Make big bucks in your spare time: Ask me how

While looking quite busy today at work (note: Actually, I was composing a musical version of "Plan 9 From Outer Space" in my head to be titled "O! Plan 9!") a "tech-support guy" wandered out of the blue to my neighbor's cubicle and announced he was taking her printer to another department. And an amazing thing happened: she gave it up without seeing ONE FORM OF IDENTIFICATION. Apparently, the standard IT uniform of Polo shirt, dockers and sensible shoes is enough to convince anyone. So wanna hear my big plan for big money?

1. Go buy the above clothing and a multitool you can keep conspicuous in a trouser pocket. The Swiss Army Knife is to IT guys what the Puffy White Mushroom-Cloud Hat is to French chefs. Also, you can use it to fight off security goons if the plan goes awry.

2. March right through the doors of a mid-size office building. If security hassles you, wave something laminated in their face and tell them the Java server's down. They'll laugh and make a joke about bad coffee. Roll your eyes and continue down the hall.

3. Pick a cubicle at random. Tell them you're here to fix their printer. Don't worry: it'll be broken. They're always broken. If by some chance it isn't, give it a dirty look. That ought to kill it.

4. Throw around any of the following terms at workers to establish your IT cred and deflect suspicion: "Trouble ticket". "PC Load Letter Error". "Toner cartridge". "Java server".

5. Tell them you'll have to bring it in to the IT Dept. office to service it. Don't take any guff from these office types either. Inform them in no uncertain terms that they are expendable - the printer is not.

6. Sell the printer for crack in Richmond. IT'S THAT EASY!

New Server. New Address.

Same tired Beyonce jokes.

My very own top-level domain at last. Can't wait to test drive it. I've got something like 800 megs of space and tons of bandwidth. I'm gonna cram enough whimsical musings down your collective throats that when you cough, all that'll come out is "Fuck Ikea".

Word is bond.

I have no idea if the old address will still update, so I'm gonna poke around and change all the links I can find, and see if I can put up a redirect from the old address.

When Webmaster Rachel and I get around to making a real website (Flash MX has a steep learning curve) we'll make that the page this address links to, and the blog will be reached via a link from there.

Fun times ahead.

Secret Plans

With one year down, I'm plotting out some key directions the site will be taking in the coming months. Limited only by cash and time, here's what I want to do:

1. New hosting. Time to move up to the big show.
2. Another movie. People liked the last one (by "people" I mean "friends I conned into watching it by telling them it was the Paris Hilton video") and I'm brainstorming for the next. Jake wants to do another Kill Bill but I'm feeling the zeitgeist fading. And my katana's pretty thrashed after that last movie.
3. This one's a little more long-term. Rachel clued me into Cafepress's new publishing arm. I want to put together enough material from this site for a book. Large type with pictures because I am Lazyman.
4. Get an editor, because I don't know what I'm doing half the time.
5. More multimedia in general. I've got a camera, I've got a mic and audio editing software, this site should be humming with sound and awash in JPGs.
6. Might buy some ads for the site. I need to get more people coming here so they can tell me what they like. Plus I just need a few more postcount points to get to 8th level so Ms. Frost can teach me real magic. (People like Jack Chick references, right?)

All hail

I've been fishing for a raise at the bank for a week or two now, when my boss called me over for a pow-wow. I asked her if more money was coming my way and she said no. A raise just wasn't in the cards and neither was permanency. She saw the dejection in my face and quickly piped up, "Oh, but we do want to worship you as a god."

Well, anyone who knows me will tell you that's all I've ever really wanted from a company. Paid vacations and fat benefit packages are nice, but worship and servitude is something money can't buy. I immediately signed up.

Benefits include:

1. A magnificent altar consecrated to My name will be built in an unused cubicle.

2. A temp will be sacrificed in My name every full moon.

3. My name has been changed to the much cooler, Moorcockian-sounding Ma'ax. The extra glottal stop is for extra POWER.

4. A festival in My honor will be celebrated for a fortnight in Midsummer, featuring bacchanalian wine orgies, ritualistic alpaca slaughtering, epic recitals of the Saga of Ma'ax, and free checking throughout July.

5. The bank's symbol has been replaced with a ram's skull.

6. A jihad against the heathen idolators in Account Reconciliation.

7. "Covered Head-to-Toe in Lamb's Blood" Fridays.

8. I will be growing several extra arms.

9. A fundamental shift in the company's mission statement away from "Providing financial solutions for individuals and small businesses," towards "Serving the undying will of Overlord Ma'ax the Unconquered, Tamer of Beasts, Slayer of Tiamat, in whose Presence we soil ourselves with adulation".

Mood: Fucking low...

I meant to say some more funny stuff before, but I just found out my friend Ryan Boell (Angelsboi from EN World) died of AIDS-related illness a few hours ago, with his friends and family by his side in Atlanta. I chatted with him a few times, and used to love reading his wrap-ups on Buffy and Angel in the TV forum. Later on, I (and lots of other EN Worlders) became very wrapped up in his trials with AIDS. I'll never forget the day he went on the forums and posted that he had found out he had AIDS - I've never been so upset over something I read on the internet in my life (not to mention upset over the small-minded PIGFUCKERS who had to pipe up and say how "something like this doesn't belong on a gaming board"). I may not have known him as well as his IRL friends but I admired him in his strength and empathized with him in his struggles. From reading his posts on the forums and his Livejournal, I came to know him as a free spirit who loved life very fully and openly. He was a really special guy and I'll miss him a lot.

People are eulogizing him on this thread. His Livejournal is here. Even if you didn't know him, give these a look. He touched a lot of people's lives in big and small ways.

Good night Ryan...

Odds and sods

First off: apologies to everyone for my spacing out. You see, yesterday was the one year anniversary of Max's World and I had a big bash planned to celebrate it. There was going to be a live party with full webcam coverage from the Viper Room in LA. A couple of hot up-and-coming bands were booked. The Wayans brothers were all set to host. But there was a problem with the lighting, Marlon threw a man-hissy over some overcooked oysters in the green room, and I finally just said "fuck it" and did what I do every Tuesday night: get hammered on peach schnapps, roll around in honey and watch Back to the Beach. A good time was had by all.

Just handed to me from my South Bay correspondent Jennifer Lopez: July 31st is World Wide Flush Day. At 5 PM P.S.T. we are all to flush our toilets in unison. Do what you can to help settle this age-old bar bet.

Scientists at the University of Virginia have posted a .wav file of the sound of the Big Bang. It's funny; the voice of God sounds less like Charlton Heston and more like a futuristic toilet flushing.

Field Report: Cobb's Comedy Club, 6/12/04

Rachel, her brother Mike, his girlfriend Vanessa and myself took in the 8:00 show at Cobb's last night. Chris Hardwick opening for Patton Oswalt. Good guys. Evening a bit marred by the presence of not one but two bachelorette parties, which apparently are the fire ants of the stand-up comedy picnic. Chris mentioned he played D&D; I now officially wanna get in a game with him and Wil Wheaton.

Oswalt rocked the house as I predicted to my non-Oswalt-recognizing friends he would. Got no boos on his Bush stuff, which stands to reason in SF but you never know (except for the dumbass drunk bachelorettes who said "Politicsssh aren't funnnny"; hey, help yourselves to a steaming cup of Shut the Fuck Up). His discussion on 80's metal videos was rad. Ted Nugent can deflect bullets in real life though, right?

On the way out the comics were doing the meet-and-greet, and I saw Mike Phirman (who played a few songs with Hardwick at the end of his set). I gave him the obligatory You Rock and I got the obligatory Thanks, Man, at which point I told him I fucking loved Rodeohead and his ears pricked up. Ah, a real fan! I got a soul-brother handshake from him and left the club feeling quite confident in my hipness.

Harry Potter

Very slick movie. Definitely the best of the three so far. Alfonso Cuaron has got directing style for days. It has the look of an old-timey film with "tunnel"-style dissolves between scenes, and some really gorgeous shots of the Scottish countryside. The kids are much better in their roles than they've ever been.

That said, I am a little disturbed about something - the story editing. I understand that they can't translate every subplot and detail from the book to the screen, but I was quite frankly astonished at a couple of important (IMHO) plot points that were left out, i.e. the identities of the Mischief Makers and why Harry's Patronus is a stag. As someone on EN World explained to me, the base assumption of the filmmakers seem to be that the audience has read the book and that's just the wrong assumption to make (3 out of 4 of the people I saw it with hadn't). A better assumption would be that the audience has seen the previous films and go from there. It doesn't give me a lot of hope for the next few films, given how much story they're going to have to axe to bring it in under 3 hours.

I will hereby abandon the tired "X amount of stars" summary. Instead I will be judging the film against tracks on the Beatles' seminal 1968 release The Beatles (known in these parts as the "White Album").

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban = Dear Prudence. Strong, moody, maybe not lead single-worthy but holds up to multiple listenings/viewings. In the end it'll be everyone's second favorite, except that one guy who dresses in black and thinks Chris Columbus is the Wings-era McCartney next to Cuaron's Plastic Ono Band.

Azkaban & Zep

I'm going out to see Prisoner of Azkaban tonight with a bunch of people. This was my favorite of the books and I hear it's the best of the movies so far. Full details when I come back.

In other news, I saw that SongMeanings is back up. That's by far the best lyric site I've been to, not the least of which is for the comment feature so you can discuss, well, the song meanings. I was just reading the one for Stairway to Heaven and it's the funniest comedy I've read in a while. It's a completely meaningless song, people, or as close as you can get to meaningless. My favorite is the guy who says it's about how the TeleTubbies are trying to take over the world. I know he's joking and all, but that sounds about as plausible as people who say "Frodo is looking to the West!" or "'A bustle in your hedgerow' is a sex metaphor!". Well, that last one might be true...but "I'm gonna try and tame your little red love machine" it ain't.

New Template: Customized and here to stay

Early response has been very good about the new Max's World (Typical focus group response: "We like that you got somebody who's 'TV-Ugly' for the main character") so consider it done. And hey look, it even has a little picture of me, in trendy nightvision no less! So now all of you strangers who haven't watched the Kill Bill video know what I look like. Or know what I look like as if you were Buffalo Bob at the end of Silence of the Lambs. And who hasn't wanted to do just that?

Max's World: Making intarweb dreams come true!

Back in black

I'm trying out a new template. If it sucks let me know. They're doing template coding in a slightly different format so I'll have to play around to figure out how to personalize it.

Ikea: Swedish for "Purgatory"

Sunday arrived bright and on time, and I got the smart idea to go to Ikea to purchase an entertainment unit for my living room. (If you don't have an Ikea near where you live, it's a furniture store, rougly the size of your average Death Star, that traffics in inexpensive furniture that's held together mostly by particle board, allen-head screws, and the power of prayer.) With some quick measurements of the space around our TV we hopped in the Toyota and rolled out to Emeryville.

As we entered the building we had to run a gauntlet of shoppers leaving, all of whom had the same shell-shocked, dead-eyed looks on their faces as concentration camp survivors. We boarded an escalator and looked down to see a plexiglassed kid zoo. I guess you're supposed to leave your kids there while you shop, but it looked to me more like grist for some child's future therapy sessions.

Shell of a man: "You mean, the reason I cry everytime I orgasm is my mom left me in the Ikea for Kids play area?"

Therapist: "You've just made a huge breakthrough. That'll be 300 space dollars."

Space dollars. Because it's the future. Get it?

Where was I? Oh yeah, hell on earth...

So they made us walk a couple of furlongs through the store before we found the department we were looking for. After an hour of brow-furrowing and consultations with my measurements (which it turns out I wrote in a burst of automatic writing, using an antiquated dialect of Sanskrit that I don't actually read), I realized they didn't have one piece of furniture that fit around my TV. Apparantly I'm the first man on Earth to own a 51" Sony television. While that filled me with pride, pride won't hold a DVD/VCR combo deck and a cable box. So it was on to Plan B: shelving.

Rachel found some shelves we both liked, and saw that they also had upright pillar shelves in a strangely similar style. In a MacGyver moment, we decided we could buy two pillars and a shelf and put the shelf on top of the pillars, and bada-bing, that's entertainment (unit). We copied down the product numbers as well as the aisle and bin numbers, which perplexed us a bit. Our paper looked like the phone number for an office extension in Tehran.

We were directed by the staff to go downstairs (closer towards Inferno) to the "Self-Serve Area". We finagled a handtruck and headed towards the first product on our list, which of course wasn't in the veneer we wanted. Then there's some confusion. Why are the side pillars in the same bin as the shelf, and they're all have the same icon on the box? Which part is which? What madness is this? I spent an interminable amount of time standing around by our carts while Rachel ran upstairs to look at the shelf.

When she got back, my suspicion was born out: they were the same damn piece. They mounted one horizontally on a wall and gave it a different product code. I felt my last few points of Sanity evaporate away and hefted up a third "side pillar" (sigh).

Soon we maneuvered our 200 pounds of wood through the lolly-gagging crowd (To all the slow people in front of us who pretended we and our huge cargo didn't exist: By Zeus, I will make orphans of your children, so swear I) to the checkout lines. The best part of the trip was that the lines weren't nearly as bad as I'd heard they could be. So they've got that going for them.

Some helpful tips for the prospective Ikea shopper:

1. Let your family know you're going so arrangements can be made if you snap and take hostages.

2. If you see a vision of a temptress standing in front of a fire door, beckoning you to freedom, that's just Satan fucking with you. There are no easy exits in life or Ikea.

3. Do not go with a hangover. Do go drunk, though.

4. You won't find what you want on your first trip. Don't count on finding it on the second either. Fortunately for you, Emeryville has many low-priced inns and residence hotels nearby so you can continue attacking it without wasting gas.

5. Rent a semi. Seriously, these boxes are huge. We buried my grandfather in a smaller box (also purchased at Ikea).

6. The numbers on the tags don't mean anything. They're a code to weed out the dull and witless among us. Every box downstairs contains the same volume of particle board and allen-head screws - only the directions change.