BIG THINGS! REALLY BIG THINGS!

This time I actually do have some big things to talk about.

I have teamed up with the Minneapolis-based cycling gear company Banjo Brothers for a Twitter-based short story bonanza!

I wrote a neato short short story called "Some Tires are Meant to Be Flat" about bike riding in Minneapolis, and this Thursday it's going to be released 140 characters at a time via the Banjo Brothers Twitter feed. It's going to start at 8am, with a new installment coming every 1/2 hour until 4pm. It's a great story, filled with love and longing and drinking and bicycles and Kurt Vonnegut. Secretly hidden in the story is a code word to get a special deal on Banjo Brothers stuff at Calhoun Cycle.

Nobody else has done anything like this on Twitter, so this is really cutting edge stuff. Even more cutting edge than the new domain name. Actually, forget that, this goes way beyond cutting edge. This is, like, laser-powered-cutting-beam-from-the-future edge. This is the light saber of marketing campaigns. Seriously, print out the story and use it to cut open a tauntaun on the ice planet Hoth.

So yeah, remember on Thursday to go on Twitter and follow the story. Then feel free to go purchase some quality Banjo Brothers merchandise.

Stop the presses!

Breaking! Breaking! This just in!

I got tired of having that ridiculous 'dot blogspot' in the URL, so I went ahead and purchased a sharp new cutting edge address. This online web-based journal-type log is now available at www.knowledge-dropped.com! Update your bookmarks accordingly.

Of course I would have liked to have it without the stupid dash in there, but knowledgedropped.com was already taken by some bozo in Arizona who isn't even using it. But still, it feels all nice and official now. Ha ha it's even got that great new-URL smell* ha ha ha!

*What the hell am I doing. New car smell jokes are never funny ever. I'm really sorry. I should just delete it right now. I put all this money and effort into getting a custom domain name and the first thing I do is ruin the moment by being terrible and hackneyed. I might as well ask what the deal is with airline food**.

**Oh God I'm sorry, this bland send-up of Seinfeldian observational comedy is even more cliche than the new car smell joke. I don't know how much lower I can sink. I should just run away forever***.

***It's still a little cold outside. I'll wait until Summer to run away.

On movies

So yesterday my sister and I went down to the Southdale 16 and watched Watchmen. I liked it a lot. This was very surprising. Now I'm not going to analyze why I liked it or share any meaningful observations (other than that "I'm glad I ordered the four-legged chicken" was easily the best part), but I'll tell you why it surprised me.

First of all, I don't really get out to the theaters much. I don't know why this is. I generally enjoy the ritualistic nature of the movie going experience, especially when I am able to dig into a nice Fun Dip, which is the greatest movie-watching candy ever made. Is it because I'm something of a film snob and there's never anything out that I want to see? No, my standards are actually pretty low. I saw Starsky and Hutch in the theater. And I liked it. Is it because my friends have always seen everything already, and I'm too self conscious to go to a movie by myself? Well, yeah, but if I really want to I can just make plans with my friends in advance. Is it because I'm a paranoid shut-in who only leaves the house to buy cases of bottled water and boxes of ammunition? No, I buy all my ammunition online. Is it because I'm really impatient and have a terrible attention span and tend to get bored and fidgety after about an hour? Yep, that's the one.

Watchmen clocks in at about 2 hours and 40 minutes. This exceeds my attention span by about 70 minutes. I simply don't have any patience for long movies. Like I said before, I get bored and fidget. There are a few exceptions, of course. I could sit still and watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy all the way through. And, um... well, maybe that's the only exception. Even when I like a movie it's hard to do. I mean I was counting down the minutes during The Dark Knight, and that movie was ten minutes shorter than Watchmen. I just about killed myself during King Kong. I think I actually did kill myself during Titanic. And I can get through The Godfather, but not all at once. It takes two, ideally three sittings. I think you get the idea. But for whatever reason, I sat through all 162 million minutes of Watchmen without getting bored once. By this criteria it must be one of the greatest movies of all time. It's my favorite movie now just by default.

In other movie related news, this trailer for Where the Wild Things Are was recently released:



I'm not kidding when I say that this is the greatest movie trailer I have ever seen. I've been looking forward to the movie ever since I heard that Spike Jonze was attached to direct, but to be honest I don't even care anymore. I mean take out the tag-lines and the credits, and this thing could stand on its own as a beautiful short film. It certainly captures everything from the book. I think I could be happy just watching the trailer over and over again. It's that good.

Then again, maybe the only reason I think it's so good is because it's only 2 minutes long and I have attention span issues.

Memory Day: I was a stupid kid edition

My sister is in town, so I am going to share a memory that includes her.

She's four years older than me, so when we rumbled and tussled as children I almost always lost. Unless, of course, I started crying. Then our mom would enter the ring, and I would get the victory by technical knockout. I was an excellent fake-crier, and I used the fake crying strategy as often as I could. Sure it was cheap and shameful, but I was like four years old so give me a break.

My sister got sick of my theatrics and unearned victories, and so one day she tricked me.

"Hey Ian, you want to play a joke on Mom?"

"Yeah!"

"Let's pretend to get into a fight, and then you start pretend-crying. Mom will think it's real and it'll be super funny!"

"Yeah!"

So we pretended to fight, and I pretended to cry, and our mother of course took my side because I was a crying four-year-old.

"No, it's okay Mom, Ian is just pretending!"

"Yeah Mom! I'm pretending!"

"See? He admits it. And now you know that every time he cries he's probably just pretending, and I shouldn't get into trouble for beating him up ever again."

Wait, what? It wasn't just a joke? It was a ploy to make me voluntarily surrender my one and only weapon in the sibling cold war? Curse my undeveloped critical thinking skills! Okay, Thea, you win this round. And pretty much every other round until I turn 16 or so and am finally able to match up with you physically, at which time you will be long gone to college and we won't have occasion to fight anyway.

On the Man Factory

So, everybody, how was your weekend? Did you do anything interesting? Oh you did? Really? And the fire department had to come? No jail time, just probation? Why you rambunctious devil!

As for myself, I went with six other dudes to my friend Kye's cabin in Aitkin, MN. Not a whole lot to tell about the trip, but here's a brief rundown:

• Bestowing upon the cabin the noble title of The Man Factory
• Finding and wearing old straw hats and a neon yellow Los Angeles Rams visor
• Finding and wearing Fourth of July decorations
• Discussing all of the other possible uses for the Man Factory name (Gay nightclub? Industrial rock band? Turns out it's already taken by a band in Texas that sings nothing but songs about Street Fighter characters. Seriously.)
  
• "I thought you meant more ammo for the ****ing American fire"
  
• Watching a Taiwanese bootleg DVD of The Wrestler
• Discussing at great length the subject of Marisa Tomei
• Realizing that Aitkin is the most boring town in Minnesota
  
• Eating fondue and almost burning the cabin down with spitting oil
• Continually referring to said fondue as Fun Dip
• "Sometimes America just happens"
  
• Purchasing and wearing fake mustaches
• Discovering my new favorite beer, Fat Cat (not actually that good, I just like the can)
• Using the hair-of-the-dog hangover strategy for the first and what I hope is the last time ever for the rest of my life
  

So in conclusion, it was pretty fun, although there was arguably a little too much male bonding going on. But then again, it was the Man Factory after all.

Memory Day: I was a weird kid edition

I am fascinated by the brain. That we can get all of our thought, imagination, intelligence, and feeling out of what is really just a soggy lump of gray flesh just boggles my mind. And the fact that my mind is boggled by trying to comprehend itself just boggles me further in like a never ending loop of perpetual boggling. But seriously, the brain truly is amazing, and if I didn't find science so boring I think I would be happy studying it for a living. Maybe win an Ig Nobel prize or two.

I think the part of the brain that I find most interesting is memory. Talk about something that we take for granted. I find it fascinating that all of our past experiences, our entire lives basically, are stored in that soggy lump. Really, how does it even work? How can a bunch of electrical impulses or whatever convey the emotional depths of our most treasured memories? I would look it up, but again, boring. When it comes down to it, I just don't have the right disposition to tackle scientific information. Instead I use my literary background to come up with analogies that don't really fit.

You see, to me memory is like a big cauldron being stirred by a witch. It's all in there, bubbling around, When you want to remember something, the witch sticks in her enormous ladle or whatever and stirs it up for you. But sometimes something will bubble up on it's own, all the way from the bottom where you didn't even know it existed. Then you kill Duncan and become the King of Scotland, only to be beheaded later. The end.

So anyway, that's my pointless and rambling introduction to what will be a new weekly feature here at Knowledge Dropped Incorporated. From this day forward, Wednesday shall instead be known as Memory Day. Each week I will highlight some of the random memories that bubble up out of nowhere. It'll be like This American Life, only way more interesting because it's all about me me me!

I don't know exactly what prompted this first memory, but it popped into my head a couple days ago and now I'm enamored with how bizarre it is.

When I was about six years old, I decided that what I really wanted to do was to sleep in my closet. I would take my pillows and sheets off of my large comfortable bed and put them on the floor of my closet and close the door and sleep there. I thought it was great. I'm pretty sure it went on for a while.

I can't really explain why I did this, because I frankly can't remember. But I have a few theories:

1. My family had recently moved into a new house, and I had my own room for the first time. Perhaps on a subconscious level I was uncomfortable in this new, larger space, and the closet offered a feeling of protection and security?
2. I have always had a deep seated love of forts. I used to build forts like a madman around my house and yard, and perhaps I wanted my closet to be like a secret fort or something?
3. I was and still am insane. Perhaps there is no adequate explanation for my strange behavior other than my abnormal mental state?
   

Of those three possible explanations, I have to say I think that number 2 is the likeliest, although 1 and 3 might have elements of truth to them as well.

On today's great leaders of discovery and innovation

Welp, I certainly slacked off around here. After the big SECRET PROJECT revelation that I am working on a screenwriting project that is destined to sit in the bottom of the drawer somewhere, I hope you realize that I had other things on which to lavish my attention. I've written about five pages so far, and combine that with the five pages that Jake wrote, and we're already 1/12 of the way done! Although I will readily admit that what I wrote was pretty inane. Here's a sample of my high caliber dialogue:

TRAVIS

Oh ho ho, Benjamin. You’re just asking to get canned. If you don’t get the fuck down here in five minutes and start making some delicious Arby’s roast beef sandwiches, I swear it’s gonna be your ass.

Hilarious, right? Ugh. I have a sneaking suspicion that this whole thing might end up being really stupid.

But moving on, I have a topic I would like to cover. And before you even ask, I'll tell you right now that yes it involves Wikipedia. I have discovered yet another fascinating page! It's the complete list of Ig Nobel Prize winners.

If you are not familiar, the Ig Nobel Prize is basically the opposite of the Nobel Prize. Sort of like what the Razzies are to the Oscars. It's supposedly awarded for achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think." They basically just pick people doing ridiculous research in completely useless fields. Oftentimes it's awarded in an ironic way, such as giving the prize in Literature to L. Ron Hubbard for the Scientology bible Dianetics, or giving the prize in the Peace category to LAPD chief Daryl Gates for his role in the LA riots.

It's a very entertaining list to browse, and it illustrates one of the great facets of Wikipedia. That is, it allows for some style and flourish rather than straightforward information. Whoever wrote the list obviously has a sense of humor, and it's all done in a very tongue-in-cheek way that you would never get from a real encyclopedia.

I have a few favorites from the list, please allow me to share them with you:

• 1995 award for Physics: Presented to Dominique M.R. Georget, R. Parker, and Andrew C. Smith of Norwich, England, for their rigorous analysis of soggy breakfast cereal. It was published in the report entitled "A Study of the Effects of Water Content on the Compaction Behaviour of Breakfast Cereal Flakes."
• 1999 award for Peace: Presented to Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong of Johannesburg, South Africa, for inventing the Blaster, a foot-pedal activated flamethrower that motorists can use against carjackers.
• 2001 award for Medicine: Presented to Peter Barss of McGill University, Canada, for his impactful medical report "Injuries Due to Falling Coconuts".
• 2002 award for Literature: Presented jointly to Vicki L. Silvers of the University of Nevada-Reno and David S. Kreiner of Central Missouri State University, for their colorful report "The Effects of Pre-Existing Inappropriate Highlighting on Reading Comprehension".
• 2004 award for Public Health: Presented to Jillian Clarke of the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, and then Howard University, for investigating the scientific validity of the five-second rule about whether it's safe to eat food that's been dropped on the floor.
• 2007 award for Peace: The Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, for suggesting the research and development of a "Gay Bomb," which would cause enemy troops to become sexually attracted to each other.

Fascinating stuff, all around.

On the SECRET PROJECT! SHHHH!

So I was originally going to write something about this Presidential Inauguration candy bar that found its way into my posession, but I've been writing about Mr. Obama quite a lot recently and I felt like covering a different topic.

Plus I don't really have much to say about it. I mean I think it's pretty funny that they made special candy bars just for the inauguration, but what else can I say? There it is, a presidential candy bar. It wasn't a very good candy bar either.

I also thought I could write another weekend retrospective and talk about how on Friday I did a karate kick in the street and ripped one of my only two pairs of pants, but that was pretty much the only noteworthy thing that I did.

And I already wrote about my shoes a few weeks ago, so that's ruled out as a topic.

So I guess what I'm going to write a little bit about is my SECRET PROJECT! I know I have been keeping you on pins and needles regarding what the project actually is, and that it's just been eating at you and eating at you and you haven't been able to get any sleep, but I believe it has finally progressed enough that I can give a few tantalizing details about it. Oh my god, here goes. Drumroll please.

My friend Jake and I are writing a screenplay. I don't know how long it is going to take, or how seriously we are going to take it, or what we are going to do with it once we finish, but we have been meeting about it once a week for the past couple months and I think that we are actually going to create something cool. I guess the McKnight Foundation gives out some fellowships to screenwriters each year, so our tentative goal is to try and win that. But who knows, maybe we'll try and sell it or something. It's also quite possible that it will end up being just for our own personal enjoyment. Hopefully not, I want to make some bucks!

I'll probably write more about the process as the project goes along. Up until now we had just been working on the story and the characters, but now we are at the point where we will actually start writing it. I've never written any scripts or anything before, so I don't really know what I'm doing. Jake on the other hand has taken many screenwriting classes and written many scripts, so he does know what he's doing. He's also probably the funniest person I know, with a sense of humor very similar to my own, so I think that we will make a very good team on this.

So yeah, look forward to more on this topic, and look forward to our movie IN THEATERS NEAR YOU!

Spebecting the mysteries of Lake Calhoun

It's a beautiful day out today. Sunny, blue sky, temperatures in the mid 30's. Just right for March. And since I am unemployed and have nothing better to do in the afternoon, I decided to do a little exploring and spebecting.

I live a couple of blocks away from Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis. If you are familiar with the area, I live by the big gold dome of the Greek Orthodox Church. As I was driving around the lake recently, I spied something in the middle. Some sort of mysterious structure, built from snow.

Since my camera is still broken (r.i.p.), I had to document the adventure using only the pathetic camera on my cell phone. It's hard to see the target in this picture, so I have thoughtfully circled it for you.

It was obviously very big, as it was clearly visible from a great distance. I just couldn't tell what it was. Some sort of pyramid or ziggurat maybe? Perhaps a giant igloo? Or maybe... a giant igloo pyramid! A giant igloo pyramid built by a secret society! A secret society of robot witches! It all made sense.

Artist's conception of a robot witch.

Even though I had already figured out exactly what it was, I had to get close and do some real spebecting. For those of you readers that don't make a habit of walking across snow covered frozen lakes, let me tell you: it's exhausting, and it takes forever. I should have used snow shoes or cross country skis.

My tracks. The camera on my phone apparently has a really poor light meter, so everything looks washed out and grey like an episode of the X-Files. It was actually incredibly bright and sunny.

Getting closer. You can see now that it's pretty big.

My heart began to pound as I approached the structure. It may have been the constant fear of robot witch attacks. The lake was swarming with them, and although they kept their distance, I knew they could strike at any moment. Or maybe it was just the trudging through the deep snow for twenty minutes that got my heart rate up. I tell ya, it's hard work.

As you can see from the following photographs, the pyramid igloo is a marvel of frozen architecture. It stands about 9 feet tall and is probably about 25 feet around.

Note the cleared off ice surrounding the pyramid. It looks almost like a crop circle. Could the robot witches be extraterrestrial in origin?

Note the distinctive markings on the side of the pyramid. Could they be the work of robot witch claws?

Of course I climbed to the top. What else would I do?

I was somewhat disappointed to discover that there was no visible means of entering the structure, and it was not really an igloo at all. Just a big ol' mountain of snow. I was also extremely disappointed to discover that what I had assumed were swarms of robot witches were actually just stupid kite skiers. Apparently there's no such thing as a robot witch, and my rabid belief in them may actually be a sign of acute schizophrenia. Man, talk about having your world flipped upside down.

So now I'm working under the theory that the pyramid was in fact built by human hands, but the true purpose is still a mystery. Something sinister no doubt. And although we may never truly know who built it or why, I consider this case to be closed.

Also, does somebody want to buy me a new camera?

Wikipedia, cont'd

So my last post, about how Shredder's Wikipedia page is way longer than Barack Obama's, received the following comment from one Monsieur brianS:

Just more evidence that Barack was underqualified to be preznit ;-)

I bet Hillary's is longer.

I understand that brianS left this comment with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek, but it got me thinking nonetheless. I decided to conduct a study of the presidential canditates and their Wikipedia pages.

After exhaustive statistical research, I was able to rank the main five players in the 2008 Presidential Election game according to the number of words in their Wikipedia pages. Please note that the word count uses the main body of the article only, and does not include the notes/reference section or whatever links and categories that come after it.

The results may shock you. More likely, they will amuse you for several seconds and then leave you bored and maybe a little thirsty.

1. Barack Obama - 5,287 words
2. Sarah Palin - 6,554 words
3. Joe Biden - 8,984 words
4. John McCain - 9,121 words
5. Hillary Clinton - 11,141

My thoughts on these rankings:

1. If Shredder had been in the presidential race, his page would have checked in at number two with 9,350 words.
   
2. Holy frak is Hillary Clinton's page long. According to Wikipedia itself, Hillary's page is the 175th longest on the site. It falls just ahead of the Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy timeline page, and just behind the United States Marine Corps Amphibious Recconaissance Battalion page. The number one longest article on Wikipedia? 2007 in Iraq.
   
3. Maybe brianS actually has a point. Maybe all of the fear mongers and rumor mavens were right, and we just don't know enough about Barack Obama. I mean, barely five thousand words? Is that really enough information to have on the leader of the free world?
   

So yeah, I dunno. This project really opened my eyes. It nearly convinced me that Hillary Clinton really should have been elected president. But after I saw that her page was the 175th longest, my eyes were drawn a little higher up on the list. Coming in at number 153: List of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles supporting characters. The article is a whopping 27,007 words. Take that and add the 9,350 words from Shredder's page, and however many thousands of words there are on the pages of the Turtles themselves. What do you get? A frak-load of words.

There is only one conclusion that can be drawn from this:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for president!!!!!!