Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.

Gaymes

Here's my xbox avatar.



Unfortunately, it is impossible to make yourself look like a normal human being in their pathetic virtual purgatory. No matter how close I try to make a virtual mii, I am greeted with a seductive handsome gentlemen, with his hips slung to the side as if trying to treat a trick. I'm sorry, but making everything homo-erotic is not a good way to personalize the xbox 360 experience.

Oh, here's an idea. How about a way to block all the underage finger painters so you don't have to hear falsetto cries of obscenities and racism each time you have the misfortune of being online before their bedtimes.

I guess that would block 99% of the netizens, but sometimes solitude is a blessing.

Printer Problems - Cat Support

This is very similar to some troubleshooting that I had to do this week.

Recipe for Viral Advertising

1. Set up a premise where an idiot is filming something stupid on a shitty camera phone.

2. Have the idiot do something even more stupid than you would expect.

3. Have something unexpectedly stupid happen. (Add some really horrible CGI-digital effects. Because the video quality is so awful, no one can tell that you hired some student on Craigslist with the old "we can't pay you, but this will look good on your rèsumè" routine.)

5. Don't mention your company anywhere in the video.

6. Profit.

Twitter

There's a website on the internet that's called Twitter and it's pretty amazing.

You can twit anything on Twitter.

The possibilities are almost as open as Zombo.com.

MSNBC Digs Deep

I caught some MSNBC political coverage during my lunch break and I believed they showed Obama's terrorist fist jab about 40 times in slow motion while some very intelligent people dished out some amazingly insightful analysis of the candidate. This is the kind of information that the American public needs to have before they can go to the polls. MSNCBC is the only source that I can depend on for difficult to understand news events.

Also, I'm starting to suspect that the science of Face Off is here and Cheney is Travolta and McCain is Edward Norton. I haven't seen Face Off, but I think I have just violated the first and second rule of Face Off. I hope the third rule of Face Off is "it's not that big a deal if you do end up talking about Face Off, it's just discouraged."

I'm going to write a children's book called: Everybody Loves Politics!

What's The Point of Pickle Slices?

I'm not a fan of cows, but bovine-free burgers are something that I enjoy to eat provided I have plenty of condiments. In fact, I'm starting to suspect that I see bread and meat as a vehicle for condiments rather than condiments as being an accessory.

One of my favorite things on food at restaurants is pickles. I love pickles. I can't get enough. French fries taste much better to me when wrapped in a pickle slice.

So when I was at the grocery store I decided that I would get a jar of pickle slices to add some zazz to my at-home meals. Unfortunately, I don't know much about at-home pickles. I could buy a jar of pickles, but I don't really like eating a whole pickle and I don't want to spend an afternoon chopping up pickles for sandwich use. What I need is a jar of pickle slices.

Pickle slices are strange things to buy in jars! None of the jars of pickle slices said "I'm a jar of pickle slices. Buy me, Ryan Niemi!" In fact, they had all kinds of confusing labels. What's the point? Are they trying to entice non-pickle enthusiasts?

There was a bunch of jars that said "Bread and Butter Pickles" and then the jar was full of slices of pickles. The contents of the jar appear to be what I require, but what's the point of 'bread and butter?' There are at least three ways I could take that. One way is that these are the types of pickles commonly eaten with bread and butter. I've never been so hungry that I slapped some butter on a slice of bread and then covered it with pickles, so I am unable to comprehend that possibility.

Another way to take it is that the pickle slices have bread and butter flavor. This is the first thing that pops in my head when I see these labels. Why would anyone want to eat bread and butter flavored anything? The next thing you know, there will be a bread and butter flavored sports drink. Their slogan can be "punish your taste buds into shape!"

The other way they could be going with their strange name is to use "bread and butter" in the way that implies 'money maker'. Like these pickle slices are the "bread and butter" of the food industry. That makes sense to me because I like condiments more than the meat, but I imagine that the majority of burger enthusiasts believe that beef is the bread and butter of the food industry.

I read the ingredients on one of these jars and it said nothing about natural or artificial bread and butter flavoring, so I just bough a jar of regular pickles and some stationary scissors so I can get that authentic pickle slice shape.

What's the point? Seriously.