Category: IRL

Spewing from the mouth of Hell

You know, I read this entire post, and all I could think is “when did Hilary Duff get hot?” Because I totally didn’t notice. Usually I’m pretty keen on that kind of stuff, but this one totally slipped by me. But honestly, the real mystery here is why is she dating a pantywaste like Joel Madden? Seriously. I’m a hunky shirtless cowboy, not a detective. So anyone, feel free to chime in here. It’s making my head spin.

Say, have I mentioned how awesome my job is yet? Well it is. Most days I have so little to do that I completely forget what I did all day by the end of my shift. Also, I put up walls. I dunno. I just thought maybe I’d bring it up. Seemed like something I should do. The one strange thing is that I’m getting satisfaction from helping other human beings. That’s never happened before, so I’m a little afraid.

And to complete today’s completely worthless blog post (Not at all like yesterday’s. That bacon man should define your outlook on life), a horrible, horrible website! It changes more often than Mike’s! (Though that’s not what makes it so horrible)

I’ll do anything for money

So yesterday was pretty good for me. First of all, I finally finally got my dumb driver’s license. So I’m basically not a loser anymore. Awesome.

More importantly, I went to see the Trailer Park Boys movie. It’s was pretty much the best movie ever. Plenty of stuff for fans of the show, and very accessible to those who’ve never even heard of it. But yeah, it was freakin’ sweet. Any movie that has Rush’s “Spirit Of Radio” as the title catch is a winner in my books. Oh, and it was funny too. Damn funny. Makes Talladega Nights look like Macbeth.

You’ll find love again, I know

If you pay attention to my blog ramblings, you may remember that for most of February of last year (and some early March), I spent a lot of words going on about… well, stuff I don’t normally go on about. And you were probably confused by it all, because I was very vague about it all. Yeah, I’ve gotta do that again today, so feel free to skip the next couple paragraphs. They should mostly be ignored, as it’s just a place for me to vent.

If you did understand what was going on last year, then you might have come to the conclusion that I’ve been smitten by the same problem yet again. Yup, old Ryan is broken again. It’s not a fun feeling, and I rather wish that it would stop happening. I mean, it shouldn’t be this way, but my mom keeps bringing up the subject in question, and it’s not helping. When people keep talking highly about something I don’t have, I tend to start to want for it. Badly. Like, can’t sleep badly. Maybe all people do this, maybe it’s a problem specific to me, I don’t know. What I do know is that I was much happier without this particular issue. But I have decided to tackle it head-on this time. Not at all wise idea, because failure will result in the loss of something very valuable to me, and I have no hand in the outcome of this particular scenario. However, I have a nearly infallible game plan, so I’m not sure what I’m so worried about. I guess I’m just afraid of a repeat of last time. But this time I am armed with knowledge, strategy, and the power of the rebound. You know, the more I type, the better I feel about this whole thing. Venting really does help!

On the upside of it all, since the job prospects are looking excellent (more on that next week) and I’ll definitely pass my driving test next time (October 6th, baby), should I prevail in this current endeavor, I’ll have the holy triad of success. Or in layman’s terms, I’ll be cleared of my “loser” status. I mean, all I really need to regain the respect of others is a job, but the other two would be very nice luxuries indeed.

And now to lighten the mood – Phoenix Wrong! (Make sure to check out the other two as well, they’re all hilarious.)

I will be the flame

So the old birthday went pretty well. The cake pictured above is the brainchild of a couple of my friends. And McCain, I guess.

Got a wad of cash thanks to my many, many relatives, and with it, I finally got a DVD drive for my PC. Not only that, but my very own Best Buy incompetence story as well! I’m so happy to finally have one of these.

Sales guy (we’ll call him Jim): Looking for anything specific?

Ryan: Yeah, I’m looking to pick up a DVD drive.

Jim: That’s cool. They’ve really come down in price. They used to be like $400.

Ryan: Yes, I know.

Jim: So what are you getting it for?

Ryan: Um… playing DVDs? Burning stuff? (to self:) What else do you do with them?

Jim: Cool cool. So they’re all pretty much the same. They’re all internal, they all do dual-layer, what-have-you.

Ryan: What about this one? I think it’s external. *points to an $80 Sony drive that’s clearly external*

Jim: Wha? *Looks at the tag that says internal, and then the box, and the tag again* Well… That’s fucked up. That tag is wrong. Huh. Well if you have any more questions, just ask.

At this point he walks away and I continue to mull over which drive to buy. About a minute later, he comes back.

Jim: Well, that’s definitely wrong. And also, the price on that one is actually $170, not $80. *rips out the tag*

Ryan: Huh. Way to be organized.

I don’t think there are many things that are as entertaining as stories about how Best Buy fucked up. Oh, and while I was there, my brother was looking for a cellphone, so my mom asked this one guy for help, and he said he’d go get someone who knew about cellphones. They waited five minutes, and after no one had shown up, they just left.

Turn off the shyness

So here’s an odd one: Steve Irwin is dead. Yeah. Just let that sink in for a minute. I normally don’t care when people die (what with the hollow tin chest and all), but this one strikes me as kind of sad. You know, getting pwned by a stingray and all. I’m not sure what else to say.

Um, so anyway, Mike’s got a new article up. It’s about comics vs video games. Go read it and vote. I won’t tell you which side to vote for, but make sure you vote. Because it’s your duty as an American interweb dork.

August 2006 archive is up and running if you feel like reading about what I did and saw last month. I also moved over a couple more old articles from Angelfire. Slowly but surely they’re all making their way over, and it looks like they’ve got some unfinished friends in tow! But will I ever finish them? that’s for the future to know and you to find out. A long time from now.

No time to talk

Ugh. So as kind of expected, I blew the driving test. Not too badly, though, and I should be able to pass easily next time. When that next time is going to happen, I have no idea. Given my penchant for procrastinating, probably not too soon. I also had a job interview yesterday, which was sweet. I doubt I’m going to get hired, but it was nice to at least get an interview. Those are rare.

I don’t have much in the way of links today, but I suggest checking out The Top Eleven Best Arch-Nemeses

I said I’d talk about StarFox Command on the off chance that I bought it, and quite frankly, I seem to have a problem saying no to StarFox. That’s not such a bad thing though. Command is almost as good as StarFox 64, even though it deviates from the formula quite a bit. All the flying is done in free-range areas, maning no on-rails levels. A shame, because I love those kind of levels, but I’m not going to complain. The things that do put me off are A)you’re always on a timer, and B) there’s very little variety as far as objectives go. Either you’re hunting down a specific enemy type, or you’re going up against a boss. The formula could use a little more, but it’s still fun.

The new thing in this game is that for each stage, you actually have a tactical map to move your Arwings through, collecting items, encountering enemies, and liberating bases along the way. It sounded dumb in previews, but I actually really like how it works out. You even get to control all your pilots (who switch in and out during the story) independently, and each one has a unique ship and theme music. It all works out really well, and I most definitely suggest you pick this one up if you have a DS. I haven’t even gotten around to playing mulitplayer yet, and I think that says a good amount about how good the single-player game is.

Just to watch it burn

Busy week here in Ryan Land. Tomorrow is what I like to call D-Day (as in Driving Test Day). I don’t know how well that’ll go, but here’s hoping it won’t get too ugly. I’m pretty confident, but it’s mostly false confidence. Which I’m told is a character flaw. But is it really false confidence if I know it’s false? The perplexity of it all makes my head hurt.

I also have to head back to the dentist on Thursday so that he can fuck around some more in my facehole. Getting a filling isn’t nearly as bad as some have made it out to be, but I could most certainly be doing more enjoyable things with my morning.

Nextly, it’s a pretty big week for Coozy For Hire. Along with the regularly scheduled comic on Thursday, we’ve got our 1st year celebration on Friday, which will come with a free bonus comic. And to top it off, the second episode of Spare! hits on Saturday, so you’re going to be getting three comic days in a row. Just nuts I tell you. Fortunately, I had most of them done early (though now my buffer is totally used up and I have to start drawing again). Not to mention, our traffic is steadily increasing every month, and that’s very reassuring. I imagined that this little project would flop long before the year mark. I even have some juicy tidbits for you: firstly, the comics up until at least the second week of October are gold. Secondly, I’m working on a new feature, but I’m not sure if it’s going to work out. It’s for a very minor audience anyway, so I doubt it’ll matter in the end.

StarFox Command hit yesterday, and I want it, but I’m a little wary. The whole “command the missons” junk is a little off-putting, but I think WiFi dogfights would easily make it worth buying even if single player is a miss. I’ll make sure to log my thoughts about it if I do decide to pick it up.

Keep an eye on RainbowPuke.com. I recently submitted a piece. It’ll likely appear once a third page is posted, and you’ll likely be able to tell it’s mine. Cause it has my name on it.

Due to my recent CD acquisitions, I will have to update at least one page in the CD Collection. I’ll also be adding a new page by the end of the week. Not many short ones left, either. B, Q, and S in particular are ones I’m not at all looking forward to doing.

After all this, I think it’s pretty much understood that I’m not going to be doing much on the article front this week.

Dreaming I was Al Capone

I spent the day at the beach today. Bad idea. The beach is fucking torture for me. On the plus side, I got to watch a couple hot girls play tennis for an hour (boing boing). I also finally got a tiny litle sunburn. I say “finally” because I’ve spent a good chunk of time this summer just basting under the sun, and I hadn’t burned at all. I’m pretty much immune.

As far as the site goes, my productivity here is probably going to go down the crapper. I’ve doubled my workload over at Coozy For Hire by deciding to publish two comics a week, and basically what that means is I’m going to be double annoyed by having to write articles. I’ve still got a handful on the back burner that I’ve been putting off for months now, so maybe I’ll get one or two of those up in the coming weeks. Or maybe the ramped-up comic production will push article production even further down my priority list.

Now, I’m not just putting out a second CFH strip each week, either. On every Saturday, I’ll be drudging up a comic from days past, drawing (pun!) from my gigantic collection of comics written about my high school shenanigans. The art quality will be a little less than I shoot for when I do a CFH strip, but considering the source material’s quality, it still looks about 100x better. I think that’s about everything I needed to go through today, so I’ll be off now.

Only wanna dance with you

There was something I wanted to link to today, but being a Boy Of Very Little Brain, I’ve forgotten what it was. I can’t find it again, whatever it was, so to make up for the lack of a link, I’ve moved over a couple more old articles from Angelfire to the dot-net. Someday they’ll all be moved. Probably the day before I decide to give up on this internet crap, but it’ll happen. Anyway, I have to do some rambling on a somewhat deeper level right now, so just ignore the next paragraph unless you’re really interested in me. That means you, stalkers.

While I was rummaging through my old junk, I found a rather personal hidden document that was written by me circa 2002. What that document was about, I’d rather not say. I know that there are a couple people out there who’ve stumbled onto other secret documents of mine, and I can assure you it’s not what you think. I do bring it up for a reason though. After reading it thoroughly, I can do nothing but smile. Why? Because it makes me happy to know that I’ve become happy. I think maybe I was more troubled as a youth than I remember, and I’m very pleased to know that things have gotten much better. I’ve clearly grown as a person, and I like seeing something that really shows that, even if the contents of said documents fill me with shame. It also makes me wonder how much growing I still have to do. I know that there are still some personal issues and hurdles to overcome, but I’m kinda looking forward to the day I can. Damn, I feel like I’m some kind of sullen hero having his cliché self-acceptance moment. And no, that wasn’t my link. It just kind of fit. So yeah, I guess that’s everything. I’m not great at writing about stuff like this (some may argue that I’m not too good at writing about anything), and truth be told, I’m a little embarassed to be publishing it to a public place. I guess that’s really the reason I keep this blog though, so I can write about junk and know that someone, no matter how random, might read it. I would never want to talk about this kind of stuff with anyone, but the idea that someone might know what’s going through my head is actually rather comforting to me. And look at that, I managed to drag it out some more. Well, this is the real end. It’s probably best you just ignore everything in this parapraph. Except the link. It’s pretty funny.

TE’s Hat Collection!

I’m not really one for the world of fashion. Hell, most straight men aren’t. I usually don’t bother with much other than a t-shirt and jeans, but there is one type of accessory that I simply adore. Hats. Yes, hats. I’ve always been quite fond of wearing hats of all shapes and sizes. Sadly, my head is gigantic, so most of the time I look silly with a hat on. So I took that to my advantage, and now I’ve become quite an avid collector of silly hats.

Well, maybe not so much a collector, but I do have a penchant for acquiring unusual headwear.

You know who else wears a wide variety of hats? Kirby. And there are even more similarities than that between me and the little pink marshmallow. See, when Kirby puts on a new hat, it bestows him a power that is somehow represented by that hat. My hats have similar qualities, only slightly less fantastic. My hats don’t make me a master swordsman or allow me to breathe fire. No, those abilities are constant.

That’s far more than enough of a preface, don’t you think? Yes, I’ve rambled a bit too much, so let’s get on to the hats already!

The cowboy hat

The first hat is the cowboy hat. This cowboy hat actually used to belong to my dad, but it was handed down to me a couple years ago after I expressed how much I enjoyed wearing it. Sadly, it spends the bulk of its time as a decoration rather than as a hat.

The cowboy hat not only gives me the skill to wrangle various types of cattle and ride bulls with the best of them, but it also does an excellent job of bringing out my inner shirtless hunky cowboy. This trait is key in scoring with hot models and your mom.

The plastic top hat

I’ve always wanted a top hat. I’ve made it clear to everyone I’ve come in contact with in my whole life ever at least once. While I’ve yet to get my hands on a real top hat, a couple years ago my mom decided that it would be funny to get me a plastic top hat for New Year’s. The thought was appreciated, but the plastic top hat was thrown to the wayside soon after the event. Now it is used mainly as a bucket that holds my bank statements and crayons.

The plastic top hat is a favourite of Party Ryan, though it is still only used on very drunk occasions. It provides me with the power to be funny and to ring in the new year with a plastic hat. Then again, the funny might just be a side effect of the booze.

The novelty pimp hat

This hat is probably the least original of the bunch, being a dime a dozen. Or… 24 dollars a dozen, given the fact that the carnival games that you win these hats cost like two bucks a play. At any given carnival/amusement park, you’ll likely see folks young and old sporting these hats en masse.

This hat affords me no extra ability, as my pimpin’ skillz are as top notch as they’re gonna get.

The adventure hat

Also known as “the fedora” and “the Indiana Jones hat”, the adventure hat has a very special place in my heart. I bought it during my latest trip to Walt Disney World, and it is the only hat I wear day-to-day. While a fedora is usually reserved for old men, I think it suits me quite well, and it matches with my sweet suede jacket.

The adventure hat’s effect is a little more subtle than most. It enhances my adventuring and relic-finding skills to near god-like levels. Like the cowboy hat, it also adds to my innate studliness, though the effect is slightly less than that of the cowboy hat.

Bonus!

As a neat little extra, apply aviator glasses and a goatee to the mix and BAM! you’re Adam Savage. The illusion is seamless.

The reindeer antlers

Alright, I’ll level with you; the antlers aren’t really mine. We bought them for my dogs to wear, but they turned out to be too big for the dogs’ tiny little noggins. Obviously, it was a big small to get around my enormous cranium.

As the antlers aren’t mine, nor are they even intended for human use, they don’t induce any special effects.

The horns

Okay smartasses, make your greenhorn jokes now and get it over with. The horns were purchased before one Halloween because I had no costume ideas and I was pretty much picking up anything I could to make a hodgepodge of novelty items.

The horns don’t do a whole lot, really. Their main use is making small children afraid and cry. Everything else is simply aesthetic.

The X-Buster

It was ten bucks okay. You know I’ll buy anything with MegaMan stamped on it.

The X-buster, to sum it up quickly, doesn’t do a whole lot when placed on my head. It most certainly doesn’t summon seagulls like I hoped it would. When placed on my hand, however, it allows me to fire small foam darts with almost no accuracy or power.

The mask

A treasured construction toy of my past, I discovered that I still had my bucket of ZAKS only a scant few years ago. While fooling aroud with them, I also discovered that most of the manual was intact. And what was the coolest thing in the manual? The ZAKS mask of course. It looks kind of like a gorilla head from the right angle.

The ZAKS mask, like the horns, does an excellent job scaring small children. Other effects include making people think I’m really smart because I was able to fashion an entire helmet (including a removable neck protector) out of triangles and squares.

The Dallas Cowboys cap

This hat actually used to/might still belong to my dad, but I do wear it from time to time, when the adventure hat seems like a little too much. I’m pretty sure it’s mine though, because he has another hat and never wears this one.

This hat grants me the special ability to look like I play far more sports than I do. It’s useful for getting into the pants of those girls who only like jocks. When paired with sunglasses, it also allows me look a lot older, possibly even enabling me to pass for a slightly shorter version of my dad. These abilities do wonders for camouflauge in populated areas.

The Bomber Bolts

The foam novelty accessories are a staple of sporting events, and I’m not the kind to not jump on every bandwagon that passes by. The cliché giant foam hand was my first pick, but since it wans’t available, I had to go with the headpiece. Unfortunately, I’d outgrown it long ago, and now I can’t get it on my head without fear of tearing it in half.

The main effect of the bolts is making me holler like an animal while watching the game. Also notable is that they change people’s opinion of you based on how well the Bombers are doing in the current season.

The Conan

So it’s not a hat. Big deal. I’m including it and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s not a perfect replica of the Conan, but it’s as close as my hair is ever gonna get. It’s pretty similar to “the Steve” as well, it’s just parted differently.

While sporting this “do”, I don’t gain the daywalker traits of Conan O’Brien, but it certainly does attract attention.

And that concludes the list of my hats and the various abilities I gain while wearing them. Maybe one day when I’ve collected more hats, I shall show those off as well, but for now this is all.