ich bin ein auslander

Mozilla’s release their new browser, Firebird… I installed it and checked it out. It’s pretty nice, but you just can’t beat IE for speed and that’s what’s important to me. If you’re on a PC, you just can’t beat it - but I highly recommend installing MyIE2, which gives you all the nice functionalities that microsoft seems incapable of building into IE themselves. Such as the pop-up blocker, which rules.

I’ve also decided to make a monumental switch - Mozilla also released Thunderbird, their email client. Making the switch from Pine to Eudora years ago was bad enough, and everyone has laughed at me for sticking with Eudora for the past few years… but hey, I hate Outlook. Can’t stand it. Thunderbird looks nice so far, seems to have a good junk mail filter, so i’m going to do a trial run for a few weeks with it and see how it goes. I wish someone would port OS X’s Mail to PC, I’d use that in a heartbeat… but Thunderbird seems to be a good consolation prize.

If you’ve known me over the past few years, you know I’ve been on a bit of a mission… I’ve lost nearly 100 pounds, which has involved a hell of a lot of work and pain. Mostly, it’s been rewarding - well, not really, it’s pretty much all sucked. But there are a few things that have been particularly galling, so I’d just like to mention them quickly.

- To all the Atkins freaks
Carbs are not evil. Moderation is good. Please, do not order a hamburger from a fast food place wrapped in lettuce. This is not healthy. Get a salad. Get the chicken sandwich. Go eat a pita. A slab of meat in a bowl will not make you thin, it’ll just make you pissed that you can’t have a hamburger. I’ve got a friend who hasn’t had a single carb in the past two years, while I LOVE bread, and have carbs - sensibly, in moderation, with a lot of exercise. I’ve lost 100 pounds. The only thing he’s lost is the ability to have a decent sandwich.

- Those of you on the bike path wearing your professional biking outfits
You look like an idiot. This is not the Tour de France, it’s the Santa Monica Municipal Bike Path. You know, the one with sand everywhere, tons of pigeons, and families waddling down the middle eating ice cream? We don’t want to see your nads, nor do we believe that Coca-Cola is sponsoring you. You paid good money to wear that lame-ass shirt with their advertisement on it.

- Those of you on the bike path that decide to stop or do u-turns at the exact moment someone else is about to overtake you on the left-hand side.
Turn the fuck around and look first, jack ass.

- To the couples that ride together on the bike path
I know you want to be able to look at each other, to see the sun glinting off your lovers face as you leisurely bike down the romantic Santa Monica Muncipal Bike Path with the aforementioned waddling families and birds crapping everywhere. I have no problem with this. Just don’t spread all the way across the whole damn path and slow the rest of us down. You’re in love, get closer together.

- To the sweaty bastards at the gym who don’t bring a towel
If I wanted to swim, I’d have gone to the pool. Wipe your nasty-ass shit up.

- To the pink or light blue J-Lo tracksuit wearing women on the elliptical machines
Why are you here? You don’t break a sweat. You jabber - loudly - on your cell phone the entire time. Go to the fucking mall and stroll there, and while you’re at it, buy some real clothes.

- To all the skinny people that tell me I’m “wasting away”
First off, I’m not. I’m still fatter than you, I can still pinch well more than an inch. Secondly, nothing is more infuriating than being told by a skinny person that you’re “losing too much weight”. Those of you blessed with metabolisms that laugh in the face of pizza and beer should really shut the hell up. I’ve gotta work damn hard to get my thin club card, while you were born with it. Your maintanence is sleeping. Mine is sweating. On the plus side, I’m working for it and getting muscle, so the next time you tell me I’m “wasting away” I’m going to whoop your skinny, weak ass.

I completely forgot that I had the phone cam… spent the morning downloading the photos and going through them. Most of them are either too dark, because I generally only remember about the cam after a few drinks in a bar, or unfit for public exhibition. But it’s time to make a blog entry and I’ve got nothing witty to discuss so here’s a random sampling of the past month or two of my life…

Working with a new artist…. stopped by rehearsal to shoot the shit (and got a shot of wendy working the photo thing)…

He’s leaving today to start a promo tour… stopped by last night to wish him well and check out his mobile home for the next month or two….

Wendy and EJ at the video shoot we were in - hopefully the one and only time we’ll be in front of the camera rather than behind it….

Skeely and his doppelganger at EJ’s birthday party - which was a story in and of itself….

Wendy enjoying the wasabi at one of our weekly suck the box nights…

The only two things I enjoy about going to get sushi….

A few pictures of things you don’t see everyday, unless, of course, you live in Venice…

chicken at night, sailors delight…

something that beats the transvestite clown….

unfortunate shortenings….

and just another picture of wendy, since she always seems to be behind the camera instead of in front of it… from new years in vegas….

are the most death obsessed band in the world. well, maybe not - you’ve got your death metal bands and shitty goth bands like christian death and all of that crap. ok, the best-death-obsessed-in-a-meaningful-way-sans-black-spandex-or-frilly-lace band in the world.

just bringing it up because i had to go to a friend’s father’s funeral the other day, which was strangely enough at the same place my grandmother’s funeral was last year. two funerals in the past 10 years, both in the same place. weird. unlike my grandmothers, however, the reception was in the friar’s club, which - although horribly inappropriate given the occasion - was quite an interesting place to see. you don’t get to do that every day.

sorry, no deep thoughts about death. no good jokes either, even though we were surrounded by comedians. “oh well, life goes on” was the most overheard comment. that just about sums it up.

Been tough to blog lately because, believe it or not, i don’t like being a downer… but the work front continues to assail me with bad news at every turn. it’ll all work out alright, but it ain’t fun getting through it.

I really, really enjoyed working at a bookstore when I was younger. I’d like to go do that again. Maybe I shouldn’t jest about it, as I might have to

At any rate - the news is still clogged with a jackson boob, so much so that I’ve almost forgotten there’s more than one boob in that family. It’s been nice to have a break away from Michael.

While I agree that it was an obviously crass and shameless publicity grab (ha ha), I’m still somewhat mystified by the amount of indignation over a boob shot. OK, a quick flash is REALLY, REALLY bad, but Justin and Janet dry humping all over the stage, nelly scratching his johnson directly in the camera, and Jessica Simpson’s whore-wear de jeur are all completely acceptable viewing for all the young children watching perhaps the most violent sport ever invented (not to mention the one particular game that’s more about advertising and subverting young minds to buy certain products, like, oh, dick-stiffners), at least since the lions went on the atkins christian-free diet?

Call me crazy, but I found the boob flash to be one of the least offensive aspects of the entire thing.