Category: Uncategorized

Heath did some quizes, which is all good and well aside from the insane amount of time it takes to load all those god-damned images over dial-up, when he could just as well have expressed the results as text … Sigh. And I took a couple of those tests, but there’s no way most of them are very accurate; their questions are not well thought out enought to provide usable data. I did get the right result on the “Which Matrix Character Are You?” quiz (anyone care to guess?), but the rest were hardly worth answering.

There ARE online tests I am happy with the depth and accuracy of. The tests at TheSpark.com have always been fun to take and given meaningful results. I recommend them.

Here are my results from all* of them, in the oh-so-odd-order I took them in:

The Death Test:

You can expect to die on December 5, 2043 at the age of 65 years old.

On that date you will most likely die from:
Heart Attack (23%)
Cancer (16%)
Homicide (11%)
Electrolysis (8%)
Alien Abduction (7%)
Drowning (5%)

(Last time I took it, it gave me until February 14th, 2044… )

The Are You Dateable Test:

Mild congratulations, you are… 59% dateable! You are neither more nor less dateable than your peers– welcome to the land of mediocrity, home of the masses! You have an undeniable animal magnetism, but you’re just as likely to attract small animals as you are to attract human beings. Nevertheless, the people you flirt with generally find you funny and cute, or “fute.” You have good hygiene, which is an imporant aspect of relationships involving two or more people. Avoid seafood and walks in the woods.

TheSpark.com’s Famous Personality Test:

Like just 4% of the population you are an EXPERIMENTER (DIAT). Although you’re slightly shy (admit it!), you love control. When a problem comes in your way, you stomp on it swiftly and decisively. You are bothered easily by failure in others and failure in yourself. You don’t like people that you don’t think are intelligent. Rather than arguing with them, however, you would just as soon ignore them altogether.

In relationships, you have a strong heart. And because you’re introverted, people take you as someone they can trust. But the fact is that in addition to solving problems, you like to create them. So there’s a decent chance that you’ll cheat on a loved one. If you do, you’ll likely get away with it.

You’re a good person at heart, but then again, who isn’t?

The Inner Child Test:

Chimneysweep
(Normal Ignored Functional Child)

“Chim-chim cheree, a chimneysweep I be!”

Your little guy on the inside is the Dickensian Chimneysweep (NIFC). He bounds from rooftop to rooftop inside you singing songs and getting covered with soot. Even though you suffer from abandonment issues you manage to look on the bright side of things. And hey, that’s cool. The world is your stage. Like Oliver Twist doing the twist you jump ‘twixt situations with zest, gusto and chutzpa. I like you. You’re fun.

If you want to get anywhere in the world though, say “guvna” after every sentence and then click your boot heels together in a leap of joy.

The Best Friend Test:

Slightly atonal chords and mildly distracting lights! You are 57% rock-solid friend.

Are you a Virgo? I’m not surprised. You’re a good friend at times, but other times you’re harder to count on than an abacus coated with finger-repellent. And made of razor blades. You’re the type of friend that when somebody asks you to hang out with them, you say you want to hang out but then you never actually specify a time, so that you don’t actually have to hang out with that person. But you’re generally trustworthy and sensitive to others’ needs, like a warm elephant on a cold morning. You’ll never be the Best Man at a wedding, but you’ll also never be the Worst Man. Don’t be shy about using phlegm or bile to show your friends you care about them.

The Love Test:

Hello, Romeo/Romea! You scored a… 68%

Love hurts, don’t it? You’re in pure love

Yes, the code is a mess because I basically just heavily modified someone else’s “store” page and haven’t had a chance to clean it up, but … I think it looks good and I’ll get the pre-order for the novel in it soon enough …

But for now, the buttons work and it seems to look okay. I’ll update it … probably tomorrow night with more info.

I must sleep now, or my brain will implode.

The new Modern Evil store

I want this.

It is a software that includes biofeedback hardware and … read the details. I want it. But I don’t have a spare $130 right now. But if you order hundreds of shirts, I will! Hooray! And then I can get started controlling my heartbeat’s shape and interval! Wheeee!!!

I have been the victim of class-related bigotry. Laura’s parents believe I am a “loser” because I’ve made it to 25 without at least getting an undergraduate degree, and they recommended that she simply cut off all contact with me immediately. She is a free thinker in some measure and decided to think about it more on her own. Her conclusion included that I was not even trying to reach her ‘class’. Her word. She says she’d be fine with someone who came from the lower classes, as long as they worked their way up to her level before getting to her. She seems to mean not just educational level, literati level, but financial, too.

I am too much an idealist, it seems. I so often forget that people are so hung up on money… since I am so NOT hung up on money. That people place so much value on buying a piece of paper that signifies a “degree”, since I realize it’s what you actually understand and can use that matters, not whether you paid the money and shoved your nose up the right asses to get the degree. I live in this idealist world of mine where people can be judged by the content of their character rather than the contents of their wallet, and sometimes I forget that most of the western world is the other way around. I get caught off-guard when someone treats me differently because whether I make $5000 this year or $500,000 doesn’t matter to me so much as how I spend my year.

I spent my year working more than full time doing everything I could for my grandparents, running the store for them to bring in extra money and doing the heavy (and often the light) lifting that keeps the place running. I spent my year re-working my novel, and by the end of the year it will be available for the world to buy it, whether they want it or not. I spent my year working on my art and create the ‘Mouse’ project and more paintings this year than the last 3 or 4 years combined, so far. If I get a couple more paintings done before the end of the year (as expected), I’ll have done more paintings this year than in all prior years combined. I just started another creative outlet, the design, marketing, production &c. of custom screen-printed products, and I expect it to be a satisfying (and profitable) outlet for me in the coming years. I’ve spent the year doing the things that I consider important.

So, even counting unemployment and painting sales, I didn’t earn $5k the whole year. After working so hard to get re-admitted to ASU last year, I simply did not attend at all this year. But how do you measure success? Is it the money I didn’t spend? Is it the degree I don’t have? Is it the relationships I haven’t built? Or is it in knowing what is important to me and doing what is in my power to achieve and support it? Is it in every time I helped my grandmother up after a fall or to walk across the room? Is it in every time I expressed myself creatively through art? Is it in every ton of junk or materials I moved from one place to another or sorted out and threw away to clean up and maintain the property for my family? Is it in actually finishing my novel? Is it in trying to build and maintain strong and worthwhile relationships with my family and existing friends, as well as with new people?

What is winning and what is losing? What is success and what is failure? Since I don’t consider myself a loser, does it matter what the parents of a person I have never even met think? Does it matter what random visitors to the site think, or that something about me induces them to vomit (on their dogs’ faces)? Does it matter that I don’t have detailed, long-term plans?

See, right now a very important thing to me is to help support my family in any way I can. To help out my grandparents, whose health seems only to be declining. So right now if you asked me I might say I was planning on living in Pine for “at least a couple more years” to “pay off my debt and earn enough money to be able to go back to school.” Which is true. If you asked me what I was going to do after school, I might not be able to tell you much, since I expect to spend several years (taking courses at not more than “half time” so I can properly devote myself to them) on what is ostensibly my “senior year” of college… and while I now see myself continuing to work on my art (which is what I will be going back to school to study; I want to get a “classical” training in the arts and get at least a BFA), things may change between now and then. Because the “couple of years” seems to mean “at least as long as I’m needed”, which sounds a lot like “as long as my grandparents are still alive” – this could be 6 months or two years or ten years; there is no way to know.

So… since my plan is vague… and doesn’t lead me down a “career track” and isn’t aggressive or “performance oriented” … am I “wandering through life”? I’m playing it by ear. I’m doing what seems right, considering the circumstances and my priorities. I’m not making plans that preclude me from taking care of what is important to me, and I’m not particularly concerned with getting things done ‘as fast as possible’, just in getting things done.

The numbers you see all over the site… the “645.0 A.C.” … that’s my calendar… that’s part of an expression of my disconnectedness from time… I’m hardly aware of the day of the week (and less so of the day of the month) on the calendar that everyone else around me uses… it just isn’t important to me. When I need to be somewhere or do something, I’ll know. When circumstances change, when my grandparents are dead, it isn’t something I can look forward to on the calendar, but something I can know has happened, and know as a cue that it may be time to do something different. Whether I put together a spreadsheet or an accounting program to tell me what day I’ll have paid off my debt or not, all I can do is keep making the payments until they’re gone, so why pay attention to it? Just keep paying until they’re gone. One day, some semester will be starting and I’ll notice that I have more than enough money to go back to school, and the next semester I’ll probably go. And there isn’t some fancy job as a fine artist waiting for me that I can only get if I rush through art school. The more time I spend working on it, the better I’ll get (in school or out), and when I’ve taken all the classes that means “degree” to some bureaucrat, they’ll let me know. Dates and schedules … just add complication and stress to an already complicated and stressful life. So I try to avoid it.

So how do you measure success? Is it how much? How fast? How many hoops? Or does it have something to do with working towards your goals and recognizing your priorities?

My brother and I are finally launching something that Modern Evil has needed for a long time – the availability of black shirts!

Actually, we’re launching an entire line of screen-printed shirts available in your choice of colors. We recommend black for both of our ‘launch’ designs, but feel free to choose cornflower blue or orange-poppy! We’ll print it the same, either way.

Here are representations of the two designs:

As indicated, shirts are just US$16 (plus US$3 S/H per shirt). 2XL and 3XL shirts cost US$2 more, and cannot be ordered with the buttons below. Email me if you are interested in oversize shirts.

The first design will be printed with white ink, so the letters will be white and the shirt will provide the background color. I recommend black shirts for this design. Click on this image for a pop-up, select a shirt color and size, and click the “Add to cart” button to order it via Paypal.

Shirt Color (Black recommended)	BlackRedBurgundyDeep PurpleCornflower BlueNavy BlueRoyal BlueForest Green
Size	SmallMediumLargeXtra-Large

The second design will be printed in a shade of magenta ink, so the letters will be the color of the shirt and the ‘background’ behind the text will be magenta regardless of shirt color. For this design, black shirts would look good, but I also recommend colors like banana, orange-poppy, and white. Click on the small image for a larger pop-up, select a shirt color and size, and click the “Add to cart” button to order it via Paypal.

Shirt Color	Black (recommended)Banana (recommended)Orange-Poppy (recommended)White (recommended)YellowBirchLight SteelKiwiPacific BlueMaroon
Size	SmallMediumLargeXtra-Large

If you do not already have a Paypal account, set one up today! You can make payments from a credit card or checking account instantly at hundreds of sites, and they’ll give you a $5 credit when you first sign up. If you have already added shirts to your shopping cart, you can check out with this button:

If you do not want to pay by Paypal, I will also accept money orders and checks (though they will have to clear before I will ship any merchandise). Email me for the relevant information.

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The deadline for pre-orders is Wednesday, November 5th. We will begin shipping shirts out (via USPS) on or before November 20th. We do not expect to produce any more shirts than we get orders for, so if you don’t pre-order you may never have another chance to buy these designs!

As always, my email address is teel@modernevil.com, if you have questions about the shirts, want to order oversized shirts, a shirt of a color not listed, or if you want to snail mail me your payment. Thanks!

(Note: Due to the handmade nature of all Modern Evil garments, you may notice some variation from garment to garment. This is not a flaw; it is the garment expressing its own unique personality. Enjoy.)

Modern Evil is not responsible if you make an “ugly” shirt color selection. No refunds, no exchanges. Modern Evil – making people suffer and cry since 1999.