The Agrinautica

   Ladies & gentlemen, it is my esteemed pleasure to introduce you all to Pelekea Cachaça, a 12 week old siamese kitten and newest member of my family in Mission Viejo.
   The name is rather an amalgamate of several proposed names. Allegedly "Pelekea" (or some similar spelling?) is Hawaiian for mischief (I haven't been able to fact-check this though, the best I could do is confirm that Pele is the hawaiian goddess of fire, lightning, etc). We expect to call her "Pele" for short, which in the spirit of recent world cup fervor & our Brazilian heritage, is the name of a famous Brazilian soccer player.
   "Cachaça" (pronounced "ka SHA sa") is the national drink of Brazil, and is similar to tequila. It is the fourth most distilled spirit in the world (by volume), but you probably haven't heard of it because only 1.5% of it is exported from Brazil. We expect to shorten this to "Sasha."
   The name Cachaça is also of course in keeping with the same theme as the kitten's cat-cousin Bailey.

   So others are calling her "Pele," but I prefer "Sasha." I dunno, the cat just doesn't remind me of a soccer playing brazilian dude.


In Other News
   Yesterday I went with Shalane to a punk-rock party. It was the awesome. Everyone was decked out so punkish, it was like I was in SLC Punk! I meant to bring a 40 of steel, but Viejo Liquor had none (!?!), so I got Arrogant Bastard Russian Stout instead -- but it tasted like soy sauce and I only drank half the bottle. d=

   Today I had coffee with Mara, who happened to be passing through on her way from causing a ruckus in San Diego back to her home in Los Angeles. Since last mentioned here, Mara has graduated with a bachelors in Art History and landed a sweet swanky job at the Christie's auctioning firm in Los Angeles.

   Today I was talking to Kristy on the cordless phone here (since my cell phone is still without a recharger), when the cordless phone died. I called her back on a corded one, but then HER cell phone died.


Previously on Emosnail
   Two Years & One Week Ago: Phonepost: Strongest Sauce Message Ever - Hear Kristy's delightful voice as she observes squirrels frolicking.
   Two Years Ago Monday: I Can't Believe I'm Crochety! - With pictures to illustrate the crochetiness & pansy romances. Also, Getting Screwed By The Man Volume II Episode I
   Two Years Ago Wednesday: Photo Essay: San Diego - Went to San Diego with the parents for 4th of July, saw the San Diego sights. Took pictures. Check it out.
   Two Years Ago Yesterday: Pictures of People at Diedrichs - ..featuring Shalane & others
   Two Years Ago Today: All Your Vampire Slaying Needs - Pictures to prove we've got your vampire slaying needs covered.
   Two Years Ago Tomorrow: The International Court of Weak Sauce - I thoroughly critique the ICJ decision vis-a-vis the Israeli wall and conclude that the ICJ is totally weaksauce.

   This morning sometime after 5am woman who claimed to be a German musician was returning home in her hummer limo from some a night of partying. I'm guessing she was plazcracked out of her mind. Anyway for whatever reason (I'd heard something about an argument with her boyfriend / date), she decided it was a good idea to jump out of the limo as it travelled at 75 miles per hour past Fairview on the 405. As to what happened to her subsequently, suffice to say the hazmat team had to be called to clean it up.
   Anyway, this was in just about the center of Orange County on one of the main arteries of north/south transportation. North/south transportation in Orange County was crippled for hours. Our techinicians coming from North County who were supposed to be at work at 7am didn't arrive until 10am.
   Bobby came in looking traumatized. He had drivin right past the strawberry jam on the freeway. Described it as the most disgusting thing he'd ever seen and said numerous motorists were puking as a result. One policeman was being held up by two others, apparently overcome by such sauce.
   Our dispatcher Colin (AKA Coliny, AKA Colination) however took the opportunity to inform us all that thats the kind of thing he had to photograph as a navy photographer. He seemed to take pleasure in the fact that other people were being subjected to the nightmarish scenes he'd had to deal with.
   Edit, from Thursday's newspaper: "multiple cars hit [the woman], spreading the accident scene over several miles" (I think the editor switched "accident scene" for "her"), "worst traffic congestion in Orange County history." Also I watched the television news for the first time in years yesterday to get news on this. They didn't mention anything, but DID mention "two suspicious arab man were videotaping the Santa Monica pier" WTF thats not news! Another twenty minutes was dedicated to other completely bogus "terrorist" stories. No wonder everyone has such a warped view of whats going on around them, the television news is complete plaz-shit.


   The other day we ate dinner outside. Everyone was getting bitten by mosquitos except me. I think its because I have bee venom coursing through my veins now.
   This morning Jeremy and I got food at a local cafe called Streamliners. I had a delicious pastrami sandwich. Streamliners gets their rolls from a local bakery called Solomons. Solomons gets their honey from Theodore D. Marder III, our boss. Its the circle of life.
   Today we did a job at a big fancy house in La Habra Heights. The homeowner told us we reminded him of his bodyguards (because we said we didn't mind "taking a few [stings] for him, to get the job done" or something like that)


   I got a formal invitation to some "Green & Gold Gala" at hosted by Sac State. As far as I can tell it has something to do with the Sac State alumni association or sometihng? I have no idea why I'd get invited to such a thing. Governator Schwartzenegger & his wife are the "honorary co-chairs," and the thing is in honour of some rich guy named Alex Spanos & his wife Faye Spanos (& they have no connection to Sac State that I've been able to find). It doesn't appear to be a scam, but I can't fathom why I got an invitation. Its probably ridiculously expensive and will be full of old fogey people, but still I'm curious to find out what its all about because I jump at any opportunity to escort my Kristy to a formal event, and I'm just plain curious.


Icon
   I've made three versions of the new icon Shalane drew for me:

   We'll call those versions 1, 2, and 3, respectively. In (3) the area around the snail was meant to be transparent, ie instead of being in a white square the snail would just have whatever the background of your screen was anyway behind it. Obviously I failed at that. If anyone knows how to make that happen I'd love to hear it.

[Poll #549793]


Picture of the Day

Alexis' opponent & a friend (see previous picture)


Previously on Emosnail
   There has never been an update on this day.
   200 pictures ago: Getting Mohawked - This picture was just knocked off my browsable flickr lineup because 200 pictures have been posted since then. The picture was taken by John Salido, an awesome barber and the only person I trust to not fuck up my mohawk even a little bit. Prior to being knocked off the flickr lineup it was the second-most viewed picture I had up, with just over 100 views.

   Last night I went on down to Diedrichs, and a lot of people were there. Specifically, there was Crispy & Abby, Dianasaurus & her band, Shalane and Tristan. Then around ten Diedrichs closed and most people, by which I mean, Diana and her band and Laners (who was gonna spend the night on her floor). As they headed to their cars Tristan played/sang Johnny Cash - Hurt on his guitar. Then valiant Diedrichs employee Ryan locked up and came out and him and I and Tristan sat on the patio and they took turns playing the guitar.
   Then Keebler drove by just to tell Ryan that one of his old friends was back in town; causing Ryan and Tristan to finally scamper off and I went home.


Pictures
   Earlier in the day I was also at Diedrichs, and I drew some pictures. Enjoy them because after I drew them I lost my good pen. )=

( More drawings, and a bonus picture of me )

   So last night, Saturday night, I'd just finished polishing my shoes for the funeral when Shalane called me all in tears and asked if I could come to diedrichs asap.
   So I went to diedrichs asap.
   Diedrichs was flooding but thats not why the Shalane was sad. She'd gotten in a tiff with Petey.

   But then who should show up but Tristan and this girl Stephanie (Who's dating Tom tHHS). And THEN, Cool Kyle and his new (by which I mean sometime since I saw him 10 months ago) girlfriend show up. And then the roto rooter guy showed up to stop the flooding and couldn't figure it out for the next hour or so. But for awhile it felt like old times. And we all reminisced about things like the time Cool Kyle almost bled to death but I saved him. And suddenly in a nearby SUV a girl emerged into the drivers seat from the back, followed a few seconds later buy a guy pulling his shirt back on. And random other people would come and go in the parking lot as tends to happen at Diedrichs. Then the roto rooter man fixed the flooding and we all went home.



   Today we put Eric Bartrom in the ground, with his snowboarding gloves, to Pennywise - Bro Hymn.

   Today, as previously mentioned, I spent much of the day marauding Mission Viejo with a digital camera.

   My day started out at the Coffee Bean at the Laguna Hills Mall, where Krispy, Shalane, and Shalane's boyfriend Pete work. I got an application myself while I was there.

   Then I proceeded to maraud about and take photographs. Eventually while I was behind Diedrichs taking some pictures a girl came up to me and asked if I knew where Matt Christie was. Matt, of course, is in jail. "Oh, I thought he was ignoring me." Turns out her name is Caylin, and SHE too has an lj (silentcelluloid).

   After I had finished marauding and eatin some hamburger for dinner I hung out with Shalane at her new place in Santa Ana (north of here an estimated 26 minutes according to mapquest). A dozen people live there, its crazy. A bunch of us watched Old School and then I returned home because my pictures were calling to me to be posted.

( Just two picture that relate to this )

Last Day In County (Saturday)
   Met up with Shillelagh, her boyfriend Petey, Megan, and others at everyone's favorite location off El Toro. Then Shalane and Petey scampered off elsewhere while others of us went down to everyone's favourite location off La Paz. There we found Cool Kyle and Croat, among others.. and of course everyone's favourite Diedrichs employee, Ryan.
   Croat wanted to try to find himself a girl. Poor misguided Croat, girls are the devil. To this end there was trekking towards the Irvine Spectrum. Eventually a number of us ended up in a jacuzzi and that was excellent.. until security kicked us out because it was several hours after pool hours.

   What with the time change *shakes fist at it* I ended up with like two hours of sleep, and then ten minutes (seriously) to pack for home. Train from Irvine to LA, where Nishan was chairing at the MUN conference I was originally supposed to be at, and rode the remaining 500 miles up with him.


Picture of the Day

Pylon Abduction
power pylon at marguerite & olympiad
© Kris Fricke 2001

   Another day of slothfulness.

   Visited Tiffany Lee Woffington Zoumer. Was dissappointed to find that not only was MVHS not going to the SDHS conference I'll be chairing at (as they'd originally intended), but UC Davis had foolishly not accepted my favorite "Lee Wofft." Fye on the admissions dept!!

   Little bit later I went down to the local cobbler and for $25 he fixed up my docs and repaired the hole in the toe like it'd never been there. He said it would take a week so I was like "uh well I'm not gonna be here in a week so maybe not so much" and he was like "going back to Europe?" heh but anyway then he was like "well then I'll do it right now. Come back in half an hour." He could have resoled them for something like $65 I think, and I woulda been down with it since I paid $125 for them and would expect to replace them for about the same, but he said the shoes prolly weren't worth repairin so I was like what ev. Guy's too honest for his own good.

   Only other adventure of the day was a brief trip down to Diedrichs off La Paz. For some reason mother was like "I know what kind of disreputable activities go on down there and I'd rather my car weren't a part of it" so I walked. WTF? No really, the car is NEVER part of any disreputable activities and I'M not even involved in most of these "activities." What ev, I felt like walking anyway.
   MtHH, Ryan (RtDE), Matt Christie, Croat, and two others I'd never seen before were there. And Matt Christie's dog Vampira who was pretty cool. Croat gave me a ride home. The end.


   In the year 1100 my Blehtite hordes recaptured Moscow from the Zulu infidels*. All across the front my armies are pushing back the enemy.
   Babylon declared war on me (because I wouldn't share the secrets of gunpowder with them) and threatened to sack my one city on their continent, Blehtia Domini, so I ceded it to the Russians (making it one of two Russian cities now).
   Then I traded the secrets of chemistry and music theory (gotta spread the punk rock) with the rest of the world for huge amounts of money. With this money I've managed to double our scientific research rate, hopefully creating a self sustaining technological superiority.
   I'm told I'm a huge nerd because I'll talk about this at length.

*It seems to me the specific definition of infidel is "one who is the enemy by virtue of being different from us."


Picture of the Day

Shalane Christie
(no relation to Matt Christie)
© Shalane Christie 2003 (?)

The Evillest Final
   So because Professor Siverson is evil, our final consisted of two parts. Part I (50% of the grade): Make up a question. Part II (50%): Answer it.
   One turn their answer in typed up by the end of the final time (15:30 today)(In interest of being evil he refused to offer any recommendations whatsoever on length, thus causing several students' heads to explode from lack of guidance), or write it in class. The advantage to the latter option being that he'd read those first and presumably go much easier on them.
   I was going to go with the latter option because I figured if I attempted to type it up I'd be up all night and torture myself immensely. So this morning I wake up at 0800 to start planning my attack. I start brainstorming into a word document and next thing I know I had half the paper written... so I just typed it up and turned it in. The end.


Possessed
   And then a great evil unexpectedly appeared in Davis with a ravenous appetite for some possession (and some sushi). Yes, my troll-like brother Tobin and his lover roxymartini came to town and repossessed my dear carmobile. I fear to imagine what damage they'll do to it before I see it again (there's something new every time), last time they kidnapped my car it was only a matter of hours before they used it to annihilate a pedestrian antelope.
   They also summoned codetoad and codetoad's girlfriend Hannah to the central park, and fed Kristy sushi.


Ode to Spring Break II
   Tomorrow (Wednesday) I have my last final at 0800 in the morning. I return home via trainmobile leaving here Thursday at 0725 and arriving at Irvine station at 1813.
   Time for more reminiscing, last spring break:
      Got a ride down with Eric from The List (By calling upon the magickal powers of Arjun). Two hours after arriving in county I was at the local pool hall with Sally & co. Next day saw my friend Robin Kivlin's band Jack Bighead at the Spectrum, then returned to Diedrichs off La Paz (DLP) where I got coffee and a cheese danish for free. Next day: mild adventures at Diedrichs with Alyssa. Next day, Tuesday, had interesting adventures with Alyssa at Diedrichs that involved drama and police. Wednesday of that week I saw a movie with Anna LeLoup (saw Willard), ate at Taco Loco (mmmmm calamari burger), saw Solomite and other bands at Chain Reaction, returned to Diedrichs at 12:30 that night for more adventuring. ...and finally on Saturday I ate at Taco Loco again, visited Fish and Ashlee at the Hub with Tom Colby and had some last adventures with the Diedrichs crew.
   So yea.. thats last spring break. Looking back, it was actually pretty action packed. I hope this one is as good.


   Well I have my last final in six hours and fifteen minutes, so I'm going to end this ASAP.


Related
   My dearest Shalane has a livejournal now: impotent_dream
   Related links: bah, they're all in the text of this update already.
   A Year Ago Today: I had my first day home of break!

   So I'm sitting here alone this evening in the red glow of my room, and Shalane gives me the link to her art. The above is of course a picture of hers, and many of her others are also awesome and I recommend you check them out. The end. Post script: oh and she wanted me to mention she sells her art and does commissions.. you know you want it.

Lord of the Rings
   FINALLY saw the third of the LOTR trilogy on Friday. It was my favorite I think. I liked the head Nazgul's new hat. I think there should be a story about the nine nazgul and how they gradually became Sauron's minions.
   The catapults were mixed up though. The people in minas terith were using trebuchets, which fire at a high arch and are therefore used to fire things over castle walls and bombard cities; their city on the other hand was being attacked with waht appears to have been magonels, which fire at a flat arch amd are used against walls. I just thought I'd share that because the purpose of knowing such things is to sound smart ass about it.

Dog Soldiers
   Tonight I watched the movie Dog Soldiers with my roommate Adrian. Now see, I don't like horror movies because (A) they don't scare me, and if they did I just can't imagine how that would be amusing (B) the plot usually relies on the scariness to amuse people, therefore the plot is usually really lame (C) the characters are usually sickeningly dumb, no really they're usually so dumb it just makes it tedious for me to watch.
   This said, Dog Soldiers basically puts a squad of British soldiers in the middle of a forest with werewolves. Its like dropping a whole bunch of smart trained people into the classic horror situation. The plot however is still interesting. Altogether it makes for a very pleasant movie experience. Instead of sitting there like "omg no no no don't do that omg you're so dumb!" the whole time you're like "damn they're good.." (but not so good they're safe and happy). So... see the movie. the end. you know you love the bri'ish accents...

( More Favorites )

   My two brothers have both arrived home. Immediately after settling in they disconnected my internet access. The relevant equipment is horded away in their rooms. I am writing from my parents computer in the other room.
   In the probably doomed endeavor to keep this journal from parental discovery I must erase the internet history after updating; but alas I don't think that erases the trail entirely, and being on my brother nibot's friends list is an imminent danger on any account.
   I should kill him.


   So while Shalane is over dying my hair Tobin stops by my room and behaves in such a troll-like manner that I have trouble convincing Laney that he is not autistic.
   No my brother is just mind-numbingly evil.


   Saw Dera, Chris Hubert, and briefly Liz (nerdrockliz) at Diedrichs today, among others. While at the Spectrum getting hair dye Shillelagh and I ran into MVHS graduate Ian Butler, and realized he lives with Matt Morgan and the two gay guys.