“The key to happiness is either hard work or low standards.”
-ME

I’m told it’s too cynical, but I checked google and it’s an original statement.

We have a guest staying with us from Spain, and he revealed something to me that I thought was interesting. In Spain, nobody likes being Spanish. I am told that people cling tightly to their personal ideals and beliefs, but that your country as a source of pride is considered “fascist” (His words). Maybe it’s because they’re one of the few nations without words to their national anthem, I don’t know. He did mention that when he’s traveling outside of his country, it’s completely different, as Spain is the symbol of your home and it’s ok to feel some affinity to your country.

We, as United States Citizens, would never do this. Patriotism is equally valued by almost everyone, from Michael Moore to John Ashcroft, and everyone claims they would rather be in the United States than any other nation in the world. In this way, the United States is quite the opposite of Spain: Spaniards shun their nation as a way of highlighting their personal ideals, while Americans embrace their nation by assuming it stands for whatever they happen to believe in.

“Venus De Milo doesn’t even have arms. She’s basically just boobs on a stick.”
-Rachel Grande

Which is why I loved art museums as a child.

For those of you in San Luis Obispo who miss CRASH, such as myself, you might want to check out hipower.ath.cx, which provides the same functionality as CRASH.

This morning, in a San Luis Obispo apartment just outside of Cal Poly’s influence, Rachel Grande awoke to discover that despite her deepest convictions, the legends were true, 3AM actually existed.

Elsewhere, 6 hours into the future, Brian Wagner lazily awoke and began getting ready to head down to Santa Monica, where Rachel was now selling vegetables, over 200 miles from where she?d oh so hesitantly awoken.

Unfortunately, I only got to see Rachel briefly as her little booth was so packed that she didn?t get to take a break from all the retired people buying vegetables on this Wednesday morning. So I had to entertain myself.

First off, I decided I wanted to buy breakfast from one of the vendors at the farmer?s market. This proved more difficult than I would have thought as the vendors are more concerned with the largeness of their “ORGANIC” banner than supplying me with a finished, meal ready product. There?s plenty of raw material there, but nothing that, once eaten, you?d refer to nostalgically as “breakfast.” Eventually I found a small baked goods booth, manned by a polite, fast moving man that would have stood his ground among the best Aryan models of Hitler-era Germany. About 5’10”, blonde, well built and with his hair parted to the side, all he needed was a red armband to complete the look, though I do think the authentic German accent was going a little overboard. He even kept repeating “Achtung, Schiza!” as the line kept getting longer. I bought a chocolate covered croissant, which was exquisite.

On a side note, as I was pulling out of the parking complex to go home, I saw Miguel Ferrer and his kids enjoying a Wednesday morning stroll through his hometown of Santa Monica. He was walking in front of my car rather slowly, so there was plenty of time for me to go through the stages of “OHMYGOD THAT?S!!!,” to “nahhh, couldn?t be,” and eventually deciding “that?s either Miguel or somebody cloned him.” Living in Southern California can be weird sometimes.

I’m in San Jose for the weekend, and I’m having a lot of random thoughts, so I thought I’d share them:

Better Off Alone defines an era to me. It will always be my senior year of high school with Lauren and I going to cheesy high school dances. I remember it as THE dance song, yet another good break up song, and one of the best midi ring tones to have ever existed.

You can go home again, but all of your friends are long gone. The last two cool ones are dating each other. You will bump into them at Fry’s well yelling about a USB cord at your parents. You will end this second person narrative as quickly as possible.

My parent’s house is nice. Moving out for a while really brings this point home with a steak through the heart level of immediacy. There’s food, tv, and a laser printer, this place is a god damn castle.

My room, well, the guest room, has the sweetest mattress. It is synonymous with sleep. Also, I have these really thick blinds that completely block out light and between the mattress and the blinds I can sleep for days.

Savers is all I ever need as far as T-shirts are concerned. I hadn’t realized how much I missed this place, thrift stores outside of Savers are severely lacking in either selection, or thrift. Call me a tight wad, but it takes the fun out of it when a previously worn garment of clothing costs fifteen bucks. I get a little annoyed when one of the “good” T-shirts cost $3.99. Today’s trip to Savers was the most prolific in all of the times I’ve been. Between my sister and I, ten shirts were purchased and the total after tax was $24.

All in all, being back in San Jose is depressing. I don’t like running into my past involuntarily and I like it even less when the parts I’m trying to run into have moved, pulled from in front of my foot like a bad peanuts cartoon.

Bill Cosby once said, “Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home.” Chalk one more mark up in the mistake column.

Time: 8:05 PM, Eugene has confirmed everyone is ready for the 6 hour drive

Eugene: ok, i just talked to thomas
Eugene: i’m going to leave soon
Me: excellent
Me: I’ll be ready

Time: 8:34 PM, I decide to make sure Eugene is on his way

Me: what’re you waiting for?
Me: still packing?
Eugene: looking for my keys

Time: 8:48 PM, we have lift off

Eugene: alright, i’m going to pick up thomas and jimmy
Eugene: i’ll be about an hour

It looks like it’s going to be a long night.

Everybody has probably heard about Don Mischer by now, right?

What? You haven’t? Weren’t you watching the Democratic convention? There’s a possibility that Kerry could become the leader of this nation, and you didn’t even want to hear what he’s all about?

You disgust me.

Don’t worry about it too much though, cause I didn’t watch it either.

Well, since you haven’t been doing your homework, Don Mischer was the producer of the whole convention. Everything that didn’t involve content was his responsibility, including balloons. It turns out Don is very passionate about balloons, as everyone watching John Kerry’s speech would know. You see, Don accidentally made it on the air just as John Kerry’s speech was ending, and announced the following:

“Go balloons, go balloons! Go balloons! I don’t see anything happening. Go balloons! Go balloons! Go balloons! Standby confetti. Keep coming, balloons. More balloons. Bring it- balloons, balloons, balloons! We want balloons, tons of them. Bring them down. Let them all come. No confetti. No confetti yet.

No confetti. All right, go balloons, go balloons. We need more balloons. All balloons! All balloons! Keep going! Come on, guys, lets move it. Jesus! We need more balloons. I want all balloons to go, goddammit. Go confetti. Go confetti. More confetti. I want more balloons. What’s happening to the balloons? We need more balloons.

We need all of them coming down. Go balloons- balloons? What’s happening balloons? There’s not enough coming down! All balloons, what the hell! There’s nothing falling! What the [expletive deleted] are you guys doing up there? We want more balloons coming down, more balloons. More balloons. More balloons”