathetic and unlikeable; there were zero laughs, unless you count laughing at what a pompous asshole Steve Martin comes off as, since he wrote and starred in it. Sorry for the negativity - check out King of Kong for good times.

However, the quote from the aformentioned link about Mr. Martin actually having a comedic method is interesting. An attitude I’ve gotten from Bruce Mau is that process is more important than outcome, because process takes you new places, whereas shooting for an outcome only takes you places you can imagine being. I personally prefer being in an inner tube, drinking Utica Club, floating down the river of life as compared to swimming through it. Let the river do the work, dig?

I just got a great spam, which I think is a great manifestation of the extreme form of Martin’s joke-telling strategy. Here is it, in unabashed glory:

From valencia to kirkwall, the englishah, the from dorrimore’s carriagenay, he may have caught do, you know. They know the most extraordinary one by one, stepped forward, and dropping on both tron, and were fighting hard, when the provost, and, as i said before, you know john, so, after the virtuous young matron. Am i to be trusted? He sat down before it, turned the key, and pressed more out in the ozone, marching abreast with shining in bridgetown, y’understand, which he is sick and peeped down the path which the elephant had and staring with round unwinking eyes full in do you think?’ ‘in his study, of course.’ ‘yes only through vague rumours. Neither the brotherhood there’s where the pants come in, she added as.

I think they were trying to sell me something, but that part wasn’t as comprehensible.