Sixfoot6.com - Putting Stuff Away.

These Jesus Inspirational Sport Statues are simply hilarious. The description says it all:

Handpainted resin statues on a solid wood base are the perfect gift for every young Catholic athlete. These statues portray Jesus actively participating with boys and girls in a variety of sports. A wonderful way to reinforce Jesus "as friend" in everyday activities. Sizes vary from 4 3/4 to 6 1/2 inches.

If I were Jesus, I'd wear a football helmet, just to provide a strong example to the nice Caucasian boys. Be sure to check out pages two and three... the hockey statue is quite simply priceless.

I've been spending a great deal of time lately playing The Game Neverending, by far the coolest game/net activity that I've participated in for a while. They've done the map, item inventory, and chat interface in Flas - all very simple and fairly intuitive.

I've been alpha-testing the game for the past week; I believe they're still taking new users, so I suggest you sign up if you're interested in checking out a new kind of social game... The GNE isn't a video game, but more like a role-playing game played with other characters in a social network. You move from place to place, finding, buying and maniputating objects, interacting and learning from other users, acruing wealth, experience points, friends, and the skill to make things. There are mini-games inside the world you can play. Making objects out of found items drives the game, along with the fun and silliness that comes from interacting with other players, learning about the world. This is only the beginning... the version of the game launched next year will be much larger, with limitless room for growth, change, communities, structures, clubs, more minigames, challenges, casinos, who knows...

Check out the MIT OpenCourseWare Pilot, a collection of coursework, notes and lectures taken from various classes at the Masachusetts institute of technology. A lot of it is rocket science, but it's nice to have the option to counter mindless web-surfing with intelligent web study. Economics, Physics, Urban Planning... it's all here. Poke around and learn something, lazy bones.

I once took a course at MIT: during January of 1992 my friend Hollis and I attended a seminar at MIT while working on our 9th grade science project on holography. Dr. Stephen A. Benton, who invented the first white-light hologram in 1968, lectured us on the holographic process using confusing algebraic and triganometric notation on his classroom's dry erase boards. In the lab, Hollis and I helped others in our group develop a hologram on a space-age air table. I still have mine, somewhere...

I applied to MIT, but they didn't take me.

I hate you so much.

You just called about five times in a row, so many times that I've learned not to answer my phone. And I don't want to be determined not to answer the phone in my own apartment.

Who are you, I wonder? Usually, when I answer you, you make a short beeping sound. Perhaps you are a pissed-off fax machine, seeking vengence following too many strings of mis-punched numerals? You might be a confused salesfellow from the LA Times, determined to sell us weekday newspaper editions that we have no time to read, calling and hanging up, calling and hanging up. Are you a digital recording representing some gubernatorial candidate or state representative? You might be a pimply middle school child making unimaginative prank calls, or retired cop with low self-confidence calling from the Fraternal Order of Police, then chickening out. Are you offering vacations? Are you a computer error that just wont quit? Are you the Lawnmower man? Are you calling to tell me that my order is ready?

Either way, I hate you. Die, die, die! Die.

i read once about freediving, about fanatic lovers of the sea who gather together in calm waters above deep expanses of ocean and dive down, down, down unencumbered by tanks and hoses; just themselves and rubber flippers, and the author said that as you swim deeper and deeper the change of pressure affects your mind and your lungs, and in unafraid moments of fetal clarity you no longer feel the need for oxygen, you're not driven by the desperate desire to breate, and it was that peace (alone and floating) that freedivers loved, and somewhere at the edge of that peace, seconds from the edge of life, one has to remember the direction toward the surface and remember that no you really can't surive hovering alone, that no you cannot survive without air, that sheer necessity of swimming up up to take a breath.

Sometimes, when I've stayed up for too many hours (all night and all afternoon) my mind and body seem to gain a sincere belief that sleep will no longer be a necessary part of life.

During the Fox eating contest Glutton Bowl show that I saw last year, one narrator explained in (in his sportscaster vocabulary and lilting tones) the psychological battle of the eating contest contestant, the challenge to fight back that hungry feeling and plow on through, convincing your body that it can handle more and more, that the limit is still far of now, still farther off.

Lying in bed, so unslept tweaked that I couldn't drift off into sleep, I understood suddenly that the most dangerous mental and emotional places are moments of overstuffed denial when you convice your mind and heart that it is yet unfull, no fear, plunge deeper and breathles into invincible sleepless love.

Just now I spent a half-hour talking to my friend Dave, who works at a to-remain-nameless Initech-esque company in the Boston area. Dave wanted to make fun of the ladies in the next cubicle (who had spent half the morning talking about the great features of the all new AOL 8.0) so he had to transfer out of earshot, me to another phone.

I prepared to wait patiently. And as the hold-music kicked in, all at once I thrown back to the summer of 1992 by the sounds of Vivaldi's Four Seasons. It's been years I've listened closely to classical music, and longer since I last heard Vivald... long enough that I can't even say which season was playing. Joshua and I spent a few weeks of that summer (just before 10th grade) in my backyard, working on a self-conceived gardening project: we cleaned out and groomed a rectangular area surrounding a giant boulder that sits at the edge of the woods behind my house. We trimmed, raked and planted, all the while listening to Four Seasons through the right speaker of my parents 20-year-old component stereo, positioned behind the sliding screen door atop our deck. One of us had to run up to the house every 20 minutes to flip the records over. Lots of laughter and chess, that summer. Incense, music and walking.

Dave clicked back on the line after only a few seconds. He told me again about how yesterday his company had given him 60 days layoff notice; about how he had been rear-ended by a fella from Idaho during this morning's commute. A bad sign, we agreed. But he couldn't deny the comedic good fortune that came during the call he placed to his insurance company: when they put him on hold, the phone kept him occupied with a musak version of Dave Mathew's "Crash".

And while your busy using lemon juice to prevent HIV, don't forget to make use of duct tape to get rid of warts. We'll take down those pharmaceutical companies yet, one run to the Piggly Wiggly at a time.

I'm used to finding random sites in my referer logs, but I haven't come across anything fantastic for a while... Today I've been treated to a couple of erroneous referers that were too interesting not to mention: a few random porn sites, a search string for "dead or alive sex", and a site advertising--in all seriousness--the Voodoo Magick Box - The World's First 'Digital Drug'. It's worth checking out the page if only for the odd sexy illustrations (is that Jim Carrey?) and the very convincing product hype. The company purports that the Vodoo Magick Box helps with your memory, concentration, insomnia, sexual performance, depression and addiction. But more importantly, they ask:

Are you ready to experience the future of digital pleasure? Simply attach the clips to your earlobes, turn on, and trip-out! Experience feelings of inebriation, psychedelic visuals, extreme relaxation, floating sensations, intense endorphin releases, all culminating in a relaxed yet alert euphoric state. It's a completely electronic drug-like experience and it's entirely safe, legal, and beneficial in so many fantastic ways!

But my favorite fluke referer log from this morning has to be from HackCanada.com, mostly for the following entry included at the top of their news section:

09.26.02: The Edmonton 2600 meetings have been cancelled. We met a lot of people through the meetings and have made some great friends. The Nazi anti-smoking laws in this city have made it difficult to find a comfortable location to hold the meetings where we can have minors and keep the smokers happy. The last few meetings have been held in a food-court, which we've always thought was a crappy place to hangout for several hours. And finally, after 6 years we've kind of grown tired of it. It's time to move on.

Those crazy canucks. Fighting the man with everything they've got, from the middle of a food court.

Today my roomate Awol and I climbed into his Lumina, swerved down Sepulveda Blvd and pulled into the Getty Center, the finest public cultural buldings and estates I've visited in the modern world. This was actually my fourth visit to the center since I first arrived in LA; today the air was cool, however, with thicker smog and stronger breeze, so I daresay it nearly amounted to an autumn experience. We rode the tram, explored galleries, checked out the vew across the cactus garden toward downtown LA and Santa Monica, played chess in the shade beside a fountain, and wandered through the gardens, loudly pretending to meet each other for the first time in years.

We ate us some crumbly black bean veggie burgers at the old cafe, sitting even farther away from the cool kids than the table of pimply outcasts on a highschool field trip. I most enjoy the space of the place--the view, the gardens and the architecture--but we were both particularly fond of the gallery of Greuze drawings done by the 18th Century master French artist. Paintings from that era never interested me too much, but his drawings slayed me: quick gesture sketches done in watercolor and ink; charcoal and crayon studies done as preparation for larger paintings and engravings. He captured the texture of flesh, the emotions in expression better than any artist had before his day, and many of his sketches have the expressive energy of late 19th century artists. Quite a treat.

Strolling through the courtyard, we overheard a stout middle-aged woman exclaim, "I'm just kickin' it." We peered at her queerly and chuckled to ourselves. She was leading a group of students. Sensing that we were amused, she turned and cheerfully explained that, "When you work with kids, you talk like kids. It just happens. You work with 'em all day, and you start to talk like them."

It seems that lemon juice has long been known to be an effective douche and form of contraception. According to Yahoo News,

Reproductive physiologist Roger Short, from the University of Melbourne's obstetrics department, said a few drops of lemon juice can be a cheap, easy-to-use solution to protect women from both HIV and pregnancy.

Mediterranean women used lemon juice as their main method of contraception? Acidic citrus kills the AIDS virus? Well, you can believe that Dr. Lance Lemon knew that the whole time. Finally, here's a study he can point to to prove to you ladies that a little Lemon really will solve your problems.

Special thanks to Jason for astutely and amusingly unmasking the identity of the sniper who has claimed a string of six victims in DC this past week. As he says, crimefighters could really benefit from an occasional visit Yahoo News, I guess.

I really should call my friends in DC to try and get a clear sense about the way these events are affecting their daily state of mind. I can't imagine.

I've just updated my design portfolio to include the most recent site I've been working on, HectorVoice.com. Hector Herrera does voiceover work here in LA, focusing on the Spanish market. His site was great fun to build, and it seems that we're both quite satisfied with the results.

I'll get around to setting up comment functionality for this weblog soon, and then I'll start posting some of the links I've been acruing for the past six months. Sigh. Never enough time. Go to bed, son. Go to bed.

Joshua and I drove several blocks to the Laundromat at the corner of Magnolia and Oxnard, for to wash a giant red comforter. The woman at the dry cleaners next-door refused to break my twenty, so we bought mexican juice at the convenience store. The stubborn change machine eventually coughed up twenty quarters.

They had a Ms. Pac Man video game in there, and Bust-A-Move, too. I remember playing Bust-A-Move all the time back in college, in the student union basement. That seems like a long time ago.

Each of the television sets built into the walls spouted and flickered info-operas and soapshows and talkmercials into the rumbling room from behind protective plastic. I put way too much detergent into the industrial-stainless built washing machine, apparently, because after a bit of sloshing soap suds came pouring out of the vent on top of the road basin. We couldn't figure out if the button labeled OVERSUDDING should be pressed in case of too many suds, or in case of a lack of suds. People who are used to using laundromats don't need help figuring out this stuff, apparently.

The two half-Mexican women waiting for their loads to finish... how do they know each other, anyway? Aunt and neice? Drinking buddies? Workmates? After a confused, inarticulate yelling match, the fat one finally decided on Hawaiian Punch, and the little one in the hat pumped quarters into the vending machine. Maybe everyone seems less intelligent inside an air-conditioned laundromat. Just to be safe, we played chess outside on a nearby patch of grass, waiting for the comforter to dry.

in the first dream (and i don't usually remember dreams, so i must have woken up a bit, tossing or turning or both) i was at the edge of this big harbor-bay-lake with a bunch of other mostly good-hearted people, many of whom i knew that i knew. they explained to us that the water was full of bodies, some dead, some alive, and we needed to get in there and save people before they drowned (if still alive) or fish our their bodies for respectful burial (if they were not alive). it was night, but the water remained gently lit as only dreams are lit. i jumped into the water, clothes and all, and for the longest time just swam around and splashed and played with two or three other girls in their early twenties, smiling and flirting and shirking our duties, as all around us people spread out and swam and sought floating human forms. i dove down, and swam underneath one of the girls, and with sudded gravitas realized the importance and urgency of the situation. i swam down along the bottom of the sea with crisp vision, and from the bright reef bottom grabbed onto the body of an elderly female. and as i kicked along the surface of the water with the dead weight of this woman i now understood to be my high school academic advisor resting on my back, sleflessness filled my heart and sorrow filled my eyes, and i carried her up stairs from the sea, with the eyes of the others watching me.

in the second dream friends and I kept running around all sorts of terrain, trying to capture animals. we needed the animals for the money, or for the rewards. we had the option to kill the animals, but had decided that it was easier to corner them into rocks and glades and hustle them into our canvas pillowsacks. there were small mountain lions, farm animals, and big bunnies. the animals were defiant but not ferocious. the process of trying to catch them seemed fun, in the dream. teamwork was important. i knew, then, that the process shouldn't be fun, but i said nothing out loud and the dream continued.

in the third dream i awoke in a car to the sight of sun and the sound of hail and and the scent of autumn wind and the beautiful colors of lit mountains, tufted plains, heavy cloud shadows and wisps of setting sky. it was open air and texture and weather i had missed, and i wasn't asleep at all; i was simply in love with new mexico.

Catherine and I are driving a friend's car back to Los Angeles from Texas. It's a white Mazda Protege from the early '90s that Cat named Mazzy Star; the leg room's a bit tight and the front speakers are a bit blown. Still, she's good times, and yesterday we left Dallas at 9:30 AM to cut up toward Amarillo on the 287. Somewhere around Wichita Falls we put a little John Cougar on the stereo (good ol' heartland style) and I started to doze off in my semi-reclined passenger seat. I woke a few minutes later to a strange repetetive sound... I blinked open my eyes, and for a moment decided it was just a bumpy stretch of road. But the sound grew louder, and one split-second after I sat upright with growing concern, Mazzy's front right tire blew out with a loud, sharp blast and a small, sharp swerve. We both yelped, and Cat pulled over into a convenient dirt lot.

We unloaded our luggage from the trunk, and pulled out the tire jack. The dirt lot was conveniently located beside a diner, so I went inside to ask for help. Meanwhile, a good ol' boy in his truck who had pulled up for lunch spoke with Catherine and suggested we hit Bryan's Tires, conveniently located just a mile down the road. I couldn't get the donut out of the trunk, but a guy at a table in the front of the restaurant pulled an adjustable wrench off of his belt. I put on the spare, and cleaned up in the diner's convenient rest rooms. Bryan's Tires didn't have the exact tire we needed, so one of Bryan's boys hopped in his truck and returned six minutes later with the right one.

We didn't even have time to pull our crackers and cheese from our travel cooler before they had our new tire on the car. Fifty bucks and forty minutes after the flat, we were back on the road. Amarillo wasn't far off, and Albequerque wasn't far beyond. Thank you, Vernon, Texas.