It's quiet here.

So Mandy's gone, and she arrived safely in Mexico, which is good. But of course, the morning yesterday was not without incident. Since I've been making little lists lately (alliteration), Here's one of things that happened yesterday (unordered this time):

• Our car was broken into again. This time it was just irritating. Nothing was taken because there was nothing to take. Nothing was damaged because the window was already smashed in. They opened the glove box, the change box, and the center console and pulled stuff out of those and left it all on the seat. There was nothing of value. If they had put it all back and left the door locked when they left, we wouldn't have even known.
  
• The plane was in San Jose at 6:15 am on America West. If you don't know, America West sucks.
  
• Mandy had a stopover in Phoenix that lasted like 20 minutes or something, which meant that she had to be on airplanes from 6:15 am - 2:10 pm without eating anything. For those of you who know Mandy, this is not a good thing. She was less than happy about the situation. Luckily a nice man on her plane shared a sandwich with her.
  

And then I watched action movies, porn, and cried myself to sleep.

What a strange lunch!

So today Mandy and I went to Boudin for lunch. For the 3 of you who don't know, that's the place in San Francisco where you can get sourdough and chowder and sandwiches. It's pretty good for the ol' corporate lunch scene, and if you're a tourist, and you heard you can get chowder in a bread bowl, some jerk probably pointed you to Boudin. Anyway, we were there and there were these two girls who ordered just that, so I immediately judged them as tourists. For a general idea of what these girls might have looked like, click this link or change that search to your liking.

Anyway, so the guy who worked in the place seized the opportunity to (how you say) "work" the hot tourists. He wiped off their table and talked extensively to them. While I sat at a table with someone else's tomato soup on it. I just think it was pretty obvious that he was providing them with better service because he thought he might have a chance to I don't know what with one of them (or both, who knows).

We were mildly infuriated by the whole situation, but from my point of view, I rather enjoyed listening in on their conversation. It wasn't interesting at all... in fact, it was completely devoid of any actual content. It's the way they said it all that made my little eavesdropping ears perk up. When they jumped into personal experience narrative (woo), they told almost the entire story in the present tense, which is interesting to say the least. They used upspeak, a predictable "girly-girl" trait. They were very clear about taking turns, but were also very good at providing some minimal feedback.

It's times like these that I wish I had recorded them and used the data for an unethical research project.

Google.

OK, time to get all linguistic on all y'all. Has anyone else noticed (if you haven't, you live in some kind of cave or hole) that "Google," the name of a company, so therefore a proper noun has weasled its little way into our lexicon as both a noun (as originally) and a verb? To slip into linguistic analysis mode, the following data illustrate this tendency:

1. Have you seen the new Google service? It's capital!
   
2. I googled my boss and found out more than I bargained for.
   

Example 1 shows the common usage as a noun, name of company, name of service, etc. Example 2 shows the slightly newer verb form, meaning "to use a google service to some end."

Why then am I doing this if it's so obvious? It seems someone googled me and found me here... see comments of my previous post. Big prize to whoever can guess who it is. I have no idea.

My head. Ouch.

My head hurts and I kinda want to go home and skip practice tonight. But, I'll go anyway because I'm a fuckin' rockstar. Shit yeah!

Church signs

One time I saw a real one that said "YESTERDAY ENDED LAST NIGHT." Well duh.



Make your own at churchsigngenerator.com!

I think musicians are dumb.

So I was browsing the craigslist musicians page hoping to find a dive bar or birthday party looking for some musical entertainment provided by the one and only iY. I stumbled across this:



So over the course of four minutes, Sparkey Ravenwood managed to go from needing musicians to having an event on TV tonight to being event-free and available. That's like four minutes of going from being nobody to being somebody back to being nobody again. And I know all about that last part... being a band looking for gigs is a real pain in the ass because of the following irritating issues:

1. Club owners are pricks. Let me explain: club owners think they can get away with not paying bands that are at close to pro level. They offer them shows with "exposure" as the payment, or at the most a couple of free drinks. C'mon musicians, we're better than that!
   
   
2. Other bands are retarded. You have to take what you can get if you're just starting out. When you're a young band, playing for exposure or free beer is a great chance. When a band with no demo, no fans, and little or no talent thinks they deserve $500 for a show in a dive bar, they are greatly mistaken.
   
   
3. Friends are not fans. I know, my friends like to support me by coming and sitting through a show. They'll even cough up the $5 cover (which I won't see a dime of). Now, don't get me wrong, I love playing for my friends, but I would be really into playing if someone actually chose to come see me, rather than me asking them to come.
   

So I've gone on a little rant here about the local music scene, and for that, I apologize. I have to say that some of the most fun I've ever had with music is playing in a dive bar for one free beer in front of six of my closest friends. Whether they wanted to come or not, sometimes I can see it in their nodding heads and tapping feet that, at least for a moment, they are enjoying themselves.

That said, House of Shields in early July... more to come later!

Coldplay's pretty good

So I just got the new Coldplay album, "X & Y." It's pretty good. The first single from it, "Speed of Sound," sounds almost exactly the same as "Clocks," which freaked me out at first. I mean, it's a good song, but they're very talented at the music, so why can't they write a different song. My biggest fear was that they would do to me what that cock licker Dave Matthews did: release two listenable, reasonably good albums ("Crash" and "Under the Table and Dreaming"), then release a third album ("Before These Crowded Streets") that I bought because I thought I liked the band. At that point, I realized that Dave Matthews could only write one song over and over again.

But, after listening to "X & Y" a few times, I realized that Coldplay will release at least three mainstream albums before I'm turned off by them. This album is solid, maybe a little less rocking than previous releases, but c'mon, the guy plays piano almost exclusively and sings. It doesn't get less rocking than that. But, while Dave Matthews has an annoying nasaly voice, Chris Martin has a lovely voice and is good at his instruments.

So, in conclusion, fuck Dave Matthews. For those of you who remember "the line," Dave can get right in there, immediately after Don Henley, but not before Bono.

I'm Graduated!

Well, so it's been like a week or two since I posted, so I thought I'd update my fans. I graduated. I now hold a Master's degree in English with an emphasis in linguistics. Hooray! Now I'm licensed by the state of California to perform linguistic analysis in the public domain! Actually, I'm still not fully graduated because I need to finish my stupid thesis, but it's like a week until completion, and my advising board is off until September. This means that I have three months to complete a week's worth of work. This further means that I will not complete said work until August.

So what else is going on... Mandy's off to Mexico later this month, and I'm going to sit at home and watch action movies and porn while I cry myself to sleep every night. Then she can do the same thing in July when I'm off to Mexico without her. I guess all is fair in love. After I come back from Mexico in August, I'm going to be heading to beautiful Phoenix (yes, Phoenix in August) for the FileMaker Developer's Conference. I will learn how to make files like the pros!

One consequence of my graduating is that I now work full-time. This means that I have to wake up by about 7:30 am (which usually means I'm up no later than 8:05 am), I work somewhere around 9 hours, and I'm home by 6:00 pm. When I get home, I put my feet up and relax, a direct consequence of not having school (except that damn thesis). I go to bed by 11:00 pm because eight hours of sleep isn't quite enough for me, and I wake up exhausted. Luckily, there's coffee at work.