found_drama

The adolescent settler girl fancies herself in love with a doppelgänger of Dan Doherty.  Her family moves west through the valley on horseback (her farmer parents, younger brother, and herself) and they encounter him in one of these frontier towns.  He’s the vain cowboy — all too conscious of the receding hairline and a bald spot on the top of his dome; he wears a blue bandana cinched tightly about his scalp and an heirloom tricorner hat over that.  He is shifty, seldom making eye-contact with anyone, dodging the gaze of the maids in the hotel, and even giving only short replies to his partner.

On their way westward out of the town, the family becomes caught in floodwaters that rapidly fill the valley.  Their wagon becomes water-logged, one of the horses is swept away, and the girl becomes caught beneath a rock.  At first the family has feared that she has drowned but as the waters recede, they find her, one leg nearly crushed.  She is in and out of consciousness, mumbling fever-dream style about the man from the town.  The family struggles to come up with a plan.  They will already lose one day of travel time from this, they’re already two days behind, and the father knows that the Running of the Gremlins is imminent.  They opt to amputate the girl’s leg with a saw and retreat to the town to find a doctor.

As if on wings of the wind, the valley closes in around them, becoming the 10th floor of an office building.  They’re trapped up there with a few other travelers.  The father cringes, fearful that they tarried too long and are now caught in the Running of the Gremlins.  He quickly organizes the others, sealing off corridors, jury-rigging quick escape routes into safely guarded rooms, rounding up the few guns in the party’s possession.  The thunder that echoes down the grey halls taunts them.  The girl props herself up in a corner of one of the safe rooms, clutching her amputated leg to her chest, mumbling about how That Man From The Town would be there soon to save them.  She tells everyone to watch the elevator.  They would send up two hunters in exchange for one of them…

• Three Panel Soul

  via kr8n: “This is where all the missing ink lines went.” (The triumphant return of the Matt & Ian.)

  (tags: comic)

Blogged just about EVERYWHERE by now: The Simpsonzu — “The Simpsons” as if they were done anime style.  Nicely done, even if Marge isn’t worried enough (and Smithers isn’t erm … “Smithers” enough).

• Marmaduke Explained
  Joe Mathlete Explains Today’s Marmaduke; e.g., “Marmaduke is being cock-blocked.”
  (tags: comic humor parody blog)
• 12 Lessons for Those Afraid of CSS and Standards
  via A List Apart: an article on how to think like a CSS web developer and use CSS and standards (”for real this time”)
  (tags: CSS html todo webdev webdesign essay)
• Plug-ins for Apple Mail
  the Hawk Wings directory of plug-ins, scripts, etc. for Apple’s Mail.app
  (tags: Apple OSX Mac Mail.app tools)
• Branding for web sites
  Asking questions like: “Will my print brand translate to the web?” and “What does my brand say about company/product/service when (re)contextualized on the web?”
  (tags: essay webdesign branding marketing todo)
• BluePhoneElite
  An OS X app that allows your Mac and your BlueTooth-enabled phone to talk to each other and do a little more than just iSync’s sync’ing; see also: call logging; see also: SMS conrol
  (tags: Apple Mac OSX Bluetooth mobile todo)
• Jalopnik
  (tags: automotive blog)
• Autopia
  Wired’s automotive blog; usually a bunch of environmental and/or high-tech focus
  (tags: automotive blog)
• Autoblog
  (tags: automotive blog)
• Exit Without Saving
  Futurismic: New Fiction From Ruth Nestvold
  (tags: fiction future scifi writing todo)
• visor
  A Quicksilver-esque way to hot-key your way into the Terminal from anywhere (from the makers of Quicksilver)
  (tags: Mac productivity OSX geek freeware todo UI SIMBL hack terminal)
• iTunes Remote Control
  Control iTunes from a remote computer with this little app
  (tags: iTunes freeware Mac OSX software tools todo)

Yes, there are a million comics about cats out there.  Yes, they all have their own little twist.  But [tag]Two Lumps[/tag] just resonates, OK?  [tag]Ebenezer[/tag] and [tag]Snooch[/tag] are the new felid heroes.

I think today’s “Dinosaur Comics” is my new favorite.

Breakfast pleasure! Finally, I have words for the most sublime of satisfactions!! BREAKFAST PLEASURE. I love breakfast pleasure.

Me too. It’s definitely in the upper tier of my spectrum of emotions.

We’re staying in a hotel for the competition.  Instead of large conference rooms, this hotel has a giant courtyard.  We’re one of a couple dozen teams competing to build a Tower of Babel out of Legos.  Ours mostly works so far.  If you stand under, you instantly know any of a dozen languages.  It’s a good start and we’re way ahead of anyone else.  But we’ve run out of red bricks and somehow I know that’s the key to getting this thing to work on French.  (One of my teammates has suggested that Dutch is close enough but we both know deep down that the rules don’t allow “close enough”.)  When I take a break, I’m accosted by a group of young black men.  They accuse me of being a racist, referencing something that I’ve allegedly said.  They take off before I can retort.  They’ve got it twisted up somehow; I didn’t say exactly what they think of said and they’ve taken it all out of context regardless.  I go from floor to floor trying to find them but they’ve disappeared for all I can tell.  And every floor’s layout is different depending on whether you reach it by elevator or the stairs.  From the top floor, the courtyard is a brilliant myriad of colors reaching skyward.  On my way back down, I stumble across a kid who has my brother’s face but a preposterously obese body.  They’re leaving in the morning (he and his corpulent crew) because they can’t get their tower to translate anything.  Back at the front desk, I ask the concierge if she’s seen the kids young men that had accused me of being a racist.  She doesn’t want to help me (taking their side without even knowing what it was I’d supposedly said!) and I find myself trying to explain my position, defend myself.  It’s all without warrant!

Today’s Real Life is a classic.  Freakin’-A - - don’t I feel like this every day?

OK… What the hell is UP with an alternate ending?

currently playing: Atomica “One Day In New York City”

Today’s indietits.com puts us right back on schedule re: being shocked by the simplest things. And in the spirit of the month, no less.

(For John. Definitely for John.)

And no, I’m not participating. But that’s because I’m still neck-deep in my “serious” project that I unfortunately started before 01-Nov.

currently playing: Lush “De-Luxe”