It Won't Long Be Long, Yeah! (Yeah!) 'Til I Buh-log to You

Disappointed by the recent absence of blogging up in herre? Fear not - a new blogging challenge is now in the works. No real details yet, but it will be heavily inspired by Chris Semp's Everyone Gets a Hamburger at the End: A Blog Challenge, which is to say that it will likely run for a similar length of time (I think it was something like six months), and completion of the challenge will require all competitors to blog something - anything - every single day, allowing only a single mulligan.

Interested? Leave a comment. I'm going to tentatively schedule the beginning of the thing for January 15. If that's not going to work for you, let me know as soon as possible. Worried you'll forget about all of this before then? Sign up now and I'll be sure to remind you to begin blogging as we approach the starting date. I'll continue accepting new contestants until the day we begin.


By the way, I'll be spending Christmas with the family, so this blog will be even more dead than usual over the next month. That doesn't mean you shouldn't continue to hopefully refresh this page every hour, and don't forget that it's always a good time to re-read the JakeyPen archives.


So that I might properly prepare for the sort of impersonal, detached blogging that comes as a result of doing this every day for a half a year, here's a link to something funny that someone else wrote [thanks, Dubious Quality!].

Always a Ring Bearer, Never a Flower Girl

My Aunt Kathy is getting married! Congratulations Kathy and Erik!

Hi, Holden, hi!

You are the lucky visitor!

I saw the above phrase on a flashy banner ad, and I like it. I like that there's no number. I'm not the 50,000 visitor to the page where I saw this ad. I'm just lucky. So lucky that I can click to claim a fabulous prize.

I have no prizes for you, dear readers, but I think the message holds true. You have the opportunity to read my blog. Indeed, a lucky visitor is you.

Dia de los Muertos

If you are seeing this, come back later. I want to get a better picture.

Also, my li'l sister's costume is amazing.

A Blog About a Table

Yes, today I'm writing about a table. Now, I'll admit that great stories are often born from dull subjects, but, no, there's really not much of a story here at all. Just a table. A really, very large conference table, but, come on, does that matter? Nah. A table's a table, regardless of size.

First of all, remember this guy?

My hero, gamemaker-extraordinaire Shigeru Miyamoto? Well today, I saw... his signature! Yeah! His signature! In real life! You'll never guess where it was. Unless you read the title of today's post, or maybe skimmed the first paragraph, that is. Yep, it was on a table. Nearly two weeks since I've blogged anything, and this is the big, life-changing event that rocked me out of hiatus. Some dude wrote on a table. Whoooooooooooooo!

In all seriousness, though, it was totally awesome. The man has an nice signature.

Above: Not a table.

Not only did Miyamoto leave his name, he also wrote the date and doodled a little Super Mario face. The man draws a nice Mario.

Above: A table. Sike! No, this is still not a table.

Each of the table's corners had a signature, though I didn't have time to see who else was there. One person had drawn a Pokemon trainer with a Pikachu, which I would've thought would be the mark of Satoshi Tajiri. Like I said, I didn't get much of a chance to check it out, and I couldn't quite make out the handwriting. I think it was something that started with an S, but it didn't look like "Satoshi" to me.

Even if I didn't know who these people were, I would've found the table interesting (interesting as tables go, at least) because the autographs were sealed off in frames. I'm not sure how to describe this, exactly. They were like picture frames that clamped around the corners of the table. Bizarre. I wonder if they were custom made. I can't imagine the table-corner frame business being a big money-maker.

Inside Jokes Make the Best Blog Posts

Suitable for framing. Makes a charming desktop image.

Improv Update: Tonight was the night of the second meeting. Of the seven people who showed up last time, one e-mailed me in advance to tell me she was sick and one came forty minutes late to tell me he and his friend would be missing the meeting. All the others were no-shows. I did have four new kids show up, two of whom have actual, real-life improv experience. They also have loads of advice, which, really, is very nice, but most of it is along the lines of, "Hey, Jake, you should run this club in a completely different way." It doesn't bother me, but I do wonder what would compel a person to walk into a club and immediately start trying to change everything about it. Odd. Even more odd was that both of them were fully aware of what they were doing.

It was said that the drop in attendance may have been related to this being midterm week. Fair enough. Still, I don't want to battle each week just to get people to show up, but I do want the improv club to succeed. I'm going to try this thing one more time before calling it quits.

Oh, and it's been brought to my attention that there aren't any pictures of "naked chicks" on my blog. Consider this problem solved.

Don't Be Turkeys; Rather KISS the Comedian

Alright, let's talk about this improv thing. In case you haven't heard, I recently started an improvisational comedy club at my school. It's sort of an odd experiment - starting a club that requires confidence and gusto at a school populated almost exclusively with computer nerds - and the results were mixed. I was quite impressed with what I saw, but, as I'd suspected, not many people showed up. Eight people, myself included. School rules require clubs to have at least ten members, and I wouldn't want a troupe of any fewer than twelve, excluding me. In fact, I nearly cancelled the whole thing before we even began playing any games, but I'm glad I didn't. I've since talked to a few people who missed the meeting due to scheduling conflicts, and I now have a small, but enthusiastic groupof wannabe improv-ers seeking out new recruits. Next week I should find out whether improv at DigiPen lives or dies. I'm hoping for life.

Troubling pattern: I have heard two (2) separate people this week say (and repeat) that KISS is important, which is stupid enough, but then they had the gall to explain the acronym. Are we really still doing this? I didn't think it was funny or clever ten years ago, and it hasn't improved with age. What really gets me is the palpable sense of smugness that always accompanies these obnoxious phrases.