Dave J

Our Room: A Slide Show For Jeff

After a full, tiring day of sweaty backbreaking labor and shopping at electronics stores owned and operated entirely by a staff of Hassidic Jews, I am pretty tired. And a few people (as you will see in later photos) are watching the VMAs on our bitchin' new TV.

But Jeff has repeatedly asked for pictures of our hovel, and so I must finally give in to his demands. The rest of you can look if you want, but this really applies to Jeff.

When walking into our very small bedroom, after a little deliberation I chose the "freaky bed" in the corner even though there is heightened chance of me hurting myself. You will have the lower bed in the middle of the room with full window view. Well actually we both have window views out that window, but ya'know...
Pictured from left to right are two 'M' ladies, Monica and Mad, both of whom helped lift the TV through rather unfortunate circumstances (thanks also go out to Deb, unpictured). I am too lazy to run redeye filters, so just admire the environment.

Closets of mystery! Three doors, all open to the same space. This is half our common room, currently full of my bad empty storage box.

This is our kitchen. As you can see, plenty of storage place for food. The fridge is also spacious. I own all the main food groups: Cheerios, peanut butter, iceberg lettuce, pears and plastic utensils.

Anything else you want a pic of, just let me know. I am thinking of doing a quick video tour using the video feature on the digicam so you could get a better idea how this stuff ties together.

P.S., we need:

-surge protectors for more outlets (2 if you have that many to spare)
-real tv stand that isnt your bed

But I am on these items. See you friday (also gabriel and his family will be humorously packed into this tiny room + you and your dad, so I anticipate sitcomeque situations)...

Extra Extra!

I forgot pictures of the actual TV sitch. See, this thing is around 15"deep, but the problem is that the height in the back doesnt decrease fast enough to go on cabinets or desks nicely. Still not as heavy as the other TVs though, which is the scary thing. It's absolutely beautiful though man; we made the correct choice even if it was an epic adventure getting it here. (Although I have received a lot of grief for our decision to get a 27" without consulting our actual room situation first, but I feel it was still the right thing to do.)

Prison Break tonight on Fox! Everyone should watch.

Small shirt! Genuine disco emo hunter happyembarassment

To those who have not experienced the brilliance of Dave and Jeff's first auction for the Blue Flamingo Thrift Store on 16th and Vinton, you are all missing out on the fun. SO GO THERE NOW. At the very least you should giggle. If you win and you're in Omaha, we'll do 70 cents shipping (to cover the cost of placing the auction up).

And be sure to keep your eyes open for even more smarmy auctions from us in an Internet near you!

Now I'm off.

Odds and Ends

So we've reached the league of the end of days, with most people back in school and myself a mere four days. Four days cannot pass quickly enough. Because certain people lack the ability to hire decent replacements, I am stuck overworked and exhausted right up to and including Friday night. It used to be back when there was still two months, then a month, then three weeks, etc., that this was a welcome pace. Go to work, forget about the day. Mark one day off. Now that New York is so close I can taste it (and it tastes like Pizzeria), my general motivation to do anything job-related has hit the absolute deep end. Forget beyond the call of duty; I'm not even managing the regular call.

For months and months they scheduled me at insane hours and continue to do so (witness: tomorrow, wherein I work from 11-2, then I get a brief break which is being consumed by further dental work that will leave me numb and unable to speak for the rest of the night, but guess what, I get to return from 4 to 11/close!) in part because they have been unable to hire anyone else that even approaches basic competence. I have been trying to get myself let go early with antics but to no avail. So now I just sit on a chair and if I customer shows up I holler at one of the new people and tell them vaguely what to do. From the chair. Burnnnout.

If you would like to partake in a last hurrah at this hellhole, though, feel free to show up my last night of work, Friday 6pm-9pm, wherein I will be serving up free smiles and hopefully free food items (depends on lax management). Afterwards there will be fun and games before I collapse dead. Or burn the place down. Fun fact: Did you know their First Aid Kit is actually fake, and just a hollow box? It's good to know when your arm has had scalding hot grease tossed on it from our fatty chips!

In other, less whiny news, today saw the release of The New Pornographers' Twin Cinema album, a mere $9.99 at Best Buy. The Canadian supergroup has surpassed itself with great results, finger-snapping feel good powerpop for those days when you really don't feel like being depressed. Track 4 (Bleeding Heart Show) has revealed itself to be an early favorite, due to an eerie resemblance halfway through to the opening song of the Lion King that is somewhat uncomfortable/somewhat awesome. Y'all know what I'm talking about; the African-chant-for-white-people where all the animals are assembling to see the new lion exhibit. Actually it sounds only abstractly/conceptually similar, but let's not fight.

In other media, when I am not working I have been trying to get through several projects. One is viewing Au Hasard Balthazar, a movie about a donkey that gets the continual shit beat out of it in an allegory to Jesus. Like I expected, it turned out to be an incredible movie, although the real animal cruelty that was forgiveable four to five decades ago has become a barrier now. The other project is the first season of Six Feet Under, because I feel I should see it now that its just wrapped up its final season on HBO. So far I have only watched the first episode, and I have to say that among the death-driven premium channel offerings, its a close call but at this point I still side with Showtime's Dead Like Me (offed after a tumultous second season).

However, I do love the last song on the final episode of Six Feet Under, which I haven't even seen, but it's been making the blog rounds like wildfire:

Sia - Breathe Me

It's a saddish, slow wispy song. Maybe I will turn into an MP3 blog...

Oh, and I also beat Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, having revisited the original MGS for the first time in several years. I forgot what a great hammy storyline it possesses.

Genes don't control your fate from birth and you don't have to justify your life, Snake. JUST LIVE.

Videogames give the best advice.

It's a good thing Jeff and I will be experiencing such advice on a badass TV. Four more days til this sucker is mine!

Digital.

Whilst in my daily/hourly perusal of CNN.com for hilarious fake news and atrocious ACTION JOURNALISM! in, uh, action, I stumbled across this story. For those too lazy, it's about a high school that magically threw out all its textbooks in a rush headfirst into the sparkling digital age. As certain sloganeers would say, Live the dream! Now all the students in the high school have laptops, and they are supposed to download and upload assignments, and do all class readings via the wonderful Internet.

Sound familiar?

Now our group left a year before laptops invaded Westside thanks to Rich Uncle Pennybags, but those who have visisted since can testify to the drastically changed landscape: huddles of iBooks in the IMC, faces glued to the screen. There is nothing but eerie quiet or the occasional Java game where there once were the best and worst of youthful hijinks. These kids have lost their souls, and as CNN reports, more and more high schools are leaping onto the bandwagon.

Naturally, I blame the adults. There is a consensus out there that kids need to be prepared for the digital world that awaits them in the workforce, and that if we don't help bridge the gap for less advantaged students, they will have yet another burden forced upon them. One problem is that the vast majority of Westside students already have access to computers at home, thanks to decent income (STAY AWAY OPS YOU WILL SUCK US DRY TO FEED YOUR ORPHANS!), so this is really doing nothing in that department except giving a new toy to play with. Adults have this "OOOHHH FUTURISTIC!" starstruck approach to technology where they think it will fix everything, while kids have grown up playing 4-6 hours a day of videogames on these things since elementary school. Different perspectives.

A second, and to my eyes a far greater problem, has to do with the very soul of school. If I wanted to do everything online and chat with friends about funny websites I found, I'd stay in my bedroom all day, never showering until I died of my own rank odors. School is not meant to be some retarded internet cafe. At the beginning of my days, the teachers were first issued mandatory laptops and told to start using them to teach, to report grades online, etc. etc. And they bitched.

Oh, how they bitched. The older the teacher, the more problems they had getting this stuff to work, and students would just nod and maybe politely roll their eyes during the daily whining about technology--and that's just the way it should be. Kids don't come to school every day to have the world bend to them, giving them the latest gizmos they are already acquainted with in an effort to make the whole learning process more comfortable. They should be there to hear long-winded and frequently repeated stories about getting drunk with other department teachers in Russia. They should be here to learn from decades-old textbooks with outdated facts, and have intelligent design and Flying Spaghetti Monsterism forced upon them in science class. It's as much about the passing of lore about "the good old days" (in a completely serious and unironic way) as it is about the actual education. I think so few people understand that schools at heart are programs of indoctrination, and when you make technology such a dominating force, you might as well just be home schooled like the little bastards you are. You're eliminating the interaction not just between teacher and student, but also student and student, as anyone who has looked in the bizarrely quiet IMCs can attest to.

Some friends still call me Digital Dave. I can't remember precisely which ones or I'd tell them to stop it. But I'm declaring war on this new front; let draconian rule ring free once again! I expect there will be no end, though. The laptops will be too comfortable to overrule, so they will continue. Then we'll find a way to add robots. Somehow robots always get involved. And then we will be enslaved.

Nobody actually read this. Nobody ever does...

NO! NOOOO!

I was so excited for you. I had my snakes shirt made, pre-washed and ready to wear. I had my snakeskin boots (although I didn't want to enfuriate you). I made a quick trip to the zoo to review all the dangerous, exotic species which might be hunting Samuel L. Jackson in this latest, greatest adventure.

Then Tommy pointed out that I had misread IMDB, and the release date is August 18th, 2006. Not 2005.

I think the most obvious question is: how will I live without Snakes On A Plane?. Knowing that it exists, having tracked it from conception, watching it switch directors from action auteur Ronnie Yu to the guy who directed Cellular and Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco, and now being forced to wait a full year before its majestic slithering glory can be enjoyed by all! This movie and I have a BOND, and Hollywood had to go and eff that up. Stupid, stupid media giants.

Sigh. Perhaps this brilliant plot outline from IMDB can tide us over...

Plot Outline: On board a flight over the Pacific Ocean, an assassin, bent on killing a passenger who's a witness in protective custody, let loose a crate full of deadly snakes.

That's what I'm talking about! Why not a gun, a knife, a fist or something practical, you say? Because snakes, man. SNAKES.

In other news I found a guy's wallet on the Woodward driveway while running on 105th today. I mailed it back to him like a good boy, although by glancing at a pay stub that was inside I learned he's a security guard at Dr. Johns. Maybe I shouldve saved on postage and had Tommy return it at work...

First comment, bitches!

Even though the front page is still fugly as all get out, I have taken it upon myself to enter the illustrious first blog of the new Wandyteeth generation. With a new attractive, slimmed down roster of all-star talent, I do believe this will be one entertaining behemoth. It damn well better be; the lease is for two years!

The urge is of course to schedule blog exactly what has happened since CombatRhino tripped down the stairs and broke its neck. To fulfill this urge while remaining interesting, I will keep the summary very succinct and in bullet-point format:

-Formerly fired at Qdoba, magically rehired at other Qdoba on 120th and Blondo. Awkward. Antics ensue. Multiply exponentionally.
-New tattoo, literary emphasis
-Videogames, acquisition of
-New York, countdown to

No concerts this summer save Thunderbirds Are Now! w/ Enon (reversible like a jacket), where Shaffer was threatened by a drunk midget who looked like a much fatter, ugly version of Mark Rathouz. He had 2 kids by age 21 with another fat, ugly girl and was yelling things at TAN!, to which the singers shot back a beautiful gaze of bafflement and drunkenness. That's all the concert I need.

If you have a 27" tv and want to sell for less than $100, Jeff and I might be interested.

More importantly, I can tell that most of you have not seen the beauty that is the BROKE television series currently running on I Like Nice Things.COM. A third episode is laying in wait just because so few people have seen the sterling addition in episode 2. There is Jeff dressed up in my Bright Eyes shirt + J-Mac with very awkward physical addition + Tommy's wonderful improv + return of Neon the pimp (with twist!!) + slight homosexual feeling throughout. It's pure not-safe-for-work video magic, and so far only Rob has commented on it (and he was negative out of jealousy that we killed off his character). GO SEE IT. And tell those industry execs you want to see more episodes made!

This is a newly reinvigorated Dave blog, signing off. For now.