Invader Tim

Merch! I’m talkin’ ‘bout The Progrum in convenient, wearable form. We are endeavoring to make cool shirts, but we want to do it only if we know you people really want them. If not, it’s cool. We can totally still be friends. I mean, don’t expect me to wear shirts of you or anything, but we can still be civil in a basic, icy sense.

But, I figure it’s not enough that we say, yep we’re doing shirts. We want you—yeah, I’m pointing at you, bub—to pick which design we go with first. We’re going to be running ideas by you in the next li’l bit. You guys can pick. Let me clarify: we are not asking for ideas from you, we are wanting to know which ideas you like the best. It’s nothing personal, just that we ain’t paying you royalties and shit.

If this is successful, we will release several other designs. And expect to see mouse pads, coffee mugs, and my favorite: Panties. I totally want to see myself grinning at myself when I go down to take care of the little lady!

So what do you think? You want some shirts? Tell me ‘afore SSG and I start cranking out designs.

I bet you know the url for The Progrum, but if not: timstotz.com/vodcast

It’s up, and it would like to be your friend. Not only is the usual VODcast poised and rarin’ to GO, but we have an additional audio simulcast of the Omega Battalion’s music at a higher quality.

Happy Hallowe’en!

Special Thanks to all the Chitlins who appeared in the intro, and to you, the fans of The Progrum. Shucks, I’m blushing and all.

Hello, True Believers, I'm making a Widget for The Progrum. It's in Alpha, in other words it just does not work. Soon you'll be able to browse the eps, and watch them, and other cool features, right from Dashboard. Press F-12 and you'll instantly see The Progrum! Just to let you know, the first real working version of The Progrum Widget will be live and enriching your lives on my birthday, Dec. 2 (hint Hint!).

You'll need Tiger for it to work on the Mac, and for it to work on the PC, we'll need to get a guy who knows how to do stuff on the PC.

The Progrum Widget Page

It's up. I tried a new compression scheme; it made it tiny in file size. I may up the quality a little later and replace it. I think it's a little too low. But let me know what you think. And the site update might not be perffect. I'm so drunk right now!

http://www.timstotz.com/vodcast/index.html

Well, I just checked this morning, and I’m in iTunes. Wild. Two things: 1, the album art is not there for some reason. And they censored “Cock” into “C**k”. Heh. You gotta love that.




The new picture and code to paste into your site is up at the pimp page

In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that the itunes link button goes right to itunes and actually if the visitor then buys anything from the store within 24 hours, I get a nickel. Gotta pay for that bandwidth, kiddies.

I don’t watch reality TV. But I do watch morning news programs (Lord help me. I almost typed “Progrum”).
It pisses me off that with wars, and disastrous storms bearing down on us, that a recap of these reality shows constitutes news. But that’s not even my main beef.
I’m so sick of these, entitled, self-centered, amoral, shifty, assholes who are intolerable to watch on these shows (from what I can see in the clips and commercials) who come back and say—invariably and universally—about there vein throbbing outbursts and Homeric incivility: “I’m just a passionate person.”
What’s with that? They all say that. Dude. That’s not passionate. That’s a personality disorder. You’re nut passionate; you’re just a jerk.
Here’s hopin’ you get through your day able to avoid people with personality disorders…here’s me knowing that’s impossible in this great land of ours.

“You just winged him and made him a Unitarian.” — one of the Flanders kids in the Simpsons.

Sup fools? If you’ve read even wee little pieces of the Blog, you know I’m not religious. And I’m not one of those waffley types who says “I’m not religious, I’m spiritual.” (To which I say, “I’m not honest, you’re interesting”—I kid!) Nope I’m an atheist. Well, if anything I’m a Pastafarian.
So, given this, here’s the new information:
I also don’t believe in the Christian Mythology’s vision of the end time. You know, the cute little thing about the four horsemen? And there are signs that precede them as the end time nears. Violent, explicit imagery that should not be read by children. I bet it’s only a matter of time before the religious right kindly bans the book because of all the sex and violence and incest and…oh wait. They LIKE that book? Oh. I don’t get it. But I digress.
Even though I don’t believe in this, I’m certain that my displaying of artwork in a church is a sign of the aforementioned end time. It’s gotta be. Yep it’s going to result in hot pokers and, well, poking.
But wait, it’s not like all that. I’m just being silly (it’s my milieu).
The Church I’ll be in is the Unitarian Church. I don’t claim to know everything about them, but they even welcome non-god fearing folk like me. For the record I fear little except what’s in hot dogs…and I eat the mess outa them. I’m that bad-ass.
And I think the Unitarians try to leave out the judgment, paranoia, hate, and pure ironic evil that accompanies a lot of other churches (please no flame war. I got my belief, you got yours, and a trifle of a comedy Blog ain’t the place to try to change each other’s opinions.)
I don’t know much else, other than at the end of this month or so, I should have stuff up. Giant lady stuff to be more specific. I’ll keep all y’all in the loop.
Hey, I made it through a whole Blog without mentioning The Progrum. Oh, horse feathers, drat and Tommy Rot! Almost, though, huh?

http://www.timstotz.com/vodcast/
Enjoy. Let me know what you think.

You can still find the old stuff in the Archives, and you can access The Progrum on your web-enabled phone too.

At the bottom of the page, try hitting the Quite Def™ link.

Literally. Not like people say when they mean “I can identify with what you’re saying.” Like, oh you hate Mondays? Join the club.

No I mean the real deal. I set up a MySpace group for The Progrum. (that’s my VODcast for the folks who have not caught on to the vernacular yet (a VODcast is a subscribable, downloadable media file for those who have not caught on to the jargon yet))

Join, and let the flame wars begin! (Except please don’t do the flame war thing.)

http://groups.myspace.com/theprogrum

Good friend and Rockford expatriate, Brian H. reported in from the Florida Branch (Division 1). Plenty of you locals know Brian. He was the crazy, sumbitch who owned the Moonblink Soap Company inside the front corner of Minglewood.
Well he’s down in Floridia now, and he figures he should get him self a Podcast going. So he Googled “Podcast” and lookee here: on the 4th page of the resultant image search there I am! (why he was searching for Podcast images, I don’t know. Hey, Bri, you wascally wabbit, don’t you know Podcasts are about the audio not visual?)

Here’s the link
for those of you who don’t want to press the “next” button 4 times.

Brian also said Maureen was hot. You guys noticed that right? I guess in the interview we never said it, but you could pick it up in the subtext, right?

It's...us ripping off Python
Jay came up with the idea of me imitating the "It's guy" from Monthy Python's Flying Circus. We loved it, but it didn't quite fit in with episode 1's story, or its already long runnning time.

Not all the goodies, but the main stuff.

On your compy (as opposed to your phone) download the li’l files by right clicking (PC) or control clicking (Mac).


http://www.timstotz.com/phone/

I’ve good news and the other kind.

First the bad: No food related musings…though I specifically figured I’d go out and try falafel to inspire me. I also read how rice cookers work, friends, and lovers I don’t mind telling: a little piece of me died now that the mystery is gone.
But it’s hard to be glum, because today, The Progrum is live.
Go to the site: http://www.timstotz.com/vodcast/
Or subscribe: http://feeds.feedburner.com/timstotzvodcast
I don’t have scads and reems to add. I’m tired and I’ll be out of town all day. I guess if you encounter technical problems and I can’t address them tomorrow, I’ll refund every lovin’ cent of your money.

I have lots of people to thank, especiialy SSG who is co-producing it (digitally speaking, I handle the 0s and he does all the 1s). I’ll get around to the rest later.

Anyway, hope you like. We’ve got some crazy shit in the works for you soon.

Oh, yeah, and as you may imagine: Not workplace friendly…it will not take you long to figure that out. [winks at the ladies]

PS. The Progrum is ready, the rest of the site is not…but the comments work…I think…prolly.

And, If the site doesn’t work, I may have gotten Slashdotted. It happens.

By now you all have a lot of questions:
What is the VODcast going to be about?
Why do you call it The Progrum?
What are all these strange changes my body is going through.
But here’s what’s really concerning the peeps, and I know it: Italian Food.
Item 1. If you don’t want to eat the crust on your pizza, that’s fine, but don’t order the breadsticks, which are just the same as the eschewed crust.
Item 2. Pasta concerns.
•Everyone’s mom can’t make the best.
•Sometimes, I don’t care what you do, I’m not in the mood for insipid flour and water. That’s been boiled.
•If I’m not in the mood for a particular pasta, don’t merely offer me a different shape. That’s not how the tongue works. Sure it detects shapes, but it doesn’t taste them
•Earth to class bistros…at the end of the day, Italian food has the cheapest material cost of just about any other, and you’re only boiling the pasta so no real deal skill is involved, so no. I’m not going to pay $30 for it. (I’m not saying that all dishes are cheap and easy to prepare, but the ones that are, should be charged for accordingly.)

Ok, I’m rendering a test compression of the first progrum…be well, me hardies.

PS if you were in the crowd and saw Jason and I filming, please don’t post and spoiler the surprise of what it will all be about. That would be dickly of you.

I had some stuff on my mind…what was it…oh yeah!
Vermouth is the opposite of Cheese. Not just different, but the opposite; viz:
Vermouth, for those keeping score at home, is an obnoxious, dry white wine that is the other ingredient in Martinis. Here’s the catch (this is the part where I explain the catch): you have to try to put as little as possible in a martini to make it “dry.” And apparently this dryness (unlike the feminine kind in menopausal women) is a good thing. Man this gets ridiculous. I mean screw all that hurling about of bottles, and stuff ala Cocktail, the bartender who learns how to split the Vermouth atom will be the best. So why, you ask—and not undeservedly—would one not just skip the vermouth entirely—because surely the least amount of Vermouth is none, until scientists come up with some manor of ANTI-VERMOUTH? I really don’t know. But it is sin. Not to be done. This renders this high status symbol drink into a mere Vodka or Gin on the rocks.
So Cheese…is the opposite. We try to pack as much cheese in as possible. There can always be more. It’s like adding 1 to infinity, or no even better, adding 2. Doritos is always making stuff cheesier. Pizza chains are always adding more. It’s like either a sick game, or somehow the dim marketing types just don’t get the idea to make their cheese based products cheesier until later. You think they want the Cheetos Cheesier? Hmmmm, dare to dream. But once again you can’t just eat cheese. I mean you can, and I do. But it is always the goal to have stuff besides cheese cheesier…almost in utter defiance of the fact that naturally the cheesiest thing you can consume is, in a word, cheese.
To recap:
Vermouth = as little as possible without having none, even though having none would be easy.
Cheese = as much as possible without eating pure cheese, although that tastes damn fine too.
You get that? Oh wait that wasn’t what I wanted to talk about at all.
Just a friendly reminder that the VODcast is on in 3. Truth be told, if today is Tuesday, and the ‘cast is on Thursday (or day 0) this would make it more like the second day instead of third, but that would be math. Nuh uh. Anyway, I’m planning on posting it in the evening.
I know you guys understand because you guys are the guys of me.

It’s been a while since I blogged; for that I apologize.
I had some thoughts. Originally I figured I’d address what we know around the Stotz compound as the “Rice Cooker Equation.” That thing freaks my shit out. Seriously!
No matter how much rice I add, it knows—I mean honest to damn fuck shit hell god KNOWS—how much time it should take to cook. HOW? It’s not Hi-tech. It’s essentially a spring mounted short circuit that heats up. Yet, it knows how long it takes to give me rice…Basmati, Texmati, white, long grain—doesn’t matter a wick. This is one equal oprotunity mother fucker. And I can be all sloppy with the measurements too…
Then I calmed down, and stopped letting the rice cooker get to me, and realized I have this thing—there may have been hype—called a VODcast.

Four Days till. Brace yourself. That’s right, in four days hence, bear witness to The Progrum.

In the meantime:
Now is the time to update your QuickTime to 7 for both Mac and PC. http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/
If you want to subscribe directly to The Progrum, you’ll need the latest iTunes as well, or something like Fire Ant (http://getfireant.com/) to deliver your video right to you.

The maiden voyage is coming together well. It giggled me. I hope you guys like it too. I guess we’ll know in 4 days.