This came out of my mouth in a conversation the other day and I decided draw it up. Life got real busy so I sloppily threw it together in the SikkLabs before I forgot it.

I am very thankful for all the support from all of you, not only in donations and comments, but sharing the blog and FB fan page. Furthermore, you guys are always sending me tweets and links of fun stuff to blog. I’ve made some real great friends here on the web.  As the family of Sikkdays.com readers grow, it seems that the contributors should also grow.  Thus, I figured it was time to add to the army of me and burdenday(Yes he’s still here, just busy with some really cool new projects and reviving TNN).

I would like you all to welcome, Spike Matthews as a new contributor. He’s across the pond, so be warned he types with an accent. Many of you will know him as Spikeyboy from PMOG/TNN, but for those of you who don’t I have assembled some questions for him to answer:

#1) Cake or Pie?

Cake if it’s a blueberry muffin, otherwise I like pie – key lime for the flan type, apple with cinnamon fer the pastry toppers (with thick custard of course.)

#2) Sometimes it feels like we are our jobs. What was your first job?

Paperboy? Meh – everyone did that. First real job was working in a greengrocer. Just don’t talk to me about rancid spuds…

#3) After years of tension the semicolon and the comma finally rumble, what happens?

Well, you’ve seen the results on thousands of handwritten signs advertising “Vegetable’s for sale, cheap!” outside shops, surely? This isn’t the result of human inability, this is what happens as a result of the Great Punctuation Wars.

#5) Favorite childhood game? (video, board, handheld, sport-like activity, whatever)

Pada-tennis (small scale tennis court, using heftier versions of table ten… er… ping-pong bats), Scrabble, Blackjack, Ten-pin bowling. Skill is another matter.

#6) Theory on why question #4 is missing?

Chemically-enhanced cock-up. (Wow Burden day went for the drug comment here too. Hmm, where did I get a reputation like that.)

#7) Favorite word?

Many, although ‘arsebiscuits’ is my current favourite for the sweary side of things. Lots of words please me for various reasons; ‘crenelation’, all onomatopoeic words (‘plop’, ‘zing’ etc), and so on, ad nauseum…

#8) Which actor was your favorite Batman? Apologies, since you are across the pond let me translate, Who is your favorite Doctor?

Best Batman… hmm… I have to admit I liked Michael Keaton’s go at it. The best Doctor… Tom Baker with David Tennant a very close second.

#9) I recall you are quite the music buff. Is there any music you absolutely can’t stomach?

Two types, but since I think you have to attend an opera to properly appreciate it, I shall let that one go. Jazz, on the other hand…. Pass me that pile of sheet music, will you? I want to wave it under some pseud’s nose and rant awhile…

#10) Which is key to peace on Earth: Bacon or Charlize Theron?

As long as yer not on about Kevin, then I have no hesitation in planting the flag for Bacon.

Hmm…

Somehow I feel like you know even less about him, now. I should really work on my interview skills.

Great news! I’ve managed to capture another blogger for sikkdays.com! Honestly I didn’t capture him, he offered to help out. Plus, he doesn’t have my address so he won’t be able to bill me for his work.

Anyway, Mr. burdenday was the community manager at the game formerly known as PMOG and now he is a community manager/designer at Rise & Ruin. You can also find him at burdenday.com where he shares his experiences managing online communities.  burdenday is just about finished with his English major, so this will be a definite upgrade for those of you that don’t just come here for the pics and videos.

Some of you may be familiar with burdenday, but for those of you that do not know him below are some questions I emailed him along with his answers:

#1) Cake or Pie?

Beefcake!  No seriously though, I’ve never been one much for sweets, but I do appreciate some yellow cake when appropriate.

#2) Do you think it is fair to the other colors of the spectrum to pick a favorite?

Look – here in America we’ve had a long standing tradition of choosing a favorite color and alienating the rest of the spectrum with our “favorite color exceptionalism.”  I’m here to change that 20th century carryover thinking from the past eight years.

#3) Buddy Holly was obviously a star, but if the plane crash of February 3, 1959 never happened who would have had a bigger career, Ritchie Valens or The Big Bopper?

Kurt Cobain.

#4) Automobile of the future: Electric or Hydrogen powered?

So close your eyes for a moment and begin to imagine pictures of the most horrific accidents in the world’s history. Begin to recall those involving air vehicles… Good!  Now I am going to say a word and we’ll do some free association: Hindenburg.

Electric – I’ve been shocked by 120V wires a few times and survived.  I am pretty sure I won’t survive a hydrogen engine explosion though.

#6) We are our jobs, what was your first job ever?

My very first job ever was as a receptionist for my aunt’s Law Firm.  It is considered “very professional” to have a male receptionist, I was told.  I enjoyed it because mostly I surfed the Internet aimlessly and just put people through to voicemail – those were the days!

#7) Theory on why question #5 is missing?

Wow, I didn’t even notice.  I’m adding this to the list of possible drug interactions for Vicodin. (I should note that burdenday just had a minor surgery and is not a junkie that I pulled off the street.)

#8) Favorite childhood game? (video, board, handheld, sport-like activity)

I played EverQuest for far, far too many years.  If I had to choose a favorite, that would be it.  There is nothing quite so satisfying as spending months of your life chopping away at virtual animals and monsters with swords.

#9) If you were stranded on a desert Island, what is the first thing you would build yourself?

A library, so I could begin writing enough books to fill it and then long after my death someone would discover it and they’d all be “classics.”  That’s how it works, isn’t it?

Wow, I thought that last question was weak, but that is an excellent answer. All I could think of was building a bowling alley. Hanging out at the beach is great, but if you lived there I have to imagine you’d get bored of it.

Sikkdays.com hasn’t really had any sort of real focus aside from ‘look what I found on the Interwebs’ & my passion for animation. Therefore, I see no need to constrain burdenday to report on a single subject. I am just happy to have his contribution as long as he doesn’t post anything about Kevin Costner.

So my 3 other blog readers, give a big sikkdays’ welcome to burdenday.

At the beginning of the month I talked about making some changes here at the site. I have made some decent progress. Now that Sato, Yukie & Miyagi are cheering me on, more cool stuff is bound happen.

Vidz

The video page has been updated to play larger versions of my original videos. I just finished modifying the page to mesh with my blog theme, however it will probably need some tweaks. I need to walk away from it and have a look with fresh eye. Comments are welcome, of course. Also, a few of the videos didn’t come out as nice as I would have liked so I’ll have to re-encode them, again. There’s a swell new intro video I made for fun & I added an experimental video I did 4 years ago. It has a summer theme, so I figured what the hell. I’ve got some ideas and now that I have removed the barrier of ‘oh the video page needs to be fixed,’ hopefully I’ll be adding some new goodies.

Where’s What?

I also improved the search box in the upper right corner. It frustrated me to no end that I couldn’t find things on my own site. There’s well over 600 posts now & I have a bad memory. Sometimes I am not sure if I have posted something or not. Plus, why the hell am I tagging things silly if the search doesn’t even use the tags! Thus, I found a groovy plugin to fix that.

Weekly Posts & Partners

I am still on the fence about weeklies, but I definitely need to get another video blog up, right? I haven’t found anybody as disreputable as myself to join in and post things, but I have approached some people.

*It feels a bit wrong that I used a line from the Matrix Reloaded as the title and a gif from the Karate Kid II.

you saw the pretty picture, now skip to the short version below

Video

I always talk about making my own videos and animation but that is an uphill battle. I am a perfectionist & I don’t like leaving things unfinished. So if I think I can’t dedicate the time or resources to something, I don’t want to start it. Obviously, without the resources and time it will not be perfect. Also, I am very skilled at making excuses.

Anyway, in the near future I think it is time to revamp the video page. I made it over 2 years ago and now those videos look tiny. Hopefully, that will inspire me to create some more.

Grassy Knoll

There seems to be a slight increase in traffic here at sikkdays. As I have stated before, traffic is not everything. However, I have been thinking of taking on some additional authors so that you don’t have to solely depend on me for your daily fix of animation, memes and snarky comments. I am not sure if I should remain the lone gunman here.

I certainly have some friends that are more than capable of putting together additional material for the blog & I continue to meet a number of clever individuals online. Of course, a decision like that would mean I give up some of the control of my baby and that’s probably the reason I have not acted on this thought before. Bringing in new blood would also give this page a bit more diversity. Though, I am sure I could find someone just as jaded as me.

Weekly Features

Speaking of jaded, I am also toying with the idea of returning the weekly posts of Adult Swim Sunday & PMOG Link Monday. I quit Adult Swim Sunday for the simple fact that I had exhausted the clips on their site. Furthermore, the newer shows on that network hold little interest for me. I can only watch so many shows pretending to be a poorly produced public access show. Recently, it looks like they have added more clips of older shows. Yet, I could quickly get through those too.

PMOG Link Monday presents a different set of challenges. For one, it is not called PMOG any longer. Nethernet Link Monday doesn’t seem to have the same ring to it. The weekly posts containing links that I learned about through the game community were no different than the other posts here on the blog. I simply wanted to share the groovy-ness. Yet, making it a weekly addition to sikkdays turned it into a chore. I was spending large amounts of time looking for things to share, rather than stumbling onto it naturally through game play. Thus, I am hesitant to start that up again.

The Short Version

• Upgrading the video page soon.
• As much fun as it is to have weekly features, I think I talked myself out of it above.
• Should I add some more authors to the site?

Questions? Comments? Non sequiturs?

Two friends have trailers up for their films so I thought I would share, since all I seem to do is talk about making films. Both of them asked me to help them setup websites. So I have a degree in video, but they ask me to make websites. Well that is a lie too, I set up WordPress sites for them so they can maintain them however they like. Perhaps that act of laziness is why I wasn’t asked to help them with their films.  I kid, I think they both asked me. Anyway, shut me up.

Also this Sunday, March 8th is a fundraiser for the documentary at Pints & Quarts in Muskegon.

Watch the trailers or visit the sites Read the rest of this entry »

I was stalking one of my…I mean reading a friend’s blog, Life’s Mystery, when I noticed my name in the recent comments list.  Being narcissistic, or more accurately, curious what one of my other personalities wrote, I clicked on my name.  I read the terribly unwitty remark and then I hovered the mouse over my name wondering what my unmedicated personality left as a link.  It turns out my friend’s blog has a fancy something or other called Snap Shots, check it out:

I became fascinated with the ad links that it came up with about Sikkdays.  Battlestar, Adult Swim, Aqua Teen are fair and make sense.  Kool-aid?  Well, I do recall I that I might have posted a video from Family Guy or Robot Chicken that featured Kool-aid Man, but I only came to that conclusion because of the Adult Swim link.  Scorpions really flew me for a loop.  Regardless of the party of personalities in my brain, I doubt any of them have a strong love for the Scorpions.  Baked Goods are delicious, and I am fat, but if you’ve ever been to this site before you know I don’t exactly share recipes.

Thus, rather than sleeping I decided to fire up the search button and see what I get.  It turns out that Adult Swim Sunday is the culprit for the Scorpions, specifically this post here, scroll down.  Interestingly enough, that is the same post that contains Kool-aid Man too.  I found my post on Cake Wrecks was the guilty party when I searched Baked Goods.

Mystery solved.  I’ve added my friend’s blog, Life’s Mystery to the sidebar here at Sikkdays, along with pfmonaco.  Who, coincidentally, seems to be enjoying marketing links as much as me.  Check this out.

You want me to add your link to my site?  Let me know, I am desperate for friends.  And by desperate, I mean the stay at your house overnight after a party and wake up the next day and ask you ‘what do you want to do today?’, desperate.