Heat shmeat

It was nice and warm. Sooo nice.

I finally left my jacket behind yesterday and today. For the first time since LAST YEAR!!!!!

Of course the denizens are swooning in this 'heat'.

"It's 100 degrees!"
"Dude, we're by the ocean. Its 82 degrees with a *^#%$($^ seabreeze."
"Oh my lord, when will the heat break??"

I see people sitting in their cars, idling, with the air-conditioning ON. Just sitting there.

Goofy, man. This is not hot.

I go online

JPennant: gabby!
gabz: how.d.!
JPennant: my favorite flakey Fishy! how the hell are ya m'dear?
gabz: hehe...
JPennant: ok, after Kate, but still :-)
gabz: heehee
gabz: i'm ok. laying low in the heat right now
JPennant: heat. *pshaah.. you bay people are tripping
JPennant: 85 degrees in the bay with a *&%@%$ sea breeze and you all are panting like dogs
gabz: dude, there ain't no sea breeze up here. that's for sure.

Nice peeps, but as you can see Im finding it very hard to take their reality seriously....
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Hawai'i. Im feening for Hawai'i.

The hippies are all drifting back to town after their pilgrimages to Maui and Kauai.

Even the most destitute ones go at least once a year.

I caught up with one the other day.. and gives me the 411 on how to do it on the cheap.

Round trip fares for 2-300??? Holy mother of shit, batman!

A 7 day stay on Oahu/Honolulu for 799???

Holy gloryhole batman!

(Ok, I should stop that. :-)

Why am I feening so hard for Hawaii. I know what the tropics are like.

Prolly for the food and the people.

Plus, I wanna get my girl to join me.

You know. Just to hang out. *cough*

But yeah. Hawai'i is on my mind.

Spam musubi and portuguese sausage brekkies....

Great. Now the laptop screen is reversed.

I can only see pictures as negatives. Gah.

No pictures for awhile guys.

For the first time, I posted to Craigslist.

It read thusly:

Will trade expert Mac/PC services/software for busted laptop/parts
Reply to: anon-12928365@craigslist.org
Date: Fri Jun 27 17:06:27 2003

My Dell Inspiron 3500 is dying. It needs parts that I cant afford, so Im looking for a anyone with a busted Inspiron 3500 for the parts. (or even a dead laptop I can resurrect).
In exchange I will fix the nagging or complicated software or hardware issues that have been keeping you (small business, home business, self-eployed etc) up at night.

You trade, I give high-priced and competent services you would be spending cash money for. It works.
I invoice, you get to write it off.

I dont need a hard drive or its caddy, CD rom drive, memory, screen battery or even keyboard. Just the machine. (Or a dead laptop I can resurrect and slip my HD into)

I have no munny, but I am very good at what I do.. MacOS, OS X, Windows and networking, applications, imaging, database support.

And yes, laptops.

I'm an itinerant writer and photographer who happens to be a tech with 12 years of experience. Worked for AOL, AT&T, Intel, Deloitte, TheStreet.com even gay.com (through PlanetOut) and an independent consultant before I regained my senses (well before the dot-com bust) and started following my dreams.

Im currently in Berkeley as I travel across the country taking pictures for my site and books.

If youve got a machine lying around in a box, dead and pining for the fjords, my blue parrot could use a frankenhand :-)

I will return the favors in kind.

Call and we'll talk, no big whoop.

Joe Pennant
Itinerant Images


it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

Clint peruses this and opines...

That is the best will work for food sign Ive ever seen.

My girl deh is a gorgon, iyah

On rotation:

Luther Vandross - So Amazing

Luther sez it all for me. Made me hope for good times, and makes the good times feel like a celebration.

So, lets all say:

LUTHER!!!

Get well, papi.
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Chica was bugging me to take pictures of me and my new smoove haircut.

(Think bowling ball with hair..)

Oh wait, no.. the story starts early this morn from when I heard my phone ringing across the building in the quiet of the darkness as I wrote on the laptop in the conference room.

When I finally answered, my girl was loving and perky, and somehow, jumping up and down in excitement through the phone.

After awhile, she said she wrote something for me in Jamaican, in patois.

I knew she was interested in learning it, so I said Ok, thats nice.

Trust her to make doing something like that feel like my birthday, our anniversary, valentine's day and christmas rolled into one.

She didnt simply write something in patois - she described our relationship from her point of view in authentic country patois.

A love letter. Yahdie styyle. Done proper.

She had slaved over this for several days.

Wow.

And she doesnt even speak it.

To say I was chuffed is an understatement.

So, what does this have to do with my hair. Hang on, hang on.. Im coming to it...

So I get to Kinko's, I see aforementioned love letter (entitled Black Jeans and Donuts.. hehehe) and she bugs me for said pictures.

So I turn to the guy next to me and ask him to take my picture.

Turned out he's from back a' yahd. Jamaica. A kingstonian peer.

So, he took the pictures and I showed him.

He read it and his eyebrows went up.

"Whaaa! She a' no yard girl?"

"Nah man."

"MAN! She's GOOD!! She write you sumting like dis.. you HOLD on to her, dont let her go!"

I have no intention of doing something that stupid.

Letting go of my lemur woman? *pshaah*

Heh, she liked the pics of my bald head too. :-)

Yeah, she is something.

or..

My dahta is a Gorgon, yu no see it Iyah...

It's. Not. My. Fault.*

*the default MacOS 9 spoken error message

Thanks to the blogger team, my archives are screwed (no, I dont WANT to download the pyra archiving script to my machine, its serposed to run from the SERVER and why did they assume I suddenly didnt WANT a seperate archive template when I set up one originally?? Gah.), so if'n y'all want back issues.. it'll be awhile.
---
I have images I need to process and sort.

Lots of them.

Had a couple of pictorials lined up.

*sigh* With no coffee and donuts (well, no donuts) it may take awhile.

Popeye cant do NUTHIN without his coffee and donuts.

Im feening so hard, even Krispy Kremes would do at this point...

Philosophy 101

I stood at the hall of the church, watching people of all races, situtations and conditions lining up for a free meal (you dont HAVE to go hungry in Berkeley)...

I just felt right about now, I should be paying attention.

Early in college, during the madd crush of registration, I had my list of classes, with the alternates picked out. For one of my humanities requirements, I had Philosophy 101 picked as my 4th or 5th humanities alternate.

Didnt think I'd EVER go anywhere near the subject, the chances of having to do an alternate picked because I couldnt think of anything else being slim and none.

Of course, thats exactly what I was assigned.

I grumbled a bit.. a lot.. until I took my first class and had my tiny little mind blown.

Holy shit, batman - I thought, this dares me to question god, perspective and reality! Can I DO that??

And it became my second major.

I didnt care for it, but Im very glad it was assigned to me.

Right now, my circumstances feel as if Ive been assigned Philosophy 101 all over again.

School is in session.

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While chowing down..


green eye'd guy: "... man, I eat GOOD here in Berkeley. Im ready to get OFF this homeless train... but I tell ya, Berkeley feeds you WELL."
the graffiti tagger: "Shoot, if you choose to go hungry here in Berkeley, the police should lock you UP for your own protection."
-----
Me: "Im gonna write that line down. 'Ive sold kilos of cocaine, bushels of weed, dealt hairawn and theyre gonna put me away for JAYWALKING'."
Chorus from tagger and greeneyes: "Youre the JOURNALIST!! We were saying there was SOME guy in there who was doing this to write a book."
Me: "Hell you probably got two or THREE guys doin that."

---
Sometimes doing the things other people dont want to do is the best thing for you. Builds character and whatnot..

My girl isnt too happy about all this, natch.

JPennant: the guys there tho have to do chores tho
JPennant: I took the one no one wanted
angelz: which is?
JPennant: cleaning the showers
angelz: :-(
angelz: you did?
JPennant: sure
JPennant: I wore gloves and used a lot of bleach
angelz: uh huh
angelz: wish i could have helped
JPennant: heheh
JPennant: hell, *I* gotta shower there. I want it spotless.
JPennant: even with shower shoes
angelz: now you know i wouldnt do that just for anyone ;-)
JPennant: no? :-)
angelz: hell no
JPennant: *muah

Thas mah girl. :-)

Did I mention she's one HELL of a woman?

Thank god this isnt forever.

batteries not required

Suddenly..

Im seeing Krispy Kreme donuts in a WHOLE new light.

JPennant: You know [krispydude]
angelz: your friend who hates my beloved krispy kremes. grr.
JPennant: heheheh, yeah
JPennant: heeee
JPennant: check this out


krispydude: oh, and i have to say i have a newfound appreciation for Krispy Kreme donuts ;-) hehe
JPennant: =-O
JPennant: *writes this down*
krispydude: yeah, noshit
JPennant: *cackle*
JPennant: so THAT'S what my girl has been trying to tell me :-)
krispydude: hahaha, i dunno, mebbe
JPennant: heehee

angelz: OH MY
JPennant: heheehh
angelz: hahahahhahaahahahahahahahahahah
angelz: HA!
JPennant: he likes them now ;-)
angelz: hahahahahaha

Baby. What flavors do you want me to bring for you?
------
Sorry to talk about it krispydude, but .. me and babydoll couldnt stop laffin.. :-)

I wonder if it'd be the same if we switched to another brand o' donuts....

Or is it totally a Krispy Kreme experience?

Sunday Laffs

Just a general crackup on my Sunday morning blog rotation...

Marn sez...

And let's face it, marriage is not just about love or sex, either, although the words, "Oh, Lordy, just looking at you makes my pee pee swell" most definitely play a part there. As I see it, marriage is about so very much more than that.

Hee.


And then, at the Mall, Pammy has a moment with herself:

"We are going to regret this."

"We are going to regret not buying it."

"When we're poor and our paycheck is late, can we eat the dress?"

"But our paycheck won't be late."

"It's been late too many goddamn times."

"But it's soooooo nice."

"Remember, we tried it on and even Melda said it was nice?"

"No she didn't, she just nodded a little."

"Come on, you like it too."

"Yeah, but is it worth it?"

"Yesssssss. Can you see the fine stitching? And the lovely soft denim?? Come on....."

"This will look great with our boots."

"Which one?"

"All of them."

------
And then LemurGirl ( her paycheck sez she's a bookseller) reports from the front lines:

Stupidest phone call of the night:

This woman calls and asks if we have news crews there. Thinking that she's concerned about crowd factor and her children's privacy, I assure her that we do not and everythings going great. She says, "Oh, no, that's OK. We just got our books early in the mail today and we wanted to come down and show them off."

I was thinking, "What the fuck?" but said "Well, uh, ...we don't have a news crew here."

She said, "Well. Okay, whatever. Bye." and hung up — like she had tons of bookstores to call and see if she could shove her precious darlings in front of giant cameras and taunt the people waiting for their copies of HPATOOTP.

Wacko.

Uh, no baby - YOURE my LemurWOMAN. Girl. Woman. See? No, I dont have a crush on her, its you and only you...

Plus, Ive never even read Harry Potter.

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Id definitely wanna read the books written by these three folks...