Highgate

Saturday

Love Fool


Love me love me
say that you love me
fool me fool me
go on and fool me
love me love me
pretend that you love me
leave me leave me
just say that you need me
Love me love me
say that you love me
leave me leave me
just say that you need me
I can't care 'bout anything but you...

Console Auction Success

I showed up at Recycle north this AM half expecting to see only a handful of die-hard gamering nerds hanging aroud hoping to get a cheap deal on a dusty Nintendo or playstation, but to my suprise walked into a 20+ crowd of hardcore nerds ready to drop upwards of 150$ for their favorite console; I had only one goal for this morning, get my hands on a Dreamcast so that i could get the much beloved Shenmue (if you don't know what i'm talking about, you don't really need to know.) the original soul caliber and equally excellent street fighter 3 were also perfected on this ill fated system.
The bidding came fast and furious - with nintendos flying left and right going from as little as 10$ to complete master systems w/ complete everything, including old subscriptions to nintendo power, posters, light guns, etc for somewhere around 70$. The highest sale i saw this morning was for a mint condition atari 2600, w/ entertainment case, 12 games, and 2 controllers for 150$. That went to some somewhat crazy dude who also got a Genesis, N64, Sega CD, Super NES and NES, he was aparently going through some sort of mid life crisis.

Master of Ceremony and system refurbisher himself Sean

Not quite the Original Zelda Gold Cartridge, but Link to the Past was actually a stellar game, thought not appreciated when it was first released. Much in the same way as SMB2.
Look at all the extras! it's a console nerds wet dream.

This guy sold for 150$. What some people will pay for Childhood memories...
The Events excellent auctioneer.

A sampling of the crowds anxious nerds.

Friday

Vintage Console Auction!


Recycle North's resident electronics guru Sean is auctioning off his entire collection of Vintage Console systems tomorrow morning at Recycle North - Each system auctioned will come with a selection of games for the system, and whatever peripherals the systems have with them. This is a great opportunity to find that old system or game you've been missing, or try out a new one your parents never let you have. Me, i'm gonna put a bid down on the Dreamcast. Let's hope Chris M. doesn't get wind of this though, or i'll surely be out bid.

Sean will also be auctioning off various household and not so household electronics; speakers, PA systems (for any of you music people out there.) etc. So head down to Recycle North (266 Pine street) 10am, tommorrow!

Thursday

Alphabet of Horror

Stumbled upon this excellent water color'd A-Z of Horror created by one Jared Hindman. I really dig his style, and his excellent film references, not only to Alien but to a little movie that rocked my world as a kid called "The Monster Squad" where-in a group of pre-teen boys take on The Wolfman, Dracula, the mummy and Aquaman, or whatever that fish looking guy is. In one scene, one of the kids, the chubby one, when cornered by the wolfman and not knowing what to do is told to "Kick him in the nards"... well, he does, and evidently, "Wolfman's got nards?!" |Click here to view the whole Alphabet|

Wednesday

Kids draw the darndest things...

Tuesday

New Look, same great Highgate taste.

So i finally took the plunge and upgraded my blogger account to its fancy new and improved interface - its not to bad, but it meant having to go through and mess with all my content to get it back in place; i still need to add some width to the sidebar and main content; as it was it was spanning something like 660px; right now its about 720 - i could use another 30. I also decided to mess around w/ a new header logo - the current one is something i threw together for lack of more time at work. I've got a few more ideas up my sleeve; but all of this is really just here until i get some free time to start working on my own domain. Sadly Highgate.com highgatecenter.com and Tannermoore.com are all taken. Check out who's rocking the Tannermoore.com -

Btw, here's a big Thanks to everyone who's ever read my blog and continues to - its been alot of fun for me the last few years, and it's nice to think i might have put a smile on some of your faces in the process. Its interesting for me to go back and read old posts as i'm sure it is for any blogger; and while the specific details of each post are there own, i find it more interesting to observe how, depending on where I've been in last few years, in terms of happiness, comfort, interests, etc, my posts have reflected that unconsciously - often times i go weeks at a time with little interest in blogging about anything personal; the reasons vary - sometimes i have no interest other than to blog the most inanely idiotic web garbage, and for that i apologize, but wait, this is my blog... so never mind, i take that back.

So, thanks - keep reading, i guarantee I'll keep posting, and i guarantee their will be plenty of grammatical errors to point out.

Monday

Lomo arigato


10 Rules of Lomography:
  1. Take your LOMO everywhere you go and whenever you go.
  2. Use it any time - day or night.
  3. Lomography is not an interference in your life, but a part of it.
  4. Shoot from the hip.
  5. Approach the objects of your lomographic desire as close as possible.
  6. Don't think.
  7. Be fast.
  8. You don't have to know beforehand what you've captured on film.
  9. You don't have to know afterwards, either.
  10. Don't worry about the rules.

Sunday

It's finally here...



Spring that is. Not my Complete first edition John Bellairs collection... not yet anyway... Jenny and I decided it'd be a nice day for a drive, we stopped up to highgate to say hi my dad and grandmother. I rarely get a chance to get up to town these days and it makes me more and more anxious as i worry that something might have happened that i should know about, but as ussual nothing had changed - except my dad's shoes - he was sporting a pair of slip-ons he got in a 2 for 1 deal; a far-cry from his usual Red Wings. He was in the process of trimming the apple trees, we talked for a bit about the dear eating all the buds off the tree the minute they pop up, and how he went to a Make-a-Wish fundraiser this weekend and almost cried when a litte 3 year old girl told her story of disney land, then he got all teary eyed telling the story... then i kind of got all teary eyed watching my dad get teary eyed.

We talked to my grandmother for a bit, and headed up towards Franklin, the county seat - and home of the franklin general store; picked up some supplies, lemonade, beef jerky, diet cherry coke, and yet another sign that there is a god, and that he does infact love us all - a Maple Woopee Pie. Bitchin.

From there we headed around the lake, and up towards Enosburg falls... (aka, penisburg balls.) but before that we stopped at the South Franklin Cemetery to pay respects to what i thought was my grandfather... but turns out i'm a moron, that doesn't know where his own grandfather is buried... Though i did find some relatives from my mother's side there, so i didn't feel like a complete sub-mental. I know i went to someones funeral here... Now i just need to figure out where my grandfather's buried... how confusing.

Mental note: If i ever have a son, name him Theophilus "Mansfield" McCuin

Regardless its was a lovely day for a walk, and the South Franklin Cemetery is home to only about 50 grave sites, a trifle in the world of necropolis' - which reminds me that i used to live in a house that sat on the property of the largest cemetery in the Southern Hemisphere (if you don't count all the mass burial sites... but who in the northern hemisphere does really...) The Rookwood Necropolis. This was a much more intimate affair, and a more beautiful spot for a final resting place i couldn't image. Dirt road, a ways away from any houses, a crossroad, closed in by an old white fence, and lined with old maple trees... I found my grave too, sort of. Jenny suggested we take a series of photos with me observing my gravesite, but after a chuckle we both decided we wern't feeling all that angsty or dramatic... besides, if we were gonna do it, it'd have to be done in costume, i'd need to be dressed like Michael Landon from Little house, jenny like that blind girl... why? why not.

Besides we had alot more driving to do.

From there we headed through Enosburg, Berkshire, up around to Mongomery, over the edge of the mountains, into Jeffersonville, and back down around into good ol' shitenden county. Where much to our chagrin, the world was just as we left it...

Monday

I'm in your Meme

Linkin' to kittehs.
The Master list

Sunday

Via the Urban Dictionary:


Mind of Mencia

n.
The absolute worst television show ever aired, or, for that matter, concieved by man. It is a void, a black hole completly empty of any mirth or comedy whatsoever. It is a momentous failure of mankind and God. It is the humor equivalent of Absolute Zero; so blatantly unfunny that it can only be achieved through a controlled laboratory setting. This leads some to believe that Mind of Mencia was, in fact, created specifically as an experiment to find the most unhumorous idea possible, but it's hard to imagine that any but the most sadistic would even contemplate unleashing such an abhorrition as MoM on the world.

Also, vb: Mencian
Something so horrible it compares to the calibur of the unholy blight itself, Mind of Mencia. It has yet to be used seriously, because come on, let's face it, nothing is that fucking bad.

"Dude, that class was so bad...it was, like mencian." (It is as bad as Mind of Mencia)
"Woah, woah. Hold up. It wasn't that bad."
"You're right. NOTHING IS THAT BAD."

Urban Dictionary

Wednesday

Wonder Showzen

So by now most everyone has heard of a little show called "Wonder Showzen" that has a few season under it's belt, and is currently sitting in limbo waiting for either MTV2 to sign them for more episodes or for some other mega-media outlet to take a gamble. If it were up to me, they'd be showing it on prime time. I've been a fan for a few years now ever since i stumbled onto it one night and pretty much had my mind blown out my ass by the show's tiny diamond hard comedy nuggets. Recently i decided it was time to get the DVDs so i could watch hours of the show on end, which not surprisingly proved difficult - Wonder Showzen is so incredibly hostile, satirical, subversive and unsettling (all in the most delightful ways...) that i usually have to turn it off after about 3-4 episodes. But then i go back after i take a dump and make a bowl of cinnamon life, and watch some more.EW: Wonder Showzen has some of the most insanely cutting, graphic, and adult comedy out there. It seems odd that it's brought to you by the same network family that brings you TRL. Do you get the sense that the MTV bosses even know you're on? (from the Entertainment Weekly interview)

CHATMAN Our executives watch the show, and we get a lot of positive lip service, so I guess that's the best you can ask for.

LEE
How do you get positive lip service when they don't talk to you?

CHATMAN
''Positive Lip Service'' was our new wave band, by the way, in the '80s.

LEE
I would say at least one and a half executives watch this show. I feel secure in saying that.

CHATMAN
It has some kind of veneer or aura about it that it's a cool thing, because the execs like to tell us, ''Oh, I like the show.'' As if, ''I'm the one who likes the show. I'm on board, don't worry.''

LEE
''We've got all these other crappy shows, I'm just thankful this show's on the air.''

CHATMAN
You can see the shame in their eyes when they talk about it. F---ing [My Super] Sweet Sixteen and stuff. Nobody's proud.... I think we're actually kind of lucky to be at MTV, where we're bastard stepchildren who can do what we want. We're at the point where they're just like, ''All right, go ahead.''
Tell me about how you came up with the puppets.

CHATMAN Chauncey is based on a handmade puppet I bought at a thrift store that we made our original eight-minute demo tape with. Him is like a gyro, basically, and he's also partially based on John's dog Littlejeans, a Brussels Griffin. Wordsworth is the nerd, the smart guy, supposedly educational, so he has an exposed brain. And for Sthugar, we wanted the most sweet, girly girl.

LEE We don't really know anything about girls, so we figured pink, and one tooth, right?

CHATMAN Passive. Eyes set apart like a doe, waiting like prey. That's all we know.

LEE And they don't bruise easily.

CHATMAN We designed them and worked them out with the puppet makers. The original makers were from Sesame Street. The problem is they've been spending their whole lives sniffing glue and have gone crazy. We had a guy flipping out on us and screaming because he didn't want to make Sthugar this color pink.

LEE We had a distinct color, which most of them want. And we give it to him, and he yells, ''You don't dictate to me color!'' And he hung up and we never talked to him again. I didn't realize we were the Hitlers of color.

CHATMAN We wanted ''a'' color, which was totally fascist.
LEE To me, I thought that was totally capitalist. But I guess those two are pretty close, right? [They high-five exaggeratedly]

CHATMAN They're proprietary about everything.

LEE When we showed them drawings, they asked, ''Who's gonna puppeteer this?'' We said, ''I guess we'll do it.'' And they said, ''Do you have puppeteering experience?''

CHATMAN [Sarcastically] It's like, ''I can go like that.'' [He mimes opening and closing his hand like a mouth] I've talked to a baby before. Yeah, I think I can do it.

LEE I think they found that condescending. They wanted to do all the classic stuff, but we wanted it to be more homemade.

CHATMAN It's better to have little creatures and f---ed-up things. It's sweeter. Which then allows us to make them vomit, and it's funny. To have a realistic-looking puppet vomit is not as funny. We're heavy into early Jim Henson, not the Dark Crystal years and lamentable Fraggle Rock era...

LEE I'd rather Vernon s--- down my throat than have to do that.

CHATMAN And we tried it. You don't believe him? There's proof of that theory.

LEE The proof of that pudding was indeed in the eating.

CHATMAN I had a lot of pudding the night before to prove the amount.

Wonder Showzen attaches a lot of horrific elements to the humor – blood, screams, decomposing and dying animals. How close are horror and humor in your minds? (from the Dead Frog interview)

Our minds are so tiny and so symmetrical, everything is crammed equally close to everything else up in there. That said, anyone who has watched helplessly as their entire family was mercilessly and methodically butchered before their eyes knows firsthand how delightfully interchangeable horror and humor truly are.

AVC: There's a lot of anti-meat sentiment on the show. Are you guys vegetarians? (from the Onion Interview)

VC: No. Meat is visually compelling. Meat works. Meat works for America. Meat is like a diamond. It's the perfect metaphor for whatever you need. Do you need a new metaphor? We'll hook you up.

JL: Meat is pretty compelling to look at. It's just solid murder, rock-hard murder. It's murder crystallized into pure meaty form. And that's just fun. When we do research and watch PETA videos, we're like, "Okay, we're not eating meat for a couple weeks."

VC: When you see a pig just kicking and looking in the camera, and blood's pouring out of it, and it's looking you right in the face…

JL: But ultimately, all the deliciousness beckons, and you gotta go back to meat. It's a siren song. It's kind of like alcohol, but in a more solid form.

Tuesday

The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (Italian.)



The comments on Youtube for this are priceless...


Kingreader36 (1 hour ago)
I demand an answer for this faggotry...

Mijckol (6 days ago)
That's so stupid, don't you italian people can just speak english?

Dark0Fuck (1 hour ago)
Uploader must be gAy!! it must die! SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAA!


rpiastrelli (6 days ago)
Quoted: "That's so stupid, don't you italian people can just speak english?"
Hey retard, I'm Italian and can understand it perfectly. They dubbed it so Italian peeps (who don't know English) can enjoy the show. There's no need for subs in English. ASIDE FROM THAT - learn to write English, FIRST, before you comment on another language.
Grazie! (That means "Thanks"! Incase you needed f'ing subtitles!)

kbelotto (2 weeks ago)
this sounds like robin williams rapping in italian lol

Chomperz (54 minutes ago)
did i hear Spike Lee?


Sunday

Christalmighty,


Anyone see that dog? you know, the one that took a giant shit in my mouth last night....

So, if success is measured in the amount of painkillers required to only slightly ease the pain in my skull, than i'd say last nights official, unoffical Burlington Bloggers "social drink", was a rip-roaring success. I remember sometime around oh, 6ish thinking... ug, i think i'm getting a cold, i'm gonna take it easy tonight... then, not long after thinking to myself "Oooooh! cider jacks are only a 1$" and then, "what will go good with a cider jack? oh i know... a giant girl shot on the rocks!" (tasted like Hawaiian punch, next morning felt more like, a Samoan daterape...) after that it was yet another failed attempt to see the 300 (that's the 3rd showing i didn't get into in 24 hours.) Then dinner at Shalimar w/ T-balls (which later that night in a strange bout of the Michael J Fox's i managed to karate chop, in a fresh out of the microwave superheated condition, all over myself... and then right after that, spill JC Penny's dinner all over her... she just sort of looked at me like... "so..... you gonna clean this shit up?"
But then there was the Blogger meeting, and that was fun. The exclusive meeting quickly turned all inclusive as we ran into other friends, and their friends, and my lovely little sister Tara "Bara" and her also lovely girlfriend Sara "Bara" who were both sporting sexy 200$ designer jeans... sevens or something. I dunno... I prefer the levi's myself, they flatter my thighs.
Then we got the stupid idea to go to JP's cause of a combination of stupidity, girl crushes, and karaoke, where i watched Ben H. do probably the greatest thing that's ever been done since forever. I can't describe it actually... and actually, the greatest thing ever was watching Jenny fresh from a sexy night at the Cabaret fund raiser party, decked out in a sexy skirt, boots and a tight little corset top, blasting away at fucking Big Buck Hunter. I mean, jesus.

1. hot girl in sexy restrictive clothing.
2. cocking a orange plastic shotgun.
3. playing a video game.

... uh.

Anway, so ben gets on stage wearing black tinted wrap around sunglasses, slouching a little, with a drink in one hand and the mike in the other, and proceeds to croon (in pitch perfect, unfaultering falsetto mind you) Lovefool by the Cardigans... you know what song that is...


Love me love me
Say that you love me
Fool me fool me
Go on and fool me
Love me love me
Pretend that you love me
Leave me leave me
Just say that you need me
Love me love me
Say that you love me
Leave me leave me
Just say that you need me
I cant care bout anything but you...
-------------

yeah that one. Awesome! There are other things that happened, like me deciding that long island ice teas are suitable end of the night, last call beverages.... or the bunch of us going over to Allie's apartment and looking at fancy treehouses while ben played drunken mp3 DJ (think Jesus Jones and "the lyrical gangsta") Or Jenny helping me to cut myself off and drink some water. (thank you.) But those things aren't important, those are just details. I just wanna know who's dog that was.

Jay has a few more pictures |spitting out teeth|
(should be retitled spitting out throw up that got caught in your teeth after you threw up on a cabbie.)

Saturday

Saturday AM, laying in bed surfin the web.



I haven't mentioned much about my job - mainly because it's a tech job w/ people who have computers and Internet connections and could potentially be reading Highgate, and in that case i don't need to complicate my work environment anymore than it is. But i can safely say right now that I've really been enjoying web design; while I've always been a tech geek, spending countless hours indoors, fiddling with PCs, gaming, surfing, etc, I've never quite felt i knew enough about one area of them to make into a career; and it was by a stroke of good fortune that my old place of (not so gainful) employment, Pure Pop was in need of a website. While I've always known, like most nerds, a pocketful of HTML, i was also aware that now adays, there was more to the game than some various element tags, so with some encouragement i grabbed some books, and jumped headfirst into CSS, DHTML, and Javascript. While so far, Pure Pop's website has yet to see the light day, i was finished, and not very long after i was recruited to do design work for my friend Luke's blooming tech company. I was shocked really - i didn't want to mention that i had about 3 months experience with any of these languages, and I've absolutely no experience with illustrator. Photoshop, I'd used to do things like paste my friends faces onto a baboons ass, things like that.
When i was asked at my interview for a portfolio, i almost choked on my own spit... Luke covered for me, i mentioned i could get something together at a later time; luckily they forgot, that or they just didn't care... its a pretty relaxed environment where i work. No one seems to mind my giant Britany spears is the devil poster...
Anyway - i was a nervous wreck when i first started, i thought for certain i would be found out as a phony, kicked to the curb after a month and forced to go groveling to Michael for my old job back... i mean, who gets hired at salary w/ full benefits for having 2 months experience? Isn't this what people go to college to get degrees in? (though i do plan on going back in a year or two to finish that degree.)
So it all came as a shock when after 2 months, i was offered a raise and a contract for permanent employment - 6 or so months later now, they're consulting me on design decisions, bringing me in on conference calls w/ big name design agencies, buying me a new dual monitor G5 workstation, and flying me down to NYC for consultations. Its in my nature to wonder when the other shoe will fall so to speak - but maybe this will work out, i have been working awfully hard and i have to agree that i seem to have an eye for all this, though it does need to be refined and i have alot to learn. Luckily i rather enjoy all of it. Except fixing IE bugs; that sucks.

Friday

who's with me?

Thursday

Thursday Triptych


Wednesday

Last night


...I kept Jenny up late, because i couldn't sleep - i was exhausted but, just before i fell away, all these memories and smells started filling up my head. It was a very strange sensation to the point where, a more than a few times it took me a moment to clear the past out of my eyes and comeback to my bedroom. Something triggered it; I'm sure - a smell or something i looked at; though while an occasionally sentimental person, I'm not all that nostalgic; my past has never been as interesting to me as my future, and while some days my present doesn't seem all that thrilling, i also have a good imagination that can fill in the blanks. I consider myself lucky in these ways.

Earlier we had been reading - me, with more Sebald; who continues to amaze me with his prose; if only i had my copy of "Vertigo" w/ me right now... [You, however, take delight in the ship, despoiling the lake with sails. I will go down to the deep. Plunge, thaw, go blind, become ice. In the tram, Dr K. is suddenly convulsed by a violent aversion to [mr.] Pick, because the latter has a small, unpleasant hole in his nature through which he sometimes creeps forth in his entirety...] Jenny was reading Tom Robbins... am i being ignorant to suggest that only girls like that guy? probably. Am i writing right now to put off the fact that i have a huge project due at the end of the month, and i'm totally stuck right now? definitely....

We finished the last hour before bed with an oration of Lovecraft's "The Festival" one of my very favorite and very short stories of his; his description of a sleepy evil new england town perched on the edge of a wintry Atlantic ocean during the yuletide is amazing and just short of fevered. And we get to listen to the church bells toll across the street every hour; and count them... Jenny counted 12, i counted 11, i'm sure it was midnight.

It was something maybe in those stories, or that we talked about reading a Bellairs novel next time; or some Poe; i'm not sure... But i started thinking of the way light came in through my Australian friend Jess's bedroom windows, and how there was always alot of beach sand on the floorboards; how their was this small picture of Bob Dylan that i hadn't ever seen before right above the lightswitch by the door... how i had a picture of that room somewhere; but i could remember where. How Jess came to visit me in one of her many tours of the world; and i barely had a moment for her then, and right now - i had nothing but.

Mostly thoughts out of context; scenes and alot of smells; i think my olfactory sense is better than my memory; None of them bringing back a slew of emotions though; it felt alot like having to sit through some familial slide show around the holidays, i couldn't leave the room, i was required to be there, even though i wanted to sleep.

Eventually Jenny noticed my discomfort and started asking me questions about this and that - and to her credit, even though it was after midnight; she seemed actually interested in hearing all my disjointed brick-a-brack. She's a very good listener. Afterwards i finally fell asleep, but this morning i woke up feeling very strange; i didn't have a single dream last night, that i remember, but today feels much like one. Even as i'm sitting in this terribly sterile office, sitting at my desk listening to keyboards clack and phones ring, i can't shake the feeling that the volume is turned down, or that i have cotton in my head; and that gravity is just a little bit unreal, a little less constant.

We don't pay for heat at our apartment, and i assume it's because no one has done any repair work in there for years; our windows look to be the same windows that were installed in the 1940's, and now they're loose and rattle when it's windy. Some effort has been made to install some outer storm windows, they tend to jam open, or skip rails. Last night the window by the head of my bed was letting in a constant drift of icy air, even though I'd tried my best to secure the storm window, and had taken a rather large scarf and jammed it into the sill for insulation; it helped a little.