in other news

several bands of cirrus clouds have been sighted in my cup of tea, signifying a change in weather may be ahead. Cirrus clouds often appear in the aftermath of a large storm or atmospheric event. Boiling water coming to a rest provides ideal conditions for white-tea-cirrus clouds to form.

room changes

Getting high is nice. I mean there's the obvious reasons: music sounds cool, creativity flows a bit easier, food tastes better, etc. I, for some inexplicable reason, clean up when I'm high. I don't even mean to do it...but if I've recently inhaled some shrubbery and my room is messy...I start organizing. I should be the kid in the Marijuana commercials-second time I've said something along those lines in about 3 days...real original. But I can picture it now: this is your room (messy room)....this is your room on drugs (neat, efficiently organized room). I've never been able to put my finger on it until last night, when I broke a relatively long hiatus of being high at home, but there I was, dashing around my room stashing doo-dads in nooks and crannies. If I ever have kids, I'm gonna make sure they get high before they clean their rooms so I know they will be doing a good job. Incentive, incentive, incentive....

...realized my hatred for school buses

I like to drive, and since I commute to school, it's something I end up doing quite a bit. But I don't like school buses. Unfortunately my departure from school is typically synchronized perfectly with the release dozens of yellow bastards of the road. I've never liked school buses. I abandoned them as a means of transportation as quickly as possibe. 4th grade found me walking over a mile to school, leaving almost 40 minutes before I had to arrive, simply to avoid riding school buses. I figured that if I no longer rode buses, they would disappear from my life, except for the punctual nightmare of bus drills. Boy was I wrong. School buses are any drivers' nightmare. Try to tell me that you've never muttered a single profanity while sitting behind a school bus offloading an unending stream of kids. Do it, you wont! And then there's the little kindergartner that's halfway through the door of his house when he remembers he left his GI joe or Blackberry in his seat and goes tearing after the bus in tears. The superfluous blinking dancing stop signs stand up on the side of the bus, telling you to WAIT, there's children on board this vehicle, sir! Since I hate school buses, the drivers can't quite escape my wrath either. They bill themselves as protectors of the children; any error committed on their part can be conveniently covered up by saying "it was some other reckless driver....I was just trying to protect the children!" That's bull-honkey. Go into the town drinking hole on any school night and watch these "protectors of children" talk about the little bastard they wrote up for swearing on the bus.
If any one of these protectors of the children may be having a bad day, like I recently experienced, they can gain complete satisfaction from their total ability to FUCK with other people on the road and get away with it. As I pulled into the left lane to get around a bus of screaming bambinos, the bus driver checked her mirror, saw me, and then threw her turn signal on and also began vying for the left lane. I honked my horn, and she retorted with her air horns, then pointed towards the back of the bus as if to say, "SIR, there are children on board this vehicle, show some damn RESTRAINT!" So I slowed down but never relinquished my position in the left lane. After about a mile, Pricky the bus driver popped on the right turn signal and returned to the right lane. Were it not for bus drivers' handy habit of writing down license plate numbers, each kid on the left side of the bus would have learned a new hand signal or two.

Disclaimer: as many of you may realize, my blog is pretty offensive. I am not apologetic about this in the least. Instead I would ask all offended parties to seriously consider whether they are offended by who I talk about (in this case busdrivers/buses) or how I talk about them. It is not my wish to offend those who aren't deserving, so If you're a bus driver and youre reading this, unless you like to fuck with people on the road like colleague did today, don't feel offended!

I don't hate all busdrivers though:

What did the pirate say after the concert?

Lets hit the BARRRR.
Horrible joke, I'm sorry, but pirate jokes are just too easy. And the joke was meant to set the stage for this post. No, this post isn't going to be as lame as that joke, but I'm writing tonight to express my feelings of joy that pirates have re-emerged onto the world scene, and not a moment too late. According to Newsweek, somali pirates have attacked 120 ships in the past year. I know, I know, this isn't very awesome news for the ships who were attacked by said pirates. But we as a society have found ourselves embroiled in a contradiction of sea-monster proportions surrounding the issue of pirates. As the "Pirates of the Carribbean" trilogy rose to become one of the most successful series of movies to date, the world had fallen in love with pirates. Everywhere from Baton Rouge to Bali to Batswana sung the praises of a gypsily (not a word) clad Jack Sparrow.
Naturally after seeing the kind of love and affection these cutthroat pirates of the big screen were getting, some entrepreneurial Somalis wisely jumped on board. I'm sure being the common thieves they were before coming pirates was an occupation that hadn't gotten any love since the Aladdin sequels- how many are there again?- beating to death the idea of thievery being taken romantically. Faced with a dwindling amount job appreciation, these somali thieves probably hit up one last bazaar, and used the proceeds to buy a boat, and some skull-and-crossbones flags. Then later that night when they were probably drinking rum to get the pirate blood pumping through their veins, they drew straws to see who would have to lose an eyeball or a leg in order to fulfill the lovable pirate stereotype.
I'm positive the last thing these greenhorn pirates expected was to be met with naval force. After all, in POTC, the navy would never FULLY commit to going after the pirates. They merely launched a few cannonballs at the Black Pearl, and then cursed it as it disappeared into the mist. If the British navy as portrayed in POTC had actually used their force, there would have been frigates and Men O'war all over the pirates. Pirate movies fail to take into account that unlike man-to-man combat, if you have more ships, you are the winner. And while a pirate ship may outgun a British frigate temporarily, said British Frigate is backed by the Royal Navy. If you don't believe me, watch Master and Commander. After watching mincemeat made out of a French ship that both outmanned, outgunned, and outpowered the British ship, I had nightmares of waking up to Russel Crowe's steely demeanor at the foot of my bed making my feet uncomfortably chilly.
Another thing these modern Somali pirates probably didn't take into account was how to go about making that darned mist appear. Up to this point, the only disappearing trick they have been able to pull is being left in the wake of a cruise ship. That's right, a 684 foot ship with 30,000 people on board successfully outran a small pirate's skiff. Imagine the humiliation of 30,000 vacationers laughing at you and your fellow cutthroats and all you can do is take potshots at the driving range on the poop deck with your ak-47.
Well, Allow me to eat my words, as while writing this I'm periodically stopping to find more articles on pirates. You thought this was well researched? I do this shit as I go along, got it? As I have just discovered, the pirates have actually performed a disappearing act, and a damn good one at that. An Indian warship received word that there were pirates in the nearby waters. Sure enough, the gunners on the warship looked through their sights to find a shitty, tattered ship with a bunch of banditos waving their arms wildly on the deck. Pirates, clearly. Probably all hopped-up on rum and jonesing to board a cruise ship and snatch some booty (haha). Nevermind the fact that the boat in the gun sights was an Indian Fishing Vessel, and the 16 crew members were waving their arms madly to prevent the Indian warship from blowing them out of the water. In a stunning display of Military might, the pirate mothership, I mean fishing vessel was sent sailing on down to davy jones locker. As a skiff of machine-gun weilding marauders motored slowly by the wreckage, looking for anything of value to pop up, the Indian Navy uttered a collective "shitballs".
Ok, on a serious note, Pirates do pose a serious threat to shipping and cruise lines. But is this any different from the past? In a way, it is. If our modern pirates were like the pirates of old, they would be sailing around in cutting edge warships that could stand a chance against modern naval vessels with the help of radar, sonar, torpedos, long range weaponry, and cruise missiles. Instead, todays pirates trundle around in seaworthy rowboats, going about half the speed of jetski, with a quarter of the range. My advice to cruise ships and tankers: arm yourselves with oranges, because when the pirates run out of fuel after chasing your boat for half a mile, at least they will have a viable source of Vitamin C until someone can rescue them.

Brilliant!

When: Black Friday, 2008
Where: Walmart

A man wearing a knit wool hat and scarf enters the store, a typical holiday shopper you might. They split up and one walks to the TV department at the back of the store and purchases a medium size flatscreen TV for 600 dollars. He carries it to the door of the store, where his receipt is checked by a presumably 80-something war veteran receipt checker. Given the approval, the man proceeds outside to his car where he hands the receipt to his friend waiting for him at the car. He loads the TV in the car and gets in the driver's seat but does not drive off, or even pull away. The second man, now bearing the receipt walks back inside the store, picks up another flat screen television, walks to the front of the store, shows the receipt to the receipt checker who reads it, approves it, and sends him on his way. Flawless, two televisions for the price of one.
But it gets better... The two men aren't satisfied with their two-for-one deal, so they walk to the back of the store, pick out a TV, walk to the front of the store, show the receipt, and exit the store with a free television ELEVEN MORE TIMES.
The TV count is now up to thirteen, almost 8 grand worth of flatscreen television goodness. That's not the end though. With the televisions loaded into the car, the man who purchased the first television grabs the receipt and one of the 13 TVs, walks back into the store to the returns counter, and gets a full rebate of 600 dollars for the TV. He walks out of the store with a fat wallet.
Un-fucking-believable. But wait, don't the receipt checkers usually mark the receipt so this isn't possible? With the holiday rush this was too much a waste of time, and large lines would build up. Instead the checker merely glanced at the receipts and ushered the shoppers on.
Walmart didn't catch on until the following evening during inventory. They reviewed their security footage and saw the same two men carrying the TVs out one by one, but couldn't get a close look because of the hats and scarves.

My thoughts: Although it was a massive electronics theft, the two men creatively took advantage of long holiday lines with a lucrative yet simple heist. And Walmart didn't catch on for over a day! In my mind, those two men should enjoy their TVs, or the money they've inevitably raked in from selling them. They pulled the wool over Walmart's eyes, so to speak. Walmart has clearly been bested, and should cut their losses or even issue a public apology; such a high level of creativity needs to be rewarded.

"..Now do Brando.."

I like embedding youtube videos. The fact of the matter is, youtube is a revolution. Ten years ago I would have had to find myself in the film vault of 30 Rockefeller to find a video like this. I can say with confidence that we are on the edge of an explosion of creativity in the media. With so many obscure videos available to the public, it's hard not to find inspiration for whatever. So without further ado, here is the late John Belushi's audition/screen test for Saturday Night Live.

Fight Test

Just sat down to make some revisions on a few papers and start cracking on a written final when the amount of work I have to do in the next few weeks really hit me. Fuck this time of the year to say the least.

 Itunes was on party shuffle and brought up Fight Test by the flaming lips. Song couldn't have come at a better time, so I thought I'd share it for anyone whose feeling as bogged down with work as I was. May the vibes be with you.

Ze classics

A few years ago I wrote a front page blog for newschoolers.com. I'm not sure why they thought I was front page material other than my knack for telling wildly eccentric stories. A few of the blogs seemed to be real hits, and so for history's sake I'm going to reproduce them here. 

For my first look back into a 17 year old senior in high school, I bring you....The Robot Story, originally posted on 10/31/2006: 
I decided to be a robot for halloween. As I write this, i sit at home, at 1:30 in the afternoon, while the rest of my friends are at school. I am no longer at school because I encountered a problem that has been building since last night. My robot costume, all home made, was brilliant, with one exception. Robots don't piss. Not being a robot, I was forced to manipulate my diet in order to ensure that i would have no problems in school. Since the suit basically requires 3 people to help me take on and off, I was going to have to hold it, if the urge came. Getting to school was sweet, I rode standing up in the back of my friend's truck (sitting down was also not an option in my costume). First and second period were spent doing the robot to music coming from the speakers mounted on my chest. Third period rolled around, and i actually had a class. A college spanish class on the top floor of my school. After trekking across the school and up to my class, I got in, and stood in the corner (no sitting..) and prepared myself to learn some spanish. Maybe twenty minutes into the class, i realized that I was sweating buckets. Not good. My costume had absolutely no vents in it, save the furnace grate that was used as a mouth- and where i looked out. Rewind 12 hours. Before going to bed, i stopped drinking fluids, to make sure that i wouldn't have to piss during school. Total backfire. Today happened to be the warmest day in almost a month here in new york, with temperatures tickling the 70 degree mark. Yesterday was a balmy 45 degrees. The School never turned off the heat from yesterday, so my classroom was somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 degrees. My suit was undoubtedly close to 1000 degrees. For any of you who have ever been dehydrated, overheating, and standing up at the same time, the products of this situation are not good:
me: I need some air, this suit is too hot
Spanish teacher: Que?
me: please stop speaking in spanish, i'm not kidding, just let me go!
Spanish teacher: No entiendan.
At this point, i said, fuck it, and made a break for the door. As soon as I stopped leaning on the wall, and stood fully upright, I lost all of my vision. I began stumbling across the room, in the general direction of the door, as my class watched me, aghast. About halfway across the room, my legs decided they had enough, and gave out, but my brain was still set on walk/running to the door. This resulted in me packing my head into the wall next to the door, and blacking out for time #1. I heard some faint voices, of my teacher, and kids asking if i was ok, or if i was faking it to be funny. I stood up, saw one of my friends outside the window of the door, with his jaw wide open, just witnessing what had happened to me. My eyes rolled back into my head, i turned white, and fell straight backwards. Blackout #2. This time i woke up with all the faces of my classmates over me, looking down, asking me if i knew what day it was. Now, i've never blacked out randomly like this before, so i was pretty confused, but managed to sift through all the questions they were asking me, and give a decent answer. I sat up, the nurse showed up with a wheelchair, and wheeled me to her office, and then I left to come home.
NOW, normally, this would be pretty embarassing for someone. I am pissed that i couldn't see myself go down for the count twice. It was really an interesting day, and i'm sure that after i left my spanish class, they had a hard time focusing on the preterite verb tense for the rest of class. If you'll excuse me, i really have to piss, so peace kiddos. And on a final note: since robots cant tinkle, it's probably better that humans don't try to imitate robots

Fuck Fire-drills

Before I speak on the topic of fire-drills, I know that there are those out there who will be quick to point out that fire-drills are a necessary precaution and increase readiness. I have this to say to you: establish a sense of humor for yourself. Life will have a nasty habit of ruining your day if you fail to follow my advice. 

Fire drills are dangerous. Mark my words when I say that after years and years of fire drills, they're going to become deadlier than fires.

When I hear a fire alarm, my heart doesn't race, and I don't sprint to the little paper map next to the door to follow a highlighted route that looks more like an etch-a-sketch done by a schizophrenic than the quickest way out of the building. The fact of the matter is, fire drills serve as an inconvenience. There are several truths to fire alarms.

1. Fire drills always occur in the middle of a crucial activity, i.e. filing your tax return, registering to vote, or waiting for your download ticket to count down so you can get that new Lil' Wayne mixtape that you need right away because it will be played and hopelessly lame approximately 15 minutes post-release.

2. If you're keeping a good eye out, you can always know when they're coming. Building honchos will be milling around, checking their watches and pretending to do work. Although this may not be much of a departure from their normal activities.

3. Fire drills always happen on the days where the weather is SHITTY. One minute you're sitting at your desk relishing that the hurricane-force winds and sideways sleet are outside the window, and the next minute a musical note taken from that dialing up to the internet noise is telling you that you must leave your dry chair and join the single digits outside to practice safety. 

Practice safety?

Since when is safety something that needs to be practiced?!? Safety isn't a sport, it's not something that you get better at through practicing it. "Well Bob, I'd love to join you and the fam' for a BBQ on saturday but I've gotta take the kids to safety practice, Johnny's got a varsity building fire next week". 

Safety needs no practice. What the fire marshalls fail to take into account is that us non-fire marshalls are human beings too. Fire burns us, smoke chokes us, and yes, water drowns us. That being said, if there's a fire burning at one end of the hallway, I'm willing to bet my Roth IRA (like that's worth anything anymore) that most functional human beings aren't going to run up to try to understand what that strange flickering orange light is. Fuck, you'd think at this point we're past caveman mentality where fire is this mysterious beast that should be tamed to make meat not kill half of the tribe. 

And that's just why fire drills are so dangerous. Say I'm sitting in the library and the fire alarm goes off. I'm not thinking about everything I've ever been taught about avoiding getting hurt by fire. I'm thinking "FUCK, now I have to pack up all my books, get my ipod out, walk all the way downstairs to stand outside and watch the building supers dance around pretending to be responding to a crisis. All this to walk back up the stairs find my nook again and try to relocate my train of thought. 

But what if it was a REAL fire, with flames and burning timbers and rubble? There would be a crowd of annoyed 20 year olds slowly getting their shit together, not caring that the atrium of the building has COLLAPSED, and they're all trapped inside unknowingly awaiting their imminent doom. 

Fire drills have desensitized us to the point where a tiny fraction of the population even associates fire alarms with actual fires. I myself have endured the skull-numbing buzz of a fire alarm set off by a small paper fire. The paper fire was started by bored office attendents dicking around with a lighter and some bathroom tissue. I didn't even smell smoke! SHIT! 

I realize that fire alarms save lives, and that's not what I'm arguing. It's fire DRILLS that are the boy who cried wolf shit. 

If I've never heard a fire alarm before, and I smell smoke and all of a sudden this banshee-on-the-wall starts wailing it's shit, I'm gonna get the fuck out of there before I can ask questions. 

Man, I never knew how "fired up" fire drills get me. 

/rant

Two short films

I found this great short film called Palindromo, telling the story of a man who has lost everything. The neat part about the film is that it's shown in reverse, so throughout the film you piece together the backwards dialogue. Great film.


The second film: La Paradoja de Arrow takes its' name from the Arrow Paradox, or Arrow Impossibility Theorem Demonstrated by Kenneth Arrow. Understanding the Arrow Paradox is a very involved process which took me the better part of an hour to get the basics. You can read about the Arrow Paradox here. The film itself is a visual play on this theory through downright beautiful cinematography and seamless graphic effects. I feel as though I can relate to the film, especially the intro, as it is a telling take on day-to-day life. Pay very close attention to the seemingly innate details spliced in, each one evoked familiar feelings for me.

Turkey Week

Thanksgiving is a time where loved ones come together to remember the amicable feast hosted by the Pilgrims, shortly before they all but wiped out the native population of Eastern North America. Having the last 5 days off from classes stretched time out into a strange but entertaining collection of experiences with friends and family.
When: Tuesday night.
Where: Syracuse, NY
Two friends call me up in search of some fresh herbal supplements In the early evening. I am of no help to them, but instead ask to join the search in hopes of adventure, and maybe even finding a little shrubbery for myself.
Our Journey begins with a quick safety discussion in the parking lot of a local ski hill. Switchboard then lights up with a frenzy of calls to help us find our way into the forest. Failed phone calls abound, a lucrative whim finds it's mark, and we are on our way to the Bro-levards of Syracuse University. Warm weather and torn overleaves cannot stomp the spirit of the night, and everyone goes their way happy.
When: Wednesday afternoon.
Where: Toggenburg Mountain Ski Center
I meet up with the Mcginnis brothers, Matthew and Michael, for a quick brief on this year's terrain park. We are antsy throughout the meeting, as voluptuous piles of man-made snow lie a mere twenty feet (6.096 meters) from our current location, inside the lodge. The meeting is done! Quick half hour drive to pick up a pair of skis, and we're back. Always the visionary, Matt transforms one snow mound into an undervert quarter pipe, with a steep landing down the reverse. Velocity check after velocity check shows us that speed is what we need. After finally getting that speed dialed, the session is on! the first spins of the season are spun and the first grabs, grabbed. Off axis rotations find their way into the mix, some intentional whilst others not. I am eventually put out of action by a tragic case of whiplash on a failed switch landing, and forced to retreat home in time for dinner...but before I left, I decided to randomly yell "visit matt's site an& buy his clothes at an& Clothing"
When: Wednesday night.
Where: China Road oriental cuisine, Mattydale, NY.
The owner of China Road, Simon Teng is standing next to the table where I am joined by my brother and parents. "Who ordered the Pig Intestines", asks Teng, a former proprietor of several very successful chic NYC Chinese food joints. My family turns their amused stares my way, as I announce with appropriate brevity, "IT WAS I". Most patrons are now craning and straining to see the poor fool who must have clearly misread the menu. I maintain my steely reserve (lame 40oz reference?) and shake Simon's hand while he explains that I am the first to have ordered such a delicacy in months. After many greasy noodles, green tea, and several bouts with an unidentified pepper that was basically hot as SHIT, my (or rather the pig's) intestines arrive.
A small army of oriental chefs deliver the intestines in several components, first a small sterno stove, next a bowl and stack of napkins, and finally a steaming hot saucer of what the menu had led me to believe were pig intestines. Said chefs stand back and join the owner in watching me cash in my pig-intestine v-card. The intestines themselves were small rubbery pink chunks of what I had always imagined intestines to be like (not that I had ever lent much thought to the texture and consistency of intestines before). I finally indulge myself and to my delightful surprise, pig intestines are downright tasty. I eat everything on my plate and also steal from my family's plates while they aren't looking. Stealing is too fun not to do all the time.
When: Thanksgiving; all day
Where: The fiery kitchens of hell
Giving thanks for what? Not getting to spend the day with my family? That was Beat

Vitamin Water

What if vitamin water didn't have a narrative about the name on the back. Suppose it was sold in a rusty tin can. Would it taste as delicious?

Cannabis

Unquestionably THE most misconstrued plant on the face of the earth. What motivates people to see herb as a destroyer? I was recently met with criticism over a research paper I am writing on the social effects of decriminalization of Cannabis. My opponent was significantly less open minded and unbiased than myself. Her use of circular logic was frustrating, and eventually I gave up fighting my point and let her walk away smug with what she saw as a victory. The backbone of her argument was that Cannabis is illegal. This point holds no merit whatsoever, and I refrenced how only a few hundred years ago, Heliocentric theory was also considered criminal. Her reaction proved that history only repeats itself. I am a firm believer that when the world is ready to accept Cannabis for the versatile plant it is, it will take a place in history among other controversial ideas. This belief is already mostly true, as a large portion of the world smokes or ingests Cannabis in some way, shape or form.
The people who can't see Ganga in this way have become unapproachable to me. There is so much of the world that they are ignoring and refusing to subscribe to, simply because they believe the lies they are fed. I enjoy provoking these types into talking about weed, and most become very uncomfortable in talking with someone who "does drugs". Through my discussions I have realized that since Cannabis is classically referred to as a drug, many opponents of the plant view users as though they have a problem. Cannabis is neither habit forming, nor has it ever proven to be harmful to the body. The studies whose results provided the "brain damage claims" consisted of giving rhesus monkeys the equivalent of several pounds of marijuana at once through a gas mask. The brain damage reported was not from THC, but rather from the smothering effect of only being able to breathe smoke. Please, before you hate, think long and hard about what you are hating on, and if one day you will go down in history as an idiot who fought in court to protect the notion that the Earth was the center of the universe...

A little side note, I try to refrain from using the term Marijuana as it was the name given to the plant by the Government during the criminalization process..

Ski season has arrived!

Ski season begins! After a copious snowfall last night. Today I met up with some friends from Ithaca to find some handrailage. After checking out a few spots, our lack of a drop-in led us to a 60ish foot down rail on the left of 36 wooden stairs. Before setting up the rail we sessioned a knoll packed into a butter pad by some local sledders. After that got old, we moved over to the rail and the session was on. We were situated on a hill over looking Syracuse and the weather created a surreal backdrop. It was sunny over the rail for most of the day, while black snow squalls rolled by in the distance over the City. One of my buddies from Ithaca, Chris, did the most unbelievable thing I have ever seen on a rail anywhere; wait for the footage, it will blow your mind. Another kid from Ithaca named Alex cleaned the rail without moving a muscle, and then came super close to a frontside 270. I ended up with a frontside 270 out but had to quit after catching a ski under the rail and taking a stair to the mouth. My camera batteries were dead but Alex and Chris were taking pictures all day so I should have some shots at some point. Day 1 of the 2008/2009 ski season was a monster success.