Good Morning Internet

To all my friends here in the US, I hope you had a won­der­ful Thanks­giv­ing yes­ter­day, no mat­ter how you cel­e­brated it.

And to all of my friends out­side of the US, I hope you had an equally won­der­ful Thursday!

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I started two exper­i­ments last week, which I talked about on my last pod­cast episode. The goals are to go a month with­out eat­ing out or watch­ing tele­vi­sion. The ideas seemed sim­ple and I hoped they would save me money and open up hours of time for cre­ativ­ity and productivity.

Over the course of one week­end, I’ve already bro­ken all my rules. This is going to be a lot harder than I thought.

I think I picked the absolute worst pos­si­ble set of 30 days to try these exper­i­ments. Almost imme­di­ately, I added an excep­tion to the “no TV” rule for World Cup games. I still think that’s a valid excep­tion, see­ing how the World Cup comes around once every four years. But that some­how acted as a gate­way to me watch­ing five episodes of Mad Men this week­end, too.

Simul­ta­ne­ously, I failed on the “don’t eat out” front. Like the World Cup, I was lured away from my goal (Ha!) of avoid­ing restau­rants and sav­ing money by Dukem, an amaz­ing Ethiopian restau­rant in Mt. Ver­non. I jus­ti­fied the expense and vio­la­tion of my newly-formed rule with two excuses. First, I was out with friends. Sec­ond, it was Fri­day and the first day of the World Cup. If those weren’t rea­sons to cel­e­brate, I rea­soned, noth­ing was.

The flood­gates opened. It was Hon­fest in my neigh­bor­hood all week­end, and my willpower suc­cumbed to the food ven­dors. Guilty and slightly depressed about fail­ing, but also angry at myself for choos­ing the most incon­ve­nient month for these exper­i­ments, I went home and sunk a few more hours into World Cup view­ing, men­tally re-writing the rules to add an “except on week­ends” clause to my rules.

But this morn­ing, with renewed resolve, I’m tack­ling my goals again. I will bring my lunch with me to work every day. Episodes of Mad Men and the queue of TV shows I have lined up on Net­flix will have to wait. I’m going to cook for myself every night. The take-out menus have been placed out of sight to pre­vent fur­ther lapses.

Sure, I stum­bled hard this first week­end. But for the rest of the 30 days, I’m going to buckle down, focus, and see if I can spend more time cre­at­ing things while wast­ing less money and time.

Except for World Cup games. I’d hate myself for skip­ping those.

Oh, and new episodes of Futu­rama, of course.

I’m screwed.

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I have a brand-new open­ing to my show fea­tur­ing America’s Radio Sweet­heart (and Sound of Young Amer­ica host) Jesse Thorn! It makes me sound far more pro­fes­sional than I deserve.

Also dis­cussed in this episode:

• There is a recy­cling bin thief on the loose in Baltimore!
• For the next month, I’ve chal­lenged myself to cook at home and not eat in restau­rants or order take-out.
• Why stop there? For the next month, I’ve cut myself off from tele­vi­sion. Instead, I’ll try to use that time to be more cre­ative? Will it work? Tune in next week to hear how crazy I am!

Enjoy!

Down­load the MP3 here.

Sub­scribe with iTunes or RSS

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The “Dou­ble Down” arrives at KFC today. The world feels like a scarier place. And the longer I stare at the above photo, the more I stop see­ing a sand­wich and the more I see some hor­ren­dous mon­ster with sauce drool, cheese fangs, and a night­mar­ish muti­lated bacon tongue.

Bon appétit, America!

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Look­ing for a way out of this cruel world? KFC is here to help with a bacon and cheese sand­wich made with fried chicken in the place of bread.

I couldn’t decide whether to be dis­gusted or afraid, so I’ll be both.

It’s called the “Dou­ble Down”, prob­a­bly in the sense that it’s a gam­ble whether or not your heart will con­tinue to beat after you eat it.

(Via The Con­sumerist.)

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Tues­day, March 16, 2010

Some of the coolest peo­ple packed The Mohawk for the 2010 SXSW Inter­ac­tive clos­ing party. It all seemed like a whirl­wind, and the days had been long and packed with great ses­sions, amaz­ing par­ties, and fan­tas­tic con­ver­sa­tions with new and old friends. As we reflected and cel­e­brated before scat­ter­ing in our sep­a­rate direc­tions, the bars were open and the booze flowed freely. We Are Sci­en­tists played an awe­some set, which made me happy because I’ve been dying to see that band live for years.

After­ward, we hopped from dance party to bar to street ven­dor (two brats in one day!) to the Driskill by the time two o’clock rolled around and we could no longer be served alco­hol. Boo!

By the way, does the Driskill always stink like a locker room when it’s packed with peo­ple? The fresh night­time air never smelled so sweet.

One of the biggest dif­fer­ences I noticed between SXSW Inter­ac­tive and Music atten­dees was how they han­dled their alco­hol. The Inter­ac­tive crowd knew how to drink and party late. Shut­ting down the bars and clubs was no prob­lem. Actu­ally, I got the feel­ing that, around clos­ing time, most of the Inter­ac­tive badge-holders were just get­ting warmed up.

The SXSW Music crowd was totally dif­fer­ent. When Inter­ac­tive left town, the sloppy drunks stepped in. By mid­night, crowds of stag­ger­ing and inco­her­ent music fans leaned on each other to avoid falling, vom­ited in the alleys, and clum­sily made out with each other in the streets. Sure, they par­tied pretty hard, but a lot of them also made asses of them­selves. Come on, peo­ple. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

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Tues­day, March 16, 2010

It was a rainy Tues­day at SXSW, the sort of weather that makes it per­fect to stay indoors and gorge on deli­cious food and beer.

I ended up at the Mil­wau­kee Beer and Brat Bash because my friend and SXSW roomie Tracy was one of the orga­niz­ers. Every­one involved should be proud because it was one of my favorite day­time events of the week. We enjoyed free bratwurst and beer, sup­ported by a bevy of awe­some sponsors.

There were give­aways, includ­ing an amaz­ing Mil­wau­kee hooded sweat­shirt that fea­tured a sin­gle, ver­ti­cal pocket designed to hold a bot­tle of beer. Seri­ously. Why more hood­ies don’t have that kind of pocket is a mys­tery to me. That’s the kind of inno­va­tion that makes me mar­vel at human inge­nu­ity, and the kind of inno­va­tion that made me cranky when I didn’t win.

Awe­some event. Mil­wau­keeans know how to throw down.

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Sun­day, March 14, 2010

The Inter­net is truly an amaz­ing place. Where else can an entire com­pany be built upon the sim­ple fact that peo­ple like silly pic­tures of ani­mals? And where else could that com­pany become so pop­u­lar that it is able to throw a party at SXSW, fea­tur­ing live-band karaoke all the cheese­burg­ers we could stuff into our LOL­ing faces?

The I Can Has Cheezburger party at the Cedar Door was awe­some. I sang Cheap Trick’s “Sur­ren­der” backed by a live band. The drinks flowed gen­er­ously. And yes, I did have cheezburger. My friends and I were lucky enough to score a table out on the deck where the karaoke band per­formed. Sur­rounded by great peo­ple, awe­some music, and a steady stream of drinks, this was one of my favorite parties.

I’m still crav­ing those buf­falo BBQ burg­ers. Where did those mag­i­cal sand­wiches come from, and how can I find burg­ers like that in Bal­ti­more? DO WANT.

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Tues­day, Bad Deci­sions in Fells Point hosted its third Bacon and Beer Happy Hour!

Look for cameos by Twit­ter super­stars @maryvale, @spamspam, @bad_decisions, @christianparent, and @amywoo!

Kudos to John and every­body else at Bad Deci­sions for putting on such a great event. I can’t wait for the next one, no mat­ter what my arter­ies say.

Update: I apol­o­gize if the video and audio are out of sync. It would appear that Vimeo is hav­ing some issues. The video worked fine on Fri­day, but the embed looks hideous today. I sug­gest check­ing out the video’s Vimeo page if you run into trouble.

Update 2: Looks like some­thing is wrong with the non-HD video encode. I’m try­ing to get in touch with some­one at Vimeo who can help me fix it.

Update 3: The kind folks at Vimeo re-encoded the video, so it should all be work­ing prop­erly now.

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I work in a very old build­ing. So old, in fact, that when some­one oper­ates the microwave while the cof­fee pot is on, that entire sec­tion of the floor on which I work loses power. The power stays off until some­one from the main build­ing walks over here and qui­etly vis­its the secret loca­tion in the base­ment where the breaker has tripped. For some rea­son, none of us are allowed to do it our­selves. So, until then, nobody is able to make coffee.

Today, I woke up late-ish and had to rush in order to get to work on time-ish. I sat down at my desk and have been extremely busy. Too busy, in fact, to pre­pare a cup of cof­fee for myself. Of course, as soon as I arrived at a break in my work where I could go fetch myself my morn­ing dose of caf­feine, some­one popped into my office to let me know that power to the kitchen was out. That means no coffee.

I just felt my first twitch.

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