If only I had listened.

We're not candy, don't eat us.

If only I had listened.

Ah, Gandalf.

This is the most I ever enjoyed Return of the King, and it sounds like they enjoyed it too.

Ah, Gandalf.

Dear Summer 2006,

You haven't even begun, and already you're pissing me off. Don't get me wrong, I know it's not really your fault, it's the lack of trees, and the over abundance of really big cars, and the smokestacks that give neighborhoods like mine mercury poisoning, but you're easier to blame. You're the one who everyone agrees is the cause of the high temperature that can be measured by that crappy old weather station in the corner of my yard.

It should not be 80° at midnight, didn't anyone tell you that? Anyone who says it's okay to leave the heater on past 9 o'clock at night is quite obviously a sadist with perfectly functioning organs.

Also, these things that follow you, like the progressive bee flies. What is that about? The sheets of cobweb I keep walking through are not entertaining either, and the bat cannot eat the mosquitoes fast enough.

Is it a deal you've worked out with Con Ed? You make it nearly impossible for people to survive without consuming mass quantities of electrical power, and who benefits from that?

I humbly request that you leave your duties to your allies, spring and autumn, and leave the world in the cool peace they've known up until now.

Sincerely,
The small dehydrated thing slapping insects away under the hedge.

P.S. Tell that winter pal of yours to quit fooling my trees into thinking January is the proper time to bloom.

Dear Summer 2006,

It's Alive! -- Another half-assed music review.

(For those reading for the actual review, it comes in on the 10th paragraph.)

Once upon a time, I watched music videos all day long on a UHF station called U68. They played a lot of music that mainstream radio didn't, and so I became a snobby elitist for my 11th birthday, with the opinion that ? (Modern Industry) by Fishbone was the greatest song ever.

I would go into Sam Goody all the time, asking for albums by Nik Kershaw, and What Is This? and another singer called Todd Rundgren who had released an album of songs that were made up of only voice and percussion called, fittingly, A Cappella. I fell in love with the song Something To Fall Back On, and I had to have it.

"Who's Todd Rundgren?" asked the man who Sam Goody was paying to help people find music.

Being a snobby elitist, however, I could not tell him, I merely scoffed and went to the Rs in search of the cassette myself. Little did I realize, but the entire tri-state area heard Todd Rundgren every Friday around 5 o'clock, when Bang The Drum All Day would be played as part of Z-100's weekend kick-off. I was an idiot, really. I did catch up on all of Rundgren's hits, though, because I like his music.

Fast-forward 21 years, and Todd Rundgren is the lead singer of The New Cars, which is, in my opinion, a brilliant move. In the case of Paul Rodgers trying to be Freddie Mercury, I nearly threw myself off my swing in an attempt to block the sound coming into my ears, but this New Cars thing, it might even be better than the old Cars.

I like The Cars. Drive is such a part of my existence that it would be creepy to go into it here, so I will leave it at I like The Cars.

Mainstream radio's been playing The New Cars song, Not Tonight, and the first time I heard it, I nearly went mad with glee, because it worked.

So I waited until the album came out, and it was a live album. That messed me up for a second, because I generally despise live albums. But It's Alive is a pretty good exception. There was really no other way Todd Rundgren was going to be allowed to remake all of the Ric Ocasek songs without a big CGI bee coming after him, so if a live album was all we were going to get in addition to the three new studio tracks, then I'd take it.

Todd Rundgren is a better Ric Ocasek than Ric Ocasek. The only track on the album that didn't top the original was, oddly enough, the Todd Rundgren song I Saw The Light. Kasim Sulton enunciates "shake" well enough on Drive, too, but that will always be Ben Orr's song to me.

If you like The Cars, go get the album, and enjoy almost-exact (and quite possibly better) replicas of the originals by the man who raised Liv Tyler.

I really have never gotten over that guy in Sam Goody. I wonder if he ever found out who Todd Rundgren is. I wonder if he wonders if I remember that he didn't know? I wonder if he hates all snarky 12-year-old girls now, because of me and my search for Todd Rundgren.

(Sam Goody, mind you, did not carry any Todd Rundgren albums in 1986. I had to go upstairs, to the other music store whose name escapes me at the moment. Musicland, I think. Musicland charged a ridiculous amount of money for tapes.)

It's Alive! -- Another half-assed music review.

Just because the song is that good.

If at some point George Lucas ever decides to work musical numbers into every scene of the Star Wars saga, I hope they're half as brilliant as this.

(Cee-Lo's ability to sing after the mask has been removed is amazing, and the backup singing pilot in the middle is wearing Porkins' helmet. I'm obsessed.)

Gnarls Barkley at the 2006 Mtv Movie Awards

Just because the song is that good.

A sure way to tell if your pet has problems.

My puppy was carrying around a bottle of Seagram's gin. I asked her if I could have it, and she pulled down my pants.

True story.

A sure way to tell if your pet has problems.

A friendly reminder.

It's time to change out your storm windows to screens for the summer.

Or else.

Sincerely,
The Homeowners Association from Hell.







(Yes, that's my front door. No, I have no idea who did it or why. And no, that door hasn't had a screen in years. As far as I know, there is no homeowner's association in this area, either, but there are some kids who let their dog poop everywhere, and an over-eager trash ticketer who doesn't notice poop, but made a killing on our late next-door neighbor's bags of clothes.)

A friendly reminder.

Somewhere between the future and the past.

(Future = me dating this for the future. I could, in fact, totally be not near a computer right now.)

(Past = a time when Mr. T was everywhere like Ryan Seacrest, the cake flowed like the rubber-smelling water from the garden hose and I played with dolls instead of standing them up.)

The Survivor song Eye of the Tiger has held up well. I heard it last night, and it's probably the best Survivor song, and quite possibly the fifth best Journey song ever (bwahaha...I kid.)

And, just to make the post have a mention of the present, I wonder if the new Omen movie is going to go for the three sequels, because I think what would be best is if the sacred daggers are used to stop the fourth movie with Faye Grant and the little devil girl from ever being remade.

Somewhere between the future and the past.

Endless amusement.

For 20+ years, it never occurred to me that the call letters (WHTZ) of Z-100, self-proclaimed player of today's hits, actually stood for hits. I learned this from a list of call letter origins by Bob Nelson.

I knew Fordham University's Voice, and I knew White Port & Lemon Juice, but "Hitz...," never dawned on me.

This from someone who was spotted typing "Turn livejournal into a livejournal" into Google last night. Luckily, only I saw it. No one will ever know. I later found out it is possible to turn a LiveJournal into an rss feed simply by adding /rss to the end of the address. Now that I know how to do this, I can promptly forget again.

Endless amusement.

Mama needs new fonts.

Something has been keeping me very busy the past few rainy days, and it isn't anything I'd like to be doing.

I learned--just in time--that there are fonts you can't just use on things you plan to sell.

Usually, I open a font and my eyes go straight to the big, shiny, quick brown fox jumping over the lazy dog. I have not, until this week, looked at the fourth line of official information included with each font.

Most of my fonts--which reside in a seperate folder until needed, I learned that lesson well--are dated between 1993 and 1997. 1993 was when I first got Windows, and 1997 was when my computer finally exploded from font overload.

There are those that have witnessed the horror of my fonts folder circa 1994. When Windows 3.1 takes over 15 minutes to start up, it's a symptom of a horrible addiction.

But I'm a collector, we know this. Usually it takes death or destruction to stop me from collecting certain things, but the fonts just took a back seat to Star Wars trailers, and then...music. That's all I'm sayin'. Just music.

So I got artsy again a few years back, and had to get a new font for the comic strip, and then I got dollar signs in my eyes and signed up at Etsy and Zazzle, and planned to make money with my lame-ass art. Of course I need to go and put words all over the crap to explain what's going on, and so I returned to my massive font folder, which is full of...what's politely called retired fonts.

Yeah, that's right, the fonts that weren't healthy enough to live off-world and the fonts that were slaves created by the WSI corporation were all hiding out in the dank, rainy innards of my computer, and they don't know how long they've got, but then again, who does?

Only instead of possibly luring a depressed Harrison Ford to my house to shoot my fonts, I faced possible fines. So I systematically went through every one of my fonts--all of which I know so well--and deleted the ones that were going to cost $95 to use commercially, and labeled the ones by foundries that no longer exist, so I could round them up and kill them all later if I was feeling evil.

Some font authors aren't careful where the copyright information is concerned, and they'll put down defunct AOL Hometown addresses instead of a name with which to track them down, and those offended me so badly that I think I deleted ten before I hit one with a name, an actual name.

Harold Lohner.

Harold, I love you. Or rather, I love Harold's Fonts. They are free for commercial use.

Oh hell yes.

So, between Harold's Fonts and BlamBot, home of the comic strip font that makes my shite readable (or at least legible), I'm set for at least another 12 years.

I'm not happy that Halloween Regular has been retired, though. Halloween Regular was fun. By definition, Halloween Regular should have just un-lived on forever. Ah well, we'll always have this.
(There's so much legally wrong with that picture that one retired font becomes hardly my biggest problem.)

Mama needs new fonts.