Sound Off

hey, here i am again, not too long after the last check-in. just came off a nice long break for the holidays, nonwithstanding a few short days of work in the middle of last week, and it's back to the grindstone. my fellow reporter is out for the rest of the week, so i'll be handling the flow of news for the daily sound in his absence. so it promises to be a busy week. luckily, i'll have tomorrow off. unfortunately, i don't get new year's day off, which is a pain not only because i can't get completely hammered the night before, being that my girlfriend is leaving, again, in some ungodly morning hour on the first day of the year for a week in hawaii after returning from a five-month study abroad program merely weeks earlier and i'll likely want to drown, with some sort of fermented beverage, the sorrow of not being able to kiss her at midnight, but also because usc plays illinois in the rose bowl on tuesday and i'll have to train myself to write brilliant journalistic prose while fervently glancing over my shoulder at the television to see exactly how the trojans decide to trounce the living daylights out of the fighting illini.

Monthly Briefer

another slow day at work. things always seem to drag to a standstill around the holidays. luckily, or unluckily, depending how you look at it, a kiteboarder had to be rescued by firefighters, winds are starting to stir up dust and ash from the zaca fire, and a bunch of new traffic laws are going into effect in january. that and an update about the plane crash in panama that killed two santa barbarans and injured another should be enough fodder to fill the paper to a respectable level for tomorrow.

the waves were pretty sloppy and gnarly on christmas day. went down to the beach during high tide and caught some wild ones, getting tossed about and beaten up by a few. there were a few surfers out there too, but we were the only people crazy enough to body surf. my feet and hands are usually numbed beyond belief by the time i decide i might want to get out of the water for a bit to warm them up. had to head into the office for a few hours of work on christmas as well, which wasn't fun, but wasn't a huge ordeal. there wasn't much going on, so it was a quick day to say the least. and this week is almost over for me. it's always nice having a two-and-a-half-day work week.

well, i'm writing this on my work laptop, so i better get back to it before i'm spotted. and i'm considering an attempt to post more often here. but i've said that about 20 times prior to this, so don't expect much.

Ages

well, here i am, about a month and a half after my last post. plenty has been going on in recent weeks, from the city council election finally wrapping up to my trip to scotland to a lot of college football. so lets start from the top. the election ended the night before i left for the airport, so that was a very high-stress way to start my vacation. running about trying to talk to all the candidates who won and a few who lost, then scrambling to type it all up in an hour to make deadline. then going home to wash laundry and pack before taking a bus the following morning to lax. the trip was incredible. plenty of cold scottish wind but surprisingly nonexistent rain. saw some castles, old buildings and my favorite person in the world. the trip back was pretty dreary. late evening flight into heathrow and everything was shut down. took about an hour to wind my way through the maze of terminals, asking for help from workers buffing floors and being turned away by more than a few locked doors and blocked passageways. but i finally made it to the right terminal and found a nice, hard, wooden bench with metal arm rests to completely prevent it from being comfortable in any sense of the word. luckily, my flight was not delayed, and after a brief struggle through customs at lax, i made my way back to santa barbara by way of traffic-plagued bus. the past few weeks have been incredibly lethargic, with a touch of jet lag, plenty of sitting around and watching football, and a three-day weekend for thanksgiving. but it's about time i get back into the swing of work during the week and back into praying for good waves on the weekend.

Old Salt

don't feel much like posting here after work. saving all my creativity for the paper i guess. i don't know how people manage to write books. well, we moved to our new office, everything looks great. getting lots done and beating up on that other newspaper in town. really windy today or i would've done a little body surfing. hopefully it will be nice tomorrow. hit the waves for a few hours before the usc game starts.

Blitzkrieg

been pulling long hours at the office lately, so i haven't felt much like writing here. to be honest, not much new is going on. i'll probably head out to the beach tomorrow to relax before i hit the grind again. usc rolled over nebraska today, so i guess that is always exciting. pretty slow couple of weeks around here. maybe things will pick up once i get off this news-press trial beat. and the daily sound will be moving to a new office closer to downtown at the end of the month, so that will be nice. no personal office yet. but i like the whole newsroom vibe anyway. even if our newsroom only has three people in it most of the time.

U.S. Americans

holy crap. this is too much. miss south carolina trying to answer a question about the education system in the united states: click here.

The Creeping Kid

after covering the zaca fire for almost two months, this is probably the most humorous line i've seen in any press release about the blaze:

The fire in the island within the Santa Cruz drainage continues to creep around.

i wish i knew who writes those updates. i almost laughed out loud when i read that. so not much is new around here. it's a pretty slow sunday, and after i finish of a zaca fire update, i should be out of here. as long as nothing exciting breaks on the police scanner. yawn.

Slowing Down

things have been pretty hectic around here with the news-press trial and the zaca fire. i also sent off my girlfriend for a five-month trip to russia and scotland, so that's been a bummer so far. and it's only been two days.

i don't know about this posting business. i rarely feel like writing in the evenings, and in the morning i'm usually too lazy. i guess i'm saying don't expect too much.

new starting line cd is decent. nothing special.

Conquest

on the way home tonight, a police officer waved me through a red light. how great is that? tomorrow the big news-press hearing starts, so i'll be stuck in court for the next three days. the zaca fire is still going crazy, so that is always a second story i can fall back on.

i can't wait for college football to start. best time of the year, hands down. fight on!

Nana's Tea Party

love it: conchords. "be more constructive with your feedback. why?"

Man Down

in the wake of doping scandals and forced withdrawals from the tour de france, there doesn't seem to be much focus on one of the true victims of this year's scandal-ridden tour: andreas kloden. his astana teammate, alexandre vinokourov, cost him a possible podium finish in paris after testing positive for blood doping, as well as pulling team astanta from the top position in the team competition. it's impossible to say whether or not kloden has used artificial means to rise to his stature in the cycling world, but he has never tested positive and he rides like a true team leader. it is unfortunate that his name is not listed alongside contador, leipheimer and evans.

my week alone at the daily sound has come to an end. our veteran reporter (of nine months) will return today, so i should get a bit of a respite. thankfully last week was relatively quiet in terms of earthshattering news.

Quite a Shocker

latimes.com headline: Drinking sodas might affect health, report says.

no freakin' way. is that the earth shattering beneath my feet?

As Requested

wrapping things up here at work and had a little energy left, so i thought i'd expend it on you guys, seeing as i made a vague promise to attempt such actions in my previous post. my co-worker and the only other reporter here at the sound is going on vacation all of next week, so it will be all me for that stretch. that won't be stressful, right?

and for the photo explanation, the triangle is the railing of the golden gate bridge, over which i am peering. through a ton of photo manipulation, i rendered it in that strange black-and-white state, so i understand your confusion.

aaaah, weekend!

July Post

i don't even know what to say. it's been so long since i've haunted these pages. feels like months. let's see what's happened since i last poured out my soul. work and sleep and eat. oh, and a great little play in sierra madre. that's about it. wink.

i spend all day writing, so can you blame me for not filling these pages with rambling thoughts? yea, okay. i'll see what i can do.

Analog Girl

check it out! a new daily sound blog featuring all the major stories from the day, including breaking news! sorta peeking into the digital age at last. (link to the blog on the right, enjoy). to view the paper as it appears in print, click the "daily sound viewer" link.

good ol' fourth of july yesterday. i got to run around to all the festivities, from montecito to goleta. of course it was nice and roasty toasty. nothing compared to fresno or, ahem, palmdale, and i really can't complain. but i thought i would anyway. ha.

Summer Shakes

howdy from the american riviera. we've got a good one cooking for tomorrow. check out the daily sound by clicking that handy link to the right there.

not much going down around here. fourth of july is coming up, but i'll probably wait until the weekend to fire up the grill. hope all you crazy kids are having fun during "summer vacation." that, sadly, no longer exists for me. luckily, i like my job. so every day is like a vacation for me, right? right.

i keep telling myself to post more, but i'm so lazy and tired when i get home from work. oh well.

Wonks

bush commutes libby prison sentence.

big fucking surprise there.

Sunbaked

i sat on the beach, surrounded by the scattered weekend families replete with umbrellas and ice chests and sand-castle-building equipment, having just returned from a swim out to the far buoy marking the swimming area and then along to the next buoy to the south and back to the shore, making a wobbly triangle in the choppy water that looked so pleasingly blue from the sand but turned a murky greenish-brown and revealed odd little slippery leaves of seaweed kept afloat by tiny pockets of air like a great undulating forest held upside down. my mouth swollen by the briny saltwater and my eyes stinging, i turned away from the sea and began jotting down, in a small notepad bound with false mahogany leather and gold corners, a letter i would later toss in the garbage bin in my room.

i stopped from time to time and glanced along the beach to the south, watching a middle-aged man sitting alone a hundred yards away, back from the water, staring at two young women, college students no doubt, sunning themselves closer to the waves, where the shore sloped up to a small roll where the high tide breaks and falls back. later, after i had abandoned the letter and lay spread over the large beach towel, another shielding my face from the sun, i heard muttering from that direction and began eavesdropping. somehow the older man had introduced himself to the women, who were, in fact, students at the nearby community college, and was now curiously lecturing them on a number of subjects, including microphone quality for music recording purposes, communications and accounting, which according to him is an easy fallback profession if you "just want to make some money."

as the conversation somehow morphed into a discussion of film, my enthusiasm for the discourse, and that i was privy to its meanderings, began to grow, and i started chuckling and snorting in disbelief, sometimes whispering to myself, "what the fuck is he talking about?" at the crux of the exchange, the older man launched into an analysis of the gladiator, russell crowe's roman battlefest blockbuster, with the clever observation that, "with this film, they have accurately portrayed, quite accurately portrayed, the world 2,000 years ago. so with film, you can travel back in time." in this moment of levity, doubtless for me and less sure for the two women, who aside from being subjected to these odd ramblings, also appeared to be of foreign nationality from the few accented words they managed to slip into the conversation, i felt the extent of humor to be derived from my clandestine spy operation had been met and exceeded long ago. nonetheless, i continued to listen, now shaking with silent mirth as he expanded on his view of film as a vehicle of nonspatial continuum with: "and with film, you can travel forward in time. into the future. have you seen the fifth element?"

at that point, i decided to abandon my mission at what most certainly seemed to be its apex and slipped back into the water for a quick refresher before i packed up my belongings, leaving the trio to further explore the ad infinitum cosmos of the silver screen.

Inbox Flood

back again. took a little jaunt up to los angeles and officially moved out of my place there. so i guess it's officially official now. all my stuff is here. or in fresno. but mostly here. and i hate moving. such a pain. probably because i've done it a dozen times in the past four years. not exaggerating there.

so looks like it's time to settle into a routine. so i doubt there will be much excitement to report. i wish we had our daily sound forum up and running so i could link to stories i wrote that i want to show off. oh well. hopefully they'll figure out a way to stop the spam commenting. keep on keeping on.

The Shuffle

i haven't posted in a while because, well, i kind of forgot about insular jot. but things are just rolling along here. coming up on one month of full-time work next week i believe, and it doesn't really seem like that much time has passed. i guess that is good. i'm living in a pretty sweet place, so i can't really complain about anything. i wish it didn't cost so much for lap swim or master's swimming. at least, that's the excuse i'm using not to hit the pool.

i'll be heading back to l.a. to clean up my former apartment and pick up my bike. so other than my ex-roommates and that pesky girlfriend (just kidding, dear), i won't have too many ties to the city of angels. and i'm kind of glad. too much noise and traffic and nasty air.

had a co-birthday and grad party last weekend with my bro. it's always nice to see the family and friends, and fill the coffers a bit. well, i'll try to get writing on this thing again. seems like i keep saying that. oh well. if you are bored, discuss the many failings of our president in the comment section. that should keep you busy for a while.