Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Nostalgia

I miss the 90s.

Saturday, November 26, 2005

Pretending

I'm worried that genuinely I'm really boring, and when ever I do something interesting, that is me pretending to be someone else.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Serious Inquiries Only

Why do people put "Serious Inquiries Only!!!" on ads for things?

If I even post an ad for something, I'm going to put "Random Comedy Inquiries Welcome" at the end.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Fans

Why do the settings on a fan go: OFF, HIGH, MED, LOW?
Surely it would make more sense to go OFF, LOW, MED, HIGH?

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Europe

Okay here's some shameless self promotion, my europe images are now uploaded to a nice neat tidy beautiful gallery, courtesy of Carl.

Europe Images

You can also back up and see images from America there.

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Mugged

I had this gig a few nights ago to shoot the pictures at a wedding party. It went really well and I was in an awesome mood on the way home. I took the el (chicago) half the way home, then got off where i have to catch the bus. I waited for the bus for about 20 minutes, while being bugged by this guy with a kid for money, and then decided to walk the 15 or so blocks home.

The first 5 blocks or so are a pretty rough area but it gets better as you get closer to my house. Or so I thought. Because I was about half a block from my house when I suddenly heard these running footsteps behind me. At first it made me jump so i looked over my shoulder to see what it was, and just saw a guy running so figured he was just gonna run past me and I looked forward again and kept walking.

Then about 2 seconds later, he grunted, "Alright, give it up" and grabbed me roughly around the shoulders from behind. At this point the most pure panic i've ever felt gripped me. It was a combination of "fight!" "let go!" "oh god this isn't happening" and a weird little bit of "weee i'm being mugged!"

I said "oh my god" a few times while he pulled my bags over my head and then i thought about the pictures that i'd taken and how they were irreplacable so i had to atleast try and fight, and all that was going through my head now was "please dont have a gun". I flipped around and grabbed hold of the straps of the bag and pleaded with him to give them back and he punched me in the side of my face. It hit me dead on, but it was more like he was trying to knock me away from the bags than hurt me. I let go of the bags at this point and he ran off.

I yelled after him please a couple of times and then tried to flag down a passing car, who slowed right down and looked at me and then kept driving. Then i started running towards my house, which was like half a block away, and saw a cop car driving up my street. I yelled for it to stop and the cop got out. I was just like "some guy just grabbed my bags! right here! we have to go chase him!"

So I jump in the back of the police car, and we start driving, he gets right on the radio and calls for back up and i give him a description of the guy as we drive, and he passes this on to the others. I tell him to turn up ellis, and i have no idea how i knew to say to go up there, but then we're driving along slow and i'm thinking that it's just pointless and then i see this guy down a side street and i'm like "oh hey that might be him!"

Then we turn down that street and drive slow up behind him (no lights on or anything), we see that the guy is holding my bags and i'm like "yeah!@ that's him! that's definitely him! That's my bag!" and so we're just pulling up next to the guy when he hears the car, turns around and see us... drops all my stuff all over the street and runs for it.

The cop jumped out of the car and ran after him. I was left locked in the back of the cop car and couldn't even go and get my stuff (can't open cop cars from the inside) so I had to wait until they'd caught the guy and came back to get me.

The cop comes back and I get out and realise theres like 4 police cars at the end of the street now. I checked through all my stuff and found it was all there (although later i realised i lost my sunglasses, i guess the fucker just threw them out :(), and they made the guy get out of another cop car so i could ID him, and then they drove me to the police station, where i told about 6 different police officers what happened, waited around for 3 hours, and then finally gave an official statement and I have to go court to testify next monday. Some of my housemates came and picked me up which is awesome of them, because i just called them to make sure someone was home because i didn't have a house key, and they said ok, then they decided to track down which police station i was at and came to get me, and it was like 4am.

Apparently the guy was on parole and should be going down for about 10-15 years. There was about $1500 worth of camera equipment in my bags, which i've got back... but some of it is slightly broken from being dropped, but insurance should cover it.

I know I'm a moron for walking alone at night, and I really don't need to be told that. You know you have all done it at some point or another so please don't give me shit about that because I already have enough "this is my fault" feelings going on.

Friday, July 29, 2005

Crazies

So lately it seems like i have some kind of homing device for crazy people on the el. Yesterday on the blue line this guy leaned over to me and said "do you have a computer?"

At first I thought maybe he was some lurker at worth and recognised me, so I said "...yes". Then he said, "do you have the internet?" so i said "...yes", and waited for that glorious moment, that is the impromtu internet meet, to begin.

Only then it all flipped on its head when he said, "Have you ever checked out the hubble space telescope website?" I told him no and he spent the next few minutes spouting off facts about the telescope, then about a launch into space that apparently had occured that morning, then about planets in general. All these facts involved lots of numbers, $100,000 here, and 576,000 miles there etc. Then suddenly he drops the big one, "and you know there's 47 confirmed alien races in neighbouring solar systems. The government knows about them, the police knows about them... they just dont want you to know."

0_0 ... "heh...yeah."

And he goes on, "People think I'm crazy you know, people think I'm crazy... but that's just because they're stupid"

No dude. I don't think that's really why it is.

I didn't think anything'd top that one for a little while, but I was wrong. Today on the green line, a couple of stops before mine, this guy gets on holding a big, black, plastic elephant. It was about a foot high I guess.

At this point I didn't know about the craziness and I was in a pretty good mood so i was contemplating a friendly "hey, nice elephant" but didn't get a chance to say it before he starts giggling uncontrolably to himself. He then holds the elephant up to the window, and starts talking to it like it was a child "heyyy what can you see huh? Can you see out of the window hmmm?"

I. shit. you. not.

Then he starts whispering jibberish in its ear, pausing only to giggle hysterically again. (Seriously, happiest crazy person ever.) A little before my stop, he started laughing and looking at me, like the two of us were sharing a joke. Then he whispered in the elephant's ear again, looked at me, and said "It's a radio you know, I'm transmitting back to headquarters."

The scariest thing about all this is that I was walking home from the el and thinking about how I must have some kind of crazy person catnip going on, when i thought to myself "Hah! Or maybe they weren't crazy and that second guy is really an alien sending messages back to his planet, and the first guy knew all about it"

Only, then I think that makes me the crazy person, which could kind of explain it all.

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Picky

Why does my moisturiser say "hand and body lotion"?

Like my hands aren't part of my body?

Monday, February 28, 2005

Razzies

My respect for Halle Berry just went up about 200%. She showed up at the Razzies, one of those comedy award shows where they give out awards for bad movies. Halle pitched up to accept her award for worst actress for Catwoman. Gave a speech and everything.

News Story

Course 200% of nothing is still very little.

(Man I hate halle berry)

Sunday, January 16, 2005

Hillbilly and other stories

Wow I haven't posted for ages blah blah.

Anyway as many of you know Ive just got back from america from staying with unzercharlie <3

Just thought i'd post this weird story that happened while i was over there even though i've already told it to quite a few people. We were in downtown lexington, taking photographs. We found ourselves under this bridge, next to a fairly busy street opposite the bus station. Unz was resting his camera on a concrete fence to take long exposures, and i spotted a guy coming over from the bus station towards us. I pointed him out to unz, feeling a bit nervous, and he was like "oh don't worry, he wont bother us".

But the guy came right up, and told us he had some advice for us. He said god told him to tell us this advice. Then he started telling us that he was a god fearing man, and his rambling went on from there, and we all forgot abou the advice, which he never told us. He went on to say that his name was Hillbilly, he's a professional hitchhiker, he has a library card in every place he's ever been, and he has a book coming out february 15th. (He urged us to remember his name so that we could check for the book.)

Then he said "alright, I'm not gonna lie to you. I need five dollars for some liquor" So unz gave him some change and said it'd get him started, and then hillbilly said we could take his picture. So he pulls out this harmonica and starts to play and I took a couple of shots.
http://www.worth1000.com/web/media/6064/hillbilly1.jpg
http://www.worth1000.com/web/media/6064/hillbilly2.jpg
The first one is better. The second one is only included cause it looks like tom waits. I wish i'd asked him to show us all his library cards and taken a picture of that (assuming it wasn't in his head)

Then we pretty much said goodbye. Later on we were sitting in a park, and we saw him again and he gave us his email address. He also said that he gave the change to a girl he saw who needed it, and that he knew it'd come back to him.

Oh also, we saw this pinned to a poster box type thing which was pretty awesome
http://www.worth1000.com/web/media/6064/fortune.jpg
I stopped to take pictures of the ripped posters and stuff (<3 dilapidation) and spotted it. Course we didn't take it, but I later realised i wish i'd added a dollar cause it would be awesome if the person who left it there went back to check if it'd gone... and instead, there was an extra dollar.

Oh and the ART.

So me and unz went to this restaurant where they have paper table cloths and give you crayons so you can draw on the table while you wait for your meal. So we started drawing and just kinda carried on, until we'd filled a whole heap of the table. It was mostly abstract stuff, shapes and things and both our names drawn cooly.

People stopped by the table to tell us it was cool : )

The waitress said we should take it with us, but we decided to be pretentious artists, so we just wrote ART in huge letters, and drew arrows pointing at it and left it there.

Then, when we left, we went to buy 96 regular crayons, 8 large crayons, about 30 sharpies all in different colours... and a ninety foot roll of paper.

We have about 15ft done so far and a bunch of people have joined in. It'll be a while before i get to work on it again, but we're sure as hell gonna get the whole 90feet done and then we'll be famous.

Here's just a couple of sections of it, there's more that i dont have photos of :/