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.

Info Highway

looks like i'll finally have internet at home in a couple of days. the computer tech guy is supposed to show up on friday to set me up. i may start blogging a little more fiercely once that happens. other than that, i don't have much new to report. just plugging away here at the daily sound. keep up the reading.

Quickie

whew. i can't even remember my last post, but i've started the job. and i'm still working on getting internet at home, so posting will be sparse until then. as sparse as this post, which i'm about to end. and.....end.

New Everything

i've been busy, alright! okay, here's the lowdown. i've moved into a 3 bed/2 bath condo one block from santa barbara's east beach. i'll be sharing the master bedroom and bathroom with my bro, and sharing the rest of the house with a sweet old lady and a middle-aged guy who isn't around much and seems pretty quiet. i've done graduated from university, and just got an email confirming that my degree was conferred. woot. i start work tomorrow at the santa barbara daily sound. i'll provide a link to the online version as soon as i feel like it. it'll probably be in the link section of this blog, surprisingly enough. my big priorities today are buying a wireless card for my desktop computer and maybe doing a little food shopping. hopefully my internet will be up and running at the condo (i'm posting this from my bro's computer in isla vista) by this evening so i can distract myself during my last day of true freedom. that is all for now.

Checkpoint

alright, as i warned, the chaos has commenced. the car is bought, but i must now square away my financing and buy insurance. then drive to los angeles, graduate, find an apartment, move and start my job. so one sort of big obstacle out of the way. not much else to report. i'll probably write more once i'm back in los angeles and back on anything other than dial-up internet.

Fredno

ahh, back in lovely fresno for a few days here. of course it's nice and toasty compared to socal. should be around for most of this week. looking into buying a car. yea, more debt. always a fun thing to do. also heading out to central for a visit with the old swim team. maybe dropping by bullard to visit my high school journalism teacher, the inspiration behind my career choice. and of course, eating lots of home-cooked meals.

posts may be sparse for the next few weeks as i graduate/move/start job/etc. could be a bit hectic. hell, will be hectic, i'm sure. all seems a bit unreal.

if i weren't so mentally lazy, i'd rant about a number of bush-related items, like the purple heart and sticking up for alberto "i-don't-recall" gonzalez. just imagine i have and shake with inner rage along with me.