It's funny 'cause it's true.

If Al Gore were President, from Saturday Night Live.

Letter to the editor.

Warren C. Herz of Washington gets it:

Buried on Page A18 of the May 3 paper in the World in Brief compendium were a couple of paragraphs about a new Amnesty International report for the U.N. Committee against Torture.

The report states that torture and inhumane treatment are "widespread" in U.S.-run detention centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba and elsewhere.

This is our country. We are responsible for this. We demonstrate against the horrors of Darfur. Why are we accepting this? It's being done in our name.

Renderer's Lament.

Dontcha hate it when you wake up after an all-night render and discover that you forgot to change the frame range, and have re-rendered everything you had already rendered the night before? Or when you discover that a different all-night render was ruined because a constraint went haywire after a Save As?

Thought not.

Ikea Walkthrough v2.3.1

Hat tip to my wife for finding this.

Quote of the day.

"I bet you're going to be an actress, just like your daddy!" -- my wife, to our daughter.

A future a day keeps the boredom away.

Now here's a great place to hang out: 365 Tomorrows, a site which publishes a new piece of (very) short speculative fiction every single day. Maybe you already knew about it. If not, now you do.

Arrrrrrgh!

I'm such a sucker for comic-book movies!

Note:

World War I Ace option not available on a Macintosh 128K.

The wife is away for three days on business. I'm already lonely.

No, it's not a big bite; I can chew it just fine!

A friend of mine once said he had a pathological fear of letting people down. (Then again, maybe he said "spiders." That doesn't lead into this blog entry very well, though.) Lately, I feel like all I've done is let people down, mostly because I've over-committed myself in the World of Animation.

• I am an animator for a project being produced by Hash, Inc. In this case I've already let them down, because I originally signed up to be an animation director, but as the project began to spiral far beyond its original parameters, and I felt more and more like I was drowning, I asked to be demoted. Now, I can't even meet my animation demands.


• I told the cast and crew of Dracula that I would produce a spoof animation, and send them all a copy with the DVD of the play. That was in October, when the show closed. I've barely started, and frankly the thought of doing it is painful, mostly because I really, really hate the character designs I came up with. But what else can I do but work with what I have?


• Some stupid idiot decided it would be Good Practice for me to produce a new animation each week, and for a while, it was. But the podcast is destroying any time I have for other projects, and to add insult to injury, I'm hemorrhaging viewers even as I make sure to stick to a schedule. I had nearly 800 people at one point, and now it's just over 300 (which, admittedly, is still more people than have ever read Rooster Spice on a regular basis).


• Finally, I still have an open offer of a paying!!!! commission which is now two years old--and what have I done to further its completion? Nothing.

It's enough to make one wish for a nice cuddly arachnid.

My sister works here. Aren't you jealous?

Hu's on first?

No, actually, Hu's in Seattle.

Do this.

Hit this link and help NTodd reach his arbitrary goal. Now. I'm waiting...

Groan, creak, grrrumph.

I'd like to wish everyone a happy holiday. I refer, of course, to the season premiere of Dr. Who.

And the kudos just keep a-coming.

I got an email yesterday:

I've been a fan of yours since I stumbled onto your vidcast several months ago. I kinda got behind on viewing them and just today saw Soap Opera for the first time.
Oh... my.... God! I just can't come up with enough superlatives. That is one of the most incredible and inspired works I've ever seen. You work has always at least mildly amused me, but this was PURE GREATNESS! The music, the singing, the graphics, the concept ... true creative genius!

I just hope sometime, somewhere, somehow I run into you at a tradeshow or something so I can shake your hand. You are a truly awesome creative spirit. Keep it up.

And <ESC> was just invited to the Milwaukee International Film Festival. Sometimes, things go right.

It was four years ago today.

Why isn't this working?

Did you know the original meaning of the word scumbag?

As dew in Aprille...

Spring break is next week. Ah, for the days when that meant a week at a Florida beach!

When were those days, exactly? I could never afford the trip.

Now it just means several full days spent trying to keep the little boy and girl from ripping each others' throats out.

Unbelievably, Rooster Spice will be four years old on Sunday. Celebrate as you see fit.

La pellicola corta piccola che potrebbe.

Well, yay me. <ESC> was just invited to the SEDICICORTO International Film Festival Forlì, in Italy no less. Funny that Soap Opera wasn't, and it's actually in Italian. (Of course, the English translation is... erm... different than the actual Italian.)

I wonder when I'm going to start feeling like a one-hit wonder? But at least I'm now an INTERNATIONAL one-hit wonder!

Message received?

It's the silence that's killing me; a reply, whether good or ill, would at least be a resolution. It would also let me know whether I've caused great trouble, or (as I suspect) I'm not even a blip on a radar screen. Whatever the case, I can't do anything about it; I've worn out my welcome already, and probably eliminated any small chance of friendship there might have been.

Phonetic danger.

My folks are attempting to sell two homes at once, for reasons I won't go into, but have to do with Precarious Financial Situations. Yesterday morning, a buyer called who had fallen in love with the farmhouse in the country. My stepfather was on a plane, so my mother text-messaged him to let him know, and read the message aloud as she was writing it:

"Australian couple interested, 6 mil, offer in July or August."

My jaw hit the floor. "6 mil?!" I stammered. "I thought you guys were poor because of all this...!"

Mom looked at me blankly, and then said, "6 Mill Road. It's the address!"

Back on the farm.

Well, here I am in Just-Outside-Of-Philadelphia, visiting my mom and stepfather, writing a blog entry on my sister's very annoying Toshiba laptop... why I even had to install Firefox before I could do anything! The horror, the horror! And if I hit "home" one more time when I mean to hit backspace, I'm going to scream. I never truly appreciated the simplicity of my PowerBook's keyboard layout until now.

Although I admit this Compose Mode thing for Blogger is pretty nice (it doesn't exist in Safari, alas).

Had great fun for April Fool's Day. I rented a car to come up here, and even though I had asked for an Economy vehicle, they gave me a free upgrade to a Cadillac (!), so I told everyone that it was my new car. Mom even added the wrinkle that K "had bought it for Zach for his birthday." No one bought it, though. If it had been a Mini Cooper I think we could have had them going.

And in other news, it's still not going away. Maybe it's time to write a song... that's always been good therapy in the past.

I am an April fool.

It's not going away, damn it. It's not going away.

MUST... STOP...

Site Meter strikes again.

Ya know what I hate? People who search for my name (or a portion of it, anyway) but don't tell me why. Come on, tell us who you are! It's not like privacy actually exists in this world or anything.

And another thing!

I got two compliments on Soap Opera today: one from a gentleman who had seen it in Cleveland and requested a DVD copy, and another from someone who saw it on the vodcast and said "Today at school I kept singing, 'Don Ivory, I have come to clean your bathroom!' " It's always nice to hear that sort of thing. And those compliments are for you too, Godfrey, as I'm sure you know.

Did I mention the freshly repainted schools?

Far too often, I blog only when things are going poorly, which leads those people who read my blog and care about me (all three of you) to conclude that my life is a cesspool of shame and depression, rife with missed interventions, pain, and self-pity. Well, believe it or not, even when this is the case, I do have some sense of perspective, and so I thought I'd share some good things that have happened, mostly unrelated to the things that I've complained about over the past few weeks.

• My son, D, who is slightly autistic, is now learning and performing at his grade level for the first time ever, according to his teachers at a recent review of his IEP (individual education plan).
• I was recently elected President of the board of directors for my daughter E's cooperative nursery school, for the 2006-2007 school year. (Of course, this is "good" news--note the scare quotes.)
• I'm also substituting for the nursery school's administrator while she's out sick, so I'll actually earn a real, physical paycheck for the first time in many years.
• I'm going to be a groomsman at a wedding in late April--one of my best friends from college is marrying a wonderful woman (also a good friend of ours, now) whom he met while at graduate school.
• Two short films of mine, <ESC> and Soap Opera, were shown at the Cleveland International Film Festival two weekends ago.
• Noises Off, despite all the, ahem, heartache, was a smashing success, and if you missed it, you should feel bad.
• The vast majority of my family is not in prison.
• I am, despite my best efforts to fuck things up, still married to a gorgeous Swede (excuse me, now I must take a cold shower).

Now what?

It's over!!!!!

And now I can get on with my life, and hurt the people I love in my usual, subtle fashion, instead of the blatant crap I've been pulling lately.

Copycat.

I've decided I'm going to copy Medley and put up a list of "Books Read in 2006." (At least, I think I'm copying her. I mean, I'm sure she's not the first one who thought of it, though that's certainly possible; she's been on the web a long time.) I'm not sure how I'm going to do this, just yet, because I don't want to edit the darn template every time I read something. I'm thinking of tagging an Amazon (or other) link every time I finish a book, and using the tag feed; there must be a way to splice that into the sidebar, right? Suggestions welcome...

Anyway, at the moment it's going to be heavy on Kage Baker's Company novels, which if you haven't read, you really should.

Update: Well, that was easy. Now you can all be jealous of my lit'ry pretentions.

"Why did you grow a beard?" -- They Might Be Giants

For once, I'm ahead of the trend. Of course, I've been telling everyone I'll shave once Noises Off closes, so...

Can YOU make your own decisions?

Heh. (Originally from here.)

Fortran porn?

Input: Reason. Output: Pleasure.

Grated cheese.

Medley writes:

Apart from all that maturity above, though, you've reminded me why I'm glad my spouse doesn't have time to do any community theatre!

Besides making me LOL, that comment reminded me of a conversation long ago in college (with Mike, I think), when we were wondering whether acting was a particularly dangerous thing to do if one is susceptible to crushes. Or, since correlation does not equal causality, perhaps it's acting itself that causes dangerous crushes, hence all the crazy Hollywood marriages one hears about.

Certainly that's the case for me, and it's probably good that I wound up falling for a scientist instead of an actress/musician/etc. (though K is actually an excellent visual artist in her own right), because I doubt any of the crushes I've had would have worked out for more than, say, a month or so if that. And there have been a lot of them, though this one has been one of the worst (otherwise I wouldn't be so broken up about it), second only to one which nearly broke up our marriage (although in truth, there was a LOT more going on than that--this was just before I was diagnosed with clinical depression).

But to return to the topic at hand... is there something about acting that increases the intensity of infatuation? Or if not acting, performance in general? I mean, I get on stage not for the process, certainly not for the audition thrill (?!?!?), but for the applause. And if you have a cast to whom you're close, that applause tends to bind you together--at least for that moment--in a profound way. Does it create something else beyond just the closeness of a cast? I don't know, since I've never acted with anyone with whom there was a mutual attraction. (Not just because I've been with K for essentially all of my adult life; I'm sure my manifest unattractiveness has something to do with it.)

I don't know. My stepfather once joked that I turned 40 when I turned 14, and he might have been right; unfortunately, I managed to turn 14 when I turned 22, and that's pretty much where I've remained in the subsequent 12 years...

(No, the title has no relation to the post. Sue me.)

Update.

The good news is that the crush seems to be dissipating with time. The bad news is, I don't want it to.

At least I was honest with my wife (had been long before the previous blog entry, so it's not like she read it in the newspaper). Telling her helped with the guilt a lot. Of course, I dare not ask how much it hurt her. She says she's OK. Certainly, I was the one wailing and crying, not her, so...

In other news, I'm considering disabling anonymous comments. Come on, at least leave a pseudonym, people!

Spring in the air.

First day of spring, and it's snowing in Washington.

I will conquer this.

And so it continues, every fucking day... the ache in my heart, the images in my head, the inability to see all the good I have going for me, simply because of one thing I cannot have...

It's a fucking mess, and I don't know what to do other than wait it out. And yet, to wait it out seems to be even more painful than anything else, because there is forever the "what might have been?"

My son and daughter smile and laugh, and my wife hugs me... I'm loved right here and now, and yet I want to be away, gone, somewhere, somewhen, and somewho else. All for... what? A fancy? A joke? A flick of hair?

Nothing will come of it; nothing can come of it, for should I try, I'll destroy everyone I hold dear; not to mention I will lose any semblence of respect for myself.

And yet, though next week should be a relief, because the temptation will be gone, I find myself dreading it, because the temptation will be gone. And at this one particular, infinitesimal slice of time, I can't live without it.

Extremism comes to Maryland.

My son's school bus driver is a surly old man who never even acknowledges anyone's existence, despite the numerous times I've said "good morning" to him. (And no, he isn't hard of hearing, because I have had a conversation with him, once.) This morning, he gave me another reason to dislike him: he was wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with "Minute Man Project."

For those who don't know the ins and outs of the Minutemen, who are a vigilante group dedicated to "protecting" the U.S. border with Mexico (and who may or may not be the reason the number of border crossing deaths spiked last year), I recommend perusing David Neiwert's blog.

What I find most interesting is the clear connection between the Minutemen and white power/white supremacist groups... and that D's bus driver is African-American.

Update: Right after I wrote this, I caught up with some leftover Washington Post vodcasts that I had downloaded a few weeks ago, including this one, an excellent overview of the new Minutemen chapter in Maryland, as well as the whole "day laborer" issue. Well worth a look.

Lo, the ache/Hath invaded mine guts.

After the third performance of Noises Off (a matinee on Sunday), I went home absolutely ravenous, but surprisingly awake, considering I had been up 'til past midnight every night this week, and running proverbial (possibly literal) miles in the course of playing the part.

K made a delicious dinner, and I took two or three bites, and my body said, "OK, we finally have sustenance. Time to shut down." I nearly fell asleep at the dinner table, and in fact did go to bed at 6:30.

By all rights, I should be relieved for the time off (we don't perform again 'til Friday), but the cast has become such a part of my life I find myself wishing I was still rehearsing. Yes, I'm lonely. Pathetic! And if I'm this lonely now, how will I feel after the show closes on the 25th?

Theater is so frappin' ephemeral. And it causes me so much pain after it ends! I need to grow up, damn it, and stop acting like a lovesick teenager.

Why, it almost sounds like 2002!

When I act in plays I don't get sleep; when I don't get sleep I get depressed; when I get depressed I get bitchy; when I get bitchy I take it out on my wife and kids. So every time I do a play, I take my life into my own hands.

So why do I do plays? Back when I was doing it for money, the answer was obvious: money. Of course, the enjoyment factor was far less than now, because now I'm acting, and when I was getting paid it tended to be backstage work. But really, are there any tangible benefits? Why do I do community theater?

I suppose one reason is that I'm pretty good at it. It's a lot of fun to be a big fish in a small pond. I'm not nearly good enough to make it as a paid actor (and most non-Equity theaters I could work at don't do plays I'm interested in anyway). But I can shine in the community theater scene.

Two is the people. This group I'm working with now seems to be a bunch of folks who know what they're doing and take it just seriously enough. In other words, they recognize that there is a whole world out there to which theatre is utterly irrelevant, and maybe that's the way it should be.

Three is the pressure, or lack thereof. One reason I couldn't hack it as a professional actor is that I utterly hate doing the cattle-call auditions where you have to prepare a two-minute monologue, etc.; but that's a major part of getting your foot in the paid door. But most community theaters do cold readings from the script, which I've always been pretty good at.

But is it worth it, for two or three weekends of glory that few people will see anyway? I don't know. I'll tell you in three weekends.

But there is one, awful awful aspect of every show I do, which continually threatens to ruin my life, or at the very least send me into a deep pool of high-school-esque angst. What is it? Well, unfortunately I can't talk about it, because this is a family blog (that is, a blog read by my family), and too much pain would result. So you'll just have to use your imagination.

All parts covered except one.

Today's Post on International Women's Day:

President Bush accused Iran, North Korea and Burma of suppressing women's rights, and said, "America will help women stand up for their freedom, no matter where they live."

So I guess we can expect a massive invasion of South Dakota sometime soon, George?

Trust me on this.

Listen to this song. You won't regret it. (via theynow)

How to fool several million iPod nuts.

Niiiiiice...

Let us now praise the iPod.

How else could you listen to every song in your library in alphabetical order, but through an iPod (or other digital music player)? How else would you discover how many songs you own that begin with the word "surf," and what they sound like back-to-back? (Hint: "Surfin' Bird" kicks "Surfer Girl"'s ass.)

Unfortunately, all things must pass, and so I sold both of my old iPods* and got a new iPod video about a week ago.

Which means, naturally...

* Actually, a pretty good story: I bought a broken iPod off eBay, replaced the hard drive cable, and enjoyed it for a while, what with hacking Linux and stuff. Then, I sold it for a $50 profit.

My mini is supposedly sold, too, but the buyer has not sent payment, two weeks later, and is not responding to emails or eBay messages. So, methinks it will be re-listed soon.

What I'm trying to say.

Kevin Drum:

I just want to make something super clear here. If jumping on the Dubai hysteria bandwagon merely hurt George Bush politically and prompted some additional interest in port security, I'd be all for it. What do I care if the DPW/P&O deal goes through? But the whole thing feeds on a mindless anti-Arab jingoism that's genuinely dangerous, and that's why I'm not joining the fun. As liberals, we're either serious about engaging with the Muslim world in a serious, non-hysterical way or we're not. Which is it?

Damn!

I can only pass on the following from my friend Pat without comment:

Zach -

This is, without a doubt, the best use of Beatle music by anybody ever.

http://www.chrisbliss.com/videopresskit.html

Click on "The Big Finale."

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

I gotta say, I'm getting pretty discouraged by all the one-star reviews for my vodcast on iTunes. I mean, sure, it's probably just a bunch of 13-year-old boys--not exactly my target audience--but to click over there, as I did, after spending several days putting a vodcast together, and read that some poor person's IQ dropped by ten points after they watched my show--well, it makes me feel bad, and not just because I'm contributing to the dumbing down of America.

Maybe I just need more gross-out and bloody humor. Amputation jokes are funny, aren't they?

Sigh...

(My star rating is down to two on iTunes. I'll keep you updated as more one-star reviews come in.)

On the stupidity of vodcasting.

Next week, I'm just gonna do a bouncing ball, damn it. What was I thinking?

They Might Be Ringtones

Call connected thru the NSA
Complete transmission thru the NSA
Suspending your rights for the duration of the permanent war...

The recycling bin of history.

Another week with K in Florida, and therefore Me and The Kids alone. Yesterday was a bittersweet day--I made good progress on cleaning out a bookshelf scheduled for Goodwill, but in the process I had to Let Go Of My Youth. You see, I have a whole bunch of manuscripts from friends who, like me, fancied themselves playwrights or authors (well, in fairness, I fancied myself one--they still are), and yesterday I bit the bullet and threw them all out. (Sorry, Clarence! I'll still read your stuff, though...) I drew the line at throwing my own manuscripts away, but everything else went--old plots and scripts for lighting designs, programs from plays I've seen (except for No Man's Land signed by Harold Pinter himself) and performed in... but there comes a point where one just has to admit, one will never read or look at such things again, will one?

Will one?

Argh, what an idiot! How am I going to be remembered without any artifacts of myself? What will D and E pore over to gain clues about their tragically misunderstood father? Where will historians of the future be without papers for the Zachary F. Brewster-Geisz Reading Room at my alma mater?

Come back! Come back, recycling truck! All is forgiven!

As close as I get to live-blogging.

Is Mick Jagger really sounding like Porky Pig, or is it just me?

I can't get no
Satisfaction
I can't get no
Satisfaction
But I twy
And I twy
Lord I twy
Lord I twy...

Why Batgirl?

Get a job. Sha na na na, sha na na na na...

It's very striking to note how completely I fall apart when my wife is away on business. Well, not just me--though there's certainly an element of depression in it--but how my ability to keep house deteriorates. Invariably things wind up scattered, out of place; the kids miss elementary things like homework, cleanup time, baths; and on the day she comes home I scramble to straighten things up to a semblance of, y'know, and all. (I also lose my admittedly atrophied ability to write coherently.)

She goes away on business a goodly amount of time, usually to Florida. And in truth I go away a good amount of time as well, though not for business reasons (unless I were to make a business out of going to comic/3D conventions and film festivals). And even if I spend less time away overnight, I definitely spend more nights away, what with rehearsals and so on, whereas she remains home most every night whether I'm there or not.

Yet, she somehow manages to keep herself, and us, together. And I just can't manage to do that. Maybe it has something to do with getting decent amounts of sleep. For some reason, I always stay up 'til midnight or later when she's gone, even if it isn't my intention. It just happens. And I am not at my best when I'm tired. Whereas as far as I can tell, K just goes to bed when she needs to.

Whatever the reason, K is going to come home around 11 tonight to an absolute pigsty, unless I get my crap together and clean up the house. It makes me wonder: how much do I rely on her on a regular basis, and why have I become so dependent? There's always a certain amount of dependency in marriage, but if there's very little disruption when I'm gone, and huge amounts when she's gone, then what does she depend on me for?

I suppose behind all this is the neverending fear, common to all children of divorced parents I suspect (if not everyone), that she'll suddenly figure out what a fraud I am and take off. Granted, we've already been married longer than my parents were, but that means little. One of my best friends got a divorce after 13+ years of happy spousitude. A friend from college's parents waited until all the kids were out of the house before they split. Now I don't think we're in any danger of splitting, but if we did, how--not just in terms of romance, but in the basic, getting food on the plate and a roof over the head sense--would I live without her?

This is about something specific.

They ain't payin' me enough for this crap.

Too much.

The renovations to our house are finally done, and I've been frantically trying to paint the new rooms so that can be crossed off my to-do list and I can get back to my life.

I have a project which is overdue, and for which people are depending on me. (Boy, that was an awkwardly constructed sentence.) I also have a more personal project, which isn't really on a deadline, but I promised some friends it would be done in November. And of course I have my vodcast which I do each week. There are about six hundred fifty people subscribed to it, so I guess that's people depending on me too (although six hundred fifty wouldn't mean as much to me as five or six people I actually care about). What a time to be sick, have a birthday (last Wednesday), and be tied up in painting and inspections.

So the question is, how can I work all this into a funny animation for next Wednesday? Suggestions welcome. (Yes, I'm talking to [i]you[/i], Clarence and Godfrey.)

Sigh...

Right.. *
by killin for cookies

HAHA lmao
very
freaking
funny
NOT
these are the worst podcasts on iTunes.
horrible
not funny at all
stupid
waste of a MB on your iPod
----
Was this review helpful? Yes / No

And so the Universe ended.

Well, my vodcast is no longer on the front page of the iTunes podcast directory. Ah well. It was fun while it lasted. Now I can begin hemorrhaging viewers, no doubt.

Chugga chugga choo choo.

One of the first things I built after my son's birth in 1999 was a G-scale train set that ran along the walls of his room, on platforms right next to the ceiling. Though we hadn't used it much in recent years, it was something of a cause célèbre among our friends, who whenever they came over would say to the unintiated "Have you seen the train Zach put in his son's room?"

Tonight, the train came down, because we're having the room expanded as part of our general renovation. I'm pretty sad, actually, and I don't know if I'll be able to put it back up or not.

"Time is marching on, and time... is still marching on." -- They Might Be Giants

We're off to Massachusetts for a week. Be good, and ponder the latest vodcast if you're so inclined.

Don't read this if you don't like hearing about parenthood or Number Two.

Hm. If you have iTunes, click on over to the Podcast directory and look down, under the Cartoons tab. Click the arrows to cycle through 'em. You might see someone you know. My circulation has doubled since it appeared. Yow. Pressure.

This past Monday/Tuesday, I had possibly my worst 24 hours that didn't involve clinical depression ever. It began at about 10:30 Monday night, when I was in bed reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and there was a stunning crash from the direction of the stairs. Oh dear. Noodles, the new kitten, had attacked a potted plant and, apparently, won. There were dirt and broken clay pieces all over. I cleaned it up, but it must have somehow aggravated the cold I'm getting, because I spent the rest of the night coughing myself awake.

Then in the morning, the daughter had wet the bed; not too suprising, nor that much of a hardship, since she only just started sleeping without diapers. But sure enough, after getting the boy off to the school bus, we had two more accidents, the last one just at the exact time that we needed to pick the boy up at the bus stop! To make matters worse, that accident included both liquid and solid components. And what a solid! I had to put the girl in the shower to clean it all up, and literally shake the soiled underwear over the toilet to get what I thought were the last remnants down the drain. Then out the door in the nick of time to pick up the son at the bus stop (by law, bus drivers cannot leave kindergarteners at their bus stop alone), the poor daughter's wet hair freezing in the cold.

But the fun wasn't over! I had dropped the soiled underwear in the bathroom sink in my haste, figuring I'd need to rinse it thoroughly before throwing it in the hamper anyway. Turns out all of the solid stuff hadn't gone in the toilet, and was now blocking the drain! I tried to remove it while protecting my fingers with toilet paper; you can imagine how well that worked. So, now the sink was completely clogged, and no Drano anywhere in the house. So, off to the supermarket, children in tow, to get two bottles of Drano. Did I mention that the kitchen is being re-done, and the bathroom sink is the only sink in the house?

We return, and I unclog the sink. Now on a normal day I might be able to ask K to cook for me, being as I'm completely underwater by this point, but a) as mentioned before, we have no sink and therefore can't do much cooking anyway, and b) K happens to be working late today. So, I call in some food from a local pizza joint, and go off again with the kids to pick it up and bring it home. While we're gone, our dog, not content with my being merely frazzled, sends me into hysterics when I come home and find him eating up the food we had left upstairs in storage while our kitchen is remodeled. So, there are crushed ginger snaps everywhere, soiled underpants in the bathroom, two extremely hungry kids waiting for their chicken tenders and French fries, and in the midst of it all, a daddy on the verge of either laughing or crying due to the absurdity of it all.

At this point K calls to see how we're doing, and to her eternal credit she comes right home.

Then, at about 10 P.M., almost exactly 24 hours after all this bad karma began, finally the sun begins to shine; I get a call from the director of a local production of Noises Off, telling me I've been cast in precisely the role I wanted, Garry (John Ritter, for those who saw the movie). So, at least I go to bed happy. But what a day! It's enough to make you check into a hotel.

It's Wednesday!

So it must be a vodcast.

Incidentally, if you're so inclined, you can listen to me make a fool of myself in an interview with 49media (warning: the front page is not safe for work at the moment). We talked about the vodcast and vodcasting in general... not that I'm an expert or anything.

I can now watch my vodcasts on my iPod, and I didn't even have to pay any money to do it! I even dug into the code and programmed normalization and dithering into the grayscale video converter. Now, if I can only get the energy to clean up the code and submit a patch to the developers.

Turkey's Day.

A new vodcast can be found here. This is a good one. If I do say so myself. What are you waiting for? Subscribe, dammit! And while you're at it, give a rating down at VodStock.

Irrelevant but true factoid for the night.

Drywall dust does a serious number on your throat.

Now with 100% more Wednesdayness.

The latest vodcast is up, with all its stand-up goodness available free o' charge. Go ahead, subscribe! You know you want to.

We make no comment on the switch from Monday to Wednesday delivery.

And, incidentally, how is it that Rooster Spice, the Podcast has more subscribers now than when it was actually in operation? Is the Odeo-bot spawning, or something?

Sickening.

Andrew Sullivan has been continually stellar on the subject of American torture. But this post in particular brings it home. If you're not sickened and horrified by what is happening, you're not paying attention.

A tale of two kitties (groan...).

Our first cat, Nim�üe, is very aloof (some would say shy, but that implies she's afraid). She has heavy-lidded eyes, which lends her a perpetually pissed-off expression. She's really not all that excited about human contact--she wouldn't climb on you if you paid her. She only sleeps on the bed after a significant amount of training, and even so resolutely stays off the hills and valleys of people under covers. She almost never chases after strings, toy mice, etc. In other words, she's far less cat-like than your average cat.

Enter Noodles, our new kitten, rescued as described in a previous blog entry. And suddenly, we're dealing with a cat who climbs all over the keyboard when you're trying to write, takes improbable leaps onto high furniture (and, on occasion, falls), plays with toys, and gets excited about catnip.

We've been spoiled.

Kaine is Able!

Congratulations to our neighbors in Virginia for just saying NO to wingnuttery!

Addition and subtraction.

We're putting an addition on our house, and with it comes a redo of the kitchen. That part starts tomorrow, and K and I just spent a good two and a half hours cleaning out our kitchen cabinets.

Ah, to say goodbye to the kitchy wedding gift of cow-themed coffee mugs! Ah, to see the dust patterns on the soon-to-be-gone white laminate countertop! And ah, to figure out where the hell to put everything that we moved! Our kitchen is small, but with a small kitchen generally comes a small house... and if we had storage space, we wouldn't need the damn addition.

I can't wait to see the kids' reaction tomorrow when they come downstairs and see all the food, plates, silverware, etc. scattered throughout the living room. It'll be like an inverse Christmas.

It's the Ark of the Covenant. Are you sure? Pretty sure.

Well, it's Monday, so it must be time for another zacharybrewstergeisz.com vodcast. (What a catchy name!)

This week, an old animation which pays homage to a film that paid homage to Saturday afternoon serials.

Subscribe now!

Friday Cat Prose Blogging.

About three weeks ago, a stray cat showed up in our front yard. It announced itself with some plaintive mews--mews, not meows, since it was a genuine kitten. We could tell it had just been dumped. Our town is a great one for central locations where one might post "Have You Seen This Cat" flyers and what-not, and even has a local community newspaper for the folks who place classified ads after they lose their pets.

Anyhow, this kitten, who is a beautiful orange and white tabby, captured the hearts of everyone in the court. We were all leaving food and water outside, and even if they were mostly stolen by the possums, I'm sure the kitten got some, too. And it was amazingly playful--at least at first.

The kitten started out mewing and chasing birds and squirrels, just as you would expect. It was a little more skittish than your average cat, running away from people at the slightest movement, but willing at least to look you plaintively in the eye. I tried a couple times to catch it, mostly just so I could make sure it got its shots, fixed, and a checkup at our vet--after that, I figured I would either release it again or give it to a rescue place so I could make sure it wasn't destroyed.

We had a few rainstorms, during which the kitten took shelter in our new construction. In fact, we were a little worried when it wound up in the crawl space on the day the contractor was due to cover over the floor with plywood; fortunately our contractor was smart enough to leave an opening, which we covered up as soon as we saw the kitten outside again.

As time went on, it became more and more battle-hardened. The mewing stopped, as did the clumsy kittenness, and its eyes were less cute, and more wary. Strangely, this made me love it even more.

Our next-door neighbor called in a friend who traps and rescues stray and feral cats on a regular basis. She set up a trap, baited it with tuna, and the kitten was caught in a half-hour. It went to a local animal hospital. And then what happened?

Well, he came home today (yes, "he" now, not "it"). And he is so damn cute. Admittedly, the other cat and the dog will need to adjust, but with time, anything is possible. And he proved his mettle in an encounter with Buddy (our dog) when he managed to bare his claws, hiss, and jump five feet in the air simultaneously.

Now he needs a name. There's an obvious one, given that our other kitty is named Nimü�e. But I can't picture this little street kitten being named after a famous wizard from Arthurian legend. He seems more like a Hobbit to me.

Man, thou art lame.

The closest thing I get to "hazardous duty" is when K goes out of town and I'm a single father for a time. This week--all week!--she's in Panama City, Florida, at a conference of some sort. It's moments like these that I realize just how much I depend on her, day in and day out, to keep me sane--and given my mental history, "sane" is not a word I choose lightly.

It's amazing, for instance, how difficult it is to keep the house clean when she's gone. You could insert some sexist remark here, no doubt, but I think this speaks more to me vs. her than man vs. woman.

Mostly I realize how scatterbrained I am, though. For instance, yesterday I had a dental appointment. They called to remind me on Friday; it was written down on the calendar; K and I had talked about it. The only missing piece of the puzzle was that she wasn't here to remind me the morning of--and so, naturally, I forgot the appointment. Hooray, more money spent on nothing at all!

Truly, marriage has infantilized me. At the moment, I'm in somewhat the same situation I was just before I got to college. I don't know if anyone else was like this, but I hated doing chores, and I knew that if I didn't do them, so what? They'd get done eventually by someone else. But then, when I was on my own, suddenly it really was my responsibility, and mine alone, to do laundry, eat properly, get enough sleep and so on, and suddenly those things seemed pleasurable, not onerous.

(In truth, I was already pretty good about doing the laundry for the whole household; and my dad, with whom I lived for most of my life, wasn't exactly great shakes in the household chore department. I distinctly remember upwards of ten bags of garbage, sitting on our back porch for months, because Dad couldn't get around to driving them to the dump.)

My point, anyway, is that I've regressed back to that dependence on someone else to handle the things I can't, or won't, handle on my own. She handles the schedule, because I can't get myself to depend on a PDA. She handles most of the cleaning and virtually all of the day-to-day straightening up. And in the evenings, she pretty much rears the kids on her own because by the end of the day, I need to be alone, for at least an hour, otherwise I explode in a mushroom cloud like the one Condi Rice lied about.

Yet she manages to hold me and herself together, while still working a sometimes punishing schedule at her job (which she admittedly loves), and she never tells me, "No, you can't go to rehearsal tonight," even though there have been nights when she's missed her t'ai chi class because I was a crying, blubbering wreck. How can I make myself stronger? And more importantly: how can I ever repay her?

Rooster Spice, the Podcast--And so goodbye...

For, yea, it is written: when the Squelch hath been revealèd, and the VidPod falls upon the crowd, then shall the Spice be Cast no more...

The final podcast lieth here, at a terminal 11:21 and 5 or so MB.

Listen for the full details; and if you feel like subscribing to something else after a decent period of mourning, why not try the zacharybrewstergeisz.com vodcast?

To hell with anonymity.

Time to shovel some new blood into this hole, so... here I am in all my non-pseudonymous glory.

Ba dee boo!

This is my new favorite animation (via Rocketboom). Here's the animator's web site, with a higher-quality version (follow the links to Animation, then Music Videos, then Bathtime in Clerkenwell).

Fplinerf Lamente, or, The Anymator who Cannot Modelle

WHY can't I sculpt a decent female face????

A query.

So, if it's better to give than to receive, does that mean when you give someone a present, you're really saying, "Here, and now I am morally superior to you"?

The blood is the life!

Perhaps I've mentioned my Five Point Plan to return to acting:

1. Get involved in community theater
2. Get involved in professional theater
3. Get involved in local independent film
4. Move to Hollywood
5. Become a film star on the level of, say, Paul Newman.

When I left college I skipped (1) entirely and went straight to getting paid to do tech work (acting, not so much) and lately I've done pretty well with (3). So, it seemed clear it was time to jump back to (1).

(Okay, truth be told, I just wanted to see if I would enjoy theater again without the pressure of getting paid.)

Anyway, I've already talked about my work on Henry IV for the Greenbelt Arts Center, but I realize I never mentioned that I had also been cast in Dracula for Prince George's Little Theater, playing everyone's favorite bug-eater, Renfield, which is second only to the title character for its scene-stealing potential. Gotta love any part for which you must mess up your hair in six directions then set it with gallons of hair spray.

We opened on Friday. It went well. No major line losses, no major tech foul-ups. And it was (I think) my first time acting on a geniune proscenium stage since college. Quite a trip.

And that's all I'm gonna say about that.

O my Gawd!

iPod video! But Steve Jobs said it would never happen! And we all know he NEVER lies... right?

Makes me want to create a Rooster Spice, the Vodcast! ...almost.

If it weren't for my recent failure in podcasting, I could see myself doing a "cartoon of the week" via RSS. But... somehow I doubt I'd be quite as prolific as all that.

Insomnia? We can help!

Watch <ESC> tonight as part of Happy Tree Friends and Friends on the G4 cable channel. Or, y'know, suffer the consequences. 12 midnight Eastern, 9 PM pacific. With my new logo, you can even see the top half of my head.

Edit: he said, forgetting that the top of his head is right next to these words in the stupid "About Me" section.

Muckraking.

So the contractors started work on Monday. We're putting an addition on the front of our house--just a little one to add an office downstairs so we can move E into a new bedroom (where the office currently is). In normal times, we probably would have put this house on the market and moved into a slightly bigger one. But with a housing market that looks something like Yahoo's stock price in the late 90s (indeed, our own home has tripled in value--problem is, so has everyone else's), we couldn't afford to move. But, we could afford a refinance and a larger loan to pay for an addition.

So now it's the Marianas Trench in the front yard, as the holes for the foundation have been dug but the cement hasn't yet been poured. A huge pile of red clay sits in the yard and our assigned parking spot. Naturally, all of September was drought conditions, but with the coming of October things have gotten just wet enough to make the clay into extremely sticky mud.

In fact, our walkway, which we share with the townhouse to our right, was covered in the mud and crap, and tracking everywhere. Fortunately, our contractors hosed away the mud, leaving a sparkling clean sidewalk instead, and avoiding a potential neighbor land mine.

But, naturally, you can't please all the people all the time, and another neighbor complained to me this morning (in no uncertain terms) about the runoff from the hosing down, which had accumulated in the parking lot. Admittedly it was ugly, but it wasn't anything but dirty puddles, rather like what we tend to get after a heavy rain. She said it was probably illegal.

Which makes me wonder: if there had been a downpour, would she have arrested the clouds?

Extra, extra...

His Girl Friday is in the public domain? Is nothing sacred?

Edit: Since I'm an atheist, draw your own conclusions as to how I define "sacred."

A tale of two disasters.

The Post's opinion pages has a comparison between Katrina and Chernobyl today. I was going to just highlight one of the comparisons I found funny, but I see they don't actually have the article online. So, here, manually typed in, is the entire article:

"Katrina vs. Chernobyl," by Richard Rhodes and Gwyneth Cravens.

Similarities

• Katrina: Levees neglected despite years of warnings of damage a major storm could cause.
• Chernobyl: Reactor not upgraded despite multiple previous accidents in similar plants.


• Katrina: Breach of levees: poor design, overconfidence, federal budget cuts.
• Chernobyl: Reactor expolosion: poor design, overconfidence, construction material shortages.


• Katrina: New Orleans submerged in contaminated water; billions of dollars in damage.
• Chernobyl: Widespread radioactive fallout from burning reactor; billions of dollars in damage.


• Katrina: No protective clothing for local rescue workers.
• Chernobyl: No protective clothing for local rescue workers.


• Katrina: Helicopters dropping sand into levee breaches.
• Chernobyl: Helicopters dropping sand into burning reactor crater.


• Katrina: FEMA director's previous experience: horse shows. Friend of a friend of the president.
• Chernobyl: Chernobyl director's previous experience: party hack. Promoted after another reactor exploded on his watch.


• Katrina: Media coverage overrides attempted political spin.
• Chernobyl: Dispersing radiation plume overrides attempted coverup.


• Katrina: Contractors and lobbyists roaming Washington and Baton Rouge, La.
• Chernobyl: Wolves and feral dogs roaming exclusion zone.

Differences

• Katrina: National leadership response delayed by disbelief, poor coordination, vacations.
• Chernobyl: National leadership response immediate.


• Katrina: President Bush tours Gulf Coast five days after storm hits, avoiding New Orleans.
• Chernobyl: Two Politburo members reach Chernobyl within 48 hours to direct rescue operations.


• Katrina: 475 buses delayed two days before evacuating 30,000 flood victims from Superdome Evacuation stretches across four days.
• Chernobyl: 1,216 buses, 300 trucks arrive overnight to evacuate 35,000 residents of Pripyat reactor community. Evacuation completed in one afternoon.


• Katrina: Delayed and inadequate emergency response, lack of coordination seriously hamper relief.
• Chernobyl: Quick decisions, good coordination, rapid response remove most of surrounding population from harm.


• Katrina: Roving gangs of armed criminals, random violence, derelict police officers.
• Chernobyl: Unarmed and cooperative population, minimal disorder.


• Katrina: Toll of preventable deaths: 1,069, according to the Associated Press, as of yesterday, and still counting.
• Chernobyl: Toll of preventable deaths 19 years later: 60.

Richard Rhodes is the author of "The Making of the Atomic Bomb." Gwyneth Cravens's examination of nuclear energy misconceptions, "The Hollow Mounatin," is to be published in 2006.

As published in today's Washington Post.

I'll leave the professional bloggers to dissect this, if anyone reads it, that is.

Just in case you were wondering.

The Podcast is not dead. But it is on life support. I'm told the Congress is going to pass a law to make sure I don't euthanize it.

It's getting hard to not sound blasé.

<ESC> was just accepted to the Annapolis Film Festival. I found this out just after a producer from G4 (formerly TechTV) emailed me asking if he could screen it as part of a short animation series. Oh, and it was shown at the Animation Block Party in NYC on Thursday... I found out about that one day after the screening. Next time, send your filmmakers an email, guys... is it really that hard?

Rock and roll.

Yesterday was International Talk Like a Pyrite Day...

Arrrgh, matey. I wuz born in th' bowels o' the earth, sulficatious and hotter than the blast o' a spanish cannon. Me golden face may sometimes be striated, an' even octahedral. I've a specific gravity that swims somewhere around 5.0, as like as not, and a conchoidal fracture, and am polymorphic with mah goodly chum, Marcas.

Events, momentous, more.

Yesterday wasn't quite as wild as Friday in terms of accolades, compliments, and swooning, but <ESC> did get a big laugh (or two). No one had any questions for me this time; it might have been because there was a different moderator, who was much less energetic. (Presumably, that's 'cause no one on the festival staff had slept for four days.) But, afterward, the Cleveland Film Society gentleman came up to me (he was much more casual this time, wearing a Browns jersey), and said, "Okay, you can send 'em both." So, two films, guaranteed in. Not a bad haul. (Although, as a friend said when I told him I was heading to Cleveland, "I'm sorry.")

The whole family came to this screening, and D & E were quite good at staying in their seat, although D did feel the need to comment on nearly everything. The awards ceremony was as fun as such things ever are when one doesn't get awards. I'm reminded of something the playwright Nicky Silver wrote in the introduction to a compilation of his plays:

A word on awards. I've been nominated for quite a few and won a couple. It's a strange phenomenon. I arrive feeling quite above the fray. I, personally, NEVER think I have the remotest chance of winning, so I adopt an "artists shouldn't compete" attitude. Within five minutes of the evenings [sic] commencement, I start to think... "What the hell, I could win. You never know." By the time my category rolls around I'm in a white-knuckled frenzy of competitive zeal, ruthless to win the damn thing! "Let me at MY statue and why is everyone clapping for Terrence McNally!"

That's pretty much exactly how I feel at these sorts of things.

But better than a glass statue (though they were pretty neat, and apparently hand-made by the festival director) is acclaim from total strangers. Godfrey found a bloig [sic] entry by a member of the selection committee for D.C. Shorts, and what she said made my jaw drop:

So let me reveal what I believe to be the highlights of the festival. At the top of my list is "Soap Opera� by a local filmmaker, Zachary Brewster-Geisz. Mozart is surely rolling over in his grave--but I don�t care. In this animated aria from "Don Giovanni,� set in a bathroom, the shampoo and soap and sponge sing gloriously in Italian--with subtitles. It�s hilarious.

It's enough to make one think one's in a 40s musical. "What a glorious feeling, I'm happy again..."*

I went to the closing reception at a local arts place. A couple people complimented me on the films, but mostly I stood around, eating brie and crackers. (Brie! Can't afford it usually.) One gentleman, who will no doubt visit me in my nightmares, stood staring at my name badge (which also listed my films) and approached me slowly. Being helpful, I lifted the badge up to display it, and chuckled nervously.

"Soap Opera," he said. "What's that?"

"Ah, it's an opera, sung by soap," I said.

"Oh," he said. There was an awkward silence, and then he looked to my left at the painting I was standing next to. Except, he didn't move, and remained standing one foot in front of me. I remained there for an uncomfortable moment--should I say more, try to start a conversation?--and eventually mumbled "excuse me," and sidled back over to the cheese table.

* That's Gene Kelly, not Malcom McDowell.

Events, momentous.

Yesterday was my wedding anniversary. We went to Cunningham Falls and hiked a little bit (very little, since with two kids, one of whom refuses to wear anything but a dress and tights, you don't want to take the Cliff Edge trail), then had a romantic dinner at, uh, TGIFriday's. We closed the evening after the kids had gone to bed with our anniversary tradition of opening a bottle of champagne and getting rip-roaring drunk. Of course, we drink so rarely that one glass each is enough to get us singing old Andy Hardy songs, so...

But anniversaries are so old hat. I've had, what, eleven of 'em? (More than my parents had, actually.) The real excitement this weekend was the D.C. Shorts Festival, in which I have two animated films. You can read about them here (PDF), in an article in the Washington City Paper in which you can also see my ugly mug.

The first screening was Friday, preceded by a gala opening-night party, in which K and I were given the literal red-carpet treatment, with photographers and flashbulbs, the whole shebang. I was expecting a more typical hotel-lobby style reception, but this was huge; clearly someone hired a publicist who knew how to Create a Buzz in the Social Scene. Ah, Hollywood. It was all pretty ridiculous. We spent an hour and a half there, met up with a few friends who had been kind enough to come, and then went to feed the meter so our car didn't get booted. Except, we were out of change, so we decided to take our chances. And no, this story won't end with a tow or a boot, so don't get your hopes up.

The screening, as expected, was sold out. Soap Opera was the third film shown, and the first real comedy of the evening. We got a good deal of laughs, though I was too nervous to pay attention to them. My "fan club" of about ten friends probably pumped up the applause-o-meter a bit.

After the screening was over, there was a question-and-answer session with the directors. Here's a partial transcript:

Q: How did you all raise the money for your films?

Other filmmakers: Well, I got a grant and blahblahblah and it was in completion of the MFA and blahblahblah and corporate sponsors and blahblahblah and fundraising blahblahblah...

Me: Um... my film was made for free.

There was one woman who had read the City Paper article and wanted to know where she could find my other films, so I directed her to my website.

When the Q&A was over, I hugged my parents, who had driven all the way from Albany (why were they in Albany, I wonder?), and as I was chatting with them, a gentleman from the Cleveland Film Festival came up to me, gave me his card, and said he wanted to show Soap Opera at the festival in March. "No entry fee, no selection process, you're in if you're interested." Naturally, I told him no. (That's a joke, son.) After I had picked myself off the floor, we headed home to relieve the babysitter, who had done seven hours of duty. We finally climbed into bed around 1 A.M. We realized it was our anniversary already, and, um, celebrated.

Today is the final day of the fest, and my other film, <ESC>, is showing at noon. There's also an awards ceremony afterward. I'm not expecting anything, but who knows? Watch this space for details.

In the interest of fairness and balanced-ness, I should point out that the government appears to have dropped its no-photo policy. There's also some evidence that it was never evenly applied anyway--for instance, photographers from the Times-Picayune were never kept from sites.

The timeline.

No, not a text timeline of the events of Katrina--a photo timeline. Via Andrew Sullivan.

Read this.

Trust me.

Hey, wow! My first comment spam! I guess posting a link in Eschaton has its effect.

Washington Post, free speech watchdog.

Surely the Post ran a story about the implicit censorship of Katrina's death toll?

Why, yes, they did.

Of course, it was only a reprint of a story by Reuters, and it was in the Style section, on the eighth page, but what can you do?

More on press censorship.

Andrew Sullivan is on it. So is Brian Williams of NBC:

While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won't be any pictures of this particular group of guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States.

At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads. Her actions (apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the scene) were over the top and she was told. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It's a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.

Will the media ignore these orders, and take the damned pictures that we need to see? These pictures of victims of negligent fucking homicide?

Press being turned away from New Orleans.

If this is true--and it came from a blogger on the scene--it is the worst abuse of power yet.

No Accountability: Bush Locks Press Out of NOLA
September 7th, 2005
We are in Jefferson Parish, just outside of New Orleans. At the National Guard checkpoint, they are under orders to turn away all media. All of the reporters are turning they�re TV trucks around.

Things are so bad, Bush is now censoring all reporting from NOLA. The First Amendment sank with the city.

The original link is here, but it's down at the moment since being Atrios'd. However I can confirm that the web page did exist--I saw it with my own eyes and copied and pasted the text from my history.

Add to that the Reuters story via latimes.com:

FEMA Wants No Photos of Dead
From Reuters

NEW ORLEANS � The U.S. agency leading Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts said Tuesday that it does not want the news media to photograph the dead as they are recovered.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, heavily criticized for its slow response to the devastation caused by the hurricane, rejected journalists' requests to accompany rescue boats searching for storm victims.

An agency spokeswoman said space was needed on the rescue boats.

"We have requested that no photographs of the deceased be made by the media," the spokeswoman said in an e-mail.

If there was ever a time that full, unfettered photography and reporting was needed, it is now. The dead have faces. THEY MUST NOT BE FORGOTTEN, AND THE GOVERNMENT MUST BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE.

Donate.

Here.

For those who want to know a little bit more about Squelch, check out the new animation web site, masked by tinyurl, of course. There are some pretty good films there, but mostly be sure to check the "about" page.

The Post is now publishing some of Tom Toles' original sketches.

I'll be back with a reaction to Katrina and its aftermath. I find it hard to comprehend at this point.

Rooster Spice, the Podcast--Artificial podcasting.

Episode 16 is here, a better value than gas at 5:10 and 2.7 MB.

Show notes:

• Introducing our guest voices


• Nic Armstrong and the Thieves


• HAL 9000

Like the show? You know what to do.

Holy crap.

Courtesy of Political Animal:

What she dealt with daily goes beyond the pale...beyond the nightmares of most people; Children with all four limbs hacked off right above the knee or below the elbow. Twelve year olds who died in childbirth after being gang-raped by the Janjaweed. Women who gave birth to rape-babies who were then cast out by their families for shaming the family name, leaving only one avenue of survival for themselves and their children after the camps: Prostitution.

What is fucking her up is the desperation, and the fact that she worked herself to death for over a month, and she still didn't really save anyone. Now that she's gone, it's like she was never there. Even the ones she helped keep alive, she didn't save. You try dealing with that reality.

That's Blue Girl, Red State, talking about a friend who went to Darfur for a month, and is, understandably, unable to process the experience just yet.

People with the courage and endurance of this woman make me weep, and make me wish I had one tenth of their strength.

A letter (slightly edited to protect the innocent)

Hello, friends and family:

I'm sending out this huge impersonal form letter to friends and family from within and without the D.C. area. Those of you outside the area, I don't expect you to drive here (well... maybe a little), but I wanted to let you know the news.

I have two, count 'em two, short animated films showing at the D.C. Shorts Festival (http://www.dcshorts.com/), which is running from Sept. 16-18 at the Landmark E Street Cinema. My shorts are showing at the first and fifth screenings--that's Friday Sept 16 at 9 PM, and Sunday Sept 18 at 12 noon. Tickets are on sale at the D.C. Shorts website, and from what I hear, they sell out quickly, so buy now.

There's also an opening night party, open to anyone who has a ticket to Friday night's screening (click on "parties" at the DCShorts website for more info), at Poste Brasserie (555 8th Street, NW, in the Hotel Monaco) from 6 to 9 PM on Friday. Rumor has it there will be nakedness. You heard it here first. I'll be there, and since it's billed as a "Meet the Filmmakers" party, I need people to swarm me so I don't look pathetic compared to all the other entourages. Therefore, I expect you all to be there, even if you wind up too drunk to actually make it to the cinema. I consider it a small price to pay.

In addition, someone at the Washington City Paper received my bribe--er, enjoyed my work enough to do a feature story on me in the Arts section. (!!!!) I have no idea why they chose me over all the other local filmmakers in the festival, but I'll take the kudos. It's supposed to be coming out September 2, at a newsstand near you. Get it! As the philosopher said, "It's free." And I'm told that some of my collaborators and peers say nasty things about me--what could be better? Supposedly, it'll also be in the archives at http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/ but I doubt you'll be able to see my ugly mug on the Web.

Hope to see you there!

Squelch

P.S. Please do forward this to anyone who might be interested--even people who don't know me. The festival is trying to increase attendance in the crucial "doesn't know Squelch" demographic.

edit: Dammit. The reporter tells me the article has been moved to a later edition. The date above is corrected.

Beautiful.

An elegant rebuttal to a so-called "ex-gay." (Via Pandagon.)