Joshua's personal timeline, a place to collect and share things from Joshua's life.
Created by Madprankster on Oct 7, 2008
Last updated: 10/22/10 at 11:48 PM
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I imagine the woman in this picture loves a man with two passions: her, and music. In return she has offered herself, and her body, to help feed these passions.
She is his love, and his life; his muse and his music. She has placed herself before him, naked, and as his everything.
I would love it if my wife were to have a sheet of lined paper inked across her back. It would be the slate I would trace my dreams on. She would turn her head and watch me, out of the corner of her eye, as I created worlds of words upon her perfectly pale skin, with the touch of my fingertips.
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1363496355
Just a pine cone that looked interesting, so I thought I would share it with everyone.
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1355977893
Watch closely as the fence passes through the shadow of a tree. This would be another reason my job can be dangerous.
If you thought Black Widows are bad, I guess you should be glad you haven’t run across any pot farmers.
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1355948334
Last Saturday, my friend Jake and I went to a place called Judge Bean’s BBQ for the Dr. Steve Ball Burger and Fries Quintuple By-Pass. We stumbled across the challenge while looking for someplace good to eat while working in the Nashville area. We were excited to find a challenge we thought we would be able to do, and from the description it looked achievable. The problem was the description wasn’t entirely accurate, and the cooks charred the patties.
We thought the burger consisted of five 1/2 lbs. patties, a single bun, and a large (but reasonable) portion of fries. Instead Jake an I each received this:
Five 1/2 lbs. patties placed between layers of Texas Toast and about three pounds of fries. These weren’t normal fries either, these were overweight steak fries. (This is Jake in the picture, by the way)
So we tried the challenge, but sadly, we failed. The entire staff—apart from the cooking staff that sabotaged our meal—seemed to be rooting for us. Other patrons of the restaurant whispered as our order was presented to us, then wished us luck as they returned to their properly proportioned meals. Our waitress informed us we had one hour to complete the meal in order to get it free (also not listed on the menu), wished us luck, and went on her way.
Jake’s plan was simple: eat all the fries first, then work on the burger. My plan was the opposite.
After seeing the true proportions of our order, we both became awestruck, and Jake’s plan went out the window. We both attacked our burgers first.
Now I’m no fan of condiments on my food, so I am used to eating my hamburgers dry, but these burgers were worse than that, and no amount of cheddar cheese slices could cover the hard blackened edges of the 1/2 pound patties. After choking down three of them, I removed the Texas Toast bun to see the full amount of damage done to these patties from the kitchen. The extent of the burn did nothing to encourage us to continue.
We showed the waitress, we showed the manager, we even lifted the patty into the air and showed the nearby table who had been rooting for us since the platters were placed on the table. Everyone was astonished to see what had been served to us at food. Soon, every waitress in the joint had made their way over to our table to see how badly prepared the Quintuple By-Pass was, all under the guise of wishing us luck during the second half of our hour-long gauntlet. At the three and a half burger mark, I threw in the towel.
Jake tried to edge me on. He had always wanted to complete an eating challenge, and for once he had found one that didn’t require eating gristle, or a burger loaded with four pounds of disgusting toppings. This one was an american classic, one he had unknowingly practiced for through numerous backyard cook-offs. He bathed the burger in barbecue sauce and continued, chewing bits of burned meat resisted mastication in death as much as it would’ve in life.
Finally the endless chomping seemed pointless to Jake, who insisted the cooks be made to finish the burger they had pawned off on us.
The manager, and the vegetarian waitress we had, took pity on us and offered to remove the cost of one of our burgers because of the poor quality of the burgers preparation.
So long Judge Bean’s. I can’t speak too highly of your food (except for the fries, which were delicious), but the wait staff was wonderful.
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1355858906
There are some downfalls to working all over the country—black widow spiders are one of them.
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1355208773
Man is the dissident note in life’s harmony. This isn’t to say man doesn’t belong, only that what he contributes may bring about the rise, or fall, of the piece.
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1299368897
As I laid in bed this morning, I consulted with the characters in my head. There was the scared teacher trying to defeat the hoards of undead pawing at the fences that surround his school. A man with aphephobia ranted to me about the teenage girl who has blackmailed him into letting her stay in his apartment, then crooned about the secretary he shamefully adores. A young teenage boy in a middle eastern country agitates the guard pulling him through the sandy promenade, then laughs as he is thrown into a windowless cell. Each one of theses characters has a story they want told, and each story is another piece to a picture framed by the parts of my soul that gave it life. My mind is lined with these pictures. Pictures that have formed a gallery of lives that span time and reality.
I let them all down today. No one will hear about the teachers progress, the aphephobic’s struggle, or the reason why the child was laughing. At least not for another day….
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1288684767
A lot has happened in the past few days. Normally this wouldn’t bother me, as my job routinely keeps me on my toes, but lately, I fell like my feet have been dangling from the clouds.
A week ago there was an incident at my job. How it started, and who was responsible is something I can’t discuss, but I was there, and I did my best to help resolve the issue.
After everything was said and done, my fellow crew members and I were sidelined for a week as the two parties involved (my company and the utility company) discussed matters of red tape and policies that had to be broken through and rewritten. We continued to meet every morning for our daily safety topics, and with each mornings collaboration brought new hope that tomorrow would be the day the legislative stars would align and we would return to work. On Friday, the first of October, we got word from above that the ability to divine a new starting date just wasn’t in the cards, and that Sunday we would begin the migration home.
Saturday morning, the day of my good friend Jake’s wedding, we packed up our equipment and personal belonging, and headed to San Francisco to wait for our early morning flights back to Michigan. At around 1 O’clock in the afternoon, I took out my phone and clicked on the link Jake had sent me a few days earlier. From the live stream on my phone I watched as Jake seated his family in there respective pews, followed by the groomsmen and bridesmaids taking there places by the alter, and finally the bride herself as she scurried past the crowd that had risen in her honor so that she could stand next to her betrothed. That was all I could watch before the low battery warning appeared across the screen of my phone.
The trip home had a few fiery patches as well. Due to last minute bookings, and the large number of us returning home, three separate airports were being used to return the crews home including Flint, Detroit, and Grand Rapids. Seeing that I live in Grand Rapids, the logical inference would be to have me flown into GR on my return trip. Needless to say, this didn’t happen. I was greeted in Detroit around 4:30 pm by my wife who had driven three hours to pick me up. In my company’s defence, they do offer to shuttle us back to the office in Mt. Pleasant, but that is a three hour trip in itself, and another two hours south to return home to Grand Rapids. Seeing that I was originally flown out to California from Grand Rapids Airport, I didn’t have a vehicle waiting for me at the office and Andrea would have had to drive the two hours north to Mt. Pleasant in order to pick me up after the three hour shuttle ride I would have to endure just to get there. Plus, meeting her in Detroit meant I could call up my family who lives about forty-five minutes form the airport and meet them for dinner.
I was pleasantly surprised to see my sister opt for the seat directly beside me. She, like myself, isn’t a very outwardly emotional person, so little clues, like her desire to be close to me, often hold more meaning then you would suspect.
It was good to see my mother and Dan at dinner. I’m not the best son, or the best brother, but they do a good job of making me feel like none of that matters.
Dinner ended on a happy, yet awkward note, with the normal round of hugs and I love yous that accompany farewells. Interestingly, as we were parting, Andrea spotted a rainbow in the distance that lightened the somber mood.
Andrea and I made it home safely, and the next morning I awoke to a strange pounding behind my eyes. I rarely get headaches. Maybe twice a year I’ll open my wife’s Advil stash and take the recommended dosage to relieve some minor ache or pain. However, this mornings ordeal lead me to the bathroom where I emptied my stomach.
After a few hours rest, a much needed shave, and a long shower, I finally felt somewhat human again. I noticed the notification light on my phone blinking and got curious. After checking the cause of the light, I soon started getting sick, again.
The notification was a missed call from a coworker named Steve. I had worked with Steve a few months prior and was confused as to why he would be calling so I quickly returned his call. He informed me that I needed to report to the office tomorrow (Tuesday) at 8:00 am so we could begin driving down to another job outside Nashville, TN.
Two nights and one day was all I would be allowed to spend at home and, with less than 24 hours notice, I was to depart on another mobilization. Of the thirty guys I had been working with in California, over half of them were worried about the loss of pay from the downtime, and here I was, wanting to spend time at home more then anything, and was being shipped back out to the front lines.
I wanted to yell at Steve. I wanted to tell him to call someone else, someone who cared, or needed the money. I wanted to ask him why me? Of all the guys who were sent home, why was I chosen? Me, the one who doesn’t want to be away from home?
I knew this wasn’t Steve’s choice, and yelling at Steve wouldn’t make the slightest difference, so I asked him to keep me informed of any changes, hung up the phone, and called my wife.
Andrea was upset, but her love of green paper, and black ink in the checkbook, kept her feelings grounded. She got out of work early Monday, so she and I could spend a little more time together. We laughed pretended everything was OK as our minds silently orbited the one sad thought that neither of us wanted to touch upon: the thought that tomorrow morning I would be gone.
So here I am, sitting at the desk in my hotel room as my roommate tosses and turns from from the soft sounds of my keyboard invading his dreams. I’m trying to stay positive about tomorrow, despite my historical accuracy in foretelling problems. The only consolation I see is that this is the perfect time to dig into my other blog, Alone with the Stars. I have it set up, but it’s password protected to keep everyone out till I’m ready to unveil it. Keep your eyes open for the password, I am going to need a few people to preview it soon.
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1253590162
“I heard it’s cold out, but her popsicle melts She’s in the bathroom, she pleasures herself Says I’m a bad man, she’s locking me out” What fun lyrics!
http://blip.fm/~wwah2
A friendly reminder.
http://blip.fm/~ww9wh
Wish me luck!
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1222433233
-AN IDIOT ABROAD
Normally I don’t like travel shows, but this one makes me laugh uncontrollably. I should have been born British.
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1220264264
I know this is a long video, but I find it really inspiring. Stop looking for the “What” in life and start looking for the “Why”. It worked for Apple and the Wright Brothers!
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1219610297
It’s restructure time, and one of the things I love to do is reevaluate my blogs. Seeing that I have a few new followers (thank you all for joining, by the way) it might be a good time to change a few things to make a little more sense.
Ironically, this blog is supposed to focus on the Fragments of my life but a majority of my posts obliterate the intention of micro-blogging and evolve directly into a novel. This made me wonder if I should use this blog more as a day to day journal, including pictures, snippets of text, and other mediums to show my life and thoughts. The new mobile application for Android will help greatly in this endeavor.
I have a private blog titled Breadcrumbs, but I have a problem with writing in private blogs. I feel it’s against the nature of blogging, but, every so often, I want to write things that I don’t want others (people I personally know) to read. I decided that the simplest fix for this issue was just to disconnect my Tumblr account from Twitter and Facebook. No one I know uses Tumblr, so only the tech savvy, or truly caring, will subscribe to my blog through e-mail or RSS feed—and those aren’t the friends I’m worried about telling my secrets to.
I’m thinking of recommissioning Breadcrumbs to focus more on my writing. A blog where I would create lengthier posts and share some of my writing. I would open it up so others could read it, but it would be a much more personal blog, with less of a focus on the trivial or humorous side of Tumblr and more on me as I try and develop as an individual.
The last one is titled Alone with the Stars, and is a joint venture between myself and myself. I created another Tumblr persona using an alternate email so the postings wouldn’t be traced back to me (as Madprankster). This may seem like an odd thing to do, but I have a good reason for doing it.
My Madprankster profiles scattered throughout the Internet are set up for fun; nothing professional. I go onto Tumblr and I feel I can say anything I want because I don’t really give out my name, and even if I do, Joshua is a pretty popular name. Alone with the stars is my first blogging project that will try to show me as a writer. Because of this, it needs to be connected to the real me, the professional me, and in order contribute to the blog effectively, I decided to share joint custody of the content with myself, and mainly because the mobile application doesn’t support multiple users.
Another reason I decided to do this is so I could stay in character. Alone with the Stars is a blog written by a NASA Astronaut who is sent into space to update the programming on an old R&D space station orbiting the earth. He piggybacks the blog onto his daily reports and talks about how he is doing, what he sees, and so on. The problem is, while he is up there, he wakes up one morning to a bright light outside and sees multiple nuclear explosions have peppered the earth. The blog posts continue past the destruction of the earth because he continues to post personal entries.
The story is intended to be more of a present day, real-time blog, that goes over everything he is faced with mentally, knowing he is the last of humanity. In order to do this, and make it seem somewhat believable, I can’t blog about the loneliness of one character then have followers jump over to my Fragments blog and read about how I’m going out to the movies and dinner, with my wife, later. I feel it has to be somewhat distanced from my personal life, or my online personality as Madprankster.
I’ve just started working on the blog, so there isn’t much there, currently. The main problem is I want to jump right into the moments after the Apocalypse and skip the setup. Another problem is I don’t know how transparent to be with the theme. The title Alone with the Stars can be used for the times before and after the End of Days without giving anything away. But what about the readers who might join in the conversation after it all falls apart? The pages I intend to set up are made under the pretext of a simple mission to retrofit a space station, but for anyone joining, it may be confusing when he starts having breakdowns and seeing his dead grandfather. Should I be upfront about the direction of the blog, or let it unfold as I intended it to?
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1217450695
Let the games begin!
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1216174631
Still no internet. Now I’m getting upset!
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1172965705
So, over the weekend, I tried to write a post about everything that has happened since my last, full post, but it didn’t seem to be in the cards. Friday, while I was working, the hotel decided to upgrade its internet hardware, leaving my side of the building unfinished and unconnected. Since I am reduced to posting using the mobile app, the length of my post will be proportionately reduced to match—sadly, the spelling/grammar will be exponentially worse.
Since my last post, I’ve come home from California, spent one week back in GR, and returned to CA on another crew for another job. While I was home a few interesting things happened that were unusual compared to the normal week off.
I was able to make it to the Michigan Renascence Festival in Holly MI.
I was able to attend the bachelor party of one of my best friends, Jake.
My wife baked food for me (corn bread muffins).
I submitted an article to GR’s hyper- local online news source, The Rapidian, for publication.
I submitted the article to The Rapidian while I was home, but didn’t get a reply from my assigned editor, Matt, until I was back in CA. Just like the last few articles I have submitted, Matt remarked about how the article needs to be rooted deeper within the community, using interviews with locals, and representatives of the city government to home in on the hyper-local premise of the site. Being hundreds of miles away makes such a task difficult considering that my main goal of submitting was to improve my writing. The realization that The Rapidian may not be a good fit for me at this point in my life had me pretty depressed for a few days. I want to be a writer more then anything, but my current lifestyle, the one that removes me from my family, but will allow me to pay off my extensive debt, and hopefully return to school soon, is causing me to miss the opportunities I care about. I could try to contact sources for my article by phone or email, but I feel that will only increase the hypocritical feeling I have, writing for a locally focused site, from the other side of the country, about a place I only visit for eight weeks out of the year. Sometimes it feels like lying by calling Grand Rapids home.
I would post more, but I’m riding to work in the back of an extended F-250, getting car sick as we drive through the hills of northern California.
Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1157033779
I’m going to try posting more to Tumblr soon, but Halo Reach came out today, so my plans will have to wait.
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1124893827
Shortly after I started working in Fresno, CA I noticed something odd. When I first saw it, I did a double take, then laughed for a while about the crazy lady on the overpass. The second time I noticed her, I tried to put myself in her shoes, and figure out why she would smile, and wave, to the speeding passengers on US 99 North.
From what I can remember she was a large African-American lady, standing merrily on the sidewalk of an overpass, waving to all the cars as they scurried beneath her. I thought to myself, this lady must have lost her helmet (I’m talking about one worn for more then just bike riding), but a few days later I had a change of heart.
One day, as we were heading back to the hotel after work, we drove under that freeway overpass and I happened to notice that same woman silently waving to the rapid stream of cars that passed beneath. I couldn’t tell if she was waving hello to the oncoming traffic, or goodbye to the commuters leaving, but either way, it suddenly gave me comfort.
Seeing someone so blissfully unaware of the statistically high number of malcontents passing below during rush hour traffic, and gleefully waving to them, made me think about all the things I had been angered by throughout the day. Sure the gas station was out of chocolate milk, and maybe my boss had done (or not done) something that upset me, but this woman was, more then likely, homeless, yet she mustered up the courage to unconditionally care for those who blindly sped past her.
I see a lot of fake smiles in a day. I see them on the faces of my co-workers, hotel courtesy staff, and clerks during the morning gas station fuel-up. That’s an average of about 14 fake smiles every morning, and we’re only fifteen minutes out of the gate.
I’d bet the woman on the bridge had never faked a smile in her life. She just stood there, waving behind the metal fabric of a chain link fence, seeing the world through rose colored glasses. It was miraculous to see a warm and welcoming smile in a place so far from home.
Fresno had shown me how small the world was in terms of indifference which peaks out through every politely plastered smile. The homeless woman showed me strangers care, too.
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1046291043
I watched The Disappearance of Alice Creed yesterday and I can’t stop humming this song.
http://blip.fm/~vi2jz
Looking back at my prior attempts at successful blogging, you’d think my personal credo would be “If at first you don’t succeed, start another blog.” In that vein, I present you with my newest blog idea: The Last Man.
This will be a drastic departure from my previous blogs in that it will be presented primarily as fiction. The overall theme will be extremely dark, and it will require semi-regular to regular blogging in order to achieve the desired effect.
The main focus of the story, and the reason I feel the comfortable with committing to such a laborious task in lieu of my previous failure, is that, beneath the melancholy and despair I hope to portray, it will force me to look for the brighter side of life within each post. If you were the last man (or woman) alive—like the main character is—what would keep you going knowing that nothing is going to change for the better tomorrow?
Most of you might be able to see past the façade I’ve created with this story to find my life hiding behind the words. I will admit, this is going to be a self-imposed form of therapy as I continue with my current vocation in corrosion, traveling the country, feeling very much alone despite all the interaction I face daily.The story will continue until one of two possible outcomes play out:
I get discouraged and stop posting to the story
I find another job, or restart my college career, back home.
The first option will probably result in the entire blog being deleted, while the second will allow me to complete the story to its premeditated ending.
The Setup
A few years ago, our protagonist, Max, climbed the ranks of NASA and found himself orbiting the earth as one of the privileged members of an unnamed (to us) space mission. Not only was this the pinnacle of his life, it became the goal of his every action; to once again see the world and the stars from the tranquil confines of an orbiting ship.
His aggressive nature, and growing impatience with authority, left him sidelined behind a programmer’s desk dreaming of his time in the cosmos. In hopes of returning to space, he dedicated himself to his new position and quickly traveled up the technological hierarchy, unfortunately, his flippant disdain towards those who had overlooked his abilities kept him seated at a desk instead of circling the stars.
A mission gets announced to overhaul an aging space station orbiting the earth. With Max’s prior experience in space, and current position on the vanguard of cosmic IT, he finds himself as the top contender for the concern.
In an effort to show off his abilities as a programmer, as well as secretly affirm his superiority to those who stood firmly between him and destiny, Max hacks into the NASA communications software and puts in a small program that will copy his personal logs, sent from the station, directly to a newly-created Tumblr blog, allowing others to read about his unbroadcasted mission into the aether.
Everything is going along as planned, unfortunately, the procedure has been scaled down from the grandiose affair he had remembered from his last flight, to a simple matter of procedures, conducted thirty thousand feet above the launching pad. The traditional countdown had been scaled back to begin at the count of three, and the forceful blast of boosters rocketing him from the earth had been reduced to the release of docking clamps that had towed him within arm’s reach of the mesosphere. All the pomp and circumstance of the past had been replaced with the simplicity and celebration of a hand releasing a paper airplane.
There were no press releases of the mission, no children looking through telescopes to find the cherry glow of his boosters moving across the night sky like shooting stars. Max’s only consolation was the peace awaiting him, alone above the world, rekindling his romance with the heavens.
A few days pass and everything seems to be going fine until Max receives a disturbing transmission form a friend at ground control that rattles him from his sleep. The COMs go silent after the abrupt and cryptic message from NASA. The room glows around him from a flash of light outside the stations porthole. The blue world he had left was replaced by a black turbulent cloud of ash, madly blowing about by the detonation of nuclear bombs and the formation of mushroom clouds that peppered the surface of the earth.
After hours of watching the world burn alone, Max began to realize the severity of his situations in quick, sporadic sips. As hard as it was to believe in the possibility of survivors, it was harder to image extinction. As disbelief slowly gave in to acceptance, he began grieving the undoubted loss (either directly from the blast of the subsequent fallout) of everyone he had ever loved, hated, known, or never met. This led to the logical deduction that he was most likely the only living human in existence.
The Big Picture
The blog will be about Max’s struggles to continue living through his weakening grasp of reality and constant battle with solitude. He has suffered through the loss of everything, watched helplessly as it burned beneath him, and whimpered as he became the figurehead of a deceased species; an arbiter of a dead planet.
Future Plans for the Man with No Future to Plan For
Over time, strange things will begin to happen on the station. Days will blend with dreams, dreams will become realities, and reality will become more and more subjective.
I hope to create a sense of mystery, not only in Max, but also in the reader. I want to walk others along his path of insanity and enlightenment as you both begin to wonder about the underlining causes of his strange behavior.
Are the people he sees on the station created by his mind, loving spirits watching over him, or angels sent to help him?
Are the projects he immerses himself in helping him by keeping his mind active and preoccupied, or will they betray him?
Will his journey end with the likelihood of starvation, divine intervention, or something more celestial?
Putting it All Together
Normalcy is determined by the majority, and when the majority is reduced to one individual, anything can be deemed normal. In order to establish a baseline, Max decides to continue writing in his log in hopes that the spiral away from what the world was can be recorded and referenced.
His life has been reduced to a program. The hopes and dreams and what-if’s of his past have become a simple algorithm of survival in relation to death. As the anomalies begin to manifest around him, his log becomes an important way of separating reality from dream, memory from fabrication, and truth from desire.
Contact with his words are sometimes the only things that feel real. His logs become an anchor for who he was, who he is, and who he wants to be. In the shifting plasticity of a lonely mind, the world we create can become more real than the space we inhabit. Max knows this; Max fears this; and that’s why his time at the keyboard is so important. If he never types the word “festooned” will there ever be a record that it existed? How long until he forgets it, if he never uses it?
A Note from the Author
I don’t plan on having the posts transfer to Facebook, so those of you who read my Tumblr blog there will have to follow this blog through Tumblr, or introduce yourself to the wonderful world of feeds.
I also don’t plan on responding to questions or comments posted directly to the blog. I feel it would be impossible to maintain the illusion of the premise by doing so.
Those of you worried that I may discontinue writing in my main blog can relax. Madprankster.tumblr.com will remain my main blog, but I may delete Teatimetech.tumblr.com as I can’t keep up with it as I had planned to.
A Note on Suicide
This topic will definitely be discussed by Max during the project. While I have had my own dealing with depression in the past, this does not reflect my current state regardless of how the story parallels my life. The point I am trying to drive with this is that even when you literally have nothing to live for, it’s still important to find a reason to keep going.
Now, to be Honest…
I had this idea months ago. I created a Blogger blog on the subject, asked one person what they thought about it, and then never touched it. If you want to check it out, you can look for it here. The writing is a little off because it was just a rough idea I was trying to carve out.
I haven’t finish (or started) creating the blog for The Last Man (on Tumblr), so there is still time for anyone to get in a few ideas before I start polishing the layout. If you checked out the Blogger blog, you might have noticed some interesting additions to the end of the post. One idea I was toying with was having the on-board computer send a few stats along with the messages, providing you with an objective perspective to what’s going on. This could also be used as a way of counting strange things that happen on the ship, finding out his true mental state, or open the gates to a conspiracy theory or two.
So tell me what you think of the idea. I have plenty of time to listen.
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1023854457
Sometimes it’s hard to see how beautiful the world is unless you speed things up.
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1017409575
Sometimes graffiti is just a simple tag, or letters of a name. Pieces like this are why I believe graffiti is an art.
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1011287518
I’ve been working on other projects, and yes I know that’s a horrible excuse.
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1007387060
Shakespeare, Julius Cesar
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/1003539165
Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/999584089
Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/995839002
Earthling: An inhabitant of the earth; a mortal; a poor frail creature.
Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/994185563
I’ve been having problems with figuring out what to write lately. Want to help? Have something you want to know about me? Want to inspire a post? Just click ask.
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/ask
All nature is but art unknown to thee;
All chance, a direction which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good.
Pope’s Essay on Man
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/985268485
Glorious dreams stand ready to restore
The pleasing shapes of all you saw before.
Dryden
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/977261573
Are you a man?
—Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that
Which might appal the devil.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/972143880
Let no day pass over you without drawing a line; that is to say, without working, without giving some strokes of the pencil or the crayon.
Dryden’s Dufresnoy
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/968217978
Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/967093546
Just took the little song I wrote, broke it down, then used Aviary’s Audio Editor to create this. Let me know what you think
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/924999916
Tried out the music creator Roc today over at Aviary. It’s an alpha stage service that allows you to mix songs using preloaded instruments. The interface is extremely simple to use. I found myself playing on this site for a few hours, just messing around with the random buttons, exploring the sounds, and getting a feel for how it all comes together. This song took about thirty minutes to make and mix. It’s nothing fancy, but it combines piano chords, notes, and an acoustic drum to give you an example of what you can do. Enjoy!
http://aviary.com/artists/Madprankster/creations/first_creation
You are a charitable belswagger; my wife cried out fire, and you called out for engines.
—Dryden’s Spanish Friar
I wanted to post this as just a quote, but I think it warrants a little explaining.
First off, a belswagger is defined as a word for whoremaster. While whoremaster is no longer used in modern day English, it has been replaced by the shorter term: Pimp.
Next is the issue of the word engines. If you use a modern dictionary, Dryden looks more like an idiot then an wordsmith. But according to Samuel, and selections of entries from 1755, engine can be defined in this context to be: any instrument to throw water upon a burning house.
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/922434732
Thought all her parts be not in th’ usual place,
She hath yet the anagram of a good face:
If we might put the letters but one way,
In that lean of dearth of words, what could we say?
Donne
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/922428243
Some more there be, slight airlings, will be won
With dogs, and horses, and perhaps a whore.
B. John. Catil
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/922418866
We bring you now to show what different things,
The cits or clowns are form the courts of kings.
Johnson
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/922415740
So have I seen a king on chess,
(His rooks and knights withdrawn,
His queen and bishops in distress)
Shifting about, grow less and less,
With here and there a pawn.
Dryden
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/922410441
A blockhead rubs his thoughtless skull,
And thanks his stars he was not born a fool.
Pope
http://madprankster.tumblr.com/post/922398900
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