not falling down

Update 2234 hrs: It was stupid to see Vanilla Sky because a)it was not the film it could have been and b) I will have weird dreams. On the other hand, I never liked Penelope Cruzuntil tonight, but now we are going to be married.

I think I actually put more effort into next Tuesday’s comic than I ever did on several of the older ones–and this oneI didn’t even draw. I tried to keep the Paint Shopping low and not get cheesy with it, but hey, one must makeallowances for the neophyte.

Anyway, I’m ahead of schedule again, so that’s kind of nice.

Predictions for the year 2002:

• Local newspaper editorials will make their own predictions, in which they will manage to misspell”palindrome.”

• Web design will veer off in a different and even less user-friendly direction.
• I will be referred to, variously, as “Brendon,” “Brandon,” “Brenda” and “Beernad.”
• I will attempt to pick up new slang terms, only to drop them quietly when I realize how stupid I sound.
• Hell will freeze over, or possibly the world will end.
• I will get a date. (Note: some predictions may be causally related.)
• I will miss a Xorph update at least once, causing me massive guilt attacksdespite the fact that like five people read it.
• Short Story will get signed, make a million bajillion dollars, andspend it all on video games.
• I will beat the snot out of everyone in Mario Kart.
• Centre students will drink, women will ignore me, BoxJam will take out the trash, Earth will tilt on its axis and Julia Stiles will put me off mylunch. In other words: life will go on.

You’re welcome. That’ll be $39.95.

Oh Lord, won’t you buy me
a Mercedes Benz

Christmas Eve Day: rebellious lights, last-minute wrapping and my mother (as always) going insane. All that’s missingnow is the annual blown fuse when we try to run the dishwasher, vacuum cleaner and outside lights at the sametime.

They tried to dissuade me from putting the rest of the shiny stuff (shown in the Idiotcam) on the tree. Fools! Theyknow perfectly well there’s no such thing as “enough tinsel.”

Have a merry.

I’m trying to figure out how to do some sort of Xorph special, since Tuesday (ie Newcomicday) is also, um, Christmas.It’s going to be difficult without the ability to draw anything. Maybe I should do it in ASCII art.

You can’t buy real Christmas lights anymore. You go to Wal-Mart, you find the seasonal aisle in the back corner by thegardening supplies, you expect massive stacks of light boxes. Not so! You can, technically, still buy the traditionaltiny-white-bulb strings–but that’s about it. No C9s or 7.5s, not even multicolored small bulbs. Instead wehave–yes!–the stupid light extravanganza!

You have your net lights, which are a cheap and stupid way to get out of wading into the bushes. You have your ropelights, which are not only ugly but unweildy. You have your bubble lights, which are fine, in limited qualities,indoors. And you have truckloads of curtain / icicle lights, which are–I firmly believe this–the will of Satanmanifest on Earth.

All of this is meant, essentially, to explain the slightly odd configuration of this year’s Second House on the Leftlight display. We had a nice multi-colored theme going on, up until I ran out of working colored strings and still hadthree trees (the big ones, naturally) to go. The aforementioned trip to Wal-Mart produced the aforementioned results,and only by scavenging the clearance rack at Big Lots did we come up with five strings of C9s. Unfortunately, all ofthem were entirely white.

I got two of the big trees with said white lights, which at least makes for a symmetrical design. The problem was this:the enormously fat tree by the basketball goal (which I have privately nicknamed “Brendan’s Self-Image”) was mostlystrung with colored lights already, and needed maybe one more string to top it off. A white string would have to bedistributed evenly or look like whipped cream atop a cherry-and-lime jello mold.

This is why I sat on the driveway for twenty minutes today, unscrewing and switching bulbs between one white string andsix colored ones.

Experts estimate that I have spent at least six months of my life doing menial, pointless work like that.

in through my veins
without brains

Reconciliation service tonight–aka drive-through confession.

Until I was about eight, I lived in a very Catholic community–I went to the same Catholicelementary school as most of my friends, lived down the street from the church, CCD, prayer atdinner and bedtime, the works. After we moved to Richmond, and especially when I started going toModel in seventh grade, that world got bumped around a little. I started realizing that not onlywere most people not Catholic, but that a few of them believed some pretty absurd things about whatI’d grown up with.

So I’ve been explaining (or trying to explain) stuff like reconciliation and communion for whatseems like a long time. I think I let my own self-deprecation bleed into it too much, actually, soit’s kind of a surprise how good I feel after something like this. It wasn’t a realconfession, talking straight to the priest (no, you don’t have to have a screen) and getting stuffout in the air… but it was something.

Before we got started, everybody in church (sixtysomething sinners and a couple of priests) gottogether in the middle of the pews, held hands and said the Our Father. There was something aboutthe sound and the timbre of all those people saying the same thing, so close together–I could feelit humming, reverberating in my lungs. It was palpable. I forget sometimes how much simple humanpower and trust there is in ritual.

Explanations aside, I don’t talk about my beliefs much. But the fact is that I take a very deep andquiet joy in being Catholic.

Home. Christmasy. Still tired from the night before last.

I brought my PC with me for the first time since summer. Naturally, it (she?) decided that thiswould be a great time to forget a lot of stuff–like, how part of the BIOS worked, and thus in turnthat it had a video or sound card. I spent most of today putting up lights and wrestling with anextremely stupid computer that really thought it could only work in 16 colors (no, not 16-bit) and640×480. Rrrgh.

Anyway. Things seem to be back to normal now. I would have inked a Xorph today, but I seem to have left the ACadaptor to my scanner in blasted blasted Danville. I’ll put something up on Tuesday, but if it’smouse-drawn in MS Paint then you, at least, will know why.

According to my Aunt Dana, after yesterday’s 40-hour straight runtime, it will take my adrenalglands until January to recover. This is probably why my eyes are so fuzzy. Snark.

he brings his work home
later every night

Witness above the rare use of a) PSP filters andb) JavaScript. They are mostlikely both drug-induced. Tara brought Christmas presents to the room tonight: those little tubesof semiliquid plastic which you stick with tubes and blow up. They contain quite a bit of acetate,it seems, so Jon and I got big lungsful of stuff lots of people use to get high (enhanced by thetrippiness that is Gorillaz). Fortunately,we opened a window in time, so I don’t think it bapple green horsefish.

Let’s go cryptic: Life is rough, life goes on. It has not been the greatest week, but I’m dealing.I remain convinced that girls are the stupidest thing there ever was. It just sucks that so manystupid things are so shiny.

There are two days, one final and one graphical user interface standing between me and Winter Break. It’s time tokick ass and chew bubble gum… and I’m all outta ass.

stomp thewombat!
stomp the wombat!

Classes are over, but the project-oriented bit is just getting started: one take-home final, onemassive database GUI and a big fat glaring Calc review.

I should be happy but I’m not. Reasons? Of course. But in the words of my perceptively British professor,”be careful when crossing the former Soviet, Eastern European republic of Arslikian.”

… like “arse-licky-an.” It’s a pun.

Update 0028 hrs: This.

I wish that I knew what I knownow
when I was younger

Play premiered to audience laughter, thanks mostly to my spectacular, gorgeous cast. There was abit of a lighting/timing mishap that kind of took the punch out of the best joke in the play, butwe’ll deal with it tonight.

Other than that… I’m surviving. Comp Sci project got pushed back till next week; if relief wasass, that announcement would have been Lauren.It’s December and it feels like June. I’m going to go shave now.

I hate the winter
in Lexington

I got a kiss from a lesbian and not from my date, and that, I think, is the story of my life.