Two Fish

brb j/k lol!

2008-07-18T11:52:00.000-07:00

If you are asking yourself how to make money off of people who believe that they will be lifted up to heaven during the rapture, someone beat you to it:

Your Unbelieving Social Network Members Have Been Left Behind!!

This service will allow those who are raptured to send notes and documents to the people who are left on earth:

We all have family and friends who have failed to receive the Good News of the Gospel.
The unsaved will be 'left behind' on earth to go through the "tribulation period" after the "Rapture". You remember how, for a short time, after (9/11/01) people were open to spiritual things and answers. (We are still singing "God Bless America" at baseballs' seventh inning stretch.) Imagine how taken back they will be by the millions of missing Christians and devastation at the rapture. They will know it was true and that they have blown it. There will be a small window of time where they might be reached for the Kingdom of God. We have made it possible for you to send them a letter of love and a plea to receive Christ one last time. You can also send information based on scripture as to what will happen next. Each fulfilled prophecy will cause your letter and plea to be remembered and a decision to be made.
"WHY" is one last chance to bring them to Christ and snatch them from the flames!
...
Services Overview
We have set up a system to send documents by the email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the "Rapture" of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system.

We give you 150mb of encrypted storage that can be sent to 12 possible email addresses, in Box #1. You up load any documents and choose which documents go to who. You can edit these documents at any time and change the addresses they will be sent to as needed. Box #1 is for your personal private letters to your closest lost friends and relatives.

We give you another 100mb. of unencrypted storage that can be sent to up to 50 email addresses, in Box #2. You can edit the documents and the addresses any time. Box #2 is for more generic documents to lost family & friends.
The cost is $40 for the first year. Re-subscription will be reduced as the number of subscribers increases. Tell your friends about You've Been left behind.

This is the email that I would send if I was raptured:

"so long sucker! I'm in heaven with teh jesus. lmao! say hi to the Antichrist for me! lol"

Being Wrong and Social Networks

2008-05-16T11:15:00.000-07:00

I was reading about the latest Phillies win on philly.com today. I also read about Chris Benson and the status of his recovery and if he can help the Phillies rotation sometime this season.

Then something interesting happened. Philly.com started using social networking technology to recommend other articles. At the bottom of the page, they have a section titled "People who read this also read...and bought:". People reading about Benson's shoulder recovery are purchasing tickets on TicketsNow.com, buying Advil and LCD screens. I'm not sure why that is relevant to anyone reading about Benson's recovery, so my first impression of this feature is that it is somewhat pointless but I don't really know or care much about product marketing on the internet.

However, as a sports fan, I find that the article links they provide are worse than pointless, they are often disturbing. For example, the other day I was reading about the previous night's game and then saw a link to an article about Brad Lidge needing surgery. I didn't realize until I looked at the article that it was 2 months old. There is no indication of how old the article is from the link title, so I was very annoyed that I had to open up the article to find out that it was old news. I'm used to browsing sports articles on the internet to see the latest news and do not enjoy having the new mixed in with the old, so I find this feature distracting.

That being said, I did have an amusing experience with the links provided with the Benson article. There was a link titled, "Phillies' Gordon is game, but no longer able."

The article starts out with this definitive conclusion about Tom Gordon based on his performance during opening day, in which he came into a tie game in the 9th and gave up 5 runs while getting only one out leaving him with a 135.01 ERA:

...isn't it time for somebody to step forward and admit that Tom Gordon's right shoulder is cooked?

The 19-year veteran, whose lack of stuff and command was tragically exposed in a ninth-inning, Opening Day meltdown, has pitched the past two seasons with a torn labrum. I got this e-mail yesterday from an orthopedic doctor friend who used to pitch and understands the slippery slope Gordon is trying to climb: "Why would the Phillies continue to believe that an aging reliever with a known labral injury could stay healthy for any length of time without surgery? Bad shoulders do not get healthier with age and work without getting fixed . . . What do the Phillies have to gain by keeping him on the team?"

Good question, Doc. Here's a sport obsessed with pitch counts and which coddles pitchers from cradle to outright release, yet unblinkingly permits injured pitchers to throw. What kind of hypocrisy is that? Does anybody believe that Freddy Garcia was healthy a single inning last year? Gordon is a warrior who wants the baseball. Pride in who he is and where he has been in the sport impels him to take the ball, suck it up and try to earn the $5.5 million he will be paid this season whether he wins Fireman of the Year or winds up having the labrum surgery that will effectively end his career. Flash is 40. He can't come back a year from now and make a living serving up Nerf balls . . .

Tom Gordon has since pitched 17 innings and has given up 2 earned runs for a 1.06 ERA. His season's ERA is down to 3.63 and has been a big part of the Phillies' bullpen, which has been one of the best in the league all season. I looked through Conlin's subsequent articles and did not see him mention anything about Tom Gordon.

damn, this is cute

2008-05-01T17:43:00.000-07:00

Happy Mission Accomplished Day!

2008-05-01T11:28:00.000-07:00

Celebrate by purchasing one of these.

You can also celebrate by going down memory lane and reading what people in the media were saying when Bush landed with his flight suit.

Here is one of my favorites from Chris Matthews:

MATTHEWS: We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like [former President Bill] Clinton or even like [former Democratic presidential candidates Michael] Dukakis or [Walter] Mondale, all those guys, [George] McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits. We don't want an indoor prime minister type, or the Danes or the Dutch or the Italians, or a [Russian Federation President Vladimir] Putin. Can you imagine Putin getting elected here? We want a guy as president.

EDIT: Here's a fun memory from that day:

HA HA! Then why did the banner say Mission Accomplished? Good question Senator!

It reminds me of that part of Catch-22 where everyone celebrated because the front line on the map moved, meaning that they would not have to go on a dangerous bombing run. Yossarian moved the line himself when no one was around, but the map had become reality to everyone, so they celebrated. The Bush administration tried to create their own reality, and failed. John McCain was a willing accomplice in creating this fantasy world.

From Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush, by Ron Suskind, published October 17, 2004 in the New York Times Magazine:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

coachella, or how to fry your brain

2008-04-25T22:18:00.000-07:00

the lineup at coachella looks super fantastic, but you could not pay me to go. the predicted high temp for tomorrow and sunday is 102. COACHELLA IS THE DESERT, PEOPLE.

natural peanut butter

2008-04-22T07:58:00.000-07:00

anybody know any good ways to mix the oil back into the peanut butter without slopping the oil all over everything? it's always a challenge to mix it in when i get a new jar. i wish i had a paint mixer like at home depot so i could just tuck the jar in and turn it on...

Make it Stop

2008-04-08T17:33:00.001-07:00

EDIT: It was made to stop because of copyright. It was another one of those McCain/Rain songs.

Never mind.

Smell You Later!

2008-04-08T14:42:00.000-07:00

Late April Fools?

NTT Communications Corp. will move ahead with a pilot trial of its Mobile Fragrance Communications service that enables users of its mobile technology to experience scents emitted through an aroma generator built into handheld devices, according to a Japanese media report.

NTT, a unit of NTT DoCoMo , will begin trials of the new service Thursday using 20 volunteers and hopes to commercialize the service later this year, according to a report in the business daily Nikkei.

The handheld device is designed to work together with music and video downloads, whereby scents are combined according to a fragrance playlist linked to audiovisual content

Is Busta Rhymes ignorant?

2008-03-29T11:20:00.000-07:00

bust out laughing

2008-03-26T07:46:00.000-07:00

from indexed

rainin' mccain

2008-03-23T20:49:00.000-07:00

eagerly anticipating a jawbone

2008-03-17T20:51:00.000-07:00

i'd grown tired of talking to people on my hands-free phone device and having them ask me, "are you in some sort of wind tunnel?" i ordered a jawbone (silver, not red, 'cause i ain't flashy). it was shipped today. all kinds of geekiness anticipation ensues.

why surfers run

2008-03-13T20:29:00.000-07:00

we've seen this a lot: we'll be sitting in a cafe on the boardwalk and a surfer will run by. why does he run? the sand isn't hot yet and they're not late for anything but waves. dave talked to a surfer and was told that surfers run because they're excited to get out in the water. is this true? any surfers out there?

the aloha attitude

2008-03-13T20:20:00.000-07:00

there's something about living near a beach that i've always enjoyed. everybody does their own thing and nobody hassles anybody about it. you could be a guy in a turban on roller blades, playing a guitar strapped to an amp around your waist and nobody says, "whoa, freak." instead they say, "dude, that's cool," and then go on doing their own crazy thing, like building dragon sand castles on the boardwalk with incense sticks for nose smoke. until recently i didn't know this vibe had a name: the aloha attitude. the aloha attitude means that everybody gets their own space and respect. isn't that a nice way to live?

singing telegram

2008-02-21T04:04:00.001-08:00

if you are my friend
and i know when your birthday is
and i remember when your birthday is
and i'm not too busy
and i'm at home in front of my computer
i will send you a singing telegram from the kakomessenger
p.s. you may want to remind me later that we've had this discussion

nightingale song generator

2008-02-21T03:58:00.000-08:00

i pasted the text from a recent rejection letter i got from a gallery into the nightingale song generator and was soothed. hey, it's not so bad, there will be other galleries!

(yoinked from the generator blog)

the facebook effect

2008-02-18T15:54:00.000-08:00

i'm heavy into facebook at the moment, as my friends and colleagues are all wrapped up in social networking software. there's a field in facebook where you can type in your "status." when i first joined facebook my friends were putting boring things into their status updates, like "xxx is at work," "xxx is hungry," or "xxx is sick." as time has worn on my friends are getting more creative with their entries. they're doing silly things like only using song lyrics from a particular band to update their statuses. it's much more entertaining now.

facebook status updates are having a curious effect on me, though. i'm now starting to mentally update my own status even when i'm not logged into facebook. i'll be sitting on the couch and this will pop into my head, "photo_re really wishes tivo would stop trying to get me to click on their advertising button." it's like i'm thinking about myself in the third person, almost. it's creeping me out. "photo_re is creeped out." see?

if gnomes existed

2008-02-18T15:48:00.000-08:00

if gnomes existed i would want one to always have a latte ready for me, whenever i wanted one. i would call him my coffee gnome.

if gnomes existed i would have one just for matting and framing of photographs. framing is such a time consuming process and something i really don't enjoy. if a gnome could do that work for me, that would be great. he would be my framing gnome.

my friend v wishes she had a gnome to get her son motivated to get out the door in the mornings. i suppose this one would be called a motivational gnome.

if you had a gnome, what would you have it do for you?

suuuppppppeeerrr ttttuuuuuuueeeessddaaayy

2008-02-05T07:14:00.000-08:00

i've done my homework on the various propositions and am ready to go to the polls.

dog fur in my iphone

2008-01-28T21:11:00.000-08:00

i found a dog hair wedged in a crevice on my iphone today. that's about all i have to report at the moment.

antm

2008-01-27T21:06:00.000-08:00

does it seem to you that the t.v. show, "america's next top model," is always on? i swear i can always find an episode of it on if i flip channels long enough.

sensitive

2008-01-20T20:34:00.000-08:00

i hadn't trimmed my fingernails in a while and now i just cut them too short. jeezus! sensitive fingertips.

Do it afraid

2008-01-17T15:34:00.000-08:00

Former Phillie, Doug Glanville, lends his perspective to the issues that factor into a baseball player's mental state prior to the decision to use steroids.

holes

2008-01-17T15:29:00.000-08:00

how many doughnut holes do you think equal one doughnut? i just ate 4 of them and feel much sicker than if i had just eaten a doughnut proper...

Don't tase me Hasbro!

2008-01-11T12:39:00.000-08:00

Don't take away my scrabulous.

nothing more black

2008-01-09T21:53:00.000-08:00

as a digital photographer there is nothing more irritating than spending loads of time tweaking a black&white image on the computer to draw out the midtones and having them print like muck. this happens because a monitor has emitted light whereas the printed page just has reflected light, so things on the screen look brighter than on paper. after a while i learned how to calibrate the monitor so my midtones on paper looked more or less like they do on the screen. the one thing that can never be truly accurate, however, is black. on the monitor there's always light emitted so you end up with just a very dark gray. this is sad. that is, UNTIL NOW. HOLY CRAP, CHECK OUT THIS SCREEN THAT WILL SHOW ABSOLUTE BLACK: http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/01/more-on-pioneer.html

i want to know when they are going to make a computer monitor 'cuz i want one.

fm3buddhamachine

2008-01-08T21:31:00.000-08:00

i'm totally blissed out at the arrival in the mail of my new fm3buddhamachine.

a production observation

2008-01-08T08:03:00.000-08:00

they're filming right in front of our house this morning. people are crawling all over the place with cables, rods, scrims, and other production-sounding things that i don't know the names of. i'm wondering how i'm going to walk the dogs before i leave for work. dave thought i should go out and ask them if they needed any barking dogs in the scene, and then let them know they're going to get them even if they don't need them. we're generous like that.

so look for the front of our house in a movie whose title doesn't show up in imdb and whose production company name produces no hits in a google search.

registered to vote, maybe

2008-01-07T21:20:00.000-08:00

why is it so freaking difficult to get registered to vote in l.a.? it took me three times when we first moved here to actually get a confirmation postcard from them. and then, dear god, we moved, and i had to do it all over again. there's not some nifty, "i've moved!" form to fill in. you actually have to register from scratch. yeah, there's a spot on the form to tell them where you lived before, but that's not so much a consolation when you have to fill out the form three times. i hadn't yet heard anything from my latest attempt to register so i called the office to see if they've gotten my registration form, and confirmed my new address. i'm not holding my breath that i'll get a confirmation card, either. if i weren't politically inclined there's no way i'd go to all this trouble.

Baseboogle

2008-01-07T15:29:00.000-08:00

Because baseball + Google = baseboogle.

It's a search engine customized to search through high quality baseball analysis websites, like Baseball Prospectus, Baseball Referene, Baseball Graphs, Baseball Think Factory, etc.

From Balls, Sticks and Stuff

Point Counterpoint: Who was the best team in the NL East in 2007?

2008-01-04T14:39:00.000-08:00

Carlos Delgado says it was the Mets:

"It was very disappointing because we know that we had the best team. And I believe that we still have a great team," the first baseman said Thursday on a conference call.

Please continue. What the matter? You were finished? Well, allow me to retort:

Call me a cynic...

2008-01-03T21:35:00.000-08:00

But I think that Rudy Guliani is trying to play on fear of Muslims in this new ad:

what's with the nighttime host beard competition?

2008-01-03T21:31:00.000-08:00

which do you support: letterman's beard or conan's beard? a caucus on this topic is to be held in iowa next week.

Battering Ram

2008-01-03T09:46:00.000-08:00

filming on my street

2008-01-01T18:31:00.000-08:00

you know you're a californian when you get the advance notice of filming taped to your door and your initial thought is, "how is this going to fuck up the traffic in the area," rather than, "cool! i might get to see someone famous!"

bears in ill-fitting hats

2007-12-28T13:05:00.000-08:00

thanks to wondermark for pointing me to this fun site

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-25T12:36:00.000-08:00

link link

Military Contractors and the Rule of Law

2007-12-20T12:41:00.000-08:00

Lawmakers fault Justice Department for not investigating rape

Republicans and Democrats lambasted the Justice Department on Wednesday, charging it with failing to promptly investigate allegations that several Halliburton/KBR workers gang-raped a fellow employee in Iraq.

Jamie Leigh Jones of Houston told a House Judiciary Committee panel that she was drugged, raped and held against her will in 2005 at Camp Hope, a KBR camp in Baghdad. No one has been charged with attacking Jones.

Peter Carr, a Justice Department spokesman, said it has given Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the committee, a detailed explanation of its authority to investigate and prosecute criminal misconduct involving Americans who are contract employees in Iraq.

This isn't the only instance of military contractors acting outside of the law and getting away with murder (and rape). (Here is a video that describes the shootings by Blackwater employees.) In the hearing yesterday on this subject, no one from the Justice Department even bothered to show up:

Wednesday, December 19, 2007. The House Judiciary Committee convenes a hearing to look into the Justice Department’s handling of allegations of crime involving contractors in Iraq. It started with the case of Jamie Leigh Jones, and we quickly learned that this was just one of a substantial number of cases involving rape and sexual assault. The Justice Department is invited to send a witness to explain its policies and inaction. At the last minute, the Justice Department’s congressional liaison sends a poorly informed letter claiming that the cases the committee will investigate are “under investigation” though, as we learn, the Department of Justice’s “investigation” got launched just about the time the Department learned that Congress was going to take a look. The Justice Department said it would be improper for the Justice Department to respond. Mind you, the Committee’s request was not for the Department to talk about any particular case, but about how it dealt in concept with contractor crimes.

Committee chair John Conyers was outraged. And he wasn’t alone. A group of Republican representatives who participated in the hearing were equally miffed. Everyone agreed, of course, that the Justice Department shouldn’t discuss on-going investigations. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was the how the Department was addressing criminality involving contractors in Iraq generally.

But as became clear from the evidence presented at the hearing, the Department doesn’t deal with crimes involving contractors. It has a policy of official indifference to them. So here we see a clear-cut case where the Justice Department has a law enforcement mandate to deal with serious violent crimes such as murder, assault and rape, and chooses to do nothing. A question of resource allocation, evidently. You see, for the Bush Administration, murder, assault and rape are not as important as other things.

This should not come as a surprise, as the President clearly does not think this is an important enough detail for him to think about. Watch the video below from a question and answer session with Bush in April 2006. He says that the question about the rule of law over military contractors in Iraq is important, but it is clear from his ignorance of the issue and his jokes and laughter that he does not consider the issue raised by the question is something he should be concerned with. The self declared "decider" even jokes about delegating the decision about the contractors to someone else.

After watching that performance, is there any doubt why contractors are getting away with rape, murder, etc.?

Irony potential

2007-12-18T12:35:00.000-08:00

Police ordered to pull over people doing nothing wrong

Motorists may be in for a surprise if they spot flashing red lights in their rearview mirrors in this Sacramento suburb during the holiday season. Police are stopping law-abiding motorists and rewarding their good driving with $5 Starbucks gift cards.

A traffic officer came up with the idea to "promote the holiday spirit and enhance goodwill between the traffic unit and the motoring public," police Sgt. Tim Curran said.

If I'm on my way to work and a cop pulls me over to give me a gift card for doing nothing wrong, I guarantee that, after he lets me go, I'm going to be speeding so that I can get to work on time.

Unselfishness

2007-12-16T21:32:00.000-08:00

B-West

911 can be busy?

2007-12-14T22:32:00.000-08:00

all operators helping other people? seriously? well, i guess i'll go tell those nice men shooting guns at each other outside my house to just shoo, then, since i have to take this into my own hands.

blue pants, not blue

2007-12-05T17:07:00.000-08:00

i thought they were blue but my staff inform me that they are actually purple. how in the hell did i buy purple pants?

the right number of hot wings

2007-12-01T19:04:00.000-08:00

my magic number is twelve. more than that, and i'm stuffed. fewer than 12 and i want more.

i wish i drove a bumper car

2007-11-30T10:41:00.000-08:00

angelenos can be pretty aggressive on the freeway. for example, if you're in a lane that someone else wants to get in, all they do is drive in the lane next to you and then start edging over into your lane. this is when you need to make a decision: drop back and let them get in front of you, stay where you are and let your car get hit. it is during these times when i wish i drove a bumper car, so that i could stay in my lane and they would simply bounce off of my car. problem solved!

peanut butter flavored dog food?

2007-11-28T08:36:00.000-08:00

is it universal that dogs love peanut butter? if so, why isn't there any peanut-butter flavored dog food out there on the market?

earthquake preparedness=wildfire preparedness

2007-10-24T07:55:00.001-07:00

within a week of moving to socal a couple years ago we felt our first earthquake. we made an earthquake preparedness bag, got some water jugs and stored some food, and then kind of forgot about it. with the recent wildfires we made a list of what we'd like to take if we had to leave our house within 5 minutes. as the list grew i was reminded of the earthquake bag. what was in there again? turns out, lots of good stuff: hand cranked radio, mini lantern, extra dog leashes, plastic gloves, work gloves, cups, contact lens cases and solution, spare glasses, emergency contact info (insurance acct numbers, phone numbers, etc.). it turns out that our earthquake preparedness bag is an all-purpose preparedness bag. i'm going to add some protein bars to it and hope i remember to switch them out before they expire. is there anything else you'd recommend adding to our bag?

it's so dry

2007-10-23T20:35:00.000-07:00

how dry is it?

it's so dry that when i washed my face tonight i was left with red skin that was on fire, just begging for moisture. i have very oily skin, so this is quite an amazing development. i'm not even sure if i have moisturizer.

it's so dry that i woke up in the middle of the night last night to get a drink of water.

it's so dry that when i laughed at what d said to me last night, my lip split.

oh, also, it's hot too, but we can't open the windows to let the cool air in because then we would get all the smoke and particles coming in from the fires nearby.

dear l.a.: a rain taxonomy

2007-10-15T20:37:00.000-07:00

dear l.a.,
if you would describe the current weather with any of the following characteristics, please slow down while driving on the freeway. i don't want to hear your screeching brakes and hydroplaning across the i-10 anymore.
with concern,
photo_re

storm

"it's raining buckets"
"it's raining cats and dogs"
"it's really coming down out there"
"a steady downpour"

sprinkles

"it's misting"
"it's spritzing"
"mostly marine layer"
"some drizzle"
"off and on"

toothless

2007-10-05T07:26:00.001-07:00

our dog had some of his tiny front teeth removed from the top and bottom of his mouth a while back, and now when he's just about to drift off to sleep his tongue pokes out.

what is that stuff falling from the sky?

2007-09-22T17:12:00.000-07:00

remember that seinfeld episode in which jerry cries, but it's been so long since he last cried he doesn't understand where the salty discharge is coming from? that's how we felt here in l.a. when the black clouds moved in and the rain started yesterday.

fed-ex delivery

2007-09-16T18:18:00.000-07:00

arrived home to a rather large box blocking the front door, with the door mat draped over it. you couldn't have come in the front door without moving the box out of the way. curiously, the fed-ex person left a note on the door knob that says, "we left your package(s) at: under mat."

these bookstore owners are idiots

2007-09-03T12:31:00.000-07:00

http://www.kctv5.com/news/14034556/detail.html

the article states that the owner offered their used books to anyone that wanted them, but no one stepped up to take them away. the article says they got "thousands" of emails describing ways that they could put the books to use, donate, or sell them. but that was too hard, apparently, so they just burned them. and they say that they burned them in order to protest that no one reads anymore.

my system worked!

2007-08-22T13:36:00.000-07:00

i had the occasion to use my system again today, and it worked like a charm.

the question: do you have a list of all the books we've bought in the last couple years?

my response: hmm...

the reply: that's probably hard. i didn't think you would keep a list.

my response: ok.

alert: i'm having a hostess snoballs craving

2007-08-22T12:40:00.000-07:00

but i want the pink ones, not the white ones.

somebody needs to tell dennis kucinich...

2007-08-20T07:51:00.000-07:00

...how to use the terms qualitative and quantitative correctly. in a recent debate he said something about needing to teach our kids to be qualitative, to learn about art and culture. he said we didn't need to teach them to be quantitative, or "good little test takers." he made a little hand motion, as if he were typing on a keyboard, during his comment on "test takers."

171 Starbucks

2007-07-29T13:21:00.000-07:00

green coffee

2007-07-27T11:12:00.000-07:00

read this article to find about a company using a solar oven in order to roast their coffee beans. that's so cool!

flapper

2007-07-23T14:48:00.000-07:00

me: i had a great weekend!
you: what did you do?
me: thanks for asking. i did a little bit of home repair.
you: really? what did you fix?
me: the toilet kept flushing itself, so i replaced the flapper.
you: wow.
me: yep.

pushover

2007-07-13T10:50:00.001-07:00

there's a woman at work who is a total pushover. today she asked me to do something for her that would have taken me a really long time. as i was thinking about ways to accomplish the task quicker than i suspected it would take, she was just kind of standing there, waiting. eventually she said, "oh, that's ok, never mind, it wasn't that important."

the lesson i've learned: the next time she asks me to do something for her, i'll just stand there a while, and then she'll say "never mind."

O HAI Google Earth

2007-06-19T14:11:00.000-07:00

don't take it personally

2007-06-15T19:28:00.000-07:00

whenever i run toward something in my house, the dogs try to beat me to it. this ends up with all of us in a heap on the floor sometimes because the dogs *try* to beat me there, but they get tangled up in my feet. or else i'll step on them as we make our way toward whatever it is, which is no good for anyone. so lately if the doorbell rings or my cell phone rings i'll get up real casual-like and make my way toward the noise, checking to see if the dogs are coming, and if they're not, run the rest of the way there. this has only worked a couple of times. i think they're on to me, trying to be sly. so if you call me on my cell phone or ring the doorbell and i don't answer, don't take it personally. it just means i didn't get there in time.

Dear Interpol,

2007-06-07T07:57:00.000-07:00

Things on the west coast are just fine, thanks for asking! How are things in NYC?

Love and kisses,

photo_re

Creation

2007-06-02T23:02:00.000-07:00

LOL Creationists

Here's where stupid people get stupider.

(BTW, here is a cool site where you can build your own LOL picture.)

dream snippet

2007-05-30T21:28:00.000-07:00

sunday night/monday morning i was having a dream in which i stood in my grandparent's back yard, looking toward their neighbor's house. that's all, it was just a brief image flash, but when i woke up i spent a good long time trying to remember the name of the woman that lived in that house.

later that day my dad emailed to tell me that mrs. x, the woman that lived behind my grandparent's house, died monday morning.

quite unsettling.

And in local news...

2007-05-29T21:33:00.000-07:00

Director Mike Figgis Detained for Threatening to "Shoot a Pilot"

Director Mike Figgis was going through security at LAX when he was asked the reason for his visit. "I'm here to shoot a pilot," was his response.
...
The director... was then detained for about five hours.

EDIT: It was a hoax

And in local news...

2007-05-27T21:13:00.000-07:00

From the pages of the LA Times Local section,...May 27, 2007.

Lohan arrested in suspected DUI crash

On Saturday, onlookers gathered outside the Beverly Hills police station as word of Lohan's arrest spread. "I think it's sad," said Susan Beck, who was walking her dog. "She has too much time and too much money."

my student workers are the coolest

2007-05-25T16:22:00.000-07:00

in addition to my staff i also have a few student workers. one of them noticed that i had a few hello kitty pencils in my pencil cup and today gifted me with a hello kitty notepad and tissues. it's not my birthday or anything, she just saw the stuff, remembered that i liked it, and got it for me. isn't that the best thing you ever heard of?

And in local news...

2007-05-25T12:33:00.000-07:00

From the pages of the LA Times Local section,...May 25, 2007.

Police pursue protective pigeon proprietors:

Roller pigeons are bred for a genetic quirk that strikes in mid-flight, causing a brief seizure that sends the birds spiraling uncontrollably toward the ground. Thousands of hobbyists compete to see who can best make their birds roll in unison.
But for a hawk or falcon, a plummeting roller pigeon is fast food. Fed up by raptors spoiling their sport, some of the leading competitors in the roller pigeon field began illegally killing the predators, according to a federal indictment released Thursday.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents arrested seven men from Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, including the president of the sport's national umbrella group, on charges of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a misdemeanor.The agents blame the clubs that the men belong to for killing 1,000 to 2,000 hawks and falcons in Southern California every year."When you take out a predatory bird, you're taking out the upper end of the food chain," said Special Agent Lisa Nichols of the Fish and Wildlife Service. "It blows the balance of everything."

I wonder what breeding birds to have seizures does to the balance of everything.

why i didn't get a treo

2007-05-24T19:41:00.000-07:00

i actually ordered one of these, had it in my hand, ready to purchase. i considered how easy it would be to send text messages and emails, wherever i was. then i considered that the only time i am ever really away from a computer is when i'm on the freeway. knowing myself, and how fleeting many of my thoughts are, i knew that i would be trying to drive and text myself things to do or think about. this seemed like a poor plan for my longevity, so i handed the treo back to the salesperson and opted for a small, cute slider phone.

silversun pickups

2007-05-24T10:26:00.000-07:00

i love the lead singer's voice in silversun pickups but i can hardly stand the heavy-handed backup he gets from the band. i'd love to pluck his voice out of the group and put him with early smashing pumpkins, in their "gish" era. you know, where the music was as inventive as the vocals?

stop me before i become my mother

2007-05-16T20:42:00.000-07:00

holy crap, i just turned in to my mother there for a second. i'm in the kitchen and need a pen so i go to the office, see my computer, write a few emails, finish up, look for my beer. wait, my beer's in the kitchen, right? back to the kitchen and, shit! where's that pen i needed? back to the office...

master, not doctor

2007-05-16T19:50:00.000-07:00

i had a manuscript accepted for publication (yay!), and today i received an email from the publisher, addressed to dr. photo_re. i don't have a phd, but i do have a master's degree. can i just get everyone to call me master photo_re? actually, dave reminded me that i have two master's degrees, so ya'll should be calling me master master photo_re. let it be so, bitches.

science badge for dave

2007-05-12T15:46:00.000-07:00

snip from the Order of the Science Scouts web page:"The "statistical linear regression" badge.
We figured that if you actually know what those three words together mean, then you deserve a badge. Statistics rock!

(http://scq.ubc.ca/sciencescouts/index.html#47, NG)"

link: http://scq.ubc.ca/sciencescouts/

smoke or marine layer?

2007-05-09T19:14:00.000-07:00

as i drove home to venice today from work in east l.a. i passed through a giant cloud of hazy air. i asked myself, "am i driving into a fire or is this a marine layer?" this is a reasonable question for l.a. at the moment, for if you didn't know, our giant urban park is on fire. a sniff test quickly determined that the cloud was a marine layer.

coachella

2007-04-28T17:05:00.000-07:00

just one more day to have to hear the word, "coachella," repeated ad nauseum. it's all people have been talking about for like the last month. it's a sold-out music thing like lollapalooza, but in the middle of the desert. a weather report noted that it was 108 degrees there today. suckers.

brady quinn

2007-04-28T11:25:00.000-07:00

will someone please pick him? watching the nfl draft this year is torturous.

[UPDATE]: thanks very much, cleveland browns! now that photo of quinn as a kid dressed in your team's outfit doesn't seem so sad.

backing up on the 405

2007-04-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

the 405 is a major freeway here in l.a., and it's always a mess. it's not wide enough to accommodate the amount of traffic it sees and so there are often wrecks, jacknifed rigs, etc. dave just phoned to tell me that as he got close to the wilshire blvd exit, which one takes to get to ucla, he noticed that everyone trying to exit was at a complete stop. why? because someone had pulled into the exit lane by mistake and was BACKING UP THE EXIT LANE TO GET BACK ON THE FREEWAY.

kajon cermak's traffic reports give me road rage

2007-04-18T21:14:00.000-07:00

this woman feels the same way i do

i'm keith hernandez

2007-04-18T15:41:00.000-07:00

we were recently in nyc, and walking under a construction walk-through we noticed a spray painted sign on the wall that said, "i'm keith hernandez." we chuckled, remembering the seinfeld episode when elaine dates keith, but then didn't think much else of it. but the other day as i was driving on the i-10 here in l.a. i saw the same sign spray painted under an overpass. research ensued, and i find that these signs are actually adverts for an upcoming film called--you guessed it--"i'm keith hernandez."

damn, my web searching skillz rock.

http://imkeithhernandez.com/

"Generally speaking, a dead body is not a good omen for the start of a baseball season."

2007-04-17T11:13:00.000-07:00

Baseball is back in Philadelphia.

What am I?

2007-04-15T19:35:00.000-07:00

mcclown

2007-04-11T19:34:00.000-07:00

every time i hear john mccain speak, he gets funnier. his reality seems to not actually be based in this world. the things he says make me chuckle, like iraq being safer now. titter. also, it appears to me that he is becoming more round and short. soon we will be able to pop him into the air like a beach ball at a rock concert.

showdown food

2007-03-31T12:47:00.000-07:00

go gators. now, if you'll excuse us, we need to go to the grocery store and load up on ruffles and french onion dip.

the last of "the show"

2007-03-18T09:25:00.000-07:00

so long, ze. i enjoyed the year of your show.

the link to his last show: http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2007/03/031707.html

pass the tanning butter

2007-03-15T10:23:00.000-07:00

on my way to work today i heard the b-52s song, "rock lobster." it has been a long while since i last heard that song, and until today i hadn't realized what a weird song it is.

in high school, after each performance of a musical or play (i was a geek, what can i say), we would hop on the stage and dance to "rock lobster," followed by "the time warp," from the rocky horror picture show. it all seemed perfectly normal and reasonable back then. but then today i actually listened to the words of the song. wack!

lyric snip: "We were at a party
His ear lobe fell in the deep
Someone reached in and grabbed it
It was a rock lobster"

note to self

2007-03-11T14:17:00.001-07:00

two smores is not a healthy lunch choice

friday nights are for pizza

2007-03-09T19:24:00.000-08:00

almost every friday night we get a pizza. it's a tradition that calls an end to the work week. there's no time spent in the kitchen, no plates to clean up after. i usually eat one slice too many. heaven.

you know what blows?

2007-03-05T21:58:00.000-08:00

coming into your office on a monday morning to find that over the weekend a pipe above your desk leaked, which sent water through the ceiling tiles onto your desktop, chair, carpet, keyboard, mouse, etc.

p.s. wet carpet smells real bad.

new dentist

2007-02-27T21:28:00.000-08:00

i ran through the list of dentists available through my plan, and there were a million of them within 5 miles of the zip code i put in the search box. i looked at their dates of their degree, where they got their degree, and what languages they spoke. farsi? sold!

britney spears in rehab?

2007-02-16T19:36:00.000-08:00

wait, there's other news besides the turmoil surrounding anna nicole?

thai food threshhold?

2007-02-16T16:11:00.000-08:00

i wonder if one can ever have too much thai food. i just had it for lunch and now i'm thinking i'd like it for dinner too. i ate some earlier this week, and the last couple fridays we've gone out for thai. that seems like a lot, right? and yet i don't feel anywhere near being sick of it. perhaps i have a bottomless pit for thai?

how to make sure i'm not going to read your blog post

2007-02-07T07:25:00.000-08:00

if you always tell me in the first few words of your blog posts that something is amazing, amazing, amazing, or *amazing*, my brain turns off and i'm not interested anymore. it's not that i don't value your opinion; hell, i'm reading your blog. it's just that if you've already processed the information and are telling me that something is amazing i don't have anything left to experience for myself. i'll go to whatever you're pointing me to and expect to feel amazed. and what if i don't agree with you? then i'm sad.

moral of the story: if you use the word AMAZING in your blog posts, do it sparingly. this also goes for FABULOUS, THE BEST, COOLEST, FUNNIEST, etc.

melissa moss

2007-01-30T07:29:00.000-08:00

we ran into this artist's work while in a gallery on abbot kinney over the weekend. i'm not sure what the little characters in the paintings are about, but they're adorable.

i really like her pieces with mushrooms in them:

O RLY?

2007-01-24T21:14:00.000-08:00

the short life of a chapstick

2007-01-23T10:25:00.000-08:00

my mom sent me a tube of strawberry chapstick to put in my christmas stocking. i reluctantly opened it at the turn of the calendar, with memories of cake-y, globby chapstick. it had been many years since i last used chapstick, so i thought i'd give it another chance. the first two weeks were glorious; it was smooth and glossy and didn't coat my lips like they were going to a frozen tundra. i kept it by my computer and every time i sat down i would put some on and smack my lips. strawberry goodness! but alas, that time has passed. last night when i applied it i was left with a thick layer of uneven glop on my lips.

what have we learned here? a tube of chapstick is meant to last about 3 weeks. they should put an expiration date on it, like milk.

nancy's state-of-the-union address outfit

2007-01-22T13:55:00.000-08:00

someone from the al franken show suggested nancy pelosi wear this tshirt to tomorrow night's state of the union address. she'll be sitting next to cheney:

more on david lynch weather reports

2007-01-20T07:47:00.000-08:00

i previously posted about david lynch's weather reports on our indie radio station here in l.a.
it turns out he doesn't so much report the weather in socal as wherever he happens to be, which is somehow even funnier. you too can get david lynch's weather report by going to his website.

clean squeaky toys

2007-01-20T07:40:00.000-08:00

here's an action shot of my dog taking his freshly washed and dried squeaky toys out of the dryer.

She just doesn't like pickles

2007-01-15T20:36:00.000-08:00

Link

...da Eagles

2007-01-13T22:20:00.001-08:00