Hi.

So, it's been a while since I've posted anything here. As soon as the semester is over, I'll make something spiffy and post it. Until then, I leave you with this.
(Before you click, take a second and consider how the Nintendo Wii could possibly be connected with The Big Lebowski. Then, enjoy.)
[Edit: Netty just insisted, insisted, that I put a disclaimer on this. Ok, there's a little bit of foul language in this video. If such trivialities bother you, you might want to skip it.]
[Edit 2: It has been brought to my attention that the word "trivialities" in the above edit may seem to trivialize certain readers' trivial concerns about language.]

Wii!

Wii! About ten minutes ago, I got the next to last Wii ticket at best buy. I'm about to go in and buy it now. Woot!

Oh, do glow on.

Another cool picture that was on my phone. These were a very fun Wal-Mart cheap aisle purchase. They're basically glowy tinker toys.

Booyah

Guess who beat the Longhorns. Booyah.

Guess who rushed the field after the game. Booyah.

A Vader-ish Halloween

Emphasis on ish. Think of it as Vader's helmet after Luke burns it on Endor.


I have learned much, but I am not a pumpkin-carving Jedi yet.

GrogIslands.com goes live!

Yes, it's true. My fictional nation now has its own website. Why? Because it was free, that's why. Microsoft Office Live is in beta, and they're offering free domain registration and web hosting. Ironically, the freeness comes at a price: as of right now, there's no direct HTML editing capability. So, until they add that feature, or until I somehow acquire MS FrontPage, my site doesn't look very Groggy. Their target customers are small business owners, so everything is set up to create a generic business website (pay attention, Gary). However, I couldn't resist grabbing up grogislands.com for the low, low price of nothing. And despite the limited design capabilities, I think I'm slowly putting together a respectable e-representation of my country. As if I needed yet another way to waste time...

My brains are full of letters.

Today was Nicole's birthday. I made her this:

Jack 'O Lantern Jamboree '06

OMG if you weren't there, you missed quite a show. Evil Fairy was up first, and they rocked...the...house. I mean it was crazy. Somewhere in the middle there was like a six minute drum solo that blew my mind so bad I was afraid I wouldn't be able to listen to the rest of the show. It was that awesome. If you haven't heard E.F. before, you need to check them out. I know they kinda look like an owl when you see them live (see the pic), but they totally rock, fairy style.

Ok, next up: Skineater. Gross name, excellent band. They have this persistently mellow sound, but with a kind of menace behind it. Imagine a zombie playing a blues set with B.B. King, and you have some idea of what Skineater sounds like.





Next up was Stormtrooper. Now, these guys are a good band. Maybe a great band. But you have to completely ignore their lyrics if you want to enjoy them. They're WAY too political, and unless you think living under a galactic imperialist regime sounds like a good time, you won't agree with anything they have to say in the political realm. Luckily, everyone seemed content to ignore the lyrics and soak in those sweet, sweet power chords.


And finally, the headliner. This is the guy we'd all been waiting for: Murray, the Invincible Demonic Skull. He's a one-man show. No band, no instruments, just Murray sitting on a rock. Actually, he doesn't even sing. He just sits up there and prophesies the doom of the earth. And he complains a lot. But somehow it just sounds like music. If nothing else, this is probably a guy you want to be friends with, rather than enemies.


So that's it. If you missed it this year, hope to see you at JackJam '07!



P.S. We (Jenette, Shannon, Me, Nicole, in picture order) carved pumpkins last night.

They may be short, but they have big axes.

By order of the Supreme Brewmaster (me), Grog Islands has officially stationed a unit of dwarves in the Jeeves Mountains! Woo!

Next I'll start working on some Thunderers, because if there's one thing Grog Islands needs, it's more guns.

Episode 2, in (almost) full Color-Vizzion!

I like having a tablet.

If I feel like making it, there may be an Episode 3.

If you can't read the text, click to make it bigger.

Our Weekend, Episode 1

Captain'sLog:

Captain'sLog: another kerplosion! After a night at Hays, and a supposed car repair, we continued the adventure. we got as far as Colby before another battery died. luckily the hockey team was behind us so now we're crammed in with them. It continues!

We're

We're stuck! the shancole-mobile just kerploded on our way to colorado. don't worry tho. the marines are on the way (in the form of amber's parents). Oorah. i'll keep you posted on our little adventure.

I'd like to hit him, too.

If you know who Uwe Boll is, you almost certainly dislike him--he's the guy who's spent the last five or six years taking video games and turning them into flamingly bad movies. House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, Bloodrayne, and several more to come between now and 2008. These are the movies you see previews for when you're in the theater to see a good movie, and you say 'Holy crap, that looks terrible. I wouldn't even watch that movie to make fun of it.' So I've never seen any of his movies. I hate him simply because he gives a bad name to movies made from video games. Granted, he's not the only one to make a bad video game movie, and in fact, nearly all such attempts fail. The thing is, though, that most directors who make a bad video game movie quit after the first one. But despite the abundant criticism on the internets of nearly every facet of Boll's directing, he still just doesn't get it.
Instead of quitting, or maybe becoming a better director, or trying a different kind of film because he obviously can't do this one, he decided a better approach was to issue an open challenge: any critic who would step up could face Uwe Boll in a boxing ring. I'm not even kidding. Four brave souls stepped up, and here's the video.



So. You challenged them all to a boxing match because you already know how to box? Very noble, Uwe. You deliberately set up an unfair fight. On the other hand, those four guys seem to know more about good movies than you'll ever know, so they find it easy to tear your movies apart. Also an unfair fight.
So, the moral of the story is that we should all stick to what we're good at--like you and boxing. And if you don't like that one, the alternative moral is that you suck.

I updated the + List.

Yep. I did. (I think the '- List' is in Purgatory at the moment.)

Vampire watermelons!

Ok, there are a few things to cover before we get to vampiric fruit. First of all, we went to the K.C. Renaissance Festival last weekend, and I think it just might be the coolest place on earth. I mean, come on. Adults who dress up and pretend to be from another time? Freaking awesome. There was a parade of all the vendors and characters who work there. Here's a video of it; it should give you a sense of the coolness.

[Edit: the video somehow got fubar'd. I'll have to repost it.

There are around 130 shops there, selling such things as armor, weapons, jewelry, clothing, leather goods, and a whole lot of other fun things, most of it handmade. There were several things I kinda-sorta wanted to buy, but what I did actually buy was this most excellent of journals. It seemed like someone in our crew needed to have a log of our adventures/plunderings. And, it's actually just a journal cover, with a generic blank book inside, meaning I can put whatever book I want in it. Keep that point in mind--it'll be an important step in getting us to the aforementioned blood-craving fruit. So anyway, having gone to the coolest place on earth, I naturally want to go again, as does the rest of the crew. They're having a "Phantom's Feaste" in October, which is a dinner theater kind of thing, hosted by Count Dracula. Kind of expensive, but it'd totally be worth it. So I'm thinking of making a vampire hunter costume to wear to it (and it'd just be a cool costume to have anyway). So I'm thinking about it, and I'm trying to figure out what a vampire hunter would carry with him. And it seems to me that he'd have some kind of record of his travels, plus some vampire lore, maybe some ways of killing them, etc. And where would he put such text? In his spiffy leather-bound journal-majig, of course! So I start scouring the internet for vampire stuff to put in my book (because I'm really getting into it at this point) and I'm finding all sorts of interesting stuff. Then I find an article about Gypsy vampire legends, and I learn that not only did they used to believe in vampires, but in vampire fruit. I'm not even kidding. I present to you a sample from the "Vampire pumpkins and watermelons" wiki:

The belief in vampires of plant origin occurs among Gs. [Gypsies] who belong to
the Mosl. faith in KM [Kosovo-Metohija]. According to them there are only two
plants which are regarded as likely to turn into vampires: pumpkins of every
kind and water-melons. And the change takes place when they are 'fighting one
another.' In Podrima and Prizrenski Podgor they consider this transformation
occurs if these vegetables have been kept for more than ten days: then the
gathered pumpkins stir all by themselves and make a sound like 'brrrl, brrrl,
brrrl!' and begin to shake themselves. It is also believed that sometimes a
trace of blood can be seen on the pumpkin, and the Gs. then say it has become a
vampire. These pumpkins and melons go round the houses, stables, and rooms at
night, all by themselves, and do harm to people. But it is thought that they
cannot do great damage to folk, so people are not very afraid of this kind of
vampire.

Fascinating.

Oh, and one last thing: I got a pirate pistol! I got a pirate pistol!
Go eBay!

3 things

It's been awhile since my last post, and not all that much has happened, but here are 3 things:
1. Sunday night, I used my limited Photoshop skillz to turn my little cousin into a Kindergarten Kommando:











2. We (Netty, Aaron, Shannon, and I) saw Snakes on a Plane last Friday, and I have just three words: Best. Movie. Ever. In fact, it was so good that I had my buddy Samuel L. call some of you to let you know. I hope you appreciated it.

3. The fall semester started today. I had one class (Creative Writing Workshop) and taught one (Expository Writing I). It was my first teaching experience ever, and if things go the way they did today, it'll be a pretty good semester.

Set course for spiffiness

Behold, my newest hobby: mapmaking! Woo! I drew this up last night. Actually, it was intended to be a prototype of sorts, just to work out the details, but I thought it looked kinda spiffy when it was done, so I framed it and hung it on the door as motivation for future map projects. Next on the agenda is a more detailed, poster-sized Grog Islands map, and then a giant map of all the Pirate Islands nations. However, before I can work on that one, I need input from all you Pirate Islanders out there. If you have ideas of what your island(s) looks like (shape-wise) or any location names (towns, capital city, mountains, jungles, rivers, bays, stadiums, artichoke fields, etc.), let me know. I don't know how many place names I'll be able to use, as I'll have to keep each nation fairly small to fit them all on the same map. But, if anyone's interested in an individual map of their nation, I could probably do that sometime in the future, too. So, leave your comments here, or, if you want to send an illustration of some sort, you can email it to me. If you don't care one way or the other about your island, tell me that, too, and I'll just make up the details as I go. When the big map's finished, I'll hopefully be able to either have it scanned or just take a picture of it so we can have copies printed for whoever wants one. Now, that's all a ways off, since this mapmaking business takes a while and school's about to start, but that's my plan. I don't know if you're excited, but I am. :)

I'm

I'm not sure if this'll even post (cell phone posts are iffy) but i'll give it a go. i'm at borders in longmont, killing time til Netty, Shannon, and gary get here from the hockey shop. that's all. also, check back for a video post in a day or two.