Electric Monkey Pants

I hope you’re okay with the fact that this site is in a shameful state of disrepair. I’m catching up man, I swear. I’ve finally got time to do all the stuff I couldn’t do during school. There was an awful lot I put off, but now I’m slowly getting to all of it. Work still takes up a big chunk of my day, but that’s to be expected.

I went to see Lord of the Rings: Return of the King today. Pretty good flick; apparently there were elves in it. Haha, just kidding. Yes, I’m a geek, so I’ve read the book and I was thoroughly put off by the ending (which was sappy and not nearly as cool as the book). Otherwise, it had some of the most amazing battle sequences that I’ve ever seen. A tolerable acting job from Bernard Lee (Theoden) this time around helped, as did the ever-inspiring presence of Miranda Otto (Eowyn). How many ways can I say this? Eowyn is hot. Eowyn is really freakin’ hot. Hot blonde chicks killing demons makes me hot. Life is good.

Anyway, I promised to say more about Cancun. Mexico is on my mind once again because a good friend of mine just went down there. She’s going to Cozumel. I’m so damn jealous. But, I probably don’t need any more sun just yet. I’ve pretty much recovered from my incredible sunburn-of-doom, but the skin on my ankles is still peeling. This process has been quite fascinating, such as when I took a shower and noticed that some sort of translucent slug-like lifeform had attached itself to my leg. It turned out that my skin was filling with water, forming a 3-inch long sack of water underneath the layer of dead skin on my ankle. It was a tad disturbing.

But enough about that. Mexico is like some sort of dreamland. It was in the 70’s for Christmas. As a Minnesota boy, this is just weird. When we were first descending through the clouds on our final landing approach, I thought we’d somehow found heaven. The clouds were just perfect that day; spaced well enough so you could see the ground below. And as we got closer to the ground it became clear that the vegetation is incredibly thick. You literally cannot see the ground at all. There’s so much green, leafy life everywhere; trees, vines, bushes. But there probably isn’t much for grass because the light can’t penetrate through the canopy above. If you wanted to cut directly through the forest you’d need a machete and a lot of time. It would probably take all day to get a couple miles.

The Mexicans present a wonderful, Fantasy Island-style face to the tourists, but you don’t have to go far to see the crushing poverty of those folks who aren’t getting exorbitant taxi fees out of tourists. Whether in the city or in the country (well, “jungle” might be a better word. Or “wilderness” or something) there are a lot of people who don’t have a pot to piss in. The rundown shacks in the rural areas are the most depressing. It looked to me like people were using some corrugated metal – placed atop some stones or whatever, forming a roof – as a house. Yeah, the weather is nice all year, but still. And of course, the yards are strewn with trash, or maybe those were their possessions, I don’t know. I suppose if you’re poor you hold onto anything you might find in case somebody wants to trade for it. Also, there were stray dogs wandering everywhere, looking rather depressed themselves. Mind you, I only saw this side of Mexico on the way to Chichén Itzá and back. In Cancun proper life is more like that of an American (by which I mean USA; Mexicans are North Americans, too) urban center. By the way, make sure you check out the Photos page for some cool Chichén Itzá pix.

Well, if you made if this far, I suppose I can let you see the sunburn pic. Laugh if you will, but I learned a very valuable lesson: Never suntan for 3 and half hours without suntan lotion in Mexico. Even though I’m Whitey McPale I probably could’ve gotten away with only a slight burn in Minnesota. The sun is different in Mexico; it’s activey trying to kill you. In Minnesota the sun tries to kill you by withholding its mighty heat. Really, there’s no excuse, though. I don’t know why I did it. Maybe it’s the only thing convincing me that Cancun is a real place. Anyway, that’s enough for now. Until next time….

I’m back after much adventure. I must admit that I abandoned Minnesota, this great frigid wasteland (today’s temp: -2 degrees Fahrenheit), during the holidays and made my escape to greener pastures. I went to Cancun with my family for about 5 days. I’m still not sure Cancun actually exists. It could all be a big scam, like Total Recall or something. It certainly feels like some vivid dream now that I’m back in the states, in fucking Minnesota no less. God, what a horrible place. Okay, no, I love Minnesota, it rocks as a state, and the people here are cool and generally won’t steal your camera out of your luggage, but that’s because the winter is a killer. Nobody’s going to take the time to rifle through your luggage, or even say “hi” to you on the street because every time you expose flesh you run the risk of frostbite and/or death. People here actually spend large amounts of time sitting in a frozen hut on the ice while drinking beer and fishing. I’m related to a lot of them.

Anyway, I have a lot of shit I want to talk about. I probably won’t get to all of it. I have to leave for work soon. I’ll talk about Cancun (and my my spectacular sunburn) more later. If I think too much about it today I’ll get really depressed and try to kill myself with an icicle….which would actually be pretty easy. The hard part is avoiding the ice-death route. It’s so cold out I’m worried that the entire atmosphere might just spontaneously freeze and fall out of the sky in bathtub-sized chunks, crushing us all instantly. That’s why I keep a blowtorch on me at all times….well, that and the other reason, which (ahem) I won’t go into here.

I told myself I wouldn’t be “that guy.” You know. Him. Yeah. Okay, I’m being vague; I’m talking about the blogger who has a song for every day, every mood, every-goddamn-moment of his stupid life. Shit, it’s not that I don’t have enough songs to cover every second of my life; I’ve got more MP3s than Jesus (fun fact: Jesus only had a 5 gig iPod). But I don’t want to give the impression that my moods or life can be condensed to a few choice tracks. Far from it; yet, today and yesterday really can be summarized by one song. It’s title pretty much captures my state of mind: “Blurry” by Puddle of Mudd. So, listen to it if you want to know what I’m feeling. But, ironically, right now I’m listening to Praga Kahn. Go figure. Anyway,I’m really confused about a lot of things, and otherwise distracted from….what was I talking about? Well, I got really drunk on Saturday night with some of my favorite people, and all I did on Sunday (that would be yesterday) was sleep off my hangover, look for a job, look for a place to live, and sleep some more.

Anyway, I hope all of this explains my this site is such a goddamned mess. I didn’t know that it was completely fuct on Windows Internet Explorer. This is probably because I don’t care much about Windoze and all that crap; I’m a Mac user and as such I use a browser that actually renders pages properly. Gasp! What a concept! But since Microsoft has crushed the competition so thoroughly (and illegally) on that platform, there’s no real incentive to make their crap work. Why bother when they can make the rest of make our site work on their browser. Of course, there really is no excuse because this webpage does work on the Mac version of Internet Explorer. But apparently the Windows IE is a rancid pile crap which does not feature tabs, pop-up blocking or other necessary features. Anyway, sorry to bitch, but I’m not sure if I can get this thing to look right without a complete redesign. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. In the meantime, I urge you to try a non-crappy browser, like Mozilla Firebird. I’m sure most of you are stuck with IE, though, for a variety of reasons, so I’ll do my best to “fix” this site. I’ll be back.

Hello and welcome to my personal site. You are now reading my blog, which automatically makes you cool.

Graduation draws steadily nearer. It is now just hours away. I will soon have a second degree, to complement my degree in English from St. John’s University. The first one didn’t get me too far; let’s hope the second one is more useful. I certainly feel like I learned a lot; more than I thought I would, really. I still feel there’s a lot to learn. You can never really stop and say, “Okay, enough learning; I’m done.” Especially not in this field. Multimedia and Web Design changes so fast that my degree is probably obsolete and it’s not even in hand yet. Still, I hope to get a good job with it and then expand and refine my skills over the years. I guess I’m feeling pretty optimistic. I was feeling pretty damn “excited” earlier. Wow. You never know what the future holds.

Oh, and for those who are interested, I have updated the Photos section with some new images…and you can actually click on the thumbnails to see a larger version!! Wow! I really spared no effort for you guys. Christmas is coming, so please get me that special gift that really says you care: ca$h.

Welcome back for my latest (second, really) blog. Not too much going on, except a little thing called…. FINALS!!! Aaaiiiieeeeeeeeeeee!!!!! Yes, they are in full effect, even though next week is officially Finals Week I’ve already got a shitload to do. This website included. Luckily, I think my Flash movie is done, so that is now up and ready for your viewing pleasure. This site is now officially on the web.

Well, I got through it. I handed in my final stuff for Adv. Image Manip and my portfolio class. Looks like I’ve got a little more time for portfolio stuff, so I’ll work my ass off tomorrow (Sunday) as well. I took today off – from schoolwork. I jammed with Matt and Ben for hours today. We had a pretty good practice. Matt and I laid down a few tracks. Nothing outstanding, but at least we’ve got a version of Én Fuego on “tape” now. Actually, it’s on my computer, which desperately needs to be backed up so I can install 10.3 from scratch and not mess around with this shit. I’m currently downloading the latest patch for ProTools because it does not work with 10.3.1. I really need a new hard drive. A nice 120 gigger would do me wonders. Anytime you deal with audio or video, you need a shitload of freespace, no matter what. It’s just the way it is.

Right now I’ve got one book on my mind, and it’s calling to me like a wolf in the night. Actually, it’s the new Stephen King book, Wolves of the Calla. It’s the 5th Dark Tower book, and it’s quite good. If you’ve ever seen Seven Samurai you know the story, but it gets pretty deep into the characters and setting of the Dark Tower realm so you don’t even notice it, mostly. It’s easy and fun reading and I’m almost done. I’ve got like 60 pages to go; it’s the final showdown. I think I might have to leave you all and go read it.

This thing is finally online, live and open to the public. No pushing please; come one, come all. Ain’t it beautiful folks? Ain’t the internet grand? So long as it works and doesn’t enslave us to it, I suppose. But that’s a question for another day. Today is the day I’m getting all my loose ends tied up and preparing for graduation, which is on the 19th, if you’re interested.

It’s Judgment Day. No, not that one; get back here. All the prayers in the world won’t stop this one. I have to present my final portfolio tomorrow. When I say “tomorrow” I mean: in about 12 hours. There’s very little time left, and I’m tired as shit. I don’t have the fire that I’ll need to complete this project, which is why I’m writing in this ‘blog. Wish me luck, although you won’t read this until it’s all over and done with since this page isn’t online yet. It will be once I get done with Priority Numero Uno.

I just wanted to mention that I hate Flash. I’m tired, drained, distracted and feeling hopelessness, not the gung-ho determination I was hoping for. I might have to pull an all-nighter, but then again, maybe it’s not worth it. D’s get Degrees, they say. But I think in this case I need a C. Anyway, I’ve already lost 10% of my final grade because I didn’t manage to apply for 3 field-related jobs with the approval of my career counselor in time. Silly me, I was working my ass off, trying to graduate. Every waking moment for the past two weeks has been spent either working, at school or doing homework. Since I only work 4 hours a day and only go to school for 4 hours twice a week that’s a shitload of homework. I think my friends are suspicious that I’m ditching them or something. They’ve never seen me work this hard before. Shit, I never have worked this hard before.

I guess you could say I slacked the first part of the quarter, but I had other things on my mind, such as the fact that I had no job and my bank account had less than $100 in it. So that was foremost in my mind, and then when I finally got a job a week into the quarter, I focused much of my energy on that since it was pretty demanding at first. Now that I know the ropes it doesn’t take as much energy, but initially, I must say it sapped my strength. This is why I hate working and going to school at the same time. I don’t like having to fluctuate between priorities like that, and work takes up a lot more time than the 4 hours I get paid for. There’s getting ready for work time, there’s commute time (half hour each way) and winding down from work time. I’d say it takes 6 hours out of my day. That really eats into my homework time. I’d almost rather work 8 hours and lose only a fifth of my time to pre & post work stuff. That’s the dirty secret of the 40 hour work week, folks; it takes up about 10 hours a day even if we only get paid for 8.

Still, I got through this crap and I can hardly complain, since it’s nice to have any relatively secure job (as secure as temp job can be) in this economy. Anyway, it looks like I will pass my independent study class, which is Advanced Image Manipulation. It’s weird; there’s no class time, just homework, which is to say projects. This website was one. My prof didn’t seem to like it much, but I didn’t design it for him, I did it for me. I have to look at the damn thing for the next few years, or however long it lasts before I inevitably redesign it. I think he’s right; the rollovers are a bit weak, and I plan to change them, but I’ve decided against Flash buttons because not enough people have Flash installed on their system. And, as I said, I hate Flash. Still, there’s nothing else like it. Oh well, I’ve slacked enough. It’s time to jump back into Flash and finish my freakin’ portfolio, if possible. I just hope I get it done in time. Thank God for DJ Shadow.

I just had a story idea wherein Tom Selleck rules the entertainment universe. I pictured myself waking up in an alternate universe; one in which Tom Selleck decided to do the original Indiana Jones movie, and thus, Harrison Ford was never offered the role. This sets forth a chain of events which complete alters the world. Bill Clinton never becomes president, the Terminator never gets made, and thus Arnold Schwartzenegger never rises beyond Conan: The Barbarian and into superstardom. He never becomes governor either, obviously. Initially, the changes are limited to Hollywood, but they spread out like a virus, inexorably changing our world completely.

What do you think? Too cheesy? Well, duh. The idea of Tom Selleck playing the role of Indiana Jones is cheesy, but that didn’t stop Spielberg and Lucas from offering him the role. What were they thinking?! What was he thinking?! I mean, come on, if Steven Spielbergo (his non-union, Mexican equivalent) offered me the role of “Guy Who Gets Hit With a Bat in Every Scene (for real)” I’d take it! This goes along with Will Smith getting offered the role of “Neo” in the Matrix. I like Will Smith, but that would’ve completely changed the tone of the film. Yes, I’ve seen Will Smith in Six Degrees of Separation and it seems he can act (better than Keanu, many would say), but he’s always so damn chipper. I like Keanu’s brooding, even boring, take on Neo. He made for a good computer hacker in the first one. As for the 2nd & 3rd movies, well, I don’t agree with the direction they took, but it’s too late to complain now.

Personally, I thought it should’ve been more about freeing the people stuck in the Matrix, not this “save Zion” crap. Who cares?! Talk about a stupid plot idea. It must’ve taken them, what, 0.3 seconds to come up with that one? The idea of mentally and physically freeing millions of people from the Matrix is a much more complex one. It would’ve been much more difficult to write and film, but ultimately, it would’ve been more rewarding, I think. They could have still included many of the new characters, like the Merovingian, but in a different way. That said, the movies weren’t bad, and were even kind of thought-provoking (kind of), but in no way did they measure up to the first movie.

As you can see below, I took an extended break from my blog. I’m aiming to start it back up again, and on a new, improved website. This one will actually be hosted on timoregan.com, unlike the earlier stuff, which was just on the school’s server. Hopefully, I will keep it going this time and you will be able to peer into the depths of my weirdness…if you’re into that sort of thing.

Just a quick update, as I’m swamped in homework. I have to finish 2 websites today. Damn right, that ain’t easy. Luckily, I’m just about done with one of them. It’s something close to my heart – the Trees Eat People Home Page is now in effect. I redid the whole damn thing from the ground up, and I must say that it humiliates the hell out of the old version. Of course, I did the old version without Dreamweaver, coding in straight HTML when I was just learning how to code. Now I know a lot more, so it should be cooler.

Next, I’m about to tackle The Center for Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment website. Yeah, say that 10 times fast. Anyway, I’ve had the basics done for awhile now. It’s gonna be fairly straightforward – add content and make sure everything works. Of course, I’m considering adding pop-up buttons to a page. Man, that’s probably not a good idea at this point. I do want to test them out eventually, but this might not be the right time since I’m right in the middle of FINALS!!! Aaaaaaiiiiiiggghhhh!!!!

Oh man, I’m gonna crash and burn on my Scripting assignment. There’s not enough time in the day, and I don’t have the programming experience, knowledge or “touch” to do my Asteroids game properly. I’m gonna have to do my best, but it’s obviously going to fall short of my hopes. Flash can be a bitch whether you’re coding or tweening. Anyway. I’ll try to check back in later. For now, stay fresh, y’all.

Well, I’m back. I just got back from the big protest here in Minneapolis. It was quite an amazing event. I’m not sure if I like protesting or not. When I was done marching (I figure I walked at least 5 miles today) I was sore, exhausted, starving, freezing cold and just basically spent. You know I’d do it even if all I got was aches and pains because I think it’s my patriotic duty to let the government know when they’re being stupid and/or oppressive fucks. But guess what – I loved it. Despite the miserable weather (it was overcast, cold, and it rained sporadically – but hey, this is Minnesota!) and despite the obvious sadness of the start of a war, I got this incredible vibe from the crowd. People were amazingly happy, once we got together and got going. Our spirits rose as we started acting in unison. It’s very comforting to know you’re not alone in fighting this madness.

I suppose you want to see some pictures from this event. I guess I’ll let you do just that. Click here to check’em out.

Can you believe that my right arm is actually sore from giving the peace sign so many times? Wow, man. 🙂 I feel like I’ve done my duty. It wasn’t easy, but it was fun. Until next time…

Man, it’s been awhile. I’ve been way busy at school. They’re really piling it on. But I still managed to create a new website. It’s another quicky, but it’s just to get something up so we have something to build off of. Mike and I talked about it last night while in the Starcraft chatroom. We decided to divvy up tasks and do something for a change. Coolness, yes? Anyway, Mike’s gonna make flyers and I’ll work on the site in my freetime, if I have any 🙂 If you want to check it out, click here.