memories 6 Comments

Sesame Street Memories

Aaron and I were talking about how it’s so easy to spend an entire afternoon or evening on YouTube, just surfing from video to video in a particular genre.

I just spent two hours watching clips of Sesame Street, The Electric Company, 3-2-1 Contact, and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

I could go back and link to all my favorite stuff, but I think maybe you should just go and search on Sesame Street and see what you turn up. OK, I guess I do want to share a couple things…

  • The Sesame Street closing credits I remember best. I’d forgotten that Fridays had different closing credits than weekdays, and I’d forgotten all about Barkley.
  • I’ll Miss You, Mr. Hooper, where the grown-ups explain to Big Bird that Mr. Hooper isn’t coming back. (I’d always heard that it wasn’t long after this episode that David passed away, as well, but the cast had to explain it away, since they’d so recently had an episode about death. According to Wikipedia, though, Northern Calloway didn’t pass away until 1990.)

Everybody has their own favorite Sesame Street bits, but OMG. The King of Eight, the Ladybugs Picnic, the series on pollution (that totally freaked me out as a young child), the lost kid on the bicycle that passes all the crazy psychedelic shit, Bert doin’ the pigeon… Wow.

I am convinced that Sesame Street was and is quality television. I mean, the Electric Company clips I watched seemed kind of cheesy in that 70’s sort of way. The 3-2-1 Contact bits were actually OK, although they were initially meant for an older audience, anyway. But the Sesame Street bits pulled me in visually and with music, although some of the songs were pretty cheesy.

Oh, and did you know that a hurricane hit Sesame Street? Big Bird’s nest got all destroyed, and you can buy the DVD to see him deal with his loss and see how his friends help him rebuild his nest. Outside of the typically cheesy musical song-and-dance numbers, I think that kind of sums up one of the neatest aspects of Sesame Street: it takes real-life stuff that a kid might come across in his life, and has the grown-up characters explain it in kid terms. Death, hurricanes, holidays, the Beatles…

Buh-Buhbuh-Buh-Buhbuh, Letter B…

(Swear to god, I knew that version of the song long before I knew why it was funny.)

the ongoing saga of my job 1 Comment

So Long, Rob…

Well, it had to happen someday. Rob, of RCC Special Projects fame, finally got another job. Now he’ll get to drive up to Corporate in Toledo every weekday morning, wearing a shirt and tie, and do something fancy with government lending.

In tribute, I made sure the following photos were circulated around work today:


Clockwise, from upper left: Rob playing hookey on St. Paddy’s Day 2006; Rob wearing his Long John Silver’s hat, January 2005; Rob with hockey great Steve Yzerman, Oct/Nov 2005; and Rob eating a piece of shortcake in one bite, July 2005.

I’m not knocking the remaining members of my department… but it’s going to be a lot less festive without Rob there. There are a very few people I feel I can really be myself around — the REAL me, not the fake chatty work me — and he’s one of those few. Honestly, I don’t understand why REAL chicks (read: intelligent, witty, cool, non-fluffs) aren’t beating down his door. Except for maybe his over-the-top cheesy phone voice. 😉

We had a going-away potluck today, and I insisted on taking more pictures of Rob than he would have liked. So, to share with the entire internets:


Rob ended up bequeathing me one of his umbrellas (because I always borrow it when I walk over lunch) and his Long John Silver’s hat (presumably because he already has two at home, but mainly because of the above photo from 2005). Note that the hat not only looks stylish on me, but also now has a hallowed spot on my cubicle wall.

Without getting all mushy and shit… damn, work is really starting to suck on the interpersonal front. If James and Heather quit, that’ll do it for me. I’ll fucking quit and have a kid and do freelance work or something from home.

randomness

I Feel Violated.

Someone is using my schnuth.com e-mail address — which currently forwards to my gmail account — as a return address for spam. I’ve gotten at least four autoreplies today — no, make that five, as another one just came in — from various recipients, including Yahoo Groups and other mailing lists.

This pisses me off on so many levels. Now I have to wonder if my schnuth.com address will be spamblocked on some random server when I try to send an e-mail sometime in the future. I’ve also run Spybot and Norton Antivirus on my computer to make sure nothing’s hijacked my Outlook Express that I never use. I figure that someone probably just forged their headers in reverse, using their spam recipient list as a perfect source for reply-to addresses.

Bastards.

What pisses me off the most is that the genie’s out of the bottle now. I can’t go and tell all these people and mailing lists, “Sorry, but some spammer is using my e-mail address to spam you. It’s not really me!” Whatever. If some unfortunate result comes of this… *shrug* There’s nothing really to be done about it.

At least I don’t use that address very much anymore.

otaku 1 Comment

SITACon Group Photo


[Posted on Flickr by Happy House of Hentai]

I used to be the person who stood way in the back of group pictures and was never seen. When did I become this person who declares, “OK, I’ll pretend to be a short person and get in the front!”

Left to right: Scott and Rym from the Geek Nights podcast; me; Andrew Corbin, con chair; Martin Leung, Video Game Pianist; Aaron (from the Weekly Anime Review Podcast, of course); and Hello Kitty and Lord Kaosu from the Happy House of Hentai.

writing 10 Comments

In Lieu Of NaNoWriMo

I now have two unfinished stories — at least two, that is — which I think are worth finishing. One I began in 1999, and one I began officially during last year’s National Novel Writing Month, although I had the ideas brewing for a couple of years before that. I also have… *counting* …twelve unfinished stories and one complete short story.

The last thing I need is to start a new project for NaNoWriMo.

If I’d ever successfully “won” NaNoWriMo — that is, written 50,000 words during the month of November — I could invoke the Zokutou Clause, which states:

You have to start your novel from scratch, unless you are a previous NaNoWriMo winner. If you have already attained the status of Winner, you do not need to start a new novel, as your main aim is now to finish one. You can now consider yourself a winner if, by midnight on the 30th of November, you have either:

  1. Written 50,000 words on one or more previous works.
  2. Completed your novel’s first draft.

I have, however, not written the requisite 50,000 words in one month, so I do not qualify.

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
14,681 / 50,000
(29.4%)

So, this November, I intend to work on last year’s NaNoWriMo story. I’ve found a sturdy little piece of software to help me write my “story bible”; in fact, it’s already helped me locate one continuity error in the 32 pages (1.5-spaced, not double-spaced) that I’ve written so far.

My plan is to research where my characters hail from, discover their individual backgrounds, and figure out precisely how a team of vampires can capture and kill an incubus without seriously injuring themselves. Hopefully, by the end of November, I will at least have enough backstory figured out so that I can continue writing without worrying about the details that form the basis of the intrigue.

Don’t be surprised if I come to you for help, like I have in the past. I suck at dialogue, which is only a symptom of my general social ineptitude, so I’ll be needing some guidance along the way.