The Agrinautica

   A Week Ago: I hung out with Chief Justice Khan of the Judicial Horde Supreme Court of the student government of Mount San Antonio College down at Laguna Beach last Sunday, because you know, us Chief Justices gotta stick together (Rehnqvist couldn't make it, said he wasn't feeling well. pff).


The 70s House
   Sometime midweek we got a call for an abandoned house in Nellie Gail (where rich people who don't feel like they need to be walled in live). Technician Ryan went out there. The rest of us were cleaning the garage I think. Then he called in for "every available technician" to come back him up, so we all piled out there.
   We arrive on scene and there are three raging colonies. Like each one of these would have been massive on its own. When we were done Ryan's truck was completely full with 10 of the five gallon buckets full of honey & comb, and there was more in the other trucks. We pull 4-500 pounds of honey out of those things altogether.
   How'd these colonies get so big? Well the house has been abandoned since the 70s. Or rather, it was owned but I think its rich owner forgot that he owned this little house. This little house had like 10 bedrooms, including one that was definitely only for the servant (it only opened to the kitchen).
   So inside the place was all 70sed out. But not just any 70s but rich people 70s. It was like something out of Austen Powers, with huge fancy completely obsolete TVs and radios, and a whole crapload of surveillance cameras that were all huge.
   Place hadn't been visited by its owner in forever. There were fish living in the pool. Squatters and pillagers had apparently already given the house a shake-down. Everything of value had been removed. Someone had hacked the lock to the master bedroom to submission. There was however one part of the house that all these years still retained its secrets -- the garage remains solidly locked. Considering the awesomeness of the rest of the house and the thoroughness with which its been scoured for things of value, the garage really piques the curiousity. There are two abandoned cars in front of the garage.
   Whats weird though is when I hear abandoned (or type it) I picture these things being all rusty and overgrown, graphitied and open to the elements. But its more like a normal house just stopped being used for thirty years. No broken windows, no graphiti. Cars looked completely fine except all tires were completely flat. Ryan drank a coca-cola he found in the refridgerator (which still reeked of food that had long since gone terribly bad since the refridgerator was no longer operating)
   Man I wish I'd taken pictures. One of us is going back on Monday to check on the bees. I hope its whomever I'm runnin around with so I can take some pictures.


Return to Wild Rivers
   So I've been meaning to go back to Wild Rivers with Alexis the Frenchman. Last two weekends I had plans that fell through on account of not being able to get ahold of anyone on the inside to get me $14 discount tickets.
   Finally I got forrest441 (Jeff Whetstone) to volunteer to get me the employee discount tickets, but more importantly, this caused me to deal with the will-call people down in Admissions. Jeff hadn't communicated the will-call to them yet but "its okay, we remember your brother" (my little brother worked as a cashier at WR).
   So me and the Frenchman show up. When we get to will-call we're still not on the will-call list. The Admissions supervisor who happened to be in the kiosk without even looking up told the 14 yr-old attendroid who was attending to us just to print us two tickets. So she printed two tickets and gave them to us and we were in... for free!

   My friend Hannah was supervising today. Or rather being a supervisor-in-training, or a "semivisor" as I like to call the position. Its the highest my WR career led me. When I met Hannah she was just a wee "ride attendant," and now she's on her way to live my supervising dreams for me.
   Shortly I encountered ultravisor Randy Jostlin (sp on that last name?), who gave Alexis and I free wristbands to the stronger wavepool where one can go boogie-boarding. What was really odd was that just as I was talking to Randy about my bee busting job, a bee landed on my hand. It was like magic or something.
   And so everything was going awesome and for once I felt like Wild Rivers was actually treating me well rather than raining weaksauce upon me. But I should have known the day was going too well, when we returned to my krismobile, my keys had disappeared!!
   Now this was quite odd since I DIDN'T lose the money or ticket stubs in my pocket. I dove to the bottem of "Blizzard Bazooka Bowls" but didn't find them down there, and Jeff (forrest441) let me swim around in the stronger wavepool with goggles to look for them but no luck.
   And I didn't recognize nearly any of the current deep guards or even some of the supervisors!! I've been gone too long. /=


Picture of the Day

Now that my flickr account is all full up I'm very reluctant to add new things.. d=

   When I ride around with Bobby, his truck has no CD player, nor even a tape player, so we are stuck with the radio. I've found that he usually ends up with it on this hip-hop station most of the time. Now I've never been fond of this kind of music, but I had managed to avoid it heretofore at least enough not to realize they only ever have like three songs in their rotation. There's the song where every line ends in "me" (oh now there's a clever rhyme), the one where 80% of the lines are "go 'head girl get down," and the one where the singer is talking about the slimey ass pickup lines he uses (though in context he acts like he's the shit). Also, how can any female be into this music?? -- every single song on the hip-hop rotations is ridiculously chauvinistic and sexist.

   With Jeremy the fair is more varied because he has a CD player and we usually listen to his CDs, which tend to be in a generally indie direction. Once we committed mass bee murder to the postal service.
   Anyway, since Jeremy has a CD player and decent musical taste, I thought I'd burn a CD of my favourite music for us to rock out to on occasion. So I selected a variety of what I consider to be some of the best songs ever written. In the order they are on on the CD I made (which is very roughly in order of best to 22nd best, but arranged to space out songs by the same artist as much as possible), they are:

1. Flogging Molly - Selfish Man
2. Against Me! - Pints of Guinness Make You Strong
3. Dropkick Murphys - Drinking and Driving
4. Momsex - Zombies vs Pirates
5. Bloodhound Gang - I Hope You Die
6. Cocksparrer - Take `Em All
7. Cockney Rejects - Oi Oi Oi
8. D Generation - Hatred
9. Flogging Molly - Devil's Dance Floor
10.Against Me! - Walking Is Still Honest
11.Dropkick Murphys - Which Side Are You On?
12.Momsex - Necrophilia (A Metaphor)
13.Flogging Molly - Tobacco Island
14.Dropkick Murphys - Irish Stout vs German Lager
15.Momsex - Stuart
16.Flogging Molly - The Worst Day Since Yesterday
17.Dropkick Murphys - Do Or Die
18.Flogging Molly - Another Bag of Bricks
19.Dropkick Murphys - Boys on the Docks
20.Flogging Molly - Black Friday Rule
21.Flogging Molly - Drunken Lullabies
22.Dropkick Murphys - Gonna be a Blackout Tonight

Picture of the Day

Previously on Emosnail
   Two Years Ago Friday: The Last Time I Saw Brianna LeMay & Carissa Romanini - They randomly showed up at Diedrichs one day. I think I hadn't seem them in nine months and I haven't seen them since. I'd really like to get back in touch with them.
   Two Years Ago Yesterday: Being xHoney.Bee.Corex - if only I knew, eh? Manned a booth for the OC Beekeepers Assn at the OC Faire.
   Year Ago Friday: Show at Jesska Ornstein's House - Jack Bighead (Robin Kivlin's band) plays. ambiguouscase and eatrice are also there. Also I poll Emosnail readers to see how well they are paying attention: only a little over half of you got the sea lion's name correct (Bolderic), readers overwhelmingly indicated that Kristy "possesses breathtaking beauty," and most of you totally failed to guess where my father and his father before him were born (Rio de Jeniero, Brazil, NOT Kilkenny, Ireland. Sheesh).. and more.
   Year Ago Today: R.I.P. Eric Bartrum - and polls indicate that most readers (35.7%), if they were to name Bolderic the Sea Lion a name other than Bolderic, they would name him "Trogdor of the Sea," followed by "The Sneak" (21.4%).

   Today at work I marauded around the county with a different technician, Jeremy. He's around my age as well. One of the homeowners asked if we were brothers.

   Our first job this morning was this obnoxious Indian lady who had like seen four bees and called us. I don't think I saw a single bee at her house. Jeremy tried to tell her the only bees he saw were just randomly flying around (she'd made him climb onto the roof to look). She told us to spray them. We told her there was nothing to spray. She told us to spray them. We did some spraying. She told us we had not sprayed.

   "I'd rather have fifteen bees stinging my face than have two cockroaches on my foot" - Jeremy, on why he would never do generic pest control.
   We ran into some generic pest control guys in Carls Jr. Cue western music.

   Had my first yellow jacket nest today. After countless bee colonies and wasps, we finally actually got out the full bee suits for these guys. From all accounts yellow jackets are by far the most belligerent and unpleasant to deal with. After we turned the yellow jacket nest into Halabja we removed the comb and wrapped it in plastic because people back at central command wanted to see what yellow jacket comb looks like. It looks like bee comb without honey -- and the grubs squirm a lot.


   Report on the weekend adventures not ready yet, hopefully tomorrow.

Picture of the Day

"park behind the police and other official vehicles in front of the arrivals terminal, leave the blinkers on, find the white courtesy phone in baggage claim 4, they will give you further instructions." Later instructions included finding the man with one red shoe, conveying the secret password and passing off a locked briefcase. No just kidding but we thought the white courtesy phone thing was a bit weird. Anyway, this is how we ended up on the tarmac at John Wayne (Orange County) Airport, executing a swarm of bees on a conveyor truck between two United 757s.

   Spent a bunch of time of roofs today. This one crazy lady swore she had wasps and would not talk about bees with our dispatcher. Upon arrival it was evident that anyone with the most basic understanding of the respective insects would know these were clearly bees. There was a mammoth colony on her roof that had been there for at least a year by the looks of it. And then she refused to pay the $125 death to bees fee. We settled for $100, but those crazy entrenched bees she has tehre are gonna need a a follow up and $300 worth of work to get them out, so take that, crazy lady.

   Two swarms on my former high school, Mission Viejo HS, today.


In Unrelated News: it makes me sad that there aren't really any updates on the (former) list of 30 in 30 2005 participants. Everyone has returned into the dark crevices from whence they came.

Previously on Emosnail
   Two Years Ago Today: Debauchery at Top of the World - And Brandon the Gay Poser (BtGP) once again tries to molest a female.
   Year Ago Today: Interests Meme - Compare to the same meme this year.