ASCII Nicely.

Here's a fun way to nerd out. Render your girlfriend or pet's name in ASCII. Just because.

Happy Bunny.

I just discovered Happy Bunny. A client I was working with earlier this week had a Happy Bunny daily tear-off calendar and this was that day's HB. Flipping through, there were lots of good ones, but this is still my favorite.

Runners up include:
-your anger makes me happy
-it's fun to write things about the bitches i hate
-hating you makes me all warm inside

The creator, Jim Benton, has lots of other characters too. I can't wait until my daughter is old enough for this great stuff! First step: being born. Next step: becoming cynical and jaded, like her pa.

Hope for Humanity.

My world was rocked the other day when I discovered that the sweet, merciful Telecom Lords have finally answered my prayers: it is now possible to turn off those agonizing instructions after your voicemail greeting. The ones that tell callers how to leave a message. I guess there are still people left on the planet who have NEVER LEFT A FREAKING VOICEMAIL MESSAGE??

Maybe it's just Sprint that has made this possible, I'm not sure yet. Here's how:

call into your voicemail, then from the main menu:
personal options (3)
greeting (2)
change your main greeting (1)
add or remove caller instructions (3)

Then you'll hear the words you've only dreamed about:

"After your greeting the following instructions can be played:

'To leave a voice message, press 1, or just wait for the tone. To send a numeric page, press 2 now. At the tone, please record your voice message. When you are finished recording, you may hang up or press pound for more options. To leave a callback number, press 5.'

If you want these instructions to be played, press 1. If you do not want these instructions to be played, press 2."

PRESS 2!!!

If you would please take a few seconds to delete this monologue from your outgoing message. The world will truly be a better place.

Atheists Got It Tough.

Christians love to talk about how Atheists are depressed because they have no higher meaning in life. Without God, they figure, of course you'd be depressed and suicidal because there's nothing to live for. The way I see it though, it's because we value life so much that it pisses us off to see people embrace mediocrity the way they do (especially here in the US). To go outside and walk around is to drape yourself in bland. Unless you live in NYC, which is an atheist's Mecca.

Seriously, strip malls, fast food, obese people, traffic, bad art, ugly clothes: these all conspire to bring down a person who has one life to live. It would be like having your wedding day marred by a freak tragedy, killing several of your guests. Or waking up and brewing your favorite coffee only to find out your half-n-half is spoiled!

Spoiled is a good word. All these jerks walking around like life on earth is their time of suffering and they'll be rewarded with gold and chocolates or a big Sharper Image massage chair in the sky are spoiling it for the rest of us, the ones who feel this time is too precious to be spent wearing acid-washed jeans or pretending that it's okay to keep a president in office who utters the word "god." Or going to bad movies or watching commercials or talking to salesmen.

So listen up zealots, just because you have to get up early doesn't mean I have to hear your alarm through the wall every morning. N'um sayin'?

Love The One You're With.

Okay, after a hiatus fueled by the glee of newfound employment, I have returned to Earth and to my readers. Yes, I have readers! Not many, but a few. And I love you. You know who you are.

Since moving to Maine and becoming poor as crap, I've learned a new lesson: If you can't be with the one you love (honey), love the one you're with... do-do-do-do-do-do-DO-DO. I wrote that just now. What I mean is, there have been a few biggish things I've wanted or needed to change, replace, fix or upgrade, but without ANY money to spare, I've had to improvise.

First was my computer. I didn't have one until my friend (and talented graphic designer) Michael and his wife Sadie gave me their busted little iBook. I think Sadie had tripped on the power cord and yanked the computer off of a table or something, then stepped on it while trying to keep her balance.

The screen was cracked and the hard drive was broken. But I really needed a computer, being a computer tech and all. So I replaced the hard drive with one I had lying around my friend (and sousaphone player) John had a spare screen he gave to me. After a few harrowing procedures and many hours of work, I had a fully-functioning laptop.

Next, my one good pair of dress pants (handy for job interviews) that aren't totally baggy on me (i.e. the only pants I've purchased since being 50 lbs fatter) had a run of misfortune. I snagged them with a hulking piece of metal at work, then a button fell off, they became too dirty to wear, plus I realized they were too long. So I took them to the dry cleaner and had them shortened, cleaned and mended. I will finally get those out of hawk with my first real paycheck.

Reeve's iBook died the other day. The screen was all jittery and the whole thing kept freezing. Luckily I found a solution in an online forum which was to remove the case and super-glue 3 thicknesses of squares cut from an old credit card to a certain part of the chassis of the computer, thus applying pressure to a broken solder joint on the motherboard. It seems to work now.

My boots, like my pants, were getting tired. I went to mall-towne looking for suitable replacement pair but everything was either too expensive or else brown. So last night I got out the super glue and big metal glue clamps and repaired the soles, then bought some saddle soap for the salt stains and some black polish, some fancy $12 insoles from the grocery store and some waterproofing spray and I'll be damned if these boots don't have a new lease on life!

The living room was bugging me and so I did a major reshuffling of furniture and lighting and now it seems perfect. The dishwasher had been leaving everything really gritty since we moved in, so I researched what to do and cleaned it out and bought a special soap and now it's fine.

My espresso machine is old and was missing its portafilter handle. The front panel had snapped off and was hanging by wires. It was dirty throughout. So I replaced the handle, learned how to clean it, super-glued the face back on, found some tricks to making better espresso with my particular machine and now I'm loving it.

My cell phone was a burden. It was slow, unreliable, it had low battery life. I found an online update to the phone's software, uninstalled some programs I didn't need and now I'm really happy with it. My dining chairs were embarrassingly rusty, so I used the steel wool I bought for just that purpose TWO YEARS AGO and scrubbed them down.

I guess I could go on. What I started to say was "Look at what you can do with what you've already got, even though things seem broken or old!" but after all this typing, I guess what I'm saying is "Damn, I've been way more productive and optimistic since I've been on Prozac!"

Now... what do I do about the cat peeing on the floor?

Hell, Yes.

I totally scored the job I wanted.

After 5 months of hard-core job searching in and around Portland, Maine, I found what seems like a perfect job. I'm still in shock, and I'm technically working there on a trial basis to see if I fit well with the firm. But I have a job! And it's not shitty! My coworkers are a couple of nice and like-minded ex-New Yorkers. Stylish, even-keeled, intelligent, and definitely not anal IT Nazis. They didn't run a credit check on me, they didn't even call my references. We drank beer at the conference table during the interview!

The first thing I did was to quit my bar job. It felt really good. I'll have one more weekend there starting Friday, then that's it. The next thing I did was to tell my landlord I got a real job and that we won't have to move out of our apartment. That also felt good.

I still feel like I shouldn't let myself get too excited or feel too relieved because what if they hate me or I somehow fuck this up? For now, I just have to remember to get up earlier, shave more often, make a smaller pot of coffee and turn the heat down when I leave the house.

Seattle Sucks: Exhibit 4... The Ned Flanders Effect.

I hate the bombastic music that heralds the start of the BBC World Service at 9a.m. EST when WNYC switches over to the Brits for the hour. So I'm always running to the radio at 8:59 to turn the station before the melodramatic brass and string assault.

This morning I tuned to KUOW for my 9-10a.m. refuge from British accents. It's the station at the University of Washington in Seattle (where I used to work). The DJ's name was Derek Wang (pictured) and Reeve asked "Is that how they talk in Seattle?" I winced and said yes. She said "Oh my god! He sounds just like Ned Flanders!" I laughed because it's totally true.

Everyone in Seattle sounds like Ned fucking Flanders!

See for yourself. I made some clips:

Ned Flanders
Derek Wang

Still... better than a British accent.

[Also see: Seattle Sucks: Exhibits 1-3]