Feaverish

New poster for everyone’s favorite band, Boy Eats Drum Machine (if you click on the poster you’ll get a GIGANTIC version perfect for pasting on a grocery bag and wearing on your head. Eye holes not included.):

I got the idea for the poster when I worked as a bush pilot in Central America and we used to drop banjos on the string-instrument-starved natives. I can’t wait until BEDM gets big and they can afford to pay me to print in color (or better yet, get me a silkscreen machine).

Speaking of bands, you kids are all listening to Tapes ‘n Tapes, right? If you like the Arcade Fire or Wolf Parade you’ll like Tapes ‘n Tapes. They have a bunch of songs you can download on their homepage, or you can buy their album at iTunes.

My favorite song so far is “10 Gallon Ascots,” which I’m sure you can find if you look hard enough. It’s a big internet.

You know that Wolf Parade song Grounds for Divorce? And how the opening lyric goes: “Said you hate the sound/of the [???] on the ground/said you hate the way they scrape their brakes all over town/I said pretend it’s whales/keepin’ their voices down?”

What’s he say there in the [???]? I bought the album, but it doesn’t come with any lyrics.

When I first heard the song I thought for sure he was saying “bicyclists” (in three rushed syllables, like: bi-seh-klists) but the internet disagrees. The internet thinks he’s saying “buses.” But you know how if you think a song is saying one thing you hear that thing no matter what the song’s really saying?

I suppose “buses” makes more sense in that it’d be easier to pretend that buses are whales (too easy?), but bikes definitely “scrape their brakes all over town.” Maybe someone from Montreal can tell us whether buses or bicyclists have the more annoying brake scraping in that city (or, failing that, which one sounds more like whales keeping their voices down). Of course, I’m a known bike sympathizer (I almost wrote “bike synthesizer” there, which would be awesome if it existed) so I could be wrong.

I broke my bike the other day. The frame just cracked all of a sudden while I was riding to work. I had another frame ready to go so I only missed a day of riding, but it was traumatic. I had to take the bus, which, as far as I’m concerned, is the worst possible form of transportation. Like a concentration camp on wheels. Honestly, when I got on, I thought I’d stepped into some kind of communicable disease treatment bus. The kind that tours Africa caring for patients with Ebola and flesh-eating bacteria. Seriously, everyone had some kind of disease on display. I kept changing seats the whole ride, trying to lessen my chances of catching anything serious. I made it from Wet Sores Guy to Probably Bird Flu Guy to Recent Case Of Dysentery Woman and finally to the sweet relief of Good Old Fashioned Eczema Guy, where I stayed for the remainder of the trip.

What’s crazy is that I know people who ride the bus to work every single day! Needless to say, these people are now on my permanent “do not hug” list.

In other news, I realize this website is turning into one of those blogs where maybe you read something funny a long time ago and thought it had promise so you bookmarked it and maybe linked to me? And ever since then it’s really gone down hill, and then one day you read the archives from before the funny post that you first read and you realize that this site was never that funny to begin with? So probably you keep linking to me just because this whole blogs’n’links thing is so new that none of us know the etiquette of ceasing to link to someone who’s still writing (hint: it’s okay!) but you definitely move the bookmark from your bookmarks bar to some folder deep in your browser’s bowels? And then maybe one day you go out and buy a new computer and when you’re transferring all the old stuff to the new computer you come across my link again and you hesitate for a second but eventually you just leave it on the old computer and figure that digg or del.icio.us will let you know if anything good ever comes out of feaverish again?

MacZOT! is a good idea I can’t believe someone hasn’t thought of before. Every day they offer a sale price on a different piece of Mac shareware. The deal only lasts for one day, and they only offer a set number of licenses (they usually sell them all before the day’s over, so shop early). In a way I feel bad shortchanging Mac programmers, but I suppose any per-item loss of profit is made up for in quantity and publicity.

Speaking of great ideas, have you heard of Blingo? It’s a search engine (based on Google) that you get prizes for using. Better still, you can refer your friends and get prizes when they win, too! So if I sign you up, and you win a video iPod, I also win a video iPod. It’s all totally free; all you have to do is click the image below to be added to my friends. Once you’ve signed up yourself, send invitations to all your friends and wait for the prizes to roll in. The more people you sign up, the better your chances of winning. Yeah, it’s basically a pyramid scheme, but it’s free and no one has to buy any knife sets or anything to participate.

So far I’ve won a $10 iTunes gift certificate, but I’m really hoping for one of those video iPods. Don’t let me down, people.

Oh, and a couple of notes: I think Blingo’s only open to U.S. residents, and only your first 10 searches per day count towards prize-winning.

Updates: Thanks to everyone who’s signed up as a Blingo friend. I forgot to mention that there are instructions for adding Blingo search to Firefox or Internet Explorer. If you’re using Safari, you can install the excellent AcidSearch plugin. Besides letting you add different search engines to your search toolbar, AcidSearch has a great Firefox-esque find-as-you-type feature. You’ll need OS X 10.3 or better.

Finally, I thought I should mention that today’s (Thursday, March 9th) macZOT! special is one of my favorite programs, Xyle scope. It’s a Safari-based browser and web inspector that breaks down a web page into easy-to-read HTML and CSS, letting you see how any page is built. Click on a page element and Xyle scope shows you the corresponding HTML and CSS. It’s pretty much completely replaced the also-excellent Web Developer Extension for Firefox on my computer.

The other day I was looking at my Amazon recommendations and saw the following:

Calculator recommendations based on book choice? That’s funny, I don’t remember any calculators in Their Eyes Were Watching God. (I do remember a woman shooting her rabid husband, though.) “These Amazon recommendations are truly ludicrous,” I said to myself. “Such a preposterous event must needs be blogged. Why, this is the very kind of observation—one gently poking fun at a foibled attempt by modern man to automate his life—that you’d find on the hallowed pages of such estimable bloggers as Jason Kottke or Andy Baio.” I could already picture the headlines:

AMAZON RECOMMENDATIONS GONE WILD
Heretofore Unknown Internet Diarist Documents Entire Spectacle on Blog, Becomes Overnight Celebrity

I ran into the bedroom where L was taking a nap and shook her awake. “Come, come, you must see what I’ve found!” I dragged her to the computer and showed her the screenshots I’d taken. “We’re going to be rich. Rich, baby! Adsense ads, banner ads, flashing popups! We’ll have it all. The whole Dooce treatment. I want you to call your boss right this minute and tell him you quit. Girlfriends of famous bloggers don’t need to work! Wahahahaha!”

L made a face. The kind of face you make at a retarded dog trying to squeeze through a too-small hole in a fence. “That’s super, sweetie,” she said, patting my shoulder, “but we teach all those books in high school. And kids need graphing calculators in high school.” I cocked my head to one side and scrunched up my face, confused. “I think Amazon just thinks you’re in high school.”

L went back to her nap and I sat and stared at the computer for a long, long time, heartbroken, until I remembered that if there’s one thing my loyal readers like better than clever observations, it’s self-deprecation. Hence this post.