Sam woke up one day and realized that his heavily art-based blog hadn’t had anything art related on it for months. He wanted to be angry about this but could only meet it with a half-hearted sort of indifference that elicited an inaudible sigh and a good head scratching. There simply wasn’t the time or the energy available to be spent on such idle worrying. Besides, as far as having problems was concerned, Sam had bigger fish to fry.

Sure, his chosen career path had sort of fallen to the level of hobby, then deteriorated to mild interest eventually fading to a passing memory of something he used to be involved with and leaving the same taste in his mouth as the memory of a girlfriend whom one loved deeply, parted with on bad terms, and hadn’t talked to in years. A stale sort of regret coupled with a question of why. But Sam also worked an uninteresting job, the kind could easily be usurped by a rather simple robot provided that it wasn’t cheaper to keep a human employed in the position. Robots aren’t cheap, and neither are the services of those who can repair them when they need a bit of oiling or fresh circuit boards to replace the ones that have been marinated in a double caramel latte. He’d use that as a defense if he ever got wind of corporate plans to start replacing the hard working, sarcastically happy homo sapiens with heartless (but harder working and quite genuinely happy in contrast to their fleshy counterparts) robots. He hoped that the higher ups would overlook the fact that machines didn’t drink lattes and felt quite smug with his solution that likely would never find a problem to be applied to.

After thoughts like this, Sam felt like he could take on the world. He decided to call his best friend to tell them all about his clever idea but ended up getting his mother’s voice mail. He waffled for a minute as to whether or not he should leave a message or if the humor would be lost when reduced to an out of context sound byte. Ultimately making up his mind to call back later, he, in the meantime, left a recording approximately 45 seconds in length and comprised of heavy breathing and the sound of the receiver scraping against the stubble on his chin.

But that was just how Sam was.

Luckily I’m not Sam, and I put some art up on my blog. The first three are the subject of a poll to find out which is the better Ackbar shirt. 2 concepts, 3 designs and only one if any will be printed. Pick your favorite. Write an essay as to why. Amuse me. Or just use the poll that’s so conveniently located to the right.

That last one is the result of feeling a little angry, a little crazed, and a little inhuman. Pretty much the same way I feel on any given day. For the time spent and considering I’ve done precisely dick lately as far as drawing is concerned, it makes me happy.

I’ve spent the last three days putting my computer back in order, the aftermath of a much needed reformat. I had done the same to Cat’s computer a week or so ago so I thought I’d clean house on mine while the know-how and motivation were still there. There was many a memory error plaguing my normal everyday use, and errors that were, oddly enough, not attached to any problems with my system memory. Big surprise there.

So things work again. I’ve got a large chunk of my files and software restored but will have to go fishing around my backup drive for things I may have overlooked. Like all of my email. And contacts. Shit.

I threw some more pictures up on flickr for whatever viewing enjoyment that may be gotten from looking at such things that go there.

I’ve also purchased a new scanner, finally. Danny’s “Devil Industries” shirt and my own coveted Pulp Heroes shirt will be following some time in the near future. Mark my words.

Oh, and one other thing. Why is Doug Jones haunting me?

So in no less exciting but generally more mundane news, I’ve found something that I thought long lost.

No, it’s not my manhood. And it’s not those battle beasts that disappeared in Grandma’s basement circa 1987. And if you think it’s my alcohol tolerance, I found that like 2 weeks ago.

Enough with the guessing already, kids. Uncle Sully’s got work in the morning and he’s just trying to relay a little bit of happiness into this dreary web. So I’m just going to tell you. I found my radio face.

That’s right, radio face. Exciting. No? Well it had been MIA for at least 2 weeks, going on 3 if not a little longer. I was certain that it was lost to some sort of secure storage bin or wherever they put potentially explosive devices in Dallas Fort Worth, or maybe kickin’ it in some Cantina in the dusty Sonoran. Turns out it was in a coat that I hadn’t worn since the beginning of May. I suppose since class had let out I hadn’t much need for it, as most of my driving is to and from work, which is across the street from home. There’s not much need for music to fill in that 4 minute car ride.

But it’s not so much the fact that I found it that astounds me so much as the way I found it. Now I had just finished watching an episode of Naruto and, feeling particularly ninjaish, hopped out of my chair, mind racing for some mission worthy of an S-rank to undertake. Then it hit me. I hadn’t looked for my radio face in about a week. Hadn’t even thought about it really. Some of my earlier inclinations had been to check my hoodies, which I had done when I first realized it was missing. Then I remembered that once I had called my girlfriend Natalie to ask where my pocketwatch had disappeared to, and she had just taken a shot in the dark and been absolutely right. With these two things in mind I dashed to the coat rack on the back of my door and thrust my hand inside of the inner pocket, retracting it to find a fistful of radio.

It was like some kind of locational summon jutsu. It was amazing.

Then I went out to my car to put my long lost friend to use once again, only to find out that my copy of From Beale Street to Oblivion had become warped sitting in the visor of my truck in the hot sun for so long. I wish I had never found that accursed radio face. But I guess every delicious icy cold can of beer has that gross warm final gulp waiting for you at the bottom. And since I just swallowed mine, this post is officially over.

So I stepped out onto my deck this morning to see this:

That’s right, building 6536 of the Cedar Crest apartment complex engulfed in flames, and I had a front row seat. There didn’t seem to be any warning or evac of our building to alert us to the possibility of the fire spreading, but it was close enough that when I first looked outside, I had thought the flames were coming from my roof as well. A bit frightening to say the least.
I did several interviews with different news correspondents, including KNBC, the Kansas City Star, the Sun, and I believe I was live on the air with KCTV5 at some point in the morning.. It was a bit difficult to keep things straight. More on this later.

The story’s summary is as follows: Building in cinders, 2 residents suffered from smoke inhalation, 1 firefighter was hospitalized, and a puppy was singed. All in all, no one was too seriously injured. The fire was supposedly caused by a burning bush, a very old testament reminder that god still hates us.
These are the links I managed to scrounge up on the event:

The Sun: Short blurb on the fire containing a quote from yours truly.

KC Star: Short video interview with myself and the lady who walks Gypsy. While I now know what her name is, I shall never refer to her by it. It’s funnier that way.

KCTV5: Couple of long videos and a story, I had spoken to an anchor but that conversation was not preserved in either of the available clips. But they do talk about the weather and fire a lot, and manage to keep referring to the apartment complex by numerous incorrect names. Cedar Crest, guys.

I also uploaded my pics to flickr. There are a few nice ones in there.

This weekend had been shaping up to be of the typical stray-dog variety, with plans to go see the Heartless Bastards at Kansas City’s only drinking establishment with a healthy fetish for black vinyl, the recordBar. Luckily the cub to my lone wolf, Cat, called to help mix things up a little bit, throwing a dash of 28 Weeks Later, a cup of computer maintenance and a heaping spoonful of Gilmore Girls into the recipe. It made for a good weekend loaf.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with the HBs, I recommend you visit that link and let it just play for a while. It’s got a very good sampling of their songs embedded into their flash player, and lyrics to help you sing along as learn to love them. They’re from Cincinnati, OH, have put out two very solid albums in the last 2 years. Erika Wennerstrom’s soulful lyrics and unique, almost bluesy singing style, combined with the band’s spectacular musicianship and catchy rock tunes make the Heartless Bastards a stand out act in modern rock. I have to admit that I found myself fascinated by Wennerstrom’s oddly alluring voice, the accent of which I was unable to pinpoint from listening to her speak in between songs. Initially I thought she was English, then I started picking out what seemed to be a somewhat Southern drawl, later discovering that she grew up in Dayton which sort of dispelled my previous notions. Admittedly I’ve not had much interaction with rural Ohioans, and the ones I have spoken to all seemed to carry the typical midwest neutral accent so I don’t have any other conclusions that I care to entertain, but I did enjoy listening to her voice regardless of where it came from. When applied to singing and short, shy sounding “Thank yous” between songs, it was rather charming.

Cat had attempted to accompany me to the show, but we had forgotten that I, without exception and quite literally, make her sick to her stomach. She survived the opening acts – Punk grrl rockers The Sixteens, and the classic rock stylings of The Only Children – but she missed out on the Bastards. I think she would have really enjoyed them. I’ll leave it to her to tell me otherwise.

I’ve encountered a triplet of Moby Dick references in the last 24 hours: A computer named Ishmael, a wireless network named Starbuck, and a Fone Bone who can’t help but put his friends to sleep with talk of his favorite Melville novel. While connection is lacking, I am intrigued and feel that the coincidence must be duly noted.

Lastly, the lingering thought of the night centers around my wish for better communication. I’m deaf, blind, and dumb when it comes to reading people. I’m good at assessing them, judging character, I’m great at finding language in which to talk to people to make them feel comfortable, make them trust me. But I’ve no skill at all when it comes to broaching more delicate subjects, and I can’t always intuit the intentions of others. And when I think that there might be something I should act on or speak to, I hesitate and do nothing as my past experiences have taught me to never rock the boat as the sea is teeming with sharks. The hazy, nonspecific nature of this paragraph attests to that. I suppose what I’m really trying to say is that when I spend a couple of days with a person I should probably try to take advantage of the time I have with them. Opportunities like those are becoming scarce these days.

My new resolution is to be
someone who does not care what anyone thinks of me
cause I don’t even like myself half the time
so what’s the use of worrying about what’s on other people’s minds?