JW Kennedy

All riled up

2009-10-07T16:08:14Z

I think the best thing ever has got to be the Fuel Efficiency bill. Cars absolutely MUST get 35 miles per gallon by .. what year was it? .. 2016? Gee whiz, that's really extreme, giving automobile manufacturers only 7 years to implement fuel economy that was already available 25 years ago. Why did they even bother passing that legislation? They're just going through the motions without actually DOING anything.

That's the problem with all this "Change" we have been promised. It seems really half-assed. Our healthcare reform has turned into the wimpiest thing possible because the Republicans have resorted to sulking and name-calling, and the Democrats caved in (now even their pathetic compromise is inevitably going to be rejected.) Instead of cleaning up Wall Street we continue to pay the corrupt executives who are responsible for the economic meltdown. I lost my job, but the irresponsible banker got to keep his? And MY tax money went to bail him out??? Anybody wonder why I'm angry? I don't know how people can take this crap. "Bend over and grab your ankles, America." By all rights there should be rioting in the street. This country was founded on revolutionary principles because of economic and political injustice ... now VERY SIMILAR stuff is happening, and the populace just sits around like idiots while our leaders piddle away our resources, steal from the poor and give to the rich.

We can stage a bloodless revolution. It is built into our Constitution; every couple of years we have an election. The theory is that if an elected official does a bad job, fails to serve the people, we can vote him out. That's what we need to do.

I know most of us are too "busy" (or too lazy) to actually find out what our representatives have been up to. Political news is boring. Plus, it's not really very easy to check up on politicians. You have to actually dig to find out anything .. AND THAT'S THE WAY THEY WANT IT. Public accountability and a thing known as "transparency" or ease of access; these are the Kryptonite of modern politicians. If the public could easily find out what these characters are doing, it would be revealed that they do very little beyond lining their own pockets.

So here's an easy solution you don't have to think too hard about. It will only require 15 minutes inconvenience on election day: Everybody go out and vote against the incumbent. I don't care if it's Democrat, Republican, Libertarian or what ... if they're in office now, they have had their chance and they failed. Vote 'em out. We need an entirely new cast & crew. Then the new people will realize that the electorate has woken up, is paying attention and wielding its power. They'll be scared. If they know that their phoney-baloney jobs are on the line, they'll start taking their duties a hell of a lot more seriously.

Because this is an off-year, the impact of this "incumbent removal" would be minimized. It's just a few governors and minor stuff. But it's important to develop the habit of voting. Next year we vote for Congressmen. An unprecedented voter turnout on an off-year would really put the fear of The People into our normally fearless leaders. Even off-year elections are important. So, if you don't like the way things have been going, then get off your ass and VOTE next month. Otherwise things will just keep going the way they're going.

Remember: Politicians are corrupt & lazy because we let them get away with it. People get the government they deserve.

Looking for a really useful dictionary

2009-09-28T22:05:15Z

So, okay, I read a lot, and I read some pretty esoteric stuff, and sometimes I'll come across a strange word which I need to look up. The unabridged dictionary is not practical to use, because it is too big and heavy: I have to put down what I'm reading, go to the shelf where the dictionary is, haul it out, find a place to set it while I look up the word, then shove it back where it goes and resume my reading. After going through this process, I've lost the thread of what I was reading; it's a real mood-killer. I want a small, portable dictionary which I can keep next to my armchair so I can look up words quickly, easily, with as little effort as possible. Because I am lazy.

However, when dictionary publishers make smaller versions of their dictionaries, they abridge them by taking out the most uncommon words. The editorial logic runs thus: "These words are rare; you are unlikely to ever encounter them, so we are going to leave them out." This is wrong.

Nobody needs to look up words like "leap" and "elephant" and "ugly" in the dictionary. You need a dictionary for words you DON'T already know ... and those are going to be the rare ones, unfamiliar because you don't encounter them often or have never seen them before. When making an abridged dictionary, editors should remove the most common words and leave in all the strange ones.

Why don't they do that?? It makes so much sense!

I found one dictionary that seems to embody this philosophy: The Oxford Essential Dictionary of Difficult Words ... but it does not quite live up to its promise. There are many words missing ("juridical" and "epigone" are among the noticeably absent.) This so-called Difficult dictionary contains far too many non-difficult words (such as "compose," "imply," "nausea," and "righteous" just to name a few.)

Does anyone know of another dictionary that might be what I'm looking for? And no, I don't want an etymologist's curiosity collection like The Word Museum or The Superior Person's Book of Words. These are written for entertainment purposes and contain less than 1,000 definitions. Not comprehensive enough to be useful. I need a real reference book: 80,000 definitions AT LEAST.

Mid-Atlantic's Sexiest Sexton

2009-09-26T21:14:27Z

I guess you have a right to know that the J in JW now stands for "Janitor." The W remains a mystery.

I did my first shift this morning, and though I enjoyed it in a way, mopping floors is much more strenuous than I expected. First off, my mop is really long and stiff and heavy. I have to dip it in the bucket and then squeeze it .. then I slap it down and push it forward, then pull it back while swishing it from side to side. If I find a dirty spot then I have to bear down and rub it vigorously until it dissolves. Man, I'm spent.

I think I'm also sick. I doubt that headache, fever, and diarrhea are typical side-effects of arduous mopping.

I'm also a little disappointed because (due to zoning regulations) I'll never have a chance to dig a grave. At least not at this church.

Okay then

2009-09-09T00:00:29Z

I have replaced the Poisonheart with Ed, the Smoking Dutch Cat from the DOZ comics logo. Hopefully nobody else has him - unlikely since I came up with him back in 1995. The heart is still there on certain special pages because trying to match the colors again would be too much hassle right now.

Oh by the way, my site had a complete redesign last month. http://DocPhlogiston.tripod.com/ to see what I did.

I am Despondent

2009-09-06T21:28:57Z

Disturbing new has arrived today at Phlogiston International headquarters:

It turns out somebody HAS already come up with my Poisonheart symbol. And registered it as a trademark. http://www.tokidoki.it

When I created it, nobody I know had ever seen such a thing. Many people said, "You should put that on a t-shirt. That's an awesome design." I thought it odd that no such thing existed before, and YUP, it turned out to be too good to be true.

Why? Why is it, every time I come up with a truly awesome idea, somebody else has already done it??

So what's my next step ... do I need to re-do my website graphics? Because I used my version of the Poisonheart in all the headers and the navigation buttons. crap crap crap CRAP!!!

This really bums me out.

Cinematic Decay

2009-09-05T19:08:11Z

I just finished re-watching Terry Gilliam's 1988 masterpiece, "The Advetures of Baron Munchausen" and I'm wondering why it is so much better than his recent effort "The Brothers Grimm."

They are similar in tone and visual style. Setting is close to the same time period and they share a theme of fantasy overlapping into reality. They have the same juvenile slapstick antics for the kids in the audience. "Brothers Grimm" has far superior effects, is much slicker, more action-packed. But it seems to be pure form, with little substance. "Munchausen" has an elaborate, multi-layered structure and is about such things as mortality, madness, fantasy, the spritual value of imagination over the coldness of reason ... all kinds of things that add up to a satisfying experience. I felt like "Munchausen" MEANT something; it MOVED me, emotionally and intellectually, and when it was done I had the sense of a worthwhile experience. "Brothers Grimm" left me flat, feeling like I had spent almost two hours looking at pictures - nothing more. What happened to Terry Gilliam? What has happened to Cinema in general? Why do movies suck now? Why do they have no soul anymore?

I remember having a debate once with Rob in the graphics room over what decade had the worst movies, and I said it was the 1980s because I remember a lot of idiotic movies from then. Honestly, there was a lot of really dumb writing then .. and movies looked lame too. BUT, Rob said, they were trying new things then. There was a lot of innovation, and good movies were made with lots of care, because you can't fix a mechanical effect like you can with CG. Everything involved more planning, and the result tended to be a lot tighter, artistically. He insisted the 1990s were the bleakest decade. I have come to agree with him. Earlier this year I was given a collection of laserdisks, mostly 1990s stuff, and OH MAN those movies were terrible. All of the assembly-line "blockbusters" of the early and mid 90s are unwatchable now. They are big-budget, slick-looking absolutely meaningless fluff. Gone is every trace of originality or interest.

And things haven't improved. Whatever the studios "learned" about production in the 90s they are still doing now. I can count on my fingers the GOOD movies I've seen this decade. Most of them are by Pixar.

I mourn the loss of that great moviemaking spirit of the 1980s. Maybe the magic died with Jim Henson. Maybe it was something else.

Will the Widget Work Here?

2009-07-27T22:12:51Z

I got this nifty thing from TuneCore which is supposed to make my music easier to find and listen to. Paste in the code for it:

Can you feel the love?

How Bout that Music

2009-04-24T22:09:08Z

Slowly but surely (I assume) Tunecore is getting my music into the stores I requested. I did some hunting to see where it was findable so far.

Here are places to buy my MP3s. The lowest price is at http://amiestreet.com/music/dr-phlogiston
They have a system where new music starts out dirt-cheap and the more people buy it, the price goes up. This encourages people to try new stuff, and charges full price for the most popular music. Smart. My stuff is still dirt-priced. But alas, AmieStreet only has ONE of my currently available digital-download albums. The other one can be most easily found at http://www.rhapsody.com/dr-phlogiston
My stuff has also turned up at Amazon.com (in the MP3 section), iTunes, and eMusic. But Amazon and eMusic are difficult to link to from outside, and you can only use iTunes if you have the iTunes software on your computer. The links I've given you are the best for these two albums. A third one might be coming to entirely different stores via Routenote in a month or so...

Meanwhile, here's an idea: PERSONAL THEME MUSIC. I could make a 30-second track on request; tell me the style and the mood it should convey, and I'll whip it together. A musical commission, if you will, and then you could play it on your website or whatever (including a link telling visitors where you got that awesome music.) I have a price in mind, but I inquire of the wisdom of LiveJournal readers: how much would you pay for something like this?

I need to learn how to stream MP3 files on my website, so I can put up samples to listen to. Also how to make the link button which the customer pastes into his webpage.

Mendacious Muttering and More Music I Must Mention

2009-04-02T23:12:46Z

Still no job. I interviewed at the Department on Friday but haven't heard back.

Last month I actually pulled in enough money to pay my bills, and then I did my taxes and had to forfeit it all to the Government. Great; let them spend it on their Financial Bailout and put it right into the pockets of those shysters whose jackassery brought about the conditions that cost me my job in the first place. Why don't I just pay them directly and save them the effort and expense of robbing me via bureaucracy?

And why did my credit card interest rate suddenly go up? Is it because I lost my job? What kind of logic dictates that you should charge the customer more because he now has less money? It's like my bank charging a fee for being "below minimum balance" which I think is the most retarded thing ever. I guess the poor can't fight back, but it's only a matter of time, if this kind of crap continues, there will be a new American Revolution. I would enjoy chowing down on the sweetbreads of a fat investment banker.

Since we, as a culture, are now OFFICIALLY rewarding ineptitude, maybe my best way to cash in is to laze around and do nothing. Or no, wait, you have to make colossal mistakes to have the big bucks handed to you (the bigger the failure the bigger the bonus), and that is going to require some actual effort. I'm too lazy, and I don't have the resources to pull off a truly colossal financial screw-up. Guess I'd better put some of my backup schemes into action:

There are now two albums of my very own musical product out floating around. "Circle A-b" is folk songs. "Ahoy" is a smattering of relatively recent original material. They are available in different stores. Tunecore's distribution seems to be completely random. It's three months later and the albums are still not up in all the places I requested. But they are up in many places. "Circle" is on Rhapsody. "Ahoy" is on iTunes, and I think also on Amazon in their MP3 department. "Ahoy" also showed up in one of the other stores; one I had never heard of and can't remember the name of... Do a search for Dr. Phlogiston and something of mine should turn up. Then buy some of it!

I am also doing commissions again, if you need some kind of cartoon drawn. The guidelines are on my website, which should be linked to from here...

What's the deal with badges? Do people really buy those things like hotcakes? I should get in on that action.

Oh yeah, buy something for me

2009-02-11T21:14:32Z

If you go to www.rhapsody.com and search Artists for "Dr. Phlogiston" then my 8-song folk album (entitled "Circle A-b") comes up. You can purchase this music for a mere pittance, a portion of which comes back to me so I can continue to afford such luxuries as hot & cold running water, lentils, and rice .. delicious rice! The album is supposed to be on iTunes as well, but it looks like that has not happened yet - I'm not sure ... iTunes seems hard to navigate.

Conservative Gibberish

2009-02-11T19:51:39Z

Working at the State Capitol I've heard some really funny Republican one-liners. Trouble is, they weren't meant as jokes.

Number 1, a real zinger: Global warming is fake, because man doesn't have the power to affect his own environment to such a degree. "How egotistical to think we could," the conservative knucklehead said to me, as if his pious mock-humility proved something.

How irresponsible to claim that we can't, especially when all you have to do is step outside the building and look around to see the evidence of man's impact on his environment. I don't think those skyscrapers, that pavement, those cars, and that diesel stink in the air just GREW there naturally. To those who claim humanity has no lasting impact, I would like to point out a few of the more famous "modern" extinctions which humans were totally responsible for: the great auk. The dodo. The passenger pigeon. Gone, and never coming back, and it's our fault. I ask you this: Do you use the toilet, or do you shit on the floor of your apartment? Because if it was me, and I believed man had no power to destroy his own environment, I would crap on the floor. I would save a bundle on my water bill, and I would know for sure that rotting pile of human waste in the corner was NOT making my apartment a dangerous and unhealthy place to live. The point of this analogy is that the earth, though large, is a sealed system ... and billions of people (more than there have ever been) are finding newer and better ways to crap in the living room every day. Tell me with a straight face that this won't have some kind of effect.

The next three are about guns.

Number 2: A group of lobbyists sporting large buttons with the slogan "Guns save lives."

Really? I guess that explains why there's a gun in my first-aid kit. That explains why EMTs carry sidearms. That explains why, when someone starts choking in a restaurant, the first thing you yell is "Quick! Does anybody have a gun?" No? Well, perhaps the logic is something more along the lines of "Fight fire with fire" which can actually be true: When fighting a forest fire, crews will start a controlled burn going in the opposite direction to prevent the fire from spreading. You can use a gun to intimidate or kill a dangerous person before he has a chance to do the same, on a larger scale. You can fight fire with fire. You can still burn your house down. Guns only save lives by facilitating a pre-emptive strike, in other words "kill 'em before they kill you." Guns save lives. Fires prevent burning. Yeah right. Only if you believe in "kill or be killed." Then you're among the ranks of Those Who Probably Should Be Stopped.

Number 3: A gun is a tool.

Indeed. I suppose there are rivet guns, nail guns, and staple guns ... but these are a far cry from a handgun, the only purpose of which is to throw bits of metal at high velocity, thereby tearing holes in soft things. (Like human bodies.) A gun's purpose is to injure or kill. You can't tighten a bolt with it. You can't open a package with it. You can't perform surgery with it. You can't change your brake pads with it. I suppose you could use the gun to threaten someone and make him do these things for you, but that's the only sense in which a gun is a tool. If there's nobody around to point it at, what good is it? If you were stranded in the wilderness, which would you rather have: a gun or a knife? I'd take the knife, because I can use it to carve wood, skin animals, make snares, build shelter, etc etc. With a gun I might be able to shoot some critter, but then how would I skin it & dress it & prepare it for my dinner? In the absence of human society, a gun becomes a nearly useless implement. About the only thing you can do with it is use it as a hammer, but there's another device which does that job much better: it's called a hammer. Which, incidentally, can also be used as a weapon.

Number 4: The same intellectual who thought man had no power over his environment also produced this gem of logic, supposedly to refute the bleeding-heart liberals' pleas for gun control: "Knives are dangerous; why don't we pass laws to restrict knives?"

This strikes me as rather glib, perhaps rhetorical because - on the face of it, this makes little sense. If we outlawed everything that was dangerous, we wouldn't be allowed to get out of bed. But the question deserves an answer. The lack of knife-control laws could have something to do with the fact that a knife won't accidentally fire and take off Junior's head. You just don't hear very many stories about tragic knife accidents. You don't hear much about gangstas waving knives around. Curt Cobain didn't kill himself with a knife. Dick Cheney didn't accidentally stab his hunting buddy in the face with a knife. A blade requires a bit more intentionality to use: if you want to injure somebody with a knife, you have to wield it and slash and come at the person. There's more to it than just point-and-squeeze. You have to really mean it. That's a big part of why when people snap, they tend to go on SHOOTING rampages rather than stabbing rampages. Knives are just not deadly enough, and they require too much effort. And even the most dull-witted and negligent parents, for some reason, seem to have the sense to keep knives away from children, when they don't have the same sense about guns. A knife is understood better even by simpler minds, since there's a direct cognitive linkage of the object with the danger (sharp=will cut you) that isn't there with guns (blunt, heavy, shiny=toy?)

I try to respect the other side of political debate, but when the other side evinces a complete lack of rational thought, what am I supposed to conclude?

Mark of the Damned Premiere

2007-05-15T15:24:31Z

Midnight, Saturday June 9th at the Byrd Theater in Carytown. Ticket price $5.00. Copies of the DVD will be available for ... I think $15, but I'm not sure. Advance copies of the DVD are available at Velocity Comics on Broad Street near VCU. Y'all come and support the wierd arts!

Mark of the Damned movie trailer

2007-04-21T18:31:21Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNbKs7esCkQ

Or search YouTube for "Mark of the Damned"

I'm in a Movie!

2007-01-26T17:16:51Z

"Mark of the Damned" (directed by Eric Miller) is finished! We showed it to a select audience of friends and cognoscenti last night .. it was the first time I had actually seen the entire thing, and I'm excited. It clocks in at about 1 hour and 40 minutes of extreme awesomeness. We will premiere it locally within a month, probably enter it in some festivals, and presumably DVDs will be for sale soon.

How to describe "Mark of the Damned" ... It's a retro (early 1960s) style sci-fi/monster movie, a tribute to the series of "Santo" movies from Mexico. It is black & white with a dubbed soundtrack (since the original Santo movies were in Spanish, we wanted that foreign language feeling.) It has all the elements of greatness: zombies, vampires, alchemists, mad scientists, cyborgs, cops, Abraham Lincoln, sweet cars, astronauts, magicians, archaeologists, a priest, a luchadore, hot girls (some in skimpy costumes), a Horror from Beyond the Spheres, a mummy, and a robot. Despite all this, it is not a hopeless mish-mash, and (unlike many movies of this genre) you do NOT have to be stoned to enjoy it. We weren't stoned when we made it. It's actually a pretty good movie, and I'm not just saying that because I helped make it.

What exactly did I do? I co-wrote the script, helped with the shooting, played 4 characters on-screen, dubbed voices for 5 characters, and provided incidental music for selected scenes. (The main musical score was done by Casey Tomlin from VCR.)

"Mark of the Damned" has an unfinished website and a Myspace page which should show up at the top of a Google search. Seek it out! You will love it!

You Should be Aware

2006-09-21T23:44:05Z

"Dr. Phlogiston's Complete Best MP3" is available for the low, low price of $25. It's a single disc containing 130 songs with a total running time of approximately 7 hours. All the worst material from the last ten years has been stripped away, leaving you with an auditorially pleasing retrospective of my ongoing one-man multitrack recording project. Don't be dismayed by the fact that it was all done in my apartment. It sounds pretty darn good, and listening to it will make you cool.
Plus it comes in a real nifty paper cover with all the songs printed on it.

Top 10 Names for a New Suburban Development

2006-08-26T14:41:53Z

Be it an Apartment Complex, Shopping Center, Country Club or Gated Community ... these are the top ten names for the next one to be built:

10. Stonywood
9. Shadeless Glade
8. River Creek
7. Running Glen
6. Brown Meadows
5. Paved Acres
4. Brickdale
3. Dirtshire
2. Tarmac Estates
1. Lost Pasture

Honorable mention: Carcroft and Phony Park

Antique speak

2006-06-21T14:03:34Z

I got "A Book of Middle English" not too long ago and I've enjoyed slogging my way through the texts. It's slow going, but I feel like a really cool guy - learning Middle English and all - which says a lot about what I think is cool.

Wearing cardigan sweaters and smoking a pipe, that's totally cool.

Going bald is the epitome of coolness.

Staying indoors and letting your skin get pasty & translucent: very cool.

I wanted to learn Old English (which is another thing entirely, a completely different language from Modern - "New" - English) and decided that Middle English would be a good first step (since ME is halfway in between OE and NE and is therefore only a partially different language.) I have a plan in which one of my cartoon characters speaks Old English in a story.

Came across some interesting info: there are three letters we used to have in English, which have become obsolete and been removed from the typeset. I can't show them to you of course, because they aren't in the font. Two of them stand for the sound of "th." One is called "eth" and was borrowed from Old Norse; it's supposed to be a "d" with a line through the vertical ascender, but in modern typesets that include it, it looks more like a backwards 6. This letter was the first one to go out of style.
The other "th" letter was called "thorn" and it was derived from runic alphabets which were native to the British Isles. It looks like a "p" with an extra ascending stem, or a "b" with an extra descending stem. Oddly enough, Medeival scribes often wrote this letter as "y" or a mark indistinguishable from "y" ... when people began printing with movable type, many fonts were made on the Continent (particularly in Italy) where people spoke Latinate languages (French, Spanish, Italian, etc) which didn't have "thorn" in their alphabet. So printers used "y" as a substitute, which is the reason why historical tourist destinations have places called "Ye Olde Shoppe." It's not supposed to be read "ye" - that's silly ... the "y" is standing in for the lost letter "thorn" and the sign actually says "The Olde Shoppe."

The last lost letter is called "yogh." It looks exactly like the numeral 3 (in fonts where the top hook of the 3 is pointy) or a fancy cursive script "z" with a long, curving tail. Yogh represented the consonant "y" or the soft "gh" and was still in use (in words such as "li3te" "ri3te" and "e3e") as late as the 1700s, after "thorn" and "eth" had been forgotten.

I suppose "long s" (popular up through the early 1800s) could also be considered a lost letter. In handwritten script (the US Constitution, for example, or even as late a document as Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation) this looks like a graceful, looping "f" that goes above and below the line of text. In print, it often WAS a lowercase "f" sometimes (but not always) without its crossbar. The rule seems to have been that capital "S" always looks normal, and "s" at the end of a word always looks normal. But anywhere WITHIN the word, and at the beginning of a word (as long as it wasn't the capital at the beginning of a name or sentence,) "s" would be written long - except in the case of a double "s" when the first one would be written long and the second one would be normal. In the handwritten draft of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, Lincoln only used long "s" in the double-s situation (for words like "ifsued" and "reprefs") but wrote it normally at all other times.

Now don't say you never learned anything from my LiveJournal.

Weird Radio, Richmond VA

2006-06-18T01:50:53Z

I've been listening to the radio and have found some stations here that satisfy my craving for the unique and unusual.

On the FM band, 97.3 WRIR "Richmond Independent Radio" is probably best. has much of the flavor of college radio without so much of the awkward amateurishness. There's still some amateurishness - just not as much. I haven't figured out their programming schedule yet, but it includes lots of strange stuff. Odd, quirky music you won't hear anywhere else on FM .. local talk .. techno music sessions in the evening... one guy who's on late at night plays excerpts from 1950s musicals. Once I turned it on and heard a sound-collage of old movie clips. This station is low-power so unless you live in "the City" proper, you can't hear it. You can listen online, but ... I forget the URL. It's run in the nonprofit manner, DJs are volunteers, and commercials (excuse me, "underwriters' credits") are usually read by the DJ in the booth. WRIR carries a lot of NPR programming which - for unknown reasons - isn't on the Public Radio station or "Community Idea Station" as it's calling itself.

WCVE (originally stood for "Central Virginia Educational") 88.9 FM, is the traditional Public Radio station. Jazz, Classical, and news. Some talk, and of course Prairie Home Companion, Car Talk, and This American Life. It's pretty boring most of the time, but not nearly as annoying to listen to as any of the ClearChannel music stations.

For truly supreme wierdness you've got to flip over to the AM band.

1140 AM is the legendary WRVA, high-power beacon that can be heard across the state, with good equipment. They play Rush Limbaugh and other worthless conservative loudmouths, but they have Coast-to-Coast on at midnight, which is almost always fascinating.

1380 AM ... I don't know their call letters, but this is a Christian station called "Spirited Talk." I know you're thinking "Radio Ministry? YUCK!" But if you can believe it, a Christian radio station that actually criticizes George W Bush. The shows I have listened to on this station are surprisingly thoughtful.

1450 AM WCLM. This is the most amazing mishmash of "anything-goes" programming. There are black Gospel shows. Big John Trimble in the morning on weekdays plays old Country music (not the New Nashville crap, but the good stuff from the 50s, 60s and 70s) Saturday morning is DJ Barnett with his Bluegrass show, and weekday afternoons feature the AMAZING Bopst Show. Other radio stations claim "We Play Anything" but Chris Bopst is the only man who lives up to that promise. You never know what he's going to play next. It's fascinating.

Shameless Plug

2005-01-19T16:01:32Z

Well well well, new cartoon uploaded to my online story vault. Maybe I shouldn't call it a vault, though, because I'm not archiving material there. It only contains four pages and the oldest one is taken off the top when the new one is added to the bottom. Try looking at The Vault.
Also, the latest chapter of "Kelly O'Dor at the Old Phelps Place" is available from Second Ed. It's a 16-page mini-comic "written" for the illiterate (and our non-English-speaking friends) without any words. In the first chapter, Kelly arrives at the Old Phelps Place, and persuades her sidekick Annophila the Wasp Girl to accompany her inside. In chapter 2 we meet the Monkey Butler, plus Old Man Phelps and his very stern Birdlike Nurse. Annophila hides in a lamp to secretly observe any potentially suspicious goings-on. In chapter 3 spooky things happen: Annophila has a brush with death, there's some mysterious business with some stairs in the dark, and a puzzling stain. Chapter 4 has Old Man Phelps telling the sad story of his life, and Kelly relating an eerie incident from her childhood which is funny to her, but disturbing to everyone else.
I can say without any trace of humility that the drawing in these booklets is VERY GOOD (for me, anyway - I really pushed my limits artistically) and the fact that they are wordless actually forces you to "read" them much more carefully to figure out the story. Well worth the paltry ONE DOLLAR cover price. That's right: chapters 3 and 4 are priced at $1. A mere, measly buck gets you 16 pocket-sized pages of cute & furry cartoon enigma. Parts 1 and 2 are 8 pages each, and priced at 50 cents. What an amazing bargain!! This is good wholesome entertainment here folks; none of that creepy "furry erotica." I gave copies to the preacher's kid at church.

Gross Toilet Seat Story (long)

2003-09-04T03:16:30Z

Well, I just wasted an evening wrestling with my toilet. The brave saga is so long I used the lj-cut on it.
A public word of advice to everyone: if you ever have to buy a new toilet seat, DON'T GET THE CHEAP ONE. Spend a few extra bucks for something decent.

Cheap toilet seats are made of pressboard. This is ground-up scrap wood that is mixed with glue and pressed into whatever shape the manufacturer gives it. This stuff works fine, for a while, but it ain't a permanent material. Pressboard toilet seats are sprayed with semi-enamel paint that repels water .. for a while. But eventually the paint comes off in spots, and gradually humidity along with toilet substances such as buttock sweat, water, and other unmentionables, all begin to seep into the porous pressboard. It swells up, gets even more absorbent, will eventually crack .. but before that, ladies and gentlemen, it will start to MOLD.

Pressboard toilet seat mold is black and very unhealthy. You can't get rid of it once it starts because it's firmly entrenched DOWN INSIDE the wood. My toilet seat has been deteriorating for a while, and I noticed the paint flaking away, and the rough area of exposed pressboard getting larger. A closer look revealed: "Great Auk!!! That's not pressboard!" The only thing to do is to GET RID of the toilet seat and replace it with a new one. So a new toilet seat was gotten.

Problem number one: The toilet seat is mounted to the toilet with two bolts that pass through the hinge arms and through two holes at the back of the bowl. You knew that. There are big plastic nuts that screw onto these bolts, underneath the back lip of the toilet, to hold everything secure. On MY toilet, these nuts are nestled down inside a trapezoid-shaped cavity underneath and behind that lip. There is no way to SEE the nut without lying down and shimmying against the wall behind the toilet. Which is impossible, because there's only like a 10-inch clearance on either side. Plus, the nuts are stuck tight; I can't loosen them with my fingers and I can't grasp them with a wrench or pliers, because a) I can't SEE the nut, and b) the shape of the little crevice is such that I can't grip the nut at an angle to get any torque to turn it. Okay, so this is obviously a job for THE RATCHET. I go down to my car and get my ratchet set out of the trunk.

Problem number two: the bolt is too long. Or should I say, the ratchet socket is too short to fit over it and reach the nut. So I hustle over to Lowe's hardware to get a longer socket. They're not that expensive. Well, Lowe's only sells "KOBALT" brand 12-pointed sockets. I want to unscrew a hexagonal nut. That's 6 sides, people, SIX!!! Not 12. The 12-sided socket has shallower sides and doesn't have as solid a grip as a 6-sided socket. You really want your socket to be as snug as possible. I shrugged and bought one anyway, because it's all they had and I was committed to getting this damn toilet seat DONE tonight.

The new socket fits over the bolt, fits over the nut, and it's turning the nut on the right side. But the seat isn't getting any looser. I double-check the threads on the bolt to make sure I'm turning the right direction (I am.) I try the nut on the left side, just for the sake of symmetry, and TWIST! The sorry piece of crap 12-pointed socket has ripped all 6 corners off the soft plastic nut. This wouldn't have happened with a 6-corner socket. Damn Lowe's and their KOBALT sockets. I'm returning that piece of junk. But now I'm stuck with a stripped nut I can't turn, and another nut I can turn but for some reason isn't getting any looser. Why is that?

Well, most GOOD toilet seats (I noticed at the store when I bought my new one) have bolts with some sort of notched, slotted or winged head on them. This bolt head is either exposed, or is concealed under a removable cover that fits on the hinge arm or bracket. Either way, the bolt head is accessible for tightening or removal as necessary. The moldy old toilet seat assembly that I am trying to remove my toilet has SOLID MOLDED brackets. There's no hatch, no secret door, no way to get to the bolt head. This is a problem. In fact it's..

Problem number 3: To test a sudden sickening theory, I grasp the end of the bolt with my pliers and turn. Sure enough, THE BOLT IS ROTATING INSIDE THE SEALED PLASTIC BRACKET. WHAT IDIOT DESIGNED IT THIS WAY??????? No wonder all this ratcheting isn't loosening the nut. The WHOLE DAMN BOLT is turning and I can't do a thing to stop it! I've been rassling with the toilet for about 45 minutes by this point, sweating like a hog in that enclosed space, and cussing like a madman because there's no way it should be this hard.

So, I get out my hacksaw and start cutting a slot in the bracket, with the vague idea of splitting it open to get ahold of the bolt head. But it's made of that indestructible plastic that doesn't shatter; it just kind of flexes so I pry on it in futility for about 10 minutes before giving up. What to do? I saw on it again, more furiously, more out of anger than because I think it will accomplish anything. And then.. By the color of the shavings I can tell I'm cutting into the head of the bolt (which appears to be made of aluminum. Stay away from aluminum bolts.) "Aha!" I cut a slot in the top of the bolt and jab a chisel in the crack to hold it still. "Eureka!" After another 5 minutes of grunting and swearing, I have removed the right-hand nut and that bracket is free.

Now what to do with the left side? I saw a slot in it with the hacksaw, but I can't turn the nut because it is stripped, thanks to the stupid and mostly useless 12-corner socket. What now?? The seat & lid are still attached to the bracket, and I think about prying the whole mess loose with brute force. The plastic will flex, and might release the bolt head. Two mighty tugs, and the back of the seat cracks around the plastic hinge pin. It comes away in my hand, mashes a finger painfully against something hard, and .. horrors .. a 4-inch chunk of it falls in the toilet.

There's no choice but to reach in there and get it out.

After washing my hands, I turn my attention to the left bracket still sitting there, attached to the toilet, defying every attempt to remove it. I now have no toilet seat at all, and I can't put on a new one until I GET RID of that FREAKIN BRACKET!! I finally decide that I have enough space with the seat gone, to lay the hacksaw flat against the rim of the bowl and cut through the bolt right under the bracket. Aluminum, though I disapprove of its use as a bolt, does cut very easily, and in a matter of 2 minutes the bolt was sheared off and the last bracket removed.

It took 5 minutes to install the new seat. It's clean, comfy, and looks classy. I got one of those "solid oak" ones that's made of real wood with a polyurethane coating. Should last a long time. And it's got philips head bolts that will be a cinch to remove when the time comes.

Whew.

Still Alive

2003-04-09T15:57:24Z

Day two of my thrilling bronchitis adventure! I went to bed early last night, laid there half asleep. Eric Miller called at 10:30. I couldn't take the lying there and coughing so I swallowed some NyQuil and fell asleep. For about an hour. I had this frustrating dream in which I kept turning over and over, trying to set up some sort of convection current in the blankets to re-direct the flow of sweat. At midnight I woke up; WIDE AWAKE and sat up like Nosferatu rising from his coffin. I was soaked with sweat, and angry. I started cussing and kicked off the blankets. Convection currents, that's so f-ing stupid. I sat up for several minutes to let my t-shirt dry, and then laid back down. It was raining, and I could hear drops hitting the window. It made me think of the motion of molecules, colliding with each other, and I got a sense of my room as a cubical space above me, full of energized particles. I, too, was made up of particles: protons, neutrons, electrons, atoms whirling around and colliding with each other. It seemed like a cloud of wet electricity, a tangle of fine wires with a current running through it. I had been struggling against it, trying to lick it or squeeze something out of it, or trying to move inside it. Trying to change my position relative to it, but now that I could sense it, I realized there was no difference between it and me, and that movement was impossible. In fact, as I lay there I couldn't understand what I had been trying to do with the blankets and the sweat. My body was an illusion, and the fact that it was sick was just another degree of fiction. It was impossible to change my position or my condition within the cloud of energy because I was part of it, and my identity as an individual, seperate being was a lie. I laid there, opening my eyes and staring at the ceiling, then closing them again, trying to convince myself that my body was real, that the room was real, but it JUST DIDN'T MAKE ANY SENSE! Then I started coughing and the pain sort of brought me back. It was eerie. But my fever broke, and the rest of the night I spent sleeping fitfully for an hour, then waking up to pull another blanket onto the bed because I was cold.