Selective Reporting

where are their heads buried? i'll give you one chance to figure out my theory (and it's not "in the sand").

Pandora

it's been another fabulous day in los angeles. i spent the day checking box office figures on movies from ishtar to american graffiti (see graffiti, not ishtar). every site i went to had different figures for each movie, because that's a rational thing to happen in a world. so i had to spend the day sorting all that out.

this site was recommended to me by a friend, and it's pretty freakin' awesome. almost like a music tivo in that it predicts songs that you may like based on artists you add. check it out, it's a good way to find new music.

looks like i'll be heading back to fresno this coming weekend. i'm praying for a cold spell, but i know it'll probably be in the upper 90s at best. that's why i'll have to drown myself in cold, cold beer the whole time.

update: well, i just checked the weather forecast for fresno. friday...106 degrees. 106...degrees...fahrenheit. why?! @%^$%^@$@!^.

Frisbee and Peace

we got a place for july. three bedrooms, actually, so it's a pretty sweet deal. except for the having to move twice in a month part. and the no internet or television unless we get it installed part. and the further away from my internship part. but i can't really complain.

my legs were destroyed by mosquitos last night. not cool. i understand the desire for people to have outdoor parties. i just wish i didn't have to pay the price with my own blood.

i think i'm gonna go be one of those guys on campus who sits on the grass and plays guitar and reads. i need a faux escape into nature.

Renovation Schmenovation

it finally happened. my worst fear was finally realized. renovation was completed on the usc dive tank, and now morning rec swim is held there instead of the 50 meter pool. i might add that the dive tank is a swimmer's worst nightmare. take a look at the plethora of terrible things this pool has to offer a legit swimmer trying to get in a decent workout.

1. temperature: a putrid 83-84 degrees. those of you that are swimmers know that the temperature of the water is essential in having a good workout. a good number is around 78-79. 80-82 is tepid at best. 83+ is dante's inferno.

2. walls: in designing this shameful pit of despair, the architects seemed to want to stick with the "old person spa time" theme. cut into the length of each wall is a narrow slit, which can only be explained as some nimrod's idea of a way to help people climb out of the pool, just in case they don't want to swim to one of the four ladders located, at most, only a few lanes away. unfortunately, this gash is also placed with such precise ineptitude as to prevent any normal swimmer from getting a good push off the wall. it takes skill to awkwardly cram your foot into a 6 inch opening and still get any decent propulsion.

3. chlorine: here is where the temperature plays another huge factor. setting the pool heater at "simmer" unfortunately creates a prime opportunity for bacteria to transform the pool into a tepid cesspool of disease and squalor. solution? double...no, triple the chlorine dosage. the first clue is when the steam rising from the jacuzzi-like water stings the nostrils. along with the savage burning sensation while in the water, one might also note the absence of any remaining body hair upon exiting the scalding cauldron of acidic liquid. and don't worry about that mindnumbingly irritating rash developing all over your body. that's just your skin committing suicide.

i could go on, but i think you get the picture. all i want to know is, who is using this pool that enjoys each of these seemingly hellish features? no one in their right mind--oh, wait. i forgot about the divers.

Translation

an article in the los angeles times today said our president proclaimed that the united states is dedicated to a democratic iraq. let's take a look at bush's quotes in this story and determine what they really mean:

bush says: he was "inspired to be able to visit the capital of a free and democratic iraq."
bush means: "i can't believe i can walk into that place and not get my head blown clean off."

bush says: "america is a nation that keeps its commitments...it's in our interests that iraq succeed."
bush means: "i've got our feet stuck so deep in this trough of pig crap that the only way out is to wade around until we thin it out a little."

bush says: it is important to meet with iraqi prime minister nouri maliki to see "firsthand the strength of his character and his deep commitment to succeed."
bush means: "i need to make sure the strings on my puppet are tight enough that it'll do what i want."

bush says: "no matter the polls and all this business, it's worth it, it's necessary, and we will succeed...don't bet on american politics forcing my hand because it's not going to happen."
bush means: "what are polls? what are constituents? what the hell are you talking about, responsibility to my people? i don't have time for this, rovey is free! it's party time! who's bringing the yeyo?"

Humdrum

well, it's another early morning. i don't have much to report because not much is going on. i put some new strings on sera the other day, so that's been nice. i can slide again! and the sound is a whole lot cleaner. wow. this is a boring post. i'll save you from the misery and end it here.

The Big One

alright, here's a list of stuff that happened on june 10th:

famous births:
john edwards
tara lipinski
judy garland

famous deaths:
alexander the great
john gotti
ray charles

events:
italy declares war on france and great britain
canada declares war on italy
rommel leads german forces to the english channel
norway surrenders to germany
alcoholics anonymous founded in akron, ohio
saab produces its first automobile
us marines land on cuba during spanish-american war

and of course:
i was born

Lunchtime Entertainment

check out this vid of stewie from family guy singing eminem. whoever put it together did a slick job of editing. nice.

Early Morning

it's around 8:00 a.m. right now. i'm just back from a swim and i'm listening to hells bells by ac/dc and getting pumped up for the day before the last day before the weekend. i'm finally returning to my job at the business school. we thankfully finished the latimes dining guide on tuesday. that was pretty much a hellish experience. now i'm working on a few actual stories. so much better. well, i'm going to stop typing so i don't wake up the roomies.

The Antichrist

from a nytimes article:

The wager of the day on [BetUS.com]: "Will the World End on 6-6-06?" By 6 p.m. yesterday, 216 of the 700 gamblers had bet an average of just more than $2 that yes, the world would end. The odds stood at 100,000 to 1.

first of all, i'd just like to say thanks to those 216 people for trying to cash in on the annihilation of mankind. i appreciate their faith in our species. second of all, how do they plan on collecting their winnings? part of the whole "world ending" scenario does, in fact, involve the world actually ending. i'm sure a few hundred grand is going to go a long way on a post-apocalyptic planet earth. thirdly, it's about 8:00 in the evening right now, and the world still hasn't ended. what is the antichrist waiting for? don't you think he'd be kind of chomping at the bit to get the mayhem and anarchy and human suffering underway? finally, what business does this story have on the front page of the nytimes site? i'd understand if it was in the "quirky news" section or something. are we now celebrating people's stupidity? great. we've got plenty to go around.

here are some things i've witnessed/experienced on my bike trips to my internship downtown:

1. a homeless guy with jeans hanging around his knees and his ass hanging in the breeze
2. a man in a red sedan rolling down his window and blatantly dropping trash onto the ground in front of me
3. countless people suddenly changing direction right before i pass them so i nearly slam into them
4. a "fuck you" from a beefy mexican girl after i hopped off the curb into the street to avoid having to try to maneuver around her and her friend
5. every possible red light on the 4 or so miles to the latimes building
6. an asian man slowly pushing a cart through a crosswalk despite the fact that he saw the police cruiser blazing down the street toward him with its siren wailing
7. four different creepy guys unabashedly ogling four different (unattractive) girls at four different locations on one trip
8. countless "horn-rapings" of tourists by veteran drivers

The Petal Tide

it was a quiet, warm summer evening when the flowers attacked. they pulled up their roots with a quiet popping sound and shuddered the dirt from their pale white tendrils. a tall sunflower lost its balance on the smooth cement sidewalk and bumped into a garbage can. a line of daisies marched across the strips of grass in front of the apartment complexes and two-story houses along the shadowed street. a squad of dandelions secured the left flank. two red zinnias signaled the attack and the battalion of tulips, hydrangeas and germaniums moved in and captured the freshly-watered lawn. walter p. appleby couldn't get from the front porch of his pale green townhouse to his car the next day and had to call in sick. the grass was strewn with bodies and he spent hours carefully wrapping each one in moist paper towels and moving them to the wet dirt around the edge of the yard.

Thumbs Up

first of all, the inspiration from this post came from the state of extreme boredom i found myself in during a 7-hour restaurant-calling shift at my internship. i had a little downtime between calls, in a sort of a holding pattern until the next wave of restaurant managers were due in, so i was cruising through the l.a. times site. it was the front page picture that made me realize, politicians have terrible thumbs up form. take this shot of new orleans mayor ray nagin for example:








can you believe that? overextension, weak fist action, flimsy wrist. it's all so wrong. now look at these from our great leader:

















let's examine the first one. extreme overextension. loose fist clench. emotionless facial expression. no power. now let's take a look at the second. a little better in terms of extension, but the hand is still much too high in relation to the body. the facial expression inspires ridicule and defeats any sense of the victorious nature of a good thumbs up. now let's see some examples of well-executed thumbs up:

















we have great form in the first example. the kid's got a nice, tight arm position. the hand is situated next to the face, not too high, not too low. he's got the fist locked in like a pro, and the smirk ties the whole package together nicely. the next example, featuring tony the tiger, also displays excellent positioning. the hand is up and in, next to the face, and the other arm crossed over the chest expounds an even greater sense of accomplishment. take some notes, folks. this is how you execute a successful thumbs up.

Morning Glory

i learned several things at my first swim practice after a week of sickness this morning. first, i am really slow and weak. second, someone put the flags at the far end of the pool in the wrong holes, so i slammed my hand into the wall, making me very angry. third, it is extremely hard to train with absolutely no one to race. i don't know where the swim team was this morning. fourth, for having the self-described job of guarding lives, the people working the stand during the 6-8 a.m. shift seem to completely hate life. i can't remember seeing more morose expressions ever. pretty sad.

i will be getting paid for interning at the los angeles times for the next four days, as they requisitioned my fact-checking skills for work on their annual restaurant guide, which is quickly approaching deadline. thankfully, my boss at my other job was cool about letting me have those days off even though i just started two weeks ago. so i'm going to be pulling in the big bucks for a few days! very exciting. that's all for now.

Installment #3

the latest and greatest from cyanide and happiness:

Aural Projection

i've been listening to old cds that i haven't played in ages and they are transporting me back to other summers that were more fun than this one. i'm seriously going crazy in this little apartment. someone with a car come get me and take me away one of these weekends!

i'm at the nagging-and-pointless-cough stage of my cold now. seriously, why can't my body figure out that by coughing once, i'm only making myself want to cough even more? i hate that little tickle that's just annoying enough not to ignore. hopefully today is the last day. i plan to hit the pool tomorrow morning, bright and early.

speaking of the pool, my paddle band snapped a week or so back, and i've torn my apartment apart looking for my replacements. so that's been obnoxious. i hate pulling with just a buoy. i'm off to play sera on the balcony.

Melodrama

well, i've been having a pretty crappy week. i've been sick since tuesday, but still went to work of course. i also found out we have to find a place to live from june 30th to august 1st because our dickhead apartment management promised our apartment to other people for early move-in without telling us. apparently they told us we had to request to stay for the summer earlier this year, but i am pretty sure i would've remembered that. so now we are looking for a sublet for one month only, which is near impossible. and this all adds up to me having to deal with stupid people, which is not a good thing. so i'm having a bad week, and i don't want to talk about it. i'm going to go curl up somewhere and try to be a little more melodramatic.

Rain and Pain

i'm re-reading brautigan's trout fishing in america and missing nature. i haven't been alone for what seems like years. and when i mean alone, i don't mean alone in a room, or alone in a building. i mean alone as in no other person within at least five miles. which is something that sounds very relaxing and perfect right now. maybe i'm getting a little socially claustrophobic.

it rained this morning. how ridiculous is that?! rain in may in l.a. unbelievable. i made it up for my morning swim and had to bike to the pool in a heavy drizzle, which had me pretty soaked by the time i got there. fortunately, it lightened up by the time i left for the times, and only started pouring again when i was a block away. so i got a little drenched, but it dried pretty quickly in the magazine section, which starts out hot and stuffy and gets progressively colder and colder until all the women are shivering and complaining by the time i leave. there's something wrong with the thermostat in that area of the building.

it was raining pretty heavily when i left the locker room for the pool. the swim team was taking up all the lanes, probably figuring that no one would be crazy enough to be out swimming if they didn't have to be there. so i had to ask the coach to open up a lane and get the lifeguard to notice me. she gave me a dirty look through the window of the lifeguard office as she put on her parka and grabbed a rescue tube. that was a little amusing. i thought they got paid for lifeguarding. maybe i'm wrong. i doubt they are paying them to sit in an office for two hours. it stopped raining about 15 minutes after that anyway, not to mention the fact that they stood under the overhang of the bleacher area. wimps. meanwhile i'm in the water trying not to embarrass myself in front of the whole usc swim team.

Attrition

i feel like this summer is going to be a battle just to keep from getting stuck in a rut. not exactly what i had envisioned for my last truly free summer. i don't have much to say because there is not much new to comment on. yawn.

Distant

in the darkness she sees
a red-cloth book
and a cigar smoldering
on the balcony's white wood

his soundless figure
searching the concrete below
chalk-gray squares
reflections of emptiness

Settling In

well, i guess i can say i've pretty much adjusted to my summer life. i think it will be a little rigorous (i haven't had 5 full days of real work since high school), but i also think it will be good for me. i need to start readjusting myself to that lifestyle so by the time graduation rolls around i'll be ready to hold down a full-time job.

i've been checking out steve vai's homepage, which consists mainly of drooling over his guitar collection. anyway, i found out he's playing at the wiltern as part of the zappa plays zappa tour. i'm not sure if i'm willing to drop $40 or so for tickets, but it sounds like a kickass show.

i also found out that the pool is open from 6-8 in the morning. and here i was all worried that i would only get to swim on the weekends. i did manage to drag myself out of bed at 5:45 this morning to go to the gym, so hopefully i'll be able to hit the pool at least a few times during the week. i'll probably be the only person under the age of 45 in the pool.

hey, i actually posted a new enough necktie story, and i plan on posting one a night (we'll see how this works for motivation), so if you were discouraged about the lack of new material...i'm working on it.