…is the headline of this reuters article.

Did anyone else read that wrong the first time through?

While ironing a shirt one day, it occured to me that the task was heart-stoppingly boring. Ironing isn’t just your average “high school algebra teacher” boring, but a piercing, resentful, lack of interest that shook me to my meager soul. Normally the television would console me, but on that particular day not even spraying innocent passerby with water could maintain my interest.

I was losing my passion for creating wrinkle free garments. As the days, weeks, and months passed by the iron lay undisturbed and cool to the touch.

Then I discovered extreme ironing. My life will never be the same.

There was a time when my computer, a 1.0 Ghz Pentium III with hardware acceleration, might be considered a minor deity, but while running modern software, it’s more of a heathen; It’s sluggish, unresponsive, with compile times longer than Jay London‘s hair.

I’ve been looking at getting a new computer for about a year now, and I finally found one for the right price, so I’m making the plunge and purchasing a brand new Dell. In comparison with my current computer, the Dell’s processor is three times as fast, the memory is four times as fast, the hard drive is twice as fast, the video card exists, and there are many other favorable comparisons as well. Click here for an artist’s conception of what my finished computer will look like (If it’s assembled in a spanish speaking country).

Last night on Last Comic Standing Ralphie May went up on the new last comic standing series. Up to his performance I’d been thinking he looked completely conceited and arrogant, not smiling at anything, not clapping for anyone, and generally looking as if he had much better things to do.

As Ralphie May walked on stage, he had his head down and he took his time to get to the mike even though his two minute window was slipping away, as if he knew a sniper was waiting for him to just reach the microphone. When he finally got to the mike, he announced, “My Father’s name was Winston May, and yesterday he died of Cancer.” He followed that with two of his father’s favorite jokes and walked off to a standing ovation.

Mad props to Ralphie for even showing up.

“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”

For my first election I thought I’d be voting Claypool for president until just this moment, when I discovered the Party Party with David Crosby and Graham Nash running for a “Joint Presidency,” meaning that they will share the predential responsibility as well as the Vice President’s duties.

But what will they do for you?

Recently, David Crosby told an assembled crowd that, if elected, one of their first acts would be the cleaning out of Area 51 to address the illegal alien issue.? Other campaign promises include free money, and a night in the Lincoln Bedroom to anyone who antes up $200,000. The renamed ?Social Insecurity? and ?Medicareless? agencies will be overhauled, and the candidates are researching fixing the electronic voting machine situation. ?Remember,? they say, ?it?s not the people who vote that change things, it?s the people that count the votes that change things.?

Check it out at CrosbyNash2004.com.

After two months of non-stop hassle, transcripts, money, and about a thousand emails, I finally got the one I’ve been waiting for from Stacey, the head of the College of Engineering at Cal Poly:

Hi Brian. I called the Admissions Office and they said they would
readmit you today. You should be hearing from them soon. Stacey

It’s not exactly a red carpet, but I’ll take it.

I know it’s not healthy to be hostile, but I am coming to the point where I want to do bodily harm to my screen-saver.

On a normal computer with the Windows operating system, when the screen-saver is needed it appears immediately, in a flash of necessity, an apparition that can be missed if you blink a little too hard.

However, I am a stubborn technology snob, and so I run Linux. Early in the days when Linux was first created, they decided they wanted to save the screen, just as the Windows and Mac counterparts did. However, due to copyrights, they wouldn’t be able to save the screen with the flying toasters and simulated aquariums that were the symbol of cutting edge technology at the time, which meant that the Linux screen-saver would be inherently inferior.

This would not be tolerated.

Great Programmers met and decided that instead of simply appearing unannounced as it’s windows counterpart did, the great Linux screen-saver would fade out, gradually acclimating the user to the fact that he hasn’t added a single word to his term paper in the past ten minutes. This would be all well and good if they’d added a feature that let any user (or at least me…) interrupt the fade to black so that he may use the damn computer. On Linux, while fading to black nothing else is allowed to happen, no matter how much I move my mouse or slam my keyboard against the monitor, the screen-saver remains unresponsive in it’s few transitory seconds as if to say, “Can’t you see I’m fading to black? Either enjoy the show or get out of my sight. True art is always under appreciated in it’s own time.”

When I was at the city of Avalon on Catalina Island, I saw a church sign that was amusing, but alas, I didn’t have my camera with me and so I had no way to share it with the world. However, thanks to the “wonders of modern technology”(tm), a team of scientists was able to re-create the image from the residual memory still drifting throughout my cerebrum:

I just got back from a quick one day trip to check out what will hopefully be the shared apartment of former dormie Joel and myself come September 1st. The pictures that inspired the trip can be seen in full here. The one feature that made me realize this apartment was to be my future home can only be appreciated when seen:

Besides the pink sink, the rent is cheap enough that I can have my own room, and it’s within walking distance to campus. Now I just need to sit back and hope that nothing goes wrong with our rental applications.

As to whether Joel and I will be good apartment-mates only time will tell, but I think this is a good beginning:

Me: Are you interested in getting broadband internet? I can do without cable and phones (assuming my cell phone will work fine), but internet I’d like to have.
Joel: I’d die without the internet
Joel: does that work for you?

***

I just realized today that the houseboat trip I’d been planning on going on with my Uncle & Aunt has a conflict and I’m pretty bummed out about it. I could have planned around it if I’d been paying attention a week ago, but I was too focused on my Vegas trip at the time and now it’s too late to get this Saturday off. I’m getting this uneasy feeling that I’m becoming the “unreliable” relative. You know the one I’m talking about; The one who is always supposed to arrive at a certain time but “you know how he is.”

I need to get my act together.

I’d been to Las Vegas before, but this was my first as a legal piece of meat, and in the eyes of business owners, I metamorphosed from a lowly bug that’s been ruining the shrubs and is generally bad for business, into a magical funnel that takes in large volumes of alcohol and turns it into currency. The last time I made an appearance in I was in high school, and I was nothing more than a liability to the Casinos, a walking infraction waiting to happen, so the whole gaming world wrote me off as the plague the Old Testament forgot to include, leaving me to wonder what the big deal is. But now, NOW I was the target market, and all of a sudden the city made sense to me, I was like Neo seeing the fabric of the matrix for the first time. The rooms are cheap so you will come and gamble, the food is cheap so you will play Keno, and the drinks are free to increase the house’s advantage at blackjack and to keep you playing slots when you should just walk away with your $6 of winnings at the nickel slots. When they say “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” they’re referring your ATM withdrawals.

***

We got 50% off tickets to The Star Trek Experience at the Hilton through Tix4Tonight, which exceeded my expectations, but the best part about about the experience is Quark’s Bar And Restaurant, where I got to drink one of these, a Borg Sphere, which includes five ounces of liquor (Midori?) and dry ice for a bubbly, swampy effect. It was by far the most visually interesting drink I’ve ever seen, alcoholic or otherwise. Here’s Lauren with the remains of the collective:

***

Question: Are there thousands of street walkers intermingling with normal casino-goers or is there something about Vegas that makes your average woman believe that vinyl is way attractive and chain link is an acceptable material for a shirt to be made out of.

Little Girl: But which cookie will you eat first?
Cookie Monster: Me thinks you have misconception of the cookie eating process.

Some background:

1. Staples, the office supply superstore, was selling a Konica Minolta laser printer for $179 with an $80 mail in rebate
2. Fry’s had an add for the same laser printer for $79.
3. Staples matches prices with competitors ads. Actually, they don’t only match prices, they beat prices, they’ll subtract 110% of the difference in prices between Staples’ price and any advertisement you bring in.
4. Staples matches the price before the mail in rebate.

So I figured, if everybody follows their corporate policy, I should be able to walk in to any Staples, show them the Fry’s ad for the $79 printer, and walk out of Staples with that printer for what ends up being $69, since they match 110% of the difference ($179 minus $79 equals $100, 110% of 100 is $110).

Now, I really didn’t expect anybody to actually follow corporate policy as that might set a rather unwieldy precedent for corporations everywhere. But dammit, I was going to try.

Lauren and I walked into a Staples we’d never been into before with the Fry’s ad in hand, we picked up one of the printers up, and asked for a price match, ready for a good fight, having never tried such a thing before. An unexpected hitch in my plan was that a Fry’s in our area had to have it in stock. So we ended up calling 5 different Fry’s, talking to 12 absolutely clueless Fry’s employees, and receiving about 142 evil glares from the Staples employee who was watching Lauren and I make our calls before we finally found a Fry’s with one in stock. The employee sighed and rang us up for $69.99, which came out to $75.76 after tax.

However, we still had a mail in rebate that was valid. A mail in rebate valued at $80. Now, to be honest, I didn’t expect anything back, I figured either there was some loophole or they’d see how much we paid for it and just ignore us. Either way, it didn’t hurt to send in the form.

I sit here with a check for $80 from Staples in my hand. That’s $4.24 and a laser printer of pure profit. Considering gas prices, I probably broke even after driving there and back, but I still figure it’s a pretty good deal. And yes, the laser printer is awesome, unbelievably fast, and I’d recommend it to anybody who needs four bucks.