Today just sucked. It sucked hard.

And at every point I thought that it couldn't get any worse, it did. All day long I kept telling myself that it would all get better once I headed home. Everything would be okay if I could just get through the day.

I was wrong, of course.

This is what happened to ME today after work (I'm in the blue car)...

It was one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen. Somebody ahead of me changed their mind about where they wanted to go. Rather than continuing down the road and making a legal turn later on... they cut back in front of me. Had I not slammed on the brakes, I would have crashed right into them. I still don't know if they saw me and didn't care, didn't see me and didn't care, or didn't care and didn't care.

Just goes to show... once things start to suck, they just go on sucking until somebody dies.

So long as it's not me, I suppose I can live with that.

I am posting this at 11:11 on 1-1-11 because it seemed like a good thing to do.

When it comes to New Year's resolutions, I'm pretty boring because I have the exact same New Year's resolutions every year. The same five goals going on for heaven only knows how long. This year is no different, except I am working on some projects which will definitely add some excitement to my 2011. More on that later.

Here's my score card for fulfilling my resolutions in 2010...

• Try a Pop-Tart flavor I've never had before. DONE! Vanilla Milkshake. I agree with Poppy... truly horrible.
• Travel somewhere I've never been before. DONE! Traveled to Alkmaar, Bucharest, Prague, Malta, Tunisia, Corsica, Portofino, Monaco, and the Amalfi Coast.
• Visit a Hard Rock Cafe I haven't seen before. DONE! Visited Malta Cafe, Valletta Bar, Albuquerque Hotel, Tulsa Hotel, Hollywood Blvd. Cafe, Berlin 2 Cafe, Prague Cafe, and Bucharest Cafe.
• Drink a beer I've never drank before. DONE! I drank several new beers, but the most memorable was the Watermelon Wheat Beer by 5 Seasons West in Atlanta.
• Get another Apple product. DONE! iPhone 4, Apple TV, iPad (which I gave to my mom).

Here's hoping that the Pop-Tart people keep making new flavors so I can fulfill my resolutions again this year!

   

And now for what's new this decade...

   
I work. A lot. And while it's work I love, the fact that it's non-stop and never-ending has sucked most of the joy out of what I do. This year I am trying to rediscover the joys to be found in creativity by coming up with projects just for me. Five new projects to go with the same five resolutions I do every year. Five projects centering around stuff I like to do, but don't get to do so much any more...

1. Collecting Hard Rock stuff.
2. Creating DaveToon products for Artificial Duck Co.
3. Writing fiction.
4. Drawing pictures and comics.
5. Keeping secrets.

And here we go...

DAVE'S FIVE PROJECTS FOR 2011

• The Hard Rock Project. I owe the Hard Rock Cafe a huge debt for continuing to inspire me to travel to new places. When I think of all the awesome cities I've discovered that I would have never visited if not for a Hard Rock being there, my gratitude knows no bounds. Coming up with a project to celebrate my love of Hard Rock collectibles wasn't easy, but then I saw my closet packed full of their T-shirts and the HARD ROCK 100 PROJECT was born. For 100 days I'll be wearing a favorite Hard Rock T-shirt from my collection and sharing the photo both on my DaveCafe fan site and my DaveCafe Flickr feed. Here is Day One (which you can read about by clicking on it)...

   
• The Artificial Duck Project. After losing my T-shirt printer, twice, I kind of let the Artificial Duck Co. store languish for a year. That's going to change. I've been working on some new T-Shirts and will be getting that set up at yet another printer soon. But that's not all... more totally sweet crap you can't live without is being planned and should be appearing this Summer.

   
• The Writing Project. After being invited to RW's house for pizza and plenty of good conversation, I realized that I wanted to start writing again. I used to write stories all the time, and loved the escape I got from it. But then my blog kind of took over all my writing time and I stopped. This Spring that's going to change in a big way. You'll be finding out all about it sometime in March.

   
• The Drawing Project. Before computers took over all my design work, I used to draw, paint, and even sculpt. Don't get me wrong, I love designing on the computer, but it's not the same as "getting your hands dirty" with a pencil and a drawing pad. Proving that one thing leads to another, The Writing Project led to me finding The Drawing project. It's been a lot of fun, and should also be debuting in March.

   
• The Secret Project. Yeah, this one is going to take a while... most of the year, in fact. I'm waaaayyyy over my head this time. And loving every minute of it. So far.

   
And that's it. Plans are already in motion.

Here's to an interesting 2011.

2010 -> AUDIO -> VIDEO -> DAVE

And now, at long last, comes that one entry for people who are curious as to what I've been up to, but only like to read one blog post a year. All-in-all, it was not a terrible end to the decade. Picking and choosing all the good stuff that happened in 2010 (out of a blog that is already picking and choosing all the good stuff) kind of makes me think it was a great year. Alas, I know better, as there were boatloads of crap I had to deal with that never end up at Blogography. Oh well. It's okay to pretend, isn't it?

---

JANUARY

• Realized the right tool for the job won't actually get me a free date with Elizabeth Hurley.

• Opened my big mouth and got the entire wine-connoisseur world pissed at me.

• AND NOW, FROM THE BLOGGER WHO BROUGHT YOU PENIS SALAD...

• Found out that somebody stole my monkey.

• Found a vagina on the sidewalk.

---

FEBRUARY

• Discovered that Canadians are responsible for the pussification of America, and showed them how REAL AMERICANS GET SHIT DONE!!

• Seattle FINALLY got a Hard Rock Cafe, and I got my 125th visit.

• Released my medical findings on a cure for the common cold to Twitter (and so much more).

---

MARCH

• That Crasher Squirrel has been showing up everywhere...

• Just like Lindsay Lohan's cootchie...

• Took my annual Birthday Vacation and ended up in Dutchyland, and Brussels, and Bucharest, and Transylvania, and Prague.

---

APRIL

• Explained why Roger Ebert is WRONG about video games not being art.

• Talked shit... LITERALLY.

• Attended THE blogging event of the year... TEQUILACON 2010 VANCOUVER!

---

MAY

• Went to New York for a-ha's farewell tour and to hang out with awesome people while Betty White made her Emmy-winning SNL appearance.

• Remembered a friend.

• Got the tackiest phone call ever.

• Took a dump on Lost and then went out for pizza with RW, which ended up having far-reaching consequences you'll find out about later this year.

• Summed up my position on the BP oil spill.

---

JUNE

• Saw the Worst. Movie. Ever.

• WAY TO GO BLACKHAWKS!!

• Had more fun than should legally be allowed at Bitchsterdam 2!

• Rush Limbaugh is a vile piece of shit.

---

JULY

• Saw one of the best episodes of television ever (thank you Steven Moffat, The BBC, and Dr. Who!). I can honestly say that I think this is the only time I cried in all of 2010.

• Sarah Palin is a fucking idiot.

• Went on a tour of the USA with stops in Hollywood, San Diego for Comic Con, and Atlanta for Watermelon Beer, and Tulsa, and Kansas, and Chicago.

---

AUGUST

• Explained to haters who don't like being referred to as a hater that they kind are.

• Paid a visit to mah Hilly-Sue and FooDiddy in Sacramento.

• Got a visit from Muskrat and Whit in Seattle.

• Was inspired beyond my ability to express by the final words of a legend.

---

SEPTEMBER

• Took a Mediterranean vacation and saw such remarkable places as Barcelona, and Malta, and Tunisia, and The Amalfi Coast, and Rome, and Portofino, and Corsica, and Monaco. As if all that wasn't enough, I got to have breakfast with Mickey Mouse!

• Remembered The Golden Rule and became the biggest evil dumbass inhuman monster of them all.

---

OCTOBER

• Nearly crapped myself watching a television show.

• Partied down in rural Wisconsin... a good place to be!

• Got all poitical for a minute.

• Wore purple for a very important cause...

• Went to Albuquerque to gamble away my money at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino there.

• Found out my iPhone can take some pretty decent photos if I bother to stop and look around because there's an app for that...

---

NOVEMBER

• Went back to Atlanta, this time for Pumpkin Beer and good friends... then a tour of THE WALKING DEAD!

• Took a look at porn and handjobs in the interest of airport security.

---

DECEMBER

• Got into the CALM Act...

• Want to know where to go on vacation? Here are some of my suggestions!.

• "Take your stupid war and go fuck yourself with it."

• Took some pictures in the snow.

• Took on stupid bitches and the law, and went ape-shit over net-neutrality, and was shocked as hell by a moment of lucidity from Pat Robertson.

---

   
And that was pretty much what happened with me in 2010. How about you?

Hope your 2011 is a good one, and thanks for reading!

And so I was craving a cheese sandwich.

But I didn't have any bread or cheese at home, which meant a trip to the grocery store after work. This was a huge mistake for oh so many reasons. It was crappy outside because it snowed today... Then the roads were crowded because it was 5:00... Then the store was packed because everybody was off work...

Then I got in the wrong checkout lane.

And I mean seriously the wrong lane. And things only went downhill from there.

• The elderly couple ahead of me didn't understand the concept of "buy two get one free" which resulted in a lengthy argument. This does not mean that buying ONE can of carrots gets you 1/3 off the price. Hence the "buy two" part of the offer.
• They also didn't understand the concept of "sale limit four" which resulted in an even bigger argument because they saw no reason why they shouldn't be able to get six cases of Pepsi since there were two of them. In fact, they thought they were being less than greedy because they were entitled to EIGHT cases.
• This argument was solved by each of them buying three cases separately.
• Which they wanted to pay for with a single check.
• The store offers a 5¢ rebate for each recyclable "green" shopping bag you bring back to re-use. But the elderly couple ahead of me had forgotten their bags in the car. So the entire lane of impatient people had to wait while the old man ran to the car to retrieve their bags so they could get their 20¢ rebate.
• And when I say "ran" I don't mean "ran quickly" because, well, you know...
• As I was waiting for the old man to get back with his bags, the woman behind me thought it would speed things up if she rammed her shopping cart into me. When I turned around to ask what the fuck her problem was, she glared at me and said "Can we hurry this up?"
• I wanted to say "You think this is MY fault? I'm not even to the register yet!" but I was feeling the spirit of the holidays so I said "fuck you."
• No... wait a second... I got that backwards. I didn't say "fuck you" to her.
• I said "fuck you" to the douchebag in the parking lot that honked his horn at me as I was trying to skirt around a vast reservoir of water and slushy ice that had formed in front of the store.
• I then had to follow somebody going 20MPH in a 35MPH zone driving home.

All in all, a pretty shitty day for Dave2.

The cheese sandwich was awesome though.

Ever feel like all you ever do is move side to side... never forward?

   

Yeah, that's me lately. Or forever. I get those mixed up.

I am not offended by foul language. If you've read my blog, met me in person, heard me interviewed on web radio, or listened to my live comedy album, you probably already knew this.

Even so, I try to be very careful about not using curse words in mixed company. Just because I have no problem swearing like a drunken ten-year-old doesn't mean I want to force my potty-mouth on innocent people. I'm a fucking saint that way.

So... when a public conversation calls for a profanity-laden explicative, what to do?

Well, if you're me you wing it.

Unfortunately, I'm not good at "winging" anything, so my improvisational cursing never goes well.

Today in a rushed search for a replacement word for "crap" I somehow came up with "crackers." Yes, crackers. And that's not even my worst offense. A couple of weeks ago I managed "frog" for "fuck."

Clearly this is a big frogging problem.

Isn't there a translation dictionary for stuff like this so I can faux-swear properly? If not, there really should be.

This was not the best day.

Usually Mondays are no different than any other day for me. Probably because I work seven days a week. But the drama which other people attribute to Mondays can definitely fuck up my day. Kind of like The Black Death fucked up the 14th century, but on a much larger scale. Well, larger to me, since I'm the one who had to deal with it. To the best of my knowledge I wasn't alive during the 14th century, so it's not like The Black Death was any skin off of my nose.

Things started off bad when my electronic key fob wouldn't unlock my car. This is really embarrassing, because it means having to unlock the door with my actual key (how quaint!) and possibly setting off the alarm. An alarm which will blast the horn for two full minutes. Which doesn't sound like a long time, but when all your neighbors are staring at you with death in their eyes, it's an eternity. The trick is to get the key into the ignition very, very quickly so you can use some off/on trickery to deactivate the alarm manually. Fortunately, I managed to get the sequence right and avoid being assaulted by an angry mob... but still.

A minor victory, but things just went down hill from there.

The good news is that it's almost midnight and tomorrow is another day.

Hopefully a better day.

For some reason I thought that I had already written in my blog today, but couldn't for the life of me remember what it was I had written about. So you can imagine my surprise when I clicked through to Blogography and found that the reason I couldn't remember was because I hadn't written anything.

Well crap.

It's not as if anything blog-worthy happened, as I spent my entire day working. This means I'll either have to dredge up something from my past, bitch about something going on in the news, or bow out gracefully with a monkey cartoon.

I'll choose door number one. Because, let's face it, a rant about all the bullshit that's filling the news now-a-days could take pages. And Bad Monkey is still recovering from his run-in with the TSA.

The above photo is of me and my Valentine Love Rocket. At this point in my life, I still had delusions of becoming an astronaut, so most of my time was spent thinking about escaping my earthly confines and going into space. Even when it came to making a Valentine card box for school. Surprisingly, I remember most everything about this scary craft project, which is odd considering I can't explain why I'm wearing that headache-inducing shirt. Nor can I explain why my hairstyle was stolen from Mr. Spock.

I remember that the body of the rocket is made from ice cream tubs. The top capsule is made from a small coffee can (I think it was Folgers, but I remember it being green, so that's probably not right). The rockets on the bottom are plastic cups that should have been spray-painted silver, but I ran out of time (then, as now, I tended to procrastinate until the last possible moment).

Not that I want to critique my younger self, but that "rocket" is pretty much crap, isn't it? No wonder I couldn't ever get into NASA.

   

Well that was fun. Tune in tomorrow as I procrastinate Bullet Sunday.

I'm thankful for a lot of things. Today I'm most thankful that I'm not a turkey...

   

   

I drew this three years ago, and it still pretty much sums up how I feel about the holiday. While I am a vegetarian, I am not a militant vegetarian who tells people not to eat meat, because I feel it's a personal choice everyone has to make for themselves. But meat is just so dang easy now-a-days, and I don't think people truly appreciate the creature that gave up its life for their meal. I wonder if people had to kill the poor turkey with their own two hands how many of them would still feel like serving one up for Thanksgiving dinner?

Anyway... I hope everybody has a happy Thanksgiving! And I hope everybody is just a little thankful for that slice of turkey on their plate. After all, he was a happy little bird at one time...

Baby turkey photo from Wikimedia Commons by Kristie Gianopulos.

And now I get to be thankful that I've got a suitcase to unpack.

Which I definitely am because the alternative is packing a suitcase and, with all the snow and ice that's landed, I'd just as soon stay home for a while.

I've been mulling over a creative project for months, and this morning I woke up and finally decided to do something about it. The result was an emotional moment, but not in the way I expected. I felt relief more than anything else... relief to finally get it off my chest and out of my brain. Who knows if anything will become of it, but at least I'm not being tortured any more.

For the longest time I've been telling myself that my work and my blog were all the creative outlets I needed, and it was stupid to add yet another log to the bonfire that is my life. But in the back of my head there's always been that nagging thought that something is missing. Some part of my life which hasn't been explored. Some ideas which are rotting in my head and killing everything around them as they die.

For creative people, this is no way to live.

It used to be that music was the missing piece. I love composing music, and it's an incredible feeling to craft a multitude of sounds into something that communicates in a single voice. It was for this reason that I got into video editing... it allowed me to score the projects I worked on and unleash my inner musician. While I was never terribly talented at making music, I was good enough to satisfy the creative urge that burned inside me. It lasted for about four years, and then I moved on to the next Big Thing. Sure there are times I miss it (and all these awesome new iPad music apps are just making things worse!), but I've been there and done that, so even if I never compose another note I'm okay with that.

And now it's something new.

As with most things, I'll just have to see where it leads me.

Hopefully to somewhere interesting.