Ever since I first clicked through qwantz's songs as outline lists thread, I can't stop mentally converting pop songs I hear to outline format. It's hella addictive. Matt kicked it up a notch by publishing Since U Been Gone as a Powerpoint Annual report, to hilarious ends. But for now here are a couple of list-parsed songs of my own. I need to get these out of my head so I can move on with my damn life...
I climbed into my antique 1979 Ford Granada, warmed it up for a minute or two, took a big gulp of my green tea, set the thermos mug into my center console, popped the car into drive, rolled my way down to the bottom of the hill, turned left onto National Blvd, gunned it to avoid cutting off another car, prepared to turn right onto Manning, noticed a jogger about to cross Manning in the same direction, hit the gas to give really climb into the turn and give jogger plenty of room, experienced INTENSE BURNING SENSATION ON MY ENTIRE FOREARM GOD OH GOD, looked down to see green tea billowing across my arm and lap, thought about the illusion of centrifugal force, screamed and swerved like The Dude swatting at a doobie, righted my mug, yanked my car back out of oncoming traffic a second before I would have hit a mid-90s Buick, and swore twice before turning left onto the 10 onramp, bound for work. The pain in my skin has faded, but lo! the memory remains in my heart.
It's been over a full week since I returned from the annual Austin trip, so here are some thoughts before posting about the conference all goes completely out of style. This was the best SXSWi in recent memory, despite the notable absences of friends like Rusty, Jared, Shaun and Lisa. I was glad to travel and bunk with my friend and coworker Star, (a conferenece rookie), since his presence shook up the old routines a bit and helped me look at the event in a fresh light. Plus he's hilarious.
Socially and intellectually, this year balanced the new with the familiar. New friendships, new ideas; familiar venues, familiar alcohol and cigarettes. So here's a brain dump of observations, notes, memories and conclusions, heavily annotated with links to Flickr photos and friends.
In several hours (bollocks, is it 4am already?) I'll be hopping a flight to Austin for my fifth annual SXSW Interactive conference. With a great set of panelist and a different mix of friends, we should be in for a good time. I've got the Nokia 3650 wired for picture messages, so you can watch events unfold in syncopated realtime through my Flickr feed. I'll be posting, learning, sleeping, drinking and messing with Texas sporadically.
Everyday in my office, Linda makes coffee using Gavi�a gourmet beans in the NEWCO brand multi-caraf coffeemaker that sits down the hall between the copier and the grid of mailboxes. The coffee tastes quite good, but gets a bit burnt after hours on the hot plate. Yesterday that burnt flavor triggered a smell memory that I hadn't accessed in a long time: memory of the summer that I worked with a bunch of morons.
Back before I discovered weblogs, sixfoot6.com was a regular personal site filled with static content in the form of music, photos and writing. A recent email to this site prompted me to clean up some of those old pages, and reminded me that though I've never been much of a musician, I really miss recording music.
Dear Wired,
I quite enjoyed the first page of your recent article about Wikipedia. I did not, however, enjoy the second page of the article, which featured a Flash ad containing a large bumble-bee BUZZING loudly every five seconds BUZZING while I attempted to BUZZ read. You can see how BUZZING that kind of thing would BUZZ turn off a reader and prompt him to leave your site. Needless to say, I did not make it to the BUZZY BUZZ third or fourth page. BUZZ.
Fortunately for me, I'll no longer be BUZZ-BUZZ bothered by these ads, as I've installed BUZZZZZZZZZ ad block software into Firefox. To make up for the lost revenue, you might BUZZZ consider an issue of your print magazine that offers me an electric shock midway through each article, or BUZZINGLY screams out, "We don't respect our readers! Buy Pepsi!" whenever I try to turn the page.
Even as I type this into your contact form, the fly is up there just begging me to bail on this letter and leave the site forever. Why, what a fine way to screen your feedback! Thanks so much! Please don't cause my browser to make sound without warning and with no visible way to turn it off. You guys are better than this.
Sincerely,
Ryan
So, nothing starts the day off like a nice $45 parking ticket. Forty five dollars! Why, I could have bought 2 movie tickets for the cost of that parking ticket! I'd been ticket-free for 6 months, and slipped up despite the fact that I was awake early enough to have moved my beast of a car. Unfortunately for my wallet, I was distracted. I was glad to see that the street sweeper had actually come tracing its steamy tracks around the Granada's footprint. So I truly deserved the ticket.
I offer you a list of my top six pet peeves:
I'm pretty dissappointed with the design of the L.A. Parking Tickets site, but at least they offer a poorly designed interface for paying my ticket by web. I should really follow Erik Benson's example and sell my car, to start outsourcing all of my possessions.
Sixfoot6.com presents expermients in writing, design, photography, and hypertext. This weblog entry was posted by Ryan, the site's author.