Smallhouse Log

Less than a month until I'm back in Chicago

I just met a kid named Micah, one of the founders of DAMN. He's a pretty inspiring guy. He does what I used to want to do, the free life, but he does it with direction.

I swear I just saw someone tune a mixing bowl.

All this is happening during the third annual SauceStock music festival, hosted by the rockin' Todd Lerew and the beautiful Karly. Many of the newer, younger local bands were better than I expected. The cops have only shown up once so far. One of the out-of-town bands sucked so much I can't be bothered to remember their name. I think they were from Nebraska. They wore eye make-up, and before their set they kept trying to start violent, two-person mosh pits. No one appreciated the effort.

I think Witness is ready to play now, so I'm going to go.

Wedthu
"Let's see if you can knock me out by hitting me in the back of the head." -Landon, 08/04/2004

Ok, first, I love this song, and I haven't listened to it in so long, because my CD-ROM drive drive was brokeded. "Love will never comfort you."

Oh, yeah, the song is "You'd Build a Robot" by Biscayne. I got it off Mitch forever ago; it's gotta be one of the first songs I ever downloaded.

So I had a fun night, and my neck is very tired. First event: Server meeting. We won an award, which can only really be described as a 'Pineapple of Cleanliness'. Later, I went to this concert. Five bands originally on the ticket: locals LAW, Witness, and En Memoria; joining them, two touring bands whose names I don't care about enough now to look up or remember. LAW and one touring band dropped out in advance. The other touring band was a no-show, but the weirdest one I've ever seen. They unloaded their equipment into the basement, left to find a hotel, and never came back. For four hours. The concert was billed at five, planned for five-thirty, and actually got started near six. I counted about seventeen (not including either band or their girlfriends) during En Memoria's set, and there were more for Witness. En Memoria was alright. Better than Chronic Mass, to be sure. Witness played all newer stuff, but they were still the same band. Peter broke strings. They told stories of their wacky adventures on tour. Peter tried to play hanging upside-down from the beams, and fell on his head, all in the middle of a song. There was much headbanging. Nothing was lit on fire, however.

After that, everyone hung around waiting to see if the other band would show up. We gave them until nine, but no luck. There was talk of a plan to go swimming at Wall Lake afterwards. In the meantime, a game was developed in which two people took turns whacking each other in the backside with large wooden planks. The resulting welts were impressive. Then we went swimming. Most people kept some manner of clothing on, but Will, the guy who gave me a ride, chose to discard all of his, and even did the 'truffle shuffle' under a street lamp at a passing car. We were all there maybe half an hour, and then we decided to jet before the cops came.

My family seemed to accept at face value that I had gone swimming in a lake in my underwear with semi-random people. I put on a dry pair of boxers, and headed over to hang out with Josh and his buddies like I had promised. It was the first time I had ever done table-top roleplaying, and it was pretty fun. I stole one car and helped steal three others, hung out in TJ, and killed a vampire with a sawed-off shotgun. Well, incapacitated. Then we muffified him with duct tape and dropped him in the Missouri. We didn't know he was a vampire, after all. Do you have any idea how hard it is to sell stolen cars when the only persons who can afford to buy them all seem to be vampires? It's annoying, man. My character, incidentally, loves nachos, is a lunatic, and has a crippling fear of women. It made for good times.

And then I biked home, thinking about what delicious stories of adventure I would include in my letter to Leah. Shoe Saga. It's totally the Shoe Saga. And that time we snuck out to Golden Wall. Or when I broke my leg. Or got my arm slashed open. And probably some of my dad's crazy antics.

He meant "with that board". I guess it was better if you were there.

Montue
"Neitsche says when you stare into the abyss long of enough the abyss looks back, but when I look into the abyss I thinks its plotting against me because it may think I taste good with special sauce." -HS, pd

It's hard to be vegan in summer. Especially in SD, which is why I don't even try. I'm doing the vegetarian thing, though. Mostly.

So these three chicks come into the resteraunt the other night, they all get Boca Burgers. One of them really has a voice. They came back tonight, Brandee waits on them. She notices one wearing a 'go vegan' shirt. Again, they all order bocas, but she informs them of something I thought all vegans already knew: Boca burder has cheese (which is non-vegan-speak for "Dead-baby-cows-style-unltimate-evil") in it. Uh oh! So they don't get them. But I mean, seriously, who comes to Denny's to try and eat vegan? What are you gonna get, a baked potato and dry rye toast with a side salad? Maybe some oatmeal? Then again, SF isn't noted for its abundance of vegan -or even vegetarian, grumblegrumble- resteraunts. Oh, ah.

Oh, yeah, and how's this for Jesus Muffins, yo?

Sunmon
"How did you know I had no pants?" -Lorange, pd

Check this out. I should've given him the other name. He had me move my hand so "PEN 15" wouldn't be visible, but it's there, and man did I laugh seeing it.

But this still pisses me off. Not only do they put my alias next to my name in print, but they spell my name wrong. But worst of all, they misquote me. And it's not like they misheard me, either: It was a freakin' e-mail interview! How do they just drop the P out of Atlasphere? It doesn't even make sense as they have it. I mean, really!

Interestingly enough, the top result googling for 'Ian Huisken' has nothing to do with me, though the following several all do. Crazy times.

Thufri
"Met someone at a dogshow; she was holding my left arm. Everyone was acting normal so I tried to look non-chalant." -'She's an Angel' by They Might Be Giants

Here's my case: I'm all for fighting the undead, except when it comes at the expense of swashbuckling. This is why Pirates of the Carribean is not, despite what the title may have you think, so very much a pirate movie, or at least not a good one. (A note: No movie with Johnny Depp is ever a bad movie, and I think it would be a decent movie even aside from his contribution, but not a good pirate movie. Dig?) This is so much the case that I think a title such as 'Revenge Epic and Voyage of Self-Discovery in the Carribean' might be more appropriate, if a bit cumbersome.

Now I grant you, The Pirates of Penzance is not so very much a pirate movie either, but far more so than the above title, even though it lacks a sea battle/ship boarding scene. For starters, there exist no overt elements of the supernatural. Secondly, the crew is more pirate than they are anything else, as opposed to the two crews in the other movie, one of which is more evil than anything else, and the other of which is more a collection of characters that are, frankly, a bit too colourful. Thirdly, a pirate movie is generally about either agents of order trying to vanquish troublesome pirates, or about greedy pirates trying to acquire treasure. The latter film fits in the former category; the former film insufficiently fits either. Fourthy, Pirates of the Carribean contains not nearly enough singing, even if one considers Pirates of Penzance to contain, as some do, too much. Pirates, by nature, are musical people. Everyone knows this. Fifthly, no CG. Sixthly, obviously fake parrot > monkey, in terms of pirate movie authenticity, anyway (not to be confused with actual pirate authenticity). And that's just six reasons why Pirates of Penzance is a better pirate movie than Pirates of the Carribean. When one considers other prime pirate movie elements, as can be observed in Roman Polanski's Pirates or Treasure Island (even, I may add, the Muppet version), such as wanton murder, being set adrift on a raft, or ships set blazingly on fire, not to mention such nearly essential occurances as a burial at sea, digging for treasure, and at least one really good backstabbing, all of which are absent from Pirates of the Carribean.... well, you get my point.

And that self-discovery thing was sooooo very much a Treasure Island rip-off, too.

The second Wedthu after that

No quote. Either people haven't said anything funny, or I didn't write it down. Oh, well.

I don't often do this, but I recently saw one of those things -I believe the young folk call them 'memes'- that demanded my attention and respect, not to mention my curiousity. I therefore wish to replicate it myself. The procedure is as such: One says twenty things, in collected written form, to unaddressed persons. Observe.

  • I started because I was paranoid. I still do it becaue I'm paranoid. It hasn't helped, I know, because I'm even more paranoid. Then again, maybe I'd be worse without it. You don't have to follow it if you don't want to.
  • Grow up. Seriously. I know, I didn't want to, either, but you can't act like a kid forever. I'm not saying you should ditch your playfulness, but how about taking on some responsibility, at the very least for your conduct and extravagances. I love you, but you disgust me sometimes.
  • I still love you, even though you screwed me over. Get help.
  • I still love you. You fractured my heart so badly that whenever I think of heart break, I think of you, and I will never think of you the same way again. In that regard, I've sworn you off. But you're still my friend, and I'll always love you for that, because whether you'd admit it or not, you need me to.
  • I find I don't still love you. I was bitter for a long time, longer than I like. I thought I was stronger than that. I still hope you're happy, and I don't regret loving you, even if I do regret some of the ways I acted toward you when I did. Moreover, I've come to realize it wasn't all my fault.
  • I hear you got married. I wish we had kept in touch. If you were ever to stop by, I would still let you crash with me, for old time's sake.
  • I wish I could make eveything right for you. I don't know how you slog through all your problems like you do, but I'm proud to be your friend.
  • You jerk. You shouldn't be having sex with her. This whole things seems almost like it's just so that you can be having sex with her. It's disgusting. I'll try not to be unsupportive in public, because we're friends, but I don't think this will work out well for anyone.
  • I'm sorry I never made it to your wedding. I wish I could've given your key back; it just sits around, haunting me.
  • When I met you, I never though I would look up to you like I do. I don't think I can fill your shoes.
  • Any time you wanted to, you could've seduced me, and I would've fallen. Thank you for not doing so.
  • You could make me do almost anything, but I don't know if I trust you yet, and so you scare me.
  • I dropped that class mostly because I was lazy. I'm sorry.
  • You're not like I remember. I was only gone nine months, but we must have grown apart. You never seemed so flighty before.
  • You're one of my best friends, but everyone knows you're an ass to women. You'll never have a solid relationship until you treat them with respect.
  • I wish I were a closer friend to you. It seems like we haven't talked in forever, and yet I owe so much to you. I owe these very words to you, and I've never been able to figure out how to pay you back. I hope, at least, that I was good for a few smiles.
  • I wish I had better grades, too, but that's not how it broke down, and I wish you'd stop talking about it.
  • I still think you're an asshole, and have done so since before I even really knew what an asshole was. I'll continue to avoid you in public, and I've always hated the way you suck up to your betters and then take cheap shots at people whenever you can get away with it.
  • I was attracted to you since the second time I met you, and even though I don't really care anymore, it was a shock to find out that you were doubly out of reach.
  • You stopped being funny as soon as you acquired power to act on those bizarre notions you have. You were just as unfit for that position as I was. Neither of us should ever have applied. I hope they continue to keep you in check, or I fear for the future of something I love.

In other news, Shavon's wedding is this weekend. I haven't recieved an invitation, which is somewhat hurtful, but I can understand that she would need to keep it small. Alternately, she just doesn't know how to get ahold of me. In either case, I've already wished her the best, and I work this weekend anyway.

Also, my family recently returned from a nice vacation in the Black Hills, where we camped and cycled the Mickelson Trail. We still, to my disappointment, did not do the very southern leg of the 109 mile trail, leaving me with about 32 mi left to bike before I've done the whole thing. Some day, I mean to do it all at once. We also saw lots of random stuff, and I got to tinker with a coke machine. I now know how to a) get free pop from a locked machine and b)how to quickly remove all the money from an unlocked machine. Not that I would do so, mind you, but my fascination with both the mechanical and criminal arts demanded that I look into the matters while I had the opportunity.

Oh, yeah, and I acheived sunburn, which appears to have mellowed to a nice tan on my arms, and is still peeling off my face. Good times.

The second Tuewed after that
"If you want to take it personally, you can, but can I bum a cigarette?" -Jessi, 07/09

I type this from the safety of my parents' basement, on Dylan's new computer. Sweet Justice! Of course, as I understand it, he be leaving in a month, but hopefully, I'll have my new computer by then, too.

AND THEN I SHALL RULE THE WORLD!

Or not; I don't want to jack up the phone bill too much. But it'll be nice, and I don't have to stay up until 9:30 to go online. That's cool by me.

So this girl Shelley who worked overnight quit, and I'll hopefully be getting her hours, which would rock. Daylight, bah.

I'm losing my farmers' tan again, though. No good, no good.