My favorite webcomic is over, if not necessarily done. I am sad anyway.
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On Halloween, I had the privilege of yelling at children during Lisa’s family’s Haunted Yard. It was awesome! They’ve been doing it for years, differently every time, and they claim that this one was their last–Lisa’s parents are selling that house. Fortunately, her sister-in-law Mary Beth captured the Haunted Yard experience on digitized video!
Night Vision Cam Power Activate! (32Mb)
Watch the upper right of the screen toward the end, when they’re getting their candy–the man chasing the children until they cry is the legendary Ken Moore. It’s not often Ken has the chance to show off that particular talent. The Haunted Yard was to Ken as World War II to Churchill.
As if you needed proof
Not that I hold any particular love for MySpace, the Geocities of the subscriptkiddie set, but have you ever seen a more blatant call to kill the messenger? My favorite quote:
“‘It just seems to me that if you put up a public web site, and you allow students, teenagers, minors to post their thoughts and ideas, and not monitor it in an adult manner, you are asking for trouble,’ Gonzales said.”
This man is in charge of a school district. Thoughts and ideas! My God! Who let them have those!
Update 11.10.2005 1519 hrs: Adam’s priceless comment:
“MySpace isn’t even the messenger in this case – it’s the medium. In other news, local school district sues air for allowing the ‘verbal’ transmission of thoughts and ideas between teenagers!”
If you don’t already wish you were a baller then I bet you wish you did.
Basketball tonight is TURKEY DINNER FROM HELL! Night. We are making a turkey and all the fixings. Do not attempt to remind us that literally weeks remain before Thanksgiving. Your Earth time cannot hold the turkey. FROM HELL!
Speaking of conspiracies, we are going to go see HARRY POTTER ON THE DAMN IMAX and you should come with us. The November 18 2330 hrs (Stonybrook) show, to which a few of us have tickets, appears to have already sold out. I’m going to go out on a limb here, however, and say that my girlfriend might want to see it more than once. I’ll post the second showtime when I know it.
All the news is old news, all the news is bad news
Sony has resorted to the tactics of virus writers to stop people from listening to music. Paris is burning with frustration from the bottom up, and the response from the top is “zero tolerance.” And we, the United States–without public approval, without accountability, without even visibility–have been literally putting our prisoners in the gulag.
I was going to explain why I hate this but that’s unnecessary, really.
The department that occupies most of this floor, at work, has decorated with a theme for today. The theme is Hillbilly Wedding. I want to die.
I make a very convincing Nazi
Lisa posted it way first, the how-fast-can-we-make-a-photocomic version (my estimate: five minutes in toto). I am a sneaky person who had the advantage of the original raw files to work with, so here’s mine, an hour and a half of work later:
Raiders of the Lost Ark in Three Panels
(SPOILERS)
My cousin Bruce came home Friday, for the first time since his kidney failed and he suffered acute pancreatitis. The survival rate for the severity of his illness is, they say, almost as bad as it gets. Bruce is a statistic (the only good kind).
I am ashamed to admit that while I wrote to Bruce, I never made time to visit him in the hospital in Indianapolis. My life experience has taught me to dislike and fear hospitals; I know that’s nothing next to what Bruce must feel now. I’m just glad he’s home.
Uncle Brendan Reviews Things You Won’t Buy
Two months ago I promised to talk about my Koss pocket equalizer, and I never did.
In short: it’s good! It doesn’t quite provide as much bass as the full bass boost function on my CD player, but then there’s not as much bass in an mp3 as there is on a CD. With the treble and midrange set at like 80% and the bass at 200%, though, I find the audio quality significantly improved. It works fine with rechargeable batteries; since my Shuffle is already rechargeable, that means a significant savings over my CD player (which ate only alkaline). I profess myself satisfied.
The thing is actually bigger than the Shuffle, as expected, but they still fit in my breast pocket together. There’s a little hiss, but it’s only detectable in quiet places. More significant is the fact that unlike my headphones and mp3 player, the equalizer is unshielded, and evidently contains metal elements long enough to pick up some kind of radio. This usually isn’t a problem, except a) near power lines, b) near big flat buildings that bounce lots of radio at you, and c) when my cell phone goes off. It really sucks when my cell phone goes off. It does the DAT-DT-DT-DAT bursts of white noise, like a hideous ringtone just for me! At least I don’t miss calls anymore.
Someday I’ll get a real mp3 player with an integrated equalizer, but until then the Koss equalizer is worth its annoyances. One thumb up.