Don’t you love it when you chase some links down the Internets rabbit hole and discover something hawesome you wouldn’t have discovered on your own?

I started at boingboing, where Cory linked to a blog created by Pixar employees who offer advice to Disney on how to improve Disneyland. I love Disneyland (I’ve been a nerd for MiceAge, Laughing Place, and Yesterland for years) and I really hate what they did to the park in the last decade or so, especially the absolutely horrifying "updating" of Tomorrowland. It was cool to read this post where Merlin Jones says many of the same things I’ve been saying for years:

The utopian, ultramodern design of 1967’s New Tomorrowland, gleaming
like a moonscape in stark white, black and cool shades of blue and
silver, was unsucessfully updated in 1998 to reflect a bronzed
Victorian/Vernian mechanical view of the future. While this was great
at Disneyland Paris, where the concept was fully realized, it never
gelled here in Anaheim, particularly as a layover to the modernist
original.

[. . .]

Tomorrowland’s apocalypse is the elephant-in-the-room at Disneyland. It
should be fixed immediately – – and before any new expansion or
additions. This decay impacts the guest’s experience and memory of the
park. The imminent return of Submarine Voyage and new Monorail trains
will help get the ball rolling. Why not drop the other shoe and revive
the entire land at the same time? It would be a marketing coup.

The blog is still relatively young, and I read the entire thing in about thirty well-spent minutes. I hope that the new management at Disneyland will listen up: it’s not about selling plush toys or trading pins, guys. It’s not about "synergy" with whatever movie is going to be forgotten in two years. Disneyland is about escaping from the cares and troubles of real life, and immersing ourselves in a world of Adventure, Fantasy, and a great big beautiful Tomorrow.

Continuing down the rabbit hole: I looked at some of the links on their blog, and found myself at Don Shank’s blog, which has some really amzing artwork he did for The Incredibles (one of my favorite movies of all-time) as well as some ultra cool artwork he’s done for himself. I can do a lot of things, but drawing is a skill that has always eluded me. As far back as fifth grade, I remember my dodge ball nemesis Jimmie Just could draw the most amazing monsters and things, while I struggled to do a step-by-step Garfield (which Donald Garwood could draw flawlessly.) I’ve favorited and bloglines-ed Don’s blog, and some day I’ll get the courage to ask him if he’ll do a drawing for one of my books.

I hope this illustrates how cool the internets is: I never would have seen Don Shank’s blog if I didn’t read boingboing, and I wouldn’t read boingboing if I hadn’t met Cory at the Boxing with Barney EFF event several years ago. (Even though I read the ‘zine version of boingboing back in the day, I didn’t know it was a website until 2002-ish.) It’s sort of like following real-life hyperlinks to a website, where you follow traditional hyperlinks long enough to find that place down the Long Tail that seems to speak only to you.

Photo of Space Mountain via Flickr user Sky Traveler
Image of Noobly Squirbulette via Don Shank’s blog.

From time to time, I really enjoy a nice grilled cheese sandwich. Melt a bit of sharp cheddar (Tillamook extra sharp is my favorite, if I can find it here in LA — there’s some embargo which usually prevents anything better than plain old sharp from making it to our stores) and dip it in a spot of French’s plain old yellow mustard before each bite, and I am a happy, happy guy. (I just wrote "man," then erased it. Then I wrote "dude" and erased that and tried "man" again. Then, I wrote "Dennis," which made me laugh really hard. Then I settled on "guy."

So. I’m trying my very best not to get some sort of unhappy cold thing which currently involves a whole lot of coughing and this weird heaviness in my chest. It started after the 5K yesterday, and by last night it required the use of some Advil. Today, I’ve mostly felt like shit, but this afternoon, my body said, "Hey! You there! Old Woman!"

Nah, I’m just kidding. I really want to go into a whole Holy Grail quote-fest, but this entry is already far too silly.

My body said, "Hey, guy, dude, dennis, man, dude, manguy, guymanndude, guy, I want a grilled cheese."

"Whatever you say, Mr. BIllboard," I said.[1]

I grabbed two pieces of the best bread ever, which is called Sheepherder’s Bread (it comes from Trader Joe’s.) Then I grabbed two slices of Tillamook sharp cheddar and shook my fist Northward at whoever is preventing the extra sharp goodness from making its way to my door. I decided that since I’d be burping cheese the rest of the night (gross!) I may as well burp ham and cheese, so I grabbed some ham out of the meat drawer and put it on the bread and closed the whole thing up. Then, I did something really white trash: instead of butter, I sprayed some cooking spray on the pan . . . and on the bread, too.

I know. Gross. Deal.

So I turned on the burner, and began turning this mass of meat, bread, cheese, and cooking spray into the glory which is a grilled ham and cheese.

Until, uh, I forgot to turn the heat down after a second, and the bread charred a little bit.

No worries, I thought, I’ll just flip it over, turn the heat down, and when it’s time to eat this bitch, I’ll do it after-school-1982-style: scraped with a knife into the sink. Yeeeeaaargghh!

I flipped it, turned down the heat, and walked to the dining room hutch to get a plate. When I came back into the kitchen, there was far too much smoke coming off the skillet to be good.

I learned an important lesson: spraying with cooking spray may be easier than slathering with butter, but it burns at a much lower temperature than butter does, which results in an after-school-1979-style grilled ham and cheeese: scraped with a knife into the sink, with most of the cheese still cold and unmelted except at the edges. And the ham is lukewarm too.

Not even the mustard could save it, and I’m burping ham and cheese for nothing.

[1] After the abomination that was last night’s sad attempt to do a tired old parody of My Fair Lady, I hereby announce that The Simpsons has leaped the shark, and harpooned it from orbit. AAaayyy.