A Misplaced List of Substitutions

Last year all the food kitchens were overbooked with volunteers for Thanksgiving, so instead I thought we might:

1. Ride BART out to the end and back
2. Call all of our friends
3. Invent new facebook/myspace awesomeness and distribute to same
4. Respond to all the craigslist CE ads with encouragement
5. Dress up like Clowns and make balloon animals at the airport

Founded by wanderers

Notes for an upcoming endeavor:

There will be unpavers and stitchers, both of whom are in opposition to the puppeteer, but have more in common with him than with any of the eschatologists. 
*
Shakers and Diggers and bloggers and grinders may all be mentioned, by and by.  Daniel Quinn’s Takers and Leavers come to mind, but I’ll have to re-read the source text.

In consumptive news (as opposed to the above productive preview):

Digital Killed the Mixtape Star

We’re all quite old, aren’t we?

That “we,” of course, means those of you who, along with me, experienced the mixtape as something other than a piece of dialog in a Tarantino film, and remember when $200 got you a thing you could hold in your hand that played music, as opposed to a thing that plays music and makes phonecalls and writes short or long letters to your friends and colleagues and is also a rolodex and a compass and a chronograph and a camera and a candle.

Today, we can buy any app we need to feel young (at heart, in mind, of body…)

But the artifacts of our youth are barely recognizable to the people
Who today comprise the ranks of the actually young

They don’t love the weight and the warble
They resent the heft and the hiss
And they don’t understand how the choices work.

Reactions to the Brooklyn Adventurist

I caught up on one of my old friend’s postings, and gave him a sample plate of my reactions… In all caps, of course.

1. Garfield minus Garfield YES

2.Buzkashi REALLY? PHOTOS?

3. On TV at Wall Street AWESOME BUT ALSO GOOD THING YOU WEREN’T SINGLED OUT SO THE TIMER ON YOUR FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME PROBABLY DIDN’T TRIGGER.

4. Dock Ellis I AM IN AWE

5. Never taken drugs TRUE YOU ARE NOT A DRUG THIEF

6. Singing Bartender AS GOD IS MY WITNESS YOU WILL NEVER GO UNEMPLOYED AGAIN.

7. Singing Bartender II ARE THERE EXTRA FLIERS?

8. Rob votes now YOU ARE STILL MY HERO NOW

9. Ice Cubes Hardening I HAD A MOMENT LIKE THAT BUT I WASN’T ALONE AT MY APARTMENT.  I SHOULD HAVE WAITED LONGER.

PS: For the half dozen of you who actually read this regularly–Would you prefer the posts without jumps?  If my (probably 0ur) Brooklyn friend was using them, it would have taken me twice as long to catch up, with all the extra clicking…

The story of an irritable dragon (from once upon a carpool mixtape)

For years it has plagued me but now I know–the tale I heard in the car on the way to Hebrew School was Michael Hutchence’s The Green Dragon, from the movie Dogs in Space.

Once upon a time there was a green monster and he ate a whole train full of obnoxious people.
Of course he got a very bad case of indigestion that lasted for many weeks and so he eventually decided he needed some medicine.

Design notes for the “blogjam salon project”

I may have written online about this somewhere else. Like so many ideas in my head, like the camera in the shape of a gun and the uber-realistic streetfighting video game that uses real people like the Pope and that vagrant on Lakeshore, I’d be just as happy to see some one else make this happen, just to see it live in the world.

1. Come up with a snappier, more descriptive name
2. Once a month, people meet at a bar with a good happy hour, quiet background music, and free (or sponsored) wifi, and at this bar they spend an evening hashing out the details for a new website (favoring blogs) that ought to exist but doesn’t. They register a url, set up a wordpress/google-page/what-have-you, produce the first 5 to 20 pages of content, email all their friends to announce the launch, and print out business cards to pass out to everyone at the bar.

What the rabbits tried to eat, wrapped in a bag for almost two years

5 books that sat on the window sill next to my desk, originally uploaded by itchy biscuit.

leaves where I leave

leaves where I leave, originally uploaded by TfUnQ.

I owe Tfunq a call or five, and so I choose him to test drive this flickr-blogging thingizmo.

Tfunq is a splendid fellow and I miss him not being out here on the streets where I twist and spin.

Also his naming conventions are, by me, appreciated.

Munish always wants photos of my hijinx

But I’ve never acquired the habit, and by the time I’m all done up and out on the town ready for mayhem, snapping a pic is the last thing on my mind.

So, there’s no caught-light record of the debut of the Rabbi Itchy Biscuit at Tomkat’s Open Mic tonight at the Oakland Metro tonight.

They came to play; you should come to stay.

Dear Readers, (all four or five of you)
Please help me decide if this is a good idea or a bad one.

Tonight I took my girlfriend (for our six month anniversary) to the first game of the A’s vs. Detroit American League Division Series. It was pretty awesome except for the fact that the A’s lost. They lost in true Athletics fashion, though, and kept the game lively with a mix of tight play, foolish mistakes, blown umpire calls, and last minute chances. Blame Zito, or Jiminez and Bradley, or the Oakland zeitgeist of mixed opportunities… but this is not my point.

My point is: people started leaving in the seventh inning. I was mortified.
We were only 5 runs down! Hell, I don’t care if we’re 20 runs down!
You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t piss into the wind, AND YOU DON’T LEAVE A BALL GAME EARLY. Sorry for shouting.

Especially, you don’t leave a nationally televised pennant game. That’s just wrong. It’s unpatriotic. It’s heretical, blasphemous, and unamerican. It’s disgraceful.

Would a full stadium crowd at the bottom of the ninth guaranteed a last ditch rally for four runs to win? Maybe not. Would it have weighed on the idiot umpire who called the runner out at first? Probably. Would it have made a small bit of difference in a game measured by small moments? Absolutely.

So I’m thinking that tomorrow night I’m going to stand outside the main exit (I don’t have tickets) with a large sign that says:

WHEN YOU LEAVE THE GAME EARLY,
THE TERRORISTS WIN.

Good idea? Bad idea? I’m open for further advice, better slogan suggestions, and yay/nay votes. I just feel that something must be done.