Category: Conspirators

January 2, 2004 /

As today’s Stone Soup points out, it’s actually pretty silly to even think about working today, but for some reason I did, and dragged myself out of bed at 6:30 just as normal. It was a little strange to be one of like four (as opposed to eighty) people waiting for an elevator, and a little stranger when all the lights on our part of the floor were deliberately off. When I read that comic strip and waited an hour and still only tech support was there, I took off like one of the wiser characters in a survival horror movie.

After that I mostly… slept? And played Double Dash. Maria got a GameCube for Christmas, so unless she bans me from using it I’ll probably never accomplish anything worthwhile again. We actually unlocked almost everything on New Year’s Eve, along with our stay-in-and-snack companion Lisa, but we lacked a memory card at that point and were bereft of saving ability. I got one of those on the aforementioned trip home from work today, so now we get to do it all again. This is a fine and noble thing.

Tonight it’s out to dinner at some fancy place where they make you eat so slowly that it takes two hours to finish the soup, then Strizzle Lizzle rehizzle, and finally sometime after midnight Ian and I will drive to the hinterlands and crash (as in sleep, not… hit things). The next morning, we and forty of our closest relatives will race tiny cars down a track for eight hours until one emerges supreme. Seriously. We’ve been doing it every year since before I was born.

We’re going to Kenmore Square

December 16, 2003 /

LiveJournal has gotten rid of their invite code system. What does that mean? It means my few remaining holdout friends (or those friends who initially gave in but quickly regressed) without blogs need to get one. Right now.

I know LJ carries a sort of stigma–just as Geocities is the source and font of crappy web pages about one’s cat, LJ is the source and font of angsty emo drama. And bad spelling. And typing in all lower case.

But let’s face it: as far as free solutions go, it’s the best all-in-one publishing / aggregation tool out there. Of course NewsBruiser is better blogging software, and of course Feed on Feeds is a better RSS reader. But they need server space to run on, and many people just don’t have that, or don’t want to pay for it. LJ provides that free space, along with grained access control, easy (but deep) configuration, and good documentation. Plus it’s open-source.

It’d be easy to go over there and snap up a bunch of free journals to compartmentalize things, but of course I don’t need to do that–I can create more NewsBruiser notebooks any time I want, and I’ve always got Zomziepie, Spam As Folk Art and Ruse You Can Bruise to write in.

What I did do, though, is create a new community. Hey, road trip people! I know almost all of you already have LJs, and if you don’t, there’s no reason not to get one now. And then when you do, it is hereby required that you roll on up and post at Calicomicon!

December 13, 2003 /

Emily Anderson was here for about 24 hours, starting Friday night; she, Maria and I made pancakes, watched movies, and generally mocked my sexuality. A good time was had, mostly. (They made me wear a pink fuzzy hat and sunglasses. They called me “Elton.”)

Seriously, it was really good to see her, and we did have enormous fun. I found out I’m a deity of some sort, I guess: this morning Maria was unhappy about the gloomy no-fun weather outside, so she turned to me for help.

“Brendan,” she complained, “make it snow!”

I turned in the direction of the balcony and ordered, in as grand a tone as I could produce, “Snow.”

It started five minutes later. I’m not really sure how to turn it off.

December 4, 2003 /

I lived through my exams, and I did get an A in the other class, so BAM: school is done for Brendan. This is still weird! I don’t have classes for like a month!

In case you’re still in classes and are wondering if that was intended to make you hate me: yes. Also, “[redacted].” (Hey, [redacted]! Get a blog!)

November 30, 2003 /

I experienced a surreal and Sumanaesque moment upon the sudden realization, tonight, that I have a LiveJournal! No, wait. I knew that. Stephen gave it to me. What was surreal was planning to set up another account, with the aim of syndicating NFD, and then discovering that a certain kind somebody had already done so!

LiveJournal: A neverending font of generosity. If you’re Brendan.

November 30, 2003 /

I really hate remedy medicine. I actually don’t like taking drugs at all, though I make mild use of caffeine and will choke down / vaporize / intravene something if, you know, I’ll die otherwise. But decongestants, antihystamines, painkillers, soporifics… bleagh. I don’t like to think about treating symptoms instead of causes. I can live with symptoms! Fix the root problem!

Nevertheless, living with an iron-willed roommate who happens to be a med student will eventually weaken you on the placebo-effect front. I’ve been taking Robitussin for about 24 hours now, which is why I was functional enough to sit in a VERY COLD ticket booth and run sound for PI Sketch with only one slip-up. It was a good show. The crowd liked it. I touched Yale inappropriately and got to meet Allilea, who differs from most other celebrities in that she’s taller in real life.

Tomorrow I crash hard, and try to get ready for my last homework and last exam on Tuesday. Then Thursday, then finals, and then the semester will be over. This is very weird. Who the hell gets out for finals on December 4th? U of L, that’s who.

Yea, I go to bed to rest my fevered brow, and to cough until the Robitussin kicks in. It’s not like this is unusual, I get sick about once every winter, but I start to worry about my brain health when I notice that I’m subtracting 230 from 1830 and coming up with 1400.

November 17, 2003 /

“I didn’t get close enough to this bicycle tire spider to see what it was wearing (I’m not scared of all spiders, just ones who live life on the edge), but I’m assuming it had a flame-patterned skull cap tied around its head over those eight mean eyes, three of which work. It hadn’t woven a middle finger into its web; I checked.”

I twinned Audrey and Stephen. It only seemed right.

Speaking of friendblogs, I only just noticed that my first-year roommate and my friend Lauren were persuaded by the Centre PR department to keep travel journals when they went abroad. I’m pretty sure they’re both in DC (District, not David) now–Lauren living a sitcom, Ben… Ben doing Ben things. They’re both going to be President, possibly at the same time.