BS

Fucking “Rockstars”

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 | Life, Rants | 2 Comments

2 nights in a row there will be no sleep.

Last night I got to bed just before 3am. They were recording some new songs. However it doesn’t seem all that smart to START recording drums/guitars/vocals at 8pm on a Sunday.

Tonight dude came home from the bar with an afterparty. However it was just a big sausage fest where some dude stole my lighter.

There was only one single girl who was pretty alternative and didn’t know when to stop talking. However I was a bit amused that she got Andrew to agree with her on her anti-christian views since he makes a big point to tell me how much time he spends at church.

Bah… Anywho, Mike&I were watching a movie when they came back. Actually a rather interesting one called Pathology… But they came back and killed the movie.

Dude promised he would have everybody out by midnight and then after 12:30 he had to start a movie. Well sort of… It’s actually a shitty British version of Jackass.

Anyway, I have had a lot of Brandy and in another glass or two I will be able to just pass out and bypass that whole need for quiet thing to go to sleep.

In other news I am REALLY far on the new theater design / database entry etc… I expect I should be able to launch the new automated theater design before the end of the week.

One of my good friends just got back from the Army. Of course he lives in Atlanta so I probably won’t be seeing him anytime soon, but it’s nice to have another friend to talk to again.

Okay, seriously “Dirty Sanchez” is not nearly as funny as Jackass. Just an FYI. Total weak-ass ripoff.

Religious People Can’t Take A Joke!

Saturday, August 9th, 2008 | Life | 15 Comments

Okay look, I am, at least as best could be described Agnostic. Yet just because I may have a different belief structure than a lot of other people, I don’t go around and tell other people their religion is wrong unless they first try to tell me mine is.

However, maybe it’s just because I believe in freedom of speech and religion that I feel I shouldn’t have to be ‘careful’ of my words and walk on eggshells around people who have certain beliefs and ideas.

10:38:53 PM James says: oh and what was that about jesus riding a giraffe?
10:39:31 PM M says: it’s my response to one of the theology on tap topics:
10:39:42 PM M says: did jesus ride a donkey or an elephant: faith at the voting booth.
10:39:57 PM M says: jesus was totally a libertarian.., and he rode a giraffe!
10:40:19 PM M says: theology on tap is where young adults get together at the bar to discuss faith issues.
10:40:23 PM James says: cool. i thought he rode mary magdalen :)
10:40:24 PM James says: haha
10:40:25 PM James says: j/k
10:40:29 PM M says: that’s disgusting.
10:40:56 PM James says: yes yes, i am a terrible human being
10:41:11 PM James says: which will be proven someday when i publish my book
10:41:18 PM James says: … as “fiction”
10:42:25 PM M says: it’s just that i’m so sick of people making fun of my religion.
10:42:30 PM M says: like my faith is fair game.
10:42:42 PM M says: especially when i’ve never pushed my faith on anyone.
10:43:12 PM James says: i’m not bashing u/christianity in any way/shape/form
10:43:26 PM M says: you just made a sex joke about my savior.
10:43:32 PM James says: so?
10:43:37 PM M says: it’s not funny.
10:43:50 PM M says: not to me anyway.
10:44:02 PM James says: wow, why on earth would you try to find a way to take offense to a joke?
10:44:37 PM James says: had i made a similar joke about anybody but jesus you would have laughed with me
10:44:59 PM M says: i don’t need to try to take offense, i was offended.
10:45:38 PM M says: can we just leave religion out of our dialogue?
10:45:46 PM James says: well i don’t know what to say. it was just a joke
10:46:02 PM James says: so i need to walk on eggshells now?
10:47:23 PM M says: no.
10:47:27 PM M says: just avoid religion.
10:47:35 PM James says: i tell racist jokes to my black friends. i tell religious jokes to my religious friends. i will refrain from doing that with you anymore (eggshells).
10:47:36 PM M says: or at least making jokes about it.
10:47:43 PM M says: thank you.
10:48:21 PM James says: but i feel bad right now, and i don’t think i should
10:48:52 PM M says: then don’t.
10:49:15 PM James says: not that easy
10:49:37 PM M says: well just feel bad for upsetting me but not for the content.
10:49:46 PM M says: if you think it’s amusing, i can’t fault you for that.
10:49:58 PM James says: i still care about you and am not trying to hurt/offend you. but it seemed harmless to me and still does
10:50:10 PM M says: if you don’t think you should feel bad, then simply don’t feel bad. power of the mind.
10:50:27 PM M says: i’m not all up in a tizzy about it. it’s fine.
10:50:33 PM M says: seriously.
10:51:50 PM James says: alright well enough discussion for the night. I’m all tapped out. g’night ~
10:53:55 PM M says: i’m sorry.
10:53:55 PM James says: [Auto-Response]: going 2 bed
10:54:19 PM M says: guess standing up for myself has it’s consequences. good night.

Yes, it is within this girls right to be offended by my words, and it is within my rights to offend her and yes, faith is “fair game”. However what the hell (oh shit, I should of more carefully chosen my words here 2) is the point of getting offended over what was very clearly a joke? So what if it’s a sex joke? I mean both of us are adults and talk about sex to each other now and then.

I know there are a bunch of Christians reading this blog entry, so I would like your opinion. Are you offended by what I said? Am I now on bad terms with the J-Man, or will it take another offensive joke to do so?

Legs Up For Jesus

Little Lucy went out into the garden and saw her cat Tiddles lying on the ground with its eyes shut and its legs in the air.

She fetched her Dad to look at Tiddles, and on seeing the cat he said, as gently as he could, “I’m afraid Tiddles is dead, Lucy.”

“So why are his legs sticking up in the air like that, Daddy?” asked Lucy as she fought back the tears.

At a loss for something to say the father replied, “Tiddles’ legs are pointing straight up in the air so that it will be easier for Jesus to float down from heaven above and grab a leg and lift Tiddles up to Heaven.”

Little Lucy seemed to take her Tiddles death quite well. However, two days later when her father came home from work Lucy had tears in her eyes and said: “Mommy almost died this morning.”

Fearing something terrible had happened the father shook the girl and shouted, “How do you mean Lucy? Tell Daddy!”

“Well”, mumbled Lucy, “soon after you left for work this morning I saw mommy lying on the floor with her legs in the air and she was shouting, “Oh Jesus!!! I’m coming, I’m coming!!!” and if it hadn’t been for the milkman holding her down she would definitely have gone, Daddy.”

The Model That Loved Me (Not Quite Enough)

Saturday, August 9th, 2008 | Life | 6 Comments

So I’m at the bar tonight. It was a “special night” as there was some modeling thing going on and the gorgeous women outnumbered the guys at least 2 to 1. Seemed ideal for me to go… AND wear my “T-Qualizer” shirt since it gets me tons of attention.

Within 5 minutes of being at the bar I had 4 girls come up to me who wanted their pictures taken with me (always a good time). One of them insisted on shoving her tits between my arm for the picture (this amused me since it was her being pervy and not me).

The night calmed down a bit from there and it went on until eventually I struck up a conversation with some other hot model girl who told me I was the coolest guy she had ever met and she wanted to buy me a shot.

She went off to go do that and I had a guy 3 times my size threaten me and tell me that if I went inside he would beat my ass. So I waited until she seperated from him and then I walked in and grabbed her and moved her away from “mr. kick my ass”.

Her friends were leaving and so was the angry guy (who gave me another dirty look) and I asked her if she was going with them or me and she choose me. So good start right? So she decides she wants to go get a drink at an Irish pub she knows, but she has REALLY bad sense of direction. I mean she tells me the cross it’s at and I start driving there but she insists that Elliot road is perpendicular to Ray Rd and I try to politely tell her it’s not but she was insistent to keep sending me in the wrong direction to get places and I was willing to let her.

So we eventually show up at a bar that supposedly one of her friends was at. We stay in the car for a minute and make out and then proceed to go in the bar and NOT find her friend. Seems he was not at that bar but at one with the same name at Tempe Marketplace.

Fine, fine whatever… Lets just get on with it.

So we get to this place and she keeps telling me how “in love with me she is” and how “i have never liked a guy enough to introduce him to my co-workers”… blah blah.

So on the way into this bar we get carded and I show my Rarotonga license (the only one I have since Arizona cop stole my Arizona license a month ago and I never got another one), and the guy won’t let me into the bar.

He insists that he will only let me in with a passport if I don’t have an Arizona ID. I say “DUDE, I am nearly 28 years old”, but he just spouts some crap about policy and won’t let me in.

So the girl goes (Georgia) goes in and I talk to her over the fence. Then she gets kicked out by one of the guys that works there because he says she’s drunk. She however sees it as her getting kicked out because she was talking to me (on the outside). So she walks around to go back in.

Since I could not go back in I asked her if we were done then and she kept saying NO… No No, of course not.

However I didn’t see how it could work any other way.

She was in, and I was out so I just walked off and drove home.

Never did get her number. Suppose I could have gotten it if I tried, but I was rather annoyed that I couldn’t get into a bar for the first time ever and the girl who kept telling me how much she adored me was able to get in.

Anyway, it’s cool. It’s just one more thing to boost my confidence. Though I really need to start getting pictures with all these hot girls I am dating.

I Live in a Recording Studio

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 | Life | 2 Comments

Since I have been back in Arizona I have gone through a transition of places to stay. First I thought, well… Lets just move in with my girlfriend… That’s always a good idea right? Ok, well things don’t always work out as you plan and I am no longer with her and have updated relationship status to FIP (friends in progress), so I moved out of there and moved into my friends office. Friend kicked ass to let me stay there while I found a place since he already had somebody renting a room from him and I just took up more space.

So I found a new place to live yesterday. I have been replying to a bunch of ads on craigslist, and after thinking none of them would ever respond, 4 people responded all at once. I was looking through the replies and then one of the guys just called me and he seemed pretty cool so I met up with him and his other roommate for a beer.

We ended up all getting along really well and it was the beginning of the month so I have now moved into their place. Yep, met them and moved in a couple hours later.

They both have daytime jobs and then come home and are musicians at night. They have soundproofed the walls, have a giant mixing board and a computer just for mixing, a vocal recording booth etc… so this is all very interesting to me, which is good since the things I know are interesting to them.

It’s a big ass house, and I get my own bathroom and a walk in closet. There is a pool etc… However what there isn’t is a Microwave… or silverware… or dishes… haha… Supposedly the last guy who lived here had those things and they haven’t gotten around to getting them.

Now I know they are bachelor-extrodinares and all, but how could they live without a microwave, but it seems they just get take-out everyday.

I do hope they buy a microwave since I would rather not… I mean I am ok buying some new pots/pans/silverware, but that’s where it ends.

Anywho, this aught to be interesting and maybe I will use studio to record me covering Chocolate Salty Balls :)

Update: Oh and I suppose I could be more specific. Underdog Studios is run out of the house. You can see their website and some of the stuff that has been recorded here on the site: http://underdogstudios.com/

I Own A Daewoo :(

Monday, June 23rd, 2008 | Life | 6 Comments

Yes, it’s true. I decided to buy a cheapie car. From pimped out mini cooper to…. a Daewoo.

I will miss the mini, but for the next 2 years I will enjoy the $500 a month residual income that it will provide me.

So from an expensive car to one that I paid $1300 for. Yep that’s right. 2000 Daewoo with less than 76000 miles on it, and it only costs $1300.

I will need to recharge the A/C, find a hubcap (1 is missing), put new speakers in it (1 of them works, but it has a rather large pen sticking out of it…), and clean the stickiness outside of car (lets hope it was from soda).

It also doesn’t have cruise control, in Arizona there is no need, however I will be annoyed if I have to take a road trip.

Oh… So George Carlin died today… Yeah, I know that sucks… and has nothing to do with my shitty new car, but it was also shitty so I thought of it.

Grr, my foot still hurts. I thought I found the cure for Gout last night, but it came back. bastards….

My Car Debacle

Friday, June 20th, 2008 | Life | 1 Comment

Ok, so good move on my part. Move to New Zealand for 2 months and during that time sell my car to somebody who will pay for it for 24 months.

It actually seemed like a good idea. I mean I am a legal lien holder on the title and it can’t be sold without me being paid off first. I get $500 USD a month in residual income, which pretty much pays my rent wherever I go. Yep, just for selling a car.

Well I got back to America and I had no car… Also due to expensive plain tickets that pulled from the wrong accounts etc.. (grr, overdraft was setup to not pull from my savings but from my credit card as a cash advance) I am fairly low on spending cash.

So I thought I could get my mini cooper back. Talked to the guy who bought it and offered most of what he had paid for it to get the car back. Hesitant at first he agreed to do so.

However we kept talking and he mentioned that he still hadn’t sold his old car. So me, enjoying the residual income though of a perfect solution. I bought his car, a 1993 Ford (Anal) Probe with 170k miles for a $900 reduction on what he owed me for the car.

Now I was informed that it was only internal cosmetic issues with the car and that it ran fine. So I gave it a full tank of gas ($58) and then drove it to the emissions place since this is required in Arizona before you can title a car into your name. Well it failed the emissions… 3 different tests failed!!! This pretty much means that the catalytic converter needs to be replaced since it was SUPER high on NOX etc..

Well this and my friend had done a quick list of things that he noticed that needed to be replaced. Some of which included the radiator, and both cv joints on the front, as well as it had some kind of weird idle where sometimes it idles at 2000 and sometimes at 1000 and power stearing sometimes works, and sometimes doesn’t…

Needless to say i was pissed off, I mean I would have fixed all the cosmetic crap and the cv joints without making much hassel but when the emissions thing happened and I can’t even title the car until it’s fixed, I suddenly don’t want anything to do with this stupid Anal Probe.

The owner agreed to take car back but still didn’t want to give me my mini cooper back. He said he would do it because he didn’t want me to try to screw him over (since there are worse things than death and I can do them all), but he didn’t really want to and legally he didn’t have to. So I told him it was fine and so long as he took the old POS back that I would just find another car.

Well this is great in theory. I mean I will keep getting my rent paid for a couple years, but now I still don’t have a car and without a car I can’t do mobile pc repair OR get another job.

So I am actively looking for a non-shitty car for around 1500… Yeah… I know, but whatever, I mean I am not trying to replace the mini cooper, but to make life easier so I can spend more time working on my website.

Gout, A Pain in the Foot

Friday, June 20th, 2008 | Life | 3 Comments

You know how a doctor looks at some test results at one point and says “wow, you are really healthy… except you do have really high uric acid levels, you should really work on changing your diet to change that so that you don’t end up with Gout”.

Well you ignore him because doctors are stupid and who the fuck are they to tell you what you can and cannot eat!?

That was my experience. Basically I have a shitty metabolism and my body is too acidic, so uric acid builds up in the joints. Most often the big toe joint. Odd, I know.

But DAMN does it suck. I mean I haven’t been able to walk properly for days. I had to pay a doctor $110 for the visit just to get him to prescribe me some drugs, which to my dismay he only gave me percoset and shit to deal with the pain, and nothing to actually lower uric acid levels.

Lucky for me I know how to browse the internet and have been trying to reduce my foods that cause excess uric acid and have been drinking cherry juice etc… It still hasn’t gone away, but it’s better than it was the other day.

I mean having shit like this takes away all motivation. Oh I can’t move my food… or even if I don’t move it the damn things still hurts and you can’t sleep because of the constant stabbing pain.

So what am I supposed to do? Eat less red meat, stop eating shell fish, cut out yeast based products and things with high protein and purine. Stop drinking alcohol etc…

Yeah, it sounds like some bullshit to me 2. Grr…

Why NOT To Move To New Zealand

Friday, June 20th, 2008 | Life | 3 Comments

Well as you probably noticed I am no longer living in New Zealand. I was given a 12 month holiday visa and I only choose to use 2 months of it. Pissed away a ton of money on the return trip flight too (1 way from NZ to PHX = $1000 USD and that was after a lot of looking).

Ok, so you want to live in New Zealand… That’s cool… I will tell you if it will or will not work for you.

First: How hardcore of an internet user are you? I mean do you watch a ton of movies online and download all your favorite TV Shows from the net commercial free? If so then New Zealand hates you.

Don’t believe me? There is no competition on most things in New Zealand. No cellphone competition, no internet competition. Sure there are other internet providers but all of them have the same backbone. That backbone isn’t very fast and charges a LOT for bandwidth, so all the companies push on that cost to their customers.

I was able to get the “MAXIMUM ULTRA-FAST SPEED” of 3 megs (haha, ultra-fast my ass). However when I paid for that 3 meg connection they capped the downloads at 6 gigabytes. Then anything I downloaded beyond this automatically charged me for a 3 gigabyte data block. Basically even with me trying to use less internet than I normally would it cost me $150 a month extra in just bandwidth charges.

Then the bandwidth monster further ate holes in my wallet. I signed up for a Vodaphone contract, (there are only 2 cellphone providers in NZ and that’s the one 95% of everybody uses… again no competition), and being a smartass I wanted to use my iPhone.

So I unlocked my iPhone and slapped the newest software on it, and walah. I had something that virtually nobody in New Zealand had.

Well fat lot of good that did me. Seems my iphone was set to auto-check my email every so many minutes, and when it does that vodaphone’s network charges me 10c just for accessing the internet, and then it costs $10 a megabyte for bandwidth. No, that number was not a joke, and no there was not any option for unlimited internet usage.

So after a month of having my email checked now and then by my phone and also pulling up Google Maps (100% necessicary in Auckland) to find your way around, I spent $250 on my phone bill (and that was only 30 mins of talk time). Seems that I had to pay $150 for 15 megabytes of bandwidth and then a shitload of fees (least of which is 12.5% GST for everything).

Ok, so perhaps I am not a typically internet case. I run a website that’s all about burning the shit out of your bandwidth… because you can.

So lets look at other things. How about importing goods. Surely a friendly island nation has lots of trade agreements with other countries to bring goods in. I mean it’s needed since you can’t produce everything you need right?

Well it seems that kiwi’s don’t know what they are missing and have learned to live with the small amount of crap they have. However the rest of the world moves there and then goes broke importing goods. It costs over $500 USD to import 50lbs of stuff from America. Then once it gets here customs goes through it and assesses GST (Goods and Services Tax), which is always 12.5% of the value of the items.

So if the items were honestly reported, or insured by the party who sent them you will have to pay a ransom fee. I myself had to pay $125 just to get a motherboard and processor that my friend had been kind enough to reship to me.

Ok, so if you are rich and don’t need any faster of an internet connection than 3 megabytes (supposedly in Christchurch there is a nice expensive 10 megabyte connection, though there wasn’t in Auckland…), then maybe you really would like living in New Zealand.

I mean it’s gorgeous and well… the women there are really easy to pick up once you get the hang of it. It’s also a great place to eat Pizza and Asian food. I mean you need to really like Asian food because every single place that we have a mexican food place; they have an Asian food place.

Be warned though, they have taken all of our American phrases and “cleaned them up” to remove the “potty mouth” aspect of it and make them more politically correct.

Example 1) Sweet Ass !!! (USA) | Sweet As ! (NZ) [Um... Sweet As what???? lame]
Example 2) Assume makes an ass out of u and me! (USA) | It’s just bad to assume. (NZ) [FYI: Saying this phrase in the American way seems to offend some people in NZ because it's so Trite and Vulgar]

There is also virtually no instant food except for pies. Now this is cool for people who like to cook, but if you are lazy (if you are an American, it’s not a far stretch) then you will need to like Asian food since it’s the only thing available for takeout in most areas.

Ok, so you are rich, you love Asian food, are thrilled at the possibility of easy loose women, think that Americans are too vulgar, you like adventure and don’t need high speed internet. Well then New Zealand IS for you.

My recommendation is to pack REALLY light and then live in the hostels, moving from place to place. I went to a hostel in Rarotonga and it was fantastic (and only $17 a day). Basically I had instant friends.

The way I went is I packed up my projection tv / ps3 etc.. and took them to New Zealand and then I moved in to a house with other people (where I was overpaying rent). In retrospect, the next time I travel no matter how long I plan to be gone I will not bring expensive toys like that so I can better move from place to place and meet other people faster.

The Crap people email me.

Friday, June 20th, 2008 | Life | 5 Comments

Can you believe the crap people email me on a daily basis? I mean am I a known resource for dealing with stupid people? I get at least 5 emails a week like this, but this time I was encouraged to publish it. So let the public embarrassment begin:

hay man i really need help i was being stupid and download some anti vires softwere that in the end i have to pay for my first request is help me get ride of them there macking my computer really slow and my secound is that is there any good anti vires softwere thats free with no bull shit? that would really help a lot becase im ready to throw my computer out the window. its an xp.

CASEY

Octopus Love

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 | Life | 5 Comments

[10:36:19 AM] Mom says: ok, was just wondering how your vacation from all technology went
[10:37:09 AM] James says: not bad… drove around entire island on a scooter one day
[10:37:26 AM] Mom says: sounds like fun
[10:37:28 AM] James says: also cut myself on some coral while escaping from an angry octopus one day…. You know, just the usual stuff
[10:37:55 AM] Mom says: why did you want to escape?
[10:38:11 AM] James says: because this other guy pissed it off and it started to shoot ink at us
[10:38:32 AM] Mom says: it was probably a female octopus who wanted to get all 8 arms around you
[10:38:37 AM] James says: haha, that’s it
[10:39:04 AM] Mom says: the ink was just so nobody else could see the nasty things you were doing