I Ate the Soap

I'm Getting Into T-Shirt Design (For Fun) (And Maybe 500 Bucks)

2008-09-03T20:08:00.002-05:00

If you've never heard of Design By Humans, you should go there right now because they have amazing T-shirts.

It's an online community where the users vote for and submit shirts. Winners get their shirts printed and 500 bucks (and possibilities to win more later).

It's really fun, and I've gotten into it. I'm going to start designing a bunch of shirts in my spare time.

This is my first design. (Actually, it's my second one, but it's the first one I created specifically for the purpose of submitting it as a T-shirt on DBH.)

You can help me out by going to this link and voting for my design:

http://www.designbyhumans.com/vote/detail/27032

The only thing is you have to register an account. (Mleh.) But it's worth it if you're into design and/or like voting for things.

I Forgot I Had a Blog

2008-08-25T11:05:00.003-05:00

Hey, I forgot about this blog of mine. My sincerest apologies go out to my tens of...ones of readers.

I also have one of those "email doohickeys" John McCain has been hearing about lately. I never check for emails because 1. nobody cares and 2. I don't care (see reason 1).

So you can imagine my surprise when a genuine self-proclaimed "fan" sent me an email. Whoop! (I say "whoop" now. Things have changed. There's so much to catch up on. Oh, also I bought a dolphin. It was an accident. Long story.)

Amanda writes:

Dear Eric,

I always check your blog and I'm a big fan. I wanted to tell you a funny story. I was going to check to see if you posted anything new up when I thought that ice cream would be a perfect snack to eat while reading. I pulled out the container and I started reading it. On the Breyers chocolate extra creamy all natural container in the upper righthand corner it says "REAL ICE CREAM". That thought scares me. If this Ice cream is real then what is the other ice cream made out of?

Thanks for the email. I would imagine any interest you have in this blog is going to diminish as soon as you read this post, like a girlfriend who finds out her boyfriend has no other friends, or like a fan of a blog who finds out the blog has no other fans.

Maybe I should pretend I'm more famous on the Internet just so that I don't scare you away. Fans can be flighty. I can't blow this.

Yep, that email was one out of about a thousand. I just randomly pick one every so often and post it on the site. Nothing special. Seriously. 100% truth right there. Low in fat, high in truth, that's what this blog's all about.

Anyway, to answer your question, most commercial ice cream brands and low-grade fudgesicles are made primarily from dolphin. Don't ask me how I learned that. Again, long story.

Charles Brown

2008-07-28T00:41:00.004-05:00

I'm making a cartoon about Charlie Brown as an adult.

It's the tragic yet uplifting struggle of a man whose childhood was wrought with failure and ridicule, overcoming the stress and schoolyard woes of the 1960s suburban social structure with a strong, positive attitude time and time again, learning that with life comes pain and after every failed football kick you still get another attempt, only to grow up to become a mildly successful insurance salesman.

Charles Brown.

Coming Soon.

Look forward to it.

It's one of those boring "What I Did Today!" posts that I always hate reading but tend to write in my own blog because I'm just a hypocrite I guess.

2008-07-10T01:54:00.000-05:00

It's 1:54 A.M. and I just got back from a late night stroll. I needed to clear my head, and there's no better way to do that than to walk about a mile and a half to Steak 'N' Shake and get one of those orange cream shakes someone was telling me about that sounded so good. The night is the best time to go on a walk (at least in this area) because you're the only one out. I stood in the middle of a crosswalk of the normally busy I-150 and just stared down the straight line of empty lanes and shining green traffic lights. It was relaxing.

I can never sleep at night. Night time is when my brain turns on, and it won't stop unless I administer a goose tranquilizer or two. (I was going to say something like "horse tranquilizer," but frankly a goose tranquilizer would probably do the job, and what happens if I need to sedate a horse? No need to waste tranquilizers.) It has honestly gotten to the point where the sound of birds chirping and the sight of a sunrise is what makes me tired. How can people sleep when it's so dark out?

Like any sane human being (as far as I'm concerned), I'm in love with music, and I obviously had an iPod in my pocket and headphones on my ears as I took my walk. I've been in a bit of a Coldplay mood lately because of the release of their new album Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends (I prefer to use the full title because it's much better that way). I've always been a casual fan of Coldplay, never really getting deep into their music, but always being able to enjoy it. So I listened to Coldplay throughout my walk. It was the perfect sort of mellow music one should listen to while walking along empty, silent streets.

I had a few of their albums on shuffle, and the second song that came up (after "Viva la Vida," which is a song I quite enjoy) was "Cemeteries of London" (also from Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends). I haven't listened to the album much, so I'm not yet familiar with how most of the songs go. I listened to the opening lyrics of this one and smiled at how perfect they were for the situation.

At night they would go walking ‘til the breaking of the day,
The morning is for sleeping
Through the dark streets they go searching to seek God in their own way
Save the nighttime for your weeping

I thought that was fiarly applicaple to my situation, though I wasn't entirely weeping. Just in a really bad mood.

Anyway, it was a pretty good walk.

Oh, and apparently that particular Steak 'N' Shake is the only one in America not open twenty-four hours.

Tough shit.

The Lowest Point of Your Life

2008-06-28T13:20:00.002-05:00

You'll never truly know yourself until you've cut open a bottle of chocolate syrup to lick the remaining chocolate stuck to the sides.

My Flossing Situation

2008-06-02T00:56:00.002-05:00

I don't floss nearly as often as I should, and I'm beginning to suspect it's because I'm just not wild enough for the type of floss I use.

(I do, however, believe that I am Cherry Berry enough to use this floss.)

I'm just an idea machine.

2008-05-29T20:42:00.002-05:00

I had a great idea for a new reality TV show. Kidnap the entire cast of Lost and strand them on an actual deserted island.

Throw a couple dozen bears in the mix too, whatever, it's good TV.

Alarming Search Queries

2008-05-14T21:22:00.003-05:00

Like many people who maintain a website, I have a way of checking how many visits the site receives, how people were referred to the site, etc.

This means that I can also see the search terms people use to find the site. They're often funny, confusing, offensive, or (usually) some combination thereof.

But I just looked at some of them a few minutes ago and was slightly alarmed by what I saw:

i ate soap, will i be okay

At first I chuckled to myself. Then I became a little worried. Will this person be okay? How much time does he or she have? Will they be directed to appropriate advice? Did the soap have a cheesecake scent or something?

They sound so concerned and trusting of the Internet to comfort them in this time of dire need. "Will i be okay"? I hope so. I hope so...

For anyone who reaches this webpage in the future with questions such as this, I give the following advice:

Don't eat soap.
Did you eat the soap even after I told you not to?
Why the hell would you do that?
Alright, calm down, just listen. Brush your teeth. No, no, not like that. Take the soap out of your mouth first. Okay, brush your teeth. Good.
Okay, I don't think that really helped. I was just kind of winging it and hoping I'd come up with further steps after that.
Uuuuummm...
If your mouth is foaming, call poison control. If not, you should probably still call poison control, but you're allowed to lie and say you weren't doing something retarded like eating soap. Don't say it like that, though. Tell them you think someone put anti-freeze in your Jell-O. Apparently that stuff's undetectable.
Oh no, now I'm going to get "how to use anti-freeze as poison" search hits.
Just DON'T eat soap again.
NO. Put it down.

I hope that helps. I need to go now, but I wish the best of luck to the poor sap who searched this:

hot pocket burns

I've been there.

Pondering the Monkeypuzzle

2008-05-04T22:42:00.005-05:00

I've started something of a solo music project. I've entitled it "Pondering the Monkeypuzzle."

It's a project I've been putting off for a long time now, due in part to the fact that I have no decent form of recording equipment (simply a single microphone) and I just recently got the keyboard I've been talking about buying.

Nevertheless, it's off to a start.

I have two songs completely finished, and two more in a sort of "rough draft" stage.

One of the two unfinished songs has proven to be quite complicated to record, but I'll get it done sometime soon (hopefully). The other one hasn't been recorded yet because I'm just so lazy that I haven't yet bothered to move an amp where I need it to be. But anyway, these songs will be done soon, and more will come after them. A lot of songs have been stewing in my head, and until recently I had no medium with which to create them.

This is one song. It's entitled "Dawn."

The song I mentioned before (the one proving to be more complicated than I had expected) is particularly more well-thought-out than this one, and considerably longer. I was going to wait until I finished it before unveiling my little project here, but I got impatient. I never have time to work on it. (I'll never finish it unless I quit my job. Oh wait, I did that already. I have no excuse.)

Anyway, thanks for reading and/or listening. You can hear this music at my MySpace page. If you use Internet Explore, I noticed the page looks all wonky. If you don't like wonky things, you should use something good like Firefox instead of the retarded web browser you're using right now.

myspace.com/PonderingTheMonkeypuzzle

Album Collage

2008-04-17T23:12:00.004-05:00

I made a collage of ten of my favorite albums (though not actually my top ten favorite albums) for an art class, and I was quite pleased with the results. It came out looking a little something like this:

Click on it to see the whole image. See if you can spot each album thrown in there (if you happen to have the same taste in music as me).

ALBUMS:
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication
The Beatles - Abbey Road
Thom Yorke - The Eraser
Menomena - Friend and Foe
Menomena - I Am the Fun Blame Monster
Elliott Smith - [self-titled]
Cloud Cult - Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes)
Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
Sufjan Stevens - Come On Feel the Illinoise
Ben Folds Five - The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner

EYES!

2008-04-14T18:48:00.003-05:00

Just a few minutes ago I was washing my hands in front of a mirror. For some reason I had one of those profound moments in which something very ordinary seems universally baffling. I was looking at my eyes, and while doing so the thought dawned on me that I was staring at the things that I was using to stare. I was using my eyes to see my eyes. It's not that amazing, but for the moment it struck me with astonishment.

I was looking at what was looking at myself looking at what was looking at myself.

I then noticed that I could see my own reflection in my eyes, meaning I was looking into a reflection of myself looking at what was looking at a reflection of myself looking at a reflection of myself looking at what was looking at myself.

My brain then promptly exploded.

Incidentally, if you could call an ambulance that would be really helpful.

One Year of "I Ate The Soap"

2008-04-03T20:09:00.006-06:00

They grow up so fast...

On this very day one year ago, I, fed up with my boredom of the Internet, created a blog.

Unlike any project I've ever started, I didn't give up or forget about it, and for that I am celebrating its birthday.

(Well, I'm making a post saying that it has been a year, if you can call that a celebration. I'm drinking a Mountain Dew if that helps.)

You might notice the "first" post on the blog was actually on April 1st, 2007. The actual first post is the one that comes after that on April 3rd. (I backdated the April 1st post because I didn't want to wait 362 days to write something about April Fools.)

Happy spring, everybody. Hopefully I'll continue this blog for years to come.

If you'd like to donate money for a birthday cake, use the convenient donation button!

The money goes to a good cause!
[Note: The money does not go to a good cause.]

Brief thoughts on being the president...

2008-03-17T21:06:00.001-06:00

I don't think I should ever be president. Everything would be okay for a few years, but then the robots would take over.

A Riddle

2008-02-26T15:51:00.010-06:00

If an egg (not a bomb—just an egg) is sitting on the roof of a house perfectly balanced but ready to fall, which way does the egg (which isn't a bomb) fall?

HIGHLIGHT THE TEXT BELOW TO REVEAL THE ANSWER

_____________________________________________________

| Trick question. The egg is actually a bomb. The house explodes. |

_____________________________________________________

Free Strobe Light!

2008-02-24T19:57:00.010-06:00

Have you ever found yourself dancing in front of your computer like an idiot with not a single strobe light in your vicinity? Well, have no fear. I took the liberty of making a free strobe light just for you!

Are you in a small, enclosed space? Perfect! Just turn off your lights and CLICK HERE TO PARTY!

(It's like a rave in your living room, except with less ecstasy probably!)

A Cactus in the City

2008-02-22T23:54:00.018-06:00

I mentioned earlier that I got a free inflatable cactus at work. I had no use for it, but who would pass up a free inflatable cactus? Nobody I'd associate with.

For the past few months, it had been sitting in my closet, unused. Then a few days ago I decided I'd give it a face, and I drew the cactus a personality complete with a nametag reading simply "a cactus." It then became a strange (awesome) decoration in my bedroom.

A couple friends and I were pretty bored today. We were roaming around with nothing in particular to do. We hung out at my house briefly, not really accomplishing anything interesting or entertaining. Then we had the idea to take the cactus out for the night. Basically, we just brought the cactus around and took a bunch of pictures of him in random places. We got a few stares (always a sign that you're having fun); and a short, round woman at Borders informed us that cacti are not allowed in the premises when accompanied by a camera. (There were a few good shots in Borders which we were subsequentially not able to make.)

This was an idea that I really liked (although I'm aware it has been done before in various forms). I want to do this again when the weather is warmer. It was so piss-freezingly cold outside that we weren't able to capture each photo perfectly at our leisure, and we definitely couldn't have stayed out taking more pictures for much longer unless we decided we didn't need our extremities anymore.

Anyway, on to the pictures...

This is the story of a cactus's first night in town.

The cactus had a fun time. He will definitely be going on another outing when the weather gets a little warmer.

I decided to check out what other sorts of inflatable tom foolery I could get myself into using my 20% employee discount. I found the following items that would be fairly awesome when used in the same way as this gentlemanly cactus:

A monkey!
A shark!
A chili pepper!
A parrot!

More will come in the near future.

Child, 9, attacked by Mike Huckabee's eyebrows

2008-02-18T17:44:00.007-06:00

FEBRUARY 18, 2008
WISCONSIN: Shocking events occurred today as a regular campaign rally for presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee went horribly wrong. Witnesses say Huckabee's notably unruly eyebrows detached from his forehead and began physically harassing a nearby nine-year-old girl.

"I didn't even know what was happening," recounts an emotional Emily Stenbrach of Hudson, Wisconsin. "I was with my mom and then I saw his eyebrow jump at me and then it bit me on my face!"

It was moments later that the second of the two eyebrows latched onto Emily. Immediately, fellow Huckabee supporters rushed to her aid and removed the cantankerous brows.

"It was crazy," says Jacob Rogers, a nineteen-year-old University of Wisconsin student. "You're just standing there waiting to shake the guy's hand, and suddenly his eyebrows barrage some poor little girl. I mean, we've all been a little worried about his eyebrows in the past, but this has just gotten out of hand. Something needs to be done."

Today's events left rally participants feeling a little shaken up, but not as shaken as Huckabee's campaign will be from here on out. With front-runner John McCain virtually the official Republican candidate, Huckabee will have to do some serious work to get back on his feet if he wants to stay in the race.

Huckabee Laughs Heartily Shortly After the Incident Takes Place

Speculation has been made about Huckabee's next move in the ordeal. Some say trimming is in place. Most demand an emergency wax job.

One thing is clear. This is one incident America must keep its children protected from in future election years.

Mike Huckabee and campaign officials refused to comment. Says Anthony Mannis, random guy we talked to on the street, "Dude got some big eyebrows."

Eric Eagan reporting from Hudson, Wisconsin.

Stop emphasizing silent letters. You look dumbbb.

2008-02-12T23:18:00.005-06:00

When people write, sometimes they emphasize the duration of pronunciation of a word. Like if you were about to be attacked by a drunken nun with a switch blade, I wouldn't say "look out." I'd say "LOOK OOOOUUUUT!!!" and then shout something about the gang of clergymen she has with her, which I forgot to mention before. The point is, some people emphasize the wrong letters when they write, and this is one of my biggest pet peeves. Figure it out, people. For example, you wouldn't yell "look outttttttt!!!" unless you have a stuttering problem and the person in danger happens to be very patient.

When you're trying to elongate a word, the only way to screw it up is if you emphasize a hard consonant or emphasize a silent letter. Either one of those can be an easy mistake to make. (If you're a moron.)

I hate seeing people write things like, "I met someone who I really likeeeeee." If you pronounce that the way it's spelled you'll sound like the idiot you are.

It's so simple, but some people can't get it right. "Hey, John, I got a new pppppppneumatic drill." That's neat, but John has to take it from you now because you're too stupid to use it. (I can't actually think of a situation where the word pneumatic would be emphasized, but you get the idea.)

Anyway, it just really annoys me. (For a person who is easily bothered by common grammar mistakes, I sure am on the Internet a lot. Maybe I should try to stop that habit.)

I just hope I don't see it anymoreeee.

The Tiny Cookie Experiment

2008-02-10T17:40:00.000-06:00

If you've ever been to a video store to rent some movie you really wanted to see and then forgot what movie you went to the store to rent in the first place and then ended up getting Spider-Man 3 instead because even though you didn't like it very much when you saw it in the theater you might enjoy it a little more this time now that you don't have any high expectations, then you may have seen a particularly delicious type of candy when you walked by the snack section. The candy is called Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites, and you may have picked up a box knowing that they're quite delicious, but instead bought them for a slightly unusual reason. That reason might have been to bake them.

Maybe you've never been in a situation like that. Well, I have, and I thought I'd share it with you.

These are Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites.

(The black stuff on the box is from a melted Steak 'N' Shake bag. Long story.)

First of all, I'd like to point out the little message in the top left corner of the box. They're 10% "more free." And I think that's great. Other products should start becoming more free. Maybe that'll cause the competition to drive some things into being completely free. And that would be nice. But 10% free is pretty good too. It's apparently "more" than whatever it was before, at least.

Anyway, these things are very tasty. I've had them a few times, and I always really like them. Everybody loves cookie dough. It's a great idea for an easily accessible solution to everybody's never ending hunger for raw cookies. They're obviously just candy, and not actual cookie dough, but one day I had the brilliant idea of baking a whole batch of them just to see what would happen.

So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to bake some and...see what happens. Then I'm going to try a few. Since it's not real cookie dough, I'm not sure what it'll actually turn into. (I'm not too worried, though. It'll probably only be slightly toxic, at the most.)

Here's a side-by-side view of the ingredients in the Cookie Dough Bites compared to the ingredients for actual chocolate chip cookie dough (according to some lady).
(QUICK GAME: Try to guess which one is for the Cookie Dough Bites and which one is for real cookies!)

The Experiment

The goal here is to take Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites and bake them as if they're regular cookies. I'll then observe how they taste, how they look, how they feel, smell, sound, etc. (But if they're making noises, I might be a bit worried.)

Step 1: Taking Them Out of the Box

I took them out of the box.

My only gripe with these is that inside the box is this tiny bag, and inside the bag is a miniscule amount of candy that doesn't even fill the bag. It really sucks when they're the same price as Mike & Ikes and those things fill the whole box. (And are awesome, by the way.)

Step 2: Placing Them in a Pan

[Note: Take out of packaging.]

I put them in an unnecessarily large pan and separated them with enough room to expand (or melt, or explode, or whatever they're going to do).

I realized that the chocolate coating might make some sort of difference. So I left some of them the way they were and smashed all the others in case they wouldn't form a cookie shape on their own. But they didn't really smash. They kind of just crumbled. It didn't really work. Just looked like a bunch of owl turds. (I have no idea what an owl turd looks like, but apparently I think it looks like this.)

(You'll notice I was a bit lazy when it came to cleaning the pan before doing this.)

Step 3: Asking My Mother How to Use the Oven

She told me to press "bake."

Predictions

I honestly think they'll just burn. The chocolate coating will melt around them, and the "cookie dough" will burn, and they'll just taste disgusting. I doubt I'll even be able to get them off the pan.

I guess we'll see.

I just heard a beep. The oven is done pre-heating. It's time to bake.

Okay, done baking. And I must say... I'm surprised.

The Results

After pre-heating the oven to 350 degrees, I slid the pan in and left the kitchen for about five minutes. When I walked back into the kitchen to take them out, I was hit by a smell. But it wasn't a bad smell. It smelled like...cookies. They actually smelled like cookies! I was amazed. Not only did they smell like cookies, they smelled like good cookies. In fact, they smelled really good!

Suddenly I had very high hopes. I didn't expect them to smell good at all. I expected them to smell like burnt molasses if anything. I thought, "If they smell good, they must taste good." I began to get my hopes up. And, to my surprise, not in vain.

They tasted...pretty good. As far as my standards for real chocolate chip cookies go, I wouldn't consider them very great. But I definitely wouldn't consider them that bad.

They certainly didn't taste as bad as they looked. Clearly none of them got anywhere close to a cookie shape. My efforts of smashing some of them into the correct shape yielded crappy results. What ended up happening was the chocolate coating simply kept them in the same shape as they were before I put them in the oven. (So some were vaguely round, and others were vaguely owl turds.)

The "cookies" definitely didn't have a normal cookie texture. They were crispy and hard, and (as I suspected) pretty well stuck to the pan. Some of them were easy to get into my hands, but others will take some long-term scraping efforts. They turned out like the little blobs of dough that somehow separate from a ball of cookie dough from time to time when you bake cookies. The little blobs bake quickly and become crispy. They don't taste bad, but they don't taste like their bigger cookie siblings. That's the best comparison I can offer.

I'm really surprised. I thought they would be horrible. They're really not bad at all. In fact, I've been munching on them while writing this. I'm really quite pleased.

I don't really know what I was expecting of it, but the experiment was a complete success. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites wear their name proud; they truly are cookie dough. Although they're better in their regular form, it is now known that baking them yields slightly delicious results.

Official Conclusion

They were actually fairly good.

And Spider-Man 3 still really sucks.

I'd like to be more jolly.

2008-02-01T18:15:00.000-06:00

I'm beginning to suspect I'll never be jolly. That's not to say I wouldn't consider myself a happy person. The problem is that I don't think I'm very jolly.

I'm just not round enough to be jolly.

Overweight people take it for granted. They're all like "Oooh, society looks down on me," "Rock climbing this weekend is out of the question," "I have diabetes." But come on. Just look how jolly you are! You don't laugh, you guffaw. I would give anything to be able to guffaw.

Am I so brash to say that I would like to be able to shake my belly like a bowl full of jelly? Is that so wrong?

I'd like to be this:

But I'm this:

I've considered starting a Burger King/Hot Pockets diet. I figure that'll be a fast track to my horizontal destination. Don't worry, though. I'll keep a well-balanced diet. I'll make sure to have plenty of milkshakes for dairy and Twinkies for seafood. (What? Do you know what they put in Twinkies?)

Once I'm successful, I'll start wearing red more often and handing out Christmas treats. Don't give me that "Hey dude, it's February" bullshit. This belly commands authority.

Now smile and enjoy your candy cane.

Taft Cone

2008-01-15T22:35:00.000-06:00

(In case you're wondering, yes, that is an ice cream cone with William Howard Taft's face on it. If that confuses you, don't worry. Taft Cone also comes in strawberry.)

The Best Christmas Present Ever

2008-01-03T01:15:00.001-06:00

Today I came home and remembered I had one more Christmas present to open. It was from my grandparents, who I didn't see over Christmas, so I just got the present recently. I thought it would be an alarm clock, a sweater, maybe a gift card, the usual type of gift I receive from my grandparents. But to my shock and utter hilarity, I opened the gift bag to find this.

Let me explain my grandparents. My grandfather is a retired pastor in his seventies, and my grandmother plays piano at church every Sunday. This gift is hilarious. It's even funnier to think that they simply might not have noticed the title of the product (written in huge, bold letters at the top of the box). But even if that's the case, everywhere on the box that doesn't say "His Sexiest Musks" simply says "Sexiest!" They must have noticed. My brother's suggestion was that they probably just figured, "Kids these days." That's also quite possible and equally amusing.

Here's the description on the back of the box:

Musk... women say it's the scent they like best on a man. Why? Because it's SEXY! Musk is one of the cleanest, freshest, sexiest scents around...WOMEN LOVE IT!

Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa!

(God, I love old people.)

A Poem

2007-12-28T17:13:00.000-06:00

This is a poem entitled Cleaning Out the Spaghetti Sauce from Behind My H Key:

uhyjuhjuhyjjhuuujuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhuju

The Best Moment in Super Mario World

2007-12-28T15:28:00.000-06:00

Super Mario World is the best game ever. Especially when you beat the Forest of Illusion and it tells you you're about to enter "the dangerous (but tasty) Chocolate Island!"

That's just hilarious to me.

I'm an idiot.

2007-12-11T22:21:00.000-06:00

I just got halfway through brushing my teeth before remembering I was planning on making an Italian beef sandwich. Now everything's going to taste minty and refreshing.