Here's Some Super-Important Stuff

Hello friend! It's good to see you again. Oh, the catching up that we have to do.

First off, thanks to Sarah from Virginia for another great picture of Flea in his signature stuffed animal pants. It is always a pleasure to host pictures of Flea during his greatest era. This one comes to us in the popular GIF format. You thought you knew GIFs, but I bet you've never seen them like this before huh?

I had a pretty good trip to Utah. I am glad to say that I had about as much fun as you are allowed to have when someone has died recently (the actual limit, if you are interested, is 27 jollies). I got to see some Dwight Schrute stencil graffiti, a rare DVD copy of Rubin and Ed, and a bunch of my relatives, including my uncle Paul, who surprised us all when he dressed up as Pee-Wee Herman one night. He really knows how to lighten the mood when everyone has just come home from a viewing! Before this grand exhibition, my mom kept asking him "Now why did you say you need white dress socks again?" and he refused to tell what they were for. It was most triumphant.

I went to Deseret Book to check out the new Mormon Comedy DVDs, and there were a few tempting titles, most notably the Pinewood Derby-themed movie called Down and Derby starring Pat Morita (you know, Mr. Miyagi from Karate Kid, died recently) as the token non-Mormon actor in an otherwise made-for-Mormon movie. I didn't buy it, so someone should go ahead and get that one for me for my birthday, which is coming up pretty soon. I was hoping to find a title as compelling as last year's Church Ball, but nothing really grabbed me. Weird, I know.

All of this fuenral/Utah action took place over the week that was supposed to be spring break. What's strange is that I told myself that I didn't deserve a spring break this year, and then circumstances beyond my control forced me to go on a trip for the week anyway. Funny how that works.

Speaking of spring break, I was also reminded today that I still have $200 in traveler's checks in my bag from last year's spring break that I haven't used. Last year I went to Puerto Rico and couldn't spend more than $50 in traveler's checks no matter how hard I tried. Those were the days! I guess life is pretty good if I can have $200 in traveler's checks just sitting around, not needing to use them yet.

Speaking of money, did you know that our nation is in a financial crisis? Money traders in the Netherlands don't even want to take dollars because they are so crappy. True story. Maybe I should turn those traveler's checks into something a little more real, like a plow and some seeds.

Speaking of investments, $100 and about four weeks of waiting has brought me 20 of these:

20 smug looks? 20 Iowa shirts? 20 yellow hats? No, silly! 20 copies of the Prayer Breakfast's Small American on 12" LP. Everyone put in $100 and we got 100 copies of the record to split up 5 ways. For those of you who went to high school in Indiana, that means 20 records for each of us. I think. If you want one and I think you deserve it, they're $12. It comes with a free MP3 download like they're doing these days. If I sell all of these, I am projecting to make some BIG DOLLARS that I will put towards buying some solar panels and an electric scooter or something so that when the gasoline meltdown happens, I can tool around like an idiot.


Also very important:
I know what you're thinking: Chocolate Skittles -> horrible idea. Right? But, guess what? These are ACTUALLY PRETTY GOOD. I ate them while separating them out by color, and I can honestly say that they taste like what they claim to be, and it is actually pretty not gross, good in fact. Once you forget that Skittles are supposed to be fruity, this product totally makes sense. The Brownie Batter flavor is incredibly accurate.

Let's see, what else... I started messing around with Lily last night (whoa, out of context, that sounds bad), and once I figured out how to get help for the objects, I think that I can see this thing being a lot of fun. What is Lily? Not some hot chick, that's for sure. Far from it. The simplest way to put it is like this: It's like Max/MSP (VERY similar in its patch-cable-style programming, some of the objects are exactly the same in fact), but instead of controlling sound, it manipulates web content. You know, the internext! So the question now becomes: What do I do with this? I'm still sort of trying to figure that out, but I have some ideas for wicked brain freezes in the future. Something that will take the whole slab of what I've written here on this blog and manipulate it in a funny way. I have ideas.

In closing, here are nine controversial and unsubstantiated opinions:

1. I dunno, I don't think that voting for a president based on sexiness is a bad thing. I mean, think about it. It just works out.
   
2. Vampire Weekend. I don't get it. What's good about this band? Maybe that magazine is called Spin for a reason.
3. Jimmy John's makes the best wheat bread in town. Prove me wrong, please!
   
4. The scientific study of hallucinogens under controlled circumstances should continue. Dude, Crick was high on acid when he discovered the double helix, and nobody fronts on him. But yeah.
5. Any Rush album after and including Presto is crap. Face it. Might as well be Yanni.
6. Garfield Minus Garfield isn't that funny. Do you have to have absurdity calluses built up from watching years of Adult Swim for this to have any effect?
   
7. Speaking of Adult Swim, Eric from Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! used to be in the band Elements of Need. How weird is that?
8. HDTV is totally unexciting. The future offers us... wider, more expensive TVs? I don't know about you, but I've never been watching TV and thought "I wish there was more definition, or something." There is documented proof that this is a fabricated need.
   
9. The internet is for babies. Let the babies have their way.
   

In even more closing, I leave you with this clip from the cool movie Triumph of the Nerds, a clip of a groovily long-haired Steve Jobs doing what he does best: belittling people because he can.