PROPER ROCKTOBER

Rocktober is almost at an end, and I can definitely say I've packed it full -- almost too full. Almost. I'll be glad to have a weekend (this weekend) where I can actually the hell run some errands; you wouldn't believe the amount of weird crap I need to take care of that's been piling up, which includes (but is not limited to) things like buying a new music stand, and getting a replacement oven thermometer.

One thing I definitely took care of was updating the Dogblog, so you can all rest easy about that one. In case you weren't already.

DOES IT NEVER END

Here's a question for you: when is allergy season over? Does it ever truly end? Is winter when it happens? Why can I not remember this seemingly simple piece of information?

I'm asking just so I know whether to start taking the antihistamine again or if nature is going to solve this problem for me momentarily.

SHOULD'VE CHARGED MORE FOR THAT ONE

I helped some friends run a booth at APE this year, about which I should probably say a lot more, but I needed to relate this story before it left my head:

On one corner of the booth, I set up a sign that said "RELATIONSHIP ADVICE $.25." One of my customers was a dude whose outfit had a lot of black in it, and sported at least two (possibly three) wallet chains. Here's how that went:

GUY: My problem is that I love indie girls, but I despise their taste in music.
ME: "Despise" is a pretty strong word, man.
GUY: I know. I chose it deliberately.
ME: ...
ME: You're going to be lonely for a very long time.

RAINVENTION

It's raining out there right now and I'm not even a little sorry for how excited this makes me, but now I wonder: how am I going to keep the bottoms of my legs dry? (I brought an umbrella) Isn't this a problem everyone has? I don't own a raincoat that reaches to the ground, and maybe that's my own fault, but I can see a space in the market for a product analogous to a poncho that's more like a rain skirt for men and women alike. It's made of raincoat material and has snap buttons at the top for people of different sizes. Fuck, I could make a proof-of-concept out of a garbage bag, even. I might do this. Do not put it past me.

HIGHLY SPECIFIC SOURCING

I need two things:

1. A spare strap like you'd get for a digital camera, the kind with a tiny, thin side that you loop through a small projection on the camera to secure the rest of the strap with

2. A strap with the sort of plastic clips on the ends that secure such as a fanny pack or backpack belly strap

Where would I go to get these? I suspect

1. An electronics store, maybe?

2. Sports Basement or some other such outdoor-adventure supply shop

Please confirm or deny. If you have other ideas, too, let me know. I'm basically trying to think of an easy way to hang a portable speaker from my neck while I ride my bike around town, because I'm tired of not having music while I do it, but I don't want to put headphones on because I would like to remain alive and intact.

I STILL DON'T BELIEVE IT

I'm looking at the weather radar for San Francisco, and it's showing what looks like a pretty big set of rainclouds moving in (the remnants of a typhoon, apparently), but part of me is still skeptical. There is something about the topography of this place that just seems to dispel rain before it ever shows its face, or at least that's what it's been doing for the past two years. Remember that one time in like 2006 or 7 when it rained nonstop for about a month? What a month that was!

I WILL NEVER STOP LAUGHING AT THIS

I don't know why I'm thinking about this now, but probably my favorite joke in the entire first Futurama movie is the scene in the Gallery of Screaming Skulls. It's note-perfect for so many weird reasons:

- Why are the skulls screaming in the first place?
-- The sound of their screaming is also really fucking goofy
- Who thought it would be a good idea to build a whole gallery to house a bunch of skulls that do nothing but scream?
- How the hell does the Gallery of Screaming Skulls make a remotely romantic location for a date?

It's flawless. I'm laughing about it even now. The lesson here is that Futurama is eternal.

WELL FUCKING HELL

I don't care what you're doing right now. You have to watch this.

It's a little bit sloppy, but do you give a flying fuck? No, you do not. I'm normally not one for straight up telling people how they should feel, but god damn. Here's the thing about Neutral Milk Hotel: they're gone. They have vanished from view like the ghosts this album is heavy with. And all we can do now is stand in the place that they left behind and try our damnedest to recreate that which they gave us before disappearing forever.

THERE NEED TO BE THREE OF ME

It is a poor thing to complain about having too many friends no matter which way you slice it. And there are several:

- "Oh, look at meeee, I'm soooo popular, isn't it tough to be soooo POPULAR"
- "Which of these peasants shall I, THE KING OF AWESOME, grace with my presence on THIS eve"
- and other things that could be interpreted as total jackassery

The plain fact of it is that there are many people in my life whom I value, some I see less frequently than others, and this fact is producing choices that I wish I didn't have to make. They are hard choices.

I realized this just now: It's not me that's too awesome, it's them. All of them. There are worse problems a person could be having.

NO ONE CAN ESCAPE FRIDAY

It's Friday, which means I need to check and make sure Lore's Comedy Double Act Name Generator is still up and running. And it is! What names did it give me this time, and what do I think they're actually up to? (last installment was here; I missed a week, so this one will be double-sized)

- Soza & Mcglohon: A particle physicist and a golf pro who live together in a cramped apartment. In their off hours, they work together trying to build the Ultimate Golf Club that will hit a hole-in-one every single time from the first try.

- Lokaphone & Sprenger: 30 years from now, a Swedish wizard will bring an inanimate object to life, and their misadventures together will be the basis for a long-running web-based video series.

- Younglove & Freno: They used to be attorneys; now they're outlaw bikers. What hasn't changed? Only their love. You have have seen that coming, but what the fuck else am I gonna do with a name like that.

- Sperberg & Clasby: A mycologist and a malacologist who somehow got funding from a VC firm, bought a warehouse space down by the docks, closed the doors, and were never seen again. Trucks come up to the loading dock at all hours, but nobody knows what's in them, where they came from, or precisely how they're even emptied.

- Laugen & Tynan: Two artists who specialize in wood and metalworking who mostly build replicas of fictional weapons. Some of them are working models. They don't put that on their business card.

- Ekas & Dibert: Rail-thin hipster boys from an unspecified Euronation who are trying to get a new genre of music started.

- Gaestel & Neizer: Time-traveling thieves who keep searching the timestream for weapons to steal; the problem is that their portal doesn't actually open into other times, but other universes, and their physics don't always work the same.

- North & Flourney: Landscape architects who specialize in optimizing your lawn for when you can't actually be bothered to take care of it.

Have a good weekend. Don't hurt anything. You know the drill.