I haven’t shaved at all, I mean not even maintenance work, etc, since Nov. 1st.  While I don’t mind it on a daily basis, it’s been playing on my psyche, I think.  On 2 occasions, I’ve had dreams that suddenly I’ve been clean shaven, and it scares me.  It takes me a bit to realize it’s a dream and that I still have my beard.  Last night’s dream left me with just a mustache (I like to spell it moustache, for some reason – I think that should be the official spelling).  I have no idea why I’m having these dreams and the whole situation seems pretty weird to me.

Other than that, I’ve got another week before I bottle my beer.  I want to get a swamp heater/chiller going so I can better control the temperature of my bottles and my fermenters.  I think that would help more with quality control purposes.

I got a new cap, a black New Era Montreal Expos hat, it looks like this:
Since they don’t make a black Detroit Tigers hat with a white D (or at least not one I can find easily), I decided to go with a defunct franchise (the Expos eventually migrated to Washington DC where they’re known as the Nationals, FYI).  The only problem is, I paid quite a bit of cash for this hat, and it has a glaring imperfection.  The MLB logo on the back of the hat is crooked, not parallel to the bottom of the hat, and it’s off center.  It’s not terribly noticeable, but like I said, I paid a decent amount of money for the hat and I want it to be as advertised, not some crooked shit.  New Era’s support says they’ll get back to you in 24 hours but it’s been 5 days and I haven’t heard shit about it.  And I ordered it directly from them, not from some fly by night two-bit operation – unless New Era is actually a fly by night two-bit operation, of course.

Related posts

• The bottomless bucket is a portal to the vast sea (0)
• Nobody watches television ’cause he’s got a better show (0)
• Don’t eat nuts at Montel Williams’ house (3)

HI!

I’m going to open this entry with one of the most cliched opening lines to any online blog or journal entry. “It’s been a while since I updated this thing”, but indeed it has. I’ve posted random videos and some drivel about how I’m uninspired by life in general, but I thought I’d take some time to update this space because I actually like to go back and read my old entries and laugh at myself because I’m probably the only one that thinks that I’m funny. I’m going to just hit plan on my ipod and let the funk flow while I write down some thoughts.

Oddly enough, the first song that comes up on my ipod when I just hit play is “Aquarius” by The Nat Adderley Sextet, and it goes a little something like this:

Anyhow, lately I’ve been really reading a lot about brewing beer.  I’ve been drinking beer a lot too, but I’ve been reading just about anything I can get my hands on about brewing beer and last Sunday I brewed my first beer – a honey nut brown ale.  I’ll tell you what, a lot of people say that the waiting is the hardest part about brewing beer.  Let me tell you, truthier shit has never been said.  This has been a test in patience.  I can’t wait to have some of that shit to see if it’s turned out to be straight spaghetti salad garbage juice, heaven in a bottle or somewhere in between.  I’m hoping its either somewhere in between or heaven in a bottle.

So since this is my little pet project, I’m stressing out about it.  Is it the right temperature? Is it fermenting enough?  Did I do enough of this?  Did I blah blah blah.  I have to go against that worrying instinct that I have and just learn to leave it alone – which I’m doing thankyouverymuch.  I have my fermenter sitting in my downstairs bathroom in the shower and I have towels wrapped around it, and I have the door closed so it keeps some heat in there since if you didn’t know, I live in the arctic circle (we usually keep the house at 60 degrees).  Katie likes to joke about how I baby the wort (beer before it’s beer for you common hillfolk), but hey… I’ve spent a lot of money on this shit, it better be good!  Why ruin it by keeping it too hot or too cold?  Yeah…

Work has been busy.  That’s really the main reason that I haven’t updated much.  I usually do it when I’m bored at work, but now I’m not bored because I’m always busy doing something or the other.  This week, however, has been a slow one, and I’m appreciating that like never before. When it’s not busy I like it the first day or so but then I feel like I’m forgetting to do something, then when it is busy, I don’t like being busy, but I like that the days go by faster.

also, this:

Related posts

• nexus (0)
• The Funky Wasteland (1)
• Parking lot wasteland (3)

Rare Bird Humps Photographer’s Head

Related posts

• No related posts.

Been feeling really uncreative lately.  Feels like I can’t come up with original good idea.  Sucks.

The beard is growing in good, but it seems like it’s taking it’s damn sweet time.

Kinda feeling down in the dumps.

Only dancing can help at this point

Related posts

• It’s getting close.. (0)
• Coffee and Burritos for Breakfast (0)
• Baldfaced Bob (0)

Since last we spoke, I have started anew.

I’ve had facial hair of some sort for the past 10 years at least, and if I’ve gone clean shaven, I’ve immediately grown it back.  This is no exception.

Yes, I’ve shaved my beard.

If you know me or you’ve read of my beard exploits in the past, you may be asking “why did you do this?”   The answer… The Whiskerino, and part of the rules were that you go clean shaven on November 1st.  I accommodated this request in order to take part in the festivities.

If you’d like to follow my new beard growth, you can check me out here.

Funny story, I was in Grand Rapids on the day of the sign ups.  I told a lot of my friends about it because I think seeing all my friends growing these beards would be pretty fun.  The sign ups started at noon and I was babysitting my niece and nephews waiting for my sister in law to come home.  Katie and I left their house at 1pm and as soon as I got home, I shaved off my beard and took pictures to prove that I was clean shaven.  I went downstairs to sign up and I got a message that the registration process was over.  Needless to say I wasn’t happy.  I hadn’t shaved for years and now I looked like a big turd and couldn’t even take part in the fun.

Thankfully I was able to email the organizer and he sent me an invitation for the site, and the rest is what they call history.

Related posts

• Yep (0)
• VHS Boxes – A lost artform (The Good) (0)
• Spending time with Poster Boy (0)

And that one thing is getonmyhorse.com

Related posts

• No related posts.

Related posts

• No related posts.

While I’m a big boxing fan, I think my interest has fallen off in the last few years. Lately, MMA has captured a lot more of my attention, and while I don’t normally get all the different Pay Per Views that are associated with MMA, I do end up catching the replays on tv or on the web or whatever.

That being said, when there is a big boxing event, I like to try to stay away from any news (which isn’t hard, since boxing gets little to no coverage on the typical sports networks) or any kinds of spoilers so that when I do finally get around to watching the fight, it’s a surprise to me. The latest “superfight” in boxing was just this past weekend, Floyd Mayweather vs. Juan Manuel Marquez, and I did my best to avoid it.  I didn’t look at my google reader account, I didn’t look at RSS feeds on my phone, I didn’t look at any social media sites where other friends might reveal the outcome… nothing.  I was planning on watching it Sunday afternoon sometime, but that didn’t pan out, so I just was able to snag it out of thin air and I decided to sit down and watch it today.

Unfortunately, all of my avoidance of spoilers and everything I did to shut myself off from finding out ANYTHING about the fight was rendered impotent by what happened in the first minute of the fight.  Floyd Mayweather was accompanied by the WWE wrestler Triple H.  I thought to myself, “Hmm, I forgot all about that guy, lets see what he’s been up to on wikipedia”, as I frequently read wiki entries about whatever comes to my mind.  Wouldn’t you know it, as soon as I start reading about Triple H during the pre-fight introductions, I get to a part in Triple H’s entry that tells me the outcome of the fight.  While I’m not going to spoil it for anyone else (which I’m fairly certain there’s probably only 1 person who may or may not read this entry that will give a shit about boxing), I have to wonder why something so insignificant as a guy walking down an aisle with a boxer would cause another person to put the outcome of the fight in their wikipedia article?

Lesson: In trying to avoid spoilers about anything that may be important to you, lock yourself in an isolation cell at a nearby prison until you’re ready to watch/read/play the media in question.

Related posts

• Well hello there, my diminutive bird friend. (4)
• Parking lot wasteland (3)
• Work is where the hate is (2)

The ineptitude of the people that I work with really bums me out sometimes. It’s really frustrating when these sweeping and massive changes have been made and nobody takes time to flesh out the details. The whole “fly by the seat of our pants and make it up as we go along” mentality is getting really old.

I don’t mind working with minimal direction, but it really shouldn’t be my responsibility to interrogate people in order to figure out what’s going on.

Related posts

• Work is where the hate is (2)
• what’s happening. (0)
• Well hello there, my diminutive bird friend. (4)

Related posts

• No related posts.

I have no idea where “The Funky Wasteland” came from, I thought I saw it somewhere, but I went back to where I was and it wasn’t there.  It’s one of those things where you are flying by some text and it’s almost as if these technically 3 words popped up and slapped your eyeballs.  Anyhow, that’s not what I was going to write about.

This weekend I am regretting getting totally wasted on bud lite around my in laws and being the only person to sing Karaoke on the dock to Mister Mister’s “Broken Wings”.   While I don’t regret the getting wasted, or the singing, I regret that I had to waste this incredible spectacle on the SQUARE assed people who were there to witness it, because it’s all I heard about while I stumbled up the stairs to pass out on the couch.  I’m sorry if you’re too chicken shit to express yourself to this beautiful hit of the 1980’s, but  in the words of the ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA… don’t bring me down, bruce (I know, now, thanks to Wikipedia that the lyrics are actually “Don’t bring me down, Gruß”, but seriously, don’t bring me down).

I also regret being laid out all day like an old man by the massive hangover that hasn’t seemed to go away yet.  I may also regret almost throwing my nephew off the boat several times.  While I barely remember it, I do remember that instead of actually holding onto him, I could have just as easily thrown him overboard and not thought twice about it as I grabbed for another beer.

I also was at one point taking pictures of things including myself with my phone (which I almost lost), and this one happened to be my favorite of the ones I was just reviewing.

Read more »

Related posts

• Parking lot wasteland (3)
• nexus (0)
• Hello, is it me you’re looking for? (1)

I’ve got a growing obsession with bad films.  As I’ve mentioned in the past, my other site is a review site of these bad films, and I thought I’d get a little into the origin story of this obsession.

When I was younger, probably about 7 or 8, my family got our first VHS player and there was a local video store that was owned by our mailman that we got a lifetime membership to.  The membership cost $20 and you got 10 free rentals with the membership.  When you went to the store, they had all the vhs boxes out on the shelves with a number on the side of them and when you took the box to the counter they’d get the tape down from a shelf behind and give you the video.

I used to go to the store with my sister all the time and rent movies there.  The one movie that sticks out in my mind that we rented from that store was “The Terminator”.  I remember we rented that movie at least 5 or 6 times and we watched it over and over again.  My sister was usually the one that rented movies, and while my parents weren’t usually too keen on letting us see R rated movies in the theater, oddly they didn’t mind if we rented them and watched them at home.  She was much more into action/adventure films, but horror movies always had the coolest covers, and those are usually the ones I remember the most.  My friend Chris that lived down the street was the one that usually told me about the horror movies because he and his brothers would rent just about anything they could get their hands on.  Now that I’m an adult, and I have the resources to find just about any movie I want, I go back a lot of the time and I get movies that I remember the covers for.  That’s probably also the main reason why most of the movies I write about are movies from the mid 70’s to late 90’s.

The VHS box cover is really a lost art.  Sometimes they’re highly detailed artwork, and sometimes they’re crudely drawn sketches.  They can range from scenes from the movies to shots where the stars heads are superimposed on better bodies, and most of the time they had nothing to do with what the movie was about.  DVD’s really never moved into the territory that VHS artwork had because VHS tapes were cranked out for any garbage movie and a lot of them are never going to see a DVD release.  If they do, there’s probably going to enough work involved in transferring it that they’re going to put some work into remaking a cover too.  Sadly, As we move into the digital age, I think a lot of this artwork is going to disappear altogether.

I also find it ironic that the more I upgrade my tv’s and start streaming content over my home network, the more I find myself watching stuff that’s been ripped from VHS – because that’s the only place that you can find these films

Below the cut are some of the good ones I’ve seen, or I still want to see:

Read more »

Related posts

• That’s odd, he seems to be getting stronger as he melts! (0)
• Where’d you get those eyes? (0)
• Weekend review- boring edition (0)

I haven’t written here for a while, like what, 2 weeks or something?  I dunno, whatever or however long it’s been, but something really stirred up some shit in my soul and I have to let this out…

IF THE ASSHOLE IN THE OFFICE BEHIND ME DOESN’T CHANGE HIS RINGTONE FROM MOTHERFUCKING YAKKETY SAX I’M GOING TO STRANGLE A MOTHERFUCKER.

Seriously, you’ve gotten like 5 phone calls in the past 20 minutes, and the first time it was amusing and all that, but I’m soon going to find a blunt object and smash your skull in.

Related posts

• No related posts.

Which is better?

The original:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

or

The acoustic version:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

??

And here’s a bonus, just because it’s a really beautiful song.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Related posts

• You have to climb to find its head (0)
• Weekend update a day late. (0)
• TV Casualty (0)

I saw Christopher Walken on Friday.  He walked right by me.  I didn’t want to bother him while he was eating.  The other patrons of the bar I was at went off on the usual quoteathon that happens when you see celebrities, namely “MORE COWBELL!! HUUUUUUUURRR!”  I was just satisfied that he was in the same bar as I was.

That night I watched a documentary on Terry Gilliam’s attempt at making “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” called “Lost in La Mancha“.  I enjoy Gilliam’s films, and it was interesting to watch a total disaster of a film being made.  In the end, the film doesn’t get made due to all the difficulties they came across during filming.

Saturday night we went out to dinner with my in-laws for Katie’s other sister, since she wasn’t able to attend Wednesday’s dinner.  Afterwards I went out to Dave’s and watched the hockey game, and had a few beers.

Sunday I saw “The Hangover” which I thought was actually really funny.  I had heard about it a few weeks earlier and that it was supposed to be good, but the trailers for the film started to make me doubt that.  With lowered expectations, it was really enjoyable, and even darker than I thought it would be.

Sometime during the weekend, I also watched a Godfrey Ho film called “US Catman: Lethal Track” which was another Godfrey Ho special where he basically mashes up two films that have nothing to do with each other.  Since one half of the film is usually in a foreign language, the actors are dubbed to fit whatever happens in the English half of the film.  Unfortunately, the Thai half of the film is godawful, but the English part is tolerable and funny in the unintentional way.

I’m trying to figure out when I can watch the Mike Tyson documentary that came out recently, and I also have a Luna documentary I want to get to.

Related posts

• Work is where the hate is (2)
• Where’d you get those eyes? (0)
• what’s happening. (0)