Practicalmadness

Yesterday I embarked on a new project: to learn to love vegetables, or perish in the attempt. See, I’m a meat and potatoes kinda guy. And candy. And potato chips. And prosciutto. And cheddar cheese. Generally the things I eat...

How many roles can I possibly take on at once? Which of those roles do I actively want, and which am I putting on because they seem to be the thing to do right now, or because I spend all day reading certain blogs and think, "hey, I can do that!"?

We need strong leadership in government who will work to pass and enforce a Meat'normous Anti-Proliferation Act so that I can be protected from my own quest for novelty.

I usually have plenty of story fodder stored up, but today, well...

Seriously, I was only trying to give these people money. What is so hard about that?

And so it was that a chicken drummer demanded was thus displayed:...

I don’t know what magic mojo SBC did while I was freaking out at the office, but they should do more of it. My internet connection at home has returned. And I got a voicemail comment on the podcast! As...

Today I am furious at: Comcast, who refuse to believe that not only do their cable boxes have something called a “serial port” that’s used by something called a “TiVo” to do something called “changing channels,” but want to charge...

Continuing my ongoing series of paeans to things, places and media that I love and think you should love too, here’s a couple of short recommendations not necessary demanding their own full post, but well worth checking out. Jerry’s Sandwiches...

Yes: I am aware that the podcast is late. But you readers can rest assured that I love the podcast very much, and whatever happens, no matter what happens, your mommy and daddy -- er, your podcast and Humble Narrator, I mean -- will always love _you_.

Episode #2 of The Practicalmadness Podcast, “All Your Body Thetans Are Belong To Us,” is now online. And in it I make a radical suggestion: there should totally be a podcast call-in show. And The Practicalmadness Podcast should be that...

No, I will not talk about why Practicalmadness was offline for five days or why the spaghetti boy has been replaced by some funny-lookin' guy in a suit.

I’ve been an occasional contributor at An Exquisite Corpse since the site relaunched earlier this year, if by “occasional” you mean that one corpse I participated in and that other one that got sent to me while I was in...

Now, when I say I have been "without internet at home" for a whole month, I mean of course that I've been without _broadband_ internet. Fast internet. Always-on internet.

In the grand tradition of making some over-specific pronouncement about my plans for this and other sites, then deciding to go eat mayonnaise instead of following through with them, I’d like to grandly pronounce my plans for this site for...

Non-Chicagoans or Chicagoans who eat traditional breakfasts may not be aware of Orange or their amazing “pancake flights.” Ever heard of a wine flight? Or a vodka flight? Where you get several small portions of the stuff in question, all...

Faster webserver! Kill kill!

The presidential debates (where I thought Kerry was very erudite, informed and impassioned, and Bush was a monkey) I ♥ Huckabees, which I’m not sure I would recommend. What’s new at Velocipedist.net, which hasn’t gotten much attention this week,...

In which we get free ice cream.

In which we announce an event and bitch a little about Kill Bill Vol. 2.

In which we allude to upcoming renovations.

In which we are...doomed! (Doomed!)

In which America's top university opens its doors to the po'.

In which we reject a justification, and post some more pretty themes.

In which we amusingly describe this entry.

In which we will, we will WAP you.

In which we take potshots at _The WB's Angel_, which will soon become _The cancelled Angel_.

In which we try to raise awareness of singledom while quite drunk.

In which I am shorn but made more brilliant or whatever. Does anyone even read these?

In which it is understood why I don't date.

In which we go back to buy light bulbs.

In which a money-saving scheme costs me at least $40.

In which I go shopping.

In which I prepare for the cold, and the possibility of eating human flesh.

Part one of a series about my return to Chicago, in which I note certain things about my flight, luggage and computer arrangements.

In which I remove a huge chunk from my old notebook, and reflect on its contents.

In which I announce my departure, and a means by which to track its proximity in time.

In which the store goes dark.

In which I briefly trash Zwan, explain certain incompatibilities between this site and Internet Explorer for Windows, and some other stuff. "In which some other stuff?", you ask? Shut up.

Had yesterday’s dinner been Chinese and not gawd-awful tex-mex, and had such a dinner been concluded with an unusually specific fortune cookie, it may have read as follows. Your goal to drink one half gallon of iced chai before noon...

Modern politics is less about visionary leadership than about team-building. Just look at the Bush cartel: does anyone really believe that this wannabe Texas cowboy who can barely string a sentence together if more than two people are watching him...

This will certainly make things awkward the next time I have to tell him to pay for his paper or get out.

1. You have come a long way, eighteen months since you last felt comfortable with your website, to discover what you already knew: that 12-pixel Verdana really is the best body text for your purposes. 2. And white text on...

It is said that the unexamined life is not worth living. You have to admit that as a quote, it seems much more reasonable than the following: Pride is closely related to hubris, which is closely related to arrogance, which...

For the past two weeks, my DVD player has been under the knife at Best Buy, and so for the past two weeks my computer has been doubling as the center of my moviegoing world. But no longer, for my...

In which I tout my summer clothing line and fantasize about the ideal woman wearing an item from same.

The City Center, the new yuppie-oriented shopping center a few miles away in Vestavia Hills, has the obligatory asian joint and sandwich shop, but I was drawn to something I really, truly did not want to exist: Sneaky Pete's Cafe....

This is an actual IM, recieved after I fell asleep last night, and I wonder -- what is my buddy icon saying about me? More importantly, dear reader, what does your buddy icon say about you? I'm using iChat AV...

For a couple of days now, the Dr. Pepper in the soda fountain at the 7-Eleven on the corner has been...funky. This evening when I went in for a Big Gulp, I decided to try before I bought it, as...

I find myself craving the end title themes for two films scored by Howard Shore (now best known for his work on the Lord of the Rings movies): Philadelphia, which is sort of an intimate, kinda melancholy strings-and-horns deal, and...

"Tall One!" She jumps into my lap this time. "Ow! Sophie! Watch the claws!" "Tall One! Tall One!" Long sigh. "Yes, Sophie?" "What's the RIAA?" "Well..." "I've been to...R.I." "And you could probably stand to go to A.A." "What?" "Sophie,...

Another old memory dredged up by an evening of P2P and Dr. Pepper: before there was such a thing as Gnutella, or even Napster, there was Usenet. Yup, as in newsgroups. I remember acquiring a pirated copy of Photoshop from...

I'm watching George Washington tonight for what seems like the first time in ages. I'm sure I've plopped it into the DVD player at some point over the past year, but my last good memory of seeing it was showing...

"...and she kinda kicks his ass," I finished explaining, "so they're going to put Oprah reruns on at 11 and just tape-delay Jimmy Kimmel after that." "Tall One!" The cat pulled up alongside my right foot like a striped, furry...

Through a typically circuitous process of thought, inspiration and LimeWire glitches, I'm listening to "Philadelphia" by Neil Young. I first heard the song on the soundtrack to the movie Philadelphia; it plays over the ending of the movie, the sequence...

I have just learned that I missed Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry's. I am not pleased. Update: However, I have not missed Baskin-Robbins's annual Free Scoop Night, which begins this evening at 6 PM local time. Sadly, their...

Is Johnny Cash's latest album something like "Johnny Sings The Nineties" or something? I've LimeWired two tracks of somewhat specious lineage from the Man in Black: covers of "Personal Jesus" (originally by Depeche Mode) and "Hurt" (Nine Inch Nails), the...

I am working on a paper on irony in Postmodernism while experiencing an early '90s kick. As such, I am listening to Alanis Morissette. Today in the War To Serve Coffee Dammit: A customer's order of "two small iced coffees...

Okay, so next we're going to be looking at using Motion Math to make an audio file change the size of a cartoon orang--zzzzzzzzz.... Yesterday I stumbled upon what might be the greatest consumer product of our times: Tylenol 8-Hour,...

Meanwhile, one evening recently I asked a salesguy at the Borders Books' Lincoln Park branch (Tom Wolfe gives it three 'huh-huuuuuuunnnnnnggggghhh!!"s up) where I could find McSweeneys. He led me to a McSweeney's-published compilation of genre stories by major authors...

There is a blog entry I want to link to. However, it's on Kottke, and I'm hesitant to link to anything of Kottke's not only because it's such a lemmingy thing to do as a blogger (woo! lookit me! I...

The temperature in Chicago is "80° F, feels like 80° F," according to Weather.com. As I was leaving the house in t-shirt and shorts for only the second time in 2003, Jenny asked if maybe I was underdressed. In actuality,...

This past week one of my classes embarked on a time-honored pastime of the SAIC filmmaking program, the group shoot. My classmates were given the task of adapting the opening sequence of John Huston's The Maltese Falcon to our particular...

Tonight we have finally gotten our cable TV reconnected after a two-month dry spell, and this time we're sticking to just basic cable, at least until the money situation improves. Then again, we may not ever have to upgrade our...

The content originally posted at this URL has been removed....

Google me and you'll find...well, not me. The first results are for a David Demaree Banta who was dean of Indiana University's law school from 1889 through 1896. Then you find some Topica archives of my various mailing lists. Then...

Certain individuals who have been written about on this site have found a need to not only respond, but to spam this site with comments. Then, days later, to comment again. This is entirely cool, and I will now take...

The content originally appearing at this URL has been removed....

The Wall Street Journal (via IMDB's StudioBriefing) reports that while all of the web's movie ticketing services may have their flaws, there's one very untapped source for quick e-tickets that's perhaps the easiest of all: the automated box office (ABO)...

Today is (apparently) Buns Day (Bolludagur) in Iceland, a fact pointed out to me by the girl sitting next to me in the computer lab. She has a large henna design on her hand, is dressed mostly in black, and...

This morning Amazon.com's front page has beckoned me to "experience the greatness of independent film with Igby Goes Down , the remarkable breakout hit starring Kieran Culkin and Claire Danes." I think I liked this movie better -- I haven't...

Salon is running an essay called Outsourcing rejection, by and about a woman who got a job as a phone recruiter for a company that does that sort of thing for other companies. My favorite part was when she started...

This is a screenshot taken from a bad foreign bootleg DVD of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: I'm glad to see that the Chinese are keeping up with our colloquialisms so expertly....

I'm continuing to assemble and refine the material for my collected student works on DVD, which I plan to finish and mail to several parties sometime this quarter. The biggest delay has finally been addressed: I have the current working...

In November 2000, I was asked to come along as a friend and two of his classmates drove down to the waterfront at 31st Street and Lakeshore, set some stuff -- including remaindered books and old vinyl -- on fire,...

Brandeis is now offering a major in Creative Writing. This news has taken, shall we say, a sideways trajectory up Jenny's ass (Brandeis Class of '02, English (conc. Creative Writing). Her friend I'm Not On The Web Don't You Dare...

Mark Pilgrim, web accessibility maven, is discovering that when your bride-to-be decides that it is time to have children, such worldly concerns as Super Bowl parties are of lesser importance. My suggestion: sell the books. Buy a child. True, the...

At my school there is a girl I like to look at. Just that -- just looking -- and not in a sexual way or because I'm in love with her, think she'd be intriguing, no. She's an aspiring interior...

Our apartment is, to put it charitably, shabby. To put it uncharitably, our apartment -- for which we pay an exorbitant sum, all things considered, for the privilege of living on the northern edge of Chicago's "ritzy ritz" Lincoln Park...

Tonight I am watching a DVD -- Trouble in Paradise -- in one window while Kung-Logging in another. I feel so decadent....

It is no longer linked-to from the front page, but the Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA) Web Team lives on through its contact page. The funny thing about the ASFA Web Team: it was all me. My first big...

Via Gleaner: Salon's Charles Taylor takes Daily Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart to task for printing a lengthy, "remarkably misinformed" screed attacking movie critics for having their own opinions, rather than simply reinforcing the often questionable taste of consum-- uh, moviegoers:...

Simply put, Julius Meinl Chicago is as comfy as a Caribou, as delectable as Peet's and more elegant than Starbucks could ever hope to be.

It's three o'clock -- do you know where your orcs are?

Unless, of course, (heh heh heh heh heh) I quit.

Forget your weekend plans.

Next: "Don't They Know It's Kwanzaa?" by the Vienna Boys Choir featuring india.arie.

We have to wake him thirty minutes before closing time or else he'll be there all night.

If you added 25 plus 20 plus 10 and came up with 30, congratulations, you could be teaching an Advanced Video workshop.

We regret losing you as a customer and hope we may serve you again in the future.

When you are contacted by a long-lost friend -- by IM, no less, which you had long tried to force this friend to use with no success only to have them start using AIM, for chrissakes -- you expect to...

1. Today in finally accepting the fact that psychotically believing I'll be one of the Great Filmmakers and/or Writers and/or Webheads does not mean it will happen, while also acknowledging that having psychotically believed in such and having been wrong...

But look on the bright side: the gorilla is blue.

"And we got a lifetime supply of Pepsi B!" "Aww! Free baby cola?! And here we are stuck with these stupid one-tuplets!" 1. After months of threats, Pepsi has finally unleashed upon an unsuspecting world the horror that is Pepsi...

1. Images of ten Survivor contestants which light up and play "Pop Music" when you click on them. -- "You're not really going to use those pictures, are you?" 2. A picture of George W. Bush which lights up and...

It is well-known that there comes a point in the life of anyone (or at least any non-yuppie non-Republican American) at which one looks around at their environment and, still drunk on hope for the future, gets mad. Allow me...

And Cheerwine Ice Cream? My God.

I might have, well, died in my sleep due to mushroom-related asphyxiation.

You gotta love secondhand bookstores. (No, you don't understand -- you gotta. I command it.) Having discovered what it takes to get us off a Clark Bus before our stop -- "ALL COOKBOOKS 50% OFF" -- we went into the...

This blog brought to you by Sudden, Violent Changes In Management.

But it doesn't make me any sexier. I mean, what could?

For you see, no tech may lay their hands upon an unlicensed computer for fear of being torn limb from limb by ravenous lawyers.

Like the bathroom, the workplace is great for two things.

We here at Practical care about you all very deeply.* (* - Denotes lies.)

Always stronger than kitty suspects.

Now to find enough Ethernet cable to reach across the room to my desk...

Her love is real, but so are her claws.

Then -- finally -- fire shoots out of everyone's mouths and Probst's smirk reigns over the flaming wreckage of sanity. Yep, Survivor is finally back.

We have shared a collective weiner experience.

Presenting the amazing latex security system.

Here's yer muthafuckin' weiners.

I hear a piercing squeaking sound. Neener.

This was my act of legendary service today. Nobody noticed.

Eat your Thumper, dear.

Of course nobody did, although we all thought it was a great idea after the fact.

I wanted to reach into the screen and slap him with a large herring. No, larger.

The profanity-spewing was in the script...I think.

I guess you had to have been there.

Okay. Done. Whew.

At least she didn't say "Caramel Makita".

Speaking of horror stories, I have one.

This just in: Some of you may have already noticed that the performance of our connection to the Internet is sub-par today. We are currently experiencing a number connectivity problems with both of our ISPs and are actively working to...

Completing the "coffee trilogy" of the last 12 hours, starting on Wednesday (I swear, this isn't a plug!) my employers at the Starbucks Coffee Corporation will prove they have less mercy than they do sense and put all their coffeemakers...

My beloved Jenny also works for href="http://www.starbucks.com/" target="_new">the great coffee conspiracy. Like me, she has a few customers that are...special: Jenny: Okay, yesterday. I had a line full of customers who didn't hear anything, and George and even Jed next...

Tonight I had a woman come over to me at primary bar and say that she had a problem with her cappuccino. "What is the problem?" he asked genially. "This drink was half foam!" "Well, ma'am, yes, a cappuccino is...