Category: lil’ chino

the coming spawn

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let’s go barefoot


Monday night and I’m mad it’s already 8:30pm and here I am just getting started writing, more mad because I’m doing my best to ignore the pile of dishes that I should’ve done first anyway. Sharaun’s at yoga and I put Keaton down about 40min ago. She cried for a minute, and then commenced to cooing and burbling the sweetest babytalk over the monitor. The sounds were like sirens calling a sailors to the rocks, making me want to go in there and talk right back to her or pick her up and swing her around. Sometimes, when I woosh her around in the air in a game where I pretend she can fly like Superman, she pulls her head tight into her body and her little neck ceases to exist. When she smiles like that, the arc of her smile is mimicked in her compressed rolls of chin – making an irresistible compact Ram-Man looking ball of cute. That’s an awesome baby right thur, I’ll tell y’all that…

Hey, wanna chuck this crap in the dustbin and head to the forest? We can bring some food and park the car and go barefoot. Let’s do that, huh? Let’s go barefoot. Because, you know, I get tired of this sometimes, the same desk and the same feigned interest and the same the same the same. So let’s just drop out for a week, put what we need in the car and drive away. We can stay as long as we want, we can wash off in a cold river and wake up to our breath steaming from our nostrils. We can sleep whenever we feel tired and scream if we’re happy. What you gonna say you gotta do, anyway? Ain’t nothing you got here you can’t get there, and ain’t nothing gonna come crashing to Earth while you’re away. Seriously, it’s not even gonna be a thing or anything. Let’s go barefoot.

Spent some time yesterday drafting up the Evite for the annual Halloween party. This being our 4th year running, I was able to lean on previous years’ invitations as templates. I can’t believe we’re closing in on that time of year again, and it only serves to make me worry that I’m running out of time to finish my wolf prop. If you asked me for a progress percentage, I’d have to peg it somewhere right around 50%. I still have to dream up the mechanization – and I’ll admit I don’t have any solid ideas on adapting that old ice cream machine motor to drive the wolves baying heads. I’m confident it’ll all come together though, it usually does. Won’t get much time to work on it this coming weekend, as I’m striking out again on another camping trip with some buddies – this one, however, being more rugged than last week’s everything-and-the-kitchen-sink car-camping outing. In a combination 4×4/camp/hike, we’ll be taking some vehicles offroad in honor of Ben getting hitched. With full GPS-enabled tracking and some gorgeous old-California gold country, it should be a blast.

Hey people, hey people c’mon! No, for really. Check out that “blocked spam” counter over there in my sidebar there… I’ll wait… you check it out yet? Do it! OK, for real y’all, as I post this that counter says 99,282 spams have been blocked. I might turn 100k by week’s end. Each one of those spammies means a MySQL transaction that my host has to handle, because each little nasty actually goesinta the database, even if it will later be deleted. I think this is part of the reason my blog goes out lunch sometimes, y’know… just flakes out when it gets overworked. 100k spams, think about that… and that’s not even from sounds familiar “day one” either, I didn’t install Akismet until I was well over a year into writing (up until then I didn’t need Akismet). Dang.

Goodnight.

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just how i like it


Sunday night and, after a weekend spent cooking over a Coleman stove and warming frozen fingers in front of a campfire, I’m not at all looking forward to waking up and going to work. It was a good weekend though: eating the campground delicacies afforded by car-camping, walking with Keaton on the beach, and our little family huddling close in the tent to make the cold night a little more comfortable. Compared to stuff like that, work pales.

Now, since it’s Monday, you know I’ve got a new batch of photos uploaded to Keaton’s gallery. Including candids from camping, bathing, and and college football Saturdays. But, I’ve also got a new little tidbit of Keaton-news. Try and contain your excitement, but she’s finally cut her first tooth. It’s barely through, but it’s there. We tried tonight to take a picture tonight, but getting her to hold her mouth open isn’t an easy task. Anyway, it’s crazy how quickly she’s growing… and I just know she’ll be crawling around any day now. It’s too fast, really, it’s going waay to fast. Without going back and looking through photos from a month ago, it’s hard to even remember how different she was.

I know, Lonelygirl15 is over. I mean, she was interviewed on CNN, she made an appearance on the Tonight Show, she’s was on TRL for pete’s sake. But guys… and I know I swore never to write about this again… but guys… this cassieiswatching alternate reality game spinoff is really heating up. After watching the latest Cassie video, a freakish inverted creepshow featuring overt references to the murderous cult of Charles Manson, and which was also shot at the exact same locale as the last LG15 vlog.

The ARG professionals over at unfiction have arleady solved the first an second cassieiswatching videos (after they recovered items left at the same locations of LG15’s videos). The latest clue revealed a phone number and a cryptic voicemail, and I won’t bother documenting it further than there. So far, the “official” LG15 creators are denying that the cassieiswatching ARG (if that’s what it is) is part of what they’re calling the “Breeniverse,” but to me – it would be a spectacular plot device to start the LG15 videos, stage a fake “outing” of the cast, but have it all be part of the grander screenplay. An intricate ARG, of which the whole “LG15 is fake” thing was just an act.

In the “kinda freaky” department, they are building a Tolkien-inspired community near Bend, Oregon called the Shire. I wonder who will live there? Seriously, check out the video… incredible.

Goodnight folks, I love ya.

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it and the was


Wednesday night, and the sparse entries continue as work has been somewhat of a wringer lately. Less time to capture random thoughts into the cellphone as that night’s blog ideas, or something. Or less desire to sit here writing them. Something like that. Going camping this weekend over by the sea, that’s called “coastal,” y’all (not “coastal” like the Florida slang-for-cocaine “coastal,” but real-life on-the-coast coastal). Supposed to be pretty chilly and windy, somewhere in the 40s. Guess we’ll have to huddle-up in the tent at nights. I’m looking forward to it as a slight getaway, and hoping it gives me that release. Moving on…

Sharaun and I have decided to pull out all the stops for our first Keaton-havin’ Halloween party. Not really for the party, but for us… as we’re planning to fly my folks in as babysitters. I just didn’t feel comfortable pressing forward with the planning while the question of who’d be watching Keaton lingered. Knowing my folks’ll be here and with her that night makes me feel much better about planning my yearly apex of personal debauchery. Although the party is actually pretty mild as parties go, I feel better with Keaton in good hands. Plus, my folks are planning to stay a couple extra days to hang out – and I’m glad they’ll get this “tweener” time (between regularly scheduled holiday visits) with Keaton. She’s changing so much, I know if I only got to see her every few months it’d be a different little person each time. For that reason, I wish we were closer to our parents. That, and we wouldn’t have to buy plane tickets to get grandparent-babysitters for our Halloween bash. Nah, I’m just effin’ with ya… it’s really the sentimental one.

I’m so excited for Fall and Winter to officially be here, for all these, and more I likely couldn’t think of, reasons:

  • Seeing Keaton in thick, snuggly, long-sleeved shirts and warm comfortable pants for the first time ever
  • Turning on our fake gas-powered fireplace
  • Grey rainy days spent inside wearing sweatpants
  • Halloween (Keaton’s first, by the way)
  • The smell of the air on a cold, dew-damp morning
  • Taking Keaton’s first pictures in a pumpkin patch
  • Not having to mow the lawn for months at a time
  • New albums getting “stuck” as wintertime albums in my head
  • Keaton’s first Christmas

Yeah, it’s gonna be awesome.

I was thinking the other night about how it’s sometimes hard to find certain bands on filesharing networks/sites. I’m talking about bands with very short, non-standard, or ridiculously common elements to their names. Most search engines have trouble with strings like “and” or “it” or roman numerals and symbols. I think it’d be funny to see and up and coming band “obscure” their work from easy filesharing-fishing by naming themselves “It and The Was,” their album as “I Be,” and simply naming their tracks as incremental roman numerals, I, II, III, IV, etc. Try weeding out the results for something as search-string un-friendly as that.

Goodnight folks, I love ya.

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a windows-open weekend


Sunday night went long at a social event, so I didn’t get time to do my normal writing nor my normal posting of pictures. This didn’t bother me. In fact, as the clock approached midnight and we were just settling down to a dessert of apple pie and ice cream, the realization hit me: “I’m not writing tonight.” Usually, if I’m out somewhere and know I haven’t written, I’ll get preoccupied thinking about having enough time to get something posted after getting home. Letting it go, so to speak, is nice. As soon as I square my OCD-self with going outside of routine, I get all rebel-proud and cool-calm. Yeah, so, being that I didn’t post Monday I suppose I can do the in-brief weekend roundup right here and right now:

It was an “open windows” kinda weekend, with the weather pleasantly warm and sunny. (This was a stray sentence, but I like it so it made the cut.)

There’s no more sleeping in at my house. When Keaton gets up, the family gets up. This new trend often finds me up and about before 7am on weekends, something that, until now, was rather foreign to me. In fact, I’m writing this paragraph right now early one Saturday morning. Sharaun left for Wal Mart at 8am, as by that time we had both been up and ready for some time. Strange, you know, how things work like that.

Changed the brakes on the Ford this weekend, and flew completely solo for the first time ever. I know, changing the brakes is literally six screws and a jack – but I was extremely proud of myself nonetheless. Being incredibly not mechanically inclined, any successfully mechanical task is belt-notch worthy for me. In fact, my success in this simple task has ignited a small fire of desire within me to get to know my vehicle more intimately. Indeed, I find myself pursuing the Chilton’s manual and trying to “learn,” soak up some information. I go back to the long exhaust manifold job that’s been in “I gotta get that done” phase limbo for a couple years now, I catch myself checking local Pick-n-Pull hours of operation and thinking about scavenging a new bucket seat or center console lid or passenger-side mirror. Some day I’d like to know what a differential does, or how to realign a transaxle (I have no idea if you can “realign” a transaxle… it just sounded all “gear”). Hell, I even added a TiVo season pass for Two Guy Garage I was so passionate about the grease under my nails and finally getting to use that economy-sized jug of Fast Orange I bought years ago.

Switching gears to Keaton, she had her six-months checkup at the baby-doctor last week. And, in case you were thinking of picking her in the fantasy baby draft, here are her latest stats: weight: 25th-50th percentile; height: 50th-75th percentile; head: 90th percentile. So, if she can manage not to pull her neck holding up that massive melon of hers, I think she’s got the makings of a strong season ahead of her. She’s definitely got the head-size advantage over most of the field… although she could stand to put one some pounds.

I also got her gallery updated, albeit a day late. Unfortunately, I moved to allowing only registered users to comment until I can create a better spam filter, so you’ll have to register (one-time only) should you desire to comment. You can check out the new pictures right here.

Today the iPod did some bizarre “random” shuffling. Back-to-back I heard Donovan’s “Lalena” and Deep Purple’s cover of the same song. And, as if to mock the rand() function even further, later in the shuffle set I heard Al Kooper’s “Season of the Witch” followed (no joke!) by Donovan’s original version. Insane.

In closing, did you know that, per capita, if America’s national debt were spread across the population, each person would carry a balance of -$2778.07 (balance/per capita and balance/GDP data). Ouch. The logic of us being dead-last on the “balance sheet” of all the countries in the world confuses me. Someone care to explain?

Oh, and this just in, LG15 is busted. A 19 year-old New Zealand born actress who recently moved to LA to jumpstart a career. Looks like it worked.

Goodnight.

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trite green halloween


Happy Tuesday my friends, it was a fairly mundane day at work – just the same old routine of answering e-mails, attending meetings, and finding time to pee in between. Came home, fed the baby and put her down while Sharaun was out getting her hair did. Poked around the net for any new leaked albums of note and caught myself up on the LG15 goings-on. Not a lot here today, I’m still in feeling something of a slump in the inspiration department. That’s how it’s gonna be, so that’s how it is.

With my Keaton “featurettes” becoming more and more complicated, I decided I need to take it all to the next level and figure out how to greenscreeen her into different sequences. Since my movie-editor of choice thus far, the free Windows Movie Maker, can’t do chromakeying (the official term for blue- or green-screening something into other footage), I once again turned to the freeware program Wax. After reading a tutorial online, the whole process sounded almost braindead simple so I decided to bust out an old blue sheet we have and take some test footage of Keaton on it. With the test footage on the PC, I loaded a static image behind it and then keyed out the blue. Amazingly, in under 5min I had some very nice chromakeyed footage (you can see it here if you’re interested – it’s DivX-enocded so you may need something like VLC to view it). Putting live action instead of a static image behind the “cut in” items is trivial, and Wax supports advanced techniques like scaling and moving the bluescreened items around the frame. So, as soon as I can dream up a worthy concept, I’ll be cutting Keaton into all sorts of scenes. My first thought was to actually have her running from a real charging bear, thus bringing to life one of my better static goofs, so maybe I’ll start with that.

Halloween’s creeping up. I finally broke down and ordered my PicoBoo today, I splurged and got the one with AC outlets instead of fiddly voltage posts. I intend for it to control the wolf prop, but I’ve had some renewed interest in doing the “scarycrow” project of late – being that I think I can do it rather cheaply and easily (the motion and activation of course being the chief cost-drivers). In honesty, I’d still ideally want the prop to be a hanging man – but I’m just too much of a politically-correct coward and am concerned about what a animated “lynching” on my front lawn might come off as to the over-sensitive. Sitting today thinking about it though, I came up with another idea which I absolutely love. Right now I’m calling it the “guillotine/headman” prop, because it’s one of those. The basis of the prop would be a prone figure with his head on a chopping block or in a guillotine. In the “headman” version there would also be a standing figure holding an axe, and the whole falling-axe head-chop thing would be animated via pneumatics. The guillotine would work the same way, but not require the second headman dummy. Problem is, altho it’s an outstanding idea – it would require two-to-three pneumatic cylinders and as many solenoids, plus a PicoBoo to get the timing right. Too much money for this year, maybe filed away for next year with the “pulling his head off” man idea.

Check out the Democrats gettin’ all MySpace with their new social networking tool, partybuilder. Fancy.

Goodnight.

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wasted time


Been feeling particularly uninspired this week, don’t really know why. Maybe it’s some sort of “senioritis” type anticipation for the extra-day weekend. Seriously, this three-day affair couldn’t have come soon enough for me… I’m ready for a “free day” from work about now. So, should we run down the normal pleasantries? Thursday night, blah, Sharaun and the gym, do tell, Keaton asleep, no kidding, and I’m sitting here typing. Right. That’s about what I figured.

But, despite all this nothing… I did manage to find, like, five or so free hours to slap together a “thank the Lord for the three-day weekend” Keaton bonus video. You can surf over and watch it right now, by clicking these words.

Tonight was some kind of awards, and Sharaun was making me watch them. Nah… I can feign ignorance, but I’ll admit I knew it was the MTV ones. Anyway, most of the show consisted of me asking “who’s that?” as the MTV roving cameras panned to someone in the audience. “That’s so-and-so whats-her-shit, I can’t believe you don’t recognize her… she’s only like the most famous who’s-it-now out there right now,” Sharaun would exclaim. Ahhh… I should’ve known, I feel so ignorant know. First thing tomorrow I’m going down to the community college and signing up for a class in pop culture… I wonder if I’ll have to buy my own “grill” or they’ll issue one to me?

Weekend!!

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wait for the stone on your window


Sunday night right now, didn’t have much “good” writing time tonight, so there’s really not a lot here. Had a productive weekend (a little more on that below), with a couple early morning starts helping to make the non-working days seem blissfully long. And, before I go, you probably don’t need the reminder, having grown used to my dedication to schedule, but I did manage to post some new pictures (and a movie) to Keaton’s gallery. Let’s get this tripe over with.

I thought I hated this Decemberists album, oh, I thought I did. Then, I put it on as I mowed the lawn Saturday morning. There, with time to listen to it properly, as a collection of stories, I changed my mind. Once again the Oregon outfit had me fooled off the blocks. The imagery conjured is outstanding if you really let yourself listen, and the music behind it has some great late-sixties swirly Leslie-Hammond organ stabs and Doors-esque muted-bouncy romps. Out of the two recent leaks I initially panned, I ended coming around on both. Guess I should learn to let an album simmer a little longer before putting my opinion on the web. But, how, then, do I brag about being among the first to a leak? Speaking of leaks, I ended up getting the whole new Tenderlegs album for Sharaun on Friday – needless to say she was ecstatic. Me? I’m once again impressed with the production on the album, and could easily ID at least four or five radio-ready singles. That’s all I’m gonna say.

Sunday I decided it was finally time to put down weed-cloth, dripline, and mulch in the planter strips in my backyard. I could’ve done this in about 2hrs any day before, but I’ve been putting it off now for months. After that’s done, I can choose some plants to go back there and get ’em in. So, I set out around 11am to get it done. Ran the drip, put down the weed-cloth, and headed to the shed to get out my trusty wheelbarrow, #1 Rolla. Turns out, #1 Rolla’s long period of inactivity caused his tire to go flat. I’ve dealt with this before, Pat and I struggled for about 15min trying to hold the weel onto the beads and simultaneously hit it with enough air from the compressor that it “took” and inflated. If you’re wondering, this is just a rubber tire on beads held there by air pressure – no tube. So, I fired up the compressor to a decent pressure and recruited Sharaun. We slaved for 15min or so in the sun to no avail. Then, I got the bright idea to check the internet for some kind of “wheelbarrow tire inflating” magic trick. I should’ve consulted the internet first. Turns out if you wrap a rope (I used a nylon tie-down) around the circumference of the tire and tie a stick (I used a short piece of rebar) into the cinching not, you can twist the stick like a garrot and pressure the tire back onto the beads. Worked like a charm, inflated the tire perfectly the fist time. From now on, I’m going to the internet first.

Anyway, got the job done and the yard looks better for it. I was going to upload some pictures to the backyard gallery, but I’ll wait until we have some plant life in the ground so it’s a bit more engaging.

Thinking about raising the capital for my dreamy co-op idea, and I do believe I’ve hit on a nugget of one. Ready? We pitch it to PBS as a reality show. C’mon, it’s brilliant – PBS is always doing reality shows with an “edutainment” bent. What could be better than my pitch for “Going Green,” the chronicle of a group of friends spending their first year in an idealist community environment where they seek to live lighter, cleaner, and with a reduced reliance on outside goods and services. I can almost hear it now, that deep-voiced TV pitchman running down the list of my rich tapestry of friends: “Four engineers, a seamstress, the beekeeper and his trapeze-artist wife, the ranch-hand and the sea captain. This Fall on PBS, they all cast their lots together to follow a common dream of a simpler way of life. Out here working the land, three master’s degrees and two doctorates won’t keep them from starving. Will they succeed at creating their own little Utopian lifestyle, or will the land best them? Find out, this Fall on PBS.” Oh yeah, I could totally get all the funding I need to get things working – then, I just wouldn’t ever leave. Right.

Somehow, I stumbled on the Voices from Inside page the other day. It’s part of a project by an anti-death penalty group. While their ultimate goal is the abolishment of capital punishment (not saying I’m aligned with that), the point of the page linked above is to get pen-pals for correspondence with condemned death row inmates. Without getting into the whole debate, I think it’s interesting that a campaign like this exists. I bet one could develop some very interesting written exchanges by sending out a few letters here and there, would make for a good themed-blog… something catchy like “dead men talking.” Sure, not the most tasteful of ideas – but I bet it’d pull hits. Anyway, if you liked that link and are interested in reading more about the prison scene, head over to the prisontalk.com forums and check out the many entertaining threads there. I find the “Husbands & Boyfriends” section of the board most intriguing.

I totally want to see this movie.

Goodnight.