I, ben wilson, the undersigned, to solemnly swear that Nirvana’s “In Utero” will rock me until I cannot be rocked by physical means. I said earlier tto m@ that I think that In Utero may very well be the finest album — nay, finest collection of sounds — ever recorded by humans. I stand by that, but I might be biased. A man, rocked as I am, could be biased.

1. finish preparations for 4th of July party that Kelly and I are throwing.

2. consider starting a site for friends to drop links / observations into. yes, it sounds like killoggs, but i’ve expressed my love for them before.

3. on the same subject, kelly told me she has considered creating a site of her own. she even discussed website design with me on the way up to cincinatti yesterday. i was so happy. perhaps set up moveable type for her.

4. get kygeek[dot]org in order.

5. complete “kristin mix volume one (T thru Z)”.

6. actually do some of these things instead of posting your intentions and then not completing them.

I am selling an OFFICIAL HARRY POTTER and the ORDER of the PHOENIX TOME CONVEYANCE. Bid early and often — serious inquiries only.

Or, perhaps more accurately: “something i wish wouldn’t happen”:

I enjoy Jolly Ranchers (the candy, not the commune). Specifically, the lemon variety. Thai Smile 4 has a large bowl of them. I took a lemon, as is my want. I got back to work, and realized I had yet to eat it. Now, I’m not one to just chew it up and swallow it. The lemon variety of Jolly Rancher lasts for quite a while — and I intend on enjoying every bit of it. Well, that is, I intended on enjoying it, until a twist of my tongue shot it into my throat at an unretrievable velocity. As the lemony goodness was fast disappearing, I briefly considered attempting to regurgitate it. However, imagining both agreeable and unagreeable outcomes of such a solution, I decided against it.

Oh well. Unexpected swallowing is something I wish wouldn’t happen.

i’ve always been a fan of comics and more specifically, graphic novels. i owe this to Hunter, no doubt. i regularly check things out from the main branch of the Dixon Free Semi-Public Library. well, back in 2002, when Top Shelf Comics had there main distributor go kaput, leaving them in the lurch for fifty-large, i thought i’d get off my freeloading arse and buy a copy of Alan Moore’s spectacular From Hell (yes, the basis for the movie of the same title). Turns out Top Shelf was flooded with orders and I now have a copy of a great book of my own that I will no doubt read over and over.

Fast-forward to today (or last week, really), and I get an email from Warren Ellis (via his Bad Signal mailing list) that Fantagraphics, a publisher of many, many comics and graphic novels (read more here) was having problems — due in good part to yet another distributor fall-through among other problems — I, the foul-weather purchaser, sprang into action.

‘What did I buy?’ you ask. Well, let me say that I found quite a few things that I wanted when I was at Chicago Comics with Nick and Hunter. One of the most striking things was this book entitled Ssssh!. I won’t attempt to explain it any better than my link does — but I loved it. For whatever reason, I didn’t buy it. Well, I get home, do a little searching on google for “Sssh” (how many S’s should I use? I dunno!) and “Jason”, and as you might expect, I came up with diddly-squat. Well, I fumbled over to ArtBomb (a graphic-novel intensive review/exposure site pointed out to me by h\m/d a while back. I can’t remember exactly why I went there – it may have been on suggestion of Warren Ellis as there was a free, online comic he raved up. Well, anyway, what should be #2 on their “BOOK FEED” list? That’s right, Ssssh!. Hey, cool, I’d love to own that. Hey, I wonder if Fantagraphics carries that…. Hah! They do (good luck browsing their inventory for it, though. Just put in “Jason” in their search engine). Oh, wow — you can get the original Norwegian version in hardcover for $5 more! Awesome. So yeah, I bought that and his first book, Hey Wait! which garnered great reviews. Yeah, I’ve never read anything other than the wordless “Ssssh!”, but I thought I’d take a shot in the dark to help out a community that I’ve profited (non-monetarily, mind you) from for quite some time. My note in the “comments” field when ordering the books from Fantagraphics: “here’s to saving your ass! good luck!”

Now, I could have ordered Ssssh! from Amazon, if I wanted to. But that’s not what Fantagraphics needs — they are trying to get rid of overstocks that they’ve printed directly. Also, *technically*, Amazon doesn’t have the Norwegian hardcover, but whatever — I figure my support is more direct that way.

You want to know who is published by Fantagraphics? Well, here are some of the most recognizable:

Chris Ware
Dan Clowes – of Ghost World fame.
Peter Bagge

and last, but certainly not least:

Robert Crumb – you know, Fritz the Cat and all that stuff, but quite possibly the reason that alternative comics even have a place in this world.

Well, that’s all I’ve got. Go and check out Fantagraphics and see if there is anything you want, and further, check out ArtBomb for reviews/inspiration/etc.

update: Warren Ellis has summed up the whole Fantagraphics issue quite well in his column Brainpowered over at Artbomb. Check it out, it’s an interesting read.

I hacked up camE, a handy and small webcam app for Linux a while back, and finally put the finishing touches on it tonight. Considering camE is written in C, I’m pretty happy I made it work! Najati helped me out quite a bit, tho’ I’m pretty sure he really just wanted another person that knows C/C++ so that they may enjoy the genius that is Citrus :)

Anyway, you can snag my patch here. Note well that my “home” webcam is now fully functioning in the manner that I would like it to…

In other news, I put MPy3‘s new code into CVS @ Sourceforge. This was prompted solely by Paul Jennings submission of a huge patchola (which is in the CVS) that cleans up MPy3 quite a bit. Word to your mother, Paul.

I just finished the page and documentation for snow2.js, a little javascript toy that makes explosive snow rain down upon your page!

i’ve been messing around with this little javascript snow-thing today whilst at work (it’s been a bit stop-and-go today, and I’m frazzled). I went to sleep late last night, and have been drinking coffee. While I feel great because I’ve been doing good work today, and there is snow outside, things are getting hectic on this project i’m on.

In that spirit, when you clicky on the snowflakes that are falling on this page, they explode.

You can pause them with the “pause snow” link over here –>

Got up bright and early at the crack of a continental breakfast in a
converted gymnasium. That hotel was just weird, and filled with
children. We let out of that joint, and stalked the “World Market” for
interesting stuff. We found a big bamboo shade we had been looking for
cheap. Threw it in the car, and made our way to Busch Stadium to see the
St. Louis Cardinals vs. the Atlanta Braves.

Paid $6 for parking, about 2 blocks from the stadium — which i can deal
with. We showed up about 2 hours early, and the place was packed! It
turns out the gates open 2 hours prior (1:10 being the game start). We
watched some batting practice after we got our tickets, and just chilled.
Kelly and I downed a beer and pretzel to start things off.

Bud Light is like water. It’s evil, really. Also, it’s not good beer.
But it’s definitely potable. The game was a great time, but the
Cardinal’s fielding wasn’t exactly stellar. And the pitching wasn’t all
that great. I respect Darryl Kile, but he got behind pretty fast (no
thanks to the fielding of his own team). Luckily, this made for a good
end-game, with the Cardinals making a small rally from the 4-0 deficit
they had dug. They lost 4-2, though.

We bid fond farewell to Busch Stadium — i enjoyed it greatly. The park
is nice, easy to get to and, perhaps more importantly, easy to get out
of. The ballgame was great fun, and the crowd there was a good time.

We hopped on 64 Eastbound, and as the Arch faded from our rear-view
mirror, Kelly and I both felt a little sad. Our journey in the west had
officially come to a close, as we passed back through the gateway to the
west.

However, our adventures were not to end just quite yet. We still had
“Albino Squirrel Hunt #2″ to go — Olney, IL. About an hour and a half
drive down US150, we get to Olney, where a sign greets us saying “Home of
the White Squirrels”. Note: not “albino” but “white”. Maybe this is a
technical distinction — maybe they are just WHITE, and not “albino”.
Though, i think they are technically “albino”, but i never got close
enough to actually check out the eyes and other albinism-affected
features.

We stopped at a great little Mexican restaurant called “El Rancherito”,
escaped for under $20, and went a’huntin! We drove about, searching the
“suburbian” areas of Olney (a small area) for a while, noting that many
of the squirrels we were seeing were in fact WHITE, but they were all
fake. As we rounded a corner into another neighborhood, we struck WHITE
GOLD! A white squirrel chasing, and possibly harassing, MAYBE EVEN
belittling a “normal” fox squirrel. Kelly and I snap photos as they seem
to pose for our peering lenses. They even pose ON THE TREE — but then,
as quickly as we had noticed them, the squirrels do that squirrely thing
they do, and escape around to the other side of the trees. One down, how
many to go, i wonder?!

We search as the summery day fades, noting yet more squirrel-themed yard
ornaments, and a bunch of white STUFF in the yards that fool us for mere
moments (bags, cups, foam, etc). We snap some photos of various Olney
squirrel-related stuff, and the post office and police office for good
measure.

I must say, as far as style goes, Olney, IL has Marionville, MO beat.
Marionville is a Podunk, whereas Olney is more towards Mayberry. They
had nice little town centers and stuff. Also, the ratio of normal to
albino squirrels (based on our cursory 30 minute searches) for both Olney
and Marionville was 1 to 1! In Olney, we saw two (real) squirrels — one
white, one “normal”.

Ahhh well.

We took US150 back to I64, passing through Paoli, IN and Palmyra, IN.
It was nice to see Louisville’s skyline again, and home felt real
comfortable.

I plan on making a directory and map and such for the places we visited
in the near future. As for now, I’m tired as heck! Hope you all have
enjoyed these travelogues!

After visiting the Hays, KS Wal-Mart (perdon — it was the SUPER WalMart
FoodCenter), we headed back on I70 towards Topeka, Kansas City, and St.
Louis.

I had looked up Kansas on Roadside America, and found that
two stops on our route, Salina and Junction City both had some sites in
them. I slept through the Salina attraction — which is the “Bones of
Seymour” — an elephant that went on a rampage from circus in 1920, and
was killed after being shot with 15 doses of poison and 15 steel-tipped
bullets. Oh well. Junction City had an “Atomic Cannon” — which was a
short-lived weapon made by the gubment during the cold war — it could lob
a tactical atomic weapon 7 miles. The prototype was only fired once,
thankfully. However, in my infinite wisdom, I didn’t get detailed
directions to the site of the Atomic Cannon, and we couldn’t find it.
However, there was yet another Air Force Base, which Kelly and I didn’t
really want to go on — i think the atomic cannon lay behind its walls.
At least i was within a couple of miles of an Atomic Cannon.

On through Topeka and Kansas City. Outside of Kansas City, we stopped
into a Chinese buffet. It sucked. Bad. Louisville is blessed quality
ethnic restaurants. We also have our share of crappy ones, sure, but they
are outweighed by the good ones, at least.

Back on the road, between Kansas City and St. Louis, we were travelling
about 80 MPH when we were all of the sudden passed on the left (in the
emergency lane) by some nutball. He continued on down the road, braking
erradically and swerving and what-not. He seemed to be a little
intoxicated — okay, he was sloshed. I called 911, reported it, and they
said that they would do something about him. About 15 miles past that, we
saw him on the the side of the road — RELIEVING HIMSELF, IN FULL VIEW OF
THE PASSING TRAFFIC. Hilarity. We stopped for gas and to relieve
ourselves (i told kelly that apparently it’s OK to do it on the side of
the road, but she objected), and headed on — wondering what happened to
our guy. Another 15 miles down the road, we see him again — sitting in
the back of a police cruiser. Hah! Dumbass.

We tried to stay at the same Comfort Inn we stayed at during our last stay
in St. Louis, but they were all booked up — so we are staying in a Days
Inn with a pool and game room and all. Lots of kids here, and a little
more expensive than the Comfort Inn, but oh well — we are shaving a
couple of days off our trip already.

We checked in, swam, and then headed towards Nacho Mama’s — the
restaurant we tried to eat at last Sunday, but they were closed. They
were open today, though! It’s a cool little fast-food tex-mex joint.
Kelly had some tasty Portobello Quesadillas, and i had their taco platter.
The salsa was roasted and sublime! The nachos and guacamole tasty as
well… Down the road was “Hacienda” and they were throwing a HUGE Cinco
De Mayo celebration. Lots of drunken thirtysomethings there.

We are going to a St. Louis Cardinals game tomorrow, and then off to home.
Yay! I love baseball, and this is only my second MLB game. We ordered
tickets in 10 minutes, too. Yay Internet!

We have a good internet connection this time, so i’ve uploaded pics from
Tuesday and Wednesday (Albuquerque and Tusayan, AZ).

All of this travelling has been quite fun so far. But it’s starting to
blend together, because we have done SO much and travelled so far. It’s
like Ozzy Osborne on tour — i have to have the name of the city i’m in
written on my hand! No, not really, but close enough.

Tomorrow — World Market (that cool Pier-One-Done-Right store, the
baseball game, Olney Albino Squirrel Hunt #2, and then home!)