Walt Disney speaks from beyond the grave

I just read a really interesting article on BoingBoing that detailed a letter Walt Disney wrote to the future. It was unearthed in a time capsule from 1956. Check out the link: Walt's Letter

I love time capsules. They rule.

A Southern Summary

Here are the two videos I shot with my little still camera. They're pretty large files, so be forewarned. You may want to right+click and 'Save Target As.' Or whatever the Mac equivalent is.
Flaming Lips Video 1

Flaming Lips Video 2

The trip is over. The last unwritten day was spent driving to Louisville, KY to use yearly passes Mandy and I purchased. Upon arrival, we found that the Six Flags in Louisville isn’t open during the week until the week after we were there. After that we headed back home and watched George Lucas’ “THX 1173” a very derivative sci-fi movie.

Some observations from the trip:

1. Always check the local papers when traveling

By doing this, Mandy was able to discover a free concert at the Olympic Centennial Park in downtown Atlanta, featuring the Flaming Lips. We didn’t know the concert was happening until we arrived, and only after flipping through a local newspaper.


2. Ask the wait staff for recommendations

I ate an Irish boxty on the advice of a waitress at an Irish Pub. It was the single most delicious thing I ate on the trip. The menu item description read, “Corned Beef and Buttered Cabbage Wrapped in a Potato Pancake with Mustard Sauce.” Which sounds interesting, but not particularly good. I took the recommendation and discovered that I love the things.



3. Use Priceline

We purchased a room in Louisville both on the way down and on the way back up. The first time we stayed in the hotel we paid well over $60. The second time we used Priceline to pay for a better room for $40. This may be an isolated incident or it may not. Either way, Priceline saved us some moolah.



4. Find alternatives

Several of our plans for each day were spoiled by circumstances beyond our control. A bit more planning may have resulted more successful plans, but it may not have. The point is, irregardless of whether a plan was successful or not, we were able to turn every situation into something fun and adventurous. Adding flexibility to a trip means that you don’t always know what’s coming up next, and that can be good thing or a bad thing. It all depends on your disposition and willingness to adapt to the circumstances.

It was damn good to get out of dodge for a week. Checking out a city brimming with interesting places, people, and new sites gives one a fresh new perspective. Atlanta is multi-racial in a way that Grand Rapids is not, and I think will never be. Generations of non-whities have been living in Atlanta for a long time, and there seems to be a proud culture wrapped around the fact that the slavery-based economy Atlanta used to run on has been replaced by a capital market.

SOUTH - Day 5

This is going to be a quick update, as we just got back from the festival. Today was good. We went to Six Flags and rode a bunch of interesting rides, especially Superman The Ride. It was a strange inverted, flying kind of thing.

A picture I took of Wayne singing Yoshimi with a nun hand-puppet

The Flaming Lips concert was amazing (and free). They played for about 2 hours, covering a wide gambit from Soft Bullitan through Mystics. Mark always told me that their shows are hard to discribe, they must be experienced. It's true. It's unlike any other concert I've been too. Wayne shooting confetti into the audience, balloons everywhere, him singing through a megaphone they sprayed yellow and green smoke, and either side of the band was flanked by a group of Martains and a group of Santa Clauses. The interesting thing is that there is no strong sense of pretention. There is no purpose for any of the fanfare apart from the fact that's it's just fun. It doesn't make any grand point or say antything important: It's just fun to watch and interact.

I have a couple video I shot with my little Cannon PowerShot that I will post when I get back home.

'Till tomorrow.

SOUTH - Day 4

Yesterday we went through town trying to find our way to the zoo. We hoped a couple trains and jumped on a bus after waiting for about a half an hour. When we finally arrived at the zoo, we found it to be closed... the one day of the year it is closed, actually. That was about 4:00PM.

In spite of that, we headed back into town to check out the start of the festivals. We went to a really cool arts and crafts festival. I got an ear of corn and a beer. It was great. We also checked out the large festival that we are going to Sunday to watch the Lips. We wandered around afterward, checking out some local dives, and headed back to the hotel to pack up and get ready to move on to our next hotel. We're going to a Holiday Inn near the Olympic Park where the festival will be tomorrow. Then on to jump on some sweet rides at the 6 Flags Over Georga.

SOUTH - Day 3

Today we woke up, well rested, and while Mandy went off to exercise in the hotel’s facilities, I rolled over and went back to sleep. The hotel is beautiful and the help is very good. Wherever we are going we are met with a smile and a hello from the staff. If we are looking confused, they ask if they can help. For example, we were downstairs trying to leach off the wireless network (see post from yesterday for details), one of the doormen was walking through the lobby and saw us boot up and then shut down. He came over and asked if we needed help. We asked if he knew where a coffee shop was, trying to be a little inconspicuous about our intentions, but he saw right through us. He directed us to a little place about a quarter mile up, and said he thought that they had wireless. And the door to our hotel room, for some reason, has a doorbell.

We walked up to the joe-shop, got some coffee and grub, and then found out that they too charge for wireless. These people are insane!! Luckily, Amerihost had many unsecured networks open so we helped ourselves and got the info that we needed. We then went and visited a very cool historic museum.

For dinner we went to really good Irish pub / restaurant and ate some authentic food. I had a strange, albeit delicious, dish called a boxty. I’ve never heard of these things before. It’s basically a potato pancake stuffed with corned beef and cabbage and slathered in a really tangy mustard sauce. It was amazingly good. Mandy had a spicy chicken sandwich and some huge, deep-fried chips. I also had a pint of Guinness per Chad’s request

Tomorrow we’re planning to go to a Six Flags nearby. I’ll give a better update.

Oh, and it turns out that there’s a free concert series going on this weekend. The band playing tomorrow night, for free, is The Flaming Lips…. For free.

AHHH HAHAHAAHA!!!!

SOUTH - Day 2

Day 2 – Thursday

There has been a day delay in the posts due to our current hotel’s policy of charging $4.95 per 15 minutes of wireless internet usage. Yes, that’s fucking insane. On the way down here, we stopped at a random exit and drove slowly through the town until we happened across an unsecured network. That has been working pretty well here in Atlanta, but we keep getting dropped.

Yesterday (Thursday) we drove from Louisville, KY to Atlanta. On the way, we stopped in this small town called Portland that is apparently where strawberries were first discovered. We didn’t realize this until we stopped and found all of these small, road-side stands selling strawberries. We stopped at a local vineyard \and bought some amazing wine.

The rest of the trip to Atlanta took about 6 hours. When we arrived, we settled in our amazingly opulent hotel room. Mandy booked the room through Priceline, so we ended up getting a $290 priced room for $90. It’s been very cool.

We ate at a slightly crappy joint recommended to us by the concierge. It was a restaurant that combined fondue, live jazz, and a giant pirate ship… which makes it sound pretty damn cool, but turned out to just be overpriced and bland.

SOUTH - Day 1

Welp, we made it as far as Louisville, KY. The drive took far less time than google maps predicted, so we're sitting in the hotel lounge enjoying a couple local microbrews. Just outside of our hotel room's window, we can see the local convention center and Six Flags (which Mandy will not let me go to... because we are going to the Six Flags in Atlanta, so it's a compromise). The theme of the convention is Suckers and Plungers or something. The sign was hilarious, needless to say. The convention going on at the actual hotel is a group of people who do the legal management for gangs within the prison system. We came across a table displaying ads for various software solutions for how to schedule prisoner transport and other prisoner services. Very interesting stuff.

We'll be heading out of here early tomorrow to make the rest of the way to Atlanta where, undoubtedly, more crazy conventions will be happening.

M&M

The South Pt. 1

I am eat tofu in the South, come to tomorrow!

Tomorrow in the dimmest A.M., Mandy and I will be heading off to the South. Grand staircases, plantations, and "Frankly Scarlet, I don't give a damn" will be everywhere. I am packing my cleanest pair of spurs and loading my iPod with banjo melodies a plenty. Provided there is enough internet-wire to go around, I will be able "jack in" and provide "updates" to "everyone." As time and connectivity allows, I'll be making daily updates including images and scratch N' sniff blots.

Keep it tuned to Drop My Straw for more lunatic ravings as we head into the deepest, darkest heart of the American South to dispell and, hopefully, create some myths.

Race Day Pt. 2

So I survived the race. I guess have to pay back all those loans I took out last Friday.

The race went really well. About 8,000 people participated, again making it the 2nd largest 5K and 25K race in America. The 5K part started at 8:10AM and I ran it in about 33 minutes, giving me, on average, 11 minutes 14 seconds / mile. Which isn't the greatest, I ended up somewhere around the 37 percentile, meaning 63% of everyone performing did better than I. However, I'm taking this race a launching point for a series of other races this summer. Mandy, Angie, Chad, Andy and myself are planning to do 5 5K races by the end of the summer. I figure if I keep up with my training and actually do the races I plan to do, I should be able to get to being able to do under a 10 minute mile by the end of the summer and loose some of the profound flab you can easily see on the image below.

Race Day Pt. 1

The race day is nearly upon me. I've been training for the 5/3rd Riverbank run for a while now. I think by this picture you can tell that my training has put me in fine shape for the 3.1 mile jaunt. The last time I competed in any kind of race was in Austin, TX for a 100 mile juvinille diabetes race. Howerver, the only training we did for that race was going out biking one time, one a borrowed bike, wearing jeans and boots. Needless to say, I did not complete that race.

At that time I made a pact with myself that if ever I attempted to compete in any kind of organized athletic thingy, I would either complete the the race or die in the process.

Well, the weather tomorrow is suppossed to be pouring and in the low 40s. It's been nice knowing you...

Little Tid-bits

We can all breathe a sigh of relief...
I don't know about you, but I am glad to hear that King Tut's missing penis was rediscovered a couple of days ago. This information has given me a renewed sense of joy, and I know that I will be able to sleep better tonight.

How many candles do you want on that cake?
A native of San Agustin, El Salvador, Cruz Hernandez, should soon find herself in the Guinness book of world records. Cruz, born on May 3, 1878 has just turned 128yrs old. She celebrated her birthday with about 200 people, some were carrying cakes and others were dressed as mythological heroes

It's a baby!!
A 63-year old is set to be the Briton's oldest mother soon. Patricia Rashbrook was given in vitro fertilization (IVF) last October. If my math is correct she should be looking for a June/July baby.

Tips n' Tricks

Thanks to Josh's recent comment about the fact that these blogs supply site feeds, I thought I'd whip up a quick list of cool features Blogger has that you might not know about. Each header is a link to a page that describes the feature.

1. Site Feeds

What site feeds allow you to do is create an active bookmark that will display direct links to each entry in a blog as they are updated (in semi-realtime). For example, I have a bookmark that says "Drop My Straw" in my toolbar in Firefox. When I click on it, it opens a drop down box that shows all of the latest entries on the blog. From there, I can select which article I want to view.

If you use Blogger, your site's feed is: http://[yoursitename].blogspot.com/atom.xml

If you are posting to your own blog, you don't need to do anything to enable this feature. As a viewer of blogs, however, you need to setup a live bookmark in your browser to use the feature. This will vary from browser to browser, but I can say from personal experience, it was incredibly easy to do in Firefox... and since Firefox is ported to basically every OS on the planet, you can always use this option.

This is Drop My Sraw's Feed: http://dropmystraw.blogspot.com/atom.xml

2. Email Updating

Email updating lets you update your blog simply by emailing the contents of your post to the blog. When your blog will receives the email, it will format the text and contents and, depending on your settings, either post it or save it as a draft for you to post.

3. Telephone Updating

You can call your blog and have it auto-update with an MP3 of your message. Outrageous! This feature isn't actually provided by Blogger, but by a 3rd party. It seems really easy to use. Just click the link and check it out.

If you have any questions, let me know!

Done (now we dance)

By the time you read this, I will have graduated from Grand Valley State University with a Bachelors of Science in Communication (Film and Video / Cinema Studies). I learned a ton of interesting and helpful things during my time at GVSU. In fact, to demonstrate my awesome mastery of the moving picture, I put together the following movie. It took several weeks, but I think you'll agree it was worth the effort. To see the film, press the play button.

You are NOT a victim

I understand that there are a lot of niave people in this world. Also, there are a lot of people that do not have what is considered "street smarts". I do think that there are more people that call themselves victims than need to be. I am going to briefly view two stories that have happened in the past couple of years.


First is a man named Thomas Patrick Remo. He decided to rent a storage unit, dress it up as a doctors office, put an ad in the paper for FREE gynecologist exam. If I saw this ad, I would not respond to it, but there were a number of women that did respond and received "exams" from him. Luckily, Thomas Patrick Remo is now behind bars on charges of practicing medicine without a license. Remo allegedly convinced unsuspecting women he was an ob-gyn while offering free medical exams out of a storage facility.

This next example is almost too much. Apparently, a 76 year old Florida man decided that he would try his hand (no pun intended) at door-to-door sales. But instead of steak knives or vacuum cleaners, he decided to give free breast exams. Now I don't know about you, but I'm not letting some guy come into my house to give me a free breast exam. Unfortunately, there were a few women that fell for his sales pitch and allowed him in.

C'mon people!!! Use the two brain cells that you haven't dowsed in PBR and think before you let some one OBVIOUSLY take advantage of you!!!

Working to be happy with me

According to the American BMI calculator I am overweight. In the American society where more is better, that may not surprise, but I am a person that generally watches what I eat and I exercise between 4-6 days a week. Granted the calculator does not take into count body frame size, but nevertheless, according to US standards, I am ‘fat’.

I came across this story today, and found myself having a strong reaction of envy for a person that could eat so much and not gain any weight. Once I read the entire article, and saw how many problems he has had over the years and how much of a struggle it is for him to live a ‘normal’ life, I obviously wasn’t ready to trade places with the guy. The release of envy for this person left me with a newfound awareness – I was not happy with myself, physically.

I have previously thought that I had a good self-image, but now know from my gut reaction I need to take a look at this part of me. I like learning, growing, and improving, and now that I have discovered an area of myself that is not as strong as I once thought, I am going to challenge myself to be the best person that I can be and be happy with the person that I am.

Do we even need humans anymore?

I know it's been a long time since my last post...I promise to TRY to write more.

I remember reading an article a few years ago about how science was in the process of perfecting the ability to fertilize ovarian eggs (through synthenic and frozen sperm). There was a lot of uproar as some groups (with mostly men as members) thought that they would no longer be needed.

Today it seems science has stepped forward again....in a different direction. Click here to read an article on a robot giving birth.

Most science fiction stories depict the world being taken over by machines. Looks like we are headed in the right direction.

Monkey Whistle

Almost done with school. 24 days until I officially graduate. I decided not to walk due to the length of ceremony (4 1/2 - 5 hours) and that I wouldn't even get to actually walk across the stage. I would just sit there while they read names.

The oddness of the thing is that so much of what I've been doing for the last 4 years has been rooted in school. My jobs have always been a means to an end. Video projects have almost exclusively been because of deadlines set by professors. Even my writing has been mandated by what I knew the Prof was looking for.

Whelp, now the end is here. I've accomplished my goal. I'm going to get my degree, so now what? I know I eventually want to get an MFA, but I want to take some serious time off. I want to earn my chops in the various technical and ideological aspects of the craft before I try to learn more. I want to find a job that is not only fulfilling, but pays well. I want to be rich and famous. I want to live in forest, off of solar-grids and hydroelectric power generators while simultaneously living in a small, cramped apartment in Manhattan. Ugh.

I'm sure things will sort themselves out, as they always do, but in the meantime this is more likely to be my working reality. I will move to China and take over this guy's job."Now can I be a director?"

I don't know art, but I know what I like

Mandy forwarded me this link from MSNBC. Regardless of what pro-choice groups advocate or any of the myriad reasons that now exist or will exist in the future, one simple fact remains: A sculpture of Brittany Spears giving birth while straddling a roaring lion is the surest sign that the end times are upon us. The end is neigh, my friends. This is proof from the Bible itself:

“Then the angel said to me: 'Why are you astonished? I will explain to you the mystery of the woman and of the beast she rides'” Rev 17:7

“It’s in Revelations, people! We don’t have a prayer!” –Reverend Lovejoy “The Simpsons”

Best wishes....and a lifetime of love

Saturday was a very exciting day for me! A day that had been a dream of mine for a long time... Esquire, a very good friend of mine got married to the woman of his dreams.

I met Esquire at CompUSA, at the end of 1996/beginning of 1997 (the exact time is a little foggy as I was partying too hard back then). There is no forgetting the smile, the dimples, or the niave person that he was back then (ok, I was pretty niave too). We had many adventures, a couple of fights, and a lot of hugs.

Through the years, I have seen him go through many changes, and along the way, he has dated a few women. I knew he was serious about Amy almost immediately, as she was not anything like anyone he ever dated before.

Amy and I have begun to get to know each other and I look forward to becoming a great friend to and for her. It would be great to have the same type of strong bond that Esquire and I have, with her.

The wedding was absolutely wonderful, bridal party were glowing, and the reception was fun. I am very happy for both of them and wish them a long life together filled with love.

Game Collection, or: OMGWTFBBQ??!??

I enjoy gaming, always have, and as long as my peepers and hands hold out, always will. I enjoy them on an aesthetic level as much as their being a self-reflexive window into our increasingly post-modern society. If film is a mirror of humanity, then video games are a kind of shiny, reflective, odd smelling silly-putty of humanity.

So, I suppose, it comes as no surprise that people can obsess about video games. If people can be addicted to drugs, chocolate, and smooches, it's not such a stretch to imagine them being addicted to the escapist/voyeuristic aspects of interactive gaming. Faint, blurry lines separate "enthusiast" from "that smelly game-guy in the basement."

To make my point, here is a link I lifted from the exhaustive game blog Bluesnews. Click the link below and take a look at the images. What's your vote: Enthusiasm or Insanity?

Game Collection on Kotaku