Dear DCI,

Please go fornicate yourselves with a steel rod.

Yours truly,
Josh

i was extremely dissatisfied with the way things went friday night. and i had only been looking forward to the show for a couple of days. i cant even IMAGINE how some of those people out there felt. those that had been looking forward to this all summer. man.

granted, it wasn't DCI's fault. they cant control the weather. however, they CAN control cancellation policies, and the policy that's in place now sucks ass. "Thanks for your money. Better hope it doesn't rain! Cause you're not getting ANY of this back." i mean, at least with a "rain or shine" event you dont have to worry about cancellation. but this... man.

so we drove back home, soaking wet and completely without our fill of drum corps.

that's where the sory ends for the Burkas, but not me. i realized that i was back early enough to make it to PeeWee's Big Adventure over at the Belcourt. i was excited to make it because i thought i was going to miss out. well, i didn't miss out. i sat in front of PeeWee's biggest fan. now i dont mind when EVERYone in the theater is quoting some classic lines from the movie, but i DO mind when ONE person (directly behind me) is quoting EVERY line and laughing (very hard) at EVERYthing. he was even cussing because of his excitement! he was like, "Oh shit! Shit shit shit. Oh shit, PeeWee!" "Oh motherf*cker." i dont remember the last time i was so confused and furious at the same time. i sat in a relatively quiet rage for about 10min and then i stood up, walked up 3 rows, and sat down. with that little distance between us i was able to enjoy the rest of the movie.

i dont know if i can take the crowd that'll be at Goonies.


we also went to the Brewer's Fest on Saturday. we were extremely full, but it was fun.

who wouldn't want to come home to this pair?

Huntsville & Prcautions

i put some new windshield wiper nozzles on jesse's civic yesterday. it's a good thing i didn't need instructions becuase, well, just take a look:

you just can't fake real engrish.

i went to Huntsville this weekend with Jon to visit Aaron. it was fun. a nice break from life. we sat around and watched movies and went out and ate and drank beer and played pool and frolfed. it was great.




sunday was such a beautiful day. a great "cloud" day. they looked so cool. so i was taking pictures of them all the way back from Tullahoma.





jess and i finally got back into "netflixing." for a while there we just held on to the movies for a month of so. recently, we watched several really good movies (and a few terrible). Gandhi and Malcom X were oldies that i'd always meant to see but just never could bring myself to sit through. let me go ahead and say they are both excellent movie and a breeze to sit through (both topping the 3hr mark). i was really amazed with Gandhi. i thought it was going to be a struggle, but really i couldn't stop watching it. it was extremely captivating. his whole concept of non-violent non-complaince was so simple yet unbelievably powerful. quite amazing. and Malcolm X was better than i thought. i find it interesting that no one associates his later years as a rather peaceful person with the character of Malcolm X. it's always about his extremist period (which was mostly due to the "islamic" teachings he recieved.) really an interesting story.

and we watched Closer. this was actually a lot better than i thought due to the fact that no one was trying to hide anything in the movie; everyone just told what they had done/were doing, so there was no stress of "is he/she gonna find out??" so, yeah, a little graphic in language, but a good movie.

never see Caché. pure crap.

photoshop and the burka brothers

look how creepy those guys look in this picture. the beady red eyes and the stone cold glare. brrrrr. creeps me out. maybe they're just from an 80's ad or something. a creepy 80s ad. for zombies.


here's what they looked like in real life. completely without remorse. stone cold. (although scott appears slightly more confused than stone cold.)


and here's what they would look like if they were that game, Goldeneye. (well, sort of.)


alright, whatever.

i always wondered how they saturated ALL the colors

this is a picture i took this morning from my building window. pretty nice. nothing amazing. however, on my normal trip to adjust the white/black levels, i decided to try the "Equalize" option. i've done this once or twice and it mostly just messed up the picture, however, on this occasion, it did this...


holy crap. normally that just messes up the colors in a picture, but here! look at the saturation! how does it find those colors? it's a bit grainy, but add some blur and you get this:

remarkable.

here's another example:

(before)

(after)

another (more subtle) example (notice this one doesn't get grainy):

(before)

(after)

all i can guess is that the Equalize option is for a time and place (unlike adjusting the histogram). and apparently the place is the sky. now, go, explore... and equalize.

corey the fabulous

ah, i'm just messing with you. but seriously, i found these when looking through the pictures from my birthday this year. i couldn't remember if we had ever put them up or not.

i messed with a few of them (obviously). "Channel Mixing" (colors in photoshop) is pretty fun once you get the hang of it. seems like you can create a ton of different color saturated possibilities with any given photo. i guess my goal would be to alter it so that it's noticeably different than the stock photo, but not so far out there that it's distracting. anyway, you should mess with it.

and of course, what's a bunch of pictures with out some Dudley?

pure crap is what.

July 8 - July 9

let's see. this weekend we... slept, ate, and watched movies. we saw Nacho Libre saturday night and Superman sunday night. Nacho Libre... okay. funny, but nothing amazing. Superman, totally awesome. it was fantastic. it was a great throwback to the old ones, but with a totally new look. and sweet action. it was sweet.

went to watch the World Cup at the Belcourt on sunday. it was full. we were turned away. so we went around the corner to Sam's. it was full. dangit. so we went back home and found an empty sports bar with some widescreen TVs and watched it there. it was mildly disappointing. i was rooting for France and was shocked to see Zidane do something so stupid. i think it cost France the Cup. other than THAT, yeah it was a great game.

watched the movie Why We Fight last night. it was really great. so great i felt the need to tell my co-worker steve about it. this was a mistake. we are currently in the middle of an hour long discussion about the military industrial complex. i just wanted to tell him about the documentary. i seem to be striking the wrong "chord" with steve quite often lately. the other day it was something about music and now this. it's cool though. gives us something to discuss.

i have a review tomorrow at work. i'm kind of nervous. i feel like i've been doing a very mediocre job lately and i'm not sure what to do about that.

jess and i went to the grocery store last night. we had many items to purchase. however, what seemed most important was some soap, a 12 pack of Flying Dog beer, and 5 pizzas. i think we covered our bases pretty good.

Autostitch, you rascal!

(that was some crazy lighting out there, eh?)

July 1 - July 2

we went to watch fireworks at steve's house saturday night. he buys a ton every july 5th and january 2nd. and for a personal show, he had some sweet sized firworks. i was pretty excited about this for 2 reasons: a) i love fireworks and b) i just figured out how to slow my camera's shutter speed down a lot and was looking for something fun to try it on.

this next one is such a great picture. jesse is squinting because apparently she found the fireworks too bright. (yeah, i dont get it either.) then there's brian and his wife. in every picture i have of the group, brian has the same grin across his face, so i think he had a good time. and then todd on the end, who apparently found them too bright and too loud.

(i like how that one tree is so in focus.)

(steve was having a great time out there.)

(i tried to tell her i was all out of faces, but she wouldnt listen.)

so i got this +10 macro lens for my camera this weekend. it's really just a magnifying glass in the form of a lens. anyway, i took this flower picture thinking i was using it properly and "blowing the image up" to, well, whatever +10 means.

i was wrong. the next 2 images were taken with the +10 lens using it's full macro potential. dang dude.

(that's the little mozilla icon on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen.)

we also saw Dark Side of the Rainbow Friday night. but that's a whole other story.