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don't forget04/08/06
We are not going to keep having all of these Married To The Sea shirts forever. They are getting discontinued on April 12th, or at least 3-4 of them are, so if you see one you like, you'd better grab it now. In order to keep things moving and make it interesting for everyone we always discontinue merchandise and rotate it around. I try to make this clear wherever I can, but invariably there are still people today emailing me to ask "How can I buy xxxx shirt that you offered for two months sometime in 2004." The answer is "if you saw it back then, you shoulda bought it."
We have all of our shirts and books and all that just right here in the house, actually, right here in the living room where I'm sitting. So there is a limited amount of room, and time, and money, and so we gotta kill off older shirts to bring out new ones. I guess this logic doesn't really bear explaining, but like I said, I get emails pretty often demanding stuff that we absolutely do not have left.
I have like ninety b-sides (drawings that I didn't like enough to put on the front page of my site.) A lot of these don't even get cut up into drawings, but there are some I do make into post-able image files, but which don't make the grade when I go to pick out what goes on the site. I draw about 5-6 drawings on a half-sheet of bristol board, so they are pretty small. I will post some b-sides now.
By the time I was old enough to consider going to Nevada to see "Burning Man" the idea of seeing naked computer nerds wandering around in the desert really wasn't that thrilling to me. I'm not dissing on anyone who likes to go to this, I'm just saying it's funny to call them up and mess with them a little bit, like "I'm going to have a funnel cake booth, so I'll need to rent a space with electrical hookups."
"I'm going to be guessing the Burning Man's height and weight."
"I'm going to sell deep-fried vegan funnel cakes to white people with dreadlocks."
"I'm going to set up a booth at the Melvins show and sell medical curiosities."
The songs that the Melvins play are slow but they are not boring. They are just really tough. I am not going to recommend that you listen to the Melvins, because if you would like them you probably already own all their albums. Or you at least have all their albums on your ipod. I get the feeling that the Melvins harbor a slight distaste for those little white earbuds.
I haven't used those, but really, doesn't ear wax on that white ipod plastic just look gross? I think it would. I would yank those dudes out and they would have ear wax on them and one little hair sticking straight up out of the wax. Thanks for destroying my cilia, ipod!
NO PROBLEM!!! THANKS FOR SUPPORTING OUR COMMODIFICATION OF SCANDINAVIAN DESIGN IDEALS!!!! NOW, BECAUSE YOU PRESSED THE WRONG BUTTON, I AM GOING TO PLAY YOUR ENTIRE COLLECTION OF MP3 FILES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER!!!
Seriously, who turns on their ipod and just goes, "Well, all right, I'll listen to everything."
Well, I mean, I do pick up my phone if it's someone I know calling. The dentist called me today and I thought that was nice, because I have to go in on Monday. I actually tried to pick up the phone but it died after the first ring, because cell phone batteries are ridiculous. I am kind of posting this because I send private/unknown/wrong/long-distance numbers to voice mail 4-5 times a day, and I am kind of posting it because, dentist, or dentist's secretary, I really did mean to pick up the phone, so if you are reading this I will see you on Monday afternoon and we will have a lot of fun cleaning my teeth.
A friend of mine, by the way, is a dental hygienist, and he estimates that "most people do not brush their teeth regularly." More than fifty percent! That's crazy. Please brush your teeth. Your friends and coworkers will like you a lot more if you do.
Speaking of coworkers, do you have to CLICK your MOUSE so LOUDLY every DAY while you SURF THE INTERNET FOR SIX HOURS?!?!?! I'm just wondering.
Okay I got to go now and rearrange my top 8. Talk to you guys later.
I'm not Dave.04/07/06
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2006 03:53:37 EST
From: xxxxxxxxx@aol.com
To: feedback@toothpastefordinner.com
Subject: (no subject)
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dave.. what the hell? you have merchandise!? WHEN DID YOU GET SO POPULAR??
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2006 03:56:03 EST
From: xxxxxxxxx@aol.com
To: feedback@toothpastefordinner.com
Subject: (no subject)
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oops. are you not dave?
american04/05/06
This is so dumb and boring but I am going to blog for a second about television. Are you ready?
Lately I have been watching American Inventor. I only watch it because I "download it and watch it on my computer without commercials" which is code for "I watch it on ABC with all the commercials and then I buy the products from the commercials. I love you ABC."
So the premise of this show is that people come on and pitch ideas for inventions. The inventions are almost always completely horrible. The judges are either totally mean to the contestants, or they cry and tell the "inventors" that they are going to have a shot at the big time. It is pretty ridiculous. It is a good representation of the good/bad reduction that many people use to assess their daily life.
ARE YOU WITH US?? NO??? THEN YOU ARE A TERRORIST!!!
Okay, so, the thing with this show is, three of the judges are just total schlubs, they have some kind of management job somewhere and I guess this makes them qualified to judge inventions. And then the fourth guy... HE IS AN INVENTOR. He actually invents stuff. I mean, he's kind of a dick I guess, because ABC is paying him all kinds of cash to be dramatic. But he is an inventor.
Here is how the show goes: (1) Dude shows up with idiotic contraption. (2) Dude makes judges cry. (3) Inventor judge says, "I am voting no, because your idea is impossible and expensive to manufacture, it will not reach a wide audience, and it is too close to some products which already exist.
(4) Other judges chastise the actual inventor judge, cry some more, and vote yes. The dude goes on to the next round. LAME. So lame. Oh my god. So all you need in America to succeed is to make someone cry? GOOD LESSON ABC, THIS WILL REALLY HELP OUR COUNTRY.
The next time I invent something and have to go down to the lawyer's office to do the patent crap on it I'm going to listen to some real depressing music, like Will Oldham or something like that, and I am gonna just drive there going, "What if my dog died. What if I see a child get injured, and nobody helps him. What if a man with dyslexia gives his ailing wife the wrong amount of medication and as she is dying in his arms she reveals she never loved him at all, not one bit." I will cry so much and walk into the office with tears all over my patent forms and the lawyer will just be like, "I admire your spirit. This is America. THIS IS AMERICA! YOU ARE AN AMERICAN INVENTOR!! YOU HAVE A NEW PATENT!!!!!!"
Anyway the theme song to this show is pretty simple. It is this sort of choral thing, in a minor key, very foreboding, and it's just three notes up, a rest, three notes down, a rest, and repeat. When I hear instrumental theme songs I usually create words for them in my mind. If you manage to "download" (aka BUY STOCK IN ABC AND WATCH ONLY THAT STATION FOREVER) this show, listen to the theme song, and as it plays, go:
Check out my. In-ven-tion. Check out my. In-ven-tion. Check out my. In-ven-tion. IN-VEN-TION!
my adventures in the rap game04/02/06
So okay, we put up that new site Married To The Sea the other day, right? Yeah, I know you have probably already seen it. But, okay, the thing is, I got this retarded idea. I got the idea that I would make a rap theme song for our new web site.
I am not going to rap, I don't think that would be a good idea. I mean, I'm not going to lie, I will rap hard for an hour, but I am not gonna put it on the internet. I just do not sound tough. You have to sound tough to rap and I just think I am not very tough-sounding at all. I sound like the toughest experience that has ever happened to me is that once I had to wait too long at Burger King. The only beef I have in my game is with the mailman who tends to bring my mail in the afternoon, rather than in the morning, which I greatly prefer.
Well, a long chain of boring events happened, and I ended up writing U-God's agents asking them if he would be interested in rapping on a Married To The Sea theme song. They did not write me back. I was pretty much deterred by that, well, definitely deterred by that, cause I don't know if he even saw it, or if his agents were like OHHHH MAN I HATE THAT GUY'S WEB SITES, OHHH, NO WAY and U-God did not even hear about it.
So I got on "Myspace" and I added myself to all the Wu-Tang member pages, because they have their own myspace pages, which actually mentally enabled me to allow myself to sign up for myspace. "Dude. The Wu-Tang think Myspace is cool. The Wu-Tang are very good rappers, I will trust them. I am going to type in the URL right now." And then I got on there and immediately I got like 3 "myspace bulletins" from U-God. Or as some call him... Golden Arms.
I don't know if you have heard the song "Winter Warz" but it is easily one of my favorite raps ever. U-God raps on that, his verse is awesome. So I thought it was fortuitous that he e-bulletin-messaged me some freestyle raps. I replied to his bulletins.
"Listen, I tried to talk to your agents, my wife and I want to hire you to lay down some vocals on a theme song I wrote for my online business, we'd give you credit and pay you $x, if you're interested write me back or give me a call at xxx-xxx-xxxx." I sent it and figured I wouldn't hear back for a while, if at all. He was online the next day, it said "online now" under his picture, and wrote some all-caps bulletin with some freestyle raps. But he did not reply to my message. Or call. Maybe U-God just does not want to rap for less than ten g's.
Then some dude wrote me a message, someone else, not U-God or in the Wu-Tang, and he said he had been having persistent dreams about the Wu-Tang. I have not had dreams about the Wu-Tang, but maybe I will after writing U-God. Maybe it's a curse, like you say "U-God" under your breath twelve times without stopping, and then I guess the curse is... persistent Wu-Tang dreams.
I am going to log off here and say it just to make sure. Usually my dreams are about people breaking into my house, and I feel very threatened, but they just sit down on my couch and watch television. And I just watch them from the stairs over the living room, just keeping track of them, you know, "Man, I hope he leaves soon. I want to go back to sleep. I better stay out here in case he tries to take anything. He probably won't, though. But I still gotta stay out here. Jesus." So if I had dreams every night where I met the Wu-Tang, I mean, it would probably be all right. Maybe they would beat me in freestyle raps every night, but who is going to win that? The Wu-Tang is probably going to win that.
It's ike I said. I rap, but my raps sound like a mild complaint. "My little flash drive broke / So I bought another / Life is hard / When you have to blog about it."
craft04/01/06
The craft fair was actually pretty sweet. A ton of people showed up, we sold a lot of merch, and there were a lot of other columbus people selling all manner of stuff. I think it surprised me because usually when we do public events, people just kind of show up and stare at us and don't say anything, but everyone we met who'd seen our sites seemed friendly.
Maybe it was because the bar opened at noon? I don't know. But it was a lot of fun, and if you came, thanks! Especially to the cats who drove in from Buffalo, and Springfield, and from all over Ohio too.
The day before we went I got some sort of pre-cooked, pre-made sausage sort of thing from Whole Foods. (I am not going to talk about that store because I'm not in the 99.99% of bloggers who have such insight as to write things like WHOLE FOODS HAS EXPENSIVE, YET DELICIOUS FOOD or TARGET IS A GREAT STORE!!!! I LOVE TARGET!!! Sorry guys I know this is a blog but I just don't care that much about where you shop.)
It was italian sausage with peppers and onions and so forth. It just sat there in a plastic container, in a bag, on the floor, not in a fridge, for probably three hours. I ate it and not only did I not get sick or die, but it was delicious. I think I may be over-cautious about food safety but crap I don't want to get some sort of food-borne illness. There is a greek restaurant here in upper arlington, near where we live, and a couple of women got some grecian bacterial infection from this place and it made the news and THAT MADE ME SO MAD. Kind of because it is easy to be safe with your food, and kind of because I don't think I will ever be able to go there again.
So, some things, whenever I have them, I think "I should have this food more often." But somehow, it never comes together. It actually did come together for italian sausage, though, and I ate it for probably a year straight. (If you haven't noticed I am reasonably healthy so oh my god you have nothing to say about my sausage consumption.) I stopped though, early last year, and I just never got back to italian sausage. I always had some leftover spinach to eat, or some buffalo burgers, or god knows what. I probably picked chicken wings over italian sausage during my five-and-a-half-week-long chicken wing obsession, and once that faded, the italian sausage was nowhere to be found.
Even when I ate italian sausage for a year I was totally healthy, I get blood tests done regularly so I'm not making stuff up here. The doctor said I was doing fine (I did not tell her about the sausage, but what the hell doctor is going to tell you that eating sausage twice a day is okay.) Giant Eagle has good italian sausage, if you live in Ohio or PA. I'm sure Whole Foods has it too but it's probably $15.99 a pound and made with fresh, free-range italians.
