davidicus

You do a great impersonation of a cynic. Those who know you well, though, know it is an act. Of course you care. Passionately. You can be extremely trusting, almost naive, in your willingness to support people and causes. Hence the situation we find you in now. If someone else were in such a position, you would advise them to have more faith in their own self-worth. Yet you seem to be choosing instead, to believe in a fairytale. —Johnathan Cainer, stars.metawire.com

it’s been a while since i recorded one of these for posterity. this one seemed useful, since i’ve been called a cynic quite a few times in the last couple weeks. if a cynic is someone critical of the motives of others, then i’m guilty. it’s hard to find people who aren’t trained to hold their cards close to their chest. if a cynic is simply focused on what won’t work, then i’m not guilty. it’s important to foresee errors, but for each one i find, i suggest another solution.

i can honestly say i’ve never received a weapon flyer in the mail before. twenty pages of pistols, rifles, something called a Knight & Hale Heckl’n Howler that looked like it might be for treating hemorhoids or something, and bottles of Elk Fire (yikes!). the stuff i recognized, i just don’t have much use for in los angeles. or do i?

the four of us drove a long way to check the Huntington Beach Old World Plum Festival out. i’m finally convinced the word festival is greatly overused in southern california. they advertised live music, dance groups, dancing, moon bounce, carnival games, plum wine, and wienerdog races.

all events need to get parking and entry right. their small lots were full, so we had to embark on a quest. after we parked, the route in was unclear and poorly signed. we ended up travelling through three parking lots, across a street, around some old world stores, and past a couple employees arguing over whether entry was a dollar or free or something; then, we took a dark and winding path through rooms in a restaurant and bar before finally emerging outside again in a courtyard.

next, if you name the festival after a food, you really ought to deliver it. the only real plum i saw was on my pflaumenkuchen (i guess the plum fest is some sort of german tradition?). it was good, which made me happy. i couldn’t find any plum wine. i had a crepe that may or may not have had plum jam in it.

there were some purple balloons too. and a larger-than-life-size spinning statue of a dancing couple dressed in german garb behind glass. the woman’s ass was hanging out in the wind as her dress was frozen up in the air in perpetual plaster glory.

the live music consisted of a guy inside behind a bunch of boxes or equipment playing polkas on an accordian. because i didn’t see him at first, and the sound system was so muddy, i thought it was a worn european cassette tape or something. i’m sure the sound system was mostly to blame for it sounding like dozens of remixes of Roll Out the Barrel. speaking of which, nobody was dancing to any of this except a young girl doing ballet in a tartan dress. she was pretty good, though.

i managed to catch a couple hopping glimpses of a dachshund race. it was set up so everyone could crowd around the track, leaving about a dozen people with an excellent view, and a hundred others with next to no view at all. they’re aware these dogs are really short, right?

hey, what does a moon bounce have to do with plums?

there was a carnival game.

Bank of America’s new identity stinks

when i noticed them putting up the new signage at my nearby Bank of America, i thought, “what the hell are they thinking? oh well, it’s probably just a local manager who knows nothing about color.” then i started seeing it everywhere, even in New York when i visited, so it’s coast to coast.

what group of suits in the deepest circle of hell possibly could have devised this visual atrocity? for those unaware, the logo used to appear on white, trustworthy expanse of classic cleanliness, color of knights and angels and honest balance sheets. who, who, who could have decided red was an improvement?

set aside for a moment that red is the color of debt, (”in the red”), and violence here in western culture, that it used to be equally red, white and blue like the flag it references, and consider the basic mechanical faults. they didn’t alter the logo at all, so there’s no tonal contrast between the blue letters and their ground. worse, there’s no contrast of any sort with the flag symbol’s red stripes. red on red—huh? i have to stare even to discern them. this is basic stuff, people.

the defense must be that red is a better attention-grabber, more powerful at retail. but they sure threw the baby out with the bathwater this time. granted, some helpful individual put a hairline of white around everything, but i can’t recall a word to adequately describe how weak it is. is fashion really interested in exploring outlined type again? just look at all the crowded schmutz in the letter holes and everything. it’s so ugly, complicated, amateur and unreadable!

amusingly, when i Googled the pipes for likeminded commentary, i could find none. nobody else is disturbed? really?

today i uploaded photos and noticed the sidebar of links; one beckoned me to compare me to myself. i was very tempted.

i recently got an email that said friends had ranked my hair and i was now #2. i was so happy, i didn’t care i also had fallen a rank on bravery.

one of the things i love about America: class action generosity!

apparently, the Palms Casino in Las Vegas overbilled rooms about a dollar a night for phone service they shouldn’t have. not sure why someone had to sue them over it, but now i’m entitled to two dollars fifty cents off a room. a quick search for the end of the month quoted me $192 for a night, so i could come in under $190 now!

my favorite hotel there, but the clubs are too posh.

i’m a big fan of Andrew WK’s new album (Asia only) but wasn’t in the right place at the right time

i lived in an old “character” building once, crown moldings, electric fireplace, hardwood floors, perpetually broken toilet—you know the type.

a young guy moved in across the hall. i ran into him at the mail boxes. i introduced myself as davidicus, we had a short conversation, then he left. he shouted farewell over his shoulder, “bye Jeff!”

huh? my name isn’t Jeff.

he was a friendly, energetic, well-dressed guy, a natural salesperson. he worked at the airport and kept offering to get me duty free perfume for my girlfriend or mother. he offered other things but i don’t remember them all. every time he saw me, he greeted me as Jeff. the first time i corrected him, but when he left he said, “bye Jeff!” again.

he was cheerful and confident, and i figured i could look like a Jeff, so i ended up just going along with it. we ended up interacting more than most neighbors.

there was the time he showed up looking for a place to hang out while his buddy and girlfriend had some “private time” in his apartment. we had blueberry tea.

once, somebody broke all his windows. it was noisy and exciting and alarmed the whole building. a friend of his rapped on my window begging to hide out in my apartment while the cops looked into it.

i even bought my first guitar from him. he swore up and down it wasn’t hot. i wouldn’t be playing today if not for him.

neither one of us could live in that crazy building forever. it was near freezing in the winter and the landlord was an ass. a drunk pissed in my window once. one of us moved out first, and that was the end of our superficial friendship. i considered telling someone else my name was Jeff.

years later, i was hanging out with friends at a martini bar and he showed up. i didn’t recognize him at first, but he came straight up to the table and shouted, “hey Jeff!” with a big smile. he introduced me to his girlfriend, i introduced my friends, conversation ensued. as we caught up, he referred to me as Jeff about three times before my buddy couldn’t take it any more. his hands were fists when he said, “his name’s not Jeff, it’s davidicus!” stopped in his tracks, the poor guy looked stunned. “what?” my buddy repeated himself, and the realization slowly sank in.

then i had to explain why i answered to Jeff all those years.

Verizon’s email interaction stinks

i’ve noticed most companies’ email experience leaves a lot to be desired, but Verizon is what, a 125 billion dollar company? my first observation is that marketing companies and departments need to pay more attention to the less sexy communication avenues like text email. mistakes like the one above shouldn’t happen. at first i thought it was due to my receiving text-based emails; as in, maybe some higher bit character was getting misinterpreted during the dumb-down somewhere. i logged in and checked via HTML-capable mail (which i turned on specifically for this out of curiosity), and got a page of removed “potentially unsafe” images instead. i can’t be bothered to hit the button or link that views those images.

folks, email is email and web pages are web pages. email is a cumbersome experience already. i get too much, i get spam, they’re poorly written, have unhelpful subject lines, and so on. i don’t want to deal with format problems and client-compatibility on top of it all. i don’t even want to read variously fonted and colored communications with triple-spaced paragraph breaks. i want everything to come in relatively consistent-looking, so i can get through as many as a hundred a day without growing eye blisters. even people that don’t ask for this would benefit from it.

so, maybe Verizon thinks it’s trivial. i should be able to figure out that they mean two years, and it’s my email client’s fault anyway. Verizon can’t be expected to support every software package, email reader, and web browser available, right? here’s why that argument upsets me: plain text is supported all the way down to DOS. if you were using PINE in 1989, you’d be able to read a plain text email that time-traveled from 2008 perfectly. wow, you’d be waiting a long time for that coveted cell phone, though. Shakespeare didn’t need JPGs and multiplatform font support to write Hamlet, so why can’t you tell me what i need to know without a bunch of overhead?

ok, dramatic plays aren’t written to be read, but i think you get my point. you may say that supporting the majority of users is more effective than supporting the lowest common denominator, but at least give me a way out, and don’t half-ass your attempts to reach the plebs without bells and whistles.

this applies to web pages too. we use more “low powered” devices than ever. we’re not always sitting comfortably in front of our two-monitor multi-GHz desktops. we’re browsing with cell phones and doing all kinds of crazy things that are convenient. whether viewing email or web pages, i might be using my Wii, my Nokia N770, Mac OS 9, web-based email interface, or whatever’s in the airport. don’t assume i have anything newer than Flash 6! if you’re developing, you should know Adobe didn’t keep up with their SDKs. hell, don’t even assume i have Flash at all.

and, damn you Verizon, can’t you get your system to hear my voicemail code right the first time? or are you just trying to eek another ten seconds out of me? sorry, i was on a roll.

Altair, in Assassin’s Creed for PS3

i love playing this game. free-running (parkour) across the rooftops of these old middle eastern cities is a joyous experience, and the views are awe-inspiring. i enjoy climbing in all the game experiences i take part in, and this game is really built for it. standing on the Dome of the Rock or on the roof of the Church of the Sepulchre—how cool is that? nice job, Ubisoft.

they don’t seem to name the various sites for some reason. my history isn’t great, let alone in this region. in the photo, i’m near the harbor of Acre (Akko) overlooking what must be a Templar fortress from the spire of a nearby mosque, by a large church—St. Andrews?