Depeche Mellencamp

Here's one dedicated to my internet crush Bronwen, who's probably too weird even for me.

This would never impress her.

John (Cougar) Mellencamp meets Depeche Mode:

Jack Strange & Diane Love

Wind & Water

What a beautiful day!

I can't wait to go running later, but while I'm stuck indoors finishing work, I wanted to try capturing the moment.

A haiku seemed the right approach.

sun melting in snow
fresh rush of wind and water
light sways the branches

Hope you're having a lovely Sunday!

Willonce

A Saturday afternoon, a couple beers, a little mixin'.

Will Smith meets Beyoncé.

This one's for Kerrie, Tanya, Max and Robs.

Thanks to Dave Schroeder for inspiration.

Wish I could go dancing tonight.

Switch Me Bodied

iTarot

I haven't tried this yet, but I intend to soon:

iPod Tarot Deck

In the meantime, why don't you?

Hands Like

Happy Valentine's, y'all.

For lack of anything current to say on the topics of love and romance, here's an old poem I wrote for a gal who dumped me a decade ago, but was just here a few days past - for a short but enjoyable visit in very snowy, very cold Cowtown:

she has hands like spiders
only not so fast and nasty
instead they move like water ebbs
connecting dots on me

she has hands oh spindly thin
long fingernails sometimes
double-joint piano hands
poised over keys of me

her hands sheathed in sweat back then
first holding mine so anxious
but now quite dry and jaded still
with no warmth left for me

these hands are mine own alone
raw cracked and brittle skin
clutch at spider thin piano hands
a fading memory

P.S. The four examples of chip music in the sidebar under Songs, I wrote for her as well - some 14 years back from now:

Plunge
Upended
Kerslamm!
Plunge (Extended Mix)

I'm It

Tagged by Absent Canadian with the following:

Five Things You May Not Know About Me

1. I was the last boy in my school to learn how to ride a bike.

2. I was strangled twice, once by a family member.

3. In my Citizen Kane paper during film school, I repeatedly, mistakenly referred to Orson Welles as "Orwell". My teaching assistant found it "very clever".

4. Rightly, a woman I love slapped my face in public.

5. I'm training for a half-marathon.

Now, you're it.

And by you, I mean anyone reading this who blogs, and especially these usual suspects: Edie, Sunny, Teresa, Pucca, Clem, and Art.

We Are The Web

Laugh if you like. This almost made me cry.

Reset

Well.

January's a tough time of year, no doubt, but this year's installment really took the cake. Battling midwinter blues, seasonal affective disorder, and post-holiday guilt is one thing.

Fighting for control of your own blog is quite another.

I'd like to thank regular readers for sticking by me through this difficult episode, newbies for their faith (if they came back after a first, befuddled visit), and everyone for their patience and support. Special props go out to Dave Roberts, Drew Thompson, Malaprop Budsen, Big Nose Barney (+ horse), Trap-Jaw, Swamp Thing, Blorthos Malamakk and cousin Farblachht Molostros - without whom there'd still be a filthy tube blocking the puzzle pedestal here in the Sandbowl interior.

For those of you who missed the action in real-time: Lord Blooddyke and his minions Vampyric Horse, the Mega-Nega, and the Night Monkey took over Mini Nerd on New Year's Eve 2006 while I was out getting blasted. They held court for most of January 2007. I recruited a crack team of fictional and real-world characters to take them down.

Our attack was threefold, spearheaded by a covert defection from the inside ranks by Dave Roberts (the Tube was sure he'd turned Dave to his side and assigned him the role of Code Baron in the Sandbowl, where this blog is broadcast from). But Lord Blooddyke was fooled. In a public (but secretly coded) message, Dave discreetly gave us the go-ahead to mount our insurrection, and we entered the desert in waves.

Swamp Thing traveled the subterranean highways beneath the hot sands to infiltrate the Sandbowl from the inside, taking out Night Monkey. Trap-Jaw assembled a horde of savage barbarians and stormed the Sandbowl east entrance using a time-honored rolling technique introduced in the 1987 Commodore 64 game Barbarian. Dave opened the east access hatch for Trap-Jaw, and our molded plastic hero tossed the Mega-Nega to his raging army for a prompt evisceration. Itinerant bard Pugvold Visigoth (who'd signed up to sing songs for Lord Blooddyke) chronicled this butchery for the ages in verse. We set him free afterward, to carry news of our victory throughout the land.

Myself and Drew Thompson entered the Sandbowl from the north tunnel, opened for us by Dave. Together, the three of us faced off against Lord Blooddyke himself, but our combined mini-might wasn't the equal of the Tube's ribbed defenses. Thankfully, Dave had a final gambit up his sleeve. Not only did he reprogram the roaming Vampyric Horse to accept Big Nose Barney as its rider (allowing our cowboy to post images of the advance as it occurred), but he also coded his favorite cat Shillelagh to giant-size. She padded in at the penultimate moment and did away with the Filth Tube, utilizing a well-timed scent-distribution nuzzle.

Lord Blooddyke was finished.

Just in time, Big Nose Barney rode Vampyric Horse down the north Sandbowl tunnel to capture the iconic image of the Tube felled by Shillelagh. On his heels came his real horse, and a second rider: Malaprop Budsen, an adventurer familiar with the Blood Caverns of Orthos from whence Lord Blooddyke and his brood were birthed.

And what of Blorthos Malamakk and Farblachht Molostros?

Well, Farblachht's staged appearance at Lord Blooddyke's Symposium of Slaughter allowed us the diversion we needed to muster our forces and begin the trek across the desert to the Sandbowl. Blorthos's political statement of not appearing for the closing keynote speech of that same Symposium was the first sign that things were not going the way Lord Blooddyke had hoped they would. By that time, we were well on our way and Blorthos had regrouped with his cousin to bring up the rear of our initiative. The two of them are stationed outside the Sandbowl now, along with several hundred rolling barbarians, to serve as protection for our homebase in the days to come.

Trap-Jaw, Swamp Thing, and lead barbarian Gorth also elected to stick around for added security. You can find them in the Mini Nerd sidebar, positioned at strategic intervals to safeguard our menus and content from future Tube infection.

Drew's headed back to real-world duties; Dave and I just finished cleaning up the Sandbowl and redesigning the blog infrastructure for increased safety. We sign off today with a fresh view on our homebase here (though I'm thinking I'd like to change the webcam angle; memories of the Tube linger from this vantage point).

As for Lord Blooddyke, he's been...disposed of.

We hope to never see him again.

If you'd like to review the whole sordid story, click January 2007 under the Logged menu in the sidebar; see also the first 15 posts of February. And to experience this kind of thing on a regular basis, with characters you'd probably better recognize, I invite you to check out Paul Sessions' Fantasy Battles website.

Onward into 2007, folks. Mini Nerd is saved.

P.S. This is Post #100. Woo-hoo!

<==testing==>

00:11:23:01 coll. inc.
00:11:23:02 entry inc.
00:11:23:03 entry seq.
00:11:23:04 rnd. seq.
00:11:23:05 core map
00:11:23:06 rnd. seq.
00:11:23:07 incident
00:11:23:08 incident
00:11:23:09 incident
00:11:23:10 incident
00:11:23:11 incident

-processing...

In. Time.

[chicka-bzz] Tumblin' tumbleweeds!!! [chikkity]

[ker-chunk] I'ma here! [kzzzt]

The. Shillelagh.

Secret. Weapon.

Blood. Brawl.

Mini. Nerds.

Your. Rulers.

Tube. Time.

AWWWW. YEAHHH.

Cleanin'. House.

Full. Intrusion.

Let's. Roll.

[chicka-bzz] This the rumble ye're talkin' 'bout? [thunk-thunk]

[kzt] Yeeeeehaaaaaaa!!! [a-chicka]

::loyalty test::

DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE
DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE
DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE
DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE
DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE
DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE
DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE
DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE
DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE
DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE

:infiltrate_--_

__incident_

_interrupt__