self-deprecating narcissism

I'm too cool for LiveJournal

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 23:56:47 GMT

Or at least too pretentious. Thanks to being unable to resist a year of webhosting and a domain registration for the absurdly low price of $9, I now have my own journalish website. I'll still keep reading LJ, but if you're curious about me, head on over to vacillatingvelocity.com

Postcards from the Edge of Sanity

Thu, 19 May 2005 19:04:21 GMT

Hello out there in internet-land! I am about to embark on what will surely be an epic journey through the northwestern chunk of This Great Land, and I will likely have intensely sporadic access to email during the trek (although these days, unsecure WiFi is about six months away from coming free in your Frosted Flakes Of Probably Not Rat Heads). I would like to instead communicate via the poor man's subject-line-only-email-from-a-non-respondable-address: the postcard.

So, anyone who would like a postcard sent from what is equally likely to be a beautiful natural park, dilapidated roadside attraction, local microbrewery, or minimum-security prison, send me your address! I believe my email is on my info page, or you already have it, depending on the value of you.

You're much more likely to get a postcard if you send before the hypothetical departure time of Saturday morning. That's 48ish hours, kiddies, and the clock's tickin' - this limited-time offer won't last long!

roughing it

Sat, 23 Apr 2005 20:29:12 GMT

I would just like to point out, for the record, that I am writing this post while sitting in a car on the side of the road on Kirkwood Meadows Drive. It appears I am close enough to a condo where some unknown benefactor has left their wireless 'net unguarded, and I get to check email as snow falls down onto each of the 360 degrees of windows that encircle me. I knew there was a reason I decided this would beat sitting around the house, even though I'm unable to hit the slopes myself.

PSA

Thu, 07 Apr 2005 00:43:06 GMT

It appears that, much like the boy that cries wolf, my thick veneer of sarcasm might occasionally cause people to mistake my sincerity for flippancy. So, just for the record, and to get the mundane details out of the way;

Sunday morning, March 13th, 2005. Benjie and I get to the 'wood and head up for another day of riding. It's just us two so far, although Becky and Bryan are meeting up with us as soon as they arrive. We take accursed chair 7 up and over to 6 from the not-so-secret lot, then take a warmup down the main run and through the park and pipe. We get to the bottom and go up to do it again. On the lift, or pehaps just before, I quiz Benjie about his bindings' forward lean. I don't have any to my new Drakes at the moment, but it occurs to me that he and Chris¹ both do. Ben says he has his set about halfway forward, so I decide to try this out. It requires really jamming your foot in there good and cranking down hard on your bindings. I set it up and head down, with the (standard) agreement with Ben that we'll meet at the top of the park.

Forward lean is pretty great. It angles and grabs your foot and lower leg in a way that gives power and decisiveness to your carving. It will also quickly cut off your circulation, which is why when you ride that way, the tendency is to not only unstrap one foot for the downtime of lift riding, but loosen your other foot as well.

Unfortunately, about halfway down 6 - to the right of the trees which are to the right of the slow sign - I hit a patch of icy moguls. I decided to ride through it and speed-check when I got out - no matter how sharp my factory-tuned edges and no matter how responsive my kickass bindings are, ice is a bitch. Unfortunately, I got launched off one mogul, lost it in the air, and came down, ass first and going fast, on the next one.

Snap crackle pop spine krispies.

I didn't know right away, of course. I took a minute to shake off the fall. Then I took another minute. A skiier stopped above me to keep me from being run over. I managed to sit up, although it hurt. At this point, my feet were killing me, so I reached down to unstrap my bindings. Oops. Pain so severe that I ended up right back on my back. It was around this point the skiier asked "are you ok?" and I had to say "Uhh, I don't know." He called (or had someone call) ski patrol.

Montage: Phone calls, ski patrol, oxygen masks, gurneys, xrays, IV mishaps, morphine, concerned friends, ambulance, ER, a doctor sticks his finger up my ass (is it Friday already?), CAT scan, hospital bed, auto-morphine, insomnia, jell-o, vicodin, back brace.

The long and the short of it is that I have a compression fracture of the spine. Spine chunklet T12 go smoosh. Spill out a bit towards the back of the spine, but not enough to require surgery or, you know, paralyze me. I'm sitting around the house out on disability for probably 3 months total, or a little more than two more. Doc says take it easy this summer, but I'll be back on the slopes come next winter.

I feel very lucky.

1. Who, if you throw in Jon, make up the Snowboarding Samurai (I was high, we were wearing facemasks, Burton has that Ronin thing going on . . . shut up), who among my friends are my only real peers, ability-wise, on the slopes.

hey pretty

Mon, 04 Apr 2005 23:28:07 GMT

(apologies to alongtheway, whose journal I was in the midst of posting a comment in when vanity took over and I decided I wanted this Deep Thought more clearly marked "MINE!")

My housemate's fraternal twin brother loaned us Gran Turismo 4 and his racing seat / force feedback steering wheel setup. It does a remarkably good job of conveying your virtual car's responses to its drive through a virtual world. Sitting ten feet back from a wall where the game's painstaking recreation of expensive cars and exotic locales is being projected in ten-foot-wide-screen is, in a word, great. I spent many hours playing these past few weeks, still unable to drive a real car but enjoying the faux ones just fine. The section of the game that I devoted by far the most time to, though, was a relatively small subset of what's available to do - the dirt tracks. With the wheel, you can feel the car slip and slide, grab and release, its contact with the road ever-shifting.

Navigating the course but not quite in control; a little messy, a little too fast. No wonder I enjoyed it so much - when I type it out like that it it sounds like a spot-on description of my race through life. A ride that gets a little scary at times - pockets of heart-pounding-stomach-churning-uncertainty that can freak me out until I realize how alive they make me feel.

up and atom!

Sun, 27 Mar 2005 19:10:25 GMT

Dear Posterity,

Something bade me write to you this morning, to jot down little memories of last night so that they might be bottled and preserved for the future. As if they were more important than the thousands of other little snippets of my past kept far past their expiration date, until they decompose and sink back into the grey matter, waiting to fertilize thoughts-to-be.

The three openers were expectedly unremarkable. I must remark, though, that the star of Napoleon Dynamite introduced the third and final opener, a brief moment of semicelebrity. It would have been 27% more exciting if I had yet bothered to see the movie. I was recently instructed to, so I suppose it will happen soon enough.

After about a song I decided my time would be better spent popping outside for a quick trip to the liquor store for cash and a beer. After the beer I bummed a smoke and as I stood outside, a gaggle of teen girls came streaming out, being shoo'd away by concert staff so that they wouldn't have to call the police and report that two of the girls were plastered. The two drunkies saw my brace and came over to be inquisitors #2 and 3 of at least 5 as to the legitimacy of my spinal injury - as if maybe I'd just donned it on a whim, some sort of fashion statement ahead of its time. They were bubbly-teen-girl-drunk-friendly and their friends were embarassed.

Fall Out Boy themselves were fun but relatively bland and un-chatty relative to prior sightings. They did, however, play the song I tried to get them to play the last two times I saw them - Honorable Mention.

And that's about it.

in other news . . .

Wed, 16 Mar 2005 00:26:00 GMT

The next time I play "I never," and someone says, "I never fractured my spine", I have to drink.

I'm making the choice to be out of touch

Tue, 01 Mar 2005 21:10:16 GMT

In continuing a trend where I'm trying to make a point of verbalizing the seemingly endless flow of thoughts, feelings, and ideas I've been internalizing recently: goodbye, politics. Disillusionment doesn't even cover it. I'm declaring myself Apathetic Towards The Machine. I've unsubscribed from all the mailing lists - the DNC, MoveOn, America Coming Together, even the ACLU. Don't get me wrong - I'm glad they're still fighting, and maybe Dean will figure out how to do so effectively (Howie - I suggest you put Incubus' Beware! Criminal on repeat until your blood boils), but I'm too fucking revolted by the whole process and what it reveals of my countrymen in the aggregate to have anything to do with it for a good long while.

Thu, 24 Feb 2005 22:39:06 GMT

I'm fairly certain that HP Proliant DL320 1U rackmount servers are, on some distant, genetic level, the descendants of banshees. And I'm currently sharing my office with one. I'm doing my best to ignore the fact that I'm good at working with computers and can get paid pretty decent money to do so, because these days, I hate them.

Happy V.D.?

Tue, 15 Feb 2005 00:01:53 GMT

I just got my first valentine of the day (well, second, really - thanks johnnystiletto!). It was from Southwest Airlines, and was a flash greeting that invites you to use an animated nutcracker to break open a peanut and reveal what appear to be testicles with love notes on them. If I even remotely bought into this holiday, I think this would dramatically depress me. Instead, I laugh, because testicles are funny.

Tue, 01 Feb 2005 22:30:51 GMT

I'm pretty sure I just saw, out my window, a woman hotbox her Geo Metro, step out, spray a half-bottle of perfume on her person, and come inside, which implies she is a client, which implies she has a child, which is scary. The entire second story of the building smells like "Eau De Crack Whore" and it's giving me a headache.

a moment of brilliance

Tue, 25 Jan 2005 00:46:26 GMT

Stayed at our newly-favorite cheap motel this weekend, and the room they put us in had a sink whose drain was not fully connected to the plumbing underneath - their fix for this was to have a small garbage can underneath to catch the water that didn't make it. By the time we noticed, we were already too settled in and tired (read: drunk) to request a room switch. Partway through our game of trivial pursuit, my multi-substance-addled brain decided it would be a good idea to empty the garbage can. I'm so helpful! So helpful, in fact, that I picked up the garbage can and emptied it - into the sink.

Fri, 21 Jan 2005 02:32:34 GMT

non Fall Out Boy fanbeings will be patently uninterested

I broke down and bought the director's cut of Take This To Your Grave, largely to read the lyric explanations. turns out there were only a few they included (although there's a video interview about every song). here's what's textual:

More than anything the words on this record will always be about assessment. Putting myself right in the middle of, putting us right in the middle of it and trying to figure it out. to me these are simple- they are a recording of exactly how we felt at a moment in history. There's not one friend, one girl, or one heart that this is all about- if we spent time together when we were writing this than there is a piece of you in it. And in a couple of years when this trend is over maybe no one will care about this- but we will always have it- kind of like a time capsule for our hopes and failures. So I don't want to unmask them too much for fear of taking away what they mean to you.

"tell that mick he just made my list of things to do today"
Starting this song off with the phone dial tone was not a random decision- this song is about distance- at three in the morning when I was hung up on- these words were like a life raft. I still get goosebumps when the opening guitar line starts. Plain and simple this song sums up the place I was at when we recorded this- the title for the song comes from the movie Rushmore- it's about how satisfying revenge can be no matter how misguided it is. Its about wishing someone into the worst situations you can think of. "lets play this game, called "when you catch fire" "I wouldn't piss to put you out"- will always be one of my favorite lines on this record.

grand theft autumn/ where is your boy
This song is kind of a Frankenstein of sorts. Its me and Patrick thinking in a kind schitzophrenic way. Its being taken for granted- its about how we all have those brief moments of clarity- seconds where everything makes sense- unfortunately these realizations often come too late.

the pros and cons of breathing
This is a love song in my own way. Bury me smiling, thinking about you. There are worse thing than being hated- being invisible is one. It's a warning, a red flag to leave me alone. These are instructions- on how to put someone together or how to take them apart. I can listen to this song and it means the exact same to me as it did when we wrote it.

pizza my heart

Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:13:27 GMT

I just ate solid food! It was glorious. I think I may celebrate by donating unused oatmeal, soup, and applesauce to my local food bank. Next step: create super-cool necklace using my wisdom teeth. Might want to clean off the caked blood first - nah.

I CANNOT FUCKING STOP LISTENING TO Incubus' Crow Left of the Murder. Holy shit it's good.

I know this is inane, but I missed my poor, neglected LJ. Deal.

lesbian battle monkeys

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 00:50:02 GMT

Back at work after two weeklong vacations bookending a shortened, deserted, and wholly unproductive pre-christmas workweek. I'm not even close to ready to turn my brain back on, and I seem to have misplaced my motivation completely. So I used the last hour or so to finally spit-shine up my writeup of my Whistler vacation and grab a few representative photos to accompany it. It is far too long.

day 0 - dec 11th

After getting a ride to the airport powered by the time-honored fuel of
familial guilt, I breeze my white, male, nonthreatening US citizen ass
through security, snag a creamcheese with a side of bagel, and sit down to
wait for my first flight. Surrounded by iPods, I rue having not asked for
a portable mp3 player sooner than this coming Christmas. I continue
rueing sporadically throughout the trip, largely on days of travel. SJC
to SEA uneventful. Sarah and I share a layover at SeaTac, and while we
manage to get in phone contact, we never actually meet face to face; Sarah
is in another terminal, and travel between terminals requires navigation
of their antiquated and confusing tram system. Sarah takes it once to her
terminal of departure and decides that trying to swing by my terminal
would require her to brave the underground tram tunnels again and possibly
be eaten by trolls. We tough it out and wait 90 minutes to meet up. I
give in and drain my laptop's battery to provide sound, which is
neccessary to mask the startlingly insipid conversation several seats over
going on between a middle-aged man and his 15-year-old daughter, who is
possibly his intellectual superior. SEA to YVR uneventful other than free
beer. Breeze through customs, get luggage, find Sarah. The two of us then
spend a good twenty minutes failing to find James, our not-so-intrepid
camp coordinator. The guy's nice and relatively fun to have around, but
shouldn't be trusted to organize anything more complicated than a
dichromatic sock drawer. We finally find him and the rest of the campers
flying in that day - John, Jerry, and Andre - around 2pm, sit down, and
have a beer - which is when James announces that actually, we have to pick
up one last camper, whose flight gets in at 8pm. Since Whistler is 2-2.5
hours away, this means we have to kill an afternoon in Vancouver. James
suggests we go and get some food. "Nobody's a vegeterian, right?"
Actually, Sarah is vegan. James considers this for a second . . . then
takes us out for all-we-can-eat BBQ. Sarah feasts on cornbread and baked
beans while the rest of us eat enough assorted meats to fuel an Atkins
dieter for a week. I giggle every time I say "pulled pork." Over the
meal, we discuss Jerry's injury - a faceplant-while-wearing-glasses on the
sidewalks of New York the night before left him with a gash above his
right eye which he hasn't had time to seek medical attention for yet.
Before we take him to a clinic, we decide he needs a better story to give
people. Somehow, a variety of suggestions all congeal into the final
explanation: lesbian battle monkeys. As we leave I stumble around,
meat-tipsy, and bum my first of many cigarettes from Jerry, my
roomie-to-be. We drive semi-aimlessly around Vancouver while Yaz, a
friend of James who is Unaffiliated With Camp, alternately trys to find a
clinic to fix up Jerry and verbally berates his cell phone provider.
He's eventually successful at the former and James drops the rest of the
crew off at the drinking alley for a few pints of 10-pin, then takes Jerry
to get fixed up. We bowl on-and-off between beers for a few hours and
debate the differences between mens and women's room vending machines.
If memory serves me (the odds aren't terribly high), I won both games
through no fault of my own. Finally, Jerry and James return and we head
back to the airport to pick up Wayne, the straggling camper. James says
he'll just run inside to pick Wayne up, so the rest of us decide to have
baggage cart races in the parking lot, right after Yaz photographs me
urinating on a luxury SUV. After several near-misses involving person and
property, James shows back up and announces that actually, Wayne's late
flight was delayed even later. We head inside to an airport bar to have
more beer and listen to small asian girls sing karaoke. Wayne finally
shows up and we hit the road to Whistler, stopping for a 12pack of
travelers en route. We're delayed several hours due to a fatal accident
(the first of at least two for the week) on what is apparently Canada's
deadliest stretch of highway, and get in around 2am. Light unpacking and
then bed.

day 1

Wake up relatively chipper despite lack of sleep - we're wired with
snowboard anticipation. James picks us up in the camp van, still replete
with travel beer, and drives us the approximately 37 feet to the base of
the village. We meet our coaches, Brandon and Dylan ("No 90210 jokes,
please.") at the Second Cup coffeshop, and after gathering up all the
campers we hop in the Whistler gondola and head on up the hill. En route,
Brandon, wearing a puffy orange jacket dubbed "the great pumpkin,"
educates us on the finer points of Whistler fashion, which apparently
includes slingin' down your pants so everyone can see the crash pads on
your ass. The day's conditions are unfortunately pretty crappy due to a
rainfall a day or two earlier, so our "mountain tour" is pretty limited.
Instead, we work on some very basic fundamentals, and generally fuck
around. I see the first of nigh-infinite "Ski Boundary Area - No Patrol"
signs, which cause me to have Bad Religion's "No Control" stuck in my head
for the duration of the trip. Off the hill, we proceed to unwind by
purchasing a shit-ton of alcohol. Jerry starts his apres-board ritual of
a glass of Glenlivet and a cigarette. James takes us all out to the Crab
Shack for what is intended to be dinner but what ends up being sitting on
a couch in the waiting area drinking beer and eating a preposterous amount
of chicken wings. Sarah, Jerry and I bring travelers along with us for
dinner, but while waiting for our "table", the maitre 'd spies us drinking
them. Instead of confiscating them, he orders us to pound them before we
go inside. After dinner we head out to MoJoe's at James' suggestion for
more beer. Each of the guys with a camera independantly and unbeknownst
to the others takes a photo of girls dancing on a pool table. I decide to
head out a bit earlier than everyone else because I'm passing out, but
when I leave, I discover I'm far too drunk to find my way back to the
hotel. After a bit of stumbling around blindly, I give up and hail a cab,
which takes me for a minute-long drive back home.

day 2

Our tour of Blackcomb. Conditions still not great, but things have
softened up a bit. We ride through the halfpipe a few times, but it's
icy, and starts to get crowded with people who can actually ride.
General riding and basic technique. We finish out the day with a ride to
the near-peak up Glacier Express, and see the terrain park area that was
our (Sarah's and my) first introduction to Whistler/Blackcomb in a whole
new light. We decide to eat in, so Sarah and I pick up groceries and wine
and make a meal for everyone. Placemats and everything. She does most of
the work. Everyone enjoys the vegan offering except Andre who is
evidently allergic to vegetables of all kinds. Afterwards, we decide to
head to Tommy Africa's for 80's night, but show up too late and give up
after spending 45 minutes in a standstill line in the rain.

day 3

POWDER DUMP! A big phat sack of powder, which had begun falling the
previous afternoon, awaits us when we get on Whistler in the morning. We
head up Harmony chair fairly quick-like and windcliff-drop into a huge
bowl full of untracked powder. It's fucking glorious and I just ride it
out for a while. When I look back up the hill, most everyone else is
enjoying the snow but having trouble with it - some of these east coast /
midwest boarders have never been in powder before. I get aggravated and
take off on my own for the morning, catching some nice powder lines in the
trees and exploring Peak chair a bit. After lunch, Dylan takes us and
shows us how to find the good snow off Peak - another bowl full'o powder.
Further down the mountain, we duck ropes into a meadow/river run, which I
enjoy but head back out of when things start looking sketchy - then laugh
at everyone else as they have to climb over rivers and hike their way out
of a mess. At night, we have James drive us out to catch The Boot
Ballet's performance of "Naked Chicks On Stage." Unfortunately the girl
with the fire sticks is absent and the performances are uninspired.
Also, all three girls are too skinny for my tastes. After the scent of
drunken horny men becomes overwhelming, we head out to check out
Garfinkle's for a night of dancing, but are deterred by a $12 cover and
head instead to the GLC for a quiet, comfy round. We're served by Sharai,
who is just about the cutest and friendliest waitress ever. Head home,
fall down go boom.

day 4

No new snow, but still plenty of fresh tracks to be hunted down, this time
on Blackcomb. We head up to 7th Heaven for a morning of breathtaking
views, and Brandon leads me through some delicious tree/powder riding that
everyone else is scared of en route. Around the second run I lose track
of Brandon for a moment, then spot him another S down the long winding
track. I decide to cut through the inbetween snow in search of powder
lines even though it looks somewhat rocky. When I get down to him, I look
up and see, to my chagrin, everyone else following me. I feel a little
guilty and when everyone has gathered, Brandon announces "OK, Rule #1 -
don't follow Nat." Later we head up Glacier Express again and build a
weird kicker partway down that nobody gets much of anything off of. We
head out for a group sushi dinner at night, then back to the GLC for some
mellow drinks. Once again we're served by the effusive Sharai, who Jerry
discovers shares his love of breakbeat music and dancing. They chat it up
for a bit and she tells him that she'll hook us up with some clubbin' love
if we come back the next night. After getting sufficiently liquored up,
we head off in search of Garfinkle's. Instead, we find James, who informs
us that Garf's is closed for a private function. Instead, he hooks us up
with free entry and a free drink at T&A's. The night is danced semi-away.

day 5

Our last day of coaching. We work a little more on nose/tail presses and
we spend most of the day in the park, working on straight air, grabs,
180s, rails - whatever each rider feels like doing to break themselves.
I think this is the day that we played follow-the-leader with Dylan, only
I didn't quite follow his lead enough to clear the rut we were jumping and
gave myself a good whack on the head - probably my worst injury of the
trip, which is good as I shook it off after thirty seconds or so. At
night, we go get a surprisingly good dinner to go with our drinks at the
GLC. John and I both independantly wear Fender t-shirts. Matt half falls
asleep at the table for the second night in a row. Phil pulls out his
video camera and interviews everyone, but nothing really juicy comes out
save for Jerry describing being hit on by a gay man while bleeding
profusely from the forehead. Three pitchers and two rounds of vodka shots
later, Sharai gives us a magical note informing the bouncers at
Garfinkle's of our rockstar status and we give her a 25% tip and begin
speaking about her reverently. OK, maybe I had already started. Sarah
makes fun of us geeks for taking digital photos of our golden ticket. The
note acts as Moses to the red sea of the velvet ropes, and we saunter
inside to the dirty looks of everyone who's been waiting in line to pay
money like suckers, since we did neither. It's Bad Top 40 night, and we
laugh at the black guys pointedly not dancing to the lousy hip-hop.
?Wayne? keeps shoving drinks at us faster than we can down them, and we
must learn to incorporate beer bottles into our dance routine. Phil at
one point uses his hands to form a frame indicating that he wants Jerry to
take a picture of two girls' asses. Jerry obliges.

day 6

last day of riding - sad. We decide to spend it on Whistler, although in
retrospect Blackcomb might've been better as it was getting more sun and
the snow was hard. After a couple runs with the crew I decide to ditch
them for the morning and go exploring. I head up Harmony and try out
several different routes, finding fresh tracks off the beaten path every
time. Take possibly my favorite photo of the trip after tripping over a
tree backwards down the hill. Meet back up with the folks for lunch where
I gift Sarah and Jerry with his&hers temporary tattoos from a bathroom
vending machine. After lunch we take another run, at which point
everyone's legs are giving out on them, so we take one final run down to
midstation and call it. We hop a shuttle back to the hotel from the
village simply because it's there. The shuttle driver confirms that he
does, in fact, drive the several-hundred-foot route back and forth a
hojillion times a day, which segues nicely into his brief chat with Jerry
about scotch where he confesses to having had four glasses for lunch. We
don't blame him. We do our best to kill the rest of our booze before
heading out for the night - successful except for the dregs of a bottle of
pesudo-Kaluha. Hit up Garf's for a while for some drinks and run into
Sharai, who suggests we come over to T&A's where her boyfriend will be
DJing. She gets 7 of us in for $15 when the cover is $7/person. We fully
dance the night away, closing out the place and ending in a dance circle
which most people are too self conscious and/or sober to enter. I do not
suffer from either of these problems. It's then back to the room to do
some damage to a bottle of rum that Wayne foolishly left in our custody.
Ken gets out-of-control drunk and very touchy feely, tackling me whenever
I start nodding off. We generally act like loud drunken idiots for
several hours, stopping every half hour to marvel that nobody has called
in the SWAT team to shut us up. Maybe Canada doesn't have SWAT teams.
Everyone finally wanders off and passes out around 5am for a good 2 hours
of sleep before our ride to the airport.

</cut>

sold my soul for rock'n'roll-related paraphanelia

Mon, 15 Nov 2004 18:48:14 GMT

This post brought to you by the vitamin I.

Back in full-on snow junkie mode, checking weather reports and watching webcams while I work. I just found a link that advertises weather one-on-one phone chat for the low, low price of $2.99 / minute. "The doppler radar is showing us a high-pressure storm system moving on in from the east, but here in my pants, the temperatures are tropical, baby - warm and moist." I want to be in bed and so does my brain.

Some more excellent early season riding took up the bulk of the weekend and the bulk of my body's energy. Saturday night after riding most of a day that began with a 5am wakeup call and an 8:50am lift load we went out for pizza and then fell asleep around 7pm. Sunday morning en route to the hill Becky and I were pumping adrenochrome or whatever it is Rockstar contains into our bodies when we drove by the Rockstar truck. We raised our cans in toast to them and were rewarded by having schwag thrown through our window; Rockstar cola (which tastes surprisingly similar to a combination of, well, rockstar and cola) and branded armbands. We put them on and drove off into the sunrise, rocking our way into corporate whoredom.

Bad Religion last night good, Warfield mosh pits bad. I only went in a few times, especially because the setlist changed by about one song (Man on a Mission, godamnit, they still didn't play Athiest Peace). Still, good stuff - Mr. Brett was playing with them, Fatty came out and sang a chorus of 21st Century Digial Boy as he is wont to do (and did a jig while exiting stage right), Greg taunted us by constantly referring to it as "'frisco".

Today my desire to post eclipses my lack of interesting narrative. I'll leave you with a thousand words compressed.

bleah

Tue, 09 Nov 2004 19:41:11 GMT

Because I've been so scatterbrained and my response to Mike's calling me on some of my shit is tucked into a comment in my last post, I just want to make clear that I don't actually believe that Christianity, or any religion, is why Bush was re-elected. I also don't actually equate all Christians with the fundamentalist asshole-type that Bush is - in fact, I'd imagine the majority of them are tolerant and loving, Christ-style, just like the majority of Muslims probably think that those fuckwit terrorists are giving them a bad name and just like ~40% of red states are probably as appalled at the outcome of the election as I am. The problem I guess was that I lumped all those groups together because of my overall disdain for organized religion and people who buy into any iteration of it. So for that much, I'm sorry, I was being a reactionary fuck and rather stupid about it. It's obviously a very complex issue and I boiled it down to one target for my venting, and then didn't express myself very well anyhow. I hate it when I let emotion overtake logic in my brain, and I hate it that I stooped to the level of those who want a specific thing or group to blame for their woes when one doesn't exist. Weak sauce.

That said, I still think organized religion sucks.

it signified his anger and his misery

Tue, 09 Nov 2004 05:29:13 GMT

Uncertain where to begin middle end.

I had a nice weekend. Went to Chicago to visit my best friend. Found out their art museum currently holds the original Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Pointillism and pixels are similar so I have an affinity for that one. Lucked out and got to see Bad Religion headline. Slept a lot but evidently not enough. Life has left me feeling perpetually drained recently. Just watched the season premire of The OC. Struck me as I watched it how as an observer, all the melodrama seems absurd and the answers simple, but my own life's drama leaves me in uncertain search of answers. I would be smoking a cigarette inside while I write this if I didn't live with other people which I guess is a blessing as cigarettes are stupid.

I feel betrayed by my countrymen. That's my best explanation for my last post which I absolutely do not apologize for nor recant. Although in my haste to churn it out before my flight, I said something like "midwest" when I really meant something more like "the south." I talked with Sarah to try to gain some perspective on my admittedly one-sided view of religion, since she majored in religious studies @Stanford and is now in grad school for the same, despite or perhaps because of her atheism. She still respects the believers while I simply somewhat comprehend them. It's hard to separate a person from this stupidity even when everything else about them is fine. I'm not going to respond to the comments on my last post but I appriciate them all - I was clearly looking for a response.

Sarah's explanation was that religion (to be specific here, I am talking mainly about Christianity, although it applies to all the religions especially non nature-based-stuff) was started by one guy who had nice ideas about being good to your fellow homo sapiens. He attracted followers 'cause he had a good idea. That's about where it all went wrong. The problem is, people are stupid. Education is not sufficient to make people be good to each other and make the right choices. So instead of saying "Hey, be good to people because it's the right thing to do and ultimately you and everyone else will be better off," you've gotta use "Hey, be good to people or you will burn for eternity." Great! Only its big strength is its big weakness - this fear of God is easily co-opted by powermongers who realize that it can be used equally easily for their own ends. Sarah sez that education isn't a valid substitute for religion because people are stupid and it's a depressing yet convincing argument. So the answer to religion is unclear. Anyhow, her explanation of Bush's win was this: by stressing his 'faith' and painting the struggle as a classic Good (or "Us") vs. Evil (or "Them"), he made Kerry look, well, petty - with all his "words" and "facts" and "intelligence." I'm so paraphrasing it hurts but I don't have the wherewithal to spell this out more. Honestly, at this point I think you either get it or you don't. And that standard exuse for Faith In God that goes "It's just something I need to get through the day" - lying to yourself isn't useful to you, only those who seek to manipulate you. If you want a community, find it for a reason other than mutual gullibility. If you want something to help you through the day knowing what a fucked-up place the world is, well, good luck. Me, I like the sauce. And yes, I realize that I'm being divisive and intolerant, that I'm generalizing, vilifying, and generally being republican. The irony is not lost on me. If you don't realize how self-aware I am, you don't know me.

I think I might've had more but I'm going all ADD as usual. If I owe you email or some variant thereof, I'm not ignoring you, I'm just lazy and easily distracted. Keep that breath bated.

abstinence '04 - no bush, no dick

Tue, 02 Nov 2004 19:37:37 GMT

I think about politics a lot. I haven't always. This is the third time I'll be voting in a presidential election, thanks to a conveniently-timed birth, but the first time I've really been informed. I'm ashamed to admit it, but for the first few months of Dubya's administration, I honestly thought he was his dad. I credit him, though, with getting me interested in and informed about politics. That, and little too much websurfin' on the ol' company dime. Anyhow, I've followed this presidential race to the point where it made me crazy at times, and it felt really good this morning to go and cast the vote I've been waiting so long to cast. (I wanted to vote absentee, and registered as such, but the ballot just never came) I didn't actually have to wait long at the polling place, probably because I showed up right at 7am to avoid the crowds. I was the first person at my polling location to demand a paper ballot. Now I'm just going to sit around being nervous until this is over - I have my hopes that it will be determined by tonight, but I doubt it.

iamadork

Tue, 26 Oct 2004 17:38:37 GMT

I'm not sure if it was leftover FaQuil crack from the night before or just my usual neural misfirings, but my dream last night was kinda wacky. I was on the set with Jay and Silent Bob (no, not Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith), which of course, seemed like the perfect opportunity to buy me some pot. Unfortunately, they were all out - so they suggested I buy some from Joss Whedon instead. Of course! Joss had the hook-up. He was driving me to pick it up, but then we got sidetracked somehow. Once we got back on track, he realized that he couldn't show his face around that dealer anymore, so he arranged the whole thing for me. I was to go into a diner down the street and order a Flaming Milk Tea, which was apparently code. So Joss took off down the street in his van and I went walking towards the diner, only I was stopped halfway across the basketball court by some thugs. We got in this big fight, mainly me against this one other guy. I was kicking his ass when a park ranger came in and broke it up, only I played it off like we was just wrasslin'. This endeared the thug to me, so he pointed me down the street, towards a couple of guys in a dark alley. I handed them forty bucks and they handed me some weed. Mega happy ending. Then came the sad part - I thought to myself "ooh, I want to write in my LiveJournal about this - only I'd better protect the post so I don't get Joss in trouble."

you're not the boss of me

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 22:11:11 GMT

Today was my boss' last day at work - she resigned recently due to a desire to do something else with her life (she's maybe 60 and was sick of politics here). I've been working under her for just shy of three years now and I'm going to miss her. She's always been very easygoing, supportive and helpful when necessary, and unobtrusive when not. Sometimes we'd go a full week without interacting - our roles here largely didn't overlap. In short, she's been a great boss. This morning she spent mostly wandering around the building and socializing, including a stop by my office. Somehow the conversation ended up with her recounting to me how she, her (now ex) husband and his friend drove from Colorado to Maine - with a kilo of weed in the trunk that the boys intended to sell.

This got me thinking back about some of my other bosses. My first boss, Michelle, went to Australia, and upon returning, recounted how she had seen something pretty and said "oh, let me go get my camera from my fanny pack!" This garnered her a lot of weird looks, because down under, "fanny pack" is slang for pussy. My next boss of interest was Ed, a tall, thin asian man with a speech impediment who routinely wore what looked suspiciously like open-toed women's footwear, and whose behavior led Bryan and I to theorize that Atmel pumped aerated crack through the ventilation ducts. And who can forget Joel, a nice guy who was my boss at Gamers. One of my most prominent memories of him was, within a month of starting the job, signing him up for a gay porn email list. Gotta love that kind of corporate culture.

Speaking of job-related oddities, my boss-to-be (who is also just fine) inherited a collectible refrigerator from her auctionholic dad. I think in this case, we can just let the pictures do the talking:

People are strange.

Mon, 27 Sep 2004 18:06:22 GMT

Finally semi-un-anti-socialed and went up to camp at a lake and wakeboard this weekend with a group of friends. We showed up Saturday night to our redneckilicious campsite - our fire pit had been previously used by a group who had evidently decided it would be a good idea to immolate their carburetor, and while we marveled over that, we were treated to a very loud and very drunken rendition of Freebird courtesy of a campsite or two over.

I'm trying to be interesting here, but it's hard. Wakeboarding was fun but just whet our collective appetites for snowboarding (T minus two months). It also used new and exciting muscles that I didn't even know could hurt this much, which my body reminds me of every time I lumber around the building here. When we finally got home last night after spending far too much time in traffic I was too tired to even masturbate before bed.

Fin.

slicing open my face to spite it

Mon, 13 Sep 2004 19:28:13 GMT

It's funny; when I was limping around the office, everyone asked what had happened. Now that I'm walking around with sterile thread tied through my lips in nice, neat little knots, the only person that has had the gumption to question it has been my boss. I guess, due to some sort of social conditioning, people aren't comfortable with saying "Hey, what's wrong with your face?" Either that, or they don't want to hear "Well, I was changing from shorts into jeans, and my girlfriend started making catcalls, so I took my shorts off and twirled them around my head like a cowboy, and in doing so, shattered the light fixture on my ceiling, the shards of which fell down and sliced open my face."

Deb said it was a "very [me] thing to do."

edit:

I should be dealing with SCSI shanks

Fri, 10 Sep 2004 19:42:03 GMT

websurfing as I eat, the minor allowance I make for downtime during your typical business day now. I really like Roger Ebert. Not necessarily as a film critic; I agree with him sporadically but can't predict my response to a film based on his. No, it's his writing. While it's often very dry and to the point and generally overanalyitical in a student-of-film sort of way (not that I fault him for that), it's those little moments like this, the last sentence in his review of the latest Resident Evil movie:

Parents: If you encounter teenagers who say they liked this movie, do not let them date your children.

going . . . going . . .

Wed, 08 Sep 2004 19:38:40 GMT

that old fucker's still got some kick left in him after all! Mom said she knew he was doing better when he demanded "the prettier nurse."