Many of you might be aware that I quit my job a little over two months ago to persue a life of leisure.

There are many reasons why I finally walked away from my job of five years, but they really aren’t important to anyone other than myself. The big thing that a lot of you who come in contact with me on a regular basis is that I feel like a new human being.

No more stress over factors that irked me to no end that I had no control over; no more false senses of urgency; no more working insane hours. It’s like heaven!

I gotta tell you, for the first month all I really did was sit around and watch the games of the World Cup. Sure, I cleaned the house like a madman just because I didn’t know what else to do with my idle time, but I got to see almost every game live. That’s a big first for me.

Then, when The Cup ended, I had to start thinking a little more long term. I took a little bit of time to finalize some projects that I had been freelancing on prior to quitting, but, with all this extra time, that happened really quickly.

I finally caught up on my five week backlog of comic books. Believe me, for my insane habit, five weeks is a crap load of books.

I got to play a video game for two days straight. I know that’s horribly hedonistic, but it was pretty damn awesome for me.

I bleached my hair and finally got my right lobe pierced to match the left one that had been pierced for the past twenty years (it’s the little things that working for “The Man” make you really appreciate).

I slowed way down on my smoking (I’m not going to say I’ve quit until I haven’t had a single smoke for three months and I’m not doing that hot towards that goal these days), and I started to aggressively attack a “Couch-to-5K” program. If all goes as planned, I start week four day one tomorrow morning.

This lack of day-to-day responsibility has got me feeling more centered than I have felt in a very long time. I’m less grumpy, anxious, sleepy (and other dwarfs as well) and I actually feel more healthy (except for the blasted summer cold I’m nursing right now).

And, because I can’t stay idle for too long, a friend and I have started a company to book Dallas-area bands (visit ManhandlerBooking.comfor more details). This will help me turn my habit/fascination with live music into a productive endeavor without having to expose anyone to my horrible horrible musical skills. I mean it. There’s a reason I do the vocal parts of Rock Band while squeezle is out of the house. There are just a few people who have been exposed to my dabbling in karaoke who are still alive to tell the tale. It’s just badness.

Unfortunately, the one thing I really intended to do over the past two months, but really haven’t gotten around to is write. I’ve been so lax with this blog that I probably need to get in here and scrub off a goodly layer of dust and mold before proceeding.

So, here’s the deal. I’ve got more to say and I’m hoping you folks are still willing to read it. I can’t promise any of it will be heady or substantive, but it will, at the very least, give you a little brain break for part of your day.

To quote something a very wise man said upon being woken on the couch: “My mind is a sewer, and I live in a cardboard box.”

P.S. For all of you worried about that mouse up there at the top of my post, don’t worry. He’s suspended in a PFC solution, so he’s just fine.

There isn’t much in the world more interesting, at least to me, than subversion and secret societies. I’m not sure if it’s because I grew up in the waning years of the Cold War or that my love of history just took a random tangential turn somewhere when I was around thirteen, but the mysterious little things people do for reasons known only to themselves (world domination, free internet, kittens & porn…) fascinates me incredibly.

I’m sure I’ll end up writing several postings about the hows and whats of me becoming obsessed with the Illuminati and the Discordian Society, but this one is even more tangential.

I high school (when my obsession du jour was cyberpunk) I read a novel by Jonathan Littell called Bad Voltage. It had some pretty interesting concepts presented in it, but what really stuck with me was the presentation of the cataphiles who explore and organize mischief/mayhem/productivity in the catacombs underneath Paris.

Bad Voltage) made it even more enticing by putting a couple of maps of the catacombs in the front of the book and then proceeded to explain how it was illegal to go into the catacombs. How do you get a teenager excited about doing something? Tell him it’s verboten.

Most recently a gentleman who I am mildly acquainted with by the name of Sean Michaels spent some amount of time doing research on the catacombs and a seemingly clandestine secret society known as Urban eXperiences. Sean put his research and experiences into an incredible read for the literary journal BRICK.

Read this article as soon as you can.

What Sean uncovered is stuff you can’t make up. It was like reading a shortened version of Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum. It’s got mystery it’s got intrigue, it’s got secret(ish) societies and a wildly interesting mystery man/men.

After you’ve read the article, email it to a friend. Hell, email it to your entire address book. The Atlantic originally commissioned a shorter version of this article, but killed it. They are utter morons.

Now I just need an acetylene lamp and a ticket to Paris.

Yeah, so I’ve been a little lax in the writing these past few weeks, but I’ve got a good (if not lazy) excuse. Ladies and gentlemen, it is World Cup time!

Typically a large majority of Americans have to be reminded that this grand culmination of the FIFA championship is going on. This year, however, a couple of factors have conspired to bring the World Cup to the attention of Americans.

The first of those factors are the two goals that FIFA officials robbed the US team of in the first round of play. Nothing unifies Americans faster than the thought that we are getting screwed over by some foreigner. That combined with the general hatred of referees in any sport and you’ve suddenly got Joe Six-Pack talking about the World Cup with his buddies on their bass boat.

The second, and way more important, factor has been the ever-present drone of the vuvuzela.

Never before has a two dollar piece of mold-injected plastic generated such a buzz (see what I did there?) on such a grand scale. Broadcasters have had to create new audio filters to cancel out some of the noise, whiny players (I’m looking at you Cristiano Ronaldo) have complained that is breaks up the players’ focus and doctors have been all over the media warning about potential hearing loss due to the 144 decibels these little monsters can pump out.

At first I really didn’t think twice about the hub-bub. It was kind of nice having something to distract from the inane commentary while I watched the first round of matches.  After the third day of three-match-a-day footie (and yes, I’ve been watching every single match), I just began ignoring them.

Then I tried watching an MLS match.

The play was good, I had beer and grilled meats, but something was missing. That’s right, I wasn’t enjoying my footie because it didn’t have the constant drone of the vuvuzela. In just one week I had been turned into Pavlov’s bitch.

Lucky for me, however, I had a variety of means at my disposal for faking that vuvuzela feeling. The easiest was to just get on the internet and download an mp3 of the buzz. Next, I hopped into the iTunes app store and found a couple of free apps that filled my need (plus it’s a great app for confusing people in bars).

So, damn the naysayers. I can understand banning vuvuzelas at events like Wimbledon and the US Open, but these plastic horns are here to stay. Besides, I’ve been seeing them at high school and college football games for years.

Haters gonna hate.

For the past couple of days I’ve been up in the mountains of New Mexico breathing clean air (a novel concept for most Dallasites) and tromping around at an elevation that would give most Texans vertigo.

I’m not sure if it was the hypoxia or the ethereal creativity that seems to float around in the air like the damn cottonwood fluff is right now, but ideas seemed to come to me pretty easily while I was slacking off. It might have also been a type of vision quest brought on by the sheer amounts of chile (red and green) that I consumed over the three day period. Either way, I don’t care.

The first of my ideas that I was really excited to commit to paper was my ace in the hole: a treatment for a television pilot that would be a guaranteed grand-slam. A cross-cultural buddy cop dramedy hit that has the potential to change the way the world looks at itsself: “Hyde & Sikh.”

The concept is pretty simple; in a freak accident, Dr. Henry Jekyll is transported from Victorian England to the 1970’s stuck in his Mr. Edward Hyde transformation. After wandering the Earth (like Caine) for more than a decade, Hyde settles in San Francisco and joins the police force. After quickly making detective, Hyde is partnered with the new hotshot transfer from Hong Kong by way of Punjab: Vikram Gony. Together they are Hyde and Sikh: dispelling prejudices and squashing crimes in the Bay Area.

The episodes practically write themselves.

For the past couple of years, squeezle and I have spent our Memorial Day weekend in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We are big fans of Santa Fe (read that as “we like to drink and eat a lot in Santa Fe, NM”), and we try and make a trip at least once a year to relax, throw the munch at some of our favorite restaurants on the planet, and spend money on art that one would usually not expect to be showcased in Santa Fe.

In fact, the Memorial Day Weekend is when we travel to Santa Fe for a very special event. No, it’s not Pancakes on the Plaza (which falls on July 4th and is pretty damn awesome), rather, it’s POP Gallery’s POP Femme Sugar Coated Strange opening and reception. Squeezle and I have been incredibly impressed with Michael and Sharla McDowell’s little shack of wonders since they opened it back in 2007. We had known both of them from their work with the Chuck Jones Gallery in Santa Fe, so we were both delighted that they cut out on their own to showcase artists and works that were more in line with their own tastes, and, subsequently, ours.

One of the best things about the Sugar Coated Strange show is that it really bucks the mentality of a typical art gallery “opening.” Sure, there are loads and loads of fabulous pieces of art, patrons swigging back glasses of champagne, but where it differs is that it really seems to be more like a reunion than an opening.

While this year’s show is just the third, it seems like it’s been going on for just about forever. Squeezle and I have been fortunate enough to meet a gaggle of very talented artists and really get a better feeling of where their art really comes from.

One of my favorite things about this show is that it involves artists who do an incredible amount of “crossover” work into the realm of vinyl and resin toys (one of my other obsessions), as well as other media. See if you recognize some of these names: Kathie Olivas (and, by proxy, Brandt Peters), CJ Metzger, Miss Mindy and (former Dallasite) Marie Sena.

Squeezle and I have purchase multiple pieces from each of these artists and consider ourselves very lucky to have had the opportunity to have met them and spent some time chewing the fat.

All-in-all, it’s a party with just about everything I love about a nice chill weekend. It’s got booze, it’s got green chile, it’s got art, it’s got friends and it even has tattoos (Marie is an incredible tattooist as well as an incredible artist). If you throw in a soccer match, I’d think I had died and gone to heaven.

What I’m saying is that you should go to Santa Fe and definitely go to POP Gallery. At the very least, spend some time with their website and pick out a piece or dozen you’d like to add to your collection. What, you don’t have a collection? Well, it’s high time you got in touch with Michael and Sharla to get one started for you.

If you’re there on Memorial Day Weekend, let me know and I’ll buy you a beer.

There is a special place in my heart for the relationship between the microwave oven and the potato. Such an innocuous combination was responsible for the beginning of an amazing friendship and the formation of the Forkers.

With that in mind, I approached the melding of microwaves and starchy tuber after reading Savory Sweet Life’s article on “How To Make Potato Chips In The Microwave” for a new approach on things to make with potatoes in a magnetron environment.

Unlike most endeavors I undertake, I actually wanted to follow the instructions on this one. The last thing I needed to do on a lazy Sunday afternoon was to have to explain to squeezle why and how I’d managed to blow up the kitchen and set the microwave on fire. I realize most modern microwaves are smarter than I am, but I’ve been very wary of them since the incident I had with the microwave that was in our house when we first bought it that operated just fine with the door open. It took one good burn on my hand to figure out that I probably wasn’t smart enough to operate that particular machine.

We’ve since replaced that oven (a couple times, I think), and our current microwave presented me with a few “challenges” when approached from the chip-makers perspective.

First and foremost, the instructions say to turn off the rotation in your oven if it does that. Since mine rotates and doesn’t have the ability to disable the rotation, I pulled out the gigantic glass tray and elevated it using some prep bowls to inhibit the rotations. From there I was able to follow the instructions: putting down parchment paper, covering the paper in thinly sliced potatoes (thank you scary mandolin cutter), spraying the mess with cooking spray and applying a sprinkle of sea salt.

Now came the scary part. I was about 50/50 convinced that the microwave was going to implode when run for five minutes with not much other than a quarter of a potato and a sheet of paper in it. To my surprise, it did not. What it also did not do, however, was crisp up those chips. I had to add an additional two and a half minutes to the time in order to get crispy chips with the stationary setup. It was vitally important to monitor the chips after the first three minutes because they all pretty much cooked at different rates.

For the second run (you honestly don’t get that many chips down in a standard-sized microwave), squeezle suggested I yoink out the elevator bowls and let the stupid oven rotate. This worked infinitely better than the stationary chips. After about three minutes, chips were crisping up and my speed to delivery (aka, squeezle’s belly) was way faster.

One potato about the size of a pint glass generated four and a half runs through the microwave and a pretty normal serving size to go with sammiches that squeezle made for dinner. We were about to embark on a second potato, but figured the oven could use a bit of a rest since the glass tray was close to lava hot and the kitchen reeked of potato steam.

That being said, I found it a bit too easy to make these chips. They were a snap to make and remarkably tasty. Usually when I set out on a “project” such as this, I make a huge mess and usually end up hurting myself or causing some sort of trouble that I, then, have to resolve.

None of that was true with this. Even with my liberal applications of cooking spray (a potential for me seriously injuring myself in a plethora of ways), nothing bad happened. I didn’t start any fires, I didn’t cut myself on the razor-sharp mandolin, and I didn’t leave the kitchen looking like the Swedish Chef had done a guest spot.

I guess there is always next time.

As many of you know, April Fool’s Day also coincides with my birthday. I’m sure many of you who weren’t previously “in the know” are now smacking your heads and thinking “that explains so much.”

That’s right, every time Mr. T utters “I pity the fool” he’s talking about me.

The life of a fool is relatively simple. People don’t expect much out of us, so we traipse through this world unawares of the dangers that await us at every turn: a.k.a. life.

Generally I avoid overt April Fool’s pranks since everyone expects them from me. It’s a lot funnier to have people wait in suspense for a punchline that never comes than to cave into expectations and actually do something stupid that people can say “I expected that from you” for.  Some of my best pranks come in the “off season,” well away from my accepted day of glory.

In fact, the last really good April Fool’s prank I pulled was way back when I was a kid and taped down the sprayer handle on the kitchen sink; soaking my mother when she came in to wash something off.

That is, until this year.

The most important thing to remember when pulling off an epic prank is that everyone expects it on April first. The key is to lay down the groundwork several days, if not a week, in advance. On top of that, an epic prank is subtle in its nature rather than right up in your face. If executed correctly, the epic prank could stay in place for weeks or even months before discovered.

The poster to the right is my prank of the decade. (click to see a bigger version).

Around my office we have a fair number of multi-function printing devices. They print, they scan, they even copy and collate all of your documents in a zippy-quick fashion. They are part of everyone’s mundanity yet just a little mysterious. That is what makes them ripe for the pranking.

I’d like to say that my prank was an original idea, but I stole the basis of it from a picture I saw on the internets of a similar sign put on an HP printer/copier. It’s always good to give credit where credit is due.

The pieces I needed to put my prank into action were simply a copy of photoshop, a list of model numbers for the MFP’s we use around here, a SHARP logo and a small illustration of the said device. The rest is creative genius.

The important thing to remember is that most people in an office are conditioned to respond to “official” looking documents. By putting a notice at the top of the poster demanding that the poster get posted and putting something mystical like a QRcode, a document number and, most importantly, a revision date on it, I effectively made this poster a missive from the copier gods. By using clever shapes and multiple colors, I lure the observer into thinking that important people took hours and hours to make sure this document was as clear and concise as possible so the observer would understand the cryptic instructions as easily as possible.

All that’s left to do is print up a couple of these and post them near the devices.

I typically get into work at least 30 minutes before most everyone, so wandering around to the various printer/copy stations with a pile of papers and a roll of tape was a breeze. Quite actually, having these signs show up when you aren’t around actually lends to the official-ness of it.

The ultimate kicker is that I actually signed this “document” in two places. See if you can find them.

This one is for Markoff Chaney.

I suck at Skee-Ball. There, I’ve said it. I also suck at most carnival-related game (even though all of them are fixed in one manner or another), so I had little hope for Iconfactory and DS Media Labs’ little torture device of an iPhone/iTouch game Ramp Champ.

I’ve been a fan of Iconfactory for a whole mess of years, so the game caught my eye when I was looking for a new time waster a few months ago. I played it a couple of times and then jumped right back to my standby of Bejewelled to numb my brain. A couple of weeks ago, however, I came back to Ramp Champ. I had it in my head that I could earn a few more trophies (three are available per “ramp”) and maybe even earn enough tickets to buy some cool in-game trinkets.

Did I mention I suck at games like this? To date, I have one trophy each in the four ramps that come standard with the game: Clown Town, Breakwater Bay, Space Swarm and the Icon Garden. Wait, I have two in the Icon Garden now (I got you, you bastard Moof). Anyhoo, my lack of being any good at the standard ramps made me venture into some of the expansion ramps that are typically available for a pittance in order to expand my trophy collection. Not only do the new ramps come with new trophies, but they also come with new crap you can buy with your virtual tickets. Sure, it all just ends up being dusty pixels on dusty pixelized shelves, but who am I to laugh in the face of reward-based instant gratification?

The coolest thing about Ramp Champ is the huge variety of little targets that pop up after being knocked down in a certain order. In Grave Danger, for example (part of a Halloween expansion that I just wasn’t going to say no to), depending on which tombstones you knock down determines what pops up. Kill the three tiny stones with crescent moons on them and a moon appears. Hit the moon and a full moon appears along with three wolves. It’s Skee-Ball, so you get nine chances to get all the points you can muster, so I’ve not managed to see what happens past knocking all wolves down.

The real secret is to figure out a way to knock down multiple targets with a single ball. It’s tricky as hell, but there are certain techniques (I like to think) that maximize the potential for double and triple target clearance.

I’ve spent 45 minute jags just doing round after round after round trying to uncover new sections of a ramp while getting so infuriatingly frustrated that I really wanted to throw my phone across the room. To me, that’s the sign of a damn good game. Despite the fact that a trained chimp could probably score thousands of points more than me, I’m not giving up on Ramp Champ.

Every couple of weeks my email inbox gets bombarded by offers of contract employment in strange and far off cities. I just about always check out where the job is in case I know someone that direction who might be interested (referral cash is as good as free money), but I generally just click the delete button and send these offers off into the ether to be recycled as ads for penis enlargement or lap band surgery.

Today, however, I got a contract offer for the one place I never thought I’d see in a contract employment email: Sunnydale, California. For the uninitiated, Sunnydale is the “town” where Buffy the Vampire Slayer takes place. Sunnydale is renowned for being a Hellmouth: a location of increased supernatural energies and basically serves as a portal between Earth and Hell.

Imagine my surprise to get a job offer there. For the seven seasons Buffy the Vampire Slayer ran on television (not to mention all the Buffy comic books I’ve read), Sunnydale as spit out baddie after baddie to terrorize the general populace and generally cause much mirth and mayhem.

Now the big question. Would I want to work there?  Even though the contract is only for a couple of months doing UI development (User Interface for you non-technical types), the thought of being smack dab (not sand dabs. Look it up) near the Hellmouth has some serious potential. At the very least I could team up with the local Scoobies (you know they exist) and hang out picking on weird homeless people after beers (or whatever they served) at the Bronze.

Wait a minute, that job was in Sunnyvale, CA and not Sunnydale, CA? Screw that.

I think often about getting out of the Information Technology business. As I sit here typing this out today, my left hand is, once again, trussed up like a Victorian strumpet thanks to mysterious wrist pain.

Too many video games? Too much masturbation? No, I think this actually came from working; and by work I mean typing out hundreds of lines of code.

I think I’d much rather do something more creative. I’ve expressed a wee tiny bit of creative talent that, with proper nurturing and education, could develop into something “real.” I get all jazzed up and try doing my little illustration projects that take tons of effort with minimal result and then I get the proverbial “smack in the face” by looking at other people’s creative work. Work that looks beautiful and effortless and comes with that incredible natural talent that, seemingly, cannot be taught.

Joby Cummings is just the latest artist to make me feel this way. I first was drawn to Joby’s work in tattooing (he’s out at Freak Chic in Los Angeles for those in the area), but then found his design and illustration work.

Holy crap he makes me ill. Take the image I stole from him for this post (available as both a printand a kickass shirt on his website). Have you figured it out yet? Those filigreed ribbons don’t just make a skull, they also spell out the classic seven deadly sins. How sick is that? You know you have to have one of those.

Joby’s even got a hotshot solo show at EM & Costarting up this week. I’d love to go to the opening reception on Thursday night, but my Learjet is in the shop. Plus, I think the Pope may swing by my place on Thursday to get his ass kicked at Wii.

I’ll just take my crayons and go cry in the corner.