The Z Axis

Saturday, Donny, is Shabbos, the Jewish day of rest

So, I'm already getting to be quite a fan of Audacity - its noise reduction isn't bad, but I'd love some more options. The thing that I immediately like, though is that it has very simple multitrack audio layering, and I also really like the way it draws waveforms. Expect a new mix of Picnic on Mars sometime soon, now that I can line up the live segments in something other than a nonlinear video editing program, which isn't quite designed for detailed waveform comparisons.

I've created (and am using for this entry) a new category, and accompanying image. It's colorful.

Today is definitely shaping up to be a "wander aimlessly around the house in my underwear" kind of day. The weather's perfect for it, my mental state is perfect for it, even the house's cleanliness is perfect for it. There aren't any piles of anything lying around screaming HEY LAZY ASS, FIX ME. I can just cruise around. If I liked drugs this'd be a hell of a day to get all hopped up or amped up or whatever the current buzzphrase for "high" is.

Oh, and as it turned out, the woman in the audience was going into labor, and Gary needlessly kept her in the security booth for several hours. I suppose the misunderstanding wasn't as comical as was initially advertised.

Tomorrow: Gary is served papers for today's comic misunderstanding, and one of the cue card guys proposes!

In case anyone is interested, I am making up fictional teasers as if this blog is a talk show, and inventing a fictional crew that doesn't even make sense for this medium. Gary does not exist. No pregnant women were harmed in the making of this entry. I just have to entertain myself sometimes, and I'm trying to get my brain used to writing again.

Because, you know, one day it might be nice to have half the output of the wordamatronic autostentrola Greg.

And now, for another something unrelated:

Finn, I think the government needs your help.

2.

[SHOMER FUCKING SHABBOS]

piss off a balcony

Why the hell not. It's those years.

So, as promised, here it is: TAB, the Lost pages. Now that I read over it again, I cringe slightly less, because there is actually some comedy in there, but lawdy lawdy is it still bad. If you haven't read the story so far, you probably shouldn't read it. It doesn't give anything in particular away, it will just scare you away from reading the story ever forever.

Tomorrow(or, for normal sleepers, Later Friday): I take a look at Audacity, and perhaps Gary, the blog's producer, gets into a comical misunderstanding with a woman in the audience. Set your VCRs.

3.

[thanks j]

eyes in the darkness

I shouldn't really be blogging right now. I certainly shouldn't be using "blog" as a verb, but that's more of a semantic thing.

I shouldn't be writing this right now, because I have a whole list of things to do.

But, even if I don't get to them, those things will probably be forgotten in pretty short order, and this will remain for thousands of years, accessible by the tiny ear-computers our eventual cyborg masters will forcibly implant in each one of us.

Yeah, I'm in one of those moods.

So anyway, what I said I was going to talk about yesterday. The writing. It progresses, believe it or not, though I'm squeezing it in between interesting music projects and interesting candle-buying binges. I in fact did go nuts at Dollar Tree, and spent 7, count them, SEVEN dollars. But back to the writing, and how it progresses.

For those of you who just joined the program, or better yet, for those of you I haven't quite plugged it to enough, I have this story here. Well, it's actually not accessible there, because I realized 2 chunks were missing from the last page, and with the exception of the Empress, I don't think anyone has even read Chapter 3 as it is supposed to be. Plus, I've found countless continuity screwups and generally nonsensical plot glitches that are a result of the rather schizophrenic pattern of writing that has produced the story thus far.

But, yet again, back to the point. Chapter 4. After I finish it, I'm going to do a thorough cleansing of Chapters 1-3, and hopefully get to a fairly streamlined (for my tangenty style of writing) end result. Then, I'm gonna put the whole shabam back up, in a nice happy new Wordpress format, so people can comment and I can keep track of revisions, and so on yippy doo squirt squirt.

Now, the part of this that may be of interest to one or two people other than myself. Well, there are 2 parts. But they're both part of a master part, or parent part, which has precisely 2 children, both of which are not so much children as parts that may be of interest. Yes, I am actually asking people to read my writing, and doing it in this way.

Early morning Friday, I'm probably going to put up what will later be dubbed as "the Lost pages" of TAB. It's a chunk of the end of Chapter 3 that prepares the reader for the whole slew of new and interesting characters they will meet in Chapter 4, like the Transformers movie, except for the killing of all the good characters that already existed. However, like the Transformers movie, it still introduces them in a horrible way, but I commit a far more horrible sin than killing Optimus Prime; I use an awful, awful gimmick. It is for this reason that this bit was cut from the web-published version, and only one person other than myself to date has read that bit. This chunk will not be put into any later versions of the story, hence the Time-Life-Home-video-esque title of "the Lost pages." I don't know if I am proud or ashamed of how well I pulled off the gimmick, but I am certainly ashamed that I momentarily considered it part of a work I'm generally somewhat keen on.

Now, the other part, the part that doesnt get as much love from the parent part, but will one day thrive on that neglect and become a big star, you know the kind of part I'm talking about. The teasy part that makes all the jibbering actually worthwhile to the people who actually give a damn about the story.

So far, Chapter 4 is suffering from some sitcomitis. There, I said it. It recapitulates a lot of the events that took place in the preceeding 3 chapters. It does so without the hackneyed feel of the first scene in the 2nd act of most sitcoms, but it nonetheless does so.

I never considered myself good at making up names. Most names I come up with seem either like John Smith or Vector D. Adrenamax (the D is for Danger), and sometimes, I sneak in something halfway decent but still very stereotypical, like Westington Q. Forthright. Actually, I think I may use that last one.

Anyway, in my opinion, I suck with names. Which is awful, because I love making characters. If I have my way this thing will be like a Tolstoy novel, but without the soul-crushing heft or mind-feel-stupid-making literary value. So, I like making a bunch of characters, but I think I'm awful at naming them.

This is relevant as in the last post I mentioned General Strummund. I've decided on that name, since I'm tired of vascillating on a relatively small aspect of what will become a central character, and since "Grievous" is now taken. As those of you who've been playing our little game for a while have noticed, I give away the subtitle for the new chapter at the end of the current chapter, and so it should come as little surprise to any of you that a character named General Strummund will come into play in a chapter called The Panic Strikes.

Anyway, that's basically the news. It's going along, sitcom-act-2 as it may be, and there's a guy named Strummund in it, and I am finally settled on that name.

Ha ha, you just spent minutes of your life reading all that for practically nothing. Nyah.

Now, for something unrelated:

This is the statistics section from my wonderful Spam filter, Popfile, which, if you look through enough of these entries, you will see me plug a number of times.

Yeah. 8.3% of my mail is good. 8.4% if you're statistically charitable. Thank you, ye gods of the interweb, for proving that yes, everything good is eventually overrun with crap.

[one moon circles]

herr schnauss and stalled high pressure systems

I sat down last night with an odd feeling. I have feelings like this from time to time, and they're usually inspired by a combination of things, often music. It's like in those japanese role playing games, where you put a mailbox and a candy cane in this transmogrifying box, and get a magic sword. Only, the result is odd and incredibly strong feelings, and the ingredients are slightly less arbitrary. Still, there is an undeniable similarity.

A while back, I found myself thrown back when I discovered the first of these combinations, and how it affected me. I even mentioned it when it happened, way back on the pre-blog version of this site. That was the combined smell of vanilla and cigarette smoke. It still does strange things to me, but I have come to hold it very dear.

Another, and one that involves more that one sense, is the wind and humidity and sound of waves, when combined with fire and or the lovely tones of Sarah Maclachlan.

Yet another is the look of sunlight on water crossing a bridge, and the sounds of the Crash Test Dummies.

The one I found last night was Ulrich Schnauss and the torrential summer downpour that only the south United States can offer.

I didn't know what the feeling meant, though. It was an odd in that it was meaningful but nondescript. Going through today, it appears I got it wrong.

I should've been feeling a bit of vertigo coupled with moody strains of "Eli's Coming."

Tomorrow I'll let you all know how the writing is going. I hope you like the name General Strummund, because I'm tired of debating it with myself.

[failed attempts to fly]

the person beside me kept smuggling giggles

100 atlanta statistics - 7/12 - 7/15, 7/16 -7/18


It took a lot longer than I wanted to to put this thing together, and I'm still not super happy with it. I don't think it gives as good a sense of my trip as the last one did. But, there was a lot about this trip that didn't quite work out like I'd imagined. However, you can see pics of my new niece online, and she doesn't deserve the bill for a bunch of familial bullshit.


I think I had a lot more fun than I would have with the original plan, but I ruffled some people's feathers in the process. Anyway. On with the gimmick incredibly useful and innovative writing device:

# of loads of white undershirts i laundered before leaving	3
# of people i saw walking dogs within 3 minutes of arriving in atlanta	3
# of those people who comprised a gay couple	2
# of people who, when faced with the last stat, immediately asked "was it a gay dog?"	2
# of people who asked if i got a haircut	0
# of haircuts i had actually had this time	1
# of pepsi vending machines i saw that looked as if they had been props in the second back to the future movie	1
# of times i actually uttered the phrase "the future of vending as we know it" in response to this	2
# of top secret missions i made to a place that is anticlimactically called "buddy's"	1
# of times someone accurately described what was on the arts channel at 2am as "some kind of italian fashion opera"	1
# of towels brought in accordance with hhgtg advice	1
# of altarian dollars spent	0
# of minutes I was delayed from a dinner engagement by my mother's in-depth discussion of her juicer	25
# of hours killed in the surprisingly nice brookwood place shopping center parking lot	4
# of books i had been looking for for 8 or more months in several states that i found in one single borders on peachtree st	2
# of said books that showed as "in stock" in the handy borders computer terminals	0
# of years i had to wait before finally posessing the bound summation of all human knowledge known as "pocket ref "	2.5
# of magazines read in their entirety in borders, including star wars insider	2
# of star wars insider magazines deemed worthy of purchase, even bearing in mind the ethical obligation that comes from having been read it in the store	0
# of unsolicited movie recommendations made by one single non-employee guy at the ponce de leon blockbuster	7
# that were actually accepted	1
# that were quite good	1
# that involved "phyro-giants"	1
# of bottles of cheap fortified wine consumed over the course of the week	3
# of maggie gyllenhaal movies i saw while under the influence of said wine	1
# that contained a scene wherein she wore a saddle and bit down on a carrot as she was spanked	1
# of scenes involving maggie gyllenhaal being spanked as she wore a saddle that i could probably have lived a long, healthy life without having ever seen	1
# of incubus songs i heard that i have the drum beat for in my sample library	1
# of times some guy i barely know walked into the bathroom while i was showering	1
# of network cables I brought in an effort to steal internet access while in atlanta	3
# that functioned	1
# that i needed to actually steal said internet access	2
# of wildly insecure wireless networks that i ended up finding within my range	2
# of guys named doug in the inman park area who really need to lock down their wireless networks	1
# of aim conversations conducted via my machine in athens using the magic of VNC	8
# of people who corrected me on how cool they thought that was in the last stat entry	3
# of 20s diners visited	1
# of grilled ham and cheese sandwiches that i have had in my life that even hold a candle to the memory of the air surrounding the ham and cheese sandwich i had at the 20s diner	0
# of pages of handwritten tab notes i cranked out in said diner	2
# of manly runs i unashamedly made to the grocery store for female-related products	1
# of different kinds of midol i learned exist	4
# of differences I could tell in the active ingredients of "maximum strength 12 hour" and "pre-pms"	0
# of times in my life, to date, I have been dared to take a midol by someone who was just using it to get rid of a headache	3
% of women, in my estimation, who actually use midol during menstruation instead of to get rid of headaches	1.3
% of women, in my estimation, who have attempted to pursuade men to take midol at some point in their lives	80
# of men i know, myself included, who have gone for it	0
# of elbow injuries i thought impossible but somehow sustained	2
# of bookstores visited over the course of the week	3
# of kurt vonnegut jr books i recommended on virtue that also happened to involve the word "monkey" in the title	1
# of times i was hugged for flicking off a shelf of ayn rand books	1
# of books weighing over 7 pounds neal stephenson has written without my knowledge	2
# of bags of catfood acquired by ransacking and hacking open a stock boy pallette	1
# of times i got to flex my culinary muscles during the course of the week	1
# of times i vastly miscalculated the inherent differences that crop up when cooking with the wonders of gas	1
# of giant nieces i gained during the week	1
# of pounds my pregnant sister in law lost in a surprisingly short time	10
# of hours it took after my niece's birth before someone finally got around to telling me, despite my numerous requests to be kept up date enough to be there for it	4.5
# of times i said "screw it" and abandoned plans to try and see my new niece this week	1
# of things that happen in the next year that my niece will remember	0
# of digital pictures taken around atlanta green spaces	87
# of above-25mph donuts done around the carter center flag-a-torium	5
# of perfect arboretum locations found	1
# of pictures taken that were of a steel buffalo sculpture, or maybe some kind of bull thing, hell if i know	2
# of different cats photographed	5
# of days it took from being part of evening plans for laundry to actually get to the laundromat	4
# of minutes remaining before laundromat closed when laundry was retrieved	13
# of infomercial-based clothes-folding products i was convinced were worth purchasing	1
# of times i got my ass whupped at scrabble	1
# of games of scrabble, so far, that i have won on these trips	0
# of "b"s in the homemade scrabble tile set we played with this time	4
# of "b"s in a traditional scrabble tile set	2
# of "b"s that were set aside so as not to be included next time	2
# of hillarious subtle jabs creative loafing made at the president in their crossword (5 LETTERS, A LETTER THAT CAN'T spell WORDS*)	1
# of awful jokes that occured to me that i had to suppress	0
# that are still true from last time	1
# of in-depth discussions had about home video wiring after 2 am	2
# of giant man-eating cakes the city cafe had	0
# of people i almost killed attempting to get to the city cafe	3
# of helpful bums encountered that gave guided graffiti tours, complete with artist biographies	1
# of times i was asked to tell said bum which character in one particular mural was the devil	7
# of times i felt a bit pressured to supply an answer that didn't exist	7
# of characters in said mural wearing 3d glasses	1
# of pounds, by volume, that the weight of my car was increased by solely from bird poop	4
% chance i will be parking in that particular spot again	0
# of bird deposits shaped like someone throwing the goat	1
# that are directly in my field of vision on my windshield	1
# of times, approximately, that i drove by a place called the disco diner	423
% of things that went the way i wanted them to	65
% of plans that involved my family in some capacity	35
# of instant messages sent from my cell phone that no one ever got	6
# of times people who were supposed to call my cell phone did so within 4 hours	0
# of people i gave all the change in my pocket to	2
# of cooperative crosswords done	7
# of nights i slept before 4am	0
# of minutes i saw my dad	0
# of miles clocked in atlanta	132
# of days in total spent in atlanta	5
# of tiny notebooks i brought to keep better track of these statistics	1
# of additional statistics generated from last time	25

* dubya

 

# of days it took to put this entry together: 7.

A bloody week.

[because the numbers tell a story]

the candles did the trick

I really wanted to get the Atlanta entry done tonight, but my school stuff took a lot longer than I thought it would, and I've had a pretty long day, so I'm beat.

I needed to relax, and my earlier trip to the dollar store for candly stuff paid off. I think I'm gonna go back tomorrow and go a bit nuts. I may spend as much as FOUR DOLLARS.

Dun dun dun.

Anyway, I am very very relaxed right now, and I think I'm gonna drift off to sleep.

[gimme the beat boys]

art imitates

A new TRB song is available.

the rage box - contemplation of murder

This has some pretty interesting organic composition in it - I actually thought about beat timing and so on a smidge. It's yet another short (< 2min) demo, which seems to be about all I can crank out these days. Do -not- listen to this on tinny laptop speakers, as you will lose almost everything good about it.

Due to unforeseen delays, the post regarding my trip to atlanta is not yet ready.
Give it time, and it will reward you.

[down through my hands]

small packages

A new TRB song is available.

the rage box - the boundless joy of discovery

This is a very short one, more of a demo than a true song.

[equals creativity]

I totally wasn't giggling

Today was such a bizarre mixed bag.

I found that the University may want some of their money back. This is very upsetting, because in addition to the peace of mind that came with having it, I've grown quite attached to it, and am decidedly against parting with it. This news sent me into a bit of a tizzy early on in the day, shortly after getting up, and I'm not sure I fully recovered from the sort of low-grade background-noise funk it put me in.

After a shower, a pretty obsessive check through my finances, and the realization that I was never going to overcome my incredibly lazy streak if I got all depressed about something relatively beyond my control, I managed to feel a bit better.

I had loads of unproductive fun (which I would later feel guilty for) talking to folks online, and going through the newly minted game show hour ritual. Ken (last name, Jennings, not Whatshisname, as I erroneously reported before) once again spanked some ass on the Alex Trebek Answer Question Quiz Time Fun Show*, though this time he really didn't even seem like he was trying too hard.

* not actual show title

Went to the grocery store, but not before finding that the new Michael Moore movie, which as I understood it involves some kind of political cant, had finally come to this friggin' THX-devoid movie-fan-wasteland burg.

So, plans were hastily thrown together to see it, and I was off to purchase groceries. They had a buy-one-get-one on parmesean cheese canisters, so I went ahead and got two, because running out of parmesean sucks, and the last time I made a big pasta thing I used like half a canister. I know, I know, the minor details of my fiscally-responsible parmesean cheese devotion are fascinating and can even cause sexual arousal in the unprepared reader. What can I say, this isn't a great blog. It's my day and I've been having some pretty lame-ass ones lately. Plus, I really like cheese.

Wow. Got kind of bitter there for a second. Anyway.

Had food, found some nifty software that abuses amazon.com to suck down Album art for the growing number of albums I'm encoding to MP3 and throwing on the fileserver so that the self-scratching material they make CDs out of nowadays will not rob me of my ability to listen to stuff. Yes, that was both a paragraph and a sentence. You may breathe for a moment before moving on.

Then, we went to see the movie, which I'm going to remain fairly mum on. I recommend that people see it, but being largely the "choir" it wasn't quite as hellfiery as I expected. Bowling for Columbine definitely hit its mark more squarely, but it was still a very well put together flick.

Got home, got on the phone, got made fun of by somebody who likes star stickers. It was a very nice evening. Though I really wasn't giggling.

That about wraps her up. Maybe tomorrow I will actually get something the hell done so I can pack this thing with more than just a play by play of my parmesean buying and scholarship buerocracy woes. The people demand more!

I'll probably just end up sitting on my ass being pissed at my lazy bones til game show time though.

[see you at 4]

two obelisks

Weekend roundup:

Got back Friday evening, as many of you have already read, and put together the stats entry that I am beginning to think is my best one ever.

Went to Qdoba for dinner, where the guy told me he'd give me the burrito for free if I chugged a whole little solo cup of their ultra hot salsa, like a shot. I did. He did. And threw in a drink as well. He also said I was what men were made of, and actually called the guy who went in line before me a pussy. It was quite surreal.

So, for a bit of momentary stomach discomfort, I got a free dinner. Pretty sweet.

I'm honestly somewhat fuzzy on what happened next, but I know I kept the Busa, or as I am earnestly trying to call him, Steve, up entirely too late talking about vi and God's encryption key. At some point several hours later, I fell asleep. And I slept for a veeery long time. I don't think any of this was related to the hot salsa.

I awoke Saturday morning afternoon kind of sad and lonely, but immediately stoked to life by the magic of Herr Schnauss, which spurred me to write that entry, which NOBODY IS READING OR DOWNLOADING THE FILES FROM. Dammit. The guy is REALLY good. I swear.

Spent the majority of Saturday recuperating from the week and continuing the Great LaundryMacht of '04. I swear, since last Sunday, I believe I've run 15 loads of laundry. Probably more. I found that nothing was going on in my family for the 4th, so I decided to stay in town.

Yet again I kept Steve up too late, and he and I formed what I consider to be an important theory of programming, despite the fact that I know little about it: languages where you can't control the exact memory configuration are a bunch of bullshit. You hear me, PHP? Amateurs. I don't know what the hell I'm talking about here, and generally think PHP is pretty nifty, but it made him laugh, so I'm sticking with it.

Sunday, the 4th, was cleaning and burger day. The Busa came to The Lair for some actual 3d time - which was incredibly cool. Through his mystic linux sorcery I was able to get DVArchive running on my linux box, and man, is that friggin sweet. Potentially sweet enough to yield its own geeking out entry, so I'll leave it at that for now. And he did not offhand reject the usually magical PatrickBurgers, which, while having the perfect marinade, were not well cooked.

I need more propane.

There was a great amount of geeking out, and discussion, and apparently somewhere in there a couple thousand dollars worth of programming work was done. My back must've been turned.

At the end of the day I was absolutely exhausted, but my home was substantially cleaner, and I felt like I'd had a pretty good day. Saw some fireworks over Bishop park, which provided some really interesting acoustics.

I guess since the federal government considers it part of the weekend, I'll include today in the patented Weekend "Nobody But Me Cares" Roundup.

Got up, somehow lost 3 hours in the AIM nether, just talking and talking and talking and suddenly it was quite later than I had envisioned. Was really fun though, and I'm really starting to get interested in watching Jeopardy to follow the saga of Ken "I'm really smart" Whatshisname. He had some pretty paltry competition today.

Made some dinner, made some brownies (which should be about cool right now, woohoo) and have been watching the CPS finale for the past hour or so.

Who knows what the rest of the day holds. Probably a bunch of half-attempted tasks before I decide I'm tired and go to sleep.

[wink]

it's german for super-ninja-awesome

I'd like to take a moment here to talk about Ulrich Schnauss, who got a bit of mention in the last post.

He's a guy from Berlin. He makes music. He's friggin' amazing.

It's like Orbital got a third member, and he really likes abstract, lilting synths, and heavy reverb effects. In other words, me.

But instead of simply bringing the lilting synths, the theme-build-destruction blueprint for songs, and enjoyment of a good reverb chamber, like me, Ulrich also brings compositional skills that can only be effectively described as "mad."

I can make the occasional neat synth sound, and I can mix it so it sounds cool, but if you added all of the good ones I've made in my life together you'd get like one Schnauss song. And my composition would blow by comparison. The man does things with intertwined basslines that make me gape.

As I found over the past couple days, this stuff is like alcohol. If you listen to it when you're sad, it will break your heart, and it will make you feel your despair all the more acutely. If you listen to it when you're happy, the uplifting peace and tranquility it imparts will make you feel like you can fly. Or it can simply assist in etching the right moment into your memory the way great movie scores do.

Even his titles are cool, and like what I aspire to in terms of images.

If you can't tell, I'm -REALLY- jazzed about this guy.

I gotta thank the Busa for reminding me of how much I used to love Groove Salad, and causing me to have it pumping during about 90% of my pre-Atlanta laundry binge. They played Blumenthal, and I was immediately hooked on this guy.

I'm still trying to find places for people to buy hard copies of the albums - I got digi ones, because I didn't want to wait for shipping, but here are a few links to shops, unfortunately both dealing in UK Pounds. boomkat - opalmusic

The boomkat site has some audio clips, but none are what I consider the best tracks from either album.

I haven't found the stuff in any of my typical US-based import houses for stuff like this, which would make it a lot cheaper, but I'll keep poking around.

For the moment, check out these, that I'm putting up in a good-faith word-spreading effort:

Passing By (from Far Away Trains Passing By)
Blumenthal (from A Strangely Isolated Place)

In the past day, I've found that these, Passing By especially, definitely benefit from headphones. They're still great driving tunes though. Blumenthal has the same kind of bassline coolness that made me such a fan of BT's Beta (3am mix), which I talked about a while back.

Anyway, this guy has spurred me to figure out a way to add a livejournalesque "music" field to each blog post. Who knows when I will actually get it done.

[n.p. ulrichschnaussbetweenusandthem]

75 atlanta statistics - 6/29 - 7/2*

# of socks i folded before leaving	46
# of times i drove by giant light-up cone-shaped dairy queen signs	6
# of times i thought about finally stealing one and mailing it to finn	347
# of times i visited the suburban lodge	0
# of times i got in the turn lane to do so	3
# of taggart's driving school trainees i got stuck behind	2
# of said trainees i would ban from being licensed drivers	2
# of miles clocked in atlanta	192
# of bowls of beer/cheese soup consumed	1
# of times i got turned around and had to find a highway	4
# of ulrich schnauss albums i had to make driving enjoyable	2
# of times my directional mishaps caused me stress	0
# of cats i petted	2
# that curled up on me	1
# of minutes i saw my dad	2
# of times my mother said she felt i was, in general, incredibly confident	1
# of times i laughed incredulously at my mother	1
# of times the next day she said i was "getting tubby"	2
# of visits other than this one, to date, that my mother managed to instill me with self-confidence	0
# of things she told me that i did not know	1
# of times she dumped my dad before they got married	1
# of laundry-room vending machine pepsis consumed	3
# of shaving mishaps that could have been avoided with a shower mirror	5
# of people who asked if i'd cut my hair	2
# of awful pick-up-line jokes that i revealed had occured to me despite my better judgment	1
# of times i meant them	1
# of crawfish that people around me randomly caught in a nearby creek	4
# of people who told me they bought a life-size stuffed ewok	1
# of times i got my ass whupped at scrabble	1
# of times my play of "large" was mutated for enormous point gain	2
# of triple word scores i got	0
# of latin words i used	1
# of wAl*marts visited in an attempt to craft a home-made scrabble set	2
# of said visits that occured after 1am	2
# of seconds of seeing her before my mother began listing technology-related problems she's having	7
# of computers in athens i controlled remotely	3
# of people who think that is as cool as i do	0
# of cell phone minutes used	35
# of people who felt a box fan was something people might normally keep in their car trunk	1
# of box fans i had in my trunk	1
# of times i said "oh, fuckberries"	2
# of times I ignored spruce st's one way sign	9
# of signs i saw advocating someone named rambo for sherrif	1
# of times i explained basic computer concepts and major facts about my life to my mother	7
# of said things that i explained last time i visited	7
# of times you must do something and expect a different result before meeting aa's definition for insanity	3
# of emergency vehicles i stopped for	5
# of harry potter references my mother made	17
# of times i snapped at her because i'd had enough	1
# of times that was harry-potter-related	0
# of injuries i caused with my teeth	1
# of people who said, verbatim, and independent of one another, "hey, wassup, man" to me at wal*mart	4
# of ringleaders in what i now call "the dreaded wassup cult"	4
# of people on la vista rd who probably think i was riding with a drunk woman	2
# of normal and orderly stops made by said sober woman on la vista rd during that time	0
# of people on la vista rd who can bite me	2
# of times i've had that much fun on la vista rd	0
# of guys i saw wearing gold boots with purple laces	1
# of times that guy could have kicked my ass with his eyes closed	9,293
# of words In ewok-girl's starbucks order i was able to successfully translate into english	0
# of ways "tall" lacks an intuitive lexicographical connection to "small"	492,299
# of hours spent outside a starbucks w/ ewok-girl	2
# of starbucks beverages consumed	0
# of cooperative crosswords done	2
# of naps taken	3
# of alarms ignored	5
# of fights had	0
# of disneyland flashbacks had	2
# of tears, my own included, wiped away	3
# of clairvoyant pit-of-stomach impending-doom feelings i had	1
# of people i love who had car accidents	1
# of bizarrely guilty heart palpitations	2
# of days spent total	4
# of days my supposed best friend is going to be in savannah	5
# of snarky comments she left me about the duration of my visit in atlanta while i was away	1

[because the numbers tell a story]

* this idea was blatantly stolen from zefrank, who does it much much much much much much much better