now *this* is some handstanding

you know, the more i look at iPimp's xray below, the better my foot feels. i think it is like the picture of dorian gray. i hope it's making you feel better too.

"feeding time causes a great deal of excitement"

i thought my house was bad, but at least there you can sit down without 6 cats crawling on top of you. christ. a little mustard gas would clear that right up.

pee, poo and pshop

you suck at photoshop. you do. so let donnie show you how to suck less.



this is lesson 3; check out lesson 1 and lesson 2.
[update -- hot off the presses: lesson #4]

don't sprain your vagina has been absorbed into the MyCo core taxonomy.

and here's an analog version: alison jackson's shots use look-a-likes of celebrities and public figures to create a photographic or filmic image, which challenges the observers' perception of reality by creating a false reality. in this gallery you'll find bill gates dancing with an ipod, tom croooz proselytising to his daughter, Our Glorious Leader pondering a rubik's cube... good stuff.

finally, after a shite week, this cheered me up: the Turd Burgler. it's not only gratifying to say -- like cat butler -- but it can be a rousing game as well. the Turd Burgler game set includes an indestructible, rubber Practice Poopie®, and an official looking rule book, called, "Poop Dreams" filled with 9 poop related yard games, using the Practice Poopie® as the game piece. The uniqueness comes from the many different markets we serve. It's a yard and garden tool for pet poop, rotten vegetables, and shedding fruit trees and whacking retarded myopic snorgoyles that actually pee shit okay maybe i added that part but it's app-row-poe.

btw this comes from a collection of the 14 Best Poop Gadgets.
because it's been that kind of week. onward, burglers.

TUAW intros the MB Air

here's a short real-world intro to the MacBook Air. the trackpad functionality i'm so chuffed about is shown briefly, and the MB Pro has a cameo role for comparison.

presenteeism run amok

Subject: GB at home
From: MyCo office mgr
Date: 11:29am
To: everyone@MyCo.com

All,

Please keep GB in your thoughts and prayers while he recovers from pneumonia and a collapsed lung. His wife called me this morning and said the results from his tests yesterday came back with the collapsed lung. He is on a strict, heavy duty medication regimen and will not return to work until Monday.

If you need to reach him for any reason, you can call or email him. I know he is checking emails between naps.

FUCKTHAT.
there is absolutely no excuse for that kind of presentee-ist behavior, which makes people like me look abysmally inadequate. and loucypher agreed: i get a fucking hangnail and i'm out of reach.

EmCeeCarv just got an iphone, was showing it off to me and the Mick in the conference room yesterday.
- don't you just love it - i gushed. i don't gush for much, mind, but my phone falls into the Gush category.
- i... do - agreed MCC, not quite as gushily. my man already has DSL at home, so his phone isn't the umbilical cord mine is. i've got both of you on my Contacts Favorites - which is a double-click of the menu button away, reason #103 to love mac - so you're a double-click and touch away.

- not so fast, my good man - i interruptust - for my phone has the iFlyFirewall. it blocks all work-related intrusions - MCC looked crestfallen - and it works with GoogleMaps and DelDOT traffic control to get me home as quickly as possible. in fact, yesterday when there was that 18-wheeler overturned on 95S it turned into a helicopter and flew me home.

- i think i saw that on the news! - he gamely tried to play along.
- no you didn't - i snapped - we were invisible.

i think i will email GB to ask whether he can put together a 50pg proposal for me by monday. with his strict, heavy-duty medication diet he could come up with some mint stuff.

'tis the season....

...to haul out the classics.

everything and nothing

I persisted in a friendship with June and Bernard. In conversations with them over several years, I discovered that the emotional void, the feeling of belonging nowhere and to no one that that had afflicted me between the ages of eight and thirty-seven, had an important intellectual consequence: I had no attachments, I believed in nothing. It was not that I was a doubter, or that I had armed myself with the useful skepticism of a rational curiosity, or that I saw all arguments from all sides; there was simply no cause, no enduring principle, no fundamental idea with which I could identify, no transcendent entity whose existence I could truthfully, passionately, or quietly assert.

Ian McEwan, Black Dogs, preface.

what a doodiehead.
of course there are fundamental ideas, & transcendent entities to assert.
theres sludge rock, for 1. on march the saints.

maynard's vagina hasn't leaked yet

puscifer's first album, V is for Vagina (hellyeah), is due out oct 30th. chafing at the glacial pace of tool releases i suppose, maynard j keenan occasionally escapes his crate at danny carey's place and beagles his way into a outstanding side project like tapeworm, a perfect circle or puscifer. in addition to MJK, other contributors to the puscifer cumpot include josh eustis, lustmord, milla jovovich and ex-nin bassist danny somebody.

MJK and trent reznor seem to share the same brain sometimes: there's the censorship is a cancer / OSR twinning, the concept of nature cleaning shit up in a swath of wrath (aenima and the warning) and the outspoken dissatisfaction with the current administration.

so i guess it's no surprise that MJK this weekend came out with his own State of the Industry address which, like reznor's declaration of independence last week, acknowledges his enviable position in a market struggling to reinvent itself, and his ability to help direct.

i’m doing this pretty much on my own. no label support aside from the distributor. it’s a HUGE learning curve. but if i can navigate it, i will be able to share what i’ve learned. i can make it easier for other bands that are trying to do it on their own. make it possible for us all to survive in our little microcosms rather than fall victim to the seductive song of the sirens… the expensive and impersonal macrocosm of the major label dog and pony show.

and while he doesn't quite come out and suggest “steal it,” keenan recognises the new world order has triggered a wider exposure to and appreciation of new music. but on the flip side, while illegal downloading won't kill or maim the keenans and reznors, it could destroy isis, autolux, and the burning brides:

downloading wont effect me TOO much. but it will affect those bands right on the edge. bands who could use the hundred bucks to make it to the next town to play a show (gas and food aren’t free. go figure) . or could use some cash to record a new record.( imagine that. it actually takes money to record a record.) i can afford to pay for the recording of my record. i’m one of the lucky ones. (thanks to nirvana and the label feeding frenzy, i won the early 90’s grunge lottery.) but those days are history. in order for young bands to survive nowadays, they need to get paid for their efforts. touring costs money. recording costs money. unless you’re ok with bands recording their songs on their Palm Treo.

the puscifer appetiser EP Don't Shoot the Messenger popped up on iTunes last week; here's the track listing:
trekka (sean beaven mix)
REV 22:20
the undertaker (renholder mix)
REV 22:20 (4:20 mix)

if you think you've seen these before, you have. danny lohner used REV 20:20 in the first Underworld soundtrack and his Undertaker remix appeared on the second. so not terribly new stuff but it's the price of a fucking latte so drink a cup of free ass coffee this morning and buy some music instead.

the EP didn't leak, but V is for Vagina has. or has it? you may find that, upon dloading (and this is all theoretical of course), the tracks you have don't match the associated track listing AT ALL – that in fact, you now have a copy of living syndication's new album Aneurythm. mistake at the dload farm, you may think, but that happens rarely, and actually Aneurythm isn't half-bad. tho you've never heard of this band before, maybe you will give them a listen, maybe you will like what you hear and go to a show and buy a t-shirt. maybe you will go to their MySpace, where you find among the syndication's influences a perfect circle and tool. and you may think, could mj keenan be so clever, to "leak" a trojan horse??

today's eyecandy: APC's judith (the orig, not lohner's peerless remix). i'm as straight as the next chick but when paz lenchantin whips her hair into a knot at the top of her head without dropping the bassline i'm utterly enchanted. ply me with turkish delight and take me to your wintery kingdom, paz.

countdown to richmond: 3 weeks

in the bank is another week's training, highlights of which were a track workout of 1200s and quarters at sub-5K pace; and hill intervals on the bike last night, followed by a tempo trail run on legs a bit tenderised by 6 miles on the treadmill that morning. an easy ride today, and easy brick tomorrow and maybe a race sunday will finish off the week. ordered my Team USA uniform, too.

hill intervals on the bike are never fun, even when you've got pantera's "Walk" stuck on the mental jukebox. there's no fluidity or zen, only hurt -- plus there's the burmese mountain dog that sits in wait on the hill cos he knows your stupid ass is gonna come up and go down, again & again, but at least you KNOW when he's coming, not like the Three JackRussells of the Apocalypse that pop up out of fucking nowhere.

but as fisch noted on tuesday, the suffering is timed and finite, and if you can get your mind on-board so it's working with you rather than against, the time does pass and you do get stronger. and when you're going head-to-head in richmond with some chick from germany, you can brew some confidence from the memory of this workout and the fact you got through it. a little pantera never hurts, either.

so here's phil, provin that his band iswas waaaaay better than zep ever was:



happy MFBT.

mangan, jameson, travis and trent

first of all, how freakin' cool is it that i can see a satellite view of dublin on my iphone?!? look, there's mangan's bust in st stephen's green, there's twenty walking into mulligans and FMC into BT2. i would take a pic to awe you but i only have one iphone alas and F decided that for his birthday (tomorrow) he's forgoing the iphone he originally asked for in favor of an xbox, a defection akin to choosing the yanks over the orioles IMO. plus, practically speaking, my iphone sees a whole lot more action than my xbox... then again, i can think of better ways to spend friday night than playing BioShock on xbox live with a bunch of mole-eyed dudes jacked on mountain dew gamefuel. i could be well into a fifth of jameson, for instance, or i could be picking burrs off the dog. i do really cool things, see.

nails wrapped up their european tour in hawaii last night (that's american geography there); here's an archive of the tour photo blog (thank you iphone!) loved and nurtured by rob, TR and keyboardist alessandro cortini. buddyhead was there -- aaron doing acrobatics onstage, travis freeloading -- and they've offered some sensible recommendations for "the upgraded Europe 7.3" addressing ketchup, queues, warm soda and yer monetary system:

Also, let’s get rid of all these fucking coins you savages have to lug around. It sucks dick having to haul all of these worthless pieces of metal in your pockets everywhere you go, and NOBODY with a clue wants to start sporting fanny packs (AKA fag bags). Next time you come out with the newest versions of Swedish pesos or whatever the fuck you have here, let’s press those puppies onto paper, deal?

read the treatise here, but you might have to scroll to the Aug 18th entry because brothas haven't twigged to the concept of anchor links.

finally, if you didn't think trent reznor was prescient, outspoken or attached to a pretty nice ass before now, here's yer sign, offered as a measured, articulate call-to-action before the day the world went away in sydney on sunday:



yo Interpol, peep that eh? THAT is stage presence.

danny lohner reinterprets a classic

not his BEST remix, but i could still watch this all day.



and maybe i will.

[thanks to rev, the MySpaceAddict, for finding this.
now turn off the comp and git outside, boyo.]

daily earworm: Gotta Go

oh that's so 25-years-ago - said loucypher.

but indulge me -- NMA's entire north american tour was canceled because Immigration Svcs wouldn't grant the band US visas. thank you Homeland Security!!

iPhone: will it blend?

(hint: there's iSmoke)



NOTE: Not Safe For Fatcats

robbie mcewen pwns

the tour de france kicked off this weekend. at first D and i were all like snoozers cos there's no lance and now everybody knows that cyclists are a bunch of craven junkies but then sunday afternoon found us sitting on tenterhooks (v painful, are tenterhooks. like those things in Hellraiser) as we followed the drama of robbie mcewen.

robbie's one of the best sprinters in the peleton: his specialty is popping into the sprint out of freakin' nowhere with eye-tearing acceleration. in sunday's stage, he got caught in a crash 10K from the finish. tom boonen's and thor hushovd's teams got to the front and drilled the pace so that mcewen wouldn't be able to get back on, so their sprinters might have a fighting chance.

check this out. the last 20sec of the vid shows a slo-mo replay of the sprint -- watch how mcewen comes up on the outside right and rockets past some of the world's best sprinters even as they're topped out. props to your man, adam.



i'm bloody sore, btw. i really do feel like i ran a marathon this weekend.

no Garage Band, but it will make coffee

some of the less-publicised iPhone features:



happy 4th of july to the 'merkins out there.
i intend to sleep as much as possible.
back thurs.

TV party tonight!!

nurse ratched and i got out of the pool at the same time this morning, and while we dressed we engaged in the kind of small talk necessary between two naked people in close proximity.

- any vacation plans? - i asked.
- i'm going to rehobeth for two weeks in august with some girlfriends. you?
- going to maine for a couple weeks in september. to a cabin on a lake with no electricity, no running water, no tv, no phone. i can't wait.

the nurse frowned and looked skeptical. i've handled this response, but before i could explain there's propane that will run a refrigerator, oven and lights, she spoke.

- that sounds nice except for the tv part. i don't know if i could go without tv.

that's the first time i've gotten that response, and i didn't know how to respond without sounding princetonian, so i smiled weakly and lied. - it takes some getting used to.

E did alert me to the fact that if there's no electricity, there's no way to charge the Lapple. now THIS has triggered some consternation on my part. i can pump my own water, shit in an outhouse, and forego bad television, but give up my mac for 2 weeks??

I sit glued to my Mac Book Pro all night
And every night!
Why go into the outside world at all?
It's such a fright!

cure for draggy booty

the aftermath of the hubbubed memorial day weekend finally hit, and the alarm rang far too early this morning. christ, i could have slept until... 6:30, i'm sure.

drove to the Y listening to off-mixes of Hurt because anything more upbeat would have, well, hurt. shuffled sleepily into the locker room. ann, one of the pool faithful, cocked an eyebrow.

- somebody got a draggy booty?
- nnrrrr draggy bootyyyyyyy.
- so get into the pool. that'll set you right.

ann works with retarded juvees, so i should know fishing for sympathy gets me nowhere, but i still test her now & then.

took a quick birdbath in the shower because there's no way i can corral my hair into a swimcap dry, then stumble through the outer doors to the pool. holy mother of fuck. they've taken the bubble off and our indoor pool is now outdoors. steam rises off the water's surface because as the goosepimples all over my body will attest, the air is a lot colder than the water.

i whinny plaintively as i truck toward my lane. ann is already in the water, doing her lazy long stroke and probably clearing her head in preparation for another 10-hour day at ferris. bernie, another pool regular, slips into the water and commences his sculling backstroke. he winks at me and i bare my teeth in something like a smile. the lifeguard is bundled up in a chunky sweatshirt; she looks tiny inside it. she hunches over a cup of coffee like it's a hot brick.

i sit down on the lane wall, stuff my hair into my cap and situate my goggles, then slide off the wall. i've been out of the water for over a week and it feels wonderful to be back. after a long warmup and some kick and pull, my booty feels less draggy; then alex shows and we do a set of 4x400 free, changing up the pace every 100. that ginormous bowl of haagen dazs i downed last night in FMC's honor last night provides good fuel.

while we swim, the sky lightens. birds sing, and the scent of honeysuckle wafts across the water. ann was right: swimming is such a good way to wake up. it's a right cure for draggy booty.

not convinced? well, check out this collection of Things you CAN'T Do When You're NOT in a Pool.

May 24th is....

today is Talk Like Bob Dylan day, or so proclaimeth this website, where you can check out submissions from people who have a whole lot more free time than i do, or maybe they're professional bob dylan imitators.

anyway, this one's snarf-worthy:

take a guess...

... who this is. teho will prob nail it straightaway, but i was still clewless even after dudes kick it in at the 2min mark.



mmmmmeaty bass and guitar. hope this is truly representative of the new album (due next mo) cos it's tasty stuff.

it's thong friday!!

fatcat i see your knob-breasted relic and raise you an ex-NIN bassist, with gimp hood.


hooray for thongs!!
i don't feel like working any more today!!!