Point Zero, Zero

On Writing

2008-01-04T18:10:00.000-05:00

A guy like me, who's been in college for almost four years and has another year coming up, tends to start thinking about his career.

Yeah, understatement, right? So as I was reading my latest novel which I'm probably doomed not to finish (this seems to be problem lately; currently it's Peter Straub's Ghost Story which I got on a whim at a thrift store), I considered the career of a writer.

That's a lie. I actually started considering it like four or five months ago, after finishing the seventh Harry Potter book. So after that I continued down a path in some lovely, dark, deep woods which terminated with me changing my major to English. I began brainstorming about what I could do with that major. Most of my (English Major) friends are either going to Grad School or teaching. Well, I'm not doing teaching licensure, so that rules that out. And I've got to be super-serious to do English Grad School, which...well, yeah. They tell me that English Majors are actually a whole lot more versatile than all that, which I hope is true. So what about writing?

One of my favorite things to do when I'm reading stories by my favorite authors is to read their introductions. More times than not, there is some little morsel of information about how their creative process works and how their ideas get out of their heads. Not "how they get their ideas," that's a silly question asked by silly people. One of the most common things I've noticed about these writers is they pretty much consistently write something every day.

W-wait. Every day? It should be clear to whoever is reading this that according to the length of time between this post and the previous one that I certainly don't write every day. Unless you consider typing up Instant Messages as a form of writing. You don't? Well neither do I.

This is a similar conundrum that came over me during the years I was a Graphic Design Major. Most of the artists and designers I read about had a near-constant stream of creativity flowing from them. Graphically creative things came out of me, but only about twice a month, and usually because Ms. Schoen didn't accept late work. That's a bit less grave than it sounds. Anyone who knows me would probably agree that I'm a creative-minded individual, but I'm not very prolific when it comes to finished works.

So what's the point of this entry? Well, I don't want my blogspot to turn into some kind of a hub for griping and uncertainties. I guess then it would be a Glob, or even worse, an Un-Glob. Probably the next entry will contain funny pictures and witticisms. I suppose I just needed to publicly vent a little on the Nature of Creativity and its Relationship with Luke Jones. I'm sort of in a well of confusion, since my ideal career is one where my creativity and desire to learn is fulfilled, but most of the times careers like that (a novelist, for example) require a lot of personal drive and self-selling, things which frankly I just don't really have. I'd rather go eat tacos with Alex, play Metroid or look up trivial information on obscure 1980s toylines. And I refuse to feel an iota of guilt over that.

I look at my dad and he went to school at Web, a place where people learn architecture and nothing else. Despite my family's inability to make up their minds on a place to live, he's always had the same career, has loved it, and has gotten enough sustenance from it to allow us to live very comfortably my entire life. Now that's something I would like.

I just hope I can find it with five years of college and an English Major under my belt.

So if you'll excuse me, I have a Wii Classic Controller and 2000 Wii points which need to be opened and used.

Dragoncon 2007 OR How Important a Balloon Becomes When One Has Been Standing In Line All Day

2007-09-03T23:26:00.000-04:00

2007 has truly been the Year of Conventions for Luke Jones. I'm no stranger to these unusual groupings of weird people from all over, but I have never been to so many of them in one year. Not only that, but each convention I've attended this year has increased exponentially each time. Botcon, for example, usually gathers a few thousand unwashed Transformers fanatics. My second 'con this year, Otakon, saw around 20,000 insufferable Japanophiles pass through its doors.

This third one, Dragoncon, sauteed Otakon with a light Botcon sauce and served them to me on a Star Trek Collector's Plate. I had no idea it was the largest and most massive nerd convention in the world before I was actually there. It apparently even beats out the immortal Comic-Con by sheer numbers. And it doesn't make any limits as to what kind of social outcast can attend; this convention saw everyone from ren-fair types to trekkies to stormtroopers (see picture) to goths, all the way to LARPers and--yes--Furries.

The 'con, which takes place in Atlanta every year, spreads over four days of dorky madness, and, like a zombie holocaust, has infected its way across three gigantic hotels. I heard a bewildered attendee mention the attendance being in the 60,000 area. I might mention that at least a third of these attendees were in costume.

And what costumes! I saw everything from Slave Leia to Fox McCloud to the Wicked Witch of the West (the pictures of which I will be posting on Facebook). We missed the Stormtrooper/Slave Leia parade, and Robert and I drooled over joining the "501st Legion," a group of Star Wars fans who make movie-quality Stormtrooper costumes and appear at charities and nerd conventions. The cost of making a costume was too exorbitant for our current statuses, however.

But before we got to enjoy all of the wonders of Dragoncon, we had to undergo one of the foremost nerd convention traditions: waiting on line. My friend Tyler's dad, who was graciously allowing us to stay at his house (since Tyler lives in Atlanta) decided not to purchase advance tickets, and didn't quite realize the scope of the event. Thus, we began our long wait.

The amazingly long line had two thrilling segments, one which snaked around the building (during which Robert, Tyler, and I explored the no-badge-required areas of the hotels), and a second which filled up a large room inside the Hyatt (seen above). This was the most mind-numbingly long line I have ever waited on. During the wait, an intelligent individual inflated a balloon and sent it flying over the crowd. The resulting obsession over keeping the balloon in the air truly revealed the insanity of people who have done nothing but stand for hours. A second balloon soon revealed itself, a smaller red one. This balloon didn't last very long, and upon its destruction, the crowd's boos and hisses were heard throughout the building, and the perpetrator of the balloon-popping was raised up on a steel crucifix, amidst the exultation of the children. A raven from hades was sent to gouge out his eyes. I'll let you decide how much of that previous segment was true.

In the center of the room, visible to those who had made it over halfway through the line, was a large flat-screen television, playing various home-movie segments and pseudo-commercial bumpers which would have made Adult Swim proud. Nearby were two long tables, alternately littered with discarded soft drink bottles and sign-up forms, upon the reverse sides of which were scrawled the miserable woes of the masses. I took one, hastily wrote "WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN," which I considered to be a worthy comic book reference, and moved on.

Most of my experience at the convention involved trying to find the most absurd or well-made costumes, and trying not to look at the 45-year-old women in fishnets. The rest was exploring the two floors of dealer rooms, and attempting to convince Brent Spiner that I wasn't a jerk.

Oddly enough, though Dragoncon is larger than Comic-Con, the celebrity roster wasn't too impressive. Most of them were stars of various sci-fi shows and movies, including Star Trek (Brent Spiner, Jonathan Frakes); Star Wars (Ray Park; David Prowse; Peter Mayhew; that one guy who got force choked in the first movie); Farscape (most of the cast); Battlestar Galactica, Beast Master, etc. Three actors from the Harry Potter movies were present, namely the gentlemen who play the Weasley twins, and the young man who plays Neville, sporting a frightening 5-o-clock shadow.

I came back from this convention with three Godzilla poster reproductions, a camera full of pictures, and a significant boost in self-esteem. I will definitely go again.

Obituary for the World's Only Reliable Newspaper

2007-08-15T12:56:00.000-04:00

Ever since I was but a wee lad, I've always been fascinated by the completely absurd headlines screaming at me under the name "WEEKLY WORLD NEWS." Whether they claim that the president is actually an alien in league with bigfoot or are reporting on the latest exploits of a certain vampire lad, I never got tired of what sort of insane stories the WWN were perpetrating as truth.

That's why when, as I was reading The Onion (ironically enough), I was faintly horrified to discover that, as of August 3, 2007, the WWN would cease publication. I did some quick searching to verify that this was true, discovered that it was, and sat back to drink this in. I recall scanning the magazines in a supermarket one day, wearily reading the headlines about this or that celebrity enduring rehab or having babies, and then my eyes fell on the headline "GIANT BATS ATTACK AIRPLANE." It was strangely refreshing, knowing that at least one tabloid doesn't take itself so seriously.

I also appreciated the irony of their slogan, "The World's Only Reliable Newspaper." It rings somewhat true, considering that one can always rely on WWN's stories to be ludicrous. They will never let you down. And come on, who can argue that heavy-handed political cartoons or reports on the latest mistakes our government is making are more awesome than "Man stabs himself to death with toothbrush." No one, that's who.

WWN has drawn my eyes ever since I was tiny, and I seem to remember that it wasn't the only tabloid reporting on how Bill Gates was hiding the loch ness monster. I wasn't so surprised, then, when I read on WWN's wikipedia article that one large corporation bought most of the tabloids in publication, and promptly changed them all to celebrity-reporting rags.

Sigh.

I'm really gonna miss that stupid paper.

WEEKLY WORLD NEWS, 1979-2007

The Consequences of Owning a Cell Phone

2007-08-14T01:01:00.000-04:00

So just past midnight tonight I heard my relatively new cell phone ring from the other room. I ran in to pick it up, wondering who would be calling at that hour, and the ID read "private."

I don't know anyone named private, so of course I was highly curious as to who was calling. Maybe it was a secret society calling to initiate me. Maybe it was the president. Maybe it was a zombie president, calling from beyond the grave! So I picked up the phone. Here's how the conversation went:

Me: Hello?
Them: Heyyy
Me: H-hello.
Them: Heyyyyy
Me: Who is this?
Them: This is !
Me: Who again?
Them: Reggie !
Me: I...don't know anyone named Reggie.
Them: Oh. So are you some kind of crazy drug-dealing f***er?
Me: Yeah...something like that.
Them: Wow. Yeah. Are you really?
Me: Not really, no. But you never know, right? I could be anyone.
Them: Right. Okay, bye, you crazy dumb cracker.
Me: Righto!
*hangup*

There you have it. Midnight call from drunken weirdos? I'm thinking very yes. So next time I get a phone call from Private...I will definitely take it. And I will be ready. And knowing...is half the battle. The other half is pretending to be a Harvard Lockjaw at a wine party.

At World's Edge

2007-08-05T20:33:00.001-04:00

I spent the previous week on my first family vacation since we went to Quebec in the summer of two-thousand and three. This time we were too cool to pick just one place to vacation, so we visited not one but three popular tourist locations. They were

A. Colonial Williamsburg

B. Busch Gardens

C. Virginia Beach

Now you have to decide which of them I'm going to write about. Finished? Okay, the correct answer is "none," because I'm not writing, I'm typing. You might even say I'm blogging, but I'm not sure if I like that made-up verb. Anyway I'm going to type/blog (blype? tyog? is every typer a blogger? is every blogger a typer? come on, your ACT grade depends on this) about number C, the Beach of Virginia, ostensibly the longest pleasure beach in the known universe.

Virginia Beach is massive, full of half-clad people with an affinity for UV rays, and guarded by a colossal statue of Neptune. Except for the latter, that's generally what you'd expect from a beach, right? Yesss. Anyway I'm not going to talk more about the beach because we did exactly what everyone does at the beach: swim not more than 50 meters from the shore and get mad sunburns. I assume that's what everyone with my complexion does, anyhow.

Instead I'm going to talk about one of those things that no beach in the USA is complete without: the Beach Souvenir Shop. If one removed all of the dollar stores and gas station gift shelves from the earth, these would be the tackiest places on the planet. I have compiled a list in my head, soon to be in your head, of the things (besides standard beach equipment) that beach souvenir shops must have in order to qualify:

1. Several shelves of cheap, ceramic sculptures of dolphins; mermaids; pirates; or any combination of the above three

2. White t-shirts displaying, in various degrees of discreteness, any of the following subjects: location of the beach one is staying at; displays of one's ability to woo and take advantage of the opposite sex; aptitude to become intoxicated; aptitude to woo and take advantage of the opposite sex while intoxicated; one's identity as a pirate; one's disregard for anything another human being may have to say; misogyny; misandry; misanthropy.

3. Novelty beach towels of varying sizes containing any of the following: dragons; the sun; sharks; dolphins; jolly rogers; females of the centerfold variety; large felines.

4. Large amounts of pirate-related paraphernalia.

5. Shot glasses. Possibly displaying any of the subjects listed under "T-shirts."

6. Various articles of clothing displaying brands of alcoholic beverages.

The above are required to created the barest of minimums for a beach souvenir shop. A couple of other things really add to the tack, however:

-Dead sea creatures, whole or in part, in displayable modes IE a shark in a jar or a head of a small alligator.

-Free hermit crabs! Of course they are only free with the purchase of a tank, shell, food...

-Alcoholic beverages.

I spent more time in beach souvenir shops than I ever have at VA beach, mostly because I was looking for a really sweet novelty beach towel to take home with me. Like, something with ninjas or dinosaurs or a dancing skeleton or maybe a castle. Of course, none of these subjects were represented in anything I could find and I eventually gave up. Instead I decided I would buy a hermit crab and smuggle it into my dorm come the school season. I haven't actually gotten one yet, but the time is coming...

It's Voldemort or me this time

2007-07-26T18:34:00.000-04:00

I must disclaim that in this entry, much like the F-1 Races, there will be spoilers. This is your final warning...

S
P
O
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R
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Got it? All right. This is gonna be lengthy. I feel both Rowling and Potter deserve it.

So, as you have already gathered, I am now joining the millions and millions of bloggers accross the internets in posting about one of my generations' most notable pop culture events: the release and reading of the Seventh Harry Potter book. I have, like many of my friends, been reading the Harry Potter series since it came out. I read the first two when I was in Junior High, after my mother ordered them from some book club. I thought they were pretty fantastic, but I don't think I really, really fell in love with them until the fifth volume. I am not entirely certain what it was about that particular one, but by that point, I felt as if the events in Harry, Ron, and Hermione's lives were happening to real friends of mine. I suffered and rejoiced as they did.

Somehow despite all of that I didn't read the sixth book until a half-year after it was released. When I finally did get around to it, after re-reading the fourth and fifth installments, the book left an indelible mark on my psyche as no work of fiction ever had. Maybe because the troubles in the books worked as a proper escape to the difficult relationship problems I was going through at the time, and perhaps because Harry's love interest in the book struck me in a way I'd never felt (it's true; a fictional character had stolen my heart, something which perhaps only Pippi Longstocking can also lay claim).

As things happen, my constant thoughts about what might happen to Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny dwindled, but the undying psychological mark carved by Half-Blood Prince remained, and I had not forgotten it by the time Deathly Hallows was finally released over a year after I had finished the previous book. A few days before the release I re-read Half-Blood Prince, and even knowing what was coming in the narrative didn't stop it from being every bit as intense at the first time (my faulty memory helped with that as well).

I picked up my pre-ordered copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows one day after the release. I was immediately both impressed and apprehensive at the simple note on the inside of the dust jacket, in place of a lengthy description: "We now present the seventh and final installment in the epic tale of Harry Potter." I opened the book to discover two lengthy quotations prefacing the story, both of them relating to death. I knew that book seven would be a serious, and perhaps deadly, narrative from what J.K. Rowling had already said about it. She had even stated that, initially, writing the book felt like "a bereavement." I was prepared for the worst.

Indeed, the book has the highest death count of any of the series by far, many of them important and beloved characters. In the first couple days of reading the book, I was almost frightened to return to it, scared of what things Harry might lose when I turned a page. Sometimes the feeling in my stomach was akin to the tingling before a job interview, or while mustering up the courage to ask someone out (fortunately I know about this).

If I were an easy crier, I would definitely have shed tears at numerous points in the book. I did feel that lurching and wonderful joyous tear-welling at least once, as the heroes began to retake their school and certain characters who in lesser narratives would be relegated to comedy relief positions proved themselves to be something more (Neville Longbottom, specifically).

I was not surprised that Harry Potter was to "die." The ominous feeling about the book was too much to expect any less, although I was not sure whether to expect him to die with finality, or to die temporarily as he did in the book. The connections between this part of the book and certain Biblical narratives are too obvious to overlook, but more on that later. I had half expected Ron or Hermoine to meet a horrible fate, or even Ginny, but I was overjoyed that this didn't happen. It's a testament to the strength of Rowling's characters that I felt for each and every one of them who died, even the minor figures.

All of this emotional strength has caused me to wonder what it is about Rowling's writing that makes it so endearing to me, and to the millions of others that caused Deathly Hallows to break sales records so easily. I am still not sure, but my attention wasn't lost on an article I read connecting Rowling's narratives to Biblical narratives. It implied that we, as humans, are drawn to things which show us our supernatural destiny and how we must achieve it. Rowling has announced her Christianity, although whether she intended certain elements in Harry Potter to be Biblical allegory, we may never know. Certainly Harry's death, descension, resurrection, and subsequent obliteration of a most high evil can quickly be seen as a similarity to Jesus's experiences on Earth. Deathly Hallows is also the only Harry Potter book to contain direct quotations from the Bible, although they are not labeled as such.

As far as Christians being opposed to the story and themes contained in Harry Potter, I can't imagine there being a more misappropriated concern. If they think we have anything to be afraid of from Harry Potter, perhaps they should reexamine the fiction of the infallible CS Lewis. He certainly wasn't afraid to write about magic. In any case, I have to quote here a resonating section from the article I read earlier today: "Rowling is a satirist of the first rank, I think, and she isn't pulling any punches in the books in her critique of government, the courts, the media, institutional schooling, organized sports, everything oddly enough except religion."

I am sad to see the Harry Potter series end, but I can't deny that it left in a proper fashion. I think Rowling's decision to end the series with finality was a wise one. That way Potter wouldn't end up in a position like Sherlock Holmes, dead at the hands of a villain and an author who was tired of forever writing his stories. Deathly Hallows wrapped everything up in a fashion which I found suitable and fitting for the tired hero. Our beloved characters, nineteen years later, married as we had hoped they would be, and with no more brooding evil hovering over their heads. At the moment I feel strangely detached from Harry Potter, where previously I felt like he and his friends were almost a part of me. Perhaps because I know, finally, that they are safe and will live, that part of me can, at length, relax.

It's strange to say these things about a group of humans who have never existed, but I only express what I feel.

I'm not sure how long my feelings of infatuation and identification with the world of Harry Potter will remain with me, until something else overtakes them (I am, after all, a human being subject to the ebb and flow of emotions), but I know for sure that I will always remember the indelible mark that Rowling has left not only on me, but on the culture of nations accross the globe.

Luke VS Otakon

2007-07-24T19:17:00.000-04:00

I confess. I'm not planning on following up my previous entry. Maybe I'll put some gratuitous pictures of the Giant Tree at the end of this entry. Or maybe I won't! Who knows! Not even The Shadow knows!

That's not the point of this entry, though. Even though I'm now devoid of a suitable camera, and have been for some time, I feel it is my duty to report on my recent adventures to the city of Baltimore, Maryland--for that mecca of anime nerds, the largest Japanophile convention on this side of the planet: Otakon.

Over the past year or so I've become a heavily jaded fan of anime and Japanese-related things. I've seen and heard of too many people become obsessed to a fault over the superiority of Japanese multimedia over our own, and after spending a good month and a half in that very country, I've had a lot of second and third thoughts. In short, I've turned my back on anime and manga at large. That's not to say I dislike it, merely that I'm many times more wary of it. I still consider the top animators from Japan to be some of the best ever, but I've seen too much other beautiful animation from other countries besides Japan to put as much faith in it as I once did.

Shows with giant robots still turn me on, though.

In any case, my brother decided not to do 1812 Reenactments with my dad this past weekend, for various reasons, and since Otakon happened to be on that same weekend, he figured that was a suitable substition. I agreed to drive him (Baltimore is a mere 45 miles from here), and off we went on Saturday.

Otakon was a Friday-Saturday-Sunday event, but we only went for one day. Now, as everyone knows, I've been to Transformers conventions. I've been to the largest one each year, save one, since 2000. That convention usually gathers 4-5000, a respectable number.

This one, however, was an entirely different ballpark. Otakon, as a quick search on Wikipedia tells me, has been running since 1994, which makes it one year older than Botcon, the Transformers convention. Evidently anime fans have enjoyed a much larger and much more exponential increase in fandom since 1994, since the brochure for this year's meeting informed me that they expected a whopping 22,000 attendees. That's larger than the town I go to school in!

Another thing a person may not realize about anime conventions is the tradition of "cosplay," which, if you don't feel like reading wikipedia, is another word for "dressing up in ridiculously complex costumes in order to represent your favorite anime/videogame character." This is extremely common at anime conventions, and since Otakon is the largest, it was even moreso. At a guess, I would expect a full one-third of the attendees to have been in costume.

Most costumes were from anime of some sort (there was an abundance of Naruto-related costumery), but nobody thought the lesser of folk dressed as video game characters, or even completely unrelated costumes. I saw at least two Enterprise officers, as well as some Twi'Leks engaged in a lightsaber duel. If you know what a Twi'Lek is, you gain +10 nerd points. I also found that for every common anime costume, there are two versions: the regular version, and the morbidly obese version. This is true for both male and female costumes.

Also notable about anime conventions is the non-gender-specificity. While Botcon is by no means an all-male convention, the females are definitely few and far between. Otakon, and I imagine anime cons in general, are far more gender-neutral. There were far more (attractive) females than any Botcon I've ever attended. I must note, as well, that at anime conventions, cross-dressing is not only acceptable, it seems to be encouraged.

In fact, a female dressed as Link, the Hero of Hyrule, was responsible for one of the more breathtaking parts of the convention. But more on that later.

After registering, and walking around in awe of the insanely detailed costumes parading by, and spending a little money in the (enormous) dealer's room, I decided to take a break. While leafing through the convention brochure in a nearby Starbucks, I encountered a blurb about an attraction named "Geppi's Entertainment Museum." I recognized the building as being very close to the center, and made it my next destination.

The Museum was located on the upper floor of an old Train Station, sharing the rest of the space with a Sports Legends-themed museum. Geppi's museum, to my utter delight, was a small space dedicated to the history of Pop Culture in America. I've long desired to see a museum devoted entirely to Pop Culture, and was previously unaware that such a thing existed. In short it was beyond my wildest expectations. There was one entire room displaying comics from the 30s and 40s to the present (a small wonder, considering the museum is owned and was created by the owner of Diamond Comic Distributors), as well as another area displaying only Star Wars collectibles and nothing else. Basically it was the greatest thing ever.

I spent an hour and half ogling original Walt Kelley prints, and had a chat with one of the museum workers about the place and about Otakon. She told me Otakon had risen in popularity dramatically in the past few years, and as a result the quality of the costumes had suffered. Regardless, she told me, I should go back for the event called the "Masquerade," in which members of the convention present short skits, and afterward the best costumes of the weekend are paraded out. Basically it was a nerd talent show.

I did return in time to wait on a titanic line bordering the entire building, which fortunately moved quickly as soon as the doors opened. My brother joined me momentarily. The theater where the Masquerade took place was immense, clearly intended to provide for large concerts or maybe an awesome laser-light show. The people onstage were barely visible from our vantage point, but thankfully there were two titanic screens which provided decent viewing of the skits.

There were around 40 skits in all, ranging from the embarrassingly bad (a lone nerd playing out shaky renditions of Zelda tunes on an ocarina, joined by an awkward friend who, we are told, forgot his instrument) to the completely contrived (the entire "Charlie the Unicorn" sequence reenacted by Kingdom Hearts characters); to the freakin' amazing (more on that in just a sec). The parading of costumes, afterward, was also quite satisfying.

Now, since I don't have any pretty pictures to show you, I decided I'd do something a bit different. Fortunately for me, some kind souls illegally recorded some skits during the masquerade, and uploaded them onto our favorite YouTube! That's right, free videos! And I found footage of some of my favorite skits, as well...

Firstly, we have a bunch of unusally acrobatic nerds dressed as Street Fighter characters jumping and vaulting around and performing various video-game inspired moves, all to music. Their choreography is actually pretty great, and their kicks and leaps are very accurate to the impossible gravity-defying special moves they are trying to imitate.

That was pretty cool, but this next one is the one I will remember for the rest of my nerd days. This little girl, dressed as Link, mentioned earlier, flounced out onto the stage, tossed aside her shield, and drew from her scabbard not the Blade of Evil's Bane, but a shiny gold flute. She raised it to her lips and proceeded to play what I can only describe as the most intense arrangement of Zelda melody that I have ever heard, to the delight and astonishment of the audience. It really must be seen and heard to believe, and fortunately this is possible via YouTube. You may have to raise your volume, as this video is particularly low.

She received a couple Judge's awards, but nothing else--I don't know why, as most of the other skits were pretty tame in comparison to this.

The rest of Otakon was mostly spent walking around and staring at the awesome costumes, but I have one more thing for you before signing off:

SPECIAL BONUS!! Footage of Nerd Rave! You must watch this until at least the 1:20 mark so you can see the person dressed as a Wii Controller. Dancing.

Thought I do not, perhaps, share the fandom's enthusiasm for the media, I thoroughly enjoyed myself at Otakon, and will, perhaps, attend again.

Houston Adventures Part I: Surrealists and Bookstores

2007-03-18T02:19:00.000-04:00

Fact: Things other than the beach can be fun and interesting during Spring Break!

This past Thursday and Friday were spent adventuring in various parts of Texas. There are plenty of pictures and stuff for each day, so I'm splitting them into two. The first takes place entirely in Houston!

Our original plan for Spring Break was to camp around in Texas, exploring ghost towns (which do, apparently, exist) and fighting rattlesnakes and whatnot. You know, Texas-type things. We couldn't find anyone else to join us on this excursion, however, so I just decided to come to Houston, to my friend Robert's house (the man with the ghost town idea) and spend the week there. We couldn't just sit around all week (especially because Robert's siblings drive both of us crazier than we already are), so we put on our thinking caps and did some day tripping.

The first trip can be credited to a book my mother got me for Christmas: 1000 Places to See Before you Die. I checked for Houston, and the only thing listed was something named "The Menil Collection." I looked it up, and it turns out it's an obscure art gallery in the middle of Houston containing a number of important works from the 20th century. Off we went!

The first thing readers should know about Houston is its resemblence to Hogwarts (as Robert constantly notes). By that I mean that roads never seem to lead to the same place twice. Take a look at that picture, and you may see what I mean--notice especially the toppled "No Sidewalk" signage.

After a wrong exit and a breezy drive through some decidedly unsavory neighborhoods, we managed to find the Menil Collection, a stark white building tucked in a wooded subdivision off the St. Thomas University campus. Facing it was a compact park with several of those modern art sculptures that nobody understands. The building itself is also a representative of the school of modern art, with a minimalist exterior, harsh 90 degree angles, and some weird sail-looking things. Pictures:

The first three are of one of the sculptures in the park, and the final two are of the gallery. No pictures were allowed in the gallery itself, and I was a nice little boy so I didn't take any. Inside we were treated to a banquet of 20th century paintings, including things by such artists as Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, < href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Mondrian">Piet Mondrian, Jasper Johns, Mark Rothko (ugh), and Robert Rauschenberg among others. More exciting than the modernist gallery was a substantial serving of some 20th century surrealism, represented by Max Ernst, Man Ray, Giorgio de Chirico, and Rene Magritte (the "Pipe" on his page in Wikipedia was on display in the gallery, even though the picture seems to claim otherwise). Wikipedia's entry on the Menil Collection and even the gallery's own website promises some Salvador Dali pieces, but there were none to be found. Many of the surrealist paintings on display were breathtaking, and several I remembered from my art history book. Besides the 20th century art, the gallery boasted a little sanctuary of ancient and tribal art. As we walked out, we were satisfied in the art portion we had received that day. Also, the museum was free.

The day, however, was far from finished. Having much daylight remaining, Robert decided it was time for me to see one of his favorite places: Quarter-Priced Books. We managed to navigate the Houston road system long enough to find it, and it was indeed everything he promised. Just look at some of the pictures of this place:

Left to Right: The storefront (it was, in fact, a wonderland); A close up on one of those signs; some cook books on a table outside; inner wonderland (the poster is a list of Iraqi terrorist "most-wanted" types); "How To," A couple of red masks; boxes of paperbacks; an interesting cover; a plug for the "Wonder Wall" (more on that later); a blatant statue of what I think is Teddy Roosevelt.

On the inside the place was unlike any bookstore I've ever been into. There were statues everywhere, including that Roosevelt statue pictured above, as well as many other random things. I'm pretty sure that shop had more copies of The Thinker than I've ever seen in one place. The metal skeleton shelves were punctuated with handwritten callout cards describing the sections one was browsing (and there were numerous sections), and as they all appeared to be in the same handwriting as everything else in the store, I would wager they were all done by the same guy. The guy, who was the only employee in there, was an older man with all the appearance of a trucker or mechanic and none of the eccentric professor-osity of a bookstore owner. He wore a loose gray button-up shirt with a pack of Marlboros in the front pocket, and regarded us with sunken eyes accentuated with prominent bags underneath. His gray hair, matching his shirt, was greased back. The counter he worked behind, scattered with sundry trinkets, seemed less of a workspace and more of an extension of his very being. He, essentially, was the store. I would be very surprised if he wasn't the founder and owner.

We pored over the prodigious selection for what seemed like an hour. I marveled at the many numbers of categories, I have never seen fiction divided in so many ways before. Most interesting was the "Wonder Wall," a long section of shelf which seemed to be dedicated to only the most famous and notable of authors in their most expensive and rare volumes (although many other shelves seemed to claim similar things). I needed to buy something from that Wonderland, if only to acknowledge the old man for bringing into being such a unique experience. I ended up with an Ace Double; a pulp sci-fi deal from somewhere between 1950 and 1970 containing two stories; one on each side.

Even after all that, the day was still young, so we drove off in a random direction hoping that something interesting would find us. Fortunately, it did. Far off in the distance, I spotted this:

The Art Deco Obelisk named after one of my home states was too odd to ignore, so we drove by it--and I was floored when I saw one of those old, magnificent movie theaters hollowed out and recreated into...

A bookstore! Clearly the object of the day was to find awesome bookstores, and this one definitely qualified. The store itself was actually owned by Barnes and Nobles, so the selection was nothing I hadn't seen before, but the presentation was what made this one an A-Lister. All of the feel and mood of a movie theater was still there, only instead of food-stained stadium seating there were rows of books, and instead of a massive projector screen there was a newstand. Pictures:

Left to Right: Clever Stop Sign; "Vist Or Cafe;" The rose deco on the ceiling; what used to be the screen area is now the newstand; the greek-style paintings on the walls (huge); a view from the newstand with the balcony cafe; a neon sign advertising various things.

I didn't buy anything from this one. I did, however, give them mad props for creativity.

Before we continued with our little bookstore excursion, we stopped for a heavy lunch at Jack-In-The-Box, a staple of Texas fast food which I had never tried before. Robert, being the expert on this, advised that I order the foremost in arterial nightmares: the Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger. It was, in fact, the ultimate. I have taken for you a picture of its majesty:

The Ultimately Deadly Burger is not to be consumed without its greasy sidekick, the seasoned Curly Fries. I did not break this sacred law.

The burger itself basically held me over for the rest of the entire day (I couldn't finish my dinner of fajitas later that night, even). After sealing our circulations' fate, we moved on, stopping at one more bookstore before making the journey back. This one was a chain called "Half-Price Books," not related in any way to our friend at Quarter-Price.

Half-Off was probably the most gigantic used book store I've ever been in. Since it's a franchise, it's clean and orderly and alphebetized correctly and all that, so some of the excitement of used book hunting is taken away. Nevertheless, the selection was nothing short of astounding. The store had also expanded to include movies and music, so we spent a good amount of time browsing through various temptations. I did not indulge, however, being satisfied with my Ace Double from earlier.

We left Half-Off and began driving back. The trip back was a search for a comic store called Bedrock City, which we found eventually (and which I did not take any pictures of). It also was graced by the presence of this awesome dog in a car next to us.

Coming next time: a journey to the far lands, in search of an ancient tree and a gargantuan war machine.

PS
Look at this hilarious sign:

I Kill You in the Name of Ethics!

2007-02-28T00:56:00.000-05:00

Some questions and answers for Human Sit, only a few days late:

* Are you an iTunes user? If so, please discuss the technology system required to deliver your music!

Nope! Oh oops, that means I can't answer that question!

* Disruptive forces are forces that change the status quo - they somehow throw off the equilibrium and sink social groups, businesses, and even societies into chaos. Identify a technology, past or present, that is serving as a disruptive technology. How is it changing the status quo? How is it impacting society?

It may be unorthodox to think of this as a "technology," but the invention of welfare seems like one of the most disruptive technology in lower class Americas. Listen, America! No longer do you have to work! Now you can just not work and barely scrape by as the government hooks you up to the great gleaming IV tube of its budget! Just make sure you have lots and lots of kids, so you can fully reap the benefits! Oh snap, did we just shoot ourselves in the feet? Well, too late to pull out now! I may be a typical uninterested-in-politics-and-most-current-events type American, but I know that welfare is one big technological mistake that America could have done without.

/Tirade

I also like to think of Interstates and Motors as disruptive technology. They aren't so much disrupting society as they are disrupting our attention to the world around us. Like we all learned so poignantly in Pixar's Cars, the Interstate cuts accross the land like a knife, rather flowing with it (like route 66 did, apparently). Motors allowed for the inventions of automobiles, speed boats, jetliners...all things which have put nature behind in favor of economy. Now don't get me wrong, I drive a car and am not adverse to accumulating some frequent flier miles, but I also believe that sometimes a person needs to put roaring engines away and experience the world in the way it used to be.

We didn't conquer it, we just think we did.

* No one has answered Adam's question fitfully - not even Adam. Do technics that are designed and created for the soul intention of doing something immoral inherently immoral themselves? Does form follow function? If the function is immoral, is the form as well? Can you come up with any other or "better" examples than a radar detector?

Sure. Let's talk about Cigarettes, Cigars, Smokeless Tobacco, and other misery-causing addictive type things. Millions of years ago the surgeon general cast down the whole Tobacco industry into a well of despair and infamy. Since then no one, not even smokers, have said that smoking is a good thing. Except maybe those smokers who can afford cigars for every smoke. What purpose do tobacco products serve besides body-ruining? Supposedly, recreation. I guess there are some people who say "let's go take a recreational smoke for the sake of smoking" and aren't talking about mind-altering drugs.

But still, when the judgment day comes, God isn't going to cast the cigarettes into hell along with the sinners. I'm pretty sure the smokes will to be left behind on earth, along with the radar detectors and the Microsoft Zunes (because those are pure evil).

* Does absolute right and wrong exist? In what context? Does absolute good and bad exist? Are we morally obliged to always do what is absolutely best?

In my eyes, absolute right exists. However, no human can ever attain it in this life. Jesus was the absolute right, and that's why we need his blood (wouldn't that sound terrible if you didn't understand the context?) to save our souls. We are morally obliged to follow Jesus' example as best we can, but to think that we can ever be as Absolutely Good as He is is to go down a road which quickly leads to madness.

I'm a scientist, Betty

2007-02-07T00:11:00.000-05:00

When dealing with science, I have to train my mind to listen to what's being said, since I'm right-brained, and therefore more prone to wander off paying more attention to the shoe-color of the person accross from me rather than a formula. Even though it's difficult for me to cross the barrier into left-brained thinking, I do it occassionally, just to test the waters. I'll attempt to do it here to answer some questions about science.

Is science controllable? Should it be? If so, by whom?

As far as I've ever been able to tell, no. Even if the entire nation rose up and formed a 100% unanimous Luddite regime, someone somewhere would still advance the fields of science. We mentioned in class last time that even when America slows research on something due to moral issues, other countries less inclined to pause for morals (such as China) continue it. The thing is, however, no matter how many blind eyes we turn to the advancement of science, it still is. Even though the Catholic church really, really didn't like the idea of a heliocentric solar system, it didn't cause the sun to change its mind. Plus, I like the idea of the sciences helping mankind along on its slow, inevitable roll towards doom. You may call me fatalistic, but I find the apocalypse to be quite poetic.

Why is "Why?" such an uncomfortable question?

Because it's the eternal question! "Why" can be asked about anything, and most of the time cannot be fully answered. All of the other members of the inquisitive party (such as "how" and "where") can be answered quickly, sharply, and with a definite outcome, like a scantron. But "why" can continue to be asked, even about the question "Why." Why ask why? I suppose it's the only question we humans can claim as our own.

It used to be that being a scientist was a big deal! People respected scientists. People valued a scientist's opinion and input. There were few professions more noble than dedicating your life to the advancement of science - not even being a medical doctor was more important! Our modern perception of a scientist is a pasty colored white male with thick glasses, a pocket protector, and no social skills. No one wants their opinion, let alone respects their opinion. Even you, as a class, expressed distrust of NASA - the US's leading science machine - and doubt in the value of the science being conducted by the organization. What changed? Can you point to a specific era in time? Why do we listen more to Al Gore than we do to leading scientist in climatology, biology and environmental science?

Personally, I don't listen to Al Gore at all, especially when he's talking about the internet. As for scientists, the glorified hero scientists of the earlier age died with 80,000 people of a certain city, leaving people with a terrible question: What has science done for us? It seems to me that the Cold War further soured the public's opinion of the Hero Scientist, as he went on to develop more and bigger bombs and missiles for us to wave at Russia and other nuclear countries. Fortunately none of that ever happened. In any case, Science hasn't yet formed for us the utopia that we thought it would (see Star Trek), and as postmodernism continues to rise, the concrete answers provided by the sciences fail to be as concrete as they claim.

On a side note, who now is the heroic society champion that once was the scientist? Is it really the politician? I surely hope not.

To close, let me provide this short clip from one of my favorite movies, which also happens to give my frank opinion on scientists:

Q&A Session

2007-01-29T23:34:00.000-05:00

Okay! It's first blogging assigment time! Yes, I managed to pull myself away from the Wii long enough to do something constructive. I'm not at all sure what I'm planning to construct, however.

Some Questions and Answers:

Dr. Priest indicated that math is SALT - a Science, Art, Language and Tool. Can you give examples of each?

We did, of course, just talk about this kind of thing today. So here are some examples:

A Science: According to dictionary dot com, anything which ends in "ology" is a science, and "ology" is a general term to describe the study of something. I suppose by that logic Psychology is, in fact, a science. So let's say my example for a science is psychology, the study of human behavior.

An Art: This is the vaguest category. An art would seem to be an action, preferably a useful action, which can be honed to a sharp degree and become something even more useful. Many unassuming things have been taken by a gifted individual and transformed into an art, like what artists (in a different sense) did with film in the early photography era, or like what Lance Armstrong did with winning the Tour de France.

A Language: A language is an arbitrary system of sounds or characters used for communication between humans. Math has the distinction of being a universal language, which has transcended cultures to become understandable to all. A similar thing (perhaps more similar than we know) is the language of music, which is also, to a more ancient degree, universal.

A Tool: Another broad category. If some item is used to help a human progress in his or her life, it's probably a tool. One of the base signs of sentient life is the use of tools. Even apes use rudimentary tools to do those silly things apes do. I'll give a piece of paper and a pencil as my example of a tool. Both are used in conjunction to write our ideas, or perhaps our math problems, down in a permanent (hopefully) location so we can forget it and come back later. It's a tool to augment (or weaken?) our memory.

On to the next:

Dr. Priest indicated that he believes math to be discovered, not invented or created. What did he mean by this? Being that, as indicated in the reading, a lot of mathematics is applicable to things in the physical world, what are some conclusions that we can reach following Dr. Priest's line of thought?

I remember Dr. Priest saying "I'll give God the credit" or something to that extent in conjunction with the above statement. Obviously he believes that math, like fire, is a natural force which has always been, and it only remains for a human with brains enough to use numbers to figure it out. Of course I'm only able to add small digits together before I stop paying attention, but for those of us from more of a left-brained position, math can be quite a bit more helpful than fire.

Do we place too much value on statistics?

A while ago, for another similar class, I read a book by Neil Postman titled Technopoly. It was the author's tirade on the prevalence of technology and the hold it has on the nation. Quite an interesting and eye-opening read (some of you who are taking other Honors courses may be familiar with it). One of the items he went off on was our unswerving loyalty to statistics. How many chapel speeches, essays, or docu-dramas have you seen or heard which open with some kind of shocking percentage? How many have you believed? Postman pointed out that these kind of things are a problem in that to so many people, they are the highest authority. Who can argue with numbers, facts, and bar graphs? Which brings me to my next answer...

Can we truly trust any information or theories that are based on statistics?

"Correlation, not causation." That has always been a true statement. Statistics and polls are useful, but we as discerning individuals have to be careful of becoming gluttons of information. What's really true? Where did this info come from? Who compiled it? Can we really ever have the right answer? Who knows. The bottom line is not to believe everything you hear (just like your mom told you, hopefully).

Thus, my interview is complete. But wait, there's more! I have to take a couple minutes to showcase one of the best things about the Nintendo Wii: Mii creating! In the Wii universe, there exists a system which allows one to create a tiny, cartoonish version of oneself for use with Wii Sports and, presumably, other forthcoming Nintendo games. Here is my Mii of myself:

Mmm. Cartoonish self.

That's not all, though. There is no limit to the amount of Miis which can populate your little Mii plaza, so naturally I've been making cute, balloon-headed versions of basically everyone I know.

Here's one you may recognize:

Look familiar?

Unfortunately, "Picklesimer" didn't fit in the name box. But hey, our professor might show up on my baseball team or in the audience at my next bowling game! Hey!!

Extrapolation

2007-01-28T20:48:00.000-05:00

I'm going to answer Dr. P's questions in the next post.

For now, I have to rejoice because I finally found one of these:

And in celebration of this joyous event (it really is quite joyous), please view this HUMOROUS VIDEO:

Press Start

2007-01-18T17:37:00.000-05:00

I'm comandeering my own blog for the purposes of Human Situation III. In the meantime:

The Perilous Potomac!!

2007-01-07T18:25:00.000-05:00

First entry for the new year! And a new adventure to go with it:

This weekend we had a freak change in temperature, where suddenly it was summertime and therefore a perfect day to go for a row. My dad is XTREME-ly into the whole yo-ho-ho thing, so anytime we go boating with him it means paddling, rowing, or sailing. The dory's mast is already shelved for the season so today it was time for a lively row! Yes! Since we live so close to DC, the Potomac is quite convenient, and it was there that we set out for a rowing adventure.

After stopping at our favorite breakfast place, we took a long drive to pick up my dad's old college friend Dave Kerner and headed towards the boat launch. We crossed just over into Maryland, and prepared to set off amidst the bewilderment of all the other people at the ramp (rowing is apparently not one of the nation's most common leisurely activities).

There you can see our boat attached to our unlikely car (the added trailer hitch bangs against the pavement between our driveway and the street if we don't curve a little to the left or right while backing up), accompanied by my younger brother Elliot, and then Dave Kerner next to my Dad. You can see how beautiful a day it was...Dave may have been wearing a jacket, but both he and I took off our jackets after a short time on the water. Seriously, the weather was really weird.

See, such a beautiful day. We got the boat in the water without trouble, and since we had four people with us, three got to row and one got to steer. Have you ever rowed with three people in tandem? It's quite a challenge. I took the bow-most position, farthest from the rudder, so I was pretty much constrained to row the entire time.

And if you'll look at a larger version of this picture, you can see that it's Mt. Vernon, home of George Washington! We passed by it and a few other tourist-y locales during our row in this direction, garnering plenty of looks in our direction from the touristfolk. My Dad mused that he'd like to see what we must look like from the shore.

We rowed for a long time. After passing Mt. Vernon we took a break and had some water from the scuttlebutt (silly nautical terms...) and headed back in the opposite direction. As we were moving along some uncommonly warm gusts of wind blew at our backs. I nearly lost my hat a couple of times. Eventually, after passing the manors belonging to the exquisitely rich which litter the coastline of the area, we came upon a small cove, which we pulled into and took a break. I snapped quite a few pictures of it, so here's a mini-gallery:

Click to enlarge. Here we have us pulling into the cove ("Pirate's Cove," if you will); a pile of dead trees and driftwood that the cove had accumulated; a mysterious concrete structure barred by many trees; a view of the cove; and pushing ourselves out of the cove with generous manpower. For the remainder of the trip I took the stern seat so I could steer (since I had been rowing the entire time up to that point).

We hugged the coast for a while longer and finally crossed the potomac again to reach our boat landing. The side our landing was on is notably less rich-looking than the Mt. Vernon side, but there were some odd and variously decorated houses (such as an octagonal house connected to an austere cube-building which seemed to house a large spiral staircase; the whole thing looked like a professor's house and appeared to be still under construction).

Returning to the landing we hitched the boat back up to the trailer, as a large man in overalls and a John Deere with binoculars around his neck watched us contentedly. After the boat was back on the car, my brother spotted a small abandoned building partially hidden in the foliage close to the landing. Abandoned buildings, especially those suffering from advanced necrosis, have always fascinated me, so we both went to check it out.

Left to right: the rusty chain link fence surrounding the once-house; what was left of the house; view from inside the fence; another view; standing in the doorway; a rusted metal (drainpipe?). I think two out of the four walls had already fallen in, and the surrounding forest had almost completely claimed the ruin for itself. Satisfied, we headed back to the car, but there was one more thing left to do before leaving the area. A park was nearby which had another interesting structure beckoning to us.

The road to the small park was flanked with trees, and thankfully the dirt roads were kind to our small Saturn with cargo. The park was on the grounds of a building called Marshall Hall, which had some historical significance with George Washington and blah blah blah. But this is why it was really interesting:

No roof! It wasn't in quite so far advanced a ruined state as the previous building, probably since it had more historic value, but the roof was sure gone, giving it that striking prison-camp look to it. It was also surrounded by a chain fence topped with barbed wire (garnished with signs citing "HAZARDOUS STRUCTURE"), allowing for some clever photography:

Looks like it just jumped out of a WWII story. Some more pictures of that building and surrounding area:

Left to Right: Picnic benches set upon what I felt to be a foundation of a previous building (look for my brother in this one); Marshall Hall sans barbed wire; a little grill for them frankfurters; another look at the Hall.

We were all beat at the end of the day. We were out there lollygagging, as Dave put it, for around four hours. It was fun though, and the day couldn't be more beautiful (or more disconcerting, given the month and season). So, here's to 2007! And a picture of me in the weird concrete structure in the cove:

Now to play some more Zelda.

MST3K In Magnolia

2006-11-01T18:14:00.000-05:00

oh

OH!

This guy:

^ That guy

That guy spoke in Magnolia, Arkansas last night. My roommate told me a few weeks ago and I was like "YEAH I'LL HIT THAT" and he was like "KTHNX." So last night, Halloween night, we drove for 3 hours and 20 minutes to the small town of Magnolia, Arkansas, to hear Michael J. Nelson, the second host of Mystery Science Theater 3000, speak to a group of college students about his books and movie commentaries.

Yeah, I was there. I have to say, Mike Nelson, though he looks a bit different in person now than he did when he was making fun of bad movies in space, is a totally hilarious guy. I haven't laughed so hard in a long time, and it wasn't just because I was giddy for being there.

It's probably pretty ridiculous for me to outline all the stuff he said or whatever, so I'll just touch on some of the highlights:

-He was there.
-He read some of his movie reviews from his book (sounds like shameless plugging, but actually it was totally hysterical shameless plugging)
-He had a couple of palooks from the audience play a trivia game to win some random stuff he had with him (such as DVDs he's done commentary for, and some books he was reading; see a picture here.)
-He showed some of his own commentary on (the original) House on Haunted Hill, which is basically just like MST3k only without Robot Friends.
-He gave lots of bad rap to all kinds of movies (he pretty much hates movies for a living)
-He opened up the floor to questions;
-Someone asked what his favorite MST3k script was, to which he revealed that he had not really ever gone back to view them (they hurt too much), but to his knowledge it was Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders, which was one of the later ones and also one of the more ridiculous and inexplicable ones
-Someone asked "how are Bridget and the kids adjusting to the move out west?", to which he gave a supremely incredulous look and said "Wha...what...Dad?" Of course the guy wasn't his dad, just some random guy who for some reason knows what Mike Nelson's family is up to. Mike started to fake calling for security (it was hilarious).
-Afterwards, he went to the college bookstore to give out autographs and photos!!

Yes! It's my second photo with a famous person this year! I didn't talk about the first one on here, though. Oh, and Alex got a picture too:

He usually doesn't have that ridiculous moustache. He had to grow his beard out indefinitely for Fiddler on the Roof, and after it grew to monstrous sizes, he shaved the entire thing off and left just the monstrous moustache. Most of us think it's pretty hilarious.

And, in celebration of Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), I have made a new comic!!

UNfortunately, I still have to use the inferior Imageshack to host my comics, since Flickr won't upload the image at the size it needs to be. D'oh.

Ever heard of a Beanfest?

2006-10-29T17:17:00.000-05:00

No? Well neither had I until Saturday the 29th of October, two-thousand and the six. For every state like Arkansas which makes a big deal out of its "natural wonders" and so on, there is a town which makes a point of showcasing those things. Mountainview is a town like that in Northern Arkansas, and yesterday I made a trip out there, invited by my friend Liz, and following is the CHILLING ACCOUNT of what happened.

We started this adventure by taking an hour-and-a-half drive up to Mountainview, which is an extremely good thing to do on a sunny, breezy day in autumn. Before long Liz had to stop for gas, and above you can see that when you drive this far off the edge of nowhere, you get to see stuff like really old and outdated gas stations. There was, of course, no "pay-at-the-pump" option.

Here're a few examples of how pretty parts of Arkansas can be. I don't think I've done it justice at all, actually, however. You really have to be there experience the onslaughts of color and the plays of light and shadows on the changing leaves to really understand. Plus driving in a place like this is really a lot like driving on a roller coaster (Liz is too safe a driver to make it exciting like one though).

After driving through Heber Springs (a local resort town with mountains and a lake and a dam and vultures and other neat stuff), we ascended into the long, low hills which make up Mountainview, and parked about a half-mile out of the center of the town. There were tons and tons of people, as Beanfest is a pretty big event (I'll explain what it is shortly).

Anyone who knows me or has read any previous entries on this blog knows that this is what I like to see. Places about which I can say "you never know what you're gonna find" always rank among my favorites. This was on the door of an antique store/fleamarket, which are legion in Arkansas and especially in a place like Mountainview. Here is an example of the weird stuff you find in places like this. Note that one of those cassettes is labled something to the extent of "Porno Pyros" and seems to have an image of a lecherous Count from Sesame Street riding a 1950s space rocket into the massive unknown referred to by most as the 90s. Other stuff I found in that shop included large amounts of old Tonka trucks, stacks of VHS tapes (through which I always must sift), and a gigantic old Howitzer cannon truck toy made by Marx (a defunct toy company which had its heyday when my dad was young). I have no idea what toyline it came from, but it was massive, mostly made of metal, and priced at $75. Needless to say I left it there.

Walking along the street towards the center of Beanfest, we passed many a stand or stall selling various things, anything from giant rugs with marijuana leaves on them to geothermic curiosities. This all, of course, reminded me of the fleamarket in Mobile, which is one of my favorite places on Earth.

Now I'll take a minute to explain what the heck Beanfest is. Mountainview is pretty much a seasonal town, only becoming the booming partyland that it was on Saturday on certain occasions. This particular occasion is, at its core, a bluegrass festival. At the center of town, groups of bluegrass-playing folk of all ages gathered in little circles and just let loose with the jams. All around them the people gathered, eating food and snacks from various little restaurants and diners which only are only open on days such as this. I obliterated my hunger with something I call the Great American Meal, consisting of a gigantic bacon cheeseburger coupled with a generous helping of fried 'taters. I didn't get a gigantic swimming-pool sized drink to go along with it, though. I'm not that American.

The reason it's called Beanfest is because early in the day, large helpings of beans and cornbread are served, and I assume they are cooked with the help of these gigantic things which were standing triumphantly in the town square. We left Searcy after they had already finished with the beans and cornbread, so we missed that. Instead, we drifted around the square, stopping at each group of bluegrass folks to take their pictures and take in their jams. Here's a few pictures of them:

There are a lot more pictures of various parts of Mountainview, I've posted them all on Flickr and the whole gallery can be viewed here.

Now before I finish this first entry of the school year, there's one more anecdote to be related. On the way out, Liz saw this giant tree whose leaves had all turn a particularly brilliant shade of orange. After 1-5 seconds of debating with herself she turned the car around to take pictures of it. It was in someone's yard, but the driveway was empty, so we just pulled into the drive and she got out and took some pictures.

Pretty, huh? As we pulled out of the driveway, an old man in a small car pulled up right alongside us. We both stopped our cars, and after a few minutes of awkwardness, Liz opened her window and he opened his door. Before we could say anything, he said "Oh, I was just gonna take some pictures of the tree!" After explaining to him that that was exactly what we were doing, we took off and had a good laugh.

I got back and that night watched Fiddler on the Roof, which I think was my favorite homecoming musical of the three I've seen so far. A fitting way to end a marvelous day.

And I haven't gotten back into the comic-making mood yet so there's no comic for today. Expect them to return, though.

The Statues Made Me High

2006-08-19T01:08:00.000-04:00

Last entry of the official summer period. Not sure where this blog is going to go during the school year, but I'm not looking to quit on it either.

Occassionally, if one opens their eyes, they can find extraordinary places and things right close to them. In my case I found a massive, massive cemetery right outside our neighborhood.

I guess I can say I morbidly enjoy cemeteries, especially really old gothic ones. In ninth grade when I had a morbid curiosity about everything that was morbid, ghosts were foremost. I've never seen an ectoplasmic orb or shimmery figures or anything of the sort, but my imagination does a pretty good job of filling that all in. It's even better in large and impressive graveyards.

It's easily the size of four of five football fields, but you may notice a curious lack of graves in the above picture. As you might expect, that's because it's actually a crematory garden. Here is one of the graves, which you can see is merely a metal plate with a small handle implanted in it; doubtlessly if one pulls on that handle and urn would be revealed somewhere underneath.

Exploring this place took forever. Adding to the grand feel to it were the statues scattered infrequently about the gardens.

And pretty statues they were, but this is definitely not Florence: most if not all of the statues are concrete casts. As such...

...most have not been treated well by age. The reason why her hand is so nubbish is because all of her fingers are gone. I perhaps only saw one statue which wasn't missing any digits.

It wasn't this one, though--I think this statue was missing entire limbs. Actually I spent a few minutes trying to figure out what it was; it was placed right over what seemed to be a family grave, and upon closer inspection it appears to be a normal human boy riding the back of a winged character, probably an angel. Why he got a free ride I don't know.

Standing confusedly among vaguely Greek and Christian symbols was this Buddha, standing near the entrance of a Buddhist funeral home. Half the graves I saw here were Asian in origin; it really reflects the mixed population of this area.

Here's another view of the amazingly pretty day and how it reflected on the pretty cemetery. You'd almost think it was a golf course (now that's interesting...).

After spying this Greek-like statue hiding among some bushes near a dirty fountain, I saw ahead the most grand statue I've seen yet in the gardens.

Yes, it's a massive tomb with a huge statue of the Last Supper standing conspicuously on top of it. Of course it's concrete like all the rest, so it's missing fingers, but it was still pretty impressive. The whole thing reminds me of the White Witch's powers from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, specifically the old BBC one with the terrible effects and animal costumes.

Upon close inspection, it seems to me that this group's Jesus is standing up in the standard arms-down-palms-forward style, while the rest of the disciples mutter to themselves. It strikes me as a very odd way of depicting Him. While initially I thought he was looking down at them, he's actually just staring off into space. Like he just stood up and announced something, but no one is listening to him. After musing on this unusual statue for a little while, we followed the path around and continuing behind it.

Following a path lined with trees and intermittent stairs, we came to the final statue I took pictures of, towards the edge of the property.

It's La Pieta, Michelangelo's La Pieta, but it's definitely not made of marble like the original. I think Mary's left hand was entirely fingerless. This statue is unusual for the unmatching proportions of Mary and Jesus. If you imagine both of them standing up, it's clear that Jesus would be a shrimp compared to the giant Mary. Since Michelangelo was such a genius, it's propable that he did this on purpose. For what reason, who knows. It's probably more visually perfect. Those Renaissance Men knew everything.

So that's all for Virginia this time. I'm flying out for Little Rock tomorrow sometime in the afternoon, then I'm going to try to move in and start classes without losing too much sanity. I'll live, somehow...

Rome Round II

2006-08-15T22:07:00.000-04:00

Last week we made our second big trip into DC, with more museum madness as our plan. We got it, natch.

Instead of taking the difficult way in by driving, we did our trip on the Metro. DC has a very convenient system of trains and buses (both are called the metro), far more efficient when traveling the capitol than cars. We took the subway, which starts above ground at the East Falls Church Station.

It's very much like the train system in Japan, right down to the way the tickets are purchased, but with less people in the station (especially on the weekend). Above you can see the nearly-empty Falls Church station. Ours is, I believe, the first and only above-ground station. The trip took about 15 minutes of smooth, air-conditioned rumbling, with an influx of passengers as we got closer to Rome.

Last time we went to the Natural History Museum, I mentioned we only explored the first floor. The second floors, with its promises of bones, bugs, and the hope diamond was left for another day. This time we came back there...with a vengeance! Okay, actually just a mild curiosity. Actually I take that back. Did I mention before that I loved dinosaurs? I'm sure I did, so let me go on to say that if there's anything in the world that can make me as happy as dinosaurs, it's insects. There's a big plus to loving insects to, in that they're all still alive, except for those prehistoric four-foot dragonflies.

We started our second-floor observation in the least interesting sector, that of the rocks and minerals collection. It's a long corridor filled with normal rocks, moon rocks, sword rocks, gemstone rocks, those rocks that are really pretty when you split them open, and rocks with really weird names like Augen Gneiss.

The whole place culminates in two rooms; the first is lined with carefully lit glass cases filled with famous gems from all over the world. Of course everybody was steaming the glass with their faces, so I didn't have much chance or motivation to get up close and see what the big deal was. The second room contained the hope diamond, which I had kinda hoped was one of those baseball-sized deals, but it's actually just a little guy on a brooch which probably has some kind of story behind it. I don't know it, so accusations of me being an uncultured philistine are called for. The rest of the museum that wasn't looking at dinosaurs or bugs were all crammed into the hope diamond room, but I don't see see what's so interesting about something that doesn't have fangs or mandibles.

I like to save the best for last, so next we entered the skeleton exhibit. This is a massive show of the bones of animals from all over, basically it's the undead version of the downstairs' mammal area. This one contains fish and birds too, though.

L-R: A group of skeleton mammals; an exemplary sun bear; a whale skeleton; a tree inhabited by bony birds. I was really hoping to find a narwhal skeleton in there somewhere, because Narwhals are amazing. No narwhals were to be found, but animal skeletons are nearly as interesting as the animals themselves, which is very interesting, so we enjoyed this exhibit.

After passing by some reptiles and other things which some people think are gross, we reached the insects.

Evidently the insect exhibit was celebrating its 30th anniversary. As such,

Everyone was there. Perhaps because it was all I could do to squeeze my way in just to see various (living) insect exhibits, it seems I only took one picture of anything in the whole place, that being one of some particularly huge grasshoppers. Throughout the first hall there was this girl, probably age 14 or 15, who would add facts to my expressions of wonder as I gazed at chinese stick insects or praying mantises. Actually I think she knew more about bugs than I do, which I think is saying quite a bit, especially for a 15-year-old girl. Anyway she disappeared into the shifting crowds by the time I reached that termite skyscraper you see in the above picture.

I guess there isn't much else to say about the bug exhibit. The last time we were there (ten years ago or so), there was a bug-exhibit-worker-guy who inviting people to let tarantulas and giant cockroaches crawl on them. I was hoping to see him again, to prove I have a DC golden age square jaw when it comes to insects, but sadly he was gone, probably out making himself a bee beard or something.

We had planned to make a goodly visit to the Air and Space Museum after that, but unfortunately it was 30 minutes until it closed, so we were only able to give it a general surface scan before they kicked everyone out. We used the rest of the time to explore the Hersshorn's totally bizarre sculpture garden!

Now, let me clarify to you that even having two years worth of art education doesn't give me the kind of clairvoyance necessary to understand modern art. As such, here is my take on only four of the garden's many extravagent members:

I believe this man's name seemed to indicate that he was a clam farmer. What that has to do with his hamburger meat-like appearance, I do not know. What I do know is that if I met this guy while I was out clamming, I'd probably quit clamming for the rest of my life. Is that a word? Clamming?

Now, witness the power of this fully operational battle station!

This is a lesson for all you time travelers: RESEARCH. If a window is going to be in the place where you jump 500 years into the past, you better know that ahead of time. A word of note: This man's left hand doesn't match up with the rest of his body on the other side of the window. As a matter of fact, there's a dog's head coming out of where his arm should be, and the arm is flailing out in the opposite direction.

If Peter Paul Rubens' paintings came to life, they would probably look like this. I'm very glad it's only a sculpture.

Before leaving DC again, we walked past the magnificent Smithsonian Castle and the closeby gardens. I took a couple more pictures of those:

DC still has a ton more to offer that I haven't visited or covered, and probably won't have a chance to before going back to school. But, I shall return!

The Interloper

2006-08-14T18:38:00.000-04:00

I'm planning on making several entries this week, possibly even every day of this week, so I'm starting out with a shorter one.

I'll start by saying that my family always stays up way past the normal bedtime for U.S. families. We're usually still up at 1 or 2, and last night I was up until at least 4. Sometimes this lets us see things which normally we wouldn't be able to see. The large bin where we keep our dog Stefie's food is right outside the door on the deck, and our dining room table is stationed where we can all see out the window facing the deck. Our friend Methuselah doesn't know that.

See him there? He comes just about every night and gorges himself on delicious Iams mix. Personally, I don't know what he like so much about processed dog food, but he's determined enough that so far he's breezed through my dad's various security measures against him. In fact, it seems we've engaged in a kind of friendly rivalry.

The first trap was our dory's anchor on top of the bin. It's not terribly heavy, and wasn't heavy enough that Methuselah couldn't muscle it right off. A loud thump later, and he was feasting. The next attempt involved tying the anchor to the banister of the deck, so even if he moved it around it would still hang there and block his entry. Methuselah countered that by pushing it just enough out of the way to open the lid and squeeze himself inside of the bin (poking his nose out every so often for a breath). The latest maneuver involved putting the bin inside our dory (which is a kind of boat). No news yet if Methuselah has found it up there.

The best thing about all this is watching him. It's rare that you get to watch a wild animal doing its thing, unless you're Steve Erwin or that guy from Grizzly Man, and Methuselah won't let anything stand between him and his dog food, not even a human peering out at him from 3 feet away behind a window. Which is what I did.

Next entry: some more stuff from Rome! Or maybe the crematory gardens, whichever I feel like.

Bonus picture: Ford Escort with a Spoiler!

You know, just in case it goes so fast that it needs extra help to keep it from flying! Sigh...

Dinosaurs? Yes, Dinosaurs!!

2006-08-06T01:38:00.000-04:00

This is a testament to how profound the Summer Laziness runs in my veins: the events in this entry occured one week ago. A whole week, and I've got nothing to cover my shame with except for the fact that the internet was repeatedly and without warning giving out. I'm glad that's over, at least it seems to be.

So. Dinosaurs.

I guess I should start at the beginning. The events which occured one week ago were my first foray into the District of Columbia since our move here. OH MAN. I LOVE IT.

First of all, you should stop thinking of Washington DC as just Washington DC and instead think of it as Modern-Day Rome. Rome, folks. What other city in America has stuff like this. No city. Not even Nashville. DC is Rome. In 500 years, long after America has been sacked by Visigoths or Canadians, people are going to fantasize about walking the streets of DC and visiting the Lincoln Memorial or the Capitol building when they were still standing. I don't have to fantasize, though. I can just go. Anyway as we drove to Rome (we should have taken the metro, probably) we of course passed that one huge monument, and after some difficulty and frustration in finding a place to park (there also aren't too many cities in the US which are so obviously biased against cars), we stopped in a small parking lot in view of a riverside temple. Sorry. I mean the Jefferson Memorial.

It wasn't too far of a walk to our destination of choice for the day, the Smithsonian, but it's very hot in Virginia so it felt long. Along the way we passed by a huge seafood market underneath a highway overpass. We ended up on a wide stone street leading straight to the Smithsonian, a street designed by the city planner Pierre Charles L'Enfant. I had been to the Smithsonian before, but hadn't really remembered what it was like. This is why I was surprised to see before me...

...a genuine Castle. If I was in, say, Britain, this wouldn't be too surprising. Mundane, even. But this is America. We don't have castles. Nevertheless, here is the original Smithsonian Institute building, which even goes as far as to call itself "The Castle." Which is pretty accurate, since the only other Castle I can think of in America is that fake one in Orlando. Here are some more pictures of the gorgeous Castle and the surrounding gardens:

While The Castle is the original building in the Smithsonian complex, now it isn't much more than a Visitor Center for tourists to check out cool 3D maps of DC or just enjoy the air conditioning. The adjacent building is also castlelike, I think it was the museum of science and technology, but it was closed for renovations. We continued past the Castle, out onto the National Mall.

If you don't know, the National Mall is a very looong strip of (theoretically) green grass, which is heavily used by picnickers and whatever else, and looks it. When we crossed the Mall, to the left we could see the Washington Monument to the left, and the Capitol to the right. Straight ahead was this, which a helpful map told us was the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. This imposing Temple of Knowledge is quite a big deal huger than The Castle, and is definitely a No Fooling Around Museum. Reason You Should Visit Modern Rome #8: Smithsonian museums are all totally absolutely 100% free. Paid for by the Government. At least our tax money is going somewhere useful.

The Museum of Natural History lets you know it's not fooling around by flagrantly displaying an elephant, profoundly raised several feet above everyone's heads, in the main atrium. Dead and stuffed he may be, but that elephant is there to tell you that here there be monsters, baby, and I'm not talking about boring latin-named monsters that somebody named Poindexter probably writes about.

I'm talking about real monsters.

They aren't alive, of course, but they are nevertheless here. Knowing this fact, and knowing that I wasn't ready to encounter these monsters just yet, I steered us towards the Mammal Area first. I love to see real animals, even if they are filled with plaster-of-paris, which is what the museum's Mammal section has to offer. A LOT of stuffed animals. Taxidermied animals are in a way actually less depressing than animals in a zoo, because we don't have to imagine how miserable they are, living in captivity, or be sad because we missed their daily performance. Anyway, there are a ton more animals on display than I took pictures of, but along the way we definitely saw a walrus, a
maned wolf (I've seen one of these in real life, they're very graceful), a giraffe, a pangolin, another pangolin (I love pangolins) and a deadly man-eating hippo.

After passing through India and the Lewis and Clark expidition (my dad loved that one), we started to hit some fossils.

Mammoths, mastodons, and saber-toothed cats are those animals which really, really want to be part of the dinosaur scene. They're even huge and crazy enough to almost be there. But they aren't quite dinosaurs. Nevertheless, the long, long corridor of post-dinosaur-huge/weird animals is almost as exciting as the terrible lizards themselves. I didn't take too many pictures of it, but I guarantee that there were no shortages of giant sloths, giant ostriches, shovel-tusked elephants, tiny horses and neanderthals.

By the way, did you know that those giant sloths, they are seriously giant. I mean, like just a little bit smaller than a modern elephant. That's why those old saber-toothed cats needed their sword teeth, just so they could stab far enough through the neck fat of a giant sloth to do any kind of damage whatsoever.

Oh, and in prehistoric times, chocobos existed.

This sofa-sized dimetrodon (one of my favorites) invited us warmly into the dinosaur area. I wasn't ready yet, so we made a short stop at the nearby Fossil Cafe, a too-expensive little deal which sold $4 cookies in the shape of dinosaurs, among other things. We got some drinks, sat down at the little tables with paleontology data inside them, and I mentally prepared myself for THE MONSTERS.

It didn't take Godzilla, Stephen Spielberg, or Ray Harryhausen to make me love dinosaurs. As far as I know, by the time two cells came together and decided they were going to grow into a human being named Luke Jones, they had already decided they would love dinosaurs. Some kids are born with a silver spoon in their mouth, I was born with one of those little fossil-duster brush things. I wish I could say I can name every species and subspecies of dinosaur and post-dinosaur exctinct animals, but unfortunately even reading all kinds of dinosaur literature as a child (gotta pick that back up again) hasn't kept me well-informed. Even so, I know a diploducus from a brachiosaur, and I can definitely tell a T-Rex from a lowly allosaurus. I was ready to see some Dinos. This boneyard delivered on those accounts. To save you from my gushing on each individual monster, I'll just go forward with the gallery thing:

From left to right: T-Rex, view from the back leg; big Rex's face; triceratops' huge head; diploducus' superb neck; a wire frame from where a small dinosaur was displayed (THEY LIVE!); another small dinosaur of the same species; T-Rex's pencil-length teeth; the dinosaur boneyard view from the balcony; a HUGE pterosaur flying overhead; some squid in an ancient reef display; what seems to be an ancestor of the dolphin; an enormous and downright diabolical prehistoric whale (take a look at those teeth!). You can bet I was pretty happy with all this. It had been far too long since I'd seen a dinosaur, let alone this kind of banquet. I didn't show you all of them in there, either. You know, I think my one big wish when I get to heaven is just to see some of these prehistoric monsters in action. Not even fighting or running or chasing or whatever they do in movies, I mean just being. Standing there. Breathing. Sigh.

Yeah. Death by T-Rex. Seems a likely way for me to go, huh.

I'll close out here by mentioning another thing that I noticed sets Japan way apart from America: lack of statues. If someone somewhere did something moderately important in America's history, they probably have a statue, or at least a bust, or at the very least a tree or street dedicated to them somewhere in DC. Japan, not so much. The way I see it, their culture is so much more group-based, that someone standing out like that is more frowned upon. Personally, I like statues. John Paul Jones wasn't nearly that tall, though.

I went to DC again today (remember, the stuff you just read happened a week ago), not so much to report this time but it'll be showing up soon.

Cop Story

2006-07-28T19:32:00.000-04:00

I've got no pictures for this post, but I really wanted to post something, so I'll go with an incidental story.

Let's see...not yesterday, but the day before, I watched Robocop. Robocop is one of those movies that is rated R, is ultra-super-duper-violent with extra fake blood syrup, but somehow they decided to market it to children. Robocop had a toyline, and possibly a cartoon. Kinda reminds me of the whole Starship Troopers thing, ironically by the same director (Paul Verhoeven). I remember seeing a lot of Robocop toys sitting around with nobody buying them, probably because kids didn't know who Robocop was outside of his reputation. Anyway why pick a slow-moving shiny robot cop dude only armed with a pistol when you could pick Leonardo who can cut foot soldiers in half and give you another good reason to like pizza all at the same time? For that matter, they also made toys for Terminator, but I bet you they didn't make toys of John Connor's dead parents or a T-1000 with a finger-blade that really stabs out your eye.

I also learned for the first time that the phrase "I'd buy that for a dollar!" actually has its origins with Robocop, specifically from the fake TV show which plays constantly throughout the movie.

Well. The point of me saying all that about Robocop was I had cops on my mind that day. I've only had a run-in with the police once in my entire life, and it was pretty ridiculously stupid, but that's a story most people reading this have heard already. So here's my NEW story about running in with the Law. Sometime before she goes to bed every night, my mom likes to take a little stroll around the neighborhood. This particular night my dad was asleep so I and my brother were asked to accompany her. The time was probably somewhere around midnight, possibly 1 or 1:30. I don't know, my watch was off.

We saw a cop with lights and siren blaring drive past our corner, but my mom won't let anything stop her from walking so we just went on out. Not too long into the walk we noticed a helicopter circling overhead. I wagered that it was a police helicopter, and we were just waltzing right into a manhunt into our own neighborhood.

Yeah, that's what it was. Not too long after seeing at least 7 cop cars piled in one street, with men and dogs flashlighting all over someone's yard, a cop at a corner stopped us and had us wait there until he said so, because "the dogs might bite us." What that really meant, of course, was they had ED-209 on duty and it's still in experimental stage, so you know it might just give us 40 SECONDS TO COMPLY and then gun us down mercilessly.

Sooner or later the cop let us off, and shortly we were stopped by another cop, this time a stout woman, who warned us again about the dogs (experimental robot). Before she was done talking with us she got a call from the searchlight guy in the copter and took off in her car. Before speeding away she leaned out to tell us that they got the guy.

We saw a group of cops towing away a black pickup truck before we finished the walk, but that was the extent of our run-in with a manhunt. I did some quick research to try to figure out what was going on, but since I found nothing we'll just have to assume there was a dangerous DVD pirate/music downloader on the loose and the use of Robot Cops was necessary to take him down.

Also the cop who stopped us was really Robocop.

Ironically, today's comic also has to do with the Law.

A Packrat-Venture

2006-07-24T13:48:00.000-04:00

I've mentioned before that I have a curse of hunting. Keeping that in mind, some of my absolute favorite places to go to are Fleamarkets, Yard Sales, and Thrift Stores. I like to hunt in those places without even knowing what I'm hunting for. The other day as we were driving to our self-storage place, I saw this:

What kind of a self-respecting hunter-gatherer could turn that kind of invitation down? Especially since we failed to get into the self-storage. Fortunately the Unique Thrift Store (hereafter referred to as the UTS) proved to be all that and more.

There are a few prerequisites that Thrift Stores must pass before they earn the right to be called true Thrift Stores. First, they must have a vague smell of grandparents or cats. I don't remember UTS's smell, but since it was brand new it may not have developed it. Secondly...

There must be at least one Mountain of Naked Barbies. All of the Naked Barbies in the world end up in Thrift Stores. Maybe there's someone out there who collects Naked Barbies, but whoever it is I never want to see or know them. In addition to Naked Barbies,

There should be a generous helping of Stuff That Nobody Wants. There is a thin line between Thrift Store and Garbage Dump, and even though I believe in the "One man's trash..." ideal, there are some things that will probably never leave Thrift Store shelves. Like Golf Sims, for instance.

Occassionally the aforementioned thin line is crossed. In this case, the line has been left several miles behind in a cloud of dust by a pole-vaulting horserider with a jetpack. This is the category of "stuff no one should want." And finally,

...you have absolutely unbelievably bizarre junk. Where on Earth or Saturn someone got a dark green, limbless, purple-finned, orange-mustachioed alien cow chair is beyond me, but I really hope this is just a sign that science has been lying to us about Saturn being an unpopulated ball of gas. The other minor prerequisites, like having plenty of old electronics and abundances of McDonalds or Burger King toys, the UTS passed with flying colors. They only thing they seemed weak on was the Extremely Hideous Sweater area. I'm okay with that, though.

By the way, I forgot to mention that the UTS, besides being Unique, is enormous. It's easily the size of a half dozen normal Goodwills or Salvation Armies laid out in a neat grid pattern. I think it's the largest Thrift Store I've ever been to, beating out Mobile's "America's Thrift Store" and another one I went to in Illinois by a margin. Unfortunately the pile of NES or Genesis games I was hoping to find alongside a pile of forgotten game systems was not present, but I didn't go home empty handed...

This may just look like an unassuming bag of standard thrift store-grade toys, but remember, this is the UNIQUE thrift store we're talking about. The UTS won't allow itself to be one-upped by any standard bag o' junk. No sir, this is a bag full of dinosaurs. Now that may sound pretty amazing in itself, but the UTS further proved that it wasn't limited to just normal dinosaurs. Take a look at just some of the loot pulled from this bag of treasure:

Little Foot. How can you have a bag of dinosaurs and not have Little Foot? Because when you think about dinosaur cartoons, I'm sure Denver or that "Dinosaur" CG flop don't pop in your head. Unfortunately it seems the carnivors in the bag have already eaten Ducky, Petri, Cera, Spike, and whatever other dumb extra characters came from the 1000 sequels.

Starship Troopers Bugs. While the movie seemed to be little more than an excuse to show off CG effects and as much goopy blood as possible, apparently someone decided that enough unwatched kids would see the movie to warrant a toyline. I guess they aren't dinosaurs, but I don't think Little Foot is about to tell them that.

Reptar. I will admit I once enjoyed watching Rugrats, back when Nick was cool and Ren & Stimpy was on my mind and I didn't have cable TV. Reptar is a nice homage to the Big G, and this one seemed to previously have a sparkling mouth feature, but it's just about as gone as Rocko's Modern Life.

Godzilla? This particular dinosaur looks like Godzilla, and probably wants to be Godzilla, but is just shy of actually being Godzilla. It also looks like it desperately wants to be a wind-up Tin Toy, but alas is neither of those things. Actually, this bag seems to be beating around the Godzilla bush as much as possible without actually having a real Godzilla figure, since next we have...

Spacegodzilla. Yes, he's everything Godzilla is, but with extra teeth and giant space crystals to boot! It's not too strange to see him in this bag, since the now-defunct company Trendmasters released a line of Godzilla figures in America sometime in the middle 90s. Oddly enough the only movie featuring Spacegodzilla had not been released in America at the time. Clearly, the Trendmasters were Masters of something, but certainly not Trends.

Tri-Cera-Tape. Yes, it's a Triceratops whose dorsal area has been carved out to house a tape dispenser. Moving on...

A Street Shark. Okay, now this guy is flagrantly not a dinosaur. Actually, judging by his appearance, he was scheduled for another bag, but he was so X-TREME that he just X-TREME'D his way into the bag of dinosaurs, because he wanted to. Street Sharks were not cooler than Ninja Turtles. But they were X-TREME.

Beast Wars Dinobot. Because the Dinosaur Bagging People at the UTS thought they hadn't covered enough ground yet, they threw in a transforming dinosaur. As you might expect, this particular figure was most of the reason I bought this whole bag. He alone is more than worth the entire $5 the bag cost, even though he's sadly tailless.

Also included: a generous helping of Jurassic Park dinosaurs; a Star Wars Rancor; a T-Rex keychain which makes a sound suspicously like Godzilla's roar; one of those evil dinosaurs from Primal Rage; a nice spattering of those tiny plastic dinosaurs which have been sold by dollar stores and supermarkets since plastic was invented.

With this, the UTS has proven its name IN SPADES. I didn't even talk about the wooden Duck Phone my dad got for his brother (we had a good laugh about that one). I plan on visiting the UTS again, because...the hunt must continue!

The SWAG Entry

2006-07-20T21:03:00.000-04:00

swag

n 1: valuable goods 2: goods or money obtained illegally 3: a bundle containing the personal belongings of a swagman

I could probably write a whole entry about the perks of being a SWAGMAN, but instead I'm going to tell you about the valuable goods or money I obtained illegally from Japan, which I brought back in several bundles.

Okay, so I actually obtained it all legally. But I'm still a swagman, all right?

Anyway. This is basically the entry where I show off all the stuff I got in Japan. Most of it's toys, but Japan's toys are cool, so bear with me, huh? I'll break it down into categories. Let's start with, mm,

KAIJU

Kaiju is simply Japanese for "scary monster," but if you go to a store and ask for kaiju movies, you'll definitely be directed to the Godzilla section (yes, those do exist in Japan). Kaiju toys are kind of similar to Beanie Babies in that they all come with a tag and become less valuable once it's removed. As you can see I devalued my whole lot of Kaiju. From left to right we have: 2005 Gigan; Dinosaur Tank (from Ultra Seven); Gomola (from Ultraman); Gomess (a monster from Ultra Q which was made from a recycled Godzilla suit); Showa Gamera (from the 60s); King Joe (from Ultra Seven); Heisei Godzilla (from the 90s); Eviltiga; Ultra Seven 21. The last two are not really Kaiju but are actually heroes. Well, Eviltiga is the evil version of a hero, so he's kind of a kaiju.

Gigan is my favorite. Gigan's always been my favorite. This particular Gigan is from the 2005 Godzilla Final Wars, where he got his head blown off by Godzilla and then came back with chainsaws for hands. In the past Gigan's teamed up with the infamous Megalon, and some stock footage of Ghidorah. Although he did on one occassion make Godzilla bleed rather spectacularly from the face, Gigan unfortunately always loses. I guess I root for the underdog, huh.

Regrets: I bought Ultra Seven 21 thinking he was really Ultra Seven, but it turns out he's a fake. Faker!

TRANSFORMERS

Yes, Transformers. All kids love Transformers! Most kids grow up and sell theirs, but here I am at almost 21 still buying them. A lot of collectors buy Transformers for their poseability or their aesthetic value, and so do I, but sometimes I find myself buying Transformers based on their personality. Yes, a tradition for Transformers is to have their personalities, goals, and mottos transcribed onto clip n' save cards on the back of the packages. I can't read Japanese, but some nice folks have translated many Japanese bio cards for me and whoever else reads them.

Most of the Transformers I got was from the Japan-only line "Robot Masters," which was kind of a filler line with mostly old molds repainted and a very thin storyline involving worm holes linking together a lot of characters from different universes. These were criminally discounted at my favorite Bellhouse, so I picked them all up from there.

R-Blade: This little guy was discounted at 245 yen, or about $2. He's also a self-proclaimed knight. How could I refuse.

Delta Seeker vs. X-Gunner: These were a two-pack, also discounted way more than half their price. X-Gunner is a former good guy who constantly wants to upgrade his body, so he goes after his former friend Delta Seeker to try to pilfer his useful body parts. You know, like missile launchers.

Reverse Convoy: Cruelly discounted to 500 yen, this guy was too complicated not to pick up. You see, he normally has an Optimus Prime-shaped head, but a few flips and you'll find that he's also Megatron. Despite having two identities, Reverse Convoy/Rebirth Megatron seems to be evil all around. You can tell by his narrow eyes.

Megalo Convoy: This was the largest toy I bought in Japan. He's from a different series than the others, and I found him discounted to 2000 yen at Tokyo's largest Toys R Us. Actually, he's supposed to be even larger than he is, indicated by the tiny Optimus Prime included with him. Megalo is said to be from the "Giant Planet," where the robots have grown so large they need to have cute little Minicons to do small tasks for them, like make sandwiches and cook brownies. He sits down to transform into a vaguely-named construction vehicle, which has been theorized to be a bucket wheel excavator.

Regrets: Megalo Convoy was a bit ungainly to transport, but other than that I think I did a pretty good job. I could have bought a lot more, too.

ZOIDS

I used to be kind of obsessed with Zoids. They're a form of model kit, but instead of becoming a shiny car or a brittle airplane, they become wind-up or motorized robot animals. Usually with large guns. Zoids was on its way out when I visited Japan, so their prices were under repeated attacks by invisible monsters with price-cutting swords. Price-cutting swords, I say!

The recent Zoids, while not wind-up, are cool because their parts are interchangeable, allowing for cool stuff like this and this. They're also kinda fragile, so at least one got damaged in-flight and is now undergoing repairs.

Regrets: Well Deathraser up there got damaged in-flight. I still haven't put him back together yet, so who knows.

GACHAPON and SMALL FIGURES

You know when you go to the Supermarket and right before you leave there's always a little rack of machines which churn out Sticky Hands or Disgusting Teeth or maybe little Racial Stereotype Figures? Well, naturally, in Japan to one us up they have machines which sell highly-detailed and sometimes poseable figurines from popular properties. To be fair to the cheaper Americans, Japanese Capsule Toys cost at a minimum 100 yen, usually more. So we get Radioactive Goo or Mile-High Bouncy Balls for 50 cents, and for 1~300 yen the Japanese get monsters and robots. Take your pick. I picked Godzilla, Gundam, and Ultraman.

The left picture is mostly figures from capsule machines (gachapon) or from convenient store toy aisles. The right picture is a huge herd of small figures I bought in one bag for 800 yen. I think there's something like 60 figures total, about half being heroes and half being monsters and a small portion being absolutely unidentifiable weirdness. They're also hollow so you can put them all on the ends of your fingers if you're feeling extra wacky.

Regrets: Cheap stuff, so yeah, it's all good.

SD Gundam Force

Something about me initially hated SD Gundam Force, a semi-spoof Gundam cartoon featuring cel-shaded graphics and a lot of cutesy stuff. But, like athlete's foot, the show grew on me, and so did the toys. Especially the ones unreleased in America, from the unaired second part. Knight Zero Custom and Bakushinmaru here are a couple of representatives of those unreleased figures.

Regrets: Well these two were kinda impulse buys, to be honest. I think they were the last figures I bought in Japan.

AMDRIVER

I have a curse. It's a curse of hunting. See, I can't seem to take interest in anything which is readily available. Take Amdriver Dark here. I saw pictures of Amdriver figures at a couple different Japanese toy review sites, and vowed to myself that when I went to Japan I would find as many of these figures as possible. As it happened, nobody had Amdriver. I had to dig through the depths of the used figures in the cavelike halls of hobby shops just to find a few specimens. Fortunately since it seems that Amdriver wasn't too hot, such specimens came a relatively low price.

Above is the only Amdriver figure I purchased, who goes by the name of Dark Kalhole. The toyline is supposed to be about a group of future-heroes who don the "Amjacket" equipment to fight an invading army known alternately as the Bugscene or the Bugchine. Anyway no bugscene/chine figures exist so he gets to fight whoever I decide he fights. I only bought Dark, but I also managed to find a couple of Amdriver "Bisar," which are their transforming vehicles/armor.

To the left, the Neoboard Bisar "Lindwurm Type S," and to the right the Lance Bisar "Unicorn." Part of Lindwurm Type S transforms into Brigandeer mode for Dark to kick even more butt in, and the rest of it transforms into an absolutely huge sword, which is appropriately named Excalibur. Besides making Dark the king of England, Excalibur also transforms even further into some kind of super-duper overcharge extra-mode stuff. When he's not swinging it through aliens or pirates, Excalibur can serve as Dark's cool flying surfboard. Unicorn also turns into armor with a big lance, but it's really not that exciting.

Regrets: Unicorn is a bit fragile in certain areas, but Excalibur makes up for all of that.

HIGH-END FIGURES

These are the figures I spent more money than usual on. There's three parts to this one.

MICROMAN

Microman is kind of the G.I. Joe of Japan. In fact his origins can be traced to G.I. Joe, but because of Japan's famous lack of space he got shrunk to the 3'' or so that he is now. He's been around since the middle 70s, and since then has enjoyed bumpy success. In the current days Microman has been revived more for collectors, and now has something like 4,000 points of articulation and usually comes with 45,000 tiny accessories. They also tend to come with a ton of extra hands.

In the first picture, from left to right, we have Military Force "Techno Wave," who is a robot with very interchangeable and shiny weapons; Microsister El, the leader of the Microsisters who is armed with very feminine accessories; and finally Acroyear Xado's Acromuzan. Acromuzan is the lone villain from the trio. These are the kind of figures who look cool even if they're just sprawling on the floor, and it seems like even if you just haphazardly move their limbs around they still somehow end up in a martial arts pose. Except El, she just looks more and more like she needs to be rescued by strong, masculine arms.

Regrets: None.

HYBRID STYLE CONVOY

I don't know what makes him a Hybrid, but this is, quite simply, the best Optimus Prime ever made. He's very, very small, but he actually comes with more stuff, weapons, and features than the much more high-falootin' 20th Anniversary Prime, often considered to be the cream of the crop. He has everything a Prime needs and more, including die-cast metal parts and rubber tires, and cost a very reasonable 4000 yen (about $40). He doesn't do windows, though.

Regrets: No.

GUNDAM FIX FIGURATION

FIX Figuration is probably the highest-end kinda Gundam figure you can get without going over to Model Kits. The deal with these figures is they usually come with an insane amount of accessories, in fact they come with so many accessories that they can be assembled into a completely different Gundam if your fingers are feeling up to it. Mine weren't, so I left this Gundam NT-1 in the package for this photo shoot. I've removed it and played with it, but the tips of my fingers were raw for days. Just so you can see, here is NT-1 "Alex" and here is what it turns into after a few hours of tweaking and armor-shifting (both pictures from the back of the box).

Regrets: FIX Alex is almost too high end for me. I like my figures to at least have a little play value, but this one falls apart at the merest mention of "battle damage." Still, it does look good on its little white stand.

OTHER

Not too much to be put here, I did buy a couple of
souvenir chopstick sets from the Daibutsu and Mount Fuji, respectively; as well as that whole Famicom thing. I think I'll save the latter for another entry, as this one has gone long enough already. So, until next time, sayonara from the SWAGMAN.

And the comic makes its return.

New Look! Same Great? Taste!

2006-07-17T22:14:00.000-04:00

I suppose you could say I grew out of Xanga. The perks of using Blogspot:

-It's a real (?) blog
-It pretty much looks better
-Everyone can (and should) comment
-I feel profeshyonul

I'm going to try to make it my new home. Since I'm not in Japan anymore, entries aren't going to come quite so easily but I'd like to keep it interesting. I'm near Washington DC now, so I'm sure I'll be able to make some reports on that before Harding claims me again, and when I'm there...well, we'll see.

For now I've got a few things here and there to talk about. First, direct your faithful attention to the right side and under the profile stuff you'll see some thingies which you can click and which will take you elsewheres. Let me just tell you what those are.

Under "influences" are some blogs and funny stuff which invigorate my imagination and take up time when I'm supposed to be doing other things. What they're about:

-Shortpacked: The world of Webcomics is a dark and angsty place, but sometimes you come across gems like this. This one is about a toy collector who works in a toy store, and four or five other people who work with him. It's not for everyone, but I think it's fair to say I'm addicted to it.

-X-Entertainment: Not what it sounds like. Actually it's a site which seems to be a blog, but also seems to have existed since before anyone knew what a blog was. This one guy writes about just about anything and makes it interesting, but most of it has to do with 80s-type nostalgia.

-The Comics Curmudgeon: A blog wherein a man named Josh critiques (hysterically) many of the oddball comics found in the newspaper. And you were wondering who actually reads "Mary Worth."

-Homestarrunner: The best internet cartoon that ever was and probably ever will be. People either love it or hate it. Obviously, I love it.

And below that, under "Favorite Haunts," you will find:

-For Video Games: I play a lot of Video Games which were taught in the Old School, and Digitpress is a website where these oldschoolers go to chat, vent, and do business. It's a lot less annoying than Gamefaqs, and a lot more personable than most other game sites.

-For Transformers: I collect them, so I go here for news. They seem to be pretty fast when it comes to reporting. Did you know there's a live-action movie coming out?

-For Movies: The IMDB. Useful for any kind of cold, hard data you need on any movie or actor or director or key grip from any movie from any country anytime. Somebody works really hard on this site.

-For Everything Else: Wikipedia is the greatest thing to ever happen to the internet.

-My Old Blog: The Xanga which many of you have hopefully been linked from. Gone, but not forgotten.

Finally, I dutifully took a couple pictures of my new home area. Care to see?

Here's my new neighborhood. The houses here were built just after World War II for returning soldiers, and originally were all exactly alike, but now most of them have been at least somewhat modified, some are nearly 100% different.

Since we live near Washington, it's obligatory that streets are named after presidents or important people in US history.

Finally, here is our new house, at 2930 Stuart drive. I think it's probably my favorite of the five houses I've lived in over my life, being not the biggest nor most beautiful, but definitely the most practical. I'd give it a blow-by-blow comparison with my other houses, but that doesn't sound like too much fun.

I don't think you can expect to see a new entry every day, but I'm currently scouring my brain for things about which to write, and some of those things may include video games, movies, or toys. I fear that may alienate some of the ten-summat people that read my previous journal, but I'll try to make it interesting for them too.

Also, I'm still recovering from Jet Lag and Laziness following my trip, so you're getting off without a comic this time. They'll be back, though! Yes!! Comments!!

2006-07-17T17:17:00.000-04:00

Testing this thing.