Talblog

Happy New Year

Early for the west coast, but fuck it.... happy new year

New Year's Resolutions (Last Single Trip to B-more)

I woke up this morning for the last time in my "single" apartment, with the whole bed to myself, as the only person the cat can annoy to feed him at 4:30 am.

I am flying up to Baltimore tonight to spend New Years eve with Kurt and our friend Emily and then we will be driving back to Atlanta to start our new life together. This past week has had the anticipatory feeling of Christmas morning as child - what suprizes are waiting for me under the tree? Or more appropriately, in the new routines of daily life with my boyfriend? We are starting our New Year with the biggest resolution of our lives, the resolution to make a go of it in Atlanta and see what adventures await us in the coming year!

I also resolve to post to the Talblog more this year.

Spaceships and Airplanes

We went over to the national air and space museum today (sweet)... I posted some pictures up, including a few cool panoramas that are huge. Click the picture to get there

Highlights included:

-seeing crazy old space suits
-standing underneath a spaceship engine
-star trek like computer equipment
-a concorde jet

Givin' and Gettin'

What I got for christmas:

-Airport Extreme! Yesss - or what I like to call Talport Extreme
-Art of Oddworld Book... sweet.
-Napolean Dynamite!
-Lots of Nightmare Before Christmas Decorations
-Sick pans (cookin) from my dad
-Some dvd's
-Unknown and in-the-mail gifts from mom

Lots o' other cool trinkets. Thanks family!

What I gave out

-Tivo! the best gift of all
-Print from obey giant.com
-Joe Sorren book
-Williams Sonoma books
-Ornaments
-As-yet-to-be finalized talbot compilation (cross your fingers everyone)

What did YOU get?

Merry Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas Eve everyone! P.S. 24 hours of "A christmas story" on TBS

Hillarious Drunk Driving Test

It's a windows media file but man is it funny.

Home but hell

Man, I love being home for the holidays, but holy crap I am bored right now...

I am waiting around for Becky's plane to land. My brother left today and I have been just sitting round all afternoon. I mean, no tivo? Come on... no sketchbook, no books, no nothin.

It kind of reminds me of being home for the summer back in college. Good times, vacation is cool, but what the hell am I supposed to do in the middle of Maryland? It was a good time for a half hour when I hit the starbucks... checked out some literature at barnes n noble. I could go down to baltimore but will hit traffic, and everyone I know there (1 person left, kurt) is working this week. BAH.

Okay, becky is now flying over Oklahoma. Cool... when she gets here maybe she will have some ideas. Meanwhile, I will surf the free internet for a while.

Technology Day

Yesterday was a big technology day for me. My parents sent my Xmas presents to me so I opened the box to find my 4 wrapped gifts just die'n to be opened. Then about 5 min after I opened the box my new cellphone came in the mail. Woo Hoo. I know what I'm doin today. I open my phone and start it charge'n. Meanwhile I try and hold myself back from opening my Xmas gifts...er 'gift' in this case as I know one of them is an iPod. So I hold out for a good 2 hours...take my roommate to the airport, do some dishes....but I couldnt' wait any longer. I called my P's and said. "I'm opening my iPod" , they said ok, so I did it on the phone with them. Yay. iPod. sooo pretty.

I start playing with my iPod for a while. Which then led into hours and hours of going through my music and putting it on my newly named "schulzpod" I know, not very clever....I just devised it from the original talpod name. Regardless, I realized though, and it makes perfect sense now that I think about it, but I never really thought about it till now....The 20gb iPod only holds 18.5gb of space. I think to the consumer 'in the know' ...this is false advertising. Oh well, just something interesting I never thought about before, duh! Harddrive!! Anyways, I carefully put on a bunch of mp3's (I had 40+gb's in my iTunes....but I ended up with 3gb to spare on my schulzpod. RAD! That means I can add even more songs to it, and I already put on a bunch of songs I prollllllly won't listen to but whatever ....I got them just in case. After that's all said and done I head over to my freshly charged cellyphone. Activate, blah blah blah. Thanks to wonderful bluetooth I took all of my pics and all of my contacts and just bluetooth'd them over to my new phone. SICK!! and I thought I'd have to go into the store to get it all transfered over. What a wonderful day yesterday was.

Today, we research more on how to get schulzpod into the VW....while it get's it's brakes checked out.

Deep Freeze

News Flash 12/20/04: IT'S FUCKING COLD OUTSIDE. STAY INDOORS!

Apparently I'm the only one who has noticed, but it's colder than a witch's tit out there. I mean seriously, this kind of cold is absurd. I have no clue how our ancestors kept the will to live in their cold log shacks, equipped only with a few twigs and a deerskin...not even a space heater or polar fleece. how did they do it?!?!?

i'm back in VA, as you can tell, and i'm not loving the below freezing temperatures. Tammy (oldest sister) and I threw a party on sunday and went ALL out. there was tons of food, tons of cheer and even more decor. well right when the guests were to arrive, the temperature plummeted 25 degrees and it began sleeting and snowing violently. AWESOME. thanks g-o-d. so basically, only a fraction of the guests made it and we were forced to eat everyone's portions. *and they were deelicious.*

so the following day, the wind continued to howl and the mercury didn't even rise past 20 degrees (about 5 degrees w/ wind chill). around 6 PM, i managed to pile on 20 layers and head out to the always-classy walmart for a few misc xmas items. WORST DECISION EVER. from the second i left the cocoon of warmth, i counted how many seconds i could survive until my extremities lost all sensation. around second six, i was sure my arms and face had dislodged from my body. so naturally, i started squealing.

walmart was a complete shithole. i feel guilty for cheating on target, and vow never to do it again. the mega-shit-store had nothing that i desired and it was crawling with the lower echelon of humanity. so did i buy anything? of course. which meant waiting in line for about two days. i peered down the row of crappy, overflowing registers and finally chose the self-checkout line. stupid.

it turns out that complete idiots like to try new things at the most inconvenient times. i strongly believe that the self checkout line should be divided even further into "tech savvy" and "tech RETARDED". once you fail to check all of your items in under two minutes, you are laden with a scarlet "R" on your credit card and evicted from the savvy line for eternity. too elaborate? yeah, i thought so.

the good news is that God did in fact crank up the heat. the temperature is currently 33 degrees at midnight on tuesday and there's a delightful rumor that it may reach 50 degrees tomorrow...hooray!!!

now blog damnit....our performance has been weak people. three days til santa's sleigh arrives!

Memories

Music wars

Tonight is our office holiday party and everyone is so over this week and ready to throw down some drinks. To distract themselves, some of my co-workers have launched into an e-mail war over the music played over the sterio (it is hooked into all the offices).

I try to stay out of the whole music thing by listening to my ipod all day - that way I do not have to subject or be subjected to unappealing music.

There are now two camps being formed - those who love bad pop music, and those who would rather listen to nails on a chalkboard (the offending music was a Celine Dion christmas CD). Lets hope it doesn't turn into a knock-down drag-out fight tonight.

New Jobs are Grand

Right before the Christmas holiday, I thought I would give you all an update.

If any of you didn't know already, I left lucasarts (I still feel conflicted about that one) and started work at a much more "nose to the grindstone" hardcore 3d graphic effects company in berkeley (www.tippett.com).

So far it has been crazy and fun... scary and weird to. In a way it feels like moving to a new town or something - trying to meet people, learn where Best Buy is, getting lost, and not knowing what to do for lunch. The cool thing about this industry though, is that people move around so much that everyone is used to new faces.

My first day was filled with them constructing my desk, and setting up my computer (why don't they ever do that the day before?). Also filled with getting a 5000 page opus of benefits documentation, benefits training, and a sweet new t-shirt ("imagination or death") what?

Since then I have been a sponge... too much new information for my feeble mind.. Also, I have been learning ping pong... trying to compete with the big boys over here.

Commuting sucks. going backwards over the golden gate bridge was a dream commute. Now I take the nasty grey bay bridge full of fuckheads and it kills me a little bit everyday.... but worth it.

Anyway, just wanted to throw a few words up... it has been a while since I posted something with substance.

Fun Fun with Christmas Lights

HAHAHAHA

Christmas Cheer

So Rocco and i went to get his tree close to two weeks ago....somehow in the mean time, we've taken no time to decorate it. well almost no time. after a crap day at work on tuesday, i popped over to his house to catch up on television, vent and maybe decorate the beautiful pagan symbol of christmas.

on the phone, i ask if he has decorated his tannenbaum, he mumbles, "yes"... oh fantastic, sorry i flaked out, but atleast he was happy enough for 15 minutes to decorate the tree. right, well, make that about two minutes. as i pulled into his driveway, the tree was visible through the front window. only i noticed that the lights seemed a little "off". like they were possibly wrapped around the tree like garland. "hmm, interesting change," i thought. no no no. in his utmost "funny fuck you" to the holiday, he had connected about five bundles of white lights (still wrapped) and launched them randomly into the branches. atleast he kindly placed the star where it belongs and delicately nestled ONE black and red ornament near the top.

TAAA DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

apparently he did this on purpose...and it worked. after catching up on vital television, like two weeks of The O.C. and Arrested Development, i could bear it no longer...so i went over and correctly applied the lights. well kind of, i got bored and tired and left a few spots bare. i assume he'll actually fix them and finally put on the decor b/c that's just how rocco is. he gripes, but eventually comes through. to illustrate the hilarity of it all, i have attached a before and after photo...........

Ever wonder...

What cartooon characters look like when they die? Well look no further....

Here is your answer

Jury Duty Rules!!!

I woke up this morning dreading to go in for Jury Duty. Jeremie and I were devising plans last night as to how I could get outta it or how I could make myself look more menacing so they wouldn't pick me....but I did none of our plans unfortunatly. Luckily I only live about 4 blocks from the court house so I walked over there with 5 min. to spare. I took a seat in a normal seat, not one of the desks or tables they had available...but a normal seat...sat down and started falling back asleep...they kept calling people up over the intercom every 5 min. because they obviously didn't know how to read and or fill out a stupid questioneer. SO that kept waking me up. Since I couldn't sleep I decided to draw. I drew people for about an hour and a half and got really pissed because i was so bored. Man I wish I had brough my laptop (which both Jeremie and Loren told me to do)...but like a tard I didn't. I didn't wanna lug the dam thing down there with a book and a sketchpad and all that stuff. So anyways, after an hour and a half they came over the intercom and said....the courtroom is not ready at this time, please take a small break and come back at 10:15. Sweeeeet! I ran home and grabbed my laptop and went back and found a seat. Fired up my laptop and started doing random crap. Like updating my website. Around 10:45 they came on the intercom again and said..."I'm going to list of a bunch of names...if your name is not called...please come up to the front desk" which meant that if they didn't call your name...you'd be excused. So they kept calling names....and I didn't hear mine so I was get'n excited. Then I heard a Bert R. Schooolz. FUCK! That must be me, dam idiot can't even say my name right...it's not that hard is it? Anyways, I was bummed for a few min. Then he said "Was there anyones name I did not call??" No one said a thing...he had called everyones name. He then said "Ok you are all excused for the next year and have fullfilled your Jury Service. Thank you have a nice day" Oh man the room went nuts!! People stood up ready to leave and were sooooo happy...they might as well have all stood up throwing their hats and papers in the air...that's how it felt at least. It was awesome. YES!! I'm out.

In case you want to see

In case you want to see those old covers, here they are. Actually, one is missing, but it was sort of half assed anyway, so you didn't miss out if you didn't get it. I am lame...

Compilation Covers

I noticed you posted the CD compilation covers from the past. I own all three. Is it too much to hope that it bodes well for a new compilation this year? I like new music! I hope to see you guys this year - if not you'll have to get a connecting flight through Atlanta sometime and spend a day. (Its too much to hope that someone would actually come down here as their final destination.)

Happy Birrrthday Tooo Meeee

Ah yes, It is my birthday and I am writing you from my new job. Scary it is... so scary in fact that I almost forgot my own birthday. Does anyone else out there feel this way when they start a new job? Or am I just a freak?

Regardless, I am 28 now, getting closer to the 30 line. Whoooo.

I don't even know what to write really, maybe someone can come up with some good comments eh?

Canada

What do right wing american's really think about canada?

Atlanta Here I Come

Oh crap, I forgot to include a B-52's or REM reference in the title. Or maybe a reference to "Hot-lanta", cuz you know, it's hot there and the letter "A" substitutes...wait, what, you don't care? Oh well, anyway, I'm moving to Atlanta. Some people (like Liz) may add the word "FINALLY" in there somewhere. On January 3rd I start a new job and a new chapter in my life down south. I'll have my b-more apt until March, so I can actually move my stuff at some point.

Some (like Liz) are all like, "get more excited, dude", but right now I'm all like "I've got so much crap to do, like finish my job here, forward mail, car registration, and a whole bunch of other stupid paper work". I finish my job here December 31 and start my new one January 3rd, oh yeah, and I'm doing a freelance job for the new job too. Add to this the the "Holidays" and I'm about ready to jump out the window.

I AM excited just busy. I'm also not good with "goodbyes", so leaving my adopted home of nearly 10 years is somewhat painful. But I know I'll be excited once I get there.

It was only a matter of time..

Check this out:
If people start saying "Ya right! Sure, your Canadian!" when you go over seas just tell them you know me!
It will be like when I come to the States. I get, "Hey, your Canadian?! Do you know Jim?! He's from Canader!"
I usually say,"Holy shit! He drove me to the Airport! eh?"
See, you have to speak the dialect. Quick lesson..

When your surpised one might say, "Whale-oil-beef-hooked!" Try it now, out loud...

O' Tannenbaum

It's official, Rocco and I have found our calling. True, it's a bit unconventional and not really lucrative, but not all of us can run Enron. Last night we discovered that we should be official Christmas Tree Choosers. Chuckle if you must, but we are gooood at what we do....

Yesterday, I was feeling under the weather and had a bit of a crap afternoon, so after work, I decided it would be good to finally go get some fresh pine garland for my apartment (since it's too fucking small for an actual xmas tree). I called Rocco and guilted/dragged him to Home Depot to fill our christmas decoration needs. First, we wandered aimlessly amongst lumber, fertilizer, lighting fixtures and really really bad prelit santa's until finally succumbing to the christmas tree cluster in the parking lot.

For about five minutes, I was pissed b/c apparently home depot doesn't sell fresh garland....and when I asked the two culver zit-faced high school dropout employees about it, they both looked at each other with faces blanker than a sheet of filler paper. "uh, nah i uh don't...." FORGET IT, SORRY I ASKED. Then they went back to telling this fat kid how cooooool he was b/c he was just as tall as his charlie brown christmas tree. losers.

Mind you, Rocco hates christmas and I love christmas. So when you take the average of our conflicting attitudes, buying a christmas tree becomes an emotionless, yet slightly humorous errand; jaded by a sense of duty to the season. If Rocco could skip christmas, he would....however I think he gets more out of just being miserable. And if any of you know Rocco, you know that he'll get stuff just b/c he can, not because he necessarily wants too.

example... I delighted in searching for just the perfect mini-pointsettias for my desk and apartment. They're pretty much all the fucking same, but it's like I'm looking for a boyfriend, "there has to be one out there, just for me." it's a PLANT missy, get a grip. As I'm sifting through shelves of red, pink and white blossoms, rocco realizes he should get some pointsettias too, remarking "they just die anyway." regardless, he grabs one of each color and states..."DONE. I'm going to look for a tree now." and walks off.

I found him about five minutes later and he was already unraveling a tree with disdain. I set my two prize pointsettias on the ground and started tackling the tree with him. There was a young family of three behind us, clumsily checking out trees; they were going about it all wrong...mindlessly, rocco and I shook out our tree specimen and proceeded to scrutinize and critique it like sorority girls during RUSH week. after much deliberation, rotation, joking and swapping, we decided the tree just wasn't quite right.

At this point we look around and realize we have drawn a slight audience. The tree is infact a great tree and we've pretty much sold it to everyone around us, except to us. The tree had grown on me b/c the needles were so different and curvy....Rocco wasn't sold, so when the slight chance came that we were going to ditch it, the wife belts out, "WE'LL TAKE IT!" realizing that others coveted our tree, made it more special to us, and suddenly I didn't want to give it up. so I grabbed it a little tighter.

Then the spirit of the season came over me and I said, why the hell not, it's a little anorexic on one side, there has to be another tree around here that's better. So Rocco and I gave up the tree to family #1. It was like they'd won showcase number 2 on the Price is Right (showcase #2 is always better). So that was great, until we had to find another damn tree.

Others had gathered basically looking for our throw aways or eyeing us to see if we would possibly handout more trees. They would start "ooohing" at a tree until we deemed in unworthy and then they too would find it distateful. I scoffed when one family joked that they would sometimes just buy a tree still wrapped and check it out once they got home. SACRILEGE! that's like buying a car off eBay.

At one point Rocco thought it would be funny to throw a tree on me. I'm sure the parents of young children appreciated it as I almost yelled obscenities instead of Timberrrrrrrr! We sorted through about five other trees when finally Rocco unravelled one that wasn't too bad. We twirled, critiqued and finally decided that it would do.

A couple next to us (who couldn't even get the rope off a tree) stated that they would take ours if we changed our minds, but I had to inform them that the large family behind them had dibs on our next reject. As we trudged off with the tree, I kinda felt bad, like we should have stayed and helped the others with their holiday centerpieces. They were clearly handicapped when it came to forestry. Anyway, the tree is now up in rocco's house, settling to a nice triangular shape. It'll need to be trimmed up a bit on the bottom, but expect stellar photos in a few days.

As we positioned the tree, Rocco tried really hard to choke out (aka sing) "O' Christmas Tree", but I reassured him that he doesn't have to pretend around me, so he opted for a moving rendition of "Fuck You Christmas Tree."

I, however, listened to the "Charlie Brown Christmas" CD on the way home and had to settle for nailing a pre-made wreath to my kitchen door. HAPPY FUCKIN HOLIDAYS.

Note to Jer: Slint is Back

Yes, they are reuniting and playing SF in March. Get yer tix.

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/news/04-12/07.shtml#story4

Lipsmacker

this is a stellar photo of me and leeops at the Zoic xmas party last night. don't worry, i'll still get to recapping my xmas party...but wanted to give you bloggers a little peek at Mark "i can't figure out how to post a blog" lipsmeyer, in the flesh. he thought it would be funny to make a queer face....mission accomplished.

how are your cheeks today mark? i made him laugh all night with hilarious tales...well kinda hilarious...he's an easy audience. it's good for the self-esteem.

Just add guns....

Quote:
""Toyota has created a walker robot that the driver sits in and controls. It's meant for handicapped people to get around with, but you can easily see the potential for this technology to become the basis for a real-world version of an AT-ST Scout Walker or mobile suit Gundam -- just add guns!" "

Link to article
Real Life AT-ST walkers pics...

*AT-ST walkers is star wars nurd talk

This just tickles me...

So i was at a poster sale at the university the other day when i saw a poster that spawned a memory of the blog. Not to long ago the site T-shirt hell.com was posted. Among other things, the shirt that quoted "abortions tickle" stuck in my mind. Anyways, my girlfriend and i were talking about said shirt when some nosey reporter for the Brock Press was at the same time clusterfucking our words into her little bitch of the week story. Our conversation went something like this:

"hey i went to the funnyest site the other day. I'm totaly gonna buy some shirts from there, there was a hillarious one that said ABOTIONS TICKLE."

"hah thats funny"

END!

This is what the article in the paper said

STAFF EDITORIAL
'Abortion tickles,' hatred is sad
by Christine Lambert

At the imaginus poster sale last wednesday I was wandering around in the rather quiet back room when i heard the girl standing beside me say loudly, "womens should feel guilty for having an abortion," in reaction to a feminist poster. At which the boy with her began to say some unmemorable things, finaly ending their discussion with the phrase, "abortions tickle."
The hate laced in those words instantly infected me and my gut reaction was to turn around and tell them in some unfavorable language the heartlessness of their comments, and make them feel guilty, but then i realized that i had just become guilty of the same thing they were, a superiority complex.
While i have never been in the situation of having an unwanted pregnancy, i have compassion for those who have.
I know the weight of the decision of whether or not to leave my family for university was one with such life-0changing ramifications that it make me feel like i was choosing between life and death.
But the choise of right and wrong on such an issue, where there are so many answers out there, and the result literally is life or death -- how can one trivialize such a thing? Some consider it murder, a tragedy, and some view it as a necessary step. Can we not be understanding with those who regret their decision? Have we never made life-altering chouses ourselves and doubted? Correct me if im wrong, but if you were in her shouse, living her life, whould it be easy to judge?
The only person i know well enough to decide what's best for is myself, and I'm rarely sure about that.
There are very few people in this world who have the right to enforce or expect compliance to their set of beliefs. The next time you decide your way is the only way, think about the six biullion other 'ways,' and meditate on how you feel when someone tells you the way they live their life is how you should live yours.
Treat others the way you want to be treated, and only throw the stone after you've decided you aren't worthy of a stoning yourself.

--

Alright sister... Next time, make sure you base your pro humanity shpeal on actual events and not feeble misquotes. Makes me wonder if she had a deadline 1 hour away. LOL and "unmemorable things" yea thats fine, unless the unmemorable things were I SAW A T-SHIRT THAT SAID. Dumb bitch... that pisses me right off

Justin

P.S. mind the errors, i was on a shitty library pc when i typed this...

WMA Party

COMPANY HOLIDAY PARTY IS TONIGHT. OPEN BAR - WAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! stories to follow. wish me an embarrass-free night!

Weekly Vid

This post is brought to you by acoustics.

My Letter to the Standard Snowboard Show

I sent this letter to the standard films store, a snowboard film company. That was the only email I could find -

I have been watching your epic series on fuel called the standard snowboard show... and the openning song is probably the coolest song in the universe. That is actually not an exaggeration. I figure emailing the store is a strange way to get to the source of the song - you will probably disregard this email - in fact you may have never even heard the song. BUT, regardless of the sanity of this email, I was wondering if you could somehow find that song and either send it over my way - because I went to the site that the show mentions and couldn't find it - Or just pass this mail over to someone who might know... where i can buy/download/listen to the whole dang thing.

Also, as an added bonus, if I can get that song, I can snowboard down the hill and listen to it.. pretending that I am actually ON the standard snowboard show. How great would that BE?

Thanks,

jer

Move over Jessica Rabbit..there's a new girl in town

I'm assuming everyone has seen The Incredibles already, so is it just me or is Elastigirl god dam hot wearing thos little spandex geetup's! I realize this sounds ridiculous but seriously........