Tag Archives: random

Two Wheelin’ Fools

Crosswalksm.jpgBikes on the college campus annoy the crap out of me. And I don’t mean motorcycles, I mean legcycles.

Here’s why.

Bikes do not belong on the sidewalk or in other pedestrian areas. You know, WHERE PEOPLE ARE WALKING.

There I said it. Flame away you pedaling namby pambies!

Yet the bike riders zoom around on sidewalks and near about run people over. I don’t think they should be on the sideWALK to begin with and certainly not if they can’t pilot their vehicle well enough to avoid clipping people with their handlebars. I did see one bicycler start to lose control of his bike, swerve to avoid hitting a pedestrian and then crash awesomely. And lo, I did laugh. (He wasn’t hurt).

What really burns my biscuits is when they jet through a crosswalk and expect the cars to stop for them. The crossWALK is for WALKERS. People on foot. I will stop for a pedestrian in a crosswalk everytime but I ain’t brakin’ for no fool on a two wheeler. Half the time they are moving too fast for me to react anyway. Hey hey hey, don’t think just ’cause you in the crosswalk mean you is right. I stop for pedestrians and for things bigger than me. A bicycler is neither of those.

I think bikes belong on the road. How many times have I heard the lycra-clad masses whine “Same road, same rules” to the car driving folk? A LOT. They want car drivers to recognize them as legitimate road sharers. Yet, how many times have I seen a bike rider pedal right on through a red light or stop sign? A LOT. “I’m a bike, I don’t have to stop.” You don’t want me to run you off the road when I pass you? Then obey the same laws that I do in my car and I’ll respect you. I have been known to roll down my window and yell at these law breaking riders “same road, same rules, pal!” I mean, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

I guess that’s about it.

Why?

bathroom1-250-blur.jpgI wrote this on June 8th, 2006 at 12:14am after a couple of beers and sent it to a friend. Thought I’d put it here so I don’t forget.

I wasn’t one that grew up thinking “I want to be an famous actor in movies when I grow up.” So many do though.

I’m not wondering why “now,” as in the timing of it. I’ve been through that process and I’m ok with where I’m at.

I’m wondering what drives a performer.

ima get the obvious ones out of the way. A need for attention. For validation. For perceived acceptance and love. For recognition.

there are highs but there are lows as well. how much of it is masochism? there’s a lot of rejection and hurtful moments to deal with.

i can’t say for sure. i can only look at myself and ask the question. i hear the echo of the question ring out in the vast darkness. what comes back to my ears?

yeah, i need validation and attention. but the times i’ve been recognized for a role or performance in “every day life” did nothing for me. so it’s not that. ovations are nice but that doesn’t do it for me either. i don’t live for the applause at the end. in fact, that might be my least favorite part because it signifies that it’s over.

What’s over? THE CREATION.

The whole process from audition prep to audition to rehearsals to discovery to performace. Performance is fun and it’s the end result, but i can’t say for sure that’s why i do it. i look forward to it. to show off what’s been created.

creation’s the thing man.

breathe.

Not much, you?

Busy, sick, busy, balance.

I don’t write about personal stuff on my blog. I’m just not comfortable with putting it all out there for people to read and know my business. I’ll write about my struggles with trying to stay in shape (I’m currently in the fall/winter fattening up stage so that I’ll have something to do in the spring, ha). But I generally don’t write about my personal life. I mean, I started this thing to be a creative outlet and hopefully entertain some folks.

Some people will write cryptic or ambiguous things so that you know something is going on but you don’t know what. Then that leads people to start asking around and maybe rumors get started. So I just avoid it altogether.

Vulnerability. It’s scary. I don’t let down my guard very often. Few people get to see me in that state. I value those people very much and I don’t know what I’d do without them. I may sometimes live my life with my heart on my sleeve but you’d never know it was there.

Anyway, nothing’s changing here, I just needed a topic to post on since it’s been a while. It’s good to see all of you again, dear readers. And when I get to feeling better, I’ll do something funny.

P.S. The Lab Rats intro finally made The Show! Ze gave us an assignment as well.

I’m so going to get fired

When a friend asked me if MSU had any job openings, I accidentally sent the reply to my boss which resulted in the following convo:

me: heck yeah. what are you willing to do and how much dignity do you have is the question(s) though.
me: whoops
boss: er
me: ssorry wrong person
boss: um
me: somebody asked for a job at MSU
me: really
boss: well THAT certainly doesn’t require dignity

Then today I got the funniest (to me) spam for Viagra I’ve ever gotten. I then proceeded to IM the pic to my boss when I meant to send it to my co-worker. Luckily he didn’t actually get it. Though when I told him what happened, he threatened a harassment lawsuit.

The pic (cartoons having sex – possibly NSFW)

Know any good jobs for a UNIX and network administrator?

Conversation in the store the other day

Me: *looking at some display*
Lady: murmur murmur murmur smoke?
Me: Excuse me?
Lady: Sir, do you smoke?
Me: Uh. No.
Lady: I can’t find my husband and he locked the car and the cigarettes are in it. We’re from Smithville and we’re driving to [somewhere I don’t remember] and this is the only chance I’ll get. (as she walks off I hear) I’m gonna kill him

Hay

iLife ’06 has got some really cool things to play with. I’m playing with the podcast studio in GarageBand. I hope to finish up a trial podcast/radio-type-thingy this weekend, but I’m traveling a lot so I don’t know. It won’t be very good or amusing but I’m still learning and thinking of amusing things to do. The built in microphone on my powerbook is the pits so I ordered one. But I’m going to go ahead and publish the first segment? installment? before it comes in. It’ll just have crappy sound.

A couple weeks ago I won my first ever pro disc golf tournament. Weird considering I suck and don’t play much or practice at all. There weren’t any “good” pros there anyway. But still, a win is a win. I’m playing in another event tomorrow at Tishomingo State Park. It’s become tradition for my buddy Jeff, his wife and me and M to rent cabin #6. Jeff is a good cook from New Orleans and he will cook red beans and rice (oh so yummy) and M will make dessert. We drink beer and play Balderdash. Everytime a new phrase or saying from the game is created and we laugh about it all night. Good times.

Oh, I finally pulled the “Hey stop here” cord on the fat train. It’ll take some time for me to get off it completely but I am putting forth a concerted effort. I’ll be back to my summer slimness (and pants) in no time.

pwn3d!!11

Finally, someone around my parent’s house has wireless internet. Unsecured wireless internet. DHCP didn’t seem to work but tcpdump came to the rescue and I manually assigned an address to my wireless interface and here I am.

My dad had dialup a while back but canceled it ’cause he has internet access at work and didn’t use it enough at home to justify the expense (I guess). My mom is, uh, scared of computers we’ll say.

I got nothing exciting to say right now ‘cept I’m full of good food and I’m doing some shopping tomorrow.

Hattiesburg was hit pretty hard by Katrina. Loooots of wind damage. In addition, loooots of people who lost their homes on the coast or in New Orleans have relocated here. Hattiesburg had been growing fast in the last several years and the infrastructure really hadn’t kept up with the growth. Well, it totally sucks now. It’s beyond suck. The traffic is ridiculous.

Semester’s Over

It’s been fun. I’ve met new and exciting people. Now it’s over…until next semester anyway. I’m going to take one if not two acting classes next semester.

This semester I’ve gone from not know anything about acting and sucking at it to hanging onto the tip of the iceberg and still sucking at it. I made some steps of progress but I still have a lot to learn and experience until I feel like I’m not a stiff reading lines on stage; that I actually become the character. A work in progress but a FUN work in progress.

Meanwhile,

I’m trying to plan a New Year’s trip to NYC.

I bought a new camera. So I need to learn how to use it properly.

M’s about done with her semester. She teaches three classes of Spanish and takes four landscape architecture graduate classes. She’s what we call insane. But she held up very well this semester, professionally, academically and more importantly emotionally and physically. I’m proud of her.

I’m still on the fat train.

Audition for the new SCT show next week. Meeting about another show tomorrow night.

After three plus weeks of fighting a “cold” I got tired of the coughing and snot and went to the doctor. I’m the proud daddy of one healthy upper respiratory infection. Yay for free antibiotic samples! No beer for me for a week or so.

I’m ready for Scrubs to start coming back on NBC.

The Bourne Identity is quite a good book. Way better than the movie.

I took a random poll and found that other people get “stuff” under their thumbnails. Here’s the kicker, it seems to be the off-hand thumb. I’m right handed and I get crap under my left thumbnail. Other right handed people I talked to also get crap under their left thumbnail but the one left handed person I talked to gets crap under his right thumbnail. Weird.

I need to balance my checkbook.

My TiVo needs a bigger harddrive.

I once spent an entire Saturday building a cat tree. The cats rarely use it. Bastards.

My in-dash CD changer broke. Yay for ipods.

My grandfather has a malignant growth in one of his kidneys. He had some kind of new procedure where they freeze the growth done today, I think. I hope he’s ok.

I’m looking forward to King Kong and Chronicles of Narnia. I saw Rent twice. Maybe a third time this weekend.

“The opposite of war isn’t peace. It’s creation.”

Family Thanksgiving: Tabacco and Meth Production

If there was ever any doubt about where I live (redneck capitol), let me relate some of the events of today.

Last night I drove from my mother-in-law’s in Tupelo back home to Starkville to meet up with some friends. One in particular was visiting from Toronto where he runs his own casting company for print ads and commercials. I hadn’t seen him in a few years so it was cool to catch up and learn about his business.

I got up this morning to drive back to Tupelo (Nettleton, really) to pick up M and her younger sister to go to their dad’s family Thanksgiving dealio. First we needed to swing by the younger sister’s boyfriend’s trailer and pick him up.

He ain’t there.

She calls him on his cell phone to find out that his dad woke him up early that morning all in a tizzy. If rednecks have tizzys that is. It seems that his mom, who recently left his dad for another guy and had gotten into the meth making business, got locked up in the jailhouse. So he couldn’t come to the Thanksgiving dealio on account that his maw was locked up for making the meth.

Cut to the father-in-law’s family’s place. The teenage boys are out in the yard throwing the football around. Runnin’, jumpin’, shoutin’. That seems right, you know, an all-american kind of a thing to do. Except that some of ’em have cigarettes barely hanging from their lips as they run around. I thought you had to have been smoking at least 20 years to master the cigarette-barely-hanging-from-the-lips-while-engaging-in-some-sort-of-physical-activity trick. I guess not.

Then their 2 year old cousin comes up to me. He’s got some dark stuff around his mouth and he announces “I got some dip” and pulls his lip and cheek away from his gums to proudly prove that he does in fact have dip. He spits and then walks on. We asked the grandma if he really dips and she’s like “Yeah, he dips and chews tobacco.” Two. Years. Old. Ho-ly poop.

Well anyway, we were told that we’d be eating at 1:00pm but it was more like 1:45pm and I had to be back in Starkville for a meeting at 4:00pm (to which I was late) so we literally ate and ran.

The teenage boys were getting their huntin’ gear together to go shoot stuff and grandma was like “C ain’t goin’. His momma said for him to stay right here cause he’s grounded. He got all F’s.” Ouch. He’s about 15 and in the sixth grade. He’s failed many grades many times. Poor guy. Maybe if they had classes in runnin’, jumpin’, huntin’ and chewin’ he’d be more interested and do better.

That made for an interesting day. I won’t go into M’s mom’s alcoholic ex-boyfriend that showed up all but unannounced on Thanksgiving morning.

[Sam Beckett] Oh boy [/Sam Beckett]