Wow! This still exists. Think of all of the wasted data that gets backed up on the internet every day. Some bits on a server's array of hard drives that money from advertising is paying for. Servers being powered by valuable fossil fuels that get mined from the earth. Strip mined land. Oil wells dug deep into the ocean. Statistical data on a pie chart about internet traffic, and another chart about petroleum profits. This is some of that.

Hey, Blog. Remember, like, almost a month ago when I said I'd post something else soon? Well, this is it.

Or, really, that was it.

Oh yeah, I have a blog. Synchronized blogging died and so did my sense of responsibility to post things. New post coming soon.

Some Shoes.

So, I totally screwed this post up, and lost the whole thing after I'd had it written. Here's a diluted and completely less hilarious version. Trust me when I say the original was the funniest thing ever. 

I like that the topic this time is a picture. It saves me from having to fill that void above the text with a fancy illustration. Especially now that this is the second time I've written this post. I can, instead, focus my artistic energies elsewhere. I think I'll start a project. Anyway, on to some rambling about that picture.

I don't really have any funny stories or personal anecdotes about piles of shoes. The only thing that really comes to mind is that House of 1000 Corpses movie that Rob Zombie made. There were piles of shoes from the victims of the crazy family that lived in the house. That movie was kind of ridiculous. I heard that the shoe thing was a rip off of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The sign in the picture says Shoe 50. Mya, who posted this image, described the scene and gave it a little more context, but I'm going to go with what I can see. It says shoe 50. What does that mean? Is it someones unorthodox method of organizing their shoe collection? Piles of 50? Are there even pairs of shoes there? It doesn't look like it. Maybe they are all shoes from 1950. Who are we to judge someone based on how they organize their shoes? We need to stop being so judgemental. Just because somebody stores their shoes from 1950 outdoors in large piles of 50 doesn't mean we should kill them and put their shoes in large piles. 

Now I'm disgusted with humanity on top of being disgusted with how blogger screwed up my first attempt at this silly post. I'm going to go start my project and try to forget about all of this.

Gossip Pose

At my current job I share an office with two guys. My boss has an office at the other end of the house we work out of, and his wife is next door answering phones. It's a very small non-corporate type gig. Everybody pretty much knows what is going on with everybody, and there's not a lot of room for rumor to circulate. 

At my old job, on the other hand, there was plenty of room. It was a retail gig at the biggest camera retailer in the US, Ritz Camera. I worked in a strip mall store with the manager, and occasionally a part time person. In corporate land there is space to talk about things like what manager is making their numbers, who's on the verge of getting fired, and when the Technical Service Manager is going to come shake the place down. Most of the time I wasn't in on the gossip, but I could always tell when my boss was for one reason: gossip pose. 

Because it was a relatively small crew at our store my boss, Steve, would get his gossip through the phone. Gossip pose consisted of a few defining features: the slightly cocked head cradling the receiver, the opposing hand under the chin, a 45 degree upper body lean over the counter; and most importantly, the single hovering leg bent at the knee. 

If you're having a hard time picturing this, think teenage schoolgirl. This was a brilliant juxtaposition. Steve was what many call a Florida cracker. His family has lived here for generations, and they tend to spend time doing what Steve called armed hiking. To see a grown southern white huntin' man in gossip pose is to truly know that there is balance in the universe.

Wisdom teeth in my brain make me smarter.

So, I decided to see what all of this synchronized blogging is about and I read four or so posts on people's experiences at the dentist. It gave me nightmares. 

I'm not really one of those people who has a deep fear of the dentist. I only had a couple of cavities when I was a kid and I had some teeth pulled, but it was nothing that really traumatized me forever. I also had braces for four plus years, so I got kind of used to having pain in my mouth.

During my college years I didn't go to the dentist once. I guess I'd figured I had done my time with the dentist after the braces. For two years after school I worked a retail job that, despite not paying crap, gave me dental insurance. I was going through a responsible phase and thought I'd get my mouth checked out. After all, I was due for check-up. . . about six years before. 

Anyway, to summarize the experience: x-ray, cleaning, drill, drill, ouch!, root canal. 

Soon after the experience of the root canal I got a real job at a real small software developer. This means bigger paycheck, no insurance.  I haven't been to the dentist in over two years. The last time I was there I was told that I had impacted wisdom teeth, and that I needed to get them out. Since then I've been in that don't go so you can ignore the problem that becomes worse so you don't go mindset. It's now a little demon in my brain that I can ignore most of the time, but presents itself in weird anxiety dreams. Like after I read blogs about people's fear of the dentist. 

Magical first post.

Buckling under the peer pressure of these internets, I figured I'd be like one of the cool kids and get a real blarg or blague or whatever you call it. I used to have something like this on that MySpace thing, but somehow I don't feel like that counts. Plus it was littered with it's inherent MySpace ugly. This is much more soothing to the eyes with it's black, and it's black, and it's random brightly colored text. The style may change if I ever decide to look at it again. Anyway, in a perfect world this will turn out to be a dumping ground for my thoughts, ideas, maybe some artwork, and whatever else I feel like sharing with the one or two people who might actually look at it. In an imperfect world it will probably just be a dumping ground for this post. I like to think that the world we live in is somewhere in between. I realize that makes no sense. Thus: the world. 

*Please excuse any poorly used grammar or punctuation in this post or any that may follow. I went to art school.