I'm not sure why my name is used in this post. But there aren't many of us out there.

Awhile back, I had the idea to start this as a meme. Then I realized that I hate memes. I decided to start it anyway. Then I realized that I don't have comments, and that I really don't want to tag anyone because I prefer to read the stuff that people come up with on their own. Then I realized it didn't have to be a meme, that I could just write it on its own. So I guess it's a meme for one. A meme for ... me. Me.

Maybe you'll find it useful.

For watching TV online, I use Hulu
Hulu is pretty much a perfect model for online TV watchin'. It's free. It's legal. It requires very little effort to sign up. It works on a Mac (without Internet Explorer even!). Best of all, it actually works. Even though it's still kind of an infant, the selection is quite good. Most of the current programs are present, along with a slew of old stuff. While I'd like to see more than 3-5 episodes of The Simpsons and The Family Guy, there's still plenty of great content, including movies. Don't believe me? Here's The Jerk, in its entirety.

For mp3 downloads, I used eMusic
eMusic works like this: For $9.95 per month, you can download 30 songs. There's no DRM, meaning that you can use the mp3s on any player, and make as many CD copies as you want. Also, they never "expire" so you can also keep them forever. The one catch: If you don't use up your 30 downloads by the end of the month, you wasted them, because they don't roll over into the next month. The other catch: The selection leans heavily toward indie stuff, so you're not going to find any Justin Timberlake or Warrant for downloading.

For (quasi-legal) mp3 downloads, I use Hype Machine
This is an aggregator of sorts for music blogs. Whenever someone posts an mp3 to their blog, Hype Machine links to it. You can search for whatever bands or songs you're looking for, and if someone has uploaded it to their blog (whether legally or illegally) you can go there and grab it. I like to use this to find full-track samples of bands I'm not familiar with. If I find I like the sample song, I might go buy the rest of the album.

For general advice, I use Lifehacker
Think "Hints from Heloise" only for nerds. Lifehacker features great tips and tricks for tech stuff (about 80% of the site) as well as the real world (about 20%). You'll find information about various Firefox plugins next to instructions for jailbreaking your iPhone next to advice for organizing your sweaters. I really like it.

If anyone does decide to do this, let me know. I always like finding out about useful junk.

Wilco has the goddamn chickenpox. I had the night off. I even had a ticket. Wilco, in the summertime, in the park, under the stars, next to the water ... it was going to be perfect. Crap. Megacrap.

My redesign mania took over Christa's site. So pretty, so punk rock.

I had a dream last night that I killed someone and buried them in the yard. And then I "woke up" in the dream and realized that it was for real. And then I woke up for real and I didn't know if it was real or not. I half expected the police to come breaking down the door any minute. Then I fell asleep again and when I woke up I realized that the whole thing was a dream. As a friend of mine once said about dreams: I don't need drugs. I just go to sleep.

I won't be making any more posts on the Product until I've finished my novel. If you're interested, you can keep tabs on my progress through this graph.

Also, I'll probably still post photos on Flickr now and then, and I'll probably write some private stuff on Vox for my friends.

If you're starved for reading, there's always Perfect Duluth Day, but you probably know about that.

Also, I recommend the archives.

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It's summer. I'm fucken busy.

Cheek has this great post, however, about the various stars of one of my favorite TV shows, Freaks and Geeks, and where they are now. Go look at that.

I'm moving next week. To some sweet effing digs.

More later.

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...and I wasn't even warned. [Link here]

The Strib did a story on Minnesota bloggers and I'm in it! I had no idea.

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Sometimes we're the victims.

There are some downsides to commuting to work in the wee hours of the night.

Postal Worker Survives Power Saw Attack

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Leahpeah interviewed the Byrneunit and right off the bat, Brian Byrne said something very eloquently with which I immediately agreed, and mentally screamed YES!

The question was "Why do you blog?"

His answer was as follows:

A few reasons. For one, I’ve always felt I needed the practice writing, and I don’t know about you, but I can’t keep a journal for shit. I’ve tried time and again, and I always run into the same fundamental problem: Who the fuck am I writing this for? I’m sure as fuck not gonna go back and read it, and I’m sure as sure as fuck not gonna let anybody else read it, so why the fuck am I not watching “The Core” on Showtime Extreme West Coast right now? For real, Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank can’t keep the planet from disintegrating if I’m not watching. It’s true. I asked them, and they told me.

For another, beyond needing practice writing, I think blogging helps keep me from going off at the mouth (keyboard) too much, as I have a tendency to write thousands upon thousands upon thousands of words when all I’m trying to say is, for example, that I tend to write very long sentences. Seven words are important, but just to be on the safe side I’ll pad them with an extra few hundred. Just to keep them from breaking during shipping.

For yet another, I am an extremely lazy writer, and I did find that having a blog, with its implied throngs of five (dare I dream, ten?) readers out there in Internetsville, was a solid enough prompt toward actually finishing things — small things, in manageable doses, and with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Entries like that strike me as legitimately good writing practice, assuming you can actually pull one off and not just spend all your time posting photographs of your television. (Cough.)

AAAAand finally, blogging has helped teach me to edit myself on the fly, and to ask myself one all-important question: Is what I’m writing the least bit entertaining? Because if not, it’s basically a journal entry, and look, I’m okay with baring my soul and all, but I apply the same (previously) unspoken understanding to the blog that I do with most of my friends: I am perfectly happy to hear what’s troubling you on a deeply felt emotional level. Just not that often. Because — and this is very important — I’m friends with you because you’re fun to drink with and you’re smart and not irritating and you make me laugh. I’m also pretty sure that’s why most of my friends are friends with me. I’m thinking an absolute maximum of maybe one bout of soul-baring every month or two is about as much as I feel comfortable foisting on my real-life friends, and thus the same goes for the Internets.

I agree wholeheartedly with all of it, but the final paragraph hits a sweet spot. Bloggers need to realize that they are publishing what they write. This means that the moment they hit "Publish" or "Save" or whatever, their words are no longer their own. Their words belong to those who read them. I've always hated writers who say, "I only write for myself." Please. If it really was only for you, then you'd write a fricken diary. When your words become available to me, you're writing for me, jackass. And if you're wasting my time, I'm gonna resent it.

This is why this blog is called The Product; to always remind me to keep the bullshit to a minimum. This blog is indeed constructed for me to crank out a couple hundred words here and there because I love recreational writing, but it also has a readership, no matter how small. And if it doesn't appeal to them, then why don't I just keep my rants about the latest processed food product to myself?

Yes, I'm a narcissist. I've never denied that.

Anyway, read the whole interview because the Byrnes are beautiful and charming.

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For ladies only.

[Your first impulse will be to think that this a joke. It isn't.]

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For your Sunday reading/viewing pleasure, I present Victor Varnado: actor, filmmaker, stand-up comedian, and black albino.

Yes, black albino.

This guy is a freakin maniac, and he's funnier than hell.

Check him out at bestalbino.com.

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Via Metafilter (as usual) I came across an article from a Russian alt-weekly called The eXile. The title of the article is "That '70s Sham: 90 Reasons to Hate the 90s," and it's hilarious.

Here are some of my favorite reasons to hate the 90s, as authored by Mark Ames and Jake Rudnitsky (apologies for quoting so much). I wholeheartedly agree. These reasons to hate make me happy.

16. Guys wearing ski caps in warm weather

The Sham: In one of the most counter-intuitive and least comfortable fashions since men wore iron corsets in Tutor England, knit ski-caps were all the rage in the 90s. Not during cold snaps, mind you, but even in Los Angeles. In the heat. Kids coast to coast representing every subculture from raver to grunge to Phish-head to hip-hop trapped their head-heat all summer long to prove their youth-ness. That's called suffering for your art. Does this mean period pieces about the 90s a few years from now, starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich in a ski cap?

65. Prague

The Sham: Somehow it was decided that Prague was to the 90s what Paris was to the 20s. Why we don't know - Paris of the 20s was only that in retrospect, no one knew it would be an era in-advance, but somehow Prague was already that before the first black-turtleneck-totin' free-versers Delta Airlined it into town. Prague was crammed to the gills with so many alienated American bohemians per square meter that it looked like a spawning ground for the eccentric-in-training set, yet it didn't produce a single memorable book, poem, song, artwork, film, even joke or quip or statement on our condition, all that in an entire decade of trying. Which is a might achievement in the annals of mediocrity, and the one mitigating factor (imagine if a great book really did come out of Prague - that would really sting).

89. Blue collar chic

The Sham: Middle class guys picking up garage mechanic uniforms with cursive names sewn into the breast pocket at the local thrift store and slumming it. Then, while downing cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon for a buck a pop at the local hipster dive, peopled with other indy hipsters wearing Confederate hats or T-shirts and scraggly beards, they'd talk about this art instillation they've got planned for their studio in Williamsburg.

There are a million eighty-seven more of these over at The eXile, so go read 'em.

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Two of my favorite videoblogs have new episodes that you must see now.

Human Dog has another interview with Ben Haberek, disgruntled math teacher, who talks about the dumbing down of education as well as labor-management issues in the teaching field. Haberek's rants simulaneously make me happy and regretful that I chose not to get into the teaching field.

The latest episode of Tiki Bar TV has the beautiful Lala building "an automatic robot based on science" to help out Johnny Johnny with his exhausting bartending duties. No wonder Tiki Bar TV posts so infrequently. It takes time to crank out this kind of quality comedy.

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Well, maybe you do and maybe you don't. In February of 2005, I dumped the blog I had been keeping for two years, and started over from scratch. While this was a good move at the time, I never had the intention of keeping those archives private forever.

Ladies and gents, the full archives have returned. Which means that if you you're a relatively recent arrival at this site, you can now peruse the events of my life all the way back to early 2003. Lucky you.

Not everything was stellar, and you can tell by the earliest posts that it took me a while to figure out why I was keeping an online journal and how to go about it exactly. So to help you out, I've created a list of links to what I feel are my best posts from that time. I hope you enjoy them.

My Life In Music | Though it's a meme, this might just be my favorite post ever. And it gets me excited yet again for the whole Mix Tape Madness club, which should be kicking in with its first mailing any day now.

2003: The Year In Pictures | An odd delivery system, but check out these photos. Those were some good times, right there.

Barrettchase.com Interviews Barrett Chase | My sarcastic explanation of my common-law divorce.

My Second-Place Bowling Acceptance Speech | For a while, we all went bowling every week. This was written the day after the first time I'd bowled in years.

Weekend Wrap-Up | I hope I didn't take weekends like this for granted back then, because I could use a weekend like this more than anything else in the world right now. It has been so, so, SO long.

Christmas Eve Dialog | In the fall of 2004, my mom almost died. She recovered, but not nearly enough to cook Christmas dinner. Here's a glimpse of the hilarity that insued when no one was at the helm.

Up Above Us | A review of some various ceilings I've slept under. I'm not kidding.

Fond Irving Memories, Parts One and Two | Some stories from the greatest/worst apartment building in Duluth. It was incredibly beautiful. Every apartment was unique. It was where I went to elementary school. But it was so, so ghetto.

Barrett's Straight-to-Video Paradise, Parts One and Two | You know I like the cheesy movies. Here are my own ideas for some lurid flicks.

Thoughts on Jason Johnson | Some of my thoughts on a particular co-worker of mine. Since this was written, we have both been transferred to another, saner facility, where we have actually spoken to one another. I found out that he voted for me for "best cartoonist" in the Ripsaw's Sawyer Awards, even though the category did not exist. Rock on, JJ.

Truth On Tap | A bit of an online meltdown I had when my mom was in intensive care. I hated seeing it at the time, but now I'm kind of glad I vented in that way. (For the record, my mom is relatively OK now, homebound and on oxygen, and certainly not doing backflips or, well, anything for that matter. But at least not in the hospital.)

There's more in the archives, too, which I'm probably not remembering. Peruse if you want. Or not. I don't really care.

PS: I'd also like to point out that I miss doing The Recliner Sessions, and I'm kinda proud of these two ads I designed.

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I've never been a fan of pub crawls. I see them parading up and down Tower Avenue, all yuppified with their matching, brightly colored T-shirts and I just want to groan. Sometimes I do. I groan like a ... like a ...

Hm. I can't quite come up with a simile for that.

Anyhow, check out today's edition of Minnesota Stories to see a pub crawl as it's supposed to be done. They've taken a good idea that usually turns out lame and turned it into a great idea that seems sublime.

What do we want?
BRAINS!
When do we want it?
BRAINS!

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Keith and the Girl | Hands down, the best podcast on the planet. A NYC couple who make their living as clowns at kids' parties, Keith Malley and Chemda are outrageous, ambitious, and extraordinary. Join them every weekday for Clown Monday (wherein they detail the awful and sublime happenings of clown life), Suck-a-Dick Wednesday (gotta get me that T-shirt), Gossip Thursday (featuring their incredibly informed friend Patrice), and a live show every Friday. Plus they play online poker with their fans. 500,000 subscribers can't be wrong -- check out Keith and the Girl immediately.

Anniemosity | My favorite Duluthian whom I've never met. Check her site out for the Weekly 5+ if nothing else. Anne is young, it's true, but she has enough wisdom and sense to know that butt-rock is where it's at. G'N'R forever! Giturdun! Um, yeah.

Receptionista | Oh, Amanda. Where to begin? Your thrice-daily posting? Your avid love of alt-country? Your guilty love of Sparks? Your intolerable cuteness?

No, I will begin with "Suck it." That is my new philosophy. Good luck, and godspeed on your move.

Human Dog | To tell you the truth, I've been kind of jaded about videoblogs lately. Still, Human Dog continues to be the best thing out there and never disappoints. Not only do I subscribe, I incessantly check for updates. This, in my opinion, is the standard by which all other videoblogs should be judged. It's funny, well acted, and beautifully produced. You should be proud, Chris Weagel. I would hire you, if I had the need to hire anyone. Except a maid.

The Whole Cast of PDD, circa 2003. | I'm more excited about PDD now than I've been in a long time. I've really been enjoying the conversations lately. And that has inspired me to revisit some of the great stuff from the past. Remember when Starfire interviewed Ca-chee? Remember when Godsey taught us that "Hip Hop Can Be Poetry"? Remember when Starfire got his face rearranged? Remember when we got all 1961?

I fell in love with all of you back then. Let's be awesome again.

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Holy mackerel! Consider my world completely rocked. Last night I was chillen out here in the Product Headquarters with my buddy Stahfukka, which of course means drinking booze while simultaneously combing the web on two computers, when I came across this video. I don't know how I found it, but we laughed, and then we kept surfing. And that was that.

Also, I thought it was pretty hilarious because as a teenager, I used to do that all the time. In fact, we had a joke back then about doing that "too many times" but there is no way I could explain it to you, so I won't.

So today I checked back and looked at the site again, when I discovered that it's a team vlog done by several guys, and one of the guys is everyone's best friend, Clark Saturn of Zip Zap Zop Dot Com. He's the dude in the helmet.

I also discovered that the video was part 5 of a series entitled "Christmas Cheer." Christ, these videos are awesome.

Watch part one
Watch part two
Watch part three
Watch part four

I have actually had a few nights very similar to this. Nights where "things get a little out of control." On video, it looks awful, but it isn't. Watching these, I felt a little of the release this kind of night can give you. I recommend getting crazy.

Kids, try this at home.

And Saturn, if you're reading this, you need to come to Duluth.

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Not that working with 1980s computers and a constantly running dot-matrix printer isn't a blast, but how can I go to work this morning when all I want to do is stay home and play with this?

Meanwhile, Chuck has been spotted danceflashing on Rocketboom.

I need to get out more.
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