I recently took The Tank on it’s second outing. I went with Lauren to USC where she was working on a video project for an art class, and I killed an entire roll of film. Now, I have about as much knowledge of photography as BrianWong has of web design, but I’m having fun with it so I put up a small album of The Tank’s First Pics.

There’s only 11 pictures out of my 24 because a lot of them were second tries or they just didn’t turn out how I wanted them to.

Above all, be gentle.

“i made a really neat knitting needle roll-up case. i took the pattern from my favorite book, stitch n’ bitch. this thing is so trendy, it was even in newsweek. give me a break.”

-Lindsey K.

I was watching Caddyshack this morning and was amazed to find that there IS a movie in which Chevy Chase is actually funny. Here’s one of my favorite dialogues between Ty Webb (Chevy Chase) and one of the Caddies:

Ty: Why do you want go to college?
Caddy: I don’t want to work at a lumberyard for the rest of my life.
Ty: What’s wrong with lumberyards? I own two of them.
Caddy: And I notice you don’t spend too much time there.
Ty: Well I’m not quite sure where they are.

you had to be there. There are many pearls of wisdom from Ty concerning college, and if you’re in college or considering going I suggest you watch this movie and pay close attention to Ty.

P.S. I was looking at imdb.com, and I noticed the movie Caddyshack II, which is rated as one of the bottom 100 movies on the imdb, as voted by the viewing public. Who knew?

The Unintelligent Design Network, Inc. has started a revolutionary movement by combining the ideas of creationism and evolution that make the most sense and shoe-horning them into a potato shaped cubby hole known as Unintelligent Design.

Essentially, they believe there was an all powerful creator, but he should have taken a few more biology classes before he started practicing professionally.

“And who the hell thought giraffes were a good idea? Bloody unlikely looking, if you ask me. And those tyrannosaurus, with the tiny little arms? Why even leave the arms in, except to flail about Corky looking for a snack. Speaking on this subject, did you know whales have hip bones? That’s like if an engineer put an outboard boat motor on a city bus.”

“It is chicozapote fruit season (manilkara zapota), and they are soooooo good. They come from the tree from which latex is made. So maybe they are the condom fruit.”

-Federico Mena-Quintero from Planet Gnome

Phantom Planet has always been one of those bands that I’ve been interested in, but never really got around to listening too. They had a cool name and their drummer was the star of Rushmore, which meant they had to be one of the best bands ever.

but… I’d heard the song “California” which didn’t really impress me much, so I gave up on them like a has been coach who can’t cut it in the big leagues and goes back to coaching a bunch of rambunctious misfits who can’t even afford their own uniforms.

Then I heard “Big Brat” off their new self titled album and realized I should have followed my gut instinct, deciding I would acquire the album as soon as possible and preach it’s virtues to all who would listen and even a few that wouldn’t.

But I never got that chance. Today on the “World Famous” KROQ, they debuted “Big Brat” by Phantom Planet. Now Phantom Planet will all be made sexy by the mtv and rolling stone people and it’s too late for me to claim that I was part of the grass roots movement that helped get them there.

Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to hope the Piebalds and Ozmas of the world will be my claim to credibility when they make it big.

*sigh*

I went to the main library branch to apply for some jobs today, which took a while to gear up for. First of all the library is so huge that it has seven separate floors, and each floor is so huge they have their own human resources department. This means you have to apply individually to seven different places, which is no fun.

So I spent some of the weekend and yesterday updating my resume and filling out the application on the computer using pdfs. All very cool and I was very impressed with myself, confident that not forcing them to read human handwriting was a feather in my cap.

This morning I dressed up, put on my new glasses, and prepared to meet my future boss.

Catastrophe.

Los Angeles Public Library system is on a hiring freeze. They can’t hire anyone, even if there are vacancies.

On several floors they accepted my application and said “That’s too bad, we have openings…”

The rest just gave me sympathetic smiles.

“I went to photograph a tree, but all the leaves had fallen off.”
-Me

That thought sounded oddly significant to me even though there’s no metaphor behind it. I took a picture of a tree after dark because of the way the streetlight looked against the leaves, but it didn’t come out. When I went back to try again, the tree was naked.

But if someone in the bible had said this, scholars would be all over it. This would be god’s way of showing that sometimes, there are no second chances.

Or something. I hate it when i can’t sleep.

My new glasses arrived as you can see:

With my new prescription I can see through walls and, if standing in just the right position, light dry leaves on fire. When I take them off and put on my spandex, I am able to jump gargantuan edifices in one attempt and move at a velocity greater than a phallic piece of metal fired out of a rifle.

Seeing if beginners luck has any credibility, I told Lauren about the two NFL conference championship games to see if she had some innate ability to decipher the outcome based strictly on the names.

And she does! She picked the loser both times without hesitation. Simply informed that the games were New England Patriots vs. Indianapolis Colts and Carolina Panthers vs. Philadelphia Eagles she thoughtlessly produced who she knew was going to be in the Super Bowl: Colts vs. Eagles.

I’m sitting on a gold mine.

In reference to the Southern California grocery worker strike:

“The one thing I’ve learned from this strike is that I love Trader Joe’s.”
-Dan

“The only crimp in my plan was that I seemed to have no talent whatsoever.”
-David Sedaris, from Me Talk Pretty One Day

I don’t know how many times that exact thought has occurred to me.

When sleeping at Brian Wong’s, Dwayne’s dog – a half chihuhua half miniature pincher – would come down and sleep with me every morning right after Dwayne left for school:

As steve said:
“He goes for the crotch or your armpit, because those are the two warmest places on your body.”

The small duffel bag I used when I visited San Luis Obispo has a diagram on the inside of seven different ways to carry it. This would just be stupid if the diagram on the left wasn’t obviously going to result in several adolescent decapitations over the next year. Now it’s not only stupid, it’s a bad business decision.

“Honduras is an Island, right?”
-Jesse B.

There seems to be this completely inaccurate view that bands get on the radio because they’re good. Hah.

Others imply they get on the radio because they look marketable and are willing to play ball with record companies. Perhaps this helps them close the deal, but it’s not what gets them in the door. No it’s something much more annoying….

Maybe you’ve noticed the airwaves flooded with whiny, untalented, excessively skinny people. They’ve taken over with their nasally, Woody Allen-esque voices and there’s nothing we can do about it, because it’s all of our fault.

The reason these three chord pop punk trucker hat wearing complainers are creeping through every radio station up and down the coast is the condition of our stereos. The average joe or jane doesn’t think to put any money into his/her car stereo. As a result, the only frequency that can be played well by your four and a quarter inch Hyundai brand Speakers happens to be exactly in the range that all the AFI’s and Cyndi Lauper’s of the world like to complain in. Since these high voices resonate better, it’s all we hear on the radio.

So have some compassion for the Barry Whites and Tim Armstrongs of the world and go get some six by nine’s and a subwoofer. It’s good for the music.

Rachel has the most depressing picture on her wall, at first I thought it was a picture of just her, which seemed odd. Upon interrogation, I was informed “I’m talking to Omar on the phone, so it’s a picture of both of us.” Omar is Rachel’s boy who lives in Honduras, which, if you’re geographically disinclined, is in Central America. Comparatively, slo and LA are in the same zip code.

Also, Rachel once again snags the quote of the moment:

“Who needs a man when you have flannel sheets?”
-Rachel G.

First day in San Luis Obispo has been everything I wanted it to be. Ping pong with Wong, saw Rachel, and made commitments to go to firestone and party tomorrow night. Good times. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get some pics to post here.

I’m quite tired considering it’s not even midnight, I guess sitting on your bum for 3 hours while stepping on something will do that to you. Anyways, off to sleep…

“I just don’t understand any of it, and i’m glad i’m living in san luis obispo, where the scene kids are all art students and the radio kids don’t get along with them, and we’re pretentious pricks and i’d never play anything on lobster records on kcpr in my life.”
-Lindsey K.

I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone in slo this week.

Today, I made my little sister promise me that she will never buy a book from a school bookstore. ever. The convenience factor is very persuasive, but you just can’t beat some of the prices that you can get with minimal research over the internet. How much did I save this semester? Let’s see…

First, let’s consider if I had bought all of my books at the cambus bookstore:
-Photography: The Concise Guide is $40.75

-Black & White Photography is $58.50

-PHP & MySQP Web Development is $49.99

-The Natural Speaker is $29.75

Total: 178.99 + 8.25% Sales Tax = $193.76

I paid:
-Photography: The Concise Guide, a new copy from half.com for $30.50, shipping and taxes included.

-Black & White Photography, a new copy from half.com for $40.62, shipping and taxes included.

-PHP & MySQP Web Development from WalMart for $31.80, shipping and taxes included.

-The Natural Speaker, a new copy from half.com for $22.78, shipping and taxes included.

My total: $125.7
Amount Saved: 193.76 – 125.7 = $68.06

Which isn’t too bad for doing things the lazy way.