5-28-03 (13:24)
  • "Evian, Perrier, Poland Spring -- bottled water has become ubiquitous in the U.S., and the resultant plastic containers are posing an increasingly serious problem by clogging landfills and contributing to air pollution.  In California, where bottled water is particularly popular, the state Department of Conservation is unveiling a campaign this week to convince consumers to recycle rather than throw away their empties, and two state legislators are sponsoring a bill to double the refund on water bottles.  To date, only 16 percent of plastic water bottles are recycled in the Golden State, despite the current cash refund of 2.5 cents for small bottles and 5 cents for larger ones.  The unrecycled bottles -- some 3 million of them every day -- enter the waste stream, where they take up space in landfills or are incinerated, yielding toxic fumes.  If recycled, that quantity of bottles could be used to make 74 million square feet of carpet or 16 million sweaters."


    • 5-28-03 (00:34)

  • "Jason West, a 26-year-old member of the Green Party, is shaking things up in New Paltz, N.Y., where he was elected mayor earlier this month -- an outcome that has the local political establishment in a tizzy.  West ran on an ambitious environmental platform that rallied support from many students at the State University of New York at New Paltz, of which West is an alumnus.  On June 1, West and his two running mates will take control of the village's five-member board. West's agenda:  curb sprawl, promote solar energy, power government vehicles with soy-based fuel, and purify sewer water by filtering it through artificial wetlands.  The defeated incumbent, 71-year-old Mayor Thomas Nyquist (D), is not bowing out graciously.  "I always considered myself an environmentalist, too, but what they're talking about is ridiculous," Nyquist said.  "We have issues that are much more pressing than putting solar panels on Village Hall."  Meanwhile, on the national level, some Green activists are urging the party not to nominate a presidential candidate in 2004, but instead to throw its support behind a Democrat to increase the chances of unseating President Bush."
  • saw blackalicious on campus tonight. they put on a pretty good show.
  • a perfect example of humanity's most dispicable trait:
  • "In the 50 years since Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary first scaled Mt. Everest, so much refuse piled up on the world's highest mountain that some took to calling it the world's highest garbage dump.  By the early 1990s, an estimated 50 tons of metal, glass, and plastic, including many hundreds of abandoned oxygen canisters, had been left behind by climbers struggling to reach the summit. The Nepali government has made notable progress during the past decade in tackling the trash problem, slapping fines on climbers who don't bring their oxygen bottles and other equipment down with them and organizing cleanup expeditions, some of which were funded by royalties paid by climbers.  The main source of pollution now is human excrement left behind by climbers, said Ken Noguchi of Japan, who has led four cleanup missions on the mountain since 2000.  Even as climbers become more conscientious about treading lightly, the high-altitude landscape continues to be threatened by an ever-growing number of expeditions that try to make it to the top each year."
  • had to wake up early today and work an opening shift so that i could be off of work in time to watch the concert. now i'm tired.


    • 5-25-03 (00:22)

  • spent the night at johnny's last night. the last couple times i've been to berkeley it's been on the hectic side. last time it was the night they beat stanford so the town was pretty rowdy. today they were having graduation commencements so the streets were packed. it took me 30 minutes just to get to the freeway. two and a half hours later i was home. it takes less than half that time going from davis to berkeley. despite that it was worth the trip. got to hang out with johnny. we played ping-pong and mostly just hung around talking.
  • watched the newest matrix installment today. i liked it quite a bit. updated movieslist.


    • 5-23-03 (02:41)

  • a lot of people feel like they're entitled to too much stuff. people think they're entitled to have a big house and air conditioning in their car and all that crap.
  • i'm tired.
  • went to sacramento today and sold a bunch of cds that were laying around. in turn i got credit that i used to purchase several cds and a playstation 2 game.
  • i'm tired and i have a long day ahead of me tomorrow. some people are coming by to possibly finalize subleasing arrangements and after that i'm going to berkeley to visit johnny.
  • updated cdlist. year.


    • 5-21-03 (01:20)

  • watched part of the graduate today. that's such a good movie.
  • i'm looking forward to moving next month.
  • today was a pretty decent day despite getting a rejection letter from the city regarding my most recent application. tomorrow is my friday and i have a three day weekend after that so that's good news.
  • updated movies list.


    • 5-20-03 (22:36)

  • "Pennsylvania State University has undertaken a massive new recycling program -- not for paper or plastics or food waste, but for the mammoth piles of stuff that students leave behind at the end of every school year, from sneakers to TVs to sofas.  The end-of-term junk problem grew into a major headache on U.S. campuses during the 1990s, as students brought more and more stuff with them to school.  Many colleges and universities just toss the left-behind items into dumpsters, but Albert Matyasovsky of Penn State couldn't bear to see all those useful goods sent to landfills, so last year he funneled the detritus to the campus stadium for a massive flea market.  This "trash-to-treasure" sale raised $15,000 for United Way and is now set to become an annual event.  Other colleges are partnering with a Massachusetts nonprofit called Dump and Run that helps them set up a system for collecting student castoffs, selling them, and channeling the proceeds toward nonprofits."
  • it's getting pretty hot these days.


    • 5-17-03 (20:35)

  • fuck fucking dallas.


    • 5-16-03 (23:36)

  • i think we've got a good chance against the mavs tomorrow. the mavs are tougher than i thought and being at home certainly will help them. without webber the mavs and the kings are pretty evenly matched and so it might just come down to who has the hot hand late in the game. should be a good game.
  • updated cdlist. year.
  • talked with my sister a lot tonight. she apparently has taken up smoking crack and having sex with random guys. actually she's doing pretty well it seems.
  • tomorrow is my lone day off this week so i'll have to get a lot done.


    • 5-15-03 (23:54)

  • i'm very happy about the kings win today. i know that the spurs will beat our ass, but it would be nice to take out dallas anyway.
  • it was also good to see derek fisher crying because his lakers lost. kobe and shaq finally shut their mouths about how great they are and that was a welcome change.
  • work was interesting today. heidi called in sick for tomorrow so now i have to close tomorrow. i'll get a one day weekend this week and a three day weekend next week. it's sucks now, but will be nice next week so i'll just have to roll with it.
  • gena (one of the least intelligent people i've ever met) worked the closing shift with robert and me today. she had some sort of mental breakdown today. she called me to the front and told me that she thought there were ghosts outside and that someone was waiting for her. she said she was really scared and wanted to call someone, but that her cell phone was in her car. she got robert to escort her outside and he spent 10 minutes making sure there was no one under/in her car. she's got serious mental problems and she's an awful employee as well. word around the block is that she's got some sort of protection from human resources so joe can't fire her. apparently this came as a result of a mix up when james (the old GM) put her on leave of absence...HR thought she was fired and her parents called and raised a fuss to the point that now we can't get rid of her.
  • you've probably heard by now, but here it is anyway: tower is officially up for sale. so if you have a billion bucks or so to throw away you might want to give the regional office a call. 1-800-225-0880
  • "Variety's DVD Exclusive magazine has revealed (in an interview with comedian Jerry Seinfeld) that the Seinfeld TV series is currently being considered for DVD release by Columbia TriStar. Word is interviews and outtakes from the series may be included as extras."


    • 5-13-03 (22:32)

  • came home for lunch today and saw part of the kings game. we were up by 11 or so when i turned it on...then we were up by 15. by the time i left it was halftime and we were up 7, but that was after we had missed 12 of our last 14 shots so i felt that we had done a good job despite shooting so poorly. sadly we had one of those god awful third quarters and that sealed the game's fate. we missed all but three shots in the 3rd and that almost made me cry. i was going to break out the liquor, but i was at work at the time so i couldn't. now i'm home so i can get thoroughly trashed and forget all about that awful awful game. sometimes you just want to hit the reset button on life and hope things turn out better the next time around.
  • all hyperbole aside, that game did depress me even though i only listened to it on the radio. if i had to see all those missed shots i would certainly be more depressed.


    • 5-12-03 (16:40)

  • "Cell phone users now have a way to recycle their old phones and support the Sierra Club in the process.  About a million mobile phones are tossed out each week in the U.S. as consumers upgrade or switch to different phone service providers, and those old phones leak a bunch of toxic substances, including mercury, lead, and arsenic, into the environment.  CollectiveGood, a recycling group, has teamed up with Staples, the office-supply chain, to set up bins in all Staples stores in the U.S., where people can drop off cell phones, pagers, and personal digital assistants (PalmPilots and the like) for reuse or recycling.  About half of the phones are expected to be in good enough shape that they can be refurbished and put back into circulation; many will end up being sold at discounted prices in Latin America.  If phones can't be put to good use, CollectiveGood will recycle them and properly dispose of toxic elements.  The Sierra Club will get a portion of proceeds from sales of refurbished phones."


    • 5-12-03 (01:06)

  • only interesting news was basketball news tonight.
  • i forgot to mention that yesterday's loss was another example of peja scoring over 30 points, but us losing. tonight he didn't score 30+ and we won. one reason i think this holds true is that peja becomes the big scorer when webber is out. but peja as the big scorer is different than webber because running the offense through a power forward, who passes as well as any other in the game, is more conducive to opening up the floor for scoring opportunities for other teammates. whereas running the offense through a small forward whose game relies more on jump shots, who has less of a post up game, and less passing ability isn't conducive to involving the other teammates. so while peja may score 30+ points when the offense is run in that manner, the team game suffers enough to lose a large percentage of those games. conventional wisdom might dictate that when your number one scorer goes down you look to your number two scorer to take on the scoring role. conventional wisdom also says that when one player has the hot hand you should feed him the ball and ride his hot hand until he turns cold. the problem with these tactics, which usually hold as good strategy, is that - in the first case - the number 4 spot (power forward - webber) plays a different role than the number 3 (small forward - peja). there's nothing wrong with allowing peja to be the number one scorer, but he can't be the center of the offense like webber usually is because his position dictates otherwise (with certain rotations peja might actually play the number 4, but for the sake of simplicity we'll discount those few instances). secondly riding peja's hot hand is an easy way to allow the offense into a one-on-one mode of playing - isolate peja and let him goto work. occasionally doing this is okay, but it requires a good disciplined ball club to recognize when it's time to play one-on-one and when it's time to play team ball. far too often teams let their hot hand play one-on-one and the other players mentally get out of the game.
  • my dad used to call nick van exel "nick van may or may not excel" because throughout his career nick van exel hasn't proved very consistent. today proved that theory. check out this stat: in the history of the playoffs only two players, after scoring 40 points or more in a game, have come back in the next game to score fewer points than van exel did tonight (5). one guy scored 2 points and another scored 3.
  • i didn't see the game tonight so i don't know what the kings did to stop van exel, but i know what has worked in the past. a) put a combination of guys on him - christie, jim jackson, and bobby jackson should rotate on him. bibby hasn't had much luck on him so try not to let bibby get stuck on him off a pick and roll. b) make him play defense. bibby and b. jackson should run at him and make him work on the other end of the court. also christie, and even turkoglu who is big, but can play the number 2 spot, should post him up. even if you post him up and pass out of the low post, rather than taking a shot, it's better than letting him only worry about his offense. c) make him take the ball to the hoop. even though he's good at it, there's help under the bucket (i especially like clark's defensive help) and it's better than letting him get hot when he can burn you for a few threes a game.
  • i like that we commited to playing defense tonight. from what i heard on the radio we played a good solid game.


    • 5-10-03 (22:10)

  • well after tonight's game and the webber injury i find myself in full depression mode. the game tonight was a heartbreaker and our season is probably over. webber has decided to wait on surgery hoping that he can tough out the rest of the playoffs, but it's yet to be seen how effective he'll be on a gimpy knee.
  • saw a good hockey game today between anaheim and minnesota. the ducks are looking really good this postseason.


    • 5-9-03 (17:24)

  • there's a preliminary report that "the big one" by michael moore might be released sometime in september of this year. hopefully "roger and me" follows suit.
  • updated movies list.
  • turned in an application for a job with the city as a courier. i'd be doing office work mostly, but i'd also act as a courier for confidential documents and as such would occasionally get to use one of the city owned electric vehicles. other benefits would include 15-28 days of paid vacation, 12 days of sick time, 2.5 floating holidays, double my current pay, a full health plan, and $600+ towards a cafeteria plan. working for the government really is the only way to go.
  • my fantasy team depends too heavily on the yankees. when they do well then so do i, but when they stink it up then...right now i'm down 8-1 and that's pretty stinky.

    • 5-9-03 (00:52)
  • this has been an interesting week.
  • melanie leaves for vacation on saturday.
  • i look forward to moving to our new place in a month or so. moving certainly is a pain in the back, but it's nice to have that opportunity to clean out the clutter in your life.
  • kings lost big today which isn't that much of a problem. however the injuries to both webber and jackson might end up being huge problems if they're more than minor injuries. at the end of the game no one was sure to what extent either of the injuries went, but webber was walking and jackson had a face injury so usually that doesn't affect your play too much. the only way that game would have been more painful to watch is if i had to watch it on espn with bill walton as the color man. bill walton is such an annoying announcer.
  • we've been having some odd weather lately - it'll go from sunny to hailing in a matter of minutes.


    • 5-8-03 (23:56)

  • i'm glad today was my friday. work has been rather tedious lately. i've been uninspired and restless.
  • it's too bad the lakers lost again. i'm hoping they'll be able to pull out enough wins to beat the spurs and advance to the next round of the playoffs.
  • took a nap during my lunch break today. i became tired all of a sudden. it was nice to rest.


    • 5-7-03 (00:53)

  • today was really bizarre. lots of ups and downs and a general air of surrealism.
  • at work i had several very odd customers. one guy wouldn't let me touch the tape he wanted to buy - instead he insisted on scanning the product himself. he also insisted on having me place the bag on the counter rather than handing it to him. when he paid for the tape he threw the money at me. for the sake of brevity i won't enumerate the other odd customers, but rest assured there were others. later in the day i found out that we got accepted for the apartment...that was good news. it's a really nice place in a nice part of town. it has a patio and the back door opens up to a nice grass area along side the greenbelt so that's convienent. the loss prevention guy at work (josh) is currently training the new loss prevention person so unfortunately josh is still around. he's a rude guy and having him around is just a general drag so that kinda sucked. even later into the day melanie called to tell me that the kings were kicking some major ass in dallas - that was obviously another high point in the day. after that i saw josh showing the new LP guy something on the muze computer (a computer customers can use to look up artist, album and song information). i hear him say "har har look how at how many times this comes up as a song title" i glance at the computer screen and see that he's looked up the word "nigger" on the muze database. josh is such a fucking retard. it really makes me lose faith in humanity when i see shit like that from people who are more than ten years old. after work i was tired and out of food so i called woodstock's to get a pizza delivered. so the guy shows up with my pizza and i pay using a credit card so we get all that straightened out and he says goodbye and i say goodbye. i sit down to dive into my dinner and i hear some ruckus outside and a quick knock on my door. i get up and open the door and see the pizza guy going down the stairs and then i hear tires screech and see his truck (with the woodstock's pizza sign on the roof) rushing down the street. his car just got stolen. so i tell melanie what just happened, get my shoes on, take my keys and wallet and rush to the car to take up pursuit. i head down fifth street hoping that the thief will head back that way on another street. i drive around like crazy for a while, but don't see a pickup with the sign on top so i head back home. i feel really bad for the guy and of course i can't help but think of what would have happened had i not ordered the pizza or if i paid cash instead (since cash takes less time). or if i had tried following them, rather than trying to cut them off where i thought they might be going. when i got back home the guy was gone...the cops had already come by and gotten the report, but apparently he saw another car take off as well so it was likely that they followed him and one guy got out to steal the car while the other acted as a lookout. it's a pretty good plan actually, but also a pretty fucked up one. that truck was probably his most expensive possession and it was the way he made a living so stealing that is pretty damn low. i don't feel too good about humanity.
  • "Everyone knows you can eat corn -- but can you eat using plates, cups, and forks made from corn?  Absolutely, and doing so can help reduce both waste and oil consumption, say advocates of biodegradable corn products.  Although it's not quite true that "anything that can be made from a barrel of crude oil can be made from a kernel of corn," as Randy Cruise, a Nebraska farmer put it, it's not far off: Corn can be used to make environmentally friendly plastics and fibers, and has already found its way into products from clothing to food packaging.  It takes approximately a month for plastic bags made from corn to degrade in a compost heap, compared to the centuries it can take for an oil-based bag to decompose.  The technology shows enough promise that Sony, Cargill Dow, and DuPont have all gotten in on the game.  Environmentalists are reserving judgment until the process has received more scrutiny, but they acknowledge that its potential is tremendous."
  • "Greenhouse gas emissions across the European Union increased in 2001 for the second year in a row, casting serious doubt on the ability of the bloc to meet its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol on global climate change.  Emissions levels in 2001 were 1 percent higher than in 2000; under Kyoto, the E.U. is obliged to cut emissions 8 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2012.  Individual countries have specific targets as well, and so far, only Germany, Sweden, Great Britain, and Luxembourg (which cut its emissions a whopping 44 percent between 1990 and 2001) appear to be on track to meet their target reductions. Spain, Portugal, and Ireland are lagging the farthest behind.  From the beginning, the E.U. has been the most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol, so its inability to meet the treaty's terms could prove deeply embarrassing."
  • updated cdlist. year.
  • in addition to the new prefuse 73 four tet albums which i picked up at tower today, i received the newest gescom ep in the mail today. gescom is autechre's alternate name and usually gescom material is more difficult to find so i had to go online. i actually first heard about gescom while listening to kdvs in my mom's car when my whe was in town. i guessed that it was autechre and turned out to be mostly right. kdvs is pretty cool.
  • i called in to kdvs during jeff kravitz's show (panic attack) today. he's a marxist who talks a lot about current events and how evil bush is, etc. but today he was talking about xmen II, palestine, and the kings. so i called in and we talked about the kings for a bit. it was fun to be on the air talking about the kings. i prefaced the call with the statement "since i believe that politics are as arbitrary as sports and possibly less important i'd like to discuss the kings for a bit." the concensus on their end seemed to be that the lakers are probably going to lose to the spurs so the kings won't get the chance to redeem themselves this year.
  • updated moviesiown list.
  • regarding the kings/mavs game tonight:``We had a good game plan, but they just totally picked us apart,'' (mavs coach Don) Nelson said. ``The bottom line is we have to play better and they have to play worse.''
  • i get to watch the second and third games of the series so that's nice.
  • i got a shirt today that shows rick fox getting punched by doug christie. rick fox is evil.
  • speaking of evil the new jack johnson album came out today. i actually don't dislike the guy that much, though i don't like his music, but his fans are generally pretty obnoxious...kinda like dave matthews band fans. we're selling his new record for a two dollar loss. i'm not sure what marketing genius came up with that tatic, but it didn't work. just about everyone who bought the album bought just that one cd and nothing else.
  • i'm listening to the new four tet album again. this shit is really good.
  • my eyes itch and no matter how much i rub them they don't stop iching. so i stopped rubbing them and took an allergy pill...it seems to help a bit. i've never had my eyes itch because of allergies though so that makes me wonder. they don't look red and it's not hard to open my eyes in the morning so it's not pink eye.
  • sleeping is fun, being woken up by lawnmowers, dogs and phone calls is not.


    • 5-6-03 (01:47)

  • cinco de mayo came and went without my knowing it. that wasn't possible when i lived in LA.
  • got a lot of phone calls today.
  • www.efitness.com has virtual fitness coaches that are somehow supposed to help you work out online. that would be funny if it wasn't sad.
  • speaking of sad...i saw the first of the democratic debates today. it was edited to shit and didn't really give me a clear idea of what the candidates are about so it was essentially useless. i hope that the democrats are able to get their shit together and be unified against the bush administration rather than fighting each other. i understand that there are big differences between gephardt and lieberman, but for the sake of the party, i hope they focus on the differences between themselves and bush.


    • 5-5-03 (01:09)

  • got free lunch the last two days. there needs to be a supervisor at the store at all times, but both yesterday and today the other supervisor had to leave work as soon as i signed onto my shift. as a result i wouldn't be able to leave for lunch so tower paid for my food so i could eat it at work. i also got a little overtime which is nice.
  • the new four tet album is similar to the new manitoba album and possibly even better.
  • dallas won today, as predicted. the kings should beat them in the next round.
  • the new prefuse 73 album comes out tuesday.
  • we're looking at an apartment in north davis that's really nice. if our credit check comes back good then we'll have our new place all lined up. i don't think they'll say our credit is good enough though since the place is a bit pricey and we're relatively poor. my half of the rent would be 50% of my post-taxes paycheck and that probably doesn't look very good when they plug that info into their magic calculator.


    • 5-4-03 (01:57)

  • despite having to work until 1130 today was a pretty good day. had a mostly good staff at work and i didn't do much actual work so that made more time for talking.


    • 5-3-03 (13:25)

  • i'm covering for a co-worker so my work week starts today instead of sunday, but it ends on wednesday and then i get a three day weekend. so it works out pretty nicely overall.
  • dallas got their ass kicked yesterday. don nelson is such a mediocre coach. that said, i still think they'll win game seven.
  • listening to the new manitoba record right now. it's a lot different from their previous album, but also better.
  • my watch battery died yesterday. i disassembled all five of my watches and took out the batteries. i'll have to buy some new batteries one of these days.
  • updated movies list.


    • 5-1-03 (01:00)

  • have to work on saturday because i'm covering a shift for someone.
  • kings won big tonight and that was very good. i actually got to see the last couple minutes of the 3rd quarter and all of the 4th quarter.
  • check out the blackalicious touring schedule:

    • 05-01 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
    05-02 Salisbury, MD - Salisbury St. University
    05-03 New Orleans, LA - The Howlin' Wolf
    05-09 Capetown, SA - The Valve
    05-10 Johannesburg, SA - New Town Music Warehouse
    05-24 Evanston, IL - Northwestern University
    05-27 Davis, CA - UC Davis
    06-08 Calverton, UK - Field Day Festival
    06-23 Exeter, UK - Exeter University
    06-24 Glasgow, UK - QMU
    06-25 Aberdeen, UK - TBA
    06-26 London, UK -Forum
    06-27 Cork, IRE - Savoy
    06-28 Dublin, IRE - The Village
    06-29 Glastonbury, UK - Glastonbury Festival
    07-01 Derry, N. IRE - Celtronic Festival
    07-02 Belfast, N. IRE - Gary McGuigan
    07-05 Montruex, Switz. - Montruex Jazz Festival
    07-06 Belfort, FR - Eurokennes Festival
    07-07 Paris, FR - Elyesee Monmatre
    07-20 Hollywood, CA - Hollywood Bowl
    07-25 Sacramento - Sleep Train Amphitheater
    07-26 San Francisco - Shoreline Amphitheater
  • tom waits came in to the store today and bought "american movie" on dvd. he came in just minutes before my shift began which is too bad because i would have liked to talk with him about that movie - which as most of you know is one of my favorite of all-time and one i've seen more (9) times than any other film in the last three years.
  • the trailblazers have more players that can put up 20+ points in a game than any other team except the kings. sadly they all need shrinks and ritalin so they'll never make a real run for the finals.

    • "U.S. to Cut 6,000 Airport Screening Jobs"