I finally got a new job as a Genius with Apple Retail. I'm happy to finally be regularly employed. Apparently I'm pretty lucky to have gotten a Genius position as an outside hire, especially in this economy. Quite proud, yes quite proud...

I'm in training for the next two weeks, then off to Cupertino. Wheeee!

Have you been tempted to offload Firefox recently because 3.0 is lame and slow and worse than Internet Explorer 7? Me too. I hate the new Firefox. I hate it so much that I have foregone the joys of Firebug, Adblock, and Gspace in favor of the software that came on my computer. I know, what am I thinking? Using pre-installed software - Hah! But the new FF is the bloatiest piece of crap ever. I probably shouldn't be so harsh, but it really is a problem creator, and that's not something I value in my software.

Well, it's a little better now with the 3.0.5 update, and thanks to the tips here: How To: Double Your Firefox Browsing Speed with a Few Easy Tweaks

Believe it or not, these tweaks actually help, a little.... well, they make FF a tolerable work space again. My CPU fan is still a little more on-all-the-time than I'd like, but now I can block ads again. Thank bajebus.

Even though I have an old tiny CRT TV and not some fancy HDTV, I've found only marginal difficulty reading dialogue text in what is otherwise the most addictive game I've played since Katamari Damacy: Fallout 3. Maybe it's the bleak grey-brown alterna-future, the 1950's art design, the payoff for exploration... I have a very hard time putting down the controller at 2:00 a.m. and coming to bed.

It is very much like WoW in it's constant-quest-giving nature. There's always just one more thing to do before you take a break. Unlike WoW, the quests feel substantiative. Although I know I'm wasting my life, I don't feel like it so much. Perhaps it's the lack of online play, though, that makes it better. It's post apocalyptic; You don't expect to see a ton of other people out trolling the wastelands. Well, maybe one or two, but that's what makes them fun to run into... There's only the one.

The one thing I am certain of, Fallout rewards exploration with oodles of eye candy. There is huge incentive to straying from the path you were on to check out that neat, oddly solid looking building beside that pile of nondescript rubble. You may be rewarded with creepy tunnels filled with glowing purple soda and giant crab monsters that don't really care if you shoot at them... it just pisses them off. Quick, go get the missile launcher! Dark Cloud 2 I liked a lot for many of the same reasons that I like this game. However, we can thank developers new propensity for catering to "hard-core gamers" (i.e., adults) for delivering a game which is worlds more mature.

Fallout 3 wins in it's character flexibility. It's a true role-playing game. It gives you tools and flexibility to play as any disturbed, unbalanced personality you can come up with. So you want to play an alcoholic pacifist? Great! Go for it! It's in there.

Bethesda has made a fantastic game, in a setting I actually want to play in, with characters I like, and enough content to screw with your head for months. Don't tell my girlfriend. She thinks she's getting me back eventually.

December 9th, 2008

A series of explosions rocked the residences of Canoga Park, within a block of the intersection of Jordan Avenue and Saticoy Street last night. There were three explosions heard at 7:30, 9:30, and 11:30p.m.

The Los Angeles Fire Department was on the scene twice canvasing streets, looking for fires and smoke. The firemen on scene reported no fire, and no damage. When we went to look later ourselves, we found a blast mark and a bits of burned paper beside a car parked in front of 7550 Jordan Avenue.

Some residents argued that it sounded like an electrical transformer explosion, some thought it sounded like a grenade. It is likely that someone thought it would be fun to over-pack firecrackers at home and set them off in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, neither the police, nor the fire department reported finding anyone carrying fireworks over the night.

December 8th, 2008 - 9:30p.m.

A family of four were irate and shaken tonight after one of them had his car stolen after being shot at tonight at a Washington Mutual bank branch, on the corner of Sherman Way and Vassar Avenue. Kami, a Canoga Park resident, said that he was approached at the bank's street-front ATM by a man holding a gun demanding money. When Kami explained that he was only checking his account to confirm that he was out of money, the man shot twice, and ran to Kami's car. The thief then broke the window and drove off. Kami was not injured.

Since the car was an older Mercedes Turbo-Diesel, Kami had taken the keys out, but left the car running with the doors locked. Kami's adult son who arrived on the scene minutes later explained that the thief appeared to be drunk and confused not to find keys in the car, even though the car was running. Both of them were thankful that Kami wasn't hit by either bullet as he ducked out of the way.

The officer on scene reported that the car had been recovered only a few blocks away on Burbank Boulevard. The police also recovered two shell casings which will be checked for prints, and they will check the ATM video tomorrow.

I understand being a young man, wanting to prove your manliness by shooting things, but cats? Really? Can't you go shoot at your friends or something?

We've had a couple of the cats we take care of (neuter, spay, feed, pet, try to protect) disappear for a couple days and then show up again with horrible wounds and we had no idea what had caused them. Marmalade, our confused, very feral but very sweet male had a big swollen cheek that finally burst and has subsided a couple weeks ago, and today, Cracker, our dirty white chubby cat showed up with a really bad limp and blood behind the leg.

I couldn't figure for the life of me why our cats were getting so hurt all the time, especially since I rarely hear the sounds of fighting anymore... That's when I caught the sound that answered those questions. There is nothing that sounds quite like an air rifle. It turns out I caught our neighbors taking pot-shots at our cats with a bb-gun for sport.

We went over looking for the kid that had the rifle, but he had mysteriously vanished. We explained to the family that we take care of the cats, and that now it's gonna cost us a lot of money to take her to the vet to get the BB removed, and that if we ever hear them shooting anything again we won't come over next time, we'll just call the cops and let them sort it out. I have been really really angry all day today. Seriously, why cats?

Fortunately, Cracker seems to be mostly okay. I still have to catch her and find a cheap vet to take her to. She was already not the most trusting of our clan, but now she's really really hard to approach. Gah. People suck. Anyway, if you're reading this, We could really use some financial help with her vet costs. There's a donate button on the right. It would mean a lot to Cracker and to us.

About a month ago I wound up at the El Rey for a VNV Nation show. I had never seen them live but I was incredibly pleased by the performance. I've never in my life seen such a rotund, bald, Irishman bounce so lively around a stage. The band's front man, Ronan Harris, made a point of demanding that everyone there really get into the show. You know, "put your cell phones and flip video cameras back in your pockets and be part of the experience." Throw your hands up in the air when everyone else is. Be as excited as him! After all, if he, a great big tubby middle-aged man, can prance around like a happy 6 year old high on caffeine and sweets, then you damn well should be able to undulate in a moderately rhythmic fashion goddammit.

I thought his cell phone comment appropriate at the time. I often am discouraged by concert-goers seeming lack of social grace when I see a great many of them more concerned with being the first to post their bland but "unique perspective" on the concert experience to YouTube... Because YouTube notoriety is more important than active engagement in an experience. I could probably go on and on about how the internet has really changed social structure at traditionally social IRL events. I might even say something poignant and engaging about how the significance of deeds one does for one's online community has dwarfed the value of experiential wisdom in our culture. But that's boring and preachy, and I'm not a church. Plus, while I'd like to get some credibility for my writing, I'm still just blogging.

Nevertheless, I have had second thoughts about Ronan's disdain for iPhone videos of shows since my recent attendance of the Oasis show at the Staples Center in downtown LA. Thanks to the totally rad people at Golden Voice and Metblogs LA, I am occasionally blessed with free tickets to shows that I would otherwise never think about attending. And while I generally avoid concerts approaching the ten-thousand-in-attendance mark, or any musical act in venues build for twenty thousand, I'm honestly glad that I went. Thanks in part to the dissociative experience of so large a space and so far a stage, made weirder by the sibling rivalry that keeps Liam offstage any time Noel is singing, It reminded me of home.

You see, growing up in Georgia you knew the first day of summer was here when you could run out in the back yard and see the garden full of fireflies glowing unabashedly, begging for mating rights. Yes, the time was ripe for days at the pool and nights... um, nights doing whatever it was that I did as a child when school wasn't waiting to pounce the next morning - oh yes, staying out past curfew, trolling the neighborhood with childhood pals, writing guitar songs in the soccer field, smoking swisher sweets or black & milds, breaking things and ducking into bushes to avoid the police on the frequent occasion that we were stupid enough to do any of these things in plain sight. Skinny dipping, capture the flag, driving for hours on a full tank of gas a prayer to find the Georgia Guidestones or to a Waffle House in Tennessee - because it's there, watching shooting stars, climbing trees, hurting ourselves and others at punk-house parties, homemade fireworks, shooting at clay, sneaking into the Botanical Gardens, fucking with old people in Oconee county at 2 a.m. in our unruly-but-harmless gang of sport-bikes, Mary Hallinan, The 8-Track Gorilla, Stinky Jessie, Jittery Joes, the basement at Blue Sky... All these memories came flooding back to me at this Oasis show. From my seat in section 205, row 10, seat 9, the flickering cameras of all those people who paid 80 bucks a piece for floor seats, the ones who found more value in capturing that moment in low resolution, shaky, backlit, pixelated mpeg, most definitely for no purpose other than to throw at the internet for virtu-props, they all looked like fireflies - little blinking, glowing, floating things in a loud, dark field.

So, While I agree with Ronan - life is there to be lived, not watched - Harris, my experience is expanded and enlightened with memories of happy child and young adulthood by those who just can't keep their goddamned phones in their goddamned pockets.

Thank you, whoever it was that left the comment a few posts ago. I am giving you full credit for my recent purchase of the domain "famouslyhomeless.com"

I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do with it yet.... but I'm sure I'll think of something. Either way, it is a totally rad pseudo-personality and it couldn't go unpurchased. :D

If you have a few minutes, go take a look at this article
from the NY Local Daily News about a 34 year old man who was trampled to death at a Long Beach Wall-Mart.

Take a minute to watch the video. Really, watch it. I know it might be hard at first to stomach the first few seconds, knowing the the man receiving chest compressions is dead. But if you sit through a minute or so, you get to the part that is really compelling. There are people laughing. Yes, that's right, people who are standing around watching paramedics desparately trying to save this man's life are laughing. I know people laugh when they're nervous, but the poor guy was a graveyard shift stocker at a Wal-Mart, the most unforgiving, thankless job in the country, and he was trampled to death by people who couldn't wait to shop. You, laughing person, were there at five o'clock in the morning on a day when you might have been spending quality time with your family. I mean, Jdimytai Damour, age 34, probably should have been with his family, but he was working a minimum wage job at five a.m. and he died because consumerism in Long Beach is still so strong a compulsion that people riot at the local Wally-World.

I want to commend you, people of Long Island. I want to honor you for your efforts to counter our struggling economy by throwing human decency and self control to the wind. That's exactly the attitude we need! I can't think of a clearer sign of our commitment to the american way of life, can you? It's exactly that kind of barbarism that we need to re-establish ourselves as the world's supreme superpower. Any nation that is willing to sacrifice the lives and safety of it's own citizens to save twenty dollars on a TV is a nation not to be trifled with. The American people will stop at nothing to buy cheap pants and vacuum cleaners, their thirst for deals shall not be quenched by cheap electronics alone, nor by the blood of the selfless workers who ensure that all americans can truly "save money and live better".

So I say to you, thank you Long Island, for giving those terrorists something to think about next time they consider bombing a shopping mall or a local Dillards. Thank you for reminding us that the fundamentals of our economy are still strong, for showing us that a great deal is worth more than life itself. In this, our darkest hour, you have truly given me back that American Pride that was slipping away like the Dow Jones; now I know that there is truly hope for us as a nation.

And shed not a tear for Jdimytai Damour, but laugh and rejoice, for his death is but a sign that consumer confidence is screaming towards the heavens with wings of credit, on the winds of visa. He is truly a hero among heros, who's name shall go down in history alongside those firefighters who lost their lives on September Eleventh, and all our brave soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. He will always be a reminder to us, the american people, that we can all do our part to fix this mess we're in. All we need is a little crazy and a little hard work and we as citizens can set this country back on the right track. We can do it!

God bless America, and God bless Wal-Mart, and God Bless us together, as a crazy shopping mob.

A late model ford pickup truck exploded in front of Canoga Park Elementary School this evening, on the corner of Vassar and Valerio in Canoga Park, CA (less than one block away from my house). According to witnesses, a man was seen pulling a bicycle out of the truck bed and riding away shortly before the explosion. It appears no one was injured.

Ox, whose house was shaken by the blast that occurred only ten yards from his fence, remarked, "It's probably an insurance job. Guy probably didn't feel like paying for it anymore. It'll come up stolen, just watch."

According to Ox and others, gang activity has been up recently nearby. There was some dismay about recent election results among the onlookers also. Californians only yesterday shot down Proposition 6, a bill that would have increased police funding in LA County. That funding may have helped add more police to the streets in our community.

Apparently, Ford truck beds are made of plastic, and are melty. Also, check out the cool tempering on the alloy wheel. Sorry for the horizontal lines, my CCD is dying an angry death.

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