Archive for October, 2006
The Mike Doughty Incident
Posted on October 28, 2006
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While wandering aimlessly through the arteries surrounding the chair-filled bladder of a local stadium I noticed an interesting fellow. He was signing CD’s, T-shirts and the occasional patch of exposed flesh during the quiet time between the warm-up act and the main event, which was an appearance by the Canadian group, Barenaked Ladies1.
It was only through intense meditation that I was able to identify this tattooed fellow positively as the band leader of the aforementioned warm-up act which I’d found to be an enjoyable, albeit Dave Matthews-ish2 affair. His name is Mike Doughty and he commands a tiny cult following, the glossy-eyed Detroit chapter of which was pushing clipboards at passersby with the breathless promise of blessed mailing list membership to all who would sign.
Tempting though the offer was, I brushed right past a portly lass with one such clipboard and took my place alongside the other supplicants with no clear idea of why. Not being so much as a Mike Doughty initiate, I was worried about seeming out of place despite the best efforts of my cheap 
Izod shirt. So I did my best to fit in by bobbing my head in unison with my chattering queue-mates and muttered “yeah, this guy is awesome” in response to the their intermittent attempts at inter-cult communication. It seemed to satisfy them; while their head-bobbing was unchanged, I somehow sensed a certain warmth in the bobs following my contribution that was not present in the bobs prior to my dissemblance. At any rate, none of them pulled a Donald Sutherland.
As I neared the head of the line his handlers began to discern something might be wrong. Security senses tingling, they shifted about and patted at their clothes to reassure themselves of their armaments and candy stashes. Fishy eyes darted about, but while they seemed to smell my presence, they couldn’t pick me out of the crowd–thank god for Izod shirts. In a few moments I found that there was only one of them between me and Mike Doughty. When that handler nervously reached into his pocket for a wad of Laffy-Taffy, I knew it was my only chance. Charging, I evaded the clutching arms of the lackeys and ignored their inhuman shrieks long enough to reach Mike Doughty and obtain this photograph:
Mike Doughty and Me!
I had only a moment left to shake his hand before darting off to rejoin my wife in the chairy bladder. “You seem very nice,” I called over my shoulder as I rounded the corner of the Beer-Soaked T-Shirt stand3, “if I were to join a cult, I swear yours would be the on TOP of my list.”
1 – No, just shut up Davecat. I’ll have you know I’ve enjoyed their tongue-in-cheek/scary-relationship music since these boys had barely escaped their Toronto metropolitan prison some fourteen years ago. Perhaps they’ve become overplayed in recent years but, as with many acts that achieve some amount of commercial success despite their best efforts, their best stuff has nothing to do with 96.3FM.
2 – Or is it Matthewsy? Matthewsesque? Oh, and I guess that in some circles it might be considered an oxymoron to speak of an enjoyable Dave Matthews-anything, but the music Mike Doughty spewed from his band and himself was well played and decently arranged.
3 – The Palace of Auburn Hills Beer-Soaked T-Shirt Stand, serving all your Beer-Soaked T-Shirt needs since 1988.
Detroit’s Stargate
Posted on October 25, 2006
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No matter how many times I passed through the Stargate, I was still in Detroit. What did I expect? We can’t even put together a properly functioning bus system, let alone a dimensional portal.
Pity, really. I was looking forward to some old fasioned B-grade sci-fi hijinks. I figure I have at least as much of a chance as the next guy of convincing some isolated tribe of humans that I’m a god. “Kowtow” only sounds funny until some toothless extra with a paid-up SAG membership is groveling in front of you… then it becomes delicious.
Enough, cruel world, my laptop will die today. Memory and hard drive will be ripped from its quivering body and replaced with evil upgrades capable of hosting the Penguin. My poison shall be SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, or SLED.
It will take awhile for me to do this, so I may be incommunicado for a day or two. Not that I post that often anyway. Soon shall there be a ZOMBIE LAPTOP resting upon my eager thighs.
Stupid Cliche of the Day
Posted on October 25, 2006
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Life is a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in bacon*.
* Unless you are religiously prohibited from wrapping your enigmas in pork products. You may substitute mustard greens.
** mmmm…. bacon.
SafeTupdate!
Posted on October 22, 2006
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Click an SFT
- all will be revealed!
- What about that new marquee, SafeT?
- Arthbard, my bestest hermit crab buddy in the whole blogiverse, seems to be here to stay.
No offense to non-hermit crab buddies. You just can’t compare hermit crab buddies to non-hermit crab buddies. If you are a non-hermit-crab buddy, you’re still precious to me.
Granted, you don’t have wicked pincers… - I’ve added his very own navigation bar, a thumbnail graphic (which he supplied from a family photo), and gave him second billing right there in the header. Snazzy, eh?
- Hey, your sidebar was missing earlier. Why?
- I did it. I did it just to confuse and antagonize you. I’m an ass.
(Not really. But I am an ass.) - If you are using Internet Explorer, then a flaw in one of the postings was causing the sidebar to show up WAY down at the bottom of the page. Firefox was not affected, so I didn’t spot it for a few days. Sorry!
- I try not to judge, but you really should be using FireFox
- Stupid Internet Explorer.
- How are YOU feeling, SafeT?
Shiny.
Bald.
I’ve employed the collapsing bulletpoints for the second time ever in order to keep this post small enough to make absolutely sure no one misses Arth’s amazing inaugural Arthimation.
It’s a touching and seminal work of cyber-romance in the modern world.
Arthimation! – Stickman and Cindy
Posted on October 21, 2006
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