Category: People

October 25, 2003 /

I found this thread about messing up your child’s vocabulary a while ago, but I guess I never posted it. I think it’s great, because a) it uses the word “xorph” and b) I plan to do that stuff to my kids all the time.

Well, actually I plan to do that stuff to Jon and Amanda’s kids first. If necessary, I will create props.

Small Brasfield: Mommy, can we go to the store and get some more Super Snot? We used it all.
Amanda: Get some more what?
Small Brasfield: Super Snot! The stuff you use to stick things together.
Jon: You mean glue?
Small Brasfield: Uncle Brendan told me it’s really called Super Snot! He showed me in a book.
Amanda: Okay, listen carefully. From now on you can’t trust books Uncle Brendan gives you. Okay?
Small Brasfield: I can’t trust the Bible?
Amanda: (begins smoking from her ears)
Jon: Wait. How did you use up all your Sup–your glue?
Small Brasfield: Uncle Brendan showed me how to make Smaller Brasfield’s hair look really cool!

After that, Jon and Amanda should have the messing-up-my-kids part well in hand.

October 21, 2003 /

I’m glad I have a reason to talk about NewsBruiser again, because I’m on the front page! No, actually I want to talk about NewsBruiser because Leonard’s had version 2.0 (“Master Planarian”) out for weeks and I need to install it. Except I don’t want to install it, because a) NewsBruiser installations have traditionally been nightmarish for me (this is due to my hosts and my own incompetence, not NewsBruiser), and b) it has comments. NewsBruiser with comments! It’ll be anarchy!

Sumana and I had a conversation this morning about said comments, and about Leonard’s implementation of Bayesian heuristics in NewsBruiser. We agree that it’s capable of preventing comment spam, but I argued that it can’t entirely prevent tar pit syndrome, because it can’t filter out stupid. Sumana argued that it can. And then we jousted. No, actually we exchanged spam jokes.

(Yes, I know you can just turn off comments, I’m just whining. And yes, I do have a forum and am thus technically already sinking into a tar pit. However, you’ll note that the definition of the tar pit theory clearly states that “as long as no one actually uses the discussion forum, you are safe.” The only people who actually post there came from AZWP anyway, so I’m totally slopy.)

I do need to install 2.0, actually, so I can do trackbacks. I really don’t understand trackbacks, but they sound like they have something to do with RSS feeds or referrer logs, so I must consume them! Speaking of RSS feeds, I’m turning into an RSS evangelist like all the RSS early adopters, and I should be shot. And speaking of referrer logs, Cody Powell responded just as I planned to my goulash bait, and proceeded to write an entry about Cracked vs. MAD, which is a topic I was thinking about just this morning, during my pseudobreakfast. CODY POWELL CAN SEE INTO MY BRAIN.

October 18, 2003 /

I stood in the bathroom and I had to snap my fingers to get the automatic soap dispenser to ejaculate into my hand, and I was thinking about how the other people in the room all paid a thousand dollars to see this show, and I got in for free, and there we all were together, peeing.

I sat in row H of the lower balcony and watched the Gala Premier of The Lion King tour in Louisville, and it was really actually as good as it’s made out to be, even on tour. It’s stylistically and technically excellent, with the kind of transparency of production that I really admire and want to be able to do, someday.

I need to explain now how I got into this black-tie-only red-carpet Kentucky Center 20th Anniversary show, which is that I have Connections. And now I need to explain how I have said Connections, which is that I’ve been rehearsing for a few weeks with the Project Improv apprentices company (my life is filled with improv). I haven’t talked about it in here because I wasn’t really sure how far I wanted to go with it–acting’s not something in which I’m really interested at this point in my life, and I’ve never actually been very good at improv. Yet I keep coming back to rehearsals. I guess I’m kind of in.

The PI troupe proper, by and large, works in the Kentucky Center; their kindness and their comp tickets extend to their adopted apprentices, and so we ended up standing nervously and giggling in the middle of people with free food and champagne. I could have hit the mayor of Louisville (who currently wields considerably more power than, say, our governor) with a rock. I have no reason to hit him with anything, I’m just saying.

It was a good show, anyway, and I got to try out my fancy new black blazer for the first time. I didn’t really want to walk up the red carpet, lined with photographers and drummers and giant puppets, on the way in. But I did on the way out.

October 17, 2003 /

I was going to write this into something else, but hell, it’s a vaguely embarrassing anecdote, let’s put it in the blog.

The summer after I graduated high school, my sister declared her intention to move into my slightly larger room while I was gone, in Brazil. I was pretty much hapless in this, since I was going to be moving out soon anyway, and so was made a part of the collective clean-and-pack-both-rooms initiative. There was a lot of stuff, because while I’m mildly materialistic, my sister is a voracious packrat.

While getting down to the bottom of her closet, as Caitlan and Mom temporarily went to get something downstairs, I came upon what appeared to be a Magic Eye puzzle. Magic Eyes are (were) stereograms hidden in computer-generated texture patterns; if you stare at them while unfocusing your eyes just right, a 3-d image pops into view.

This one was a mostly purple square, not part of a puzzle book or anything, just lying around. I didn’t feel like working very much, so I started trying to get the image.

I’m normally very good with Magic Eyes, but this one took forever. I’d think I’d caught something, then lose it, then I’d have to start over with the pull-back-from-your-nose strategy. Finally, I siezed something indistinct–a diagonal bar in the left third of the sheet, and some kind of amorphous shape…

“Brendan? What are you doing?” said Caitlan from the doorway.

“I’m trying to get this Magic Eye to come out,” I replied, a little annoyed. “This one’s really tough.”

She said “Brendan. That’s wrapping paper.“

October 16, 2003 /

I smile habitually at people I don’t know, when making eye contact. When I’m tired or it’s raining, it’s like saying “Hey, yeah, you know, all in it together, hang tough.” Otherwise, it’s my version of “Hello! Don’t shoot.”

This morning at the bus stop:

Harrassed-Looking
Woman:		 “Excuse me. You got a cigarette?”
Me: “No, I’m sorry.”
(HLW pauses, looks around, looks back)
HLW: “Makes you happy, doesn’t it? Makes you happy to refuse people.”
Me: “No, I… don’t smoke.”
HLW: “Then why you smiling like that? I’ll tell you why. It’s ’cause you’re an asshole.“

Kentucky. It’s that friendly.

October 16, 2003 /

I hardly ever remember my dreams, so when I do they always seem bizarre way out of proportion. Last night I dreamt at some point that I was a superhero who worked in an office, and that a quasi-friend of mine was trying to catch me in my secret identity by going through my computer while I was in the bathroom. Fortunately I could monitor his actions via my wrist-camera screen. At another point a bunch of people, including Ian, Arnold Schwarzenegger and my cousin Josh, were at a Lowe’s that doubled as a toy store, and which sold Play-Doh and other modeling compounds in enormous quantities. (It was part of a mall, but we never actually made it that far.)

And I woke up repeating to myself “the principle of recursion is founded on the fact that some Mexican food can be made without any food.” Which almost makes sense.

October 13, 2003 /

Will Johnston doesn’t believe in binomial nomenclature.

Will Johnston drinks molten steel and eats fish heads.

The Tower of Pisa didn’t lean before Will Johnston.

Will Johnston shits emeralds.

And yet, somehow, Will Johnston is not Jake Berendes.

October 12, 2003 /

I want the Cubs to win the pennant an awful lot. I think I’m becoming a Cubs fan, and it’s all my grandmother’s fault! Plus I tend to like things that lose.

Yeah, I got nothing. Boring weekend.

Update 2337 hrs: No! Not boring! I forgot about seeing Lisa yesterday, and comic shopping, and picking up my first Powers collection, and finding it one of my favorite things ever. Permit me to dork out for a moment, but Brian Michael Bendis is fast becoming my favorite comics writer. Okay, out-dorking complete.

Also finally got a couple of secret projects up to date. One of these you may well already know about, as it’s not terribly hard to find. The other you probably don’t!

And I have health insurance now. Just in case you were wondering.

Apparently only my boy friends have blogs.

October 9, 2003 /

Yo ho. I emerge from the shark-thick waters, knife in my teeth and a steely glint in my eye, having taken all three of my double-damned midterms in ONE DAY and lived to tell the scurvy tale. Yo ho.

And now, in lieu of booty, I go to Lexington. What reward holds Lexington, you ask? It holds Jon. It holds Monica. It will hold me and Ken and Maria, and most importantly, it will hold ANGIE APARO!