This is just one of the many reasons why I hate using the Tumblr dashboard.

(h/t to Ryan for demonstrating this so perfectly)

reimer:

What in the sam hell is this?

I did not sign up for this. In fact, I’m still recovering from that Tweeteorite I had to dodge last week.

Something tells me @textism is not thrilled right now.

Favrd : Pulitzer :: favstar/Tweetiorite : America’s Got Talent

cleversimon:

After wasting an afternoon taking pictures of a broken tricycle, moss on trees, and the shadow of a wrought-iron fence, Churchill Alternative High School senior Jessica Ivers falsely informed family and friends Saturday that she was getting into photography. “I love the way real film looks,” said Ivers, who has owned the old single-lens reflex 35 millimeter camera for exactly one week…

So what’s the right way to get into photography, then?

According to most critics on Flickr and Photo.net and such, the process is as follows:

-Be older than 45 and start every photography conversation with “I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and…”
-Have a lot of expensive current gear, as well as some expensive vintage gear.
-Talk about that gear in purely technical terms at all times.
-Understand that your gear is the Right Gear, and everyone else’s is the Wrong Gear.
-Be pedantic about every minor detail of your lenses, and make sure to commit every spec to memory including, but not limited to, exact weight in grams, focus throw, and circle of confusion.
-Never use squishy words like art, interpretation, aesthetic, composition, or beautiful. Photography is for technicians, not creative people who don’t know the proper way to use their gear.
-Have a full portfolio of technically perfect but visually lifeless photographs. Wide landscapes, mountains, trees, and deer are popular subjects.

I think that’s a pretty good starting point.

It’s getting fairly large, so I think he needs a name. I considered Patrick, but that didn’t really fit his demeanor. Edgar is a better choice, because it incorporates his quirky and generally non-threatening side while still leaving the vague impression that at any moment he may transmogrify into a malignant melanoma stuffed full of pigmenty death.

Then again, Edgar is a bit of an antiquated name, and doesn’t coincide well with the fact that he lives inside of graphic tees most of the time rather than finely tailored shirtings.

Also, this conversation would be much less awkward if my dermatologist and psychiatrist were the same person.

A Partial List of Things I Have Eaten While at the Coast:

-Bacon Cheeseburger
-Bleu Cheeseburger
-Styrofoam Cup Full of Fries (2)
-Cardboard Carton Full of Peanuts (2)
-Lobster Tail with Bowl of Butter for Dipping
-Farfalle Pasta with Roasted Peppers
-Moose Tracks Ice Cream (1/2 Gallon…but not in one sitting)
-S’mores Pop Tarts (3)
-Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries Cereal (1/2 box)
-Cheez-Its Duoz (1 box)
-Hush Puppies (7,400)
-Flounder ‘N’ Shrimp
-Fish Tacos (2)
-Nachos with Queso for Dipping (18 gallons)
-Mahi Mahi (8 oz.)
-Island Rice which is just like regular rice but with chunks of pineapple and some other blended fruits that I might not have eaten if I hadn’t sucked back a giant margarita
-Bojangles 2 Piece Dark Meat Meal with Green Beans and a Biscuit
-Extra Biscuit (1)
-Spinach & Avocado Salad (with Bacon)
-Soft Pretzel (1)
-Slice of White Pizza (1)
-Curried Scallops & Shrimp
-Fried Plantains (3)

Yes, but what did you eat on your second day there..?

“Wow,” I hear you say, “that is indeed a metric assload of pixels.” So it would be no surprise, statistically speaking, if at least one or two of those pixels were broken. Dead, as it were. Le petit pixel mort, as they say in Spain.

But no. I’ve been lucky to have two awesome Apple cinema displays that are pixel-perfect. “A rarity!” you cry out. And you would be right.

Until this morning.

The first thing I noticed when I started working was an irritant in my left eye, like a tiny ache. I turned my head to the left, and it was gone. Looking forward again, it was back. It took me a few minutes to figure out that the irritant wasn’t in my eye, but was in fact on the far side of my left monitor. A stuck pixel.

A stuck pixel is, in my opinion, an order of magnitude worse than a dead one. A dead pixel emits no light, so if you have a dark desktop area (like I do), it simply blends into the background, and you don’t notice it unless you’re looking at a window directly over it.

But this pixel on my left side, it is stuck. On green. Not a light green, but a glowing neon green. It has been irritating my peripheral vision all morning long. It stares at me, like an evil green Lovecraftian eye. Watching me. Tormenting me. Judging me. When I look directly at it, it looks away¹, feigning innocence. But I know it’s there, casting its green gaze upon me all through the day.

I hope it goes away on its own. Perhaps one day it will tire of watching me, and return to the inky blackness from whence it came. I can only hope.

Nevertheless, it has come to my attention that I did not send each and every one of my dear friends an individualized holiday greeting card. A situation that I will attempt to remedy, right this instant, by providing a template you can use to create your very own personalized holiday greeting from yours truly.

Simply print out this post, circle and/or insert your chosen personalizations, and voilà - a heartfelt holiday wish from me. You’re so very welcome.

- – - – - – - >cut here< – - – - – - – -

Dear _____,

Wow, another whole year has gone by. Hey, remember that day I [made a hilarious tweet / got your dog drunk / hit on your aunt / got you out of that speeding ticket]? That was so crazy. And then there was the time you [Favr'd my tweet / threw up on my kitchen floor / made that awful gazpacho / hit a pedestrian with your Segway]. It’s been a wild year, huh? Yeah.

You’ve been such a great friend ever since we met [in third grade / on Twitter / at reform school / in the confessional], and I just wanted to wish you the happiest [Christmas / Chanukah / Kwanzaa / Ramadan / parole] ever.

My best wishes to you and your [lovely spouse / girlfriend / boyfriend / mother that you still live with at age 36 / sexually ambiguous live-in "friend"], and good luck with [grad school / your new job / impending cosmetic surgery / recovering from rickets] in 2009.

Your [friend / pal / impersonal internet acquaintance / AA sponsor],

[Tony / Tone / @tony_d / Mr. Delgrosso]

Look at all the little losers

The funny thing is, pretty much all of these clothes are somewhat in style again in one way or another. There are a couple of shirts in that photo that I wouldn’t mind having now.

If anyone can point out which of these little urchins is me, you win a prize.

The psychological theme here is self-control and obedience. Ultimately, my toilet training failed and my parents were always too controlling, so naturally we can place the blame on them for my overly rigid and highly organized adult life. It’s time for a review, so shall we? Great!

BOOKS: I organize my books in any number of ways. They are grouped by category and stacked horizontal or vertical in ascending order according to size. Color coordination is far too insipid and tawdry. You should possibly contemplate killing yourself if this is your method of organization.

CLOTHING: My clothing is first organized by clothing type, i.e. pants, jeans, long sleeve button shirts, short sleeve button shirts, t-shirts, etc.  I don’t necessarily organize by color, except for t-shirts, which are very important and the obvious exception to the rule. Abusive t-shirt organization is attributed to flaws in the Oral Stage of your development, approximately at 18 months. There is nothing that can be done now, accept failure and move along to creating your To-Do List.

TO-DO LISTS: These are fundamentally flawed, because the amount of time that it takes to keep rewriting them after you have marked something off of the list reverts back to making more work in and of itself. If you were able to make it past that last sentence, then it is best we move along to the grammatical section pertaining to proper spelling and enunciation.

GRAMMAR: One of the biggest annoyances is encountering and dealing with a general malfunction of the common English language. If you can’t properly speak or form sentences, then I am no longer interested in what you have to say. You can also forget about ever being considered my friend. I might possibly call if I need money, but please write what you are going to say on paper first before attempting to speak to me. I can forgive childish misspellings and even a misplaced apostrophe or two, since no one is perfect, except maybe for me. It most likely comes down to a problem with the Genital Stage. Again, the psychological theme is maturity and we all know you skipped that phase of your life.

I hope these tips have brought a new found feeling of pride for those who also suffer from the same obsessive thoughts and phobias. Remember, it’s not anal retentive, just perfectionally meticulous.

[ I'm surprised you stopped washing your hands long enough to write this post. - ed. ]

- Josh Hopkins, guest blogger

But the larger reason is that every time I click to add a comment, I’m confronted with some variation of this dialog:

To leave a comment, please enter your OpenID, ClaimID, Blogger, WordPress, or Google user info. We also accept TypeKey, Yahoo ID, or just your email address and URL. You can try logging in with Disqus, but good luck with the spam you’re going to get. LiveJournal users can suck it. Your avatar/Gravatar/bassguitar image may or may not show, for no particular reason. You may also see an image of yourself that you’ve never even used on the web. Maybe that embarrassing headshot of you in your Cub Scout uniform from 1977. If you’ve never commented here before, it may be held for moderation and mockery by the site author.

The process of commenting is becoming more of a hassle than security at JFK.  So, I tend to just stay out of the conversation.  Most sites can’t tell the difference between the info that I enter anyway, so it usually defaults to a Blogger ID, which I didn’t even know I had, and can’t seem to get rid of.  Oy.  Once I get my “ID” problem sorted out, I’ll get back into the mix.