ThisIsVlad

hoegarden:
last week i went to see Chris’ band hoegarden. this is the second time i’ve seen them, and they’ve been pretty good each time. this time they played at the red cherry lounge or something like that, and the soundsystem was pretty jacked. the show itself was a lot of fun though despite any sound issues. they’ve definitely got some fun catchy songs.

christmas lights:
every year, the mercury news puts together a page of all the houses in the south bay that have the most impressive christmas decorations. on saturday night, caryn and i drove around trying to check out some of these houses. dude, some people seriously go all out when decorating for christmas. we went to this one place that had so much crazy shit going on! besides just having christmas lights everywhere, they had tons of figurines in their yard doing various things including an alien ufo, penguins, a santa on a surfboard, trains that drove around, reindeer and god knows what else. we were so impressed. and on top of all of this, they were handing out fresh baked cookies, cocoa, and hot cider. dayum!

sticky:
then, later saturday night, we went to that party “Sticky”. this was the first time i’ve gone to a rave in forever. i ended up having a really good time though. hella people came to this party who i haven’t seen at a party (or anywhere else) in years. it was fun to see all the familiar faces. the party had an open bar all night too, which was definitely cool.

survivor:
sunday night i wasn’t able to watch the survivor finale. i had been watching the show all season long, every damn episode, and now i couldnt get to see who won!! how annoying. luckily, it turned out that marcel recorded the show on tivo, so later sunday night we went over to his house to watch. it was a pretty crazy finale, and then when it go to the end and everyone was casting their votes for the final winner… the tivo thing indicated that it stopped recording there. FUCK!! all that for nothing! i can’t believe we watched the whole thing only to miss the last 5 crucial minutes!! arrrggghh!!

-v

Last night my brother and his friends accidentally drove his car off the road and crashed down into a ditch.
It was a semi-gradually sloping ravine about 10 feet deep.

from what i hear from my brother, it was a pretty crazy accident. after rolling down the ditch, the car wedged itself between the two opposite sides of the ditch. the airbags deployed and everything. they even had to request some special super-powered tow truck, cause the regular one couldn’t get it out. unfortunately, though the body damage was not too major, the front axle of his car was completely mangled and the car will most likely end up being totalled.

-v

recently i heard form gerlando that his company got bought out by Siebel and that now he works somewhere near me. we’ve been meaning to meet up for lunch and whatnot, but i never really realized just how close he works, it turns out that his company is located only like 3 blocks away from mine. you can see our building from his. how crazy is that?

anyways, we kicked it today at the starbucks by work. it’s so weird to think of how different our lives are now. just like 4 years ago we were both doing pretty much the same thing: hanging out, going to bars, partying and whatever. 4 years later i’m still sorta doing the same shit in some ways. in the mean time, gerlando’s gotten married, bought a house, and had 2 children. while i get bummed that i don’t have enough free time to hang out, he’s bummed that he doesn’t have enough time to play with his kids.

i swear, sometimes i feel like life is on fastforward. i remember thinking “dayum, am i really old enough to have friends who are married?” and then “dayum, am i really old enough to have friends who have kids?”. as life goes on i guess i’m gonna have more and more of these moments. those “holy shit, how the fuck old am i and is this really my life?” moments. heh, and one of the biggest signs of not being young anymore…. is complaining about not being young anymore. i used to watch sit-coms and think “what’s up w/ old people always whining about being old, talking about ‘back in their day’.. . can’t they just suck it up and deal w/ their shit?!” and now i’m one of them.

i’m definitely not in a hurry to “grow up” any more than i already have. but at the same time, life is all about give and take. as time passes you lose some good stuff, but gain stuff too. i wouldn’t trade who i am now to be who i was before, and so i assume that when i get older i hopefully will be glad to be at whatever stage in life i am at that point.

-v

holy fucking shit. i just saw the most absolutely fucked up anti drunk driving ad. sheez, it makes me feel fucking ill even just thinking about it… ugh.

be warned.. this site is rough… http://www.hot.ee/dontdrink/

fucking hell. everyone always thinks it’ll never happen to them. but then there are the unlucky ones. sheez… i really should start taking public transport when i drink…

-v

earlier today, this article – Click! – was on the front page of cnn.com. To make a long story short, there’s a father living in Pennsylvania who believes that polygamy is a good thing and therefore is teaching his 10 year old daughter about this. Surprisingly, the courts said that it is illegal for him to do so, even though he is arguing that polygamy is part of his religion and that he should have the right to teach his own child to practice whichever religion he wishes.

honestly, i’m really surprised that the court ruled that way. for the most part parents are allowed to teach their kids whatever the hell they please in regards to religion. for instance, i couldn’t imagine the courts getting involved if he taught his daughter that women are totally subservient to men as many religious zealots think… or if he taught her that gay people are evil sinners that will go to hell… or if he told her that masturbation will make god hate you forever. honestly, it terrifies me to think of the crazy shit that a lot of people teach their kids. and it’s not just the parents. i just read some statistic saying that almost a third of US school systems dont teach their students anything about evolution. hell, in some states you legally aren’t even allowed to teach that evolution is anything more than one of many possibilities of how the world works. in fact, according to recent polls, 47% of americans do not believe in evolution whatsoever. 47%!!!

-v

friday night, after stuffing my freezer totally full with a *ton* of Trader Joe’s food, caryn, joey, and i went to the Up and Down club for this new monthly club night. the night was ok. didn’t really spend much time dancing or anything. instead i spent most of the night kicking it outside w/ the smokers. Afterwords, we went back to joey’s house to drink some more. oh yeah, on the way there we stopped by jack in the box. space is so tight in the city that fast food places can’t have drive-thru windows, but people still want to eat food late… so they just have an outside walk up window. like a drive-thru, but on foot. i dont think i’ve ever seen that at a fast food place before. anyways, we ended up staying up till 6 am at joey’s house looking at old photos from *years* ago. it was pretty crazy..

the next day, caryn and i went to the flower conservatory. it was hella cool. they had a ton of different kinds of orchids. orchids are so damn crazy and intricate. they look like some kind of weird alien species. the place also had these crazy lilly pads that are supposed to grow up to 8 feet across and hold up the weight of a full grown person!! unfortunately, the ones there were only like 3 feet across or so, but were still pretty cool.

saturday night i tried to continue working on my mobile. unfortunately, it looks like it totally wont work. the glue is not strong enough to hold it together, and when i tried to pick it up, the whole thing pretty much crumbled in my hands. ugh. oh well….

-v

i’m a total loser. i’m registered to vote in Sunnyvale instead of SF. i’ve kept meaning to do a change of address so that i could vote in SF local elections, but have just been to lazy and lame to do it. i just finally filled out the online form today. it turns out that to vote in a local election, you only need to register 15 days in advance…. which means that if i had just gotten my ass in gear 2 weeks ago, i could have voted tomorrow. *sigh*.

-v

another thing i found while digging through email was this old quote i always thought was really cool…

“In some alternate dimension
Seashells hold humans to their ears
And listen to the sounds of machines”

-jeffrey mcdaniels

from time to time i have this huge urge to do something creative. i’ve always really wanted to be able to make something cool. unfortunately, i have very little creativity in me. even though i’m really into art and stuff, other than building the ducky car, i really haven’t made anything of my own.

over the last several weeks caryn and i have been toying w/ the idea of building a mobile. we went to several stores to try to get ideas of how to make one. finally, after a lot of brainstorming etc, we came up w/ a plan of how we would design this mobile and what we would build it out of. it’s kind of hard to explain what it would look like w/out drawing it, but basically it would consist of concentric right angles formed out of multi-colored mosaic tiles.

after tracking down the supplies we need to build it (and revising our idea a few times since certain parts did not exist), we spent a whopping 60$ for pieces to make just one mobile. we started putting it together and… ummmm… errr… well, now i have this horrible feeling that the mobile will not work out. all of that planning will probably amount to nothing. argh! oh well… back to the drawing board…

-v

i’ve always tried to not delete old email. in a way, email that sticks around in your sent box or email you received is kind of a journal in it’s own right. i tend to use email *constantly*, so chances are, if something is going on in my life or i am planning on doing something, there will be a record of it in my email. i’ve worked here at consumerreview for a bit over 3 years now, and today did a little digging through some mails i have laying around from when i first started here. it’s so weird! so many of the emails are about raves etc. it’s crazy to think how much a part of my life they were at that point, even though by then my interest in it had been waning for years. it’s also pretty trippy to see who of the people who were my friends back then are still my friends now, and who has fallen through the cracks. it’s pretty nuts how much can change in just 3 years. on the flip side, a lot of the stuff i wrote about back then, i’m still into now. i wonder what parts of my current life i’ll keep w/ me when it’s 3 years from now? how different will i be?

It keeps making me think of this book i read back in the day, where the main quote was “I gave my life to become the person that I am right now. Was it worth it?”. If you think about it, at any given time, if we take a current snapshot of our lives, it really does come down to that. everything a person has ever done in their life… all the places they’ve gone, all the jobs they’ve had, all the choices they’ve made, all the time they’ve spent.. basically everything in their life so far, they have given and spent in exchange for the present which is: their current personality, a bunch of memories, and interpersonal relationships that they have formed. as we continue to live life, the amount of time we have traded to be who we currently are keeps going up… and we can only hope that the barter is still worthwhile.

-v