This is what happens when cultural icons collide, in many colorful, delightful ways.

Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition sketch has stood out from their amazingly memorable show (Monty Python’s Flying Circus! Go watch it on Netflix or something), and has blossomed into a lasting cultural reference, at least among the geeks.

Here we see that reference applied in Lego form (which is its own breed of geek culture), and then liberally poured all over stagings of other cultural references, also in Lego form.

References to the (sometimes shockingly influential) Stephen Colbert:

To Star Wars infamous Admiral “It’s a Trap!” Ackbar:

And of course they had to infiltrate the Spartans of meme-tastic 300 fame:

Flickr user </arpy> took these photos at Brickcon 2009, so if you’re into Lego or just really clever sculptural recreations (and new creations too of course), I highly recommend checking out the rest of the set.

Potentially Related posts

• 100 Papercraft Ideas + Paper For Your Walls (1)
• BIRFDAY! G’s Wishlist 2009 (0)
• Holiday Shmoliday: Perfect Summation (0)
• Use Your Love of Design to Donate (0)
• Clippings & Scribblings — Busted Specters and Bones (1)

You are hiding behind a stone wall being shot at by heavily armed cultist. You have had two weeks of training to deal with situations like this. But you’re only just starting to remember this. You know you should feel angry that people are shooting at you. But you consider that they would shoot at anyone trying to sneak into their heavily armed and very secretive religious compound. Instead you think about the figurative bastards that put you in this situation. They woke you up at four in the morning approximately thirteen hours ago. Bundled you into a car, then an airplane and whisked you six hundred miles from your home. They told you that that two week blackout you had was their fault. That two week blackout two years ago. A blackout that cost you a relationship with a person you deeply loved and very nearly alienated you from your immediate family. They said that you’d been taken to a secret government facility and been in their words ‘The Clockwork Orange’ treatment. Except instead of making you dislike violence they taught you to know how to do very unpleasant things to your fellow human beings. When you didn’t believe this as they quite reasonably expected they produced photographic evidence, timestamped and digitally signed. These memories slowly came back to you. You attributed this to the background music playing in the airplane’s cabin.

The current problem that you are to be injected into was explained to as a local disturbance which could rapidly turn into the European version of the Waco Ranch massacre. They explain to you that this is where you come in. You, they explain are to sneak into the compound and assassinate the leader of the cult as well as disrupt as much of the chain of command. Logically you try to explain to them that Solid Snake does this in the video games and he tends to die an awful lot in the attempt. They do not get the reference. They also suck their gums a lot which you take as a sign of ‘you’re not the first one we’ve sent in.’

The sneaking into the farm ran by crazy cult members did go better than expected. You made it past the official police line and through a field past the body of who you assume was ‘the first one sent in.’ As you reach the edge of the main farm complex however it all goes wrong.

Not the first one to be sent in seems to explain the problem well as you hide behind a dry wall. Your mouth is dry and your hands have almost stopped trembling. Their bullets have stopped firing. Cautiously you peer around the corner and see that three of the larger cultists are running towards you while brandishing very scary looking shotguns. You gulp. Aim the silenced pistol you were given at the closest cultist. Then you fire. It isn’t a perfect shot. It goes through his leg and he tumbles to the floor. He is screaming but the other two have upped the pace. You take aim again and fire. The next one drops without a sound in a mist of red. The third cultist stops. He raises his shotgun. You take cover. He discharges the weapon into the wall and the pellets bounce off the wall harmlessly. You feel you are getting the hang of this. Looking around the corner you feel slightly disappointed that he is running away from you.

You move forwards from this wall to the next. This is progress you think. Then they start firing a machine gun at you and you dive for the closest thing you see that looks like cover. The training you remember consisted of firing ranges, simulated close quarters combat exercises and training drills. Very little of the training (although you cannot be quite certain right now as your memory is still fragmented) involved being shot at and the immediate action to be taken when you inevitably come into the situation. You go on instinct here. Duck and cover, then hope that the machine gun breaks or runs out of bullets. 

The person manning the machine gun appears to be enjoying himself. Every few seconds a burst of fire removes fragments of the dry stone wall. The bullets are close and you hear some of them whistle through the air. The gunner however has a steady rhythm to his firing. You remember that you have a mirror on one of the cargo pockets. You take it out and use it to peer round the edge of the wall. There is only him. His burst finishes. You jump over the wall and shoot him in the head. The way into the main building is clear now. You kick the flimsy wooden door from it’s hinges. You hear a thumping noise.

You are cold and cannot move. Your head aches with a dull throbbing sensation. Your face hurts. Opening your eyes you see that you are in a cellar. The thin light of sunset comes in through an opening in the wall near the ceiling. You work out why you are cold and cannot move. Directly ahead of you  is a man.  He is naked and strapped to a gurney. His right arm has a horrific gunshot wound and his groans occasionally break his possibly drug induced sleep.

Four sky clad people walk into the cellar. One of them has a demonic mask and a evil knife. Another, a drum made from wood with a tight white skin with tattoo ink blue Celtic markings on it. The other two are women who start dancing and chanting as soon as they enter the room. The drummer starts to hit his drum and the masked man you watch move to stand in front of the injured man blocking him from your view.

“For your intrusion onto hallowed ground we punish you,” the masked man shouts.
“For your intrusion onto hallowed ground we punish you,” the others repeat.
You watch the masked man drag the knife across the injured mans chest. Blood runs to the ground.
“For your violent ways we injured you,” the masked man shouts.
“So we shall injure you again!” The two dancers say.
The masked man pushes the knife into the injured mans gunshot wound.
He screams!
“We the children of the gods say you must die,” all of the cultists say.
The injured man screams one last time.
You see the masked man turn to you. 

You are sweating heavily now. That evil knife is covered in gore and the blank look of the masked man you feel hides a sadistic smile. The drumming man carries on his vile rhythm for the dancers to follow. You see a small ball shaped object role through the sunlight opening. It bounces on the stone floor of the cellar.
“For your intrusion,” the masked man starts to say. You close your eyes in terror.

You hear a deafening noise followed by chaotic screams and gunshot. You close your eyes even more. The ringing in your ears stops and you open your eyes. You try to speak and a desperate whimper is all you can summon. You see eight people in battle dress and black full face gas masks. One of them approaches you and slings his weapon over his shoulder. You watch him take his gas mask off.
“It will be alright. You’ve done your duty. You’ve exceeded our expectations. Let us help you,” he says.

This story was originally entered into the SFX Pulp Idol competition. It didn’t win (aw), didn’t get shortlisted and it didn’t even get an honerable mention. No matter I’m well aware of it’s deficencies and it was a tracer bullet. Oh well it’s a success if someone enjoys it.

Will.

Potentially Related posts

• Giania (1)
• No Other Explanation Necessary 1: Door Sign (0)
• Social Site For the Literate (1)
• Hope, strength, and patience to all who lost something today (0)
• Heart-Pounding Tales of The Manliness of Men Vol. 3 (0)

The bathroom was a terrible place to be. All the stall doors were slightly ajar and the terrible placement of the typical office fluorescent lighting gave the shadows life that they certainly wouldn’t have possessed on their own. I kept turning back in terror from what I assumed was a malevolent face in the handicapped stall. The wall by the sink provided me something to look at to occupy my mind, but this too became a source of vile fascination. Whether the talk was all in my mind or if there was someone there I do not know. Kindly and reassuring it spoke to me of demons, and angels, and paths to power sometimes being fraught with dangerous-looking things. There was no need to worry though of course, not if you were prepared.

People came and went out of the bathroom during all this, I played it off, made small talk. No one seemed to notice anything amiss, though I distinctly remember talking about the bathroom being haunted. More common knowledge than I’d assumed, I guess. It was late, these were after-hours types of people. Just sales floor looking to bag a couple extra bucks for the week, that’s all. Trying to get in those calls to Malaysia or wherever-the-fuck.

My benefactor guided me around to a room I’d never seen before, one that seemed like it shouldn’t exist, since it was approximately 10 feet too big, and had no windows. There were no outward bulges on this building! No way this could exist without breaking some serious physics laws. Nevermind that. The floor looked sort of like a chalkboard, the green kind. There was also an actual green chalkboard on the wall. Other than this and some boxes on the side it was empty.

So much younger, I looked about me in wide-eyed vulnerability, eager to begin my education on these demons of which my kindly old benefactor had spoken. The room was now fitted with a bed, and candles, and shelves full of books. Yet it was as if no time had passed at all. Securely I was strapped down on the massive, fluffy bed. Legs spread wide to reveal that holiest-of-holies, and the blood that was trickling from it. Eagerness made squiming fools of us both, and he crossed to ensure the door was bolted. After all, on the other side of that were working stiffs. They wouldn’t understand the complexity of what was at hand, all they would see is an old man raping a barely pubescent girl.

There was no desire for the predictable fallout of that, so he pulled the first of two doors to a close as quietly as possible and pushed in the lock with a wincingly audible click. As he pulled the second door into place, cracked white paint flaking pathetically, there was a pull at the first. The sliding bolt of door number two held, but only just barely. Small talk ensued. Oh yes, don’t worry about a thing, just trying to get some things buttoned up afterall, ha ha. He could see in her eyes she wasn’t really buying it, and a furtive glance got past his careful guard to what looked like and for all intents and purposes was a young girl strapped spread eagle to a bed.

Satisfied that he’d prevented disaster, he approached me. I didn’t question why I was suddenly so young, so vulnerable, so eager to have my brains fucked out by this stranger, so willing to be filled with dark knowledge of the kind of beings I had been utterly terrified of only a short while before. As he plays with my bloodied, virginal body I become possessed of all types of knowledge I never before suspected to have. I become something else. A vessel for this knowledge, for things dark and unknowable and realize with no small amount of fear that fear is no longer an option.

Cue the out of body experience. She who had so suspciously checked the room that shouldn’t be and seen something which clearly couldn’t be looked around and discovered a convenient can of translucent purple stuff. It was a kind of paint that induced the surfaces it was spread on to be translucent. Smearing this on the wall outside the room, nothing happened. Yet slowly an image formed, and she saw precisely what she was conerned she would see. A solidly built but somewhat out of shape older man was humping away at the young girl strapped down to the bed. The dark shapes and amorphous smokey clouds of energy which surrounded them were of no consequence in this horrific view. Inspired to action she frantically sought a way to bring this man to justice for what surely had to be the rape of a young girl.

Blood. Terror. Struggle to control the newly reborn demons within. Nothing really came of this. Or maybe a lot came of it. Hard to say now.

I was in an elevator with a boy I’ve always found tremendously attractive. We only needed to go to the fourth floor or so, but the digital output of the elevator stated our destination as 26. I played along with this, flirting heavily and rubbing up against him when it seemed appropriate. The elevator jerked periodically, in a way that felt much more like a subway car than your standard issue elevator. At some point late in the journey, the sensation changed from a straight upward motion to an up-and-over motion, as the elevator changed tracks and followed a curve while still rising higher in the building. There was a distinct sense of deja vu, and I felt fairly certain what I would see when the journey came to an end. Alas, not enough time to try to talk my elevator companion into a quickie, and I wasn’t confident that the elevator could handle being stopped.

When the doors opened it was on to other things. I stood beside a table of people in suits, loudly proclaiming how much I missed working with the model at the far end of the room. Oh he had been such a delight to work with, so much fun, so understanding. A purse with a colorful floral pattern caught my eye and I began to rifle through it, looking for identification to see who it belonged to, since it looked familiar. Inside was an address book I have not used since my freshman year of high school, leading me to think that this was perhaps my purse. I was not convinced and continued to paw through it, to no avail.

A woman with a flyer in her hand stopped me on the street and asked if the person metioned in a poorly photocopied ad was me. Well yes, it was. An amaturish ad for eyebrow tweezing and graphic design which distinctly mentioned me. I clarified to her that a dear friend of mine (the model mentioned before) that I used to do work for had put that together, trying to help me get business. Of course I don’t really do eyebrow tweezing, but I am pretty good at graphic design, so do keep in touch. The woman seemed suddenly repulsed and unimpressed, despite the fact that she had approached me about the ad, and wandered off.

Fortunately I ran into that model friend of mine after I got off the elevator. I tried to talk to him about the flyer but he was too busy for me.

The room was sterotypically dark. A long table lit by one or two overhead lamps with green cones that didn’t really serve to diffuse the glare of the bare bulb. A long, plain table at which three people sat, doing coke and looking bored. They barely talked. Time flashed forward in little fits and spurts, and the baggies got less fun, but the people no more animated than before. It struck me as wrong, but I was only an observer in this case.

Cue the naked girl wrapped up in plastic, more like an impossible collection of plastic bags. The bag over her head simultaneously covered her head, but was open at the front, the blue and yellow (make green!) top portion of the bag left open in front of her face to allow her to breathe, and to allow the three from the previous scene to keep feeding her drugs. Whatever it was, she was out cold most of the time. White pills and white powders floated in and out of view during all this. At one point, Bag Girl came to and saw the dashing male model. Recognizing him, she begged for his help, struggling in her plastic prison with the energy that hope provided her. A spoon filled with a pink substance that looked remarkably like Pepto Bismol came into view and seemed to slosh around in slow motion. This substance was meant for her and was given to her. Bag Girl blinked stupidly and blacked out.

Apropos of nothing, three older men dressed like greek gods stood about, discussing their power. When the insense power of the sun was brought into the conversation, sun screen was splashed haphazardly onto two of the three men. This was fortunate, because the clouds opened up and as the sun shone on the three, all the skin which had not been coated with sunscreen split and ruptured violently. They screamed like mighty warriors.

The last part is now the fuzziest, although it inspired me to make sure I wrote this all down in the first place. I should spend less time on exposition and make sure I get the base notes down first. Once I’ve written out the basics of a dream, I can typically remember most of it with ease. So now I give you loose snippets and notes of what I dreamt just before I awoke.

giant insects.
Green and almost puppet-like or cartoony in nature.
giant insects that fuse with and incubate in people.
people totally cool with it until bugs burst out of their bodies.
then they just die in a flood of green gunk.
Somehow it all tied in with the three drug-doing people and Bag Girl.

Potentially Related posts

• A Review of Lonely Places (0)
• Day Dreams of a BioTech Future (1)
• Remarkable Sand Art from SICAF 2003 (0)
• No Other Explanation Necessary 12: What Twitter Is For (1)
• I MAED A R3V13W OF A I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES (IN IT)!!!1 (1)

Day one was fraught with challenges, up to and including having trouble finding the venue. It took a lot of wandering around, a phone call, and I think two concierge desk stops to finally figure out that the Copley Plaza Marriott was in fact through the Copley Plaza Westin and the attached mall. That said, on with the notes.

Session 1: Understanding Web Design – Jeffrey Zeldman

• Missed this session entirely. :(

Session 2: Lessons of CSS Frameworks – Eric Meyer

• Missed over half of this session. :( I blame Mass traffic.
• Hits on server vs. File size. The more hits to the server, the slower the load times. File size isn’t nearly as much of an issue.
• IE(6) does not cache 2nd tier stylesheets. (stylesheets linked from within other stylesheets)
• IE6 wants nothing to do with your fancy link styling. Don’t rely on it to convey critical information if you think you’ll have a significant amount of IE6 visitors. (Know your audience!)
• Mobile phones probably can’t handle your stylesheet (iPhone notably excepted from this guideline).
• create a grid or layout background to use for debugging.
• Create a debugging stylesheet that replaces more subtle elements with large, bold colors to see exactly how your major elements line up.
• Set default colors in the body of the document to override any CSS weirdness or absence.
• Try to avoid measurements in pixels. Percentage or EM will provide better usability and cross-browser support.
• Create a framework file. This is a totally empty stylesheet, containing only elements, classes and ids, as well as comments explaining the general purpose of each. This provides the framework for others to understand your work, and gives you a blank to start from in future work.
• Maintain clean, logical naming conventions. Don’t use .RedBigText use .Header or .CallToAction. This way if you have to make this class perform a function other than red, big text you can make those changes while maintaining your markup.

Session 3: Good Design Ain’t Easy – Jason Santa Maria (turned 30! Happy Birthday!)

• Look to be different. Be familiar with popular box models & learn what you can do to separate yourself from them.
• Print != the web. (!= is does not equal for those who aren’t familiar) Therefore, instead of innovating based on standards of print, we must look to usability standards and concepts to build a better (mousetrap) website.
• Design reinforces your message.
• Design fills in where content leaves off to create impressions.
• Referenced the storytelling power of a mostly visual chart of Napoleon’s progress.
• Pacing must be capable of including all pertinent info. Editor’s Note: I don’t remember what I meant by this note.
• Design must account for flexibility, changes, functions
• Design must be able to demonstrate depth, or give the visitor confidence that they can navigate comfortably.
• Design for your audience, not just to fit your box model.
• Take advantage of the medium, learn to apply the tech to its fullest.
• Plan before you do, and make stylesheets accordingly flexible
• Level of design intricacy hinges largely on the type of content it is meant to showcase and support.
• “Design can’t not communicate.” – David Carson, Helvetica
• The Golden Rule or other ratio is a handy reference for balancing a box model.
• Links:
• A Brief Message
• Fray
• Principles of Beautiful Web Design
• No One Belongs Here More Than You
• We Tell Stories
• “You can have it in any color you want, as long as it’s black.” – Henry Ford regarding the Model T
• Art direction should apply to the web also.
• Evaluate the saclability of unique content art direction (i.e. serious differences between pages, breaking from one standard template between pages).
• Marry your design to your code.

Session 4: Web Application Hierarchy – Luke Wroblewski

• You have approximately 1.6 seconds to make an impression on a first time visitor.
• References Steve Krug’s excellent book Don’t Make Me Think in regards to illustrating how we use the web. We don’t read. We track around the web looking for the next thing to get us to our intended informational goal.
• Great presentation on the web is comprised of a balance between information and emotion, or Visual Organization and Personality.
• Organize things in ways people can relate to. For example, organizing information in a customer lookup system like a rolodex.
• What’s front and center is critical
• Presentation should follow desired function
• Downplay non-critical information
• Create context by applying contrast, placement and seperation
• Consider the color scheme. Contrasting colors attract attention.
• Make uniquely important items distinct from the remainder of the page.
• Focus on your use of labels, whitespace, and the scanability of your page.
• Proximity of items, similarity of items, and pattern of items dictate how noticable they are.
• The more differences between neighboring items, the higher the contrast and the more likely a visitor is to focus on it.
• Orchestrate the distribution of visual weight (what’s most noticable to what’s least noticable) to influence user experience.
• Avoid too many “look at me!” items as it creates confusion.
• Avoid too few “look at me!” items as it leads to disinterest
• Information should not be distributed via firehose
• Be aware of how people access and use your site. Or how it is intended to be used at least. These factors inform how the hierarchy of information should be structured.
• Consider how people find you and what you want them to do when they get there.
• People come to your site for some kind of content. Don’t let the overhead (structural elements of your website, other navigation, etc) overwhelm that content. Give the people what they want.
• Visually prioritize the actions you want or need people to take
• Strive for a clear, logical flow of information using visual cues and standardization of content. (Hint: Centering text is very unhelpful when trying to achieve this logical flow.
• Consider your overall signal to noise ratio when displaying lots of information. Too much contrast and the data gets overwhelmed. Too little and the data itself is overwhelming.
• Luke’s site: Lukew.com

And then it was lunchtime! Will talk more about that when I get around to my travel log post. I’ll have the rest of day one in a seperate post, so keep your eyes open, and if you aren’t already subscribed to the RSS feed, by all means hit the GIANT PURPLE BOX at the top of the site to do so. :)

Potentially Related posts

• Amy Goes Betty-Homemaker: Holiday Edition (2)
• Five Things to Make You Smile on Blue Monday (0)
• Reality Politics (0)
• Speaking of Control… (0)
• All links open in a new window. So there. (0)

A clear and flagrant disrespect for all things was extruded from the two young men chatting back and forth on the mostly empty train car and left the air palpably unclean. Crisp suits, slick and greasy hair, shifty bright eyes, and utter animal stupidity were readily apparent upon a quick glance. Typical upper-class white boys with no sense of purpose beyond where their dicks will be by the end of the night or who they can roll under the bus to get the next raise. No love except the long-since-abandoned love for mother, and a lust for money and the status associated with it that they assume is love.

‘This is why people think Hannibal Lecter is cool,’ I thought. ‘He eats people this obscenely disgusting. Something to be said for ridding the world of human waste.‘ Braying laughter made me wince and shift in my seat. It was an ugly, filthy train, and these were ugly thoughts started by the ugliest kind of beautiful people. I wasn’t really in the mood to dig to the bottom of my gear bag for my headphones because I knew I’d likely miss my stop if I didn’t pay attention and I certainly wasn’t comfortable having them out in this area of town.

“…so then I said, ‘well you know I remember you saying that we could have that done by tomorrow’, right in front of the manager. He’s going to catch so much shit.”
“Well did he?”
“Pfft, no. He said we could have one part of it done – maybe – but whatever, these fucking computer nerds get so fuckin high and mighty. Meh-meh-meh can’t do this, blah blah blah stability that, standards ‘n shit. Makes me gag. It’s just an excuse for being lazy.”
“I know, right? They take the simplest stuff and turn it into a big production. They’re the ones who know how to make the stuff. If the boss wants something, I tell him we’re doing it, because I know these guys make up deadline extensions so they can waste more billable hours.”
“Such a fuckin farce, am I right?”
“Definitely! So where we going tonight…”

I rolled my eyes for and no one in particular. ‘What a crock of pure, unadulterated bullshit,‘ I breathed quietly to myself, illiciting a glance that suggested perhaps talking to myself in public was a great way to get into more trouble than I cared for just then. I could tell just by half-listening that if those two fine, upstanding gentlemen were faced with a cartload of Grade A manure and a clearly labeled can of Shinola that they would not be able to discern the disparity between the two. This was getting nastier by the minute. I could feel the blood rushing to my face, making it hot, and the little voice in the back of my mind was beginning to whisper sweet nothings. That little voice coyly suggested that I explain to these over-privileged wastes of flesh exactly what their place was in the grand scheme of the universe (hint: nowhere worth caring about) and to inform them that their only recourse if they had any moral fiber left – assuming it hadn’t all been used up repairing damages to overpriced suits from nights of wasted rape-and-pillage – was to get out at the nearest stop and make sure their head was directly on the third rail when the train started up again, to make absolutely sure they were killed. That little voice was a real cunt like that, always goading for fights that served no higher purpose and most certainly made no friends.

Luckily, a swift jerk of the train coming to a halt reminded me that I could get off the train here and put all of that behind me. It was for the best since trolling wasn’t really my style, no matter how satisfying it seemed on an imaginary level. Scrambling to gather my various and sundry (but wholly necessary of course) items from the seat beside me I saddled one bag firmly over one shoulder and the other bag on my back. Visible effort moved me off the train before I could succumb to that little voice, despite the fact that I could practically smell the smoke from the burning, judgemental eyes of the two who so brutally deserved some kind of reality check. When the dust and wind of the departing train removed their car from my line of sight by way of flapping my hair into my face I finally relaxed. A little bit anyway.

Color and sound were at a premium here which was undoubtly the draw of this stop over the next one, which was closer to where I needed to be anyway. The chuffing of approaching and exiting trains and their warning whistles were generally the most noise to be had. The landscape surrounding the platform was comprised wholly of grey industrial buildings and derelict housing. Terrific for urban exploration but not exactly a popular spot. Unless of course one was a grey-faced industrial worker or a derelict. Yet as the industrial sector collapsed over the last few years even the derelicts moved on to greener pastures. It was probably just too depressing. Not that it was by any means a safe neighborhood, which made me pause to make sure all my gear was strapped down tight.

Once I’d had to run nearly a mile with all my things to make sure that the dark figure who’d stumbled out to meet me as I descended the time worn steps to the street wasn’t still following me. He (at least I assumed it was a he) chased me most of the way, gurgling what I’d taken for obscenities in an alternately high and gutteral tone. To this day I have no idea what he wanted, and haven’t seen him again but it was a very memorable experience. Still, given the choice between the chance of running another record breaking mile or enduring any more inane prattle from those subhuman ex-frat boys I couldn’t help but think I’d made the right decision. I felt that little voice in the back of my mind rising to call me a pussy but I ignored it and tromped in the direction of my friends’ house. It had been a while since I’d spent any time with them and I was glad to remedy the situation on a night like this.

It had looked, until the call came in a few hours ago, to be another boring Friday. There is a certain standard of tinny emptiness that comes on a Friday night. Particularly those that come and go without anything even aproximating a noteworthy event. Such things as cannot be avoid but still leave a certain imprint that lingers through the weekend and onto Monday. A dried out feeling of loss, like another year somehow slipped by and nothing came of it, even though it’s really only one day of the week. Yet an empty Friday can set the tone for several days to come. Sure, sometimes it’s welcome when the week has been hell and there are a dozen or more parties laid out on the horizon like the glittering lights of Las Vegas approached by highway. The lights go from glittering to blinding and opting out of everything seems like the best idea anyone’s ever had; the weekend goes on to feel like a sigh of relief made large.

Then there are empty Fridays that spawn other things. What am I doing? Where am I going? What’s the motherfucking point, anyway? Such introspective escapes, hardly in proper e-prime form, lead nowhere and get there faster than shit runs through a goose. ‘Yet,’ I mused while rounding a corner into a world of slightly more color, with fresh billboards and open shops, ‘when the music is too loud, and you aren’t too old and you aren’t drunk, aren’t high, with a plan or prospect of a plan, relatively few options present themselves lest one is very ambitious.‘ Very ambitious, in the context of that thought, is as simple as a hobby, or even acting on the fulfillment of basic needs. In a place so awkwardly desperate it did seem pretty simple to lose the will to realize such things, though.

Thoughts turning darker by the minute (hardly any way to gear up for a party), I crammed my hands deep in my pockets and decided to roll with this serious navel-gazing type activity. Snippets of Stooges songs cruised through my brain whether I liked them or not. ‘Iggy’s not much of a singer really but there still kind of a crude animal mangetisim or draw or something like that.‘ The closer I got to my destination, the closer my mind crept to empty and the better I felt. Nothing like telling all those stray thoughts and little voices to go fuck themselves for a little while to really clear out the old noggin. I turned down corners here and there, going down familiar streets without even considering in the slightest the route itself or who I might run into even though I could think of a lot of people I could and did not want to run into just then.

All in all I looked a lot like I felt (i.e. like shit) and it was really best no one saw me but my mindset had no truck with such considerations anyhow. As my train of thought – ‘…are wombats marsuipials?‘ – wandered further and further from myself and my concerns du jour, the less I cared. It was down right liberating. It was at least as liberating as it was par for the course, at any rate. So many expressions: train of thought, par for the course, at any rate, du jour… where did they even come from? Is that kind of vernacular useful, or just idiotic, bland filler expression for lack of anything useful to say? No good. As I closed in on my destination, my thoughts started to turn heavy again. A touch too much I, me, and my. Such unpleasant results came from such thought patterns but it was very difficult to break free from once the habit is formed. The withdrawal seemed like it might be easier than, say, heroin but working up the cojones to quit seemed much harder. I reckoned that eventually I’d be the mental equivalent of cancer patients with throat bypasses that still smoked.

That’s all for now! If you found this more fun than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, you might also like a couple other posts here!

Potentially Related posts

• Design-a-Vagina Contest to Re-run (2)
• Meaningless Drivel: Coffee Rant (2)
• Apologies for infinitedesu & New RKNet Friends (3)
• Is it all just a little bit of history repeating? (0)
• Best You’ve Never Heard: Guided By Voices (0)

Simple links that summarize my feelings for this particular pseudo holiday that inspires more jealousy, depression, and ill-will than possibly even Christmas!

• Wordlab – $122.98 Says I Love You In which the spending habits of the besotted and pussywhipped are discussed.
• Ectomo – Lupercalia: Happy Fucking Valentine’s Day In which the dubious history of the holiday’s Christian/pagan associations is discussed.
• The Sherman Foundation – New Word Order: Honey Trapper In which the definition of a newer phrase says a lot about modern relationships.

Enjoy tomorrow’s discount candy!

Potentially Related posts

• Junk mail is often so facinating. (0)
• Luddite strikes again (0)
• In Soviet Russia Forum Desu Floods You! (6)
• zola fun time (0)
• French Vogue Has Gone a Little Bit Funny In The Head (4)

A while back I wrote an article discussing the less-than-finer points of an invention known as the “shenis”. The inventor happened by here just yesterday and decided to let me know that she wasn’t terribly enthused by my rather negative first impression.

Well, once the subject of “what’s a girl to do when there’s no sit-down toilet services available?” was broached, someone was kind enough to mention a similar invention they’d heard of in years past.

The invention in question was developed in 1988 by a Dutch woman named Moon Zijp and is called the P-mate. It’s a simple cardboard funnel, really. It can be folded for discreet and space-saving storage. It comes with a baggie for disposal (or sanitary storage if immediate disposal isn’t available). Most importantly, it allows women the alternative of peeing standing up when conditions merit it.

Now maybe it won’t let you pee off the side of a boat as perfectly as a twelve inch golden dong, but at least I won’t have to worry about urine in my purse afterward. For purchase of the P-mate in the US, please see their US-based order-and-info site.

Potentially Related posts

• Our Closest-to-Winning Contest Entry! (2)
• Day Man! Fighter Of the Night Man! (0)
• Musical Discovery: Cocorosie (1)
• Stream of Tuesday: Madness at the Desk Edition (0)
• At First I Was Like… But Then, I LOL’d! (0)

If I may be so bold as to quote Animaniacs…

“It’s time for another good idea, bad idea”

Good idea:
A device that allows folks with female sex organs to pee standing up.
Bad idea:
Fashioning said device to look something akin to a giant golden dildo.

It’s certainly a device that’s an invention of necessity. Yet I fail to see the need for it to be – as the site describes it – 12 inches long, and golden. And as it’s stated on the site “The Ebony model is due out soon. It will be significantly larger than the gold model, come with wheels and is…priceless.”

I’m absolutely positive that concept of this device could be executed with a LOT more discretion. I can’t picture wasting that much space in a hiking or camping pack, much less a purse with something that huge. A plastic funnel would probably serve the same purpose, at that.

Plus, I’d bet a nickel they’ve done SOME kind of keyword research, too. On the “Blog On” page, I couldn’t help but notice the sub-header stating: “The Shenis fits all designer vaginas”. The designer vagina issue seems to be coming up a lot more lately, probably due to changes in surgical proceedures and promotion. (I distinctly recall complaining about the very idea, in fact.) They could probably do more to optimize for that particular keyword, but I find it’s placement and presence in general to be highly suspect.

Conclusion: This is a pure novelty item and I’m not terribly impressed, to be honest. Campers, hikers, and road-trip travelling ladies, just make sure you have a plastic funnel (or good directions). You’ll be fine. Don’t throw money at this silly attempt to provoke in the name of convenience.

Potentially Related posts

• Cross Talk or What’s Keeping Me Too Busy to Update (0)
• RKNet update (0)
• From The Softest And Most Sophisticated Parts of The Place Beyond The Veil A New Challenger Approaches (2)
• A Review of Lonely Places (0)
• Today’s Post Brought to You by the Number 9 (0)

Just to keep things brief:
I dreamt I had a fish tank with a few kinds of viscious, snappy fish in it, and a small octopus and some other kind of shellfish or something. I accidentally screwed up the whole aquairum by collapsing one of the sides leaving only a tiny bit of water at the bottom, and nearly crushing the fish. I set everything back up and added in the appropriate salt water for this collection of pirhana like fish. (One looked like one of those clap-trap deals from Donkey Kong Jr.)
Next time I looked into the fish tank, it was full of irridescent octopi. They would look like small, but relatively normal, bluish and reddish octopi, then they would contract and glow in neon colors with cartoon faces. I watched this in fascination, as more were arrising, born out of the dead bodies of the fish that did in fact die because I had broken the tank.
That’s all I remember now. There was so much more. There has been so much more lately but I unfortunately haven’t had time to record the overall details. I have been told I need to watch Until the End of the World. …I can’t imagine why.

Potentially Related posts

• when you aren’t here (0)
• Design-a-Vagina Redux: A More Serious Approach (1)
• Because we’re obviously just that cool (0)
• Words To Know Volume 6: More Homunculi (5)
• Dream Log: Poltergiests and the Stupid People Who Don’t Flee Them (1)

No names have been changed, but appropriate links have been provided to appropriately ID the other participants in the conversation. Where no appropriate link could be found, the name has been omitted. Some cross-talk has also been omitted, since it doesn’t make quite as much sense out of context as it would with much more text. Rather than retell the story, again, in another format, I figured just sharing this with everyone would suffice.

Giania XD I worked yesterday, spent Sunday at my parents’, got briefly kicked out of my apartment due to a law enforcement situation, and drove my brother around all Friday afternoon.
Steppo due to a…law enforcement situation?
Giania Did I tell you guys about the loony tune that lived down the hall from me?
Giania I really have to make a blog post about this…
Steppo No you sure havent
Steppo sits down infront of Giania
WEERD the old bag who burnt her place down?
Giania hahaha. no not that one, WEERD, this is ANOTHER psycho
WEERD wow
Steppo another…psycho!?
WEERD Good ‘Ol Freak Magnet G!
Steppo do you live at a mental institution?
Steppo lol
Giania apparently I do
Giania OH!
Giania So yeah, we’ve got lady who nearly torched the joint
Steppo hehe
Steppo I love storytelling time
Giania then I have this encounter with the lady down the hall, from 206
Giania I go down to get my laundry from the dryer
Giania it’s about 1am, since I work weird hours and decide to do chores at weirder hours
Giania Her and her husband (I’ve seen him around before, sort of weird, quiet, plays his techno loud) are down there doing laundry
Giania Uh oh – I think – this could go weird
Giania Sure ’nuff
Giania She introduces herself, starts rumbling about the issues we’ve had
Giania fire, the break in because of the party in the 3rd floor hallway
Giania etc
Giania and it mounts from t here
Giania I fold my laundry and try to be polite
Giania she gets more and more into her dialogue
Giania talking about how everyone in the building is either “trash” or “a drug dealer” ….oh wow, a paranoid.
Steppo oh god…
Giania Then it slowly turns to her. Her personal history, which conflicts the more she talks about it. Her opinions on all kinds of things. a schizophrenic paranoid
Giania During all this, her hubby is going back and forth, doing the laundry and periodically saying things like “hey, the girl’s arm is falling off, let her go home” with this “oh that wacky gal of mine” tone
Giania My buddy Jay goes by, without really stopping, I was hoping I could have grabbed him in time to have him bail me out. No such luck
Giania I endure about an hour and fifteen minutes of that before I can retreat
Steppo wow, like…
Steppo wow
WEERD jesus
Giania I found out later that Jay had been trapped by her weirdness in the elevator before, so I can understand his hesitation
Steppo hahaha
Steppo jesus christ
Giania on top of that, he’d caught her ranting into the entryway intercom
Giania hollering from her apartment to the front door about how she was watching, and those fuckers had better go elsewhere, etc
Giania Well
Giania Saturday was the fetid gravy on the cake. She’d apparently had enough.
Steppo haha, and lemme guess. There was none at the door?
Giania You got it
Giania well, until Jay and Ash went by, anyway
Steppo haha
Giania he almost decided to rant back at her
Giania So yeah. Saturday
Giania She snapped
Steppo yeah saturday
Giania Got too paranoid
Giania thought people were bothering her, watching her, etc
Giania pulled a knife
Giania cut her husband on the hand pretty good, and was apparently threatening herself and others
Giania I myself woke up right around 2pm (aaah weekends)
Giania About 5 minutes later was when the cops knocked on my door
Giania they wanted everybody on the second floor OUT because they had guns drawn and did not want any loose fire going thru the paper-thin walls.
Steppo what the hell…
Giania I and my neighbors hung around outside for about 45 minutes.
Giania In that time, the building was surrounded. 3 local cop cars across the street. 2 state on our side. at least 2 ambulances. 2 plain clothes cops, a building manager, and 1 full dress cop at each entrance and stairwell
WEERD I would have asked if they wanted backup : ]
Giania They brought the husband out and put him in the first ambulance to get his hand stiched up
Giania (he bled on the floor, etc after he got back, on top of it all)
Giania when they extracted her, in cuffs, still cussing and struggling, she had no pants on
Giania when I went back upstairs, I discovered that she must have ditched her shorts in the hall
Giania Also, the screen in the second floor hall window was knocked out
Giania It was propping open the front door
Giania couldn’t tell why

Potentially Related posts

• Let's play… (0)
• So, I heard you like Mudkips… (6)
• Dream log, around 10AM this morning (0)
• QED Group – Last.FM Topographical Map of Friend Compatibility (2)
• Scarlet Imprint Release: Devoted (3)