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So, many weekends of mine have a few consistent activities:

1) Going out at 1am on a photoshoot and editing when I come home.

2) Keeping up social ties and enjoying company of the binary (computer) variety.

So it was last friday afternoon. I reviewed these options. I figured doing #1 was a given. I wasn't sure how to rope in #3, though. That's when I noticed my one local friend, the good captain, was online. I had a plan. Apparently, he did too. We both simultaneously proposed to do the usual dinner and a movie thing.

The meal itself was mediocre but passingly odd. We traditionally go to this 50's style diner chain, which consistently sports this aura of domestic violence.

We then drove out to the promenade where the theatre was at. Imagine two blocks of shops and civilization out in the middle of open country and freeway interchanges, just a giant palatial slab of neon and parking lots straight out of a theme park. Every side has entrances like carpenter bee holes.

The variety of biped there on the weekend was striking. You could just say that couples and packs of friends roamed around, but the attitudes and dress styles all had these wonderful little differences. Being a pervert of the first order and 32nd degree, I myself sincerely appreciate a woman who accentuates all the right accents. Hell, I can appreciate when a good-looking guy does himself up right, but not in the same tingly 'yum, yes, that body with a bottle of wine, please' way.

I digress. We saw the "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen". We were extremely disappointed. The Captain argued Sean Connery made the movie passably decent. I argued that just because a God might exist in the Universe doesn't mean we're any better off.

The better part of my late night was spent trying to do photography out and around The Captain's apartment complex and in front of this gated community nearby. I didn't have my tripod with me, so doing any kind of long exposure shot was futile. I resolved to go back with the right equipment the day after.

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And oh you bet your sweet arse that I made sure I had the right equipment: two fully charged lithium batteries, my tripod, a cleaned camera, everything.

The Captain and I had made plans again to do another dinner and a movie at the same palatial promenade of theme park parking and Aguilera aspirations.

Our first stop was at 'Shabu Shabu'. I just call it 'Boil Boil'. It's alot more accurate that way. See, the Japanese used to sit around campfires and boil their veggies and meats in these large cauldrons. Some businesspeople decided they could do this on an individual scale with tiny personal skillets (a la a sushi bar set-up) and make it tres chic. Well I tell ya, it was tres chic. And the prices were tres, tres chic. We were paying 12 bucks for unprocessed chicken as much for the novelty as the atmosphere.

'Boil Boil' itself was decent. Going to see "The Italian Job" kicked much arse. Not since "The Usual Suspects" had I seen such a slick crime movie. Granted it stretched reality at convenient points, but it was dead sexy.

The highlight of the evening--again--was the eye candy. Not The Captain, mind you--we're not like that kind of set of best friends--but all of the shots I'd composed in my head the night before. I tried a few around his place, including this shot.

The twist in the evening was when I was shooting Tungsten Falls 01 (see end of previous entry) over at the front of the "Woodlakes" gated community. I had that very shot in focus and I was thinking about some of the shit I needed to do, including studying for the GRE.

'Wait a second,' I thought, 'Did I? I had to have..oh..no I didn't...oh shit.'

See, having had our fun at 'Boil Boil' and the movie we enjoyed a lengthy afterglow. I'd brought my GRE study books into the car for the trip there--and I'd left them there, sure enough. The first thing I did was kick myself mentally. I did it a few times more and thought about what I could do. It was 2:00am so I assumed he was in bed already. The Captain's place was (I thought) a few blocks away, my car was parked at a supermart two blocks in the opposite direction.

I chose to run for his place first. So there I was, holding my tripod like an african hunter, bobbing alongside a flat bed of construction and dirt steadily giving birth to luxury track homes. I could hear African ritual chanting, as if I was imitating some man with a spear tens of thousands of years back and thousands of miles away near the heart of darkness. It was like "The Gods must be crazy" meets "Grapes of Wrath".

The Captain was up and bored. He said hi. I said hey. He helped me get my books. I thanked him and raced out to finish the photo shoot. After packing away my crap, I drove out and away from The Captain's hunting grounds, looking over to the left just before the 110 freeway to see the Trinity broadcasting channel's Versaille-like gated grounds. In front of their holy emblem on either side was a deli sign that read "open". These signs were not lit at night. Every time I passed the place before I thought it an execution-worthy shame. This time was similar. I'd call the shot "Christ's Deli" and have the description be a car sales pitch. I can dream, can't I?

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I studied for the GRE...**[section deleted for personal and ethical reasons]**...edited some photographs and posted Tungsten Falls 01. It became popular. I was pleased :D

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The Captain had convinced me to go out to see him again. He was going to be slogged down with work for the next two weeks and, like any good bondage and/or marriage contract, needed to have the equivalent of a bachelor's party before tying the knot--with a long drop and a short stop.

I'd raved about "Pirates of the Caribbean" to him. Johnny Depp himself makes it worthwhile to see twice, I chattered at him. We ended up going someplace else besides the accentuated skin promenade. It was vaguely by the ocean, in that same way that people in Arizona long for California to sink into the ocean, all just so they have a bay and beach-front property.

We arrived early. Rather than sit, we hiked for an hour in hopes of getting to the beach (which we couldn't find) and talked about genes and consciousnes. The scientific community don't know shit about genes, really..at least beyond cocktail party comments like Down's Syndrome or Schizophrenia being associated with this gene or that one. We discussed how much do genes influence consciousness and vice-versa, how society/family was a weird force that could force perfectly healthy people into killing themselves, etc. We both reached the conclusion that consciousness and genes are separated in some way, some irreconcialable way that forces the two of them to negotiate. Maybe that's an argument for a soul of some kind, who knows.

Philosophy aside, "Pirates" was again fantastic, one of the few movies where the fantasy surpasses the reality. That and it features undead in it. I have an unhealthy fixation on the concept of undeath. No, really, 3/4 of my short stories involve it to some degree--none of them including vampires.

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There was a lab meeting at noon..and the vague feeling that we were getting nowhere.

15 male rats were ready to be introduced into experiments. The few undergrads there seemed to like this new development. Basically I'm trying to see why the hell we aren't getting our 48 hour depression effect. I'm hoping that repeating the same experiment but with adult--as opposed to teenage--rats will get it back. I'm using half the rats available--8 in total--for it. We'll see how that goes.

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Largely a combination of studying for the GRE (insert parrot squawk), posting new photographs and wading through social brujah-ha with witchy women...**[section deleted for personal and ethical reasons]**----

It puzzles me why I seem to attract people. Granted, I'm not incredibly sarcastic all the time (I really over-emphasize it here for catharsis), but just enough to leave a taste in your mouth. I guess it must be a good aftertaste..either that or the kind that gives you a lobotomy and makes you happy anyway. How'd that be for a compliment: you're like a frontal lobotomy and triple-bypass to me.

I tried writing some of this entry, wrote dialogue for the game team I'm a part of, went off into editing photography, got some coffee, wrote more of this entry, vapored, ate dinner...then finally finished this entry and the week.

And if it's been difficult cultivating the energy to read this, it can stop now.

But I will say this: accentuated accent women do give me a frontal lobotomy. So does Johnny Depp, but not in the same tingly 'yum, yes, that body with a bottle of wine, please' way.

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And now, if I can get the energy, I'm going to park in the middle of nowhere at the LA harbor and photograph industrial stuff.

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