But luckily we have some plans in store for the next month or two. Think a horklezorp-meets-kicks type of blog. I’m getting kind of excited. We’re looking for contributors, let me know if you’re interested.
=hot dog the rapper
I had some time to shop for kicks between meetings this afternoon — I went to the local football/sports chain’s store and tried on some velcro Kappas. They didn’t fit for shit, and that’s all they had in stock. I guess this is an appropriate time to mention that my major goal in terms of “souvenir” was to find a pair of Kappas while I was in town — I haven’t ever seen them in the US and I haven’t taken the plunge into buy shoes from Ebay yet.
I asked a guy there where else I should check; he pointed me to some store (I forget the name), but it was in this pretty thin alley, and it was obviously the place to get “trendy” or “fresh” kicks in Reading. There was a pair of Legacy’s that I liked, but not for 100 pounds (which is almost $160 right now).
I hit another couple stores, and found a pair of Gola’s that I really loved and a pair of Etnies that I liked a lot — but neither were available in my size. Brits and their tiny feet be damned.
There may be another shop or two that I can check tomorrow; our morning meetings got cancelled, so I may also take a train into London for the morning and spend a couple hours bumming around. It remains to be seen. Either way, peace and don’t call me because we just got yelled at for not using Skype.
=hot dog the rapper
After I got off at Heathrow, I (surprisingly) quickly made it through customs and stood outside in the cold and snow waiting for my bus. After about 20 minutes, I realized that no bus was coming, so I began to look around. I was supposed to be at the Central Bus Station, but obviously I was at some other bus station that only had hotel shuttles (nice).
Once I got to the right station, I switched up some dollars for pounds, bought a Gatorade, and grabbed a bus ticket to Reading. By the time I got to my hotel (about 10:30am local time), I had been away for about 20 hours and I was pretty exhausted. And they told me that I had to wait until noon to check in. Fuckers. So I hung out at an internet cafe (McDonald’s) for a little more than an hour and caught up on email. When I got back to the hotel at 11:30am, I just kind of stood there until they finally let me check in. Ahh, nice. Shower and a 10 minute nap.
I got to our client’s building in time for the afternoon meetings. As I predicted, I didn’t really talk much; instead I alternated between chugging wee little cups ‘o coffee and catching myself dozing off.
After the meetings were finished we went to dinner at a British chain called Wagamama http://www.wagamama.com/ (there are supposedly some pretty obscure US locations, but I’ve never seen or heard of it). It’s a ramen bar, and the food was pretty good. After dinner we headed back towards the hotels, and the walk took quite awhile as the sidewalks and streets had iced over pretty nicely.
My PM Grant and I stopped at a pub for a pint, then I got back to the hotel and had a Lech’s before passing out around 9pm, roughly 30 hours after I’d last slept. Whew.
Then, I woke up quite some time later, assuming I still had a couple hours before anyone else would wake up. I was pretty wide awake, and I started reaching around to find my phone or a TV remote or something along those lines. When I found the phone, I checked the time. Gasp. 1:05am. I was wide awake after sleeping for 4 hours, and it was at least 7 hours before anyone else I knew on this island would be moving around.
So, after watching Kung Fu Panda or whatever it is for about 45 minutes, I finally dozed off enough to pass the time until about 7:30. Woke up, emailed the rest of the crew to make breakfast plans, showered, and hit the streets. Grant and I went to a “dirty spoon” or whatever they called it for breakfast. I had egg, bacon, chips and beans; Grant had beans and toast. Quite interesting.
Now we’re at the client site in our office getting ready for the day. Since I’m much closer to being on a regular schedule now, I plan to paint a little bit of the town up tonight. The pubs all close around 11pm, so I’ll probably try to do a little shopping and then belly up to the bar across the street from the hotel.
Hopefully I’ll be headed into London tomorrow evening with one of my co-workers for a bit. If not, I may try to push my flight back a day as my trip to San Juan has been pushed back to March. Off to coffee and meetings.
Peace, don’t call me.
=hot dog the rapper
Today’s to-do list is down to “deposit checks” and “buy champagne”. Let’s hope I’m drinking the champagne in 7 hours.
Here we go, Steelers, here we go!
peace don’t call me.
=hot dog the rapper
Most of my to-do list for today is crossed off, including “make to-do list for tomorrow”. Tomorrow’s looks like:
Today’s list was much longer — it was the big “wrap shit up” day for me before a pretty non-standard couple days: The Steelers playing in the superbowl, followed by me flying to London (Reading) for a few days for work. It was completely breaking a constant sweat while running all of my errands in shorts in sandals..in January. We’re now at 3 officially perfect days (~72 degrees, partly cloudy, slight breeze) this year. TIC.
Tonight I’m going to take it really easy, because by Tuesday my body is going to be fucked if I don’t. FRANK and I are heading out for dinner and a couple drinks in a few moments, then I’m going to go to Del’s to hang out for a bit and probably head back towards Whole Dudes when karaoke gets too annoying.
For the first time since I settled in here I’m doing a bunch of work travel. Since I’ll be in England and San Juan, I doubt I’ll be posting like it was a trip to Shreveport or anything like that, but I’m sure I’ll have down time and do a little posting.
If anyone has any suggestions on what to do in Reading/London, shoot me an email. Obviously I’ll only be able to choose one or two things, because I’ll be there and free on Tues-Thurs evenings, so I need to decide exactly what I’ll do. One of my coworkers is a Brit, so I’ll probably just let him tour guide me unless I find out there is something remarkable I need to see or do.
Long live islands. Peace, don’t call me.
=hot dog the rapper
it’s time to get ready for people doing crazy shit because they can’t handle still being far better off than most people in third world countries or even people in their own cities that are much less fortunate than they are.
At least the Obama administration is taking some stands against the fucking assholes that helped us get to where we are.
Me? I feel pretty fortunate that thus far, I appear to be mostly recession-proof.
Peace don’t call me.
=hot dog the rapper
Even though it’s nothing I really want, I’m hooked on this.
Digsby is just so easy and awesome at social, IM, AND email (archive gmail messages from a pop-up with no browser load??? google=hate, me=FUCKING LOVE) , all in one — like Meeba but not forcing you into a money-trap web browser…Digsby it’s the closest thing to having an iphone installed on your laptop, basically. Just don’t fall for all of their creepware at the beginning of the install and you’re about to install a pretty slick piece of software (unless it’s logging these keystrokes =)
I absolutely hate a lot things about it — but they’re all cosmetic or minorly annoying functional things. And I’d much rather deal with that shit than NOT have the smooth, well-working functions that will make my life infinitely more efficient.
If this software keeps updating, I’ll be interested to see how quickly they can cover the spectrum and make it worth my while to pay $20-$30/month to let them do everything I want. Archiving Gmail messages without having to wait for the mail interface to open? AMAZING. Twitter already looks sharp with it. When I can facebook my status and make comments from the same app without a browser, I’ll be in heaven. Especially if I find a new network of people on Facebook that day. That’s anyhwhere between 20-30 times, in one day, that i can click something from a running client rather than waiting for my gmail to load. That’s at least 10-20 minutes of my day, without including chats that I get roped into.
Here’s a hint on how you can make yourself amazing, Digsby (and get my CC#) — in addition to what you do, add Google Calendar scheduling to it, so you can take ‘Outlook’/'Exchange’ style invites (as well as others) and be the intermediary between a POP/IMAP email account and someone’s Google Calendar with those invites.
Leaving now — it’s been great for an hour, if it ever ends up being a hit or a drag I’ll post a follow-up, but it’s definitely worth testing out for anyone who likes Meebo (which doesn’t include me).
Peace.
Um….don’t call me.
=hot dog the rapper
Well, I’ve calmed down signficantly since the last post about the rap battle, and I couldn’t say ‘no’ to Flex when he asked me to listen to their new song, Outside This Bitch. It’s pretty good. I do want to clarify one thing, though:
When Dorsey says, “these clowns steal my songs”, and he’s addressing Drew and I — first of all, Drew made that beat for me, I helped Dorsey write the chorus, and I even had this conversation with him:
me: so we are working on “christmas wishlist“ i hope you’re ready to record it in the next week or so so we can send it out prior to xmaspatrick: i wrote the fucking hook , i sure as fuck hope i’m ready i can’t wait to write some verse that song is finnin to asplode actually you wrote the “red headed, black, blonde, asian, and brunette chicks”
Then, the week before xmas when we were working on it, this is the response I got from him:
it sounds pretty good. i dont’ know if i can do shit right now, as 8 = D is mainly at davey’s right now. i LOVE how filthy it is. it’s very eazy-e.
all in all i’d have to say it’s a really fun track that could use a little work. i’d obv love to spit on it, so we may have to see about making that happen. the new roommates moved in over the weekend. it was INSANE filling a 3 story house with shit, but it’s totally full!!! there are atleast 4 areas dedicated to kicking it or taking it easy. you have to check this pad out. either way, we’ll be able to record really nicely there, but not for another few days. we just moved all the heavy shit everywhere it goes and got the first floor cool. now we’re all on our bedrooms, and after that, the lab.
at that point, we’ll start passing tracks and virtual blunts.
And that’s what the whole rap battle was based on.
For Greenlee’s future information, our “Dre phones” (they’re not Dre’s, they’re beyerdynamics fwiw) were not “destroyed by a magnitude of awesomeness that is, as of yet, uncomprehensible.” In fact, you should probably grab some Dre phones so you can hear what you’re doing better. You could have come up a lot on the drum loops and the orchestra hits, and maybe the overall volume. I just got done listening to a Ben Folds song that has a kick with a higher magnitude of awesomeness.
Further, while I was writing lyrics, I obviously combed through every chat/email of the last month or two to make sure I didn’t miss anything like that corny “magnitude of awesomess” line, and beginning with the “FUDC” status messages a few weeks ago when this began to take off, I couldn’t find an instance of me being involved in any kind of rap battle/war of words until two days ago, which was the night that it became obvious that they were actually going to make the song. So, the only person in UDC that had anything to do, whatsoever, with talking shit back and forth is FRANK, and they didn’t even mention him in the song. In fact, they only called out Bubs, I didn’t even get called out (unless that kegerator line was all).
All in all, the last four days have been pretty weird. Very glad that now that I’m back to getting Pic SMSs of Sky in the t-shirt I sent her and ordering Steelers shit off the internet instead of hating. I’m going to make plaque logo for the side bar that says, “challenging me to a rap battle will result in your windshield getting smashed, at a minimum”, and from now on I’m just going to drop aluminum bats on people’s cars instead of getting wrapped up in this.
Peace. Don’t call me.
=hot dog the rapper
“A special elastic belt and inflatable tunnel”? LMAO @ this is short, funny read about NASA’s extraorbital/zeo-gravity sex experiments.
=hot dog the rapper
nailz called me a homo when i was chatting with her, and for the first time in my life i told one of the handful of females i love, ‘fuck you’. that made me stop and think. not that i think i was wrong to say it, but what would cause me to say that? i’ve never thought once about saying ‘fuck you’ like that to my mother, nails, bregan, aunt lori, etc..
background: pat, flex and (somehow) greenlee decided to rap battle me and upsidedown couches (okay, i should probably clarify from the start that this story is going to be way too emotional and scattered to follow easily, even though i’m planning on trying to effectively tell my side of it).
so i never really put any thought into this until it actually became apparent that there was truly a rap battle (aka last few days — i heard enough static to know for a fact they were recording). so when i found out they were, i started putting my strategy together to destroy them.
i don’t know why you people don’t understand this, but if it’s a game of any type and i’m committed to playing, i’m going to do anything it takes to win. and i’m going to be merciless about it. ask grant, ask julia, ask rocky (i still owe you dieting enough to fit into that duke jersey fwiw, but thanks for getting me an XL — i haven’t worn that size since jr yr of HS), ask anyone whose ankles i ever broke or sprained playing soccer, ask anyone whoever got boxed out/elbowed in their junk playing basketball against me after you talked too much shit, ask anyone who ever got fired because of me (you probably don’t know you did, but yeah) and without bringing up any sore topics ask my family (because it’s almost certainly their fault that i’m this way, but i should leave family business out). but basically, fuck all of you. i’m way better to all of you than any of you are to me (there might be an infinitely small number of exceptions — and i fully plan on rewarding all of you as soon as i’m capable, if i haven’t already). and i’m this way to a fault; this is probably both my biggest priority and hugest FAIL. so don’t put me in a position that i have to shit on you in any way because i don’t want to and it sucks so many fucking dicks i can’t explain. and it’s not something i have the time or understanding to change — just fucking compete with me, not against me, please. i’d much rather waste my time and energy on you in a positive manner (i don’t use the word ‘waste’ lightly in this specific scenario) and feel really good about doing so, than deal with adverse bullshit that stupid shit like this brings about.
last night at the hubcap, it was time for me to start working on my rap battle song. i decided quite awhile ago that i wanted to do a remix of ‘My Dick’ (mickey avalon) simply because it would be fun. sidenote: that’s the entire reason i kept rapping after ‘party party’ — it was actually fun for me to rap, even when i REALLY sucked, and i always thought that if i could improve at it, i’d love it as a hobby. i was a HORRIBLE rapper then. it took me a month to make one shitty song, and i spent a LOT of time trying to make it. but i stuck with it and things slowly got a little better. i can actually write songs that i love now (i hate ‘party party’ more than i hate Ohio so it has come a long way) and it’s a fucking AMAZING release from all the other shit that i do. and also, i’m really lucky right now to have FRANK working on this shit all the time with me. he’s more of an inspiration than anything i’ve ever had since i started rapping, and most of the time i feel like i’m holding him back, even if he’s not really that ‘technically’ good at music. he pumps shit out way faster than i do, and he’s continually getting better etc. he’ll be really, really fucking good some day if he keeps up the pace, and in the mean time we’ll have a fuck ton of fun while he’s getting there. one of my huge personal/rapping goals is to simply keep up with him.
anyways, back to the ‘my dick’ thing. how easy is that? awesome song, i can remix it as a diss (which it originally was, although not specifically towards any person or group of people, so it works great), and everyone laughs. except, when i started writing lyrics, they weren’t very light. the only thing i could think about as i was writing lyrics was ‘how am i going to win? i have to KILL them, this needs to be over as soon as it starts’ blah blah blah all that other shit that you would imagine an overly competitive person would think. well, pretty soon, i had a song where the first stanza was making a really inappropriate cancer reference about patrick’s mother, and it really didn’t get much more appropriate than that (other than one nick cage verse that i LOVE — ‘My dick, National Treasure….You’re dick, Gone in Sixty Seconds’), and actually got WAAAAAAAAAAY worse, for the entire eight text files full of lyrics that I wrote for eight different songs that i considered recording. i’m assuming ryan doesn’t even rap in their song, but i wrote two separate songs that both clocked over 1:30 (without any chorus whatsoever) specifically about him because he pissed me off so much today.
i almost fainted twice today at the office because i was so worked up about all of this shit. i was eating aspirin and chugging waters because i was worried. and i don’t WANT that in any fucking way. i just can’t control it. today was reminicent of my first trip to vegas when i was total nuts for a day and a half, but luckily today was only for an hour or so. even within the last half hour as i’ve been writing this i’ve almost stormed out the door to buy cigarettes and start smoking again a couple times. it’s pretty much the worst day i’ll have this year unless someone important dies or something insanely more aggravating happens (aka 9/11 attack when i thought they were after my dad’s building).
this is one of the harder things i’ve had to do since i can remember: but i’m completely giving up. i’m going to sit this one out, because i think it’s in everyone’s best interests BY FAR. if that means i’m a pussy or whatever, i guess i decided that i don’t really care. i hope your rap is great, but i’m never going to listen. i’m sure this makes no sense to anyone besides me. oh well. it’s probably a good idea not to say anything to me about it.
break: this chat (exerpt below) just interrupted me, and it made me want to delete stop writing this post and completely move on because i’m not being positive right now, i haven’t been all weekend, and i shouldn’t really devote time to this shit.
me: yea, today was the first day it really sucked. i had a shitty fucking day though.
i’m just going to avoid shitty days from now on.
someone else: well…
yer gonna have to be a non smoker on shitty days too
but you know that
i’m proud of you
keep it u[
up
me: thanks!
I guess to finish…this morning I was so pissed off about this shit that I quit the mailing list (kcf) that I started nearly a decade ago (which has been one of my favorite things in my life). I’ve turned it off enough times silently for 2-, 3-, 5-days, etc., in the past few months because it was way too much of a distraction, and today was the worst it has been. I wish I had the time and love for it that I used to, and hopefully i will again some day, but honestly I can’t even remember the last time that I was motivated to write more than 5-10 sentences for it, and most of those times have been forced. It was probably when we made the rocky sucks video? I used to write hundreds/thousands of words for it every week. It was the last personal/social thing that I’ve been holding on to besides this blog but I’m going to stay away from it for the foreseeable future because I don’t really have the time or energy for it or any of this kind of shit right now. my priorities in my life seem to be awfully different from all of my friends, so i think it might be a good time to explore distancing myself from my friends a little bit to focus on the things that i want to accomplish.
Also, I’m vowing never to even consider having a rap battle because it eliminates the purpose of rapping for me and I don’t see the point in having days like this when it can be avoided quite easily. of the handful of ‘best’ rappers alive, two of them are dead because of a rap battle (total FAIL on the world’s part)…and along the same lines, i was certainly on a path to say things that i’d regret for the rest of my life because of this ‘rap battle’ with my friends. and even though i’m still pretty non-rational about the whole thing, i can’t imagine that it’s anything besides stupid to have a rap battle if it isn’t necessary. i don’t even know why it would possibly happen, other than ignorance. i’m sorry for anything that i had to do with its formation.
final note, it’s probably worth keeping your opinion about this to yourself (or at least, from me) because I have no desire to talk to you about it, and it’s not likely to be a very productive conversation if you bring it up. If you’ve read this far….thanks for reading, i love you, and i’ll catch you soon. This blog is probably closing back down for quite awhile until i absolutely need it for some reason or i have to use it for work. all the new rap songs and any updates will show up on upsidedowncouches.com as they are released. if you think i’m absolutely crazy, which i’m sure a lot of people might, oh well — go yell it on the mountain. this wasn’t especially easy and i want it to be completely over. peace, don’t call me.
=hot dog
PS (edit). read this: http://sports.espn.go.com/highschool/rise/basketball/girls/news/story?id=3859935
Things like “golden rules” are fucking bullshit. If you’re going to play, play to win. Otherwise, don’t play, or step your shit down to a level where you can compete. I don’t care who you are or what you’re doing, if you’re trying to do shit over your head you’re going to fail, so either accept it, or realize that it’s YOUR responsibility to understand your capabilities, not your competition’s. I’m going to go puke myself to sleep.
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