Caffeine-Free Dr Pepper

What is this stuff good for? Isn't the massive caffeine buzz the reason for drinking Dr Pepper anyway? This caffeine-free stuff is marketed as a beverage, but it sure ain't for drinking, I can tell you that. Could it possibly be put to use as some kind of alternative fuel source or something?

Reminders and/or Announcements of Biggest News

We Like Media is up and running, the website devoted to intelligent (we think) articles about all kinds o' media. Featuring stuff so far by Jason, Tommy, Noby, and Rusty.

The Mnemonic Devices' Sparkling Objective Correlatives is the best new album of 2002. Hear it to believe it.

Dusting the cobwebs off the robot

The ninja-related announcement I mentioned a while back is still pending, just delayed for a while due to lazine... uh... being swamped with other projects.

I was browsing Usenet the other day, and this posting gave me a laugh.
Manimal!

Nobody knows who you are

This suddenly reminds me of talking about the Electric Company Spider-Man and singing the theme song with mine and Steph's old elementary school friend Allison on occasion.

I've gotta add that I'm really enjoying the Amazing Spider-Man comic book again these days, especially after years of mediocrity and endless storylines about Spider-clones and rewriting of previous storylines seemingly for the heck of it that drove away most of the book's readers (including me). It's now back to the basics, about the seeminly ordinary guy who's able to escape his frustrating life and have a little rewarding fun by fighting bad guys and helping people--and you don't have to have read four comics a month for the last few years to be able to keep up with what's going on anymore, thank goodness. I think they should have realized something was wrong back when they had to start putting two pages of story recaps in every issue of almost every comic Marvel published...

I'll start working on some We Like Media articles soon, just as soon as I finish up a couple of personal projects I'm working on right now (and when I stop procrastinating), so your Tom Green article won't have to be alone forever. How many will have to die before then? Only the We Like Media page counter knows.

Spi-Der-Man! (See Company, Electric)

Spiderman was always my favorite, as well. Not that I ever read superhero comics. I read stuff like Richie Rich and Archie. I was never into those "boy" things... just kid things. I only had one G.I. Joe, and I called him G.I. Joe (he was Clutch). I never watched the boy cartoons. The closest I got was He-Man. I liked The Smurfs and Muppet Babies. I know I've said these things before somewhere, probably here. But, yes, Spiderman is the best. He was the funniest. Everyone says they like Batman because he's not superhuman, but what's the point of that?

If we can stay in one daylight time mode, I pick the one we're currently in. I like more sunlight than less. I don't know if we're in the normal time or the DST right now, but whatever we're in, I like best. Of course, if we must have DST (which I don't mind too much), then at least it works out good seasonally: in the spring and summer, we get lots of light for partying on the beach; in the winter, it gets dark just in time for Halloweeen and for Santa Claus to come early. I dunno, maybe I do like it. But I won't tell Jason that.

Oh, wait...

"Did you know that your mama was a pelt? Did you know that?" --Yo! MahMa

Me Like Media Too

MTV decided to show the Tom Green Subway Monkey Fun special again last night, so I have it on tape now, too. Missed a new episode of X-Files to see it (which is probably actually a good thing now that I think about it, since it was apparently one of those "let's do a goofy episode to show off how clever we are" episodes, not to mention the general quality of the show these days). I appreciate the offer though Rusty.

I'm looking forward to Spider-Man too. He's my favorite superhero character--an ordinary guy who leads an ordinary life and can never seem to get a break, always struggling to follow his conscience and live up to his uncle's advice about power and responsibility, despite all the crap life throws at him even when he does do the right thing. What I've seen from the previews looks good, and I think Sam Raimi can make this work.

April is looking to be a really good month for animation DVDs--several Gundam discs, Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis (with the Cowboy Bebop movie trailer!), Evangelion boxset, Transformers season 1 boxset, Batman: The Animated Series Vol. 1, and the long-awaited unedited version of Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker.

I may have spoken a little too harshly about Angelfire, as their "contact us" form has reappeared, the bandwidth outages appear to have ended (for now), and they finally sent out an email about the change in the amount of storage space this weekend. We'll see how things go, though. (Bravepages does look like a better deal)

And now, a serious message about a serious and controversial topic:

Daylight Savings Time needs to be stopped. There is no need for it. If you find that you really do for some reason need an "extra" hour of daylight to work or whatever, then just go to bed an hour earlier, and get up an hour earlier on your own. Don't force your needless stress-causing wake/sleep cycle changes on other people's bodies. If there is some real need for having the clocks set an hour ahead, why do it only for part of the year? Why not make it Daylight Savings Time all year round so we won't have to bother changing our (both mechanical and internal biological) clocks at all? Who needs that hassle and stress?

It's no doubt an economic liability as well. How many hours of work are missed this time each year because people forgot to adjust their alarm clocks? Think about all those people feeling tired from having to wake up earlier, hurting their productivity on the job, hurting our economy in turn. I urge you all to write to your congressperson, urging them to take measures to ban this unfair, wasteful, stress-causing, and unhealthy practice. Join me in the fight against this oppression!

Headline News

Tom Green in Japan

I have it on tape. Mayhap it can be viewed by me again, and with you in the room. Or mayhap it can be viewed by you without me in the room. Whichever works best.

Tom Green in We Like Media

There's a new website now called We Like Media which writes a very intelligent article on Freddy Got Fingered. Okay, so I wrote it and We Like Media was started by me and whoever else hops in to help. You can find it here and see it in its little baby form!

The Lunchbots

They're pretty funny. Unfortunately for Jason, the next issue will have to be more than a recap. Or will it???

Angelfire

We Like Media is at Bravenet. Maybe that's the way to go.

The Mnemonic Devices

The group I'm most famous for has a new album. Read all about it here! Carrie "I Only Post Pictures" Hoffman even sings on it. Mayhap I'll play another show in Chalmette, LA so I can sell it to the eager teenagers. They loved me so there.

April Is Not the Cruellest Month for DVDs

I got Joe Versus the Volcano yesterday (it came out Tuesday). Mulholland Drive comes out this Tuesday.

May's Not So Bad Either for CDs

The new Weezer CD comes out in May.

... Or Movies

Has anyone heard that Lucas is making an episode two of Star Wars? Is this just a rumor?

Peter Parker Brothers and Mary

I'm also anxious about Spiderman. Me Like Media.

Art On Art

So while I'm writing articles about movies and music and stuff, I'm thinking, "Hmmm. Writing is used to talk about everything. Has anyone ever, like, painted a painting about a book, or taken a picture about a symphony?" It's interesting. I guess that's why writing is the #1 thing in the world, once you get down to it. I picked the right job.

Simon and Garfunkle

I bought their first album today. I decided I need them all (there are only five). They are one of the few 60s bands I listen to/own music of. The other are The Beatles and The Velvet Underground: I got all their stuff already. Anything else I have is just scattered songs here and there.

Glasses

I got two new pairs of glasses. One look kinda similar to, but better than, my old ones (which broke), and the others are not-quite Buddy Hollies. Less thick and pointy. I didn't go full-blown indie kid.

Emails

Everyone that reads this and is not a poster should write me here and tell me. I'm just curious.

Rusty.

Checking in

Haven't posted here in a while myself, so here's a big update on various assorted things I feel like updating you about.

• I'm feeling much better than I did two months ago, and I'm handling the Sucky Thing That Happened a lot better. (Not that it should be taken by anyone as a sign that my opinions about the situation or anyone or anything that happened have changed or that I'm okay with it or ever will be. I'm just able to be more civil and less overwhelmingly sad/angry/hurt about things.)
  
  
• My computer died last week. The operating system had been acting increasingly buggy the past few months, and then a botched installation of Internet Explorer 5.5 put the final unremovable nail in the coffin. It had a good run--seven years of constant upgrading, installing, and uninstalling with no major problems until now. The hardware was all fine, so I just backed up my files, reinstalled everything, and it's all back up and running again.
  
  
• I lost track of time while trying to save my computer from dying, and missed Tom Green's Japanese special. Strangely, MTV isn't re-airing it a hundred times this week like they do everything else. Someone be sure to tell me if you see it in the listings anytime.
  
  
• While I don't particularly care for the more gross-out stuff Tom Green does (mainly because I just don't like gross stuff), I do appreciate his style of humor. I think his critics tend to focus on his outlandish behavior more than the interactions and contrasts he creates between the normal everyday world and his craziness, and it's in those interactions and contrasts where most of the actual funny resides. It's like he says in this interview: "It's an interesting thing, especially from my show since it is so based on getting people's reactions. In Japan, it is the people's tendency to not acknowledge when someone is making a fool of himself, which I often do." It's just about not being normal or predictable or behaving as expected. Then again, it's often funny just to see someone acting silly.
  
  
• For those of you who don't religiously visit my website every day like you're supposed to, the big news of the decade is that there's a new issue of The LunchBots comic online now as of April 1. It's the first new issue published in about sixteen years!
  
  
• A warning to those of you who use Lycos's Angelfire or Tripod free web hosting services: For those of you who do religiously visit my website every day, you might have noticed that in the past few days the sections on my site that are hosted by Angelfire have finally been hit by the infamous frequent bandwidth limit shutdown plague that has siezed a majority of Angelfire and Tripod sites.
  
  It appears that they've switched from controling your bandwidth consumption by using monthly and daily limits to using hourly limits. The result is that now instead of them temporarily shutting down your site when you reach 1 GB in one month or 33 MB in one day, they now temporarily shut down your site when you go over around 1.4 MB in one hour, and that's just stupid. I mean, what's the point in having 20 MB of storage space if only one and a half megabytes can actually be viewed or downloaded by your visitors? I could be wrong about this, but they don't seem to be answering anyone's questions on their support forums about this lately, and their previous statements and the numbers back it up. They claim it's being done this way now to "protect" site owners from going over the monthly limit and having their site shut down for days at a time, but the way this works, even if you only use about 1/10 of your alloted bandwidth per month like I do, it's now possible for your site to be shut down for one- or two-hour periods every few hours--like mine currently is.
  
  So... that means that either there's a glitch in the system somewhere, or they're just being stupid about this, or they've got some serious problems going on there. (And let's face it, who in the web hosting biz isn't having problems these days?) Given their recent cutback from 50 MB of free space to 20, the fact that they didn't bother to inform any of their users about the cutback in the amount of free space or the threat of having your files deleted if you continue to stay over the new limit, and their removal of the "contact us" form on the Angelfire help pages, it's looking like us rats should be getting ready to flee the ship...
  
  
• New episodes of Invader Zim, which I maintain is the best American-created cartoon in a loooooong time are now airing Fridays at 9:30 ET/8:30 CT and Sundays 1pm ET/Noon CT on Nickelodeon--a network completely undeserving of such an intelligent, twisted, wonderfully morbid and cynical, and creative show (which is why they cancelled the show, so catch it while they're still contractually obligated to broadcast it).
  
  
• It's 4 in the morning and I'm drinking iced tea and eating leftover cornbread dressing from Easter dinner. Yummy.
  
  
• I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Ozzy Osbourne is a funny, funny guy. And the great thing is that he's funny without even trying or seeming to be aware of it.
  
  
• Speaking of underwear:
  
  
  
• Watching my Buffy Season 1 DVD set, I've just gotta wonder how far Joss Whedon had planned out certain characters' storylines when he got started with the show. I mean, there's major stuff that's happening later in this sixth season of the show (yeah, I've broken down and read some spoilers) that is seemingly foreshadowed waaaay back in the beginning, giving a really eerie depth to what seemed like innocent little jokey remarks at the time.
  
  
• Red Lobster is now running an ad with the same "Happy Together" song, but now with scenes of couples hugging and stuff instead of people getting to know friendly ocean critters before ripping them apart. Because nothing makes you feel more romantic than eating seafood, I guess.
  
  
• That's all for now.