What the Hell?

Ok, Internet, you've finally fried my brain.

We've all seen the stupid banner ads on every website ever. Refinance your home, get government grants to go back to school, click the button and win a free iPod, this hot girl in her underwear is just dying to talk to YOU. That's all great and everything... but today I saw one that just contained more WTF than I could handle:

Seriously, this is a real ad.

About 3 years ago, I was offered a chance to "audition" for a Faustian-sounding job designing banner ads for the web. Work from home, embarrassingly high salary, and all I would have to do is toss off irritating little boxes and rectangles containing misleading, irritating propaganda. I spent a few hours designing 3 different versions of what I thought was a beautiful, sophisticated submission.

Did not. Get. The job.

Now, look up at that banner ad I posted. The old man with 7 chins and a confused, hurt expression. After consulting the ad's text, I can only assume that the pitiful puppy-dog eyes have something to do with this man's profound remorse that no, he is not a mother who has finished some college credits. And if he is, then I am convinced that there is a God-- a cruel, twisted God with an incredibly sick sense of humor.

On second thought, he may just be sharing my observations on this matter. I have never in my life seen a human face so accurately expressing the thought: "What the fuck am I doing in this ad?"

Testing mobile post

This is something. Yay!

Confessions of The Synchronicity Killer

Robert Culp is dead, and it's all my fault. Apparently my actions have the power to murder people from vast distances. It's never intentional, but it always seems to happen to talented celebrities that I happen to admire. Let me explain.

It all started in the summer of 2004, when I saw a Rick James t-shirt at a tacky beach gift store in New Hampshire:

Basically this, but with the actual Rick James's face.

I bought the shirt, mostly due to the mildly-amusing coincidence that my first name is Rick and my middle name happens to be James. (I sometimes use "Rick James" as a sort of pseudonym when singing karaoke or posting potentially inflammatory comments on web discussion boards. It's also a really good icebreaker at parties and bars.)

A month or so later, I was getting ready to drive to Pennsylvania for a camping trip with my college friends, affectionately known as the Popov Society. Stopping at McDonald's to pick up a cup of coffee, I accidentally pushed the lid on the coffee cup down too hard and the cup exploded boiling hot coffee all over me and the brand-new Rick James t-shirt I was wearing in public for the first time ever.

After a quick stop back home to change my shirt, I made the 5-hour drive to the campsite. I was the first to arrive. The second was my friend Mike. During some chit-chat, I recounted the story of my ill-fated Rick James shirt, and he just stared at me in disbelief.

"Dude... you killed Rick James," he said. I asked him what he was talking about, and he informed me that Mr. James had been found dead in Burbank that very morning, and it was all over the news.

I can accept mere coincidence, but something this huge and so seemingly connected blew my mind. I started to question the very fabric of the universe, and the possibility that I had just experienced, or even caused, a shockingly potent case of Jungian synchronicity (although technically, the very concept of synchronicity is, by definition, not directly related to causality). At any rate, to this day, I still feel responsible for the death of one of funk's greatest legends.

This is what everyone thinks of when you say the word "synchronicity".

Fast forward a few years, to March 2010:

As a longtime Netflix customer, I discover that they have the entire series of "The Greatest American Hero" available in streaming format, so I decide to start from the beginning and watch every single episode. It's not a particularly great show. The writing is corny and sloppy, the production is weak, but I still find that through the magic of nostalgia, I have no problem enjoying the escapades of Ralph, Bill, and the "magic jammies" as they repeatedly save the world from Russian spies and Arab terrorists.

In addition, I discover a local TV station has been playing reruns of the 1960's series "I Spy". On Tuesday night, I watched an episode of this equally ridiculous show for the first time since I was probably 10 or 11 years old.

Wednesday after work, my revisiting of "The Greatest American Hero" came to an end as I watched the series finale during dinner. 20 minutes later, I was informed that Robert Culp had died at the age of 79 after accidentally falling and hitting his head.

I'm sorry, everybody.

Believe it or not... this is the murder weapon.

Blogger Ruined My Life

Ok, maybe that's a bit dramatic. Anyway, everyone who reads this blog (yes, both of you) will notice that it looks like a piece of off-the-shelf preformatted crap right now. There's a reason for that. As of May 1st, 2010, Blogger will no longer support FTP publishing, which also means that the custom HTML blog templates I spent hundreds of tedious, meticulous hours designing for my own blog and two or three others are going directly into the toilet.

I figured I may as well get a jump on things and experiment with the remaining possibilities while I still have a little over a month to make the switch. I have set up a redirect from my site to the blogspot address that my blog is now being hosted on. I really hate this template, but it was the closest match I could find to the color scheme of my website. I hate that the post width is like an inch, or that there seems to be an indelible navigation bar built in to every template that Blogger uses.

Please, if anyone can point me to a fully-customizable blog service that doesn't require me learning an entirely new programming language to use, I would appreciate it. I am great with HTML and CSS, as well as SQL. I have experimented a very little bit with WordPress and was also looking into Tumblr, but I'd like some suggestions and advice before I decide to get too committed and entrenched in a new service. Blogger just isn't going to cut it anymore. Thanks!

EDIT: Since this post was published, I have discovered that Blogger has incorporated some new beta features that will hopefully allow me to customize the blog layout more than I had originally thought possible. Experiments to follow. Over and out.