It's Not Just You, The Problem's Mine To Hide

Some photos taken my last year at Penn State, from my third apartment in State College. There are actually three different days/nights represented here, grouped into the first thirteen, the next one at night, and the last three.

The Day You Move, I'm Probably Gonna Explode

When I became interested in new music in college, I started making CDs to share what I'd found with people. Not too many people took me up on the offer; but nonetheless, these discs provided me with a soundtrack to my college years. Here's the first one, created in late 2005.

New Stuff CD 1

1. God Killed The Queen – Louis XIV
2. Do You Want To – Franz Ferdinand
3. Cold Hard B**** - Jet
4. DOA – Foo Fighters
5. Seven Nation Army – The White Stripes
6. Disrepair – The Cycle*
7. Walking With A Ghost – Tegan & Sara
8. Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt – We Are Scientists
9. I Just Wanna Be Loved – AM Radio**
10. Boulevard Of Broken Dreams – Green Day**
11. I Want To Be Buried In Your Backyard – Nightmare Of You
12. Lost At Home – The Sun
13. Slow Hands – Interpol
14. Checkmarks – The Academy Is
15. Stories – Deception Point
16. Enter Sandman – Metallica
17. Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana
18. Welcome Home – Coheed & Cambria
19. C’mon C’mon – The Von Bondies
20. Alive & Amplified – The Mooney Suzuki

* Local band I saw at the Penn State New Ken Battle of The Bands. They turned into another band called Eightfold after one member left.

** I fucking hate Green Day, and AM Radio doesn't interest me anymore.

We Were No Match For Their Untamed Wit

Another random playlist.

Breakfast Where The News Is Read

Anyone who knows me will know that I am a very avid fan of webcomics. I know what I like and I wanted to share a list of my favorites. Many of these I've been reading for years, some almost eight since I picked them up in college.

Currently reading:

Questionable Content

Questionable Content is a slice-of-life humor comic that I picked up at the start of my college years, and still read. The attraction lies in the strong characterizations and young-person-savvy humor, for me, even though at first the strip was heavy with indie music references and humor that may seem dated now. Not that I minded at the time; the strip's creator, Jeph Jacques, has inadvertently introduced me to some new bands through mention in the strip and in his newsposts with comics. 

Sam & Fuzzy

Sam & Fuzzy is an alternative comic that, when I started reading, was a joke-a-day strip, but thanks to some interesting recurring characters and the opening of some very interesting plotlines, has become quite the impressive story. Absurd and extreme humor abound, along with deep drama and tension in the later cohesive plot arcs. 

XKCD

If you're looking for a joke-a-day comic rife with nerd, geek, engineering and internet humor, I would recommend XKCD. Randall Munroe, a former consultant for NASA, started the comic to show off doodles from his college notebooks, and eventually created the stick-figure, pun-steeped, and often impenetrably nerdy comic we all know today. 

Megatokyo

The definitive webmanga. Although notorious for his often slow update schedule, Fred Gallagher has transformed Megatokyo from its initial concept of a gag-a-day strip for an anime news site into its own massive story encompassing, commenting on, and often poking fun at and subverting many anime and manga tropes and themes. Gallagher gives his characters believable motives, serious emotions, and drops them into situations that challenge them as much as they do the reader. 

Ctrl-Alt-Del

I'm no longer sure this comic is in the right category now; I just read today that the comic will, in a fashion, be rebooted. But for the past ten years (damn, has it been that long?) Ctrl-Alt-Del has been a great geek/gamer comic with an opinion on every slice of nerd, gamer, and otaku culture, with likable and occasionally unpredictable characters. 

Dead Winter

Only one comic about the zombie apocalypse has kept me intrigued from the beginning - and that is the fabulous Dead Winter. Boasting a central cast of characters with serious backstory and depth, the struggles of this ragtag band have kept me on the edge of my seat for months now.

Diesel Sweeties

A classic gag-a-day (or running-gag-a-week, depending on how long R. Stevens' attention span lasts) strip with fun pixel art and characters steeped in their own unique attitudes and identities, Diesel Sweeties is another comic that deserves its long-runner honors. Although some humor may be obscure, it's often best that way. 

Hark! A Vagrant

Historical references? Check. Geographical humor? Check. Making fun of the differences in societal standards in Victorian times versus now? Really big check. HaV jabs at history, war, kings and queens and presidents alike with a goofy and often affectionate wit. Drawn by the talented Canadian lass Kate Beaton, laughs historical await. 

Toothpaste For Dinner

Created by the mysterious Ohioan known as Drew, Toothpaste For Dinner is a bizarre strip in laugh-a-day format with simple art and a penchant for finding the strange and uncomfortable side of humor as often as poking fun at everyday and mundane things. Also very self-deprecating/-referential.

Octopus Pie

Meredith Gran's ongoing comic about the lives of two Brooklyn twentysomething girls who couldn't be more different captured my attention thanks to its evocative art and great and deep characters. Hipster humor and general silliness make this a fun read, while Eve's romantic and social struggles bring a seriousness to some chapters. 

Menage A 3

Ongoing comic about a virginal comic book geek nearing 30, which pairs him with the skinny punk rawk chick and the Amazonian-figured Quebecois as roommates? What kind of story is that? It's a sexy one, duh! Also hilarious - generally lighthearted sex comedy abounds. With characters as fun and still human as these dudes and dudettes are, it's tough to pull off well, but Ma3 does it, as contra-worksafely as possible. 

Order Of The Stick

Players of tabletop RPGs may enjoy Order Of The Stick, a stick-figure comic revolving around the adventures (literally) of a six-player-character band of heroes out to save their world from certain doom. Hilarious, action-packed, and with a quasi-realistic viewpoint towards war and fighting, the story and all of its little subplots fascinate me to no end. While much of the humor and drama revolved around the D&D 3.5 edition rules and quirks thereof in early chapters, well-developed and real characters take over and drive the story like a pack of marauding goblins (literally). 

Read occasionally:

Girls With Slingshots

Danielle Corsetto writes an all-around awesome strip about love, sex, relationships, and drunken antics (sometimes all at once) from a uniquely feminine point of view. 

Between Failures

Another slice-of-life comic, this story follows a group of employees at a big-box store, and their misadventures and antics. Good characters, but the art has changed some, seemingly to make it easier to draw.

Natalie Dee

The wife of Toothpaste For Dinner creator Drew, Natalie Dee does a similar joke-a-day strip alongside her husband. Although it's similar bizarre humor, the character thereof is significantly different. 

Finished, hiatus, or stopped reading:

Ai-Yai-Yai

A tale of romantic fractals, let alone mere triangles in a Japanese high school in the 1970s, Ai-Yai-Yai was an interesting webmanga that has now been on hiatus for years. I don't know whether it'll ever get picked up again, but its' later chapters feature some very intriguing character development. 

Keychain Of Creation

Currently on hiatus, KoC is another adventure comic based around a tabletop RPG, albeit the Exalted platform in this instance. Unique art and an interesting extrapolation from the Exalted canon make for an entertaining read. 

Scary Go Round

John Allison was the author of an excellent slice-of-life/adventure/British comic running from 2002 to 2009. Boasting some of the best art I've seen in a webcomic, British humour abounds and the strange and decidedly non-sublime plotlines kept me amused and intrigued for days on end. Allison currently writes a new comic called Bad Machinery at the same web address, but I have to admit to not being as interested. 

Overcompensating

Generally a joke-a-day strip about a really odd cast of characters. I stopped reading it during a period where the author became somewhat unfunny, and I was looking for something new. 

Anders Loves Maria

Not a humor comic; this is a dramatic story about the titular characters and the failure of their relationship. It's a good read, but the story has been finished. 

Emotional Feedback On Timeless Wavelength

After I got my first MP3 player, a 4GB Zune that I've been trying to find recently, I all but stopped listening to the radio. Occasionally tuning into Jim Quinn in the mornings was about it, until recently. I've been turned on to listening to 91.3-WYEP (Where The Music Matters!) by a combination of friends of mine; railfan pal Matt, and Jeremy and Woody from work.

I am so glad they talked me into giving the station a try; I've heard new stuff I already like and have been introduced to more still since tuning in. That's where I discovered Poliça, Minus The Bear, Florence + The Machine, and Django Django; heard new things from Guided By Voices, Dinosaur Jr. and Tegan And Sara; and just generally playing much better music than I've ever heard on the radio since Channel 97 imploded. I find myself saying that a son sounds like so-and-so band, and it indeed turns out to be them. Too cool. 

In particular, I've come to like their Block Party and After Hours shows. I hear more stuff I like in the evening than I seem to during the day. Not that I've had much chance to listen during the day, since I can't pick them up at work. I am strongly considering making a donation to keep them around.

I've Got A Red Japanese Teapot

I'm cold. I just helped my dad put the plastic up on the porch, and the day has gotten somewhat chilly since then. So I'm making a cup of tea.

I've always liked tea, and I've had a soft spot for herbal peppermint and Earl Grey. I actually made a batch of peppermint iced tea a couple of years ago. It would have been better if I'd used peppermint candies instead of sugar to sweeten it, but it turned out well nonetheless. (I like my mint, and I like it strong.)

But what I've only recently come to appreciate is the fact that tea has its own little ritual. You put the kettle on, pick your flavor, set everything up for the water to boil, pour, steep, sugar etc, and sip. It's oddly comforting now that I think about it. One of the most interesting days I've had was the day I got up, made tea and had a slice of leftover cake from something I missed, and put on some vinyl. It was really cool.

I recently wrote about drinking coffee again. But thinking about it, coffee and tea are more different in my mind than they probably appear to others. I've never made coffee at home, except for the time in college that I used up some old single-cup coffee brewer thingamajiggers and creamed it with that mint chocolate Bailey's that Tim didn't like before heading off to class. Coffee is for the road, tea is for the home. Coffee is public and formal, tea is personal and intimate. Coffee is hanging out, tea is making out.

And now that I've overextended that metaphor to the point of injury, I'm going to go drink my tea.

The Lowest Part Is Free, But He Can't Leave Home

A brief photo essay from my senior year at Penn State, and my second year at University Park.

Been Thinking Little Thoughts

A list of small pleasures:

• The smell of a freshly opened pack of cigarettes.
• When the battery meter on the Zune turns green.
• Rolled coins.
• The combination of the color orange and trains, both real and toy. 
• Graffiti, corrected for spelling and grammar. 
• The combined smells of smoke fluid, light oil and grease, and the ozone from open frame motors. 
• The sublime flavor of a beer after a shot of bourbon. 
• The search through a stack of unsorted vinyl singles, and the discovery of every song you recognize. 
• When the song or band I was just thinking of comes on the radio. 
• Getting the laces on a pair of Chucks to exactly the same tightness on both feet. 
• Discovering that the new album came out, whatever band it's from. 
• Good coffee and bagels. 
• The sound of a train hitting a joint in the rails.