he's a spitter, sir

so i had court again yesterday. like usual, i woke up too early and had lots of time to kill. i showered, shaved, and got ready. i decided i did not want to wear a suit. i didn't eat anything before i went in. i probably should have, but it turned out ok. the typical cast of orem 4th district court were present and accounted for and even a cameo appearance by one of the more depraved sort were in attendance, so the events of the day gave me enough energy to sustain myself til i could get some food. so i walk in and sit down and there was this guy wearing some sort of netted contraption on his head in the holding box. it had like a cloth thing around the bottom covering his mouth. i wondered if it was because he was sick. well i didn't think much about it other than he just looked kinda crazy. which was fine. i dig the crazies. there were the normal dui, unpaid fines, reviews and pre-trial stuff. there was one kid who got busted smoking weed in a park out of an apple core. the judge gave him shit about smoking weed in one of the most conspicuous places possible. and i concur. this ain't a big place. cops don't really have much to do here. and most citizens are more than happy to call them. why do you think they call it dope, dope. well the crazy guy with the face thing got called up and the judge asked if he had a health problem, to which the prosecutor nonchalantly called out, "no sir, he's a spitter", to which the judge responded with some incredulity; "a spitter? you spit on people? why do you spit on people? who did you spit on", and the prosecutor, the acme of nonchalance, responded, "um, a transportation officer and one of the officers here, sir", and the judge says "ok i'm not going to talk to you until you can learn how to not spit on people, so we're going to hold you for another day to see if you can get that thing off your head" to which mr.crazy responded, "i don't do that anymore judge", and the nonchalant proseutor fired back, "he spit on someone today, sir" and the judge, in his wisdom, says, "ok, take him out" and mr.crazy, of course is trying to convince the judge in the worst way that he does not spit at people anymore and that he doesn't do that sort of thing, and the judge keeps saying the court will hold him for as long as we need to, by this time the guy is up to two days in the hole and makes it out of the courtroom door into the holding cell where everyone gets to hear him shoot a few fuck yous and assholes at the cops and the judge, to which the judge replies "or, five days". i got a pretty good laugh out of it. i think the judge and the prosecutor thought it was funny too, ecause when the judge caught me laughing, he didn't say anthing. this was about the 4th or 5th time i've been busted laughing by the judge in court, and i guess if he had a problem with it he would have said something. i guess he was happy to have an audience, because i kept noticing him glancing at me anytime he said something sarcastic in court. like am i the only person who is entertained by court proceedings? anyway, i was the last person to go and i got a continuance, and after wards i stuck around a sec to ask the pub defender a question and before i could get his attention the judge went off record and the lawyers and the judge started talking about the crazy guy. i tried my hardest to not pay attention to what they were saying, but my mothers side of the family has taught me better. i think when you're privy to certain information its perfectly acceptable to be a fly on the wall and act like you have no idea you're privy. it turns out mr.crazy had decided to start throwing shit at the cops. like turds. out of his butt. and hit one of the cops in the face. it took everything i had not to pitch my head back and laugh at the top of my lungs, but i succeeded. i made a face that looked as if i was surprised any one in the criminal system would ever do such a thing. so after wards i went to school and got some lunch. by this time i was starving. i got a crappy chicken broccoli casserole thing and a salad at the cafeteria. along with a cherry 7-up. i love cherry 7-up. god bless the inventors of cherry flavored syrup. so i went to class and we talked about the dadas and their approach to technology. pretty cool discussion. then i went to work and played a game called ballon invasion for 3 hours straight. i then left work and got a sub sandwich that was soggy and lame. i did have some sour cream and cheddar chips though. can't lose with those. i was pretty beat from the the show the night before and it was only about 5:45 so i got a vanilla frappuchino to wake me up. didn't work. i wasted some more time online before i went to the dada cinema where we watched a few episodes of the 3 stooges. one of my favorite tv shows ever. i doubt there is an episode i haven't seen. i used to watch it daily when i was a kid and teenager. i'm glad alex showed these. i'm gonna start watching again. i went home and sat on the couch and watched tv and hung out with dave and lex for a bit then went to bed.

combo!

so i woke up late, no thanks to william willett, and i roped maggot into taking me to school by bribing her with Einsteins bagels, but we took too long at Einsteins so i missed math. i've really sucked about going to math lately. i went to the computer lab and fooled around then went to the cafeteria and got a salad. yup. i put lettuce and spinach and hard boiled egg, and chicken chunks and kidney beans, and cheese and ranch dressing. missing math all came back to me as i walked down the hall after the dada class and i ran into my little phillipina math teacher and she had to give me crap about missing class but i redirected the conversation towards something i had been reading about. longanisa. its a phillipino sausage thats supposed to be sweet. she told me where to find it and how to cook it, then told me she was going to make me cook it at her house when i learned how. i'm kinda scared of her. after that i went to work. errin was in a meeting the whole time so i was pretty bored. maggot came to pick me up and we went to las tarascas. i got the carne asada burrito and it was pretty damn good. i ate too much which sucked because me and maggot were supposed to go play tennis. yup. tennis. we actually ended up playing a few hours later after letting the food digest. we both sucked. after we played tennis we sat around for a while then went to smiths and i found some rad mexican confection that i knew jesse would dig on. when we got back to maggots i decided to experiment. i made a turkey reuben. i don't usually condone this type of thing but it turned out so very good. i usually don't put mayo on my reuben but i kinda mixed the turkey melt with the reuben so necessity dictated i put mayo on it. it turned out great. maggot got upset because i wasn't talking to her when i was eating it. i really couldn't talk because it was that good. we then watched more venture brothers. i was going to try to eat some dessert, but i'm too full. i'll do that in the morning.

eat right in

no breakfast. i had to drop off my rent check to the worst property management company in provo. aspen ridge. if you decide to move to a new place, make damn sure they don't manage the property. i've never encountered as much ineptitude in the 4 weeks they've managed my apartment. lost y rent check, lost our contracts, harassed me for a week about someone else's rent. i can't wait to see what happens this month. after math (i stayed this time) i decided to bail on the brit lit class. i figured i spent enough time researching the great plague that i could afford a few days off from that torture. so i went to the computer lab, started in on some math homework and did that for about an hour then got hungry and heated up the leftover chicken broccoli pesto i made last night. man, that is some rich food. that meal stayed with me most of the day. after the dada class i was walking with some of the newspaper kids and we were talking about maybe making this blog part of like a food column. i'm down with that. i wonder if UVSC is down. get ready. so i went to work and did more math and was generally bored then caught the bus home. maggot picked me up and we went to her house to hang out and make dinner etc. one of my favorite things to do is find whatever food maggot has laying aroud and make some totally tasty out of it. today we made like a broccoli rice velveeta cream of mushroom casserole with grilled chicken breasts. it wasn't bad. i forgot about the chicken and burned it a bit and it ried out as a result. the casserole part was the best. i threw in some rosemary and some greek seasoning and S&P and covered it ad threw it in the over for a while. while we waited i posted some pictures of the show on facebook and maggot played jaws. after we ate we sat around and now we're having a laptop party and are generally being boring. i doubt i'll eat again today. see you tomorrow.

the great plague

so i did it. i finally read about the great plague of 1665. and i gave my presentation and it was good. i don't think the kids in my class were any more bored than usual, so i counted it as a success. the coolest thing about this presentation was the color image of y.pestis i printed out. i think i'm going to use that image again sometime for a flyer or something. i skipped math again today because our crazy phillipina teacher was out of town and she had a sub come in. who does that? subs blow. i ended up going to the computer lab and researched more on the plague. i even had transparencies for my presentation. maggot called me an underachiever because i didn't read every single book and article ever written about anything having anything to do with the plague. after the brit lit class i rolled on over to the cafeteria to see what dining services had whipped up. i got the chicken cordon bleu and cheesy potatoes and a roll. its a thing of wonder how dining services can dry out a piece of chicken. it didn't taste bad, but i had to drink about a gallon of water to reconstitute it. they even managed to dry out cheesy potatoes. may the lord have mercy on them. after lunch i went to class and was super tired, probably because my body expended so much energy trying to digest dehydrated food. we talked more in the dada class about chance operations and john cage. in my opinion john cage is probably second only to duchamp in developing some of the coolest ways of approaching the act of making art. one of cages ideas that i love most is when he says that art isn't made in merely capturing nature, but in capturing the function of nature. i totally paraphrased that, so don't get all correcty on me. on our way to work, grabbo and i realized that once you cross the threshold of the GT building your i.q. seems to drop exponentially and you start talking like a backwoods retard. all we seemed to want to do on the first floor in that building was fix stuff. i don't get it. and once you pass the music department and into the service elevator things go back to normal. after work i had to run home and grab my small 'zine collection because me and vegor and brendan from the dada class were meeting to discuss the class 'zine. i'm really excited for this, not because i'm excited to see what my peers will turn in, rather i'm excited to see how much i can enrage my peers for destroying their carefully constructed "dada" work. i dont think they have any clue whats going to happen to their precious projects they worked so hard on getting "right". and since i doubt very few, if any will read this, its still going to be a big ol surprise. after we were done with our meeting vegor gave brendan and i a little truffle. i snagged an extra one for maggot because its still margrukkah (the week leading up to maggots b-day). maggot picked me up from the meeting and we went to las tarascas. i think this is the last time we'll go for a while, because i've been like 4 times in like 2 weeks and i don't want to burn out. i got gorditas again, but this time i got them with carne asada. score. next time i'm gonna try something new. and their beans give el salvadoran a run for their money. we thought we might go see a movie tonight, but hollywood sucks and i can't justify paying money simply for kitsch value. so we just went to her house and sat around. i know, i lead the most exciting life possible.

i hope you have a good nights sleep

thats what a giant polynesian guy said to the judge today in court. as he was being escorted out by the bailiff. he woudn't shut up and he kept going on and on about not having to pay a fine for having piles of garbage laying around his house for like a year. part of me wanted to say, yeah, let him have his piles of crap wherever he wants, it his property, but he got so annoying so quickly i was really hoping the bailiff would taze him to get him to shut up. at one point he even asked the judge to lend him some money to help pay the fine. finally the guy tarted to get visibly agitated and the bailiff moved in on him and started escorting him out and by this time he was telling the courtroom how he couldn't sleep at night and he wondered out loud how the judge slept at night and then started repeating, "judge i hope you can sleep at night, i hope you have a good nights sleep." so funny. me and jesse were sitting in the back cracking up, as were most other people. court in orem is pretty funny. i kinda wish i had a laugh track to go along with all the dumb asses that infest this place. the judge put one guy in time out in the jury box to think because he wouldn't tell the judge about his prior convictions. so funny. when i got up to the lectern i did the most sensible thing possible. pled guilty. just kidding, i pled not guilty. i think i was the most sensibly dressed, i was wearing some grey pants with a black v-neck sweater and a white shirt and a light blue tie (bradx says blue makes people trust you) and i was clean shaven (i know, right?) and i was the picture of innocence. they got nothin on this babyface. so afterwards i filled out the paperwork to get a public defender and then jesse dropped me off at school. as a result of mowing the hair off my face i got tons of predictably strange looks from classmates and professors alike. ok, i shaved, get over it, it will be back in a week. so on my way to the dada class i stopped at the teryaki stix and got myself a bowl of sweet and sour chicken. totally unsatisfying. i should have gotten the curry or the orange chicken. and it didn't really even fill me up, which is strange because usually one of those rice bowls there makes me so full i can't even think. after dada i wandered up to the office and hung out there for a bit with errin and vegor and then left when vegor left to go to work. i needed more food and no one would take me to costco to get a hot dog, and she knows who she is. so me and vegor rode the bus to the mall (he works at the woodbury gallery) and i stopped in at sbarro and got a slice of pizza (pepperoni, duh) and ate on that for a while til it was safely tucked away in my innards. i then made my way over to macys where i had my pimp-ass suit waiting for me. and glory, it was done! so i got them to wrap it up and i was off. i rode the bus to my house and hung out for a while with lex watching king of the hill and was hungry again. like for some reason i have been starving all damn day and no food has been able to satisfy me yet (insert satisfy me by the carbonas here). so i talked lex into walking over to gandalfos (we live like 2 blocks from the one in downtown provo) and i braved their reuben. it was actually pretty good. the marbled rye they used had caraway seeds in it so that kinda threw me off, but other than that it was pretty damn good. i don't remember it being as well made before. the corned beef they used was super tasty and it came as close to anything today to filling my voracious ass up. lex and i parted ways because i was headed back to school to watch a screening of modern times. man this is one of my new favs. i realy love this film. and i'm also in love with paulette goddard. i think very soon i want to work out some of the themes in this film with some of the themes in society of the spectacle, and some of deleuzes' ideas on lines of flight. chaplin is/was a genius. why hasn't anyone ever made me sit and watch this shit? i plan, very soon, on watching tons of chaplin. maybe all at once on a day or weekend when i have no commitments. at the screening (which is part of this dada class i'm taking) old man mike made popcorn and me and torben at most of it. yes, i was still hungry. i washed it down with a sunkist. i love sunkist. after the screening me and grabbo and torben chatted for a bit then i walked out to catch the bus. on the way home i decided to document my bus ride home. after watching modern times i was thinking about how important movement was to the film, not just the physical movement of the machines, but movement from place to place, movement from idea to idea, movement from poor to rich, homeless to indigence, movement from being human to being machine (or incorporation into machinery), the obvious theme of dynamism (cogs, labor struggles) and how we are supposed to interpret and adapt to change is completely subverted by chaplin throughout the film. the only times he is happy is when he's in jail or with "gamin" and at these points he's homeless and jobless (squatting doesn't count because you aren't paying for it, right?) and even in the "home" setting the house itself seems to reject chaplin, so he has to sleep in the woodshed to escape the risk of harm inflicted by the house, his adapting to this setting is very unorthodox, just like his form of adapting to work in a factory is a nervous breakdown. this is easy commentary, but i think it illustrates the underlying concept of movement by showing that expected types of adaptations aren't always productive and that certain elements within our structured environments need to be subverted in order to make them livable, which involve things like fleeing work or avoiding the happy home. so as i rode home on the bus i took out my camera and took pictures of passing cars and lights and people inside the bus. the photos themselves are meaningless until the idea of subverting our environment through different types of movement is considered. the photos don't make sense unless you pay attention to the movement documented. its hard to steady a camera on a bus. i loved seeing how the photos differed from what i experienced. the mechanical eye of the camera interprets motion much differently than my brain. lines turn into curves and curves blur across the screen making a mess of time and place. people are seen doing multiple actions or movements or expressions simultaneously. the bus driver smiles and frowns in the same second. a car, my hand and the giant left turn arrow are given equal footing though each inhabit separate spheres. i don't know if i actually subverted my environment, but the act of taking photos of the movement of lights and people and structures within the bus allowed me to experiment with the simultaneity of my surrounding space. after i got off the bus i walked over to maggots and i'm still friggin hungry.