12-30-02 (12:41)
it's been an eventful last few days.
sarah was here and that was both good and bad, but mostly good.
i went to oakland and got to hang out with the family over there for a
day. we went bowling and sarah beat me by one point. i'm not very good
at bowling, but i like to do it anyway.
i got a ps2 from my dad for xmas. that was a big surprise. we played grand
theft auto every night the last four nights. i also got a couple gift certificates
from my mom which enable me to finally upgrade to a better desk chair.
the one i had before was fine, but didn't have the back support i've grown
to need. this new chair is very fine. got a frying pan which will is nice
because the one i have now is on its last leg. it's better to get a really
good frying pan that'll last a long time rather than just buying new ones
every year or so. this frying pan will last forever so i won't have to
contribute any more pans to the landfills of america. i'm happy about that.
i didn't get any useless presents so that's encouraging.
went to buy the wood for my cd case, but they didn't have enough of the
type that i needed so i'll have to go back another time.
12-27-02 (15:07)
quote of the year... when talking about who would get the big pillow before
we went to sleep, my sister said: "i always have to have something between
my legs."
12-26-02 (00:06)
it's so cold in my room.
working on finishing up my top ten list. i have 101 albums that were released
in 2002 so it's tough to do.
a middle-aged woman came in today while i was bumping the blackalicious
album and was bobbing her head all over the place. it was odd to see an
older lady getting down to hip-hop like that. then later i put on autechre's
LP5 (an amazing album by the way) which is classified as IDM and she was
digging on that as well. she actually asked what it was and i told her
about autechre and she sounded pretty open about music. that's pretty cool
to see. i also put in some tabla beat science and lots of people asked
about that. those are the best moments i have at work....when the bosses
aren't around and i bring music from home to play in the store and people
dig it enough to ask about it and sometimes even buy it. a couple people
actually bought the tabla beat science record so i was pleased. i think
that people are generally open to world music and enjoy hearing the new
sound that international stuff has to offer, but they don't hear it very
much and don't know where to start so they don't seek it out. it's too
bad there are so few radio stations that play any world music because there's
so much out there that people like. there's some gmc (or some other car
company) commercial that uses fela kuti's track "lady," but you wouldn't
know that because like the likelihood is that you've never even heard of
fela kuti and commercials never give the artists any sort of recognition
before pirating their songs.
i don't know when commercials started becoming high art, but it seems a
recent phenomenon. naturally 98% of the commercials are crap, but there
are a few that are truly good in lots of different ways. volkswagen seems,
to me, to be the leader in this move towards more artsy commercials. the
one where the guy does the same old stuff day in and day out until one
day he sees a vw bug convertible is really good. they use all sorts of
cool cutting techniques and split screens and it's just really good. in
fact, if they had a dvd with all the original music from their commercials
and the commercials themselves, i would buy it.
i'm going to get some sleep so i can pick up my sister in the morning.
12-25-02 (20:18)
big news of the day would obviously have to be the kings beating the lakers.
the lakers had shades of their former greatness, but once the kings started
playing their game it wasn't really a game anymore. i don't know if i love
the kings more than i hate the lakers. i might actually hate the lakers
more than i love the kings, but it's close either way.
i managed to avoid wishing anyone a merry christmas this whole season.
dozens of customers wished me a merry christmas and i just smiled.
updated movies list.
it's probably about 50 degrees in my room right now.
lots of stupid people came into tower today. actually most of the stupid
people were people who called. one call (at 9:40am) went like this "tower
records, this is chris." "hello are you open?" "yes" "cool, and what time
do you close today?" "10" "10 AM?" "no 10 PM." "okay, thanks."
then there was this kid who asked me if borders books was open today. i
told him to fuck off.
then there was some guy who asked how much a twenty dollar gift card cost.
i just stared at him.
then there was another guy (yesterday) who asked where he might find games
for playstation 2. i told him "across the street they sell a few." he then
asked "where's that?" "across the street i said."
then there was an old lady who wrote me a check. she wrote down her driver's
license number on the check and handed it to me. i asked her for her ID
and she tilted her head and gave me an incredulous look and said "i think
i know my own driver's license number." i told her calmly that i need the
expiration date and that i wanted to ensure that the check was indeed her's.
then i punched her in her face. while she was on the ground cupping her
nose i yelled "how many times have you written checks you fucking old timer?
don't you know by now that everyone asks to see your ID?"
then there was this one lame customer that had nothing better to do on
xmas than shop around in tower for over an hour, all by herself. what a
lame person.
working 8 hours at tower wasn't too bad today. after work i came home to
an empty house and watched the game with all my davis friends.
being able to laugh at yourself is an important quality.
thought up a story today...it's about a guy who at birth is stricken with
a skin disease of some sort (we don't really know what kind it is) and
as a result of that and his poor condition grows up homeless. it's very
hard for him to get handouts because of his awful appearance and there
aren't any adequate shelters where he lives. after a while living on the
streets and all that comes with it is starting getting to him. he is malnourished
and despite being only thirty something is in very bad health. finally
on christmas day a generous person gives him a twenty dollar bill. however
our protagonist is so weak and underfed that he needs substance immediately.
he wanders the town for hours and can't find any open stores. he retires
for the night in an alley, but never wakes up. in the coroner's office
the reader discovers that the skin disease was a pigment disorder that
made his skin black.
when my dad worked at the century plaza hotel (an elite hotel in LA) he
hired these two black guys as bellboys or something equivalent. after a
little while his boss came to him and told him that they weren't "fitting
in with the image of the hotel." my dad asked what image that was. his
boss replied "well, they're too black." so it was implied that my dad was
to fire them. he talked to the two guys and told them what his boss said
and they said okay, collected their pay, and left. the saddest part of
that story isn't that the boss was such a blatant racist, but that both
the guys were basically okay with it...they didn't raise a stink or anything.
they were completely complacent about it because they were so used to it.
bill walton said today that rick fox, of the la lakers, was a high class
guy because he took less money to stay in la and continue to play with
the championship lakers. allow me to tear bill walton a new asshole. a)
sure rick fox could make a couple million more over a few years by moving
to another team, but it's not like we're talking really big bucks here.
b) rick fox is married to vanessa williams who could easily support the
family even if rick fox decided to pursue his dream as a back alley prostitute
turning tricks for five bucks a pop. c) LA is one of the top two cities
in terms of peripheral opportunies...rick fox has made it clear that he
wants to act and be a model (like his wife). LA makes perfect sense for
him and his wife...they stand to make more than enough money modeling and
acting to make up for any money he might lose by going to another city.
if the lakers were based in provo, utah then it might be a more true test
of his so-called class. d) since when is it a high class move to stay with
a team that has won the last three championships in a row? how classy is
it to start a fight with doug christie, get your lights knocked out and
then try and make up for it by running around the back alleys of staples
arena to pick a fight with christie on your home turf? in essence rick
fox is just about the scum of the earth and bill walton is, once again,
a moron for saying otherwise. i fucking hate bill walton and if he were
to die tomorrow i'd be a happier person.
came up with another idea for a story, though this one is even less complete
than the last one. it's about a guy who works in mint printing dollar bills.
after several years on the job he grows a horrible disgust for the smell
of money and is forced to quit at a late age. but because he has no marketable
skills, other than printing money, and his old age he drops into unemployment
and starts devising plans to disrupt the economic system.
my sister comes into town tomorrow. i also have to work.
joe brought in food for people who were working today. at the risk of sounding
like an ingrate... it seemed like he just brought us leftovers from his
dinner or something. there was ham, mashed potatoes and some chocolate
chip cookies. having food was better than not having it though, i guess.
12-23-02 (22:45)
got a free cd from work today. joe, in all his graciousness, offered to
exchange some "clean" product he had been saving up. so everyone at the
store got one cd of their choice. also got my xmas bonus today. they really
know how to time these things. tricky dick.
work was really really busy today. promises to be even more so tomorrow.
and the day after that it'll be pretty slow and i'll get paid double time.
fantastic.
i'm going to go listen to a cd or watch a movie.
decided to listen to a cd instead of watch a movie.
i'm somewhat cynical when it comes to literature. english teachers and
film buffs will try to get you to believe that every word or every frame
has a meaning. when watching a movie i might see certain scenes as having
a certain symbolic meaning...the placement of the camera relative to the
characters or the placement of characters relative to each other/objects
within the frame. i might attach some significance to this or that particular
shot, but i don't know how some can claim that every shot has a greater
meaning. so i was trying to think of a way, if i were a director, to make
it clear which shots i wanted the audience to view as important. so i thought
about narrating a story and only having images pop up once in a while...those
shots would clearly be significant since they were specifically chosen
to be the visuals...since the audio acts to advance the story, the sole
purpose of the visuals would be to expand on character dynamics, theme,
etc. then today i realized that had already been done in la jetée
(the inspiration for 12 monkeys). it sucks when you come up with a pretty
good idea only to discover or remember that it's been done before. the
major drawback to that would seem to be the format lends itself to a shorter
film, but that's what i would have thought of a koyaanisqatsi type film.
if i were a teacher i'd like to give a test that said simply "write anything
that you have learned in this class." one good thing about a test like
that is that no one would leave wishing that something they had studied
was on the test. i remember on several occasions people being upset because
they studied for the test thinking that one essay question might be on
new deal policy and instead the essay was on fdr being a womanizer or some
other such bull crap.
joe strummer died today.
i should get some sleep since i have to open tomorrow.
12-23-02 (01:40)
updated movies list.
hidden fortress and man bites dog. yay.
well i guess i have to go back to work eventually. my cold has progressed
to the coughing stage so it should be over and done with soon enough.
sarah comes to davis on thursday.
i'm revisiting geogaddi, the newest boards of canada album, right now.
it's better than i remember it being. it's going to be tough coming up
with the last few albums on my top ten for the year.
nothing really exciting happened today. i watched some football, watched
a couple movies (including another kurosawa film), and ate. being sick
and broke doesn't allow for much excitement. plus i wanted to watch at
least two more movies today. 13 to go to hit 250.
my fantasy football team is a joke nowadays. only one more week of humiliation.
12-22-02 (12:24)
i called in sick today, yay for me!
not going to work is such a wonderful thing. i'd rather stay at home, watch
movies, and recover from my cold than go into work and earn a few bucks.
hopefully this doesn't affect my request to get the 29th off. if it does
maybe i'll just quit. seriously though i don't think joe has any power
over me so i doubt that he'll try to do anything like that....especially
when i come into tomorrow and show that i was (am) genuinely sick.
12-22-02 (02:47)
updated movies list.
finally saw seven samurai.
watched seven movies in the last two days while trying to lose this damn
cold.
happy to see miami lose today. i hate miami.
the niners won, but the kings lost. bibby looked good from what i saw,
but i only watched one quarter.
i guess xmas is coming up in a few days here. it used to be such a big
deal, but these days holidays don't really mean anything to me since i
don't celebrate them.
we live a sedentary lifestyle that benefits almost no one and i wish it
was different.
i need to get some sleep.
12-19-02 (22:56)
today was a lame day.
it was raining like crazy earlier so going to work was a drag. now that
i sleep under my window i get all sorts of cold air during the night. now
i'm sick. at least i have a couple days to recover before having to go
back to work. bought some kleenex and cold medicine which is supposed to
lessen the length and severity of the cold.
i'm going to go rest and recover now.
12-19-02 (00:00)
melanie left for washington today. she'll be away for about three weeks.
that sucks.
hard to believe that the avalanche fired their coach...pretty tough standards
i guess.
i'm really digging on the fela kuti music lately. been listening to the
tribute album "red hot + riot" and listened to his best of album at work
today. if you're looking for some good african music check him out. the
track "lady" is recommendable.
i'm usually complaining about work, but it certainly has it's perks. being
able to listen to almost anything i want at any time is pretty nice for
me. seeing new movies and music as they come in is something i'll miss
quite a bit once i leave. plus it's been wonderful for my ego since i work
mainly with self-made rejects and idiots it makes me feel relatively smart.
i'm being facetious of course.
my back was hurting today.
when i get money i'll buy myself a nice desk chair.
came up with my 11 man olympic u.s. basketball roster yesterday. i don't
know how big the roster is supposed to be, but 10 or 11 sounds about right.
shaq, kobe, webber, garnett, iverson, kidd, mcgrady, duncan, j. o'neal,
pippen and payton. i think it balances experience/youth and offense/defense
well.
yao ming is going to be good in the same way olajuwon was. and with steve
francis...the rockets are going places.
seems like stanford has been having tough times sports-wise these days.
men's and women's basketball teams are disappointing and their football
team sucked too. they probably have a good table tennis team though.
it's really cold in my room.
i need to get some sleep.
12-18-02 (17:21)
kent went to the astros today...."Astros general manager Gerry Hunsicker
said. ``I would dare say, after Nolan Ryan, this is the most significant
free-agent acquisition that this franchise has ever acquired.''" acquisition...acquired.
funny guy.
12-17-02 (23:40)
peep this.
the first 5.5 hours of work went by pretty quickly because i was running
the register on account of the fact that erin called in sick. put it my
request to get the 29th off so i can spend time with my sister.
peep this.
when i write "peep this" i am purposely mocking myself for using the term
so don't think that i'm serious.
updated movies list.
weather was decent today.
i have a date with my seven samurai dvd on friday. i will finally watch
the movie that i've put off watching for so long.
a very close hearts game.
one horrible game, eight perfect ones.
12-17-02 (00:11)
finalized plans for my sister's visit. she'll come after xmas and stay
for a few days.
not looking forward to waking up in the morning to goto work. i hope it's
not raining.
12-16-02 (01:49)
both my football teams lost today.
work was work. joe was there today...usually he only works m-f. it reminded
me of a mr. lif song wherein he relays the story of a father/husband who
learns the hard way that being a good family man isn't about bringing home
the bacon at the expense of getting to know your family. i pity the fool
(joe).
i should win this week in fantasy football. culpepper had a huge week for
me. i knew he'd come through for me eventually.
abby, this new girl at work, is pretty absent-minded. working with her
will probably get old rather quickly.
very windy out right now, but isn't raining as much as it was earlier.
the fox show with andy richter (who used to be conan o'brien's sidekick)
is very funny and even inventive (as far as sitcoms go). they do a lot
of things, technically, that television doesn't usually do. ER is another
show that is pretty good from a cinematography point of view.
i really like the idea behind koyaanisqatsi, or the qatsi trilogy in general
- take parts of our everyday life that are usually on the periphery and
bring them to the fore. i find that i view the world around me in much
the same way that the cameras in the qatsi trilogy do. that's not to say
that i view life sped up or i see necessarily the same things, but i do
see life in the same way. it's kind of hard to describe with words.
if i had the equipment i'd make a movie about it, but i don't. at any rate,
i really dig taking certain aspects of life and presenting them in a way
that people are unaccustomed ....recontextualizing things as it were.
i had a political science teacher that used to (and probably still does)
say "we (teachers/the university) don't want to tell you what to think
we just want to teach the way to think about them and you can draw your
own conclusions from there." i never really understood how he could say
that with a straight face. it's like me saying here are the rules...1 is
the first number, after that comes 2, then 3, and so on. when you add 1
to 1 you get 2, and 2 and 2 is 4. those are the rules. now go ahead and
add 2 and 3. because he's defined the process and rules of thought he has
more that limited my conclusion. now with international politics there
is more wiggle room, but he has still defined the process and rules of
my thought (he calls it "logic") and as a result our conclusions can't
be too far apart.
found out today that gore has decided not to run. that's disappointing
because even though the democrats and republicans are too similar for my
taste gore does at least have some understanding of what importance the
environment holds for our future....plus i think he had a good shot at
beating bush.
12-15-02 (01:28)
the next couple weeks are going to be about solidifying my top ten albums
of the year and watching enough movies to get me to 250 on the year.
there's a chance that my sister might come up to davis this week. that
would be nice, but she might be bored since melanie's not going to be around
and i'm not very entertaining.
listening to vincent gallo right now - very good winter night music.
went to vallejo to get cash for a bunch of cds. sold about 30 cds and got
enough money to pay for the wood for my cd cases and dinner tonight.
other than my trip to cash in those cds i didn't do much today.
not really looking forward to going to work tomorrow.
watched the bulk of the kings/jazz game today. i'll admit that the officiating
was bad and it was to our benefit, but i'll take it.
watched SNL tonight and that was pretty funny. i'd like to see gore run
for president again. i wonder who would best complement the ticket as vp.
someone high in the ranks from a swing state would be nice. kerry and lieberman
don't really add that much to the ticket....because ma and ct are usually
locks for the democrats anyway. then again gore couldn't even carry tn
and that's where he's from so nothing's a given...i think he's got a good
shot in 2004. i'm not going to vote for the guy, but that's because i'm
stubborn.
xmas will be a good day because i get to see the kings beat the lakers
and get paid double time for a full eight hour day at work.
hearts is a good game.
12-14-02 (13:38)
it looks pretty awful outside. very windy and raining pretty much nonstop.
i'm probably the only non-republican who thinks lott wasn't referring to
thurmond's segregation stance when he was talking about how great a guy
thurmond is. granted both of them are ignorant scum, but i think the left
is just politicking on this one.
12-13-02 (17:01)
heard a story on npr yesterday about dwindling xmas bonuses. the average
xmas bonus is 1-3% of your yearly income....mine (if there is one) is likely
to be less than .5%. the crux of the story was that xmas bonuses are decreasing
and, in some cases, disappearing. but that that's okay because american
workers take it for granted that we deserve bonuses during the holiday
season when really it should be only those who are working hardest who
get bonuses. i think that as long as those on the top expect to
reap ungodly benefits by this lame consumer binge we call the holiday season
then we, the workers, should expect holiday bonuses.
moby got attacked the other day. that's not cool.
did my xmas shopping today.
picked up my paycheck and noticed that i got paid for only 7 days instead
of the usual 10. one was because joe forgot to put me on the schedule so
i didn't show up, and the other two were days i thought i was going to
get vacation time for since i went to la for thanksgiving vacation.
i suppose i didn't explicitly state that i wanted vacation pay for those
two days, but it's not unreasonable for me to assume that he would have
known to give me vacation time for that.
updated movies list.
up until today it hadn't rained very much this winter. according to melanie
is supposed to rain 6 inches in the next three days.
12-13-02 (00:12)
planned on watching "the war room" tonight, but decided to listen to music
instead.
i realized why joe was kissing my ass so much when we talked...i'm one
of only two supervisors remaining. if i left then he'd have to work all
sorts of extra hours. if i were mean i might exploit that to my benefit.
lately i've been thinking more and more that humans are far more animalistic
than we would like to think. i see it in myself and in others. from the
way we consume to the way we react in all matters of life.
don't have any plans for tomorrow which usually means i don't end up doing
anything productive.
i don't go to class any more because i started to realize that i wasn't
really taking it seriously which defeated its purpose. i never bought the
book and i didn't study. the purpose of the class was to memorize some
of the more mundane (and thus more likely to be on the subject exam) material.
i'd like to either take a woodshop course or a history of american music
course if i have money come signup time.
big news for the day is that aphex twin and autechre are coming out with
new albums early next year. autechre's is going to be a new studio album
and aphex twin's is going to be a remix album; that is, him remixing other
artists' work - not vise versa.
"The Aphex Twin remix album has been cut and is scheduled for release in
March 2003. '26 Mixes For Cash' [WARP102] features an extraordinary range
of Aphex reworks for various artists, including David Bowie & Philip
Glass, Curve, Saint Etienne, Jesus Jones, Baby Ford, Meat Beat Manifesto,
DMX Krew, Mike Flowers Pops and many many more.The album also includes
unreleased mixes of Windowlicker and SAW2 CD1 TRK2 (Selected Ambient works
2)."
"Autechre will release their seventh album on April 7th 2003. Title 'Draft
7.30'. Tracklisting TBC."
read somewhere that bush has decided to increase mpg standards for suvs
and trucks by 1.5mpg beginning 2005. he's such a progressive thinker. "The
Transportation Department will require fuel economy for SUVs, pickup trucks
and minivans to increase by about 1.5 miles per gallon over three years
beginning with the model 2005 vehicles that arrive in showrooms in late
2004..."
erin, from work, has been annoying me lately.
12-11-02 (12:04)
i made a small, but important change to my room the other day. i placed
a board on top of my dresser and under another set of drawers where i can
now put my unabridged dictionary. now it lies there, open at all times,
ready for use. if i had a digital camera i'd take a picture of it.
i'm going to go make some tacos for breakfast.
12-11-02 (00:39)
yao ming is going to be so good if he can stay healthy.
saw the kings lose today, that wasn't fun.
lately i've been able to stay in the office more and more while i'm at
work. i'll take extra time to do deposits, i'll count the safe a couple
times a day, i'll count out drawers at a more leisurely pace...all in an
effort to be by myself and listen to npr.
saw nic at tower today and we talked for a bit. he didn't end up coming
over to get a cd i offered him. oh well.
might goto oakland to visit family this week.
12-10-02 (00:49)
joe asked me what was wrong today so i told him that i felt heidi was incompetent
and that the store has been far too driven by profit at the cost of the
employees. we basically agreed to wipe the slate clean which i guess is
fine despite the fact that i'm the one who's gotten shafted more by their
policies and screw ups than him by my apathy of late. i think the other
employees will benefit from my airing of grievances because i told him
that heidi throws her weight around too much and that he doesn't kick down
enough promos which doesn't make for good employee relations. really it
was just the same age old problems between labor and management. we'll
see what happens. i don't dread going to work tomorrow as much as i did
today so i guess the talk was for the better.
five people have quit in the last two weeks. joe hired four new people
this week.
hopefully i can get in 250 movies before the end of the year. updated movieslist.
blackalicious paraphrase for the day: every morning you awake you make
the choice of whether to say "good god, morning" or "good morning, god"
didn't make the playoffs in fantasy football. a sad day indeed.
12-09-02 (00:58)
"Sacramento tied an NBA record by turning the ball over only three times
-- two of them by Bobby Jackson and the other by Jim Jackson." pretty nice
statistic especially when it comes after a game in which they had 23 turnovers.
i've seen yao ming play only a couple games, but he looks like he's going
to be really good. strike that...he is really good.
calling in sick today was a great idea.
watched the last 17 seconds of the 49er game today...turned out to be a
pretty pivotal and exciting 17 seconds.
criterion is going to be releasing fear and loathing in las vegas and the
killers on dvd next year. those should be good.
12-08-02 (15:00)
called in sick today. i just didn't feel like going to work...that's the
first time i've done that while working at tower.
i haven't done any xmas shopping yet.
purchased an electric nail/staple gun the other day...it'll come in handy
when i start building my cd cases. wood costs a lot these days so that
project will have to wait until after xmas.
i prefer pens over pencils.
12-07-02 (23:49)
updated movies list.
purely by coincidence the last three movies i've watched have been criterion
collection dvds.
finally saw a few films i've been wanting to see for a long time. finally
saw wild strawberries, which is the first bergman film i've seen. i saw
that it was a brilliant film in terms of its mastery of the craft, but
it lacked magic. i was emotionally involved with borg's character, but
not to the extent that i felt the movie wanted me to be. the ending made
sense and was nice, but that was all....it wasn't magical, it wasn't an
epiphany, it wasn't amazing and i felt it could, and should, have been.
sometimes i have trouble allowing a film to just stand on its own as a
great piece of craft. all that being said i think this film will get better
as i age.
didn't do all that much today.
i got a haircut, watched a movie, played n64 - which my sister let me use,
and burned a bunch of cds.
vanishing point is a really good film.
now that melanie is officially graduating i'm going to have to find an
isp.
read some mad paperback books last night. i used to read those things all
the time. al jaffee is by far the best mad writer.
shannon, a friendly co-worker, quit yesterday. she was the last cool supervisor
left. pretty soon i'll be in the minority and that'll suck. joe's such
a cock sucker.
vern has found his wife. i bet she looks like a female version of johnny....just
like that episode of seinfeld where george finds this great woman who looks
like jerry and it destroys him to think that maybe he is secretly in love
with jerry. man i wish life were as simple as it is in seinfeld. what a
crowning achievement in human history. i really mean that.
speaking of great comedy...i watched south park tonight. i haven't been
watching very much tv lately, but i have been trying to catch as many south
park episodes as i can remember to see.
i think eventually philosophy will evolve to the point where philosophers
realize there's really no point in examining the meaning of life or the
intentions, or existence of, god. eventually people realize that it doesn't
have anything to do with us. well that's my hope anyway. then ramblings
like this
wouldn't be necessary. in the concluding paragraph of that link he tips
his religious card...he says that it's possible that people may one day
become gods....this guy truly is a mormon.
gotta go to work for the man tomorrow. darn.
12-06-02 (19:02)
when you're young what do you call someone who always wants things done
their way? a spoiled brat. when you're old what do you call someone who
always wants things done their way? boss.
i need a haircut.
12-06-02 (01:42)
"In an abrupt departure from past policy, high-tech giant Hewlett-Packard
has announced that it will support California legislation requiring computer
manufacturers to pay for safe disposal of electronic waste. In October,
HP used its considerable clout as the world's largest maker of personal
computers to persuade Gov. Gray Davis (D) to veto an e-waste measure.
But the company changed its tune last week, following the publication of
a three-part series by the San Jose Mercury News documenting labor and
environmental woes in China stemming from the U.S. computer industry.
HP is suggesting that all U.S. computer makers shoulder a percentage of
the cost of recycling their products based on relative market shares in
California. So far, other electronics companies have remained mute
about HP's about-face. If the state adopts new computer legislation,
it could pave the way for federal regulations to keep hazardous e-waste
out of landfills and prevent it from being sent overseas."
"Looking to minimize your impact on the environment? Don't buy a
car -- and especially don't buy anything made by DaimlerChrysler.
The U.S.-based automaker ranked dead last on a survey, released yesterday
by the Union of Concerned Scientists, of pollution levels in vehicle fleets.
The survey looked at the environmental implications of the six largest
car manufacturers in the U.S. market, which together sell nine out of every
10 vehicles purchased here. Those vehicles account for vast percentages
of smog-forming pollution and carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S.
From best to worst, the companies were Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Ford, General
Motors, and DaimlerChrysler. Toyota was the only company to cut its
fleet's average CO2 emissions between model years 2000 and 2001. The only
company to move up in the survey was Ford, which went from being second-to-last
in the previous survey to fourth in the current one. UCS credited
that change to the environmentally friendly leadership of William Clay
Ford, Jr."
i guess the big news of the day was that there were two more celebrity
sightings today...bekah from sorority life and keon clark who plays basketball
for the sacramento kings. that guy is tall. i talked with him...only to
tell him where our cassette tapes were, but i still talked with him. he
seemed like he didn't really want to have people swarming him. some public
figures don't mind being recognized everywhere, others do. one guy went
up to him and said "hey keon" and they shook hands, but that was it. looking
at him i would have guessed he was about 6'10"...yahoo sports has him at
6'11". he is very tall. he was driving a large SUV and it was still registered
in ontario because he used to play in toronto.
"We're hearing all kinds of additional buzz from our sources that Warner
Bros. is gearing up to finally announce the DVD release of classic Looney
Tunes shorts in early 2003. And we've just gotten word that no less than
four titles in the series have already been revealed for Region 2:
2/17 - Looney Tunes: Bugs Bunny
3/19 - Looney Tunes: Daffy Duck
4/14 - Looney Tunes: Tweety Pie & Sylvester
5/12 - Looney Tunes: Wile E. Coyote & Road Runner
There's no official word from Warner yet as to whether these discs
will be the same for Region 1, but we expect to hear something soon."
hopefully i get stuff done tomorrow.
12-05-02 (00:30)
listening to clinic right now.
work was okay today. joe asked me if i had any concerns...i guess that
was a good manager type thing to do. i answered no to his question which
was a complete lie, but i'm not all that good at that stuff. besides there's
no easy way to tell your boss you have no respect for them. later in the
shift some guy came in with over 100 dvds to sell. he told me that he had
to pay rent for his apartment in sac and SF because he was in the process
of moving. having to pay first and last month's rent along with security
deposit sure does make moving difficult. he easily had over 2,000 bucks
worth of dvds with him and i felt bad buying them for so little. tower
wants to make 100% on all used purchases so every dvd that normally sells
for 19.95 will sell for around 9.99 used which means i'll buy them for
$5. brian, jj, and i went through his collection, picked out stuff we wanted
and paid him cash for them. by cutting out tower as the middleman he made
more money and we paid less for the dvds, so i felt good about getting
him at least a few extra bucks. if i had the money i would have taken the
collection off his hands for a bit more and then made some money by selling
it off slowly, but you need money to make money. i ended up paying 50 bucks
for 8 dvds which is a pretty good deal. updated moviesiown
list.
there was a report released today which confirms my suspicions - most of
the world dislikes the u.s.a. of course that be interpreted in all sorts
of ways from "they're jealous" to "they resent being taken advantage of"
to "so what," but it's good to know no matter what.
in somewhat related news..."Around the world McDonald's restaurants have
been burning. One was torched in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Nov. 20. Another
blew up in Moscow on Oct. 19, while less than a month before, a small bomb
ripped through a franchise in a suburb of Beirut. According to Reuters,
militants arrested in July for the bomb attack on the U.S. consulate in
Karachi had also been planning to bomb McDonald's. In December 2001, a
McDonald's was bombed in Xian, in central China, and in September 2001
a pipe bomb exploded on a McDonald's in Istanbul."
life is completely different when your screen is running at 800x600...i
looked at my webpage for a couple seconds at that resolution and boy does
it look horrible.
listening to money mark now.
this (11'09"01) movie sounds
good.
12-04-02 (12:22)
got to see usc destroy notre dame on saturday. my dad and i were rooting
for notre dame, but a couple minutes into the fourth quarter it became
too much to watch so we left the game. the coliseum was as packed as i've
ever seen it...they said there were almost 90,000 people in attendance.
this year i've seen two notre dame games (one live and one on tv) - those
happen to be the only two games they've lost this year.
i'm not sure what i should eat...i've haven't been shopping in probably
three weeks so there isn't much here.
switched around the top ten
a bit. it's tough to pick a top ten when i've listened to so many more
albums than any other year. it's not only tough because there is more competition
for only ten spots, but also because i don't get the opportunity to really
absorb a lot of the albums because something new is always coming along.
12-03-02 (23:39)
updated movies list.
cleaned up a few pages throughout the site. added a couple links to the
sidebar. for a long time i neglected the layout of my page, but i'm going
to try to make it more logical in the weeks to come.
i've gotten 272 cds so far this year. my cd case is basically full so i
need to get together some funds for my plans to build two cd cases which
will replace the one i have.
haven't been in the mood to watch movies lately, but i forced myself to
watch one today anyway.
updated my wish list for those who want
to buy me xmas gifts. a lot of the stuff i want falls into the video/music
category which means it's more economical to get me a tower gift card,
but there are other things as well. i'll try to think of more things later.
oh and anyone who is planning on buying me anything this holiday season
please refrain from useless gadgets and trinkets. they're nice for a day,
but they all end up in the trash and it just makes me feel bad that we
consume things for the sake of consumption.
"Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a
progressive discovery of our own ignorance." -Will Durant
"We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?"
-Lee Iacocca
i think a six hour work day would be more reasonable.
www.bulletinyourhead.com
12-3-02 (18:17)
well i'm back home now. it took 80% longer than it usually takes to get
here from la. people should stay home and eat turkey.
i got one e-mail and zero phone calls while i was gone.
if i wasn't getting paid 8.50/hour i would have found a new job a month
ago.
thought about changing the background color of my webpage, but i like black...it's
easy on the eyes.
this is the fifth december that i've updated my webpage.