State Street

I have now seen enough of State Street in Santa Barbara to last me a lifetime. In the past forty-two hours, I have walked up and down this avenue of restaurants, bars, expensive furniture stores, and chic clothing boutiques at least ten times. There are at least five homeless street performers per block providing unsolicited music, a Starbucks on every third corner, and eastern themed shops with statues of the Buddha sprinkled throughout.

I picked up a copy of The Pump House Gang by Tom Wolfe at the Borders. This was quite a cool Borders: three stories of paperbacks and a healthy selection of mystery novels. Then it was off to the thrift store to browse the donated paperbacks. This thrift store held true to the rule of thrift store book selection. It was heavy on worn copies of bestselling murder mysteries and Tom Clancy novels. Picked up Elmore Leonard's Pagan Babies. I hope to get further in Don Quixote this week, so I'll sign off.

Mission success

Visited the Santa Barbara Mission today. The tour costs four dollars per person. A man stopped my father in the book store and asked him if the church was worth four dollars to look at. Upon further thought, I don't think four dollars is a lot of money to begin with, especially when it's not your four dollars.

The interior of the church was dark and colorful. Dark since there wasn't a lot of lighting. Colorful since the church had been restored to its "original appearance" using bright colors. See for yourself.

The sanctuary here and below the colorful paint.



Unfortunately the zeal for historical accuracy doesn't extend to placing the alter against the wall or having holy water fonts. Instead there was the cliched baptismal font being inappropriately used as a holy water dispenser.

Outside the SciFi Channel was filming a movie. There was a guy dressed like a priest and a man and a woman wearing stupid clothes and pretending to shoot guns at something just beyond the camera.

Going to watch Friday Night Lights tonight. Good movie. Highly recommend it.

Quiet consumption

Golata, CA.

The sun shines down on the mountains behind this extension of Santa Barbara. The mountains stand brown and dry, dulled by a hazy veil of "marine layer". The locals keep insisting any sort of smog or hazy layer is actually from the sea. It must enhance the real estate values.

The hotel is a Best Western. There is a continental breakfast served every morning. The patrons sit in reserved, awkward silence, not wishing to disturb anyone else. Personal space has a three foot radius. Each person sits quietly with a Danish or bowl of cereal. The selection is quite nice: Golden Grahams, Cheerios, Danishes, donuts, toast, etc. The only noticeable noise, from the air conditioning, in enhanced when two older women begin talking about grandmothers with belly rings. They do not appreciate the six foot diameter of privacy each patron has.

I eat my oatmeal. No one else is eating oatmeal. A large man with a stomach that is two sizes two large for his own good loads up on glucose encrusted donuts. A skater chews Lucky Charms. All the food here seems to be sugar in different shapes. I finish my oatmeal and have a donut. I am on vacation after all. Accompany that with some cranberry juice, and top it all off with another bowl of oatmeal. Ah, whoever said Wheaties was the breakfast of champions didn't work for the Quaker Oats company.

New graphic

For fans of Naruto, go find out what character you are.


Which Naruto Character Are You?
Test by naruto - kun.com

Chelsea Clinton worth 40 goats

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13394619,00.html

Santa Barbara

Hello from wonderful Santa Barbara!

I'm on a week long holiday here with my family and it turns out the hotel we're staying at has internet access in the rooms. So now I can blog while vacationing.

I've started a short crime story which I will be posting later in the week. Ok, well night all.

Detailed prose

Tasik has finally started his blog. It's about time.

His style is good. I recommend the second post "slow motion". Some of the descriptions are excellent, especially the last lines.

You can look for me trying to give this sort of slow lazy Garrison Keillor style description since this blog is nothing if not something completely different and Tasik has inspired me to rip off his style (imitation is the highest form of flattery, no?). I'll probably get board and go back to random off-the-wall posts, but look for something more artistic now and again.

Abandon Ship! We've been overrun!

It seems that this blog is going to be taking a more personal, this-is-what-is-happening-to-me tone.

Now to get down to business. Several unfortunate things have happened (and by several I mean two).

1. The college campus has been overrun with high school students, or, as I have decided to call them, cancer with legs.
   
2. Novusordowatch.com has been blocked by the school's web-site blocking software.

It's not that I dislike high school students. I was a high school student at one point and was quite fond of myself and my peers, with the exception of half of my high school class--I was rather bitter towards others in high school. I dislike these high school students because they are a large plague on the land, ravaging the food supplies, leaving messes in the commons, and generally acting like they own the place just because their parents paid $800 or so so they could spend a fortnight here pretending to be college students. Check out that link. See how many teenagers there are? Now imagine them all congregating fifteen minutes early for lunch and talking very loudly. While we summer workers eat. Maybe that doesn't seem as bad as I made it sound. Maybe you don't get annoyed easily. I will try to be nice and charitable towards them for the next two weeks. The first week will be very easy since I am going on vacation.


The second item is the more serious of the two. If this site was manually blocked, then this heralds a new reign of censorship here at the college. Just let that sink in. I'm probably overreacting to this. I have visited Novus Ordo Watch before using school computers. I am shocked to find out that this site which was previously "acceptable" is now

Website Blocked: Inappropriate Content

and cannot be viewed. Does this mean that any site which is vocally critical of the current papacy and the entire modernist movement within the Catholic Church is now rated at the same level as playboy.com? I'm guessing not, but if I find anymore blocked sites, don't worry, I'll let all three of you readers know (Am I flattering myself by assuming I have at least three readers? Yes.).

Junor year already

Does anyone who reads the TAC2007 board feel like we've already started Junior year, what with all of the political debate and none of us really knowing what we are typing.

Also check out Angry Alien Productions for 30 re-enactments of movies using bunnies. They're funny, but will spoil movies you haven't seen.

Justice Roberts, Come On Down!

So Bush picked Roberts. Now we can all sit back as the Democrats and Republicans try to be as partisan as possible while trying to appear as bi-partisan as possible. Remember kiddos, this is all for the sake of a divided nation which doesn't want a nasty confirmation battle.

Ann Coulter doesn't seem to be happy. The Left doesn't seem to be happy. Roberts appears happy in the photographs. At least someone has a smile on his face.

Coulter Complains

The first post is always rather pointless

It's pointless because no one is going to read it except the owner of the blog, not having told anyone that he has a blog yet. This post is where the promises of random thoughts, odd jokes, and potentially disturbing musings are made along with a promise as to how often the posts will come. This culminates in the first attempt at issuing some content and maybe telling the entire world wide web about oneself.

I will not promise anything. I will give no expectations so I will not feel obliged to meet any. I will give whatever I feel like. If you enjoy this then I am happy for you. If you don't then click on one of the links and go spend your time on the web more productively.