Category: Uncategorized

Obit photos are now done. boon had soup for lunch. i had tom ka. david keeps sending me odd little pictographs over the cubicle wall that i don’t think even make any sense to him. i over-steeped my tea (again). poor elise found out that her mother passed suddenly and left to go join her family. i was actually rather busy until just now; photos this morning needed quite a bit of tlc. most of the house is coughing up their lungs so i am desperately trying to take care of myself so i do not join their ranks. kim (who i worked with at LRS during bev’s psychadelic shows) is going to have me work with him on a more regular basis so i can perhaps fill in for him if he has a catering gig, and serve tables when the studio hosts the twice monthly dinners they will be having before the shows. which will be nice little amounts of pocket cash. and i like hanging out with the troupe. it is way too quiet in here. i require far more animation than is what’s currently being provided. i need stimuli. meh. too bored to write and i have no topic. so sad.

voulez voulez vous blog fail.

You leave the house with Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F major, BWV 1047 to accompany you. Leave at 7:45. It’s about a 40 minute walk to work, so you allow five minutes for…unexpected events. Like dogs. Which you find. Madison Market…Golden Retriever and Springer Spaniel, tied to the post while their parental unit shopped. Oh so cuddly. You scratch their ears, get some kisses, explain to them that you’d love to spend more time, but you must go to work. So, standing up, you replace your headphones, give them small scratches between their eyes, resume walk.
You make your way down Pine, exchange smiles with the local fireman as he raises the flag at the fire station. Hear the cacophony coming from the demolition team as they tear down what used to be the Foley Sign Company. They are fortunately leaving the facade intact. The facade of the building must be nearly 100 years old, and in Capitol Hill, with all of the new condos being built, historical preservation is becoming very important.
Crossing 11th and Pine, green light, you are nearly run down by a swarm of bicyclists running a red light. You will find this extremely hypocritical considering recent events. You consider yelling at them, but pause. What good would it do? It won’t change their behavior. Besides, they weren’t wearing helmets. They’re obviously careless. Karma and all…anyway…
Make your way to Broadway, wondering where Superman was. Maybe it was his day off…perhaps he was sleeping in. Just then a very, um…rotund…drag queen walks up…you think to yourself…my, she’s out early…she says to you, “well good mo’nin there baybaydawwl!” You say “good mawnin beautiful!” with a big smile and remember why you love living on the Hill. Walk by all the odd little store fronts looking in even though they have the same things every day. Weird furniture, acrylic moose heads, vintage shoes, pet supplies, an old-school Lite-Brite you’ve thought of buying more than once, pretty-boy designer clothes, a very pink store that is so pink it’s blinding and you don’t even bother to look in, a baguette shop with cute paintings of dogs, a shop with Indian teas and exotic spices and incense, a Yoga studio, and Bauhaus, a cafe you’ve frequented more than once, sketchbook in hand. You make your way through the crosswalk, passing the leash-free dog park, surveying the pups romping about this morning, always wondering if non-dog owners were allowed. Sometimes, after work, you’ll catch your friend Boon (Carrie) in there with her dog Fire, stoked because you now have an “in” which is nice…one day there were a couple of gorgeous Dobermans and an adorable Japanese Mastiff to play with. Much slobber.
Heading down to Boren, you see the Paramount sign, always meaning to look up the history of the building but forgetting by the time you get to work. Which isn’t unusual. You usually get wrapped up in Wikipedia about something else. Heading down Boren, you can see your building, you just have to make your way through the random, intermittent craziness first. One thing you will notice is the women who wear stiletto heels to work. They have to somewhat hobble down the hill on Boren trying to balance themselves, precariously minding the uneven concrete. You acknowledge that high-heeled shoes can be sexy, but for cocktail parties, not hobbling like drunken sailors down sidewalks in Capitol Hill. That’s better suited for the people who actually are drunk on Capitol Hill at 8:15 in the morning, who love to holler and dance about at the bus stop on the corner of Fairview and Denny. They’re there every morning. Sometimes you feel like you need to pay admission.
There’s always a lot of traffic on Denny. There’s always a lot of people honking at each other and cutting each other off and riding the ass of the person in front of them. People resting their temples on their fists as they scream at the person in the car in front of them as if they could hear them. As you think about your morning…as you stroll down the tree-laden streets, looking up at the reddening fall leaves and the people beginning their days, going to school, walking down sidewalks, girls looking in shop windows to put their eyeliner on, reading books at bus stops, sitting in front of cafes with their laptops, people walking their dogs, getting their morning coffee, skateboarders, coming, going, walking, running, doing, living…in a 40 minute walk to work you get to see it all. People. Life. You walk into work, sit down at your desk, face flushed from the walk, greet coworkers, feeling like a human being…a being full of life and energy, ready to start your day…as opposed to an automaton who mechanically makes their way through the office sitting down at their computer just going through the motions with a Starbucks cup in hand.

How was your commute?

*I realize most don’t have the luxury of living 1.8 miles from their job…so this post is inapplicable to you =)

I’m not ready to be at work right now. I think I need to go back to bed and try again.

My African violet is pissed at me. It requires water. It’s going to team up with the Asian pear I have hanging out on my desk and bludgeon me while I’m removing spots and scratches from soon-to-be obituary photos.

David Matayoshi just walked by cryptically smiling at me. WTF? Psycho.

I need some more water. Maybe I’ll share some with my plant.

Superman was hanging out on the corner of Broadway and Pine this morning. He had a sign asking for money. Why does Superman have to ask for money? He should deliver pizzas. That’d be a perfect job for a Superman. Then he wouldn’t have to panhandle anymore. He must get cold in those tights.

Phil told me that I am an abject fail. Whew. I was afraid he didn’t like me anymore.

Boon has a cold. Or allergies. She’s not sure which. I said ewwww. She said ya totally!

I’m trying to talk Phil into a hot dog and a Slurpee from 7-11 which is about 5 blocks down by Seattle Center. He says he won’t go unless I do. I do not want these things. For some reason I want him to get them. Wondering if the round trip 10-block trek is worth it. The weather is nice.

David says “you have to be in it to win it.” He never knows what “it” is.

Now David is rambling on about “ribbon candy”. For gawds sake. Ribbon candy? Yeah. My grandma had the stuff. She had the smaller versions that she would keep in crystal candy dishes with lids that had pointy crystal handles on top that would poke your hands when you went to lift it. Then of course the candy, which despite the array of colors all tasted like licorice, was so rigid that it would result in multicolored drool which traveled down the jawline, continuing down the neck and collecting in nice little pools of sugared saliva in the collar of your shirt to the utter joy of your mother. What the hell made him think of ribbon candy all of a sudden? Freak.

There’s stuff in my inbox. I suppose I should get to it. After I water my plant.

voulez-voulez-vous krebs cycle.

Phil S. (not the Phil of Haiku fame…this Phil is my Mad Libs buddy) sent me this image in an email. Knowing my love of art and of comic sans, he drew this picture of me and sent it post-haste in an email.

It’s almost as if he looked directly into my soul!

Click

here
for more information.

voulez-voulez-vous all hail the Queen.

So I was made aware of this recently:

click here for teh hawesomeness…

This was, oh so good to be true…

So I am posting our submittal email. It is long. It may be boring. It may be disregarded by most of you because of these facts. I say…uh, so?

Here you are:

“Dearest ThinkGeek:

(This may need a little history first…so I am going to copy and paste from a blog entry I did):
“Last week I started this new thing where I demanded that everyone in my section of cubicles write me a daily haiku. By 10:00 am. After explaining what exactly a haiku was, I discovered that my otherwise preoccupied peers actually did it…some were so enthusiastic they would write several in a day. Some would even write one without being prompted in the morning with my direct albeit threatening reminder emails…I suppose it was our substitute for smoke breaks.”

So, this began back on July 9th…my 6 coworkers and I. To my amazement this has reached astronomical proportions, completely by accident. To date there have been 427 haiku’s composed. (I’m not sure of the apostrophe protocol of Haiku(‘s) but I’m winging it here…). So when a friend noticed your contest, and knowing my love of your catalog (most notably for your pi merchandise) and the Collective’s Great Haiku Experiment…I did not see coincidence…I saw destiny!

Since as of yesterday we had no haiku’s composed that could really be considered “techie” or “geeky”, and since we have “haiku themes” on a regular basis, the theme was set, and haiku’s were produced.

There are several authors here, but as we see ourselves as a Collective, we felt we had to send them en masse. That and some of the haiku’s tended to become a back and forth conversation between us. So my deepest apologies if this is highly inconvenient, but I feel it would be a disservice to The Collective to not submit our work together.

So.

* Your First Name: Jennifer, David, Ed, Chris, Heather, Andrew, Phil
* Your location (City/State or City/Country) Seattle, WA
* Your Haiku(s)

Here you are, with the brief introduction provided in our 82-page (yes, 82) Word document of Haiku’s:

Then we learned that ThinkGeek was having their own haiku contest
where the requirements were:
Your Haiku MUST be geeky and/or infused with a technological bent.
(and this part we thought was especially awesome):
“You can submit as many original Haikus as you like, please keep them within a single email to make it easier on us though.”
(um, not sure if the “easier on us” statement, when applied to our submittal, is quite what you have in mind, but…this has great potential, we felt…)

Without further ado.

Doom 3 is my fave
Too bad that I have a Mac
my processor sucks.

Jennifer

I can recite Pi
Up to 200 digits.
Thus have no boyfriend.

Jennifer

Open tag close tag
I adore HTML
CSS hates me.

Jennifer

Touchscreen interface
+ kids with snotty fingers
= viral bomb

Philip

Please don’t overload
Flux Capacitor. Great Scott!
We’ll never get home

Chris

Robots we will be
A data input function
Slaves to computers

Chris

Blank stare at the screen
Instant gratification
Beware tech zombies!

Chris

Hail Jean-Luc Picard
Best, Starfleet Captain, Ever
Set Phasers to Stun

Chris

Indiana Jones
Now enjoy it in 3D!!!!!
George Lucas, you whore.

Philip

Demolition Man–
When they plucked out that guy’s eyes..
Let’s stay analog.

Philip

Online gaming: lame.
Screw that World of Warcraft junk
Give me Minesweeper

Jennifer

I’m out of practice
Haikus don’t roll off the tongue
Jenn only skilled for PONG

Andrew

Late night, eyes blurry,
Yelling out “More DOTS, More DOTS!!”
Gaming is stressful.

David

You’ll get sweet lovin’
Sugar…Baby…just gotta
Finish this level…

Jennifer

Dress up in costume
To role play in the forest
Just like Robin Hood

Heather Van

Once an episode…
Computer – tea, earl grey – hot…
Damn, tea is sexy…

Jennifer

Elf ears and cloak, check.
Perfect elvish dialect,
Here I am, ladies!

David

Or you could dress up
As a powerful Sith Lord
Stand in movie line

Chris

We are SG-1
Oooh! Richard Dean Anderson!
Teal’c is hotter bald.

Jennifer

Oh the poor Asgard
Beware the replicators!
Thor is worm-fodder

Jennifer

Stargate: Atlantis
Is such a lame-ass ripoff!
Hammond is cooler!!

Jennifer

It’s the Chapa-ai!
Watch out for the goa’uld!
Wormholes are awesome

Jennifer

Sadly, SG-1’s
Richard Dean Anderson is
No Scott Bakula

Chris

Enter my Tardis
Come along! Don’t make a fuss!
Trapped with me in time…

Philip

Aw, no need to cry!
Care for a jelly baby?
Now, there’s a good girl.

Philip

You’ll never be free!
Now obey your new Time Lord–
Serve my robot dog!

Philip

I have to quote Phil…
“Ignorance is my weapon!”
That’s funny right there…

Jennifer

YES! Continuum!
The One I’ve Been Waiting For
Netflix Is My Friend

Ed

Oh we are the Borg
We will assimilate you
Our skin is nasty

Jennifer

We are perfection!
And resistance is futile!
You organic slime!!!

Jennifer

We are Locutus!
No tea earl grey hot for you!
Number one? Hello…?

Jennifer

Rejected CC
Wrong number? Three digit code?
Insufficient Funds?

Chris

Poor Lieutenant Yar.
Engulfed in a pool of goo.
So embarassing.

Jennifer

Commander Data
“Oh no, my emotion chip!”
Such a whiner now.

Jennifer

Q is Teh Hawesome!
He toys about with Picard.
Most enjoyable.

Jennifer

Picard to Riker!
On screen! Engage! On my mark!
Warp 2! So bossy!

Jennifer

You forgot Geordi
He works on the engines and
Hosts Reading Rainbow

Chris

And what about Worf
Always struggles with temper
That silly Klingon

Chris

These were pulled from the previous Collective’s Collection:

evolutionist
psuedointellectual
congratulations

Andrew

Dot, dot, dash, dash, dot
Dash,dot,dot, dash, dot, dash,dash.
Dot,dot, dot, dot, dash.

David

The Web under seige
Invading the blogosphere
Haiku’s will conquer

Chris

Plant energy source,
They cannot live without it.
Photosynthesis.

David

Photosynthesis
Lets just pick random words now
What a crock of poop

Philip

Photosynthesis
Makes plants Photosynthesize
As in the act of

Chris

Oh the green green leaves
Photosynthesis takes place
Yummy food from sun!

Jennifer

Photosynthesis?
Doesn’t happen at my house
My plants are all dead

Heather

Accursed sunlight!
Photosynthesis shall fall!
Methane sea Vents WIN!!!!!!!

Philip

Nothing grows in here
Darkness is all pervasive
No seeds will blossom

Andrew

In the dark I take
Pictures of plants, so why no
Photosynthesis?

Chris

I.T. just called me
seems that we crashed a server
Go team venture go!

Andrew

3.141
5926535
8979

Jennifer

Comic Sans, Woo-hoo!
I’m festive and appealing!
Use it everyday!

David

XBOX 360–
Finally it’s worth owning…
Fable 2 is near!

Philip

Got My Brand New Wii
Won’t Be Playing Much Else Now
Make Room And Fear Me

Ed

Forget Fable 2,
No other game but Lo tro,
Nothing else matters.

David

I’m still stuck playing
Guitar Hero III but can’t
Wait for Fable 2

Chris

Cry myself to sleep
Jacked up my home computer
No internet now

Cannot surf the web
World of Warcraft must now wait
Blankly stare at walls

Andrew

OUCH! My Worst Nightmare
To Not Have World Of Warcraft
Should Just Kill Me Now

Ed

Wikipedia
Random Article Button
Brain degredation.

Jennifer

finis

So, we might be disqualified by sheer overwhelming mass alone, but I’m just excited to send this out there somewhere. This is probably more haiku’s (again the apostrophe protocol disclaimer) than you planned on receiving for the entire contest, but if nothing else it might provide some relaxing light reading…

My humblest regards,

Jennifer and the Collective”

*fingers crossed*

voulez-voulez-vous…discarding humility for a moment…I can accomplish some damn cool things when I’m focused…long-live OCD!

*oh, my, there is the moststunning sunset right now…

So I climb aboard the #8 bus to Seattle Center via Cap Hill and as I sit down I notice an assortment of coinage on the floor. Being hot on the heels of The Great Seattle Times Penny Experiment, this was just too good. I stifled a giggle so as to not arouse any suspicions that yet another mad vagrant made it onto the bus. I look at the floor. I look at the pennies. I must photograph this, I think to myself.
Only problem was, there was someone sitting next to me.
It then occurred to me that someone sitting next to you on the bus taking pictures of the ground might arouse even more suspicion than the aforementioned giggling, so I paused. My seat-mate didn’t seem like the type to go postal if I tapped her on the arm, so I did so.
“Excuse me…”
She removes her earphones.
“Yeah?”
I was going to take a picture of the floor, and I noticed your foot was there, and wanted to see if you minded…”
She laughs.
“Oh, no i don”t mind…”
I smile.
“Awesome, thanks. I didn’t want you to think I was some creepy bus-perv with a foot fetish…”
She laughs again. Asks:
“Can I ask what you’re taking pictures of?
“The pennies on the floor…”
She clasps her hands over her mouth and gasps…
“Oh, I’m sorry…I dropped those earlier…”
I say,
“Oh, no no no please, this is perfect; i just need to blog about this…”
“yeah…” she says. “I dropped them all when I sat down, and was going to pick them up, but thought ‘fuck it’. ”
“You have no idea how perfect that is…” I say.

So, there is photo #1. i hope you enjoyed it.

Photo #2 and accompanying (albeit less entertaining) narrative:

Phil and I had decided to take the Great Penny Experiment one step further. We scattered the pennies on the floor between our cubes as usual, but Phil had other plans. He kidnapped David’s can of Mandarin oranges in light syrup (David had been trying to pawn them off on us for days; no one trusted them, so Phil thought he was justified in absconding with them) and strategically placed them alongside the discarded coinage to see if people would bend down to pick up the oranges, but not the pennies.
I must add that by now, most of the advertising floor is onto us with the whole penny business and as such they pretty much disregard any weirdness going on in our row of cubes. This proves challenging to our experimentation and we’re considering relocation.
So, nothing spectacular to report on the oranges vs pennies front. I was keeping a tally at one point. i think at last count it was oranges: 3, pennies: 0, since those who opted for the oranges didn’t actually get to keep them. (We told them it was for the good of science and mankind and if they really wanted oranges they needed to get their own).
Turns out we were doing them a favor.
As the day concluded we gave up and I opened the can to nosh on them a bit since I had forgotten my lunch. Shared with Phil. He got pissed. They tasted like ass.

Phil has now built up an arsenal of pennies in his desk and has resorted once again to using them as projectile weaponry (most notably at me) as the experiments seem to have become fruitless.

voulez-voulez vous find a penny pick it up, then all day you’ll have…mandarin oranges.  But not really.

When you can put it to good use?

I know I’ve posted pics of this damn thing before. And I know even though I’ve added quite a bit since I last posted update pics (in my eyes anyway)…I know to most everyone else it looks…well, the same.
Eh, it’s MY doodle. So ha.

voulez-voulez-vous rose windows are very teh.