Archive for the Category ◊ neighborhood ◊

Author: VSC
• Monday, July 19th, 2010

It’s that time of year boys n girls, that time when my city loses its mind and all hell breaks loose.  Yesterday there were two separate shoot outs, as well as a knife incident that ended with the guy being shot by Oakland police.

The knife incident involved a guy they tazered twice, who charged a police officer with a knife in each hand yelling “shoot me” repeatedly.

Shoot out number one closed freeway 580 West all day.  Apparently the CHP (California Highway Patrol) pulled the guy over for weaving in and out of traffic, and as the cop started to walk up to the guy’s window, he saw him pull out a gun.  The guy was wearing a bullet proof vest, and according to his mother, went ape shit because of the leftist policies be forced through Congress.  No really.  The guy survived because of the vest.  The cops survived because the guy was a lousy shot.

Shoot out number two occurred when an Oakland police officer pulled over a car in West Oakland.  While searching the car, someone in a high rise pulled out a shot gun and tried to snipe the cop.

Yup, just another day in my city.

Author: VSC
• Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008

We got the house and we’re moving to Oakland!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

Category: neighborhood  | 3 Comments
Author: VSC
• Saturday, January 19th, 2008

So once again, LAN season has rolled around. Everyone is play Team Fortress 2, but I’m tired and not focusing, so instead I checked my backlog of blogs. Ici is still updating damn near daily, which reminds me that my own blog could use some love. But I never quite know what to say.

Which is silly. There’s shitloads of things going on in my life right now.

The brief run down would be:

  • LAN party weekend!
  • I’ve lost 100 lbs now.
  • Work is moving Feb 15th.
  • My girlfriend and I are looking to move to Oakland.
  • I’ve taken up embroidery.
  • I did genetic typing on my aunts and they have some uber-rare allele that seems to be Portuguese in origin.
  • I have turned into a Coach whore, and bought another used, leather Coach bag as a reward for 100 lbs.
  • I spent all day photo copying the labels from the Happy Mutant Handbook onto sticker paper, and labeled random items in the sample prep lab accordingly. (my favourite would be where I labeled a box of 100 vials of blood with a sticker that said “contents may have expired during shipping”.)
  • The cops raided a house at the end of the street, guns drawn and everything. Ah, life in Pittsburg!

So that’s what going on in my life.

Oh, and who knew embroidery could be subversive? I’ll get ambitious and post pics later.

Author: VSC
• Friday, March 30th, 2007
I told Corrigan that if he updated his Beer O’clock posts, I’d do a Beer O’Clock post.

For my Beer O’clock post, I’d like to rant about our current watering hole. It used to be a british pub that the new owner is converting into a sports bar. The owner is nice enough, but the changes have changed our quiet back room with wifi into a room with a giant screen projection TV tuned to either sports or Country Music TV with red neck assholes drinking beer and playing pool. I don’t really mind them except for the noise. That’s the problem. The room was wonderfully quiet, and now it is perpetually noisy.

This is a shame. The place has free wifi, pretty good appetizers, and Guinness and Strongbow apple cider on tap. I don’t want this place to suck for obvious reasons.

My other rant about the place is regarding the person I ran into while grabbing a chair to sit in. I went to junior high with him, and ran into him again during one of my many stints at Tinker Toy Tech. The TTT meeting resulted in a couple of dates that eventually ended badly when, after the third one or so, I asked if he was going to kiss me. He didn’t, and he didn’t call me again, either. I remember being slightly miffed, but not really all that upset.
Fast forward a good 5 or 6 years to shortly after I got my degree. I ran into him again in the grocery store, and boy was that awkward. Somehow the conversation got to a point where I guess he thought I was trying to hook up with him, because he went on the defensive and mentioned he was married and wasn’t available. I got pissed and mentioned that was fine because I was pretty sure my girlfriend wasn’t interested in sharing me. We went our separate ways after that.

So imagine my surprise to see him, his wife, and their three or so year old daughter in the dining room of my watering hole. The conversation was far nicer this time, he gave me a hug, couldn’t remember my name, mentioned we went to junior high together, somehow skipped the TTT dating scene, and while we were chatting mentioned that he and his wife had started a church.

Granted, this is a huge step up from other ex’s I’ve run into. I’d be willing to bet money he’s never been up on embezzlement charges or fired from a restaurant managerial position because he was stealing from the till, or anything else that dumb.

And what he told me about his church sounded kind of nice. I like the idea of Friday night Cigar and whiskey church meetings. Unfortunately, according to his wife, they’re liberal in creativity, not particularly liberal in their beliefs. Somehow I don’t think they and I would be a good spiritual match.

Honestly, I’m starting to think I should just get the phrase “sorry I missed church, I was busy practicing witchcraft and becoming a lesbian” across my forehead. It’d just be easier.

Mood : bewildered Music : none Tv : Country Music TV. I’m doing my best to ignore it.

Author: VSC
• Sunday, December 31st, 2006

Nothing, and I do mean nothing, gets me awake, up, and out of bed faster than a mouthful of stomach acid. Even hearing someone unload a full clip from an AK-47 into the house of a neighbor two doors down didn’t inspire me to get to my feet that quickly. (Of course, that was just so fucking surreal that I actually had to ask my girlfriend if I was hearing gun fire. This just re-affirms the truth that I already knew: I am not Street.)

The basic problem with acid reflux (for me) is the fact that I can’t lay down for hours after it kicks in. That, and the fact that I have no one but myself to blame as I only get it when I eat too much dairy and grease. Alcohol may be a factor, but I’m not sure. I do know that I can have it without alcohol, but not without dairy and grease. This is why I have only twice whipped out the most amazing chicken parmigean on the planet. Because no matter how good a meal is, if you spend the rest of the night puking up stomach acid every time you lay down, you strike it from your repitoire. It’s like homemade biological shock treatments that go on for hours.

Anyway, that’s not why I have acid reflux tonight. I have acid reflux tonight because I’m a fucking retard, and decided to celebrate the closing of the old watering hole by having the ravioli with the bacon cream sauce. (I’ve had it once before. It didn’t give me acid reflux, but it did give me an ear infection. Which *maybe* should suggest to myself that I *not* eat so much damn dairy.) Between that and the alcohol and the uber-greasy tortilla chips I insisted on eating, I’ve successfully fucked up my digestive tract for the next few days, and will be celebrating the new year sans alcohol, because I am NOT having another night of acid reflux if I can help it.

Which is, quite frankly, probably for the best. At the very least it means that I can, in fact, be taught.

Now if the neighborhood drug dealer could be taught not to piss off people with guns, I could quit getting up for three hours a night.

Mood : irritated Tv : Venture Brothers, season 1