I still exist

I still exist, here, to burn the early morning electricty so that I might submit my paper by the proper deadline. What a bitch the all nighter is.

More blogs will come on finishing the semester… been busy. Also still have to get my laptop fixed.

Game Sumaries and photos shall be posted sometime.

Photo Freeze

I’m upset. Too much school work and refereeing to take photos like how I want to. Gr.

 

 

<–me.

 

 

 

Look at my arm (yellow) on the right border… lol.

It died.

My hard drive died on my laptop. What a joke. All those digital photos and music I purchased POOF up in smoke. I just hope they can be recovered. Stupid DELL…

My next computer will be a MAC and that’s a fact jack.

LAME.

Anyway, the weekend was mostly productive though I couldn’t quite pull off my taxes. But I’ll get them done.

That said, I get to do my first Rochester Rhinos middle tonight. A preseason game, but thats great because that is all I’m allowed to do at this point until I get upgraded which could be as soon as January, so I have to work hard, but I think I can do it.

13.5 working hours until the weekend.

I hate that song, “Everybody’s Working for the Weekend.” Sadly, the lyrics are simple and true — the music still sucks. Anyway, that’s a pretty awful balance if you think about it. 5 days of stress and annoyance for 2 days of freedom and you hope they’ll be fun.

What shall I do this weekend? Referee 3 games over both days. Celebrate a friend getting another year older. Maybe watch a movie, create some photos too. Do some homework, laundry, cleaning, blah…

It’s time to take ownership for the other 5 days a week. I just need to figure out how to do it.

Here’s a photo to think about. This is 3 exposures on one section of film.

 

Running to go nowhere.

I put 3 miles on the legs tonight.

Normally, I run down the very safe, very white, very yuppie road that is Park Ave. Tonight, I ran down the 1.6 mile treck that is Meigs St, the place upon which I live. Then I returned home for the full 3.2 miles. (Sort of a wimpy run compared to what I should have done, but sometimes work can take the extra mile out of you.)

I’m glad I did it, because the people on Park ave can be so boring. They wear the same clothes, jog with the same iPods (guilty), walk the same dogs, the dogs make the same shit, and the people just walk around with an attitude of holier than thou Art. So, Instead of running down streets which are packed with more people who think they are intellectually hot shit and way too cool for a guy like me, I took the path into the seedier areas. I saw a run down houses, dry cleaners you would never know were there, bullet casings, kids on bikes, men on skateboards, dudes in hoodies, parents carrying kids, a guy cooking on the grill and I told him it smelled good, people having beers on the porch, college girls standing in cluster, teenagers and grade schoolers at the play ground, cops driving meat wagons, and meaner scarier dogs behind fences. I saw the black pearl bar and reminisced as I passed by Snuffy McGees watering hole. I felt the burn in my lungs and my hear pound. I felt alive and not bored and encased by expectations. I wore my short soccer refereeing shorts and listened to 6 Boss tracks and 2 by the counting crows, and I didn’t care what any one thought of me.

I’m glad the sun and the heat have returned, we have missed you. It’s good to be alive, enjoy it before death’s cold grip grabs you by the neck and puts your ass in the ground. Don’t confine yourself to cultural or societal norms (just don’t hurt other people stepping outside the boundaries.)

Welcome to real life. I love Jesus Christ, but organized religion is total bullshit – don’t listen to fake rules, be yourself and have fun.

The Mono Poly Project

I have hatched an idea today. I will take photographs. It deals with commercialism. It will document a famous city in NJ, I will travel there with my camera(s) and I hope it will be good.

The pages of the book shall be laid out in the following way:
1. Go
2. Mediteranian Ave.
3. Community Chest #1
4. Baltic Ave.
5. Income Tax (10% or $200)
6. Reading Railroad
7. Oriental Ave.
8. Chance #1
9. Vermont Ave.
10. Conecticut Ave.
11. Jail
12. St. Charles Place
13. Electric Company
14. States Ave.
15. Virginia Ave.
16. Pennsylvania Railroad
17. St. James Place
18. Community Chest #2
19. Tenessee Ave.
20. New York Ave.
21. Free Parking
22. Kentucky Ave.
23. Chance #2
24. Indiana Ave.
25. Illinois Ave.
26. B&O Railroad
27. Atlantic Ave.
28. Ventnor Ave.
29. Water Works
30. Marvin Gardens
31. Go To Jail
32. Pacific Ave.
33. North Carolina Ave.
34. Community Chest #3
35. Pennsylvania Ave.
36. Short Line Railroad
37. Chance #3
38. Park Place
39. Luxury Tax
40. Boardwalk
41. Go (reprise)

I intend to focus on American Commercialism with a pop-culture twist. That is as much as I will give away right now.

Happy Photo Hunting everyone.

No Exit

I really dig this city of Rochester, NY. However, there are a few things that bug me about it.

Today, I will focus on three such things. We shall go in descending order where 1 is the most annoying:

3. The accent. A friend of mine, not from here, showed me a few notes she took about this and boy was it dead on. The way it sounds to me is like imagining someone from Chicago mixed with Minnesota, toss in a bit of Canada eh… and you’ve got something like the way people talk here. “RAaa-chester” ugh.

2. Pizza. It’s just too much dough, mediocre sauce, and funky tasting cheese. Not a good combo for someone so used to the NYC/Jersey/Philly style pie.

 1. The use of highway exit numbers is null. People in Rochester have this problem with using the exit numbers assigned to highway off ramps. Why? It’s so simple. In NJ we use them all the time and it makes life easier. Here people don’t use them and it can confuse people. For example, south of Rochester there is a town called Avon. I’ve been told to take the Avon exit off of 390S before. I did and I got lost, why? Becuase there are 2 exits labeled Avon. #10 and #8. Yet, people don’t use the exit # here. The insist on giving the street name. In Rochester there are other exits, eg. there are 2 Monroe avenue exits on 2 different hwys. It would be SOOO much easier if someone could teach them all to use the exit numbers and not the exit names.

And now for something completely different…

Buring it from both ends.

 Time to get up. Another day and not enough sleep.

 Here’s to Friday!

Shut Up or Sit Down.

This happened over the weekend.

 

How much of a pest does one person have to be before they get sent off? Apparently Mr. Mascherano is confused as to why he was sent off. That was fairly obvious!! He was sent-off for receiving a second caution in the same match. It wasn’t like Steve Bennett didn’t give Masch any chances to alter his behavior patterns. Any player worth his salt knows that dissent is one of the 7 cautionable offenses. (They are 1.Unsporting Behavior, 2.Dissent, 3. Persistently Infringes the Laws of the Game, 4. Delaying the Restart of Play, 5. Failing to Respect the Required Distance at the Taking of Free Kick, Corner Kick, or Throw-In, 6. Leaving the Field of Play without the referee’s permission, or 7. Entering the Field of Play without the referee’s permission.)

Masch picked up an early caution (yellow card) for a late sliding tackle where he slid in to win the ball but he could not win it because the ball was already gone, yet Masch slid in anyway and took the man out late. There is some question as to whether or not Masch started his slide before of after the ball was gone, but that fact is irrelevant. The referee gave the card and that is a fact. The match continued with constant badgering of the referee, finally culminating with him running over 20 yards to confront the referee about a situation that he HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH. What a fool. He was rightly cautioned a second time and sent off. It’s about time someone stopped the idiocy. Perhaps if we all follow ref Bennett’s lead, we can get some measure of respect back from the players.

 Bob Evans’ blog deals with this situation in a little greater detail and with some better clarity here.

Wally World Strikes Again!

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/25/walmart.insurance.battle/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

 There is only one thing that irks me more than irresponsible use of mass media, and that’s big business stomping down the middle and lower classes. Wal-Mart is one of those sorts of evil corps. Click the link and read the article. Way to go Wally. “Slashing prices everyday because we’re suing our own employees to save you money!”

Soon to come… the list of companies that are killing America.