Spectacular Spektors

Dear blog:

It's been three days without a beer. I am starting to get frantic and snapping at people, mostly Forrest because he's the only one who seems to be around. I'm also listening to Regina Spektor, which is further proof that something has gone terribly wrong.

And here is something I should have put up a week ago. Diana and I officially have a dog now- years of planning for Itsy-Bitsy are out the window. Good news is the dog is cute. I'm not sure how old he is, but I do know it's a cross between a Shiz Tzu and a Bichon Frise.



Quickly: because when it gets late and I get lonely I tend to ramble, I want to say that I hate pretentious art-types. I was at coolhunting.com tonight when I saw the headline picture (of somebody holding a revolver, pointed at the camera, with only the barrel in focus) with the caption "Brad Webber is a Los Angeles based photographer and filmmaker who is fascianted [sic] with creating single frame films".

"Single frame films." Do you mean PHOTOGRAPHS, you pompous asshole? He even spelled a word wrong...perhaps they don't teach you how to spell in "Single Frame Film" school. Bah. Like I said, I haven't had a beer in three days....

Tabbing my life away

Good evening, bitches. I was going to have a video ready tonight showing my new workplace in downtown Jax, but I have decided that I will re-shoot it tomorrow afternoon (there was an ambulance driving by the entire time I was filming and I didn't notice). This is the beginning of my second week with the New Media department. Last week was Ok; there was a huge rush to get me out of Clay and downtown in order to start work with the other community publications, and then my boss had the week off. So I just kept doing the Clay thing.

In other news, one of the new reporters at the Sun, Joe, was laid off on Friday. There have been rumours flying around about company-wide lay-offs, and apparently those fears may be true. It's a shame, Joe was a decent guy and I hate to see him go. He was hired about 2 weeks before I was as the entertainment/government reporter. We all went out Friday night and had beer and pizza.

I have also decided that I am tired of the deluge of information I take in every day. Maybe it's ironic for somebody who loves (and works in) news to be exhausted from the constant flow of information, but I'm really getting tired of it.

Perhaps the obvious answer is to stop reading/watching so much, but sometimes I feel like there is just too much information to consume, no matter how many tabs I add to my netvibes.com feed. Maybe I need a week-long vacation from gorging myself on news. BUT I CANT

If you love me like I love myself (3 times a day)

Two funny short stories from my week so far, then that's it. That's it!

I was at Target last night doing my lonely, single-man grocery shopping. *Note to Cola residents: Targets here have an awesome grocery section. Like a Super Wal-Mart, minus the shoeless children fondling all the apples*

When I went to check out, the mushrooms didn't have a UPC sticker on it and she asked if I knew how much they were. I most certainly did not and so she made up a price. My final item was a 12 pack of Rolling Rock. That didn't have a price either and she asked if I knew how much it was. I most certainly did, it's $6.64 a case, which comes out to an awesome 50c a bottle.

When she asked I basically repeated my previous sentence to her, and then the guy behind me (who I hadn't noticed before), starting cracking up. I figured was he was laughing about and said something about not knowing how much mushrooms were but sure as hell knowing how much my beer was.

Hope that was awesome for you. Ready for part two?

It was today at work. My boss, the guy who told me I was being promoted last Friday, walked by while I was pretending to be busy. He didn't stop, he just said "Jonathan, you're the man," and gave a really dorky thumbs-up.

I said "I know I am," and gave him a return thumbs-up.

My coworkers were mortified and thought I was going to be fired. Apparently, and I really didn't mean to, I had replied in an "eat-shit" sarcastic voice. And then they said something about that not being the correct response to the man who runs the company.

Picture time!

Damn me

I realized today how much of a greedy, self-centered son-of-a-bitch I am.

I went grocery shopping at the nearby Publix and since the parking lot is super-tiny and always crowded, I parked in the very last row. When I came out with my bag of shrimp, peppers, garlic and booze, there was an ambulance parked right behind my car, with its lights flashing. My first thought was "Damn it, I've got to get home and make dinner and then go to work. I'm too busy to put up with this shit."

Then I realized that the ambulance was only there because some poor bastard was probably dying. So I felt ashamed and walked next door, bought a Starbuck's coffee, and watched an old homeless person being tied down to a stretcher and put into the ambulance.

Eventually the ambulance drove away and I left.

In other news, I got the world's worst promotion on Friday. As all of you know (now I know there are two of you; Nick, Forrest) I have been on a 7-day schedule with the newspaper and it's Web site. Friday I was called to a meeting and told that I was being put in charge of all of the community newspapers' Web sites, not just the one in Clay County. That makes 8 papers, which is more than 1.

How am I going to do it? No idea. But I get to start Monday morning.

The one good thing is that instead of working out in Clay County (which is outside of Jacksonville about 30 mins, kind of like Irmo to you Cola residents) I am officially a employee of the Times-Union's New Media department, one of the most respected new media depts on the east coast.

This blog is too long. Here is a picture.

Friends

I made a new friend today.

I was eating lunch when I met Perry. He was pretty cool, but then I ate him and threw him away. *Allen just pointed out that this Perry is like this Perry. As many of you know, I have a weird thing for Steve Perry. If you don't know, don't ask. Just don't stop believing*



In other news, the bloggers on my Web site are insanely conservative Christian. This is a direct quote: "we should all write "IN GOD WE TRUST " on the back of all our mail...after all, that is our national motto, and it's on all the money we use to buy those stamps. I think it is a wonderful idea. We must take back our nation from all the people who think that anything that offends them should be removed".

I am not kidding. I wish I was. When I moved to Jacksonville, I assumed that a large city meant a free-flowing of ideas, a willingness to accept all viewpoints. This is just like being back in TR.

Hard to be a gangsta

Blah blah blah. Today I had to be in Middleburg at 730 am and I had to leave here at 645. Not so much fun.

Otherwise today was very similar to most of my other days; busy and incredibly short. Rich called me downtown today. I got a "We need to talk, how soon can you be here?" kind of e-mail. I naturally assumed my job was over and started to freak. But I got down there and had lots of good things to say; he mostly said that he felt bad for me being out in Shitsville.

Which reminds me. The other day Lamar asked me if I was willing to be the content coordinator for the other Sun products. Being a moron, I said yes. I haven't had to do anything yet since those papers haven't opened their Web sites, but once they do....damn.

The art of being awesome

Good evening, fellow inhabitants of Awesomeville. Work has been pretty sweet, I am still working 7 days a week but I feel less stressed, which means either I'm getting used to the work or drinking too much.

The site is doing awesome traffic-wise, but we have a few complete assholes blogging, but as long as they dont break the decency or soliciation standards we have, I can't do anything about them. Oh yeah, we also have one complete crazy lady who put random stream-of-consciousness stuff up, except not in a good Fante way, but in a bad bird-lady way.

I'm also reading the short stories of John Cheever and it's already one of the most goodest books I've ever read.

Oh yeah, and Gray is in Jordan. Do any of you know Gray? Does anyone even read this damned thing?

One last thing. The camera I've been given for work is the rig of my dreams: Canon 30d, 580ex speedlite, L series 28-135 IS US lens. I've got a picture of what it looks like

Turtle-Wyrtle

This afternoon I was driving back from meeting with the PR girl at Thrasher-Horner Center for the Arts when I saw a teenage girl on the side of the road banging on the sidewalk with a 2x4 trying to shoo a huge snapping turtle out of the road. I was on the cellphone at the time and slightly lost, so I didn't realize how strange the situation was until I was sitting at a red light a couple of minutes later. WTF? I thought Did I just see a girl banging on the sidewalk with a stick of wood trying to encourage a turtle's progress across a busy 2-lane road? The turtle was pretty huge, and completely stretched out while "running", if you can even assign that term to a turtle, no matter how fast it's going. I have an artist's rendering.

The bees

I was listening to an NPR story on my way back from work about how a billion honey bees have disappeared from bee farms around America.

Apparently those little stinging bastards also pollinate our crops and they said California's onion crop will be 85% lost this season. The bee experts were asking for emergency money from the gov because they think it's going to be a big agricultural nightmare when nothing grows due to the lack of pollination.

They said the bees just disappeared- no bodies, no nothing. Most of the time the queen bee and a few helpers are all the remain, while the rest of the hive just vanishes. They don't know where the bees go.

But then I figured it out. No bees = no pollination = no American food = death to Americans.

I suppose you can put the rest together. Yes, honey bees are terrorists and that's the inside job the FBI has been expecting.

Who would look out for the wildlife? And armed with billions of stinging missiles, how could we stop them?

I for one welcome our Bee overlords.

Ebay

I'll admit, I'm pretty much just writing this because I'm counting the minutes until an Ebay auction is over (8min 32sec) and I hate sitting there refreshing the page, watching the time count down.

Today was interesting. Last night my boss told me that I was working too much and that I should take half a day off. See, I am technically an hourly employee and can't legally work more than 40hrs a week without overtime compensation. Except I'm not allowed to work overtime because they can't afford to pay overtime. Except I can't do my job at 40hrs a week.

If I had to guess, I'm working 60 or so, which is fine because I have nothing else to do and I enjoy working there. As a matter of fact, most days I'm there by 9, and 15 minutes later its 4:30 in the afternoon. (5min 9sec)

So today I came in at 1pm, taking the first half off. It was ok, I got to sleep in, but it also threw my daily pattern off, so I was kinda in a daze most of the time.

The good news is, I've got a lady who is very excited about being a community photographer for me and who is covering her very first event in the morning. Her excitement makes me excited and I can't wait to see how her pictures come out.

Brb. The auction only has 3 minutes remaining.

Son of a bitch! I bid in the last 15 seconds and someone swooped in and took it from me. I hate the bots that people run on Ebay.

Well, on that note, I guess I'll get some sleep. Stupid Ebay.

Rocking faces

That's right. Back at it, in the office this time

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk2xWeFV3ZY

You think it's hypocritical to post one blog about the Tube being evil and then using the Tube for my own good? No way

the Tube

I just tried to watch a video from a NBC affiliate in Augusta, GA (where I was an intern for Morris one summer) which showed a story they did about Krispy Kreme's new whole-wheat donut. Apparently, they had pulled the background graphic from the inter-tubes and it said "So good it will make you suck D*ck".

I thought that sounded awesome but when I clicked on the You Tube link to watch it, the content had been pulled by the affiliate. Censorship? Looks like with the new corporate influence on You Tube, "copyrighted" pieces are getting yanked.
Evidence
Video from the Oscars- gone
Videos of embarassing broadcast moments- gone
Video of Steve Perry singing Faithfully- still there, thank God

And the worst thing is, everything just gets posted on the Tube now. Everyone assumes that it will be around and it serves as an easy video hosting site. But if Tube controls the videos, what happens when everyone starts calling their copyrights in?

Stone Age

Sometimes I feel like I'm in the stone age at work. I can't blame anybody for thinking this way, but when someones tells me that we cant run a picture from the site because it doesnt have any cutlines and I saw yeah well thats the way it is supposed to be then we dont run the pic, I just dont get it.

I understand journalistic integrity, but the times have changed and the rules are going to have to be broken in order to make some progress. And of course, everyone at work will get used to this stuff and resist it less as I ram it down their throats, but in the mean time its frustrating.

Today was also set to be the worst day of work ever. And of about 2:30, it was. I had decided to introduce our first expert blogger ever, a wine expert who also happened to be the husband of one of the staff reporters. I interviewed him, got a pic and wrote the story. The whole idea was then pulled for ethical issues, didnt want people to get upset for us promoting him while he's related to a staff member.

Ugh, I'm tired.

And finally, this is the first time in my life that I've ever heard people actually talk about Weight Watchers and points and carbohydrates and cholesterol. I guess I'm officially in the white, middle-aged, middle-class, middle-America

What you see on I-95

I'm never traveling on 95 without my camera. Every time I'm on that interstate, I always see awesome stuff on the back of semi's that I want to take a picture of....except I usually lack a camera. This time, victory:

Yes, my friends, that is a huge life-size model of Thomas the Train Engine on the back of a flat-bed. I like how his face is covered to protect his identity...oh those celebrities.

Anyway, this weekend was busy but rock-awesome. I drove to Columbia after work on Friday to see the little lady. I can't believe that work starts again tomorrow, yikes. I also bought a mattress tonight, after weeks of deliberation and sleeping on the sofa. It gets here Saturday, I'm excited.

Dylan wrote every song, ever

You bitches want to know what makes me cry? This does.

http://www.cinefilevideo.com/2007/01/24/bob-dylan-wrote-every-song-ever-made/

except makes me cry from laughing so hard. Skeet skeet, skeet skeet skeet skeet skeet. You'll get the reference in a minute.

Today at work was pretty ok, I went to the chamber of commerce lunch with lamar, joe and some sales reps. I swear to god, nothing makes me more depressed that having a shitty lunch in a poorly-lit meeting room of a Hampton Inn that's being renovated and smells like mold, piss and hand lotion.

Other than that, the meeting was cool. I met a guy from the DOT who is going to feed us the highway traffic cams. Should be a cool draw to the site. My column today was a bit more impassioned (note, *obtuse) than any of my others have been. I could tell that Lamar really didnt like it, but he was kind enough not to laugh at me. We'll see tomorrow how much he cut.

Bed-time, homies. Keep it real

Why Digg Failed

Oh yeah. Half the reason I blogged tontie is because I wanted to include this article.

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2007/2/14/131127/709

It's pretty sweet. Check it

If it keeps on rainin'

Hmm. So we're 5 days into this whole website thing and the momentum seems to be slowing down. The response was overwhelming at first, but I just went the whole day without seeing much activity (like 3 blogs and 1 photo gallery).

Now i'm thinking: What the fuck do I do? I don't suppose I should have expected the site to keep being awesome to people. They've had a few days, the novelty has worn off and now it's my job to go out there and keep the site known.

I just need a damn game-plan. Any ideas?

Jax Welcome

Me being awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_IVagIT_Zc

Except now, blogger doesnt allow merged google accounts the option to embed video in their posts, so you get a crappy link instead of the video.

Super sweet

Sweet mother

Sweet mother. Is it Friday already? On Monday I talked about how proud I was that my first full week at work had ended, and now it's Friday night.
Last week seemed to take a month- a month of this quasi sadness/hyperbusyness/maladjustedness and some of -nesses. This week, however, completely disappeared. It was definitely just as busy, but I guess settling into the routine helped time past. The best part of all this is that I enjoy my job.
Every morning I look forward to work (I still hate the waking up part though) and the days always fly by and when it's time to leave I kinda wish that I didn't have to. Hell, today I forced myself to leave at 6 because I couldn't think of another thing to do. I guess that's awesome, because all of my other jobs have been tedious and I hated them. Especially the Progress internship, that was really dull, I'm glad my first real job in journalism has been a million times better.
As far as the Web site is concerned, there isn't anything to worry about so far. We released to the public on Wednesday and people came in droves. The blogs are active and people are submitting to the Spotted photos. I'm not really overwhelmed with the response, but I am encouraged
At worst, my bosses at the TU are very happy with the job I have done and I appreciate that recognition.
I just made a video, and once I publish it to You Tube, I'll send the link here
I'm also bitchin tired, but no sleep yet.

One whole week now

Woot. Another long day trying to get the site ready for roll-out (which i'm now told will be Wednesday), 7:30-8:30, and no lunch.

Today was really frustrating, but mostly not because of work this time. My parents were in town yesterday to drop off my furniture and stuff (more on that later), and it was great to see them. Although its only been about 1.5 weeks, it seems like months since I've seen them.

Anyway, they were supposed to meet me for lunch today, but they got a bit turned around in downtown Jax, which I cant blame them for, and by the time they got re-oriented, it was too late, and I had to go to a 1pm staff meeting. It basically ruined my day and I'm still sad that they had to go home...and on dad's birthday, nonetheless.

I would write more, but I'm too damned tired, and have to be back at work in the manana.
The best part today was Diana's anniversary/valentines present. She sent me a box of little hearts cut out of paper with our favorite memories on them and other presents, most notably a picture of herself and a V-day Pez dispenser. Totally sweet. She's infinitely more considerate and loving than my pitful ass, I wonder why she puts up with me.

Oh, and I sneezed while brushing my teeth tonite. Toothpaste sprayed everywhere out of my nose and it was totally awesome and my nasal passages smell really good.