I Have Seen the Face of Death

Actually, I've seen it twice. In the span of five minutes.

First, I read my friend Liz's blog, in which she recently posted the final picture ever taken by a very famous Japanese nature photographer. Before he was mauled to death. By a bear. This picture is exactly what you think it is, but it still doesn't make it any more horrifying.

Darrell and I looked at this before heading to Emily's place for a Memorial Day barbecue, the centerpiece of which was Karen's grill, lovingly delivered from Toftrees for Emily's future enjoyment. Today was the christening, which entailed re-hooking everything up and making sure it all was working right so that we could grill all the deliciousness we've planned to.

And who was in charge of lighting this grill? Of course, it was me, Mr. I Guess The Handyman Genes Never Quite Made It To Me From Dad's Seed.

After a few failures, I did what my father would never do: called for help. So I got Karen on the phone, solicited her advice, and hung up. I did what she said, clicked the ignition button a few times, failed, tried a few more times, and was about a second away from giving up when--

HOLY FUCK!

--which is Manspeak for, "I'm staring down the maw of a giant fireball that came inches away from singeing off all of my facial hair!"

But hey, at least the grill's lit now.

Once my breathing was restored to normalcy--and after I called Karen back to assure her that all went well and I had not, despite my best efforts, burned my face off--I decided that two near-death experiences (even if one was only vicarious) was still too many for one day. So I grabbed another beer, took a long swig, and told Emily, "Hey, there's a picture on the Internet I need to show you..."

Then, as I'm attempting to show Emily the aforementioned picture, she replies, "Make it quick. I need you to cut the melons with a really, really big knife."

Who the hell thinks this is a good idea?

Farewell, Dear Friend

Even though graduation has happened and the diploma is mine, for real and for true, I find myself sitting in my office. Not because of any nostalgic longing to hold on to my academic responsibilities--oh, fuck no. I'm here because it's the only place around that seems to have consistent Internet access.

Ironically, I'm here to avoid the very thing about which I am posting. Once Emily and Darrell decided to bail on hanging out this evening, I needed to go someplace where I didn't feel I'd slip into the trap of sitting on my couch watching TV. It's not that I don't love TV--I've professed often that my cable bill pays for itself by virtue of ESPN HD--but I feel like being slightly more out and about, more in touch with things.

But tomorrow, the journey ends. Tomorrow, I have to pack up my glorious cable box, the spiderwebs of component cables, and the universal remote that has been oh so good to me. In order that I don't get billed for another month's worth of service, it must be dispensed with before the end of the business day.

In less than 24 hours, my beautiful TV will be relegated once more to the indignity that is--[gulp]--basic cable. And so, I offer this humble elegy for my LCD love.

It's been a great ride, my friend. I can't wait to see where the future takes us. I know it will be hard at first, but I promise you this: my Wii will still have component cables plugged in. My DVD player will still upconvert. It will still make use of the highest quality HDMI audio and video. I will not let you simply waste away. We will get through this, I promise. Just stay strong.

...aww hell, I promised myself I wouldn't cry...excuse me...

You Can Take the Internet from the Boy...

It's been a relatively uneventful past few days. Which is pretty much precisely how I like it. Ever since classes ended on May 1, and my work was submitted on May 4, I've been lazy as hell and loving every second of it. Someone once said something along the lines of, "The joy is not in having nothing to do. It's in having lots to do and not doing it anyway." To that person I say: bullshit. My idle hands couldn't be happier right now.

So after a brief jaunt home and a lovely drunken blowout on Tuesday, I woke up early Wednesday morning and decided to take a mystery trip. Though there were a few hiccups (which I will of course detail in a later post), it went off without a hitch. Unfortunately, the downside is that, while stuck in my wireless-free apartment or out of town, I had no Internet access for about 36 hours. No big deal, right?

Yeah, tell that to my Twitter.

So in the interest of catching up on my Internet tendencies without flooding my own Twitter page with about twelve thousand consecutive @replies, I will herein post a series of short comments on some of the things I missed on the World Wide Web over the past two days:

• Wait a second. Jack White has another side project?! For God's sake, man, I understand that The Raconteurs are better than The White Stripes, but each new supergroup will not be better than the last, I promise you!
  
• A great story about why the Yankees haven't made the World Series since 2003. Couldn't have anything to do with pitching, could it?
  
• Texts From Last Night is quickly turning into my favorite site on the Internet ever. My Life Is Crap, you need to step up your game.
  
• I'm genuinely curious to see if any Twitterers or Facebookers actually respond to Karen's offer of a Sega Saturn. I'd take it, but I'm a bona fide, certified Nintendo geek.
  
• If this qualifies as a one-way ticket to Hell, I'm truly fucked.
  
• I know I already addressed TFLN, but this is just fucking spectacular (NSFW).
  
• Seriously considering buying tickets to Kevin Smith's performance at Carnegie Hall. Anyone else interested?
  
• In a related story, I love that Kevin's hockey jersey is #37, even though I should expect nothing less.
  
• I know where this area code is...ROFL!
  
• After receiving three text messages and seeing the remaining 140 characters of Karen's Tweet on Amaretto spent on "mmmmmm (etc.)," I think I may need to pick up some Disaronno from the Wine & Spirits Shoppe on the way home from campus today.
  
• This eBay auction must have shown up on my Twitter feed at least seven or eight times in the last day. I'M NOT GOING TO BUY IT, DAMN IT.
  
• Scare quotes rule. "Accidentally." Suuuuuuuure...
  
• New York Times article on absinthe confirms my original suspicion: the Lucid set with glasses and a spoon was a good value, but in the future, I should really purchase Kübler.
  
• It's friends-only so you'll have to take my word for it, but when people you know Tweet texts from last night, they're much better than mere anonymous TFLNs.
  
• OFF-TOPIC: The radio station in Mackinnon's just started playing "Eruption." AWESOME.
  
• Everyone's semester grades are ending up far better than expected, myself included. I like this trend.
  
• Finally reached the top of my feed! Not sure if I'm happy or sad...

Well, that was exciting. Or not. Time will tell. But since I do need some more excitement in my life, it's time to head to Hulu and catch up on this week's 24.

Writing Where I Oughtn't

It's almost over. By the end of today, all of my formal academic responsibilities will be done with. I'll have successfully completed all the work for my classes, and will only have a small assignment and a set of student papers to grade until I can put this strange chapter of my life to bed.

Despite the relative urgency of the mock thesis proposal that looms over my head, I'm posting on my blog. It doesn't much matter that I've under-read woefully and have only 2 out of 8-10 pages completed. I still run over to my blogs to type away the idle hours.

Which has me pretty darn pleased, if I may say so myself. I've said before that I'm glad grad school didn't kill my love of reading, but I'm even more excited that it hasn't destroyed my desire to write. In fact, I'd argue it's actually ramped my motivation to write up even more.

I've been discussing several of the creative projects that have been bouncing around my head, and it feels like the more I talk about them, the more viable they seem. Each one feels like something worth seeing through, and that's an incredible feeling. I can only hope now that each one ends up the way I see it in my head.

Until then, I probably should click back over to Microsoft Word every once and a while. Five hours left, after all.