JBot Mania

I’m relatively new to the blogging arena. Even at nearly a year of semi-consistent posting, there’s still alot that I don’t know—mostly about content. My biggest concern has always been, what do I post from other sources?

I actually use WordPress for a couple of different types of sites. There’s this site—a personal blog, and then there’s those that use a modified version of WordPress for community-oriented web sites, like for a ski club.

In the case of the ski club, we post alot of articles about the sales of mountains and such found from newspapers. I usually just get these things emailed to me. I felt uncomfortable posting them verbatim, but the club is small and it was nice to have content. I used a blockquote and sited the newspapers, but I still didn’t feel too great about it. After reading this article from Lorelle on WordPress, it’s clear that this was completely wrong and thankfully, there’s a pretty reasonable guideline that she points out. Read the rest of this entry »

“Step one: cut a hole in the box…”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dmVU08zVpA]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzrjAAzJ73w]

I’d buy this house. I’d buy this house with bells on. Bells on what? Bells on me. Bells on my cat. Bells on anything.

Admittedly this house is nothing overtly flashy or impressively sized, but I have, in my old age, become a fan of 1960’s architecture. I LOVE the deck. It goes from back to side to front with just enough overhang to keep you dry. It reminds me of A Frames at summer camp.

The slim windowed garage utterly exudes the word “swank”. It reminds me of the houses on the street where I grew up. I think I should move back there. But for the lack of suitable employment, I could buy a street for what I bought my current house for. And the street would be filled with houses like this.

Oh sigh… BIG sigh… I love it.

And it’s only $125,000 more than my current house. So… I’ll get a sugar daddy, big whoop. I can be bought. We all know it.

Nostalgic for a generation that you probably weren’t alive to see, much less able to lay claim to? Me too. If that generation is the 1950’s, then Plan59 should be your next destination. Plan59 is a fantastic site that is “THE MUSEUM (AND GIFT SHOP) OF MID-CENTURY ILLUSTRATION”.

The wealth of material here is wonderful and I think anyone could get lost browsing through its pages for a bit and imagining the future that this wistful time was dreaming of. I’m a car fan myself and I think the ads are great. The space section looks like something straight out of a Marvin Martian cartoon. More than one spacecraft is overtly phallic to an almost comical degree, but hey, Ace & Gary had to start somewhere.

Now to think of a project for this new found repository of what might almost be called kitsch.

In my first post about my search, I decided to alter something that I had bought at Staples to construct my ultimate tickler file. The item was a good start, but it needed some modification.

I grabbed some cardboard, some decorative paper, spray adhesive and a glue gun. I was ready to get down to business. After about an hour, I managed to construct the model you see to your left. In general, the final product looked pretty close to what I had wanted. It was stylish, small, and freestanding. However, the sides ended up being a little larger than what the frame could hold. As you can see here, they also did not reach all of the way to the bottom.

In the end, my swell construction completely collapsed under the weight of the file folders. Not all together shocking, but disappointing nonetheless.

Despite poor construction, I still have faith in the design. And if the edges could support hanging folders, it would be the ultimate tickler. Hmm… Ultimate Tickler™ sounds like a GREAT superhero.

After I was done with this first attempt, I thought that it might be wise to see if I had just wasted an hour of my time and a good portion of my specialty paper on something that I could have simply bought. What I found was that I may have wasted my time, considering the resulting quality, but that I really didn’t have any other options either. Read the rest of this entry »

Listed under “Eat It”…

Ten Reasons Gay Marriage is Un-American

1. Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.
2. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
3. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

Continued…

Subject: Order for Pick-up

• Mozzarella and tomato salad platter - Healthy Choice B
• Chicken Parm sandwich - Extra cheese & sauce
• Honey Turkey with Lettuce, Tomato, Mayo on a hard roll
• Small order of potato salad - if you have it (But if you don’t it’s okay, we don’t like him very much)
• French fries
• Onion Rings
• Bacon cheeseburger medium-well HOLD THE CHEESE (Yes, someone seriously ordered that. We’re considering weeding him out from the rest of society.)
• Spinach Salad with Grilled Chicken, Tomato, Bacon, Feta Cheese, Red Onion, and Egg - Healthy Choice C
• Hamburger cooked Medium-Well with LETTUCE ONLY
• Turkey on whole wheat with mustard, tomato, NO LETTUCE
• Triple Decker sandwich

• “Big Girls Don’t Cry (Personal)” - Fergie
• “Hey There Delilah” - Plain White T’s
• “Grace Kelly” - MIKA
• “The Great Escape” - Patrick Watson
• “They Weren’t There” - Missy Higgins
• “If She Wants Me” - Belle & Sebastian (an old college friend—the music, not the band)
• “Don’t Wait Too Long” - Madekeine Peyroux
• “Hey Ya” - Obadiah Parker (a truly great remake)
• “You Know I’m No Good” - Amy Winehouse (a little porno I suppose, but you gotta give her credit for working in Roger Moore)
• “I Turn My Camera On” - Spoon (Oh, Spoon… what a great word is “spoon”)
• “Right Me Up” - State Radio (Favorite line: “My life will fight my body for air”)
• “Bubbly” - Colbie Caillat

Conflicted much?

For once, the infinite repeat of commercials on Comcast finally broke and I saw two commercials for movies that are now on the top of my list. All I need now is a rainy day, or a really hot day… and matinée prices.

The first movie is “Death at a Funeral” starring an array of British actors, most of which I’ll probably never see again. There is one however that holds a special place in my heart ever since I saw him in “The Station Agent“.

“Death at a Funeral” apparently “Puts the fun in funeral” according to Staci Layne Wilson of Buzzine Magazine. Check out the trailer here. I’m a little concerned that this movie comes from the director of “Bowfinger” and that they actually admit it, but I’ll let alot ride on the little shoulders of Peter Dinklage.

Another movie I’m looking forward to is “The Ten“. Yeah, yeah, yeah—it’s a movie about the Ten Commandments and obviously a bit of a satire, but with this cast, I just can’t resist. Highlights include Adam Brody, Liev Schreiber, Rob Cordry, and Ken Marino.

From the Director:

The Ten Commandments have been a cornerstone of our society for nearly one hundred years. If you’ve ever taken a Sunday off, or if you’ve ever stopped yourself from murdering someone, then you yourself have been following the Ten Commandments without even knowing it.

Fascinated by the concept of these simple directives, Ken Marino and I began to spin the tales that make up our new feature film, THE TEN.

Before attacking such a weighty subject in a screenplay, we knew we needed to to do a great deal of research. Taking a tip from a friend, we found google.com, where we learned not only what The Ten Commandments are, but what order they’re in.

We were thrilled to learn that all Ten Commandments were available — they’d been optioned by Universal but had reverted back to the writer last year.

Armed with our newfound source material, the characters flowed out of our imaginations — so vividly that it was often the characters themselves who wrote the story!

Source

All in all, I’m quite excited.