Just sayin’…
The devices displayed a "Mooninite" -- an outer-space delinquent who makes frequent appearances on the cartoon -- greeting passersby with an upraised middle finger. But the discovery of nine of the light boards around Boston and its suburbs sent bomb squads scrambling throughout the day, snarling traffic and mass transit in one of the largest U.S. cities.
...
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and others said the statement offering an apology was not enough, and did not rule out criminal charges or a civil suit to recover the estimated hundreds of thousands of dollars it cost the city to respond to the bomb scares.
—"Man held after ad campaign triggers Boston bomb scare," CNN.com
Just think how much time and money could have been saved if more first responders watched ATHF...
22:54 »
It's obvious to any "Aqua Teens" fan that these are Mooninite replicas...
...
If an Aqua Teen fan had been on the Boston police force, could he or she have recognized the Mooninites and stopped the insanity sooner? Maybe, but maybe not.
—"The Moon rulz Boston: Aqua Teens shut down Beantown," Gael Fashingbauer Cooper on MSNBC's Test Pattern blog
It’s not my party, and I cry when I don’t want to
Sometimes I hate it when I hold myself together for so long and just lose it in the end.
But it's probably better that way.
NEW CAREER PLANI want to be Tyra Banks when I grow up
Full weekend; fuller week ahead
Yesterday, I went to Shekinah up at Tempe First and got to see my favorite UA SSPers, other peeps from around the conference, the Breadwinners, and Devin on the ukulele. And, guess who the Central East District's two young-adult delegates to annual conference are going to be? Brian Indrelunas and Eric Askins. That's right.
Then I went to Jordan Costello's power hour at Rula Bula with both of our moms for a little bit, and today at church we got to celebrate Brian Schlemmer's birthday. He's turning twenty-eightncient... uh, I mean twenty-eight... today. :P
What did I get myself into?
But get this: Tomorrow marks the beginning of the third week of school, and I have three, count 'em, three papers due this week. Plus, I haven't even totalled up how many pages I've got to read this afternoon for all of my classes.
And unfortunately, this week is not looking like an anomaly.
Next week, I've got a paper and maybe a speech due. After that, another paper and the speech if I didn't do it the week before. Then, two papers and a presentation. The week after that is a nice break: just one midterm. But then the next week, I've got two papers, a midterm and maybe a speech.
Then the gloriousness of spring break sets in.
The week after break, I've got a paper due and that speech if I didn't give it before break. The week after that, two more papers. Then I have a week with no major assignments... at least none that have been assigned yet. And past that point, I stop having major assignments due every week. But for the first two-thirds or so of the semester, heh, this is gonna be fun.
You know it’s a good night…
...when you have a dance party, and you're not the only one in attendance.
I love how oblivious one can be in his or her Valley home
Case in point: I had no idea there was "breaking news" going on in my neighborhood until Mike heard about it from a friend.
I feel so self-sufficient
Tonight I made dinner for myself, not because anyone was coming over and not because I needed to have food for a potluck or something but just because I was hungry and it was dinner time.
Making the enchiladas, rice and beans was a blast – in part because I had the Zona '06 Staff CD on as my cooking soundtrack and also because I was going wild with the cheese. And it all turned out hella tasty, which made it even better.
Cooler still was that Mike and Beth had some and liked it, and not only that, we sat around in the kitchen eating and talking. Yay meal-based togetherness!
But I think I'm most proud of the fact that, despite my usual M.O., I don't have to rely on other people, restaurants or microwavable foods to keep myself alive. It's like I can provide for myself in a way... a really yummy way.
‘It’s like rai-iii-aaaain on your wedding day’
Today I made a conscious decision not to drop in on The State Press newsroom since I had stopped by on each of my on-campus days so far this semester. I mean, come on. I don't even work there anymore.
Well, not really.
Tonight I got called in for another interim night-editing stint. Luckily, Ryan called me just as we were getting started at Wesley and since it was short notice he had no problem with me starting after I was done with church stuff. But being on campus past midnight was not so fun and definitely not what I had planned for tonight.
Also not fun was going to get my bike and noticing that the headlight was missing. So, seeing as how tonight would not be a good night to be stopped for violating bike laws, I walked ye olde bike home. But oh well, I need to go to Target anyway, so now I have one more reason to get off my butt and go there.
Funny thing was, though, before my mediocre night, today was an awesome day.
Aaron Brown helped me 'get' my calling
OK, so that headline or title or whatever function the <h3> tag is serving on my Web site these days ignores the (dominant) role of the Holy Spirit in my afternoon ponderings, but it is true that said ponderings were sparked by Aaron, the former CNN anchor who this semester is my TV-news history professor.
And hey, after all, prominence was one of those elements of news we all learned about in Journalism I back in high school.
Anyway, I spent a few minutes talking with Aaron after class, and some of what he said got me thinking about vocation as I moseyed around campus. Bring in some things remembered from Exploration, and you've got a small-scale but still important Brian epiphany on your hands.
It's way too late at night and I'm way too tired to explain the thought process itself in more detail right now, but remind me and I'll fill y'all in tomorrow or Friday.
in other news classes
Public Speaking made my morning thanks in large part to the fact that we played a "Whose Line?"esque game of party quirks during class.
And have I mentioned that I have now written a paper on Paris Hilton? A required, non-open-topic paper for a real, three-credit-hour class at ASU? Yeah, I turned in my Paris paper in Public Speaking this morning. And it all still strikes me as a bit bizarre.
Spanish-American Civ bordered on pure chaos, but I did a decent job of staring it in the face unflinchingly. It stressed me out a little, but one thing my Spanish classes have undoubtedly taught me over the years is how to deal with unchecked, unmitigated chaos.
Oh, and you know what's really great? I don't have any more classes to attend this week. I love having Fridays off. So aside from the Spanish Lit work I have to do by Friday evening, I am now out of the red zone for all the rest of my homework. Hello, leisurely pace.
Who says an old newspaper can’t do ‘new media?’
The State of the Union in Words: A Look at the 34,000 State of the Union Words Delivered of George W. Bush, The New York Times/NYTimes.com
an outlandish Monday
So remember how I finally got air in my bike tires? Well, this morning the front tire was flatter than ever, but now all is hopefully well for a while because I took my bike back to Domenic's for some new-tube action. Goodbye unnecessarily overworked leg muscles; hello getting to campus more easily.
But enough about the bike because even with the goofy flat, I still made it to campus by about eight for some breakfasty goodness in a new Monday-morning Wesley small group, and when everyone else went to 9:40 classes, I moved over closer to the fireplace in the MU and spent the next hour finishing up the reading for my Spanish civ class.
Then the three-class-in-a-row block commenced: public speaking, Spanish-American civ, TV-news history. Bam! So that was all fine and good... except note to self: pack midday snacks on Wednesday.
But in the afternoon, we did the bike fixeroo, got some food and then went to my four-hour, once-a-week night class: online media. It was cool, but it was four hours long, so by the end I was mighty hungry. So Sam and I got Julio's and did our usual talking-smack-about-people shtick.
Then tonight, the school-shooting episode of Degrassi was coming on TV, but instead of watching it with commercials Beth and I just watched the DVD.
Oh, and I did laundry too.
Oh, the laundry.
So I washed a bunch of niceish clothes tonight so I have something to wear tomorrow at CNS. In my haste and my hope to not overload the washer, I pulled out what I thought were my tight, uncomfortable pair of black pants, which I usually don't even touch but busted out Friday for my well-intentioned but unneeded mourning getup. But I actually pulled out the pair of black pants I wanted to wear tomorrow instead.
I notice this after moving the already clean clothes to the dryer and frantically make another small load of the good black pants, the other couple things left in the hamper that didn't fit, and my pants and sweater that I wore today. Problem was I forgot to empty my pockets, which were full of pens, pencils, highlighters, my debit card, candy-wrapper garbage and (worst of all) receipts. The latter were obliterated in the wash and consequently ended up in little specks all over the mostly-black clothing in that load. So that all got washed again, and now it's fluttering around the dryer with its clothing friends.
Oh well. At least I caught the pocket stuff before putting pens in the dryer, which would have been disastrous... outlandish even. (Ahhhhhhh!)
So I’m the Wesley whore now…
Tonight at the Wesley party at Sara's house, I told the drag queen story yet again — the full version this time. This was the retelling for people who didn't hear it on Wednesday. (I mean, come on... Sara did ask for the most interesting thing that happened to us over break.)
So I pretty much look like the bad kid at Wesley right now, but just because no one else is telling sketchy weekend stories does not mean they don't exist. I know you people. But whatever. I will relish my title as the Wesley slut as long as it lasts.
By the way, if by some chance you missed both tellings of my drag queen story, you can read it here, and to see my oh-so-talented ninth-grade self, click here.
Dust off that ‘Shuffle’ album…
The Bears are going to the Super Bowl, baby!
Call the man police…
Yep, I was the victim in the case of a broken man law tonight.
I think the fact that said law was broken in the two-urinal bathroom at Old Chicago makes it clear exactly what law was violated.
Yeah. I kinda considered going, "Dude, what the hell?" But I was pretty much rendered speechless by the whole affair, so I just avoided anything even close to eye contact and got out of there ASAP.
So, uh, consider that a warning, buddy.
an unmentioned bright spot from yesterday
Getting to see some of the Mesa Mercenaries again. :)
What’s sadder than the death of a ‘Degrassi’ character?
Having to wait another week to see it!
I could have sworn that the commercial after last week's episode said nothing of the new episode being "in two weeks," but apparently we don't get to know who gets knifed until next Friday.
As you can imagine, I'm pretty upset... especially because I was dressed all in black and had a candlelight vigil at the ready. Oh well...
It’s a beautiful day… to die
I love rainy days, but this one seemed especially noteworthy because it sets quite the morose mood for tonight's episode of Degrassi. I have my suspicions of who's getting knifed tonight, and we'll just have to see in 20 minutes...
You know what I forgot until just now?
So I hereby retroactively assign him 10 cool points.
Btw, someone's going to die on Degrassi tonight. I'm so sad/excited!
Yay new server!
Indrelunas.com has now officially changed registrars and hosting providers! That means everything on Brian.Indrelunas.com is now actually located at Brian.Indrelunas.com instead of redirecting to members.cox.net.
So if you've got any bookmarks or what-have-you that have "members.cox.net/btindrelunas" in them, just change that to "Brian.Indrelunas.com" and you're golden.
Oh, and since everything's on a new server, some things are a bit broken right now — like that Google Maps error message you probably just got. But don't worry; that stuff'll be fixed soon.
And one other change of note is that http://Brian.Indrelunas.com/index.xml is no longer a valid RSS feed for my site. Site feeds for Brian.Indrelunas.com are now available at:
http://Brian.Indrelunas.com/atom.xml and
http://Brian.Indrelunas.com/rss.xml
I don't really know what the difference between the two formats is, so just pick one and see if it works, I guess.
one more beautiful thing
I'm done with classroom-based classes for the week.
That's right, kids; no classes on Fridays. Be jealous, be very jealous.
another sign of my brilliance
For the last month, at least, of last semester, I wondered why it seemed to be getting harder and harder to ride my bike to campus every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I mean, I had been riding to campus all semester, so one would think that my bike-riding muscles would be in top form, not all tuckered out like they were by the time I got to campus every day.
So today Beth pointed out that my bike was one of the all-but-one in our backyard that had flat tires, so as I strenously rode the bike to campus today I suddenly realized that my tire losing some air could account for my perceieved getting-out-of-shapeness.
This afternoon, one of the nice bike-repair guys at Domenic's, the bike shop at 10th Street and Mill Avenue, put more air in my tires and also greased up the chain since I told him the riding had gotten a little chunky. (I somehow scraped together a more detailed and better-sounding description for him, but it now escapes me.)
Now, tada, my bike is not incredibly hard to ride and goes smoother chainwise thanks to the little tuneup the Domenic's guy did for free. Yeah, the free part was nice too, so the next time I need to spend some bike-related money, I know where I'm going...
I <3 this semester
CNS is going well, I'm liking my classes so far, I get to go to Wesley again on Wednesday nights, and I get to be home before midnight multiple days a week. It's a beautiful thing.
On the wire
My first Cronkite News Service story went out over the wire today! Let's hope some papers pick it up...
Things’ll be great when you’re… downtown
Well, today was my first day working for Cronkite News Service out of our downtown Phoenix bureau, and it was really cool.
The bureau facilities are nice, although everything's just in a temporary setup right now. It's not too far from the Capitol. I found free parking this morning. I worked on a story that involved neither police PIOs nor pets for the first time in what seems like forever. (I'm only half kidding there.) And I was downtown, forgetting all my troubles and forgetting all my cares.
I'm a big kid now?
So as I was walking down First Street to grab lunch this afternoon, I called Julie at the Republic to answer her questions about my last Republic story, which is running in print tomorrow. And as I hung up, I realized that I was a guy wearing a shirt and tie talking on a cell phone while walking on a downtown sidewalk amdist skyscrapers. I felt like such an adult. It was bizarre.
What's crackin'? My skin.
But the least exciting thing about today was and is how something about this cold snap is wreaking havoc on my skin. The backs of my hands are horribly dry. A couple other times this winter, the skin on my hands cracked a little, sometimes even hinting at some blood underneath. But tonight, I've got cracked skin from my knuckles halfway up my fingers with blood seeping into every ridge. It's painful.
Back by popular demand. One Two nights only.
In contrast, night editing at The State Press has not been as painful as I've occasionally been making it out to be. I agreed to fill in for the yet-to-be-hired night editor last night since I didn't have anything to do, and I got talked into a second stint tonight after I got back to Tempe from Phoenix.
And though I was grumpy at the outset tonight, it was nice to be down in the dungeon again, and we didn't get out too horribly late either night, so that helped too.
It’s… so… cold!
Early this morning, I dreamed that I was on the beach in Galveston and that I was really hot. I was worried about getting sunburned when I went to lie out in the waves. And then I woke up and realized it was below freezing outside my house and there was no beach in sight.
So I've been cold all morning, and with good reason, as I later found out. Check out this icicle we found coming out of our hose in the backyard:
Yeah. And that picture's from this afternoon, so you can imagine how cold it was this morning.
Or you could just ask my mom. She and Jolene were out around sunrise this morning to walk in the Rock 'N' Roll Arizona Half Marathon from downtown Phoenix to the finsh line at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe. I caught up with them after they finished the marathon:
Girl-movie marathon!
I forgot to mention the other reason I'm excited about owning Spice World on DVD: the Spanish audio track. Can we say educational experience?
Also, watching Spice World led to watching Mean Girls, and then Beth and I watched D.E.B.S., making it a full-fledged movies-about-groups-of-girls marathon.
When it comes to Spice, CD > DVD
It's only been nine years since Spice World, the Spice Girls movie, came out and it definitely hasn't stood the test of time quite as well as A Night at the Roxbury has. But it's still good for a few laughs... and more than a few sing-a-long moments.
Though Spice World won't go down in history as my all-time favorite movie, I still know all the words to "Wannabe." Well, all the decipherable words at least. I'm kinda iffy on Scary Spice's rap toward the end.
And in case you're wondering why I watched Spice World tonight, I had ordered the DVD off of amazon, and it just came in the mail yesterday along with other assorted goodies — like my new bacon cookbook, complete with a recipe for bacon ice cream. Oh yeah.
It’s a small world after all
Today I went to Gentle Strength's new store in search of agave nectar and other juice-mixing supplies, and when I was there I ran into the one, the only Senta (of Mesa Republic fame). Crazy, huh?
Technical difficulties may lie ahead
Indrelunas.com is playing a game of musical servers over the next week or two, so if you have problems accessing my site at http://Brian.Indrelunas.com, try http://members.cox.net/btindrelunas instead.
Goodbye, Mesa…
Today was my last day interning at The Mesa Republic, and it wraps up more than a year of me journalizing out of Mesa newsrooms. Tuesday, I officially start working for the Cronkite News Service out of our office at ASU Downtown in Phoenix — although I'm not going to be working in Phoenix the first day.
But anyway, today my internship started not quite like how it began. I went in a half-hour earlier because today was a big, important News Now / Information Center / breaking news kind of day. Too bad there wasn't much breaking news to speak of in Mesa. But that's OK. We had not-so-breaking news to post to mesa.azcentral.com anyway.
So I got to write a few last Form IV stories, and I put my last non-Form IV story into SoEd this afternoon. It should run Saturday... I hope. And I got to go to lunch at Costco with Dan. And everyone signed a really nice card that Dan gave to me before he (and later I) took off.
I'm gonna miss those guys, that newsroom, that city...
You’re kidding, right?
From a Tempe press release:
Intersection of Mill Avenue and University Drive restricted
Tempe, Ariz - The intersection of Mill Avenue and University Drive will be restricted to one lane in each direction from Jan. 15 to March 15 to install a water and sewer line. No left-turns will be permitted in any direction.
Whoa, buddy. I suppose that means the bike lane on University's a goner, eh? Oh well. Tenth Street is closer to where most of my classes will be this semester anyway.
‘A Night at the Roxbury’ is so one of my favorite movies
After hearing "This is Your Night" on the radio while driving back to the newsroom this afternoon, I decided I was going to watch "A Night at the Roxbury" tonight. And I think I enjoyed it even more than I did back when it first came out — having since then been to a few clubs and picked up a few more cultural reference points.
Plus, I know almost all the lines. It's awesome.
Anyway, I think I am now going to have myself a Roxbury-soundtrack dance party and then maybe settle down and do something legitimately productive.
New year, new lots of things
Yesterday we started our new Sunday-morning worship schedule at church, complete with the addition of adult Sunday school and our new roommate Beth started moving in. Both very cool new 2007y things.
O-H, oh no
^ Had I been more awake at 2 o'clock this morning, I would have entitled my post about the Big Bang more like that.
In retrospect, asking all the Ohio State fans to "go home" even before their team played in the Fiesta Bowl Part II or whatever it's called was downright cruel.... almost as cruel as asking them to spend their Saturday night in Glendale.
I realize that there's nothing going on in the West Valley that even comes close to Mill Avenue, so I guess I'll just take solace in the fact that here in Tempe we're getting the tourist traffic but are excused from tomorrow's game-day traffic.
But seriously, OSU fans, while you're out here in the EV can you give the O-H-I-O bit a rest?
As Cameo said at lunch today, you can spell a four-letter word. We're all very proud, but you can stop now. Thanks.
O-h, go home already…(but please spend lots of money on your way out)
I went to the Big Bang for the first time tonight, and it was pretty frickin' sweet.
Only problem was it was crazy overpopulated with Ohio State fans, and the piano players kept playing Ohio State songs or the Michigan fight song with the words all changed, and this one set of piano players said "O-H..." (response: "I-O," as I have grudgingly known since November) after just about every song.
But someone played the ASU fight song once, which was nice. And the rest of it rocked. Yeah, being 21 and therefore being able to get into such places as the Big Bang is nice... really nice.
Just call me Brian ‘Drag Queen Magnet’ Indrelunas
OK, so tonight some of us went out to celebrate AK's birthday first by having dinner at Caffe Boa and then by taking her to Burger Betty's to scandalize her with their drag-queen night.
But I think I ended up getting way more scandalized than AK did.
We're all sitting there on this couch, and at first I'm finding the thing really awkward because, honestly, I just don't understand the whole allure of drag queens for anyone really — gay, straight or otherwise.
But then it gets even more awkward when my drag-queen magnetism starts up. While she's singing her song, one of the drag queens comes over near our couch (I'm on the end closest to the center of the action.) and kinda opens her shirt to reveal a bra holding her fake boobs, which she shakes in my direction. I proceed to blush like a mofo. Then afterwards, during her little monologue that drag queen pins us as "the straight couch," even though that was only true of three-fifths of us, thanks to my blushing.
Anyway, I think it was the next drag queen who, right at the outset of her song-and-dance routine (and I don't know if this was prompted by Andrea pointing at me or if it was just full-out spontaneous) comes over and gives me a full-blown lap dance. Like on-me, crotch-in-my-face lap dance.
I don't think I've ever been more surprised in my entire life.
Well, after she had gone on to dance elsewhere around the place, one of the girls hands me a dollar to give to the drag queen. People periodically tipped the drag queens, and the members of the birthday party were all like, "Dude, she gave you a lap dance. You have to give her a dollar."
Then, all the way at the other end of the couch, AK's friend Chris says, "You should put in your fly." It sounded like quite the mess to get myself into, so I reverted back to grade-school tactics and asked, "Do you dare me to?" Chris did dare me to, so I unzipped my pants enough to lodge the dollar bill in there, and when the drag queen came back over she pulled me up onto the stage, had me lie down and then, uh, extracted the dollar bill... orally.
Yeah, but it's not over yet.
I forget now if this next part happened with that same drag queen or another, later performer, but at one point one of the drag queens comes over and points to a nickel that's on the ground near my feet.
"Pick it up," she says.
So from my seated position I bend over to get the nickel, unsure of whether I'll be allowed to retrieve it without incident and then be asked to do something with it or if my bending over is going to be used in the routine.
It was the latter.
As I'm about to pop back up with the coin, she pushes my head down and then proceeds to, um, rub her crotch on the back of my head. Although I initially tried to not think about exactly what was going on above me, I have since been informed — in detail — of exactly what body parts were just a few layers of quasi-fabric away from my head.
From there out, though, it got tamer. Some flashing of the underpants in my face, singing to me, pointing a clothes hanger at me (It had something to do with the song.), etc.
Anyway, after that excitement died down a bit, we went over to Amsterdam — which I had never been to before — for more drinking (which was probably not the best idea for AK) some talking and a little bit of dancing.
Luckily, there were no drag queens there... at least none in costume at the time... at least as best I could tell... so I was safe. But I had already gained the nickname of, yep, "Drag Queen Magnet." Awesome.
I give myself a rose and/or a clock
Tonight I went on one of those famed dates with myself that I kept hearing other people talk about.
It all started by me making dinner for myself, but then I decided I might as well leave my cooking background music, XM Chill, on for eating. Plus, I added a disco ball during the cooking phase and candles for eating. And it was just me. Hence the candlelight-dinner date with myself.
And I must say, I was quite the charmer. :P
observations on non-ASU, non-Chandler football
Oh man. Did you see the Fiesta Bowl tonight? Boise State led for a while and then didn't and then put the game into overtime on a crazy play — at which point I decide it's time to turn the TV back on and catch the action. Oklahoma put seven on the board in OT, and then Boise State gets a touchdown and goes for two... and makes it. Now that's what I call a good game of football.
That makes the Fiesta the second of the two Valley bowl games played thus far to go into overtime. Texas Tech pulled off a nice comeback in overtime Friday night in the Insight Bowl. Now, I didn't watch either game all the way through (I mean, come on. ASU wasn't playing), but I did catch the frickin' awesome overtimes.
And these games have set some mighty high expectations for next week's BCS championship game in Glendale. Here's hopin' for some more quality Arizona overtime...
Happy 2007, y’all
Happy New Year!
Last night, Priya and I went to the Tempe block party, and although Third Eye Blind was good, they would have been a whole lot better if they followed block-party tradition and played their own songs during the 10 minutes of fireworks at midnight. Instead we were, uh, treated to a 10-minute-long guitar-solo-esque rendition of "Auld Lang Syne." That kinda sucked. But overall, it was fun.
So it's a new year, but never fear: I didn't make any stupid resolutions that I'd probably break 80 percent of by Jan. 20. That being said, however, some things are gonna be different this year. More on that as the year unfolds.
