Nil by Mouth

A very good read, The

A very good read,

The Morning News – Roundtable: Writing on the Web

but do you ever get a bit tweaked when you find yourself taking something you do just to waste time so seriously? In other words, articles like this make me take my stupid blog seriously and make me want to do many more interesting and thoughtful things than i currently do. Which may be a good thing. But then again, i’m like, it’s just a stupid blog.

• Dec 7
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“This could be big. This

“This could be big. This could be the culture shift.”

brought to us by wood s lot

—

“Okay, Ted. I am tired.”

para Ken Layne

• Dec 5
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So yeah a few days

So yeah a few days without any posts. That means things are looking up, right? Well work’s been keepin’ me busy recording tidbits like:

in my best flat and boring voice. It’s for our VoiceXML thing which i keep talking about.

Every time i hear my recorded voice i am horrified at how LA i sound. I’ve worked hard to shave off most of the sunshine-y Southern California ditsy-ness from my voice, but i couldn’t get rid of all of it.

Oh and, if you’re sufficiently interested in this shiat, this link tells you how to syndicate your blog into VoiceXML, so that people can call an 800 number and have your blog read to them over the phone. Isn’t that just fabulous? I’m too lazy right now to do it myself, but if you do – let me know how it turns out.

On friday i’m flying to London for a long weekend, which should be fun. I’m flying because it’s at least a hundred dollars less than the Eurostar. The Eurostar is a total rip-off. It’s really nice and all, but a 3 hour train ride should not be costing upwards of 200 smackers. Even if you are lazy and don’t buy your ticket until 2 days before.

More later.

• Dec 5
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Okay. Rob Bresney’s horoscope seems

Okay.

Rob Bresney’s horoscope seems to have explained away my winter, homesick, isolation misery:

…you can’t reprogram yourself until you deprogram. And seeing as how deprogramming requires the destruction of outmoded brain circuitry, it doesn’t always feel real bouncy and peppy and fluffy. What does this have to do with you? Everything. You’re right in the middle of your deprogramming season, with the reprogramming phase soon to follow.

Is this true? I sure hope so as it would explain a lot. It leads to more questions though. Like which part is getting deprogrammed at the moment? It seems to be the part that’s fun, communicative, and has friends. Now what’s on the menu for reprogramming that? Maybe i’ll be able to talk to birds in a secret “cooing” language after all this is done.

In other news, a character from my somewhat-distant past turned up in Frankfurt last week. Tomorrow he’s driving into Paris to hang out. This may or may not be such a good thing. On the one hand, i sho could use the company. And once upon a time, he was good company. On the other hand, that somewhat-distant past can be described as a *very sketchy* time in my life. At the time i was sure i had it all under control, but as we always realize later, i was diving for pearls at the very deepest part of the stupidity ocean.

In any case, it may make for more interesting blog entries than the one i posted last night.

• Dec 2
• 16 Comments

Tonight i tested the theorm,

Tonight i tested the theorm, A watched pot never boils. Empirical data suggests that this is false. I watched a pot, and it does indeed boil. This gem was brought to you by Caffinated Boredom LLC.

• Dec 1
• 1,839 Comments

A few things for rainy

A few things for rainy friday. A new old marley tune in the d-laods section of the broadcast. It makes ya feel good. Also check out my best french bud, Anne-Marie’s, new age hippie flashy website.

• Nov 30
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This is a chunk

This is a chunk of what i’m working on right now. It’s the navigation design for a demo of our web app in VoiceXML. I won’t get into the acronym-laden specifics, but everyone who walks by my monitor while i’m working on says, “That’s cool.” And i think it sorta is. My job as art. Who’d a thunk it?

• Nov 30
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Tonight I will go and

Tonight I will go and see a french movie. That means: a movie, here in france, where the actors in the picture speak in the french language exclusively. How will i fare? Will i understand anything? Will i rudely snore after the first hour. Or more likely, will i concentrate so intensely for two hours that i will go home with an enormous headache?

• Nov 28
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Ariel’s post about her interview

Ariel’s post about her interview with Toys in Babeland reminded me that in every single search statistic report on my blog, i get at least 5 hits from people searching on “shit in mouth” or some variation thereof.

I’ve considered excluding the phrases on my meta tags, but i find it amusing that someone (probably secretly and feverishly) searching for “scat play” will spend at least a half a second reading about what i had for breakfast – ha!

• Nov 28
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Could it possibly not even

Could it possibly not even by 8pm and i am quite seriously considering getting into bed? Wait! It’s not as bad as it sounds.

Woke up ridiculously early to go to the “Medicale Controle” for my work visa which was outside of paris. My appointment was at 8:30. I was quite late anyway, and it was far. Got there, got lost because since the place is outside of paris it’s not on my map. Finally found the street and Whoops i forgot my passport. Brilliant. Back to my house, pick up passport, 3 train transfers again and back to the medical place. Guy at counter asks if i’m 2 1/2 hours late to all my appointments, in this very snide and very irrelevant way considering he’s the security guard, and then more irrelevant considering there is no real appointment, just a maze of lines where you let people in white coats do things to you.

Line 1 : stand against wall for height

Line 2 : scale for weight

Line 3 : vision test

Line 4 (here’s where i starts getting good) : Woman tells me to into this booth take off my necklace and and clothes from the waist up, put on gown. A few minutes later there’s a door on the other side of the booth that sort of magically opens up. Woman opens it to this big room, ohh xray, got it. She shoves me, yes like a real shove, against the machine. I’m thinking this is for TB (?).

Line 5 : pee in cup. I really had too pee so i filled up the whole thing. I remember once when i was a kid peeing in a cup with my mom. And i filled up the whole thing. I go out to where my mom is waiting and hand it to her, and she’s like,

“You don’t have to fill it up to the top. What do you think, you’re handing her cup of damn lemonade?!”

So i’m cracking up at the memory of this, and i hand the lady a full cup of lemonade. She looks at me like the damn foreigner i am.

Line 6 : very very very long line to see doc about all these tests.

Well, i’m all checked out. Tomorrow morning at the prefecture and i should be as french as they come.

• Nov 27
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