Unnecessary Pipe Trench Excavation

Archive for the ‘coffee shop notes’ Category

Just received this fortune from a fortune cookie:

You will soon find more adventure in life.

Just yesterday I was pricing one-way tickets to Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh city for the end of the year. Coincidence? I rather think not. …

Dear wannabe-punk kid:

First of all, if you’re gonna try and pass yourself off as punk, a mohawk actually involves shaving the sides of one’s head. Anything less is a fauxhawk, which deserves unbridled derision. I’m usually a live and let live kinda guy, and god knows I was completely clueless (and probably still am, by most people’s standards). But fauxhawks … that’s serious weaksauce, champ. Sporting a fauxhawk is more Ellsworth Toohey than Johnny Rotten.

Second of all, sticking it to the man doesn’t mean you have to freaking stink. I don’t care if reaking of body odor is punk; so is me going upside your head because you do. Not that I would, of course; I’m more buddhist than punk, these days. But seriously, take a bath. I can smell you from two tables away.

And while you’re at it, shave the sides of your head.

Technorati Tags: punk, mohawk, fauxhawk

Sitting here in the coffee shop on Halloween cleaning out my work e-mail inbox – I have real work to do, but I’ve barely been staying ahead of the dreaded Outlook “Your Inbox Has Reached Its Limit!” notices the past two weeks, and finally decided to take drastic action.

Anyway, this dude comes in as part of the local Trick or Vote campaign. All the tables in Sitwells, he goes up, talks to the cute Asian women sitting behind me, and don’t bother to canvass anyone else in the place. Nice, dude – it never occurred to me that this would be a good way to meet girls. You’ve got a free pass to walk up to all manner of women under the get-out-the-vote excuse.

But some get-out-the-voters are truly dedicated; my friend Io – whom you may spy in the photo feed to your right – came in later, and canvassed the whole place, including me. I shocked her by declaring my decision to vote green. And she had a lobster on her head. Those two facts are unrelated, by the way.

Read the rest of this entry »

Two completely unrelated things.

One: Welcome back, Big Red. Haven’t seen heard you in awhile.  Still not clear on the indoor voice concept, I see hear. Someday you’ll get the attention you need, I hope, for all our ears’ sakes. And as for your choice of Halloween garb, God, it literally killed me to keep my mouth shut. But I’m pretty sure I don’t want to ever register on your radar screen as anything more than background clutter.

<vent>

Two. *In best gravelly Charleton-Heston-Planet-of-the-Apes voice* Damn you Chicago Style Manual! Damn you all to Hell!

Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: Chicago Style Manual

It sucks! It sucks!

So my first showing of my photography started off a little bumpy. To whit: it took me much, much longer to mat 30 some photos – I was still matting two hours before I was supposed to be at Sitwell’s at 7 a.m. on Tuesday to hang them. Plus, I learned that cutting mat board to custom-sized prints – hell, cutting and matting at all – sucks. There’s no other way to say it. It sucks. And I suck at it. I sucked at crafts as a kid in school, and I suck at crafts as an adult.

To add insult to injury, I decided at the last minute that I should frame all these photos. Might as well go all out, I figured. Ever try and buy 30 11 x 14 frames at one shot? It’s not easy, nor inexpensive. So I ordered them online, thinking at worst, it would take a week – specially since I ordered them from a local place. Nope.

Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: photography