Unfamiliarity in Familiar Places

  Looking for something important lost in a familiar place makes everything seem alien. Everything you see that holds a memory is an enemy as long as it is not what you are looking for. The living room, the basement, the bedroom: all can be ignored until you find what you need. And if everything has changed within those places? It can make one feel like a stranger in his own home sometimes. Chairs, lamps, even rugs; gone. And what you're looking for? Lost forever. It's what I'd imagine searching through rubble might be like, on a much smaller scale. You fear what you might find at the bottom, but you also fear what you won't. You don't want to start removing the unimportant junk in your way because you know what you are looking for isn't at the bottom anyway, but sick guilt tells you to look, compelling you forward just in case. And it's not. And you can feel at ease for just a second knowing if you hadn't looked, it would have meant you would find it somewhere else. Then you realize it's still lost, and it's probably somewhere you won't find.

 During a role-play I was doing for my Crisis Counseling Techniques class I used my house situation. I'm going to move past the whole first world problems via Perks of Being a Wallflower: "I'm not going to tell my children that their problems don't matter just because there are people out there much worse off than they are because their problems are still important." Or something like that. I don't know. I can't find my copy, but that's not what I'm looking for. I'm sure it's in a box somewhere.
 
  Oh the boxes. In an effort to get rid of clutter and make the house nicer, my dad has put everything in boxes. Fucking boxes. He's replaced all of the furniture and took away the rug. The house looks great. Some might say we've moved into upper middle class. I don't know. I just know I've lost my home. This isn't mine anymore, it isn't ours. It's my dad's. And that's great. He's got a home. He deserves something nice, he's been so great to me. But when all is said and done, this is no longer my home. I might call it home out of habit, but it's a way-point. My dorm room isn't my home either. It's certainly not permanent by any stretch of the imagination. I've referred to it as "home" before, but I think I call "home" wherever I'm heading to live for the next amount of time at this point. I could move out, but I can just imagine how drab and impersonal an apartment would be. My dorm room is a good example. As long as you use removable adhesives, you can put up posters. Everyone who comes into my room wonders why the walls are so bare. Last year was even better, because my roommate had all sorts of posters/pictures up, and my side was blank. I had dark brown sheets and pillow case, and a big blank wall. Visitors used to make fun of me, so I put up a world map my sister gave me from Doctors Without Borders. I don't think I ever actually looked at it except for the slogan at the top. It fell down a lot. I think I just used Google Maps anyway.

  The point of mentioning the role-play was that I mentioned how I felt I was losing a lot of my childhood and memories when my dad started transforming the living room where I've grown up for 18 years (he's spent about two years fixing things up). When it was over, one of the girls in the group of 6 told the guy role-playing a counselor, "You did a pretty good job, but I feel like there was something missing. It seems like his mother was in the picture at some point, but now she's not. You might have wanted to try and broach the subject. Now he's smiling, and I right?" And I was smiling. She got it. It's become a game for me at this point. A dark little game I don't want to play but had no say in the matter. How fucking droll. This game I play is called How Long Before Someone Realizes My Mother Is Dead? Haha, you won, that's why that guy seems slightly off-putting! He's got some pretty interesting insights on things! Joke's on you, it's the product of emotional trauma and spending over a year in mental isolation! Gee, you survive pretty well on your own! Boink on the nose for you, it's because I have an awful time trusting people after I had very little support following her death from the people I trusted and now expect people I need to drop out of my life! Whee! And that little grin I can't stop is knowing you're trapped in a corner not knowing what to say other than "I'm sorry" and for some reason it feeds a slightly terrifying sadistic pleasure that's come out of nowhere. Hilarity ensues.

(Thought while writing this an hour ago: A scab won't heal if you keep picking at it. Funny though because either way it leaves a scar.)

  But the sadness is nice sometimes, you know? I write the best when I'm like this, specifically my photocomic, and I enjoy A Softer World exponentially more.

Speaking of which, the banner for the comic when I was getting the link was:

Which is just fucking perfect.

  Wouldn't it be awful if this was just a giant advertisement for my photocomic? I've officially decided to call it A Happier Kind of Sad (you can refer to it as AHKoS so as to seem super cool!). Kind of like how (SPOILER ALERT) Remember Me was a giant plot of family problems, only to be concluded with the main character in one of the twin towers on 9/11. But that's a whole different discussion that I think will get quite messy. But it's okay because that's not what this is. Or at least, I hope not.

  The moral of the story is that I can't find my grandfather's fucking Greek Fisherman hat anywhere and 5 years ago someone told me I looked stupid wearing it without a beard and now I have a beard and I can't find the hat anywhere.

  And now all my friends probably think I'm actually crazy because I read about serial killers looking for their humanity because I've lost my own and I want to know I won't become a monster too. Maybe. I don't know why, but that's the best I got for now.

 This will become that ridiculously emotional post on the blog of some kid that I should delete (the post, not the kid [parallel structure needed!!!]), but it's a reminder that this is who I am underneath and thus it'll stay I suppose.

  At least I feel a bit better now. But it was a really important hat and I miss it.

Grammar Vikings

  Everyone's always going on about Grammar Nazis and how strict they are when it comes to grammar. I totally get the whole "Oh gosh, Nazis are just the worst thing in history and you are now the same thing as those things" insult,  don't get me wrong. But think about it; Nazis have become the enemy in so many video games and movies that they have almost have no real weight anymore. Hell, think about what someone is calling you. "You know those guys who took over a couple countries, set up death camps and killed over 6 million people? Yeah, you're doing that with grammar and me right now."

  So I have come up with someone better! "What could be better than Nazis" you're probably asking yourself right now (then you realize that most things are better than Nazis)? Vikings! No matter where you look in history, Vikings are pretty fucking terrifying. I for one think that if I were threatened with the idea that when my grammar was incorrect a Viking would come out of nowhere and chopped my tongue off, I'd be a lot more likely to learn grammar as fast and best as possible.

This is Bjorn and he's here to fuck shit up.

The Difference Between You and I

Read this:

  "I'm sorry I almost ran into you, I wasn't looking where I was going!"
"Don't worry about it, no harm, no foul."

Now this:
"Dad, I can't go hunting, I don't think I can shoot to kill!"
"Hrmph, no harm, no fowl."

  Really the title should be The Difference between "u" and "w", but that doesn't flow very well.

I'm unsure quite what the point of this is, other than how a single letter can change an entire conversation's point. Switching them would make absolutely no sense. I think I was really just hoping "No harm, no fowl" would catch on. It's much like "No pain, no gain", so the chaos that ensues with this will be exciting!

Linguistic Prank #1

  So I know I haven't posted anything in a while. No, I'm not going to apologize. In fact, fuck you.

  For those of you who don't know, using a definite article means the word "the". the indefinite article is "a". I'm unsure if there are more, but for now, that's what we'll go with. E.g. The neighbor's dog bit me yesterday. The dog is just the worst the worst pet.
  Saying "the dog" becomes a type of pronoun for "the neighbor's dog". If the next sentence had been, "A dog is the just the worst pet", you would think I was talking about all dogs.

The Prank:
  Completely ignore the rules of definite articles and see if you can get people to stop using pronouns. The idea came about when reading a linguistic example about a court case involving Iowa, and I was thinking, "What if every time one of the lawyers said 'The State', you pretended you weren't sure which state they were talking about. While it might be annoying, I wonder if it were possible for you to eventually get everyone to say Iowa every time they mentioned the State." Similarly, if someone was telling you a story, if you made sure they knew you were listening (so if they ask you if you're even paying attention, just repeat the story thus far), ask them to specify each pronoun. Get them to stop using pronouns all together! Or they'll just stop talking to you, which, in reality, is the most likely course of action. But isn't that the point of linguistics? To be so semantically educated that no one wants to talk to you anymore?

The Sketchy Shuffle

  Skipping through music, I've discovered quite an odd list when on shuffle:

I Guess I'll Have To Change My Plan- Frank Sinatra

Let's Call The Whole Thing Off- Ella Fitzgerald

White Wedding- Billy Idol

I can't tell if I see a message there or some sort of terrible prophecy!

Edit: Upon further listening, Let's Call The Whole Thing Off features Louis Armstrong singing "Potato, Potahto, let's call the whole thing off," I assume he's telling not to worry about it. Though now I must come up with a dance called the Sketchy Shuffle.

Is That Penciled or Are You Just Happy To See Me?

New comic!

Color Me Ossified

Just Happy to See Me: Black and White Version of CMO

If you go back and forth between the two, Devian Tart causes this gray glow when you look at the B&W version.

Like A Rolling Stone, Like A Train Wreck Home

Drawing women is like doing heart surgery for the first time. At first you think you're doing awesome, it's going really well, it's all coming together nicely. Then...you get into the details and it all goes to hell and you have to inform the family that she didn't make it. Then you erase the whole thing and start over. You can do that in surgery, right?

Drills and Screws

Drills and Screws 

Drills and Screws is the only song ever to be recorded by The Flintlocks. While the band was not fully formed yet (we did not have the bassist we eventually did), the three main members were all involved. The whirring is actually an air ratchet (we recorded this in the technical theater space at the high school our junior year). 

Myles Teague: Vocals

Tim Foley: Bass

Nathan Green: Lyrics

Brian Lomasney: Air Ratchet

  The Flintlocks lasted from June to August of 2009. The only other original song by The Flintlocks was The Dungeons and Dragons Song.

A Game!

  I came up with this weird association game yesterday.
The way you play is that you pick a song on your playlist, any song. Choose a word from the title and find a song with that word in that one's title. Lather, rinse, and repeat as necessary. For example:

1. Sorrow-Bad Religion
2. I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow-O Brother Where Art Thou?
3. Piano Man-Billy Joel
4. The Piano Duet-Corpse Bride
5. Violin Duet-Gaelic Storm

 I ran out of songs that could work there, which is the point of the game and it's over! If I had gone with Iron Man by Black Sabbath instead of Piano Man, I would have gotten Iron by Ensiferum and been done. If I had gone with Sadness and Sorrow [Piano Version] by Enigma, I would have come full circle to Sorrow by Bad Religion, but I felt that was cheating because it's not really the title.

  Anyway, It's cool to see where you end up. I went from a punk song about religion to lively fiddles by an Irish band. What did you get?

Comics Comics Comics!

  For now my website is down and blogspot doesn't like when pictures are too big, so I've uploaded them to my Devian Tart:

A Day in the Life
Fun Fact: I wrote this while on the train yesterday and when I pictured the last frame, I actually did giggle a bit.

Questions Answered
Fun Fact: I came up with this one while half awake as I was getting ready for class.

Grand Theft Of My Heart
Fun Fact: That brick wall took about half an hour to draw because I used a ruler.
Fun Fact II: That logo is probably my official one now.

The Health Fairy
Fun Fact: I drew this for someone when they were sick, and it will replace an animation I used to send sick people because I don't have the animation anymore. It was a card that said, Screw "Get Well Soon"... and it would explode and a guy climbed out of the hole and said, Get well now!

Philosophical Musings
Fun Fact: During finals week I did three things: played World of Warcraft, listened to podcasts with the artist and the writer of Least I Could Do, and drew comics.

Ankle Schmankle
Fun Fact: The title was going to be Patients are a Sprain in the Neck, but it felt too long and I didn't want people thinking I sprained my neck.
Fun Fact II: I drew this most recently besides A Day In The Life and I forgot to scan it in last night with everything else. Probably because I couldn't find it and out of sight out of mind.

Banging It Out On The Interwebs

  I'm in the middle of an interwebs quest for find a quote from a movie and figure out the exact quote. It's something along the lines of, "...go in, motherfuckers come out."

  So I googled it, and from an abstinence forum:
"You don't have to ejaculate inside a woman to get her pregnant. A few sperm just have to get into the va jay jay and make the journey to the egg. Well, more then a few. The vagina is setup pretty much to kill sperm. It should be renamed the Spermkiller. Sperm go in, motherfuckers come out."

Edit: Upon further examination, the forum is from Penny Arcade, so the quote I'm looking for probably is too.

Oh The Lack of Humanity!

  I was thinking about how when I get into critical-thinking mode, it's like I'm cranking on my executive functioning*. "Fire up the frontal lobe!" and all that. I was also reading Cracked the other day (I know, it's a crazy phenomenon like putting pants on or not murdering children) and if you check out #4, they mention that psychopaths have most of the higher positions in the work place. Really they should be referred to as sociopaths, but once you get into it it's pretty much tomato tomato (pronounce those two differently in your head. Or out loud, you crazy person you).

  Anyway, in a weird twist of word play and lack of sleep, I realized that those who have the least amount of executive thinking- sociopaths/psychopaths have underdeveloped frontal lobes, which hinders the ability to plan out consequences and understand other people's emotions - have executive positions in the work place. Oh the irony! Oh the amount of time it took to explain a really stupid joke!

*executive functioning-Just so you know what that means**
**I know that it says prefrontal cortex, but thank the gods Nathan covers his ass, because BOOM!

Hop, Skip, and a Jump

  I have a tendency to stop whatever I am watching to look something up if it catches my eye. Currently, I'm working my way through Criminal Minds. Just a bit of background, they reference the Zodiac Killer, and so I looked him up. From there, I looked at the references and two of them were from newspapers with the letters from the Zodiac Killer (silly tidbit: his code he sent the papers is referred to as the "Zalphabet"). In the same newspaper, I found this:

Paper from November of 1969.

 Good times.

Viking Poetry

  For the most part, when someone says the word "viking" the first things people think of are huge blond men with swords, horned helmets, and Thor. While some of that may be true, people often don't see the original texts of Norse works and are given simplified versions. While there's nothing wrong with that, especially since it can be incredibly convoluted, no one can say that Norse poetry is written by uneducated pirates. I've been reading through The Saga of Ragnar Loðbrok recently and here is an excerpt when describing his son, Sigurð: 

"I have never seen bridles in the brow-stones of the beard-slopes of the brow, save in Sigurð alone."

“Beard-slopes” is a kenning for cheeks, and “cheeks of the brow” means “eye sockets.” Thus the first helming (the first four line section) literally translates: “I have never seen snakes in the eyes of an eye-socket, save in Sigurð alone." " - Chris Van Dyke

Edit: While the writers can't be called uneducated pirates, the kings themselves may not have been the smartest:

"But Ragnar’s sons, though they were powerful in them- selves, thought they might not stand against both the great crowd and the pagan sacrificial-magic. However, they faced it unflinchingly and guarded themselves well and bravely and with great renown. They, Eirek and Agnar, were at the front of the host that day, and often they went against the host of King Eystein.
But then Agnar fell. Eirek saw that and then bore himself most boldly and did not care whether he came away or not. Then he was overborne by the great force and seized. And then Eystein declared that the battle should stop, and offered Eirek peace. “And I will lay this offer before you,” he said, “that I will give you my daughter.”

Imagine: Ragnar, one of the most renown vikings ever, tells his sons that it's totally okay to go pillage a nearby kingdom. They go off with a small army of men, and when they land, they are confronted by a ginormous army. Specifically: "...and it was said to me truly that they do not have a third of our troops."
Now imagine that you are winning that battle, and then you kill one leader and capture the other. Why on Earth would you ever offer to marry him to your daughter?
"Now, I know we have our differences, them being that you want to kill me and take all of our riches, but I think with time we can work through that. Please, marry my daughter!"

Of course, Eirek being a badass motherfucker:
I will not hear an offer for my brother, nor buy the maid with rings from Eystein, who spoke the words of Agnar’s death.
My mother will not weep; set me up to stand pierced through by a forest of spears— at the last, I choose to die.

I'm a lyrical lover...

Random story from freshman year:
  I was listening to Mr. Boombastic by Shaggy one evening while my roommate was around. The conversation went more or less like this:

"Ha, letting out your inner gangster?"
"I guess? I found out about this song in the whitest way possible..."
"How so?"
"I was watching a BBC improv show (Mock The Week) and the prompt was 'things the queen left out of her Christmas card this year.' The comedian started to sing the lyrics to Mr. Boombastic and I liked it enough to download it."
"Yeah, that's pretty white."

Balls Among Men (and Women!) Pt. II

Slapball

 I created this game my senior year of high school and unlike the version of baseball I proposed, this game has actually been played.

Rules:

1. This game is played with 6-8 people, 3-4 people per team. 
2. Slapball is gender neutral, meaning teams can be mixed, unlike most sports.
3.  The court is preferably a large room, but the game was first played on an auditorium stage. A basketball court might do the trick.
4. The court is divided horizontally down the middle.
5. The court itself has two options:
• Walls are set up at the farthest ends of the court. The purpose will be explained later.
• The ends of the courts are empty, but the court is required to be longer in both directions so the players have the space to run.

Gameplay:

1. Teams start on their respective sides of the court. Suggestions for team setup:

2. The person in the front, i.e. closest to the line, is the server. The server tosses the ball (see below for details) into the other side of the court, and it must bounce at least once. Because this is the serve and the beginning of the round, it must be a gentlemanly toss, meaning that it cannot be whipped into play, nor can it bounce over the other server's head.
3. Once the ball is tossed in the round has begun, not after the first bounce. This is important for the next couple of rules.
4. The ball cannot bounce on the ground more than 3 times. If the ball bounces more than three times, even after and between slaps, the other team gets a point.
5. If the ball ends up rolling for whatever reason, it is considered dead and the opposite side of the dead ball gets a point.
6. The ball cannot be slapped more than 3 times. This number is cumulative between teammates until the ball reaches the other side.
7. The ball can be slapped 3 times by 1 player, or 3 times between teammates.
8. If the ball comes in contact with teammates more than 3 times, the other team gets a point.
9. While the correct way to make contact with the ball is a slap, i.e. a flat hand, the ball may be backhanded, punched, chest- and/or belly-bumped, and/or head-bounced.
10. The ball may not be kicked. Kicking will result in the opposing team to get a point, but this is subject to the referee's call.
11. Most of these are at the players’ own risk, and is especially not suggested during The Thunder Round.
12. After every 3^rd round, Slapball enters The Thunder Round. A round is over after each point is scored.
13. The balls used are the following:

To acquire one, search the interwebs or ask your local toy store about Helium Balls.

This is the lightning ball. It is filled with helium, relatively light, and is the ball the game starts off with. It bounces quickly, so be ready!

To acquire one, search the interwebs for "ball filled with water and glitter" or ask your local toy store.

These are thunder balls (I have the green one!). No, don’t worry; they are not all in play at once. As stated in rule #10, after every 3^rd round the lightning ball is removed and the thunder ball is put into play. This ball is much heavier, picks up much more speed, and requires a lot more force to slap back. Regardless of this, all above rules, including the bounce and contact rules, apply. Following The Thunder Round, the thunder ball is removed and the lightning ball is put back into play.

14. The game should have a referee to make calls on contacts and bounces, as well as making general calls on other issues that might arise.
15. In order to keep teams and referees fair, in the event of odd numbers, such as 3 vs. 4, after every Thunder Round teams rotate clockwise.

16. Regarding walls: If the ball hits the walls at the back ends of the court and returns to the opposing side without coming in contact with a player, the sending team gets a point.

While this is shown in the diagram, three bounces are not required to count against the receiving team. If the receiving team does not make contact with a ball before it returns to the senders’ side, it is a point for the sending team. 

  17. Rule #1 of Slapball above all rules: Talk about Slapball!

Balls Among Men (and Women!) Pt. I

Today I have a two-for-one special. Last night while trying to sleep, as all great inventors do, I came up with a new game. I'm also going to introduce a very special game dear to my heart.

Baseball

  I really shouldn't have to explain the rules of baseball to any of you, but basically you have people around the field, a person at each of the four bases, and a pitcher. The pitcher throws the ball at the batter and if he's good enough (which no one really is) he hits it and hopefully it goes so far that no one can catch it and he gets to run in a giant square and he gets a point. Doesn't that sound so exciting?

That's actually really really cool.

  So how does such an unsportsy person like me have any hope of changing a game as old-school as baseball? Get rid of the bat.

  "What?!" "You must be crazy!" "I'll cover the bill if you get the tip." are things you are probably thinking right now, but really only that last one if you're watching Reservoir Dogs.

It's true though. It isn't his fault that their tips are taxed. Though he's still a dick.

  Well I'm [probably] not crazy, I was just thinking, we've got kickball, why don't we have a baseball-like game where you punch the ball? Then I thought, that's stupid, mostly because it involved the pitcher rolling the ball to you like in kickball and then you uppercut it. It sounds awesome now, but try doing it. You'll probably miss and remove all the skin from your knuckles.

I refuse to find a picture of torn-up knuckles, so here's a picture of Greg Kinnear.

  The next step to this was to remove the pitch-hit-catch formula and make the batter more of a catcher. Perhaps steps will be easier to understand. Plus, I really like lists.

1. The "batter" has a padded glove like the catcher has on.
2. The pitcher throws the ball to the "batter" like the pitcher usually does. The padded glove is for the impact.
3. The "batter" then has 5 seconds (or 3, we'll see how it goes) to get rid of the ball. The key here is, instead of hitting the ball into the field with a bat, he has to throw it into the field.
4. The rest of it goes as baseball goes; with people yelling useless advice from the stands and distracting the batter with witty things like "We want a batter, not a broken ladder!"

  The reason that I would see this being more interesting than baseball is that you have a bit more control over the ball. Batting is hard, and according to this website the best batting average goes to Ty Cobb with .366. Wikipedia informs me that that means "batting average (BA) is defined as the quotient of hits divided by at bats." From what I learned from backyard baseball, and simple division, even if the coach keeps me on, if I'm shitty but keep going up to bat, my average is going to be incredibly low. 

I don't really need any further education beyond Achmed Khan. His brother was terrible though, not gonna lie.

  That's obvious, and that's how baseball works and we pay baseball players tons of money to be terrible at something that is hard. But I'm sure I'll bring in a lot of flak from baseball fans, so we're going to move on.


  Back to the control thing, you have 5 seconds to identify where the weak points are in the field and get rid of the ball. That seems much more interesting than fighting against the force of a 100 mph ball with a stick. The field would have to be smaller so that home runs were at all possible as well. Plus, because the batter has to be skilled in throwing the ball beyond fielding, the whole team would have to be better at throwing and catching. This could open up pitching beyond the star pitcher. This way you might not have a designated pitcher all of the time, meaning the other team can't just learn any patterns in the game and rely on skill alone. Again, I don't know a whole lot about baseball and don't want to make a fool of myself, but the chaotic factor of a person being able to do almost whatever they want with the ball seems like it would be pretty interesting. Grounders might be much more common, but because the field is scaled down it wouldn't make much of a difference. 


  On the other hand, without bats we wouldn't have awesome things like this:

Meta En Francias

  The other night I was watching Private Benjamin. It's a fantastic movie and not as 80's as you'd think, because it was coming out of the late '79. But this isn't a movie review. The movie player I was using was automatically set to french for some reason and the film was in three parts. When I opened the third file, there was a french wedding scene, and the audio was in french. Basically I was watching an American movie in french while someone was actually speaking french. It was crazy, I swear.

Achievement Still Locked

So final grades are rolling in as TA's grade papers and exams. To be honest I'm really disappointed.

  Not necessarily in myself; I don't think an 81.6 is terrible for a class I had trouble in. I'm pretty proud I managed that, seeing as how the exams went terribly. But seriously, the average for that paper was a 14? Now, I've taken stats so I know that averages can be really skewed by highs and lows, but considering that I'm an outlier for both the average and the median means that my score was only helping to raise the average. To fourteen. I suppose all that matters is that I passed with better than a C so I qualify for pretty much every psych class after this one.

Well of course!

  There's this really cool website that basically allows you to download books the same way that itunes allows you to rent movies. I personally can't get it working because it's not formatted for my computer, but you get a borrowing period of 7-14 days. You just have to sign into your library with your library card (has anyone seen that awesome Arthur musical episode? Is Arthur even on anymore? I know the voices had been changed 5 or so years ago).

  Anyway, I couldn't sign in for some reason and when I went to refresh the page, I noticed this:

Click to Enlarge

  I can only assume this elder god is keeping me from discovering an e/audiobook explaining how to stop him. He's masking his presence with an additional "H", but I'm on to him! That, or I forgot a three.

But come on, let's be realistic here.

Suggestion Box

  I understand that this uploader is is the same person for both videos, but that is just the most useless suggestion.

Wat.

End of an Era

 School's over in a couple of days. For some people, like my clustermate, tomorrow is the last day of school. Do you ever worry that with the end of school you will lose an identity that has been built up over the last 9 months? For most of the past year, no matter what was going on, you were a college student. Studying by day, hanging out by night! Whenever someone wanted to know what you were doing with your life, you were "College Student!" Soon the summer will be upon you and when people ask what you are doing with your life, you will be "College Student in the Summer!" And people will ask, "Do you have a job?" And you will reply with, "I am a bum." If you didn't have a job during the year, that was fine, because you were "College Student!" But now what? What are you doing with yourself? There's no studying that needs to be done, unless you are in summer school, but even then you are only "Part-Time College Student!" and what are you doing with the rest of your time? You will continue to reply with, "I am a bum." And when your parents' friends and coworkers ask, "What is your son/daughter doing with themselves? Are they getting a job?" Your parents will respond with "No, they are enjoying their break" and their coworkers will raise an eyebrow and frown a bit, as if to say "He/she is a bum."

  Do you worry about these things?

Neither do I.

©

  So as not to seem like a weirdo, here's some background information:
I was reading this article and I read "And he wasn't just making it up: Though it's not advertised in the commercials -- stuffed to the gills, as they are, with physical innuendo for humpin' -- the side effect is listed right on Viagra's official website."

 So I clicked the link and scrolled down the page:

The blue diamond tablet shape is a registered trademark of Pfizer Inc.

 Seriously? They've registered a shape and a color for a medication? I can understand if they did it so that old people don't confuse their viagra for their heart medication and go into cardiac arrest, but they most likely did it for trademarking. The business world is weird.

Kill that man and steal his boat.

Studying for Psych 242

  On Friday, in preparation for tomorrow's exam, the TA collected the discussion group's questions we had and typed them up. She sent the final document out as a sort of review sheet, though I don't find it helpful because there are no answers to double check that you are right, but oh well. Anyway, I'm surprised she didn't see this and leave it out. Especially since someone else asked How does Plato’s Allegory of the Cave relate to research? :


Who is Plato and what is the deal with his cave?

Indeed

Click to enlarge.

  For the record, I did not.

Working on Comics

  So I've started working on comics again. It's the week before finals and I don't have much to do (that's the way it works, right?) and I'm in a pretty good mood so I figured I would finally start working on comics. So I start racking my brains to remember what I wanted to do (this morning I had three) and I could only remember one of them. It was terrible!

Or alternatively, terrabo'.

 Editor's Note: I just remembered one of them, so we're up to two, but that's still 66%.

  Luckily, I have post-it widgets that I keep thoughts on, specifically comic ideas I got while playing World of Warcraft saved for a later date when I have more time (you know, because I was playing WoW). For instance, I have a hash tag on twitter called Why My Guild Hates Me, even though I didn't actually have a guild...

Editor's Note: Don't go back through my twitter looking for it because I have twice now and when I finally found the hash tag for it (way down in fuck-all history) and click, Firefox freezes.

  Anyway, I was going back through these post-its to see what I had in mind, and here is the main post-it where I kept my notes:

hit and run, and block,
got people
scared of skunk
alert the guards!
growth elixer
deadly fish
someone will do-take silver
hyena-don't look at me like that
notice he's dead?
robes of shame
surpriiise! scroll! too old a inn keeper
Quests: It's all about the Britches
RAGTHAR-great, please get me crawfish
cat with pants on

Now, I know what a couple of them are, for instance the Britches joke is going to be a poster-like drawing, but honestly, I have no idea what "RAGTHAR-great, please get me crawfish" or "cat with pants on" means whatsoever. I only barely remember what "robes of shame" was about.

-Back to work!

Editor's Note: I remember what "RAGTHAR-great, please get me crawfish" meant! I still don't know why I would draw a cat with pants on and why that would be humorous in my style.

See What She Did There?

  As I was sitting here taking a break from my Psych 242 (Research Methods) paper, I remembered this ridiculous email I received Friday night two weeks ago.

Click to Enlarge

  To give you some background to this paper, they spoon-fed it to us. Starting at week 5, we were required to pick a topic, but then had until the 7th week to change it. If you didn't mind losing what amounts to about two days of work (assignments are due Fridays in discussion, and of course most people do it Thursday night), you could change your topic later on. From there, each week we were given a new piece of the paper to write. At first it was the introduction. The next week, revise the introduction. Next, find two sources (yes, that is it). After that we spent a few weeks working on the body paragraphs about methods, procedures, and how we were going to get our participants. To her credit, we did move into statistics a bit last minute and it was basically a crash course, but if you were really lazy, you could just copy someone else's numbers. Oh yeah, did I mention it was all hypothetical and we share the same data and base our experiment around that?

Click to Enlarge

  [Somewhere in there the math is off by a couple of decimals because of rounding, or at least compared to the TA's results, but everyone was off by about +/- .2. If you really want to, go ahead and run those numbers again and see where it's wrong, I'd be interested to find out, but I can't imagine anyone wanting to run a bunch of random numbers for a hypothetical t-test (including the "researchers"!).]

  Basically if the girl who sent this email reads this blog, I've already done the data portion for her, easy peasy! Did I mention we started this at week 5? I suppose she only had about 8 weeks, not 15 as I said in the email (due Friday), but when I started working on the paper as a whole Tuesday the 19th, I just copy and pasted the different homework assignments together like some really boring Frankenstein.

2 am instead of actually writing my paper. Graw indeed.

  So do you see what she did there? Something really. really. really stupid.

 

 

Really really.

  But it's okay, because it was just a "spur of the moment joke with my friend after feeling stressed" even though "I'm not kidding". Because isn't that what we all do when we are stressed? Send a humorously-written email to 200 freaking people?

Or something like that.

Dungeons And Dragons

  I'm a gaming nerd. I'm sure that's no surprise, given the numerous Minecraft blogs. Well the summer going into senior year of high school, a few of my friends and I formed a band called The Flintlocks. It was awesome, and while we never went anywhere, I wrote this song that our singer refused to sing because it would ruin his street cred. That said, here it is.

There are cave bears (the furry beasts!),
but our wizard shall toast them, there shall be feasts!
he makes the most checks so we don't die,
and he's got a spell so we can fly!
he's chaotic evil and fire based.
he's one of the worst enemies you've ever faced.

We have a warrior; we call him a fighter,
we really wish he was a little brighter.
His intelligence is eight,
so he knows just enough to mate.

We have a bard, he likes to sing.
His inspiring words, he will fling!
We hit stronger, we hit harder,
When we're dead, our names they shall martyr!


We're playing Dungeons and Dragons,
Meetin’ hot chicks n’ drinking outta flagons.
We've fought goblins and we've fought kobolds
Leavin’ victorious, loaded with swords and gold!


Of course there's the ranger, the drunken lout.
He just strings his bow and shoots about.
He could never miss a single shot.
He can shoot a fly the size of a dot!

We acquired an avenger, what an odd guy.
He’s a royal assassin, so he's quite sly.
He’s mostly good for that one monster you can't hit.
But he's weak, so after every battle he'll have to sit.

We're playing Dungeons and Dragons,
Meetin’ hot chicks n’ drinking outta flagons.
We've fought goblins and we've fought kobolds
Leavin’ victorious, loaded with swords and gold!

We have a glorious warlord, he's really scary.
big and burly, and a wee bit hairy.
He's a tiefling, but he can be nice.
still don't mess with him or you'll pay the price.

A halfing rogue is last and least (just kidding).
daggers and knives are really quite fitting.
He jumps and twirls, dances and leaps,
the bodies stack up in nice neat heaps.

We're playing Dungeons and Dragons,
Meetin’ hot chicks n’ drinking outta flagons.
We've fought goblins and we've fought kobolds
Leavin’ victorious, loaded with swords and gold!

Of course then there's the dungeon master
he's everything from troll to caster.
he throws out the monsters for us to kill
even though we always die a little.

As a party we knock them about,
stick them in a bag of holding, drag them out!
Staves, swords, axes, lutes and knives,
Stand in our way, we shall take your lives!
Of course then there's the dungeon master
he's everything from troll to caster.
he throws out the monsters for us to kill
even though we always die a little.
he plans wars and he plans battles,
across the continent our fights will rattle!
There are steam punk engineers and a mage level thirty,
Jim Darkmagic has spells that are really quite hurty!
There are fire dragons and crazy guns,
soon we'll deal with emperors' sons!
Our team speaks almost every speech,
so there's no language in which we cannot preach!
Our heroes will arise to paragons, and even gods.
There's nothing we can't handle, we win by all odds!

This is No Joke

Ain't he cute?

  Happy April first! No, this is no joke, I have a...drawing...comic...thing. Yes, I strapped a baby to a kite, yes I tied said kite to a peg in the ground. Just to clarify, that is not a cross, it is a kite. Don't you think Christianity would be so much more interesting if Jesus was tied to a kite instead of being nailed to a cross though? I would think we would much more civil, and we'd say, "Go fly a kite!" instead of "Bless you!" I drew it during my psychology discussion, and surprisingly no one noticed what I was drawing. Future doctor here!

  Anyway, that's enough blasphemy for one day, enjoy the rest of the afternoon!

Gylfaginning: The Birth Of A Bunch of Weird Stuff

  In the previous installment, I left you with a crazy Shyamalan Twist.

What do you mean, "No you didn't"? I did it at least as good as he did.

  Ignoring your ever so rude criticism, let's dive right into the Norse Creation Myth, shall we?

  Before the world was made, there was already a sort of existing universe. It was referred to as the Mist-World, and like most sources for Norse things, it all came out of a well. This well, called Hvergelmir(1), is where the rivers Svöl, Gunnthrá, Fjörm, Fimbulthul, Slídr, Hríd, Sylgr, Ylgr, Víd, Leiptr and Gjöll come from. Gjöll, incidentally flows past Niflheimr under a bridge going to the very gates. Being a river near Hel, it is ice-cold and for arbitrary reasons supposedly has knives flowing through it.

Who doesn't love a nice cold glass of sharp?

 While all this is existing, the very first place in existence is Múspellsheimr(2). There's no origin story for it, which is really typical of the mythology(3). That's about all it says about that.

And now for something completely different.

  Things get kind of convoluded here, which is fine, because you have a genuine skald here to help!
(Ed. note: Self-declared and thus not really genuine. Sorry.) 

  There's a Yawning Void, called Ginnungagap, which I can only assume is the Norse version of saying "It's like throwing a hot dog down a hallway." It's just a giant open void in the middle of existence, and the ice from the aforementioned rivers called rime(4), which is made a venom for about as good a reason as Gjöll being full of knives, flows into it, while the lava/magma (it's not really underground, but it's not above ground either..?) from Múspellsheimr mixes in and makes a catastrophic mess. 

  Much like uncovering a block of ice with an undead mammoth residing in it, within the ice were terrible things waiting to get out. I think the "venom" mentioned is a euphemism for evil and whatnot, not necessarily straight-up poison, but with the Norse at this point, who knows? So the heat from Múspellsheimr meets with the ice from Niflheimr and it melts(5). Sur-fucking-prise. 


  So without any frame of time throughout this entire thing, a man forms out of the ensuing melted mess (because isn't that how all people are made in the end?), named Ymir, though the Jötunn call him Aurgelimir (gravel-yeller. Your guess is as good as mine). Now, again the following is out of context, but when I get to the Völuspá, I think it will be more explained, because all research tends to lead there.

All the witches | spring from Witolf,
All the warlocks | are of Willharm,
And the spell-singers | spring from Swarthead;
All the ogres | of Ymir come.

The reason I say that it should be explained later is that these names do not appear anywhere else except the Gylfaginning and the Völuspá.

But concerning this says Vafthrúdnir the giant:
Out of the Ice-waves | issued venom-drops,
Waxing until | a giant was;
Thence are our kindred | come all together,--
So it is | they are savage forever."
This basically says that because the Jötunn are made from venom, they're always going to be savage; for those of you who don't read the poetic snippets. 


  But then, coming out of story-mode, Gangleri asks, "So... where is everyone else? Or is this it? Is this 'Ymir' fellow your god or... Is there someone less... I dunno, venom-savage marked?" In what I can only imagine as a blustery mustached man in the middle of a swig, Jafnhárr goes, "Oh, Gimlé no! He's a venom-savage, and we can't be having that being a god!" He's probably a bit insulted, because remember, he's also Odin in triplet disguise. Now, I can't imagine many grosser creation stories, but regardless of Jafnhárr's Just as High opinion of himself, Ymir is pretty much a god in this myth. The other thing is, he still doesn't get straight to where human-man comes from, Snorri seems to be using "man" just in the sense that the resulting creations are male or female.

"Now it is said that when he slept, a sweat came upon him, and there grew under his left hand a man and a woman, and one of his feet begat a son with the other; and thus the races are come; these are the Rime-Giants. The old Rime-Giant, him we call Ymir". Most of this is redundant, but that's okay. I guess.

I didn't want to get to the point anyway.

 So Gangleri doesn't find this odd at all, and goes on to ask, "Well where did Ymir hang out? What does he have to survive on? He's in the middle of a freakin' Ginnungagap. Of course Hárr has a perfectly good explanation! Why, from the rime, a giant cow named Audumla(6) drips down and four streams of milk ran from her udders, and she feeds Ymir.

So he's got that going for him. Which is nice.

  But Gangleri won't let the leather be pulled over his eyes, so he continues to bother Hárr for the sake of your education and asks where Audumla gets her nourishment! Hárr is still on top of things and tells Gangleri that she licked the ice-blocks, because apparently cows like salt and it's satisfying enough for food?

This is starting to sound less like the work of a priest and more like the time your Uncle got drunk an- No, yeah, sounds like the work of a priest. Zing!

In the next episode, we will be exploring what becomes of the licked ice-block! No, that is not a joke:

"She licked the ice-blocks, which were salty; and the first day that she licked the blocks, there came forth from the blocks in the evening..."


1) Meaning "bubbling boiling spring". I maintain that the Norse were too busy naming their swords and bedding wenches to name regular things like wells.

2) Literally, The home of Múspell, or as it looks in the phrase, Múspell's home; directly translated, Flame Land.

It's probably the only time Pedobear wasn't lying.

Múspell is the fire realm, and demons are referred to as Sons of Múspell. I think that it's like calling soldiers Sons of America or something like that. Regardless, the demon Sutr is the ruler, and will eventually set the world on fire at the end of Ragnarok. The myths like to get ahead of themselves midmyth, so we'll save Ragnarok for later.


3) There's a whole chapter that flows from one myth to the other without a new title, and in the end the whole point is that some witch's toe fell off while Thor was carrying her through a cold area, and Thor just threw it into the air for good measure, and that's why there's this star somewhere referred to a cold witch's toe thrown in the air by Thor. They had a weird value system.


4) Thus rime-giants/Jötunn. See? It all comes back around!


5) According to Wikipedia, the combination of both 'heims (as we call them in the hood) is called Eitr. This is the substance of all life, but it is also made from poison, and the same poison of the World Serpent (coming soon to a blog near you!). 
  SPOILER ALERT: Ragnarok does not destroy the universe, but rather it starts it over. A major theme throughout Norse mythology, and general mythology, is that from life comes death, and from death comes life, so this is a really good example. 


6) I'm sure I've said this before, but my favorite part of Norse mythology is the arbitrary stuff.

Gylfaginning Pt. II

  When we last left our plucky hero he had just entered the next room with the juggler to see iff'n he could have a sleepover and talk about boys.

I couldn't find any stock photos of a slumber party, so here's a picture of Greg Kinnear.

  Gangleri walks into the room, and he looks around, and is like, jigga whaaa? All around him were people playing games, hanging out, getting drunk, and sparing with weapons. So you know, like my saturday nights. Then he says, as we all do to ourselves when we get invited to a sick party,

All the gateways | ere one goes out
    Should one scan:
For 't is uncertain | where sit the unfriendly
    On the bench before thee.

Farther into the room are these three guys sitting on thrones. So cool as ice, Gangleri meanders up and is like, "Who are you fine gentlemen that own these halls?" He used the word "lords" but whatever. The lords respond that they are Hárr (High), Janhárr (Just as High), and the guy in the highest seat is Thridi (Third). The interesting thing is, I always read that thinking it was opposite, so I thought Third was the lowest, thinking it was High, Just as High, and Third, like that little brother you don't like. You learn something new every day!

  Then Hárr goes, "So are you here for the meat and drink, caaaause...That shit is free for everyone in the Hall of the High One...." Now, or some reason Gangleri doesn't question any of this. He's just like, "Ain't no thang, baby." Then comes the sweetest zinger ever.

 Gangleri "answered that he first desired to learn whether there were any wise man there within."
And Hárr, like a BAMF "said, that he should not escape whole from thence unless he were wiser." Hella fucking sn-ap!

  Following this, Gangleri starts a kind of, "Oh yeah? Well if you're so smart, who was the first president of the United States?" like it's second grade or something.

They gave me half credit for trying.

  But yeah, as typical Norse fashion is noted in Part Eye, Snorri jumps into the dialogue like there was a heroin needle buried at the bottom.

Gangleri: So who's the oldest of the gods then?"
Hárr: Why, elementary my dear Watson, that would be the Allfather!"

What Hárr thinks of your silly questions.

Hárr (Again. Hog the spotlight some more, will ya?): But, just to show you up some more, I'm going to name aaaaall twelve names he's got.

There are so many things wrong with this reference.

The next few lines are mostly quotes because Snorri could write a thing or three.

"One is Allfather; the second is Lord, or Lord of Hosts; the third is Nikarr, or Spear-Lord; the fourth is Nikudr, or Striker; the fifth is Knower of Many Things; the sixth, Fulfiller of Wishes; the seventh, Far-Speaking One; the eighth, The Shaker, or He that Putteth the Armies to Flight; the ninth, The Burner; the tenth, The Destroyer; the eleventh, The Protector; the twelfth, Gelding." All (see what I did there?) of these he can use to pick up chicks at whim. But he doesn't, cause he's that fly.

Gangleri: "Where is this god, or what power hath he, or what hath he wrought that is a glorious deed?" I'm pretty sure he must have practiced that over and over during the previous monologue, because no one could just say that in one go.

Hárr: Technically that's three questions, but there are three of us, so you'll get off lucky this time... "He lives throughout all ages and governs all his realm, and directs all things, great and small."

Jafnhárr: "He fashioned heaven and earth and air, and all things which are in them."

Then spake Thridi: "The greatest of all is this: that he made man, and gave him the spirit, which shall live and never perish, though the flesh-frame rot to mould, or burn to ashes; and all men shall live, such as are just in action, and be with himself in the place called Gimlé. But evil men go to Hel and thence down to the Misty Hel; and that is down in the ninth world."

We'll get to this eventually, but basically: die in battle, Val Halla with Odin or Fólkvangr with Freyja, don't die in battle but live a good life, Gimlé with Frigg (I swear that's a chick). Live a bad life, you go down to the freezing Hel, Niflheimr. The fiery Hel, Muspelheimr, everyone knows and loves is full of fire demons like Sutr. But we'll come back to all that later.
(I don't know why this exists, but I don't really mind.)

Gangleri: "What did he before heaven and earth were made?" My english, not so good, since I'm Swedish...

Hárr: "He was then with the Rime-Giants." What are Rime-Giants you might ask? Well to school you, Rime is also ice, thus Ice Giants, ak-fucking-a, Jötunn.

Gangleri: Heeeey, you got me agaaain...heh...alright then. Well then if you're so smart, tell me the creation story to educate our readers!

Hárr: Again, mere child's play! But I'll indulge you, because I just enjoy it so damn much.

And because I'll be on the Library of Congress while everyone will forget your name.