Maybe it's because I've just gone through a terrible and traumatic event in my life... but I feel the need to be more active in world events. I have an urge to fight injustice and make this earth a better place for all mankind and the creatures who inhabit her. Kidney stones will do that to you.

And it is with this new-found strength that I have been given the courage to stand up for my beliefs and confront people who I feel are doing something wrong. Even people who I consider friends.

People like Karla.

For quite a while now I've been enjoying her daily exploits as a Texan living in Norway via her witty and entertaining blog called Tales of a Textpatriate. She always has a way of taking the chaos out of my day. A way of bringing order to a universe gone mad. A comforting voice of reason amongst the horrors of my existence. But today all that changed. Today she wrote about something so disturbing that I feel compelled to act.

Karla admitted that she wears fur.

And not just any fur, but the fur of the rare and beautiful faux.

Karla is a faux fur wearer.

At first I thought that she didn't know any better. I sought to educate her as to the cruel nature of the faux fur industry. But she shows no remorse. She told me to "faux off" and when I told her I would be blogging about her reprehensible faux fur wearing lifestyle... she replied in the comments: "you faux right ahead... I faux dare you... faux bitch!!"

And how can I not?

So today. Right here. Right now. I am starting a campaign to save the fauxs from their tragic fate...

It's just not right in this day and age that people are still wearing faux fur. I feel it is my duty to spread the word and help bring an end to this barbaric practice. To argue my case, I've done a little research...

• The average faux is 14-inches (36cm) long and weighs 11-ounces (312g). They reach sexual maturity in 9 months. They mate just once a year in July-August, and have a litter size of 1 to 5 pups (based on diet and health factors). Wild faux live to be 3-4 years old, or 5-7 in captivity (assuming they are not slaughtered first!).
• At their population height in the early 70's faux could be found on all continents, including the rare White Arctic Faux of Antarctica.
• Since the faux-fur fad of the late 80's the faux has been hunting nearly to the brink of extinction. Where the world faux population once ranged in the millions, only a few thousand survive in the wild. Europe alone has shown a 92% decline in their faux population since 1984. Three faux species are known to be extinct: Frisky Siberian Faux, Mandarin Forest Faux, and American Southwest Rattler Faux.
• The "American Great Plains Faux" (the largest specimen of the faux species in existence) once roamed freely on the plains of North America in great herds that numbered in the thousands, but is now found only in the Faux Animal Reserve in Oklahoma.
• With the decline of wild faux, farm-bred faux "factories" have risen up to meet faux fur demand. Fauxs are forced to live out their lives in tiny, dirty cages and fed steroids to keep their coats as shiny as possible. Little fauxs often develop heart and liver damage which make their existence a miserable one.
• Exotic faux fur has become even more popular as their populations dwindle... the Spotted Faux and the Leopard Faux being the most desirable. To keep up with demand, common faux breeds are exposed to painful genetic mutations in order to produce more interesting variation in their coats. This barbaric practice has resulted in fluorescents, pastels, stripes, and even variation in length and texture.
• Faux were revered as a gift from the gods by ancient cultures because of their gentle and inoffensive nature.

And there you have it. Faux furriers spend millions to hide the true nature of their savagery by advertising that "faux fur is a cruelty-free alternative to other furs". I say ENOUGH! It's time that people learn the TRUTH about faux fur and the entire faux fur industry. I hope you will join me in boycotting faux fur products as a truly inhumane fashion accessory. I can only hope that Karla has a change of heart, and can see that faux fur is nothing more than a life of pain and suffering for innocent creatures who deserve better at our hands.

How is it that we can put a man on the moon, but can't find a way to manufacture fake faux fur??

This will be my last entry at Blogography. This morning I got an offer to write material at a commercial blog FOR MONEY and, since I am barely capable of writing one thing each day, I'm afraid that Blogography will be shut down for the foreseeable future.

Oh... wait a minute... I got that backwards. I REFUSED the offer because I am barely able to write one thing each day, and I am not ready to give up my blog just yet. Yes... yes, I'm sure that's how it went. But still, that's kind of flattering isn't it? Somebody found my crappy blog entertaining enough to want to pay me actual money to write stuff. Strange.

Anyway, the latest Project Catwalk finally hit, and Liz was her usual brutally hot self. A double-vision in magenta...

On the way to work in the rain this morning I needed to stop at the mini mart to pick up some cheese popcorn. Hey, I woke up craving cheese popcorn and far be it for me to deny myself anything. When I arrived, there was a guy in a dirty coat standing soaking-wet in the middle of the parking area. As I pulled up and got out of my car, the guy came right up to me and without hesitation said: "I really need a drink, do you have a couple of bucks?"

The reason I don't hand out money has already been documented (here, in a very special episode of Blogography), so I told him that while I cannot give cash, I'd be happy to buy him a breakfast burrito and a coffee if he was hungry. "Burrito? I don't want a burrito! I need a drink!" After explaining that this wasn't going to happen, I fully expected that he would take me up on my offer, but instead he said "aaaah, keep your damn burrito!" and walked off into the rain.

If only I had the discipline to become a wandering alcoholic. I mean, I always have such a great time while drunk, so it must be like a non-stop party (at least until you run out of booze money like that poor bastard). Meagan called once I had bought my cheese popcorn and, after I told her about my random encounter, had to remind me that being drunk in public is not the best career move for me...

Years ago while she was still living in Portland, I had gone down for work and we hooked up for a night on the town with her brother and his partner. Many alcoholic beverages were consumed before we finally decided to go to the movies. It was one of these weepy drama flicks that only women and gay men can enjoy, but I was totally drunk and didn't care what they wanted to watch. Turns out that was a mistake, because I was bored... bored... bored.

So bored that I did something bad.

There was this dramatic scene in the film where some daft bitch wasn't watching her daughter and the little girl wandered off and got trapped somehow. The woman struggled valiantly to reach the girl, but she couldn't. There were all these dramatic close-up shots of their hands almost touching, but not quite.

The woman in the movie cried.

The little girl in the movie cried.

The audience cried.

I just screamed "USE THE FORCE, BITCH!!"

In my defense, it did work for Luke when that abominable snow monster hung him up-side-down in the ice cave and he could almost touch his light saber.

There were a couple of big laughs in the audience (presumably those few straight guys who had been forced to watch this pile of crap by their girlfriends), but overall my helpful comment was not well-received by my fellow movie-goers. I really don't blame them. I hate it when some dumbass ruins the film for everybody... it just so happens that this time the dumbass was me.

When a woman left the theater, I knew she was going to get the manager, so I told my posse I was going back to the bar before I got tossed out and they could just come get me after the movie was over. Much to my surprise, they actually did come and get me.

So perhaps Meagan is right. If social drinking is this difficult for me, maybe this isn't a good career move?

Oooh, look! It's another picture of Elizabeth Hurley!!

Oh yeah, speaking of The Force... my fellow Lego Star Wars video game lovers will be happy to know that IGN is running a production diary for the sequel over at their site. How cool is that? I guess it's time I renew my IGN Insider membership. All I know is that I cannot WAIT for this game to be released...

Awww... isn't little Lego Darth Vader cute as he chokes that little Lego Rebel Alliance soldier?

There are choices that define you. Choices that let the world know who you are... what you're about. Everything from what you choose to wear to what you choose to drive is analyzed by everybody you meet. Make the wrong choice, and you can give a very wrong impression.

And there is nothing more harshly analyzed than what bank checks you choose.

It used to be that checks were all the same. You opened a checking account and got some kind of blue or green pattern and that was the end of it. There was no choice... your bank had already made it for you. But now things are very different. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of check blanks you can choose from. I don't write checks very often because I use an electronic billing service and a debit card, but every once in a while I need to write one. And I am down to two left, so now it's time to choose.

The checks I loathe most are the cute ones. Puppies and rainbows and all that happy crap. When I am writing a check, I am generally not happy. And I don't want the people to whom I am giving the check to be happy either. Kittens are the worst. Nothing more horrible than a cute kitten on a check. Unless it's a kitten cartoon...

Or maybe babies dressed up as angels is the worst, I can't decide...

So then I start looking for things I dislike. Things that make me very unhappy. And right at the top of the list is country music. I loathe country music with a passion usually reserved for child molesters and Ann Coulter. And there are plenty of country music checks to choose from. Like Kenny Chesney, for example. A design like this is guaranteed to piss me off whenever it came time to write a check...

But that's pretty gay. Okay, it's a LOT gay. And with my gayness rating hovering at 20%, I cannot afford to add the kind of gay points that Kenny Chesney checks would give me. I need something more butch...

But that's kind of lame, because checks with chicks just look like you're compensating for something... they say "I am so not butch that I give you this sexy chick in the hopes that it will fool you into thinking that I am a total stud". So instead, I thought I'd head in another direction and look for something totally macho. Something that would make that babe at the checkout counter totally "get" me. Something that shows I am a bad-ass that doesn't take any crap and knows how to handle a woman. Something like these policeman checks...

But passing out checks with guns to people is a little scary now-a-days. I don't even know if airport security would let me on a plane carrying something like that. So maybe there is a more heroic choice? Something that screams "I am the very definition of masculinity and manly vigor". Something like these firefighter checks...

Except the only thing more lame than checks with chicks has got to be trying to explain why you are carrying firefighter checks when you're not a firefighter.

So then I go looking through sports checks... cartoon character checks... patriotic checks... designer pattern checks... check after check after check. And nothing even remotely says "THIS IS ME!"

Until I found these totally awesome Rob Zombie checks...

That aught to scare the crap out of the little old lady at the rental storage company!

Now go find your own check bliss.

Thanks to a suggestion from Rach, I decided to make my own bank checks. It's only $20 for 150 of them, and you can rotate through four separate designs if you want. Since I've already made my own stamps, I figured "why not?" I don't think that you can use photos of other people without permission, so Elizabeth Hurley checks are not an option... and I'm certainly not going to put photos of myself on them. Guess it's going to be a bunch of DaveToons then.

The hard part is trying to pick toons that will work in such a severe horizontal format. I did the best I could, and am mostly happy with the results.

Bad Monkey...

Toothpaste...

Scary Clown...

Super Pope...

Big fun! I need to start customizing everything... I want my own glassware, dinnerware, and cutlery. My own shoes, socks, and boxer shorts. My own toothbrushes, shower curtains, and condoms. I definitely want my own line of erotic sex toys (which may be considered "Not Safe for Work" and are pictured in an extended entry)...

The sweat pours down my forehead as I crouch behind the battered automobile. My ears are ringing because the sound is deafening as they unload in my direction. The car shudders amidst flashes of light, and pieces of metal rain down upon me. These guys really, really hate me. But that's okay. Thanks to some inventive internet research, I've got the Big F#@%ing Gun with me and am ready to unleash. I wait for them to reload, and then it's my turn. I blow away everything in sight, my MSAW ripping through wood, glass, metal, and flesh. I know this is so wrong, but I just can't wipe the smile from my face. The Microsoft Internet Explorer developer group deserved to die. All of them. Rest in pieces you bastards.

And this is why I think playing violent video games is actually a good thing. If I couldn't fire up my Xbox and pretend to blow away the idiots who made Internet Explorer the shitty-ass browser that it is... I would probably be tempted to do it in real-life. But instead, I just sit down with the video game Black and blow shit up for an hour, then the urge to kill is manageable again.

And it's all because of this...

BloggerPeeps beta, which is starting to look fabulous in every browser I throw at it (including Safari, FireFox, Opera)... is, of course, looking like crap in Internet Explorer. AS USUAL!! So then I've got to sit down and try to figure out which magical combination of "display:block" and "display:inline" statements will bypass all of the IE bugs and display the page as it's meant to be seen. I must be getting used to it, because it only took about an hour this time.

Anyway, everything is coming together for my very own elite blogging "anti-network". Tonight I'll swap out the temporary graphics with the real thing, then get the database hooked up. After that, I'll be good to go, and start adding sites later this week. Woot!

Now I need to go buy groceries. It's 10:00am, and all I had to eat for breakfast is a can of Mountain Dew.

I feel funny.

Sometimes it so sucks to be me.

At 8:30 this morning, I found out that some sort of crisis had happened, necessitating me having to pull together a project, drive 3 hours to Seattle, fly to Chicago O'Hare, spend the night, meet somebody at the airport at 6:30am, then fly back home directly after.

36 hours of my life gone so that I can play delivery boy.

And this was shaping up to be such good week.

As I sit here in my hotel room, I marvel how things like this tend to happen to me so often (note to self: wireless service at the Hilton O'Hare SUCKS ASS, so don't stay here again). I guess all I can do is order up some crappy room service food, watch TV, and hope I don't oversleep because the wake-up call system is all screwed up.

About the only cool thing that happened this entire day was sitting next to Seattle musician Jim Basnight on the plane and talking music for the trip over. He's on his way to New York to play a few gigs this weekend, so if you're in the city, be sure to check it out.

Dang.

Since I didn't have time to pack anything except a change of underwear and a toothbrush, I just realized I don't have any Carmex lip balm with me. How in the heck am I expected to survive Chicago in March without my Carmex lip balm? I feel my lips chapping up as I type this...

I've decided that I don't like being a delivery boy. Too much hassle for too little reward. There are perks, however. Unlike my "real" job which never ends, this job is done, done, done. I hand over the package, and it's over. I can go home and not think about it anymore.

The only thing I have to think about is whether my flight is going to leave on time. Last night they were having problems with their radar here at O'Hare, and we arrived a half-hour late. And since I didn't get much sleep last night, I really don't want any delays for my flight out. I'll have a hard enough time staying awake for the 3-hour drive home once I land in Seattle.

As a side-note... why in the heck do they put cameras in mobile phones?

The quality is always tragic, making the camera totally worthless, so why bother?

On the left is a picture out my window from yesterday's flight out of Seattle. Since I bought my ticket earlier that same day, I got a crappy seat in the back of the plane. I wanted to preserve the moment forever, but this picture isn't going to bring back any memories except how much my phone's camera sucks ass.

On the right is a photo of a dumbass who is clipping his nails here in United Airlines "Red Carpet Club". This elite refuge for frequent travelers is supposed to be a classy and comfortable retreat from the chaos of waiting at the gate. As it turns out, you get the same redneck morons who think that flinging their nail clippings everywhere is acceptable behavior.

But, on the other hand, here at the Red Carpet Club you get FREE MINI BAGELS WITH CREAM CHEESE!! WOO HOO!!

Actually, these bagels totally blow, which just goes to prove that you cannot find a decent bagel outside of New York. Don't ask me why.

OH GREAT! SOME BITCH JUST BROUGHT A SCREAMING BABY... INTO THE RED CARPET CLUB!! I guess that's my cue to go claim my seat upgrade and go home. I project my odds of being able to sleep on the plane at 6%. Hopefully somebody will drop a suitcase on my head as they try to over-stuff the overhead bin so I can finally get some rest.

When I got back from my trip yesterday, I was understandably exhausted. It took seven hours to get to Chicago O'Hare where I spent 9 hours waiting to do something that took 5 minutes, only to have to turn around and spend another seven hours getting back home. After working for a couple of hours, I think I must have passed out, because I woke up at 8:00pm and didn't know where I was.

And so now my sleep schedule is going to be all messed up, and that sucks ass because I'm already battling insomnia. With nothing better to do while wide-awake at 1:00am, I thought I'd write up a summary of my trip. But that was boring, so I decided to to try telling my tales in verse. A pity I'm not much of a poet...

Ode to the dumbass who kept yelling "ARE YOU THERE?" "HELLO?" "ARE YOU THERE?" "HELLO?" "ARE YOU THERE?" at the airport check-in counter...

Mobile phones sure are swell,
    Cellular technology is sly.
But if the connection makes you yell,
    It's time to hang up or die.

Ode to the impossibly cute woman I saw sitting across from me in the food court at Chicago O'Hare International...

Your hair sets my heart aflame,
    Your smile is devilish and fleeting.
Your brown eyes are calling my name,
    A pity you pick your nose while eating.

Ode to the Reggio's Chicago-style pizza I ate for breakfast at the airport yesterday morning...

Cheese! So gooey and right!
Sauce! So flavorful and tight!
Crust! So buttery and light!
    Your calories widen my butt.

Ode to the rude bitch in the seat ahead of me on the plane who crushed my kneecaps and nearly destroyed my laptop...

To recline slowly is courtesy,
    To look behind first is kind.
To flop back indiscriminately,
    Makes me want to beat your behind.

Ode to the "Right Bite" boxed meals that United Airlines sells in lieu of the in-flight meals you used to get...

Meals are no longer free,
    $5 for a snack box insane.
Contents really do puzzle me,
    Because tuna stinks up the plane.

Ode to the woman at the gas station who was wearing so much makeup that I had to wonder if there was a face under all of it...

Pants worn tightly.
Tits covered slightly.
Hair teased nightly.
    You look like a whore.

Ode to the piece of crap motorist ahead of me on Blewett Pass who is obviously too old to still be driving...

Hey old man you're taking all day,
    Oh why won't you let me pass?
Time to get the f#@% out of my way,
    Or I'll crash into you then kick ass.

Hmmm... well that was a bad idea. Sorry. It won't happen again.

Gah! It's now 1:30am and I'm still not tired!! I am so going to be dragging my ass today.

As I mentioned a while back, I'm going through kind of a Kool-Aid renaissance.

Lately I've been getting much bolder in my Kool-Aid choices, and have started to stray away from the classics (Grape, Orange, Lime, Tropical Punch) in order to try some of the freakier flavors they've got going on. First there were the "Kool-Aid Twists" which are blended flavors ("Swirlin' Strawberry Starfruit", for example). Then I experimented with "Kool-Aid Ice Cool" which adds a bit of tingle to the taste ("Arctic Green Apple" anyone?). And now I'm moving on to the "Kool-Aid Aguas Frescas" which are favorite flavors from Latin America...

Last night was time for "Pineapple" which tastes about as unlike pineapple juice as you can get. I didn't care for it at all.

Until I added vodka to it.

Suddenly the pineapple-ish stuff became an exotic nectar of the gods. Which begs the question... is there any juice (or juice-like substance) that vodka doesn't taste good in? I like it in grape juice, orange juice, cranberry juice, pineapple juice, and any kind of fruit punch. I haven't tried it in apple juice yet, but something tells me that it will be equally tasty.

Much like a fresh episode of Project Catwalk with the delicious Elizabeth Hurley...

And speaking of alcohol, I need a new drink. I'm getting bored with the same old cocktails every time.

Here's the kind of stuff I like:

• Jäger Bomber (Jäger & Red Bull Energy Drink).
• Long Island Iced Tea (Vodka, Tequila, Rum, Gin, Triple-Sec, Sweet-n-Sour, Coke).
• Hard Rootbeer (Capt. Morgan's Spiced Rum & Rootbeer).
• Pinedriver (Vodka & Pineapple Juice).
• Liquid Cocaine (Jäger, Bacardi 151, Goldschlager Cinnamon Schnapps).
• Snakebite (Yukon Jack & Lime Juice).
• Liquid Asphalt (Jäger & Sambuca).
• Bronze Monkey (Vodka, Capt. Morgan's Spiced Rum, Orange Juice).
• Jameson Irish Whiskey over Ice.
• Any decent ice-cold beer (from the bottle).

Maybe I should create my own alcoholic beverage. I could call it the "Bad Monkey"...

Too bad my lunch hour is almost up, because I would totally try drinking that.

Today I got an email telling me that my ICRA labeling is out of date. Truthfully, I don't think that labeling site content matters one bit, but if it will keep people from sending me an email because their kid stumbled across Blogography and ended up traumatized, then I have no problem doing it.

Just like last time, I am being very conservative, and applying labels that I don't necessarily agree with (better safe than sorry). The one thing I have changed is that I've blanketed all of this crap as "appearing in an artistic content" because I am of the opinion that my cartoons and writing do have some artistic merit (no matter how small). If you were to read down the list and NOT see it as appearing in an artistic context, Blogography looks incredibly pornographic, violent, and balls-nasty, which I don't feel is a very fair assessment.

The simple truth is that I don't consider my blog to be in any way obscene. It's more like a PG-13 rated movie where young children reading it may be exposed to things that they don't understand, or sarcastic material that they can't yet view in the proper context without help from an adult. Sadly, I don't think this comes across in my ICRA rating because of the very narrow choices you are given, but it is what it is and so that's what i got.

Below is the current rating structure which I have labeled on every page in my blog. A sample link is given to show how I am interpreting the label for actual content...

• Exposed breasts: Janet!
• Bare buttocks: Hot!
• Obscured or implied sexual acts: Peanut butter!
• Injury to human beings: Postage!
• Injury to animals: Vegetarian!
• Injury to fantasy characters (including animation): Potter!
• Blood and dismemberment, human beings: Jedi!
• Blood and dismemberment, animals: Vegetarian (again)!
• Blood and dismemberment, fantasy characters (including animation): Scanners!
• Abusive or vulgar terms: Every chance I get.
• Profanity or swearing: Da F-Bomb!
• Mild expletives: I use "crap" and "ass" more times than I could possibly count.
• Depiction of tobacco use: Love!
• Depiction of alcohol use: Intoksikayshun!
• Depiction of drug use: Tatercrack!
• Depiction of the use of weapons: I want a gun.
• Gambling: Hard Rock!
• Content that sets a bad example for young children: that teaches or encourages children to perform harmful acts or imitate dangerous behaviour: Send in the clowns!
• Content that creates feelings of fear, intimidation, horror, or psychological terror: Danza!
• User-generated content such as chat rooms and message boards (moderated): Having comments turned on is user-generated content, I guess.
• This material appears in an artistic context: Well, it does. Kind of. A little bit.

Oooh, I feel so perverted and dirty now.

Why does the USA have the ugliest, most boring money on the planet?

Seriously, I've been around the world more than a couple times and, everywhere I go, everybody else has sexier money than we do. Most foreign currencies look as though a gifted designer... a true artiste... sat down with a plan and crafted a cohesive statement that is both beautiful and representative of the currency's home nation. US currency looks like somebody sat their butt down in some random patriotic bits then wiped their ass with a piece of paper.

I can only guess that the "design" meeting for our currency went something like this...

"Hey, let's slap an engraving of a dead president on there, then sprinkle random shit everywhere to really junk things up. Then, just to be sure we don't accidentally make our bank notes look like a currency "family," let's intentionally make sure all bills have different typefaces and symbology. And, to be sure our money is the most boring it can be, let's use drab green as the only color, sprinkling other random colors around only when forced to for security measures."

Thus the "new" US currency was born.

Well, not actually "born" so much as crapped out of the ass of the US Mint. The latest atrocity being the $10 bill that's being released any day now...

And then there's the $20 that was released a while back, showing entirely different design elements, typefaces, and illustration style. WTF? Did the person designing the $10 even LOOK at any other bills?!?

How totally embarrassing. I'd rather shop with Monopoly money than this dippy-looking cash.

Now take a look at this beautiful specimen from Costa Rica (as swiped from Randy Johnson's excellent world money pages)...

Yes, Costa Rica. An agricultural country that's smaller than the State of West Virginia (one-half of %1 the USA's land area), has 1% of the USA's population, and 1.4% of the Gross Domestic Product, takes more pride in their money than we United States. Why didn't we outsource our currency design to Costa Rica so we could have nice-looking bills? We don't seem to have a problem outsourcing every other f#@%ing job here.

I should run for president in 2008 based solely on the promise of affordable health-care, accountability of action, and better-looking money.

I would seriously kick-ass as president.

I finally got around to finishing up the last hour of VH1's I Love Toys show and have to say I am monumentally disappointed. THE HULA-HOOP IS THE #1 TOY OF ALL TIME?!? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. The Hula-Hoop was a fad... not a great toy at all.

But the show was great fun, and did remind me of my favorite toys from over the years. With nothing better to do, I decided to come up with my own list of top ten best...

1. Lego. Easily the greatest toy ever created, there is not a time in my life that I can recall Lego not being in it. In the early days, all you had were bricks... if you wanted to have a Lego figure, you drew a smiley face on a yellow piece and that was it. But now Lego is cooler than ever, with little pirate and ninja mini-figures to populate your self-created universe. Lego kicks ass!
2. Atari 2600. I shudder to think how many wasted hours were spent staring at the television playing Atari. My favorite games were always of the explorer/RPG type genre (not that you could have much of an RPG back then)... those games that had a purpose. My favorites being "Adventure" and "Superman".
3. Six Million Dollar Man. My Steve Austin action figure was beyond cool. He had a hole in his head so you could look through his bionic eye, and had fake skin on his arm you could roll up to get to the bionic "parts" inside. You could also get Steve's space capsule (which turned into a bionic repair center), and other action figures like Oscar Goldman and Fembots!!
4. GameBoy. I am pretty sure that I've owned each of the GameBoy models that have been released over the years... from the original Black & White... to the GameBoy Color... to the Advance... to the Nintendo DS. Being able to "game on the go" is almost too good to be true, and Nintendo has always been there to make mobile gaming cool.
5. Micronauts. This very retro toy was a big favorite back in the day. You started out with the little transparent "Time Traveler" dude, then added other nifty characters like the evil "Acroyear" and "Pharoid". Everybody had holes on them so you could plug them into bitchin' vehicles like the "Mobile Exploration Lab". If you are a fellow Micronaut fan, you need to visit the Micro-Outpost!
6. Hot Wheels. There were too many days spent running Hot Wheels track through my childhood home, then racing cars through the twists, turns, and loops. Keeping up with the latest hot cars was a big status symbol in my neighborhood. I also played around with Matchbox cars, but they never captured my imagination like Hot Wheels.
7. Erector Set. A real building toy for real men made with real metal. Oh yeah! Erector Sets let you get pretty creative in terms of what you could build, and you were able to order extra parts from the Erector company in order to create exactly what you had in mind. Any toy that comes with a wrench is entirely too sweet.
8. Viewmaster. Back before the VCR and DVD the only way you could travel the world and watch big-name entertainment at home was with a Viewmaster. In some ways, it's still superior technology than what we have today because it was in awesome 3-D!!
9. G.I. Joe. Yeah, like every other kid in my generation, G.I. Joe was a huge favorite growing up. My favorite was always the Joe that had "real" fuzzy hair and beard, along with Kung-Fu Grip and a bad-ass scar on his cheek. In many ways, G.I. Joe was even more of a vain toy than Barbie, because there were all these clothes and accessories you had to collect to make sure that your "Joe" was the coolest on the block. Eventually the 12-inch Joe was replaced by these pussy 3-inch models that weren't nearly as fun.
10. Tinker Toys. I was really into building toys growing up, and started out with Tinker Toys. Then moved on to Lincoln Logs. Then Erector Sets. Then Lego. Sure Tinker Toys were always kind of limited in what you could create, but it was the first, and I do remember having a lot of fun with them when I was young.

Speaking of toys... Boing Boing had a link a while back as to how you can make photos look like tiny little models. I gave it a try and ended up with this shot of Toy Shanghai...

Nifty!

I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to get the latest Project Catwalk today, because most weeks it's at least Wednesday before it shows up (ATTENTION SKY ONE... you need to sell your shows on the iTunes Music Store so we poor Americans can see them in a timely manner!!)

Anyway, I start watching and was very pleased that Liz was looking particularly hot in this episode. I like it when she wears simple outfits that flatter her kickin' body rather than the more crazy stuff that covers it up. I mean, less is always more when you look like this...

Better yet, the camera man and film editor final realized who it is they're dealing with, and have started to use appropriate shots to fully exploit the grandeur that is Elizabeth Hurley...

But then the best news ever is announced...

OMFG!! THIS WEEK'S COMPETITION IS TO DESIGN A NEW DRESS FOR ELIZABETH HURLEY!! How utterly brilliant! Why don't they do this every week? The good news is that this means we get to see a bit more of her this time... including some rather fabulous shots of Liz describing what kind of clothes she likes to wear...

I was desperately hoping that Liz would be modeling all the the dresses on the catwalk but, alas, this was not to be. It was just like a regular show with Liz in the judges seat looking hot and making notes.

And that's when IT happened.

That's when the most unfathomable, totally incomprehensible thing ever to air on television was shown in one heart-stopping, unbelievable moment.

Some dumbass said that he thought a dress was too sexy for Elizabeth Hurley to wear.

Yes, you read that right. This stupid queen actually had the balls (or lack thereof) to say that an article of clothing was not appropriate for THE Elizabeth Hurley... not because it was ugly or poorly made... but because it was TOO SEXY for her...

WHAT THE BLOODY F#@%?!?

Did he somehow FORGET what Liz looks like? She was sitting right next to him... all he had to do before opening his stupid mouth was turn his head and LOOK at her so he could realize "oh shit... I almost made a terrible mistake by saying something outrageously idiotic! How could I suggest that there could possibly be a dress that is too sexy for this brutally hot piece of eye-candy! How silly of me! What a silly little pickle I am!!"

But NOOOoooooo.

This monkey-spanker actually said IT. I was hoping that Liz would walk over and beat the shit out of him (seriously, I would have paid money for that action) but if she did whip up on him, they edited that bit out. Or maybe she waited until after the show was over, then set his car on fire... with him in it??

Then again, at the end of the day he'll still be a pathetic little bitch that nobody cares about... and she'll still be Elizabeth Hurley.

I guess there's no worse punishment than that.

But there should be.

Blogging is an effortless endeavor for me. I've read about bloggers who struggle with every new entry, bloggers who get burned out, bloggers who can't think of things to write, bloggers who ramble on because they don't have anything to say... but it's never that way for me. I just sit down to write and, 10-20 minutes later, it's over. Results may vary, but that's all there ever is to it.

But not today.

I woke up, had a few minutes to write... but didn't feel like it.

The twenty minutes I take for lunch... didn't feel like it.

Home from work and done with dinner... didn't feel like it.

Now I've watched a couple hours of TiVo-recorded television... and still don't feel like it.

Maybe if I make a toy boat from a photo I took in St. Thomas...

Awww, cute. But I still don't feel like it. Maybe a dippy internet qiz will help... like "Which of the Seven Deadly Sins Are You?"

Uhhh, no. Stupid quizzes are still stupid. How about a meme I found at Blue Goo Ate My Mom?

• When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was behind you? The bathroom door.
• How much cash did you spend yesterday? Around $30.
• What's a word that rhymes with mist? List.
• Favorite planet, which you would live on, if you could? Kashyyyk, where the Wookies live! Or maybe that planet in Star Trek where the hot green bitches are.
• Who is the LAST person you kissed? Mary.
• What is your favorite ring on your phone? Vibrate.
• What is the last band shirt you wore? My Thompson Twins "Into The Gap" tour shirt which I wore on Sunday from a concert I attended in 1984.
• What do you think of yourself? I am astoundingly brilliant, and should totally be ruling the earth.
• Name the brand of your shoes you're currently wearing? Nike.
• Night light or pitch black? Pitch black.
• What do you think about the (previous) person who took this? He has one of the sexiest blog templates ever.
• What were you doing at midnight last night? Working on the BloggerPeeps sidebar widget.
• What did your last text message say that you received? I don't know... it was Verizon trying to sell me something so I deleted it without looking.
• Where is the nearest Valero? WTF is a Valero?
• What's something that you say a lot? "Crap!"
• Who told you they loved you last? My grandmother.
• Last furry thing you touched? A towel.
• How Many Drugs Have You Done In The Past three Days? Uhhh... none.
• Favorite age you have been so far? 30.
• Your worst enemy? Jared Fogle, the Subway Sandwich whore.
• What is your current desktop picture? My friends, from a trip I took with them to Expo 86 in Vancouver.
• What was the last thing you said to someone? Bye.
• How do you like your eggs? Over medium.
• Do you like someone? I like a lot of people.
• The last song you listened to? Nothing's Impossible by Depeche Mode.

Eh. I give up. :-(

Am I the only one who delights in the misfortune of dumbasses?

I don't know what's wrong with me, because my Buddhist leanings are all about love and respect for my fellow humans, yet I just can't seem to feel badly for stupid people when they do stupid things. Can't do it. Maybe my sympathy gene was misplaced somehow?

Or perhaps it's just because I am pure evil...

This morning I had to provide chauffeur services for somebody needing a ride. After dropping them off, it was still early, and I was hungry enough to eat breakfast at McDonalds while I waited. Sure the food will kill you, but I'm facing 40 and am totally ready to die.

So there I am just pulling into the McDonalds parking area, when I see this car entering from the opposite side of the lot. Much to my surprise, they all of a sudden floor it, and come screaming across the pavement in my direction. At first I thought that I had somehow been transported into the movie Death Race 2000, but then I realized that they were just trying to beat me to the drive-through.

Except I wasn't going to the drive-through.

But they didn't know that, and decided to race me for it...

... and ended up ramming their spiffy new truck right into the curb because they were going too fast and couldn't stop in time.

Oops.

After parking my car, I noticed that the driver had gotten out of his truck to inspect the damage, and it looked like one of his rims took a bit of a beating. This made him mad. Very mad. Very, very mad. He was saying words that I don't think were intended to be said at McDonalds.

I'm sure he probably blames me for this somehow... dumbasses always do.

I thought it was funny, so I just laughed at him as I went to buy an Egg McMuffin (sans ham).

Evil, I tell you.

When you live in a small town, your options for eating out are limited. We have a fine dining restaurant, a family restaurant, a pizzeria, a burger drive-through, and something like 37 Mexican restaurants (give or take). Unless you want to eat Mexican for a month, you only really have a week's worth of variety (and even that's pushing it, because they all feature mostly hamburgers on the menu).

And if you're vegetarian like me, only about 3% of what they serve is edible to you.

Last year a new restaurant opened up selling "Authentic Pulled Pork BBQ" which has since turned out to be a fairly popular place to eat. If you like shredded dead pig and loads of barbecue sauce on a bun, it's the restaurant for you.

I affectionately refer to it as the "Little Shop of Horrors". Mostly because of me doing the vegetarian thing, but the fact that they blast country music at full volume and have redneck decor everywhere is the real kicker...

Frightening.

And yet this is probably what everybody from outside of the US thinks that all restaurants here are like (at least the ones that aren't McDonalds or Kentucky Fried Chicken). They could be right. I'm pretty sure that this is what the cafeteria at The White House looks like now.

But they make a decent potato salad and have good cornbread (with honey butter!), so I drop by every once in a while when I can't think of anything better to eat for lunch.

I just ignore the stench of roasting animal carcasses and try not to think of what goes on in that kitchen...

Or what they have to do to get their "pulled pork"...

Which ends up looking like something that dropped out of a diarrhetic yak's ass...

Bleh. It's Rush Limbaugh on a bun! Bon appetite.

I've written ad nauseam about my profound disappointment in the United States Government to provide adequate health care for its citizens, but it's never been written from personal experience. It's always been an observation of other people struggling... elderly people who can't afford to buy medicine... people who can't afford to go to the doctor when they get sick... things like that.

Until today.

Because today I received my medical bill from the little trip I took to the emergency room for kidney stones a couple weeks ago. The grand total? $2762.77, which is about the price of a brand new, top-of-the-line Apple Power Mac G5.

The good part (if you really look for it) is that I have health insurance to help out. Unfortunately, my deductible means I have to pay $1250 before my insurance actually kicks in, which is about the price of a new Apple iMac.

In order to help people like me with that deductible, the government is generously allowing its citizens to create "Health Savings Accounts", where you are allowed to put in your deductible amount each year, and not pay taxes on it. So I go to open up my HSA at the bank today, only to find that any account with a balance under $2500 will have a monthly service fee of $2.50. And since my account will have a balance of $0 after I pay out for my expenses, I will be effectively paying $30.00 a year to save any money on my taxes.

What a brilliant f#@%&ing idea.

Seriously, when are people going to get sick of this shit and start rioting in the streets? How much worse does it really have to get?

American citizens have to pay huge insurance premiums that still result in huge bills... but not huge enough to deduct from your taxes (unless said expenses exceed 7.5% of your income). Bad enough that the wealthiest nation on the planet makes us pay for all this shit in the first place... but to tax you on top of it? WHAT THE F#@&?!?

If the government is going to make me pay my own medical expenses so I can stay healthy, thus be able to work, thus be able to pay taxes on what I actually earn... why should I have to pay taxes on ANY medical expense? Would they rather we just not go to the doctor and die? How can you collect taxes from somebody who's DEAD you dumbass f#@%ers?!? Are you trying to encourage people to not earn any money so they can go on welfare and get their medical care that way? Stupid. Stupid. STUPID!!

Does this make sense to anybody? Anybody at all?

You shouldn't need to pay a bank $30 to save a minimal amount on your taxes if you need medical attention... you should be able to claim ANY medical expenses on your taxes as a deduction simply by saving a receipt. This is the least... the absolute VERY LEAST... our government can do for the people they are f#@%ing over.

Happy f#@%ing St. Patrick's Day.

As a big fan of the original graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, I was very nervous about V for Vendetta being turned into a movie. After all, Moore's previous works League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and From Hell were positively butchered in the translation to film, and the odds of V bucking this trend seemed unlikely.

As it turned out, the result wasn't half bad. Sure several characters and events were changed, but I think the Wachowski Brothers did capture a bit of what made the original story so great...

The problem is that the context of the book when I first read it fifteen years ago was very different than now. Back then, the Orwellian world in the story echoed a possible future... today it seems to be a likely future. Because of that, the movie seems like a clumsy attempt at socio-political commentary instead of the elegant revelation it was when Moore wrote it.

In any event, this tale of an oppressed future society and its masked terrorist liberator is still worth a look as a film or, better yet, even more amazing if read from the book as it was originally intended.

Then you can be V too...

...and understand why the ending of the book is SO much cooler than what's in the movie.

With tons of work to get through this weekend, I spent most of my time in front of the television with my laptop in an attempt to get caught up. I always like to work with the TV running in order to mask ambient noise, and this time I decided on a Dr. Who DVD that a friend gave me to watch, followed by a marathon of classic Star Trek episodes.

It doesn't get much geekier than that.

Until I start watching all my Buffy The Vampire Slayer DVDs.

Argh. My plan was to spend my birthday in Cabo San Lucas for four glorious days... but my friend can't get her schedule changed, and I'm too buried in work, so we're postponing things. I'm still going to Seattle to goof off this weekend, but boy was I looking forward to drunken adventures in Cabo.

It was just one of several disappointments facing me as I started the week. Unfortunately, it wasn't even the worst thing to happen. No, that would be the old woman who was shouting at me as I drove through the parking lot this morning. I'm getting used to old people yelling and shaking their fist at me, though I can never figure out exactly why they do it. I used to stop and roll down my window so I could find out what their problem was (they're my neighbors, after all) but eventually gave up, because I always ended up more confused than when I started.

So I just give a quick wave and continue on my merry way.

Except she was having none of that. She decided to come after me.

Waving her cane with a righteous fury, she hobbles off the sidewalk and shuffles toward my car. Slowly. Figuring that something could be wrong, I stopped the car, got out, and walked back to her.

Turns out it was a case of mistaken identity... she thought that I was supposed to be driving her to an appointment because my "car looked the same". This was a huge relief to me because the last thing I needed was to have an old lady beat my ass with a cane. I deposited her back on the curb so she wouldn't be run over and said my goodbyes.

Then, just as I was heading back to my auto, somebody pulled up in a beat-to-shit car that looked nothing like mine and started screaming at the poor old woman to get in or they would be late. So once again the old lady hobbles off the curb and then tries to open the car door. When I notice she is having trouble, and the bitch behind the wheel has no intention of helping her, I once again ran back so I can assist her into the car.

My reward is to have the bitch driver then scream at me for blocking the exit.

And yet if I were to strangle the white-trash piece of shit, I WOULD END UP BEING THE ONE SENT TO A POUND-YOU-IN-THE-ASS PENITENTIARY!

This kind of pushed me past the "disappointment" stage and sent me right into "rage" mode. It took every bit of strength I had to not curse the bitch out and, if the old lady hadn't been there, I most certainly would have. AAAAARRRRGGGHH!!

A canceled trip to Cabo. Screaming white-trash bitches. And NO Elizabeth Hurley Project Catwalk torrent yet. THIS is how I am starting my week?!?

I. Want. Out. Of. Here.

Steak SAUCE!!

Last night while tearing through some work I had to finish, I was watching my bitchin' DVD set for Justice Leage: Season One, which rocks SO hard. Honestly, I am more excited about watching a new episode of Justice League than I am about seeing the new X-Men film. The lame-ass "movie X-Men" fight stupid boring crap instead of the bad-ass enemies they get in the comic books, so who cares?

But the Justice League cartoons are just as exciting as the comics, if not more so. It's a comic book lover's dream come true...

And speaking of super-heroes, I was my own super-hero this morning when I totally made Kitty Spangles my bitch on my very first game of double-deck Klondike...

Kitty Spangles Solitaire was recently upgraded to 2.0, and now includes some other versions of the game (like Freecell, Spider, and Yukon). Even better, it's free to registered owners which was pretty swell.

And speaking of swell, I finally managed to watch the season finale of Project Catwalk. The best part of the show was when the final three contestants were told that their mentor "Ben" would be paying a visit to their home, but when they opened the door, it was actually a SURPRISE GUEST... Elizabeth Hurley had dropped by...

I would have shat myself right then and there, but the finalists somehow managed to hold it (somewhat) together...

Liz was brutally hot, as always. Even if she did go a little bit crazy in the end there...

Sigh. And so ends my weekly Elizabeth Hurley fix. It sure would be sweet if they bring her back for another season...

And speaking of sweet, has anybody tried "Golden Oreos Originals"??

They kick all kinds of ass, and I am on my way towards devouring my third bag in two weeks. That cannot be good for me, but I am going through a kind of "cookie renaissance" just now and can't help myself. Somebody needs to suggest another awesome cookie so I can use it to break my 3-bag Golden Oreo habit.

I have wonderful, amazing news.

Incredible, spectacular, miraculous news.

As I was heading home yesterday, I stopped at the mini-mart and found out that my beloved Coke with Lime is back! Sometimes begging and pleading actually works. What I am not sure of is if this is old stock that the Coke Man is trying to get rid of... or if it really hasn't been discontinued, and they were just going to stop selling it at that one store until I complained.

Oh well, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. For now, I'm just happy I can still buy it...

Coke with Lime kicks ass.

In other news: Ha ha. HAH HA HA HAAAHHH! BWAAAAAHH HAAAHH HA HAAAAAAHHH!

Maybe they should call it "Windows VAPOR"?

For crying out loud... just buy a Mac and be done with it.

As for me? I'm going to Daveland...

Oh Daveland...
   It's the place to sing a happy song.
   Grab your wallet and come along!
Oh Daveland...
   It's the place to have a great day.
   Bring your money to pay pay pay!
Oh Daveland...
   It's the place where fun times begin.
   Give us cash or you ain't gettin' in.
Oh Daveland...
Dave how we love you!

For Hachiko...

No. I am not kidding.

I totally love Coke with Lime. Except for an occasional Jones Blue Bubble Gum soda here and there, I had all but given up soda pop for four years. But then I was walking in the grocery store one day and was intrigued by these bright lime-green caps calling out to me from the soda aisle. Intrigued, I decided to give it a try because I like lime.

I now drink a minimum of two servings each day. Yesterday I had four.

Seriously. If you haven't experienced Coke with Lime, you haven't experienced life!

And to all those kind souls who have suggested adding lime juice to Coke to get the same effect... I've tried it. For some reason, it's just not the same. I've tried bottled lime juice. I've tried squeezing fresh lime. I've tried lime slices. I don't know what those Coke bastards do in order to make Coke with Lime so tasty, but I'm sure it probably involves some sort of crystal meth type substance.

That would certainly explain a lot.

I first saw this meme at Chronic Listaholic, and misunderstood it to be that you have to answer every question using only the title of songs by The Eagles. Now I see that Kevin over at Kapgar has done it, and apparently you get to choose the band you want to answer with.

Now that I can do...

Choose a band/artist and answer ONLY in titles of their songs...
Based solely on question #5, I'm going to have to go with Depeche Mode. I should try it again with either a-ha or Erasure, because they both have some songs that are perfect for this kind of thing.

1. Are you male or female?
"Somebody"? (see, if I was going with Erasure, I could have answered "Boy"!).

2. Describe yourself:
"People are People" (hey, I should have said "Sweetest Perfection"!).

3. How do some people feel about you:
"Just Can't Get Enough" (because can you ever really have enough Dave?).

4. How do you feel about yourself:
"Dangerous" (I could be dangerous if I wanted to).

5. Describe your ex boyfriend/girlfriend:
For the last one it would have to be "Now This is Fun".
For the one before that, "A Pain That I'm Used To"".
For the one before that, "Lie to Me".
For the one before that, "Barrel of a Gun".
(Thankfully, I don't have to answer "Shake the Disease"!)

6. Describe your current significant other:
"Nothing".

7. Describe where you want to be:
"Behind the Wheel" (I was going to say "In Your Room" but thought that might scare you).

8. Describe how you live:
"It Doesn't Matter" (because so few things in life actually do).

9. Describe how you love:
"I Feel You" (or, on occasion, "Strangelove").

10. What would you ask for if you had just one wish:
"Never Let Me Down Again" ("Policy of Truth" would also be nice).

11. Share a few words of wisdom:
Either "Nothing's Impossible" or "Everything Counts".

12. Now say goodbye:
"Leave in Silence".

Funny, I just went back to Chronic Listaholic so I could link to SJ for starting this, and see that she had asked to see me answer with Depeche Mode songs in the comments. Cue Twilight Zone theme here.

Today I am forty years old.

That's a lot of years. Where did it all go?

Still, I can't complain. I've done a lot of things in my life, am fortunate to have seen a bit of the world, am relatively healthy, and have terrific friends and family to get me through the day. I guess that makes me a lucky guy (if I believed in luck, which I don't).

But forty... wow. A pity that I still act like a 12-year-old, but everybody has their issues.

Anyway, I guess I'm ready to die now.

Not that I want to die, I'm just saying... if it happens, I'm okay with it.

And if I get to choose how I'm going to die, I think it would go something like this...

The good news is that being dead gives me a terrific new DaveToon to draw...

And just for the record, Bad Monkey did not die from a marathon love-making session with Elizabeth Hurley. He died from an overdose of Coke with Lime.

Uhhhh... yeah.

Happy birthday to me.

Yesterday I made the mistake of visiting Brookstone and trying out one of those magical computerized "massage chairs". You sit down and press buttons that makes the chair come alive and give you a massage. There are a variety of modes to choose from... you can get a Swedish massage, a Shiatsu massage, or anything in-between. You can get a hard massage or a soft massage. You can have a heated massage or a vibrating massage. You can even have the chair massage your ass.

I turned on everything.

It was actually painful. But in a good way.

It was SO good, that I had to resist the urge to touch myself inappropriately...

By the time it was over, I was ready to buy. But there were three problems...

1. The price tag was $4500. And for $4500, it had better do a lot more to me than massage my ass.
2. It was made by Panasonic, and everything I have EVER bought by Panasonic has busted to shit.
3. Did you read the FOUR THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS part?!?

After goofing around the East-side this afternoon, I said goodbye to my friends there and headed Seattle-side.

Since our Cabo San Lucas plans were scuttled, my friend and I decided to stay downtown so she could take me out for birthday dinner and we could wander around the Market in the morning. We would have taken a look tonight, but everything was closing just as we arrived. The sunset was nice though...

Our room overlooks the new Seattle Public Library. This freaky building seems interesting, and sure photographs nicely from a distance...

Unfortunately, it looks like total crap from street level. Kind of like they took six really cool buildings, then smashed them all together at unpleasant angles or something. Not a pretty picture to me, but it does have its fans.

And now, if you'll excuse me, it's ice cream time.

ICE CREEEEAM!! ICE CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAM!!

Oh yeah... thanks to everybody who was kind enough to send their birthday wishes... I feel much loved. :-)

WARNING: This is a bullet-point entry!

I am driving home from Seattle this afternoon, then will immediately start boxing up 38 T-shirt back-orders so they can ship out first thing Monday morning. That's pretty much my entire day, so I figure bullet-points are better than nothing.

Here we go...

• As mentioned above, I picked up a new batch of T-Shirts this weekend. For all 38 of you who've been patiently waiting for your orders to ship, tomorrow is the day! Thank you for your patience as I battle winter storms, kidney stones, emergency trips to Chicago, and all those other pieces of "life" that kept me from filling your orders.
• I've received a couple of emails asking if my recent cartoons featuring "Zombie Dave" were in any way an indication that I was a part of the "Zombie Rave" that went terribly wrong in Seattle's Capitol Hill district this weekend. The answer is no. It is entirely coincidental, and I didn't even know about the "Zombie Rave" until we saw the news of the shootings on television. Very sad. The Seattle PI has the story for anybody who's curious.
• Thank you again to everybody who left so many nice comments and sent all those happy birthday emails. It was completely unexpected, and I am deeply grateful to all of you who spent their valuable time giving me a shout-out.
• Speaking of my birthday... March 24th is also the birthday for MacOS X, my operating system of choice. It's also the day that the dumbass monkey-spankers over at The Register published a completely false report about Apple CEO Steve Jobs selling off his stake in the company (it was actually a settlement to pay the taxes on his vested shares, and in no way shows a lack of confidence in Apple). But that didn't stop somebody from posting an anonymous (of course) comment that said "APPLE IS GOING DOWN DUDE!!! MAC SUX!!!!!" and then pasting a copy of the article. Oh how I loathe blog trolls. Read the facts over at AppleInsider.
• April is looking to be kind of buzy for Blogography. The 10th through the 14th, I will be participating in Kevin's "Grassroots Campaign" to promote Pauly's new book "The Lost Blogs". Then the following week is my Blogiversary III Celebration from the 17th to the 21st (which is shaping up to be just as crazy as last time). Be sure to tune in, because there just might be some surprises along the way.
• And speaking of Pauly... I am really behind in responding to comments and emails, and seriously behind in reading other people's blogs... but did notice that Pauly (who is one of those rare individuals who can be profoundly funny without resorting to curse words) has finally succumbed to temptation and almost used a swear word in today's entry over at Words for My Enjoyment! And what could possibly get Pauly pissed off enough to type "a-hole" in his blog? The answer is right here.

And I'm off. So long, Seattle...

I almost forgot about my blog today, because I have been completely absorbed by the new Nintendo DS game: Metroid Prime: Hunters! I haven't had a lot of free time, but every minute I manage to find is devoted to playing this game. To say that it kicks ass is an understatement of biblical proportions.

Basically, it's a "first-person" shooter, where you play a bounty hunter immersed in a fully 3-D environment. The visuals are amazing, and the gameplay is beyond cool. Being able to have this kind of action in the palm of your hand is almost too good to be true...

The best part of the game is that you can play against other people over the internet. This is adds an entirely new level of fun to an already awesome game. Unfortunately, I'm not very good yet, so I spend most of my time having my ass served up to me...

Big, big fun. I find it shocking that the game designers managed to fit so much cool stuff in such a tiny little Nintendo DS cartridge.

As if that wasn't enough for today, I got the latest Lego Shop at Home Catalog in the mail this morning.

OMG! THEY NOW HAVE BATMAN LEGOS!

Yes, you read that right, BATMAN!!! and he's made from LEGO!!!

How could I possible NOT buy these?!? You can see the entire line at Lego.com.

Okay, back to getting my ass kicked in Metroid Prime: Hunters.

I am going to start carrying around one of those little "clicker counters" so I can keep track of the number of people I want to bitch-slap in a given day. I'm thinking that the number has got to be rather large... perhaps in the high thirties or low forties. It's possible that I'm just irritable, but I honestly think it's because there are a lot of people out there in need of a good bitch-slapping.

Case in point... I stopped at a shop whilst in Wenatchee yesterday. I wasn't there two minutes before some idiot came in with his demon-spawn child. His boy then proceeded to continuously blow a coaches whistle LOUDLY while the father did... nothing. The sales clerk and three other customers just stood there staring in shock. Me being, well... me, walked up and said something...

Dave: Hey... does he have to do that in here?
   
Idiot: It's either that or listen to him scream his head off.
   
Dave: You sir, are a model parent.
   
Idiot: Uhhhh... what?
   
Dave: Yeah, that's what I thought.

See? There's two slaps right there... one for the dumbass father and another for his whistle-blowing dumbass kid.

It's times like this that make me want to abandon saying "bitch-slap" and go back to saying "a punch in the face". I can see now that my attempt to come up with a less-violent way of enunciating my disproval in people is not nearly as effective, because I seriously wanted to hurt these idiots.

Most people would say "don't blame the child, he wasn't brought up right and doesn't know any better." But since he's the one with the whistle in his mouth, I don't really care. Obviously he isn't being taught proper manners at home, so it becomes the duty of society to educate the little hellion. The ideal solution is probably too harsh...

... so I guess a bitch-slap it's going to have to be.

And in other, non-slapping-related news, I see over at TV Shows on DVD that the Air America television show spin-off is being released on June 6th. Ordinarily, I wouldn't mention something like this (it was an okay show, but nothing fantastic), except Scott Plank co-starred in it with Lorenzo Lamas...

Now that Scott's tribute site seems to have disappeared, I get a lot of Google traffic from people trying to find out stuff about him (probably because I chose Scott as one of the three "Guys I Might Go Gay For" in a previous entry). Since he was one of the few decent people I met while I was involved in my "Hollywood project", I figure the least I can do is help keep his memory alive here when something like this comes up.

Oh, and before I forget... Kachina has posted a totally awesome entry on how great I am over at A Whiter Shade of Pale. As I said in the comments...

"I wished I possessed even a tiny amount of humility so that I could at least pretend to be humbled by such kind praise... but my ego simply doesn't allow for it.
   
As it turns out, I AM totally great.
   
If I weren't me, I'd be wishing I was me. But since I am me, I just have to be satisfied with wishing I was more me than I am right now. If I were three times more me than I am, I think I'd be pretty much perfect."

Now feel free to go write about how great I am in your own blogs.

Not that I need the validation or anything... I'm just suggesting a topic in case you can't think of anything better to write about today.

Though I can't imagine that there is anything better to write about than me.

So even if you THINK you have something better to write about than me, I'm here to tell you that it probably isn't, and you should just go ahead and blog about my greatness instead.

Not that I don't value your opinion, it's just that most people don't understand how truly magnificent I am, so I'm trying to point you in the right direction.

Because, admit it, you are feeling a little lost right now and could use some direction in your life, couldn't you?

Yeah, that's what I thought. Off you go then... remember to double-check the spelling of "Blogography" when you link back to here.

Not that I am accusing you of being a bad speller, I'm just saying...

Washington State is a pretty amazing place. We've got a rain-forest, a beautiful coastline, the San Juan islands, the Columbia River, plenty of mountains & lakes, yummy apples, famous wines, the world's biggest extinct waterfall, a huge dam, the Space Needle, and lots of other cool stuff. It's a happenin' place, and I kind of like living here. You should drop by and see it if you get a chance.

And with all the nifty stuff we got, you'd think it would be easy to sell the place as a tourist destination.

But apparently it's more difficult than you'd think. A team of 32 "experts" spent 18 months (and heaven only knows how much money) working on a new slogan for us, and what did they come up with?

Which has a lot of Washingtonians saying "say WHAT?!?"

Most people do not like it at all, and just about every publication in the state has called it stupid (or worse). This makes the prospect of a half-million dollar ad campaign a little hard for people to understand when they see stuff like this...

When all I can picture is this...

Personally, I don't get it. What is this trying to say to potential visitors? It's like hipster slang gone wrong instead of a compelling campaign to get people thinking of Washington as vacation destination. Oh well. The real shame is that this could have been a decent concept... for Oklahoma. "SayOK" has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

Anyway, here's a list of things I DON'T want to do today...

1. Get out of bed.
2. Take a shower.
3. Go to work.
4. Pack an overnight bag.
5. Waste 3 hours driving to Spokane.
6. Spend the night in a hotel.

But, lucky me, I get to do all six!! The good news is that once I get to Spokane, there's a fresh episode of Veronica Mars waiting for me tonight...

And, of course, the best pizza in the known universe at David's Pizza. That's almost worth the trip all by itself, so maybe this won't be such a bad day after all?

Looks like I am off to SeeWA.

So SeeYA.

Bleh.

My big plan to recover from a three-hour drive yesterday was to have a slice of David's Da Vinci pizza and then check into the hotel and watch the latest Veronica Mars.

But everything went wrong. David's was out of Da Vinci so I had to get cheese pizza (still good). But then the shit really did hit the fan... at 9:00 I turned to the UPN channel for Veronica and instead saw that The A-Team was playing...

WTF?!?

Turns out that the local Spokane UPN affiliate switched to "The Retro Television Network" back in January. So no Veronica Mars for me. Comcast bastards.

Fast forward to this afternoon. Work is over, and it's time for the boring drive home. If anybody is curious, here's pretty much what the Central Washington's Columbia Basin looks like this time of year...

Later in the season the wheat will be grown up and turn a nice golden color which looks great at sunset. Today, it's just getting started, so things are a little green yet.

Usually I drive I-90 because it's the fastest way back home. But, because I love my readers, I decided to drive Highway 2 instead. This way, I could make a stop at "Dry Falls" so I could show everybody what the largest waterfall in the world looks like. Well, it was the biggest, but not anymore...

Unfortunately, the massive scale of the formation is lost in this photo. Those cliffs are 400 feet tall. If there was water still flowing over them, it would dwarf Niagara Falls by a large margin (it's 350% wider and 250% taller). Turning back the clock 13,000 years, here is what it would look like...

If you're curious about the whole Dry Falls story, I've copied the info in an extended entry.

For everybody else, see you tomorrow (and don't worry about me, David's had a fresh Da Vinci pizza ready for my lunch today, and Veronica Mars was waiting for me on the TiVo when I got home).

I'm getting some nice emails from people who are finally getting their shirts this week, many of whom have been waiting quite a while. I feel bad about all the delays, and can only hope it was worth the wait. What I am wanting to do is fix the store so that it shows inventory quantities. That way, people can see if they'll be getting a shirt right away or have to wait a bit. It would also be nice to come up with a solution that calculates exact shipping charges, so nobody pays too much (this is a BIG problem for international shipments, which can be billed too much or too little by $5 or more). If wishes were fishes.

Anyway, I don't know if it is apparent from the $8.95 price tag, but I don't make much money on these things... once everything is factored in, I get about 50¢ to $1 per shirt. Considering how much time it takes to package and process the shipments, I am actually operating at quite a loss. But I don't mind one bit. I never got into this with the intent of making money, it was always just for the fun of it. And when I see pictures of people having a good time while wearing their shirts, it's all worthwhile...

There will, of course, be a new design for my Blogiversary III Celebration come mid-April. And once again I'll be giving away a bunch of free shirts (among other things) to people who enter the contests (just to warn you... this time you may have to work for it, so put on your thinking caps!).

And, while we're talking about shirts, time for some Q&A...

Where can I get your "Healthy Boobies" Breast Cancer Awareness Shirt? This was a limited-edition shirt that I designed, but had no part in manufacturing (I don't even own one!). The shirt was a success, however, and helped raise nearly $1000 during Breast Cancer Awareness Month... quite an achievement considering only 50 were ever made! If there is enough interest, I may make a limited edition shirt this October and donate all the money to The Susan G. Komen Foundation. I'll keep you posted.

Why can't I buy a "Dave Cafe" shirt like in all your DaveToons? Because the Hard Rock Cafe would probably sue my ass! I love the Hard Rock, and would rather that people head to their local cafe and get a "real" shirt than anything I would come up with.

How do I get an "Artificial Duck" shirt? They are currently not for sale, but may be resurrected one day. The logo is really too good to not be on a shirt, so I definitely want to print them again. I'll take a look at it after Blogiversary III is over.

Why are your shirts in black and white? I want color! For the current designs, I just thought that they looked better that way. I did experiment with color, but kept coming back to the B&W. The good news is that there may be some color options coming up...

I'm a GIRL and want a GIRL'S SHIRT! How can I order a baby doll T or fitted women's shirt? Well, right now you can't. The simple truth is that having to keep an inventory of many shirt styles in various sizes would bankrupt me. HOWEVER, I have talked to my printer about custom ordering them along with my "regular" orders and it doesn't seem to be a problem. So I am thinking of having a "pre-order store" next time, and letting people order sweatshirts, baby dolls, fitted shirts, long sleeves, or whatever. When it comes time to order the Blogiversary III stuff, I'll let everybody know.

What does "Bad Monkey" mean... who is this "Bad Monkey"?? There is no secret meaning to Bad Monkey. The very first DaveToon I drew was in reference to that evil little monkey in the movie Outbreak who infected everybody with the ebola virus. Not only that, but monkeys have been known to spit and throw their poo at people, which makes them bad indeed!

Who prints your shirts? That would be Ad-Fab Ink... the best screen printers I have ever had the pleasure of working with (and there have been quite a few over the years!).

I was told by (insert name here) that they got a shirt for free. I want a free shirt! There are five ways to get a free shirt... ONE: Get lucky from leaving a comment here on Blogography (every 1000th commenter gets a free shirt, assuming you leave a valid email address so I can contact you, and aren't a comment troll who got deleted). TWO: Win a contest during one of my Blogiversary celebrations each April. THREE: Be one of the first twenty people to make a tax-free donation of $100 or more to Doctors Without Borders during a disaster relief drive (contact me if you're interested). FOUR: Order a shirt that's out-of-stock for 4 weeks or longer. FIVE: You are Elizabeth Hurley, Kristen Bell, or Betty White and ask for one.

Alrighty then. I am off to wash a giant pile of dirty clothes that has accumulated over the past week of craziness. Something is starting to smell funny, and I want to take care of things before it comes alive and strangles me in my sleep. Just my luck it would be a Bad Monkey T-shirt... oh the irony...