Friday, January 06, 2012

New Addition - 2011


Alot has gone on since 2009.....

Thursday, August 06, 2009

H100's - Dismantle 7"




I'm pretty sure this 7" fucking rules with lyrics like this:

when your runnin' from the pigs, one thing thats on your mind, this is to get the fuck outta here, destroy all mankind!

awesome

Iceburn - Burn/Fall 7"


Just as a usb turntable bonus:

the iceburn - burn/fall 7" on an extremely shitty record that I traded for from a guy who hates records apparently.

enjoy

USB turntable? YES!

I was on woot.com the other day and they had one of those USB turntables that allows you to rip your records to mp3, so I fucking bought one.

so awesome.

so so so awesome...as I type this I'm listening to Iceburn's first 7" - a clear record first press....so sweet.

so fun.

The entire motivation for buying this comes not only from my overwhelming music snobbish record collection of shitty punk and hardcore music, but to get a single record on mp3 that I've had now for years.

the Fugazi - 3 songs 7".



and not just any 7", the 7" that I have. When I was in high school I borrowed this 7" to my friend who promptly never played it but put it on his dresser next to his window in his bedroom for a summer.

I assume that it was the sun, and not the overwhelming stench of teen-age dude room that warped this record slightly, leaving a whispy noise in the audio when it played.

the thing is, I think it added the perfect character to the song "Joe #1". the song starts with just an overwhelmingly spectacular bass riff and drumming, and then there are a few pauses in the song, where you can hear the whisp of the warped record.

I think it sounds awesome, and here it is, download it, add it, love it.

I love fugazi, I love this record, I love this goddamn turntable.

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Leadville drama

SO I'm working on a field project up near leadville, colorado. I decided to be a hard-ass this week and CAMP while working, rather than stay in a hotel.

Of course, in my life, if I ever want to try out a new adventure, I have an extremely strong desire to make sure it goes smoothly. of course since I'm writing about it, it never does.

Since I was camping:

1. I wanted to make sure that I got a good campsite
2. I would have everything to keep me warm and comfortable - it gets fucking cold up here
3. I wanted to make sure that I had all the shit I needed so that I would wake up on time and be able to make it to work.

I arrived here and began working on monday. During the lunch hour I thought that I could take care of #1 by getting to the campsite early. Of course, when I got to the campsite, I didn't have any cash, and I realized I left my checkbook at the field trailer where we are working. (the national forest service doesn't take debit cards, apparently).

I met the camp host there, an older guy who looked exactly like a national forest service camp host should look:

-straw sweat-stained cowboy hat
-grizzled beard
-fingernails just a bit too long
-pull-on flat-soled boots
-leather vest/flannel shirt combo
-had some weird androgynous name that reminded you of a johnny cash song
-had busted old chevy conversion van rv from the late 1970's
-sold cowboy art on the site
-was cooking bacon for lunch

he seemed nice so I shook his hand and he was all "whatcha doin' out here?" we talked briefly and then I realized I couldn't pay him.

He looked a bit pissed, but then said "well go on...git'cher money".

Of course I only had my lunch hour to pay up before I had to get back to work, I sped out of there, grabbed my checkbook from the trailer, and was on my way back when an ambulance showed up in the rearview mirror.

I was like "of course, I'm trying to get this to run smoothly, so far I can't pay up, I'm running out of time, and now I gotta pull over and let this fucking ambulance pass over....with my luck, its probably going to the same fucking campsite"

...so I pull up to the campsite, and there is a firetruck, the sheriff, and the ambulance not only at the same camp area, but actually at the camp host's RV.

What the FUCK?!

Obviously I couldn't pay him up so I threw my tent down on site #6, paid the honor box at the campground sign, and bolted back to work.

That night I went and got groceries and who was in the pasta isle, but the fucking camp host.

now there's two ways to play this one:

1. ignore the dude, go to another part of the store, and then return and hope he didn't see you.
2. say "hey there, pardon my reach...see you later!"

so I did #1, but the guy was just hovering around the pizza-squirt and I had to get some or my smooth camping plans would have to be changed again. So I finally said "well how's it going...pardon my reach"

he talked to me for a minute, and while I was contemplating the non-refrigerated parmizan cheese, I found out that his wife had a pelvic problem. fine. fuck it. whatever dude, if she's fine, I'm gonna go back to the camp and hang out.

One thing about smooth camping, is that you don't have to deal with ANYONE, just sit there, read your book, eat camp food, drink beer.

so I pay up, get to the camp, and assume thats the end of it...

the next day I return to camp after work and the camp host is sitting in a golf cart by my camp wearing a wax-canvas duster jacket and stroking his beard like I just stole his cattle. Turns out I overpaid. so I talked him, figured out the payment, and then he mentioned his wife.

I said "yeah, how is she"
he said "she got real dehydrated, they don't know if she's gonna make it"
me: "really? shit man, you seem like a fighter, if she's like you, she'll be fine"
him: "well she has had 2 strokes"
me: "thats terrible"
him: "we've been married 46 years, and she's over at the hosiptal, I can't be there, I couldn't handle watching her die"

at this point his eyes get kinda watery, and he had those old man eyes: kinda yellow-red all the time.

fuck.

we talked a little more, I engaged him, listened to him talk about how they traveled in their RV all over, from Idaho, down to arizona, through colorado, up here to the leadville area.

I said "well shit man...she'll be ok, she's in colorado now they have good doctors up here, and I'm sure she's gettin' the best care"
He said: "they might ship her to denver, if they do, I gotta go..."

the conversation finally ended, but I spent all of last night all thinking and worried about that guy and his wife. here's the thing:

he said he couldn't be with her and watch her die. Far be it from me to judge a man who has been married 46 years...I'm sure that would be the single hardest thing any one person can ever have to do in their life. but I thought, "what about her?" what if she's in that fucking hospital right now wondering where he is? wondering who will be there with her. what if she does die, will she die with no one around but fucking doctors?

which lead me to wonder what he would be thinking...and then that made me think about how much pain he must be feeling. this fucking old man in a yellow chevy van by himself. The only way he knows how to handle this situation is to just sit there and do nothing, maybe he's even delusional, maybe he's so scared he can't move, who fucking knows. I can't imagine that burden. I really fucking can't even come close to that.

I sat there while the sun went down, built a little fire, and thought about all that shit. I could see his RV through the trees and just thought to myself "He'll stay here if she's ok, if she gets transferred to denver, he'll have to leave, and if she dies...he'll also leave...if that RV just stays here all night, that means she's ok...she's not dead"

The RV was gone this morning when I woke up.

Friday, June 05, 2009

A night at the museum.

So I took a position volunteering at the Denver Museum of natural history, in the “prehistoric journey” exhibit (that’s the dinosaur and fossil hall).

Its surprisingly pretty fun. I kinda just stand/sit around and talk to people about my favorite fossils. Sometimes if they hang around me a bit too long I start telling them all the random bits of trivia that I know (about fossils).

I mainly talk with kids and the occasional adult.

Here’s a few observations:

1. This position has renewed my faith in humanity. Its actually interesting the cross-section of America that not only knows something about science, but in their free time they pay to come and learn more. I’ve talked with real-tree-hat wearing good-ole-boys that really wanted to hear some cool stuff about Paleozoic sea transgressions. There’ve been old crusty people that really want to know what’s with the suture patterns on ammonites. I’ve talked with soccer moms and suburban Nike-sport-polo wearing dad’s who are genuinely interested in Eocene placental radiation.

2. I’ve learned a bit of patience. I’ve only had 2 creationists come and talk to me, and since they were both fucking retarded, they crumble when presented with real data. You want to just lay into them, but in a hall of fossils you just point at any wall and they are confronted with overwhelming evidence to the contrary of their shitty claims. No need to get argumentative, no need to even be confrontational…just say “that’s an interesting point, check out the fossils in case 3 over there, I think you might find them to be enlightening.”


I don’t really have any complaints about the whole gig….ok I do…

I really can’t stand over-achieving kids. For real.

There’s 2 kids that I volunteer with: one is like 10 years old and he knows everything about anything in the exhibit…very smart, but also an annoying fucking tool…More about this shithead later.

Then there’s this other kid, he’s gotta be like 15-16 years old or so. He comes in and volunteers with his mom and dad, but since he’s going through puberty he doesn’t want to hang with his parents because it “cramps his style”. He’s also too much of a chickenshit to hang out in the exhibit alone, so what does he do?

Yeah, he tries to roll with me. He’s asks stupid shit like “how awesome is it to get a master’s degree?”

I like to work the “ancient seas” cart, it’s a bunch of fossils from the Paleozoic, and the point of the cart is to demonstrate Paleozoic ecology and to allow people to check out some cool fossils. I add finesse, humor, and I make it a little sexy.

I got the fossils going, I’m talking to people, we’re all stoked on Cambrian fish plates, and this fucking douchebag kid always chimes in with the dumbest shit:

Me: “Check this out what do you think this might be?”
Parent and child at the museum: “hmm. Looks kinda spiral patterned, and its very smooth….”
Douchebag volunteer kid: “oh that’s an ammonite fossil from morocco, they lived in the Permian ocean…they were benthic”
Parent and child at the museum: “uh..great, thanks”

One of the things we’re supposed to be doing at the museum is engaging people, not just spewing facts and shit, but asking people questions gets them more interested in thinking about the fossils. No young kid is gonna understand the concept of Permian time, know where morocco is or why it might be important to this fossil…

I think its better to have them discover that there is a fossil in the rock, and the fossil represents the remains of a living organism, and as they go through the exhibit to check out and see all the shit that lived in the past. From there, they can formulate their own concept of the fossil record. They aren’t gonna be college graduates after the museum, but maybe by the end, they’ve constructed a framework with which to consider this science…so when they do get to college they can go “oh yeah, ammonites, ocean fossils, big spirals, Paleozoic…cool!”

If the kids are older or adults, you can throw some more facts at them, but come on douchebag kid, stop fucking up my game here. He’s just trying to showboat all the fucking crap he’s rammed into his orange-round head.

That fucking kid also farts all the time. I’ve seen him clear the Ancient Seas area of people in seconds after letting some silent, nervous, kid-fart spread over the Brachiopod specimens. I HATE kid-farts.

Fuck that kid.

So back to this 10 year old kid….he’s another asshole. I get an email this morning from the Museum saying that last Sunday one of the carts got put back all messy. The 10 year old kid said specifically that he handed me the key to the cart room and that was it.

Funny thing was, I didn’t work last Sunday since I was out traveling.

That little bitch. Naturally I ratted him out, and blamed him for everything in the exhibit that was in disarray.

In short, if your gonna volunteer on my shift, get ready to get steamrolled if you’re an over-achieving, farty, lame 10 year old.

if you come to work sick

you are MONUMENTALLY inconsiderate.

that is all.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Take Care of your Health...

it takes care of your spirit.

its true.

Monday, January 26, 2009

What I really wanted to say....

I resigned today.

moving on to bigger and better.



YES!

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Get out of your cars....

Sad.

I don't know what's sadder, the fact that there are fat fucks in America perpetuating the situation that this article is about...

..or the fact that I routinely have to avoid being dragged under the front tire of these pieces of shit on my way to work.

So I gotta rant again...

I ride a bicycle to work every day. I love riding bikes, I have a mountain bike and a road bike, I ride every day and try to ride for fun on most weekends.

I've ridden my mountain bike in Moab, Utah, Fruita, Colorado, Winter Park anbd Crested Butte, Colorado, most all of the Colorado front range trails, in Mississippi, in Minnesota, Nevada, etc...I've fallen off my bike a number of times. I've been a bit hesitant about some rides, been damn scared on a few of them.

but nothing, absolutely NOTHING on a bicycle is scarier than riding to work in the mornings.

Denver is easily one of the most bike friendly cities in the US, there's so much to do on a bike here, and yet there isn't a single east-bound bike lane in the Downtown Denver area...but there are 2 west-bound lanes: one on 15th street, and one on 18th street.

that means you commute like me, you have to use 17th street (or some other over-crowded street), which is a one-way gauntlet of shitheads, assholes, buses, retards, fuckfaces, and pinheads...and I don't necessarily exclude myself from those categories.

Here's what I would do with Denver:

1. BAN ALL CARS FROM THE DOWNTOWN AREA. Seriously. I know it sounds dramatic and unworkable, but think of this: A. it costs alot of money to park a car downtown, B. in rush hour traffic a person on a bicycle - er, a person WALKING - can get around downtown faster than you can in your car. This is the biggest thing that I don't understand. Even if you can get your car up to about 30 mph, you will just be stopped at the next block for a red light.

There is absolutely NO FUCKING REASON why you need to bring a personal car into the downtown area EVER. There exists already a shitty mass transit system that you can exploit if you get the fuck out of your shitty goddamn toyota and stop threatening people on bicycles.

I'm standing firm on that point, so I'll say it again: THERE IS NO FUCKING REASON YOU NEED TO BRING A PERSONAL CAR INTO THE DOWNTOWN AREA, EVER!

There are other ways that are better for you, and better for the people around you.

2. EXPAND THE LIGHT RAIL. Right now there's not nearly enough light-rail service to keep cars out of downtown. There could be a huge park and ride to the north, and the park and ride at broadway and alameda could be expanded with a nice big-ass parking garage. Park your car, take the light rail into downtown...then do some walking!

and yeah, what the fuck is up with the light rail? we should have that shit all over the place out here.

I know what your saying, "WALK! but downtown is almost a mile long, OMG!!!! on a bad day it may take me up to 20 minutes to walk from one end of downtown to the other~!!!!!" don't walk then, bring your bike with you. without traffic on a sunday a bike ride from confluence park to 17th and grant streets is literally under 5 minutes...or it might take as long as 25 minutes if you are on a cruiser bike and stop for a latte.

and don't give me that weather is bad bullshit...we have maybe 2 days of really bad weather for walking around downtown...its after thanksgiving here and its almost 70 degrees and sunny today! put on a coat and stop being such a fat-fuck up.

3. OVERHAUL THE BUS SYSTEM - it should be considered a serious problem that I can frequently WALK to work and out-run the 28B and the 32 and the 48 cross-town buses into downtown. I've posted about this before, my bus, the 28B literally has more than 12 stops between my house and downtown. Thats 12 stops in a little over a 2 mile distance. Its literally stopping every fucking 500 feet...and that doesn't even include all the red lights and traffic that it has to stop for.

and its not just my bus, I have friends/coworkers that ride the crosstown buses into downtown from the east, and they say the same thing "yeah, you can pretty much walk faster than the buses go".

of course if you banned personal vehicles going into the downtown area, you could immediately improve the speed of the cross-town buses.

4. NO MORE 16th STREET MALL SHUTTLE BUSES.
You need a place to put some awesome bike lanes? 16th street would be PERFECT! There's no need for the 16th street mall shuttle buses, they are slow, full of puke and BO and SHIT, and also the unwashed overweight...the very people that should be getting out into the sunshine and walking around ride the free shuttlebus in Denver. And during rush hour they run asshole-to-elbow, literally 2 buses in a row driving fat people down a street that they can easily walk down.

The shuttle buses stop on EVERY BLOCK. and I'm sorry, but downtown is not that big, 16th street mall takes minutes to traverse on foot. and yeah, I'll say it: there's really nothing all that cool to see on 16th street mall.

The same fucking shit you see at every other mall is there: Hot Topic, check...Chili's restuarant, check...Lids hat store...check, TJ MAX, check....walgreens, check...Office Depot, Check...food court, Check. Thats about it. really!

Go to the park (any park), its better.

16th street mall is already off-limits to cars, if we could just get rid of those behemoth fucking wastes of time and money people could walk and ride bikes from one end of the downtown to the other. It'd be great!

meh...ok, Yeah, I almost got plastered AGAIN today on the way to work by some entitled, fat lazy shithead in their car. and I'm juiced on coffee.

I'm not asking for much out of life, but maybe, maybe some secure bike lanes in denver (not a stupid lane painted on a really busy street), or better yet, just open 16th street mall to bikes, skateboards, and rollerblades ONLY and give us a conduit to get around downtown....



I already love denver's bike trail system, its awesome, I love riding it, and I really like Denver on the whole, its a great place to own a bicycle. The city planners have already ruined the Denver tech center and the interlocken-loop areas, lets keep downtown for the pedestrians.


go outside, get out of your car and walk around for awhile. fuck your car. fuck that waste of money and time. and if you drive into downtown, fuck you too.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Ahhh....traveling.

well ladies and gents, after a long respite, I'm back on the road...back traveling. I've got a healthy week of work here in Good old Joplin Missouri. If you've been following my travels like I know alot of you have been, you'll remember that Missouri is the home of the Shit hotel, and the Sexual Bible.

I'm trying not to be judgemental in this electrically charged political climate we're living in, but so far, my trip to Missouri hasn't been a skittles-rainbow quite yet.

I did come here thinking it would be a similar experience to my last trip...but its as as different experience from the last time as the rocks I'm now working in: Paleozoic Carbonate rocks instead of Pre-cambrian rhyolitic gneisses. (I'm rolling around in the Mississippian aged "St." prefixed rocks).

I hope to have some good posts coming up, I work for a different company with different people, and using different methods. Though as I sit here in my hotel, using all the outlets to charge various meters, data-loggers, laptops, gps's, etc... I kinda feel a sense of deja vu.

So...here we go, I hope to have more to say tomorrow after a day of work.



I believe this is what they call a Missouri 6 course meal.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos

Public Enemy is playing some free show downtown today...hopefully.

Bruised, battered and scarred, but hard...word.




and to all those curious about flava flav? ....FUCK flava flav, he needs to stay the hell of of chuck D's rhymepath.

yeah.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Some reading I liked

I read a part of Clifton Fadiman’s “reading I’ve liked…” at the behest of my mom. While I didn’t really agree with all the books on his list (he was really into Victorian aged shit and random stuffy literary crap that you’ve never heard of), I thought about what I’d write about if I were gonna write a book about “reading I’ve liked”.

Its hard to say, I’ve read quite a few books that I “liked” but there’s been a commonality to the books that I really liked. If I had to try and encapsulate all the books I’ve read, and really thought about the books that I’ve liked, I think I could encapsulate it in by saying that I like MEATY books.

By meaty I mean books that you slow down when your reading them, and its almost like the language and description of the setting, or emotion or mood is what stands out. Like you read a random paragraph and then you look up from the book and think “that’s fucking perfect”.

I’ve never been good at picking up thematic ideas or metaphor or shit like that, but rather I’ve been attracted to books that have great description, or really reflect emotion or imagery.

I’m now reading Suttree by Cormac McCarthy (one of my favorite authors). Yeah, I admit, I was introduced to Cormac by reading The Road on Oprahs book club – fuck off, I liked it and I’m glad I took oprah’s advice and read it.

Cormac McCarthy’s books are spectacular, Blood Meridian has got to be one of my favorite books of all time. McCarthy knows some geology, and his descriptions of the brutal and unforgiving desert southwest make you want to just say “that’s fucking perfect”…take this description:

They rode through regions of particolored stone upthrust in ragged kerfs and shelves of traprock reared in faults and anticlines curved back upon themselves and broken off like stumps of great stone treeboles and stones the lightning had clove open, seeps exploding in steam in some old storm. They rode past trapdykes of brown rock running down the narrow chines of the ridges and onto the plains like the ruins of old walls, such auguries everywhere of the hand of man before man was or any living thing.

I don’t know…I’ve walked around in the desert a lot and looked and thought about rocks a lot..and to read his descriptions? Its perfect. Sometimes rocks DO look split open as if by some steam explosion, or have some linear pattern that resemble walls made before man or anything else…its just a perfect description.


Shiprock, in New Mexico comes to my mind specifically in this passage...the volanic neck of shiprock, pushed up through the plateau, and the radial dikes like walls before living things...yah d00d!


This morning I was sitting in the bathroom and broke open the beginning of Suttree by Cormac McCarthy which had this fucking perfect description of the fish in the bottom of a muddy river:

Fabled Sturgeons with their horny pentagonal bodies, the cupreous and dacebright carp and catfish with their pale and sprueless underbellies, a thick muck shot with broken glass, with bones and rusted tins and bits of crockery reticulate with mudblack crazings.


I think you have to have in your mind what a sturgeon looks like, and what those shiny shed scales look like strewn about a muddy black river bottom…where the water itself is relatively clear, and the sun reflects those scales back through the mud to you. Its just a great description. I'm not that far into Suttree, but I'm already liking it....Shortly after this passage, McCarthy through the voice of a character describes the effects of some moonshine whiskey as "the dry heaves, the drizzle shits, the cold shakes, and the Jakeleg"

I was riding to work this morning I thought about all the other great writers I’ve read, and I remembered specifically Herman Hesse (another one of my all time favorite writers). From Steppenwolf:

“And who over the ruins of his life pursued its fleeting, fluttering existence, while he suffered its seeming meaninglessness and lived its seeming madness, and who hoped in secret at the last turn of the labyrinth of chaos for revelation and gods presence?”

This passage comes after a description of things that Henry Haller considers to be worthwhile in life… who really appreciates these things, and indeed, in the end…who consciously takes time to appreciate all the things in life that are awesome.

If you are trapped in some deep narcissistic depression where you look around at your peers, and at people in general and wonder at their dismissive or shallow characterizations of life's pleasures and pains...well shit, all thats left is death or transcendence.

The Steppenwolf is one of those books that you read and then spend the next 12 months of your life reflecting on everything. It really is beyond me to describe it...its just good. I read it first when I graduated college, and then again about a year ago…and both times it carried a slightly different meaning, both equally important. Damn it’s a good book, crazy and elegant, frustrating and perfectly descriptive.

I just spent like 5 minutes looking back through some other books I’ve read and there are other authors like that: Salmon Rushdie’s language and descriptions are convoluted and perfect at the same time. Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire is another book that every so often you look up from and say “yeah man, perfect”. Arthur C. Clarke’s descriptions of some sci-fi ideas are like that…he’s got some short story about an automatic house that starts up after a nuclear war…its perfect like that. I forgot the name of that story.

Who knows…I like books like that, that make you think or at least for the moment you read them and are so impressed by the writing or the theme or the setting of the book that you think about it for a few days (or years) and end up posting about it on a fucking shitty blog.

in re-reading this, I understand its a stretch to juxtapose Herman Hesse with Arthur C. Clarke, or Edward Abbey with Cormac McCarthy, but really...I guess it just boils down to great writing, I like good writers, writers that express emotion, and can convey not only an elegant description of some physical scene, but at the same time express how that scene shapes how you feel about it.

I mean really, I wish I had the talent to articulate why I liked the “books that I’ve liked”, but I don’t. dammit.

Friday, July 18, 2008

What are you gonna do?

I was on a field job recently, and it was out in the suburbs of this town.

Near the site was one of those shithole commerical developments, you know the type: There's a walmart store or a target, and then in a strip mall next to the parking lot there are 2 shitty restuarants, a radio shack, a great clips salon, etc... Right next door to this there was some condos...just some crappy middle-to-lower income housing.

I started thinking that there are people that live in those condo's, and are assisstant manager of that radio shack, get their groceries from the superwalmart there, and get their haircut at the cost cutters. Its like a closed system...just out there using resources.

I mean there's gotta be more than a few people that live like that. Rarely going outside of that comfort loop to see anything in the world, to meet different people, and because of it, there's no record of anything they might accomplish. Though the concept of significant accomplishment by people in that situation doesn't seem likely.

So I started thinking about myself....like ok I've traveled around a bit, seen stuff, but I have this naive and really self-centered view that somehow the life I'm living is any different or better than if I worked at that radio shack. I go to work, I come home, I consume food, gasoline, shit like that. and what do I give back? what's my exit from that closed loop?

I tell myself that I work for an environmental company and that I'm doing shit to help the environment, or that if I travel to europe somehow I'm more worldy than that person who works his shift as a line cook at Huang's Asian Express next to the great clips and watches the history channel at night.

I don't really have anything. and I'm not trying to sound depressing, I mean if you pull-the-camera back far enough, all any of us really do is exist in the world, with a very small, VERY small minority of people that actually DO anything that is remarkable. Nothing anyone does really matters in the long run, and if you really get ape-shit and think about your existence in the context of geologic time...you don't mean shit as an individual. T

what significant accomplishments can I ever hope to do that would record my existence outside of the immediate people I know? Maybe this is the wrong way to measure your life - or even consider yourself. Rather what's really important is what you mean to the other people in life, those immediate people that you know. or maybe you're not supposed to consider any of that and just live your life.

Like really just kick the shit out of life.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

I'm Platinum!!!!!

THis week I'm stuck in the Thriving Metropolis of South Bend Indiana - Home of Notre Dame University.

its a suprisingly boring town. Apparently the only really cool place to go eat/drink is this place...I had the shepards pie. it was ok.

People in Indiana eat "Dinner" for lunch and "Supper" for dinner

And yeah, this trip marks a milestone for me: I'm now a marriot rewards PLATINUM member. Yep...Thats the highest echelon you can get with the Marriot Rewards system. I'm now an Ultimate preferred guest and get all sorts of perks that you plebeian losers don't get.

Here's some of the highlights of this real ultimate prestige:

-if I want a hotel room anywhere, I can get one. If the hotel is sold out, they make someone else leave.

-THe hotel staff, particularly the front desk people HAVE to learn my name and call me so when they see me. "Good evening, Mr. Gilbert, how's your day?" of course, I reserve the right to ignore them.

-I get free snacks and water and pop from the snack bars they have in the lobby. yeah, that shit that YOU have to pay for? I get it for free.

-I get a free gift box if I check into a hotel...in my room will be a sweet basket of awesome shit that only ultimate royal platinum people get.

-I automatically get the best room available in the place. no additional charge. when I travel, I get the awesome supreme luxury room.

-I get to check out later: like 3 pm or something.

-there's several more ultimate prestige royalty benefits I get, but if I really listed all of them, you'd probably get jealous.

So there you have it. thats a little taste of royalty...maybe if the rest of you try a little harder you could one day reach Platinum status at marriot. Probably not, but never give up on your dreams.


South Bend, Indiana - home of the College Football hall of fame, and occasionally visited by Royalty.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

From the SNL Archives...


via videosift.com

Bought Another Motorcycle.

this one's a bit bigger:

1994 Ducati 900SS CR.



Sad.



pretty much truth though...