The look that made Jonas a Griner.

We finally got a decent photo the other day for our Christmas card, and when I saw Jonas' expression, it seemed familiar. Eventually, it hit me. It looked almost identical to the photo taken at the pound in California.

On the left, you can see the original photo that ran on a rescue group's adoption page. I was actually just visiting the page to ensure I was printing the Web address correctly in our newspaper's weekly Adopt-a-Pet feature. Jonas (actually called Wally at that point), was at the top of the page, and I was smitten right away.

Obviously, the Christmas card photo is on the right. Three years have elapsed between the two shots, but Joe still knows how to fire up the charm on occasion. (Especially if the cameraman -- my dad in this case -- makes a weird noise right before the shot.)

Do not, repeat, do not arm yourself with the bones of Godzilla.

In one of those "don't ask how I got here" kind of moments, I found myself perusing the Godzilla page on Wikipedia today. Scrolling through it, I started to notice that the page is a treasure trove of hilarity.

Here are my favorites:

• "In the movie Godzilla x Mothra x Mechagodzilla: Tokyo S.O.S., the two shobijin fairies warn that using Godzilla's bones as a weapon is a big mistake."

• "Indeed, a translated conversation between Godzilla, Mothra and Rodan in said film reveals that Godzilla's ire towards humans is merely due to what he perceives as unprovoked attacks towards him."

• "The American version looked much more like a badger like than the original version."

• "He is also shown to have a high degree of physical strength and dexterity, often utilizing martial arts techniques in combat."

• There's really no excerpt that will do this justice, so here you go:

In Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, it is discovered that the time-travelers that had attempted to prevent Godzilla's creation had left in its place on Lagos island their own creation—three tiny Dorats—mutating and combining them into a three-headed golden abomination, King Ghidorah.

Unfortunately, they are unaware that the Godzilla they had planned to erase was later mutated by the nuclear submarine crash which would lead to the events of The Return of Godzilla. In an effort to stop King Ghidorah's rampage, an extremely wealthy corporate developer plans to send a nuclear submarine into the Bering Sea in an attempt to create a second Godzilla. Instead of finding the Godzillasaurus, the submarine would come face to face with Godzilla himself, unchanged and still recovering from the ANEB.

The Futurians’ ignorance of the past leads them to create the second Godzilla in the first place rather than removing him from history. Godzilla absorbs the power of the nuclear sub, purging his system of the bacteria and increasing his size further to 100 meters (328 feet), becoming big and powerful enough to defeat King Ghidorah.

Godzilla proceeds to attack Japan itself, but is stopped when Emmy, one of the Futurians who had turned on her fellows, resurrects Ghidorah as a cyborg in the future and returns to the past to battle Godzilla with the new Mecha-King Ghidorah. The two battle in Tokyo, with both falling into the sea, but Godzilla is still alive.

•Finally, some actually interesting information:

"One characteristic that has remained stable is his roar. It was first created by Japanese composer Akira Ifukube by rubbing a resin glove over the strings of a contrabass."

If real life were like Rock Band.

So I got a chance to try out the new game Rock Band this weekend at friend Bill's house, and it is truly spectacular. Like Guitar Hero stepped up to the Nth degree. (You can read Bill's summary of the game here, or check out videos like this one to see how it works.)

Anyway, so yeah, the game's a blast, but to make it as fun as it is, the programmers had to really change your notions of how a live performance should work. Below, I've done my best to recreate what it must look like from the fan's perspective.

-----------

Hey man, how was your weekend? Good good. Yeah, no mine was fine. Went and saw a show. What? No, I wouldn't really say it was good, but it was pretty friggin weird. No, nothing like that. Let me see if I can do this justice:

At the beginning, the band just kinda walked out on stage and picked up their gear. Then they started debating who should play what instrument. The guitarist picked up a bass, then changed his mind again and sat at the drums. The drummer picked up the mic, then seemed to get shy and handed it to the other guitarist. I thought maybe they were just joking around, but then it really got crazy.

Right when the band looked like they were finally ready, they just stood there staring straight ahead. So someone yells out, "Play 'Run for the Hills' by Iron Maiden!" Then the drummer freaks out and starts trying to hand the sticks to anyone who will take them. Everyone else in the band tells the bassist to play drums, but the drummer wants to play guitar, so the guitarist switches with the singer. Then the song starts after what felt like forever.

So the drummer begins playing, but he can't figure out the beat, so it's just random banging. And just when I'm thinking, "wow, this sucks," the singer gets going. And it's like she has never heard the words in her life. She's reading the lyrics off some kind of karaoke machine, at least until she gives up and just starts saying "roo roo roo" for the next, like, 6 minutes.

Right when I'm about to go get a beer, things actually got pretty interesting. The drummer, who looks like some kind of nervous, caffeinated monkey, gets forcibly yanked off the stage for playing so incredibly bad. Then it's kinda creepy, because the song keeps going without any percussion.

But that only lasts 30 seconds or so. That's when the guitarist, who's actually pretty good, starts crotch-grinding his guitar and doing this weird ride-that-pony dance across the stage. I guess that won over the stage manager or whoever, because the drummer got to come back out and play the rest of the song. Strangely, this happened two or three more times. The drummer even got kicked off stage a second time, but he got to come back yet again, apparently because the bass player started shaking his butt and using a wah-wah pedal.

Anyway, at the end, they try to do this big finish. But it's not like one of those jam-band finishes where all the different melodies come together into one triumphant finale. No, it's more like they all just start hitting random notes and drums and cowbells and whatever. I swear my ears were bleeding.

At the very end of the song, they all hit their instruments one last time, but the bass player hits his note about a half a second too late. Everything goes quiet, and they all stare at him like he's an ass. He apologizes to the rest of the band and says he should probably just sing the next one or two. Then the audience got to vote on who was the "most energetic" or some crap. I threw my bottle at the stage and went home.

Home security redefined.

Found this photo while I was organizing our external drive and decided to give it the lolcats treatment. Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!

Hoboy! I have an Amazon wish list! And my unborn daughter has a charity!

This feels self-serving and materialistic, but I personally like when friends have Amazon wish lists. Because even if I know you well, come Christmas crunch time, I don't really want to do any more thinking than I absolutely have to.

So anyway, here's mine...



If you've got one you'd like to share (or see something that I'd love but is blatantly missing from my list), post a comment here.

Oh, and I almost forgot, with all the baby registry stuff also going on this year, Karen and I are offering an easy alternative to gifts of any kind.

We're trying to collect donations in our daughter's name for kiva.org, so you're all invited to take the easy route and send a contribution of any size (seriously...$1, whatever) via check. Just make it out to us and write kiva.org in the message line. Contact me if you need our address.

Five years ago today....

...it was an icy-cold, blustery day in Chicago. And mere minutes after our friend Matt snapped this photo, it started snowing and didn't let up. Thankfully, I don't live in a Victorian novel, so the weather didn't end up being a portent of things to come. It just made the bridesmaids cuss a little.

I doubt I have to tell any of you how incredible it's been being married to Karen. She keeps me excited about life and energized about learning new things. We've gone through some pretty dramatic transitions in the past five years, and Karen has always been the voice of enthusiasm and optimism, although she's enough of a realist to actually make me plan my life more than a day ahead.

I could obviously spend countless posts talking about how great she is, how much she's added to my life, how cute she looks when she's killing samurai on the XBox, but there's really no rush. We're only five years in.

Happy anniversary, Karen.

When no one's looking.

Had to run home today for a few minutes so the TV repair guys could pick up the set. When I got there, it was quiet. Too quiet.

Assuming Jonas had not again broken INTO the house, I decided he probably just hadn't noticed me pull up.

So I carefully went into the house, grabbed the camera and snapped a photo of what he secretly does when no one's around during the day.

Witness the SHOCKING TRUTH. If you dare!

A (not so) quick wrapup of the many things going on.

I keep wanting to write epic blog posts about all the different things we've got going on lately, but I never have the time to actually write them. So I'm going to cop out and just give you guys some big updates in bullet form.

• We're having a daughter. Sorry if you're just now hearing about it, but yes, it's true. We're quite excited, nervous, etc. Karen's about halfway along and has had a pretty much ideal pregnancy. (No sickness, no super-crazy cravings or aversions, etc.) Read more over at Karen's blog if you haven't already. If you're my daughter reading this in the distant future and wondering how your dad announced the big news....um, sorry about this.

• We're adopting a cat. That's the plan anyway. Tomorrow, we're scheduled to pick up a kitten that was brought into our vet. It was found hiding under a car and has since been named "Volvo," which I assure you will not last. If this ends up causing too much craziness, our vet has assured us we can bring her back at any time and they'll find a good home. So at worst, we're fostering, but I hope it'll work out long-term.

• We're painting our house. And it is an epic affair. After two steady weeks of work, we've only completed about 1/6th of the house, but it looks INCREDIBLE. (We're going from horrible mint green to a sort of dark cedar. I love it.) Again, I steer you to Karen's blog for the backstory. We'll have some great in-progress photos soon, and I'm especially excited about my parents coming down to help next weekend.

• I got to see They Might Be Giants Friday night in Atlanta, which was great. They played a good mix of old and new stuff, although they did seem pretty exhausted from all the touring they've been doing. (Thanks to YouTube, you can see a video clip from the front row, which is far closer than I was.) I picked up an autographed vinyl copy of their new album, which will make for a fun memento. Had a great time with my old California friend Jeff at the show. Maybe too great a time, because....

• Saturday was one of the worst days of my life. Not really sure why. I didn't drink a tremendous amount Friday night, and never even really got that tipsy. But Saturday was literally a gut-wrenching day of frequent, sudden stops along the interstate. I came home, passed out and woke up about 20 hours later feeling quite a bit better. I'm blaming the gypsies who fed me before the show. They'll probably come for my baby in a few months, too. (Actually, the restaurant was tasty, if a bit underwhelming in terms of menu choices.)

Sadly, I had to miss our monthly Supper Club with friends and family (sorry again, guys), but another drive up to Huntsville was far, far out of the question.

• I've been playing around quite a bit on Facebook, which is a world of better than MySpace. If you're on there and you haven't found me yet, let me know. All sorts of friends from college, high school and elsewhere have come out of the woodwork on there. I even started a group for advertising bloggers, and it already has more than 80 members from around the world. Crazy. (If you have a Facebook account, here's the link to the group.)

• Work is going wonderfully, but it's definitely keeping me busy. Just embarked on a huge new project that should be fun. It comes on the heels of this huge project, which was a good time. I have an office now, which is a first in my career. It's quite nice and serene, and I'm actually somewhat close to my colleagues now.

I don't have much recent stuff I can really show off, but here's a fun "save the date" card I made with designer Miles to promote an HR conference. The client is a local law firm.

FRONT


INSIDE



• Our TV is broken, and it's become quite an ordeal. We took the 180-pound monster into a repair place, which eventually said they fixed it (for $125....not terrible). After dragging all 180 pounds BACK home, I realized it was still broken in the same way. (But thanks to Greg and Valerie for helping load it into and out of the car.) The repair guys are picking it up tomorrow and waiving the $50 pickup fee, but we'll see how it goes.

If it ends up costing too much more or being unfixable, we're looking at this 37" LCD by Vizio, which sells for about $750 at Sam's and has gotten good reviews for such a cheap model. Anyone out there have any other recommendations? We're replacing a 34-inch CRT by Phillips, if that gives you a sense of perspective.

• Jonas has ballooned to 73 pounds. I'm starting to think he's actually a manatee.

OK, that's plenty of updates for now. There's so much more going on, but I'll try to be better about keeping you all up to speed more regularly. As always, you can enjoy my blogging antics somewhat daily over here.

For a $25 copay, it's pretty good entertainment.

Doctor: So, what's wrong?

Me: I've had really bad abdominal cramping for a few days.

Doctor: Ooh, could be kidney stones.

Me: Really? I mean, my kidneys don't hurt.

Doctor: Huh. Maybe bladder stones?

Me: Uhh...

Doctor: Does it burn when you pee?

Me: No.

Doctor: Have you had heavy bleeding in your stool?

Me: I would have mentioned either of those things before the cramping.

Doctor: Huh. Well, let's X-ray you and see if we can find those stones!

(After X-ray)

Doctor: Mm, no stones. Are you sure you haven't had heavy bleeding in your stool?

Me: Pretty sure.

Doctor: Well, if you notice it happen a few times...

Me: Shouldn't I be worried after the first time?

Doctor: Yeah. That would be bad.

Me: Wait, should I expect it to happen?

Doctor: Whew, I hope not. Do you ever eat so much that it might rupture your intestinal wall?

(Doctor looks at my 150-pound frame.)

Doctor: Probably not, huh?

Postscript:

I was eventually diagnosed with "abdominal cramping" and given pain pills and antibiotics, even though the doctor seemed vague about what he expected the antibiotics to kill.

To date, no heavy bleeding, and I feel much better. And I can't say I'll stop going to that doctor. He seems to call it like he sees it, which I appreciate. And strangely, there's never a wait.

All the freaks come out.

Here's a slideshow of choice pics from this year's Boo celebration in Birmingham. Most of our group went as marketing icons. I'll let you try to guess them all.




One highlight of the night was a friend saying that my gray beard made me look "10 years older." That would be 40. Jerk.

One joy I cannot be denied.

P1010004, originally uploaded by Griner.

My TV's broken and my Internet connection is failing every few minutes, but nothing can keep me from enjoying the first fire of the season.

Every reporter's dream.

Big congrats to my wonderful friend Angela, who has made it into The New York Times. I think she's either trying to dismantle her own chin or getting ready to play the harmonica.

Let's get ready to jumble!

So a few months back, Karen proposed a small yard sale to get rid of excess junk around the house. I personally didn't think we had enough to justify the work of a yard sale, but then my sister found a new house, effectively stocking us with a driveway full of pretty good stuff.

This past weekend was the yard sale. (Or as they say in the U.K., "jumble sale," which my British friend Cait wants me to popularize in America....although I didn't risk putting that on the signs.)

It was a somewhat epic amount of work, but the result was about $630 in profit. (We spent roughly $100 on the newspaper ad, signs and prizes for friends who helped set up).

The experience itself was great, too. I actually had a lot of fun. People were nice, and just about everything sold.

But if you ever find yourself wanting to host a garage/yard/jumble sale, let me share a few tips while they're fresh in my memory.

What we did right:

* Warned away early birds. We had a "No early birds" line in our ad, and we put a sign at the end of the driveway the night before. That seemed to keep people from knocking on our door at 5 a.m. (which I hear is a regular occurrence).

* Offered free coffee. It was easy to make and set out, and it seemed to make folks happy and encouraged them to stick around longer.

* Had HUGE signs. I borrowed some large sandwich boards from my agency and covered them with poster board that we had colored with markers. They ended up dwarfing every other pitiful yard sale sign. I know most people don't have access to these, but you should at least try to scrounge for something similar in size and effectiveness.

* Had a clothing rack. Last time we did a yard sale, we stacked clothes on a table. This time, thanks to a clothing rack we borrowed from Karen's office, they seemed to sell a lot better. They also obviously saved precious table space.

* Had lots of grocery bags and cardboard boxes on hand. The boxes proved especially useful.

* Priced low. Our goal was to move stuff, and we did. If you price low, you stand the best chance of getting rid of most things in the first hour. Be strong, and forget what you or your mother-in-law paid for that porcelain sauerkraut cooker or whatever.

* Priced simply. $1 for adult clothes. 50 cents for baby clothes. The only exception was $3 for jackets.

*Didn't have a cash box. We carried the money in fanny packs and dropped off large wads of cash inside when it started to get full. This eliminated the stress of watching a money box all day.

* Arranged tables by topic, not by price. This just seemed to help people find what they were looking for, then buy lots of it. It can be tempting to bunch by price, but it's pretty worthless.

* Played music. It made it a bit less creepy and easier for people to talk to each other about my stuff in front of me.

* Cut boxes in half to hold books. This was my personal accomplishment. We had tons of books, but I didn't just want them stacked messily on a table. So I cut some cardboard boxes horizontally, then sealed the top or bottom. Poof! Suddenly you have a bunch of shallow boxes that were perfect for books, CDs, etc.

What sold well:
* Tools. By far the big winner, especially power tools. Sold before we opened.
* Small appliances. (Be sure to have an outlet for people to test them.)
* Computer and video game peripherals.
* DVDs. (Thanks, Dad!)
* Books -- especially cookbooks and paperbacks (we charged 50 cents a piece).
* Holiday stuff. (October was a good month for that.)
* Bathroom stuff, aka "Health and Beauty." Everything sold but a comb.
* Furniture.
* Guns. I didn't have any, but people kept asking all day.

What didn't sell well:
* Reference books. Total waste of space, except the dictionary and the Bible.
* Board games.
* Flower pots. Didn't sell one (out of about 15).
* Coffee mugs.
* Candles.
* Slim clothes. (Although it was worth it to see the look on women's faces when they held up Karen's shirts.)

Well I hope all that helps you guys out if/when you decide to tackle one. I definitely think it was worth the effort, but it'll be a while before I have the energy to tackle it again.

If you find yourself waffling about whether to have one, just picture this little stash of pot-dealer cash:

More news from my childhood (kinda).

Sure, my mom is friends with a bunch of astronauts. She has been as long as I've known her. This in and of itself has never impressed me.

But back when I was a video game junkie (er, in my early days as a video game junkie), my mother found a way to truly impress me. I was reading an article about Richard Garriott, creator of the Ultima video game series, and it mentioned that his games always included a silver serpent medallion because he actually wore one every day. The only time he didn't wear it was when his father took it into space.

Wait a second, into space? I asked mom, and sure enough, she knew Richard's dad, astronaut Owen Garriott. Holy crap, I was one degree away from the guy who made my favorite game! OK, so maybe it was still two or three degrees, but still.

Mom sent me an e-mail the other day saying that Richard is finally living his dream and going up into space himself. Now the story's starting to pop up in my blog feeds. (The photo above comes from a New York Times story that mentions Richard also owns a Sputnik. Good for him.)

But what confused me was today's entry in Gadling, a travel blog I read daily. They never mention the fact that Richard Garriott was one of the first software millionaires. In fact, check out this bit from the blog post:

If the name Garriot sounds familiar, think Owen Garriot. Owen Garriot, is a retired NASA astronaut who spent time aboard Skylab and Spacelab-1 is his dad. Next year's trip will be the first time an American astronaut's kid has headed to space.

I don't know how much weight I should give that blog entry anyway, since it misspelled Garriott on all references. But even in the NYT story I linked to above, Richard is referred to in the headline as just a "Texas man."

So now I'm not sure whether to feel bad that I think of Richard as the far bigger celebrity, or feel good that my mom is friends with the dad. One thing is clear: I don't really come out ahead in either scenario. Maybe I'd feel better if I had my own Sputnik.

Hey Emily, take notes from a real poet.

As we pored through boxes for our upcoming yard sale (more on that soon), Karen and I dug up some real treats. One of my favorites was "The Write Stuff: 1987-1988," the literary magazine from my fifth-grade year.

I think it will become apparent in the following poem that I was an exceptionally gifted poet, and some of you might find yourself shocked or even angry at the fact that I didn't pursue this as a career. The experimental rhyme scheme, the nontraditional metaphor...I may have reached my creative peak at age 10.

Undertow

Once there was a little man
Sitting on the beach.
A big wave came along.
He was afraid.
It turned him white like bleach.

It sucked him out into the water
Taken away he was.
He was treading water poorly
When he asked himself
"Is this what a dolphin does?"

He was swimming rather well
When a whale nudged him in the leg.
He looked for something to hold on to
When he saw a keg.
So he laid on top of it.

Finally he came to a shore.
As he got to the beach of ice
He stated "Gah!"
He had started out in South America
And ended up in Canada.

Now, as pleased as I am with the work of child Griner, I have to say I was actually outdone by other kids in my school. Check out this opening line from a fourth-grader's short story:

One day a robot named E.L. Fudge found a crystal that breakdanced.

I'll just let you imagine the rest.

Behold, an online bible for coffee nerds.

If you knew me in college, chances are you knew that each of my days was divided thusly:

• 1/4th asleep.
• 1/4th in classes.
• 1/4th working at student newspaper.
• 1/4th hanging out at Lakota Coffee Co.

Lakota was almost solely responsible for both my epic love of coffee and my unshakable desire to open a coffee shop. It was relaxing, warm and quiet — a combination that's just about impossible to come by in a college town.

Sure, it was the preferred hangout of professors and grad students, not undergrads like myself, but that's probably what has kept Lakota alive while countless other coffee shops in Columbia have failed.

Anyway, getting to the point, I was working on an AdFreak item today about NOSO, a somewhat-serious effort to break people away from social networking. You can read more about it on their site, but basically they recommend you find a nice quiet place to relax and invite other NOSO users to show up as well — but not ever join you or talk to you.

I was instantly reminded of Lakota, where I saw the same people every day but never talked to any of them. Even the staff didn't know my name after four years of daily visits, but that's just the kind of vibe it is. Friends would join me there on occasion, but most times it was just a nice introverted break from the daily chaos of college.

But I'm still not getting to the point. After reading about NOSO, I decided to Google Lakota and make sure it was still there. Not only is it alive and well, but they've even started a separate Web site to teach people about coffee.

The site — Specialty-Coffee-Advisor.com — reads like an ad for a book. But in fact, they just put all the info out there for anyone who's willing to read.

It's a virtual encyclopedia of coffee learnin', with tips for the daily coffee drinker and the professional roaster alike. (I hope to be both someday.)

You can read about:
• How to grind beans properly.
• How to store coffee.
• The real meaning of "organic" and "fair trade."
• A thorough definition of coffee types.
• Brewing tips that justify my own preferences. (See mom? I told you you're not supposed to be able to see the bottom of the cup.)

I don't mean to sound so blatantly promotional, but I know that several of you share my zeal for coffee, and it can be difficult to find one reliable source of information about this stuff. In the end, the site is likely aimed at getting potential coffee shop owners to hire Lakota's operators as consultants. In that respect, I'm sold as well.

Now I just need a Web site with tips on how to raise $250,000 in a few short years. Hey, what a coincidence, I just got an e-mail from a kind-hearted bank president in Nigeria...

Bush has a plan for zombies to eat U.S. beef.

I've got a few things to blog about in the near future (like the Griner 30th birthday festivities, which are still in full swing).

But until then, you'll have to subsist on this bit of YouTube awesomeness:

Not dead. Just resting.

Sad to say, the Cafe is probably going to remain a dusty, tumbleweed kind of place for a few weeks more. I'm loaded with intense amounts of work, and I'm trying to devote any free writing energy to AdFreak, where I'll also be helping as guest editor this month.

So don't cancel your RSS feed or erase your bookmark, but also don't expect a lot of action over here. I'll still try to post when I can, preferably with items of more substantial girth than "hey look, something funny!" I'd also like to rekindle my podcast idea. So many things to do! So little desire to sit in front of a computer and do them!

Cheers,
Griner

25 and sleepy? Sign me up!

A snippet from an IM chat with friend Valerie today:

Me: Check out this message that just got through my Gmail spam filter: "Hi! I am tired today. I am 25 y.o. girl that would like to chat with you."

Valerie: awesome
hee
I know how much you like tired girls

Me: Every good solicitation starts with an expression of fatigue.

You guys might not know this...

...but I am SO an industry notable.

Have a great weekend, all.