many moons

it has been a long time since i have made a post here on this blog. unfortunately, the frequency at which posts occur will not increase here. mostly because this blogging thing has become a bit of a “meh” thing for me. well, i’m lying… but not really… you see, that whole “i am jealous” thing has my blogging focus by the short hairs and doesn’t look like it will let up anytime soon. speaking of…


iaj is doing something a little new for this week (i meant to post this yesterday, but some things had me otherwise occupied): themed jealousies. every first week of the month will follow a theme that all those jealousies will share; this week being “science”. so for the next 6 days (this week's started yesterday, obviously) all the posted jealousies will be somehow related to the general topic of science. i am constantly trying to figure out how to draw more traffic to what is, essentially, a clever link-dump. this was the best i could come with so far. please feel free to leave any comments regarding iaj here or on the site itself.

i don't know what else to write about right now. not like there are really more than a couple people that will actually read this.

for abby

my 10 year old kitty, the sister of allie, a forever kitten, passed away today. the mouse entered the bedroom earlier this evening to find her at the foot of the bed.















she never grew up. she played like a kitten every day. she made you smile the instant she walked into a room. she had the most beautiful purr. she was incredibly soft. she was my baby kitten and she kept her promise to always be a kitten.
















i ran this evening. a day later than my normal schedule. i ran for abby. she would have still beat me; chortling the whole way.




i am jealous of your serenity

i am jealous

trying a new thing i began last friday. it started out as a joke/compliment to a thread made in a forum i frequent quite a lot. specifically to an announcement by daniel davis that he had released his new book, klawberry. he’s a talented fellow and self publishes his work. i do wish i had the patience and talent to pull such a thing off, but i simply don’t right now. so as a way to say “congrats!” and show my “inspiration,” i posted, “i am jealous of your talent”.

this made me give a little chuckle at the absurdity of the statement on a forum. i wondered if there was any way to make this seem even more absurd. what followed was a posting spree of “i am jealous of your…” comments where i was “jealous” of some facet of the thread posted in. there were some 25 posts on that single forum made in the span of about 20 minutes. i then moved to the threads on iconbuffet and did the same thing. it was received with the appropriate amount of humor i thought it would garner. luckily, no one got offended at the mass postings.

then it hit me: i should totally make a blog about this. not just a post about it, but a whole damn blog. a way to post daily news (i find interesting) but with a very small slant. a slant of jealousy. thus, iamjealous was born. i’ve since done a post a day on that blog (due to its incredible simple premise for content) and am considering an actual branding to go along with it.

i, heroes

so… the last time i posted, i hadn’t run 3.1 miles for elvis loving taco eaters. since then, i participated in an annual 5k race put on by elvis loving taco eaters. it was my first “organized” run that i’ve ever done (outside of middle school) and it was actually rather fun. hey… fancy that. guess that’s why they called it a “fun run.” anywho, i ran it in 29'33". i wasn’t doing the timed race and i really have no idea how good that is in the grand scheme of things, but my wife seemed pleased. after crossing the finish, i grabbed a couple of powerades and intercepted her to walk the remainder of the course and watch her cross.

this gave me a bit of a bug; and by bug, i mean my wife signed me up for all kinds of runs. next up is the livestrong challenge (which is featured in the banners kicking off this post and the one that will live in the “outside” well). i am not going all gung-ho on the fundraising part because i don’t really know the first thing about fundraising. but if you feel inclined to donate, i have a modest goal of 100 dollars (i think that is the default) to which you can contribute to by clicking on the banners. this is obviously going to a good cause because… well… it’s cancer and cancer sucks and is due for a good ass kickin’.

elsewhere: thanks to all you folks that have signed up to iconbuffet under my referral. i have a really awesome foundation there, but it is always great to get more stamps to spread the icon love. if you sign up, do leave a message in my box to tell me who you are (hopefully they’ll eventually add a feature that notifies me who referrals are as they sign up).

i have also taken part in the wonderful satire that was started by barb carneiro relating to “sniping” deliveries. a small group formed and came to be known as the pirates. it has since grown to some 28 confirmed members. i, however, decided to create a competitive group. the obvious and clear choice was ninjas. the ib shinobi clan boasts 24 confirmed members and has a cumulative point total of 124,410. pardon me whilst i shine this apple upon my shirt.


“i know it’s you” — the crystal method (legion of boom)
“heroes” — dj tiesto (parade of athletes)

my fortuna

iconbuffet is really kicking it up a notch with their new ibid feature. this little gem allows a member to display a good assortment of badges on their website/blog to advertise sets, profiles and even grab referrals. as you will notice, i have already included two versions of the available badges on this blog. the first is my profile at a glance (vip status, number of points, avatar) and will link you to my profile page on the site. there you can bask in the glow of my many badges and see just what sets i have to offer. the second banner will take you to a sign-up page where i will get credit for the referral. eventually, iconbuffet plans to roll the referral state into both the profile and standard banners.

“my weakness” moby (play)
“o fortuna” orff (carmina burana)

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unfortunately, until iconbuffet can fix some of the site-load issues, the scripts for the badges have been removed from this blog. it simply hangs the blog and can’t load it entirely. i will replace the badges with the simple img link i had before.

iconic promotion

make me an iconbuffet god!

sign-up now!

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smile athena

wikipedia’s daily featured article really sucks today. but that’s my plan for these haikus, so… here goes.

one diva’s power
would wipe alexander’s rule
ottoman too slow

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post title
“smile” lily allen (smile)
“athena” dj tiesto (parade of athletes)

young velveteen

while not officially a part of the motodiva birthday haiku challenge, i thought i’d slap some words together. using the subject of wikipedia’s daily featured article:

with pashtun prowess
she attacks another year
not a scratch on her

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post title:
“young lust” – pink floyd (the wall)
“velveteen” – yoko kanno (ghost in the shell - stand alone complex o.s.)

battle soul

what does that title mean? well, i decided to play a little experiment. at the beginning of generating this post, i selected to randomly shuffle through a personal smart playlist in itunes (songs with 3+ stars, limited to 60 minutes and no song played within the last 3 days). the first song to play was "battle without honor or humility" by tomoyasu hotei (of kill bill fame). using the first word in the song’s title gave me the first word for this post’s title. when i finish making this post (and just before posting it), the last word in the title of the song playing at the time will comprise the second word. ya… that sounds ridiculously complex. i don’t even know how that popped into my head as something to do.

i actively participate in too many forums/websites. yayhooray!, virb, twitter, to mention but an extreme few. many have some heavy design reason for my belonging there. each serve to distract me without fail. i have no idea how to stop. i’ve forgotten more websites than most will ever visit in their lifetime. speaking of which, thewebmachine.com is no more, it seems. sad day. was a nice tutorial resource. the mouse joined twitter, too. sorry for the distraction.

i always seem to sneak under the wire on monster stories. of course, being that mr. bucher is in california, and me in texas, posting at 1:50am cst has me beating his daily deadline - mwahahahaha - ’cept that one day, damn. so, ya, monsters 68 & 69. enjoy!

ps: the song playing just before posting? "birdhouse in your soul" by they might be giants.

super typo

monster 66 gets a tale.

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on feb. 6, 2005, i made a post titled super bowel. the ‘e’ in bowl was intentionally added to describe my thoughts on the year’s commercial offerings (being that the super bowl is supposed to be the king of commercials). i thought i was being clever. as it turns out, at least once a week, i have someone do a search on the super bowel. however, they mean bowl. they misspell bowl. one of the (if not the) largest, yearly sporting events this country puts on and there are people who don’t know how to spell bowl when doing searches related to it. now, i could attribute these errant searches to the fact that the letter ‘e’ is right next to the letter ‘w’, so i will give the fat-fingered of the world the benefit of the doubt. but i don’t think that is the situation for the majority of the searches.

so, if you searched the following terms/strings:
where will the Super Bowel air this year
super bowel pepsi
super bowel winner by year

you might have better luck with taking that ‘e’ out. i will edit that previous post with a front-end disclaimer to make people aware.

cold literature

austin is frozen. been so for the last two and a half days. might get better tomorrow afternoon. last night, our power went off at around 11:45 pm. normally, this isn’t a bad thing, actually it is quite exciting and can be very fun. however, this time, i happened to be in the middle of playing ffxi with a party (that included my brother-in-law) and was thusly disconnected. moreover, i had yet to post monster 60’s story. luckily, the power came on just long enough for me to make the post using my wife's laptop.

also: posted monster 61’s tale just now.

uh… ya

this blog is looking a tad better than my website. why?

chonsom is having a grand opening, which is different from their soft-opening from last year. nice menu.

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it’s apparently national delurking week. no one posts here. feel free to keep lurking.

Super Bowel

firstly - you meant to search ‘super bowl’ didn’t you? admit it. it’s ok. you’re in good company. and by ‘good’, i mean plentiful. many people misspell a simple four-letter word like ‘bowl’. the word i used to title this post, however, refers to the intestine (commonly seen as bowels). as in, the transporter of crap. this post has nothing to do with the actual game, but rather the commercials that are aired during it. the ‘05 super bowl had some real stinkers.

secondly – go to youtube to see the 2007 super bowl xli commercials that aired.

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It is (was) that time of year again. Many people anticipate today with much fervor. Folks around the nation, chomping at the bit to see something spectacular. An impressive moment that will be talked about during their morning coffee to the guy from accounting. That’s right — Super Bowl commercials.

A couple of years ago (several actually), the commercials that aired during the Super Bowl could have challenged the game itself for air time. If you bought your tickets and went to the game, you actually care about the game. But for the rest of us folks, we get commercials whether we care to see the next touchdown or not. And advertisers know it. At its height, Super Bowl ads were something to see. Watching commercials didn’t seem so bad. Today… what a bunch of crap.

The FCC, or perhaps advertisers in general, have become so scared of the minority out there that the rest of us are subjected to donut ads for Dodge trucks. Sure, there is the occasional “good” ad that is either funny, witty or essentially clever, but I want commercials like Apple’s “1984”. Where are those ads? Being censored because of “Somebody Else” syndrome. PS: Read the comic there too. It’s ridiculously worth it. Unfortunately, this type of mentality has ruined it for the rest of us. The best we can hope for this year was barely a handful of ads about cars and mortgages.

However, despite the bumper crop of “ho-hums” out there, there is always the one that shines above the rest. The one that tried so hard to be different. To actually say something. The one many will likely talk about during their morning coffee to the guy from accounting. I’d like to think that one, this year, was the ad promoting Napster. Why? Because it was -the- worst ad I have ever seen. Ever. And I have seen a lot of ads. A lot. If you are going to compare your product and/or service to another’s, at least have the intelligence to compare the same type of product and/or service.

If you didn’t see the ad, good for you. Otherwise, suck it, because I am not linking to it — wherever it is. Basically, all the ad does is paste an equation type deal up on the screen to compare the cost of Apple’s iPod’s capacity to Napster’s new music service. That’s right, they compared a portable “hard drive” to a music service. Saying it would cost you $10,000 to fill up an iPod (they didn’t even bother to specify which iPod) as opposed to $15 a month to fill up any other MP3 player (Apple doesn’t like crap touching their products, I guess) using their service. How does that even compare? First, the assumption was made that every song for your iPod (the 40GB model) is the result of iTunes purchases (at 99¢). Second, they claim a service is the same as a physical product. Third, they are comparing Apples to oranges. Sorry, had to do it.

In the ad, they say you have access to a million songs at any time during your subscription and you can download as many as you want for only $15 a month, thereby never having to pay 99¢ each time you want to download a song. Oddly enough, I have over 600 songs in my digital library and I have only shelled out $13.17 to Apple for music downloads. And, yes, you can download songs and then import them into your iPod without having them originate from the iTunes Music Store. According to Napster, I must have paid over $600 for having all those songs on my iPod. It’s probably due to the fact that I actually bought CDs legitimately and transferred them to my computer and then to my iPod. Crazy!

The ad fails because it will not cost me $10k to fill up my iPod. iTunes is not my only option to acquire 10,000 songs. It also fails because the ad tries to attack the iTunes Music Store but its strongest argument is based on the iPod’s storage capacity being the reason you will pay so much. Obviously, I am not the target audience for this spot… but can one really say this was a good ad at all?

Lamest commercial ever.

EPIC Realism

The scary part is that EPIC looks like it could really happen. This is some fine motion-graphics work and worth the peek. All the ideas and theories could really happen. Just how far will this “internet” take the world? And will it be for the better?

Elsewhere, I received the most excellent piece of mail yesterday. It was a nice envelope with my address ink jet printed on the front in what looked like Apple Chancery. Opened it up and there was a trifold "letter" of the same paper and a vellum sheet in it. It was, for all intents and purposes, a wedding invitation. I was like, “Now, who do I know that might be getting married.” It turned out, however, to be the most clever direct mail piece I have ever seen. It was a “wedding” announcement for Cingular Wireless and AT&T Wireless. It was brilliant. And from the looks of it, they sent one out to every one of their customers. What a great piece of junk mail. I am definitely holding onto it.

Weebl & Bob give another history lesson.