Experiments In Mediocrity Small, obscure, nocturnal, dizzy and itchy; I tell weird stories and will give you my opinion on everything given the time. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 7 0 55 4979

Articles from Experiments In Mediocrity

The Calming Effect of Not Being Unique. 2007-08-10 14:09:00 I get seasick watching bad camerawork, we know this. This earthbound version of the space stupids frequently spills over into my personal life and while it should delight me to feel drunk without actually having to ingest anything that might erode my innards, the other people on the road don't like it.I bring this up again only to point out other people who get it. I was shocked almost to the point of tears when I found a post called Michael Bay Doesn't Get Motion Sickness over at Movies No One Should See.In the article, there's a link to a video on YouTube entitled, Michael Bay Goes To Wendy's, and the camerawork is actually better than most Michael Bay films, but the video made me laugh, so here it is:Matt Damon quoting the Paul Greengrass steady-cam fund also made me smile.Nothing on YouTube will ever put into perspective what life in my head is like while watching high-speed extreme close-up daftness on TV because on the computer the framerate is knocked down to something I c ...

I Wiped a Tear in My Head. 2007-08-09 15:56:00 A movie is being made about Eddie the Eagle.You know Eddie the Eagle, don't you? You should...if you watched the 1988 winter Olympics.I love him. This should surprise no one.Tags: August 2007, movies, Eddie The Eagle, Eddy Edwards ...

My Game Skills Are Better Than My Building These Days 2007-08-04 14:42:00 Oh Lego, you plastic demon. I swore off Lego sets after the tragic move away from yellow as the universal color for everyone in Legoland (yes, I'm a brickist, there I said it), and maybe deep down that had a little to do with my inability to hold Lego bricks anymore, and maybe it came from my inability to blow money that could go to emergency house repairs. But no, I still say making a Lego set (#10123, for the geeks) where Han, Leia and Luke were still universal yellow while Lando was brown was just half-assed lazy Lego making, and that's maybe too deep a look into what matters to me, so I'll move on to the next thing, which I think will catch on way better.Lego is making an Indiana Jones game. It will be called Lego Indiana Jones. You know in your heart there will be tie-in sets.There is going to be a little Lego Professor Henry Jones. I can feel it. will there be Lego Nazis? I don't know, I don't want to think about that and all it entails, but a little Lego Dad with a L ...

News from Excitement Central. 2007-08-04 00:09:00 Lightning hit a transformer near our house and there was a power outage at 10 o'clock, it lasted until 12:55. The fascinating part of this was that of the three-blocks-worth of houses in the dark, we seemed to be the only ones calling Con Ed. The woman we got on the phone said, "Don't tell me it's raining, I have to go to the Bronx later!"Um, yeah, well, okay, lady. You be careful on the streets in the rain.The next woman we got at about 12 told us our food going bad was the least of our worries. Maybe we really were in the dark. Maybe there be tripods in them thar streets.To be fair, I agreed with her to the extent that the food wasn't going to go bad in a couple of hours or anything, that I was more likely to vomit all over the house from the flickering candles sooner than the milk in the fridge would turn room temperature, but who wants to hear that? Not you, I bet! HAHA. Vomit. Heh.The power's back on now, it's not something I'd like to do often, but there it is. N ...

Dear Neighbor with the Weedwhacker, 2007-08-02 18:10:00 It's a really hot day. For summer, I guess it's about average but I have to say that for the three hours you've been going over that same 10x10 area with that weedwhacker, you must be beat. Why don't you put down the weedwhacker for a little while, sit down, stop making so damn much noise you psycho, what the hell kind of enchanted acreage do you have in that little lot? THREE HOURS?! Buy a mower! Your arms will thank you, and I will thank you, because it makes me a little nervous to know I'm living near someone crazier than me!Sincerely, that girl with the squeaky swing rope.Tags: August 2007, neighbors, summer ...

A Sign That It's Going To Be Okay. 2007-07-31 15:48:00 I appear to spend a great deal of time obsessing over RSS feeds. A few posts back I vented about Newsgator's new AJAXed-up beta reader, and how it's slower than the old reader it's meant to replace over time. I gave up on the beta yesterday, after being unable to get the unread feed count down from 1523 in under twenty minutes. I mean I couldn't get it down to 1522. So I switched back to the classic reader, and read all but 50 blog posts (and yes, that probably means your blog if you're reading this. Yes, you, dear reader. I like to get junk out of the way before I read the good stuff, and you know you're the good stuff. But I digress).My mind goes through phases much like the moon. Yesterday, I considered myself to be thinking better than usual, because for instance I actually thought to switch back to the classic reader to get anything done. In preparation for the inevitable removal of the classic reader, I started copying feeds over to another online RSS reader, and t ...

Deep Thought of the Day. 2007-07-30 15:51:00 No one knows anyone else's world.A child of seven couldn't care less what life was like in the 1930's, a man of 80 has no idea what it's like to grow up now. Empathy only goes so far, memories and imagination both have their failings. We're all fools, and the sooner we accept that, the better.Meanwhile, this is a pisser:Tags: July 2007, generation gap, human nature, video ...

How I Almost Ruined Meringue. 2007-07-29 16:32:00 I woke up slurring. But that was not it. I could hear just fine. What I heard were instructions to gradually add the sugar when the egg whites were "frothy.""AH DA ESS NOW!" I believe I said, then realized it was the eggs bubbling, and said, "DE SUGR! AH DE SUGR! DEY SAH FROHY! SAR ADDIN IT!"I actually enunciate a little better than this when my jaw's all locked up thanks to my ventriloquism fixation of 1986, but I have to give an idea of what I must sound like to people, and that's the one I'm going with today. Anyway, I heard the word frothy, saw bubbles, and comandeered the making of meringue.Fifteen minutes later, meringue was just beginning to form. Why? Because "frothy" is not when you add the sugar. "Frothy" is like when you get rabies from drinking too much peroxide (don't do it, kids) and a quick look at "How to akme merigue" on Google told me that the egg whites had to be way past frothy to start getting some sugar.Notice how I develop dyslexia when I'm slurrin ...

Cat Face, He's Got A Cat Face! 2007-07-28 15:52:00 Maybe baring my soul to Blogger isn't such a great idea. I'm going to stick what I enjoy. I mean, what I enjoy when I'm not venting. What I currently enjoy when I'm not venting is Cat Face, the latest series from the glorious beings that gave us Weebl & Bob.If you haven't seen them, check out Cat Face, Cat Face 2, and the third installment, Cat Face 3. You will want to go out and be rubbed with a special scent. I know I want some ash. It's very important, you know.Have a good weekend, peoples.Tags: July 2007, Cat Face, Weebl & Bob ...

Waiting For The World To Not Be So Damn Touchy. 2007-07-26 20:23:00 To follow up on yesterday's post about the choreography on So You Think You Can Dance, I'm watching the results show, and Nigel (who I *heart* anyway) started off by apologizing to pro-war people for the Wade Robson solo routine to the John Mayer song Waiting For The World To Change.I shouldn't need to add to that, really, but it's been a while since I let off some steam on certain issues, and if you want an example of the amount of steam I could let off if I really unleashed it, I'm just sayin' that pipe that blew downtown last week knows how I feel. To keep it light though, because unleashing it is not what I do here, I will say that I like that John Mayer song, I believe in its message, I'm on the same wavelength as Nigel when I say that after three times, it started to be a running joke every time the dancers would scream, and I'm not going to go out of my way looking for more than the one complaint I read against that routine, because it boggles my mind (and it's been pu ...

So I Think I Can Judge. 2007-07-25 20:00:00 What do I do when I'm not spouting words out of every finger? I watch So You Think You Can Dance? on television...when it's actually on! I'm just happy it managed to come back for a third season. Usually shows I watch don't last more than a few episodes. No wonder people latch onto reality TV.For about the tenth time this season, the judges have had a problem with the choreography the dancers do as if they have a choice in what they're given by the master crazy people who design these routines. Say, the Viennese Waltz being done as a Paso Doble. I said it, I said it like five times, because although Don Quixote was playing, I wasn't sure anyone else was noticing, and by God the head judge Nigel SAID THE SAME THING. I'm so happy I haven't wasted my life. *ahem*I'm just waiting for each dancer to come out and scream to the John Mayer song. This show is so damn fun. I want to scream like that every time the flashing commercials come on. How much do I love this show? I ...

Explaining it All Away. 2007-07-22 16:11:00 (I feel the need to point out that the following news is unsurprising and my apparent ignorance is really a deep-rooted sarcasm mechanism which I have honed over the course of many nights.)Children who prefer the night are more-likely to be anti-social. This just in: Vampires have fangs.I don't think these findings are totally accurate. As a child, I got along with anyone willing to stay up until 4AM playing Atari or watching Mary Tyler Moore. It was only during daylight hours that I hated everyone. Even the infamous rake kicking incident took place while the light of the sun was just leaving the sky.Honestly, people, who will our next generation of night workers be if all the kids are monitored vigilantly into a state of being ready for the button-down hours of The Man?Tags: July 2007, sleep, night life, vampires ...

Counsel This 2007-07-21 16:49:00 (No Harry Potter spoilers follow, I'm not like that...anymore.)Is the world is so sad? A grief counselor wants to help those who cannot cope with the release of the final Harry Potter book. (Here's a link that has a to the official story, as well as a funnier, more verbose, or otherwise just different version of what I'm about to say.)As Yoda might say, my own counsel I will keep on who is to be laughed at.I don't know, I always thought books--particularly those geared for the younger, nimbler minded among us--offered their own type of solace to the reader. You know...like...how the characters handle things?Harry Potter, for instance, he's had his deal of crap thrown at him. I doubt his most faithful readers are unable to deal with much.That's all I'm sayin'. Enjoy your book, people. Enjoy your feelings.As for the grief counselors, where were you when I read Dickens? Huh? No, I read those books alone, in a dimly-lit room, in winter. Sydney Carton? I mourn for him stil ...

I am the mouse killer. 2007-07-20 16:08:00 In this year, I have been through three separate pointing devices. Do I still possess the Hands Of Doom? Or is it just that I buy cheap mice? Wait, I didn't buy the most recent one, it came with my old PC.Rest in pieces, my good ol' cheesecake-colored PS/2 mouse. Ever since the last time I took it apart to remove the small furry creatures from the inner workings, there are extra clicks happening. I cannot drag with confidence anymore. It's been nine good years, and it pisses me off to think I did it myself, this last bit of damage.Well, like, who else would? No one else is allowed to touch my sterile mouse.I currently use four different mice, recently I had the delight of meeting an optical mouse. I'm new to this optical thing, so it blew me away that I can track on my leg and still get a decent line. I hear there are also waves that carry sound and special media than can capture images. I'm impressed.So I've been replacing any mice that suddenly decide they want to go ...

Boobies! 2007-07-18 16:49:00 It's the middle of the month and I just feel I haven't taken ten minutes to unleash unnecessary personal judgments against people I don't know in a long time, so here goes.The Internet Movie Database. We all know it and love it and can't live without it, but have you ever looked through the message boards attached to some movies? I mean really looked? There’s a pattern of sometimes young, sometimes just very, very strange users who ask, "How much nudity is in this movie?" or "Is this movie too violent?" as if someone else can properly judge how much is too much for another person.This last one, asked of The Fantastic Four back when all I'd seen was the trailer, complete with Dr. Doom tossing his doctor through glass after he gave him some bad news (and who wouldn’t want to do that? Come on), came from a kid whose parents wouldn't let her (or him, I can never be sure about these things) see the movie if there was blood. You know, there can be killing, but for the love of ...