Zack Mast's Corner of the Internet

A Chat at Lunch

Wed, 30 May 2012 23:00:35 -0500

A friend asked me today, “What’s new with Zack?” and I realized I didn’t have an answer. So, Jill, here’s what I should have said over sandwiches:

I’m working and finding time to play — not writing, but at least thinking, experiencing, gathering mistakes for the future. My past is all mistakes — a recent visit from a long-time friend, bearing stories of people I’ve once loved, confirmed that — and so I might as well stockpile some new regrets.

But maybe there are some things that are new with Zack. I’ll move into a new apartment in July, and the fact that it’s far from my girlfriend’s place means I’ll probably need to buy a new bike. In August, they’ll put together teams at iO, so I’m devoting the next three months to preparing for that inevitable (a) failure or (b) success I’ll never be able to credit myself for.

I am, I suppose, finding success at work, but that’s just work, who cares; life happens between the hours of 5 p.m. and that moment you wake up screaming at 2 a.m. and see a black spider crawling on your bed and leaping into the air and swirling toward the wall, but then you realize it’s just a shadow and settle back down onto the shuffled pillows. Those next five hours, after the sweat cools on my face, are when I’m most at peace.

Sorry, Barack, but you just can’t compete.

Mon, 21 May 2012 12:36:23 -0500

Sorry, Barack, but you just can’t compete.

WHENEVER I SEE ONE OF THOSE .GIF BLOGS ON TUMBLR

Mon, 14 May 2012 11:24:07 -0500

Photo

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 23:24:34 -0500

Gone Fishin’

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 13:13:58 -0500

Gone Fishin’

Priorities, man

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 01:19:45 -0500

Zack! How are you supposed to have an Internet presence when all you do is get out and form lasting relationships and live life to the fullest?

My grandma Harriet left me a voicemail on my birthday, November...

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 21:22:14 -0500

My grandma Harriet left me a voicemail on my birthday, November 3, 2011. I listened to it again two weeks ago, after I’d returned from visiting her in the hospital. She’d suffered a massive stroke a week earlier, when, in an instant, her voice had been ripped from her identity forever. As she lay on the bed, resigned to tacitly nodding her head in agreement or rolling her eyes in dissent, I desperately wanted to hear her speak. But I kept my phone in my pocket, where it belonged, until I said my goodbyes.

In the voicemail, I can hear her gentle lilt, which still has traces of her native Illinois twang — a foible she passed off on my mother, I’ve come to notice. She calls me “Zachary” — again, a trait she shares with only one other person — and tells me she’s proud of me. At the hospital, I learned from my uncle that she was more proud of me than she’d ever let on; she never would have dreamed, forty years ago, that any of her grandkids would end up attending Cornell. Hearing her distill that pride into a simple cliché (any grandmother would be “proud of” even the biggest fuck-up), I feel like I can make out a tentative sigh, as if she’s asking me: “Do you know I’m proud of you?” But then, it may just be the lilt.

To me, my grandma is her voice. It’s the single greatest thing about her that I can recall. When I think about her now, almost two days after her death, it’s the first thing that springs to mind, before even her face or her smell or the infamous creaks in her old house’s floorboards. In my head, I still hear that slight raise in pitch at the end of every sentence, though now, in my memory, the words are always the same. As long as I remember her, I’ll hear her say, “Hi, Zachary! I’m proud of you,” over and over, and I’ll just want to reach up to her bed and place my finger on her dry, dying lips and tell her to be quiet.

“Enough, Grandma,” I’ll always say. “I know.”

The thing about Twitter popularity is that none of it matters.

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:15:27 -0600

The thing about Twitter popularity is that none of it matters.

mariawojo: Help make me a POP STAR! My...

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 13:32:44 -0600

mariawojo:

Help make me a POP STAR!

My friendquaintancecolleague Maria’s an example of a super-talented comedian who actually does shit, so this video deserves to be watched.

veekeetee: hipster disney princess by viria13 These girls are...

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 13:40:56 -0600

veekeetee:

hipster disney princess by viria13

These girls are hot and all, but Anastasia is technically a Fox princess — not Disney — and as a dude in love with every hipster in this picture I feel inclined to point out the total poser, man.

She wanted to introduce me to Downtown Abbey, but I’m...

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 12:03:27 -0600

She wanted to introduce me to Downtown Abbey, but I’m making a last-second substitution.

nedroidcomics: There you go! Comics are just that easy. Computers do everything for you! Ahahaha...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:16:37 -0600

nedroidcomics:

There you go! Comics are just that easy. Computers do everything for you!

Ahahaha this comic. This is what nedroid makes for tutorials.

These DVD backers were 20-for-$1 at the Blockbuster clearance...

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:04:09 -0600

These DVD backers were 20-for-$1 at the Blockbuster clearance sale.

Could I have found more of this beautiful mug if I’d looked juuuust a little harder? Probably.

Somebody and Me: Episode 54: Tommy Jangles

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 16:51:43 -0600

Somebody and Me: Episode 54: Tommy Jangles:

On my fifth appearance on my buddies’ podcast, I make a very trite observation about movie trailers and win a movie trivia game on a technicality. Everything’s coming up Zack!

Uh oh. I think waiting four days just to swap some tiles might...

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:44:54 -0600

Uh oh. I think waiting four days just to swap some tiles might have broken it.

Admit it: you wish one of these dirty hippies were president...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 22:49:05 -0600

Admit it: you wish one of these dirty hippies were president right now.

When I was at Subway, buying my economical yet nutritious foot-long hors d’ouvre of carbs and...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 22:37:00 -0600

When I was at Subway, buying my economical yet nutritious foot-long hors d’ouvre of carbs and chipotle sauce, I saw two guys off at the furthest, smallest table in the corner, talking quietly. One of them was pretty animated — sticking the fingers on his left hand up and pushing one down with his right every time he punctuated a point. The other listened intently, rubbing the bridge of his glasses every so often and squinting at a laptop screen through the circle made by his fingers.

On the screen, a diagram: at the top, one man, smiling. Below him, branching out on either side, two more men, smiling even wider. Eventually, those men grew legs, and then the next men, until the men became ants and then spiders and then centipedes.

“Oh, fuck,” I thought. “That guy’s selling that dude a pyramid scheme,” I said to the cashier, who stared back at me. She nodded politely and went back to cleaning the toaster oven tray.

As I passed them on my way out, I could hear the bullshit pitch:

“…and then two sales to your left, two sales to your right — boom! The company gives you a hundred dollars…”

It made me angry that someone would ever try to hawk this kind of shit — and worse, that someone would ever fall for it. I swung my sandwich in its bag, incredulously, and then I pushed open the door and stepped into the cold rain. Through the window, I looked back at the man listening. He seemed to be considering it, weighing the important decision of investing in a low-risk, high-reward investment opportunity or buying yet another damned lottery ticket.

I considered trying to get his attention and mouth the words, “Don’t do it!” Maybe run my finger across my throat. At the right angle, I could do it without the salesbro even seeing me.

But something weighed on my conscience. My heart raced. I couldn’t bring myself to upset the forces of the universe. That guy was gonna trap that sucker, and soon enough that sucker’d sprout a thousand more legs with which to hoist the rest of us up — to carry us home, like Cleopatra in her sedan, while we nibbled on our cold, rain-drenched sandwiches.

“And that concludes our extensive three-week...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:01:14 -0600

“And that concludes our extensive three-week course.”

nedroidcomics: mrhipp: HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS. I’ve been...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:02:46 -0600

nedroidcomics:

mrhipp:

HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS. I’ve been wanting to experiment with slightly larger illustrative pieces; this is what I came up with. The original is 11”X14”. By comparison most of the illustration pieces I post are no bigger than 8.5”X11”.

This is

incredible

Oh man. This is just… the quote’s actually “Life finds a way,” dude. I just… wow, I feel so bad for this guy. Tough break.

I drink dirty martinis and wear ties and am classy.

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 21:42:38 -0600

I drink dirty martinis and wear ties and am classy.