The Agrinautica

   So we survived our adventure in Porto Nueva, Mexico. Our 12 person expeditionary force consisted of C-Bunch (entries, pics), his cousin SirPsychoSexy, their friends Byron Tyrone Tyrel Tyrice Bison Tyson & Branch, Kim Bowles (entries pics), Little Colleen (entries), Colleen Milton (entries, pics), C.Milton's cousin Elise, Lyrakeet (entries, pics), Sashakeet (entries, pics), Kristykeet (entries, pics), & myself (entries, pics). We stayed in two six-person suites, which were built in a vertically oriented manner, not-unlike a cat-tower. A narrow spiral staircase led up to the highest rooms, which being the highest parts of the buildings were quite tower-like.
   In the nearby lobster-oriented village, every restaurant seemed to have the exact same $12-16 lobster special (of corresponding amounts of lobster). It was really difficult to distinquish between the restaurants... and not only that they need to learn how to come up with more creative names, there was Porto Nueva Lobster Restaurant I, II & III, and Restuarant Del Mar I, II & III, etc etc!


Meanwhile Elsewheree
   Elsewhere apparently, Saddam Hussein had a rather unpleasant end to his New Years eve countdown . In Somalia, the Ethiopian and Transitional Government forces crushed the final Islamic Courts Union (ICU) stronghold between the evening of New Years Eve and the early hours of New Years Day. Local clan elders asked the ICU to leave the city (Kismayo) to prevent the city from being destroyed in the fighting, when the ICU refused, fighting broke out behind the front lines between the ICU and local clan militias. ICU commander Sheikh Yusuf Hassan stated "are not going to surrender. We will fight to defend Jilib and Kismayo until we die," shortly before there was a mutiny within the ICU forces and they began a disorganized flight from the battle area. Kenyan forces were seen moving towards the nearby Kenyan border to prevent ICU forces from crossing over, and the United States fifth fleet patrolled the coast to prevent ICU forces from escaping by sea. This appears to be the end of the ICU. The transitional government has announced weapons collections and amnesty programmes for former fighters.

   First day of the quarter today here at Davis.

   Last week Kristy came up to OC to visit, and we went with Nidia & Marybelle to the Goat Hill Tavern, a place the guys at work talk about a lot. Unfortunately for various reasons the guys from work couldn't make it -- Bob was entertaining people at his place, Ryan had fallen off a ladder that morning and sprained his ankle, and Jeremy was responding to my textmesseges completely nonsensically .. I'm assuming he was already plastered somewhere or something. But Kristy finally got to meet Nidia & Marybelle so that was fun.

   Then Kristy & I went down to San Diego. Saturday was her 22nd birthday, so along with her roommates Sashie & Lyrakeet, & Lyrakeet's sister Forest & Forest's boyfriend Warren we all went to Joe's Crab Shack because Kristy is all about the crab. And Sloshie made this thing called a trifle that was hellorz good.
   That evening we went to an indie club, but it wasn't anything at all like Rock It here in Davis . )=

   Sunday we went to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, and it was the awesome.

   On Monday Kristy had her first day of work as an Assistant II in the office of the Dean of Engineering at UC San Diego. During the day I went to lunch with my friend from high school, Liz Gonzalez. Later on Chris Bunch arrived to visit everyone.
   Tuesday morning Sloshkins drove me to the San Diego train station, from where I took the train to the Irvine station. My parents had dropped my car off there the night before so I drove it from there down to Mission Viejo to finish packing. Then up to UCI to get a copy of my UCI transcript (their registrar's office is so much more efficient than ours. Here it takes six days to get a transcript unless you pay rush fees, there they just print it out right then and there and toss in an unofficial copy for free, and the line isn't even as long). And then the long drive up to Davis.
   Interesting notes including passing a truck full of green and white police cars that said "Miami Metro" on them in Los Angeles (I'm assuming they were for a movie set), and watching seven firetrucks go by as I got gas at the beginning of the hills north of Los Angeles and then noticing a lot of smoke rising over one of the ridges accompanied by an orange glow as the sky got darker.
   I stopped in Fresno to get food and stretch my feet, and was able to meet up with my friend Aimee Anderson and hang out with her for half an hour or so while I ate and got some coffee.

   Wednesday I was in Davis trying to get thte disaster I put my room in while packing up back in order. Ate with Chris Joy-Webb at Pita Pit. Almost went to the Grad since my friend Simone Davis had proposed doing that for her birthday, but the line snaked out for like a furlong and was filled with drunk little freshlings.

   And that catches this up. Hopefully I'll stay more caught up now that I'm done working 70 hours a week d=

Picture of the Day

   So I finally got around to watching that 9/11 conspiracy theory video "Loose Change" a few weeks ago when Chad posted about it. Just as I suspected, it was a pile of tin-foil-cap conspiracy theory. Unfortunately, I think many of the more politically naive may be alarmed by it, but for my part I found nearly every assertion to be highly suspect.

   The many problems with it are far too numerous to even begin to address. In fact, the State Department Counter-Misinformation Team has issued a 10,000 page report in rebuttal to these conspiracy theories. Anyway, I just wanted to highlight one particularly glaring example of how misleading the "documentary" is:
   At the end of part one the video is talking about the impact hole in the Pentagon. It compares the size of a hole in a photograph to the size of the cabin of a 757 and argues that the aircraft couldn't have made that hole. The photograph does indeed show what appears to be a large hole blasted through the side of a building ... however there is an anarchy symbol spraypainted on the wall beside it on one side, and a "no parking" sign on the other. Incidently there is not vehicle access on the inside of the ring (which is what the shot is supposed to be), and I deeply doubt anyone in the pentagon was about to paint an anarchy symbol on the wall beside that hole.
   In conlusion, the video's producers knowingly used completely unrelated footage as "evidence" to make their delusional point.


Picture of the Day

People reacting to the Loose Change video?

(Not really)

   So I've finally gotten all the pictures up from Kristy's visit. These include a number of pictures of young sea lions, so you might want to check it out unless you hate cute animals. Pictures from my cousin's wedding that we attended while Kristy was down here are of course already up.

   Also while Kristy was down here we met up with Sashie & Lyric in San Diego to look at apartments since Kristy & them are planning on moving there in September. They found a place and signed the lease.
   The management company was kind of weird. From the start I thought the dynamic between the employees was rather odd... then the woman we were talking to called the boss "dad" and it all made a lot more sense. The guys that worked in there were generally dressed really casually and covered in tattoos. One of the guys, who it turns out will be Kristy & co's on-site manager, chatted casually with someone else about being in prison. Interesting.


   On Friday , Marybelle & I went to a party in Fullerton.
   Then yesterday (Saturday) the three of us went to this party in Oceanside, which is on the southern edge of Camp Pendleton Marine Base & halfway to San Diego. It ended up being on base actually, but I didn't know that until we were on our way -- I'd thought we were going down to San Diego! So we get there and most of the people there are marines and I'm feeling rather awkward and out of place. If I'd known where we were going I'd have at least worn a punk band shirt instead of an emo one (Plain White T's)! )=
   But it actually ended up being okay and I didn't feel as out of place as I thought I would. Later on though we discovered that there was also a party going on next door, and I discovered it was entirely people by punkish rockabilly types! So that was awesome and I totally fit in immediately over there and so I hung out there for a bit.

   Also Nidia's boyfriend 38 year old lover Chuck Norris came over later. I found out he can speak Swedish, which earns him a lot of points with me, but I still think he's too old for her and the fact that he already has a girlfriend still pretty much disqualifies the shit out of him in my opinion.

Picture of the Day

Kristy holds Pelekea Cachaça during her visit.

   Alright so tonight I'm writing a paper on St Francis of Assisi. Or more specifically, I am to compare and contrast two movies about him, Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972), in which he's portrayed as a flaming hippie, and Francesco (1989), in which this apparently famous guy named Mickey Rourke plays him and he's a bit more emo and rolling in the dirt oriented.
   Anyway, I really don't mind writing about history, but I hate having to analyze films for a history class. Maybe if I'd signed up for a film class I'd expect this kind of crap, but I didn't. I signed up for a history class, and here I have to write several pages on some crap-ass director in the 70s wanted to portray a 13th century masochist as a hippie.

   Anyway, so yeah I'm disgruntled, and in a hurry, so yeah. But by Wednesday I'll be done with finals, so I'll have almost as much free time as otimus, so y'all better look out.. at least until I die on the 18th.

   So for todays little entry, by popular demand, I am going to talk about Bailey. Bailey appears to be mostly an unusual breed called "Australian Mist," causing him to have an aweomse grey-&-black leopard pattern, with a golden belly. slosha got him at the Woodland animal shelter when he was wee (and sick). But Sloshie's allergic reactions to cats proved too much so his Other Mother Kristy took over Bailey-raising.
   Because he was really sick for much of his wee-er weeks, he grew accustomed to being held constantly. As a result, he is much more cuddly than most (and especially male) cats. When one comes home after he's been left alone, he'll frequently mew until you pick him up and hold him for a bit.

   Bailey is BFF with Kristy's flatmate Jardine's pet bunny. The bunny was named "Oreo" by Kristy's former flatmate Chrissy, who got him as a gift from some sorority older sib or something. Since Chrissy literally never took care of the bunny, however, it was adopted by Jardine, who just calls him "Mr Buns." Me I call it "Orca," since its patterned like an orca. One thing we can all agree on though is that "Oreo" is a dumb name.
   But yeah, Orca & Bailey are best friends. Also, Bailey is fond of lying about on his back. In fact he's doing that right now! He's such a master of loungin.

   Bailey likes to wake us up in the morning by licking our faces, something that kittenbehaviour.com (or something like that - I don't have time to check facts here) says is a sign of particular loving.


   But he's not all well behaved. He likes to throw fiestas & pool parties. Crap fiestas that is! He gets a little carried away while burying shit in his litter box, and next thing you know he's just watching the litter fly for the fun of it. And then when we are emptying his litter box and have his little gifts all wrapped up in a plastic bag, he likes to bat at it, and we have to say "no bailey, no! NOT a pinata!" And if one leaves the toilet lid up (which is gross anyway people, seriously), he will sometimes decide to throw a pool party in it.

   But mostly he's a good kitty, waging war on his eternal enemy, Dots on Walls, sitting in windowsills, and hanging out with his catmom Kristy. He's one of the most loving cats I've ever met.


And now for the only reason half of you read this crap: Entry of the Day Awards: xaositecte definitely wrote another entry which will be remembered in blog-memory for years to come (at least when I'm reminiscing about past 30 in 30s) - What the various 30 in 30 participants would do with two cows, respectively.

Previously on Emosnail
   Three Years Ago Today: Previous Year in Summary - Or at least highlights of it. Yeah and cryptic references to missing my friend Kristy over the summer.
   Year Ago Today: Controversial Sauce II - The Sanctity of Marriage - Man if I'd remembered I'd have linked back to this when I got you all hot & bothered about polygamous marriage this year. Anyway, last year's conclusion: as far as "abominations to the sanctity of marriage" are concerned, divorce is many times worse than allowing gay marriage; or at the very least, allow seperation if people were dumb and make eachother miserable, but disallow remarriage. Also, a picture of a typical Davis student behaving as we typically do.

   Now, though earlier today I issued an encyclical urging you all not to post about your daily lives, I'm going to go ahead and do just that. But wait, before you declare me the antichrist, let me note that I bring you a photo essay -- a photo essay with drunken debauchery, people dressed up, and people practically naked! This, my friends, is almost always a recipe for an acceptable blogging. Also I already posted a less underbloggist entry today, and though I recused that one as being too recursive (being about 30 in 30 itself), I think together these two entries should meet blogthodox requirements.

   Last night Kristy & I attended both my Φ A Δ (Pre Law) formal & then Gina Scheffel's "Dress Your Best .. Or Not!" Party.

( See More! )

   Or see all these pictures and some more from thte party that I didn't work in here on flickr.


   For no particular reason I thought I'd link to one of my all time very favourite 30 in 30 posts now to inspire you all: Jesus Cthulhu.
   As to my best day 3 post choice, I'm not gonna beat around the bush, its going to apoplecticfittz again. Though original megabloggist philosophy¹ frowned upon the use of multimedia as taking away from the technique & craft, it was quickly seen that the use of images very greatly enhanced the achievable hilarity in entries. Even those without digital cameras can still find images on the internet to enhance their entries, and I would say I definitely encourage this. It helps counteract the debilitating effects of TL;DR, and frankly I think some of you need to turn some attention to the TL;DR issue.
   And so my point is: that apoplecticfittz's post for today is a brilliant example of how a simple office prank can be turned into a hilarious blogccomplishment through effective use of multimedia.

   Another example of good use of multimedia I'd like to recognize is orwell_troll's first post (ever, actually). The simple addition of a 51st star to the US flag demonstrates how very simple a brilliant idea can be. In addition to the aforementioned Brent "Darth Laabs" Laabs, I'd like to give a shout out to the other people who have either joined 30 in 30 since my last post or I just forgot them at that time: gerbilgrrl, professor_david, the mysterious anonymous_frosh, punitrebel, and the venerable citizene (reporting from Singapore).


Previously in the Blogosphere
   Three Years Ago Today: UCD MUN Conference 2003 - First annual UCD MUN Conference. To this day they were my favourite committee ever.
   Two Years Ago: 30 in 30 I, Day 3 - shekb declares the pulitzer prize "tapped out." I didn't think the entry was that funny but comments from other participants seem to laud it as blogging gold. lerani posted about Dennis Quaid & the Sharks, and how you can get him to touch your enemies. stephenl decides that “The fact is, girls can't keep their pants on when they encounter a guy who's big into anime,” which is further proven by the fact that shid is now engaged. Also, bloglarious as usual, apoplecticfittz posts a must-see entry about gummy bear porn - I swear its tasteful ::caugh, get it?::.
   Year Ago Today: 30 in 30 II, Day 3 - From the Field - Phonepost abilities unexpectedly failing me, I desperately make a post from some random person's house in Santa Barbara. Not much of a post, but I had to use maximum intrepidness to get it done at all and its the thought that counts, no?

   As mentioned, the weekend before last I went on an epic expedition down to Las Vegas. This shall be that story, or at least, what I remember of it a week later.

   Kristy Sashie, C-Bunch and I left Davis on Friday morning and drove down the Five to the remote village of Fireball (167 miles, 3 hours).
   Now the town of Fireball, it has two stop-lights, a "Latino Market," a grocery store / police station, lions, and our friend Lyrakeet's house (turn right at the glowing pile of radioactive sand). There we transfered our stuffage into Lyrakeet's car, as it was bigger, & continued on our journey with her.
   From Fireball to Vegas is a distance of appx 436 miles (8.5 hours). We made a pit stop in Bakersfield, which is shockingly ghetto, watched in wonderment as the strange sights of the Mojave Spaceport passed by, and stopped at some gas station town that probably doesn't have a name, but does have a restaurant called The Mad Greek (or something) which is advertised for more than a 100 miles in either direction. There was also a Subway Sandwiches there at which we ate, which had telephones at every table.

   Arriving in Vegas we occupied our hotelrooms and commenced the merrymaking forthwith. We then went out to the strip with the people from the other car and marauded.
   At one point early on, apparently, Brittawater Segerstrom & Julie Parker went to get coffee, saying they'd be right back (as people always do in horror movies). Someone else told them we'd wait for them right there. Then the whole group moved on and left them (I was not aware of this). Later, when we got to the other end of the Strip, Olivia informed Colleen that she "didn't like [her]." The personnel from our car, + Colleen, then headed back towards the hotel.
   Back at the hotel several of us got in the hot tub, despite our lack of towels. C-Bunch & I had to resort to more innovative ways of getting warm afterwords. Eventually Brittawater & Julie returned.

   During the ensuing days we set off for adventure regularly and without such dramatic results. We visited the cultural sites, admired the art, observed the flora & fauna, picked up some souviniers, and found more lions.

   On Monday morning we embarked upon the epic drive back. We stopped to eat at the Mad Greek restaurant -- and the employees there couldn't even pronounce "gyro" correctly!! wtf. Exchanged cars in Fireball, took a detour to Pleasanton to pick up Bailey, & returned to Davis. (Worked the next day, & the day after that school resumed & I flew to Los Angeles for my next adventures)

Picture of the Day

In the spirit of Spring Break

   Its officially Valentines Day. That means that as of this moment, I have known Kristy Heidenberger for approximately three years and one hour. <3


Anything But Clothes
   On Saturday Corey Quackenbush, Cheryl Miller and their parrot Coco hosted an "Anything-But-Clothes" (ABC) themed party. Kristy wore balloons. I made myself a suit of samurai-armour out of some of the 800 flyers I still have from my last campaign for Senate ... it was like megalomania armour. Sashie wore a starbucks apron. Host Corey had an awesome suit of cardboard armour.
   Since I'd had wisdom teeth out the day before however I didn't drink. It was still quite fun though. There was also drunken trampolining. Unfortunately Sashie hurt her ankle doing this however. Anyway, I commandeered Sashie's camera for most of the party and consequently there are about a million pictures.

   Some dood from Sac State tried to drunkenly talk to me about student government as we were leaving. The only thing worse than drunken talks about ASUCD politics is drunken talks about how some other school has it better -- he was saying we should have different representatives from the various colleges and things. Silly Sac State and their less-evolved government.


   Speaking of ASUCD, one of our justices has had a family emergency. As we are kept at exactly quorum, we can't do anything without the involvement of all of them. We are currently in a state of ongoing deliberations regarding Case # 29 -- when we end deliberations the judicial codes indicate we have three days to produce the opinion. Remaining business on this case can be resolved via email but I don't know if he's going to have access to email (he's left town for the week). If he doesn't, it could be a week before we can do anything. Reason number a million that we need more than just quorum of justices.


Daviswiki Today: The Clarification Holy Wars
   Renaming things for "clarification" on Daviswiki has become somewhat of a Holy War. It started out with people renaming things like "Internal Affairs Commission," because apparently it alarmed them that they didn't know immediately what it was (there is, however, only one Internal Affairs Commission in Davis). More recently it has spread to renaming all the pages for people's pets with things like "the dog," "the rat," "the ravenous bugbladder beast of traal," etc. Wiki messiah Philip Neustrom has ruled that this is acceptable but smote down changes to make "The Anonymous Crowd" into "Band / Anonymous Crowd." Things started to get saucier when Travis "I Only Post Negative Comments in Kris' Livejournal" Grathwell (sivart13) renamed MichaelGiardina (who had been renaming the pet pages) to "MichaelGiardina the Person." This too, was reverted, possibly because "human" would be more in keeping with the naming convention. Once again tapping into the dark side, Darth Laabs tried to rename Sen. Rob Roy to "Rob Roy the Fucking Legend," but Neustrom was waiting with his +3 Revert Hammer. SaulSugarman has yet to weigh in.

In International News: Chad & Sudan recently ended their war over Chad's renaming of the United Front for Democratic Change to Sudanese / United Front for Democratic Change. The United Front for Democratic Change, or F.U.C.*, aims to overthrow the current Chadian government. It was formed by the combination of eight independant rebel groups who have denounced partisanship, under the philosophy that anyone's better than the current government. Libyan leader Muammar Kadafi has told Chad & Sudan both to STFU and play nice, basically. *I'm not making this up!


Towing Run-Around
   So University Imports has proclaimed something to be seriously wrong with my car's engine, and that it needs to be looked at by a Mercedes specialist in Roseville. I called around and it'll cost between $175 and $215 to get it towed there. However, (for the cheapest company at least) I can't book them directly, I have to go through AAA. AAA, however, books the closest towtruck to your location when you call them. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to convince AAA to let me go with the cheapest company.


Quotes
"Police-cars are painted like orcas" - Me
"Orcas are painted like police-cars" - Jardine
"Police-cars evolved from orcas" - Kristy


Picture of the Day

see ABC Party above

   Yesterday Kristy & I went to Sacramento and got my new computer from the UPS warehouse there (after UPS got tired of trying to deliver my computer while I was in class -- they'd often find the only 20 minute window when none of my roommates were home). So now I have a computer, but I can't get on the internet until the ThickAir people come look at its MAC address or something.

   This morning my apartmentmate Ben was assembling his own new computer. As he did so he made some comments like "hey, I'm going to go mount my computer now" and "the fan is too big, it doesn't fit in the hole." Jason (our other apartmentmate) weakly ventured "thats what she said," but we ignored him, I could sense that the time was not yet right. Finally, there was one more piece to be inserted into the computer. Ben held up the CPU chip and said "its amazing that it all comes down to this thing thats only about a centimeter long," and then, then I knew the time was truly at hand, and I said triumphantly, "thats what she said."
   Ben plans on putting the old CPU chip into a teddy bear.


   Thursday in the middle of lecture Professor Jon Carlson asked "how many of you have class on Fridays?" Three people in the room of about 60 raised their hands. "Neither do I, and I thought I was getting off easy, but if everyone has Friday off, than that means I'm the chump with a class Thursday evening, which is really like a Friday evening" speculated Professor Carlson during the 4:40-6:00 Tues/Thurs POL124 (Politics of Global Inequality).


   Yesterday was Sashie's 21st birthday. 17 of us went to local restaurant Sophia's and piled into their quarantine private party room. Then we all went to The Grad and did our best to create huge stockpiles of the the $1.10 well drinks before the price went up at 10:30. Most we got long island ice teas, and some tokyo ice teas and tahiti iced teas (which I liked the best). Then the ladies pranced about. This was the second time I've been to The Grad I think.
   Eventually we left that place because people wanted to investigate the other bars on G Street. Kristy and I stopped at Pita Pit. The first time we ate there Kristy hated it. We went back the other day and she reluctantly admitted it wasn't bad. Last night she jocked it, saying "maybe when I don't get not meat its not bad... don't quote me in livejournal on that!!"

   This morning Sashie called me to ask how she got home last night.

   Now I need to scamper off for the second night of partying.

Previously on Emosnail
   Two Years Ago Thursday: Dreams & Memories - or a noteable lack of the latter. And an echidna bites me?!
   Two Years Ago Yesterday: These Are Secrets Everyone Knows - Quotes from nuclear physics (PHY137), former (current at the time) ASUCD queen advisor Vicki Swett acts unobjective as usual, and quite icey, and my good friend Kristy makes me eggs and bacon at 1am. <3
   Year Ago Today: All Hail the Governator - Arnold Schwarzenegger wins the California election. 106 of 135 candidates in this election get fewer votes for governator than I did last time I ran for ASUCD Senate. Comments to this entry indicate that readers for the most part had no idea what I was talking about.
   Year Ago Thursday: Gratuitous Acts of Piracy - A make some songs by the awesome band Hefner available to The People. But now I've lost all those songs in the series of computer crashes I experienced this summer. So if you happened to download them from me or have them from somewhere else, I'd greatly appreciate it if someone would make them available to me. Also, you should all go try to find these songs anyway.
   Year Ago Yesterday: Admittance, Racism & Standards - At the time I let the two quotes stand in contrast to eachother without further comment, but now that you've had a year to make your own opinions, I'd like to say that Gregory Jones is a fucking idiot and a blazing example of the most retarded of attitudes. I hope he gets scurvy and fleas. Also there were free apples on the quad on this day in history. Chamber of Commerce Day happened again this year but I missed the free apples (and bemoaned it repeatedly).