In which the author reveals other talents

It occurs to me that I have never plugged this site, one which I spent a good three months helping out on:

The Dramas of Haymarket

It’s all about the Haymarket bombing that took place in Chicago in the 1880s, which led to the trial and execution of several men whose only evident criminal behavior included being of an anarcho-socialist philosophy. It’s a very compelling read, and while I cannot take credit for any of the text that appears, I did ensure that many of the images were the proper size and resolution. Well, somebody has to do it. So if you were wondering what I was doing from January through March in 2000, now you know.

And also, just because it ranked high on the list when I searched my own name through Google, a review of the above site.

Also, I apparently ran for Hamilton Alderman Ward Four in Hancock County and lost.

Summa-summa-summertime

Chicago is lovely in the summertime. Just walking down the street, feeling the sun’s warm rays on my face, the slightly humid wind on my skin, makes me wish I lived someplace where the weather was like this all the time. But the city itself is something to see also… flowers, sprinklers everywhere, birds chirping, teenagers running around screaming monosyllabic nonsense… there is nothing quite like it. Pick a day this summer and, with a friend, go wade hip-deep in Lake Michigan, fully clothed. Then get yelled at by the lifeguard in the rowboat for not wading close enough to the rowboat. There is nothing quite like it.

News and notes

Well, not really. I just ate some cold spaghetti and a pineapple coconut ice cream cone. Life is pretty sweet. I have been working on a new site layout. The problem with thinking of a new layout is that I’m not sure which elements, if any, that I would like to keep from the previous layout. One certain change is that this blog will be appearing on the front page, so typing “lucubus.com” will lead you straight to it, without having to type out “/thedailyhey”. It’s a fairly conventional thing, the blog-on-the-front-page, but it is a thing that makes sense, and a thing that will help reduce site-bloat. I will still be calling this The Daily Hey, despite claims from myself and others that it is not particularly daily. I have to say that it has been so long since I have done any designing that I am basically having to re-learn how to do it. But look for The Lucubus, Version 5.0 before summer is out.

Also on the horizon: I’m working on my first full-length comic book. The working title is THE INADEQUATES, and as it is planned as a 24-page story I have no idea when it will be finished, let alone when I will let anyone look at it. But it will be full of everything you have come to expect from me: drawings of pretty girls, and oodles of unfunny comedy and hilarious serious bits. Sneak peeks will be given as they become available. We shall see!

One more thing – in an effort to make myself look more ridiculous and less attractive to women I have started to grow a moustache. Actually, I have good reasons for doing so: the hair above my upper lip doesn’t itch, unlike the hair under my chin; every time I shave above my upper lip, I cut myself in six places and bleed profusely and have a scab moustache the next day; and there’s a slim chance I’ll end out looking like the dread pirate Wesley from “The Princess Bride”, and he was drop dead handsome.

Till later, sweet potater –

Those lying bastards

So it appears that I posted two messages at exactly the same time, both of which register at 12:01 AM on 7/9/01. The funny part is not that two were posted at the same time, it’s that THEY WERE POSTED AT 11:50 PM ON 7/8/01. This time delay thing is really going to put a serious cramp in my style. This menstruation thing is going to put a serious cramp in my abdomen.

Uh oh

It looks like the folks who run Blogger are being evicted from their offices, and they’re selling off a bunch of their crap. I wonder if that means their service will no longer be available. Maaaaan, I’m too lazy to write the code myself! I have been redesigning my page over the last few weeks, and the blog is an integral part of the new design. Well, there’s probably another site out there I can steal bandwidth from.

I just saw a commercial for a Dale Earnhardt clock. Every hour on the hour a little car races around the outside of it and a little speaker announces, “And the winner is… Dale Earnhardt!” Is it possible that Dale Earnhardt put in his will that something like this should be manufactured upon his death? Unless his actual statement was, “If you have to make a Dale Earnhardt clock with a little car that races around the outside every hour on the hour and a little speaker that announces, ‘And the winner is… Dale Earnhardt!’ please do me a favor and wait until I’m dead, or at the very least, kill me first,’ it’s not bloody likely. Also peculiar is that the announcer for the commercial says the clock is dedicated to the memory of “the immortal Dale Earnhardt”. Well, clearly he’s not immortal, or he would be alive today. I suppose it’s possible he has returned to Asgard or Olympus or New Genesis or wherever the particular race of gods to which he belongs is based. Er, no pun intended. Come to think of it, maybe he is immortal now that he’s dead. Once you’re dead, you can’t die – am I right, people? I’m not talking about “oh well he still lives on in our hearts and minds and memories”, I just mean that once one is in a state of death, the act of dying is impossible, for one must be alive to die. Unless one is undead, which is arguably the same as alive to those of us who watch Angel and sigh over hunky David Boreanaz. But I don’t think Dale Earnhardt is a vampire. Vampires generally stay out of the racing industry.

Speaking of death, now that both Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon have passed away, it falls to Jack Klugman and Tony Randall to carry the torch in any future Odd Couple sequels. However, the Grumpy Old Men franchise will have to resort to prequels. May I suggest Kevin Spacey and Oliver Platt as the leads? But do keep that Ann-Margret around, for she’s as young and beautiful as ever. I saw this TV-movie Bye Bye Birdie that aired in 1995, and she looks AMAZINGLY young in it! She’s playing a TEENAGER, for crying out loud! Dick Van Dyke looks pretty young, too… good makeup artists on that flick.

Dark is the main thing; it is there I am tender and undying.

More links unfettered by elaboration

Toyota Prius
Snoopy.com
The Road to Springfield
Nuclear Blast Mapper
Powers of 10
Lightning Bolt Comics.com Online
Warren Ellis Forum discussion of above site
George W. Bush is a robot
Lincoln Park Trixie Society

Salvation

I apologize for not having posted in quite some time. I have been busy developing my screenplay. It is shaping up to be the Citizen Kane of bikini movies. I can see the little statuette over my fireplace already. Although perhaps I am seeing it over someone else’s fireplace, which occurs to me because I do not have a fireplace. Damned unreliable psychic flashes.

Go visit these sites:
www.emotioneric.com
www.dancingpaul.com
www.neofuturists.org
www.warrenellis.com
www.ninthart.com
yabs.comicbookresources.com
zot.comicbookresources.com
www.proaxis.com/~half/BeanWeb
www.igia.com/epil-stop
groups.google.com/lucas
www.clambake.org
www.politicalcompass.org
court.it-services.nwu.edu/idealog
www.mightybigtv.com
www.duniho.com/fergus/enneagram/test

Or don’t, if you’re a loser.

Is the Hey moving to a Monthly or Bi-Weekly format? Because I haven’t gotten a new one in some time.

You should know by now that many of your readers rely on the Hey for relief from their drab workaday lives. This being undisputably the case, I hereby call, on behalf of all Heyites, for a revitalization of the Daily Hey as a true Daily, or Weekly if Daily is too ambitious — academic institutions being the frantic, fast-paced places of constant change and innovation that we all know them to be, I as much as any — so that the average, hard-working, Hey-reading global citizen can once again enjoy the diversion from reality, however temporary, fleeting, shallow and narcotic-like, that a cursory glance at each new Hey affords.

One idea, if “Weekly Hey” seems too cumbersome or rhyme-deficient a name, is to forgo The Hey as a title altogether, and rebrand oneself as the “Weekly Cheek”, or, slantwise, the “Weekly Check”, or even, in a clever workaround, the “7th-Day Hey”. Alternately, in a tribute to Norman Rockwell’s alma mater, one could call it the “Saturday Hey”, and “post” the new edition each Saturday evening at 10:15 sharp. That would be a cunning “cure”.

Puns and pop music references aside, good friend, let us put behind us these dark days of infrequent and spotty publication, and gaze ahead to a future of limitless Heys, commenting on all manner of interesting social and cultural phenomena, offering a pristine window into the maturing, self-doubting soul of Generation X, eulogizing popular humorists, skewering the inept, upraising the meek, and soldiering on through remarkably slow download times and browser compatibility difficulties to deliver, through it all, like a rock, like a tower, like an island in a sea of dispiriting, worldweary ennui, a few minutes each day (or week) of blessed diversion to its deserving, patient, voiceless readership.

Thanks.

I.F.C. Hammond-LeKaak

Douglas Adams, R.I.P.

Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series of books, of which I am a fan, passed away from a heart attack yesterday at the age of 49 – that’s the official story, anyway. Rumors have been circulating online which reveal that Adams’ untimely departure was actually the result of a slight warp in the fabric of spacetime which had the unfortunate effect of erasing him from existence.

Now, I’ve read the arguments against the existence of warps in the fabric of spacetime. But I have seen such warps with my own two eyes. On the train this morning, a large, chubby, bald man with a beard and dark sunglasses entered the car behind me and sat down across from me. The headphones this man was wearing did nothing to dampen the Kenny-G-type soprano-saxophone-based easy-listening music he was listening to at a very high volume. In addition to this he was swaying his large head back and forth, not just bopping along in time to the music, but engaging in some sort of complicated cranial choreography, almost ritualistic in its complexity. Suddenly light began to bend along the contours of his body, and space itself began to distort. I had to look away lest I lose my sanity; in fact, I think that I have lost a portion from that mere second. The light around the man continued to bulge and pinch and bubble, and as the train pulled into my station, the man swirled out of sight.

So rest in peace, Douglas Adams, and wherever you may be, I hope that this other guy’s headphones are more effective on the other side.

I am drunk.

So it snowed today. It SNOWED today!?!? It’s the middle of fucking APRIL!!!! Goddamned Chicago. I’m going to move to Hawaii. Also my gay marriage will be recognized there.

So no one ever leaves any comments, not that anyone visits the site or that I say anything worth commenting on, but maybe I’ll get rid of them since they’re so damn UNPOPULAR.

I still can’t believe George W. Bush is president. STOP THE WORLD, I WANNA GET OFF! I’M GETTING DIZZY AND STUFF!

I will delete all of this later.

a 150 proof

BACKGROUND.

I was on Usenet a couple of weeks ago, and some idiot was trying to defend use of the phrase “a 150 years”. He claimed that “a 150″ was how to say “a hundred and fifty” as opposed to “one hundred and fifty”, which he claimed sounded “stilted and pompous”. When people told him he was wrong, he launched into a diatribe about how this is English, not French, and there is no governmental agency determining the rules of the language, and thus the rules of the language were to be determined by popular usage. When informed that he was the only one defending this phrase, and thus that it was not popular at all, he said that he wrote “150” on a card, asking random people to pronounce it. He said most of them said “a hundred and fifty” and so that made him right. When told he was missing the point, and that “a 150″ would mean “a a hundred and fifty”, he would accuse people of being “language fascists”. He refused to listen to what anyone had to say because they “gave no reasons to support” their arguments. So I wrote this formal proof.

PROOF.

Prove: “a 150 years” is a silly phrase.

Given:
1. The numeral 300 is pronounced “three hundred”.
2. The numeral 200 is pronounced “two hundred”.
3. Numbers can be used as nouns AND adjectives.
4. Adjectives modify nouns.
5. Nouns can be modified by multiple adjectives.
6. Nouns cannot modify nouns.

Assumed:
1. The indefinite article “a”, being singular, is roughly equivalent to the adjectival number “one”. Thus, “a year” equals “one year” equals “1 year”.
2. The adjectival phrase “hundred” minus the “one” or “a”, as in “hundred fifty” or “hundred and fifty” or “hundred-dollar bill”, implies a singular hundred, or 100, unless other numerical modifiers are added, as in “two hundred”.
3. The phrase “one hundred and fifty” is equivalent to “one hundred fifty” is equivalent to “150”.
4. In the phrase “150 years”, “years” is the noun, and “150” serves as the adjective that modifies that noun.
5. The phrase “a one year”, when “year” is the object noun, contains a redundancy. (When there is a hyphen, as in “a one-year trip”, “one-year” becomes an adjectival phrase.)
6. Redundancies are silly.

Point #1
a. The numeral 100 is pronounced “one hundred”. (G1, G2)
b. It can also be pronounced as “a hundred”. (A1)

Point #2
a. “[one hundred fifty] years” is equivalent to “[150] years”. (A3)
b. “[one hundred and fifty] years” is equivalent to “[150] years”. (A3)
c. “[a hundred and fifty] years” is equivalent to “[150] years”. (A1, A3, P1b)
d. “[hundred and fifty] years” is equivalent to “[150] years”. (A2, A3)

Conclusion #1
[150], [one hundred fifty], [one hundred and fifty], [a hundred and fifty], and [hundred and fifty] are all variations on the same numerical “word”. In the case of “[150] years”, the numerical “word” serves as an adjective. (P2a-P2d, G3, G4, A4)

Point #3
a. “a [one hundred fifty] years” contains a redundancy. (A3, A5, C1)
b. “a [a hundred and fifty] years” contains a redundancy. (A5, P1b, C1)
c. “a [hundred and fifty] years” contains no obvious redundancy. However, as we showed in Conclusion #1, [hundred and fifty] equals [one hundred fifty]. Therefore, the phrase contains a redundancy. (A2, A5, C1)
d. “a [150] years” contains a redundancy. (A3, A5, C1)

Conclusion #2
The phrase “a 150 years” is silly indeed. (P3d, A6).

POSTSCRIPT.

The poster acknowledged that I did back up my reasoning, but then he went back to the “one hundred and fifty sound stilted and pompous” argument, which means he continued to miss the point. The guy was almost certainly a troll, although seeing as the thread went on for weeks (to which this proof was my only contribution), it may not have been a troll, as trolls have much shorter attention spans than that. People on crack also have short attention spans, so that can’t be it either.

And yes, I am a loser for (1) writing out a formal proof on something so inane (2) using usenet lingo (3) using usenet and (4) enumerating the reasons that I am a loser.

Overheard on the Train

“I’m sorry, could you sit somewhere else?”
“Why?”
“You’re sitting on my wife, sir.”
“Whatever.”

“Did you pay to get on this train?”
“Actually, I fell out of a helicopter and landed on the platform.”
“That would explain the open fractures.”

“This is Jarvis. Doors open on the left at Jarvis.”
“Jarvis was the Avengers’ butler.”
“That’s nice, honey.”
“Alfred is Batman’s butler.”
“Hmm.”
“The Fantastic Four didn’t have a butler, but their mailman was named Willie Lumpkin.”
“All right.”
“Richie Rich’s butler was named Cadbury, but Richie Rich wasn’t a superhero.”
“Okay.”
“Unless you count being the world’s richest kid as a super power.”
“Yes.”
“And I don’t.”
“I want a divorce.”

“Mommy, should I trust the government?”
“How the fuck should I know? Eat your fruit roll-up.”

“[Current Fox News in the Morning co-anchors] David Novarro and Tamron Hall are a good-looking pair. However, unlike [previous Fox News in the Morning co-anchors] Bob Sirott and Marianne Murciano, they aren’t fucking each other.”

“What did you think of the Oscars the other night?”
“They were great! I won Best Supporting Actress.”
“Wow! Enola Gay Harding! Can I have your autograph?”

“This car smells like poop.”

February has proven to be a slow month in Heyville. The reason I have not been updating very often, aside from not having any funny ideas or anything interesting to say, is that Blogger is behaving as if it were – and I shall phrase this as delicately as possible – a fart turd. Earlier today when I was at work it took this page like five minutes to load on an ethernet connection. Now, I’m no T1-routin’ cable-splicin’ switch-flippin’ system-configurin’ network jockey, but that seems a bit off.

I’ve mulled over changing the design of my site a bit. I think that perhaps, after over a year, the wooden frames and goofy blue backgrounds have been played out. The caveat is that I would need to come up with something better. I can come up with plenty of different designs, but there’s that qualitative judgement issue that trips me up. The problem is, they’re all equally brilliant. I still have that scissors-and-comb motif I’ve been wanting to implement, but now that I am no longer in barber college, it is perhaps no longer appropriate. The other problem is that solid, flat colors don’t naturally occur to me while I design. I see them all over the web, and they look great, but they never seem to come up on my own site. If it doesn’t go 3-D, it ain’t me. If it don’t got a BG IMG SRC, it ain’t me. If no contact paper patterns thar be, it ain’t me.

Had to go pirate for that last one. Anyway, leave some comments below and tell me if I’m wasting my time thinking about this garbage.

Speaking of New Orleans, Fat Tuesday (“Mardi Gras“) is now well underway. For this yearly festival, thousands upon zillions of wanna-be revellers trek down to the Big Easy and choke up the streets with cheer and drunkenness and immorality and litter. Some will have an experience they will never forget. Others will have an experience they will never remember. Others still will have had to work that night and will have missed it. And a few will have engaged in the two most intimate encounters one can have with a comely stranger: one, making love to her in a dark hotel room while the crowd pulses outside, sirens blaring as police track down ne’er-do-wells, bottles flying, hitting the window, almost breaking it, but you don’t even notice, no, because the Louisana heat has your lithe bodies dripping with sweat and sliding against each other and sticking to the light blue linen sheets, and soon, in rhythm with the wild dance music you can hear from outside the window as loudly as it would sound inside, the two of you writhe spastically and release your passion in short bursts of mutual sexual satisfaction leading to an explosion of full-fledged erotic nirvana; as you relax, bodies grow cooler, sweat drenched sheets become a cocoon in which you and this woman, whose name you have not even been pronouncing correctly, will slumber as though mated, comatose for life; and two – during or after the previous – projectile vomiting on her.

But no matter which category your experiences fall into, you can rest assured that one sure thing can be said about this year’s Mardi Gras: a new edition of Girls Gone Wild! will be out soon. Not to mention Girls Gone Crazy!, Girls Gone Insane!, Girls Gone Bananas!, and, my personal favorite, Girls Gone Nucking Futs!

Can I get a “hell yeah”?

Dale Earnhardt died in a crash today, during the Daytona 500. I am not a racing fan, but I will mourn. Largely because the only other racer whose name I know is Jeff Gordon, who, in the commercials, dips Fritos into chili and calls it dinner. So, the racing world has truly lost a class act. They say that most fatal accidents occur within five miles of the home. However, they do not say that about race car drivers. That would be stupid. Unless said driver raced exclusively within five miles of his home. There would be a certain bittersweet irony if Earnhardt had died in a run-of-the-mill traffic accident, but no — he died as he lived: going around in circles at heart-stopping speeds.*

I just thought of the Unser family. But weren’t they a singing group in the seventies? I think I have some of their stuff on vinyl. Scratched, but listenable. You buy?

* Edit: Technically, he died while being smashed between a wall and another car at 200 MPH. He probably did not live that way.

Technical crap
I’ve been experimenting lately. Such experiments have included changing the date banner, adding the feedback forms, and creating a “headline” class, which I have used above. It may be a silly thing. I do not know. Is it?

My archives seem to have disappeared. I am less than happy about this development. In other words, it is poopy. I am hoping to restore them toot-sweet.

The time just flies by, doesn’t it?