i finished my fourth year of college while my site was down. funny, i can’t really get it past my mind that i’m almost done with college or that i’ve even gone through high school. in fact, i’m fairly sure a part of my brain still thinks it’s 1998.

wow, that’s almost a decade ago. time sure flies.

after five days of downtime, my site is finally back up. my host was migrating to a new server and my account was mistakenly labeled inactive and therefore wasn’t moved. even though it was pretty annoying, i’d be lying if i said it wasn’t nice to take a break from this site for a few days.

by the way, my photos for the past five days are going up right now so as not to leave a blemish on my perfect record so feel free to check ‘em out if you’re into that sort of thing.

yawn.

i found out today that my instructor’s old cat and i share a name.

ivan liked to pick fights with dogs, raccoons, and other animals and thus bore many scars. he was missing a leg, was blind in one eye which swelled up and bulged out of his skull, and his ears were so tattered that they crumpled inward. to make a long story short, he was absolutely hideous.

the cat’s pretty cute, though.

one thing that i’ve never been satisfied with is the piddling little “stream” of water that comes out of drinking fountains. there’s no pressure control, no temperature modulation, and it’s near impossible to consume anything close to a substantial amount in the short span of time you’re there.

and to top it off, you’ve got to hunch over to get at it.

May: i swear that my sphincter hates me

ivan: what’d it do this time

May: i KNO that i had to crap more than that

May: but it just shut itself down on me

May: and told me “no fuck u! no more for the day”

Winnie The Pooh doesn’t wear pants!

i’m not a big fan of shoot ‘em up games. it’s not the violence that gets me, though. rather, it’s the loose, jarring movements that come with first-person views that give me a bad case of motion sickness.

in spite of all this, i decided to try Ghost Recon, a game i was certain i wouldn’t enjoy because it’d make me ill, this past weekend and i liked it. the controls are real tight, which means my character doesn’t go flying off to the left every time i accidentally tap the joystick. it’s also amazingly realistic in the sense that you die if you get shot. there’s none of that take-20-bullets-like-a-man-before-your-health-bar-goes-red malarkey. you get shot in the leg: you limp, you get shot in the head: you die. the A.I. is also fantastic. i had never been ambushed at the top of a stairwell by a series of 1s and 0s holding an AK-47 before.

because of motion sickness, i normally don’t have much exposure to this genre of games. however, after a round or two of Ghost Recon, i discovered that i settle in with relative snugness like one of those square pegs in a square hole. the amount of patience and precision aiming gained from being a photographer helps immensely, i’ve decided. it also helps that some of my favorite things to do are street photography and camp on rooftops with a telephoto. i just imagine that i’m taking photographs instead of lives and ignore the fact that i’ve ditched my D70 for the longer, heavier SA80.

with a grenade launcher.

buses are like chocolates. they all look pretty much the same on the outside but the gooey fillings are all different. the driver might be a complete nut who barrels through red lights or a timid old bat who slams on the brakes when they turn yellow. sometimes they’ll be empty, sometimes you’ll be hopelessly trapped between two sweaty Indian guys and a world class bum who hasn’t showered in months.

well, i had pretty bad luck with buses today. the one i caught in the morning had very obviously been defecated in and the smell was nothing short of intense. i was contemplating jumping off and catching the next 126 but i was already running late. then, on the way home, the bus driver took her sweet old time putt-putt-putting down the street at five miles per hour and also wasted even more time trying to operate the handicapped lift properly. we were passed by six other buses during the whole ordeal. two of which were on the same route.

but i still said ‘thank you’ when i got off.

so there’s a certain TA that i’ve got who annoys the hell out of me. he’s one of those artsy fartsy types who thinks only in “life-changing artistic concepts.” he’ll ask these ridiculous questions like “why didn’t you shoot 50 more rolls of film of the same thing?” or “how does this process affect your journey?” what does that even mean?!

he’s also incredibly dense, fantastically unintelligent, and generally insufferable in any and all contexts.

oh, and he’s ugly, too.

beatrice: b/c usually the help desk isn’t very helpful

ivan: how ironic

beatrice: that’s what i’m saying!

ivan: you should cause a ruckus

ivan: rattle some cages, yaknow?

ivan: get your voice heard!

beatrice: i shall!

beatrice: i’m gonna threaten to rip out their pancreas if they don’t solve my problem tonight