March 30, 2004

i trust everyone as far as I can throw them…

…and I throw like a girl.

I recently bought a moderately expensive item on ebay, and when it hadn?t shown up a week later I fired off an email to make sure that it had shipped. I received the following:

Due to a severe concussion received on saturday the 20th of march, my brother is behind on his shipments and your merchandise will not be sent until monday the 29th, we’re sorry for the delay, but he’s just beginning to come back to normal (as it were) and I’m now in the process of sending everything else out. Thank you for your patience in this matter. Faith Resnik

As I?m the horrible, skeptical person my parents raised, my scam-sensor went off the charts. Part of me wanted to report this guy immediately and get my money back, but the part of me that believes he there?s a chance that he might actually have an owie on his head won out. I sent back the following:

Having had two serious concussions myself in my lifetime, I can honestly say I sympathize with your problems and wish him a speedy recovery.

Please let me know when my package ships.

Thanks and God Bless,
Brian

Sensitive, eh?

It?s a good thing that he doesn?t know me or he?d realize how funny that was and I?d be in trouble?

March 27, 2004

how are you doing today?

I’ve been working at Staples now a couple weeks and it’s interesting. Working traditional retail is something I haven’t done since my first job at Sheldon’s hobbies, which Staples reminds me of immensely. I relate to my coworkers much better than I ever did at Pizza Hut, they ALL speak English and in general are a much younger and upwardly mobile crowd. I’d forgotten that having my nights free meant I’d have less time during the daylight hours to get things done, such as working on photography assignments, which have suffered due to lack of well lit time in which to get them done. I’ve also discovered that I get more done as a whole, the morning was always my most idle time and now it’s full of paid goodness, with the evenings free to have fun and run errands. All in all, I just needed a change and am happy with what I’ve got. However, if I’m still working there in a year I’m going to be pissed.

Some out of context quotes:

“The Herm?s-scarf people are, in my experience, the most vicious and aggressive bidders on eBay…”
-Stephanie Zacharek

“My button hole backfired.”
-Lindsey K.

“I have to pee like a raisin.”
-Lauren

March 25, 2004

note to self…

Possible movie idea:
Man loses two hundred pounds and becomes obsessed with staying in shape.
He becomes a successful personal trainer whose trademark is a black ceremonial garb.
He drinks fermented grape juice and refers to it as “the blood of Chris” or something…
Starts working with an obese little girl who is so flexible she can turn her head around 360 degrees and crawl down the stairs backwards like a crab.

Working title: “The Exercist.”

March 23, 2004

eternal sunshine of the mindless audience

I try not to do movie reviews. They give away too damn much. By describing the characters and plot they give away parts of the story that are much more interesting when you’re seeing that image with an untainted view of what the movie’s supposed to be. Old movies can be much more fun to see as you have no preconceived notions of what they’re supposed to be like. An Example? Go see The Sting, starring Robert Redford. Just do it. If I describe it or you look it up you’ll have taken away a really interesting element of this movie. Imagine if somebody had told you what makes Fight Club or The Six Sense so special before you saw it in the theatre. The punchline would be gone and the movie would be reduced from greatness to an interesting idea. Walking into a movie with _no_ expectations is the best way to view a movie and I always try to do everything in my power to not ruin the movie going experience for others.

BUT

Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind had an opening week that wasn’t even in the top 5. This cannot stand. This is one of the best movies I have ever seen and the fact that more people went to see a zombie horror flick than this movie is just unacceptable, inconceivable, and will not be tolerated.

However, I refuse to do a traditional movie review as they lessen the impact a movie has on you. So the following are random tidbits to create “buzz” and to get you to see this movie.

  • ONE minor character spoilor: Elijah Woods is in this movie and he plays an annoying twerp. If you’ve been looking for a reason to hate this huge puppy eyed hobbity punk, here’s your chance.
  • The most negative review by a guy who likes to hear himself talk: “Another unpleasantly glib, shallow demonstration of Kaufman’s self-satisfied cleverness, further marred by failed pretensions to profundity about romantic destiny.” That’s right, unpleasantly, shallow, self-satisfied, clever, failed, pretensions, profundity, and destiny all in one sentence. He should win a pulitzer.
  • I WILL go see this movie again if you want to go.
  • Kirsten Dunst is hotter than Angelina Jolie. (SHAME on those who saw taking lives)

Anybody who saw the movie and would like to share their thoughts or has random unfounded opinions to share, bring it on.

Finally, my two word review: See it.

March 21, 2004

I just shortened a man’s life by fifteen minutes

NOTICE: Due to the over-enthusiasm of the last entry, from here forth no more tootsie roll pops shall be offered on watchred.com.

I sometimes forget how willing addicts are to ignore sarcasm:

Eugene: it was a bad idea to quit smoking before i finished this equipotential
lab
Eugene: i’ve only done 1V and 7V and i want to scream

Me: it’s always a bad idea for you to quit smoking
Eugene: word to the motha
Eugene: i’m going to go get some smokes
Me: good
Me: grab an extra pack and smoke it for me
Eugene: thanks brian
Me: no prob
Eugene logged out.

I’m pretty sure this makes me a bad person.

March 20, 2004

como?

“It’s like those monster vampire high school kind of movies, only here the monsters are Jesus-freak teenagers.”
-Michael Stipe, R.E.M. lead singer

First person to post what movie he’s referring to gets one chocolate flavor tootsie roll pop.

March 18, 2004

he just won’t shut up

Since I’ve started taking photography classes I’ve been sort of obsessed with it, so I thought I’d post some thoughts that have been cycling through my mind without regard for the fact that _nobody_ will be interested. However, there is a pretty picture at the end.

on chemistry and digitry:

Photography is just a huge, complicated parlor room chemistry trick. You expose some silver halide crystals on a razor thin sheet of film to light for a bajillionth of a second, process the film in about eight hundred chemicals in complete darkness, shine some light through your negatives and an enlarger onto another material with some more silver on it, dump it in a few more hazardous chemicals, then rinse and dry. All of this has made me realize that digital photography is just as legitimate as film photography. They’re both just ways to capture an image and I’d say that digital photography is even more natural with respect to the original image due to the lack of complicated error prone steps needed to get something you can look at.

With digital photography, cameras can become more portable than ever, though right now it seems manufacturers are content to just put a digital sensor in their existing camera bodies. As sensor technology improves, sensors will be able to get smaller and smaller and “normal” size sensors will become more and more powerful. The need for costly, bulky, medium format cameras could be eliminated as the final image size is determined by the sensor in the camera, not the physical size of the sensor, whereas in traditional photography the amount you can blow up a picture is directly affected by the negative size. This does create the need to upgrade that isn’t currently prevalent in the photography world, my camera that was made in 1986 isn’t all that different from a new camera while a digital camera made in 1999 is already unusable. Whichever way you like it, digital technology is here to stay and it should be interesting to see what the next 5-10 years brings us. Personally, I hope it brings an 11 mega-pixel SLR for under three hundred dollars.

cool toys

Through my Photo 1 teacher I recently discovered toycamera.com, a website devoted to crappy, old, plastic lens camera photography, the idea being to use the camera’s vices to create art. My favorite is the Holga, a piece of crap camera that costs only $16.99 (less if you buy in quantities of 6 or more), and whose natural vignetting gets me the photographic equivalent of aroused. I mean, how cool is this:

kid on bike

March 17, 2004

Today only, two entries for the price of ONE!!!

Peni and Other Pluralities
Taking non Latin words and having them use the Latin plural form just because they end in “us” can be great fun. If the plural form of “alumnus” is “alumni,” what stops “Lexus” from becoming “Lexi” and “Bus” from becoming “Bi”?

One Man’s Minute is Another Man’s Eon
Lauren was talking to me about how the end of semester is coming up so quickly. Her semester ends the first week of May, AFTER I find out whether I got accepted to any of the schools I applied to, which won’t happen for an incomprehensibly, disastrously long amount of time. Right now, the concept of knowing where I’ve been accepted or rejected reminds me of Schr?dinger’s cat in that until I open the envelope, I’m not accepted or rejected, I’m some combination of both. The decision has been made, they just haven’t enlightened me, so to me the letter is simultaneously an acceptance and rejection letter until I open it and it reverts to it’s final state.

Nah, I’m not nervous, not one bit.

March 14, 2004

more interesting than pizza

Yesterday Lauren and I went for a hike at Griffith Park, which is only ten miles away from my house and gave us a chance to get outdoors and get some great pictures:

Unfortunately, due to some confusion, our sweet little 1.75 mile round trip trail ended up being SIX MILES. Do to a certain party’s involvement this topic will not be discussed further. Today I still suffer from the blisters, chafing, and emotional ruin which are a direct result of this this unnaturally long trek.

On the positive side I did end up with 8 Cricket Colas, the only Cola made with green tea.

Later that day while watching Matchstick Men, we had the most random visitor (RV from now on). Here is the conversation between me and RV:

RV: *knock* *knock*
Me: Hello?
RV: Hi! Do you have any condoms?
Me: Sure…
Me: (returning) Here you go.
RV: Thanks! (enthusiastically) I’m about to get &$#@ed!

There’s one for the grandkids…

I’d like to end this entry with some instant messages that have appeared to me in the past 24 hours:

From Eugene:
Eugene: i remembered my $200 voice recorder wouldn’t work and I was going to flash it

Eugene: funny thing is, my concentration level in class has gone up since this thing stopped working
Eugene: thats not funny

Eugene: damn, my friends hard drive just crashed
Eugene: he’s a graphic designer
Eugene: and his whole portfolio was in there
Eugene: plus all the work he does for other people
Eugene: the funny thing is, he has a $3000 server sitting right next to his computer
Eugene: and a backup hard drive that he was using to store movies
Eugene: now thats funny

From Lindsey:
Lindsey: I MADE PIE
Lindsey: IT LOOKS SO DELICIOUS

March 12, 2004

and how!

Consumer WhoreI am such a consumer whore. Six, Seven times a year I am drawn to movies of which I know _only_ what I’ve seen in a two minute preview. A two minute preview that prioritizes getting people to come to the theater with disregard to everything else, even revealing major plot points. Studios pull out of a pool of about 5 actors, 3 scriptwriters and 2 directors to get me to come to the theater time after time. And it works. It works like a Tank, as reliable as it is relentless

I want to see Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless mind so bad that it’s irrational. Jim Carrey finally looks like he found a part where he can be believable in his manic ways. Kaufman finally has a lead man that’s as insane as his scripts. I have to realize it’s just a movie and that even though Jim Carrey’s in it, even though it was written by Charles Kaufman (Being John Malkovich anyone?), and even though title of the movie sounds like a Sgt. Pepper era Beatles song, I need to somehow get myself grounded so that I can walk into theater without high-as-Snoop-Dogg expectations.

Oh well, I’ve decided I’m going to repent this evening by watching a smaller art house movie, perhaps Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, another Kaufman written project whose budget was so small that several famous actors (Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt) did _unpaid_ cameos. If not Confessions, that then most likely Donnie Darko, which has been on my “to see” list for so long it’s established residence there for tax reasons.

fin.

March 10, 2004

but my friends call me tripod

“I can eat pretty much anything. I ride bikes–I’m a bike-sexual. I ride hard, I ride long. I go long distances on a bike. I’m sponsored by Viagra, which means I don’t need a kickstand.”
– Robin Williams’ pre-Oscar slim-down tip

March 8, 2004

Oh, I remember….

bullet points

  • Today’s theme: Rest and Recuperation. The secondary theme would be laziness, but only as it relates directly to the first. I’ve been sick, so I basically laid around until I could hear my mom say “drink your fluids!” from deep within my skull, at which point I’d drink some water and lay around some more.

    It was magical.

  • It was also ungodly hot here today. The rain I can deal with, but heat is just depressing. It’s like a four hundred pound, naked, heavily perspiring gentleman is sitting on your chest: It’s not just excessively hot, but it smells bad and you fear moving will just make it worse. It has been pointed out to me that there’s a pool twenty feet from my front door, but I haven’t really lost this year’s winter insulation. Or last year’s for that matter…
  • This game is just plain addictive, while at the same time being free. Deadly. It’s a puzzle type game in the “Full Throttle” vein. You pick stuff up and put it where it doesn’t belong in order to get the next level. Absolutely inane, but it DEMANDS to be played. Good thing I don’t have any real classes this semester.
  • There’s something else….

March 7, 2004

fosbury’s flop

Once in a while you get the feeling that if you were in a movie, people would be screaming at your ignorance as you sat there blissfully unaware of the opportunities dancing in front of your eyes.

Let?s review the situation as I sat in front of my computer at 1:00am Friday morning:

  1. My sister always invites me to see her perform at her High School Comedy Sportz shows.
  2. My sister had a High School Comedy Sportz show Friday night.
  3. I haven?t seen her perform since freshman year.
  4. I feel bad about 3.
  5. For the first time since freshman year, I had absolutely _nothing_ to do on Friday _and_ Saturday.
  6. Lauren had plans all day Saturday.

So, I?m a little slow, but the obvious finally occurred to me. I didn?t tell my sister I was coming up and she freaked out when I appeared there. Jumped me fosbury style.

Good times.

March 4, 2004

nice…

Either my pants have been extremely stretched because I haven’t washed them in a long damn time, or I’ve lost some weight.

Update: I’ve just done my laundry. The pants fit much better now.

March 3, 2004

…or white folk songs for old people

My Uncle B. runs a radio station at Red Bluff High School and they recently published an article about him in the local paper that was also picked up by the San Jose Mercury News (Second Story down). Apparently one of the history teachers at the high school donated his entire record collection to the station, including some of my personal favorites, such as Frankie Laine’s “Hell Bent for Leather” and “Negro Folk Songs for Young People.”

On a completely different note, I’m not a big fan of turkey eunich meat, but Lauren can’t get enough of the stuff:

March 2, 2004

sweet while it lasted…

I walked out of my photo class this morning and prepared to drive to the parking structure for the first time this semester. After over a year of walking about a third of a mile to campus, I received the parking ticket that finally broke my resolve and decided it was time to just pay the $75 for a parking pass. As I followed about eight others into the structure, I took a gamble and turned the opposite direction of everyone else to check out the 20 or so parking spots on the very bottom level.

The gamble paid off.

An unguarded parking spot lay open in front of me as if it had been waiting for me since I last had a parking permit in December 2002, always believing that one day, I would return. And so I pulled into the spot, opened my door, tilted back in my chair and just took a second to appreciate the excellence of my location. After my parking spot had been fully acknowledged to the extent which it deserved, I reached for my gym clothes so I could head over to my weight training class and found? air. My gym bag wasn?t there. I checked the whole car, the passenger side floorboard, behind both seats, but I simply forgot the damn bag at home, on my bedroom floor, three to four inches in front of my computer, and 11 miles from where it needed to be.

With a sigh I realized that I could make it home and back in time, so I got down on my hands and knees, kissed that sweet asphalt goodbye, and drove out of a spot whose equal I will probably never know. I made it home and back in record time, and found a spot that my Honda civic was barely able to squeeze into on the second floor of the complex, far, far away from the stairs. Still, I had 15 minutes left to get changed and get to class, so I began walking. As I was passing the weight room door I noticed a yellow piece of paper hung up that read the following:

Briggs, 12:45-2:05pm,
CANCELLED

So here I am, back at school with my gym clothes and nothing to do for the next five hours.

Powered by WordPress