Illinoir

A side effect of this pic-a-day business will obviously be a post a day. How lovely….

Here is the alley behind my apartment, early evening. I came down to take a picture and take out the trash and to my surprise, find a man urinating on the dumpster next to the back door. Charming!

I’ve decided to try to post a photo every day during January. As with all other “Blog-entry-a-day” or “haiku-of-the-week” efforts, this will probably fail, but heck, it doesn’t hurt to try. At the end of the month, I’ll post a gallery in the photos section of my website. Until then, daily pics will be here.

Our first photo was taken 3 minutes into the new year with my cell phone. We were at Morseland, celebrating with Q101’s Just Joey (tremble in awe) and boy was it fun. Actually a grand old time — many people told me how happy they were to have me back in Chicago and it was rather touching….

Love the fireplace in the apartment, and damn, I love the pine mountain crackling fire logs. There is a moment between the lighting of the wrapper and the settling in of the steady fire where it is an absolute roaring inferno. I lit this fire and was sitting on the floor near the fireplace and could feel the floor rumbling from the intensity of the fire as if I was playing super-bassy music or some such. Anyhow — check it out.

So, okay, another outraged group is talking about video games being too violent and kids shouldn’t have access to violent games and companies shouldn’t market mature-rated games to kids, and that’s all well and good, but they released their list of worst violent games and best non-violent games (here’s a llink to that)

Their list of violent games is just a compilation of all the games that recently came out. Of course, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is at number 2. But they’re knocking Halo…. I don’t think games where you’re a good guy and you’re killing alien bad guys to save the world should be considered violent. It’s just good clean fun.
Here’s their list of recommended games:

RECOMMENDED NON-VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES:
1. Antigrav
2. EyeToy:Antigrav
3. Jak 3
4. Karaoke Revolution Vol. 3
5. Madden NFL 2005
6. Mario Power Tennis
7. Prince of Persia
8. RollerCoaster Tycoon 3
9. SimCity 4

Alright, let’s set aside the fact that Antigrav and EyeToy:AntiGrav are the same thing and listing them twice just smacks of mistake/lack of research. Jak 3 is violent, though surely it’s animated cartoon violence. Professional football is perhaps one of the most violent activities I can think of. Prince of Persia is all about running around and killing things with your sword. Finally, if Karaoke doesn’t get violent, you’re just not doing it right.

Hey yo yo, here I be, back in Chicago and whatnot. Two stories to tell:

1. Last night, outside, taking out the trash, round the corner and see an unmarked cop car, lights flashing in the grill, pull over a car full of 3 or 4 folks. The detectives get out of the car, are walking up to the other vehicle when it suddenly pulls away and tears down the street. The cops stroll back to their car, cool as can be and take off after them. Some guys standing on the street are just laughing, and so was I.
2. Working the door at Morseland tonight, some guy gives me attitude because I say he’s not on the guest list. Turns out he was, but under his…. I dunno… street name? His rap name? He tells me I’ve just cost the restaurant some business. I apologize later, but still. You gotta cut me some slack — I don’t know everyone in the scene, man. I don’t know all your A.K.A.’s and nom de plumes. Shiiiit.

It’s good to be back.

So, I’ve learned a lot about photoshop lately and have had some fun with it.

For your enjoyment: photo manipulations.

Keep in mind, it might be inside-jokey and yes, I was bored.

checking out stats for chaoskid.com and the always interesting stat of search words that brought up the site confused the hell out of me.

now, why on earth would that get me a hit?

(okay — i’ve looked now — check it out yahoo hits me)

in other news — new site design….and actual content. this is just me procrastinating doing the same to beaters.

A couple months ago (I guess it was) we were driving back home from the shore and took what I thought would be a shorter route home. Turned out that it took forever…. But, we did pass through Leonardo, NJ and I was shocked to find that the “block of stores” from the Clerks movies and cartoons is right there….

In the movies and cartoons, Kevin Smith’s made it look like there’s just the Quick Stop and the RST Video store but it turns out there’s a couple more lovely establishments in the strip mall — a tattoo parlor and a dog obedience school. I took the picture with Chia-Jung’s disposable camera at a distance that I figured was just about as close as we wanted to get. I am now regretting not having gone into the Quick Stop to buy (or steal) something, but who knows, maybe I’ll get another chance.

howdy doody folkaroonies, here’s some photos for your enjoyment:

1) chia-jung and i visit with the supremely funny Ralphie May. If you haven’t seen him or heard him, by all means, you should. We laughed our tushies off.

2) dan and i visit with death on the best roller coaster ever: Nitro. Nitro kicks ass. Nitro goes 80 miles an hour. Nitro has an initial drop of 215 feet. Nitro kicks ass.

my first video editing project…. real simple…good times.

…flies…