second-best

Damn it, The Onion, you are amazing in every way. I want to be you. Here's one from the latest "issue":
Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be

"Right there in the preamble, the authors make their priorities clear: 'one nation under God,'" said Mortensen, attributing to the Constitution a line from the Pledge of Allegiance, which itself did not include any reference to a deity until 1954. "Well, there's a reason they put that right at the top."

"Men like Madison and Jefferson were moved by the ideals of Christianity, and wanted the United States to reflect those values as a Christian nation," continued Mortensen, referring to the "Father of the Constitution," James Madison, considered by many historians to be an atheist, and Thomas Jefferson, an Enlightenment-era thinker who rejected the divinity of Christ and was in France at the time the document was written. "The words on the page speak for themselves."

Tiny Art Director

This may be the most awesome page ever. A super-talented artist creates a work of art based on the recommendations of the "Tiny Art Director" - that is, his 4-year old daughter. After the first draft, she makes some critiques and can choose to accept or reject the work. These comments are put in full below each drawing. Here's an example:



The Brief: A dinosaur, not too scary
The Critique: He's a ugly one! I hate those kind of dinosaurs! Where's your eraser?
Job Status: Rejected
Additional Comments: [hits page] He has ugly eyeballs.



The Brief: A dinosaur in a X-Ray
The Critique: I just want to see a little mousey in his tummy
Job Status: Approved (after addition of mousey)
Additional Comments: That's what kind of bones dogs like to chew on. Dinosaur leg bones.


Hee hee hee! You can read some other amazing critiques and requests on the Tiny Art Director Blog.

..and though the transcriptions may not be 100% accurate, they are 100% hilarious!!

Hi Shane, that alright. The Peter and I got a message from you. I have repair wanna bet the yep so I'm Burt tonight. 15 that night and I just wanna call. Find out more about the power. He out and buy not, we're having not digits Burke show tonight, but we would be a really big ten technical everybody. So, hopefully there's a chance to do it. I will be back on it. Bye.

For the three of you who had the courage to read part 1 of my story, part 2 is coming! Unfortunately not now because I have a big ol' acting workshop this weekend (and today!) It's amazing and it could not have come at a better time. i always come away from this workshop feeling passionate, present and eager to continue learning.. the hard part is holding on to it after the workshop. Each time I go, it's a little easier to take those lessons out into the world with me. So yay, I am already full of love and 2 more days to go!

Power outage at the Center House today. Thanks for the LOLs, Center School!

:|

Some bastards are playing dirty and have taken the lead through nefarious methods. Thus I ask you to watch my vid again! We will win this popularity contest goddammit.



Also I want to see your halloween costumes.

This cat still comes over despite me offering no food. She just wants to cuddle. Supercute, but SOMETIMES I HAVE TO GET OFF MY COMPUTER CHAIR.



FAT CATS MAKE THIS DIFFICULT

Dear sirs and madams: our Windows 7 music video is in a new contest where the most views win. So please.. watch it again! :D

Okay, I know he will make it through because there is a season 3 and now a season 4, but HOLY FUCK THIS SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME. I am 8 episodes into season 2, and seriously I kind of want to die because of all the tension. AGH. AGH. AGH. fdskjlaakjfsad. Plus this stupid disc doesn't have a "next on" thing so I have NO IDEA what is going on in the next episode, but seriously I don't want to continue watching because it's fucking me up, also I don't want to stop watching. UGH



Might I also add it really is something for Michael C. Hall to make me completely forget about his Six Feet Under character. I mean he is 100% Dexter. I have watched 8 episodes in the last 2 days.

also: sup halloween icon

Also, Valve makes some fantastic trailers for their games (See Team Fortress 2)



Warning: lots of graphic violence against zombies, and there is also a clown zombie.

Here's a song co-written by Leeni and I. We created it for the Microsoft 72 Hour Film Challenge. We recorded a bunch of stuff but unfortunately we had some technical issues and didn't have nearly enough time to edit.. but Leeni was fantastic enough to piece it together.

Okay, I just had a dream where I went to Safeway because the manager begged me to cover a single shift because their dairy manager couldn't work that day. Despite not having worked there for 4 months, I suited up and headed to the store.. only to see the dairy manager. He was confused by my presence, but was also okay with maybe leaving a little early now that I was there. He also mentioned that I was late, as the dairy shift had changed to 4am-noon since I had left. Feeling a bit confused, I found the store manager who also denied having contacted me. After some sorting, we determined that I must have dreamt being asked to come and fill a shift and my dreams were ultra-vivid that week. This being a dream, no one found it to be that weird and I quietly made my way out of the store after picking up the new ad because it was ad change day.

To summarize, I dreamt that Dream Shane dreamt about being called in to my old work. The rabbit hole is DEEP, my friends.

THESE WERE OUR SEATS FOR THE SEATTLE SYMPHONY SHOW WITH BEN FOLDS. HOLY FUCK



Also we were all apparently Ben Folds.

So I have now seen Ben Folds Five, Ben Folds and a Piano, Ben Folds with a backing band, Ben Folds with THE backing band (his "permanent" lineup), and now Ben Folds with the Seattle Symphony. So, uh, I'm pretty awesome. Just sayin'.

I have Live From Perth and it's not my fav.. but by going to this show, I realize it's because you just can't experience orchestra in mp3 format. Who knew how much it would help being able to hear all the instruments rather than just a big wall of noise. This helped especially for the louder songs like "Narcolepsy" and "Steven's Last Night in Town" which I wasn't impressed with on the DVD but sound awesome when you are RIGHT IN THE FRONT ROW.

He did a new song too, which I think might be the first time I've heard him play a new song in concert.. he tends to stick with his recorded stuff with the occasional cover and made-up song. The new song was called "Picture Window" from his upcoming project with Nick Hornby.

It was funny.. there were some in the symphony who were having an awesome time, and then others who were just kinda up there because they're getting paid to do it. Ben also sung a few parts of songs away from the piano since the symphony was handling it.. it was kinda weird!

Setlist:



The predictable encore becomes even more predictable when the entire symphony waits on stage for you. But then he did a second "for reals" encore with just him on piano, doing "Army," an impromptu Seattle song, and "Rockin' the Suburbs." He ended the night by having all of Benaroya Hall yelling "FUCK" over and over. Fantastic.

A few friends and I entered a 72 Hour Film Fest this weekend. It was Windows 7 themed. This film was "Family/Kids/Pets" (that's a genre?) and then we had a character/line/prop we had to use. Turned out pretty funny. I edited this!

I have been super exhausted the past two days and then wide awake right around 1am. What's the deal, body? Please let me know what's up, as I tend to do my stuff during the daytime and then sleep in the nighttime. Thanks in advance.

Due to some small print my health insurance has still not been activated. Insurance companies.. good lord. I'll elaborate later, but what a nightmare. Good thing I'm completely healthy - I just have to hold off swine flu until I'm insured again.

Speaking of bodies I am taking active steps to feeling better about my own.. so that's good. It's really tough for me because I love me some instant gratification and bodies don't work that way. So I am impressed with my persistence so far.

This last week I got my google voice AND google wave invite, so now I am totally awesome. I have yet to set up either one.

The Daily Show is fucking amazing. Like, seriously.

I sound designed the latest show at Balagan, Zastrozzi: Master of Discipline. Pretty proud of it. Check it out if you can.

My job is friggin' awesome.

I auditioned for a Gus Van Sant movie last week.

I'm still stuck in anti-social mode and prefer staying inside my house to going anywhere..

I found out my kitty is a she, and she will be moving out next month! :[ Sad but also at least now I know when I can start the hair-removal process.

Okay that's enough. BACK TO BED!

Come on!

I find it very difficult to be content with the present, as I'm sure many people do. The strong feeling that what the future holds is more important than what the present currently is. Stop and smell the roses, the grass is always greener.. there are quite a few cliches talking about this very situation. The hard part is recognizing the routine and stepping outside of it. I often sleepwalk for hours before realizing I was far away daydreaming during every interaction that day. Oh, habits! I loathe thee!

So satisfaction is a very difficult thing for me to achieve, or realize, or even define. I've been told I should have designated "break times" where I don't think about the 20 projects I'm involved in, and just play a video game, or go biking, or listen to music, or whatever. But it's so hard. When I'm on the computer, I multitask. My Firefox typically has 11 tabs open with things I want to read, projects I want to accomplish, and general to-do stuff. Offline, there are a million projects I COULD be doing and that bogs down any enjoyment I might have for my current activity. I have to be okay with not doing these things, and I have to take time where I'm not thinking about them. I'm.. still working on that one. Trying to find my triggers, see what puts me into standby mode as routine takes over and my personality goes to sleep. They're tough to catch.

Currently on my plate for this month is Live Theatre Week, finished the Kick-Off Fair, all other work stuff, sound design for balagan, sound design for theater schmeater, a staged reading later in october, begin rehearsal for a play that opens in december, beta society stuff (we have a show on public access now!), maybe a short film with brandon, a short film with wonder, the DEVS series planning, I hope that's it.. so now that I've written out the insane amount of activities I have available to me, I should not feel the need to look for other things that need to be done.


Right?



Here's a picture from the ferry.

From Ferry is pretty

hahahah what the hell

Not much to say lately. This summer has seen a huge drop in friends who had a fairly consistent presence in my life; it feels very much like a transitional period. Not many texts.. barely any calls at all. People come and go but right now my confidante list is at record lows. It'll rise again someday, but in the meantime it makes my life pretty uninteresting.