My 500th Post. Oh, the Humanity!

Greetings, y'all! And welcome to my 500th post! Woohoo! Never before in the history of blogging has someone made 500 posts with so little substance contained therein! I am a Master of Hot Air! A Rambling Literary Bindlestiff! A Jack of No Trades, Master of None! I should rename my blog The Empty Set!

But today is a day of celebration. A toast to my 500th post!

Hooray! OK, before I get to all of your gifts and cards (with money in them, I assume), I'll first break out the celebration cake. Hold on, let me get it from the living room...

Ahh... whoever said "the cake is a lie" was wrong. (That reminds me, Portal 2 comes out soon...)

And now, for ice cream... I can't decide which one to serve. Help me decide...

Would you choose the Vanilla Bacon flavor...

...or the Fish flavor (imported from Japan, of course)...?

After cake and ice cream, we'll get a raucous game of Back-alley Scrabble going... I remember the last time we played... it got ugly...

Some bad blood after that one. The bulldog on the left made an illegal play (proper noun), and it went downhill from there. Ah, well, comes with the territory, I guess...

Since this is such a historic event, I might as well hop in the Wayback Machine and bust out a little This Dayve in History for April 15...

This Dayve in History: April 15
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- 1452: Leonardo da Vinci is born. (Paint misbehavin'...)
- 1783: Articles of Peace are ratified, ending the American Revolutionary War. (Up to then, it just went round and round...)
- 1817: The American School for the Deaf is founded in Hartford CT. (or so I heard...)
- 1865: Abraham Lincoln dies after being shot the night before. (Worst. Play. Ever.)
- 1912: The Titanic sinks after hitting an iceberg the night before. (Worst. Play. Ever.)
- 1947: Jackie Robinson debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers. (Biggest. Pair. Ever.)
- 1955: The birth of the McDonald's franchise. ("Do you want franchise with that?")
- 2010: Ash from the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull shuts down airspace over Europe. (Yep, a red line under that name...)

I bet you were wondering if I'd post any videos today, weren't you? See, I was right, you were wondering that! That just goes to show you how well I know you. We're such close friends, I know you like *that* (Dave crosses fingers). OK, here's a couple cool videos for you.

First, you have to PROMISE me something! With this juggling video, you have to promise me you will mute the music. For some reason, the guy put a rap song as the soundtrack, and it has bad words in it. Normally I would not post such a thing (not to mention the dude only wears a ridiculous pair of pink shorts the whole time), but I've never seen juggling like this, it is so good. You have to see it. Or not, you decide... remember: mute the music!

EDIT: After contemplation, I took down the video. If you want to see it, go here. It's amazing juggling, but ultimately, the negatives outweigh the positives, so out it goes./EDIT

 I have an amazing (to me) skateboard video to show you... ah, but it's a double-edged sword...



You see, unless you were very familiar with skateboarding to begin with, you'll likely have no idea just how creative and unique 90% of those tricks are that Richie Jackson does in that video. I mean, nobody does those tricks. To the unfamiliar, I'm sure the tricks were cool enough, but nothing special. But can I be so bold as to say "trust me, that clip is extra awesome"? The guy just looks at skating from such a crazy angle...

OK, I don't know if those videos did anything for you, but this last one will connect, I'm sure. You have to see this... the scene is the 2008 Big 10 track and field championships, and the event is the 600m. The girl in the lead trips and facplants after two laps (with one lap to go), gets up, and proceeds to catch up and pass the field and still win the race. You won't believe this...

OK, that's enough videos for today. Hey, don't get greedy! You'll just have to wait for more. It's Biblical: Deny Yourself...

So, after having finished A Game of Thrones, I naturally moved right into A Clash of Kings. I'll likely write a review of that one as well, for the vast legion of you out there that are interested in such things! (Hey, Logan, I called you a 'vast legion'!) I've kind of lost interest, sadly, in Val Gunn's book In the Shadow of Swords and in KJ Parker's book The Hammer. They have been sidelined indefinitely - I'm sure I'll pick them up again after I make my circuit through the Song of Ice and Fire. At the rate I'm going, that should be in another three weeks or so. Martin is such fun to read. Of course, there remains the few scenes I would have edited out, but hey, I'm kind of prudish like that.

I was thinking about it today - the world that Martin has created is so bleak and hard, I think it makes those moments when good things actually happen feel like a victory. Perhaps that was a conscious choice on his part, as a writer. If everything went well all the time (or at least always resolved itself well), then maybe the story would lack the power that it has. Does that make sense? Well, it makes sense in my head! Tragedy follows difficulty, bad goes to worse, then something awesome happens and it feels amazing... like you, as a reader, have worked hard to earn that small burst of awesome.

And now, in honor of it being Tax Day and all, I decided to illustrate my story using the Rage Comic Builder over at Memebase. Yeah, I know, I doubt any of you follow the latest internet memes, so most of the "in" humor of this will be for naught, but I did it anyway! Because I love you!

And on that note, my 500th post comes to a conclusion. If you read this post to the end, you have my thanks. If you watched all three videos, you have still more of my thanks. If you've read my blog for a long time, you have even more of my thanks. And if you've read it from the very beginning, then your name is either Havah or "Mom". And for that... you have my thanks.

Man, I am just doling out thanks all over the place today!

Adios for now.

Dave 500, out.

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PS Since I pulled the plug on the Juggler clip, I felt I should replace it with another... watch this one full-screen, HD. You'll thanks me..



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