New Year's Resolutions

Sam's Lofty New Years Resolutions
in order of attainability

1. Embrace my wierd
2. Eat something I can't pronounce
3. Camp.
4. Fall in love
5. Write a song
6. Write a good song
7. Perform a good song that I wrote
8. Sweep someone off her feet (figuratively)
9. Get something published
10. Put a brick through the Murphey's car window. I mean, seriously, it's 1:50 in the morning and the doorbell is like ten feet away. You could just get up, ring it, and your pampered progeny would come running.
11. But no, you just stay in your car, leaning on the horn and talking on your cell phone through the open car window like you're some kind of hotshot.
12. you're not a hotshot, you're a prick.
    
13. I mean, we tolerate your coffee-charged psychopath offspring launching hockey pucks at eachother in the street (I think it's some bastardized version of street hockey), but this is insane!
    
14. Why don't you just call the house? Hell, call the kid - I know you all have cell phones!
15. Maybe you can't hear the horn way up in your mansion, but from here it sounds like a fucking fire alarm.
    

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Oh my darling.

So, I was eating a clementine in the kitchen (my fourth one today), when I realized I do it in an oddly sadistic way...

How I Eat Clementines
via shitty iphone pictures

I start with a clementine. It's like an orange - but it's sweeter, smaller, easier to peel, and a thousand times more adorable.


First I peel the clementine. I do this by cutting a line around the clementine, ultimately attempting to separate the peel into two halves. It rarely works out.


Then I take a segment of the clementine.


I first bite a thin line of skin off of the top of the segment. I then proceed to peel the skin backwards on both sides.



The end result is a skinned clementine segment. I do this for every segment of the clementine. Without the skin, the insides are super sweet.

Why do I do this? I'm not sure: feel free to speculate.

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Mantra

When I first began this silly bearded endeavor I scribbled a simple phrase in my sketchbook/journal:

In order to know himself a man must know his limits - facial hair included.

I stand by it. Read more!

State of the Beard: Part one

and now, ladies and gents, I present you with the first annual...

STATE OF THE BEARD ADDRESS
A Bi-Weekly Facial Hair Report

Well, folks, I'm not going to lie: things aren't looking too good. I hate to disappoint all of you, but I don't think I'm on track to hit my target image on time. Though I am a seething cauldron of man-hormones my facial hair is more Orlando Bloom than Robin Williams.

But worry not, beard faithful, I have not given up hope! My facial hair may not be flawless, but god dammit it's mine! So what if it has obvious missing patches! So what if it's a completely different color than the hair on my head! So what if it's whisper thin, itchy, and makes me look like I don't wash my face even when I have!

It's my facial hair dammit: As long as it's still growing, I'm not going to cut it!*


*for the next two weeks

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JAPAN: why? (Part II)

Why Japan?
part two: I am a nerd

I was by far the youngest of three children. My brothers, eight and nine years older than me, were too filled with grunge angst to play a major part in my development. My parents, jaded by raising my brothers, allowed me plenty of time to pursue my own interests. So, with all this free time and a borderline attention deficit kid brain what was I to do?

Why, play videogames, of course!

Videogames fueled my imagination. They provided me with dozens of characters to write stories or draw pictures about. As a child I spent most of my free time concocting ideas for new videogames - scribbling out schematics for levels and character relationships in my free time.

Eventually I wanted to seek out the source of my inspiration. Only one culture could produce the bizarre cast of characters I fondly remember as childhood heroes. Rather than go into detail, I'm going to make a list!

My Videogame Heroes
-(circa 1997)-

1. Megaman
2. Donkey Kong
   
3. Star Fox
4. Robbit (from jumping flash)
5. Klonoa
6. Kirby
7. Cloud
   

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Christmas

It would be bad enough if these guys only had the star up during the season, but they keep this glowing monstrosity going all year long.

New this Christmas are the glowing reindeer, glowing faux-christmas tree (offscreen), and flickering action lines for the star.

My friend Mike is unlucky enough to live next door to this fluorescent behemoth. He's tried to sabotage it a few times - but it always returns brighter and more obnoxious than ever.

Now, I'm not religious, but wasn't Christ a big fan of humility? Somehow, I don't think that Jesus would be proud. Read more!

Santa?

Dear Santa: Thank you for the concertina. I've been futzing with it and it sounds great - like a thousand harmonica-faced kittens singing lullabies. I'm sure it will only sound better as I learn to play it. Some day I'll make a living off of it - playing strange sea shanty versions of David Bowie songs in New York subways. Those will be the days.

I know it was an esoteric present to ask for, and finding one must have been a bitch. My hope was that you would find the challenge refreshing - I imagine it's no fun carrying around a sack full of High School Musical backpacks and XBOX 360s.

And lets face it: you have a beard. If there's one thing I know about bearded peoples, it's that they all love the concertina. It's pretty much a universal fact. Just watch any pirate movie.

Oh, Santa, that reminds me - do you have any relation to Blackbeard (the pirate)? Were you ever a pirate? Are you guys locked in a cosmic allegorical battle that will determine the fate of the universe? I'm going to write a fan fiction about it.

Stay warm (though I hear things might warm up in your corner, so stay cool?)!

-Sammy

(unconnected thought: I saw a sign the other day that said "keep the Christ in Christmas." Well, if you take the "Christ" out of "Christmas," then you just get "mas" - which, for the record, is my first name backwards. Does that mean I'm the antichrist?) Read more!

nosebleeds

I am plagued with chronic nosebleeds this time of year. Every once in a while I'll rub my nose and it will respond with a cokehead-force blood stream. Over the years I've grown used to it - I know when to expect nosebleeds and the most efficient ways to stop them. I'm a pro.

I have always had the option of having my nostrils cauterized - it would stop them forever. I never had it done. At first I didn't because I was afraid of hospitals. The last time I had been to one they dunked me in a tub of ice water (I was a baby with a fever, I guess it makes sense).

I got over that fear, though, but I still won't get my nostrils cauterized. I think it's because I've simply grown fond of my winter nosebleeds. They are, for better or worse, something unique to me. They remind me of my childhood, my individuality, and my humanity.

I am currently in a process of learning to love my peculiarities; how strange that nosebleeds would come first. Read more!

Silly Beards: 1-6

Silly Beards: 1-6
a list

1. Stark Attack
2. The Mad Catter
3. The Anti-Hitler
4. Karate Chops
5. Hair Supply
6. The Howdy Doody

NOTE: attention all you snarks and scoundrels ~ when I vowed to write something every day I was not referring to the tired AM/PM cycle preferred by western civilization. I was referring to instead that span of time I spend awake between two periods of extended rest - ergo I have upheld my goal.

Let's not nitpick the details of this explanation, you know what I mean.

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JAPAN: why? (Part I)

So, why Japan?

Ah - though that question is simple the answer certainly is not. Where do I start: the technology? the food? the robots? I could go on ad nauseum about my reasons for choosing Japan. That, however would be boring.

It makes sense, then, that I would split my reasons into fun, digestible giblets of introspective explication:

Why Japan?
part one: surrealism

I'm going to start out with what is (to me) the most obvious reason: surrealism.

I heard somewhere that Japanese surrealism flourished from the ashes of the second world war. Faced with rubble, despair, and national impotence, Japanese artists and writers found solace in the surreal.

I've also heard others attribute Japan's acceptance of the wacky and supernatural to their cultural history. Spirits were once (and some places still are) accepted as integral to the natural world.

Whatever the reason, Japanese culture is saturated with the absurd and the surreal. These things are accepted not just in the media, but as part of everyday life. As an artist and a silly person I need to investigate the source of this craziness.

Japan goal #1: Absorb some of Japan's crazy energy.

note: I am currently working on a list of silly beards. It will be up tomorrow.

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ready, set, GROW!

Hey gang. Guess what? I am going to Japan. Everything worked out for me in the end, so please ignore that first post <3. My second semester will be in Osaka prefecture.
Oh, also it will start in April.

And so I find myself on a four month(or so) forced hiatus. In times such as these my first instinct is to build a pillow fort in front of the TV and not leave until: (a) vacation is over, or (b) the TV rays have reduced my brain to the consistency of lukewarm junket.

In order to keep myself interesting I've made a list of goals:

~GOALS~
(in order of cognition)

1. Grow a beard.
2. Write something every day (this counts)
3. learn to play the concertina.
4. get the comic battle blog started (more on this later)
5. learn Japanese
6. buy a hat

(fig 2: Grow a beard.)

This blog is going to follow all my pre-Japan antics. Also, it will be my Japan blog. Also it will be awesome.

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