Awesome Internet Site

Hello all of Dave’s viewers, fan’s, and family members: welcome to Awesome! (the) Internet Site.

I am aware that recent December posts may have alarmed and confused some of you, however, there is no need to panic!! Dave is indeed taking a ‘holiday hiatus’, however he has ‘given me the reigns’, so-to-speak, for this month. As I have secretly desired this for some time, I thought that I would be a fool if I did not ride this strange torpedo to its end (Thompson, 11). So here I am! People call me Ben, Michael Vanderherberg calls me ‘Benner’ and I have yet to be called ‘Benerino”, but for sake of a nod in the direction of The Big Lebowski, feel free to do so (don’t actually).

Now that I am coming down off of the high of writing my first post, I am beginning to realize that I don’t really have all that much ‘internet cool’… I get most of my material from the websites Boing Boing , Fecal Face and American Suburb X, so if you frequent any of these sites you will be out of luck for the month. Feel free to email me (btyne89@gmail.com) if you have, like me, secretly desired to blog on this site, or if you have something interesting you want to forcefully interject on people in their homes and minds.

I will leave you with one of my favorite things to look at:

Jenny is a sweetheart and she has contributed this:

It’s late again,
in utter disdain I make my move for higher ground.
Higher ground being my bedroom.
Stating once again I am a masochist . . .
Not understanding why exactly I do this to myself.
A quick tinkle and I’m off.
just shut off the light.
OOH
Turn the light on.
It sure is dark in here.
I’m not fond of the dark, I’ve been convinced since I was a child that sinister things are lurking there.
So, I begin my ascent.
Trying desperately to get my poor eyes, mind, body
to adjust to the dark.
Sadly it doesn’t work and I leave myself perched and paralyzed there on the stairs.
At this point either going up or down could cause permanent damage or even death, depending on whats really lurking in the shadow of my interior . . . imagination.
Who is counting?
Realizing I can’t step forward, based upon my own irrationality, and, consequently understanding that I can’t spend the night on the stairs.
I close my eyes, turning the tables on perception.
In doing so I fashion the opinion I am no longer climbing the stairs in ‘the dark’ but ‘with my eyes shut’

“To have been a child of the 80s is to have been bred by lovers like these . . .”

This came across in my news feeds this morning and is the obvious evidence that in 1983, programmers in Germany were livin’ large . . . “I’m a computer programmer” doesn’t have the same ring to it in 2010, does it?

Today’s Guest Post is brought to you by James Forde.

Guest Post either post the links as photos, or keep em as links… what ever!

Blondel sends me a message on Google chat (see side note). Gives me 30 minutes to create a guest post for this adventure in Internet awesomeness.

The only thing I can think of is Gino Reda’s moustache . . .

His moustache represents all that was great about the sports I love, adventurous goalies, good baseball, and athletes you were pretty sure were still intoxicated from the night before.

I miss those days. Today sports is a business. It’s corporate, it sucks. My kid will grow up in a world where this guy is considered an all time great, and where people forget about The Shaker.

I miss it, that simpler time.

Sidenote, Who the hell uses google chat? that is all!

Joseph Manafo has more Photoblogjammin Guest Posts than anyone. 2 of them. Enjoy:

Blondel is obviously starving for good material, so he begged me for another guest post. Begged, I say.

Not sure there’s any point to watching a movie if all the good stuff is cut out.

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This past Christmas season, Santa brought my friend Rick a fancy new Sony Digital Book Reader, so I asked him to write up a few thoughts about it.

Here is what Rick had to say on the matter:

Review: The Sony PRS – 600 Digital Book Reader

The first thing you notice about the Sony eBook Reader is the screen: charcoal floats on a smoke-grey background and the brilliant white page we’re familiar with is strikingly absent. The advantage to this “e-ink” technology soon becomes obvious as the eye-strain that comes from a backlit monitor simply doesn’t occur. It’s also possible to read in bright sunlight but, unlike your laptop, a lamp is required to read in a darkened room. Let’s face it though; a lamp is required for reading dead-tree books as well and not many of us curl up in bed to read a good book on our laptop. Paper and ink books may never go the way of the vinyl record but eBook readers are not going to disappear either

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Up next with a Guest Post is Meaghan Culkeen. I have known Meaghan for what seems like forever (when it has only been 7ish years?), while I have always regarded her as a genuinely gracious and beautiful human being — she has not failed to be entertaining nearly every time we talk/hang out or engage in internet chit-chat. Postcards to Cigarettes will eventually be studied in middle school literary circles . . . spoken of in the same tone as the masters.

Postcards to Cigarettes.

When I was quitting smoking I dealt with the cravings in a number of ways. I’ve chewed bumblegum like a fiend for instance. My friends would be calling on their friends Peter Jackson and Monsieur DuMaurier and I’d be ready with a pack of Double Bubble in my pocket. The pink kind. I’m that kind of guy.

I’d chew toothpicks. I thought it looked pretty badass in a cowboy sort of way. It gave me something to chew and something to hold, which was pretty helpful.

But then there was the emotional loss. See, cigarettes and I had a relationship. We were pals, even lovers. The relationship wasn’t a healthy one. But I loved them all the same. Dealing with the emotional loss was a harder thing to deal with. I couldn’t very well weep during every missed cigarette break. So I started writing postcards to cigarettes. Usually on the postcards you buy in the convenience store. The postcards were adorned with woodland creatures. They were steeped in longing.

Dear Cigarettes
I wish you were here.

Dear cigarettes
I saw you hanging on the lips of other men, you hussy.

And so I decided to write a Christmas card for cigarettes. Lately I’ve been indulging. Having a few here and there. Dealing with the stress of my interminable undergrad by going back to the warm embrace of an old flame. So here it goes:

Merry Christmas Cigarettes,

These last few weeks have been incredible. You’ve been a comfort and a joy in this time of trial and need. We’ve been there for each other. It’s been great, mostly.

And it is with heavy lungs that I say that come New Years Day, we must once again part. I am resolved. Don’t try to change my mind. Baby.

Love always,
— M

Ed Note: So I get this desperate email from community activist, lover of the chipnut, and all around swell fellow, HC Joel Martin . . . I don’t want to say he was pleading with me for a guest post spot here on Awesome Internet Site, but he did make it clear that a Friday Guest Post was something he had to do.

The following transcript is what Joel sent me. Possibly unedited, but probably not. Either way. It’s a banger.

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Kingston’s finest; Al Dosegar comes through with a dandy guest post, shut your weekend down with this:

Someone once told me that each time a bicycle is stolen a fairy dies. Where I live, most of the magical sprites and nymphs are all but forgotten. Yesterday Tinkerbell gasped her last breath. “Dave” dropped by The Ranch and noticed what looked like his bike hitched up against our railing. From here on I will give you the conversation with very little grammatical leisure or entertaining license on my part. Could be word for word as I tend to take in all the nouns pronouns verbs and adjectives with great glee, storing them for times such as these.

Dave: That is my bike I can tell.

Al: Well if it is then you should take it home. what makes you think it is yours

Dave: Well 2 weeks ago i purchased it for my daughter.

Al: So you mean it is your daughters bike?

Dave: Ya I can tell by these marks (shows metal rubs on seat post) and points out the kickstand he installed.

Al: Well around here many bikes are stolen so I tell you what we will keep it here for a few days and if no one come to claim it then it must be yours.

Dave: Oh I know it is mine, Al I will see you saturday. (starts to walk away)

Al: Dave when was the last time you saw the bike?

Dave: Two weeks ago I was riding it down by the lake and had laid it in a grassy spot by the forest while I went into the forest to take a shit. but when I came out the bike was gone.

Al: Of course it was.

Many more questions were now in my head but I decided to leave it but for the story’s sake these were my top three.
1. Does Dave live in the woods?
2. Grandmas house?
3. Wetnaps?

Then if the story could not get any better another guy four hours later finds the bike in my office and asks me “wWhy did you bring my bike inside?” for those keeping track at home we will call this guy John Porter and so I told him that can’t be your bike. it belongs to Dave.

He then tells me quite adamantly, “No it’s not I bought it from a friend of mine who said he found it just laying in the grass by a forest”.

Finders Keepers.

I went on to tell him the bike was just waiting.