The Taste Will Move You, Young Wizard

I made another video.

love

I am in love with salami sandwiches-- sopressata, miracle whip, Swiss cheese, and lettuce on Italian sesame-seed crust bread.

I am in love with Maria Sharapova. Seriously, Maria, let's stop this charade. Call me. I love you.

I am in love with Morton Feldman's second string quartet. The whole thing.


Figure 12: Awww, don't cry, Maria. Here, let me fix you a salami sandwich, we can share it while we listen to Morton Feldman together.




Love, Matt

Beanizza? Beazza? Fuck it, it's a pizza with beans on it.

1. Get an oven pizza. The cheap kind that doesn't totally suck.
2. Have a friend who makes huge vats of beans and get some beans from him.
3. Put some beans on your pizza.
4. Shred some cheese on there too.
5. Cook it (enough to make the crust hard enough to not fold under the weight of the beans), and then put spices on it, and hot sauce.
6. Eat most of it, but save some for tomorrow.

Tomorrow's recipe:
Something involving cut-up leftover beanizza and probably an avocado.

(Don't even think about telling me this is "Mexican pizza." That is hella insulting to Mexicans.)

man this really didn't turn out as funny as I thought it would

A while back me and my buddy RJ made this boom-boom song, recorded live with naught but a 707, some effects pedals, a mixer, and a mic. I had this idea to turn it into a hilarious video that would become a youtube sensation.

Figure 12: The Roland TR-707, Perpetrator of Mad Beats


I made the video, allright, but it's not hilarious at all. It seems like something a 5th grader would make. But god damn if I'm not proud of it anyhow. So here it is.

always something there to remind me

It seems like everywhere I turn I see your face. I miss you. I miss the times we had. Remember? Nowadays I see you with so many other people, and I just want to grab these other people by the shoulders, and look them in the eye, and tell them to cherish you. I want to tell them, "you have no idea how lucky you are." I want to say, "no, you have no fucking clue. Cherish, for the love of God, cherish every second you spend together."

And you know what's the worst? God help me, but the last time we said goodbye, I said I hated you. I said that, and I have to live with that forever. I know you knew I didn't really feel that way, but I have a lifetime ahead of me to think about how that was the last thing I said to you before the Lord took you away from me. If there was some way I could get in a time machine, or harness the power of lightning to bring you back, just for one moment, I would do anything. Anything. But you're gone. You're gone and soon enough I will think about you less. Eventually I won't even care about you anymore, and that is the saddest of all.

Don't go softly into that dark night, Smoking, don't you dare!

livin' the dream

The Boss once asked "is a dream still a dream if it don't come true?"

I had a dream I bought some chocolate covered pretzels. It's not often you can make a dream come true so easily as this dream. I am gonna buy some chocolate covered pretzels.


Figure 12: This, my friends, is what dreams are made of:


I am living the dream.
I have become the dream.

so sayeth the boss...

You can't start a fire...
You can't start a fire without a spark.
This gun's for hire...
even if we're just dancing in the dark.

R.I.P.

You can't pretend quitting smoking isn't tragic. Smoking was your buddy and your companion for a long time. It's not like it isn't sad to see it go. You gotta mourn it. You gotta admit to yourself that smoking was awesome, and that you will miss smoking. You gotta comisserate and say smoking will always kind of be a part of you. It will always be there up in heaven, looking down on you and kind of watching your back, like your grandma, or like Jesus, or like Yoda, Anakin, and Obi-Wan. It is the great consolation but also the great tragedy that life goes on without smoking. All things must pass.

...else your sandwich ain't a sandwich

I love Miracle Whip. When I was a kid I thought Miracle Whip was a brand of mayonnaise. It wasn't until I was in middle school I learned they were different. The only places I'd have mayonnaise was places like school, or friends' houses. I just thought my schools and my friends' parents had shitty mayonnaise that tasted weird. Then when I was in middle school is when Subway started up. I would go there and get a Cold Cut Combo (I have since changed my Subway jam to the Spicy Italian, largely based on my intense love for salami) and I would always think their mayonnaise must suck too, but nobody agreed with me, and finally I realized that mayonnaise isn't supposed to taste like Miracle Whip. I don't even get why they are compared, they are totally different in everything but color and texture and application and... oh wait, I guess I do get why they are compared. Mayonnaise is far more famous, at least on the internet, but to me Miracle Whip is so much better. In my older age I like mayonnaise too now. But still, gimme Miracle Whip any day. I wish they had Miracle Whip at Subway. Why don't they have Miracle Whip at Subway? God damnit, why not?

I heard there are fancy kinds of salami. I think I might go to the Italian market and get some, and some bread, and make some salami sandwiches with Miracle Whip. Oh god that is what I am gonna do. I will ride my bike. Bye!

New Leaves: I am turning some over

It is sort of cheating, because I am sick, but still, I haven't smoked in 5 days. So I stole that counter up there on your right from my bro's blog and customized it a bit and now it is there to keep me honest.

Also my terrible disintegrating foot is almost back to normal. Besides putting various creams and salves and poultices on it, I have been actually cleaning my bathroom a lot. I guess that again is cheating, because it was also motivated by disease. But still, I am liking it, and getting positive reviews from female friends, so I think I will keep it up.

But not everything is disease-motivated. I have been keeping my kitchen clean too. I mopped it twice in the same month. For real. Believe it. It's because I want to turn over a new cooking leaf, and cooking just seems so much easier if you have a kind of clean kitchen to cook in. This horrible fucking cold makes me never want to eat anything ever, but as soon as it's gone I am gonna hit that kitchen hard and make just the nastiest shit you ever heard of and write about it in here. Just nasty shit, like Peanut Butter and Jelly Omelets (I didn't make that one up, my dad did) and Pickle-n-Bacon Sandwiches with Miracle Whip (this is only theoretical, I hope to have a beta version early next week).

I took a cue from one of my main doggs and started riding my bike around, too, taking it to the train and taking combinations of bike/bus/train to get places free (I get a free bus pass from my school) and get exercise too. I think when I get my six hundo check I'm gonna go buy a bike that isn't a pile of shit. Maybe something like this one, but probably something more like this one. Gotta do some test rides. Apparently I am already reaping the health benefits, because even though I've been getting concerned about my growing beer gut, some little kid in a school bus yelled at me on my bike yesterday "Hey skinny boy, you sure go awful slow!" What do you say to that? That's like half a compliment, half an objective statement of truth. It put a smile on my face that lasted a couple blocks, but then some mean nasty ugly bitch in a huge SUV laid on her horn at me because she was pissed she had to wait til some mean nasty ugly dickhead in another giant SUV passed in the oncoming lane before she could go around my lil' bike. I gave her the meanest glare I could muster, and damned myself for not having the ability to ride handless, since I wanted to give her the double finger instead of the single. Whatchu gonna do.

God damnit I'm getting real fucking sick of being real fucking sick

Figure 12: My meat is waxing loathsome (bottom right)


If Flegme abundance haue due limits past,
These signes are here set downe will plainly shew,
The mouth will seeme to you quite out of taste,
And apt with moisture still to overflow,
Your sides will seeme all sore downe to the waist,
Your meat wax loathsome, your digestion slow,
Your head and stomacke both in so ill taking,
One seeming euer griping tother aking:
With empty veynes, the pulse beat slow and soft,
In sleepe, of seas and ryuers dreaming oft.

the sexual revolution: I don't buy it

Man, fuckin' ex-hippies are so self-congratulatory. They think they invented sex. And the concept of personal freedom. They didn't even invent being too lazy to find out all the people who did the same shit before they did. People have been fucking, feeling free, and being lazy since the dawn of time, I bet. That's what I bet. I'm no historian. But I do sometimes see a few seconds of a history channel documentary, and I usually come away pissed off at ex-hippies taking responsibility for basic facts of human existence. They didn't even invent sex the way George Washington Carver invented the peanut. They didn't even invent sex the way Newton invented gravity. They maybe invented sex like Steak-n-Shake invented the steakburger. Maybe.

I'm sick, and also I have athlete's foot real bad

God damnit. Shit. Fuck, this sucks. I feel like shit. God damnit. My foot is disintegrating, too.
Fuck.
Shit.
Damnit.


Fuck.

I Hate Al & Dan; I Love the Future

I was watching the Cardinals game today and I just reached a point where I couldn't take it anymore. During an exciting game, Al and Dan (the FSN midwest announcers for the Cards) were just blabbering on about their T-shirts and their cats and shit. I hate them! I hate listening to them! It's all blabbering until something vaguely bad happens, then it's Dan bitching like a fifth-grade jilted boyfriend. Then it's Al saying something vaguely almost goofy and Dan acting like it was the weirdest thing ever, and totally sucking Al's cock over it for the next ten minutes. Fuck those guys. I mean, I'm sure they're nice people and I don't hate them as people, they are just fucking awful announcers. At the beginning of each game I pray to the gods that this thing will happen more where the audio feed gets fucked up and you only hear the sounds of the game without any announcers. Gods, please make this happen more than once in a blue moon. It is the most glorious. It is the most high. It is the most exalted. Baal, Crom, Jesus, Mormon, come to my aid. Make this happen.

The future has allowed me, through mlbtv, to understand how truly bad our announcers are. I have watched games from all over the league, and I'd say ours and the Diamondbacks' TV announcers are the very bottom of the barrel.

(Who's the best, you ask? Vin Scully. Joe Morgan and Jon Miller. Joe Buck even, and Tim McCarver. The dudes who do the WGN cubs games, I don't know their names.)

But the future, bless its little heart, has also allowed me to do this: I hooked up a little radio's headphone output into my computer, into Logic (an audio recording program), through about 10 seconds' worth of delay (the most I could get from a delay plug-in), then bussed through about half that delay over again to match FSN's unreasonably long broadcast delay, then through the living room stereo. This way I could mute out the TV and listen to our radio announcers, Mike Shannon (awesome) and John Rooney (fucking sucks hard, but at least better than Al & Dan), whose broadcast is in real time. Thank the gods for the future. Thank the gods for the one good announcer in this city. Thank the gods for computers. Also thank the gods for love, and for cute animals like platypusses and guinea pigs, and also thank the gods for the enduring miracle of the overtone series. That shit blows my mind. I'm sure I'm forgetting some stuff. The world is full of things to be thankful for. Thank you.

There's more than one good web comic!

I've spent a lot of time trying to find another worthwhile webcomic to compete with Achewood. Sure, you got your Garfield minus Garfield which can be funny or even downright revelatory. Sure, you got comic-related things like that hilarious dude who writes about Marmaduke. And of course these internets are always great for archives of old classic print comics like Krazy Kat. But until last week, nothing else really scratched the web-comic itch for me.

Figure 12: A Funny Comic from Brad Neely's Creased Comics



Well I have found an answer in Creased Comics. It doesn't have the story arcs and character development of an Achewood, but it has the one-off genius of the old Far Side. Also it explores a wider emotional range, from the plain old hilarious, to the tragic-yet-funny, to the confusing-in-a-hilarious-way, to the utterly baffling-but-amusing, to the plain old heart-wrenching-why-would-he-do-this-to-me-I-just- wanted-something-to-laugh-at-in-this-cruel-world.

Plus Brad Neely's other stuff is funny too-- Professor Brothers (here is a good place to start), a couple other cartoons (you can watch a lot of them here), Wizard People Dear Reader (here's the first chapter synched up, and then you'll probably just want to download the mp3s and rent the DVD and have yourself a time). Go ahead, check it out, be not disappointed.

this is a city of crime

(don't step out of line)



It somehow warms my heart that there are little cultural tidbits like this that even now, even today, in the middle of the future, with wireless signals buzzing around our heads like golden flying moths, with text-to-landline technology threatening to make us laugh at even the saddest of phone messages, with flying cars just around the corner, with five hundred reaction videos to a single shock site, that the only internet representation of this horrible, horrible disfiguration of "rap" music by one-and-a-half respected American actors is a shitty VHS rip with catastrophically unsynched sound. Somewhere in my heart, nestled between fond memories of Honey Nut Cheerios at Grandma's house and hidden flames for older professors, between the aorta and the left ventricle, there is a closet Luddite jamming up my arteries. This is a city of crime. Don't step out of line.

The slow movement of Beethoven's fifth symphony

Shitty Food For Shitty People Makes Good

Episode 12: My bros are in town

[start theme music]
[montage of the city skylines of San Francisco and Denver]
[stock footage of airplanes flying/landing]
[montage of St. Louis city scenes]
[clip of the Patterson-Gimlin sasquatch footage]
[extreme close-up on action figures being shot by BBs]
[end theme music]

---

1. Get your bros to come to town.
2. Go grocery shopping with them.
3. Try not to get in the way while they prepare:

-Salsiccia gnocchi & Italian bread
-Sausage gravy & biscuits
-Scrambled eggs & toast
-Various and sundry fine Belgian ales
-Premium bourbon

---

I think all my friends love my brothers more than they love me. Possibly because my brothers are the coolest dudes in the world, ever. I'll be thinking of them later on when I cook up some

Sausage-Gravy-Hot-Dog-ritos
-Have some leftover sausage gravy your bro made
-put it on a tortilla
-put a hot dog on there
-probably grate some cheddar cheese on there
-wrap it up and microwave it

This will taste good to you if you are filled with love. Are you filled with love? I am filled with love.

The Stupidest Thing You Could Possibly Ever Think About Doing At All Awards

Let's hand these out this year.

Caesar salad at Applebee's

-go to applebees
-order grilled chicken caesar salad
-eat it while you talk about your feelings

(this isn't something you probably want to do all that often)

faux leftover pizza

Sometimes you want leftover pizza. Sometimes you want that even more than you want new pizza. At least I do. Try these tricks if you have a fresh pizza but want a leftover pizza:

-Wait
-Put it in the fridge and wait
-Put it in the freezer and don't wait as long
-put it in the microwave and pretend it is re-heated rather than simply heated
-order two pizzas this time, then you can always stay one pizza ahead, one fresh one to age, and one aged one to eat.