A Day Late and A Day Short

Man, if I would have just made this post yesterday like I planned on. I would have won.

Stupid NPR, now everybody (everybody white, at least) knows about Stuff White People Like. And while I'm not an official White Person, I hope to be someday when I get a job at a non-profit that helps/knows what's best for poor people.

I think my favorite thing about the site is that it lets white people feel either more or less white than other white people, which are both things that white people like! You can't lose!

But deep down, the blog (do white people like blogs?) gives really good advice about how to interact with white people to make them feel good about being white, which is a very kind thing to do, really. With this help, I might even be able to pass as a white person now.

Whatever Happens, Happens

This one time, actually it was yesterday, I had to go to the oral surgeons. I hate oral surgeons. He had to pull out two of my 3rd molars. It was not very fun. My face looks really lopsided now.

The good news was that I got to miss work yesterday. It's pretty much a toss-up whether I dislike the oral surgeons or work more. I think I dislike work more because work never gives me hydrocodone.



But other than that, I haven't been up to much, you know. Just mostly sitting around at home and at work, eatin some pizza, learnin about Cuba. I do have a favorite new band of the moment. The National. Don't worry, it's still just regular old twenty-something semi-mopey, semi-orchestral white boy indie rock. You know me, I'm a sucker for that shit. I would say that I am a perfect member of the most predictable demographic, behind 4-7 year old kids that is. We're all semi-elitist, semi-self-aware, semi-rich insufferable bastards who think they're different than the stupid normal Americans. Which is true, I guess. We ARE all the same amount different. But at least I'm not really semi-rich anymore, so I've got that going for me, which is nice.

Son, I've Been Hearing Good Things

The Ramones were right, being sedated rules.

If Beggars Were Choosers

Do you ever have one of those days? You know the ones that I'm talking about. The days where you sit there all day worrying about the pieces of your skull that are going to get ripped out tomorrow? Yeah, that's the kind of day I'm having.

But on a lighter note, I started reading The Population Bomb yesterday. I'd bet a million dollars that the malthusian disaster theories that are popular now will be as far off as the massive global famines were in the 1970's. But maybe not. I don't have a million dollars anyway.

I've always wanted to try to deep-fry a turkey.

Yesterday, I ate 4 pieces of toast for dinner. It was crunchy and warm.

It's true that if you throw up at the same time you sneeze puke goes shooting out your nose. Also, you can briefly see the infinity of universes that exist in parallel, but it's not nearly as cool as it sounds.

Guess what! I get to drive to Iowa next week!

I'm getting tired. I'm forgetting why.

Bad Photetry Thursday: Oops

Bad Poetry Thursday: Just Sitting Here Resting My Bones

A Far Off Land

How many times must a man walk down the same road
Before he realizes He's been down this road before?
We've been over this ground before.
We've always been over this ground.
This time I swear it's different.
I'm breaking new ground here.
I'm going somewhere.
I'm shooting for the stars.
I'm going to make it, just you wait and see.
I'm the great hope.
Watch me as I fall.
I'm breaking new ground here.

You'll Start a War

Maybe it's just me, but toilet paper isn't supposed to be translucent, is it?

Maybe it's just me, but what the hell is a handbasket?

Maybe it's just me, but where's my tax refund?

Maybe it's just me, but didn't we expect something? Something better than before?

Maybe it's just me, but why is it so cold?

Maybe it's just me, but weren't you always weird?

Maybe it's just me, but I wish I could get over it.

Maybe it's just me, but sometimes I can't help myself.

Maybe it's just me, but WTF?

Maybe it's just me, but do you want a piece of pie?

Maybe it's just me.

The Return of The Roving Machinations of the Watching Movies and Then Pretending to Write Reviews that People Pretend To Read

Here are some brief Reviews of the movies I've watched in the last dickety-two days.

Treasure Planet - Like Treasure Island but IN SPACE! The blend of computer and traditional animation is a little offputting, but extraordinary in a way, since it seems like such an obvious idea but nobody else does it.
5 Pieces-of-8 out of 9

Treasure Planet - Better the second time through, "By tunder."

Casino Royale - Definitely the best James Bond movie starring Daniel Dubbleishsomething. I really like how they made torture and murder look bad. You don't see that every day anymore.
A Straight Flush

Treasure Planet - Okay, this is getting old.

Treasure Planet - When exactly is this movie due back to the library?

12 Monkeys - This one makes way more sense if you don't fall asleep in the middle of it and wake up when Bruce Willis is naked in WWI. By the way, if you've always wanted to see Bruce Willis naked and getting scrubbed down and naked in a filthy trench, this is the movie for you. Also, when you watch this movie you officially get bonus points if you point out that it was based on the 1960's French move La Jetee.
9 out of 12 Monkeys

Treasure Planet - .....

Control Room - A documentary about media coverage (specifically Al Jazeera) during the lead up to and beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom: Persian Gulf First Blood Part II starring John Rambo? Snoozefest. Bombs, guns, dead journalists, bi-polar extremism, war is bad, the end. Interesting if only for the fact that it's fun to watch peoples' reactions to things they thought/believed/knew would never happen. But not that interesting.
11 gain knobs on a 32 channel sound board.

Treasure Planet - I give up. It's my new favorite! The centroid of the mechanism is important though, so at least I've got that going for me, which is nice.

Return of the Roving Machinations of the Giant Bottle of Rye

Just like most things that happen, the title of this post doesn't mean anything.
However, from time to time, something does mean something. Like yesterday, when I went to Costco. Going to Costco meant that I was one hundred and something dollars poorer and Dickety-two consumer items richer. It was quite enlightening to realize that.

So at least I've got that going for me, which is nice.

Bad Poetry Thursday: Dude, I'm Tripping Balls!

Said the Porpoise

In a lot of ways
A guitar string
Is like a cup tea.
Round tones and round handles
Reverberate in rounded chambers
A pluck can send a note soaring
and destroy the seeping bag.
The constant overbearing harmonies of
Black and green, of
Half and whole, of
Sustain and influenza, of
Black and tan
Can calm the noble savage.
And aggravate the ignoble savant.

The Miracle of Flight

The other day I was just doing my usual thing, you know, driving home from work when I saw something that literally made me fall out my chair. Well, not literally, but figuratively literally. I couldn't literally fall out of my chair because there was a door to my left and a stick shifter control knob thingy to my right. But anyway, I figuratively literally fell out of my chair because I saw this dude just walking along on the side of the road! By the Buffalo Wild Wings at 26 and the Van Dyke Expressway! Who does that??? I almost rolled down my window and asked him if he needed a ride. I didn't though, because it was pretty cold out there and nice and warm inside my car. I didn't want to let the warm out. Global warming is bad enough as it is.

Blahd Blahetry Blahday

When Walking by The Lumber Store on A Snowy Evening

I think that I shall never see
A box full of free wood
that is useful to me.

A warp-ed piece of creaking pallet
And two panels of fiberboard
To nail together with a mallet
Would not make a very good stage.

If only two-by-fours were in there
I could build a tennis racket
If I also had strings and tape and
Other wood-shaping equipment.

All the wood in the world
Would not stop your innocence lost
from being found again and lost again.

Not even if all the wood in the world
Was free.

What Was I Thinking?

Sheesh, I almost broke rule number 1 just now. That probably would have caused some sort of hilarious rift in the universe and I would have been transported to a parallel universe where everyone never breaks rule #1 except me.

That would rule.

Sixteen Tons, and What Do You Get?

So, I was reading this book the other day. It was pretty good.

Then, after I finished reading the book, I listened to a new CD. It was pretty good, too. Then I listened to it again and it was a little better.

After that, I went to work. It was pretty good.

After I got home from work, I went to some store or another. I was pretty good. Not as good as NOT going to the store, but better than eating a shit sandwich.

Then I started finishing another book. It was pretty good in a different way from the other book that I finished.

Then I went to work again.

Bad Poetry Thursday: I Used To Be Made Of Plastic

All four of these were written in the span of about...let me see...it's 9:52.....29 minutes! So you know they must be totally friggin' awesome.


Non-recyclable
by The Landfill

The only thing I know of
That can't be recycled
Is a memory.
It just gets re-written
until its resemblance to the actual event
is tenuous at best.
It doesn't get recycled
Just forgotten.


The Sound of A Thousand Feet
by Podi A. Trist

A thousand feet
More or less
Are what you need to grind bones into bread
To tread the many miles to the office.
A thousand feet
Are stomping at the bit
and skidding lengthwise toward
the empty vat
that used to hold our bread
before we broke and ate our bones.


When Dogs Lie and Pigs Fly
by Total Nuclear Warfare

I saw a tinsel cat the other day
it adorned a tree of stone and twine.
I thought "what odd things are done with tinsel,
Nowadays, at least."
I also ate a trundle bed the other day
It was all that remained of yesteryear
And I was wont to see it gone.
It tasted of bad taste
and rotten cotton
and ancient hopes.
The mattress was too much for me
I couldn't finish.
Like many things
it was too soft
and full of hidden metal.
I lost an eye to jumping springs
and washed my hands of it forever.



11 O'clock on Thursday
by Alfred P. McMatoat

What light from yonder window breaks?
The glow of ten thousand glowing screens
of course.
What other light could make the world
so frightening and grotesque?
Blue glow is a haunting shade.
It never goes out.

Paint Your Body Red and Brown

So, the other day I was just sitting around watching one of the strangest, best, and most non-sequiturishly-titled movies of all time. Okay, no. I wasn't just sitting around watching one of the strangest, best and most non-sequiturishly-titled movies of all time, I was also reading the news on the internet. All of a sudden, out of the blue, out of left field comes this article about a national security higher-up guy talking about how we need to redefine privacy. It should no longer mean [REDACTED]. Instead it should mean that the government will keep your information private from other organizations. Those [REDACTED], crazy [REDACTED] think that we don't [REDACTED]. [REDACTED] them!

If they successfully change the societal meaning of privacy my family and I are [REDACTED].

Seriously.

List Tuesday: I'd Sing You a Song But They Blew it Away

Songs That May or May Not Be Performed by The Growlers On Their 2007 World Tour

1. American Pie


2. Down On The Corner


3. Mary Jane’s Last Dance


4. Blister in the Sun


5. A Way Back Into Love


6. Dust in the Wind


7. Mr. Jones


8. I’m Gonna Be (1000 Miles)


9. We’re Not Gonna Take It


10. Last Kiss


11. Cinnamon


12. Where Did You Sleep Last Night


13. Pennyroyal Tea


14. Monster Mash


15. Have You Ever Seen The Rain


16. Horse With No Name


17. Jesus Don’t Want Me For A Sunbeam


18. Hard Day’s Night


19. What I got


20. Cotton Fields


21. The Scientist


22. Signs


23. Back In Black


24. You Shook Me All Night Long

Please feel free to suggest more songs for the setlist provided that the following conditions are met:

1. Key of Gmajor


2. No more than one or two Em thrown in

He's Spitting Out His Teeth

Here's my weekend in three nutshells.

Friday: Spent the evening and well into the morning playing poker and cribbage for money in smoke-filled rooms full of progressively more drunken gamblers.

Saturday: Spent the evening grinding, mashing, and squeezing organic, hand-picked apples to make some home-brewed apple wine in a bucket.

Sunday: Spent the evening watching nearly three hours of the 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice.

I'm not sure, but I think I might have some kind of identity issue or something.

Or maybe I'm just post-f'n-modern.

Suck on that.

Lies All Mixed Up With Omissions

So it's not Tuesday. Sue me already.

Things People Searched For That Lead Them Here (Well, Not Here Exactly, But Rather to Somewhere in The atonofbricks.blogspot.com File Library) And The Exact Page to Which The Search Results Directed The Intrepid Searchers

1. PEOPLE KILLED IN A BIG HOUSE NOW IS HAUNTED MEXICO MONCLOVA


2. Zach 3years Genius


3. Manthong Photos


4. Mama Cass died of Ham Sandwich


5. Trombone Hemorrhoid


6. What stores carry honey i shrunk the kids on dvd


7. "Historical Global Temperatures"


8. Jiffy Pop popcorn Meijers


9. Peter Bulanow Budweiser


10. Short reviews of diary by chuck palahniuk


11. zipconnect itower

Makes No Difference if You're Right or Wrong

In which I present to you approximately 14th hand a video that will make you lose a good chunk, or perhaps all of your faith in legislation. However, if you, like me, had absolutely no faith in legislation to begin with, you won't lose any faith. It is metaphysically impossible to have negative faith in something.

I think.



My only comment is, who knew running the government was so much like playing a game of Hungry, Hungry Hippos????