dreadpiratetom

I guess I forgot to mention this, but my site, RaKhan.com, has been revamped. Mostly it's going to have my portfolio-type stuff, animations and drawings and comics and all that.

And some photos of the Secret Village of Little People.

This is one of the best Wikipedia articles I've ever read, on Peanut Buster Parfaits, since I happen to be eating one right now.

Peanut Buster Parfaits

The factor that separates Peanut Buster Parfaits from say, a hot fudge and peanut sundae, is in the design of the cup. A Peanut Buster Parfait (PB parfait for short) has a long thin base, and open up at the top to create what looks like a small bowl on top of a tall glass. the hot fudge and peanuts, separate the ice cream into two separate sections, as the toppings are layered. A decompilation of the toppings would reveal that the very bottom of the cup has one layer of toppings, then an inch and a half of ice cream, then another layer, more ice cream ending in a tapered ball with curl, and yet again more toppings.

I made a comic today:



A bit of a tribute to Perry Bible Fellowship and Dinosaur Comics.

Must see:



Howl's Moving Castle by Miyazaki; he did Spirited Away and such.

and A Scanner Darkly by Richard Linklater, kind of like Waking Life.

My dad reported that my old van is in a persistent automotive state, and they had to pull the plug on it.  I think the engine fell apart, or something equally catastrophic.  Anyways, good news all around.  My mom's knee surgery will be next month, hurray!  Er, yeagghh, great.  At least Psychonauts will be out soon.  April and I went through the demo last weekend and were most impressed.

Today I was grinned at from afar by a seven-foot-tall man who also happens to be the college's president.  A very friendly, yet terror-inducing guy when you run into him.



See?

Well, Ann Coulter has come and gone.  In related news, mosquitos are back.  I took Jon's advice and didn't go to her 'lecture' of sorts.  Apparantly it was more entertainment than anything else.

Lalala...set up punch line...

"liberals are soooooo stupid"

*ha ha ha* *boooooo*

And yes, all liberal men are gay.  It is too true.  Ah well, our school has become very good at wasting money.  When Jesse Ventura came they put a plastic bendy wrestler man in EVERYONE'S p.o. box.  So, about 3000 of the damn things.

Anyhoo, April and I drove around the country today looking for signs of toxic spills, but no luck.  It was wonderfully beautiful outside, though.

Two people tried to kill me on the road today.  The first was an asshat passing me on the shoulder while oncoming traffice was in the lane next to us.  And the other was some rich bitch in her red car with her friends swerving into the intersection where I was waiting to get out of, barely missing my door.

So yes, if anyone crashes into me, I'm going Adam Sandler-in-Punch Drunk Love on their ass with a tire iron.

"Hey Tom, that neutral color chart looks pretty sweet."

"It looks like vomit up close."

"Well, it's like how they say time heals all wounds...distance heals all art."

Ann Coulter is going to be here next sunday.  Her lecture is called "Liberalism and Terrorism: Two Stages of the Same Disease."  Can you say 'fucking bitch'?  Anyway, Jon and I already talked about this.  It's probably best not to go see her, as it would consist of her saying, "Fuck you, Tom Lubanovic," over and over again.  So yes, our PAC coordinators need to find some decent liberals.

Hey, it's raining.  niiiiiiiice.

We had a nice bonfire on friday, and saw the Decemberists on saturday.  Too much fun.

Today I realised that I really dislike seeing my friends smoke.  Not that I mind the smell or such.  But, after losing one friend, the idea of you guys infesting your lungs with that shit really gets to me.  So yeah, I'm done being a Melvin.  Sorry.  Maybe I'll indulge myself sometime to see what the fuss is all about.

( cut for a english grammar quiz of sorts )

01. Total volume of music files on my computer?

12 days and 17 hours, some of it I've stolen from friends and never listened to.  Like Tal Bachman.  Who are you?  What are you doing on my computer?  Are you possibly Norwegian?

02. The last CD I bought was ...

A Ghost is Born by Wilco, and GOD is it beautiful.

03. The last song I listened to before writing this was ...

Pretty Girls Make Graves - "Holy Names".

04. Song playing right now:

After reading this question I put on Wilco - "Hell is Chrome".  It's been stuck in my head for a month.  Now I can't hear anything because Charlie's filling the air mattress with the mini-vacuum and I can't hear it.  Okay, he's done.

05. Five songs I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me:

Wilco - "Hell is Chrome" is fucking brilliant.  I'll totally burn you a copy if you want.  Michelle just called it 'bad sex scene music.'  Huh.

Tilly and the Wall - "Nights of the Living Dead" makes me want to fully embrace hedonism.  We're gonna end up screaming about some midnight garage sale.  I've listened to it a lot, and we'll see this fine Nebraskan band at the end of the month.  They have a tap dancer, too, ya know. 

U2 - "All I Want is You" always gets to me.  Way romantic and touching and such.  The video also has a circus dwarf in love with a trapeze woman.  So sad, though.

David Bowie - "Life on Mars" is mostly due to The Life Aquatic.  We sang this a little bit in Ear Training, once.

Iggy Pop - "Passenger" has a lot of memories attached to it.  A lot of them are with my friend Ben, who died this year.

06. Five albums I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me:

U2 - Achtung Baby.  The other two lists I've seen both have this on it, but hey.

Oasis - What's the Story (Morning Glory)?

Belle and Sebastian - Dear Catastrophe Waitress

Ryan Adams - Gold

Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

07. Which 5 people are you passing this baton to, and why?

the_chauffeur, rakugo_report, graeffufighting, and all y'all.  Just curious.

Well I finally got the Internet back in my dorm room, and to celebrate, I'll share a little spam I got today:

The porn business is all about fresh meat.
New girls, fresh new faces are what keeps things
from getting stale. We recognize this and have
made it our goal to find and bring to you the hodtest
new gerls on the porrn scene before they ever make it
big in the business.

DRASTIC EDIT: Nevermind. Things are right with the world again. Thanks, Katie.

So I got disconnected from the network and haven't had internet access from my dorm for about a month. It's because the spyware software I got from St. Olaf sucks goat nuts. Don't use Ad-Aware.

Anyway, I got back from Sioux City, Iowa yesterday. Had a most, most excellent time, watched much, much adult swim and slept. We also worked on a set for a play at Charlie's high school, which his brother will be starring in.

I met Terry Pratchet today. He signed a frisbee disk of mine (I thought that was so clever) and acted like a humourous, gray-haired English author, which he is. All I want for my birthday is a giant gift certificate to Dreamhaven Books, thank you. My sister is also getting into more interesting things, like Neil Gaiman, which is good. Apparantly her teacher Mrs. Pixler, who I met once, "wishes she'd known somebody like me in college." Erlack.

I could also mention that I've been drawing naked people at school and it is my favorite thing to do besides sleeping and eating nachos, which I never get to do. It looks like I'll be working at Olaf this summer, helping to manage the school's website, which sounds fun. I may also model nude next year so that I can get money and buy books on how to properly draw other naked people. Hmmmmm.

You don't read these kind of stories every day.  Good God, I fucking cried.  You'll be glad you read this, I think.

There are some very exciting things coming to town.  The biggest one is something I've found called The Animation Show, which is a presentation of the best animated features out there.  It's being hosted by Mike Judge and Don "my spoon is too big!" Hertzfeldt.  Looks like it's opening at both the Lagoon Theatre in Uptown and Edina starting May 13th.  I may have forgotten to mention this, but it's my new life's ambition to become a damned good animator.  Or, failing that, to be involved in movies somehow.  I've talked to a lady working at Weta Digital in New Zealand now who graduated from St. Olaf, and it sounds like a mighty enjoyable career.  She's working on the King Kong remake that Peter Jackson is directing. *headdesk*

The other awesome news is that Tim Schafer, creator of Grim Fandango and other adventure type games, is releasing a game called Psychonauts in April.  This guy has a big giant huge imagination, and if you happen to run across any of his games, buy them and treasure them and love them forever, because they're that good.

A good friend mine died in a car crash yesterday, on his way to school.  His name was Ben Wolff, and he played drums in our band.  The full impact of this hasn't come close to hitting me yet.  I can't focus the idea in my mind for more than a little while before it seems completely ludicrous and stupid.  Being quite honest, he is one of the nicest and most excellent guys I've ever met.  Ben, Nate and I went to South Dakota on a trip once to do some volunteer/habit for humanity type stuff, and we had a wonderful time.  We visited Wall Drug and had mini raves in the woods with flashlights.

The only good news is that it was a neck injury and he died instantly.  All of his organs were undamaged, so his body is going to save the lives of lots of people.  What else can I say?  Pretty soon the grief is going to hit me, and I don't know what happens next.  I miss him a lot.  A friend of mine, Stacy, just lost her dad, too.  I want this week to be over.

I'm not dead, just tired. First off, I should say that I'm very proud of my sister, because her team won the state championship for 'future cities,' a bit of a Sim City/engineering type activity at her middle school.  Congrats to mentaron's sister, as well.

Snow was falling beautifully today, turning the patches of pure ice into deathtraps.  Beautiful, wonderful deathtraps.  This is the first week of the new semester, and my brain hasn't exploded yet.  I've got six classes, half music and half art, and the profs all seem to have a sense of humor.  Everyone has been dreading ALICE's class, since she's apparently the genetic mixture of Satan with a music history teacher.  Nobody told me she had a wicked sense of humor, though.

After suffering a severe OCD attack the other day, I moved my desk and rearranged everything so that I barely have to move from my little hidey hole beneath my roomie's bunk.  Is veray comfy.

Did you know they make paintbrushes from squirrel fur?  Not all of them, obviously, the pricey ones.  How the fuck do you shear a squirrel?  Do you have to raise them in New Zealand amongst the sheep, in scampering little hordes, or do you have to snatch them out of their trees with extendo-arms?  Hmm.

Oh, and Tilly and the Wall rock.  Thank you, Allie.  I've been spreading the love and the CD has been circulating across the campus for a while.

My final piece for electronic music: Kong!

And... if you want to see the video I scored it for, watch!