Eclecticism – Page 495 – Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk

What’s your funny?

December 17, 2019July 25, 2005 by Michael Hanscom

Another online quiz — though this one (unlike many others), actually gave me a result that seemed pretty accurate: the three-variable funny test.

The Wit

(60% dark, 30% spontaneous, 22% vulgar)

your humor style: CLEAN | COMPLEX | DARK

You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you’re probably an intellectual, but don’t take that to mean you’re pretentious. You realize ‘dumb’ can be witty–after all isn’t that ‘the Simpsons’ philosophy?–but rudeness for its own sake, ‘gross-out’ humor and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat. I guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer. Your sense of humor takes the most effort to appreciate, but it’s also the best, in my opinion.

Also, you probably loved The Office. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check it out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/.

PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart – Woody Allen – Ricky Gervais

Humor Test Result Graph

My test tracked 3 variables. How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 54% on dark

You scored higher than 0% on spontaneous

You scored higher than 9% on vulgar

Link: The 3 Variable Funny Test written by jason_bateman on Ok Cupid

(via James)

(And, once again, I’m driven up the wall by the mind-boggling horrible HTML code that these quizes generate. I just don’t have the time to clean it up any more than I already have right now…grrr!)

Bite of Seattle 2005

December 17, 2019July 24, 2005 by Michael Hanscom

A small photoset of shots from wandering around Saturday at the Bite of Seattle. Not my usual onslaught of pics this time…I just wasn’t as into it on Saturday as I am sometimes. Still managed a few decent shots, though.

Housekeeping

December 17, 2019July 22, 2005 by Michael Hanscom

I’ve finally gone in and made a few slight tweaks to my about page, adding a short list of other sites that I participate in and a few other bits and pieces here and there.

One change that is more major in my head than anywhere else is the addition of a paragraph about my identity as “the Microsoft blogger”. I’ve resisted this until now, as I’ve always felt that: one, it’s a very small part of who I am, and I’ve never been entirely comfortable with looking like I’m trying to capitalize on the fracas; and two, it was a dumb mistake on my part that I keep hoping will evetually disappear into the great bit bucket of ‘net lore.

However, given that the three primary posts about that event (the picture, the day I was let go, and my wrapup from a few days later) are consistently the most heavily trafficked pages on my site — lately, they’ve been getting a boost every time new information on the Xbox leaks out, as one person or another feels compelled to point to me during the ensuing discussion — I figured it was time to just shrug my shoulders and admit that yeah, that’s me, and point to the pages in question.

I’m still not entirely comfortable with that, but ignoring it in the hopes that it would go away hasn’t done much, and I’m not so determined to get away from it that I’d actually delete the posts in question…so, there they are.

At least I didn’t end up inadvertently coining a new term for getting fired — ‘djwudi’d’, ‘michael’d’, or ‘hanscom’d’ just doesn’t roll off of the tongue like ‘dooced‘ does, anyway. ;)

Okay…who washed their car?

December 17, 2019July 22, 2005 by Michael Hanscom

For the past week, we’ve had gorgeous high-70’s to low-80’s sunshine throughout Seattle, with more predicted through the weekend and on into next week.

So how come I woke up to grey skies, rain, and “possible thunderstorms,” according to Weather Underground? Some fool must have gotten the urge to wash his car yesterday. Everybody knows that that’s the surest way to bring on a sudden burst of rain!

Ah, well…I’ll just keep my fingers crossed for the weekend. This weekend’s the Bite of Seattle food festival, so I’ll likely be wandering around the Seattle Center for much of the weekend, camera in hand. As long as nothing unexpected crops up, I should be out at the Vogue on Saturday night, too — things have been so busy lately that I haven’t been able to get out dancing as often as I like, but I need to get some bouncing in when I can.

And to close (for the moment, at least), a shot I took yesterday at Westlake Plaza of people camped out in the sun on their lunch break.

Podcast 06: ToriMix v2

December 17, 2019July 20, 2005 by Michael Hanscom

A little late today, but here’s number six in my old collection of mix sessions that I’m putting up for download and podcast. Another “theme” mix, this is a forty-five minute mix of Tori Amos’ dance remixes. As a fan of Tori and bouncing around on the dance floor, this one was probably bound to come out sooner or later during my DJ days.

Standard disclaimer: All the mixes I’m posting were mixed ‘live’ — running a Pioneer dual CD mixer directly into my computer and recording straight to .mp3 — and have had no post-mix editing done in the computer. As such, they’re not flawless, but they’re not bad, either, if I do say so myself.

Here’s the link: ToriMix v2 (46m 37s, 53.36Mb). Tracks included are:

Tori Amos ‘God (Rainforest Resort)’
Tori Amos ‘In the Springtime of his Voodoo (Hasbrouck Heights Club)’
Tori Amos ‘Professional Widow (Armand’s Star Trunk Funkin’)’
Tori Amos ‘Jackie’s Strength (Wedding Cake Meltdown)’
Tori Amos ‘Talula (BT’s Synethaesia)’
BT feat. Tori Amos ‘Blue Skies (Hot Tracks)’

Eclinkticism returns

December 17, 2019July 18, 2005 by Michael Hanscom

Assuming I’ve managed to figure out the right combination of shell scripts, SSI includes, CRON jobs, and other associated voodoo, the Eclinkticism linklog in the sidebar should be up and running again. As before, it’s just a dump of the most recent items I’ve added to my del.icio.us account, so feel free to add that RSS feed to your reader if you like.

“What’s Going On” by Lauper, Cyndi from the album Twelve Deadly Cyns…and Then Some (1989, 3:51).

Bag’n’Pipe Hoppers

December 17, 2019July 18, 2005 by Michael Hanscom

One of the local street performers I enjoy running into is the Bag’n’Pipe Hoppers. Actually two performers who team up together from time to time — Don P. Scobie on bagpipes* and Jesse Bishop (or Bishnutz) on drums — their combination of traditional Scottish piping and modern hip-hop beats is always fun to stumble across.

Last Friday evening while waiting for the Half-Blood Prince to come out, Prairie and I took a wander and found the Bag’n’Pipe Hoppers playing at the corner of 4th and Pine. Their playing had attracted a small crowd of onlookers, including a few b-boys breakdancing beside them, so I grabbed my camera and recorded a few minutes of video.

May 2010 Update: Though the Bag’n’Pipe Hoppers are no more, Don has gone on to form a new outfit, Nae Regrets. Worth checking out!

Prairie’s especially fond of running across Don (a.k.a. “the hot bagpiper guy“), whether or not he’s playing with Jesse. Her only complaint about the performance we saw was that Don wasn’t wearing his kilt. :)

Acid bath

December 17, 2019July 18, 2005 by Michael Hanscom

The front steps of the empty section of the Convention Center that was being used for the temporary Seattle Central Library were being washed off today, sending streams of water running down the sidewalk. As I walked along, I started stepping over the rivulets, not for any sane (if somewhat stupid) reason like not wanting to get my shoes wet…

…but because somewhere, in the back of my brain, I’d decided that it wasn’t really water, but streams of acid running down the street that would eat through the bottom of my shoes and into my feet if I accidentally stepped into one.

Some days, it’s really hard to remember that I’m 32, and not 12.

“Auzonomous (Hot Tracks)” by Quinn from the album Roadkill 2.1 (1993, 6:23).

Potter potter potter…

March 7, 2022July 16, 2005 by Michael Hanscom

And with that, it’s done! Our copies arrived about 11am this morning. After opening the box, we packed up picnic supplies and headed down to the Arboretum, spread out a blanket under the shade of a Madrone tree, and got to reading right about noon. Amusingly, Prairie and I read at almost exactly the same speed, so we were within a page or two of each other the entire time — sometimes one of us would be slightly ahead, sometimes the other, occasionally stealing glances at the other’s page numbers to see whether they were giggling or gasping at something we’d just read, or something we were about to read.

Five hours later, we were both within a few chapters of the end, but our bodies had finally started to complain about having been camped out on the ground for the entire day. So, quite reluctantly, we marked our places, came home…and dived right back in.

By 7pm, we were done. Prairie closed her copy just a couple minutes before I closed mine, and waited for me to finish. A few minutes of talk about the final events in the book, and then — after our long, stressful day of lying around in the shade reading — it was time for a nap.

And now, a long, long wait for book seven to arrive…

“Who Do You Want to Be” by Oingo Boingo from the album Best o’ Boingo (1983, 3:21).

Everything old is new again

December 17, 2019July 15, 2005 by Michael Hanscom

A random comment on a Flickr photo led me to do some digging, and after reading this summary of Seattle transportation efforts, all of a sudden it’s no surprise that we’ve seen such ridiculous controversy over our (finally under construction) light rail and (eternally beleaguered) monorail plans.

The essay is replete with examples of ideas, controversy, failed starts, cost overruns, tax packages…any of this sound familiar? From the look of it, it’s amazing that Seattle has anything at all to support those of us who — for whatever reason — eschew automobiles for other forms of transportation.

Completely randomly, another discovery I made: did you know that Seattle has its own flag? I didn’t, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it flying anywhere.