Man Who Enjoys Thing Informed He Is Wrong

Dear person below me,

Please stop playing ukulele at 1:00 in the morning.

Thanks,

Luke

P.S. - You suck at ukulele.

Watching LOST is like dating a good-looking girl who doesn’t have much behind the mask; once you accept that it’s not really going anywhere - she’s just screwing with you - you can relax and enjoy the benefits while they last. It’s pretty much an abusive relationship, but hey, it’s decent fun while you’re waiting for something real to come along.

Oh boy…

http://popularism.blogspot.com/2010/01/apple-tablet-revealed.html

“The Germans do not seem to be afraid to repeat a word when it is the right one. they repeat it several times, if they choose. That is wise. But in English, when we have used a word a couple of times in a paragraph, we imagine we are growing tautological, and so we are weak enough to exchange it for some other word which only approximates exactness, to escape what we wrongly fancy is a greater blemish. Repetition may be bad, but surely inexactness is worse.” 

Mark Twain, The Awful German Language

The rest of that piece is a satire on the difficulty of the language - really funny - but I like his point here, too. Made me think of certain electronic musics. Rock - Robot Rock.

ooh, that’s a good idea for a blog.

but is it long enough?

yeah, maybe it would make a better status update.

and which one of those is more likely to get comments.

mm hm.

This is hilarious. I love that crap.

I’m watching V, that new alien show. It isn’t very good. I’m giving it one more try because I really like aliens, but I don’t think it’s going to change. It sure is providing a lot of fodder for comics, though.

“Life doesn’t imitate art, life imitates bad television.”

-Woody Allen

I got a pretty good response to my comic today:

I just deleted it cause I’d rather not have blowhards like this commenting on my site (once I approve one comment they have free rein), but then I wanted to respond to it. So Joseph of Club Penguin, here you go:

BEEOOUM. In the meantime, why not start your own socialist webcomic? I’d read it. BEEEEOOOOUUUMM.

I’m working as a Health Assistant in an Elementary School now (I love it), and today I went to a meeting on H1N1 (the first case identified in the U.S. was in a school - we’re sort of at the “front lines,” really), and I thought I’d pass along some non-media-sensationalized, non-comic-hyperbolized data:

-90% of the flu viruses currently going around are H1N1.
-It’s more communicable since it’s new strain of flu, but H1N1 is no more harmful than your typical seasonal flu, and the virus is not mutating much.
-6 months to 24 years old is by far the most affected age group.
-People over 64 years old aren’t getting it. It’s suspected there was a similar flu during their lifetime.
-91% of child deaths involving H1N1 have involved additional preexisting medical conditions.
-(Again) c. 36,000 people die annually in the U.S. from the common flu (acc. to CDC), 250,000-500,000 worldwide (acc. to WHO), and ECDC reports the number of worldwide H1N1 deaths to be 4,747 as of today. Yawn.

I’m sure I’ll come into contact with it with all the sick kids I see; I probably already have. I got a little sick-ish last week but I just slept a lot and it went away without any trouble. I’ll let you know if I start oinking or growing a curly little tail, or hey what’s thiOIIINNK OH CRAP

And I thought they smelled bad on the outside

I’m an adult!

Seein Zombieland today.

***

During a preview, the name “Michael Bay” came onscreen and the whole theater chuckled. Portland is great.

Call me heartless, but you know the thing babies do where they’re crying and they pretend they’re starting to choke? It makes me laugh. They totally do it. I love babies.

Goodbye, Windows 95 comics.

I started a new twitter; it’s less of a personal diary and more of an alien news station (better than my real twitter).

During the X Games I discovered that what used to be called “Extreme Sports” are now “Action Sports.” ACTION SPORTS! Not that I don’t appreciate the update - “Extreme” always felt a bit severe. (Look for Christian Youth Groups across the nation to start putting “Action” in their names [trying for a clever misspelling but ending up bungling it, e.g., "Axetion Christ Evermore36" {"Dude, you comin' to ACE tonight? It's a great place to look for possible future wives."}].)

What I really like about the label “action” being given to a certain arena of sports is what it says about the rest of them. (Basically: “Yes, everything else is boring.”) We have Action Sports, and…sports. Imagine espn.com’s channel selections as genre sections at a movie store:

There’s Foreign (Soccer), Music Video (Basketball), Crime Dramas (Baseball), Rom-Com (Tennis), Disaster (Football), Documentary (Golf and Outdoors), and Action! Woooooo!

Coming soon: The Food Cooking Network! The Discovery Finding Channel! ESPNESPN!

MAN I love the X Games. Some of things these guys do - 360 tailwhip backflips, double tailwhip backflips, double frontflips over a 70 foot gap, all on BMX bikes, 360s on a freaking motorcycle, skateboard tricks that are quite literally starting to look like video games, then all of a sudden they stop spinning wildly through the air and land in the exact right spot (it feels illogical to see), rolling away like it ain’t a thing, smooth as butter on baby seal’s behind. It want to cry sometimes, it’s so beautiful. I love jumping.

I also love that the trick competitions aren’t judged with fall-once-and-you’re-done scoring. I love the Olympics too but that drives me crazy; it’s hard to enjoy a rountine when all you’re thinking is “please don’t fall…please don’t fall…” Gymnastics and ice skating judging have gotten particularly nitpicky - it’s as if all they do is look at a huge list of possible deductions and then sit there not smiling, inspecting for errors. It’s like how a lot of people see God. It’s totally demerit-based rather than merit based, and it sucks the artistry right of out the room. But when you watch the X Games Mega Ramp competition, guys’ll go for a huge trick and fall it’s no big deal. THANK YOU.

If you don’t have ESPN, like me, you can watch it here.

You can also see great moments from X Games past. Some breathtaking stuff here.

Notice the time.

Attire for the week: scrub pants cut off into shorts.

“Often it can be easier to find common ground with a white person by talking to them about something you both hate.  Discussing things you both like might lead to an argument over who likes it more or who liked it first.  Clearly, the safest route is mutual hatred.”

from Stuff White People Like

A friend brought it to my attention that another webcomic and I both posted somewhat similar comics yesterday. Check it.

I just moved, that’s why the comics look different now. Only thing wood and large enough I could find. Sorta totally looks like an old Windows 95 desktop background, but whatever. Maybe I should buy a piece of wood and stain it.

Today is my birthday and I get to post whatever I want. It’s one of my favorites, though. :)

Last night I dreamt I stole a car and ran from the police. I don’t remember why they were after me. It was fun, but I knew if I had to deal with the consequences, the dream wouldn’t be fun anymore, so I woke myself up.

I’m toying with the idea of turning Saturdays into Not Funny Comic Day. I get a lot of stupid ideas and it’d be nice to have a place to exhume a few of them, plus no one’s on the internet on Saturdays anyway. It would only work if it was understood they were failures. It could just be dumb. They’d have to be the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel ideas. Although, I really like things that are almost funny, too, cause sometimes that’s worse. And come on - The Office - the pain of medocrity can be funny, you just have to present it the right way. So maybe Saturday could be Mediocre Comic day? We’ll see.

There’s a new “share” button by each comic now, so you can easily post things to Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, what have you.

A while ago someone liked one of my comics enough to post it to Digg, and I got about twice as many visits as usual that day. So if you believe in love after love, be strong enough. I really think you are.

This is a very funny site.

Earthworm Jim
A film by Tim Burton

The Sims
A film by Robert Altman

Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?
A film by David Fincher

A few highlights from Rotten Tomatoes’ video game movie wish list.

Today I worked with 2-4 year olds, and built this:

It’s a helicopter/teeter totter. Two kids sit in the middle and two sit on the sides and make it rock. It’s pretty sweet. It took me about four hours of cranking screwdrivers, ratchets, and mostly little allen wrenches. It was kind of like building a big LEGO set. The kids were pretty excited about it.

I’m flying at 11:45 pm tonight for my sister’s wedding in Michigan. I’ll fly through Texas, reach Detroit at 11 am ET, and then get on a bus that’ll get me home around 2:30. That should be weird. I stayed up super late last night doing some wedding stuff (finished writing my sister’s processional, actually), so I already have a little travel delirium going on. I kind of like it; makes it exciting.

Today’s comic has absolutely nothing to do with Mother’s Day.

Shoulda thought about that.

In part of my dream last night, I could smell the smells of fast food and mountain air at the same time, and I was like, whoa, I’ve never smelled these two things together; it smells so good. And then someone had a plate of cookies on top op their van, but they forgot about them and drove off, so I went and got cookies off the street and ate them. I think they were raisin at first, but I made them change to chocolate chip.

I’ve just run out of my notebooks. I have the names of stores Carolina Pad ships that product to, so I should be able to find some more, but to hold myself over I made my own.

From espn.com:

“STAT OF THE GAME: The Spartans had 21 turnovers in the game, and the Tar Heels converted them into 25 points. You simply can’t make that many mistakes against a team like UNC and expect to win the game.”

I’m really disappointed. No team lost to North Carolina by any less than 12 points the whole tournament, but still, it hurts to lose like we did. Especially right after beating 3 really good teams to be there.

Had we lost in the semifinals, people would have just been happy to see us make it that far, and turned back to ooh and ah at the Louisville game. But after we beat UConn, people really started expecting more. So instead being overachievers, we’re now a team that got too another level, but failed there. It’s more disappointing, but it is also more satisfying to have played on the higher level, and to have proved that none of our wins against Kansas, Louisville, or UConn were flukes.

I hate to talk this way so soon, but I don’t think we’re losing too many seniors. Next year should be a good one. And this loss should be a really good bad memory to motivate us this whole summer and through next season.

And hats off, North Carolina. You guys were freaking amazing.

Both my parents went to Michigan State. The first house I ever lived in was on Spartan Avenue. My dad used to put us in the bike seat and take us to the end of Spartan football games, when they’d start letting people in for free.

Ergo I am majorly rooting for MSU this weekend. I am also mildy proud of the fact that I once trimmed Tom Izzo’s hedges (though he technically had moved out the day before, from the nice neighborhood to the really nice neighborhood across the road).

Why should you root for them, too? Here is a very nice article about that.

Made it the US Barista Championships yesterday.

It was pretty neat. I waited in line for 20 minutes and got this thing for free. It was really good.

It was fun for about an hour, and then I got bored.

The 2009 US Barista Championships are being held in Portland this weekend. I’ll probably go tomorrow; I hear there’s free coffee to be had. One time a friend and I played music for an event and signs went up all over campus that said “Free Coffee” in really big letters and then had our names, so we called ourselves Free Coffee. I remember I tried to start doing this ambient guitar loop thing, but it wasn’t working out very well, and my friend gave me this “what are you doing” kind of look so I stopped.

So I’ve had today’s comic ready to go for a week or so (typically I’m a bit more ahead than that…), and on Wednesday I saw this front page USA Today article on a newstand, with the words “We Will Recover” in giant letters. Hmm.

I played at the PSA finals tonight…didn’t win, but someone from a local cable station did ask me to come be on their local music show. Yay! Who you tryin to get crazy with, ese? Don’t you know I’m local?

I’m playing in the PSA finals tonight. I just found out there’ll be some local TV people filming us. Hoo-ray…

I’m currently down to my last notebook. I grabbed a bunch of the model I liked from a Food Lion shelf before moving from Nashville to Portland last Spring, and haven’t been able to find the same model since. But after some research, I spoke to a very nice North Carolinan lady at Carolina Pad and have located a few stores here in Portland that should have CP Item #775 in stock. Good news. I love those notebooks. And I really don’t like perforated pages, because they start falling out after a few months.

Happy Digital TV Day! Woooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I found out over the weekend I made it into the top 10 finalists of a songwriting competition I entered here in Portland. Music as competition is a little weird, but hey - some iTunes tracks get downloaded more than others, and some Portland Songwriters Association judges voted for me more times than someone else. So I’m excited. The finals are on February 19.

Here’s my music page if you’d like a listen. The songs I sang were “I am a Bird” and “Amelie.” Both recordings are pretty lo-fi. I’m pretty happy with “Bird” performance-wise; “Amelie” is…well, it’s old.

I went snowboarding on Friday, and by the end of the night executed a couple tricks down I was working on. I drummed with the band on Saturday night and I swear my snowboarding helped my drumming - the confidence I’d gained Friday transferred right over to the drums. It was cool.

Wanna make a quite note here…

Not all my comics are autobiographical. I don’t want you to assume that everything I write (even this) is a reaction to a specific event or person, because it’s not. There’s a name for that: The Autobiographical Fallacy. Of course there’s some of me in my comics. But not every joke springs from a specific personal experience.

Sometimes a comic might be replay a situation where I got pwned in real life, but then go back and write in my razor-witted comeback. Or it might not be something that anyone said, ever, I’m just making up something dumb for someone to say so I can pwn them. The latter is more likely, probably. Part of the reason they’re stick figures.

If you’ve ever wondered if you’d actually survive a water landing in a plane:

(Picture of yesterday’s Hudson River plane crash; I got it here)

All 155 passengers were safe, the worst injury being a lady with boths legs broken (no “serious” injuries, apparnetly, whatever that means).

OK, internet - it’s kind of annoying that one day after the incident there are already articles to wade through to find the initial report. This happens a lot - you google an event and all you can find are 27 analyses of analyses of analyses of the original report. People like talking, I guess. (Here is one of the first reports on it.)

I just watched The Incredibles again. I think that must be the best movie in the world.

I’d like to get this book:

It’s all sort of art deco style. Very, very cool.

This one would be great to have too, though Amazon’s cheapest copy is currently about $150:

I love Pixar.

At first I was upset when Disney bought them, but I’m optimistic about it now - I think they could help make Disney what it’s supposed to be again. Incredible director Brad Bird says: “Walt Disney once said that he doesn’t make films to make money, he makes money to make films. That’s very much Pixar’s philosophy. It’s why we’re in the game.” Amen to that.

Just uploaded about another week’s worth of comics…

I played at an open mic downtown last night. There were actually some decent acts there. And there’s no smoking indoors in Oregon anymore; hooray! I can’t do smoke. Which is why I love Wii bowling.

About 15 minutes before I was up I discovered my guitar’s pickup had no battery in it (probably why they had to mic at the open mic I played last week…). Fortunately, the first guy I asked had a 9V he let me borrow. Stuff like that right before you sing doesn’t help the nerves so much. But it went well. I was happy with my voice; I definitely have more control over it now than I did, say, two years ago.

I actually never even liked the sound of my singing voice until, well, about two years ago, or less. I remember reading something Chris Thile said in a Nickel Creek interview about their band having to take singing lessons when they were starting. Chris mentioned some guy whose voice he really liked and said, “whenever he opened his mouth, all this beautiful sound came out, and whenever I sang, it just sounded like I was trying really hard to sing,” which was really encouraging to me, because that was exactly how I felt about him. So if you want to learn something, just go do it, and keep at it. I didn’t start playing guitar when I was 2; I was 14 or 15. Give yourself a few years before you give up and say you’re terrible at it. Unless you just don’t want to do it. But you should at least give it a try and demystify it a little.

The FBI is currently hiring for like 850 open positions right now: http://www.fbijobs.gov/

They’re not just hiring Super Secret Agents, either. Some of the job titles are Maintenance Worker, Motor Vehicle Operator, Secretary, and Woodcrafter. A Maintenance Mechanic Supervisor can make up to almost $100,000 a year.

I flew twice over the holidays, and I think I got better at it. A few things that’ve helped me:

-Airlines are very exact about the 50 lb weight limit now. Even now that they’re charging $15 to check a bag. (I’ve heard of people shipping boxes of clothes via UPS to their destinations rather than check a bag.)
-Movies and books kill time like nothing else.
-Bring earplugs, in case a baby starts crying, or if you just want to save your hearing from a few hours of loud plane noise.
-Don’t overpack your carry-on with stuff you’re not going to use on the trip (it took me way too long to learn this).
-My personal favorite way to sleep on the plane is with my head down on the open tray table.
-To carry on a guitar, put it in a gig bag. I did that and no one gave me any trouble about it. I’ve heard this from a few other people who used gig bags, too. I have seen people carry on hard cases, but I also have a friend who tried to carry on a Martin in a hard case, and they made him check it and ended up crushing his guitar and snapping its neck, and I think they only gave him a couple hundred dollars for it. So pack it in a gig bag, and if they give you trouble don’t be afraid to tell them that it’s delicate equipment that needs to be carried on and that you know it fits. You should be fine, though.
-Take everything you need, but for goodness’ sake, don’t overpack. I’m usually surprised at the end of my trip to see how many of my clothes I didn’t wear once.

I just got a really youtubey youtube comment:

stop with drugs !! shoot him :-D lol
very fun video (y) also great combosss :_d

Heh heh. If you want to know what 00DirectorsCut00 was talking about:

Here’s my brothers’ (and friends’) Christmas movie! They got a standing ovation when they showed it at church this Sunday.

If it’s not showing up click here.

Flying home on Christmas Eve tomorrow, PDX - ATL - DTW. Last time I flew I sat next to a nodder part of the way:

I’m attempting to clear some room in my church’s basement via craigslist right now. Today I made the mistake of posting a disco ball for free right before I left for the day. Getting home ended up taking about an hour, during which I received 7 phone calls and 7 emails about the ball. “Do you deliver?” asked one of the first callers. I took it off craigslist as soon as I had wireless again. They cost like 10 bucks, people. Maybe I’ll try charging for it tomorrow.

My mom usually does a Christmas pageant at my church back home in Michigan. This year she was too busy, so my little brother is making a stop-motion LEGO Christmas pageant movie, with the help of our other brother and the rest of the kids who play LEGOs after church with him. I’ll try and get my hands on it and post it after they’ve finished. I think Michel Gondry and Sufjan would approve.

SO

I didn’t get that job; still a little baffled about thatBUT… I’m looking on another school district’s site right now - a school district closer to the part of town I’ve been thinking about moving to - and they have a few different decent-looking jobs posted. So the plan for tomorrow is to mow that site clean and apply til I’m dry. Or I cry. SHUT UP LUKE RHYMING ISN’T A JOKE. But yeah, the one thing that was kind of bothering me about the other job was that it wasn’t in an area I particularly wanted to be nailed down to. So now I’ll try and direct my job search towards there. So hooray all’s not lost OF COURSE IT’S NOT.

I just found I am most likely not getting that job. Man. I thought for sure I’d get an interview, at least. I thought I was a shoo-in for the job.

The main thing that’s disappointing is I began to feel like I was really going to start doing something I loved, something that made me come alive, as my day-to-day occupation. I’m perfectly willing to do a survival job; I’ve been applying around; I just felt like that might have been a hump I was close to being over. Maybe it still is.

I’m still subbing when I can; I subbed today, actually, and really liked the people I worked with, and they said they should have some more work for me soon. And I’m still working with the Junior High group at my church, which I really like. This job would have sorted a few things out somewhat nicely, but I didn’t have all my hopes pinned on it. I’ll be fine. It’s just disappointment; this hasn’t halted anything yet. God is good. All the time. This is a low, but who cares. I know some better avenues to look for better jobs now. The worst thing that could happen would be living in my car, which would actually be kind of fun, and not much colder than my house is anyway. And I’ve always got moving to California and entering the drug trade in my back pocket.

After subbing today, I came home and cranked my ankle breaking a piece of firewood I thought would be harder to break. I hit the floor. Then I started image searching “cute puppy.” It’s helping.

The longer I’m single, the more I start to realize what a waste of a half stick of butter mac ‘n’ cheese is. Especially when you don’t have milk to make it with, so you find some buttermilk in the fridge but it smells funny, so you just use a little water. AAAAHHHHHHH hey could you pray I get this job I just applied for. I subbed at an alternative education school for kids with emotional and behavioral issues and loved it. And now they’re hiring for that position. I was the P.E. teacher, and in between P.E. classes I floated around other classrooms and was a teacher’s assistant. So I got to run around with hyper little guys, read The Lion King and color with a kid in the back, make a Thanksgiving display and put it up where an autistic kid would be able to read it from his desk, cut up orange slices, hear a kid think out loud that God’s probably not real; why doesn’t He just show Himself and help us out (he was hating life because he was getting disciplined…which I understand :), talk with a kid about what part of Ireland his grandparents were from, and eat the extra school lunches after the kids had all taken one. It was sweet. And it has benefits or something. HA. But most of all, it’s something that’s in my heart - sort of what I want to do with my life, actually - and I haven’t been able to do a lot of it in the past couple years. I called the school today and they said they’ll be calling people to set up interviews today and tomorrow. So please, pray!

Just spent two weeks with my family in Michigan:

And then it snowed:

I once shared a hotel room with a friend part way through a trip to India, and when we went to sleep, he dropped off quicker than I and started snoring. If you give snorers a little nudge, the position change usually ends the noise. I reached over to his bed and gave his mattress a gentle push. No change. I got out of my bed and moved his bedding around some more. Still snoring, loudly. I gathered some courage and gave him a nudge. First you start with the pillow, to move the head around a bit and adjust some airways. That didn’t work. Before long I was rolling his body around the mattress, but still he didn’t stop snoring. We had probably spent close to 20 hours on the plane that day - I was really tired - so after lying back in my bed a little longer, I finally just grabbed a pillow and hit him with it, hard. I can’t remember if I hit him in the face or what, but I really let him have it. He stopped snoring. And then sharply sat up in bed and looked straight at me, without a word. I stopped moving as fast as I could and laid there as still as I could possibly get, trying to not even flex a muscle for fear of the movement it would create, breathing as slowly and as shallowly as possible. He just sat there in the dark, looking directly at me. I don’t know how awake he was, and I couldn’t make out what expression was on his face, but after a while he just laid back down again, still without saying a word, and I was able to fall asleep in my new found quiet.

So wherever you are, Anthony, if you have some vague recollection of me clobbering you with a pillow - yeah, that wasn’t a dream, I actually did that. Sorry, man, it had to be done.

Just got back from a week in Montana (one of my favorite places - every time I breathe that air it feels like I just added a day to my life), been here in Portland a day, flying out to Michigan tomorrow for a couple weeks with my family (spending Thanksgiving there and helping my parents record some of their music). Gonna use tomorrow’s travel time to get the comic queue set up for a couple more weeks or so. Boom.

My band is in Montana all this week. We’re streaming live whenever we play; you can watch it here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/rend-the-heavens

See our website for a schedule [Mountain Time] of when we’re playing (on the left of the front page).

Today I tried a sample of the best bleu cheese I have ever tasted. Ever. $28.99 a pound. In one of those halogen-lit grocery stores. Mm hmm. I’m just sayin.

Sometimes I reach into my pocket to get something, only to forget what I was getting by the time my hand is in my pocket. It’s happened more than once.

My mind likes jumping from subject to subject. I forget what I’m doing a lot, sometimes what I’m saying. “Distracted from distraction by distraction.” One of my favorite jokes goes like this: “How many ADD kids does is take to change a lightbulb?” … “Wanna go ride bikes?”

A lot of times this means I don’t get around to eating until late afternoon. You sort of learn to ignore it after a while. And then suddenly you’re falling asleep and you have a headache and you wonder why it is we humans have to shovel so much food into ourselves so often in order to stay alive and healthy. And then you go into the kitchen and look for something to eat, but everything takes too long to prepare, so you make tea to pass the time, and you forget about eating and go sit down with your tea, and you drink it really fast because you’re so hungry, you hit refresh on the five websites you left sitting there four minutes ago, and now the tea’s gone, and you look up and remember that gentle gnawing in your gut, so you walk back into the kitchen and make bean-and-cheese burritos again, because you forgot to buy taco seasoning for the ground beef you just bought, and later you went to the store just to buy taco seasoning - nothing else on your list besides taco seasoning - and you came out of the store with four items, none of which were taco seasoning, because you couldn’t find it and then you forgot about it, and then you got home and remembered about the taco seasoning, but at least you found a box of Cheerios with a free kids’ book in it that’s helping you learn names of animals in Spanish.

Wanna go ride bikes?

Hooray!!!

Stickworldcomics.com officially reached 2,000 visits in only its 5th official day up. Thanks so much to everyone who’s been comin’ around.

Dear all my friends who are newly married and having babies and are making me wonder what I’m doing with my life (just kidding I know what I’m doing with my life and it’s THIS WEBSITE),

Your beautiful babies like soft-soled leather shoes, right? WELL, there are no coincidences, because my friend here in Portland just started a baby shoe company.

I have zero babies, but I still go to the site from time to time just to look at the shoes, because they make me laugh very happy laughter.

Here are some of my favorites:

They’re $15. Not bad. And 5% of the money goes to the IJM to help fight child slavery.

“So he disguised his sanity before them, and acted insanely in their hands, and scribbled on the doors of the gate, and let his saliva run down into his beard.” -1 Samuel 21:13

David scribbled while feigning insanity to escape from Achish, king of Gath. Today I scribbled to keep my sanity and escape from boring, king of job.

I finally went to downtown Portland and did a little busking today. I messed up a lot and made 31 cents, and then gave the 31 cents to a guy on the MAX in an Army jacket who was talking to himself.

While my family was having a fire on the beach, my little brother had to go to the bathroom. Since it was dark out, he just went over to the side of a little dune to take care of business. However, unbeknownst to him, there were some kids hiding in the dunegrass, one of whom yelled out “I saw you pee!” Not a big deal; my bro wasn’t mortified or anything. But he did ask my mom if we could go sneak up on the kids and scare them. My mom has the occasional adventurous streak, and her approval was granted. I went with him and we snuck up onto the dune behind the group of young hooligans, got as close as we could to them, and then jumped up, ran past them, and yelled, “I saw you poop!” To which they replied, “I hate you!” and “you’re fat!”

I’m pretty sure we won that one.