A couple of Jesus-y links for you today:

Action figures for major world religions. If you need to be sold lookie here for more.

Thanks to Tim McKee for the big laugh of the day.

My glasses finally arrived today. To explain the upheaval and wanton destruction these particular spectacles caused in my home life would be so raw it would actually get me banned from the internet. But let me just say, Weezer had better find a new gig. I look so emo, they call me Philips.

Word around the web production department is that I look very “techie” now. I hope that’s a good thing.

Lately, my mantra has been “Just rain already” on a number of different days.

For one, I truly enjoy rain. Hard thunderstorming rain that feels like pebbles exploding on your shoulders. Plump, ponderous drops the size of softballs that drench you almost instantly. Mist that chaps your skin, but gives you that dank basement feeling when you strip off your clothes and climb into a dry bed. Rain can make my day.

Plus, when it’s raining, I feel like I’m in a worldwide sensory deprivation tank. Driving in the rain with no music you can’t hear anything but the dull thumps of drops on the roof and windshield. Outside, the colors of the world are muted in the sun’s absence and even the smell of the air is one pallatable constant. Meditation on days like that just happens naturally.

But, when it hasn’t started raining, the pressure systems the preceding weather produces cause such unreasonable pain in my sinuses that I have difficulty enjoying the downpour when it breaks. As my mind is immersed in such things, I sometimes consider it my superpower, being hypersensitive to changes in meteorological patterns; however, it’s the dumbest superpower ever.

Not simply because it causes pain. I could live with limited precognition at the cost of migraines. No, it is a stupid power because the pain it causes only reminds me how I am mortal and at the whim of the world. I feel almost like Cassandra, powerless to change the future of which I am so urgently aware.

“Just rain already…”

From the always impressive leptard, whose blog I discovered through…aw, take a guess. Not my fault that she’s the hub of the meme-iverse.

1. Grab the nearest CD.
2. Put it in your CD-Player (or start your mp3-player, I-tunes, etc.).
3. Skip to Song 3 (or load the 3rd song in your 3rd playlist)
4. Post the first verse in your journal along with these instructions. Don?t name the band, nor the album-title.

You walked all over, in your blunderstones
In your own road movie, with your one armed man
Gonna make it to the problem page
Trouble-shoot your life
Gonna make it to the problem page
Need some time and space
Just to find yourself.

I kind of wish I could post the chorus as that’s the part that attracts me to the song, but rules are rules and I am nothing if not a complete thrall to the edicts of others. Thank you, leptard, for revealing to me what meaningless rotes my days amount to. I think my newly discovered Nietzchean outlook equates to you owing me a beer when you get to the states.

p.s. only kidding.

p.p.s. except for the beer part.

Hand-delivered by Czelticgirl is this little ol’ piece of greatness written by Harvey Pekar about Bill Hicks. Doesn’t get much better than that, folks.

Am I the only one who thinks that Bill Hicks’ entire collection should be given to every high school student upon graduation?

Said I to Bjorn in the year of our Lord 1999, “We should truly mimic our favorite rock band, The Led Zeppelin, and produce an epic, yet incredibly short, tune obviously written about J.R.R. Tolkien’s works. Perhaps we could have severe guitar chords followed by the repetition of the name ‘Gollum.'”

Said Bjorn to me, “It is done.”

And it was good. And, lo, was a genre born unto us. And then, some guy made some movies and our rightful riches were handed to the plagiarized, yet altogether worthy, work of a hack.

(Apologies for the lame bookends of MTV on that last link.)

Linus helped me define myself today. I wish I was closer to Islam and farther from Scientology, but my buddhist nature reveals to me that I mustn’t wish at all.

You’d think that Buddhism wouldn’t lend to jaded railings about comic book superhero movies, but you’d be wrong. I mean, just look at that score. And I’d be a Jain if I hadn’t murdered thousands of silverfish last night.

1.?Mahayana Buddhism (100%)
2.?Theravada Buddhism (96%)
3.?Unitarian Universalism (96%)
4.?Liberal Quakers (91%)
5.?Jainism (80%)
(more…)

1. Grab the nearest book to you, turn to page 18, line 7. Read what it says:

“batch is equivalent to at -q b -m now.”
But I’ve never read that book.
(more…)

More on this thread between Bjorn and the world of rock, somethingawful chimes in.

Someone better do something about this soon, or my little brother’s generation will never understand what the words “new” and “music” sound like together.

UPDATE: Road trip to save music.

This smokescreen of funny will keep you reading long enough for me to be bitter again, I promise.

The reel truth, from Wannabe Giant, who never posts anymore. Too cool to blog, B-rock?

Does Chipotle frighten you? You are not alone. Go to the 16th of April and listen around. This is probably the most genius one can post on the web by law. Bjorn, take note. This could be you, and you could ascend.

And finally, nothing is more surefire comedy than monkeys in hats.

Those last two stolen remorselessly from the mighty research girl herself.