Remembering Colin

Best Obituary Ever

Colin Yurek Farbotko

Farbotko, Colin Yurek 34, succumbed to ALS on October 15, 2012, after 6 years of valiantly fighting the debilitating effects of the vile disease. 

Colin was born on August 13, 1978 to George and Janet Farbotko. Surprisingly to anyone who knew him later in life, Colin was a mild-mannered and well-behaved child, especially in contrast to his rebellious younger sister Anna. His formative years instilled in him a drive for creativity and out-of-the box thinking. 

Upon graduation from Hononegah High School (Roscoe, IL), Colin entered Luther College in Decorah, Iowa for four years of typical adolescent male debauchery. During college he and his father sculpted giant works of snow art, placing in competitions as far away as Switzerland. Graphic artistry, drinking, naked soccer, and other (thankfully clothed) sports occupied much of his time. It was at Luther where Colin met great friends Kevin Frantz, Pete Schonebaum, and many other good Luther friends. He also met a young lady, Marney Olson, who would someday become his future wife. Colin graduated with degrees in art and communications and moved to Minneapolis, MN to pretend to be a grown-up. 

Colin provided creative graphic, web and video design work for Target, Inscape Publishing, and also did freelance work. He was an unapologetic Mac snob. He spent much of his bachelorhood biking and running around Minneapolis lakes and parks and entering local races. He participated in and completed the Wisconsin Ironman Triathlon. During the Lifetime Fitness Triathlon in 2004, he re-met Marney when she recognized and cheered for him during the race. They began dating immediately and were married on April 1, 2006 (no joke). 

Colin loved Marney and his family and friends, good local craft beer (especially Surly), the Four Firkins, whiskey and gin, every kind of seafood and edible delicacy such as caviar, foie gras and tongue. Colin also enjoyed grilling on his back deck with friends, running, biking, skiing, double entendres, the Simpsons, The Jayhawks and other music, the Internet and being creative. He disliked bad drivers, people who talk in movie theaters and ALS. 

Friends and admirers are invited to gather together to raise a glass in honor of Colin on Saturday, October 20, 2012 at the Local, 931 Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis, from 12 - 2pm. In lieu of flowers, memorials are preferred to The ALS Association MN/ND/SD Chapter, 333 North Washington Ave. Suite 105, Minneapolis, MN 55401.

Published in Star Tribune on October 18, 2012

keyed up

Typing with the on-screen keyboard is slow. Very slow. So slow, in fact, that I spent six hours working  on the previous post. I've ordered one of these bad boys, and will pick up the blogging pace once it arrives.

another post about doctors, drugs and rock 'n roll

I saw one of my doctors last week. My calf muscles are tight and twitchy most of the time, and it makes sleeping difficult. I ended up with a prescription for Baclofen, but first I messed with my doctor's head a bit. My shenanigans started as soon as she walked in.

doctor: "So, what can I do for you?"
me: "I'd like some drugs please."
doctor: "Okay, what did you have in mind?"
me: "Well, I'm really in to Pink Floyd right now. I'd like something to help enhance their music."
doctor: *puzzled expression*
me: "Like maybe some LSD or MDMA."
doctor: "I can't prescribe those, but I can give you directions to a street corner downtown where you probably could get them."
me: "Far out."
doctor: "Too bad medical marijuana is illegal in Minnesota."
me: "Marijuana is medicinal?"
doctor: "You are trouble."

She went on to tell me that several spinal injury patients of hers have successfully 'self medicated' with weed at home. For some people, weed works better than Baclofen, Botox or any other anti-spasticity drug on the market. And unlike some prescription pills, marijuana has few side effects. The main one being: it makes everything way more awesome. Literally everything.

Of course, there's that whole "against the law" issue with pot — also I can't use a lighter or matches. So I guess I'm out of luck, unless someone brings 'medicine' to me. (hint hint) But that won't happen because my friends are law-abiding citizens. (wink wink) Remember kids, just say no, (say yes) and users are losers. (losers with great taste in music) I'll continue taking my prescribed medication (lame) and listening to Led Zeppelin IV. (hint hint)

 I also won't (will) try to enhance rocking tunes like this Minneapolis duo:
 

...or the classics...
 

 ...or these Canadian fellas:

Their bass player looks like a young Jack Bruce and sounds like a young John Entwistle - nothing wrong with that.

vote for me please

If'n you're on Facebook, please vote for me in the Surly Coaster Contest.

Real blog post coming soon, I promise.

my brain is basically a jackass

Last night, The Simpsons did a clever little parody of the movie Inception. It reminded me of an odd dream quirk I've been experiencing for the last year.

My dreams have always been pretty far out. I've had dreams in foreign languages (languages I don't speak, like Japanese and Italian), dreams with subtitles, dreams in black & white, and dreams within dreams, just like Inception.

About a year ago, I dreamt that several friends and I were painting my kitchen. I picked the microwave up off its shelf and set it on the counter so I could paint the shelf. In reality I haven't been strong enough to lift the microwave since 2009, but in dreams I could. Anyway, one of my friends says, "I didn't think you were strong enough to do that." I say, "Oh yeah, you're right." Then I put the microwave back on the shelf, walk over to my wheelchair, sit down, and spend the rest of the dream watching my friends paint the kitchen.

My subconscious is a total dick!

This happens all the time — at least a few times per week, and occasionally multiple times in one night! In a dream, I'll be walking or skiing or biking, and some bozo will say, "Aren't you too weak for that?" And I always say, "Oh yeah, you're right" and go sit in my chair. Of course, the bozo in question is me. I constantly sabotage my own dreams for some reason.

I think I have a solution. it comes from the great mind of Homer Simpson:


It's on, brain.

this kid rocks

campus man

This afternoon I'll be taking part in a neurology workshop at the UMN med school. First-year students will practice taking my medical history, then ask me basic diagnostic questions. My wheelchair is a pretty big clue to my condition, and I don't want to make it too easy for them, so here are a few things I'll say to throw them off.

• "It really hurts when I pee."


• "My sinuses sting — I think the fumes from my meth lab are getting to me."


• "Can you write me a prescription for ketamine? I'm going to a rave this weekend."


• "Are you familiar with Excitotoxicity? It's my favorite Def Leppard album."


• "I'm in a wheel chair because of a freak mosh pit accident at a Neil Diamond concert."

The last time I did something like this, I had fun. Hopefully today will bring a few laughs.

I love keeping med students on their toes.

acting twice my age

Here's a fun fact — people with ALS are eligible for Social Security, regardless of age. I guess the government figures we might as well see a little return on those Social Security taxes before we die. OK, maybe that isn't a 'fun' fact, but it's a fact nonetheless.

Since I'm basically retired & on Social Security, I get a lot of mail intended for the 65 and older set. This lovely little brochure showed up the other day:


According to their website, "SilverSneakers is a fun, energizing program that helps older adults take greater control of their health by encouraging physical activity and offering social events."

That sounds delightful, and if I were older than 33 and capable of physical activity I'd be all over it. The SilverSneakers obviously got my info from my insurance company, and I can't fault them for that.

However, I can fault them for this gem.


SilverSneakers has a clip art logo. It makes me sad.

If SilverSneakers was a volunteer organization with a shoestring budget, I'd understand the clip art. Turns out they're a division of a company called Healthways. Healthways is worth about $500 million. They have an original logo, but creating one for SilverSneakers must not have been in the budget. I guess half a billion dollars doesn't go as far as it used to.

C'mon, Healthways — kick a few bucks down to SilverSneakers so they can hire a designer. If you're going to print your logo on a bunch of shirts for old folks, at least make them look kind of cool.

solar

There's a crazy solar storm heading this way. I hope it's as cool as a solar eclipse.

i wish i'd thought of this

better late than never... probably

I planned on returning from my blog hiatus with a fun game for you to play, but I couldn't pull it off. My ActionScript and JavaScript abilities were too rusty to track the score. So here's a free game idea for you Developers.

I was going to call it; "Drunk, Diseased or John Wayne"

The basic concept was this — you would listen to a slurry, sleepy audio clip of a male voice saying a short phrase. Then, you'd decide if the voice you just heard was that of a drunkard, a motor neuron-diseased person, or actor John Wayne.

John Wayne sound clips are easy to find. Recording my own slow speech is easy. Getting a few of my friends loaded and recording them would have been the easiest task, given the massive quantity of Russian Imperial Stout in my fridge. The hard part was that I wanted the game to be 10-15 'questions' long, but I couldn't remember how the scoring worked.

Oh well. I have a feeling "Drunk, Diseased or John Wayne" wouldn't be burning up the iTunes store.

break

i'll be blogging over here for a bit, keeping people up to date on my sister-in-laws brain tumor surgery. Writing brain tumor jokes instead of ALS jokes is a nice change of pace. Weird, eh?

I watched The Empire Strikes Back last night for the billionth time. I noticed something new during this viewing... actually, I noticed two things.

First, Leia on Hoth is arguably hotter than Slave Leia in Jedi. Granted, I live in Minnesota so my perspective on such matters might be skewed. Most guys don't find wool scarves & mittens sexy — I am not most guys. I'd love to get her alone in the South passage, if you know what I mean.¹ I'm just saying that I'll take ski bunny Leia over steel bikini Leia any day.

She can fire my ion cannon any time.²

The second thing I noticed is R2D2 goes every place people go (except inside Yoda's house) under his own power. He follows people around on multiple planets and space ships. He travels by rolling. Which means...

THE ENTIRE STAR WARS UNIVERSE IS WHEELCHAIR ACCESSIBLE!!!

Both the rebels and the Empire put ramps and elevators in every damn thing they built. Even the Death Star is easy for R2 to navigate. We never hear C3PO ask Han, "Excuse me, Captain Solo, would help me carry R2 down these stairs?" Han Solo doesn't have time to carry R2 anywhere! He'd probably shoot C3PO just for asking — which would have made the whole trilogy more watchable.

Oddly enough, we don't see anyone zipping around the background in a quasi-futuristic wheelchair. I suppose they have medical regenerative technology that makes wheelchairs obsolete. It worked for Vader...


1. If you know what I mean, you are a geek. And I'm a scruffy looking nerf herder.
2. Get your mind out of the gutter.

i made a funny

A few days ago, my sister sent me a photo of a bike shop in her town, Nantes, France. It's called Assbike.

Yep, Assbike.

The first thing I thought was, "I want that on a t-shirt!" The second thing I thought was, "More people need to know about this awesomeness."

So, I fired it off to Stevil at All Hail the Black Market and he put it up on today's post.

Spread the word, the Assbike has arrived.

comical

Have you ever wondered what's the worst thing about being in a fancy power wheel chair?

It isn't the inability to go most places, or spending the whole day sitting, or that it sometimes breaks unexpectedly. No, the worst part is this;

My chair's menu uses the font Comic Sans.

Comic f*#king Sans.

Someone actually made the conscious decision to program my display with a font for children. I spent the last four and a half years of my career on an IT team, and they never used Comic Sans. The Developers I worked with used Arial only, excepting the time one guy used the font Trebuchet in all caps. The other IT boys thought it was awesome.

You may be saying to yourself, "Hey, I like Comic Sans. It's fun and kinda cooky!" Well, I have two things to say to you...

1) There is a time and place for 'fun' fonts.
2) Bite me.

Let me illustrate my point. Which warning below would you most likely heed?

I rest my case.

retired

I'm officially on the disabled list.

My last day of work was a few weeks ago. My fingers grew too weak to hold the mouse button for more than a second at a time. How am I still blogging, you ask? I can use Mac Dictate to compose about 90% of a post. However, I can't use Dictate to draw in Illustrator, tween in Flash, airbrush in Photoshop, or roll edit in Final Cut. It just isn't possible to say "Draw a rounded rectangle 1200 pixels wide by 800 high in the shade of blue I'm thinking of."

I'm trying to stay away from daytime TV, so most of my time is spent poking around the internet. Lately, this game is occupying most of my time (personal best: 25 days).

I should blog more once I recalibrate Dictate with my new microphone. If you have an idea for a topic I should write about — such as sex tapes, the man, hospital visits — leave it in the comments and I'll do my best to work it in.

woops

Can you spot what's wrong with this picture?

I managed to snap a foot rest off my chair by shifting my weight while seated. Apparently this thing is held together by cheap Ikea-grade hardware.

I wonder if my AAA membership covers towing and repair of power chairs.

I have achieved the impossible

Throughout history, man has always had one goal. One seemingly impossible dream, held above all others, that might one day be realized. If fortune and the gods smile upon thee, thy quarry may be won. The dream I speak of is, of course, man's desire to leave the toilet seat up.

I have climbed to that mountain top.

My arms are so weak that it takes considerable effort to lift the lid and seat. My wife, in a display of almost unfathomable kindness, has started leaving the seat up for me. It is a beautiful thing.

rule 34

The internet has it's own unique language at times. Since most of the work I do is destined for 'teh interwebs' I'm well-versed in these goofball colloquialisms. One of the webby phrases I know of (but have never had to apply) is Rule 34.

Rule 34 states that, "Pornography or sexually related material exists for any conceivable subject." Weird, right?

Well, I started writing a post about moving to L.A. so I could become the world's first wheelchair-bound porn star. After writing the first paragraph, I thought to myself, "I wonder if Rule 34 applies." So, I googled 'wheelchair porn.'

Mother. Of. God.

Google came back with 2,890,000 results. Nearly three million instances of wheelchair porn exist. Suffice to say, I would not be the first. Or second. I'm thinking more 25,000th.

Eeewww.