We Built This City…On Cardstock

Godzilla taught us much about rage, kindness, and the need for a good urban planner. Who hasn’t wanted to stomp their own city after a bad day? Rather than destroying billions in municipal infrastructure, you can now topple an entire skyline by building it yourself, out of paper. For the cost of a few sheets of paper, an Xacto knife and your time, you can create New York or Chicago in miniature.

Wurlington Brothers Press for offering free downloadable papercraft model kits of several major landmarks of New York City and Chicago. Want a mini-John Handcock Tower for your desk? Done. Re-create Times Square? Its your ink cartridge…go nuts. read more

A Pseudo Geek Guide to Mediocrity

Life can be boring, really boring.  Day in, day out of work, laundry, a few hours of T.V. and then sleep.  The mechanics of life are endlessly dull.  No one loves doing dishes or paying bills or vacuuming the floor, but this is the stuff that keeps life functional, and it sucks.

What is one of the the first things people say they’ll do when they get a lot of money?  They get a maid, so they don’t have to deal with all the boring crap anymore.  But sadly, most of us will never have enough money.

Sometimes all of these mundane tasks and responsibilities clog you up like the lint trap on your dryer.  It makes you hopeless, makes you question what you’re doing all this for.   Sometimes your lint trap is so full that all of your hope and happiness is getting filtered out.  But like Miles in Risky Business says, “Sometimes you gotta say ‘What the Fuck’, make your move.”

Nothing fun and exciting is going to happen to you while you’re sitting on the couch.  There isn’t a secret patrol of super fun people going door to door.  You’ve got to get out of your comfort zone, go and do something new that you’ve never done before.  Great moments in your life are always a little scary.  This is life right now, this moment.  “This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time.” read more

The Summer Movies I’m Not Seeing

Spring break is over and summer is right around the corner. Beware: the summer blockbusters are sure to follow!  Last Summer was dominated, as we all know, by the superhero movie.  Iron Man, Dark Knight and, to a slightly lesser extent, The Hulk made huge money for Hollywood last year.

In the past, the summer movie season kicked off on Memorial Day weekend, but in the same way that Christmas has overshadowed Thanksgiving and is sneaking up on Halloween, summer movie season keeps creeping up earlier each year. For example, this year’s first blockbuster action film,  X-Men Origins: Wolverine, opens May 1st. If this keeps up, we’ll be seeing the next James Bond or Jason Borne movie on Valentine’s Day.

Sadly, the globe is an an economic recession, making the public more selective over films are worth the ticket price. The competition is tough this year, with a slew of cool movies being released starting this spring. I would love to go see all of them, but at $10-12 per ticket, there is no way I can justify this expense. I’m going to try to narrow it down to two movies.  Painful as that might be. read more

Epic Time Waster or Why My Blogs Are Late

Cover for ShortPacked! vol 2

I am usually quite skilled at procrastination all on my own, but every once I awhile something comes along that just pushes me over the edge of what is a reasonable amount of time to put something off. I could not motivate myself to write this week because a coworker suggested this site. Good readers I give you ShortPacked. It’s a web comic. It’s a brilliant Webcomic, which you should go read, bookmark and enjoy. The blend of geekdom and comedy, driven by interesting characters creates one of the best webcomics I’ve read.

The story follows the employees of a small toy store run by an ego-maniacal man bent on world domination. While there are several supporting characters there are really only three that are central to the ongoing storyline. Ethan, a hopeless geek to his very core, Robin, neurotic and cheerful and Amber, who starts off quiet and mousy but becomes much more rounded as the strip progresses. About the time you start to get used to the characters and plot Robin goes and pulls the Drama Tag and all hell breaks loose.

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