If Atheists Ruled the World

Okay, it is a bit unfair to take stuff off message boards. But I still love this.

(via Boing Boing)

It is like eating Cupid's heart

(The lighting on the photo is bad.  It is actually sort of pretty.)

Here it is.  My modified Bacon Explosion (still needs a new name).  Bacon weave, bbq rub, Italian sausage, crispy bacon, bbq sauce, roasted garlic mashed potatoes (made with a bit of cream cheese), spinach, a bit more bbq sauce.  Cooked in a oven at 275° for approx 2 and a half hours plus another 20 minutes at 375° (in an attempt to crispt up the outer shell).

Yes.  It is magnificent.  It looks more burned than it is and all of that is just the bbq sauce.

There are some things I'd change.  Thinner layers but more spinach.  And fresh spinach.  And less sweet bbq sauce.  And spicier bbq rub. I should have made the sausage, potato, crisp bacon and spinach layer on a piece of plastic wrap to get a tighter roll.   And it definitely would benefit from being grill over hickory.  

I fear however that the bliss that would be created by making it better might break my mind.

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night to discover that your lover, finding you aroused in your sleep, has taken you between their legs and begun to make love to you?  Not in a creepy way.  But you wake up to find yourself already close to climax.  And then you realize that your lover is actual the goddess Venus?  And The Pogues are playing live in your bedroom, but it isn't your bedroom? It's actually a tropical beach and a crystal clear night, temperature just cool enough to cool the sweat on your skin? And off in the distance, a lighting storm lights up winged unicorns that do battle in the sky for your enjoyment?  And then Venus begins to feed you bacon?

It's like that but in loaf form.

One slice was enough.  Now the rest of it sits downstairs, mocking me for not being enough of a man to appreciate its glory.

God Monkey Robot

This is the sort of song I would write if I could write songs and music.


And as a bonus... TMBG "I'm Impressed"... andother video with robots...


Hell, while I'm at it... Another stop-motion-robot music video...

Bacon Explosion!

PapaSix forward me this receipe from BBQAddicts.com.  It's called Bacon Explosion.  I will be making this in the summer.  

Let me start with the shopping list:
2 pounds thick cut bacon
2 pounds Italian sausage
1 jar of your favorite barbeque sauce
1 jar of your favorite barbeque rub

That's it.  Bacon, sausage, sauce, rub.  

And God said, "It was good."

Cult of Snuggie

Wear the Sacred Robes and wield the Wand of Enlightenment.

For only $14.95.

(via Jezebel)

Against All Odds: An Improvised Breakup

Last night was a last minute whipped together System Error show at the Parkside Lounge.  I still had tons of fun (big props to JR and LBizzy).

Since it was basically un-attended (thanks Bozarth for coming out... and LBizzy and LBizzy's friend who wasn't wasted like the Bizz-master), Nikki D. and I decided to try something we had talked about earlier in the week.

When I say "earlier in the week," let me be clear.  On Wednesday night I had an idea of a two-person improv form I wanted to try with Nikki.  On Thursday, I IMed her about it.  I believe our entire discussion about it was about 60 gChat lines from 10:30am to noon.  That was it.

So 80 hours later, without talking about it anymore than those 60 lines (besides saying "This seems like a good idea"), we were up on stage doing it.

And it was fun.  And I think it was funny.  And ripe with potential.  It's not a wholly original form or anything.  But it allows me (1) to do two-person improv which I've wanted to do for awhile, (2) do slower improv, (3) focus tightly on the relationship in a scene, (4) walk closer to that edge of sad and emotional and funny which is a space I enjoy, and (5) work with Nikki D. who I makes me happy, both as an improviser and a person.

It's very nice when things work out so well.

Anywhozits, Against All Odds: An Improvised Breakup is available for bookings.

Synecdoche, New York

I finally made it out to see Synecdoche, New York last night.

Let's be clear. I love Charlie Kaufman. Back in '97 or '98, a friend in Minneapolis handed me a script. It was stamped with some studio's logo in read ink. Looked all official and everything. My friend said, "You have to read this. Messed up." I did read it. It was messed up. It was also amazing. Beautiful and distorted and twisted and weird. With in 5 pages I remember thinking, "This is unshootable. Or at least unsellable. I love it."

It was Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. This was at least a year before Being John Malkovich came out.

Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind is still one of my favorite movies.

Synecdoche, New York is now up there too. It is far from perfect but that doesn't matter. It is ambitious in a way films hardly ever are. The last film this ambitious that I've seen was The Fountain. I really liked The Fountain but its ideas where SO large that the whole thing turned into a tone poem. The Fountain was about image and Ideas with a Capital I.

Synecdoche manages to stay grounded. Because it is telling a simple story (the 2nd half of a life). But it explores the very fact that you can't explore just one life because every life is connected to other lives... which are connected to other lives. But it doesn't get lost that concept. It finds a simple analogy for that point (or points – One, that all of us are connected and affect others and, two, that you can't tell the truth of any life because of point one) and just plays it simply. Or as simply as works in Kaufman's mind.

In his previous scripts his weird ideas (a tunnel into someones body/soul, a machine that erases memories, a man writing a script that becomes the script that is being shot) have always been analogies that become the larger hook of the stories. The characters respond to the fact that the ideas are weird and surreal (at least at first). Synecdoche is different. Oh, it is surreal (sometimes just surreal for surreal's sake which would be my one criticism), but it is rarely called out by the characters. Perhaps Kaufman, directing for the first time here, decided to remove the anchors for the viewers. Pure (or almost pure) analogy in form without feeling the need to explain it away.

Time and space and identity is fluid here but it always is in film. One reason I love it so much is that so few films use the medium to portray that which cannot normally be seen in life. And I don't mean space ships or whatever. I like films that do something new. A Scanner Darkly, Sin City, 300... all flawed but at least they tried to do something new, and I appreciate that.

I want to discuss the themes but I also don't want to tweak it for anyone. If you want to see it, you should decide what it means for yourself. It's one of those movies I can't recommend to people because it is TOO much MY aesthetic. "If you are exactly me, then you'll love it. I have no idea how anyone else would feel about it."

Spore without intelligent design

Darwin@HOME is a project that uses idle personal computer power to do a whole lot of simulating of artificial life. (Much like SETI@HOME uses that power to sort through radio data from space to see if any of it is from, well, aliens.) They started with simulating something simple: locomotion. How to walk. How to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible.

Plans are to expand it into a competitive world. Getting food. Hunter and prey. The good stuff. So a lot like the early stages of Spore but without the meddling human input.

(via Kottke via Boing Boing)

(Warning: Boing Boing has quite a few interesting things posted this morning. I try to not make this blog just a Boing Boing reposting site... today I expect to fail.)

Jesus Use Me

From the pretty amazing LP Cover Lover site. This could be another improv form (the site, not "The Faith Tones"... although I take dibs of that has a team name).

(via Boing Boing)

Be a rock god!

Guitar Praise

Grab the guitar and play along with top Christian bands! Shred those riffs or blast the bass…you add a unique sound to the solid Christian rock. But watch out: if you can't keep up, the artists will take a break and stop the music. Crank it up and try again - you'll soon be rockin' with the best while praising the Lord!

I'm not mocking here. I think this is pretty cool. I wish there were screen shots.

(via Boing Boing)

Super Short Stories. Pt 1.

(I've decided to challenge myself this afternoon. Different genres. 100 words or less. Feel free to give suggestions and feel free to be as specific as you want.)

Spot Speaks (horror)
It wasn’t the discovery that, after all these years, Spot could talk the disturb Jack the most. It was that Spot was saying grace over Jack’s half eaten leg.

Answers (sci-fi)
As Alice was led into the starship, she was in awe of the beauty of the moment. All those years wishing to have proof of life beyond the bounds of Earth and here it was. The alien, grey-green skinned, eyeless smooth face, asymmetrical limbs where there should have been limbs.

Alice geared herself. “Please,” she whispered, “I wish to know the answers to the Universe.”

“Crap,” squished the alien. “I was hoping you’d know.”

Subway Choice (romance)
They stood in the rain at the subway entrance. He shifted uncomfortably in the silence that had settled on them. She stared at their feet on the wet sidewalk. What was in her head, he thought. What is she thinking? All he wanted to do was kiss her. That was all that was in his mind. No thoughts of today or tomorrow, just the moment.

Without looking up, she gently touch a button on his coat. “I should go home.”

Damn. “Yeah. So should I.”

She tilted her head up, grinning. “Yeah. You should come home with me.”

Jesus Pickle

Okay, wait. I am the pickle? And electricity is the power of Christ? So God is ConEd? And I need to be jabbed in both ends with what? The church?

(via Filled with Chocolate Pudding! via Boing Boing)

26 Days Until Doomsday

In 26 days the Large Hardon Collider [ed.- HADRON, idiot] goes online. A 17-mile ring stretching from near Geneva and into France, the LHC will crash particles together, producing "tiny fireballs of primordial energy, recreating conditions that last prevailed when the universe was less than a trillionth of a second old." Imagine creating the universe, over and over, 30 million times a second.

Chances are discoveries will be made that will make theoretical physicists swoon and make the rest of use say, "Awesome. I'm going to go see The Dark Knight." But there as never been a collider near this scale so who knows what will happen.

(via Gizmodo)

"Clowns can look rather intimidating if you see a lot of them in one place."

Look, I am not a religious man. I respect religion and I certainly try not to mock religions for no reason.

But I have to say I am loving GodTube.

Christian Clown Training pt. 1

"I'm a Christ Follower" "And I'm a Christian."

Baby Got Book

No more wining

Ah! A bad pun!

I had that tiny rant about the person who pulled a bottle of Showket off the rack and opened it at the pre-Idiotarod party. Part of the reason I was a bit miffed was that some house guests back in November (wonderful house guests that I love and adore and would deny nothing to), decided to have wine one night and pulled the same bottle off the rack. The one from the Idiotarod was a replacement.

PapaSix, it his infinite generosity, called the winery and found out they only had six bottles left. I assumed he was sending me one. Today I received all six bottles. There is something thrilling about getting the last six bottles from a winery.

In related news, there is still a bottle mystery out there. On the day after the pre-Idiotarod party, right after discovering the partially drunk bottle of Showket, I discovered a bottle of Prager port on the counter. Now what is weird about it is that there was a mini-controversy in my home not a week before involving a bottle a Prager port. There was a catered dinner party and PapaSix, again in his infinite generosity, gave the bottle of Prager he had brought to the caterer. Some people at the party (okay, just one person) took joking offense that PapaSix had given the bottle away.

So having a bottle appear on the counter was a bit odd. I though it might have been my house guest (the one who had been upset about it), perhaps as a "have a good race" gift. But when I finally got a chance to talk to her about it, she denied it.

That leaves me with three conclusions: (1) Team COBRA has some very generous kind people on it; (2) Team COBRA has some people with some very good taste; and (3) fate/coincidence is sometimes totally bizarre.

On the eve of celebrating the virgin birth of of the son of the diety... I say, "What diety?"

While I consider myself agnostic (it's not that I don't believe god either exists or doesn't exist... I just believe you have no way of proving it to me), I tend to agree with atheists a lot more. Last year I posted Penn Jillette's "This I Believe" essay on the topic, which pretty much summerized my feelings.

Today I bring you a quicky article from the L.A. Times.

I love what historian Stephen Henry Roberts once said:
"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

Chew on this while you pray to your Baby Jebus.

FSM: The Game

Not to the add to the controversy of the Left Behind video game, I bring you The Flying Spaghetti Monster game.

C.O.B.R.A. presents the 2007 Idiotarod

As it is late in the evening, I won't go into this in much detail right now. Just that the Idiotarod... the greatest sporting event to grace this planet... is coming in just two months. TWO MONTHS! January 27. Mark it on your calendar. Mark it well. Start "obtaining" those carts. Start building that team. Get ready.

Go to the site. Talk on the forums. Sign my butt. Teach me to read. (A cookie to the first person you names that movie.)

Because this is the Idiotarod C.O.B.R.A. style. The world will never be the same again.

(I apologize for all of the labels... The Idiotarod crosses so many boundaries.)

Get Behind Jesus

Anything I say before hand would just lessen your Belief and Faith.

Just go.

Get Behind Jesus.

Election Night!

I'm taking a break from writing for awhile to watch some election night coverage.

I love election nights. So much crazy fun. And always more fun when it is not just a night of crushing defeats for your believe system.

The exit polls are of course just one pile of BS after another but still entertaining.

CBS is reporting that the feeling inside the Whitehouse is "glum." Welcome to my world, buckos.

Looks like Lieberman will win in CT. Considering that he is a Republican acting Democrat running as an Independent, it's not big surprise. He is the political equivalent of a straight acting lesbian bi-sexual cross dresser male transsexual female impersonator in drag. He appeals to no one or everyone.

NY went the way we all thought. No surprise there. Menendez (D) won in NJ... maybe the office vandalism this morning worked. In RH Whitehouse (D) won, which supposedly is a big deal although I don't know why. But he ran on the slogan "Have a Whitehouse in Washigton you can trust" which is cute but just a bit easy.

Governors seem to be going both ways. Governors do that.

Cardin (D) beat Steele (R) in Maryland. Cardin had a Michael J. Fox ad. Steele had a rebuttal ad with his little sister who has MS. So both favor stemcell research, but I guess a time-traveling teenage Nixon loving werewolf Hollywood doctor with Parkinson's beats a little sister with MS. I believe that is up there with "never get involved in a land war in Asia" and "never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line."

(EDIT: Maker that "a time-traveling teenage Nixon loving werewolf Hollywood doctor with Parkinson's beats a little sister ex-Mrs. Mike Tyson with MS." Who knew? Well, everyone apparently.)

Dan Rather is supposedly co-anchoring with Jon Steward tonight. Sweetness.