The other thing I worked on today was http://www.TheStarTimes.com
Here’s a smaller version - click to go to the full size:

For those of you who are not familiar with it, the Star-Times is the fictional newspaper from the radio program “Box 13.” I’ve been toying with the idea of doing something with it. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it yet, but I think that image turned out pretty well, so I put it online.

I’m rather disappointed, because yesterday I was thinking about how I could write in here about how things here are just a boat full of awesome - indeed, yesterday I was feeling like just about the luckiest boy that there could be. My girlfriend (who does exist, and whom I enjoy and appreciate thoroughly, despite what the last post may have suggested) brought me pumpkin bread and tillamook cheese (two things I haven’t had since moving to Texas) and is spoiling me with massages and makeouts; I paid off my rent and other bills so I don’t have to worry about that again till next month, the sunny and bright (but not too hot to go outside), and all-in-all I was feeling on top of the world.

… and then today happened.

Usually in the mornings, by boss calls and tells me what project I’ll be working on that day. This morning when he called, he told me my project for the day is to start looking for a new job. He isn’t exactly firing me yet, but he says if I stay on, I’ll be put back to part-time. I sort of figured that something like this was going to happen before to long, as for the past week or so he’s been far more unusual than he usually is (not calling me at all for four days, and then last night he gave me the afternoon off and told me he’d call back at 8, and then at 8 he said he’d call back in 15 minutes, and at 8:30 he told me he’d call back in a half hour, same thing at 9, and that was the last I heard from him until this morning.

So, I’m now on a job hunt. I submitted one resume today to an advertising agency that’s looking for a graphic designer. The bad news with that one is that it’s way on the other side of Austin, so I’d pretty much have to get a car if I got that job, but the good news is that if I got that job, it’d pay $45,000 a year, so I could afford one. Right now I’m casting a wide net to see what sort of options are available around here.

That phone call from my boss was what woke me up this morning, so that was off to a bad start. The start was then made worse when I walked into my bathroom, which for the past few weeks has had not a single ant in it, somehow during the night became completely covered. It went from 0 when I went to bed, to a million when I woke up. And I was still just half-awake at this point, and the sight of all those ants half made me wonder if I was actually dreaming all of this. Unfortunately, I wasn’t.

Boo to today. Today needs to walk the plank.

In other, happier news, I’ve got the dialogue all put together for Harry Potter and the Copyright Infringement, and am now just adding some sound effects and music, and it’ll be done. Yay for silver linings.

I just know a girl who would get really mad if she heard me say that.
(- Mitch Hedberg)

my sleep schedule is currently all wonky - hence, it is 1am, and I just woke up from a nap. This is what I get for having sleep-overs and not working for four days in a row. And, in addition to the destruction of my sleep schedule, so too is my status as a Single Bachelor; I always try to avoid being Officially Boyfriend and Girlfriend, but now I am thus labeled (and it even says so on facebook, thanks to Lila grabbing my ankle and physically dragging me to the computer so that I could update my relationship status on there).

This is surprising for two reasons - one being that I did not anticipate any Official Relationships with anyone at this point, and the other being that of the people that I would have pegged as Likely Candidates for the Position, I didn’t wind up with the one that I would have expected. This is all to early-in to fully write about, so I’ll just say that I’m enjoying it, and we’ll see how things go.

In other news, my old computer is back from the grave. The data recovery company was able to salvage all of my stuff and put it on an external hard drive (for the low-low-price of $1000 plus the cost of the external hard drive). With the data secured, I was able to reformat the old hard drive and re-install windows, so now I’ve got that computer sitting in the living room hooked in to the cable, so that I can watch TV, DVDs, all the videos and things from my computer, and can use the computer as a DVR to record shows so that I can watch them later. Sweet deal. And the new computer is still here in the office.

On the entertainment front, I am now almost finished with the dialogue recording for Harry Potter and the Copyright Infringement. I had recorded the narration, and voices for Harry Potter and Lucius Malfoy prior to the computer fiasco, so now I’ve got those audio files again, and yesterday Hilary came by with her mum to record Hermione, after which I recorded the voices for the small parts (burley gentlemen, sorting hat, etc). Now all that’s left is to record Voldemort, and edit it together. Exciting times.

Quite an eventful memorial day weekend if ever I saw one.

I’ve just discovered a website that allows me to share my karaoke skills with the world!



• I still have plenty of ham left if you want any
• My harddrive-less computer is sitting next to me. The hard drive itself is off at Flashback Data; I do not yet know whether or not they’ll be able to salvage my files from it.
• I am typing this using the new computer I just bought. I’ll have to upgrade the RAM in it to bring it up to my usual speed, but it’s working well otherwise. It has windows Vista in it, which looks fancy.
• I spent pretty much this whole week working on my old computer, or getting this new one set up.
• As a result of my having no income for the week, and having to spend $100 (so far) to get the hard drive fixed, plus the $500 for the new computer, I am now poor.
• Also as a result, my entry into the Punniest of Show at the O. Henry Pun Off was much more hastily prepared than I had intended.
• The good news - the audience liked it.
• The bad news - the judges did not. In a word, I was punned (read that as “pwned”). But, still had fun.
• Just got back from seeing “Hot Fuzz,” which exceeded the high expectations I had going in. Go see it while it’s still on the big screen. Do it.
• Tomorrow I have to catch up on all of the work that didn’t happen during the past week thanks to my computer problems.
• I’m out of bullets to point with. Time to reload. Goodnight.

It was so young… less than a year old.
Cut down in the prime of its life by a deadly virus.
The doctors did all they could for it, but in the end the virus proved just too strong.
The Hard Drive has been removed and is now in the care of a company that is charging an arm and a leg to try and recover the data from it - I should find out before too long whether or not all of my files are gone for good.

I am saddened by the loss of my digital companion. In time, I will grow to love this new one, but I must take time to grieve.

The reason you shouldn’t shop on an empty stomach.
One Eight Pound Smoked Half-Butt Ham -
Bone Included.

It’s a half-butt ham, not a half-assed ham.

On day one, it is delicious.
By day three, it is no longer a meal -
it’s a sentence.

Ham is the most anti-semitic of the meats.

Ham and eggs. Ham sandwich.
Ham with pineapple. Ham on its own.
Ham and Potatoes Au Graten.

Hot Ham Water.

Don’t blame me for over-acting -
you are what you eat.

… ’cause maybe I don’t love you all that much.

Not since seeing the New Pornographers in Bellingham have I been so happy with a concert - this past Thursday I was able to see one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Dan Bern (the source of the title quote) in person at the Cactus Cafe on the UT Austin campus.

There’s Dan Bern on Guitar

with Paul Kuhn on the ‘cellocaster,’ an interesting instrument that he played both guitar-style and violin-style. Apparently he invented it.

And as if a Dan Bern concert isn’t enough, there’s another story, too - as you know, I’ve been trying to be more friendly and outgoing since I got to Austin, and my main way of doing this has been to start up conversations with random people that I see and think look interesting. So I get to the concert early so that I’ll be sure to get tickets, and while I’m waiting for the show to start, a young lady catches my eye, and so I grab a drink and join her at her table, and was hit it off.

As the conversation goes along, she mentions that she does voice over acting. I think that this is a fortuitous coincidence, because just a few days earlier I had put a post on craigslist looking for voice actors to be in the new Harry Potter cartoon. And now here’s the really interesting bit - as she’s telling me about the project she’s about to start, and I’m telling her about the project I’m about to start, we come about the realization that we’re actually talking about the same thing - she was one of the people that responded to my call for voice over actors, and we had already been conversing via e-mail before our chance encounter at the concert. Could you ask for a more perfect first-meeting story? I submit that you cannot.

So that was Thursday. And on Friday, I went out to The Spider House coffee bar and for a little exploration of the UT Austin area with a girl I’ve been talking to on facebook for a while. In addition to introducing me to some of the college hot-spots, she also introduced me to Captain Bad-Ass, who is apparently a local internet celebrity. He was walking around the coffee place trying to get people to come be in his newest video (a version of the Numa Numa song in a huge dance number style, complete with synchronised swimming and whatnot). The Spider House was a pretty cool coffee place - they had a huge outdoor patio area that was pretty well packed, and they had some DJs spinning some records.

So, after those two fun nights in a row, I’m feeling pretty awesome. Yay, Austin.

I don’t usually write about my dreams, but last night was the most ridiculous, intricately-detailed one I’ve had in quite some time:

it started out at a Jones Family Reunion, somewhere in mountainous country narrow, winding roads through the rocks, along which we drove for quite some time. After a while of driving, we arrived at our huge mountain-top hotel. The extended Jones family got checked in andwe went to check out our rooms. I had my own room, which was probably twice the size of my apartment. It looked liked a very fancy cabin, with wood everywhere except for the outer walls, which were all glass so that you had an unobstructed view of the mountains all around you.

That night we went to the restaurant at the hotel, and we were enjoying dinner, when the waiter came over and told me that I had an urgent message, so I went to a little computer station and checked my e-mail, when I learned that there was something wrong with guywiththecoat.com, and I would have to come home immediately. I didn’t want to leave, but I wasn’t given a choice, so the next day I left the reunion and flew home (to what was an odd blend of Austin, Bellingham, and some fictional city with tons of raised walkways and underground shops and stages).

As it turned out, Pizza Hut had launched a lawsuit against me for one reason or another, and in order to destroy my credibility, they had hacked all of my sites, and put up all sorts of inflamatory things. I tried to re-upload the actual site, but pizza hut was flooding the server so that it was not accepting uploads. Meanwhile, the very beautiful prosecuting attorney showed up to convince me not to try to bother fighting, because Pizza Hut is way too powerful. I asked her what exactly they were suing me for (because I didn’t know) and said that she didn’t have the details, but that there had been a town meeting where it was all discussed.

I decided to play along, since I figured that would at least buy me some time. So the beautiful attorney and I started to go through all the legal procedures, and as time went by I kept trying to get her to see that I was innocent, and that Pizza Hut is evil. Eventually, she admitted that she hadn’t actually seen any of the things that pizza hut was suing me over, but she had a list of things. One of the main ones was a comic strip that I had online, and I explained to her that the comic was harmless, and I showed it to her: first panel - rabbit and a fox fighting. Second panel - later in the day, rabbit and the fox fight. Next - the next day, rabbit and fox fight. Next - next season, rabbit and fox fight. next - next year. there’s a pause, and the rabbit and fox look at each other. And they fight.

The beautiful attorney couldn’t see why they’d be suing me over that comic, and that was enough to get her to give me some time, so we left the city and went into a snowy forest (the scene from the comic), where we saw the rabbit and the fox fighting. She was amazed to see that the comic was based on this real-life fox and rabbit. During this romantic walk through the woods, she fell madly in love with me, and said that she would do all she could to sabotage Pizza Hut’s plan to destroy me. Also during this scene, she accidentally killed the fox while she was playing with it, and we buried it near its home.

We then went back to the city, and to a bar to grab a drink. The bar was one of those types you see in the movies, with an upper level and a lower level, with a giant grizzly woman at the bar, and assorted regulars at all the tables. Everybody glared at us when we went in, and we were kicked out, because I’m that guy they were talking about on the news.

So we went back to her hotel (since I had been kicked out of my apartment), and turned on the TV, to see that Pizza Hut had spread propaganda about how evil I was to all the news stations, and various people were debating whether or not I should be executed for treason. There were some people coming to my defense, but whenever they would make a point, they would then show some part of the website (the new, pizza-hut-designed evil website) that proved them wrong.

The beautiful attorney said that she would go back to New York immediately so that she could stop this, but at that point some guys busted in and hauled her away, since they had found out that she had changed sides. So I ran out into the streets trying to tell people what was going on, but all the people I talked to were convinced by FOX News that I was a bad guy and so wouldn’t listen.

Eventually, some guy told me that there was a complete archive of town meeting videos in College Hall, so I went and got the tape of the meeting that had started this whole thing - which I could use to prove that all of the things they said about me were lies. So I went back to the hotel, and stood on a table and got everyones attention, saying that I had the proof that what they said was wrong. But just as people began to believe me, the Seafair Pirates arrived and put on a huge show to distract everyone while they stole the tape.

After putting on a really cool staged pirate fight, they left, with the tape, as I tried to chase after them. But they got away, and so I then began wandering through the mazes of streets trying to get somebody to help, with no luck. There were also a bunch of documentary crews in town for some sort of music festival, so I tried to get one of them to follow me to document the craziness that was going on, but they were all hired to film some band or another, so I was on my own.

At this point, I started to wake up, but dream-me fought hard to stay asleep, because I couldn’t give in to being awake until I had resolved this crisis. So I stayed asleep, and continued searching for somebody to help, but the longer I searched, the more real-me realized that it was time to get up, and so I had to leave the dream world (which still seemed very real. In fact, I’m not entirely convinced that if I pull up my website right now, it won’t be a hacked duplicate describing my activities with the KKK and neo-nazi groups). But, it was such a dream that I just had to write it down while I still remember the details.

Happy Cinco de Mayo today, and belated Happy No Pants Day yesterday.

I’m happy to say that I’m feeling adequately destressed, as for the past few days I have done very little work (not counting on my own things), and instead have been relaxing and having fun. Thursday I made it up to the ‘First Thursday’ happenings in the trendy SoCo district - all the shops and things that were closed when I walked past them a while back were open, and they also had some open-air markets set up, and live music going. It was pretty fun, and as a bonus, I bought a book that I’m rather surprised that I didn’t already own: The Batman Handbook - a step-by-step guide on how to become Batman.

Friday I finished drawing the pictures for “Harry Potter and the Copyright Infringement,” and began coloring them. I also took the opportunity to go grocery shopping - which led to the invention of a new culinary delicacy - Chicken Pot Pancakes:

They came about when I bought a chicken pot pie at the store, and didn’t realize until I took it out of the freezer at my apartment that I don’t own a microwave. I looked at the directions on the back, and saw that if you don’t have a microwave, you’re supposed to cook it in the oven at 400 degrees for an hour. I considered this, but decided I didn’t want to have a 400 degree oven heating my apartment for an hour, so I used my Genius Skills to think of other means of preparing it.

What I realized was, when I make chicken pot pies the normal way, the first thing I do when they’re finished is to crush the crust in with the filling so it’s all blended - so, I imagined, it would be just as delicious if they were mixed together at the start. So, I pulled out my pan, and stuck the chicken pot pie in. As it thawed, I chopped it up into small, easily cooked bits, and stirred it all together.

The original plan was to just cook it until everything was hot all the way through, and then put it in a bowl and chow down. But, as it kept cooking, I noticed that because of the dough mixed in with everything, the mixture was starting to solidify into a pancake-like structure. This, I realized, would be way better than mush in a bowl, and so that was the new path I followed. During flipping, the giant pancake became a series of small pancakes, but those smaller ones held their shape well, as I cooked them until they were a lovely golden brown. And, as it turned out, they weren’t too bad. I don’t think I’ll be making them again, but as an experiment it turned out as well as I could have expected.

Today I cleaned my apartment. Yesterday, I recieved my new vacuum cleaner that I had ordered (it was scheduled to arrive on Monday, so it was a pleasant surprise to have it so soon), and so after I picked up everything from off the floor, I gave it a good vaccuming. My vacuum is one of those where the dirt spins around in a visible window, so you can see just how much grime was on the floor - and there was a ton. Rather gross, actually, but now that dirt is safely trapped within the vaccuum, where it will stay as long as Walter Peck doesn’t come in and shut down the containment grid.

Once that was taken care of, I continued work on coloring HP, and then it was off to see Napoleon Dynamite with Jon ‘Uncle Rico’ Gries. I walked most of the way, stopping off at a few places along the way, until I saw that it was near time that I ought to be there, and so then I hopped on a bus the rest of the way. The place was pretty packed - I couldn’t tell if it was completely sold out, but if it wasn’t, it was pretty close. Luckily seats were assigned, so I had a good seat (front toward the middle). After the movie, Jon Gries came out and did a Q and A, and then stuck around after for pictures:

Fun times. After that I attempted to go to the Old Pecan Street festival dealy, because I thought that it went till 10pm, but when I got there, pretty much all of the booths were closed. Boo. So I wandered around for a while, until I was ready to go home, at which point I did.

And then I wrote this post. And what will happen next? Tune in next time to find out!

There is some wild lightning going on outside. It’s exciting to watch.

But unfortunately that’s about it for excitement down here lately. Pretty much everything for the past week has been either work, shopping, online shopping, writing (mostly Harry Potter and the Copyright Infringement, but I’ve also been going through my old things trying to polish those up), or working on BlueChairEntertainment.com. I haven’t left the house much, other than to run errands.

I did go back to the Velveeta Room last Thursday, and I got to perform about halfway through the night as opposed to dead last, and it went quite well. I did about 3/4 new stuff, 1/4 old stuff. I think my favorite of the new jokes is: “I entered a dog show last weekend. Not, I mean, I didn’t enter - I mean, I entered a piece of french toast in. It was so humiliating; the judge took one look at my french bread and through it in my face, said I was disqualified. Yeah, just because it wasn’t pure bread.”

I also went back to sing with the Chord Rangers barbershop chorus last night. It was another low-turnout night; more people should be there on non-tornado warning nights.

The good news is that tomorrow will begin more adventures: it’s the first Thursday of the month (which means that it marks the one month anniversary of me being here), and on the first thursday there’s a huge street festival downtown, so I’ll go check that out instead of going to the Velveeta Room. After that, I plan on going to see the midnight showing of Spiderman 3 (as long as I can get tickets). I tried to get Spiderman tickets at the Alamo, but they were long-gone, so if I go, I’ll have to go to one of the smaller theaters.

While I failed at getting tickets to Spiderman at the Alamo, I did succeed in getting tickets to Napoleon Dynamite on Saturday. “But Nathaniel, why would you go see Napoleon Dynamite when you’ve seen it so many times, and you have the DVD?” The answer is, because this time John “Uncle Rico” Gries will be there in the room, so he can ruin my life and eat all the steak in person! Flippin sweet!

And now as I say goodnight, here is a picture of Harry Potter from the upcoming movie, “Harry Potter and the Copyright Infringement!” Wow, exclusive!