Lately I’ve been listening to a podcast called Welcome to Mars which is actually a 12 part radio series that some guy produced for some station. Between 1947 and 1959, the future was written about, discussed and analysed with such confidence that it became a tangible presence. This is a story of weird science, strange events and even stranger beliefs, set in an age when the possibilities for human development seemed almost limitless.
Subscribe to that podcast here. I’ve only got a couple more episodes to listen to. I still listen to lots of podcasts, but I’m too lazy to post names or links to any of them. I need to update my list in the sidebar.
On Saturday I went on a hike with some people, which included finding a few Geocaches. One was in a tree, about 12 feet up, so you had to climb it to retrieve the logbook. I was happy that Holly did that so I didn’t have to. Another one was inaccessible because of overgrown thorns and brush. And the 3rd was the coolest Geocache I’ve ever seen. You had to pop the cap off of an aluminum fence post, then pull on a bolt that was stuck in the side of it. The bolt was attached to a long piece of wire, which pulled a pole up through the post, knocking the cache out of the top. It was like something you’d see in the Goonies. I took a video of it and I’ll post that on here later if it doesn’t suck.
Today I spent most of my day in Portland. I ate a lot of Pez. Caught up with some really old friends on Myspace.
I heard from the Geocaching group today that our picture was in the paper for the Target thing, so I went to 7-Eleven this morning and picked up a newspaper. They only photographed the side that we weren’t standing on, but it was still kind of cool. At the same time, it seems like getting featured in the paper defeats the purpose of being mysterious flash mobbers since it tells everyone who we are and why we did it. A scan of the paper can be viewed in my previous post.
I rarely buy a newspaper anymore since I get all my news and entertainment from blogs now. But while reading the paper this morning I was reminded that Albany had a Veterans days parade, so I took the kids to that. The Albany paper recently started up an online edition of their paper, but to get access to it you have to subscribe to the paper version too. How stupid is that? I’d really like to read the local paper, but only if it’s on the computer. (They have a website, of course, but it mostly just has the front page headlines.)
So I’m thinking of asking on Craigslist if anyone wants to give me access to the online portion of their subscription if I can pay them for half of the paper or something like that. Either that or just subscribing to the paper and throwing it in the trash every day. Or maybe I could pick a random subscriber of the paper and secretly set up an online account for them. Maybe I could subscribe but give them some random person’s address. Geez, why can’t they just sell web-only subscriptions?
The parade was a standard Veterans Day parade. After about 30 minutes of standing and watching it, we decided to join in so we got behind a Christian school group and walked with them for about 7 blocks. The kids both threw all the candy they’d gotten from other parade people back out to the crowds. Payton saw quite a few people he knew from school along the way. We stopped at Big Town Hero for lunch, then, 30 minutes later, the parade was still going on so we got back into it and continued along the route until we were just a few blocks from our car.
A few weeks ago while on a hike with the kids and a few others from the hiking group, I met a guy who was involved with an area Geocaching group so I joined it a few days later. Turns out, these people pull occasional flash mobs in Albany and Corvallis with a surprisingly large turnout. On Saturday morning, me, Payton and Spessa’s kids drove to Target to cheer for shoppers coming to the doors, as if they were winning a race. They had a finish line banner for them to break through and there were a few signs that people were holding. I was going to make some posterboard signs, but instead I decided to whip up these buttons to hand out to the winners:
Here’s a picture of the flash mob crowd several minutes before the event started:
This is us, lined up on either sides of the doors, waiting for the next victim:
And here’s a father, running towards the finish line with his son in his hands, thankfully not tripping and falling on the way:
I managed to get a parking spot close to Target so I could point my camera out the window of my car as the event happened. I also tuned my scanner to Target’s frequencies, hoping to hear employees talking about us, but I only heard one thing which I think was related to us and it wasn’t that hilarious. I had a digital recorder with me to record the sound up close.
Even though I told the other guy with the camera that I was videotaping from the back of my car, which I pointed out to him, he decided to stand directly in front of my window for most of the flash mob, rendering my already spotty video even crappier. If I’d known there would be such a large turnout (at least 40 people) for this event, I would have just held my camera with me since I’d probably be unnoticed in the middle of the crowd. I was only expecting maybe a dozen of us to show up. Here’s my video:
Everyone had a really great time with this. Most of the customers entering the store seemed to think it was hilarious. A lot of them ran through the crowd, reveling in the cheers, raising their arms in victory and breaking through our finish line. Some took pictures. Others were too shy to deal with large crowds screaming at them, so they went to the side of us instead.
I was really hoping for some conflict with mall security, Target managers and/or the police. Especially the security guy that works at Target who doubles as their floor sweeper. I would have been thrilled to have been asked to leave by any of those people. But only the Target manager came out near the beginning, asking who was in charge and what we were doing. I told her corporate said it was okay, but she ignored me. After a couple minutes of questioning us, she smiled as she ran through the finish line and back into Target as we all cheered for her. For the rest of the event, quite a few Target employees gathered at the doors to watch us from inside.
Fifteen minutes later, we quit on our own. It’s too bad we couldn’t have continued for another 15 minutes, but I guess the organizers wanted to keep it short to lessen the chance of us getting on everyone’s nerves and/or getting thrown off the premises. It was a great time and I can’t wait for the next one.
11/11/2008 EDIT: A picture of the mob was in yesterday’s newspaper with a short paragraph about the event. This seems counterproductive to a flash mob. Isn’t the point to weird people out without them ever knowing who you are? Here’s the picture, click it to enlarge:
Later that day, the Spessas and I took the kids to the Wunderland, which is a nickle arcade in Salem. They left this afternoon, and I took Emily and Payton to Springfield with me since I needed to visit Best Buy. While we were there we saw Madagascar at the theater. It’s a movie I didn’t necessarily want to see, but I still enjoyed it a lot.
On the way out of Best Buy, the security alarm went off. I did what I always do in this situation – I yelled to the kids, “RUN!!!” and I bolted out the door. I was hoping for a chase, but it never happens. The only place I’ve ever been chased was at Wal-Mart where the old lady at the door walked after me (running would have been too strenuous on her) saying, “Sir? Sir? Please come back!” (By the way, I wasn’t shoplifting at Best Buy. They just forgot to deactivate my tag since I bought it from the return desk.)
On Friday afternoon I came home and decided to check my mailbox which is out on the sidewalk. I rarely check it since all my mail goes to my PO Box, and it was filled with a huge pile of junk mail as usual. As I was opening the box I spotted 4 young men in suits getting out of their car. Mormons! I had one of those movie moments where I’m frantically trying to get the key into the lock to escape the impending conversation. I wasn’t quick enough, though. As I pulled my junk mail out one of them walks up and cheerfully says, “Hi there!”
“Hey.”
“That’s sure a lot of mail you’ve got there!”
“Yep.”
“How are you doing today?”
“I really don’t want to talk to you. Bye!”
“Do you know of anyone who might need help from us?” he asked as I turned to leave.
I quickly walk back to my house. As I shut my door I turn to notice that they didn’t see which apartment I went into. A minute later I watch as two of them begin knocking on every door in the complex. The other two, I assume, went into the other neighborhood.
So I did what any other normal person would do. I took off my pants, put on the weirdest pair of boxers I own (red ants all over them) and grabbed my video camera. When they knocked I ran down the stairs, quickly shoved my cat into a closet to keep him from running out the door, flung open the door and screamed, “I am the true lord of the dance! No matter what those idiots at work say!” and then I slammed the door on them. I videotaped it all, of course, and you can click here to see the video.
It’s hard to see their expressions in the YouTube video, so here’s a frame capture from the DV version.
I’ll leave it up to the viewers to decide what emotion the one on the right is feeling. I like to think terror, but it’s probably more like WTF. WTF is an emotion, right? I went upstairs to my open window afterwards and listened to them for several minutes while they giggled about me. I was surprised to hear one of them repeat what I said to them verbatim. I wonder if they visited any of my other neighbors afterwards and asked them about “the weird guy.”
If you’re wondering why I shouted what I did, you should listen to this song, especially around the 30 second mark. Well, I guess that doesn’t explain why really, but at least you know what the reference is from.
I normally don’t announce to everyone that it’s my birthday since I’m an adult and shouldn’t care that it’s my birthday, but there’s no way around it this year because I have to post this roadsign that the Spessas hacked for me. They sent this to me last night on my cell phone and I LOLed.
Spessa has been showing no mercy to roadside construction signs lately, as you can see in the latesttwo entries on signhacker.com.
For my birthday, I bought myself The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts which are the original 3 manuscript drafts of Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger. He died before he completed it, but it’s still the best thing he ever wrote. I would love for them to make a movie out of this book. It could have so many cool visuals. (This disturbing video on YouTube shows a smart part of it in 80’s claymation.)
I also bought a recliner for the living room a few days ago and I’m going to pretend that it was also a birthday present from myself. It’s another piece of furniture that I’ve been putting off buying for the past two years as I try to find the perfect chair on Craigslist. This one is pretty close to perfect and it was crazy-cheap. It mismatches the rest of my ratty old furniture perfectly.
I watched the Obama’s acceptance speech on hulu.com today. It’s the first time I’ve heard him speak and the first time I’ve seen his family. I think it’s cool that most everyone seems to be so excited about him. Was anyone excited about Bush 8 years ago? I think I remember everyone hating Bush until 9/11 happened and then we were required to like him in order to consider ourselves patriotic. Anyway, I’m not excited about Obama. I just have a hard time caring. I do hope he does interesting things, though, since I’m in it solely for the entertainment value.
It’s not that I’m too lazy to vote. It’s that I’m too lazy to follow the candidates and know what their issues are. I didn’t watch a single debate this year. Or in 2004, or in 2000, or ever. I don’t even know what Obama or McCain sound like. I couldn’t tell you a fact about either of them. Even though I read blogs nonstop all day, I’ve quickly skipped over all the entries relating to the election this year. I haven’t even watched a single parody of Sarah Palin or any of the others. My vote would be meaningless since I know absolutely nothing about any of them.
I probably would have voted Obama today, just to shake things up a bit because he’s black. And because Obama doesn’t look like a grouchy old man. I’m tired of grouchy old men in the white house. In 1992, I would have voted Clinton because he was younger and had cool hair. I wouldn’t have voted for either of the Bushes because they look old and crotchety. See why I shouldn’t vote? My votes are based soley on looks and age, not issues. I think democracy is great and America is awesome, but I’m just glad everyone else is so into voting so I don’t have to be. Thanks, people who voted today!
9:27PM UPDATE: Obama won. See? My vote didn’t matter!
9:53 UPDATE: Ugh, does every single blog I subscribe to have to inform us that Obama is president?
Also, Spessa is certain that her Obama sticker campaigns (here and here) were solely responsible for the election results. Way to go, Spessa!
Payton is Mario, Emily is Patrick (from Spongebob) and our neighbor is a sumo wrestler. I’m proud of two details on their costumes. One is the M on Payton’s Mario hat, which I cut out of felt and sewed on. I had to buy the hat for $15 from Amazon. The other is Emily’s Chumbucket nametag, which Patrick worked at for a short time. It helps identify her costume since a lot of people don’t notice who she is.
We went to the House of Fear in Albany this evening, which is some guy’s house which he converts into a haunted house each year for people to walk through. It was pretty neat and it looks like they put a ton of work into it. That’s the only haunted house we did this year. I waited til the last minute to do some others and we missed them.
Went trick-or-treating this evening in our neighborhood for about 2 hours. Payton kept telling everyone that our sumo wrestler neighbor needed extra candy since he was so fat and had more to fill up. A lot of them actually gave extra candy for the effort, but one grouchy lady said, “You only get TWO each!”
A couple days ago I went on a midnightish walk where I ended up at the park and I decided to go into the woods and cross into the other neighborhood. It’s pretty scary in there when it’s so dark and quiet. Animals kept jumping away as I walked by them. Probably rabbits, but they sounded big.
My weekend plans will either be awesome or land me in jail. Either way should be interesting.
Last week I was chatting with John Sever (you may have heard of him, he’s very famous) and he mentioned a book that he really likes called A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny which is some kind of Jack the Ripper book. Since I haven’t read a book in months now, I decided to give it a try and reserved a copy on the library website, not realizing that I’d actually reserved a copy of the nearly identical titled, Night in the Lonesome October by Richard Laymon.
I picked it up the next day and it lay around my house for a week. Yesterday morning I finally got a chance to start it and I couldn’t put it down. I read it all day yesterday in between activities with the kids and finished it around 1am. Occasionally I would pause and wonder what it had to do with Jack the Ripper. This book was about a guy who went for late-night walks through neighborhoods and began stalking a girl, peeping in windows and going into peoples’ houses. There were bridge trolls, rape, murder, bludgeoning, stabbing, kidnapping, chasing after crazy old ladies on bikes, etc. I thought it was supposed to be Jack the Ripper: The College Years or something. It was a great book, though, and I’m really glad I made the mistake. Thanks for accidentally making me read this, John! Now I need to go pick up the Roger Zelazny version.
Speaking of books, I’m attempting to use Amazon’s Your Media Library to catalog books that I own or like. I’m still not sure I like it, especially since it requires others to log in to view it. Maybe I should just catalog my books/movies/music on my own website.
Yesterday I read that book all day, but we still managed to do a lot of other things. We went Geocaching in the morning and found two geocaches fairly easily. Then we went to the mall to return something at Target and had lunch in the food court. We stopped by the pottery place in downtown and picked up the plates that we painted earlier this week. Here’s what they look like:
Emily’s is the one with food drawn on it, Payton’s is a depiction of the video game N+ and mine is supposed to look broken. These plates were crazy-expensive! I was expecting them to cost maybe $8 – $10 and they ended up being $20 each. Quite a bit more pricey than the mismatched plates I currently use, which I got for free from Craigslist. It’s going to hurt if one breaks.
After going back home for a couple hours, we drove back to downtown Albany at 6:30 and attended a free magic show at the Venetian Theater. And man, did we get what we paid for! Actually it was a good, fun show. I guess as an adult I’m bored with magic since I’ve seen every possible trick that can be done about a million times now. After that we came back home and I read my book nonstop until it was finished.
I can’t really think of any other notable things that have happened this week. Last Saturday and Sunday I didn’t have the kids so I spent most of one of those days in downtown Salem, writing on the laptop. Mostly in the Blue Pepper internet cafe and a few hours in the mall food court where I had lunch.
Today we may or may not: find a haunted house to visit, go to Salem to buy Emily curtains for her room, go geocaching, go on a bike ride, or just sit around the house all day staring into various LCD screens.
Last week my son mentioned that he’d never seen Roger Rabbit so I ordered it from Netflix and we watched it tonight. Man, I’d forgotten what an unimaginative piece of crap that movie was. It tried way too hard. Disney pretending they’re Warner Bros. Sure, it was neat with all the live action combined with animation, but ugh. The scene in the theater where Roger Rabbit was going on about Goofy’s brilliant performance in the cartoon they were watching was sickening. “What brilliant comedic timing!” he yells. Disney cartoon shorts were the lamest, unfunniest shit ever. They all had stupid voices and tried to pass off the dumbest crap as comedy. Did people in the 1950’s actually think Mickey was awesome? I can’t believe Warner Bros. agreed to have their amazing characters alongside all that Disney crap. What a horrible blow for the 80’s.
I’ve done a lot of stuff lately, but I can’t seem to remember much of it. This evening the kids and I went on a hike with the hiking group, then had pizza at Woodstocks. There were about 7 of us total on the hike. At the top of the hike we were all just kind of hanging around and a guy was looking on his iPhone and mentioning that there was a Geocache up here. I said, “Oh really, let’s find it!” and he said that his dumb, useless iPhone doesn’t even have GPS so we couldn’t. Only he didn’t insult his iPhone like I did there. I said, “Well my Blackberry does because it’s about a billion times more awesome than your stupid phone that can’t even cut and paste text. Give me the coordinates.”
So he started reading the coordinates to me and I was typing them in. And before my GPS could even lock in, my kids emerged from a group of trees with a plastic container yelling, “We found it!” I guess it was hidden in a pretty obvious spot. They sure know how to take the fun out of a Geocache though!
Yesterday we saw City of Ember at the Pix theater. I don’t know how that theater stays in business. It was opening weekend for that movie and there were only 20 people in there. And that’s the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen there. I’ve spent the last week moving all my websites to a new server, which I think I finished today. I vacuumed a lot today and the kids cleaned their rooms. I know there was more. Dang memory. I’m going to bed.
Oh wait, I got a funny message on YouTube today. It’s from some girl named Ashley and she says, “I know you killed JonBenet Ramsey. Everything Richard said was right. I may be young at age 14, but I already have even more evidence pointing to you than Richard does. I know what I’m doing and you WILL pay for hurting this little girl and i will make sure of that if it’s the last thing I do.”
I replied with, “Shut up, bitch, or you’re next! Just kidding. I hope you’re more competent with your investigative skills than Richard is, though.” And I just now noticed her response. “trust me…I am a thousand times more competent…..is that a confession? did you really do this? please just tell me I won’t like turn you in or anything I’m 14. nobody would believe me anyway…and the Boulder police are complete dumbasses so even if i knew who killed jonbenet I wouldnt tell them because they’re retarted.”
I’m not sure what I’ll write back to her. If anyone’s forgotten, last February I found out some nutcase was claiming I was involved in the murder of Jonbenet Ramsey. Which I suppose I should point out isn’t true. I got an email from some other guy on YouTube last month asking if I was the guy they were talking about. I wrote back, “Yep, I’m the one he’s talking about. My friends and I have nothing to do with Jonbenet though. Richard Cardo is a nutcase.” I actually love Richard Cardo for making my life more interesting though.
I’ve never been a fan of fat wallets. I like something slim, that I don’t even notice in my back pocket. My wallet has almost always been one of those 2-panel deals, where one side is a clear window for my drivers license and the other side is for my few debit cards, library card, membership cards, and whatever else. I don’t keep receipts, pictures or cash in my wallet just because I don’t like the thickness all that stuff creates.
Every once in awhile I go through it and throw out the membership cards that I don’t use that much, to keep the bulk down. The unfortunate side effect of this is not having certain membership cards when I need them. Like earlier this year when I bought 3 used games for Emily’s birthday at Gamestop, my Gamestop card would have given me a free game. Luckily the Gamestop guy was nice enough to let me use his own card that time. I hate the very idea that I have to carry a card with me to get discounts like that. Like at Albertsons, I can save $10 – $20 per trip by having my card with me. Why can’t they just make it that cheap for everyone so my keychain isn’t loaded down with membership cards?
I finally decided to try something that I read about in a blog earlier this year. I scanned all of my barcoded membership cards into the computer, edited them into a nice looking 320 x 240 JPG, and put them in my cell phone. Now when they ask for my card, I can have them scan my cell phone screen. Here’s what they look like on my cell phone.
I pixelated portions of the barcodes on these images, in hopes of keeping you stalkers from giving me reward points at Fred Meyer. The scanners are able to scan these cards just as well as they can scan a laminated card. Now all I have to deal with is the weird looks people give me when I hand them a phone to scan instead of a card. So far I haven’t been turned away by a rogue employee enforcing a new “no cell phone membership cards” policy, but I’m sure that’ll happen if I give it enough time.
I put all the card images in a folder on my phone called “Wallet Cards” so it’s easy to quickly pull them up while I’m waiting in line. Another thing I’ve always done to enhance my thin wallet lifestyle is keep pictures of my kids in the cell phone too. So if I feel inclined to show off pictures of my kids (or myself, posing with MC Frontalot) I can pull them up on my cell phone instead of digging through a giant wallet for them.
I think this is something that could work on almost any phone. I’m not sure how well a scanner could pick up on one of those tiny screen cell phones, but it’s worth a try. You probably don’t even need to be as fancy as me about it – just snap a picture of your barcode with the phone’s camera and that would probably work just as well.
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/17081126155022016204 is my page of shared blog entries. I read blogs all day, so that’s the stuff I deem worthy of sharing with other people. Some of it I share for the sole purpose of showing to my kids when they get home from school, but it’s mostly just cool/funny stuff. Does anyone else here have any shared blog pages? I’m always interested in new stuff to read, so post your shared page or your favorite blog links in the comments here.
For the past 2 weeks I’ve had the innards of the October 2008 Esquire e-ink display sitting on my desk, blinking at me. Yesterday I got sick enough of the blinking to just try and destroy the display. Instead of doing something sensible, like putting it up on a shelf where I can’t see it. Here are the results:
