Thursday, April 27, 2006

the good, the bad, and the ugly. oh, and the WTF??

Vince Cruz, Scott O says:

next tiem you bog

Vince Cruz, Scott O says:

blog I’d like to make a request

Miller, Zane B says:

aye?

Vince Cruz, Scott O says:

can you blog about

Vince Cruz, Scott O says:

hot wimminz

Vince Cruz, Scott O says:

and show a pic of 2 hot wimminz kissing?

Miller, Zane B says:

u know what

Miller, Zane B says:

as a matter of fact, i have one of those planned

Miller, Zane B says:

i’ve just been having trouble getting it right

Vince Cruz, Scott O says:

ok take all the time

Vince Cruz, Scott O says:

but remmeber hot wimminz

 

note: i started this one a while ago. it’s not as bad now i think. appologies in advance for the length.

i’m trying to figure out how to revive the funny. i dont want this blog to become one of those banal personal journals i see all the time where people just chronicle the events of their lives without even trying to make them interesting or funny and without any level of analysis as to why these things that happened to them should mean anything. at best you get some overly melodramatic, (yes, yes, i can be accused of that as well) woe-is-me, lame attempt at self-critism, minus the self-introspection. at worst, you end up with an overly detailed, blow-by-blow, down to the second description of each individual action perpetrated during the day, written in unimaginative, single clause sentences displaying no interest in changing tense or even in expanded vocabulary usage. would it kill ya to use the word “plethora” occationally? just to appease those of us familiar with the three amigos?


this may make sense later. maybe. at least it piqued your interest? er… i hope

so what’s my problem? why dont i write consistently (or regularly rather)? i mean, stuff should happen reasonably often that’s worth talking about right? i cant even blame this one on school or video games. i havent played all week and the homework assignments this quarter (unlike last) are laughingly simple and often amount to 30 minutes of busy work.


this is definitely the good. believe it or not, danielle really likes this picture. prolly cause i look like a giant next to these chicks. also because under higher magnification, the girl on the right has a look on her face that makes it seem like i have my hand on her ass and she’s really enjoying it. these girls couldnt even make it in the con door. every step they took, they were accosted by somebody wanting to take their picture.

the challenge that i find myself running into sometimes is how to write something that doesnt just end up being a long string of uninteresting, progressional sentences that reads like a 3rd grade writing assignment titled “what i did last summer.” (not that i dont see blogs out there that read like that that get 50 comments a day). maybe my standards are too high. maybe i need to just start slapping stuff together, whether i’m “inspired” or not. sit down and write something every night and post it, regardless of how boring it is. treat it like a job. well, not like a job. if i treat it like a job, i’ll never actually do anything…


anime con 101: cosplay. cosplayers dress up as for conventions and such as their favorite anime or manga characters. the girls in the last picture were dressed as these two characters from final fantasy X-2. the resemblance is fucking crazy. they even had the mismatched blue and green contacts and the one dressed as yuna had her tatoos and that thing on her chest meticulously reproduced on her skin.

part of this is case’s fault. he made the mistake of paying me a complement once about my tone and use of fonts, images, etc and now i try to earn that complement everytime i post. now i’m a little too concious of my audience. i mean, i can look back at the earliest posts and see how much better they were. how much more free form and entertaining. i definitely had more passion for what i was writing about, at least in the beginning. but u know, after the anatomy class ended, i kinda ran out of really obvious material. it can be hard to maintain the continuous thread of penis dissection jokes when u’re not even in the lab anymore.


this is the bad. and by bad i mean goooooood! one thing about cosplayers is, they make their own costumes and weapons and such. i chased this chick down the escalator to beg for a picture. she’s dressed as asuka from evangelion. interesting story here. when i asked for a picture with her, she got kinda worried and asked her boyfriend if he had a problem with it. he just shrugged (he didnt care, even thought it was a cool idea). but she still looked dubious, until i flashed my ring and said, “my wife SPECIFICALLY LEFT TOWN this weekend because she knew i was gonna go to this con, so i need pics of me with girls in costumes to show her she made the right decision.” she brightened right up after that. i did the same thing with the ladies above. i never believed it myself, but apparently being married really is the key to getting women. dammit.

so what does that really leave me with? i’m not an idiot. i know that the stuff that most appeals to the vast majority of u guys that still read this is the racing and car posts. maybe the reason they’re so popular is because my own interest shines thru a little better. or it could be the humor behind the trial and error and the self deprecation. to be honest, i’ve been trying to write those up as well. i mean i have lots and lots of pics from working on noel’s S14 that we’ll be racing this year, but i’m having trouble coming up with a context to bring it up in. is anybody REALLY interested in seeing how we replaced the clutch? actually, if personal injury is funny, now that i think about it, i may have something to go with…


this is the wtf?? well, maybe just the ugly. yeah, those are dudes. and yes, they were nice enough to pose with me. one of the archetypes (really one could say stereotype) always present at anime cons is the cross-dresser. usually personified by the fat hairy guy dressed in the tiny sailor moon outfit or japanese school girl uniform. i honestly have no idea what series they were supposed to be from. they fell for the wedding band trick too.

and i realize u guys dont really like it so much when i branch out into politics. for instance, george even commented on kevin’s blog that this blog was dead and that he refuses to participate in my “political hackery.” the reason the political hackery gets written before the car posts is because it’s usually a immediate venting i can do at work in 30 minutes without having to find much in the way of tie-in photos, etc. basically inspiration strikes and i put it between the anvil and hammer and strike it again. the mundane occurances at work are harder to record. hell, even the big nights doing fun stuff are hard to set down on paper in a humorous way that i can be satisfied by. they may have been fun to do, but they dont necessarily translate well into story telling.


ok, i take it back. THIS is the wtf?? this chick had no idea i was grabbing a pic of this, but really, this has to be the cleverest costume i saw that day. certainly not because of the half-ass wig and skirt, but rather because she has a tentacle monster and because she’s, well, felating it. if u dont know what a tentacle monster is, then you weren’t subjected to urotsukodoji: legend of the overfiend at the tender age of 16. that or u didnt come to my highschool graduation party. u missed out. ask me and i’ll explain it sometime. the tentacle monster is just one subset of the whole hentai branch, which if u dont know already, is japanese cartoon porn. it comes in several varieties, including yuri (gay) and yuni(lesbian) as well as fan fiction called… uh… doushijin or something like which basically takes popular characters from other series or movies and puts them in sexual situations and well… positions. there were more booths selling that stuff than anything else, i swear to god. as one kid there put it… “sakuracon: sponsored by hentai.“

i guess, basically what i’m trying to get at is, as life’s events pass ever by, most of them just don’t seem worth reporting on. fortunately however, god gave us sakura con. a really cool little soiree of casual fans of japanese comic books and animation. but i’m kinda tired now, so maybe i’ll blog about it some other time. if i can get the inspiration to strike. but, in the meantime, it seems i have just created one of those mundane, woe-is-me posts i was just ranting about. FORGIVE ME!!!


jet black, ed and ein from cowboy beebop. this one’s for u forest. now take a closer look at my profile pic. this has no relevance to the this post. you know, because this post isnt about sakuracon. i just wanted forest to see it.

meanwhile i should have a post up tomorrow for photo friday. methinks i need to do some photo editing…

Posted by sand at 08:29:38 | Permalink | Comments (11)

Thursday, April 20, 2006

another 15 minutes

i have decided that the B-52’s were genius. and i’m not talking about love shack.

a letter i wrote to the local NPR affiliate was just read on the air. here’s the background. the seattle sonics, after being unable to convince the state legislature to give them $220M to renovate key arena (after a $60M renovation 2 years ago) have gone to the city of seattle. they have delivered the city council an ultimatum this week. they’ll pitch in $18M or the $220M and the rest would come from the city. they gave the city a month to decide and said if the answer is no, they’ll move the team (supposedly a “unnamed city” has offered them a “blank check” for stadium construction). one possibility is that they would move accross the lake to bellevue. a developer from that side of town was interviewed on the show. he told the sonics that if they came to the east side, they would try and see what kind of stadium they could build without any money from the tax payer. totally privately funded. ok… with that in mind…

here’s the link to the debate from yesterday

here’s a link to them reading my comments. it starts at about minute 51.

so… having heard that (and i’m sure nobody actually listened to it. except ang. she prolly heard it at home), here’s the actual text of the letter i sent.

Finally a voice of reason! Mr. kemper has to be the first person I have ever heard suggest that sports teams should, or even could, finance a stadium on their own without government money. I hope he gets to try that little experiment and I hope he succeeds.

So the sonics go to Bellevue, so what? Would they be known as the Bellevue Blue Bloods? Or would they eventually be known as the Seattle Supersonics of Bellevue. Imagine the uproar.

Doesn’t hurt me anyways, I’m a Phoenix Suns fan. =)


squatch vs. the gorilla? as if there could even be a contest.

i knew they would edit it. especially since i got the guy’s first and last names backwards. but notice the cut out the last 2 paragraphs. probably a good thing too, since it was a really bad classist joke. bellevue is the scottsdale of seattle. it has a reputation of being where the rich people live, even tho the vast majority of ppl over there are generally middle class (again, ang).


thank you city of phoenix. for the copyrighted image. not the ballpark.

i’ve written to these guys before whenever the topic of any of the local stadiums comes up, and i always mention what happened to that poor lady in phoenix when the city council pushed thru a sales tax to for bank-one ballpark after it was voted down by the public. again i refer u to former ramblings.

If the situation does come to pass, where a referendum on a tax for new stadium construction or renovations is voted down by the citizens and then subsequently pushed through by the city council or state government, hopefully we wont see the same thing that happened in Phoenix when that happened with Bank One Ballpark. Nobody in that town wanted a major league baseball team, but big business money was more important than public opinion. After the city council levied a 1/2 cent sales tax which had been overwhelmingly crushed at the polls, one fool was angry enough about his will being circumvented that he actually shot the city council woman who sponsored it. Right there on the steps in front of city hall (if memory serves).

I’m not saying he should have shot her, but I can certainly understand the sentiment. I’ve only lived here a few years, but I dont see that happening here. Guess its a good thing we live in friendly Seattle =)

OK, maybe this isnt airworthy…

see? SEE?? u take out any references to shooting ppl and suddenly u get on the air. i’d make a joke about the st00pid “liberal media” here, but i’m not sure the sarcasm would come thru =D

Posted by sand at 22:40:32 | Permalink | Comments (6)

Friday, March 3, 2006

let’s be honest about it

i got out of the car at work this morning and thought, “gee i love fridays!” then i thought to myself, do i really like fridays? what’s to like about friday? i still have to get up early. i still have to go to work. i mean, seriously, the whole promise of the weeked thing? that’s bogus too! believe it or not, d and i usually go to bed EARLIER on friday because we’re wasted from the week. TGIF my a$$!

friday’s a tease. sure, she put’s out maybe 3 or 4 times a year (and when she does, it’s always good), but let’s be honest. saturday is your best girl. saturday’s almost always good to go. saturday will let u do whatever you want with her and she’ll even enjoy it! saturday is the fair maiden and the dark vixen all rolled into one. friday? friday’s the bitch that gives ya blue balls.

up yours friday! except on 3 day weekends… then we get it on.


yes i know this is sub-par. i’m working back up to it. another one for the NES nostalgic

i’m gonna start doing this i think

Posted by sand at 23:18:22 | Permalink | Comments (9)

Monday, July 25, 2005

i thought it was funny anyways…

exerpts from the mind of bill swanson

if you can think of anyone else that needs a ride we may have room for one more..the sentra is no limo but it should do the job…1.6 litres of japaese piston pumping fury baby. oh, btw, had some fucnut that drea works with ask me mockingly (because i was from az) if i was a big nascar fan..i wanted to rick james his ass but instead just asked “are you a homosexual and drive a convertible”. not to clever..but i aint gunna let some prissy, bay area, cali prick dog on the AZ…gotta represent !!! drea was not impressed. fugit..late

bill does not take kindly to being stereotyped.  as if that wasn’t obvious.

Posted by sand at 08:08:12 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Friday, July 22, 2005

a powerful destructive force is unleashed!

i was listening to to the point today.  they were discussing the conclusion by a british think tank that brittain’s role in the occupation of iraq contributed (but not exclusively) to the recent series of subway bombings in london.  anyways, the commentator from chatham house refered to the london subway bombings from 2 weeks ago as 7-7 and i was thinking, ok, so now we have 9-11, 7-7 and 6-11 (train bombing in spain).  from now on, i’m going to refer to my birthday as 1-28 in recognition of the day a horrible terror was unleashed upon the world when i burst forth from my mother’s womb and began my campaign of wantan destruction.

ok, maybe i should actually call case’s birthday 1-26.  he’s a hell of a lot more destructive than me.

the best part about this is that in europe, the military and maybe some other places in the world, they list dates day first, then month.  so september 11, 2001 becomes 11 sept 2001, or 11.9.2001 or 11-9.  looks like at least one good thing will come out of a terrorist attack in that finally, the rest of the world will be forced to get onboard with our way of recording dates.

incidentally, i’ve written all my dates in the DD month YYYY format since i was a junior in highschool.  dare to be different.  

Posted by sand at 19:45:02 | Permalink | Comments (7)

Thursday, July 21, 2005

business opportunity


my future financial indepenence

who wants to go in halvesies with me on a bubble tea shop in downtown ballard?  this is definitely an underserved market here.  for the last year, i’ve had to go all the way over to the u-district to get my fix.  at first i was thinking, maybe i should buy this for myself at home.  then i can have all the bubble tea i want!  but then, d and i have been talking for quite a while about how somebody could make a killing opening one of these in ballard.  shouldn’t be hard to get a bank to give us a small business loan, right?

i think we missed the opportunity tho… monday on my way home, i was forced to take a detour down market to get home and i notice that ann’s teriyaki has a bubble tea banner in the window now.  i’m torn… happy because it’s right there down the street from me instead of accross town and yet bitterly, bitterly saddened that they beat me to it.

maybe it’s not to late!


thx for paying the yearly fee for me mom ;)

Posted by sand at 14:36:10 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Monday, June 27, 2005

more filler: bubble tea conspiracy

so, yesterday was a reasonably busy day for me.  i dropped d off at the airport @ 7:30, turned around and went to work for 30 min and then headed up to everett for an ASME executive breakfast meeting to figure out what we’re gonna do for meetings this coming year.  after that i went all the way back down to tukwila to work for 6 hours.

as i was cruising down the freeway in the FC, i figured, since i was gonna be going to work for the rest of the day, i’d swing through the u-district and treat myself to a bubble tea so i’d have something to chew on for an hour.

i tell ya man, there must be some kind of forkin bubble tea conspiracy going on down there.  i started out by going to yunnie, my usual place on the ave, only to encounter dark windows and a hours of operation sign that said “sunday closed”.  ok, ok, no problem.  i’ll just walk up the street to WOW (for world of worship.  it has a the feel of a televangelist ministry.  good tea tho).  but what’s this?  they’re closed too? dammit!  fine, one last stop at a third place just south of 45th and waddayaknow?  they’re closed on sundays too!  what the hell?

i mentioned this to jay at dinner and he said, and i quote, “maybe there’s some kind of bubble tea convention going on.”

“sure,” i said, “every week, apparently.”

either that or the entire bubble tea industry of the u-district is owned and operated by mormons.

i have another nukuler cartoon sketched.  did it during a meeting.  be warned…

Posted by sand at 22:27:30 | Permalink | Comments (9)

Monday, May 23, 2005

anthropology of business culture

today i participated in the ritualistic exchange of business cards with representatives of a foreign supplier.  everybody was exchanging small, antiquated, rectangular pieces of paper with raised letters and shiny finishes and after having several proffered to me, i ran back to my desk and collected a few of my own to hand out.  as i gave them out, i told each person that this was the least important one they would recieve today.  after everybody goes back to work, these cards will never be looked at again anyways.  all the appropriate names, phn numbers and adresses will be sent out by email and that will become the definative list.

i realized today that people that wear full suits look like full dumbasses.  the only time i ever see anyone wearing a jacket and tie is when they’re trying to present an image of profesionalism that is dissingenous.  i think that in most businesses, with the possible exception of the financial industry, business casual (i.e. polo and slacks) has completely taken over as the accepted dress code for all functions.  i realized this today because all of the guys that are here today were in tailored suits when we visited them for a site evaluation, but today their rockin’ the business casual.  now that the impressions phase is over, they have reverted to the normal casual, comfortable style of dress expected in our industry.


dumbass?

don’t get me wrong, i think their a great group and very good at what they do and i’m not judging them personally, but it seems that as a society, we’re propping up an uncessary industry.  i spent $600 on an interview suit for college, and i never wear it.  it was completely unnecessary.  every interview that i’ve ever gotten a job offer out of, i’ve shown up wearing short sleeves, dickies or jeans, and my nose ring and pyramid bracelet.

in my view, the business suit is an anacronism.  it says, “i’m more interested in creating unessesary expenses and buying expensive clothes than focusing on the the work i produce.”  i guess the point is to show a certain level of affluence necessary to buy one.

i guess that’s why they call it a monkey suit.


monkey suit?

Posted by sand at 23:28:26 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Thursday, May 5, 2005

slow drivers

every year around about this time, the boeing employee community fund people have their fundraising drive.  this usually takes the form of managers wearing hawaiian shirts and serving free hamburgers at lunch time while collecting donations.  this year, at our building they had a car wash out front with a bunch of them dressed up rather convincingly as the blues brothers and playing johnny gun in the background. (that’s the spy hunter theme for you non-middle school band members out there).  i gave $22.


that’s me and case with our parents LTD.  he’s the tall skinny one.  it’s got cop engine, cop shocks, cop brakes. and yes, i wrecked it.

as you can imagine, with a building housing a few thousand cube dwellers, the lines were pretty long.  by the time i went down there 1.5 hours after they had started, there was still probably at least 100 people waiting to get food.  the line moved along pretty quick right up until i got to the food table at which point i guess eating had finally outpaced production at the grill.  the waiting began. at this point, there was a guy running back and forth between the grill and the two serving tables, literally bringing them over to the line 2 at a time.  i was waiting for a boca burger that never came anyways, so i just let other people in line behind me step up and take the burgers as they came.  everybody was all polite and taking turns, etc, but there was still a wait of at least 5 minutes between trips, so the pace was agonizingly slow.  then this one guy comes up and takes TWO BURGERS!  

keep in mind that this didnt effect me at all, since i wasnt waiting for a meat burger, but i called him on it anyways.  i said, “u’re taking two burgers?” and he says, “yeah, i’m a big guy.”

“big guy??  whatddya mean big guy? big asshole, maybe! what about the 60 people waiting behind u in line?“  unphased, he walked off to get his soda and icecream.  big guy my ass!  my dad is a big guy.  this guy is a big prick, no taller than me and with a moderately hefty belly and a featureless neck!  if he had wanted a second burger, he shoulda walked his big ass back to the end of the line and waited like everybody else!  i hope those two burgers give him a friggin heart attack!

when i vented this back to my desk, they all laughed and one of them said, “u’re pretty easy to get, zane.”  see, the thing is there’s actually very little that makes me mad or gets me riled.  but if there’s one thing that pisses me off, its seeing or hearing about something unfair, or somebody cheating a group like that.  it’s just, i dunno… discourteous.  “i’m a big guy”  what a bullchit excuse!

a few years ago, i went to a casting call for a TLC game show called ESCAPE FROM EXPERIMENT ISLAND.


yeah… it was as lame as it sounds.

it was supposed to be sort of a spin off of junk yard wars with the flavor of survivor.  two teams for one week on an island game preserve off the coast of scotland.  anyways, they brought us in groups of fours and asked us a round of questions about where who we were, where we work, what kind of hobbies we have, etc.  at one point, the guy asked me what kind of people piss me off and i honestly drew a blank.  (keep in mind, this was before the 2002 elections when the republicans took over congress).  i really couldn’t think of anything.  i told him the truth.  i have an extremely even temper and i just let stuff roll off my back.   i usually look at the good side of folks and it takes a lot to get me angry at a particular individual.  i made the mistake one thanksgiving of telling case that my greatest failing as a human being is my ability to empathicly place myself in any person’s head and justify any action they make based on what their psychology was at the moment.  nobody does stuff they really consider evil.  this makes it extremely difficult for me to stay pissed off at somebody.  he told me that’s the stupidest statement he’d ever heard me make.  of course, i didnt mention any of that in the interview.  eventually, i got some prodding from the guy sitting next to me.  he said, “what about people who pick on people smaller than them?”


“oh hell yeah!  those kinds of people really piss me off!” i said and went into a 10 minute tirade about it, telling them how i was a bully bully in grade school and would always go beat up the big kids picking on the smaller ones… but that’s another story.  when i went home and relayed this story to danielle, as soon as i said they asked me what kind of people piss me off, without missing a beat she said… “slow drivers”

damn that girl knows me well…

believe it or not, this post began life as a commentary on icecream. i got a boca burger and a neopolitan icecream sandwich for desert.  when i finally got to eat it, i opened the wrong end first and found the strawberry side.  damn… i would have prefered to save the strawberry for last… i hate chocolate icecream!


can you believe there are no pix of neopolitan icecream sandwhiches on the web?  tragedy!

Posted by sand at 00:43:10 | Permalink | Comments (8)

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

work interlude

kickin’ it old school with ice-T and body count.  u know… zach de la rocha is a punk compared to ice-T.  when i listen to this old stuff, it actually sounds like he is pissed off first-hand, unlike zach who sounds pissed off by proxy.

now he plays a detective on law and order SVU.  hmmmm…

hopefully this will be the last commentary i will ever make on mid 90’s music.

Posted by sand at 00:13:47 | Permalink | No Comments »