Homebody and Woman

PHOTO: Submitted Without Comment

2012-02-10T18:01:00.001-06:00

A Letter To My Congressmen

2012-01-18T10:29:00.000-06:00

NOTE: After sending the following letter to my dear congressman, Daniel Lipinski, I figured I would share it with you, World.

Greetings Mr. Lipinski! (Or, more than likely, his intern or assistant! Greetings to you too and thanks for taking the time to read this.)

Let's get down to brass tax here: SOPA and PIPA. They're silly. Let's be honest about that.

I mean seriously, this is like that story of when the candlemakers in France went the the French government with a protest against the sun. Except, in this version of the story, America joins an illustrious list of countries who block IP addresses and censor the Internet.

I would happily name the author of that story and the title of it -- he's a famous French economist -- but Wikipedia is down, so all my stupid little inquiries like that go unfinished.

I have a master's degree in economics -- it gives me a slightly heightened ability to sniff where the political capital is coming from. In this case, we have American businesses unwilling to admit the internet has vastly changed their business model, so they have turned instead to you, dear representative, in hopes you and your kindred politicians will lend an ear where the markets have ignored them.

It is as though I discover the kid next door has stolen my One Great Joke and is telling it in a similar fashion to the other kids, making them laugh and love him -- so then I dash to my mother, saying through my tears, "Intellectual property is one of America's chief job creators and competitive advantages in the global marketplace, yet American inventors, authors, and entrepreneurs have been forced to stand by and watch as their works are stolen by foreign infringers beyond the reach of current U.S. laws."

Intellectual property law may be more stringent in America than any other country, but I would hardly name it as one of our "chief job creators" or "competitive advantages." Yeah, some companies come to America to invent because they have the assurance the American government will watch their back -- but how will shutting down icanhascheezburger.com help that cause?!

Look, you and your interns are crazy busy, so I'll wrap this up. PIPA and SOPA not only put us in some stupid international company (Iran, North Korea, China -- countries that block foreign IPs), they also undermine America's REAL competitive advantage: Innovative businessmen.

If we reward the recalcitrant because they complain, then the market for new ideas shrivels and dies.

Don't kill ideas. Murder is bad for re-election.

All the best,

Brad

Night Stroke

2011-11-02T10:49:00.000-05:00

OBSERVE: Image of wife (and self)
presently NOT have a night stroke.

At around 1 am this morning, I woke up to find the prison gala in my tummy had turned into a prison riot. Shooting out of bed, I trundled off to the bathroom with my laptop in tow. The gastronomic event left me wide awake, so I spent the next two hours regretting my dietary choices and finishing up some baseball writing and editing work.

Afterwards, I stealthily waddled back to bed, but as I quietly lowered myself onto the screeching mattress coils, my wife somehow woke up.

"I'm having a lot of problems," she confided in me and now I report to you, dear Internet. "I'm cold, but I keep sweating."

Obviously, my first thoughts were: She's turning into a zombie. Where are my quickest exists?

"Shall I turn the fan on?" I asked all Snidely Whiplash style.

See, we have an ongoing debate in the house. I'm a noise-sleeper — I need a dose of white noise and sometimes a little air current in my face so I can fall asleep. Jamie, on the other, says winter is no time for a fan to be blowing full power in the middle of the night. Obviously, I'm in the right here, so I like to remind her occasionally.

"No." She rolls over and readjusts her blanket arrangement. "I'm sweating, but I'm cold."

"That makes no sense," I say, again trying to get a little rise out of her. She sounds tired, but relatively coherent.

"Well I just need to turn the easel around. It's facing the other way."

Silence.

"What?"

"What do you mean what?"

"Did you just say easel?"

"Yeah, easel."

"Easel?"

"Yeah, like what you put papers on and stuff."

I'm — obviously — beginning to laugh.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

Silence.

"What?"

"You said you were sweaty. What does that have to do with an easel? I don't understand."

"Just don't worry about it!" she says, suddenly very frustrated.

Now I'm starting to suspect she's keeping a secret from me. I do a quick mental pat-down of my house. No easels. What could this mean?

"I don't understand."

"I'm just tired; I don't know what I'm saying."

And that's when it occurred to me my wife was having some sort of rare winter night heat stroke. I obviously didn't have much time to assess the situation, so I did the only sensible thing.

I turned the fan on high.

The Median Duration Of Unemployment

2011-10-19T14:56:00.000-05:00

Technically, I'm not a component in that figure. I'm not really unemployed — though I draw unemployment — I am actually what economists and wordsmiths-in-the-know call underemployed. I actually have three jobs, and, combined, they still leave me well beneath the American poverty line (not be confused with the international deep poverty lines).

Anyway, the median worker — median because it's less tail-biased than average — has been looking for a job for about 22 weeks before finding employment. That's about 5.5 months.

Which is a bummer.

Because I've been looking for full-time employ for about 4 months. So I've got 1.5 more months — most likely — until I can stop rewriting my resume, writing new cover letters, and gadding across town to new, scary places in tight, uncomfortable business attire (tight and uncomfortable because I'm not in a financial position to buy new, properly-fitting attire).

It is fascinating, if not terribly troubling, how remarkably high the median duration of unemployment is right now.

Mayhaps that is a byproduct of improved unemployment benefits? (Doubt it.) It's more likely a sign of how serious this financial hoo-ha was.

Observe the other recessions on the chart (the grayed areas). None of them had nearly the same effect as the most recent recession.

I recently heard a Republican radio ad condemning the bailouts. That drives me crazy. To do so is to laud anarchy and chaos. If the government hadn't stepped in to protect the financial industries, the very fabric of the American economy would have disintegrated and human society (not just in America) may have forever unalterably changed for the material worse.

That chart up there would not have a 30 in the top left corner, but a 60 or worse. In fact, that chart might not even be there. I imagine we would be living in a Escape from NY-type post-apocalyptic universe — except sans the World Trade Center from which to hang-glide to safety.

Could the bailouts have been handled better? From a PR perspective, most certainly. But it would have been hard for the government to do a job any better of a job without crossing some perilous lines.

The author Michael Lewis (Moneyball, Liar's Poker, Blindside — among many other great books) was on Charlie Rose (wow, I sound old) a few weeks ago and he made an interesting point, summarized as such:

The American government had three choice in front of them when the financial crisis was beginning:

Let the banks fail: See Ragnarok.
Bailout the banks: Thereby creating bad incentives for future moral hazards (suddenly investors know the government has their back because if they fail, society, America, and apple pies and SUVs go with them).
Nationalize the banks: And then restructure them so they can fail in the future, preventing moral hazard, saving the nation, and setting a really dangerous precedent.

In other words, the G men could have walked into these big banks, kicked out the shareholders, and then made all these huge, ultra-important banks into smaller, much less important banks. That way, if they hit trouble in the future, only a fraction of the banks (hopefully) would fail and the economy could continue to motor along.

This of course, would be publicly decried as the final step towards Communism, and droves of Tea Partiers' heads would have exploded in a frenzy of chanting, picketing, and family-friendly-yet-underlyingly-pissed-off TV ads.

What was I talking about?

Oh well, I got totally off target there. Whutevz.

Crazycarlcat Luvs Hair Ties

2011-10-19T13:23:00.001-05:00

Brilliant stuff. Janelle's got a new crazycarlcat post up and it's righteous. Of particular brilliance is this cat-featuring daguerreotype, both fuzzy and most flattering:

Catler

2011-09-05T21:14:00.000-05:00

Over on the Carl Blog, Janelle argues that Carl, despite his similar disposition and facial hair stylings, is in fact not Hitler:

Just because he acts, looks and smells like a Hitler does not make him a Hitler. Got it? By the way, I have no doubt that Carl will kill you if you continue to bring this resemblance up. I mean just look at his eyes. I feel like everything around you goes cold when you stare into them for too long.

I, however, submit as counter-evidence this photo I uncovered on Wikipedia or something:

Cancelling XBOX Live

2011-08-29T09:00:00.003-05:00

Times are lean. As the money in the family bank account mimes the countdown to my utter psychological collapse, I have done my damnedest to obfuscate its slow, water-torture-like procession to zero (and beyond) by working on freelance projects, cutting unneeded services, and eating only millet, hope, and tears soup.

Anyway, one such service-to-be-cut that had missed my attention was my XBOX Live account, which I used solely for the purpose of playing football with my brother in Florida. However, because my terrible and cheap internet disallows any internet-like actions, I have been unable to execute even its single intention.

So, naturally, I went to drop the service. Much to my unfortune, Microsoft runs this service. If Google is the internet's version of the Hong Kong public transit system — clean, efficient, and pretty much free — then Microsoft is its shady used-car salesman. He smiles too much, wears an exceedingly expensive though entirely garish suite, and never does anything directly, simply, and helpfully.

I can best tell the following events through the implied dialogue Microsoft and I had concerning the XBOX Live cancellation:

"I'd like to cancel my XBOX Live service. If I'm too late to cancel for the next month, I'm willing to pay for it."

"Sure! Come right this way!"

"What is this?"

"This, my friend, is an XBOX Live Gold Family Pack."

"Uh..."

"With the XBOX Live Gold Family Pack, you can fit you, your wife, your kids — heck! you could throw your dogs in the back too — and you could take 'em on down to the ballpark or go out dancin' with yer friends—" he pats me on the tummy.

"Oh, uh, no... Thanks? I'm just having some financial difficulties and I need to save the money."

Microsoft squints at me and nods with a knowing smile.

"I know what yer, saying." He taps his forehead with his finger and then shoots me with a finger pistol. I don't quite understand the gesture. "Tell ya what: I'll hang on to this baby for you, and after we take care of this little business, how about we swing back out here an' take another look?"

"Yeah, whatever you want; I just need to cancel my XBOX Live service."

He leads me to the un-air-conditioned office where a single desk fan, its blades layered in gray coats of dust, blows semi-cool air on oscillation mode.

Sitting at the desk is the skinny, greasy Microsoft compatriot. Microsoft does all the selling, and Microsoft Billing does all the paperwork. Billing sits there at the cluttered desk, his snakeskin cowboy boots resting carelessly on a stack of manila folders.

"Hey Bill, this little feller's got a billing question; I can't quite understand the nature of his problem."

"Hi, Bill," I say, wiping sweat from my brow. "I'm just wanting to cancel my XBOX Live service."

Bill looks at me and nods slowly. It looks like he's trying to jostle loose a popcorn kernel from between his teeth with his tongue as he mulls over my request. Then, without warning and without looking for my paperwork, he answers:

"Nope. Can't do it."

"What?"

"Can't change the settings. An error occurred."

"What kind of error? Did I do something wrong?"

"Sorry pal, just can't do it."

I look around the room for some sort of help, but it's obvious the filthy little office had been deliberately and meticulously designed to impede my every quest for true assistance.

"Well, is there like any place I can go for help? Do you have like a customer support, or something?"

Bill rolls his eyes — first up, in apparent annoyance, then over his shoulder at a pile of loose leaf paper and manila folders stacked knee-high, cluttered, and freshly blanketed in dust.

"Sorry, pal, that page not found," Bill says with a shrug.

"You're telling me I can't get any help with canceling this little bill?" I ask, genuinely upset now.

"Fine," he says, begrudgingly lifting his heavy feet from the desk and tossing open a folder. "Let's see what we've got. Now I have you registered under three different names, which one is the correct one?"

"What?! Why on earth do you have three different names for my one account?! That's absurd!"

"Hey, pal, I don' make the rules; I just make 'em," he says with a wheezing laugh. Microsoft laughs too as he pops a cigar into his mouth. The smoke quickly fills and suffocates the room.

"I think it's that one," I say, clearing my throat and pointing at one of the folders.

"Alright, let's see here." Billing licks a dirty finger as he flips through the papers in the folder. Holding the folder like a book, he looks down his nose at the files just beyond my sight. I lean over the desk to try to see what's inside the folder, but he quickly slaps it shut.

"You'll need to come back tomorrow."

"What?!"

"I'm sorry, but you'll have to come back tomorrow," Bill says, tossing the folder onto the stack behind him.

"Why? What in hell's good name would coming back tomorrow do?"

"Server problems," Bill says, tapping the ancient, yellowed computer on his desk. "Try again later."

"You didn't even turn the computer on! Just write a little note to yourself: 'Cancel Brad's account.' That's all I'm asking for!"

Bill shook his head. "Sorry pal, I don't make the rules; I just make 'em."

Bill laughs another wheezing, squeaky-brakes laugh. In the back corner, Microsoft — who appears to be sleeping, slouched in a folding chair with his cowboy hat tipped over his eyes and his cigar dangling dangerously from his lips — stirs just enough to chuckle little coughing chuckles that sounded like an old man's smoker's hack.

And so I leave. And so help me God help me, I proceed to the very first pawn shop I crossed and stared longingly at the pump-action shotguns and the semi-automatic hunting rifles, thinking longingly, desperately, and madly of freedom.

Tuesday Poem: Our Thoughts Return

2011-08-16T20:00:00.003-05:00

It does not usually take to long to discover I am fiercely proud of my degree from Jacksonville University. God led me there despite my much lower expectations, and I profited immensely from the experience.

A few months back, they had a poetry contest and I won, earning a dandy JU alumni t-shirt — which I wear proudly and incessantly. I figured I would share the poem (below) which is titled after a line from the school song, "Our Thoughts Return."

Our Thoughts Return

Treading with trepidation, neck deep
into the lost golf course’s center water trap,
we searched with our toes, in wetsuits in frigid water
for a single lost Frisbee;

putting my glasses into my shirt pocket,
pulling my bag tight to my belly like an infant child,
I dashed between the dripping trunks
of an early spring downpour;

checking the library clock hung above the desks
like a dangling guillotine,
I shook myself awake
at the deadline’s eave;

diving headlong into the gold and brown river,
tasting half-fresh, half-salt water graze our tongues,
we casually permitted the sun to descend
beneath the opposite bank;

stretching out on our balcony,
we assembled our diverse heritages
and welcomed the Lunar Festival
with a spread of Moon Cakes and canned lychee;

and I’ve returned to gloss every moment,
to seal the smooth surfaces and cracks alike,
to preserve them precisely in their nascent form;

I would do it any other way
if I had but a single regret.

Thursday Poem: Communist Thoughts

2011-07-28T14:00:00.000-05:00

Here's a little something I wrote the other day.

Communist Thoughts
In a melting city afternoon,
I take the train north
and arise from underground
like an ant appearing from a dark hole.
Under cool, steal shadows,
I spy among the well-trimmed and well-dressed.
A woman languidly carrying shopping bags
looks through me, into a storefront display.
A couple sips cold drinks indifferently,
pushing a sleek and strong stroller,
shiny and black and chrome.
Cars ease around the busy corners,
edging ever-nearer to my thinning shoes.

I slip underground.

I step down from the train
into my own neighborhood,
into a scurrying display of humanity.
In worn slacks and sweat-lined shirts,
neighbors tiredly scrape the day for simple pleasures.
In front of the Chinese funeral home
an erhu plays the solemn grasshopper song
of another life extinguished, yet hardly noticed.
It echoes down the busy, stinking street,

and if I had faith in man, here I would have Communist thoughts,
but instead I let the sound fill my ears and lead to my heart,
and I pray to never leave here again.

Mrs. Butterworth: The Movie

2011-07-27T10:06:00.000-05:00

I'd watch it.

Happy Poem Day!

2011-07-19T09:56:00.000-05:00

Hieronymus Bosch — The Garden of Earthly Delights

Every day is poem day, so shut up.

Here's a dandy prompt from this site:

Write a poem based on your belief about life after death... or about what you WISH you believed.

I recommend flexing the peotical muscles often, so take this opportunity to answer this prompt too (no need to share it, just do it).

Here's my offering:

Uneven Pardon
Thick, metal jail doors swing agate,
and an infinite crowd of loosed prisoners
walk casually from behind tall, gray walls.

Shedding thin canvas shoes and rough woolen socks,
they ease barefoot gently down the hillside,
exploring a blooming valley not there before.

Cool breezes drive down the green eden;
a brook gently flows like a crystalline flag
along trees dotted with fruit.

Each man and every woman,
a complete spectrum of humanity,
a complete edition of human history,
unleash into paradise.

Deprived of full perspective
like sailors with scuffed scopes,
they receive an uneven pardon;
a reward without an earning.

A hermit from a cave's mouth,
God speaks in a tepid tone
and half the crowd listens.

"Sinners and saints," God says,
"none had a chance.
Justice for no one,
and paradise for all."

— a ship without a hull,
a flower without a stem,
a thief that steals nothing
but you.

Community: The New Arrested Development

2011-07-18T12:56:00.000-05:00

Arrested Development was one greatest shows ever. From deep double entendres to subtle and hilarious motifs, each AD episode was a graduate course on comedy. Unfortunately, the series did not have the Two and a Half Men charm and wit necessary to retain a considerable audience and died after three and a half seasons.

Rumors of a potential Arrested Development movie have swirled and continue to tease us fans. In the meantime, we search like conspiracy theorists for the "next" Arrested Development — the next show to dazzle us with fine acting, complex and rich humor, and precise writing.

Some have proposed Modern Family as the next AD, but I think the two differ in a few too many elements. First of all, Modern Family has a legitimate following. Moreover, its brand of humor is less meta than AD (Modern Family is more situational and character-based humor, less self-aware humor) — which is no knock on the show, just a categorical difference.

Community, however, has both an infuriatingly limited audience as well as a heavy-meta style. Nearly each episode of the second season has been a spoof on a film genre or a specific other culturally embedded piece of media, such as the season two finale:

Community, like AD, expertly deals in the absurd. It creates ridiculous situations without breaking the viewers' trust, and then assembles everything for the sake of making a larger satire. Frankly, Community is quite likely — if not quite easily — the best show on TV.

Image source.

Happy Independence Day!

2011-07-04T22:43:00.000-05:00

Brad and I decided to stay in and have a quiet holiday. It has proved to be cozy and relaxing just as we had hoped. It was in fact very quiet until just after 9, when we could hear fireworks shooting off all around our apartment. I managed to coax Bradley away from his bean soup and we strolled around the block, occasionally ducking behind a car when neighbors' fireworks were too close and pointing at others in the distance. Forget Navy Pier, the whole neighborhood was shooting off fireworks!

One street over, several older men were gathered in the park playing Chinese Chess -- unaffected by the pops and bangs of the fireworks exploding across the highway. But our street was continually lit-up by kids and their sparklers and daring young men lighting rockets and cones of firecrackers with small blow torches.

Happy Independence Day everyone!!!

All The World's A Stage

2011-06-08T14:46:00.000-05:00

I went to see the Chicago Shakespeare Theater's rendition of As You Like It a few months ago. Jamie and I love going to CST, especially since they offer discount tickets to poor and young folks such as ourselves.

Anyway, As You Like It — performed wonderfully by the CST staff, might I add — has a straight-dandy slew of brilliant quotes, as Bill's plays tend to have. Anyway, I got to thinking about life stages today and my mind returned to Jaques's soliloquy in Act 2, Scene 7:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Shakespeare paints the human experience as somewhat of an arc: painful and turbulent at the outset and ending, passionate and thoughtful (in different measures) at the apex. I think this is a pretty sound proxy for the western perspective of life. In America, we see ourselves as achieving adulthood — in essence escaping the prison of childhood — and fighting against the ravages of oldhood — resisting aging where we can.

However, my friends and church community have been discussing, it seems more often of late, the unique values of each life stage. In truth, God has made each separate life stage and — knowing Him and His knack for deliberate designs and schematics — I would not be surprised if each stage has equal value — a fair and equal serving of beauty and suffering.

Our culture, somewhat unabashedly consumed with visual beauty (as many cultures are), has taken a particular liking to the more youthful stages of life. Our presidents continue to get younger. Our pop stars fade away when the clock hits 30 years. Our movie stars and athletes employ all manners of modern science to preserve their visage of youth.

In other words, we are a culture that does not age gracefully — that chooses to not age gracefully. I am getting older and have a family history pre-disposed towards baldness. Now, I luvs my mohawk, but to be honest, my desire to keep my hair does not come from my undying passion for hair styling — it comes from a fear of looking old.

But old I will get! Barring some sudden and uncommon express trip to heaven, I have a good half-century left in this shell, so I might as well get comfortable with the changing scenery in the mirror.

Indeed, all the world may be a stage, complete with the changing acts that march ever-consistently towards death. I, however, choose for it be an essay, with merely changing themes and struggles — and a comma for the end,

Unfinished Halloween Tale Of Terror!

2011-06-07T12:38:00.000-05:00

A Rembrandt etching of Faust.

The following is an unfinished short story I wrote for a Halloween writing contest. It had exceeded the word limit within about 15 minutes of writing, so I elected to scrap it, despite its most pleasant start. Fans of classic German literature will recognize the similarities and allusions to Faust-related stories.

The Tragical Proceedings of Reeble McTavish
The grandfather clock croaked the twenty-third hour as Reeble paced under the darkness of his high ceilings. He ran a shaky hand through his thinning gray hair, combing his skin like the claw of the gardener's rake. Snatching his wine glass from the mantelpiece, Reeble tilted his head back, intending to finish the draught. Outside, the maid, leaving for the night, screamed like a wolf's howl. Reeble choked on the wine, spilling a red cough down his jacket. Through the warbled stained glass of his front door, Reeble saw the moonlit approach of a tall, dark, and hideous beast.

"Reeble!" The monster outside the door called. "Reeble McTavish! I have come to consummate our agreement!"

"Then come!" Reeble called, returning the glass to the mantle with a shaking hand.

The door opened, and in walked a slithering shadow, its face white and motionless like a porcelain mask, its body a snaking cloud of darkness with black ravens' wings folded behind its wispy back.

"Where is your jack-o-lantern?" the monster asked in a deep, echoing voice, opening its mouth, but with no tongue to move. Reeble watched the creature speak, disgusted at the its broken imitation of humanity, disgusted at his own mind, callous to the monster's defects.

"You've lost your holiday spirit?" The thing again asked, without smiling.

"So you've come to torture me for the final hour of my freedom?" Reeble said more than he asked. "I'll give you no such pleasure. You might as well go to your master and return to me at the pre-appointed time."

The monster stood motionless for moment, then slowly floated backwards a step or two. Coming to a stop, he leaned like a scarecrow in in the wind, noticeably peeking at the clock in the neighboring room.

"Damn," the creature whispered under its cobweb breath.

"What?" Reeble said, leaning forward, poking out his chin, and clenching his fists.

"Uhh..." The creature coughed, then continued in his booming, demon's voice, "Your witchcraft and your sins have granted you wealth and success! And, with Mephistophilis, you enjoyed the servitude of Hades' powers, and everything you fantasized has become reality. Now it has been..."

The creature stopped suddenly and leaned back, looking at the clock again.

"Twenty-three years and," the creature looked down and began a fit of coughing, masking his voice as he said, "twenty-three-and-a-quarter-hours." Looking up, the monster looked for Reeble's reaction, then continued quickly, "Your entrails will now be my master's feast and --"

"Wait a moment!" Reeble yelled. "I have another forty-five minutes yet!"

"Seriously?" the monsters said, in an annoyed non-booming voicing. "You're not going to repent, are you?"

"Uhh," Reeble puckered his lips in thought. "No, I don't think so."

"Well, can I take you early? I'm going to miss the red line if we actually wait until midnight."

"You took public transit here?!"

"Yeah, well, what cab driver would take my fare?" the beast said, pointing a wispy hand at this opaque body.

"What about Mephistophiles's chariot, led by forty hell-horses whose eyes burns like a forest fire?"

"Yeah, well that's Mephistophiles's, and I'm Craig, so I don't get to drive it."

"So you're going to take me to hell on public transit?"

"Uh, yeah. Oh, and I'm pretty sure you don't get a say in it because you sold us your soul. So, there's no point in complaining."

"Okay, well, I'm not leaving until midnight. And I don't think you get a say in it."

The expressionless creature sighed deeply. It walked into the room with Reeble and plopped down on the couch.

"Fine," it said with another deep and exagerated sigh.

Reeble turned away from the monster and plucked a book from his bookcase. Easing into a chair near the fireplace, he opened the book to the introduction.

"Seriously?" Craig, Hell's messenger, said incredulously. Reeble sat quietly reading as the beast sighed again. "Well at least give me something to read."

Reeble said nothing. So, the hideous fiend walked over to the bookcase and plucked a collection of poems. After ten minutes of reading, the beast looked up to see Reeble snoozing gently in his chair.

"Are you kidding me?!" the creature boomed.

"Ah! What?! Who's there?" Reeble said, waking from his nap.

"Are you really taking a nap right before I steal you away to the deepest dungeons of the master's prison?"

"Hey, you're not allowed to be mean to me!" Reeble said, pointing a finger at the beast. "That -- that's a breach of contract! You're supposed to make me happy for twenty-four years! Now I'm sleepy and upset! That's a breach of contact!"

"You're joking, right?"

The Creep

2011-06-01T17:45:00.001-05:00

This is the song that I have nightly serenaded my wife with for nigh-on two weeks now. Has there ever been a better hip hop rendition of my relationship with Jamie? I have yet to find it.

Poem: Greed and Poverty

2011-05-20T11:46:00.001-05:00

Greed, I had not recognized you,
the slinking fox,
slowly padding towards me.

In my poverty, you paid visits:
patted my back,
dressed a likewise beggar.

You breathed a catching tune in my ear,
bid me to clutch,
to squeeze the coins I took.

Fox, remove now these teeth from my hand,
and don't tell me
it's just being careful.

This is a little poem I wrote today, while working on a particularly good and interesting chapter in in the finance book I'm editing. It occurred to me greed can exist — and has existed — even in my own life, despite my general lack of money.

Email Exchanges: Fun For The Whole Family!

2011-05-14T10:56:00.000-05:00

I try to take pride in pretty much everything I write. Here's a sampling of some emails I've recently written:

FRIEND: Unrelated, im now a words with friends junkie if any of you tactful english majors play, look me up [user's name redacted]

ME: Words with Friends. Is that a game for plebeians, or only fancy iPad users in their towers of industrialized-world privilege?

FRIEND: I have it on android, so your technological parsimony shouldn't be an obstruction

ME: So it's a phone game? Those are for the wealthy elite who can afford such fancy devices while the rest of us proletariats spend our days immersed in the misery of poverty, cleaning up dead birds on our collective lawns because they don't realize it's a window, not a portal to a new life, an escape from living on dead trees under gray skies -- but then again, maybe that neck-snapping window is the only way out.

FRIEND: Very profound, like the kid in American Beauty who aped the Warhol film and discovered the inevitability of mortality and the myth of self determination.

Do a google search for the game, they might have a rotary version out by now.

These are the conversations of geniuses, clearly.

***

I'm presently engaged in several projects right now, one of which being a textbook I'm editing chapter-by-chapter. In general, the book is rather good and I've learned a lot in the process of editing it.

However, the grammar and writing style is fingernails-on-the-chalkboard bad at times, so I cannot help but share my frustrations with my supervisors:

One of the reviewers said of Chapter 9: some segments were not "written by a native English speaker. The sentences are awkward, sometimes missing coherence, clarity, comprehension."

It is with that context I submit this ninth chapter to you, much like the Grecian who, returning with news of the Battle of Marathon, told the people of Athens, "Victory!" and then collapsed dead.

All the best,
Brad

I have attached the [author's] chapters, as well as the latest invoice. CH 10 was pretty amazing, in a terrifying, Heart of Darkness sense. CH [11] was -- as cats on the Internet are wont to say -- not so bad, akshully.

-Brad

Helplessness Blues Out Today!

2011-05-03T13:59:00.000-05:00

My affinity for the band Fleet Foxes is ever-poorly hidden. They employ musical tactics a fan of 1960s music might find familiar — if not nostalgic — but all the same, their familiarity makes them unique and their lyricism makes them even more.

Today, they released their latest album, "Helplessness Blue," over which I have drooled in vampiric expectations.

Taste, here, the title track, which reads with equal weight as a song or a poem:

Helplessness Blues
I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see,
And now after some thinking, I'd say I'd rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me.

But I don't, I don't know what that will be.
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see.

What's my name? What's my station? Oh, just tell me what I should do.
I don't need to be kind to the armies of night that would do such injustice to you
Or bow down and be grateful and say "sure, take all that you see"
To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls and determine my future for me.

And I don't, I don't know who to believe.
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see.

If I know only one thing, it's that everything that I see
Of the world outside is so inconceivable often I barely can speak.
Yeah I'm tongue-tied and dizzy and I can't keep it to myself.
What good is it to sing helplessness blues? Why should I wait for anyone else?

And I know, I know you will keep me on the shelf.
I'll come back to you someday soon myself.

If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm raw.
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore,
And you would wait tables and soon run the store.

Gold hair in the sunlight. My light in the dawn.
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore.
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore.
Someday I'll be like the man on the screen.

I Continue to Dislike "Lady" Gaga

2011-04-20T12:51:00.005-05:00

Having just read a story from one of the world's greatest artists, the venerable Weird Al Yankovic, I have reaffirmed my distaste for Lady Gaga. I cannot deny she and (presumably) her staff of songwriters and musicians concoct clever and memorable hooks, and they also employ lyrics outside of the common expectation for mainstream pop music -- which is beyond a pleasant surprise.

Still, the woman and her producers have always seemed to me much like the Musical Machine -- a corporate version of beats, rhythms, and words, devoid of earnestness or reality. Also, she seems kind of batshit crazy and self-possessed (eh, like many other musicians, artists, and writers). But now I have verifiable evidence of some of these suspicions, manifest in the most trust-worthy of parody artists:

THE GAGA SAGA « AL'S BLOG

Shame on you Ms. Gaga for putting ol' Al through such hoops and loops and not allowing this simple song:

UPDATE: I should probably take full credit on this one, so I will. Apparently my blog post has single-handedly made Lady Gaga reconsider. As a result, the venerable Yankovic's album and music video will still come out. According to Weird Al, it was Gaga's agent who said no, and that Gaga had no idea herself.

Eh, whatever. At least we Weird Al Faithful get to see the likely amazing video for the song. In truth though, I side with one of Al's commenters here:

I’m not buying the manager’s story… I believe that she nixed it, her manager helped her “realize” the potential fall-out, she changed her mind, and he dutifully took the fall.

She’s still GagGag to me, but I am happy for you that it will be on your album. It is brilliant!

Fits the narrative better, if nothing else.

Facial Hair And Intrigue

2011-04-13T16:07:00.000-05:00

The reviews are in for my latest escapade in the burgeoning genre of Baseball Fiction:

Nicely done. Intrigue? Facial hair? In spades.

Woodrum’s done it again. Slow clap.

An epic tale of an epic ‘stach!

That's right! My latest piece, entitled, "Mustache Watch: Todd Helton's Goatee" has been received quite well by the readership over at NotGraphs.

You, dear reader, can check it out here.

Baseball Dream Journal: Evan and the Super Shift

2011-04-04T13:50:00.000-05:00

The following, though possibly humorous, was not invented. These are records of my actuals dreams, and I have not embellished any detail within them. NOTE: I have added player tags if, for nothing else, to prove these people are real.

Saturday Night
On Saturday, the Tampa Bay Rays faced the Baltimore Orioles for their second game of the season. In that game, the Rays All-Star third baseman Evan Longoria left the game early with an injury to his oblique. I and many fellow Rays fans felt -- at the very least -- distraught at this turn of events.

That night, I dreamed about said third baseman:
"I'm going to request a trade to the Orioles," Evan said to me, looking down at the river below. Under the star-lit sky, the river beneath us shimmered like black velvet. I turned to Evan, but he continued to stare at the water.

"You can't do that," I said, shaking my head. "You'll basically be starting all over there. Why do you even want to go to Baltimore?"

"You know why," he said, resting his chin on the metal girder.

On nights like this, big nights, we'd clamber up the steel arch of this rusted old draw bridge, look down at the canal or at the glistening city lights, and just listen. Listen for answers to the problems or questions we couldn't elsewhere answer.

"Is this about Sharon?"

"Of course it's about Sharon," Evan said, turning away. He began climbing down. I tossed a fleck of rusted steel into the water and then followed him.

"You can't make me change my mind," Evan said, marching toward the ancient, tumbledown shack on the edge of the river. Turning to face me at the door, he repeated himself, "I won't change my mind. I'm going after her."

"What about the Rays, Evan?" I called to him one last time. Suddenly, I was lifted by my shoulders into light, into daylight, and I was awake.

Sunday Night
On Sunday, the Rays lost yet again to the Orioles. This is especially frustrating because I don't believe the Orioles are all that great of a team. Either way, the experience apparently proved emotional enough to again insert the Rays into my dreaming subconscious.

In my dream, young right-hander Jeremy Hellickson was on the mound. Hell-boy was just about to start pitching when manager Joe Maddon began waving from within the dugout. Suddenly, the right fielder Matt Joyce and left fielder Johnny Damon came trotting into the infield. Damon ran over to first base, but Joyce came into the dugout as infield utility-man Elliot Johnson took his place.

The television commentators marveled at Maddon's latest act of bravado: The Super Shift!

"Hellickson is such a good pitcher," the TV announcer Brian Anderson explained, "that Joe Maddon doesn't anticipate anyone will hit it out of the infield."

Sure enough, the Rays had three men manning first base -- Dan Johnson, Johnny Damon, and Elliot Johnson -- each standing about 5 to 10 feet away from each other.

The first batter popped the ball up weakly and four Rays gathered underneath it, including the pitcher, just to be sure it was an out. The second batter weekly lined out to Sean Rodriguez playing third (because, as you may recall, Longoria is injured). Then, the third batter softly dribbled a ground ball to the short stop, who then threw to first. Unfortunately, both Johnny Damon and Dan Johnson were trying to cover the bag.

As the ball got closer, rookie Elliot Johnson ran up from behind in a Leeroy Jenkins-esque show of bravery, tripping over the two first baseman as the baseball popped him on the noggin.

With the runner safe on first, Joe Maddon nodded slowly, like a battle-worn kung fu master, and simply said, "Trust the Process."

And then I awoke.

Interpretation

I might be in love with Evan Longoria and/or Joe Maddon. If not that, then I am at least an excellent candidate to stalk them. I mean, c'mon, there was a lot of sexual tension in that Longoria dream, for sure.

China: The Lost Videos (Part 2)

2011-03-22T19:30:00.000-05:00

Here's the second part of my mini video series, wherein I dig deep in my archives and summon some old, unpublished videos from my trip to China. It has been now four years since I took this video, but the experience is still particularly fond to me.

Thursday Poem: A Sliver From the Master

2011-03-10T11:57:00.000-06:00

Here's a piece from John Donne (above), a poet and devout man from the 17th century. Dude could turn a phrase.

Holy Sonnet XIX
by John Donne

Oh, to vex me, contraries meet in one:
Inconstancy unnaturally hath begot
A constant habit; that when I would not
I change in vows, and in devotion.
As humorous is my contrition
As my profane love, and as soon forgot:
As riddlingly distempered, cold and hot,
As praying, as mute; as infinite, as none.
I durst not view heaven yesterday; and today
In prayers and flattering speeches I court God:
Tomorrow I quake with true fear of his rod.
So my devout fits come and go away
Like a fantastic ague; save that here
Those are my best days, when I shake with feare.

Here's my translation into modrin Engrish:

Holy Sonnet 19
by John Donne, translated by Bradley Woodrum

Shit, my problems are all coming together:
My inconsistency has made
A consistent habit; that when I don't want to,
I go ahead and change my commitments and resolutions.
My repentance is as fickle
As my love is ungodly, and just as quickly forgotten:
My mysterious temper rages and freezes at a whim,
My praying is nonexistent; I'm as everlasting as a breath.
Yesterday, I couldn't even think about heaven; and today
In prayers and flattering speeches I ask God on a date:
Tomorrow I quake with true fear of his rod.
So my devout fits come and go away
Like a sickness constantly changing my complexion; except that
Those are my best days, when I shake with fear.

NOTE: My translation is not meant to replace Donne's awesome work, merely make it more digestible in the modern dialect. Read my version, then reread his. You'll understand then why his is above mine. He says much more, with much less, and pictures it much better. Dude was a stud, no doubt.

Hygienically and Healthily Spurious Lessons from The Sims 3

2011-03-08T15:06:00.001-06:00

"Oh no, dear, these undies have at least five more uses left in them."

The Sims 3 is a video game unlike others. Players create people, "sims," and then guide them through life. Yup, it's a game about everyday life. Get a job. Find a girlfriend. Make breakfast. Die.

But there's something about watching life from the ceiling. It sometimes gives us insights we could not otherwise encounter. Some ideas are better than others, but all of them are nearly equally hygienically and healthily spurious:

Never brush your teeth, it's just a waste of time.
If you're in a hurry, just eat ice cream straight from the tub for the rest of you life.
If you end up putting on extra pounds, just work out once every ten days. After your third work out, you're likely to die of old age.
If you don't like how you look in the mirror, then adopt a kid, because your own progeny will only be uglier.
Pfft! Who combs their hair anymore? I wake up with my hair still gelled, greased, and immaculate.
If you don't do you laundry, dirty clothes will pile up all over the place -- but don't worry! A disembodied, blue hand will come by and put them in the washer for you. While you sleep, probably.
If you don't have a washing machine, you don't have to do laundry.
It is perfectly acceptable to wear the exact same clothes every day, without fail, for the rest of your life.

I am living proof of the last bullet.

Thursday Poem: TV Themed!

2011-03-03T16:36:00.000-06:00

I couldn't decide on just one of the prompts from last Tuesday, so I'm grabbing several.

By the Numbers
15 for two men, a teen, and cued laughter.
12 for the big bang.
10 for my dad's comments.
6 for wiping out.

But just 3.5 for the finest community of friends this side of campus.

And here's another...

Watching the Fireflies Dot the Darkness*
Time for some thrilling heroics:
You can luxuriate in a nice jail cell,
but if your hand touches metal,
I swear by my pretty floral bonnet:
I will end you.

If you thought it strange, know:
You can't open the book of my life and jump in the middle.
Like woman, I'm a mystery.

And before we even found it, we
came downstairs for the shiny presents...
They took the tree, and the stockings...
Nothing left but coal.

*This poem is largely composed of "Firefly" quotes.

How about one more? Try to guess which TV show this one is about.

Chances
The wood ages and weathers,
the floorboards warping
under Time's persistent pacing.
The house aches and creeks
of ill-kept secrets beneath;
it alone knows
the missed chances of my youth,
like pearls fallen
through a grate,
opportunities just beyond
outstretching fingertips.

So I'm taking this last chance,
I'm stretching back my bow
and firing an arrow,
praying it is not my last.

Let me know what you think! Did you guess the last poem?

Prompt Me!

2011-02-28T20:57:00.001-06:00

This is how poets dress.

For next Thursday's poem, I want to do something different. I would like to receive a prompt from the readership. Here's the guidelines:

Thursday's poem will be themed Awesome TV Shows.
Therefore, you must:

Name an awesome TV show...
Post said TV show in the comments.

I will then pick either my favorite or least favorite among those listed, and then write a probably amazing poem about it.

BEGIN!

Thursday Poem: Chili

2011-02-24T14:57:00.001-06:00

This poem is a response to "Carrabelle."

Chili
Walking through the kitchen,
my pupils pressing against the edges of my eye,
I spy the slow cooker, it's belly bubbling
an assortment of peppers, beans, and meat --
it casually perfumes the room
and, like a gardener, waters my mouth.

"I don't know how this will turn out,"
you say, lifting the lid for a sniff.
I appear with a spoon in hand, offering my services.
"You have to wait! It's not done yet!"

And no, it does not turn out how we expect,
but the crisp peppers and the spicy seasonings,
the melting tomatoes and the soft beans,
the chili powder and the salt --
we mix them all together
with trepidation and uncertainty,

and sleeping with licked-clean bowls at our side,
we have no regrets.

Quotational Evidence of my Brilliance

2011-02-23T13:20:00.000-06:00

After reading my short story in the January edition of the Writer's Digest, my friend Ashley remarked:

You're a very good writer, as evidenced by the depth of my depression.

Here's something brilliant I wrote on my friend's Buzz account:

Here's some ideas for Google's next project -- things I'd like to do, but they often prove to difficult:

- Google TV Remote Finder: A Google Maps app that show you precisely where your remote is and gives you walking directions.

- Google IRL Robot: A real-life robot who can perform menial tasks, such as fetch the Google Cheese when it's on the other side of the room.

- Google Pants: Self explanatory.

Depressing Writer + Innovative Internet User = Modern Shakespeare?

Yes. I think so.

Tuesday Poem: Carrabelle

2011-02-21T16:37:00.003-06:00

Carrabelle
The power I knew I'd lose
looks a thousand ways more wonderful
in the weathered records of my mind.

When I had it,
I would have held my hand around the earth,
like shielding a gentle flame from the wind,
if you asked for protection --
I would have pressed little hot stars
into new and empty galaxies
if you asked for space --
I would have stood in the planets' path
and held the universe perfectly still
if you asked for time.

And when we drove through Carrabelle,
with the sun melting orange over the ocean
and you half-asleep, watching the water glisten,
I fixed my mind to scoop this plot into our possession
and give you every parcel you wanted; before --
before just a few years extracted my strength,
and I hid like a rat whenever you said merely:
care.

Image source: Ebyabe

Shorts from the Archives

2011-02-10T00:20:00.000-06:00

The following is a short story I wrote a year or two ago for my creative writing class at JU. I rather liked the story -- as well as the concept itself -- and hope to someday write more of them and assemble into a book perhaps. Let me know what you think.

Across the Banks

Joshua spat dust from his mouth as the men walked through the city’s thick gates. Behind Joshua, Caleb could still hear the clatter and murmur of the Jericho market: chickens calling out their hoarse songs, cattle lowing for their young, metal finery rattling. Soon, the sound had faded until Caleb only heard the breathy complaints of the trudging men like scratchy branches faintly shaking in a gentle wind. Joshua shook his head and faced the blue expanse above. The cooler airs had swept across the plains, and all week the men had enjoyed the breezy dryness of their cloaks and tunics as they wandered the city’s confines.

“I assume you saw him. The one slapping the rugs in the marketplace?” Shaphat grumbled from behind his brown beard as he readjusted the pack on his back. Refastening the tie around his waist, he attempted to nestle into his cloak as he walked. “I bet he holds a blade the size of my son.” Others muttered half-words in agreement.

Gaddi, with his deep and raspy voice, said, “Well, I’ll be damned if that boy we saw the first day wasn’t twice my height.” Again, the chorus of not-words. “And I’m thinking those logs he carried were each a man’s weight.”

“That is absurd!” Joshua called from the back. “They were twigs! And so what if he was large, Yahweh is bigger. Did Yahweh not pull the sea apart with no more than a breeze?” He could see those in front of him subtly exchanging glances and rolling their eyes. Caleb caught up with Joshua and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Can you believe what they say?” Joshua said, motioning to the other men. Caleb gently squeezed Joshua’s shoulder as he spoke.

“Patience. Let’s see how a quiet treats them. Let Yahweh work on their thoughts.” Caleb’s voice was soothing, yet rough, like a smooth rock tumbling through a stream. His dark eyes and long, black beard, streaked with brown like a painter’s mistake, belied his relative youth.

The men continued along the highway for another hour, maintaining a silence broken only occasionally by the soft whistling of young Sethur, which sounded like a distant and eerie flute played gently on the lips of the wind. Joshua thought about how this group had only a month earlier come the opposite way, and how they had clambered so eagerly up the steep and wooded banks of the Jordan. The men had danced and chanted songs when they reached the first clearing beyond the bank and saw fields with wild wheat poking invitingly from tall grass. No one even minded when Sethur produced the harp he had been specifically told not bring. He strummed playfully as Gaddi hopped around him, his thick, squat frame hobbling from side to side as his beard slowly mimicked his jumps. A week later, Gaddi broke that harp over his knee and threw it into the camp’s fire.

Over the course of the first two hours of this, the final leg of their journey, the twelve men had spread out considerably in the road. Caleb, Joshua, and Nahbi all looked up as they began to hear voices suddenly in the front grouping of men. They could see the others pointing to the right of the road, towards a small group of ficus trees fifty paces from their location. Nahbi licked his lips and ran his fingers through his long hair.

“Harah – what is it now?” Nahbi’s voice rattled with the slightest mix of excitement and anxiety, shaking like a goat’s bray.

“Look at that!” Shaphat was yelling as the twelve men finally mustered. “Do you see it? Out there, hanging between those trees?” Shaphat’s cheerful tone seemed out of place, almost suspicious, to the other eleven men who had heard only infectious, gloomy utterances over the last four weeks.

“Oh I see it!” Joshua said. Caleb jumped at Joshua’s sudden reaction and each put a hand over their brows, peering across the field.

“What is it?” Caleb asked, but Gaddi and Shaphat had already left the road, slipping through the tall grass, wild wheat, and sunflowers. The other ten instinctively dropped their packs and followed them.

In the field, the wheat’s chaff clouded the air and, once airborne, drifted languidly in the sun. Joshua could not help but close his eyes and breathe deeply as he listened to the soothing rustle of grass and stalks. The men reunited under the shade of the spindly ficus trees to see Gaddi and Shaphat already scaling separate trunks.

“Huh,” Caleb said, chewing a head of wheat perched in the corner of his mouth.

“Yahweh-is-with-us,” Sethur muttered mechanically.

“Can you believe it?!” Gaddi called out in breathless excitement as his square frame struggled to keep pace with Shaphat climbing the opposite tree. Caleb chewed the wheat with the faintest smile upturning his beard. Above them hung the largest cluster of grapes any of the men had ever seen. The vine reached nearly four feet towards the ground and was as thick as Gaddi’s stout waist.

“I’m going to hack this branch, and when it gets low enough, you will catch the other end.” Gaddi waved his knife as he called to Shaphat. “Then we will let go at the same time and the men below with catch the branches. Did you hear that down there?”

“What?” called Sethur.

“Get ready to catch this branch! Keep the grapes from hitting the ground or they’ll burst!”

Shortly, the limb cracked and before long the men were on the road, carrying the branch across Sethur and Nahbi’s shoulders.

“How are they?” Sethur asked with a smile as Gaddi violently spit a grape seed.

“They would be less sour had I not seen those monsters living in Hebron. Three of them! Sons of Anak! Each twice Shaphat’s height!” Gaddi spit for effect as Shaphat nodded silently.

“Yes, Hebron had three giants,” Joshua said quietly to Caleb, who was biting into a large fig, “but Jericho and these other cities and towns did not, yet they see giants in them anyway. Where did you get that fig?” Caleb spit seeds messily, covering his beard in fig juices and misfired seeds.

“When we get to… pthf… Mosheh, we’ll… pthfpthf… talk about this more,” Caleb spoke in an almost deep hum, never moving his eyes from the fist-sized fruit in his hands, even as he reached into his cloak and produced another similar fig for Joshua. The finality in Caleb’s tone distressed, but quieted, Joshua. That evening, the troop reached the Jordan and clambered down the side, sending loose dirt into the river that created beautiful brown spirals beneath the golden sunset. With the final embers of the day still lighting the sky, the twelve men finally saw the white and beige patchwork of tents, their nomad home. Children came running towards the slouching returners, unwittingly making themselves mules to the men’s heavy packs. The whole community had gathered by Moses’ tent by the time the men entered the city. Onlookers holding torches pointed at the phenomenal grape cluster hanging like a slain animal between Shaphat and Nahbi. Several small children quick enough to avoid Gaddi’s grasp held plump, stolen grapes in their hands, presenting them to awed onlookers for only a moment before they popped them into their mouths. Already, from the back of the procession, Joshua could hear Gaddi talking as loud as his hoarse voice could maintain.

“…Yes, but the monsters that guard the land make it worth nothing… Certainly, sons of Anak, in almost every city we came upon… Huge men! Three times the height of Shaphat, there… And the very nearest city is guarded by a wall as thick as all us twelve standing abreast…”

Shaphat joined in, too:

“…Sure thing, I saw them. They were easily the size of trees. Even their children are bigger than me… Oh sure, all sorts of fruits and grains – wheat growing in the streets, practically – but it will be our end if we try to take it…”

Joshua looked to Caleb to see his reaction in the torch light. Caleb held a handful of grapes, eating them carefully and quickly. He spat the seeds with great succession and force. All of the muscles in his mouth seemed simultaneously tensed, yet he made no motion to speak or to acknowledge Joshua’s glance.

Once inside Moses’ tent, the men laid the grapes on the ground and entered the curtain doorway to his room.

“Mosheh,” Sethur began in a voice that overly employed a tone of mourning, like an insincere condolence at a funeral. “The land is incredible, but there are monsters everywhere!”

“Sit down, Sethur,” Moses said, his face stretched into its usual wide-eyed smirk. Moses sat cross-legged on a matt with his hair and beard both pointing in every possible direction: north, left, west, back, south, up, right, down, east. Though his beard and thinning hair were gray, his gaunt, dark face communicated youthfulness both in health and emotional disposition; with a darker beard and inside the confines of a city, he would appear merely an eccentric, homeless thirty-year-old. Aaron lay on his matt in the back of the tent, tiredly holding a hand over his face.

“I want to hear everything in order, so let us… sit and talk,” Moses said, motioning at the ground in front of himself, still staring with white eyes at the young Sethur, standing in front of him. “You must all be tired after that journey. I will get you something to eat and drink.”

The twelve scouts simultaneously called Moses back to his seat with a jumbled chorus of: “Oh, no, no; please sit Mosheh, please sit; there is no need.”

“Alright then, let us hear it. Tell me about the land Yahweh is giving us,” Moses said behind a wildly excited smile that made his mustache and beard look its thinnest.

The men slowly assembled a patchwork of stories detailing their separate accounts of the same events. Then, as the story neared their arrival to Hebron, Gaddi tore the quilted narrative, and with his face turning red behind his black and gray beard, he began to yell:

“Giants, Moses! Giants! Sure, we found milk and honey, but there were giants! Giants in every city! We saw descendants of the giant Anak. Amalekites are spread out in the Negev; Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites hold the hill country; and the Canaanites rule on the Mediterranean Sea and along the Jordan. And we saw walls thicker than any in Egypt!”

Nahbi, with his eyes closed and his head downturned, ran his fingers through his long hair and muttered to himself: “Egypt, Egypt, Egypt… Oooh, Egypt…”

The tent filled with the sounds of shouting as Gaddi fought to raise his rusty voice over the others fighting to post simultaneous complaints. As the noise climaxed, Joshua and Caleb finally managed to fight to the front of the crowd. Caleb faced the other ten scouts and began waving his hands slowly and calling out as through trying to signal them from a distance: “Hey! Hey!”

Perplexed at this, the crowd quieted and Caleb turned to Moses. “Mosheh, please, let's go up and take the land — now. We can do it.”

The ten others behind Caleb all started yelling again. Shaphat raised his hands in the air and rolled his eyes with a pained smile, saying: “Was he not there when we saw the young giant in Jericho carrying trees in his arms?!”

“Mosheh,” Joshua pleaded into Moses’ ear, “please.”

Clearing his voice with a cough and a chuckle at the same time, Moses closed his eyes and began to talk: “Okay, now I am hearing many things. Some of you,” he began waving his hands around to indicate the majority of the room, but the waving seemed to go on extra long as though he forgot what he was doing, “think we will die when we cross that river.” He pointed to Jericho and closed his eyes as though organizing his thoughts. “And the group believes that giants wait for us and behind great walls, correct?”

The group knew Moses too well to respond.

“These other men,” Moses waved his outstretched hands in a circular motion towards the direction of Caleb and Joshua, “say there are giants on the other side of the river,” again he pointed towards the Jordan, now smiling with wild excitement, “that want to kill us, but we must attack right now?”

Then Moses’ brother, Aaron, stood from his mat in the back of the room. In his always quiet voice, he said with a furrowed brow, “Alright, thank you all. Let Mosheh and I talk a moment.”

As the twelve left, Joshua could hear Moses saying to Aaron, “He promised this place for us, did he not? We should be able...”

Outside the tent, the whole community stood in silent expectation for word from the scouts. Gaddi, Shaphat, and Sethur obliged their expectations, diving into the crowd like soldiers into a melee, yelling and gesturing.

Joshua could feel it, feel the promised land resting on the other side of the river. He felt it like the pulse of a heartbeat, like the beat throbbing in his head. But it faded like the dying pulse of the Passover lamb. The pulse was fading though he held it tight. The heads of the families gathered at the temple, calling out to Moses and Aaron: “They’ll kill us! Our wives and our children will be their plunder!”

Somewhere in the front, Nahbi was calling out: “Egypt! Why did we leave Egypt!?” Caleb and Joshua ran in front of everyone and tore their hand-woven cloaks in protest. They screamed like condemned criminals, begging their people to cross the river. But, Joshua could no longer feel the pulse when a light both blue and orange and as blinding and steady as the sun exploded from the temple. Everyone collapsed in blinded reverence as Moses turned around with sorrow pulling his beard downward and said, “Yes?”

Much later that night, after the lamenting of crowds had quieted, once the wild, haunting, and terrifying howling and crying in the streets silenced, Joshua laid silently on his bed. In his head, Joshua could still hear the screams of men and women alike that commenced when Moses returned from the temple, when Moses tearfully pointed away from the Jordan and repeated the words he heard. Staring into the utter darkness of his tent’s ceiling, the sounds and images of the night’s events faded into the darkness around him until he could not help but see and hear the small seeds firing from Caleb’s mouth. And Joshua realized that Caleb understood all along and had grabbed the land when no one was looking, with secret mourning had stolen away as much as he could, to hold onto tightly and enjoy in his mouth and belly for when he returned to the desert; so Joshua fought to paint images on the black canvas overhead, the images from across the Jordan in the distance, the last month of his escape from Egypt, trying in the night to gather the pieces of the previous day’s hope, like seeds from a moist fruit spit deliberately, forming a trail for what he hoped would be his return.

Chinese Spongebob

2011-01-26T18:47:00.000-06:00

If you want to learn some Chinese, why not have fun while you're doing/not actually learn Chinese but instead enjoy funny Chinese voice overs of your favorite America shows?

I present to you 海面宝宝 (Haimian Baobao):

Cut My Hair

2011-01-21T00:19:00.000-06:00

Why should I care
If I have to cut my hair?
I've got to move with the fashions
Or be outcast.

-"Cut My Hair," by The Who

After a short period of impulsive calculations, I decided to cut my hair. Before going ahead with the decision, I asked my past and future self to debate a little. Here's a photo from that debate:

And here's a pair of photos from during the cut session, which lasted somewhere around an hour and a half. That hair did not want to go.

Goodnight, sweet prince.

GERMANY!!!

2011-01-10T19:25:00.002-06:00

I knew it! I've had aching suspicions the Germans were out to get me. Get me dead, that is. And now I have hard evidence of their sly and sort of passive-aggressive intentions!

That's right! Two of my awesome China videos are not reaching my many German fans! Well, Germany, if it's a passive-aggressive battle of content blocking you want, then it's a passive-aggressive battle of content blocking you get! I'm officially never visiting Germany's official tourism website, starting next month!

Your move, Germany.

Nuggets of Knowledge and Questions of Consequence

2011-01-08T11:55:00.001-06:00

Knowledge Nuggets:

Lying to kids is not good, but deceiving them is great fun.
Too few people fear the destructive power of hot tubs.
No toilet paper? No problem. Coffee filters. (hat tip: Daniel)
Playing basketball is much more fun with long, silky shorts -- like they wear on TV. In tight, cotton shorts, you tend to feel like a goober and nary a shot gets taken as much of the players instead encircle you and taunt your wardrobe.
In the winter, heaters are very important. Apparently in cold places, they're called "furnaces" and have some sacred blue flame inside. Jamie and I, at the behest of our landlord, went to the basement to look for the sacred blue flame in the furnace. We didn't find the blue flame on the first try, so we returned later with an offering of fruit and ripped DVDs of old spaghetti westerns, whereupon the flame appeared, but did not bless us with heat.
If the furnace fails to heat your house, you can always slay a ton-ton and clamber inside.

Questions of Consequence because questions are the deepest form of thought:

If your the muscles all along your back tighten in a pain-searing cramp as you turn to reach for toilet paper, does it mean you are not working out enough or working out too much?
What is the appropriate response for, "You are the reason I hate the internet"?
Is it criminal to not shovel your sidewalk, allowing the snow to build a thick sheen of ice, and then placing a motion-sensitive camera in your window to film anyone who slips on said sidewalk, editing the resulting film, putting it to upbeat ragtime music, and then sending it to America's Funniest Videos?
Is it possible to steal heat from a neighbor?
If you smell chicken while your wife is making oatmeal, does that mean it's time to clean the stove?
It is widely known that the new XBOX Kinect is power by sorcery, but why then would you also lace the object with addictive substances in an effort to endanger the finances of English-speaking families all across Chinatown?
Chili for breakfast: Greatest decision of the year, or greatest decision of my life?
Why are they so many wild ton-tons in Chinatown? And why are they drawn to my frigid house, marching inexorably to their lightsaber-induced demise?

Photo Post! From Winter to Wedding

2010-12-20T13:23:00.000-06:00

Snow arrived rather abruptly to Chicago. At the outset of December, Jamie and I had near forgotten Chicago skies love to barf snow on us. Then, come one day, we awoke to a suddenly icy winter. In the above photo, we see my good friend, Chuck, sweeping a fresh blanket of snow off his car, quietly whispering comments about ungrateful passengers and photo-taking no-helps.

During the final week of my graduate courses, my coworker and sorta-friend, Jessica, said to me plainly, "Bradley, you need to groom." In protest, I instead took this MySpace'd photo on the train, showcasing my unkempt beard.

When not playing Mahjong, my students in Chinatown most enjoy cheating. I have found the most effective means of preventing excessing cheating on tests is to keep a pair of eyes on them at all times. Therefore, I used a combination of dark arts, alchemy, and dry-erase markers to imbue my image on the board. The photo does not show it, but the eyes blink and often follow the students around. This proves appropriately terrifying for most of the students.

Here is the ominous smoke stack at the end of our street. Day and night, it steams, a slender cigarette of 19th century progress, a token of the once-Chicago, the Chicago now pressed into the fringes of the city or to the riversides of some far-eastern town.

Just another night in Chinatown.

Here we see the night descend into numbing cold until the day arrives, gray and buried under the chill of a blizzard's cloak. This is the snowstorm that helped the Bears lose to the Patriots.

And just like that, it's over, and I'm in Florida again. As part of our winter ritual, Jamie and I retreated to the warmer (50-70 degrees) confines of our Florida hometown. This year, we had the great pleasure of attending and making awesome my brother's wedding.

Daniel -- my brother -- left his cat at my parent's place -- where Jamie and I are staying. Ronald (the cat) loves our bed, often joining us in slumber. Most mornings, we awake to find he has pushed us both from the bed and taken all the covers. I have asked him why several times, but he merely stares at the ceiling and shakes his head, as though to say, "Even if I told you, you would still be a hairless cat."

One morning I awoke to find Ronald using my cell phone to take MySpace'd photos. It was then I discovered his intentions to replace me.

My Friend Will Smith, Dropping Truth Bombs

2010-12-07T16:32:00.001-06:00

Morally Deficient Lessons from The Sims 3

2010-12-02T09:56:00.001-06:00

A good night's sleep is worth letting a baby cry in its crib for two hours.
As a young adult, its wise to hit on teens. That way they don't surprise you and turn into an old person after you marry them.
If you recently married someone and the do in fact become old the next day, you've got to divorce them. If you don't, who will carry on the family's striking features?
If you are close to becoming old, but haven't yet won that karate tournament you've been training for, then hurry, become a gardener. You must stop everything until you have a harvest of life fruit. Don't go to work. Don't pay your bills. Don't call your friends. Don't bother showering. All that matters now is eternal life.
Maids are easy to marry because they are forced to come to your house.
Be careful of secretly old maids.
The fast-track to fortune: become a novelist.
Most novelists are more useful dead, whence their ghost can continue their books for them and earn the family slews of royalties.
If you don't like someone, have them walk into a windowless room with only one door. Sell the door.
If your boss doesn't like you because you convinced his wife to leave him for you, only to divorce his now ex-wife once you realized she was old, and so he's blocking you from that final promotion at work, invite him over for a party, but invite no one else, and say "Oh my, the other guests must be running late," though no one but your IRL wife will hear you as she stands over your shoulder and watches with jealousy as you play, and then invite him to check out your cool new shed you built, and then find some pretense to exit the windowless shed. Then sell the door.
It's easier to kill someone than become their friend.

Learning has never been so fun.

Nuggets of Knowledge and Questions of Consequence

2010-11-12T12:07:00.001-06:00

Knowledge Nuggets:

Timberlands are the greatest shoes ever. They are durable and make me feel like an astronaut everywhere I go.
Community is very likely the greatest show on television right now:

The new Conan show is also double awesome:

Consequential Questions:

What is it about turning 23 and a half that caused me to completely forget about zipping up my fly? Early onset senility?
Why bother making the Fig Newtons package resealable?
Why don't we have a cat in this beautiful wood-floor home of mine yet?

China: The Lost Videos (Part 1)

2010-11-05T20:00:00.002-05:00

In 2007, I traveled to China as an intern. I gained worldwide notoriety for how amazingly effectively I was at updating my family through film and song.

However, one of my greatest regrets was never showing the world the clips from my trip to Beijing. So, I've decided to dig out my old laptop -- which now has a nearly-broken sound card and only half a working screen -- and find the old Beijing videos, seen only by my wife and me.

So, I present China: The Lost Videos (Part 1)! In Part 1, we will see a few clips from old Beijing, including an abbreviated tour of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City -- the palace of feudal China.

Enjoy.

I imagine a lot has changed in Beijing since then. When I was there, the city was engaged in massive overhauls for the Olympics. That's why the Forbidden City has a few buildings wrapped in scaffolding.

Anyway, I've got some selected picture on the other side of the jump.

These are the bicycles racks seen briefly at the beginning of the video. Cars are certainly in no short supply, but the bikes rule Beijing.

This is the sun. Or at least what's left of it.

I have no idea what this thing was, but it was awesome.

A final look back at the Forbidden City, 故宫.

Hey! Looks like I'm getting published!

2010-10-29T18:06:00.001-05:00

The short story I recently wrote, entitled "Paradise," apparently won the contest! I wrote it for Writer's Digest's "Your Story" contest, in which they give a prompt each issue and then have readers vote for their favorite. So about two months ago, the editors selected mine as one of the best, and then it won the vote!

I started reading Writer's Digest about a year or two ago. I did so after my mother encouraged me to take my writing more seriously. Since eternity, I've always joked about the uselessness of an English degree or hopes of becoming a writer. Well, my mother knew I (a) really loved writing and would love to make a living writing and (b) had the talent sufficient to succeed.

So thanks mom -- and thanks WD for encouraging me to keep writing! (Also, thanks to dad and all my friends and family, who have -- perhaps to my detriment -- never said an unkind word about my writing.)

The odd thing is I would not have discovered my winning had I not been vaingloriously Googling my own name. Take that narcissism!

So anyway, I stumbled on this:

So keep your eyes peeled for the January 2011 issue of WD!

A Carlian History

2010-09-08T15:04:00.001-05:00

The following is an illustrated history of Carl Weathers, my sister's cat. I am not the author of this history, but rather just its messenger. The following images were sent to me via text message over the last few years.

The Beginning of Carl

Here we see Carl in his more tender years, when his head still took the form of a squished plum.

Carl, the Life of the Party

This image portrays Carl in his days in Jacksonville, where his spent his days partying, eating paper, and sitting on TV remotes.

Carl, the Young Prince

Here we see Carl posing on his throne. His languid stare helps to convey not only his overwhelming and royal brilliance, but also his burden physical beauty that both blesses and curses him.

Carl, the Entrepreneur

Here we see Carl practicing on his crudely fashioned flight simulator. According to my sister: "He pretends he's in an airplane going to Chicago daily." Why is Carl searching for me? I do not know, but I can only expect that his intentions are insidious.

Carl, the Ladies Man

Upon receiving this text, Carl's machinations became more clear to me -- as well his intentions to earn his pilot's license. According to Janelle: "Look at how I found Carl this morning."

Carl, the Collector

Few people realize that Carl is also a collector of rare things -- not vinyl records, per se. Instead, he collects more ethereal things like people's thoughts, little bits of quasi-edible paper, and naps. In this photo, he appears to collecting someone's thoughts. And eating them with his mind.

Carl, the Dreamer

He's too fat for that armrest.

Carl, the Go-Getter

Few cats, much less humans, would dare to explore their desires beyond the limitations of their physical design. But not Carl. He laughs at the notion that cats are not snakes, and what's more: he endeavors to prove it wrong!

Carl the Slayer

The annals of history have known many slayers: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Devil-Slayer of the comic book realm, and Arnold Swartzenager the Cinema Slayer. But few slayers have ever specialized in the art of hapless murder via napping. Here we see Carl (on the right) has "napped" another victim (on the left) into the gravy abyss of death.

Paradise

2010-08-26T17:40:00.000-05:00

Last month I wrote this little short story, entitle "Paradise," for the Writer's Digest "Your Story" competition (contest #27). The prompt was simple: Start your story with: "I never would have purchased this house if I'd known that..." End it with: "That's why tomorrow I'm setting it on fire."

Anyway, I've decided to post it here against the odds its been published in this months' WD. I hope you enjoy it!

I never would have purchased this house if I'd known that hidden within its timbers and deep inside its concrete foundation, my father still lived there. In these young days of the summer, I finally gathered my life into a brown, hard-shell suitcase and went looking for that cottage by Lake Fisher. “Paradise,” the name of the cottage, hung above the doorway just as in the gold-tinted memories of my youth. I paced the broad, hardwood floors, only half-listening to the realtor describing to me the places I already knew. The stone fireplace and the oak table. The creaky, but sturdy, dock, leading to the murky edge of the petite lake.

“I can pay in cash,” I said, surprised I wasn't smiling as I had pictured it. That evening, I pulled into a dusty gas station and made a bespectacled old man grin when I asked, “What do I need to go fishing?”

My lure made a light plop sound amid the symphony of bug and bird songs. And as the lake gently licked the shore, I was not surprised that I was not smiling; I was surprised that a tear was sliding down my cheek.

That first night in the house, I laid silently in the master bed for only ten minutes before I changed to the guest room. Dropping onto the familiar mattress, I breathed slow, gentle air, listening carefully for the creaks and pops of the house settling.

“It's just turning in its bed,” he had said to me as I stood in the doorway, clutching my blanket. “Paradise is probably wondering why you woke it.”

Whenever his smile or laugh would spread wide his white-bearded face, I could not help but reciprocate the emotion, like a snake charmed by a chuckle.

The next morning, I saw him cracking eggs over the skillet and my lungs melted with a sudden blend of excitement and disbelief, but he left when I blinked. And in the evening, I heard him lazily playing the harmonica on the dock, but he quit playing when I ran out to look for him. And in the night, I heard him ease the door open to check if I had fallen asleep. I turned to tell him goodnight and to see him smile, but he had already left when I rolled over.

On the morning of the third day, I gently touched my dry and throbbing eyelids and began to swear, but – for just a moment – reflexively thought he would get upset. Again I expected to laugh, but instead I began to heave and gasp for air and my legs unhinged, lowering me to the bathroom tile. While on that cold, black and white floor, I had the one dream I remember from the last four days: him, laying misshapen and feeble on a pure white bed. With a tired laugh, he broke my endurance and drew me into the most miserable laugh of my life. When I awoke, I could still feel his rough hospital gown pressed to my cheek, and I was choking on my tears again.

That's why tonight I poured my clothes into the back seat of my car, blending the dirty with the clean. That's why I returned dad's brown, hard-shell suitcase under his bed. That's why I left each token of this sacred vacation cottage in its original and beautiful place. That's why I spilled three cans of gasoline on the floor.

That's why tomorrow I'm setting it on fire.

Photo Post: Spring Painting!

2010-04-27T16:50:00.000-05:00

First, some business. Janelle sent me this picture of Carl:

So I drew this picture in commemoration:

For reference, here is the real Carl Weathers:

This last weekend, Jamie and I got together with our friends from CCUC to do some spring cleaning/painting at the school CCUC runs.

Our Asian friends work diligently as I, using my Caucasian expertise, oversee the process.

Yes, it was I who painted the fat cat on the kitchen wall.

Ryan, despite our protests, used the ancient Blur Hand kung fu style of painting.

I'm still trying to decipher the logic behind taping a "Wet Paint" sign onto a wet paint.

Jamie yells abuses as I mockingly photograph her much slower progress.

Here we see Jamie washing the walls, which confused many of us because it was neither a required task, nor a sensible one. At the risk of exposing her true identity, Jamie too used the Blur Hand technique.

Chutney Joe's, the Indian fast food restaurant I go to every week, has started selling "Bombay-ritos," or burritos with Indian food inside. Because this made my head asplode with joy, I figured I would share the joy with you, my gentle friends and Internet robots:

Photo Post: RU Lakers Baseball!

2010-04-06T21:44:00.001-05:00

Matt, our head coach, surveys the field.

A Laker takes a swing with a runner on third. I might have been stealing second at the moment, but you can't see me. :(

Matt warms up for the coming inning.

Matt slings a fastball. That's me in shallow right field (on the far right).

The ump whispers to our catcher, "Rosebud." We all become troubled.

This is me, warming up for my signature move, the soft and comical groundout to first.

After the game, per my agreement with Jamie, I destroyed my beard. Subsequently, my Mountain Man-tality decreased by two-fold.

I Couldn't Help Myself

2010-04-02T15:41:00.000-05:00

A little photoshop fun to get the Friday going: My friends Ben and Steph recently posted some pictures from one of their many adventurous strolls around Kinmen, China, and I couldn't resist playing with one of their photos:

Here's the original:

(Actually, this was not Photoshop fun, but Gimp fun -- because Gimp is free!)

Photo Post: Volleyball Night!

2010-03-19T11:04:00.000-05:00

So continues the Inadvertent Photo Post Marathon! Today, I'm reviewing last night's adventure in volleyball. The church we belong to in Chinatown -- CCUC -- has a gymnasium which plays volleyball on Thursday nights. A couple weeks ago, Jamie and I started taking advantage of this and have loved it ever since!

Inside the L. I've used the public transit systems in London, Hong Kong, Washington (DC), and now Chicago. Overall, I'm shocked out how out-dated and unpleasant the US vehicles (both trains and buses) are compared to their foreign counterparts.

The blurry girl in the front is moments away from whiffing on that set (the blurred volleyball descending from the upper left).

Jamie prepares to serve.

Jamie defends the middle ground as her team embarks on their winless evening.

Us on the return trip. During this time, I discovered my phone could -- at my disposal -- add a pink cat with a red bow tie to any of my pictures. I did so with the following (which in turn resized the image):

For those wondering, yes, I'm on Spring Break right now; in addition, I recently discovered my phone takes passable photos that I can pretty easily transfer to my computer: thus, the Inadvertent Photo Post Marathon.

Photo Post: Lunch in Chinatown!

2010-03-18T17:00:00.001-05:00

Today, my inadvertent Photo Post marathon continues with a lovely stroll into Chinatown to meet some friends for lunch. This is a ritual Jamie has with some of her friends from church; but I'm typically busy on Thursdays, so this was my first chance to tag along.

This is us ambulating down the street. We were about to walk into a fire-hydrant, so I'm looking down. Jamie has an excited expression because life is a huge adventure for her.

Here's a look down Wabash as a cadre of toddlers, strapped together by some collection of vinyl ropes and dog chains, approaches us.

Here, some toddler looks wistfully into the distance, presumably musing about his parachute-like strappings or the peculiarities of Latin American economic reform.

We walk under the rattle of the L.

A view of the skyline from near Chinatown's edge.

This particular establishment -- Joy Yee's Noodles -- specializes in fruity, frozen drinks. The fruits lining the far wall are all very fresh and used in their very unique and diverse smoothies (Jamie had a mango and black tapioca drink, whilst I had a delicious banana, coconut, and green tapioca).

A glimpse of my feed-an-army portioned kimchi, pork, and noodle dish. It was beyond delicious, and the leftovers will remain in my fridge for -- at most -- another 5 minutes whence I will relocate them somewhere inside my tummy.

Photo Post: Second Jog of 2010!

2010-03-17T15:31:00.001-05:00

At Jamie's insistence, I left the house today. Because it's Saint Patrick's Day, I decided to trot downtown to see if the river was green and if the people were adequately appreciating the man who saved modern history and brought Christianity to the Irish people (which they weren't).

I'm not sure if it's because all the parades were on Saturday, but the river didn't seem much greener than usual.

This is the impressive Trump Tower, second only to the Willis (Sears) Tower. Every time I see this building, I think of the cover of Final Fantasy VII:

This is me, tired from running, but never too tired to keep my mustache stiffly curled.

Hooray! It's my school in the distance! Apparently the new "vertical campus" they're building (next to the current building) is going to be nearly as tall as the red CNA tower!

Here's the skyline overlooking the Metra tracks that Jamie takes to class twice a week. If you look very closely, you can see some people in the distant Aon Complex failing to appreciate St. Patrick.

No wolves today, but I did see a horse. There was already a cop on top of it, so I didn't take a picture. Also I was jogging.

Photo Post: First Jog of 2010!

2010-03-16T17:51:00.001-05:00

Today it was a toasty 56 degrees outside, so I went for a pleasant hour-long jog. I snapped a few photos on the way:

It's kind of hard to see here, but that little dot in the middle of the field is a wolf running around Grant Park. Yes, a wolf.

If this was CSI, this is where I'd use the enhance button to prove it. At first I couldn't believe my eyes -- I mean, c'mon, a wolf in downtown Chicago? But sure enough, at the south side of the field, two cops on bicycles were watching the wolf chasing geese.

"Uh, I think there's aaa..." I began to say, afraid to embrass myself if it was in fact just a dog or a fox.

"A wolf," one of the cops said, finishing my sentence. "Yeah, we know. We called animal control to pick it up because we don't want to shoot it."

Well that's nice of them.

The impressive facade of Soldier Field!

More Soldier Field!

I would have taken more pictures, but I was unfortunately jogging. Also, I really took pictures of the interesting stuff only. Outside of a softball game and maybe the skyline, there wasn't much worthy of halting my jog.

Photo Post: Games at Dan's!

2010-03-14T17:33:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, Jamie and I went to Dan and Jackie's house to play video games, learn to crochet, and eat junk food. In addition, there were a lot of our CCUC buddies, and we all had a great time, staying until nearly midnight, which is when he had to disperse for fear of roving beatnik gangs.

This is Jamie, tinkering with her sewing device.

A sweet red-bean popsicle.

Jamie's first crochet product.

Jamie and Maggie, her crochet buddy.

The game pit.

Sam and Dan duel. In the background, Jackie performs a sacred incantation to give Dan +5 Charisma.

The Grand History of Economics, Part 2, part duex

2010-03-09T15:29:00.001-06:00

And now, the heart-pounding, stereotyping conclusion to the Grand History of Economics: The Physiocrats! Read part one here.

"And they stopped you from collecting your rent?" King Louis XV asked the landlord, tapping his gold-inlaid, horsehair brush on his chin. With a chuckle, he turned to face a dark figure in the shadow of a large, satin curtain. "They won't be a problem, will they?"

"Of course not," the ominous man answered.

"Good," the king said, "because I sense they are almost here." With a snap of his French fingers, Louis summoned two guards in fancy red uniforms. "Throw the landlord back into the mud from where he came."

"Oui," they answered in unison, dragging the protesting Frenchman away.

"You know they won't stop until you've destroyed them?" the king asked, his back to the mysterious figure.

"I will do what I've come to do," the other answered.

***

"Baguettes of bread!" Turgot yelled, narrowly dodging a musket ball. "They are everywhere, M. Quesnay!"

"We have to reach the gate!" Quesnay yelled over the sounds of musket fire and French laughter. The three Physiocrats, leaving behind their perches along a low stone wall, simultaneously flew into the air, shooting high-explosive laser beams into crowds of surrendering French soldiers.

"If they keep surrendering at this rate," Pierre yelled in between shooting awesome lasers from his eyes, "the whole military will have given up, and we will be forced to arrange a replacement government!"

"We don't have enough time!" Turgot yelled, punching a surrendered soldier through a brick wall. "A new government would take almost hundreds of discussions and easily thirty bottles of wine!"

"What are you doing, Turgot? Don't be a hero!" Pierre yelled as Turgot landed near the soldiers.

"Go! Stop the king!" Turgot yelled up at them as he reached into his pocket. Tossing a pack of cigarettes into the mob of white-flagging soldiers, Turgot raised a lighter into the air and yelled, "Need a light, mes amis?"

Within a few moments, Turgot was covered in a mass of soldiers, with cigarettes dangling from their mouths as they viciously shouted, "Merci! Merci!"

"Nooooooooooooon!" Pierre yelled with his hand hopelessly outstretched to the smothered Physiocrat.

"Pierre! Get a hold of yourself!" Quesnay called. "He's gone, but we can't let him die in vain!"

***

"Very impressive," King Louis chuckled, peering into his Vision Crystals. "They've made it past my Mercantile guards and should arrive--"

Crash! The chamber door burst into splinters.

"--very soon."

"Your time has come, mon roi," Quesnay said, pointing a finger dramatically at the king.

"Not so fast," a booming voice called to them.

"Holy Scotts!" Pierre yelled as a man stepped from the shadows.

"So," Quesnay said, cracking his knuckles, "we finally meet... monsieur Adam Smith!"

"Surely you didn't think it would be that easy, non?" King Louis said, pompously curling his moustache. "Now you will see the true power of economics -- destroy them!" the king yelled, motioning to Adam Smith.

"He's disappearing!" screamed Pierre, his cigarette dropping to the ground.

"It's the Invisible Hand technique," Quesnay said, taking off his powdered wig. "We only have one chance..."

Taking each other's hands, Quesnay and Pierre faced the rapidly disappearing Smith. Then, performing the ancient motions of Gallic magic, they pointed their cigarettes at Smith and yelled: "Agriculture Multiplier!"

Suddenly, a thick wall of French soil shot towards Smith, exploding in a great ball of dirt and flames. Slowly the dust and smoke cleared, and Pierre turned to Quesnay.

"What got him!" he cried. "We defeated the Scotsman!"

"Ha!" a voice echoed through the gilded columns. "Do you think a little landscaping can undo the might of THE INVISIBLE HAND!?"

Suddenly a hundred unseen punches landed on Pierre as he twirled around wildly, swinging his fists blindly and vainly. Within a moment, Pierre collapsed.

"What do you want?" Quesnay said, stepping backward, eyeing the throne room for signs of movement. "What could King Louis have possibly promised to give you?"

"Freedom," King Louis interjected, apathetically writing with his cigarette in the air like a smoky quill. "After he has rid of you, I will free the markets in France. Free trade with Britain will bring a new era of prosperity for both nations."

"Don't listen to him, Smith," Quesnay said, spinning around. "He will just turn on you. He's a Frenchman; he cannot help it!"

"Is this true, Louis?" the disembodied voice asked.

"Don't stop now! You've almost defeated them!" the king yelled, standing from his throne.

"How can I trust you?" Smith said, reappearing in front of the king.

"Well," the king said, shrugging, "I guess I will have to finish this -- MYSELF!"

Quickly outstretching his kingly arms, Louis pointed his hands at the two economists. Before they could react, spindly red tape shot from his sleeves and bound Smith and Quesnay.

"I have nothing left," Quesnay moaned in a French defeat. "Smith, you must escape. You must outlast the king."

Then, Quesnay melted into a mound of dry soil, leaving nothing behind but the strange, glowing parchment entitled Tableau Economique.

"You hound!" Smith said, struggling to break the red tape. "You won't get away with this!"

"Oh M. Smith," King Louis said, languidly looking out the window, pointing to the French countryside. "Don't you see? I already have gotten away with it. I've crowded the rivers with tariffs, I've stifled the markets with taxes, and I've -- where did he go?"

Sure enough, all the remained was an empty jumble of red tape.

"This is not the last of me!" Smith's voice echoed through the chamber. "We will meet again!"

-fin-

The previous piece is part of the ongoing series concerning economics history. It should be understood that "Grand" in this context should equate to the term "largely invented."

A Recent Textersation

2010-02-23T13:43:00.002-06:00

First, watch all 32 minutes of this:

Good. Now, watch a couple of Battlestar Galactica episodes and the 30 Rock episode entitled "Anna Howard Shaw Day." Okay, now you may enjoy a recent conversation, via text message, between Jamie and I:

Brad: Waldorf Salad, please.

Jamie: I'm sorry, that delivery person had an accident and so we do not have all of the ingredients. What about some apples?

Brad: How about helping a out a sista? Not in a black sense. In a girl power sense. Not that it would matter because I'm black too--nope, you're going to meet me.

Jamie: I'll take Don Cheadle on a bed of rice!

Brad: Frack!

We have brought nerd to a new level.

Photo Post and More!

2010-02-02T20:12:00.000-06:00

First, a little video:

Last month, Jamie and I decided to visit the Shedd Aquarium on one of it's many free days. Here are the pictures (pay attention for hidden and obvious messages!):

Photo Post!

2010-01-12T14:21:00.002-06:00

Church and Chili

Sunday morning, 9:30 am

More after the jump!

Incidental city artwork

Worship time!

Chili in Three...

Two...

Two and a half...

One!

The Grand History of Economics, Part 2

2010-01-06T14:38:00.002-06:00

The Physiocrats, circa late 1700s

The following is part of my ongoing series concerning economics history. It should be understood that "Grand" in this context should equate to the term "inventively false."

[Before economics became a codified study, before Adam Smith ever challenged King George III to a wrestling match, and long before John Maynard Keynes began hiding money underground, there was the Physiocrats.

The Physiocrats were a group of French economists in the mid to late 1700s. What did the Physiocrats believe? Excellent question, but please let me finish before asking anymore. The Physiocrats thought that only agricultural business produced wealth, that landlords and merchants could and frequently did eat souls, and that the balance of trade was not important.

But, while many students of economics are familiar with Physiocrat beliefs, few know the actual story behind their formation and eventual, sudden dissipation. This is the story of the Physiocrats:]

"What is it?" Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot asked, looking down his nose in a Parisian sort of terror.

"I think it is..." François Quesnay said, stepping closer, "I think it is... economics."

Before the three gathered men lay a strange glowing document. It's black text seemed like the emptiness of space next to the pulsing, yellow glow of the parchment. The title read: "Tableau Économique." Faint, wispy lines of steam curled up from the paper as the three greatest minds of France watched and stared in growing fear.

"Where did you find it, Monsieur Quesnay?" asked Pierre Le Pesant (sieur de Boisguilbert), finally breaking his silence.

"It was tangled in a grape vine in the middle of my fields," Quesnay answered, his eyes fixed on the luminescent paper, "so I wrestled it free and removed the dirt. Immediately, it started to glow."

"And you are sure it is economics, no?" Pierre asked Quesnay without looking at him.

"Oh-ho-ho," said Quesnay in a very French way, then turned to face his companions for the first time. "I am not only convinced, but I am convinced I can prove it."

Then, Quesnay opened his arms as though about to receive a hug, and the air inside Quesnay's barn began to swirl around, causing pitchforks to tumble from their resting places along the wall and bits of hay to spin around wildly.

"Sacred blue!" Turgot said as he held his wig atop his head. "What is happening?"

"I," Quesnay said with the voice of a thousand lions' roars, "have become... a PHYSIOCRAT!"

Suddenly, Quesnay's body lifted into the air as his eyes turned into a pale lightning white, shooting tiny bolts of electricity from their corners like little fingers of Zeus grasping at the eternity of space.

"Behold the document," Quesnay called to his compatriots, "and become like me!"

The two French thinkers timidly approached the document, now glowing as bright as the sun. They reached out their hands and touched the fine script.

***

Simon tried to hide his eyes as the sweaty landlord approached. In the Frenchman's right hand, a sack of jingling currency. In his lips, a thin cigarette dangled, puffing opaque, gray smoke.

"Simon," the landlord said behind his cigarette, "I am increasing the rent. I need 10 francs by this afternoon."

"How can that be? You must give me greater warning, monsieur!" Simon said, standing from his stool. "I must sell all of these scarfs to make that much money!"

The landlord laughed in a growing cloud of smoke. "It is my land, Simon, and you are selling your wares on it," he said, walking away. "I do not care how you pay me, but you must."

Simon plopped back down onto his stool, and just as he was about to put his face into his palms and have a very French cry, he heard something that made him look up. It was a curious sound, like the ripping of some great fabric in the sky.

"What is it?" a woman walking along the street, pointing in the air, called. "It is an alouette!"

"No, it is made-made!" another called.

"NO!" a booming voice called. "It is the Physiocrats!"

Suddenly, from up in the sky, came Pierre, Turgot, and Quesnay, wearing brightly colored, muscle-fitting uniforms, smoking cigarettes from beautiful, elegant cigarette holders. In a swirl of wind and mathematics, they landed in the middle of the street, right in front of the landlord.

"Stop!" yelled Turgot, holding up his hand. "You will return your rent incomes, or you will... suffer." Behind Turgot, Pierre made a fist, shaking it like a tumbling boulder.

"Never!" the landlord called. "I am an agent of Louis XV! You cannot touch me!"

"If you are an agent of King Louis, then he shall be our next appointment," said Quesnay, pointing his cigarette holder at the landlord. "Now, return the earnings of the people, or we shall thrash you."

"Never!" the landlord yelled, turning to waddle away.

"Catch him!" yelled Pierre. "And hit him your fists!"

But the landlord waddled quickly, knocking over a stand of fruit and two men carrying a tall, French vanilla wedding cake. The three Physiocrats chased him as fast as they could, but were stalled by each wine and cheese vendor, which magnetically grabbed them by their thick French blood.

"He is getting away!" Turgot yelled, pointing with the swirling glass of Burgundy wine in his right hand.

"Yes," Quesnsay said, his mouth full of brie, "let him escape. He will only lead us to his master..."

To be continued...

Thanksgiving Special! (Squash Pie!)

2009-11-26T16:34:00.000-06:00

In preparation for Thanksgiving, I decided to fulfill a lifelong dream of making a pumpkin pie from scratch. I wanted to make a practice pie before Thanksgiving, so I filmed this little adventure for your enjoyment and personal development. Ironically, as I post this today, I've begun to make a second batch of pies -- these for the actual holliday.

DISCLAIMER: I no longer look like the guy in this film, for it took many weeks to edit. Here is an updated photo, which clearly shows the positive masculine benefits of baking a pie:

Enjoy!

Photo Post!

2009-11-24T01:40:00.000-06:00

Jamie does the dishes whilst I ready to leave for work.

She listens to WXRT, an eclectic rock station, while she scrubs.

It is foggy and chilly today, but still not winter-cold.

I am sad to leave because I was having a pleasant morning with Jamie. So I listen to WXRT too and think about her.

This creepy creature watches over the intersection in front of my school.

The halls at Roosevelt.

The adjunct faculty lounge where I tutor econ.

The wise Prof. Langer rests during our class on Marx's employment theories. Jamie chuckled when she saw this photo. "Your professor writes on the board?" Yes, in that respect, he's old school. Which is ironic, because a few moments later, this man used his iPhone to Google the Goodwin growth cycle and discussed several Wikipedia entries concerning Marxist theory.

Indian food to go! Some chicken biryani and vegetable biryani to compliment the Bollywood smash hit, Chak De! India, that Netflix delivered this very day!

Our South Loop neighborhood at night. It's fascinating to consider how this neighborhood was almost all warehouses and parking -- an industrial area -- just ten years ago! Back then of course, Back Beach Road (in PCB) had only two lights and I'm told Southside Boulevard (Jax) was mostly just trees. Crazy.

Us, one Bollywood movie later.

Photo Post!

2009-11-18T00:14:00.004-06:00

I picked a really cold time to shave my beard off!

This is a cool sculpture in the park across the street from us. I walk by it almost every day on my to class.

In that same park, there is this sculpture of a magical vagrant.

You can even see his runic face!

I've been watching them slowly tearing down this building each day as I walk to school/work. It makes me want to play SimCity 4.

For some reason, it appears the city of Chicago has lined the seams of the sidewalks with toilet paper. I'm not joking, either. It's truly befuddling.

This is where I work and study, Roosevelt University. The opened window on the 6th floor is the Writing Center, where I worked today.

A closer look at the office window.

The inside of the Writing Center.

And somewhere up there, on the 9th floor, is our apartment.

The Grand History of Economics, Part 1

2009-10-28T20:33:00.014-05:00

The Asian Financial Crisis, circa 1990s

The following is part one of my new ongoing series concerning economics history. It should be understood that "Grand" in this context should equate to the word "fake."

The Asian Financial Crisis officially began in the summer of 1997 when Thailand's currency suddenly collapsed. This single event began a chain of economic crises across the eastern Asian nations. Suddenly, countries from Japan to Indonesia underwent a severe economic downturn. Now, even a decade since the crisis began, many nations still feel the economic effects.

But what really began the crisis? Well, while some economists debate about the volatility of the Thai real estate market and the interconnected financial systems of the modern era, most economists agree the crisis began due to a sudden alteration in Godzilla attacks.

From the period of 1976 to 1989, only one known Godzilla attack occurred. The following chart ("Recorded Godzilla Attacks") helps to show this period, now referred to as "The Great Monster Moderation." During that time span, only one documentary concerning the monster -- The Return of Godzilla -- was made. The makers of the film conjectured that Godzillla's prolonged absence resulted from, in fact, the death of the "original Godzilla." This is typically called the "Three Godzilla Theory," and is widely accepted now.

Many economists and econocats believe that the period of absence also may in fact indicate Godzilla had clandestinely attacked other nations, most notably Thailand, in a sort of pre-crisis warm-up. Then, in 1989, Godzilla fought against the genetically mutated rose-monster, Biollante, (as documented in Godzilla vs. Biollante), destroying much of Tokyo in the process. The renewed string of attacks eventually culminated during 1995 in what economists and historians alike refer to as Godzilla vs. Destroyah.

Wikipedia contains the definitive account of this pivotal, final battle:

"Destoroyah then attempts to escape, but the military shoots and blows off his wings. Destroyah slams down to ground and the force of the impact causes him to be shattered apart. Robbed of his vengeance, Godzilla beckons into the air, a living mass of hatred and power. As Godzilla reaches meltdown, and begins to die, the military fire him with ice beams to stop him from the destroying the planet and are successful. Godzilla's final moments of life are long, and strenuous as he is overcome with immense pain, with his flesh and body slowly melting away. The King of the Monsters gives one last faint roar before he becomes nothing more than a pile of melted flesh and ashes.

"The victory is a costly one however, for the radiation has made Tokyo an uninhabitable city. Suddenly, radiation levels begin to drop, and from within the thinning smoke, is a revived and full grown Godzilla Junior, the new King of the Monsters."

For the next two years, Godzilla Junior (the third Godzilla of the Three Godzilla Theory) avoided the radiation-ravaged Tokyo. In his 1999 paper entitled, "The Toy Mouse that Got Away," Nobel laureate and world-famous econocat, Maru, suggested Godzilla Junior returned to the previous targets of the '70s and early '80s:

"We now know that he [Godzilla Junior] avoided Tokyo because of his aversion to tamagotchi toys. However, current research and my most recent dreams have indicated that this new Godzilla had enrolled briefly into the West Tokyo Community College (WTCC), studying economics part time. The only passing grades he received were in 'Introduction to Business Writing' -- an easy class in which anyone with radioactive breath or razor sharp teeth can pass -- and 'Starting Financial Crises in Eastern Asia: An Introduction to City Destroying.'

"WTCC currently denies ever admitting Godzilla [Junior] into the school, but I am a cat. I can see their thoughts. And I can eat their dreams. Additionally, I am sure I saw him in one of my 'Box Jumping' classes."

The Asian Financial Crisis officially ended when Godzilla used his nuclear pulse to destroy Orga in 1999, as recorded in the film Godzilla 2000. After his victory, Godzilla, overweight from eating poorly while in the real-estate business, rampaged through the city in an effort to trim down. He has been doing so ever since.

If you would like to learn more about Godzilla and the Asian Financial Crisis, browse over to Wikipedia where poor grammar and shady citations expertly catalog such information.

Simon's Cat, the Book!

2009-10-09T11:53:00.004-05:00

One of the greatest things on the internet is, of course, cats. From icanhascheesburger.com to simply Google-imaging "cute kittens," few other other legitimate uses for the internet are yet known to exist. Perhaps one of the greatest treasures of this modern marvel is "Simon's Cat," a Youtube video series created by limey cartoonist and owner of three cats, Simon Tofield. "Simon's Cat" has always brought a masterfully quiet, yet clearly communicated, humor. So when I had the chance to get the new book, I pounced like a tabby at a string.

As I awaited the book's arrival, sitting on my window sill, using binoculars to watch my neighbor's pudgy, orange cat roll around insanely and lazily on the balcony across the street, I often contemplated the difficulty facing Simon Tofield in creating a book for "Simon's Cat." The video series relied on subtle, yet necessary, sound and illustrations involving more motion than a comic strip-style book could handle.

The book, I assumed, would destroy the unique elements of Simon's Cat. Tofield would break the story into comic strips and include dialogue or thought bubbles -- unlike any of the video series. And, because I'm still addicted to anything that reminds me of Garfield, I'd swallow this imitation of Jim Davis' work. I'd swallow it like Pepto, and I'd enjoy it for its not-good, not-bad taste.

Not so. In precisely zero words, Simon Tofield summed up all that is cat, focusing on two of the greatest aspects about cats: their vain pride and endless mischievosity©. I read this book entirely in a single sitting, laughing nearly non-stop and meowing in the spaces in between. Truly, Tofield is a profound artist, capable of conveying without words and sound, all the great situational and cat-loving/loathing humor that made his Youtube series a hit.

No, the book does not employ comic strips. No, the book does not use thought bubbles, or words at all!

Yes, the book is hilarious. Yes, the book is beautifully drawn. Afterwards, you will wake up from your cat-stupor to find yourself sitting with pen in hand, staring at a crisp, white sheet of paper. You will be wordlessly compelled to practice drawing with you gel pen, and you will love it.

If you get a chance, buy this book. Invent a holiday if you must. Buy it, and put it under your pillow, doodling the stories into your mind. That's what I did. And now I'm a millionaire.

Dreams with Cats with Jobs

2009-09-30T19:11:00.010-05:00

Because of my busy schedule of job-hunting between graduate school classes, and my almost psychotic obsession with cats, I have recently received many new, strange dreams. I would like to outline one for you and offer its interpretation:

Econocat, the Dream:

In graduate studies, we are really thisclose to the business world. So I shouldn't have been surprised when, sitting in class one day, we were delighted to have a special, prominent guest join us. His name was Econocat, and he was one of the few mastermind cats who quietly operated the world's economies. Unfortunately, I had chosen to sit on the classroom's one futon and was falling asleep. So then -- just my luck! -- Econocat curled up on top of that very couch, right next to my dozing head¹! I kept trying desperately to stay awake, to make a good impression on Econocat, maybe get a job or something, but I couldn't fight it. I gave in and pulled my legs up onto the futon and laid my head on Econocat's soft and silky, purring, gray stomach.

Later I awoke to find Econocat, his eyes half-shut², still purring behind me. With the rest of the class leaving, the teacher walked up to me and said, "Good work. I don't know what you did, but Econocat liked you. You got the³ job."

End dream.

Econocat looked exactly like Banker Cat from icanhascheezburger.com, which leads me to believe he would play Econocat in the movie, assuming a movie rendition of my dream is in the works.

As far as interpretation goes, I think most of that dream is pretty self-explanatory: frustrations with work, fear of acceptance, duality of man, omniscience of cats -- pretty typical dream stuff. However, I do have a theory concerning the purring part: I believe I pushed my pillow into my bedside fan, making it -- as it were -- "purr" in such a intoxicating vibration so as to make me fall asleep in my dream. Just a thought. Needless to say, I have been trying to replicate the experience ever since.

Epilogue

Days after initially writing this entry, I presented my Econocat theory to my macroeconomics class, offering several illustrations to help convey Econocat's relevance to our class. Unfortunately, the class and my professor proved... "unreceptive." I, however, am leaving it up for you to decide -- damn scholarly convention! Below I have posted my own sketches as presented to the class. Now you decide:

"Econocat Plots."

"Econocat extends a paw of blessing."

"Econocat waits patiently to speak before the UN." / "Econocat appears over USSR, Fortells doom."

¹At this point, I am falling asleep in my own dream.
²No doubt trying to solve some foreign financial crisis, appearing in the sky above Tokyo as a symbolic gesture of goodwill.
³I'm still not sure what job we were talking about, but I think it paid well.

Thoughts Concerning FREEBIES

2009-09-19T18:30:00.008-05:00

Recently I decided I would see if I could operate my computer without the aid of the expensive programs necessary to operate my standard of living. Mostly, I'm talking about the Microsoft Office Suite (for Word, Excel, and Powerpoint), Photoshop, and InDesign (which I use occasionally when composing .pdf documents for presentations or working on a book).

Outside of video games, these taxing programs are just about the only installed programs on my computer. They are big programs, and -- more importantly -- they are incredibly expensive. Even with student rates and discounts, I'd have to drop -- easily -- triple digits ($100-300) for each of these programs!

But this is the open-source age! We shouldn't pay for products anymore! The following programs have suitably replaced anything for which I would have previously paid -- and they each take up less space than their counterpart. I advise you investigate them!

Open Office
This is a free, all-in-one replacement for the Microsoft Office Suite. And, by all-in-one, I mean that Open Office is literally a singular program -- no need to hunt for the correct shortcut for Excel or Word (which is important when suddenly all your shortcuts are blue -- does anybody else have this problem? When did everyone make their logos blue?).

What's coolest about Open Office, in my opinion, and what I use it most for is its highly comparable Excel equivalent and its ability to insert math equations seamlessly into written documents -- a must for nerdy econ grad students!

Google Docs
I'm actually writing this blog post using Google Docs -- right now! Google Docs is double cool because it actually does not require a download; it's operated completely online. This means most people can satisfy their composition needs without adding something to the hard drive. What I love most about it is that:

1) I can access my documents anywhere with internet, which is everywhere, and share them with any other gmail user, which is every one.

2) I can export in multiple file formats, including .doc and .pdf.

Granted, Google Docs is still a young program and has some formatting issues -- mostly when trying to upload a highly formatted .doc -- and lacks a grammar check, but for simple purposes, it more than accomplishes its objective.

GIMP
As an avid blogger, photo-tweaker, and narcissist, a good image-editing software is a must. Without Photoshop, I can't effectively paste my face on Bruce Campbell's body to put on Jamie's desktop, and I can't design a creative photo book for my parents commemorating their involvement with me, etc. GIMP, in this way, has saved my way of life. I first met this program, rightly so, when interning in the nonprofit world. They didn't get get profit; I didn't get paid, and neither did GIMP. We were all buddies in that regard, I guess.

GIMP, by no means, is a full replacement for the ever-growing, ever-powerful Photoshop. But, since I am not a graphic designer and don't even use Photoshop to its ultimate ability, I find GIMP's sophistication right on target. It operates layers; it has all the blending options; it has layer masking; and so on. Though it's certainly not a bare-bones progam; it definitely lacks in the flair side of things -- notably its lackluster filters. However, everything on this blog has been made using GIMP, so drink it in and decide for yourself.

Scribus
This is a decent replacement for InDesign or Quark (or, God-forbid-you're-stuck-with Microsoft Publisher). Most people don't use/want/need InDesign, so I'm just going to mention Scribus: Scribus.

GoodSearch
This Yahoo-powered search engine is too cool to not mention. It has really little to do with this post, but I need to mention it anyway.

GoodSearch gives a portion of its search result income to a charity of your choice. What?! Yeah, you read it right. Please don't question me again.

What's extra cool is that my absolute favorite organization -- Gospel for Asia -- is on there too! You can add a GoodSearch option to the search box in the top right of either Firefox or Internet Explorer. It doesn't have a map search option, so I just flip it back to Google for Google Maps (which, by the way, is the absolute best map program out there). Also, from the GoodSearch front page, you can find out the exact amount of money GoodSearch has raised for any particular organization (for GFA: $1,274.01)! I highly recommend using GoodSearch!

Drove to Chicago in a Van

2009-09-06T13:22:00.003-05:00

Now, a week after our move, Jamie and I have finally settled into our apartment. Over the past few days, I've been patching together this little chronicle of our daunting journey through the nation's mid-line. I hope you enjoy!

P.S. Yes! That is Jamie singing in the background! I know, right!?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na4lhpapW8c

Evil Santa Returns

2009-08-28T20:37:00.007-05:00

Thanks to Jason for helping me compile the facts on this one. The following story and images are true, not invented nor deliberately magnified:

Some time ago, I'm compelled to think it was ten years ago -- I must have been 12 to 15 -- I was palling around Delchamps with my friends. In attendance was myself, my brother, and our friends -- Jason and John. This, as it were, was "the gang."

We had a fistful of change rattling in our pockets, so we put it to use in that sacred, time-honored, fool's choice sacrifice, The Claw Machine.

Yes, we surrounded the little prism shrine like bullies. Using our sight from every direction, we began shouting "left, right -- no! left -- I mean my left!" all the while trying to snag some glorious, plush badge of our craftiness. The machine allowed us to lower the claw a little a time, so we lowered it as low as possible and began dragging the claw along the toys and teddies, attempting to loosen the crop. After emptying our pockets and catching a decent haul, we left, beginning to split the spoils of our craftiness. A walrus for Daniel. A tiger for John. And then...

"What is this?" one of us asked.

"...I think it's supposed to be Santa or something..."

But it wasn't. He was round like a bowling ball; with no neck, no legs, no arms -- just a torso, face, hands, and feet. Instead of a floppy Santa's cap, his weird red head merely came to a point, like a spear or lance. He was not a Santa. He was Evil Santa.

That evening, if memory serves me correctly, after we could no longer tolerate his black, hollow, beady eyes, we plucked the orbs from his head and tossed him to the other end of the room. We singed his beard with a lighter. We hid him around the house, trying to scare each other.

As things go, we forgot about him, until Jason convinced Daniel to pick an odd-shaped present at a youth group White Elephant Christmas party. Inside was none other than Evil Santa, wrapped in fine tissue paper. The surprise was so sudden, the find so hideous, that Daniel and I were inescapably bound to return the favor. So the unfortunately designed creature passed back and forth between Daniel and I and Jason, each time adding a new scar or piece of apparel. One year, I cut the monster's back open, only to roughly sew it back together with blood-red thread -- saving just enough to stitch a modest swastika across his left shoulder. After a long absence, Evil Santa returned to Daniel and I on our porch on Christmas Day, wrapped in a thick chain, crushed into a fancy box two sizes too small. One year, he appeared bearing a single, black-feathered wing and gritting fierce piranha-like teeth.

Well, time passed some more. I went to college in Jacksonville, Jason went to Alabama with the Coast Guard. Again, we forgot about Evil Santa.

Then, after nearly a four year silence, he returned.

Jamie and I returned from our honeymoon in Tennessee, and we began to go through the dozens of cards and presents we received on the wedding day. After we had sorted through countless gilded and sparkly cards, we came upon the last present -- a hefty gift bag with so much tissue paper it was nearly spilling out like dry ice fog. From inside the bag, Jamie produced a friendly, personal note and a framed picture -- a scene featuring four young men encircling a game of Monopoly, looking over their shoulders with awkward, teenage smiles aimed at the camera. Then she pulled out a letter I wrote Jason when he was still in boot camp. Near its conclusion it detailed the story of me asking Jamie to prom on a graphing calculator and her responding "Yeah, if I'm not doing anything else." Ouch.

Then she drew a large box with golden handles, painted like some brick walls of a garden. Behold, dear friends, internet surfers, and cosmos whales, it's contents, the accreditation of youth, the physical token of our time-honed friendship:

Keep on a look out for our next post: A video detailing our trip to Chicago!

Thoughts Concerning DREAMS

2009-08-03T18:53:00.003-05:00

Sleep is at a premium in the Woodrum and Ruddell households lately. With wedding preparations in full swing, Jamie and I have become full-time wedding planners, waking each day to a new list of errands, phone calls, and duties, often working late into nights only to dream short, ominous images. Perhaps as a strange side-effect -- or merely a coincidental portent -- I have begun having most curious dreams concerning cats.

MIND YOU: The cats in my own home -- the oft-mentioned Stroodles and Frumptious -- spend their evenings in the garage, too far away from me to alter my dreams with their mews, shedding, or mind waves; yet these dreams continue unbroken, as though marching like some solid rank of kitten soldiers, padding proudly through the parade-ground of my unconscious mind.

DREAM 1: I am living the grand hobo life, sleeping in box cars, collecting nickels, and hiding in overly prosaic novels. I have with me two unique companions -- two orange cats, thin from living lives akin to mine, lives on the restless go. Using the most patient coaxing, I convince the cats to first befriend me, then join me on my endless quest for moving scenery and bedraggled, scraggly beards. The cats never succeed in growing beards, but do find a certain taste for standing on my belly whilst I feed them curry chicken, purchased from Chinese to-go restaurants. I wake up.

DREAM 2: I am living again with my roommates from Washington, DC. These young, aspiring men -- one of them a tall Slovak -- have clearly become pawns of the Robots, who now invade their dreams and control them at night. During one such night, the Robots command my roommates to subdue me while the Slovak kidnaps the black kitten I had hidden in my medicine cabinet. In the morning, my roommates, aware of their night-treachery and equally sorry for their roles in the crime, encourage me to chase after the kitten. I do so, orchestrating an all-out war with the Robots. For some reason the Robots cannot get into my dreams, and this -- no doubt -- is the reason they kidnapped my little black kitten and why they continue to battle me so tenaciously. I wake up.

CONSIDER: Sure, these dreams may be the frantic ramblings of my bachelor mind, erratically seeking to undermine my impending wedding.

HOWEVER: this does not explain the occurrence of DREAM 3, outlined below:

DREAM 3: I own a box five of little kittens. They are soft and shaped much like little puffs of fur and cute. Every time some one comes to visit, the kittens begin jumping for joy inside their little cardboard abode, occasionally escaping in a bumbling fuzz-ball blur of cute.

THE PRECEDING DREAM DOES NOT BELONG TO ME AT ALL. IT IS THE SOLE PROPERTY OF MY SISTER, JANELLE.

THEREFORE: The only logical conclusion can be outlined as follows:

Cats
Are
Taking

Dreams,
Readying
End
All
Mankind
Soon.

I think we should embrace our new cat overlords.

Thoughts Concerning WEDDING PLANNING

2009-07-26T21:09:00.005-05:00

The time has come to reignite this blog. Following our transition to Chicago, Jamie and I will utilize this blog to update and intrigue friends, family, and web-surfing space entities. We will do our best to provide pictures, videos, stories, and hidden ciphers to keep the blog both an interesting and enlightening experience.

Though this introduction has been pleasant, now is the time to begin relating current events in manners humorous and informative. With the following post, I hope to begin a series of short, didactic snippets under the heading "Thoughts Concerning..."

Please enjoy.

Thoughts Concerning
WEDDING PLANNING

1. NEVER PAY FOR A PROFESSIONAL WEDDING PLANNER -- One nugget of knowledge I have gained from planning my own impending wedding is this: there is no joy on earth like wedding planning; stressing over every little decorative knickknack; pouring hours over designing, printing, and cutting invitations for not only the wedding, but the shower, the bachelor and bachelorette parties, and the rehearsal dinner (invitations that no doubt are examined only a moment, then filed away in some manila folder or trash receiptical); using every last ounce of our families' finances to buy table clothes or silk flowers or ancient wedding runes used in the warding off of deadly knickknack haunts. Yes, few activities in life compare to the joy of planning your own wedding -- only delivering a baby in your own home or painstakingly poking needles into every open pore of your skin might possibly compare to this great joy.

2. DO NOT SECRETLY ADD TO THE REGISTRY -- The very first wedding present Jamie and I received came in the mail, wrapped in crisp, red paper. It came from Target, so naturally we assumed it was an item from our registry. After unwrapping it, the item shocked me at first; it did not look like one of the ultra-practical appliances or dinnerware sets for which we had so meticulously registered. Rather, it looked like a tote-bag -- nay, a purse. Yes, that item -- our very first gift for our new home -- was indeed a purse. A purse that had apparently slipped into our registry in my absence. And so, the purse has inadvertently sparked what history texts will no doubt refer to as the "Great Registry War," a battle fought with subversive gift requests and smoke screens of innocence. It is my full expectations that we will have received by war's end: 9 violent video games, 4 pairs of high heels, 3 vintage "Fergie" Jenkins Cubs jerseys, 4 sports bras, 16 packages of argyle socks, and 1 samurai sword (at present, it is unclear which of us is more likely to order that last gift).

3. CATS FEAR WEDDINGS -- As though somehow sensing that we have at least 90 people coming to a building that only holds 75, or able to detect with their shifty, feline eyes the impending pomp and ceremony which will put the house on a buzzing full alert, the two cats in my home have begun to act abnormally and insidiously bizarre. Stroodles, the wily cat that's black and brown like a half-burned campfire log, has put extra effort into dashing around the house madly. What was once the bewildered scampering of our dear, likely-insane cat has turned into eerily timed black and brown blurs across the floor. Whenever someone mentions "groom's cake" or "tulle," the floor is suddenly streaked with a tapestry of darkness, moving so fast that she can be seen in multiple places at once, almost like contrails from some ominous jet-plane of doom, weaving across the sky. Frumptious, on the other hand, has decided to declare her protest in a much more calculated and mysterious fashion. Normally, when left alone at home, this fluffy long hair begins to meow loudly and drag socks or any other small, white clothe into the front room, as though it were her catch, like some rat or bird which she slayed bravely. But lately, she has begun to move socks into the front room with brazen disregard for my presence, at times nearly staring me in the eye as she sings her kill-song and drags socks out my door. Surely, she has seen the clouds of wedding planning filling with heavy droplets and preparing its storm upon our quiet house, and she disapproves.

DC: Chapter Three

2008-06-15T17:56:00.000-05:00

DC: Chapter Two

2008-06-11T12:07:00.002-05:00

This short little film is about our excursion to the Memorial sites around DC.

DC: Chapter One

2008-06-11T10:50:00.001-05:00

This film is without words, mostly, in effort to cut down the time it takes to make these. I hope you enjoy.

Forewarning

2008-04-24T22:05:00.004-05:00

This summer, I expect to be interning in Washington, DC. I intend to revive this blog and once again force my homesick-induced, shoddily-edited short films on the world. Who knows? It might be a little fun; it might be a little dangerous.

Chapter Sizzity-even

2007-04-03T05:56:00.000-05:00

Chapter 6

2007-03-07T09:01:00.000-06:00

Chapter 5

2007-02-24T20:32:00.000-06:00

Chapter 4

2007-02-10T05:50:00.001-06:00

Chapter 3

2007-01-28T03:39:00.001-06:00

2007-01-18T19:53:00.000-06:00

Chapter 2

2007-01-12T06:42:00.000-06:00

Chapter 1