Do They Know It's Halloween?

How many indie rockers does it take to make a Halloween song? How many cooks is "too many cooks will ruin the pot"?

The Cramps - I Was A Teenage Werewolf

Happy Halloween, Muthafuckas!

I hate two things more than any...

Q: Terri Lamb asks: I was told that lobsters are the "roaches of the sea". Therefore, I was under the impression that roaches are crustaceans. Is this at all true? And if it is not true, what is the relationship between a roach and a lobster?

A: Terri, as both a lobster and roach lover I can give you a reasonably authoritative answer. If you go to the Tree of Life WWW page at the level Arthropod (Phylum), you will see that cockroaches are insects (Class Hexapoda) and lobsters are decapod crustaceans (Class Crustacea); they are two groups in the same phylum, URL: Tree of Life (at Arthropoda level) You can move up the tree to see how arthropods are related to other animals.

Beyond classification which should reflect the lobster and cockroach evolutionary relationship, the term 'roaches of the sea' reflects the behavior of lobsters as omnivorous scavengers. Cockroaches will eat almost anything organic and so will lobsters. They clean up the dead and dying plants and animals in their environment. So much for the delicious taste of lobster?

Halloween Costume

Here was my Halloween costume. I was a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman Punk Rocker, but Natasha never took a picture of my pants, which were the punk part (plaid punk pants). I was not a Hitler Youth. One person got my costume without prompting.

Cairo Station

passing it on

seems to me that some or many of you may like this guy's music.

A Venetian Gondola

Who has not battled a fleeting shudder, a secret dread and anxiety upon boarding a Venetian gondola for the first time or after a prolonged absence? That strange conveyance, coming down to us unaltered from the days of the ballads and so distinctly black, black as only coffins can be -- it conjurs up hush-hush criminal adventures in the rippling night and, even more, death itself: the bier, the obscure obsequies, the final, silent journey.

I Love It

Take a listen.

Weekend Fun

Here's a bunch of pics from last weekend.

Happy Halloween.

FOI last weekend

This is from the Expresso Royale Show last weekend.

Enjoy

Carpool

Does anyone want to carpool to Michigan at Christmas? I'd be willing to pay an equal share and drive too (I can drive 5-speed), even to go to New York or thereabouts. It's already getting hard to find tickets to Michigan. If anyone has any ideas or knows, I'd really like to take them up on it. It'd be better and cheaper for everyone.

EMERGENCY SWIM CLUB BLOG TOPIC

Can people post ideas for last-minute halloween costumes?

I'll get the ball rolling:

Wear a white t-shirt and pour green stuff all over the front. Then put green stuff down your chin, like you barfed a lot of green stuff.

Nicole covered herself in brown paper and twine and was a piece of mail one year - that was a good one.

Dan Mulkoff suggested wearing a sheet and drinking through the sheet the entire night - "drunk ghost."

This might be fun, post away!

Sissy Boy Slap Party

Sinéad O'Connor II

This one's my favorite.

Sinead O'Connor

I saw her this week in Boston.

Terrorist Busters

This is the CIA's logo for terrorist busting.

Here.

mongolian rap ii

Masta Flow-Born in UB


Enunciating vowels is apparently Mongol freestylin'.

So Many Pictures!

The Ann Arbor/East Lansing trip was awesome. Here is some visual evidence of the intense gnarliness:

Remember the beautiful EQ carpet? It looks like mistletoe set on compass roses.
Dax found his old room! Tristan's hand was shaking, so the picture is blurry:
RC40 participants could put up little notes about our memories of various EQ rooms.
Carlie and Tristan eating cookies and having a blast in 3rd Hinsdale:
Dax caught on camera outside 112 Strauss. Check out the corduroy blazer:
This little guy is all you need to know about our time in East Lansing. In his left hand is a calender full of Big Ten hotties. The music of Vanity Tweak plays in the background:

And here are some bonus pictures that I've been meaning to put up for a while. They are all from trips to New York undertaken by Swim Clubbers:

Ian and Nana wait for the G train:

Labor Day weekend:This was amazing. Joel threw 3 darts at the SAME TIME and THIS WAS THE ACTUAL, HONEST-TO-GOD RESULT! I nearly crapped my pants!

Hipster, Dracula Follow-up

People keep calling my ideas for short films "hipster." This sucks and makes me grind my teeth. Does that happen to any of you guys in your respective fields?

A German man posted the following comment on my youtube video of Dax as Dracula, or as I lovingly call it, "Hipster Dracula" (available here).

"Ingenious!!! Please do a remake of the whole movie in this way!!!
If you like, check out my dedication to Renfiled, the tune "Renfield´s Lullaby" here on youtube!"

Renfield's Lullaby:

Um was es nicht geht

check it out.

Daily Show Clips

I noticed that they have an beta archive of old daily show clips on the Daily Show website.

Besides being awesome and the loss of work productivity; it's fun seeing the show evolve over the years. I thought I'd post a few of my favorites.

Halloween 2001:Steve Carell's haunted house.




Indecision 2000: McCain Bus and GOP debate.






And a Back in Black: Sexy Gaming, for the road.

Internet Domination Begins

Hey so John showed me how to register the website www.daxvisitsnicole.com and have it forward to the blog site that we set up. So if you guys want to share the site with your grandmother it's a bit easier now.

Thanks John!

From the U.S. Census

"In 2006, 86 percent of all adults 25 and older reported they had completed at least high school. More than one-quarter (28 percent) of adults 25 and older had attained at least a bachelor's degree."

(From http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/education/009749.html)

See more interesting stats here.

Together Again

by The Muppets

[Kermit whistling]

Kermit:
Do, do, do, do, da da da, doo da do do do (etc.)
Together again
Gee, it's good to be together again
I just can't imagine that you've ever been gone!
It's not starting over, it's just going on!

Miss Piggy:
Together again
Now we're here and there's no need remembering when.

Fozzie:
Cause no feeling feels like that feeling!

All three:
Together again!

watch out, new yorkers!

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=local&id=5711586

and some information about pythons:

"Ambush predators, pythons typically remain motionless in a camouflaged position and then strike suddenly at passing prey. Large adult specimens can kill people. Unsuspecting children can and have become prey and swallowed whole after being suffocated. Reports of attacks on human beings were once more common in South and Southeast Asia, but are now quite rare."

"Chocolate! Derrida!" Ikiru! - To the RC at 40!

"Life is brief.
Fall in love, maidens,
before the crimson bloom fades from your lips,
before the tides of passion cool within you,
for those of you who know no tomorrow.

"Life is brief.
Fall in love, maidens,
before your raven tresses begin to fade,
before the flames in your hearts flicker and die, for those to whom today will never return."

"The Birthday Present"

Hey folks - So this is a short film that I shot and edited over the last summer and into the beginning of this school year. The script was written by my classmate Jeremy, and I helped rewrite and then directed it (btw Jane, there's a character named Jane, but it's a coincidence). Check it out!

In a lot of ways it's the best thing I've done, especially considering the editing and the shots and everything. Although it's less imaginative than "The Night Janitor", I think it's a lot more polished and professional-looking, and I learned a lot about narrative clarity working on it. I also think the actors did a great job.

So, for the next project I'm going to try and combine the more weird, imaginative stuff I did as an undergrad with this more competent filmmaking style I'm learning as a grad. And Dax Visits Nicole is still my favorite thing to do.

People in Ann Arbor: Dax is bringing a DVD of this to show you guys so maybe wait so you can watch it on the big(ger) screen.

Also, Nicole and I promise to post pictures of our new apartment soon.

New Year's essentials

I would like to suggest that everyone who is willing, able, and planning on attending the SCSF New Year's festivities make a dance mix. I suggest we have some sort of limits, like 10 songs, none of which can be over 10 minutes long. Then we can draw numbers out of a hat or have a physical challenge or use our intuition to determine in what order they should be played.

If there are too many of us who want to do this, or too few, the number of songs per mix can be adjusted.

This one goes out to you, PN.

Coming to Your Town

I thought I would issue a formal announcement that I will be in Ann Arbor this coming Thursday, and will be bouncing round there and the Lansing area until Monday. It will be great. I will play guitar with Fields of Industry on Friday. I am excited about that, although I need to practice the songs. On Friday afternoon, as part of the RC 40 festivities, I will be participating in a German lunch table with RC alumni. I should practice for that as well. Darf ich bitte die Chicken-Broccoli-Bake haben?

My New Home

The town I will be living in next week was featured in a news article today. This took place a couple of miles away from my soon-to-be temporary home. Man, I just can't wait to start breathing in that toxic cloud.

So I'm on the Blog now

Thats right. I'm on the Blog. At the moment I have no witty remarks to share with you all. But I will. I promise. Thanks for inviting me, Nicole.

Bitches

Everybody hates Ann Coulter, but I hate her in a different way. Her humor is just a republican narcissist's version of Adam-Jaros-jokes. The reason I hate her is that her facade is so transparant and she tries so hard it embarrasses me. I roll my eyes when her jokes fall flat and she pretends to be thrilled with herself anyway (when really she is dying inside).

That is why I was so happy to hear that someone hacked her website and wrote this:

Class of '04

This will mean something to only a few of you, but here are a few RC40 attendees:

Michael Brady
Carlie DeBuysscher
Eriko Atagi
Dax Monta
Amy Horning

Moby Dick

Last weekend, my girlfriend and I visited western Massachusetts and saw the farmhouse where Melville wrote Moby Dick. Mt. Greylock looks like a sperm whale when covered in snow. Here's a picture of me there.

'First, we're going to seal up this pool-'

I can have it? Michigan isn’t going to break the second it’s out of the box?
By Hillary Clinton10/11/07 6:12 PM EST New York



Congratulations Election ’08, you’ve succeeded in turning states into whiny six-year-olds who haven’t had their afternoon juice boxes.

In case you didn’t catch the story, Obama, Edwards, Richardson and Biden have withdrawn their names from the ballot in Michigan fearing citizens of New Hampshire and Iowa will get mad at the Wolverine state for infringing on their “right” to have disproportionate influence on the primary outcomes.

As the candidate of experience, I’ve dealt with politically sensitive situations like this before.
In May of 1992 Chelsea wanted to throw a post-prom party, but was a little late on the scene (not to mention in the midst of a 12-year awkward phase). First we tried to make her party cooler than the other kids’: Popcorn balls, Pepsi Clear and a midnight lecture on Geopolitics from Bill.

But with her party not polling well only a few days away, Chelsea wanted to withdraw. “We can move the party back to next weekend,” she said, desperation in her voice. But Chelsea knew I wouldn’t back down from a race; I was going to stay in that sinking ship all the way to the ocean floor.

OK, so maybe this is a bad example because the other popular kids didn’t really care when the hell Chelsea’s party was, but who cares, I’ve got Michigan!

Snowball Headbangs

Chris

Can Chris be on the blog? He likes it. He wants to be on.

Obama, Edwards, Biden all drop out of MI primary race

Many of you may have already heard the explosive news that 3 dems have dropped out of Michigan's presidential primary, conceding the state to Clinton before the voting even takes place.

This is, of course, after Michigan enraged New Hampshire and the like (not to mention breaking the party rules) by moving up their primary date ahead of almost every other state, attempting to get a little of the primary-push glory. But Michigan has seen none of it because the candidates agreed not to campaign in Michigan.

"The candidates have been caught in this interstate feuding, prompting some to pull out of Michigan despite its importance in the general election."

Actually, instead of me paraphrasing the whole article, just read it.

"Their absence will diminish Michigan’s importance in the primary process and probably deny [Michigan] attention from the candidates and the news media."

The Misfits - January 07 1983 Dearborn Michigan

Feeling sexually revolutionized

At the Philly Zine Fest on Sunday I bought a substantial zine called "Fertility Awareness for Non-Invasive Birth Control". This shit is blowing my mind. When I discover things like this I always wonder, "Why didn't I even consider this before?" Why wasn't it even in my sphere of possibility to actually figure out how my body works instead of just stuffing pills into it so I can ignore it? No longer being at the mercy of pharmacists and my waxing and waning health insurance would be such a relief. And all you really have to do is keep track of your waking temperature, cervical fluid, and - if you feel like it - the position of your cervix. Women have been doing this forever. Why have I spent so much time and money messing around with foreign substances and playing into the agenda of the patriarchal and money-driven medical establishment?

Okay, less gushing, more excerpts.

The initial benefits of studying fertility awareness & herbal remedy are a sense of self-awareness unlike any other (in my experience), an eventual self-determination in some of the most significant aspects of our lives. Much of this info is merely an invitation to listen to what our bodies tell us all the time. Our bodies truly are the best guidance. The problem lies in the fact that we are trained from prepubescence to suppress this information - in fact almost all information our bodies and our cycles give us. As so many of us know quite intimately, the concept and practice of birth control in US culture is all too often a lifetime of damage control for women, who alone bear most of the burden and risk. For many of us, the negative consequences, side effects, and stress of birth control outweigh much of the pleasure of sexual relations. And this, dear sisters, is fucked.

Compare the very long list of dangerous, unpleasant, invasive birth control methods designed to suppress female fertility with those designed to inhibit the fertility of men. We can choose from a whole slew of wonders, from ingesting daily doses of chemical hormones (the pill), injecting them every three months (depro-provera), implanting silicon under our skin (norplant), plugging up our cervix (cervical cap), inserting devices into our uterus (IUD), sponges, diaphragms, spermacide, forced sterilizations, and the list goes on. For men, who are fertile ALL DAY EVERY DAY FROM PUBERTY UNTIL OLD AGE (unlike women, who are fertile a mere few days each cycle),we find a modest list of benign devices: condoms, 'pulling out', and the occasional vasectomy. Sure does make you want to holler.

You can get the zine atthis distro or this one, or probably a bunch of others. Or if you don't have $3 I will photocopy mine for you. A lot of the material in the zine is from this book:

Little German Entertained by Dromedary

Max & Dax

Ain't we cute? This is sometime before I ran into the brick wall of life...

The Good News

Yes O Lordy Lord! I'm going to Live. The sun, the trees, the wind! Women! Chocolate! Derrida!

Bye bye bye

What should I do with my Steelers-heavy fantasy team next week!? I'm confused about this one thing: players on the bench still influence the points you get, right? I sat Hines Ward out last week because I knew he wasn't going to play...but his 0 points still seem to have brought my score down. So if putting them on the bench doesn't get them out of the way for that week, what do I have to do?

Half my team is not playing next week. Help me Herr Commissioner, you're my only hope.

p.s. i just replied to that post about philly connections in case it's still pertinent.

Hypochondria O Lord

Since Sunday, my head has been all fucked up. I feel constantly hung over. I go to the doctor, she tells me I'm dehydrated as a result of two weeks worth of fasting. Not enough fluids, drink more. I drink, I drink, I drink. Don't feel any better, called the emergency room, wanted to get a shot of whatever they give to make me feel better. The doctor says this is no emergency, just drink up son, you'll be fine. Last night, I felt a bit better, after drinking I don't know how many glasses of water throughout the day. Finally, I said, this is going away. I sat down, opened up a book, read and took notes for the first time in a week. Woke up, felt hung over again. Went back to the doctor, told her that I still felt hung over all the time, and now she says well it's probably due to the low level of salt in your body. Without salt, your body doesn't hold the water. You probably don't have enough salt either after two weeks of fasting. So now I have to eat a lot of chips or salty food and drink a lot of water and hope to feel better by Monday.

Meanwhile, I'm losing my fucking head, conjuring scenarios of death in the shower, death on the way to school, death here, death there. Death is announcing itself everywhere. This doesn't help. So now I have to wait till Monday. I got things to do, books to read, things to think about. I fast for the sake of God and I get dehydrated. That's what I get. That's my religious experience. Fuck. No rapture, no mystery, just a fucking condition. Just a weak body trying to worship a frail God.

I don't want anything but this: let me sit down with my books and be happy again.

Hope There's Someone There

Internal Salt Bath

Two years ago, I did the Master Cleanse (Lemonade diet). On the third day,
I decided to try the internal salt water bath as recommended. Unfortunately
(or fortuitously) I took my quart jar of salt water up to my computer desk
at 6:00 AM and logged on the Internet. I sipped on the water so it took me
till 10:30 AM to empty the jar. Not what is recommended! As you would
expect it did not flush through.

That evening I started to feel slightly bloated but no pain. I was awaken
out of a deep sleep twice during the night! The first time, it felt I had a
car race going on in my intestines, the second time it felt like heavy
artillery or a baby kicking in the 8th or 9th month of pregnancy.

I thought to myself, It seems I have disturbed some freeloaders with the
salt water A friend of mine who specialized in parasitology had previously
informed me that the head of tapeworms are difficult to detach, but salty
foods will make them let go so they can be passed out.

When I got up in the morning, I took another quart of salt water, but I
stayed in my kitchen to drink it within 15 minutes. I then did the twist on
my rebounder for 5 minutes to help shake it down as rapidly as possible. An
hour later I had to take a trip to the bathroom.

To my surprise, what was washed out was a 1 inch thick layer of bright
yellow of whipped butter consistency! I spoke to a master herbalist from
Hungary and he thought that the thrashing about of the worms before they
were dissolved (like slugs when you put salt on them) they scrubbed all the
mucous build up in the small intestine which was the cause of the bright
yellow discharge.

DVN Episode 5: "$700 Including Light and Water"

Episode 5: "$700 including light and water" from Dax Visits Nicole on Vimeo.

Al Kennedy

His real moniker is Al Kennedy. He was in on the Keystone Trust knock-over in Philly two years ago, when Scissors Haggerty's mob croaked two messengers. Al didn't do the killing, but he was in on the caper. He used to scrap around Philly. The rest of them got copped, but he made the sneak. That's why he's sticking out here in the bushes. That's why he won't never let them put his mug in the papers or on any cards. That's why he's a pork-and-beaner when he's as good as the best. See? This Ike Bush is Al Kennedy that the Philly bulls want for the Keystone trick. See? He was in on the--

Philly

Do we have any Swim Club connections in Philadelphia?

Godzilla: A Happy Moment

This is Winnie Cooper.

This is also the 600th post on the blog!

Stagger Lee