and he's gonna cause trouble

ok, so in case you haven't noticed yet, the puffin is back, doing the 'blog thing again, and out of the gate, he's got a nice huge review of the new Sonic Youth album. it was only a matter of time, with the consistent badgering we (and others) were giving him to return, that he would do so. he's back now, so give him some linky-love, folks.

in other news, i'm still working on a design for my new musiced thing, and actually reaching a point that i'm fairly happy with. i've been rather frustrated by graphic design for years, always feeling that i was falling short of the type of stuff i'd like to be able to do. hopefully, i'm finally getting the hang of it. next design tasks–a new theme for bipolar, a redesign of coffeemonk.com (which hasn't been updated in… well, years. it'd be nice to come up with a new design for x:13 design proper, as well.

anyway, once the design for musiced is done, i'll start posting my reviews. in the meantime, anyone who wants to contribute to my musical education can of their most highly recommended albums. i can't guarantee that i'll buy & review everything (especially if the list ends up crazy long), money is, unfortunately, a factor. if you really want to get crazy and send me (legal) copies of your favorite albums, hell, i always accept bribes. ( for a mailing address.)

oh, and i'm fully moved into the new digs at work, bathing in natural light all day for the first time in a long time. i'm going to get the webcam set up again, so, once that's done you'll be able to catch some glimpses of me at work. (yeah, don't jump for joy all at once, folks.)

that's it for now. go visit puffin-a-go-go.

in order to get in at least one more post this week, i'm resorting to some good old-fashioned link throwing.

first of all, there's my co-worker's site: http://www.ae4rv.com
he's been creating flash-based games for a while now, and has several fun ones. his latest venture, and a very addictive game, is StarMonger… essentially a game of Risk in space. It's still a "beta" product, but well worth the visit, if you're into that sort of thing.

I pointed this one out to Nate yesterday, and he was loving it.

In turn, he passed on some links to me, most of which i noticed were from this directory. turns out, whoever this guy is, he's been hoarding humorous bits of internet arcana for quite a while now, and has quite an impressive collection. There's some horrendously funny stuff in there (i haven't gone through it all yet, though i was up for a couple extra hours last night busting a gut when i should have been sleeping) like this little gem. (warning, "this little gem" could be considered very tasteless & offensive)

y'know there's a reason i don't do a lot of linking to esoteric internet hole-in-the-walls. i pretty much figure that if i've heard of it, that it's been on MemePool or something similar like 2 months ago, and has been bouncing around internet mailing lists, message boards, and email forwarding chains for at least that long. in other words, i figure if i've seen it, you probably have too. if there's one thing that I and my fellow blogging compatriots are, it's link whores. so be it.

nevertheless, a post was needed, and a post has been made.

(oh, and i was supposed to post about the Dell Computer guy–from the commercials–getting fined by the Screen Actor's Guild for filming commercials during an actor's strike 2 years ago. unfortunately, the only link i could find to this bit of news was this one, which pretty much just sucks since it's only like 3 sentences. blah. "Dude, you're gettin' a fine." hehe, that's clever. grrrr. )

ok. i've really gotta get out of this place and get home. but before i do, i just had to post this little image that a co-worker whipped up for me (and several other co-workers). i tell ya, i just about died when i saw it.

he told me that there was a little flash app somewhere out there that was like the storTroopers thing, in that you can take all these South Parkish components and build your own characters. of course, he forgot what the link was. i'll try to find it a little later tonight and update this post, but if any of you industrious fucks decide that you wanna help daddy matt, feel free to include the link in a comment to this post (or in an email to me, whatever floats your boat.)

** update ** steve kurp was gracious enough to provide the link to the south park character builder for us. check his comment for a link to a powerpuff girls character builder.

er, well, how 'bout an easy way to look up the meaning of "life"? i've been working on a bookmarklet for dictionary.com word lookups (a bit on Friday, and a little more today), and have finally gotten the kinks worked out. since Microsoft refuses to do things according to established standards, i had a bugger of a time getting this thing to work in IE (had it up & running in Mozilla in about 5 minutes). but, it does work in both browsers now–and Netscape 4.75! oh, and if anyone is willing to test this on a Mac, please let me know how it works.

anyway, on to the thingy.

Lookup

to "install" this, just follow your normal routines for adding a link to your bookmarks/toolbar–either just drag it up there and drop it on your toolbar, or do the right-click "add bookmark" thing.

Now, the beauty of this beast is that you can (on a non-frames-based page–it won't work on bipolar…) use your mouse to select any word (or words) you like, click this bookmark, and voila!–a page pops up with the dictionary.com definition of the selected text.

enjoy!

*update*: of course, silly me did not think to check dictionary.com's site to see if they already had a bookmarklet, so, of course they do. but, on the bright side, mine is much more functional than theirs, so–nyah nyah!

plus, i've gone ahead and incorporated their little "enter a word to lookup" thing into mine, so now, if you don't select any text, you'll get a popup box asking you to input a word (this is great if you need to look up a word from a frames-based page). then, if you still don't enter a word (i.e. you hit "cancel") you won't be directed to the site at all… it'll be as if you never clicked the bookmark in the first place (except that you'll be a few seconds older). if anyone would rather have the option of still getting a dictionary.com window (even if you don't enter a word in the pop-up) let me know and i can fix it to do that as well.

if you grabbed the bookmark between 11:56 and 1:00 PM, be sure to grab it again, so you can enjoy the new functionality.

ok. i've now officially wasted enough time.

well, i've had enough "free" time the last couple days to get some of the photos–from the trip brian & i took to Romulus–scanned in and fiddled with, so i figured i'd post 'em here for you guys.

our intrepid romulan commander, brian, with his (self-described) "crazy brian beard."

the only pics i got of the actual show were a few of Hey Mercedes, and unfortunately most of 'em weren't that great… i really need to learn how to use that camera better before i go on trips like this. anyway, on to the photos.

and finally, just for fun, a shot from a recent photo shoot with the Lucifigous Prick mascot–Stupor The Skeleton. this is a rare action photo, capturing his innate vitality and charisma.

as brian promised last night, here are my semi-official seven questions with the seven-questions master himself…

for a while there, it seemed that you were going through a phase where you couldn't date a girl that lived less than 300+ miles away… was this in any way related to your recurring alien abductions?

i did have a problem where i'd start whacking it and then i'd wake up in the bed of some 17 year-old girl, somewhere in new hampshire or some other similarly ludicrous place. whether this has to do with alien abductions, secret government experiments in sexuality and space/time travel, or my own uncontrollable libido, i can't tell you.

speaking of aliens, if H.R. Giger were to feature your penis in a painting, in what situation would you like your penis to be placed?

remember those paintings he did of deborah harry? well…my penis should be involved in just about any deborah harry painting.

or involved with deborah harry, period.

assume you are a powerful telepath like Professor X, what would be your first action upon realizing your powers?

realizing? like what would probably happen that would cause me to realize i have these amazing powers? or i already know?
and what is the first act i perpetrate upon another living mind after discovering that i'm a super mack daddy telepath?

you become aware of your powers, what is your first action upon another human mind?

i would instantly transmit thoughts to all the beautiful women on earth, making them forget to wear clothes. then i would mess with the minds of authority and make them believe that this is perfectly okay.

either that or i would convince rachael leigh cook to have sex with me.

all the time.

and, speaking of rachael leigh cook…
If you were a zit somewhere on Rachael Leigh Cook's body, where would you be, and what would you want her to do about you?

i would like to be a nice sized zit on one of miss cook's breasts. i would like her to show her zit off to various people, trying to convince them that she has, in fact, grown a third nipple.

if you were sent to prison and made someone's bitch, what would you want your name to be?

definitely "crotchrot" or "crotch killa." this would, hopefully, head off any future "bitchmakings." i would also spread word around that i bite and that i keep razor blades stuffed up my ass.

ok. it's bottom of the ninth, two runners on, your team is down by two runs, the batter's at 3 & 1, you're the pitcher. as you check the runners you happen to glance into your team's dugout, where you see the aformentioned miss cook and lucy liu naked and beckoning you to forfeit the game and take them right there on the benches… exactly how long does it take you to drop the ball?

to be honest, my balls would be doing the opposite of dropping, if you catch my meaning. it really wouldn't be a matter of measurable time. i would toss the ball into the stands to my number one fan, wave to the crowd and stalk into the dugout to get my rock on.

if you could give one piece of advice based on your life experiences to children living in a post-apocalyptic world, what would it be?

hmmm…

how about…

don't believe all that shit your friends say. they haven't proved the exact content of soylent green yet. so eat up before i sell your little mutant asses.

[j. brian "the brain" hall posts like a fiend over there on the left side of bipolar and is a constant thorn in my side–always saying things to me like "post, damn you!", or "when are you going to fucking post!?" oh, and then there's that whole transmission3000.com thing that he kind of does on the side…]

while i'm here at work thinking about it, i should probably write the post i've been promising my co-worker i'd write for several months.

mainly it's to point you guys to his site www.ae4rv.com so you can go get your fun on. geoff has several nice flash games that he's been working on. the big daddy of his games is his (nearly) world-famous version of asteroids/lunar lander called Flashteroids. it's a pretty complex little game that can be quite challenging. he's started liscensing the asteroids portion of the game for a few sites, and even has a custom version (called "Hendroids") up on the phil hendrie show's funhouse.

really though, as far as i'm concerned, the nuclear powerplant simulator is his best game so far… and it's not even finished. but he's threatening to one-up himself with his newest game, the flash based WWII Pacific Theater war game.

he's also got a nice High Frequency Radio Propagation Primer (primarily for HAM Ops, but an instructional piece for the layman as well…) which will soon be featured at the Swiss Museum of Transportation and Communication. (and probably on their site, as well, assuming they can get it working properly.)

anyway, check it out, play some games and enjoy yourself.

i'll get off this subject eventually, but i had to include this little tidbit that was kindly sent to us by a reader
(Matt, i'd put a link if you'd included one in your email!)

breakdown of traffic for bipolar as reported by dbwired:

as brian pointed out, if you haven't yet read the whole story of the treatment we received from dbwired, you can read it here. (and for you bloggers who like to keep your links correct, you can use that new link, and we'll try to keep the page up as long as we are.)

we went to the palace theatre today to watch psycho. it's the first time i've been to the palace, and i was really just amazed at how beautiful the place was. i felt like i was walking into a painting. and then, there were the areas where the walls were recessed and glowing a pleasant soft blue. it was really breathtaking. brax was suggesting earlier that we need to buy that place so we can live there, and i now am in full agreement. anybody loan me a half-million dollars?

now that bipolar's back, and since it's been down for almost a month, i'm going to try to take that as the break i had apparently needed (since i wasn't posting on a very frequent basis) and actually, as the title of this post suggests, get back into the swing of things. hopefully, we'll come back even better than before. thanks for sticking out the long wait.

oh, and the themes page seems to be broken at the moment, it doesn't quite want to set the cookie. hopefully i'll get a chance to fix that in the next few days.

it's been a very busy few weeks at work with a few big projects landing on my desk, or threatening to land on my desk simultaneously. in fact, i went the entire workday today not logged onto AIM or jabber, not chatting with friends, as i am prone to doing throughout the day. i've developed this bad habit where i come into work and take the first hour or so catching up on news sites, or getting sucked into really involved IM conversations with paul and nathan. my work ethic has seriously suffered from these several months (since around February) with very little to do while at work.

right now, i'm actually having trouble trying to remember all the things that have gone on in my life recently. it seems like i've just been going pretty steadily since my last post. we've had several band practices (we're actually managing to get together not just once, but twice a week now!), several nights spent drinking at bars and hanging out with friends.

i actually had enough presence of mind to write last-minute emails to some friends of ours that we'd sort-of lost contact with, and they ended up hanging out with us over the weekend at the big 30th birthday party we threw for brax. so, it was really cool to get to hang out with our friends again, and it really helped to elevate the birthday party above our usual run-of-the-mill cookout get-togethers we've been having infrequently. and, of course, it also helped that payday fell on that week just before the big party weekend, so i could afford to have as good a time as i could handle.

and my sister ended up swinging through town on her way to language camp in (or near) minneapolis. so we were able to have lunch together before she went off to spend a couple months with a bunch of american kids speaking bad french.

oh, and another fun thing was going to see Final Fantasy on Friday night when wug came up. the movie really was pretty good, if you (as paul mentioned) can deal with the cliche'd plot, story, and characterization. but really, the animation was amazing. i mean, it's still obvious that it's computer generated, so flesh and blood actors needn't be afraid quite yet. in fact, probably the best part of the whole movie was getting to see the spider-man teaser on the big screen. i tell you, that helicopter scene just sends shivers of joy up my spine everytime i see it. the shots of spidey swinging through the city still look a bit too CGI, but i think that the effects in the movie are going to be excellent. now, cross your fingers and hope for a decently written story.

well, i think that's done me in for tonight. i'm looking forward to taking a half-day tomorrow, and taking monday off, making this a nice extended weekend. hopefully i'll be able to motivate myself and get some stuff done. wish me luck.

well. i never did manage to write anything about that dream that i had… or anything else for that matter. another week has slipped by with me, once again, thinking about writing a post every day, but never quite managing to pull up blogger and actually do it. and what a strange week it's been as well. right now it's friday night, but it feels like a tuesday or thursday except that my belly is full of Denny's and there's a bag full of comics sitting on my bed in my room downstairs, so it kind of feels like a wednesday too. i'm just all messed up. the past couple of days have been fairly depressing.

now, don't get me wrong, first off my sister did come into town (from FRANCE, no less) and spent the first few days of her American vacation here at the house. i love my sister to death, and i'm really glad that i got to see her. unfortunately, visiting with her was probably the happiest part of the past few days. we all had a grand time hanging out on Tuesday night; me, my sis, paul, brax, and mr. norman (not sure how he feels about us using his name on these blog things, so i'll just leave it at that). we all sat around (as described in paul's blog) and played a game of drunken trivial pursuit until the attack of the evil succubus. after that, the party kind of devolved into bitching, whining, pissing, moaning, laughing, chatting, and generally haphazardly carrying on. of course, brax and his cancerous growth were arguing on the front porch (which is my only smoking area) so i had to interrupt them and then walk around the block while i smoked. nothing like not being able to enjoy your only refuge to really twist your spine.

then, of course, came the 4th of july. big plans for a big party with a bunch of our friends, some good food, drinks galore, and fireworks spectacularrr. so i got up around noonish figured i'd have a lazy kind of day until around 3 or 4, y'know, relax and enjoy my day off, which i did. of course, this entire time, brax is locked in his room having his soul ripped away. around 4 my sis started complaining about being terribly hungry, but i was hoping she could hold off until we got the grill fired up at jim's house around 6. i mentioned to paul (who'd already gone out and gotten some grub himself) that we should probably start gathering up the troops for the trip to jim's. his response was that it was "too late." so, seeing my big plans effectively dashed against the rocks by brax's disappearance and paul's bad mood (we could have done the cookout without brax, and perhaps that would have served to point out the stupidity he was subjecting himself to…), i got dressed and my sis and i went out for dinner. we didn't get to go to several of our first choice restaurants because they were closed for the 4th, but finally settled in at Mark's Feed Store for some good Barbecue. after getting back home i called up jim to tell him about the failure of my plans, and to suggest we might have a more intimate little gathering to watch movies or something. i also tried to call my former roommate jess to be sure she was aware of what was(n't) going on, but didn't actually get to talk to her. a few hours later, jim called back and said that she and her beau were already over there. i woke my sis from her food and jet-lag induced slumber, grabbed some movies, and hit the door. we stopped at the grocery and picked up some ice cream, then got to jim's.

after we got there, we chit-chatted with jim, jess, and john, the polite conversation eventually turning into an enjoyably heated discussion about stereotypes, homosexuality, religion and religious fundamentalists, theology, and philosophy. lori (jim's wife) got home and jess and john left shortly thereafter to go to another friend's party. so the four of us hung out and chatted a bit longer before settling on "Heathers" and plopping ourselves in the living room to watch it. after the movie we just came home and called it a night. not quite the fun, enjoyable time i'd been looking forward to, but at least it wasn't a total bust. at least i was still able to get sara out to socialize a little bit. the day had pretty much pissed me off, because my sister had decided to spend her time with me on the 4th of july rather than with her friends who were also planning (and probably actually did) some exciting things for the holiday. i'm glad i got to see her and hang out with her, but i think she'd have had a better time with her friends.

and of course, the other reason i was in an ill mood wednesday and thursday, is the conversation that my father & i had had on the phone on wednesday. i know i've talked about it before, but a bad familial relationship isn't something you can just sweep under the rug and forget about, it just keeps coming up, each and every time you interact with that person. as i said, i've already talked about it in this forum, so i'll not drown you with the details. if you're a glutton for this type of thing, you can freely search through the archives for it. but i did eventually take off from work an hour early on thursday so i could be home when dad got there to see him and so i could tell my sis bye. hanging out with my dad was worse than the phone conversation. we hung out, we talked, he made jokes, i made jokes, but when he left i was just completely depressed. i almost just shut myself in my room to read a book, but instead i immersed myself in a game of bridgebuilder.

anyway, i'm not so depressed today, it's actually been a decent day. i'm a little tired. i'm very broke. i'm going out for a smoke.