January 1st, 2009 by aarondietz

As you make plans for 2009 to be even better than 2008, be sure to think of everything. Here’s an example:

November 20th, 2008 by aarondietz

November 11th, 2008 by aarondietz

We can’t shut the opposition out or pretend the opposition doesn’t exist. We have to live with them, and help them understand how to live with us.

FREE SHOW! If you’re in Seattle Friday night, I’ll be in a 3-piece suit, reading at the KNOCK Magazine release party. 7pm. Jewel Box Theater inside The Rendezvous. (I’m also opening for Jonathan Evison on December 11 – that one’s free, too, and even includes free beer and an Appalachian wedding buffet.)

June 27th, 2008 by aarondietz

They decked our rooms out with simulated natural light, and artificial windows that displayed a realistically boring 3-D outdoors.

They even gave us simulated real fake plants that looked like they were really real fake plants.

The cold smooth hum of the contemporary cooling unit was drowned out by a simulated cranky whir that made us feel at home.

We could make believe the Death Star didn’t even exist, if we wanted.

And we wanted.

April 16th, 2008 by aarondietz

I worked all weekend, pretty much, so I didn’t have a chance to go see the Dalai Lama speak.

On Sunday, I woke up late. I had intended to get into work by 11, but I didn’t leave for work until about 12.

I walked about two blocks before figuring out that I had forgotten my security card to get into the building. I started back for it.

When I got to my apartment, I figured I might as well take out the recycling.

This meant that I went around to the back of the building to drop the recycling off. As I was headed back to the front, I saw two people carrying coffee cups from Uptown Coffee. That made me really want coffee, and since I was already late, I figured I might as well get some before I went to work.

As I was walking toward Uptown Coffee, a motorcycle cop pulled up out of nowhere to stop traffic. He let me walk across the street but stopped all vehicle traffic.

Someone asked him, “Is this for the Dalai Lama?”

And I don’t know what the cop answered but I knew that it was. I stopped walking and waited by the side of the street.

Soon, fifteen or twenty motorcycle cops sped around the corner and drove by. They were followed by the Dalai Lama motorcade, and I didn’t know which car the Dalai Lama was in, but I suddenly felt happy.

March 19th, 2008 by aarondietz

You may have heard: there is a bit of an oil shortage.

But see, oil is just the tip of the iceberg!

July 2nd, 2007 by aarondietz

An excerpt from Alfred Katar’s journal, Production Manager for the first Death Star:

Of course I considered the possibility that some farmboy would throw a couple proton torpedoes down that chute and blow the whole thing up! We consider everything: cheese in the vents, parasites in the mail, an irregular muscle twitch happening to Lord Vader while he’s practicing light saber–you name it, we thought of it and had a design for the Death Star that accounted for it.

Our original proposal included a fix for the “farmboy proton torpedo” scenario, but budget cuts forced us to eliminate several fixes on our Least Plausible Scenario list (the rebels alternatively could have simply melted a candy bar over exhaust port subvalve 6843 to achieve the same effect).

Still, we figured we were okay. Who would think of using proton torpedoes against the Death Star? And why would they target that particular two meter section of real estate? It just didn’t make ordinary strategic sense.

However, one of the technicians posted a blog about the “farmboy proton torpedo” scenario on our internal DeathNet. I read it. It was pretty funny and completely satirical. I didn’t even make him take it down–who would take a blog seriously, anyway?

How was I to know that some Internet-obsessed droid would get on board and start reading our blogs? That was the one scenario we didn’t consider.

Protect the Internet. It’s our only hope.

May 10th, 2007 by aarondietz

1. Write crappy blog.

2. At the end of crappy blog, type “Problem solved LOL!”*

3. Problem solved LOL!

* I’m going to try very hard not to steal that phrase ever again, and if you still don’t know where I’m stealing it from, check out Eexlebot’s The Worst Comic Ever.

April 12th, 2007 by aarondietz

Six facts about a subject I know too much about (idea stolen from Dabi who stole it from others):

1. Wyatt Earp lived to be 80 years old without being grazed by a single bullet. Once, after an exchange of gunfire in Southern Arizona, he thought he had been hit in the foot. On further inspection, he found that his boot had been hit and a piece of the boot had been pushed up into his foot, but the bullet never touched him.

2. Wyatt Earp’s lifelong friend, Bat Masterson, became a close friend of Teddy Roosevelt during the 1890s and they continued to hang out during Roosevelt’s presidency. Teddy Roosevelt, of course, led the Rough Riders in a silly little war that Stephen Crane (author of Red Badge of Courage) reported on. Stephen Crane later moved to England where he befriended author Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness). There is an unconfirmed tale somewhere of Joseph Conrad touring Brigham Young’s compound in Utah and reflecting on Young’s polygamous lifestyle: “It is like the loneliness of one marriage, magnified.” As Brigham Young led the Mormon Exodus across the West, they wintered in Nebraska, near where a young Allie Sullivan was growing up. Allie’s childhood friend, Amelia, went with the Mormons and eventually became Brigham Young’s 25th wife (and supposedly his favorite). Allie herself went West later, though not as a Mormon. She married an adventurous man named Virgil, who happened to be a brother of Wyatt Earp.

3. Wyatt Earp had four full brothers and one half-brother. The five brothers from the same mother looked very similar, and they tended to settle in the same towns in the old West throughout the 1870s and early 1880s. They also tended to get involved as law enforcement officers. Many citizens of Dodge City, Tombstone, and other towns couldn’t tell the brothers apart, so there was an odd mystique about the Earps: when you got in trouble with one of the Earp brothers, all of a sudden you saw that same brother all over town. It was like he was hounding you, making sure you didn’t mess up.

4. It is rumored that on one afternoon, Wyatt Earp and Charlie Chaplin had dinner together (where they may have talked about the Alaskan Gold Rush, a subject they both knew much about, as Earp participated in a minor post Klondike rush, where he met author Jack London, and Chaplin made his film, aptly titled The Gold Rush). Charlie Chaplin may have even done his famous dinner rolls dance for Wyatt. Chaplin, of course, produced films and met Orson Welles because they traveled in the same circles. Welles’ film, Citizen Kane, was a financial nightmare because of William Randolph Hearst’s brash interference with its distribution (the film made fun of Hearst’s life, right down to his pet nickname for “pussy”). William Randolph Hearst was the son of mining magnate George Hearst, who befriended Wyatt Earp in Tombstone. They may have bonded over ice cream (yes, Tombstone had ice cream in 1880–it was very cosmopolitan).

5. When Wyatt Earp was working as an advisor on John Ford’s first Westerns, young Marion Morrison would get him coffee and listen to his stories. Marion Morrison, of course, later changed his name to John Wayne. John Wayne would one day later in his career be rude to a waitress named Joyce, who would later work with Aaron Dietz (that’s me!) at the Denver Public Library. In the year 2000, Aaron Dietz shook Ray Bradbury’s hand while Bradbury said, “God bless!” Ray Bradbury was a pen pal of Tom Mix, the early Western movie star. Tom Mix knew Wyatt Earp from the movie industry, but he also became a pen pal and close friend of Wyatt. Mix was a pallbearer at Wyatt Earp’s funeral.

6. After the gunfight near the O.K. Corral, Wyatt Earp, Virgil Earp, Morgan Earp, and Doc Holliday faced an inquest to determine if there was enough evidence to try them for murder. They hired a good attorney named Tom Fitch, who had once edited a literary journal called The Weekly Occidental. One of the The Weekly Occidental’s regular contributors was Mark Twain (who some say is the pre-incarnation of Kurt Vonnegut). Mark Twain used to hang out in Nikola Tesla’s lab in the 1890s. If you believe some conspiracy theorists, Tesla once looked out across the deck of a particular ship and spied Albert Einstein being ushered about by military personnel. Einstein and Bertrand Russell wrote the Russell-Einstein Manifesto together. Bertrand Russell was a friend of Kurt Vonnegut’s, who died yesterday.

I saw Kurt Vonnegut speak in person at the Tattered Cover in Denver. He was everything a person would expect him to be.

August 24th, 2006 by aarondietz

Kali: James, what’s up?

James: Not much. What’s the dealio, K-bob?

Kali: What’s the what? I don’t get it.

James: I don’t get it, either.

Kali: You don’t “get it”? Or you don’t get “it”?

James: Did you just use quotes on me? Over the phone?

Kali: What? What do you mean?

James: You just, you know, “used quotes.”

Kali: Uh…”no I didn’t.”

James: You just “did it” again.

Kali: I did “what” exactly?

James: That.

Kali: “That.”

James: “”That.”"

Kali: “”"That”"”?

James: “”"”That.”"”"

Kali: “”"”"That”"”"”? Seriously?

James: “”"”"”That.”"”"”" “Seriously.”

Kali: “Oh.”

James: “Yeah.”

Kali: “Sorry.”

James: That’s what I thought.

Kali: So, how’s it, you know, “going”?

James: How’s “it” going?

Kali: Yeah. “How’s “”it”" “going”?”

James: Yeah….

Kali: “Yeah?”

James: “”Yeah.”"

Kali: “”"Yeah?”"”

James: No.