The Agrinautica

Quotes
"After killing bees all day how can you sleep at night?" -Alvin Tsao
"Well, its 3am and I'm not asleep am I." -Me. I wouldn't sleep for 20 more hours or so.*

Office Dave was shleffing through business cards looking for the silkscreener who made our shirts last time. He came upon a card from someone we rent lifts from or something, the company was named something like "John's High Reaching" or long reaching or something.
"You ever wonder how people get into things like this? Like did John just wake up one day and go shit, I'm good at reaching shit, I should start a reaching company dammit" -Me.
"Yeah how do people these weird businesses... like bees..." -someone else
"I just woke up one morning and was like you know what I want to do when I grow up, I want to reach my arm into holes filled with bees!!" -Jeremy

Jeremy is gassin some bees, I'm standing next to the truck, a guy comes by and sees the bees flying around the dying colony:
"Are the doing that because there's a queen there?" -guy
"uh.... there's always a queen. -Me, after being dumbfounded for a minute on how to even respond to that.
"but they're doing that because there's a queen there right?"
"uh.. there's always a queen, you have bees, you have a queen."

"There's the bees" -some client
"um sir, thats a pinecone" -one of the technicians, arriving at a call that turned out to be a pinecone.

*but I had just woken up from five hours of sleep you see.


Today
   Today I finally got down to Diedrichs again, for the first time in at least a week. Alexis the Frenchman came as well. There were two chess boards going at Diedrichs. The regular chess games are starting to attract more chess enthusiasts. Today there was this guy Brett who teaches Chess to the children of rich people for $30 was down there. He was damn good and gave a few pointers to everyone. There was also this guy Jim who is 62 and has three masters degrees. Then this middle-aged guy who it appears had just come in for coffee joined a game.
   Former Diedrichs-area security guard Danny showed up which was awesome because I hadn't seen him in a year and he is awesome.
   After Diedrichs closed down after 10:00 Alexis went with Mike & Brian to this bar/place called Le Cave that purportedly was pretty cool and had jazz music. I didn't go though because jazz music usually involves saxophones and saxophones to me are like nails on chalkboards. Apparently they continued to play chess there.
   After they left Brett and I ended up talking about logical fallacies, paradoxes, & logical riddles. Eventually we went to Harbour House to continue talking, and played some chess.

In Other News" my laptop which is essentially dead at this point.


Previously on Emosnail
   Two Years Ago Thursday: First Occasional LJ Awards - & I see Bullets N Octane at Chain Reaction, & hang out with Hannah at Wild Rivers
   Two Years Ago Today: Getting Hassled By The Constabulary - And hanging out with Jimmy McTaig & making the Steel Reserve shirt and hanging out with Hannah at Wild Rivers.
   Year Ago Wednesday: Peasants Quest comes out!!! - And pictures of Petey & Shalane.
   Year Ago Thursday: Gutter Punk Trogdor!!! - and some chillaxing at Diedrichs

edit: original post time: 04:37 (moved to 23:37 to put on previous day)

   So early in the afternoon Shalane and I set off to take Mike tHH to jail in Orange.
   Then we went looking for this place the cobbler called "craft-fors" that was at McFadden and Harbour and supposedly had cheap docs. Well we get there and find a "crawfords," but there waren't no docs there. So I bought shoelaces instead.
   Then Shillelagh's friend (future roommate) Lori made us food while we watched the only segment of Pulp Fiction we'd both seen already*.
   Then them kids shleffed their stuff into their new apartment while I bollocksed about with Megan. The end.


*I think this is a good example of resistenialism, the theory that inanimate objects demonstrate hostile behavior against us. [from Latin res (thing) + French resister (to resist) + existentialism (a kind of philosophy).]
( More on Resistentialism )

Wednesday: Last Final
   Last Wednesday (03/25/04) I had my last final, ENL113A, at 0800. It was mad easy. Then I said goodbye to Kristy, and proceeded to sleep away the rest of the afternoon.


Thursday: The Journey Home
   Thursday morning my uncle Ben gave me a ride across town to the Davis Amtrak station for my 0725 Amtrak bus to Stockton (hour & 25 minutes). Waited there for half an hour and then it was time for the four hour, 26 minute, trainride to Bakersfield. Then the funnest part [/sarcasm] two hours and twenty minutes on a bus sitting next to a crazy guy down to Los Angeles' Union Station. Fifty-five minute wait thee and then hour and three minute train ride to Irvine station. Total time: 10 hours, 47 minutes.
   No I didn't time everything, those are the official times I was given.

   That evening I just loafed about at home and took it easy.


Friday: Return to Diedrichs
   Friday afternoon I went on some adventures with Shalane (impotent_dream). She's been drug-free for 66 days now and its so nice to have sober Shillelagh back and I'm so happy for her.
   She's in Mexico now for the weekend.
   I really like her latest drawing Fig. S20 (apparently thats even a bad scan). Compare to pre-drugs Fig. S19.

   Then my good friend Alex called and her and her friend Oi Kelly came to visit me. Our initial plan was to stop by infamous Diedrichs off La Paz to get coffee and then come up with a new plan and have adventures elsewhere. Arriving at Diedrichs at around 9pm, we ended up staying there until about 1am.
   At first there didn't seem to be very many locals there that I knew.. just this guy Ryan who works there and Tristan.. then Croat (inequity) showed up, and Cool Kyle, and MtHH (who was suprisingly agreeable).
   Then, most suprising of all, my cousin Holly (bobolly), and her boyfriend / our longtime family friend Eric Shamay (shamster) showed up; apparently because they were in the area and suspected correctly that they could find me there.


   Tried this "Cisco" alcohol Croat's been raving about. Tasted like utter crap but it did give me a rather pleasent buzz with no inkling of sickness its true (going down it felt like it was gonna make me sick though). How can you be hard core drinking something strawberry flavoured though?


In Other News
   Little brother Lance Corporal Fricke was just notified that he will be sent to Iraq as early as this Wedneday.

   Mother just got a new job working in the office of the Assistant Vice Chancellor of Communications at UCI.

   Eric (Lance Corporal Fricke) had actually just started working at mother's previous place of employment, The Yarn Lady when he got notified of his immenent departure. He promptly was like "eff that!" and after a career of one day retired from the Yarn Lady.

   I used my last package of Knox Gelatine trying (rather unsuccessfully) to spike my hair on Friday. I'm now on a mission to discover a more effective way of doing it, since spiking with the gelatine is just about impossible to do alone.
   I washed out my miserable attempt at spiking with gelatine after it had been in less than three hours and tried again with this weird gel Shalane's friend gave me and it worked pretty well. I want to experiment with murrey's wax and aquanette hairspray next.. and if I get desperate maybe look into this egg white thing.


Related
   A Year Ago Today: Taco Loco, Solomite Show, Diedrichs, & Denny's
   Holly's reference to these events
   Eric's reference to these events

   So yesterday I wore my Steel Reserve shirt cause Becka and I were GOING to take pictures to go along with the fan mail we wrote to send to the Steel Brewing Company.. but as I said the digital camera was AWOL.
   Upon arriving at Diedrichs Mike the Horrible Human greeted me with "hey dumbass, you forgot an E on steele!" Now this of course was so flabbergastingly stupid it took me a second to figure where to even begin. Then I was like "uh. You are either dyslexic, or illiterate. Steel has two Es on the can and anywhere else." It turns out him and his friend Tom the Horrible Human's Stooge (THHS) both made shirts that say "steele reserve." Hahahahaha awwwwwwwww they're dumb! Later on when THHS himself was there MtHH was like "Hey look Kris spelled steele wrong!" and I laughed at them both again (well THHS hadn't been around for the first incident). I think MtHH motivation here was to prove that he wasn't the only person who spelled it wrong.. to bring his henchman down to the same level of shame as he. Isn't it cute how horrible people treat eachother?
   Much later as I was leaving THHS came up to me and was like "hey do you have a fireplace?" me: "uh, why?" "you should burn that shirt as soon as you get home" (MtHH is always threatening to set my shirt on fire. My shirt enrages him, presumably because he has the same shirt but spelled wrong).
   Now this minion of MtHH's, Tom; how pitiful must one be to idolize MtHH??


   In other news, it is now September; rumour has it that my one and only Ex-girlfriend will be returning from Bulgaria (map2) this month. But none of us have heard anything for a long time now.

   Yesterday there was some famous surfer at Wild Rivers. Some people were very riled up about it. One Sunny Garcia, anyone heard of him? I saw him.. he had lots of tattoos.

   Last night there was totally thunder and lightning and rain. I loved it no end. No really. I want to live somewhere where they get thunder and lightning every day.
   Some random kids from Las Vegas hung out with us at diedrichs. There was Joe the guy who got jessie all drugged up and boned her, and man he kept peeling in and out of the parking lot no end.. everyone was terrified he'd smash into their cars or a building, and generally found it very unfavorable behavior. Then there was Joe's girlfriend Allison, who he surely was cheating on when he boned Jessie; and there was this big cuban guy.
   When I got there I was like hmm.. something seems different.. its unusually pleasant... omg Mike the Horrible Human isn't here!! He later showed up and I gave him some of my steel reserve because he asked and I do what I can even for my sworn enemies. I'm twice as rightious as thou art. He had shaven off his mohawk to throw off the cops, so now he looks skinhead core. I think I'll try to put him in an awkward situation with some black gangstas.


   I swear there could totally be a daily half hour tv show about the adventures of the diedrichs crew.


   Sean Wallitch and I were discussing The Pirate Movie ( more on that... )

   I spent mass time driving around and finally found Ace hardware, whereupon I spent $1.29 on a new Thingy to hold my chains to my belt.

   My god the roads are swarming with "Hummer H2"s. And man.. these things are freakin the biggest (and most hideious) joke since the PT Cruiser. Like.. the "original" hummer is entirely utilitarian and thats what the big deal is, and besides that it has this for awesome predatory hyena kinda look to it right? The new one for all practical purposes is just a giant SUV, that probably is worse at SUVing than a real SUV, and LOOKS like some horrible cross between a rhinoceros and a school bus.

   There were 53 people at Diedrichs tonight, not including our group. Most of them were these teenie-bopper types who we're pretty sure were also jesus-freaks.

   Mike the Horrible Human was pushing the limits of getting in a fight with me pretty close today. I was thinking about it and even though he is bigger than me, he is a COMPLETE alcoholic and I'm SURE he doesn't work out.. whereas I'm actually in pretty good shape right now... just gotta keep an eye out for his switchblade.....

   Friday night Robin Kivlen had a party. It was pretty for awesome. Now Robin I have known since 4th grade I believe, though we have gone to seperate schools most of the time since.. but we've hung out like once a year in that time... so all these people at his party were like "hey I met you once three years ago." It was weird. And then a few Diedrichs kids showed up, namely Olivia, and Alyssa.
   Most of the kids were Capo graduates. Lets review: Robin's friends - from Capo HS; Diedrichs kids - from Capo HS; Liz's friends who I hung out with all last summer - from Capo HS; where did I go? - Mission Viejo HS. I swear I should just start wearing a Capo HS shirt or something.
   There was this guy Brad whom neither he nor I could convince certain people we were not brothers, and they instead were trying to guess whether or not he and I were TWINS. Way weird. And there was this dude Reno who is like the OC version of Stan I swear: (A) he purportedly ALWAYS wears a suit (B) he can be easily compelled to sing the soviet anthem while drunk. Hmm I think I'll put the soviet anthem on right now.
   And then of course there was Laura:
Girl: This is Nigel*
Laura: Yes I've met him before [departs, other girl wanders off shortly]
Me: .....was that... the girl I spent the whole time talking to at that one party a year or two ago?
Robin: Yes.
   Annnd then I was emo. I had spent the whole time talking to her at this one party and then she somehow convinced me to dance using her devious female ways, and my complete inability to dance immediately overcame the previous hours of conversation and caused her to abandon me and flee. I totally hadn't recognized her though.


   Then there was Wild Rivers on Saturday morning. The general overview goes along the lines of: swim for two hours (inservice), idle about, swim for another hour (deepguard "tryout"), work, swim for another half hour (swim break), work...
   I did the deep tryout rescues (even though I'm already deep, and have already done deep "area training," which also involved extensive swimming, we have to tryout every year) with David Jeffry, the newest supervisor. We wasted soo much time and had altogether too much fun swimming around in the wavepool. At that time there were about a dozen people in the stronger wavepool ("hurricane harbour" I think? None of US ever call it that, its just the "farther wavepool," and no, six flags stole the name from us), ALL of whom were employees. It was way funny.
   Sometimes we have someone rotating around giving people "swim breaks" whereupon they go swim in the aforementioned wavepool for 15 to 30 minutes. Usually its a set amount of laps or something but this time it was entirely undefined.. I was told "just float around for 15 minutes or something" so I frolicked for awhile.. unfortunately I had just eatin though. And on that note Wild Rivers now has the bessst hot dogs omg.
   Also I determined that I definitely do have more seniority than about two thirds of the supervisors.


   Eric from The List (citizene) is down for the weekend, so after coming home for about fifteen minutes from work I headed out to cause trouble with him. We went to Diedrichs and chilled with the crew there, then we all proceeded up to Top of the World, where the usual kind of festivities transpired, only with Eric in attendence.
   Then we went back to Diedrichs to get the free pizza hut, which we were successful at. Various people showed up to return to their cars, among them Jessie, and Anna who talked about how this guy whose nickname is apparently "HIV" tried to hit on Anna and how the totally approved of Mike the Horrible Human. Which brings up a subject which I think makes him twice as bad as if he were just a complete asshole. He is totally nice to any female he thinks he might be able to bone. Like.. and good enough at it that he seems sincere to them.
   We spent about an hour talking and trying to think of something better to do, eventually going to taco loco at like 1:30. The End.


   *my name is Nigel, didn't you know?

rescues saturday: 1
career rescues: 67

   So yesterday I wanted to hang out with the Ashlee and Aimee's again.. but Aimee was sleeping. Silly Aimee. So I picked up Ashlee and of course returned to diedrichs. Where they were doing less than usual. I was like.. yea.. the one time I bring a nondiedrichs friend there are no beach bonfires or good times at Top of the World. Figures.
   We eventually ended up in a field by Cordillera elementry or something. Kyle, one of the diedrichs kids I think is particularly for awesome (and had been wearing a gas mask all day randomly), got attacked by a soccer net apparently and looked like he'd had the shit beat out of his face.. psha on that.
   The Ultimate Dumbass award must now go to Mike the Horrible Human, who has overshadowed Brandon the poser-gay's smashing of Katie's rooftop airfilters, by throwing an empty 211 40 at a passing SUV. If he had had enough skill to actually hit the car he would have been in a world of shit, and he would deserve every bit of it.
   Unfortunately Croat got greedy and tried to get free taco bell at ten minutes to midnight, while they were still totally open and lights all on and such. He got one pizza out of it out of pity, but the employees refused to give out most of the food because of it. Let that be a lesson to everyone else to be not greedy. I must express much sympathy for Croat though because he apparently has a massive ulcer right now. Psha on that.


   Currently wasting time before going in to wild rivers to do beach runs... I intend to keep a low profile until saturday morning inservice whereupon I'll see if Nikki can give me the deep tryout. Mother of course never tires of nagging me and is trying to convince me to maintain a very visible profile there.. my rationalization of mine: "look everyone knows I'm never getting promoted, so I'm just trying to bring less shame upon myself for appearing to be oblivious to the fact."
   Beach runs totally suck ass. As deep guard Stephanie "Guacamole" Gamache said yesterday, "who in their right mind would do beach runs for fun?????"

Yesterday, Thursday:
   (1) ( A Risky Endeavor at Diedrichs )