June 30, 2004

meet jack, mike’s evil twin

Sometimes it’s hard to maintain an objective perspective. I, for one, really don’t like our current President. It started with rational reasons, but my dislike for him has become irrational in the process, so much so that I was willing to interpret even the admittedly cheap shots at his administration in Michael Moore’s new movie as brilliant social commentary. I loved that movie in all it’s horrible glory, I relished the jabs at Wolfowitz, the exposure of Bush’s ties to the Bin Laden family, I almost cried tears of laughter when I learned Ashcroft lost a Senate election to a dead man. Seeing this movie with a bunch of like minded people made me feel like everyone felt the way I felt and there was no hope of this 14 year old trapped in a President’s body of ever, ever, EVER getting re-elected again.

And then I’ll read an article like this, by somebody like Jack Wheeler, and it will bring me back to this annoyingly real world.

Here are some choice quotes from Mr. Wheeler’s article:

“Bill Clinton is such a repulsive subject I never thought I would ever write about him again after he was replaced by a man of decency and integrity in the White House.”

Well, at least we’ve established Michael Moore isn’t the only biased individual in the media.

“One reason is that it’s too blindingly obvious that Mr. Clinton’s book should have been titled ‘My Lie.’ All of that stuff about Hillary being mad, making him sleep on the couch, going to marriage counselors for a year, yada yada, is all made up. They have had a pact for decades: He gets to fool around with women, and she gets to fool around with women.”

OUCH! Not even Big Mike called the President’s sexual orientation into question. Every now and then I have to re-learn the lesson that for most people, politics is as much about loyalty as it is about “the issues”. It’s kinda like sports, just because the Warriors are having a bad millenium doesn’t mean I’m going to start rooting for the Kings, and even if the Kings made it to the Finals I wouldn’t stop informing people of how much they sucked.

June 29, 2004

at least i’m not at work

Feeling sluggish, it’s 4pm and by finally putting my Laundry in the machine I’ve begun the first productive task for the day. Unless you count finishing a re-reading of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, eating lunch, or watching an episode of Futurama, this could be the single least productive day of human existence.

Liz, who has been staying with us since last Thursday, just walked into the house and informed me that she’s received a parking ticket. Normally, the reception of a parking ticket in the Los Angeles area isn’t news unto itself, it’s an unpleasant side effect of the area, one that’s equivalent to somebody from a sane part of the country stepping in a mud puddle. But Liz doesn’t live in the Area surrounding Los Angeles, so she responded the way any level-headed, non-Angeleno would: She acted like somebody drove by her car in a little circus car, grabbed $50 out of her cup holder, and kept going. Which… …now that I think about it, is pretty much what happened. Except instead of grabbing the money, they left a bill, payable to a group that has one hell of a collection agency.

June 27, 2004

daily…

“Do you ever wonder whether the guys who thought of the BCS helped plan the postwar occupation of Iraq?”
Ivan Maisel, ESPN columnist

June 25, 2004

Long Live Fertile Valleys*

It’s official, I’ve got a hotel room booked for July 8th through July 11th. I’m going to Las Vegas only six days after my 21st b’day (July 2nd).

When I first started planning my trip, I really didn’t have any direction as to what I wanted to get done in Las Vegas besides the usual 21 year old fare of debauchery, so I consulted my Unofficial Guide, which I’ve used to great success on other occasions, and found a whole Vegas I didn’t even know existed. Now we’re going to see what shows we can go see for half off, I’m personally hoping that we’ll be able to see Blue Man Group(a long shot), but I’m definitely planning to see Second City‘s Las Vegas Chapter, while Lauren has her sites set on the stars. I’m not so sure as to the whole Star Trek “Experience,” but Quark’s Bar might be ok, the Hamborgers and Flaming Ribs sound questionable, but I’d definitely be up for trying one of these:

weird green drink

We ended up getting a pretty good deal on a hotel too, with a little help from the unofficial guide. We’re staying at the Imperial which is pretty close to the center of the strip, right across the street from Treasure Island. It’s a three star hotel and we managed to get it for $39 thursday night and $49 friday and Saturday night. I’m psyched since we saved $60 off of their website’s price, which was the cheapest rate to be found in that prime of a location. Hopefully it isn’t hole. I’d settle for clean room with a shower and toilet that drain.

There’s more to update but I’m lazy so here’s the condensed version: my parents sent me my birthday present already (yay parents!), Lindsey has spent a few nights on my couch in the past week because she has nowhere to stay for her internship(yippee!) , we went to see Piebald (Travis is creepy), Brian Wong is down south because he actually got his internship at Warner Brothers(you lucky bastard), Lauren’s mom is in town and sleeping on our couch (Go Liz!) and I might be going to Catalina Island for July 4th with Lauren and the band (possibly!).

*Viva Las Vegas translated into English

June 22, 2004

quote of the moment

From a List of things to ask your potential new roommate:

” Do you smoke? Drink? Do drugs? If yes to any, how often? Will you share your drugs? ”
-From here.

June 17, 2004

crystal balling

Brian Wong: who knows what i’m gonna do when i graduate

Me: Actually we’ve got a pool going
Me: I’ve got $20 that says you’re going to be a man-whore in the Philippines

Brian Wong: excellent
Brian Wong: i want in on that pool

June 13, 2004

pomp and circumstance should be cartoon squirrels

I went to my sister’s graduation and heard a couple of choice quotes in the valedictorian speeches:

“By my Sophomore year I had realized that I was a dork. The only time I ever cut class was to show up early for another class.”
-Some Valedictorian guy

Another person’s speech was this big metaphor on how life was like driving a car, which nobody was paying attention to as it wasn’t their kid, until she said:

“Shift Happens.”
-Some Valedictorian girl

That was a good one. All of a sudden the entire crowd was murmuring “What’d she say?” and “She did NOT say what I think she said.”

After picking Eugene up from the BART station in Fremont, we ended up leaving for Los Angeles at about 9pm. We had dinner at the In ‘n Out in Kettleman City just after midnight. We weren’t too tired yet, but there was a group of locals there that must have been not only tired, but famished, all of their eyes were bloodshot and they were putting away double doubles like hamburgers were a seasonal delicacy.

June 3, 2004

you eeeeediot!

In Photo 1 today, everyone was giving their final presentations, which are slide shows set to your choice of music, making a pseudo music video. How it goes is the teacher leaves the room and the person would do a practice run and make sure everything is in order, then the teacher would come back in and the student would do the “real” presentation. Thanks largely to Lauren editing down a song for me, my presentation went much better than I anticipated, people responded well, and the teacher complimented me on my multiple exposure shots.

Then I had to go make an idiot out of myself. I was so psyched about my slide show doing well that I didn’t even notice that the guy after me forfeited his chance to do a practice run and was starting his presentation right that moment. I, assuming he was just practicing, was turned ninety degrees away from the screen so as not to spoil it for myself and was playing with my cell phone. I continued my performance by talking to the guy behind me (Why is he just nodding?), and for a grand finale I walked out just before the end to get a drink of water. Only when I heard everybody clapping 20 seconds later and noticed the teacher wasn’t in the hallway with me did I realize that had been his real presentation.

It took me a good minute to work up the guts to walk back into class.

drat

Rachel: and there will be much rejoicing…even without the benefit of eating Robin’s minstrels
Rachel: you know what…that’s an awesome name for a band!
Rachel: Eating Robin’s Minstrels

Me: I was just thinking to myself, rachel hasn’t been quoted in my blog in a long time

Rachel: you’re not serious
Rachel: drat

June 1, 2004

where have all the posts gone?

The number of posts has diminished lately as all my creativity has been sucked dry by both my photography classes and my speech class. I?ve been coming up with tons of ideas but since I?m taking Speech and Photography they’re all going into these classes as opposed to on my web page. And now… well, I’m out of ideas. I need to do a one minute “Special Occasion” speech today and even though it should be a really easy topic, I’m drawing a complete blank.

I was hoping this would lead to something interesting and cause a burst of creativity which would result in my speech not so much being written as much as escaping from my fingers, leaving a trail of broken pencils and wadded up paper in it’s wake,…. but it’s not panning out. I better get to work…

Like he said:

“I get all my ideas from a mail order company in Indianapolis. Although I’m not prepared to give you their name.”

“It’s funny when you’ve got to sit down and write something that’s funny you think “Oh God…” That terrible need to be funny all the time. And when you’ve got to do something serious “Now hang on, wouldn’t it be funny if we did this…” I remember my history master at high school used to send back my essays saying “Adams please, more facts and less jokes.””

-Douglas Adams, from here.

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