so something involving rose petals on saturday night led to a very *special* episode of cops in redmond and the next thing you know we are on the run, ending up at a taco bell in capitol hill talking to an off-duty cross dresser and a blind man named mark. but not before landing at a 7-eleven just outside the 520 exit and listening to the man about how the super sour watermelon slurpees will completely fuck you up. obviously that guy hadn't seen what we had seen that night. it's amazing how quickly the shock led to anger, which has now subsided into one hell of a funny story. but who to tell?

gotta get v! now on dvd WITH commentary! hear that, jesse?

ok, are you in the seattle area? what is UP with those damn empire glass ads? if i have to hear about those 24 free dinners at the cucina cucina italian cafe and diamond stud earrings with the purchase of a new windshield one more time...i mean, 24 free dinners?? what the fuck? how expensive are these windshields? or maybe, more importantly, how cheap are these dinners? the ads remind me of the old ginsu knife ads from the 70s.

flying saucers are everywhere...and medical problems? two words: alien abductions

well, my brother got infected with the latest email virus and i got a whole slew of virus messages from him. i knew that it was a virus right away...so far the auto text for virus messages gives it completely away that it is a virus. it's almost always too awkward and reads as if it was a bad translation. all your base. i was, however, worried that my dad or someone might open one of the attachments, which required some quick phone calls home.

sometimes i wonder if i've woken up from the dream. i wonder if maybe i've been living the whole thing the entire time and maybe the dream is just a summary of the patterns that my mind has found. suddenly i feel ok about it, though.

well, noon was a better time and it seemed that the whole day went much better than monday when all was said and done. yeah, ok, i still kind of feel like a fuck up...but maybe more of a minor fuck up than a major one.

anyway, guess whose house i was at this evening? yep, bill's house. and it was *that* bill. cool house, although i've gotta say...those people behind the movie antitrust must have seen the place because the house in the movie was pretty damn close to the real one. anyway, we didn't get to go into the house too much though...not too much at all, in fact. but it was still cool to see it.

i hope that you all have some love in your live right now.

i hate assholes. ask me about *my* week...could 5pm have been any more of a disaster? and, well, 4pm was pretty bad too.

yep...i'm just a misunderstood destroyer...

so this weekend ended up playing out much differently than i had originally thought...although it was such a back and forth week with regard to phone calls, reservations, etc that i wonder if i really had any concept of what was actually going to happen this weekend. not that we ever really know...but that's neither here nor there. my dad called today from national en route to reno via o'hare. i couldn't help feeling bad for him with regard to the whole thing.

anyway, i'm back in the loop now and i have another test to run at work this week. i had another amazing weekend despite all the oddness going into it. it's a really nice feeling. i should have known that "the emerald city" would bring such things...

one question before i sign off for the night...who is this aaron carter kid that they keep advertising on mtv? apparently he's the brother of a backstreet boy...but that means zero to me. it's the worst ad campaign that i have seen and they are giving away a ton of stuff when you order his cd. bad sign, kid...whoever you are.

well, it's been back and forth but it seems that i am definitely going to reno this weekend. to review, my grandfather broke his hip and things are a complete mess down there...i have no idea what's going on and neither does my dad. it's really, really bad timing, especially after a particularly frustrating week. but i'm glad i'm not going alone. and that i'm not going through this completely alone is quite surprising. but nice.

soooooo fellow babies...i'll be out of the loop for a few days since i'm not sure that i'll be able to post before i leave. hope that everything's well with all of you.

here's another good article on katharine graham in today's salon if you are interested.

spyder games is so, so, sooooooo bad. what's really funny, though, is that christina from high school is playing this character named taylor and in the last episode said that she grew up in alexandria, virginia. ok...that's only funny if you know that she really did grow up in alexandria, virginia...i mean in real life. ok, maybe that's only funny to me.

it seems that some things are changing...for the worse. when will this stop? and not just in south africa...but everywhere...

wow...the grand dame of the washington post has passed away. washington and print journalism will never be the same...the mayor ordered that the flags be flown at half staff in dc. yes, it's that big a deal. of the post, she once said:

"when my husband died, i had three choices. i could sell it. i could find somebody else to run it. or i could go to work. and that was no choice at all."

vrgirl salutes katharine graham and her extraordinary life and work.

hopefully this won't sound as bad as i am sure that it is...
all results will be lifeless and lead to an excuse...
to never try again, to never try at all...
staring up at the ground.

if you get a chance to see carissa's wierd [sic], go. they are the most amazing band ever. i've seen them twice this summer already.

going to a mariner's game tomorrow -- some work promo thing or something. as you know i hate the diamond sports. but hey. it's free. and it's a day away from work.

i'm your superhero. it seems like this has been the summer of just that. every day brings more references to superheros. gotta wonder what kind of crowd that i'm running with now, eh?

anyway, i may be going on an overnight trip to reno this weekend. why you say? the grandparents. they had disappeared off the face of the earth...vanished without a trace. turns out that my grandfather broke his hip a few weeks ago and they didn't call a soul. so since reno is about an hour's flight away, i'm going to be headed down for a day. at least i know the city, right?

the capitol hill block party was yesterday. of course there's always one giant asshole that can completely fuck up a good time. how could anyone piss off 4 people in less than one minute? i mean it just wasn't one statement that got us all but FOUR separate statements, each targeted to us individually. what the fuck, right? anyway, we made it through, lost the asshole, and went on our way. but with regard to other things...i have to tell you fellow babies...the cat is out of the bag. i think that you know what i mean. i mean exactly how long could it be kept a secret? exactly.

going to disneyland. oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!

i often wonder who visits here and why. i mean not just web stat kind of stuff but i wonder who exactly the people are who find my blog by accident or whatnot who have never actually met me. what were they looking for when they arrived at my page? and what the hell do they think once they get here? my friends know that i'm quirky in real life...what about the people who only know me digitally? i wonder...

this would be kind of funny if it weren't so terrifying.

bye-bye disneyquest chicago. what went so, so wrong with all the LBE (location-based entertainment) venues?

nice...webvan haiku. i saw webvan just the day before they departed from this world. one thing about being on the west coast? i have at least been able to observe some of the high tech loved ones before they left us.

oh -- and before i forget? claire's boxes finally arrived in new zealand. so that company really wasn't a scam after all it seems.

ok...big project going on at work right now and i feel like absolute death. wait...do i feel like death or am i feeling like i am dead? or dying? what exactly is it that i am feeling? if i feel like death does that mean that i feel like i am taking life away from other people? no...that's not quite right. or at least i don't think that it's quite right.

anyway, what a funding snafu back at the ranch, eh? the picture is starting to look a lot less bleak though. and btw, if anyone is wondering if the offer has been made for me to stay out here on a more permanent basis...it has been.

and i said no. there are, after all, promises to keep. and miles to go. but besides all that...i think that at the beginning of the summer i was feeling so burned out that perhaps the thought of leaving c-u for good was very, very, VERY appealing. but now i think that i have gotten what i need out of this whole experience...the light at the end of the tunnel. and now i know that it is not only there but it is much brighter than i thought.

and isn't that something.

every now and again you run across a web log that is so desperate that you wish you could grab ahold of them and somehow make it better. it never quite works that way does it? i know, i know...you are all saying kaycee nicole. but there's something uncomfortable about this blog...perhaps because it leaves you with the fear that because it's so dark that maybe it really is true...whereas *kaycee's* was too good to be true, especially in these mediocre times...

you know a web trend that i really don't understand? those web sites that spawn a pop up window and the entire web site is contained in that pop up window...and the main windown only has a single line of text or something that says if a window hasn't popped up, click here. you see this in movie web sites all the time. i mean, first off...i really hate pop up windows. i hate that stupid pop up window that comes up every fucking time you go to amazon (which i finally saw the hq of the other day...it's in an old veteran's hospital building and it shows!), all those pop up ads that are appearing everywhere, etc. i swear to god that all it does is completely piss me off and NOT make me want to buy that product (you hear that marketing geniuses?). so where the hell did this "website in a pop up window" idea come from? it's not like the pop up window is a floating menu either...the ENTIRE site is contained in that window. ugh. stupid web tricks.

when i first read this years ago, i thought that it was one of the most well written articles that i have ever read on the subject. it seems that the author, jenn shreve, was a bit of a local celeb of sorts...when she was a student at uw she wrote quite a few articles that caused quite a lot of controversy. good stuff!

i love this! sushi generation...did you hear that jesse?

my latest big project starts on monday and i have so much to do tomorrow. right now i'm watching a re-run of a show called almost live, which was a regional comedy show for the seattle area that got cancelled a few years ago. it's quite brilliant and it's a shame that it was canned. lots of poking fun at redmond, etc. bill nye, the science guy, got his start on the show interestingly enough.

so i was in kind of a funky mood all day today. too much to think about...

wow....unbelievable.

got a phone call earlier...it seems that a mutual friend is in more trouble than he ever has been in the past. most of you don't know who this is. but those of you from undergrad definitely do. nothing is ever quite good enough...and i wish i knew what to do. i have the feeling you're sinking further but i don't know how to find you. i'm not sure that any of us really ever did.

listening to the remainder of the fireworks...thinking about the 4th in year's past. i've never really been a fan of the 4th. for some reason the 4th was always such a stressful time. we were always running late, we could never find a place that was good enough to watch the fireworks, they always lasted for much less time than they should have for the effort put forth, and it was always hours before we could get home when they were over. there was always something sad about the 4th though...i remember crying on the 4th quite a bit. it's kind of like that same sadness that i used to get as a kid on sunday nights after the wonderful world of disney, that same inexplicable sadness that my dad says that he felt. but i feel ok today...probably best to ignore the whole thing, right?

how are you, aj?

well, i really have screwed up my shoulder/upper back again. time for physical therapy again it seems. maybe i'll try to get my ass up in the morning and go to the pro club and do some of those exercises that i am supposed to do. then again, maybe i should lay off it for a few more days. i just remembered that tahoe is coming up in a few months...ugh...i really, really, really need to get back on the gym plan soon. and i really, really, really need to go to bed now! but before i go to bed, i'd just like to say how excited i am that i am going to see some of you soon. it's gonna be a kick ass time!

and one more thing...doesn't that new levi's low rise jean commercial with the talking belly buttons creep you out??? ew...

happy 225 america. i wonder why 225 wasn't such a big deal -- remember 1976? it seems like we were much more into the 1776 scene then than we are today. maybe greg's right...maybe this has to do with burnout from all the millennium crap.

what's your glam rock star name? mine is rebel doll.

ok, so i've been ignoring my blog. life interrupted. went to port townsend this weekend. the trip was fun. the town wasn't all that. i really want to see something outside of seattle that screams *pacific northwest* but i have yet to figure out where that is. anyway, i'm reading stephen king's "on writing" right now and am taking his advice about reading, reading, reading if you plan to be a writer. he says that if you don't have time to read, then you don't have the tools to write. and so i'm following that because as you know, i've got a novel to write. what's on my reading list now? choke (by fight club and survivor author, chuck palahniuk), jemima j, and the big u by neal stephenson.

tip for cell phone users:

if you call someone up in a bar and leave a message for someone, remember to hit "end call." particularly if you are planning on taking a trip to the restroom right after placing the call. we don't need to hear all that on our answering machines. thanks.

the scariest thing is not knowing your place in the world...

yeah, unbreakable is out. i know that a lot of critics didn't like the movie...i think that you have to look more darkly into the film to really appreciate it. what is so sinister? the way the movie ends? or is it the fact that we aren't sure that there's anything to believe in during these "mediocre times?"