words...: March 2006 Archives

My favorite thing from over the weekend?
Well, I'm glad you asked, because I had just been thinking long and hard about that.
I'd have to say it's the advertisement for the new videogame movie called... shit.... I was going to remember... damnit! Well, I forgot what it's called and I'm too lazy to look it up right now, but you'll know the commercial because it's the one where the guy says "if you die in the game, you die in real life."
Twice.
And no, not twice as in two different ways. Twice as in: they didn't have enough other good lines in the movie so they had to use the same exact clip twice in the commercial.
The only other explanation would be they were really trying to spell out the premise of the movie to the 12-year-old boys that they are aiming at with this video game pseudo-profundity (look it up, it's a real word).
It is such a lame premise, you can picture the kids sitting there 8-hours deep into a Vice City binge, high on Doritos and Mountain Dew, when one of them turns to the other and says "What if when you died in the video game you died in real life?"
Whoa.
I'm pretty sure this was the same scenario that spawned Snakes on A Plane. "What if there were snakes.....on a plane!"
Whoa.

I hate looking for new jobs. It's the worst. I'm too modest -- and awesome -- to try and play myself up like you need to. I end up doing exactly the opposite and come off sounding like a morose teenager who doesn't believe he's qualified to work at a Dairy Queen. In fact, at some point this week, I might swing by a Dairy Queen and drop an application just to make sure that I am qualified to work there.
Honestly, I don't know why we put ourselves through the whole job process. What makes it even worse is when I roll into an interview I'm thinking about how I would have killed to have had someone like me come and interview at the last place I managed, and yet I somehow can't convey my perfection to the office-manager drone on the other side of the desk.
Jack-holes one and all.
Maybe I should stop giving my prospective employers this website address in lieu of a resume.

A few choice selections from job postings as I continue my never ending search:

"We Have a STEAK In Your Future!"

I bet you do.
I like how they knew that most of the people would miss the intentional and highly witty misspelling of "Stake" so they wrote it in all caps. They are expecting illiterate people to apply for their job.
Know your audience people! Can't stress that enough.

"WHAT WE LOOK FOR IN PEOPLE:
* Willing to learn new ideas
* Hig Energy (THEIR MISSPELLING, NOT MINE), self-actualized and upbeat personality."

Self-actualized? What the hell does that mean?
Do I still get the steak?

"Integrity -
Treat all people with dignity and respect."

Had they been having enough problems around the office that they actually had to list this?

"But what we really do is get results."

F--- yeah! Finally, someone had the balls to say it.
I'm "results driven" too. I expect them!
For every action I have, I EXPECT RESULTS DAMNIT!

"Bolivian authorities and neighbors said the couple had been giving away nude calendars promoting "the sale and exportation of explosives, fireworks and liquor.""

Actually, this wasn't in my job search. This was some crazy American guy who was arrested for blowing stuff up in Bolivia. But it was the best quote I read today so I thought I'd include it. As I'm sure you can tell, the guy was obviously Results Driven and Self-Actualized.

This is awesome.
I saw this place in a beastie boys video a long time ago and I've always wondered where it is.
I'm so there next roadtrip!
(thanks Bifurcated Rivets)

No, "Free Fanbana" is not refering to a political prisoner in Puerto Rico, it's my campaign to get me a free ergonomically designed sign. I want the good people at Fanbanna to give me a free Fanbanna so I can promote Fanbanna everywhere I go. (Note to Fanbanna people: I have already used your product name 5 times since the opening of this entry, the least you could do is give me one. It could even just say "Fanbanna" (6) on it. Or "Awesome." Or maybe even "Awesome Fanbanna.")
What is a Fanbanna? It might be easier to ask what ISN'T a Fanbanna!
No, on second thought that wouldn't be easier at all....
But don't take it from me, let's here what the good people at Fanbanna have to say!

Fanbannaâ„¢ has unrivalled potential as a retail product, whether purchased at a sporting event, entertainment event, visitor attraction, as a souvenir and even as a postcard to send back to family and friends. The Greetings Card industry will also beckon Fanbannaâ„¢ to convey international seasonal and congratulatory greetings.

p.s. As far as I can tell Fanbanna (13, in case you were counting) is some sort of sign you take to sporting events or to celebrate the Jewish New Year (pictured above. In the picture.). And it's ergonomically designed so you don't hurt yourself unfurling your message.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone are kind of my heros.
After making fun of Tom Cruise and Scientology in an episode, Scientology put the heat to Comedy Central and Comedy Central caved. The episode has been pulled from repeats but Trey and Matt issued this statement:

"So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!"

The duo signed the statement "Trey Parker and Matt Stone, servants of the dark lord Xenu."

You can read the whole article here.

Just making sure I can maintain putting up my photography 2 days in a row.
New Robot Coffeemaker Update: Day 2 of my robot coffee maker and I already forgot to program it to make me coffee. I was kind of hoping it would take the iniitiative to go a fill itself with water, take out the old grounds and grind and fill itself with new grounds.
No such luck.
Lazy robot.

Whaat I'm listening to as I post this: Prison On Route 41 by Calexico and Iron & Wine I'm on a huge Iron & Wine kick right now. This album just came out and it is pretty tight. The best of both wordlds, Calexico's lonesome west music and Iron's haunting vocals. It's going to make for some very good road trip music.

If you ever go in for a job interview and it looks like they either
a.) could pack the entire office up in the back of a pickup and be outta ther in 10 minutes or less
or
b.) look like they might have moved a few pieces of office furniture and a computer into a vacant office for purposes of conducting interviews,
you are probably in a place you don't want to be.
I was in that place this morning. Wracked with nervous anticipation for what the job may be, if I was going to interview well today and whether the cops were going to raid the joint while I was still there.
I probably would have been better served had I just walked out.
I should have guessed at this company's shadiness when I saw that their website was so filled with impenetrable jargon as to completely throw the scent of what the actually do for a living:

Delivering a personal and charismatic bridge between client and consumer has become the fastest growing marketing channel in the United States. Direct response vehicles include print, broadcast media, direct mail, flyers, catalogues, in home or on site presentations, business-to-business, electronic ordering, Internet and video presentations, event marketing, and trade shows.

Oh, the new rule is, I'm trying to just use my own photos from here on out (except when pictures from the web are completely warranted. Which may turn out to be often. You never know.)

Alright, say you woke up one morning and you go to check you e-mail only to find a message from someone you don't know asking if "You Mant Free Cursors!!!!"
Sounds to good to be true right? I'm so sure some rich millionaire is out giving away pricey cursors in today's hot cursor market.
Well, I thought the same thing until I got to the website. the first thing the website tells you is that these cursors are "100% free!!!"
I know, I know, my heart did a backflip when I saw that!
Look, I don't understand the economics behind it, all I know is these guys are "100% for Real!!!" (those are my quotes, they didn't say that on the site, although I might send that to them so they can use it for marketing purposes in the future).
I'm going to write a letter thie anonymous tipster thanking him/her for letting me in on this incredible cursor deal.

note to the Ryan Adams fans that keep e-mailing me:
I didn't say I don't like Ryan Adams, I do like him, I just think his last couple albums have been suspiciously similar sounding. stop e-mailing me, or I'll give the cursor people YOUR address.
I'm sorry, but you are forcing me to play hardball like that.

Does anybody else find it more than a little bit annoying that one of the numerous CSI's out there uses the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" as it's theme song?
I'm not even really a big Who fan (or CSI fan for that matter) but damn that rubs me the wrong way. Has the Who's catalog fallen into Public domain?
That's why I rushed right out of the room to come here and file a complaint on the internet.
Hah!
Looks like I showed them!
fuckers.
On an unrelated note: that reminds me of something I've been meaning to say for a while, everybody can shut up about what a musical genius Ryan Adams is now. Christ, how you gonna still be gushing about that guy after he put out the same album about four times now.
I just needed to vent.
thanks.

Holy sh-t.
It is a frickin'skating rink out there tonight.
People are literally ice skating down the street, doing pirouetts and such. It's pretty impressive to watch actually.
I just went to see Crash on about the worst driving night in Denver since we moved down here. If I had thought about it ahead of time I might not have left the house to drive around to a movie ironically called "Crash."
That's the kind of humor morticians just pee their pants about.
My take on Crash:

1.) It's pretty good. I would award it as highly as I could if I made those sort of decisions in Hollywood. C'mon academy, I think this one might deserve an Oscar nod! Well, I guess we'll see once Oscar time rolls around... when are the oscars? Anybody?
2.) The movie suffered from a few too many characters played by Nigroid actors. (This is a blatantly racist joke that only makes sense if you have seen the movie.)
3.) "Nigroid" is not a funny word. Actually I didn't learn that from the movie, I learned it from re-reading this post.

All the world is racist.
Fortunately for me, most people appear to be much more racist-er than I am.

Did you know that the South Platte right here in Denver eventually flows into the Mighty Mississippi?
Neither did I until I just used Google maps to follow it all the way to New Orleans. That practically makes us related to people in Mississippi!
You know what else I learned (besides I am capable of performing enormous feats of dorkiness online when no one is looking): If you don't have a good idea for a name for your town, most people have decided just to name it after George Washington. Washington must be the most used name for a town ever. I bet there are over 500 towns just along the Platte River drainage that have Washington in their names.
That's a fact. Look it up.
Oh, one more thing that is cool about google maps: look up Bombay (the one in india). Bombay from satellite is very, very cool.
this is bombay beach. no relation:

So I was doing what I normally do at 8:30 every Saturday morning - furiously sleeping - when the doorbell rang.
Repeatedly.
I wasn't expecting anyone so I figured it was an aggressive little girlscout who was about to get an earful about over-ringing people's doorbells at the crack of 8:30.
As I was walking into the living room to ge tthe door I see this middle-aged guy peeking in the windows and down the side of the house. I realized at that point that if this guy was a mormon or some other religious nut out spreading the word I was going to completely lose it on him.
I opened the door and this pudgy, mustachioed man looks very sternely at me and says: "Bo Lindsay."
Not a question or anything, he just was saying the name for both our benefit.
I stood there bleary-eyed looking at him and he says it again: "Bo Lindsay."
I finally tell him that I think he has the wrong house and he says "You are Bo Lindsay."
Again, not a question, this guy is telling me who he wants me to be. It's at this point I notice this guy has a huge stack of papers in a manilla envelope - this guy is serving Bo Lindsay with a court order to appear. He was just dying to say "Mr. Lindsay you have ben served. Have a nice day."
"No, I'm not Bo Lindsay."
The guy looks seriously pissed off now, and more than a little skeptical that I'm not Bo.
"Does Bo Lindsay live here?"
"No."
"Oh...well...I have court documents for him...... uhhm, sorry," he stammered. He said "sorry" in the least sincere way I've ever heard and he shot me one last suspicious glance and walked down the stairs.
I would have been annoyed by the whole situation, but I know that that guy is having such a shitty day today thinking that the first thing that happened to him this morning was that he was outwitted by me, Bo Lindsay.

As I lay in bed trying to go back to sleep after this whole exchange I put together a list of the guiltiest things I could have said to this guy:

Who wants to know?
You got a warrant?
I know my rights.
No, my name is Moe......Moe Rindsey.
You tell me what you want to tell Bo and I'll let him know.
Let's see some I.D.
Bo's a good guy, why are you guys always hasseling him?
I swear, I'm not Bo.
Look, I'm innocent, you can't accuse me of anything!

Alright, I really shouldn't be posting today.
I have to finish my grad-school essays this afternoon.
I'm kind of stuck on one of them. The essay is something along the lines of "Talk about an ethically challening dilemma in your life and how you got through it."
Maia keeps suggesting horrible scenarios about the times that I didn't roll a bum for the last swallow of his lukewarm 40 oz. Somehow I don't think the review board is looking for that sort of noble sacrifice.
What to do, what to do...
Whatever I end up writing about I've got it stuck in my head that I need to get the Freakwater lyric "there's nothing so pure as the kindness of an athiest" into the essay somewhere.

Alright, no bootleg. I didn't have a place to put my I-pod if they didn't want to let me in with it so I bailed on the whole thing and just went to the show. I'll tell you what though, Flogging Molly is the tightest 8-piece bar band you'll ever see, so if you want to hear last night's show just put their 4 CDs into a playlist and hit random (to truly relive the show turn it off when you hear "Deliala" or you pass out, whichever comes first.) I swear those guys don't miss a note.
There's such a thing as a bad Flogging Molly show.
Observations at the show:
* unless Def Leppard is Pouring Some Sugar on You, please refrain from holding your lighter above your head at a concert.
* note to fat punks: "there's no such thing as a fat punk"
seriously, if you want to sport a mowhawk and array of facial piercings while rocking out your old Clash shirt (that better not be from Target by the way) you had better not be grossly overweight.
There's nothing punk about ordering an extra wad of triple-cream cheese on your sandwich at Wild Oats every day.
Punks eat ramen, when they can afford it. Otherwise they drink their meals.
If you are prone to being a heavyset person please find a different genre to pretend to be a part of. (Perhaps a NASCAR enthusiast?)
* note to budding young ticket scalpers:
Ticket scalping is a dying art. By a strange series of events I ended up with extra tickets to last nights show and I had every intention of scalping them in front of the show. When I got there though, there was nobody buying tix and 2 scalpers with 30 tickets between the two of them. So I did the scalper/perp walk back and forth in front of the Ogden a few times. The black guy scalping asked me if I needed tickets every time I walked by him. After I told him for the third time that I was trying to sell tickets too I asked him if we all just look alike to him.
He didn't forget who I was after that.
* note to my crazy-ass cab driver:
I have no idea what this guy's deal was but I thought I was a goner on the way to the show. My cab driver was racing 70 down the backstreets of Denver zig-zagging through traffic and laying on his horn when someone was too slow in front of him. I have never come across a cabbie this agro -- even in New York.
He cut the meter a couple miles before the Ogden so I could settle with him before he stopped the cab. I thought he was going to take off on me before I was even halfway out of the cab.

Art is subjective, but bad art is unanimous.
First Friday on Santa Fe is something to behold. I'm not sure where they come from but everyone and their brother turn out for the art-walk. Punks and art-hags mingle with "collectors" (i.e. the guys in suits driving cars that normally would never be parked in this part of town) and aging-artists steadfastly refusing to sell-out to corporate - even if they were ever given the chance. The sidewalks are almost too small to hold the gallery-hopping crowd that hits this part of Denver once a month to check out Denver's up-and-comers in the art scene.
I assume they're all there for the art and not the $2 pulls from the gallon jugs of Gallo.
This month's hyped up must-see was the disapointing Art-o-Mart. Plugged as the best in show, the Capsule gallery's affordable art experiment was the art you would find at a travelling strip-mall parking lot "art festival". It was a strange assmeblage of clunky jewelry, ill-concieved Basquiat and Dali homages, and what-I-did-on-my-summer-vacation photography. Oh, and there was an un-ironic picture of a unicorn. The art-world should have a hard/fast "no-unicorn" policy.
I can't draw my way out of a paper bag (and believe me, I've been stuck in many a paper bag that was escapable only by having high-quality drawing skills) but it seems to me that if you are going to be working in a photo-realistic medium and on a large scale you would want to have your artistic skills dialed in. I'm talking perspective, shadows and basic techniques. Something you could learn in two or three life-drawing classes. But time and again on the art walk we were presented with enormous paintings with peculiar little defects. Nothing glaring, but just enough that your eye tells you something is off. How are you going to ask for $1,400 for a painting that everyone notices is "slightly off."
I guess it's taking the time to learn these basics that seperate the good from the great. Everybody wants to claim to be self-taught, but for the most part that phrase translates into "weak" on the canvas.
Just a thought... from someone who can't draw.
Anyway.
Kanon Collective had the most consistently solid show of all the galleries on the walk. (see picture above by Leticia Villarreal.) A collection of abstract painting and photocollages all executed with a level of competence that would have put most of the other galleries to shame -- were the other galleries to have any sense of shame at all, which they obviously didn't with some of the stuff the y were passing off as art. Kanon also has the best New York collective feeling backyard on the tour.

Conversation overheard after the art-walk:
Drunkish Loud Guy Behind Me At Bar: "Oh hey Katarina, nice to meet you, I was just telling these guys about [at this point he went into a needlessly long and detalied lead-up to his story -- which I will spare you, but note that I was not given the same courtesy] so that's when I realized I was peeing in my pants! And it was freezing out that night! So by the time we got to the next bar I had a big frozen pee-stain on my pants!
Katarina: ........ [stunned silence]

Thanks for sharing chief.