Towel Day Reminder

Don’t forget that this Thursday, May 25th, is Towel Day — the yearly memorial day of Douglas Adams. All you have to do is carry a towel around with you throughout the day.

Google Notebook Firefox Extension Easter Egg

I just got myself a Google Notebook and I think I like it! Taking snippets of text from webpages and archiving it online privately or publicly is pretty cool.

I especially like the simple Firefox Extension. It adds a little ‘open notebook’ to the browser’s status bar, which when clicked pops up a little in-page pop-up where you can type text or capture selected text from the current page. Very nice!

I did find one pretty neat feature that the Google Notebook help pages doesn’t mention. Right click the button in the status bar, and you’ll find an Enable ‘Note This’ button option. Enabling this doesn’t seem to do much straight away, and in fact, it took me a while to figure it out. But when it’s enabled, try selecting some text, and a little [+] button will appear at the end of your selection — click it to add your selection to your currently selected notebook! Neato 😀

So uses for Google Notebook? I could find it useful for keeping a list of things I want to post about, a shopping list, inspirational quotes, or maybe even for some GTD loving. What will you be doing with your Google Notebook?

Exploding ducks interpolate out of my eyebrows

This is some free writing I did in preperation for a theory session on brainstorming and creativity I am teaching tomorrow. I need some root ideas for people to ideate from. Enjoy, or not.

there was a guy walking down the street and he went to the bathroom. he did his business then left for the movies. he bought some popcorn and then he sat down to watch the movie. but there was no movie. it was taking the banana too feelings it had never assumed before. games exploded from the mouth of the ghananise gorilla, while the bassoon played on the piano. my fingernails melted into blobs of golden chocolate. i took my green pepper and used it for a device to prevent hemmeroids in siamese gulls. the squeeze gun then put on a jersey and danced the gigalo. the guy drank a tall glass of tar and profusely vomited onto the floor of the patisserie. the mona lisa took her glasses off and ate the bottle from the water cooler. the colour aqua and the colour red made out. my bananas never stopped. a tv show character never blew a green goal. my wallet was full of bmws. people congregated around an intray. i believe you have my exploding duck’s complete collection of 1930s architectural dives. my head melted into a million shards of atomic cafes. propaganda of the green manilla folder made me a grand total of eighty five cents. a bowel of fruit was collected from the masses and lo, there was no aubergines that were yellow. a matte stapler attacked a child while they were swimming in the jungle’s largest pool of custard-flavoured tar babies while the jello men were sunbathing in the moonlight. my pillow of keymashed kumara licked off it’s eyebrows which were coated in a yellow substance which would shatter under pressure from either david hasslehoff or that guy who does the joy of painting. a loud number coloured blue explained in morbose detail the mating rituals of an enlarged jumbovision with a blue orangutang. my nipples flew out of george costanza and they took out fps doug, boom forehead shot. lol roffle lol i take it back it was really chuck norris. then a pair of macrovision encrypted sunglasses dropped out of the treasure chest and were crushed by the planet golufulava. my parents took out the trash and used a machete to renovate the viper. a snake coaxed out of me my secret location to my snozberry m&ms. my headphones transformed into warren bady. a haircut took my power supply and used it to get a real job, whilst my exploding duck unexploded. it was viewtiful. joe made shortbread and laughed at it’s lack of blueberry muffins. cakes i like the most, except for daniel. moses exploded and left behind a collection of little puce ducks. the ducks were made of marzipan. i ran to the store to buy some icing and i freed morgan freeman from the narration of some 3d game, maybe half-life 2. then prince albert emerged from his tupperware and i mixed us up a storm with my thumbprints on a lp record made from fudge. we danced but it wasn’t the best. i decided that we should take the exploding munters and use them for table tennis. i later regretted that i used a passionfruit to scrape the kiwi birds from under my nostrils. my wrists were relaxed from all the grabbing of explainitory signage i discovered in my armpits. my brain frazzled and decided that was long enough.

Blanket Man has a Posse

I was stunned and amused to overhear some of my collegues say that Blanket Man has a wikipedia page. Turns out his name is Ben Hana.

Wow. This is pretty awesome, because while a lot of people don’t think he should be on the street, he is, so the least we can do is learn more about his reasons.

An Open letter to Bill Holbrook

Hi Bill,

My name is Brett Taylor. I’m a 24yo male from Wellington, New Zealand. I’m proud to be a geek.

I started reading your web comic Kevin and Kell on Monday 5th September after repeated recommendations from several sites around the internet. I finished reading it all last night (Monday 12th). I had never read any Kevin and Kell before that Monday.

I’m writing to tell you about how Kevin and Kell has changed my life. You see, I really shouldn’t have been reading this comic in the first place; I’m recovering from an addiction to pornography — my favorite stuff was the furry stuff, and anything furry-related (like Kevin and Kell) is a potential danger zone for me.

But I kept reading. I read all ten years of your comic in a week, taking up all my spare time. But I started getting depressed. I guess I grew kind of jealous of how the characters of Domain came together when they faced problems time and time again, and how they grew closer together, overcoming adversity as a team. For some reason, I really identified with Lindesfarne early on. At the time, I couldn’t work out why.

On Friday night, a friend of mine gave me some ribbing about how I should ask this girl that I had told him I fancied, like he normally does. Usually I can shrug his pestering off, but this time it stuck. And it hurt. The depression got worse. But I kept reading, longing to know more about the world of Kevin and Kell.

On Sunday night, at my church, after the evening service, I broke into tears, confused at what was going on inside of me. The pain that resulted inside of me from reading the comic that was full of happiness and joy was tearing me apart.

Pain is a good thing. It tells us that something is wrong and we need to take action to fix it.

Thankfully, a friend came over and looked after me. I thank God that she did. Over the course of what seemed like an eternity, I came to realise that while I am caring and loving to others, I do so without realising that there is a wall around my heart, making it difficult for others to care for me. I was lonely. I knew I was lonely, but I didn’t even know that it was this wall around me, but I now I know it’s there.

I guess that’s why I identified with Lindesfarne so much. She grew up with her quills as a wall that made it hard for others to get close to her without getting hurt. But somehow she made it through, even gaining a life-long companion. I long so much for family, friendships and relationships similar to the ones portrayed in your comic in my own life.

Is what I long for attainable? I know K&K is fiction, but I know that within the story of Domain there is truth for the whole human world, and that some of that truth is obtainable for my own life. I know the road in front of me is long — I have to figure out how to let people into my heart, and not scare them away. Am I scared? I’m scared out of my wits. I don’t know what I’m gonna have to do. I’m afraid of rejection; of putting my heart on the line, only to have it thrown back in my face.

But I guess I’m writing you to say Thank You. When I think about the world of K&K and Lindesfarne, I’m sad, but now I know what’s wrong with me, I’m going to do what needs to be done to let people into my life. I know that eventually goodness will come out of this. I know that the sadness will eventually pass and I will feel some of the joy that Lindesfarne must feel when she thinks of her friends and family.

Thanks Bill. Thanks for contributing towards this revelation in my life. I will continue to read every day. Please pray for me that I will be able to take down my walls and let those who are closest to me into my heart. If you don’t reply, that’s okay; you’re probably a busy man.

God Bless.

A huge fan,

Brett Taylor