Burn baby burn

Well after years of emails from friends in Canada asking me if any of the california brush fires have affected me...well a brush fire is currently burning just outside of my house...

I was driving home from work, Kraig calls me to say he heard there was a fire in our complex...so I'm not thinking much of it, like some ghetto neighbor dropped a cigarette on their couch or something.

I go into my complex...I turn down the streets...and RIGHT where i turn onto my little street in the complex there were around 6 or 7 fire trucks and 2 helicopters circling overhead. It was crazy. They blocked off that section of my street, and apparently they were on call to evacuate the homes that face the canyon that's right next to my complex.

So I was PISSED because a bunch of us had to park in the fire zones, and the dumbass president of the association comes over and says how the tow trucks are coming because they can get huge fines when people park in the fire zones...uh HELLO I think the firefighters are dealing with a bigger issue than our cars parked in front of garages. Even the police sheriff admitted that he told someone it was okay to park in the handicapped spot, because it was such mayhem.

Even more reason to be pissed: so many people didn't have their cars in their garages (come ON people), and the dumbass president of the HOA had his MOTORCYCLE parked in a parking spot right by his house...wtf, he has a ton of room in his garage for that thing! He saw people circling the complex trying to find parking spots...what a frickin' dick. Needless to say, this disgruntled homeowner is attending HOA meetings....

Those poor bunnies and coyotes got their home burned down :( I scoped out the canyon...it's just a big chunk of grey and black, like someone poured concrete and tar on the canyon. I wonder how it started...pfft maybe the ghetto hillbilly flicked it out of his window instead of dropping it on his couch.

MSNBC article about the brush fire.

Fortunately, I got a spot on the street and didn't have to walk crazy far.

This poor deer! Damn fires.

Scenes from a post office

In case you need to be bored...

So on Tuesday I left work early 'cause I had to haul ass to the dentist to pick up my new retainer (in case anyone cares, they removed the bottom wire that's been attached to my teeth since I was 15 so that i could get a retainer that i can take in/out). When that was done, i managed to get out in time to swing by the post office...

See my ghetto mailbox doesn't accept my key anymore, which is a pain in the ass because anything that involves government workers is bound to be a hassle. Fortunately my actual mailman is awesome, but that doesn't make going to the post office any less painful. On Saturday I went and bitched about the key not working anymore, and i shelled out $30 to get it replaced. And they said they'd call me when it was ready. Which i took to assume, they'll never call me.

After the dentist i took it upon myself to find out the status of the key situation, and the lady couldn't find ANY record of anything. And she kept insisting that i had put something in the "special instructions" box, which I didn't, all I did was fill out my address and that's IT. I didn't even know there WAS a "special instructions" box.

So while she's looking in the back for the status, the counter guy calls the next number and this wannabe rapper guy comes up to the counter saying he's picking up a package, but he wants to know who it's from because if it's from his ex girlfriend, he wants nothing to do with it.

After awhile of standing around, I asked him why he didn't want the package. He said that it was BAD and that there's nothing good that could be in there. I asked "what if there's money?" and eh said "nooo...it's paperwork that she wants me to sign".

Me: "Paperwork?"
Him: "yeah. She's a singer and wants me to sign something saying i'm not goign to talk sh*t about her now that we've broken up"
Me: "shouldn't she have asked for that when you started going out, not when it ended?"
Him: "you'd think. We only went out a month and a half and she keeps threatening to get her lawyers after me."

Me: "Is she famous? Have i heard of her?"
Him: "She's one of the top singers on MySpace...she's the #2 most famous chick on there..."
Me: "Second to Tila Tequila?"
Him: "Yeah. ((Insert name))"
Me: ((shrugs)) Note: I tried to do a search for the top females on myspace and other than Tila, i couldn't find any name resembling the one he said. So Miss Thang is full of crap.
Him: ((shrugs back at me))

Then there was a long pause...while we're still waiting for our stuff...

Me: "You didn't have any idea that she was psycho? Was she hot?"
Him: "yeah, but hot doesn't matter. Personality matters" yeah right "It doesn't matter how hot you are if you've got a bad personality. She was 30 and crazy"
Me: "well if she's hot and 30 and a singer, then you had to figure something was wrong...right?"
Him: "yeah. Plus she says I owe her money for a gift. When we were dating she took some photos 'cause she's a photographer for my album cover, and now that we're broken up she says I owe her"
Me: "how much?"
Him: "Probably over a grand"
me: "Is she really going to pursue it? The cost of a lawyer would be more expensive than that..."

Him: "Well she's got a contract so the recording company can send lawyers after me, she wouldn't pay"
Me: "oh, trust me, she'll end up paying. You didn't sign anything?"
Him: "Nope, no contract. But she says it was an oral agreement"
Me: "Oral agreeements are highly overrated."

Then he asked me about my phone (EnV) and started saying how he wanted an iPhone, I told him that unless you're willing to pay for all the services it's kind of a ripoff, then he got his package (not from teh exgirlfriend), and he went on his merry way.

And that folks, is a Scene From a Post Office.

More stupid random thoughts

So for a serious lack of having any opinion or anything to write about, i'm forcing myself to blog even though I have no topic in mind.

First off....Transformers. I've been waiting for what seems to be a lifetime for it to come out. It was highly entertaining, however there's a few flaws that bugged me (regular people probably won't care, but if you grew up with Transformers, this stuff will bug you):

1. Megatron is a GUN people. Don't make him a jet. That's puts him on the same playing field as Starscream.

2. The level of detail was TOO much...i couldn't tell who was an Autobot, who was a Decepticon, and when they were fighting i couldn't tell what was an arm vs. a leg...

3. Okay I get that Volkswagon wouldn't let Bumblebee be a Bug, but did they ALL need to be american cars?!

4. Somehow a small car turned into a MASSIVE robot...it wasn't exactly to scale. Whenever the cars transformed I was like 'WTF...i really doubt the pieces to a car would end up making it the size of a high rise"...

5. The computer people. Come ON. NO COMPUTER MAKES LITTLE HIGH PITCH NOISES WHEN IT'S PROCESSING. If it did, you'd keep it on mute. It would drive you NUTS to hear those sounds all day. Plus, i really doubt that out of all the people the CIA/FBI could find ont ehp lanet, it's this dude who lives close to the pentagon (and lives with his mom while he plays Dance Dance Revolution all day) is the one who can break the "code" within a split second.

6. AND...there's no gorgeous hot computer programmers that are like 25 and considered the top in the world.

7. Back to Megatron...at least OPtimus Prime looked like the cartoon...but Megatron looked NOTHING like the cartoon, which is kinda crappy when the only reason you're watching the movie is because you grew up with the toys.

Compare:

vs.


So all of that griping aside, it was a pretty entertaining movie. Shia LeBeouf (which translates to "the beef" in case anyone cares) steals the show with his deadpan one-liners. He'll be great in Indiana Jones. As for Megan Fox...well she plays the typical hot badass chick. Which i don't expect her to get overly jacked up, and her clothes stayed on the whole movie, but geezus the last pan of her face at the end of the massive fight showed she was wearing fake eyelashes...COME ON PEOPLE...for you guys otu there, that's the equivalent of seeign Nicholas Cage's fake hair weave up close.

I give it 7.5 out of 10, but if just want entertainment then i give it 8 out of 10 (it loses .5 for wandering off the original characters).

I also saw Children of Men...pretty entertaining, not a fantastic movie but definitely one of those movies that gets you to think. They did alot of crazy camera moves too, which was interesting to see (almost documentary style).

But the true hero of the movie wasn't Clive Owen...ohhh no, it's this psycho homeless chick:


I tried to find a YouTube video of her going beserk but i couldn't find anything. When Theo (Clive Owen) is being attacked and you think he's done for, crazy HomelessChick comes out of NOWHERE and whacks him with a big flintstones' size bone...chicky needs her own movie.

Alot of tv shows wrapped up and some are starting anew. 4400 finally kicked off, and I'm eagerly anticipating Scott Baio is 45...and single and Brett Michael's Rock of Love. Plus I just saw a commercial for a show called I Hate My 30s. Fabulous summer indeed.

In other random news, still trying to nail down a flooring guy (ha ha...get the pun...haaa...)...our carpets are jacked up to the nth degree.

And that's pretty much it. Home improvement mode. TV watching mode. Oh and I've got my Citizenship test on August 17th or somethingl ike that. I just love using my vacation days to sit in a government building (without a cell phone) to be grilled on history questions and personal questions like i'm on trial.

That's what she said...

Yes, it's been a lifetime since i've written. Mostly 'cause i haven't had much to say. ("They come mostly at night. Mostly.")

Last night I got my tv watching on with Carrie and Nicole...Carrie stuck around to watch the 1st episode of the UK version of The Office. The US one is almost play-by-play off the British one, but dang it was hard to understand their language. Instead of saying "layoffs" they say "redundancies".

Anyway so I scoped it out online, and turns out there's a trillion other Offices out there.
First we have the "true" first episode, the British one:


Now compare against the US version:


Jim kicks ass, no matter what country he's in.

Now the French (France French, not Canadian French) version, which somehow replaces the jello with cheese...I guess jello isn't a common dessert in France?

Le Bureau (which translates verbatum to "the desk" but I guess that's another word for office as well...):


Now I have no idea if the Quebecois version ever did the jello/cheese shtick, 'cause I guess it was only on some random subscription station and only in January got aired on other channels, so searching for it is brutal on You Tube ('cause it's called "La Job" (which yes, means, The Job) ends up with mostly Steve Jobs Apple crap):



And finally, the German version, which started off not being The Office (it's an insurance company, not a paper company) but the British Office people sued the Stromberg people 'cause it's pretty obvious even without understanding the language who is Michael, Jim, and Dwight (or David, british Jim, and Gareth):


And there you have it. The more you know.