kapgar

Checking it off my list, unable to rewrite...

Yes, I do still have two Top lists to post and, including today, only two days before the New Year to post them. However, I really wanted to do another Snippet Wednesday. Plus, Katie and I are talking about seeing a movie (or two) on New Year's Eve and I'd like to give those movies a fair shake on the Top Films list. So that one will be on New Year's Day while the Top Shows will be tomorrow. Promise.

Banking
This bugs me. We are receiving bills for an urgent care visit for Katie from February and March of 2008. They’re claiming we never paid. Never mind the fact that it took them nearly two years to discover this supposed discrepancy, we did pay it. They say they’ll waive it if I can provide them with copies of the canceled checks. Due to that stupid federal law that passed some odd years ago, banks no longer have to send back canceled checks to us. So I checked our online account to find the digital images of the checks. I can only access back through August 2008. So I call my bank branch and they tell me they can look for it but it will take “research” as the information is “archived” and they may have to charge me for the research time. Isn’t that supposed to be the great thing about online banking is that your history is entirely digital and should be available at your fingertips 24 hours a day, seven days a week? Why would you archive digital information and make in inaccessible to the user? This makes no sense. Stupid banks.

Bear
I was reading Marty’s top albums of 2009 list and I really like this one thing he did which I might try next year… he included lists of albums that he considered a letdown or that he just didn’t get. It’s a pretty cool concept considering how much hype some albums receive. And I completely agree with him on his assessment of Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest in this regard. I’ve listened to that album a ton of times and I just don’t get it. Why is it so highly regarded? What makes it so great? Why was it one of the top selling independent albums of the year? And the real kicker for me is that usually when I see a band live, I wind up gaining an appreciation of the album by hearing the songs up close and in person. I saw Grizzly Bear at Pitchfork and the live experience helped not at all.

Bears
Can someone tell me where the hell the Jay Cutler that we saw on Monday night against the Vikings has been all season long? Damn. Even though the Bears defense really started to stink things up a bit in the fourth quarter giving up 17 unanswered points and letting the Vikes tie it up, it was a very exciting game! This is something we haven’t really seen all season… save for the stinking things up bit. That was pretty much par for the course for the Bears this year.

Book
I cannot, for the life of me, find my Moleskin notebook. I’m pretty sure I’ve exhausted the places where it could possibly be located. Dammitalltohell. Why is it that when you don't need something, it's always there, but when you do need it, it's nowhere to be found? I wanted to do some writing and, of course, it’s nowhere to be seen. 

Books
The reason I’d like to find my Moleskin is because I have an idea for a book I’d like to write and I want it along for the ride. Maybe I should just buy a new one that would be dedicated to this endeavor. Actually, that probably would be a better idea since I have some ideas for illustrations that would accompany the text and an oversize Moleskin would be better for this project. Yes, it’s a children’s book. Anyone have contacts in the children’s book publishing industry?

Bark
Dog collar beer bottle opener? Greatest. Invention. Ever. Me wanty. Hey, do you guys need a blog reviewer? Drop me a line. E-mail addy's in the top menu bar.

Time to head to work. Adios, peeps.

He's makin' a list...

I know, I know. Christmas is done... STOP USING CHRISTMAS CAROLS AS POST TITLES!!! I will make a concerted effort. I promise.

Not all of you are Twitter users, I would presume, right? For those of you who are, you know that the most recent gauge of cyber-inclusiveness has nothing to do with your ability to avoid being dealt the Facebook deathcard known as unfriending (I'm still in shock as to how this got "Word of the Year" accolades... whatever). It's all about being added to someone's Twitter List these days.

Since I'm still working on my Top TV Shows and Top Movies lists for this year, I thought I'd spend a day discussing another Top measure that happens to come in the form of Lists: all the Twitter Lists I belong to.

Sure, this is completely me tooting my own horn, I admit. But it sounds like fun.

Currently, I've been "Listed" 19 times by various folks. And I want to point out a few of them real quick.

 

While I'd like to be able to say that this is as dirty as it could be perceived by gutter-minded individuals such as myself, it sadly is not. She actually runs a Web-based cupcake company in the Chicago suburbs. Bummer.

I have always thought of myself as delightfully perverted. I'm proud knowing that my efforts were noticed by you, @hismuse! Thanks.
 
 
I'd really hate to see his wish-dead list. I'm afraid to look and see if there actually is one.

Well, we'll just have to work on that one, won't we?

@neilochka, I would definitely sit there and hold your hand through this ordeal... from the other side of the bars. Feel free to call me. Just don't expect bail money.

While I love being on his cool-mfers list, I think he and I should both create a list called cool-bald-mfers and be the charter members!

This is the ultimate sign of cyber acceptance, IMHO. @avitable is looking pretty damn hot these days and with his increased fitness level, I would assume comes an increased capability level in the sack, right big guy?

Can you tell I'm really reaching for blog fodder right now? I'd make a New Year's Resolution that I will come up with higher quality posts and maybe post more often, but I can't guarantee that the Angel of Inspiration will bind herself to that resolution.

So how was your Christmas this year? Big haul? Small haul?

I'm happy with how it turned out. Several books, some giftcards and cash to buy some new appliances in the kitchen, a copy of Rock Band: Beatles for the Wii (no drumkit, sorry), and, from Katie, a Blackhawks jersey (to be worn at the Blackhawks game for which the two BiLs and the FSiL got us tickets) and a copy of the Monty Python's Flying Circus 16-disc box set, among other things. That's pretty sweet! I can't wait to start watching it. I got Katie a few things including a really pretty garnet necklace. She seemed happy. I guess that's all that counts.

And, in case you're interested, here are some photos from the various Christmas celebrations we attended this year (Facebookers, click through).

But one of my favorite photos of the evening was just a little experimental picture I snapped. Not that it's a true mystery photo like the ones I used to post. Heck it should be easily identifiable. But it's just a different point of view on it. Let me know if you figure out what it is.

Everybody's singin', all the bells are ringing out...

Hey all, Merry Christmas!

Yes, I said it. I opted for political incorrectness and y'all are just gonna have to deal with it. Heh.

I just wanted to quickly share one gift that we exchanged. This was with some of the cousins on Katie's mom's side of the family. In lieu of regular, paid-for, what-retailers-are-begging-for gifts, we decided to make mix CDs of music we enjoy for everybody else. No, we're not making mix discs of music the recipient would like. These are of music we like in order to potentially introduce the recipient to new stuff.

Sounds like it should be pretty cool. Especially being the music fiend I am, right?

Not so. I hate making mix albums. I was dreading this. I remember the John Cusack character (Rob Gordon) in High Fidelity describing all the work he puts into the creation of a mix tape and similar information is shared by Rob Sheffield in his book Love is a Mix Tape. And, based solely on this input, I've been scared off of ever making mixes. Stuff like the delicate mix between soft and fast music, the blending of the end of one track into the beginning of the next, etc. I'm a perfectionist and, if I can't do something right, I don't want to do it at all. That's just how I am. 

However, after making the actual exchange yesterday, I feel much better about it. Everyone was really excited checking out the mixes that we all put together. Then, with those couple of people that forgot to include a tracklist, we threw the discs in a stereo and played "Name that Song." It was really fun despite my earlier dread. And Katie and I are kinda hoping we do it again next year. Heck, she's already planning out what she wants to do for hers.

But here are the albums we put together. Let me know what you think.

First, the covers. The covers are basically a photo of us die cut on top of a wallpaper of the album art for the songs contained on the disc. Disc one on the left is the disc in Katie's name and disc two is the one from me.

And now for the music...

Disc 1 (Katie's mix):

• The Smiths - "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want"
• Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson - "Relator"
• Rascal Flatts - "Life is a Highway" - she was worried about this fitting in, but it actually sounds decent, I think
• She & Him - "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?"
• Dave Matthews Band - "Why I Am"
• Weezer - "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To"
• Scissor Sisters - "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'"
• Katy Perry - "Hot n Cold"
• Doves - "There Goes the Fear"
• Norah Jones - "Chasing Pirates"
• Imani Coppola - "Legend of a Cowgirl"
• Lady Gaga - "The Fame"
• Phoenix - "Rome"
• I Fight Dragons - "Heads Up, Hearts Down"
• The All-American Rejects - "Gives You Hell"
• 30 Seconds to Mars - "This is War"
• Paramore - "Ignorance"
• Pearl Jam - "Just Breathe"

Disc 2 (my mix):

• The Flaming Lips - "Race for the Prize"
• Matt & Kim - "Lessons Learned"
• Pomplamoose - "Beat the Horse"
• The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - "The Tenure Itch"
• The Republic Tigers - "Buildings & Mountains"
• Blitzen Trapper - "Gold for Bread"
• Stardeath and White Dwarfs - "New Heat"
• The Mooney Suzuki - "Alive & Amplified"
• Tokyo Police Club - "Tesselate"
• Razorlight - "America"
• Phoenix - "Lasso"
• Silverchair - "Straight Lines"
• Wolfmother - "New Moon Rising"
• Damone - "Out Here All Night"
• Foo Fighters - "Wheels"
• Bear in Heaven - "You Do You"
• Modest Mouse - "Guilty Cocker Spaniel"
• Dungen - "Du ar for Fin for Mig"

I was expecting most people to not know a majority of the stuff on my disc. I relish the thought of it being a musical expedition of sorts.

Alice at Beyond Alice and Through the Looking Glass has bequeathed unto me the Lemonade Award, or at least that's what I think it's called. Might have something to do with being able to turn lemons into lemonade via your blog posting or maybe it has more to do with having posts that grate on your nerves like a sour lemon. Meh, I'll take it either way. Thanks Alice!

And now for the rules...

• Put the Lemonade logo on your blog or within your post.
• Nominate at least 10 blogs with great attitude or gratitude.
• Link the nominees within your post.
• Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
• Share the love and link to the person from whom you received this award.

Well, let's see what I can cobble together here. Mind you, these are just 10 of the many blogs I read and love every day. So, if you're not included, it's not from a lack of love. Trust me on that one.

Oh, and as for the fourth bullet, I may or may not get around to that right away. We all know my piss-poor commenting of late.

• Marie's Blog Cafe
• Kev's Useless Bollocks
• Renagerie
• Sybil Law
• Charm School Reject
• Katie Schwartz
• So a Blonde Walks Into a Blog
• Banal Leakage
• ilaxSTUDIO
• Life is Not a Movie

Merry Christmas to all my lemonheads out there!

Well, I'm outta here. Talk atcha soon.

The gift you gave is gonna last forever...

I know that there are some of you who actually look forward to Snippet Wednesday. And I've kinda left you hangin' the last coupla weeks. Last week it was an unfinished Snippet Wednesday due to Katie's crash. Yesterday, I just plain ran out of time.

So I'm gonna make it up to you with a special edition Snippet Thursday: The Reckoning!

Still love me?

Katie
Tomorrow marks Katie's official final day of student teaching. However, she got her grade for student teaching as well as her portfolio yesterday. As on both! That means she is graduating with a 4.0! I'm ridiculously proud of her! Mah baybee gotz intelluhjints!

Taste
My IT Director at work was in my office for a meeting yesterday when he looked on my cubicle cabinet and saw a promo card for the release of The Flaming Lips new album. This led to a discussion about music. Turns out:

• My IT Director loves The Flaming Lips.
• My IT Director loves Pete Yorn.
• My IT Director loves Bob Mould and Hüsker Dü.
• My IT Director loves The Replacements.
• My IT Director loves Tom Petty.

Clearly, my IT Director rawks.

Digital
I went to Best Buy yesterday to look into how much copies of The Hangover and Inglourious Basterds were on DVD. I also was curious if they came with digital copies. Both do. But, thanks to Ren's recent warning, I began to read the small print. Expirys were not a concern, thankfully. But compatibility was. Basterds is fine, but Hangover is neither Macintosh nor iPod/iTunes/iPhone compatible. Why in the name of Christ would a distribution company not want their product to work on the top-selling digital player of all time? Sure, I can probably rip and convert it without a problem (I do have Handbrake and iSquint and all those other cool little apps), but just loading the digital copy is so much easier. 

Inglourious Basterds digital copy? WIN!

The Hangover digital copy? EPIC FAIL!

Oh, and I alerted some customers and employees to this fact as well. They were dumbfounded by the stupidity of it all.

Blu-Ray
I actually have a Blu-Ray disc. My very first Blu-Ray disc. I don't own a Blu-Ray player, but I have a disc for when that day does come. I don't know how many of you subscribe to e-newsletters from restaurants and whatnot. Well, I do. And I get all kinds of free birthday shit as a result. Usually they amount to free desserts or, if I'm lucky, free entrees.

I got über lucky this year thanks to Disney who offered me a free Blu-Ray disc for my birthday. Say whaaaa? Of course I could only choose from a list of five movies. But it's free. So who cares? I chose Enchanted. Hey, Katie and I enjoyed that movie. And it's got Amy Adams. Can't go wrong with Amy Adams. Both my wife and Sizzle know of my obsession with her very well.

Gift
I think I've finally figured out what I'm going to get for Katie for Christmas. I usually have her gift done by now. This, I believe, is the latest I've waited to buy something. I just want to do a little research first before I actually buy it. There's no way in the name of all that's holy that she'll be expecting this. Not one iota of a chance.

Fox
I had a plan last week to write up a big glowing review of a movie Katie and I went to see, Fantastic Mr. Fox. I had it all pre-written in my head and was sitting down to type when I decided, instead, to read through my subscriptions in Google Reader. This was when I noticed Avitable had done the same thing and pretty much had the exact same opinion of the movie as Katie and I. So, if you'd like to read about a fantastic film, sure to be one of my tops of the year, head over to Av's digs and read up. 

Medley
This is simply too cool.

Well, adios for now.

Devilman, devilman...

From time to time, I find myself amused by the images that Google News chooses to use to accompany news stories. I know it's probably some complex algorithm that picks the image based on metadata incorporated into the image, blah blah.

If that's the case, explain to me what the hell metadata was embedded into this image to make it algorithmically associated to an article about Microsoft's Bing search engine?

Click image to excite it

I can only guess (and shudder) at what the "5 Turning Points" are based on the image.

I went back into Google News five hours later and found this...

Again, click the image to give it a thrill

Seriously, is Google trying to create a mental image of Microsoft as a bunch of crotch-grabbing child molesters? I knew Windows was evil, but this?

I was on Goodreads last night and I entered a bunch of contests for free books. It had been a while since I entered any, so why not?

One of the books was a comedy about a road trip (I think), another about a woman trying to bring to light in America the problems in Darfur, a third was about a female photojournalist in Vietnam. The fourth I entered -- just for kicks -- is about a woman's voyage of self-discovery... in the world of BDSM.

Guess which one I'm probably gonna win?

Oy.

Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak...

...somewhere in this town. Tonight there's gonna be trouble, so don't you be around.

And that trouble is Snippet Wednesday!

Dodging
Tonight is the playoffs for this season of dodgeball and I think, afterwards, I'm officially quitting the sport. It's just not as much fun as it once was and the novelty certainly wore off quickly. Plus, having a bunch of adults slinging barbs and calling each other a bunch of effin' liars in a league that runs on the honor system just sucks. I'm done. God I hope my buddy starts a sand volleyball league again this summer. Been too long.

Funkalicious
Katie got me an early birthday present this year and I'm just as happy as can be about it. The funny thing is it's only a sweatshirt. But it's singularly the coolest sweatshirt in the known universe. It's called Funkalicious from Threadless. I saw this design for the first time at the Threadless booth at Pitchfork and fell in love. I was planning to go back later and get it but I got so stuck in the masses of people awaiting the Lips show that, if I left, I never would've gotten my place back. And Threadless only recently started reprinting this design on hoodies (I didn't want it on a t-shirt). But now my boom-boxin' astronaut is rockin' it on my chest!

Stats
For some reason, this morning I decided to look at my all-time stats just to see how things have changed. Right now, I'm lucky to break 100 hits a day. But there was actually a time when I had 943 views in a single day. So I drilled down to find the date... June 4, 2007... yeah, the day when Dave guest posted for me while I was in Las Vegas. And, in the comments is Kim stating how this is probably going to be my best statistical post ever. How right she was. I find stuff like that funny. But it was a brilliant post by Dave. No question. Slappin' the salami!

Flair
Remember the 80s when we owned jean jackets with buttons and patches all over them? Do you still do that at all? Decorate something with flair, that is? I think my camera bag is slowly becoming that flair canvas for me. I've got a few buttons and pins and a Rwandan beehive keychain (craft thing I got from Starbucks) and I want to sew on some patches that I dug up at home from a friend who was in the military (Airborne patch and unit insignia). It's not ridiculous looking and I'm sure I'll stop before it gets bad. But it's kinda fun. Takes me back. But in a controlled manner.

Mars
I've been watching the BBC version of Life on Mars, season 1, since they finally made it available and, like many of you told me, it is good. In some aspects better than the U.S. version I so dearly love. But, in other aspects, not as good. I'm not sure if it's simply because it's a DVD version, but the BBC version is far more risque. The stories are really cool and they don't delve as far into Sam's "visions" as the U.S. version (no lunar rovers yet; but that little girl and her clown doll are weirding me out). While I still really like Jason O'Mara in the U.S. version, Jon Simm is starting to grow on me. I'm kinda torn between the U.S. and U.K. when it comes to Annie, Gene, and Chris, in all honesty. But, the biggest difference to me is the character of Ray carling. The BBC Ray is just lacking a lot of the gusto and bravado brought to the role in the U.S. by Michael Imperioli. I think Imperioli and his 'stache rock that role like no other. I'm also hoping the story with Sam's mom and his younger self builds up a lot more like it did in the U.S. version. There's still time. Any other opinions? Bear in mind, I'm only six episodes into season one. There are two eps left and then I've got season two to watch.

Any way the wind blows...

Happy Snippet Wednesday Before Turkey Thursday!

Bohemuppets
This video goes a long way to proving why I love the Muppets and how, despite being nearly 35 years old, I find them hilarious and oh-so brilliant.

Okay, it's not as new as it was this morning when I first began writing this up. Now it's everywhere. But I'm still posting it. I don't care.

Graduates
Yep, we graduated this past Sunday from the Citizen's Fire Academy. I don't know what I'm going to do with myself on Monday nights now. Anyway, here are photos from the final two days including auto extrication and the graduation itself. Enjoy! (Facebookers, click through)

Amazon
I'm thinking the greatest single thing to happen to my music loving has been the Amazon MP3 Store. Now they, like so many others, are getting in on the Black Friday specials. A little early, sure. But still. The sad thing is, I either already have much of what I want from this list of specials or it's been ordered by my local library by my request. I really have too much music. And too much influence over my library.

Moon
I know I've been having fun on Twitter at the expense of many New Moon and Twilight fans. I can't help myself. This is my revenge against all who heckled me when I got so geeked (and ultimately disappointed) about the release of the new Star Wars film back in 1999. Yes, Twilighters, I'm equating you to geeks. And you are. Admit it. But anyway, I do want to see the film New Moon despite this heckling. And I think Katie and I are going to see it pretty soon. We kinda have to. About half of Katie's class saw it opening night at midnight and they were in shock she hadn't seen it yet. Due to parent-teacher conferences this week, she's had a reprieve, but we need to see it before next Monday or she may pay with their scorn. Here's hoping tickets are available.

Eternal
I only wish I had video of the show that Katie and I gave the drivers next to us as we drove to the grocery store tonight. She was singing harmony as I took the role of Susanna Hoffs singing The Bangles' "Eternal Flame." I thought we sounded pretty damn good.

We care a lot...

I need BlogFiber. Something that will make me more regular about posting here. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who would benefit from taking this.

There was a time when, for 14 consecutive months, I posted every single day. Not that I ever want to go back to that again. That was hell. Not that I didn't enjoy the writing or struggle for something to say. I had ideas coming out the proverbial yin-yang. I only wish I'd held onto a few of them for these dry spells.

Oh well. Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20.

Now I'm lucky to post three or four times a week. For those of us who live and die by RSS feeds, that's not really all that big a deal. We simply wait until notification arrives in our aggregator letting us know that a new post is up.

But not everyone "gets" RSS. Sure it's free, but they don't understand how to use it or whatnot. And I can understand that. Not all of us are geeks and I'm not going to hold that against you. These people have blogs like mine bookmarked and just make return visits when they have time in hopes of finding something new to read. And here's little ol' me giving you jack shit for your loyalty.

So I'm going to try to be a little more fair to you and your faithfulness. To that end, I've implemented an e-mail notifier on this blog. Simply enter your e-mail address and you should receive an e-mail when I post something new. Bear in mind, I did try to implement one of these some time ago from a third-party source and it didn't work. Hence why I hadn't done it since. But Typepad's been rolling out a bunch of new features lately and they've all been pretty reliable in their functionality. With this one working in conjunction with FeedBurner, it should work quite nicely. Here's hoping!

All you need to do is visit that little box in the bottom of the right column and sign up. It looks like this...

[this is not the actual box;
you won't be able to type anything in it;
use the one over to the right --> ]

You may encounter a CAPTCHA verification and then a confirmation e-mail, but those are all pretty easy peasey.

See? I do care!

Lots of people have asked that age-old question "if you could meet any one person, alive or dead, who would it be?" on their blogs.

That question is boring. It always winds up being some great world leader or philosopher or thinker or the like. Plllbbbtttt! Yes, that's right, I just blew an e-raspberry at the great people of the world. BO-RING!

I want to ask something a bit different...

If you could sit in a bar and do shots with anybody, who would it be? And let's keep it to people who are alive, okay? And have some fun with it. None of the standard answers.

Me? I want to do shots with Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips and Chad Ochocinco (nee Johnson) of the Cincinnati Bengals. 

 

Why? I'm really not entirely sure. I just get this feeling that it would be a blast, they'd both have great stories to tell, and there would be some fantastic drunken Tweets (Chad does have his own account, too) and videos to post on this blog afterwards.

Plus, you'd need one helluva twisted mind to come up with the stunts that Chad does as well as this video from the Lips.

Ummm, I'm gonna make you link over to the video as it's severely NSFW (as in Not Safe For Work). Don't say I didn't warn you.

I'm gonna set you free...

Um, yeah, so it's Snippet Wednesday. Sorry, I got nothing more original. I need to make a couple lunches before I head out for work.

Fall
While I'm upset that we here in Chicago still never seem to have much of a fall in terms of nice autumn weather, we did get some beautiful leaves for the first time in about two or three years. Lately, the odd times during which we've had rain have made the leaves go from green to brown with no color variations in between. Something worked this year and we got some magnificent colors. Thank God.

I'll upload some more pictures soon.

Victims
Talk about death and decay, police in Cleveland have discovered the bodies of 10 victims in or near the house and yard of a suspected serial murderer. The kicker is that people have been complaining about strange odors emanating from his house for years. One person went so far as to describe it as the smell of a dead body. And it took Cleveland cops how long to investigate? There's something severely wrong with this story.

Superman
Funny thing about this particular Dilbert strip is that I could see this sort of thing as an outtake in the original Superman. How funny would that have been?

 

Swell
I was totally stoked the other day when I discovered that The Swell Season (featuring Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova of the movie Once) had a new album out. Cooler yet was that there was an iTunes code in it for an additional free song. But they had two codes, one for the US store and one for the Canadian store. So, if there are any Canadian fans of The Swell Season, drop me a note in the comments and the code for this song is yours. I'm not sure if it cancels out after I redeem the US code, but it's worth a shot. First come/first served.

Married?
Archie is marrying Veronica? Not Betty? Six-part comic arc? WTF? This is so not cool.

Time for lunch making. With a tear in my eye on Betty's behalf.

She broke your throne and she cut your hair...

I finished the St. Baldrick's video!

This is actually the quickest I've turned around a video since, well, ever. And I'm kinda proud of it.

No, the edits aren't perfect and there are several areas where I probably could've improved things. But for a guy who only recently started into the heavy editing of videos as opposed to the shoot-and-post mentality I previously held, this is decent if I do say so myself. We're not talking Scorsese-level quality or anything, but enough to keep me excited enough about video editing to keep playing with it. So enjoy! [Facebookers, click through]

The Damn Fool Network: St. Baldrick's Event from Kevin Apgar on Vimeo.

If you're having trouble getting it to play, click the play button and then pause it until the progress bar fills up most or all of the way. Might help. I hope. And the video quality is a bit low because it was shot using a little point-and-shoot digicam. I need to get a Web-ready, Mac friendly HD video recorder. *drools*

For the record, the music is by I Fight Dragons (@ifightdragons). And I gotta thank Brian from the band for being so gracious about letting me use their music (despite not knowing exactly what for).

This'll learn 'im! ;-)

While you're at it and I have you as a captive audience, I've got a couple new photo albums up on Flickr from those field trips I went on with Katie. Don't worry, for the most part I didn't include photos that would identify any of the kids. Not to the point where Avitable's photo waiver would be necessary anyway.

Thank you, Typepad!

Typepad just introduced social media sharing options that show up by default on our posts (look below).

Sure, I could've gone out and nabbed my own code for this and done it myself, but I'm lazy.

And I know you Wordpressers out there are going to say something akin to "well, we've had this for years! So you should switch over." It's not gonna happen. I tried Wordpress when I was redesigning this blog some months ago and hated the experience. Sure, you have all kinds of cool plug-in toys and whatnot. But what you don't have is customer support. You're open source, which, in some cases is great, but in the experience I had with WP, was terrible. I couldn't get my RSS feeds to work and, when I posted on the boards, no one replied at all. Likely still haven't to this day, but I'm not going to bother checking.

So I stick where I have great (and quick) support even if I do have to pay for the service.

Where's the deception...

It cracks me up sometimes just how we prioritize things in our lives.

The other night, after both Katie and I pretty much fell asleep while watching a show off our TiVo, we decided it was time to go to bed.

Did we go like we said we needed to or felt we should?

No. Of course not. Instead, Katie got it in her head that she wanted to find the Psych theme song as a ringtone for her iPhone, more specifically, the Boyz2Men rendition of it from a few weeks ago. Not being available as a purchasable ringtone on iTunes, we did some research and found what seemed to be viable instructions for making custom ringtones for an iPhone 3G. Then we had to find the song in MP3 format. And, perhaps, a few other Psych-related sounds like the Hindi version of the theme from a couple weeks prior to the Boyz2Men intro and Shawn chiming "Boom, boom, boom... muffins" to be used as a text message alert. Then convert them and then try to make them work.

All this in the name of going to sleep.

Of course it still didn't work. iTunes won't recognize the file as any sort of audio file for whatever reason. Stupid iTunes and their stupid ringtone policy.

They all work fine on my Blackberry. No special conversion necessary.

And Katie hates me for it.

Oh yeah, and after all was said and done, we were so wide awake that we watched three more shows off our TiVo. Go fig, eh?

I finally got to play Guitar Hero: World Tour yesterday with the BiL, Scott, for the first time in my life. Working drums, baby! The stupid display models at stores never seem to work. Always out of order.

Now, though, it was mine! Well, to play anyway. Otherwise it belongs to Scott and Becca.

I did okay. Anywhere from 68- 90% once I figured out the timing.

And one helluva calf workout. Holy crap!

Another TUA? Why, this could almost constitute a Snippet Monday! Nah, not really.

I just wanted to throw another reminder out there that Wednesday is almost here... the day when my hair becomes no more... and I'm only a little bit away from my fund raising goal

If you're able to help, please do so. Thank you all again!

Mother, tell your children not to walk my way...

I knew I wanted to use that lyric for this post but I wanted to get it right so I Googled it. I was so damn convinced it was The Cult. But it's Danzig. How the hell did I mix that one up? Oh well, on with Snippet Wednesday, anywho.

Foo
Ack! New Foo Fighters!! NEW FOO FIGHTERS!!! NEW FOO FIGHTERS!!!!

(iTunes | Amazon)

Did I get the idea across that I'm excited? Really? You didn't feel it? Lemme try again...

NEW FOO FIGHTERS!!!

No, I won't go so far as blinking text. Not even for the Foo Fighters. Sorry.

Malfunkshun
The other day, while shopping for decade-related costumes for Katie to wear to school in their weeklong celebration of the school's 50th anniversary, we came across a Mother Love Bone T-shirt. Of course we bought it and she wore it on Monday. But it got me a bit wistful for the band and I've subsequently been going a bit nuts listening to their music as well as reading about them and their late lead singer, Andrew Wood. I discovered that there was a documentary made about his life called Malfunkshun, after the name of the band he fronted prior to MLB, and I tried to find it on Netflix. They clearly didn't have it as this mixed bag of search results would indicate.

But seriously, a cult horror film followed by an NC17-rated steamy, dark, cerebral romance about a kid's forbidden desire for his mom, and then... Mulan? A Disney flick. Family animation. I can just see some kid putting Ma Mere in their queue as a mother's day tribute.

Music
I'm sure all of you already think I'm a music addict ("whore" might be more appropriate). But just to confirm the theory, my iTunes account is now showing that I have...

Yes, 10,794 songs that clock in at 29 days, 12 hours, 51 minutes, and 13 seconds (including the copy of Danzig's "Mother" that I just picked up because I felt so guilty). I can listen for nearly a month without hearing the same song twice (unless you're talking February; I so rock that month, even on leap years). Yeah, my name is kapgar and I'm a music junkie.

60
Katie and I are actually going to try watching The Amazing Race again after giving it up for about two or three years. We kinda miss it. But the problem is that CBS, the network that airs TAR, always seems to have something programmed during the day on Sundays that bumps the start time of everything else after it, including TAR. So I get severely annoyed having to open my TiVo viewing of something we want to watch by seeing snippets of crap we don't want to watch in the form of 60 Minutes, a show that I feel has absolutely no newsworthiness or cultural significance at all. Why is that show still on the air? Somebody please pull the plug already.

Rogue
Why is part of me morbidly fascinated about the pending release of Sarah Palin's memoirs, Going Rogue: An American Life? Am I doomed to damnation if I read it? Could my damnation be any worse than it already is having forced myself to read an Ann Coulter book as I did a few years back?

Funny thing... I couldn't remember Coulter's name for whatever reason. So I Googled "conservative freakshow blonde pundit" and, lo and behold, a link to a CBS news page about her shows up first in the results. 

I'm off too work. Enjoy!

We hear he is a wonderful wiz...

Hollow it out, pack it in tight, light 'em up, and take a long drag on Snippet Wednesday.

iDependence
I was reading a post on Kevin Spencer's blog about his iPod crapping out and how he suddenly became very aware of how dependent he is on his iPod on a daily basis. I completely agree with him except I never needed my iPod crapping out to tell me that. I'm fully aware of my overdependence on this little electronic gem. I listen to it on my commute to work and nearly all day during work. I use it when I work out and anywhere else I drive and sometimes just when I have a free moment and need a music fix. I would be so lost without my iPod. Is that sad?

Jam
I wasn't going to talk about the new Pearl Jam album, Backspacer, and how much I'm enjoying it so far (probably my favorite album of theirs since Vitalogy), but then I read this review on Chicagoist and realized how nicely it summed up my feelings and decided to share it with you. So here you go.

NCIS
After all that to-do yesterday with regard to NCIS: Los Angeles, what do I do? I forget to set the TiVo for last night's premiere episode. Oh well. Guess we'll be starting with episode two as I see no replay of the first episode in the immediate future. Stupid me.

Lips
I totally want to preorder the new Flaming Lips album, Embryonic, from their Web site. Not that I actually expect to get either the autographed litho or win the tickets for the New Year's Eve show (although either would be damn cool), I'm in it for the dead Muppet CD case! Tell me that's not cool. Okay, there are a lot of reasons I really want this set, like the DVD/CD and the litho, but that is some damn unique packaging. Oh and if one of you, as a result of seeing this snippet, orders the set and wins something, I'd better get a cut of it. If it's the litho, be creative. 

Wizard
Tonight, Katie and I are off to see the wizard. Yep, the wonderful Wizard of Oz. It turns out that a local theater is showing it and hopefully there are still tickets left. With my luck, there won't be. But we shall see. That would be a cool flick to see on the big screen.

Yep, it's all sold out. Go fig.

I want to ride it where I like...

As I type this, Katie's asleep on the couch. We're supposed to go run some errands and get some stuff done, but we just got back about an hour ago from a 20-mile bike ride up and down the Fox River Trail. 

We had beautiful weather and it was a gorgeous ride, save for the point where you ride past the sewage treatment plant in Batavia. If you weren't feeling hunger pangs before...

But Katie's now completely wiped. I know she's getting tired on our rides when she starts to lean forward with her forearms on the handlebars instead of her hands. Never a good sign. Thankfully that didn't happen until about mile 18. 

She did take a few pictures. Sadly my PowerShot is in the shop with a busted zoom dial. But Katie took some (one of those times when Facebook readers should click through to view the photos)

Do I wake her up? I know we've got a lot to do, but I'm not suicidal.

I'm so stoked about this little gem I ordered. It's an official Invaded! coffee mug for Avitable's 2009 Halloween party. 

This thing is truly a work containing both fine craftsmanship from the folks at Zazzle.com and the artwork of Dave from Blogography. 

 

Unlike most coffee mugs, the design is not raised at all. It is so protected by ceramic glaze that there is no way to accidentally damage the logo without destroying the mug. And it's a heavy-duty mug at that. This is my favorite coffee mug second only to the kick-ass Jack Skellington mug that Katie bought me down at Disneyworld last year.

Kudos to Adam, Dave, and Zazzle on a fine product.

And no, I'm not receiving any sort of compensation from Adam, Dave, or Zazzle for this shameless plug other than warm, fuzzy feelings. I can't even go to the party. I'm just going to have to celebrate with my mug.

*sniffle*

Help... not just anybody...

I found this ad on Facebook today.

It disturbs me for a few reasons.

One, why is it that only dads can take advantage of this debt-relief program? No moms? No childless guys? What exactly is involved here? Will they be selling their kids into child slavery behind their wives' backs?

Two, I could be wrong, but in that image I see long blonde hair, a pregnant belly, and boobies. How does this image depict dads in debt? Or is it meant to imply that all men are in debt because of women and pregnancy? Are they claiming women are the root of all evil including excessive levels of debt? That's a bold statement.

Three, what exactly is this woman doing in the picture? It would appear she is sitting/standing in the glow of a TV, but otherwise, what is this image depicting? Looks like her hands are doing an Al Bundy with the waistband of her pants. Is there porn involved in this deal?

So many questions...

Once in a while, I love scrolling through the Chicago Tribune's "Mugs in the News" section. You find a great random sampling of life there.

For example, here's a guy who was charged with first-degree murder and aggravated battery. Well if you were near a dude looking this sullen who was wearing a shirt that says "Most of the people that drive me nuts are in my family" and you didn't treat it a sign of things to come, well, you probably deserved it anyway...

This girl is actually pretty cute and looks happy to be there getting her mugshot taken. Prison fetish, I'd suspect.

I was going to ask why this guy looks so damn happy after being arrested and booked, but I think we all know why, don't we?

I have no words.

And oh so many more!

He's the world's biggest...

Fasten your seat belt, if you can (more on that later), 'tis Snippet Wednesday!

Disclaimer
For any of you reading this or any of my posts in the Notes section of Facebook, you might have noticed how I talk about photo albums or videos that don't seem to be there. This is a quirk of the Notes application. It imports text with some degree of efficacy (minus some formatting) and the occasional embedded image. But photo galleries or videos? Nuh uh. I recommend you all just click on over here to www.kapgar.com to view these posts in all their gory glory.

Photos
Here are some pictures I took recently in and around Union Station in Chicago for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Signature
The reason I was downtown and able to take those pictures last week was because I was going to that showing of Million Dollar Quartet where I was going to get my copy of The Last Starfighter signed by Johnny Cash/Lance Guest. Well, here's what my cover looked like prior to the signing...

Wanna know what it looks like now? Exactly the same. Turns out after going all gaga for the showing, Lance Guest wasn't in the cast that night. Actually, he's out of town for a few weeks and they expect him to rejoin, they just don't know when. 

Damn you, Alex Rogan! You owe me a signature!

Toner
I can honestly say, there are few things in life I hate buying more than replacement cartridges for our printer. I dread this deed simply because they cost so damn much and rarely last long at all. I'd go to those refill places, but the one or two times I've tried refilled cartridges, they didn't work well at all and did a number on my printer. This may have changed in recent years, though. Any experiences positive or negative?

Belted
As I was driving out to pick up the printer cartridges last night at OfficeMax, I discovered that the button on my seat belt buckle was coming loose. The seat belt still works, but it sometimes takes a little fiddling. Thank you to the guy at Advance Auto Parts, though, who told me about a local junkyard that has what effectively amounts to a freeform Saturday. I just drive in, find what I need, grab it, and pay about half price off the normal junkyard costs. He told me he redid the entire interior of an SUV for about $50. Guess where I'll be on Saturday?

Jackass
Am I the only person who applauds President Obama for calling Kanye West a jackass? Regardless of whether it was off record or not and whether it was appropriate or not, it needed to be said and by someone from whom the message would actually bear some weight. Hey, if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and steals the spotlight from a VMA winner like a duck...

Well, time for work. Adieu.

The birds will still be singing...

I have a confession to make, after a few months trying to transform into a runner, I crashed. I crashed hard. No, not a literal accident. Just the figurative "wall" that runners tend to hit. But it still hurt bad.

There was a while there that I was doing pretty good. Constantly attempting to increase the distance that I was running. At one point, I actually hit five miles. For the first time since the summer after my freshman year of college, I ran five miles straight.

Since that day, I have not run more than a mile and a half again.

Physically, I'm not entirely sure why it happened, but it did. Any time I attempted to run, I got winded way too quickly or my body just couldn't move. That so-called "groove" I had during the monster run just would not come back. 

Mentally, I saw myself getting worse. I watched (or read) as people I knew were running longer and longer distances at shorter and shorter times. I kept thinking "Why not me? Seriously, why the fuck not me?"

As a result, I got frustrated and I ran less and less. I think I got stuck in the whole "you lost the race" mindset and gave up. I still worked out, but not nearly as much and running was a once or, maybe, twice-a-week thing I would do that did nothing more than bum me out even more.

Yesterday, though, my brain had a breakthrough. After giving away an hour and a half of my life to Guitar Hero III (yes, I still enjoy playing that one solely because of the mix of songs on it), I decided I just needed to go out and run. 

Screw how long I go. 

Screw how far I go. 

I just needed to go.

And I did.

I'm not sure how long. I'm not sure how far. I don't know how it compares to those of you who are runners... and I don't care. I just know that it was more than I've run in months. And it felt good. And I need to capitalize on this feeling. 

Screw medals.

Screw finish lines.

Screw mentally competing with all the people I know who are runners.

I need to do this for me.

I need to do this for my health.

I need to do this for Katie.

I need to do this for our future family (no, that's not a veiled announcement).

So, nothing personal against those of you who are competitively running. I'm happy for you and I wish you all the best. But I need to stop paying attention to what you say and write about. I need to stop gauging my success on how I compare to your efforts. That's the wrong way to live. 

I need to do this for me. My own rules. My own standards. 

And I need to just be happy that I'm doing something. Something that, hopefully, will result in a longer and happier and healthier life.

Life is just too damn short to worry about keeping up with everyone around me.

On a lighter note. I found this gem of a video via Google Reader. 

A musician named Jarbas Agnelli found a picture of birds perched on a series of five suspended cables as birds are wont to do. But instead of just disregarding the image, he and his musical mind decided to see if there was any compositional value to how the birds were sitting.

Check out what he discovered. It's pretty amazing, really.

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Originally posted at Superhero Journal. Well, that's where I found it, anyway. Via Google Reader.

I believe that we are gonna be friends...

Hey! I actually did it! I recorded another video podcast! It's been a year almost to the day, but The Damn Fool Network is alive! Alive, I tell you. Alive!

Actually, I made a commitment to myself to defeat this video editing roadblock that keeps holding me back. So, while the results of this little experiment in habañero pepper consumption may not be the most exciting, I was doing this more for the opportunity to play with recording, editing and use of titles and transitions. I want to do this more often as it should get easier with time. I hope so anyway.

Again, if I only had an iota of Marty's talent.

Be honest and let me know what you think about it...

The Damn Fool Network: Habanero Peppers from Kevin Apgar on Vimeo.

I received a note from the press people for the Chicago Public Library (CHIPUBLIB) asking if I'd be interested in helping them promote the CHIPUBLIB Sound Off competition.

It's a really cool music competition for participants 14 years of age and over to develop their own original piece of music about or inspired by the City of Chicago. The competition is being judged by local music critics Chris Force of Alarm Magazine, Jessica Hopper of The Girls' Guide to Rocking and Kanye West's collaborative songwriter Che Smith, more commonly known as Rhymefest. Submissions are being accepted until September 27, 2009, and the grand prize winner will headline the CHIPUBLIB Sound Off Concert in October and receive a package of recording studio time.

How cool is that? If music (making) were my forte, I'd be all over this.

So if any of my Chicago-area readers are interested, head on over to the CHIPUBLIB and get a bit more information or check out what else is there.

Hung up on your wall for the world to see...

Some of you may be wondering what the new "Capture Me" widget is in my sidebar. It's my attempt at self whoring. Allow me to explain.

CBS 2 Chicago is running a photo contest called Capture My Chicago and the winners, as chosen by fans visiting the site, wind up in a coffee-table-style book. Accompanying the book will be a DVD with several other pictures as well.

While even making the DVD would be cool, of course the creme de la creme is making it into the book itself. And I've uploaded 20 photos to the contest in hopes of one of them making it. The images in the widget? Those are they.

This is where you come in. I'm hoping I can snag some votes from you. Registration on the site is free and I would like to take a moment to encourage you to sign up and vote. Preferably for one of my photos, but if you find something else you like, I think you should vote for them as well. Most of us are amateur photographers just trying to gain a little renown. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, right?

So head on over to my photos on Capture My Chicago and vote away. Please? And if you can think of other photos I've uploaded on Flickr that are related to Chicago and the suburbs that you think should be submitted, let me know.

Thanks!

Here come the story of the hurricane...

I feel like the floor of a taxicab. Hmm, must be Snippet Wednesday!

Bose
I finaly got my new earbuds and I did wind up getting the Bose in-ear buds again. Turns out those of you, including Katie, who said to talk to Bose were absolutely right. They actually do have a replacement program. Turn in your old ones and get a new pair for half price. Sure, this half price is still more than I was looking to spend, but Katie even said I use them religiously and we know we like them, so I might as well. Can I tell you how nice it is to have bass again in my music?

Crowes
And what better to listen to with my new earbuds than the new double album, Before the Frost... Until the Freeze, by one of my longtime faves, The Black Crowes. Glad to see they came back from their hiatus. I only hope the Foo Fighters do the same.

Parents
Not only can I see parents doing this, it's really not a half-bad idea. Funny though it may be. And when The Onion, in an attempt at lampooning morning "news" shows, does a better job than the shows themselves, you know something is wrong. Or maybe it's right. Hmmm...

Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids

Poll
The idea that somebody would pick Spider-Man 2 over Superman in a head-to-head superhero poll just floors me. Please avert this travesty of superheroic injustice by visiting Cinematical and changing things before it's too late! (I agree with all the other results so far, though).

Kevin
Yeah bitches! I'm a hurricane this year and I'm bearing down on Mexico! Rock on!

Check that. I've been downgraded to a tropical depression. I guess I pussed out. Talk about depression. I was so excited when I saw the name "Hurricane Kevin" on the Google Earth hurricane tracker. This blows, but apparently not enough.

Fetch
Somehow I don't see that a subject line of "Jerry plays fetch with himself" on a spam e-mail message is really going to make me want to open it. Just so many things about that I'm much better off not knowing.

And it's time to head on out into the void.

Is anyone going anywhere...

On my way to work the other morning, I looked ahead to approximately where I hit the on-ramp to the highway eastbound and saw two helicopters just floating there.

At that time of day, I couldn't imagine them being anything other than news or traffic choppers. This could not be a good sign, could it? Accident? Traffic jam? Prison break? Toppled beer delivery truck?

Despite my internal alarms ringing, I kept driving in that direction in hopes that I was wrong.

I was only partially wrong.

They were, in fact, news/traffic choppers and were likely reporting on some accident, but the scene was about a mile or so further west of my on ramp. Translation? There was no eastbound traffic coming to my merge. My commute in to work was free and clear, baby! Oh my God, the only other time I'd ever seen the highway this empty at rush hour is on those few days between Christmas and New Year's when nobody is working. It was a beautiful thing.

Now I must come up with ideas as to how I can create traffic jams at that same location daily so I can have this same easy commute every day! Any ideas?

This has to be one of the most amazing music videos I've ever seen. It's for "King Rat" by Modest Mouse. Director credit was given to Heath Ledger for conceptualizing it as a protest piece against whaling off the coast of Australia. I'm not sure if he actually did any work beyond the concept phase, but I do know he had directed a handful of music videos in his time.

Modest Mouse - King Rat (directed by Heath Ledger) from Johann S. on Vimeo.

I think one of the reasons I love it is the choppy pseudo animation that's employed (I have no idea what the actual animation style is called). It's very reminiscent of Monty Python segues. I do believe Terry Gilliam had something to do with this as well, which would explain the Monty Python parallels.

For the record, the video is incredibly brutal and raw and bloody, but oh so powerful and entrancing. I love it. Almost as much as A-ha's "Take On Me" (this particular copy complete with VH1 pop-up commentary), which is my favorite video of all time.

Seeing stuff like this and realizing just how much raw talent was lost makes me miss Heath Ledger even more.

Thanks to ChordStrike for cluing me in to this.

Where have all the good times gone...

Have you ever had a friend that suddenly, and perhaps even without explanation, ceases to be your friend?

This happened to me back in high school.

Shortly after I moved to Chicagoland, I met Pete (names have been changed). He and I, along with another guy I'll call John, were all really great friends. There were others who migrated in and out of our group, but the three of us were the nucleus of our insane little institution. Throughout junior high and freshman year of high school, we were practically inseparable.

At the end of freshman year, Pete came up with the insane idea that he and I should try out for the football team. I had my doubts, but went along with it. We went through all the administrative stuff and showed up to two-a-day practices that summer. It wasn't easy, but we tried to power through it anyway.

After the first week ended, Pete quit. He didn't even tell me he was leaving; he just stopped showing up. To top it all off, he stopped talking to me entirely.

To this day, even upon years of reflection, I still couldn't tell you what happened. I thought maybe I had changed as a result of all the new people we had been hanging out with from the football team. But, if that had been the truth, I wouldn't have remained friends with John. The two of us stayed close despite him not even being on the football team at all. He didn't even try out. Yet we were friends and he even became friends with a few of the football players by association. When I asked John one time about it, he had no clue what happened either.

What makes people act this way?

I realized something yesterday when Marie commented on my post about being a lover of all things Beck... my post title yesterday made absolutely no sense in relation to the context of my post. Well, less sense than usual.

I chose "Devil's Haircut" by Beck as my title because I had a snippet on there about how I was going to push for legislation to allow people to shave the heads of women they find sporting the Kate Gosselin hairdo. Tacked onto the resolution would be a caveat allowing the public beating of any man with similar hair. So, in that regard, the post title was perfect.

However, at the last second, I changed my mind and deleted the snippet. Not sure why anymore, but I did. And I did not change the post title.

So, for that, I'm sorry. I usually try to tie in my titles, at least tangentially, to what I'm writing. Didn't quite happen yesterday. Whoops.

I got a devil's haircut in my mind...

Welcome to Snippet Wednesday, where we take three parts debonair, four parts sexy, five parts awesome, and... completely disregard it all in the name of blog tripe! Wooo hooo!!!

Fiber
If you read this on a product, would you ever eat it? "NEW USERS: Increase your fiber intake gradually. Gastrointestinal discomfort may occur until your body adjusts." This warning is on the wrapper of the new Kellogg's Fiber Plus bars. I'm thinking the original warning "You will have gas the likes of which have not been seen since Vesuvius" was nixed at the last second. C'mon, be honest with us here, okay? TRUTH IN ADVERTISING, DAMMIT!!

Porn!
If you're under 18 and having, er, urges, you might want to take a hop across the pond to get your fix...

Rampage
Fatal cow attacks in Britain? Well, duh, they obviously want their porn, too, before the three-week grace period is up!

Jet
Holy crap! I had no idea Jet was even still around and now they've got a new CD. I was way more addicted to Get Born than I should ever admit. But I will say it anyway. And their new album, Shaka Rock, is only $3.99 on Amazon for a limited time. Or pay full price on iTunes once the promo period runs out. Gotta say I'm loving the Amazon store more and more every day.

Faces
One of the things I always loved about Sports Illustrated was the "Faces in the Crowd" section where they give little sentence blurbs plus a photo highlight to regular people who have made some major athletic accomplishment. I always hoped I would see someone I knew in there. To the best of my knowledge, this has not yet happened. Have you ever known anyone in the "Faces in the Crowd"? Oh too funny, while searching for "Faces" on their Web site, I found that the swimsuit edition is on Twitter. I'm shocked there aren't more followers. 

Targettunes
I'm curious... for at least the last several years, Target has had an online affiliation with Amazon. Amazon is in direct competition with iTunes in digital music sales. So how come Target is now aligning itself with iTunes for exclusive online music sales starting with Pearl Jam's new album Backspacer? What am I missing? It's an online menage-a-trois of pain ("I hear you have to pay extra for that kind of action, Cotton"). Clearly I need to be hired as their proofreader, though. Found two errors in that tiny little paragraph below.

Time for work!

Then we go back to school, yeah...

I don't know what made me realize this, but while working out at the gym tonight, I realized something relatively significant about today...

Aside from it being the start of Katie's student teaching, today also marks the 20th anniversary of me starting high school back in 1989.

Holy shit.

I think I'm going to curl up in a corner and cry right now.

Okay, maybe I'll wait until my fantasy football draft is done. Then I'll cry. And if I don't get the players I want, I'll have even more reason to cry.

I seriously can't be the only person who cracked up insanely upon reading this.

If you know code, you should understand this. But it's so incredibly geeky that maybe I am the only one who gets it.

.clowns{float:left;}.jokers{float:right};#me_you{position:fixed;margin:0 auto;width:100%}

Thanks to @MarcDrummond for sharing this little gem with me.

Grab your mouse and stroke your keys...

(Sung to the tune of "Frere Jacques")

Where is Kapgar?
Where is Kapgar?
Here I am.
Here I am.
Where the hell you been?
Lazy S.O.B.
I took a week.
Just for me.

And it felt damn good. Okay, moving on.

Apparently, retail America would have you believe that we're closing in on the winter holiday season. This despite the fact that we have only just begun hurricane season and, hell, Chicago only recently started to actually have summer weather. Yeah, we're late bloomers around these parts.

But the idea of it being so close to holiday season had me thinking about gift giving. No, I'm not giving you anything. Well, not yet anyway. Maybe sometime down the line a bit. I was actually thinking about the process as a whole. Some people are easy to buy for, some people are a pain in the ass. Some gifts are fun to buy, some are not.

This is where you come in... I need the answers to two questions regarding gift giving.

First question... What would you consider the worst gift you had to buy for someone? I'm not talking about white elephant gifts or gag gifts. I mean what gift did you have to buy for someone that just made your skin crawl, activated your gag reflex, made the hairs on your neck stand on end? But you did it anyway because it was what this person wanted.

For me, it was the Bodyguard soundtrack CD that I bought for my brother one Christmas years ago. I know I don't always listen to the greatest music and that some might consider my tastes to be bad. But this? An album of nothing but Whitney Houston tripe? This was physically painful for me to have to purchase. Mainly because I could not fathom that living around me did not rub off on him more positively. The shame I felt.

Second question... what do you think others may have considered to be the worst gift you bought for them? This would be something that you bought that you just know this other person despised. It may have been purchased intentionally to drive them nuts or maybe they just didn't receive it the way you intended.

For Katie and me, it was a gift package of Chicago Bears bib, baby bowls, sippee cups, and plastic flatwear that we purchased as a baby shower gift for Katie's cousin and his wife. Why was it so horrible? Well, her cousin is a diehard Bears fan, so we're pretty sure he liked it. But he lives and works in Green Bay and is married to a woman who bleeds Packer green and gold. We knew this when we bought it. It was purchased wholly for him in his quest to keep his newborn daughter on the good side of fandom. And we're pretty sure it's either been disposed of by his wife or has at least been hidden far, far away.

I think I have discovered the definition of "geek porn." And it's a song.

The song is "(Do You Wanna Date My) Avatar" by The Guild featuring Felicia Day (she being the object of many a geek fantasy herself after her starring role in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog).

It is a truly hilarious satire (at least I choose to look at it as satire) about people who take their online realities very seriously. Not to poke and prod them too much as they might rise up in revolt against me, but it is well done and funny. (For the record, there is a video embedded below that you may not be able to see if you're reading this from my Facebook wall. Wanna see it? Click through to this post on my blog.)

Also, this video is receiving huge traffic so you might want to click to start it and then pause it to wait for the entire video to preload before you play it straight through.

Check out the song on Amazon or on iTunes.

Alright, already, we'll all float on...

Need I say more? Didn't think so. Okay, I will anyway. Go check out my guest post at Secondhand Tryptophan.

Yesterday was Triple Feature Friday for the ol' kapgar. Something I'm pretty sure I've never done before in my life. Yes, three movies in one day. And I stayed awake for all three!

First, after Katie finished her student teaching meetings during the day, she and I went to see (500) Days of Summer. Absolutely brilliant movie. It was so well done and if this doesn't hammer home the name Joseph Gordon-Levitt as one of the better 20 to 30-something actors in Hollywood right now (I think he's 28), nothing will. And Zooey Deschanel? I don't think there's anything I can say that hasn't already been said. She's just fantastic.

After that was The Time Traveler's Wife. Admittedly, I have not read the book yet so I cannot compare from one medium to the other. But Katie just finished the book a couple weeks ago. As someone who has only seen the movie, I enjoyed it. I was never bored nor confused and I enjoyed the interplay between Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams. Katie said that there were some key details left out and the ending was very different, but it didn't bother her too terribly. She still cried like a baby at the end and enjoyed it overall. She did tell me, however, that whereas the book's description of time travel kinda confused her, it all made sense when she saw it on screen. The woman sitting next to us completely agreed.

Then, later that night, my buddy Eric invited me to go see DIstrict 9 with him. I need to admit something about this movie... before last week, I'd never heard about it at all. No previews, no posters, no nothing. Then I saw a trailer tacked onto G.I. Joe and just thought it looked weird. But I went anyway after Eric gave me a primer on it. I FREAKIN' LOVED IT! Holy crap. I haven't had this much fun at an alien film in years. Probably not truly since Aliens in '86. The documentary style of shooting this film and splicing in the news and archival footage was brilliant. Plus, it was the most perfect integration of live acting and CGI I've ever seen. And the movie was a ton of fun, too. I don't want to say much about the plot of the movie whatsoever because I think my going into it with a complete sense of tabula rasa really helped the experience immensely. Just go see it.

'nuff said.

Sometimes I was drifting on a coffee buzz...

Three weeks.

Three very long weeks.

Three excruciatingly painful, truly untasty weeks.

That's how long it's been since I've had coffee.

I was never a huge coffee drinker. I only had coffee one, maybe two, times a week. But on that "one, maybe two, days," I would have about three cups. The first cup would never be enough to sate me.

However, over the course of the last few months, that "one, maybe two days" turned into five days a week. I was as bad as everyone in my office. I would sit there and wait for the coffeemaker to finish brewing a pot just to make sure I got some of it. I was becoming an addict. And it wasn't even particularly good coffee.

I decided it was time to kick the rapidly forming habit. Cold turkey. And I went to water. Straight water.

There are few things as boring to drink in life as water. God it's boring to drink repeatedly. I've even tried hot tea or those drink stir ins. It helps, but that can get a little pricey after a while. The big ol' Nalgene bottle I use requires two packets of stir-in mix.

I guess the one good thing about it all is that I'm sleeping much better at night. Truly.

But I miss my caffeine.

Speaking of coffee, have you seen Boy Obsolete's hand-drawn coffee cups? Total coolness.

I missed my blogiversary. Again. It was back on June 16. How could I miss such an important holiday???

Never again.

After seeing it over on Renagerie, I decided to add my own blogiversary counter. Thanks, Ren.

Now what app can I find to remind me to look at my counter?

Oh, and I gave myself a new banner in belated celebration.

You were a vampire...

Today we will talk to a 12-year-old girl who was impregnated by her seven-year-old half cousin who summarily left her for his 52-year-old social studies teacher. Now she's working as a greeter at a local Wal-Mart while living in a mobile home that she shares with a family of dogs that sought refuge after escaping from Michael Vick's, er, kennel and traveled halfway across the country with a bunch of crack-addicted carnies. All this and more, today on Snippet Wednesday!

Talkies
Something like that might actually get me to tune into Maury or Tyra or Oprah or whomever. Alas...

Coraline
Instead, I watch movies like Coraline, which, in all honesty, completely underwhelmed me. And I was a fan of The Nightmare Before Christmas. A big fan. But Coraline? Meh. The animation was pretty cool, but the story just didn't flow well for me. It felt too forced and no fun.

True
The good thing is now that I'm sending back Coraline to Netflix, I will finally be starting up on HBO's True Blood, season one. My only complaint about this is that each disc of the set only has two or three episodes on it. I've become so accustomed to four or five episodes per disc (House does five per disc from season three on) that this is just not gonna be enough to whet my appetite. I know it's all about the timing. Network shows are shorter because of commercials. But HBO shows aren't that much longer. They still have commercials, just at the ends of the episodes. Most episodes of Deadwood still clocked in at only about 45 minutes each and that was HBO as well. Stinks of a plot to upcharge for the DVD set, if you ask me.

NFL10
It was time to renew my subscription to Sports Illustrated and I saw that they had a new offer... subscribe for a half year and get a free copy of EA Sports Madden NFL 10 on whatever gaming platform you want. So I checked, and they do have it for the Wii. I'm not a huge fan of the Madden games. They just get too damn complex for me. But on a Wii? This could be fun. And Katie wants to play it with me. We can be terrible together (I was going to say "we can suck together" but I know how you perverts think). 

Lebanon
Is it wrong that I saw the headline to this article -- "Arlen Specter Faces Angry Lebanon Crowd on Health Care" -- and all I could think was "what the hell is Marie doing now?" Of course this time, they actually are talking about Lebanon, Pennsylvania, not the country that Marie is currently visiting. My bad.

Lego
I'm a fan of nearly all things Lego (except maybe for Bionicle). I love these little bricks and have since I was about five years old. I still get excited when new sets get released and I love going in Lego stores. It's just too much fun. But this announcement of a combination live action/animation film featuring Legos? I dunno. I can't say I'm looking forward to it at all. Please, just nix it before it goes too far.

I know a bear that you all know...

And welcome back to my neglected stepchild of a blog. Just in time for Snippet Wednesday!

CDs
I love getting CDs from the library, as many of you already know. What I hate, though, is that it seems there are few to no libraries that believe in CLEANING their CDs. Of the tonnage of albums I've picked up in the last few days, both Morrissey's "Maladjusted" and Ray Lamontagne's "Gossip in the Grain" are scratched beyond listenability (is that a word?). To librarians everywhere, do not just check that discs are in the cases when they're returned; you also need to make sure they're in good condition. There's nothing more frustrating than waiting a while for a disc (be it CD or DVD) to become available only to have it rendered unusable. Not good.

Scoots
I told you, Scott. Once I met your new dog, Scooter, I'd talk about him here. And he is an awesome dog. He's half Doberman and half Schnauzer, so he's a slightly larger-than-medium dog who thinks he's either a purse dog or a cat. This claim was evidence by his utter need to lie on people's laps or on the top edge of the couch. The latter proved somewhat disastrous as he fell between the back of the couch and the cushions and couldn't figure out how to get out. Here are some photos. If you can't view the gallery in Reader, click on through either here or to the Flickr album.

Secondhand
Now that you all have read my two guestposts from Monday and Tuesday and know the sort of thing I like to do while guestposting, I need your help. A week from this Saturday, I'm guesting over at Secondhand Tryptophan as part of Karl's Summer of Love. I want to know what you'd like to see me write about. Within reason, of course. I'm not going overboard as I'm neither unemployed nor self employed. I do have gainful employment that I'd like to retain and my employers are aware of my blog so don't expect anything too wild. But still have a little fun. Let me know.

Tweet
I've been cleaning up my Twitter follower list a bit lately. Yeah, yeah, I know I was recently considering dumping it, but I didn't. Instead I took it private and have been trying to reduce my following/follower lists to just those I know or really give a damn about. But it is possible that I accidentally deleted one or two of you. So please, if you were removed from my Twitter list and feel it was an error, let me know. I have a ten-page application I can send you for reinstatement that needs to be filled out in triplicate. And I need a note from your third-grade teacher. Can't be too safe these days.

Ultrapsychotic
I know I railed against marathons some time ago, but I must apologize. Compared to this dude, not only are marathoners completely sane, but they're measurably pussified, too. Nothing personal, marathoners, but you got nothin' on this dude. How many times was he dropped on his head as a child?

Bearly
And in pure LeSombre tradition, I will save the last snippet for the Park Ranger should Wil Wheaton's tweet come true... "I know I'm not first to think this, but just once, I would have liked Yogi to tell the ranger, 'I'm a fucking BEAR, man. Just walk away.'"

Killing me softly...

Just because there isn't much here doesn't mean I'm not up to something. I am! I am! I swear I am!

It's just not... here...

It's actually over at La Casa de DutchBitch where I am guestposting as part of BlogJacking 2009.

Enjoy!

And, even if you don't, just pretend you do and make me feel better about it, okay?

 

I just received the e-mail from Brandon to rejoin the DownWithPants fantasy football league!

Do you know how much I've missed fantasy football? Do you know how much I've missed football, period??

Oh, thank the maker! Football season is nigh!!!

Oh lolli, lolli, lolli...

Eventually, if my eyes ever peel themselves open (ha! not freakin' likely), it will truly be Snippet Wednesday. Yet I fear it's gonna be a drag-ass one at that.

Birthday
First a Happy Birthday wish to my Dad who turns God-only-knows how old today. Actually, I might really know if I wasn't too tired to do the math in my head. But he might not want me posting the truth so perhaps this works out for the better. Happy birthday, Dad!

Lollipop
The picture of me with Tori, Kim, Sizzle, and Nilsa the other day? It was pointed out to me by a couple of them that coming up with a name might have been easier if I had posted an alternate photo. One of the others that was taken by Sweets who snapped quite a few with my camera while Steven was taking pictures with everyone else's camera. So, below, find the picture they suggested and you all get to choose which name is better... "Kevin and the Hot Licks" (Nilsa's suggestion) or "Lollipop" (my suggestion). If you pick the last one, I'll get to strut into work like Jerry O'Connell and Corey Feldman as they sang "Lollipop" along the railroad tracks in Stand By Me. Oh, who am I kidding? I'll do that anyway.

Jinx
I swear I gotta stay away from big-deal sports events. Last night, while typing up my weird post, I received an e-mail alert from the Chicago Tribune that White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle had another perfect game going into the fifth inning. If you recall, last week, he pitched what is only, by official definition, the 18th perfect game in baseball history. And now, on his first game back after that accomplishment, he had another one going. There have never been back-to-back perfect games ever. So I turned on the TV and saw him get two guys out in the sixth against the Twins, only to give up a walk, a couple hits, and a run immediately afterward, thus negating not just a follow-up perfect game, but any shot at even a no hitter. So to White Sox fans, I apologize. I'll stay away and never watch anything of this sort again. Promise. But to Buehrle, 45 consecutive retired batters? Nicely done. At least you're doing your part to make Chicago baseball exciting.

Renewed
Yay! Both Burn Notice and Royal Pains have been picked up for additional seasons by USA. And I do believe Wil Wheaton Tweeted from ComicCon that The Big Bang Theory was renewed for two more seasons. Happy days!

Mal
Oh, dude, Nathan Fillion is on Twitter? Sweet!

Ripped
And in pure LeSombre tradition, I will save the last snippet for myself for when someone truly pisses me off and I must go all Whitechapel on their ass.

Friends like these...

You see that picture? I was trying to come up with some cool name to describe us like the "Blogging Trio o' Terror" but there are five of us. "Sex Kittens"? Nah, not with me in it. 

So just call me Charlie and declare them my Angels. That works.

From left to right, we have Tori, Kim, Sizzle, and Nilsa, thus comprising a killah network of both incredible bloggers and fantastically cool women. And my personal value skyrocketed in their very presence yesterday at Nilsa's house in the way deep north end of Chicago. 

I'd really love to say more, but there are no words in a human vocabulary grand enough to describe them. Suffice it to say that if you ever have the opportunity, you should meet them. Do not pass go, do not colect $200, just GO.

Thank you all for agreeing to get together. And thank you, Nilsa and Sweets, for hosting us.

And I get to move two people over to my "Bloggers I've Met" (and want to meet again!) list.

I want to ride it where I like...

Wilkommen aus Snippet Wednesday nummer googolplex! Yep, despite how the company spells it, the real way is "googol." Looks so funny, though, doesn't it?

BMX
The BMX photo shoot that I was supposed to do last Thursday had to be rescheduled due to weather and other mitigating circumstances. Blake and I moved it to yesterday, instead. And then I almost missed it not realizing that Naperville, IL, has two skate parks and I was sitting and waiting in the parking lot of the wrong one. Go fig. But I finally got there and snapped away to the tune of 147 photos worth. I trashed 31 off the bat because they were bad and wound up uploading 98 to Flickr. I'm hoping this embeddable Flickr slideshow works better than Pictobrowser isn't, but, if not, you can check them out in the Flickr album.

Boxing
I've always harbored a love of boxing, a revelation that is likely to turn my mom's stomach. And I've always wanted to take up boxing personally. Not for the purpose of fighting, but for exercise. I'm not sure you can get much more "total body workout" than that. I haven't joined a boxing gym yet, but I was pricing one near where I worked only to find out last night that it has gone out of business. Back to the point, though. Imagine my surprise when, a day or so ago, Katie tells me that she would like to try boxing as well, for fitness and stress relief. Not that I'm into the overly ripped female physique, I'm not. But something about Katie boxing is just, well... hawt.

Does that make me weird?

Sizzle
Just a few more days! Just a few more days! Until what? Until I meet my long-lost blog sis, SIZZLE! Ohmigod, we've been talking about meeting each other in person for years. Yeah, blows my mind to think about how long we've known each other too. But, yeah, it's been years. And I also get to meet NILSA! After oh-so-many Chicago-area meetups that she has backed out of, she's trapped! She's hosting this little shindig at her place and CANNOT ESCAPE! And there is also a chance that CITIZEN NEIL will be in attendance. There is no guarantee at this point depending on his schedule, but it could happen! As Sizzle pointed out to me, this meet-up will most certainly be worthy of its own post. Damn right!

Dawg
Apparently, the brother-in-law who regularly reads this blog has inquired as to why I have not written a post about his and his lady fair's new dog. They adopted recently and, by all accounts (Katie's included), he's one adorable little booger. The problem is that I'm the admin of this blog and I have not met him yet. So, Scott, when you want a post and pictures up about the li'l guy, you let me know when your schedule opens up and you're not busy littering the earth with little white pock-marked balls.

Ball... court... yours. ;-)

Wired
And in pure LeSombre tradition, I will save the last snippet for myself for when I must make the ultimate decision between the red wire and the blue one. Or is it green? Or yellow? Shit!

 

Thank you, kitteh.

Never coming back until I touch the midnight sun...

Welcome to Snippet Wednesday number one billy-yunnnnnn. Okay, so that's not entirely accurate.

Props
So do you think I can lie and pretend I live in Scranton just so I can unload a bunch of my crap to the producers of The Office and hopefully see that shit appear as props on a future episode? That would be soooo cool!

Ride
I'm hoping to have some pretty good photos later this week. A local park district decided to reserve a couple days of the week for BMX riders and I am friends with the guy who was behind the request. So he's gonna make sure that a bunch of guys are out there tomorrow, weather dependent, so I can snap some shots of them in action. That could be serious fun!

Plimp'd
I didn't even know Martha Plimpton was still alive let alone still acting and now she's going to be a regular on Grey's Anatomy? The last thing I saw her in was Pecker with Edward Furlong (don't ask).

Guest
It's weird. I don't guest post for the longest time. Then I receive an invitation from one person... and then another... and another... until I have three gigs all within a couple weeks of each other. Guess whose blog is gonna be rather neglected during that time? Anyone want to fill in here for me? But I will have fun during these posts. I actually already have one written for It's Me Penelope. It's one that will guarantee she never asks me to guest post again! Muahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! ha.

Tupac
Holy crap! Not only is Tupac alive, but he's... purse snatching?

Simpson
And in pure LeSombre tradition, I will save the last snippet for myself for when all the rest of my hair falls out save for two strands. Then I can groom it and be stylin' like Homer Simpson!

Easy as 1-2-3...

Hey everyone. Hope you're having a very happy 7/8/9 Snippet Wednesday. Don't forget to make it an über-celebration by going hog wild for a whole second at 12:34:56 p.m., too!

Obsessed?
I was driving behind a little PoS car this morning when I noticed an odd license plate. It said "TWI HARD." I wasn't quite sure how to take it until I read the license plate frame that declared "My heart belongs to Edward" and was accompanied with a litany of bumper stickers in the rear window including "I like my men cold, dead and sparkly" and "My other car is a shiny, silver Volvo" (Edward's car), among others. Yeah... obsessed much? I've got one thing to say to that and I'm going to let the Count from Sesame Street do it for me...

Rollin'
Also on the way to work, I was driving up a hill when I saw a can in the road up ahead of me rolling uphill. Yes, uphill. That had to be some strong wind. Not that Illinois is full of mighty hills by any stretch of the imagination. Heck, I live in an area where "mountainous" is used to describe any natural formation that is greater than 100 feet above sea level. Ah, scenic northeastern Illinois!

Redesignland
Did I mention that Tales From Redesignland has returned? Oh happy day!

1901
A couple weeks back, my Pitchfork buddy Eric introduced me to a French alt/electronic band called Phoenix by way of the video for their song "1901." I was hooked. So I purchased the "1901" single... only to receive a copy of it free the next day as part of a Facebook indie rock sampler. Go fig, eh? There's something to be said for patience.

Deck'd
Tweetdeck supports multiple accounts simultaneously now??? Oh, this is dangerous. Seriously dangerous.

Rochambeau
And in pure LeSombre tradition, I will save the final Snippet for myself in anticipation of the day when the apocalypse will be determined by a game of Rock-Scissors-Paper (and I hope the other guy picks "paper").