Angie's CD Swap

Hey everyone else, sorry for doing this here, but my printer decided to stop working.

Keyboard Cat, Redux

These videos had been discussed the other day concerning their biggest flaw, which is the fact that they are all titled "Play them off, Keyboard Cat." And being how YouTube only displays a thumbnail of the exact middle of the video, most of them end up with just a picture of the cat. So what I am going to do here is make a little catalog of my favorites:

Dude vs Treadmill


Dude vs Himself


Pass Out Woman


Dude vs Flaming Dr. Pepper


Wine Lady


Time Square Toddler Punt


US American + The Iraq


TV Proposal


Family Religion Talk


Kid Scared


One of a Kind


Recoil


Light Fixture


Walker Texas Ranger


Vanity


Home Makeover

Venomed Such Words

Another night at home. I broke my spending fast today for some Oreo Cookies and a Watchamacallit for my wife. Its always a terrible thing to not have something sweet in the house. I never crave sweets but when I do, lord its something awful.

Everything in my body is begging me to go out. I know that there would be at least one person to talk to at Excuses. And even when I am not in the mood for talking, there is something vastly entertaining about sitting at the bar sipping on a beer, staring down a shot of Jameson, chain smoking cigarettes, scribbling illegible notes in my notebook, and watching Charm School or some extreme sports show, or, god forbid, like that one night where I sat at the bar and could not for like life of me tear my perpetual gaze away from that small (it was not even the big HD one) TV that played not once, but back to back "Miss Hooters USA" competitions (the same one, no fooling, and it was from 2007, I don't know why that was such a special year in the competitions storied past that they felt the need to replay it or why I in such a fit felt the need to rewatch it).

It sounds like someone is using a Hedge Trimmer on my corner. I know that it is the unending road construction coming from Carson Street, but that does not make it any less obnoxious.

I could just sit around here, finish reading the last two issues of Akira (Which for christ sake, I dont know why no one told me how much better and long and drawn out the graphic novel version one was in comparison to the film...the film is a little over two hours I think, but the freaking book is four six 300+ issues. For shite!), drink some of the beer we have, or maybe even wine...hell if I felt like it I could strain the rendered bacon fat off of the Bacon-Infused Bourbon I made saturday and give that a shot. A smoke would not be bad. But I really, really am trying to be a frugal and spendtrift as I can be. These smokes need to last me through the weekend and there are about sixteen left. I have about 70% of a package of Buglers tobacco, maybe 30 more papers, all as an eventual backup. It will come to that, I am sure of it.

Anyhow I am writing here because I am a little bit tired, a little bit restless, and a whole lot of thirsty for booze that I know that I should not drink if i want to wake up early enough to get some work done before I go to a really important bartending interview.

Frustration

I don't know why. but I do it to myself. Maybe we all do it. But there are these 'friends' that we have on Facebook that we are not, in any way, shape, or form, or cliche, or anything, whatsoever, friends with.

I keep asking myself why the hell is this person still on my contact list? Why must I be perpetually bombarded with his quasi-intellectual, snide conservative remarks about every time BHO (that is what they call Obama, just to have you know) wipes his nose the wrong way. It's torture and I cannot bring it upon myself to kick him. I don't know, I must get some pleasure from it. I do admit that I respond back occasionally to make a super sarcastic remark about things like why anyone would want the president of the united states to speak at their college graduation.

Anyhow I am going to illustrate my point about three items that can make you become an object of hate to others on Facebook. (All of which are enjoyed by this person in question).

1. Pictures of your baby instead of you. Not so much a big deal if we have been friends for a long time and such, but sitting at this moment in my inbox are about four different friend invitations from women who now have different last names then they did when I knew them 2-8 years ago, and every single one of them has a picture of their child instead of them. I have no idea who the hell they are. It just gets obnoxious. Make your kid a Facebook page and I will be friends with them too, but come on...


2. Propaganda. Facebook is a fun place to catch up with people you have not seen in a long time, or even just to be a part of peoples lives that you don't get the chance to be a part of due to distance, oceans, space etc. Its not a platform for which you should ejaculate your political, religious, or otherwise base values. Someone isn't going to like it, its going to make them uncomfortable. Friends don't let friends talk politics, religion, or buy music from Walmart.



3. Status Updates. This could be lumped in with the above, but fuck it. I like status updates that tell me what you are doing, where you are going, where you are going to be, how you feel at the moment and such. When you use them to state a very blatant opinion or to back up inane just dumb-fuck-ed-ness (new word, I made it) you should just be ashamed. That is what twitter is for, or Blogs. I don't know, I mean I don't write the rules on these things, but I guess that's how I feel. It seems like common courtesy, which is why we are all here, no? Oh well, I just needed to vent.



(ps - this final image is the first image I have ever edited with Photoshop, and though I know that it is not much, it is a minor achievement for me of which I am very proud.)

PIttsburgh

Oh how I adore the level of professionalism that is present.

The New York Times Reader 2.0

For anyone who is a fan of the New York Times, or news in general, and in specific of getting/reading/enjoying/sharing it online, I must say that I am a convert to the New York Times' new Reader.

You can download it right onto your desktop/dashboard; which works for Mac, PC, and Linux. Upon opening it, it will immediately download up to seven days of back issues which you can then read offline at your leisure. The only difference that I can see is that the offline version does not have the banner ads that the online one does. The implications of this are beautiful and brilliant. I only hope and pray that they translate it to the iPhone sooner rather than later.

User interface has always been a big problem with online newspapers, I feel. Whereas some people are inherently more comfortable clicking links and browsing articles that way, others (such as myself) enjoy reading an actual paper where the information and content that you stumble upon has more to do with page placement than relevance to the article. I believe you are allowed a more rounded view of events rather than such a pedantic one.

The Times Reader's interface is brilliant. I won't go so far to say that it translates like the Amazon Kindle to your eyes, but the font and shade are quite pleasant and newspaper-esque. You can read an article with your fingers on the directional keys, tapping up and down to go back and forth through the pages of an article, while hitting left or right to skim to the previous or next article. The reader also has a "browse" feature which allows you to zoom out of the articles and skim over headlines, page to page, before selecting a page to inspect closer. All together very well thought out and designed.

The only downside is that fact that it is not, like its online and day specific counterpart, free.

If you are already a home delivery subscriber (Like myself, even though I downgraded from Friday-Sunday to only Sunday once I got the Reader) The Reader is free to you. If you are not a subscriber, you can enjoy a thirty day preview for free, but then will be required to pay $2.75 a week, which for everything you are getting, is not too bad.

I think this is a very good step into a more organized online world of media, and I am glad that the Times pulled it off.

Keyboard Cat

Laughing Squid had a great post today concerning this keyboard cat trend. If you check it out you will get about eight different of these videos, though just searching youtube for 'keyboard cat' can do it as well. I laughed for a really long time. here is a taster.

To begin one last long look back.

It was only the reflections from my kitchen lights, but looking out the window it reminded me of the little paradise my father has spent the last twenty years or so building in his backyard. There was something a little inherent in the beauty there, not so much of looking out my window into the wet courtyards and rooftops of the Southside of Pittsburgh, but more so of that feeling of being really, really happy amidst the epic nothing of Little Rock, Arkansas.

It was such a happiness that it has inspired me to listen to that play-list on my phone so aptly titled "DO NOT LISTEN TO," which at one time held the moniker of "This Was New York." Inspiring seems like too weak of a word to use.

For anyone who is not on Facebook (You archaic loons, yea) I changed my status to read something like: "Ryan Reed has finally wiped the last traces of Microsoft from his life...the last partition on my Mac Pro being that which was filled with games, being the hardest..." I then go on to claim that some rediculously unreachable goal of creative productivity for myself.

I am going to stray, just to mention for a moment, The World of Warcraft and the role it has had on my move to Pittsburgh. Its just what I needed and just what I did not want. Moving into a new city in the deadest cold of a winter I could ever imagine (And I survived a winter in Ithaca, I will have you know) it was a great outlet to the frustrations that I felt in leaving a shitload of really damn good people and friends behind. WoW allowed me to reconnect with a number of the guys that I had passed up even before New York. I needed that comraderie. But as those games go, I put way too much of my attention into and sacraficed a lot of time that could have very well been spent not making excuses to my unproductivity. I needed it though. I do not regret that time. Mac Mercer, in particular, Sam Brown, and Matt Hoffine (Who doesnt fucking count because I still talk to that glorious bastard almost more than any two men need to talk - on which subject, don't even bring up Bush Williams) were all people that I needed for the long dark winter, colder still with the realization and actualization of the losses...blah blah blah. I needed it.

But we all grow up. We all learn that you should never end a sentence with a prepositional phrase. Its just something that happens, and when you grow up you learn to worry about the things you can change, and embrace the things that you cannot.

So distractions aside, its time to get to work.

As in a wake I will not let you, dear New York, dear, dear, Brooklyn fall by the wayside unrealized. I will give you a month, one month of the full realizations of what will probably end up being some of the best years of my life. Then, once I return from my trip to Little Rock (which should probably be near the Ides of June), I will never speak again a word of regret or longing towards that dirty old town (Little Rock? Memphis? Ithaca? My heart has reverberated in the halls of far too many towns to give any true weight to longing). But thats it.

Lets see what this old boy can do.

Vegetables (And a fruit or two)

I know that very few of you may find this interesting, but I was doing a little research (After Carrie kept ruining tomatoes by putting them in the refrigerator) trying to find out proper storage techniques for various veggies. I found one website that was rather helpful here. There are a few bits in there that I did not already know, which is helpful.