Over the weekend, my wife and I decided to check out something that has become a bit of an obsession for some friends of ours, Virtual Magic Kingdom, which for the uninitiated is something like a sanitized, Disney-ized online version of Animal Crossing, where one can explore the Magic Kingdom, talk to other players (using Disney approved words only*), play games to make "money," which can then be used to purchase virtual clothing, furniture and magic pins (which apparently mainly serve the purpose of enticing hundreds of other players annoy the hell out of you asking for a trade.) In between annoyances caused by spotty Mac browser support, I had the following humorous exchange with a couple other players:
falloutgurl93** i like u. do u like me?
sk8rboi65905** idk
me i like lamp.
falloutgurl93** what the sell is lamp?
me what the lamp is sell?
falloutgurl93** omg.
falloutgurl93** you don't know what sell means.
me um, i think i can figure it out.
it felt nice to draw again. this one's for my daughter's birthday invitations. maybe someday soon i'll draw something just because again.
as i was fumbling around in the cabinet that serves as our entertainment center tonight looking for our netflix copy of corpse bride, i ran across a CD-R i had forgotten about labeled "best of 2003." i figured i'd throw it on just to see what i was into two years ago. so far the most shocking thing to come out of it is just how good starflyer 59's "old" is. (the song, not necessarily the whole album.) oh and how, no matter how great of a single "big boat" is, that m. ward's transistor radio will never hold a candle to transfiguration of vincent.
I got tagged by the futon.
To avoid being a broken record, I'm simply going to post the lyrics to The Innocence Mission's "Every Hour Here" and tell you that I am trying my best not to forget the ticket-half in the pocket of my old leaf raking coat.
We ride our bikes
around the circle in the cemetery,
weaving.
I wave up to You on the Cross.
Am I to come upon You suddenly like this forever?
Happy, relieved that You are here
and I can see You, I can feel You?
You are like the ticket-half
I find inside the pocket of
my old leaf-raking coat.
There all the time, all the while,
forgotten.
I so often seem to leave You
in churches
and other islands.
And on my beads
where I can see You, I can feel You.
I take the ticket-half
and put it on the table, saying,
This is God
and He's here through my comings
and my goings.
But I walk past the ticket-half,
I walk past the ticket-half.
I walk past the ticket-half
just as I've walked past the Cross on our wall.
Our self-importance grows so dazzling we don't see
You.
But Gentle Jesus, aren't You always,
aren't You every hour here?
It's so hard for me not to think about the financial state i'm in right now. It's a bit like a loose tooth. You know it's going to hurt to push that tooth with your tongue, but yet you keep doing it, out of compulsion or a hope of eventually wearing down the connection enough for the tooth to pop right out. While I know the answers aren't going to change, I keep asking myself the same questions over and over, out of compulsion or a hope that eventually I might see some angle I hadn't before and find a way out. Probably all I'm gonna get is a lot of pain and a mouth full of blood.
i think i could have listened to the mountain goats all day long today (and i just about did).
tallahassee
Window facing an ill-kept front yard
Plums on the tree heavy with nectar
Prayers to summon the destroying angel
Moon stuttering in the sky like film stuck in a projector
And you
You
Twin prop airplanes passing loudly overhead
Road to the airport two lanes clear
Half the whole town gone for the summer
Terrible silence coming down here
And you
You
There is no deadline
There is no schedule
There is no plan we can fall back on
The road this far can't be retraced
There is no punch line anybody can tack on
There are loose ends by the score
What did I come down here for?
You
You
i want to have faith that everything will work together for good.
Don't hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or--worse!-stolen by burglars. Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it's safe from moth and rust and burglars. It's obvious, isn't it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.
Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have!
You can't worship two gods at once. Loving one god, you'll end up hating the other. Adoration of one feeds contempt for the other. You can't worship God and Money both.
If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don't fuss about what's on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds.
Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion--do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best--dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them.
If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers--most of which are never even seen--don't you think he'll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I'm trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God's giving. People who don't know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don't worry about missing out. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.
Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.
my dad gave me one of these babies tonight:
i know it annoys some people to no end, but i truly love using the word google as a verb. i think my affinity for it can be traced back to my first encounter with it, an episode of ed in which ed follows a particularly successful... ahem... "biblical knowing" with the phrase "i googled how to satisfy your woman." i can certainly understand how some people would loathe this usage, as i am generally vocally on the bandwagon of hating internet-speak, but this is one case in which i swing the other way. plus, i get special joy out of calling myself a good "googlizer" the way that derek zoolander says he's a bad "eugooglizer."
this morning, i was greeted by a little booklet with pictures of me with my 2 kids
what i like to do with daddy:
go watch painting on the street (we took a walk downtown to watch artists paint last weekend)
what my daddy likes:
dragon land, elmo, mommy, mommy's glasses, popcorn
what my daddy likes to drink:
water... no, ice tea
what my daddy likes to do:
watch homer, watch bart
Total volume of music files on my computer: 37.05GB (thanks, iPod, for taking my hd space away)
The last CD I bought was: the replacements "don't tell a soul" in the case to the replacements "all shook down" at a yard sale for $2. a steal in either case, but i thought i was getting "all shook down." ah well...
Song playing right now: the mountain goats - i'm so lonesome i could cry (live hank williams jr. cover)
Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me (culled from my 25 top played songs smart playlist):
1) Crooked Fingers - Twilight Creeps
2) soul coughing - sugar free jazz
3) David Dondero - Living and the Dead
4) Big Star - The Ballad of El Goodo
5) Death Cab for Cutie - Tiny Vessels
Five people to whom I'm passing the baton:
1) ben leonard
2) not
3) sure
4) yet
5) i'll keep you posted.
look dudes - new fountains of wayne!
no really, i am. i love my friends, but i never keep in touch with them. i would love nothing better (well, maybe a plasma tv, but very little better...) than to spend an evening talking to one of my friends, yet i never call, never return emails, never do anything to really keep in touch. i've been trying to get better lately... caught up with a couple people through myspace and had dinner with jericho the other night, but really i'm still not tearing the roof off it. so if you're my friend and you don't think i love you anymore, chances are i do, i'm just not great at showing it. oh yeah and i'm going to see velvet revolver on wednesday. for reals.
growing up is lame.
sometimes i'm wrong. hopefully this isn't one of those times.
if you have any ideas for what i should name this comic strip, let me know about them.
i took some pictures last night at the mainzer. unfortunately, my camera ran out of batteries between soundcheck and the actual show, so everything here is pre-show.
darling darkness:
the jabronskis:
so much like i did in the ultimate skateboard, i got excited about my new (still in the planning stages) band this past weekend and made me some cover art.
this is quite possibly the best thing ever. at the moment, i'm particularly fond of the passengers album and the remixes of "mysterious ways."
so yeah, i've been getting more & more into hip-hop lately, much to the amusement of many who know me, as i'm not your typical hip-hop fan at all. most of the stuff i've been listening to is old school (relatively speaking), but i stumbled across something new last night that i really like. this guy calls himself "listener" and has an album out called whispermoon (itunes) that seems to be really great. i wasn't too surprised then, to find out he used to be in a group called deepspace5 with manchild & dust who now make up mars ill, one of the few other new hip-hop artists i really like. the main thing that blew me away about whispermoon was "train song," which is available as a free mp3 download from listener's purevolume site. seriously, take a listen or two to train song. now if i could only figure out a way to not feel like an idiot for nodding my head along to the beat.
so a bit ago, a guy (maik) from germany started listening to my radio stream.
somewhere along the way, he introduced me to a german artist that is really
great, a guy named maximillian hecker. i would iTunes link him if i could,
but he hasn't had any of his stuff released in the u.s.
oh, and if you don't get the title of this here entry, go watch high fidelity
again.
so i heard this on kexp tonight, and i really liked it. very reminiscent of the jam's mod-punk mixture, but with a bit more (scottish?) accent. check it out: the futureheads (itunes)
also, the new tom waits sounds great.
in the city.
highlights included:
steriogram - walkie talkie man dir. michel gondry
just your run-of-the-mill everything's made out of yarn and a giant yarn
monster attacks the capitol records building video.
see it here
(web) buy the song here
(iTunes)
badly drawn boy - year of the rat dir. monkmus
rad animation of damon gaugh (otherwise known as badly drawn boy) going around
town making everything better with hugs. as silly as it sounds, it's really
quite emotionally effective.
see it here
(web) or here
(itunes) buy the song here
(iTunes)
klonhertz - three girl rhumba dir. Dougal Wilson
klonhertz cuts up the wire song "three girl rhumba" into a new
dancefloor rocker and almost gets cut up by scissors in the video. a cool
concept executed really well.
see it here
(web) buy the song here
(iTunes)
the divine comedy - come home billy bird dir. kuntzel &
deygas
kuntzel & deygas are the guys that did the opening sequence for "catch
me if you can." while this doesn't quite reach the level of brilliance
those titles did, it's still a great video about a traveling businessman with
a bird head. no, really, it is.
see it here
(web)
ate at blondie's
shopped at rasputin's (i bought maritime,
harold & noah bought death
cab)
drooled on stuff at the apple store
